"splenda" poems
"Everyone wants to be a little anorexic" she says
"You know, like, in a glamorous way, like fashion friendly anorexic"
I bite my cheek and nod, pretend to agree
All I can think of is waking up to stars dancing on the ceiling
Pale skin with bruises of unknown origins
And battered feet on and off the scale
Almonds in Ziploc baggies
Bite marks on fingers
Hair down the drain
Measuring crunches by the marks they leave on your spine
And battered feet on and off the scale
Enough water to turn organs into boats
Eating an apple with a fork and knife
Desperate hands grasping for ribs
And battered feet on and off the scale
Standing and the world going dark
Coughing around shots of apple cider vinegar
Carrying an emergency rice cake for weak spells
And battered feet on and off the scale
Enough green tea to drown organs
Sugar free gum to mask the smell of decaying organs
Whatever nail polish covers yellow and purple
And battered feet on and off the scale
How many calories are in toothpaste
Thinspo blogs
Pillows squeezed between thighs
And battered feet on and off the scale
Is today the day my heart gives out
Waking every day in a new body
Fingers clasped around wrists
And battered feet on and off the scale
Notebooks filled with numbers
Purple crescents under eyes
Fingers clasped around forearms
And battered feet on and off the scale
Elbows knocking into hipbones
Being scared of your own reflection
Lies to get out of dinner
And battered feet on and off the scale
The stench of *****
Oxygen that tastes of Splenda
Fingers clasped around biceps
And bleeding feet on and off the scale
If this is your idea of glamour
Then you can have it
Nov 27, 2018
Nov 27, 2018 at 12:48 PM UTC
part, the first; serve
a good conversation is like a good game of tennis,
(with no winner) the ball drunkenly goes from side to side.
coffee shop, asking to pass the sugar,
the serve is delicate and precise, making it is key.
acceptance with the splenda is passed along with ‘sure’,
the receiver must lose their name, anticipate the arrival
following up with such a statement, a vocational inquiry
title lost, the ball has been struck and thrown as response.
part, the second; dance
the game has truly begun;
the beginning is not the serve,
but the response to.
back and forth in endless banter,
meaningless question,
to meaningless answer.
secretly, both don’t want the volley to end;
not often does the
passing sugar trick work.
part, the third; point
a fatal slip- achilles heel:
remembrance. no appointment is worth
losing a point, even
one for a prostate check (despite common opinion)
good thing then; the score
does not go to a single point, it requires
four or so completions,
though by four they will not count score
(and will drop the rackets).
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 9:59 PM UTC
You make me sick
Slathering Splenda sweetness
On, all slimy and thick
It is fake like your nails
your hair
your skin
And especially -
Your claim to enlightenment
Enlightened ones
feed not on attention -
but on living & giving
Sharing your thoughts
to spread happiness
Cause beauty blooms
In the garden of the mind
So stop sharing your body
the only thing it pleases
is many, many a *****
You exclaim love is your guidance
But internally you shout disgust
Disgust for yourself
Disgust, for all those girls
Whose men you claimed
With your filthy cat claws
Your heart is an empty hole
And pitch black is the color
Of your ever whimpering soul
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 8:44 AM UTC
you are like black magic,
a hidden lip underneath a night of grace; underneath the canopy
of old soul trees, stretching out above
to protect hearts from being
hurt;
but you,
you are like black magic
and cheeky lick kisses under ****** blankets.
you were a secret
you were a shame
you were a dose of mortifying pleasure;
a sore amount; a quarter of a cup; a batch of chocolate chip cookies
with just one egg,
splenda, not sugar,
tofu, not meat,
never enough;
but I’m a sucker for vegetarianism and anything
orthorexic – I’ve compared you
to my biggest demon
too often; so I should really know that
you’re toxic –
I dance alone
with my eyes closed
and you’re there; step step, close.
your fingers slide into the gaps between mine
and now we’re interlocking,
like a devil on my back;
I move with you; dancing to your heartbeat
step step step, hold me close
and never let me go
-- oh please let me go
-- oh maybe I should let go.
