"gracelessly" poems
Twisted reeds sway gently in the wind as black seabirds slice the sky overhead.
Waves rolling one by one crash with increasing ferocity on to the rocky beach,
And I watch the red sun set fire to the spray while the tide encircles me.
Tugging at my feet, pulling me forward, it beckons for my consent. I give in,
And all is quiet even in such chaos. All is nightmarish and beautiful all the more.
The blood red horizon seers my retinas; freshly unleashed tears take to the sea.
These waves, such enormous swells, crash in on me; an unseen war is waging.
They press me down and back, and then drag me further into the endless blue.
Over and over again, repetition loses count, my outcries die prematurely.
Only seawater and air manage to sputter from my lips, cracked and worn.
Not a whisper can be heard out here in such a true state of despair, but not all
Castaways are without faith. The past I once cherished has been lost to the depths,
Yet a knowing tingle in my gut keeps me searching for a message hidden merely
'Neath the surface. Drifting deeper into my pain, I notice a curious thing:
The force of the waves lessening as I gracelessly surrender to Sorrow and the sea.
My feet torn by jagged rocks no longer felt, my eyelids blistered by the red
Eternal sunset, a few waves push me under before the siege of the sea falters and
I learn to ride the surf, taking each afront as it comes, whether predicted or
Suddenly upon me. My pain ebbs away slowly with the passing of each episode,
And with each wave I acknowledge my loss, relinquishing my burden.
Like so many desparinging hearts before me shipwrecked in the sea of tears,
I forcefully remind myself that one day the lush, inviting green shores of the
Other side of the sea will appear in my line of vision. Yet, for now, I let myself
Drift through the grief of grieving you, often unsure of whether I'm meant to float
Or should let myself sink toward the blackest crags of my mind. Here alone.
Apr 19, 2011
Apr 19, 2011 at 11:30 PM UTC
You have
inner-city-Chinese-restaurant-koi-pond
eyes; infiltrated pupils
that sit behind and spy on the others sitting around,
all whilst remaining dark: a hallmark I admire.
There's a maternity queen wrapped tight in a dress,
blue and white, who sits at the front and speaks and
you write down what leaks and you make it
stick with a biro you bought with a virgin-first
pay check envelope-
ripped open with an eager thumb I'd like to hold
when winter rolls up and in.
Lighthouses look across bigger ponds to warn
of storms that are yet to come.
From afar they see and decide,
weigh up and divide choice into digestible chunks of
we can save them, or if not, we'll guide them whilst they swim:
you make me do this endlessly, almost every day
and this poem is to stop me from thinking
your falsetto hums, that pause in mid air, free, are for me-
you've another bow in brown hair and our corridor conversations
lead nowhere-
I'm gracelessly in love and I just said love and
it's a kind-of cliché, a boring over used word
that we all use when we're excited;
when we run laps around a track that we cannot navigate,
when we're hungover and don't want to work with another desk clerk bore
who sits and talks and works as if an unpaid chore,
but it is true and I wish you'd notice me.
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 1:16 PM UTC
I've been thinking
about
the art of speaking
auditory rhythms
and the like
in my very personal
opinion
these audio utterances
so often used
by the population
have become
somewhat
like pollution
fogging gracelessly
over the small drops
of wisdom
uttered
in near silence
if you actually listen
you'll probably hear them
somewhere
under the blurtations
of the unconsidered
thoughtless thoughts
they're there.
