"drugstore" poems
"Back from vacation", the barber announces,
or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.
They are amazed to find the workaday world
still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,
their customers having hardly missed them, and
there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders,
the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,
the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved
in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,
the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.
But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.
Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,
warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,
the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so!"
13.4k
to the hometown i hate,
i miss seeing the october sunrise while taking the train to school every morning
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to wear uggs, hats and scarves already at the end of september,
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to buy 90 cent face masks and my favorite protein bars at the drugstore 10 minutes away from me
to the hometown i hate,
i miss seeing the porsches and mercedes c-classes parked on the curbes of our sidewalks
to the hometown i hate,
i miss the quietness of my area
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to speak a language i know fluently, not worrying about the anxiety i get if i get into a complicated situation
to the hometown i hate,
i miss running in the quiet, clean, green forest next to us
to the hometown i hate,
i miss sleeping in my own bed, in the room i did not like
to the hometown i hate,
i miss being able to go to my fully-equipped kitchen and bake whenever i want to, which i complained was too small until i moved into my dorm
to the hometown i hate,
i miss you
Oct 31, 2021
Oct 31, 2021 at 3:26 AM UTC
Sometimes maybe the dreams should
go away
--What do you dream about?
Last night I dreamt I journeyed
into that dark part of the city
where even hard-armed truck drivers
refuse to unload alone.
It was late. Street lights knifed
the false dawn and wet sidewalks
shivered off shards of glass.
Perhaps I had come there for a pack
of cigarettes
or maybe I had a message to deliver.
It was dark. I was dreaming. I knew
I was dreaming. When they met me
outside
at the bottom of the long ramp
and told me all the stores were closed,
then I could see the bars across the door
and the sign that said, open at seven.
It all seemed too obvious
but I had found some friends
and they didn't seem to mind the
long walk back to my car.
This was only a dream, after all,
so it came as no surprise
how my blood drenched the dark pavement.
I waited for flowers to bloom or butterflies
to rise from the spot, but
nothing happened.
I think I killed them then,
but it's not clear how I
got to to the soft lights
of an all-night drugstore
and cuddled up between the rows
of witch hazel and staionary supplies.
--Is this what you dream?
This is what I dream. I have yet to find
a satisfactory substitute for the warmth
of sleep, so I dream.
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 2:08 PM UTC
i miss the sadness
i miss the home that never was
the beautiful you never thought you were
where has your pretty gone
who’s wearing your flowered dress now
whose lips are your boyfriends kissing
who could’ve known this was to come
i miss your father’s pride
when you gave him a reason to be sober
now all you are is disappointment
another unlucky occurrence for him to sleep with on the couch
his favourite drinking buddy
i miss church
i miss the red the pastor turned you
the blood running to your holy cheeks
when the congregation applauded
at the fact that you would burn for this
that this secret would be the end of you
the ***** that came up in that bathroom
the god that frowned upon the smell
i miss the way boys used to look at you
when you were something to be desired
when you made others feel more than just confused
when you weren’t an inconvenience to love
you’d rather your innocence be stolen for being beautiful
than for being unwanted
i suppose you pick your poison
i miss the way you looked
every night you cried
the colour mascara makes when it meets blood
like drugstore lipstick
at least there was something gorgeous
something romantic about it
the way the moonlight made your bones stick out
it was something boys could fall in love with
pretty girl
why would you ruin yourself like this
happy girl
how couldn’t you see it for yourself
you were a trophy
your future said husband
it said children
it said the life we want for you
forget your own
you were not happy
but how can you learn to be now
that place that played safe haven
at least, was warm
you are not sure if you miss the sadness
you simply know
this world wants you to
Jun 13, 2018
Jun 13, 2018 at 12:03 PM UTC
Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
No difference.
The sparrow *****
upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs
Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.
Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.
Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.
I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?
Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.
A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
(after Shiki)
On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.
Another year
has past-the world
is no different.
The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.
My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.
My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.
My mother's ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.
I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.
The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.
Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town...
Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.
On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.
A hardon in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.
The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.
[Haiku composed in the backyard cottage at 1624
Milvia Street, Berkeley 1955, while reading R.H.
Blyth's 4 volumes, "Haiku."]
5.1k
I
I stole my brother’s car and drove to Phoenix in the dark.
