"facedown" poems
i lie facedown on the train tracks.
the gravel presses symbols into my skin,
but none of them translate.
home is a concept with too many rooms.
i sharpened my alibi
on my mother’s brittle bones
until it fit into a quieter mouth.
she didn't flinch.
the sun unthreads me one fiber at a time.
nothing resists.
blink
blink
blink
each time, the world returns
slightly rearranged—
trees on the ceiling,
windows in my stomach.
i found a way out,
but it only leads back here.
the platform loops
in the shape of an open jaw.
i circled it three times,
then laid down between its metal teeth—
the world doesn’t bite anymore.
it just holds me.
small, warm,
still breathing.
regret nests in the hinge of my jaw.
i keep it clenched, and
it doesn’t protest.
it flicks the lights off
when the rail begins to sing.
it knows the schedule better than i do.
the daylight plucks at my ribs like harp strings.
each note sounds like a name i was never meant to hold.
i buried the moon weeks ago.
she made it difficult to leave.
if you’re still listening—
the train is already halfway through me.
today,
i let the mouth stay open.
maybe the scream will crawl back in.
maybe it never left.
Mar 1, 2018
Mar 1, 2018 at 11:42 PM UTC
Open your mind to wonder.
Don't close it with belief.
For the spell it puts you under makes it difficult to leave.
The road to self deception, paved with preconceived conception, makes an evolutionary blunder that much harder to believe.
But in the natural ways we suffer and the things we have achieved, I don't think we should be misplaced -- mistaking all things as perceived.
And the self-redeeming peace that lives in uttered pleas for buttered ease -- like praying for forgiveness for the feeling of appease.
Or kneeling-bound to beg facedown for children with a sickness.
(Although prayer doesn't prove to cure disease or wickedness, it seems.)
So if you ever get a chance to wander and start to see the world with wonder, don't let it slip into neglect.
Nor impose upon another what you chose when you were younger.
Don't abuse your self-respect.
Instead, just seek to be free
and find the wonder in-between.
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 12:43 AM UTC
When my mom was dying
We put a bed in the living room
Fresh from the hospital
In front of the piano
Behind the rocking chair
We still called it the "living room"
I didn't mention the cruel irony in that
And the living people
Who knew my mother
All came and sat around her
And we weren't allowed to touch her
Cause the morphine lost its memory
And every bit of her was falling down
Dozing in a straw house
When the weather man called for hurricanes
She was right there
But miles away from rescue efforts
And hand-holding daughters
Marilyn Monroe went the same way
In bed, I mean
Facedown
Her pill supply run out
And I imagine her room was a beautiful mess
Full of roses and tokens from insincere men
An icon deserves better than that
A pin up with no one
But ex-lovers and sheets to hold her
And a pillow stained with last lipstick kisses
All those little white beads of forgetfulness
Crawling on the floor
And happy birthday Mr. President
Billy woke up bawling the other night
In bed with a girl
Who was not my sister
And he called and told her he loved her still
She hugged my dog and cried into her fur
She finished the roll
Of toilet paper blowing her nose
There were three of us in bed that night
And two somewhere else
Continents, nations, states apart
The air in my room was like asphalt
And allergies weighing us down
Lulu barked at our crestfallen hearts
Under the supermoon
I turned into a twentysomethingwolf
Keen senses acute defenses
And all I could smell on my sheets
Was the kitchen I work in
I wanted to be human
Taste the fear and perfection
Of being a ******
In bed with a boy who is not family
A teenager whispering under sheets again
I stayed at home alone
Soothing, sighing, and howling sweet nothings
To my lonely bed
Telling mom and Marilyn Monroe
The fever dreams in my lone wolf head
Praying "please God, send us someone"
"Please God, let love burn us quick and strong"
"Please God, don't draw the blues out. We all buckle."
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 12:08 AM UTC
The morning came slowly on that third day
The sun wondered how it might be able to shine through such darkness
The tears of the earth came early in the dew that morning
The flowers began to bloom in an open defiance to the earth
Perhaps the decaying body of the Lord gave them new life
The birds sang songs of jubilee that morning, as if there were reason for joy
Did they not know that the Light of the World had been snuffed out?
Did they not know that the one who fed them had gone away?
Did they not know that their creator lay below them dead in the ground?
