"lysol" poems
I’m currently sitting in the coldest clinic,
Across from, probably,
the cheapest Mexican restaurant in Western Arizona.
The floors are sterile white,
And I giggle at the thought
of you
recognizing the irony
Of my emptiness.
The walls are also white and look slick with Lysol.
They radiate that dampness
that I swear that they smell
like loneliness,
We didn’t make love,
So much as **** in the dirt,
But the truth is
I’d rather wake up hot in the afternoon
on the dirt and the ground
(After you’ve already left)
Than wake up next to
The wrong person
in the wrong bed.
From earthy and raw
so quickly
to empty and white.
Sep 23, 2018
Sep 23, 2018 at 8:21 PM UTC
I shall never get you put together entirely,
Pieced, glued, and properly jointed.
Mule-bray, pig-grunt and ***** cackles
Proceed from your great lips.
It's worse than a barnyard.
Perhaps you consider yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.
Scaling little ladders with glue pots and pails of Lysol
I crawl like an ant in mourning
Over the weedy acres of your brow
To mend the immense skull-plates and clear
The bald, white tumuli of your eyes.
A blue sky out of the Oresteia
Arches above us. O father, all by yourself
You are pithy and historical as the Roman Forum.
I open my lunch on a hill of black cypress.
Your fluted bones and acanthine hair are littered
In their old anarchy to the horizon-line.
It would take more than a lightning-stroke
To create such a ruin.
Nights, I squat in the cornucopia
Of your left ear, out of the wind,
Counting the red stars and those of plum-color.
The sun rises under the pillar of your tongue.
My hours are married to shadow.
No longer do I listen for the scrape of a keel
On the blank stones of the landing.
4.5k
summer, spring, winter, fall,
it always carried a whiff of cleanliness, like lysol,
bleach and daffodils had made a not so secret love
child.
there were never any marks. no signs of mistakes,
accidents, humanity.
the floors glistened like the sun beaming off a black
convertible.
the windows, you couldn’t even tell they were
windows. not without the panes.
transparent like the shores of the Mediterranean.
I never touched anything.
I held my breath among glass, ornaments, picture frames.
afraid one intake would show up like a smudge that could
never be wiped off, no matter how much one tried.
she fits the house. like those china dolls, polished to perfection.
blonde hair rolled in unison curls. no frizz. never any
fly aways.
face just like those windows, eyes raging in a storm too far away.
his room was the only one i could sink in.
legos scattered
(i always stepped on the yellow ones)
clothes fuming with dirt and almost manhood.
his posters crooked, carrying characters dressed in
armor, or tuxedos, animated, weapons in hand.
his bed, never made, incasing the last impression of his body
(he always slept on his side)
a spot of drool still visible, blankets holding his scent.
soap, laundry detergent and oranges.
game controllers trashed, bite marks, dents, too many battles.
i finally breathed when i walked in.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 8:06 PM UTC
Under my bowels, yellow with smoke,
it waits.
Under my eyes, those milk bunnies,
it waits.
It is waiting.
It is waiting.
Mr. Doppelganger. My brother. My spouse.
Mr. Doppelganger. My enemy. My lover.
When truth comes spilling out like peas
it hangs up the phone.
When the child is soothed and resting on the breast
it is my other who swallows Lysol.
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet
it is my other who sits in a ball and cries.
My other beats a tin drum in my heart.
My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep.
My other cries and cries and cries
when I put on a cocktail dress.
It cries when I ***** a potato.
It cries when I kiss someone hello.
It cries and cries and cries
until I put on a painted mask
and leer at Jesus in His passion.
Then it giggles.
It is a thumbscrew.
Its hatred makes it clairvoyant.
I can only sign over everything,
the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels,
the soul, the family tree, the mailbox.
Then I can sleep.
Maybe.
