"doorknobs" poems
A little boy
Neat white shirt ironed to perfection
A monster truck plastered on the front
Denim jeans, fitting his skinny waist just right
Innovative
Imaginative
He loves creating new things
Making plain old cardboard into the next best thing
He gets his crayons
Sharpies and all
And runs to his room
All excited on his new project, his new creation
One piece of cardboard after the other
Rectangles flying everywhere
Coloring what looks like door handles onto cardboard?
The vision isn’t clear, yet it will come together soon.
He works quickly
With a due date set in mind
Full of ambition
The vision isn’t clear, yet it will come together soon.
He finishes his new achievement
Smiling happily at his new jumble of handiwork
Glued together precisely
The vision isn’t clear, yet it will come together soon.
He attaches the different shapes to himself
Straps glued to the cardboard
It seems he’s wearing armor
With doorknobs and wood grain painted on it with pure artistry
He hears someone come in the front door
His smile turns to panic
He quickly cleans up the supplies
Throwing things around the room anywhere they fit
He runs to the corner of his room
He quickly pulls the “armor” close to him
As he sits in the fetal position
His armor becomes a small dresser that looks as if it was made for clothes
The father bursts into the room
With rage spelled out on his forehead
The boy hides brilliantly afraid of the wrath to come
The father looks around the room carefully
*Come out Come out
Wherever you are
The next time I see you
I’ll give you more bruises than last week altogether*
He closes the door with a loud slam
The boy unfolds his creation, a simple dresser
Who knew that a young boy’s imagination
Would protect him from all of the horror and pain usually unleashed on him
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 9:27 PM UTC
dreams of drowning
but not in water, necessarily
locked in rooms that look familiar
though not recognizable
locked doorknobs with missing locks
and my name being called from the other side
repeating mundane tasks
to the point of insanity
"what's the point of everything?"
dreams of you hurting people in front of me
and while i watch, i say,
"it's okay. i understand."
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 2:08 AM UTC
Your voice has a choice.
Your tongue is moist with juicy, fruitful words.
Your lips chirp like harmonious birds;
building botanical gardens inside some
beautiful person’s head somewhere.
You could distinguish old flames, smother your pride
ignore all blame… Or
you could turn something worse.
Go postal, find trouble to immerse
yourself in.
Do you even try to scale the value between a blessing and a curse?
Did it sound more exciting when I said Congratulations first?
Is your mommy and the tv well distraction from the hearse
all of us blindly ride in.
We’re born into a society claiming Life, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
I feel no freedom in our flags
when more blood falls on clothing tags of women who were “just asking for it”.
I’m desperately clinging onto the pursuit of happiness,
but my hands slide off like butter fingers pursuing monkey bars
The greasy kind of disappointment you can get at
McDonalds for a dollar
I’m a little confused where the donations are Ronald?
$27.6 billion in revenue,
yet every seventeen minutes
another person pursues death as if it were their
only chance of freedom
and you’re squeezing your red clown nose
thinking of what new toy to impose
on the children buying Happy Meals.
The 111th richest corporation in the nation
has the audacity to serve deep fried pink slime
and call it a happy meal.
At the same moment,
a stiff insurance business suit is denying
extended treatment to people.
People:
dying to learn how to tame the monsters in their heads,
dying to learn how harming themselves harms their families health,
dying to learn how to fight enemies who sing them to sleep at night.
Thousands of children men and women
who are in so much pain.
Plastered with close-lidded visions
nightmare doorknobs with creaking hinges.
Some violent, some explosive, some ******
ostly misunderstood combinations of the above.
Some, accidents stained with blood.
Some, knife twisting in their back, broken oaths.
There is more freedom in valuing the pursuit of life
than happiness in living for a dying pursuit
Congratulations, we live in a society
where the living die with a side order of either
painful awareness or
numb naivety.
