"jawed" poems
here's to a package of
Marlboro Reds
in the hands of
someone other than
the Marlboro Man
standing in
for those slack-jawed outlaws
my heroes now lack jaws
tongues
lungs
I swear it's been too long
since I inhaled manhood
The Great Darrell Winfield
rolled
packed
and filtered
into the only thing I know
that makes a man a man
the essence of
cowboy boots and farmer's tan
in every drag
see, I inhale my heroes
all the dusty red-necked
cowboys
Darrell Winfield
and my dad
men whose lives
went up in smoke
to coat my throat
in my own self-righteousness
I'm frightened this
is all that I'll have left
of him
lung cancer
and the lingering stench
of cigarettes
he always smelled
of cigarettes
he'd pull me into these
firm embraces
he held so long
that he'd suffocate me
in tacky business
and cigarette smoke
masked only
faintly
by a poor man's
cologne
still I breathed him in
until I'd start to choke
it was too much man to handle
my grandpa told me
“smoking doesn't send you
straight to Hell,
but it sure does make you smell
like you've already been there”
he was
a grown man
cursing
crying
lying
dying by himself
trying to drown out the inferno
with a case of beer
but sobriety finds you sometime
and I'd rather suffocate in cigarettes
than lose him altogether
and even if he smells like Hell
at least that means he made it back
May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012 at 6:14 PM UTC
Check back soon to resume and consume
every tight-lipped, slack-jawed fool in the room.
See, it's all what you know
as the fires start to grow
and the future burns slow.
Keep your eyes on the ceiling,
and your antenna feelers feelin',
for when your senses stop reeling,
you will finally start believing.
Kick-back to the basics,
not too far from the basement,
and close enough to show
that **** really isn't basic.
It's another mid-west, ******
******** freak show.
Another evening drinking whiskey
with the seedling's peep-show.
So, it's time to relax and relapse
into acidified broken synapse.
The lights keep flickering
and the couples keep bickering:
***** I am not above homicidal snickering.”
I steer clear of these diversions,
and wander past the sermons,
just to chew up all the crooked talk
and spittle out inversions.
I shovel mockery to hypocrisy,
pin-prick the empty *****
whose passions lack predicates,
and in the background, I'll be complexifying my medic-kit:
ketamine, morphine, ecstasy;
marijuana, mushrooms, LSD.
Watch those ******* jitter-bug college *****
procreate while sloppy drunk,
but keep an honest eye
on the flies that will rise above –
then fall back down in existential angst, like:
“Dear God, why must I be free?
Oh, God! Why is every universal eye on me?
I'm just another acid war veteran,
sneakin' through these gutters
with pestilence and bitter sin.
When they reach the promised land
of golden clouds and holding hands,
I'll be underground with the slugs and the spider band.”
Yet here I sit, sick of sippin' poisons with illiterates.
So, let the skies fall and the buildings crash,
as you stand on the wall with a fist full of cash.
I'll be on the front lawn,
picketing for dawn,
while the night around me slowly ambles on.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 12:23 AM UTC
Marry the person who says "and I love you" after every other thing. Marry the person who lets you borrow their favourite shirt. Marry the person who remembers what you like. Who goes to the movie theater early to buy the tickets. Marry the person who rubs your shoulders when you lean forward, so you don't have to ask them to. Marry the person who gives you the last bite of everything. Give it back to them. Marry the person who's willing to watch movies they hate with you, just because you love them. Watch movies they love instead. Marry the person who's scent you can recognize across a room. Who surprises you with little, meaningful things. Who knows a lot about music. Marry the person who can always make you laugh, if only out if unbridled joy when they're not funny. Who considers you home. Who you can tell all your deepest, I really mean deepest secrets. And who can tell you theirs. Marry the person who you smile about. Marry the person who smiles about you. Marry the person who looks at you with complete open jawed awe, eyes bright and fixed, smile indelibly grafted on their face. Marry the person who makes you feel like you're in a movie every time they kiss you. Marry the person you know you need. The person who needs you. And need each other, forever.
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 3:00 AM UTC
More a French shave than five o'clock shadow,
the young artist's way of backing off,
announcing danger, an air of the unexpected,
as the King snake has evolved to feign the Coral.
Yet, where camel hair touched canvas calm,
where quintessential light met quotidian ennui,
not the advertised blackened rose or orchid,
rather the sizzle, the honeyed-heat of azalea.
