"landmines" poems
The secret, I guess, was to always be brave;
No matter what you see, think or hear.
There are landmines carefully fitted along the road,
Rattling to its joints and ready to explode.
And before the truth of the situation blows you away,
Before you get knocked off your feet and get thrown in the air,
Before searing pain engulfs your numbness,
Just before you cut the trip wire;
You shout it out, no louder than the softest whisper, “Be Brave.”
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 12:50 PM UTC
I want to write you a trilogy on the stages
in which our relationship formed.
The first book would be solely based on the day
that I stopped treating your text messages
like active landmines. Stopped tiptoeing.
No longer being afraid of what your affection
would do to me once I submit to it.
It would be based on the first step I took to
stop being so **** afraid. From that very day
you've helped me in ways I'll never be able to fully explain.
Helped me let go of fear and trepidation, and open
my heart to the greatest thing in the world; your love.
The second would revolve around the first time you kissed me.
I don't know if you noticed, but my knees buckled
like seatbelts and I shook like glass window panes in torrential rain.
That day you awoke something inside me that I didn't know existed
but I'm so glad you found it. Like a stray kitten I was lost
and you brought me back home without questioning where I'd been,
and I'll never fully understand why, but I guess it doesn't matter.
You've taught me not to overthink things, to just revel in the moment.
The third would be set in here and now. Every forehead kiss
and stolen glance sums up to another page, every loving gesture
is another chapter. We are creating something people wish they
could create for themselves. A love that belongs in museums
to teach the world what it really means to give yourself to someone,
with no fear, and not a single ounce of regret. To say that you changed
my life is an understatement. You altered my way of thinking.
Took a broken thing and made it new again. Made me, new again.
And with every word that slips from your lips I am reborn.
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 11:25 PM UTC
Civilized life is rigged, O land-dwellers!
With landmines hidden
in trails of Society's doctrine,
'Too often is it stepped on,
Too often does it explode.'
Blowing constitutions to smithereens,
Where you then rummage within your nucleus
to piece together your scattered jigsaw,
Misplacing your natural elements,
Overcasting your ability to side with beauteous aspects in simplicity—
Of those ethereal-resplendent butterflies.
Disillusioned on land thus is you (the complex you).
Let go—
Rise above your materialistic graves—
Walk on air!
My kindred wisps
Walk on air!
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 4:56 AM UTC
The whole world has PTSD,
brought about by watching
far too much TV.
Normal people becoming
neurotic or psychotic
by all the "Breaking News".
Talking heads spewing fearful
endless chapters of dread,
all with their own ax to grind
into our heads, day after day
after day until we want to scream.
Real news or fake, impossible
to know the difference.
A political landscape strewn with
landmines of division and hate.
Melting Ice, and adverse weather,
hurricanes and tornadoes devastate
and forest fires burn, as racists and
terrorists abound at every turn,
and crazy's with military weapons
killing us for sport, just to make
the nightly news, as our nation's
infrastructures crumble into ruins,
all "Breaking News day and night",
while we and the world choke and
quiver from an excessive Carb diet
of information overload, trying to
sleep bathed in bad dreams, laced
with too many strong doses of PTSD.
Aug 31, 2019
Aug 31, 2019 at 12:14 PM UTC
Somewhere between eggshells and landmines
Were the creaking floors upon which I played
Carefully, for her wrath could be detonated
At a footfall, just a bit too heavy
From a word uttered under the breath
A mess left too long in the sink.
But her embrace was warm,
Wrapping around me like sheets from the dryer
And when she put on pause her own life
To tend to me at my sick-bed,
Her eyes showed only tender love.
“My baby goat,” she would say, affectionately,
And leave a kiss upon my feverish brow.
She is a living contradiction, my mother:
Churning disapproval shattering the gleam
That she put into the hopeful eyes of a child
Just a moment before.
I lived in perpetual uncertainty,
Never knowing which mother I might see next:
The raven or the hen.
And now she looks at me with disappointment,
Wondering aloud why her children fear her.
Her capriciousness eroded away any trust
And much of the fondness as well
Her hot-blooded adoration
And her ice-cold tantrums
Have mixed so long now
All that is left is
Lukewarm like the bathwater
Left over from when the
Baby was thrown out.
