"neosporin" poems
Band-aids to prevent the social infections that could eventually
spread to the frontal lobe,
Diseases started on Fox News, spread to the living room,
circulate around the family dinner table
putting victims of ignorance on the coroner’s slab
Alleviate the pain.
Should we let the gapping wounds of intolerance fester, decay and grow maggots?
***** bigotry, vile illiteracy, primitive ideas coat the skins of society like a black goo.
Band-aids: self adhesive bandages
We aren’t teachers. We are medics.
covering the gapping wounds of life
lathering the lesions with Neosporin.
Healing the scars from parenting gone wrong
- scars from wounded self-esteems
-lacerations to the proverbial heart
Scars lasting longer than the body itself.
No one knows where its impact will end.
Band-aids
temporary fix
heal the wound fast, heal the hurt faster
A Johnson and Johnson remedy for damaged organisms
Well-meaning ones hurling scriptures scald hands with tainted words
Healing is a matter of time.
Arm teachers to protect children from the crazies who loom?
What will protect them from their own inherited ignorance?
The damage is already done when they get here.
Equip us with Band-Aids, boxes and boxes.
Hello Kitty over their ears to block the infection from coming in
Spiderman for their mouths. Stop the seepage of any contamination from spreading to others.
The remaining scars will fade, but not disappear.
even with a band-aid.
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 8:13 PM UTC
I see so many ads now
they feed into my insecurities
and help me to notice everything that is wrong with me.
"Got stretch marks?"
they ask, and my eyes shamefully
trace down my chest to my inner thighs and I learn to hate what I see.
So I read on, hoping to learn
how to get rid of the natural signs of an ageing vessel
"Neosporin, coconut oil, and olive, and they'll be gone in a week."
The ads proclaim, and so I do as they say
because how can I be pretty
if no one else thinks me so?
"10 Tips on How to Get the Relationship of Your Dreams"
"5 Signs that You're Not as Pretty as You Think You Are"
"4 Things to Try to Spice Up Your *** Life"
"1 Way to Tell Whether the Creepy Old Man on the Corner Thinks You're Worthy of Being Catcalled by Him"
I read on, trying to understand what it is to be pretty
but the more I see,
the more hopeless I become
Men will only ever see me as a piece of meat,
just a pair of **** and an ***
only there for their enjoyment or pleasure.
but I am not here to make things easy,
I am more than the sum of my parts,
more than my cellulite and hip dips
I revel in my stretch marks
I have grown into the woman I am today,
and I refuse to erase the proof of that.
Apr 18, 2023
Apr 18, 2023 at 11:18 PM UTC
Numbing from the sting of life
Neosporin is the razor
The band aid is blood
Anesthesia is working
Numbing from the loneliness of life
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 1:40 PM UTC
I am missing the spoon for the sugar bowl.
Rippled like rocks licked by the Pacific in the 60s
It is somewhere away, shining like tails of Peter Pan’s Pixies.
Looking down into the glass opening, the hole
Is now occupied by a plastic fork I kept from a bagged lunch Wednesday.
I used to scoop a mountain of crystals onto a perforated
Paper napkin, the sugar camouflaged above its blank stare.
Grandma would grace strawberry fields before my chair.
The scarlet berries plucked by her arthritic fingers, dated
And bursting with memories of great-grandpa’s farm in Cokato, Minnesota.
I will never drift away from that healing kitchen counter,
Not away from the times gingerbread dough, spread
All around it or the Neosporin smeared across the thread
Of seams of cropped shorts as I ran out to bike more, even louder.
Never could I forget Minnesota summers when she wasn’t so frail.
After all, I need a sugar spoon, so I can’t break away
So easily. I have to attach and remember popping cans of Coca-Cola
And live between those memories, not perceive them as fables and tales.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 12:01 PM UTC
I'm gonna make it
I told you now
I'm gonna make it
told you before
I'm gonna make it
They can try to stop me
patience
I'm gonna save it
success
I'm gonna crave it
Haircut
gonna fade it
My soul
won't have to trade it
gonna get it
how I want it
Gonna prove to everyone
who left me
doubted me
thought I was boring
left me in the rain
cut me deep
with no neosporin
They're gonna see it
what they left
gave away
I'll make pain my slave
I forgive
but never forget
who I am
and what they made me became
I have come so far
keep going
see the hope
A smile
I'm not gonna fake it
Take the hits
keep going
I'm gonna make it
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 1:25 AM UTC
A locked box has the bodies of three different birds, all blue, all lyricists, all beautiful and stuffed with Xanax and newspaper. I paid my childhood best friend's brother to taxidermy them, stitch up their stomachs once and for all.