Each stroke portended floral intifada,
pastel yellows and oily greens igniting
upon a fired-umber background,
threatened to melt the easel into tar.
I stood gape-jawed, nodded approval,
eyeing the second creation within a single flower.
Feb 19, 2012
Feb 19, 2012 at 8:25 PM UTC
*oh you
body of a woman
you've cried in the dark to long
with your enormous thrilling charm
you
under my skin
with your blood thirsty neurosis
like a queer moon
begging to be hollowed out
slow and cruel, you begged
calling me sir, like that
your mouth gleaming wet
your eyes piercing like flashing cleavers
you groan wild
like a hyena on fire
leaving all sense behind
saying yes to my darkest of whims
and weeping echoes
darker
darker and darker yet
twist me in circles
and circles in circles
my soul a rioting expectation
she eats the backward apple
God knew you would
the sadist
good destroys
evil heals
you eat apples of sin galore
your **** puffs
a fluttering gate drooling
madness, all Adamite
an iron jawed angel
tides of panic in the dark
kisses that ground you down
paralyzed by the black pit
true will of desire
atavistic compulsions torrential
pain that makes beauty stunning
pain that hums
like needles and tongues
sliding curves
milk and blood
doomed by carnal opportunity
under leaves of darkening green
depth charge
shifting flesh
towards a swift arrow
i am a sudden storm
like Caligula's kisses
and you are absolute sacrifice
draped drooling
in heavens arms
Sep 10, 2017
Sep 10, 2017 at 12:24 PM UTC
I REMEMBER here by the fire,
In the flickering reds and saffrons,
They came in a ramshackle tub,
Pilgrims in tall hats,
Pilgrims of iron jaws,
Drifting by weeks on beaten seas,
And the random chapters say
They were glad and sang to God.
And so
Since the iron-jawed men sat down
And said, "Thanks, O God,"
For life and soup and a little less
Than a hobo handout to-day,
Since gray winds blew gray patterns of sleet on Plymouth Rock,
Since the iron-jawed men sang "Thanks, O God,"
You and I, O Child of the West,
Remember more than ever
November and the hunter's moon,
November and the yellow-spotted hills.
And so
In the name of the iron-jawed men
I will stand up and say yes till the finish is come and gone.
God of all broken hearts, empty hands, sleeping soldiers,
God of all star-flung beaches of night sky,
I and my love-child stand up together to-day and sing: "Thanks, O God."
2.2k
I
had something on my mind
I
guess it really doesn't matter anyway
I
was unable to get my point across
You
stand there slack jawed with all the answers
You
bathe yourself in fairies tears to recover from my words
You
are popular and "open minded" so you win I guess
OF COURSE
They
will never take my side
They
are on every block praising you
They
are also in charge and can burn me so bad
How quaint...
Jul 19, 2015
Jul 19, 2015 at 10:08 AM UTC
Brushwork
If I were a jazz pianist I would pay
my dues in one lump sum on a tip
from some country singer on his way
down who gives me the shirt off his back
a Nudie with piping and plenty
of rhinestones that catch the stage
lights just so and sweep in reflection
across the polished planes of my 1890
rosewood Steinway Grand Modal C
a beaut with a pedigree, one I won’t fail
to mention from the stage in the second set
during the pause between How High The Moon
and I Love The Life I Live from behind
a bobbing cigarette, sharing the remarkable
fact that this is the very same piano
Mose Allison played in a two night stand
at the Blue Note in 1962. Later I’ll work Jimmy
the trumpet player’s name into a tune and trade
winks with the guy on upright bass
the drummer slack jawed oblivious, lost
to us all in some very tasty brushwork.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 7:49 AM UTC
the morning after always hurts the worst
hazy brain
summersault stomach
and where in the hell is my car
i want a pizza
or two
it was nice to see you
i've missed your smile
and condensed stare
and the shape that your lips make while you confess your love to the beer bottle's neck
that explains the jameson
and all the beers at the bar
the beer bongs at the after party
and why i could stomach the strippers
it was all you
so nice to see you
why do i always feel guilty when the sun comes up
no one got a black eye
i didn't grab the mic
and my clothes stayed on until i was safely home
although
the cab driver may have caught a glance
to think
i'm "all grown up"
i'm not at all sorry
not for the whiskey gut
or the fire i'll throw up
or the kisses that i didn't plant along your collar
i'm still the same floral-print ship-wreck at the bottom of the bottle
my mother once said that the only people worth clinging to
are those who see all of your greatness outweighing your flaws
you still see the holes in my tights
and my falling hem line
not the honey sweet legs they shape
or the hips and thighs that the denim hides
i'll be just fine as the german genie in the bottle of irish whiskey
witty
and slack-jawed
and ready to kiss the lips off the face of the clock
and two shots away from dancing with the cops
i look great in hand-cuffs
i'll whistle the whole way to jail
small victories weigh the most
and right now
i feel like muhammed ali
thanks, babe
here's two asprin that glow better than your eyes
and they're mine
waiting to chase away the pain that came up with the sun
here's to endings that aren't a safe bet
here's to sleeping alone
here's to new mistakes
just waiting to happen
water never tasted so good to me
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 1:39 PM UTC
I'll write a poem a day,
and maybe that way everything will be
okay.
