"nitroglycerin" poems
Your love is not a hurricane
It is not an earthquake
It is a sweet, sweet salve
to an old heartbreak
Your love is not lightning
It is not a tidal wave
It is a deep, deep breath
at the end of a long, hard day
Your love is not a fever
It's not an addiction
It is not my nicotine
nitrous
Novocaine or
nitroglycerin
Your love is not suspenseful
seismic
shellshocking
stomach-churning
sugar cane saccharine or
surprising
Every love before you has been
a frantic, careful dance of
close
but not too close
honest
but not too honest
Yet you
strange you
can look at me from across a room or
across a tabletop and
there is wonderment,
but no wondering
passion,
but no pondering
Defined by choice
not whim
We always crave the love
that is our
hurricane
Novocaine
sugar cane
to sap away
our pain
But what about the love
that simply is?
Is that what makes it real?
Is that what makes love
Love?
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 8:22 PM UTC
Looking through a complex eye
poisoned by countless vials of nitroglycerin
the world sings a familiar tune of
an ineradicable human urge for lethal conflict.
A world view
of culturally intolerant tyrants and a place
where Robin Hood does not exist, instead
his former self sits wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity.
Society now aids the pauper,
who is but a superficial vagabond sitting intrigued by
hopeless people from distant lands.
As the innocent of Beirut lie murdered
the reaper tastes regret,
while bank accounts paint self portraits
instilled by ephemeral yet righteous morality.
Dangerously speeding through the lanes of life
to make it home just before it rains;
the world all encompassing
is never the concern.
Halos hover above diet pills dressed in simple linens
for everything is an easy fix;
lies, hatred, ignorance, and blatant evil,
all can be fixed by ignoring the even lies (the even lines that lie above).
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 7:53 PM UTC
From where i sit
in this puddle of memories
my instincts feel like
the vague words
that form prophecies
of yesterday
"Run !" they screamed (they meant far and fast)
And when i failed to , she did not.
"Break!" i heard breathlessly exhaled in a yell ( they meant everything)
And where i was weak adhesive begging to bond, she was volatile nitroglycerin
"Forget what it could do to her" ( I longed to much more than i ever understood)
And where i remembered, she removed.
Instincts.
Born not of anything i could see.
For sure i thought, Paranoia.
But No.
Something in me saw sure.
when i could not to myself admit
the deadly damage she was capable of inflicting
But were this damage to turn to not be irreperable
I will have been ecstatic to ignore my instincts
Though fool it might make me
If again i near involuntarily ignore
for unbelievable ideals.
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 2:17 PM UTC
relationships
are water on the rock
erosion
rust on iron
corrosion
a match to nitroglycerin
explosions
it's love undeniable
minor indiscretions unbeknownst to you
picked apart
it's having someone reliable
to leave you stranded and alone in your moments dark
joy undescribable
when you're stabbed in the heart
May 23, 2021
May 23, 2021 at 8:04 PM UTC
Microspasmic and ethereal heavenly chords flow inside the avenues and walk ways walled in by different expanses of grey, a monochrome city.
If you have time to stand on the escalator I envy you; dread your existence and pity you on a Friday morning when everything is more quiet.
Hot sweat growing on my back, my fear and financial disparity exploding on my skin. Fresh roasted coffee beans and legs that prove endless and soft descending from a pink comforter.
I walk through the streets in the uncomfortable light of a September morning when the world struggles and it's health declines, but the light of winter is more pure - a planet bathed in cathartic light.
I never forgot how you looked on those mornings when it was colder - your face a faded navy in a morning still wrapped in night. The fire escape and scaffolding like bones that hold up our bodies and the life that applies pressure to the structure.
Akin to the city you are beautiful in the morning, alive in the day, joyous and free in twilight; restless in sleep. I've found a deep rhapsody in the smile that accompanies your perfume; stepping over a single crushed flower and someone's children sleeping on the street.
A sugary leak in and a vengeful glance his way, thirty-eight hour torment. Sitting upright in the bath with your phone resting on the edge waiting for a response, conversation boiled down to a pictorial exchange of genitals: horror that your **** isn't big enough, trepidation that your ****** isn't neat enough.
Tuesday saw you take that leap into forever, you come back up once you've drowned. Skin to match your nails. A train derails inside you; a man is stabbed to death. I'm awake and it's real and my bones are filled with molten fire which spits out of compound fractures to my ego.
A cup of water.
Nitroglycerin collar.
