"lanyard" poems
I say hello
My nametag dangles from my lanyard
"Hello, my name is Liz
Pronouns are kye/kyr"
it says
They see the lanyard
and they laugh.
"Those aren't pronouns!"
they say
"She is messed up."
Shut up.
A 300lb woman
looks into the mirror
she sighs
remembering her peers' words
"You should lose weight."
"You're very overweight."
"Your obeseity is your fault."
A 75lb woman
looks into the mirror
Her anorexia laughs
remembering the 300lb woman she used to be
her peers then tell her
"You need to gain weight."
Shut up. Shut up.
The boy hides his face
Not giving the teacher eye contact
The teacher calls his name
His stomach flips upside-down
She called on him on purpose
he just knows it
In front of the class
expectant, judgemental eyes glaring
Instinct tells him to run
He looks at his notecards
All he sees is chickenscratch
The teacher hangs her head in disappointment
and growls
"Just sit down if you have nothing to say."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
A girl drags hersef through the day
Everything is black and white
Coming home to wild parents
Who hit her constanty
and then claim
"I love you."
Excuses, excuses.
For every welt, mark and bruise
But when she gets one on her face-
She had given one, too.
In fact, she had given many
How generous she was!
The police came and arrest the girl.
All she heard was
"Her mother is dead."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
Take a breath
the girl tells herself
She goes to her parents
They stare, wide-eyed
at her dress, eyeliner and nails
they just stare.
She tells them
her new identity
They tell her
"Chris. You aren't a girl.
You're a boy."
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.
You read a poem
titled "Shut Up"
About the hardships
The unfair, the despair
of living life.
Please know
Opinions don't matter
If you are happy,
who cares what they think?
If they criticize you
Just smile
and say
Shut up.
Nov 7, 2014
Nov 7, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
Thats how I will remember her; just as she was. Laying in my bed wearing her rastafarian drug rug that twinned my own, holding my lanyard close and my brother even closer. She laughed as she watched me drink lemonade that I later learned contained laxatives, and she avoided any type of emotional outburst that didn’t reveal that she just might not be okay. As I started to exit my room and said “Goodbye”, she surprised me.
“Don’t say that Bean.”
I looked down at one brown eye and one eye colored fake blue with a contact lens, and I saw sadness in both. So I smiled sadly and said,
“Instagram you later.”
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 11:32 AM UTC
He puts it out there, the Schrödinger’s cat of invitations.
Now, I’m irritated. “I TOLD you I don’t have time for.. involvement.”
“But you have to eat - so eat with ME,” he shrugs. “You can build a friendship with someone and still have freedom.” His observation was casual, as though it were unrelated to anything between us. He seemed to have the intuition that I’d balk if pressed.
“You’re subversive.” I said. “Why me? There are prettier girls, more agreeable, fun girls. I feel like I’m on the edge here,” I look around to indicate the room, the environment, the university. “And I can be a complete as-hole.”
He looked a little offended, “You’re interesting, I like what I know about you and, yeah, we can all be as-holes - we’re in a pool of “A” types, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“What do you KNOW about me?” I ask.
“I’ve read some of your writings,” he looked thoughtful, “I may know a little about how you think, It’s unusual.. interesting.”
I’m shocked and I squirm, “You looked me up?”
“I looked you up.” he nodded, “to be sure you’re not an axe murderer.”
“How much did you read?” I asked, wheedling, my inner-writer engaging.
“Tell you at dinner - YOU name the date and time,” he smiled.
“My idea of “dinner” is walking to a dining hall, picking up a bag of food, bringing it back here and taking ten minutes to eat it between chapters,” I warned.
“I have a meal card,” he says, jiggling his student lanyard.
“We’ll see.” I said. “Have you talked to anyone else about my writing?”
“No,” he answered, “Why?”
“Please don’t, I have to think about it.” I say. As far as I know, no one I know in RL has read me - it’s an odd feeling - like maybe he got ahold of my diary. I haven’t worried over the fact that someone I’m in physical proximity to could look me up. That all this stuff is actually out there.
“Don’t think my misgivings can be cajoled away,” I say, “no more talking.”
He chucked but we got back to studying.
