"staircases" poems
I saw you in winter,
and thought of tree branches feathered by starlight in poorly lit neighborhoods. A hearth where the more honest parts of myself, I am bared fetal, warmed upon, welcomed.
I saw you in spring,
and thought of long drives in the countryside in the rain. Ice cream melting from our chins dancing petrichor upon our toes, kissing by the sea shore.
I saw you in summer,
and thought of sleepy boathouses, uncovering ancient childhood treasures in the woods. A secret lake somewhere, the sky's reflection in promise. Windy hilltops upon which to blame each other for the sunrise.
I saw you in autumn,
and thought of scarfs and cafes, city streets and sunsets where we watched each others breath escape. Apartment staircases where windchill hibernates, the world slowing down around us from your window.
The first time I saw You, I thought to myself, "I could live there."
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 5:24 PM UTC
If I sung you to sleep,
what would you dream?
of mystery and madness?
of love and revenge?
of spiralling staircases, culminating
swiftly in a pool
of swirling fear?
Starfish –
sleep slowly,
sleep soundly.
Stretch bubbly limbs that
are kissed by the shore,
hugged by the sea.
This cove
of creeping creatures,
they slip and slime
like a plastic bag
of goldfish.
What will you dream?
of memories:
when you were swept
away from the sea
to dry on the sand
like a limpet?
Bubbling, giggling,
blobbing starfish:
sleeping, sliding,
slipping out of place,
slipping out
of starfish dreams.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 5:36 AM UTC
I’ve been crying a lot lately.
—
Swirling thoughts, as if they try to crush my existence. An endless staircase that leads me to nowhere but despair, despair, and another despair that greets me over and over. An unfathomable, non explainable feelings that I fail to express to others; and they only came out as faint scars. Countless voices screaming into my imaginary ears that I yearn to stop, and I deafened myself from those voices by running away to even louder voices. Something inside of me that carves the walls of my skin with a gushing, sharpened knife, but I can’t grasp the reality of that knife so I just stand there and ignore it.
The cycle of me trying to fight my painful, unexplainable misery. Even so, I couldn’t cry.
I couldn’t express all of my predicament, so I couldn’t cry.
That’s why it became a cycle. Again, again, again! I suffer, to the point I want to cut my own throat and die.
“Don’t cry. Crying means you're weak,”
those were the words that were said to me ages ago. Why do I always remember that? I think the person who said that to me already forget about it.
—
Then, when I thought all of my miseries flooded inside me, they spilled. I cry, ugly face in front of the mirror. Oh boy, when was the last time I saw those eyes, that were usually red below the pupils, wet? When was the last time I sobbed that hard?
That was the first time I sat on the public toilet,
crying.
—
“What’s wrong with crying?”
A person said that to me. A person said that people who don’t cry are the weird ones; do they not blessed with these beautiful, miraculous thing called emotions? Cry, cry, cry, because tears are ...
—
So, the cycle came back to me. Gushing thoughts hitting me madly, along with staircases that still lead me to land of despair. But now, I cry when I think of them.
I cried.
And cried.
And cried and cried and cried.
—
I’ve been crying a lot lately.
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 10:40 AM UTC
Presumptuous, perhaps arrogant,
My perception of reality.
I invoke, with humility,
The Great Spirit and
Receive an answer.
Heavenly manifestations
In the form of trees,
Birds and dreams.
My reality.
But, what about me?
I am important.
I am destined.
I am.
I
Regulate and manipulate
My world.
Channeled energies, memories
Are brick and mortar
For the building of myself.
I build and build,
Adding rooms,
Windows, staircases.
My domain.
My center draws farther
From the edge.
Understanding expands.
I know more and more.
I sleep.
I dream of angels,
Of nature in bliss,
Of blue skies imbedded
With soft clouds,
Of worlds--
Many, many, worlds--
And, I dream of myself.
I wake up.
I wake.
I
Am aware, facing
A being not of my choosing,
Beyond myself.
Shrill whistles,
Bright, flashing bulbs,
Agitated bees,
Forgotten memories,
Woven into the
Space that unfolds--
And more.
No longer under my control,
The earth spins on
Its axis.
A world apart from me.
Presumptuous, perhaps arrogant,
My perception of reality.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 5:36 PM UTC
It dons a hat of seeming sophistication, in the manner of a Boston gangster where cross-cultural expressions gather at Gaelic mouse-traps of East Coast dominance.
