the clay patio was baking
just hot
enough for the dough to rise and crisp
and for you to spread your blanket
in the sun
perfect for a picnic with the kids
and observing the man on that really tall bicycle

it’s times like these when you think
why doesn’t everyone just shut off
and bake in the sun
with a glass of peach tea and a pair
of well behaved kids
who share life like it was their job to love
each other
their mother
dad
and especially
the old dog

even the young lovers get jealous
as their gaze from the park to
your front patio
witnessing that there is something more to love
than just body heat
chocolate-dipped strawberries
and jazz clubs
that children grow like spinach flowers
in mellow
medallion
heat
until the training wheels come off
and they feel earth’s balance for the first time

and the peaches!
they shackle the branches
like juicy bombs
and you decide that
mothers are like fruit
unbruised
unwashed
and perfect
something that God
herself
keeps in her finest
crystal bowl and replants
in the summer

mother
sister
friend
shoot me some of that peach tea
you’re drinking
that sun you are soaking
that air you are breathing
the world needs more of you
and you deserve the last taste
of its summer light

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air—The edge
cuts without cutting
meets—nothing—renews
itself in metal or porcelain—

whither? It ends—

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry—

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica—
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses—

The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end—of roses

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness—fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal’s
edge and the

From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact—lifting
from it—neither hanging
nor pushing—

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space

How do you explain that your bones are the coal used as breeding ground for a fire? How do you explain that there's a fire raging inside of you, setting every inch of your body and thoughts ablaze? Like a wildfire destroys the forest, this pain is knocking me down and smoldering me.
But how can you say you're in ashes when your body is unbruised?

No collapsed limbs, no heaving lungs, no unconscious mind -only puffy eyes and a tired tongue?

How do you explain that the tightness one gets in their throat upon hearing unexpectedly terrible news is a common feeling of yours - a side effect of the blood that runs through all of your veins? That even though you know you can do something, the words 'you physically cannot' are flooding your brain like a drug and poisoning every choice you try to make?

How do you explain that every move you make feels like walking on a tightrope that seems to never end. How each step sends a shiver down your spine; trying not to fall, trying to finish the task, trying to stop the anxiety -but you can never reach the end because your destination keeps switching from left to right despite the progress you've made.

How do you explain that you're dying when everyone see's you as perfectly alive?

NJ2016

i am lonely in a
body that has wasted
my skin to paper stretched
against collar bones and
my ribcage won't stop
trembling

i am isolated in a
body which hyperventilates
when it nears all things
sweet or salty or sour
or good because the weight
wrestling in the pit of my
stomach suffocates me

i am alone in a body
that aches for untouching,
unbruised skin and hair so
thick it'll never fall again but
it cannot give that to me any
longer because that would
mean i cannot be sick

i am in a body
that refuses to love me back

I realize  that when you asked me to  feed your two calicos
while vacationing, I wasn’t given title to  pluck four large
tomatoes  from  your perfectly trained  vines.

The tomatoes were Christmas red, unbruised
and husky. It seemed criminal and unfair
to my palate not to devour them
by dusk the day I stole them;

in my shallow defense
both of your cats
repeatedly hissed
at me when fed.

You came to me flawless
Skin smooth and unbruised
And my arms were painted
Scars from the past exposed

And I tried to assure you
That you would come away clean
That love doesn’t hurt
That love isn’t mean

But you walked away decorated
One arm black, one arm blue
Tattoos from clinging too tightly
To someone who wanted to run

The sharp words we threw around
Dug deep into your skin
Leaving permanent lines
Etched into your porcelain arms

Yet, I’ve spotted you lately
With skin smooth and unbruised
You hide your scars from the world
With an innocent smile

The rose is obsolete
but each petal ends in
an edge, the double facet
cementing the grooved
columns of air—The edge
cuts without cutting
meets—nothing—renews
itself in metal or porcelain—

whither? It ends—

But if it ends
the start is begun
so that to engage roses
becomes a geometry—

Sharper, neater, more cutting
figured in majolica—
the broken plate
glazed with a rose

Somewhere the sense
makes copper roses
steel roses—

The rose carried weight of love
but love is at an end—of roses

It is at the edge of the
petal that love waits

Crisp, worked to defeat
laboredness—fragile
plucked, moist, half-raised
cold, precise, touching

What

The place between the petal’s
edge and the

From the petal’s edge a line starts
that being of steel
infinitely fine, infinitely
rigid penetrates
the Milky Way
without contact—lifting
from it—neither hanging
nor pushing—

The fragility of the flower
unbruised
penetrates space

dear dumb deer,
gentle though I am
I wish the worst for you

When you jolted my car,
you set fire to a flame that
even Smokey can't contain

Like a stone cast in water,
your effects reverberated
loud through my house

your innocence
your ignorance
caused me many tears

cosmetic costs the least of my cares
You hit me way worse
echoes of him curse, curse, curse.

