"kneecaps" poems
Sometimes the words I love you swarm like hornets behind my teeth, a phrase so heavy it only has eight letters just like I lost you.
Sometimes in the pause you take before you speak, I wonder if you’re fighting to keep down the same things as I am; trying to swallow a confession that seems less like a secret and more like stating the obvious.
We were funny, we were bad at holding hands, I hated when a car goes over the tracks, you had this way of making silence the loudest sound in the room when it hit the floor.
I made a home out of your hands just like how many beautiful things go without reciprocation.
We seem to have found fault in being whole, somewhere alone the way, we’ve started enjoying breaking things;
Like my ribs when you’re gone and I want to know if you can tell the difference between the absence of my voice and silence.
You are the only thing I’ve ever let go that makes my hands ache.
I’m still trying to piece together what made you lose your faith in me, was it how everything starts with gritting teeth and everything ends with you walking away? I should’ve known, the way you used to hold my back like you were checking it for exit wounds.
It took me 2 car wrecks and 6 shattered mirrors for me to realize that the world has so much more to say when it is silent;
if I didn’t bruise so easily, if I wasn’t looking for a way to be made of a river, if I needed the silence to mean something, then I would ask you to build me out of quiet revenge and goodbyes that stick in your sides like tree branches, I would need you to build me out of reasons to believe instead of reasons to be afraid, I would turn my kneecaps into strawberries in exchange for potter’s hands so I could mild you a bulletproof spirit.
It was silence and your lighter, I was cold, you were drinking; that was our backbone.
You were alone, I was going too fast because sometimes you don’t have to be in the wrong place to be looking for the wrong thing.
I am afraid and you are warm; this is the beginning of a forest fire filled with broken glass shattering in broken homes with broken people inside on a broken piece of land in a city that has too much rain for someone to build an emergency room in.
I spend nights up until my body can’t handle itself any longer,
mornings have come like a hammer to my head-
instead of my face, all I can see in the mirror is an unfamiliar expression,
something like a dead battery.
All I ever wanted was for you to be my fire, I am tired of these old lives and would like to see them burn.
Mar 9, 2016
Mar 9, 2016 at 3:31 AM UTC
You are the velvet to my lace, the freckles on your face, the rocket to outer space when i’m forgetting why my feet need to hit the ground.
You are three seconds away from a sunrise when I desperately need the light, you are a cup of tea and wisdom, and you are a giggle at just the right moment while the blood exchanges ideas between my wide-eyed fanatic manic panic mind and my static acrobatic heart.
You are love and a smile when everything around has fallen dark. We fall down the seasons, each leaf turned to green as the time is subjective as valued.
we fall down the winter of broken glass and torn kneecaps and into the summer of understanding and patched hearts.
We fall down the stairs of the boy who was the blank slate and into the arms of the boy who painted his stone happy.
You are the living room of my soul, where all the pictures make us smile just to look at them and the quilt on the couch is beautiful enough to make up for the small tear in the corner. Where the cups of tea sipped are innumerable as the curls on your head and the watercolor windows open past our souls and into our worlds.
Someday we’ll be able to keep track of our socks and get enough sleep but right now I’m still figuring it out. I’m still trying to connect the sky to the tree to the earth to the tesseracted interaction theatrical statement of who I am and what I will be. We will become.
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:28 PM UTC
THESE ARE YOUR HANDS AND THIS IS HOW YOU TELL THE FLAMES YOU'RE NOT ALL BAD.
THESE ARE YOUR THIRD DEGREE BURNS TO SAY YOU'RE NOT THE ONLY ONE WITH BONES MELTING IN TRUST ISSUES.
THESE ARE YOUR WRISTS, THOSE ARE YOUR KNEECAPS, THIS IS YOUR STORY.
THIS IS HOW YOU BITE YOUR TONGUE BUT STILL MANAGE TO LEAVE THE WORLD WONDERING HOW YOU COULD MATCH UP TO THUNDER'S HARMONIES,
THIS IS HOW YOU WHISPER TO MOUNTAINS AND KNOW THE PEAKS WILL HEAR YOU.
