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Amanda Newby Dec 2016
Dear Self,

For you it is November 9th, 2016. Despite all odds, Donald Trump is president. Mike Pence, governor of your home state of Indiana, is his VP.

You are 17 right now. You were born into a world run by George W. Bush. You spent your whole childhood hearing your parents yelling at the tv, angry at the Texas governor in the White House.

You grew up in Obamanation. You saw months of “YES WE CAN” and “CHANGE” stickers going up, and a magnet your family still has get put onto your refrigerator. You heard your mother’s sigh of relief when Barack Obama was announced the 44th president. That was half your lifetime ago.

You spent the last year following the campaigns. You were not surprised by Hillary Clinton running again. You “felt the Bern” of the somewhat radical Independent candidate previously unknown to you, Bernie Sanders. You laughed off the wild reality tv star Donald Trump’s campaign.

Months went by. Bernie and Hillary were fighting hard leading up to the primaries. Republicans slowly started to drop out. Big names like Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, and Chris Christie left the race. Bernie didn’t do good enough in the primaries, which was upsetting to most of your friends, your older brother, and your mom, who all voted for him. Ted Cruz fell off, defeated, in May.

It was down to Hillary and Trump.

You followed the comments made at their rallies. On their social media. You heard a lecture about the election from Josh Gillin of Politifact at Indiana University over the summer. You won an award for an opinion piece you wrote on Trump. As the election day grew closer, you watched every presidential debate. You analyzed them in class.

Last night, you stayed up until 4 A.M. to see the results of this election. You sat through excruciatingly slow interviews, political analysis, and different predictions. You couldn’t turn away from the blue and red maps, the aggressively American backgrounds, the anxious masses.

The tired tv hosts were right, it was a nail-biter.

As Trump gave his victory speech, you wept.

You wept for the months you spent wishing this wouldn’t happen. You wept for the 1920’s suffragettes, for the descendents of MLK and Cesar Chavez, for the Orlando victims. You wept for me. The people I joined. The people who will join me.

I am dead.

You learned in your final moments that homophobes look like normal people. They are not all rednecks with beer guts wearing ten-gallon hats. They are more elusive than that. They can be dressed smart. They can have friendly voices. Familiar names and faces.

A friend of a friend of a friend of a friend killed you. Someone you live near. You might have passed them in a car. In the mall. In the school hallways. It was someone that people you knew,  knew. You probably could’ve gotten their Twitter handle if you had heard their name before.

You were killed in a city that VP Pence had once stood in.

People tried to learn about your killer. Were they someone you knew? Someone who just went crazy? Someone who couldn’t handle who you held hands with?

You were too young, the local news anchors said. Your school administration said. Your mom said.

Mike Pence didn’t say anything at all.

Your friends didn’t say much. They cried. They withdrew. They wore baggier clothes. They bought switchblades. They washed “*****” and “ladyboy” off of your tombstone. They wondered about joining you, voluntarily and not.

The school newspaper’s headline: DEAD AT 17.

No one thought it would happen to you, except you. You stayed up late at night, imagining your funeral. The first thing you did in the morning was practice for your wake. Every time you left your house, you were a dead man walking.

No one  believed this more than you did.

The news anchors said it was just one of a string of murders. People said it was an isolated incident. Your friends said it was a hate crime. Your mom said it was the worst thing that  ever  happened to her.

There was no question that you were gone, even when they found you- chest jumping. There was only one thing to wonder: who was next?

Not an if, but a when.

I hope the when is  never.

All my love- to you and everyone else,

Yourself
benedictpiper Nov 2017
Switchblades, *******
more drugs equals more pain

died way too young
20 one, here ends his song

rest in peace
Lil peep  15/11/2017 +
Third Eye Candy Oct 2012
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.

this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.

and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
Third Eye Candy Feb 2012
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.

this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.

and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
Amanda Small Dec 2011
Tonight, let’s take God hostage
throw Him in the backseat
have Him show us around town

We're "those kids"
spending our afternoons learning how to do handstands on nail beds
The ones that foresee failure and live in the moment
Sit on street corners and barter for advice

Let's treat this world as an etch-a-sketch
For we are nothing more than flecks of aluminum looking for a physical reaction

More like soul mates than friends
If you fused us all together you might have one functioning addition to society

Making wishes at 11:11

Looking for beauty in air,
We breathe out to give inspiration to sonnets

Dreaming of switchblades and palm trees, we sit next to the fire
Our feet shoved in embers, burning off the memories of passing Decembers

We pass a flask of whiskey and daydreams
Keeping our mouths sealed tight around the top
I sit in darkness, soaked in Gin, I remember everything,
except all the things Tequila forgot,
I remember nothing except for the things left to rot

I forgot the darkest nights
most certainly in days light
I forgot you placed the drink in my hand,
is that how we ended up here last night?

