Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,

than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.
Mikaila Sep 2018
The day you got your hair cut
I went to a lesbian bar after work.
It was 3
And I was tired
But I went straight there
Because I had to do something.
I knew it was a lost cause before I even got there.
The back of my neck was prickling with tension
With fear
Because I knew I was too late.
Somewhere in the depths of my soul
My free will was on a gurney,
Cold.
But I couldn’t help it-
I needed to feel like I had control,
So I went inside.
People were dancing.
None of them held themselves the way you do
Like a marble statue that has set down axe and shield and stepped off the plinth for a brief rest
(You will be returning to battle shortly-
After you fix your eyeliner.)

I did a shot
Because that’s what you do.
They were free- *** on the Beach.
I sat there,
Wondering why the fact that you named your cat Heathcliff as a child meant that I had to love you.

I decided that I needed something stronger in the way of alcohol.

A girl with soft brown eyes and long hair came up to me.
Her name was Tiffany.
She wasn’t clever like you
And her voice
Wasn’t low and rough like yours
But she told me I was pretty.
I already knew, but I thanked her.
I felt nothing.
She wasn’t interesting
Or funny
Or smart.
She was attractive- beautiful even, I suppose,
And maybe she was kind.
She bought me a drink,
And mistook my sadness for shyness.
As I answered her questions I was afraid your name would fall from my lips like a seed
Take root and grow up through the floorboards.
Nothing she said changed me, nothing I said back changed me,
And my thoughts kept snagging on you
Tearing and unraveling.
I needed you out of my head.
She was looking at me with big eyes
And I suppose they were compelling
But they weren’t yours-
Rimmed with black, hypnotic and stormy at times, sparkling with mischief at others,
Forever changing and forever captivating,
Windows to a soul I fiercely wish I knew-
They were just eyes, and maybe they were vulnerable
Or curious
Or sweet.
I kissed her so that I could stop looking into them
And not seeing you there.
Her lips tasted like nothing.
I closed my eyes and kissed her harder,
Hoping for a reason to forget you.

We were beautiful, I knew that.
I could feel eyes on us-
Two small, lovely women
Tangled on the dance floor under the lights
Fingers in each other’s hair-
We must have looked
Just like lovers.

I searched for a way out of my feelings for you.
I kissed her for a long time, until we were both gasping.
I found nothing.
In my frustration I pulled her head back,
Bit her lip
Pressed my fingers hard into the back of her neck
And I felt her lust
But not mine.
It was nice to be wanted
But not nice enough.
I wanted to hurt her for touching me
For not being you
So I pulled away
And kissed her cheek gently
My hands beneath her jaw.
“Wow,” she said.
I couldn’t look at her.
That tenderness wasn’t hers
But it didn’t matter.
I kissed her hands
In penance disguised as sweetness.
Suddenly all the anger was gone from me
And I felt desolate.

That night I walked home with my head buzzing.
I wasn’t drunk,
I was sober as hell
Head pounding with thoughts of you.
I hated it.
I hate it.
Somehow I fell into this feeling
And I’ve been fighting not to drown ever since.
When I look at you
I feel everything I wish I’d felt while I was kissing her
And more
That I sometimes wish I’d never feel again.
Sometimes I think you see it.
Sometimes I know I cover for it badly.
Sometimes, when you’re suddenly present
Like the sun has turned on just for me
And then distant later
Like the sea at night
I think you know I already love you.
Maybe you hate it like I hate it.
Maybe you worship it like I worship it.
Maybe you fear it
And I don’t blame you.
A storm presses out against my skin when I look at you
And I’m surprised no chaos seeps through.
My bones hum with it
My heartbeat reaching like thunder into my fingers.

I’ll probably never kiss you
And maybe that’s for the best
Because even being near you makes me feel like I’m falling from somewhere high up.
If I kissed you, I’d feel everything, I’m sure of it-
Everything there is to feel
And it would end me
And I would be grateful.

I wonder if you ever see that in my eyes.
That fear, that longing, that shame and joy.
A love and loathing so intense it scalds.
‘I can’t believe I’m here again,’
It pounds through my veins.
‘I can’t believe I love another person
Who is always looking elsewhere.’

Just know, if you ever discover how I feel
That I tried to **** it.
I looked at this beautiful feeling
A feeling you could pray before like an altar
A feeling you could whisper into like a temple- barefoot and cold with wonder- and hear your soul echo back,
I looked at the sacred piece of humanity that had suddenly risen in my heart like a hymn
And I tried to silence it-
I tried hard-
So that you would never have to fear it.

I failed. It lives.
It took root in me, and whenever I speak your name little harsh flowers push their way up through the concrete under my feet, sending cracks out like jagged spiderwebs.
They bloom like wounds.
They kiss the sky.
And, slowly,
They are crumbling this city to dust.
Title is a quote from Milton’s Paradise Lost, spoken by Lucifer.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.

The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly **** out their names.

The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence
Adia Heart Oct 2014
I pried out my own skin
wide open
with needles dipped
in cheap india ink; I dabbed
at the black mixed with red
staining my fingers.
Do I do this for the pain,
or to get the poison trickling in
to my skin, to my veins?
A symbol, an alphabet.
Vast meanings that I tried to bestow
upon them hours later
really means nothing at all.

There's the cause and the effect,
which really goes both ways.
The pain for the gain
of the blurred out ink under my skin,
and the gain for the pain
of the sharpness prickling

my ankles, both legs
bare the stain of alcohol tinged
nights.
The skin beneath my eyelids
a darkened haze;
but the tattoo still burns
needle-sharp against it all.
raen Oct 2011
I may never know what exactly happened,
but I think I know the why of it

Tadhana…Fate…Destiny…Kismet…

Put it in so many words,
but it all boils down to that.

Tadhana…

shivers down my spine,
tears prickling my eyes,
as I hear once more the story,
the destiny
of two souls
one stormy day in July…

She was being stupid,
crashing into the waves that day
just for the thrill of it

He was being pensive,
reflecting on how those waves
just somehow seemed to soothe him

People slowly left the shores
as dark clouds loomed in the horizon
save for these two souls...

She wasn’t even supposed to be there,
just a spur of the moment thing,
forgetting her other worries
she loved storms, she loved the beach
combine them and for her it was bliss…

He went there for closure,
the 10th year of his brother’s death
trying to accept that he did all he could
he loved him, he loved the beach
but guilt drowned him…

The rains then came down in sheets,
winds whipping, storm waves crashing
she was almost at shore though,
when the undertow pulled her back

He thought he was imagining things,
his brother’s ghost perhaps?
When he saw her again,
and fear was tossed like jetsam

Was she the answer he was seeking for?
His redemption in another form?
Was this the reason why he was here now?
Her only hope for salvation?

Rushing out to sea,
adrenaline rushing through his veins
Faith and Fate working together,
he swam towards her

and as they reached the shore
the winds dropped to a whisper,
the waves went back tickling sand,
the raindrops trickled into drizzles

She was breathing, thank God
He lay beside her, exhausted
She could only thank him with a smile
well, a smile that could match the Sun

and she took his hand...
and put it over her heart

It was not so much that their hands fit perfectly,
but there was something else
mole on her right ring finger
perfectly aligning
mole on his left ring finger

Tadhana.

Shivers down my spine,
tears prickling my eyes,
as I hear once more the story,
the destiny
of two souls
one stormy day in July…
and of why I am here.
'tadhana' is a Filipino word for fate/destiny/kismet

07252010
My mom says,

"You look beautiful today"
She asks "have you lost any weight honey? Here's a salad before you go to work.
You dont want to get fat"

Mom says, life is always easier for skinny girls and that I haven't had it easy so maybe my weight is the problem.

I tell her I'm comfortable.
But as I walk away, I find myself gazing into my bedroom mirror pinching at the fat on my stomach
Wishing it was nothing but paper, because then I could cut it off and maybe then I would be happy and maybe then my mom would think I was good enough.
Mom says, "those leggings aren't flattering on you. And don't you know what people will say about you if you walk around dressed like that? Hide your body. Hide your curves, the world doesn't need to see your fat seeping through those nylon pants. "

I yell back " I don't care what you think! I LIKE THEM"
Mom says "yes you do, I know you do. Now go change and come eat your salad."

