"mistook" poems
I went out to find
Some value in me,
So I sold what I had
For little a fee.
My eyes for a penny
I sold to some fools,
They're blind and useless,
Mistook for jewels.
My lips for a nickel
To the sweetest sin,
So they'll know the love
That has never been.
My ears for a dime
I sold to a lover.
To hear sweet nothings,
And silence uncover.
My hands for a quarter
I sold to a ghost,
So that she might feel
What I've wanted the most.
Finally my bones for a dollar
I sold to the earth,
But as for my soul-
There was found no worth.
Aug 10, 2019
Aug 10, 2019 at 5:23 PM UTC
.
...is a fragile little thing,
that most tend to overlook.
Small word with a **** big meaning*.
Some may uphold it; some may
conveniently have it mistook...
Trust...
...is in the grasp of the unknown
stranger,
that helps you up when you've fallen
down.
Trust...
...is the pact between you and the cab
driver,
as he takes you to where you want to
be, across town.
Trust...
...the bough on which your swing does
sit.
Pray that it doesn't break as you enjoy
its joyous ride.
Trust...
...your cook, hoping in your food he
doesn't spit...
Especially when you've provided
feedback that scuffed his pride.
Trust...
...lays exposed when the keys to your
house you surrender,
to your neighbour who'd keep an eye
while you're away on a retreat.
Trust...
...exists latent in the open palm of your
caregiver...
As a child you'd take his hand so he'd
ferry you safely across the street.
Trust...
...is the unspoken oath that I had thought
we both held sacred...
When I spilled the contents, my heart
couldn't bear much longer.
Trust...
...meant nothing when you took it all for
granted,
when you weakened and succumbed...
...and then shared with another...
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 7:14 AM UTC
**† † †
A quorum of biblical scholars
turned their doubts into thousands of dollars.
Armed with Document Q
they revealed nothing new
but the dirt neath’ the white of their collars.
A proud “health & wealth” Oklahoman
was renowned as a gospel-tent showman.
While the scriptures he twisted,
their tithing assisted
his rise from poor hick to rich Roman.
A sexually diverse professor
(assured he was not a transgressor)
spoke only of openness
glossing sin’s brokenness;
rainbows and tolerance—yes sir.
A Mormon, who lost his own ephod
Realized he was running quite slipshod
and invoked Joseph Smith.
(Yes, it may be a myth—
but it’s not like misplacing your I-pod…)
A Christian whose faith was prophetic
held to views that were truly pathetic.
This crazed Pentecostal,
not quite an apostle,
had taken an End-Times emetic.
A sober and staid Presbyterian
was distrustful of thoughts millenarian.
After smoking some bud,
he awoke with a thud;
in his sleep he’d become Rastafarian.
A preacher who fleeced his disciples
overdrew his own balance of scruples.
He was finally captured
(defrocked and un-raptured)
and rent by his destitute pupils.
A sister who waxed Pentecostal,
mistook herself for an apostle.
Speaking pure glossolalia
she sure could regale ya’
with prophecy; crazy—but docile.
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 8:12 AM UTC
In a bedroom in small-town Pennsylvania,
you’ll find an unmade bed,
a pile of clothes on the floor—
clean but not folded,
open drawers and dusty shelves,
a desk in the corner of the room
with pictures laid across it.
When I caught my first fish at six.
I held it at arm’s length by the fishing line
to avoid the slimy scales,
a frown on my face from being forced
to sit silently in the cold.
When my family went to Marco Island,
my sister and I, sifting sand for the best seashells
in our matching swimsuits and hats.
Mom and dad’s fights forgotten in our fun.
High school graduation
posing with my best friend since first grade,
diplomas in one hand and an extra cap held between us
because not everyone survived all four years.
Move-in day at college,
sitting on my raised bed with a grey comforter
and two decorative pillows the color of cotton candy.
Sweat on my brow from southern humidity
and moving furniture without the help of a father.
The pictures are merely snapshots
that lack the full story.
How I learned what it meant for love to fall apart
when I was eight years old.
My sister warned me before it happened,
told me what a divorce was.
I mistook her for joking until they called us upstairs.
