"sinkhole" poems
Imagine that
I could write a salve,
compose an ointment of verbal herbs to heal,
even mere protect the already-torn-so-easy mental flesh,
just to disguise/hide the multi-colored bruising our
fickle mistress-in-common provides when you are down so far
another bruise joining the cast like a floodplain subsuming one more feeding creek bed into the shapelessness of indistinguishability
imagine that
where atoms hide eternal between creation and destruction,
borrow brief the set exact you require to restore the taken years
from fathers/mothers/brothers/sisters,
children,
return that which went unused by the uninvited, unseemly human whim of war and lies for no gain
imagine that
the deep sinkhole of despair that ***** one in, years in the formation, appearing in instance, and worse does not drowns but leaves helpless, unable to climb out, and all our scratching digs us in deeper until we cannot be, seen or heard or just be
imagine that
a check comes in the mail, payable left open for filling-in,
in the amount of full restoration, with no additional fees of guilt needed for deposit and cashing/caching out: and you wake up
and the stony chest is breathing lungs free
imagine that
and I do; for I am the smoke of return and rest, sky inscribing,
knowing precise needs and the screams and the years unfair taken,
they are screened through the five perceptions, and the word weaver
sets the loom for each peculiar requisition, no imagination needed
imagine that
you lament and anger demand verifiable proofs mathematical,
cursing the knights of false hopes with untethered regret
I do not imagine that; hear it and accept; my task, imagine that, making you imagine that, thus commencement of repair begins
when
we imagine that
for this how new healthy cells are born
quiet-now, go, imagine-that, now*
Aug 18, 2018
Aug 18, 2018 at 1:02 PM UTC
hello,
have you been
well?
i guess not,
for your attention
in my poem
could tell
sorry if this nurse
took so long
in finding
the perfect words
to cure
your soul
first,
strip your clothes
and
stand at the mirror
gaze at the
creature with
the foggy figure
there's
a sinkhole
in those eyes
and a temporary
stitch whenever
you would
smile
the collarbone
which hides,
suffocates from the
blanket of skin
with
sickening lies
it penetrated
and
corrupted your mind
ignored the
fact and just
romanticized
the beast
will **** you,
please
don't find
it ****
the chaos is screaming
later on
you'll be
empty
i know how
a reflection
cries
you lost yourself
you lost you
it's like
having a stray cat
beneath your
tissues
a wandering stranger
sails from
the memories
of truth
overflowing blood
choaked
your dilemmas
too
it mimicked the
fire of hell
in those
shoes
the greatest harm
you'll ever
cause you
but why a
nurse
and not a
doctor?
listen here,
you are your
fighter
the cure and the pain,
which decision
will define?
all i can
say is,
save yourself
from death,
because
it hasn't
deseved you yet
go ahead
and fight your
way to life
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 3:51 AM UTC
From the ripple in a glass of water
to the sonic boom of this internal
Pompeii, the erosion
of her etymology is the only
sense of movement in her
dilated, cave-pupil eyes, those
two ghost towns spanning
and encircling all the way back,
stretched like an elastic blindfold
past the moment the first brick was laid,
perhaps her first vivid memory,
or anecdote, or first word uttered
in a Cuban slum.
There are mountains of tumbleweed
over the once thriving metropolis
that expanded towards America;
who threw herself into
the architecture of seven pillars,
borne from her land and
minerals. Gone are the
huts that housed her
knowledge of basic motor skills.
The women who once imagined
Mami and Mima as her birth
name now scrub off
the graffiti of her excrement;
they saw a swarm of pink moons
the day she told the same story
to every visitor that came
their way, each day then becoming
a missing surveillance tape, a sinkhole
dismantling the awareness
in her bones and stubborn will,
until she became
these dust-engulfed plains with
a daughter and granddaughter
archeological in their efforts
to chase down the remains
of a girl still breathing in
those eyes from time to time.
Every other ten-millionth blink of
the eye rides the silhouette of a post-infant girl
on the high tides of her quick visit,
looking in horror
as the nation of her life's nightmares,
heartaches, broken promises, romances,
spiritual breakthroughs, life-changing seconds
drowns with morbid unity en cien fuegos,
desperately attempting to assemble
the remnants of her psyche
past her cognitive bloodclots
with the awareness of one
who speaks no languages.
Gone is the moment
she first learned
to feed her several children
before the slip of sunset.
One of seven pillars remain intact,
the others long dismantled of their
stick and straw infrastructures.
