"reflex" poems
Hope surges upward from your core and to the heart. It warms your blood as your heart crushes into itself twice every second and unbelievably, your mind starts to think of a million and one possibilities. Your hand tingles and finally, after what seemed like eons, you think you are feeling hope again. You start suppressing it out of reflex- an unconscious, uncontrollable action. You push it down, right back to the void it came from but its too late and your lips are curving upwards into a gentle smile. You anticipate euphoria -almost can feel it at the top of your fingertips and you finally let yourself believe and hope.
It comes crashing down without warning. For a second, you still smile because your mind could not process the disappointment yet. Then - hurt, sadness, shock - flits through your mind. You still hold on to your hope like a child who refuses to let go of candy. Your smile wavers. But just like grabbing onto handfuls of sand, hope will fall out through your tightly clasped fingers. You realised that your hold on hope is no longer and instead, it is replaced by cold, unforgiving reality.
Like an icy slap to your face, like an unexpected kick to the stomach, like a bite from a dog you have always love- that is how disappointment feels like.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 10:53 AM UTC
I.
Time passes, another
batch of refugees and migrants. Cities turn into
new houses of gambling and vicious cycles.
Some say only machines can speak clearly
and most humans have lost what they have earned
throughout all this time, just right on schedule.
To own our language,
and the relationships it sets into motion,
we learn painfully, repeatedly like sunrise
and sunsets.
Claiming our own spaces and demons
hidden in our conveniences and reflex routines,
and learning the tricks that has kept peoples
from fully healing from broken promises
and betrayals throughout time.
We own up to our language and its demons
every day and night that we toss and turn
into something feasible, edible, livable.
II.
Iba ibang uri ng digma.
duguang kasaysayang binabaong buhay
binubura ang lakas at memorya tulad ng siyudad
ng Songdo sa South Korea na ang ibig sabihin
ay "city with no memory".
Ito din ang isa sa mga modelo para sa New Clark City
na tinatayo sa Luzon. Sa dalawahang mga pamamaraan
ng mga naghahari-harian, nakikibaka ang anakpawis,
nakikibaka ang kamalayan ng pagpapasya at pagwasto
sa mga pagkakamali, na paulit-ulit na sinusubukang
patayin sa iba ibang mukha.
Mula pa sa panahon ng mga lolo at lola noong 1940s
hanggang ngayon, patuloy ang mga pag-eexperimento nila at paggamit ng panlilinlang at dahas, sa ngalan ng kalusugan, edukasyon at batas, upang ipain ang buhay sarili, lasunin ang lupang kinakain ang sarili. Kung hindi tayo mag-aaral at mag-iingat din, tayo mismo ang papatay sa mga sinisimulan. #
Sep 8, 2018
Sep 8, 2018 at 2:58 AM UTC
Hiding the complex
Through basic reflex
Seeing simple lives
Through diamond eyes
The world falls
And then crumbles
So the time flies
Through diamond eyes
And rain falls
And thunder rolls
The tiny lies
Through diamond eyes
No want to be obtrusive
Need to be reclusive
Seeing quiet sighs
Through diamond eye
Nov 21, 2014
Nov 21, 2014 at 2:05 PM UTC
Treasure my **** in your mouth
Engulf it slowly with your lips
Negate this gagging reflex
Delight on my hot *****
Enjoy the taste of it
Running down
Aug 25, 2020
Aug 25, 2020 at 1:44 AM UTC
His blue eyes are like glacial-lakes, wrapping around his heart till he's chilled to the bone from the cold.
A deadly place where treading is no longer permitted.
His eyes are transparent and distant as the impersonal clouds passing overhead.
Even as I stands before him, reflecting off him.
I am still merely a reflection.
He knows my face, I reason silently.
From the hills of my cheeks, down towards the valley separating my lips.
He should recognize it all.
Instead a blank expression greets me.
A look of cold, solid insouciance.
I'm immediately angry with myself for wanting to justify his indifference's.