THIS IS HOW YOU TELL THE VOICES IN YOUR HEAD TO SHAKE HANDS WITHOUT STARTING AN EARTHQUAKE,
THIS IS HOW YOU TELL DEPRESSION TO LIGHTEN UP,
THIS IS HOW YOU GRAB ANXIETY BY THE SHOULDERS AND SING LULLABIES TO ITS LUNGS.
THIS IS HOW YOU WALK UP TO GOD AND RIP OPEN YOUR CHEST WITHOUT INTRODUCING YOURSELF FIRST AND ASK "WHY?"
THERE'S PAPER UNDERNEATH YOUR PILLOW,
THOSE ARE THE NOTES YOU PASSED TO YOUR BEST FRIEND IN THE THIRD GRADE WHEN YOU TOLD HER ABOUT YOUR FIRST CRUSH.
THERE'S A PAPER THAT'S BEEN IN YOUR BACK POCKET FOR A YEAR AND A HALF,
THE ONE NEXT TO YOUR RECEIPT FOR A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY AND STAIN REMOVER,
THIS IS THE NOTE SHE WROTE YOU A WEEK BEFORE HER FUNERAL.
THIS IS HOW YOU WASH YOUR JEANS WITH TWO CUPS OF 'TODAY I FORGOT TO REMEMBER TO FORGET'.
THIS IS HOW YOU COPE.
THIS IS HOW YOU LAY ON MUD STAINED CARPETING AND AND STARE AT YOUR BROKEN DOOR,
THIS IS HOW YOU CONVERT TO HARDWOOD FLOORS AND STRONGER DOOR HINGES.
THIS IS HOW YOU WIN A WAR WITH ONE BODY ON A BATTLEFIELD,
THIS IS HOW YOU SHOW A BLIND MAN THAT YOU CAN PAINT A GOD **** MASTERPIECE.
THIS IS HOW YOU REACH HEAVEN WITHOUT DYING, THIS IS HOW YOU KNOW HELL WITHOUT LIVING THROUGH IT.
THIS IS HOW YOU UNDERSTAND THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE, BY CROSSING PATHS WITH THE GUY THAT MADE YOU HATE WET PAVEMENT AND THE SMELL AFTER IT RAINS,
THIS IS HOW YOU HELD HIS HAND THE SAME WAY YOU HOLD A KNIFE, THIS IS HOW YOU LEARN FORGIVENESS.
THIS IS HOW YOU SMOKE WITH THREE LUNGS AND LOVE WITH ONE.
THIS IS HOW YOU STUFF THE PERSON YOU WANT TO BE IN A FORTUNE COOKIE AND LEARN PATIENCE.
THIS IS HOW YOU TELL PEOPLE YOU'RE NOTHING LIKE YOUR MOTHER. THIS IS HOW YOU SAY YOU HAVE YOUR EYES, NOT HERS BECAUSE THIS IS HOW YOU UNCLENCH YOUR HUSBANDS FISTS.
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE SOMEONE THAT NEVER KNEW HOW TO BE ALONE, THIS IS HOW YOU WORRY.
THIS IS HOW YOU CONFIDE IN A HOSPITAL BED TO TEACH YOU HOW TO LET GO.
THIS IS HOW YOU LET THE NURSE WITH SHAKY HANDS TEACH YOU HOW TO TRACE THE STRAIGHT LINE ON YOUR HEART MONITOR AND BE OKAY AFTERWARDS. THIS IS HOW YOU LIVE AND ACCEPT DEATH.
THIS IS HOW YOU UNEARTH YOURSELF,
THIS IS HOW YOU STOP EXISTING,
THIS IS HOW YOU STOP FOCUSING ON LIVING AND BREATHE FOR YOURSELF.
THIS IS HOW YOU STOP THINKING AND FEEL.
THIS IS HOW YOU SPEND A LIFETIME TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT 'THIS' IS.
Mar 16, 2014
Mar 16, 2014 at 8:32 PM UTC
September speaks in dull sand flecks
and billowing my stiffened skirt to kneecaps
rested on for prayer, grinded on for ***
It pokes and I’ll awake –
I am just like a ***** in the autumn morn
first torn, the first born of a hundred
encounters of which I would not believe
it could be the opus of.
