"liters" poems
It's 3:09am
I'm im the library
Desperately trying to write a research paper:
'LGBT Familes'
How fitting.
Caffeine courses through my veins
Coffee overloads my bladder
Bathroom.
I hate bathrooms.
When you have no gender
The simple act of relieving yourself becomes a chore
The heavy weight of that key decision
Chokes your lungs as you stand outside the doors
Two doors.
Men.
Women.
Not me.
The choice becomes simplified:
While I sometimes pass as a man
I often do not.
I can choose the men's bathroom
The consequence of which could end in physical violence
The same hate I explain through my essay.
The same fear that plagues my community.
The women's restroom is also an option
The consequences likely less dire than the former:
Heavy side eye and the potential of yelling.
A much safer choice.
Obviously.
Per usual, I walk into the women's room.
I take three strides inside.
Then I stop.
I've never used the men's room.
My fear of violent reactions has always won.
Yet at a time like this
How likely is it that someone is inside the men's room?
Now is my chance to face my fears.
Now I have a safe chance at peeing in peace.
In a bathroom potentially more suiting
Of my gender identity
So I turn around.
Let the door slam behind me.
Half a step into the men's room
The smell of rancid ***** hits my senses
Toilet paper liters the stalls
I have missed absolutely nothing in my years in the women's room
Women have nicer facilities
A significantly more advanced hand dryer
Cleanliness
Air freshener
Men do not have these luxuries
Now I question,
Do men not take as good of care of their bathrooms as women do?
Do the workers intentionally prioritize women's sanitation?
What causes this undeniable divide?
Is the messiness of the men's room a result of their conscious decisions?
Or simply a response to societal expectation?
Regardless,
I think I'll stick to the women's room
While I add bathrooms to my compilation
Of more discrete gender inequality
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 2:23 PM UTC
Last Valentine's day I donated 3.3 liters of blood.
Enough to replace the 7.7 pounds of red roses
you bled when you found out I loved myself
more than I loved you.
It killed me.
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 12:35 PM UTC
I fear.
I fission.
I flow.
like a sponge,
I become aqueous
when wiping blood or saliva.
like a finger, I lose myself in rings of prints.
I am the ography
of space loosely tied to the
end of a carrot. detach me from
ice and I float to the other side of the island.
I wave at ships passing night or day, captains
drunk or sober, buoys clean or covered in mucky ****
save me.
I am losing my
mind on these stairs
crawling the ceiling, these
riches made of paper, these children
using liters of glue to stick themselves to
each other.
everyone is stuck.
everyone is covered in barnacles.
everyone is design on my pine tree’s needled hooves.
a horse gallops four at a time. they name it “power” for the dreams it has of stormy women.
Jul 12, 2017
Jul 12, 2017 at 9:13 AM UTC
key into lock
skull-like
iris
blooming
in the corner
vintage red
sipped down
2 liters
of 2006
an amount of
a capacity of
mind
pink
rose
horse out of
water
through mud
moon gallops
across
warzones
couples kissing
and
for a moment
winks in
the horizon
of day
Jul 10, 2017
Jul 10, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC
The distance is what makes it so hard
To be here, so far away from your side
To be here, as if snared in the lies
That you miss me as I long for times gone by.
To know what I had… To let it all go...
Your smile, your laugh and your touch
To know they are gone, never to return
It tears me asunder, it saps my soul...
The realization is what makes it so hard
To know that you were never mine
I could have had it, but I couldn’t grasp
It slipped my fingers, how could I be that blind?!
The shadows are what make it so hard
To let go of your memory and bury you in the past
I feel it clawing at me, it is screaming so loud
It won´t let me forget and it brings me down under its weight
As I measure this sadness in pounds
My failure streches on for miles
And liters of tears flow from my eyes
If only I could purge these hours from time...
And it is there, as it has been since the first day
The emptiness, the silence, the space
As time ebbs away, and life goes on
Mine came to an end
The moment I let you go.
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 11:38 AM UTC
I woke up to my neighbors belting out an off-key tune. I tried to cover my aching ears with my pillow, but their discordant voices echoed in my head, so I finally got out of bed.