We’re Getting Older,
the lyrics in the song I am listening to
tell me;
but I feel young under your gaze
a time machine; taking me back to a year ago
in the winter
in the cold
under the open, black sky
because the trees are broken and little in the winter,
leafless,
and don’t have enough life in them
to protect my heart
from being hurt
(by you).
oh you,
you are like black magic,
and I am like a baby lioness,
proud and easily tamed.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 12:28 AM UTC
I write such pretty words
About the ones I've sort of loved
I used to think I'd be like Joni Mitchell
And love all the beautiful men
With their beautiful voices
And their beautiful souls
I've gotta get me a singer in the park, dancer in the dark
A ***** word thief to mirror my own heart
Funny how life goes exactly how you don't plan it
Or if you were prepared for that
It will go according to plan but taste like splenda
Sticky, fakesweet
Me, I'm riding steady on the latter
Sometimes getting sadder
And barring that time when I was sixteen
All the loving never felt like love
Not all the way
I don't mean to degrade those salty days
I've got a headful of memories that I'd never trade
I don't know what I'm thinking when I say the love I make could be better
Maybe because I've never been made stupid, never really been played
Which is to say that I've never actually gone all the way
Never settled or sacrificed anything I couldn't get back
Most of me is always tucked away
Escaping only in blinding bursts that leave everyone involved a little scared
I don't remember how to temper myself
In relation to anyone else
But I remember every time I've realized that something wasn't what I wanted
I'm **** good at falling out of it
And writing lots of stupid poems about it
I've watched too many people rip each other apart with it
Felt it start to rip at me
Of course I'll never let that happen
I'm the first to advocate divorce
But some days I get really worried that I'm not capable of anything more
It's not that I'm broken
I just have really,
Really
Good boundaries
Maybe I'm lying, scared and selfish
Going against my own mind
I know I've felt bliss
Once I felt infinite
But that was a different me, all soft and made of clay
This me, pushing out these particular words, well
I've never been in love
I'm always a little bit in love
Feb 14, 2013
Feb 14, 2013 at 10:45 PM UTC
The dark and mysterious
Starved and delirious
Eddie Murphy shotgun
Guffaw at the pitiless
Just another sound from the TV
The livin room consumed by the gloom that was written in
The script of a cartoon poppin Ritalin to stay in tune with the
Mood of his peers eatin shrooms for dinner pour salt in the wound
No splenda
Suspended by their necks from the system as society forgets them
The news covers an angle
And tells you who's the victim
Saying the youth is the danger please don't go near them
Creating strangers out of family endangering a strain of love cause that's the only thing to overcome the ******** on their tongues
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 12:04 AM UTC
Cara beltà che amore
Lunge m'inspiri o nascondendo il viso,
Fuor se nel sonno il core
Ombra diva mi scuoti,
O nè campi ove splenda
Più vago il giorno e di natura il riso;
Forse tu l'innocente
Secol beasti che dall'oro ha nome,
Or leve intra la gente
Anima voli? O te la sorte avara
Ch'a noi t'asconde, agli avvenir prepara?
Viva mirarti omai
Nulla spene m'avanza;
S'allor non fosse, allor che ignudo e solo
Per novo calle a peregrina stanza
Verrà lo spirto mio. Già sul novello
Aprir di mia giornata incerta e bruna,
Te viatrice in questo arido suolo
Io mi pensai. Ma non è cosa in terra
Che ti somigli; e s'anco pari alcuna
Ti fosse al volto, agli atti, alla favella,
Saria, così conforme, assai men bella.
Fra cotanto dolore
Quanto all'umana età propose il fato,
Se vera e quale il mio pensier ti pinge,
Alcun t'amasse in terra, a lui pur fora
Questo viver beato:
E ben chiaro vegg'io siccome ancora
Seguir loda e virtù qual nè prim'anni
L'amor tuo mi farebbe. Or non aggiunse
Il ciel nullo conforto ai nostri affanni;
E teco la mortal vita saria
Simile a quella che nel cielo india.
Per le valli, ove suona
Del faticoso agricoltore il canto,
Ed io seggo e mi lagno
Del giovanile error che m'abbandona;
E per li poggi, ov'io rimembro e piagno
I perduti desiri, e la perduta
Speme dè giorni miei; di te pensando,
A palpitar mi sveglio. E potess'io,
Nel secol tetro e in questo aer nefando,
L'alta specie serbar; che dell'imago,
Poi che del ver m'è tolto, assai m'appago.
Se dell'eterne idee
L'una sei tu, cui di sensibil forma
Sdegni l'eterno senno esser vestita,
E fra caduche spoglie
Provar gli affanni di funerea vita;
O s'altra terra nè superni giri
Frà mondi innumerabili t'accoglie,
E più vaga del Sol prossima stella
T'irraggia, e più benigno etere spiri;
Di qua dove son gli anni infausti e brevi,
Questo d'ignoto amante inno ricevi.
1.4k
I calibrate and exuberate when I bring my new level,
these girls look me in my eyes and lie to me they can't push the right pedal.
I wish I knew a girl true to the heart and not after an agenda,
a real love rather than the alternative such as Splenda.
When will I learn this love is practically unattainable in this crazy world, especially in this globalized Computerworld.
