"unlaced" poems
My body spun
From one side of my garage
to the other.
In between the pillars of poles
creating space between the cars
parked in the two car garage
perfect family, right?
not even close
I unlaced my skates
tossing them in a case,
unorganized as my chaotic brain
I leaned down to pick up
a mess of what looked
like plastic
like a broken water container
crushed by the weight
of a basketball tossed without looking
being the good girl I was
I picked up the charred plastic
placing it in my hand to
throw it in the trash
I dropped it in the can
letting the pieces fall
one
by
one.
As I wiped my hands
I found a piece I had forgotten
it had the label of Prego on the side
I realized then
It was a broken spaghetti jar
I ran upstairs
to help with dinner.
I asked my mom
what I could do to
She said
"You can run that blood
under a cold water faucet"
I looked at her confused, saying
"Where am I bleeding?"
She turned my arm over
showing me the cut
glazed over my forearm
I hadn't even felt it
I didn't know
that was the moment
I would find an advantage
to not feeling pain
and an interest
in the impure
realization
that bleeding
wasn't scary...
that it couldn't hurt me
as much as the rest
of my life could.
Feb 17, 2018
Feb 17, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
I see her sitting over there
another's arms around her waist.
Sunlight shimmers through golden hair,
bodice ruffled and unlaced.
Surprise sits obvious on her face,
over the distance where I walk
it shouts to me of felt disgrace.
A story told no need for talk.
I look down staring at the ground
feeling awkward as I continue
not raising eyes to what I found
like curtains drawn across a window.
My footsteps quicken with the pace,
footpath blurs with constant view.
My head can't raise to see her face
because I don't know what to do.
I hear her calling, voice a quiver,
I hear her tread as she doe's chase
Almost a trot I do deliver
trying to clear from this place.
I manage to evade her follow,
thinking of the scene I saw.
Her cheating ways are cruel and hollow
as I viewed her frolic on the floor.
What do I say when next I see
her arm in arm with my best friend.
But if these words I say to he
will cause him harm that may not end.
So I have given them some room
to sort themselves in their own way.
It's she that must hand out the gloom
from her own words then she must pay.
As for this secret I say nought
I shall not give her game away
for she's not the only one I've caught
for my friend does play away.
I do not judge the things they do
and best that I do not involve
myself with what they both go through.
It's for themselves both to resolve.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 9:26 AM UTC
do you remember the siren in my throat?
the howl of her, the empty vessel?
do you think of me sometimes,
think of how often my fingers
unmade the buttons at the
collar of your longing? how I
unlaced the cement that held
your damaged pieces together
into something resembling
personhood? how you painted
me with the blood of your amnesiac
sins, how I came to be the shrine
of all your broke and all your
bent? do you ever wonder how I
look now, draped around new
frames and coaxed by honey
that drips from new fingers?
do you ever miss those nights,
the half-light of the bathtub, the
shrine of bare thighs and the
drip drip drip as you watch me
melt into something black and
shimmering on the surface maybe
like blood maybe like nothingness and do
you desperately try to take handfuls
as I slip away like sinking ocean down the drain?
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 4:22 AM UTC
Honey tastes slow, glowing like amber
Trapping touch in a heady crush of warm
Nestling between my ******* where sweat pools, delicate
Dipping fingers into pots, swirling, lingering
Licking the syrupy sweetness
Craving the rose scented dark and the musk
You, above me like summer
Creating me from the flesh of your hands
Describe me with your kisses, unwrap me with whispers
Suspend the rules of us between my lips
Breathe your will into words that glint with
Consequence, etching heat into flesh
Charge the oxygen around us with sweet almostpain
That draws out my ghosts, blood over flames
Leading the Moon out into the depths, into the crevasse
Wallowing in my softest curves as you
Follow me down to the forest bed and
Claim my world as your Fetish
And if I open to your insistence, slowly unlaced
Kiss me in obscenity until I speak in tongues
Silence me with your sternest hand of fire on flesh
Bring my bruises to boil beneath your gaze while l,
Shyly revealed by your voice,
Try to cover my eggshells and hush my moans
You, beneath me like summer
The seed will grow where l place my kisses
Divining water from your ancient well
Suckling the slick pomegranate flesh
Until the star on your forehead is burning
Shudderfall down into night, into my storm
Collide in me, where the clouds are heavy with rain and lust
Leading the Moon down into the depths, into the crevasse
Melding desire with Fate as you
Meet me down on the forest floor and
Claim my love as your Fetish
Wrap my body in silken cords that sing of you
Handfast beyond gesture
My flesh, your manifesto
Fetish
Jan 13, 2019
Jan 13, 2019 at 6:58 PM UTC
The cause of ignition is inconsequential,
no trigger to let loose the hammer- Only,
I become a passenger, a **** cur.
