"hopefulness" poems
This poem was written after watching a few hours of slam poetry on Youtube. Let me know what you think...it's my first shot at slam poetry.
There are so many words flowing around out there about the big girls. The thick girls, the curvy girls, the p-h-a-t phat girls. About their plush and soft exteriors, their abundant backsides, their willingness to accept themselves and their hopefulness that others will do the same. Their….thereness.
They are beautiful, don’t get me wrong.
They are beautiful.
But what about the skinny girls?
The small girls with petite builds and large hearts and an aversion to the word short. The size two and under girls, the drive thru can’t gain a pound girls, the I AM NOT ANNOREXIC OR BULLEMIC girls.
The girls who will always be referred to as “pixie-like” or “waif-like” or “twig-like.” The perfect model body girls that all of the other girls hate…because of their lack of fat.
Aren’t they beautiful?
The girls with the size 32 bust line, the girls who, at 24, still shop in the junior sections of department stores. The girls who, regardless of their age, their strengths and weaknesses, their experiences, heartaches and joys, disappointments and triumphs, their want or need for life and love will always look like they missed a meal or gave it back purposefully with the intent of becoming even thinner. The girls who, no matter how ******* HARD they try, cannot even weigh 100 lbs soaking ******* wet.
Aren’t they beautiful?
The big girls have to search and search for cute and **** and attractive clothes because of their size. Guess what? So do the skinny girls. Do you know ******* hard it is to find a pair of pants with a size zero waist and a 34 inch leg? To finally find an extra small shirt that doesn’t have one of the top three cartoon characters of the time plastered across the front?
All I’m saying is yes, the thick girls, the curvy girls, the p-h-a-t phat girls…
They are beautiful.
But ****** so am I.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 11:58 PM UTC
I'm here
Watching you fix your tie
With the grace of a clumsy seal
Who got drunk
On the verge of tomorrow
And the brink of today
I'm here
Watching you stride out
With the hopefulness of a child at Christmas
Who won't go to sleep
For Santa will arrive
At midnight
I'm here
Watching you speak to the crowd
With the confidence of a frightened duckling
Who were recently hatched
Out of an egg
And into the light
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC
i wasn’t feeling okay
so i put on my overalls and went
outside
to wander around my backyard,
trekking around in clunky rain boots
as i hummed and tried not to think
i like to write
little notes
on the leaves that are now
changing colors
and when i’m done
i let them
fall
so i can flatten them
beneath my heel
till the small words
are crinkled and no longer legible
amongst the dirt and grass
and so desperately,
i wish i could
let the thoughts in my head
fall
to the ground
so i could flatten
these
pitiful feelings
beneath my heel
until they were no longer legible
amongst the hurt and hopefulness
in my heart
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:07 PM UTC
Every time I hear of you--
I wonder what went wrong
that you would choose
another over me.
The cogwheels of my brain
would constantly rewind
to the very day we meet;
the nerves I had prior
and the brief good memories.
This bitter nostalgia
reminded me of
my foolish sense of hope
that I was the special one
among many others--
Only when I was told
that I was rejected
did I realise...
I was only a pitiful jester;
dancing and joking
for your fancy
on that very day.
I could not help thinking,
being rejected on a Christmas eve
is a terrible Christmas present,
and also the only Christmas present I had.
They say that it was not His will--
But they also did not know...
Perhaps it was His will
that I spend the dead morning of Christmas
soaking my pillow in tears
while nursing a overactive mind.
And yes, I saw you again on New Years Eve--
from afar, where everyone was celebrating
of their successful association with you
with delirious hopefulness and motivation...
Meanwhile, I was made to
welcome the New Year all alone
with tears in memory of your rejection.
Jan 6, 2019
Jan 6, 2019 at 1:17 AM UTC
I want to run away so badly.
Just end it with everyone.
I'm burning from my own mistakes.
I hate the person I become when you are around.
The reality is that I've never ment anything to you.
Hopefulness has taking me into the realm of delusion.
What is right I see as left.
Your eternal love is really a three minute panting and moaning fest.
How could I be so blind.
