"shrivel" poems
65 years from now when my grandchild looks me and asks me
"Grandma do your cheeks look like they are falling and why does your backbone rise higher than the rest of you?"
I will answer:
Baby girl what they don't teach you in school is that the older you get the more gravity pulls at you.
Keeping your feet planted and your mind out of the clouds.
Life moves down instead of forward.
Bones grow frail and muscles shrivel up and weaken just like your ability to dream.
Dream of what you’re going to be,
"when you grow up" because,
darling this is it. I'm all grown up.
I am all I was ever meant to be.
My clay has hardened,
no longer able to bend and curve with the wind.
Too weak to keep walking forward.
That is why baby run while you still can,
discover the world.
Leave footprints in every corner of existence,
because when you're as old as me your feet will be sore
and won't be able to venture deeper into the pockets of the universe.
Roots now bind me to this little house where I will keep moving down.
Gravity is too strong for me now dear. My skin has already given up. Succumbing to the mighty force. Falling away from my bones that lie hollow inside my cheeks engraved,with the memories too valuable lose after lifetime.
So that when this world had
changed,
beyond recognition,
I will still hold inside of me the days that I spent in the sun .
As for my back.
Honey, the best thing you can have is a backbone ,
because when everything in this world in pulling you down,
you're going to need something
to keep holding you up.
My backbone,
a tribute to the years
I spent tiptoeing across
the coal beds of this life’s mighty fire. But one day it will turn into a white flag of surrender.
That is when you know that gravity has won.
I will sink back into the earth
and maybe start again…
Jun 11, 2015
Jun 11, 2015 at 2:59 PM UTC
I can’t catch my breath
as throat swells after smoke
you exhaled behind you;
you didn’t look back as euphoria hit.
I can’t catch my breath
as salty tears dilute my blood
and erythrocytes shrivel
leaving gas stranded in my lungs
after each grudging, shaky breath -
I can’t catch it,
it begs for freedom in endless sky
over the suffocating pressure inside my chest;
I can’t catch my breath,
I can’t catch my breath.
Aug 19, 2013
Aug 19, 2013 at 7:10 PM UTC
I’m working to unwrap you slowly
To form you up like a theory
To create a habitat for you in my head
My steps grow wider when I see you at the end
Lying, lounging, an old lion
Afternoon sun low and tired
Rays and shadows streak the road like enveloping arms
As I grow closer, you project even further away
I just long to reach you
Rest my head against your ***** and
Sleep against your softness like a pile of feathers
To rest at last.
But at times I think I’ll never reach you,
As I approach you reflect even further away
I wonder that this road is endless, thinning into the distance
The black wires radiate into the air above me
Mutating my simple DNA into something else entirely
A sole purpose survivor, a solider
The cause is more desperate now
They’re buzzing to each other above my head, talking about me
Their scrutiny banging between my ears
The dust becomes a new layer of me, with incredible thirst
Just fields of dehydrated dandelions, just nothing
They soak up the liquid from everything
With their chemical and electrical waves
The fields are screeching as they shrivel up, like dying children
Now it’s all yellow, beige, and far away
It’s all so tiny against the horizon,
For all I know, your silhouette has become a statue by now
Just this long stripe of dirt I treat like a passageway
Just a ladder to a final place of rest
I’m desperate for a stop in my trudging motion
But I know I can’t lie down in this unworthy sand.
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 5:52 PM UTC
Nothing works out in the end.
All of us will be gone.
Our name will not be remembered.
The signs and lights will fade to black.
The Hollywood sign will collapse of old age, like us.
Poppies shrivel up, their red coats falling onto the scorched earth.
Grapes transcend into wrinkly sacs of bitter wine.
The way your hand slipped in mine,
the fingerprints will rub away.
Our heart beats slow,
diminish.
Our laughter evanesce,
wanes
as our voices descend past the Pacific ocean.
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 12:33 AM UTC
i feel like a flower
born backwards
because i love the feeling of golden light all for me
but i shrivel in fear of my own sight to see
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 11:28 PM UTC
You start from a seed.
You are planted underneath.
You start in the womb.
You are planted inside.
You begin to peek.
