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Jordan Frances Apr 2015
i.
In the shower under cold water, I scrubbed and scrubbed
I wanted to rid myself of my own skin
Escape into a mine so I could live among the coal
A fuel almost as ***** as I felt.

ii.
As he pulled away from me
As he broke me into pieces
Shattered glass lay upon the seat of his car
I know what it's like to escape into a stranger's hot breath
The weight of a warm wash cloth upon my back
Pressing down again.

iii.
I prayed my wings would grow back in time
For me to fly to places I could never see
Before, my vision was black in white
Suddenly, I could see in color
His memory continues to pluck the feathers
But once again, I see the value of bone.

iv.
I tried to move on
Forget the thrashing of your memory
Like a gong, clanging symbol
Leave my mind alone
Leave me be

v.
Free me of broken pieces of the years I lost
Minutes, I lost bleeding from the inside out, razor eloquently in hand
Hours, I lost to purging myself of your uncleanliness
Days, I lost dredging my soul in therapy, hoping to dig up something that would do me some good
Years, I lost to the talons of PTSD
Depression
Anxiety.

vi.*
Finally, some hope
I taste it on my tongue like raindrops after the drought
Sunlight after the storm
I find myself
And lose the taint of you, heavy laden upon my skin
You are a cavity
Filled by love and support.
And finally, there's beauty in the struggle
It's anything but brief
Because the fight goes on
Forever.
Odi Apr 2012
Next time you tell me to go away
I'll show you just how good I am at disappearing
You just haven't stuck around long enough for the
vanishing act
You have the audacity to
say my name tastes like filth
But have you ever thought
that the source of your uncleanliness
was born somewhere in your lung's
and made its way up your throat
I can taste that
when I kiss you
No wonder everything turn's to grit
in your mouth
You have the stones
to say
you're an insomniac
But there's a difference between
not wanting to sleep
and not being able to
And your hands wouldn't shake so much
if you didn't drink so much coffee
and you wouldn't look so tired
If you smiled once in a while
and your breath wouldn't taste
or smell
or look
like ****
if you didn't smoke
100 packets a day.
So you have the audacity to tell me
"Well, baby the truth hurts."
In that southern drawl
With eyes so animated
I wonder which movie star you're impersonating now
After four months of Kurt Cobain
I've had enough of your angst and love letters
And I'd love to lay
my hands against your throat
and let you feel the threat
of life
draining away
But I know you would just smile
and rack your brain
for a quote from a movie you have stored somewhere
away
Mateuš Conrad May 2016
sure, the romance, they are the new gods,
     Paris, Rome, Barcelona (don't ask me about Madrid,
                                                       too royal),
a Venetian mask i would don, and become the quixote fighting treadmills rather than windmills -
although to Rome i have not walked
                for my footsteps to encounter the pave,
but in the Venetian pirate lair, plunderers of Byzantium
i have set foot on, at the same time to have learned
of the number 613 near a synagogue and heard the shofar.
Paris (not the Trojan) is the cliche synonym of Eros -
elsewhere Gemini: St. Petersburg as the Amsterdam
   of the north, and Edinburgh as the Athens of the north.

well, such a verse does indeed desire
                                                 more translation of Horace,
as in nimis ex vos, sed non satis ex "ego",
  yes, "ego" the abstract component of you that's
free from the three tier psychoanalytical *******,
what superego, what id? forget it! there's only you
and only "you" - work with me:
               too much out of you, but not enough
               from your alter (synonym of "ego" -
               Jungian shadow porridge);
but as promised, yet more Horace

               deus inmortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles
               ardentem frigidus Aetnam insiluit.
               sit ius liceatque perire poetis:
               invitum qui servat, idem facit occidenti.
               nec semel hoc fecit nec, si retractus erit,
               iam fiet **** et ponet famosae mortis
               amorem. nec satis adparet, cur versus factitet,
               utrum minxerit in patrios cineres an triste
               bidental moverit incestus: certe furit ac velut
               ursus, obiectos caveae valuit si frangere clatros,
               indoctum doctumque fugat recitator
               acerbus; quem vero arripuit, tenet occiditque
               legendo, non misura cutem nisi plena
               cruoris hirudo.


