"floorboards" poems
*here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty*
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 10:30 PM UTC
All strung
out
on
sadness,
empty shells
of needles
that injected
the next defense
to keep me going
splayed upon
the coldness
of metal
somewhere in a place
lower than
the floorboards
of the nether regions
of a private hell,
where no one sees
the truth behind
the doors of
beaten swords
of silken pictures
in frothy shades
of effervescent green
a smiling happy family
in which the
sounds of drowning
can only be
vaguely heard
a faded gurgle
in an ocean of sighs
Somewhere, there,
the pain in my veins
spreads like
a self-administered
drug
only it's not
my prescription, at all
just a parody
from the very
sick doctor
who shares
this house,
meant to
be a home
one who thinks
he knows it all
but knows nothing
In this dreamlike weaving
of staring blankly
into alternative spaces
when all is so heavy
that even breathing is a task
I suddenly remember
who the **** I am
and push my gaze through
the ceiling cracks
to look up at
the stars,
receiving their
shadows
of light
like a blessing
upon my
nettle-stung
tongue
and
rise
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 5:27 PM UTC
My parents gave me a pink childhood framed with lace and luxury--
but a black stain has spread there, deep as the amount of time
I’ve spent thinking about what people are capable of, and how they can stand
hanging a mirror in every bathroom, because water cannot clean people
of the lie they told their brother or the betrayal inflicted against their friend,
some wrongs of which may never be realized, but will always remain
in the form of a new freckle on my left cheek or shadow beneath my eye.
And I am sorry, because I should have sooner heeded my mother’s words
when she told me I was the moral compass grounding you stonedust streets.
Your childhood resembled a light bulb broken before it tasted electricity,
no one taught you North from South and how different the terrain may become
when you find yourself in the mountains with only sandals on your feet.
I had been that for you, and you told me as much every weekend we spent
riding in the bed of my father’s pickup truck and shouting against wind-gusts
that threatened to carry our voices away from one another--
I have sinced learned there are many ways to **** a person.
I killed you when I stole your sense of direction like floorboards from beneath
your cracked and bleeding feet, and allowed you to fall--who knows how far--
landing in a pile of skin-biting needles and leftover sediment,
the very bottom of brown-glass bottles strewn across the floor.
Staying would have saved you, I’m sure, and I’ll never forget that I turned away
out of fear, cowardice, because I hated the sight of your skin-and-bone crowd,
friends in name but not in heart, and left you lost among them,
And you who knew no better remained, your humanity
expelled with each smoke-laden breath and then evaporating, nonextant.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC
Neatly coating the floor in thin white trails, woven into floorboards like cotton twine, sunbeams snake their way across hardwood.
Books scream to be read & my yellowed pages ache to detail my experience as a widowed reader of time.
Magazines pile, while my simple hands grow a day older.
Heat on my neck.
The driver of time exhales grandiose,
tells me to travel while I'm young,
visit regions on this globe that grow green with age,
listen to honest trumpets before I gray,
wade in pools of clear urgency.
He said:
"Find a walking stick out beyond the ether
laugh with veracity, poking fun at Saturn & the Stars."
Nov 18, 2017
Nov 18, 2017 at 1:20 AM UTC
Time passing -
Is not the tick, tick, tick, of the movies.
It is a barely audible, high-pitched ringing in your ears.
It is the low thrum of a distant compressor somewhere.
It is the sound of the long shadows brushing against the wall.
Time passing -
It is the fabric rustle of changing your position in a chair.
A cat padding along the oak floorboards of the hallway.
An electric cube powering a computer.
The sizzle of speakers turned on with nothing playing.
Time passing -
I hear it from a silent telephone,
From the idle doorknob and hinges.
From wooden steps leading to my front door.
Time passing -
It is all of this,
And nothing.
