"peels" poems
White paint peels off to leave the walls bare,
naked and exposed to
elements.
Much like her soul.
Starved of love and affection,
accepted but not wanted.
Tolerated.
The sun casts her shadows on those
she frowns upon,
leaving winding roads to spiral out of control.
Time shifts her world from
it's axis as it progresses,
it doesn't heal,
it doesn't lessen,
It just is.
Echoes of your voice ricochets
to find her heart,
carrying the exact weight they
did the second they fled your tongue,
never shedding an ounce of momentum
"The waves of pain
that had only lapped at her
before now
reared up high and pulled her under .."
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 9:01 PM UTC
Eyes like massive clanks- gazes morphed to lanced boils, lungs ache and the tumour of hopeless alien weird melts an old painting we used to call 'existence.'
Ankles dry, calloused thoughts, skin peels to reveal oozing flesh. **** sinks in and swallows floating zinc; immune. Consuming ex-cadavers in mall parking lots and pushing the crippled in shopping carts, an ankle twisted, a mother swallowed monetary ***** the stock market became the shelf market, and creation wondered if we were okay with frozen pizza for dinner.
Life dragged on and on, the world swirled on twitter feeds and Facebook statuses, the streets completed laps around our better judgements and our better lives, we sank to scheduled escapism and believed that one day we would find the light despite our never left-look.
Massive intention swelled to disjointed shark search. A witch-hunt to burn unhappiness in it's own angry passion. Bones; cost efficient at the least and designed in the weirdness of erosion-return. Miniature intention swelled to grabs solidarity. A manhunt to freeze stillness in it's own endless silence.
What complete? What shatter-tastic ******
Eyes like massive clanks- gazes morphed to lanced boils, lungs ache and the tumour of hopeless alien weird melts an old painting we used to call 'existence.'
May 25, 2013
May 25, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
My lavender is burnt and loveless;
Painful, devoured and helpless,
Weak by the side of its dying corpse;
Solitary yet at an age so young.
My lavender cries in its daydreams;
Giggles in sorrowful screams,
And faints and dies beneath fun daylight;
As though tortured and wounded by the sun.
My lavender wriggles in isolation;
Like those ragged clothes in damnation
And there's no more death between heaven and hell--
For none is alive, nor breathes to live.
My lavender longs not to drink nor die;
But it sleeps by the hushed setting moon,
Trapped behind the tail of his lethal winds;
Blinded by too many mysteries, unseen.
My lavender peels its own skinny bones;
Its quaint lust cut and fiercely torn,
Teased by the cold trees of summertime;
Faded by the sweet whispers of time.
My lavender eats its own bloodless veins;
And its hateful friendless world,
Having laughed at anonymous walls
Marveled at unspoken poems.
My lavender drinks of its own soul;
And to love now is but to have none,
With her autumn love stolen by fate;
All her gripping sonnets are far too late.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 12:02 PM UTC
she walked
foot on each crack in the sidewalk
the heel of her boot
sinking
and then her skin peels away
turpentine wiping away
the painting that is her mask
and she walked
she crumbled
her bones dust
come back
you've gone too far, little girl
the wind blows her away
the sun cremates her memory
and she is born again in the rain
sprouting from between
the cracks in the sidewalk
and she walked
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 12:36 PM UTC
“I remember the bed just floating there” is how Phil Kaye started his ‘repetition’ poem.
I remember pausing the youtube video after the poem ended.
I remember burying my feelings under 3 blankets and 4 hours of binge watching spoken word poetry.
I do not remember the dreams I could have had.
I remember the set of nightmares that visited religiously like the downstairs neighbor tired of how loud my heart pounds at late evenings.
I remember, very clearly, how they went.
I do not remember if I have written them down.
Dream one: he peels my freckles off my skin; he says he needs them because his coffee is too light. I scream while he calmly adds pints of the cheeks to his cup. He says I can never be as quiet as the girl who managed to sneak into his ribcage and build herself a bedroom.
Dream two: We are standing in the great library of Alexandria. He pulls the sea from underneath my feet and stuffs it into his back pocket. He says he needs it because he is tired of drowning himself in uncertainty. I start to cry and he says: Aries is the god of war, and women born under this sign confuse war for love.