Nov 16, 2021
Nov 16, 2021 at 10:21 PM UTC
It is
a lazy nod of orchid shift that sees
the poppies lean in times, where
glockenspiel lanyard clings are
goat herds on a Cretan rise.
Sweet boat-words claim a beltane fare
that calls to mind all Summers gone
in spools of warming solitude
that talk of when the Earth was young.
Jun 22, 2017
Jun 22, 2017 at 9:36 AM UTC
i am
--am i?--
yeah, i think i am
drunk drunk drunk
and signing myself up for
selective service so i
will be able to access my financial
aid and not have to cough up
almost $2,000 for one term
that me and my bank account
just really do not have, ya know?
and that little dropdown menu
well it doesn’t offer the option of:
“i am being forced to sign up for this
so i can afford college”
because i guess that sounds less
appealing than my being recruited
during lunch while i watched my fellow
(cis) male students dislocate their shoulders
doing pull ups so the older boys in uniform
would be proud of them and
maybe even give them a
nice little lanyard
because after over $100 to get
the right name and gender marker
on my id and $60 to get a new
birth certificate
i’m male enough for the government
to want to make into cannon fodder
but i’m still not male enough to
use the men’s room without the
threat of being verbally harassed
or physically assaulted
and that just makes me so angry
because here’s “bone-spurs donnie”
a known draft dodger of
at least 5 times who had the money
to pay off any doctor he wanted
trying his hardest to ban trans
people from enlisting
to fight in a war backed by a country
that wants them dead
yet that little M on my id
that i paid so much for
makes me eligible to be blown
to bits or come back to
a country that doesn’t want me anymore
with my brains scrambled from
shell shock and ptsd
because this country is willing
to pretty much force-feed young men
into the bottomless belly of the
war machine
always stoking the fires of the
military industrial complex with
money and unscarred flesh
and so much lies
and so much fear mongering
and i am just so tired
of having to fill in that
little bubble with my ballpoint
pen and a click of the mouse
pledging what could easily be the
rest of my life to being
riddled with bullets
miles away from home
just so i can grab that
financial aid
that perpetual carrot being dangled
in front of my oh so
transgender and queer nose
so i can afford an education
and not become another statistic
another person that the
united states of amerikkka
has failed
Dec 5, 2018
Dec 5, 2018 at 2:07 AM UTC
-
i took no pleasantries in that adjustment
from the top shelf of Pastry Perfection
to the wicker-wire dust bunnies at the
"sole" level of humanity
after i mistakenly thought —you— took
some element of freeverse i had posted a
couple of years ago at one of the more-read
poetry sites on the internet-
then i realized something, Poet..
that for all those sleepless hours you
spent cramming for the SAT—
i posited on how many welding rods
could be burned down during a two
hour period of trade school
and with respect to those thousands of
words diligently packed into your
undergrad dissertation—
(*including that humorous description of a
knitted strap you used to keep the pencil
from rolling off the table*)
i wrote a brief essay of commonalities
on how much Gerald R. Ford and
Elwyn Brooks White
actually disliked
football,
and to those thoughtfully crafted lectures
in front of scores of distinguished
scholars and senior staff—
i was projecting shadow puppets onto a
screen during a slideshow while the
teacher excused herself to the restroom.
basically this;
as to the volumes of books
you have published
over the decades—
i have a few thousand words of
amateur poetry posted online
inside of a few years.
That Said,
for those carefully-placed words
(of mine)
you incorporated into your
latest masterpiece,
realizing poets will not always
happen upon the same instant
at any given intersection,
i recognized that most familiar sensation
we Both get when having correctly
delivered the punchline to the funniest
joke of the evening.
we —in fact— have only the readings
of fellow writers to blame for each
other's blending of creative impulses,
that during these miraculous,
yet humble birthings of verse—
i have it now on good authority,
that we all could possibly exist
within this capacity
as mere equals...
"The Lanyard of Amateur Poetry"
© 2020 by Seranaea Jones
all rights reserved
.
Oct 7, 2020
Oct 7, 2020 at 6:53 AM UTC
I hit the ball.
The ball winds down a grassy corridor, gleaming in the fall's orange glow,
My breath stifles, closing a moment, and it all starts to bend.
