"sputtering" poems
Endless stains of blood
On white t-shirts
On nights that scatter blue trees over black earth
Alight by shooting stars
The mother tells her child
Unwilling to unlock the truth
The truth those stars
Don't grant your wishes
They grab them
With scarred scratching hands.
Alight,
The damp stitches in the soil
Cemetery symmetrical to hospital
Those shooting stars circling
Like a vulture
Speeds towards dead carcasses
Still, the murdering star will not cease
To break bones
That have already broken
To take lives
That have already been taken
To burn
What is already charred
Today
smells like burnt muddied skin
feels like gnawing on your own fingers for feast
sounds like tired, howling machines
spurring and sputtering, never-ending their onwards trek
Swallowing distances and with it, nameless faces
countless places
Today the earthquakes of death
Don't make the land shake anymore
For it has learned to cope
With the desolate cemeteries filled with mute bones
Today burns like gasoline
Looks like intestines decorating destroyed doorways
Today it rains curdled crimson
Tell me shooting star
If the child liked jam on his toast
Did he snore?
Did he like math? Or english?
Shooting star doesn't know and neither the bombs.
As bodies fall from trees
like rotten plums.
The world was born in blood
And has not ceased to suckle its wounds
Endless blood thirst, Endless war
But not endless skin to bleed.
Oct 15, 2017
Oct 15, 2017 at 2:41 AM UTC
who knew you were filled
with gold!
when I stuffed the dynamite down
your throat and ran you
through the casino I wasn’t
expecting a jackpot
maybe a princess piñata or a
party popper
but a corner leather and a
fresh haircut?
no, we’re not
in the 50’s anymore
but your vault was guarded
like mob headquarters when you head
started sputtering
quarters
you the
light-skinned pin action
movie star
looking highly alien
you
my diamond studded
chain
Oct 13, 2015
Oct 13, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
gurgle, gurgle,
groundcurrent unsettled,
moon unseen like stars
fever dreamed,
dissonance for the melody maker,
dissonance for the retired risk-taker,
dissonance for the hips of homewreckers.
civil, civil,
no minutes can afford the divide,
aside, to the crystal buildings and
the sky's sputtering cries,
compliments to your forehead's ****
compliments to your forefather's rash,
compliments to your aforementioned crash.
the current, the current
rides hot and merciless along thigh,
dribbles down chins and nightgowns,
dries--a permanent badge of scattered life,
electroshock seeps from self-made holes,
electroshock seeps from smoldering bowls,
electroshock seeps from typecast roles.
volcano, volcano,
grumble and moan.
volcano, volcano,
clear cord and stroke.
volcano, volcano,
grieve me in ash.
volcano, volcano,
I've been awful bad. I've been awful bad. I've been awful bad.
Feb 21, 2011
Feb 21, 2011 at 11:19 AM UTC
I took too many busporine,
But I'm still anxious.
I'm still ******* freaked.
I'm still nervously shaking.
I'm still sputtering about.
I'm still worried why you haven't opened my message.
I know this whole thing is new.
I know you're probably sleeping.
I know you have a life outside of me.
I know you sometimes need a break from me.
But my anxiety doesn't.
My anxiety doesn't get that you're busy.
Anxiety doesn't get that you're sleeping.
Anxiety doesn't get that maybe you just want some space.
Anxiety doesn't get that I didn't do anything wrong,
And that your feelings for me haven't changed.
Anxiety is scared.
Anxiety is panicking.
Anxiety is popping one too many pills.
Anxiety is crying and trying not to cut again.
Anxiety is worrying that you've found someone else.
Anxiety is worried that you're out with them now and just ignoring me until you're ***** later tonight.
Jesus Christ, Anxiety.
Give me a break,
Quit giving me a battle.
Jesus ******* Christ, Anxiety.
Take a deep breath,
Try to stay rational.
Jesus ******* Christ, Anxiety.
I'm trying to salvage a relationship here,
And ruin the one I have with you.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 3:41 PM UTC
My soul is a flame.
Right now it's a spark,
Sputtering and flickering,
Trying to stay alive.
But I swear,
It was once
A bonfire
May 28, 2015
May 28, 2015 at 12:23 AM UTC
She strolled down a winding pathway, admiring the brightly colored roses, listening to the loud chirping of the birds
As she walked,she hummed a tune of joy and followed the path marking on a map, just to reassure herself that she was heading in the right direction
Around a turn o the left she went, then back to the right, as her pace sped with every step
But then the beautiful path that she'd been following for so long fell into a babbling creek, only to continue on the other side
Had she, excited for her long journey, mistaked this path with the one she wished to take?