I remember the mole on his left ear growing bigger in my nightmares without me ever watering it.
I remember he smelled of tangerine trees and broken records.
I do not remember if his face looked like the man I almost fell in love with last winter, or my father.
I remember the first time I saw my father after he came back from Ukraine.
I remember his brown leather shoes that oozed of old spice cologne and neat scotch.
I remember his hardly worn pair of glasses and the pieces of me they never cared to read.
I remember the wrinkles that seemed newer than his glasses slowly colonizing his hands... the hands that never held me as tight as the dress I wore to my school prom hoping it would catch my ex’s attention.
I remember that dress.
I remember it had a floral print reminiscent of the season that I was named after hoping maybe it would remind him I’m part him.
I remember realizing he will never remember.
And now, I sit on a carpet of autumnal leafs as crisp as my tied tongue and as dead as my fears, trying to turn my love for him into more than just a memory.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 4:00 PM UTC
The porch bends beneath me,
its gray boards sighing.
I light a cigarette,
send my breath to the wind-
maybe White‑Shell Woman
will carry it to the horizon.
He's fired again,
last kitchen inside forty miles
that could stand him,
bridge burned behind.
At lunch I’ll call,
say get out
or Daddy and Jimbo
will haul your whiskey bones
to lie with the rattlesnakes.
I swore to Mama and to Owl,
I will keep the night honest,
I wouldn’t spend my years
driving a man to dialysis,
watching Irish blood unravel
like wet lace.
But I remember the long Covid winter-
two bears in one den,
one soft, one starved-
when Spider Grandmother
wove us together
in the dim blue light
of tele-novellas and snow.
I almost believed
it was love again.
He pops up like a coyote
in the truck’s passenger door,
smelling of smoke and ruin.
Eighty‑five down the prairie road,
bug‑spattered glass,
sky bending blue,
fields gold as escape.
This isn’t working, I whisper.
We want different things.
Don’t, he says,
fingers crawling my thigh
No-
I shove.
Sweetness peels,
the sleeping volcano wakes.
Before his hand
can teach me the rest,
I already know:
there is no leaving.
The road is long,
lined with white crosses,
and the Ghost Buffalo
that's been leading me
down it
all my life.
Aug 5, 2025
Aug 5, 2025 at 3:41 PM UTC
i am running out of
air
i am running out of
scrapes on my knees
running out of
new corners to cross
in this neighborhood
we are growing up in the same houses
with the same curtain of trees draping
their limbs over our windowsills
we are sleeping in the same bedsheets
wrinkled from the imperative
tossing and turning
of adolescents.
we inflate our chests
and float away like red balloons
a freckle in the pale complexion of the sky
for this love affair with the pavement
has lost its edge
this slipping on
slimy banana peels
has stabilized
we have bitten and scratched and stained
the doors of your fingers
studied every trail of your fingerprints
we have grown older in the palm of your hand
your fists raised to the sky
it is time for you to open them.
Jan 19, 2018
Jan 19, 2018 at 3:33 PM UTC
Dear 'luck,
Sometimes I wonder how those girls feel
How their goodluck turned around
It's like running on banana peels
Keepfalling, can't even get up
The key is in the sea, someone changed our luck :(
Cos this isn't the guy we all trusted to change our walks
It's funny how $12 could buy a life
And N2000 can buy a wife
A child is supposed to think of getting grown
And not wearing a wedding gown
You call yourselves the govern-ment so do what you're meant to do
Cos I'm a believer that you can deliver our innocent people.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 4:10 AM UTC
What a face
"Sells"
Abruptly she yells
Matte burning dry
Just try
Too moisten her lips
She's the Red devil
From hell why does her
orange face peel sell?