Or did they sing defiantly knowing what we yet did not know?
Much like it had been in Bethlehem decades before, the world was silent
Breaking the silence like the Divine Child’s cries, somewhere a child cried
As if this child knew that his Lord lay dead below the earth
As if he could feel the thick darkness that surrounded him
But then, in defiance like only a child could bring, the first laughter in days
The new world was cold, dark, and bitter, and a child dared to laugh
While the rest of the world cried and mourned the death of their only hope
This child laughed while the birds sang and the flowers bloomed
It was as if they did not know that the Life of the World was still dead
Rather, though, it was as if they had read the prophets of old, and believed
When the sun finally rose, it could not shine through the thick darkness
We lived in a dark purgatorial world where we awaited the judgement
What a terrible judgement that must be coming toward us
We, who drove the nails into His hands, and gave Him over to death
But then, a glimmer of light comes upon the horizon
The light was not the rising of the sun, but some holy other
Those disciples who had run away while He hung on the cross ran again
This time not away from their Savior, but toward that otherworldly light
When they came to where He has been buried, they fell upon their faces
The brightest light to ever grace this old world poured out of the tomb
Then they heard a voice, the voice of the Risen Lord
‘Rise up you men of earth’ He said to the men lying facedown
‘Rise up oh you sleepers!’
‘Behold the Light of the World is upon you’
It was then that the world began its slow change
The cosmos, which had fractured so long ago in Eden, began to mend
Dead men rose to new life
Dark places were then filled with life
The world became a new place where the old had passed away
Every crack and crevice filled with an uncreated light never before seen
For the Lord has risen from the dead!
Indeed He has defeated death!
And forever, we shall keep the feast !
Alleluia!
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 7:46 PM UTC
Never let the ******** get us down
The world won’t stop, won’t be letdown
The ground won’t shatter, won’t be a breakdown
The power is out, complete shutdown
Fall to the ground, facedown
Sometimes all is not okay in the comedown
Sometimes all you have to do is slowdown
Don’t make this into a showdown
Turn it into a knockdown
Quarantined, put into lockdown
Don’t let them be a putdown
This world is a freetown.
Oct 28, 2010
Oct 28, 2010 at 4:59 PM UTC
Pine needles in my head
Snowbird starts to fly
A want of apricity
Enters my blood stream
Like lukewarm sea water
Enters hiemal streams
I'm sprawled facedown
An angel or so
Below the snow
The taste of frost
Technically wintergreen
From your breathy kiss
Hinting at a return
To rays of affection
And the crush of limbs
Feb 5, 2021
Feb 5, 2021 at 9:10 AM UTC
Doesn’t run.
Doesn’t even curse.
Just sits there as the tide
Comes surging forward
And the clouds tumble
Over one another in the sky.
Doesn’t run.
Doesn’t even curse.
Just pulls out the tile
In her pocket as dull black
Water sizzles and froths
In a torrent all around her.
No, she
Doesn’t run.
Doesn’t even curse.
Just stares at the engraved
N and the sub 1
On the game-piece’s face
While the water drags her in.
Even when she loses her footing, she
Doesn’t run.
Doesn’t even curse.
Just clasps her hand
Into a tight fist before
The icy water
Swallows her whole
And thinks:
Where are you now,
Ocean Eyes?
Where are you now,
When I really am drowning,
And not just in every word you say,
Not just in every thing you do?
The force of the tide
Is not very strong,
Yet she does not fight it.
She is limp,
Now part of the water
Just as she was once part of him.
Where are you now,
Ocean Eyes?
Where are you now,
When everything is just too hard,
When I really do need
To disappear inside something bigger than me?
Seagulls scream overhead.
The sky is a black oil rag,
The lake a dark,
Rippling curtain,
The wind a shrill lamentation,
The girl a hollow husk.
After a time and with crunching,
Crushing force.
Her ragdoll body collides with a rock.
But she doesn’t move.
Doesn’t grab hold.
Doesn’t climb on.
No, she
Doesn’t run,
Doesn’t even curse.
She floats facedown,
Almost as if to look
after the tile
that falls from her hand.
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 4:01 PM UTC
Burnt out psychenaut
trying his hand at making art.
Mosquito bitten,
from bed-ridden to facedown in the swamp.
Glorifying mind loss.
