"scrawling" poems
*here's how it happens
the morning after
you reach into the drawer
where the your t-shirts live
to find it austere
you'll shrug because
you're still drunk
& you can't remember
when last it was
that you had something wet
or how long it's been
since you made the floorboards blush
or why the carpet is upset
who wouldn't be
the contents to the upended ashtray
strewn around the apartment
resemble the aftermath
of the smallest war
to ever take place in norfolk
some midnight thief
must've made off with the lighter
because it isn't in
any of your favorite spots
maybe you chucked it
along with a hundred other things
that make noise when they land
in the neighbors yard
you won't remember putting
the refrigerator's belongings
in the bathtub
or scrawling a buzzard
on the bedroom door
but then again who would
you'll pretend it's spring again
before putting on your winter coat
to go out front with a cigarette
in your mouth
you'll hope for a passing stranger
to *** a light from
or drag yourself to the corner
with couch cushion change
to buy a new lighter
and on your way
you won't bother looking back
this is just another day
on eggshells for no reason
another november
choking on birthday candles
on your way home
you step over beer cans
the kind you fell in love with
and wonder who
had the last laugh last night
or if anyone said a word at all
it might've been another
moment of clarity
it might have been some idiot savant
any adjective that feels like home
anything that keeps you thirsty*
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 10:30 PM UTC
My pen bleeds
As its ink seeps
My words cry
The seer weeps
I keep scrawling
Until my pain recedes
Walking on my way
Where my lament leads
Crumbling to bones
Changing to fit the needs
My frailty drives me
As nothingness breeds
In madness I did
Those fearful deeds
Now I'll have to pay
The price of my greed
Making me suffer
My demons succeed
In the garden of love
I feel like a ****
I am looking for my way
To the flowery meads
Where the chains will be shattered
And then I will be freed
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 1:29 PM UTC
Back to the scrawling pad
a cheap red notebook
wide ruled, with the perforated pages in it
in case I wanna punch one out easily
Those moleskin daze were measly
Thinking I'm creative and potent
but spending two years
to fill those tiny pages
Please, help me
reinvent the feel and manifest it
to real, accomplishment
Songs, verse, or vice grip words
to change a nation with
- to start a new nation with
Bokonon Bhikkhu
hurling Pikachus down from Mt. Olympus
land on the concrete with lemming splat
Get the metaphor?
I don't. Make your own up
I just an absurdest
A poor boy humming Queen
and writing rap atrocities
Nah, the rap "apocalypse"
minus all the apostrophes
Write so much anything anyone says
from now until oblivion
was just quoting me!
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 12:38 PM UTC
Toting the mysterious bundle and sporting a sore back
I drag my feet up the last few steps, expended of vigour
I almost couldn't resist prematurely looking through the sack
Remembering the words from the wise old seer
Grimacing I walk a slow gait to get to the table
Set the bundle down and relieve my weight onto a chair
Parched throat but wait longer I am unable
Curiosity takes charge and into the gift I will tear
Blood is pumping along with an increasing heart rate
Fingers scrambling clumsily over the strings that bind
Nails digging frantically into this package bearing my fate
Gnawing thoughts of uncertainty flooding my mind
At last my fingers win the battle that lasted
The final string has fallen... Obstinate knots all undone
I pick the cloth by the edges to have it unfolded
The contents inside reach out like rays of the sun
Corners of the cloth open up like a fully bloomed blossom
Exposing the treasure that lay solemn and quiet inside
Common objects we'd normally perceive as random
Petty things now important as they attempt to guide
I pick up the first and notice an engraving on it's stem
Between my fingers - an unassuming feathered quill
Barely legible, such little space the words do cram
"Here is your sword... Draw blood and let spill"
More riddles, I sought to examine the next
A flat bottomed vial filled with jet black ink
On it is a label with scrawling of time worn text
"Here is your blood; let flow what you think"
Lastly, lay bound up sheets of yellow stained parchment
They reek of age-old herbs; intoxicating slightly
At the top of the first, a note scribbled not so recent
"Within these pages, you must bleed to find Sanctuary"
Staring down at the objects laid in front of me
In hopes of discovering something I should miss
Then finally it struck me, so plain to see
I'm using the instruments now, writing to find release...