I'll look up at that oil covered sky,
that peculiar black stained shade of grey,
those wisps of condensation tilled out,
like fields of wheat and
creased tightly through golden streaks,
of setting suns' last gleams,
and I'll sit lack jawed, if just for a second,
and wonder if truly my existence is worth it.
So much doubt running,
so very deep.
Yes, I'll write a poem a day,
as if...
nothing,
really.
Aye,
Eureka, I know my meaning,
Yes I will express that frustration,
of an infinite empty feeling.
That little almost insignificant voice that says to you,
It doesn't matter, none of this is real,
Well for each and every one of you I'll feel,
quite intensely in fact,
that ignominious void,
the elephant in the room,
and with tact and poise,
I'll illuminate it for you,
so you can live, and I can dream,
Sweet fruitful dreams of nothing.
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 2:11 AM UTC
He veers to the left when he walks
in and out of lives
up and down city streets.
His gait clumsy
and haphazard
bumping passersby
and knocking glasses off tables.
Slack jawed stares and
excited whispers;
unphased
unwavering
steady in his unsteadiness.
He meanders down alleyways;
breaking hearts
and preconceived notions about
what a vagabond should
or shouldn’t be.
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 1:55 PM UTC
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose-
I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.
True. There is
a beautiful Jesus.
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!
But I can't. Need is not quite belief.
All morning long
I have worn
your cross, hung with package string around my throat.
It tapped me lightly as a child's heart might,
tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.
Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.
My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue's wrangle,
the world's pottage, the rat's star.
1.8k
On campus, warm sun bathing my shoulders
as I listen to two girls discuss poetry
(and the dreamy guy who teaches their class)
and I try not to laugh at them as they talk about
how romantic I would be to have poetry written about
them. I want to ask them if they are really that stupid.
Instead, I bite my tongue and enjoy the taste of pennies
that floods my mouth and keep my laughter gurgling inside of me.
I long to ask these simpering, silly girls
if they have ever read any poetry about life. Not about the
romantic notions of life, but about really-real life. Poetry about
blood and pain and ******* and dying and loving and art
and I want to force feed them great ****** bites of
Chaucer or Ginsberg or
Bukowski.
Yeah... Bukowski. Visceral, blunt, gory, beautiful Bukowski.
But I have a feeling that this action would go unappreciated.
Their poets don’t use language like **** or ****
Their poets don’t talk about the world I know.
Their poets live in a world of rewrite and revise.
I want to scream at them how silly they are and how much
their views will change over the next few years. And I realize that I may
have been staring (glaring?) at them because they have fallen
silent and are now looking at me with the squeamish discomfort
of people who have just realized that they’re being observed.
And I think to myself, **** it,” and I smile and tell them that
their handsome poetry professor is married, and their idea of poetry
is limited. “You should read some Bukowski,” I tell them, “Then,
you just might get it” and they gaze up at me slack-jawed, staring blankly
for a moment, and I want to make sure I have not sprouted another head.
Instead, I gather my things and walk away. And as I do, I revel in a fleeting
feeling of superiority because I know.
I understand.
I get it.
And I can almost feel special.
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
Wake up to a pulsing morning.
Sooner than you know,
circles back to ******* Monday.
Empty batteries.
Empty call log.
Empty stomach,
and ash-mouthed, empty-hearted anger
leaves its streaks on the walls
of the insides of the skull--
it's a kitchen, that mind you got:
it's covered and crusted--well used I suppose--
but smells funny, needs dusted
and swept
and mopped
and wiped down
and shined up. Dress down
the absentees in your life--I'm sure you know how--
'til it circles back 'round--
to breakfast,
to Monday,
to you.