The blue-green glow of dashboard gauges, the biting scent
of roadkill and desert marigolds. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Insects slapping the windshield, incipient rain.
Keep driving. Drive until the sun blooms.
II
Some days were more dire than others. CCTV footage confirms
I pawned a shotgun, a Gibson guitar, and my wife’s engagement
ring at the pawnshop next to Fatty’s Tattoo parlor on MLK Boulevard.
The typographically accurate Declaration of Independence
inscribed on my back also confirms this.
III
I ran the tilt-a-whirl at the Ashtabula county fair,
fattening up on fried Oreos and elephant ears,
twisting behind tent ***** with a one-armed
contortionist with strawberry-blonde hair.
IV
I derailed in a dive bar.
V
I disappeared in a city lit by lavender streetlights,
where buildings blotted out the stars and the traffic
signals kept perfect time. I picked through trash bins.
I paid for love with drugstore wine.
VI
I closed my eyes on a mountain road.
The sheriff extracted me from a ****** snowbank.
VII
I holed up for weeks in an oceanfront motel, dazed
by the roar of the breakers. Each morning I drew
back the curtains and lost myself
in the crisscrossing patterns of whitecaps,
the synchronous flight of sanderlings above the dunes.
I dreamed of dead horseshoe ***** rolling in with the tide.
VIII
The moon over my shoulder
tightened into focus like a spotlight.
One night the barking dogs undid me.
I caved in to the candor of a naked mattress.
I grew my beard, an insomniac in a jail cell,
clinging to bars the color of a morning dove.
IX
I coveted the house keys of strangers.
X
I opened and closed many doors.
I sang into the mouths of storm drains.
I stepped out of many rooms only
to find myself in the room I just left.
Despite all my leaving, I remained.
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 1:45 PM UTC
How will we progress today?
Will we risk life attending Mosque,
Or have an affair with our spouse's boss?
Will we take the dog out for a walk,
Step on a landmine, use plastic straws?
Perhaps we'll play with our kids today,
Or call Amber Alert, wait scared, and pray?
Will we defy authority with a righteous tone,
Or leave our tail tucked, like a dog with his bone?
Will we gauge goods today for our Vegan menu,
Or show a distention as millions today do?
Will we drive around town for cheaper gas,
Or choose our pickings from picked-over trash?
Do you sling eggs and sausage for sub-minimum wages,
Or attend a visitation in a tortured MADD rage?
Will you tee off at eight, or do a spin class,
Or sit solitary watching the hourglass?
Did we place our script at the shiny drugstore,
Or wade across water to Jordan's fair shore?
Will we question the teacher at our kid's school,
Or play Avatar falling off our bar stool?
Did you set a reminder on your AI phone
For chicken delivery to your suburban home?
Will you lift copper tubing from construction sites,
Proclaiming your station in life gives you right?
Do I recline in my La-Z-Boy for a nap with a book,
Or teach someone to live with a line and a hook?
Will you take out your family,
Are you last on your list,
Will you reciprocate a handshake
Or raise a gloved fist?
Our words can't bind all our wounds,
Few are born with silver spoons,
We're not wrapped in silk cocoons.
A metamorphosis is coming
To this world of gloom,
A rousing group flight,
And it can't come too soon.
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 9:36 AM UTC
A drugstore pallid in waning light, always illuminated in halogen halos.
I am earless with music.
Black metal loud in clanging sets and blows-
foreshadowing the smell of cleaning solution,
air freshener and the outside
sweet at my back
all steeped deep in the rip roaring undertone torrent of cigarette smoke
blended with cheap perfume until I cannot tell the difference.
There is a limp familiarity to the underlying odor
born partially of personal encounter and-
nestled in the hive mind of social experience.
A distillation of regret and remorse,
of lonely,
of irrelevance;
this black hole swallows my voice the way of my ears,
eaten by rust.
Four cans of beans,
kidneys,
in cans squeezed without any power against sagging swells
melting into other curves
and I swerve close and around guiltily,
noting you only as the source of this pungent spring.
You are smiling apologies
ignorant of my apparent inhumanity-
blind to my selfish hands..
Pinioning belly flesh,
flattening,
reaching
and gaining attendance from a better man
retrieving every dropped can.
