"disappearances" poems
The woman who had her wings clipped in a car wreck showed me how to swallow truth deep into my throat, how to pull it out with minimal damage - told me being a circus act is easier than being a good person. And it is! worrying about money isn't apple pie, worrying about appearances, disappearances, alien encounters, trafficking, scamming - all so sticky they causes me to gag. When you worry you lose sight of the trophy buck... Which doesn't matter to me, it's your video game - its hooves are in the field, stomping pumpkins and viny gourds to mush.
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 7:27 PM UTC
Again and again
Your wings make wind feel alive
Disappearances
Jan 6, 2012
Jan 6, 2012 at 7:22 PM UTC
curling up into all sweet confusions
that trickle down from
your touch,
we become the sky, as birds fall
from above. i lose
a tactician's leverage throughout
this fog; a descension
if you were the moon,
an aberrance,
if you were a single leaf,
dripping from this
tree coiling up to
the lights hung on
netted strings set under
the darkness of the sky,
where-ever you have been.
where-ever you are.
so,
do the stars still shine solely for you,
the nights you most need them?
perhaps i have
gone blind,
just when i need to see you,
more now than ever.
perhaps i've just
been sleeping
a little
too long, inside this cave.
does the sky still divide the sea?
but, undoing the buttons on your grip,
you build declensions on foundations
of realisation: with full authorship of
your motions, you know you could
go anywhere, love. you now know
away from i is any road, every treadmark
save this single one.
and mine is hardly treacherous,
but you'll still only find me in mountaintops,
so i could barely blame you if the path gets
too narrow, or too long-wound.
do the clouds still turn images
in full colour, late afternoon, to
remind you of shapes i imitate
in all fractured disappearances?
i've seen retreat from so
many sides now, the addition of
yours could
hardly make a dent. not that i
would not lament a loss like you,
more than anything.
yet, don't
worry, never
worry, i can still stay in motion.
still, if you see fit to
collect all broken pieces of me,
and build up this cottage, or nest, you can keep
your heart here long as
you like, darling.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 1:44 AM UTC
Childhood is a
Kingdom
Where nobody dies
Isn't that
Such a
Heartbreaking
Lie
It's surprising
How we've
Lasted this long
With so many
Threats around us
So many
Disappearances
So many
Forgotten
Childhood is a
Kingdom
But beyond its
Borders is
Where darkness
Lies in wait
Of you
That darkness invades
the kingdom
Picking us
Off
One
By
One
Into the realm
of reality
Of harsh cruelty
And of sorrow
Betrayal and
Anger
Sometimes
We find those
who are lost
Not always
Breathing
And sometimes
They never turn
Up
Childhood is a
Kingdom Where
nobody dies
Isn't that
Such a
Heartbreaking
Lie
But it's the
Kingdom where
Our future
Lies
Our defenses
Are not
Always strong
But we are
Never weak
We will always
Look and search
Never give up
Even if ten
years past
And you're
no longer a child
You're not forgotten
By us
Don't fear
Just let someone
know
And truth will
be with you
Childhood is a
Kingdom
Where nobody dies
And no one
is forgotten
about
No matter how
Long ago
In its
own walls
Life is full
of color
with anything
you can imagine
Though we'd
love for you
to stay
forever
You must
Leave sometime
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 8:31 AM UTC
I saw the great change in him
After he saw the nyanga
As if something was tailing him
Something sinister from the Okawanga
He wanted to gain mental strength
That was why he sought witch doctor help
So together they went to great lengths
To summon the Tokoloshe for this whelp
Born of ****** and sinister thought
The foul creature was called to this world
And a wake of ill doings it brought
Causing fear in each boy and each girl
With this new friend he didn’t need me
But he still needed praise and accept
So he brought me along just to see
How he ***** a girl whose blood he kept
In a bottle for pride in his deed
After he killed her and chopped her up
“I was brought there to watch her bleed”
That’s what I said, when I told the cop
The Police came and took him to jail
But the Tokoloshe followed him inside
Soon he vanished, no trace, not a trail
And rumours said Tokoloshe helped him hide
No one saw him for several days
But a rise in disappearances occurred
And soon he revealed his wicked ways
He stole belongings from his victims, I heard
So, he was caught again but not held for long
His Tokoloshe had not finished yet
It was his purpose to match evil with wrong
And **** and **** whomever he would get
18 months he was on the loose
Sometimes aiding police investigations
He would help them pick up the clues
So he could re-live the gory exhilaration
They could only find partial remains
Tokoloshe had made him use his axe
Rather thoroughly and thrown them off trains
He made sure souls would never relax
When they caught him the final time
He was smiling with satisfaction
He felt no sense of remorse for his crimes
Now he hangs as the judge’s reaction
Tokoloshe is still hiding somewhere
Coming out at night when your dreams are deep
Wreaking havoc and causing a scare
Biting toes, ****** women in their sleep
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 2:58 PM UTC
She was too selfish to share
Her feelings with the rest of the family
So she faded
Kind of like the rainbow after the prettiest
She blended into the whole
But no one noticed her sudden disappearances
Into the confines of her bedroom
Where there were CD's and music
And blades and pills
And then one day
She didn't come back out.
