"disarrayed" poems
A part of me lives miles and minutes and moments away
in an indefinite, dreamy place where clocks are not my enemy
and I associate the word “distance" with travel, not longing
My heart has sailed across the Atlantic,
moved eagerly through the Indian Ocean,
navigated using an atlas inked with butterflies
and stars that gleam ardently
(just as your rosemary eyes do,
every once in a blue moon,
when you’re able to sew together
the disarrayed thoughts
that dwell in your messy head)
You are so, so far away
However, if I avoid calendars and geography,
it feels like you’re right here beside me
In the afternoon, when the sun shines
through my bedroom window
and paints the world map on my wall with light,
I shut my eyelids and run my thumb along the string
that stretches across the parchment,
connecting me to you
I pretend that when I open my eyes,
you will be here
and that my aching fingers
that are so desperately
grasping the paper
will be intertwined
with yours
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 1:35 PM UTC
Days that cannot bring you near
or will not,
Distance trying to appear
something more obstinate,
argue argue argue with me
endlessly
neither proving you less wanted nor less dear.
Distance: Remember all that land
beneath the plane;
that coastline
of dim beaches deep in sand
stretching indistinguishably
all the way,
all the way to where my reasons end?
Days: And think
of all those cluttered instruments,
one to a fact,
canceling each other's experience;
how they were
like some hideous calendar
"Compliments of Never & Forever, Inc."
The intimidating sound
of these voices
we must separately find
can and shall be vanquished:
Days and Distance disarrayed again
and gone
both for good and from the gentle battleground.
9.6k
tonight,
i will lay my head on my pillow
and my mind will be silent
and i don't know if that's
better or worse than
a thousand disarrayed thoughts
keeping me away,
because regardless of
whether or not
i'm thinking of you
and wondering if
you're thinking of me,
whether or not
i'm thinking of this
or that or anything
that makes me feel,
it still takes forever
to fall asleep
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 2:44 PM UTC
It was hard to miss Jerry
in the corner
holding court
over the bran muffin.
Flurries of judgement and wisdom
flying across coffee dappled pages
as he sentenced a large cup of
Paruvian Dark Roast
to be ******
7 am Dan never flinched
steeling his tenured chair at
a spot one section of stir sticks away
calculably just out of reach
of the regularly scheduled tantrum.
An auburn-haired newbie
fanes camoflage
peeking over two pages of Obituaries
she never intended to read.
Her raised and nearly detached eyebrows
hover above the dateline like a magic trick.
And on every table fall
scattered leaves
of press print trees
unsorted and littered with intent
by careless absorbers of trivia.
Disconnected
ear-budded
footnotes of humanity
see nothing
hear nothing
using the disarrayed World News as
enormous coasters
unmoved by hyper-ventilating compulsives
pushing panic buttons through
desperate quests to uncover
one alphabetically organized set
of local news.
Of the papers not strewn
the remnant holds anxious
on a distant wall
a throng of flopping
rabbit-eared
step children
dangling precariously
from unaccomodating magazine racks
like smoky orphans from
windows in a fiery building.
Disordered.
Disrespected.
Discarded...words are
Jews in the holocaust.
Death of a voice.
We are irreverent in our silence
diminishing genius through apathy
put off by the imposition to be challenged
choosing disposable principles
above responsible knowledge.
Everything is disposable - cameras, cars,
relationships, loyalty, babies...and wisdom -
crumpling Pulitzer prize authors
and discarding WW2 veterans
just to get to the cartoons.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 11:15 PM UTC
I don't ask you to be faithful - you're beautiful, after all -
but just that I be spared the pain of knowing.
I make no stringent demands that you should really be chaste,
but only that you try to cover up.
If a girl can claim to be pure, it's the same as being pure:
it's only admitted vice that makes for scandal.
What madness, to confess by day what's wrapped in night,
and what you've done in secret, openly tell!
