"overgrow" poems
Parenting
organizing the day,
while the baby room adjacent
makes dreaming rock n' roll noises
siren calls to lay in bed,
semi-alert, on guard duty,
scheming about dis n' dat,
you are sleeping, dreaming,
wide awake seeing,
multitasking eyes closed simultaneously.
lesser of a poet, more a notate-er,
list keeper, note taker,
arguing with yourself inside the head,
actually feeling the thoughts
coursing, lurking, seeing both sides now,
parentally, washing the dishes
of the hours and years ahead.
while the woman-mother
makes her soprano dreaming noises,
you laugh at the orchestra of
******* sighing somnolent noises,
a cadenza of love dancing in your
irresistible wide awake dreams.
paying the bills, lying in the dark,
you wonder-worry about the agenda
unknown that will overgrow you,
fast creeping up the grain of your skin,
ivy on stone skin walls.
lala lala
you borrow baby's lullaby,
yourself calming,
keeping time, silly rhyming,
organizing the days ahead
in you head, while,
recording the harmonies of sensory inputs.
the dark provides the cloak
where you alone
feel and hear the worry and laugh lines knitting
into a single stitch of parenting.
1/20/2013
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 11:02 AM UTC
You’re like a storm.
But in the best and most beautiful way.
The kind of storm that happens all of a sudden on the most average of days.
You’re like a hurricane coming into my life and tearing away the ugly grey buildings and leaving only the green freedom to overgrow my heart again.
Like a thunderstorm that pours out love filled raindrops to fill my soul and grow back the childlike happiness that's slowly been deprived of its pure ecstasy.
Like the tsunami-sized tidal waves that wash away my lost ambitions and filthiness.
A blizzard that whitewashes my view with your unmistakable perfection and pulchritude.
The flash flood that appeared into my life at the snap of a finger and since that death-defyingly moment my love for you has only grown.
You’re the faultless storm that has taken my heart, life, and soul into steady hands and locked them all within yourself.
Since then, I’ve never looked back and never will.
You’re the perfect storm.
~S.C. Kelley
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 8:54 PM UTC
reposting a poem from 3 1/2 years ago, when I knew how to write
<>
organizing the day,
while the baby room renter in the adjacent,,
makes dreamy rock n' roll noises,
siren calls to stay~lay in bed,
tho status of semi-alert,
ready to relieve Ernie and Bert,
who have the first shift covered
soon on guard duty,
scheming about dis n' dat,
you are sleeping, dreaming,
wide awake seeing,
multitasking with eyes closed simultaneously.
lesser of a poet, more a notate-er,
list keeper, note taker,
arguing with yourself inside the head,
actually feeling the thoughts
coursing, lurking, seeing both sides now,
parentally, washing the dishes
of the hours and years ahead.
while the woman-mother
makes her soprano dreaming noises,
you laugh at the orchestra of
******* sighing somnolent noises,
a cadenza of love dancing in your
irresistible wide awake dreams.
paying the bills, lying in the dark,
you wonder-worry about the agenda
unknown that will overgrow you,
fast creeping up the grain of your skin,
ivy on stone skin walls.
lala lala
you borrow baby's lullaby,
yourself for to calming,
keeping time, silly rhyming,
organizing the days ahead
in you head, while,
recording the harmonies of
sweet sensory inputs.
the dark provides the cloak
where you alone
feel and hear the worry
and laugh lines knitting
into a single stitch of parenting.
1/20/2013
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 4:39 PM UTC
Her thoughts
grow like weeds
through swaying reeds.
In her head
exists a garden
as bright and as varied
as the tulips of Amsterdam.
Each canal lined with bikes,
the water flowing from one to the next.
If not careful, though,
that mind will overflow,
overgrow with the seeds
of past ill deeds.
She sits still now,
thumbing through her prayer beads,
pleading for the protection
of some modern-day Diomedes.
May 1, 2018
May 1, 2018 at 9:48 PM UTC
By a day's difference, and a night's
indifference...angelic flight looses
evasion what was embrace.
The repose of memory blighted by
forgetfulness...seven constitutions
ago that personified the goodly
week of creation.
Incontinent, now...to All Things
small that were big.