Sep 3, 2016
Sep 3, 2016 at 8:29 AM UTC
It's 8:00 and we have our whole lives ahead of us
Life is silly
I suppose this is who I am for the time being, it will pass
As everything does
So judge away, I'll play the defendant
Bang your gavel and give me the sentence
It's only a life time
It won't mean a thing in your eyes
There's you , then there's me
That's just it
That's all we need to know
To each their own
The quietness, silent only because they cannot scream for help forever
I think the nitroglycerin worsened my cough
Mother's face has been shot off
But father doesn't cry
His crippling soft lies
So I take my over stuffed overnight bag and leave
Eons later, The Wolf, The Coyote and The Raven come
And then all was well in the western hemisphere
All fires dissipated and they all began to rebuild, this time stronger than before
-Tommy Johnson
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
you know what happens to them. or maybe you don’t. maybe you’re still caught in the flood. that’s okay. it’s better to drown than to burn. don’t you think? don’t you think? don’t you think?
it comes to me in two distinct shapes. (distinct. are they distinct? to me, yes, but i suppose to you they are just as shapeless as i am to you.)
him. my beautiful idiot. though his hair and eyes are dark as night, i know there are sparks that lie there, dormant. waiting to be ignited. but he makes me smile, makes me laugh so hard my stomach begins to hurt. i haven’t felt a good hurt in such a long time. the lips of his ghost leave an afterimage on my neck. he likes to watch the color rise to my cheeks, likes to watch me squirm. he thinks i’m worth something.
her. my ethereal starry girl trapped in a rotting sack of flesh. she wants out. she wants out. i know she will supernova anytime. it will be just as beautiful and terrible as she is, but i don’t want her to go. she keeps me from floating away, even if i am so unbearably heavy as a result. she protects me, loves me. she always tells me so. i can still feel her hands on mine. they’re warm. she thinks i’m worth everything.
but it doesn’t matter which form it takes. it always ends the same. they kiss me (hold me protect me embrace me touch me touch me touch me touch) and they burn. they always burn. it’s because of me, i know it’s because of me. this can’t be my skin then, it can’t be. it must be gasoline or gunpowder or nitroglycerin or god i don’t know but don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch me don’t touch
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 5:21 AM UTC
Anxiety through the roof
Sweaty shakey palms
Concentrated sweat
wiping X’s off my hands
To get glass of Jack
And lean back and relax
Another ****** relapse
Of the mind losing my time
Another ******* pointless line packed up
Like im homebound passed the
Disease around
With more depression and stress
In my legs quivering
Knee caps busted
nitroglycerin
combustion in my chest
Because no one is ******* listening
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 2:57 PM UTC
The woman I was supposed to
marry moved away long ago
And no matter how hard
I tried to follow the dust trails
I only ever came up short of breath
In the end of days
where it's always night
we spend time
in a broken down watering hole
on the edge of purgatory
and listen to muffled bomb blasts
bleeding on through to the other side
When she laughs she
stares up at the ceiling
and I can see traces of
repressed horror welling up in her eyes
I can tell she's thinking about
nitroglycerin sweat and splintered cells and scattered shells
before it all goes down
In the retro cartoon relapse nightmare
I've conjured for us to spend our time
The television flickers with the hissing reluctance
of reporters telling us to prepare for another
invasion
She finally speaks.
"You know there are no real sides right?
You know that back home there's just
dodging fire and not necessarily knowing
who it's from?"
She takes another drink
and tells me
"You could have come
for me, you know?
You didn't have to sit stateside
with endless excuses while the rest
of us had to be there on the blurred
front lines.
Still...I want to be with you now.
Here I am trying to look my best.
I like to wear
brightly colored ribbons
woven into my hair
and don't bother to cover
all the scars...because
that's who I am.
they can't take it back
and neither can I..."
She pauses to brush
tears from her face
and finishes with
"...and I think everyone
wants to look nice for the one
they love".
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 7:59 PM UTC
fizzy love wild days
like dynamite and lit fuses
you were explosive
Apr 9, 2019
Apr 9, 2019 at 3:01 PM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
I'd jump in front of a train with battery acid in my
Heart and nitroglycerin in my system just to show
You that I love you for the sake of meeting you and
being in Your line of sight,
I know I won't get any sleep tonight,
cause without you my death would flutter into
a million butterflies with lies that could not tell the
truth,
Your my only hope for maintaining my youth,
And possibly my future,
I won't hurt you,
And I don't give a **** what your parents say,
I belong to you,
From the acne on my face and the sweat
Of my brow,
I'd give all my soul to you and then walk
Out into the crowd of the people that have
a second chances at love,
The only thing I'm dreaming of,
The only one that I could trust,
I'm not an attention grabbing glory seeker
Muching off the souls of my peers,
I miss the days when there would be just
You and me and these tears,
I cherish days when I'd be kissing you
Above in treetops,
My heart only beats for you in fact you know
It won't stop,
I'm so in love with you.
Oct 21, 2016
Oct 21, 2016 at 11:47 AM UTC
The library was quiet
Silent ischemia read a book called
Myocardial infarction
The radio played techno tachycardia
While myocardium got high on nitroglycerin
It was quiet
I whispered yet no one was listening
I heard a heart murmur something
Into the echocardiography
It echoed
edema
edema
edema
It was there I rested in lipid
I knew my heart was broken
The day she said she was leaving
It was then my diagnosis
became cerebral thrombosis
I had a cerebrovascular accident
And I lost my mind
With my heart underfoot of my lover
Now I'm searching for a surgeon
To put it all back together
Dec 21, 2018
Dec 21, 2018 at 2:15 AM UTC