"tangling" poems
In a wakeful contradiction,
It lays fact between my fiction.
Tangling subatomics,
It unravels, as its tricks spin
Deeper, toward the outward . . .
It won’t let up,
Until I give in.
Over matter, lay my mind . . .
I tell a lie to pass the time . . .
But there’s no reason nor a rhyme —
Less still, a purpose?
I search for something
To remind my mind
That there is truth,
That isn’t worthless.
But as always, failure appears
In a sort-of amnesiac continuity,
And my reality lies to my own mind,
Just as well
As it succeeds in its futility.
With destruction as its manifest,
It tells me that I stand my tallest
Upon two buckled knees.
Just as faith will find one’s doubt —
A search within has left without.
It seems that an answer, once sought out,
Will be left lacking its question.
My truth divides itself,
As the product
Of infinite misdirection.
I try to substitute a reason, for a rhyme.
But with no lies left to pass the time . . .
I swallow a dose of ignorance.
It goes down
Smoother than the truth.
In a war that started with a truce,
This world betrayed my faith
To show me:
That I'm only tall enough
Once I’ve been
cut
down
slowly.
A pill too large to swallow,
I think I’m choking on myself
Or the irony of asking,
“How could I be so careless?”
Here I stand, Barely standing,
Consumed almost entirely
By my own dry-heaving self-awareness
Each night I am left to fight the fears
That my nightmares create;
I’m still running from my past,
Yet, haunted by my fate.
They walk beside me always,
Shadowing wholeheartedly —
They exist as a duality,
Both “apart from,”
And “a part of” me.
In truth,
These ghosts have taught me very little,
Aside from what I hate.
But, I've come to learn, not to fear
The forceful hands of fate.
For, I shudder not, at the thought of destiny,
Or the inevitable in time . . .
Instead, I fear the eventuality of the choices
That were solely,
And entirely, mine.
I fear that my will may be
Of enough influence, alone . . .
That fate itself may collapse
Beneath decisions like my own.
Or that I, myself,
Might be constructing
What destruction I will find
Among my shattered spirits
And convictions,
In these depths, to which I climb.
Jul 3, 2018
Jul 3, 2018 at 9:43 PM UTC
TO: romeo
you could’ve loved me but you didn’t and that kind of ******
TO: romeo
i wish we could go back to when we were still possible
TO: romeo
i’d rather be just friends with you than nothing
TO: romeo
see, we only worked when the gravity wasn’t on
TO: romeo
see, i could only love you from 5000 miles away
and we’ll always have the last city we trampled through
TO: romeo
see, i loved you, on other continents and always at the wrong time
TO: romeo
see, i’m not sure i loved you because now looking at you is like disconnect
and maybe i just wanted you because i felt so small,
without a hand to hold under
the heavy weight of history crushing in around us
TO: romeo
see, you make me feel like i’m eleven again,
listening to “you belong with me” by taylor swift and wondering
is that what love’s really like?
not realizing that the girl in the video was wondering the same thing
TO: romeo
so “if you’re wondering if i want you to;
i want you to, i want you to, i want you, dude, i always do.”
TO: romeo
i can’t listen to weezer without thinking of you
TO: romeo
i have this bad habit of tangling up the things i love with people i’m trying to,
i have this bad habit of ruining them that way
TO: romeo
i want custody of our song back
i want you out of the baseline, hiding underneath the notes
Dec 5, 2016
Dec 5, 2016 at 11:16 PM UTC
Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.
You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.
Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,
burying lamps.
Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!
Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,
taciturn miller,
night falls on you face downward, far from the city.
Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.
The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,
running free, mad, in the sea-spray.
The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.
Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.
You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane
of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now.
Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.
Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.
It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire.
And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.
Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?
Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.
Hour that is mine from among them all!
Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.
Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.
Shaking of all the roots,
attack of all the waves!
My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.
Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude.
Who are you, who are you?
14.4k
Since the last time you touched me...
All I want is to feel your hands on my skin.
On my face and through my hair.
Feeling your body heat up against mine.
Taste barely contained anticipation on your breath.
Smell the comfort that you emanate.
Drinking the passion from your lips.
I want you...
Anchoring me down,
Vulnerability plunging into my eyes.
Stealing the air from me.
Swallowing the noises you incite.
Tangling feet and twisted fingers.
Embracing and submerging in honey junction.
Just the sound of your tenor,
Erupts a burn that speeds throughout my veins.
Heart stuttering and dizzy and trembling,
All from the presence of you.
Wanting to lose myself with you.
Forget all reason...but then what is reason?
Since the last time you touched me...
I long for the next.
