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John Jordan Jan 2013
.     .     .     .   knew highs                                                      
                            /\                                                          
.______________/   \      /\    ____ _ _ _ _   
see this line ^             \   /    \/    now back to snoring               
flat, dull, boring           \/              flatline = status quo              
                              knew lows       flatline = comfort zone        
    
     this high
         /\
       /    \         /\
.___/        \     /    \ _________________ _ _ _ _      
                \/            and the hospitals all know
            this low            that flatline = death
     .     .      .     .     .     death by Cenophobia
Cenophobia is the fear of new ideas
Desmond the poet Apr 2018
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.
Using rare and probably used words to express how I felt when I met my wife for the 1st.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
could you ever, with your ears, express a piece of music, as: fluffy? dark soho's piece is fluffy; and by god i was the pretentious one at the beginning of the 20th century critical of the emerging music... but i'm the one merging at the beginning of the 21st century: and it's a T.S. Elliot scenario: the overload of rhythm: industrial core due to the industry being foetal sieg heil! and so many have fallen for the nostalgia trap... it's not coming back: against the thump thump gyroid reproductive muscular we emerge from... for whatever lack of drums in the orchestra: we're paying for it with an excess of techno techno Bob the goldfish cardboard box dance sequence... or as some would suggest: filling in the gap about the joke concerning a triangle being a part of the orchestra and the person educated in it, rather than the harp.