(inhale) Bending... (exhale)
A troup of lizards march up this chalky hill, and a curve lays like a lanyard discarded, groovy and misshapen
And they walk with detached, floppy fiddle strings across the green to apprehend the ball.
The ball eludes them and redirects to the rough, and the hole sits, agitated and circular.
(inhale) Bending... (exhale)
On the couch, I stretched.
Thinking and wondering why gnats never sleep.
I'm at the apartment, one thumb over my left eye looking at the exterior of a DVD,
Thinking and wondering why gnats never sleep.
A closed mind in transit with a DVD lodged between left and right brain,
Left eye socket with left brain in
Right eye socket with right brain in
I press my thumb to my right eye, and the DVD spins, tickling my brain and playing.
(inhale) Bending... (exhale)
I putt.
Gently, one flinch from the right arm.
Loosely holding the left arm in place.
The ball rolls again, grinding the grass beneath.
It has the gumption to gather its matter and mass.
(inhale) Bending... (exhale)
Click.
It is sunk inside its cubbyhole.
Oct 18, 2013
Oct 18, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC
*My treasure awaits,
Has pearls to uncover,
Locked in lips of flesh,
Rose petals, blushing full
Cheek, eyes of lacing nebula
Exploding in milk of heavens,
This treasure I must hoard,
Climb on to the proud chest
And unlock, spun gold threads,
Sparkles in tresses of crown,
Sovereign pink hands, tendered,
Are freckled in beads of amber,
A brooch of navel, whirlpools,
Commands my ***** greed
Toward singular jewel of her
Thighs, lanyard of legging,
Of toes, whispering ripples
Till the under tides ripped
Agast in so much bounty,
Casked in reams of satin
And flows of wet breaths
Was nary sunk, drunken,
Moony in starry love ring,
Now, by map of dream
I bury my treasure.*
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 1:35 AM UTC
I. '88 dakota
mondays still **** granted i don't get up at the crack of dawn no more but around noon i always feel the need to leave the rest of the day behind me and take the big red monster out and go to the beach and contemplate my life for hours, so i'll reach into my tattered 35 year old prada bag for a lanyard that says "nirvana" on it (like the band, not the stage of buddhism), but then i remember that gas guzzler and i got 337 miles between us, no more, no less.
II. whidbey
on wednesdays i feel like i've shifted into an alternate universe where there are things other than evergreen trees and dirt roads, where the view when i look out the window is an interstate and dagger-like icicles that are as tall as me. maybe it started when they took down the texaco star in freeland and maybe it started the day i left, but i'm not sure if i can remember what home feels like anymore.
III. you
i still miss you on thursdays, sometimes saturdays. i know, i thought i woulda found someone better by now too till i realized that i'd been giving myself false hope this entire time. no one will ever be you. no one's teeth will curve the same way. no one will ever love the home teams as much as you. no one will ever smile as hard when i give them my last kit-kat in a strip mall parking lot at sunset. they drink to dak prescott and spit wintergreen griz more than you ever did. i thought i would find someone better until i walked into the coldest part of heaven with some crinkled twenty dollar bills and a carharrt jacket.
-z. vega
Jan 17, 2017
Jan 17, 2017 at 6:28 PM UTC
it took a few months to recognize my first car.
i’d wander through parking lots reading license plates
as if they were names i should know, but forgot.
i just looked for the college parking pass to show it was my own.
i graduated two years ago.
i still looked for the parking pass last month.
it took a few months to recognize my keys.
they didn’t feel like mine for months;
i was used to touching doors with the reticence of a guest.
i couldn’t tell which unlocked what,
i just looked for the college logo lanyard.
the red fabric may have unlocked as much as the keys did.
it’s taking more than a few months to move on.
i’m still in therapy for the therapy i didn’t ask for
when people couldn’t tell the difference
between the will to live and the will to die.
the keys on my lanyard led to doors that weren’t mine anymore.
none of the other cars there had to leave.
the parking pass laughed as i drove away.
it took a few weeks for the airbags to stop ringing in my ears.
i didn’t hear the sirens until i saw the lights,
kind of like the way i didn’t feel myself being pushed
until the door was shut. i didn’t know what to reach for—
i would have held the steering wheel tighter.
i would have looked a little longer.
i would have watched what they did and not what they said.
it takes longer when i’m in the driver’s seat now.
words need more salt. i take roads more slowly.
the car that was my home through shut and locked doors
was my safety one last time.
i have new keys. i have new doors.
a home where i’m not a guest.
i walked from both crashes, but only one still haunts.
the parking pass was towed away, and i wish i had laughed.