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 5:43 AM UTC
Listen to the turning of the doorknob -
Listen carefully, as though to a prophecy
Candles burning in background pose - prose - close the door,
Leave nothing unopened - not mind, not heart, not soul, not eyes, not love, not love
Listen to the turning of the doorknob -
Listen to the prophet scream obscenities in the face of God -
Screaming law to children in the playground,
Waiting for dawn to **** night, and say hello to never -
Leaving nothing unopened - not the door, not the door,
Like never before - except now, no, because because...
If an angel rode in midnight, wings out full-flight -
Would they be invisible to the mortals of planet Earth?
Or would they become best-friends with the lowest of the low?
Listen to the turning of the doorknob -
The door speaks sudden truths to the ears of the heart of wisdom and desire,
Wisdom holds no desire, just as desire holds no wisdom -
Both polar opposites in the city of Being,
Rising like smoke in the collapse of nations and culture -
No tears shed for the loss of men, in the war of knowledge,
of pride and territory and fortune and remembrance -
Listen to the turning of the doorknob,
Listen to the turning of the doorknob,
For the sake of living forever right now in this moment -
Listen to the turning of the doorknob -
Leaving nothing unopened -
Not the past, not the present, not the future, not the never forevers,
Like the wars being fought for oil and money and cheap gratification -
Short lived egos, going down in history books,
For the children to read while being screamed at with obscenities from the prophet above,
And the angels below, and the ground and sky and earth and stars and gravity and all -
Listen to the turning of the doorknob,
Please, for the sake of living forever right now in this moment, or never
Right now - because now is forever - cheap cheap poetry, meaning nonsense
Just an escape...just an escape from the turning of the doorknobs,
For a minute or two or three - just a longing to be free,
And no one can be free when they’ve been ****** to mortality -
Oh sincere mediocre heartfelt dribble - just turn around, door and all -
Fall out the sixth floor window and don’t look back - never again forever again -
Right now in this moment, forever and never and back again - looking up,
Singing to the screaming prophet, blocking the door on accident - there are no accidents in life -
So, listen to the turning of the doorknob,
Listen to the turning of the doorknob,
For the sake of your own existence and place in these here cosmos -
Listen to the turning of the doorknob.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 6:46 PM UTC
Doors slam like Satan himself is
in a fit of rage below us, even if he is
in the deepest level of Hell, I feel the floor
shaking like a 6.0 has just swept us but it
is only a consequence of wood slamming
against wood and fists fighting doorknobs.
Voices rise like the temperature in Arizona
in the summer, abruptly, hot and heavy, so
quickly stifling any chance of relief—
anger is an emotion I am far too familiar with.
Some people live quiet family lives, are never
interrupted in their sleep by screams from a
father who dreams of death and a mother who
carries a scythe of shame as if she is the Reaper,
some people wake up in the morning knowing
there is breakfast waiting on the table, fresh eggs
hot off the stove and orange juice with pulp, but
others wake up and make coffee for themselves,
knowing parents sleep past noon and
we are the ones who are doomed to repeat the
history of abuse and psychological suffering but:
we are the ones who will help to stifle the shouts,
to put a stop to slamming doors and shrill screams,
dysfunctional daily routines and waiting for hope
that never arrives, we have had lives consisting
of always having to act stronger than we feel
when the floorboards seem to be breaking just
beneath the force of our feet, because our
bodies are not just our bodies, we are carrying
burdens that weigh more than our bones and
blood cells combined, so when we step on the
scale the number we're reading is really how
much hurt we have been holding, not how
much food we've been hoarding inside of us.
We are the children of complex family situations,
we are spend-more-time-in-psychologist-offices-than
we-do-in-our-own-rooms, we are no-parent-to-tuck
us-in-at-night-read-yourself-a-story-it-builds-ability.
We are daydreams of escaping like Rapunzel,
we are *how do I save myself from a nightmare when
I am already awake?* We are years of reading self-help
books in Barnes and Noble until we finally understood
that the only thing to do is to help the world help us:
we are strong. And we understand that family exists,
but for us it is different. We are the children who find
comfort in books and coffee and anything outside
of a house so filled with tension and hatred, and we
have been waiting to fix ourselves for too long.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 4:35 PM UTC
The thing is, you can’t ignore that graceful lament-
The teal heaving of your chest-
The wash of questions in your head
That exquisitely hold pinpricks of the future.