I’m retreating,
shaken,
tense to alternatively slacken.
My sweat slippery palms with whitened red sharp fingers feel foreign
and I am surrounded by razors then shaving cream,
moving from shampoo to conditioner,
the whole store is infected with smell.
Staring at nail clippers/snipers clipping touch smooth sooth my tense mind-
don’t look
**don’t
look**
I can sense little else but dread
drawing closer
you are now crouched so close I’m gagging,
taken forcefully-swept away in an olfactory flood
roiling in rot,
currents of solitude exude from your smiling sullen appearance when I turn to you
fumbling
with my electric ears,
surfacing
in a breath of Amish silence
broken with simple request
and I want to scream at you that I am not a man to ask opinions of
that it does not matter what fake nails she glues to her body
that she is excluded and I don’t know why.
I choose swirls of cream suspended within watery milk,
over childish lady bugs framed by yellow
or dots of red alternating to black,
an epitaph to a lifelike effigy.
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 1:42 AM UTC
The local convenience store dealers lean on glass windows with ****** pupils scanning the parking lot for any takers. I pump my gas on station four and spy from afar. Don’t make eye contact or that means you’re interested. No buyers yet. What do you suppose is on the menu for today? Judging from the amount of zombies I’ve seen pushing stolen shopping carts a block away from here, I’d say smack. Tar. Black. ****** Whatever they call it where you’re from. Welfare bodies withered down to just flesh hanging from bone, wandering around aimlessly for their next fix. I’ve only ever tried it once; I was curious and sad and it was there—in Violet’s hand and then in my lungs. Do you think my mother would cry out in those disgusting sobs of snot and heaves of not-being-able-to-breathe-tears if she knew? Do you think my sister would look at me with that glare of judgmental disapproval because yet again, here’s an example of why I’m the family ****** Do you think my father would smack me upside the head and call me a dumb *** Probably. And do you think my third and sixth grade teachers who told me I should one day do something with my writing would be gasping in disappointment? Definitely. The gas pump clicks off. A potential customer staggers across asphalt to meet his makers and I am no better than he is at this very moment.
Dec 1, 2020
Dec 1, 2020 at 3:17 AM UTC
Lipgloss dripping candy lacquer aquamarine
Wrought silk enfolding shadows of her shoulders obscene
Drugstore ribbon laced her feet just as in my dream
She reduces me to liquid in an urban machine
On the asphalt a virile shellac.
Power like a thousand ships of industry steel
Columns fall to soldiers at the clack of her heel
Sirens’ polished poisoned fruit that drives one to ****
A Dahlia's vitality shunted and left to congeal
In that pool, then a wave of relief.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 9:36 PM UTC
Here, on the flatlands
I was put in my place.
formed and pressed
into their neat and presumably safe little box.
It's all they knew.
It is so hard to think of them as once children themselves,
formed and pressed.
Formed from a different time, with different conformists.
There are no manuals when we are born,
you get leftover instructions from previous pipe fitters.
Agrarian raised, like grain fed beef.
Complete with the fears and habits of bygone generations.
I leave one bite of each item on my plate,
with just enough drink to wash it all down.
I have done that as long as I can remember.
I want the whole candy bar, rather than just a bite.
Pressed and formed my Father saves.
He saves twist ties from bread bags.
He saves old welcome mats, and garage door openers.
He buys in bulk, and has two deep freezers full.
Full of freezer burn, tasteless, barely nutritious,
neatly formed and pressed portions of frozen in time Salisbury steak.
It is as if he himself would like to be frozen in time.
He is a depressionite child.
In the basement there is an old dresser that he found at a yard sale.
He painted it a hideous green,
but it has a formed and pressed neat white little doily on top.
In the top drawer there are various expired drugstore items,
some dating as far back as 35 years ago.
"You never know when you might need something in there."
Expired aspirin that has broken down into powder and smells of vinegar.
Vicks Vaporub, in the pretty blue glass jar, that is dried up and orderless.
All brand new and have never been opened.
Formed and pressed neatly in their little containers.
I watch these molders of my life slowly pass away,
becoming neatly formed and packed into their aging corner of the world,
neatly formed and packed into a stereotypical old folks home.
Forgotten, in the way, slow, aching.
Soon all they will have will be memories.
Soon all they will need will be memories.
