"flatline" poems
When we met, love Obnubilated me.
I became bananas about you.
I wanted to be luculent.
Just to be Pauciliquent.
I however felt like a blatherskite.
You probably thought I was a glaikit.
Did I sound like a meacock instead?
If so, it’s due to kakorrhaphiophobia.
I might have operose my feelings.
Did it seem like I wanna mamaguy you?
You behaved like a frondeur.
Your callipygian body looked extramundane.
Your hair looked ulitichous.
Did you feel like I lusted your Callipygian shape?
I foresaw a love that won’t flatline.
If it does, it will be eucatastrophe.
Now we’re together, I’m disenthrall from Misogamy.
You’re a deipnosophist and a mixologist.
I’m edcious.
To keep you happy, I share a boffola.
To me, love felt like a Humdudgeon.
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 6:46 PM UTC
Stripped down
For the World to see,
Beneath flesh and bone,
Deeper than marrow and blood,
Right down to the soul.
Let them see the veins,
Let them watch as my heart
P u l s e s
Nestled between heavy lungs,
Shrouded by an aching ribcage,
A heavy blow
That makes me stumble and fall,
Bruises,
Grazes,
Flatline.
Make another incision
While I lay upon the operating
Table,
I don't know what you are searching for,
Nor do I know what you will achieve
when you do find it,
But it isn't here.
Love cannot be found by extracting cells,
It cannot be discovered through
The translucent glow of an X-ray,
Not even an autopsy,
Removing each piece of me,
Could speed up the process,
It's lost,
It's incurable.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 9:50 AM UTC
The feel of the pen
on the paper
the poet grabs a verse.
the dripping of morphine
the flow of endorphins
flow of electronic lines
across the monitor
let’s hope we don’t flatline
this mere mortal
needs a portal to the stars
this mere mortal needs
defibrillation to the heart
the way the poetry forms
in the lungs and the mind
the way life needs beauty
is sometimes unkind
I am the blood transfusion
the illusion
of poems
bells chime
Electrons flow
Radioactive X-rays know
Poetry opens doors
I am the emergency poet
I will take flight
in flames
never shall I be tamed
But I will make that heart beat
and get you out of your seat
And on the road to recovery
and discovery
Because poetry heals
and steals back our songs
what could go wrong?
Dec 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021 at 2:54 PM UTC
Heart skips
like a warped record,
trembles over scarred vinyl
until "I love you"
tastes incomplete:
(I) love you
I (love) you
I love (you).
My Swan Song mewls off key,
cascades across the
marred terrain of my soul
in a thick lacquer of tears.
Notes flatline
in unison with my
waning pulse
(waning, like the face
of the moon on the night
of my eighteenth birthday).
My breath
resigns to static,
dances in slow decrescendos--
sputters its way
towards nothingness,
slipping rapidly from
my consciousness until
I no longer hold
any recollection of the music
(or the poetry).
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 6:00 AM UTC
words fall
like hapless fledglings
tossed from a cliff edged nest
with much screeching, squawking,
countless feathers lost
and then an awful thump
or hopeful, glorious flight
first love is tachycardiac love
all adrenaline, sweating palms
and stutter-stumbling sqeakings,
ungainly gropings,
when not with you, mopings
unrealistic hopings
for happy ever after endings,
breakings, bendings,
awkward mendings,
repeated leavings,
repented lovings.
heartfelt givings,
of broken hearted rendings.
lendings,
of time stolen from life
tearing, teasing,
tantalising teamings
crying, begging,
pleading strife
and then,
the metaphorical knife
cutting, slashing,
wordblow bashing,
screaming, reaming,
end to loves life.
til eventually, words fall,
like old birds leavings
to settle, unremarked upon
at the base of the tree of life.
first love's loss, is slow dying.
arrhythmia to flatline
in a multitude of laboured breaths
and long lingering sighs.
a loss of warmth,
from breast and thighs
and water copious,
falling from red rimed eyes.
sobbing, murmuring,
don't know whys?
from lips turned
toward,
bleakset skies.
as one settles firmly,
into black dog muck
no longer able to give a f▼ck.
tucked in tight to sadness,
lost all sight of former gladness,
caught up and shackled tight,
to the badness
around and around,
the carousel goes.
then,
at last,
the blessed silence,
as you die
one of many of....
life's little deaths
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 8:25 PM UTC
Moonup, shades of sangria
hazed in mothwing
dust
motes. We wrap in
flannel, tartan Seattle
warmth
accompanied by smudging sticks.