ah, the blank, and i have to work on it: let's imagine i was just
cooking a pork stew for my father and you don't
bother to ask why someone's surname is written
Raßer - and you don't know how
to pronounce it: and you end
up with razors - which you end up saying
racer - or how about sharpening
the s into a zed - how's that?
this is surgical activity while you you're
at at the butchers: necromancy aplemty:
when god speaks, the devil whispers -
American divergence of the pronoun
y'all / you all -
                           we the safeguard
and they the paranoia -
                                    take it slow,
imagine yourself living in Alaska:
you're exposed to the elements
and Prometheus isn't handy:
  all you have is west London drool
that later translates into easter in London,
Ld: isn't even an postal code:
given Greenwich, bellybutton on the world
they're bound to abuse / feel special
                 about, it's just a John Bishop
          Scouser type of beating.
                  ya - i say i aye, you frostbite of
culture, ya yarn ball of ****!
    oh 'ere we go: the red-coats are hunting
foxes: sort of scenario -
   the sooner they ******* a killing
the better for me: 'ave that one with a grizzly:
             some say the longer the yawn
the greater the applause -
      yo! Yogi! turntable of Las Vegas
says you better gamble on hibernating in the
effing Hermitage!
  - we say a lot of y'all when we imply the
plural, don't we? terrible, ****** thuggish
'n' all, to say it.
   i have five pages worth of notes,
and even though i'm drunk,
i came across a foundation, i'll never be ask happy
at i am right now,
   i signed a copy of my book (look! i don't
have a publicist, i don't have the ******* swagger,
i have the inferno that says:
  when the writing dries up, get a proper job;
if the writing doesn't dry up?
             you're less than necessary than a
supermarket shelf-stacker...
                 there are succumbing reasons that
explain the affair later) -
      no i'm about to sell my first copy -
  i say to her: when you working this circuit next?
Friday night? i'll tell you how much i'm selling
for, well: i'll never be this happy: ever -
it really doesn't matter how much for how little:
   i'm not exactly a family animal: farmed -
i'm political: through and through -
   by the time i finish this whiskey i'll be
demanding something new...
    i don't think your able limbs do idle chores:
i just think admire that they do them
and hardly complain: i blame it on the workers'
encouraged banter - and that's called solidarity.
still, right now, it's all about
dark soho's: dark moon in stonehenge -
       or why you never take l.s.d.
   question arises with Bach...
and polyphony - again, non-linear polymers:
   back when the Germans were at it
music sliced through the air
                   - or the modernity of lost
string (quartets) and woodwinds -
          only the thing plucked rather than in slicing
stroked kept from the strings:
    it was truly a devolution via brass -
   you can have the iron age,
but this is the brass age -
                   and subsequently the evolution
or filling the void of orchestral percussion,
which began with jazz: how orchestra was stripped
of woodwinds and strings and elevated
the humble triangle and enforced drums
and the rhythmic transcendence of limb and heart
and less ear and mind -
           oh the spontaneity thus involved:
forever the enigma of the composer's ability
to say much more than *A
, when saying in A# -
oh hell: music used to be the Mongolian horde
of all things imaginable,
                  the screams, all the entrenching
embodiment of battle: soothed -
  but in our apathetic guises: music is a variant
of the once exfoliated, thus hushed:
music is expressing a war in waiting - or a war
that's not to be - once music music ascribed
wind and tornado toward its elemental composition -
these days there is less wind, and more earthquake:
we are exposed to a trembling -
           an overt percussion methodology:
that's not fire and the storyteller / poet by
the lonesome huddling of nomads by the fire
with oud and recitation of the to come Quran:
we are experiencing a complete reversal of wind:
here we have dark soho's tectonic cardiovascular:
over stating the percussion until the eventual
obliteration of breath, and subsequently
the flatline of the heart's rhythm: to reach the zenith
of a flatline: beehive musicology.
         it's all earth: and the quaking
rather than a waking into.
                  sure: to the alien ear outside the populace
of those that listen to that kind of "****":
but let me assure you:" you can intellectualise
anything beyond the guilty pleasure:
or else - care to disclose your opinions about doggy?
once we were slicing and ******* -
these days? we're hammering, Soviet committee
said: hammer hammer hammer...
            gravitational drilling against the Catholic
lessons of worldly-detachment akin to a Gagarin:
and all the world's problems morphed into
an image of moving away from earth...
    far far away...       well: we're grounded, like it
or not.
              i love that: y'all -
                          it's as if we all need to agree, ~.
and what better way to actually open a poem up
if not to say how prose is a miser and poetry
the mad spender, or compose: he had / another thought
he wished to take / but...
           originally
                    he had
                  another thought he wished to take
                 but...
saving an Amazonian tree, suggesting that: one by one.
i'll sell my first copy on Friday,
i just need to know how much money was put
into printing it -
   and it will be the happiest i'll ever be -
who cares that it's only 1... if i were selling
100,000 copies i'd be thinking of buying a Mercedes
to do away with the capital...
      oh right, the poem (six pages of notes):
the question, what does it all mean?
       i'm thankful that the all means very little,
or at least enough for physicists to take a bother
in answering:
               i'm just thankful to say that at least
bites / bytes / isolated units have more meaning
than the whole... i.e.?
do i care what the universe means, more so
than i known what the word darkened means?
                 pause for thought -
the well established organic search engine that memory
is: and never will be: an algorithm (engine) -
           still the organic variation of accessing it
reveals Rodin's statues -
                        post-Rodin (Rho-dan: ****** iota!
why so naked in the first place?!) -
            the point where it's not so much enigmatic that
you wish to replicate: but entomb, and mould
a statue worthy of the perpetuated cut-short
and mediating the idea that thought has also
the faculty of imagining and memorisation
that hardly translate into being via ergo...
       if that's the case: you're demented via the
ergo of memory... and deluded via the ergo of
imagining -
                      or Frankenstein / Disney respectively:
but never the extinguished cogito, somehow,
oddly enough:
                          and by the way - no one is going
to question my opinions because dialectics was
giving the hemlocks... my opinions
will only become passed around like Bulgarian
Versace copyright thefts, or because they
were never ideas: attachment .pdf
                   will never entertain someone else's thought,
or because they were originally always opinions
will be consecrated on the attachments of .jpeg:
ever wonder why the crucifix always
mobilises so much emotional foundation to
react and protect a torture-filled instrument
worthy of worship? me neither.
                but that's the whole beginning:
we ensured our memory is eroded by an easily
accessed algorithm - we prefer the goggles to
mensa -
                   and if i were a technophobe: e ah e ah oh...
McDonald would turn out to be McTrump:
'cos' i wouldn't be using it.
              then how to synchronise the senses:
you surely can't leave one the prime consumer of
all the things around you:
     i guess that as stated: you can't live out a life
whereby one is polarised, and the others recessively
make your thinking into potato -
   then again: not polarising one of your senses
will leave you thinking that old fantasy that
you live in a hologram "reality": which i mean by saying:
if one of your pentagram limbs isn't polarised
like a blind person, your thought will claim a sixth
sense status - and subsequently you'll experience
either a second chance of allowing one of your senses
to be stressed / polarised, or all your senses will become
overpowering your non-sense: that's thought into submitting
to a polarity / vector: kindred of
the manual worker feeling his trade take
perfect replication -
a composer polarised by "hearing" -
a painter polarised by "seeing" -
a poet polarised by "speaking" -
a chef polarised by "tasting" -
   a perfumer polarised by "scenting" -
and within the sixth sense extension:
a politician polarised by "thinking" -
  the first antonym suggestion comes within the latter's
parameter: mobilising or puppeteering:
would i care to find variations for the latter? no.

     interlude... opening of page 3 of notes on a windowsill...