A half empty glass we have mired our delusion dear
Do the stories just get better or do we simply fill in the blanks?
Trace our old lines again and again.
Weathered are my eyes behind a mask
It’s no place to breath but anything beats the grave.

As we recall the sunset from the shore it seems so far now
it is but a fraction of the truest sense and the most cursed fools delusion
a switchblades sting and you will remain my favorite scar?

Delusions are illusions with which we fool ourselves
with a magician’s eye and a sense of skill.
Sunsets upon a distant shore are our memories
retreating against our will.The switchblades knife is rusty and it's only hope is to scar.

Do you revere or revile me?
The empty bottles that lay between us ask for little.
I ask us for more!

Will I be your scar, the one you rub when you’re alone?
Tracing lines that cut so deep but set rigid, like stone?

Perhaps the open wound you created
when you picked apart our past won't heal as quickly,
and like the final drink we had together won't be our last.


Painted is the portrait so far from the truths we all choose to ignore
and now I simply understand are regrets than the echoes of a shared view.

When we break the heart do we find solace in a statue like existence?
We all spill the glass sometimes and a candles view dim will only reflect the shadows we've become.

Tomorrows a dream and the nightmares become a friend far more than this dance
I care no longer to stand and the ice won’t bare the weight of this ego's crash.

Let's skate the ice so thin it cracks beneath the weigh of pain.
Let's dance the tango of wilted dreams and find no shame.
Let the broken heart of shattered glass
be a reminder of our pain
but you and I, we share a common lust
we mix silently, oil and water
blending in the same frame

For from the page to the far corners of this empty floor we have made our choices
Now we understand past regrets in silent reframe

Never doubt the passion for the lack of fire it simmers a volcano underneath the illusion of emptiness and so we find are paths twisted yet always brought back to the same point.

We always speak in shadows what is known in light of day.

Our paths are gritty dirt, pretty split and intertwined
broken cobblestoned nights and sun baked days to which we can’t deny
Shadows that come to play hide the demons
we would once talk to, but threw away
when we attempted to revive a life we weren't meant for
Our answers don't lay at the bottom of the bottle
nor do they rest behind the closed door,
They itch beneath our fractured skin and spill their secrets on the floor
dripping from serrated cuts that pump a life full of ****** memories
the broken bottle stands as sentinel asking always for
One More...
Please?

Maybe we found our muse in a mutual insanity.
Laid bare the vein I question what lingers when nothing remains beneath?

This last round stands only for the night my dear for its clutches are but a moments embrace and an overcast view.
Tomorrow I can never promise what fate hands us by surprise.

Insanity is a fickle Muse
that's sips from a collapsed vein
breaking bottles against skulls
looking for an idiot to blame

Personally I think our Muse
is a Mistress that flogs well in the dark
Chaining our souls to our demons
never shining light on our demise,
Demanding we whip ourselves hoarse
prying opens the oysters
of our murky world spilling pearls of stone into a world so stark

No, the Muse of you and I is an unruly *****.
She chokes our memories and forces our pain
with a flick of her wrist
As always I have to give most credit to my friend Helen writing with me is bout like being in a tornado and with her skill she makes my work seem far better than it is Cheers Helen its always honor to pen one with you.
Andrew T Aug 2016
You painted your eyelids with green velvet and ruby red. The fractured mirror kept your insecurity at bay, as sparkle blue glitter poured all over your head from a little tin can.

We drove across the bridge, and through Shocko bottom, stopping at a nearly deserted parking lot sanctioned by an honor code. We double parked behind an Acura sedan, and waited as you snorted half a gram of Molly off your manicured fingernail into each
nostril.

You took in a deep breath, smoked a Parliament, and blew smoke out the
window. After ten minutes we shambled out of the car with our purses tucked under our armpits, and red fire dying in our eyes. When we reached the Hat Factory venue, the line disappeared from our view and we walked to the entrance where two bouncers were posted up. The tall giants marked our hands with black sharpie ink, drawing a large, bold “X” on each one.

