"slumping" poems
Can't talk about, can't write about, a single thing but loving you
Don't mean to schmooze, my shameless muse, always down for aimless cruise
stare through window glass at tunnel lights that zoom straight past our heads
I walk on air, dodge solar flares, ignites my mind when I'm in bed
I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way
And I feel a nostalgia a sense of old security
the same I got when I was young and fell asleep to the TV
underneath the afghan with unwravled threads and fraying ends
hold onto me while I nitpick the same old **** inside my head
I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way
Tell me baby is it true?
Should I ride or die for you?
can I be your passenger?
or do you find me lackluster?
I can't let it be the thought of you and me
scared that our future is tragic history
and every time I find myself ready to shift gears
something holds me back, some aching type of fear
I can't stop, cotton to moth
brushstrokes swirl upon the backdrop
slumping over center console
dream about centaurs and scary monsters
shake me awake and tell me its okay
I know it is but it feels better that way
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 6:03 PM UTC
The pen shakes in my hand; to write these words
Sleep all day, sleep all night, doesn't matter
Haven't missed much, an empty conversation
Exchanged under this leaking roof in whispers
Slumping on the porch, watching it all drip down
Pinging off of empty brown bottles in the grass
Keeping time by your breathing, the rain pours down
As I hold your hand in mine, side by side
Puddles overflow, spilling their cloudy contents
Only to fill another puddle
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 5:04 AM UTC
We slump on the couch when we return like lifetimes
have passed before us.
We have to, even though it was only a seven minute walk
to the dining hall, because 1) the food was just
“weird consistency”
(which we tend to say regardless), 2) the light
in there yawned indifferently to us (when does it not?), and
3) the reassuring clink of our forks on our
plates wasn’t even there this time it was
hiding underneath slop
and smothered on top by the intruding sound waves
(who asked?)
of our next-table neighbors’ lives.
You made a sly remark about seconds to catch
a glimpse of youthful ****
She’d gone to get some more baby carrots and cucumber slices
to put in her salad maybe
(who knows? who cares?)
Either way, her youthful **** would make the food taste like
something to you. And you
described them to us when you sat down again so
the slop would taste like something to us
(there’s pride in that type of generosity, don’t forget) and
(congratulations)
we had the faint impression of
some sort of
****** there, but
we didn’t tell you
(it’s easier that way).
A cup, a squeeze, a kiss on her ******* yes that could feed
our hunger for a night. And tonight was a night
like any, so her ******* led us to talk
of women, and women led us to talk of
love
(and the blooming one for the poor *******
as we who lost withstood the vicarious twinge of
an addling ****** very different from
the first.
This one led us to pine for sweets, but the ones we found
were dry, so we left the table, left the dining hall, looking around at
the others: the lonely, the couples, the blessed
lonely couples, and the fortunate friends
huddled against everything with open laughter, enjoying
the weird consistency like drunk theoretical physicists before
they discovered bubbles and inflated eternally meaning
when they safeguarded a
zoo with a pistol they didn’t know how to
use, in Soviet Russia.
(So you see?) We have to slump on the couch
when we return like lifetimes
have passed before us.
No one even bothers to pick up a guitar, we leave all four of them
strewn on the floor like
dead wooden boxes because
Dylan or Young or Cash (or whoever)
is already in the living
room. Any
bubbling, inflating, theoretical physicist
(any drunk, pistol-packing zookeeper, for that matter) will
tell you that.
So we slump, comfortably uncomfortable,
(at least we’re trying!)
feeling their (our) strings plucking. No sounds, no voices.
Because we don’t need
to hear this that.
Not right
now. (Not right
now).
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:33 PM UTC
Sorry it ended up like this.
Me out here, still wrapped up warm in my vestigial garment of flesh.
You in there, naked amongst your primitive ancestors like the youngest adult at a wedding, mingling awkwardly, embarrassed.
I wonder how you died. Your ribs look like they have been fixed back together after some kind of trauma.
A car crash maybe?
Maybe you struggled with long term illness, rotting before you ripened like a sickly bud in a wet spring.
However it happened your bronze plaque states it was untimely and therefore probably tragic. '(A young woman)' I read, not so much discovering but confirming what I already knew to be true when I first laid eyes first met yours across the crowded room.
You stand about as tall as me, your shining off white cheeks delicate as fine china. Staring out of you glass cabinet, you seem to beg not to be judged alongside your distant relatives, your slumping neighbors.