One pillar remained,
housed her own colony
for nine months,
and now both descendants
travel the mind of their
greatest influence
with perplexed dedication,
caustic humor the decoy
for swarms of exhaustion
and asphyxiation
from the truthful atmosphere,
reveling in the seconds
of humanity lurking
in an abandoned etymology.
Jun 29, 2010
Jun 29, 2010 at 11:19 AM UTC
it was the Cubist who created the space and color that
everywhere today assails our eyes
in uniform architecture and monotonous
design; the various branches of modern art
through tedious & exhaustive experiment
& research creating a massive cultural sinkhole
whose banal discoveries unveil for all the sameness
of form, line and color;
Quote from Gorky's 'Camouflage', 1942: I like the heat;
the tenderness; the edible; the lusciousness;
the song of a single person
in a bathtub full of water.
I like Ucello, Grunewald, Ingres,
the drawings and sketches for paintings
of Seurat and that man Pablo Picasso;
I measure all things by weight.
In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
26 June 1942
I love Mougouch, Gorky's wife. What about papa Cézanne;
I like the wheat fields, the plow, the apricots,
those flirts of the sun. And bread above all.
My lever is the purple; About 194 feet away
from our house in Armenia on the road to the
spring my father had a little garden with
a few apple trees which had retired
from giving fruit;
this garden was identified as the _'Garden of Wish Fulfillment'_
often I had seen my mother and the other village women
exposing their naked bosoms, taking the soft,
dependable ******* in their hands &
rubbing them on the rocks; above all this
standing an enormous tree all bleached
under the sun, rain & cold, deprived of leaves.
This was the Holy Tree [quoted in 1942]
In text for MoMA, describing the 'Garden in Sochi' - series,
26 June 1942
I don't like that word 'finished'.
When something is finished,
that means it's dead, doesn't it?
I believe in everlastingness;
I never finish a painting – I just stop
working on it for a while.
I like painting because it's something
I can never come to the end of;
sometimes I paint a picture,
then I paint it all out. Sometimes
I'm working on fifteen or twenty
pictures at the same time; I do that
b/c I want to – b/c I change my
mind so often; The thing to do is
always to keep starting to paint;
never finishing the painting [quoted in 1948]
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 4:39 PM UTC
pale clouds at the summit
water color sky
cattle guard at wood bridge
creek bed running dry
split log fence downtrodden
razor back in wire
sinkhole on the wild plain
grouse fields under fire
pine bug and a lone wolf
clear cut on the trail
stump lake on the open range
kettle valley rail
raven on the hatheume
slash and burn and scar
blasted church in a tired sun
wild rose under char
thistle in the hollow
quails nest sitting high
carriage house at lone rock
curtains of july
smoke jaw in the canyon
percolator dream
silver sage in chapel
schneider's requiem
stockmen on the wrangle
big horn antler chase
table top at sunset
deacon creek in grace
quarry in a furry
lines of tinted red
spurs and blades and columns
patchwork of the dead
past the bow hill junction
cattle ropes are black
indian amphitheater
saddle on the rack
sun is at a high bake
sedimentary stone
three days on the morphine
skeleton and bone
cold water road is lonely
corrals are cut and paste
gone but not forgotten
the dust filled aftertaste
Jun 3, 2017
Jun 3, 2017 at 1:06 PM UTC
Dry veins branch the dead gulch
cinder cones set on a marble tan scape
fanning sands sketch ephemeral
fossil plates fold under columns of gray
Mountain back steep at the crevasse
sinkhole spots form on parallel nine
sulfur pipe stems from molten ash
withered shrubs and crumbling spines
silt fields cover the foothills
swayback shed near the Whipple tree barn
tumbledown shacks form the patchwork
from goat canyon ranch to big bison farm
Salt lakes fractured in amber
sickle-bush cut at the bowline knot
a half-moon traced by the viper
oxbow streams and valley grot
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 1:43 PM UTC
Every day I reveal
I give a little more
something special, so real to life
a different side of life
those pieces of me no one can steal
every night I'm where it takes me
to where I find that part of me
that needs no excuses
nothing to change
nothing to add to
But what if it isn't the truth? What if I am a product of fear? When I look at my keyboard, I remember things I cannot say aloud. That is the darkness.
nothing to subtract
the fairy of all things sharp and dangerous.
