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blushing prince Feb 2016
I've seem to have lost my youth, I fear it was never there to begin with.
All the fuel that was riddled on my tongue as an adolescent is rubbing off with time, like a word I don't know anymore.
I keep darting to women on bus stops looking at their knees and wondering if all the lines there are like the rings in a tree, like the creases in flowers rich men buy for their honeys.
All these bodies piled in a room full of smoke, in recollections of other times they were in smoky rooms with strangers but all I taste, remember, is the sun on my forehead while Spanish guitars play nearby and there's a million voices, curling into chatter, into banter I can reconcile.
The night is young, this is the way to die if you're ever going to but the days are permeated under my shoes; I walk into 99 cent bargain stores and don't see plastic like she does, do not see the degradation of objects that never dissipate but easily break. The ***** floors of feet that live in small apartments, that dry-heave for the cheap cigarettes and low cost security cameras for their victim-less crimes. The resilience of things that grow in the only place they know where.
No I see a 25 year old girl stocking the shelves and watching the soul in her hair run for the door, for the foreign on her skin evaporating into the electrical fans, her golden years on the ankles that will one day twist in slippery showers, in greasy paved roads, in the heels she never learned to wear.
I see my generation through glass windows, through transparent doors, in between every beer I sip I don't find myself losing my worries into the inside of my bra for later inspection, under my wallet for when the party goes into the graveyard hours and I'm frozen in an unknown couch. I don't think about the time she left or the time he lied. Not about the knots everyone you meet leaves, or the heartbreak residue in drawers you don't open anymore. No time.
Standing in front of cold deli aisles, there is no resurrection of when my friends would call me by my first name, no remorse for the chances I didn't take when my shyness didn't burn on my face. A father that had a heart attack at the beach and I wasn't sure if the tears were because mortality was there holding my hand or because there was sand in my eyes and would it matter?
The neglect in my stature, the depth that is lost every time my head falls on a new pillow once again. When they talk about the jokes they wrote down on napkins, on fast food places at midnight, when the leather jacket they smooth down but all I see is the thread that is unwinding below their waist, the condiment stain on their napkin and how so very easily beef reminds me of the hospital.
I want to say that yes I am young, I have always been. That nothing has changed since when I was 12, that when everyone picked up their addiction I chose mine as well. That being alone is like a rock you take off the ground and you hold it for so long you start forgetting it's there until your hand untangles, until your jaw unclenches. You look around and you notice everyone is laughing and you try to as well but the second is gone, eyes are blinking, the sun has turned slightly and there is nothing else to do but grab another rock. I'm afraid I've exhausted myself too quickly.
I imagine the exasperated nostalgia of childhood is because there was no past, no better memories to cling to, you can't look back when there isn't anything there. But you begin hanging out in dim places, where the people are grittier than the seats in bars, in subway cars. The gods in your desk start to lose meaning, and the love, all that love, stops defying gravity like the bags under your eyes. The guys with caramel complexions treat you like the rosary on their chest, with reverence only when it's Sunday. The way the sweat glistens in yellow lights.
and if I didn't exist in all of that, then I wouldn't want to.

I don't want pity, no ****** white room, no Judas kiss; just a simpler truth that you wouldn't understand and I wouldn't expect you to.
a commentary on feeling
LONE STAR Sep 2023
You have no idea
How much my heart bleeds
One single word unclenches me
You lead me on
Only to let me go
You promised you wouldn't hurt me
And still I told you
Words are never a guarantee

You have no idea
How I wish you would have never said anything
From the love induced words
To the midnight crazed hearts
To the love language of touch
Caressed assurances that
I am the only one
Who knew what lay ahead

You have no idea
How I fell for every little bit of you
From your laughter
Your infectious smile
Alluring presence
Charismatic benevolence
Generous soul
A weakness they may suffice

You have no idea
How I hate repeating myself
But for you a parrot I become
Saying words not heeding them
Going over the same things
All over again, drowning
Misery since I'm miserable
Look what unruly affections have done to me

