"scrawl" poems
I was going to write you something
that embodied our love, some
infinitesimal prose about
your name click-clacking off of
my tongue or your eyes
when you're smiling.
I was going to answer all of
the questions that are silently ticking
inside your mind and scrawl
perfect prepositions across the page
so that your hands might
falter as they traced the corners.
I wanted to tell you about
the tug of your presence or
the way that your fingerprints
feel against mine,
but I'm writing this instead,
listing off the beauty that I feel
seeping into my skin and
it doesn't really make sense
but that's just the way it falls
onto the paper, bit by bit.
sad things, serenade me.
I'm only romanticizing
the madness of it all.
I never asked to be
a ******* poet.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 10:10 PM UTC
Perseverance on my tongue,
a silken thought in silver ink
I scrawl strange patterns on the sun
and watch for daybreak to dismiss
the blackboard starlight drips and runs.
Now listless with my aching legs
I’m counting candles, chasing smoke
that filters yellow, drains the dregs
of coffee, cold and drowned of hope.
By tingling error I swallow words,
boredom pervades the bitter night
with a whistle, tuneless, that seems absurd
I empty out my troubled mind
to exhale sadness; curled, entwined -
quite futile, like staring when blind.
May 19, 2012
May 19, 2012 at 8:57 AM UTC
In the solemn air of the exam hall.
With the weight of the world pressing against its walls.
Students write, scribble and scrawl.
In the solemn air of the exam hall.
In the solemn air of the exam hall
The burden is great with every stroke big or small.
Written on these papers their path in life.
In the solemn air of the exam hall.
In the solemn air of the exam hall.
Diarrhea of all sorts spill onto papers before.
Brain dead they are.
In the solemn air of the exam hall
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 3:41 AM UTC
Glance at the bullied survivor with no hair left at all,
Look twice and you'll notice
She's still standing tall.
Watch the former gang leader, walking submissively,
Look twice and see the trail of tears,
As he searches for the winding road to recovery.
Observe the old man scrawl a name in the snow,
Look twice and see a father,
Mourning his murdered daughter buried down below.
Admire the woman you love for sure,
Look twice and realize that,
Due to her past abuse, she's still insecure.
Witness the beating of a man done in vain,
Beneath his unruly hair and dark eyes, look twice-
Don't you see pain?
I recognized the quiet woman, generous to the core.
I looked twice and saw my mother,
Still tortured by memories of the Vietnam War.
Dismiss the endless news reports of crime and abuse,
Look twice and understand,
Violence starts with the power to choose.
Awaken and see the world through new eyes,
Look twice at society and find out,
You've been telling yourself lies.
See the disabled, the victims, those who made the wrong choices,
Look twice and listen,
Now can you hear their agonized voices?
I realized the world was never the cordial society I'd dreamt it to be.
I looked twice and found out,
Stopping violence begins with me.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 9:44 AM UTC
Why scrawl any
pattern or
family of bitemarks
or caresses
The illustrator has
children of his own
and loud red
wine to waste
Visiting your birthplace
in your example
suggests antique
weaponry
Through sublime sense
Puritan watershed
Jan 4, 2012
Jan 4, 2012 at 2:22 PM UTC
I seethe within what echoes disdain for all things wanting, because I can't seem to keep what's there to begin with
The desire to purge prior prose and start from scratch beseeches my mind to scrawl what dire nuance calls my name, but I don't look it in the eyes
It's my demon; my voice that resonates deep within; the call of all things mired by fate-less whispers of what's more, or right
But I know, it can't be how I desire. What can be will only come when time sets right the means to seek it out; to reach for whatever may be reaching back at me
I can't move forward unless I know for certain what's there would not bring more desolation. I am a coward, but am I human? I ask myself that every waking moment
I crave nothing more than to be normalized and reverberate with twining string of fate that actually calls my name, not the sour tones of dissonance and disdain as before
I crave reality to be my own, rather than reality to own everything I can not
I seek, eternally.. I find nothing but light that touches the surface, but never does the sun actually rise.