There’s a brand of groan you know well
That belongs to feeling unresolved.
That noise you make when you’re a painting without a face,
When you’re two lines of a song that’s lost to the breeze,
When you’re a cup of water dribbling through careless hands,
That noise is the growl of restless dreaming.
There is a struggle to unpin yourself
From the avalanche of time
That has pooled thickly around your legs.
You try to kick, but it moves like molasses.
Slower than a hard thwack to a non-newtonian fluid.
Pointless as collecting antique doorknobs.
There is an urge to catch a destiny by the tail
Like you’re somehow prepared right now,
Like there’s nothing left to learn.
How fortunate you are that perceived linear realities
Can curve the hubris of your linear fantasies.
And yet there’s that gnawing need,
A craving that demands surrender,
That all too graceful lament,
Of being forced to take the smallest of steps
on the greatest of adventures.
Nov 28, 2012
Nov 28, 2012 at 4:06 AM UTC
The four of us wrote each other fortune cookies
And the sad part was that even though
The cookies we baked together were sugary and warm
None of the little squares of paper inside
Made much indication of one another.
You remarked that it had been exactly a year since
You were where we were:
Lying in a snowy field and watching the grey clouds rush
From the horizon to the moon
Illuminated by city lights too.
You protested those lights, throwing doorknobs
For the darkness but you couldn't break that streetlamp
Until the sun had already risen and the LSD
Had already worn off
Such that there was nothing to do
But read our fortunes quietly and sadly reminisce
About that night we'd spent
Melting the snow beneath our bodies.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 7:07 PM UTC
Ashley,
Your blues inspire me, insipid triangles, walking cold, sweating more and wetting the bed your lips the sizes of gods that I married through hidden video cameras, I caught bias in bliss, racism in slow disasters, tornado sirens and just sirens, and justice on the horizon. My eyelids the sizes of your little ******* the party of tomorrow, the starting sounds of scarred and stripped *** sounds. Caught in a drift, my bottom lip stuffed with lift-lust and jolting up and down your porcelain rift. Messed up and round the back to the buttons, the clasp too heavy to drop your ego down, the cold too swift to catch me as I fell. The heavens too burdened to beat me with your god. I just wanted to me smacked in the face with your flaws. Hips the sizes of doorknobs, hurdles that I caught one weekend sipping slow gin with granddad and papa and Tootsie, your evils carnivorous, your mess much more than your message. Your koo-koo voodoo and big bad red frock. Tuesday's made me the man I am today. The Slayer made me the hate I stuffed into my **** jock-strap to puff out my chest and make prisms in kitten litters and furrow the night clauses to match stick the pumped-up bypass of hazmat and heroism, I was won and didn't know it, you were one and now you're all one.