a day in the sun a light
That casts no shadow,
Pushing through all darkness
To reveal the only truth
a smackeral here,
a smidgen there
i stitch into the weave
as my truth
as i can bare,
leaving me naked
and bereft
but as a milliner of words
so fine
I stitch together a tapestry
of twine
upon a silken bed of shadow
the words, they matter
on the morrow
Twisted threads of golden thought
weaves crimson tears
that taught
the one that orates
as they weave
leaves a pattern
that can't deceive
cleft, my palette
of words, sacred,
alone but not forsaken-
created, awakened and tasted
and i stop for a while
to taste the silence between words
the echoes of my steps
roaming inside a dream
Chinese boxes with corners that
domino like the seals
of envelopes, they
stick to sticky
seals of words,
telling of straw earth.
sinkhole, the word frightened me as a child
even now I tread lightly
allaying the inevitable
i tread lightly, lightly... allaying
the inevitable
babble of...
"lustful gushing
of wordlove
that cascades
from my brain
enervated, regenerated
obligated
to explain
the gears
and cogs
of this
clockwork world
write....again
and again
the never ending
refrain
oh listen to the silence
listen
between the words
from
the death of one breath;
to
the birth of the next
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
fast forward three years
you're living on the coast binding books and your hips together
and i'm still in the small town that turned me into a sinkhole
you got out though, huh? you got out just fine, you have always been stronger than me
you have always been able to get well and get up without anyone bringing you bouquets of hands
you sit down to explain to her that love has made you reckless, that too many people
have been easygoing with your heart; let it cross the streets alone.
drunkenly leaving it in cabs in other countries
so for a while there you weren't sure who to give it to
my dear, I know now that you were never a hotel I could check in and check out of
you were in the best way possible, the mental hospital,
the time I woke up with nobody but the voices in my head (they were all yours)
(I couldn't leave until I got better)
you tell her you fell in love with a girl who never burned your letters,
who showed love in all the wrong ways, never picked up the phone, "honey", you'd say,
"she was nothing like you" ... "kept her hair light to contradict the dark inside of her,
didn't trust anyone to blindfold her and walk her down the street"
you try to tell her my name, but you can't
you can't remember what they call me, call me, call me,
I never picked up the phone
fast forward three years
you're living on the coast making love and mixed drinks a little too strong
and i'm buried near the sinkhole in town, next to the dog my dad kicked a little too hard
out the door of the house he lived in with my mother
i've got your name tattooed on my neck
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 6:58 PM UTC
capsized beating purple algorithm
for a heart,
cross-nit aspirations
still taste dirt on my teeth,
the mission creep of eager eyed poets,
carry a briefcase with my levi's --
close cut cigarette encounters,
all brick shantytown of a friendship
them lovelies run on endless,
it's starting to get cold outside.
restless sprites circle our *****
exhaling greek mythopoeics
every sure footed step.
alcoholism echoes in my skin
a depth charge i cannot cut out,
we all have broken thoughts here,
all have blind spots in our stomachs,
they read like a preacher's insecurities:
burly things we warm ourselves with,
the winters sting bitter.
something is wrong with me,
sinkhole of ambition and honey kisses,
all the great thinkers **** themselves,
it's the staunch lack of spotlight,
way the earth drips lackadaisical-like
we just call it a perfect orbit.
shake my hand and feel a goldilocks pulse
anemic shards of a cornered animal,
we cut right
to the bone
here, or so we tell ourselves.
and love is always the answer?
that sure footed toothy angel
so beautiful, it couldn't just be our
churlish blood,
frothing and calming,
frothing and calming,
electrons rise and fall to create light,
they still circle an untapped atrocity
perfectly,
like this, like it must be
god
or something close. something
stopping them from running, free
from bonds ionic or otherwise,
bare feet
beating the pavement until there are
no more stones to throw.
firstborns of the universe,
each star is a setting sun,
blinks staggered,
still grew us up quicker than most,
there is no aphrodisiac like heliocentrism.
them bones cut good
doped up on oxytocin,
those empty thoughts still rattling,
dig sharp -- then nice and numb.
and we cutthroat and glossy,
sharper than ever.
walk outside
smoke a cigarette
know how much you love her,
look at the stars --
it's ******* beautiful isn't it
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 7:57 PM UTC
Sometimes all I can think of is the sinkhole that I learned about in 8th grade.
It destroyed an entire lake and swallowed all of the fish, rocks and even boats on the water.
The thought of it fascinated me.
Until I realized;
There’s a sinkhole inside of me.
It ***** up everything that makes me happy, towing it into the underwater oblivion.
And soon enough, the only thing that’s will be left will mud.
