"fourteenth" poems
I didn't get mail today,
The postman didn't call,
No letter box rattling,
No letters in the hall,
No dinner reservations,
No flights to Istanbul,
No romantic entanglement,
Valentine's day’s so cruel.
Feb 14, 2015
Feb 14, 2015 at 5:11 PM UTC
I am here. I am everywhere.
Every place you’ve been, I have waited.
Every face you’ve seen I have worn.
I have one name but thousands.
On your birth I am your twin.
At your death I shall be your shadow.
In a mother’s womb I have slept.
In a hero’s cry I have risen.
In the smile of a bride I took pride.
In a widow’s tears I am crushed.
I am the pledge of a groom.
I am the passion left by the dead.
I am the spark in every kiss,
The eternal flame of every vow .
Fourteenth of February I was born.
I am the spell in cupid’s arrow.
In the eyes of Aphrodite I am found.
Red as cherry I have been drawn.
I have no age. No gender.
I linger in your heart or perhaps in your mind.
‘Til eternity I shall live.
I am your hidden desire for others.
I am their hidden desire for you.
I am not LUST.
LUST is a friend and sometimes a foe.
TRUST is my companion. LIE destroys me.
BETRAYAL is my enemy.
TEMPTATION will lead you to another path.
Do not follow. You won’t see me there.
Don’t either find me. I WILL FIND YOU.
TIME is my deliverer. Be patient.
I have one name but thousands.
But you, you may call me
LOVE
And I’m pleased to love you.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 12:20 PM UTC
Please be advised
that I will be on leave,
Until the fourteenth of December
until the bonus has been received.
Just like all of you guys,
I am not a robotic machine,
We all got problems, bills to pay,
wants and needs, what else can I say?
For all your concerns,
just Inform our secretary,
just badly needed this break,
I need some time to enjoy and be happy
I will be turning off
all my mobile phones,
A couple of weeks is much okay,
to relax and rest my heavy bones
Guys, for your Information,
please be advised,
For your usual support and cooperation,
Thank you and best regards,
Joseph :)
Nov 29, 2010
Nov 29, 2010 at 2:56 PM UTC
In the barren bowl
Of the local park
There is more brown
Than green
And naked trees
Rest like tired moths
Upon grass
That has been lacerated
By studded shoes
And knees and toes
And elbows
That have ploughed it
Bare.
The edges of the path
Look like eyebrows
Scant
Poorly plucked
And rats-tail
Mongrels
Scatter and shred
Across the carpet
Sodden
Sinewy.
Jarring teenage love
Letters
Sit upon February
The fourteenth
Like it is a mantelpiece of
Glass
Tip blue hair to grey sky
Beiged fingers
Intertwine
Black fingernails
Fumble
They watch their childhood haunts
Through the frosted panes
Of spectacle windows
And wonder why
Nostalgia dies so bitter
Today.
*Kiss my empty skin
Waiting.*
I find myself a love affair
In the sky
Clouds form a coastline
A single dribble of peach
Taints the ash
Like careless words
And I tilt my chin towards it
Already the spindle of my mind
Turns
And begins to weave
Gold from straw.
Feb 14, 2015
Feb 14, 2015 at 1:09 PM UTC
So I see that my poems have started trending. And according to my friend it has to do with the people that follow me.
And as of this moment I have 15 followers (6/3/2014). Cool. So I guess thanks are in order for all of you
1.Sierra Leone - You were my first follower on here so thank you I apprecaite it.
2. Ranger - You were my second follower. and you are a friend on my "little sister". thanks for the follow
3. Fenix Flight - I am surprised you werent my first follower. BUt regardless, you are the reason I am even on this site so thank you sis.
4. Summer Skye - My fourth and lucky follower. the sister of my "sister" thanks little LF, I am grateful you gave me the honor of being followed by you.
