"elevators" poems
Your perception of me pre-existed, you saw black and you felt danger, you saw my skin and with it painted a personality from the prejudice of your mind.
You don’t know me, yet you assume that I am just like every other dark skinned man out there.
So that is why I feel angry when you cram yourself in the corner of elevators, if you could only realize I am the one who is truly backed into a corner, provoked by your ignorance, until I become what you painted me.
With your judging eyes, cautious smiles, and nervous actions you made me this way when in the beginning I was just me. Now after all you have done, and all I have done, I’m just trying to be me again.
I just want to be me.
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 7:23 AM UTC
I have studied the tight curls on the back of your neck
moving away from me
beyond anger or failure
your face in the evening schools of longing
through mornings of wish and ripen
we were always saying goodbye
in the blood in the bone over coffee
before dashing for elevators going
in opposite directions
without goodbyes.
Do not remember me as a bridge nor a roof
as the maker of legends
nor as a trap
door to that world
where black and white clericals
hang on the edge of beauty in five oclock elevators
twitching their shoulders to avoid other flesh
and now
there is someone to speak for them
moving away from me into tomorrows
morning of wish and ripen
your goodbye is a promise of lightning
in the last angels hand
unwelcome and warning
the sands have run out against us
we were rewarded by journeys
into desire
into mornings alone
where excuse and endurance mingle
conceiving decision.
Do not remember me
as disaster
nor as the keeper of secrets
I am a fellow rider in the cattle cars
watching
you move slowly out of my bed
saying we cannot waste time
only ourselves.
7.9k
Bustling activity,
Frenzied brief energy,
Noisy beepers beeping,
Doctors, nurses, calling,
How are you?
How did your weekend go?
Echoes of friends and beaus.
Friendly voices chatter,
plans for weekend matters.
How are you?
Calm Code Reds cut the air,
urgent, requesting care.
Elevators dinging,
Loved ones heard exclaiming,
How are you?
Not given privacy,
Stripped of their dignity.
Phantom guests, masks they wear,
nurses ask, no one cares,
How are you?
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 7:31 PM UTC
My first impression of the children's hospital was how nice everything was. It was new, with fish tanks and red sofas; pastel windows which made pretty colors on the floor when the sun went through them; walls were freshly painted and everyone talked with a smile. Everything just looked so peaceful.
It wasn't until my second visit that I saw the flaws. I was sitting on one of the red couches, waiting for my name to be called, and I was looking at the fish tank. A little girl was pressed up to the glass telling her mother that she could see nemo. But when I looked closer, I saw a little fish turned over floating at the surface. A man behind the glass quickly pulled it out of the tank, but I saw. That's when I started noticing other things. Like the bloodstain on the cushion next to me. And the fact that a few tiles were missing from the floor. The wood paneling had scratches on it; one of the pastel windows was taped up; and every parent was smiling, but the little kids holding on to them kept asking what was wrong.
Maybe that's just how hospitals are. They want you to think that everything's okay; that all that goes on inside are couches and fishtanks. They think that if they write out the word HOSPITAL in bubbly pink letters people might get it into their brains that everything's okay. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a hospital. Masking pain only works for so long, until broken bits and pieces push their way through.
I think hospitals are just fish tanks. Everyone is put on display for doctors and visitors and things seem okay for a while, you know, until they aren't. When a little nemo dies, they send away his body and just replace him with another orange fish that people can look at. We are all the cracks in the pavement; elevators shut down for repair; a phantom pain that nobody wants to believe is real. If you stand far enough away; if you distance yourselves from anything close to the word hospital, you can just let yourself focus on the mask they put up. But once it's time, and you're sitting on a red couch in the lobby of the children's wing, with a kid asking you where her older brother went, you'll find yourself staring at the cracks in the facade with a single tear running down your face and with emptiness in your stomach.
Jan 31, 2015
Jan 31, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC
A wave of elation hit me the second I saw you,
and through that revolving door you flew.
I couldn't help but notice the smile on your face
as we held each other in a longing embrace.
The scent of you flooded my lungs,
how good it is to be happy and young.
