"unstick" poems
Clumps of red lacquered strings
twisting and wriggling
They just won't unstick
They cling together with stubborn love
Basil leaves hopelessly floating through the eternity of red sauce and garlic
Chopped up and sprinkled thoughtlessly throughout the disarray
Yet, somehow, little strands of spaghetti manage to stay together
and
I find myself
envying them
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 8:22 AM UTC
Babushka doll, you're an acid vase
Empty as church mornings
Devoid of all feelings;
You unravel your sullen smiles,
Ill-bred and unclean.
You are not complete.
You lost your babies.
Now you're alone.
Darling, darling, darling, how does it feel?
To feel the root of brute in the stubby heel,
Your silly scarves lost in the wheel.
Just peel off the cabbage roses
Petal by Petal,
Dismember yourself.
What a laugh!
The air has asthma,
The sun gives it T.B.
Oh dearie me!
It wheezes kisses heavier than a lecher.
Saboteur of my days,
Why must you hurt what you can?
Because you hate me, hate me.
You are an acid vase full of hate.
I can see your ruddy heart like an X-ray.
Unstick yourself from me.
I don't want you,
Your scarlet lips
Lake Baikal eyes,
or Eastern European knits.
The rings shed their gold.
Knock knock,
Dead at 30.
The last twist of the knife.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
she seems like a saint in my dark moments
as she graces me with her gentle smile
because her nomadic heart came to rest for
a butterfly's moment within my grasp
and with noble intent i heart and soul to her attentions
so she unsticks my head
with her own road of good intentions
she is tender in my wilderness
placing small acts of cataclysm in my path
to dislodge my mud filled head
and with her devices nailed to my mind
it is easier to think so i think
so with her delighted mind she tinkers
with my comfort zone
trying to find the greasy spoon
that i eat my metaphysical meals with
leaves me hungry for words
when it comes time to put pen to paper
my head full of mud
grapple with the notions of her divinity
but the weight of thinking too much
keeps me from doing freestyle take to wing
so it is me that must unstick
from her influences
and her rubber band heart
that keeps bouncing back
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 8:06 PM UTC
And here I am, the chip
on your shoulder
Now tell me what shape
can this neutral face take
you to meet
your ends
make amends, rage through
over get over?
You look at me, see
last dances, smiling kisses
young romances?
Or hands not held
misunderstood--rejected
resentment for disconnect
still festering, infected?
Or perhaps kind words
dreams under
stars and secrets
and good times--
my favorite by far?
Now here's one of those faces
with something to say
I can be so much more than
a projection of your past if you
you'd let me--at least
release me from
angsts gossip
I promise I'm not your
youth come back to haunt you I'm
just trying to live my life here I
don't exist just for you
to torment you
or adore you
let me be myself please!
The chopping block's so painful and
right beside your face was
not the seat for which I'm aiming I
feel so trapped here
please release me
just ignore me
let me be a blank slate
if nothing else-- just boring
And maybe even something new
I promise not to sic my past on
you just please--oh
please
don't make me relive your nightmares
like you do
I don't want to be stuck with you
If I could I'd unstick you
Don't be stuck on me
I'd never do that to you
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC
103rd Street / Watts Towers
Suicide help lines posted
on signs above the train tracks
make her wonder where the
stars went make her wonder
what she’d do if
someone near her jumped
Decided she ain’t tryna
save a life, she just tryna
stay alive
Vernon
Little girl with big bright eyes,
do your troubles have a name?
Little girl your kicks are sticking
to the pavement. Do you ever watch
the planes at night?
They’ll try to tell you otherwise but
you don’t gotta unstick yourself.
In the City of Angels someone’s bound
to get caught in the smog layer.
7th Street / Metro Center
She looks for you in piss-soaked
alleys, on rusted fire escapes, behind
buildings flashing neon green crosses,
a sort of salvation — together you’re
the most perfect covenant.
Does she tell you that enough?
Pershing Square
There’s no such thing as dreaming
here, and you get used to that.
You get used to everything.
When you’re flying over Angel’s Knoll
it’s easy to forget how far you are
from Hollywood, same city same jungle,
the only place with hundreds of stars
on the sidewalk but hardly any
in the sky.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 9:31 PM UTC
The colors of the world is bursting at the seams.
The colors of the world exploded all at once.
So many, so many.
Images and color and color and images,
Wedged behind my eyelids, stuck in my mind.
Won't move, won't budge, won't unstick.
So bright, so colorful, so many wonderful.
They've escaped my mind, they've escaped the world.
Is a retribution at hand?
A revolt, a rebellion? An army? A battle? A war?