Once inside the spacious warehouse, we ascended a white marble staircase and paid a ten dollar entry fee. Another doorman took out his marker and drew a red line, crossing through the dark black “X” that was drying on our hands. You broke off and away, going
straight to the bar. The bartender asked what you wanted to drink, and you requested water. She smiled and gave you a red solo cup filed with tap water and ice-cubes. After you thanked her, she handed you a bright pink glow stick that you wrapped around your forearm, fitting a figure 8 around your skin like a cloth sleeve.

On the stage was a young man dressed in neon colored plaid and skinny jeans. He climbed up a tall stepladder and jumped from the top, belly flopping on a beautiful African Queen bodacious gluteus Maximus, daggering deep into her soaking black spandex, the decadent bodies swimming on top of each other, stroking and staining the pink gymnastic mat with hot sweat and salt. A huge beach ball colored with red, white,
yellow, and blue pinwheel stripes sailed through the air over the balcony, smacking into a deathly thin model who was smoldering her Parliament cigarette into a clear glass
ashtray.

Mollywopped undergraduates gathered around circles where reggae artists harpooned inflatable black and white killer whales with thrift store bought switchblades.

Laying flat on his stomach was an Asian photographer snapping away with his Nikon digital SLR camera, pale hipsters in ***** black blazers and black fedoras hurling red and purple plastic assault rifles into the intense mass of worry-stricken college students carefree for the moment, gyrating and grinding to the womp-womp bass booming from rectangular speakers that squished in a disc jockey and his hardwood stand with his mixer and two turn tables. He scratched the needle along the worn edge of a battle-scarred vinyl record. His fingers zigzagged the sliders, pressed down on buttons, turned up the volume knobs.

Some hyper-maniac golden child bounced around the dance floor, sneaking up behind university sophomores mesmerized by the makeshift floodlights in the rafters blinking on and off. Conversations were made in the head, but never opened up when the girl approached. Stuck up super senior girls with heavy black mascara and matted eyelashes raised their eyebrows and swatted away ***** flies with a wave of their lotioned hand.

***** girls dress in high heels and septum piercing, their ear cartilage stabbed through by unclean metal. A rude person bumps into the Hyper-maniac golden child, causing the golden child to shove squarely into the rude person’s back. Name-calling ensues, threats fired and received, looks exchanged and bitterness rose over any other tension in the fuming room.

In the far right corner were a couple of kids making out; they’d just met.

Walking away from the fight, sidling between sweaty ugly people, the golden child swayed upstairs to the second floor, passed another bar and balcony tables, chairs, and dance platforms.
He went through a swinging door and joined a conversation between
a bunch of strangers. Wary around the golden boy, he starts practicing his standup Comedy routine, almost bombing on the first joke. Cheap jacks burned bright orange after a blue flame ignited the tapered paper end. Arms snared around the golden child’s body. Oh how nice! It was his friend from Modern Grammar class, he used to sit next to
her in the second row and copied homework answers from the blackboard with her.
She was happy.
And he was happy.
Helen Mar 2015
I sit in darkness, soaked in Gin, I remember everything,
except all the things Tequila forgot,
I remember nothing except for the things left to rot

I forgot the darkest nights
most certainly in days light
I forgot you placed the drink in my hand,
is that how we ended up here last night?

A half empty glass we have mired our delusion dear
Do the stories just get better or do we simply fill in the blanks?
Trace our old lines again and again.
Weathered are my eyes behind a mask
It’s no place to breath but anything beats the grave.

As we recall the sunset from the shore it seems so far now
it is but a fraction of the truest sense and the most cursed fools delusion
a switchblades sting and you will remain my favorite scar?

Delusions are illusions with which we fool ourselves
with a magician’s eye and a sense of skill.
Sunsets upon a distant shore are our memories
retreating against our will.

The switchblades knife is rusty and it's only hope is to scar.
Do you revere or revile me?
The empty bottles that lay between us ask for little.
I ask us for more!

Will I be your scar, the one you rub when you’re alone?
Tracing lines that cut so deep but set rigid, like stone?

Perhaps the open wound you created
when you picked apart our past won't heal as quickly,
and like the final drink we had together won't be our last.

Painted is the portrait so far from the truths we all choose to ignore
and now I simply understand are regrets than the echoes of a shared view.