I force feed myself a salad for the 5th time this week and change into a baggy sweatshirt and some sweatpants.

I want to believe that I don't care what she thinks but her words feel like bee stings prickling my entire body and no matter how many times they attack, I don't grow numb to them.

I weighed myself today, I lost 5 pounds this week but im starting to feel sick from hunger, I'm light headed.

I head downstairs, the thought of inhaling every carb we have in the kitchen because it's been 2 weeks since ive had one and the cravings are too strong.

Just as I'm about to make some pasta mom comes into the kitchen.

"You look amazing," she says.
"You're so beautiful hunny I'm so proud of you. Wait... is that pasta? What are you doing? If you eat that you'll get fat again. If you're fat you won't be happy. You can't be happy. Put that down. Here's a pill for you hunny"

Take it when you're hungry, it'll take away the cravings and surpress your appetite.

I take the stupid pills that mom seems to think work like magic and I go back up to my room, staring at this body of mine that doesn't feel like mine anymore.

I hate myself.
I hate that I want to eat carbs and I hate that I dream of sugar every night.
I hate that my mom thinks I need a pill to fix who I am, as if I am unlovable when i am not losing weight.
Even as her daughter.

Growing up, we're always taught that our mothers are our protectors...
But I realize now my mother is the reason I never feel like I'm good enough.
I never feel like I'm loveable.

Mother's are suppose to make their daughters feel beautiful and empowered.

I spent my entire childhood on a diet.
To this day, I still hear her voice in my head.
Have a salad honey.
It will be easier if you're skinny.
Change into something else.

I wonder, if this will follow me forever.
If I will always be haunted, by my mother's shame.

I promise though,
If I ever have a daughter,
I will empower her to love herself no matter what.
I will teach her that love isn't based on your waist size and neither is acceptance you can find love at 400 pounds the same way you can at 130 pounds.
I will teach her she is beautiful.
I will make sure that when she grows up, she's not afraid to touch pasta, or have a sweet.
I will teach her, no matter what, SHE IS LOVEABLE. And so are you.. And so am I... I think...
In the rectory garden on his evening walk
Paced brisk Father Shawn.  A cold day, a sodden one it was
In black November.  After a sliding rain
Dew stood in chill sweat on each stalk,
Each thorn; spiring from wet earth, a blue haze
Hung caught in dark-webbed branches like a fabulous heron.

Hauled sudden from solitude,
Hair prickling on his head,
Father Shawn perceived a ghost
Shaping itself from that mist.

'How now,' Father Shawn crisply addressed the ghost
Wavering there, gauze-edged, smelling of woodsmoke,
'What manner of business are you on?
From your blue pallor, I'd say you inhabited the frozen waste
Of hell, and not the fiery part.  Yet to judge by that dazzled look,
That noble mien, perhaps you've late quitted heaven?'

In voice furred with frost,
Ghost said to priest:
'Neither of those countries do I frequent:
Earth is my haunt.'

'Come, come,' Father Shawn gave an impatient shrug,
'I don't ask you to spin some ridiculous fable
Of gilded harps or gnawing fire:  simply tell
After your life's end, what just epilogue
God ordained to follow up your days.  Is it such trouble
To satisfy the questions of a curious old fool?'

'In life, love gnawed my skin
To this white bone;
What love did then, love does now:
Gnaws me through.'

'What love,' asked Father Shawn, 'but too great love
Of flawed earth-flesh could cause this sorry pass?
Some ****** condition you are in:
Thinking never to have left the world, you grieve
As though alive, shriveling in torment thus
To atone as shade for sin that lured blind man.'

'The day of doom
Is not yest come.
Until that time
A crock of dust is my dear hom.'

'Fond phantom,' cried shocked Father Shawn,
'Can there be such stubbornness--
A soul grown feverish, clutching its dead body-tree
Like a last storm-crossed leaf?  Best get you gone
To judgment in a higher court of grace.
Repent, depart, before God's trump-crack splits the sky.'

From that pale mist
Ghost swore to priest:
'There sits no higher court
Than man's red heart.'
ALK Apr 2013
It was back today,
that prickling scent of ozone,
that foggy sensation
slowing my thoughts
and adding dead-weight to my head.
I'm not losing grip again,
no,
I'm just viewing the world.
It seems like every time
I sweep my gaze
across an object or face
it's wearing a mask I've never before seen.
This feeling's not new,
in fact it's an old friend.
I beg it to return,
to help me see this peaceful world again.
Everything crystalline and perfect,
it's a new understanding
hidden beyond confoundment.
I fear it,
because I recognize only that which I have viewed before,
but I always wish that it had lasted just an hour more.
A flower now seems wilted,
while another blooms.
The one constant,
it's always you.
LovelyBones Feb 2015
Water filled eyes
Tear stricken face
Mascara running all over the place

Trembling hands
Vermilion drained heart
Shriveled up soul, ripped apart.

Solid enough, a single tug
Unravels each strand
As a woven rug.

Weakened and empty
Failed once again
Never enough to fight through the end.

Prickling fear
Climbs down the spine
Paralyzing each victim that it can find.

Locked in a ruthless, icy cold clutch
Struggling for air, but the suffering is too much.
The title says it all.
Manny Mar 2014
I lock myself in places - so no one can see me crying,
So no one can see my tears
Or my pitiful face.
My mind explodes as my thoughts torment me
It all gets so overwhelming
And I can feel the tears prickling my eyes
I close them - and they sting
But no tears fall - although I can feel them,
Scoring their way down my cheeks
Outlining my faults,
Outlining my weaknesses,
And forcing me to atone for them
By keeping them suppressed in my ****** up mind
And not permitting my tears to fall...

These are my restricted tears.
Written 21:59pm Wednesday 19th March 2014

Have you ever wanted to cry but no tears came out, so you just stare blankly into space while feeling your heart break into pieces.

© Maniba Kiani
The fruit rolled by all day.
They prayed the cogs would creep;
They thought about Saturday pay,
And Sunday sleep.

Whatever he smelled was good:
The fruit and flesh smells mixed.
There beside him she stood,--
And he, perplexed;

He, in his shrunken britches,
Eyes rimmed with pickle dust,
Prickling with all the itches
Of sixteen-year-old lust.
Nancy Dees Jun 2015
Rugged body hunches,
Impression of a humpback,
Spit blood more than saliva,
Straighten posture to reveal
Ghastly mold of ribcage,
Bones poke at the dermis,
Gasp, prickling oxygen,
Pierces respiratory system,
Flinch to agonizing pain
An hour of spasms at the most,
Wounds deemed trivial,
Famed hers walk around
To stitch the prized emblems
Mymai Yuan Sep 2010
It’s been a decade and a half that I haven’t returned back to my little home in that far away magical place. Fifteen years- exploring and travelling through the world. It was always my dream, ever since I was a young boy. Living this life is lonely. No one ever belongs to me, nor do I ever belong to anyone. Seeing a million things is marvelous, but it could be twice as marvelous with a companion to express the feelings over instead of my usual, battered black log book that never talked back but was filled with entries from all over the world. One day, I’ll publish it.

I guess the fact that I was always alone was the reason why the little home and my little mother that I use to take for granted became more and more part of me as I stayed away. The land, the gently curving hills and glassy lake grew clearer and clearer in my mind until sometimes, it was all I could see when I shut my eyes at night after a long day of work. Sometimes I would smell the soap on mothers’ skin acutely and played her voice in my head like a radio.
A blur of bright brown eyes.