I stared at the unfinished painting I had worked on the night before. In just a few seconds, my stomach dropped. Even in its incomplete state, there was a sense of impending doom looming outside my door—hideous, and that was my first thought this morning.
Shadows ran through the waves of my curls—spiraling endlessly—as my fingers gently brushed away the exhaustion from last night. For the second time, I turned to look at the unfinished painting restlessly sitting at the end of my bed. If it had eyes, it would definitely not meet my somber, dark brown gaze. It would fear me, for I would cut it into pieces. I would let it bleed until it was no longer breathing.
It would forever be cherished as a beast—unfinished, freshly cut like a lemon. When poured into a deep wound, its acidity would seize the skin, leaving nothing but unfortunate agony.
I drank two liters of fresh lemonade, but nothing happened. It didn’t cut me into pieces. I was still unfinished.
And so I avoided its beastly eyes. Even an unfinished canvas resented my sorrowful presence. I sliced another lemon and added a teaspoon of sugar, hoping today would be different.
Nov 3, 2024
Nov 3, 2024 at 5:08 AM UTC
There once was a chicken
and there was once a hawk
the hawk would talk
non stop
about his ability of flight
his speed his force
he'd talk so long
the chicken would bash his head against the door
The chicken hated the hawk
hated listening to him talk
the chicken wanted to beat the hawk
so he would no longer have to hear him talk
and then the Rocky music played
as the chicken flapped his wings
up steps sliced out in the sky
till he would reach the top then dive
the chicken became very good at this
though not as good as the hawk
and when the hawk won the race
he would just continue to talk and talk
the chick was sick of it
he fled to his own getaway
feeding on solely chocolate
and liters of gatorade
The chicken consumed
until he couldn't see his toes
he stumbled out his front door
where man found him
unaware of his past
caring just for the fire and not the wood
why the Hawk is fast
and the Chicken tastes good
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
A lot of time spent
having miscellaneous conversations with the air.
Even stupid questions like "how's your day" acting as if it'd give an answer, or, even more,
a whisper of inspiration
It's an obligation, or, maybe a delegation, or, a confirmation?
that we will create a masterpiece before insane peace
With a piece of our minds becoming a little less peaceful by the day.
Soon our minds will turn into violent catapults hurling out sentence after sentence making our paper bleed
Black, Blue, Red, Gray
Joining a cult created by the letters we created ourselves
falling into the abyss these stanzas and paragraphs invite us into
And don't get me wrong, it sounds terrible, but it's home.
There's no place like it.
Where these words are so much more than words,
they're family.
But frequently, we get into arguments that erupt into something sinister
and our desks become littered with papers that wilt and wither into nothing more than liters upon liters
of a type of alcoholic beverage that'll tempt us into becoming outspoken drunkards
But that's the goal:
to be outspoken.
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 4:14 PM UTC
Memories
Hazy as the clouds you don't reside under
My eyes thunder with the possibility of seeing you
And the mist is from the realization I never will
Black silhouetted are the dreams,
That scream at me through windows
Like widows
Begging for their lovers to come home...
All so beautiful...
Like petals on headstones
Or blood on snow...
Nightmares remind me
My life was never a show.
I remember triggers and barrels,
....
Screams and sparrows...
Blood spilled to keep blood concealed in the hearts I love
Are liters of my life well spent
The screams die down even in my own ears and silently I repent
The roses bloom,
In last winter's corpse.
Watch the strings on the loom,
They weave life's course.
Breathe in the same air ****** did,
Exhale the same breath Mother Theresa Had.
Accept the curse among the twigs,
For there are blessings to be had.
But never forget,
Any stone on that path.
Swallow regret,
We all wear a mask
Carpe Diem
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
Why are there entire cities to drain,
When Somewhere in my village,
People are dying for a drop of rain
Coming from a cave through a seepage?
Why are many places flooded elsewhere
When the drought there is constant
And People are struggling everywhere
To moisturize the soil just to plant?