The ****** about to bed some Roman off the street
still locks her door first, keeping out the crowd:
will you yourself then make your sins notorious,
accusing and prosecuting your own crime?
Be wise, and learn at least to imitate chaste girls,
and let me believe you're good, though you are not.
Do what you do, but simply deny you ever did:
there's nothing wrong with public modesty.
There is a proper place for looseness: fill it up
with all voluptuousness, and banish shame;
but when you're done there, then put off all playfulness
and leave your indiscretions in your bed.
There, don't be ashamed to lay your gown aside
and press your thigh against a pressing thigh;
there take and give deep kisses with your crimson lips;
let love contrive a thousand ways of passion;
there let delighted words and moans come ceaselessly,
and make the mattress quiver with playful motion.
But put on with your clothes a face that's all discretion,
and let Shame disavow your shocking deeds.
Trick everyone, trick me: leave me in ignorance;
let me enjoy the life of a happy fool.
Why must I see so often notes received - and sent?
Why must I see two imprints on your bed,
or your hair disarrayed much more than sleep could do?
Why must I notice love bites on your neck?
You all but flaunt your indiscretions in my face.
Think of me, if not of your reputation.
I lose my mind, I die, when you confess you've sinned;
I break out in cold sweat from hand to foot;
I love you then, and hate you - in vain, since I must love you;
I wish then I were dead - and you were too!
I won't investigate or check whatever you try
to hide: I will be thankful to be deceived.
But even if I catch you in the very act
and look on your disgrace with my own eyes,
deny that I have seen what I have clearly seen,
and my eyes will agree with what you claim.
You'll win an easy prize from a man who wants to lose,
only remember to say, 'I didn't do it.'
Since you can gain your victory with one short phrase,
win on account of your judge, if not your case.
3.4k
Dear Wednesday morning floor waxer,
We really need to stop meeting like this. Me, bursting out of my dorm room at 10:26 for my 10:30 class across campus. You, intently waxing the floor in front of the elevator. I always rush past you, spitting out a labored “Sorry, excuse me!” as I slam into the door to the stairs and hit the same place on my hip that’s been bruised since the beginning of the semester. I rush off to class and forget about you until I head back to my dorm at 11:20, where I see you waxing the exact same spot on the floor that I left you with. No longer in a rush, I have time to smile as I walk past and politely excuse myself. You never so much as speak a word, often not even raising your head to acknowledge my existence. I sheepishly return to my room, tail between my legs, to wonder for a few minutes about why you refuse to speak to me before signing on to Facebook and forgetting all about it until the following Wednesday. Why do you ignore me, Wednesday morning floor waxer? I am certain that we could be great friends if only you would give me a chance! I fear that I might frighten you, with my disarrayed appearance and chaotic demeanor as I run to class. I certainly don’t jibe with the relaxed, stress-free air you clearly strive to maintain. Your zen rivals that of Miyagi himself. I COULD BE YOUR DANIEL-SAN. TEACH ME YOUR WAYS.
Sincerely,
That crazy girl in room 422.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 2:24 AM UTC
One year ago exactly, I awoke to the miserable news that my dear friend, Morgan Helman, was dead. I called her voicemail and wept my goodbyes. I punched the wall and screamed until I thought my lungs would crack. I wrote a poem to express the ravaging anguish I was experiencing, and to try and honor her life. I read it as a eulogy at her funeral. In it, I mentioned a time when she had asked me to write a happy poem. Everything I had ever written was a result of sadness or some other tortured emotion. I apologized that what I wrote for her was far from happy. I told her someday I would a write a happy poem, though I doubted my own words. One year later, I have walked away from the depressed mental state I used to call home. On the anniversary of her passing, I completed this "happy" poem. It's different than what I'm used to creating. It might not be as artistic as some of my other poetry. But it is a vivid expression of the first step in a new direction. This poem is dedicated to Morgan Helman and the legacy of love she left in her wake.
