"rationed" poems
His "I love you" came swiftly.
Like the monsoon pouring down on a leaky roof
Those three words broke through my defences.
At first they were an ambrosia;
They sustained my life and our relationship.
At least for a short time.
Then "I love you" became an excuse;
For absences, and purpose-filled accidents.
And I ignored the warning signs, the flashing lights.
I pretended like "I love you" was enough...
...But it wasn't.
His "I love you"s were like band-aids on bullet wounds;
Like using play dough to fix cracks in concrete walls.
But I rationed our good memories,
I held on as tight as I could to our love
And watched as it slipped through my fingers.
His "I love you"s became poison,
That seeped deep into my bones,
And turned blue skies grey,
And turned light into darkness,
And slowly killed whatever semblance of love
I fooled myself into thinking we had left.
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 6:23 PM UTC
Muted, muffled, dull thud on concrete,
Staggered, drunken, half conscious nobody,
Starved, seeking, worried about payments,
**** in hand, knocking on the wrong doors,
Fire and brimstone stoked in the belly,
Mad, strange, appetizing burlesque eyes,
Obnoxious smacking and licking of parched lips,
Rolling on half rationed legs,
Quiet, sullen, mournful footsteps,
Presently placed awkwardly one in front of the other,
Memory serves correctly, destitute, reprise,
Thunderclaps and crashing roars,
Almost forgotten, with great relief,
Soon, very soon, to be lost forever,
Candlelight, sobbing vigils, no power,
Nail, Nail, Nail,
Praise in the box, graffiti walled,
Like a bathroom stall, just as ******
Docile dissolving vessels,
Brought to the commonplace dropoff,
Settled down and greatly relieved.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 11:38 PM UTC
these thoughts...
they are my own,
walled within the deepest recesses
of my
cerebral labyrinth.
sprouting out of vine covered walls,
are multicoloured blooms
brandishing thorned stems
and
thirsty stigmas,
dripping with
absinthe.
mind full of poison in
permissible amounts...
i am caught in a
web of restless stupor,
anguish...
and regression...
these thoughts...
rationed out sparingly,
for they're not for unready ears
blooms of thought meticulously
triaged before
necessary expulsion.
hairline cracks between
insanity
and peace...
i tread precariously
the fine,
meandering line.
still clutching my flowers
in a tight obstinate grasp...
not letting go
for these tainted blossoms
are
undoubtedly
mine.
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 6:42 AM UTC
when made a designated drinker
for a designated driver.
when stomaching stale pabst
and rationed sweet cider.
when frat boys fulfill
stereotypical homophobia.
when twenty grade A reds
can't last me longer than a dream.
when old man nightclub and triple kills
usurp the crown of moderation.
when you fall asleep
with so much in your blood to spill
like beans,
or milk not worthy of tears,
and i keep a loom in my heart
where i weave a string of everyone
[with myself]
and every fray in warp or weft
is mimicked by the splinters
shuttled to my hand.
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 10:06 PM UTC
It’s dusk
Lustful grapevines curl around my ankles
And I’m thankful it’s wine season, the pickers should be around shortly to save me
And bathe me in last year’s crop to scare the grape vines into submission
It’s a decision they have to make
Do they care about a perfect stranger enough to waste
Roads of trucks of crates of bottles of red velvet
Or white sunshine
Or do they allow this ensnarement and turn a blind eye whilst I sink
While thinking; pondering the fertility of the soil under my feet
I’ll wait for the pickers, just to see how they view me
And in the meantime the vines are spinning yarns around me
Crawling up my skin, holding me tight while telling me bed time stories
Once upon a time there was a vineyard struck by a drought
Caused by unrelenting calm, and clear blue skies with no clouds
And they resisted, rationed their water between them,
And it seemed then that everything was fine
The crop was harvested and won best wine, but failed to mention how many vines
Died in the making of their own blood
Morbid and dry, a pinot noir fashioned out of pain and scars
And tears in flesh, not human flesh, but the flesh of the landscape
I didn't smile
But it did make me sleepy
I couldn't fight their grasp
Addicted to their emotions
I let them take me down into their fertile ocean
And when the pickers came to discern the source of the screaming
A new grape vine had sprouted and was teething
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 2:19 PM UTC
the collar on my jacket is frayed
but I have clothes on my back
(just)
the packaging is white with green print
but I have food in my belly
(of sorts)
the soles talk and leak when I walk
but I have boots on my feet
(for now)
so I’m OK
(I suppose)
***** deep into the Smart Price ™ life
this man, his daughters, his son and his wife
where all their food comes at discounted price
expired meat and rationed heat
sweepings and fat wrapped in plastic
the walk was wholly unexpected, but it was easy
leaving the town where the forward leaning walkers
were the slowest thinking talkers steeped in sugary urgency,
and all the way we **** giltterballs and Skittles
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 8:41 AM UTC
I love the warm smell more than baked bread.
