"salvageable" poems
Oh
to be the girl in those adverts ,
Light,
skinny,
beautiful
A tragic line
to every gentle rib
I fetishise her fragile fingers
A monstrous beast reflected in the mirror, the worst possibility.
Tis poetic, there she stares
Says her lines; remaining fair,
Into my face, My acting is heavy handed and awkward
She’s a consumable reality,
She’s easy on the eyes
The fragile female,
salvageable.
We are a tragedy of ages, her Juliet, I Faustus
They silently boo while I slop onto the stage
A lazy slob,The **** of society, just don’t eat you fat **** men like curvy girls We don’t want to see you, You’re so brave! You’re the problem, it’s not hard hide your mass from view, unkempt, repulsive, vile. hide yourself it offends my sharp eyes.
I open my drooling mouth to speak, but there are chins smothering my mouth
My eyes clouded by greasy cellulite
I don’t want to exist like this.
So just stop eating.
I’d give an arm and a leg,
my pale teeth,
my parasitic possibility
my child
Oct 14, 2020
Oct 14, 2020 at 12:36 PM UTC
When I was seventeen I thought I knew love.
I thought it came naturally, like you didn't have to seek it.
And you couldn't hide from it.
When I was seven I looked my mom right in her blue eyes and said
"Nobody ever tells you that the person you love is the most dangerous."
This was after He died.
My grandmother literally broke my grandfather's heart by sleeping with the priest on Sunday while the children drawing
Jesus closed their eyes and hoped that their prayers would save them from Goliath.
I started a rumor when I was younger that if you layed with your ear to the grass above his grave you could still hear
him reciting love letters.
Listen closely, I'm writing in whispers
until the whispers become whispers
and I want to keep halving myself
until the halves become something salvageable.
If I talked to you today you would tell me that I was the worst person
to try and save.
Every morning I'd wake up with new scars and you in my ear.
Telling me that you love me as much as you can love a person
as much as a person can love a person as much as my father loved my mother
and as much as my mother loved herself.
(Never enough).
When I was thirteen I got my first detention for talking too loudly,
now when I speak, eyes widen and mouths open.
I wish nobody quieted me down.
Because now the only words I know are apologetic and giving
and full of goodbye.
Nobody ever tells you that the person you love will be the person who lives.
Nobody ever tells you that God is a child with a serotonin imbalance and a
bad sense of humor.
Nobody ever tells you that love is Goliath.
Nobody ever told David to use his hands.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 8:39 PM UTC
I am not old, yet.
My skin is not powdery and white, see-through like a paper lantern.
But there is a part of me which
When I dare to reach for someone I love
Reaches with brittle ***** fingers, soft and cold and fluttering like white moths
That edge closer to a flame until they catch.
There is a part of me that feels old, and fragile.
And already even in the crest of my youth I’ve cursed this body
For its frailty, its needs.
It suffers and complains, always crying out for something,
Never sated, never still.
I’ve said it feels like living inside a porcelain doll
A look, and cracks can spider out along an arm,
A word and blood can bloom beneath the surface, seeping up into
Bruised pictures and symbols.
I must always be gentle,
I must always be
Watching.
Too passionate, and fissures form, marring the cheek, spreading like shadows thrown by a lace curtain.
I stare out, burning to touch everything,
And yet I pull back:
To dare is to risk, and I’ve seen
Both reward and loss.
I have seen a thousand shining colors spread across me like sunrise,
Warming my skin,
Calling to me like prayer until a bit of light escaped through the spaces between my atoms and reached another person’s palms,
But I have also seen the pale, flat shards of myself,
Sifted through white dust in dismay
For a salvageable portion.
Indeed, there are rooms in this world where sharp edges of me still linger
Waiting in obstructed corners and beneath heavy refrigerators
To gouge a foot or snag a hem,
Interred
In the dark and hollow places where they flew when I shattered and could not gather them all.
I have known
Intimately
My own fragility,
How maddeningly breakable I am
And how difficult to mend.
And there is a part of me now, always,
Which whispers to me when I would be bold,
“You are not old, yet.
But wouldn’t you just love
To live that long?”
