"shoulderblades" poems
i remember
gettin' kinkykinky in the backseat
while your friend drives
illumined shoulderblades in the dimmers
your step daddy doesn't have much
say in us running away since you're 18
your mommy never loved me
and how i don't normally fit in things
told me you'd be going to school
in Kirtland, but i'm missing out
on how thick you're getting
for the waving tiers of succulence
belting in your stomach
profusion of feelings confusing your tongue
Apr 3, 2018
Apr 3, 2018 at 9:19 PM UTC
I write too many poems about my body.
but it’s the only house my spirit knows
and the only movement is my own
I could write you a love poem
or one about the way the kids in my hometown
used to walk the traintracks like they led somewhere
but i’m completely obsessed with this idea of entrapment
that i could be more than skin and bones that i could be made of
ink blotch shoulderblades
ribbon ribcages
clothespin wrists
and ruby lips
that i could abandon myself and get out of this cage
that’s too big or too small or whatever the **** they tell me this week.
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC
Rich, red raspberries in your palm,
rolled there from a damp paper towel as you sit
crosslegged on hardwood floor,
perfect posture,
head leaned against the lowest of the barres in the studio.
Your shoulder blades shift and
your collarbones gleam with perspiration.
Down the wall, another girl savors every drop of an orange.
Through the wall we hear an instructor yelling
and slipping into strings of Spanish curses.
You lean your head on to my shoulder wearing a new shade of lip stain: raspberry romance.
I bite into my bell pepper like an apple and
try not to breathe too loud.
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 12:38 AM UTC
the laddering of my ribs creak
like water-stained cherrywood stairs;
tread lightly, lest you
stir the dust and the ghosts
that dwell underfoot,
‘neath the cracked floorboards
of my skin.
i have but a simple request:
rid yourself of your lungs
and fill up the empty spaces
with used coffee filters,
crinkled wrapping paper, and
forlorn hope. do
cast aside
the shroud of indecision?, for
that winding sheet will only
hold you down between
your shoulderblades, like
framed butterflies pinned on paper
with needles of stone and salt.
stay with me tonight.
we will be taxidermy birds
on marionette strings
with crumbled concrete
between our talons,
the afterimages
of neon diner signs
stamped into our inner eyelids
oscillating, phantasmic.
we'll sing elegies in spring
rock sugar on our tongues—
there are staves of music
written in the lining of your mouth
and in the webbing of your hands
––as Sappho might say:
girls, sweetvoiced.
oh! but to think
that the starfire in your eyes
could be extinguished
by the tears you shed;
i’ll return my heart to the constellations
for you
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 8:58 AM UTC
safety is a forehead
pressed between sleeping
shoulderblades,
butterfly kisses on spines
and entangled fingers
Oct 21, 2011
Oct 21, 2011 at 12:21 AM UTC
At one point he realized that if he hugged me hard enough our hugs don’t last as long
It reminds me of the way some people take pills
if you take enough all at one time
perhaps the dosage will be strong enough
to run through your blood like runners in a race
to blissfully declare that it’s all for nothing and nothing for all
that the feeling of my shoulderblades cracking under pressure
is better than overdosing on pills
It reminds me of the way some people gorge on food
because if you eat it all as fast as you can
it takes a few minutes before your stomach feels that its too much
and if you wait to puke it all up in the bathroom of your school after lunch
maybe the feel of ***** and the burn in your throat
is worth the taste of all that food
that you ate too fast to enjoy it
It reminds me of the way some people use their orajel
because if you sit there are you numb one spot
all the other aches are suddenly so appearant
because all of you hurts, doesn’t it?
Not just one tooth, but all the others
and if you numb the one distracting you
suddenly your whole mouth is in disarray
and you hurt everywhere
It reminds me of life support
because a machine pumping what you were born with into your body
reminds me of the way I cling like a child to their mother’s skirts
to you as if you were my only living teddybear
because I know that if you were to walk away one day
I could go on living
and that fact alone makes it that much likely
that you’ll stay even longer
because I don’t think I need you
but I want you around anyway
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
forever and always.
a very long time.
