"flatlined" poems
9:43 on a frigid clear morning, the morning I made the conscious decision to stand as far as possible from the dropoff to the train tracks, and an older gentleman next to me, newspaper folded, saying "It's a cold one today, isn't it". And I smiled in agreement and I drank my overpriced coffee, fogging up the sky.
10:13 on the train, unwashed windows turning the sun dirty-bright, and I didn't drift off for it as all the men in suits and flatlined mouths slowly did.
And 11:36 in the City, a man I had decided not to love and his sarcastic appreciation of modern art, and me laughing endlessly. And this man showing me his secret hideouts and telling me secret stories, stories that you earn. I had decided not to love him, though, and so I didn't. It was easy because he had made no such call.
And 5:52 in his marble high-rise and his bed that was bigger than my bed, on it, he told me he had decided not to love me too. And then we kissed, and kissed, with nothing-to-lose moving our hands and mouths all over each other. Nothing-to-lose tangling his sheets and relaxing our heartbeats, and making them audible.
8:04 on the night of the morning I began to fear the third rail and the whoosh of the New Haven line, a bruise on my neck and my kiss-swollen mouth flashed red and dirty-bright to the post-commuters, and the man I forgot not to love still in the city, and the feeling of peaceful but irreversible damage heavy on my lap.
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 10:57 PM UTC
He wears his solivagant demeanor like armor; your battle of love will never scratch his silver plated chest, your swords will never pierce the walls inside his ribcage called, "home" Home is where the heart is and he flatlined a long time ago; broken heart syndrome only has only 11 documented cases of death, but something snapped inside that boy that day and I think about how they never mention that you can die on the inside, too.
He says cigarettes are a way to manipulate time, that sand is just sand if you don't know how much you have left in your hourglass, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
You could've called us time travelers, we were making best friends with the moon and the stars as we breathed in the promise of calm, an ashen beach lay beneath us. Sand is just sand, after all.
The confessions of an insomniac, the stream of unfiltered emotion laying open, so vulnerable- how terribly sad it looks in the light.
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 10:41 PM UTC
Knew you had walls guarding your heart
Uncomfortable with the way you look
Girls left you feeling broken, empty,
You try to replace pieces they took.
Flatlined and abandoned
Questions where confidence should be
Gave all my love to you
In return got disloyalty.
Another person to hurt, betray
I never was important to you
Mental acrobatics performed in my mind
The intense thoughts weren't in yours too.
I told you to be yourself
Had already lost who that was
Held by insecurities
Instead of me chased a buzz
You said I meant everything to you, the world and more
If that's true why do you treat me like I'm simply yet another score?
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 8:33 PM UTC
(Heart beats)
What does it all mean actually? Love.
The thing that we all chase, feel, abuse, anticipate and yearn for.
No money can buy its power. No fortune teller can predict when it may happen. We seem to be in denial about it. Some of us have it and forget about it, like an old pair of shoes that we were once excited about but now just look at as something that once gave us this amazing feeling...only to fade and be thrown away. Why do we just forget and throw it away? Why does that excitement fade? Where does it go? Is it instilled in us as people to naturally get rid of what once made us feel good? Maybe it's the distraction of others? or the tarnish over time?
I have no idea. I try not to ask. I've been fooled by my heart so many times that I have no idea what my mind even thinks when encountered by the fury of love, the captive eye of its emotions. "We were young" "No good thing last forever" "I don't know what happened?" The excuses. They never match up like the wrong pieces we try to force into the puzzle. Why do we try to make it fit? Why is love so complicated? And why is it so abused? "I love you"... "do you?" We say in our head...self consciously...because trust is an issue. But we instead say "I love you, too" to help break our fall. Falling helplessly hoping to grab something to stop us from breaking, shattering like a piece of glass and love was the hand that couldn't handle us...so they let it go to break. "I'm sorry"...are you? Because you once said "I love you" are you just saying things to help yourself of your dazed condition? Are you just a malicious heart seeker? Do you still "love" me? Or was this all a dream? That's what love is right? A dream... A moment, a thought, a figment of ones imagination, sleeping for hope, only to wake up and realize it was never real. I pray the idea of love changes like all does over time. I hope it becomes more of an art form and not a skill. There is a difference. The art form is created off a skill but the art form isn't something you practice...it's something you internally create and lasts a lifetime. Others see the art form and get inspired to want, do the same...or so we hope.
Love isn't extinct...it's not fading...it's not to be forgotten. It's just stopped being created. It's not being treated right...it's being abused and forced to do what it wasn't placed here to. So I ask again. "What does love mean?" "Why is it still being abused?" Will its art form be remembered...if it dies?
