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Vale Luna Jun 2018
The scrawlings of a madman
Stuck in my head
They aren't meant to be seen
And certainly not read
Insanity through carvings
The life that I led
For the period of time
That I lived my life dead
Black rivers of nonsense
Like the blood that I shed
The words on the paper
Hang by a thread

The scrawlings of a madman
Slain in my bed
Poisonous ink
My appetite fed
Just ****** and repeated
My limp body spread
Crystal white sheets
Now dripping with red
Ripped open too wide
From the places I bled
The logical lunacy
Fills me with dread

The scrawlings of a madman
All wisdom has fled
Turn the next page
And forget what I said
It seems I forgot
The demons I wed
The scrawlings of a madman
Came from my head.
Skylar May 2015
Yank myself out of bed
Peel the film of sleep from 'round my head
It's 4:00 AM
And all the world is dead.

It's 4:00 AM and all the world is dead.
From the streets every man has fled.
But in hours it again shall be
Brimming with potential; energy set free.

I assemble my appearance.
Staring into the mirror,
I say to myself: "One last time.
"One final tour."

The door is open, before it I stand
To face morning's faint chill
Surrounded by paling blue.
There! The first bird's trill.

The air is sweet
And free of smog.
The faintest fog
Is draped on the trees.

The empty street beckons
And freely I obey.
I have things I need to do
Before the commencement of the day.

I pass the playground on the corner,
Where I wasted time as a child.
Where many a battle was fought
And we had adventures in the wild.

Past the playground and to my left
There is the river bank
Where I went fishing with my father
And my friends and I made our mothers mad:

Where we lit our little fires
And we had our first drinks.
Where we shared our first joint
And came to talk and think.

Our school is down the way.
We all can safely say
It's the place where we first learned
Classes and books have less to say than the real world.
  
    We became:
        Artists.
        Athletes.
        Academics.

    Our achievements
        Are scrawled upon
            The stone walls
                That lined that same river.

A little further on,
And there's the little store
Where I kissed my first fleeting love
Just outside the door.

I keep walking, I keep walking,
Until I reach the shore.
I put my back against a rock
And rest on that sandy floor.

The life that I'll soon be leaving
Lies behind me asleep
While I watch the sun lazily rise
Over the mysterious, unexplored deep.

I built myself in this town
And it built me as well.
But I cannot stay much longer:
In a few hours I will bid it farewell.

Will I ever make it back?
Will I ever return
To trace the scrawlings by the riverbank
With bare fingers full of nostalgia?

Nothing at all is sure.
Therefore I must take this last chance
To make my final tour.
R Forrest Feb 2014
Why do I feel compelled
To describe you as imprinted
On the bone face of my skull?
Am I in there, rattling
Around with each curt nod
When you offer me your time?
Hurled against the stretches of the mind
The head's own incubator
Some Palaeolithic cave
Where the only inexperienced scrawlings
Are your portrait
In this cave I have invented film
Starting with a rickety old Zoetrope
Of the first smile; lips bracketing
The teeth, enabling
The tongue, to churn out
The voice, your nuclear voice
Hanging my Nagaskian heart by a hair
I haven't needed irradiation
Like the hand-canter of a harp player
I have been plucking my scalp
Hardly Lilith but perhaps
Deforesting Eden
Will tempt you from Eve.
Skylar May 2015
The libraries and bookstores of the world
Are stocked with pleasantries:
Prim, proper, peach juice-oozing volumes
That made the grade.

These books are all well and good,
        And are not unworthy of examination,
Simply because they were deemed so
By a jury of your peers.

Make note, however,
Of the myopia inherent
In limiting yourself
To the savoury.

Observe:

Past the shelves of
        Well-lit,
        Worn-covered
        Thoroughly thumbed delicacies,
There is more to be seen.

Do not hesitate to approach the shelves
Wreathed in thorns and security tape
And kept under dim bulbs.

The books that lurk there
Are sealed tight
And wear jackets plastered in sludge:
Sludge laid thick by heavy-handed brushstrokes.

Prying open the padlock
Will sometimes reveal
Further grime coagulated upon the pages.