Admonished whole by the changeable--
thou fairest...unwell.
Supping thy chinny chin chin--with
world-wearied, and wearying palms...
overgrow The Garden in hopes it may
obscure The Fall.
Sep 29, 2012
Sep 29, 2012 at 6:09 PM UTC
Here once they would
have been locked up,
have sat rocking back
and forth, drooling into
their hands. Have looked
from this same window
where now you stand
looking out at the asylum
grounds. The place now
abandoned to its ruin like
those who were once
imprisoned here. There
is a smell about the place,
smell of sadness and pus
and ***** and echoes
of those crying out in
anguish, gazing once
where you now gaze,
seeing the same sun
and moon, eating away
their days with the same
spoon, same poor food.
You see the grounds,
overgrow weeds, bushes
overgrown. You there
staring out at the view alone.
Nov 26, 2016
Nov 26, 2016 at 3:14 AM UTC
I pick apart the marigolds petals in my hands
wishing for way back then.
Why did you leave me?
When our future looked so bright together.
The garden wilts everyday.
The thorns overgrow on the cliff we used to sit on.
We had forever
Why did you leave me here.
When the day passes noon
There is only silence to keep me company
Your shadow still overcasts the empty spot to my left
Your eyes still tear through the running creek water.
The sun has never been the same
I thought we would get through this together.
Now I am here, overgrown, exhausted, and desperate
This garden will burn along with me.
I sit in the same cliff, letting the crackling of the flames keep me company with its twisted disharmony.
I pick apart the marigold in my hands.
At least its not silent anymore.
-Kore
Mar 7, 2021
Mar 7, 2021 at 11:56 AM UTC
…………………………………………………………
Red lip
Bled for a tip
$6.00 grip
Retained and placed at the hip
Felt the caustic eye
Depicting a senseless lie
Seemed like a simple guy
Dressed elegant in a suit and tie
……………………………………………………………
Liquidized assets in a fortune 5 hundred
Cauterized wounds for the plundered
Sipping on blueberry wine
Breaking bread, dinning on banned swine
Luxuries overgrow the jewelry box
Scotch overvalued, yet on the rocks
Locked safe, cold-clocked combination
Lost in a dream, trapped enumeration
Unwilling to sip soda as a pauper
Social stigmatisms holding him proper
The man bears arms
Coy as to avoid alarms
…………………………………………………………..
Muzzle lit
Puzzle refit
Hands up, dinners sit
$6.00’s retrieved after the handle hit
Red lips crashes to the floor
The well-earned man heads for the door
Attendants pause, awaiting more
Empty wallets, patrons left poor
…………………………………………………………….
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 1:04 PM UTC
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
—Adam Zagajewski.
9/11/2016.
Sep 11, 2016
Sep 11, 2016 at 1:23 PM UTC
To feel like crying
wouldn't feel so sad
so hard
and rough
like that cemented road we walk down.
It always took too long
to trollop to the shade
I cannot bear the heat so
you hold up a hand to shelter me.
to block me from the sun.
and
I only remember blackberries
and those little white flowers
that always overgrow the path.
Tell me how you do it,
tell me how you can overgrow
overpower
fade
a rolling path
of memories.
To feel like crying wouldn't be so sad.
Jul 19, 2012
Jul 19, 2012 at 12:52 PM UTC
Imagine the mind as a tree and the brain as a seed.
The mind is made by the brain as the tree is made by the seed.
Imagine routes growing amongst hostile environments,
akin to thoughts that germinate in the mind of another.
A thought formulates from the combination of accepted truths that spirals out of control like the tree and it's roots.
Yet these moments are only revealed when the earth is disturbed,
if not they still grow but remain unheard.
Thoughts forceful through pastures,
it's in the nature of the living to overgrow and expose like an explosions aftermath.
Repressed and unchosen, but even the best storms pass,
give life to the grass and the elements that surround sound.
The seasons change like the reasons to live again.
The bony tree branches shake away the secrets of human beings leaving footprints underneath that intersperse the leaves.
Like a strong breeze.
Imagine a human being as a growing tree,
naked underneath without the leaves;
The leafs fall in time and reveal the skeletons of the human mind forgotten thoughts of friends and enemies both left behind.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
If plants can overgrow,
Then we as a species are obese.