Softly as a dancer, on swells of change,
undulating to the jangle and clink
of lives being unlaced,
splayed apart in bitter irony,
displaced into objectivity.
You take it personal,
as if, I am just a faltering piece of personality.
Dropped like salt in the Devils eye,
I'm just over shoulder- needing the fall
into comforting familiarity.
I'm unfeeling, mute and defensive-
peeling self back to where we merge.
At the base I know I am one
but cruelty makes our hands feel like four.
I am my own dark passenger depersonalized,
sloughed off in stress and
bound in unrecognizable life.
Apr 20, 2013
Apr 20, 2013 at 4:33 PM UTC
Mildew clutched tight,
hollow-boned, manic thrusting,
marionette-faced, barrow-lunged,
nails bit to the bone-gristle,
lips raw with spit-polish,
redacted eyes, redacted eyes --
two palpable creatures,
transient drifters of soulspeck,
one unraveling the other constructing
one unraveling the other constructing
forever,
sallow truth would dissolve skin.
Lips read: founder a self.
Rusty copper
with adamantine eyes.
Steel core, unbroken by absence.
Drown in opposite directions,
oceanwater salve, yes
calloused tongues jostle,
ribbed in salt and rust.
Unlaced corset,
striped sweater,
grunged trainline veins
run on endless.
A clock,
abandoned in the middle,
I think once
it very much mattered.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 11:27 PM UTC
Furrowing deep with claws blood-stained,
into dirt, a heap of heavy ashes,
too depressed to flow with the wind,
or dance with breezes sprung from heels clicking past,
I sink.
These ashes reside
from my burnt body.
Wrinkled edges, dim, clotted blood,
a heart suffocated by the flame
of victimization.
Take a scalpel to my remains,
mutilate my body, my Self, all that remains,
stitch on male genitalia,
or chop my hair off,
none can remain, none can remain.
Gorge out my fat, reveal
gaping white bones;
none can remain.
An emergency room
(a yew)
A home with quiet time at 2:00
(an ever-green)
A place with after-meal support
(a willow)
A pile of *****
(a palm)
A fresh crimson cut
(a pine)
I met you.
(before it was too late)
You ****** me into the arms of a God
And you placed a Bible underneath my bare feet.
I stumbled and cut my heel on its edges
and watched the blood seep into the welcome mat.
When you first gently unlaced my blouse
flashes, images, screeching memories flew back in
shattering porcelain glass.
But a look in your eyes
soothed the tempest
and I drifted along with your rhythmic tides.
I once said I wanted to be a tree.
(Nothing more than still wood.)
I once felt like a million dollars wasted.
Swallowing the moon and the stars so bright.
Now I say
overlooking shy tulips, so young, so young,
Humanity is a house abandoned
and in you and Him have I found
the warmth that tiptoes across my chest,
like the pit of a peach radiating sweet, sweet nectar.
