"haircuts" poems
Delicately pink hearts gently unfurl
From nests of lively minds;
There is nothing weak about Southern women
We are supposed to wear ugly dresses,
Enamel bugs,
French scarves that wrap around and
Tie us all together from the inside out
Football and sassy new haircuts might not make faces look younger,
But they can lift spirits
And just because you spend all day advising others
Of their secret trials
Doesn't mean that you can hold your family in a cage,
Golden and happy though you may want things to be.
Remember that if you feel new, an outsider,
Your personal tragedies seeming too much to bear,
You will always find comfort in laughter
Especially if laughter through tears is your favorite emotion.
You might not pick up boys or money,
But friendship steeps in small salons
Like sweet tea.
Prickly sarcasm and pessimism aren't always the hallmarks
Of a heart devoid of caring,
It's just a natural response after two deadbeat husbands and
Three ungrateful children; somewhere in all of it is a promise
Of hope.
And even in a barren womb new life is discovered,
And even in death joy is found,
And even through pain,
Sisterhood blooms,
Delicate steel petals enveloping grieving hearts.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
eye did. As my prejudices expected, the odd assortment of "characters"were all present and not to be unaccounted for...a romantic comedy on a good Friday, attracts the believers, the well wishers, the ones who think if only the world was.. and I was not re or so tired of life, unemployed, lonely, damaged in some manner of being...
not too many young, just a few... theater darkness is a masque, with a risqué chance of oh no, I've been witnessed by the non-believers.
the infirm with their mobile caretakers and paraphernalia were there. Odd couples, were there. If there was one unifying common characteristic, I selected this one. We all needed haircuts. eye don't know why but it made me think about going to get one's haircut, and the rituals that requires....and it is and is not a bit like being in a almost totally private world inpublic, where you, the individual and some outside force majeure, hairdresser, movie screen engages and temporarily transforms you. That is why, I, went to the movies on a Friday afternoon, to be transformed and not reformed, in public, in private...
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 4:30 AM UTC
despite all those new hairstyles and haircuts
to make yourself forget about him and move on
girl, you can never change it to the way you want life to be
or cut him out from your life
Aug 18, 2015
Aug 18, 2015 at 10:07 AM UTC
I once had a lover that on the most ordinary of days
Out shopping for underwear
Looked at my reflection in the mirror and said
I love the boy in you
And I love the girl in you
And everything in between
Later they asked me what love is
And I said I think that's what love is
Seeing everything in between the reflection
Seeing somebody clearer than they see themselves
I said tell Me you love every piece of me
The skin I shed
The skin that hates this chest
The “it's a boy” they never said
The “I love yous” they never meant
I've spent so much time trying to find the in between where there's no haircuts
Or funny ways of dressing
Or anything confusing about my chest
I'll just keep choosing to ignore the way they say
You're so beautiful
In the same breath as potential
As if it's a credential for my anatomy
Instead tell me I'm the cutest boy you've ever had in your bed
Tell me my body isn't woman it's just the wild
Tell me flesh is nothing
I'm made of light
Tell me my light is beautiful
Touch my soft
Touch my belly button but not like they ever touched me
Touch me like I'm the kind of soft that can turn hard
A tin roof against the rain
Beating a thunderstorms refrain into music
They told me I have too much bark
Too much bite
I'm too pretty to fight
So tell me instead I'm the softest pebble you've ever skipped across your body
And ripples are born of my feathered fists and my hammering heart
Tell me softness has no gender
Tell me our body's never knew what gender meant
I want to be gender bent over till it breaks
And takes the freighttrain words of haters
But don't you cringe under the jagged teeth of their stares
**** my love into your body and hold it there
Always write a poem in my body
And use the words they spit at us
But instead infuse them with a welcome song to tell my body it's found home
Everything we do rhymes with ****** rhymes with **** rhymes with queer
These labels belong to us
The fear in these labels does not belong to us
I'm here to witness you try to live in a body you call home without trying to run away
I wish my body was made of clay so I could fit it into the box labeled
“I love you no matter what”
Will you love me no matter what
If I want you to bend me over backwards until I break the reflection the mirror tries to make of me
And find it's just glass
Like my see through skin
Try to see through my skin
Tell me you see me
I'll see every piece of you
Soft
Hard
Apart
Together
Girl
Boy
But never in a box
I'll take that box labeled “I'll love you no matter what” and I'll break it down
Leave that truth around your bones
Until you believe it can't break
That truth will be our home and we can live in that between because that's where love is.