Ladies lose physical barriers, but they
do not evade a September when orchards are
trimmed and all that’s beneath is unveiled:
see it with my glass eye. No dust inside.
See it with your honey bulbs –
the foothills, the knees married to the floor
where stars first aligned, so I ****** you off.
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 12:04 AM UTC
The South African sun caused my
Eleven year old eyes to squint.
Sat in the stadium, my father and I,
Sweated and watched rugby;
A father - daughter tradition.
That Saturday afternoon was the final,
The stands were crowded and full,
Like a fish-tank ready to burst
At any moment.
In front of my father and I,
There sat a dark-haired woman
In a lose fitting jersey.
About forty minutes in,
She bent down, sudden and quick,
Her head, hitting her kneecaps,
She screamed her intense screams;
Muffled in her own bent body,
Some spectators thought her crazy,
She continued her whails, and soon
A small crowd grew in front of us,
One man pulled her straight in her seat,
Her hands, her face, her her legs and stomach
Were all drenched red with blood.
No one ever heard the gunshot;
They traced it back to its origin,
Two hundred meters away,
Fired from a building by the stadium.
The bullet just happened to land where it did,
And the game went on.
- Jamie F. Nugent
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 8:09 AM UTC
Along a narrow, vacant street at 2 a.m.
Underneath the threatening lights of peril
An act of ******** was taking place between
A beautiful cigarette and the orifice of my lips
Halloween had not yet dawned upon us
Yet as I walk Jack-O-Lanterns smile at me
Displaying minor quakes of bloodthirsty evil
While a serum of scorn soaks my tongue
With a heartless trick of ice, cold malice
Summoning the entire town to its kneecaps
Devils regurgitate lullabies resembling the sound
Of nails ****** a chalkboard sparing no mercy
Arousing the hopeless romantics
To awaken a graveyard
And **** the corpses until they're
Resurrected from their comas
As the nymphomaniacs ice
Their frozen flesh with *****
Painting an ocean of abstract thoughts
Across the edges of their frames of mind
Do morticians make up the majority
Of necrophilia related crimes?
Maybe so but, I bet they had never felt
A ****** so dry and so cold
Yet still the thrill of chills tickle these criminal's spines
While they measure their screams careful not to awaken
The beautifully disgusting corpses that lie before them
They turn their heads only to find a pair of scarlet eyes
Gawking at them from within a cowardly shield of fear
Darkness was it's home, Mother to all its desires
In my opinion it was just a phase; A massacre encaged
Aug 25, 2011
Aug 25, 2011 at 4:12 AM UTC
Sometimes it’s something, as
Simple and clean, tapping my
***** hat forwards, and
Kicking my back heel against
The wall.
Sometimes it’s the dank cavern
Of a Dodge’s backseat.
The frozen entrance to the
Diseased freeway, breathing words
Of tragedy and paranoia.
But, sometimes, it’s
The painted landscape of a
Beach, that hung in the
Girl’s TV room, Lodged in place.
I contact my mind’s
Travel agent, to find it, and
Wearing Ricky’s sweatshirt I
Stare at the open water.
Mindful of sharks,
And the smell of ***
Or sometimes, Svedka.
Or I’ll stare into Sam’s eyes,
Wishing instead to be
Spying the bottom of
Jacky’s bottle.
Or Mary’s bowl.
And when my *** hits the ground,
I’ll look up, this time,
And just like last time, the
Trees will melt. Dripping like
Engine sludge, onto a pavement.
Behind the pool of
Vaporized reality, walls of
Fire rise, so I’ll sit
Back a bit.
But sometimes, it is too much.
And I’m down on my
****** kneecaps,
Appealing to the apparitions.
Begging for a
Box of wine.
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 2:22 PM UTC
*Fall In Love Or Fall In Lust.
Make Plans, Or Make Cookies.
There Is Living To Do Here.
There Are Books To Read, And Movies To Watch.
There Are Art Museums Meant To Wonder Through, And Ocean Waters To Taste.