I love the old stories flooding back through my head.
I love the middle-age chatter, with child like mutters,
finding old favorites in old familiar covers.
I love the personalised fountain-penned message,
carefully scribed and meticulously dated.
I don't care about the number of dog eared pages,
or the tell-tale signs of well worn aging.
Tea stains and small tears - they don't bother me,
each tell a new tale beyond what I can see.
I love the weight of the years sitting in my hand,
I love the tether to past lives multi-second-hand.
With memories of libraries with warm worn carpets,
wall to wall adventures and sun faded artists,
battered yellow seats, shooshed conversations,
quietly spoken protests at the books being rationed.
I stayed past closing, riding trains of free thought
with Tin Tin, Asterix and old Mrs Pepperpot.
I'm still drawn to the pages and the feeling inside
second-hand stories where memories reside.
Nov 28, 2018
Nov 28, 2018 at 5:03 PM UTC
If we could consume the world,
we would all gorge ourselves in an instant.
To sacrifice eternity, humanity, all we know,
for a brief moment of pleasure.
This is our nature, one of greed,
of self-serving at any cost.
It is our driving force, our only motivation.
To take all we can, and keep others from having.
We would rather stuff our faces
until we become sick,
than share the smallest morsel
with those who have less.
Any goodness, any charity,
must be motivated by hidden interests.
By the desire to take a greater share
of the love and respect rationed to each person.
To trade the lives of all in exchange for our own
is not even a thought.
No matter the name you give it
selfishness is who we are.
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 12:15 AM UTC
this is (not) a heartache poem
about
you or the way
your eyes stood glossy and
your mouth silent
in large crowds of people –
your
demeanour slowly playing
over me
time and time again,
even when i swore to myself that i would
shut you out
for good
but,
like your smile stuck in my brain,
it kept coming
back.
please understand that there is (no)
heartache here
because this is(n’t) a
poem
about how i spent my life in
paragraphs
filled with every beautiful,
treacherous
word i could think of
while you lived in
shallow, broken
sentences
or
how i could see you perfectly
through the flesh and bone and ********
that
nobody else knew about.
could you see
how much
i longed for you to
take me in the way i
was –
speak to me in the carefully rationed
words of your
stories –
anything that could’ve
brought me closer to you but instead,
only burned
inconceivably
in the wildfires of all you
cared about?
did i end up in those fires too?
were you so certain that i would just
forget
how you stopped sending me
the texts
that i waited
oh-so long for?
were you so certain that i
would have
let you slip away so easily
after the way you lead me to
believe
there was something
between us?
well, i did(n’t),
yet, just the thought of it
kills
me to remember how
you were the brightest star in my universe but
i
was just a mere speck of dust
in yours.
this will (not) be another poem
where
i dream about
watching every bone in
your body cave in
or
feeling your breath
against my ears
but (no),
trust me, there is (no) heartache
that i have
for you
or anything you ever did
in the last seven months we spent
together
that always left me dreaming
on a prayer -
but never listened to.
i know you didn’t want me.
i know you didn’t care.
i was just another one to you.
