"dishwater" poems
"You look like love,"
she said one night,
cold with the
whispers of winds
on old cobblestone
and hushed
footsteps
of snow-covered
boots.
He stopped
in his tracks,
the cherry of
his cigarette
pulsing
like the colors
of a spinning
satellite
lightyears away
from their newly-found
lives.
"What does love
look like?"
he asked,
syllables hanging
close to his face,
blue eyes
darting
from her lips
to her hands
and back again.
But he knew.
He knew from the first
time he shook her hand
and saw the
sweat glisten off her
brow,
and listened to her
listless stories
of how summer
never truly loved her,
that one day
he truly would.
She smiled,
lips cracking
from the dry air,
"It looks like an
overflowing sink,
fresh with bubbles
from soapy dishwater
left unattended
to waltz in the kitchen.
It looks like ice
cracking
to the sweet smoke
of scotch
and the divot
on the couch that
sinks our thighs
and the thought
of any afternoon plans
deep
in crevasses
we're both too sleepy
to crawl out of.
It looks like all
the things
the world
took from me
and promised
it would never give back,
but instead packaged
in a
candle
bright enough
to illuminate
all the dark places
and remind me
that even though
others have treated me
like a
flicker,
I'm truly a
flame."
Jan 9, 2018
Jan 9, 2018 at 1:43 PM UTC
it's not me
pushing you
away except
it actually is me
it's the kind of
morning that the
wind is blowing
just right so that
the open flag
flutters in front
of the window
where i can see it
the kind of morning
i don't need coffee
and i try not to
think about
it too
much
*(i just wanted to
be the girl in
an owl city song)*
pacing back and
forth in straight
lines and gritting
my teeth against
an onslaught of
small town gunfire
*(i'll bet annmarie
never had scars
or scratches
brielle didn't cry
and shake for
hours thinking
how to end it all
it turned out
okay for anna
and vienna probably
knew how to dance
between the snowflakes
and underneath her regret)*
i've never been good at
drowning out thoughts
they just get louder the
longer time rolls on
good at rolling out
cookie dough and
good at drowning
in dishwater when
the brownie batter's
baking and the bowl
needs washing when
nobody's looking
*(i've had moments
here and there in golden
sneakers and navy blue
lace covered dresses
but i'm not the girl
in an owl city song
not something worth
writing dreamy poems
about not so lovestruck you
replace your words with dada)*
girls like me wear flannel
khaki too much day old
eyeliner too many day old
scones have half heads of weird
colored hair and spend valentines
day alone watching tv
so maybe why i'm bitter
as the inside of a lemon is
that i'll never be able to change
to someone drenched in verbena
spinning through the sunny
skies between your fingers
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 9:39 PM UTC
You can identify your own flaws by scrutinizing strangers.
I watched a woman
from across a platform
at the subway station:
Straight, dishwater-blonde hair
glimmering in the subterranean fluorescence;
striking posture—
a dancer's figure—
and a thrifty ensemble that bespoke good taste
in spite of budgetary constrictions.
She pulled a circular compact from her purse
the way people in films exhume a pack of cigarettes.
Then, in deliberate fashion,
she removed a pill and swallowed it.
Birth control is like receiving a governor's pardon
in the process of planning a crime.
I resent her having that kind of indemnity.
I pass judgment on assumptions of character,
high on the blissful soapbox of bigotry.
As that pill crested the ridges of her teeth
and met the soft tissue of her tongue, then esophagus,
my mind conjured a phantasmagoria of lewd images
on the surrounding subway walls--
more a reflection of my character
than hers.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 11:49 PM UTC
Across the width of the shiny railings
a wooden stick was dragged.
Beneath the beady eye of the peacock
quite a lot of skin sagged.
Through lack of sleep.
The peacock wished he had a penny
for every time he was awoken.
he longed for a decent nap
without the pattern broken.
All he wanted was sleep.
So he became an angry peacock
and showed his venom in his tail
Out shot each and every eye on the feather
a picture of beauty to unveil.
He wanted peace and quiet.
The children delighted in this act
and thought he was putting on a show.
They dragged their sticks furiously
Little did they care or even know.
So the peacock refused to sleep
slumped in a corner forever and a day.
Then came along a peahen dull as dishwater
the peacock was excite, didn't know what to say.
She is dull but I will compensate for that
He shook his feathers to impress.
The little lady strutted by oblivious
thought he was in fancy dress.
Well.