Tossed and turned in ocean waves.
Slamming into stop signs.
Disney's just a hindsight.
Theme parks just a crime spot.
Tourists just a foreground to hide what's in the backdrop.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 11:26 PM UTC
people are friends
to the bone
—bottomliners,
no human can drown,
but they can turn
from a solid to a liquid,
whose name is written on water,
whose laying facedown
on the topsoil?
lovely thunder today,
good weather for an airstrike,
the road is a gray tape
over magnetic fields,
too fragile to walk on,
a sudden Manhattan of the mind:
all of the buildings
are time passing fragments
in spawned harbinger,
accidently reacting like
a stream with bright fish
below the waste.
Jul 20, 2022
Jul 20, 2022 at 9:01 PM UTC
VI
No.
These books lie.
These words and these voices and
These photographs
Hoodwink us into thinking
Titanic is really gone.
No.
It was the Olympic, dear
Baby girl Titanic is still out there
Twanging lovely cello notes
And drifting with smooth propellers.
No.
Adrift like a ghost
Is she…
**** those photographs
They feel so untrue, because in my heart
I was there
I am there.
So I am drowned?
I am facedown in the water
Gasping for a breath my
Body cannot take?
I am dead?
NO.
My boy is still alive
I am still holding his hand deep
In the sea
Blue blue ocean
If lovely girl, Titanic, has broken
I am broken too.
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 2:25 PM UTC
The lines have escaped me once again,
all buttered up and sliding under furniture
like cockroaches at dawn.
I was made with a different chip.
My heart, she dances to her own music,
a song with no words- just Gregorian chanting
and an amnesiac beat; she dances lonely.
My tongue is tied to the floor of my mouth
with fresh sinew that I stole from the belly
of the cat still steaming on the damp asphalt
beneath alien streetlights, streaming
unhurriedly past a new Mercedes,
seeming to fall in chunks down my throat...
neverlanding.
Every trip, every drip, drop, knife or needle,
only leaves me more alone when my imagination
is gone again, and the elevator panels
have ceased giggling as I tell them ***** jokes
between floors two and four.
My dreaming lover lies while I stare rudely,
washing his clothes and feeding him broth.
He wretches over and again, poisoned
by the arsenic in my kiss, the lead in my bowels.
Not this lover, nor any other, could survive
the rugged terrain where I insist to live,
where the well supplies me well
with replacement tears,
yea, even blood.
The mosquitos so strong there,
despite the heat and barren broken stones,
they lick me dry as I methodically flip the light
and lift the coffeetable and ottoman in the den,
finding the nests of my soulmates
who have eaten my lines slowly,
savoring the bitterness of cheap paper.
I refill myself at the well,
swallowing the unsuspecting larvae,
while the one I love drowns facedown as I watch.
His heart stops, and mine, she quickens her step.
She can hear the tortured tongue.
Tickled with every gulp, he's giggling.
I take a step forward, over the void.
The elevator disappears as I turn the corner
into the falling crimson sun.
Jul 11, 2012
Jul 11, 2012 at 5:40 PM UTC
*Silent Killer,
A Predator’s Smile,
A Guise Engulfed In Disguise,
A Child of Immaculate Torment,
Her Diamond Lies, Insidiously Advent.
Lost In Her Radiations,
Trapped In Her Demented Seductions,
Fenced By Her Hype,
Immersed In Her Gripe.
As The Clicker Goes Down,
The Ideals Start To Facedown,
As I Cauterize In Her Suicides,
Ashes Divide,
Weeping For Absolution,
Filled With Consternation,
Her Angel Eye’s Smirk, As I Charred Alive,
Screams Slowly Vanishing In Void,
Devoid Dismantled,
Lured By Her Lust,
Transcending To Dust....
- 03:07AM*
Mar 7, 2017
Mar 7, 2017 at 4:37 PM UTC
Even when blank
you flash with memories.
Mindless doodles,
quickly jotted poems.
Stains of past lessons
still remain.
How many eyes
have gazed out at
your white vastness?
How many hands
have nervously fumbled
with your squeaky markers,
scrambling for answers
inside their own minds?
Do you see us?
Some racing to
take the notes
scribbled upon your
pallor surface,
and others facedown
on the desk,
trying to recover
sleep that was lost.