"No," she decided, for she checked the path a million times before beginning, and she was positive she had journeyed on the correct one
Should she give up on her journey, only to turn around and go home?
"No," she told herself, for how could she live with herself of she gave up on her dream?
But how will she, small and dainty, cross the sputtering creek that lays before her?
She gazed at the creek in front of her, considering walking alongside it until she reached a spot where she could walk across
"No," she determined, for there was no way of knowing whether there'd be a break in the flood of water, and even if there was, she'd be lost in the forest, continuously searching for the path
She glanced from left to right, searching for something to aid her in crossing the creek
To the left of the path, she noticed flat stones, the exact size of her foot
"Yes!' she exclaimed, as she sets them in the creek and skipped across them
She was back on her way, strolling down the pathway, headed towards her dreams.
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 1:49 PM UTC
THERE is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.
Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice ... but these are some of her thoughts:
The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.
The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.
The love of a young man whose sweetheart married an older man for money burns with a sputtering uncertain flame.
And there is a love ... one in a thousand ... burns clean and is gone leaving a white ash....
And this is a thought she never explains to the parrot and goldfish and two white mice.
5k
I like the feeling of lips on skin
Smeared lipstick
We look silly with my red all over our cheeks
But we don't care about those little things
A big thing is happening
My legs wrapped around your waist
Take off the bra that's lace
Place your hands where you know I like
My eyes roll up into the sky
Lips I bite
Yours and mine
I like the way you roll your hips
And thrusts so good should not exist
hold my hands and whisper things
I've got prints on my thighs
They're a redish white
Don't worry
I like that you hold them tight
We don't need wine to feel this good
I took one look and I was hooked
Eyelashes fluttering
You are sputtering
As you spank me
"God... Yes.."
I mumble into the kiss
One more ****** before you bust
And I go nuts
Jun 25, 2016
Jun 25, 2016 at 1:14 AM UTC
This pencil sounds
like sputtering,
a car engine failing.
It smells like
the sheets you just left.
It feels weighted,
heavy like a lead blade
that I can hardly hold up.
It tastes bittersweet,
like the tail-end of smoke:
as musky and infectious
as your kiss.
This pencil looks
at me sparkling with dew,
"did you lose interest in me
like the boys lose interest in you?"
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 11:10 PM UTC
I slept with her, my rapacious pen, took me in quiet vengeance in
full on conjugation
raken and taken, me,
her overlording me now, her authorship, so long held
in my maledom abeyance,
a kept imprisonment, unleashing at last, a tongue lashing~leashing,
de-spite my un-desirous craven lying supplications,
excuses of innocence and accident, coincidence and conflation,
ashes, ashes, denials incinerated, all fall down
she wrote/stabbed upon my heartless chest,
in the cheap crudités colors of a prisoner’s inking,
“user of words mine, all mine”
gathered up my innards of loose words,
speculative notes & titles yet to be,
born and kept hid in password protected silent back labor files,
now hers, leaving me sputtering, unable to create,
a homeless mute citizen, possession-less,
helplessly hoping her hovering harlequin might relent,
without any shelter, even a glimmering, a single aleph or bet
she celebratory cackled and clawed,
professed her reclamation ownership of all my poems predecessors,
zola j’accusing that I, ripped from her forcibly,
with no granted permission, her womanly touché of my scribing,
warning of no more global warming for my unprivileged hands,
daren’t try for pretenses of stolen legal guardianship,
warning of a new, forced caining inscription,
a tattooing of “thief” upon my 5 knuckled right ******
“plagiarist” boldly inked in back & blue upon my left palm
I, predator,
she, victim,
of my now self-professed, admitted confess,
she, my single victim,
of a decade long serializing criminal coverup
her parting poem a threatening,
herein issued in this very verse,
damning all who would falsely credit themselves,
to suffer shame and an unimaginable curse,
this, the newborn eleventh of ten commandments
parting, she kissing my lips, even my emptied apertures,
with warning bitings,
she knew all my
my numerous noms de guerre,
no dead scrolls caves to hid in, and to be discovered some future day,
and if ever marked as copyrighted,
’twas no tunneling escape,
the exposed truth to be over-stamped
upon all, upon each, in every language,
”copied right from the tongue of a woman!”
and she would be wright...