5. Zero Zaneh - Fifth follower, Thank you man. your work is good.
6. Stace - sixth follower. we never talk or whatnot, but your work is really good.
7. IJ Keddie - seventh follower, thank you. your work is interesting. I like it.
8. Beryldov Lew - eighth follower, thank you. every follow means something to me
9. ᏰέƦẙḽԃṏሁ Լέῳ - ninth follower. I do not understand your name but i like the work you put up
10. That Asian Josh - tenth follower. (dont take this the wrong way but) We asains must stick together right?. your work is intersting. I enjoy reading it
11. POETIC T - eleventh follower. Marvel? **** yeah man. keep up the cool work
12. Namir- twelvth follower (i cant spell for **** Dude really it took you this long to follow me -.-. come on, but thanks for it anyway. your work is intense.
13 ISverre G Holter thirteenth follower. your work is cool. I like it. keep it up
14.PrttyBrd- Fourteenth follower, you started following me last night (6/2/14) after my poem Life started trending. thank you
15.Nanna Harrow -fifteenth follower, last but not least. you as well started following me last night after my poem Life started trending. thanks for the boost of confedence
There you have it folks. all the people who on here think I am worth something to follow. thanks to each and everyone of you.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 10:31 AM UTC
Your father
Is ordering
Gold bangles
For you
You ought to be glad
The glimmer
In that eyes
When you were born
While wearing those
Tiny bangles on you
For the first time
Are inimitable
I feel envious
Of that bangle
And that world of yours
Without me.
I declare war
With your father
For no reason
Although certain
That I would disappoint as usual
I too had bought
A karivala *
In the third life itself
Sure that you would come
I’ll wear
That
On your hand
On the morning
Of
The fourteenth life
I have preserved the karivala
In saline water
Lest it
Gets blighted
I deserve the honor
Of being the first poet
To have preserved a black bangle
Meant for his girl friend
In saline water.
Translation : Shyma p
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 10:31 PM UTC
the dust
that collects underneath my
bed
flakes of old
skin
are more myself
than I am
the person I was
when I was seven
is not me
nor
the person I was
on my fourteenth birthday
the person I was
yesterday
is not
the person I am
in this moment
the cells
the building blocks
of this body that carries me
are constantly
changing
they die
and entirely new ones
take place
how can I say
I am the same
person
that I was at fourteen
when every particle
of myself
is completely different
what is it that has
kept me the same
person
throughout my regeneration
is it my consciousness
is this my soul
I am a tree
grown from just a seed
every year
my leaves
shrivel up and die
and every year
I grow
brand new ones
it is still the same
tree
because it's trunk
remains the same
I am still the same
me
because my consciousness
remains the same
after a tree
is cut down
it does not disappear
it's trunk
remains
smaller,
yes
but still there
now a stump
if I am still myself
after my body
changes every molecule
of my prior self
this begs the question
will my consciousness
remain
after this body has died
if
I
am not limited
to a specific
chemical makeup-
able to transcend
different bodies-
does that mean
I will transcend
this
life
as well
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 9:08 AM UTC
february fourteenth was coming and I
imagined ways you would try to get me back.
I counted a dozen rose petals and ended
on "he loves me"
oh, how beautiful would it be if a rose could
tell me that you love me?
I laid in bed counting the glow-in-the-dark stars
that we put on my ceiling that one snowy night.
you had told me "whenever the world casts a shadow
or makes your life like a blizzard, and you are for some
reason unable to see the stars that make you smile,
look at your ceiling and know that my love and their
light will shine down on you."
oh, baby, I'm counting them and looking for your love
but the only thing I can feel is your absence.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 6:32 PM UTC
thoughts from february fourteenth;
No one else alone, just me. Hence the word alone.
Only my dreams to send a rose to.
NO, no thank you. Love is not for me.
I'm perfectly fine being with myself.
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 1:14 PM UTC
I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes
The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.
Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?
I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.
Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.
Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.
And Woman looks around.
Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.
And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.