and how often is soul ascribed a sensual dimension?
i guess as many a time thought isn't ascribed one:
necessarily made into nonsense.
soul? what do i mean by that? the part of you
that isn't indestructible, but, rather,
the part of you that feels that ease: the uninhibited
correlation (verbiage necessary, darling,
if you want the gist of it) -
when at ease you're not really ascribing to yourself
thinking, but a narrative -
  hence your notion of being indestructible,
or young.
      when thinking is easy we're not actually thinking,
we're narrating, hence the majority of us
are clogs in the machine, and once the machine works
we're upbeat about it, because we prefer to narrate
ourselves into life than think ourselves into it:
primarily because (even i included):
we lack a public addressal attache to make
vague concerns over our: inhibitions -
we are entrusted with inhibitory encrusting
for the sole purpose (we should be afraid of
suggesting): let's see who falls off the ferris wheel
first and we can entrust our congeniality toward
the joke: thank **** it wasn't me, later...
          but still:
if were were really intended to think
rather than narrate we'd be given global warming
solutions everyday...
   there's nothing in us that suggests an 'ought',
a moral choice to later say: thought
                      that could fish-hook us out of
kissing the narrative goodbye -
  narration is an undisturbed faking of thought -
as such the 'ought' is never thought of:
because there's a narrative going on
that's more important than anything requiring
even the most basest obligation.
       we are never obliged to be, because we are
never obliged to think: it's strange how the
two are anti-synonymous due to the ergo disparity:
as if one produces the other, or the former
the latter.
              thinking you're good never precipitates
into being good - and vice versa:
   for all i know i know fake rather than falsifiable
saintliness: the power of the scientific
  suggests that i should be Baron von Scorn
when it comes to the ignorance of testifying
         against people who abhor science
and reproduce, nonetheless, with failure to
transcend deformities: because deformities are
glorified and all forms of ability demonised:
so it looks quasi-Vatican-e.
                   preface to a Michelin star:
start with a ******: work your way down:
enjoy your meal, bygones-be-bygones:
you very happy people.
                  but i never understood why
the idea of thought has never the opinionated phrase:
me, exponentially, to no book's avail!
        p.s. as to be ever written!
    thought conscripts man to rubrics -
for example? examinational candélabre -
  some call it i.q., other's call it: for god's sake man,
****** shoot! shoot!
                        and the flying toes and digits:
thumbs away: booh booh Blitz.
                        first thought: that Jersey song:
fifth of November - that Fawkes ****
who almost.... n'ah.
                            in case you're narrative:
thought has its narrative: it's transcendental -
phenomenology comes into play with
narratives and Lady Gaga and how you're an
"individual": thought is acquired trying to transcend
atomic electron orbits that says: electron clouds -
or it's there, but it isn't there, but it's not there,
but it's there: huh?
                         narration conscripted to the rubric
of school exams at school: palpitations, sweat,
nerves... in this scenario thinking is actually
regurgitation -
                          actually we're still doing the Elvis
Costello hope: while narrating we pass from
these shackles of having to think lessons through
when in fact: we're gearing to having no need
in having to learn them primordially, period!

the paranoiac "they" are eroding our protective
membrane -
    they begin with memory -
         it's not that we care to remember certain things,
but by educating us in the Pythagorean theorem
they're not necessarily dressing us in bow ties either -
they need to implant an abstract educational
thought to replace our natural assimilation into
a narrative that we ourselves have created -
       they need to create erosion within our
memory to stop us coagulating our sense of memory
within a framework of us imagining backwards
rather than forwards:
      the cinema of the mind means memory utilises
imagination to do cartwheels backwards
rather than forwards: because forwards is always
a Disney pharmacology of the neon hyper colouring.

or how they made us escape the "Alcatraz"
of the couch of cognitive narration into an
iron maiden of thinking -
                    in this realm narrating is disparaging
from thinking: narrative is a comfort zone:
thinking is a discomfort zone -
                       but neither me nor you will
become a Newton in terms of narrating the ideas:
so why the hell would they want us to think?!
       concerning Heidegger:
the problem is not that we're not thinking -
the solution is that we're narrating and have
no urge to write books, and thank god for that!
               or man, as the pentagram of the senses,
reversed into thought as the sixth sense calamity
and reversed back as that sense missing
and the tetra exemplified...
         when learning what is the weakest point,
the audio or the optic-receptive stimulation?
                         i mean, the senses over accuse
thought's complexity as if it were a sense akin
to them, hence the suggestion nonsense;
well of course, thought is actually non-sensory -
     i just suggested that when thinking
i'm not polarising any of the penta -
         i'm suggesting that when thinking i'm
invoking the tetra - as if blind or deaf -
but that means i'm deviating from the superstition
that a sixth correlative mediatory balance exists
between the two dichotomies -
                            the senses will always treat
obscure thinking as if obscure narratives:
even though i know how much a price of bread
costs in the 21st century -
                              what i'm saying is that
the nonsense assertion is also true for the other:
not having had the chance to polarise one
of its senses to point toward the artefact use of
wh
SG Holter Sep 2015
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.
nivek Mar 2016
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.
LJ Chaplin May 2014
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.
Golden Girl Jun 2019
I remember that day like it was yesterday.
What happened, you claim, was barely horseplay.
Will you ever comprehend,
That what you did, I didn’t “misunderstand”?