The right color
a psychic won't tell
Wishing well drenched
He touched my orange juice
"All Frenched"
She loves to slice and
he peels what appeal
orange saffron sauce
One last juicy squirt
divorce
It's time for fresh squeeze
Too frozen concentrate
The happy hour "Orange" feel
no other place like fate
Ten times real
"One" face peel has been
love absorbed
Like lemon meringue
Tainted love
Bitter grind soft butter glove
Do you mind orange flame
(The Spa) sells to be loved
Tra la so kind all Grunge
Going "Wawa" coffee cruel
Other colors haha
Movie set Orange payroll
lounge tease squirt
But destroyed by the evil
spell curse
Summoned on sunburst
But we need the Orange
before the sun comes
Like clones orange, you glad
we have "Green Apple"
phones
One step beyond orange
zones
I don't want to burst your
orange sauce
Grand Marnier starry twist
of orange
Two timing orange yogurt
Taste to tangy it hurt
Hey Yo Orange peel Spa
Still sticks Orange Julius
flirt
O outrageous P pick
What turns us on and gets us sick
Plan your work and work your plan
Never offend her
Let's see the chef make you love her
Creamified dreamlike Whip free
The orange mousse pie
Let me hear it yummy to lie
Apr 21, 2018
Apr 21, 2018 at 11:43 AM UTC
A dizzy flake of snow falls,
perfectly balanced, upon
one outstretched finger's squat end.
It clings tight for a second-
a sticky, icy second
where I hold with fragile care
the weak sliver, and my breath.
Yet, the next moment, only
water my digit holds up.
It melts away instantly
with the dry warmth I supply,
and I find that, always, all
the delicate, pretty ones
with exquisite tender grace
burn out ever the fastest, first.
So snowdrop kisses, on the
frosty, red nip of my nose
now only make me shiver.
It's all just skin and ice,
and more ice and skin.
Peels of snow and chips of freeze
make chilled my blood and glazed eyes.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:02 PM UTC
Peeling Oranges
We sat on the floor as you began, and
you told me how she showed you the way
to skin the sun in one single swoop.
But the burn you learned by yourself.
It happened when you were finished,
at the moment you pressed the peels to bitten lips,
during the time you smelt the layers stuck to your
skin.
The sticky sweetness was enough.
You explained why before speaking of Shiva,
and Ganesha and someone else I cannot remember, but
I do recall how you didn’t like it when I stepped over
your legs.
Once you asked, I would step back over, so
you could grow tall and lean, but – now –
I don’t know what you look like, whether
you grew or peeled or warned others of the burn.
I’m only left with my steps, and my inability to peel has not changed.
But I do know – now – how you shouldn’t have had to ask me to step back over,
because I never had to ask you.
You always peeled two oranges at the same time,
just so I didn’t have to burn. For that reason, I know
how you grew far above me, even back then,
tall and lean.
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 2:32 AM UTC
They first appear
With two clicks of my lamp
I invite the darkness seeping from my windows
Covered in a lazy blanket
I lay on my side, watching the lifeless room
Restless, but all the same exhausted
From the ***** laundry and the memories I keep
One stares harmlessly
My lungs began screaming and wheezing
My heart and brain nearly fried
My muscles frozen in sweat
One easily becomes many
Soon, every corner of my room glares back at me
I press my eyes close and pray for sleep
But their hot breath runs down my neck
And peels my eyelids apart, squeezing my chest
Forcing out a stuttering sigh
I have no choice
Click click
My lamp peirces through each monster
Until I can fight them on my own
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 4:55 AM UTC
Proudly standing, rigid trees
Swaying gently in the breeze
We watch the shadows fall
Switches whip, the twigs are severed
Yet the mighty wood persevers
Awaiting its next call
Day becomes night; sunshine ends
Branches soon begin to bend
Raw bark peels in strips.
Autumn comes; the trees must fight
For each burning speck of light
Drudged from unwilling lips.
We watch them quiver in the breeze
The axe-man comes to fell the trees
The thinnest shall go first.
Year by year, the seasons change
We ignore the passing strange
Stiff bodies, in one hearse.
No one knows if it shall end
The loss of foe, alike with friend
Means sunlight for the living.
“What shall happen to them all?”
Still we watch the shadows fall
A gift that keeps on giving.
Sep 20, 2018
Sep 20, 2018 at 2:20 AM UTC
You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.
They've changed all that. Traveling
**** as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.
For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.
Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and ********* her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.