What is love...
(Beeps start to slow down)
why'd you take it from me...
(Beeps slow down)
What is...
(Flatlined)
**What
Is
Love?**
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 11:20 PM UTC
My ribcage shatters apart to expose
Splintering fragments of brittle bone
I scrape them up into a pile
Offer them to you with a smile
Carving into this sordid heart of mine
With ink spilled from the grip of your fingertips
It spells the words I've never heard
Uttered from the sinister curls of your lips
And the lusting lick of your desire across my death bed of wilted roses
I feel your hunger devouring what's left of mine to give
Your kisses I repress with my tongue
But I'll give in until you're done
I'll beg for more down on knees with prayers
when our course has had its run into the immolation of the sun
We'll end our affairs and leave it unrepaired
dwelling in the darkness that we've built upstairs
I fall into your black tracing scars upon your attack
I feel the bones break in your back
When we collapse our arms around ourselves
Holding tight into a mendacious night
seething with tumultuous roars
Our bellies hungrily ache for each others' taste
We satiate ourselves until the early whisper of dawn
Leaving our scars in scraps of flesh and song
The bite of your bitterness sings along
So tattered I leave beside you
So shattered I break inside you
So torn to be reborn without you
We mourn the morning of our scorn
Pressing it into the palms of our hands
Pushing deeper this belly ache of rotten thoughts and perceptions
Those secret discretions buried clear in our deceptions and flatlined intentions
We have lived this life we give with smoldered chances rendered
Not a moment to spare for the tired or mentored
Guided by the guilty jilted mistakes of our indiscretions
Our hands are bathed in the blood of our love
It takes every ounce of me not to give in to reminiscing of missing what we're dismissing
We're lost searching with no profound calling to take hold of our hands and lead us into the light
just speechless apparitions given into desperations of heartache and failure
seeking a savior to release this pressure building inside the beating of our entwined hearts
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 10:46 AM UTC
"the sacred geometry of chance,
the hidden law
of a probable outcome"^
*so many days,
composing years of a book
of empty days
unlined with lines,
white on white pages,
subtitled
no joyous fear
of the
life changing chance taking
wrenching a thing past,
mostly forgot,
except for periodic
ache stabbing
you can't recall
the choices
that you didn't take
that got you here,
nowhere
the road split,
highway and river path,
always chose
incorrectly,
now
so past the younger days
question the lack,
no courage flaw,
what does it matter
anymore,
safe until death,
death having arrived
early on
always bore right,
when left was
the soul
go go
the chance right
un un taken
wanted needed accidents,
trip wires,
incendiary kisses
that rebirth
you one more time,
over over to
alive confirm
but fears of
breaking pain,
made you a broken man
the angles of life
obtuse,
the planes of life
flat fuzzy,
irregular, smudged,
flatlined
days drone by silent,
not a single word
out loud uttered,
three hundred and sixty degrees,
volume measured and
zero summed value
every normal distribution
has a tail,
some fat, some skinny
even this lonely man
has a tale
where the
improbable
is the most unlikely
day of likelihood
his days
were numbered,
they were,
each one had a number...
that day arrived,
calendar unremarked and unremarkable,
when
the hidden law of a probable outcome
saved,
the sacred geometry of chance
was rightly computed,
his number chosen
don't know this man personal,
heard the story from a mate,
third mate third
so third hand,
cause the other two were busy
one, holding her hand
and the other occupado
writing this poem
-----------------------
*A lyric from "Shape Of My Heart," as sung by Sting
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 8:07 AM UTC
I loved you before the alcohol,
Hourglass to the soul,
hour pass,
days maybe...
in between the formulation of golden nuggets in the mountains silver sands.
You held my hand and through velvet touch,
Electricity meander through my arms,
before the storm calm,
the start of a heart attack -
then the pack of house of cards collapsed.
In a deserts smile,
you flatlined through our favourite past times.
The pastures rich with buttercups
and dandelions like the last time.
When we walked over the train tracks harvest.
Last summer and last spring.
Somethings are everlasting,
and some pass like storm clouds without one droplet of rain,
in casting,
our love grew like tulips,
Yellow, red and blue,
bruises,
but soon come the rain,
our muses loses,
&
rendered useles;
I went away and
It's too soon to explain myself,
For that.
Back,
with cap in hand.
Lost in hearts melted by false starts,
and feathered cap,
Falsetto moods
sharp stilettos,
slap back.
