"intakes" poems
I stare at the crowd
rapid breath intakes
sweaty palms
I can't do this
I look back at her
telling her I can't do it
don't overreact
she says
my heartbeat is deafening
faster
faster
as if it wants to escape
I can do this
I think
but i know I can't
I'll fail
fail
f a i l
I feel nauseous
why am i so stupid
all I have to do is go there
just walk
**** it
why am i afraid?
I can do this,
I convince myself again
but my heart and sweaty palms
told me otherwise
I look back to her again
with my pleading eyes
on the verge of crying
*it's so simple
how can you fail,
everyone else can do it*
she says
simple for her,
but I am not her
nor everyone else
why are you forcing me?
i bite my lip,
so hard that it's bleeding
I stammer
but- I - can't-do- it
why can't you understand?
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 9:16 PM UTC
Before everything
i. I never knew four letters could melt
menthol candy-like, hydrochloric acid on my tongue
and keep burning it in different degrees
I had to swallow back.
ii. That there would come a time
I'd have to baptize the pain in my chest like seasons
robbing me lungfuls
on January, September and December nights.
iii. That my blood was really ink I needed to stop using
before my skin turned paper-like.
iv. That my heart had an epicenter pumping a magnitude of earthquakes
that made me tremble helplessly in its intensity;
and that they were man-made calamities
followed by harsh, heavy, whipping tsunamis
to flood my grave of bleeding, jagged fault lines.
v. That aftereffects lasted longer than treatment itself,
and that I didn't need any professional diagnosis to know
I was terminal
from the same drug that made butterfly-strokes in my veins,
whose arms withheld the only elixir to this malady.
vi. I named my sickness, my pain, my agony like orphaned children, after you--
a rare disease
the doctors didn't even know about yet.
vii. I did and I doubted
but a part of me beat signals
that echoed off the cave walls of my skull
that I knew.
viii. Before everything,
I have been warned
but I chose to listen to the soothing, wrong, hopeful voices
"He means no harm,".
ix. You began spreading like an epidemic-- a tumor to a colony of cells all over me-- until I became you;
a reflection of familiar suffering and mortality, slowly withering away.
In the end, I didn't even have you to blame
for letting me overdose from intakes
of my own **** bitter medicine and unforgivable mistakes.
x. I guess, this was how you wanted the price to be paid.
Feb 18, 2017
Feb 18, 2017 at 6:24 AM UTC
Hot/Cold, Part 2
Hot endings, cold starts.
Hot feelings, cold marks.
Hot temper with a cold reaction.
Hot double barrel with cold pump action.
Hot church with a cold congregation.
Hot merch with cold affiliations.
Hot meat, cold wine.
Hot dollar, cold dime.
Hot queens with their cold mink.
Hot kings with their cold links.
Hot art with cold reception.
Hot mirror and a cold reflection.
Hot woman with a cold reputation.
Hot main chick with a cold side on placement.
Hot funk and cold R&B.;
Hot world but the colds all I see.
Hot information, cold intelligence.
Hot faults, then cold recompense.
Hot forgiveness, cold mistakes.
Regardless of what the world intakes.
Hot ignorance and cold oblivion,
are bliss to those who favour dominion.
Hot pathogens and cold diseases.
Hot gold with the cold diamond pieces.
Hot gat within a cold Gucci belt.
Hot knife inside the skin it starts to melt.
Hot love for God and the cold religion.
Hot pain after a cold circumcision.
Hot skin, cold whip.
Hot hands, cold grip.
Hot city, cold ghetto.
Hot calls, but no memo.
Hot rapper with no demo.
Hot baller with no c-notes.
Hot thoughts, cold emotions.
Hot theories and cold notions.
Hot models with their cold body motions.
Hot love before the warm heart ceases.
Hot hatred 'fore the cold heart seizes.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 3:38 PM UTC
This is the machine.
Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.
We are quiet machines.
With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.
This is the machine.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
It’s is a rope, with the strongest of fibres
that holds me together and can unthread and tear me apart,
it replaces my bones and makes me limp.
It makes me fold into myself as I walk -
are people staring at me?