Why are young Maasai men digging
For hours Into the patched African soil
Searching way into the humid evening
For a drop of water, they have to toil?
Why did nature leave my playground arid
When she rains down billions of liters in Texas?
Streetlights, no lights, drought at the power grid,
Scolding of nature is the caveat of the water crisis.
Why did God give us diamonds and gold,
How can he bless us with an abundance of minerals?
Then seal up the skies and put the rains on hold?
Turning the crisis to a vulture's feast and human funerals.
#IvanBrooksPoetry©️
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 2:27 PM UTC
Carefree drizzles softly sings as bliss and ease taken wing.
Gaze upon the auric blooms while sweet melodies, mellowing.
Alleviate our friend's crises, their debts, paid in purple silvers.
Eliminate those pesky mortal threats, lest blood spills in liters.
Toward our star, astride the verde, vibrant beauteous noise.
Abating virtues, without the merde, cometh Byronic poise.
A smoken distance, famished flames, fiery tongues yearning.
A fearful master, ***** dames, merry songs flowing.
Parallel meridians lovingly caress floating wisps of white.
Quarreling impulses embracing soaring orbs of light.
Bright.
See... sigh.
Lavender shades cushion our convents of misty mysteries.
Serene panacea tease me upon sapience; argent histories.
Ebullient crush casting glaring lights into the hostile wind.
Beneath dusky whirlwinds come hazel sparks of sand.
Glory guilty of detested crimes, anon trembling tears.
Inspiration follow thy limelight; guidance of young seers.
A canvas of blue, emotions ablaze through one hundred days.
Amber pillars burdened with wishful horizons... come what may.
Never believe our luxurious dreams under the rainy rainbow.
Drowning in sunshine, tis the era to escape the clutches of limbo.
Cease our anthropocentrics to soar on frozen blooms tonight.
Taste vermillion pain, lest we be gluttons, spying; useless insight.
Mirrors refracting broken perfection, for ever-clear prisms.
Commit altruist favors for all our mistaken rhythms.
Behold the mind, mightier than a sword, bitter tool of priests.
Crusading zen, grander than any reward, come join the feast. <3
Aug 28, 2010
Aug 28, 2010 at 5:13 AM UTC
I am alone now here at the bar
Beside me is a girl and a beer jar
I do not mind about the girl
Because my mind is now on swirl.
A shot of tequila and a lemon
Make a toast for being forever alone
Give me a another glass of ***
I am cold and I want to feel warm.
My heart and brain still feel the pain
Like I drank tons of liters of gin
Please make a drink for a heartbreak
And the bartender started to shake.
I tried all of these drinks and runaway
But still, I cannot drink you away
Give me another round of champagne
Just to forget and ease the pain.
Jan 10, 2016
Jan 10, 2016 at 6:19 PM UTC
White Interceptors illuminate, cry, and leave ribbons of red and blue,
accelerating north on Featherbed. Streetlamps hang like midnight ornaments.
It starts to rain, turning the tar streets into slick mirrors.
I can see my lights lead me, sweeping the asphalt.
Kent is still too dangerous to gentrify. The trashcans are spilling
cereal boxes and empty two liters. I imagine a two-thousand year-old
mountain of trash, corroding and forming this neighborhood.
Barefoot children walk around aluminum cakes, reaching for the rain.
Skinny cats trot across the street, green and yellow eyes,
leaking through the dark. I name them after sicknesses.
The humming of my Camry grows louder as I squeeze by
dripping, patting hands. I now recognize the moon.
Buildings swoosh by faster and faster. Minutes go by and I
find myself on the outskirts; the trees sway, dodging rain.
My phone rings like a frenzied roach. Picking it up,
'Hello.'
'Sure. Yeah, I'll be right there.
'Nowhere.
'I'm going nowhere.'
The phone bounces on the grey seat. A screeching.
Coming to a stop; my chest almost touching the center
of the steering wheel. All becomes still.
A buck with velvet antlers stands in the rain.
It runs into the dancing forest. Much like me.