© NDHK
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 3:45 AM UTC
Clayton
How I know you
Paternal parenting
DNA infused
Carbon contribution, to my physique
Father
In everything
My skin, eyes toes,
Unfortunately; inside my mouth
Spitting plaster-walled
Copy-paste personality
The same
Intimately
Close-dangerously
Different
Me a bold-faced fraction of ill abated love
Something that didn't work out
Photocopy
Blond-blasphemy of useless flesh
Reminder of her
Mom
Enough!
Teeter tottering
Tip-Toe tangling opinion
Excuses
Words fermented
Rotting-rigor
I know you.
Slit-eyed palefaced ****** of bigot ideas
Bearing pronged poker
Clicking glinting-clawed finger fondling fake religion
Suppressing supplement thought
********
God's love the good life
Living a life to be proud of
Excuse me!
For not being as I am "supposed" to be
Eatting rancid lies
Your reality relative
To kiss-ass preferred siblings
Who like the taste of ****
What you shovel
Hung on lipsucking harlot, hinged hip hung-over
Descending oppressidly upon willing wanton will of man
Letting cracked-cackled toothed
Field Gap-smile
Decide your next move
I know you
I see what you push into hidden corners
The bias, nasty film of your character
Under whitecollar shirttails
Citizen, Patriot
Americas American
I know you
Your oppression
Not new
As underhanded and seedy as it was
And still is
I know you
As much as I'd like not too.
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
Tim O'Brien had the right idea
about carrying people and ideas;
we all have experiences that live within us
like a stain on our grey matter.
I carry with me every insult hurled at me,
caught by my web of sensitivity;
I lift them onto my shoulders,
my back creaking as I trudge on.
My insecurities are shackles at my ankles,
the chains tangling themselves and chafing my legs;
my knees knock and pop and shake,
my back creaks and groans.
The ghosts and spirits of the self-departed
dance their ethereal ballet about my soul
and howl their eerie opera through the night,
begging for forgiveness and understanding.
The heaviness of the future rests
inside the caverns of my cranium,
latching on to my thoughts
and chipping at my hopes.
Past loves plague our emotions
and rest in the deepest corners of our hearts,
reminding us of who we once were
and asking us what could have been.
A cloud of sadness condenses in my body,
little drops of dejection slide down my lungs.
My chest constricts and grows heavy
and pointlessly hopes to see the sun.
Everyone together carries the weight of the world,
but I'm not sure what is heavier:
the mass of the planet,
or the things its people carry.
Aug 6, 2015
Aug 6, 2015 at 5:01 PM UTC
Snarling, fangs shining, moonlight illuminating ferocious beasts,
limbs tangling, separating, lunging, caught within deadly battle.
Scarlet streams trickle from trees gouged like the bellies of their prey,
canine fiends bare their teeth, their growls like black thunder,
facing these soulless demons smeared with the blood of many.
Bodies drop with screams still rattling inside their rib cages,
demons devouring with rage that can never be quenched,
their hearts ripped from their chests, veins slit,
arteries torn mercilessly out of still warm flesh.
Creatures created from pure insanity that breed nothing but anger,
fear and despair, children's corpses torn apart, their skulls shattered.
Snapping of jaws still slimed with internal juices,
bits of raw flesh clinging to hair that shimmers under the blood red moon.
Hissing from the shadows, knotted into frenzied war,
animated corpses beside twisted bodies of wolves,
wounds gushing ruby tears, still pulsing organs shredded.
Flames rush from overturned fires,
shrieking forms, torches wavering through darkness.
Pale beings gather for the finale,
blood spatters across ground, staining everything within it's reach.
Only two are left, facing each other in the coming dawn.
Heaps of creatures litter this burned, bloodied ground, none alive.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 5:05 AM UTC
myopic frames on a stern temple remind me that once he too wandered recklessly and felt ardent
empowered by time on his sleeve
there was nothing he couldn't conquer and nothing standing between the open air and breathing it in
i suppose the difference here is i grab the breath of air and hold it in my pocket for when i stop being so nervous
marshmallow heart
the road only goes one way and the streetlights hover and coil eternally, you can never meet the epilogue
a drive-thru drink in one hand while you feel your hair tangling into a mess of a beehive, the one that likes to unwind in soft tendrils on a weak pillow
heart racing for the constant fueling of a near empty tank telling you to go further this time, this time
time isn't yours
holding in a cough
i too have tried to drown waterbugs
my cheek pressed against the tiles of a kitchen floor, hand perched languidly as my fingers make circles in the tiny swamp i made in the middle of the room
but i forget laying there until i hear my own soul walk in with bare feet addressing the elephant in the room, the one that hasn't left since i was sick with bronchitis that winter years ago
and i want to tell her to come here, to come back inside myself so it doesn't feel so cold this season of frost but she brushes me off with the temperament of a child
"i don't exist, i never did" the words dawdle back and forth from her back molars to her incisors
and i remember when i felt like i was dying when i hopped from one state to the next but realizing a little to late that if i were to go back my dread would jump on the back of my shoulders and force me to look it into it's shiny face and show me the mild nuisance of what it means to be alive
so my soul closes the door and i hear the keys rattle and i myself sink into the warm arms of someone i spent my entire life with
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 12:32 AM UTC
What saddens me horribly,
is that we spend too much time tangling ourselves up in our own insecurities.