Neatly formed and packed in their aging minds.
And then, like a comet that has shuttled through space
for thousands of years, millions of years,
they will burn out and fade into dust.
And their whole lives
will be neatly formed and packed
away,
in a trunk
in the attic,
to be opened like a time capsule,
at a later date.
the result of a week with my 94 yr old Parents
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 4:32 AM UTC
Before last night, I'd only seen the forbidden-fruit curves and
ripples
rendering my skin unbeautiful.
But in the fluorescent indifference of a drugstore
I caught sight of my legs through eyes not my own,
new tapers and bulges swathed in black spandex
even too flimsy for the $15 price tag,
and wondered why words like "small" and "gap"
were heaven to my ears,
while "quadriceps" and "endurance"
have their own quaint ring,
a lovely taste on the tip of a tongue
which has spent too much time
wallowing in self-hatred.
Strength isn't a virtue in women,
we who learn from birth to take up
as little space as possible.
Our shapes always need shaping,
guiding,
sometimes our own voices telling ourselves
we deserve the pain of fatigue
after one mile too long spent running
up the avenue,
forcing ourselves to faint
for a glimpse of thinner thighs,
we deserve to be dehumanized
if we don't inch our way into
the body laid out for us by
Mother Society.
Where is the place for the girl who
hobbles home, skin bruised purple
but flushed with the accomplishment of stopping
every single shot in practice?
Or for the boy whose gentle hands provide
the perfect perch for a butterfly to land upon?
My strength is not an imperfection.
There is beauty in it, and discipline.
These legs can take me for miles if I
take off the iron vest that keeps me
anchored to a Hollywood version
of myself.
Without it, I can fly.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 8:33 PM UTC
she smiles for me
she was born beautiful
with golden hair and green irises
but when did she get so pretty?
a pleasant upside down triangle smile
a collaboration of lips, teeth, cheeks and eyes
shining in affection for me
for happy childhood memories
singing Disney songs
painting unicorns and waterfalls
stringing beaded bracelets
and learning how to draw good
because she "keeps on trying"
at times she was the devil's child
incorrigible
other times she was the sweetest
little chatterbox
at the corner drugstore
I couldn't get her to stop talking
"Why are we following that man?"
she said within his earshot
"Because he knows the way out", I replied
at four years old
she could beat me at video games
truly a kid from outer space
now a young woman
at life's threshold
with doubts and questions
and confidence
and more strength than she knows she has
working and going to school
I have no fears for her future
I know she'll keep on trying
till she gets what she wants
that was my advice
spoken so many years ago
to my little niece
my Godchild
Dani
Sep 21, 2011
Sep 21, 2011 at 12:52 AM UTC
I'm like Alice;
I fell & now I'm sitting
because I can't choose
between the "Drink me"
or the "Eat me."
"Go to sleep," you whisper,
I bite your hand, like a cat
with the arch of my back.
You're a short, stocky man,
barely to 21, already commanding
these things of me.
You spank me, "does that hurt?"
I'm indifferent.
You ****** inside of me,
"is that okay?"
I'm indifferent.
The story unravels, as my body
turns to sand paper.
I become so cold, I cannot sleep.
My words are rusted door hinges.
My skeleton, made up of bruised fruit;
unwanted, and worthless, even
to the most empathetic,
or frugal of shoppers.
You send me ambiguous messages
as if the internet can even maintain
the most insignificant,
unreal relationship that my heart
tricks my mind into believing.
I don't change my sheets,
because I think they smell
of your expensive cologne
and drugstore deodorant.
I'm stuck with sheets
that smell of my sweat,
and of my sour dreams,
our uncommitted relationship,
and my mind completely
tearing at the seams.
Sep 6, 2012
Sep 6, 2012 at 9:58 PM UTC
the defense of your legacy manifested into strings of saccharin
and phrases like ‘Come on in from the rain. We all need a torrent to own the storm, just- take off your clothes, don’t mind Kierkegaard.’
your sincerity is a cipher
you’re something of a conversation piece between good friends
who were artfully made of pre-engineered steel on a day Jove tremored in his bed
you’re something postured beneath a javelin
and likewise- something propelled for decorum
blackguard, black coffee and a birthmark turned into a running joke.
inevitable.
you searched the bottoms of summer pools
and found no discernible trace of your history
her sable crown whips back and forth in your head
and you maintain the chaos with aureate cries of preservation
it’s a halcyon boom, a lonely and sexless halcyon boom
it makes every yellow and red dress chimerical
it makes your neck unassailable
drugstore cowboy
they got close enough
to see you sweat
to note that heat and her magnificence could purge as quick as they reinstate
and you still beat
like they do
stubbornly.