Hand in hand we walked,
all the way to Top of the Rock.
Admiring the city we stood in that space,
you wrapped both arms around my waist.
Still standing in the corner behind the glass,
I turned with a grin, and our lips met at last.
We strolled over to Bryant Park,
where we laughed until dark.
The times we stared in each other's eyes without making a sound,
made it feel as if no one was around.
We watched little kids play many games,
if it wasn't freezing we said we'd do the same.
Finally caught a cab to take us to The Met,
there we listened to a string quintet.
We sat at a small table with my dad and his wife,
where they talked all about college and life.
For an hour we stayed, in that beautiful place,
and secretly, our fingers were interlaced.
Back to the apartment with only an hour left,
we rode the elevators without a rest.
Foreheads touching, and mouths pressed together,
you soon had to leave in the cold frosty weather.
When it was time, we said farewell and goodbye,
then you ran back and held me for one last time.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 2:15 PM UTC
I, naive
I believed that the break in the clouds
Was the end of rain
Thought those rays of sun weren't burning
I was lying
Myself in the grass,
Asking if the tulip chutes in Anatolia
Were the same sinking green I feel now
Where were we?
Love for a thousand spaces and bottling them into skins
Wanted to touch and know deeply all beautiful things
No you're not allowed, they don't want to let you in
That way, it's a distant place and means too much to understand
The biological and irrational
Crazed, sweeps gregarity above and within an aether-- like milky foam upon the waves
When I return home from excursions
I will be Ipanema
The soft locale, unabashed and known to no soul
Except empty elevators--
The lowly philosopher-king
Maybe then you'll think highly of me
Through the mixed feelings
Unable to handle
Straight through the socket
Ring of fire
Then and only then will you realize
That real life
Is more than just a zone or some local
Brewery on a Friday night
And every other Friday night
Ever thereafter--
You'll unlock the box of atomic intention
And listen deeply to her on the station
"Sade and Other Like Hits"
Slowed down for full potential
Letting your cochlea stroke themselves off to the tune of the universe
And the sound of air moving indiscriminately
Will give you
All this
Somewhere
almost fractal, imbibed
Decimated repetitively
There is a fragment of my voice,
Calling
"Love, how much I'd love to be. "
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC
I’ve been craving female companionship as of late. The need to have her in my presence at all times. I want her, face against the wall with joyfully erratic breathing, hands tied behind her back. I want her on all fours, head swivelled my direction with a smiling look of pleasure. I want her legs wide open for me, only because it’s me, only because it’s her. I want my tongue to make musical instruments of her ******* and ******** I want her to put me in her mouth so I can see her eyes tearing with shameless sin. I want her in her parents’ bedroom, I want her in tut rooms and auditoriums, I want her in the back of my car, in McDonalds, in elevators, under restaurant tables and on top of kitchen counters, I want her to say my name under soft moans during rough rounds. I want her in as savage a manner as possible.
I want her sitting in silence with me. I want her to listen to my ramblings, to sit there and be present. To exist. I want her to have her own ramblings, to educate me. I want her lips to be available for me at all times, for my head to make pillows of her chest. I want to introduce her to Ben Howard and Tom Misch, to Planet Hulk and The Pixar Theory. I want flowers to remind me of her. I want her to cradle me when Chelsea loses, to stroke her hair and rub her tummy when she has monstrous cramps. I want to hear ‘I love you’ over loud laughs between soft kisses. I want her on butterfly wings. I don’t know who she is, but dear God I want her to laugh, because I know I’m going to love her laugh.
I want so much from her, I want her to want so much from me. I want so much that I never wanted before. Only thing I’ve been wanting was to feel again, now I need to feel again in order to get what I want. I want her. I want more than me.
I’ve been feeling a certain emptiness
I feel like I’m not enough
I’m not enough to make myself as happy as I want to be.
I feel like there is nothing more I can do for myself.
For so long, I’ve been happy because all I’ve wanted, I’ve given myself
Or I’ve taken, but
I don’t satisfy myself anymore,
And I can’t take what I now want.