You begin to seek.
You embrace the touch of the sun.
You embrace the cosmos.
You grow taller.
You get higher.
You extend to the horizon.
You expand your mind.
You burn brighter than the stars.
You glimmer in your colourful essence.
You outshine the rest.
You radiate the power within you.
You whither and squeal.
You long for strength.
You shrivel and burn.
You long to live.
You have bloomed
You are doomed
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 2:08 PM UTC
Leave me to be young,
to shrivel.
A white gardenia always must wither,
and shrivel;
Die.
Leave me to marry,
to love.
A heart can pump alone I assure you,
leave me to revoke my own sins.
A lost cause you take me,
and your silence will break me.
Your pesticides will **** off anything natural I possess!
A White Gardenia must shrivel and,
die.
Success is what disillusions me,
in pretense I fight.
A war on egos, envy and such!
It is all I know in my mechanical set-up,
is to follow the world in it's redundant tide.
A White Gardenia can bloom,
it can shrivel,
wither.
A White Gardenia always must die.
Feb 9, 2013
Feb 9, 2013 at 1:37 PM UTC
Let me tell you a story about a busy steet in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world.
Somewhere near the end of this busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world, there was a flowershop.
It was a lovely old place; an elegant building surrounded by beautiful gardens with daisies and daffodils and roses. It had bird baths where the cheery cardinals and bluejays stopped by for an afternoon splash, and even a sprinkler for the young children to run around in while their mommy's and daddy's were picking out pretty flowers.
Now, inside this flowershop, there were rows upon rows of pots filled with any type of plant you could imagine: dragonsnaps, lilies, zinnias, tulips, the whole lot. Baskets of flowers hung from the ceiling, overflowing with bright colours. Every once in a while, petals would rain down and the entire shop would look magical.
Everyday, people of all ages would dash into this flowershop. Men in suits, looking to find the perfect gift for their dates. Ladies in dresses, picking out just a little something to look nice in a vase on their dinner table. And of course, the gardeners, with their overalls and ***** fingers.
So, as I said, busy people on a busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world would dash into this busy flowershop, then dash back out and get on with their busy lives. Always looking for the most ravishing type of flower, the ones that could catch your eye as soon as you entered the shop. Never focusing on anything else.
What no one realized was that there was a small flower placed near the back wall of the shop. It was never moved; always been in the same exact place ever since it arrived at the flowershop years and years ago. The owners had stopped watering it, so the flower was beginning to shrivel up. Most of the petals had fallen off and were now laying in a sad little pile on the ground, and the few that remained had turned the colour of black.
The little flower got sicker and sicker every day, but it never lost hope. Every time the suited man stopped in, or the lady with the dress, or the ***** gardener; the flower would use its last bit of strength to make itself noticed. It stood on its tippy toes, perking up and spreading its wilted petals and frail stem as much as it could.
No one saw.
Then, one day, when the owner was sweeping the floor of the flowershop, he saw something near the back wall. Something broken. Crumpled. Blackened. Ugly. Dead. Something that once was beautiful until it stopped being noticed; stopped being loved.
You see, in a busy flowershop on a busy street in a busy city in a busy country in a busy world, no one's ever going to notice a wallflower until it wilts.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 6:47 PM UTC
Waking up with sweat
stained sheets wrapped
around me and you are
nowhere to be seen as
you believe being mean
is keeping the lads keen.
Your leather jacket is
still here hanging on the
hook by the front door
and he wonders why
she didn’t want more.
He loved her laugh last
night as they drunkenly
tried to walk right home
after finishing a few gin
and tonics between them
that made his head spin
and her think that she
would forever win at sin.
Her long blonde hair
had flown out behind her
and it reminded him of
fresh sunflowers because
that was the colour of her
beauty and he prayed the
rest of the night would not
be another careless blur.
The radiance within her
shone so bright that he
didn’t even turn on the
kitchen light as he let
them both inside as the
liquor made their shyness
want to shrivel up and hide.
But in the next morning,
there was no hungover girl
mumbling sleepily and
yawning because instead
there was only her leather
jacket and the faint smell
of sweet perfume left on
his pillow as he tried to
visualize that beautifully
bright sunny yellow that
made his throat dry and
gave him a sickening urge
to cry because he didn’t
want this feeling to die.