Batteries never charged-
defibrillator
shock. Flatline.
You said no violets (you
didn’t
mean it). Moondown takes
time- scores of swaying shadows
to arc
the parsecs. Inherit starlight,
bank it, never blink; wet stones
echo
in the noise of stars.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
The living reality of a metaphor, almost every ounce in-taken,
Every nuance, every pronounce, measured, weighted and weighty,
Fluid or firmament, each encapsulated, prior to release, scaled,
Tabulated, ordered, noted, recorded, and ultimately judg-ed.
Totality of it all, the varied quantities of the ingested nutrients,
even the forecast of the future, if every day was a metaphor for
like today…
DO
I speak of the day's headlines?
Of the quantity and nutrition that passes through my lips?
Or
The surround sound of the surrounding sounds of this day,
the flocks of bandito geese who exist only to torment,
the landscape working crews, with their tools, like a 7::00an wake up buzzing about, for the entire street, going house to house, looking for itinerant grassy knolls of patches of bright green,
overnight sprung up and needy to be
guillotined,
laundry to do, rugs needy for clothesline screaming/beating or merely super fast vacuuming;
they, hawking their skills available for the old and infirm,
or the fatty catty cattle lazy, (somewhere in there is moi);
and the decibels of their machines, the rat-a-tat of their rapido, voluble speech that feeds me poetry by the ounce of their laughter, but more exactly of,
What do I speak, to what do I allude?
Why all and none, everything and specifically nothing,
for the metaphor is meta! (1)
It is life itself, from the quarter teaspoon
to the overflowing bath, it is life at its most incremental,
the moment
of flushing face,
the second
of ah ha! recollection, the,
long term trends
trending,
the flatline of my EKG,
the weighty pronouncement of my talking scale (you've been bad),
IT IS THE EVERYTHING
that is measurable, weighable, isolatable, defined;
it is our existence of our each & every of action and inaction strung together like a necklace and a chain
We are metaphor, reality, is, the script,
which is the product of you.
scriptwriter…/
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 6:17 PM UTC
The sun shines on us all, as well as the rain
Torrential downpours of pain, we lose and we gain
We veer into cliched territory to verbalize our response to more tragedies that a lost world continues to offer
The signs of the times the Holy Text forewarned becomes ever more visible...except to the blind and the Scoffer
Why does the blood of the innocent and unknowing continue to shed for the next man’s awakening of his own imminent flatline?
At times I, picture myself in someone else’s fate, how would I have handled myself in that same place?
How would I have responded with bullets suddenly flying around me as potential dead bodies surround me, in that unexpected moment of truth...which characteristic would have ultimately found me? cowardice...or courage?
I find myself at times discouraged by my struggle with self-assurance in knowing that my demonstrating answer would have been in the latter rather than the former
How many times have we entered into a school, mall, concert venue only to have a passing or pressing thought enter into our conscience only to ask “what if I’m not supposed to make it back out alive”?
I often wonder if Rachel Scott struggled with these internal inquiries in the years, months, days, hours, final seconds before she stepped foot on that columbine soil destined to receive her call to became a maytr for the Gospel she lived...and died for.
What exactly are we dying for? Are we dying to self? Or because of it?
Whether our final earthly breath is due to a natural cause or one unsuspecting...what are we dying for?
Many people will not be able to answer that question…until it is forever too late...
Nov 10, 2018
Nov 10, 2018 at 4:12 AM UTC
The cocoons cracked open
And these beautiful creatures
That resulted from metamorphosis
Fluttered around their new home
In the wife's stomach
"I am going to pick him up"
She kissed her daughter
Whom also had insects
Fluttering inside her 9 year old stomach lining
720 seconds were spent in the station-wagon
Dodging the potholes the city refused to repair
720 seconds were spent
Taking her to see him.
His flight landed
360 seconds after she arrived
And they embraced one another
for 180 seconds
Before she guided her camouflaged warrior
Back to the station-wagon
Sweaty palms gripped the steering wheel
Salt water streaks on her burning Scarlett cheeks
Bleached teeth being advertised
To her camouflaged warrior
Thhhunkthhuhnkthhunkk
Pothole.