Perhaps you’d like to blame it on your upbringing,
Because your dad taught you to control a woman who doesn’t have the “right” thinking.
Mexican patriarchy is ******, but it is you who chose to comply with it.
So don’t claim you aren’t responsible for the sins you commit.

Today I speak,
For I refuse to be weak.
Today I’ll unfold the truth I never wanted to accept,
When I was just a little under 15 and felt completely wrecked.

I stand today to expose you **** as I’ve been,
A monster in full shape and form, guilty of ****** while you grin.
You’ve kept your eyes shut to my dreadful sensations,
But today you will listen to my crude allegations.

We were in your house in Mexico where you locked me in the basement.
You claimed you wanted privacy, but only offered me enslavement.
Maybe it really was my bad luck,
When I believed you when said you loved me, but didn’t realize you only wanted to ****.

A monster, you pinned me against the wall,
I hit my head and cried, beginning to feel like your personal doll.
Touching my head where I discovered that I bled,
I reached for your hand, but you only grabbed mine to throw me onto bed.

When I was five, mother told me monsters don’t exist,
But today I am a witness to the contrary, as I know angels and devils coexist.
You are a monster for what you did to me,
For you pretended not to hear my plea.

A monster, you tied me onto your bed,
And ripped my clothes until I was left with nothing but a thread.
I begged you to stop and pushed you away,
But you slapped me and pressing your body against mine, told me you were here to stay.

A monster, your tongue against my breast,
And I completely undressed,
I watched your face transform,
Like a caterpillar taking its new form.

You, a monster, a demon, and a coward,
Faced a broken soul who had not yet flowered.
You took your hands and forced my flower to bloom,
Though it did not unfold with pleasure, but with fear of ending in a tomb.

And like a painter facing an empty canvas,
You traced me from head to toe as I lay nearly dead on the mattress.
You carved your name onto my body and robbed me of my innocence.
A monster, you obliterated my purity, leaving bruises as evidence.

A monster, you watered my flowers with the filthiest juice,
Not with God’s purest waters, but your own waters of abuse.
I weeped and screamed and in that moment begged for a God to exist,
I even prayed, but found no angels to untie my wrists.

If you really loved me, then you would look past your lust,
But you never did and chose to break me with each and every ******.
Rocking back and forth I was controlled by you, a monstrous puppeteer,
Your *** danced down my legs as I watched you cold and with fear.

A monster, you carefully tamed me to satisfy your *** drive,
Never did I imagine I would go to Hell and come back alive.
Today I stand a witness of your repulsive proclivity,
Penetrated by a monster who awaited for the trophee he believed was my virginity.

It wasn’t just a simple “quickie”,
The way you threw me around and used me.
I may have stood still and allowed you to profanate me,  
But I always threw up once you finished touching me.

People say our dreams are reflections of our memories fused with fantasies,
But there is no magic in the nightmares I regard as tragedies.
I’ve spent four years feeling entitled to nothing but pain,
And stay awake fearing my memories will haunt me, crashing into me like a train.

I wash my body once, twice, and thrice to flush away the picture of your fingers,
Scrubbing and scrubbing to ensure I numb my skin from your smell that lingers.
Your colossal hands a million times larger than the girl they groped,
Remind her of the million times she was choked.

I only wish you could understand what it feels like to be someone’s puppet,
A doll you can pull, stretch, bend over backwards and play like a trumpet.
It’s difficult to accept I’ll always feel possessed,
That the monster who injected me with his poison jerks off to the thought of being caressed.

You are the reason I’ve sought the sharpest blade,
To slash my skin and mark your cannonade.
But I can’t slice you out of my body,
As slicing my skin with glass won’t provide me with an antibody.

A monster, you conquered my body with a single purpose,
You kept me in the darkness to guarantee your coitus.
I’m sorry my ******* wasn’t as **** as your *******,
I blowed as fast as I could to prevent a flatline on my Electrocardiography.

I’m sorry I had to fake an ******,
But I had to escape you once you threw me into a chasm.
Navigating in the maze where I was constantly abused,
Was difficult having no compass to pretend I was being seduced.