Mar 11, 2012
Mar 11, 2012 at 9:07 PM UTC
6 sides
Latent enabler
Counterpoint to truth, amorphic
Dada to life
Callous Birth
Islands dripped in collagen
Mystic, effortless life
Tempests laden iota in tune
Riven
Licked flat, obtuse
Crescent stench
Pagan cells
Hazard the thought
Pick the Atlantic cherry
Reach further than comfort
Pushed & consumed
Spirited paste
Jesuit told in spheres
Lament interest, matted quill
Totem, Saxon tribe
Inflections of hearsay
And Swastikas on parade
Guilt of the blacksmith, undecided
The arms of tablets
Ashtrays & tropospheric light
Another page turned
Capsules filled with perfume
Loose skin lost in relics
Temporal lobe
Cautioned indignant
Pardon the prose
Sonnets dissolved in ethanol
Caricatures of the fleeting
Of our cities last broadcast
Absorbed by times gone
Glittered pestilence
Canceling subordinates, powdered Semtex
Soup of the sewer
Lift the butcher above your head
Nazca lines
Suborbital
Silk screen with *****
Horizontal qualm toward revulsion
Incursion
Calm, cued and cubed
Lab coats coated in pharmaceuticals
Base compound, ionic bond
Covalent CNS
Sympathetic vibration
Default to nature
To theorise movement
Agitate intolerance, turbulence
Beautiful thought
Calculate causality
Passenger of licked lips
Token to latex
Croft in ear, to taste
Unlaced tips, rings of halothane
Bliss
Intrigued with obscurity
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 1:33 PM UTC
I've Realized,
I've Slowly Grown To Have A Permanent Scoul,
Which Sits Upon My Face,
Ive Realized,
Every Play Is A Foul,
My Happiness Coming Unlaced,
I'm Tired Of Pep Talks,
I'm Tired Of Encouragement,
Im Tired Of Getting Pelted With Emotional Rocks,
Energy Thinned From No Supply Of Nourishment,
I'm Sorry To Everyone,
Because I Have Grown To Be Bitter,
I'm Angered Because I Feel I Have No Freedom,
I'm Sorry I Am So Bitter
Let Me Be,
I'm Fine With Lying Through My Teeth,
I Don't Care If I'm A Snot,
I'm Tired Of People Pretending They Are Not,
Im Sorry To People Who Accidently Step On Me,
I Yell At You Because I Am Internally Angry,
I'm Sorry For Snapping,
Because I Fantasize About Being In The Woods,
Napping,
I Need To Let It Out,
I Need To Cry,
But You Shout,
If I Even Try,
I'm Sorry To My Friends,
I'm Ready To Burst,
I Promise This Will End,
But I Need To Blow My Fuse First
Let Me Talk To You,
It Will Only Take Me 10 Minutes,
I Need To Scream At You,
I Haven't Forgotten Yet,
I Need To Get Away,
I'm Tired Of These Kinds Of Days,
Pouring Out My Pain On A Blank Page,
I'm Sorry I Am So In Rage,
Its Only Because Every Thorn Wants To Poke,
Where There Is Already A Scrape,
Whenever I Start To Sing I Choke,
I Want To Feel Great,
Just Like The Old Times...
I'm Sorry I'm So Bitter,
I'll Try To Runaway From What I Have Become,
I'm Sorry I'm So Bitter,
I Feel Like Some Kind Of ****
I'm Sorry Im So Bitter,
I'm Sorry I've Been So Dumb
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 8:38 PM UTC
as a bundle of batik cloth
you carried me
slung across your shoulders
a mess of curls and hungry crying
you sing me words I don’t understand
after the rain
you sweep the fallen leaves
with one arm against your back
and the weight of shadows you could not leave
at home
sleepy faced in a bowl of morning cereal
your fingers braid my bed head
with bright blue ribbons
that intertwine our worlds together
and then apart
red faced
shoes unlaced
i stumble through the door
tripping on sentences
you say nothing
but tuck me in
back in her homeland
she left her two children
only to gain two more
and when i leave for snow this August
i will be leaving not just one mother
but two
May 18, 2013
May 18, 2013 at 2:24 PM UTC
I remember this girl
who went to the window
at dawn when it was still
dark in the winter and she
sees we have a long time
now that her father passed on
and we know we won't have to
go to school because the bus
it can't run, she slips her slip
over her hair and places it over
the chair near the fireplace
while I unlaced the sinew
of my boots, I remember it
well how we lost our cherry,
it was hard as a rock, like
breaking a wild horse, it was
a mirage of sound as the blood
moon sunk into the frozen ground
and I realized that the times
we can bat our eyelids, and
all of our nights and tomorrows
are not infinite, like love that comes
only once in a lifetime of sorrows.