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 10:36 PM UTC
|
Cubism brought the
omniscient narrator
into the visual arts &
|
traveling far enough
from the center of the
universe makes the universe
seem actually tiny &
finally, imperceptible,
all that is time-travel, god &
ordinary life: is relativity,
the math of the diameter;
quantum mechanics, that
of the circumference
|
the Russian avant-garde
of the 'teens & 20's
applied these principles
to typography to serve
the supposedly omniscient
Soviet State;
|
an early cold war
project of the NSA
was to fund the arts
as propaganda
|
1950's & early 60's
America saw unbridled
expressions of mass,
individual, artistic &
intellectual
creativity:
facilitated in large
part by the invention
of LSD by the CIA
|
so far the greatest mind
of recent times has been
essentially a disembodied
brain; RIP Stephen Hawking
|
the future points to our brain
being salvageable from the
polluted mess of the body;
|
Under Gretchen Carlson
Miss America is to be judged
on brains alone
|
_That's Avante-Garde, *****
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 8:45 PM UTC
December 18, 2013
Words stab like knives. Each syllable uttered slices deeper into the nothingness that is this emotion.
Actions break bones. Pressure mounts and mounts until the sharp, quick snap ends in a flash of pain.
Caring suddenly becomes your worst trait. It muddies the waters of a once clear pool. Give. Try. Fail.
Repeat. Something so important becomes something you put so much effort into that you beat it half to death. The mystery is gone. The excitement is gone. The surprise is gone. The anger never leaves. The fighting never ceases. The hostility, rage, disappointment, misunderstanding, and fury never die.
It is still salvageable, so long as everyone agrees. As long as one person is not at their breaking point, you can always go back. Go back to the mystery, the excitement, the surprise. Effort is crucial. Patience is key. Understanding is vital.
Love lives.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 8:55 PM UTC
i. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You were what all burning things are, hot and radiant, crackling with a force I cannot name. You were a comet speeding to earth, a malfunctioning two-stage rocket. I watched as you turned yourself inside out, as you were absorbed by the sky, as you detonated yourself in an act of destruction so powerful it created collateral art. I watched as you gave yourself up to ash. I was there.
ii. When a building is on fire, the first human instinct is to run away. But I ran toward you. I ran toward you, because I knew what things might be tucked within you. I ran toward you, because your heart deserved to pulled from the wreckage. I ran toward you, because I was not afraid, because I have been a burning building and I remember what it was like to be trapped inside myself, dissolving in the heat and the pain, toxic and dehumanized. I remember. So I ran toward you while everyone else ran in the opposite direction, and I put my hands on your windows, and I entered you.
iii. You were trembling in those flames, those flames I swept aside like curtains, looking for the salvageable. You were sad and raw and red and wonderful, surrounding me with your swollen hopes, bleeding words of venom and gentleness, a dichotomy of throbbing remorse. You blew out window panes and shook down doors. You shattered the roof, sent furniture tumbling. You howled at a moonless night, you agonized gloriously.
iv. I watched the pieces of you fly. The Tuesday night Hennessy, the poets you tried to understand, the I-am-not-scaredness of you, the pressure of your angry palms smacking the table, the movement of your legs, the ache of your voice, the bravado of your soul, all sent scrambling like grains of sand. I watched you contort, watched you turn quiet and strange, watched you forget things I still remember, things I cannot forget: the color of our laughter, the finding of trust, the promises you failed to keep, the dissolution of the invincible. I watched as you were, for one incredulous moment, so beautiful I couldn’t breathe. I stood at the core of you while you collapsed around me. I wept for you in ways I have wept for no one.
v. Like a building on fire, you appeared in my path. You ended the way all burning things do, falling, skeletal, to earth. Desperate. Brilliant. Gone.
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 4:12 PM UTC
There are ways
To be ready for a death of the soul.
The way you'd write a will
Or take medication to ease the pain.
People to say goodbye to,
Loose ends to tie...
Granted,
It's a little trickier when you know your body will still go on
After you die.
When you know you'll have to leave it and then
Slam back inside
And handle all the damage done in your absence.
But
There are ways.
Silently I tie back my hair.