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 8:52 PM UTC
when you die I'll get your ashes
I'll form bar graphs and pie charts
of how many times I made you laugh
when I helped you heal
how I made you feel
I could see when you were happiest
and when you were the saddest
I can see how much money you spent at Starbucks
and how many hours you worked
and how many miles were driven from our homes
how many times you left your things with me
how many cds I listened to on my way to see you
how many haircuts you gave me
and how many poems I've written you
Oct 15, 2012
Oct 15, 2012 at 6:54 PM UTC
And they are doing white
Cars,
Nice haircuts and,
Broad Boulevards,
They are doing slick radio Ads,
Smooth charcoal voices,
And Western music,
Gliding with thoughts of Cashmere,
Air-conditioned Kaftan's catching the breeze just so,
Dark glasses like reflective buildings
Perched on tight noses,
Moving forward with morning talk shows in,
Gleaming white cars,
Fabulous fingers prodding perfectly balanced power buttons,
Opulent mechanisms,
Fabulous manoeuvres,
In Dehli they are moving swiftly,
Their stylish Sari's, airborne.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 4:47 PM UTC
This small talk kills me
when once it was so easy.
I remember when I
was the favorite.
This was before her first car
and sixteenth birthday,
movie dates, weekend sleepovers,
and high school crushes.
This must be how old toys feel,
played out, aged,
traded for the new and bright.
On a sand dune,
we sit shipwrecked,
stranded,and talk carefully
like strangers do about
sea birds pecking for food,
dead jellyfish,
and the innocence of sand castles.
Dark glasses disguise
my quick views of bikinis,
fitness thighs, and smooth dark tans,
mask her sneak peeks
at young muscle, flat stomachs,
and cute boys with fashion haircuts.
She burrows her toes into the sand
to pass the time.
I try to think of jokes
to make her laugh
but no punchlines come.
We share a fancy grilled cheese sandwich,
shy giggles,
and a pink lemonade
before she can no longer hide
the boredom in her eyes.
I know its time to leave.
She reclines her seat back
and sleeps the drive home,
leaving me alone
with miles, empty highways,
and whispers of classic rock
from the radio.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 10:53 PM UTC
Fowl floating and flapping across an ocean canopy.
Lightly squawking and ascending in a calm summer sky.
Waves shine and melt into the beachfront in a dull roar slowly thundering in diagonal collapsing sectors.
The top of the ocean. The point of a sphere. Its water that falls slowly to the bottom of..... Here!
Ripples and puddles and drinks full of life, the clearest the murky and bluest in light.
Mountains and palisades can be rocks that reach skyward. God on a gravel road walking through.
The golden purple cattails glow in the sunlight like strawberry fields that fizzle on my hands in the wind that can dance. The vinyl green stem leafs sit stagnantly silently awaiting the moon.
Hoppers crescendo in a frozen moment singing in stillness that refuses to relent.
The trees around them bask in the energetic massage from the moving sections of recently called air vapors.
The Hi- C haircuts that nature reminds me it inspired bobble from the vectors.
This climate ecology scenery breeds the moments religions were made for me.
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 8:33 PM UTC
a parade of haircuts, chosen clothing
we talk small talk at a distance
waltz around filling our baskets
the weather is mentioned, often
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 10:41 AM UTC
I had a haircut, I read it cuts off feelings.
I forced myself to smile, my mama said it heals it.
I met some people who I’ve never ever met ,
My friends ensured me it has to help.
I started drinking stronger liquor,
Tequila was the best, it worked the quickest.
Some time has passed, I thought I am feeling better,
I have moved on and I became independent.
My under eyes stopped needing so much make-up,
And I thought to myself: f*ck, yes! I made it.
