"indented" poems
Once, monster feet were all you wore,
pounding its claws upon wood floors.
Well now the beast is walking in your skin,
that you have lived, and fought them in.
How much can a human body take,
When horns pierce your skull, to keep you awake?
People say faking's profitless,
while I'm choking demons back in my esophagus.
An intervention for dented hearts,
that were beats, you wrote apart?
Do they await indented bumps,
a heart, bitter, selfishness pumps.
Alert the shadows as I bow to them,
poetic, inadequate, I lost to them.
What worthy life have I built to live,
if pain is all I know to give?
------------------------------------
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 7:51 PM UTC
Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the contents pour out like
spaghetti confetti.
Tommy, Elizabeth's boyfriend, rode his ocean blue Huffy, until the tread on his tires grew bald and until the grips were blanketed by dead skin. Looking for her, panoramic views of the horizon leapt beside him. Silhouettes of his legs, churned and kissed the orange and caramel dusk. With every tear in his hamstrings and calves, the **** in his sky grew and swallowed the memory of Elizabeth Mendenhall, Honor Student.
Margot, Elizabeth's twelve year-old sister, was an idealistic soul. Taking a Sharpie, she wrote on her sister's wall, "Liz, there is no death greater than the loss of self, and no life greater than one where we continuously search for what self is." Margot struggled with concentrating and frying eggs - but focused on the sunflower garden, dangerously and perfectly.
Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.
She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."
The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.
Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 5:37 AM UTC
You make me smile so easily
almost as easy as the breeze on a fall day,
Effortless,
Knowing it's the least you can expect.
You let me write doodles on you,
Words that usually hurt,
Words about my former heartbreak,
But with you it doesn't hurt.
You call me your friend,
And I try and explain I can't be your friend
I'll like you,
Oops,
Too late for that.
Every time you laugh I see your dimples,
Indented so deep into your face,
I love them,
They draw the perfect amount of attention to your face,
Those gorgeous dimples help me see your lush lips,
Perhaps they'd like to meet mine one day.
Your one of the few people that aren't afraid to be seen with me,
To be seen talking and laughing with me,
Apparently to some I'm shameful,
But you just continue on making jokes,
Making me laugh.
Each moment I spend with you
I like you a little more,
Liking you has grown easy,
Your the kind of person that can make me happy,
I think your the only one that can make this loneliness fade,
So you should do me a favor and just stay,
Stay and keep the loneliness away.
Sep 28, 2011
Sep 28, 2011 at 8:27 PM UTC
i live in a ******** so boring tractors roam the streets in the usual
traffic,
but i found that you can wizen up to a title of wizard
by finding inanimate things entertaining and thought provoking,
because the internet will not become
the next scapegoat of goldfish memory - not the next
box of entertainment - it will be what god’s green earth indented.
out here, where you’re far from trafalgar sq. you
get crows circling back to the origin of the woods with odin on the lyre
venting out against too much pigeon **** coo coo of the attired men and women marking karma with the no. 13 and being ******* on from on high,
you get seagulls, even, seagulls so far into dry land... imagine!
and you get the autistic zoning in of the cat’s eye,
those cats are very autistic, their eyes tell the sad sad story
of encapsulated solipsism - snap your fingers or meow
and they look at you passing you looking at some randomised
point of entering their sleeping pattern - very autistic those cats,
they look at you almost cross-eyed when you try to snap them out of it -
out of it being: ****** off at being awake.
very autistic those cats, those cats are very autistic, they look
at you looking past you, looking almost cross-eyed -
don’t blame me for the zigzag or the w!
so as i said, it’s so boring where i live you see tractors and crows,
and the only solidification of your presence is either provided for
by an addiction to television eager for the flicker -
or drinking... watching bricks, thinking bits and bobs out
for the torrent of slavic plumbers building the great ****** of london.
lo... upon the yonder... there it blooms *******
i like places where trees tower over man's handing man brick on brick -
makes the sky a bit bigger and less asthmatic.