Pour myself a frosty glass of milk.
I hate milk.
Always have.
I drink the whole thing.
Milk makes it less painful when you get sick.
Whatever I hear from you tonight,
I know I have been terrified long enough,
And there is just no way
I'm gonna keep this food.
Too bad,
I muse,
Rinsing out my glass.
I did love my dinner.
I had hoped we wouldn't meet again.
In the mirror a girl with my face
Raises a debonair eyebrow.
I wish I was as good at brushing this off
As she is.
I remove my earrings.
I put on some comfortable clothes.
It is rather like hearing the warning on the radio
That a hurricane or tsunami is headed your way
And there's not enough time to leave,
Only to prepare.
I am piling sandbags.
I am sealing my windows and doors,
Retreating to the cellar of my soul.
I am
Mechanically,
Numbly
Doing everything I can to minimize the damage,
And prepare to pick up the pieces.
I wonder
What will be salvageable
This time
From the ruins.
I hope the advance notice
Has made a difference
Because the tension of
Waiting for the storm to hit
Just might stop my heart.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 11:39 PM UTC
Today might be the day it all becomes too much
The day I grow tired of scratching at this wound
Digging deeper and deeper, scratching until my fingers are raw
Pulling at my skin, pulling myself apart
Pulling at these twisted tendrils,
hoping to finally strip them away
Hoping that there is still something salvageable
and I wonder: what if nothing is left unsoiled underneath it all?
Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of obsessing
Obsessing over every thought in my mind or move I make
Obsessing to the point that I find no rest
Spending every waking and sleeping moment dissecting every situation
Only to find that I am helpless to change what has already happened
and the actions of others
Still I wonder: was it something I did?
Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of the ugliness
An ugliness I carry and see in the world around me
Nothing seems worth hanging onto for another aching second
As I confront myself and am forced to look in my own eyes each day
I grow more tired of being in this skin
so I pick at it again and again
Longing to hurt myself, to feel any pain but the pain of existing
Still I wonder: would they be better off without me?
Is today the day it all becomes too much?
The day I grow tired of trying
Trying to find meaning in a life centered on meaninglessness
Trying to keep smiling when my heart and soul feel so heavy
and my face feels as though it will crack if I pretend for another minute
I wouldn't wish this on anyone
Fighting an enemy that isn't tangible for so long
Still I wonder: is this enemy even real?
Something I can't touch or describe,
but have in my mind every day
Urging me to hate myself and bringing me down,
every step feels weighted down
Pulling me further into myself and away from my surrounds
Is today the day it all becomes too much?
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 9:06 AM UTC
Thoughtless words flow from your mouth
And to me it sounds mangled and garbled
Some language that I've not yet learned
Some days i can make out what your saying
Usually in the morning
When the monster in you still sleeps.
But everyday he begins to stir
And I know that soon he will have taken over.
And then you ARE the monster
And whatever pieces of you I thought were salvageable,
Have vanished and I'm looking for an escape route
Anyway out will do
As long as I don't have to hear the words which you once spoke,
So clearly and sweetly,
Spewing out like a hot geyser
Unintelligible and broken.
What went wrong along the way
For you to so fully embrace
A monster that would soon inch into every corner
Of your life, stealing everything precious to you
And collecting them together with it's ugly claws
Balling them up and swallowing them into it's ugly black heart.
What made you love that monster
More than your own offspring?
What made you love that monster
More than yourself?
I've learned how to live with him
I've learned he's a part of you now
But no matter all the time that passes, I cant understand him.
His words, actions, thoughts.
And maybe that's why I cant help you rid yourself of him.
But when I can fully understand
I'm going to take that bottle he's been living in
And smash it into a million pieces.
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 8:50 AM UTC
2 fitted sheets, stretched and tucked atop each
other. A nesting home for soft bugs with thousands
of legs, in which you cannot see.
Why does it smell like Michigan basement
bathrooms, and size 4 feet in turtle sandboxes.
Painted, chipped, salvageable wood only shows
it's gritty teeth in the day light.
leaking through shower curtain rings on
the makeshift curtains like pool water
through the cracks in your smiling eyes,
blue goggles, the ones that cover the nose.
the longer you listen to the silence,
the louder it gets.
or is that the sounds of fan blades
ripping through the indescribable texture of
the stale air you swim through each night.