She,
came to me in French class holding straws. I picked swiftly and came, all staled and stiff, lock-jaw and threesomes one moonlit night the fourth of July.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:09 PM UTC
I’m always yelling at myself
For the things I took for granted
They said to save yourself
But I called them cowards
And threw it all ahead
Screaming, tomorrow will be better
Better
Much better
Every day that’s not today is destined for greatness
A steady decline in sadness
Until one day my tombstone will read
“EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT”
(That one’s Vonnegut, but I bet you knew that)
See, my flux capacitor’s broken
And I’ve been reading this **** backwards
I just want to go back
I used to be such a show off
Collecting my experiences just to line them up on shelves
Lists of proof of my own beauty
My bright future
Proof that I’ve been loved
Of all of my different selves
I like that one the least
But miss her the most
Now I try not to leave the house
And when my phone rings I get really anxious
Now I feel like I’m always fighting
But there’s nobody around
So I’m fighting with belt buckles and doorknobs
And I resent the people who make those things look easy
Now a part of me feels angry when my friends ask me out
They don’t understand
That’s not self pity
They’d understand if I told them
But that would require answering my phone
And I just can’t do that today
I know I’m being selfish
Self absorbed and petty
But my heart has finally ruptured
It couldn’t hold all of the empty promises I’ve filled it with
And I’m tired of fighting
Now all that my shelves hold
Are stacks of reasons why I want to go back to bed
And the only list I have
Is filled with concrete evidence
That tomorrow will not, in fact,
Be better
Not better
Because today is worse than yesterday
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
Sixty years ago, you could have loved me
- a sailor, - a trophy wife, - an 'okay, fiancé' in a sarcastic legacy
A turn of the century turns you around and turns you into a (skate! jam! live in a van!) type of person that I am vastly uninterested in but just tryin' to be sad about somethin'
- I am sad about your big feet, your cuffed trousers, all the places I didn't want to run into you at and not letting that stop me from carting my coffin to Kansas City art museums
(Your love poems to me must be dried in caked-on mud from tires pulling away)
Did you know you're an accident?
- The whole crowd laughs, someone get me a microphone!
(Someone! Get me anything your mouth has touched!)
- I'll bury a vial of your organic germs in my hometown backyard to find later, when you're dead as your dangling doorknobs and disguised by giggling gargoyles (you are welcome, by the way)
Ultimate hide 'n' seek warrants a worthless existence and a holy trinity of the same name(s)
(The dog is under the bed)
(You are locked out on the back porch)
(I am fetal position in a parked car)
- Can we put this on the Christmas card?
Happy Twentieth, Darling! I Love You Very, Very, Very, Very Much.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 5:02 PM UTC
and we asked you for help
and you laughed at the candor
and we dropped dead like flies.
****** t-shirts falling from
clothing lines as clothing pins
litter the floor of the morgue
and parents pick out caskets
ten sizes too small, for dead
babies and children of the
night, the ones who had been hanging
from street lights and shooting stars,
who asked for help in the form
of loud music, slow dancing,
painting in dark colors, tying
red balloons to doorknobs,
and leaving home without layers.
these children, they’re wearing t-shirts
in late december and you’re
wondering why they’re shivering.
in the mean time, you turn your cheek
and lift the zipper of your fur coats.
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 8:58 PM UTC
it’s inevitable
we are two waves crashing upon one another from diverse directions
6 feet overpowering a near five
an abundance of sand collected in her toes, painted sunset in season
salt in the crevices of his cracked lips
he hasn’t drank since March
wildflowers on her dress and holes in his shoes
it’s faulty
we are racing towards riverbanks: barefoot, unsteady, and homely
this doesn’t feel like home
he’s a moonlit tower, prewar stairwells, and a bright white nail bed
she secretes meteors in her pockets and a jackknife
slopes and curves and hills to stumble
words and doorknobs and photographs to wonder
it’s vexed
we headline in bold faced Georgia
friends concerned themselves with each petty fight
oh, boy did we
fight until her tongue wore out
his palms scratched to be healed by hers
her mother was on board, she guessed; his mother said yes
it’s bereft
we’re naked on the South lawn
a rose brush picked, prodded, called to question
her hazel eyes lack the ability to cry and cry and cry
his voice, stripped of rage
politics behind the scene
a young widow’s desperation for peace
it’s mass-produced
we’re political maps facing the chalkboard
colored crayons and heel-high socks
pepperoni’s dot her pizza the way she dots her i’s
as she writes lyrics of you
he raids the kitchen for her, prying the fridge for her
glinting sparkles in artificial light
it's submitted
we’re chipped steel bracelets
her straw bends forward at a crease
they didn’t realize what factors meant
his version too close to candor
yielded, the missing L on a paper sign
a stranded guitar pick balancing atop city grates and a below ground maze
it’s whatever it may be
and may be whatever it’s
but she and he and I and you
we perch on seven lines of fact
like birds we wallow, and trees we droop
‘til the ending sunrise
where you figure the truth
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 8:03 PM UTC
She kisses me with cream
and lemon yellow
making me pucker up
for lips
that are like doorknobs
covered with red velvet
driving me crazy
for birthday cake that I don't need to taste
just light all the candles
and blow me away.
