"litters" poems
Broken glass lines the path
as if they were shattered dreams themselves
fragments of hopes lost in the whisper of the wind
in the night they lie still
I feel like I am dancing on the shards
as I walk, knowing I am blessed
but it makes me sad too
trash litters the ground
life is tossed into slums
many never get the luxury to escape
merely adding to the glittering pieces
they pile up unending
eroding, until the glass is no longer discernible from sand
I am talkin' 'bout the ghetto baby
and it ain't no easy road
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 11:55 AM UTC
I am from screens and bright machines
that show whole new worlds
that I use to pretend I’m
not living in this one.
I am made of the sharp smell
of artificial apples and cinnamon
burning your throat as you breathe it in
like secondhand smoke.
I am made of lonely days
spent on my phone
pretending to laugh when people say or send something
because I know they need the ego boost.
I am made of late nights
when I shut my phone off
and I start to cry
because I know that no one thinks about me after I go.
I am made of hours spent huddled
as my brother spits vitriol at my parents
and they take it with willing ears and become submissive dogs
with tails between their legs.
I am made of hellfire
carefully bottled up
until someone pushes me to the edge
and I am ready to ****
I am of thousands of cups of black coffee
sobbed over at three am
alone in my kitchen
hands searing, but refusing to let go.
I am from carefully counting every dollar
wondering when
I am allowed
to leave this town.
I am from four am walks
alone through the town
taking in the sights
and praying the sun will rise.
There’s a shattered hand mirror in my room.
Broken glass litters the cold dark marble
and teardrops drip all over the shards,
because even in all of these things that I am,
I am still not good enough for myself.
Oct 1, 2020
Oct 1, 2020 at 10:03 AM UTC
Apart, our Souls, they linger lost. My hearts demise, is what you cost. No sunshine, no colour, only lonely frost. That litters this Soul... aside Ive been tossed.
#TwinFlame
Jan 29, 2016
Jan 29, 2016 at 5:25 PM UTC
soaring
oh ****
crashing
tumbling
speckled glass litters my hair
life flashes before me
blinking yellow and red
roaring
screaming
blood drips to the ground
help
Help
HELP
Dec 21, 2021
Dec 21, 2021 at 12:03 PM UTC
20 years old
lost 1 and a half litters
and her mate five years ago
in a flood
vet says she’s super healthy
and she’s a furball of love
wisdom and mischief
in her catty eyeballs
and here i sit thinking about
a cat that’s lived more life than
i have in my entire life
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
Roaches litter my ashtray
and empty bottles litter my room
and burnt out incense litters my nightstand
and hollow memories litter my barren landscape of a mind.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 3:28 AM UTC
"Not too short on the sides,
not too long on the top."
I've prepared my little speech,
dreading the inevitable small talk
as the hairdresser's fingers fly
across the jungle of my dome,
her scissors like mini machetes
cutting down the foliage to see
what is hiding in plain sight.
I love the Bob Marley shirt I'm
wearing, so it's bittersweet it'll
immediately be taken off when I
get up from the chair. "One love,
one heart, give thanks and praise
to The Lord," laughing as I type this,
autocorrect shows Siri's faith in
human invented religion and God.
Hair litters the floor, and I know my
turn is next. The beginning of the end
starts
now.
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 6:53 PM UTC
Coffee house
windows drape
litters of faces
like teabags
milk white but
feature black yolks
in sunken pits--
sinking pits, dip
under the morning
embers. Sunny side
where? A day begins
though you lot, out
to dry, waiver it off;
It's not ours, you say,
It's yours and you's
filling the streets below.
We's wait for the sunny,
we's wait for the up.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 6:10 AM UTC
Ashley,
Your blues inspire me, insipid triangles, walking cold, sweating more and wetting the bed your lips the sizes of gods that I married through hidden video cameras, I caught bias in bliss, racism in slow disasters, tornado sirens and just sirens, and justice on the horizon. My eyelids the sizes of your little ******* the party of tomorrow, the starting sounds of scarred and stripped *** sounds. Caught in a drift, my bottom lip stuffed with lift-lust and jolting up and down your porcelain rift. Messed up and round the back to the buttons, the clasp too heavy to drop your ego down, the cold too swift to catch me as I fell. The heavens too burdened to beat me with your god. I just wanted to me smacked in the face with your flaws. Hips the sizes of doorknobs, hurdles that I caught one weekend sipping slow gin with granddad and papa and Tootsie, your evils carnivorous, your mess much more than your message. Your koo-koo voodoo and big bad red frock. Tuesday's made me the man I am today. The Slayer made me the hate I stuffed into my **** jock-strap to puff out my chest and make prisms in kitten litters and furrow the night clauses to match stick the pumped-up bypass of hazmat and heroism, I was won and didn't know it, you were one and now you're all one.