Coiling so very tightly
twisting and turning and tying,
tying me up, forcing me to my knees.
Cuts deep into my foundation -
they’ve spread too far.
Rapid breath intakes, sweaty palms
my heartbeat is deafening, faster faster,
punching through my chest as I walk down the street.
I just need to get to the end
yet I always fail and f a i l more.
Trying not to let my weak body collapse me.
trying not the let the sheets smother me.
trying not the let the rocks squash me.
trying not to let the fingers strangle me.
trying not to let the words define me.
It’s like a ***** that holds my world together
there not point trying to look, you cant find it,
yet when I’m in public it comes loose.
I prepare to run as
the sky crumbles around me.
The ***** is so small you cannot tell it lay inside me
it’s so delicate so don’t look at me closely,
or you can see it in the twiddling in my fingers.
The dilated pupils and panicked expression.
Choose. Fight or flight?
I bite my lip so hard it starts to bleed
trying to keep it inside and hidden as to keep it a secret,
it’s like a wave trying to break towards the shore.
Like somehow, it’s never going to stop
so I keep sinking and sinking and nobody can tell.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 12:42 PM UTC
All I ask is an antidote allowing all adults around the atmospher an appointment about arguing.
Because brother basic bodies are bound to believe bragging & bribing basically being broad brings about the best. But be
Cautious, cause carpets can't carry couches alone, concrete creeps. Causing careless catholic christians to create children.
Don't **** the deranged, dedicate the distaste to the drugs. drinking, and dumb deeds that did it.
Even Eminem explains enternal emotions excellently.
For fear feeds frusttration, though frustration can find fun in fornitcation. Foul. Focus on friends and family.
Getting grouchy gonorrhea grants graves too gorgeous gilrs. Game over.
However, having ****** hardly helps handsome happy hands.
Indicating interesting intakes, involving inception in indecive individuals.
Just joking, jealousy just justifies Jose Cuervo.
Kinddling kindness kidnaps king kong's kingdom.
Learn like lovers, loathing little, liking largely, letting laughs live loudly.
Maning mold mountains out of mud, make missery monogamous with merry.
Never neglect the notion of nice.
Optimism overcomes others opinions.
Personally, persisting perfection probably puts pessimistic patterns in people's personalities.
Quietly questioning their quality.
Rest assured reading random reactions really is redundant.
Searching someones soul secretely sends self salvation.
Take turns, tell truths, talk, these things take time, they are talents to be treasured.
Understanding ultimatums unlocks unlimited unison.
May 5, 2011
May 5, 2011 at 1:50 AM UTC
these last two weeks drag on.
I wash my hair all the time, rinse and repeat rinse and repeat rinse and repeat repeat repeat repeat repeat
slithering out of my follicles and sliding down the drain
toweling my hair dry, and
then you're creeping into my skin
you're creeping in creeping creeping and there's a whole bar of soap, gone.
and I think I'm finally clean and you've etched yourself in the pads of my fingers
that I rub on sandpaper until they bleed, ****** ****** badges of I'm winning!
winning this game with you in my lungs, pushing out with all your hands and your feet;
I can't breathe out, you won't let me, I hold it hold it hold it I touch edges of darkness feel my eyes
clog with pinpricks, stars, explosions and I've suffocated you, let out my breath,
calmed by your soft murmur in my ear, your touch on places we always went together,
I am cleaning cleaning cleaning trying to get you out of my skin and my hair and my thoughts
thoughts like you didn't even care and you don't even think about me anymore and all I do is think about trying to scrape your brains out of my innards.
vivid intakes, passionate obsession, cleaning cleaning cleaning the house the yard my hair (again) the door the mirror you wrote I love you beautiful the car seat you pulled me into the feel of your lips and your hands and your hair when you sweat because I could make you
feel.
and now I look in that mirror where I can't erase your words and I don't see that girl you watched anymore;
all I see is ***** of skin and listless hair and blue purple circles stalking my eyelids and profound sadness and I see so much that isn't even there because the one thing I need to see I can't because it's
you and you're wrapped up in her like a present
and all I got this christmas was coal to match this listless hair and an inability to see reality and a really awful obsession with wanting to cause you pain
pain pain pain pain what is pain, pearl white
what is pain
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:28 AM UTC
I
here alone apart
I realise
we are marked by the tide’s turn
and that drawing back
long aching inhalations
intakes of more than breath:
the very filling of lungs
with white and various
sounds
of beach
of foreshore
floating
in the heavy air.
