"illegibly" poems
He seeks truth in places of no good.
He flies high in places where others stood
Still he cries tears of perpetual sense.
A chameleon
his outer vesture cloaks his identity.
Unyielding
He plants his foot in the dirt.
Tangled vines tie his toes
contrasting his poetic prose.
Left dangling in the temptress spider lily's web
the noose tightens
as the old boy sings.
A fist with two thumbs
he raises like a martian.
Strangers illegibly write him
off.
A Jekyllish laugh
empties the mucus from his lungs.
Eons of inhaling senseless knowledge
he finds a second breathe to speak.
Words slice the web of lies
spinning silk into impenetrable pride.
Raw and uncut
his diction polishes diamonds
before were only rust.
He wakens every morning
Anew defiant face.
Contradicting himself
a joke
he cackles everyday.
The children who say he's changed
are correct.
But the chameleon found his true colors
somewhere between the lines
of white and black.
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 11:43 AM UTC
I can see your eyes
trying to hide behind glasses you surmise
no tendency to free nor fear to be
I waited as an outline
watching curtains fall to further shadow
making out a hunched figure -
shaded but clear as the note
you purposefully wrote illegibly-
Look at me!
You walked away bent and kept
your curtain nailed to your head-
and I gloriously alight instead.
May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011 at 9:15 PM UTC
-
Crazed beyond this fragile manuscript
ink now bled out in caustic flow
emptying my mind of the clutter
pouring from a heart beat’s mechanism
grinding gears of rusted thoughts
handwriting illegibly unrecognizable
scratched into burned edge parchment
pleading for destinations
across borderlines and wastelands
calloused fingers write…poetry
between broken dishes and *** luck cuss words
folded, creased and left lying on the desk
gathering defiant dust particles
behind the barricaded door
of cranial creativity
seeping
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 3:49 PM UTC
i had taken the morning off from work
to get a botox injection
afterwards i went to starbucks
and bought a venti carmel something
to drink on my walk to work
somewhere inbetween starbucks
and work i noticed a man in a wheelchair
he was stuck
il·leg·i·bly
he was asking for help
illegibly
i had to put my coffee on the ground
to get his wheelchair up and moving again
the wheels ran over my foot
and the coffee got knocked over
and spilled on the ground
he didn't say thank you,
but he was in a wheelchair
and couldn't speak coherently
it hurt
and my toenails
were black for the entire summer
a few months later
i got a job at starbucks corporate
but quit with no notice after six months
because the manager
couldn't stop yelling about white privledge, me, and howard shultz
and i didn't want to turn into her.
her initials were kkk.
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 6:11 AM UTC
I wrote her lyrics on the back
of a postcard. Half of them were
mine, the other half stolen from
an undisclosed source by the sea.
I meant to finish the piece with
hope or a splintered olive branch,
but instead I changed hands
and wrote illegibly:
*I expect to hear from you
next time you are bored
or alone.*
It has been four years now
and I haven't heard that song on
the radio. It has been four years
and the letterbox remains closed
like the reluctant mouth of a
four-year-old in a dentist's chair.
I haven't seen the doctor for a long time
and often I know that I am dying.
I close my eyes and slow my breath:
*there are stellar clouds and old
Arcturus is falling from the sky.*
The farmer's truck is offloading pigeons,
descending the cages as they fight
for the freedom of an updraught.
I watch it behind a television screen
and I see acceptable nature through
my parent's back window. I have learned
to experience everything behind
a screen door, to keep out mosquitoes
and compassion for far-off deaths:
*Twenty-four dead in dust cloud,
as freedom spreads to the East.*
I wrote her a letter the day before
my wedding and told her the whole
affair was simply to get a mortgage
and to have a reason to shave.
I knew she would likely have moved
address, or else threw out my envelopes
along with pizza leaflets and
charity bags. I wrote clearly with
my better hand:
*I have found a place to rest my wings,
but they still cramp at the thought
of a cloud.*
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 8:57 AM UTC
The burning sun dips behind the buildings
That blur my view.
They stand, strong sentinels,
Soldiers from another time.
Heavy with rust,
Bowing with age,
Yet their proud necks extend
Stretching tall toward the Heavens,
Regaling another far off time.
An epoch when the world still,
Flourished.
Before the insect-like destruction.
The tears coursing down my cheeks,
They are memories.
Stories and tales of my beautiful world
Before it slipped through my grasp
Like water in cupped hands.
I mourn my loss
And your loss.
The epitaph of the world reads:
Silence.
Illegibly carved onto the backs
Of those who walk her surface
And for now, we all choose to ignore it.
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 2:09 AM UTC
I practice telling how you need to leave me in front of a mirror
Tired excuses for my own emptiness
Everyone just dies and goes away in the end
I cry
"All we're left is words, Words, WORDS"
Scrawled across the page illegibly in umpteen leather bound volumes
Typed neatly in Times New Roman across the glowing screen
Scratched on the ******* wall with those same scalpels
Biology labs, the excuse I didn't need to own such
Triggering tools
Love lust lies lost live life longing laceration
Cut your ties from me
Busy convincing myself you're a spy
Presently finding the nut of
My many petty weaknesses
Throwing it all away again for a song and a bottle
Like Jack & Hemingway & Everyone I love
All dead anyway
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 12:50 PM UTC
When people point
fingers they scribble
illegibly with nails.
Aug 25, 2023
Aug 25, 2023 at 7:25 AM UTC