"shuttering" poems
Devilish blue eyes, frozen gaze.
Influencing me against my will,
Submitting into dropping defenses.
Overcome with an inability to escape,
I become bound by those piercing eyes.
Sapping once kinder thoughts,
Replaced by detached isolation.
Shuttering at the crack of the whip,
Blindly I walk to death.
Carved flesh ammunition against
You, weakness exposed.
Lacerations to the heart exchanged,
Milky fog clouds my oppressor.
Pieces held together by hatred,
One blow away from cracking.
Further into broken self.
All freedoms come at a cost.
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 10:32 AM UTC
It went quiet
Not because it gave up
Bt because it was saving me.
It felt too much
So it chose silence
Over shuttering.
It held the storm
Behind closed doors
So I could keep breathing.
It's not numb
Just protecting
What's still healing
Jul 6, 2025
Jul 6, 2025 at 10:04 AM UTC
to hold a photograph in my hand
and believe what is presented,
take is at it already is – why not?
if I close my mind’s shuttering eye,
will you be as candid as before?
unrestricted, unsorted from the hullaballoo,
you, freer than what is imagined, closing
in like a bullet from yesterday shot out
of the sky’s contrived clearing –
to hold a photograph in my hand
and tug closer by the mouth of the fringe
as if to pour water on a broken glass,
slithering now, a shadow of moon
at the very dull end of my cup;
you are closer than any rehearsed moment
ready to catch the inner canthus of the eye:
this relentless picture-passing, tense and
fervent, avid like bankiva to air,
water to chrysanthemum: behind thick shrub
of crepuscular, an arboreal locomotion
shatters loose, your frantic figure.
to hold a photograph in my hand
and size it down to the dimensions
of this home – there is potential in this
comparison: flaring out like smoke from
where it infinitely burns, I seek an ache
and hence place a finger to shush,
to hold this photograph in my hand
and confabulate a soft blow to the gut
and feel it realer than any dagger or berretta
held at one’s life-edge: this delusory intimation,
a slipshod work of feeling. to feel it rejoin
me somewhere I ought to be back again.
Jan 27, 2016
Jan 27, 2016 at 2:48 AM UTC
Wicked nether-land. Nether world, white, askance. Capitulating mangroves, verdant trees spliced with hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and manilla envelopes; her world is stuffed with secrets, she listens to gorillas cracking mussels a kilometer away, near a rill. Never she thought. Nothing that could provide....providence. Mangled heliographs sprayed all over the everywhereworld.
"Don't be S.A.F.E.," she whispered. A bouquet of gorse, cistus, and pimpernels squished in her small fingers. She climbed her way through the pedimented stairway, then collapsing on the porch. Legs spent, and spread out upon the desiccate grayed four by four planks of the portico.
And as time elapses, the shuttering shake of the hemlock, which writhes through her skinny nimble dactyls, upwards straining the heart as its toxic bends appendages- crisp cerise lumens bend on the Titanium White walls, where only shadows bend time. The hour, still nine. Every adornment, furnished with red and its hues. Not purple, periwinkle, or any masked enhancement.
These are the symbols that reticulate splines, that curve temperatures, perverse hemispheres and debunk worlds. Upped antes, verbs that terns flirt worth, birth words. Ooh. Aah. Camera. The forest wraps her in its verdant pasture, where at last the moribund tamarisks disperse.
While at the plateau she is quiet and longing. Arms astride, dangling. Vaunt with highs and bliss- a kiss of withstanding pleasure serves her the cure for a lifetime of whining. This, yesterday where her body rattled through crooked vines. Square ships toasting her vocal melancholy in the sweet-waters of Time. So that all of her ripened limbs could grow, no more sheepishly than the magic she knew as a child. Stress free. First among the Earth-words, verbed-up and made jealous by pronouns that encompassed her joy-brimming hide. Closing down her voice and hugging her from behind.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:44 AM UTC
I'm a bright blue box with a bitter black inside.
I screamed 'open me! open me!' to those who had tried.
As they peek in it takes their breath away,
how broken and sad before them i lay.
Shuttering and sobbing, i scream out: close the box!
because i know no one can undo my sad twisted knots.
shame on me for trying, who could ever care?
I wanted to be happy, but i doubt I'll make it there.
My inside grows darker, my dreams more disturbed,
but the outside still gleams blue, fake, unperturbed.
My dark insides take over, I can't turn it off
I'm trying, I'm trying, but the voices just scoff.
Happy? Loved? You? You've got to be kidding.
These things are reserved for light, your darkness is forbidding.
