"shoebox" poems
I approach most desires
like a competition; can I
**** better than him;
can I be famous at twenty-
-three since he was famous at
twenty-four -- I must be able
to sink better than him.
God, it is exhausting. I
feel like I'm dancing with
a machine; a phantom that
I can never catch, for it runs
on my blood; my insecurities;
my passion -- and, boy, oh boy,
can I attest to having plenty of
that stuff, ladies and germs.
I think, truly, that I am
encompassing the American Dream
I think is utterly flawed; that I think
is futile in nature; that I am sure of
is the closest thing to Hell, in this
Godless, spiritually motherless
dark shoebox of sudden collisions;
this space of useful and useless
results, splayed onto and into
our hearts, asking for reverence.
There is nothing I want more
than to be sure that my importance
is not illusory. I am not sure if
I am real.
May 14, 2017
May 14, 2017 at 2:14 PM UTC
midnights still find me retracing the moments
that led to our thousand lakeside kisses;
they were secrets left in a summer dream.
each second — a bowline knot
leading straight to our
late night drives
and vehicle breakdowns
and last minute goodbyes
at the break of dawn.
midnights still find me sleeping
next to a shoebox of the books you left;
i still hear your voice
when i read the lines
of your favorite paragraphs
the clock hands, mocking,
leading me through a maze of
memories and parking lot conversations.
midnights still find me rewriting histories
with resin-pressed flowers,
maybe the petals will point to where
i started losing you —
and maybe it's in every direction.
the black, bold numbers have become my crumbs
leading to road trips and
to all the bus stops we missed,
kissing;
now i still miss my stop
without your lips next to mine.
and midnights still find me
writing poems like these
but clearly,
you're too far off
for these words to reach.
and now, midnights still find me wanting you back.
and 'til now, midnights still find you gone.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 7:52 AM UTC
Part II of "Got 0 Followers"
aim high
to keep
it low
expectations
such an
Awesome Awful
curse
others infect
you with
don't, yada yada,
ya wanna be like
Tom, **** and Jane,
even Harry, a transgendered
friend and fellow (ha) outcast,
all with a good job
prospects of a
goodly tented long life?
so ya write poems
to nobody
about nothing and
you are pleased
to be pleasing just yourself
in writing you have
nothing to prove,
so read them
like keepsakes
ya like,
keep 'em & me hid,
in the shoebox
under the closeted
pile of ***** clothes,
special designer outfits concocted
so they keep my remains,
privatized and unsanitized,
my equity,
hidden,
disguised as disgusting
but for god-sakes
don't follow me,
unless
you want to curse us
both with
Expectations of Expectations,
then comes with
illiteracy of
Affection
then the literary
pre-tension
that always follows,
leading to
Affectation,
the first derivative of the infection of affection
yeah,
then comes
caring
and it instantly it's too late,
you're *******
right up the mental heine,
lost condemned
ruined annihilated
crushed subverted
crushed into
mental death camp suffocation of more, please ma,
can I have some more?
crap, why did you have to go and follow me?
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 8:14 PM UTC
Remember when, you were a very little boy
and your mom would warm the towels up in the dryer
so when you jumped out of the bathtub shivering you would feel cozy warm?
Remember when, you were a very little girl
and your dad would hold you in his arms
and whirl around in circles until you both fell to the ground laughing?
Remember when, you were a little boy
and you scraped your knee when you fell out of the tree,
and your mom held you close until the tears stopped?
Remember when, you were so sick you stayed home from school,
and your mom made special soup just for you
and cuddled you up and read your favorite story 6 times, just because?
Remember when, your pet hamster, Louie, died,
and you insisted on having an official burial ceremony,
and mom and dad said nice things about Louie before the shoebox was covered up?
Remember when, you were a little girl,
and your grandma gave you your first china tea set
and she had tea and crumpets with you and Bear?
Remember when, you were very young,
and a hug or a kiss or a word would repair
the biggest hurts in the world?
I remember when..............................................................
Oct 29, 2010
Oct 29, 2010 at 11:52 AM UTC
Love on my toes, love in the cabinet, love jumps off balconies
it is an eighteen year old succubus offering spinal taps.
Bring the gentlemen their evening numbness before next
morning’s nightmare and ******** are scheduled on God’s map –
he just steps out for a moment, settles his sleeping mask on.
God is so unhappy: he understands nothing of love.
Get this recipe recited so we shall feed them pink and blue pills
which knobs can sting boys in the *** a fleabite or bow
soon our leather heels chime through their ears like hooves.
The master may question their nutrition so hold out a paper cup
sloshing in female nectar, our vaguely cerise saliva
sustenance that comes from between slits carved for such –
these acids are love, love, love. Love from cavities, love pearls
knotted in the roots of a mother clam, fallopian love tubes.
