"dormitory" poems
**** the twin-size mattress,
that cheap indigo color.
Where my best friend’s legs,
her hands and knees,
were entangled in struggle.
**** his barbell body
heavy and cold to the touch.
She had been hunted
by someone that she trusted.
**** the world that assumed
she was kissed. Not gripped,
nor crushed under his pressing force.
**** the cinder block walls
of that college dormitory,
where she stared and refused
to sleep in her own bed
After that night.
**** the catchy tune of breath
rolling over teeth
that play in her head.
**** her father. He would say
he doesn’t approve of her *******
So, she chose to stay quiet.
Forgettably quiet.
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 2:09 AM UTC
Sitting on my bed
Gazing out at the view
Laptop in lap
I wonder
Being of mixed race
The truth of my origins
The blood coursing through my veins
Goffle they would say
But iv always believed a man's skin colour doesn't define who he is
Kwabulawayo
A place where he is being killed
Home of the Ndebele
My hometown
Built on the ruins of a Royal town
uMzilikazi ,Leander Starr Jameson ,Lobengula ,Cecil john rhodes
Men of courage
Black and white
Fought struggles
Years before my birth
Mater Dei Hospital
My journeys beginning
My grandfathers end.
Joy and pain
My hearts memories
From Primary
Whitestone
Green fields
Where i spent my childhood
Life's little joys
Clay-yaki
In the rain
Barefoot.
Speargrass
How it stung
Running through the grass
Taller than i was
Forts
Built with shoelaces
Marbles
Fights in the sand
Afternoons spent picking mullberyys
The girls dormitory
Offbounds.
Matrons
Got me the cain
Thursday Nights
Prefects Priveleges
Sports
Cross country
The houses of Tuli, Shangani, Shashe
lifelong friends made
A place frozen in memory
Home of the best years of my life
Tears streaming down
Every Sunday evening
The way back
A boarders sentiment
Lasting 5min till reunited with friends
Tuck shared
Eskimo Hut
The Green Mamba Or Pink Panther
The food hall
Quiet
Till dessert came
Mr Haworth
Everyday
"The queen would be disgusted if she saw u eating"
The tide of his time
Wandering around my childhood
I bumped unintentionally into
Maturity
Starless nights
First kisses
A little bit older i was
Aug 21, 2010
Aug 21, 2010 at 8:34 AM UTC
I have always believed that it is possible to see through the defenses of those who keep secrets tucked into their back pockets like wallets with a little more cash than they are comfortable with, if one is willing to look closely enough. It is apparent in their heavy eyelids, as though the weight of what they are carrying is resting on their eyelashes. It is apparent in the curve of their lips, and the way they are not able to smile to their fullest potential. It is apparent in their hands, and the way they are not able to hold anything, as though their fingers are already full. However, I never realized that it was also possible to notice leaves clutching secrets to their chests like keepsake necklaces passed down by their great-grandmothers until one afternoon when I was walking between two bushes. My feet were carrying me lackadaisically down the sidewalk toward my dormitory when something to my right caught my eye. Among a congregation of green leaves, I noticed one blushing sinner. She sat in the center, as though she was attempting to blend in, but her pink cheeks made her stand out from the rest. When everyone stood in unison, she followed a few seconds behind. When everyone clutched hymns and bibles in their hands, she tied her fingers in knots to appear busy. When everyone partook in communion, she bit her lip quietly. But there was something about the way she held her hands in her lap, with her palms pressed together and her fingers interlocked, and the way she wore her hair behind her shoulders in curls that made me want to get to know her and every secret she kept tucked beneath the belt of her summer dress. But we don’t always get the pleasure of conversing with sinners, and we often are not even willing to have those conversations with ourselves.
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 2:50 PM UTC
***** stories make front pages,
Massacres and killings,
Mayhem and ****** ,
A mad man is dealing,
This masked man antics
Is masking the city ,
The mind behind the gore
Is on 30th floor,
In a dormitory with no door,
Only a window,
With which
The nocturnal tenant tends to
Look over.
Watching
The overnight onlookers
Night walkers,
Alley cats,
Insomniacs,
And boulevard hookers..."