If you listen
the art of quiet
uncovers many surprises
Jan 23, 2011
Jan 23, 2011 at 10:14 AM UTC
i am fluent enough to understand emptiness when it speaks to me; if you dust off my skin enough, you'll see traces of the sighs we exchange — spilling down gracelessly, they bruise a fragile skin. i have mastered the art of naming them after wild lilacs.
maybe for once, i can say that i am soft enough to grow flowers on my wrists. my lungs. my sternum — all the parts of me that hurt.
but i know too well all about screaming in barren lands. i have thrown my poems in a forest fire. i have forgotten how to breathe without hands around my neck. i have wished to fall on a sword, way too many times to still call these open wounds as bruises — these bruises as flowers — these flowers as soft.
i am fluent enough to understand emptiness when it speaks to me — kindly, and yet, how can i tremble over gentle things? maybe pain isn't what it always is, and i wish to unlearn this language — the mother tongue, whose every word i know by heart. and maybe one day, when it sighs my name, i finally will stop sighing back.
but now, this bed is caving in under all these lilacs and glassy, distant eyes. oh, such a classic case of a girl gone mad at the sight of sunbeams on dying flowers — aching in silence, as she watches it all.
i am fluent enough to understand emptiness when it speaks to me. and outside, the sun rises in vain.
Oct 10, 2020
Oct 10, 2020 at 7:20 AM UTC
from the eye wall
thoughts of imminent rain
banked clouds assemble
black and ominous
with saturated breath
will not be denied
their time to rage
against the numbness
of each little death
barometers fall
coastal fortification
futile sandbagging
forlorn gestures
against the flood
a tropical depression
jet-streaming blue
wild moon tide
to desolate shore
precipitation
gray accomplice
faithful torrent
stratified walls erode
sodden wood, bone
unbalanced homes
collapse gracelessly
no match for gravity
or the merciless sea
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 12:43 PM UTC
Clementine deleted Joel
from her mind. Joel tried to
forget her; he couldn't, so
he got rid of her too. You
try, I know, to get rid of me. I
try, you know, to pretend that
the world isn't spinning so fast
in the hope
that we will fall of its spinning-top edge
and stumble, clumsily, gracelessly, into
each other. We're spinning so fast with it-
the world- so this is unlikely, so we both
pretend that it's an accident when we fall
into each other,
again and again, as
We play spin the bottle while
The world spins instead.
Suddenly.
Now that that same world has stilled itself for
us: we don't know what to do without its
rotationary madness angling us
towards old age and crumpets (together?). That
same world has stilled itself until
tomorrow when that same world will spill
itself out from day to night to day again
as we take our respective first drafts
of our poems written about each other
and
Edit.
out that same mad spin
that made us
us
just like
Joel and Clementine forgot-
on purpose. We forget, on purpose
with purpose
but,
we'll still meet each other in Montauk where
that same world will still itself
as we wrap our fingers around each other's
fingers
in the cold
where you might finally reciprocate
my lacklustre
confessions.
You too,
right?
Jul 29, 2015
Jul 29, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
darling, loving me is falling apart with octobers and kissing your poems goodbye. it is watching autumns unfold while slipping into the tracks of a freight train. i will kiss your skin, all chapped lips and sweetened cigarettes, my hands on your neck, as if feeling the walls of an athenian ruin. i will be every distinctive silhouette in a film, every line in a song, every secret spilling gracelessly off your lips before you catch yourself. i will set you on fire and you will burn; all wide-eyed and irises made of the storm, beneath my feather light touches.
i have a proclivity for breaking hearts and you will find yourself neck-deep in whirl of heartbreaks and headlights — all moonstruck and confused. i will break you — destroy you, bit by bit, in the most elaborate, exquisite way, that you will know one thing, darling —
chaos has a tendency to look beautiful.
Oct 11, 2019
Oct 11, 2019 at 10:52 AM UTC
I woke up
to a nightcalm-shattering
cell phone ringtone.
"Can I come over, baby?"
"What time is it?"
"I don't know 3, 4."
**** eyes roll, sigh,"yeah I guess so."
"Don't sound too excited," Molly said, Molly laughed.
"Are you going to be long?"
"Nah, I'm already outside."
"Awesome. Okay, let me put on some pants."
I opened the door.
Her hair was up.
Her skin was the color of milk.
Her eyes were grey.
She held keys in the palm of her hand.
"I like your hair," Molly said, Molly laughed.