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 5:37 PM UTC
The shirtless poet,
he writes on the fourth floor.
Corner of Bedlam and Squalor.
He’s running two experiments:
Ingesting only whiskey and
texting only ex-girlfriends.
He keeps a journal.
The title is
The Dishonest and the Deceased.
He’s seven days and forty-one pages in.
He’s sent 63 images of both himself and
empty bottles.
Three different women have shared his bed,
and each subsequent morning departed
with a similar sentiment: this never happened.
He’s drank ten liters, placed the empty bottles
on top of the cabinets. Proof. Yeah, I’ve been drinking.
I guess you can tell, he said. I’ve got friends.
Just haven’t seen them in a while.
He said he’s getting closer to the center.
Of what? Woman No. 2 asked.
Of myself.
I wouldn’t do that. Whatever you do.
It’ll help my.
Don’t do that.
My art.
This isn’t art.
I am art.
You’re drunk.
I can remember the first time.
I’m starting to.
What does.
Nothing.
You’re leaving.
No. Well.
The first time. Your grandma’s shed. 2007, 2008.
I’ve got work in.
I remember the smells.
The morning, she said.
The dew, the grass, the sweet wind.
Please.
Your husband’s no ******* poet.
I.
Let me remind you how poets love.
The air conditioner hiccuped.
A taxi door slammed outside.
A helicopter dipped past Squalor.
Through the window a beam of light.
But this never happened.
This never happened, he said.
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 3:50 PM UTC
Yeah! - we win!
We Aussies win
the CoreData 2011 award:
each household will spend
an average of more than $1000
on gifts, food and deco for Xmas
Yeah! - we win!
China? $400 only
The French? $600 only
The Kiwis? $631 only
America? $644 only
The British? $815 only
Britain beats France - but
Yeah! - we Aussies beat 'em all!
Yeah! - we win!
We Aussies also win
the IBISWorld 2011 award:
Australia will spend $1.2 billion
on ***** just in December
Yeah, we win! And throughout 2011!
the UK? they drink only 10.58 litres
average year round
the USA? a paltry 8.42 liters average
And Down Under? - 10.61 litres this year
Yeah! - we win! we win! we win!
Dec 17, 2011
Dec 17, 2011 at 8:42 PM UTC
Remind me, please
Write me one more letter
One like letters 16 through 53
The golden ages
Write the last paragraph
Like you don’t want it to end
Squeeze out the lines
You were planning on holding back
Like you did
For those 37
Teach me how to fall asleep before midnight
Again
Teach me how to wake up without hangovers
How to wake up with ideas
Show me everything
Like our poetry collections
Volumes 1 through 3
When we alternated days
And submissions
For 188 straight days
Minus the 14 days
We wrote four-letter poems
Remind me, please
When the bar was a date
And 1.75 liters was a dinner party
Not a Tuesday
Make me pay you back
The $65.00 in make-up
That I used to paint
“You’re too beautiful for make-up”
On the bedroom wall
Make me buy your little brother beer
For painting over it
Put 7,640 new songs on my itunes
Because these 7,640 are played out
Make sure we see every movie
Nominated for best picture
Before your cheesy award show party
It’s up to ten now, you know
Stay with me
For nine more minutes
While I hit snooze
Awake and right at it
Like ’04
Baby snores and blanket wars
Like ’05
Up before the alarm
Like ’06
Or at least in my dreams
Like ’07
And ’08
Rub it in my face
For the umpteenth time
By taking extra good care of me
When I’m sick
Even though
I never get sick
Pose for me
While I paint
And stare
Like that one time
When you were feeling so brave
Let’s spend our last $8.00
On yellow tail
Our last $18.00
On Sebastiani
Our last $38
On Veuve Cliquot
Because every day is a celebration
*******
Let’s reminisce on the 414 times
Our bodies became one
And the 671 times
They were at least in the same bed
Inspire me
Call attention to my capabilities
And caution to my chaos
Instigate that ******* in me
That made a jealous appearance or two
At christmas parties and night clubs
Hum me all 162 times I teared up in ’06
At the exact same time
Like a drumline
Of being lost
Because baby i’m lost
Point me
Point me in the right direction
Send me on the right path
You know, the one with you at the end of it
Jan 20, 2012
Jan 20, 2012 at 10:26 PM UTC
He proposed to me at Disney World
and I loved him anyway.