There Are Plays That Deserve Standing Ovations, And Musicals With Words That Need To Be Sung, There Are Girls That Need To Be Kissed, There Are Boys That Need To Know What It Feels Like To Have Their Hands Held.
There Are Poems That Need To Be Screamed At The Tops Of Someone's Lungs. There Are History Books With Frayed Edges, And Broken Tea Pots That Died Before Their First Breath.
There Are Heart Throbs Waiting To Make Teenage Girls Swoon.
There Are Jeans, With Knees That Are Begging To Be Ripped Open.
There Are Sunflowers That Have Never Been Told “You Are My Sunshine”.
There Are Grandfathers With Empty Laps, And Mothers With Empty Wallets.
There Are Law Students, With Hearts Ready For Humanity, There Are Babies With Broken Families.
There Are Fortune Cookies With Untold Wisdom, And Grandmothers With The Best Rhubarb Crisp Recipe You Have Ever Tasted.
There Are Undiscovered Passions, And Ancient Ruins.
There Are Empty Canvases And Blank White Walls.
There Are Silences, Recorded And Played Back For The Ears Of The Empty. There Are Places On This Earth Where The Sky Is The Color Of Bleeding Tissue Paper. There Are Places On This Earth, Where Dry Lightening Storms, Are As If God Himself Is Snapping Photos.
There Are Lost Valentines, And Flickering Lampposts. There Are Forgotten Dates And Remember Birthdays.
There Are Lost Puppies And One Man Bands.
There Are Butterflies With Missing Wings, And Eagles That Mate For Life.
There Are Places We Put Our Insane, And Others We Place Our Sick.
We Have Tattooed Our Mistakes On Skin, And Branded Cattle To The Same Tune.
There Are Times We Fall Together, And Others In Witch We Fall Apart.
There Are Moments When We Gage Our Existence In The Breaths We Take, And Moments When We Gage It In The Moments That Take Our Breath Away.
There Are Times We Take Chances And Times We Take Pills.
There Are Moments When We Bruise Our Knees While Praying, And Others Where We Break Kneecaps For Dollar Bills.
There Is Living To Be Done Here.
There Are Words To Be Spoken, And Even More To Be Written.*
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 8:26 PM UTC
Had her legs insured for
movies, her career,
a million dollars
worth
calves and thighs
Kneecaps that just won't quit
and those tights
with the seams in the back
Oh.
My.
Gawd.
Betty Grable
Driving me insane sometimes
I lay awake at night
mentally budgeting future
paychecks
online shopping for those
lacy tights
I want to get my legs insured
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 4:36 PM UTC
I built a home for you, out of me,
when the bricks break
it is because I have been raided. The blue sky's
not even immune to cloudbursts
the humid air lifts
to resemble some form of heartbreak.
Call it
a mushroom cloud, I go off almost nuclear.
The truth loves me enough to reveal itself
the truth loves me
even when you do not.
I've decorated the staircase with it
and discovered rope-burn,
calluses like children wanting you to just watch
what they can do
watch a ceremony. What fathers create.
I've padded its feet
with snow, the whole summer leaks with December
and my kneecaps are rotting wood.
Creaking
using garland as a noose
you know when I walk and when I sit, the truth
cannot stand for not knowing.
I've not let it lay down either,
this ****** affair. My
walls stay white and unheard of, untouched
yours are only
the cream of glue, I should have kept the doorway
shut and tied to you with a string.
Not even the truth can dissolve over a lie
(but I can, I can, I).
But
when God smells fear, he makes it happen
and God can be
a man, a woman, a lover.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 4:02 PM UTC
A bill becomes a law through a process not unlike wet clay curing in the sun, seasonal labor filling the fields in springtime, a drop of sweat absorbed thirstily into a towel, a stain spreading across a tablecloth.
A bill becomes a law eventually, but often, not in time. A bill often fails on the floor, as do some people, as does, just as often,
the attempt to revive them. The attempt looks an awful lot
like a senator's face, energetic and gray and doomed and
looking for any advantage
when the needed advantage is in the ether
and still immaterial until the tenth of February.
I notice the bumper stickers, and I've deputized a Google Alert
to tell me that the popular mass is wakening.