Dad cried when they told us, but mom held her tears
until the day he left. The sounds of her cries
escaping from behind a closed door.
“This doesn’t mean we don’t love each other.”
But that’s exactly what it meant.
How I was taught by my father that love is conditional,
and I repeatedly needed to prove myself
through good grades and unquestioning obedience.
Forced to stay home to spend time with the family,
sitting wordlessly on the couch while he watched TV.
Made guilty for wanting to spend time with friends
because that somehow meant that I was a bad daughter.
It’s funny—I never asked myself if he was a good father.
If you look harder at the bedroom,
you’ll find journals filled with bitter words,
screws from disassembled pencil sharpeners, loose razors, and Aquaphor,
food wrappers stuffed in hidden places,
a closet brimming with junk and pairs of shoes,
evidence of a story untold. Until you.
Sep 20, 2023
Sep 20, 2023 at 9:09 PM UTC
Dear father,
I still remember the last time I saw you
It's funny, because you looked just the same as you always did
Like someone
Who was never really mine.
Like a stranger in disguise
Who's reality only exists
When I close my eyes and fantasize about you being in my life
But I guess
When you heard you should live your life without
Regret
You mistook that for my name
And I wonder if you will ever understand the pain
Of knowing someone only when you imagine them
Or loving someone who thought
Never talk to strangers
Was a lesson best learnt by example
But they say actions speak louder than words
And you became so consumed by your own self worth to really give a **** about who you hurt
So you became the expert
At manipulating words
Like turning
I love yous into sorrys
And
Tomorrows into yesterdays
Until it was safe to say I couldn't count on you
Dear father,
Because of you
I constantly found myself falling in love with things that could never love me back
I became infatuated with sandcastle and snowflakes
Addicted to temporary moments
Addicted to broken
Thought if I learnt to fix things
Then somehow
I might find the manuscript
To piecing the shattered part of my being whole again
Because of you
I spent years trying to cover this skin that you left me with
Tried decorating these scars
With tattooed hopes
To remind myself
That sometimes
Some things
Were made to last forever
Because of you,
For years I avoided looking into the mirror
Because I never truly knew
If you could love someone
You only ever met in passing
You see
I mistook your ***** for water
I never realised I was internally drowning in your poison
I thought I needed you to stay afloat
It took me a long time to realise
That ***** was just your way of relieving yourself from blame
You became a box full of things
I packed away the day you left
But I've stopped trying to hold on to your burden
So I've taken out my smile
And I'll wear it with pride
And Dear father,
Did you know
That if you repeat a word enough times
Then eventually the word will start to lose it's meaning?
And I've stopped wishing I was still young enough to understand
What the word father meant
And now no know
That if I ever see you again
Then you will look just the same as you always did
Like someone
who doesn't deserve to be mine
Jan 16, 2019
Jan 16, 2019 at 9:52 PM UTC
You ask me if I'm okay
And I can't even tell you
Because the words break in my throat
Like waves crashing against the cliffside.
How can I look at something I knew
Like a scientific conviction
And believed in with a faith
Stronger than that of god,
And choke out the words,
"How could i still love you,
Through all this pain you've caused?"
I've always been broken,
Something that I've accepted
Like the knowledge that the sun comes up each morning
And goes back down at night.
I never asked for any of it,
And never asked anyone but God and Archangel Micheal
For help.
But you heard the echo of my plea,
And mistook it for a cry for your help.
I never asked it of you
Yet you acted as if I expected you to stop your life
To find and mend the pieces.
In reality,
All I asked for was your support as a friend.
But even that was too much.
Instead,
You ignored me.
Me and my pain.
Maybe you didn't want to deal with it,
And I can assure you that I did not.
But you made me a million promises
And broke every single one.
I suppose you did it to protect yourself,
And through everything,
I've learned that from you.
I've learned to fight for my soul too.
So now I begin writing my goodbyes
Which will probably come to you in a thousand fragments.
But this is it.
The pain and anger over the last 6 months was heart shattering.
I've come to resent you.
For loving you so much that I can't tell you I can't love you anymore.
And even though I cherish and love
The people who laid next to me when I was sick..
Who never left or judged or pitied..
Who were just..
There...