It is a heritage, my friend.
There is sophistication around Italian restaurants, and I have no regrets. Yet, I must say, that I have experienced minimal fun amidst this political Anglican black-comedy where integrity is often confused with connected colours of red, white and blue, and the colours of green white and gold.
This is a picture of illegitimate power, where brethren gnash their intellectual mandibles and covet recognition at the price of their very soul.
Delusional quests for superiority remind me of downward spiralling staircases with blazing torches, where the echoes of scorching souls can be heard to resound throughout professional circles.
As I carry this blazing torch through spiritual levels of command, I ask the question: whatever happened to humanity?
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 10:23 PM UTC
"I'm not a ******* villain," he said as he walked down those lonely staircases and out the door
I wasn't a lover,
I was a victim
A serial killer with an appetite for hearts
holding captive his next hostage,
ready to chew her heart and spit it out
May 8, 2012
May 8, 2012 at 10:30 AM UTC
Jordan gave me rose quartz prayer beads. Freddy picked me up and spun me around.
I kissed the beads and kissed my hand and blew it to the stars, over and over again.
Thank you universe, for the kind hearted people you have dropped into my existence.
Thank you universe, for the good music, the good **** good wine, and good company.
Thank you, for the smiles, the laughs, the cigarettes, the numbers given out on backs of receipts.
Thank you for the swing sets, the campfires, the coffee and tea, the cars we drive around in.
Thank you for emotions.
Thank you for the feeling I get when someone kisses my forehead,
the feeling when someone compliments my smile,
the feeling when I notice the moon for the first time that evening.
Thank you, for the moon, the stars, the clouds, and the autumn breeze.
Thank you for the sounds, the crickets, the leaves rustling, the clinking glasses,
and the sound of small kisses.
Thank you for the snort I get when I laugh to hard.
Thank you for the bass, the guitar, the drums.
Thank you for the shouts, the soft spoken, the loud, and the whispers.
Thank you for the doors, the staircases, and the windows.
Thank you for everything that ever was, is, and will be.
Thank you for the indefiniteness of the now.
Thank you for everything.
I once read in a book, that the likelihood of our proteins folding just so to make us what we are is comparable to that of a twister rolling through a junkyard and assembling a jumbo jet.
This is something I like to remind myself daily.
It is so miraculous that we are here today to experience everything and everyone around us, and be able to document and share it.
I hope one day someone can look at my photographs and writings and feel these immense and overwhelming emotions that I feel in these moments.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 6:10 AM UTC
Next time I act like a heartbroken Holmes,
do me a favor and let me drink it away.
Words hurt what whiskey soothes.
I catch your name drifting away on a nimbus,
past the trees of someone else’s hometown.
Your eyes are bean sprouts and your scent
is divorce. Your fingers are still placid,
not yet ****** from the scratch of anxiety.
Eyebrows bow to nose bone in speculative uncertainty,
confusing rainy prom nights with dreams of Hercules.
One more sip of wine will detonate firecracker cheeks.
I hold your hand in secret on desolate city streets,
remembering the practice of lost lovers and
drunk ******* in dead friend’s beds and falling down staircases
in mid-afternoon moonshine. Our pasts intertwine, just as
West-coast tourist traps fill family photo albums.
Oct 29, 2011
Oct 29, 2011 at 7:44 PM UTC
The paradise of darkness is like a climactic and physiological déjà vu, where souls have been swallowed by ancient daemons amidst an **** of oral sacrifice.
Aren’t you tantalised by such forbidden seductions?
Although I am somewhat acquainted with the blackness of unfathomable depths of the ancient abyss, I sincerely call upon your superior wisdom to beckon me across craggy chasms of mathematical perplexity, where eternal ghosts wail with agonising obscurity from the turrets of architectural stronghold.
If you light a candle toward the incarnation of depravity and reveal the sacred circle, then I will ensure safe passage down those historical and spiral staircases where dungeons hold innumerable fetishistic secrets.
I am captivated by co-existing opposites.
Let us talk with the goat, and arrive at a mutually agreeable pact.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 11:17 PM UTC
JESUS emptied the devils of one man into forty hogs and the hogs took the edge of a high rock and dropped off and down into the sea: a mob.