I can also tell when it yawns,
or prods a rib for a pain that wasn't there yesterday.
I can tell when the popular mass has slept funny.
I can tell when it would rather not wake up at all
but the light is streaming in through the window
and the house is full of the sound of the dishwasher.
Pain on both sides, in both ribs, ignored
because sometimes it just happens - pain,
that is - and is a part of getting older,
like how you can't put peppers in your chili anymore
now that they don't grow on this side of the planet,
and there's nobody left to tend them.
I would like somebody to tend me, too,
but the law that sanctions that workforce
is still in committee, and mired in a dispute
about who deserves love.
This one goes out to all of those lying on their kitchen floor
once everyone is out of the house, lifting their legs and placing them on the countertop, listening to their heart ticking
and trying to discover if it reaches everywhere, if they can hear it
in their ankles.
This one goes out to their savings accounts and their kneecaps.
Here's hoping they make it.
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 4:08 PM UTC
Flip flip slide slide
grind grind pop pop
concentration.
hours and hours
sweat pours
bruised ankles bruised kneecaps
scraped shinbones scraped elbows
scabs and scars.
shirts and jeans torn, worn;
shoes a tattered mess--
laces shredded to bits tied desperately
clinging on to lapping tongues.
hair matted to skull sweating within damp skullcaps,
whether be it helmets (by choice or restriction),
or fitted baseball hats turned backwards,
or cuffed beanies in the dead of winter.
(father says the latter choices work well to soak all the blood up, I always roll my eyes in naivete.)
The paved driveway, where on my eighth birthday
a shining basketball goal sat at its full height
towering in the mountain sky--
stood forlorn in place as wide eyes glued to the pavement--
where shoes stood atop the gritty surface of a wooden board
with wheels attached to gleaming metal axles
rolled smoothly excitedly across the pavement in perpetuity.
destiny.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 4:54 PM UTC
I kneel
kneecaps cracking, head bowed
under the heavy breath of your adoration
eyes ground into the dust each footstep rises
I am dirt-blind
but the crows can see, my ears bleed
how they cry and scream, weep and admire -
they enshrine him; I, unwilling, immortalise.
I keep
my eyesight clouded, looking down
the soil is my church, inadequacy
a mired crown.
Apr 24, 2018
Apr 24, 2018 at 4:55 PM UTC
liquid
substance
rocks
substance
smoke
substance
can’t remember
substance
which substance?
abuse
abuser
abusie
abooozie
*****
abuse
fill up my cup
abuse
fill up my pipe
abuse
fill up my syringe
abuse
fill up my veins
abuse
fill up my heart til it’s beating hard enough for me to feel alive
abuse
feed the mermaid in my kneecaps with glitter liquid
abuse
any kind
abuse
to make me forget
abuse
just want to use
abuse
to make me forget the pain
when he lays hands on me
lays his own
abuse
on me
someone once told me, substance abusers are weak
face your problems head on
why do you need to see stars before you wake up
why is coke your coffee
why is whiskey your orange juice
why is **** your pancakes
and I say
if I am weak
then how come I can cling onto the clouds
perhaps, if I could live to be 1000 years old
I will have clinged to the clouds long enough for them to get sick of me
but for now, those clouds are my demons
and I’ve never loved the color red
so much
Sep 1, 2013
Sep 1, 2013 at 9:25 PM UTC
i smoke the ****** people take a wiff
i cant tie ma shoes but i can *** yo *****
i walk that streets wit my boombastic reggae styl
we go to ma doops bungaloo and he says *** and stay a while
we find some bittys wit a fat *** and tell them theat they fine
they say we're creeps witout jobs we say they need some wine
turns out they werent down to *** like an assembly line
tired i go home down tha empty reggae street
i light tha **** i light tha spliff till i cannot feel my feet
a car puls up i drop my cup they say to get in the backseat
im ****** about the cup it had my last brew and i want to drop a **
i owe them money i have none they brake ma kneecaps what fun
they throw me out the car, away i scurry
she got a big ***** so i call her big *****
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 12:24 PM UTC
You think you're a badass?