Leaves make trees more beautiful,
But fall has rid us of all of them.
We are a rotting tree in winter,
And our demons live inside.
Hibernating the fear and angst away,
Since they can't afford to hide.
Everyday we pray,
No groundhogs will be afraid.
So spring can spring upon us,
And feed our many roots.
But Mr. Groundhog,
Doesn't show up.
All he does is paint sliver linings,
And keep our hopes up.
With the sun keeping spring a secret,
That only fools know.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 8:48 PM UTC
We all have masks
But no, I will not ask
Of you to never wear
Such safety that you bare
It gets us through the day
And keeps our id at bay
Without our mask
It’d be a task
To live a civil way
For we are social beings
We need those special ties
To share our inner feelings
And free what underlies
But underlies cannot be shared
Until you’ve built a bond
And that is why we have to wear
Our mask to help belong
But if you wear it long enough
Your skin will overgrow
And what was once your social bluff
Will be the only face you know
And what is social fabric
If you’ve forgotten your despairs
Your mask’s a pointless tactic
If you’ve nothing left to share
I encourage you to wear your mask
It gets you through the fight
The only favor that I ask
Is you take it off at night
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 10:14 PM UTC
I’m sitting in history right now, the teacher is talking and I can hear him but I can’t understand the words. I can’t filter them through the thoughts in my head. I feel like crap right now but I don’t know exactly what I’m feeling, it feels like sadness but it’s not, and my therapist told me to recognize my emotions based on what sensation I’m feeling in my body. But all I can feel is an empty pit in my stomach and that’s just hunger, and maybe an ache in my chest, pulling down on my heart, but I always feel that and it’s just normal. It’s just normal, right?
I feel like I’m going to throw up all the nothing I’m feeling, all the nothing inside me. I should be feeling something, feeling anything, but all there is in my chest is emptiness. I don’t feel, and have I ever really felt?
I think I feel heavy, but I don’t know what I feel, I’ll never know what I feel. I’m not human, I'm incapable of being human. Humans can hold things, and keep holding, but everything I grasp fades away and slips out of my hand, turning to dust and was it ever really there?
And maybe humans make errors but I make too many, more than can be counted.
I walk towards flowers and they wilt, the leaves and petals turn brown and fall off. Those same flowers when I try to water them and care for them, I give them too much and they die, they die because I tried to keep them alive. Those flowers stick to me, braided into a crown of thorns that sits upon my head.
And vines and weeds overgrow me, spiders make webs in my hair. The spiders are my only friends, and they sit with me.
I’m sitting in history right now, with the spiders and the vines and weeds and the crown of dead flowers and thorns and the empty pit with all the nothingness all tangled together to make one inhuman monstrosity, incapable of feeling and holding, to heavy to be held, that can hear but cannot understand the words, that can think but not speak the thoughts.
Dec 16, 2024
Dec 16, 2024 at 12:44 PM UTC
the light falls greyly down
on dusted carpet and darkened leaves,
and I wait for the clouds to part.
the summer breezes sway branches
of trees older than my parents,
as I wait for my life to start;
butterflies wing, and higher soar
the birds, who have some purpose
and I wonder what is mine?
spiders crawl through my dry hair:
I'm Miss Haversham in her glory,
with cobwebs spinning through my mind.
cars rumble while i rust,
our sun rises and falls again;
why can't I get to sleep?
a world buzzes on around me;
weeds overgrow my soul and
my silence runs far too deep.