but of course i'll translate, but prior in dogmatic proposals...
keep the book of revelation of the Ιωαννης,
discard the rest... the four primers are a parody of
the tetragrammaton - so gentle in his own land
yet such a vicious serpent in Egypt? which one's the fraud?
messiah of just hanging, standing still,
40 years in the desert or 40 hours on the cross?
and all that iconoclasm and modern too via narcissism?
"bring out the selfie shtick! oh wait... my hands are
nailed to a ******* crux!" and this persistent 2000 year old
negation - and being spared, the Romans, or
rather the alphabetum, Roma est mort but you
can still ask the italians of a cappuccino - Chino and
Khaki elsewhere with the Lombardy League ponce
rubbing shoulders with Saxons... Chino Versace
whistle at a Bella... you can still see c b g long after
and the coliseum in ruins... it wasn't swallowed up!
i too though the second H in the tetragrammaton was
intended as a déjà vu - it would sit perfectly with
anti-, the concept, but not the man as such,
and indeed the Y would make a perfect tree of Golgotha
in that tweaked geometric, then W and seas
and continuance - Roma alphabetum, sole constructor
of computer robot? maybe... but you see, the H
is a slippery *****, it's silent, like in Khaki... or
as is the usual case in Hindu - Dhal... it's not so much
déjà vu but silence - a necessary surd to make spelling
pretty... dyslexics think spelling is a bit like arithmetic...
it's actually an aesthetic, but they do find it as hard as
arithmetic, and that's why they're genius at numbers...
but the aesthetics is missing, so they cling to numbers
and the aesthetic is missing, and everything associated
with money... well, it's a bit ugly, isn't it?

... (postponed translation)... yes, London is Hades...
    doom and gloom.

but indeed the Gemini in the tetragrammaton,
but first the principle of three-dimensional space (Y) -
just look into one of the corners of a cube (yes
the room you're sitting in),
and lastly the principle of waves, whichever,
sine or cosine as you will, looks better that way
than mediating the ad infinitum of 1, 2, 3 etc.,
sea and constant fluxes (fluctuations),
pin-point the opposite, the principle of one-dimensional
space (a definite coordinate, rather than three-dimensional
space and that ****** indefinite coordinate) and
subsequent ripples, which aren't necessarily waves:
my tools? a-       and -the            and every other ism
that might act as an auxiliary attaché - time (W).
but indeed the anti- implementation that serves as
direct Gemini chiral-ism: the latter serves no close
resemblance to be guided to Golgotha,
hence guided toward Megiddo, and a crucifix also there?

**** such religiosity twice over with its vortex,
as promised the Horace translation

       Empedocles, desirous of godliness in being so,
       having icily strutted toward old age and by
       old age near frozen, was prophesied to jump
       into flaming Etna. as they want, let the poets
       have a right to a death (of their choosing).
       who whomever against his will saves,
       twice-over rattles the suicide's intentions.
       it hasn't been the first time, it's not that easy
       to say it: i am human. he wants to immortalise
       himself, fame posthumously. he writes poems.
       why? maybe he urinated on his father's grave,
       maybe in a place basked by throngs he took
       from it the vices and in solitude became
       desolate with inherited uncleanliness of urbanity?
       like a bear with scars, prison bars he breaks open,
       scares off the wise and the foolish, such
       the adamant nature of compulsive poetic labour,
       whoever he grasps with recitations he
       finishes off, the leech attached to his skin will
       not fall off, until satiated with enough blood.


**dicam Siculique poetae narrabo interitum.
beth winters Jan 2011
the windowsill is hilled,
shoved into lumps and valleys,
too frothy for flight,
heavy to be held.

the pane of glass separating
twenty degrees from a cool sixty six
would shatter neatly,
somewhat like poured sugar
or the skin of a balloon,
stretched tightly and then
released.

the asphalt is stubble,
unshaven uncleanliness, blackened
by ages of rain and snow, seattle slush,
still elastic when a rubber
ball hits it, throwing
material back,
to be clutched in a moist
chubby palm.

calm, pale,
smoothed by the run through air,
skin traced by blue (ish green)
lazy title again, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nev2O5hgtqc
Brady D Friedkin Apr 2016
Colossae
April 28, 2016

Oh Colossae, where have you gone to hide yourself from the Lord?
Colossae, why have you wandered away from the fold of God?
Have you forgotten the words of St. Paul, the man who brought you the news
Colossae, why have you departed from the ways of the Lord?
Oh Colossae, where hast thou gone?

Colossae, have you forgotten the Word which became flesh?
Have you Colossae, a city of unholiness, forgotten of the promise of newness
Oh Colossae, how quickly you have fallen into uncleanliness
From dust you came and to dust you shall return
But must you, oh Colossae, so quickly descend to the dirt of the earth?