Apr 14, 2025
Apr 14, 2025 at 3:27 PM UTC
Wickering destruction thundering from the summit
First a death rain then deafening sound.
Rumble and boom.
Cordite flowers bloom and twinkle in
The srarless night.
Whistle me home my friend though my face unseen.
Lock and load my friend .
Then whistle me swiftly home.
Mother stands in the doorway worlds apart. She ponders the sudden chill.
FIRE. Pull the lanyard wire and whistle me home.away.
Soaring. Sireen.screaming thunder
True and deadly.
Ground zero stands the hero.
Drop the sight
Gunny,crank her down.
Lock and load Gunny
Fire and whistle me home.
May 18, 2013
May 18, 2013 at 11:09 PM UTC
So you are a God-fearing person,
I see...
You are suffering from a delusion,
You see..
Because you can certainly never truly,
Convince me.
If God is still alive and taking care of us,
Why you're in worshipping & afraid.
Of Him & the fabricated demons,
Inside of you and in others..
Holding onto His lanyard,
Day & night...
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 6:36 AM UTC
Man the lanyard! Over the sea!
To lands unknown to you and me!
The wind blows south, my merry men.
The ale flows free, to heaven then.
To Sea, to find my heart aflame!
To Sea, to find the dragon's claim!
Salty air, on dark stormy winds
Fair, rock our ship, to pieces then.
Tossing freely, dancing wildly,
Spinning to the rhythmic pounding.
Passing time on deck and mast,
From the crow's nest, we hear at last.
Land ** Land ** Captain!
The very land that has been sought.
Rivers of silver, mountains of gold.
Paradise for Pirates, so I'm told.
Sep 27, 2010
Sep 27, 2010 at 9:03 AM UTC
I was sitting with a boy
We weren’t doing much of anything, just playing
Video games and eating crisps
We blow something up and he turns to me and says
“Man, if I had a piece of gold for everything I knew
I’d be no richer than I am now.”
I snort.
“Don’t be stupid, you know heaps.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
I think for a bit.
“You know there is blood in your veins.”
“Yes. One gold then.”
“You know that it’s sunny outside.”
(He cranes to the left to look out the window and nods.
“Two gold then.”
“You know your name.”
He shrugs his shoulder.
“Sometimes. Am I the name on the lanyard I use at work? Am I my girlfriend’s endearment? Am I the nickname I had at school? Am I my mother’s darling or my father’s ‘tough little man’?”
He pauses. “I’d only give it a silver.”
I say
“You know that you were born, and one day you will die.”
Another pause.
“Three gold, one silver.”
After that we can’t think of anything else.
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 3:55 AM UTC
He is just tall enough to make me feel like a giant by the way he cranes his neck to look at me
His hands are too small for the camera he is holding
No one notices as he takes pictures of them
While they look at pictures on the walls
I ask him if I am on his camera
And he asks me to sit so he can show me
“Start at the beginning,” I say
There are no pictures of the actual work in any of his photographs
These are 14 megapixel close-ups
Of faces you thought you only made when you were alone
And I don’t want to see myself anymore
But I don’t stop him
These paintings might as well be mirrors
They might as well be
Crystal clear soul windows daring us to stare
a moment longer
The faces we make into them are response enough
To what we see inside
I already know what I see inside
It’s like listening to your own voice on a tape recorder
You can hear how ugly your voice is
Even though
everyone else tells you
“You sound like yourself”
Looking at these pictures is like walking in on your parents having ***
I know I am not supposed to be here
And after about 30 pictures we get to mine
These are 14 megapixels worth of tears drying on my cheeks
Suddenly I wish this museum was on fire
And the beams above us would come crashing down and bury us
I wonder why a little boy felt the need to photograph my soul
And I hate him for it
I hate his smile
And his eyes that have not yet seen enough
And his heart
Beating like a hesitant breeze
Warning us of winter
He must see all this on my face
Because he takes another picture
Then runs to his father almost tripping over the camera
Which hangs from a lanyard
Wrapped around his tiny wrist
I get up and leave
I avoid my own reflection in windows as I walk back to my car
I never again want to see what I feel like
And I will spend the rest of my life knowing
That somewhere
There is a little boy with a camera
That holds a picture of me
While I am crying
Aug 9, 2011
Aug 9, 2011 at 6:53 PM UTC
.