Sep 11, 2023
Sep 11, 2023 at 7:16 PM UTC
Singing birds are often better off caged, and maybe I’m no different. Maybe it’s safer, biting my tongue and shoving my hands deep in my pockets when the urge to delineate my woes shivers its way up my spine, shaking the rust from the back of my teeth and loosening the hinges on my jaw. I’m constantly reminded that the world outside my mind is far too dangerous, too brutal for my fragile thoughts, for my feeble words. But every now and then those words get the better of me. They convince me that their songs are worth hearing, that they’ll survive the hell that awaits them. Then, eager and hopeful, they jump off my teeth like a diving board, spreading their wings and gliding out into the world of the unknown, the world of wars waged to divide and battles fought to conquer. I watch as they hang suspended in the air, wings spread, small and beautiful against the ominous background, innocent if only for a fleeting moment. But, of course, beauty has no place here.
I cringe as the shots ring out from all directions, as everyone around me opens fire upon my winged thoughts. I shut my eyes tightly against the firing of guns, arrows, cannons: delivering the message loud and clear that the airspace between me and the world is better left unclouded by my superfluous banter. I try not to watch as they drop from the sky, my unsuspecting words, but my eyes force themselves open. Wings broken, hearts still, they crash to the ground, silenced.
I want to gather them one by one, my feathered thoughts, gently in my hands; I would take them somewhere safe and give them a proper burial, for they were once so near and dear to me. But I’m afraid of what lies in the battlefield. I’m afraid of the landmines and the barbed wire and the trenches. So I bow my head, refasten the locks on my sore, stiffened jaw, and turn my back on the carnage, on the dirt and grass and the haze and smoke. I turn from my defeated birds, form the bodies of my barely spoken words, and I leave them.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 3:19 AM UTC
Your fingers pull at shower-soft hair
Getting longer but not too long
Your eyes are dry but so is your tongue
Because you can’t find it in you to cry
Your chest is tight but it’s not the shirt you wear
It’s your ribs closing in on your lungs.
Your insides are crushed beneath the weight of their words
Pronouns buried like landmines beneath your skin
There’s a sickness inside you
Gnawing on your bones
Black tar sticky in your stomach
A violence pressing against your organs
You’ll feel better when you’ve changed your body
When your voice is deep and there’s hair on your jaw
You can take your shirt off at the beach
And flirt with girls at the coffee shop
Until then there’s no one who can understand
No one to get why you stand before the mirror
Running your hands over your flattened chest
Or practice walking like there’s something between your legs
No one asks why you’re not happy with cancer
Because no one is happy with cancer
But no one understands that your dysphoria
Is a sickness
And its terminal
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 4:19 PM UTC
She is a landmine, of profuse love;
No precautions necessary.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 11:24 PM UTC
Princess Diana was born in England and died in France.
When she was in a car crash, she didn't have a chance.
She divorced Prince Charles of Wales just one year before she died.
Diana was only 36 years old and her death was mourned worldwide.
When somebody dies that young, it's always hard to understand.
She did charity work and was trying to have landmines banned.
Harry and William are Diana's sons.
If she hadn't died, she would be 61.
For many, Diana's death was a devastating blow.
She was a princess who died a quarter of a century ago.
Aug 31, 2022
Aug 31, 2022 at 1:29 PM UTC
I guess I’m okay… What more can I say?
Forget it—never mind,
You wouldn’t understand anyway,
Would you even know what it's like?
Inside a scattered disconnected mind,
Employed to go on strike?
Where indirect misdirect
The sincerity at play,
When sinusoidal chaos spikes
And past meets the future present day?
As paranoid points outlandishly connect
At intervals of broken lines,
Memory lost in recollect,
An array of misshaped bells
Internally infect the eternal confines
Of infinite distributional decay,
Parallels with no intersect,
Streetwise cells with empty signs,
Burned out lights, potholes, and landmines,
Littered all the way.