May 7, 2015
May 7, 2015 at 6:45 AM UTC
I
Originations of consciousness whir into a moan of torment.
A sudden bombshell of consternation;
her eyes burst wide.
Baby?
Sleep-laden, post-finals brain gravy:
No, can't be. Could be. Shouldn't be. Want to be? No, can't be.
Lurking beyond the reach of terror, realism slithers closer.
The hysteria deteriorates as deduction brings lucidity.
******* eggs.
They are abolished, and never heard from again.
II
Suitcase tetris, smothering each layer.
She moves without direction,
or a lazy child with ADD.
At long last, the shimmering sink full of death beckons...
Dissatisfaction erupts in a symphony of fragmented drinkware.
Her assumption lingers, cresting into prediction.
Her expectations are met.
A thorn in her paw.
The dishwater weeps.
III
Her rage is tangible, hissing in her ears,
bashing her skull when it is ignored,
clawing at her spine.
She abandons the silverware.
They never did anything for her.
The loathsome bag swings threateningly.
She ignores it, giving it a silent challenge.
Fate strings before her eyes, yanked taut and thrumming
with inevitability.
Crimson satin sheets tangle lovingly from the rift of tender peel.
Cake-batter-in-a-mixing-bowl splatter,
the dissimilitude of children's laughter.
Wobbling, fawn-like under the density of rage gnawing at her lips,
she retreats, acknowledging her submission.
She begins as a tree, but rapidly degenerates
into grotesque dysmorphic spasms on the cheap veneer.
Hysteria threatens to burst forth, frothing, but no.
This is not my day.
Sep 27, 2012
Sep 27, 2012 at 4:47 AM UTC
Mistaken for nobody.
Everybody's no one.
Fractured yet generically.
They think I am a
Thoughtful
&
Slow talker.
I was born in the furnace,
and grew up halfway homeless.
Tough doesn't mean strong.
Thick skinned, maybe.
Lets make a theory;
If we're made of the same matter from
the beginning of time, we have to find out
where that matter has been. Like a recipe;
Coffin Nails.
Bullets.
Salt Water.
Broken Umbrellas.
Cherry Blossoms.
Burnt Plastics.
Lipstick.
Mountains.
Etc. Etc.
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 1:04 AM UTC
Sacrificial droves
wildly waving
antenna-mills,
charcoaled palms outstretched
merely feeble
attempts of withstanding poor decisions,
my decision
already calculated,
minute tongues warn
pleading wide-eyed,
muted by a dishwater gull
peg legged watching -
understanding with a single bulging eye.
My top buttoned suicide
finally undone,
shaky windswept fingers
childlike in efforts made,
those made to measure ambitions
superbly shined
befriended balconies,
that leap of faith
faith,
belief in my own boldness
stream uselessly in rivers
from numb sockets,
one single step..
White feather.
Oct 25, 2011
Oct 25, 2011 at 1:59 PM UTC
Her face
Sour
A washed out ugly gray
Similar to that of dishwater
With greenish clumps
That closely resemble
Expired milk clods
For eyes
Her hair
Worn out
An expanse of stringy greased mess
As if she’d dunked it into a fry cook’s sink
With the occasionally highlight
Of a darker, muddy brown
Like Mother Nature gave up on a painting
And left her
Her body
Frail
A structure of porous bones and blood
A once pure white soiled with brownish red speckles
The devoured remains of a media wolf’s snack
Unable to really hold itself up
It shudders and shakes constantly
Sort of like a hypothermic deadbeat
So undeniably ugly
Disgusting feeble and poor
Yet somehow
Against what all the yet of you see
I see something gorgeous
Something that could be loved
What I see in her
I love
Jun 10, 2011
Jun 10, 2011 at 9:06 AM UTC
Hand lacerations
Are absolutely no fun.
Especially when on
The dominant hand
But somehow the slash
In two fingers,
The spread of pink in dishwater
The dark red welling up
And spilling over
Somehow through the
Majority of calm after a
Brief freak-out
Somehow this stifles my
Desire to mutilate
This horrendous lust that
I do not want and
Barely can control
So now my handwriting
***** my fingers hurt,
These cuts are a nuisance
But my repugnant hunger
Has been tamed...
What's wrong with me?!
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 9:53 PM UTC
We are rain, we are tears;
we're the condensation
on your beer mug.
And we form,
and fall,
and feel forgotten
some times.
From heaven, to earth,
and back again,
we take trillions of tiny journeys—
assemble in sheets,
hover in mists/
trickle, splatter, pelt without mercy/
quietly collect and freeze/
loud as the sea, softer than the whisper
of death—easy to deflect and shatter,
with power to carve canyons.
