"unsettlement" poems
Her breast of broaden chest
uncovered slight
by a sheet pulled across in the night
tangled by twitching feet
a mixture of movements
unsure toes singing
songs of unsettlement.
And her brow
furrowed as her teeth set
and clench
What does her throat yearn to garble?
instead of yarble
as her wrists slither along
like Cleopatra's snakes
that whisper trails of burnt red
and blotched white.
Bedded portrayals of lovely betrayals.
Because the guilt is clawing up
transpiring from the floor
like a mutant through a wall
weaving through taught bed springs
as a mouse after cheese
bursting from the indented mattress
like a monster in a horror movie
to grasp her
and pull her
until her screams ring out sharp
and scissor through paper dreams
before the weight crushes her.
Decapitated
as the Red Queen did to cards,
It was only a game
and always,
as silly games do,
someone had to lose.
And she
unfortunately
Won.
Jun 19, 2013
Jun 19, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC
The man gazed at the weathered sheet of paper held listlessly between finger and thumb, its edges slightly ripped and not a little yellowed. The list was printed in varying shades of ink, the older entries significantly faded. The words were his life transcribed: a list of all he had accomplished. The list included both trivial and monumental achievements and covered the page from back to front.
His expression was not one of pride or satisfaction, however. It was instead one of deep unsettlement, despair. No joy was to be had from his successes; no reprieve from the sense of ubiquitous uselessness was found in the work he finished.
The feeling was dampened when active, but at night with only his list as company the weight of his utter lack of meaning tore his lungs from their cage and his heart from its socket.
He took a lighter from his pocket and resolutely held the flame to the parchment. The flame, however, merely curled round the edges and left the frayed paper unharmed; his life was so lackluster as to be absolutely inflammable, untouchable by any strong desire or emotion.
The apathy clogged his throat but forced him to breathe.
He sat down heavily and tried to remember how to cry.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 2:06 AM UTC
becoming the subject of a muse,
merely an object as the muse.
i see the discomfort that comes from
having your story told for you,
displayed without your consent.
i am the director of my own life.
i wrote you out of my script,
so leave your idealized version of me
out of yours.
the unsettlement i feel
to be spoken of so highly,
with a glaze of gold outlying my skin,
stuck to a pedestal.
i am not your trophy,
i will never be your wife!
your version of me
projected through the eyes of obsession.
infatuation.
did you see me as your possession?
and so here it lies.
here lies the irony of making you a muse,
to preach my uttermost desire
to be shed as yours.
May 16, 2019
May 16, 2019 at 6:30 PM UTC
Tethered between branches:
The aesthetic of unsettlement,
The sweet mortality that tastes
Like a dead *** of leaves;
Shed on a cleavage of daylight,
Where the breaths chatter like autumn trees.
The gush that blows a fleeting murmur,
Its alibi in disguise.
The dust creeps upon a fall,
That screeches an eventual end of a boulevard;
Stuttering the leaves on a dawn,
Where they covet for to be hither or thither,
For twere,the mortality, in awe of them,
And for did I unleash them aught,
Under it crawled in my flesh
Sewed through as if an intravenous flow.
Death, my fellow(!)
for 'tis headed to thee,
As it cleft hither a flaw.
On a light it flickers,
On a death it singed,
For 'tis a shed,
Upon the day when it cleaves
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 11:06 AM UTC
a crevice carved
deep within
cutting through
the unnecessary
hacking away
at the undesirable
pieces
of things
unneeded
unwanted
but still
there
why?
the scrambled thoughts
i've organized
have urged me
to be rid of
to toss aside
this garbage
that fills my thoughts
fills my mind
consumes my head
with
darkness
an unseen truth
yet a suffocating
existence
of what is real
this unhappiness
this unsettlement
a wavering reality
of
discontentment
and it cannot
or it will not
leave me
and so
i live my life
nodding
smiling
urging those around me
to embrace
to love
to feel utterly fulfilled
in an envelope of plastic
that cannot
be
real
but that which
is a totally acceptable
form of
life.
May 25, 2020
May 25, 2020 at 4:58 PM UTC