I’ve been to almost every country in this world: Japan, France, America, Denmark, China and all the different continents… almost a hundred different countries. Each country held such a different (but slightly similar if they were in the same continent) flavor in the air and never failed to teach me one new thing. They all held such distinct character. Beholding the stunning sights and noticing the heart-wrenching small details of a new place was my passion. It captivated me, but the calm, steady love of my heart remained still.
Nothing touched me like the memory of home and my mother. Not the women who flickered through the chapter of my life, appearing in explosions of lust and never meaning more than ***, though some begged me to stay. My loneliness would sway my path of thinking for a short one or two week before I realized it wasn’t what I truly wanted.  
My lovers reminded me of cookie crumbs fallen from my mouth down onto my shirt- there for a brief, brief moment- sometimes picked up to nibble on or brushed away and forgotten.

Oh Love; Love never found me. Perhaps all the travel I did made it harder for Her to find me. I was never at a place for long. Perhaps She, Love, grew tired of trying to catch up with me as I crossed the seas and vast lands. Maybe She got lost one day in an Indian market with the exotic, fat fruits and glittering bangles- fading off into the air with the aroma of powerfully rich local dishes.
Or maybe I travelled away from Her, and She got left behind.

2 a.m.- On a train: the train is brand new and the metal is still yet glossy and innocent from hard rains, thick snow or fiery heat as the Southern part of my homeland is so prone to. The window is surprisingly see-through, unlike all the muddy windows covered in dust, grime, bird droppings and smashed insects (especially squished mosquitoes) I have looked out of in the past fifteen years. I think I’ll read a few chapters of that book about Cambodian culture to distract my impatient mind: sitting on this cold train that will take me home is all I can possibly think about. Hurry, you ******* train, hurry!
There is something about a train that calms me down and makes me feel all starry-eyed. It is the memory of the only girl I ever loved. A little girl I grew up with. Such thick dark brown hair, big round bright chocolate eyes and the loudest, most obnoxiously boyish laugh I have ever heard from a girl. Hmm, I recalled the small rounded chest and bottom.
We lived so far deep in the country side and one day, on an overnight school trip, the school we attended at took all hundred students on a trip to see the city for just a day. Flashes of her eating a creamy white ice cream sprinkled with tiny candies of the rainbow and standing in awe of the huge library made me smile to myself.
How when everyone was tired that night back on the train, even the teachers exhausted after an early morning and keeping a hundred thirteen-year-olds under control for a whole day, fell asleep. My eyelids were just drooping when she appeared- I smelled her first, sweet like honey with a tinge of something sour like orange or lemon peels. My senses have always been sensitive- especially sight and smell. She carefully peeled back the curtains around the bed, crept into my bunk and cuddled with me, curling her tough plump legs.
My mind flew in many wild ways- for as I said, my senses were sensitive and the curiosity and thrill of an inexperienced young boy did not help to make them any paler- and try as I might to quiet the thoughts, they leapt at her every movement.
I suppose it was her way of telling me she had fallen in love with me. Her cold monkey-feet pressed against me and whispering the night away: her tousled head as she kept sitting up to look out the window on the side to look at the stars. I sat up with her and held her against my chest. I remember wondering how my heart wasn’t bursting from the enormous love I felt for this creature in my lap, watching the dark silhouettes of trees rushing by and the black swaying fingers of rice patties illuminated by needle-point stars and a full, silver moon. The beautiful creature turned around, placed her icy finger tips on my hot neck, and gave a little sigh of relief before leaning in and kissing me.

My skin was covered in goose bumps.

Oranges are my favorite fruit.
I left her, my little home and mother at nineteen. The darling was mine till then. I wrote to her, but when she got around to replying I had already moved. And there my love became my once-loved.
The heart ache didn’t last too long. There was too much to see, I was young and full of cravings and impossible to satisfy hunger despite the countless number of women. I lived in the moment, the fiery moment of passion and life, and the memory of her were blown to wisps.
A ray of pink sunlight broke me from my thoughts and as I rushed back from the past to its future, I wondered in a haze whether she had married or not.

Five a.m. – the sun was up. The sky had streaks of dark blue, so dark it was almost black. A ****** red of a newly-cut wound ran through the sky, arm in arm with royal purple and a pink the color of a child’s lips.

Six a.m. - twenty-two or so students milled into the train chattering. The younger ones have neatly combed hair, slicked down with mousse and parted so aggressively the comb lines are visible cutting the hair in hard chunks with a paper-white hairline slicing through the scalp. The smallest one would be around thirteen and the oldest at eighteen. The oldest-looking one is very pretty with slanted gray eyes and chestnut hair- very matured for her age. A puff of powder to conceal any imperfection of her skin, and the first two buttons on her school blouse unbuttoned to hint at a cleavage of well-developed large *******. Her gaze darts over me frequently. She looks like a lover I had in Holland. I give her a small smile and she returns it, batting her lids to reveal matted dark lashes and shimmery pale blue eyelids like the wings of a butterfly. No child, only if I was much, much younger and had just left home as you will so soon.
A stench of too much perfume emits from the girl beside her. So much that I am momentarily diverted and glance up at her from my log book. I will be relieved when they leave. If there’s one thing I find extremely unattractive in a woman is an overload of perfume- it becomes a stench that is a reminder of gaudy prostitutes.

Six-thirty a.m. -  The train jolts to yet another stop and they clatter out but not before I heard the words, “That man on the train near us was rather handsome, wasn’t he?” I cannot help but chuckle.

Seven a.m. – the train has stopped at least five more stations. This is going to be a long trip. Rummaging in my packed bag for a pair of dark sunglasses I push them on, waiting for the fact that I haven’t slept all two weeks in excitement (and travelling at the speed of light half way around the world at the same time) to kick in and hit me unconscious with sleep.

Two p.m. - the dark glasses cannot block the glaring sunlight of the sunshiny afternoon. We have almost finished passing the city. The rows of buildings, large houses, one-story apartments are narrowing and shrinking in size. I know the railroad tracks have remained unchanged in destination and twenty-so years ago I took this exact same ride but everywhere is unrecognizable.  
I check my wristwatch once again even though I know the time: around nine more hours to go before it reaches the very end possible station and I take the long walk back to my little home.

Six p.m. - I talk amiably to passengers on the train. It is beautiful to hear my home dialect again. The words I speak have grown quite clumsy and my accent is rough. No matter, in two weeks time I’ll be fluent and chirping along with the same fluid accent as the old man beside me is.

Eleven-thirty p.m. – I am all alone on the train. The old man just got off at the station before. He shared a portion of his sandwich with me and a swig of beer from his water bottle (naughty old man), seeing as in my anticipation I forgot to buy any food for the day. A very interesting old man who was delighted to know I travelled just as he use to in his earlier days- quote to remember from him: “Too many people go on about this ******* of a ‘fixed’ home: Home isn’t where you live, son, it’s where they understand you. I’m telling you, that’s something so special in this crazy world.”
It is horrible to be sitting here alone counting down the minutes without a distraction but after all, it is near the last of stations and no one ever comes here anyways. There’s nothing here that could attract visitors. If I were a traveler nothing about this place would excite me very much. Yet for this first time in fifteen years, I’m not an outsider and this land promises me much. My hand shakes from fatigue- but mostly from eagerness. Little home, darling little home, I am coming!
It is a chilly, chilly winter night. My breath pants out in short white puffs. I wrap my scarf more securely around my neck, capturing the warmth as I step out from the warm train into the cold air outside. I can barely notice my environment on the way home except the path has remained unchanged. It is as if I am travelling back into time itself. After a while, the coldness turning the tip of my ears and nose pink is forgotten. All I know is each step is taking me closer and closer to home.

I finally see it. The small little house with a small brown door standing quietly alone next to other identical houses comes into my view. The little homes are clustered on the edge of a river bank, surrounding by dark green trees. The crisp rustling of the leaves in the winter breeze brings a melancholy happiness so great it makes my chest throb. I cup a tiny bit of snow from the ground in my mitten and taste it: oh the same sharp iciness on my tongue.

I wonder if she still lives in that one with the indented steps, the stairs worn out by the thundering saunter of her and her five brothers. They still haven’t bought a new flight of stairs?

The river’s surface is smooth and serene, its surface looking like molten silver rippling in the slight breeze. I remembered in the summer when we, the children, danced; splashing in the water and the elders watched lovingly.

