"stairwells" poems
Beauty out in the open, light falls on linoleum tiles like heel-worn stones
Windows to a sunny world sit at the end of locker-lined tunnels, beckoning beyond fluorescent mazes
Clotted with conversation, upperclassmen stroll like the elderly
Young blood doge or cling to the sides, scared of the critical runway that is us
Windows to a sunny world sit at the end of locker-lined tunnels, beckoning beyond fluorescent mazes
Eyes from all sides, thinking nothing yet are supplied by our own thoughts
Young blood doge or cling to the sides, scared of the critical runway that is us
Finding refuge in educational terrariums, an ecosystem that saves me from the weight
Eyes from all sides, thinking nothing yet are supplied by our own thoughts
Finding solace in stairwells, sealed off by doors and hold awkward opportunities
Finding refuge in educational terrariums, an ecosystem that saves me from the weight
Clanging like a child’s cry releases stress like floodgates, another trip into the shark tank
Finding solace in stairwells, sealed off by doors and hold awkward opportunities
Open doors that are actually closed; they are like aquariums – no tapping on the glass please.
Clanging like a child’s cry releases stress like floodgates, another trip into the shark tank
The longer I stay the more I wish to leave, away from substituted confrontations
Open doors that are actually closed; they are like aquariums – no tapping on the glass please.
Prejudice like heavy rain beats at my skin and soaks my clothes - but I know it was I who brought the downpour
The longer I stay the more I wish to leave, away from substituted confrontations
Must comparisons be so obvious when I walk alone, unprotected? They are lucky to have such equals to act as parents; they hold each other’s hands to keep from drowning
Prejudice like heavy rain beats at my skin and soaks my clothes – but I know it was I who brought the downpour
They pull like vultures at flesh; I am not allowed to wrap myself in hurricanes while out in the open
Must comparisons be so obvious when I walk alone, unprotected? They are lucky to have such equals to act as parents; they hold each other’s hands to keep from drowning
Ignorance is bliss, they say, and truth that is here – the less you know the less hate you bear the weight of.
They pull like vultures at flesh; I am not allowed to wrap myself in hurricanes while out in the open
Look down, one foot – and then the other!
Ignorance is bliss they say, and truth that is here – the less you know the less hate you bear the weight of.
Anger and sadness, guilt and fear turn like Viewmaster slides lit up by the sun
Or am I on my own here? Each boy's path runs along each other like long-exposure stars, leaving streaks between the darkness.
Jun 26, 2010
Jun 26, 2010 at 10:48 PM UTC
Empty classrooms
Filled with sunlight
Vacant stairwells
Accompanied by cobwebs
Busy city streets
filled with
Rushing people
And loud children
Deserted parking lots
With nothing except
Bottle caps
And lonely pocket change
Placid libraries
With abandoned chairs
and desolate books
Familiar neighborhoods
and childhood streets
Thoughts of you
String along with me
Everywhere I go
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 1:45 PM UTC
3:8:15 - Kosher pinot noir toasts the snowflakes that the eider brings, just as the Ash bows ache; naked and starving. Hurdling through old bedroom windows, giving those reasons why pennies are wished first into window wells. Smoggy gawkers, locked into an image shaped by organic lines and gestures. The two smoker- cure their hours reconnoitering in skyrise stairwells, discussing recipes for fixing wounded hearts without the peaceful frequencies she speaks into two styrofoam cups with strings pierced through their innards. Much like the story of how two people meet within the timespan of the living.
Even the Moon Men eat space cakes to loosen their chests, from the apathetic laws that began to govern their personalized truths. Not a mug with a name on it bought after an almost very cool free-art reenactment of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Love is not a sentence I can choose not to awaken.
It's the difference between having a one night stand rather
than keeping a toothbrush at each other's places.