A reflex I've never been able to expel.
The vestigial limb on a skeleton.
A party favor from another time forgotten for the newly discovered toy.
I twist in the fridged winds wrapping around him.
My force giving under the great pressure magnified by his powers.
I never wanted to dance upon his breeze.
This realization makes me burn hotter.
My anger brighter than the northern star.
I welcome it, my amounting rage.
I embraces it with a raging smile.
His glaciers may be cold, immovable at times.
A pretentious notion I might freeze.
For I am the sun swirling in nova's ring and cannot be affected by his black iced personality.
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 11:38 AM UTC
Her warm words wash over me like a dope fiend daze... other voices boorishly buzz a cackle cacophony. At best they are the background noise of your existence.
bit players (endless layers) as she comes my way
**Your body pixilates in an ******* focus**, it bends, projects all else slowly into your frame, the deja vu of ****** tunnel vision. I struggle to speak as I stand before you.
All others condemned, reduced to extras in a celluloid daydream
they are arrayed for your adornment
set pieces that surround you in the cinema that is your daily divine saunter
body sacramental (those around you incidental) as she walks away
The subtext, the reflex, the ambivalent, ambient lighting
means nothing without you
**my arc, my carnal ******
any other epilogue is dystopian
cdh
Jan 12, 2019
Jan 12, 2019 at 5:25 AM UTC
Breeze bellows,
leaves echo in
quivering psithurism,
dithering like
unbroken smoke,
this approaching omen goads.
Dozing crows
slumbering in rows,
droves of locusts'
silenced drone,
almost comatose in repose;
nighttime overtones
choir of toads'
raspy croaks
answered by alto
of crickets' orchestral strokes.
Gust encroaches;
robed boughs
cloven open,
bring into
scope and focus
me juxtaposed,
suspended apropos.
Although motionless
and petrified in stone,
provoked by zephyr
coaxing to and fro;
swaying pendulous
and no longer frozen,
locus gently thrown.
Death rattle moan
evoked from throat,
reflex can't say no
to rigor rigidly posed,
final sigh in silence,
awoken vocal,
expelled and disposed.
Smote by
morose emotion,
gun loaded then exploded
by neurosis,
now bloated
necrosis decomposes
into gross ochre.
This trophy
and this ode
both an opus to
my inability to cope;
romanced i proposed,
eloped and betrothed to
my own
inappropriate composure.
Pocket full of posies
plucked when luck bestowed
and tears in a cup, a toast;
crying copiously,
tempest runneth overflowed,
eyes swollen and soaked.
Dipped my toes
in the coast
of this ocean's
amorphous folds,
gripped by undertow
holding control of my soul;
swiftly shipwrecked in
shallow shoal,
an old atoll.
On sandy floor,
water burrows roads;
digging, carving, roams
through unmarrowed
silica and sandstone
eroding into a cove.
A host for
opal geode trove,
enclosing a
technicolor rose,
from the depths
a glowing mosaic shone
Unopened lotus floats
on foam
of lapping waves,
a boat;
prone to no
grandiose notion
or motive,
adrift as wind stokes.
I suppose
this only shows
the total corrosion
into which I dove,
the only foes to oppose
are those of burdens, so
only weightless can I atone-
I must let go.
Mar 11, 2024
Mar 11, 2024 at 11:02 AM UTC
As the sun reflex’s an immaculate glare.
Upon the flowers and as the honey bees acquire their nectar.
The breeze of wind from the west blows east as the young tribe sets to feast.
From the belly of the beast, from the ground and to the trees,
We were once sunflower seeds.
So small and so innocent, without a care in the world to say the least.
We should look back and acquire the imagination, as children it was amazing.
Astonishing that we could be
Anything we ever dreamed and desired.
Picking fruit from that apple tree, the juices sweetened just for me
So lovely a day it was, playing games with the neighbors across the street.
The feeling of being free is a virtue, a God given right not just for me, but for thee.