Mother’s carefully watching eyes on me as I swam to and fro, my laughter mingling with everyone else’s. She was especially careful after that near-fateful day when I was six and foolishly went swimming in August without telling mother as she made us her special clear chicken broth. I had inhaled gallons of water before she fished me out, both of us soaking and sobbing. How wonderful it was to hold onto something warm and solid: something breathing, full of life, and I clutched onto her and she clutched onto me and my life.
Up the wooden steps… how surprised mother will be. The ghosts of memories come running to me, pounding their way towards me to greet me first as I open the wooden door with the key slung around my neck as always: mother with her hair curled in soft mocha *****, mother making an ice lollipop in the hot summers in her flower-printed summer dresses, mother swishing around the house cleaning in her blue apron, the hot fire with hot chocolate as we told stories, all the different cats we had purring in a soothing melody… Amalie and her laughing figure spread over the sofa chattering away, Amalie’s quick, hidden kisses in the corners when mother was out of the room or pretending not to look, Amalie’s long hands creeping towards mine… Amalie and mother gossiping together and mother declaring Amalie was the daughter she never had and mother eyeing me knowingly, expecting me to settle my ways and marry Amalie…

Oh little home, I am back, I am home.

I shall go lie on my feathery bed and in the morning I’ll wake up and have no idea where I am before the thought comes back to me that this morning- no, I am not somewhere around half the world away- but in my little hometown.
As sure as the sun will rise, Mother will wake up at her usual eight o’clock and I’ll be downstairs in our sunny-tiled kitchen making a bowl of porridge for her and me.
After her tears and hugs, we’ll sit down by the fire with hot chocolate despite it being early morning and the skies aren’t yet jet-black. I see in my mind’s eyes her dark eyes huge as I unravel my colorful carpet of stories and treasure box of tokens from all around the world.
Maybe after that I’ll ask her whatever became of Amalie…
I hear the tread of footsteps on the stair case. They are heavy sounds. Has mother gained much weight in her old age? She was always a lithe little woman when I was here.
A burly shape appears in the shadows.
For one ******* blindingly stupid moment I think it is mother much fattened in a fluffy night gown, her hair curled up in soft ***** yet again. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to believe despite my senses and instinct suddenly prickling up in one jolt through the spine.
And the shape emerges holding a bat and the outlines gains focus to become a bear-like man with dark brows furrowed and a mass of curls. He starts yelling at me and slashing his bat dangerously.
I raise my arms up in defense and the world swirls around me. From far away I hear my voice shaking in fear and fury, “Where is my mother!” I yell her name and I yell my name to let her know I am here. I am insane with fear for the safety of my mother. No, it cannot be that I come home on the day a demon decides to rob the house of a frail gentle angel. If he has killed her, I will- “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?!”
“What?” he asks in a tone quiet from extreme bewilderment, his grip on the bat loosens and I am quick to see this and take advantage of it.
With an explosion of violent swears I leap onto him to throttle him to death. “MOTHER?! MOTHER! WHAT HAVE YOU ******* DONE TO MY MOTHER?! I’M GOING TO ******* **** YOU, YOU *******!”
A fast pattering of feet sound down the stairs and my mind registers them to be female before I am wrenched of the man and we are separated. I am about to clutch this woman safe from the hulking beast before I notice the skin on the hands pushing my panting chest away from killing the beast are too young to be mothers’. Her hair is a dark mahogany brown, not mild coffee like mothers’.
I stare at her, silent in shock. All the fight drains out of me.
Those eyes that were once so chocolate-brown and bright have lost their sparkle in her tiredness and appear almost… dull as she turns to me.
She says my name three times before I can reply. “Sit down here.”
It is strange that she has ordered me to sit down on my own sofa in my living room. Her frosty hands guide me. “Amalie… where is mother?” I manage to stutter, all the time keeping an eye on the monster of a man.
“Listen to me” she took a few shuddering breaths, “I’m sorry to tell you this way, I wished I could’ve told you any other way but this… your mother is dead. She died five years ago.”
She watched me with an exhausted expression, “In her will she left this house to you and me because she assumed one day-” she shot a cautious glance at the man who towered in the shadows next to her, nursing
To strive, for recognition

An assembly point for thought
Triumphed within an open page

Paper evidence of unspoken verse
Retrieved from the place behind this heart

Do you mind?

Don’t look over my shoulder at my vulnerability
Private stance is mine

Do not mock as I turn the page
A personal preview of this unlocked memory

Back of my neck, prickling
Anticipating on the spot reaction

Young, ill at ease
Crying from the yard

Hiding the scars
Don’t rush away the memories, a deluge

When time was so limited
Become brave

Force open the private recess
Cobwebbed and masked by dust

Speak clearly, not from mumbling
Mouth, I need to………….. know

I am blemished

So glad to be alongside you
Reunited, forgotten, forgiven.....now ribbon tied

Can we bury?
It would seem not......but wait and remember

Deceived by the dark
Under dressed for the occasion

Battered suitcase dragged and kicked open
Essays of remembrance

Headlines screaming for discussion
Released for a while

Obeyed and tidied
Press down and close the rusty catches

My new day transcribed here
I don’t mind, lean on my shoulder

See my vulnerability
It makes me strong
Victoria Kiely Oct 2013
The rain beat the pavement as the man ran to a nearby bus shelter holding a newspaper over his ragged hair. The rain hitting the glass was nearly deafening, but there was comfort in the sound. A public transit bus comes and goes, recognizing the bleak figure immediately. This was, after all, his commonplace - the closest thing he had to a home in the past two years.
"Get a job", people would say, as if it were ever really that easy.
He had been diagnosed with depression after his wife’s passing nearly four years ago and suffered alone as he mourned and pushed through what most people see as a normal life. On the outside, it was unapparent how miserable he had become, unable to share the world with another as he had now for so many years. He came to his cubical on time each day, he worked until the late afternoon had came and went, and he left without a word. He was the unnoticed face in a crowd.
All at once, he lost his drive to live his life. He stopped showing up to work, he did not pay his bills, he didn’t answer the door or the phone. The clear print reading “EVICTION NOTICE” had meant nothing to him. He took only the essential things with him as he left behind an empty house behind. The last thing he put into his bag was a copy of the Odyssey, worn now after so many years of attentive reading.
The tattered copy sat open on his crossed legs, the moment passing by. The walls of the shelter sheild him from the wind and welcome him into their embrace. the adequecy of lighting was questionable as the sun descends and the world loses its colour. A streetlamp flickers to life and casts an ominous glow onto the street beneath it. He continues to read about the long journey of a man trying to find his way home, not unlike himself. What’s happening on the page is disconnected from thepart of the world that he is trapped on; he watches his secret world become a vivid painting beneath his hands and turns the page.
"Hello," said a man waiting for another bus to take him to a far off place.
He didn’t respond.
"I take it you like the book, judging by the condition…" The man tried again to grasp his attention. His dark figure loomed on the other side of the glass.
"I do", he said.
"What’s your name, son?"
He paused, turning to fully look at the man. “Its Tristan,” he said, contemplating the man as he stepped into the light. The man shuffled into the shelther gingerly, leaving behind the loud clack of his cane. His clothes chaffed against the skin on his legs, and he carried his fedora in his hand. He creased his face in pain as he sat beside Tristen.
"My name is Connor Wright", he breathed heavily, struggling to continue. "I have a spare copy of that book myself, laying around at home. No use to myself. Would you want to have it? I can bring it to you the same time next week"
"How do you know I will return it?"
"Perhaps I don’t want it back"
The silence stretched. “I would like that very much, sir” replied Tristan.
A dark blue bus pulled up to the stop without warning and stirred the stillness in the air. The headlights shone in their eyes and caught the edge of the mans thick-framed glasses. “I will see you next week then”
Each week came and passed as Mr. Wright began to bring Tristan books frequently, exchanging each new book for the last. “Why do you treat me with such kindness when I have nothing to give?” Tristan would ask him each week, never recieving an answer.
A year passed by in the presence of the silent agreement. Mr. Wright would often bring Tristan a warm container filled with soup, or a sandwhich left over from lunch to accompany his reading for the night.
On a cold night in april, Tristan waited at the bus stop for the greying man. He spotted him across the street as he waved to him. Tristan, flashing his increasingly more common smile, returned his vivid wave in the direction of Mr. Wright.
"Hello Tristan", he began as always with a bright smile. His distinct aroma filled the hollow bus shelter - a mix of burnt wood, but also new paper and musk, and apparent paradox. After a brief conversation, Tristan took the book out of Mr. Wright’s frail hands.
The bus arrived shortly thereafter and Mr. Wright borded the exhausted vehical, taking his time going up the short stoop of stairs.
This book was rather unlike the other books that Mr. Wright had given him in the past months. His books had usually been full of journeys abundant with creatures, or filled to the brim with a quaint scenery, embodying an allegory in a far off place. The book he held in his hands was called “Darkness Visible”. It was a self-help book for those in the winter of their lives, much as Tristan was, though he hated to admit it.
He opened the page of the book and the spine cracked as the smell of fresh ink and paper filled his senses. This book was new.
He read with curiousity at first, which later turned to deep interest, and later still, turned into inspiration. The following week, Tristan returned this book to Mr. Wright as he told him that he would not be returning to the bus stop with any more new books. “I wish to see you again in the future”, he said, handing Tristan a slip of paper with his name and phone number on it.
Many years passed by and the two men kept regular contact, discussing the endevours of Tristan and his success in his new life.
"Doctor Spense, you have a visitor" his secretary informed him in her usual airy tone.
"Send them in, please"
A man with strong lines creased into his face turned the door handle and entered his office at Kingston University. Commonalities were exchanged and the man fought back a solemn look as he took a seat across from Tristan. The armchair engulphed him.
"Doctor Spense, I’m sorry to inform you that Mr. Connor Wright passed away this morning as he succumed to his long fight against cancer", he spoke as though he had said these words in practise. "I am here because you were included in his will and we need to speak about legalities".
Mr. Wright had left him his entire collection of books, including that first copy of the Odyssey that Tristan had cherised so many years earlier when he had had nothing else. As he opened the familliar book, an envelope fell to the ground.
He stooped to the ground to pick up the white sheet and put it in the pile of other loose pages when he saw in handwriting, “To Dr. Tristan Spense”.
He read the words and tears filled his eyes, prickling at the corners and pooling in the clear canvas of skin before his jaw.