Wishing for things I don't think
I am allowed to tell you
and even if I could
I'm not sure I would
because her body is my church.
And
that's not what I mean but it's the closest my tongue will get
with words.
My god
is merciful.
She plants kisses with rosewater
and
green seeds across my landscape
and confessions are
sincerely *****
Forgive me mama,
I have sinned.
And
she does
with gifts of limbs
from a better half
the pagan's god
split.
Because this kind of man
with this kind of woman
made them weep for symmetry
and envy
how permanent every one of our moments
are.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 4:36 PM UTC
I felt used
like an object
more like a doorknob
one that was unable to project
I've had hands on me
turned without complain
left open to all
too many time to drive me insane
now all the screws have been uncorked
and I can only adjust for one last pull
I'm left alone
left to be alone and forever dull
z.s
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 1:38 AM UTC
Broken lips, I smile inwardly,
watching you amongst the books.
Wanting you.
Internally, I ridicule my fascination for you,
I mock my lust.
I see the other men just like me.
I see them everywhere, all wanting you.
I hate relating to them.
I hate wanting you.
You posses a designer desire,
like ******* you is all the rage.
Everyday we all see your face
in every newsstand, on every front page,
but only because we all look.
Only because we all want.
And it's me crawling in the dirt like a worm,
it's me licking the doorknobs of every bar in town,
shoving fistfuls of knotted hair down my own throat
from every shower drain in every filthy run down
apartment complex covering this ******** city.
And it's me still wanting you,
sick with the want,
driven mad with the want,
dying wanting.
Poor from the late fees
for books I just can't
bring myself to return.
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 3:02 PM UTC
She invited me into her palace of art,
Where everything signified something else.
She wore a silvery gown,
Covered with a million miniature mirrors.
I was badly dressed.
“Beautiful lady, be my love
and heal my soul.
My life is fragments.
Make me whole.”
“I made this place to stand apart,
A window to a world purer, deeply felt.
Everything here is for you but my heart.
Don’t get the idea that it’s going to melt
Later on.” Music played.
Nirvana. Or maybe it was “Deacon Blues.”
Twisted letters carved
On doorknobs offered clues
To someone else’s mystery.
“Then be my muse,
Teach me the language of clouds
The coded words on the ceiling’s vault.”
A digital river flowed beneath
A winding stair down to an analog sea.
I asked “Are these ‘caverns measureless to man’?”
“Yes,” she said, “But not to woman.”
I wandered through room after room,
One printed, one painted, one sculpted, one
Paneled with friezes like the blazing tomb
Of an epic queen deified by the sun.
I saw a near-empty room with a single chair.
The light defined its form,
its form escaping into light.
“Is this real or a photo?”
“Yes,” she serenely replied.
I came to two doors. One said Discipline,
One Desire. “How can I possibly choose?”
“They lead to the same place,” she said.
What was real and what wasn’t flowed together
“You’re starting to figure it out.”
The innocence of a woman’s arched back,
And the wisdom of children.
The solitude of a lonely pier.
I knelt and I thanked her “Was all this for me?”
“I made this to give away. Not just for you.
What have you learned? Let’s review.
“Art is a shield
Against falling glass. Art healed
My divided mind, which used to devour
Itself, giving away its power.
Art is hunger, a piercing lack.
Art is a ride on a gull’s back.
Art is a dodge, the as of the mirror.
Art destroys, callous clearer
Of old order. Art is a dance,
a surrender to chance.
Art is not all seduction and fire
Or tethered to your desire
(Except when it is).
Beyond the dazzle of you and me,
Art is a failing light for learning how to see.”
I said “Now I understand less than before.”
“Then you’re ready.
Imagine starry ways beyond these walls.
Use an innocent eye.