Well in truth I was viewing it all and I just wouldn't let go.
I knew it was wrong but I just didn't care.
I apparently don't love myself at all.
If I did you would have seen nothing and I would have remained as Mother Teresa.
So long it's time to grow up and outgrow you.
Let my new roots be firm and pure.
Sep 7, 2015
Sep 7, 2015 at 3:53 AM UTC
Willow herb floating
on silent certainty
ashes of sighs
not fleeting,
unvapoured on the
blossom of the rain,
I am too light to
pull or push
the swing of delight
through this land.
The rain left me for a
while
sun unshielding
-a thousand widows
more unyielding than the depths . .
Once shadowed whisperers
of delight,gossamer
sparkling , descending
their chains
of necromantic hope.
Lilith is no night owl
she is mother, eve
and my becoming:
sweet earth spun
at once ,
exhaling her .
The see saw
bumped gently
on my chin
it is a most gentle
form of awakening.
The silence bore no whispers
till sinking through the quicksand
-or was it quicksilver?
-in any case I could smell little
in my amniotic amnesia.
I made ten thousand friends,till their soap
made this place clean.
Is this a seed or a dying
hopefulness
-is my sallow sowing
beyond all shores of
reproduction;
a reflection of the child
they dared not bear?
Is my last breath like this
a forgotton yielding
will they catch me
as I fall ?
-(sweet earth)-
This moth of my ending,
a shallow recantation,
my fears-
their memories, mere
testubes of
stylish hope .
I breathe the elegant stare
you have forgotten .
Once more free
from such
rememberance
I need not ,
remained not ,
your imploded ,
wakefulness .
A thousand pardons
exhaled like silk
entwining
an unfinished race
spider of a thousand eyes .
One may say
I was
stared
to death
but surrogate air
mocks childish pity.
Taut refelexions
bear salt echoes
in silk convulsions
fresh water
a veneered hope .
Easier in death than life
is a child's sorrowed
partings ,
the illusion of
bouyancy
rippled tides
unfelt.
The oceans have not enough salt
for such shrunken sorrow.
if we could but once
have shared
unbreathed aspersion .
The room has come and gone
the pillow quite undry
unforgotten
unremembered.
A web untouched
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 7:46 AM UTC
It happens imperceptibly
but you know it
when it’s in full effect –
Two’s company
three’s crowd.
It’s not
anyone’s fault,
not something
anyone decides,
just how it goes
sometimes.
Conversation
becomes
more and more
personal,
until it is clear:
You are not supposed to be here.
So you do
what you are good at doing.
You disappear.
-
See, disappearing?
You have it down
to a science.
Talk less and less
and then not at all.
Stare off into space,
perhaps fidget from time to time,
make small movements
to show that you
have not quite
turned to stone.
Take a while to leave.
It can’t be sudden -
you wouldn’t want to draw attention
to yourself.
[It’s awkward for everyone involved.]
Finally,
when you think you just
can’t
bear it,
get up to go to the bathroom
and never come back.
It’s easier than you think.
-
They will look for and address you
eventually:
*oh good night, are you okay, you’re so quiet,
you should have said something, I’m sorry, sorry,
sorry.*
The usual.
You will reassure them
when the time comes,
fold up your feelings
into a little origami crane
that you wish could just
fly away.
But for now
you can sit safely
in your invisibility.
-
You told your friend group earlier
that sometimes you thought
there was no point calling yourself
gay
because you just hated everyone.
It makes everyone laugh,
and even you find that you’re amused,
but
you don’t know if they heard
the hurt, the bitterness, the honesty of that statement
buried within your voice.
-
You watch
the way your two friends (with benefits)
are affectionate with each other,
the way one puts her head
in the other’s lap,
the way they play with each other’s hair
small kisses on small places,
the way they do these things
and see only each other,
as if all of this
is only obvious
to them.
It’s sweet.
You try to rouse yourself into
more feeling:
jealousy,
sadness,
hopefulness,
anything intense, but
everything boils down to
the same nothingness.
This is simply
another thing you
can’t/won’t/don’t have
[pick any verb, they’re all true].