Its constantness,
everywhere
together
its everywhere and together
oneness,
though with such difference
scoured into the sand
by weather’s hand
by the wind’s rough play.
II
Shield the eyes
against the glare
against the pressing wind
spinning down and past us
out of the light noon-distant high-sunned
light,
glancing the tips of bejewelled waves,
dancing, only to fall to translucent hollows,
only to rise and follow
the wave before itself,
that, even now and finally,
breaks into a foamed lace,
a fragile flower spreading
across the sand and shore,
a coverlet for this bared flesh of land,
wet glossy shiny sun-lit wet,
yet drying beneath our gaze,
leaving the infinitely-tiny
grains of sand’s
dew to glisten,
to sparkle.
III
No pathways here
after the entrance
of footprints splayed
down the slight dune
through the ammophila
down to the hard sand the littered stone.
Only up and down
across perhaps
to the sea - from the sea.
Otherwise it’s up:
to sunward windward,
out out along the jigged line
of surf meeting sand,
a self-similarity,
a symmetry breaking on the shore.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 3:24 PM UTC
Silence,
Licks up the air around you,
Intakes it all,
Constricting your very thoughts, fears, feelings, pains until...
Everything goes black
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 5:04 PM UTC
The sounds are astounding
My mind is completely at its wits end
The scents of our bodies
The compassion
Unison
****** and powerful intakes
The many desires are out spoken
Pain strikingly pleasurably
Stopping is impossible
Rapid thumps
This is serious
Becoming over the top
The gasps become groans
The sounds become screams
Names
We are climbing
The ******
The ground shaking truth
The beautiful
sensual release of it all
Our minds become faint
Our bodies now in a exhausted state
The heart is pounding
We drift
Into a seducing slumber
Until we wake again
For another addicting ******
******
Leon Wolf
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 7:54 PM UTC
Falling out of distracting thoughts
he reacquainted with his glare in the mirror;
he'd been somewhere else, undoubtedly lost
in a moment of her.
She too was standing in front of a mirror,
putting her face on, yet the occasion was stained
with an uncharacteristic frown, as if sadness
had found her somehow.
After many anxious intakes of breath,
he reached for the door-keys lain by the trinket box
next to their photograph. He cradled
the apartment keys in his palms for a brief moment,
then went on his way.
She stared at their joyful pictures on her wall,
a shrine with each an expression of love.
She clutched his name on the key fob and left also.
That evening in the restaurant,
her eyes glued to his as intensely as her hands
pursing through the gaps in his fingers;
two sizes too big.
He reciprocated warm heartfelt smiles,
trying to keep it together for both of them.
Circling his thumb gently on pressed fingers.
Her accented cadence a perfume for the ears
and her broken English endearing;
this would all haunt him,
these details tearing at the pit of his stomach
as he languished in the reality
that he has no choice. He must return home.
Over the balcony
wrapped in her anaconda-like arms,
he witnessed her cheeks
tear-staining in the moonlight,
her whimpers battling the lulling tides and cricket chorus.
She crumpled as a strewn napkin against his frame,
before exchanging a kiss;
soft and lovingly endured. The very kiss that wishes
not to end but to stay this way forever.
How melancholy it was in the sea breeze,
to walk among their favourite spot on the beach;
where many an anecdote was told,
many a sweet little nothing shared
and many a glance embraced.
Right now with the hush of salt water
lapping the shore;
their 'Last chance to see' had been studied.
In that instant, both knew
that it couldn't be possible to have
one another again.
They stood for a long while by the waters edge.
Both just as broken,
before becoming ghosts of the scene
and ghosts to each other.
May 19, 2017
May 19, 2017 at 6:54 PM UTC
When dancing skin illuminates your sin
I'll bask in the sight of your fair moonlight
When the warmth emanates your intakes and outakes
I'll fill my lungs with those sounds that I've found
When your hands are bands of muscles grasping me
I'll tantalize and tease, listen to you gasping 'please..'