My treasure awaits,
Has pearls to uncover,
Locked in lips of flesh,
Rose petals, blushing full
Cheek, eyes of lacing nebula
Exploding in milk of heavens,
This treasure I must hoard,
Climb on to the proud chest
And unlock, spun gold threads,
Sparkles in tresses of crown,
Sovereign pink hands, tendered,
Are freckled in beads of amber,
A brooch of navel, whirlpools,
Commands my ***** greed
Toward singular jewel of her
Thighs, lanyard of legging,
Of toes, whispering ripples
Till the under tides ripped
Agast in so much bounty,
Casked in reams of satin
And flows of wet breaths
Was nary sunk, drunken,
Moony in starry love ring,
Now, by map of dream
I bury my treasure.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 2:51 PM UTC
.
My treasure awaits,
Has pearls to uncover,
Locked in lips of flesh,
Rose petals, blushing full
Cheek, eyes of lacing nebula
Exploding in milk of heavens,
This treasure I must hoard,
Climb on to the proud chest
And unlock, spun gold threads,
Sparkles in tresses of crown,
Sovereign pink hands, tendered,
Are freckled in beads of amber,
A brooch of navel, whirlpools,
Commands my ***** greed
Toward singular jewel of her
Thighs, lanyard of legging,
Of toes, whispering ripples
Till the under tides ripped
Agast in so much bounty,
Casked in reams of satin
And flows of wet breaths
Was nary sunk, drunken,
Moony in starry love ring,
Now, by map of dream
I bury my treasure.
.
Feb 24, 2018
Feb 24, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC
Aching, breaking
20,000 leagues beneath the sea, you now find yourself shaking.
And the pain, it is buried so very deep
You think you could glimpse the opening to Hades.
So why not stop to ponder what became of all that childhood wonder
And before you finally go under, recall the manifold wonders
That the child within you glimpsed with each unique unfolding day –
It was knocked from you, shaken out of you:
The hard ruler thwacked upon the desk; the calloused hand that cuffed your head … all of it inevitably led
To
A late card
A lanyard
A back yard
… A graveyard
But it doesn’t have to be this way my sleeping brave
That child who dreamt of wonders never truly went away
He’s been sat in extended detention staring out upon the rain all these blasted, wasted days
Smiling defiantly, waiting patiently for this, the day that you inevitably awake again
-So awake again
And acknowledge the dull convention that held your child in suspended animation
All these very many years
-recall the tailored hopes and fears that steered you upon this path of aspiration
All that vile accumulation of stifling convention
Now let those dimly-lit and narrow days just simply wilt and fall away
Lay down your daily paper and incline your face up towards the sun
And allow the child to mingle with the man you have become.
Be a child once more my son
And you may rise with the grace of a brace of golden angels once again.
Spiralling; entwining; in the endless space between the margins.
Dipping and swooping, joyously, carelessly loop-the-looping
Through skies and heavens never ending
You feel the glory of your golden child for evermore ascending
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 7:01 AM UTC
My fingers stumble over the strings,
over the flicker-book of life;
missing half of the important things
going on around me
until they have been and gone
and never to return again.
Childish lapses cause me to stare at the ceiling
through important demonstrations
that could save my life some day-
I always begin to imagine
my fatal accident
at the hand of a misplaced floor sign
as I sign the contracts
for those I feel no loyalty for,
in a signature my jittery hands
can never replicate.
My feet gain their own volition
when approaching anxiety,
and so I never know
if I will run away,
or run into the storm
of half-familiar faces
and half-tolerable anecdotes.
I am still a child, I know,
beyond my lanyard
and half-grown beard,
always dreaming of escape
whilst keeping close to home.