Back then summer time felt like a lifetime, never having to tip the hour glass over.
Man those were the days.
But we grow up not sunflower seeds, yet sunflowers.
You see, the sun still shining but a little brighter on me.
Because my path is different, and I’m not just a ****
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 6:31 PM UTC
“We love what we don’t know, what it’s lost already…”
Jorge Luis Borges
I hang on to your portrait, in front of me;
among candles, copal, and all those things you worship in a mexican altar to the death.
You are my invisible jaguar,
you appear before me, between dreams, and I fell alive.
Full of wounds,
lacerated by my absence,
I put your portrait in front of the altar that my mind has conceived,
and you seem to hold the paradise's secret in your hands,which are made of ashes.
Then, according to the mexican & catholic tradition,
like a rural priest,
you start to draw a cross, made of the ashes of your magic, sacred hands.
The smell of the whole,
sacred being that exists in this spiritual plane,
lays on your profile, so beautiful embodied in your portrait,
which I prefer above any other reflex.
Finally, when I think on your lips,
is when I stop believing in anything else,
and just keep on holding the devotion that I worship to your portrait...
Then I chase each single one of the naked,
flaccid,
vulnerable memories of you,
trying to protect me.
I think of you,
so profoundly and vividly right now,
that my skin transpires,
bleeds,
my muscles are tense,
and my mouth recites your name with all and its last name.
I wish that, under a supernatural power,
you're also thinking of me, at this precise moment,
and that some thought can touch me below my skirt,
and make the skin of my white buttocks to bristle.
White –Blanca in Spanish-; the name of one of my childhood’s friend.
And the same color of your so polish, european skin.
The rainforest of your sacred Chiapas.
I need you excruciatingly.
Like a dagger into my body.
I will like to see your portrait being devoured by the flames,
but I do not have the courage to throw it to the fire,
for its image will become strongly painted in my mind,
and the effect that you exerts towards me it will be more powerful.
Dangerous.
I had a dream a couple of hours ago,
it was me,
so earthly,
being blessed by your voice,
and the tattoo you have on your left arm, being kissed by my simple mouth.
Our skin,
together,
united,
white,
is the wall where the moon lays on,
Lays in our bodies making love,
in a black hammock,
conjuring with our pneuma to the whispering of the rainforest...
Jan 19, 2014
Jan 19, 2014 at 5:37 PM UTC
Panic,
placed on the splintered edge of a dreaming mind,
I spit and sputtered, like the dying wings of
a dragonfly on a cold cappuccino morning.
She called me in the dark moody blue hue of early morning
as if to steal the broken moon from the attic in my chest.
So early I could hear the creak of spider legs
inching for a place of warmth.
Still in dream logic, she was crying so quietly
Melted spoons for a brain, I could only hear
the groans and pains of
the pet spiders on my ceiling,
their so cute and pissy in the morning.
She muffled "I need help"
I snapped awake as if a reflex to fight a charging train wreck.
This time advice came direct from my dream landscape the truth served dark black
and without the vanilla flavor.
I focus and get in gear "Hey girlie I am here, whats going on?"
An hour goes by a like a cat sneeze on a stormy day.
Again she laughs if I could see her, her smile would be wide tired and tear stained.
I laugh with her, while aching at the corner of my eyes " well hey try that tomorrow and if it doesn't work we can brainstorm to try something else. Call me tomorrow my sleepiness is welting my consciousness, I am not much use now except maybe for some mad hatter talk." A pause she sighs as if pushing of sleep. I wanted just one more smile to be sure" Stand strong if you can survive this hit the sky will clear for you. We'll strangle the rainmaker if we have to"
parting jokes and the call the ends, my moon back in my chest
content spiders basking in rays of light I can almost hear the hum of the morning sun.
I smile fading with the ceiling tucking me in, I can see her curled up with her stuffed animals half crying half terrified she falls to sleep drooling on her long time best friend
Mr finkers.
and
Finally the purr of happy spiders lulls be back to sleep.