Every shoebox offers warmth, complementary wakeup calls
a petite blonde to peel him out of his pajamas, too –
lay your husbands down into the doll-case if he has no love
as God is not watching here. Oh, how happy our gentlemen are.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC
I found a baby doll
3 days later
I cradled her in my arms
Careful not to wake her
She was but one head bigger
Than my own perfect doll
When she was alive
I buried her in a shoebox
And said my goodbyes
I said my sorries
And dried my eyes
But they never stopped leaking
And she never stopped sleeping
No more is she alive.
In the same strong blanket
I wore as a babe
She'll rest in peace in pieces
Inside that grave
For I am weak
But she is brave
And I'll never know
The love I never gave
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 5:11 AM UTC
We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
The bomb opens like a shoebox.
And the child?
The child is certainly not yawning.
And the woman?
The woman is bathing her heart.
It has been torn out of her
and as a last act
she is rinsing it off in the river.
This is the death market.
America,
where are your credentials?
2.7k
the azalea grew there
twenty years,
its grey body now
but scratchy bones,
browned blossoms
to ponder
until someone with courage
pronounces it over
cuts barren spines down,
and mulches the ground
with faded smiles
aged between pages
found saved in a shoebox
string-tied tight in darkness
will we still want spring
when we remember
our missing fuchsia
or discover
a new color to admire,
forget it ever was,
as we’ve manged
to forget laughter
in passionless winter
Sep 12, 2010
Sep 12, 2010 at 5:29 PM UTC
I spotted the box
out of the corner of my eye
There in the closet
stuffed into a corner
covered in cloth
At first it mattered not
I had other priorities
I had to meet
But then a memory
knocked upon the wall
of my curosity
So I took the box out
and sat upon the bed
And I started to take
the photographs out
So many faces , so many places
lost in time's goodbye
So much found
and so much lost
so , so very much
After all the you and me's
After all the summers
and winters too
Life has boiled down
to a box of photographs
made for a shoe
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 6:10 PM UTC
My Shoes
Someone once said, “Walk a mile in my shoes”
If you asked me to indeed I’d refuse
They protect me from bruise, respect me to choose
Which pair to prepare me to win or to lose
If footprints are clues, mine would be *****
Some shoes leave tracks, some shoes are flirty
If my shoes could talk, you be they’d be wordy
And here is what they would say:
“we protect you from weather, we’re always together
You cannot survive with just one
We provide you with style and last for a while
Until our job is done
Some of us new, but most of us old
We’re essential to everyday life
We’re there on the stairs, the court, in the car,
And even to marry your wife
We’re red, or tan, we’re **** and span
And proud ‘til the day we retire
‘til we say our goodbyes in the shoebox in the sky
Or perhaps the ol’ telephone wire”
Someone once said “walk a mile in my shoes”
If you asked me to indeed I’d refuse
For my shoes are unique, with every lace and squeak
They speak, oh yes they speak
Until they sing the telephone wire blues
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 11:47 AM UTC
Today I had an abortion.
I held the foetus in my hands, still hot, covered in blood, so tiny, yet so recognisable in its incomplete finishedness.
I was at a loss, it hit me slowly at first, then all at once, I started to cry.
It wasn't unexpected, I've been having this weird feeling lately, as if I knew that I wasn't going to see it live.
I felt like that from the start, to be honest, my stupid paranoid head couldn't avoid the thought, but why worry? Everything was going fine.
I don't know what caused it, if you ripped it out, if my body rejected it, or if it just wasn't the right time; maybe all these things together, in the end it takes two.
And so there I was, looking at this unborn being, staring back at me with your eyes, finally ending the dying life we put on it from the first moment.
The organs and the limbs all at the right place: I could see what they could have been, if they hadn't been so weak. It looked like that undeveloped Polaroid I took of you that still lies at the bottom of the drawer: I know what it is, but no one else can see it.
I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to let it go, I couldn't throw the remains away, not yet.
I put them in a shoebox, under my bed. I'll have a beer, sleep on it, tomorrow I'll see.
I have to get used to the emptiness first, I have to untangle myself from around your fingers, get some paracetamol for this ******* headache.
Oct 14, 2020
Oct 14, 2020 at 6:33 PM UTC
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.
2.1k
From the time he was a little boy
He wanted to be a soldier real bad
To wear big boots and a uniform
to look just like his dad
Although he'd never met the man
Many pictures had he seen
Of daddy as a soldier
being inspected by the queen.