When we break the heart do we find solace in a statue like existence?
We all spill the glass sometimes and a candles view dim will only reflect the shadows we've become.

Tomorrows a dream and the nightmares become a friend far more than this dance
I care no longer to stand and the ice won’t bare the weight of this ego's crash.

Let's skate the ice so thin it cracks beneath the weigh of pain.
Let's dance the tango of wilted dreams and find no shame.
Let the broken heart of shattered glass
be a reminder of our pain
but you and I, we share a common lust
we mix silently, oil and water
blending in the same frame

For from the page to the far corners of this empty floor we have made our choices
Now we understand past regrets in silent reframe

Never doubt the passion for the lack of fire it simmers a volcano underneath the illusion of emptiness and so we find are paths twisted yet always brought back to the same point.

We always speak in shadows what is known in light of day.

Our paths are gritty dirt, pretty split and intertwined
broken cobblestoned nights and sun baked days to which we can’t deny
Shadows that come to play hide the demons
we would once talk to, but threw away
when we attempted to revive a life we weren't meant for
Our answers don't lay at the bottom of the bottle
nor do they rest behind the closed door,
They itch beneath our fractured skin and spill their secrets on the floor
dripping from serrated cuts that pump a life full of ****** memories
the broken bottle stands as sentinel asking always for
One More...
Please?

Maybe we found our muse in a mutual insanity.
Laid bare the vein I question what lingers when nothing remains beneath?

This last round stands only for the night my dear for its clutches are but a moments embrace and an overcast view.
Tomorrow I can never promise what fate hands us by surprise.

Insanity is a fickle Muse
that's sips from a collapsed vein
breaking bottles against skulls
looking for an idiot to blame

Personally I think our Muse
is a Mistress that flogs well in the dark
Chaining our souls to our demons
never shining light on our demise,
Demanding we whip ourselves hoarse
prying opens the oysters
of our murky world spilling pearls of stone into a world so stark

No, the Muse of you and I is an unruly *****.
She chokes our memories and forces our pain
with a flick of her wrist
I don't know if I can truly express in words how joyful it is to write with John. His soul is deep and his dark side is a comfortable place for me to write. Again, I'm truly honoured to him for allowing me to write with him. His words take me to another world :)
Matalie Niller Sep 2012
Shroomers
silly goons
why are they around-
sketchy friends to have
these foes
smoking out in public
not a care
he carries switchblades
openly cries
makes all uncomfortable
but he sells the stuff
right?
They're nice
to his face
and he's nice
to all he meets
but deep down
all can tell
this guy is trouble:
either we'll get in jail
or he'll get killed.
Inevitable
poor guy
so sweet,
who's to believe
his stories
been through hell
maybe
or maybe he's an actor
a pastor
wanting followers
ending up
alone
because none want to be associated
with one so
wrong.
Ate a plate of whey, with the weight of the nation
on my shoulder blade, away from any destination
so underpaid, my paychecks archaic
not even a quarter to go to arcades with
it’s outrageous!
misery must be contagious
haven’t seen happy faces in ages
It may just be time to vacate
break out like rosacea to the golden gate
every swig of this whiskey brings me to a bolder state
like Colorado
i weighed my options and hopped in my Silverado
like a desperado full of bravado
with the bottle, feeling tipsy now though
singing in staccato ‘**** an intervention’  
time to get uncertain,
speed full throttle towards the intersection  
laughing and swerving
through the red light cursing
and yelling interjections
with a bottle of bourbon
horns blaring, it’s deafening
my ******* ascending
just struck a deaf person
no ***** giving
i’m out of my mind, livid
get hired and fired in 5 minutes
from any job i was given
i’m tired of living
no one even knew i existed
until i started whizzing through traffic
causing collisions,
now i’m forcing decisions
on residents w/ moral convictions
who’d rather see me oral constricted
then remain mortal in prison
got these ******* endorsing petitions
to have me executed by poison injection
shot, hung, electrified, the above all mentioned
and did i mention-
My backseat looks like a knife convention
there’s an array of switchblades i had since fifth grade’s declension
Sketching art on the desk while serving detention
some kind of wonderful, no eternal reflection
i’m reflecting as i smashed into a connection
and see my reflection in the water
as i’m descending slow motion like deception
my body is in all different positions of flexion
this is met with favorable reception
hear the crowd’s exhilaration
i’m unwilling to indulge in anymore retrospection
just waiting to hear the splash
and waves crash then….
this is my rap song
Austin Martin Jul 2016
Flying in the skying so bule and wide
diving and swooping through branches so fast,
zooming past widnows and houses and cats.