Even on a Saturday night, we could fasten ourselves
to one another. Even if it's only you and I, who are you to
say it's not a party.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 9:47 AM UTC
You followed down through the gathered pages
to the labyrinth that leads back through the changes
A long and twisted line of unmapped rivers,
*** holed low-roads and tattered mileposts
glancing homeless back-alleys as dark as lonely crossroads
Past the broken wings that fell from skyward treetops
scattered feathers amongst rose petals wilted
at the hand of tear stained faded photos
of frozen black and white faces;
hidden ghosts in the closet that fell from grace
The pathway narrows where the traces dissipate
passing under burning bridges, beneath locked stairwells
A fickle feather floating upon rivers ragging
like the hubris disconnectedness of time rolling out to sea ―
Shadows growing darkest as you reach the blackest silence
and you kept the answers to all the questions at arms length
hidden in the darkness ― where you saw love disfigure me
It was then and there I knew I'd dreamed of someone like you
looking for someone more than I could ever be
Just an unsated curiosity, trying to see beyond
your own misunderstanding, to feel and touch
an unknown depth beyond reach
As sunset pales the distantness, the night is yours alone
when tomorrow's morning rain
hangs on the falling leaves ― I’ll be gone
Just a wayfaring loner in a lonely world
Where rivers are only water
and love was once a flowing river
I thirst to swallow ―
to wash away these tracks of my tears ...
rivers ... 2017
Oct 12, 2017
Oct 12, 2017 at 11:58 AM UTC
Billy arrived when the
sky was all ******
"Sailors take warn
Red sky at dawn."
He never was a sailor
and he never awakened so early.
He stopped for a coffee
at a Brew and Blue
This is when he met
Rainbow - a hippie child
all stunted and rude.
"Enlightenment will never be mine"
Billy muttered as he climbed into the orange booth.
Eying Rainbow's *****
Rainbow looked him over
she had seen one too many
dusty would be sailors.
But something about his
manner-gave her hope
for something that mattered.
They looked into each
other's eyes to find
two companions without
disguise.
This rather shocked them
into disbelief but
life takes twists and
turns definitely different
than whatever we expect.
Billy was a screenwriter's
son with wealth and
health
Abandoning all fantasy
he claimed he rode
the rails in order to be free.
Rainbow raised by a bipolar
soul, who claimed never to know,
wandered aimlessly
with no where to go -
she had slept in stairwells
of stranger's homes - till
mother's flip was over
and she was taken to the car -
her new home, again.
Billy and Rainbow, as ridiculous
as it comes, tried to deny it,
but knew they had already begun.
It has slipped their minds
they were lovers from kingdom come.
Billy left and went
searching for other scars.
Rainbow sat on her
porch and searched the stars.
The train blew its whistle
at the crossing
and the rains began to come.
A week later, Billy was
back setting up a home,
waiting to find Rainbow
who had hit the road
searching for Billy,
that lost soul.
They both remembered
what had slipped their minds
being together was one
moment when life was
kind.
Nov 20, 2013
Nov 20, 2013 at 2:09 AM UTC
My heart has been invaded.
Alarms sound through the open hallways
And echoing spiral stairwells.
I hear the tread of a thousand-man army
Trudging through liquid and flesh
To capture my precious Love,
The Love that has been locked away in a tower
Safe from the outside world.
Call 911 -
This is a real emergency.
Fear creeps up my spine
As the shadow looms in the distance
And my days are numbered.
The army closes in with a fatal lullaby,
But to my surprise
The figure emerging from the mist
Is no heartbreak militia,
But instead
A girl.
Just about my height
Face to face.
Flower petal lips and hummingbird heartbeat.
Deep brown eyes glance through feather-lashes
And I am smitten.
If my invader is here to kidnap Love from her tower,
Love would go willingly.
A dream-come-true abduction.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 10:51 PM UTC
Father Mychal Judge bent down
to the woman on the floor.
His right hand made the cross in sign
like oft he had before.
Above him the North Tower Burned
like South Tower just next door.
The chaplain of the firemen,
Mychal was a Catholic priest.
Born and bred in Brooklyn,
He was no stranger to these streets.
When he heard word about the planes,
his safety he ignored..
He had to go be with his boys
His trust was in the Lord.
The people in the towers had
the choice to burn or fly.
So many that day took the plunge
preferring not to fry.
The raging fires melted steel.
South Tower started to collapse
The Bravest in her stairwells
never heard recall perhaps.
“Sweet Jesus, Make this end now! ”
Some heard Father Mychal cry.
Debris from the South Tower
Like a scythe came flying by.
It was blunt force trauma to the head
laid Father Mychal low.
His friends removed his body,
before North tower , too, would go.
Thousands passed that terrible day;
the mighty and the small.
When responders came with body bags
Mychal was first of all.
Zero Zero Zero One
A strange number for a Priest,
who rushed in where many others fled,
May now he rest in Peace.
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 6:43 PM UTC
This is the machine.