Until a day that I received a text:
“New haircut looks great, I need you back.”
A very long one minute later I replied:
“I’ve never left.”
Feb 4, 2018
Feb 4, 2018 at 12:17 PM UTC
All those years worn,
you never did make it outta The Valley,
all those feature film premieres, never did land a starring roll,
or get any recognition, let alone an Oscar from The Academy,
all those foggy eyed groggy times, you were probably high,
all those checks you cashed, for your non refundable time,
waking up one day, wondering where it all went,
driving a car with a lease more expensive your apartment’s,
still stuck in that same apartment, off Ventura Blvd.,
still a B-List actor ******* that A-List ****
still getting haircuts from stylist, still racking up milage,
got more clothes in your closet than dollars in the bank,
& in the end after it’s all said & done & all the time is spent,
& you’re finally spent, what’ll you have left to show for it all?
All those years worn,
spent suspended in mid air, baking in The Valley,
all those times you attended, those feature film premieres,
still no recognition, let alone an Oscar from The Academy..
∆ LaLux ∆
from The Hollywood Hearts Trilogy Vol. 3:
Dark Lights | Bright Shadows
9/9/19
I'm letting it all go, telling it like it is in Hollywood. This book is the one. Get it, or if you can't afford the $3, let me know and I'll buy it for you.
Sep 2, 2019
Sep 2, 2019 at 10:33 PM UTC
I love him. I've loved him since the time he tied my left skate in March 2013. And it's a love that aches and hurts and explodes. But it's also a love that sings and twirls and laughs for no reason. It's a love that has you crying in the bathroom on a Saturday night but its also a love that has you dancing in the shower on a Monday morning. It's a love that's left me with cramped fingers, dry ink pens and full notebooks. It's a love makes me feel like a thunderstorm. It's a love that makes me feel like a sunset. He's not a home, he's a person. A wonderful one. And sometimes people say things like, "why would you forgive him," or, "why don't you just let go." And I smile. I used to get mad but out of all the types of love this is, it's also a love that's flexible. It's not a love that waits or chases but a loves that's there. It's a love that shares shoulders and stories. If I've learned anything about loving you it has been that if I cannot love you as a lover, I will love you as friend. I will love you messy handwriting, always asleep first, bad haircuts and all. Our love is flexible. Our love is patient. Our love is what happens when you rub your eyes. It's a love that bruises and bleeds and scabs and heals. It's a love that asks, "how was your day?" And would wait patiently forever for your reply. How was your day?
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 11:19 PM UTC
Somedays I don't feel like writing
and it worries me because
'Writers write everday --
real ones, at least.'
I fear being ordinary,
which is tasteless because
maybe being ordinary
is what I need.
The appeal of snapbacks
and hipster haircuts
is starting to make more sense.
Blending into a crowd
might suit me better;
to be invisible but
to no longer be insecure.
Rap lyrics make more sense,
even though I can't relate;
these words are my sedation,
these clothes aren't armor
but marketable camouflage.
My words have been said before,
but that might be okay because
I'd hate to torment myself
wondering about my relevance.
So, to move on, I write,
and I write, and I write
to pander and to conform.
Substituting thought for
appealing diction and
strong imagery, afraid
to show myself because
maybe you're too much
like me, which, surely,
would eat me alive.
Jul 22, 2016
Jul 22, 2016 at 10:49 PM UTC
i swallowed the
bathroom mirror whole
threw an entire bag
of lemon drops
into the highway and
danced on someone else's grave
in a failed attempt at
self-acceptance.
it's hard
to shatter the
saccharine sweet
taste of personal hate
sticking to my hands
like half melted wax.
i've almost
given myself permission
to fail
but not yet.
hasn't it been
stovetop memories
a couple haircuts
and one hell of a year?