-
And this is what
your life is:
trying to find ways
to make everything disappear.
Feelings – gone.
Desires – gone.
Expectations – gone.
Hopes – gone.
Communication – gone.
-
And this is what your life is:
Succeeding.
Mar 30, 2016
Mar 30, 2016 at 2:43 AM UTC
In the spring and in the autumn,
in the calm and in the storm.
I give thanks to You, O Lord.
In my sorrow and in my joy,
in times of bounty and times of uncertainty.
I give thanks to You, O Lord.
In times of darkness.
In times of sickness.
In times of abundance.
In times of youthful vitality.
In times when I do not understand why.
I give thanks to You, O Lord.
In days of rest; and days of stress.
In days of struggle; and days of hopefulness.
I give thanks to You, O Lord.
In every season.
In every season.
I give thanks to You, O Lord.
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord,
unto me. (Thomas Chisholm, 1923)
I give thanks.
To Thee.
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 5:29 PM UTC
Bittersweet lime-flavoured love
An apparition, a ghost, a face I think of
A mere shadow without definition or name
A hopefulness for the fulfilment of why I came.
Stretching into the ghetto of my mind
Is a body, a shape, a stencil of who may be mine
Reaching against the wicked hands of time
Yet never grasping; a drop of sugar, a cup of lime
Down on my knees with my hands clasped tight in prayer
And my will alone shakes the foundation, yet no one appears
Errant tendrils of loneliness grip at my rotting soul and heart
And the rejection, and the hurt, and the hope tears me apart.
I am now a sinister, cynical shell of who I used to be
And I plead, I beg the monotony to set me free
As I am suffocating on the slimmest sliver of a wish
My head turned upwards, lips waiting for a kiss.
Whether love, or like, or grudging intimacy
So be it, for I need it, and whatever else it may be
Thus, I will wait by the water's edge where the waves are violent
I'll wait at the volcano's peak, before it erupts, when all is quiet.
I'll hang to a fraying rope placed miles above solid ground
I'll stand at the edge of a tall building and dizzy myself looking down
Until someone, or something, arrives from somewhere to extend my time
Until the taste finally fades: a drop of the sweetest sugar, a cup of bitter lime.
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 9:56 PM UTC
I still feel you in my arms.
.
Still looking at the heavens together,
With the galaxies in our eyes.
.
Still breathing in unison,
Our living souls crash like roaring seas with every inhale,
And calming them with each exhale.
.
Still whispering destinies in your ear,
Feeling your hold around me tighten with hopefulness.
.
Still together in what felt like fate,
The moment that was forever.
.
Still, steady heartbeats,
Softly throbbing into each other.
.
Stillness that never ended,
And the anticipation for it to be broken,
By the sweetness of your soft, lively kiss.
.
Still,
Wishing for that night back.
.
Still.
Waiting.
.
.
~S.C. Kelley
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 3:01 AM UTC
My sunset begins as yours comes up
I sip my wine slowly, knowing you’re downing your whiskey at 6 in the morning
The tub of ice cream from last night has melted away
So why can’t you?
This city of lights blinds me, a nice distraction
But I have to run, I have to keep running
Because my demons have your beautiful smile
And I can’t help but stare with melancholy in my heart
My sleepless nights are invaded by your chocolate eyes and velvet lips
If I’m honest, that button on my phone taunts me
It begs me to call, send a text
But I don’t
I don’t and I won’t
You had let go first and danced our dance with your little noelle
O how jolly you must’ve been, staring into her starry eyes
So even if I miss you, I won’t
So I sip my wine slowly as you down your whiskey at 6 in the morning
These devils smile your smile and I look away
I move forward, melancholy and anger and hopefulness without you fuelling me
I hope you miss me as much as I do. But sometimes I don’t
Dec 3, 2020
Dec 3, 2020 at 8:34 AM UTC
I’m a ********* for love,
I couldn’t give you up
Sweeter dreams of yesterday
Are a lust that’s gone today
I’m a ********* for love
I gave my all not to give you up
Writing rhymes of wondrous romance
Trapped in feelings like a trance
I’m a ********* for love
Take the beating, give a hug
It’s only masochism when not returned
And believe me, girl, I’ll take the burn
A body that is bruised
Can indefinitely still be whole
What matters the most
Is the condition of your soul
Purity and peace
Hopefulness on bending knees
All these things you don’t possess
That you still never took from me.