And the demons that cling to my soul like an anchor.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 2:21 PM UTC
She may be somber
She may be sad
She never had a mother
She never had a dad
The feelings crawl up on top of each other
Crushing each below
Crumbling down like a sinkhole
in her heart’s hollow
She may be somber
She may be sad
She may be mourning
a life that she has never had
It piles and piles
It heaps and heaps
Heavy is the hollow heart that crumbles
Heavy is the heart that weeps
Aug 8, 2025
Aug 8, 2025 at 3:40 PM UTC
I fell into this sinkhole of gluttony. Money can be a curse like that.
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 3:39 PM UTC
Sometimes all I can think of is the sinkhole that I learned about in 8th grade.
It destroyed an entire lake and swallowing all of the fish, rocks and even boats on the water.
The thought of it fascinated me.
Until I realized;
There’s a sinkhole inside of me.
It ***** up everything that makes me happy, towing it into the underwater oblivion.
And soon enough, the only thing that’s will be left will mud.
And the demons that cling to my soul like an anchor.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 2:21 PM UTC
Sometimes, I wish my soul
Wasn't so sensitive
I extend my exposed hand out
For others to grab
Sometimes, my reach
Is acknowledged and held onto
Other times, it's crushed
With the overwhelming and
Presumptuous weight
Of being a burden and
A disappointment
This pain is very strong
This suffering tugs and
Drags me down
A sinkhole that I don't even
Notice I'm falling through
Until it's too late
Until I feel lightheaded
When my heart beats
In fluttering patterns
Until my chest tightens
And I feel a knot in my throat
It's hard to swallow this air I breathe
For at times, it's so dense and thick
But there's no fog, no illusion
Just allusions to the fact
That I'm tired...
Fatigued...
Exhausted...
A barren tree
A lot of life to give
But an abandoned seed
In my mind
That's what my demons tell me
This is my story of triumph
That I'm still writing
This is my journey
That I'm still fighting.
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 1:52 PM UTC
Vision Blurred from mind murmurs, I pause.
Weak so very weak, ideas -the main cause-
It starts with thought, Mine? Maybe. Theirs? Viable.
Perchance a sight sparks sources, pliable
To my forgotten fountain of words and youth.
Whatever kerosene lights false truths,
Matters not, the elicit creation
Itself boils thick blood, a gyration
Of self-exploration and daydreams.
Envision that my dear, a lonely sunbeam:
It is there! Muses dancing in the field,
Undulating excitement revealed!
The blank page beckons, the clever pen begs
To strut. Alas! Its form flutters, the dregs
Remain to tease&taunt; the restless soul
My mind murmurs, trapped, weakened: the sinkhole
Dec 7, 2011
Dec 7, 2011 at 8:32 PM UTC
you wear your ulterior motives around your neck like a no
ose or a beaded choker you know you have weird style yo
u don't need reminding its not supposed to hurt when ****
boys with high libidos take and break but you've got eyes
that remind them who's in control they think you're *****
y and whatever you totally are it's okay to howl at the mo
on every once in awhile they'll make you want to slide into
a sinkhole or be swallowed in the soft wet soil but you've
got a hidden agenda for when you smile the sun shines bri
ght no one can deny a witch like you when you sing for ma
ma earth your soft skin makes plants grow what's a minor
heartbreak when a tsunami could wash away an entire vill
age at least you have patience
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 12:06 PM UTC
Breathe Steady 10.29.20
go forth then, unto God and his Glory, abounding and rejoicing in the power and peace of that holy dwelling place.
abide, therefore, forever in the Love and in the Light.
-sayeth the channelings, sayeth the distorted mask,
sayeth that through which sound passes.-
sons and daughters of the Earth who bathe in the waters
drawn of love/light/wisdom in the bathhouse of
the higher densities and inner planes.
Bath waters of golden white light, brilliant in a
radial pouring forth of tangible understanding and freewill.
scarcely can such energy be described in so
cumbersome a language, charming as it endeavors to be.
underwhelming must the emotions evoked be
in comparison with the All Glory of experience of
that which is spoken of.
the death ****** of the fire-bird serves as its own
inoculum and womb; two ends of a terminus
in polarity.
I activate in order to combine,
dwindling dread.
I seal the upswing of trans-dimensional laughter,
with the everyday tone of exodus.
I am guided by the advent of thermals.
-I am a solar riptide, surf me-
and then time slowed way down.
the semi trucks were like great sea mammals with
their whale calls and slow passage by the flanks.
“Who are you?”
“I am the Kalachakra.”
“Did you hear that?” (hushed tones, hands cover the phone.)