I couldn't let go when the sun came through,
and a calming parting of the clouds where the rain came blue.
I thought I could live without you,
but I bottled it,
again.
Now I've nothing left to give,
but my gift to you.
sinking, sleeping in the land dunes
trying to understand you.
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 10:56 AM UTC
Faced back before the field space overrun
of runway's end, rusted spikes of flower'd
dock, the field left empty there. World's
airport flatlined beyond and down the sky
ride planes on turbined mist. The stack's
descent, each air-braked glide to tarmac
draws another on and down the day
I slip off into, drive away
along the curve of it. Before
Haslemere, where a tight hedged bend turns up
to the town, is a roe deer, struck dead against
a van. The driver, in descent,
appalled before the long, spread body
of this two year buck, its twin-tined head
laid to ground, a trickle of blood at the mouth.
It fell to this elegant pose
athwart the van's front width,
white neck flopped from the withers;
Crash landed in a sudden grace of death.
Jun 19, 2011
Jun 19, 2011 at 8:03 AM UTC
"God why, why god? Why me? Why is life so miserable? I want to give up. Show me. Help me."
These words. The ones weighed so heavily on a hospital bed. They dragged the air down to my shoes leaving all lungs without oxygen.
The walls felt deep.
Never ending abyss of confirmed failures. Continuance of a ringing that still bleeds in my ears today. The slow beating of a flatlined life.
This was simply the bad news on repeat. Stuttered and obliterated my brain waves that couldn't find up from down.
I've never seen a heart spread so neatly on the floor.
The pieces too small to pick up one by one. Instead we stare and observe a life not wasted across the linoleum. Watching the pieces flutter and shake in their space
So we swept the pieces into the corner. No need to keep this reality playing like elevator music. Stand by if you know what's best for ya.
These walls are for the broken hearted, the wretched, and fallen, you'll fit in just fine.
Lets push this bed out the window, it will be the first time we've been free in years. Like a bird? **** that, today we are our own.
Find wing tips fluttering fallout baby balling on a window sill. Haven't felt this way before. Outpatient freedom that will last as long as that nice pair of socks that somehow, your dryer ate and turned into lint.
I'm gonna need some therapy with that noxious cup of coffee. I can't simply continue the same beaten path.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 5:39 PM UTC
Sitting in tired classrooms at the edge of everything, teetering on the precipice with coffee cups hidden between our thighs; taking secret sips just to get by.
We cried ourselves to sleep last night but we're here now, staring mindlessly into rows of maroon chairs & tan desks.
We're dragging each other from Monday through Friday with empathetic sighs & bummed cigarettes.
We're aching for the weekend so that we can drown our insides until we drown the memory of this place.
We're racing up the same road that has carried us home, five days a week for the past four years.
We left our childhood kicking up dust, as it chased behind us at fourteen.
We buried him on a cold February afternoon but didn't accept that he was gone until mid June.
She was crushed under the weight of metal slamming cold, hard steel on a windy road with the April rain pouring through shattered glass.
Casket closed and our sixteen year old eyes wired open.
He flatlined on his living room floor & I only spoke in ball point pens all summer long.
But we're older now & we're eager to find pain in different faces.
Well, you can find me in the city, writing nostalgic poems on the back of every photograph we took in the suburbs.
You can find me counting street lights, on my back where I used to count stars in your arms.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 6:48 PM UTC
I died waiting for you to come alive.
Now that you have come to life
I need to be revived.
I shouldn't have waited
for you to arrive.
Watched my dreams fly by;
my existence became a lie.
So many tears I cried
praying you would see the light.
I emptied my soul
while you were blind
Finally you arrive
in your own time.
My heart is cold
watching our fateful story unfold.
So sorry that I have died
waiting for you to come alive
I've flatlined.
_________^________^_____________^_____________________________
See you on the other side.
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
They sent an ambulance
to our location.
The sirens could be heard
even under sedation.
The drugs that flow through my veins
I got without consultation.
I'm floating over broken glass
to my salvation.
I'm screaming for you from the crowd.
I hear you screaming from the crowd.
Don't suffocate on the clouds!
But I like the feel of these clouds.
Why can't you take my hand this time?
I don't want to take your hand in mine.
I'd cushion the crash of your high
Driving like this is a crime.
So I called an ambulance for you,
because that's what I needed to do
And you
Tried to take me out of this mindset
That I did not want to leave yet.
But you drove without a seat belt on
and crashed through the windshield of your car
And I
Wanted just to take a drive
I didn't know it'd threaten my life.