From shoulders we
vault to elbows,
dance down arms,
scurry between legs,
squish between toes,
hurry down the drain
linger on linoleum
when you pad away
from the shower,
trailing steam down
a sweaty hallway—
to where he lays motionless,
breathing sunny
solstice dust
in a closet-sized room.
“Better”?
“Oh, much. And thanks for the towel, too”.
II.
Everything about you was flat.
I knew your hair was blonde
but also something else—
not dishwater
or *****
or even unclean—
“flat” was the only word that fit.
Flat as your face,
your chest,
the bottoms of your shoes,
and not a whole lot less scarred.
Flat as your eyes—
such eyes as I’d never seen;
not always awake—
hunting/wanting/sharp
like a scavenger’s
yet full of blind spots,
placed there by the drug
to impede self-perception—
and wantonly green.
I knew only your name.
You hung with Jim, haunting Mother’s—
just two junkies bumming change.
I was amazed you managed to survive.
House rule was
never trust a ******
but home alone,
in too much pain to care,
I let you take a shower,
borrow my towel.
We compared spinal surgeries;
vinyl siding on childhood homes;
monsters and movies;
fruits we didn’t like;
a nod to new music/
put on your red shoes and dance the blues
then places we’d go
when our ship came in;
the greasiness of the sun outside;
the final indignity of death—
anything but our lives just then.
From summer cotton to suddenly nothing—
no memory of how or why.
You spurned my offer
of a cigarette after
with a gesture so shy
and self-conscious
I felt myself growing
suspicious—then alarmed, confused,
and finally, amused
at my own lack of observation.
You weren’t hiding anything.
You just didn’t want
me to see you
as begging.
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 6:53 PM UTC
How long has it been--
Since I chased the thieves of all my sense;
Since I chose heartstrings over frontal lobe waves,
Hungers of the heart over milk and bread?
And at what time will I awaken
To a sun-drenched dream or a subtle rainstorm
Rather than nightmares or responsibilities?
---
Instead, I sleep in dishwater dreams,
Lukewarm and foggy,
And wake to thoughts of a queue,
A restlessness reserved almost exclusively for
A train station,
Where one waits, waits...
---
And which one comes for me?
And when it arrives,
Will I choose the fate prescribed on my ticket,
Or will I avenge all of the decisions
I chose not to make in past encounters with strangers,
Standing in queue, as well,
All waiting for the same hum and crash
In their final Destinations?
I ask all of these things, of course,
As I hand one of these strangers my ticket,
I step on board the cable car compass,
Riding into the flaming abyss.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 6:33 PM UTC
Droplets of a black swan's fever sweats
coat purplish nightmare blisters
Reminds me of nights before
I forced my eyes to sometimes drift
through broken down envy telescopes
opening pathways to fissured late night ruptures
Blotting out black plague garlic mask threats
no one left to speak ill of these mass grave
injuries
Our blight flag battle standards set for
miserable whiskey soaked duelists trudging through the snow
past careless crossroad wasps' nest dissection
a Glasgow smile cut in a hostile makeover struggle
makes for uneasy amends
when my copper cable pirate princess
holds the offending knife
pulled across like a dishwater blonde's drag on a last fix
I know I'm hard to follow but no one else
will take the torrential reigns
to leads us home but bitterly so
Who do we end up with in heaven
if no one likes us now?
Feb 14, 2014
Feb 14, 2014 at 10:40 AM UTC
i sometimes wonder what it would be like.
to slit my own throat.
how long would it hurt?
how long would the blood pour before...
nothing.
i long to bathe in blood.
warm, heartbeat blood.
glistening and gooey.
stain me.
heroic.
pour me down the drain.
like dishwater.