Fragile and sweet, you radiate a quiet dignity. It isn't hard to imagine the thin layer of blood, skin and fibrous tissue that it would take to make you beautiful again.
I plunge my hand through that glass portal, soft folds of meat transposed to brittle bone and back again, unifying you world with the mortal
It was obvious that you were beautiful, and involuntarily I envy the one who held you and kissed you last.
I wonder if anyone ever wrote a poem for you when you were alive.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 5:08 AM UTC
In the broken kitchen chair he sits
Weeping the tears of a killer
Face buried into the palms of his grisly hands
He sobs uncontrollably for he knows what these hands have done
He cries as a child might having seen his parents murdered
Gasping and struggling to draw in a full breath
Snot running from his nose, curling over the stubble of his upper lip
With a clenched fist he wipes this away
Rage building in his veins, hatred, and remorse
His face grows red as he shakes uncontrollably with anger
Unsure of what to do with himself he rises quickly to his feet
His chair crashing back to the floor behind him
He paces the kitchen back and forth
Feet padding monotonously over checkered linoleum
Suddenly, abruptly, he stops, his gaze drifting to the counter top
As he catches sight of the skinless corpse he screams
A blood curdling scream that chills to the bone
Unable to bare the sight of his disembodied victim any longer
He barrels out of the kitchen
Crashing through doors, splinters of wood marking his trail
In the bathroom he now stands
Sulking in shame before a ***** mirror, staring down at his bare feet
Slowly, he raises his head, eyes squeezed shut
Fearing to find what he might see when he opens them
He pauses here for several moments, collecting his thoughts
Breathing deeply, hoarsely, sporadically huffing
Mustering all of his courage, he makes this final leap, opening his eyes
In the mirror before him he sees all too clearly himself
Wearing a skin that is not his own
Face, hands, feet, all that are exposed
His own pale skin standing out in bold contradiction
To the beautifully bronzed hollow man that he wears
His pale and bony knuckles crash repeatedly into the face of the mirror
Over and over again the thud and the crunch
Broken skin and shattered glass
Blood now smeared across what little reflective surface remains
At last he can see himself no more
Slumping down into a ball on the floor
He sits alone and rocks
The mere shell of a man remains
With dripping hands he tears away a patch of flesh from his thigh
Groping the floor blindly his hand closes over a shard of glass
He is now far too numb to feel pain, dead inside
Gripping tightly to the broken glass this broken man begins to write
Carving his apology into his thigh
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
I'm not scared of the tenebrosity of a room, I'm scared of the thoughts which struck me.
I'm not scared of humans, I'm scared of the demon which resides in them.
I'm not scared of being alone, I'm scared people will forget me if I'm not in touch with them.
I'm not scared of going naked in the outside world, I'm scared of losing my self-esteem.
I'm not scared of the society, I'm scared of the hoaxes they spread.
I'm not scared of your love, I'm scared of being abandoned by you.
I'm not scared of dying, I'm scared that I haven't lived enough.
I'm not scared of making memories either good or bad, I'm scared of these memories fading away.
I'm not scared of the past or the future, I'm scared of the present.
I'm not scared of slumping, I'm scared of failure.
I'm not scared of asking questions, I'm scared they'll remain unanswered.
I'm not scared of being corrupt, I'm scared of losing myself. The sacred me.
I'm not scared of the aftermath, I'm scared of the side-effects it has.
I'm not scared of being scared, I'm scared that you'll think I'm frail.
~Saumya.
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 1:53 PM UTC
I see it, the heaviness on your eyes,
the shyness of your teeth.
Smiling's hard, oh so hard.
I see the little things,
The slumping
When you look away,
How silent we've become...
Hey... I think someday I might love you like that.
That maybe you might send the spark to start a fire in my heart,
But right now?
Right now, I'm frozen and afraid.
I've forgotten how to love.
I need time to heal and recover,
I need to clear the blindness,
I need to get a breath of fresh air, unclouded by emotion,
Feeling, love, regret,
I'm bound too tight.
I need a place to hide for a while,
Left alone to relax.
But I'm afraid to ask you to wait, or just let me go for a while.
Afraid to make your smiles heavier.
Cause your smiles have become a part of my skies.
So please, please, just don't stake too much of your world on me?
I'm not stable enough to stand on.
