"floorings" poems
By Joseph Childress
Backyard parties
Are more free
Then open houses
No limit power
Sky ceilings
And ground floorings
Flourished
On earth's home
Earth tone colors
And bright flowers
Compliment one another
Feng shui settings
Decorated by nature
Greet guests
And shade neighbors
This lawn is alive
So my backyard is favored
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 7:43 AM UTC
vapor on vapor moorings
your lips end when the smoke fades
brunette ashes on black tile floorings
(lit from above)
mascara tear ducts' lathe
eat a blown glass dove
with halos of smoke rings
the angels resurrect then bury
stock and store
nicotine for the winter
2 moths between doors
and 7 leaves of cherry
you
lift the latch
and slip inside
knowing
no one has heard you
but me
turn out the light
and
be my pure fire
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 3:26 PM UTC
Today will not be the same as yesterday as much as you'd like it to be
I finally learnt to remember the image of deserts etched across your knee
Yearning is a cheat; it weaves into clocks and watches pretending to be time
And I know that when it comes to us coincidence might resign
You let the city in your lungs collapse under this emptiness that’s your earthquake
I hope you refuse to smile if it isn't for my sake
I wish for the days to be gone that are you and your concrete frowns
For now I only wish to see you safe and sound
I will caress your white shirt soaked in mud
If you promise to stop jumping off buildings, staining the parapet with your blood
And so we depend on borrowed feelings
Don’t you think that remorse is time worth ticking?
For me, it skims across lined pages
And for you, it settles back into rusted battle cages
Truly, it’s another one of those questions your tongue holds no answer
I am familiar with the way desperation forces you to bite into inked rubber
I've been scratching spirals into wooden floorings
In an effort to take the pain out of waiting
And if you look up, the shadows are holding out their hands
You turn to me, your face contorted in the strain of trying to understand
I cannot bring myself to smile because confusion lies in everyone
They’re whispering your name; they’re pulling us into oblivion
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 10:41 AM UTC
i like broken houses a little too much.
shattered glass rotting floorings
dust and cobwebs and echoings
so you can nearly hear the laughter and the cries
of her old residents
and how she's kept them in an ivory box
all those years
in her basement
while everything else ******* falls to pieces
and there's nobody to mend a single thing.
maybe nothing's the same after hearing
a hospital hall's echo and how he only
tries to get away from the screams and kisses
and the pristine courtains barerly let light in
and he's a broken mess that hasn't been abandoned
but the impending damnation breaks him
and kills others
death resides but so does life
and which one is stronger
and poetry cannot fix the world
or fix her or fix him or anybody
and buildings should be buildings and a dust-covered door
should not be a call for my curiosity and i should not
mark my fingerprints on it because my sweaty palms
will make her shriek awake and believe
someone's finally going to take care of her
while someone else then walks away
and leaves her walls stained
i feel the allure of it somehow because
there's no more ******* glass to stain break scratch
within her so i must find some in me some that can contain her
and contain me i'm falling
fallingfallingfelldownandwhereaminow
and hospital halls are nothing but white and sad and a cemetery
that's being pieced together and it smells of cleaning products
but the abandoned place has harbored entire lives
so maybe i'd rather bleed out at an abandoned
house without glass
than next to a graveyard in the make
people tell me i should stop thinking so much.
Jul 20, 2015
Jul 20, 2015 at 1:30 PM UTC