Tucked under necklaces, poppies and daffodils
calligraphic fingertip Xs
hurry across pockets.
Thursday morning job postings
markers on construction paper windows
exhausted by making parts.
Keep weddings in thunderstorms
to hide the sound of windmills in chests,
bittersweet directions to ticking clockwork.
Carbonated water can’t convince summer to stay,
musical breaths and tulip footsteps
remind me of the gears in my knees.
Always buy wallets used
daylily bank notes folded into stairwells,
the heels of my socks.
Blue collars in ochre wheelbarrows
soaking next to the white ones.
We are quiet machines.
With cogs in our wrists
battery powered bone and sinew.
Baby’s breath white in our hair,
tiny bunches piled into collar bones or concave stomachs.
You have stars in your hair
whispering in manufactured voices
to pull out your eyelashes.
Consumed by the concept of concepts
on ravine park benches,
marred with newspaper labyrinths
smelling of rolled up sleeves.
Hand held gummy bears
prompt me to check my fluid levels,
bubbly orchids in my left palm.
Sugar intakes and patterned pants
hide homemade pulses.
This is the machine.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 12:14 PM UTC
There was a squandering ember that climbed her spinal chord
and lit the deteriorating birchwood on the peach-fuzzed tea lamps.
When those stairwells cramped and swelled with staggered liquid terraces
in the foundational pin-cushion that cradled family after family.
Woe begone chants that railed support beams moaning under elemental abuse.
A litter of ghost kittens coiling underfoot where the rug
used to yawn before the grandfather clock,
now senile and rotting with absent-minded tick-tocks.
Inside her streetcorner, the music was that
monkey hopping to street ***** blue notes on somber ropes.
The air thick with the regal, chunky vibe
of batting eyes, flirty sighs, and bourbon.
Between the buildings again...
embraced with the same warm feeling that
entrances your fingertips, lips, and ears when within a man's arms.
In this city, Love is those two birds on that same powerline
that bowed and ebbed with summer's sweet sigh.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 11:47 PM UTC
He loved to teach...
He loved to teach her...
He loved to teach her abject lessons
in elevators and on stairwells.
She hated to learn...
She hated to learn from him...
She hated to learn from him the inherent
danger of buildings.
Dec 3, 2019
Dec 3, 2019 at 2:32 AM UTC
Am I lost?
The hallways and corridors looking the same
Each floor looking like the last
Stairwells that go to certain floors, instead of every floor
The endless wandering
Is there even an exit?
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 5:12 PM UTC
She watches a drama on the television
calendar pages flying
from time’s prying fingertips
showing her,
reality is
slower,
trudging ,
dragging in its pain;
she paces quietly,
wandering down
lonely stairwells of her memory,
her feet shuffling,
slipping
on loose tiles
of broken promises.
the floor is covered in his tracks,
decaying leaves of fickleness, letters of blotted ink, thick gray scratches;
his unsaid goodbye, lingering
heavy and stale,
the air
filled with the smell of him,
scents of his self doubt and insecurity.
Jul 26, 2011
Jul 26, 2011 at 1:44 AM UTC
it’s inevitable
we are two waves crashing upon one another from diverse directions
6 feet overpowering a near five
an abundance of sand collected in her toes, painted sunset in season
salt in the crevices of his cracked lips
he hasn’t drank since March
wildflowers on her dress and holes in his shoes
it’s faulty
we are racing towards riverbanks: barefoot, unsteady, and homely
this doesn’t feel like home
he’s a moonlit tower, prewar stairwells, and a bright white nail bed
she secretes meteors in her pockets and a jackknife
slopes and curves and hills to stumble
words and doorknobs and photographs to wonder
it’s vexed
we headline in bold faced Georgia
friends concerned themselves with each petty fight
oh, boy did we
fight until her tongue wore out
his palms scratched to be healed by hers
her mother was on board, she guessed; his mother said yes
it’s bereft
we’re naked on the South lawn
a rose brush picked, prodded, called to question
her hazel eyes lack the ability to cry and cry and cry
his voice, stripped of rage
politics behind the scene
a young widow’s desperation for peace
it’s mass-produced
we’re political maps facing the chalkboard
colored crayons and heel-high socks
pepperoni’s dot her pizza the way she dots her i’s
as she writes lyrics of you
he raids the kitchen for her, prying the fridge for her
glinting sparkles in artificial light
it's submitted
we’re chipped steel bracelets
her straw bends forward at a crease
they didn’t realize what factors meant
his version too close to candor
yielded, the missing L on a paper sign
a stranded guitar pick balancing atop city grates and a below ground maze
it’s whatever it may be
and may be whatever it’s
but she and he and I and you
we perch on seven lines of fact
like birds we wallow, and trees we droop
‘til the ending sunrise
where you figure the truth
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 8:03 PM UTC
From the throne the broken and dying came to me
twisting and contorted riving in agony
dripping down dark stairwells
to me their vertebral blooded end
In the time of the lizard king
so much ****** ****** has been committed
even some of my own were poised to fight
yet I told them to hold there ground and wait
This never ending war
this fight without retreat
battle hardened with fight we sing
to the defeat of the lizard king
I kiss and tend the wounds of the fallen
with all I have I heal them and give them love
and when evil comes to my domain
I will smite all their armies
Sweet saviors I make in a blink of an eye
words of the last I do sing
by all I own all empires I will bring
to the defeat of the lizard king
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
Jun 1, 2016
Jun 1, 2016 at 4:05 AM UTC
I'm feline in my approach
slender-sleek and silent
footsteps like ghosts
on stairwells and whispers
in your ears.
