"rinses" poems
Life is beautiful
Water lilies dancing in the ripples
But people are callous and cruel
Life is beautiful
The sun soothes my soft skin
But people lie and hate
Life is beautiful
Rain water rinses warm sweat away
But people build bombs
Life is beautiful
The night is cool and merciful
But people can’t seem to reciprocate
Life is beautiful
Full of wonder and descriptive words lack
The power to express that
But make it easy to see the dark ways
Of humanity
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 1:57 PM UTC
I last rode this road in Summer
When the light was as now;
Long, flat and mellow
But by the hour not the season
The trees back then still wore clothes
Green, perhaps liver-spotted with yellow
Now I watch them tangle their naked arms
And the world turns its face away in shame,
Longing for its chastised summer
The wheat field is grey scrub
An old bristling beard
And my bike tyres trace its edge
Like fingers on the jaw of our grandfather
And the watercolour wind
Rinses my knuckle bones
And then bites them open
They don’t bother to bleed
They’ve been chewed too many times
As the clouds wash in,
Black with frostbite,
I bite my winter scarf
And sing to it of bluebirds
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 3:35 AM UTC
I lost it
I lost my poem mojo
Thoughts piled higher than an air balloon shaped like a kite
I'm scrawling all over the page
Just to say what is near the tip of my tongue
But...Air
And only air is escaping my tongue's grasp
So the page ends up balled up
Spread into a crumble onto the floor
My day rinses and repeats
With my sprawlings traveling to the door
Dec 6, 2019
Dec 6, 2019 at 10:26 AM UTC
No more guises,
Just look into my eyes
Every word said from now
Will not be a lie
But every word about to jump
From your lips shall die
Because your carnal cravings
Will eat them alive.
I’m slowly dissipating
But I know you can revive me
A fallen tree, I sleep here
Slipping into lifelessness
But I feel so ravenous
And I know you can feel
The thumping of my heart
It’s eager; deeply.
You crawl up to me
With a different face
Different intentions
Breathing different air
I inhale your energy
My longing embraced
I want every trace of innocence
Completely defaced.
Overpowered
By this yearning
We want, we crave
And we’re still learning
I cannot feel a thing
But a burning hunger
You cling to me
I invite you in
Of course, I do, I crave your skin
It’s a liquid I wish to immerse myself in
Your scent rinses me
Keeps me within your carnal hold,
Let the numbing begin.
Apr 2, 2018
Apr 2, 2018 at 4:11 AM UTC
Finding something on the road
And serving it for dinner
Buying dresses far too small
And thinking you look thinner
Solar powered submarines
Broken ribs or ruptured spleens
Driving cars and drinking beers
Lightbulb licking, bad ideas
Knowing where you shouldn't be
And being there despite
Going out in thunderstorms
To fly your iron kite
Sharing needles with a shark
Going to Mansfield after dark
Setting fire to someone's ears
Telemarketing, bad ideas
Not deploying gaffer-tape
When doing D.I.Y.
Believing the implausible
While branding truth a lie
Replying to Nigerian Princes
**** bleach and ******* rinses
Tabloid papers touting fears
Voting UKIP, bad ideas
Impersonating ******
Before nineteen forty-five
Catching a train on Sunday
And assuming you'll arrive
Turning lights on with your nose
Eating food that moves or glows
Listening to Britney Spears
Marmite Pringles, bad ideas
**
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 7:20 AM UTC
I struggle
To be back in this place again
Warily treading a gorgeously uncomfortable river
Of crashing beauty
And the shivering memories of devastating pain.
I press my hands to the cold car window
And I let this landscape of thoughts roll through me
Dense and flat
Like the low-lying valley fog flirting with the evergreens.
The beauty rinses me clean for a few hours
Absolves my blue beating heart
Of a loneliness that falls and puddles within me
Like soft rain.
The cold smell of snowy pine is sharp
Like the crack of a whip in the white metal air.
A distended azure sky swells to fill the heavens
Smelling sweetly of snow and wind.
Wind hums gently through dense, endless miles
Of storybook forests
And my heart shudders inside me
As though it has never been touched before.
It is then that I let myself wander to you
And I feel your last kiss
Burning softly on the lips of the woman
Reflected vaguely back at me in the window.
She waits for you, as I do
Both of us dwelling in two cities so different
That a wide and courageous fjord
Holds them forever apart.
I wait for you
Life's brave soldier
Eyes that still my soul
Arms of kind and gentle steel
Heart of gold and purple and blue
Kiss of waterfall and wildfire.
Come home to me.