I said it was getting ridiculous,
she put her hands on my chest,
the tension in the tips of her fingers grew,
exploration, exploration.
"Do you want something to drink?"
"Nah, can we just sit on the couch?"
"Sure."
"How's your fella do-"
She kissed the words, to lock them in.
She started to tear at my shirt,
I stalled her advances,
turned the tables,
I'm done with being prey.
I pulled her up gracelessly,
I fell through her crimson shirt,
through her black bra,
I drank each ounce of her chest,
I grabbed her nape gracelessly,
her eyes briefly frightened,
turned sinister,
turned to validation,
turned to encouragement.
I mapped her stomach,
made quick work of her
cotton shorts,
I bit the waistline of
her lace,
she clung to my coagulated hair,
I laid her to the ground,
we warred atop notebooks and
***** t-shirts,
kissing vigorously in an attempt
to stay far ahead of morals, of reasoning.
I feasted on her hip bone,
she tugged at my shirt,
no,no,no.
I removed the lace with my teeth,
her breath was exciting,
I feasted on the insides of her thighs,
she convulsed,
cursed,
grabbed tight to shirt, to hair, to every piece of furniture near.
Molly's pupils, irises, all grew.
Molly's panting ******* moans all rose.
Howling.
Peaking, breaking, releasing, falling,
sighing,
sighing,
breathing.
I wiped my lips with the back of my arm,
got up,
went to the bathroom,
used some mouthwash,
Molly walked in behind me,
"Things have been going better with him, lately, actually."
"I'm ******* happy for you guys."
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 2:45 PM UTC
Hard to swallow:
When they see you,
stretched languidly across the page,
frivolous in your expenditure of letters,
This is what you are to them.
Long and polysyllabic,
a frustrating combination of strange, small word-parts
And that Y (such an indecisive letter!):
flung in there so gracelessly.
You are repulsive to them;
You have broken their rhythm
of short, blocky words that trip off the tongue
with your sudden and awkward out-of-place-ness.
You are abhorrent to them;
You have blurred their strict margins
of male and female roles,
of pants and skirts,
with your little blip of existence,
mucking about in the wrong side of the clothes store.
You are an anomaly, a mistake, a mystery to them;
You are a *** to be located
A term to be defined
A word to be pronounced
A gender to be assigned
But I like you.
I like how your letters sprawl,
confident and self-sure.
I like how your attire causes others to gawk
and reorder their worlds.
I like how your legs look in that tux,
your eyes in that dress.
How the long swoops of your g and your y
echo the way the ends of your undone tie drape from your collar:
Elegantly.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 3:39 PM UTC
Of the piano man
I've never heard, and
am gracelessly missing out
on him. Cannot thank
him for inspiring me
because I refuse to listen. He's
playing in concert only blocks
away, or perhaps on YouTube, but
who needs him? I ask myself
this on the surface--
deep down I know that
I do.
Walking all over the town in
other directions, still
can't get away from the
violin accompaniment, the truthful
tones. I've
no hope, I won't hear him
I've no hope for relation, I
won't listen. Run
everywhere, find myself there
He says, "Welcome home my
lost dreamer."
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 2:28 PM UTC
It was supposedly a birthday gift,
this long-legged razor's edge.
My brother must've seen me
watching it's live demonstrations.
Little did he know,
how skilled I thought myself to be.
The wrapping came off easily.
It was crudely shredded by a lesser blade
soon to be replaced.
Then the weapon itself glared at me
through the clear plastic window of its box.
Unsheathing it then, I felt its power come to me,
two steel legs spreading for a ****** murderer.
I probed it meticulously, the blade
caught the light and somehow swallowed it
before its appendage whirled across to conceal it.
This was a knife with thoughts.
Then I tried my first trick.
The blade danced elegantly,
and though I held on (for dear life)
it wanted to escape from my clutches.
I was caging it gracelessly between my fingers
and its first prerogative was to be free.
Still holding tight, it changed tactics,
a blood thirst radiating from within.
The next move would be my last.