It will hurt every time someone mentions your name
Until the day I die.
And even when they shower me in the light of their smiles,
I will miss you like a bad habit,
And yearn to see your eyes
Like the steely kiss of cold metal on my wrist.
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 2:00 AM UTC
your stars hung in pairs against the
accustomed singularity of celestial bodies
your stars held the promise of enlightenment
and i sought you the way kings did
hunting you down in the endeavor of navigation
pinned down and ****** until
man left the stars for devices of their own
and when the stars followed humanity
stardust resurrecting in the arrangement of atoms
constellations manifesting in wombs
nebulae shattering for the genesis
the universe destroyed itself for you
oh gemini boy
the cosmos are not kind
to boys who are destined to be halves
on an eternal voyage for missing fragments
in a lover's touch and a child's laugh
the world is not kind
to boys who look into your eyes
and only see their reflection
but you were kind to me
oh gemini boy
this is an apology
to a mortal born from the immortality
of twins whose love bore the gods' mercy
to rest among the stars
not knowing that stars die just as
the children born from them do
just as you
oh gemini boy
maybe i should have known better than
to love a boy always searching for himself
i mistook you for a cosmic collision
meant for the dawn of a new heaven
and maybe i fell in love with your destruction
as i navigated you the way ancients looked
to your stars for salvation
oh gemini boy
my stars hang in the silhouette of the unknown
isolated from the promise of deliverance
man was once told
we are born from different stars
our fates moving in parallel precision
never meeting again after our stardust
once laid prints upon our astral anatomy
and because we are not stars
but the echoes of seraphic wars
meant to traverse desolate lands
in search for completion
oh gemini boy
i forgive you
you just wanted to be whole
Sep 5, 2016
Sep 5, 2016 at 4:19 AM UTC
I have trust issues.
not because I mistook a raisin for a chocolate chip,
but I mistook you as a person who wouldn't hurt me.
Who wouldn't let me be tortured under the world's pressures
You knew I was treasure but locked me away in your cheap jewelry box
So, when I was freed of a year's slavery,
I built my wall
Much taller and stronger than before,
just to hope it'd scare away monsters like you from my door.
Until one learned how to climb.
In time, I let his angel face distract me from his devil's soul
But the guards of my heart blocked him out before I paid another toll.
My wall was built and rebuilt a million times
I installed the blinds and laid alone.
Until a price charming climbed along
or does he belong to those monsters?
My heart says no
but my trust issues say yes
what if he can actually break the spell placed on me?
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 7:18 PM UTC
Electromagnetic Motion Ocean Of Pure Focal Emo-tion.
The Very Sound Of The Creators Verse And Rhythm In Loving Notion Pouring Through The Crystalline Endocrine Indoctrinated Shock Ra Of Shocking Unblocking Colorful Tones In Unmolested Focus And Definition.
To Flow Your Emo-tions Through Your Core And Manifest In Your Intended Notion All Without The Misidentified Horror Of The Wrongfully And Negatively Defined Emotions, One Finds That The Mere Act Of William Tell And That Apple Upon The Head Must Have Been One Hell Of An Interesting Interaction, Yet Instead Of The Reassuring Smiles And Calm Demeanor Of The Archer As They Lock Eyes, What Pray Tell You Think The Eyes Of The Archer Looked Like On That Very Frozen In Time Moment As He Released The Arrow To Guided Love Of Perfected Intent And Delivery Of Safe And Demanding Fortitude Of Action To Defeat All Possible Variable , As If To Need To Bend The Very Laws Of Nature If They Were To Cause An Number Of Odd And Unpredictable Events To Derail The Intent Of The Man Shooting The Apple Off The Head Of His Dear Child's Head, For Not A Bird May Pass Between, Not A Gust Of Wind Be Seen, Not An Earthquake Be Fabled To Accrue, Not A Single Action But The Undeterred Focus Of Absolute Might In Will, His Fee Will In Flight. What Might His Eyes Be Relaying In That Frozen Moment? Reassurance, Pity, Fear, Confidence, Or The Electric Fire Of Electromagnetic Motion Ocean Of Pure Focal Emo-tion To Get The **** Thing Done And Without Foolish ******** Reactions To The Real And True Focus Of Emotion, And Pray Tell, What If The Child Mistook This Look In A Moments Notice And Flinched Out Of Concern That The Father Was Angry With Him? Or Is It Best To Realize The Real Importance Of This Story As It Is The Trust In The Definitions Of Intended Focus And Not Of Simple Trust.? ,... Yes, Intended Focus Of Emotions Being Trusted As True And Not Negative In Nature, Dear Friend, Yes. So Let Your Soul Be Your Pilot, Let The Flow Of Emotion Be Free And Not Dictated By The Restraints Of Control And Be Seen And Used In Negative Ways, For These Are The Crimes Against All Mankind And The Bigger Part Of Why Spoken Word Is The Very Spell That Binds The Psyche, For The Focus Of Or The Lack Of Focus Of Emotions True Meaning And Purpose Is The Crime Against All Life Indeed. Live Free And Pilot This Love Ship Successfully By No Longer Defining Self By The Ways And Means That Have Caused Us To Fear Our Own Power To Move Mountains, And Kept Us All Mustard Seeds When We Are Truly Far More Than You Can Believe. Feel Free, Yes, By All Means Feel Free.