Further prying, however,
Will split open tomes
Scrawled with fractures of light,
Lending to the eye
An illumination unique
To such tarred works.

Do not fear these banned books,
These veiled wonders,
For they contain pure, unscreened scrawlings
Soulfully wrought upon simple scraps of paper.

It is within these that truth can be found.
Brendan Thomas Apr 2014
I travel into the great unknown
Through kaleidoscope tunnels
In marshmallow homes

Silly putty writings
Unfold in my lap
Scrawlings from fairies
Under my hat

Bubble gum people
Walk by my stoop
They'll do it again
My day is on loop

The tea was Earl grey
Then it turned blue
I've had a strange evening
How about you?
ive been drawing for you all day
impermanent scrawlings on the white board
im just trying to keep my hands moving
so my students dont have to see me weep
because today its not going to be pretty
one of those hard lump in the throat ones
i would have taken pictures of them
the doodles
but you know how i am with technology
all thumbs if thumbs werent the only thing you needed
you keep coming to me in my sleep
and in a cold sweat i search the house
for your wet foot prints
and now your visage is imprinted
in orange and yellow dry erase
camera phones clicking behind me
performance art that hurts
wild and swooping gestures
leaving tracers to be erased
i cant read
so i just write
i quickly become tired
with your work
i would much rather pace
wear down the blades of grass
in the familiar place

i cant read
because while the graces of poets
philosophers
and scholars
make pretty the page
syllables dancing
atop meticulously pressed parchment
while this happens
through their beauty
i only think of you

toss the tome aside
and imagine all the ways
i can express
the things that capture and drag
the fingertips to their home
back to the place where i feel full
loved and laughed at
where i carouse and cherish

this was never about the "reads"
never about the ratio
of lit to likes
it was only ever about me writing
you love letters every day
ten max though

fact is, half of these *******
scrawlings these
are returned to sender
but crying alone
is far better than pretending
pretending you were never upset
and begging for something you need
begging doesnt only work if there is a listener

i cant read
i cant read our future
i cant give you house keys
a front or back yard
a cat box
a leash

i cant read
i write.
all 106 of them
garbage some think
but its garbage
i sealed with tears
and stamped with a kiss
spritzed with cologne
(if i wore it)

i cant read
star charts
memos
concert bills
calendars
no parking signs
or the expressions of cats

but i can write
pour out every guttural spasm
scribble every inspiration
leer and laugh toward
a glowing screen
mute and accepting
of the drivel banged out below it

i cant read
i can write things though
some things
good things
things

see what i mean??
i cant even write.
"things
good
things"
hay-seuss x-mas!
looking to hire a writing coach....
999-888-9988 extension 666
"i like it"
so i guess i win
Third Mate Third Mar 2015
It Must Be Done Lovingly -
this  title comes easy,
leaps from screen,
jumps in between
my eyes,
where poems electric start,
starting line tween the
head and heart circuitry,
followed by a
thundering silence
of say what...

the notion, face smacks
a five fingered lighting bolt,
feeling the meaning, the ******,
but the body, the text, not,
the explication, the purpose singular,
not so much

it's gonna make me work,
this entitled commandment
"it must be done lovingly,"
sure, words from heaven sent,
what does it mean precisely
it doesn't come with liner notes,
just empty sleeves,
no compact disc,
to explain it well
to your ill-written soul

brain pulsating images, lyrics, tunes,
mr. memories working overtime,
but no catalogue,
thematically a disaster,
blue lined paper
crawling with scrawlings,
notes from a blues guitar,
jumbled bojangling riffs discordant

whipped,
boy's locker room,
towel whipped
gonna give up,
exactly what
is the it
that must be done so,
with loving attention

crap cutting, beat the bush,
you know what's driving,
snap, crackle and pop,
it is arriving
with mega doses of
insatiable pain

you don't love her anymore

you knowing,
that she needs
the knowing,
deserves the certitude
of the bad news,
but cowardly lion
don't got
no idea
how to tell her

so the words
on the page
resonate,
with badass emotional clarity,
a guiding light,
do it lovingly

makes no perfect sense,
but it's sensible
and almost perfect

mr. memories speaks up
at last,
in a sad voice,
the old times flash,
drawing for you pictures,
lending strength,
and whatever else you gonna need,
from history and
tell her her lovingly,
you don't love her anymore

surrender your flag,
hand over your weapons,
you were good at loving her,
some long time ago,
but
No

don't say it with stale raisin bread reasons,
soiled explanations,
just hold her in a way,
the way you used to
that has grown dusty rusty
from lack of use

that will  explain everything,
better,
by doing it
lovingly
Samuel Klistoff Aug 2014
i am surrounded by,
drowning in
                   things.