Close your eyes babe, and try to make it through
while your dark dark insides utterly consume you.
So come on, sit down. Make yourself at home.
Let the voices talk, let your mind roam.
Because you're trapped here darling, inside this blue box
no keys have the power to undo your locks.
Your blue box is shut. Seal it off, seal it tight.
It's simple, you just have no hope to ever see light.
The people, they leave. They don't understand.
Each time they go, unable to withstand.
You're a being of sadness, disguised as a girl
come on, fake a smile, let your lips curl.
Yes, cut yourself off, you little blue box.
Make yourself tough, a foundation of rocks.
Because not feeling anything, nothing at all,
is the sure-fire way to make certain you don't fall.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC
Trundling through the loud clouds
that barrage me with thunder.
Pausing to smile at the lightning
shuttering from the red-carpet-crowds.
Tripping on the crimson rug
as they capture my blunder.
And smiling fake feelings,
whilst thinking of you.
You, with your unrequited
commitment to critters.
You, with your dedication
to the unknown.
**** you and only you.
That's all I really wanna do.
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 9:10 PM UTC
On a spring day, Emelia soared through the field, like a baby robin learning to fly, running in diagonals with her hands brushing against every shrub and leaf she saw.
Mud drenched pink overalls
and a bright blonde bowl cut.
She ran like a bumble bee on a mission
to pick the freshest, prettiest flower.
Stepping over bugs and playing tag with chipmunks,
she giggled uncontrollably and was a friend to all that walked nature's green carpet, tripping over wild, wispy grasses.
She looks up with innocent eyes, beaming like two sunflowers,
"We have to share," she announced to the big tree
that resembled Grandmother Willow.
She had just seen Pocahontas for the first time
and wanted nothing more than to become a color of the wind.
The wind blew the leaves in a nodding fashion,
showing agreeance to the young sprites statement.
She whipped and whirled her arms toward the sun
as it danced on her skin through the branches of her friends.
"I want to do this forever," she squealed.
So, she did.
20 years later, the girl grew
But with a dimmer light
Weaker legs
And a hole in her chest.
On a cold night, Emelia staggered through the barren field, fueled by a magic dust that made her feel like a crashing plane
Running in diagonals with her hands
Brushing against her watery eyes, keeping them from flooding.
Mud drenched ripped jeans
and a long, shaggy haircut mirroring the bark on the trees.
She ran like she was being chased by a vicious monster
trying to find the safest space for her to vent after feeling her brain bleed from her nose and heart deflate in its cage.
Stumbling over broken bottles and playing tag with her inner demons, she was a slave to all that walked nature's casket, tripping over roots and graves, smashing against a tree.
She looks up with innocent eyes, welling with painful tears,
"We have to share," she whispered to the big tree
that resembled Grandmother Willow.
She felt an unbearable pain that no one should live with and wanted nothing more than to be numb.
The wind stopped in it tracks, the leaves stagnant on their branches, showing heart wrenching dismay to the old skeleton's statement.
She sobbed and heaved with her arms wrapped tight to her torso
as her skin danced with her shuttering bones and tightening muscles.
"I don't want to do this forever," she helplessly breathed.
But, she did.
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 12:39 PM UTC
Never finding expectation to exist beyond the last known blip of the past, projected through my back, in tackled grounds, bound, in the banter of spectators, speculating the specifications of specialised weaponry, silencing the empathy, and seducing my enemies in the isolated idolatry of their stupidity that i sculpted from the scrutiny, that was wished to have eluded me but soothed my playful solidarity to my sickly game called reap and sow instead.
We are all dead, all dead inside, residing in thriving wounds.
Left unsaid in rhymes etched in tombs.
In the lies of old bafoons
I shall not fight, myself, as they do, nor shall i defy whats right just to eat tonight.
I will fight until I am mine and sleep.
Cradled in my shrine of thoughts amiss, in the frost of loss vs reward.
I am torn, between torture and a vultures wait of the prize to pedal the pestilent pettiness to the edges of my testaments, in the truth of youth-less suicide, slicing social structures into cylinders to swing in circles around the room.
Swooning, in my looming threat of self immolation to warm the heart with shopping carts of satire, killing the sad away.
Delaying the the decay of hope.
A stay of patience in my irrelevance,never hesitant in my clever projections of nothing.
I feed you nothing
But emptiness
Shuttering in the sultry shade of my suffering and loving every moment of it.
Saying nothing too much in things of such insignificance.
Spilling the mizpellings and settling for wordlessness after a good ***** of belligerent arrogance.