My closet only has memories. A bracelet with a feather on it that smells like fear, looks like betrayal, **** dealer, track pants, self-proclaimed whiny ***** A painting I made when I was six. All the pills I stole from my boyfriend, thirty-seven. All the pills that would've knocked my world out cold, skin cold, heart still, pulse still, veins finally at rest. A knife a psychopath gave me. Yes, he was a romantic, and yes, he did ruin my life, so in essence, still just a romantic. A fox hat I bought standing next to one of my under appreciated best friends, recovered anorexic. He's at college right now, falling in something close to love, probably another early grave. A too big teddy bear from someone I thought was the formula for the speed of light once. He's trying to force feed pills and slip **** into all my friend turned surrogate son's sentences. I am wishing I could lay a curse on his name. His mother already did it for me.
A drawer beside my bed, packed full of **** Candy wrappers, gum, crumbs, marks of my self-proclaimed obesity, all 120 pounds of me feeling like the weight of the world and everyone's eyes. My inhaler, because these lungs don't want me to run. Pictures and letters from the ones I love, because I'm a romantic. Plastic dinosaurs, dried flowers, pennies, dimes, lotion, Neosporin, a deck of Tarot cards.
I'm just a vessel for all the things I can't fit inside my mouth. I can't tell into you what I've seen, I can only pull out the receipts. I can give you the ****** tissues my boyfriend handed me. Tell me how your stomach retches. I can give you the poem a crazy person wrote me. Tell me how you feel his void. I can give you my heart. Tell me how heavy it all is.
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 1:37 AM UTC
you miss childhood so much you try dressing like you would if you were seven again.
sneakers and frilly socks.
big t-shirts and messy hair, because you’ve stopped caring about perfect hair.
you don’t mind getting your knees ***** or scabs on your shins.
those pains don’t make you flinch.
those pains don’t talk to you at night.
those pains don’t hurt like the hurt you’ve really felt.
the type of hurt that can’t be pin pointed or fixed with copious amounts of Neosporin.
you don’t worry about how you’ll feel in the morning until the morning comes.
you bite the skin off the tips of your fingers like your aiming for the bone.
because the stress and pain hits you bone deep.
bone deep.
its almost romantic sounding.
but isn’t being so broken such a romantic thing anymore?
sad music doesn’t even phase you.
its all you know. instrumentals lined with tiny violins and crying cellos.
you lay back in the grass and close your eyes. you try forgetting about the city surrounding you. the heat rises from the pavement and grips your lungs like my hands grip the small of your neck. the sun beats down on you like you owe it money.
but you don’t sweat.
this is the small stuff.
ice coffee and a bagel with cream cheese.
start your day happy.
fall apart at the end.
repeat. things get better.
then they get worse.
three months of total bliss for three months of total ****
thats the way life works right?
it always gets better though.
be still.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 3:31 AM UTC
01:39 on a Wednesday and I realised no, it's not like the way water effortlessly flows down the window shield just to get swept away by the wiper
my love isn't elegant, and there's no point in me pretending to reshape it; think a hurricane, a tsunami, a natural disaster; think beds collapsed under the weight of too much love, think lips so raw blistex wouldn't stand a chance to heal them, think new memories being made everyday so that eventually you stop living in the past because your brain tells you this is it - this is what it was and what it will be [even if just for an hour]
put into context a shade of red somewhere between maroon and magenta and then throw it on a white canvas, see how beautiful it becomes only when it encompasses everything, when it becomes one with that paper holding it up; do not fear my love, please; let me spread around and let me be the one to give you colour, let the bleak melt away
don't let your mind wander to tape because i won't tape any holes I see or scars I run across; I'm not a doctor and never learned to be one
BUT, I will help: I'll be there with your favourite beer, there with neosporin in handy just because I've learned a little sting in the beginning is worth a lifetime of infection, standing there in your favourite shirt and purposefully letting you see that height is just a number and bruises are just colours of memories once lived
01:40 and I think I realised that somewhere in between being a hopeless romantic and being numb I've lost myself, bits scattered in blankets and sheets long laundered after me; I've realised that I don't know what I can and can't give, and I've realised neither does he
here it is: think. think the earth and the moon. think gravitational pull and how the moon is pulled back to the earth if for nothing else because there's some kind of connection it can't control. now think us, and tell me: is it not we're the Galaxy?