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 10:58 PM UTC
this is a letter to all of those
who stumbled upon my dull eyes
and poetic words
i apologize to those who participated in
whispered i love you's and dreams shared
for watching from afar as your cared for me
a half of a whole
you held my body, empty
my soul scooped out of myself
like an acorn squash during winter months
nothing left but the skin
and my soul out among the wildflowers
searching for the missing parts of me
searching for my home
i placed my body in your hands
letting you sip the wine that made up me
drizzling you in honey, in sweetness, and in light
for i knew you would protect me
scrawling poetry into the broken bits
the unfiltered bits
you would cause me to feel something on cold winter nights
i am sorry that when my soul stumbled home
bringing home the bits that were missing
that you were left alone
standing in the dark under streetlights
unsure of where you went wrong
broken promises and dreams in your hands
drowning in your own love
suffocating on your sunshine
cursing yourself for loving too hard
i am sorry for hurting you
but thank you for loving me
even when i left you lonely
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 3:38 PM UTC
I love you doesn't encompass the warmth that spreads through my soul
I love you doesn't realize the need for your friendship
I love you is so generic, so simple, that it really has little at all
I want to say that with you,
the world is at my fingertips,
with you I feel alive,
with you my heart races a nascar driver's and wins.
I love you doesn't amount to much, it's three simple words,
But then again, no words ever do.
Because words are lost in seas of actions, and
picture's speak a 1000 times faster in their 5x7 frames
But it's the look of your eyes,
the caress of your touch, that says I love you,
So much more infinitely than I could ever dream
And I'm left sitting here,
scrawling down syllables,
trying to capture the infinity that is emotion.
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
The truth is, I’m not really sure who I am. She told us to draw ourselves and then to draw our souls; so I drew my face scratched and uneven, just as I’ve always seen it, and frowned at the result both in the mirror and on the paper. The only soul I’ve ever really known was the one that shone through the strokes of the keys I punched, the scrawling of ink on paper in mismatched arrays of awkward thoughts, disorientated and unorganized, shaded different spews of emotion and rearranged through the lens of ever last viewer’s eye. Even so, this soul that is composed of words that defined me painted a picture vivid in its contrast, though blurry from both afar and close enough to squint, no details able to be made out. These words that have wrapped around my soul rubbed raw from the time my skin first flinched at the cool March air cannot be deciphered by their author, though I know somehow that their letters flowing into one another say more than any curve of my face ever could. These words are black and white, two extremes crafted in the pallet of the Universe’s toolshed, and perhaps that’s exactly what I am. Black or white. I’m dark and lost and scrounging for some rusting wall or tree branch to cling to as to ensure the shimmering waves, onyx and charcoal in their nature with the flow of blood in its spine, do not flood into my mouth at a rate in which is too quick to balance myself upon them, or, I’m white, drifting snow from a cloud scraping the vast expanse of brilliant blue gazing as a sky above all the world, pure, innocent, unscathed with the potential for creation in vibrancies yet unknown, or to be ripped to bits, scattered amongst piles of cream and autumn leaves drained of their color beneath months of shivering frost. And so, perhaps any physical representation of my being would be all wrong, because that’s not what I am. Myself, my soul, it resides in the murky depths of heights I’ve yet to discover, tethered endlessly and uncertain among the caverns of my inners, pink and mushy, stirred and ****** untouched from the harsh light of a world encased in brevity.