The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:44 AM UTC
only dead boys hold insects like they're something
special
only a dead boy would let a mantis in his heart and
preying was always a better descriptor
because hymns burned in my throat and
i scratched a cross into my palm but i was never lucky enough to scar
but
oh, dead boy
bug lover
enduring a thousand lashes to save the soul of a beetle -
i'll help you peel off all your scabs to make sure they scar
thick tissue skin memory sometimes you think scars are the closest you'll get
to a wedding ring
you're a suicide king i think a kingdom of hearts was never the safest place for you i
don't think you understand the way your subjects' hearts are strung because
entomology entomos everything you love is cut to bits
and on the fourteenth of february you told me
the only purpose of a flower
was to hold
a spider
inside
and i guess that was why you painted all your walls with roses i
hope your garden smells as sweet
covered in your misfortunes
only a dead boy would let
a praying mantis so close
to his neck
oh, you freak. disgusting.
i ate the last one that let me this close.
you told me {if i die
leave my body
in the forest
by
an anthill}
maybe you don't realize we were doomed from the start or maybe you're just naïve but
honey you're a dead boy and
corpses don't fall in love.
[you're so genuine it hurts and i think
i could teach you how to be a fake -
nobody likes an honest man
i could teach you how to hate the world but you said
{the only one
i hate here
is me}]
freakish child.
all you see in every rorschach is mantes and
decapitations and
wedding rings you are an aberration,
suicide king entomologist your throne room
was full of termites.
with hallowed cheeks and hollowed churches,
i will assure that you scar
dead boy, if you die
i will put maggots
in your chest
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 2:44 PM UTC
August the fourteenth
2003
I remember quite
Well as there was a black out
But I full moon pearing into my
Bedroom window
Making me think
Of my Asian ancestors
Or was it a past life
Memory
Feb 20, 2021
Feb 20, 2021 at 9:40 PM UTC
New York drowns in the California-made blue
The child of the voodoo kisses the sky
Her indigo ligaments are laid bare
While she falls, chasing smoking rabbits
She is small yet she soars
With her proportions falling on deaf heads
She remembers the knights of the dawn
Tangled in her gallivanting hair
Without knowing her doors
She noses her way through her window
The modest parachute travels
With the nomadic East
She recognizes heaven by taste
Knowing that she believes less and less
Seeing all without need for the travel
Ignoring the scrutiny of a gavel
Leaving in the morning
Not stopping until the fifth night
Learning for forty fortnights
Stopping to rest every second year
What a bright-eyed soul!
A sparkling visage
Adorning all her wanders
The world is at her command
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 3:07 PM UTC
I reached the summit in time to see,
the grey of dawn just leaving,
The new sunrise begin to ascend.
The breeze, reborn, fresh as the day.
An Eagle soaring high over head,
spiraling on updrafts, master of the sky,
not hunting, just testing his wings,
apparently enjoying a little joy ride.
Oh what freedom that must be,
to fly like that as you please,
so completely released from gravity.
I watched him play, 'till out of sight.
Below me, on a slope stood a
sure footed Male Mountain Goat,
Warming himself in morning sun.
Head held high, proud and alert,
eyes searching for opportunity.
Mountain Jays squawk and play
among the sparse trees below
my lofty perch, as if they too frolic,
in new day celebration.
A day ago I saw the sun rise from
the fourteenth floor window,
of my office building.
That same sun, I now see,
from the top, of this mountain peek.
But it was very different.
Rather than fresh air laced,
with the scent of Fir and Pine,
It was the stale stink,
of cigarettes and dust,
Air pushed through a vent,
Resuscitated, recirculated
and processed, dead air resurrected.
My view East slightly obscured, by ***** glass.
A picture window that can not even be opened.
The Cascades majestically blue on the horizon,
The new days sun, resting on Mount Hood's shoulder.
A bright light inviting, Big and yellow, calling.
And but a day later,
here I stand, on Three Finger Jack,
Looking further East,
Breathing in this new clean day,
Taking memory pictures with my eyes,
Alone, but never completely.
Next time I will not wait so long.
Oh, if I could only live right here forever.
On further thought, after I'm dead,
haul my ashes up here, and leave 'em,
Sunrises and sunsets for all eternity.
