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Holland Feb 2018
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.
Ovid Dec 2014
"I don't know" are your favourite words
Your mind is made up of paths you're not sure of
Your body language is always foreign

Why can't you just be someone who knows who they are?
Attention is all you ever wanted
Just look at the aching hands that write of your aching heart
Alone you feel because you don't surround yourself with those who've been with you since the start
Make ties with people instead of being a stubborn unlaced shoe
You're the only one accountable for what you do

Grow up and be an open book
Don't push away everyone just because they want to take a look
Just look at the aching hands that write of your aching heart
Inspired by Fall Out Boy's "My Heart Will be the B-side to my toungue" Ep
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.
4th September 2012
RMatheson Sep 2014
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.
ghost girl Aug 2018
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?
Canaan Massie Sep 2013
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.
I haven't written in a good while, so I know this is not my best piece... Nor my most elaborate. But this is something that I want to say.
Akemi Jan 2016
There was a dream here. It passed over in the night; a blur that burnt a fever into the earth. It died in the gap between. Fingers unlaced. Hand to the side. The sun runs soft tendrils through thick curtains. Or something like that.

Have you seen the new Star Wars movie? No. You’d like it. It’s the same thing all over again, but with a black guy and a chick as the main characters instead. I guess that’s what you call progress.

There was a dream here. A thick, unfurling mass of potentialities. Sartre once wrote existence precedes essence. Schopenhauer believed the essence of a chair was as much willed into being as the essence of a man. There was choice once, but it died when we chose. The breath you took before your last smoke. The air is stirred by a passing train. A woman steps off a bridge, into the mourning blue of an autumn lake. There is an empty car on fire. There is a man inside. His brother sleeps through his exam, doped up on too much codeine. There is the stench of lack. There is death passing a mirror, seeing herself in haste, but too rushed to make sense of it.

He runs fingers down the scars of her arm. A trickling, stream awakening from a long winter thaw. Vessels blue. Oceans of laughter tucked deep in the folds of her skin, so faint you can barely see them any more.

The sheets are black. The city folds itself. The sky collapses into the gutter; Jupiter bleeds into the apartment block on east side. A man leaves his home, but never reaches his destination.  There is a movie Face Off, where the identity of Nicholas Cage is challenged through the transplantation of his face. If reincarnation were possible, would we even be capable of recognising our reincarnated selves, stumbling through the visage of a billion other, unknown vessels? The skip collectors come at 4am. Metal grinds against metal until all that is left is dust.

Hands shaking a pit of coal. Shake shake. Shake shake. Your mother is dead. Shake shake. Shake shake. Jesus working at a shoe store. Shake shake. Shake shake. An atheist. Hah hah, hah.

The channels fill. Ink drops on water. Fireworks blackening the contours. There is a sun in Peru. Waste water pumps through the vessels of the city. The mayor drinks punch. The catacombs crumble like desert bones. The roads split above. Traffic stalls. Shadows stretch. Meet at the centre. A core. Slender fingers. The infinite. A hollowed heart. A heritage.

Drink your punch, says the mayor, try the grape and cheese.

There is a comic. Five or six woodland friends play grab the tail. After one round, they look over to find friend raccoon sleeping. They laugh and shout next round. Friend scorpion looks at his tail with tears in his eyes. It is funny, because death is boundless, amoral, and imminent.

A group at a party. Someone brings up the right-wing branch of their government. Everyone begins laughing, red in the face, spit flying from their mouths, arms noodling into the sky. Yeah, yeah. Hella. It is an imitation game. A laugh track on repeat. Maybe someone scratched it on purpose, or the sound guy fell asleep on the button. Now everyone is stuck, laughing. They begin to doubt themselves, but look up, reassured by the glowing sign above their heads that displays the text laughter, in bold black Helvetica. The sign is faded from heavy use, a sickly cream that looked bad before it left the factory. They were made in batches of a thousand and shipped across the country. One begins to choke, spilling her drink, bunching the cloth on the table beside her. They keep laughing. She is purple now. Another group spots them and joins in. The party next door. The whole neighbourhood. It is broadcast across the city. A wave of hysteria sweeps the nation. An online celebrity creates mugs. A famous rapper uploads himself eating pancakes. The sound guy wakes up and turns off the display, but everyone keeps laughing.