Looping it around our throats and strangling our souls.
Maybe we need to start carrying around a mental knife...
Start cutting ourselves free before it’s too late.
The slow and painful process of watching a beautiful persons heart deflate from the negative needles that they turn on themselves, is becoming too common and too difficult to see.
Please, know that you're loved,
that you're unique,
that you're beautiful and smart.
Know that you're worthy of kindness.
Especially from yourself.
-Sincerely, A Stranger
Feb 6, 2017
Feb 6, 2017 at 11:25 AM UTC
Ruby red slippers, rich with passionate love
for you, dear state, as I search your land,
grazing the colors, the life, and the mystery
of weeds choking gravestones, tangling the dead.
But you, dear state, yourself is so gentle.
Kansas, you stretch to ****** my curls;
to stroke my tender cheek with a
flock of sunflowers, blooming vivid gold and
a mizzle of musicality, too high, too loud for me.
Your screams of country overwhelm me.
Why you, dear state, never treat us to
tangles of concrete nor mazes of glass?
Kansas, your heaven gives me migraine.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 9:59 PM UTC
There're footprints trailing down
To the Earth core inside
Some heading up the h i l ls
I n v i s i b l e o n e s
lying around in the atmosphere
and stuck inbetween seas
Now, I tell you they're all mine
Darkness on the edge of town
Tangling with sand on seaside
All o f them glow and thrill
Just a bit b e t t e r than Sun
When you feel funeral my dear
Follow my trails don't miss
Find Heaven by all the signs
Be afraid of those hounds
This is just where they reside
Living with rots of their kills
Ready to run
But don't worry, don't show fear
Never do they hiss
Just running in lines
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 2:58 AM UTC
iloveyou,
you say, tangling up the three words in one breath.
i love you more, i tell you.
no, iloveyoumore, you say.
i love you more than bees love flowers, i say,
and you tell me that bees love pollen
and that youlovememore.
but i love you,
more than bees love flowers and yes, pollen
and i love you more than birds love to sing
more than wishes love stars
more than dreams love sleep
i love you more
than grass loves rain
and rain loves the earth
and the earth loves trees
and the trees love the wind.
i love you more
than sunflowers love sun,
more than the sun loves the sky,
more than the sky loves blue,
more than blue loves the sea.
i love you
ilove you
iloveyou like youloveme.
Oct 19, 2019
Oct 19, 2019 at 5:57 PM UTC
I can’t help but wonder if we have crossed paths
Over and over again, tangling each hello
Catching a hint of mischief when we first bumped into each other
And how easy it was for us to slip into
Conversations, plotting to take on the world
But first things first, we have to catch the moon
And hold the stars ransom in our back pockets
I swear we were pirates singing sea shanties
And conquering cities, but now we settle
For late night dance parties, and one shot, two shot, three
And sure, we are invincible, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our stories layering, life long friends
Or maybe arch nemeses, and each time
Tagging out a new adventure
Where we are chasing after each other
I swear we were renegades, young rebels
Questioning authority and pushing boundaries
Now, we collaborate artistically
Broadcasting in a world of social media, one shout, two shout, three
And sure, we are strong, and I can’t help but wonder
If we have crossed paths over and over again
Our history repeating, kindred spirits
Or maybe pieces of the same soul, and each time
We meet, we find a part of ourselves
We had forgotten
Jan 28, 2021
Jan 28, 2021 at 1:29 AM UTC
Rusted trailers file in,
carrying pop-up roller coasters
and tilt-a-whirls. A tall man, face splashed
with paint, trips in oversized shoes.
His drawn lips smile, but teeth do not show.
A ferris wheel spins in the distance, time
measured in each rotation, the carnival's only clock.
Perched on a saddle, a small tot
rides a stallion, tangling her curled fingers
in its mane, cotton candy stained palms
shaking the reins. The steed chained
to a central post, muzzled in silence,
frozen like his carousel brothers.
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 12:22 PM UTC
When I was three
And my mother brushed my hair
She parted it carefully
And braided it equally.
Two fat plaits
Hung as even as my stare.
When I was nine
And the hairbrush was my foe
Wild curls entwined
Personality defined.
Hair tangling
Faster than it could grow.
When I was fifteen
And hair hit the salon floor
I just wanted to be seen
So dyed it pink, blue and green.