So much nothing.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 2:42 PM UTC
He lives in a cold and empty house
Where lightbulbs hang from silver chains
And lonely ghosts live within
The cracking, creaking wooden walls
He leaves out his favorite books for them
And listens to footsteps beneath the floorboards
He plays piano,
a reclusive recital for empty rooms
And they keep each other's soft-spoken secrets
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 4:03 PM UTC
A vacant room of dark spaces,
where furniture once lay
An empty lot of trash and cracked concrete
Where weeds take root with hopes of becoming trees
And cobwebs span for miles
Worn wind chimes still glisten in sun
Papers of bad handwriting fly with the wind
This place left unoccupied for so much time
Small lives make home in the walls,
While this home settles further beneath dirt
This place reminds me of our forgetfulness, our need to not rebuild
As a place turns old we leave it behind,
never to fix again,
never to feel loved again
Weeping floorboards
Walls crying tears of yellow paint
Roof caving in feeling hollow
Abandoned places
Forgotten
Always forgotten
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 3:42 PM UTC
in the silence
our thoughts are the loudest
they're the creaks of the floorboards
letting us know
we are not alone
whether the voices are good or bad
the silence really will never invade our minds
May 19, 2014
May 19, 2014 at 1:01 AM UTC
I think the world is ending
and I really wish I didn’t.
There’s a rat under the floorboards
and a knife inside the kitchen,
and in the alley by the bins
a man there ******
The streets all smell of *****
and ******** indecision
has us riddled
in the middle
of our end and our beginning.
In the town a politician
with a jet black tongue
licks the seal on our decisions
without every truly listening
to anyone.
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 9:38 PM UTC
all i got's a rusty truck
some dreams and my guitar
out of all them three
not one will get me far
the truck don't run
the guitar's out of tune
the day just must get better
it's only ten past noon
i'm building bridges out of sand
with water and some glue
i'm building bridges that won't stand
unless they're built with you
i'm building bridges out of sand
that may not last the night
i'm building bridges out of sand
and with you i'll build them right
my roof is always leaking
my boat won't stay afloat
i'm tone deaf and i stutter
i can not hold a note
the truck has rusted floorboards
they've rusted clear on through
the thing that makes me keep it
is it's where i first kissed you
i'm building bridges out of sand
with water and some glue
i'm building bridges that won't stand
unless they're built with you
i'm building bridges out of sand
that may not last the night
i'm building bridges out of sand
and with you i'll build them right
with your voice there beside me
a new truck and new guitar
the dreams won't seem so distant
we'll be closer to the stars
a good and strong foundation
and belief in what i dream
with two hearts it is stronger
with two hearts, we're a team
i'm building bridges out of sand
with water and some glue
i'm building bridges that won't stand
unless they're built with you
i'm building bridges out of sand
that may not last the night
i'm building bridges out of sand
and with you i'll build them right
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 11:15 PM UTC
Why do you still occupy
the nooks and crannies of my head?
Drifting up through the cracks in the plaster
bent nails and poor construction
hammered hastily into place
How do you fill
my vacant minutes with shadows of you?
Your outline walks beside me on the street, wound up in my headphones
the echo of your daydream touch
a humming static on my skin
How still do you fall asleep beside me
when I am wrapped in the disquiet of a restless night?
How do you ease yourself into my brain like its nothing
and hide among synapses that try so hard to lose you
And how still to lose you?
When the thought of you occupies the wasted time
that escapes order and control
and slips under the floorboards
And in that quiet and that dark
is where you and I occupy,
held together by the wandering nature of thoughts,
that find their way into the nooks and crannies of my head
The thought of you is indifferent to my hasty plaster work,
and
the thought of you is intoxicating.
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 6:49 AM UTC
I’ve never heard this song before
as flowers come out of the floorboards;
I forget what my heart had ever been sore for.