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 11:28 AM UTC
father arrives carrying lovelessly
the weight of his own shadow
across the furniture.
throws his socks missing
the mouth of the laundry bin.
exhaust of television static
as his mouth opens agape
receiving the dizzy fizz of
turning channels
like spindrift through the windows
moist, wizened on his resigned couch
he falls asleep like a pin
dropped into the heart of the ocean—
life, what have you done?
mother lacquers her fingernails
as the dog wags his tail furiously
the mirrors ache as dead moments
grow roots in the viscera,
as shadows curb themselves
perfecting their disappearances,
the madhouse women
rehearsing their discomfitures
time swiftly passed
through the very past of things
that we have forgotten,
late to unsay the day struck by wind
and too uneventful to even plead
for undivided rest.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 10:05 AM UTC
bleak darkness and its measure:
squandering the light
no definitions
no spectral haze
no inhibitions
its onerous labor is one
with me.
live life at the edge of the fall.
holding a hand
fallibly.
live alone, love alone —
these things pulse with strength
in singleness, even the glances
of prying neighbors are sequestered
reduced to sealed shut, hermetic,
no sight or hindsight.
i'll run to where the sunlight is
and wish for the moon, slumber
like a dead log adrift in the current.
buying myself love and selling its pleasures to defunct markets.
trying to repair what is beyond salvation,
trying to amalgamate what is perpetually
scarred, sundered.
clangorous *** of metal, herding jeep
and riotous chariots; mad men fill
the lines waiting for encumbrance,
bardic in the streets of Marilao
hungry for something:
give me a blank piece of paper
and i will try to reinvent the world
with impunity and lostness.
the world gives back such awry stare
and all imperative darkness reigns
supreme, mine are all emergencies
as shadows are succored not,
retained in their caliginous thrones.
living alone
yet not so much alone.
the dog outside does not bark anymore.
the well-placed gnome of stone outside
stares stonily across the thick space.
the nosy neighbor does not meddle
through the rusted ocher grills.
the old moon wanes outside
as the lift of light sways to where
there are no disappearances.
somewhere in the metropolitan there
is a derby of fools and all mirth;
i wish myself there and curse my presence
right then.
work does not fill me anymore,
money does me no good. my soul
bangs the walls and slams the doors
it threatens to leave without auguries,
and demands a new sense of necessity.
tonight, i will go out, drink at a local pub
and crawl towards the ajar door of
my father's car. smoke will caterwaul
the pressing scenes of the vicinities
crumbling at the tremor of clocks;
i will open my dresser and discover
all books dissipated, some naked
in relished pages, others abeyant.
the curtain can fall later,
and the night too, falter evenly
widely spread across the sky.
— all is broken.
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 8:49 AM UTC
a wand of disappearances
operate in our very
midst
who is the conductor
of its vanishing
gist?
where once our fellow
poets did pleasantly
reside
now the wicked wand
has eradicated their
bide
numerous blank spaces
symbolize the conductor's
vice
employing a wand which
has emptied the
rice
black the hour
black the day
a black instrument
whisking them all too
suddenly away
a wand so dark
of intent
wanting to wane
our writers tent
the subtracting conductor
will be planning future
disappearances
so be mindful of its
wand's unsolicited
clearances
Feb 17, 2018
Feb 17, 2018 at 6:09 PM UTC
The girl who was never seen,
During school throughout her teens.