The sheep on the hills of Australia, blundering fourfooted in the sunset mist to the dark, they go one way, they hunt one sleep, they find one pocket of grass for all.
Karnak? Pyramids? Sphinx paws tall as a coolie? Tombs kept for kings and sacred cows? A mob.
Young roast pigs and naked dancing girls of Belshazzar, the room where a thousand sat guzzling when a hand wrote: Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin? A mob.
The honeycomb of green that won the sun as the Hanging Gardens of Nineveh, flew to its shape at the hands of a mob that followed the fingers of Nebuchadnezzar: a mob of one hand and one plan.
Stones of a circle of hills at Athens, staircases of a mountain in Peru, scattered clans of marble dragons in China: each a mob on the rim of a sunrise: hammers and wagons have them now.
Locks and gates of Panama? The Union Pacific crossing deserts and tunneling mountains? The Woolworth on land and the Titanic at sea? Lighthouses blinking a coast line from Labrador to Key West? Pigiron bars piled on a barge whistling in a fog off Sheboygan? A mob: hammers and wagons have them to-morrow.
The mob? A typhoon tearing loose an island from thousand-year moorings and bastions, shooting a volcanic ash with a fire tongue that licks up cities and peoples. Layers of worms eating rocks and forming loam and valley floors for potatoes, wheat, watermelons.
The mob? A jag of lightning, a geyser, a gravel mass loosening...
The mob ... kills or builds ... the mob is Attila or Ghengis Khan, the mob is Napoleon, Lincoln.
I am born in the mob-I die in the mob-the same goes for you-I don't care who you are.
I cross the sheets of fire in No Man's land for you, my brother-I slip a steel tooth into your throat, you my brother-I die for you and I **** you-It is a twisted and gnarled thing, a crimson wool:
One more arch of stars,
In the night of our mist,
In the night of our tears.
2.4k
I dance
And when I dance
I dance
With her
I dance
Across the room
On the thin blade of a rapier
I dance
Her into walls and
Over splintered tables
I dance
Her into the shower where
She huddles fetally as she
Awaits the next act
I two step and waltz her
Down staircases
Tango with her
Through doorways
I dance
And when I dance
I dance
With her
Because she always
Allows me to lead
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 7:24 PM UTC
Our hands clenched together
In a spontaneous dash,
We fly down the grand staircases and swirling halls
Of the Atlantis at 3 a.m.
I,
Skidding to a halt in triumph,
Push toward the wall of sleek windows
Containing the exotic creatures
Swimming swiftly and sweetly
Through the dark water of the night.
And you, my dear,
Drunk with the ancient incense
Of island air and twilight,
Nourish my curiosity with your voice.
“Go ahead.”
We approach the world of blue
And lift our faces to the glass,
Pressing coolly against the fins
Sprinkled with deep, dark gold.
Through the water I see
The scales twinkling in your eyes,
And in secret I see them return a gaze
Through the reflection of the window
Softly sprinkled with life.
Sep 27, 2011
Sep 27, 2011 at 9:38 PM UTC
Facebook makes me want to *****
Spew chunks of fake houses
perfect spouses
So many poses
perfect smiles and staircases
tout it.
Adorn rose-colored glasses
as you watch the egregious *****
boast champagne in their glasses
as they fool masses.
What does it matter the square footage
if you can’t teach your children how to solve problems?
Or start movements?
Or have values?
I’d rather wear hand-me-downs and have roots
than don Versace and walk in rich boots.
When the day ends, as you are lounging in your satin linens
do you ask yourself how you grew today?
How you moved today?
How you flew today?
Well I am…
So get out of my way.