You Are
Resonating laughter
as the child plays,
hallway smiles
on bad days.
Disney movies
when I'm sick,
lightsaber battles
as a kid.
Rope swings
for make believe Peter-Panning,
backyard sprinklers
spraying the trampoline.
Hot soup
after it snows,
Refreshing popsicles
when the sun glows.
Warm cookies
melting in my mouth,
playing cards
at Grandma's house.
Blazing campfires
engulfed in inspiration,
jam sessions
with passionate musicians.
Barefoot freedom
in the grass and on the beach,
Sandy paradise
sinking beneath my feet.
Captivating books
as it gently rains,
favorite songs
when I'm disarrayed.
Intimate poetry
as my soul sings,
genuine happiness
spilling out of me.
Caring parents
whose admiration lasts,
trustworthy friends
who remove my masks.
Comforting arms
when my friend dies,
calloused hands
pulling tears from drowning eyes.
Raw love
strung on splintered wood,
My God
you are everything good.
~ m.w. ~
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 1:23 PM UTC
Through the messy, dis-shaped contours
of pained reflections
the light — disarrayed, distorted —
make day of the endless night.
Colors and shapes manifest
in the once dark structure
through lighted emanations
projected forth by shadowed obstructions
Tricksters by nature
the archetypal projections dance
to the beat of an unheard drum.
Animated by the refracted light,
they
dance and dance
round and round
to the incessant rhythm.
Personified vessels
of noumenal glory
slowly guiding themselves
back home.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 11:05 PM UTC
I never fix my room, no, never. On every corner, my books perch, stacks after stacks, like hungry butterflies destined to inhale the delight of only three summer days.
On the chair sleep those clothes I was wearing yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and last Monday and weeks ago, like fallen unremembered friends. It still has the scent of the woman sitting next to me on the bus, beside the window, her fleeting heart and endless readings and the way love flipped between her forefinger and thumb. That was the type of love that not the world could interrupt; not even the hundred years of common existence could contain.
It still has the sound of our broken steps on the pavement, the feel of the scraping wall, the drunken scent of the stranger I ****** with. His skin against my skin, his mouth staining the length of my neck, his hair wrapping my fingers, my breath on his temple, his leg, my leg, his arm, my arm, the stars dancing and our warmth defying the curse of human mortality.
Scattered on the floor were the paintbrushes, unwashed palette, stacks of newspapers I use to cover around my interminable uncertainty. I hear the wall, almost every day, discussing about my inferiority complex, about how it impedes me from creating something original, something infinite, about how it trails behind me, gasping, grabs me from behind, locks me in then eventually enslaves me.
How dare they are to go about the spectrum of these endless wanderings, these filthy fellows who knew so well that I never comb my hair and that I have always, always, hated the boring Murakami.
I never fix my bed, no, never. The propped of my pillow, the uneven creases, they will serve as the living reminder of our final encounter. I must have disarrayed the bed sheet – I cannot remember exactly when –but I have no plan of rearranging the constellations any moment soon.
My blanket swallows me alive, its edges draping on the edge of my bed, sometimes flipping reluctantly, savoring the vacancy of the afternoon, the way the light scars my books, glistens my skin that I have strewn everywhere for the mother of otherness to eat.
Most of the time, in my sheer insanity, I set my room afire.
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 11:02 AM UTC
I awoke this morning with all my
nanoseconds whizzing by—
spiraling, they broke for their exits,
they disarrayed my sky.
Each now and now and now
seemed a face, flash color,
many worlds. I could not sense
their place of start or stopping.
Morning sun peeped blue curtains.
I tried my usual breath, felt
heartbeat, wiggled foot.
My dog, he stretched
and bumped my bedframe
with his chest.
Against my fear I placed and pushed
messages of gratitude.
I thanked all things changing
and all of changing time.
Rather than elsewhere, I was here.
Instead of dead--
alive.