5.3k
They sit atop a low wall kicking heels,
Pyjamas draped in bathrobes pulled-to tight
To ward Antarctic winds — Nearby the squeals
Of blues and twos betray the mortal plight
Of some ill-fated soul — A fog bank peels
Up from their glowing embers, for in spite
Of coughing blood and dragging drips on wheels,
Collective will has long since lost the fight —
And did they think as children at the flicks,
As war was sold with glory, did they think
As Bogart raised a lucifer to his lips
How Tinseltown might guide them to this brink,
And just like Fleming’s catcher tempt them in
With candy coloured cartons and a grin?
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 10:52 AM UTC
It feels like tar on my tongue,
My mouth is dry and my throat burns-
Horrifying twists as my stomach churns.
Those words still come easy,
But my voicebox is chained and has to force them out.
Why do I let them out?
Those simple words will stay with me,
Floating about and polluting all I see
The memory of them rest easy,
Reminding me how bad I am.
I used to enjoy it,
Felt them to be necessary,
Natural,
Powerful,
And expressive.
But now their taste is bitter,
They are sickening and distasteful.
They offend me.
They whip at my ears and stab at my heart.
They are degrading.
I’ll sound like a hypocrite
I’ll sound entirely fake.
They are only words
But oh how they are foul.
I enjoy the taste of tar,
As it makes me unhappy to speak them.
I enjoy how it peels my skin,
As I do not want to be near them.
I adore how it destroys me,
Because it is that
Which builds me up.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 6:16 PM UTC
These nowhere towns,
Mountain tops snow-capped long through march,
All else,
Enshrouded in brown.
Though people live here,
And seems they aren't broken down.
The paint peels from the motel,
The mother tends to her daze,
The attendant ponders the insects of the sill,
Tumbleweed the only things, un-willing of being still.
Life is good here,
In these hazy,
Background,
Nowhere towns.
Mar 7, 2019
Mar 7, 2019 at 7:54 PM UTC
Forthcome that which has no meaning
beyond the petty dreamings of a fool.
Trickled thoughts walk off mid-conversation
with strangers into the vanishing
managing to forget that I forgot them first
way before they wandered off
to inhabit the earth
but that's just me being hipster,
rather be in Pittsburgh
because New York,
too contemporary.
Very hedonistic with a lack of trajectory
or am I projecting to protect me
from an existential vasectomy.
Maybe
I'm afraid I can't make it here
Maybe
I think I drink too much beer
and Baby
I should have been more clear
I am scared
I am scared
I am scared of being a failure
and I don't even know
what the **** failure is
or what one even looks like
because every time I think I've met one
they've taught me something about my life
half the the high school teachers
across this country couldn't.
My home
has taken their lives,
my passion and my poisons
have made it hard to get by
and my parents
have worked and will mostly likely die
holding on to concept I now perceive as a lie
That's why I so badly wanna believe in nothing
but I keep falling head over heels
cartoon like slips on banana peels
Women; smart enough
to know a poet is a bad deal
but I still do it 3, 4 times a day
I let someone inside
and we'll make love
with words and thoughts
we'll tell each other what we dream of
and talk about the kinds of things
that can't be bought
cause those are the things that matter
at least to me.
But I guess
that's just me
being hipster
again.
Nov 2, 2013
Nov 2, 2013 at 1:19 PM UTC
Eid reven nac taht eno... Latrommi ma I
Thgil eht gniruoved... Ssenkrad eht ma I
Edisni lived eht, sraef ruoy... Eramthgin ruoy ma I
Thgin yreve peels ot og uoy nehw, luos ruoy gnilaetS
Mrah yna morf uoy stcetorp taht eno... Ruoivas eht ma I
Nus lanrete eht ekil gninrub... Tghil eht ma I
Dnal esimorp eht ot egdirb a... Ediug ruoy ma I
Dnah efas ni er'uoy erus gnikam, Peels ouy sa ouy gnidrauG
Erif lanrefni eht em ni eveileb... Lived eht ma I
Erised uoy lla gnitnarg ni em etivni, eman ym maercS
Thgif ew lived eht rof htaif yb deneprahs thgil fo drows a...Legna na ma I
Thgink gninihs a, rotcetorp ruoy em otnu llac ythgimla eht fo rewop eht htiW
One may contemplate, doubting their faith,
For some reason with a little suffering they started to hate;
Easily clouded their minds with deception and lies!
That's what devils do before plotting your demise...