Oh Colossae, you cut off limbs afraid of the flesh
As if less flesh could make you more holy
You believe that this gnostic theology saves you from your sins
But only God incarnate in flesh can save
Oh Colossae, forget not the Savior who made you new

Colossae, forget not the Spirit of God, the very giver of life
He descends upon you and makes you holy,
He proceeds from the Father and the Son, and is worshiped and glorified
He is not one to worship alone, or to give identity alone
For that you have been united with Christ, who proceeds from the Father

Colossae, remember not this heresy of mysticism
There is this flood of culture and thought
Oh Colossae, be not drowned by this flood
And forget not the great unity the Body is to be
Forget this heresy to which you have come to love

Oh Colossae, you worship angels and men, yet too God
But you know, oh Colossae that the Lord on High is worth the worship
For these messengers from heaven may bring the Word of the Lord
But certainly, oh Colossae, they are not the Word which became flesh
Oh Colossae, forget these ancient heresies, and raise up the Lord Jesus

Oh Colossae, you partook in the Holy Communion of His Body and Blood
And baptized in the death and resurrection
Anointed with oil like the kings of old
Engrafted into the marriage of the Lord Jesus and His bride
Oh Colossae, you are one Body, abandon it not

Oh Colossae, return to the Lord!
Come back to the land of your spiritual fathers
Where they worshipped the Lord in all goodness
Come back to this land of orthodoxy
Oh Colossae, repent of this heresy against the Lord!

Oh Colossae, how we have followed path you have trod
To forget the redemption by which we are saved
To remember not the works of the Lord, perpetrated that we might freely live
That we have forgotten to live holy lives
Oh Colossae, how we have fallen in line with you and the Church of yesterday

Too have we, this Church of the modern age, departed like you, Colossae
We have succumbed to these heresies of forgetting our Lord Jesus
Oh Colossae, we have fallen, like you, and dirtied ourselves from holiness
We have descended to the depths of the sea like the rest of the world
Too we are drowning in our sorrows and our sins and unholiness

Oh come Lord Jesus
And redeem us, like Colossae, back into Your holiness
Come Lord Jesus
And renew our troubled lives, bring us back into Your holiness
Oh come Lord Jesus
A poem written on the heresies and the rebuke of St. Paul to the church of Colossae in the letter to the Colossians
Daniello Mar 2012
The gym is here today, perfect for me, exactly
as it was yesterday: too many mirrors, too many
glances, not enough weight, and not enough

pulse to burst me out, smelling like

bodies deconstructing. The stink of themselves
airing out in the uncleanliness of another day
that had to be. This one, too, to turn out

having been a necessary pixel. Even though

today it looks fuzzy. For instance, I could be
a deranged circus master right now, taming
my body as if it were a lion, commanding, as if

brandishing a lash, that beast to jump through

each fiery ring conflagrating in my combustible
mind. Like this one: Wouldn't this be happiness?
If I were a handsome actor, who lived his craft

and knew what a secret he were tapping into?

Who knew that really there was just one of us,
passing through each of us? And who, still, was
able to enjoy women, as blessed fruit he might

pick off the tree of life, and not as immaculate

fields of first fallen snow that almost desperately
seem to require distance and impassibility.
Wouldn’t it be? I lash the lion, he jumps

through the conflagration, and into flames.
Winter Kane Jun 2010
as he slid further into me
i realized this was the last place i wanted to be

the heat was making me sick
his breath reeked of beer and uncleanliness

i could hear laughing and music
my friends in the other room had no idea; hadn't noticed i'd left

his slurred speach was incoherent
he traced the edge of my ear, trying to be **** and failing

i dug my nails deep into his back
i bit hard into his shoulder; breaking skin; tasting blood

the pressure started building
as much as i hated him; i needed this release

one. last. final. push-
and i shoved him off of me, got out of bed, and put my pants back on
TS Jun 2017
I don't like new notebooks.

I mean, I like new, beautiful, clean, pristine notebooks,
but I don't like using them.

I don't want to ruin it.

I open up to the first page and it's so blank, so white, so pure,
there's not an imperfection in sight.

I don't want to use it because I don't want to mess it up. I want it to stay perfect, and beautiful.
I don't want that inevitable ****** drawing or poem to **** it up.
I don't want my uncleanliness, my messiness to spread to something so perfect.