"....My eyes lay
On a prominent, candidate
For cannibalistic practices,
My dominant traits
Widows peak,
Vampirical feats,
Long, hollow teeth,
With massive molars,
Used to chewing meat,
Which sit beside my
Sharp Canines.
But my sizable incisors
Scissor inside the side of my
Silent victim
Select venom in him
Bereft of vocalism
Vocal cords torn
I violently vanquish
His speech.
He’s paralyzed from his
Neck to his feet
I throw him over
My shoulder,
Escape the obscene scene
Before I am seen..."
Oct 1, 2010
Oct 1, 2010 at 12:19 AM UTC
The funding of my own little massacre,
my own precious little war crime. My smoke
is everywhere. My father coughs in his sleep.
My mother gags, hangs her head out the window, sick.
My cheap *** before and after cheap ***
I chat up some high-waisted pastiche on Alberta.
She tells me collage this and that and looks
so lit up and skinny, it's a dream.
Where I go to brand myself. I have this image
of a spark on my arm sitting stovetop red,
sinking into the skin, losing color as it digs,
turning to grey and then nothing like the drowning
of a comet's tail in atmosphere. My burns look so good
in the pale dormitory bathroom shower light: so baby tulip
and teeth, so how-I've-made-it-through-the-wringer.
Christ, I should be a film, look at me: so bent and bright,
such a cute boxer, such a prize fight.
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 4:34 AM UTC
Dissolve -- fade
Broken bodies
The child needs some room to live
-----
Selfish stories persist
We listen
we enter the mountain and find the cave
----
Broken promise
We vowed our eternal love
Dying oceans -- and the rest
------
The child needs some room to live
The collage dormitory
The collage needs some room to live
------
Naked *******
Empty hands
Poems about razor blades
--------
I am a holy man
I climbed a holy mountain
nothing changed
----
Apr 20, 2013
Apr 20, 2013 at 1:12 AM UTC
" "
Within my dreams Illuminated
Galaxies travel across Fiery dark canopy
Maybe the Traumdeutung is too much
Of a work before day's work Begins
Above us is also below Us dormitory
Dreaming of our luscious Bodies entwined
Riding each other as Universe was a Wild
Splendid stallion stampeding through Open Space
And her sacred blood turns into the salty Waters
Upon his black neck caressed by the noon
Beneath hot eruptions of Sun's squared light beams
Beneath his magic ebony knited untamed mane
Covering by his pace awaken eyes thirsting
For crystal cold waters deep in the distance
Feeling the pull of a mirage flickering
In the deserts of life; each one crying
Howling alone to the full Moon
Singing to us with strange allure:
"Fairy tales do come True. . ."
We have to believe!
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 5:21 AM UTC
The dormitory never sleeps.
Lights hum like insects,
shadows twitch across the floor,
and every night I remember,
this is not where I am visiting.
This is where I live.
This is where I am kept.
The other girls go home.
They vanish into weekends,
into kitchens filled with noises
and smell
and warmth.
They complain about parents,
about rules,
about being seen too much.
I would give anything
to be seen too much.
Instead, I return to my bed,
my small metal drawer of belongings,
my ceiling with its web of cracks.
It stares down at me every night,
silent,
unchanging,
a reminder that nothing waits
beyond these walls.
My parents are smoke now.
They pass through my thoughts like strangers.
Their voices are static,
distant,
sometimes I wonder
if they’ve already forgotten me.
Maybe I was too easy to let go.
Maybe I was never worth holding onto.
I don’t plan for the future.
The future is a locked door.
The future is another hallway
that leads back here.
I have stopped imagining anything else.
Sometimes, in the quietest hours,
a thought flickers,
a cruel kind of hope:
_one day I’ll grow wings._
But even as it comes,
I know it isn’t true.
Even birds fall.
Even birds are crushed beneath tires
on roads no one bothers to cross.
So I fold myself smaller each night,
make myself a shadow
so no one will notice how much I’m missing.
I practice the art of disappearing,
learning to dissolve into silence,
to be overlooked,
to vanish without the world
ever pausing to ask why.
And if I write it down,
it isn’t for saving.
It’s proof I was here,
that once there was a girl in this building
who waited,
and waited,
and was never collected.