He wondered if she would
call because it really hadn’t
taken him long to fall for her
long limbs and the way she
had dark humour that stung
him like a cheap rumour and
so he slept on the sofa that
day with the aching bones
of a man who lives alone
but with a leather jacket
wrapped around his arm
because he wanted to see
her again and see if she
maybe felt the same but
he knew deep down it
was a Friday night love
and the weekend would
soon fade away because
she was never destined to
stay yet he hung her jacket
in the closet for years to
come and tried again to
find the perfect one but
he’d let her slip between
his fingers yet the smell
of her sweet perfume still
lingered for Friday nights
to come and he missed the
colour of the sun that shone
in her hair and the bright
eyes that that craved fear.
She’d been his Friday night
coffee and cream that would
never return no matter how
much he stroked the seams
of her faded leather jacket.
Sunflower girl was now
gone with the wind and
soon he could no longer
recall her voice and the
paleness of her soft skin.
It was like she had never
met him in the first place
but oh god how he loved
her beautiful hair and knew
she had once been there in
his arms even if it had only
been for one Friday night.
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 4:37 PM UTC
Thump.
Skip.
Thump.
Skip.
Skip.
Thump.
Pain flows through my chest.
Washing away the seconds and minutes.
Time Stops.
And the clock no longer ticks.
One more moment.
One last breath.
Lungs shrivel.
And blood freezes.
I sense her
Death.
Awaiting, Assuring, Strong.
Then the moment bursts.
A hand grenade.
A home-made bomb.
Life flashes back
And time ticks on.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 11:05 AM UTC
Don't you dare speak those words.
You know exactly what they will do,
to you,
and to him.
There will be no more
you and him.
Like the peach blossoms
broken from the delicate, young branches,
the verbal hail storm,
the weight of the ice,
will knock him to the frozen ground.
Raw,
Unsure how much affection he can return,
of how his own whirling thoughts fit with yours.
Your tale, far from fairy, will end.
Your open heart will shrivel,
like the salty sardines you left on the wooden picnic table
in the burning sun.
You will regret your thoughts and
you will regret your feelings,
but know, sadly, there was nothing left to do,
but leave too soon.
Mar 19, 2018
Mar 19, 2018 at 10:42 PM UTC
The flower of creativity withers and dies
from the waters of society's lies.
The petals shrivel and dip
from parents backbreaking grip.
The leaves crack and crumble
from those trying to be humble.
The stem breaks and falls
trapped in the cage of these walls.
The flower of creativity is now a distant memory,
the soil now becomes empty.
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 2:34 PM UTC
I want to shrivel like a raisin
Curl up into a ball
From your rounded little basin (of friends)
Of all the torturers, you're the most cruel
I wish to stand up to you
But my knees are to bruised
For begging for forgiveness
And my lunch money too
But I can't and I shan't
And I never shall
As I'm the weak little girl
Bullied by all
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 6:27 PM UTC
Dull does not become me, pale, monotonous I laugh at, for they never defined me.
A world in black and white would cause me to shrivel up and die for I am as bright as the brightest butterfly.
The little girl inside me screams to show off the colors that make a girl girly, a woman a woman.
The color pink is my absolute favorite, it brings out the very essence of who I have become.
The little girl who loved pink candy cane, pink bubblicious bubble gum which made the biggest pink bubbles no one could miss.
Pink skirts, pink shorts, and my dazzling pink sunglasses made me look like a princess from another era.
The sheer color of pink, and the flamboyance nature that it adorns with that dazzling ray of different shades.
The world would be a simpler place if colors were lighter for it would bring about so much laughter.
A night on the town and ready to make a splash is what it's about.
How about a blue dress and what accessories could I wear to make me look so debonair?
I got it, what goes with blue? Why pink is a good mix. Pink pumps, pink bracelets would catch someone's eye.
Definitely not blah looking, more like dazzle, razzle superstar in the making.
The trees are green and that's amazing, the clouds are white and that's also amazing.