I think, for the first time in a long time, I feel lonely.
- Kata
Mar 12, 2017
Mar 12, 2017 at 4:27 AM UTC
The Empire State Building is a giant middle finger
Concrete is broken, NYPD, taxis racing, red light green light
I enter the hand of the city through it's capillaries breaking mad concrete
Warm gusts of **** grime, and transportation swallow me
The city feeds off dreams and hope which we personally, willingly give up
We all somehow learn to accept this fate
The passerby no longer human but broken mirror
The hand inundates my eyes from breezes of tomorrow
The spacy apartment, and the affluent career and the acquantanceship
Of the handful of New Yorkers that run the hand: all questionable plans today
It's as if the hand's grasp, although sharp and brick, would venerate your intellect, guaranteed
If that's the case, I see wizards of wisdom everyday snoozing on concrete and cardboard and plastic
Bearded, black with dirt and skin, threads ripped by a world inferrior than the one in thier minds
Empire "Middle Finger" State of intellect, scrapping billion dollar clouds
Sardine can subways, escalators, elevators, high on crack **** speed of sound
The cash nerve system meltsdown into golden chips to feed the pigeons
Glass and steel craft spaces for modernity to be sold like a Washington Heights *****
You can feel the growth of the hand at the end of your intestines
It's a warm, uncomfortable vibration revealed in your ********
Foreign tongues buzz through the air, through your hair for 19.95
New York needs a haircut, some profound discipline so we wake up from this bizzare life of welcomed pain
You once charmed me with hopes of culture, open minds, connections, real connections, love and laughter
Yet, Today I am hungry in Murray hill
I am cold in Chelsea
I am broken in Union Square
I ***** in SoHo
I have fallen in the East River
And I bleed on financial monoliths
Someone have mercy on my wills
It is an intention trying to be fulfilled
But failed when it became self-aware
Nov 4, 2010
Nov 4, 2010 at 11:44 PM UTC
there are no sheep.
just wolves with
sheepish tendencies,
each boasting the
ability to bite.
-
rust falls in
dusty flakes
only to make
room for new.
paint chips.
wilted petals.
baby teeth.
expelled
replaced
by something
bigger and better.
when there's
only room for
the one of 'em.
a mushroom doesn't grow
on top of another mushroom
but next to it.
quiet now.
just the cold caress
of the breeze left.
no more salty
sweat or tears.
rustfree, scratchproof.
temporarily titanium.
until
an agonizing internal groan
like industrial sabotage
of factory machinery.
gears grind and steam moans.
everything jerks to a halt.
the mechanic is a cannibal.
they're all bloodsuckers really.
no noble stairs around here anymore.
just elevators, that only lift you up
when they get to come along.
not like stairs at all.
Apr 12, 2010
Apr 12, 2010 at 5:38 AM UTC
He loved to teach...
He loved to teach her...
He loved to teach her abject lessons
in elevators and on stairwells.
She hated to learn...
She hated to learn from him...
She hated to learn from him the inherent
danger of buildings.
Dec 3, 2019
Dec 3, 2019 at 2:32 AM UTC
Until tonight they were separate specialties,
different stories, the best of their own worst.
Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy's
laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first
story. Someday, I promised her, I'll be someone
going somewhere and we plotted it in the humdrum
school for proper girls. The next April the plane
bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned
and fear blew down my throat, that last profane
gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned
to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor,
sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.
Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.
Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities
turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy's
story, the April night of the civilian air crash
and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper,
the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash
ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.
This was the rude **** of her; two planes cracking
in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds.
And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking
bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards
to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature
photograph left, too long now for fear to remember.
Special tonight because I made her into a story
that I grew to know and savor.
A reason to worry,
Rose, when you fix an old death like that,
and outliving the impact, to find you've pretended.
We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.
2.1k
You haunting ******* ignition switch,
the nail's-head trigger was hung over like
a pendulum Poe would be proud of.
I'd have stopped elevators with my blood and bone,
held it back, pushed it back,
taken my life out in a splash of cement chalk-lines,
to save you.
I still dream of you.