***** and calm.
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 10:25 AM UTC
March has always been my bane
Tastes like steel and skin
The skies are just as cold
as the knife
twisting in my sin
I caught ahold of morning's sleet
You caught cold and died
Looking into the coffin's ward
You crossed
that great devide
The bottom of the red clay pit
gathered tears and falling rain
I never knew you long enough
to be dealt with so much pain
Bitter bites the chill when the ides of March arrive
Life felt cheap and nasty
under ***** dishwater skies
I kept hearing Eleanor Rigby
ricocheting off the wall
I just want to paint it black for those who had to run before they learned to crawl
No one was saved that day
No ! There was no one there at all
The old black men in yellow coats stood waiting for the call
I stood not far away
beneath the leafless tree
Watching the men with shovels in hand
Bury the last stop for memories
I found myself a muttering
Tinged and biter as the cold
It's good you died so young
before you died so old
Nov 11, 2018
Nov 11, 2018 at 2:52 AM UTC
there's a certain pier
out there
that dangles off the east side
of a certain island
that i would without hesitation call 'home'
if you sat out there in the middle of the night
just for kicks for the first time
you'd be slapped around by the angry cliff wind
you'd be overwhelmed by the sea rot
and you'd be threatened the lapping of dark freezing waves
right underneath you in the spaces between the creaky wet beams
and it's all screaming at you to get up and leave
but if you are like me and her
you'd stay
we always decide to stay
we snuck out there late at night
and we found that there's more to the pier than the wind and the smell and the
cold and darkness
we found that there is just enough space
between the windblown wood poles and salt crusted cables
for two beautiful people to squeeze between and dangle their feet
over the edge
to laugh at that cold water and speak streaks of light into it's darkness
we found that there's just enough starlight to take a fuzzy picture
of ripped jeans and flannels and knotted dishwater hair
and a pair of glasses
i didn't know that i could talk to someone the way i learned to talk on the pier
it taught me
He taught me
she taught me
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 7:13 PM UTC
Her face is a sour
Washed out ugly gray
Similar to that of dishwater
With greenish clumps
That closely resemble
Floating milk clods in the
Center of her face
For eyes
Her hair is a worn out
Expanse of stringed greasy mess
As if she'd dunked it into a fry cook's sink
And left it to sit
With the occasional underscore
Of a darker, muddy brown
Streaks of feces throughout her head
For highlights
Her body is such a frail
Structure of porous bones and blood
A once pure white is soiled with
Brownish blood red speckles and smears
Like the horrid remains of a wolf’s meal
She can’t even hold herself up and she
Shudders and shakes constantly like some
Sort of like a hypothermic deadbeat
She’s so undeniably ugly and
Disgusting feeble and poor
But how would you feel if I
A relatively sane, accepted member of society
Was able to see something in this horrid girl that I loved?
You’d never accept it and you’d no longer recognize me
For finding love the wasn’t perfectly suited to your ideals
My love has to be pretty
Jun 29, 2011
Jun 29, 2011 at 9:41 AM UTC
This was the last
ragged dishwater gasp
before the panic
overwhelmed
Before the bloated
swell of a sagging heart
stooped down
to ache
its gutters overflowing
choked with drowned
rats and mildewy leaves
and when at last those
flaccid lungs failed
The sun shined through
inscrutable walls of cloud
but its aura could not
woo the mud
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 7:23 PM UTC
Yes, they all agree.
It's time to go.
Relatives and friends
trickle away
leaving her
to close the door.
Washing up their plates,
she listens to the sounds
of silverware
clinking softly under the suds.
Her eyes cold and hard
as the knife she holds.
Staring at a dripping distortion
of herself,
the face on the blade
is unrecognizable.
Stabbing the knife into suds
that close behind the blade
in a slow thin flow,
no visible trail is left
to show the water's wound.
Her tears drip through
unnoticed
in the changing color
of the dishwater.
Relatives and friends
stream in
to stand by her,
a torrent
of sympathetic chatter,
Red roses,
her favorite,
so lovely
standing tall
together.
Yes, they all agree.
That was clear
as dishwater.
Nov 7, 2009
Nov 7, 2009 at 9:47 AM UTC
summer
never truly loved her
she thought
kicking
the last soft waves
of the season
like they were
a pile of autumn
leaves
closed her eyes
from the sunrays
imagining
the oranges and pinks
of sunset
painted by the trees
answering to the
cold whispers
of the wind
winter
they call but still, summer
never truly loved her
she thought
but as the last soft waves
crash to her feet
the little bubbles
like the first fall
of snow
she thought
of the heavy footsteps of mud
and the snow-covered boots
on the porch
the subtle smell of pine
circling around
the divot on the couch
the bubbles from
soapy dishwater
waltzing in the kitchen
it means
you're home
and though summer
might not have truly loved her
it never took away
her metaphors
to describe what
love looks like
and love looks like
dry leaves scattered like
freckles on your cheeks
on the old cobblestones
we walk on
on Sunday mornings
it's like a pair
of warm socks,
hot cocoa and marshmallows,
and Christmas carols
it's waking up right where you belong
like blossoms greeting
the first sunlight
after months of snow
and it's summer
when the agony of waiting
under the scorching sun
learns to turn into
patience
love is these seasons
giving way to
years
and patterns
we will never get tired of
summer
might not have truly loved her
but she'd hoped that one day
you truly would
and
you did.