3.3k
She hides in pockets of flesh in my gums
I can taste her in the morning when I spit
at night I can feel her swimming in an ocean of mouthwash
In sleep she oozes onto my pillow
moistening the dusty fabric under my cheek
When shes really playful
she will wiggle herself into my cerebellum
and dance furiously with my dreams
or gently sing lullabies when my heart wont let me sleep
when the world and its filth have commandeered my hope
she is there to brush away the dirt with untarnished hands
she is my religion she is my ******
without her I am sick
a smoldering heat of black matter and fungi
she is antibacterial soap on my soul
Lysol wipes to my tarred lungs
with one whiff I am cleansed of debris
she saturates the oxygen in my blood
she resides in my abdomen
I can feel her in my kidneys.
Oct 8, 2011
Oct 8, 2011 at 5:08 PM UTC
What's my Problem, Doc? It's that simple-glaze sugary madness
That gingerbread, paired with lysol and lipstick: paired with street and box
Those perfect, angular crumbs that file my highbrow into conformity
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
The soap in my downstairs bathroom reminds me
Of the ooze that leaked from a pregnant snail
After I mutilated her shell to use the meat as bait.
Forcing a hook through her body and casting it into a lake,
I waited for a fish to swallow the tiny knife
And hoped it would get lodged in his esophagus.
I pulled his lungs from the water
And laughed as he writhed at the end of my string.
I don’t fish anymore.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 6:04 AM UTC
I’m living through a pandemic.
The sum of our daily lives has been reduced to monotony
that renders me insane some mornings and free the next.
I awake to news of just-discovered symptoms,
and incoherent ramblings of injecting Lysol from that man
and the susceptible deaths of the poor and the Black –
at least some things never change.
I have come to savor the simple pleasures
of food, fresh air and do-nothings.
Yet, my body finds a craving for chaos,
the feeling of running with your eyes wide shut.
I stay inside, my house and myself,
and feel, feel, feel.
A thing no one has time for in a world for profit.
A thing we have all the time in the world to do these days.
Dec 14, 2020
Dec 14, 2020 at 11:03 PM UTC
To be a man, is to be made not of
Glass or plastic, fragile or manufacturered
Like these young boys plucking
Away at keyboards day to day, acquiring
Vanishing trophies; a man is made of
Steel and stained wood, screws and twine
Make up his joints and bark is his skin.
To be a man is not smell of lysol or
Carpets, but if sawdust and oil, leather and
Soil, for a man is shelter.
When boys pitch canvas tents
In sand, a man plants logs on sturdy
Ground in which his family can reside, his back
The roof under which it is dry and safe.
To be a man is not to bake your mind with flashes
Of light and thunderous noise, but
To create, to be dynamic and soulful, imbuing
Himself into his creation;
To be man is to help and be helpful, to share and
Collect wisdom from others, to better
Everyone.
One day a Man will be honoured to take you
Home, to care for you until the
End of his days.
One day, that man will be me.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 6:11 AM UTC
Although, I’m mindful of the President’s tweets
and the pundits’ chatter;
And, while I keep up with the world news that matters;
Amid the pandemic, the politics, and the police brutality;
I often settle my spirit on . . . poetry.
I take some time.
I free my mind.
S l o w l y, I sip from a glass of smooth merlot wine.
I relax,
I kickback,
and I ride the rhythm of the rhymes.
Because after a bit,
the constant “Breaking News,”
the quarantine,
the vanishing Lysol disinfectant spray amid covid19,
the social-distancing,
the quest for a vaccine,
the protest rallies,
the unsettling maskless scenes,
and the viewing of America’s racial unrest,
just invites unwanted and needless mental stress.
So, during these anxious days of shelter in place,
I retreat to a quiet and pleasing space,
where literature calms all worries within.
I find a book. Take a sip.
And, I warmly welcome fiction like a cherished friend.
Nov 29, 2020
Nov 29, 2020 at 1:57 PM UTC
Every time we meet
I feel like I need disinfectant.
Every time we talk,
I feel like I need to talk to the father and ask for redemption.
Every time I see you,
I want to close them shut and never wake up.