But I want to drown in this, sink with me on this ship
I'll toss the sheets away, making white rippling waves
And we'll sail away, my dear, toss away hesitation and fear
As I'll lick the tender tendrils of your soul, just let go
So that I can hold triumph in the soft sounds of satisfied echoes
Gently tracing your skin, reminiscing the spots I've been kissing
As your eyes gently close, and the moonlight softens to a glow
I let you fade away into the night, but with me by your side
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 11:06 AM UTC
Bright Eyes: Lua
Loudon Wainwright: Motel Blues
Radiohead: No Surprises
Keaton Henson: You don't know how luck you are
Tigers Jaw: Never saw it coming
Fleetwood Mac: Songbird
Paolo Nutini: Candy
... and your laugh
the clearing of your throat
your sharp intakes of breath
the chattering of your teeth in the cold
and the movement of cloth against your skin
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 10:55 AM UTC
I’m measuring heartbeats and gauging miles across torn atlases and
each space between the intakes of breath while saying I miss you
feels like my lungs are freezing over or decaying or burning
I’ve been pacing around my room for so long that I think
my floorboards are starting to form fault lines
and some nights I miss you with the magnitude of an earthquake
I’m digging trenches in my chest because
my heart holds more use as a graveyard
and I’m burying your memories there
It’s midnight on the first day of autumn and I don’t know
if the thunder cracked again or it’s just my voice
begging and screaming at God to bring you back to me
except no one can hear prayers over the silence
that’s fallen over me since you left so I keep missing you
until heartbeats can keep up with distance
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 7:21 PM UTC
Permeating - Begins with a simple dispute, argument, disagreement, and conflict with the individual. Second, temperate levels arise, violence emerges, resulting in uncontrollable actions, creating a brutal response. Third, very difficult to describe, but I will do my best, here it goes, limits have exceeded beyond recognition, logic is no longer liable, quickly disappearing, reasoning malfunctions, love is no longer there, hate has taken full control, picture this experience, the demonic manifestation.
Torturing - The body increases heavily in strenght, meanwhile pain flows throughout the blood stream, invincibility neurotransmitters take over, eyes dialect largely covering the entire layer, screams become very unfamiliar, roughly deep raging voices infuse, bloods exposed, numbness arose, receptors react, nothings inevitable its too late, shark bate, regenerate don't anticipate or hesitate, meditate composure and control the setting, pain is in motion.
Suffocating - Powerless embodiments, crucial destruction, ineffective signals, petrified terrified horrified symptoms, death is near if the hody turns weak, vulnerable absorption, manipulating cells propelled, evil casting spell, damaged speech impairment, strange feelings corrupt breathe intakes, prone to cardiovascular shutdown, heart attack, seizures, lose conscious, maybe faint, watching this occurrence is far much more traumatic, I'd say an experience unforgettable, marking scars forever, taken to my grave, remember Jesus saves...
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 2:58 AM UTC
Grasping at the air and your gone, like a whisper in my mind or my breath on a foggy morning. It lingers for a while, surrounding my head,
Like a pure cloud of delusion, a bubble of insecurities and hopes and desires and dreams and then it's gone, Like the flicker of a candle blown out by a child in an adult world, run away with the Humm of your breath, escaping into the night.
It's like quicksand running through my fingers, and I can see my time clock always feeling like it's running out, it's like a butterfly dancing into the deepest corners of my mind, running through a river of emotions and bursting through my
Mouth in a babble of awkward communication, freely flowing with everything that's been bottled
corked up and already set adrift in some running thought. All my
Mouth can conjure is a free flowing eclipse dabbed with bubbles of truth floating away to the surface of my sharp tounge. And as the negativity cascades around me like a cloak of invisible emotion, the river runs from
my soul through my eyes, and the pain of crashing waves batters against my throbbing heart just willing you to take me in your arms, and plant a kiss on my forehead and tell me everything will Work out. But instead you're gone, like a whisper in my mind or my breath on this particularly foggy morning, and despite my frequent intakes and the river that won't stop running, I know that at the end of the day, that's all you wanted from me too.