Feb 18, 2019
Feb 18, 2019 at 7:15 AM UTC
life, i cannot begin you to describe beyond my dreaming self your how divine moments of simple nothing.
your body is not, and i love it the how it is not. it is
and not it's
some muscles firing with hurt
seething to ache
so horribly
wondrous. it's driving
to the beach
too early in morning and you're heads not clear the sky is so wide and the sun is barely. it is
the uncurling of your fingers between
dishwater
and the winsome triteness
of the caving instant of your breath
caching in your throat
as you realize the dying
of your frail self,
clutching furiously the mundane heady song
of a coffee cup
(and in perfect silence emitting
the most enormous roar
of surging electric stillness) . Life
you are half terribly
painful to. and life, you
are half splendorous to ****
sweating in the heap of your
car behind
the creeping sweep
of raging vein. Life
you are perhaps nothing. But lifE
you are the most,
and nothing hurriedly to slowly
take between the unutterably tiny *******
of snowgirls
their coldest song of closing lips,
and speak something hot
(something big).
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 7:46 AM UTC
“I took a Rorschach test” she lamented
*“Though I admit, it was accidental
A bouquet of Cherry smears splotched on toilet-paper
Through liquid lines and violent streaks
Miraging shards of an eight month Terra-cotta
I saw a dishwater boy
Sifting dirt in a garden
He hid among the tomato vines, smiling behind strawberry stains
Oddly reminiscent of that picture I stole
from your mother’s house
I turned the paper square in my hands
Another child
A young-eyed girl
drowning in a pair of peacock heels
And a floral patterned muumuu
Involuntarily closing her left eye when a laugh turns to tears
You've always said you love that about me
Raw images framed in a sharpie-circled day
It’s permanence displayed on the kitchen calendar
A mind’s-eye mosaic that shattered when
I felt it around my insides
A searing grip, and gravity wins
The porcelain bowl is filling now
Like a bloodroot squeezed from toe to crown
None of my tears could wash away any of the red
And all the sirens came
But the tiny shoes stayed wrapped in tissue paper
And some mornings, not many but some
Before the bluish tint of pre-morning dawn
When the slivers of my thought wake me
I feel that invisible hand
Squeezing a butterfly inside my stomach"*
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018 at 2:24 PM UTC
I yearn for a life of loose clothes and footsteps
Easy smiles and arms, draped like scarves about shoulders
A life of contact and salt-washed skin
Arguments heated by the sun and rinsed off with the dishwater of an evening meal
Glorious nothing, it calls to me as if it were already mine
To toy with and pretend not to pretend that it is real and I am in it
To believe in the haze of those times that could be happening somewhere
To someone that could be me, somehow
Glorious nothing
I could make it my all, given the right conditions
Carve out contentment in the sandy rivers that water-fall
From the cliffs of my foot-bridge
Dropping over great cavernous edges of toe to rejoin familiar regions
Make a life around it there instead of here
But I don’t believe it needs me much
Not more than my family might
Or I believe I earned something else in the unknowing
And now my debt is stacked and not against the door of a beach hut
Dec 15, 2012
Dec 15, 2012 at 5:21 PM UTC
*She meekly chased after
nonexistent moonbeams
in rose fashioned pipe
dreamt illusions,
as visual stimuli to
rock her existence
of inklings' stark impressions
inciting some exertion
in her bland universe,
she was ever so ordinarily dull
even her reflection in the
deepest sapphire seas,
appeared as drab dishwater
she lived in a world of her
own fabricated deception
still, she wondered why every
impaled consequence was an
arranged shade of washed-out gray*
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 30, 2015 at 8:53 PM UTC
Why is it
That when I see
any
other
girl
I think, “oh! She’s so pretty!”
Why is it
I describe
Other people’s eyes
As
oceans
forests
streams
But mine are just ***** dishwater?
Why is it
I must change my hair
Damage it
Color it
In order for it to make me happy?
Why is it
That I am
my own
worst
critic?
Mar 2, 2020
Mar 2, 2020 at 10:28 AM UTC
*What is the point
in tainting my dishwater red
with your blood*
How then can the plates be cleaned
Dec 31, 2012
Dec 31, 2012 at 8:41 PM UTC