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 5:04 PM UTC
~Depression plants suicidal seeds, don’t copy hate, instead do good deeds~
◄►◄►◄►◄►
Rhythm and rhyme beats in the heart
Forming musical inspiration in a creative art
Beauty from pain
It lies within, as rainbows bleed a colorful stain
Razor marks tattooed on the skin
Is this a sign or a committed sin?
Learn from past, live the present
Don’t be a suicidal mocking bird who always laments
Copying others, with suicide entwined in imagination
Bleed the pen, and brightly color in your blank emotion
Represent a leader
You were born a survivor
Revolutionary options are provided for you to excel
Grow wings, spread them, and fly beyond this living hell
Skidding across icy obstacles
Wishing for miracles
Live your dream
Let the dying razor scream
No more suicidal mockingbird
Let hopefulness be today’s most used word
◄►◄►◄►◄►
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
Please forgive the lies.
Those lies you realized were real lies in your eyes, that look at my eyes that cries.
Please forgive my tick, my tick that flicks when you click my impatience.
Please try to forgive the tears I cried, my hands tied down to the chair of my stupidness.
Forgive me for the different masks I've worn because I was born with a face torn..
Please, forgive me for looking at that mirror
Glaring
Staring
Preparing, to attack and smack
Break this make-up of me and off my face.
Forgive those scars across my heart that left marks on my inner wrists, forgive my fists that ball,
hit walls and doors to settle the score between love and hate.
Please forgive me for wasting your time, I'm fine. That line, like the line you wait behind dozens of people who I've said that to.. please forgive me when you tell me "I'm beautiful" because the thought of me possibly, being pretty, is new to me.
Forgive me when I say I'm lonely or feeling alone because I only have myself in my mind
and behind the door of thoughts are secrets kept, sept underneath the rug if uncertainty.
Insecurities, get the best of me,
Forgive my darkness
Forgive my awkwardness
Forgive my serial killer mentality, hunting down, killing off my confidence and any compliments I receive.
I enjoy bringing myself to low points
And at this point, I need a new point. A hight point. And the distance between my low point and my high point is a long line of self awareness and weakness.
I digress, my progress is better, my confidence is higher, I guess..
You'll be impressed with what you don't know,
What you should know,
But what I don't show.
My confusing image of myself
"Love thy self"
Lord please forgive me for I have sinned.
Trying to die earlier than intended is a sin.
Trying to force pain amongst my body is a sin.
Please forgive my dark thoughts, my depressed ways.
Forgive those who attempt the same attempts i attempt.
Forgive those who drag themselves to the ground, buried underground with tomb stones above their heads.
Forgive the knives they used to bleed out their tears and sadness.
Forgive the pills that sit in the stomach of the people lying on the bathroom floor unaware of their scared mothers faces.
Forgive the flowers you place in front of their grave of hopefulness buried with terrible self consciousness.
Please forgive me when I say, please don't delay, but I really can't stay..
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 11:48 PM UTC
the most dangerous person I know was a beautiful girl,
with a singing voice like white chalk:
when you came into contact with that voice, even momentarily
you found your fingertips lightly dusted
and the taste of chalk in your lungs
She settled on you.
This girl left pieces of herself everywhere--
anchors.
to things she knew should be
important to her, but instead she couldn't find the commitment
enough to make them important.
she could only find
fragments of a conversation
about anything
that affirmed her
self-importance
or made her feel
important.
even if only for a second.
she disregarded the pain that lumbered just beneath those
glimmering retinas,
only to step closer and see the light
was just a reflection of whatever stood before her.
so she anchored herself to humans.
she chose to connect with people
based on the "mutual" stars in
their eyes.
and how they felt important.
she anchored herself to
the expectations held aloof in
the eyes of her unattached lover.