May 23, 2019
May 23, 2019 at 10:10 AM UTC
The devil's speech say they:
Rolling, clattering, frolicking, hungry.
Billows of charred skeletons embrace the air
Black soot pumped straight from the pyres of Hades
Congealing to clouds of evil intent wherever it roam.
That charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
In the coughing desert
Not a thing dares roam
Neither wind nor creature
And neither stick nor stone.
But then the silence disturbed by a horrible shriek -
The railway screams in horror and the train itself speaks, saying
"Tell me, thou innocent,
Why feel you special and best?
For when all is done I take you
And return you to my nest;
Your world is bright and happy
Full of high spirits and song,
Though soon you too shall step aboard
And join my faceless throng."
Hot saliva on the heaving engines:
Weeping, groaning, ghostly, parched.
Rusted joints spewed onwards grinding resisting
Movement spat out like a violently beaded string of curses
Sloppily uttered as incantations of a malformed mouth!
From that charred old shell so terse,
Black as sadness and dead as a hearse,
Darling to death as he brings on the rain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
That dark train cries out and all around
A mourning whimper rises like slumbering fog-
Bleak and yellow it obscures the land
Seeping out insidious in strange locales all:
The old lonely fisherman
Sleeping on his wharf,
The frustrated hawker's
Windblown barefaced booth,
Silent streets crying for attention,
Dark places hidden at the corner of every eye.
That solemn train cries out and all around
Her mourning whimper rises like harrowing fog
Calling all to upright attention and fear.
Looming like a spectre but a breath-span from your window
Slowly closing cold dread claws-
Naked numbness dumb as ice-
Cold dread claws upon thy waist.
And you,
You poor old thing,
Shivering in your pitiful shack of bones,
You never had any chance!
You were only human.
You were only human, you poor old thing.
Barreling on with brimstone slang:
Clang clang! Dang dang! Beelz Bub!
Sputtering an ocean of curses from turgid goat-flesh
Born of sadness to cause even more, yawning great maw
Jowls clanking with fresh hot oil drool steaming stark and lewd, and yet
That charred old shell so terse,
Blacker than sadness and slain like a hearse,
Is all that gives meaning to our every gain:
The dry rolling thunder of the funeral train.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 12:10 AM UTC
I touched myself to the thought of you last night.
And, God,
It felt so ******* good.
The thought of you above me,
Hand around my throat,
With your teeth clashing into mine.
It felt so *****
Our spit and other ****** fluids mixing and creating the chemical reaction for love.
I could hear your voice edging me on.
‘Go faster, you ****
‘I know you want me to make a mess of your innocence.’,
I can still hear the echoes of the filthy and twisted fantasies we have.
My fingers spin the most intricate and intense shapes over and over again.
In hopes of merely grazing the ******
I can feel you,
Pulling my hair,
Digging your nails into me,
And slapping me senseless.
Everyone must think we’re sick—
But I don’t care.
I need you,
I need to ***
I need you like never before.
If this is the image of true love,
Me with my hand down my *******
Head thrown back,
Back arched,
And sputtering gasps of “Yes, Sir.”
Then this is a fairytale.
Growing wetter and wetter,
I’m soaking through my moans of pleasure.
Closer and closer,
I’ve almost reached the end.
With a happily ever after
You growl into me animalistically.
You spread me open to lap up each and every last drop.
You look at me—
You smile.
“Who’s a good girl?.”
Jul 25, 2020
Jul 25, 2020 at 11:25 PM UTC
There’s a tightness in my chest
Pulling me deeper into this dark.
Choking and sputtering I try to fight
The way I’ve fought for so long.
Holding on to a glimmer of hope
I cling with drenched and wrinkled hands.
I can’t breathe in this murky Hell
No matter how hard I try.
It floods down my throat
Into my lungs like tar.
It coats them in my miseries and failures
Until they’re suffocating under the weight of my madness.
The string holding me up
Is getting weaker and weaker.
I can feel it fraying
Slimy hands struggle for purchase.
Climbing through the waterfall of tears
Away from the end of my rope.
I reach for the hand holding it up.
I can finally get clean and help myself.
I can feel their fingertips
Tickling at my outstretched hand.
I grip their wrist and begin to cry
Not out of sorrow but relief.