Oct 6, 2012
Oct 6, 2012 at 6:57 PM UTC
A love like pomegranate seeds — I am condemned to a mortal marriage with Death, waiting for his hands to touch me in the winter; I am stuck inside an autumnal equinox, waiting for the spring. My mind is a brothel — filthy and thoughts floating in and out but not looking for any sort of commitment. But you say that my brain is efflorescent and something lovelier than I would believe. There are cities in the palms of my hands, once teeming with life like the Great Barrier Reef, but now moan the silent sounds of desolation within a Chernobyl wasteland; but you are roaming the ashes atop my fingertips like a lost child trying to unearth the memories of her mother beneath the rubble of a shaken faith, despite knowing she was lost forever in the wake of brutal destruction, kicking me left and right as though I were the collapsed mountain of infrastructure in the wake of early September, 2001. I say all this to confirm that I do miss your voice and its fluidity on the phone — I miss your voice even though I know you'll hang up, and I wish I felt that way about living. I only want you to hold my sticky heart like melted candy. I want you to stop sighing and slumping in your chair like the names of every Holocaust victim is engraved on your eyelids. I want you to smile like an innocent child, for once.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 3:36 AM UTC
If I listened to every advertisement
hollering through the static
of my cable-hooked television,
I'd have a mammoth bottle
of Hidden Valley Ranch
sitting with the ego-quenching sheen
of recommendation in my fridge,
a Weight Watchers membership
(it told me to join as soon as possible
with the speed of a steroid-devouring treadmill),
Children's Tylenol
(despite being situationally barren),
and a Bowflex-shaped elephant,
ivory tusks slumping uselessly in the corner.
My living room would be the fraternal twin
of the American Smithsonian,
a faux-genuine quilt
of our Founding Fathers'
present day descendants
draping over my popcorn ceiling.
I return to the latest
sacred cow in the flea store
cartel of Lifetime Movie heroines;
it's "Vengeful Vixens Sunday"
and Elizabeth Berkley shooting men
and stabbing women in the back
all while eating buckets of Ben and Jerry
and getting addicted to crystal ****
The dialogue is as freshly
packaged and slovenly edible
as the Minute Ready Late Night Dinner
with a cartoon grandma plastered on the logo,
all to remind you of down home,
or in the case of this Lifetime screenplay,
a time when the brain wasn't fully developed.
Same difference.
We all hide our guilty pleasures
as if our tolerance for the
secondhand existence of these favorites
were deemed malignant
by a cardboard kingdom
of young adult sophistication,
but I ask you:
who hasn't slipped into the comfort
of a mind turned to mush?
Apr 29, 2010
Apr 29, 2010 at 10:55 AM UTC
"Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
-Ozymandias
I.
O wait for us, Colossus
as we wait - and throw you
to earth: from heaven’s gates judge you
unworthy - to hades’ lands assign,
where your iron limbs make mincemeat out
of anguished homes - by tyrants
you were thrown but floated aimless past
the drifting realms where once lay hell,
and fired you your rocket boosters - apollo’s gift
blinding still your eyes -
II.
next, awake: the visage of the Child
in your face - languishing, affronted:
two vast and trunkless legs of iron glare, only to grow
rigid still - slumping at His feet: with heart-engine smoking,
eyes hollowed-black,
lying in slumber with giant's knees bent,
in grasslands rest and where hearkens the plain - He cries out:
’tis you!
though dwarf, He is - he kneads your iron
by grass, and your wounded legs the earth
now christens, snd blesses still your sleep.
III.
He moves forth with grass blades and twigs,
crown you a nest; and bear stones unrolled to where
your feet first kisses ground.
-2.17.16
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 11:38 AM UTC
Home.
It's a noun.
It's also an adjective, adverb, and verb.
It is the place in which one's domestic affections are centered.
A place in which
The essence of childhood, innocence, and versatility
Bloom like a spring annual.
But after the clock of those 18 years
Runs out
You are free to leave.
In fact, you are encouraged
To move to another
Until you build a home for yourself.
Some never build another home
They find decent company
In one night stands
And the nicotine tinged, cigarette burned sofas.
Some build a home better than the one they came.
Gardenias, chrysanthemums, and marigolds in the garden;
Scrubbing a crayon medium portrait
Off the comic latte walls.
I have a distorted image of home.
All these places I want to go and
All these people I want to meet.