As crazy as it might be
This callus is a beautiful thing to me
What's an ego to go unbruised?
What's a heart left unabused?

I didn't get this hardened shell
From concrete, glass, or fires of Hell
Why dwell on the knell you gave my cerebral gel.
I'm under someone else's spell

My palace with this Alice
Unshared with such malice
As what gave me this callus
It should be just now, us

I can say with a sense of pride
I needn't abide by a bride
Whos the great divide on each side
Without intention, will break my stride

I won't be denied
This emotional high tide
This woman which I confide
My side, a guide astride this distance ride

This callus thick of scorned love
Glad you're not what I'm thinking of.

The old and feeble worship and rave
Trying to find more souls to save
For if they can save one from the pyre
They'll surely subvert their own hell's fire

Dismissing a past strewn with humanity and sin
All the lies forgotten, so empty within
Judging all others, since they found their path
Do they have enough stones, they're doing the math

For they will not leave a sinner unbruised
Bashing their lives, verbally abused
Telling them all they're feeling is wrong
Dressing it pretty in verses and song

Hypocrites profound, come one and come all
The louder they boast the harder they fall
Pride in beliefs is still a cardinal sin
When I get to Hell, I'll welcome you in

Wrapped in a blanket of blue
steadily breathing
blissful to the world
How I envy
So full of joy
of all the goodness the world has to offer
Unscathed and unbruised
My only wish is to bask
in the light of the world
that took you in with loving arms
and held you close under the stars
so that I may be so lucky
as to shine with you

she asks me why i keep looking behind
closed doors
and i don't want to say but
i keep looking for something unbruised
or a distant feeling that's been renewed
or i don't know

a past memory. maybe an old life.

she asks me why i keep looking behind
closed doors
and i struggle to say that i miss the past.
that everything i lost was really all i had and
i miss it. i miss them.
i miss every time someone made me genuinely smile

i miss the times where people bothered to try.

she asks me why i keep looking behind
closed doors
when i know there's nothing of substance
and i don't want to say that
i find out a new disappointing fact every time
i peak behind that door,
an outstanding opportunity to break my heart,
an old smile that feels like happiness when i tend
to revisit,
and a part of me believes my care could revive it.

that's why i keep checking behind closed doors.

that's why ill beat the door down, until i can see right through it.

-behind closed doors

conceptcollection

Grasping my breath, over time
time, is so slow and I just want to
see you
I just want to
touch you
I just want to
breathe you

Looking into the screen, that are mirror images of us
Is she there? Is she looking for me? Is she real?
I could feel her thoughts, filled with passion and full of excitement
heart pounding, wanting and yearning to dig my nails
into her unbruised skin
wanting and knowing she would be at my feet in heart beat

whatever is damaged, I will heal
because we're all damaged in some way

It was told to me that maybe we're all alone for a reason
That there's something wrong
blood related family, it was us three
single hearts with drifting minds

Now I could say, that lonely person
Isn't me
and I just found
the key

The flames that melted innocence
Ravaged my soul uncontrollably
Doused by aspiration of purity
If only I could be clean again
If only I was
Unbeated
Unbruised 
Unscathed
Doused Flames
Melted Innocence

Grief sees grief,

sorrow spoken
in tear drops
and swollen
red eyes.

Grief speaks to grief,

in holding hands,
hugs and
heartfelt conversations.

Grief cannot cure grief,

or see sorrows removed,
flesh unbruised,
and the abused
reborn.

Grief can ease grief,

tension softened
in the presence
of those
who share the essence
of similar
experiences.

I imagine things that do not exist
And to those that do, I am blind
As a spew of caustic apprehension
Pervades through my mind.

I am possessed with a fear of losing
A thing much near and dear,
Or having lost it already
Or, more fiercely, not having had it ever.

Losing it would affect me
And make sour my present,
But not having had it threatens me more
Stripping off my very essence.