Flying along with the feeling of freedom. elation. sprouting wings, they shoot out from shoulderblades. Time to sour. Unrestrained, liberty and life in the breath of the clouds. Whole and Complete. Joy unending.
these things can't be written, only felt and forgiven. Unbidden, so, welcome still. Freedom of the soul can't be lost of sold. the way the music plays, crescendos and dances. Notes the most beautiful melody of joyous abandon.
Release. Fly.
Freedom in the waves, wings glide along glistening waters.
Sparkles.
Millions of diamonds dancing atop waters, delighting in the laughter of joy and, innocence. Wings unfurl, plummet through sky. no stopping no turning no end to this flight. Can't open or close, define or control. this freedom brings so, much, more. Words can't describe, minds can't imagine. Poets left wordless, musicians without notes.
Purity, not a definable thing. This love, that they sing. it isn't a definable thing.
release, be free. That's the song to be sung, nothing can come, near. Sweeping and swirling, with no worries simply twirling. unimaginable. uncontainable. the beauty of this freedom song. A dance, sweet flight, all things beautiful. Release and relinquish and be free inside. arms open wide, wings spread so free. on top of a cliff, overlooking the sea. Breaking. Free.
Forever and always, the love of which we sing. freedom comes at a price, I'm growing new wings. break. free. New and completed, ever appreciated. Perfection in imperfection, every bit accepted and, unabbreviated. No need to say no, to change or to bend. Just spread those wings and sour through the breath of the wind. Undivided and unqualified, yet utterly complete. Perfected in the sight of love consummate.
Flawless, fearless, freely flying, forever and always. such a very long time.
Perfectly broken and unintentionally flawed. Beautiful in the chaos of a world still in snow. Beautifully broken, all the battles have been won. sweet wings open wide, feathers glisten and gleam.
fly. fly.
fly free.
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 10:33 AM UTC
The Supreme Reacher
was a watcher of dreams.
The Supreme Reacher
was an inclination.
The Supreme Reacher
was the instantaneous
and the forgettable.
The Supreme Reacher
could recede into the shadows of a thought,
only to emerge from its triangles
clean as a remembrance.
The Supreme Reacher
had veins for hands
and could reach across the mind
like lightning.
The Supreme Reacher is not
a person,
place,
thing,
or God.
The Supreme Reacher
had thighs black with feathers
and shoulderblades
hairy with time.
The Supreme Reacher
could talk and talk for days.
Lazing on dreamt-up
park benches,
green in their concrete holes
with algae,
and become green
as well.
The Supreme Reacher
could lay her heart on your
heart
and
place her lungs
in your palms.
The Supreme Reacher
could never be reached,
but only dreamt of and felt
like heavy fog on a tongue.
If ever there was a time for the Supreme Reacher,
to be Supreme,
this was the time,
the time of limes
and wicker minds,
of transposition
and aberration,
the time of larks
and loons
and goons,
of thugs in power suits
and kings in jumpers
and dreads,
of revolutions gone stale
in their infancy,
crunchy and pale
even to their cores.
The Supreme Reacher,
could not be reached,
but it could reach out itself
with lightning hands
firing up the whole earth of minds.