Eyes that swam with the imaginary meetings and hopefulness
to obtain girls not her.
and so she swam.
at first, she treaded water like it the thing to do in the eyes of your
"lover"
then, the ropes she tied to herself
to make anchors began to drag her down.
the people she anchored herself to reached out as far as the cold depths would allow
but she refused to tread the last few feet and take hold
of a shoreline filled with
finite praise for not drowning herself.
The most dangerous girl I knew
made drowning the important thing.
and now she waits, sunken and waterlogged
with the weight of eyes that are not hers.
The eyes of her lover, who sparkle artificially
as the light is just a reflection of whatever stands in front of him.
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 3:18 AM UTC
My father, my father
Now he's going to see
I've proven myself worth a bother
And there's no stopping what I can be
Future king of the islands of iron
And son to the one who they currently worship
Sprung in the hard isles, I was
But raised in the frozen north
I can only imagine the plans father will put forth
Now that I've sailed
Though with an unruly crew
The iron price shall prevail
Because my father says it's true
And he is His Holiness
And the undisputed head of my native land
I can do nothing to quell my hopefulness
On these ****** rocks, on this crimson shore I stand
Now and again though I've been told
That I am Theon of the North
And am a part, no longer, of the isles where I was birthed
I will show my father just who his son has become
****** it in the face of islanders who don't believe in their rightful heir
I've made mistakes, misstepped the side who won
But I am a noble, one born into which I will flair
I'm off home now, though it is my snowfallen one
Where I learned what is right
Where there is no such thing as an "iron price"
One which is embedded in my heart so tight
But I mustn't look back now
At all I have gained from these people and lands
For it's time to wake this sleeping cow
I know it is right when I step foot on the sand
March my men straight back "home"
Sneak up, like proper thieves, and sack my once-called castle
Who would've thought it'd be such a gods-be-damned hassle
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 3:02 PM UTC
All
Gone mad!
..
My friends !
.
Facing the beast -- the beast stared back
--------
--
Facing the mad days
Too involved
---
--
-
It HAS COME TO THIS
It has come to a few sad remnant human beings
TO THIS
the .........bluff
The swagger
The puffed up
Ideology of fearlessness
.
Facing the GODLESS god
With
Dread
.
With dreadlocks
With tattoos or painted bodies
With
ATTITUDE!
Yeah we ain't gonna lose
Yeah
We done lost already!
---
Gone mad
Facing the beast the beast stared back
-----
To end on a note of hopefulness?
Would be the most hopeless thing to do
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 3:27 PM UTC
Stranded out in the bitter cold
wind slicing up my cheeks
while it slaps me with its icy fingers
Limbs buried in the dense snow
weighed down by the frozen
hopelessness that is as far as the
eye can bare to see
Although weakness threatens me
and death nips at my nose
I beg of all to leave me be,
I dare them
For I know that through the
darkest night of my life
thoughts of you will rush
to comfort me
I think of your piercing eyes
and how the blueness calms me
My mind runs to thoughts of
your lips- to each pure kiss
These frigid fingertips of mine yearn
to be entwined with yours once more
As love awakens in me
the warmth you’ve embedded
into my being multiplies
I find myself free of the icy *******
in a pool of warm hopefulness
Green emerges from the thousand
shades of melting white
and I know lovely things will grow
from what I have made it through
The sun kisses every inch of me
the way only you do and I know
I can get back to you now.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 2:39 PM UTC
Giant golden orb, primed,
the Scorpions tail delivers her blow
And I, in futile preparedness,
crushed between her barb and the centaurs insecure rage.
Unabashed love the second casualty
as Mars raised his sword 3 times and struck with Aries force,
a tsunami into gentle waters.
Later the fish, the fish in the whirlpool,
he chewed mercilessly,
he was not hungry for flesh but for innocence
and he feasted to corruption.
And I, with bitter hopefulness,
purged the fish through one way inverse fury.
Adrift at sea, the second god of war,
carried to lucent quartz shores,
captured the tsunami for his salvation, dragging her to the desert.