Feb 27, 2018
Feb 27, 2018 at 8:58 PM UTC
(I. Summer ‘ 13)
Freckles clung
like manic-pixie stardust,
spackled whispers
an unfolding fractal
of brimming dresser drawers
old pictures and mix cds,
we could only ever do
what teenagers were supposed to.
Smushed crabapple handholds,
moxy and sadism hard-won,
no crash course in platonicness,
our stained glass eroded
into a beach
frozen in unsummer,
opiates dull senses,
a synesthetic void
exchanging echoes of echoes,
a cacophony of empty
distilling as it leaves
in whisks of 2 a.m.s,
honey-laced whiskey—
if the sky murmurs one
last love poem, it isn't
to us but our
moment of infinity,
of blind faith
irredeemably lost,
that forever of apex
where the line between
falling and flying
blurs.
(II. Fall ’13)
Spines and ribs
don’t do it justice
you raptured me
both ways to Sunday,
built me up to shatter jaws,
car windows—me
bar stool battered,
you my perfect carpenter,
smile with wooden teeth
(you made them yourself)
so stain me the color of
cherry trees
and unbliss my empty spine.
(III. Winter ’13)
Mildew clutched tight,
hollow-boned, manic thrusting,
marionette-faced, barrow-lunged,
nails to the bone-gristle,
lips raw with spit-polish,
redacted eyes, redacted eyes--
we are palpable creatures,
transient drifters of soulspeck,
one unraveling the other constructing,
sallow truth would dissolve skin.
founder a self, rusty copper
with adamantine eyes,
steel core unbroken by absence,
drown in opposite directions,
oceanwater salve, yes
calloused tongues jostle,
ribbed in salt and rust.
Unlaced corset,
striped sweater,
grunged trainline veins
run on endlessly,
a clock,
abandoned in the middle,
I think once
it very much mattered.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 2:10 PM UTC
i like to imagine you can't feel the way i
can; you are sculpted from ashes and
ice, you smile and you laugh and you
melt when someone touches you in the
right way, but still, you can't fall in love,
not really. you have kept your heart
clutched tight in your own fist, vena
amoris unlaced and fluttering in the wind
like a kite string.
[anybody could make you fly in the right
wind, but the trick is to keep you high
without letting the tether slip through his
fingers.]
it would be easier for me if you really were
so cold, if you were a simply a monster
masquerading as a man. but i know
that the only person here who isn't quite
what they seem to be is me; i'm the one
who pretends that if you came back to me,
i would twist up my lips and pull back my
hands and leave you crawling in the street.
[but i know, and you know, that if you even
turn your head to look at me, i am yours all
over again.]
there is this creature inside of me, malignant
and scavenging for any memory, for the
sound of your name. i think of you and it lifts
its head, salivating, i wish you were here and
it gnaws on my bones until i am weak and
stumbling. i am not sure if it is punishing me
or living off of me, if it is an avenging angel
or a parasite, but i think you both have
something in common.
[i am heartsick and trembling, swaying when i
try to stand, and neither one of you would
bat an eye if i didn't make it. for you, it would
be the same as any other day; for it, well,
there are plenty of others with whom it could
roost.]