Jun 1, 2015
Jun 1, 2015 at 8:20 PM UTC
what i said:
"you sound rough this morning."
what i meant:
"your voice is lavender and honey and tea time and supernovas colliding with gentle breezes and if i could wake up to it, just once, cocooned in a tangle of your arms and couch cushions and that blanket you keep in the back of your car, i swear by the stars in my eyes no one on this godforsaken planet would be out of earshot of my singing
i hope that tonight when i dream of you--it is no longer a matter of uncertainty, but anticipation--you speak like you've just overslept your alarm and frantically motored yourself to where i am, like is the case today.
i wish you had chosen me but if i could only listen to you speak to me, about anything--rivers or math homework or football or belonging or music or even your girlfriend--i promise i would listen with the beating urgency of a swimmer in a frozen stream, i would savor each word from your lips, like they were the spring and i was the underground daisy waiting for your kiss.
and in precisely three days i will have an essay to compose about a beautiful topic that would consume me thoroughly were it not for the memory of your groggy morning voice, so full of raspy complacency i can't breathe but instead of fulfilling my obligations i will be hashing out halfway comprehensible poetry about you and crying about how i cannot recreate the sound of your voice with any combination of hollowly clicking keys.
you are so beautiful that i could spend the remainder of my life with a five-subject notebook, scrawling 'your eyes. your smile. your hands. your voice' over and over endlessly and die feeling as though i had lived a thousand years of quiet adventure.
you are so much and too much for me and i have no idea why you see as much in me as you do but i will not question it, for fear that if i were to come too close to you, to run my fingers along the marvel of your face you would shrivel and unfurl into nonexistence, like the leaf in the fire."
and also:
"why can't your voice always sound like this?"
and finally:
******* you're attractive"
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 12:24 AM UTC
I was gonna write about how I was writing standing up like Hemingway at some bar in Key West, but instead I ended up nearly lying down, like some Roman eating grapes, and I’m not scrawling with a pen. I’m typing.
Why the standing up, Ernest? Was it to gauge how difficult it was to keep good posture? Was it to better measure how drunk you were getting?
He would have boxed me for those asking those questions, or maybe he’d just slam a few shots.
All of us Northeasterners enjoy getting drunk somewhere tropical. I never have a choice in the matter. Whether it’s Florida, South Carolina, or the South Caribbean (I've never left the Western Hemisphere), all I really like down there is beaches and seawater. Everything else gives deep cringes. Those other tourists, so annoying just to look at. Flip flops, whole families, and the god awful shops they keep open. You go to a place good for a beach, green hills, seawater, and fruit, and you want to buy diamonds? C’mon. I wish you’d want these islands to be like national parks; nature over here and cities over there. But the tourists enjoy fake grass huts that try really hard to sell them junk.
So who’s to blame for the sellers perpetuating petty sales and mediocre values? Is it the islanders that make a profit, or the buyers that want the wares? Or is there a third party guaranteeing that the buyers and sellers alike are propagandized to expect the less than fine things in life? Are the salespeople actually working the shops, the ones really getting rich from the sale?
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 10:04 PM 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
it seems, my words
have lost their allure,
this morning.
and i am too fixated,
on vainly scrawling.
to see
the crafts of others,
floating on the river poetry.
i am, hands to the oars, rowing against,
a beautiful tide.
endevouring,
to attain a mooring,
on the inside of a thought. what would happen,
if i.....
let go and read just
one or two poems
from other,
weary skullsmen
and made comment.
it mayhap...
nothing, but then it,
maybe...
instead of poetry,
decrying a dying state.
the poet in the other boat,
rowing silently,
for a moment, or a lifetime
is encouraged to,
greater acts
of creativity.
just maybe.....maybe.
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
I can still remember.
That burning feeling of inspiration, bubbling up through my body.
It dominated me, defined me, led me to believe that I was my own hero.
A protagonist on a quest, a road to travel on, certainty in my bones.
Driven by love through the narration of my world, my story.
Words overflowed from my heart.
Staining the tracks, pages, and lilies of my life with my fire.
Every heartbeat resounded like the clanging of a tower's bells.
Each ring dictating time, order, purpose, place.
I can still remember.
The lingering taste of coffee on my tongue, my face sore from smiling.
Hours spent talking and listening.
The content of my life summarized like chapters of a book.
The way my heart vaulted when your eyes met mine.
It was like the moon pulling at the tides.
Giving the waves motion and momentum.
So I spilled my ink and blood, writing you into the story.