Oct 6, 2015
Oct 6, 2015 at 10:29 AM UTC
You need to leave me alone. You should go, far away. I'd hate for you to stay another day, because of you skies are always grey. Depression. Everyday you scream at me and remind of me how useless I am. How ugly I look. My innocence you took. You constantly **** with my mind and I don't want to try. Suicide. I yearn to say goodbye. You make me blue. Your not my friend so why are you in my head? Because of you it's hard to get out of bed. You took me, consumed me and ruined my life. Do you want me to take my life? I'm so lost with you by my side. You need to **** off. I wish to be tough. I'm sick of you making me cry. Depression. I smile to hide you, gosh I'm so ashamed of you. I cut myself as an attempt to release you, the dark hole you've indented in my soul. Depression. With you it's a battle, you either win or you die trying. You've imprisoned me in a cage with no escape. You've taken the key, the key to my happiness. What a mistake I made letting you into my head. I thought we could be friends. Depression. We'll see who wins this battle, you *****
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 11:44 AM UTC
Inconclusive patterns
Form indented regularity
In flowing drifts
A panoply of tropical orchids
In my mind
A menaced distortion
Straining forward
Like an isolated image
In an old photograph album
Disclosing only the fragments
Of an insoluble puzzle
Its atmospherics of frequency
Disturbs me somewhat
It is identical to hidden speech
Or the resistance to time
Of exclamatory reminders
Of forward motion
That momentarily fascinates
Then falls through a hole
In a central vortex of vision
This is the architectonics
Of a thought
That can never be articulated
Feb 9, 2013
Feb 9, 2013 at 11:38 AM UTC
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
I have a love unending
Transcending space and time
Living in the world I create deep within my rhyme
And I stand 'till I choose to sit
And I will sit for now
Wiping inkblots off my page as if sweat from my brow
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
She was and still is the girl
The girl who was unobtainable
Yet my body stays restrainable as I sit here scribbling
Tossing her hair over her shoulder
I stick to my seat as if atop me's a boulder
And I try to convince myself that I'm too busy
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
I am a boy who doesn't take chances
While the words dance in my brain
And I write of love and true romance and live them on the page
So my **** has finally decided to not partake in the occasion
And stay seated so I'm not defeated to prevent sorrow's invasion
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
My brain and heart battle for control
Of shifting feet and lover's soul
And what stands as inconceivable is why I'm so lost
A chance is a chance and that is all they are
And I need not travel very far
Not trying is still losing and standing and sitting both have their cost
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
Heaven's eyes lie through ruby curls
She meets my glance and smiles at me
While I stew with ink-stained fingers here in purgatory
Stand up, **** it! Just stand up! My heart and head reach a conclusion
Pages only go so far and the safety of sitting an illusion
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Level-headedness was never in the job description
Pushing away this world like it's a bad addiction
I stand up and find, to my surprise,
My legs choosing to support
Dropping pen and picking up the ball that's in my court
And I walk up to the girl who plagues my dreams
As if her very being, to me, beckons and calls
Only to hear the world laughing at me as I slip, trip, and fall
And hell is all to real to the boy who occupied purgatory
With tear-filled eyes from looking to heaven
With ****** nose caused from leaving his seat
Seeing my chance flutter away as I run out of the room
Indented in the red haired girl's eyes as a simple buffoon
Let's back pace, erase my face from your memory
I will leave and make you believe my new identity
Coming back another day to claim my love once more
And being ever so careful to make sure my face meets yours, not the floor
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 11:33 AM UTC
I looked for love held by an empty hand
She left yours shaking too hard to ignore.
Brittle bones and cracked knuckles,
Burying your pain in the wall above a bed where she used to lay.
Its empty
Bare
Naked
And you've slept on the floor ever since the creases of her body indented in your sheets started whispering things you wish she'd say.
But no matter how forcefully you scream or how silently you cry
The voices in your head are always too loud.
I guess no one ever told you not to believe everything you hear.
So when your lifeless body is scattered on the floor,
Drugs filling voids,
3am,
And nights never seemed so dark;
When your throats too raw to curse her name
And another "please come back" only makes her feel further away
You'll learn that not every "I love you" is sealed with a kiss
And meaningful words are often emptier than the people who speak them.
When you start searching for the trek marks her fingertips left
Or her scent lingering in the smoke,
You'll learn that not every story has a happy ending
And sometimes the book ends once tragedy begins.