You'd swear you experienced a sonic boom here,
the bull whip cracking from over pressure. or is it
under pressure? I always thought that pressure
weighed like pounds and tons. I still don't
know if that is wrong.
I won't remember the sound of your laugh,
or the way you smell, or the clothes you wore
when we met. Like a good poet should.
But I'll remember all the things we forgot
to do together. All the times we spoke but
got too high to listen.
High, like the time I told you I thought
the trees and the sun were making
strobe lights for our long drive into
October. Flashing light in the car windows,
as we drove down the open freeway.
It's easy to remember the world
was made for us, when we are
alone, here, in this room, together,
like we were before, and will be soon
once again.
Jan 9, 2016
Jan 9, 2016 at 3:17 AM UTC
Do not let the faces fool you.
Every bump in the night,
May be the cruel figments of your mind
Hoping to ignite the illusion
of utter insanity.
Do not for one second
Believe in the spine-chilling moans
that seem to leak from every unsightly crevice
of your disfigured thoughts.
Do not allow yourself
To slip from the serrated edge of sanity,
Even for a fleeting moment.
For the comfort is short-lived,
And the slope is endless.
Do not stare too long
At the scorched bodies of men,
Contorted into the soot covered demons
That will unfailingly materialize
In your loneliness.
Do not take the threats,
Which echo in the
Impenetrable darkness,
lightly.
They are the fabrication
of your own self destruction.
Do not think
They won’t bury you alive,
Every chance they get.
Leaving the decaying scent
of wilting roses atop the mounds of dirt.
Where they will scrawl your name in haste
across a grimy tombstone.
Do net let
The voices sway you into madness.
For they will play your vulnerability
with the fingers of a skilled harpist.
Leaving you so intoxicated
with the sweet melody
that you will believe you asked for
your own demise.
Do not forget the flimsy nature
of your deteriorating mind,
when appealing whispers
begin to ring in your ears.
They are merely hoping
to glimpse your downfall.
Remember,
not to let them get the best of you.
that if you find anything salvageable
In the chaos inside your head,
or the tsunami inside your heart.
Grasp onto the little beam of hope,
and begin putting yourself
back together.
Sep 2, 2015
Sep 2, 2015 at 10:36 PM UTC
Holding onto forgotten memories
fragmented by time,
tucked away neatly at first
and then haphazardly
as if they're less important,
you revisit them like old friends,
careful not to stir any pain still
clinging to the deepest parts of you.
Even as the pieces crumble, they fall
into place like a puzzle -
the worried corner of a dream,
a water-stained wish,
distorted faces behind shattered hope.
When you sift through the remains,
not much is salvageable in the cobwebs
your mind has weaved.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 4:37 PM UTC
there’s nothing good that’s come
from these past few years.
no political changes for the poor.
no more role models.
no more poetry.
I wonder what historians
will think of us.
will they lump us together
in groups of ten,
like the ’80s and ’90s?
or will they get lazy retelling us?
will they place us together
in hundreds, or thousands,
picking out only the salvageable
from this worthless era?
I won’t be included in these stories.
neither will you.
and they still won’t have poetry.
Jan 23, 2019
Jan 23, 2019 at 1:11 AM UTC
You were a statement,
a brick wall,
covered in small pieces of graffiti,
lost in a noisy city.
Barely noticed.
So you changed.
You tore yourself down,
giving away pieces
to anyone who would take them
destroying the subtle art.
I had to leave,
unable to stand the gravel
of you at my feet,
like a part of me
was in that rubble.
They all noticed you then
a small glimpse from the corner
of their eyes,
no one pays attention
to a neon jumble.
When I came back
you had lost all but three
spray painted pieces,
no matter how much I tried
I couldn't recreate you
Nothing will live
in the broken space
you once occupied completely,
so I walked away for good
You are not salvageable.