You ****** me over too many times before.
You seem to think that you can move me like a *****
Well,
*I'm not your little **** boi*
You think you have such power,
***** you're nothing to me**
I wish I could find
this thing you made me lose inside.
I wish I could forget
there ever was an us
Because I like it much better
just being alone.
Away from you.
You are infected,
evil,
and a nervous wreck.
Someone needs to get you a life,
lord knows you can't do it on your own.
just talking about you makes me crave lysol.
Look,
I'm sorry to be bashing on you,
but this is necessary
in order to forget
everything you ever were
You call me a ******
but honey,
I've been called WAY worse.
I've been called your boyfriend.
And that beats any sting you can inflict.
You are the lowest of the low,
Im glad I was able to get away
cuz *****
I wouldn't wish you upon my greatest enemy.
I seriously need to see a shrink
after you.
You caused me so many problems.
I kept going back.
how could I be so dumb?
Answer
because you made me believe you loved me,
only to drop me like a sack of bricks
I have finally gotten over you.
But the disgust still lingers
I would shake your hand and say goodbye,
but then I'd need to buy more disinfectant
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 3:54 PM UTC
I.
The humdrum whitewashed wall of my balcony
overlooks almost everyone here,
but it’s yellowed in the slightly
past-the-season holiday lights
winking behind my back.
Rip them out, and yet
the still flaming cigarette butts alight
the charred pupils watching.
Never quite willed away.
II.
Today I saw a hairy upper-ankle poking
out from a tie-dye dress
and out-of-fashion Birkenstocks.
Adam leering through
the straightened golden curtains,
and I thought: woman? No.
You wouldn’t catch me out like that.
III.
The end of my mug’s looming
and only now am I confident
in passing personal judgment.
The last drops smile while they cling
resolutely to the inner-rim.
How they refuse to fall!
The sprightly demon climbing
the wet, ridged inner-walls
of my throat is parched,
strumming on my vocal chords,
and I’m singing,
obscenely.
IV.
You can’t come into my house
before I’ve cleaned it up,
flipped the cushions, hidden
all the plastic cups and washed
the clear ones to look like glass.
I’ve gotta Lysol, Clear-ox, and detox,
then I’ll let you in, maybe.
V.
My balcony knows too much about me.
-BRD
Copyright @2012 by Ben Davies
Nov 13, 2013
Nov 13, 2013 at 11:48 AM UTC
One. Go to the U-Haul store. They haven't run out of boxes yet. Get a few medium, a few large. Don't forget the tape.
Two. When you begin to pack, start with the largest items first. The blanket you watched the stars with. The letters. The books.
Three. Tape everything down. Don't let anything out. Tape it several times actually. Let him hold the box closed while you tape.
Four. When you can't fit everything in your tiny boxes throw the rest in the car. Pile everything in the trunk. Every photograph, every memory, every good day.
Five. When everything is gone, sweep. Be rid of any crumb, flake, dust, or morsel that remains. Sanitize each surface with antibacterials of course. It must look as if you were never there. We were never there. Now it is empty.
Six. Bring everything to the storage center. Remind him he doesn't need a 10 by 10. Load it in. Lock it shut. Now there are no possessions. Now there is just you.
Seven. Obsess over anything you may have forgotten. Focus on something. Did you get everything? You don't have gloves! You need gloves. Go buy gloves.
Eight. Write him a note. Rewrite it. Write it again. Try to say everything you'll want to say for the next few years. Repeat every memory from the last six months and write them down. Repeat. Make up the ones you'll never get in your head.
Nine. Drive to the airport but don't go inside. Stand on the curb. Give him a mask. Lysol wipes. Gloves. Suitcase. ID. Note.
Ten. Say goodbye. Hold him with every last bone in your body. Cling to his shirt. Try not to cry. Smile. Hold his hand for the last time. Plant a kiss on his lips. Remember his eyes. Draw them in your head. Run your fingers through that new haircut again. Kiss his ears. Kiss his nose. Hold him again.