Aug 24, 2025
Aug 24, 2025 at 7:41 AM UTC
house.
dormitory.
lodge.
apartment.
duplex.
hotel.
all places to call home.
none of these feel like a home to me.
my home is wherever you are.
your welcoming arms,
your loving touch,
and your greeting; a gentle forehead kiss;;
create a home.
My home is wherever you are.
Wherever you are to welcome me in, hold me tight, and kiss me gently.
Feeling safe is what creates a home, and you are my home.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 1:11 AM UTC
*Yes! Yes! It's a great "Barry Hodges" memories poem involving *** and degredation!*
O Croydon, dormitory town of happy memories
With your delightfully sixties-style Ashcroft Theatre
And your many enchanting concrete underpasses!
O delightful borough so deservedly renowned
As one of the major English centres of wife-swapping,
That quintessentially bourgeous weekend pastime
And surefire antidote to inevitable marital ennui!
O gracious queen of the central south London suburbs
And gay paradise of semi-detached commutersville
O I cannot sing your praises ******* loudly enough
Nor can I deny the charms of your public toilets,
Where I have oft times enjoyed a **** with a gayish stranger!
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 3:34 PM UTC
I see for miles, yet all upon my sight
outside my carriage are the endless seas,
the shifting clouds of fog, the tops of trees
that rock a simple path through poisoned white.
And at their feet, some sodden deep in mire?
Some sunk Atlantis sleeping 'neath the weight?
or but a borough innocent of hate,
Not well in hearts, but dead of hope and fire?
A dormitory town? Or have you died?
Though built by stone, your pulse is nearly lost;
though faint your breath, your bridge is still uncrossed:
return before you reach the other side...
O land so drowned in dreams beyond a doubt
dissolve your heartfelt fog, or be spat out.
May 31, 2010
May 31, 2010 at 10:56 AM UTC
12/18/2014
months ago
walking to your dormitory room
i had asked myself
had i really taken this spurned summer
romance and spun it to this
thing that only breathed when you
touched it with a cautious finger?
a figure moves while i sit
in an empty parking lot at night in december.
we have not spoken in two weeks
and i think that is ok.
it is funny how
i’d **** for you turns without hesistation
into i’d **** you
provided the circumstances and whether
they are extraneous.
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 4:51 PM UTC
.
returning to my childhood home in thought
returning to mallard quacks tolling
and the hour toiled
by ever thirsty church bells
cold damp rock house with ammonites
and belemnites coiling in the walls
and a cooling ichthyosaur
futilely trying to swim in the silty soil
struggling to catch prey
beneath the foundation
its darkness is rummage
.
a flush lawn planted nilly and obscene
monkshood mint cotton grass and ling
warm mentions an evening fire
and the family room
i'm mooding through the memory
and it grooms apart organic
birthing not river not smoke
rat sized earwigs take to the air heat
over the boiling tar garage roof
and i return home back through time
child swinging on thick vines suspended
by the yew over the stream
the willows dapple and paddle
the fir trees return
fierce sproutings of involving shade
ridding the house
of the intruder new extension
riding time back
and the caravan my parents
would later park on concrete
is swallowed
the storms of a bad year return the old wall
at the property edge
and the cottage reforms an ancient pace
with its surroundings
.
it's no longer my families claimed place
re-seemed with ghoulish history
the workhouse returns
and files with hard poverty
the wall punches through
in what will be the kitchen
and the cottage runs through long
with the neighbours space
dormitory takes the whole upstairs length
and the legend of the garment thief
drops ghost and rumour to live again
and then all this too flees out of history
.
rushing back through time
and this all sinks into the levels
swamp life takes over
and the ammonites
moisten with anticipation
prehistory is sprout to begin
.
Sep 23, 2025
Sep 23, 2025 at 10:08 AM UTC
I watched through
the open window
of the boys' dormitory
as one legged Anne
crutched herself
across the dew-covered lawn
of an early morning
the young nursing nun
quickly ran after her
and said
where are you going
at this time
of the morning Anne?