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 4:55 AM UTC
Why they call me the fearful poet! (The Razor Thin Difference)
*”but who am I to complain
the razor thin difference tween
blessings and curses so thin,
sometimes are they not, the same thing”*
Aug. 2018
~~~
this familiar line, well traversed, lives on the maps
sketched indented on your palms and brow,
at the edges of the crow’s nests, the eye’s keyboard witnesses,
recording every stroke
we tap in seeings, forming letters,
letters into lines, lines into verse,
as we alliterate, we walk unawares,
of the razor thin difference tween blessings and curse,
indiscernible until concluded, perhaps, not even then,
the stanza’s probable outcome,
always unsure, unknowing destiny’s decision
so we walk, tread, plumb, shoutout
“vive la difference,”
hoping the blessing messengers hear us first,
consummating our pleas on their favorable sight & side,
ever fearful, we do not shout loud enough,
do the blind hear,
need me, possess my sacrificial offerings,
my trepidations, burnt on the Temple’s altar
who will breathe their smoke and understand
their fearful origins?
so we-write, cajole that our every moment’s fear,
find the difference, that we don’t bleed from life’s razoring,
the thinner thinnest
needle threaded,
**and fear is the threat,
and fear is the thread,
that holds me together**
until the unraveling
requires me to write again,
the fearful poet
Mar 22, 2019
Mar 22, 2019 at 7:18 AM UTC
I misread
a lot of you's
I proofread most of your mistakes
you ****** at grammar
I silently made my red pen dance
on your blue inscriptions
that you thought
were unique
I scratched the wrong words
I indented your run on's
I even added a bit of sincerity
to all your reality
I stepped back and looked at you
you were blotches of red on scribbles of blue
you were a mistake
that I thought I could fix
at the end of the day,
I took that paper crumpled it
and aimed at the trash
and scored
My red pen yearned for correcting many more
but my red pen gave up scratching
and wanted to create its own story
of its very own mistakes
of its own doing,
so it can create a masterpiece of
"me"
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 6:41 AM UTC
I feel apart of this hick town place
Breathing in life, through open, clean air
Trapped by my mind in a wide open space
My granddad showed me on his Gum tree
The marks left by moths and beetles alike
I went to touch them whilst he let them be
The Scribbly Gum tells the same story
Our lives intertwined in memories
The aftermath of destruction, can be beauty
My chubby hands admire what my eyes miss
like a blind man hungry for the verse
I feel the indented trails, lead me into the abyss
I envy those tiny critters, hiding away
creating art without even knowing
One day I shall join them and there I shall stay
Dancing glimpses of times past
The smell of eucalyptus sticking to hot air
Pulling, aching strings of my childish heart
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 11:56 PM UTC
crisp pages
indented fom my pen's point,
whisper beneath the dry skin
of my cracked palm.
they flutter together,
butterfly wings,
and weave together a time
so melodious.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 6:59 PM UTC
What happen to the envy to all imagination
Nothing is worse fearing the person you once loved
I guess the reasons have become to worthless
And the sensitivity is real when you make a picture perfect
If you have the right to dream then you have the right to work it
That's that feeling that makes it worth it
I Try to repent on the true commitments
But that fraud is dangerous if it's not indented
Positive work ethics I see that's a good successful story
Bashing in the moments and bathing in the glory
Now I know it's the world wide mess
I change from hood hoodies to business suits to dress and impress
When Hov made his first Mill I was still in my Batman draws
Now this young cub is following in his own lion paws
I swear last night was so unreal
My jesus your blessing is not invisibles so please take the wheel !!
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 6:39 AM UTC
My sleepy eyes search for hers,
as my arm reaches across the empty bed
and I find the pillow still indented from her pretty head.
A hollowness instantly makes my stomach tight,
afraid she's gone without any goodbye,
without her cuddles, I would die.
In this moment I hate the white of the sheets
no longer stained with shadows of her bodies curve,
the sun even shining displays its nerve.
Footsteps in the hall give my heart a start,
the door swings slowly open and a smile forms
as her lips part.
My arms reach out, my lips don't move,
from her throat soft giggles rise
and I feel her light touch my sleepy eyes.
The crisp air sends goosebumps to cover my body,
as she pulls off the blanket to get back into bed,
I pull her in close and turn blue into red.
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
The tears have come so oft
that I can feel their presence in their absence.
Their bodyless shape is indented on my cheeks,
a perfect trail from my heart
to my eyes.
Even when my eyes are dry and cold
they run with the wet and hot tears
of my gladly saddened heart.
These blind tears have seen a lot,
from the death and parting of a loved one
to the birth and gain of another.
From mornings in paradise
to nightly terrors in hell.
When the angels sing in light,
these tears rejoice
and when the demons come to consume in dark,
these tears mourn.
When the sun doesn't shine and
the snow doesn't let up,
these tears feel the pain.
When the wind blows
and the light shines,
these tears feel the joy.
These tears have come so oft
that I can feel absence in their presence.
Their bodyless shape is indented on my cheeks,
a perfect trail from my eyes
to my heart.