I have nine lives
and I've wasted them
all stalking you
through concrete
jungles and labyrinthian
words and feelings.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 10:27 PM UTC
Encroaching satellites
High voltage saturation and shade
And an obtuse synopsis of cognitive psychology
Condensing your threshold
Searching for hand outs
Ripping the railings out of the walls
In the stairwells in the doctor's office on the way to your colonoscopy
Laying on the futon with and your therapist writing down everything you say
"Go on"
"Mhm"
"I see"
"How does that make you feel?"
Skid-marked underwear
Delving, dumpster diving for food
In the lonesome twilight
In the rippling rainstorm
People shelling out gripes
Squinting, doing a double take at you
Followed by a wavering tumult
They're gonna have you capped
That is, unless you purchase this love seat
-Tommy Johnson
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 11:04 PM UTC
I'm walking down the cafeteria hallway
holding a laptop that took twenty minutes to fix.
I spot her packing up her possessions from the table,
everything too spread out for her not to have eaten alone,
but she's smiling as usual
and it spreads to my lips.
I hear my name and I stop
not because someone was talking to me
but because they were talking about me
something that never happens
or never used to
until they started to see who I really was
and fall in love with that-
Clapping me on the shoulders,
sending me emails,
adding me on Facebook
congratulating me publicly
giving me hugs
stopping me in the hall
turning history into a discussion about me
being a superhero for those in need of help.
all because I have developed the guts to say something
or rather, write something
nobody else admits to being able to say.
My name comes from that table on the left
up against the lockers
first seat on the far end after the bar
my old seat, for two years.
It's those memories that have allowed me to say what I've said-
those memories of losing everything
of rebuilding, from scratch
of having my lips bleed because they are so unused they crack
of finding the darkest emotions
and recovering.
I walk five more feet and turn right.
She looks up as I approach.
I hand her her laptop and charger, smiling
as she is.
always is, always has been.
"It's done, it works"
I say, enthusiastically.
Her eyes widen in surprise
"really?"
I nod
"it only took a few minutes, it should be better"
she scoops up her stuff
and we walk away from that place together
as we always used to, freshman year
when our round table sat in that exact spot.
But three years have changed a lot:
she's smiling in my presence
and we split, heading opposite directions.
her to her locker
me to the library.
I hear the faint words
"merci beaucoup"
as I pass the 3rd post
And for a second, I want to turn back.
To walk with her like I used to her
but actually talk to her.
I continue walking.
"Four years change a person"
I think as I climb every stair
as I have, for four years.
I stop for a second,
three quarters of the way up
and watch the way the sunlight drifts in from the door window.
A beauty I never would have seen then.
I would have been too entranced in her
and now I walk alone.
I would have been far too depressed by my own problems
to say what I have.
I may be a stronger person
a better person
than sitting there at that round table
but I always someone then.