this is (not) a poem about
how i’m now
broken
because you left me
even though
you weren’t mine –
for where i am
now is(n’t)
heartache.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 4:33 AM UTC
*We were squeezed from corruption
armed with the monstrous cutlery
of rippers and tearers of rationed meat
for a day, for a day, for a day:
the butcher gives his best cuts
to the young and godless divorcee
find us, keep us : a spectre hiding
in the dark pig iron rust hooks looping
through your *** and shopping lists:
smelting your coin
and punching your face
Company is the full knowledge
of our protracted, 3 -stage decay
burn drift degradation
eyes crusting shut
in doom and settling bomb silt
palms up, taking a punishment
in the mothertongue
ignoring lessons in the gracious
expectancy of departure
We, A legion of ancient clockwatchers,
in on the joke of time
and folk fetish of apple-cheek poverty
[Gasp!] The gruesome romance of class!
!you cry! !safe! !always safe!
in the nuclear hotdog option , which is
observably, the title of this advertisement
We will never get you[ ]you're awake!
and your atmosphere is still In Da Black
We watch you
watching
the 5 car pile up
catch up rolling down your chin*
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 10:20 AM UTC
Carrickfergus (1937) - poem by Louis Macneice.
I was born in Belfast between the mountain and the gantries
To the hooting of lost sirens and the clang of trams;
Thence to Smoky Carrick in County Antrim
Where the bottle-neck harbour collects the mud which jams
The little boats beneath the Norman castle,
The pier shining with lumps of crystal salt;
The Scotch quarter was a line of residential houses
But the Irish quarter was a slum for the blind and halt.
The brook ran yellow from the factory stinking of chlorine,
The yarn mill called it's funeral cry at noon;
Our lights looked over the lough to the lights of Bangor
Under the peacock aura of a drowning moon.
The Norman walled this town against the country
To stop his ears to the yelping of his slave
And built a church in the form of a cross but denoting
The list of Christ on the cross in the angle of the nave.
I was the rectors son, born to the Anglican order,
Banned for ever from the candles of the Irish poor;
The Chichesters knelt in marble at the end of a transept
With ruffs about their necks, their portion sure.
The war came and a huge camp of soldiers
Grew from the ground in sight of our house with long
Dummies hanging from gibbets for bayonet practice
And the sentry's challenge echoing all day long;
A Yorkshire terrier ran in and out by the gate-lodge
Barred to civilians, yapping as if taking affront;
Marching at ease and singing 'Who Killed **** Robin?'
The troops went out by the lodge and off to the Front.
The steamer was camouflaged that took me to England-
Sweat and khaki in the Carlisle train;
I thought that the war would last for ever and sugar
be always rationed and that never again
Would the weekly papers not have photos of sandbags
And my governess not make bandages from moss
And people not have maps above the fireplace
With flags on pins moving across and across-
Across the hawthorn hedge the noise of bugles,
Flares across the night,
Somewhere on the lough was a prison ship for Germans,
A cage across their sight.
I went to school in Dorset, the world of parents
Contracted into a puppet world of sons
Far from the mill girls, the smell of porter, the salt-mines
And the soldiers with their guns.
Louis Macneice
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 8:54 AM UTC
Play on.
Pretend.
Drum your anxious fingers out
In sync with the drip-drop of the melt,
Seeped prolix, distraught faucet mouth
Leaky kitchen sink, we drowned
Everything we could think to rinse
Meaning from
Down the drain. Our thumb prints
Scrubbed smooth away,
Quicker than crumbs
We followed and rationed and named
Stale keepsakes to keep us thin through Winter.
Thumb drummer, play on.
Pretend.
Facetious rhythms could kindle us
Warm enough to hibernate.
Thumb drummer,
Play on.
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 6:58 PM UTC
Maybe it was the fact that you only knew broken English
And that you cried when all your tongue could only come up with blunt Norwegian
Did you cry when all the other first graders thought you were stupid, grandfather?
Was it that which drew you inwards to the growing child
And the growing misunderstanding of communication.
The barrier between elementary school tongues and accents is a large casme in your world.