How am I to convey that all those times
You let your mind wander away
That I was reading, thinking, dreaming,
Teeming, never idle, never strayed,
Seeing, being, so far and away,
Even the brightest intellect beaming,
Could not grasp the feeling
In the slightest of highest orders reeling,
Wound unbound, or as it would be seeming,
Imperfect, even to the disarray
Of the tamest prefect, whose verdict
Could not predict the reflect,
For in this world, seeing is deceiving,
As the lamest reject, defect,
Increasingly decreasing,
In simplistic bliss obey
Crowned unsound fallacies
That contradict all meaning,
Hiding behind reality, the actualities
Lest, protect the thoughtlessness perceiving,
Let me stop you if I may...
I must interject for I digress,
What nonsense was I weaving?
Forget it—I've lost my mind,
I best be leaving,
What more can I say?
It's periodic I must confess,
You probably don't care anyway,
Yeah, yeah, I'll be okay,
Until next time I guess,
I wouldn't want to be misleading.
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 10:10 AM UTC
So I'm a "fly" white guy,
with "Jet" black tendencies,
Try to be a nice guy,
But somehow end up the enemy.
I'll treat you like a princess,
But I'm a fort,
You can't get into me.
It makes no sense to me.
How did this knight in shining armor,
Get slain by the dragon?
So once upon a time,
I was a hero,
Now I'm a has-been.
Last in the castle for I belong with the Pagans,
Slaying distressed damsels,
Giving hell to the angels
With strangers wrapped in mangers,
Destined for greatness.
Trapped within this labyrinth of my cranium.
But when it comes to blame,
My pigmentation begins to change,
But this time it's not my shame.
'Cause you play the same game
That the dames did before you.
You're no different.
You're not worth a fortune.
Fortunately, you revealed your horns for me.
It's torturing how for me it ended horribly,
and you moved on to the same dude you ******* before me.
Love's supposed to be patient,
Love's supposed to be kind,
Instead it's a battlefield
Filled with landmines.
You say it's false,
that nice guys finish last?
Well clarify why I'm starin',
At taillights from my past.
They say when you have everything,
You give nothing back.
So I guess that explains
Why your feelings for me lack.
You're like "You're a white guy,
That tends to be black.
Well how in the hell
Can I get used to that?"
That's ********
You're afraid of commitment.
That's why you had to end it,
Before it could begin with.
You're a cynical, sinister,
Hypocritical minister,
Angelic sinner sent to incriminate innocence.
Evil's equivalent,
Yet as sweet as carcinogens.
If heartbreak were a game,
Girl, you would be winnin' it.
If my soul were a food,
You would've finished it.
I had a confident conscience,
but girl you diminished it.
Listen kid,
I get you're immature and ****
But don't go and slander my name
When you used to worship it.
Love's supposed to be patient,
Love's supposed to be kind,
Instead it's a battlefield
Filled with landmines.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 2:23 AM UTC
Old scratch walks up and down in this world.
Not some misunderstood romantic tragic figure,
but the father of lies.
Old scratch stands behind the curtain
and raids the caravans loaded down with good intentions
He is the wicked warlord in the horn of Africa.
He is the self serving dictator with ridiculous hair
murdering his family in paranoid fits
while his people eat bark in hungry desperation.
He is dengue ebola, ecoli, the plague..
He is rage and landmines in the soccer fields
He is dysentery and influenza and krokodil.
Old scratch walks to in fro in this land
with infectious breath and violent laughter
He is the womb of grief and lost hope.
twenty thousand crying skeletons
with bloated bellies blinded by thirsty flies
each and every day old scratch ushers them
to the only relief they will ever find.
while another twenty thousand wait in line.
We give it a face, a voice, and a name.
I'm so glad we have old scratch to blame,
otherwise whose fault would all this madness be?
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 4:24 PM UTC
We will always have the same sky.
Brother, I have always been afraid to write about you. I have always been afraid that you would somehow find my poetry, my prose, whatever you call these letters I stitch together and see that my embroidery looks kind of a lot like you.
I visited the place where we first met last August, and there I found out that you can still make me cry. And to think it's been three years. Crazy, right?
I used to love that city. I still do, but last August I also discovered that there are landmines under almost every sidewalk. Those places have traces of the ice cream we ate, our laughter on the train, echoes of all the poetry and music and stories we gave each other. Bittersweet landmines. Each time they exploded a smile onto my face but the dark smoke would choke it out and take its place.