There's a shoebox in the cupboard
With daddys medals and beret
And a letter Johnny never read
about how daddy passed away
The Falklands war was halfway done
but wars are always hell
and The Battle of Goose Green
is where Johnny's hero fell
As soon as he was old enough
despite his mothers pleas
Johnny joined the army
though she begged him from her knees
It seemed he was a natural
a born soldier like his dad
who looking down from up above
would be so proud of his lad
He had an honesty and integrity
that his advancement did effect
A natural heroic son of a *****
you could not help but respect
So when war came around again
this time in old Iraq
Johnny proudly did his duty well
not just the once, for he want back
28 years ago we said goodbye
almost to the day
this time we're here for Johnny
who war also took away
Johnny was my friend
a man I truly loved
No wife or children left behind,
his family's given enough
Jul 10, 2010
Jul 10, 2010 at 8:07 AM UTC
My friends wonder why
I'm acting so care free,
so giddy.
They haven't put the pieces
together yet.
Like a picture that hasn't developed,
the result a secret.
You're my secret.
You're always in my mind,
constantly.
I can only focus on you,
and nothing else.
Like how cameras focus on one object
and blur everything else.
All our time together,
is stored in my mind forever.
Like the pictures I have of us,
tucked safely away in the shoebox
in my closet.
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 7:09 PM UTC
I dreamt I still knew myself the moment you turned your face to me
you were about to enter a very personal space: a diary, a dream journal, a shoebox of love letters, a suicide note, the angry ramblings of a madman
Standing on the bridge where we're no longer suffering, the dream exhaled
and joy found eternity running over the closing frame, floating away in every direction where time intervenes
Apr 10, 2023
Apr 10, 2023 at 8:51 PM UTC
In a shoe box he sits
Quietly watching the darkness
Sitting forlorned
He's a sneaker
A loafer
Tied in laces
And hidden in shine
Alone
As his eyelets sag
With hopes the light peeks in
An envelope
Finding his leather
If only he could feel a touch
A foot
Feet
Interaction
A women's toes that wiggle
On those cold and lonely nights
Where inhabitation brings comfort
If only
He
His shoes
It could be fitted and fulfilled
Tailored and shined
And not be a beaten path
With wishful thinking
Of a women's toes that wiggle
For now though
A shoe horn would be the panacea
His hope
From being shelved
Hidden
In a shoebox he sits
Looking at the darkness
At the four walls corrugated
In lost time
Oblivious
Of walking
Logan Robertson
11/24/2018
Nov 24, 2018
Nov 24, 2018 at 2:25 PM UTC
i) up the stairs
red scarves and tight skirts
loose slacks and grey shirts
my how the landscape has changed
I can’t say that I love to be dipped into this *** of pretty
where the lipstick liner queens supreme
and the coffee is brewed to mitigate the colostomy retch
so I try a yellowed paper backed beat
but it held nothing to the shoebox diorama
of national care
where the alphabetised gates of ingress
more or less double as departure lounge
for the broken and spent where their god
might sit them on fashionably backed chairs
for the percentile of misplace repairs
or is it me that smells of warm ****
ii) down the travelator
a troll lives under the MRI,
moved on from the bridge by the gruffest of beards,
now working externally of the fable
beneath the table of the magnetic eye
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:39 PM UTC
They want bodies.
Warm, compliant bodies. Moving parts.
Hands that open doors and flip switches.
Spines that bend but don’t break.
They want eight hours of labor, plus the commute,
plus the side hustle,
plus the ever-present smile that says,
"I’m lucky to be here."
But bodies need rest.
And there is nowhere to rest.
No shoebox. No storage unit.
No couch, no floor, no friend with a spare key.
Just asphalt and backseats—if you’re lucky.
Just parking lots and fear and pretending to be fine.
We’re told to buy the things that prove we’ve made it:
the ergonomic chair, the smart toaster,
the streaming subscription that numbs the noise.
But where do we put it?
Where do we live with it?
They expect us to consume while we disappear.
They want machines
—but with human elegance.
They want efficiency
—but with soul.
They want labor without the laborer’s needs.
We are the product and the producer.
The face and the function.
They demand dignity at the front desk,
but deny it in the zoning map.
We work full time,
and still live in our cars.
If we have one.
If it hasn’t been towed or repossessed.
If there’s a safe place to park without being harassed.
Why?
Why can you clock in at dawn,
and still sleep under stars you didn’t wish for?
Because they want bodies.
But they do not want the burden of keeping us alive.
Apr 2, 2025
Apr 2, 2025 at 6:41 AM UTC
The old man living next door to my rented shoebox
told me that the hospitals are slowly draining the humanity from the city
and that the country is just animality rationality fictionality
and that at least when there was a king, everyone had food.
now his wife can’t pick things up because her hands hurt
so she throws things
constantly
and at least in India, he knew where he stood.
"My granddaughter on the fifth of July will be coming into her ninth year of life. She wants the world, though."
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:42 PM UTC
When i was younger
I loved to color.