Dec 10, 2018
Dec 10, 2018 at 2:19 PM UTC
i can still feel his hands around my neck.
the fingers like words and “i don’t love you” and it stings although he wasn’t the first to say it, i can’t breathe.
she haunts our hallways, our floorboards are cracking
beneath our feet, our home is crumbling
between our fingertips and
i can feel her weight on my chest. sometimes
i think that she should just go by the way that her footsteps echo after she’s gone. i remember
a wall full of holes from where his fists
kissed ever so gently.
i think that wall is what my heart might look like but lately
i’ve had trouble finding my pulse.
i can still feel his hands around my neck.
does he know
why i can’t look him in the eye? does he
know
the blue makes me feel like I’ve swallowed too much water, does he know i can’t breathe?
i think I’m still trying to understand why
beautiful things die in my fingertips and why he stomps on every rooting bulb my wilting body tries to plant, why he ripped my roots from beneath my feet and why my hair started to fall out why
he put his hands on my throat and how i still feel them there.
has he figured it out?
does he know that lemon scented bleach would taste better than
her on his lips and the ********
they splatter?
i can still feel his hands around my neck.
i was born into light, into pain, into love and
he wasn’t the first man to leave a mark on my body and i feel like he is the works with the universe to watch me fall
things fall and shatter without you touching them, things break while you’re sleeping and
everything about him and her stings like saltwater and everything about me
bends for him like light.
i can still feel his hands around my ******* neck.
he crashed into her hips like his hands to my bones, like fists to walls, the walls
rattled, my ribcage
rattled, he was
rattled and i can still feel his hands around my neck,
pushing, like me trying to ******* make this work.
what is this?
his hands are like ghosts around my throat,
the memory of her wrapped around his body instead of me
wrapping, holding in place
icanstillfeelhisfuckinghandsaroundmyfuckingneck
i am not stupid you know.
i can only see that he moves like these words write themselves, and he
speaks like music bleeding through a closed window,
i swear, i am still cracked
though i still have tattoos left from the tips of his fingers from those heavy-handed nights,
i swear, they didn’t even sting.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 12:47 AM UTC
I want you to hold my hand.
Hold my hand so tight that my bones break and every crack whispers how much you really need me. The space between my fingers should forget what it's like to be empty because you'll fix each and every crease. Light a fire in my palms and melt away any other touch other than your own.
I desire you.
I am something worth destroying. Can't you see that I would rather be a pile of broken floorboards and shattered glass than an abandoned house, having never been touched by you? Burn your name across my body and tattoo it onto my heart so I understand what it means to love with a passion.
I want to thank you.
You've made minutes feel like decades by holding me until my internal clock shattered and the only perception I had of time was the beating of your heart. You turned words I was too afraid to speak into currency and now I am a millionaire with nothing to show for it except your smile. You filled my eyes with stars and heart with assurance so when pieces of me died I still had something left to believe in. You never gave up on me when everyone else did.
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 9:11 PM UTC
I don't know what he was to others—
fireworks, lemonade, ants crawling on a picnic blanket—
but I always knew him at his worst.
He was sleep cycles shaped like carnival pretzels,
days that bled together,
weeks that clumped like a rat king
under floorboards in the beach house.
He spoke in clouds
swollen with diluvian rain,
daggers of lightning
cracking the river in half,
the language of a muggy body in sticky room
staring out a window
at absolutely nothing.
The sort of stuff that makes me think
he didn't know his own strength,
most of the time.
As always, when he died this year
he died by degrees,
bedridden in the hospice of September.
I listened to his death rattle
of rustling yellow leaves
and watched the last of the fireflies
crawl from between his parted lips.
When he went cold for good
I built a pyre out of his firewood bones.
The ashes fell into the soil
like seeds in waiting, and I watched
the moon grow so large that it stretched
the nighttime like candy licorice
and made it longer than before.
My duty done, I turned to go.
The smoke rose up to embrace the sky,
and at the time, I could have sworn
that from the corner of my eye
I saw it curl around
and wave at me.