Call me pessimistic or just down right ugly,
or maybe I'm just roughly stubbly part of this muggy money.
I wish we were utopian and part of simpler times,
but this is unreasonable and not realistic as we live in lifetimes of nonstop wartimes.
Dec 18, 2016
Dec 18, 2016 at 11:15 AM UTC
You,
fall through my fingers like rain.
mixed with the residue of some delusional things that we can’t help but
feel.
because inside we’re just children, really excited about going to the
movies downtown (on cheap Tuesday!), 7-dollar tickets clutched in our fingers,
like your fingers clutched in mine.
I lean against you, you lean against me, and it’s just the way that we lean,
the angles are complementary. or was it supplementary?
I don’t think this is love.
but it sure feels like Splenda instead of real sugar.
Dec 1, 2010
Dec 1, 2010 at 11:45 AM UTC
Blonde, blue eyed, suburban, two hundred percent American
the nation hangs on the perky point of your nose as your
corn silk corkscrew curls are straightened, and you fly to Paris
to collide with fellow shooting stars, but you never forget that boy,
although there are quite a few, lyrics recycling their smiles like
Splenda confectionary tissues. Your melodies are one note harmonies
on the discord of Romantic Middle Class Mediocrity, saccharine
apples in a shiny package for teens who haven't bitten life too deep.
But there is still a boy in a red pickup truck, teardrops and Tim McGraw.
The girl next door has a backbone of country strong and books filled with
silly, sweet, strawberry sodapop songs, slipping over herself in earnest
for the rawness of four chords about love, ends that spiral back to beginnings.
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 1:24 AM UTC
I hear your words baby
Drip out of your mouth like honey
Viscous, oozing
So easy to get stuck
Sweeter than sugar
But rotten to the core
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 12:51 PM UTC
Sweeter than Sugar
Love beyond borders
Soothing and Exciting
The Spur of Life
Every Inhale taken
Climaxes exhale given
The Savour of Dulcet
Sweetness and soothing
That moment of Splenda!
Eureka!!!
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 8:23 AM UTC
it's weird meeting with people
who actually loved you
after months have passed
this love that once strived to be permanent
like conquering mountains
but i shed it like snakeskin
forever is way too hard
when you're too selfish to love people back
always chose myself
did you know your feelings
were the greatest gift i've ever known?
i thought if i arrived here early
and gave you no set time
i would have a bit of the morning to myself
but you were already around the corner
i knew you would be
i know you well, too
i didn't let us go deep this rainy morning
we should only go forward from here
not backwards
we talk
hell, we live in small talk
i say i thrive in summer
you talk about the snow
not much has changed
and somehow weather preferences
felt like the biggest incompatibility then
the most mundane of compromises
didn't run to my own defenses
or fall to your knees apologizing
didn't tell you if i pray or who i've slept with
or that i spent the last three days
crying on the jumpseat
we talk about the coffee shop
i just came here to create a new memory
stub out everything that was
like a stale cigarette
see? i haven't changed that much
instead i say i'm tired of sitting in the back of the plane
as people probe and poke my sides like an insect
asking for coffee with five packets of splenda
i say new york is a drag most days
i am lonely
i wonder if i'm pregnant
it's the only reason i stopped binge drinking
i woke up and wasn't hungover
thank god
i wouldn't admit that i miss the noise
of dry heaving over a toilet bowl
you didn't pay for my coffee
or pour your soul out
or drive me home
you say you leave today
you don't even say you came here for me
because you are just as free to be
so i nod and begin putting my headphones on
before even saying goodbye
i leave the conversation abruptly
ending on a note about
how many cape verdeans
live in boston
i grab my bouquet of sunflowers
slip away into the brooklyn fog
i was gone before you knew it
all the effort you put to be here
with me today
for me to walk out the door
reminiscent of what i did to you then
on a smaller scale
you say "until next time"
but you know i'll slip through the cracks
like i do
predictable me
and even when you find me
i'll be on the run
Jun 7, 2017
Jun 7, 2017 at 3:57 PM UTC
The will to be somewhere, right when you feel you are at your most joyous moments, dissipates because you want to preserve your moments of comforts. The message is good, should get more messages. This coffee is nice, could use more cream. Taste is tantalizing, comfort works in tandem with fear. victim, silenced refugee living out his last days, whatever you want to call it, abstraction, necessity driving behaviors
behaviors fascinate me, probably because fears fascinate me. I am very interested in the relationship between passion and reason, I have a few ideas, and I wrote a paper called Halloween Logic, in which I explored the relationship, but to philosophize is **** its useless, but stoics do because their presence demands it. Take my word for it
Do you go to get a coffee because your body and mind craves coffee, or do you go to get coffee because you want to stay awake? do you go to get coffee because coffee tastes good? do you go to get coffee to relax in a cafe? Do you need coffee to read the news? Do you like it with cream? sugar? brown or regular? splenda?