Confusion calls.”
I never saw her again.
But it was enough
to start small.
She tempted me like an empty page.
From this immense vacuum, I write.
Jan 5, 2019
Jan 5, 2019 at 1:50 PM UTC
You told me you
Couldn't trust anymore
So you locked your heart
And you shut the door
I would knock and
Knock everyday
I waited for a response
Then I walked away
Soon I grew tired
Of trying to earn your trust
Your teardrops on
doorknobs begin to rust
It was pointless to knock
So I just walked in
Your trust in me
Growing more thin
*"No more doors
We can have a new start
Now I only have
To unlock your heart"*
*"But why should I trust
The one that didn't knock?"*
*"Because I am the only one
That cares about your lock
Everyone else left
For the same reason I stayed
Because I couldn't bare
To watch you use that blade"*
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 1:08 AM UTC
You've got to promise not to click on me
It's not high it's empathy
I don't know what you're trying to tell me
Abstract faces on the wall
Sagittarius
Rainbow
Fall
Salty sun
*** on the moon
Lost in the covers
Whisper about how you'll b be gone soon
Disturb the noise
Silence the sound
**** her brains out until you can't figure it out
Eyeball doorknobs
Debase her
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 12:57 AM UTC
I've been thinking of the stars,
and all I picture are doorknobs.
Ones I hope you twist open.
The one to my sanctuary.
The sactuary which houses my bed and technology.
The place that smells like me.
The handle is always yearning your touch
It extends itself to every hand that reaches
and locks itself when it realizes that
the hand reaching for it is not your own.
It locks when it knows that it is not you,
And it never is.
I've been thinking of the stars and
All I see are beards.
Blankets of ****** hair.
And thick arms.
And legs.
And I wish that your feet arms and legs
and your whole self
would creak through my room.
Gazing at me glued on my stomach
with my eyes bleeding onto the screen.
I've been thinking of the stars and
All I really end up thinking of
Are you,
your shoes when I step in them
and attempt to walk
And understand that it is hard to
When you're going a long distance.
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 3:36 AM UTC
In today's world religion can be hard
To tackle since so many view it as barred
Away from the world like the poor dying man
People avoid as best that they can
But what is the price of being uptight
About suppressing the essence of life?
Why is it so that it can be so wrong
To speak of the motives that guide us along?
Religion is not just a vast collection
of various mythical origin legends
Religion is the root of motive and desire
Religion is wood, humans are fire
So how can it be that the absence of thought
Is how some are marketed after they are bought
Into a title that simply describes
A lack of connection to open blue skies?
How can it be so, that siblings can fight,
Over which one is wrong and which one is right,
When in the end the real problem is
A lack of empathy for hers and for his
Where does it say that you have to sign up?
Why do I have to drink from anyone's cup?
What prevents me from creating my own?
What prevents me from being alone?
Why do you look down upon me so,
For having not only courage to say no,
But to say no and also be self-assure
For my essence is pure, and so is yours
Question not the names and titles
Question not the idol or idols
Question not those who dare to walk alone
For it is from the same cloth that we are all sewn
Question not the small details
That can breed such conflict, but to no avail
Question not the symbols or form
Question not those who deviate from norms
Question attempts to segregate
Question any actions fueled by hate
Question your mother, question your father,
Question your friends if you dare bother
Question anyone who you care for
Religions are doorknobs and humans are doors
For it is religion that truly precedes
The philosophies carried by you or by me
So question your friends, go on, it's ok
Hopefully the world will reach a day
Where religion is the opposite of a taboo
Where religion is recognized as what makes you
So question the motives, question desire
And most importantly, question those who set fire
To other's religions, to other's homes
Violence is never the answer
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 11:17 AM UTC
Cascades, cascades
Veils of rain
Never ending, Never rending
Faith in pain
To see is to explore
in the dim lit night
To see I implore
by hidden moon light
to the ways of the waves
as the rain cascades
on umbrella's held high
but only semi-dry
are the eyes and the sighs
and the little black ties
on doorknobs unlocked
precariously ensconced
those cries of pain
by the pouring rain
Unexplained
Unrestrained
Unexplicitly refrained
When the cloud flies
The crowd sighs
And the children unequivocally
sing
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 1:48 AM UTC
No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I can't find any outlets.