scratch the back of my
neck
in a halfhearted attempt
to forget
and i'll take up burning
aluminum pillows
like i took up
loving myself.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 6:46 PM UTC
For I to cherish soaked in sunbathe dream of freckles on cream and strawberries
For you to see and sigh and fill with warm fizzy pink water too sweet to contemplate
For you to see and sigh and long for long sleeved sheathed in jealousy spilling out in bright red syrup
For I to paint faces with my utterances fanciful making ugly alluring curious mysterious attractive
I can take my nose to be strength clever seducting wicked men and women to listen to my describes or look upon papyrus sheets
I can make my jaw a naive child stricken with blue veins translucent skin clinging papery like wings to brittle bones under eaves ready to snap
I can write my eyes wide innocent in first time headlights first time frosted firsts filled with empty antecedents of unclasped things and fifty fifty longings
I can make the ugly striking like a stinging snake cruel contemplating lashing smarts or make it sad sorrowful quiet longing new to life love mature but still a child
I can add grace poise to my stretched out neck make it stand tall of pride training because it's ladylike to do so and so I must and say my prayers every night too as I powder over my faintly drawn freckles
Boyish humour uncaring to my generous brows a baseball mitt bubblegum cards and a fetish for goths forever unrecognised as spit flies and at home haircuts compose a flyaway life
Embellish the hollows collarbones and detract the too-broad shoulders make the frailty proud and small shrink it down to fit in a girl big brothers to gentle and lovers to rough pinned wrists that near snap
With my words I reap the benefits of my own mindly kindling I wander through half made times in history and finished times two seconds right now
I can create myself and so I do my thirst to be is insatiably insatisfied like my attraction to bad grammar and lilts when you talk so I do I become each and every one
I create myself and it's addicting
Aug 3, 2012
Aug 3, 2012 at 5:41 PM UTC
I avoid writing poems about flowers
I don’t need to tell you that roses
Bright, blood red, placed perfectly atop a broccoli-green vine,
Existing solely for the purpose of atheistic pleasure
Is something that is beautiful
Put a white background behind anything and it becomes beautiful
Flowers are more than a hyped-up beauty pageant queen that those old white women grow to fill their voids with
They sometimes manage to grow in my neighborhood too
Once prominent Victorian homes now squalid and neglected
Weathered wood, dirt embedded in the sea-foam green, navy blue, eggshell white paint they were once coated with
Trash thrown in front of their faces
Like their appalling forms granted validity for those who passed by to toss their gum wrappers, soda cans, and cigarettes without hesitation
It’s an age-old tale
Ugly things deserve ugly treatment
I’ll always spot a savage grove of mutt flowers
Amongst the trash cans and recycle bins
Struggling to make their way to the surface of these rejected homes
Acknowledging them, coddling them, interweaving themselves along their battered walls
Ignorant to their repugnancy
Eager to decorate and give them an evanescent glow
Sad too,
Sad they didn’t grow in front of some rich family’s home
Where they would’ve been given weekly haircuts and fertilizer containing only the best **** on the market
They wilt a little
They have no direction,
No will to live or to die
They exist and sit there until a bike runs them over
And takes them out in one swoop
Or until those stray dogs **** and **** on them until their weak
Frames fall staunchly onto the grave sidewalk
Exquisite wild lepers,
You do more for society than I ever could
You’ll sit there with a dutiful posture
Harboring old McDonald French Fry boxes
Eating the sewer-infested dirt that you laboriously grew from
Constantly breathing air swarmed with smog
Beautiful because,
Despite it all,
You don’t hate them
You’ll peek at me through your prison of trash and give me a flash of your purple and blue skin
And
My eyes feel your love and serenity
And for a moment,
The world is nothing but a kaleidoscope of warm skin and heartbeats
Nov 3, 2011
Nov 3, 2011 at 11:06 AM UTC
I don’t get haircuts anymore because they’re too traumatic.
I panic at the thought of clippers clipping loudly,
buzzing past my naked ear, flesh freshly exposed after
months of muffled confinement like a prisoner in a
third world country hidden away in dark quarters
then pulled out in bright light and pushed around by
a man with rough hands and sharp instruments.
Jun 8, 2012
Jun 8, 2012 at 8:00 PM UTC
I want to go home but I don't have a home.
I live in the middle space between where you're driving from
and where you're driving to.
I live on backseats and inside large purses.
I live in vending machines
and beds you used to sleep in all the time
but don't sleep in anymore
because you moved away.