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 9:27 AM UTC
The left of center
are in north bound throes of a dupe
and can't begin to forecast this wonder of polluted marvel,
in the morrow
my optics discharged in a catastrophic traversal
While whimsy and accidental feels like I've taken pills
a power rain this sobbing has spilled
No longer to be contained based on sheer will
Attacked by neurotic transcending
While sifting through files and photo stacks
Came across multiples of your smiling face
From when I shot you, a couple hundred miles back
No one would dare debase the abundance of your emitted grace
Bloodshot mist eyed and blind from tears
control lost during transport steer
Drips off my cheek pouring down my chest
Could make great sense to don a life vest
Filling up floorboards like a spraying firehose
Shattering cascades diamondize the windows
A single glance at an image turns farmland into rural seaquake
If they interview my lifeless corpse what a headline this will make,
turning tragedy into a foolish mistake
people will curse and laugh
Paved over roads now films unseen
when dusk fuse night from the weep my eyes dispensed
Elements effected by incidents
Rising waves climb over to decimate interstate 65
All over a tiny tear drop and her sweet smiling photograph
Oct 20, 2018
Oct 20, 2018 at 8:01 PM UTC
I held your love
with the fingers of my heart
I tattooed the promise
to all my tomorrows
across my back to be carried for eternity
. . . where are you now ?
It takes forever for distant stars to burn my lips
There is no mercy found on the floorboards that walk across my kiss
. . . where are they now ?
Remember how the needles of time stitched the nights together ?
How easy does the fabric of love become unentwined
. . . remember ?
Jun 29, 2025
Jun 29, 2025 at 2:08 AM UTC
A sea of gasoline's,
Grace of novelties,
Cars and halogen,
Social disease,
Manufactured dreams,
Scream on screens,
They glean from all living things,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
Such a contumacious existence,
Results in an animistic decline,
All things that once made us strong,
Oblivion has made a meal of them,
I walk around this town,
I see the colors,
I watch the scenes,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
I live in a world without a heart,
But machines keep it breathing,
And it has many sons,
Crowned with clockworks maturation,
Am I the last one beating?
I don't tick,
Not like them,
I just watch men bite one another necks from the steps of the front door,
They call me the queen of the creaking floorboards,
Fight,
Take,
Hide,
I have matchstick eyes,
I twist fires with my fingertips,
All of these people made of wood,
They are like smoke to me,
I breathe slices into them with teeth that have no number,
I am December,
I fight,
Take,
Hide
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
He belches verses of prayer
from the acidity of his gut,
staggering upright
on two toddler feet,
he trails drunkenly
to the fridge,
scarce with only a few dented beers,
a bucketful of ice to feed him,
till the next scroungers pay-check is due.
Cracking open a frozen one,
it hisses a warrior's cry,
loud in the stillness
then dies swiftly,
as he raises the carcass to his split lip
swilling alcoholic entrails
round him gums.
Wincing slightly,
the beer half-empty in his hand,
he twitches a pink eye
in pain
as something rolls
around his jaw,
the made-of-man pinball stage
has begun a game
without him.
Gathering his saliva
into a hard bullet,
he spits the foreign object
onto splintered floorboards,
where his last tooth lands,
a final casualty
of his handsome youth.
May 9, 2012
May 9, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:49 PM UTC
Verse One
Tie me down,
I'm scared of floating away,
Take the crown,
I'm tired of the game of swords we played,
Hold myself steady,
Soul is heavy,
I should have sounded the alarms
When the charm
Spilled from the heart in your hands
Chorus
I've torn down the walls in my home,
Won't build them up so I don't feel alone,
And you left me to clean up the tears you spilled,
Hide the mess and the shame of the time you killed,
Under the floorboards,
You were only bored.
Verse Two
Take my hand,
I'm too frightened to fall,
Beneath the sand,
To lose sight and sense of it all,
Step back slowly,
I'm so lonely,
I should have screamed when you struck
And I ran out of luck,
Yeah the glass was too **** full
Chorus
I've torn down the walls in my home,
Won't build them up so I don't feel alone,
And you left me to clean up the tears you spilled,
Hide the mess and the shame of the time you killed,
Under the floorboards,
You were only bored.