Bring me to my own horizon, bring me fate, bring me peace..
I hope..
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 3:48 AM UTC
you were quiet and i was loud, talkative
you asked to borrow a pencil so i gave you the one with the hellokitty stickers on it just to see you smile
you gave it back with a note and i read in my car in the parking lot after class
it said that you thought my hands were beautiful, but i always thought that they were too small and definitely too pudgy and said so underneath the scrawl of hellokitty’s graphite. oh, and thanks
when i gave it back, you looked confused and turned the scrap over to show me the name on the front and it wasn’t mine
that same day someone slashed the tires on your honda accord
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 11:08 PM UTC
Everyone you have lost is gone forever.
If you try to call the dead, the phone won’t ring.
You won’t hear their voices.
The ground will shake like your wrists.
You will realize this sometime, when you’re in the bath and every nerve in your body is screaming at you to put your head under and count to a thousand.
You are more than a suicide note.
You are more than a suicide attempt.
You are more than cuts and bruises, and friends that abandon you and don’t even say hello in the hallways anymore.
People will leave you, daughter. People will leave you alone and shaking.
You’ll find solace in the most unexpected places, in the boys that look like they belong in the 1970s and in the vinyl that whispers to you while the sun is going down.
Eventually you will find the people that will bend the sky down to you so that you can touch the clouds.
They will become your motivation, they will become the glow in the dark stars on your bedroom ceiling.
You will forget that they are plastic, and often mistake them for the night’s sky.
Memories do not always hurt, it’s okay to be nostalgic but do not drown in it.
Do not drown in anything but love, daughter.
Love every leaf, every lover’s vein.
And every single time you think you’re going insane.
You’re not.
Remember that the door is always closed, but always easily opened.
Remember that you can leave.
Remember that you can take the next flight out, start a new life.
Remember that the world is in your piano hands.
You’ll meet someone and call them love because they don’t know the difference between the dull and sharp edge of a knife.
You’ll write poems.
Lots of them.
You’ll write enough poems to fill the walls in all of the rooms in all of the houses you have ever lived in.
You’ll scrawl them on the tree stumps you find temporary homes in while walking in the forest.
You’ll engrave them on someone’s bones after they tell you that they would rather die a thousand deaths than go a second without your energy warming their cheeks.
For every accomplishment, erase five shortcomings from your mind.
Be yourself before you forget who that is.
Be, daughter, be who you want to be;
Be who you know yourself to be.
When the world is sleeping on your shoulders at 4 in the morning, don’t wake it up.
Take a deep breath, rock the earth into a deeper sleep.
Tell the walls your secrets because they don’t whisper.
Don’t tell anyone with a tongue something you wouldn’t want to end up floating back out of their mouths like a catchy song.
When you’re standing up on stage, waiting to start your poem, do not avoid eye contact.
Make everyone nervous with your metaphors.
Make everyone nervous with your passion.
You are the strongest soul you’ll ever be.
And when I die, shall we not meet again,
Remember that I am your mother, daughter.
And mothers, always know best.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 10:24 AM UTC
A pen is not a tool,
it is an instrument,
and it does not do for an instrument
to be cheap
or poorly made.
If I have a choice, it will be expensive
Ink, not gel.
God forbid a ballpoint Bic.
No.
It will be the kind of pen that makes you want to write,
even when you have no idea what it will be about;
Write,
not for the flow of thoughts to pen to paper,
but for pen to hand to brain,
the sensation of the tip smooth across white ****** paper
swimming up your arm.
Handwriting that is usual jerky
and of questionable legibility
morphing into a graceful scrawl
I would have the kind of pen that rips the words out of me,
if I had my choice.
The pen a bow, the paper a cello.
The notes pouring, spilling, becoming,
composer unsure of where they come from
but suspecting some deep, secret crevice inside them
only touchable by the finest instrument
that they can imagine.