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 10:45 AM UTC
We built cathedrals on street corners
under heavy orange lights
cascading down our faces.
I loved your imperfections:
a narrow, twisted spine,
a long, indented nose
and a shrill voice slicing through
the midnight summer wind.
I'd love you forever
in the sagging bench
on your thin front porch,
where I'd spend eternity
tracing outlines of silhouetted trees
covering soft, flaring streetlights.
We burned through hours
recounting the wounds from our past.
Every kiss was a lightning bolt,
and cracked like raging thunder.
We felt a violent forgiveness
exploding like stars in the pits of our chest.
Jun 23, 2014
Jun 23, 2014 at 5:07 PM UTC
Pancakes
and french toast.
She had a sweet tooth
for mornings
laying flat
on her back.
Just like yours,
cotton wrinkles
indented on
freckles.
Saliva soaked
collarbones,
last nights
tequila
on your tongue.
He’d roll you over,
breakfast taco.
Kiss your neck,
turn it purple.
Smirk covered coffee,
smoke lingering
'round
chocolate covered
sleepy eyes.
All you've ever known,
simple sweets
and bacon grease;
she kept you
on your'
toes.
"I'll be back for the summer,"
and he'll pretend
you’re more
than just a morning
of goodbyes.
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 1:34 PM UTC
Soft padded sheets with a chalk-white fade
Contours from repeated pressure illustrating a familiar shape
Indented rivets in the overused cushion where you tried to hide
Red-turned-brown spots dried, markers of where you failed to keep it inside
Timid stains of salty moisture once fallen from your eyes
Now just a faded gravestone to the bliss simplicity brought before your fight died
Deaf ears and the pleas that pass through their shallow halls
But the sound changes octaves as it bounces off the thin beige walls
And so it echoes unheard as it falls
One too many close calls to accept the sound that emulates from it all
Trembling bones under heavy skin clutching the bed-frame with an iron grip
Second only to the pressure your upper teeth have on your lower lip
Revolving doors unhinged, flooding your thoughts as they race
Tired eyes stay bolted open, not recognizing the shape of your own face
in the jagged glass that now lays fractured and stained from the image you tried to replace
But it still didn't go away
“This is it,” you say
Cavernous holes,
Once whole,
Now just hollow shells you used to call home
Empty of all heart and all hope
And you brace for the hit, the moment where it finally all goes black
And the silence will finally answer back,
telling you you've ****** it up, it's all rotted through, you didn't fight hard enough and now you're done
And every single time you're still surprised when that moment never comes
And despite the tremors and daggers, your stubborn heart carries on
So find the narrow sliver of air where reality and your mind meet
And take in all the oxygen like it isn’t always free
There isn’t much too it,
You just put your head down and breathe
Because if there’s only one thing of which you can be sure
It's that these souls were designed to endure
And "this too shall pass" will become true once more
Let your heart and its resting pace made amends
Once the shaking stops you can finally stand
And wear that smile until courage finds you again
Somewhere inside you always knew this isn’t how it ends.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 5:52 PM UTC
This lack of
Professional identity.
wakes me too soon,
With the dawn moon.
The building tones on a single stone note,
Like blood through ears.
Overlooked, but for the silence
Of time unbooked.
I go stumbling
into a different fame.
Where smaller applause lulls me,
Like crumbling brickwork,
The flashing indented,
Re-invenited,
Like ancient sea rocks,
Soft to the shells of clinging creatures
And the feathers of gulls.
Dec 24, 2018
Dec 24, 2018 at 5:56 AM UTC
The circulation has been constricted,
Painful memories indented,
I'm just a mooring of ******
Carrying a shipment of resentment,
My organic piston is done repenting,
My aorta's done it's sifting,
But now I'm down and out,
I'm not worthy of remembering,
The makeup is addicting,
The flesh of my rose is lifting,
And now I've lost my pedals,
Down a river woefully drifting,
There's a thong around my heart,
Tightly squeezing,
The juice of my love,
Now I'm a loveless human being,
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 8:26 PM UTC
half a dead pigeon
has indented itself in the gravel lot next door
and every day at dusk, when i run my sacred shower,
(with the lights off and windows open
and otis redding echoing through the empty house)
i have to watch the black static tide of flies
swim around one of it's upward bent wings.
the first time i saw it my jaw dropped and repulsion choked my throat closed-
disturbed by it's total disgrace,
i slammed the window shut
and preferred to gaze at tile grime to pass the time.
but from the days that followed,
i managed to muster up respect
and acknowledged that this
battered half of a bird
was now a variable in my scenery
(praise be to impermanence)
and now
the sunset drowns everything in it's hazy blood orange
and the wind floods the trees and fills the underside of the bridge with sound,
and i stand naked in the warmth,
singing boldly out of key, twisting hot water out of my hair,
as the summer breeze politely invades my privacy.
so i salute the pigeon, say i wish you the best.
and embrace the weight and fullness of my happiness,
and know well i am more than body and voice,
and watch it sink further into the arms of the earth each night.
grateful to know that death doesn't end life.