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 8:48 PM UTC
Yesterday. The idea of the past. The belief that what we do can become what we have done; what we say, what we have said; who we love, who we have loved. To have the audacity to believe that our shadows can no longer follow us once we step away from them. Growing up, we've all heard the saying at least once. "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." But they do. And they leave the deepest scars that we hide deep in our heart, locked up like a child that wants to go outside and play but his mother doesn't want him to come home with a scraped knee. But that's all it is. A minuscule wound that can be healed with time, and maybe a little Neosporin. By no means does that mean we should hide from the pavement because we fell off of our bike one day. We must remember that yesterday was once tomorrow, and tomorrow will soon become yesterday.
-k.d.
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 8:42 PM UTC
I am from band-aids
From scraped knees and Neosporin.
I am from the gravel
That seperated my feet from the hard ground.
(Covered with the color of gray,
But felt red hot under the sun's rays)
I am from the backyard,
From the lilac bush,
Whose roots are still buried deep
in the earth.
I am from the Hundred Acre Woods,
From Pooh Bear and Christopher Robin.
I am from knock-knock jokes,
And non-stop giggles,
From water colors, markers, and cayons.
I am from Cherios
With sugar,
And early fall mornings.
I am from my grandmother's embrace,
With watered down coffee
And the Sunday newspaper.
I am from my mother's eyes,
Who's deep brown pigment matches mine.
At 6512 Orbit Way, you will find a house,
a home. A capsule of memories,
Laughs and giggles,
moments of peace and heated debates.
I am from that capsule.
Where I'm from is woven into
every thread and fiber that is me.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 11:54 PM UTC
_tw self harm_
Haha... I’m drowning in Neosporin
Finally my leg decides to sting
Rhythmic pain
From the line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line after line and line and line and line line line line line line line line line line line line.... . . . .
That I drew in
Desperate for feeling
An awakening of my heart
Instead... with each line the realization set in
I’m too far gone
Too disconnected to feel anything
I practically laughed at the wounds...
Wondering what purpose they might possibly serve
When nothing within even feels alive
What began as a resuscitation attempt
Turned swiftly into an autopsy
And **** I don’t even care that I’m out of gauze
I’ve done this before
It’ll heal eventually
Not like it matters anyway....
Aug 8, 2020
Aug 8, 2020 at 4:50 AM UTC
My alphabet has grown
and torn grown and torn and grown
into a celestial vortex of melting letters,
words, phrases, and lame
euphemisms that sputter out
and capture the essence
of America the Blue, America the black
and blue, with band-aids on her
knees and elbows. Her porcelain
body is chipped and her hair is
the wig in the hat she wears.
Her natural fingernails are
now plastic with worn paint
while her hands are wrinkled
and dry from neglect. Where the
measurements of data are scoffed by
the word of God and stories of
fear, retribution, and revenge travel
with the breeze no matter how
many think the old winds are gone.
Where engaging is done in the
far reaches of cyberspace and
face to face is day by day.
Where the focus is on old highways
to old solutions instead of how
the new problems allow us to roam.
Where there's no Neosporin behind
the band-aids only making
them so capable.
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 8:51 PM UTC
Satisfy
my morbid desire
to know
just how you are this morning.
You wish you were dead
and I don't blame you.
Your hand-written note
and Aspirin bottle
loom large in my imagination.
I think of you
falling asleep to ask Death,
"May I go now?"
and his response
of rocking you in his arms just one more night.
In my mind's eye
your cat (the little black one) watches you
take your phone in hand,
the clock readout "9:10 pm" in its green lettering,
and calmly type your confession.
You are not dead,
but you want to be,
and I grab a wire and some neosporin
because I can just picture
what I plan to do next.
Mar 16, 2014
Mar 16, 2014 at 9:28 AM UTC
Nothing can heal a broken heart.
Not a bandaid,
Not pulling it farther apart.
From the mended pieces,
Stitched up already,
10, 20, when did I lose count?
Neosporin, Solarcane,
I only wish it were the same.
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 9:07 PM UTC
Ah, bestfriend! You're back!
What a wise one!
I can't say I've missed you, but
I can tell it's been awhile.
Want a drink?
I'll gladly stay for awhile!
It's been several months
Since I last saw you.
You helped me heal my
Wounds.
And you helped me with my darkest fears.
I'm glad you're back,
Things might be easier now.