I spent years looking for an exit out of your maze,
Taking too long to realize this wasn’t only a phase.
Some blame me for being too oblivious,
For wearing a blindfold and perceiving you as chivalrous.

And perhaps you blame me for being too naive,
Because I wished for you to change on New Year’s Eve.
I sought a fairytale, forgetting Cinderella did not meet her prince,
But a wolf who impaled her with his claws and abandoned her since.

I was your slave for two long years,
And you, a monster, showed me each and every one of my fears.
But I have lived in spite of my trauma,
And today I stand to scold you for this drama.

I no longer fear the monster inside my head,
For I understand many others will dwell ahead.
But my monster will no longer haunt me in my sleep,
For now I sleep knowing I have my body to keep.

I am strong, proud and bold,
And I have found my place in this world.
No longer will I let you win,
For it is you who reeks of sin.

Does it make me sick to empathize with your situation?
To feel for your pain and share your deeply held frustration?
Is it you who is wicked for being a pervert?
Or me for wanting you to hurt?

How can I wish you the greatest agony,
When I would never want anyone, not even my monster to experience my tragedy?
I am being torn in different directions,
But I’m no longer tied down to successful erections.

Monster, I thank you for your rotten kisses,
For the hundred bruises and tight stitches.
I now know my body is a shrine,
And that I am my own lifeline.

No longer will I feel soiled by your hands.
For I have built new dams.  
I now look at my own reflection,  
And see a figure composed of fascinating lines shielding me from your infection.

I am on my way to finding my peace,
But need to put my thoughts together to find my release.
It may be forgiveness, prevention or punishment,
But no longer will I undermine my own torment.

It may sound funny when I say I wish I was a superhero,
So I would know when a girl is in danger of touch and close to Ground Zero.
I’ve lived my years carrying the guilt of watching women fall one by one,
Of never being able to prevent another unwanted son.

I now understand there is only so much I can do,
For I am an ordinary person with a big heart turned blue.
I only wish my words will inspire, the victims of this fire,
To embrace their burns and wear them as an iron attire.

My growth and strength came as a result of patience,
It took years and tears to show me a way out of complacence.
But in an effort to give you a lift,
I have found myself adrift.

I have tried to be a saviour,
Forgetting to save myself before and bring myself to shore.
Today is the day I become my own light,
And fight to stay bright in the night.

Monster, you may now live in paradise,
Walking around as the devil in disguise.
But I believe in divine retribution,
And live in peace knowing you will get your fatal conclusion.

You are a monster, and I was your prey,
But today, I am no longer in decay.
With these words I purge myself of your touch,
For I’ve released my demons back into Hell and no longer seek a crutch.
Jade Oct 2018
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).
Don't be a stranger--check out my blog!

jadefbartlett.wixsite.com/tickledpurple

(P.S. Use a computer to ensure an optimal reading experience)
betterdays Apr 2015
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
prompt: write an anti-love poem...
not sure whether I met or muffed the brief....... but it is the first piece I have written in a fair while that had an easy rhythmic flow for me...so I am considering it as a crack in the big white wall that is the creative block that I am battling with.
Mike Jewett Feb 2015
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.
Alienpoet Dec 2021
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?
Marge Redelicia Dec 2013
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----------
It's 2 am, Monday. I couldn't say no to the call of inspiration and idea; I might completely forget if I wait.
a m a n d a Sep 2013
whatever you were
wrapped in,
it's gone.
      so get over it.
that feeling of panic
in your gut
      isn't going away
anytime soon
you can't afford
   p r i d e
(though you have a death grip
       on dignity)
life is struggle
    don't hope for escape
because there is no way out
no one is there
  to catch your tears
or return you
to a state of
blissful ignorance

keep pushing down
  your fury
pack it down
  hard
lest it ignite
   and burn what is left
strike the word
fair
   from your repertoire
because the mere thought
of the word
   constricts your chest
with such bitterness
   that it is surely
an unearthly force

don't ruin it
  for the precious little ones
fill their lives
  with color and music
and stories
  because there is
nothing else worth doing
but creating
   let them scribble
and babble and run
and get *****
because that freedom will
be taken from them in
the blink of an eye

don't jade the teenagers
  under your watchful eye,
you fool
   give them color and music
and stories
   and the power to question
and think
   that is all you can do
with your feeble self
    and good luck with the task

don't bother anymore
with pursuit of
politics or philosophy
because nothing matters
your goal
is one foot
in front of the other
without
breaking an ankle.
Molly Hughes Dec 2013
I find it quite amazing,
that you don't realise how my lips tingle and my heart swells
when you make me,
yes,
make me,
kiss you.
Just a friendly little peck, eh?
You could be kissing your Aunt Mildred,
your lips remain so dead
and your stomach so still.
I'll give you one of my butterflies,
if you want one.
The brushes against my back,
my cheek,
the brush strokes that paint sparks along my skin,
leave your hands lifeless.
They resuscitate me.