What have you created?
Perhaps a scientist,
or a few?
A lawyer, a doctor,
maybe two?
Without you,
oh ever-present whiteboard,
I doubt our teachers
would know what to do.
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 4:54 PM UTC
4 A.M.
A body lays slain
facedown in a pool of blood
a halo to match her name
stabbed 4 times in the chest
a street worker
like all the rest
who would want to her hurt her?
- to put her to rest
your guess is as good as mine
she may have not been the best
but someone was prepared to cross that line.
————————
An innocent as far as I could tell
first night on the job
tell me who goes to hell?
- those who give or those who rob
her next of kin were called
so that they could name her
once at birth and now at death
twice they tried to save her
an umbilical cord wrapped around her neck
a noose just two months earlier
maybe now she got her wish
released back to the sea
this angel fish.
Jul 22, 2021
Jul 22, 2021 at 5:56 PM UTC
Sometimes I wonder why
I write and what the reason is
for breaks and lapses in words
and writing and why I would write
about an Elvis pumping his neon
with unleaded and myself
at the pump across the way
with my eyes fixed on this Elvis
a forty something burnout
with too many relapses
who returns my stare and says
in the most average Elvis voice
"How ya doin"
How am I doin
I think to myself
okay and think about why I write
and why I would impersonate
an impersonator in words
for my own consumption
or for the one person I will have
read this or entertainment
or just a way to get from eleven
to midnight to one in the morning
it seems my dreams
have taken over
my life
I sleep like a dolphin
with one eye open
Mar 11, 2011
Mar 11, 2011 at 7:37 AM UTC
First my fingers go numb and I can't feel my lips
So I drink your presence like I drink cheap tequila
Rough at first
But after a couple sips, smooth as water
You touch me but my body is without sensation
Something different is pumping through my veins
And Novacane blocks any feeling
From the pain that comes as you cut me open
My blood drains but I don't sense it
Ignorance is bliss, they used to tell me
That is until you're facedown in a pillow
With the life escaping one strained breath at a time
My teeth clench and my knees lock
I can't help it but tomorrow I'll feel it
If tomorrow comes
Songs about feeling high in love
I don't want that
What happens when you're too high
To notice the person in front of you
Is the one pushing your face down
The Devil Incarnate?
Naiveté suits you, Honey
And so does misery
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 2:36 PM UTC
Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I have nothing to say
Behind these closed lips are thousands of stories,
Endless words, thoughts, emotions
Waiting to be summoned
But fear is the glue that keeps my mouth shut
And the words scrawled on these pages
Convey more than my hushed voice ever could.
Just because I smile, doesn’t mean that I’m content
Beneath this ill-fitting cloak of concealment
With all its plastic sincerity,
There is a girl with fragile dreams
And eyes brimming with fire
Thrown into a world where she suffocates
In the heat of human expectations.
Just because I am ignored, doesn’t mean I am transparent
Carelessly I am dismissed, overlooked
They don’t understand that, like them,
I have felt pain, sorrow and joy
I am alive
My heart beats as their’s do
But we are separated by invisible walls.
I am more than a flickering, nameless face
Whispered words, a vacant smile
I am not a long-forgotten book lying facedown on the shelf
I am an endless world below the barrier reefs
Of a vast, uncharted ocean
But no one ever dares to leave the shore
And break the surface.
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 9:24 PM UTC
don't try
be the acorn in the molasses. be the demon in your thimble of hope. be That Guy.
save your trophies in your spit. keep breathing, but don't quibble with ice long trinkets and dead sky.
trip on your theme and plant facedown, the rally of your kingdom !
you
Will Be
at some
Time,
the Unspeakable Lisp of your Acute Prayer
at half speed, the true grit of your paralyzed steam... the frozen lightning
of your effortless... The True Would, if You Could.
but you can't seem to Jimmy the Lock
as much as be locked; you canter
in the stable Chaos.
You dust off the Rotten Preamble
too a previous
Horror.
you come
equiped to slip into the trojan noise,
you come as often as a candle
in the pitch dark
without a voice;
in shambles.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 6:11 AM UTC
NEXT!
Good lord, that was a disaster.
Forget the script. Perhaps it's time to improvise
Get her on stage and just dialogue.
She has such a comfortable presence up there,
Like she was born to play that part.