One may keep holding on, no matter what is thrown;
For they believe in the almighty, and the coming salvation;
A walk through hell, a test of their own will and faith
For never a moment the devil tried blinding their sight
We are our own angels and devils
With free will we live a life with choices
A path through darkness where the devil lies
A stairway to heaven where the almighty shines
You need a mirror to talk to your self
Ask something that you will not regret
What kind of person soon you'll become
A soldier of God or an army of satan...
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 10:43 AM UTC
Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
the sidewalk
our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too
you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
we got anything we could want.
I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
mouth and circling buzzards around.
But how does a girl say
she would rather have someone than a cigarette
stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
and feign middle school maturity?
We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
not powdered sugar from beignets
or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.
I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
to be your personal belonging
the treasure you immediately thought of –
but that is not what Summer was.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
Everywhere, on the sidewalks, in the gutters, right outside my door. Flourishing in the streets of Tegucigalpa, like leftover confetti from Mardi Gras. Lining the paths, nestled in the gravel, the broken concrete, and overgrown weeds. Coloring the landscape with orange and green.
Proliferating around garbage cans, discarded bottles, tires, and take out boxes, liberated to the acrid landscape around.
Men, cutting back the peels, devouring the tropical flesh, delectable, united to pits. Dark skin and eyes, their accents singing, so different from my own.
I stepped carefully, but always underneath, a sweet stickness, clinging to my soles. A bond to the red dirt, platanos fritos, and cattle roaming the street.
When I returned to the wide boulevards, pristine and meticulously clean, I stopped watching my feet, looking for mango peels underneath.
Jan 17, 2019
Jan 17, 2019 at 3:04 PM UTC
When stretch'd on one's bed
With a fierce-throbbing head,
Which preculdes alike thought or repose,
How little one cares
For the grandest affairs
That may busy the world as it goes!
How little one feels
For the waltzes and reels
Of our Dance-loving friends at a Ball!
How slight one's concern
To conjecture or learn
What their flounces or hearts may befall.
How little one minds
If a company dines
On the best that the Season affords!
How short is one's muse
O'er the Sauces and Stews,
Or the Guests, be they Beggars or Lords.
How little the Bells,
Ring they Peels, toll they Knells,
Can attract our attention or Ears!
The Bride may be married,
The Corse may be carried
And touch nor our hopes nor our fears.
Our own ****** pains
Ev'ry faculty chains;
We can feel on no subject besides.
Tis in health and in ease
We the power must seize
For our friends and our souls to provide.
3.6k
I wrote you something. Im so angry. No idea why. The paint peels, the fruit rot, and I am still here. The world spins, the birds chirp, and I am still here. And people ***** and people moan, and they run and they laugh and they cry and they sing and they mourn and they **** and they die. And I am still here. sitting in the dark lit only by candlelight writing in a tiny notebook. writing about how I feel. And I wasnt planning on writing a poem.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 7:25 AM UTC
the end is now in sight
terror comes encroaching
don’t let the perilous dusk
douse the flame that leads you
the dream inside you burns
yet darkness wants to dim it
when you want to quit
hear the summit calling
and when’s the sky’s sunlit
and faith is at its brightest
the blackness strikes again
the apex is still higher
tho’ energy now spent
you vow to keep on going
just when the crest you’ve reached
you slip and fall now dangling
hanging by a nail
a famine then come robs you
feed on your inner will
to see your destination
you break free and go on
the wind strikes now the hardest
resist not but take flight
set sail to elevation
your spirit will not break
your eye’s upon the zenith
but next the snake will bite
let passion be your tonic
it burns right through your veins
your skin molting peels off you
metamorphosis has changed
the venom to elixir
then illness strikes quite fierce
you sink into a deep trench
reach down throw up your twine
towards the light you see it
no strength left yet still walk
you are not to be broken
stop gasp and catch your breath
you are at the top now
a phosphorescent light
envelops all around you
spin it into gold
throw rope to those still climbing
you who’ve scaled the mount
tho’ scarred have high ascended
fear’s an illusion here
love’s altitude has conquered
never give up hope
tho’ night is at its cruelest
hang on to see the sun
the pinnacle is magic
©2016janetaylor
May 19, 2016
May 19, 2016 at 11:48 AM UTC