Feb 14, 2016
Feb 14, 2016 at 8:00 PM UTC
i know that
most days
the cathedral of your body
with all its dips and curves
forgotten staircases
and ripped velvet covers
on the splintered pews
is hard to love
and there are days
where you wish that your
body would have manifested itself
as a palace
made of ivory and bone
with great empty halls
that would host nothing else
but your anguished cries
and empty stomach
but these things
are incapable of filling you up
because it is hard to sustain yourself
on bitterness and past scars alone
so i say to you
my friends
brothers and sisters
my lovers
and those living in the wastelands
of themselves
cast aside these
things for you are not a church
or a palace or a temple
no
you are something
much stronger and vast
grow yourself into a forest
turn all the sleepless nights
and breakdowns and hospital visits
and suicide attempts
and those traintracks of scars
into the great twisting trunks of trees
grow yourself as big and bold
as you need to be
protect yourself
wrap up all your sharp and soft
edges and corners
into the bark of mother nature
become a forest
because
through fire and drought and storm
and flood
the forest always comes back
even the charred remains of trees
stand strong
so
i say to you
with your dark circles
and long sleeves
and chest hidden behind a binder
with all your scars
and imperfections
be a forest
because
a forest is unstoppable
it always comes back
it always grows back
and so will you
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 3:06 PM UTC
She resembles a make believe song
As if my sorrow for the staircases
Of the ocean
Blue because the nymph stretches
Around the ring of perfection
When the world was as dull as a sink
When the sky looked like a pillow
Trembling behind the doors of ***
As if the leggs weren't enough
To ask for a second meal
Then
The hand cuts the melancholy pear
Swift and shinning pear
Before the branch broke in half
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 5:59 AM UTC
Piled in corners
are things I've tried to be.
Study books build staircases,
art materials stack up in paint splashed bonfires,
a yoga mat lolls like a disembodied tongue
and the sewing machine crouches beetle like,
chews on thread
weaves a cocoon over itself.
Pictures line the walls.
I smile behind glass,
children tuck in, arms tight.
Dec 15, 2010
Dec 15, 2010 at 11:47 AM UTC
He liked it black
No sugar or cream
16 ounces of pure caffeine
I've never tasted something so bitter
The way it touched my lips
Made my body shake and quiver
This caffeinated high
Drives me to do such things
Like going on endless adventures
Reaching for the extreme
Building staircases in familiar places
But never reaching for the stars
Leaving only a slip of paper
Handwritten with a smile
Silly little light house
Sitting on the rocks
Laying there for hours
Singing and such
I could waste away here forever
There in your arms
But I rather have those
Black coffee kisses
So bitter, so strong
He liked it black
No sugar or cream
These black coffee kisses
Made me forever weak in the knees
Aug 21, 2015
Aug 21, 2015 at 10:19 PM UTC
we'd wake up and play with magic
like any other game of pretend
bath towel tied into a cape
we'd approach an empty plastic top hat
wand in hand
we were tapping into an ancient power
that we barely even knew
we've played a superhero, Sub-zero
and now, a miracle worker
there was nothing we couldn't do
we'd climb trees to the summit branches
as high as we'd dare to go
we'd lower the hoop and dunk with ease
alley-oops, 360s
sometimes in slow-mo
there was nothing but room
to grow and explore
frontiers of the imagination
seized on roller blades with plastic swords
we'd tie skateboards to the back of bicycles
and Jamaican bobsled down the street
we were free ninjas in the 90s
off to adventures no one sees
we'd front roll down hills like hedgehogs
we'd scrape knees
we'd footrace to the stop sign and back
to pretend we're going faster
we'd kick clouds of dust in our tracks
we'd steal bricks from the neighbor's garden
and throw them into lakes to see the splash
we'd throw pebbles to see how high they'd go
or paper planes from the top of the staircases
one time, we jumped off:
it was a dare
we did it though
we unscrewed the air cap from the tires
of our enemies' parked cars
we clapped back with super soakers
the block was truly ours
we'd play until the streetlights came on
with more discoveries left unseen
and in the shadows while sleeping
we'd play catch with our dreams
May 30, 2019
May 30, 2019 at 10:51 PM UTC
I like how her eyelids slowly close ever so gently, as if those words could be forever inked into the pockets of her mind.
Oh, the way he breathes in at times, it's like he tries to inhale the words through his slightly chapped lips into the airways and then
into the staircases to nowhere.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 10:08 AM UTC
What if you're the addict that has accepted the first step a long time ago, while lines tallied up against years, and once familiar folk have given up hope long after patience; there's you first squatting in the corner of a house you barely know, with people you just met, and you shoot water in your veins, now on bent knees, praying this water is holy enough to ease the pain. The immaculate fix.
Arms outstretched, facing east and west, needles as big as nails delicately caressing the flesh and resting on sweaty palms, emaciating by way of lust and fear. No Will. No Power of Attorney. No Will Power.