I am saved, I am free from this place!
Never again will I return
Because I can survive.
I am strong.
The hand slips.
And just like that
I am back where I began.
At the end of my rope.
Sep 7, 2012
Sep 7, 2012 at 8:38 AM UTC
God is spoken
From a potent Thing
we smoking Trees
Gaia birthed the bloom
breathed the boom
in the canopies,
In the wind flew the bees
and grew the pleasantries
Prana pushing
thunder through
sQuishing lemon trees
like a hundred new
Whisps of mists
and heavy deeds
Sit with honeydew
The gist of this
the lemon breeze
(We) Going tunnel view
Fits and Shakes,
seeking remedies
digging under you
Might be
dicking under you
Might be
Torn asunder true
Pirate borne to plunder you....
Sweat means gold,
what's been found
with lemon -ease?
I've been told
What in our eyes
is what we ever see's
7 seas,
more like 7 deeds,
filled with deadly feeds
Demons like to pleade
with ready rease,
Virus, the life that
spread disease
(it alters our sense
and what we please)
~Ahem,
***no te comas
la verdad
del diablo,***
today to trust
Might feel bad, but
none brought low
There's an easy in
WE Strong Standin',
N0ne brought low
and now we win
amen, a man
none start south
Its begun...
Light as
Potent as my prayers
**** the make-believe
***I can't wear it, ah
Dark is
Ever reaching
What do you receive?
***What you carrying hah?
Balance
(Is) an even preaching :
What we choose to be
***I can bear it ; hah
Come and help me unweave
those who have been so deceived
Those stuck in in the mud of ...
sputtering " how can it be ?"
**** the you or me, mentality
When Neurons Fire free
and Serotonins drained in me
You Might find Saraswati
sweetly swathing me
In glowing rivers,
poured off the moon
With Omens looming soon
With Omens looming soon
I been choking on my doom.
Dreaming
with Both eyes open
and a heart awoken ,
poorly stoking gloom
Too blind to see hope
but stoked, still
mocking roving
Vroom : im off to tokin soon.
Sh!t this blunt be totaled soon
I Might be total loon
an inverted magic man
who most often enwomb
those caught on the moon
Those stuck in the tune
For those who hear
this earworm, this tea room sloom.
This is for Those muted in zoom:
I've found traction in heaps
Breaking as hard and often
As the risen yeast
When you pass on the least
My Passion is to find
the passion of peace
its Stuck In the grasp
Fashioned with the sap
of my last energies...
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022 at 12:27 AM UTC
I stopped breathing two years ago
I don't know if it was because of him or not
Maybe it was coincidence
But I was choking, sputtering for fourteen years of my life
Gasping for just one
And now for two years
I have stopped breathing altogether
My lungs are tared black
But I don't smoke
My skin is charred and burnt with open sores
Yet I freeze more with each passing second
I feel like I'm inside a trash bag
Or I am a trash bag
Certainly though I'm trash
I'm a corpse in a body bag
Soon
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 4:03 PM UTC
The country road like poet’s fancies unravels
Through the giant hanky- sized paddy fields
And the dream sized ponds
Dotting the landscape
in perfect squires and riots of skewed and regular shapes
The green spread and the muddy beds, spell the village beauty.
Parrot green fields
And stark blue skies look at each other
In perfect silence, like mother and babe
And a great , grey house exposing its ragged bricks,
Bared like the buck tooth of the old
Provokes a village memory
Past picking itself slowy and ambling into the future
Its wooden columns
stand like mute exclamation marks!
or so it may look to me.
Flies the skidding scaly tarred snake
Fast and spreading like the traveler travelling on it.
Patchy it looks, now;
And full like the misery of the scorned lover
Eager like the maiden speech of a parlimentarian
The country road, runs fluid like a stream after the rains.
As the rustle of the engine trips and falls
into the divine air.
A roaming peacock calling adds charm to the great whole fare
A winged beauty, struts across
Nudged by the sputtering , speeding me.
The exotic avian attains the hedges galore
With its metal blue feathery strangeness blurred in my glancing eye
A species rare, found only in ornithologists diary.
A clamour in the air
And the school boys emerge in buddy pairs
Beneath the village banyan
That let loose its tresses to dry like a country maid.
I see, a promising glint in their eyes
The will make themselves of king and ministers of the modern days
The sonority of ringing bell
clubs the cacophony of school boys in into two dead parts.