Feb 21, 2012
Feb 21, 2012 at 2:53 AM UTC
i am trying not
to write poems about ***
but it’s not easy.
everywhere our souls and our bodies are being
torn apart by genocide and violence
but all i can think of
is the sound you make
when i kiss the soft sweet-smelling hollow
carved into the place
where your neck meets your shoulderblades.
i’ve never ****** someone
without wanting to write poems about them.
you see, it’s a new language
i’m learning, this calligraphy
of the flesh,
how touch and sensation can transmit messages
unknown by hastily scratched letters.
they say when you learn a new language
the most important thing you can do
is practice it.
i am discovering now
the art of translation
how skin and hair and warmth and movement
can be described in these
empty syllables we pour from our mouths
these words we caress each other with
the only other thing our tongues are really good for.
i am a pious monk
dutifully copying the holy verses written on your body
to a cold thin page
hoping only that in doing so
i can preserve the memory of your touch
long after death has taken us both.
and i am trying not to write poems about ***
but i want to honor what you have taught me
about these strange forms we were given
this is merely a manifestation
of our animal incarnation
this is all i can do
to give voice to desire
the thing calling
wanting only to be heard.
Feb 16, 2011
Feb 16, 2011 at 10:22 PM UTC
shoulderBlades meekly scrunched, hard, together shoulder blades.
Before me shoulderBlades and spine curved up to head, raven coiffed,
hair pulled, lipbiting, shoulder blades: you've got monsters inside you
've
got pain, cuts, and bruises inside you
've
got pretty eyes and dimples and you like to wear flats, tanktops, and skirts.
But i like how your monsters taste like molasses and sulfur, they taste like
fingernails(turquoise)rending. And your cuts feel like lace and razors they
feel like your waist in hands thick with me deeply in you: shoulderblades.
Apr 17, 2012
Apr 17, 2012 at 6:22 PM UTC
Praise my pillowcases and her shoulderblades
which carry my horrors so soundlessly
Press kisses to the mouths of ghosts that sing
and the lullabies I swallow like prozac
and bless you, angel, who told me I was Holy
and I told you I was God
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC
I once met a boy with shoulders that could hold up the world and a few stars across his shoulderblades. He stood high, swear he belonged to trees, with a stare that made every nerve correspond to make me a personal lightning storm (to get a better idea, I used to jump off branches to feel wings I didn't have and his eyes were the leaves I'd see before I crashed to reality). What was reality without the birds beating against my chest when the expanse of my hand covered the thrumming of his heart. If there was a God? If there was a Plan? He would've made him ready to hold my hand, and he was (I'd like to include that he fit me like tides on shorelines).
He was entirely made of stardust and sea glass, jaggedly beautiful, someone shattered him along time ago to throw him to my shore, thank god she did, you were too alluring for me not to admire.
I've never been to the ocean, but the way your hands felt on my back felt like the entire world. (To elaborate, he's earthquakes, forests and the way the moon loves the sea).
Somebody asked me to explain the scientific explanation for infinite and I just whispered his name. He was engulfed in my forever, surrounded by words I whispered about futures we were scared of, with plans we'd propose now and promise to mars they'd work.
You see, I'm not artistic, not in the least, I like the elaborate equations of the brain and how your bones never actually fully mend. But I wrote books of words for this man, every color in my paint set couldn't compare to the way his eyes looked under street lamps or when he first wakes up.
That's what scared me, everything in the world can be drawn, written, solved, but someone forgot to finish the riddle for a boy with shaken leaves for eyes, forgive me, for I have been caught in the labyrinth of this boy.
The only way out, is to stay until stars crash around our ankles.
Tu sei un mondo tutto da solo.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 7:08 PM UTC
Tired eyes
shame envelops her body, like gauze
shoulderblades dripping with chagrin, a tattered pair of wings.
Freckles dot her nose, a miniature map,
sanguine lips on milky skin.
Stale, intangible disgrace.
Her eyes are drawn to the sunken sky,
and puffs of breath dance around her lips.
Acid boils within her
rippling throughout her body, threatening to tear her in two.
Fingers pressed to lips; drag,
a tiny ember. Ash away the agony.
A script, perfectly mastered:
a whimper, a moan, a buck of her hips.
Expectant with dread:
a low grunt, heavy panting, and slick, salty sweat
and at last it comes to a close.
And then: a fistful of bills.
Stiff, unyeilding, she will swallow hard.
