"sallowness" poems
I should have kissed you before you ****** on your smoke,
Before the fluorescent elevator lights illuminated the flaws
That danced and drifted along your skin.
The thick smoke mingled with your shadow,
A shadow of a man; no face, only a cigarette.
You breathed in smoke, but your lips were positioned for a kiss.
I don’t look like the other girls, the ones you used to kiss.
I can still picture your eyes, reddened by smoke,
And your lips as ashy as your cigarette.
And I hoped you, too, could forgive my flaws.
Like how my body casts too wide of a shadow,
And the sallowness of my ordinary skin.
Things that really shouldn’t remind me of your skin,
like old leather books with burnt paper that I bet taste like your kiss.
Such books I read in the shadow,
And hide, like the way you hid behind your smoke.
Because, like the way I love a bad book and its flaws,
I could love you and your cigarette.
I’ve held your hand, the one that holds your cigarette,
And I felt the sandpaper of your skin.
I smelt the airy cologne you use to cover the flaws.
It smelled light; you used just a kiss.
Now, I smell only smoke,
And the memory of your touch is a shadow.
In the hospital you were no longer a shadow,
But a body, surrounded by walls as white as your cigarettes.
Your voice cracked from the smoke,
While needles pulsed life into your skin.
Your lips were cracked with only blood to kiss.
I saw you naked, and I saw your flaws.
Your favorite vice was your fatal flaw,
And the black fire of death became your shadow.
It followed you around, and it saw our first kiss,
Which was our last, because you chose your cigarette.
So a charcoaled monster brooded beneath your skin,
And your flesh succumbed to the white ghosts of smoke.
You died in smoke, from your flaws.
Your skin’s now dust, roaming with the shadows.
So I’ll smoke a cigarette, ‘cause it tastes just like your kiss.
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 3:46 PM UTC
I gild myself
in a sheet of
plastic, thick enough
so that no one
can see through…
Like an Easter egg shell;
I let them hollow out
the sloppy insides,
and paint my delicate skin.
I am no individual, I am
cultivated, harvested,
like the simple product I am.
Protect me: my flesh is delicate,
They’ll throw me away
at the first sight of a crack.
You consume my comrades,
But I am lucky—
I am now but a pretty little shell,
Painted pink and lush to conceal the sallowness
of my frail and immaculate skin.
Nov 26, 2011
Nov 26, 2011 at 10:33 PM UTC
Dawn slipped through the dusty blinds
of the chipping white condo
in the middle of the city
Soft, pale light
like the sallowness of her late son's cheeks
stuck in broken bars
to the far wall of the living room
The tiny yellow canary
in its iron prison
did not sing
A newspaper
with boldened headlines
lay open on the kitchen table
unread
The neighbours ignored the fake white lily
laying quitely on the cement,
cracked with cold,
the blue recycling bin
that had never been taken from the curb
the letter in the mailbox
that had never been read
The murmur of the news
floating from the television
that was always buzzing
filled her head with the static of
Nothingness
And her head, it seemed
was at the bottom of
Everything.
Slowly, the electric blue light
was lifted with white fingers
from the grey sky, through the blinds
She sighed heavily.
She hated watching television in the dark.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 1:51 AM UTC
There are poems about you , which do not live,
its a sad kind of disguise
but they grew ,
developed body parts ,
bloomed like buds ,
and found their way straight through my summer plumed heart
to write about how it felt when your hands touched me ,
and your arms felt more soothing than the star blue bed I miss home back.
your thoughts are crabbed , creating the sallowness of fear .
the bitter sweet time we spent projects into my little dumb mind ,
then makes my tears like vinegar , or bitter blinking yellow missings .
with forever my lips curving in an arc .
coming of you was not so easy but you made me alive now.
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 3:47 PM UTC
**call me blessed when indeed nothing really clicks
call me blessed when the lucky ones excel; and
i wallow in the sallowness of shrunken prospects
call me blessed when glory is posthumous death**
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 3:02 AM UTC