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 11:52 PM UTC
I wake up in the morning questioning the infinite cracks on my bedroom ceiling. There is a crack up there for each time you leave. I ask them if they know the reasons as to why I feel undone. The foundation of the room searches for an answer in its faults only to find that behind the paint lies nothing but rotting wood. I feel naked. A resting foreigner on the bed that I made as I lay fully clothed in a nightgown I can feel settling into my skin. I feel ill. ***** settles on my tongue the same way spit does when your mouth waters for something you long for. Some mornings my body becomes a corset that relies on you to tie the knots and by the afternoon I find myself stranded in tangled knots of indented flesh and exhaustion.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 4:28 PM UTC
About 4 years into the friendship, or whatever it had by that stage become, during a chat on our Internet **** preferences
over badly-filtered Americanos
in the UCD student cafe, I said to her
" I think I enjoyed our friendship more when we used to get coffee and just laugh for twenty minutes. "
And after a half second of unusual silence from her, those pools
of ever-renewing blue eyes of hers almost incisions
into my consciousness, I added" That was pretty unique."
And then I laughed unbound, and she almost shrugged
and definitely smirked as if to say "this is where I am now, it took some time for me to realise but it's where I've always been."
Unapologetic, as only she could seem to be.
And it was, like any tryst, fling or abandoned half-romance is, utterly unique. Half on the way
to becoming something we were going to hang on to and definitely regret
and half-stopped, sulking out of a puddle,
dead damp weight created by the differences we made ourselves
for the other to behold and dismantle.
The immediate was meant for us, first the attraction, then the disgust, then the despair, then the cursing off, then round to the intrigue all over again.
She remained the great question mark of my undergraduate years. Heartaches after her were equally demeaning, but far more easily explained.
You know you've found someone irreplaceable when they tell things you really shouldn't know,
things shoved up in boxes for years, things too unformed to be really caught sounding out, in the moments after your first kiss.
And every clever undergraduate will tell you how negative all connotations of "irreplaceable" are.
And yet these are the backhanded good graces,
the immeasurable gifts that memory serves
I wear this like a wound I can find wry mirth at the very sight of,
I have learned all this from her without her ever intending
These memories are indented in a music box with an imitation sacred heart all mine
distempered by the candid lines of a girl who never wanted religion, divulged somewhere in our seat of learning.
Oct 16, 2016
Oct 16, 2016 at 7:32 PM UTC
Nobody is in love.
Shoulder to shoulder, flesh spilling over
Flesh: our warm bodies heave
And contort together, leaving no room
For sentiment that goes deeper than
Your off white down comforter.
Nobody is in love.
The harsh sunlight seeps in
Through down turned blinds,
And thin, translucent eyelids,
Both half open, but oblivious to the
Indifferent world. Life is too much with us-
Never leaving us alone to really feel:
The cold, smooth wooden floor pushing up
Against the delicate archs of our sinewy feet,
As they drop down to meet the brisk morning air,
That seems to coat everything revealed and left vulnerable
By the crumpled up sheets limply collapsed over the headrest,
Or the soft, steady breathing
Of someone left unstirred by the dizzying
Relay of thoughts that dance across my
Foolish mind. No one is in love, here.
The last fragment of hope
Was forgotten underneath mismatched blankets
That bear the faint scent of lavender fabric softener sheets
And something that lingers nameless beneath your presence.
The indented pillow, where you lay your head
Holds fast your hollow shape,
As if to remind us that reality is only as real
As those who are brave enough to feel it.
Time treads on and on,
Leaving us scrambling over coffee tables
And yesterdays newspaper strewn across the bedroom floor,
Blindly groping the abysmal space to find something
That isn't really there. Instead it's nestled between
The tiny slivers of our hearts,
Scattered across neon billboards and thee star hotels,
Pleading with us to acknowledge it's elusive presence
Before the world runs out of excuses,
And we're met with a big boom,
That probably will never even be felt.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 12:06 PM UTC