As the wife turned to the rear window
Fearing she hurt one of God's creatures
Frightened she had innocent blood on her hands
Inadvertently disobeyed the shining red beacon ahead of her
Screeching metal violating airwaves
Burning tires sliding against asphalt
Glass fractals orbiting through the sky
Flatline.
Beneath the Mylar balloons
Waiting patiently under the "Welcome Home" banner
Sat a daughter with fluttering butterflies
Unaware the balloons would lose their helium
And the insects inside her would decompose
Long before she would be reunited with her parents again.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 11:28 AM UTC
Sweetbitter kiss caressed
lips. esophagus. stomach. chest.
inaccessible 'till death.
untouchable--so close to the chest.
unable to put out fires, burns
will have to rest
where they lie smoldering, watching
eyes walk bye.
I close my I.
Carry me, now--not home
not to neverland
not over the rainbow
Just carry me softly in sweet-smelling acidic things.
--a little corrosion does a girl a world of good--
sing me songs, wolf-in-sheeps-clothes, that my mother used to
and bring me gifts on angel-dusted wings,
nothingness never before made greater feeling.
Our lives themselves strived for meaning while we strived for the reason for being
the way the great cold faceless hands created
our unyielding . . . softness
separate from and not unlike a feather
equal both in whimsical light, lack of value, disease and helplessness
great beauty, plainness, and utter insignificance
Us little things are great only to those with great imagination--
light in the clouds,
break in your fever
blip on your radar
the fast one before the flatline always seems so much shorter than it should. Shorter than they said it would.
I relax
sweet relief
sweet goodnight
we'll wake up and try this one more time.
we won't get it right-- you can't
get it right
give me this bip, this sleep, this chance.
********* we'll still try--
to get it right sometime.
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 1:47 AM UTC
His eyes grew dark and distant
absolutely nothing wrong
He smiled without his eyes
how are you feeling?
nothing, numb, bored
Bracing each other, pushing
out
Fearing the flatline, we find
one another, in the dark
Rubbing the blood back into his palms
he buries his breath in my clean hair
Counting down the seconds, we remember
Leaving the cold room, he asks
is it over now?
Mar 8, 2010
Mar 8, 2010 at 1:50 PM UTC
Parts of me have faltered,
My years numbered,
Waiting for a final breath,
To let my body trudge on,
This burden to carry,
Backpacked in my thoughts,
Praying I flatline first,
These chances I don't deserve
Jan 17, 2015
Jan 17, 2015 at 7:35 PM UTC
Words find their way.
Hearts speak through fingers.
Reading eyes are mirrored in
Ink systematically spilled in
The shape of sounds
And minds.
A pen resting on the table is a
Flatline.
A blank piece of paper merely
Dead, compressed wood.
Don't deny us your genius.
There is no try in poetry.
Sep 17, 2015
Sep 17, 2015 at 8:00 AM UTC
Waiting in the wings the flat-line holds her breath
but she knows she always wins, in the end
and her holding her breath is for her own amusement-
a game she daily plays with death.
hooked up to her video game
all a heart can do, is play her game, and wait.
Mar 16, 2016
Mar 16, 2016 at 5:27 AM UTC
Empty, flatline numbness, marry me! Marry me!
Oh, jester in white inhale yourself; nothing but a fool.
Do you know your fate?
Majestic brutality, do you know your fate?
Heart beats so rhythmic, it's a brand new taste.
A white noise craze, walk along the pretty phase.
Tongue tied fantasies, drop dead harmonies and the worlds upside down.
Posiden met Godzilla, it's nothing you said it was.
Kitty cat, baseball bat ate your face, jester start again.
Ghoul, ghoul, ghoul dressed in white, take my veins, weave a gown.
We will dance, tonight, dance so pretty in the light.
Tell me, ever painted beauty in blood?
Oh, wicked numbness, Marry me! Marry me!
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 6:19 AM UTC
It's not another blue moon
The wolves are restless
Their savagery grows like
The wicked fire outside my cave
It's almost there and I can
Feel it burning up my toes
My chest still, motionless, remains a frigid icebox
I forgot what purpose heat serves
It's been too cold
Too unforgiving
It's been too many black skies
Frostbite all over my skin
Closer to deaths conniving hand
Enough to graze
Enough to spark fear, touch, blood builds up, squeezing my veins, green vines, curling in and out of their white soil, pulsating, glorious serendipity, the tangibility of
Rest in peace
In pieces
Bony white sharp shards of
Nails
That don't even sever my flesh
No drops of red
Not even to cut the thick air
the clock keeps it's mouth shut
I have no answers
Monotony
In between living and dying
Limbo, flatline, where am I
Louder
Where am I
I hear the wolves howl once more, closer now
The stars shatter
a streak of silver lining
Cosmic brutality
I'm the punch line
Forever hungry
I finally feel their hot breath on the nape of my neck
I close my eyes
Where's my escape?