Im tempted to quit but my wick is lit and to submit now, would just put the fire out and i want to watch the burn.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 11:41 PM UTC
The crisp sounds
of the trail
the pure nature
the peace of it all
yet
A headache that was too much to bare
made my nose drip blood
and taint some purified leafs
Guilt began to strangle me
I picked up the two stained leafs
the leafs illuminated the color red
against its dark brown canvas
my nose was still bleeding
The crisp sounds were shuttering about
I fall to my knees
with the leafs in hand
I look up to the branched covered sky
and think
Guilt
the feeling tightens around my neck
and my wrists
making me let go of the leafs
the pressure in my skull made the blood from my nose spew
the constriction grew stronger
and stronger
as I fall to my side
and grasp for one last breathe
i think
Guilt
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
The light catches his body and
will not let it go, as I lie
and smile and make the appropriate
movements, always thinking -
my head never shuttering, never silenced
as I count up the crimes of the day,
reflected from sight of the light of him,
slapping my face as it hits.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 3:46 PM UTC
Shuttering in the in between.
Trying to search for some sort of normalcy.
Some place I'll never know.
Some place I've never been.
No sort of consistency has ever maintained me.
No established foundations.
No branching deep roots.
No part of me has any sort of regularity or normality.
It is how it has been, it is how it will always remain.
Mar 14, 2015
Mar 14, 2015 at 1:25 PM UTC
Across and abound to the sounds of fire, they lurch and leap toward the river bend. The twilight is thunderous and bold, a fragmented frown upon this calamity of calamities. It's jagged, smooth streaks of light passing judgement from the heavens above. God himself looks on.
Bright Blues to blend with Grim Greys upon such an all encompassing canvas of green. I hadn't known the extent in power of the color Red before this night, in overpowering; in swallowing up, smothering. Exploding in iridescence and irony, in trite translucent tragedy. It sinks into the ground. As it sinks into the bones of myself and my posterity.
I shivered and clutched my chest, that my heart did still beat. Noticing to my relief, it was thudding quite audibly amongst the quiet stir of grass and leaves beneath my feet. It was then I noticed the haunting silence of it all. I was alone.
But I was not alone, my eyes could see the smoke rise, they could almost feel the bullets whip through the wind. The chill of which caressed my skin in sensation. But sounds of gunfire, bombs bursting, yells yelping, the riotous roar of it all, were absent as a shadow. My veins turned to ice, my skin to stone.
In one particularly magnificent mingling of light, in one irradiating instant; I stumbled as sound met my deaf ears. Lightning and Fire danced in the sky. In this soulless shimmer, the slow shuttering lens of humanity captured the essence of something much beyond the present frame of existence. Breaking glass and pouring out of corners, a transcendental photograph. Reaching out through the pages of time to be acted out in accents yet unknown, by peoples yet unborn, to scream with insoluble resolve. The heart of man beats as one, we shall overcome.
Sep 26, 2011
Sep 26, 2011 at 1:49 AM UTC
You walk with me parallel on the beach,
You in the water, the charge and retreat,
No fear of what isn’t in your control,
But it can move fast, swallow you whole,
I stay on dry land; I like what I know,
But you urge me in with your eye’s glow,
We walk slowly through the water at first,
Adjusting to the cold with shuttering bursts,
A saunter turns walk a walk turns dance,
We tango in the water hands holding hands.
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 11:50 PM UTC
.
Rain fell in commotions—
The birds would have none of it,
The moon bellowed in ghostly white,
Faced in the sprite, ringing indifference
Of low fading stars, trees in posted dark
Scratched the grasslands of the fallen
Firmaments and the small creatures
That are holed up in days, scurried
With the creep of night and moan
Of oceans slide, mangled clouds
Clutched the murky burn of sky
And smallish eyes everywhen
Shuddered in the frosts
Of a shuttering rose.
.