They return to their classes, sanctified by the silence,
And open their minds to the feminine vocie.
A Glorious moment ,
As the morn of wisdom is born
Rich are the sightings of poor country side
And many are the mappings on the way,
My sensibilities recouped,
I drove back
not spent
But profound.
sound.
Sep 13, 2010
Sep 13, 2010 at 5:15 AM UTC
Parachutes billowing,
floating
above the abyss
though we all once knew.
Parachutes colliding,
landing
upon the barren land
that man once had.
They came by the millions
drifting from heaven.
Their reason for being...
a mystery to all.
Parachutes flaunting,
opening
to reveal themselves
so that man might learn.
Parachutes lifeless,
wafting
through cloud speckled skies
when man was glad.
They came by the thousands
dropping from heaven.
Their reason for being
could not be explained.
Parachutes lingering,
meandering
toward their spacklespace
of the damaged sphere...
Parachutes multicolored,
sized and shaped
caught in the crosswinds
and turbulence of man.
They came by the hundreds
crashing from heaven.
Their reason for being
was not understood.
Parachutes traveling,
transporting
the essence of life
for all to perceive.
Parachutes tangled,
snared and collapsed
by pettiness and greed
of those who wanted more.
They came by the dozens,
groping from heaven.
Their reason for being
was a little too late.
Parachutes hanging,
lifeless
not realizing their fate
but expecting the best.
Parachutes sputtering,
idling over the masses..
too blind to see...
too ignorant to know...
They came by the millions
but now there are none.
their reason for being
will never be known-
Aug 20, 2010
Aug 20, 2010 at 3:36 AM UTC
My breath fogged your glasses
well...
someones glasses
hard to tell hard to see hard to care
so I whipped up a couple of blinks and pumped more blood
garden fresh cheeks
lace and sweet cherry knots
memorizing scripts in margarita swirls
same sentences--erased lines
spied the EXIT fall
crashed with a simple laugh
I laughed too
rows of lipstick stains and plastic strips
tripping over the way out
muttering punk sputtering prank
then they wobbled out the
ENTRANCE
and I ordered more foggy
glasses
Jul 5, 2012
Jul 5, 2012 at 10:34 PM UTC
The Queen sat alone in her throne,
Drapes drawn across the window,
Sputtering candle flame by her side,
She sat there holding her heart in her hand,
Looking down she could see the veins are bruised
The colours red and blue had turned into a pale complexion,
Tears fell down her cheeks,
She starred up to see a red tapestries hanging above her bed,
The design on the tapestries was beautiful scenery,
The Queen remembered when she received the tapestries,
It was a gift from a sailor of the sea,
Each month he would come knocking on her door,
Sit down by her thrown and tell her of his adventures,
The Queen longed for those stories from the Sailor,
As she was unable to leave her castle to see the beautiful lands,
One day,
The Sailor had left her a gift,
He told her he would be going for a long trip,
He may not return for a while,
Queen took a deep breathe,
As she knew this might be the last time,
The Sailor insisted for the Queen to look at the tapestries,
To remind her of how beautiful the world can be
Jun 4, 2021
Jun 4, 2021 at 5:17 AM UTC
The Ravens
On a rainy night so boring
I heard Munin soundly snoring,
I grew tired of my poring
Perched above Valhalla’s door.
“Munin!”, screeched I to the ceiling,
Sending the poor fellow reeling,
“Let’s deal out a joke to Odin,
One that he’ll be falling for -
Just one joke, and nothing more.”
After barrow ghosts-invoking
Odin entered, wet and soaking,
And I started with my croaking
From the dark above the door:
“I’m the first and oldest Volva!
All my secrets I could tell ya,
For the right price I might sell, yeah”,
And I cawed, “Would you know more?”
(He is crazy about lore.)
“What!”, cried Odin, “Quick, be talking!
At the price I won’t be balking.
Searching wisdom, I’ve been walking
Wandering from door to door.
Let my need for knowledge reach you,
All my own skills I would teach you;
Tell me all now, I beseech you!”
Quoth I grinning, “Nevermore!”
(Just a jest, and nothing more.)
Odin with frustration sputtering,
Munin laughing, wildly fluttering,
I was dead-pan and kept uttering
Nonsense about hidden lore.
For his need he found no quelling,
All Valhall woke from his yelling –
Oh, the fun to keep on telling
Him that one word, “Nevermore!”