Licking their lips and ready to pounce,
claws like switchblades silce the air.

Feathers ruffled and muffled and shuffled
dirfting to the ground weaving to and fro.

-AM
Danielle K Jul 2013
The Bad Kids were the ones your mother warned you about. The kids with messy hair and ***** fingernails as well as thoughts. The ones that rode their bikes with no helmets and looked the other way when their parents called their names. But you couldn't resist, could you? You couldn't stay away from the girls who stuffed their bras and twirled cigarettes in their fingers as if they didn't have coughing fits whenever they exhaled.

They took you under their wing and promised to show you what it really meant to live. You followed, unaware of all the danger you might face. And when the girls with alcohol on their breaths took your hand and led you behind the dumpster to smother you with kisses, not once did you think about your mother's warnings. And when the boys who wore their pants low and kept switchblades in their pockets pressured you into robbing the local convenience store, you felt on top of the world, didn't you?

Everything seemed perfect then. You finally had friends that liked you for you and thought you were 'cool'. Little did you know that all they wanted from you was what you could do for them. They didn't really care about you, no matter how much you tried to convince your mother that they did. When your so-called friends finally realized that you were too good of a kid to be a part of their group, they kicked you to the curb and left you stranded. You spent day after day begging them to take you back, but they stared you down with their cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. Your mother waited for you by the door with her hands on her hips. When you walked in with your head lowered, sporting a torn bandanna and a leather jacket, she chuckled.
"I told you so."
D.K
(Can also be found here : http://www.writerscafe.org/writing/Daniellesk/1203806/ )
Nat Lipstadt Jan 2017
~~
for Danel Kessler^
~~~

in the early morning
of one's youth,
going to synagogue,
quite regularly,
a fabulous, honorably believing,
father's sole request,
more than a half-century ago

time eroded,
the fallacies of organizing a public meeting time
with a deity who seemed unavailable,
when most needed

instead we chatted
in the late of night of the early morning,
a time and places of my choosing,
for human fools do like  a setting regular,
comfort food for the divine spark within

rising/writing for early morning
poetry mass,
was a noted feature of the twofold meaning
of my latter years

where and whence, now and thence,
irreverent dialogue
tween the invisible one,
that would be me,

(can you see me now?)
and the visible one,
the you-know-who-
maker-of-custom-suited souls,

(can "you" see me now?)

*had become  
quite the regular artistes salon

witty repartee, elegiac conversations,
the residuals, in a rain drain trapped,
products collected by the light of  the early dawning,
apres skiing of an all deep-night long mournful body scoring,
poetic raconteur-ing

heaping spoonfuls of two-way mutual chastising,
paeans to the divinity in human-inherent,
regular debate team features of a
contested dark bedroom,
lit only by tablet light bright,
one if by land, two if by sea,
which the shining path to be taken by
itinerant signal comedic essays,
crafted aboard frigates and kayaks
voyaging on turgid, turbulent rivers,
mean city streets, 
swath cut by switchblades of greed,
exploring stories of the dying lands
of an aging man
fed by the streaming videos tubing down
the veins and arteries of an aging poseur

so in the sleep hours,
when I did not dream,
instead nail bled from my hands
words upon  a cold sweaty screen
from fevered fingertips,
diatribe prayers of hope ever after,
after every
dialysis of the arrogance of human nature,
removing, diabolical urea of our tainted beings,
replacing, with granular molecules of wishful thinking

then it stopped, for unknown reasons,
unbegotten creativity, chilling like
***** and champagne layabouts,
on the upper shelf of a mind's refrigerator,
always ready, just in case,
say
a new borne terrorist atrocity,
a seasonal wistfulness flu,
a cold virus blue through the heart,
love came and went with nary a
how-the-hell-did-that-happen,
even a new born babe joy
to the family est arrivé,
comld torch that heirloom/heritage seeded
inert patented creativity
into anime wakefulness

so here, so hear, I paid-pause,
conclude-delude, at 4:44am on
January Seventeenth of Two Thousand and Seventeen,
winessed by numerals white on a blackened background,
of a digital alarm clock with time, temperature and
the lunar phase of a madman
who twice was Christ told
would be a poet/story teller,
like his mother

a bountiful clock telling,