the people are absent,
there is no warmth,
                      no love.

the frigid and dank skeleton of a house
                                is what i call my home.
these words, the texts and scrawlings may give me
                        solace
                           momentarily,
but i feel ill and lost.
          hadn't i found happiness before?

My heart is sick of being in chains.
Vida Crow Sep 2016
My strange lover came to me last night
Late December murmurings,
Bruised lips
                      and Hooded Eyes
*[And in the morning when he is gone,
She finds ink scrawlings staining her sheets]
and
Jane Doe May 2014
write
write when no one is around
write when you know no one will read it
write for you
and only you
the rawest, purest writing
is found in old journals
notebooks
scrawlings on napkins and shards of paper
write when you you've had your first kiss
or what felt like your first kiss even if it was the hundredth
write when you're falling apart
let your pen fly across the paper
and let your emotions bleed out
because when you are done
and tired and numb
you'll have a piece of art
write just to ******* write
ms reluctance Apr 2018
Puppy videos on Instagram,
snarky relatable memes,
pretty pictures pinned to my board,
filtered funny tweets.

Bashful poetry and uplifting words,
whispering truths to the cosmos,
a few shows, binge-watched,
peppy dance routines,
movies, music, art,
time-consuming scrawlings.

These are some
weapons in my arsenal,
my anti-venom
against the toxic approach
of tedious,
stifling
boredom.
Poetry form - List
Flicking through yellowed pages
Of words written by younger hands
Of tormented scrawlings
Of tear-soaked memories
And love-eyed tales of autumn
Hoping to find something new
In what mattered back then
Or how the world looked
When seen through a mask
Speaking Sorrow Jul 2016
Without these writings
My legacy is that of a drunkard
These scrawlings just prove
That I’m ******* who can’t let go. And there’s not enough time in the day
To prove otherwise.
I’ll leave before I get the chance
To make it right by you.
S D M T Oct 2019
Mirror buried behind filthy flesh
Scratch and scrape with fervor
Futility rendered in weeping scars
Visage a nostaglic figment

Shivering and shriveling away
Distant laughter like tinnitus
Thumbtack to the eardrum
Piercing radial arrows

Spidery scrawlings plaster cell walls
Slipping through sensation
Swathes of silence part seas of noise
Salvation takes a platonic form
I tried to write a poem this time
Middle Class Dec 2020
misplaced, my intentions lay
a muddled sultry mess with the essence of my soul tied on
knotted and forlorn
nestled like bungee cords in the back of a suburban
the countless ambitions and insurmountable lows
they don’t treat me with focus
they cling and sink and surface in little moments
they fog my glasses and leave me empty, in a stupor
walking through any alleyway that beckons my name

it’s foreign to be misaligned with your conscious projection
someone put this out of sync
something left me out of frame
i’m pouring substance to smudge the scrawlings of a hallowed obsession
my autocratic, autobiographical TMZ
a drink to dull the sharpness of my critiques

a little remedy to sleep
KG Jan 17
I've had visions, not before
but later on
of me donning on cotton covered scrawlings of feather down horns banishing cretins from porches threatening my dinner portions
But, more awe than form to psychiatric patients brandishing
war torn grins from chins whilst scuffling about amongst floors of white marble enlightening me once again of the future I get to look fooor.
So another sip slips past amongst the radar and by this light on the keyboards I alight myself to dream once more.
new answers
T R S Oct 2019
Brazen molten filigree sorries
Shelfed themselves on the edge of a shore made
of stickers and shapely woman.

Before I begin my crayon scrawlings,
I have a question.
A smart one that knows to gnaw on the back of my head...

"How do we know when we're alive?
And how do we know when we're dead?"

— The End —