Getting some
fecking fresh air
Anne said
without stopping
the young nun
sort of ran beside her
trying to reason with her
but you've only got
your nightie on
and it isn't
that warm yet
the nun said
**** OFF PENGUIN
Anne bellowed
and crutched onwards
the nun red-faced
ran along side her
the white habit
flapping around her legs
Sister Paul will
not like this
the nun said
Sister fecking Paul's
not doing it
Anne said
pausing briefly
staring at the young nun
who stood a bit breathless
you mustn't use
such language Anne
it isn't nice
for the younger children
the nun said
Anne looked
at the sky
and took a huge
intake of air
and closed her eyes
any other nun
would have stood
her ground
and have ordered Anne
to returned
to the nursing home
but this young nun
just stood gaping
at the one legged girl
standing on
the dew-covered lawn
unsure what to say
or do like a lamb
just dropped
just born.
Apr 4, 2016
Apr 4, 2016 at 2:28 AM UTC
When we hear the sirens’ banshee wails,
Flying up behind us,
The four horsemen of the apocalypse,
We say a silent prayer:
“Thank God it’s not for me.”
Then continue on our way,
Until the traffic begins to slow,
And the crowds appear
With their clown faces agape
As the sharp reds, flashing blues, hard blacks,
Charge haphazardly into the scene.
An acquaintance approaches to report the news,
Our faces blank to white as a sheet,
Tears spring to our eyes,
The floodgates of sorrow open:
No. No. No. It can’t be him.
The boy, strong and quiet, funny and kind,
Who hiked mountains up and down the coast,
Who jested in stealing cigarettes,
Who jammed the bass,
All with a twinkle in his eye:
Almost gone
Out a seventh floor dormitory window.
Each of us silent,
Our minds race:
Prayers saved for when God is really needed,
Memories of happy moments,
Nightmares of what ifs.
But then silence,
As the stretcher emerges,
And there he lies
Covered only in a sheet
As white as our faces
We all feel it:
A void, then sudden surge
Love, Despair, Faith,
Past, Present, Future,
And we are with him.
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 12:13 PM UTC
I woke up in his bed yet again
Stumbled through the mess of clothes and ***** dishes on the floor
Trying to find my outfit from the night before
I darted out the door
Down the stairs and into my room
My head throbbing like some impending doom
And what does it mean
We're only just friends?
Waking in your bed daily
Seems more than just friendly
If that’s all it is, all my friends really owe me
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 7:10 AM UTC
I’m not much of a poet
The constituents of Shakespeare’s thoughts were not replicated unto me
The tantalizing, beautiful linger of Maya Angelou’s words were not instilled in my dialect
I digest what I see from other people
Speak your heart rhyme your words make it seem like its talent
Poetry, battle cry, dormitory
Is that good enough
I’m not much of a poet
I’m not frantic about the poem I’m writing right now
I’m just doing what I feel is right
Speaking my heart rhyming my words pretending to have a talent
I’m not much of a poet
I sometimes create fabrications to make my words sound poetical
But I would be creating another fabrication if I told you; you were not much of poet
Because whoever you are and whatever you write it is right
It may not rhyme or contain bombastic words
But you are a poet
You create a creation that needs attention
You don’t create *******
You are much of a poet
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 6:45 AM UTC
Dear Kristina,
Your name is still tattooed on my left *** cheek.
I remember how it curled your lips
like the cursive script it's written it.
You called me an idiot
every time I made you look at it
My mother said the same thing,
except without the smile.
I guess somebody should have explained to me
the permanace of drunken whims
or ****** friends who giggle too much,
but **** it.
And **** you.
I burned your birthday cards and ticket stubs
to bands that haven't sounded good since October 25.
I loved you.
I threw away your black high school track team sweatshirt
and those little ducky magnets with Italian words coming out of their beaks.
I pretended they were funny
just because I knew you felt lame buying them for yourself.
But I'm still
looking for pieces,
thinking in circles,
wasting hours
trying to
dream of
anything
but
you.
See you never,
Michael
Dear Kristina,
You spent a lot of time on your knees for me.
I liked that.
But we started falling apart
when you started standing up.
God gave us with voices that yell in permanant ink.
I forget what straightened your knees
and made you pick up a pen,
but I do remember
how tall you became.
I admire you now.