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 12:38 PM UTC
Within the purple walls
of my dorm room
a quiet heart began to flutter.
Perhaps it started when you wrote:
"Artemis, happy not valentines day"
on the day after fourteenth
and made it much more special
with an overused brown paper bag
and a Chuck Palahniuk.
Now at home, even within the white walls
of my own room--
I'm missing you.
my quiet heart has just been silenced
but you're there
in every The Flash episode I watch
in every taro drink I get
and in every text message I receive
hoping
for the slightest chance
of you being there.
Because, after all, you are
the Orion I could only ache for from afar.
Jul 6, 2021
Jul 6, 2021 at 12:50 AM UTC
Five months ago we met,
On a Sunday morning.
That day my heart was set
I loved you since that moment
Before I left that very place
I wrote a special letter
A secret admirer was my case
But when you knew my identity, that I was your lover, you didn't go away
January thirty-first I sent you a poem for your birthday
The first poem I ever sent you
It took me more than a hundred miles to give it to you
But it was worth it, I made you smile
And that every detail did fit
February fourteenth of the present year
I greeted you with a great smile
And no fear,
I sent you my second poem
You thanked me for it
And that was enough to make me smile
But there came a day
You told me that it is about time to end it
That we have to pave away
And it is about to that for good
I was left out
With a melancholic feeling
Having a great doubt
About moving on easily
There were times
When I suddenly become nostalgic
Thinking of the glorious past
Remembering the memories that would last
People say I should start moving on
It is so hard
That I can't seem to figure how to
But if I won't move on
Would I be like this for the rest of my life
The sad story that was set aside
The encrypted past that no one could decode
The love that would never collide
And the heart that could not be revived
Life does go on
And I should cope with it
But until I have accepted
The fact of moving on
I'll be in this sad story of my time
Oct 19, 2013
Oct 19, 2013 at 9:32 AM UTC
I could drown myself in cups of coffee, in nicotine, old books, and whiskey.
But that won't make me crave you any less.
I could immerse myself in the deepest of enthralling literature, poems, a sea of colloquy,
Waves, strangling the current of my mind.
But you'd still be the resonant word.
I could listen to the sweetest of voices on repeat, golden like honey, sticky,
But my ears would only ever truly answer to yours.
Serpents tend to bite their own tails, a mythological and alchemic symbol of the cyclic nature of the universe: creation out of destruction.
But I'm not breaking my heart, loving you.
Swollen, yearning, daydreamed astray, gathered fast by night.
Curiosity deniable no more, innocence lost, hands wandered exploratory below.
Clambering desperate over themselves, those hands fell over folds of warmed flesh, over forgotten nooks and unfound crevasses, over trembling thighs and aching calves.
Astounded by the vast array of fresh delicacies, of unencountered sensations and deepest pleasures, she stood by loyal as those hands swiftly accustomed themselves to pursuing true ecstasy.
What divine rapture. What soaring heights of pleasure to ascend to. And what a delicious revelation to encounter such unimaginable ecstasy.
That twelfth year become a fourteenth, a fifteenth, a sixteenth.
And with the passing of each came a series of ever more adventurous trysts, the sorts of which Cousteau, Armstrong, and even Columbus could all be truly proud of.
Depths sounded, crevasses plundered, self’s nectars tasted and devoured, the pleasures of the flesh went unearthed.
Elaborate constructions lovingly shaped, waxed and honed, years of heady experimentation, trial and errors, fantasy and dreaming, all in the pursuit of even harder, better, faster, stronger ******* Perhaps it was that, or was it more a case of welcomed companionship? Ambidextrous frustration? A carnal appetite, most terrifying in its magnitude?
Isn’t it time then, you tried a little tenderness?
Be good to you.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 3:20 PM UTC
Your father
Is ordering
Gold bangles
For you
You ought to be glad
The glimmer
In that eyes
When you were born
While putting those
Tiny bangles on you
For the first time
Are inimitable
I feel envious
Of that bangle
And that world of yours
Without me.