Did I hallucinate then
If I indeed lived in a delusion
And thought of holding the thing
So firmly in my possession?

Or am I being paranoid now
In making mountain of a molehill
When I still possess the thing with me
Unblemished, unbruised, and whole?

an edge, the Double facet
becomes a gEometry--
but each petAl ends in
    But if it enDs
but love is at an End--of roses
              cementiNg the grooved
                       colD, precise, touching
               columnS of air--The edge
Crisp, worked to deFeat
     cuts without cuttIng
                            edGe and the
                           figUred in majolica--
        from it--neitheR hanging
    From the petal's Edge a line starts
    glazed with A rose
                              infiniteLy fine, infinitely
                                      It Is at the edge of the
itself in metal or porcelaiN--
          laboredness--fragilE
    makes copper roses
         meets--nothing--renews
           nor pushing--
         penetrates space
                       petal that love waits
             plucked, moist, half-raised
              rigid penetrates
      Sharper, neater, more cutting
so that to engage roses
  Somewhere the sense
               steel roses--
            that being of steel
          the broken plate
The fragility of the flower
           the Milky Way
The place between the petal’s
        The rose carried weight of love
       The rose is obsolete
        the start is begun
     unbruised
    What
whither? It ends—
without contact--lifting

[fragment]**
I can not breath,
Unless your lips, of black & blue,
Are pressed against me.
My pale skin can meet your once unbruised skin,
And maybe I will breath again.
So, place your tainted, blood-stained lips against my clean, pure ones, and
Pull me into your damaged world

My heart is ticking like a bomb,
Beaten like a dusty rug,
Still ticking like a bomb.
Unbroken, unwavering
But ticking like a bomb
Not unbruised
Not yet fatally wounded
Still  ticking like a bomb
My heart is....
Strong but not hard.
And ticking like a bomb
Safe in its own discontent.
My heart is...ticking like a bomb.

~for my students

Beginning a new semester
once again I encounter
bright, thoughtless faces
staring at me as if
I were a curious, irrelevant
antiquity from a museum
they don't wish to visit.
The earth is fresh to them
and they are unbruised,
for a little while yet,
by the unforgiving realities
that life must provide.
I shuffle papers and make
solemn pronouncements
about the beauty of learning.
They yawn and ******
the ubiquitous cell-phones
I have so cruelly
ordered turned off.
I no longer envy them
their youth or their future.
They remind me of pigeons
ready to be plucked.

I am tempted to tell them
the  necessary brutal truths:
half their marriages
will end in anger and divorce,
others will drag on in despair;
there is no such thing
as true love forever and ever;
the jobs they dream of will
mostly be empty and boring
and obsolete in short order;
the corporations and the usurers
have already captured the world;
that the earth is poisoned
and dying a slow, certain death;
how there are no more secrets
and the government may now legally
read their texts and emails,
listen to their conversations
and learn down to the last moan
even how and with whom
they make love;
that there will be more
than just rumors of war
and they will have to pay for them
in blood, loss and treasure;
that God is otherwise occupied
murdering children in the middle-east;
that we have utterly failed them.

But I don't, of course.
They wouldn't hear me if I tried.
******, weeping holocaust
that it has always been,
the world must be rediscovered
by every shiny, new generation.
Mentally wishing them luck,
I do my job, stick to the syllabus,
say a prayer for their possibilities,
turn it all over to them, smile,
and continue to pretend.
  - mce

Under unfounded skies;
My soul has been buried alive.
A dreadful fear creeps in,
as the treading sound comes closer.
My bones can barely make a move to hide.
The dark creature dwells out every night,
in hunt for skin.
He prowls in;
With the hunger of flesh in his eyes.
His cursed fingers,
Burning my skin.
Not a place left unbruised from the greed of his pleasure.
My Soul bleeds out,
as he thrashes himself into me.
The pain ebbs to my bone
Giving me a wailful cry.
It keeps dragging me down every time I make an attempt to climb out o' this hell.
If only you could listen;
You would hear the crashing pieces of my Hope.
A Hope to escape my Destined World.


           ***** for several nights.
  I'm the voice of a 3 year old girl.

It dropped down on my forehead
I saw crimson red.
Red like the roses that burned back then.

I couldn't fathom the reason why
Why she didn't say goodbye
I could only scream and cry.

I sat there unmoved
Like the books in the library unused
Decades unbruised.

I felt like I was forever frozen
In a silence unbroken
Why was there no commotion?