I cannot settle
Until I have shaken hands with the world itself
But the argument still standing is
Do I go alone?
I have never been good with loneliness
And yet I crave the anonymity
Of standing on the street, watching the cars rush by
Knowing
I am not bound by failure.
I am not tethered down by my haunting past
No definitions chained to my shoulders
Forever slumping my chest.
No.
I will meet many people and learn from them.
I will tell people my name is different.
Soon, I will be the wisp of stardust
Hovering in the void
Between here and there
Changing,
Yet staying absolutely the same.
I deem myself a traveler.
Eventually meeting the civilizations
That created my favorite words.
Maybe in a few years at my high school reunion
My old classmates will have kids to show their progress
And I will have the words and wisdom from a thousand cultures
And that will be enough,
For travel is the soul of me.
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 1:46 AM UTC
Slumping back in your chair
You hardly move your head
Gazing straight ahead you look
Like the living dead
Your feet are swollen like balloons
With little piggy toes
How you stayed alive this long
Heaven only knows
Your belly looks as though
It's about to pop
You're looking nine months pregnant
And about to drop
I'm sure you're very clever
But hardly very wise
When's the last time
You took some exercise?
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 10:06 AM UTC
Red is the colour of blood
Red is the colour that
Wraps my arms around you
When I am in love
Red is the colour of fire,
Of the warmth that keeps me alive
Red Is the colour
That makes me angry
The colour of you screaming
Down at me and
The tears
Falling
Red is the colour of my hard work
“Beet red face” they call me
A bull and the red flag not
A deer in the headlights
I can fight for my own.
Red is the colour that kills
Little boys and girls
A barrel to the head
Pull the trigger already
Red is the colour of hurt
Watch the blood pour down
Red is the colour of
Slumping to the ground
Red is the colour of tears
Red is the colour of love never spent
Red is the colour of faces never smiled
Red is the colour of her heart
Not pumping anymore
Her breath
Not flowing through the canals of her
Red throat
Never tasting a berry again
Put a barrel to the head
“It’s only red,” she whispers
“Colours
Are nothing
To be afraid of.”
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 8:49 PM UTC
The stars and palms
hold all the secrets of the world
And I'll never let go
chasing the cat down the back ally
sun shines slumping
into
my baked brown skin
It smells like old summer rain
and laughter
One day it'll be gone
and I do not need
the stars
the palms
or Mrs.Sally's water well
to tell me
May 12, 2015
May 12, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC
Slumping in her wooden chair,
she began to become upset.
Tying her blonde strands into a bun
(far from messy),
she began to bite on the eraser tip,
tasting the frustration in every nibble.
And when a tear fell into the margin,
she panicked
(and silently)
balled up the paper,
and threw it against the wall.
She soon became relieved of that stress,
and when she unraveled the delicate lined-paper,
the tears ran dry.
Reading the unreadable words,
she muttered what she had been longing to hear:
"Time to wake up."
Dec 15, 2013
Dec 15, 2013 at 11:52 PM UTC
the house is making,
noisy demands, this morning
that i feel i am, unable to meet
the microwave,
is bleating about the coffee steaming, standing, waiting,
on it's spinning table
the washing machine,
is singing a smug little jingle.
job complete. washing done,
are'nt i neat!
the dryer,
whirring, sighing, thumping,
slumping,
to a rythmn all its own.
the roomba,
is doing,
the
rhumba,
all the way
down the
hall.
the computer,
dings and sings
you have new mail.
and worst of all
the alarmclock,
has told me.
i have,
met my quota,
of snooze recalls.
so,
now,
i have to,
get up and face it all.
how i wish,
for the days,
when the
house mechanics,
went about their work,
in quiet and dutiful ways.
requiring no praise at all.
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
My heart is so warm right now
like a toasty marshmallow
all brown and melty
slumping to one side.
Part of me wants more
like a piercing light saber
my desire increases tenfold
three red shafts throbbing
extremely hard and ready to go
when my nostrils take in
your sweet scent. It's nice like
honey baked bread fresh
from the oven or soft like green litchen moss with warmth radiating while watching
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
(again) while cuddling you
letting your body heat fold over me so neat like someone cranked open
a portable blow torch and
started blowing my frozen heart wide open with orange flames
thawing it to room temperature.
Now a tiny piece of pink remains peeking shyly at you in the dark
precariously dangling its delicate
frailty like soft woven spider lace.