I declare war
With your father
For no reason
Although certain
That I would disappoint as usual
I too had bought
A karivala
In the third life itself
Sure that you would come
I’ll wear
That
On your hand
On the morning
Of
The fourteenth life
I have preserved the karivala
In saline water
Lest it
Gets blighted
I deserve the honor
Of being the first poet
To have preserved a black bangle
Meant for his girl friend
In saline water.
trans : Shyma p
Jan 28, 2016
Jan 28, 2016 at 10:53 PM UTC
Above our Earth so high
The Hubble telescope now hangs
Beyond our vault-like sky:
An all embracing eye;
Now showing us the universe
In all her glory.
Those swirling galaxies give way to seemingly endless
Tracts of quasars, dust and gas.
Through Hubble we look back through time,
At remnants of the Big Bang:
The Birth, they tell us, of Creation,
That might be repeated,
Over and over again.
Yet, before this satellite was launched,
Or telescopes invented,
Just what did humans know?
What did the Aztecs know of England,
Or fourteenth century English folk know of America?
As technological advances have
Been swift, so our state of ignorance
Has been revealed for all to see.
For no-one knows The Purpose of Life.
Why?
Oh Why!
Do We Live
To Die
Why?
For we will Die
Not Knowing Why.
Ask Christ they say,
He’ll show The Way.
Ask God and He will too.
Ask Allah, Buddha,
Anyone you like;
And Me, I’ll tell you just to Hope,
For Love will see us through.
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 5:17 AM UTC
It was January when I wished to have an adventure
Like climbing a mountain; just being one with nature
But you seemed disinterested. You didn't make plans with me.
You simply said, "Don't worry. Someday. Maybe."
On Feb fourteenth, I made some chocolate parfait
Hoping we can enjoy the love-is-in-the-air day.
But you wrote me, "There are some things you have to let go."
And I thought to myself, yes some things, but not you. No.
On March, there was a pile of school stuff to work on.
Everyone was so busy to even sing me a birthday song.
As I entered the room, you just smiled and said "Hi."
And that left me thinking you forgot that today is my...sigh
End of sem, 'twas posted. Yes, we passed the exam!
With tears of joy, I gave thanks for a job well done.
I so wanted to celebrate that joyous moment with you.
But you weren't there. Worse, there was no one to talk to.
It sounds heart-breaking to know how cold you treated me.
But wait, there's more- I'm not yet done telling this story.
There were things that didn't turn out as I wanted it to be.
What happened next sums up how you ruined it perfectly.
You didn't plan that trip with me 'cause you wanted a surprise.
One day in January, you brought me to nature's paradise.
Hours of climbing up the mountains, alas we have arrived.
And that 'someday' you told me then, is a dead word given life.
I flipped that letter on valentines, and read what's written next.
"...except lollipops. Everybody loves it", that's the following text.
You said I should let go of the things that made me bitter.
And that you'd never leave me, come worse, or even better.
On my birthday, I managed to say "Hello" but nothing more.
Then I saw your doodle greeting posted on my backdoor.
"Happy birthday dear", it says. That made my day brighter.
Turns out you've worked overtime on that since two nights prior!
You went home that night when the exam results were posted.
I wasn't in the mood to talk. I'd rather sleep on my bed.
Then you placed on the table, this fruit you brought from the city.
So that's why you were missing! You bought a delish gift for me!
Looking back, I can't complain on how sad I felt initially
'Cause when I felt so down, you never failed to uplift me.
And if being with you means my every plan will not happen,
Then I'd bravely take that risk and live along these lovely ruins.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 9:13 AM UTC
So it's your fourteenth birthday and you must compose a list
A list of anything you want as a birthday gift
But what if the thing you want is really hard to say
The one and only thing you want on this birthday
Most girls my age might want an ipad or a phone
New makeup, a Nintendo or a laptop of their own
But the only thing I want, it would forever last
The one simple thing in which is from my past
All I want is him. Oh, how I miss him
Late June marked three years since I've seen him
It's been too long we've been apart
I want him, yet distance keeps us apart
Oh him, the one. What love shared
In my head I felt he cared
He made me laugh, and never cry
Never could I say goodbye
So can you see, just try to see
That the one thing you can give to me
Though he stands alone on my list
I never got my birthday wish
#7_8/9/11
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 10:29 AM UTC
He threw invitations
Through the halls.