A pen like the head of an infant
in your palm,
so soft and inexplicably right
that you want to hold forever,
because it feels like it belongs in your hand;
cradled plastic as pleasant as downy hair
And with such a pen I will write
and write,
at the start hardly aware
what these words will weave.
A portrait of an artist,
genius or insane?
And the ideas will unravel
until it becomes more than sensation,
the meaning bigger than paper and pen.
Finally, at last.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 5:58 AM UTC
dear bill,
so sweet of you
to leave behind
a paper jot
for me to find
for ev’ry breakfast
lunch and tea
gone missing since
you married me;
- however -
such wilfulness
I do condemn
each crust and crumb,
each stone and stem,
each potluck plum
purloined at night
to satisfy
your appetite;
this doctor’s wife
has had her fill
of poetry
and bitter pills,
and crumpled drafts
in juicy scrawl
appended to
the icebox door;
your words do not
a meal make
how many more
must I forsake
- meals, that is -
before your page
is fit for press
and I can sup
on more…not less
love, floss
ps dinner’s in the oven, probably
Mar 16, 2022
Mar 16, 2022 at 6:09 PM UTC
What am I hiding?
Nothing at all
Nothing important
Just a silly scrawl
What's in that package?
Nothing for you
Nothing significant
Just a thing or two
What are my secrets?
What secrets are they?
I wear my heart on my sleeve
Every moment of every day
What are my desires?
I have so few
I am a simple person
Unlike you
What is my goal?
To live life, of course
To the fullest I can
With the least remorse
What's that key for?
The one around my neck?
It's just an old thing
Got to go, just a sec
What does it open?
Nothing at all
Nothing significant
Nothing I can recall
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 2:01 PM UTC
ECG
They showed the broken rhythm of my heart
With inky ripples traced in peaks and troughs
The night when sudden life was torn apart
Left echoes like a dry persistant cough
This paper trail more signature of self
Than any scribbled scrawl of given names
More indication of my vital health
Than any poet’s talk of light or flames
My quick survival charted there as fact.
“And here, you see a murmured aftershock”
The remnant spider scribe of heart attack
My ailing pulse, my brittle ticking tock
Once took a moment’s beat to catch its breath
And left me reeling at the edge of death.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 3:07 AM UTC
Behaviour of Writing
In psychology pre- uni.
Case study of a mental man.
Or crazy lady on a play day.
Remarked on mental cases.
Exhibiting strange behaviour.
Writing so was stated.
A subtle gentleman perhaps.
Lady chilling in the evenings.
Picks up pen and writes.
Why I asked,
Oh why,
Oh why is writing thought strange.
We writers we,
we are not deranged.
Write because we wish to .
Scrawl to save our souls.
Scribbled wishes in verses.
Cathartic.
Words drawn because we want to.
Words drawn because we can.
Removes the daily curses.
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 6:59 PM UTC
I could hold it in a breath,
bury it inside my chest,
watch the cilia react,
a current sent with each contact;
alas, I cannot keep it in
considering the broken skin;
with crimson ink, this razorblade’s
a fountain pen, I scrawl away:
“Hear me now, in sight of God,
first all is still, then comes the flood.”
The little blackbird hushed her song—
she could sense something was wrong—
pitchforked lightning bent the trees
and fireworks consumed the leaves
where my better angels hanged—
this, the Province of the ******
If you were kept inside my chest,
you’d have slipped out with the rest,
while the vultures had their fill
picking piece by piece until
I’m left bone-bleached in the sun—
all the others turned to run;
but you were steadfast through it all,
from the spire to the fall.
The willow whispers from outside
where my history resides,
ghosts of angels hide beneath
the wilted branches of that tree—
I still catch glimpses of the scythe
from the corner of my eye,
but morning’s come, I cannot sleep here
in the shadow of the Reaper.