Was it the marines, the war, the things you saw
that rationed you
Into the secluded soul that you became?
The distant, angry man, husband and father
Who drove cars far away from home
And than raged when you made it home on the weekend.
Was it that which made my father different?
Made him paint the walls of his room black and break windows at seventeen?
The walls of that confining house had never heard yells that loud.
The front door had never been slammed that hard.
Friends' couches became more familiar family members.
Was it that which made him the eclectic artist, unconfident man, funny husband, and tentative father?
Who mentioned specific detailed taste without any context
Who refuses to be challenged
Socially inept, his daughter thought.
Slight asburgers, she thought.
Ungrateful! Selfish! Attitude stricken! He retaliated.
How the **** was he supposed to react?
He never mentioned how much he loved her,
How much she changes his life.
Was it that made her the way she is?
She began becoming familiar with wine bottles and ***** that wasn't chased.
She drank to forget sometimes
She drank to not worry.
She'd say **** more often
And in the rooms of her best friends,
She'd laugh at her circumstances.
Than all she'd say was,
**** THEM ALL*
And sipped until the bottom of the bottle was her best friend.
May 29, 2011
May 29, 2011 at 1:52 PM UTC
Are these tears of blundering laughter
or heckles of contempt
that spirit on these haggard few
to rhapsodise our era’s curtain calls?
They who brought us mounting debt and conscientiousness
which seems only to be healed in the appeasing fluorescence
of 24-hour supermarkets and the purgatory
of weekends spent at home?
Such stifling, nervous coughs
are head as responses of
today’s domestic questionnaires
Gung-ho reformative advances
and calls to “pull up our socks”
Mixed with the state-sponsored fortune-telling
Rationed out to boys languishing on the dole.
Which All falsely transpires,
intimidatingly revealed as being
About as appealing as vacuum cleaners for the soul
aimed at the resolutely bored to tears.
Despite our fears
the sun will come streaming again
through fresh fir trees
which decorate contemplative, sheltered lanes.
These last, frostbitten years
seek replacement with halcyon days
in order to suspend dogmatic disbelief.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves:
Pessimism is ****
Even in the most roaring of times
we remained despondent and calculated.
Jul 16, 2012
Jul 16, 2012 at 12:12 PM UTC
My poetry's really meant as decoration
For the days of life that we get rationed;
My lines for scrapbooks, wrapped around vases;
Words embroidered utilitarian places.
My words antimacassars for things nearby;
Some dangling sentences passing by,
Upon the latest quilt or jewelry box;
Or purse, or duffle, or coffee mug.
Please use my poems as flourishes and frills,
To substitute for things sans time to feel;
Shabby chic poetry, for every need:
Then there's always something to read.
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 3:06 PM UTC
I have the shape of the institution.
Each email address is a human.
They are known by their words and actions.
The whole wide world is just a fraction
of all I do not know. Expansion
and contraction, breathe in, out, meditation
on existence, non-existence, creation
and duration. I have no explanation
for fusion, fission, taxonomic relations
or artificial classification.
More I do not know: locomotion
by combustion, electron separation
and transportation via superconduction
which supports the idea of the unified nation.
What girls are like behind their eyes. ************
a useful restraint on overpopulation.
The story of a life, my life, any life, cohesion
must be rationed, conjured, a fiction
about a vexed, tenacious town, its rail station
truck stop, high school, night spots, recreations
the temporary citizens enact visions
dream-like orations, ballets, conflagrations
to in the end receive in annals honorable mention
from family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, institutions.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 12:11 PM UTC
Consider the coffee cup in the bitter early morning
clutched by the weary, in the hands of the sleepwalker.
A Styrofoam chimney that warms bodies to the bones.
Like a silo of potential energy that awakens and inspires.
A companion of the cigarette soft pack, as long as both are full
When empty, a ruffian of a house abandoned
or a vacant playground, a soul void of vivacity.
Sleepy fingers trace the serpentine trail of steam
escaping via vent in the lid; gateway to wakefulness
Perched in a nest of hands guarding the sanctuary for the alert
This storehouse of caffeine must be rationed.