They rained down
In an endless stream
And it seemed like everyone
Ended up with two.
There are over a thousand
People at are school.
But nobody wanted to go.
Not one person came out and said,
"Brian,
Everyone
Knows
You're
A
Pothead."
They all were "too busy"
Or their parents would
"Never let them go."
But everyone knew.
And so everyone went.
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 11:05 PM UTC
I'm innocent
everything goes opposite
LiFe has no abashment
Problems are objects
Life is aberrant
shoots hard bullets
I'm innocent
Life is full of coincidences
Hope people understand
Life ? People abases
Its a painful wound
No more absolves
I'm innocent
I'm tired of myself
Sick of being the same
I feel like a werewolf
Me , I did defame
Myself is just a calf
I'm innocent
This what life wants
No more tolerate
Live in aborts
Small sins accumulate
Chokes me with ascots
I'm innocent
I don't want this
Live in aversion
It's only my bris
Love must accretion
Or live like the ******* nazis
I'm innocent
I NEED her back
Important in my life circle
keeps me on the track
Every word is a canticle
Wrack hack her lack clack
I'm innocent
She's the one i NEED
My life is She
Sweet, tasty like the aniseed
The most important strophe
Makes it shinny and adorned
I'm innocent
I don't want drugs
I hate to scab
Its not brags
It hurts like a stab
Drugs is crags
Edit by: Melanie on this fourteenth day of September, twenty thirteen
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 7:54 AM UTC
Twice did our love see the roses of
St Valentines rising sun.
That which follows,
worse than the one foregone.
For we were never
the type,
to
obey.
The fourteenth day,
of that second month,
he came to me,
and I heard him say:
"My darling, for you I bestow a gift! -
the gift of irony
No gift at all."
He knew me,
and he knew
me
well.
O' then the second Valentines,
saw that this year,
I had a gift for him.
A gift he'd rather not hear.
A gift I'd rather not bear.
The gift to end
all
gifts.
Autumn blessed me,
with the deterioration of his memory.
And Winter cursed me,
with a heart of stone.
Spring breathed life,
into that which
I thought I'd
buried
alive.
And he's happy now.
He has another now.
And I'll be okay so long
as the sky remains blue,
and the setting sun leaves
the clouds
a rosy
hue.
Remove these photographs
from inside my skull.
Can't you see they're
making my heart too sore?
Take these rose-tinted glasses
from upon my eyes.
For I cannot bear
them
anymore.
Sep 15, 2012
Sep 15, 2012 at 3:35 AM UTC
I.
i was fourteen when i learned that columbus brought
guns and shackles to the new world instead of turkey.
last weekend, when you told me what happened to you
the night of october fourteenth, i had to check both of
your wrists to make sure they weren’t bound together.
i had to grow sea legs in the backseat of a parked car.
II.
sometimes hands are not kind.
sometimes hands explore people like diseases invade towns,
choking the distance between breath and body in seconds.
when he touched you that night, you must have confused
the cobweb of lines across his palm for transatlantic cables.
you must have forgotten that each year, the ocean spits out the
skeletons of ships who rattle the tides without her permission.
III.
when christopher columbus hit land, he wanted gold so badly that
he excavated it from the hearts of natives, took a midas hammer
to their spines until they bled pools of light around his ankles.
that autumn night, it happened to you too, didn’t it, golden girl?
except afterward, the stain you left on the white sheets was red.
IV.
in 1491, no one thought that the earth was flat.
sometimes history tries to rewrite things that make no sense,
that should never have happened to cities carved from trees
or girls whose bodies sing electricity into the midnight air.
if you listen, you can still hear the hiss of sparks on cold flesh.
you won’t forget the smell. they can’t remember anything else.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:22 AM UTC