God died today. Crumpled jacket at the foot of an apartment block. Creased ticket. Crooked can rolling down suburbia. American dream wakes up. Finds herself an amnesiac in a foreign land. Catches bus downtown. Wanders vacant sun. Blood trickles from wrinkles. So many now. Creased, crumpled, crooked. Drinks from gutter. Chokes. Stumbles into abandoned church. Blood dries into grotesque mask. Hard to feel through it. Like second skin. Tired. Rests head against wall. Waits for pulse. Finds nothing.

A joke to break the gloom. Two crows are perched opposite one another, partitioned by a one-way mirror. Both break into laughter.

No, wait. Maybe tears.
January 2016

(Crows are one of the few birds capable of self-recognition.)
Janette Jan 2013
So say these rooms are darker
than you remember, these distances
between bones, so deceiving,
the syntax of castanets at the windowsill
swell all the cells with silk,
my body sun burnt
and translucent as moth wings,
bring the viral inconsistencies in the sternum
to anchor my reddened limbs
into the desperate ***** of the heart...

Where I gather milk and moonlight
at night, the phantom
tantra of your lips, open
my mouth as deliberate
as the throat swollen with rain,
remembers how your kiss
takes to cold, at the collarbone,
something slender and unlaced,
your mouth, a length of silver chain
wound about the impossible symmetry of my dress
made entirely of vowels,
dried roses caught in its hem,
baby's breath tangled and dangling from my hair...

See how the body becomes an apology,
bending into an alabaster suicide,
its entreaties carved into the heart,
in the tar at my shoulders,
and now, how the fibula splits open,
feathered, I am this dark seed across a canvas,
a furthering, azaleas harboured
in the languid anklebone, and sudden water
gathers at my hem, bears the scent of hurricanes
and lilies, all this mayhem in the cells,
begin to loosen its wreckage, the rough
of your hands, river-wild and dark,
cool against my cheek, the ropes
of your arms bind the moment, opaque,
and I lose my way among the hours,
dimly lit through the damask curtains,
the windows are veiled by a steady rain,
and in my famine, I swallow enough of this gin
to drown, the dark collects in my mouth,
as the muslin flesh presses the seams of my dress
in blackened promises, of milkweed and almonds...

Thursday, at last,
and there are sonnets in my hair,
these hours are so rare, the indigo
in our roses spread like bruises,
as you weave poetry into the hemp of a collar,
my wrists, all Indian burns and snakebites,
snap beneath the jungle gym
where lilacs burst against the barbed fence,
the light swallows the seconds
and how my face is hollowed by shadow,
moths beating themselves, merciless
against the porch light, as you still, your body
listens to the gentle burning in my bared forearms,
the taste of copper, the risk
of skinned knees that bleed
in the lull of nightfall,
when I begin to braid
my daughters hair, fireflies
in a glass jar, at the panes, dizzy
and wanting, whisper their pale accusations,
left scrawled in the margins,
in a drier season, I tear out
the furious passages of my body,
and survive solely on ritual milk baths,
as lips allow in a liquid innocence,
though it takes more than this to drown,
the giving in, a tangle of amber braids
in the undercurrents, there is a gentle tedium
to my hair between your fingers, my throat
beneath your thumbs, a thickening
of immaculate tethers to bind the seizures about your lap,
the octaves tremor, like cicadas,
all those days in the ground, the damp wrinkle
of their wings, years I have been hiding
the bones in the words, as the syntax
of sorrow and jazz darken the windows of this room,
on a day that can go no further....
C Apr 2013
DPD
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.
TC Dec 2013
Mildew clutched tight,
hollow-*****, 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.
Janette Aug 2012
Night wanton,  peeled bare to intoxication, the sultry scent of indiscretion,
Bears the wicked wild
   Pleasure, pulsing to repletion; a shadow silk of born embrace,
Opens my mouth as deliberate as the throat swollen with rain,
Slender and unlaced,
And moonlight spills silver above earthen shadows. that jostle diamond stardust through fire;
My pale woman-flesh tingles as the breath of night, brushes need, tasted on skin,
And I become wrapped in the essence of deep dreaming,
His dark waters writhe and surge against my shimmer-gleam;
Whisper-sleek in heartbeats that threaten the crimson of flame,
As I am held down by the whisper of silks,
I become vulnerable in the skin of his hands....