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 9:46 AM UTC
if life is made up of tiny little moments
I wanna be a master of small tricks
A jack of all trades in the smallest exchanges
As an organism, micro to stars and macro to ants
I want to take up just enough space that breath allows
And moments can grasp
I want to live a life on the edge of sanity on the edge of limitations
Crossing boundaries and blocked bridges
We should always remember though that our fingerprints are small, yet heavy
With responsibility we should be careful not to press too hard on the world
But to leave a fingerprint of peace, love, and kindness
Not even for me, not for you, but for us- for the world we share together
So let’s share in the tiny moments
In the you and me laughing over a cup of tea
In the little pockets of sunshine
I want to find happiness
And goodness in that
I want to know that there is depth to even the smallest flower
And like Horton hears a who, a person is a person no matter how small
So much time I spent trying to be visible
That when my heart broke into shattered pieces
I was scattered across the universe
Lost between bits of myself like a dusty tornado whirling around in my mind
Constantly plaguing me to negative thoughts
Succeptable to anger
And quick to see the pain of the world
And instead of being Neosporin
Or trying to be peroxide
I was prepared to let that good die inside
the present is a mary poppins pocket
filled to the brim with possibilities of infinite nature
possibilities reaching towards both the east end of the world and the west
from the most northern point
and the most southern
which is constantly changing
there is a circling orb
that floats around planet earth
catching all hopes and dreams and wishes
and then sprinkling them like fairy dust throughout the entire universe
for the realm of possibilities is not limited by the sky
although some of us prefer the feel of the ground
the sky extends out farther than all human life
to a universe of quiet space and darkness
planets and black holes and infinite mystery
and we try to make sense of, try to understand
and we love
this planet and this universe
this is our power
our curse
our beauty
and our obstacle
for emotions are a beautiful thing
and we wish to live beautiful lives
life itself is beautiful to all who can see it
all who have been given trust and love
and took it
kept it
Nov 30, 2015
Nov 30, 2015 at 2:11 PM UTC
remember when a simple dandelion was the most beautiful and rare flower.
and when if you fell you didn't go to the hospital for a broken bone, your mom just put some Neosporin and a bandage on your knee.
and when you could pluck the petals of a daisy to determine if your crush liked you back.
now it's more like utility bills piling up on the counter and bouquets of dead roses sitting on a kitchen table long forgotten by the moved on couple.
it's wars televised for all to see and pills to help you sleep and alcohol for when that doesn't help.
it's more like drowning your sorrow in the whole carton of chocolate ice cream and Friends reruns on tv interrupted only by the occasional commercial and your tears
it's competing for likes on an app that only exists on your phone and being **** when it comes to real life conversations.
in these times it's not about who you are, it's about who you pretend to be on the internet.
Jan 26, 2018
Jan 26, 2018 at 8:53 AM UTC
Life comes quickly,memories pass fast,and i sit here today thinking of the past.No more toys and know more piggy tails.No more story's and no more veggie tales.No more fireflies and no more slow goodbyes.No more playing in the rain and no more neosporin for the pain.No more tea party's and no more games.No more taking the blame.This is the start of a different way of life.This is the time a boy finds his wife.A girl falls in love and the toys get thrown away.This is the time to listen to what others have to say
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 10:05 PM UTC
i press my fingers into peony petals,
feeling their density,
cold, even in summer.
you talk like you mean everything you say.
you feel like the sun, you feel like
warm water in kiddie pools and
grass on bare feet, messy,
muddy, just like the color of your
eyes and
nostalgia tastes sweet but
its hard to wash off of your hands.
summer is just around the corner and
i feel it like ive felt it every year since i was nine.
i allow myself to say that this is more than just a scrape.
i allow myself to realize this hurts so much worse than
falling off my bike.
(gravel in my palms, my mother kissed my bleeding hands and smiled.
this is something she cant heal with neosporin and a kiss on the forehead; the only person who can help me is myself.)
i take baths in peroxide and still dont feel clean,
i wake up in the morning like ive just been reborn,
i think about how everything is so beautiful.
i lay under the peony bush. i let the falling petals baptize me.
i promise my mother that i'll be okay and
for once, i believe it.
Apr 13, 2018
Apr 13, 2018 at 1:15 AM UTC
Burning gas and my lungs is better than sitting alone with all the empty time to think
Think about the tears and layers of neosporin that you went through trying desperately to make the lines heal without a trace
Trace the lines of her face on the cold screen because it makes you feel closer to her somehow
Somehow you're carrying on, you feel weight of the universe on your shoulders and you're too dizzy to stand much longer
Longer than the miles between seems to be the time until you next have her in your arms
Arms that are weary and sore and cut up, but they still pull and reach and grab and push
Push everyone away until you're alone again, bridges are what you're best at burning.
Dec 23, 2015
Dec 23, 2015 at 10:21 PM UTC
where I just don't feel anymore.
I have this natural urge to strip bare naked
and run wild through the woods to feel, again.
Feel, anything at all.
So, I did one time.
The next three days,
covered in cortizone and neosporin,
I promised, when I get that urge again,
I will tie myself down
and let someone hit my head with a bat.
Jul 30, 2015
Jul 30, 2015 at 8:34 PM UTC