I can still remember.
What it was like when it was over.
I hadn't realized I had been living in a cell.
Scrawling my visions of the world onto every inch of those four walls.
Diagrams and diatribes, the things I considered to be myself.
Going mad in the most wonderful fashion.
As I left I saw them for what they were.
Mosaics and memorials.
Poison and poetry.
The passionate magic of first and finals, the ****** taste of loss.
But **** it was beautiful all the same.
I can still remember.
What it felt like to move on.
The taste of freedom and fresh air, an urge to defy what was.
And become something more again.
But suddenly, the bleeding in my heart slowed.
The resounding clangs of my inner bells softly faded.
It took years,
But one day I reached inside myself
Expecting to feel the fire burning inside me.
I can still remember.
The dread that came with the lack of heat.
The soul of myself, the definition of me as the hero.
Was only embers now.
The easy numbness that washed over me.
The determination and inspiration that was me had left.
I was broken, as I always was.
But I no longer knew myself as beautiful.
I was not a protagonist.
I had written myself out of my own story, slowly but surely.
There was no quest, no journey, no one to save or be saved by.
Just whatever I have become.
I hope one day to remember.
My clumsy and earnest return to form.
When my heart again bled ink and crackled with flame.
May 5, 2017
May 5, 2017 at 3:21 PM UTC
Heathens -
in heaven's lobby
flock
to barter
for Magic 'Shrooms
with pop rocks... and pancakes
and leaf-green brownies.
new to the scene;
the Son of Man
holds a motley court,
then wanders off
to fetch Picasso - Lassoed
from his cups, his Love that must Love
his genius... doubtless,
cloud-scrawling
huge pendulous *******
in Elysium; for no one at all.
better Pablo
should tend bars that set mobs free
than one god's toddler, with long odds
against Bacchus - should ever
small-talk-speak
to the godless
or worse...
preach.
" Better Sins to love.. " The Spaniard once taught...
A Lover's Urge is born in forms of weakness.... adorned in all Might -
bathed in blessed contradiction,
a Lingam for a Yoni's dream of stiff drinks
and pliable men, with strong arms.
a blue fiction on Calvary -
nailed to the softest
cross.
Between thieves,
an honor, double
parked
with bucket seats brimming with moonlight,
and her knickers
tossed.
Picasso asks for absinthe
to be sent
post haste
and polished off -
by all
his better angels he had guillotined
with dull snails,
and fallen
harps
ones - he stole, to de-tune
a flat fifth of Cuttysark
for a deaf
**** [but no mute ]
a portrait, ****
and is soon
bought...
lust
sleeps then -
with both Eyes;
Locked on
One of
God's.
like a deer
in a Head-light's
Gospel...
now, a Minotaur on the
Autobahn -
stalking
it.
II
Heathens
in heaven's lobby
recite ' Howl '
as Ginsberg, walks over hot coals
and spicy psalms; glowing wanton
in white grass; with a very
cherry ****
And a wise throng, cobbles...
****** -
they rob
Peter of his toga,
leaving nothing wrong.
but no less ' On '
they laugh hard; and wake the dead
asking them for new songs
to set their false alarms
in lofty Tic' Tocks
of Eternity's
clock.
Bible on a snooze bar
for at least that long
or someone
knocks.
As if "Hello."
Spoke the Whole World into Being -
And " Goodbye."
misspoke, and
trailed
off...
Feb 6, 2013
Feb 6, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
Falling into depths of indecision
Where once there was redemption
Feeling this moment come to freeze
As I am falling, falling to my knees
Life continues to mock, laugh at me
Taking away hope, left feeling empty
The past comes creeping, crawling
Causing dark words that are scrawling
So age comes running, giving his test
This aching body, I fear I detest
Relapsing into an unknown thought
Stripping me of all I was taught
Doubt comes with nothing to save
Taking me one step closer to the grave
Where once there was redemption
I keep falling into depths of indecision
copyright Chris Smith 16th December 2010
Dec 15, 2010
Dec 15, 2010 at 7:07 PM UTC
Basquiat - radiant child
made daring visions wild with
frenetic energy, frantic rhythm
with paint on his Armani clothes
with paint on his Armani clothes
with paint on his Armani clothes
If only you’d worn that AARON helmet,
and donned a suit of armour the
day the needle pricked too far,
spiked the skin with ******
Artist and millionaire.
