"lowlights" poems
The world is lonely while they cry for help and
they reach their hands up.
In words, in books, in paintings,
they portray their loneliness hidden or blatant.
But even that isn't enough to highlight
the lowlights of our lives
It's in our blood, it's in our veins, our bones,
it's in the cigarettes that we smoke.
Which fills the air and wails out loud,
screaming a symphony of isolation.
It's hidden in the corners of the cities,
hidden in the tall green grass of the countryside
It's everywhere you look, in famous words,
in ancient books.
It fills your mind, it takes you hold, it's in the tiniest key hole,
but enough.
It's enough to spark a burning fire, to long for another's touch,
to feel desire
From another human being,
to share in what is the only thing worth keeping
Human company. We long, we dream, we scream for it,
and we hope it favors us too.
It's overwhelming, it makes me, it makes me long
like so many others
We are not alone in our loneliness
and what a queer thought that is
“Wir können uns einreden, dass wir mit einem Buch nicht allein sind, wie wir uns einreden können, dass wir mit einem Menschen nicht allein sind.”
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 10:20 AM UTC
i remember now, it was by the tree that i found the fallen star. I saw it from my window as i lay waiting for sleep to visit, the moon was full to the brim that night. Spilling lucid light onto the landscape adding highlights to the dales and lowlights to the fields of tea.
The fallen star was still warm, i hoped i could save it. So i climbed the tree with the star tucked in my jacket pocket. Limb over limb till i sat on the crown, ready to call the route for the fallen star to go home.
That is when it began to talk.
"I am here, to make sure you know there is only one thing
that will stop you.
It’s in plain sight but hidden under a mask,
your best friend who will ask you to make amends.
Under the rocks into the caves it’s a farce it’s a maze. So all you have to do is ask and you’ll find your way home”
and with that the fallen star fell.
Oct 11, 2013
Oct 11, 2013 at 4:48 PM UTC
sunlight
highlights
the lowlights
of all things
continuing contrasts
lighten the load
of an expanding
consciousness
change occurs
void of that unaffected
thoughts, beliefs, ideals
actions perceived free of inspiration
a hidden motivation
spirals cyclically and infinitely
to ever expanding nothingness
the body is only a vessel
for a timeless being
a collection of all
that was and is and has been or will be
what wasn't and isn't and hasn't
been and won't ever be
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 9:08 AM UTC
my social skills are painted by bubblegum lipstick and the ash of my lucky cigarette in a pack I found from a few weeks back
one more pill, one more line, another sip
another white lie, stale cigarette smoke filling up the back of my throat
buried in the depths of my backpack along with old makeup that makes me feel made up,
made up of small talk and old inside jokes
i thought would last longer then the last drag you took before you used it to finish the masterpiece you call a night out with people you think you need the most.
but they're just as made up as you.
made up just like the taste of that bubblegum flavor that lasts as long as the last drag.
as long as it takes to paint yourself into the crowd of the social scene.
the socialist you thought you could be under the lowlights and backlights where even darkest whites could've bloomed in the corner of that crowded room, where the lucky eventually ended, and the lights eventually dimmed, and the made up small talk fades into the faces you won't remember in the morning, along with the polished insecurities you learned to forget forgetting that you painted yourself to fit in.
fitted into that party that didn't even matter a few weeks back.
Aug 1, 2016
Aug 1, 2016 at 8:40 AM UTC
I think that maybe I loved you,
in the darkness,
and in the lowlights.
And I think that maybe I held you
in my heart
or in my hands.
I think that maybe I misunderstood
all the little things,
or maybe the big things,
the things of which the size, I couldn’t comprehend.
I misunderstood everything.
Every moment that was spent thinking that I understood the world,
thinking that I understood us.
Who we were,
and where we were going.
Everything was supposed to be black and white.
I expected it
to be black and white.
I tried to avoid all the grey areas where the lines were undefined,
sought to avoid the questions and confusions.
But I couldn’t.
Slowly,
the universe seeped through the eyelids I had attempted to keep forced shut.
Strands of color.
Threads which shot across the darkness,
of my lonely ceiling,
weaving galaxies,
and forming Gods.
I watched all the stories being written
in the form of harlequin dreams.
Surrendered to the kaleidoscopic visions,
of everything I’d originally witnessed in passionless monotint.
Everything became chaotic,
complex,
as I laid there in what was now
nothing more than the remnants of a former perspective.
I think that maybe that was the moment it all made sense.
All the things that didn’t make sense,
all the things that were never meant to make sense.
I became suddenly comfortable with this Pollock-like perception,
where everything was smeared and splattered together
as an illustration of pure and continuous creation,
providing a canvas for both reason and insanity.
I think that maybe it was then that I loved you
for everything that you weren’t,
and everything that you would never be.
I loved you for all the expectations that weren’t there.
For all the things you didn’t ask about,
and all the secrets I didn’t feel the need to tell you.
It was all clear,
when the lines blurred and the colors mixed.
I think that maybe I loved you
simply because I loved you
Aug 23, 2016
Aug 23, 2016 at 11:49 PM UTC
~
“My reasons for writing had to be my own, divorced from expectation.
There would be no reward.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power”
<>
*certain words, hers, previous unknown, or, better,
not yet your own,
acquire your devotion, all the my oh my of possessed tenses,
words ironic, for they are the shoving of contrary adhesive separators,
AC/DC currents running together, a single physical electric stabbing,
owning you, but gulfing away those customized,
prized illusions yet kept,
freeing finally by focusing on the single commandment that matters:*
Expect nothing, but write, knowing the only reward,
is the satisfying of self-imposed goals and conditions,
that are will always be,
always,
one more step and edit away from attainable, maybe.
My reasons, my illogical reasonings, admixture of anguished highs and loving lowlights,
a porridge of seeds that need burying to be borne,
in soil of a soiled soul, write to breathe, write to see, write to taste,
write to smell, write to hear my voice say,
not good enough,
even when it might be, just, barely, though that bar is a
moving target,
always
a perpetual notch too high.
My reward for acknowledging, accepting, no denying, freeing, finally,
There would be no reward
11:02 Sabbath
February 22, 2020
from deep in the internal confessional
Mar 20, 2020
Mar 20, 2020 at 11:16 AM UTC