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018 at 1:01 AM UTC
Pilsner cap switch blade
tie dye and piccolo
greasers and freaks
with platform feet
muscling in
on the bow legged hoofer
tapping
Bursey Hill Tram
Diamond tuft console
mullets n' ****
angels and saints
(unrestrained)
appropriately trimmed
as 3 mile wreaks havoc
on the nickers and
fighters of penn
Bangers and home boys
hookahs and sheiks
hostile geeks
breaking knuckles and jaws
on the caners and skinners
who are locked
and grinding the root
Desert boot foothills
boardwalk jeans
rainbows and sea fairs
and psychedelic dreams
(the platinum queens
jamming it hard
on the jade room floor)
8 tracks
and fender packs
the hottest summer days
psychedelic haze
center hall, graffiti scrawl
(sinister yet refined!)
covering the subtle
yet striking third ****
Brunswick cues
and red man chew
350 blocks
(on a solid Chevy - stock)
monkeys and beatles
and laugh in scenes
pastel dreams
from the long and coveted
velvet scroll
Mar 5, 2019
Mar 5, 2019 at 12:39 AM UTC
Too lazy to decipher scrawl,
she took to typing.
But graphite gratified,
thunderbolts struck her empty.
Nostalgic for
the soothing scratch of pencil
as a child cloistered,
shuffled between states,
who translated her life
to pass the days.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 8:38 PM UTC
I watched the water rise. Creeping down the muddy street. As if a divine force was attempting a stealthy act of insurrection. I didn't have the heart to fight it. Had I only known.
I watched Hell's Half Acre silently succumb to the whimsical (however so pleasantly devastating) path of Gaea. Through this empowering incident I felt redemption like I never had before.
I jumped down from the platform of the livestock pen to personally welcome the satisfying force of nature's purification. The water lashed out and grabbed my leg. At that moment my jubilate spirit spoiled to uncontaminated terror. It was not a redemptive Spirit winding its way through the rail tracks but the serpent Lucifer. Had I only known.
And so in the West Bottoms Tavern I found myself under the ***** shoe of The Machine. A wayward phantom rising from our precarious Kansas River. It drifts through the sweet Midwest like the coal black locomotive smoke that paints a suffocating thick haze above the Stockyards.
A welcome slate of provision. A shelter covering us from the racial tension and poverty smothering the outside world. To those in the Bottoms with unruly desires, a saviour. To those at City Hall with loose morals, the messiah.
And it was at 1908, I nervously pulled the covers over my vulnerable body and sealed Satan's foul kiss with a diabolical red scrawl. We skipped hand in hand through the freshly paved streets of our "wide open" town. I always tried my best to look the other way but I knew full well that I travelled with a gang of thieves.
Nonetheless, everyone votes in our town. A brutal party whip keeps the Jackson County Democrats in line and "Charlie the *** prevents any Rabbits from multiplying.
But I've been working from within the belly of a "whale" for years and I fear we've now run out of ocean. Our arranged marriage has robbed my capacity for faithful navigation. I'm seeking a radical divorce from The Beast, the cost has become inconsequential to me.
So I found genuine redemption. Finally. I closed the driver side door to my sedan and walked out to the edge of the bridge. The water below seemed whimsical (and so pleasantly devastating) in nature, much the same as it had 36 years ago. I pinned this note to the window, and with a Ready-Mixed Concrete block tied around my waist I watched the water rise.
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 9:47 PM UTC
your words make me
ache as far as a torch
stretched between murky-
blank pages
do not wait to scrawl your
truths until heavy resignation
creeps over my head like
a dark shawl
do not wait -
- I miss
everything and nothing
and (god
**** it)
the philosopher was right in
assuming a search for completion
leads only to a sort of frustrated
compassionate silence,
so
tired of being tired of growing
weary with assumptions,
mad libs of the spirit, only
fill in the line with whatever
you dream might be,
no
let me know you, the real
uncensored and true
(I can love) you
I feel like a child being spelled at
to keep the F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R for
adult ears only but even though
I admit the fact
- I know next to nothing
my heart desperately
wishes to know
you, everything.