The good dreams hurt
much more than
the bad ones did,
when you still lived.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 8:48 AM UTC
hold my mind
it feels like soaked cheetos
puffy and orange
my feet are calloused with thought
and i have been stringing along ties
with too many people
hold my head
as i think about the men i meet in transition
instability in the back of a kit kat bar
and Los Angeles literature
because disappointment bends the broken
the soft cranium crunch
split to be eaten
but built to be shared
hold my thoughts
because im falling asleep in elevators
no longer able to choose the floor
save me from the ponder
from putting bottle caps on shelves
the gravity of my fingertips keeps lighting candles upside down
creating limitless space and
useless entities
hold my belongings so my brain can breathe
because unlike my mouth it cannot reach
you are my deep breath
pudding melted in my lungs
ill have an affair with the Wonka man
just to keep me from loving you
he could store me in one of his rooms
drown me with the a heavy chest
of something dark and semisweet
hold my body and steal my soul
because i group anything you sphere
and my life keeps changing all the love i need
Nov 12, 2013
Nov 12, 2013 at 4:06 AM UTC
sweaty forehead, a gory past
wildly glowing eyes of oblivion
shivering hands, sirens, bars
freedom, imprisonment, razor blades
peru, coca farmers, chemicals
smuggler channels, route 36
franklin's face on crumpled-up paper
rattling coins, benjamins, stacks
gotta make it or take it
gotta sell or abuse it
flashing louis, abundant future
sweaty forehead, ****** present
biker chapters, brothers, funerals
tommy hauled jim's coffin
rick carried tommy to his grave
cut-offs, gats, one call: ******
despair, hatred, vengeance, omerta
mortals remain silent, angels don't
rain of blood, a puddle of codes
turf, plots, streets, blocks, gangs
cults **** cultures, weapons replace
shelter in a group home; the stabbing
"shaun got heart, he a furious one --
can use dat dude, pay him up"
black, white, african-american, chechens
territories of unspoken laws
intimidated witnesses, gay mobsters
lured teenagers, deadly magic of power
the old ones impress the new ones
newbies will turn into soldiers
**** or get killed; headshots of fear
numbers on the forehead, blueish
unwritten are the rules of some
bribed politicians, skippers, knockos
the one who wets, will be wetted
others prefer the clarity of faith
organized crime, rats and kingpins
multilevel marketing, elevators
glass towers, late and secret meetings
route 36, the white magic of death
it's all in the game
"The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life.
Your memories, your attachments, they burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you, they say. They freeing yourself.
Relax."
(Quote from the film "Jacob's Ladder")
Dec 26, 2020
Dec 26, 2020 at 4:06 AM UTC
It’s starting to cool down here in Connecticut. Leaves are falling, like giant, burnt snowflakes (science says that trees send chemical signals to their branches to clip leaves away).
Peter borrowed a friend's toy-like, pea green, Fiat-500 convertible and we drove into the country to see the turning leaves. We hiked a bit too and stopped, in Mystic, for seafood.
I never realized just how theatrical trees could be, with their few, simple, chlorophyll tricks and how reflective still lakes could be. Wowzer, just - wowzer.
There are some things that should never be shared. Like a toothbrush, an iPad, lipstick, strawberry stroopwafels, a slice of pizza or a secret lover (that last one just sounded good). But life is good, I can share that. We’re young, dramatic sophomores with good hair products and we’re at it, working and playing hard.
Ahh.. ok, upon consultation, I have to add that some of us are in their mid-twenties with only a few good years left.
Did I mention that we climbed up a twisty lighthouse staircase too? Peter always thinks people should take the stairs, and not the elevators, “You want to have muscles and bones that work when you’re eighty,” He says. Since he’s closer to eighty than I am, when we’re not carrying furniture, I let him have his way. Of course, he’s never been to up Lisa’s 50th floor townhouse either.
My mom told me that they’re off to Poland again, over the holidays, for another tour with “Doctors without Borders” **** war). Lisa’s parents have (kindly) invited me to share their high-rise utopia again this year. Who knows, maybe Peter will have his chance to try those stairs.