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 7:35 PM UTC
Spider
Walking into a corridor of neatly aligned cobwebs,
that have your history strewn across, like telephone wires
intertwining and intersecting,
Making all the conversations and voices interweave,
crossing paths - causing a disruption in the line,
the static disturbances echoing through the dark corridor
embellished with these cobwebs that have been lost in your mind.
The cobwebs speak like conversations
from broken telephone poles
that are overlapping and confusing the mind,
muddled and disarrayed, lacking any sense.
time has consumed these thoughts,
leaving bits and pieces,
that only mislead you
You swing across paving new paths with silken threads,
crisp and new, like adhesive,
glistening with prosperity.
Yet you keep these deep rooted cobwebbed memories
locked in your mind,
like Pandora’s box ready to unravel.
So just let them retire,
they have fallen and become undone,
and now they just collect
dust from your memories
Reminding you of thoughts,
that are specked and flecked
with dusty recollections.
Those worn out thoughts can no longer collect,
they only eject,
tangled stories confusing you
and bemusing you
So don’t collect
your abandoned webs,
like a memory book - they are no longer relevant,
they were just webs you wove to learn
how to weave the web you now conceive,
strong and secure,
fully capable to endure.
Dec 26, 2012
Dec 26, 2012 at 3:21 PM UTC
Iodine damnation cleanses Alice--rock-and-roll medusa
alone in the field,
she waits for the flies to eat the spider
--the third testament of law
divinely christened as low as $19.95.
Hell is where
Schrodinger throws the bodies. Revived Alice is in a burlap sack
embedded in the cubbyhole
of a mortal anthro-rubix,
the small garnishes that spot livers during cancer.
"Hello and welcome
to the resting place of all Blues songs."
speaks the curbed lips of Gluttony. A name that vomits
up rebellion, like cleansing the glucose off
fish-cleaning tables.
Alice touches her eyes rolls them
--fortunate galleries,
broods deeply on the jaws of her receptors.
"After the last drop, the hard boiled spoil
and the cats won't eat 'em. Neither will I," Gluttony spews, "You all show up
as do I, magnifying the cruelty of digging,
digging,
digging
that follows me and you to the bitter stem
and rough petal--throwing this rose,
that rose,
here and there inside the carcass of lust.
The scalding photograph of a guerrilla war playground
hangs over
the mantle of a prideful garden.
"Pulp wisdom
looking back at the names of thieves/murderers
of simple thought
over-turning scars of fallacy
in that garden.
"Picking,
picking,
picking out the best arrangement
so it doesn't look like I went
through a drive-thru
for what to say. 'Hey.'
'Yes?'
'I love you.'
'You too.'
Something in between
what you, I, and the others were looking for
has uprooted bushes--the tilled chest of my sister
and lover--disarrayed, dirt thrown
to the side.
Fibonacci colors patterned
across the moist earth
to distract you and I, all from the dread, and all
the relief
of ripping apart the white, pink, black, and red."
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 8:48 PM UTC
Flora and fauna hides the maze,
In the concrete jungle of corporate race.
Disarrayed and frazzled thou shall not,
For thou shall seek a roadmap of top notch.
Jun 28, 2012
Jun 28, 2012 at 11:34 AM UTC
Some things I cannot resist; I blame my own self worth.
I got shot in a dream once...it didn't hurt.
The apple is never as sweet
as the whispered words that slither out of your mouth.
Still moonstruck, still insane,
You throw me straight into the flame.,
and I like the burn
enough to go back for seconds.
Because even though I don't owe you anything,
I feel an obligation, like muscle memory
it falls out my open mouth, gasping
to remember the last few fragments
of the nightmare you woke me from.
So here's to biting off more than you can chew,
and having no regrets about finding yourself
cracked beneath the covers, and disarrayed
among the reflections of mistakes already made.
Maybe I needed this
reality check. I'm on my own, I know.
The temporal frustrates me, the birds
fly south for the winter, I fly...nowhere.