At my grandparent's house
there was a shoebox
full of crayons.
I am older now.
So are my grandparents.
I got the crayons from the closet
because I still love to color.
With a satisfied smile
my grandfather turned to me
and said "you remembered where the crayons were"
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC
A newborn father
wears a path to heaven
in polished holy marble
'neath the pedestal
of stoney saints.
Deific overseers
cast artificial glory
incandescently.
A slice of dimly lit
hospital heaven
is framed with two candles
and the incense of Betadine.
Saint John's shadow
shares confessions
and supplications
over a once-immortal man
now unashamedly broken,
bartering trade with God -
his life for his son's.
This shoebox chapel
is starking cold.
Cold enough to preserve meat,
and doubts
which mock peace
against nun-hardened walls
echoing Satan's laugh.
Hope drowns in the ripples
of a basin filled with water
to wash our sins
but not our fear.
In the air hangs
the promise of eternity
(which is spiritual code for "death", but no one says "death" outloud. The more they don't say it, the more it sounds like "WE AREN'T GOING TO SAY "DEATH", WE CAN'T POSSIBLY SAY "DEATH", UNTIL IT IS SO UNCOMFORTABLE THAT WE MIGHT AS WELL BE SAYING "DEATH, DEAD, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DEATH AND TO TOP IT OFF...ON YOUR MOTHER'S GRAVE").
Yet piercing through
the promise of eternity
is the frail wail
of his baby's voice.
Legacy lingers in a
plastic manger down the hall.
Resurrection is more
than a prayer, it is his spirit
rising for one more miracle.
Faith is summoned
like a woozy fighter
demanding his will
to go on,
beaten,
half-concious
on the mat
refusing to lay down
for the count.
"God, I believe.
Help my unbelief."
The weeping man
stares into a statue's eyes
for salvation.
Jun 16, 2014
Jun 16, 2014 at 7:49 PM UTC
A shoebox of letters
hand written on yellow looseleaf
pages upon pages of promises
written in red ink,
a coffin in need of a burial
a reminder of a life
and a love denied.
February 14th, 1989
penned within my first year
the name at the top is not mine
but she writes to him
the way you will write to me
only two decades later.
I shiver as I read each draft;
to realize our failed romance
was but an echo of the past.
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 2:04 PM UTC
*A writer writes…
so that’s what I do.
Not that I must
But it’s the right thing to do.
It’s not always easy
to lay down a line
on a small scrap of paper
that’s so hard to find.
Expressive nouns and passionate verbs
they assault my brain and
take me away.
There’s no way to dictate them
out on a page.
So I write them all down
any place that I can.
While at the bar,
a napkin will do.
Or in my car,
a matchbook or two.
A Post-It will get me by
in a pinch.
Or any other paper
I’m happy to find.
And into my shoebox
I tucked them away.
I laid them right there
for another day.
Occasionally I’d come back
to see what they say.
Reading them over
again and again.
Into my brain,
that's where they have gone.
Stuck in my mind
for a decade or more.
The shoebox is gone now
from so long ago…but
the memories still linger
inside my brain and
out to my fingers
they continue to flow.
I write them all down
and expand on those thoughts.
Remembering the memories
I once thought were lost.
An explosion of words
pouring out on the page.
These many little thoughts they
now have a stage.
The lasting memories
are now down in print.
The shoebox is gone
but the words are in ink.*
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 8:06 PM UTC
a watched *** never boils,
shine red letters, “9:09”
a watched wrist will not cut itself
this wristwatch won’t keep time
my pockets they are full of sand
i think i need a drink
but the bottles are all filled with ships
the salt is full of sink
the kitchen drawers are filled with clothes
the bedroom tile’s stained
theire’s bodies lying in the tub
i flushed it down the drain
“it hurts, it hurts!” i cry out
through the painting on the bed
the pink and blue’s a vivid grey
that noose i made from thread
“BATTY, BATTY, LITTLE ONE”
a psychic claiming womb
“we lies, we lies” he hollers back
a whisper, shoebox tomb
when tap run dry tap tap a vein
i wait ‘fore you(r) reply
the alphabet’s your master now
subvide by multiply
my my my you’re growing
every new voice looks the same
each set of eye’s thats staring back
deferent different game
the early bird just passed we
floating downward wrinkled skin
worm slither in your fat cells
to your wheels on broken rim
we’ve eaten all my vegetables
i’m eating all that’s green
whom made you king i’m paying
there is something underseen
name starts to sound familiar
daily hourslongs each week
enough milk baby didn’t drink
she too loud when i speak
i cut back on the coffee
i’m not laughing, ha ha ha
one tweak, I’m boiled water
it’s 9:10, a smoking ***
Nov 24, 2012
Nov 24, 2012 at 12:12 AM UTC