And tell herself it was all worthwhile.
There is a hole in her heart,
dimly lit by a frenzy of pale, crushed stars
the smell of their flames: chalky, thick charcoal
whisper a faint reassurance.
Penance stains her cheeks in lacy contours
ageless, crooked bruises lace her body and blister to the surface of her skin
unable to rinse herself of sin,
she will choke on the sun.
Oct 12, 2011
Oct 12, 2011 at 12:21 PM UTC
one of these days
i will stop falling in love
with angel-headed boys
residing entire oceans
and plateaus away from me
the ways that their honeysuckle words
drip from their lips like honey
only to cover me
consume me
drown me
i'll cease thinking about how golden hair
would feel between the tips of my fingers
how their voice would sing
and reverberate within the hollow prison
of my rib cage
reciting rimbaud
rilke
camus
i will stop being tripped
up by the unyielding curve of pale
cupid-bow lips and lithe
long fingertips
tracing collars
shoulderblades
eyelids
continuously rendering me
hopeful
hoping
helpless
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 1:15 PM UTC
You were born bone
I became tattoo
flesh tethered your scaffolding
Under my beautiful scars
Thin paint, Stinging red
Constellations of wings
Left them with fingernails
Your soft shoulderblades
snug under pale skin
A bit lip tease soft blonde hairs one by one
Down tips underneath
the divet in your neck.
I admire the canvas of your spine back to me, all red wing stinging.
Ready to fly off
Moving thigh and held
Shifting maroon blankets.
My mouth smirks
Attempts to hide how desperate
To taste it is.
Sweet bird. Sweet angel.
Awake all night
With a tattoo of an arrow
And her hand
Pressed to her forehead.
A glass of water.
Towel held like a childs blanket.
Still white.
Even used, it is still fresh linen smell.
We are still fresh linen smell.
Your hipbones agree.
My thumbs asked them.
I kiss your feathers gentle and let them burn softly as I trail down.
Your whimpers send me skyward.
Lighter headed now
Tight cheeked.
More rustled blanket
Your thigh dances over hipbones.
I feel the tethers between bone and canvas
Scar and silk.
Warm in these wings
Stars in this constellation.
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 7:48 AM UTC
I wish that when you moved your head
you were turning over to tell me
something beautiful and that when
you adjusted your legs it would
be as subtly purposeful
as when I moved mine
because when I breathed
it felt like our bodies
were flowing together sinusoidally
from head to foot. And our hands
snarled, hardly together, close to
thick barbed wire our fingernails
scratching each other’s palms. Despite
mental unrest for two hours
I did not feel uncomfort, my chest
warming your soft shoulderblades.
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 7:46 PM UTC
I am open for you—
like cemetery gates at sunrise.
Both deities above and below
warn of dire consequences.
Still I am open for you.
Love, and love, and love.
You must admit there was love
in the speckled blue you left on my neck,
and the tight grip on my hip
beneath flannel sheets and morning eyes.
Not love like caged doves and thrown rice.
Not love like three-bedroom house in the suburbs.
Love like no space in your queen-sized bed.
Love like you showing me how to inhale smoke at 3am.
Love like teeth and tongues and thumbs and thighs.
I am open, fully.
Gaping, expanding, overwhelming.
I am racing heart.
I am goosebumps on your forearm.
I am fingertips gripping shoulderblades.
I am love, I am love, I am love.