Jul 3, 2011
Jul 3, 2011 at 4:21 PM UTC
i don't know
gleaming like an apology
what i want
your scraped pomegranate summerteeth
these winter days, i used to
a pointillist sunset,
wish i could inhale
don't tell me that muscle
the wide wide world
is made whole by breaking,
just to breath it out
back bent toward abstention
into your mouth, once,
none so present as yours
i never really knew
(and cracked holy monuments,
strength
vines their unlaced exoskeletons)
just that i wanted to be strong
atlas was no gardener
for a nebulous reason i cannot
to hold up is not to tend.
remember
where could it be written
i'm leaving for
why would anyone say, why would
a very long time,
a poet teach the heart survives by breaking?
but you have to go
that in black ink my love may still shine bright
away
to come back
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:35 AM UTC
I lay awake...
Again...
Unable to sleep.
Replaying those words you spoke to me tonight.
Over. And over. And over.
As if my whole life had led up to those few words.
As if nothing else in the world mattered before those words curled up at the end of your lips,
And laid down to rest by the fireplace of my cold heart.
Over and over and over,
My inevitable smile never straying from my cheeks.
Falling... Falling... Falling...
Until I realize "falling,"
Does not quite quench my desires,
For maybe by dumb luck,
Maybe by fate,
Maybe an unlaced shoe,
Or maybe your straying, clumsy foot,
I endo'ed.
Brains above my unlaced shoes,
And heart somewhere in between.
And to stand up,
Would mean I had the strength,
And the will to do so.
So here I lie.
Never to stand up,
Nor fall again.
Sep 13, 2013
Sep 13, 2013 at 3:48 AM UTC
Little girl,
lay your weary head in the black space
that is unwinding between us,
a void to lose yourself in.
A train-station railway burning down to bare metal,
a dove flying away and spreading the ash.
If only that dove could carry you away somewhere
safe inside my mind.
The bone in your heart
chokes you sometimes.
I'd ease all of your concern
with a touch.
Your heart is dark-clouds.
Lay your weary head in my lap,
little girl,
dream of dandelions floating away
through this cloudless, broad blue sky,
bend your chest up into the calming sunshine,
let go,
and rest.
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 10:20 PM UTC
For such a pretty face did I get up and try
And charm unlaced, but told a lie
To her who, charmed, attended
And with fibs she did comply,
But what fool, I thought, lamented,
That I could not haste her mine!
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 2:50 AM UTC
I just wanted to say
that I forgot what I wanted to say
because you look so cute bending over
to scoop the cereal out of the bottom container,
and your smile slants just like a three-day crescent moon
when you spill some Fruity Pebbles on the ground,
or how you cradle your cup of milk
like sometimes you cradle me when we’re half asleep
and our dreams start to play tag with one another,
dressing themselves in the fog we’ve created
from the steam our kisses drag out. And I guess I get
how tied up you get when you’re sneakers are unlaced
but your mind is tripping between hours spent here
smoking this and banging yourself up with that. I guess I get
how you can loose focus, but I’ve caught you at your lowest
and I’ve straightened you out just by kissing the pressure points
until you’ve been strained like elastic and your heart has thickened.
I just wanted to say
that I forgot what I wanted to say
because you pull at my thighs like I’m made of clay
when we’re messing around in the shower,
letting the water fall around us like our own little storm—
you’re the perfect sound of thunder. But you’ve left me
in puddles on my carpet, pulsing to the beat of my fluid heart
as I try to remember exactly what it is about your face that I love so much.
I bet you’re getting tired of hearing me ask if you’re up,
of if your’re busy, or if you could just knock on my door two times
instead of once so maybe I could feel it through the thick skin
I’ve grown over the years of stopping and locking and shutting down.
And I guess I get that. But I also, just. . . you—
I forgot what I wanted to say.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 11:07 PM UTC
The dawn of a journey; the slate, as yet, blank.
A charm of the breeze attached at the flank.
A cathartic virtue posed as an outcast
For your ship and your crew, dead hand of the past.
Once veiled by the mist and engulfed by ice,
The albatross kiss framed your quarters at night.