Breathless shadows,  bathe velvet bliss,
Moon- warmed, between hips arching against possession;
Thrusting In the edges of bed-stricken memories;
Softly...gently whispering his name... on the  purple wind  that pulses, my narcotic flower,
Honeyed caresses, the slow burn of now;
...And
Silk slides in a whispered seduction
Permutating a  moon-burn's soothe; mouths
Wandering indolently, furtively down the sinuous curve
Of
Tongue
Revealing patterns smothered thick , symbollic against my breast....



Eyes close to the heat of urgency
Wicked.....hovers above skin, licking a trail sparking flame;
He speaks and I purr, he touches and I melt...his wandering hands seek their fill
Of my milky rise and fall, the slip of fingers wandering curves, between the valley of awakened *******, his
Tongue dances across buds hardened in breathless;
I sigh against masculine, running wild;  pouring wicked, and he wears me wet,
I **** the night long and slow and he...
Growls deep, while
Arms stretch, tasting flesh, teeth nip as he throbs,
Taut, against my thigh; worshiping the swollen altar...




I am blushed by kisses, held captive, beyond yearn...seeds of fire, warm breath staining nakedness beautiful;
Pink petals moistly shadow dance,  a tongue crazed, vortex of passion,
Strong muscles suckle whispered thoughts,
The ghost-atoms of rose petals, kiss the rainbow of glittering lips
Deepening sigh's lost, tasting the pulse of his heart;
Sweet evocotive essence, presses me into his swallow,  whispered words,
Lain across my flesh with the slick of tongue...



Peeled slowly, trembling , finger tipped kisses brush my ******* wet in eagerness,
His  forging ******, whispering forevers, while wildfire lips, brush black satin shivers
Across moistened tongue-play, breath,
Dancing in the swirling mist....Hot against his skin;
Untamed passion, a silken slide, tingles dark on steel, slow dancing,
Melding the sweetened heat of thigh fevered ache...





We lay upon the rainbow drift, wet beneath the honeyed dance
Open lips sip fragile webs of silk in passions sway,
Bleeding whimpers that beg the rush of primal,
Slick flow, the milk of moon, when blessed with linger's touch

and we

Bathe in the splash...of curled worship..........................................................­...
My heart softly speaks the honeyed dreams of lovers touch drumming....quiet mink singing craven passions unfound and unmet......whisper the spiral of my heart.... oh tendril moonbeam of kiss!....this ache corners me wild.....no softness but ravaging blood raking needs wanting the ink signature of yours only....breathless would I be...... your silk slide beckoning mine ............. J
Kelly Lloyd Mar 2012
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.
Feedback appreciated.
Connor Reid Apr 2014
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
Doy A Oct 2014
Warm thighs
Cold nights
Empty bed
Tears shed
Dry hands
Feet untangled
Messy hair
Lips bare
Nervous sighs
Hungry cries
Skin untouched
Fingers unlaced
Moans unuttered
Thoughts cluttered
Wandering soul
Time slow
So slow
Pangungulila.
Sydney Victoria Sep 2012
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
It Was Just One Of Those Downer Days:/ You Probably Know How Those Go, I'm Sorry To Everyone Because I've Been Out Of Control.. I Need To Go Up North NOW:)
Marissa Cooper May 2013
Ibu
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
'Ibu' means mother in Malay.
r Feb 2018
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.
TC Mar 2014
(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-*****, 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.
Bella Potter Jul 2011
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.]
JRC Oct 2014
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!
TC Feb 2015
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
                                                     ­
Sophie Herzing Jan 2015
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 ******* 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.
Today shall be a talking day
a walking day
and I shall walk and talk and say things
to myself and maybe others too
and if I do
it may make this day seem okay.

At times the rhymes that stymie me
those unreleased
I will set free to walk and talk along with me
another piece of poetry.