A walking contradiction
which could not hold.
You began by scrawling truth on walls
your graffiti battle cry,
‘did fame consume you?’
‘just another tragic star?’
I dunno,
I just know
RIP SAMO
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 5:45 PM UTC
Somewhere seabirds pipe and bleat,
gathered on a dark low tide.
Shapes and shadows line the fleet,
cold and calling.
In the shore hide facing north
I'm focussing black ten-by-forties,
hunched against the wall for warmth;
the tide still falling.
Looking out, I'm looking back,
thirty years have ebbed away;
the boy, his joy, his haversac,
his notebook scrawling;
I see him, tremulous, wild-eyed,
among the plovers, curlew, knot,
a loosed dog shakes them and he flies,
the seawall salt sting cuts and dries;
there's no recalling.
Jan 22, 2012
Jan 22, 2012 at 6:55 PM UTC
I
The characters on the ashen keyboard were faded, now yellow smudges remain
and the words that once danced like clouds in his mind had been evacuated
Reading back on a thousand pages, the writer realised that he was wrong
while the shredder destroyed the lives of every personality he had created
(God's fading smile)
Littering the floor were the shards of paper, twisted and unnerving
Thin strips made new languages, new words, forlorn dictionary
Grasping at the shreds, our writer assembled a masterpiece
Seward on the Ouija board, advice from beyond
(Joyce laughed from) the grave
Scrawling longhand in a notebook on a jaunting bus through the city
No eye-contact, no interaction, careful contemplation
To the river he headed, concrete conscience
Writing nothing
Careless disregard for the laws of language
While they shunned his intellect
and tore pages before him
Scornful
No education, just a passion for words
Running away from his sadness
and learning that it don't stop
Ripples in the water
Single raindrop
Stop.
II
Start,
A tear fell backwards
Wrinkles in the brow begin to fade
Experiencing happiness for the first time, sweet joy
Sprinting in reverse, looking for the smile, return to a face
Think back to schoolyard glory and the books that were once relished
Admiration
They glued his life together
Praising the grinning genius before them
Careful preparation, consulting his Bible, The English Dictionary
Writing everything
To the world he was headed, mind free of guilt
Shaking the hands of a thousand folk, the happiness in a community
Caressing the keys of a pristine writing machine, black ink perfection on a white page
(Joyce sighed from the grave)
Seward on the Ouija board, applauded from beyond
Grasping at his hands, "this writer assembled a masterpiece"
Thin pages made new languages, new words, pregnant dictionary
Littering the coffee tables of many a home, words of beauty and precision
(God's enlightened gaze)
While the printer confirmed the lives of every personality he had created
Reading back on a thousand pages, the writer realised that he was correct
and the words that once drifted like clouds in his mind, now bees making honey, eternal hive
The characters on the immaculate keyboard were dazzling, free from corruption and scrutiny
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 1:46 PM UTC
if you talk
about it
they'll tell you
its just a case
of centring yourself
before
it builds up;
placing yourself
in the moment
and understanding
what cannot be changed
except
there is
no progression
no steady curve
it goes from
a carefully traced line
to a scratched
scrawling scribble
that tears
through leaf
after leaf
of paper
whether the message
is legible
or not
apparently
its simple;
in that split second
between empathy
and apathy
before the destruction
of everything
outweighs
the strength
of all
that has been
accomplished
i simply need
to breath deep
and
count
to
ten
i'm still waiting
to be told
what to do
when my count
reaches ten
and
i'm still
angry
Mar 9, 2022
Mar 9, 2022 at 10:09 AM UTC
After reading my first love poem
And misunderstanding my first love story
Romanticizing your bleak hope
I knew I was ******
And in trying to explain this
I am left feeling like a schizophrenic Walt Whitman
Scrawling poems about your beauty
As if love is something you can actually seek outside yourself
While inside you there are walls
Mine fields
Trapdoors leading to deadfalls
All to keep you from it
I want to stand at the entrance to myself
And be baptized in my own sweat
From the work of this deconstruction
There is heaven and peace in the rubble