Sound luck unheard cleared a space on your shelf;
You killed the poor bird and held it yourself
Its merit unlaced and outrage profuse,
Obliged as a vigil, so strung as a noose
To remiss of a sin you couldn’t undo.
Sometimes a captain’s remiss of his crew.
The struggle of hope in alms of despair
Caught in your throat as you finish your prayer.
Once woven together, as roots with the earth,
Now tortured by weather, the fruits of a curse
The mast downed by lightning, the sky’s bitter wrath;
The swirling foundations of an arrogant past.
And though your veins pulsed as the crew flew about,
Your body was choked by the legs that gave out
Who knows if a curse was the cause of your death?
Perhaps all you stole was a free bird’s last breath.
The ocean, denied all its depths, would agree
A mariner in plight is a dead man at sea.
Nov 14, 2011
Nov 14, 2011 at 3:00 AM UTC
Today the world stopped spinning.
It slowly came to a stop as the time counted down to zero
And the ball didn't find it's way through the orange circle.
What were we supposed to do?
We marched passed those who stopped our world, with tears streaming down our faces.
We made the longest walk back to the locker room together unable to hold back our sobs.
We sat in silence because who knows what to say in moments like these.
Even our stone-cold coach was unable to conceal the tears streaming down her face.
Four years of work came crumbling down and there was nothing we could do to pick up the pieces.
For the last time, I unlaced my ankle braces
and threw my beat up toxic-smelling shoes in my bag
and embraced the girls who had become my family.
You see, for some, it's just a game,
But for me, it was my world.
So today, the world stopped spinning.
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
Your heels always hit the ground first and years later
thats how you learned how to run
you kicked up so much dirt that
the debris from your detour clings to your lashes
cradles your eyelids
you've become a whole new kind of transparency.
glazed and spaced, tell me when your shoes became the only thing
unlaced
tell me the next shade up in opaque and I'll superimpose you if it would make the slightest difference
in your distorted disposition
you're aware of your capacity of scarred composition but you say hey,
it's better than plain vacancy, well
I want to shake the coiled novas nestled between your temples so that the air
can be polluted with something beautiful for a change, I know that love
is just a futile prescription that you're immune to
but I still pray it's something
you'll get used to
I want your antics to stride past exposed bones so maybe I can pave
a fractured thought of my own
I want your second hand smoke
to inhale
a sweet exhale
of your mind, in the shape of O's that linger from tolks
this room is white like clean coke and
stained white with clean coke and
when I swallow so much shadow that I too
become a ghost, just know that I
am only malleable
but not the only thing you're able to
control
May 2, 2013
May 2, 2013 at 4:32 PM UTC
A bluebirds chirpy song shakes off the morning's dew
a flap of its wings and into the fresh air,
she adds a drop of blue
soaring high up above the clouds
as the sun slides behind the glistening orange sea
and the moon wakes up from its sunset-bathed sleep
she tilts her head to the sky to see the stars twinkle into to life
she flys to touch them
but bluebirds aren't unlaced
the sky's the limit
but the stars are in space
over and under there is no escape
everything living is tied to this place
the earth is a zoo
exhibit one is the jungle
welcome visitors from space
please don't be afraid
the creatures of the earth are locked tight in their cage
the thick stained glass windows of the sky
safely seclude this planetary base
ants crawl
bluebirds fly
gazelles roam
and little boys cry
visitors are yet to come to the zoo
but are we the keepers or caged animals too
Nov 13, 2017
Nov 13, 2017 at 8:18 AM UTC
The words were not there
But something was stirring deep within
Insanity or brilliance, perhaps both
Understanding the fullness of its urgency has never come
I put pen to paper and wrote anyhow
I wrote what I saw within
Heaven and Earth
Unlaced and dancing
Beating upon internal drums ... I could barely hear
I put pen to paper and wrote anyhow
And though I am sure of very little
I am certain of one thing
That you and I, are pieces of all of this
This primal dance of Heaven and Earth
So I put my pen to paper and I write anyhow
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 5:21 PM UTC