Shout at us all for no reason?
Blame me for your problems like I give a ****
Take it out on my family and expect US to be sorry?
Well **** you, you and your weird *** hair do.
I never had a beef with you
I didn't even know you!
You believe what others say about me
Well come at me now what do you see?
Am I all that they said I was cracked up to be?
Get the ******* message, I don't mess around, you hear me?
Or do I have to bash your brains into the concrete?
Would that be enough to get the message across?
If I blew out your kneecaps out would I feel sorry for your loss?
Hell ******* no, I'd blow your **** legs off!
Wait, ***** that I,d take a handsaw and cut em off!
Break every single bone in your ******* hands
Smash em with a hammer without a second glance
call 911 now that you can't touch a **** phone!
how would you like it if I barged in your home?
Sayin I'm all that and the president too
Yell at your family and blame you too?
Like your haircut? Let's see it all over my wall!
Hold the phone ******* let's give your insides a house call!
Oops, was that your gut, let me rip it open for you
You won't need it after I get done with you.
******* you thought that this would go down smooth?
**** that, drink some barbed wire too!
Let me tell you this just one last time
Make my girl cry again and I'll make you wish I'd killed you..
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 3:31 AM UTC
jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I wasn't mixed; my parents are just different
shades of the same color but she doesn't believe me,
and the man behind the counter silently agrees.
the old white lady that always takes the 5 train
stares at me curiously, her eyes say they don't trust me
and I don't understand why. I never thought I had to
explain myself to strangers or that my race was the most
interesting thing about me but that's always the
first question everybody asks.
my aunt told me the other day that I was jabao,
in other words, nobody knows what to do with me.
I am unidentifiable. my skin screams the sun and
stars too small to recognize; it says I am the product
of a collision between the blackest sea and the whitest sand.
some parts of my body sing a ballad so dark only certain
people would ever want to listen to. maybe these are the
parts that the old white lady on the five train is scared to
listen to. maybe the curls I tried so hard to straighten are
what terrifies her, maybe the black in my kneecaps keeps
her up at night, maybe the sound of boisterous music in a
language she could never understand makes her skin jump,
sends shivers down her spine makes her think twice
about who I am.
jan from the corner store doesn't understand me,
I told her I was jabao, a mix of summer glow and
muted winter skin. but she doesn't believe me; says
she has never met a Dominican like me, that in some ways
I must be a mixed breed. and the man behind the counter
silently agrees.
(h.l.)
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 9:03 PM UTC
I’ve begun “The Wasting” once more.
That ragged uncovering of bones and peaks and ridges that crop up along my spine and shoulders.
My scapulas revealing themselves like the bed of a lake as the waters recede.
Indents beside and under my kneecaps, hollows that match the ones slowly sinking themselves back into my cheeks.
And the hipbones…the things I truly crave to see through the paper thin layer of my skin…
Those…I’d starve myself to waifish proportions just to graze my hands along the mountaintops of those things, those sharp little things.
I lose my hair and my colour and my shine just to dig my fingers into the hardness of my breastbone, just to know that my jawbone is an overhang, just to plunge headfirst into the thrill of being thin.
“The Wasting” and I are friends, and I want to drown in her.