Blueprints for a home without safeguards
A simple place you can rest your head at night
This chest
Love is not something you seek
But you tell that to these hands
This pen
This mouth
Tell these eyes without losing my gaze
That it is not hiding somewhere behind you
It is not
I know this now
I know that love is this
Your heart is this
Your body is this
A spare room in a small house
You had intented on living alone in
And everytime someone comes to your door
Know it is always nicer inside
And be grateful that someone came to it
Let them in with your smile
say
"I have been expecting you"
Then let them leave if that is what they must do
They might
Just remember to be grateful for their presence
Everyone who sought your door
Sought it because there is something good there
There is always you
Apr 22, 2013
Apr 22, 2013 at 5:07 PM UTC
Sitting here writing some of my most inner thoughts and feelings
with the padlock closeby, I am scrawling in red ink in that I visualize as blood
my inner thoughts and understandings of life
while the clock ticks away the meaningless minutes I have wasted into writing about my days
I have wrote about my happiness and wrote about my saddness
the things that makes me cry and wish I would die
and the motives of why I even stay alive
I told about the day I tried blasting my brains out, but couldn't pull the trigger to try
I've told about the man I murdered
He'd shared with me everything and I couldn't bare him finding out who or what I was
Now his blood screams from the ground, crying out to me
and I take up alcoholism as a job, a worthwhile profession to comfort me
I have told about the pregnant girl on prom night
who was stuck, wasting away wishing she could party that night
who was thinking about self aborting her child, motherhood she dared to fight
until she felt her son kick and she sobbed, tears that she tried to fight
I have told about my first love
my first kiss and how I felt higher and more pure than a dove
i told about my grandmother and how she taught me that "god is love"
switching to blue ink now, because blue is for peace
I signed my name at the bottom of each page
saying that I have become stronger with each turn of the page
I no longer feel that I have to shove the whole canister of anti-depressants down my ribcage
I wrote with red ink scrawled in blood
that was full of agony,anger, and regret
Finished in blue because I found a happy place,peace, and acceptance
I lock the padlock onto it, in order to protect my secrets
and I stop the clock by taking out the batteries to remind me that my life isn't ruled by human time
and I smile as I look into the fireplace, at my book of secrets, finally erased.
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 8:44 PM UTC
Dolefully trudge to my chamber this night.
Carrying burden of this inimical plight.
Scrawling as a means to drop this weight light.
But alas, who will read these words that I write?
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 12:01 AM UTC
I can hear them. There is not one, but might be hundreds of them lurking behind these rickety wood walls.
He is watching. The party has always been watching. I can control my thoughts. Cogito ergo sum. This is my world, no one can touch me. These are my thoughts, my heart beats for what is good for me. My hands scrawling, my brain is just scribbling.
Yet, I’ve known from the start that I am a dead man.
I didn’t commit adultery, I followed them. I am alive, I can feel my heart racing. My blood all over my body... reminds me why I’m here. To survive and live, yet I am still a dead man.
I am no mute, but I can’t speak. While writing this I can picture my hands and feet with shackles, wounds of torture. I’ve been always a dead man.
The prole doesn’t know. They need to know. They should stop listening or watching the telescreen. They should strive to dig the Oldspeak.
Oh, right. Who dares to doublethink against a totalitarian regime anyway?
The guns are always on their hands. The war is always going. It’s always here. The past... is always here. We don’t see it, but it’s here! There’s nowhere to run or hide, the world tried.
I will be the next unperson, vaporising in the history of Oceania. They won’t remember. They’ll try not to remember. We are a nobody. Winston was right. I can feel the boot stamping on my face. This is the future.
My voice... is a thought crime, will never be accepted in this society.