I live on driveways that got redone while you were gone,
and new haircuts you couldn't see because you weren't there.
I live on promises that we'll do something.
I live in those cool new sunglasses you got,
but they broke,
and I never got to see your wear them.
I live in the little space between you and your lover,
the one that feels like "I love you"
but really means
"I love you, but I'm not in love with you."
I live on unsatisfactory naps
and the island your friends put you on when you finally said what you'd been wanting to say.
I live under the rug when you complain about people behind their backs
because no one really knows how to tell someone they don't like them
for who they are...
as a person.
I live in every spare shoebox that isn't filled with notes
and gets jealous of the other shoeboxes that are filled with notes.
I live on the top bunk
and I've never fallen off
but I'm still kind of scared that I will one day.
I live on the laugh that lets me know you're still listening.
I live where I never wanted to live,
but I live here,
because I choose to live here.
And you live there because you choose to live there,
even if it doesn't seem that way.
I'm here and you're there.
I'm here for you and you're there for me,
even if it doesn't seem that way.
This is where I live.
You should send me a letter some time.
Apr 22, 2010
Apr 22, 2010 at 5:07 PM UTC
Goodbye my long forgotten love story
We shared our youth spending glory
Those days of innocence have finally closed
My heart has ceased with the overdosed
You shared your green pretty eyes with me
I forgot how that smile was my long lost key
Unlocking hidden dreams of our gorgeous passing days
We've had our dragging overdue pays
Changing for the better
Changing for the worst
Reminiscing over fond memories of the past
Keeping this conversation alive to last
My thoughts of you are calming down
With all these painful doubts to drown
You call me up and whisper with your soft voice
We always had our year long choice
Pretending to hate our junior age
Moving unto the distance with this blank page
Writing down our new adventures
With or without each other
We won’t share this same cover
But we’ll mention each other in these memories book
Once in a while we’ll take a loving look
At what we had layed down long ago
When we grow old and begin to go
You’ll remember my glasses
I’ll remember your side smiling glances
You’ll remember my stupid haircuts
I’ll remember how our love drove me nuts
You’ll remember our quiet conversations
I’ll remember our silent hesitations
You’ll remember my poor departed eyes
I’ll remember your beautiful ***** blonde hair
You’ll remember my silly way to care
I’ll remember the yellow dress you wore
You’ll remember my last steps out the door
We’ll remember our love forever and ever
Goodbye, my yellow dress girl
We change for the better, my dear
Something I came to fear for many a year
We’ll remember the day we held those storybook hands
This is my last love letter to you
The Yellow Dress Girl
Gone and gone
Away into happiness
Fading away into happiness
Happiness for as long she lives
Goodbye, my beautiful bride, she’ll never be
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 1:43 AM UTC
*Wise guys in Presley-style haircuts
mill around the booming jukebox
It's late in the fifties
and there are no hippies
Sweltering October afternoon
So you buy a soda and drink it slowly
Your meagre resources make you lowly
I stand in awe, dazed and wondering
This machine has a hand and a brain
Feed it a coin and it picks your song
Suddenly King Creole is playing
and they all jump like catfish on the pole
I'm no square so I too twitch, turn and jump
Everybody is dancing
and life is a rock'n roll song*
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 5:32 AM UTC
Men are doomed, Carla told me,
It’s your eternal haircuts, she continued,
How can you sculpt a life from a single shape,
One look,
Every mirror an impersonation
Of the initial version of one’s self,
Each day reduced to a child’s calculation,
You wake up, only older, grayer, a withered rasp,
Ever more discouraged by the unfairness of things.
Carla exhaled a dragon’s torrent
White jet streams unfurled out of both nostrils,
A waft of my father’s morning scent.
With a flick of her thumb,
She snapped the ash
Off the end of her cigar.
A sharp hiss as the ember sizzled and sank
In the shallow of a pavement puddle.
It had cold rained most of the day.
Over a pause, the sky roiling with indigestion,
We bundled up in autumn clothes,
And trudged uptown,
Our chins tucked deep into our chests,
Our squinty eyes glued to our shoes,
The wind had a slap to it.