I'm going crazy
You're going crazy
Because I can hear the sirens,
but they sound slowed down.
I'm just under
the surface of consciousness
and I think I can hear that the sirens
are
not
so
loud.
So stay with me
I open my eyes and look to my right
to see broken glass sparkle like
diamonds in the one streetlight.
The ground is vibrating
as I'm shivering in shock.
The ambulance rumbles
the loose pieces of rock.
That rattle against the concrete
on this disaster of a street.
So broken bones and broken souls,
I'm hurting all over this ****** street.
Fill up the street that's full of holes.
Flashing lights make me close my eyes.
They push at your chest, so unkind
I'm floating again there are no ties.
In the ambulance you flatlined
Life is full of stupid lies!
Don't let your heart burst
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 12:56 AM UTC
I cant do it again,
I only began to feel alive,
and it was so easy to pretend,
that everything you had forgotten was,
well.. temporary.
How could i not notice that you started to forget what i had said,
that repeating my self had become a common occurrence,
I cant do it again,
feeling as though my time with you,
was a heart machine i couldn’t view,
and when you flatlined,
i would fall to my knees,
but a prayer won’t save you,
god has no mercy,
I cant do it again,
I don’t want to dress in the color,
that absorbs happiness and hides emotion,
I don’t want to be encompassed by sunshine,
but feel darkness wherever I walk,
hear about you,
but not be able to see you,
see pictures of you,
but not be able to take one of you,
I cant do it again,
not only I had a wounded heart,
you didn’t just hop off the side of the boat,
but you sunk it,
with everyone waiting on the deck,
hoping that you would come back,
we all knew you had shot a hole,
in the side of the boat,
and as the water slowly inched its way,
from the bottom of our feet,
all the way,
above our heads,
we stayed standing strong,
holding each others hands,
as silence and sadness ,
greif and worry,
flooded our minds,
but don’t worry we survived,
we remember your story ,
every day,
constantly living in your memory,
even though you couldn’t,
but i cant go through it again,
I cant go to school every day,
waiting for a call to the office,
hopping they won’t have anything important to say,
because that would mean it was all ok,
but silently hoping the day had come,
because that day all your suffering would end,
and you’d go into the white light,
see your mom and all your friends,
but if there is one thing i know for sure,
is that I can not do it again.
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 10:53 PM UTC
taking government loans, parental guidelines
and flashy dress-skirts made this life unfact
and unfiction. Lost in the disabled returns on
tax dividends, the world kept calling your name.
“Rise up and be born with me, brother” Pablo
Neruda inclined-- *“Give me your hand from the deep
Zone seeded by your sorrow.”* it all it all it all ached,
an abyss of patience with nothing-- a droplet of sidelined
coffee given sentience with ingestion-- all the banal all
the mundane all the flowing rock-face moments so
presented by society-- in my heart of hearts, in my mind
of minds, in my eye of eyes, in my neck of necks, I found pain....
the ache of achey betrayal and the ache of achey loss. In this
pain we find repreive from Pollyanna-- reprieve from the false
Gods of Evil, the Devil Within your Ex-Girlfriend-- the reason
she let his ******** inside. Through all the latency-- through
starving streetless sleepless evenings-turned-to-nights I could
see death within the sliver of a flashlight beam.. telling me to
take the life or leave the life but never in-between-- telling me
the pain was part and parcel to the ecstasy of faith and resurrection--
screaming “FLATLINED IF YOU WANT, FASTLINED IN YOU
WANT, SIDELINED IF YOU WANT, STREETLIGHT IF YOU
WANT” and throughout this evil and this darkness and this nothing
-but-a-flashlight-beam, I hear Neruda--
“Rise up and be born with me, brother.”
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 6:40 PM UTC
Great, I think she wants back in my life
She walked out when we possibly had a future maybe with two kids a happy husband and wife
I'm still bearing wounds from our last encounter
It's ludicrous what I had to go through with this *****
Oh wait I shouldn't say that even though she ripped my heart into halves and almost flatlined me
So even though I swore I wouldn't do any more rhymes about her I'm going out of my solace to lay my feelings to rest like a hydraulic mattress
I'm glad this has happened in a cosmic sort of way because no matter how hard it became alive I stayed to prove not to just to her but myself that you can survive heartbreak of that density those few weeks felt like a nomadic crackhead wandering the centuries yet it interests me that she expects me to say something to her first which is why I'm putting all of my problems and angst into this verse
I'm open to being friends again I'm all for that because what happened shouldn'tve happened at all but don't you dare play with my heart again because of you do I'll burn you like a succubusses ***** after an STD
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 12:37 AM UTC
What does one do when love is lost?