I am a dead man.
I am ready... the Thought Police has been always watching me. The INGSOC. Big Brother. I will never love him!
But I am ready to be trap in the place where there is no darkness. I am ready... for the Ministry of Love.
I won’t ever, ever love Big Brother!
I do not care, for I am already a dead man!
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 10:38 PM UTC
Writing of a poem
Oh! How it can be likened
To having a baby!
With the copulation of fancy and thought,
Comes the moment of conception
It can happen any day
Unanticipated or planned erstwhile
On a star studded night
Or a rain drenched morn
It swims into you as a seed
So tiny… so inconspicuous
Once the pregnancy confirmed
Comes irritation, nausea
Lethargy and loss of appetite
Your stomach rarely growls for food
Clouds of words hang heavy and low,
Refusing to break into showers
They don’t gush or rush.
Ideas dry up leaving the nib parched
Lines crack n’ break
Depression follows
Discouraged, you feel fatigued
But all the while you begin to realize
That a new life
Independent of you
Has begun growing inside you
Then all the care taken
To foster the young life
You read…
You refer the lexicon
You withdraw from other works
Take rest, relax in solitude
Slowly the foetus moves
The first stirring of life!
With fond fingers, as you pat your belly
Your pen pats the paper
The first line…..
The first faint beating of the heart!
Then words….
Like little harness bells tingling
Fall in line, line after line!
Drawing nourishment from you,
The embryo grows limb by limb
The miniscule of insight
Grown after months of waiting
Into a mature body of illumination!
A stretch of your dreams!
A suffusion of light!
After the labor pains
Of scribbling and scrawling,
Writing and rewriting,
Deleting, adding and editing,
With time stretching and contracting,
A baby, no, a poem is born.
Whether cute or ugly
No mother can dislike it
She marvels at its birth
Wraps it in her warmth
She must have had in mind a name
Or seeks to find a name;
An apt name
Thus a poem with a title is born!
She wonders if her baby would lit a smile,
On others lips too
Or from them would flow,
Words of endearment as from a trickle!
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 11:39 AM UTC
in the dark of the classroom you can't see your scars
and neither can anyone else
which is the important bit
the teacher droning on and pointing to the big screen that dominates your life
you hope that it gets better
idly scrawling notes and drawing images of what you imagine to be
a less painful existence
it's not that you're depressed
more disillusioned
because the teacher doesn't stop
and the assignments don't stop
mountains of work that you don't plan on completing
and students whispering either insults, or-
you don't know what
you don't know them
you don't want to know them
they're all empty eyes and spitballs and legs that trip you in the hallways and fists that have made their mark on your mouth and eyes
bruises that take weeks to disappear
and that teachers ignore
they ignore
your sleepless eyes
your swollen lips
your bloodied cheekbones
the boys that trip you in the halls
that call you a freak
a ***
that pin you against old metal lockers
and choke you
whisper in your ear and force you down on your knees
you don't know their names
they don't know your names
they know you only by the terms that you've come to know as endearments
(you hate them
you hate them but you can't make it stop)
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 4:00 PM UTC
baby butch in the bathroom, splotched with shaving cream
using dad's razor to shave what's barely even there on their jaw
baby butch in the bathroom, shirt off and defiant
(though alone who's there to see it)
(them that's who)
washing his feet and their armpits and her face
baby butch on the sidewalk, leather jacket wrapped around them/him, internal bravado daring everyone
not to look at him/them
baby butch in the hallway at school, laughing loud and pitching voice low
no one can know
but why not act how you want to
baby butch in the classroom, slouching in their seat, knees braced against opposite legs of the desk
carefully lazy
legs so tense
baby butch on the internet
finally telling
saying CALL ME THIS CALL ME THEY CALL ME HE
AND THEN CALL ME YOURS
she did. he is.
it's too soon. but he is.
baby butch in the background, scrawling out words
they. he. xavier. baby butch. king ****
alive.
alive.
alive and living.
Nov 16, 2017
Nov 16, 2017 at 10:59 PM UTC