In your bed.
Fight the throb in your head and push back
on the sheets that still rush up to claim you--
slack jawed with maimed thoughts--though it's
late in the day.
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 6:51 PM UTC
Bobbing and weaving,
Slipping and jabbing.
The fighting stance against a thousand opponents,
All of whom, look like me,
Is a stance I can only articulate,
In a mirror,
Shadow boxing that guy,
Strangely looking like me.
Pop-Pop BANG,
I throw punches at the air in front of me,
This bull can rage like Cinderella in a cage,
A square, roped cage,
Where life’s uppercuts put me in a daze.
The fighter in me,
One stubborn little *******
Iron-jawed and iron-clawed,
Always taking one to the gut,
I fall down and so ruthlessly get back up.
24 and 0,
I’m the undefeated world champion,
My opponent remains consistent,
But I’m not afraid,
I got this far,
You think I can’t go a few more rounds?
Oct 26, 2023
Oct 26, 2023 at 10:53 PM UTC
Hey you!
Yea, you!
You one-eyed
Crooked-jawed
Rat-faced
Sad excuse for a human being!
For too long your voice has left me in tears
Too long your voice has killed me from the inside, out
You have teased me and slandered me
Depressed me and angered me
You’ve taken advantage of my kindness
And stomped on it
For too long
But that’s all about to change
As I have recently come out of a shell
I’ve come out of a shell of rage and depression
And I’ve realized I have a voice
And man my voice is POWERFUL!
Not only that, but my voice has a message.
I bet you didn’t see this **** coming, did you?
Your voice gave me the message of self-loathing
But my voice will now give you the message of your demise.
You see,
You can no longer hurt me because I’ve found
I have a way with words on paper
Now I’m the giver and you’re the taker
And man it’s time to meet your ******* maker!
You have no right to judge me because you barely even know me
You have no excuse to torment me because I am not your pet
You feed off of your ego and you make a scene to get noticed.
**** you must be really insecure.
Did you not get enough attention as a child?
Are you not proud of yourself for what you have become?
You must look in the mirror every day and feel a lot of remorse
And anger
And denial
Which is why you continue to hate
You hate yourself so you hate on others
You hate your life so you hate those who have it better than you
But you can’t hide that from me anymore
And it’s time you fixed your voice
To be more encouraging,
Optimistic
There’s one life rule I heard before:
When the amount of **** taken
Exceeds the amount of **** given,
It’s time to get the **** out!
I got the **** out
So should you
**** man
I got a voice
And my voice is powerful
My voice has a message
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 10:15 PM UTC
slack jawed in a puddle,
my tongue hurts from making you melt.
claw marks in my arm,
you’re certain I’m here for your pelt.
killing myself with a string,
telling the truth with some bugs.
the loose teeth are rotten, not ripe,
I inch around like a slug.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 12:01 PM UTC
Iron Jawed Angel.
Unoriginal & Unwritten. Unseen, And Unforgiven. I Hoarded Words, Stashed Them In The Empty Rooms That Are My Body. Achingly Delicate Lyrics In The Spaces Between My Ribs, Heartbroken Heroes Behind My Eyelids, Folded Lines On Bar Napkins In The Space Behind My Knee, Or The Backbone Tramp-Stamp Of A Loveless Beauty. I Was Dying To Make This Skin My Own. Cover Myself In Metal Jackets That Could Scare Away The Sorrow. I Had Empty Promises In My Fingertips, Friday Night Serenades Pressed Into My Collar Bones, Recklessness On Repeat, Pleated Across The Lines Of My Tongue. And The Words Rose Up, Frothing Around My Wrists, Rising Over Scalded Flesh, Popping Balloons And Swallowing Bruises. Sought Out Landmines To Call Home, And Found Solstice In The Explosions Of Fading Glory.
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 4:53 PM UTC
I.
pink satin masks
blood and broken toes.
i keep effortless poise
while knees and lungs shake.
i dance in tattered tutus,
in old toe shoes,
for a pocketful of coins;
i dance until i am blind with joy,
until my lungs are full of trumpet shouts,
until i am exhausted and weightless,
until my audience is standing,
breath gone, knowing what it is to be--
II.
in the storm of applause
one gnarled hand launches a torch.
"you danced with me," i cry--
her lips seal shut.
wild, cold eyes watch
flames singe my feathers,
fuse flesh to bone,
floorboards collapse.
she stays until she hears
my heart stop.
at dusk,
the stage is ash.