He’s discovered his own brilliance at 22
It’ll ruin him early and completely.
The Ouija Board said he’d die at 33,
like Jesus he’s living fast and loose.
His sleep is a menagerie, a night-
time sound machine, all owls and lions.
He drank 2 liters of gasoline
and lived to tell it, used the fuel like sickness.
He punched his arm through a window because
of the gasoline. Swastika-shaped scar tissue.
He is at least 9 feet tall
and contrary as a tree limb.
He bought me diamonds and I lost them,
he bought me more and ******* them into me.
He liked to clamp his lips around cold cat ears
when he had no air conditioning.
His voice was an engine dying, choke and hold,
growling for new air and old adages.
His name walks in front of him, announcing
the second coming and the first going.
When he was sick or scared sick, he’d wrap in
his sister’s pink scarf, only that one, only pink.
He told us to be strong like men but act like women
so I wanted to be a doctor that always did the dishes.
His love was a closet too small for two peoples’ clothes
so I packed it in boxes and burned it on the sidewalk.
His eyes harbor the whole world: bombs, bicuspids,
A wink that could **** a small school of children.
He makes proverbs that tell the time
not minutes though, but centuries.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 3:30 PM UTC
You only got a buzz and a little fizz
'Cuz you became introduced to soda pop
I call it soda pop cuz you really "can"
Did everything you can to bottle up your hip hop life
So that you can appeal to some new fans
That's what that mountain do
You get to the top and start foolin with that cola
Shaking up the crowds
But you getting ran over
Then it all spills
So **** gets real
Then you figure that you false started
So you try to run over
You now follow 2 liters so here comes the Royce's and the rovers
Now you rocking with the rollas
Guitars and Crown Vic motors
Got you a six pack for the core
Security guards attached to your arms
Dr.pepper spray on his waist
You didn't spring from that kinda soil
You say that you were towing the 40 while you was drinking the 40
Now you root beer
And 7 up
Just forgot about us
No more grits and pop tarts
You doing it for the popular charts
But I call that **** minute maid
Cuz you getting paid to do sweet **** like lemonade
Aug 18, 2013
Aug 18, 2013 at 3:36 PM UTC
Girl No. 1 wears her jeans cuffed and hates everyone but the Jets. Her voice is honey-thick around biting words. Smiling does not come easy to her. She wears her face like a mask—big glasses, big eyes, big quiet. When I see her, she lifts her hand in a grim wave, delta creases in her brown palm. Her excuse for her silence is that she’s boring, but she’s not. She dots her eyes with tiny stars and listens to German orchestra whenever she can. She thinks she has buried herself well, but bits of her still protrude from the topsoil, aching to be known.
Girl No. 2 is grey flannel and deliberate sentences. Her hair covers her face, yet when she speaks about trees and animals and the hole torn in our atmosphere by ultraviolet, ultraviolent rays, she is thunder. I gave her lotion for her cracked hands one time. When we smiled at each other after, we knew at once we were part of the same club. Girl No. 2 never corrects people when they forget her name. They say Kaitlyn, Kaleigh, Katie…let the word drop as if it were no more important than a used napkin. I hate it. I pick her used napkin name from the floor and smooth it over my lap. I say it right and she replies, with perfect seriousness, thank you: Thank you for the correct pronunciation of my identity.
Girl No. 3 is a hard one. Look at her once and you’ll see Maybelline lashes and a glass-cutting face. Look twice and you’ll see more. The sag of her shoulders, the stinging weariness of posturing for people far beneath her. I startle her. I’m too inquisitive for her taste. She does not want the world knowing her mother drank three liters of ***** before driving off a bridge, that her favorite color is celery green, or that anorexia and anxiety stalked her through the halls of high school like a pair of vultures. She wants to stay in her castle of ice, but it has imprisoned her. You poet, she teases me. You right-brained heap of color and sensitivity. You’re too much. I don’t know what to do with you. I ask her who she is and she recites her answer. 130, 125, 2315. But this girl is more than her IQ, her weight, or her SAT score, and when I tell her so, her Maybelline lashes are ruined.