The belt that lady--I didn't mean to
disappoint--bought me is coiled,
surrounded by Tupperware walls.
A nurse checked herself in. No
affect; asking for charge; reset.
I'm twenty and letting down my dad.
My belt used to live at JC Penny
and has navy-outlined bass on it.
One of the counselors is black,
from Africa, was adopted, moved
here to be raised by two JP Morgan
lifers, played collegiate soccer, married,
got pregnant, lost the boy--which he said
he had a feeling it would have been.
So, he can relate.
No doorknobs exist on this floor.
I am twenty and this exists in the past.
Wheeling in due to an inability to walk
--totally her brain's fault; a real former-
controllable, current-uncontrollable thing
that her mind pulled on her, on account
from the cold, Vaseline touch of a relative
--this redheaded girl pretends to smile
before apologizing for pretending to smile.
Our black counselor, former soccer player
and father says to not apologize and that
we are all pretending, all the time, even
when we don't think we are.
I find this strangely comforting.
Oct 7, 2017
Oct 7, 2017 at 3:09 AM UTC
The first rule of the open door
is someone must walk through it.
Someone has to slide off that bench
and find a new seat, lean their head
against the cool glass and sleep
across time zones and hillsides,
rows of corn running alongside.
I dreamt of that place, I shouldn't
say again because I don't count myself
a liar. But the table was set, wine poured
and that dog wouldn't hunt.
The sidewalks ran with the moonlight
of one thousand doorknobs, teeth
of hungry doorways calling to be filled,
to be necessary. All the orange flowers
covered my grave that night. Branches
shuddered with the blackness of one
hundred crows, the moon just slivers
of leftover cheesecake crumbling down
into the spines of hotel bibels and ******
veins of the orchard's nectarines.
And the clouds beat their knuckles
against the coming night until their passion
bled out onto the bleached white sheets
on their chests, all purple and red and blue
and bruised.
A colossal stillness hushed its way
across the swaying seashore.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 5:02 PM UTC
What I am most fearful of, is waking up in the middle of the night, not being able to move. Being paralyzed. Only being able to move my eyes.
I am terrified of the dark, or maybe not that, it could be the things that are found in the darkness. Imagine waking up in your 160 year old house, with ancient doorknobs that have apertures only a skeleton key could fit, finding out that the door is locked. How? You are inside your room and yet the door is locked, who locked you in, how did they lock you in? Your eyes might water but before you cry you will pound on the door. There is no response.
But wait, you are now paralyzed again and still you can move nothing but your eyes. Your only hope is that the morning will come soon and the sun will shine through your windows. What seems like an hour, passes. You are able to twist your head to the side. The clock says 2:04 am. You wait and wait, but surely ten minutes pass and the clock still says 2:04 am and now your head is stuck looking at the clock and you are scared you are so scared, and the door, you can hear someone put a key in your door, the **** turns and the door swings open, something forces your body to jolt up, you look at the door and all that is there, is.....darkness.
That is what I am terrified of.
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 1:15 AM UTC
my fingers are spindles of thread, unwoven from blankets of strong women who fought harder fights than I could withstand.
my neck is a porcelain clock. engraved with wisps of words, it's cogs churning to keep my brain functioning.
my torso is an storm. lightning leaves scars acrioss the lining of my stomach, spreading out like spiderwebs, covered in dew. thunderheads boom when I walk, rattling my ribs and awakening this hummingbird heart.
my spine is a garden, blooming. daisys and forget-me-nots bloom from the soil tilled into my veterbrae.
My hamstrings are tightrope across the twin towers, quivering.
My knees are doorknobs left unturned, the room contents dusty and cobwebs string the corners.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 12:46 AM UTC