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 5:41 PM UTC
Peter is joining us for lunch in the cafeteria. I met him on a crowded Saturday morning at a coffee shop. He’s from the flammable, paper-dry, sagebrush hills of Malibu and grew up overlooking the hazy blue pacific ocean. He says Mel Gibson’s drunken **** rant, when a cop pulled him over for a DUI, put them on the map.
Poor Peter is fashion challenged. He’s 25, too tall, and too thin. Reading glasses hang around his neck. His too loose-fitting clothes are all variations of brown, like tawny, penny and wenge. He’s wearing a battered tweed coat, brown corduroy slacks and tortilla colored mock turtleneck. He’s adorably shabby-fancy. If he fell in the dormant, straw-yellow grass, we probably couldn’t find him.
Peter has a serious aura of experience about him. His cheek bones are sharp, his hair is an explosion of uncombed black, his skin is pale - bleached - by over exposure to library lighting.
He lives in a different world - the prosaic, laissez-faire universe of research - where students are left to their own devices and expected to self-manage.
Right now, he’s being vetted by one of my roommates, Leong. His student lanyard marks him but she wants specifics if he’s going to hang around. “What’s your major?” she asks, her eyes squinting like the Chinese lie detectors they are. “I’m a doctoral student in applied physics,” he says.
I pat his knee, “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” I say, reassuringly.
Mar 1, 2022
Mar 1, 2022 at 7:24 AM UTC
(20 minute poetry)
Fill it in Friday
dye it blue,
what does anything
have to do or anyone
have to say,
but
Friday.
send me a test card
hung on a lanyard
or up on the yardarm
where I'm swinging
my bones
Weismuller's
full of something
now
that guy knows how
to swing
but
you're probably too young
to remember him,
Guess again
I'm back on the
underground train
and
it's snowing down here
either that or my eyes
have gone queer
it could be the light
or a trick of the night
looks like snow
though.
Nearly done for the year
eight more hours here
and a beer for a chaser.
Going
but not quite,
Injecting
testosterone
deepening my voice
a tone
heading on home
for Christmas.
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 8:44 AM UTC
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her *******
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift – not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Nov 12, 2019
Nov 12, 2019 at 10:54 PM UTC
I found a little poem
In the back drawer
of my soul
It was a fire opal
In a bezel of fine gold
I fashioned a lanyard
Of scarlet ribbon found
But I didn't see...
The knot broke free!
My poem was
on the ground!
I searched in
every corner
My fingers raked
the stones...
But I finally
Gave up the search
Due to my
Aching bones
Yes, i lost my
little poem
In the backyard
Of my mind.
I guess I will just
Leave it there
for someone else to find!
SøułSurvivør
(C) 6/7/2017
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 3:24 AM UTC
I'm a key without a cute or handy keychain.
Just a key.
I open doors for many,
but not for myself.
I'm a key without a lanyard.
I'm loose and easy to lose.
Just a key.
I'm a key without another key next to me.
No keychain or lanyard to share.
Just a key.
Nov 28, 2024
Nov 28, 2024 at 1:08 AM UTC
the middle bedroom:
brother's torn futon pointed at the television
he controls the neon animated race car
sister sits on the top mattress practicing
braids on her doll's golden locks
the youngest lay below with the her cousin behind
everything seems fine
until she feels his warm palm stretch across
her innocent hip
steadily inching his way into her ruffled *******
and making her touch the untouchable
she couldn’t even tie her shoes.
the bathroom:
pain began to suffocate her
a razor blade made pretty lines along her thighs
blue face refused air under the grimy water of a tub
a lanyard wrapped around her neck twice to extinguish any oxygen
thirteen caps of sleeping medicine
she couldn’t even drive a car.
the cheap hostel:
one too many ciders in the berlin pub
the gentleman grabs her hand
clumsily walks her home
“stop.”
it was all a blur when he led her upstairs
when he took off their clothes
when she said no
when he never stopped
she couldn’t even legally drink.
memories burned and ashes buried
she needed to let go.
life was now perceived as a kaleidoscope of meaning
each color representing a state of mindfulness
and for her to attain the sacred
metamorphosis of nirvana
she accepted that attachment is the root of all suffering
a radical change was desperately required
because happiness is a warm gun.
she shot her past self
from her present existence
and now life was in her control.
Apr 28, 2017
Apr 28, 2017 at 1:41 AM UTC