It’s contents dark, rich, bold, spilling
scolding and fierce and alive.
Consider the coffee cup a comrade, a loyalist
Companion of the diligent, the learning, the weary.
Aug 23, 2011
Aug 23, 2011 at 3:46 AM UTC
I was born into a famine
that had nothing to do with bread.
Love was rationed in screams or absence,
served in scraps too small to even fill a sparrow.
It folded children into masks,
teaching them to barter their bodies,
their brilliance,
for one spoonful of being seen.
Starvation is generational —
My grandparents wore silence
like a second skin,
their hunger pressed into my parents’ palms
who learned to mistake
approval for affection,
discipline for devotion.
By the time it reached us,
the scarcity became lineage:
my sister and I
daughters of starvation,
gnaw on shadows,
calling it comfort,
rehearsing the same ache —
our bodies learning
to beg in disguises.
Late twenties,
and the fridge hums louder than I do
bones hum with the ache of it,
eyes swollen from begging the air
to answer back.
I peel the silence open with my teeth.
There’s nothing inside.
I am tired of carrying
an empty bowl across centuries.
I will not pass down
a hollow mouth.
May my hands
unlearn famine.
Love will be abundant
in the soil I leave behind.
- V
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 5:01 AM UTC
The moment he rejected you the first time
I saw a little part of you break
like the icicles in your eyes were melted with a self destructive hate fire
burning dangerously with the unrequited desire
for his love.
I want to tell you you're perfect.
On the times he moved closer to you at the lunch table
I saw the way your body stiffened
I could see the mental checklist being ticked
making sure you had the grocery list of the things that you wanted
the things you thought he needed.
I want to tell you you're perfect.
He fluttered your heart with his smile
making you realize that this spell he put you under isn't temporary
no matter how many times he knocks you down
you'll always go back for more.
I want to tell you you don't need him.
Where other girls want to undress him with their eyes
to see the chiseled swimmers body armor created from
years of waking up before sunlight
all you want is to strip the armor from his skin
to see if what lies underneath the charm
is really as soft and sweet as it is in your dreams.
I want to tell you he doesn't matter.
The day he asked out another girl in front of you
you tell me you need a friend
you say you don't even know how to stop crying
you say it hurt so bad
choking back tears is causing you to choke out that it's killing you
and it just kills me when you say that you feel so pointless
but you're infinitely perfect to me
so I make sure that you know how pointless he is too
and that if he can't even see through his glasses to realize how beautiful you are
then he might as well be as blind as a bat.
I want to tell you you're perfect.
even though you say your importance can be rationed out in teaspoons
I tell you that no amount of measuring cups could ever measure how much you mean to me
I want to tell you that your shine is like the one light in powerless city
gifting those in the dark with the wonders of your intelligence
and with the beauty of the way in which you look at the world
I want you to know that you're perfect.
I want to tell you I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for not noticing all the times that your lip was white beneath your teeth
or the way your eyes stung from the acidity of rejection
causing tears to form around the red insides of your eyelids
I'm sorry I wasn't there to wipe those tears off your face like I always promised I'd be.
I'm sorry for the time that you had to ask for me to listen
because the invisible rules written by love
in the book of friendship in my mind
say that you shouldn't have to ask for me to uncover my ears
they should always be open
and so should my arms
because that's what friends are for.
I want to tell you you're perfect.
I want to tell you I'm sorry.
I want you to know that putting layers of make up on your face
makes him fall in love with a copy of every unoriginal
girl he's ever dated but you
my friend
you are not a copy
you are not unoriginal
you are a story
you are amazing
and you should never let your self feel like any less.
Dec 13, 2013
Dec 13, 2013 at 8:50 AM UTC
Thoughts racing she's not sure what to say.
Waking up each morning, spontaneous everyday.
She looks for happiness, in the worst places.
Lives on each day, not remembering any faces.
Once she's up, it a rap, she's off to the races.
Birds she adores, she's always wanting more.
Even when she's all worn out, and all sore.