I only cry for the dead. But you saw how I cried over you at the apartment elevator that night. I think you told me to stop, but I'm not sure. All I remember is street lights, the taste of wet salt, and you looking like you were having a hard time breathing. Know that I felt the same. Or not. Sometimes I wonder why God never let me lose as many people as you. Maybe He knew that I would barely be able to handle losing you.
I haven't heard you breathe in years. All I see are your pictures and posts, intangible you. I can see you have grown in some parts... I hope you have. But I also see a lot of tiredness. And pain. And change. I don't think I can make you laugh anymore.
I don't know what your plans are now. I don't know if you still want to make films, if you still want to make things, if you still want to go everywhere you said you'd go. But I hope you know that my door is always open. And even if I will never hear you knock again, somehow I am comforted knowing that we
will always have the same sky.
Apr 7, 2017
Apr 7, 2017 at 12:57 PM UTC
(9-24-11 instrumental)
it takes 2 years to forget 6 years,
it takes 12 beers to forget your tears,
and it's those tears that flow so near,
this backyard that you hold so dear,
i held you here in better years,
i'd cheer you up, when i'd hear your fears,
the taste of beer and sky so clear
steer away now, it's in the rear,
view and that feels so cold,
i only see you through untagged photos,
youtubing high school talent shows,
or recitals, it's vital, that no one
actually knows, that i'm caught up
bought to get lost up,
another drink, another think,
i'm just a flawed ****
but i play it cool and act strong,
those other fools won't last long.
another sad song, i make it better,
got a new chick that's wetter cause
she aint afraid of that weather,
umbrellas discarded, in the bleachers,
teachers, gawking from the sidelines,
it's all fine, it's our time,
no need to dodge landmines...
call me minesweeper,
call me mindreader,
call me timekeeper,
call me justin bieber,
call me baby, baby baby,
call me jay-z, call me kanye,
call me all day, call me homewrecker,
call me and say i can do better,
call me about your sweater,
that's still at my place,
call me ghostface, call me action bronson,
call me hot one, call me ******* loser,
call me a waste of your time,
call me and say that this rhyme's, too simple,
call me jimmy kimmel, sarah silver-man.
i'm a better man, i'm business-man, i'm a gentle-man
i'm stan, writing this down in a crazy letter
no ink, self-mutilation and a feather,
better yet, i'm saying this outloud in the booth,
kick this rap game in the tooth with these red wing boots.
Apr 23, 2012
Apr 23, 2012 at 1:55 AM UTC
*
In poetry I unload to explode
To break free from all the dynamite
I usually kept hidden
My passive nature makes me resistant
to its pollutants.
Sometimes they’re more like landmines
Awaiting for someone
Who stomp the wrong buttons
Then detonate
And explode between my shouts
And cries.*
*In all honestly
No matter how resistant I am to become resilient
my core is too vulnerable to crumble
By a simple backslash of toxic tongues
And suddenly I fall in my knees to simply walk away
No battle is worth an effort
When you know it’s just pride
Battling himself.
*
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 3:47 AM UTC
A flight here and a flight there
Let me compensate for not being there
When you needed me
When you need me
I taught you how to deal with pain
While being lonely
I thought you how to fight away the demons
By leaving them to feast on your flesh
To gnaw at your bones
To leave you for dead
And I return to take you on a trip
To take you away from the misery that i am blind toward
That I do not know you have
I taught you how to talk through your fears
Now the only ones you talk to are in your brain
No father, I will not shed a tear
I am the water beneath the desert
the undiscovered landmines in the soil
I am held back tears and the god of war
The war against pain
As I fight in the trenches
In a battlefield facing myself
Battling an enemy that is closer than the end of my nose
Breathing so heavy, until the pain to goes to hell
Don’t let me see the tear stains on your sweater sleeve
You are not the child i birthed
You are but a machine
Do you not feel a thing?
Can you not say you’re glad?
I’ve never seen you smile
Is that a tear in your eye?