I was quite close to the illusion of Death.
The opaque specter, shaking and rumbling the very
fabric of the matrix about me.
wavering not within the sinkhole of indifference lest my terror turn manifest.
I’ve risen from a pillar of salt,
I’ll rise from the embers next.
Oct 29, 2020
Oct 29, 2020 at 8:37 PM UTC
He had a way
with a pen,
my friend
the part-time
con artist, full-
time drunkard
with twinkles
in his eyes
like stardust,
and wrinkles
from laughter
as loud as
a clap of thunder,
and it was
really a wonder
to watch him draw
his last breath
with such depth
like an outline
of a shadow,
a sinkhole
in the shade
on the side
of a dark ridge.
Dec 12, 2016
Dec 12, 2016 at 9:10 PM UTC
Amazon heats her burning waste,
she’s tickling time with paint squint eyes.
With a sinkhole grip of uncertain hold;
she just babble talk babble, babble just blah,
blah and blab.
She dropped the room flat cold -
down so down.
Stole the show, priced the surprise;
little to show and much too nosey,
mind your business, it’s all go go.
2010 Barry Comer
Jul 3, 2010
Jul 3, 2010 at 4:15 PM UTC
As a little boy he wandered,
explored the forest
of life. One small, smooth
and jagged piece seeking out
those around in hope
that they’d one day
latch together, make a whole.
Trillions, gajillions, infinitillions
of parts, each unique, each
the same in a relative way.
Faces appeared and stayed,
others faded away. Ideas
blossomed gently, exploding
to states of mind, concrete views
or dust scattered with the wind.
Slowly he grew.
Some fear attachment,
but this boy lived for love.
Love for souls, life, ecstasy,
youth, holding hands, dancing,
grooves and groves of wonderment.
Some years went and others didn’t
but this boy(‘s puzzle plot)
had expanded to an extent
unbeknownst to him. Smoke
and mirrors mystify and cloud
the lucid mind.
Sometimes the crystalline clarity
never returns and the pieces fall,
a part of nothing
but ignorantly serene delusions.
This boy got lucky, though.
Some light, some gustling breeze
scattered the foggy reflections,
debilitating for so long.
The natural allure of a young lady
can lift a man from any sinkhole,
be it momentarily or neverending…
He saw those bright brown eyes
shining one day. A sublimely
beautiful face no words justify.
In he walked from the rain
and called out, hey!
So it began, the pieces reappeared.
For now, the others didn’t matter.
Two minute beings in a sea
of colored cardboard fragments,
secure. This girl, she showed him
the big picture, or lack thereof.
She pushed him to create for himself,
for her, them, noone, everything.
So they dreamed.
Aug 12, 2010
Aug 12, 2010 at 9:26 PM UTC
Bonjour, mon Cheri, mon petit Chou!
The doorbell rings with a solemn telegram:
- this just in -
I am exactly like most girls - in civilizations lost, or civilizations in other civilizations, Italy hiding in Toronto and a government hiding in a shameful self-promotion, and 20 seconds later I'm a poly-sci major (incorrigible!)
- 911! 911! 911! 911!
What's my emergency? What's YOUR emergency? But really, what is my emergency? And when it comes to that, What's in an emergency - an aristocracy in high-waisted shorts, an ice cream social (media) scream - lets back the car out and park and loop and inevitably end up in a straight line caterpillars away from
(The truth) - (but more of that later)
Cross-continental cigarette and now I'm running out of material to trade it for. I am lonely, can't you see? A fair trade, for a night with me-
**** me so hard I can't walk, **** me over so bad I can't detour a one-track mind)
I am not the one Hemingway prepared you for, I will not blow smoke rings in Spain or wander the streets of Paris, I will sit right here lounging in a plaid vinyl sinkhole and carry myself with delusions of grandeur
(Beyond novels unread - yet sadly written - by the unwashed and falsely educated masses)
Life as an existential film, life as woe is me in backwards bus terminals. Life as when you marry someone you hate and life as cold tempura on a booze-stained tablecloth. Pass the peas, please.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
I wrote a poem for you
The day before I met you
When I didn’t yet know a soul can be shipwrecked
Or that the sun can have secrets
When I hadn’t yet learned to look for symptoms
Or dreamed you could become my weakness
You entered me like a sickness
From your first ‘hello’
You whispered my world red
And smiled it yellow
You came to me; a sonnet
A decorated soldier
Dressed in sentences and statements
With which to catch a schoolgirl
In succulent surprise
Your eyes kissed me
Long before your lips did
And under the spectrum of your splendor
My heart bloomed a blushing orchid
I was a slave to my sweet-tooth
You, a dulcit daydream
That knew just how to turn me
From still life into story
And in so doing, you cast me -
A shapeless statue -
Into your private purgatory
You created a planet
With just us living on it
And a snakepit, a sinkhole
With which to swallow me whole
I wrote this poem for you
The day after I met you
I thought it worth to mention
Why I started to regret you
So please pay close attention
(As I’m trying to forget you):
My innocence
Though far from inner sense
Was no less common
Than the unoriginality
Of your sugarcoated sin
Mar 12, 2012
Mar 12, 2012 at 9:25 PM UTC
I'll miss the day we were crawling down main-street at 4 a.m
after we slept in the guest house and danced to CCR.