Apr 3, 2015
Apr 3, 2015 at 1:01 PM UTC
I discover a black hole
Which can swallow anything
No matter what it's size is?
I am trying to control
And take charge of it
The black hole is my brain itself
It never knows how to differentiate
Only intakes that it can all the day
I have to use my heart as a control system
As we have good and evil
I have to grasp the good
And lead my life
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 8:32 AM UTC
Drifting on a steady tide
Of euphoric teal,
Abroad the dozing sea
In broad daylight, my heart solely yearns to feel;
That
kick-
started
backwards flipped,
butterfly
& honey-
dipped
Choking-on-my-words sensation
Smooth talking me,
to maximum elation
Move your steady hand
Upwards,
along the seam
Of my glitter covered, purple faerie
Ripped,
skinny jeans
May our love take us to cloud 9
Bodies pulsing in the drivers side
Hips glide; perfect, precise
Against the window of the frigid outside
As I
Climb into the backseat
Eye to eye,
find your breath on my lips
my hand under your hips
Your exhalation is my favourite high
Teasing ***** electrify this body baby
Push
it
deep
inside
of
me
please?
I bite your lip, always a tease
Mind enthralled, car hazy
Harder sir,
you've kept me waiting.
Yes,
oh
please
Daddy can you feel me squeeze?
I feel your body
I feel your heart
I feel your thoughts
I feel your soul
But you're the only thing in this entire world
That makes me feel like I've lost control
This perfect state of pleasure
Lips loose,
hips roll
Heavy heaving intakes
Of cigarette perfume
Drifting past the rings of your
amber-gold,
They find my softened eyes
You lean in
to whisper against
my neck
"I will love you until the end of time."
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
H e l p
I can't breathe
Short intakes of hot air
Begging, pleading for someone to save me,
But only he is there
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 11:44 AM UTC
years of words on paper, meticulously folded, filed,
un-forgotten, found and re-found
so often as to tear the edges, smudge the ink
un-escape back into, trapped on the ferris wheel of
spotless rosy memory, broken-record memory, memory,
memory,
memorize, become
words on paper
words on palms
words and touches and sharp intakes of breath etched
and etched
and etched and—
now, we use disposable cameras
look at what’s in front of us
we’re starting to
remember how
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
Glittery train tracks of escaping melancholy,
exploring the curves of cheeks.
Skin taut from wilted stripes of salty emotion.
A mounting pressure.
Eyes straining against the wave of tension.
The world slowly receding into blurry shapes.
An ache,
like a hundred hammers battering the temple of your mind.
A blooming tint of pale rose surround the eyes
with glistening, dark eyelashes.
Shaky, scraping breaths,
uncontrollable sharp intakes of air into suddenly shallow, shrunken, insufficient lungs.
And that renewing cleansing, like an unusual baptism.
A curious sense of catharsis.
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 4:24 PM UTC
Take me back to the Mountains,
with a soft breeze in my hair,
for steep hiking, leaves crunching,
and short intakes of air.
You were a speck in the distance,
from a climb through the ridges,
so I clambered over rocks
to make it to the finish.
With one last pull to the peak,
I saw a smile on your face,
then I brushed off the dirt
and fell into your warm embrace.
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 11:49 PM UTC
i. How to justify running away
there was no solid ground to stand on
no
earth to sink into.
a remember-me-not
of dirt.
ii. How to describe anxiety
laying on the edges of paper
slicing arteries of the throat,
the jugular veins,
forcing a sort of not cry/moan/scream/whimper.
iii. How to talk about unrequited love
push open the wound
accidentally scarring the memory
into skin.
writing calligraphy from the bloodstream.
*iv. How to know what's home *
slinking back to cotton
to caress and cover and rebuild
weary soul.
let a candle be the lighthouse.
*v. How to write about someone who will never write back
oh these relentless intakes of air
that rattling the rib cage,
why is love only fair
when its finished to the bottom of the page.
Feb 10, 2019
Feb 10, 2019 at 7:14 PM UTC