Apr 18, 2012
Apr 18, 2012 at 10:13 PM UTC
I was raised in a house that seemed big on the inside
With a garden that was larger than the rest of the earth.
My bedroom was shared. But there was more than enough room.
So proportionally, I always felt small.
The curtains were vines in a furniture jungle
The bookcase a tower of riddles.
I used to spend my days inside the wardrobe
Because I heard there were whole worlds inside of them.
The sofa was a cloud, I liked to sink into it.
The bathtub an ocean, that I was constantly floating adrift in.
The TV screen might as well have been
A stage compared to me when I was younger.
Even the cupboard was a cavernous place, my sparrowbone limbs
Would fold up only slightly, but still there would always be too much space.
Space blank as a bullet hole
Like the gaps between stars.
An absence you're constantly falling through. When you're so tiny,
And surrounded by nothingness, its easy to forget that you're not nothing too.
I was compressed in the classroom behind a scrawl splattered desk
The lines of graffiti looked mammoth.
The teachers were giants
And I was just jack
They ground up my brains to make alphabet stew
And gave me only a handful of A, B's and C's back.
The playground was Olympus, I was acting atlas
I felt as though the whole world was on my shoulders.
See I was a really loud kid, always shouting out
Because I thought that was the only way to get anyone to hear me.
Lungs like an opera singer by the age of just nine
And in the habit of using embellishment.
I've been where you've been kid,
I've seen it all.
I know exactly how the sight of a bullies hand-down button-up
Can be enough to make you choke...
Sometimes it still is enough.
And I know I don't look so tiny now
I expanded as I grew more constricted.
Trying to compensate for the empty place,
I had made a habit of occupying.
See I understand, I know
But I promise you, one day you'll stop standing under things
Find your feet and grow.
The leaves of your family tree do not define
Who you'll be
You do not have to hold up those branches all alone.
And I know I look so small right now
But in here, in here
I'm mammoth.
And I promise the world is not so nothing filled
When everyone is giant.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 3:18 PM UTC
My hero bares his nerves along my wrist
That rules from wrist to shoulder,
Unpacks the head that, like a sleepy ghost,
Leans on my mortal ruler,
The proud spine spurning turn and twist.
And these poor nerves so wired to the skull
Ache on the lovelorn paper
I hug to love with my unruly scrawl
That utters all love hunger
And tells the page the empty ill.
My hero bares my side and sees his heart
Tread; like a naked Venus,
The beach of flesh, and wind her bloodred plait;
Stripping my **** of promise,
He promises a secret heat.
He holds the wire from this box of nerves
Praising the mortal error
Of birth and death, the two sad knaves of thieves,
And the hunger's emperor;
He pulls that chain, the cistern moves.
2.9k
Working under a cloud of sadness
Cleaning a mother’s home
After their death.
All the familiar objects
Are so much heavier
Loaded with emotion
Triggered by every trinket touched.
And the unfamiliar
Items never seen before
Not really secret
But secretive
Shed an unfamiliar light
Or a tragic one
On the lost life.
Add some desire you had
For resolution
Or proof of affection
A letter un-mailed, explaining…
Everything, less,
Or adding further mysteries.
Photos signed with a revealing scrawl
In a curious masculine hand.
And flowing in your mind
As you reduce a life to a list
For disposal, dispersal
A certainty
A knowing
That what you see is not the whole
The whole life
There’s something missing
That might explain
Her wistful expression
Her unexpressed longing,
The aura of regret,
You recall it easily.
A perfume of disappointment
Lingering.