She,
came to me in French class holding straws. I picked swiftly and came, all staled and stiff, lock-jaw and threesomes one moonlit night the fourth of July.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:09 PM UTC
The little black book I keep next to my journals sits on a bookshelf I made from recycled wood. A fresh coat of paint may hide a splintered past unknown to me, but that is of zero importance when refurbished trees that died for a purpose hold books containing paper collected from a different tree that is now dignified in service.
One that expands as more hot air is blown, and shrinks when cold shouldered. The little black book holds numbers without faces, but the pocket in the back holds a face that could never be confused as paint by number.
It maps out the girl I've been searching for that never deserved a page in this book of lust, only the pocket in the back that will one day accept my trust.
And the reason this little black book is kept on the recycled bookcase is because the paper is also recycled, the same as the trash that litters the pages.
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
Mopeds, Mercedes
Dandelions and daisies
Churches
Mosques
Women masked
Exposed eyes
Revealing
More than the body
Ever could.
Lingerie
Sold openly on the street
Olives
By the kilogram
To fast-talking
Fast-walking
Men and women
Young and old.
Ancient ruins,
Ruined
The fall of one civilization
Destroyed
Merely to give rise
To one that will
Only hope to make men
Worth remembering.
Mystery lies
In the lives of artifacts
Bare finger tips
Graze over frescoes
Religion
Art
Expression
Litters every corner
Accompanied by waste
And poppies
Blood red
Amidst the gray haze
Of cigarette smoke
And pollution
Clouding the view
Of snowcapped mountains
Diamond lakes
Undisturbed
Surrounded by
Mopeds, Mercedes
Dandelions and Daisies
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 9:42 PM UTC
The fireside retreats
into the wall
as another TV Christmas special repeats,
with its sound echoing in the hall.
Tangerine,
Satsuma,
Clementine-Orange
peel litters the tabletop;
orange runway for the action figures,
plastic arms, moulded hairs.
Nina Simone plays loud,
'Nobody Knows When You're Down And Out',
Christmas is over,
and now there's nowt to do.
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 12:58 PM UTC
today i awoke
knowing the danger
that awaited me
as the dust settles
the litters came
one at a time
weapon in hand
locked and loaded
pointed at a bus
the litter hits the ground
dazed and confused
tears in their eyes
i rush over to carry the wounded
underneath the rotorblades to safety
not knowing til its too late
they're already dead
the clock is clicking
upon highway one
weapon in hand
pulling sercuity
as the buses rush around us
today i woke up
knowing the danger
of going unarmed and unafraid
the lifeless eyes staring at me
as i lowered them to the floor
as the tears stained my cheeks
as the anger gathered inside me
angry my brothers just died
but i can't show any emotion
standing at attention
as the rotors turn
awaiting my brothers in arms
as the flag covered brothers
inch closer to me
my final salute rendered to their memories
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 10:38 AM UTC
I am the coy smiling handsome man
and my feet beat the darkness away when I rush.
And I rush, in the alleys, sightless,
an actor led by lines of wilting dialogue.
And jasmine litters the gutters, fit to be dredged, the
aroma and the petals streaked with reminiscence.
I rush. I am the man toward an apogee,
a scalpel, with tastes as keen as winter lavender,
and eyes that feel the weight of tastes behind them.
As I dredge the depths for rarer tastes
I rush toward the gutter.
And like the gutters I thirst, in the levees and fen-
In the fen the rush of prey caught
Idling fills the space inside my eyes like oil,
and I dredge the lake for traces.
I am the actor, the dredge, my wit rehearsed
and I am acquainted with the lady of the night.
I smile as she caresses my oily deluged eyes-
And her eyes are filled with bile,
accented by jasmine, even
in the dimmest light of
gutters are rushing to an
apogee, fiercer than I'd like them to
appear, but I am the scalpel, to incise the insincere-
I am the prince, an heir to exacting the coerced-
I watch her eyes like windows from the gutter like a vigil
and hold tight to her breath.
I pour her blood in paper cups
until her breath is weightless-
And I rush, an actor, in the scene that we portray-
I am the giver, the oily deluged eyes that close around the flesh
and rend the fruit from the rind.
Mar 27, 2010
Mar 27, 2010 at 12:52 PM UTC
My internal landscape was once a wetland. Grasses and herbaceous plants sprout from the ventricles of my heart. My rib is a birch tree, a deciduous hard wood crowned with thin leaves. My veins are wild ravines. Inside it is the torrent of rain water that keeps me alive.
My heart is a beating water lily, eternally blooming on the lake of my blood. I was a sullen mist, and I loved it that way.
But they mistook my solitude for loneliness, the crowd, the clever engineers. So they loaded sands on their trucks, sacks after sacks. They opened me up, covered my wetland, and built a city inside me. They paved roads. They constructed buildings. They opened cafes and pubs and restaurants. They turned on their neon lights.
A rave party is inside me at night, and they won't stop until I am filled with cigarette stubs and empty bottles and used issues and half-eaten plates -- litters and grime that I have to clean every morning of my life. My gutter is overflowing and they call this happiness.