"The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty…" - Mother Teresa
I treated you kindly holding the knowledge that you would have nothing to give in return because I saw something I once saw within myself during the darker days of my time. I helped you because I knew your soul would rot and perish in a sickly way should you go unnoticed. I helped you because I hate faith in you and knew you had the kind of illness that could be taken away with the love of a friend. I hope that I have been able to give you the medicide loneliness, desparity and hopelessness and that your cabinets are stocked full. Remember where you have come from, and remember that it is always darkest before dawn.
Your friend always,
Connor Wright
Maya Grace Nov 2014
Anxiety
A ball of prickling fire tearing beneath my sternum.
Fear
A bolt of electric ripping through my veins.
Depression
A cloud so thick is suffocates my soul.
Anorexia
Starving the outside from within.
Bulimia
Inhaling the world and purging it back.
Failure
Being crushed by society for all of the above .....

And still wondering why oh why is it me???

Why?
Brittle Bird Jan 2015
No, I am not alone
I turn to the sky
and glisten with the same stars
that touch the whole world
and I am not tired
My face is hidden in shadows
covered in blood, sweet
and tears as well
but I am alive.
I feel the gravel beneath
and between my bare toes
That prickling fire air
only sparks me more
Everything is heightened
in my scope of mind
and screaming with life
I know it deep down
like a charge through my bones
and remember that I used to feel alone
but now I look up into
her eyes, the universe
and know it was never true
I run past the illuminated windows
of lives people have built
for themselves
and even feel connected
to what they represent
I make my decision and begin to fly
the distance from lonely
growing inside
My roots are unwinding
and finally
ripping free
from all the cages
I made throughout my years
I take the forest path
in the comfort of dark
so that I can be alone
but won't have to feel alone.
I sit among the towering old trees and
I breathe
a deep gulp of the universe
It is calm and eccentric
and everything at once
It breathes
I breathe
and I am not alone
not ever
wherever we are
we are not
alone.
Thought I'd share one of my earliest poems, found in a journal entry. This is a lot longer than I normally do, but I had to include it all.
Zach Gomes Aug 2010
There is an electric hum from traffic lights
Barely audible to the people waiting at the corner
Overwhelmed with confusion over the former
Condition of the economy in spite
Of the surplus of traffic signs
So they stare at traffic signs
The signs don’t mind
They stare right back and watch and contemplate crossing, too
But the signs will stay behind
Because people go
As they please
Under an ashy sky
And flickers
Of lightning
Appearing in the clouds

Consider the aerodynamics of taxicabs
You wish humans were so streamlined and yellow
We’re not so bad!
Said a fellow
Accountant using an algebraic formula to attempt to derive
Why you smile for us and I’ve
Noticed, though no one else has, the electric storm churning
Miles above
Polarizing the sky
In silence

They tremble, these, the not-so-poor
It’s that fearful tic, the one we’ve seen before
But you tremble, too
Do you see me quiver
We’ve got that quick jitter
Like a prickling under the skin that’s pulsing through
Our blood the way that caffeine does
Or the wattage exploding in death throes or birth throes
Above us now
Hypnotic
And powerful
Though I cannot tell
Exactly how far away
mikarae Oct 2021
rain is running down your window.
its drops, akin to constellations, decorate the glass in clusters, running down the pane when too many join the group.
you watch the chase like a child, tracing each competitor’s path with your eyes until they hit the bottom of the windowsill.

each drop is dyed yellow with the light of the street lamps behind them.

the smell of damp earth is lingering in the air, present even through the walls you hide behind.

the storm outside wears a dark coat of rain clouds, heavy and full.
she touches down on the earth with every raindrop.
your neighbor’s lawn is overflowing with her gifts.

she is insistently loud; demanding that you acknowledge her, comment on her power, complain about her generosity that is flooding your garden, and take shelter in the wake of her downpour.

but beneath it all, the rustling of her heavy grey coat and the thundering of her many feet...


a siren sounds.


a song, sweet and promising, chimes through the night air, its melody akin to a lover’s embrace.
the ozone-heavy wind carries it gracefully and you can almost picture the creature it came from, honey bubbling up at its lips.


you know this sound. you hear it ring under every rainfall.


an urge grows, twitching your feet where they are planted to the floor.
your wrists, as if puppeteered, long to reach for the door.
a deep pull, hooked around your rib cage like a fish doomed, is threatening to uproot you from your chair.


and you wonder, if the rain were to touch your skin, would you be given the sweet salvation you were promised?

would it wash away the ache of existence, the permanent stone settled at the bottom of your stomach that anchors you to the earth?

you swear, if you could just feel the lines of rainwater drip down your skin that you would give yourself away for the promise of a new beginning.


a siren song, the temptation of the sea.

a distant fantasy in the streets of suburbia.

it’s singing to you tonight.


it’s the pull to go outside in the rain in the hopes of washing away all that you are and starting anew.
to watch who you were run into the gutter and feel your soul ebb and wave with the waning of the moon behind the storm.
to feel water running down your arm and soaking your shirt, prickling your skin with cold just to remind you that you are alive.
to surrender to the power of the torrent, to tilt your head to the sky and feel the drops hit the thin veil of your eyelids and run past your ears and trail back into your hair.

the chill of the air is weighted with rainfall, and you feel the urge to cry. you might already have.  

it would be hard to tell in the storm.


the sweet siren whispers in your ear, and her voice is made of rain-slicked tires and damp earth.