Oct 17, 2011
Oct 17, 2011 at 10:20 AM UTC
How will we progress today?
Will we risk life attending Mosque,
Or have an affair with our spouse's boss?
Will we take the dog out for a walk,
Step on a landmine, use plastic straws?
Perhaps we'll play with our kids today,
Or call Amber Alert, wait scared, and pray?
Will we defy with a righteous tone,
Or leave, tails tucked, like a dog with his bone?
Will we gauge goods for our Vegan menu,
Or show distentions as millions do?
Will we drive around town for cheaper gas,
Or choose pickings from picked-over trash?
Do you sling eggs and sausage for sub-minimum wages,
Or attend visitations in a MADD rage?
Will you tee off at eight, or do a spin class,
Or sit solitary watching a sandless hourglass?
Did we place our script with the shiny drugstore,
Or wade across to Jordan's fair shore?
Will we question the teacher at our kid's school,
Or play Avatar falling off bar stools?
Did you set a reminder on your AI phone
For chicken delivery to your suburban home?
Will you lift copper tubing from construction sites,
Proclaiming your station gives you right?
Do I recline in my La-Z-Boy for a nap with a book,
Or teach someone to live with a line and a hook?
Will you take out your family,
Are you last on your list,
Will you reciprocate a handshake
Or raise a gloved fist?
Our words can't bind all our wounds;
Few are born with silver spoons.
We're not wrapped in silk cocoons.
A metamorphosis is coming
To this world of gloom,
A rousing street flight,
That can't come too soon.
Sep 21, 2021
Sep 21, 2021 at 8:11 AM UTC
we are the insects trapped inside homemade fly traps
glued on at the roof of the mouth
underbelly, I run around looking for trouble
trailer park princess, bar-fights in every space between my teeth
I'm a child of a child
I beat my paper wings against the shamelessness
Dance like the cigarette breaks are forever
Swisher blunts for the forget-me-not flowers inside backseats of cars, cabs, stolen automobiles
Revenge, locked jaw police officers like the fathers that never let you hold a gun so you become one
Taste blood, tongues, beauty in chaos
loose lips, stolen drugstore mascara and no more bruised knees
Boys like soft but you're the ******* Armageddon, knuckle-ring gods and all
so the men want to be kings and you grow up a feral cat sleeping in twin sized beds with a mouthful of curse words
Lord of the flies, lot lizards and truck-stop races
gritty bathroom graffiti is the cathedral but prayers never stop
Taverns with your name and the angels that spit
The television static never ends here, cicadas
Doors with mosquitoes held hostage, home for supper
wasted by dessert
Down in the dirt, grimy bathtub I unearth all the things I couldn't drink away; all the motel fantasies, cum-stained skirts and the neon lights waiting for the swarm
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 5:36 AM UTC
I've got the world's best kept secret
locked in 2 AM screenshots--
her late night musings over a crusty joint, a crushed pill,
or some ***** cigarettes.
She sends me her thoughts,
fears,
anxieties,
insecurities--
at her most vulnerable,
absolutely the most beautiful.
Her anguish stressed in the digital scroll
(though she doesn't like Kerouac, I let her borrow my copy),
her stained fingers mashing all their hurt and nicotine
into the keyboard--
and her pen aches and her paper stains
with the unrequited love she empathizes with
in the somber pop punk songs that explode from the stereo
she sings loudly on cold and lonely night drives
(I shiver in her passenger seat).
And she made for me the greatest of mixtapes,
her holy scrawl expounding upon a dull grey donut-shaped
slowly fading form of intimacy,
a blank CD--
"This mix is a good time"
and when I jammed it into my car stereo I was illuminated.