For one split-second it escaped the probation of my palms,
somersaulting through the air above me.
It pointed downwards for a final coup de grâce.
I divorced myself from the weapon that day,
stitches adorned my bloodied hands
and the blade was taken as evidence,
though for what trial I never discovered.
My brother tossed it into the sea, I found,
legs still spiralling, blade still sharp.
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 5:41 AM UTC
The world weighs down upon the life examined.
But life is unsubstantiated;
Proof is sought in the darkness
with unbeautiful hands that extend
gracelessly into the unknowable,
Desperate for the horizon.
And we set ourselves on fire,
burning in blue flames,
to escape what we can't control
and to remember what it means to exist.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
L--- is the thick, adrenaline-wrought catharsis of a summer rainstorm on the highway at night.
It's the ridiculously advantaged team in a game of dodgeball;
and the hail in March as you run from work to close your car's skylight;
and the wave that rakes your hair with the teeth of the sand and surf;
and the pebble on the downhill slope that your bike trips over and you fly off, eyes wide and gracelessly flailing;
and L--- is the way you lose yourself in the cosmic threads of their eyes;
and the breath you forgot you were holding.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 11:22 PM UTC
there are drops that tremble
along the edges of my glass--
i stare into them, trying
to see how they cradle blood
in their atoms.
they yield none of their secrets.
they slide
unnoticed
through my veins.
they are crystals that emerge
gracelessly, unheeded
to ponder the airless spaces
that clutter my lungs.
tonight they roam like ghosts
to the unclean surfaces of skin that
stretch grudgingly across my bones.
they tremble
to the lights.
they are silver pepper
that sting my cells alive yet
i can't feel them singing.
they inhabit me
and uninhabit me too quickly
for me to invite them home.
they find no home in me, only
poison
to **** into their loving atoms
blindly, uncaring
that they are contaminated with
my waste, my blood.
they carry these things from me
to pour back into the forge
that melts my mistakes.
they permeate any weakness
to sustain it.
to prevent me from bloating
with toxicity that unconsciously
finds its way inside
especially on colored nights.
they click their tongues at me
while i'm sleeping, they
can see my dirt-encrusted synapses
and the hitches in my skin.
they feed and chastise me
from within.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 6:59 PM UTC
I'll tell you a tale
of our own Devil's Island
and the demonic crash
of the waves in a swell,
the smell and the taste
of the ball-breaking weather
the ghosts that deliver
poor sailors to Hell.
We were out in the water
amongst our Magdalens
the wind plucked the ropes
of our rigging at sea
we looked for a port
and saw many lights flashing
“that's old Devil's Island,”
said the skipper to me.
Ghosts began hurling
their fierce imprecations
to “come to the Island
safe landfall to thee”
but the skipper turned round
the ship with a vengeance
“that old Devil's Island
will never catch me.”
I thought he was mad
to be scared of a legend
it was my first time
in a storm on the sea
and two men washed over
to Davey Jone's Locker
“God bless 'em, they'll rest now”
the skip said to me.
Protesting the treatment
of two forlorn sailors
I said to the skipper
“It's not good to tell”
“It's better,” he said,
“that they're resting in Heaven
than entering into the portals of Hell.”
Winds lasted the night
then the voices did falter
the lights blinkered out
and I saw very well
so many rocks jagged
just waiting to smash us
The Devil's Isle gateways
await in the swell
If you're on a ship
and the voices of demons
come tell you it's safe
in their harbor alee
remember the shoreline
at old Devil's Island
then turn the ship seaward
and gracelessly flee.
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 6:38 PM UTC
For God So Loved the World
that He gave his one and only begotten son
For God so loved the World
that He saw our sins and didn’t call it “done”
For God so loved the world
that He sent a lamb to be grown for slaughter
For God so loved the world
and we chose to hate us… harder and harder
The Heaven rejoices, the night’s stars delight
The night runs gleefully in a bright satin light
The people around me, scurry with the customs.