“Is this the rebirth you were looking for?
Have you escaped what you were running from?
Will you give yourself to the sea if she asks it of you?”



you ponder. silent.



a deep empty is beginning to settle where the stone was in your stomach.

how far are you willing to unmake yourself?




you already know the answer.


you can’t.




when you open your eyes, you have to blink the tears out of your eyelashes.
your ears ring with the absence of song, as if they’re aching to remember the echoes of a melody just out of earshot.

water beats on the metal cars and slanted roofs outside and you ache silently with the loss of something you knew you could never have.
the absence of it sits heavy, gnawing at the inside of your stomach and making its way up your throat in cut-off mourning.

the storm whips the trees around, as if berating you for ignoring her, for ignoring her gift of thinning the veil so you could escape to where you would always be unknown.

if you decide to go out, perhaps the siren would come back to sing her sound to you, delivering you to the ocean where you swear you belong.

maybe she'd sing you to sleep away from it all.


but the rain continues to fall and the urge comes and goes and you remain, glued to your window, tracing the constellations of what could be if you only step out the door.
have you ever felt the intense urge to stand out in the rain? it's like a place where reality has thinned and you almost feel like you could slip away unnoticed and wash away every trace that you were ever there. but you can't. and you'll carry that ache with you for the rest of your life. inspired by the recent video trend of lying in the street during a rainstorm
Massoupial Oct 2012
The season is a lullaby
of frosted clocks and prickling ire
impatience with the steadfast solemnity
of the wintertide uniform

Locked in crystal formation, the sunshine sleeps
where the mountains beckon
the very peaks
and the hours of the passing days diminish
into austere darkness,
Yet my heart thrills with each crystal shimmer
and beats a pulse that cannot be met
by any life
contained in snow

There is a whisper to my very soul
from the whitening glow
as it shatters the bones of cold

Such Redemption in the icy sound
sets my mind heaven bound
Caught myself amidst the wilderness
Where I was neither born nor raised
It always appeared so, so strange a place
No place for a child

My heart resided in the certain and familiar
Now I wonder where it longs to take me
Desire's inbound with unflinching insistence
But perceived reasons stake me to the ground

Curious odors, pulsating flashes, prickling noises, voracious appetites
The atmosphere overwhelms me senseless
Am I here to enjoy or to observe?
My chains answer with invisible weight

Now comes the rainbow-colored mist
Is this a magician's home--a flourishing disguise?
Sparks and shadows scatter into the expanse
All I see is a vista like the blessing skybox

Desire will you take me?
Lead the boy out of his crib built by the safe
Who are one and the same
Sitting, allowing the box for forge us

A light of the mist careen's my way
Its pleasant sting spreads, boundaries finally disintegrate
Remains litter the ground, I'm finally free
I'm finally lost
Logan Robertson May 2017
****** Finds Her Love

as the rising heat rose,
prickling horse pose
a young jockey is born
among saddle of thorns

she sees his harden well
up close it looks swell
looking both in the eye
will he teach her on the fly

his widening eyes yearn
of nature's lesson she'll learn
one must trot before she runs
labor of love before the fun


she pets and explores his tap
and he sings and fiddles her gap
a plumb beautifully glows
yearning love for the rainbow

she takes his bridle slowly in
crawling like with a grin
on wings of sage she flies
higher, higher as she cries

kiss me through the night
as her widening lips incite
a fire rages the rarefied air
a trotter shaking the pair

to the moon and stars she goes
her first orbit coming to a close
down to earth with a pop and splash
their wedding night's dance a smash

LR-5/7/17
Mollie B May 2013
I used to like you a lot.
i don’t know what ******* happened.
we’re children and you pushed me off the swings,
off the playground,
out of the park.
And now my best friend only wants
me for what i can say about you,
you sea urchin.
bouquet of prickling spikes
piercing my jagged rib bones.
rip through me,
feasting scoundrel,
you *****, you fox.
you viper.

wipe her from my soggy slate.
dinner plate? it’s empty.
everyone is the garbage disposal,
grinding my teaspoons of self-worth
into dusty pieces. i am the garbage.

and i never pegged you as one
to leave me in a  
dark parking lot,
shadows curling their bony fingers
around my purple lungs,
but she found you making love to
him in the same car we sat.
the bull frogs saw what you did.

i’m warning you to stop pretending
like you’re still a fawn.
a doe-like female.
i can see through the speckles
on your face
and your mixed tapes.

i don’t have heart left for you,
you ******.
kneel in front of his  knobby
knees. beg,  
*****.
muck him up and then
lick him clean,
feline.
slink past me in the night,
in the broad daylight.
you are not a spy
i can see your arteries.
A whisper from a shadow
Prickling at my ears
Anything you have to say
I find I long to hear

Standing still behind me
Enticing me with words
Hold my breath, close my eyes
For all that you infer

Good or bad it matters not
It's your presence that I crave
Whip me, beat me, bleed me
I promise to behave

Or at least I promise for a bit,
An undetermined time
Knowing well how much I like
Crossing over your line

Bind my hands in silken rope
And hook them to the ceiling
Leaving me on tipy-toes
For pains blessed healing

It's playful punishment
That I daringly seek
A red moment captured
Your hand print on my cheek

Or perhaps my inner thigh
A delicious smack or soft whack
Of fingertips sublime
To pull me to the present track

Help me now, you know how
To take the world away
Here I am just for you
A piquant entree
Coleen Mzarriz Apr 2021
There he stood outside the windowsill waiting for the wind
to whisper in her ears, his soft call of her name
heed the faceless man, and there he stood, outside the windowsill.

Her soul awakens and her hand in her chin
fresh from the bathe of her blood. There Avernus and
faceless, standing outside her chamber waiting for the woman to fall asleep.

The faceless man then wanting to reside by her side,
softly lulling her into death, prickling her thumb with a needle of life and death
through the parallel of his world and hers — there he stood waiting for his muse.

He grows slowly and deeply, his stomach churning; savoring
her blood in his mind, he waits until she falls asleep.

Her eyes wandered through the thin port outside her room —
the trees harshly peering through her window,
it is as if, they were telling dark tales in the midnight dawn of the night.
Avernus then sang in his native tongue; his muse terrified at the sight of him yet there was
comfort between the wind and the chilly night outside her window.

“It’s cold outside, why are you standing there?” She called out.
Here comes a new poem. :)
ollie lynn Dec 2016
it shocks me to think that i let you touch me the way that you did,
your fingers dipped into my skin and an arm slung my neck.
you left an imprint that will never leave.
i have rubbed my skin pink and raw countless times but i am never truly clean.
who am i more disgusted with?
myself,
     for letting this happen?
          or you,
               for still having the nerve to get so close- hot breath prickling the back of my neck, sparking skin, inferno eyes- and tell me our game is done?

yes, the game i was never told we were playing... every tiny motion, every syllable, every touch… just a simple strategy to win.
i was unknowingly an opponent that you sought to knock down.
you never even let me know the rules.
now you flinch at the touch you once so lovingly leaned into.
(i use the word “lovingly” sarcastically, of course. you and i both know that, to you, there is no such thing as love. only winning or losing.)

so, you’ve emerged a victor. what’s your prize? tears that leave me hollow on the inside? midnight migraines while i long for a love that will never come?

does it fill you with satisfaction to watch the way i tremble when you come near?

you keep the trophies of every body you’ve invaded along the shelf of your room. i’m sure you run your finger over the plastic lip and think about the way her breath hitched and eyes fluttered shut when you did the same to her. she tastes like golden-plated achievements, doesn’t she?

but what you already have is not enough. you are constantly on the lookout for another medal, another souvenir from her heart.

you will make her laugh, deep from her stomach that causes her head to snap back. her chest will feel heavy when she looks at you.
(but it is not love.)
you will give her those half-lidded gazes and whisper in her ear and trace patterns into her side.
(but it is not love.)
you will get close- far too close.
(but it is not love.)
then you will sever that thin thread between you both.
     dip it in gasoline.
          set it on fire.
               add fuel to the flames with a few venomous words.

but you are not to blame.

it is never your fault, is it?
misunderstood,
that’s what you are.