Jul 6, 2023
Jul 6, 2023 at 2:50 AM UTC
I'd be okay with getting old
If I got to keep these gams
They'll wrinkle and sprout those purple-green veins
Like spiderwebs spun over kneecaps
Yes, since aging means ugly legs
I think I'll find a Peter
And a Neverland
And fight pirates in fabulous Lost Boy tights
That accentuate my ever-youthful gams
Feb 12, 2010
Feb 12, 2010 at 6:35 AM UTC
I felt like a giant
Holding fireworks in his fists
Fuses burning between my knuckles
I could silence the bang if I wanted to
Inside your chest are bibles
Full of psalms about hunger
And love
And letting go
Psalms about selfless
I want to kiss you like a prayer
**** you like a prayer
I am small
And I feel the ground breathe beneath my feet
It is dark
I am a marble with a green cat eye center
Still hot and smooth
The glass blower that made me had asthma
I don’t roll like the rest of them
This dent in my chest
But you decide it is a good place to rest your head
You feel like the ocean
When I am sleeping on a raft
I made from fallen trees and rope
A steady rock just past the wave break
So calm I’m sure I could sail safely
As far as I wanted
I feel like I don’t exist
Like I am unicorn horn glitter
After the slaying
The men who have ground me down
Use me to sell toys to kids
Because glitter makes everything magic
I am magic
Clumsy magic
Like a giant learning sleight of hand
Fireworks in his fists
I could stop the bang if I wanted to
I don’t want to
I am hot glowing color
Falling from the palms of a giant
Whose hands are clouds
Someone has just prevented a car accident
Saved someone’s life
There are fireworks
A celebration
I am rubber kneecaps
For people who collapse
I bounce them back
People who don’t pray anymore
They just keep walking
I feel like a slave song
The simple message
When you sing these words
I can do anything
I feel like a giant
And I want to kiss you like a prayer
That stops someone from dying
Dec 1, 2012
Dec 1, 2012 at 4:48 PM UTC
Welcome to the place you’ll find me sitting
helplessly trying to find a way out.
The place you’ll never want to visit again,
you’ll run, at full speed wishing you’d never
said it would be okay for me to
open up and let you see the insides of my
horribly damaged head,
and instead, never brought up the subject
but only find yourself back where you started in this maze
of desperate uncertainty,
because in this place lies carcasses of dreams
abandoned but never forgotten,
my knobby knees and shaking fingers
just haven’t yet found the strength
to put them back together again.
I've arranged them in patterns that resemble broken things
like china dolls with cracked smiles
and butterfly amputees, this is no picnic.
I am sorry for the horror you will see
in the depths of my cerebral cortex,
I never imagined you’d actually step inside,
and now here you are clawing your eyes out
right beside me screaming at the top
of hoarse lungs and pleading with sad eyes
now just barely bleeding, for a way out,
with a tone just below sad whisper I tell you
I’ve yet to find a ship off of the island of misfit toys,
and for now, you’re just as hopeless as you
found me to be in the beginning.
Just remember you provided the gun and ammunition,
I only loaded it, and gave you a taste for
the possibility of an ending.
I never tempted you with the idea of destruction,
only provided you with its breeding ground
and that's not something I can help or even change.
you've now seen the depths of hell
and men have said it leaves one blind
even if it does come in the shape and size of panic attacks
pain killers, *** and a heart rate that laughs at the word fast,
races beyond it, bearing sharp teeth and a smile,
swallows me up like the ever raging sea.
My body was not built for this type of misery,
my skin cracking and my kneecaps knocking
like a sort of secret police to tell me
that it's getting out of hand again.
Marionettes sewn straight into skin,
dancing just like all the other puppets
we live a life of lavish lamentation and hold up
bronze metals just for showing up and sticking around.
How much does life mean now?
Do not tell me I am not suffering because now
you have seen it and it will never leave your memory.
I bestow this upon you because you chose not to take me seriously.
This is a message from the island of misfit toys,
I may seem like I'm keeping it together just fine,
but beyond every door lies a secret,
beyond every shining light, a shadow
and beyond every smile, someone is broken.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 6:02 PM UTC
Five years is an awfully short time to spend with someone you thought was a part of your stomach -
the skin in your throat, the folds of your kneecaps
You couldn't imagine shaking them from your fingertips,
not in a million lifetimes
But instead, it only took one;
not as brief as a mayfly but as not as long as a bird soars
If you ask me, we were cut down too soon but hung on too long -
I'd have kept hanging, too,
if only the branch weren't gone.
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 2:52 PM UTC
Not for all eternity
Will sadness streak my cheek
Or curve me with a sightless weight
That bows my kneecaps weak.
Nor evermore shall I mourn
A departure so abrupt,
A constant fixture in my world
From it, so sudden plucked.
Even all time, so short and long
I dare not wish nor pine
Each blessed day that passes by
Each night would ease my mind.
But for a lasting moment
Each smile, each laugh, each breath
The memories shall hold me now
No longer left bereft.
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 11:40 PM UTC