Or do you get coffee because you are afraid of being uncomfortable. comfort fascinates me, because we are a culture obsessed with it, comfort comfort comfort, what does it truly mean to be comfortable? to have the right set of circumstances in a particular moment in order to get the most out of enjoyment? is comfort a habit, a function of the brain which we do not entirely understand?
To a philosopher, behaviors are driven by fear, I go to get the coffee because I am afraid of the consequences of not getting a coffee; I am afraid of being uncomfortable. because comfort is...everything...to a human, to a human who knows surplus, who knows taste, who believes one cup of espresso is better than a standard cup of black, taste drives the desire for comfort, and we behave to be more comfortable, and we behave because we are fearful of the consequences of not behaving
So would you like room for cream?
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 8:31 PM UTC
the next great poet
walks among us
without a halo
or unearthly glow
she might post daily
or he might write in bursts
they might be ringing
up your groceries,
or making your
non-fat double decaf
latte with splenda
(smiling to themselves
and saying "why bother"
under their breath)
mostly they stand
bodies distracted
by making a living
and watch
so their poet's eye
can record life
in a way that
makes some sense
to their souls
Jan 5, 2016
Jan 5, 2016 at 7:24 PM UTC
What the hello!
Columbia coffee------------- makes my head spin
Out of my mind
My stomach sick
My cheeks chewe(d)
Like Ice
been ****** up up up
into a Splenda brew
Pinched straw
my nerves
a mess
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 12:45 AM UTC
Dear old lover,
You send me all these signs to remind me that you’re around.
You come again and again to **** me over in your bed of lies,
You give me cracked porcelain and glass expectations for me to mend with gold.
But you’re a topaz among yellow diamonds, a ******* rube.
But you’re Splenda, ******* Stevia.
You’re overpriced, second hand Ikea,
I’d push you into a swimming pool to ruin your silk tie.
Your hands white from the bleach and peroxide, and collar yellow from nervous sweats.
Yeah, you’ve got a library; dictionaries of medicine and candy sweet science,
but you must have burned everything on doing a person right.
You’re a double entendre pain-in-my-fucking-ass with a Ken doll grin.
Give Mr. Freeze his heart, and buy your soul back from the devil.
As filthy as it is, you could do with a little in your life.
Dear former friend,
I want you like a salad of poison ivy,
I need you like I need a nap, and I’m the designated driver.
You’re chopped liver, and your humors are out of whack,
The crown you wear is turning your forehead green and doesn’t fit quite right.
I’m the beast and you’re the burden
You’re the straw and this camel is kicking you off
at last chance, last call, last stop Nowhereville
You bathe in the bubbles of champagne dreams and silver fantasies,
But I’m the cup of ambrosia gods long for, and you lost me.
Jul 14, 2016
Jul 14, 2016 at 10:09 PM UTC
Surrounded by fire,
we are the gate keepers of this living hell.
Alluded to think we swindled the universe,
yet drowning just the same.
He's never wrote before,
sweet words melted into verses was a world he had yet to touch.
His hands only reached for a bottle, a pack of cigarettes, another mistake.
Lethargy comforted him when others could not.
Constantly labeled, every characteristic has a medication.
Phizer strives to one day cure our personalities.
Bending to fit the mold our parents left on wax paper near the oven,
we scream in the face of society.
Beauty hidden behind half closed lids,
comfort is a brown couch and black coffee with two splenda.
A warrior, fighting for her life in a world that keeps swallowing and spitting her out.
Every day is war and she is both armies.
They ask why we are suffocating,
to be explained in a 5 paragraph essay.
Times New Roman, size 12, double spaced.
Tragedy formatted by MLA 7th edition.
Lost in the chaos,
there are no winners but only survivors.
Eyes filled with doubt we face the world,
exit plan crushed in bags in wrinkled wallets.
She's afraid of his past, his future, his inability to control himself.
My inability to control myself.
We are flight risks, broken souls with misguided dreams.
A lost breed dying by our own hands.
This is our disclaimer
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 2:00 PM UTC
Cling from change like a tree in a hurricane.
Sometimes it gets to be more than you'd thought
and all your confident friends fly through
your pulverized shelter from it all.
What a change they've made.
I wonder just how revolutionary
they'll be after all the fun is over looking at just how
ugly their faces can get in the rear-view.
The only thing you ever did was desire youth and feel farther away
every year.