Others look and wonder why this man that mouths words passes by
with spittle dripping from his lips and tips of cigarettes unlit
just waiting for a light to rip into his eyes and slip a match into his hands which make the shuffling of the pack
another cigarette and back to walking
talking
stalking through the rush hour crowds which pass like clouds around my feet
and will I ever find a seat
to sit?
unlit again.
'Hey mister have you got a light and if so might you give some substance to the nicotine'
and I,unseen
the haunted of the haunting dream
lit,unlit and barely time to clean or clear and my oh my oh dear
the heavens open up and fill my begging bowl which in actuality is a Starbucks cup which in the breaking makes a better place to put my shamefaced
unlaced misery.

A cup another cup of steaming tea
sweet,delicious and given to me by a sweeter looking lady who maybe felt a little pity,sadness too
but who am I to know what goes on in the minds of those that throw this sausage dog a bone?

I howl and I can howl and how I bark
but not when I am in the park sat by the swans and ducks and in being somewhat of a lucky man
which I most assuredly feel is what I am
feed the wildlife with stale bread and talk the words that flow in seasons round my head.
I'm sure these birds appreciate my soft spoke words but they don't tell me so, and so I go into another walk and talk
with skateboarders,
talking tall orders as they whizz and skid along the concrete tracks
on which the local councils with their tightened schedules close their eyes and turn their backs.
And back to City
unmade streets
leaking drains and leaking brains that leak through walls and wall street halls and madness ramparts
broken and rebroken hearts
false and even falser starts until it falls apart.
The falling I can understand
another matchstick in my hand and one more cup of tea
I've had enough of lunacy and lunatics
I shall go home to egg and chips
retire and
sat by the fire will watch the flames that flame out names and burn the corners of those pictures that I carry on the inside
another fireside
an ash grey day
a walking,talking time today
tomorrow
who knows?
C Jacobine Nov 2011
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.
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
Alex Mar 2014
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.
basketball <3
spacewalker Nov 2017
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
:)?
Natasha Velvet May 2013
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
Kris Feb 2015
kinda wanna go home and shop mindlessly, let the dull clicking of my mouse be my zen and then regret it when the high wears off

kinda wanna go for a walk that never ends and let my feet bleed through my unlaced sneakers and stain the sidewalk

kinda wanna dye my hair blue, and maybe the colour will turn my fingers into tiny smurfs and make me less boring and more worth noticing

kinda wanna sleep until my brain gets tired of itself and shuts down forever

kinda wanna let go,

but kinda wanna live too
Allyson Walsh Aug 2015
After months of playing tug-of-war
I lost you

You told me your heart was never in it
But your words cannot be true

You continue to love me
But you are not in love with me completely

I asked you to kiss me one last time
I tasted your familiarity

Then we walked to my car
Keeping our fingers unlaced was heart aching

Perhaps separation will mend the broken parts
And we will grow while being apart

And maybe we will pick up right where we left off
But for now, you are lost
For WY and for the end of it all

"It's not like I want to do this."
"Then why are you?"
"I still want to keep in touch. I don't want to lose you completely."
"You're my best friend. I don't know how to be without you."
‘If only she hadn’t turned,’ he said,
‘The bread and the bacon burned,
It wouldn’t have made me jump,’ he said,
‘Knock over the butter churn.
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
With coals caught fast in the lace,
And that’s when the skirt went up,’ he said,
‘The flames in her lovely face.’

He carried her into the garden where
The rainwater barrel stood,
And tipped her into the chilling depths
Where the fungus ate at the wood,
The barrel hissed as she thrashed about
Came spluttering up to see,
Was anything left of her golden hair
Or aught of her modesty?

‘I saw the tender length of her thigh
Where charring parted her skirt,
The flames had burned so far and so high
Her cheeks were covered with dirt,
Her hair in tails was stuck to her face
Her bodice unlaced and wide,
I helped her out as best as I could,
She asked if I’d looked… I lied!’

‘That tiny scar you see on her brow
Is all that’s left of the day
Her petticoat was caught in the grate
Before I whisked her away.
I couldn’t wait until she was dry
To ask for her dripping hand,’
She said, ‘Oh well, I knew you were sly,
You looked at my contraband!’