You learned far earlier than I
that the hardest thing in the world
is to stand up to those we love
and I couldnt deal with change.
You were a handful of quarters
when I had holes in my pockets.
Maybe I let you slip away
but maybe
I never should have put you there in the first place.
It's safe to say I'm over you,
so I feel safe saying
I'm sorry.
Sincerely,
Michael
Dear Kristina,
I lost your address a long time ago.
This letter will never leave the spiral of this diary.
I couldn't remember what you looked like today,
and have forgotten most of the things you ever said
but I still hold on to the things you taught me.
I've worn a ring for many years now,
and though my aging arms
have long embraced another woman,
and waved goodbye this year
to a son standing on the steps of a college dormitory,
your name is still tattooed on my left *** cheek:
living, ******** proof
that no matter how hard we scrub,
the fingerprints of those that touch our souls
can never be erased.
Love,
Michael
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 10:03 PM UTC
I have been drinking green tea by the evening light,
I have been wearing all my travelled hats again.
I have been striving for something beyond my reach,
in the hope that by stretching, I'll end up taller.
I have been eating croissants and drinking coffee,
exchanging currency and staring out windows.
I have been comforted by the sound of the rain,
as it taps on the drain by my bedroom curtains.
I have grown easy in this dormitory life,
sleeping through the day and then working through the night.
I have grown lazy, laid out in the olive grove,
in the eternal garden of the writer's mind.
I have grown weary through my scowling at the moon,
no more a wolf than a painter's aesthetic muse.
I have grown ugly through vague vanity's mirror,
I have grown privileged through my vacant stupor.
I'm still waiting for the love that has now perished,
a love that's now forgotten, that once was cherished.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 2:51 PM UTC
She said who am I and
what am I doing here?
They all said that
he said all of them
but she was different
she had a darker
tone of voice
and her eyes haunt me
to this day
and she was often heard
at the opposite end
of the ward
singing Puccini arias
and some of the others complained
she'll drive us mad
drive us over the edge
so she sang Mozart instead
and walked about stark naked
and some of the guys
liked that but the nurses
soon dressed her again
after all one can't have
that kind of thing
he said can we?
She cornered him once
and said Bach gets jealous
if I don't sing his arias
but he can go **** himself
I like Puccini and Mozart
and now and then she'd concede
and off she'd go
with some Bach thing
loud and clear
as a bell in a valley
and she slept
in the women's dormitory
and hated it when the big woman
tried to climb into her bed for ***
she hated that
like a **** hippo she said
hippo in bed with me
do you know what
she does on Sundays?
He said she goes
to the hospital chapel
and sings the Mass in Latin
and ****** off the C of E clergy guy
and he complains
but she just sings louder
and that Monday last
she punched that fat dame
in the nose because
she touched her *** at breakfast
and broke her nose
and naked again
no clothes.
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 3:11 AM UTC
Hey Kid
Anne says
Benny follows
to where
she calls him
what is it?
he asks
go get my chair
your wheel chair?
yes my wheel chair
what other kind
of chair do I have
ok
he says
and goes off
over the green lawn
passing kids
on the swing and slide
pass the skinny nun
who has just come
whom Anne says
looks like a clarinet
she's so thin
in through
the French windows
passing a girl
who has ****** burns
but who manages
to smile at him
in down the hall
into the girl's dormitory
and takes hold
of Anne's wheel chair
and is just about he
to wheel it out
when Sister Blaise
stops him
where are you going
with that Benny?
she asks
he looks at the nun
with her stern features
and icy blue eyes
it's for Anne
he says
did she ask you
to get it?
he looks at
the crucifix
on the wall
behind the nun's head
no I saw she was
struggling
and thought it best
to bring it to her
he says
taking in
the Crucified's head
leaning to one side
eyes half open
as if He were
looking at him
is that the truth?
the nun asks
he nods
and puts on
his Mr Innocent face
all right off you go
she says
eyeing him
as he wheels the chair
along the passageway
and out through
the French windows
and across the lawn
at full belt
until he comes
to where Anne stands
propped painfully
on her crutches
any problems?
she asks
no
he replies
trying to get
the nun's
icy blue stare
out of his eyes.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 3:13 AM UTC
Two days into being back in Van Lear upon onset emergency,
I feel trapped in my childhood home and engulfed by jingo lobbyists who have posters of Ronald Reagan,
And I read about Pascal's Wager in an essay by William Buckley to realize how anyone, in annoyance, could fall into conservatism.