Stuck
Just
White teeth
Blades
Carnivorous
Famished
Just for one taste of my soft flesh
And god, god I whisper through
the stubborn air
Isn't that all that matters?
The murky cloud of my cry
Turns ghost
Another victim of my past pleas
A furry nuzzle to contrast the ruthless slay that leads me to my final destination
Pink fields, beautiful fidelity, your Golden Gates, on a cloud too far away
Always a little out of reach
I'll wait an eternity
For a god who never picks up his trash
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 7:51 PM UTC
In the depths of despair, I find myself bound
Wrapping my feelings, discarded and drowned
A facade I wear, to hide all the sad
These pills promised joy, but it's all just a fad
Awoken from slumber, uncertainty sets in
A dreamlike haze, questioning where I've been
Carelessly ingesting the pills I rely
But happiness eludes, just a hollowed-out lie
A world spinning 'round as I lay on the floor
Regret floods my thoughts, seeping to my core
Perhaps behind the smile, I was never truly glad
A facade shattered, revealing the sadness I've had
Waiting for flatline as time slips away
The clock's steady ticking, my senses betray
Listening closely, knowing the world will carry on
In its blissful ignorance, without me, it will dawn.
Sep 13, 2024
Sep 13, 2024 at 5:39 PM UTC
Writing on The Walls
A bloodstained handprint
Are you alive to see this
Do your eyes pierce now?
Where the soul sees a mirror?
Oh God why cant they see
Why can't they see
The writing on the walls
Wed like to stay blind
But the rest wont last
Time to break a flatline
And wakeup from your bed
Pray now
You fall on your knees in grief
Do you see what you've been doing?
Do you see what you have left?
Another bloodstained hand print
The writings on the walls
Wed like to stay blind
But the rest wont last
Time to break a flatline
And wakeup from your bed
Press your face to the floor
Don't leave your posture
Don't move a muscle
Your eyes see it now don't they?
You can't hide
The Writings on the wall
The Writings on the wall
The Writings on the wall
The Writings...
Jan 17, 2017
Jan 17, 2017 at 5:27 AM UTC
*Honestly I’m too caught up in you to even function sometimes.
People ask me if I’m okay because I have tunnel vision confined
To a place where I never look back and never resign.
But I can barely make out their words
When your song keeps singing in my head,
And stringing the thread of your heart to mine.
As it pulls without tearing enough to flatline,
While taking you in
To a “Once upon a time” world beneath my skin.
Where the sun kisses you every chance you look away,
And the moon cradles you as if someday you’ll never get older.
Because with you, time never wants to move but carry
Your everlasting stokes of color made from sweet berries.
On a canvas that’s trying really hard to sit still when you’re fatal lips ****
Whatever seems to be holding me down.
A piece that compounds beauty on top of brilliance.
Discovering yourself and the meaning of existence.
Like two flames holding hands, never to strand
From the light, they expand to burn down the doors
That others have shut with all their might.
Chasing the tails of fairies to horizonless twilight.
Searching for no end but the means of foresight undressed
When looking ahead I see wings spread from behind your chest
And pull me pressed to the taste of heaven
When I'm close enough touch your breath.
So don’t stop breathing and never stop believing in our laughter
Because every breath we ever share becomes happily ever after.*
Feb 26, 2016
Feb 26, 2016 at 8:21 AM UTC
I'm a silently panicked individual,
on the outside I'm calmer than
the ocean on a windless tide.
But underneath I'm like a riptide of
trepidation,
I wonder different scenarios.
What if's,
when will I,
why the hell are they
not 6 feet away.
In my view, a cotton cloth isn't going
to stop anything, if a **** can get through,
boxers, and Demin trousers.
How's a thin cloth going to stop it,
P.s the rest of your face neck
hair is open for business.
Its absorbed, every breath, touch
cough, that travels much, much
further than you think.
With your vinyl gloves that spread more
than you realise..
