"nailbeds" poems
Pits and pockmarks
flit and dart
across an infinite ceiling.
Random synchronicity
plays patter song
stupor and languidity
The orchestra conducting
purple and yellow
to a sparkling, a
crushing crescendo
falls like a wave on tastebuds, tempting.
She lingers like
fog on a pane of glass
A sharp signature
impaled on a pile
of dreaming dust.
Like a rushed column
updraft through a house
of leaves blank and staring.
A mark from the
back of your palms up.
Your fingers stuck signing
a language sang by the blind.
How did she stay so long
A force hidden in neuron canyons.
A Gypsy camp lodged
between cortexes
spinning silk into a
muffled gasp, a conspiratory shuffle.
She lingers like spines of glass
in nailbeds, planted sweetly,
with the best of care.
Laughter in an asylum
electroshock dreams soaked in sweat.
Grabbed my brain like a chemical symphony.
Painted pictures of pivotal seconds,
wrapped up and romanticized.
Dreamt about.
Your lilting language planted
little honeypots deep in my palms.
Sparked fire from entropy
lighting a city in my chest.
But now these buildings tower
like Goliath in David’s dreams.
I need to escape
I need to slide out of
this sleep you’ve monopolized.
******* dreams
like smokering fingerprints
left on the cleft of my conscience.
The old taqueria on Victory.
The Bourgeois Pig.
The bitter spice of winter
painted over the cracks
crumbling the walls.
These waking hallucinations
haunt my habits.
Still frequent the holeinthewall
dives in my heart.
Nov 14, 2011
Nov 14, 2011 at 8:33 AM UTC
the heart is located just below the sternum and i
would like you to exist in the space between them
curl into me and fall asleep to the pounding
of my heart that i feel whenever you look at me.
i think i could make you like me better if i
could make a soft bed for you inside of myself
but there’s only hardness and bone.
would you still love me after seeing that there’s
no depth to me at all? no flowers under my
nailbeds? there’s nothing poetic about the
desecration inside me. does that turn you off?
does it scare you? it scares me. it does.
Jun 12, 2018
Jun 12, 2018 at 10:06 PM UTC
It's eating me alive
What I think but never say
It's killing me inside
All the words I keep
Confined in one notebook
Pray that they never escape
That page and stop scraping
Their claws in my brain.
I don't hate
Showers
I hate who I find
Myself to be
When I'm that
Alone
No distractions
Just my own
Twisted mental
Interactions.
And it's not the music
That makes me sad
Because I keep switching
Genres like a genuine
Shuffle button ****
But I've come to the conclusion
That it's some kind of thermal
Curtain messing with the
Natural lighting
In my brain.
And what I want you to know
Is simple
But I won't ever tell you
Because I am not
That girl anymore
Unless of course
You're keeping up
With what's going on
Between the blue lines
And stale sheets
I sleep in every
Dark afternoon.
And sometimes it hurts
Too much for words
So I don't even
Try
Just hit that shuffle button
And pretend that the music
On the other end of these
Headphones
Can actually
Change what's in my chest cavity
Cover up what's
Lying dead and rotting
In the center of everything
I've ever felt.
But let's cut the
Metaphors and get back
To this hot glass reality
Pulled straight from
The dishwasher
After four hours
And nineteen minutes
Of steam.
I remember the moment
Exactly
I was standing with the faux oak
Cupboard doors open
And blocking the
Sunlight I so avoid
And I was thinking about
The week old sermon
Still rattling around
The shelves of my
Misplaced
Thought processes.
And then
Suddenly
After years of confusion
All the pieces snapped
Into the picture of
My epiphany
And it hit me
Hard
Too hard
Why.
I'm always wondering
Why
But sometimes wondering is easier
Than why
And not knowing is better
Than why.
So I turned around and
Changed the song
But nothing is drowning this out
Nothing is stopping
The words bleeding from
My torn nailbeds
Or changing what I keep
In the cracks of my knuckles.
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 11:01 PM UTC
these sharp crooked joints
bulge beneath powdered skin
rotting nailbeds point
lurch from a lumpy shin
stretch my elastic ligaments
release these captive organs
seethe against my innocence
seek release from biblical orphan
Feb 10, 2020
Feb 10, 2020 at 11:10 PM UTC
i bathe in milk
an alkaline to bleach
the acidic stench of stress
out of my poor pores
i lie in a rose garden
the hummingbird flying over me
to cleanse the noise
of the distant city
sitting pretty
with cucumbers over my eyelids
while a lady caresses my nailbeds
with a file
it seems menial;
that this is supposed to make me
feel better on the outside
when inside i’m in denial
self care is not just
an instagrammable bath bomb
exploding in the consumer’s face
like the feeling exploding in the feeler
it’s realer.
i washed today,
brushed my teeth today
got dressed today
i’m impressed today.
today i am a phenomenal woman.
today i am a higher being;
i am maya
sitting in her mansion
sipping on her sweet tea
smiling sweetly;
reminiscing on her millions.
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 6:29 AM UTC
For three years
I have been dirt under your nailbeds, no one’s gotten
close enough to see me. This skin
is a cage
and I know how everyone looks to you
sticking to you in some place, the green goo of
a dead firefly or
an old sweater hung by shoes you no longer fit into.
Your mother is not
from America, but is a mother yet –
I am not from her, nor am I foreign to you.
She watched us in bed together when you were so ill
you thought you would die.
But mostly she saw how
I put more fever
on your cheeks – I wished I would die
for you. No one would miss a crescent of filth you
touch them with or loose hairs
on your sheets. No other girl would notice.
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 12:26 PM UTC
The extra split second of suspense
waiting for fingers to be release
held captive by soda-stained keys
the familiar rhythm uncomfortably disturbed
The echoing strain
as eyes feel the magnetic pull
towards an airplane TV
endlessly searching for dialogue gone MIA
Shredded fingers and cracked lips
wind-burned lungs and throbbing eardrums
pulsating temples
the familiar ache
Peeling t-shirts off of backs
making sense of childhood love
soaking in tri-colored LEDs
questioning validity
Past stages feeling like distant memories
old therapy now feeling like a chore
memories linger out of habit instead of desire
assumptions of immaturity mask diluted longing
Stringy hair from groping fingers
shattered nailbeds from shameful sabotage
magenta stains covering past identities
nighttime risks saturating your pace
Silence fills your ear at night
isolation creaks around your fingers
slow beating heart serves as a singular passage of time
as hot summer nights slowly tick by
Jun 7, 2019
Jun 7, 2019 at 1:39 AM UTC
Deranged distortions thinking i could contort just right foot red left foot blue twist and turn on trembling tip toes so i might fit into pocket or palm, remain calm if claimed clammed up im bearable woman being rearranged into commercial jingle ring "im good, how are you" stuck in head or throat tote a hoarse smile stinking of another blah facade forlorn forewarn follows fake plant growth in (t)his sunlight promised life to the rubber made grade points plucked like pencil pushing excuses, effort isnt tallied into parking lot anxiety attack lacking attendance peer remembrance of your presence in bleeding nailbeds ****** into sweatshirt smothered eraser faces, forgetful social graces self slap lap up launguage barrier breaks cant breathe without letting words escape race to wring the worry whimpers that echo out of bitten lips split a panicked pulse quicker and louder shout not now mouthy mislead slink in your seat enter dark disengage garble gag on empress embarrass
Mar 22, 2018
Mar 22, 2018 at 8:00 AM UTC