Aug 23, 2012
Aug 23, 2012 at 6:29 PM UTC
My grandfather passed away on a dewy September morning;
About 17 years ago;
My grandmothers glass eyes still draw a picture of fright in front of me;
I remember as she sat silently for hours;
Cold , vulnerable;
As if she was robbed of her breath;
Since then she has sliced her life into two parts;
Before baba, after baba.
Yesterday as we sorted her cupboard;
Over hot chai;
I asked her about a saree;
" I think it was before baba" she says , like an unconditioned reflex , an involuntary knee ****
They don't teach you how to love like that anymore;
Love like this swallows dictionaries and renders meanings, meaningless;
It moves mountains and drowns rivers;
It spoons the hatred and vaults it.
My grandmother never went to school;
Even at 24 today, whenever I see her;
She presses a 500Rs note into my fist and asks me to buy something sweet for myself;
Last time she did that, she told me he taught her how to count money after they were married;
And to say words like "curd" and "rice";
Every year on his death anniversary;
She still cooks food for people;
With a metal rod holding the bones in her thighs;
And pressing the bleeding points of her psoriatic palms;
She keeps adding cards to her monument;
And remembers love;
Everyday;
In hushed muted tones;
In lemon pickles and measures of salt;
And in a way that stuns me the most;
Without even realising.
Aug 29, 2018
Aug 29, 2018 at 2:46 PM UTC
Swimming in a sea of darkness
Drowning without hope
Trying to touch the surface
Dying, cause I can't stay afloat
Smelling the molten fumes
Of life's red hot flame
Burning to my deepest core
Where no love can claim
Falling deeper into the sand
Can't dig out of the hard dirt
Finding rocks at every turn
Scraped and cut, always hurt
Breathing in life's deadly curse
Inhaling the putrid smell
Just a natural reflex
Exhaling as I fall to hell
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 9:04 AM UTC
You praised my heart and helping hand
And for the longest time I could not understand
How any of that could make me special
Until you used those words to describe her
And how perfect she is.
And that is the paragraph on how you broke my heart for the first time ever.
But even in my darkest hour, my darkest day
Your doings could not take my humor away.
I am more than what you did to me,
I am more than what you made me feel.
Even when you broke my heart
I could not be mean enough to try and tear you apart.
I cried so many tears,
But for the next few years
I wished you only the best.
Even after you left that gaping hole
Right there in the very centre of my soul,
I could not hate you, never hate you
Because I loved you, always loved you
Beyond your kind heart and helping hands
Your everlasting patience and my high demands
You understood me like no one else had ever done
You listened to me when I was undone
You cared for me when I broke down
And then you took my heart, my very crown.
You broke my heart, my spirit, my pride
But the one thing you could never take from me is my reflex to fight
I'll fight your impact, your demeanour, what you made me feel
I'll reclaim what you took me from me and reveal
Once and for all what I know to be my greatest strength
My love for myself. And that can really
For real
Unlike you
And what I once allowed myself to feel for you
Last the entire length.
Sep 30, 2018
Sep 30, 2018 at 9:37 PM UTC
Travelling by foot in whatever weather
I took to walking the gardens' route,
With single lens reflex camera
Still able to take the sort of pictures
That stop the eyes from wandering.
Photos in black and white
Where contrasts given a subtlety
Slowly revealing the depths
Of the familiar.
And into the park
Where rain, recently fallen,
Drenches the lens with jewels
Dropping from tree and cloud,
Sporadically,
Catching the light
With its rainbow spectrum
And collecting moments
Of nature's splendour
Into unnoticed places.
Love Mary ***
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 7:35 AM UTC
lay low
make yourself a nervous fit
imperfect replication
here no one’s happy
staring down narrow paths
burning out the cells
lining their guts
words are worthless.
Sep 11, 2018
Sep 11, 2018 at 2:49 AM UTC
I waterfall my fingers down my throat
and wriggle them like they’re alive,
like I’m nineteen years old again,
trying to prove that I’m the cool girl
with no gag reflex.