Now I stand in stairwells alone
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 4:16 AM UTC
If I did go wrong more or less at once, I wonder where
The chop block decisions of grade school, when you first realize you don’t care
‘I just don’t care’ in whiney and off-pitch voices and messy drawers
Was it the first time you realized you couldn’t be perfect and so just stopped
Being
Was it sneaking on to computers and secretly learning more about life in books than your
Parents wished you to ***** things)
Or was it when you learned because you shouldn’t
And didn’t learn and didn’t learn, and that persistent bubble as you grew up got bigger and bigger
Some looming threat about your future dangled over your animal head like a carrot as you trotted through worksheet a, a-2, a-3
And exercises you could finish in two minutes or two hours and get the same grade
Or copy and get the same grade
And those grades mattered more and more, and vaguer and vaguer
And they guided you less as they shoved more in front of you and grabbed your nose to say
This is important, this is you
And your friends started laughing like lunatics as well as ********
And the first kids ended up crying in stairwells
And you slept in class?
Was it all that, or was it outside. Was it your parents admitting they weren’t happy.
Was it the first time you had to recognize dishonesty or cruelty in others
(you had long since seen it in yourself)
Was it the first time you wanted to die.
Is it now?
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 1:13 AM UTC
**** sonnets
she screamed, half awake,, raspy broken chords
**** mistletoe
He responded, barely breathing, words are a chore
**** surrender
She moaned, lonely against the canvas of silver and gold
**** alarm clocks
He smirked, craving the fabric and minutes to unfold
**** ghosts
She whispered to the abrupt emptiness of 4 in the morning
**** stairwells
He mumbled to the steps that tripped without warning
**** forever
she breathed, breathless against the waves of waterfalls
**** sidewalks
He admitted as he wandered aimlessly appalled
**** flowers
she scowled at the precipice of tomorrow
**** candles
He gritted at the concept of unrequited sorrow
**** Thursday
she exclaimed at the notion of fresh beer blossom gardens
**** July
He exhaled against the women who dressed without pardon
**** Twitter
she tweeted three nights deprived of sleep
**** Xanax
he stumbled five Klonopin deep
**** stars
she wished with a mouth of cigarettes and strangers
**** memories
he insisted accompanied by potions and danger
**** you
She would have laughed against the midnight canvas
**** me
He would have crafted versus the twilight lanterns
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 9:47 PM UTC
I saw a necklace I thought you'd like.
I still like the sound of your name
even though it hurts to say.
I never liked it on anyone but you.
The healing bracelet you gave me
has been in my jewelry box for 13 months.
I wore it every day for more than a year
I haven't seen or spoken to you since Marie's birthday
September 9th
I wonder if losing you was part of my healing or yours.
Do you still dance to Florence & the Machine?
Do you still tell our stories?
Remember Stab Wound Guy
and the time we took videos of each other
throwing up in the same weekend
and it wasn't revealed until brunch the next day?
Or the cab driver that said "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"
is the most romantic song?
What do you tell our friends when they ask where I've been?
I can't forgive you for saying
I would have been ***** even if I hadn't come to Chicago.
I can't forgive you for saying
you needed me.
You held me crying on your bathroom floor.
Do you know I got a cat?
When was the last time you saw your sister?
I was never more honest than when I was with you.
Secrets in stairwells.
I don't look at our pictures.
I dreamt I saw you and you looked away.
I only speak about you gently.
I still think about you daily.
You are one of three things I wouldn't change
about my time in Chicago.
You taught me how to eat an artichoke
and how to survive.
Just so you know, I'm okay.
I wish you could see me smile now.
I still wish I knew how to thank you
or if you know I'm sorry.
What do you remember about me?
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 3:42 AM UTC
Photographers step out of hazy stairwells, tired eyes adjusting to dim light, looking for
their next muse.
“Works of art take time” they tell themselves
they look for the next spark of intrigue, their next fix.
You’ll find them on public transport, in old cafes:
cameras slung around their necks like billiard boards captioned ‘the end is nigh’.
Buzzing with anticipation of their next good catch, biting the lips of their disgruntled
faces like ancient gladiators biting the dust.
Castaways, oil paintings once brilliant and beautiful thrown into apartment blocks and
grey buildings,
ruins of art cast adrift by time.
Haunted by still frames and possibilities, all burned onto retinas, they stumble across
traffic jams;
finding beautiful people, forcing themselves into their lives.
Fleeting whispers rotate into double takes and flickers on the film of a Polaroid camera;
the subjects become muses,
cities are reborn as golden
flood into spotlights:
vibrant, reckless, insomniac.
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:32 PM UTC
.