Bridge
I'm busy swimming through quicksand,
The pole balances in the palm of your hand,
Turn your back and walk away,
'Cause you were bored and I was your
Entertainment for the day
Chorus x2
I've torn down the walls in my home,
Won't build them up so I don't feel alone,
And you left me to clean up the tears you spilled,
Hide the mess and the shame of the time you killed,
Under the floorboards,
You were only bored.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 4:32 PM UTC
i wish i could peel up the floorboards
and lie beneath them
there i could hide in still silence,
but it still wouldn’t be completely
silent because i cannot leave my
mind behind
i couldn’t tell you what i’m thinking'
even if i wanted to
i thought that i had words for
everything, that i could always find
refuge in my ability to arrange
letters into feeling
i can’t
this emotion is a lightning bolt
and i am a bare tree alone
in a barren field
'what’s the difference between
thinking and feeling? how do you
know if it’s coming from the
head or the heart?
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:12 PM UTC
chocolate fireguard, teapot,
or fender, icecream sofa, dry sea
or wet towel, glass hammer,
waterproof teabag, newspaper
raincoat and umbrella, lead parachute, ashtray on a motorbike,
handbrake on a canoe,
vote in a dictatorship,
loudhailer to a deaf mute,
grief at a wedding,
****** in a monastery.
inflatable dartboard,
spoon in a knife-fight,
screen door on a submarine,
wooden soap, shortbread tires,
knitted light bulb,
bread boat, plasticine wire cutters,
paper hole punch, water hat,
custard floorboards,
ceiling tiles made of gravy,
portrait of a bowl of soup,
a stone cigarette,
syrup knickers, hole in my bucket,
plastic oven, wax truss,
liquorice bridge,
false teeth made of soap,
lemonade roof,
jelly boots,
jam cardigan,
paper bicycle pump,
ice-cream saucepans,
soluble drain pipe,
packet of rubber nails,
see-through mirror,
revolving basement restaurant
roll-on hairspray, rubber pencil,
****** with a hole in it,
limp **** pockets on a lettuce,
**** on a fish, lolly pop van in Hell,
one-legged man in an ****
kicking competition,
meaningless life,
unnecessary death,
forgotten words and deeds,
ignored needs,
this poem.
Apr 30, 2016
Apr 30, 2016 at 4:11 PM UTC
The last time I loved
I knew exactly
what I wanted,
I was so sure--
it had to be
you.
It had to be
awkward laughs, soft music,
coffee brown eyes
half-asleep,
a house full of dogs,
vinyls,
chamomile tea.
I just knew,
believed,
it had to be
you and me.
I am always running,
looking for fire exits,
secret passages,
ways to escape,
always wanting
to be somewhere else--
anywhere else
but with you
I stopped running--
started wanting
wooden floorboards,
walls and a person
I could finally call
home.
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 1:48 AM UTC
acting on a stage,
she builds with each step,
step,
step,
stepping,
the floorboards trail behind her feet.
they form from the soil,
the earth breathing beneath,
wooden planks sprouting between her toes.
she sings in a voice strained and trained,
her diaphragm strong and core
rumbling in single breaths.
her skin brushed with pigment,
cheeks tinted rouge and lips scrubbed till pain,
gold-dusted on her bones
rays reflecting and blinding from her beauty.
stomach she ***** in,
twenty-four
seven,
always prim and proper,
a perfect specimen of femininity,
her blood flows in a viscosity unique
only to the elite.
fingers down
but she lacks words to throw up,
she's silent,
an empty vessel,
her lips meant to be a two-way gate
but nothing flows either way.
her skin sunkissed turmeric,
her irises tapioca pearls,
hair flowing and falling from her face
toasted nori on the white rice her dress.
daily rehearsals of sixteen
odd years practicing lines;
memorizing them, repeating internally,
the stage she builds like a church
her loves oppose to the act,
but she builds an antidisestablishment
forcing her audience of parishioners
away from her.
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 10:54 AM UTC