The shower runs on boiling hot
and if I stand, I might fall,
so I’m taking the hair-infested plughole
as my date to the dance,
once I’m done with the black hole left in its absence.
My fingers are uncomfortably water-warm
and if I close my eyes, it feels so good,
like the first time I realised there was a clenched fist
inside my stomach that I could begin
to uncurl.
When I think about it, it’s like ************
It’s something I wouldn’t talk about in Church
and it’s something I should only do behind closed doors.
A lot of things are like ************ in that way,
like being gay, and cutting my own hair, and whatever this is.
It’s a distraction.
It’s something to do when the list of things to be done
is the same every day, when the doors are perpetually
shut and the clenched fist will always be clenched
once rigor mortis has set in.
Jul 17, 2021
Jul 17, 2021 at 8:47 PM UTC
My mom offers me a bowl of oatmeal she cooked at seven.
It is eight.
Sitting on the stove, it looks clumpy and cold —
a mash drowning raisins.
I pretend like I don’t see it.
But it calls my name as I start my day,
even though it looks repulsive
and I have avoided oatmeal since college.
I toast some bread.
She glances over the counter to see if I am paying attention —
a reflex from my childhood.
Because as a child,
my parents said I had selective attention. —
sometimes I listened and other times I didn’t.
When they got divorced, it got worse.
I was distracted by the bristle of my dad's 5 o’clock shadow
and the sigh in my mom's voice when they asked me
separately,
What time I needed to leave?
and
If all my stuff was packed?
But all I kept thinking was:
Is that all there is?
You get married, get divorced, and cart around your kids.
The thought of swallowing this is repulsive.
like leftover oatmeal, it stares me in the face.
I don't want it.
Most girls I know are raisins —
They already have their whole
wedding planned on Pinterest,
and their kids names picked out.
Everytime, I see engagements on FB,
I can't help but forsee divorce
and I wonder why people run for a
partner, kids, and a mortgage,
when in college their
ambitions were more.
I wonder when their
mid-life crisis will be,
or when they'll wake up
and want more than
9 to 5 to fulfill a lie
patriarchy put forth.
So I spread peanut butter on toast and
murmur, “I put the oatmeal in the fridge — someone will eat it.”
My mom puts her head down and finishes her coffee.
I eat my peanut butter sandwich.
I am stuck trying to answer an impossible question,
as she begins sentences like
"Once you get settled,
you'll want to look for someone..."
I tune out.
I don't have selective attention,
just the perception that
everyone is ignoring
this important question:
Is that all there is?
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 3:06 PM UTC
So, after reading this Programme with her
And felt the Blood up-river past your brain
She was Smiling. And thus I beg-confirm
How to abdicate this Throneful Pain
Do Tears from your Fans ever sensate you
Even when their Pillars support your Fare
Bitter Notes will tweet; And Pretty Souls too
Just how you Falter these Dictions beware
She was Brave enough to post the Same Event
At Risk to debit their Frustrated Fears
Brother and Sister: Most live Excuse meant
A Funny Welcome to whom they Revere.
Please. This isn't the first Turtle Reflex
Of Four-Digits-Two minus Year-of-Six.
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 3:41 AM UTC
It sounds like a broken record
Feels just like a revolving door
When another tin-star soldier
Explains what somebody died for
When both sides are crying "justice!"
But when all things are complete
There's another broken family
There's more blood out in the street.
And there's nobody to answer for
The systemic elimination
Of innocent black men and boys
Across this old and broken nation.
When guilt is predetermined
And last resorts become reflex
A whole race of Americans
Are forced to worry "Am I next?"
You don't have to like the truth
In order for the truth to be.
You can cry out furiously
When men in protest take a knee,
But if you deny the evidence
When the truth is brought to light
Then, you're a sucker or a liar,
Either way, you're just not right.