Dec 28, 2013
Dec 28, 2013 at 10:02 PM UTC
The girl’s corneas expand over the small black abyss of pupil
Tides of blue and hazel rising over onyx isles
An unhinged eyelash balances precariously on its neighbor
It evaporates with her quick blink
Directly beneath her right eye
Below the mottled eggplant shadows
The corpse of a capillary drains among the freckles
Subterranean rivers of vein
Pulse under thin skin
Her nose is spherical
Etched by soft papery scars
Pores round and gazing
Culminating in a uniform valley
Lips are soft and pink and unkissed
A source for a small steady trickle of pride
Her mother’s lips
But behind the outer façade
The seamed surface is rough with nervous nibbles
Ribboned with scars of worries and troubles
She lacks fourteen teeth
Absent since the womb
Those she has are either sickly infants or filled with grainy mystery metallics
Some entirely fabricated with spatulas of amalgam
Yellowed and cracking
Rough and worn
Spongy inner marrow screaming with pain
She hides the stony incisors from view
The hair
Curling and waving
Kissing with reptilian tongues at her cheeks
Neck
Forehead
Framing her face in brambles and cowlicks
Indecisive of its true form
Fuzzy with moisture
Unwilling to obey
The strands of a gorgon
A monstrous tangle of personality
Instantly recognizable
Her hands attempt to soothe the undulating tendrils
But they anger
As stubborn as her
Refuse treatment
She gives up
Rinses her hands
And turns away from the mirror
Sighing
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 11:48 PM UTC
Three men on a platform,
one wipes the sun,
another washes the clouds,
the third one rinses the sky.
I wonder if they will stay there,
When it's night time.
When I come back,
one wipes the sun,
another washes the stars,
the third one rinses the milky way.
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 3:28 PM UTC
"Why do you love her?”
I don’t know, mom. Why don’t you ask yourself the same thing about dad every once in awhile?
Why do you love him?
Does the way he wraps his barbaric hands around your womanhood and rinses it of all pride turn you on?
Or maybe it’s the way his fists move with your tears… the choreography perfectly in sync with the ballad of your captivity… comfort… conformity - same thing, right?
Why do you love him?
Do you not see the chains on your ankles?
These are the same rusty chains that held onto your self-doubt; you’re drowning in a glass of water, mother.
The hinges are loose but you’re so stupid… so in love… your vision is blurry now. Let go of the tears you held back for sixteen years.
“Why do you love her?”
I don’t know, mother. Somewhere between the passion and commotion; the *** and the rage, I forgot.
I think I understand why you’re holding on.. It’s all in the comfort of knowing they will always be there. It’s all in the lack of trying and just being.
I don’t know why I love her.
Jun 5, 2017
Jun 5, 2017 at 1:32 PM UTC
Coalescing, cuddling life
swimming inside.
Cleansing, like a mother
would a child,
scrubs away
collected stains.
An attention to detail
rinses, washes food,
blessing it into our bellies with an aqua kiss.
A coolness douses the summer heat,
A relief quenches thirst
Of human and animal alike.
A babbling sound, bubbling
into a relaxing,
lazy Sunday…
Sep 12, 2011
Sep 12, 2011 at 1:03 PM UTC
I sit tinkering
with the bells in the wood
flicking the bell this way and that
Not doing me that much good.
Playing with my head
and that is not sheet music
it is regrets and bashed dreams
shot down completely dead.
The blues I call it the lavender blues
blue rinses, phone calls and lonely beds.
Not with fruity flowers but dried hay
I have the lavender blues that is
all that I can possibly say.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 11:26 AM UTC
my body is a trash can
a dumping ground for mistakes
every day is a morning after
every day breeds saccharine aches
bruised lips and handlebar hips
a naked exposé of wrong
from tarpit lungs, through purple teeth
eerie hisses of my afflicted song
the poison flower blossoms only once
infernal fragrance of forgive-me-nots
no tide rinses the sins of night
at 1400 weeks this vessel rots
Jun 4, 2012
Jun 4, 2012 at 6:26 PM UTC
in front of the mirror, she stands and sees them on the wall, tipping along the dust
she presses coffee and rinses dishes under hot, soapy water, her eyes on that wall
then out the window
the sun winks high and the glass talks in telltale signals left by sunken reveries
she falls into slumber so deep and intuitive webbing takes over all ahead
the old Singer in the corner sits silent and awaits its timely command
then, she wakes to find all the silent trappings of caterpillar's welcome
and deep in the forest of her serene thoughts, she taps into worlds half lost to Man
too little to expect in the moonlit attic of North verdant wedged into half a heart
she lowered all the burnt offerings into the soil and gave up one prayer after the other
pulling loose the pieces into the loom, turn the wheel and spin a cloak out of suffering
all night and all the next day, the spinning proves to be substantial
and it grows
*the cloak is done, it's so beautiful
and on the wall, there it shows the promise of tomorrow
she eyes that missive dumped in the wastepaper basket*
so many squares overlap in the rainbowed light; the shadows play rapier games on the wall
and the night lands refreshing on spicey green and greets the walker
hurtling somnabulist takes a dip into cast reflection of unexpected calls
and on the wings of nocturnal takings, she travels yet further
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
He squeezes her shape into a suit that fits
But happily disregards the ones that don't,
As every material or materialistic item
Is merely just temporary clothing he wears for his comfort.