I only heard a ringing
Like I heard back at the beginning
It was nothing but chilling.

Her eyes were dead and gone
Like the daffodils that whithered at dawn
Why did she have to whither alone?

I do recall sensing pain in her voice
There was no rejoyce
Why was this her only choice?

As the timeless seconds pass by
I saw a light that could only amplify
I heard a familiar ringing,I could only comply.

I woke up with tears in my eyes.
I realize as I slowly rise:
It was, again, the dream that never dies.

The dream haunted me as far as I recall
On every night with rainfall,
I only want it to stop once and for all.

I don't care about it's wrenched meaning!
Since it started leaking,
My sanity took quite the beating.

Playing with my crimson red hair,
I start reluctantly prepare
Time to start the day I declare.

Two white dots
What gives?
Why are you writing this?
That is you and this is me
What do you mean?
We're exactly the same
2 of a kind
1 is such a lonely number
And you're lonely all the time
The thing about dots is that they can be erased
You won't stay
Maybe I will maybe I won't
If I don't will you give in ?
Probably not because I'd never give in
I'll probably never love again
Why is this ?
My heart is not mines to give  
Whose possession is it left with ?
His
He abandoned it!
Some place it's hiding where I can't reach
But love is the thing you seek?
No, I just don't want to be lonely
You don't have to be
Two white dots
What gives?
Why are you writing this?
This is you and me
What do you mean?
We're exactly the same
Nothing?
But an empty blank space
Ran off and concealed
You could build
But instead you ****
You **** with your looks and your mean words
You're not the only person who hurts
You're not the only one without closure
But if you look deep within
You don't need to find it through him
Your heart is still inside you
It's sitting, waiting and ready to be unbruised
You've just been stuck in this ruse
That reconciling with him is what you need to do

Because you kept your head close to my heart
as you lay within my belly,
I did not push you from the womb
but had you taken from inside by a stranger's two hands.
You could not fight to avoid the world,
and, for that, came out unbruised.

But there is a wickedness that awaits you,
and though I may wipe away your  tears
I will not always be able to exile their cause,
And, now, while you are little more than a babe in arms,
you laughed with ease as I lie awake at night
wishing I could forever have my belly cut to keep you safe.

And so the ancient, unexperged fairy tales--
the tales of dragons that feed on men
and mermaids that die for love--
are the ones I'll read with you
not to frighten you or make you laugh less
but because they tell of the hurt
healed only by love.

by Vicki Gates Bryant

this says body,
and I'm thinking I can't think

there's worlds to put here
but confusions overcome me.

Why? or Where? How Will I ever?
What?
I want to but can't.
Nothing comes out how I want to.
It is hard. For me.
I'm so shy
Not playing

scared of people
the "what people?"

I'm embarrassed
why
what's there to scare me?

prizes aren't for me.

Is that how i see things?
no attention is necessary!

I just want to live
or get things out
I'd really like to write.
I'm good at this. I've tried..
along time ago...I've tried.
There were points of happiness
of completeness
of solidness
of structuredness
of being free
of being spirited
for having something to say and saying it
in ways that made sense

to myself

or to someone who could understand it
one day.

that was a dream
a hopeful dream maybe
or maybe not even a dream
just a kidding thought

but it would be okay to
hear someone notice
and think aloud
but to leave me untouched
and unbroken
and unbruised
and untainted
and UN-humiliated
and not judging

Just let me say what i need to say
and let me pass by.

and if you want to, smile at me.
I'm cool with that.

I was small but little when the dream
came to me,when the earth spoke to me
when I spoke to myself,
when I took control or had control
even slightly.
when i learned to love....everything...
for who I was and what I was
and Where I was....
and to recite and to wonder.......
But it all goes away.
and in a blink of an eye,
I don't know how.
I ever thought I land up so far away from myself
It's interesting.
But maybe this is a step in the right direction.

Why did you have to come
When my heart's not done healing
From that last love
Where my heart was left reeling

I was just getting up from that fall
But here you come, teasing
With that beautiful smile
And eyes that seem to know my soul

I'm still scared
Heart clutched to my chest
I don't know if I could take that chance
To fall in love...yet again

So I'm just waiting
For you to take that first step
When you would hold your hand out
And ask me for mine

I am waiting
For when the timing is right
When I could give my heart
Unbruised and untattered

I'm still waiting
To fall in love...yet again