What a crime that is.
once you're gone I don't know just how special their over-bright
minds will get after this last over-reaching manipulative
display of how little of the sugar pouring from their eyes and
mouths doesn't turn splenda, **** the lights in their eyes, maybe
give them one last cry, then let them die.
Apart from this last gasp of hooks spewing from one's mouth the
story's over and you might kite a night time flight way past
any we've ever had.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 4:17 AM UTC
Oh, you love it,
When I call you sugar,
But just remember,
It'll taste just as sweet,
When I kiss you goodbye.
Jun 25, 2014
Jun 25, 2014 at 12:52 AM UTC
The morning, good; the morning, relentless—she tip-toes
out the front door in her ex-husband's brown patent leather shoes.
Outside. Walking again. On her own two feet but not in her own
two shoes. It's a Monday. It's an autumn. It's a neighborhood
with tricycles strewn in front lawns, with spent confetti in the
gutters, with Japanese trees, with Greek columns, with the reliable
sound of the working class commute in the distance. The shoes, four sizes too big, nearly slip as she half saunters, half staggers on
her way to the bakery on Bellevue. She's hungry for predetermined conversation, an exchange between a patron and a cashier. There's a young boy playing with a water hose. He waves enthusiastically. She matches it with a wave of her own as she passes by. The boy turns away, runs toward his home. She feels self-conscious and there's something in the pocket of her ex-husbands linen suit jacket, a bottle of cologne.
The door chimes as she walks into the bakery. The cashier says good morning before looking at her. The cashier's eyes quickly scan her and dart away. She's a child in her ex-husbands clothes. She orders a coffee. She asks for a Splenda packet. "I like my coffee like I like my women," she says. "Hot and artificially sweet." Pity laugh. Nervous laugh, maybe. It's not even her joke. He tells her the price. She hands him the money. Thank you. No, thank you.
She sits alone by a window. She's an alien doing normal people things. She's tired and whatever spark got her out the door may not get her home. A man seated at the table behind her sneezes once, twice, three times.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I think I'm allergic to your perfume."
"Me too," she says.
Aug 31, 2020
Aug 31, 2020 at 12:54 PM UTC
There’s no eloquent way
To say
**** you or
what the ****
the immediacy,
the poignancy,
speaks volumes
where fancy words
Cannot.
So here’s a big,
Fat **** you
Sealed with
Contempt, sprinkled
With salt, because
Your sugar sweet
Was ******* fake
And that’s the icing
On your cake.
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 2:00 PM UTC
Pale blue eyes and to do lists on my arms
I guess I'm not everyone's type
Crossing off miseries like milk and eggs
I'm wrapped in another stranger's sheets (again)
I take it back
I'm everyone's type but yours
Poems on crumpled napkins
Red lipstick and tipsy confessions
I guess I could if I wanted
If it would make you love me
As if anything could make you love me
Just bad music that everyone else grew out of
And cold hands from only being held in cold hearts
Why does loving myself feel like an affair?
Cinnamon tea and Splenda
I'm a certain flavor of je ne sais quoi
Good for winter nights, but not my favorite
Apparently not yours either
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 11:41 PM UTC
Because I'm sweet.
But maybe she's heard sweeter.
And everybody has a sweet tooth.
But lately mines been bitter.
And I didn't want her teeth to fall out like mine did.
I was just exposed to the reality of love biting.
And I never liked sweets to begin with.
I prefer my coffee bitter.
Like the space between our mattress when you stayed over that one night during the winter
Like the gap in our eyes when I stare at you while you stare out the window.
And in the moments I get your glance a sense of caramel melts over me like apples at a circus.
And these occasions are sweeter than red wine on a candy glass carpet.
They're only special in the events of our loneliness
Like two lost souls looking for a purpose.
And maybe we went separate directions because your sweet tooth was held over mine.
And I never liked candy in the morning just at night so my nightmares would be sweet.
And every time you stirred splenda in my coffee I held back excitement in my content.
Only so before I sipped you'd see my smile thinking I loved it.
But really I hate splenda.
But I love any coffee made by you.
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 11:25 PM UTC
sculpt you in the palm of my hand
chisel your most fragile features until i feel your raw
coarse frame
let your hair dangle until is grazes my ever so nourishing skin
that aroma...ahh the aroma of fresh cappuccino hinted with
a vanilla scent
you look gorgeous in that mahogany tinted outfit...fits you splendidly
(splenda)
your heating up . skin must not like the material.
remember when you said you lost my favorite pair of jeans at the dry cleaners?
anyways
my scolding coffee looks better on you than still in my cup.
Jan 7, 2020
Jan 7, 2020 at 9:52 PM UTC