Save it for later
Throw away the paper
You cannot be another traitor
To your brain
Do not talk about your heart
you are not a painter
No woman, i am not your child
I am nobody’s daughter
Just a trapped little boy
Screaming through the windows
Cause you won’t let me out
Of this house made of hate
With these cracks in the walls
That lets in little rays of love
That I am too afraid to touch
Because i barely know love
But the walls of my house are my skin and my bones
And the prison called *** that is set on the roof
No I’m not complaining I’m just being honest
Didn’t you teach me that when you said I was going to be nothing
When you called me a pig and I learnt to cry silently
Now I almost always cry silently
~~
For these are the scars that I bear on my soul
That I wear on my sleeve
For i have been told that there is beauty in acceptance
In accepting what you’ve faced
And learning how to be loved
And how to be alone
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 11:49 PM UTC
You could say you're
Still a juvenile
All you lies are spread
With a vicious guilty smile
Just wanna stay up late
But it's time for bed
All the boys and girls
Have their own share,
And if I don't get any
Then I'll think it's unfair.
Now I'm gonna throw a fit
So everyone can stare.
When I'm gonna fall asleep
That's when it comes in handy;
Sweet tooth is gonna cry
Unless I get candy.
Gimme some lipstick
And I'll makeup my mind.
Only working part time,
But my nose is to the grind.
Sick scavenger hunt,
Take what I can find.
Your path is in the clouds,
Doesn't mean its the high road.
No reading involved,
But you live between the lines.
You're playing in a field,
Dancing by the landmines..
I've told you a thousand times.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 10:49 AM UTC
eight, nine
nine, eight, nine
Hello, father, spare me a dime,
and pay the mime with
five landmines;
**** off the bridge if
we've got time.
Appalachian Yeti-man:
set fire to the trashcan.
Call me hobo-stan,
and if the beard fits
grow it.
Show it;
show me the D.
Dentistry,
stay with me;
Explain for free:
"Dichotomy
of the mind"
thoughtfully,
for a time.
Robot-o me,
Mr. Oregato.
Set phasers to ****
stunningly.
Make fun of he
for bad grammar
and intellectuality.
He dumber;
me smarter.
She's aderall;
I'm martyr.
Destroy my innards,
Captain.
I need them not.
She leaves me rot,
and he feeds me Scott.
Scottie doesn't know
that Fiona and me
eat him in a van while
he's sleeping.
Cannibal,
call me Hannibal,
and she's the Jane to my
Tarzan,
pulling the fruits of
my loom.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 1:40 AM UTC
Spitting out poetry
knitting out seams
seems to never make much sense
or much money.
It tastes like honey
It exists where
landlines turn into moles
landmines turn into souls.
Bowls of coal for breakfast,
flag half mast
cast in bronze on front lawns.
Yawns echo through classrooms.
What was I saying before?
I can't remember anymore.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 9:07 PM UTC
What have I done to you?
My lambs ear child grown thorns
Along the backbone of our narrative
Each vertebra a catastrophe
And I can’t make skeletons fall in love with me
No matter how much flesh I force on them
And in the interludes of the symphony they wrote for us
I taught you dark by darkness
I watered you with gasoline
And snatched each word from off your tongue
I sprayed fresh poison into your lungs
And I can still recall
The twelve tears
Blurring that birthday
That suffocating epiphany
Of this-has-gone-too-far
And these aren’t scars
They’re time bombs
Landmines in the marrow of your bones
And this is not a ********* throne
It’s an electric chair
Look at me I dyed my hair
And I mourn us with the black around my eyes
Here we are we walk this line
I ask you how you are
And you say “fine”
And I am shocked at how much those thorns sting me
Every ******* time.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 9:58 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
Gently she raised her dress, revealing where the axe struck the tree,
"Here, a forest once thrived," she whispered solemnly,
Then came the scars, pathways for plastics to reach the sea,
Regret's sewage flowing through springs, an unwanted decree.
Landmines left pockmarks on her face, remnants of war's blight,
Awaiting the innocent, seeking to maim and to ignite,
Deep incisions from perilous landslides, a haunting sight,
A testament to the struggles endured day and night.
She revealed the melting snow, beckoning an avalanche of change,
Witnessing a road where an unsightly swamp once held its range,
Broken ships and skeletons, remnants left estranged,
Abandoned in the depths, hidden in ocean's grange.
Finally, she pointed to the scorching sun with teary eyes, "It didn't burn so fiercely until this heart carried its demise."
Jun 20, 2023
Jun 20, 2023 at 3:52 PM UTC