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 2:37 PM UTC
It knocked
softly
a breath at the door
but I
bolted the windows
and swallowed the key.
It came wearing warmth,
but I mistook it
for fire,
for teeth,
for grief with a new face.
So I fled,
faster than joy
could reach out its hand
afraid it might feel
like home.
Jul 26, 2025
Jul 26, 2025 at 10:19 AM UTC
one more for Joni and the one who accuses me of
"owning the courage to care so blatantly."
<:>
accused of writing with blatant courage,
a 4 credit requirement for caring
blatant is a word of merger -
open obvious unsubtle and unashamed
and a dissembling misleading one!
it is all of these and yet can be a contradictory mask of
opposing, differing faces
my blatant is none of these
but appearance only
**** muses keep me coming back
to a particular lyric,
keeps seeking me out, so successfully, wherever I go,
I hear it
it’s invading my both sides now
the dizzy dancing way you feel
you think I have my own blatant courage, untrue!
so oft you mistook my dizzy dancing,
all fluff all humbug so obvious so ashamed,
a cover up, a most subtle cosmetic pretense of the truth -
of
no courage at all
and yet (they mock)
you do care...
just another of my peculiar
life’s illusions
(self-delusions)
I really don’t have blatant courage at all
Jul 3, 2018
Jul 3, 2018 at 9:18 AM UTC
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
6k
- by Ashley Capps
Ophelia, when she died,
lay in the water like the river’s bride, all pale
and stark and beautiful against the somber rocks,
her hair an endless golden ceremony.
She made the water sing for her; it flowed
over her folded arms.
Not so my father’s sister Karen,
swollen in a day-old tub of water
when they found her,
needle tucked into the fold of her arm,
her last thing: a wing.
So everything went as nameless as the men
who lifted her naked from the tub,
or those who rolled her
into the mouth of the furnace,
which is what you get
when you don’t get a service,
when your mother’s years of grief turn
last to rage: I won’t pay for it.
Leave me out of it.
And even though they finally said
it wasn’t suicide; a mistake—
no one knew what to do
with all of that anger,
or in the end how not to blame her.
Even now, in her unmarked container.
*
People once believed a deeper reason, some dark secret
motivation to the way the lemmings threw themselves
en masse into the sea. Were they weary
of their lives; could they, too, despair?
Or like those second-vessel swine
when Jesus exorcised two babbling men of their demons,
driving the demons through a pack of bewildered hogs—
the way they plunged?
The truth we know now: they leave when food is scarce,
when they’ve grown too many;
believe the roads they follow
lead to new meadows, a place to start over.
I think of Karen, feeding
and feeding her veins, how it is possible
she saw us all suddenly there—miraculous
and festive on some bright and other shore,
like the life she had been swimming toward
all along, trying to get right.
Like those sailors long ago,
that tropical disease, calenture—
when, far from everything they knew,
men grew sometimes delirious
and mistook the waving sea for green fields.
Rejoicing, they leapt overboard,
and so were lost forever,
even though they thought it was real, though
they thought they were going home.