Lonely longing for a connection,
Only loving was her obsession.
Any show of slightest act of ordinary kindness,
Made her glow with brightness, distracting her with temporary blindness.
Overwhelmed and grateful,
Though deep down, she knew strong emotions like these can lead to feeling,
So compelled and painful...
Again being used to occurrences of blissful happiness,
In the end she sees disappearances, feeling fearful and never ending resentment.
Bliss only to last for what feels like a few minutes,
She's living in the past clinging to what she misses.
As she grew tired of this cycle and all,
She often knew prior before the final result.
not wanting to go through those days of watching those walk away anymore;
She did less talking,
irritated by their knocking, she ignores.
Thoughts filling her with doubt,
She closes the door shutting them out...
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 11:30 PM UTC
When I was young, white moonlight poured in, nights
Through my gauzy white curtains, and the world turned paler,
A ghostly apparition of it's daytime countenance.
The whiteness contained all the emotion, of my whole life's turning
Condensed down into streaming rays of silvered light-
And that moonlight scoured, cleansed everything it touched;
Nothing was sordid, forgettable, unimaginable; the magic turned all
Into a fairy's world, of majestic mystery and translucent dignity.
I trusted the moonlight. Moonlight today is not the same;
My curtains don't block it, but the moon doesn't seem to smile as large
And I know too many secrets and disappearances now-
When I knew less, the fantasies could sustain the weight of my world,
Which has since grown too heavy, and the hour now is late.
I feel if I could reach that lost moonlight one more time,
I could find the other self, the one knew so much more of nothing,
But was secreted between the moonlit nights
And felt satisfied, not yet knowing the deep inward emptiness of life,
And the way the colors get released one by one
From the central altar of night time’s lamp,
And how particles of soul get extinguished;
Released to another life, in the far-travelling moonbeams.
But the moon does not remember bewitching my face,
Which has grown cratered with time,
And while the moon slowly steals our breaths away,
And covers up our eyes with its brilliance,
It's hands pick our pockets nightly,
And take everything there that is light, bright, glowing
To return it to the moon-blinded young.
While we just keep on growing darker,
Until they shove us back underground again-
Now even the moon has forgotten my face.
Jul 4, 2010
Jul 4, 2010 at 6:49 AM UTC
Before her Disappearances
My Heart Beat went out of control
As I look in her eyes…
My body went Black out
I felt her love for me… from miles
I Love Her , don’t know why….
Endless Sparkles in my eyes
& joy to meet is still alive
I will meet her soon ..
May be she too think so ….
No conceptual metaphor
She Is Unique
She is My Queen
I dreamed her last night ..
& Then I fell in LOVE …..
Feb 1, 2018
Feb 1, 2018 at 7:06 AM UTC
A ghost use to be something I was.
I'd pop up, do some crazy stuff
and disappear, just because.
Even though my interactions were brief,
I changed the lives of the people I encountered.
Due to this, my disappearances caused much grief.
I've turned that nasty habit into something constructive.
A series of poems, the contents uncorrelated.
Still, the theme is reproductive.
They are all random thoughts and incomplete theories
A complex ball of conflicting emotions.
I'm talking, of course about my "Ghost" series!
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 4:13 AM UTC
The atmosphere with your eyes,
Their dreams, the space, the color,
The picture shows
words. Traffic jam,
Disappearances, smoke and society;
service. Lightweight musical instruments
Diesel and submarine speak
Favorite and small script
Help. Cornelius is the largest
Add the Brazilian Robin's clothes
Build Brazil again. the future
Learn about La Lorra from Galicia
Latest address, Jesse's advantage
It will be the Dominican Republic
was gone. Bernard, in other cases,
She has no connection with her.
Your first page is easy to grow. Who
Germany has been arrested.
It's always like blood.
The first two? The director acts.