I do end up using it. If I didn't, I'd just have a bunch of empty notebooks lying around which honestly I'd prefer.
But I take forever to do it, to break the seal.

I have to have the perfect thing to ruin perfection because if it's not perfect, it's not worth it to ruin it.

It goes two ways though:

The first entry is perfect, beautiful, inspiring, deep,
and then I never use that book again.
Because now it's perfection is magnified.
I couldn't possibly follow it up with something better or just as good,
and it's quite possible that the more I try to come up with something good to match, the initial piece deteriorates and it becomes disappointing, thus resulting in the notebook not being used.

The second way this goes is the first entry is trash.
It's disgraceful and I want to tear it out
but suddenly the book becomes less daunting, less intimidating because now, it's imperfect.
Every entry to follow doesn't have to live up to some grand standard.
But I'm reminded everytime I use that book that I failed, that I created garbage.
It makes everything that comes after, not as good as what I want to do, it lacks passion.
If I tear out the initial entry, the cycle starts over.

No matter which way you spin it, we just don't get along. I end up with a bunch of half used, disappointing books sitting around haunting me as I walk by.
A notebook is reflective of who you are,
it displays the deepest parts of you.

What if your unhappy with what you see on the page?

What if what you see isn't you?

What if, this blank, empty page of nothingness is better than what you are?

Why would you want to ruin something so pure and perfect with your mess?

Because nothing you ever write, draw, sketch, compose or create on it will ever be as good as it's once held purity.

-t.s.
Michael McLean Apr 2014
we were all gathered

around lathered in nervous sweats

not of uncleanliness but distress from

the site of this girl passed out on the floor

of the front porch or stage to the parked cars

and pedestrians with deranged hands politely pointing

elbows bent and necks curled to their chests

otters with oysters the meat

of gossip hidden within a hard wall of backs

their ‘is she okay’ rocks rapping like gunshots

and I thought about how odd it was that I’s

find their way into statements of them and you

their slender bodies sliding in with the same quiet

that renders letters silent
Em or Finn May 2015
My skin with all the acne
My feet for being too big
My height
My style
My nails
My weight
My shyness
My uncleanliness
My work ethic
My weight
How I play my instruments
My physics grade
My hair
My personality
My smile
My teeth
My chest
My weight
My divorced parents
How my mom expects too much
My sloppy handwriting
How I can't express my feelings
My weight
My weight
My weight

That's all my mom seems to mention
Not my outfit
Or my oily hair
But my weight

She tells me to love myself
But how can I
When the person I look up to the most
Is always trying to change me
Mbali Dlamini Nov 2016
World how dare you persecute me.
World how dare you judge me.
World how dare you trumpet me.
How dare you push me to the ground;
Having me fall so hard, I dare to doubt I'd ever stand.

How dare you fill my head with your lies,
Lies of corruption, hate and uncleanliness.
For have you not been told? I am;
Gods untouchable.

For it is my God who makes all the injustice not last long.
For it is my God who cures, cleans and constructs.
Persueing, protecting and perplexly loving me.
World , the hold you have will never last.
For my God is a God of everything, anything , entirely out of love for his children.
So world, don't you dare ever think you have an upper hand.
For I do believe in a God that lives
Believing in something bigger, when all fails and you just have to keep your head up high...
Your angelic voice,
it just lays down on my ear drums like the finest silk made straight from the cocoon of our cultivating love.
of course, it's a raw, earthy cocoon, dropped several times off the tree of life.
but that was our origin. so why dispute it?
i brush off the dirt on my side of the cocoon but yours has been left stained from the past.
if a divine deity looked down upon our enveloped love, they would see a great divide.
one pure.
one polluted.
one yearns.
one loses.
one in the same, both feelings are identical, but for other passions.
so. i sit here.
trying my best to clean your side of the cocoon as i displace you to my side and you ***** up mine.
a forever cycle of uncleanliness and a weird form of cat and mouse.
Thomas Mooney Feb 2014
Somewhere in the loose change you find it- your brokenness.
Somewhere in the soapy bath water you feel it- your uncleanliness.
Somewhere in the setting sun you see it- you're ending.

Nowhere in your life can you fathom it- your importance.
flitting Apathy Oct 2020
seeping,
into uncleanliness
is better than cleaning halfway
                   it is uncomfortable until you settle
like greasy hair is just a silk blanket if you stop thinking about it
like how i cannot feel my clothes touching my skin anymore
ah great now i can ****

— The End —