Her silky waist down and up to her cotton flammable heart,
Both burn and tear just as easy as the next,
Despite his sweet persona,
He's as bitter and acidic as chemistry gone wrong.
But he washes and rinses her into a wave of hope,
And she drowns,
Because she has been habituated to drowning.
Cold bones is her love,
But he always glides away like a ghost in the night,
Questioning whether he bleeds the same blood,
Because is it humanly possible to do the things he could.
She has dreamt of his silhouette all night
But is unable to see the whole faded image,
The silence has become part of her,
You clipped the angel wings she would bare just for you
And is no longer able to fly.
Instead she drowns in an ocean that you quaked,
Suffocated on an island of crashed cold bones,
Cold, cold bones.
Even when she was the soldier
That never fled from battle,
You made her the brute
With a machine heart and machine mind,
Steered from her innocence
And tenderness to be kind.
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 7:59 AM UTC
Your words sizzle,
spouting fire in the back of my mind
from kindling
to flames from the maw of an unappeased dragon.
They twitch at my lips,
begging to be set free
but I keep them trapped.
They want to flee
so my mind rinses cleaner than Pilate’s hands.
They cling like spiders to my gums,
finding holes from which to poke
a solitary spindly leg
and then explode,
scattering shadows and hallucinations
and vocabulary *****
But now the monsters are lurking in corners
not just in my brain
and they reach out with scaly claws
to brush passersby on the shoulder
or neck
and I am Pandora and you are
the box.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 3:22 PM UTC
She says,
Smile more
He says,
Look you got to freak out a little less
And I wait
They say if you’re quiet enough,
You start to hear your own voice
I can’t decide if that’s a good thing
He picks me up and I dumb myself down
Rinses me down while I size myself up
Width is still one word I can’t say without biting my tongue too much at the end
Mar 20, 2015
Mar 20, 2015 at 1:41 PM UTC
21st May
Lying down in fields of flowers whilst the warm Spring sun beats down on me and
warms my skin as if it were
a hug, a kiss, maybe.
The air in my chest is so light and cleans out the dirt left in my lungs from
inhaling false love from those before.
Fresh as a little daisy, a new bud that has blossomed with life and burst at the seams with happiness, elated to be here on Earth.
Alone, but never lonely.
May's rain does not wet me, but wash me, rinses off the past and it soaks into the ground for the flowers to drink.
the thirst for love is over
now that the sun has come.
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 9:47 PM UTC
It’s morning
The light hurts your eyes:
Yesterday is hurting you: You were moving in.
This is how they welcome you to the neighborhood,
The toothpaste is making everything bitter—
he’s dreaming of rivers
you’re awake staring at the ceiling
at clumps of runaway white paint—
on a pillow that smells like your sister
At the beach
The sand is bleeding—
the water rinses away the stains,
You’re making circles out of sugar
She’s laying on her stomach—
The sun pouring maraschino cherries on back
Jul 31, 2015
Jul 31, 2015 at 2:08 AM UTC
I. Aprilis
You wished the summer for no one
moments of white wilderness
stars in the blood
sepaled bees scatter
drown each day as all lights
unmade pollen blossoming among
fistfuls of paper tasks
busied thought scrolls with the Seen
afternoon feathers multiply
white honey of Aries
II. Julius
Months as paper pass flitting
through the screens that
separate outdoors from in where
light pools on an ancient carpet and
summer lay broken in pieces
on the floor like
so much shattered vinyl
what happens to the trapped light then, as
it ages, it thickens
curdles in the stale drapes
staunches awareness of
time the moon
is slowly
drifting away
from Earth
III. Octus
Apples fall on the rotten dusty ground we
threw them, trapped in the speckled atmosphere of decades
that never rinses clean you swore
we could see Venus if
the clouds would sit right
Aphrodite in blue jeans a ladder
in darkness is still
a ladder
IV. Januarius
Color dissolves and
hibernates underground grey winds
stampede through the Roman Year
like the ghosts of unchained thoroughbreds
all the bees have drowned their honey
spread thin across the blackened sky when
everything is upside down
stars become seeds
Mar 12, 2010
Mar 12, 2010 at 7:21 PM UTC
Sometimes she remembers how to smile
How to laugh
Sometimes she forgets how she looks
But then a realization comes
She is not somebody that can be happy with herself
She is not desired
She is no one's first choice
She goes to the bathroom
Sticks two fingers down her throat
And grasps the seat as if it will save her
Hoping
Wishing
That she was a different person
That she was beautiful
But alas these are just dreams
So she rinses her mouth
Fakes a smile
Until the next time reality hits
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 8:43 PM UTC
eventually I'll stop writing about you.