III.
at dawn,
a chorus of mouths emerge from the ground,
my audience, full-throated, white-knuckled,
tchaikovsky hollowing cheeks,
nasoprotivnyia daruia;
knuckles white--
flat-footed, slack-jawed,
the arsonist stands--
and i ascend from the dirt
on pillars of diamond forged from ash,
while my bare feet spill blood and i say
look at the source of my strength--
while new wings spread,
blood-red and gilded and brilliant in the sun--
while fire sprouts like flowers from my palms,
while spiders wrap my toes in silk
and i dance on thick-tongued harmonies
that tremble the earth with new roots
and i bourrée across the green trunks
and i become the sun
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 3:33 AM UTC
since i decided that the chain was too short
and the anchor i had attached myself to
was pulling me under
it's been Three Months since I've sharply inhaled and
let go of the rope
and stood slack-jawed
and in awe
at the calm with which you watched it suddenly go limp in your relaxed palms,
and then shrugged,
and retreated.
Three Months since I've turned my head toward the horizon
and rubbed the tension of staring at a backward-moving object
from my weary neck.
Three Months of my infatuation worming its way back into more isolated parts of my mind,
and festering in my body,
becoming quiet--
like the absence of a laugh track
while the film keeps playing.
And I feel like I am still holding my breath.
It's different now because I finally see the pattern.
Breathe easily,
breathe excitedly,
gasp,
hold your breath,
feel it abruptly leave your body as you deflate
find your breath again,
have it stolen from you once more
The question is: what will lure my lungs back into blissful submission again? And how much time am I left with to enjoy my returned sanity?
And if you came back,
I think it would feel like a falling dream.
I think I am in the falling dream.
I am grasping and flailing and fearing the crash,
everything becoming a quickening blur of
irrational analysis and false epiphanies,
an asymptote approaching demise...
until
i wake up
(and realize that I never really was falling).
Only to have the ground snatched from under my feet once again
but instead of down, I will go up.
(and then down again)
I wish I wasn't familiar with this pattern.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 5:46 PM UTC
Give me..
**Give me that good ****
You know, *that good ****
We're handed pipes instead of pills.
Told to smoke pain away something that's been breed 4 generations deep.
A poverty in the sheets.
An allergic reaction,
nuclear,
biochemical -
skin abrasions, lacerations -
3rd degree burns on our hearts.
Drink away the pain to sooth the burn.
To silence the scald.
No one even teaches you to hold yourself.
Instead they tell you to find someone else to do it for you.
Make you unable to be whole.
To be three fourths **** up.
Bandaging your own self inflicted scars in the bathroom sink.
To be metal jackets made of sorrow.
To be blacked out Saturday nights, too hung over to go to church with your family in the morning.
To be so high, you never even get low.
To be light bulbs busted, stayed bright too long.
That good **** ain't good **** when it turns you into the kind of slack jawed, numb monster your mother is ashamed of.
We are a generation self mutilated - no, no - self medicated.
Raised by television sets, they made cigarettes look ***
They made suicide look pretty,
And binge drinking look cool.
They made it normal for kids to pass around bottles of liquor at 14.
You're too young and too fast, and **you're trying to not ******* feel ****
I've been you.
I am you.
So no, it ain't no good ****
*I don't have any good ****
Cause nothing is good, if it's never been bad first.
If it's never been broke, and broken, and sick.
If it's never cried itself to sleep.
If it's never seen its own reflection in broken pieces of glass and felt akin to the shatter.
You have to feel every inch of the low to make any high worth it.
And let it be a homemade one.
Let it be love.
And lust.
And the sun, and good art, and loud music, and jukebox laughter, and your family telling you, you matter.
Don't let it be synthetic and manufactured. Don't let it be bought on street corners, let it be home grown, and natural.
Raised in the corners of your mother's smile.
Let those good moments be you.
Let those moments be life.
Let them be the warmth before the scald, let those be the moments before you fall.
And I know it hurts.
It hurts to be a volcano victim.
To be so irrevocably in love with life when it can burn you so badly.
Believe me, being numb means nothing.
And yes, I know it's hard.
Hard to be 14,
And 17.
And 21,
And 45.
I know it's hard, so ******* hard to exist every single day.
I know the bouquets of heart break, feel like chainsaws and forest fires.
I know the boys hurt your feelings.
I know your parents don't understand you.
I know your teachers don't listen to you,
I know you hate yourself
And I know you shouldn't.