It is hard to let someone go when you still love them. It is hard to watch conversations dwindle. It is hard to never hear him call you his star. It is harder to watch little pieces of us say goodbye every day. Because while the whole world is six feet apart he is one thousand one hundred and eighteen point five miles from you.
So take down your photos. Put those in a box too. Put away the letters. Fold up his shirts. Don't go to the places you went to together. They're closed anyways.
11. It is hard to let someone go when you still love them. Try not to love them anymore.
Apr 2, 2020
Apr 2, 2020 at 11:34 PM UTC
I love cleaning,
I need to clean.
From my hands to the walls,
Lysol, Windex, Disinfectants, Bleach.
Don't ask me why...
Don't say "But everything is already so spotless!"
Because friend, reality is one thing,
My mind is the mess.
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 11:41 PM UTC
Pad lock clenched teeth
Bc you can't tell anyone
It kills you to keep this spirit locked up
This spirit of tears located in your chest
When you swore you were totally over him
And then he speaks to u.
The spirit fades into your collar bones
You gain salted cheeks
And hyperventilating breaths
Heck. He did it again
I come home smelling like cigarettes
And my grandmother sprays the house with Lysol.
She asks me why I smoke
But I can't tell her it's because the smell reminds me of you.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 7:09 PM UTC
**I’m going to kiss your lips,
they are cold and taste like the word America)Quote)*
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I am going to say curry, turmeric, ginger and, garlic
The secret to one’s health:
the true radiant of loving ones’ body:
Like this secret place in my mind
The Gardens at Marqueyssac, Vézac, France.(relaxing)
I’m going to make love to you like the internet explorer
Two words Private mode: just to quench the thirst (even though)
It wiser to separate the two, business and pleasure
One word complication: never bed your business partner (unless)
If you can pulled it off like my heroine McKenzie Bezos (go for it)
I’m going to exam your tockley,
It’s sinful, and deadly, like the initials S.T.D
I am going to end here with a prayer,
Asking for guidance, and Lysol sprays:
Dark Poem
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 27, 2019 at 11:52 AM UTC
Lysol the package
Packed and shipped by robot arms
Now close the front door
Aug 12, 2024
Aug 12, 2024 at 8:00 AM UTC
I woke up this morning,
- well, last night, it's 4:30 AM so
where does that count - phone
on the floor where it rolled from my
sleep-slackened grip right off the bed,
sheets drowning in sweat; they smell like
me, and I am feeling nauseous.
my spine is curved around a
particular puddle of sweat, the
one I awoke in; it's still wet,
but it'll dry out; I have to
put these bedsheets in the wash,
use three times as much detergent,
maybe spray em with Lysol first.
but getting rid of the sweat-soak
won't get rid of the
nightmares of you.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 5:57 AM UTC
I'm not going to complain.
Life is pretty good right now.
I left all of your things in a bag outside-
You can pick it up on Sunday, by the way.
I cleaned the apartment-
The smell of Lysol has obliterated the scent of you.
I got a haircut, too-
I remember you liked how long my hair was,
So I got a pixie.
I sold everything you gave me-
Except for the silver wall clock.
It looks great in the kitchen.
I also painted the bedroom-
And bought new sheets, and cleaned out the closet,
And replaced that old chair you bought for me at a garage sale last Christmas.
So,
I guess you could say that I'm over you-
But when you called me last night,
I knew that you weren't over me.
Deal with it.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 5:45 PM UTC
Dear teller
you
with ten fingers
two eyes
and a mouth
find the next nova
to go super
and from there
trace the galactic map
back to me
so I can
go
and
discover
the freedom
outside
a personality
that isn’t just
Lysol and Clorox
and just maybe
I will also
see you
more than just
ten fingers
two eyes
and one mouth…
Apr 15, 2020
Apr 15, 2020 at 9:05 AM UTC
Chewing this artificially flavored candy
I ponder the best way to phrase this
As my tongue explores the roof of my mouth
Parched and bitter with resentment
Dissecting emotions pulling them apart
Meanwhile I hope will sweeten the words
I’m about to exhale
Words that come with a bite and a sting
That aren’t afraid of dissent
Creating an unpleasant air
That even Lysol can’t mask
With its chemicals
And its poison
Filling up
Until both of us choke
On tainted love
Feb 13, 2014
Feb 13, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
I'm just waiting for that check to come.