Dance. Black Life can be a mistake.
When you see lions like lions,
Lion number is the perfect place,
Appearance, from the opposite side,
Still available. He killed his brother;
His weapons were in the washing machines,
Dress, and dress should be worn.
The groom is listening to our ears
Society and our light.
New Sandy Favorite game
And small screens
Cornelius is the biggest woman
Roberts heart touches Brettina's
City. Few futures -
Jesse in Hollywood Love;
Hollywood census information was lost;
system. If you do, then you speak.
The first page of development is easy.
PRIVATE MARKETING ACTIVITIES
Should he give the cherubim? Lakes, rocks,
Blood to Germany and law
Application. The first two? It contains
Caulkerer that may be wrong.
Dark in the dark;
First I decided (one)
[As Eli was already a polygamist,
if not a bigamist, it wasn't
a problem for him to marry Chuckie;
Becky aware of the arrangement,
he'd lost a second wife somewhere,
never quite sure where she'd been
misplaced. He even asked Leonard,
who nodded & grunted telling Eli
nothing; Leonard knew Chuckie, her
name in fact unpronounceable to
the Western ear. He congratulated Eli
on getting himself a real Russian girl.
Chuckie was born in Siberia & had
made it to St. Petersburg on her back.
The Unknowns gave her good reason
to stay that way, then Eli came along.
Tom had literally thrown her at the
diffident painter, who gladly took the
bony ***** in hand & under his
watchful eye, she never choked on her
own ***** & neither did he; it was a
match made on the floor ...
Nov 20, 2018
Nov 20, 2018 at 5:14 PM UTC
mind's collective.
a primary congregation
in chiaroscuro,
white axis
tilting black worlds
as stars lean
towards their gaseous disappearances.
mind's prison.
blood surging in staccato,
thumping like wild animals,
trundling underneath the womb
of genuflecting hills.
a cityscape is innervated
by electric wires and their
secretive jolts: this plunging light laying leschenaultia diadem
on my head naming me king
of shadows thriving inside
bells telling all buoys
with their rotund calisthenics.
all words elope stagnant rivers,
vexing truths out of horizons
painting them without color,
like the image of a dove trapped
in mirror's water, reaching
forth kingdom come.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
I left my phone in the fridge again.
Texted my dead friend by mistake.
The dream said turn left at the red door
but every door was mauve and melting.
I wore the wrong shoes
to the right breakdown.
God, I’m tired of being
the lesson in someone else’s flashback.
Of saying 'I’m fine'
like it’s a good thing.
Sometimes I bite a fingernail off
and flick it to the ground,
just to prove I was here,
just to pretend my DNA
is not a walking lie.
Sometimes I talk
to the dogs with TikTok accounts
like they’re holding something back.
Sometimes I rehearse my disappearances
in liminal spaces:
parking garages,
abandoned malls,
group chats I left on read.
Now I RSVP to nothing
and they still say
“you’ll be missed.”
I keep meaning to heal,
but the plot keeps thickening—
And my name—
God, my name—
it echoes like a spoiler
in a house that isn’t mine anymore.
A trivia fact
no one got right.
My memories keep getting
auto-corrected to get over it.
I don’t.
I alphabetize the wreckage.
I romanticize the ruin.
The rot is getting readable.
Anyway,
I’m late again.
Time got weird in the hallway.
I swear the mirror
was trying to warn me—
but I was too busy
checking if my under-eye bags
made me look exquisitely exhausted,
or just ordinary and old.
I wanted to scream
but the hallway
was practicing silence.
I wanted to run,
but the rug said stay
and the mirror said
be still
and beautiful and
unavailable.
The mirror said:
this is what longing looks like
when it runs out of places to go.
So I stood there—
a half-wreck, half-reflection—
trying to decide
if disappearing quietly
still counts as survival.
Somewhere,
my phone is defrosting.
Somewhere,
the red door is waiting.
Somewhere,
my dead friend
is laughing
his ghost-laugh,
mouthing: same.
Apr 14, 2025
Apr 14, 2025 at 2:33 AM UTC
Not gonna be around for a little bit
Gonna be without the Internet
Mar 10, 2012
Mar 10, 2012 at 9:37 AM UTC
The son's eyes set low as green felt feigns grass stains.