I come home and all the farmers are talking Communist uprising,
But back in the university the Mormon professors are talking up our structure and that we should roll with the punches.
Noting that everyone disagrees on something,
Everyone back home is too sessile to talk or debate the issues.
I must leave at once and argue with tact about the grander schemes of life and money,
I'm just getting started.
///
This is not a place where you can accumulate *** and alcohol,
And thus not a safe space for creative expression and thought...
In the dormitory halls I would put on my Aztec print sunglasses and parade the hallways declaring myself the most immortal of men from third to fourth floor.
And then you inevitably get trapped in a two story country house,
Cry for the fact that the sky is too calm.
Nothing happens here.
Nothing happens here...
It makes me uncomfortable.
Let me sit in the corner of room 403 and meditate with more excitement than a shouting match here,
Or how everything is so quiet and we're waiting for a phone call of awful news.
They all must think I eat nothing,
I subsist on nighttime ghost stories, or something,
I'm a creature of the night,
Then who are you,
Man of American with your European jaw,
Or King of all men who dare to call themselves free,
Why is it that in a decade of invention and creativity
That it's the appeal of brawn that wins out continually?
We are regressing.
Eastern Kentucky is the center of the wound,
The eye of barbarism and I am not welcome.
I will move west to spite my family and then become successful to spite society.
Sep 10, 2016
Sep 10, 2016 at 7:25 PM UTC
As her back arches up as he goes deep into her,
All she remember was the face of him
Not him who penetrated her at 2 in the dormitory in the campus,
But him whom she still love and never forgotten, who was in the same institution.
Oct 1, 2015
Oct 1, 2015 at 4:22 AM UTC
On advice from a friend
I’m sure that “plenty of ******* in the world”
and “Love me some freckly *******
were said with the best intentions
On Physics
While I watched a woman Hoola-hoop
and take off her clothes I was fascinated,
but when she laid down on the ground
and took off her stockings, while the hoola-hoop
twirled on, I lost all belief in science.
On painting a brown dormitory ceiling white
“You really have to use both arms to get up in there
Just push it up in the brown
Get it all until it is covered in white
Come on Tom, use your muscles.”
That’s what she said
Oct 2, 2010
Oct 2, 2010 at 9:06 PM UTC
Affluent men taketh and foreclose thy dormitory residence
They smirk and grin with their polka dotted ties
They loveth to giveth pain
They laugh to poor man's suicide
They build skyscraper's to thy sky
Metal steel to beam star high
Animal's tis they hunt as trophie's
Whilst African and even American babies art choking
From no food nor water!!!!!!!
They drop acidic gas for slaughter
Whilst putting chemical's in the turf
Slug round's to virginal church
They've scoffed high Jehovah
Made **** their Ponderosa
Wriggling worms
Master artists of DEATH
Selleth thy soul to the world dear reader
And thou shalt taketh thy last breathe
For they've madeth man focus on media ****
****** thee by breast's
They Maketh women a harlot *****
They telleth them what they should be
Giveth them fifty bucks
For girly magazines
But these art the Queen's
That the howler's corrupted their image
Man of no humbling
Devilish scrimmage
As he also maketh men
Robots to his illusion
Giveth him archery
They calleth them soldier brainwashed timid's
They run ourn own weather
( DARPA) run by the government beast
Stick poles in the ground
(Search it in Alaska) thou shalt seeith
Mankind thinks this weather is natural
As natural they tryeth to be
Disillusioned by fact's soon
Their chapter shalt be seen
Their heads will be bowed
Tasting the ash
Their law's of soo called justice
Kiss mine ***
No I don't cuss ( not a cusser honest)
But I'm overboard now
Sick of the molestation of ourn being's, creature's, And GLOBE overflowed!!!!
The blinded eyes
Are woozy by robes
But guess what dearest?
Almost the end of the show.......
Jun 26, 2015
Jun 26, 2015 at 12:43 PM UTC