Roads are her motivation, yeah it lowers all her frustration.
High hopes, are her salvation.
With every might, she holds onto concentration.
Oh hell with this petty *** nation,
nothing about her is rationed.
Just let her travel, and drop her off at the nearest train station.
(est.j.r.e.)
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 11:17 AM UTC
This is my conclusion
We’re all in an illusion
Our minds go blank
Our thinking tanks
Have just refreshed forgotten.
By some imagination
All our thoughts are rationed
I believe
We’re deceived
A separate dimension.
What I’m saying has been said
What you’re reading has been read
There is no original
All we do is fictional
Our existence is a fantasy.
‘Uh-huh, sure, totally’
You think this is just poetry
I hope you realize
It’s your own demise
But you never will believe me.
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 5:13 PM UTC
Tied your hands and feet
Fed you to the aviator
You're a king and you're loved
So you must be put to death
We need a miracle, man
Stripped naked, blood-red cape
Wreath of spinous wood
Pounded in by hammering bark
Spit, hit, mocked, robbed, derobed
Sent to the place of a skull
Grape juice from a sour vine
Rationed you away by nine
A thief to your left
And a thief to your right
Begging for bulletproof miracles
Eclipsed, forsaken
Wine-soaked sponge,
A scream,
And he's gone
Nov 25, 2011
Nov 25, 2011 at 7:26 PM UTC
The flame
In his chest
The same
To the rest
But twisted
As he was
Blessed
But gifted
With inferiority
And was horribly
Conflicted
Of the message
He was meshing
With the decrepit
Feeling
Of his fleeting
Half stepping
To the
Recollections
Of his blessings
That he was tempted
To dissect
From the crowd
Inflicted
Despite the
Shroud
Of clouded
Bouts
Torn from
The panicked ****
Of the phobias
He knew they were scared of
And glared
Right through them
Before he opened up
His coat
And started shooting
Proving
Others wise
In the silent
Reprise
Of 45's
And nines
He smiled
In the exile
Of fear
Escaping
Through
The fading
Lights
Of dying eyes
In the wild
Surmise
That with each
Trigger squeeze
Eased him
Into shame
As he
Aimed
To please
For the release
Of lives
Crawling
For the
Finished
Lines
And in gorgazmic
Slitherings
He delivered
The final blows
With power ups
And scores
Progressing
The killing
As he reloads
With shrilling
Grins
And stints
Of compassion
Fashioning
The rationed
Satisfaction
He received
From the screaming
Mothers and babies
Brothers and maybes
Splattering
On the plastic trees
Of escalators
And skeezes
That laid shuttering
Headless
Upon the exits
Of his
Insurrected mind
And he was just fine
With dying
In kind
And he was just fine
Shining from
The shrine
Of Santa
In a sonata
Of solidarity
To the led
Soldering morals
In a story
Of victory
And of
Personal glory
For the lords
Of defeat
Seething
In the completeness
Of a defeatist
As he stuck
The heaters
In his mouth
And was out
Without
One doubt
As to what
Nothing
Means
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
We are a subway.
We ride encroaching on our own spaces.
We bundle and fold each other
into outer significant dimensions.
Our arms harden to tree trunks
while our blood begs to flow freely under the elevated pressure,
grounding our Earthly existence.
This track beats on without destination,
regardless of bumps and bulges in the pathways,
our starting point forgotten light years before.
We try sharpening the images melting under this velocity,
and our eyes flicker back and forth attempting to follow these quickening pictures.
But we ride on,
crushed by the pressures of the Earth,
decaying the love we housed in storage,
now rationed up our stabilizing arms,
holding us averagely comfortable in this close proximity.
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 2:26 PM UTC
The Great Depression
Days where countries felt like secession
The deadly dust bowl swept crops away
The stock market crashed
Everyone had to pay
The Great Depression
A lot of people died
From the dust that flew by
As the tumbleweeds flied
The Great Depression
The money went away
Food was rationed
But not every day
Most of the food
Was sent away
For the soldiers
That risk their lives everyday
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 10:27 AM UTC