When you say you 'love me',
I don't think you understand
how many times I've imagined you whispering those words,
in a thousand different places,
in a thousand different situations,
in a thousand different ways.
They float through the air,
stopping time and creating pixie dust,
before falling into my ears,
forcing tremors throughout my once stable foundations.
In reality,
you could be asking somebody to pass the salt,
your voice is so flat.
So why can I not stop fizzing?

If you grow old and look around
and find yourself alone,
don't worry.
Don't cry about how nobody ever wanted you,
about how nobody ever needed you
or loved you till it hurt,
hurt so bad they almost hated you.
Because they did.
I do.

I do.
*****.
Clare Coffey Jun 2016
Hey what's going on in there
What's happening in my brain
Just let me get hold of it
Before it gets lost again

Some days a thought is lonely
And goes rattling round my head
Bouncing in endless circles
Long after it should be dead

Sometimes they come in battalions
Like spies to steal my secrets
Spewing them out to the world
Before I know any regrets

I'd like to feel totally numb
To float above all the pain
To find and press the off switch
To get off this express train

Sliding down into forever
Synapses without a spark
Someone turned off my power
One more beep flatline I'm dark
The more I writhe
The more you squeeze
And I can't breathe
I can't
Breathe
Each
Movement made
And my bones break
And my blood pools
Where my split
Heart Aches
And
I can't
Breathe
Each
Trace of pain
Moves to my head
Moves through my eyes
Where the sorrow
Is shed
And I
Can't
I am
Weak
And
I am
Faint
And
Then
It Is
Dark
Like
Night
And
Then
I wake
And it is day
And there is light
Air stirs through me
Air fills my blood
Air cures my heart
And I am freed
Oh I am
Free
Katherine Paist Jan 2013
I fall in love quite
frequently, in glances with
those I’ll never know.

To exchange awkward
advances while predicting
this too will plateau
Eric Flaze Apr 2010
Flatline
Doctor leans over me
In my eyes he can that im dying
No time to mourn no time to find time to cry. If I    were to relive my life would  I choose to end it. Why  so confused why no more good news. Where am  I going to go when im gone. I chose my choice now im to far out, hidden in doubt. If I could hold time I'd never let it fly by. Im not okay im not fine . Ive realized ive flat lined. Whispers in the night fighting for a fight to survive through flatline. My life in shambles my memories scrambled.  my gritting teeth begin to bleed. This hell I scream. My body fused  by the flame. Cracked between the crevices of forgotten memories. How did i get here. I don't deserve this. I lead a good life. Now I'm deserted. I try to breathe but it starting to seem that im  held by the chains that i have carried with me. All my useless desires fade to a sea of gray. I will never see the light of day.  bounded and confined I lay down to cry as the pain seeps through my skin. I missed the mark and theres no turning back.  I've cross the line. Is this what it means to flatline.
A place I hope we never get to know
Jo Hummel Apr 2014
My ear hurts.
That's nothing new.
You're beautiful,
and that's old news,
but I'd listen to it every day
with this bleeding mess on the side of my head.

I'm cramping.
Guess it's that time of the month.
But I love you every time of the month,
every day, every hour, minute, second
breath

Heartbeat.
It sounds in my veins and reminds me of you,
lingering under my skin and keeping me alive.

Beat.
Beat.


*Beat.
Eric Lewis Jan 2017
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...
John 19:37
jack of spades Oct 2013
Churning in your stomach
Burning on your tongue
Taser in the chest
Hatefully sung
Pulsing of your mind
Slamming of your heart
Flatline screen
Electric start
Crawling through your veins
Sinking in your blood
Building, building, building
Til your insides begin to flood
Pulsing of your mind
Slamming of your heart
Flatline screen
Electric start
This is the buildup
This is the monster's best
Wait to see what happens
When it bursts through your chest
Clawing, crawling
Stabbing, grabbing
Feeding and falling
This is the monster start
Ripping out your heart
This is the buildup
The monster start
probably one of the best things i've ever written
curlygirl Dec 2015
I listened to his heart beat
night after night.
I felt it beneath my ear
my hand
my lips.
I traced it and cherished it.
I even tucked my own away
inside it...