Tossing our beer cans in the neighbor's trash,
and singing with every molecule of our bodies
at the passing train
that deafened us from 20 feet away.
We ran wild beneath the overpass,
climbing the engines lying dormant on the tracks,
pretending we could fuel them up
ride across the nation in a rusted box car
write our names between the colors of illegible graffiti
and shout against the wind as we rolled through the hills.
And what a shame we didn't chase that passing train the way we could have.
What a shame we didn't let it carry us away
with nothing but our flannel jackets
and cut off shorts,
the lighter in my pocket,
and the thirst for a nice adventure.
We sauntered back to the diner,
exhausted by the scenery and faces,
our buzzes vanishing to the neon signs
of bars, seven bars on one street,
and the smell of coffee
as the elderly hobbled in with the morning paper
clutched between arthritic fingers.
Tomorrow, and everyday after,
a train will pass through town at 4:45 a.m.
and I can hop on the caboose any day I desire.
Each birthday slithers by,
flicking it's tongue in my direction,
tasting my youth.
And I glance again at the disintegrating old man
sitting alone in the window booth
wearing the face of a jailed old bird
with clipped wings and the grievous expression
of an ***** gent.
He would pass one day,
leaving a dusty, crumbling shanty to his children,
a box of crinkled newspaper clippings full of obituaries,
and an empty seat in the booth by the window,
where someday I will collapse in the a.m.
take my coffee black
and cut my husband's name from the paper,
wishing I was on that train
shedding this loose blotchy skin
for the rough hands I had
the day I chased the engine to the edge of town
and regretted the moment
that I turned around
and came home.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 5:44 AM UTC
i am who i am.
not a name, not a number, not a reset button.
not hair or clothes or wordless things that
call to me from big cities.
i'm staring at hair and it's staring right back,
but you're staring at me and
i've chosen to look the other way.
trains rush by in the rain on slippery tracks
and i'm afraid they'll never stop moving,
rushing blindly forward in torrents of what
must be starving icy thunder.
we are the passengers and we're scared as hell.
but i am who i am,
going nowhere in circles and and
tracing petite diamonds with my fingertips
(sans sparkle, of course.)
down the sinkhole i spiral with no wings
to catch the air beneath me, but where is the bottom?
i was born without the remote: just another
Fast-Forward Girl floating too high off
the surface of her cereal bowl.
i'm stumbling out of bed on cold mornings because
the car is here and i've got to go somewhere other than this place,
somewhere with a big red X saying
"I am here" in the very center
of my universe.
i am who i am, and
maybe that will be enough for you.
you hold my hand and say nothing at all and somehow
that will always be enough for me.
i don't ask for your forever, i ask for
a finger, a tooth, a song.
give me a beat, a broken mirror, and mile-high windows
and i won't be lost anymore.
i'm up for sale, more or less: would anyone ever want these
small blue eyes that have seen so little?
she's gladly trading bottle flames for smashed headlights because
she takes what she can get.
i'm writing poetic so you can't make assumptions,
writing noetic because my mind is infinitely collapsing in on itself.
still, i am who i am, no future written
on legal pads
or pink Post-Its
or in the leftover foam
of coffee cups.
i carved my name into the piano because i thought it
belonged there, took a pen and busted it
to see what sour blue ink would look like on
the white concrete below.
i am who i am.
you are thinking i am just another 2-by-3 in someone's back pocket,
but in a life full of pins and needles, i am
the blue balloon with
the red letter trailing
sweetly behind.
don't think.
on the X i yell to the eggshell sky,
"I am here!" but no one is there
to catch the whisper.
so who am i now?
Apr 11, 2010
Apr 11, 2010 at 8:23 PM UTC