It isn’t war you should fear, she continued,
It’s robots.
Soon we won’t need you for anything,
Carla jabbed her lacquered fingernail at phantoms as she spoke.
Women have been fornicating with machines
For over a hundred years, she said,
The transition for us has already occurred.
Weld and solder us a pleasant replica,
One that can shine a toilet
Sterilize the dishes, **** us brilliantly,
And recite Shakespeare at will-
Believe me,
Soon we will barter for your *********
Exchanging bitcoins for the innate,
With no intention of ever attending your funeral.
No the war is over and men have lost, Carla repeated.
She walked ahead me,
Her hips a sashay as she spit a loose bit of tobacco leaf
Onto a lamp post.
I could not persuade my eyes to look away.
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 9:36 PM UTC
not in the usual way with
bent knee and bowed head
but with nag champa and cd inserts, with
deep reds,
plastic costume jewelry beading and safety pinned rips.
it was post cards and cigarette ash
with Kroger's box dye in
rusted orange.
staining our fingernails. didn't matter. we painted them in
neon green and chunky glitter. we stayed up late and wandered
laughter like a shattered diamond breaking into a million stars and thrown out over such a welcoming ivory towered
night sky.
and itallian food households with those noodles in jars.
looking up.
it was Billy Corgan telling us he'd
sing along.
it was memories that aren't even mine. cut in my eyes.
it was blunt bobs and pixie haircuts. it was cut necklines and walking on air. giant chain necklaces and whispered chap-lipped secrets.
endless folds and bottomless love
in a deliciously musty floral hat box.
you're just low end in
loving apathy.
and i'm absent in my own life.
it was an interruption so unspeakably painful.
doesn't seem so hard to revisit.
but i can't.
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012 at 6:20 PM UTC
I sit in an ordinary seat
in an ordinary office
with an ordinary will to live
and a cactus
I am surrounded by people with ordinary habits
and clothes
the window is opened at the usual angle
and the volume of the ringer is on default
we look at each other in an ordinary way
(No love/ no anger with a dash of hope)
we have families, lovers and cats in ordinary numbers
(They calmly invade our minds on our tea-break)
we work shoulder to shoulder sweating
with no fear of Evil or God
we have no ink in the printer, no problems, no money
no elevator
we have similar names, ordinary haircuts and shoes
we have a receptionist who eats carbs
the second floorboard, the one on the right as you come in after you punch the code and give it a good tug
is squicking
I am told that’s new
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 3:09 PM UTC
you store olden clothes in rear closets
smaller size doesn't fit
but you're slow to release it
you drip golden particles from under the sleeves
blue scent just soaked in
he couldn't move on
red wine bottles grow dusty
waiting for someone
to slop it all over the floor
I see
three-year race was puzzling
five-star, I still chime you
to slip back in my door
laying eyes on all my sweaters
through lens
you scan breaches in my polished facets
sticked out are
the tiniest strings
busy streets are our checkpoints
same curly haircuts
and same curvy outfits
all facets of yours in a walking men
haven't told you
you booked rent-free place
in my wardrobes
when squeezing your hand
but man, you're stale as bread too
**** you blue smell
from that dressing room
Feb 10, 2021
Feb 10, 2021 at 5:37 PM UTC
Down at the barbershop where the
upbeat finesse fills the scene,
hypnotic basslines and smoking beats
rise from the radio into the
jazzy air.
Various boys and men come
by to get close haircuts, fresh
fades, and dope designs.
Harmonic flows travel across
the shimmering space, bright
waves of excellent taste, a
thrilling serenity of light,
as the barbers create magic
in the brilliant place.
Biggie’s lyrical anthem, Big Poppa,
blazes around the room,
hip-hopping jams full of
deep spins and breaking booms.
Groovy barbers rap to the beat,
spitting fire flaming diction
in glowing dimension, marching
in glorious rhythms, as the
whole masterpiece becomes
a supersonic sea of incessant
boogying and wavy arms,
snapping ankles and dancing
feet, an engine racing extravagance
moving in high flight.
Dec 21, 2018
Dec 21, 2018 at 12:33 PM UTC