I miss you, in a way. I still love you,
in a way. probably always will.
but after awhile, after it sets in,
you will evaporate. you will stop
being in the foreground of my
waking mind. even now, the space
you occupy is so small. more or less
of a habit, I suppose. the habit
of thinking of someone you loved
for four years. you on my mind
is a knee-jerk reaction. I guess I
thought since I did the leaving,
it wouldn't be like this. I thought it
would be like ripping off the band-
aid. the residue that's left rinses off
with a little water, a little soap, a little
scrub. oh, no. you are wound. healing,
but still bruised, still sort of aching.
but you are an exit wound now, the
memory of an injury that will come to
pass. someday, you won't even be
background. you'll be the faintest
whisper of somebody I used to know,
a trace of somebody I used to be.
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 2:00 AM UTC
The emptiness visits as dusk begins to fade away.
The loneliness awakens to indulge your thoughts.
The sadness rinses your eyes,
and you begin to converse with the thoughts;
thoughts that continue to manifest 'til your body aches.
You lay, achingly;
tears leaving your face with marks.
Thoughts, rumbling like an endless drum-roll.
Your insides, sore,
chest, tightening -
breathing, difficult.
Your hands, limbs, trembling uncontrollably.
A feeling unexplainable if never felt.
This emptiness hurts -
this feeling of constant melancholia and worthlessness,
this shedding of tears,
this pain - hurts.
Somehow, the body manages to shut down;
you find peace in your sleep -
a peace that is disturbed every hour 'til you wake.
You wake to relive the nightmare of yesterday;
Aching, pondering why you continue to hold on.
Holding on 'til the inevitable happens.
Jul 14, 2017
Jul 14, 2017 at 2:20 PM UTC
Seawater gently
rinses the washed grains of sand --
No flood to be seen.
Feb 9, 2024
Feb 9, 2024 at 2:20 AM UTC
i watch the smoke curl out from under
my painted lips, and am acutely aware of the
caked lipstick smeared across them,
like an oil painting gone wrong.
getting high wasn’t something girls like me ever did;
drugs just felt too artificial, too ******
too… irresponsible, for someone who wanted to be the best
in life.
but it seems to be the only thing that rinses away what
i still haven’t managed to forget;
like how you’d delicately caress my lower lip with your teeth.
or how when you’d smile, the fine lines around your tired eyes
would wrinkle upwards, you’re lips twisting into that stupid,
jagged grin that made me giggle.
i forget the first night we ever spent together,
and how ******* terrified i was at how i was trusting someone
so completely after just four weeks.
and when i rolled over, you were there, smiling –
calm, collected, sleepy –
and whispered across the pillow, “good morning, beautiful.”
(that’s when i fell in love with you.)
i sort of forget how you held your face in your hands,
mumbling how tired you were, and how i would never make it out of
this ******* state.
i sort of forget the annoyance flickering across your face,
how video games became more important than cooking dinner
together,
and how i cried alone in my bathtub,
wishing that i was clutching an empty bottle of pills.
i brush sugar on top of my oil painting lips,
demanding you to kiss me and still tell me that i’m bitter.
i sort of forget how you cried, but i was too
numb to care.
i sort of forget how you told me that you loved me,
but not enough to stay.
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 11:58 AM UTC
I paced
I paced the entire apartment
I hadn't really felt anything.
And i worried
maybe the nothingness meant something
Like the way a nod can mean something from across the bar
Or the way a quick glance can tell the whole entire story
Or the way a text message vibrates in you pocket
Maybe the nothingness meant I had cried every tear I ever had
Or maybe it didn't
Or maybe it meant I couldn't busy myself with emotion
Like a bird to its nest
I couldn't occupy my time with tears
Maybe it meant the sound of my laughter was more important.
It was more important than kisses on the forehead
And a date to the party
Maybe it was more important than photo ops and family dinners
Maybe smiling now spoke 5,000 more words
Then any tears that had fallen then
Because freedom melts in my mouth
Because laughing rinses away tired memories
Like water hose to ***** paws
Like bees to there busy hive
My happiness pursued me
It romanced me
It took me out to fancy dinners
And dressed my face up with a smile
Maybe my happiness was my nothingness
And maybe I finally deserved it.
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 7:37 PM UTC