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 5:51 PM UTC
How I miss it
The taste of tequila
Warm
Acidic
Slithering down the back of my throat
Blooming hot in my limbs,
Reaching each fingertip
Numbing
Bubbly sprinkle font
Shrouding my brain
In happy thought
Carefree wistful abandon
The burning choke
Of refer flower
Swaying my body to the
Rhythm
Of life
THIS MOMENT
His taste
The beat of his drum
Thumping
Thumping
Pounding
Madness
So caught up in him
I no longer am
Hooked
Shared
With his cosmic love
Submerged in subs trance
Lost to the essecence of the right now
Def to the whispers of tomorrow
In this moment I
Exist
As I have longed to
To just be
Me
Carefree
Floating on Cloud 12
Because Cloud 9 is full of want to be's
Ignoring the rancid truth of reality
Lost to it
Within it
Attention held by one and many
The shuttering, shake of atmosphere
His breathe the back of neck chill
Goose flesh intensity
Tangled in sensation
Over-infatuation.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 2:48 PM UTC
He came in from the dark of the monsoon of his soul
and pondered how he drifted so far from land
desecration and destruction…torment and anguish
waiting on the other side, hoping I’d find it but praying I don’t
fear, hopelessness and all that appears
statements of contracts entering the room
screaming, “not today, tormenter”
“not today”…
And so he becomes me in thought and despair
waiting for the turn, the moment of truth
until I and me combine with him and he
shuttering, tossing my food, crying inside
traffic jams in my mind due to congestion
wailing to my assailant, “not yet”,
I’m here to stay
“not quite yet”…
Finally, night becomes dawn in the recess of my heart
fluttering amongst the flowers, plants, and trees
those swaying trees of time and wonder
fate hanging on by a thumbnail and a prayer
receiving and sending love from heaven
in the form of a lightning bolt, a rainbow
believing at the end, “I’m free to be”
knowing “I’m free at last”…
Sep 7, 2012
Sep 7, 2012 at 4:44 PM UTC
The terrifying teeth chatter into the crimson lips of a wound up smile, chattering along the very risen table top that draws all small toys to their finite dooms. While breaths sour hour upon hour, each idling ear suffocates the last gasping breaths of its epicurean syllabic tongue, drizzling down the stomach like melt water from a cubic glacier in an ornamental silver tub, and sternly quibbles the stem-like dactyls drawing rose champagne into a fissure of the brain's tumescent humming.
Each finger tips' nail rouge and red, each dry crevice sewn into the knuckles, and a leaflet on sadism near the scratchy illegible lines whittled on the topside of the wrists and the slalom runs of the ankle. The ankle sinister. The ghost-like hallow sockets of where eyes could have once be seen. Plaster and albicant-like dying death white skins forbade from the Flushing streets where the jazz dance once began. And with each nellypotted hop, three useless nuisances could not carry the bridle towards each nearly favorite sound that curiosity enslaved man to lean towards.
The women weirded out by corners, plastic-wrapped furniture in outdoor corridors, where sinners veil their retreats into state run triage centers. Fake plastic countertops built from fake plastic trees. With an M14's muzzle stiffening and shuttering, she who vents off her cured romances will always find herself flaccid on rubber knees. The disease of the plea, is once more an affectation of not falling for royalty but instead the royal we. There is this weapon of fraud that perplexes geneticists, that enslaves heterosexuals, where albeit nor the time or place, she venerates the libations that her mind creates, she lubricates her cells, dressing, her skin ripening, heaven trickling across her humble nape, where gentleness is only a fool's disease and need.
She. We. Heathens of eternity bowing our breaths in grand hyperbole see. I see she, and she sees me.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 3:28 AM UTC
Show me the peace of mind that I lack.
Apart I am weak and wondering and shuttering and stuttering.
And at time's I am very alone.
More panic attacks.
More feelings I'm stuck muttering as others are meddling.
Not having a life of my own.
not completely
although maybe bleakly.
So please show me the peace of mind I can't find for myself.
Stay my mind I beg you
because the alternative is... Unspeakable.
Stay my mind for me. I don't have the strength to do it myself.
Self-pity is so easy. Comes so quickly. Flows so hazily.
From now on that stops.
Maybe it's time I learn a thing or two...
and begin to stay my own mind.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC
dreamingswanseyeaperturesboxboatsevergreenstarzenithgazing
~
while dreaming,
i became a swan's eye,
i was dreaming through both its apertures at once,
clicking separately, click, click shuttering
both sides from out a box, or from out a feathered,
living boat, or two, severed visions
superimposed:
evergreen under,
star over at a zenith
gazing twice over
paddling under
~
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 5:02 PM UTC
10. it’s like when you get to the airport
just in time to watch your flight take off without you.
it’s like when you get up dance but the music’s already over.
i think sometimes we’re all scanning the crowd
for someone who is never going show.
4. baby, you make nervous
like i’m not talking butterflies, i’m talking a mass exodus of monarchs
shuttering from the trees in mexico
like the sky’s rippling around their wings.
i’m not talking fireworks, i’m talking atomic bombs.
i’m talking terrible internal bruising
and the first time i saw you was like the first time
i saw the sun rise.