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 5:47 PM UTC
Tell me how to pull the weeds out of my scalp
Because spring tried to come with the company of flowers
The company of something new and better
But I let them wilt and rot within my flesh and bones
Death stormed in with an unforgiving glare
As winter quickly bombarded the land
The weeds and flowers had died in my hands
Nothing is salvageable
Everything beautiful dies
Where is the life I long to see?
Nov 3, 2017
Nov 3, 2017 at 1:34 PM UTC
What is a mirror without vanity?
Youth chemically plastered
smitten by Hollywood delusions
Eager limbs with a fine insect coating
What is time without thievery?
The years go and we are left with these empty spaces
Sometimes filled with television glow and robot trances
The kindle and cookies
Let the crumbs gather for the microscopic
What is life without a tilt?
Pour the paranoid another drink and nod at the bankrupt morality
Pat the cornered fiend and comfort his hate filled hindsight
observe a wasted generation
Hysterically hydrated and slumped
What is God without interpretation?
Mine is not yours
but I admire the tenacious taste of a salvageable salvation
I appreciate kindness in all forms
Whatever way it may manifest itself
A smile is a smile
What is a beginning without an end?
Find peace or guilt the path may be up too you
Sometimes the path may be chosen for us
It takes a strong mind
to reject their idea of happiness
For the sake of your own
Nov 5, 2016
Nov 5, 2016 at 5:32 AM UTC
I look at my life and see two roads.
And I stand against the current, I'm standing between them and hoping I won't have to choose.
I'm a laundry basket of jealousy, frustration and worry.
I'm constantly walking on egg shells because I don't want anything to change.
I don't want to upset you
I don't want to anger you
I don't want to lose you.
So I hide behind someone who isn't fully myself.
Because you know not yet who you are. And I guess I don't too.
We are carcasses in this life and our paths will show what we choose to show. But your emptiness frightens me and I feel it my duty to fill you.
But I'm torn between someone who cares and someone who can't. I'm torn because the perfect piece of paper I once was is no longer something salvageable.
You aren't the same. So I guess I'm not too.
But I turn to something that isn't stable to help me out of my own battles. I turn to a floating piece of plastic and expect it to help me stay afloat.
These two roads are both a part of myself. These roads aren't a mangled lie or a twisted fib,
They are who I am, just not to the full extent.
You aren't you to the full extent.
And I guess, I'm not too.
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 10:08 AM UTC
This corpse lays before me, rotting
I can feel the decay
I can smell the death
I can see old blood stains
But I still hang onto something
Some sliver of hope
That this corpse is still salvageable
That there is still a heart beating
That blood still pumps in this body
That something is still alive in there
There is nothing left
And yet, I can't fathom
That this is really it
That there is nothing left
It's all been bled
And it's all dead
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
God, I love you.
You were my first love
and once I really learned how to love
I love you with a love like no other love
than the love that I had to give
...to you...
-------
I loved you so much
that I was willing to do anything to be with you
because I needed you to love me too.
-------
I was broken on the inside.
All messed up, empty, and confused
but then you came
and you swept up the broken pieces
that I'd once claimed to be my heart
you put it back together and together
we tore down that wall
that I'd built up to protect what I had left
and although it was barely salvageable
we fixed it
and as a token of my gratitude
I gave it to you...
-------
I gave it to you to cherish
...now and forever more...
I gave it to you to admire
...treat it as your greatest treasure...
I gave it to you to fully exploit
...to take to new heights...
-------
I gave it to you
in hopes that you'd be different
Then and there I vowed to you
-------
I vowed to be your shoulder to cry on
when you just couldn't hold back anymore
....
I vowed to be the hand that you'd hold
when you just couldn't go on alone
....
I vowed to be your treasure chest
in which all of your deepest darkest secrets were held
until you were ready to reveal them
....
I vowed to be your nightlight
when you couldn't escape the many demons
lurking underneath your bed
....
I vowed to be the pillow you laid on
when you made your bed too hard to lie in
....
I vowed to stand by you
through the good and the bad
....
but most importantly
I vowed to be yours forever
-------
I upheld those vows
to the best of my ability
Again I was broken
-------
Broken and battered
destroyed by the same hands
that had once helped repair this broken heart
the same hands that picked my sagging head up
and helped me hold it high
the same hands that helped me through
my deepest darkest hours
the same hands that....