The earth is brown, the sea is blue but without a dash of rose pink, ruby pink, ultra pink and creamy pink tell me where would we be?
In a world lacking in fashion, pizazz, creativity, no future insight to vanity.
We need flair and dramatics, fashionistas in our market and I propose to get us started.
We need to paint the town and make it look oh so **** Pinktastic.
May 28, 2020
May 28, 2020 at 11:07 AM UTC
Teach me how to love again.
Teach me to love again.
- One word can change the meaning of a simple sentence.
But that is not my argue. You see, I lost the love I thought I understood then replaced with a caring heart. A caring soul.
Which once I believed was love; was abuse. And now left curious wondering through time like a drunk cat becoming ever so curious.
Am I leaning to far on my heels?
Will curiosity **** me like our dear friend?
Will I shrivel into a mindless existence?
Who will I lose?
Who can I love?
Teach me to love again... For I want to love you.
Dec 12, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 11:03 AM UTC
I murmur in my heart complaints of the world’s state,
But shrivel at opportunities to effect change,
I drag my chains across the street,
My back branded by expectations whip,
My prison follows me,
Courage is coin that eludes me,
My mind dreams have made turgid,
Constructing a mirage of solace,
Thirsting through this urban place,
I yearn for a place afar from this globe,
Where human’s greed has not grown,
The desert of all deserts, red but has known no blood,
With teary eyes I squint at stars,
How to begin I have not understood,
The journey’s price is too steep,
Strawberry diesel is all I have to fuel this trip
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
Hidden, oh hidden
in the high fog
the house we live in,
beneath the magnetic rock,
rain-, rainbow-ridden,
where blood-black
bromelias, lichens,
owls, and the lint
of the waterfalls cling,
familiar, unbidden.
In a dim age
of water
the brook sings loud
from a rib cage
of giant fern; vapor
climbs up the thick growth
effortlessly, turns back,
holding them both,
house and rock,
in a private cloud.
At night, on the roof,
blind drops crawl
and the ordinary brown
owl gives us proof
he can count:
five times--always five--
he stamps and takes off
after the fat frogs that,
shrilling for love,
clamber and mount.
House, open house
to the white dew
and the milk-white sunrise
kind to the eyes,
to membership
of silver fish, mouse,
bookworms,
big moths; with a wall
for the mildew's
ignorant map;
darkened and tarnished
by the warm touch
of the warm breath,
maculate, cherished;
rejoice! For a later
era will differ.
(O difference that kills
or intimidates, much
of all our small shadowy
life!) Without water
the great rock will stare
unmagnetized, bare,
no longer wearing
rainbows or rain,
the forgiving air
and the high fog gone;
the owls will move on
and the several
waterfalls shrivel
in the steady sun.
3.2k
I cried, but I didn't understand why, so I laid there for awhile in thought.
As I became one with darkness, I realized:
I feel inadequate.
I am smart.
You are smarter.
I am strong.
You are stronger.
I am stubborn.
You are stubborner.
(Not that I'd ever tell you to your face.
I've got to keep up appearances you know.)
I'm genuine.
But you are moreso.
So when I told you that I think I love you,
my feeling of inadequacy grew.
I don't want you to admit to feelings that are untrue,
but I wish you could decide if you love me too.
I can't tell you any of this.
You'll draw back inside yourself.
So I'll continue to hide it.
I hope I don't shrivel up and die.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 11:07 PM UTC
Close you eyes
Shut out the light
Let the darkness take over your mind
Breath it in
Don't hide
Let it trickel like a stream and turn into a waterfall
Feel the depths of yourself
The place you had not felt before
Let it fill your every void
Let it hide your every pain
Until only nothingness remains
Allow everything you fight everyday to shrivel up and fall away
Take it to the end of your soul and bring it back again
And when it seems that everything is truely lost
Open your eyes and be blinded by the light
Let it chase the darkness away and with it all the sadness and the pain
You will find out of the darkness come the brightest light
If you first allow yourself to face the fear of the the unknown
And trust yourself to guide you back to what you where before
The life you lost was never gone
But buried deep within you all along
Let the darkness carry all your days of fear away
Allow your love of life to start again
And know
Out of Darkness Comes The Brightest Light.