Nov 4, 2022
Nov 4, 2022 at 3:30 PM UTC
You leave me stranded like years made up of moments and vacuum hickeys and Asian milk toast mean nothing.
Train tracks remain on my timeline like a seam opening the spine of an old diary with nothing written over and over inside.
You say we will be playing scrabble on the floor of your living room someday when we are old, just as your mother does next to us with her friends listening to Adele as we plot out our lives together on a collage atop your dining room table.
You hurt me
We are dinosaurs
Strutting for the fist time in glory down seventh avenue as people wonder who we are and we think of fun to be had with friends to be met.
Park slope spread out before us paved yellow with fly paper.
Holding my heart in your hands as it is broken for the first time, i cry but know you will be there to turn those tears to glue for our friendship until you are not.
Years made up of your boyfriends that come and go and come and go and I miss you. And I want to strut down seventh avenue with you by my side feeling powerful and new again.
I want to feel fresh running down a beach of asphalt and trash; the whole world ahead gilded with possibility, and eternity resting gently on the horizon of city smoke and traffic lights. And I feel old now. But I suppose we always did.
I miss you
I still remember **** bought from boys with blonde hair and loving blue eyes hidden in camera cases, and smoked under thick trees that kept us safe from the turning of the earth. Elevators lifting us up to the 35th floor ticking like time bombs on days occupied by truth or dare marked red upon truancy calendars our parents would never find.
Why did you get so old? mature. I remember once together we vowed to remain silly and young and do all we could to smother the sound of the ticking clock removing our innocence, silencing our songs, and slowly turning us into those who we were made by.
My sister is grown. Where are you now?
Beautiful the world looked from a Brooklyn balcony at 16, the skyline smiles with the mirage of possibility and smirks with a wicked knowledge of things to come and years to pass. Would I go back to that balcony now, and stay there with you forever.
If I needed you would you come
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
Oh, those poor
peasants
without a ***
to **** in
who celebrate their
thin-skinned twittering
king ascending
in his gilded elevator
of gold stolen
from the empty plates
of those
who do pay taxes
with real axes
to grind
it boggles my mind
just what in
the hell
could they have been
thinking
I mean, Sweet
Jesus, we'll all be
refugees
in the end.
*Where e're we go, we celebrate
The land that makes us refugees,
From fear of priests with empty plates
From guilt and weeping effigies.*
--Shane MacClowan, "Thousands Are Sailing"
Dec 8, 2016
Dec 8, 2016 at 9:43 PM UTC
While he sleeps
I scrape the inside of my glass tube
for the last bits of ******
There's not much of anything
there
worth smoking
but I keep scraping away
anyways.
While he sleeps
I think of hotel elevators
and remember my last ******
There's not much of anything
here
worth saving
but I keep holding on
anyways.
Jun 8, 2014
Jun 8, 2014 at 3:01 PM UTC
Pudong Airport to Shanghai. Yes. Good. Push in.
Start go....go...go! 150kms, 200kms, 300kms, FOUR ONE FIVE KMS.
High above the highways I think
Today the driver is drunk.
Today is the day that I die.
Quickly I take a cellphone pic
And send my last moment to my mother.
I am shaking, this is so fast
What flashes in front becomes the past.
Shanghai, we're here.
I push myself out of the carriage
Through the crowds on the elevators
I run to the Yangtze River
I breathe in the over-polluted air.
Thank you.
Now I am safe.
I put on my mask
And walked to my heated apartment.
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 10:51 AM UTC
I celebrate this journey in the desert -
I am but a traveler in my time:
in this pasture of my fathers, land,
where stands this miracle of glass
now calling manna down
from the high home of eagles:
I am but a helpless everyman, lost
in the desert, on a journey out
from the clutches of misery, and pain;
The world is making progress.
As I see the oases running farther
away from my sights: on
elevators to the skies, numbers
of the young call on benefactors
across the seas, for a ropeway
across the quagmires: a home, a car
and the family life; saving for a
better day, in the future, while
my home went from mudbrick
to thatched grass, then out on streets
by the gutter with the dogs;
I am a cleaner, cobbler, janitor
in the land where I was the tiller.