© Tara India.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
I burn bridges
I watch in the rear view mirror
embers and the remnants fade away
I like closure and closed chapters
I wanted to destroy ours
So completely
That there never was a bridge
Pointless waste
you always still
Seem to find your way
back
To me
Even now I can feel you drifting
I overgrow pathways with thorns
hide the signs
switch off the lights
leave the post on the porch
let the dust settle
Still you end up at my door
Baggage in hand
spark in your lazy eye
I never leave you in the cold
God's knows I want to
You follow me to the kitchen
Where I start on the new bomb
While you build the new bridge
I aim to blow
Our cycle is consistent
Your leaving is exhausting
My heart break is on rewind
There's comfort in repetition
But where is the love
Apr 3, 2017
Apr 3, 2017 at 3:23 PM UTC
I sit at the edge of a creek
It's the middle of the night
Warm air is blowing over me
I listen the the whispers of the water
My eyes melt, molten metal
My brain comes to a grinding halt
Faulty machinery anyways
Grass and leaves overgrow me
Thousands of years pass
I only catch glimpses of them
A life lived through dreams
I only feel through the soil
My roots grow past uneven ground
Touching dark waters
My bark hard and brittle
Protects my gentle sap
My leaves drink supple sunlight
This elegant growth is slow
Grass pushes up around me
In this life I am drowning
Nov 2, 2018
Nov 2, 2018 at 11:59 PM UTC
The hand rose petals of ripe red.
A fast bloom of rotten revenge,
Stemmed only from gnarled thorns.
Sage runs strong into crimson.
Reaping, what is sewn or shown.
This paradoxical thought has flowered.
Was it first the pain or was it desire.
Trim the fray or overgrow in vain.
Suckle little roots, undying doom
Eternity's flora in the poet's stalk
Blood cursed words, ancient fret.
The seed of grudge is the heart's regret.
Apr 30, 2018
Apr 30, 2018 at 8:22 AM UTC
I still walk past bridges and imagine us jumping off of them
Maybe it would feel the same when we hit the bottom
As it does when we speak to each other.
Do you know what it feels like to watch the walls of your house collapse onto your shoulder blades?
I used to love to watch you skip over the puddles trying not to wet your feet
It was the same way you held your hands out of the car window on the freeway
Flying, so fast.
You told me " i dont care what anyone thinks "
but the truth is-
i hate the way you hold your breath before you laugh at my jokes
like you're about to blow out a candle but you're just not quite sure you want to watch the flame go out
I hate when your eyes disappear into the ceiling of your bedroom -
the same place your dreams go every night
as they flash and turn into lightning bolts of images of who you used to be
In them are your screams
They are the sounds of your alarm clock before you hit the snooze
You told me you were happy
if happy is a place where babies cry and bees go hungry because flowers are dead.
and thorns capacitate roses, weeds overgrow petals, and dogs bark endlessly into the night.
starving and cold.
the way you look at yourself is the way I look at you too
shivering and crooked like a bad park job
I imagine your promises like a sealed letter without a stamp to the wrong address on a Sunday morning
your voice makes me violently scratch at the roots of my follicles and fight with myself over whether to submerge my head into the beads of the water or to just finish conditioning my hair
your laugh burns. it echos through lobbies like elevators waiting to be pushed and children waiting for the waving hand of their mother to slowly dissipate and dissolve down the winding road
I remember the sound of eggshells crackling underneath my feet walking through my living room
Wishing that the panels on the doors and the fibers in the carpet could speak to me, or Ask me how my day was
You became the fibers in my carpet sewing my pieces together holding my lungs in place filling them with oxygen
And then slowly just letting them burst.
Sep 30, 2014
Sep 30, 2014 at 3:53 AM UTC
If you can't read the signs
You'll be going down the wrong road
In the opposite direction
From where you want to be
And you may not find out
Until its too late to turn back
And the truth is everywhere
In the stars and in the air
Still if you don't know to look
You can't read the signs
And no one else can show you
I could try but know its no use
You have eyes but your living blind
You can't read the signs
Still if its early in the spring
When the first weeds start to growing
And their roots are not yet deep
But you don't take heed
If you just leave them be
They'll overgrow the garden
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
Its either
Chaos, contagion, or comatose
They weigh in
Those
Heavy
Pheromones
find a way to
Overgrow
Almost anything
No Matta what
Jan 26, 2021
Jan 26, 2021 at 6:37 PM UTC
I see you
In grocery receipts, in faces at the mall, in college applications.
I cannot escape you, because I think no matter how hard I try, where you planted your flowers will always overgrow mine.
I look for signs of you in every person I meet.
Try to find minimal traits that lead me back to you.
I want you to find me again, to call from an unknown number so I will not know it is you and hear your voice and feel everything all over again.
I want to feel all over again.
Nov 21, 2017
Nov 21, 2017 at 10:47 PM UTC