And when you finally
Discover her dark journals
Her writing, but reflecting a stranger
A talent, a power, a presence
Never revealed, never known
But rich and sharp
With bright witty language
You understand this is a set of wings
Dusty with neglect
Heavy with melancholia
Unused wings.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 2:01 PM UTC
Take the word enough and graffiti it across the walls of your heart
Stamp it under your eyelids
Make a short sharp scratch in your skin
And send it shooting through
Your veins
Weave it in and out of every doubt
Scrawl it in a letter
And send it first class
To all of your insecurities
Embed it in the curves of your smile
Carry it gently in your tears
And catch its salty taste on your tongue
Take it out to the shore
And dip it in the ocean
Watch as, finally, it sticks to you,
Like wet sand.
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 9:07 AM UTC
What was her name?
**** I can’t remember.
It was a boy’s name
made feminine
with a little “i” at the end
like maybe hearing it would
make you think of
some fat guy making pizzas
until you see it
spelled out or
until it becomes attached
to her lips and hair and
skin.
The “i” was not dotted
with a little heart,
(not her style at all) but
I should have a picture
in a box some where with more pictures.
I don’t.
I’ve got little notes,
tiny thoughts scribbled
on empty match book covers,
on the backs of
pretentious
business cards,
in the borders of
the mutilated,
amputated flesh
of decrepit
used up yellow pages,
ripped from a dead and
disjointed phone book.
I woke up from this dream
and groped for something
to scrawl on,
anything,
because it seemed significant
at 2:38 am.
In the desert somewhere,
(I’ve never even been)
you were
looking out the window
and the way the parched
dry light crackled
around you
you might have been an angel
or a sign
partially occluded by glass
advertising something
I could never afford
like family or god
when suddenly you were not
a silhouette,
not back lit,
but glowing.
You were so in love, with
who I don’t know, and you
went into free fall
back
onto the bed
pulled your knees up
to your chest and
kicked your legs giggling.
I was part dead, half ghost
and still happy that you
were so happy.
I said, “you’re pregnant?”
knowing the way you
know things without
really having a way
of knowing
in a dream.
You laughed again
grabbed your little dog up
in your arms,
(I’ve no idea where the pup
came from), and baby-whispered,
“You’re going to cut
the umbilical,
aren’t you?”
and I woke with
the image of that mongrel
chewing through
the cord.
I am
waiting at the pharmacy
and the…
technician,
is reading the
cryptic symbols
penned in
indiscernible Latin,
my prescription.
She is not beautiful
but very fuckable
And in my mind
I am constructing an
image of her ******
likening
the shape,
size, color, etc.,
to her mouth,
when I see
my own writing on
the back
through her precise
fingers.
The tech,
she is holding a
snapshot of her.
It might as well be
a picture of me
vomiting or
************ or
defecating.
This
is what I have left,
my version of a photo,
my dream,
scrawled on the back
of my medicine.
**** getting better.
I ****** it from her hand.
I leave fast. I will
never go back.
This is no chemical imbalance.
This is not my inheritance.
The loss and pain, sometimes,
that's the pill we need to swallow.
Oct 30, 2011
Oct 30, 2011 at 11:14 PM UTC
trap me in a song
or perhaps a simple note
scrawl down love for me
Mar 26, 2017
Mar 26, 2017 at 2:43 AM UTC
This hand which moves and rides some voice is not mine.
I have given it over to you, young boy.
This is what makes it fly so, traveling out,
tripping along in dance of shape and sound.
I acknowledge your presence in this fashion.
You tell me by messages,
beaming out the back of your head,
you are the very boy who has waited an eternity
at some upper railing.
You sit and peer through the spaces,
down the twisted stair.
Your hands, they grip the vertical rail.
Silent. Silent. Waiting you.
Let this right hand of mine be your secret voice.
Let this scrawl and scratch be your gravelly tongue—
ick-nicking, ga-chooing, click and stutter.
What language may I shape for our sake?
With you, may I follow, setting trail markers just so.
Will others come mistaking their ways for yours?
My hand is opening and opens wide.
I remember you. I am returning.
Let it be.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 6:29 PM UTC