She is so cool, she is so punk,
and in her clandestine drugstore car charger thefts,
broken poems,
impalpable aesthetic,
impeccable music taste,
illuminated or even further obfuscated drug trips--
I have the world's best kept secret,
and more than anything, I wish to share it with you--
so she can make someone another mixtape.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 11:50 PM UTC
When I was seventeen
I did a dangerous thing:
Rung by rung, I rose
into forbidden space,
climbing as an insect
would along a slender
blade of wiregrass.
At the top of the tower
I settled into thin stratus.
I took in my home town,
insignificant and benign:
car headlights sliding
on roads to park below
neon drugstore signs,
yellow house windows
and amber streetlights—
whole neighborhoods
stretched out like fields
lit by electric flowers.
I’m sure I saw the glowing
orange tip of the cigarette
my girlfriend was smoking,
rocking herself away from me
on her metal front porch swing.
While I cowered
there in that aerie,
the air reeked of rain,
smoke, and despair.
I remember my heart,
syncopated and suffering;
how it pulsed beneath
a scaffolding of bones—
a buried, burning flare.
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 9:27 AM UTC
I am made of red lipstick and brewed coffee at four in the morning
I am made of hidden scars and kisses
under bleachers
I am made of black tights and short skirts
I am made of drugstore make up and hickeys
I am made of city lights and stiletto heels
And a bit of acid
I am made of free shots of love and unspoken 'I love you's'
I am made of sad tears and fake smirks
I am made of poetry and dusty furniture no one will ever clean
Dec 13, 2013
Dec 13, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
I wasn't raised as a lady
with three brothers and a father to tie me down
and beat sense into my girlish mind.
But early illuminations
brought dark realizations-
as it seems a fool is favored.
Feathered eyelids and buttered cheeks
of these I knew nothing.
Clumsy drugstore purchases
to paint a face too young into beauty.
The type they want to look at.
Braces be gone!
Glasses, so long!
Sear these curls with an iron!
So there, cursed mirror of murmurs!
The type they want to look at!
Nay!
He says that's not enough.
And who am I to stop his hand
spidering up my skirt.
This is it.
The type they want to touch.
Wash your face off
and all the scents and spots
of whoever he was.
Some are too deep,
it seems they have seeped.
*The type they want to ****
You'll ruin your sheets
if you cry like that-
motherless infant.
You cannot always need,
you'll be the type they want to leave.
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 1:23 AM UTC
it's one o'clock in the morning
and it smells of drugstore perfume, daisies
mixed with something attempting
to be sweeter than sugar
when its truly salt
swirled together with
arsenic and my vapid feelings.
it's one o'clock in the morning
and it feels like static, like the fuzziness
on television screens and the
sensation of the wires in my
brain snapping from this exhaustion
that was never there till i
gave up on the phantom innocence i'd been
clinging to in the hopes it
was still clinging onto the shreds of
clothing at my feet.
it's one o'clock in the morning
and it looks as though everything has been
painted monochrome. it's a series
of hazy greys and blurry whites, but
it's mostly a black delved so dark
i can't see anything through it; it's
not transparent enough to even
glance at the stars blinking down
toward the earth because the nighttime
won't let me see anything but mysteries
and untouched memories.
it's one o'clock in the morning
and it tastes like blood, so much
blood. there's metal on my tongue
and it's everywhere because there's no
knife anywhere, just this transpiercing
pain in my stomach and my lungs are
being sliced open and the gore of my guts
is spilling onto the tile floor and there's
blood covering my hands and my
face is cracking against concrete and
i'm puking rainbows again
and it tastes of heartsickness.
it's one o'clock in the morning
and it sounds like nothing. it's
the kind of nothing that
everyone notices: the breath that
stops when one gets the news
that their loved one is leaving
them for good, the nothing after
a performance that's left everyone
contemplating the universe and love
and whether i actually want to
live at all, the silence following
the coffin being shut. it's the nothingness
of sobs and heartbreak and
death. it's the sound of
loneliness - particularly mine.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 7:51 PM UTC
How dare you.
You are full of lies.
Pretending that you love her because it's
"that day"
And people have
"expectations"
of you.
It's insulting that you could possibly think you are fooling anybody.
Anyone could see through the cheap candy and drugstore card.
You're only pretending.
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 7:02 PM UTC
as a generic medicine
exposed in a drugstore
no one knows your name
they take you
because you have a low cost
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 11:27 AM UTC