Sep 21, 2016
Sep 21, 2016 at 2:28 PM UTC
*did i tell you about that orca (killer whale)
that killed a killer white (shark)?
yeah, flipped him on the stomach
inducing a conscious sleeping position
of the shark, belly up... the ****** orca
drowned the shark.*
dear daffodils counting to only sixteen
springs, why blossom why bloom so soon?
lemmy was part of something better
than his solo project... no one really talks
'bout his solo crazy train antics,
so why talk lemmy why talk ozzy os' burn
and simply dismiss hawkwind & black sabbath?
oh -
*na kraju nocy i u progu dnia
kogut na dachu pieje
w głowie sie kręci
da na da na da
gorączka znów szaleje.*
given all that, imagine a seal on a drift of ice,
a stowaway of a berg,
then imagine why, it's seeking a monastery,
there are four orcas beneath the mirror surface
of the water, in formation, like horses
to the gallop of a wind's flute eolides,
and they're moving in, dipping with tail
fin exertion of some reflex spasm -
and the mini tsunami created suddenly
tilts the seal's monastery and the seal plops
into the depths... where it's only an old
cloth rag soon to be mince.
p.s. i denounce the polish diacritical mark
over o to make u (ó) as not diacritical at all...
it's an aesthetic mark, and yes, it does look pretty.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 5:47 AM UTC
These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh,
Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye,
Though tenemented in the selves we see,
Not more perforce than azure to the sky,
Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh,
And startled from no daylight you or me.
For trance and silvermess those moons commend,
Which blanch the warm life silver-pale; or look
What ghostly portent mist distorts from slight
Clay shapes; the willows that the waters took
Liquid and brightened in the waters bend,
And we, in love’s reflex, seemed loved of right.
Then no more think to net forthwith love’s thing,
But cast for it by spirit sleight-of-hand;
Then only in the slant glass contemplate,
Where lineament outstripping line is scanned,
Then on the perplexed text leave pondering,
Love’s proverb is set down transliterate.
2.6k
isn’t it beautiful that our first reflex when listening to music is to replicate that tune,
with the same throats that are tired of speaking we try to make art
Jun 12, 2021
Jun 12, 2021 at 3:06 AM UTC
The Hour Glass represents us. Confused how.. Let me elaborate it to you.
You do see the sand that is seeping slowly off the orifice between the two bowls..
That sand shows the flow of love from ur heart to mine. But wen the flow stops. U just have to revert the glass and u vl see that Ur love is not just taken in, it is adored, processed, felt. Its warmth and the care that is hidden in it is scrutinized. And then it flows back into u.
This is the way we are. Due to this our love always wins from our fights.
U widout any selfishness and greed give me all that u ve got inside u, planting banyan trees of love to make it live for years.
And here, Its me, trying to provide the carbon dioxide and water for helping the tree to grow and feel the fresh oxygen, extracting each amount and inhaling it wid full greed. This greed, Which Comes like a reflex only fr u, is not a devil's one but a Loving one. How can it be possible to share u wid anyone else in the whole world. I cant help it. I cant share u. And I am proud of being greedy fr u.
This sand which keeps on seeping consists of all memories stored in it about us.
All of them, Staring wild eyes with the rays of Innocent Infatuation, Then the seed of frndship that we planted (Actually u planted), And then My extravagant feelings converting that seed of frndship directly into a plant of love, Then the rains and the hot sun that the plant faced between these paceful yrs we were together, Then the Era of wisdom that attacked me and made me construct a good shelter to protect this plant from heavy rains and hot burning rays of rageful sun..
All these memories. That we lived together. Which we now remember and smile, sometyms cry and sometyms even laugh after crying. And I promise to give u more, good, to be confident, fresh and best memories in this lyf ahead so that while taking our last breath these wud give u the best smile u ever had in ur lyf.
And if this hourglass, ever, accidently or unfortunately breaks, dont be sad. cuz these memories are stored in every pinch of the sand it contains not the outer body that consists it.
Love You
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 10:56 PM UTC