The world is burning but I feel numb.
TV is awesome and outside is dumb.
So I'm sitting here waiting for my check to come.
I'm holding my breath when I go to the store
And they're still out of paper, like the 5 times before.
But when that check hits, it's ******* galore.
I'll buy it all wholesale, it'll be a big score.
Just a few weeks til I get that sweet cash
Then it's Amazon Prime, Grub Hub and DoorDash.
I'm sure that this plague will be done in a flash
And we'll go back to life with our fat wads of cash.
So I'll sit on my sofa and watch the train wreck.
In my fortress of Lysol and standard-grade tech.
With my *** getting bigger and pain in my neck
Waiting patiently here for my stimulus check.
Jul 20, 2020
Jul 20, 2020 at 5:23 PM UTC
Let’s talk about feelings - feelz.
Does anything else really matter?
Ok, sure - health - yeah, right up there.
Covid was my generation’s depression (literally).
Maybe not for everyone, there were places that ignored covid, I think.
We didn’t ignore it, not any of it, not at my parent’s house.
Do I sound bitter? I got fifteen long months of ‘social isolation.’
In most states, you can shoot someone and not get fifteen-months.
At one point, we sprayed Lysol on everything that came into the house. Except the cats.
Anyway, that lock-down mess was reason #1 why I skipped senior year of high school for college.
If you look-up ‘desperate’ in the right dictionary, they used my high-school junior-year photo to illustrate it.
University felt so far, so different from my covid, remote video, no-touch high school life that it was, in the most basic sense, like going to a foreign country.
It felt dreamy, in a jet-lagy, out of sync, science fiction, not part of real-life way. I landed in this wonderland where I didn’t know anyone, or where anything was and there was a different sense of fashion, of music, of freedom and I didn’t quite speak the language (not snack bar, buttery).
It was like there was a soundtrack, that’s how serious it was.
You know how, when you’re intoxicated, you can be half awake and still excited? I didn’t want to miss any of it, I’d rub my eyes to stay focused.
Everything was so stimulating - the sights, the sounds. I had this idea about writing - a fealty to the idea that I could capture the experience and share it with others.
Now, I think that idea was so 2021.
OK, before it’s too late - poetry time!
Now-a-days I feel like I’m in the know
hold on, I’ll I paint the celestial afterglow
uhh, this might take a while..
.
.
Songs for this:
Dreamin' by G. Love & Special Sauce
VIRGO'S GROOVE by Beyoncé
Jul 25, 2024
Jul 25, 2024 at 5:48 PM UTC
Lavender and Lysol
I hope you’re excited!
guidance in the form of secrets
Coming out of your shell (I see the old me in you)
Goblin Market
Tales of trysts with a silk tie
under an amnesiac glow (ggp)
A pre-roll keeps doing a disappearing act
Eucalyptus, sweat, steam
You sat there with me for what felt like hours
Two minutes
Sipped electrolytes
Mexican chocolate is back!
They’re zero waste now
Reminiscing (talking ****
Helping me fill in the gaps
Part 2, 3, 4
Sour wax crunches when frozen
You don’t know how much I needed this laugh
You guys keep me honest
Now more than a day alone feels like solitary confinement
I’ve shed my introvert childhood
I crave companionship
I know how sweet it can be
People say we die alone - get used to it
But I think I’ll end up somewhere
A mango tree
Arms outstretched
Friends as far as the eye can see
Jun 18, 2025
Jun 18, 2025 at 2:48 AM UTC