And I, all watery doggedness, laboured for her a thorny oasis
from which the second god of war was banished.
Whence fair daughter of Gaia in refined tenderness,
delivered the gift between life and language,
Blushing song of refuge.
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 11:24 PM UTC
Angela,
would you ever
come back?
I've been asking
this question
as the licquor
subsides.
I've been
sleeping
on it,
just to take
its weight down.
I ate
three tasteless burgers,
and rummaged
through their tomatoes
looking for your lips
red as cherries.
Hopefulness
is a disease,
a cancer
because it spreads
in violent fingers.
The **** of my heart
has begun
before the burgers
settled.
Apr 11, 2012
Apr 11, 2012 at 7:30 PM UTC
i am the sum of my worst parts.
i am best friends with my loathing,
i dress all my nightmares in sheep's clothing.
i tell my mother they're friends of mine,
i tell my mother i am fine.
we were terrible actors but, god, were we good at memorizing the lines.
but we both know that nothing’s worse than insincerity.
i think i was so lost i couldn’t stand being found.
it was all i knew, my old paint under the new.
you know what it’s like,
you get stuck in a sadness so sweet
you almost mistake it for something you deserve.
you become comfortable.
it’s a process, cut my losses
relapsed back into my sadness and all my bad habits,
begging you to lick the wine and water off my lips,
the way you grip my hips,
just press me down into the sheets until i don’t exist.
we wrote an album full anthems and we couldn’t carry a **** tune.
you’re just a big bleeding heart, an open wound of a person
and everybody loves you
and everybody hates you
like the radio hit that made their favorite band big.
so this is for all the times you were told to bite your tongue
but you were so tired of bleeding.
this is for all the times you opened your mouth
but never spoke.
this is for all the times you talked to fill the air
but never really said anything.
you are what you think. you are what you say. you are what you do.
but, maybe most importantly, you are what you don’t do.
because what if icarus had been cautious?
what if icarus had never left the ground?
i guess one way to love somebody is when they're never around,
and i guess there’s people like that;
those who only want to hear songs they’ve already heard.
there’s people like that, those who don’t want to learn anything
that they don’t already know.
there’s people like that, those who don’t like to question things.
science and god sit at the dinner table as lovers.
they say their vows in verse,
in a thousand different languages.
neither of them have the whole story,
but together, i’m told sometimes they make a lot of sense.
science and god sit at the dinner table as equals.
art and wonder and the human spirit are their children.
love may be a myth, but it’s my favorite one.
we do not age at the dinner table
we do not know hate at the dinner table
we spit bullets and grow flowers into vases.
we knock elbows, and argue, and love, and reconcile, and praise.
we spill wine not blood.
we do not know hate at the dinner table.
and i find, at the dinner table, seated
between past and present
between heart-ache and hopefulness
between glory and insignificance
i am not so lonely.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 9:59 PM UTC
Riley wants to build a robot.
With all the eagerness of
a five year old
who has been told
that she is brilliant, and beautiful, and kind,
she presents me with her shopping list:
METAL
CLEAN WHEELS
ROBOT FOOD
She tells me that the wheels need to be clean
so they don't mess up Mama's floor.
Of course, I say,
and kiss the top of
her brilliant, and beautiful, and kind head,
reflecting for a moment, with my eyes closed
and Riley chattering happily,
on why a child's hopefulness
always makes me
just a little sad.
Feb 5, 2011
Feb 5, 2011 at 8:42 AM UTC
The finch, awaiting the morning sunrise
lifts its beak in proud anticipation.
Darkness. The sun has forgotten to rise.
The finch waits for it in desperation.
To sing, to wake the world in glory’s song!
Why night, but for the finch to greet the day?
But dawn forgot to come; something is wrong.
The finch is lost, hopefulness fades away.
The sun causes the song of spirit freed,
his morning song in praise of all beloved!
The finch had grown accustomed to this need.
He’d never had to miss being so loved.
The finch misses the only thing he knew,
yet missing dawn less than I’m missing you.
May 6, 2019
May 6, 2019 at 9:19 AM UTC