Hair chopped short
Little girl no more.
Now I'm twenty-three
No longer in the nest
My parting is messy
And my braids escapee.
A hairy reminder
That mother knows best.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 5:43 PM UTC
there's something about you
that buries itself in my chest
growing its roots somewhere deep inside
blooming and blossoming
reaching and tangling around my veins
wrapping its vines around my bones
spreading its pollen through my bloodstream with every gentle heartbeat
seeping through my fingers and toes
crawling up my spine and flowering in my thoughts
I carry you everywhere
and as I fall asleep at night,
I think about the way it feels
to have you next to me
May 5, 2022
May 5, 2022 at 1:39 PM UTC
I like the fog during the night
To smell the ice cold and feel the cold
To see that white cloud between my skin
Tangling my brown hair
I like to smell the fog and how he makes a sinister air
To look and feel that breeze covering the old trees and autumm leaves
I like the fog and to feel the cold entering my troat
To say that it reminds me of winter
I like the contrast between the foggy white and the city's light
But I love the scent of fog
- d.a
Nov 12, 2015
Nov 12, 2015 at 11:57 AM UTC
I cannot keep watering dead flowers.
I cannot keep tangling with powers
Way beyond my ken.
I cannot keep hoping for more.
I cannot keep fighting this war
And losing all over again.
As much as I miss you, dear,
I cannot keep watering dead flowers,
Not even an IV can save them now.
Why I'm still trying is unclear,
But I've been giving CPR for hours,
Trying to save this somehow.
I cannot keep watering dead flowers.
I cannot keep tangling with powers
Way beyond my ken.
I cannot keep hoping for more.
I cannot keep fighting this war
And losing all over again.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 10:29 PM UTC
My words wrapped in a chain
Restricting my choked refrain
Fear the words i say
Cutting deep into your way
The Warm blood spills
Take it away before it refills
The blood of the fearful,the blood of the sheep
It's for them we weep
You are leeches that **** out our blood
Leaving us in **** and mud
Were taking it all back
Before it turns black
Tangling us in your web of lies
We see through your disguise
We know what you are
You've made it this far
The grass will still grow
And the wind will still blow
But you will be gone and forgotten
Dead decayed and rotten
A new day will dawn
We will stay and you will be gone
Oct 21, 2010
Oct 21, 2010 at 6:34 PM UTC
Sentry to the Pink Lady’s Slipper, protector
of the delicate orchid. Her plum breath speaks
in smoke curls that travel upward, a green screen that
paints a wet woodland scene. Once you slipped
her on for size on a moonless night.
Can you still feel the *****
of her bite? Cup the cool water
with both hands and watch as it trickles between your
knuckles. Use them for falling trees and
blowing bubbles into mountains. Make brightly burning fires
that lick
the undertow tangling your feet, drawing whiskey
from your lungs. Her pink slipper waits. Go
cover your body with dust.
Let her gather your crumbling yellow into her moccasin
and carry you above the leaf-covered ground to
a secret strawberry garden. Smell her red
and taste her white freckled with seeds in your mouth.
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 12:00 AM UTC
If I had just ten minutes alone with you.
Oh, all the things I would do.
I would trace the lines that define your perfect figure with my tongue,
Leaving tiny lipstick stains down your abdomen.
I would kiss you softly and tenderly,
while tangling my fingertips in your hair.
I'd make you moan with pleasure,
While our tongues fight for dominance in each others mouths.
I'd hold you close,
Our bare skin touching.
Entangling our limbs together,
While tiny droplets of sweat form on your forehead.
Craving every touch
All these things I would do,
If I had just ten minutes alone with you.
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 12:08 AM UTC
I'd like to be lovely to you, again
I'd like to matter to you again
I'd really like to receive flirty texts from you again
I'd really like to be the girl you tell your friends about again
But you've changed
And I hate your friends
I'm no lovely, you were lying
And as pretty as the lie was, I'm done with your lies
The truth is, I never really mattered to you
Girls don't matter to you, you play us like we can't be hurt
I don't even want to matter to you, because you're messed up dude
You're a liar, and a cheater, and faker, and an *******
You are fake sorry, fake understanding, fake trustworthy, fake caring,
You are fake.
I don't need your ****
I have enough of my own
I really believe, by the end of this year, I can be happy again
Like I was two years ago
And the only real way for me to achieve that
Is to not get mixed up with you again.
I'm not tangling my emotions in your words
The truth is
I WILL NEVER BE HER
So don't waste my time
Stop texting me
Stop telling me you're sorry, you're lying
Stop pretending you knew me
And stop believing me when I say I'm fine
Goodbye.
Just know, I don't have a particularly high opinion of myself
But that being said,
even though I'll never be her
She will never be me
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 9:48 PM UTC