David Lewis Paget
F White Feb 2015
I thought of the giants whom
I planned to conquer when
I'd reached an eligible age:

build a house out of my goals
furnish it with a child in white
rule by 28 with a future bright.

but now in the clearing of brinks and
cliffs, facing the threshold of the sum of
three decades.

I stand, with one boot unlaced,
mirror in hand
a deviant Janus.

I try to block
the bird, as she whispers "Close."

*Meet your knight
or meet the night.
but for love of god
walk a road, ANY road,

before it forks you over.
copyright fhw, 2015
ConnectHook Aug 2019
Butter-baste in haste
For better poet-taste
Reposting pastry
Poet-tastery
Pronounced as mastery:
Poetastery

Past repast
It goes down fast
Poetic firsts shall be last
Lyrically-paced
Poetry-based
Poetry's straitjacket, unlaced
Lack of meaning showcased
I just vomited it up
(for your erudite perusal)

*** I'm like SO totally embarrassed.
Just found out how "poetastery" is actually pronounced.
I'm all LOL just like ***.  
Fer reelz.  ☺♪☻☺☻ ♪♫
JAM Apr 2015
It’s raining,
And I’m taking refuge,
Watching a bridge
Withstand a river deluge.

Drinking the sight of waters rage,
The ebb and flow of each new age.
My faces are glazed,
Until I exchange my gaze
For a traveler
Treading
Woe.

In a hastened pace to stave disgrace
By their cultural need for saving face.
Their mind unlaced,
Glancing through
Time’s passage;
They can’t see the message,
Blind to choosing a clue.

I assume their fear
For failing to adhere
To societal passages,
Spurred by the purchase
Of each new dear.

I feel their urgency surging waves of gravity;
Tied tides, I can taste the apocryphal surgery.
It hurts me,
To see their druthers change hue
Just so they can drink the dangers they’re daring,
Slaking their need for this fixed way through.

Un-damming a plea,
Steeped in empathy,
“Be patient. Please,
May I help you see?
That this river is
Swifter
Than you or me.”
All spilling from my heart's case,
And my mind.

“Can’t YOU see?
I haven’t the time and hardly the space.
I must keep trudging if I’m to keep pace,
In the race for the sun
And all that’ll never come
Undone.
Now keep you to yourself and--oh, never mind!”
Damming their course,
Leaking remorse lined remedies.

With each new step, the last one readies,
Traveling rapidly towards temporal eddies;
Vexed whispers in the flow of things,
Watch this fellow in the context of streams.

This friend thinks they can churn and rage
Against the turning of an age.
I really thought that they could too,
Oh! How I wish this stream’s course true.

Instead I watch the warrant
Of ridged destiny
Abridged,
Tearing under river's torrent;
I’m drinking in a travesty,
Of purely slickening torment.

The levees brim then burst.
The waters rage and rumble,
Spilling over bridge a-tumble.
“Don’t take me!”
My neighbor’s footing starts to crumble,
Their mettle and meter all a-jumble.
It is a tragedy.

“I’M DROWNING IN COMEDY!
What do I do?!
Can I do?!
Will I do?!
Should have done?!
Would have done?!
Could have done?!”
Nothing.

So I watched my dear friend swept
Away and wept
Into my hands.

I gave them a rope,
And found them hanged.

Then,
Looking up,
I realize something:

It’s raining,
And I’m taking refuge,
Watching a bridge
Withstand a river deluge.

Drinking the sight of waters rage,
The ebb and flow of each new age.
My faces are glazed,
Until I exchange my gaze
For a traveler
Treading
Woe.
Mobius: The end is the beginning
Melissa June Dec 2013
Satin petals encased
her heart's desolated pieces
from love unlaced
a fragrance of forlorn releases
 
Her tears trickle down
caress unconsolable hands
red eyes begin to drown
as her head lands
 
Onto a bed draped
with thorns of the foregone 
though she escaped
her heart has yet to press on
 
Until she has healed 
her heart breaks through
she remains concealed 
a rose so blue.

— The End —