Few things hurt more
than the realization
that it doesn't beat for me
like mine does for him.
Ashly Kocher Jan 2018
Beauty lies within ourselves
The way your life lessons will make your heart beat
Is the pulse that keeps you alive and going
Once you stop believing your beautiful
Then, only then, will you flatline.......
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2013
To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM
the same mood haunts me, three years on...six months on this site today
Phil Riles Nov 2018
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...
Dumb Baby Jan 2014
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.
SøułSurvivør Oct 2014
_/_/\/_/_/\/___
                                (beeeep)

i'd rather feel
total angst
than

complete
INDIFFERANCE



soulsurvivor
catherine jarvis
(c) october 10, 2014
We are headed for
dire consequences for our
APATHY

BZZZZZZTTTTT!!!!

WAKE UP WAKE UP
SLUGABED!
THERE'S MORE TIME TO
SLEEP
WHEN YOU'RE IN THE

G R A V E !!!
N E Waters May 2013
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.
ji Jul 2014
Maybe if I die I would be loved,
Or maybe if I die no one would sob

Maybe if I die I can have my life renewed,
Or maybe I can't, perhaps this is how it should

Why won't I just die that this may end?
I may not be broken, but I'm tired to bend.

Why didn't I just die when I was in my mother's womb;
Rather face reality and to society succumb?

Just let me engage in my demise,
I can't play this game, I have lost the dice.

Surely if I die there'd be no more oceans to dive,
And if and only of I die I would know that I was alive.
A couplet
Miranda Peterson Mar 2010
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?
Sally A Bayan Jan 2014
"A Tribute To Nat Lipstadt"

Found myself leafing through
A luscious garden of poems,
Found some  lines worth dwelling on...
Read of a man
Who writes effortlessly
Who gives himself away, too often,
Too obvious, sometimes...
While he teaches us to write
About daily motions, daily commotions...
We learn these wise words from this man:
I quote...
"write about what we know best...
"we, all feel
we, all believe in
the primacy,
the rightness of I.
but then, one must begin to observe others..."

This man writes about simplicity...
Simple thoughts. simple truths...
"No complexity nor trickery employed..."

He reads all about sadness, tragedy,
All kinds of pain, depression,
Every emotion captured in his mind...
And so he tells us---
"Let's write of joy,
celebrate reunification, singularity,
of our place,
our happy collision,
our universal location.
For where you are,
I exist,
no where else."

When we run out of things to write,
He is always around to remind us- - -

"I lifted up my eyes to the mountains—
From where will my poetry come from?

From men.
From women.
From you-reminding me,
It is where it is, not where you are...

It is here in the unread tragedies,
The wails so plain, repetitive,
The screams that never cease, the
Poems, yours, that deserve ten thousand likes,
But die ignored, despite, my best efforts."

"Let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams

wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records..."


He appeases our restlessness,
Through these golden thoughts from him- - -

"Place your ****** hands upon thy chest.
Let them melt thru and come to rest,
Inside, the battle ongoing, under thy breast.
Watch, eyes open, knowing, fearful.
Swiftly, with no hesitation, from within,
Rip open your body, exhaling the best,
And the worst of what you got.
nobody knows the silences
kept in my treasure
box."


We can find ourselves in his poems,
If only we read on and on,
Let us find the time
To skim through his words,
And read between the lines:

"Some never find true love.
Some never experience
reckless abandon.
Some of us are
recklessly abandoned,
and never forget,
and never forgive."

"Most of us remain
unpublished, undiscovered,
unremarked, blanketed,
cloaked in bills to pay;

Living a triumvirate of
heart ache, loneliness, worry,
our normal table fare
consists
of hand to hand
into the mouth
combat MRE's,
we engage,
to survive,
just stay alive."

And, he tells us further, for our own sake:

"Be forever young n
humble;
Feel ancient and royal;
Ride tall in the saddle;
Do something nifty;
Take someone's hand unexpectedly.
Drive home in the slow lane;
Do the minimus;
Do the maximus;
Leave a book on a park bench;
Use pen n paper, write a letter;
Take a chance, make people laugh;
Barrel into contention;
Show mercy to the confused,
Show anger to the
abusers.
Bless a child with both hands;
Grasp your soul, thrown it down,
And raise a child to the sky
Straight up,
A continuum, you and they,
A ladder to heaven..."


To this great man, we would
like to say:

"You sir, are an electrician
of words, a verbal technocrat,
Plumber of the depths where
Few fear to tread, explorer of the head,
Restorer of human paintings unmatched,
Without your ilk,
this world would be unbearable,
Your heart's warming silk
Comforts bodies and souls,
Speaking from experience personal."