(We thought it was a joke, no more.)
In the morning ceased his raving,
But that did not end his craving,
And we saw our master waving
To our roost above the door.
“Friends”, he said, “Now I will ride out;
Over Midgard you shall glide out:
Seek the Volva in her hideout!”
- Then it felt a joke no more.
(And Munin, to this day, is sore.)
Every day we must keep flying,
Always for that “Volva” spying,
Acting as though we were trying;
Well, the joke’s on us, for sho…
To escape a rightful chiding,
To this day the truth we’re hiding;
By this tale we are abiding,
And we’ll tell you nothing more!
Apr 7, 2014
Apr 7, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
a river runs through a ghostly town
soaked clay red with the blood of the earth,
the land is marked with tire tracks like an addict's elbow crease
sweating oil and electrical wire,
fields tilled with the claws of a paper beast
sprout telephone poles and generations of debt
amongst indigo coffee beans,
rotting tin roofs striped with rust
creak folklore in the pouring rain,
muddied palms clinging to trust on mala beads
are stung with poisoned ink leaked from shrines golden and winking,
an ornate temple carves god sharp into a clouded sky
its steeple piercing his hands
shards of bone spilling ash onto upturned foreheads,
sun scorches unsuspecting soil and it cries exhaust fumes,
the sputtering song of a motorbike is answered
by the howl of a stray mutt in an alleyway
reverberating pleas to a clenched fist,
an unremitting flame sweeps ruin
across leaf barren trees
wind choking on smoke coughing up skeletons,
and the planet heaves
and the planet heaves
weezing on humanity's delirious daydreams
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 2:11 PM UTC
Twisting and Dancing
Consume and Control
Body to Body
Soul to Soul.
Flame and tinder
Catch and combust
Rise from the ashes and
Brush off the dust.
Mingling flickers
Destroy and create to
Fix what is broken;
Alter its state.
Beneath all that burns;
Unattainable goal
Sputtering fires and
Diminishing coals.
Body to Body
Hollow to Whole.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 12:06 PM UTC
Addict.
Fly free unwanted conqueror-
I detest you
And your haunting illusion.
Midnight visage-
Encapsulated in wanton peaks
Of redemption.
You who scorched my fields
And ignited my fears,
Laying waste in a furious
Dervish of extrapolated ecstasy.
It might have been over
But in what I was sure
Was my final moment
Your grip became slack,
my conscious lying sputtering
in the destitute mud
That comprises bewilderment ,
And you showed me mercy-
Such bravery in the face of havoc.
And now you gladly accept me,
Embrace me in cold arms,
Wantonly smiling at the distance-
almost, almost imperceptive
But my knowledge trumps mere sense,
With the certainty of a madman.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 2:47 PM UTC
Once, I bathed in anxiety,
soaking it all into my follicles and letting it slide
between my bones and through my muscles like ice water.
And I reeked.
Others couldn’t stand to be around me.
I became an inhuman symbol,
something robotic and unfeeling.
Then, I reached the peak of hypocrisy--
rejected sparkling convention yet was
simultaneously enamored with it.
I binged on harsh words
aimed at diminishing my sense of self.
I was a frail,
98-pound girl
looking into the mirror
and seeing only excess.
Throughout, I was weighted with bruised limbs--
from being grabbed too hard and pounded too rough against the floor,
and broken down doors and cracked cellphones--
which my father threw violently against the wall.
I watched the glass shatter and end tables topple
down at my mother’s feet,
her eyes wide and glassy,
her face fallen.
Once, I stood naked in a sputtering shower
and slammed my fist
—twice—
into the face of the person I loved
the most, leaving him
with a haunted
eye.
Then, I picked a flower from the sky.
Throughout, I cried because my father left me,
while pretending I was only crying
about a sad song.
These days no longer belong to me,
but the voices are still there.
And the ache.
And the fear.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 9:17 PM UTC
Who do you think leads us
When we find it there at the top of the mountain
The sky a sweating forcefield
Defending an unknowable cannibal society from the rages of brutality
No lifeguards here at the sidewalk hot dog stand
No golf carts swerving in and out of lanes
On a neighborhood parkway
Our footsteps bend back with tension
Where we face a collision course
With a culture three short steps removed
And left to warp and mutate in the lee of the stone
Where sands of time blow sparingly
To the pace of a sputtering tractor motor
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 1:48 PM UTC