Father Mychal Judge bent down
to the woman on the floor.
His right hand made the cross in sign
like oft he had before.
Above him the North Tower Burned
like South Tower just next door.
The chaplain of the firemen,
Mychal was a Catholic priest.
Born and bred in Brooklyn,
He was no stranger to these streets.
When he heard word about the planes,
his safety he ignored..
He had to go be with his boys
His trust was in the Lord.
The people in the towers had
the choice to burn or fly.
So many that day took the plunge
preferring not to fry.
The raging fires melted steel.
South Tower started to collapse
The Bravest in her stairwells
never heard recall perhaps.
“Sweet Jesus, Make this end now!”
Some heard Father Mychal cry.
As Debris from the South Tower
Like a scythe came flying by.
It was blunt force trauma to the head
laid Father Mychal low.
His friends removed his body
before North tower, too, would go.
Thousands passed that terrible day;
the mighty and the small.
When responders came with body bags
Mychal was first of all.
Zero Zero Zero One
A strange number for a Priest,
who rushed where Angels feared to tread,
not fearful in the least
Dec 10, 2011
Dec 10, 2011 at 8:43 PM UTC
*and there, carved into the oaken doors
of the Madhouse, in stark, lifelike detail,
three massive cyclones. side by side.
They seemed to sway and beckon
as the door began to creak open.
"We'll be there soon," the Cyclones harshly whispered to me.
"We'll be along shortly, and then we'll rip apart and send you whirling along with
everything you love. Send you whirling to the void, where everything wails and moans,
and nothing will ever rest in peace again"*
Madhouse
Time for the rain to shine,
ways for the moon to rhyme,
space for the gods to pine,
running through a madhouse with no way to stop.
Cane for the *** to chew,
slow when his eyes hit you,
rope when the hands push through,
skidding on wet floors on the way to the drop.
Slip to a diiff'rent side,
high on the wind to ride,
hope that the tree will hide,
stumbling up stairwells to get to the top.
Run as the jaws will snap,
swing when the wings won't flap,
streak when the soles do slap
Twilight is closing on the whirlwind's last crop.
Jul 6, 2012
Jul 6, 2012 at 6:58 PM UTC
for all of us, star-seekers, feeling now alive
for those with the ghastly skill of being alone
amid crowds of people
lost in thought but ok inside
for those who see streaks of madness
fly round, illume patterns/puzzles
grasping scales celestial to infinitesimal
for those playing games with reality
snogging smug wealthy boys in stairwells
oxygen bonds breaking the sublime
for those forgotten under dirt, asphalt & spot
buried dates and dashes no splashes of memory
just naked nihilistic Precambrian bones
for those nameless from identity crises
smiling glibly through missing teeth
embarrassed by circumstance and the folly of age
for those trapped in jaunty youthful frames
lacking mind's dessert: veneration (contradiction)--still
wisdom perilously choked plus feared
for those chanceless beings fate sweeps & sooner snips
chuckling at theodicies while they still can
some soothed by snake oil--I mean Purpose--
then just dying
and we're still uplifted? we are still star-seekers.
we, divorced from form and aching for the sky's response
hear nothing, but we know
eyes' lies are all around us and inside
they wear us out and keep us moving
they are ancient dull clichés, tarnished but
they have the audacity to make us shine, aspire
they are what your grandma says to get you to behave
eyes' lies are true:
we are still star-seekers
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 11:27 PM UTC
Ragged clothes on the sidewalk, toddlers murmur and cry
cold morning air where abandoned row houses
smell of whiskey, sage, and molded cotton
diesel exhaust belches into light breezes
forests of burning coffee beans mingle
into their hearth, the children, this is their nostalgia
everywhere leavings of life scatter driven by wind
cover unhoused, distressed, makeshift families
they stand shoeless as fortunate people drive past
Glut of humanity smells of wet newspaper
grey gulls picking at grimy cellophane
cardboard litters muddy sidewalks
above the billboard the wealthy jeer at them
sitting by a liquor store with bars on the windows
shut out of row houses with black wrought iron gates
basement stairwells filled with trash
men in alligator boots ready to lunge
into the lives of slick, bright, vacant women
this is the fate of feminine mother love
Thriving in dead landscapes
growing lost opportunity
under skyscrapers where it is always
almost dusk
Nov 11, 2017
Nov 11, 2017 at 12:05 PM UTC