©Lone star ✨
®Jerusa Mentrin
In the darkest sky I feel so alive.
The dictates of affection are beyond one's control.
S Smoothie Nov 2015
As the stresses of the day wear on,
My furrowed brow tucked firmly in pensive thought,
My back torn open from the malicious whips of jealous competition
Lips pursed tight,
chest groaning with slivers of painful angst
Mind racing foul
I carry my heavy load yoked firmly home
I walk through that familiar door
bright eyes burning with warm welcome seer through me
my furrows are swept away
tension easing,
I unfurl as you  rise to greet me,
Warm smiles contagiously leap on to my gaunt expression
tender lips move so gently over my  mine
softening every hash word passed through them,
My chest unclenches releasing butterflies from thier  paranoid chains
Warm arms brush away the stings of the days warfare
Relief washes through me
My armour falls away
As my soul tucks tightly into you
A whisper from my heart releases
'I'm home'.
Love you xo
AJane Feb 2017
the sun breaks through
another night and I have dreamt of you
now I'm not so sure--

of the shape of your face, your voice
a heartbeat underwater
your body

a frankenstein
stitched loosely with memories
of closeness

when the brain unclenches
its invisible fist
slowly, in defeat

all I have is my imagination
and a better girl
is fixing you now

The sun breaks through
and this time last year
I was in love with you
Noah Apr 2016
sometimes
you crawl back to things you once played with
looked at
dabbled in
because you need that kind of comfort,
that reminder of when things were easier,
that familiarity
that allows you to clear your head
and calm your breathing.

jaw unclenches

sheets feel softer again

the rhythm of your heart
and your breath
dies down

the throbbing behind your eye
that emerges every day
sometimes more than once -
that dies down too,
and you forget to hope for cancer,
you forget to want it to grow

the way forward
is sometimes the way back -
at least for the time being

get your fingers to stop shaking
and then set off forward again
Daniel Magner Oct 2017
In this place
chopping so much your hand cramps,
so you have to hold it by the wok
for five minutes before it unclenches,
is something to by proud of.

In this place
college students scoop and cook
to pay for school,
or pay off school,
instead of applying what they learned,
which cost them more than money.

In this place
the line never sleeps,
you are Pavlov's dogs
trained to a bell.
And if you are unlucky enough
to be put in the kitchen,
you'll find it worse than Hell.
From a time when I did not like my job.

Daniel Magner 2017
Kathleen M Nov 2019
The cup crashes to the floor, it shatters spitting it's contents out. The man smiles, he squats. He carefully scoops the broken porcelain into his left hand. He squeezes tight. Blood drips from his clenched fist and hits the cool tile mixing with the spilt tea. The florescent lighting swings overhead. His smile is now just clenched teeth. The only thing in his life that he has any kind of a grip on are the sharp peices cutting into his hand. The ground lurches up at him quickly. His head bounces off the floor and his hand unclenches releasing ****** peices of porcelain. Hes having a hard time remembering, what's his name? what's his name? Did he drink out of the broken cup? what was in it? Where is he? His head jerks up off the floor face wet with tea and blood.

The floor is hardwood, it needs to be refinished badly. The light flickers and switches off. He struggles to his knees and hears a shuffling in the shadows. He freezes and a dim blue light fills the room. He flexes his hand and the remaining peices of porcelain fall off and hit the ground, they make such a satisfying sound. He turns scanning the room unable to decipher the shadows.
Unfinished
Buried Words Nov 2018
The pain starts to dissipate as numbness floods her body,
She closes her eyes,
Unclenches her fists,
And lets out a final sigh.
In an hour or two someone will probably find her,
But she won't hear the worry in their voice
Or see the concern in their eyes when they do...
...because she's gone.
Graff1980 Apr 2021
The chaos is a creation
of indistinct figures,
these fallen formations
of monstrous
proportions,

abstract static
beats that are
automatic,
matter of facts
that lack
any clarity.

I am looking for
something
that is more
of a rarity
than diamonds
and gems,
some truth
staring back at me
that unclenches my teeth
and takes the scream
out of the pillow
I laid my face in.

That yankee
dandy daydream
isn’t satisfying,
it’s really
only a rally for
rich men
who are lying.

So, why the ****
do I keep on trying,
keep on crying
for some sort
of order,
the kind you
proport
angels report
to a higher being,
when I haven’t seen
******* thing
to make me believe
god exists.

So, as the bullets rip
through innocents
and right wing pundits
spin this creeping chaos
to suit their purpose,

I propose we end this
illusion,
this great god and state delusion.
We only howl when the sun rises
Cause nights are for softer sounds
And softer hearts than
The faces made for the
Days that make fists

Paler light unclenches them.
We blend into a scape
Without fading, a starry
Dusk overwhelming

Our cries will cease
And we will hum and burn
In our fall.  The trip to
Earth is fun
While it seems to smile back
The land glowing closer

— The End —