precision information detailing,
a tale that tells about nothing about a man,
who no longer requires
an alarm reminder to attend
his own moring reborning mass,
on a regular basis,

for his disheartened verbs,
runaway convict adjectives,
con-nouns, whimpering exclamations,
all on the loose,
nice sounding,
but of no earthly use

his lips like (the book of) Ruth's,
move in silent prayer,
only two can hear,
but the low priest observing,
disbelieves, thinking the piety of the poet
is just drunken emotion, not devotion,
kens not the broken poems
of the morning mass service no more,
but for
this one, irregular,
unacceptable exception
5:18am 1/17/17

^
I don't think I can write a storytelling poem much better than this. So happily gift to Denel, who serves the gods of poetry and our works with devotion, and who wrote this and inspired me

You must begin early
while it is cool and your head clear
discernment, a sharpened tine
probing the rocky darkness
for all things latent and destructive...

You must delve as close
to the origin as possible
or the **** you think eradicated
will bide its time, germinating
in the still secret ground

waiting for light
to penetrate the moist earth
waking the sprout
who voraciously pushes up and out
a curled blemish

in your otherwise carefully tended garden.
TC Apr 2013
Her eyebrows are switchblades
My unknown fate her whisper-silver-steel
Dagger breathing intricately carved nows,
Tomorrows lose meaning when her hair
Tastes like smoke fists like ashes
She looks and the signs
Are a fractal explosion
Holding all that I have been.

Won’t you laugh, won’t you frown?
Won’t your whisper-silver-steel?
This is my hand, each ridge
Means I have weathered a storm
Each valley a piece of me gouged
This is my hand, take it,
Take my tomorrow.
Divine, improvise
and whisper, just beware
not to speak out loud.
Olivia Kent Aug 2015
Living, well it's just a job.
The unpaid task of population.
A pleasant job with unpleasant consequences.
We build and procreate.
Make families.
Who in turn amass and destroy.
The woods, forests and open spaces.
The deepest oceans, the beach fronts.
With litter bugs of little ones.
Flowers gone and trembling bees.
Look at their little trembling knees
What no honey!

In the city streets full of illicit money.
Plenty of money.
Big business men in pinstriped suits.
All believe they're kings of heavy hearts.
Stiletto heels sported by women of big businesses; nobodies business but there own
Flicked into switchblades in areas where cruelty rules,
Profoundly.
Where children are still sleeping amidst remaining flower beds.
The blades on the flick knives are strawberry toned.
The shape of the world honed from simple child development to world amendment.
Each day's just the same.
(c)Livvi
Daan Apr 2014
Dogs start barking, whistling strangers,
passed, tell me that my time has come,
however young I was or fast it went numb.
Horses all over are tied to their mangers.

Two men escorting an other, grabbing
his neck-piece, rapidly and furious. Run
before the dark is here, run from stabbing
criminals and switchblades or a harmless gun.

The mist has found its way and clouds
have no secrets for this place. Droplets of
glorious rain make paces lower and a dove
hide. Some higher some fly in massive crowds.

The growth cannot be contained or laid still.
I'm held here, in a dark depression, against my will.
So very much against my will.
I am not strong enough to survive these storms.
OnwardFlame Mar 2016
Heat up coffee, paint the blues
The most painful part of all
(I thought and wrote in my mind)
Is that you turned out to be
Everything you proclaimed with such veracity
You were not.

Lets put on a play
A little fable, if you will
I'll wear the mermaid tail and crown upon my head
We are the media.

I light my arms, my lips, my chest
Hustling and bustling
Moments of quick positivity
Warning myself from the solitary moments
Where I reside, where we once resided
Someone new lays next to you.

And me too.

But I don't need it,
I don't search or long for it
As you hide behind the branches of your denial
Loss
Big man on campus, such a big man on campus
But I was always more popular than all the boys combined.

Intricate, complex, deep conversations
Over lemon whiskey lime
I continue to reinvent and play
My fingers creating and spawning
I never dreamed, but really
Yes I did.

Saturday night.
Perhaps I'll meet someone cool, interesting
Full of might and armor
Switchblades and fever
Swamp queen Marilyn Monroe
I ghost and host
All around Chicagoland.

I could write and type
About you for 6 months
Eager for it to grow into less and less
I know it will.

This too, shall pass.

(For 6 months I need you to *******.)

I know, that must be
The most painful part of all
For little ole Peter Pan you.

But I've got a hook on my left hand