He has his eyes, his ears open,
Ever-compassionate,
Ready to help,
When we are like a river run dry,
When there is not a strand of hope
Left in our bodies...
Let us read his poetry,
It is a kind of music that...

"arrests and rests me,
miracle each time
I walk on its waters..."

So, let us go on and on,
Never get tired of
Picking up bits and pieces
Of these
Precious  poem crumbs
We gather all times
From his garden so green...
We bask in its paths
Brimming with pearls of wisdom,
Of unheard truths, from him,
We learned first times,
R-e-v-e-r-b-e-r-a-t-e-s
Loudly, in our ears,
In our hearts,
In our minds,
These golden Nat-ty poem crumbs.

(January 29, 2014  5:02 PM)

~~~~~

Sally

Copyright 2014
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
My way of saying, "Thank you, Nat M. Lipstadt,  for your kindness to everyone, for always being around."
Cristin H May 2015
You died on a Monday.

Nobody likes Mondays.
But this day was the first of the longest week there has ever been
or will ever be.
Days dragging their feet like my heart across the pavement.
Please save your questions, comments, and complaints,
I'm trying to wrap my head around dead dreams and saints
Wondering
how the faint cries echoing through my insides
sound
to strangers
and soulmates.

You died on a Tuesday.

Such an unassuming day for departing
Nothing happens on a Tuesday.
Until her phone rang,
We were parked outside of our favorite restaurant
I heard the world flatline to the sound of traffic
We stayed in the car.
Now parked on the roof of patient parking,
Though I had never felt less patient  
wondering
How the ******* sun can shine when you can't even breathe.
I watched my mother cry until she wouldn't in front of you.
we COULDN'T in front of you.
I promised.
But we did.

You died on a Wednesday.

A day like a life, only halfway through and it's forgotten itself.  
Like I had forgotten the heaviest my heart has ever felt
was the night I looked into my sisters eyes
and spoke like doctors,
Wore the words "there's nothing left to do" like they had ever even come close to answering the question
WHY?
Which was the only one she could get out
WHY?
They said he could have up to a year
WHY?
Or as little as a week.

You died on a Thursday.

The day so wrapped up in the promise of tomorrow,
we can only ever think about yesterday.
Throwback to any single moment before this day.
Throwback to 5 days before
watching the irony of a birthday cake in hospice
While I wondered
how many wishes it would take to keep you.
Throwback to the moment that we were alone
when you grabbed me by the collar,
So tight and so close
I could smell heaven on your breath,
As you squeezed a plea into a whisper
Get
Me
Out
Of Here.
I was silent.
But I swear to god I was screaming at the top of my heart.
And I am sorry every single day
that I had no way
to wheel, walk, or wish you out.

You died on a Friday.

I had never been further from TGIF-ing
I was busy wondering why
and begging for your breath back.
You hadn't said a word in days,
your eyelids hung heavy like sheets off an empty bed,
but when mom would whisper our names into your ear
I watched every ounce of strength you had
stand shoulder to shoulder
forcing your eyes open in bursts
like the fourth of july finale
we could hear from your bedroom.
You were a god in each goodbye,
While the blue drained from each your eyes
for us to paint our days with.

You died on a Saturday.

I thought the weekend had a deathwish
showing up like it belonged in our bereavement,
like this week would ever end,
like it hadn't heard the news.
Every night was a silent struggle
we couldn't stay,
but wouldn't go.
The night before we had collapsed into a pile on hard-backed chairs
At the mercy of the nurses who didn't have the heart to make us go,
or just enough
to let us stay.
I didn't sleep a wink that night,
I was busy listening to the human hum of our family set to the slowing beep of your vitals
and wondering,
if the grass you'll lie under will know where it came from.
But this night,
this night there was a quiet compliance
an air of understanding in our war-torn bodies

besides,
nothing happens after midnight.
Until my phone rang.

You died on a Sunday.

You were holier than any day of the year.
I don't know if you let go
or if dying always feels like drowning.
Drowning.
Like I was in every drop of water your skin couldn't hold in anymore.
Like my mother was in disbelief.
Like my grandmother was in desperation.
Like my sister was in sadness.
Our family
drowning
And not one of us moving.


You died every day that week,
and you've died every day since.
You died on her wedding day
and at my graduation
You die on your birthday
and on every anniversary
and every single day that we have to deal
with an absence so great that it deafens.
And all I can do is wonder,
what the time difference is in heaven,
and how many sleeps it will be before I see you again.
I wonder if the angels recognized you.
And how you hid your wings
so well
for so long.

But mostly I wonder,
if you wonder too.
Tupelo Jan 2015
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
Pdub Nov 2014
When did you get to decide
when
my
heart
*beats

— The End —