-------
Was I not enough for you?
Did my tears do nothing
to dampen your dry, rusted soul
Did my screams not penetrate the walls
that you built up to block me out
------
why wasn't I enough for you
you were just perfect for me
now we've went our separate ways
and what was once your hand and heart
is now just a silhouette of hope
Hoping that this is just a dream
and that you'll be back
Right??... Wrong
You turned away without so much
as a glance back to see
what a mess you'd created
-------
Did "we" ever really exist to you?
Or was it just a game?
Didn't you want this?
No???
...God, I loved you!!...
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 5:48 PM UTC
You stood upon that pedestal, an MIT degree
In math; a research doctor of psychiatry
As for why
you decided
to take interest in me
I had no idea.
I was a lab rat, my life exploded
But for some reason you devoted
Time to me-- from my place
It was insanity; just in case
You gave me a number
Said call
If anything
happens.
In a week and a hundred pills I called
Days later in the ICU I awoke
Very alive but thinking that I broke
My life into irrecoverable pieces
But for some reason you visited.
First you shook your head and said-- well you said
‘You took a lot of medication.’
But at the end of the conversation
You promised you’d check up
Again.
And then, that was when
As I thought I’d used my second chances
Thought my life had made it’s last advances
And all that was left was downhill
Having passed the pinnacle
You shook my hand, from that pedestal
And so matter-of-factly said,
‘You’re going to do well.’
And that really stuck in my head.
The thought that I was salvageable
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 1:56 PM UTC
Remember those small ***** that wash up at shore,
in the event of a low-tide?
I am those ***** and you are the tides.
I lay buried beneath a surface of fine grains,
salvageable in your grasp. I wait, live with you,
call to you like a tenant to their home.
I descend into your hold, unknowing, or rather,
forgetting that you change.
You always do.
You are the tides, always shifting and moving;
slow to recede, fast to return. You hold me close,
take what is dear to me. You press, and you pull,
and you push, push, push, bringing everything
with you. Always leaving nothing for me.
I lay open, bare, confused by my lack of home,
discarded like a stone, left to search for you
into deeper waters.
When you come back, you are new;
perhaps warmer, or perhaps colder,
depends on where you've been. Where
your currents always travel. It always
depends on where you've been, but your
current had brought with it my filter of grains,
the white stark sand. The place I rested,
and where I deemed my home.
And you left it somewhere far beyond my reach,
apathetic to my struggle.
With your new presence, you leave me to burrow once more,
either shallower or deeper than before, in grainy arms
and lulling currents, making me anticipate when you would
leave again. Because I always have to find a new way to fix and
build my home, when the only thing you've ever done is make
me wait for you to come back.
And I am always surprised of the fact that I always stay.
Nov 8, 2019
Nov 8, 2019 at 11:04 AM UTC
I'm hurting inside for the world we inhabit
We protest, burn flags, but ignore every homeless rabbit
When will we notice that we aren't the only ones fighting back?
That Nature is retaliating against us and planning to attack
We won't even give Her a voice
She has no choice and can't scream Her warnings and pleas
Soon we will be banding against not war but disease
What will it take for our nation to understand
Why can't we work as a planet and outstretch our hand
To rejuvenate the few salvageable pieces of land
Because what's the point of calling for change when we are losing our homes to our Mother's fists of rage
It brings me to tears and it breaks my lion heart because I can't come to grips with the extinction of our natural art
Law makers are seeing what we're doing with our signs and parades
Now it's time we understand Nature's game of charades
Because as the volcanoes erupt and tectonic plates shift
Our nations grows more divided with a widening rift
It's all we have left as a place to call home
Animals are going extinct and in a few years won't be known
Soon will the human race fall from the earth
And our daily phenomenon won't transpire like birth
We need to see what our own world is doing
With each passing day Her anger is brewing
We ripped Her to shreds and broke all Her limbs
Then we polluted Her waters with our oil seeking whims
We aren't looking with our eyes
We aren't heeding Her signs
When will the world stop being blind
Pick up the trash bags and leave the old ways behind
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 11:47 PM UTC