I have merely stopped existing.
No past, no future
No dreams, no fears
No up, no down
Just a mere straight line,
With no faults, breaks,
or ascensions.
I even crave a plummet,
If need be.
But there’s nothing...
I have flatlined, I am dead.
As what is life without love?
Nothing
Jun 2, 2019
Jun 2, 2019 at 1:09 PM UTC
I flatlined in the flatlands.
© Matthew Harlovic
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:36 PM UTC
Blinded by choice. Shh why cant you hear those silent cries? She is reaching out with her misunderstood voice.
You cannot see that invisble exit she seeks. She can, hearing those beckoning her spirit, as she reaches into another dimension not fearing touching deaths blade. Tired of the uphill journey just to let her name be spoken upon those lips that dont see or feel the difference. Selective in what emotions they want to feel. She can walk by her very breath unheard as her heartbeat slowly aches and wants to fade away. Feeling her existence is just that, it appears a shell,where echos can be heard now that her heartbeat has flatlined. She is finally free from the weight of hiding her heart and how her own family exited and evicted themselves from her when .....
She lived.
(C) 2015 cherry rose
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 6:59 PM UTC
He didn't believe I was crazy
But you can't see the insides of peoples
Skulls and mine was plastered with posters
Of him and pictures of us.
I'll cut off my head to get out
Then you can keep it if you think it's so pretty
Just throw the rest of me to the wolves
They've already had it.
The melody said "love is watching someone die"
then sign me up to catch your last breaths
Because I want to see you realize
what you gave up.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 7:55 PM UTC
"Should have known it was contagious like a sickness.
But I'm not sure if I want the vaccination for this.
Do I suffer from it like Hell? Do I try to rid it and get well?
All it took was a inhale of scent. Paralyzed.
All it took was a taste. Sterilized.
All it did was drop me to the floor. Flatlined.
All I did was beg for more after I would die..
Infected High. "
Mar 30, 2018
Mar 30, 2018 at 4:13 PM UTC
there will be time in your life
when nothing seems to work
when all the pain you can muster up in your wrists
will not be nearly enough to shoot endorphins through your veins
when you don’t know if the choking feeling in your throat
is because of the pills you downed in a heartbeat
or the recurring thought of “i’ll never be good enough”
of “maybe i should just **** myself”
when the sadness has drilled too big of a hole in your chest
that your nerves can’t seem to send your brain signals
that pain has flooded your entire system
shutting down not only your organs
but also your ability to move
to speak
to think
when your highs seem like mountains to climb
and your lows just another step forward
to fall into the neverending trance
of the sensation upon reaching the bottom
you just want everything to stop
you want your atriovencular valve to cease its motion
your aortic valve never to open again
to never close again
there will be no more isovolumic contraction nor relaxation
the beat at which your heart dances to keep you alive
you want it all to stop
maybe it will keep you from life’s ups and downs
you want a flat line
no rising action
no falling action
you want nothing
you want to be nothing
or you just want to be happy
but if there are no ups, no downs
no contactions
no relaxations
when your heart has flatlined
that means you’re dead
and no amount of epinephrine will bring you back
just take a shock to the system
please, whatever you do
don’t sign for a DNR
“do not resuscitate”
take a shock to the system
to remind you that being around
is actually pretty worth it
that pain
that suffering
they give beauty to life
they are the beauty of life
that you’re the beauty of someone else’s
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 2:03 AM UTC
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.
Apr 22, 2010
Apr 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM UTC
"It was all so beautiful"
The sky, the sea, the trees,
as she said in final breaths,
Flatlined and silence,
I still miss her,
it has been years now,
And all I think about
when I see the sky,
is her voice,
saying how beautiful it was.
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 12:04 PM UTC
Lab coat on
I stand in a cold morgue
Scalpel in one hand
My heart in the other.
Hands tremble
Making the first incision
Cutting through the sweet memories
And stripping it from the bitterness
you left behind
It lays open
Displayed on a silver tray
Tied down by your half truths
And compassionate lies
Held down by the “I love you”
And trapped by your “Don’t go”
A beaten heart
That no longer beats
No longer pumps love
But instead is filled with tears
And regrets
It has lost its color
A vibrant red
was turned into
a Coal-black
As dark as the bruises
You left behind
Yet
Flatlined
And without pulse
I still live
With nothing on my sleeve
And an empty hole
on my chest.
Sep 29, 2018
Sep 29, 2018 at 2:38 PM UTC