Because baby,
A pipe,
Or a pill
Or a bottle
Won't ever do any good **** for you.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 11:30 AM UTC
Tangible toys to trifle with
Telescopes and televisions and telephones
Teaching us to tick and tock
Telling us time
Trading touches for tricks
Though doesn't it seem just so?
The collective ties then tears
Tucking individualism into sleep
Terrors of the twilight to wake and hint
Tweaked in turbulence to set the sails smooth
Trying at contentment to dig up but contempt
Though doesn't it seem just so?
Telepaths and tellers on muted megaphones
Teething a societal infant proves troublesome
Tight jawed and spoonfed
Track the time travellers, the ****** heretics
Tennessee in '33 preached inequality
Though doesn't it seem just so?
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 9:44 PM UTC
The night sky is
staring back at you.
You're checked out.
It's all gone to hell.
Bought a one way ticket
halfway to Shambhala.
The Christmas lights in
the tapestry above flicker
and fade out of conscious
thought. The moon hangs,
slack-jawed and silent,
shaking your shoulders as
you kneel into the pavement.
"Won't you leave me be?"
But no, he's calling the sun
and he's begging for help
********* stop it!"
They're driving you crazy.
The pavement is beautiful
against your cheek.
But here comes everything
You're flying on clouds,
and there is lights from the sun
and the moon is there, crying,
"Stop it, stop it!"
All you want is the pavement.
And your mothers screaming
through the glass. And the lights;
white and bright and cruel.
You only hear the pavement,
you only see the night sky;
staring back at you.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 2:42 PM UTC
I am lost to the inside joke
of the empty street in my city
and laugh about nothing, really
as I flick my cigarette to go
inside—
I am lost just inside the door
where I trip on a
slack jawed chair
spending too much time
in front of the T.V.
I am lost in the dark
looking for a light switch
with no luck
so I try to think about
not being lost
with as much luck
as the light switch.
A lost cause at the
bar earlier, crooked darts,
sideways glances and
upturned chairs.
On the way home,
thinking about those
upturned chairs
and how unfair it was
to be cruel to something
unassuming,
I was lost in track marks
on my face when I thought about
how my mother would feel
about all of this nonsense.
I cried like I did when
I saw my mother cry
for the first time—
like she’d just come
from the womb
and it stole my innocence,
So I sit to pry open my chest
and see gears turning,
realize
I'm still looking for the
light switch,
realize,
we’re all dying of the same thing;
click—
Time—
Not the digital glowing red that
shrieks at me to get up,
not the one that
punches me in the gut
when I watch it at work
one thankless,
minimum wage minute
at a time, but
A pocket watch,
a family heirloom,
sacred, unapologetic,
searching, etched with our
Human monogram
and shined to near-perfect
Reflection.
I am lost in its face as it winds
around the ticks in mine.
I am lost in place
I am lost in motion,
I am lost in the Abyss
staring back.
I am lost, but
I still have
Time.
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 1:50 PM UTC
People build their own prisons,
she said, build up their own walls.
He said nothing, knowing not
what to say. He liked just that
she spoke, her voice, the tone
and timbre of it. As she spoke he
watched her lips move, the way
her tongue danced inside her mouth,
upon teeth. Mental wards are full
of people who have totally entombed
themselves, she added, placing one
of the sandwiches she’d bought
inside her mouth, while she spoke.
The park bench was hard, there
was a smell of spring in the air,
he watched her chew, now silent,
her mouth closed, masticating.
Her silence drew his attention to
the way she sat, one leg crossed over
the other, the black shoe and foot
dangling. The lower length of stockinged
leg, showing, the dark skirt just over
the knee, nothing else to see. He lifted
his gaze to her cloth hidden thighs,
the way they disappeared into her
waist, slim, drawn in. Ones I used to
see on my tour of the wards had drooling
mouths and cross eyes, she said,
swallowing the small sandwich bits.
He moved his eyes from her waist to
her impressive **** let his eyes settle,
rested them there, as if they were weary
travellers after a long journey. And the
smell, she added, reeked of ***** everywhere
one put one’s nose. He wanted to lay his
head between or upon or even beneath
those beautiful ******* She jawed on, he
wasn’t listening anymore, he was engrossed
in a different story, an actor in a different play.
She took another sandwich and was silent
again, staring at him, taking his measure,
unaware, no doubt, of his silent pleasure.
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 3:03 AM UTC