acrylic fingertips
and regurgitated phrases.
to you, and to the girl that is everything you hated about me.
George Anthony Oct 2017
upon waking, i could feel glass in my lungs
small, sharp shards prickling the breaths from my chest and
stealing them away from me—
like some stolen innocence i remember once was mine;
but that was years ago, now
i've been ruined for a long time

i don't sleep very well, and i don't-
don't really wake up very well, either
particularly as we accelerate towards winter
and the only thing i can associate the cold and the dark with
is childhood and threat,
and my school teachers called it Seasonal Depression
but my therapist knows i'm always depressed
Depression is a long-time cuddle buddy;
she's kept me company through trauma.

my therapist tells me that
the cold and dark, they're incentive to flashbacks
too many nights, only single digits in age, forced
to sit in the frost-bitten shadows of an alcoholic's living room
with the AM hours throwing bloodied ***
and violence, through a TV screen
and i still remember the crippling ache of empathy,
watching that little robot boy's family abandon him:
lost in the woods, found only to be beaten.

i breathed through the glass in my lungs,
and never could quite let go of the memory,
nor the popping eyes and crashing cars
or the bleeding walls and possessed children;
wondered, briefly, if maybe some strength could one day possess me
and make my father see i was worth more
than a black-blue shadow in his home, and an accessory in his favourite bars
your demeanor

   is highly suspect,

attempting to disguise

malfeasance neath a heart

    of fortified wrought iron,

Machiavellian by nature

  still, you have your wily ways

   like that of the allure of roses

       within prickling thorns,

  twisted of laughable

         frivolous superficiality

      and reckoning's  bereavement
Leigh Jun 2015
The well-oiled clunk of padlocks
slotting smoothly home
for dark to close off
rooms to outside days
and droned opprobrium.

The morning shine that
carries breezes brimmed
with birdsong must await
the sliding click and clack
of opened blackout blinds.

Open to a bundled clump of
tumbled, crumpled, crass,
incessant, prickling,
self-reflective musings
binding me to doubt.

It is this lair wherein I
rest and find the peace of
reign; 'Tis here I manifest as
Father Time to forge a faulty
rise and set with blackout blinds.
.


.
Kuzhur Wilson Oct 2013
In the garden in Corniche
In the playground bound by a metal fence,
While the Arab teenage kicks the ball,
The feet of the Sudanese, sitting on the stone bench nearby
Start prickling;

Cries out that
For one who knows how to score goals,
The hunger to kick a ball
Is the ultimate one!

Me? I shall remain nameless!

The fisherman
Whose whole body tingles
As he espies a shiver of gigantic sharks
Even while swimming for life,
Having lost his boat and fishing net in the deluge,

The nun, whose ******* start secreting
As she watches a bawling baby,
Standing amidst toddlers of the nursery

The swimmer,
Who crawls through the desert
On camel-back

I do not ask for anything else
Just the ball and the opposition
Let a thousand, or tens of thousands come,
Let the goal-mouth
Be miles distant,
I do not ask for anything else

Once, while carrying a load of cement
On the tenth floor,
For a moment,
A moment,
The sun tempted, as a huge ball.

The scar of the beating received
While dribbling the sun on the sky meadow
Remains on the back..

There are ***** anyone can play with.

No, all surges ahead
Do not end in goals.
There are no games that do not have ‘foul’ -
Even in dreams.
There are no Arab children
In the playground now.

Jut the ball, ball, ball alone.

It scurries hither and thither
By itself,
Races outside,
Speeds towards the goal-mouth,
Sometimes ducks out of sight.

Very privately,
And even more secretly,
Ball smiled at me.
A shudder of incarnations
In my toes.

As soon as the ball and feet
Left the playground,
Two legs
Started dancing,
Betwixt twilight and night.
(trans from Malayalam by Anitha Varma)
Sieve Jan 2013
I live my life
for the jolts and tingles
the prickling of skin
and the involuntary wrinkles
I live my life
for instances of bliss and euphoria
the experiences that floor ya
for the moments of clarity
when I make plans with sincerity
whether or not accomplishment,
may indeed be a rarity
I live my life
for the sensular shudder
of the feminine other
for the flashing and thrashing
and skin-tingling flutter
for those shots to be made
without use of a putter
I live my life
for new connections and epiphanies
for misdirections and the mysteries
for all the questions without answers
like, why does life give you cancer?
according to the state of california.
I live my life
through a miasma of sidewalks
and ticking clocks
through drunken walks
and forgotten talks
for the chance of a Win
and the inevitable balks
I live my life
sometimes for him or for her
in sin or while pure
and without hope of a cure
for the human condition
"the human condition?"
you know, when the world says,
"assume the position!"
and your teacher says
"are you even listenin'?"
I live my life
for zoning out and finding Rules to flout
for the workings of my mind
the ability to rewind
analyze the times
and uncover the blinds
I live my life
There was a time in former years—
While my roof-tree was his—
When I should have been distressed by fears
At such a night as this!

I should have murmured anxiously,
‘The prickling rain strikes cold;
His road is bare of hedge or tree,
And he is getting old.’

But now the fitful chimney-roar,
The drone of Thorncombe trees,
The Froom in flood upon the moor,
The mud of Mellstock Leaze,

The candle slanting sooty-wick’d,
The thuds upon the thatch,
The eaves drops on the window flicked,
The clanking garden-hatch,

And what they mean to wayfarers,
I scarcely heed or mind;
He has won that storm-tight roof of hers
Which Earth grants all her kind.
Mitchell Jan 2013
The light
Above me is on
And I'm lonely

Outside a plastic bag
Blows in a hard wind
Like an empty hand waving at me
And I'm lonely

Once there were names
That meant something more
Than their names
And I think of this
And I'm lonely

I see the hallway light flash on
As a passerby walks down the hallway stairs
Wondering where they're going
And I'm lonely

I push the button
It takes me downstairs
I lift the glass
It takes me - for a moment - away from here
And the stars burn out
And I'm lonely

Seven lights hover outside my window in squares
One goes out
Another turns on
And I'm lonely

Poorly painted golden window latches
React to the warm wind outside the same as I
A sense that all will be changing soon
And I'm lonely

Where do the lonely go, when there is truly no one?
Some go mad with work, drink, ******, and drugs
Other's with family, social circles, and religion
I outside the hyena's circle who are devouring the decayed
And I'm lonely

Funds for overseas prose panics me
I see no end for I have experienced no beginning
Allow me to view the rules
Digest them and give me time to recover
Noon strikes a silent chord prickling the hair upon my arm
And I'm lonely

There are four lights on now outside my window
One with the blinds drawn
The other lit only by the grey blue glare of a television set
Meeting midnight brings me none of the old
Feelings of dusty comradery or delinquent joy
And I'm lonely

Three more lights
There is hope
They are gone after only a shutter of a tease
Back to the comfortable four
The death of a Winter spent in discontent
And I'm lonely

On a hillside I rested
Alone with thoughts of her
What I knew then
I know now
Some days are meant for rain
And I'm lonely

Parted by facts dealing with science and faith
Love became an issue immediately
There are only two rules in Love
One does or one does not
And I'm lonely

The night is neither setting nor rising
The moon hovers over me like a noose
Like a scythe
Like an ancient medieval axe
And I'm lonely

Only a single light on now
At the very top almost past my view
The wind is still blowing
The bag still waving
And all I am

Is lonely
Alec Boardman Mar 2017
Three in the afternoon and everything is fuzzy
You feel the familiar prickling under your skin and welcome it with open arms
But you can’t feel your arms
This vessel isn’t your body
But at the same time it is
You’re watching yourself lay there hopelessly while you pray and scream And cry
Oh, God, please don’t let me die.

But you aren’t dead
But are you even alive?
A bittersweet medium where nothing is real and your chest is on fire
You live in the flames, you feel yourself escape the trap of gravity
And you are floating
The bed you lay on is no longer touching you
You are in the air, weightless, but only for a few moments before
You crash down to earth and farther
And farther down more
Falling into endless
Painless
Void.