A scratch over my eye
Long tentacle tendrils
Swashbuckling boots
A smile that could ****
Eyes full of smite and venom
My ship and I set sail.
Nemo Sep 2013
You've got a lot of heart, kid
It's just on the wrong side of the line
You've got a bit of soul too,
It's just hanging by your side
In a basket you rejected at 13
Hoping no one would ever see it
Under the 6 wool blankets
you believed into existence
You stole them from the supermarket
Down the street
Threw them in a bag
of rocks and switchblades
You collected with your friends
And with your hate
It all leads down a sunlit trail
To a point on the clock
where the second hand determines your death,
and if it stops, so do you.
But can you tell me,
Is it worth it?
Tyler King Jun 2016
Elegy for a life of war,
21 guns of Brixton firing an all night salute, the bitter irony not lost on anybody, as the very last gang in town tucks switchblades back into leather jacket pockets and decides that violence just can't pay the bills anymore, our brothers and our sisters and our fathers and our mothers will be expecting us home and we will carry our scars back to them with pride, we will talk about this fight for the rest of our lives, where we went wrong and where we really made the ******* feel it, and maybe one day we can win, but we have lost so much blood we owe ourselves a night of sleep at least, in the morning we will be powerful, we will be crass, we will be unstoppable, we will light cigarettes as the flames engulf London and creep across the Atlantic to tickle American nightmares, we will watch all the young punks in their new boots line up itching for the damage and the energy, we will kiss them each and every one as we send them off to die for the cause
I heard your rallying cry coming through the radio when I was a kid, and I want you to know that I will be ready any time you call, and I will come armed to the teeth
And Joe, when the riot comes, I will save you a place among the chaos
I love you forever Joe Strummer
scully Jul 2017
it's
something out of a movie scene it's
something in its own language like
art or maybe something just a little
bit better, a bit more tangible than
words on paper or paint on canvas.
i want to keep you all to myself. i
would write a hundred letters and
mail them out to sea if it meant that
i could let your heartbeat hum me to
sleep every night. if it meant i could
tell you i love you without choking,
it if meant i could sing your name into
every bad place and let it coil around
my head and stick to me like glue.
one time, someone told me that even
when people leave, art remains and it
will never break your heart as hard as
mean boys with switchblades for mouths
and claws instead of hands. and i repeat
into the silence of your bedroom,
id do it all over again, id do it all
over again,
every heart break and hurt
on my tongue, every evil hand on my
body and every single tragedy that sent
me packing and running outside barefoot
into the storm, id do it all over again
if it meant that the wind would send me to you at the end of each tornado. i used to
think that i loved art more than anything
in the whole world until i saw the
smile you kept for me after i kiss you
in the dark. i used
to write about the things i saw, museum
walls and blown glass that holds
heat and traps light under fingernails. i
used to love a world that didn't love
me back and i would write about
man-made beauty that sent artists
running for the hills and off of buildings
just for some inspiration.
now i
can't help but write sonnets about how
i am proud to love someone who is
more beautiful than any
god made, god ******
masterpiece i've ever seen.
ej Apr 2017
We were never good at talking things out,
tongues like switchblades

Never good at figuring ourselves out,
wills carved in evergreens

Your wide eyes never knew me
and your hands never touched my skin,
I know it needs to be this way so I
can get out of your mind
Star BG May 2019
Some children in High School
have tongues like switchblades.
Sharpened at home
in parents care.
They scar beautiful souls
trying to live in an often cruel world.

Children in High School
have tongues like cutters,
that should be left in doors mouth.
They cause pain by bulling
thinking they are immune to persecution.    

But they will learn,
as shields are formed by
those transgressed upon.

AS parents take control and
dole out punishment teaching them to
  leave their tongue bolos firearms inside.

AS people awake to not tolerate
their insensitivity and ignorance.
After all...we are all one. We are all gifted.
inspired from Mack. A gifted poet. Thanks
zebra Feb 2021
earth wakes like a blinking marble
worm cake
ravine of ravenous hunger
breathing bowl of fruit
and black hole cauldron
of spit and sediment
where life grows like debt