It's as if she's seen the words contained within those pages
Even though they lie, facedown, on the chair.
But the script is direction, it is control.
The script. THE SCRIPT.
It's wrong.
The script is wrong.
The lines are wrong.
Her delivery is wrong.
This whole theatre reeks of wrong.
Wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Out. GET OUT.
**** the lights as you go.
Nothing but dark, and quiet.
The darkness persists, but the quiet cannot last.
Unwritten lines met with easy delivery,
Unscripted staging matched by effortless movement,
A couple of bumps in the road
(What production is without those?)
But still, beauty in the performance--
Now replaying in the silence.
A single bulb flickers on,
Casts its wavering light over that script,
That work, crafted so meticulously.
A fat lot of good it's been.
A new idea strikes.
Certain? No. Nothing is certain.
But worth a shot.
The script? Facedown in the trash
Except the few words to set the opening scene.
The play? Not for one actor, but two.
A note scrawled to she who was chased out,
And nothing left to do but sit
Under the solitary bulb
In a darkened theatre
Hoping for a knock at the door.
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 1:24 AM UTC
Turn my eyes inward
Scatter the nerves that flirt with shades pale and bright
My skin crimson and sour
Like an untimely foetus
Let it roll into a curl facedown
Reduce that deadly tongue
To the serpent it fears being
Race down to my swollen belly
When the trinity is gone
Darkness will prevail
And we'll see once again.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 3:59 AM UTC
I am making a wall that is so much
I cant break it down, on my own
this is my mistake and I cant change it
I tried my best to tear this apart
but my best is so worse
Ive been hopeless, no where else to go
Is there an open door for me to go in?
Take this ways, Im so vulnerable
When I am alone and with the crowd
I end up with tears at night
And praying facedown to the floor
This heart is always thinking of you
In my dreams, you are there
Sometimes you are annoyed of me
Just like in reality
And it breaks my heart
I woke and I ask myself
Why are you so selfish?
You are always thinking of that
Many people were telling you to stop
but are you listening to them?
This will carry you to great deliverance
Its been too long since Ive been here
Im so anxious of the future
So curious that never wanted to lose my affection
Because of this self-centeredness of myself
I cant talk with you personally
My tongue never produced a word
There is no victory in my way
It condemns me day after day
My time was consumed by this feeling
I thought that this is over
but as I walk towards holiness
Its getting so hard and heavy
I cant defeat this fiery ordeals
They are everywhere
I can sense there presence
God, you know my heart
If this is love
Teach me how to prepare
If this is not the thing that You suppose to be with me
Let the root of this infatuation vanish
Let it sink into the ocean floor
Or bury it into the ground
So that I will never put to shame
May 15, 2010
May 15, 2010 at 1:05 AM UTC
The dust in kicking up, windy night in New Mexico
Watching the moon rise up over cactus & canals
Listening to rocks become pebbles
Filling our stomachs with cold water
Under the blanket you wove for me, the one
we slept in
On that cold October night, when we thought the
sun would never rise
And when it did, it shone with such brillance
Stuck our hands out, between the cracks, just
to catch its radiance
To stop the shaking, it set me on edge
Made me want to run, just to feel myself sweat
But I'd just fall facedown in the snow
Lost in a canyon, full of black rocks,
dead trees
And a silence we forgot existed
May 14, 2011
May 14, 2011 at 9:48 PM UTC
You’re just rough enough
To make me tremble, and squeal,
And this delights you.
Make me helpless, Take
Everything you want, push me
Facedown, hold me fast.
Desire, raging fire,
Clothes rip, teeth nip, you devour,
Merciless master.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 6:28 AM UTC
~for Joel M Frye~
give me your blunt, stunted words,
rooted in the genome human
give me rough, toughened words,
wizened savvy by caress and punch
what use angels ethereal pinheaded,
inexperienced in the vocabulary of the maddening crowd
give me anger, rage, envy-jealousy,
the burnt ashes of the remainder of real
give me perspective of eyes facedown on concrete,
feel of flesh hands pounding the soft spots of the skull
In return for? What bargain struck? What consideration exchanged?
for your blunt, stunted words,
I give you this:
the homage of inspiration
the honor of no questions asked
one day of my life
poured into your vase
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 7:00 PM UTC