Jul 7, 2017
Jul 7, 2017 at 12:49 PM UTC
Laying in the middle of the field
Dead grass pricking my shoulderblades
I'm up against the sky
Drowning in ocean of clouds
Tree's stretching their achy limbs
After long hibernation
Sunshine gold kisses my flower petal lips
Crimson as my love
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 2:15 AM UTC
when i was a little girl,
during that span of time
when years weren't the yardstick
but rather the speed with which
my popsicle would melt
or the days awaited
when wands of pine
would cover me from
sun-burned scalp to scraped-up toe
with sweet sap,
i would run about the tall grasses
and name every wildflower
that brushed my ankles
oh-so-tenderly.
i would keep a journal,
all in cornflower blue crayola,
about my findings,
my voyages through seas of green
and the whispers heard
in rustlings through the waves,
all turning to fae fairytales between my ears.
everything was named beautiful,
and everything was soft as a cloud
as i laid with my shoulderblades in the earth,
sticky fingers outstretched towards
projected memories far above me.
and now
i often find myself in a similar position,
ribs heaving heavily
as the floral essence
fills my lungs so amazingly--
the leaden comfort in my limbs
making it almost as if i had never left.
it's as if those fae fairytales have finally come true,
the ponderings finally rippling anew,
and the poppies lulling me to sleep
for hundred of years,
millenia stained with
the purity of august's finest daisies.
their perfume roused me one morning,
the sky still bruised and fluttering,
head sticky with a misplaced exhaustion and the woes of age;
the circumstance to which i awoke was this:
the buds,
the lilacs and hyacinths,
the baby's breath and dandelion
fluff
i had made delicate wishes upon since my earliest days
had found themselves a home wrapped around my spine,
fragrant petals gracing my stomach with their presence.
as if influenced by draught,
the ache did not place itself
but rather my fascination
with each tickling floral
forming fissures in my abdomen--
i took mental note
of their names
and characteristics,
as many as i could fit in that sap-lined cavity of my mind,
just as lovely as ever.
the soil was as soft as a cloud,
childish glee filling my heart to overflowing.
some things never change.
sometimes, the beauty of flowers
remains
the beauty of flowers,
whether it is plush under foot
or pushing through
bone and sinew.
Jun 27, 2018
Jun 27, 2018 at 5:47 PM UTC
One More, My Love
One More, Cigarette
To quench the stress in your shoulderblades
One More, Sweet Note
From the belly of the dying Piano
One More, Last Kiss
Before you learn to hate me for the rest of your life
One More, Burried Treasure
In the park by the tree where we met
And One More, Excuse
As to why I let you wander into oncoming traffic when I knew you were drunk and I should have been watching you.
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
One More, My Love
One More, Cigarette
To quench the stress in your shoulderblades
One More, Sweet Note
From the belly of the dying Piano
One More, Last Kiss
Before you learn to hate me for the rest of your life
One More, Burried Treasure
In the park by the tree where we met
And One More, Excuse
As to why I let you wander into oncoming traffic when I knew you were drunk and I should have been watching you.
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
Eyes: Stars. I can’t help but wish on them, holding my breath, standing on tiptoe, hoping. They promise so much.
Arms: Branches and vines. Reaching, wrapping, holding. You break what you let go of; you choke what you keep.
Legs: Thunder thighs and tree trunk calves. You frown like it’s a bad thing, but you’re strong; you’re steady, sure, solid. You are a forest and a storm.
Laugh: A flash of lightning. An instant of blinding, dazzling music in the midst of my storm.
Shoulderblades: Bookshelves. My head is a journal, thoughts spilling over. You are strong enough to bear even the heaviest of my words.
Tongue: A forest fire. I still have a second-degree burn from the first time you told me you loved me.
Hips: Hills. You are mountains and valleys, and I want to take a walk and get lost in you.
Feet: Anchors. They team up with gravity to keep you here. And so you stay.
Chest: A strongbox overflowing with treasure. Your heartbeat is the song your whole body sings, kept in time to your pulse, flowing through your veins.
Ribs: Boards on a ship. Weatherproof, waterproof. This means my tears (saltwater, too) will not ruin you when they fall onto you.
Hands: Morning glories with green-veined leaves. Opening, closing; beautiful every time.
Mind: A maze. You’re a puzzle I can’t solve and a line I cannot rhyme. You are never going to make sense, and I love that.
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 9:11 AM UTC