Am I alone?
Am I real?
Words ramble off the tongues of a homely face
But the words got mixed up in Google translate
Foreign words ringing in your ears and you can’t tell if
If you are really experiencing everything you are
Or if you’re just playing make believe with yourself.

Back to nothing.
Always everything but.
October 2016, my alter Lucy wrote this one.
Hands Apr 2011
I left the table feeling gross,
nauseous and swollen
and altogether overwhelmed.
My ring finger traced the curves
of my arms, twisted into the
light hairs running over like
infinite eddies of shallow streams.
The world reeled around me,
nightmarish carousels careening
through the dark,
spinning around and throughout
my head, my mind,
every single sentient thought.
Life had gotten too much
for me to handle, though,
suicide never quite worked.
Feet dragged across the ground,
rubbing the wooden surfaces
and creating friction,
creating heat.
I felt hot and
restrained there,
like too much of me-
far too much of me to hold in-
was cramped into that tiny corner.
I needed a way out,
an escape route
from the fire burning all around me,
carousel on fire and
carnival flaming
to the ground.
There was no panic in
the destruction, though
it lacked the methodical touch.
There was no reason to
panic or to worry about it
as all had come to go
as it pleased and had planned
without any great
forethought of my own.
I wanted to burn down my temple,
turn the offerings to ash
and destroy all my gods and idols
that I had collected.
I itched and scratched
at a sensation unable to be traced,
of a small hovering
caught within the air
trapped within the hairs
upon my goose prickled arms.
I took my pillars in my hands
and smashed them to the ground,
satisfied at the crumbled
limestone and pretense
that lay scattered around me.
"This is what I need,"
I told myself calmly,
"total destruction.
Revolution."
And so as I had
revolted myself at the table
my mind revolted against
my body as my soul
revolted against my mind,
making the itch to scratch
a greater prickling feeling
than before.
Needles, hot and heavy,
traced the outlines of my arms,
felt the ridged contours
of my spine.
There were eyes on me
as materiality caused my body
to revolt against my soul,
making me disgusted
and fat in my indulgence.
I was bloated and needed
to be punctured,
to release the pressure.
I felt stabs all across me,
causing screams to erupt
from my mouth in almost-pleasure
and surely pain.
Pricking against me
were knives and daggers
where needles had been.
I felt the pressure recede,
the great angry mass
of rotting fluids within
spilling out of the holes poked
within my body,
mind,
and soul.
They had broken through,
broken me down,
revealed the decomposed
and near-dead individual within.
Suicide hadn't worked
and neither had ignoring it.
"Total desctruction,"
I repeated,
"total destruction."
And so I jumped
on his back, clawing at his face,
his chest,
kicking his stomach
as he punched my top.
My finger bent
in a happy sort of violence,
and I was all too pleased
with my feigned surprise.
He fled, retreated
to his cave of
lonely, musky isolation
and delusional regret
as I ran,
up the stairs and past the curves,
flying into what
was once my bedroom
and grabbing for my coat,
the one without my last name.
Putting it on,
I walked slowly to
the back door,
unlocking it gingerly,
as though the key might ignite
into millions of different colored fireworks
at any second wasted.
I descended the steps
in the way a monarch does
in his last hours,
the way a priest might as he
watches his house-
no,
his whole religion
crash to his feet.
Calm.
Demure
with the knowledge that
this world was not meant
to support it this long.
And so
the spirits of frustration,
the roasted spine and
too-afraid shadow flew out of
the debris before me,
to be caught in the
forever kinking and
knotting curls upon my head,
an infinite mess of
paradoxical equations
to be fully examined
by no one but themselves.
These ghosts of myself
hastened my flight,
spirited me off
on a mad run down the street,
ring finger throbbing from the scars of war,
I soon discarded this itch as I had
the last one,
as my ring finger was meant to be ****,
unadorned and
free of any promises
that it knew it could never keep.
A car stopped and picked me up,
drove off to a familiar place
full of smoke and magic,
friends that felt
about as sick as I had.
We partook in the
mystic rituals, knowing
they meant very little,
anymore.
We drove around,
watching the steam before the headlights
dance in the dark like
overjoyed spirits making love.
The road seemed endless
as the lines rolled into
then out of view,
forever reeling in
infinite streams of shallow
yellow on black.
Finally, our priestess departed
and I was given a new place to sleep
and not made to sit at
a table like before.
My ring finger smiled in agreement
as we figured our new place
in a world without religion,
bodies,
minds,
or souls,
carousels to mock us,
or flames to ******.
No threat of anger and destruction
boiling over within myself
to erupt on everyone around.
Just
stark sheets,
clean walls,
the drumming
in my legs,
and the throbbing
freedom held within
my ring finger
as it traced the curves
of my arms.
I left consciousness feeling clean,
refreshed and renewed
and altogether reborn.
can you hear the monotone rumble
ringing in my head?
it creeps its way through my bones
an echo of all the things that i could have said.

my shattered jaw line outlines all I’ve suffered
and what’s left to come.
the bruises layered onto my skin
are only the reflection of a long night of regret.

imprints of recurring dreams
and stones left unturned
impressions are digging at me again
they don’t know what i truly am.
build yourself a little empire
to protect your stuttering ego
i will be the flame to start the forest fire
it won't be such a shame to see you go

do you recognize the stench that fills the air?
that’s the smell of a thousand burning forests.
you can hide behind your walls in shambles,
losing everything you thought you ever had.
but me? sweetheart, i’ll be doing just fine.
roaming the earth, spreading the seeds of regrowth.

positivity and its fine little hairs
prickling at the sight of someones skin
you just so happened to fall in love with
but they’re not really there,
darling, you made it all up inside your head,
among the burning flora of a million sins
you would think you would have learned
the fifth time around
but perhaps you never really cared,
blisters where the shackles of lust had you bound.

you’re seeking definition
thinking it’s buried deep in the neck of others.
you bury your lust in the sheets,
transforming casual conversation into white noise.
you’re foaming at the mouth and your pupils dilate
waiting to strike and tear your next victim apart.
like a succubus, you linger in the shadows
twisting and turning your way through
the wide open doors of the unknown
you sink your teeth into your prey,
**** away their sympathy
and leave them breathless,
hollow and taciturn.

i watched you slip away
deep into the arms of others
slowly declining as your breathing grows heavy
your body becomes a warzone
those who have traveled it before know,
you’re not the same as you once were,
and you never will be again.

what will you do now, with your claws at the ready?
will you tear them apart, or yourself first?
be sure you get the order correct

you are not the seamless dress you slipped off
before you made your way under the sheets
you are the breath that expels from your lungs
when you finally see your reflection
and you are not what you once saw

your lips curled back into a snarl,
your fingers bloodied and cracked
your eyes void and black
not once will your prayers be heard.

i caught myself wishing you back
finding myself buried in delusions and heartbreak.
you should’ve just said “i never loved you in the first place”
but that would’ve just made things simple.

simplicity was never an option for you.
everything had to be a challenge,
because that’s how your entire life was.
abused by your father, channeling the hate of your mother
there’s nothing you would do just to form stability on this
tattered and beaten ship you call your life.

where will you go now,
that your ship has sunk?
what paradise can you seek
without the stars to guide your way?
they will not shine for you any longer,
the darkness is now your only friend.

and to you, directly to you,
where do you hide your heartbreak?
can we build a fortress strong enough
to hold our heads high
through the pasts empty threats?

our towers were built alongside the shoreline
shining light to those who passed by
in hopes that they wouldn’t just avoid us
our intentions were pure, but our actions were contradictory
we can’t accomplish anything if we don’t know how to.

did the ocean wash it away?
or is it still standing, pure and tall.
everyone can see you sparkling there,
your light runs through your veins
where your blood is supposed to be.

all along the watchtowers
we hide our emotions, like treasure
to be found by a lucky passerby.
whoever ventured into what we’ve built would find
everlasting love and emotions too strong to perceive.
we just pray that whoever finds them doesn’t sell them off to another.

crystalline passages to our hearts
shattered by a beating drum
they collapse and collide
our minds lost to the debris

— The End —