They say Adam walked with Eve in the garden, and it was Eve that bit the apple. But you never hear the part about Adam killing Eve with silence. Adam was the snake. And of course above, and beyond, omnipotence comes with the added responsibility of design. "Would you consider yourself a Type A personality or a Type B personality?" The doctor asked.
One suicide and one admission to the psych ward should always be coincidental, but in case it's not and silence becomes deadly you must keep a straight face. Let the guilt mentally choke you, like a murderer choking the life from their victim. You look around the ward to find that there are no staircases. But empathy and keeping that straight face will lead to discharge, and programs, and twelve steps.
And you know when you get to that final step, it takes only one more
to push off and fall away.
Jul 24, 2015
Jul 24, 2015 at 2:36 PM UTC
Your children twist
their legs in the fields
during
the play murdering
gather their
arms to decide
how to assemble
your hips
when onlookers
burned into paved
staircases
dream of how
tumbling phantoms
destroy countrysides
and what wreck
is the womb
Nov 25, 2011
Nov 25, 2011 at 9:57 AM UTC
Oh ferocious angels,
lionesque children of Eden
on narrow streets and polluted alleyways
whispering cruel things to each other,
you're radiant in your belligerence
and as my enemies you are virtuous.
Beside me in this carpeted rectangle room
a faint glow exhales
from the tall alpine ivory lamp illuminating
firefly wings of blossoms
alluringly exuberant in the afternoon sun-ray
diamond shine and shimmer.
Dusty tin roofs billow
firewood smoke in the thick violet shade fog over-top cabin potted
mountains and hills sprouting firs and rose bushes abounding.
Spectrum cast chandeliers echo staircases which
jot up and up arduous ruby landings,
hardwood floor cracked
and stacks of novels ballast the senescent hallways
of bookshops where poets works and journals diaries and memoirs blur
the serpentine walls with memories.
Angelic the soul which is too often contaminated with
avarice rebellious to concord living
harmonious midst dew grass and calm waters in residential lakes
empathy equanimity, far from Bodhisattva.
Few kinds of darkness transcendental
subduing other darkness to a weak shadow.
There's an importance to admiring the delirium of metropolitan roads on roads
this intricate unspoken connection to those who
rest by stoplights and crawling traffic metallic molten aura of
cars in July heat.
Paying attention to the open window of adjacent apartments
where Mr. Norris waters his tulips and shares this moment
modern meditations practiced
finding a balance in such an anxious
volatile world like this.
Oh ferocious angels, impetuous
forlorn seraphs,
sing! sing and soar!
Boundless is our ardor
and our passion.
Unenclosed is the lion
in it's bloom.
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 3:09 AM UTC
Outside these three walls,
we assemble and separate.
We’ve gathered up all that was received and given out,
only then to burn it all in the end.
Forget the Barber, the Barista,
the man who borrows heels,
and those who argue that all are wrong in and around the snow.
All know me as the easy mark.
Remember the slaves to the letter
who are washed and cut in red,
Agony and age written well on hands blue,
live life in a mirror, too.
But these words spoken at the seat of the head,
and underneath twin staircases
high, low, and in between your hair,
Suggest that longevity isn’t so bad after all.
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 1:21 PM UTC
*I groggily stumble out of bed
My high pitched ear splitting alarm
Having ****** me to consciousness
Everything around me seemingly heel over head
Spiraling up and down virtual staircases of confusion.
Aftereffects of a long night cut short inadvertently, causing untoward harm
Thank Heavens I don’t suffer from urinary incontinence
It’d otherwise be a disaster of mind boggling proportion
I go about my daily routine tasks in slow haste
Mine eyes heavier than lead, straining to keep them alert
I hurriedly help myself to a serving of chips doused in tomato paste
I top up my morning meal with a chocolate mousse dessert
I proceed to kiss mummy on the cheek
Wishing and hoping for a good week.*
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 8:11 AM UTC
In the orphanage a child
cowers from cursing men outside.
She wants to climb back into
her dead mother’s womb
and hide inside its warm, soft,
un-edged safety,
where no explanation is needed
or reason to hide under splintered
staircases or run the gauntlet to basement
bomb shelters, existing minute to minute
with strangers until the dawn arrives with her
deliverance and she refuses to be born.
Michael J. Whelan
Apr 25, 2017
Apr 25, 2017 at 7:08 AM UTC