Jan 20, 2017
Jan 20, 2017 at 2:42 PM UTC
Slumping over their shopping carts
like porpoises on parade.
Baskets overflowing with
fritos, doritos, and sugar-ade.
Reckless the dream that changed
what they couldn't,
to swim through foil bars
soaring from cash to vein.
Girl with scissors, cutting hair,
to reach a new brain.
Sofa-living, so much thwarting
thoughts of inadequacy.
Streams of image, money
-- and American Honey,
I think you are fine
the way you hurt.
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 10:12 PM UTC
I still feel her hand
Removing the ring
Of which I made a bullet
And put it on a string
Rip away if needed
My mere being
On the string
Snapped
And trapped
In the ceiling
Releasing
Everything
But that feeling
Like nothing
Erupting
From my somethings
Slumping through
Creating the me
We never knew
Until all the way through
To the other side
Where I reside
In uncompromising lies
Disguised
As not caring
But my blaring heart
Shines through
Under clouded stars
But to start loving
Just seems too far
To go back
Too much weight
On impact
And I'll collapse
And lapse
My days away
In a lackadaisical haze
Of happiness
Where I'm eventually
Betrayed
And made
To feel
Less
But always
The opportunist
Tuning this
Ruined mess
Into the most
Beautifulest
Beast
I can leash
Until this test
Of heart and mind
Is complete
And the noise
Ceases
In the peace
Of her single image
Serenading me
In eternal sleep
Whispering lovelies
To my being free
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 2:39 AM UTC
Persian pink slumping petals on sturdy green stems
Brought a smile to her face
In return you received her grace
But like her heart
Upon their final days,
cut into pieces
lid ******* on tight
glass walls limit sight
The air is fleeting
Slowly they suffocate away
Feb 12, 2016
Feb 12, 2016 at 1:40 AM UTC
The heart is
Deceitful
Indecisive
Ambivalent
And, frankly
Childish
It's whimsy is
Unparalleled
And it's style is
Overdone
It's either lost
It's mind
Or never had one to begin with
It operates on a level
That is not physical
Not mental
But a completely different
Plane
And it's odd
For lack of a better word
The heart is ominous
It is ambiguous
Perhaps even indifferent
Not caring for the fate of it's
Keeper
Simply chugging
Slumping
Thumping
Along for the sake of it's own being
Sep 21, 2012
Sep 21, 2012 at 12:41 PM UTC
.
The mouth of death
opened wide
and swallowed me whole.
It's oblong eyes
tongues my bones
clean.
A slumping bouquet of dead
chrysanthemum stare
through the crooked
screen.
I can hear the
rumble of an aromatic
acid bath,
grumbling, tumbling,
as I'm fumbling for
my lighter inside this
suicidal psychopath.
The squeaky swing
in the yard sways
as I'm going
down frowning
like a cosmic clown.
So as
I'm remembering
a memorable memory,
the devil's on the loose.
( Suddenly I slip and slide
in his sloshing stomach juice.)
I do the back-stroke
'til my eyeballs are gone,
the bile I am mixed with
is as green as my lawn.
With one last chance,
I nailed up a poster and protested.
Then I climbed back out
before I was totally digested.
What does he think?
That I am a fool?
Besides, I have a test
this morning at school.
.
Feb 16, 2010
Feb 16, 2010 at 9:09 PM UTC
Dignity, Arrogance, Apathy and Absolution
I feel as if I am singing your ode to your back,
quite silently. I am mocking you,
the girl who knew you best, who
wanted to be the constant entity on your
occasionally slumping shoulders.
Fool.
Mar 9, 2012
Mar 9, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
I just watched a mini-documentary
on pig factory farming using
extreme confinement of individual pigs
in ‘gestation crates’:
I saw each poor pig
trapped within metal box-grates
which pressed against their flesh
stopping the pig from turning around
stopping the pig from walking around,
each pig suffers their whole life
standing in one direction
or slumped down on the ***** floor.
I saw pigs with open wounds, pressure sores, infections,
bleeding gums from biting the metal bars.
I saw pigs screaming in distress
Or suffering slumped down depressed.
I saw trapped pigs going mad
banging on the metal grates
distressedly trying to break free
and failing and slumping down depressed.
I ask myself
is there a humane way
to farm animals?
Such as free-range farming?
Jul 21, 2019
Jul 21, 2019 at 5:44 AM UTC