Jul 15, 2015
Jul 15, 2015 at 6:36 AM 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
you cry like lost toys and dead pets
there's nothing you can do about it right now
you cry like a small animal with a broken spinal chord
you keep whimpering, but it can only heal in time
you cry like pressing the skin of your palms
into the membranes of your eyes
when everything in your head is so cacophonous
you want to rub away all the little things you absorb
want that your hands could throw out this migraine
like a candy wrapper on the sidewalk
and if you believe hard enough that it's gone
you'll never notice the sugar rush or the comedown
so you press your hands to your face
as hard as you can and try to pray like a religious person
but you were raised christian and american and
the ways of believing and hoping and loving that you knew as a child
seem insincere now, and hard to speak
the language is not truthful
everything is what they told you it was not
nothing is what they told you it was
or everything was always what it was
and you or i could've told them that
and you think that wrapper might eventually end up in a landfill
if you go throwing it carelessly around
and sadness taken with too much sugar can be a toxic combination
so maybe making the bad things go away
is harder than throwing away the wrapper and enjoying the rush
maybe the wrapper is somewhere else now you can't get to
where you can't hear it crinkle or see it shrivel,
but you can still relentlessly feel it
getting whittled away by time and weather
while steadily melting down bits of you
as you pass your heart around
gasping inside the icebox
until one day you look up and the sun is a bloodier color
and your lungs are full of ice like pins
freezing inside of you
and when seconds before you had oxygen
as you begin choking, you think it's amazing how long
it seems to have been
since you were alive
your knuckles are dry from holding on
to a rusty ladder wrung
even when you want to move so badly
and there's nowhere to climb
you refuse to jump
and you're still trying to figure out
how to fall correctly
to break the least amount of limbs
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 6:45 PM UTC
Wandering under
woodland leaves,
my mind confined
to winding suture lines.
Paths of pink nerve tissue
cherry blossom trees,
dendrite branches wave
in a heavy breeze.
Myline bark, an axon stump,
rooted contents of my skull
continuously growing,
a tangled plexus of
neural connections.
Twisting, turning,
a knotted blockage.
Pathways, rippled in roots,
a crossing synaptic stoppage.
A suffocating strangle,
choking corpus callosum
decaying mangle.
Branches atrophy,
shrivel and scar.
Root terminals suffer
hormonal harm.
Forest trails quick fainting
when lost in overthinking.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 11:29 PM UTC
*if only I knew how to love...
for my Victoria
winces-grimaces, that these words even leave my fingertips,
reminiscences, a chrome bookmark tab full of decades of near misses,
instances, subway sideway stolen daily glances of she who would be the only, the one, but one day failed to appear, left to dream peer,
and/or
decades long of romanced lasses, flying spectacular super crashes, when my heart-blanched, lanced, and the lawyers danced, poems shriveled as dried ink crack'd and words rusted shut,
cut by so many p'raps, and ugly motives, beautiful covered up, disguised as synapses of sin and insincerity, and I,
the sad man,
both the sinner and the sinned against,
totalities, of shoulda-woulda-asked/kissed-her-gallantly,
activities, when kisses were doorways to trap door rooms
and an over decorated monte cristo prison cell
ah well
the 'and yet,' the 'but for,' a single finger, sealing silenced lips,
passions mourned and irrevocable sensations, frittered, fractured,
all that I calmly called love was sprigs and broken branches,
cut flowers destined to shrivel,
not of what I believed in, something akin to a tree rooted, an oaken strong unbreakable love
of this certain, all approximations, all failed incantations,
for surely, if but only one escaped, could have been saved,
and if truthful love it was,
I would have known it,
for would I have dared to let slip away?
Jul 14, 2017
Jul 14, 2017 at 6:05 PM UTC
Ages pass
and
shells of resistance
shrivel up and die
leaving a fresh new chrysalis
resting in their place.
Like a shiny newborn baby
wiping the crust from its eyes
with tiny curled hands
fingernails as small as sand
and
love of life
has wedged its way
beyond all hints of
**** negativity
and
the only way forward
is found
before the sun even rises.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 9:03 PM UTC