—by Ashley Capps
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 11:49 PM UTC
Shadows are real
they move when you don’t want them too
When you think your taking steps further away, and they slowly move closer towards you
Flash light and colors in your face, sending you signals
But I’m only human, don’t they know I’m not bilingual?
Or has the crack made me lucid
Feel the presence of the other side
Why did they choose to torture me?
Because I didn’t hide? Because I kept getting High?
Maybe because I was close
This devils dying to taste me, inching closer every time I crush his powder.
Making ticks on the clock louder, every minute of every hour.
Our connection was inevitable, I could tell how bad he wanted to break through
Enough for him to convince me,
crashing my car was how I’d get to you.
Your cheeky in the way you move
Fed on my weakness because you’d know I’d listen
But you’ve mistaken my blood shot eyes, for ones that glisten.
How could you think I’d be that easy?
I’m stronger than you realize, It insults me you mistook me for a phoney
You’ve been taunting me for years, how infuriating that your voices haven’t made me enough lonely
Your angry, losing patience in the divided line
But your poison kept me alive when it came down to my life and a telephone line
I’m a fool, not foolish. Near sighted, not blind
You made me weakest, gave false hopes on becoming yours and no longer mine
I’ve realized maybe you wanted me to meet my real demons
While they flashed red and blue in the taillight behind
I can’t decide if you wanted me at the bottom
As payment for my sins
Or gave me an opportunity to start solving all the real problems,
The ones from within.
I can’t find the right words yet.
I’m hoping this was our last dance
But I mean it when I say I met my maker
I know this time is my time, a real second chance.
Feb 9, 2022
Feb 9, 2022 at 4:26 PM UTC
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.
Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.
In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.
I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover ***** were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.
Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.
To ****** all that life under your tongue!-
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad bone; bruised, you'd say,
and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.
Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,
leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love whatever it was, an infection.
5.1k
How wonderful it is, I say, to the retreating
yellow form of your feelings I mistook
For Infatuation, you’re a romance heckler
far and far away from
Accepting fruition within classrooms and
being labelled as an angel.
And it was within forbidden hell of
euphoria, I found
You nestled in the society’s psyche
neither content or calling
For help. Neither did you neglect the
pink spectacles of the society,
Even found yourself moulding and moulding
into a fungi green
That I could not recognize, within that
half-sanctum, half-oasis I found you
absentmindedly
Bathing in, you were already out of
its waters.
And I was no longer seeing you within
the dry desert or the sibilance
of my desires, but instead
in cement woodlands and
Within artificial communication and
Intimacy I gave willingly.
Now how does it feel, to have your
heart in one piece,
How does it feel to not use
whipped cream to fill in the
Cracked, salty sections of your
own ***** that,
Out of confusion, continues to
play its favorite song but
in all the wrong beats.
Somehow within cacophony I found
you, nestled, comfortable in
Bogus, fraudulent wings of a former
angel- who now weeps under our
Feet in theory- Somehow, somewhere,
I lost you within an epiphany
That reeked of bliss and pleasure-
Somehow, we end up losing
Twins of the heavens when all is well.
How wonderful.
How wonderful it is, I say, to your
lost, secretly-weeping figure
That I can’t tell whether transparent or
yellow your figure is.
But I keep speaking-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To love the first angel I’ve set
my eyes upon-
“Oh, how (falsely) wonderful it is-
To lose an angel, no matter how
phoney, to a social heaven.”