disembodied skyward souls
who's haloed ground
a funeral coif
of etched intaglio grim headstones
that remain arcane symbols
of refuse underworlds
sunken under black beds
shaped like centuries of tragedy
in moldering graves
and dusty trailer park archaeologies

cosmologies eclipse
open pleasures and sultry winds
that form charades of architype golden eyes
impregnating us with dreams
like animated tarot cards
while body-caged man-o-spheres
on apocalyptic mountain sides
crawl and claw in endless nights to thrive
with every breath and squalid gasp
                                *
we propel ourselves through this life
by sacrificing the present for the future
in arduous labors of discord
and glowering autopsies
of smoke & blood
until we remain
unable to live with ourselves

i vaguely remember
traveling disembodied
like a new sun
past empty hulled tenements
where the living dead
perform soap opera cameos
as sliding doors
open and shut
like switchblades
on withered clanking subways
of shuffling bones
all the way to Hades

time bruised and beaten
bedlam of age
we each fall forgotten
grey as pulping zombies
shuttering downwards
from primordial nuclides
of contagion and death

gossiping Doppelgangers
on tesseract winds
witnessed energized prodigies
teaching the dead to construct dreams
with drum stick rhythms
and flutes of savage craving
in meta whirls
that mobilize astral spitfires
faster than tachyons
in a forever extravagant next world
monster infinity
Styles 12 Aug 2017
It felt good
when switchblades
opened up
in the bite of a wolf.

Knocking on your door
I should have known
your response.

Wandering away from home
so young,

what did I know?

Other than a million magic breezes,
or a haunted taste of beauty without claws.

What could I see skipping
through the dark?

Fireflies like stars with wings glittering all of night, enthralling
my wonder, making it grow.

How did I feel when they circled all around me?

Choking on tears,
swallowed by hate
not knowing blood would follow.

What did I learn from your ruthless run?

Leaping wild through branch, drinking from a poison lake,

using the fang,
licking my claws clean
for another night hunt.

Taming you took practice,
I had to search with
everything I had
in order to bless you
and set you free.

Tell me wolf.

How does it feel now knowing I am hunting you?
Third Eye Candy Feb 2020
dem streets ain’t know yo name
just be out there like hunger on parade
all Mardi coup de grace, with spiked tea-
and neon giblets… all draped over hot coals
and incandescent funk. with meter maids
and pidgeons-
sweeping thunder under rugs
everybody know
ain’t your real
Hair.

dem streets be like consequences
marching with a band of thieves. tuba prodigies adagio
with oily smoke and cauliflowers marinading
in umami and soiled alters.
switchblades are like optional candy.
sharkfins in buttermilk
more like an actual
Wednesday.

dem streets be soaking bullets in Kopi Luwak
chuffing pearl dust off a subway chit
while staggering home from a dust-up
at Berkley.
we keep telling ourselves
to tell ourselves something
but forget to remember
how to forget
about it

out loud.
Gabriel Aug 2020
I’m feeling the air on the thick of my tongue,
and it’s summertime -
it’s summertime, now, and I think it’s a Sunday,
so I’m going to smoke that Cuban cigar
in the quiet, against the sunlight.

I’m going to wait until the sun comes down,
and then the light is all mine to drink in;
not one, but millions of stars share the glory.
I’m blinking it in, like this will be forever,
and there’s something in me that wonders
why I’ve waited so long to live.
Why I always let the light filter
through stained glass,
and why I believed them when they told me
that staring directly at the sun
would blind me in forgiveness.

Why does forgiveness have to hurt?

I’m wondering if I can ever forgive myself
by kissing switchblades
and licking the flames from votive candles,
or if there must be an easier way
to do all of this.
But if I cling too much to what happiness could be,
then I’ll never know how to forgive myself
for not having it sooner;
they want me to live a good life,
but I am steeped in sin
and waiting to burn.

This - this thing -
is far too much about what they want.
Far too much against
Cuban cigars and Sunday mornings
in bed, and grabbing hold of life
with fists and hair and saying
“take this, all of you,
and roll with it.”

I’m paving my own narrative,
looking at barefoot beachfront walks
like altars, and I know -
I ate the fruit, and now I know,
that a long line of commercialism
will fool you into thinking
that the light at the end of the tunnel
means something.
From a collection of poetry I wrote for a creative writing portfolio in second year of university, titled 'New Rugged Cross'.

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