I call this wreckage.
I moved close to the bed, pulled the sheet and laid down. I tried to remember my by-gone world -- my birch trees, my herbaceous plants, my wild ravines, my water lily -- before I was converted into a rattling shell called Happiness.
You wrapped your arms around me and press your face on small of my back. My spine was a hard wood once, and every October it shed its golden leaves. "What do you want?" you asked.
The neon lights and the avalanche of noise from everywhere drowned my thoughts, and all I can do for my defense is curl my mutiliated body. "Love me until the end of everything," I whispered. "And understand that this is not a plea."
This is a burning desire to have my wetland back.
Feb 18, 2017
Feb 18, 2017 at 12:13 PM UTC
even if what I do is not okay
I am not alone
I have my songs to sing
when I sit
and breathe in some sorrow
that passes on an awkward wind
I am okay
I have my songs to sing
and I always remember
that I am never alone
there is always someone
so close not far away
-
don't get sad about it
in the scrawl
that litters my floor
there is no scrawl
there is an eternity
of thousands of lives;
the common sentience
of planets
and stars:
I look up
and I am home
I had a friend visit from out of town
he was a good guy
and what's best:
he got home alright;
he's still alive
Sep 16, 2010
Sep 16, 2010 at 8:02 PM UTC
Around the christmas tree the family gathers.
Wrapping paper litters the floor
and giggles trickle through the air.
Pause.
Everyone has wishes for christmas.
Marie wishes for her boyfriend
to leave her alone so she won't lose her baby.
Anne wishes for forgiveness
from her husband because she has suspicions
about how her lovers left.
Marcus wishes he knew
just where his wife's last affair had run off to.
Jason wishes for acceptance
from his parents for him and his boyfriend.
And little Katie wishes she had someone
to talk to when she thinks about ending it all.
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 10:47 AM UTC
Inflicted pains of knowing it will never be the same
I'm haunted everyday by the remembrance of your utterances
words seep from my skin
they twirl over
up and around settling where you should have been
this constant knocking of pain has worn me down so thin
stretched out so far my heart is forming unforgivable scars
holding on to this imagined world has turned into heart vs head war
I repeatedly ask myself what the hell this is all for
I skirmish with the truth, refusing to see, though I know precisely what it is doing to me
fatigue unravels my skin
it peels off in facets of severed hopes
along with the screaming ring of hoarded charcoaled chains of promise words
Shredded dignity litters the floors of my heart's chambers
Thud, thud it screams, "I failed me!"
as I blackout bleed for the price of loving you
Surround sound beats of rushing blood in my ears
the theme song of banshee screams that leave you sliced open
with your twisted insides falling into the black ocean.
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 5:05 PM UTC
Fine porcelain litters the cloth,
yet a quick pull leaves it still.
An exchange of tails both
holding, careful to not spill.
Our plates remain intact,
despite accidents of gravity.
Clearing the surface momentarily
within arrangements of integrity.
Utensils quickly turning
our tensile accent; I uttered
Vowels to what was heard
repeatedly signed our yearning.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 10:49 PM UTC
Had my foot resting on the pig pen,
watching my sows bringing new litters in,
wondering if these would help ends meet.
The crops all dried in that Texas heat,
we had to find work in the city so we could eat.
That was 35 summers ago.
Stood in line with all my gear on,
about two hours before dawn,
worried if I was going to qualify.
They dropped us, rolled us
and pretty much as they pleased,
got rid of a lot of boys except me,
told me to get back in line.
That was 35 summers ago.
Thirty five summers of doing it all,
sometimes knocked on my *** and **** near crawl,
made a life out of what I have.
Seen things I did'nt want to see,
did things that would normally not be me,
made it through most of the tough times.
That was 35 summers ago.
Hope I got 35 more summers to go.
Jun 13, 2012
Jun 13, 2012 at 2:46 PM UTC
Eyes that stare at me with such depth that I shudder when I look directly
Hair which curls around my finger and bounces simply perfectly
Giving me a preview of a sunrise that hasn't yet been seen
Gazing at darling Jenny and knowing only she does this to me
Watching the heavens with such wonder as she litters them with stars
Hoping that she sees me from palaces in clouds from afar
Yet holding her with such unwavering dedication and never letting go
Seeing my dear Jenny and feeling her love's glow
Hearing every whisper, every hark, and every secret breath
Binding a love that I know will not be abolished by this thing called death
Shining in a world where humdrum people flock in by the many
Loving her for all she's worth, wanting my dear Jenny
Jenny's hands are the only ones which soften my rugged fingers
Before and after she leaves the room I find her scent does linger
Her silouette is one I look for each time I enter the door
Hearing her soft footstepstouch the cool, wooden floor
I will keep my dearest Jenny for as long as long can last
Seeing the timeline in her eyes of both our future and our past
Knowing that we will be in a love with no questioning or regret
And lying with her as her eyes close in and under her eyelids are sunsets
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 2:52 PM UTC