- enriko. aug 5. 11:45pm
Aug 5, 2018
Aug 5, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
Lay rest your flashing glaze of wishes
Down received for a moment
Breathy bow lifts to hold
and waver across few measures
Sienna and topaz
Sienna and topaz
Singe and simmer
Shine and glimmer against
All the thoughts born and dead
What makes you eager to rise
If it is not sensing gone away stories
or nursing the aches that lunge through anywhere else but here
While you replay and delay all creation
the blossoming goes unseen
She, the maiden is reigning
Une palais à remplir
Une palais à remplir
where she is her own queen
Her oceans made of no time channel open mouths
flooding its spill
She waded into The archer
Downed in his own vessel he mistook himself the pilot of
He, marooned in the surrender of damp and fertile places
where in Death he is still recovering
Soldiering and sullen
Soldiering and sullen
He is choking, and can not stop to see or savor the blossoms rising from his own till
Jan 5, 2022
Jan 5, 2022 at 9:03 PM UTC
We use video games
To make video gains
Until the screen goes black
And reality attacks
We lose all our progress
In the deletion process
As we level up we devolve
Around the TV we revolve
The more experience we gain
The more moments we lose
Our memories forever stained
When this is what we choose
Our life inside a hard drive
Our life becomes a hard lie
We revel in being unwise
Rage quitting life
We enjoy strife
And avoid pesky light
When we live in the dark
With consumerist plights
We are all marks
Video games balance in a zone
Between game and art
The frustration starts
When art is confused for games
And games mistook for art
People take things to heart
And spitefully spew viper venom
If this is where games send them
Then why do we play?
We have no other way
To feel accomplishment
In a society that worships competition
Video games become the second edition
Of a life filled with loss
On our pixelated cross
We are murdered millions of times
Reminiscent of the millions of lies
That make us losers in the real world
Video games become our shiny pearl
The computer displays defeat
When our lives aren't complete
Because we need someone to beat
Not realizing our lives are conquered
By frivolous topics we've pondered
Our meaningless life squandered
And hope comes in the form of new releases
While inside our faulty headset is in pieces
Sep 16, 2017
Sep 16, 2017 at 3:13 AM UTC
I looked to the stars to see what I could find,
and I sighed with exasperation at the wonders in sight.
For lo, behold, there were more than millions,
and poor old me, choosing one just wasn’t an option.
If you gaze at them all at once, you notice there is a sky,
but if you pick solely one, you find yourself willing to fly.
One of these twinkling wonders might be you someday,
for the world knows whom it should repay.
Focus on one tree, you lose sight of the forest.
But look at the forest, you lose sight of your tree.
Find your star, hunt it down, and you just might,
you just might, you just might,
absorb that glittering gold glimmer of light.
Then its all uphill from there,
as you shoot up,
and reach forward
and outward,
and suddenly,
you fall back down.
But this time, you have your star,
so climbing all the way up, it can’t be that far.
After hauling and hiking, you reach the top.
and as you gaze at the bottom, you start to wonder.
Wonder about what? I cannot say.
But you’re at the top, you have to stay.
Since it’s you who made it all the way.
L’appel du vide, you start to sway.
Then it hits you. It hits you hard.
Back you go! as you go down.
Down again, down on your knees!
But as you look in its eyes, your glittery golden glimmer lights it up,
and you can’t help but notice what wasn’t there before.
It cannot be, but surely, it is.
A trace of affection, gone as quickly as it appears.
As you get up, you swear it smiles,
and when it disappears with a gust of wind,
you bet on your life you heard it whisper,
I’ll see you at the top, you’ll get here quicker.
And you scramble up again, surefooted and strong,
as music surrounds you, life’s very own song.
Your ascent slows to a stop, and you look around.
Many are there, whom you never found.
And in the centre, who else could it be?
Your very good friend, whom you mistook for an enemy.
It glides towards you, and you don’t wince,
Because now you know, that which you’ve known long since.
Life pushes you down, not out of hate,
but so you learn, to open up the gate.
Now what did you learn? How can you explain?
What you’ve spent years on, things almost impossible to gain.
But you don’t give away the answer, it’s not yours to impart.
You must help out, pick up all who’ve lost heart.
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 5:02 AM UTC
The honey in the lion sounds like a delicious thing––
a gentle balm capable of subduing
the cruellest of monsters.
According to the stars and tattooed,
you fancied yourself king of the jungle––
lazy in hot African afternoons.
Golden and tawn with sleepy sun-gold eyes,
shaggy mane, muzzle red with
the blood of a gazelle.
Did you think me such easy prey?
Or was I so much fermented honey,
only a sweet intoxicant.
Sun warmth seeps from jungles of cold concrete.
I mistook your gargoyle wings
for those of a guardian angel’s.
I overlooked your rough skin, your
crooked hawk nose and your skinny ribs,
and assigned fine things in you that didn’t exist.