6. please, please, please love me
even when everything about me feels like ****
8. love will never ever feel like it did when i was 16, 17, 18.
love will never feel like it did the first time again.
and first love only seems perfect
because it had nothing to measure up to.
so i stopped trying to catch it, stopped waiting for miracles or for magic.
because i’m not sure it’s out there.
i’m not sure there’s The One in capital letters
but maybe more like a lot of ones. plural.
maybe everyone you’ve ever loved was The One right then.
see, love is not a choice but the way we do it is.
and sometimes forever is just deciding to stick out
for as long as you can make it.
because, sometimes, things start fading
and we either choose to throw them out or color them back in.
2. my heart is unfocused;
love is not obedience and obedience is not deference
and i love you is not i always will.
7. i wish i could send sixteen year old me
a letter about love like “baby,
you want to rip yourself apart to find space inside of you to fit them in,
this is not love. i know it feels like it sometimes, but this is not love.”
i wish sixteen year old me knew how the **** to listen.
3. see, i am 90% bravado and bad timing.
a lack of serotonin and a closed mouth.
more fistfight than handshake, more gritted teeth than grin.
and i love myself like you’ve got to love yourself
when you don’t always really like yourself.
i am in the room full of my mistakes
and they are telling me ghost stories about you.
see, i didn’t love you, it was… just the music.
my heart got confused, caught up in the baseline.
9. and i’m always reaching for something that burns
the palms of my hands, leaves me blistered.
i am always trying to hold onto borrowed time.
1. and i know this isn’t the love letter you asked for,
but it’s the one i’ve got.
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 7:58 PM UTC
Who am I
Who am I to think that it all will be ok.
When my heart is shattered for the first time
A million pieces on the floor
While I stand up confident and smiling
I'm shuttering and in excruciating pain inside
Who am I
To seem put together
To put on that plastic smile
That makes money and wins hearts
The smile that wins; the smile that takes
Who am I
To crush hearts
But when I myself am crushed
Be surprised at the anguish
Who am I
To just want to touch you
To just want to hold you and feel your warmth
To feel you there in my sleep
To once in my life not feel alone
You can run, you can go
Just a moment more with you would be worth a million heartaches and a million bruises
I'm broken inside, but I'd do it again just to kiss that beautiful face and feel ok for a moment more.
And so I drown into myself. My hard controlling self. But I have to breathe eventually. And I come up--gasping for air-- and pooling my tears around me; I remember how it feels to be broken. Then I pull myself down to drown once more. Covered in my plastic suffocation. I am safe. I will be safe. Blissful suffocation
Feb 8, 2017
Feb 8, 2017 at 12:48 AM UTC
The flame
In his chest
The same
To the rest
But twisted
As he was
Blessed
But gifted
With inferiority
And was horribly
Conflicted
Of the message
He was meshing
With the decrepit
Feeling
Of his fleeting
Half stepping
To the
Recollections
Of his blessings
That he was tempted
To dissect
From the crowd
Inflicted
Despite the
Shroud
Of clouded
Bouts
Torn from
The panicked ****
Of the phobias
He knew they were scared of
And glared
Right through them
Before he opened up
His coat
And started shooting
Proving
Others wise
In the silent
Reprise
Of 45's
And nines
He smiled
In the exile
Of fear
Escaping
Through
The fading
Lights
Of dying eyes
In the wild
Surmise
That with each
Trigger squeeze
Eased him
Into shame
As he
Aimed
To please
For the release
Of lives
Crawling
For the
Finished
Lines
And in gorgazmic
Slitherings
He delivered
The final blows
With power ups
And scores
Progressing
The killing
As he reloads
With shrilling
Grins
And stints
Of compassion
Fashioning
The rationed
Satisfaction
He received
From the screaming
Mothers and babies
Brothers and maybes
Splattering
On the plastic trees
Of escalators
And skeezes
That laid shuttering
Headless
Upon the exits
Of his
Insurrected mind
And he was just fine
With dying
In kind
And he was just fine
Shining from
The shrine
Of Santa
In a sonata
Of solidarity
To the led
Soldering morals
In a story
Of victory
And of
Personal glory
For the lords
Of defeat
Seething
In the completeness
Of a defeatist
As he stuck
The heaters
In his mouth
And was out
Without
One doubt
As to what
Nothing
Means
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
Those magnificent sunsets, riveting
to the bone.
I walked into the prairie,
and felt like the cool wind on a Saturday night.
I can see the old rusted behemoth.
It sits, lost in the wastebasket of oblivion.
Tall whisky willows, tower in front, their boughs
blocking it's menacing complexion.
A hummingbird approached me.
The shuttering of the old clock in the truck,
fell to a lonesome silence.
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 10:24 PM UTC