But what ever makes
you comfortable.. that's ok!!!
But don't touch anything
I want to pick up with your filthy hands.
Id rather trust unwashed digits to those
blue, white, finger puppets of falsehood.
I read the news, so many who help us,
those in need thank goodness I'm
not one, not yet..
But they help the poorly,
the dying..
I hate that word
DYING..
loneliness,
of family unable morn you,
to smile and wish you good journey.
You, we, them just die without a smile.
a We Love You.
No they just gasp looking for comfort,
but all they see is others gasping for
just another day...
Flatline...…………………………………….
Apr 29, 2020
Apr 29, 2020 at 6:37 PM UTC
aren't you
sorry for leaving ?
I've dissolved like salt
because I've become it
I'm fluent now, in being silent
Paced myself over and over
breaths because I have to
naming them after you,
because I forgot what need was
flatline me another time, love
tonight so I can sleep &
these are weekends;
those are mouths meeting.
I'm going to quit calling it love
& call for a favor cause
the wave is wild like the whale
just ask her;
I'm riding all of them on
shoreline shoulders
a continent of rhetorical knuckles
buttoned toward my throat
no mercy in floating through the roof
it was never a boat that saved us
only bones
my moral roots
doing whatever you say
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 3:34 PM UTC
Absquatulate,
flee to the unknown,
where I can be an organism
of concinnity,
deipnosophist I will,
dine with Plato on an herb
deracinate me,
become a dance or song
with effable eternity
flatline...
to infinity,
or possibly....
continue to hunt and peck.
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
Thump. Thump. Thump.
While others flatline,
I live life on the front line.
People starve, and I eat attention.
I crave the spotlight,
You don't have a place to sleep at night.
Complain because I don't have a iPhone,
You cry because you have no home.
I say, "It's unlucky for them."
"Not my fuckin' problem."
I'm a punk kid, got no care.
Living in a world where all that matters is hair.
Music, *** drugs, and anarchy.
**** the government,
you think it's rough?
I'LL TELL YOU WHAT'S TOUGH.
When your dad beats you,
When you aren't good enough,
You're only outlet is having ***
With every guy who has no reference complex.
**I'LL ******* TELL YOU WHAT'S ROUGH.**
Getting knocked up at way too young,
Living off the government you once hated so much.
Welfare, WIC, unemployment.
No husband, not back from deployment.
Think I'm wrong?
Write a song.
Punk rock band,
needed a hand,
So many ways to get ******* paid
To sit on your ***
And dwell in the life you made.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 12:15 PM UTC
The Enemy comes to
Steal, **** and destroy
But before he plunges you
Down to the dark abyss,
Your ultimate defeat
He will cause you to, to, too, toooooooooo
----------f l a t l i n e----------
He will set a feast of lies before you where
Every sweet, delectable crumb
Is poison that will
Numb
You from your head down to your toes
The poison won't
Make your ears deaf
Or your eyes blind
It will seep in deeper in your system
And cause your brain to harden
And your heart to grow cold
It will inflict hallucinations
And bring your conclusions to distortions.
To hunger, poverty, you will say
"That happens everyday"
Injustice, greed
"Everyone does it anyway"
Pain, sorrow
"That is normal, usual"
"All is just the way it should be"
"Everything is ok"
So now you will fade to
Inaction, stagnation
And your life will end
Into mere existence
And so now you will drift
And roam
This aching, weeping world
That you've tolerated
in a
----------f l a t l i n e----------
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
I've always wanted to fall in love with a satis
I'd set her high on a Trojan horse
And maybe the ranger ain't the death toll
He's off whistling a tune that sounds a little like silver bells
It's never my own words that I get caught up in
And like Brackett said it's the little things
But it's never come 'round right
But I'll be laced through your fingers in any time
I'm sizing up a rope and a steady beam
To put myself between the bullets of reality and dreams
Where the archer's pulling broadheads out of a scorpion's side
And the sheperd's purse smells just like a flatline
You used to hold your hands over your ears
So I whispered my devotion into your confusion
When I laid my head down on your *******
That's the first time I've ever heard my heart beat
And every time I look in backward angles
Your face bleeds into the corner of my eyes
And if worlds apart should be the death of Casanova
Then I'll go down with the ship whistling the color of your hair
Apr 8, 2011
Apr 8, 2011 at 9:05 AM UTC