So duped, I acquiesced to your slimy kiss.
Your mouth a neglected cemetery,
teeth a row of mossy tombstones.
Vampire. Incubus. Your seduction like grotesque death.
You named me tempest in a teacup,
but I was the eye of the storm.
Until the night the eye was eradicated,
and the storm blew in,
striking me dumb with your sound and fury.
But no spattered blood and no spreading bruise
to be found in the pattern of the kaleidoscope.
No cause for alarm.
Today I am lost in a picture show,
a beautiful world coloured by nostalgic past.
Women’s lips the vivid red print of a velvet valentine.
Head in the Clouds, I fantasize about a certain scene.
Because you think violence is ****
retaliation – ********** in my dream.
Give me an eye for my eye,
for all the eyes you plucked, from women and breadwinners.
Give me blood running down your back, sweet as honey.
Sep 22, 2016
Sep 22, 2016 at 5:37 PM UTC
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
- Wallace Stevens (not me)
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 11:04 PM UTC
1651
A Word made Flesh is seldom
And tremblingly partook
Nor then perhaps reported
But have I not mistook
Each one of us has tasted
With ecstasies of stealth
The very food debated
To our specific strength—
A Word that breathes distinctly
Has not the power to die
Cohesive as the Spirit
It may expire if He—
“Made Flesh and dwelt among us”
Could condescension be
Like this consent of Language
This loved Philology.
3.9k
i.
this life has been led
in a hundred different directions
by a hundred different shepards
but you
were able to show
a lamb
how to walk
like a lion.
ii.
how sweet power tasted.
iii.
the night that i met you,
after a lifetime
of running from
darkness,
you said
"sweet child,
rest.
take your shoes off.
stay a while."
i let out a long sigh
of relief, my legs
tired, eyes blurry from
sleeplessness, judgement
clouded, i mistook you
for light, i stayed
by your side until
you took the last lick
of me i had left,
stole the sun from the sky,
stomped out the last
burning ember that remained
from what was once a forest fire
i left with nothing
footprints in
debris and ash
absence
where life once was
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 4:09 PM UTC
I am clueless as to how I have dug a hole in this concrete ground, 60 feet deep. The dust I’ve been choking on does not bother me no more, layers piling upon my lungs like snow upon an exposed carcass. The slightest upheaval of my chest and tingling in my lungs reminds me that I still breathe. I’ve met scaffolds of bones down here. As I stare into their hollow sockets, I could never figure if they were ever esurient for something I held. They taught me how the ocean is never blue but only a de facto reflection of the sky. They said many mistook the sea for the sky, but never once mentioned the salt that contaminated their lungs- the impetus that drove their feet 60 steps into the waves. A reconciliation it must have been. I doubt it made any difference, when their hearts were bleeding out; a pity it doesn’t make it any lighter. Down they sank.
I wonder if I mistook these soils for the sky. As I looked up, I realised that the sky only seemed further away. There’s something peculiarly comfortable down here, the little bumps on the walls and contours of the craters looked like jawlines of a new-found friend. The sun is so blindingly high in the sky. I preferred how sometimes I could see the man in the moon- shadows cast by imperfections on the moon’s surface. In the vague moonlight and scrawny silhouettes, the fact that the moon always has a dark side makes it tangible a thousand miles away. Sometimes, I lay on this wooden receptacle discovered upon excavation and gaze at the empty skies with my friend as he tells me what lies outside this trough. Happiness is a pack of hungry wolves and when they are done, you are left with only your marrows. I see things clearer down here, than above where they are smothered by smoke from the trees they burned to the ground. Sometimes the skies are dark with no hint of dusk, sometimes the sky is filled with white nebula; but most of the times, the days are shorter than the nights. But it never gets any darker down here.
I figured I could never mistake this hole for the sky. I was just chasing these broken pieces like I used to chase happiness. I have no idea how I’ve gotten this deep while trying to pick up these pieces that I don’t recognise. But the struggle tells me it’s real, and the pain keeps me awake. They say if you spend enough time with someone, you will fall in love. I guess that’s what happened between sadness and me.
I’m staying here.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 4:09 PM UTC