The people around me, quaff honey and merry
The people around me, buried in delicatessens
The world reminiscing in carols with cake ‘n wine
But remember Christmas, not for its colour and pop
‘Tis the dawn of our deliverance by Love from atop
For God So Loved the World
that He gave his one and only begotten son
For God so loved the World,
that He paid a price in blood for us, bloodhounds
For God so loved the World,
and we chose to gracelessly trample our brothers
For God so loved the World.
and we chose to hate our kin, harder and harder.
Harder and harder.
Dec 24, 2020
Dec 24, 2020 at 2:45 PM UTC
Exhausted
I have done to myself
a beating worth giving to somebody else
Someone I used to know. . .
Inducted
Unceremoniously but proper
Into a world pushed out of a stopper
Oh, how I used to know
the shine of your skin in a moonlit glow
the pause of your chest after taking in breath
Awaiting the exquisite,
Inexorable,
Exhale
Where I too would exude from your abysmally beautiful depths
to fall gracelessly down frosted wrought iron steps
to land in a mangled heap of electrified fear
Wishing frantically
that your faraway ears may hear
the call of my heavy falling tears.
For years
Four years
the end had loomed near
but I pushed it away
Awaiting the day
When I would exhaust all the words I had left to say
It never came
It never does
So what you're left with ought to be enough
but if it's not
then stop right then
Quit right there
You can't hold it in
Breathe out your tainted air
Feb 4, 2010
Feb 4, 2010 at 9:49 PM UTC
Have you ever looked for wonderland?
Have you ever nearly smashed your head through your looking-glass?
Candy-striped fairy class,
Dancing around a glitter waterfall.
Prince charming line ups,
All dark, handsome, and tall.
What would we be without our starry-eyed harlequin princesses?
Lest, tire of the transparent stares?
Do venture, never care.
We will build a castle.
A castle in the air, yes?
A castle in the clouds,
T'will be the envy of the sun.
A castle of stars,
A castle of gold,
Diamond door knobs,
Pavement of pearl.
Venture up the cosmic stairs,
Note the hint of ***
And you open the door,
And 14 are dead!
Their suicide notes,
They are fraught with a sin!
Vanity, greed, lust, sloth..
Sinners never win,
So that's why you immediately fled!
Sinners are taught thou shalt not sin by sinners themselves!
Yes, it's not your folly, alas you've been groomed!
Trudge two steps at a time down the stairs you go,
Wait!
No,
No stairs to be found!
Molten rock and lava petticoat.
You topple down,
Clumsily ,
Gracelessly,
Down to fiery pits of Hades!
And that's where our story ends.
You see,
I nearly went mad,
Looking for my wonderland.
Dec 29, 2013
Dec 29, 2013 at 11:11 PM UTC
Fast.
Matter-less.
Moving through the city like photons.
She's never there like the stars...
muted gracelessly by carcinogenic light pollution.
Dark.
Empty.
Like a landfill where every day it's sunny.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 12:57 PM UTC
i laugh
as i watch
you
fall gracelessly
from the
pedastal i
naively placed
you upon
at first
i think you
flawless
no imprefections
mark you or
disfigure you
but turns
out you are full
them
i think though
i placed you up there
as a distraction
while i tell you
all the things
you want to hear
i cross my
fingers and
hope to hide
all the flaws
that ive been
trying to hide
so jokes on you
my inadequete
vision
of useless
perfection
Apr 7, 2010
Apr 7, 2010 at 3:39 PM UTC
After the last flood has dried
And the last quake has grumbled
After the sky has torn--
in chunks both feared and fair--
And unto Earth gracelessly crumbled
When there is no time left to unwind
or memories there to rewind
Listen,
for in the silent breeze
floats a living dream
with childlike ease.
It sings:
*Of all the places I have been
Of all the faces I have seen
Of all the comforts I have had
None dare be as safe
as the arms of Dad.*
Oct 23, 2010
Oct 23, 2010 at 5:22 PM UTC