Permanence is a dream as fleeting as
its own contradiction.
It makes no sense, but what did I
expect from you?
Do you remember the nights
we laid across each others ankles
to see if either would break under
the weight of the other?
These fractured bones
don't mean a thing. (promise)
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 8:56 PM UTC
As the ocean
sat on your tongue
and waited to flood over me
you've disarrayed the stars
and draped them
on my skin.
My exhausted blouse and your restless jeans
are the sheer reminders
of our unimpeding infinity.
And as I locked
your waist
between my legs
The world quivered
then burst
into a series of flicker and flames.
This is how I shall remember us:
We crave a love so deep
the ocean would be jealous.
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 1:41 PM UTC
the inherent beauty of the mob
is in the fluidity of their anger
it is the colors of burning buildings
the music of guttural chants
the freedom granted by inevitable destruction
and the finality
of their judgment
it is in the perfection of collective enmity
and the clamant rectification of flaws perceived
so that in the end
all that remains
is the disarrayed corpse of the mob
and the excrement of it’s existence
not as a force of humanity
but as a mechanism
of wanton ferality
Jun 9, 2011
Jun 9, 2011 at 6:14 PM UTC
Through the half-opened door, I watched you dissolved yourself in the thousand places and hundred years in your book. The sun hadn’t gone out today, like yesterday. As you flipped the pages and contain love between your fingers, the cat beside you remained uninterested to the benign indifference of the world.
Your coffee had gone cold, cream flared indiscreetly like those letters I have written and never sent, torn to pieces, all bits screaming your name. I can hear the sound of your tongue licking your lips – you always do that, before you form your words. After I disappear with you.
The sound of my footfalls echoed and I watched it wrapped the wall, covered the hinges of the door, up on the roof, and then dripped on its edges, fell like rain, kissed the pavement madly, then broke irrevocably like hearts. In our sheer vulnerability, this is how we encompassed the world.
I moved closer and you disappeared in your secret self, again. Roughness seethed my palm as I invade the space you have fenced. I wonder if this curtain had ever questioned how long has it been since you last summoned infinity, with me.
In this dungeon.
That night.
When the stars were disarrayed.
When immortality was defied.
When heat was lingering on the wall, in the atmosphere.
When I dismembered the universe just to melt with you while the entire space is screaming at me to run.
You must have heard my plea, my open mouth just above your ear. You should have heard me, to never stop your lips from measuring the length of my neck, to never chain your hands set wild between my legs, to let me bury your hair strands between my fingers, to always encompass me in your scorching breath.
And then eventually,
To burn me away.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 5:37 AM UTC
We keep on searching
Inventing and re-inventing
Dexterous minds
Looking for solutions
Problems seeded deeper
Takes root firmly
As we hone our skills
To mitigate our fate
We create a bid divide
Chasm wide and unfathomable
Disarrayed paths
Somnambulists take the lead
Unknown hurdles
Every time they falter
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 8:08 AM UTC
I am ink faces and paper traces
vowels and consonants arranged
in molecules and red splotches
vascular and musculature
an anthem to all of us.
Homonym hymn religious
syllables silliness
nouns non- meaning
me
I am composed and disarrayed
like an alphabet scattered into a wind .
A Bic pen running out , skipping,
writing, for a lack of paper on the back of
poems written before,
I need a Quill and inkwell,
one thousand trees
to reach my destiny.
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 12:31 AM UTC
The cracks appeared but
they were not like those
that you see as you walk
a pavement, chasing the
gaps that parted, each
cemented slab,
they were more like
shattered pieces of glass
that formed on a marble
floor as you threw down
the champagne flute
hurt, angered
passion rearing its head
a mixture of pleasure
and pain
relieving the numbness -
the pleasure
reliving the past -
the pain
Lipstick marked partial
pieces of glass, matching
the blood that began to
seep from her hand as
she collated the pieces
scarring the floor
droplets fell, she brought
her palm to the side
taking up the blood
into her parted lips
loosely letting go of
any glass in
the palm
of her
hand
On her knees she lifted
her body
slowly
he took his Prada shoe
kicking her
a blow to the stomach
knocking her
to the floor below
she missed the glass
table
by mere inches
saving her head from
a similar blow
As he walked
away,
he flicked his cigar
unfinished, on her
barely clothed body
and from a distance
spat and cursed in
his mother tongue
"Puttana!"