Wiping the sweat on my brows
as I loaf on the lawns, awaiting
labour days hyphenated by mealtimes,
there is no witch-doctor now, and
no money to pay up at the hospitals
that the wealthy from afar line up to,
but to die helpless a wretched death,
I celebrate my helplessness!
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 4:17 PM UTC
Some kind of joy
I saw in that elevator girl
like no other creature before
she had an ice cream cone
rocky road
marshmallow chocolate nut
chunky toothy grin
she found her happy place
on an elevator
with an ice cream cup
from baskin robins
it was large
at least three scoops
she laughed
elevated
spirit and body rising up
the levels
forget the rocky road
she was going
up
up
up
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 8:42 PM UTC
Loving me is hell and hell is dense
And hell is heavy
And hell is hot
Dense with the influx of passing souls
That nudge elbows of their brother sinners
In tight elevators that hum not
Piano music but drums so loud
They convert heart beats to 808 rhythms
They shake the victims of vices so
Hard the change falls from their pockets
And bounces back up into their eyes
Hell is heavy
It is heavy with the weight of lies
And of the truths of passions sought and met
With only finger tips and white lips
The vicious bosses of mobs
And the cemented feet of snitches caught
Hell is dense
It is packed tighter than fingers in fists
Clenched fixed on righting wrongs
The air there is hot with breathes
Held in and finally released with
The unbuttoning of sliming corporate tuxes
Fastened inside out so the brass buttons brand and burn
The business boys’ bantam bodies
While they look up at the men the tired to measure up to
But where always a stich or two short
Hell is hot
Hot and steaming with the blood of the corrupt
That was spilt and then encountered a tilt
Down a funnel mixed with rotten oil
Left stagnant by sinners that sought not
To move a finger to clean up that gunk
The steam from sinners water not sweat
Boil sweet and steamy up into the
Mouths of men with jaws wired open
And rested on their bellies that are propped up
By guns taking all that is sweet for themselves
This is hell
This, like me,
Feels tastes sounds and smells
Of dense hot and heavy
Sins deadly appealing
And dammingly just.
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 6:43 PM UTC
you are a pause
you are the second
before the air raid
an anticipation so loud it's deafening
you are the stillness, the static,
pins and needles between lightening
and thunder. 1. . . 2 . . . 3. . .
you are the heartbeat, last blink
separating bullet and flesh
crescent cuts bleed from empty hands
you are red lights. stop
knuckles white through a
raindropped windshield
you are elevators
early morning coffee stains
shifting eyes. look away.
you are the dead air
on a faraway radio station
bent antenna. turn the dial. silence
you are the needle
on that half broken phonograph
sidling arthritically away, back to sleep
you are the skip a beat
nervous lip bitten hesitation, envelope stamped
staring into the letter box. just let go
you are punctuation. . .
you are the hyphen
splitting words in two
leaving lonely nothings on different pages
you are 0:00
you are the force that
draws our eyes together
if only for an instant
Oct 15, 2012
Oct 15, 2012 at 9:00 PM UTC
soap and water
dishes
laundry
or shower
brick from mortar
boys against girls
urban velvet smog
city vapors clog
this train -- there is a line
beginners
quitters
this parking lot -- there is a line
shoppers
influencers
open bar pharmacy, bottled water
no pity
no guarantees
dragon chasers
chin music
lapsed short term memory loss
opening mail for grandmother
the obituaries
that ****** fly
a discussion among men
about a woman's voice
come sit and listen
one last cigarette couple
walking home through the park
driving alone in the dark
on the heels of
a reflection
of Christ
or an hourglass
in remission
them or not them
just arrived
just married
too many stairs
not enough elevators
worry about it later
them, definitely them
sharing beds
under the leotard
under the candlelight
a helping hand
finely manicured fingers
one stationary
then two in missionary
word upon words need aspirin
orchestrate
headache
pillow is the threshold
tomorrow...soap and water
Mar 17, 2024
Mar 17, 2024 at 10:13 PM UTC