The son does not cry at the father's funeral. The son
holds them in.
He, the son, is now a rung higher
and lower. Simultaneous promotions and
disappearances. He is the last line.
The son does all the planning. For the day of,
the week next.
The month's end, and the bills due.
The son does all the fathering that the father
has now left behind.
He is now a caretaker. A husband to two wives,
his,
and his.
The son and the father
were not strong in their love.
Not a single day.
The son will find humility where once was cruelty.
Where once was impulse he finds patience.
Where once a sinner comes anew virtue.
The son is now a house where once was a home.
The son is now alone.
Aug 4, 2018
Aug 4, 2018 at 2:42 AM UTC
I guess that's it
Him the straw
Me the camels back
I'm broken
You're gone
His now
Or maybe all along
I'm broken
Your heart his
Never truly mine
Always distant
Always in his arms
Strange disappearances explained
With him
In mind
Body
Soul.
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 1:28 PM UTC
The stars in their ordained paths and metered blinking
their blue shifts
their moody disappearances into the south or into daylight
their human dreams of travel -
I dispute their ownership by anyone
and would they weakly claim to own me?
Should I feel the fatherly pressure
of their hands on the nape of my neck?
Should they tell us the future
if we’re quiet enough to listen
and if we read the newspaper?
I can’t unpack decisions from markets
and markets from the seasons
nor seasons from the stars.
They are comfortable with great distances:
they circle and swoon. One day, their orbits
will bend to one another and the great gas globes
will move in straight lines. They’ll put
two gallons in the tank and go
wherever they want to go. But for now
I am as bound as they are, and I am told
I don’t live in the same kind of darkness.
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 5:04 PM UTC
some kind of perpetual motion
perpetual motion
this movement took this
what a strange love
strange disgust
where did all this come from
what a strange light
strange moon and stars
where did all this come from
what a strange night
strange strange shadows
where did these shadows come from
oh my mind oh my mind
oh why do I say it all
why there is all this
why the torch burns on fire
why the blood runs running
where did all this come from
why disappearances
why is nothing to us all
never reach
why there is all this
13.07.18
Jul 13, 2018
Jul 13, 2018 at 5:22 AM UTC
Some days,
I wish I could ride away
And be one of those
Strange disappearances.
What a vivid of a “some days”
This night is.
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 8:55 AM UTC
They were friends before Kindergarten, he and her
Long before either of their troubles would occur.
Laughing and playing from night until day
Neither of them thinking that the other would stray.
When elementary school started, they were the best of friends
But his parents were having trouble making amends.
When his father left the scene, he became home schooled
And for being his friend, she became ridiculed.
But not caring about the opinion of others,
She continued to think of him as one of her brothers.
By the end of elementary school, she was his only friend
But at the start of middle school her popularity began to ascend.
When middle school came about, it was as if she had been crowned
And slowly he began to seep into the background.
The years went on and it seemed as though he had disappeared
Which had been on the top of the list of things he feared.
What he did not know, was that his disappearances caused her grief
And despite her mother and father's warnings, she became a thief.
Being reckless and silly caused her mother's death
And her sadness had almost caused her own last breath.
After the tragedy, he came back to public school, hearing of her devastation
Soon after his timely return, he became her rock, her foundation.
She had crumbled on the inside, getting into alcohol and drugs
Walking around empty and lost, living life as if she were wearing earplugs.
For the rest of middle school through the end of high,
She was living in her mind, her life flying by.
He finally convinced her that she needed to change
Because she was being perceived as strange.
It took her a while to realize that she
Cared for him more than anybody.
The two eventually got together
Attracted to each other like birds to a feather.
They married young and had a child
Who looked like his mother an d always smiled,
The older they became, the more she remembered
That in her younger years she was very dismembered.
She thanked him every day
For saving her when she had gone astray
He told her that is was her friendship that he was defending
And their love was completely unending.
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
i eat a cucumber in defiance of the forces that would overwhelm me
Oct 6, 2019
Oct 6, 2019 at 12:56 PM UTC