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 9:32 PM UTC
Sentient
Primate
Alive
Is that the soul or the nerves inside?
Is the brain a soul? or is it hearts
that drives?
Are the lungs the source,
each breath our revive?
Is it but piston and shaft,
within us that survive?
I'll have two liters gear oil.
Synthetic, please. Yes, Premium.
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 14, 2018 at 4:25 PM UTC
Heavy hammers are pounding my courtyard
Have to reach thousand liters deep
Each blow is hitting my mind hard
Demolishing what I thought forever’s keep!
What was built up over years of toil
Now dug out as mossy broken dumps
Lie debauched the dragged out soil
As the dark hole to the gaping depth slumps!
I look down it with a sense of hurt
And down the years I ride
Sniffing to catch smell of a lost part
The times that in this cavern hide!
How I looked as these were built
How youthful she surely was then
Fossil moments embedded in the silt
If only I had them regained!
The peephole into past is now bare
Paving the time traveler one chance
To swim with the memory and be there
Give the living remnants last glance!
Lost years are never dead I believe
They all live what we think we demolish
It’s only us that are forced to leave
Leaving them breathing in buried bliss!
Dec 28, 2013
Dec 28, 2013 at 2:50 AM UTC
in·dom·i·ta·ble/inˈdämitəbəl/
Adjective: Impossible to subdue or defeat:
“indomitable spirit”
-
That was it,
I understood how to win the game now,
I understood that you had to show them
that a milliliter of your blood,
is worth 5.2 liters of theirs.
-
You are superior.
Never trust the hungry,
and never give a penny.
Your success was built by you,
and you alone.
Unfortunately the parasites come with the package.
N.H.
Jun 2, 2013
Jun 2, 2013 at 1:14 AM UTC
We know just how this song goes;
It's been playing on loop since 2008
But we're ******* sick to
our stomachs of singing along
We strive for insanity just to
forget the lyrics & get lost on the chords
We know just how this looks to them;
A bunch of ******* misfits
throwing punches in moshpits
But they don't see the salt
water we are drowning in when the shows over
Oh **** here we are
smoking in your sunroom again
And if one of us hasn't started crying yet,
we'll say we're makin progress
Haaaaaa
we all look a little cleaner
after a couple handles of ***
You look flawless through
the smoke that's blowing over your face
When my head is spinning
& the walls are melting down all over you,
I can finally see that this is not
what we were made to be
But it's too late, we're too lost
And we know that we can't
find our place with liters
of liquor flooding through our veins
So we sit naked in circles and
talk about how comfortable
we all are together
But I know that none
of us feel safe in our skin
And I know we're all just dying
to shed this layer & see
what's beneath it
We're hoping to find a reason to scream
Because we're so **** willing to lose our voices
But we've just ran out of things to say
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 2:28 PM UTC
I am not the wife she needed.
she never need a wife.
she needs a man.
a michigan man.
a medicine man.
a mans man
a masculine mass of muscle man
a man to make more little men with.
a man who watches us make out
mouths on mouths on mouths
till he finds the courage to drag **** out of his.
the first girl I slept with told me i didn’t count.
the first girl I loved is still in the closet.
the first girl I dated has a boyfriend now.
In this man’s world
she still sips, steals, stinks with liters of whiskey.
Texts me the next morning saying i went home with two guys last night and i am still
so empty.
She hides in holes of london
Hides in fear of hell
Hides and heals in me.
My love hides in middle ground
perched like a bird on the fulcrum of a teeter totter
nested in the arms of justice between the scale.
she texts me everyday
“everything has gone to **** I wish I wasn’t too scared to make myself happy”
Jan 6, 2019
Jan 6, 2019 at 1:47 PM UTC