"Ti disprezzo!"
She kept her head down
her hair knotted in
the smashed glass,
picking the stem of the
hollow flute, she
threw it
flying through the air
hitting him,
to the shin
*"Son of a *****
The words, pulsated
through the air
bouncing off all four
walls,
she held no regrets
she had become accustomed
to the repercussions of her
own counter attacks
she didn't even quiver
They had fallen
convicted criminals
of passion and pain
numbness
reality a daze
blood and fire
alight
Neither left the room
until the following
morning
whiskey bottles emptied
clothes disarrayed
blood on the walls
In this fight between
passion and pain
neither would leave,
abandon this disrupted
****** up ship
"Stay!"
the only word she
would murmur
when all was
said,
and done.
© Sia Jane
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 9:53 PM UTC
And on that day you were born, my Sylvia, I murdered your father. So how you would grow up will depend entirely up to me.
I burnt his graceless flesh and mantled you with isolation. I threw his clothes on the window and buried his existence in the ground. Syl, sometimes you see him suspended in midair, I know, like a strange curve on the portrait, like a portrait wrapped in moth, like a moth perched on the wall, like a wall that doesn’t suit the architecture. But you never bothered to find out, good girl.
You were created in the course of the stars, on the backyard, my Sylvia and molded by flowers, so I must feed you with butterflies, drown you in poetry. You are the constellations I have disarrayed, the world I will dismember. You are the infinity, my love. You are the stretch of the ocean, the look in your father’s eyes before he sleeps. You are the incoherence of forever. You are the inconsistency of happiness.
My Syl, I fear that you will grow up, one day. You will leave this little cottage, and search for a better plastered wall. You will doubt my existence and those bleeding of the feathers. You will tear your skin and discover a new you underneath. You will find your crater of imperfections, you will be astonished, you will begin to wonder, you will begin to question and you will forget about me. You will begin to ***** my lullabies.
Hush, my love, and close your eyes. I will make you immortal. I will stitch you with stardust. I will cover your little lovely bones with perfection. I will smoothen you like a wax; you may kiss your scars goodbye. I will preserve your name with you, and lock you both in a beautiful cage. I will make you immortal. I will make you immortal. I will make you immortal. Like a prayer. Like a lovely prayer.
Your fist locked like a period, began the history, encompassed the world, the silent plea, the quivering resistance, the flickering flame; your little mouth in absolute surrender. You are the rigidity of my everlasting delight, the bleeding poppies in every battleground. Sleep, my Sylvia, sleep, and never wake up.
Stay infinite, my Syl, my sweet, my love. We are greater than literature. We are larger than biography. Always remember that.
Always remember that.
Always remember that.
Always
Remember
That.
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 3:04 AM UTC
Harshly they fuss, brutally ascend
The living are merely the dead sleeping
With tired minds and dimming spirits
Whimsically panting as they pass an unmitigated declaration of disarrayed yet binding love
The living sing
They sing of old men and babies being born
The children cheering
Sermons of legitimate advice and reassuring reminders
Integrations of baptizing and rebirth
Of anointment and atonement
Conjugal wellness
Tales of glory
-Tommy Johnson
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 1:07 PM UTC
She listens on
to the melody void of octaves
A phantom grasping under uncertainty
Reality handed her a flaming torch
Her dress billows in the breeze
as she burns herself free
disarrayed by flames.
Nov 8, 2015
Nov 8, 2015 at 12:59 PM UTC