Color and images and images and color.
Are there no revelations? Will there be even one?
They're out and about, and roaming this world.
They've escaped the world and our minds and our reality and I know we know we all know they've gone and run out and drained us and escaped us.
Sep 4, 2015
Sep 4, 2015 at 3:08 PM UTC
i return to the world from my hours long sleep, leaving my bed still tangled in the tail end of my last dream. without even a chance to unstick my lungs from my back or wipe my bleary eyes, i shuffle towards the cabinet where i keep the coffee. i always have instant coffee – it’s not fresh, but the brevity is gratifying when you’re tired. it’s still habit for me to reach for this, but i put it back because there’s something better to come if i am a little patient.
you recoiling at the thought of instant coffee was funny at first, but i began to think why i continued to drink it. i wasn’t scared of the effort, but i couldn’t be bothered so i settled for what would be easy. but that changed the first morning i saw you in my kitchen brewing it for me. i couldn’t have been more in love.
the roasted scent no longer bitter and stale but fragrant, the espresso cascading over a cup of milk, delicately diffusing with the dairy in a loving long-term marriage they have always had. paired with your morning hair and sheepish grin, i doubted whether i really needed the caffeine.
i had never known coffee to taste this ambrosial, this good. when the warmth passed my lips it lit candles in the coves of every nerve in my body. you asked me if it was good and it was perfect. you said you’d make it for me like this all the time if i wanted and i wanted your coffee only if it came with your company. it was a good deal, you said.
soon i came to expect the coffee to be made and brought to me. i was spoiled by your kindness, which spoiled itself. you left the coffee machine and some grounds and other things to make it. it was never like yours, but i assume the taste would be off now if it was.
i turn on the machine, slowly awakening as my senses suddenly remember to do their jobs. the cream and sugar melt into the cup. it’s warm enough. it’s not like it was before, it never will be.
i throw away the instant coffee container, the last remnant of how things were before you. i can live in a post-you world comforted at least that something lives with me where you left empty space to die.
you’re here and gone in a flash, like the coffee i used to drink. a slow drip will see me through it all.
Nov 22, 2021
Nov 22, 2021 at 1:00 AM UTC
every year
is a month
that happened twelve times
every month is a week
that happened four times
every week
is a day
that happened seven times
every day is an hour
that happened twenty four
every hour
is a minute
that happened sixty times
every minute
is a second that happened.
so this second
this tiny little fleeting thing—
my dear, that’s your minute, hour, day, week, month year—
just the replay, callback, repeat buttons are a little bit stuck
so everything happens a whole bunch
but in the end its all the same
so fight
with your dear god ****** life
to make them different.
repair yourself. unstick the replay repeat callback buttons
and dont let your time be a series of play backs.
make each one a new route through the park
a new journey
to a new star
a new poem
a new sentence
lose the order of time.
you have the power to make every second different from the next
you can turn each second into an experience
a journey
a song
a rhyme
a hug
a smile
a new friend.
so dont let each year be a year
make it a scrapbook
of the world and you
a constant evolving friendship
with endless things to do.
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 12:12 PM UTC
If I had to say something now, in this moment of a great nonsensical sense of loss it would be that I too, can’t stop falling in love but am stuck in the 1950s, I can’t carry a tune or stand in line so there is very little hope, they said hope was the last thing in the jar, and when the lid slammed shut, we were saved from it all. That earth angel knew what she was doing, wholly like a lock of blonde hair from Doris Day, when she set the paper moon on fire, and I guess Bobby knew it too, when he dunked it underwater, hoping to send it somewhere flameless and soggy, beyond the sea. I cried into the moon, tripping over my slippers and I put my head on the bookcases’ shoulder, Paul Anka and Chubby Checker themselves couldn’t quench the tears, I was twisted you see, and I didn’t think it could be the same again. Time to put the cardboard cut-out down, the picket signs chopped to fences and I dragged my toes, I fell in love with the plastic walls, the table I built and a thick, encompassing sense of home, like a teenager in love, I don’t know why they did it but the high crooning voice of Lymon helped me unstick from the walls. Some spirit of left creativity, me and my bereftment belong together, tied when Ritchie Valens dropped us down behind the chest of drawers, I yelled to grab a hand, but it fell quietly onto the curtain pole, impaling itself. Nathaniel entered the room, came looking but answered the ringing with a “Hey, Mama” and left. I couldn’t save my own last dance, I didn’t know that I was it, it drifted and said it would meet me someplace. It said it would meet me when the air clears, it’s getting late and tonight I look something dear and washed up. I miss you so dearly, send me. I hadn’t known that that would be it, this impressive but horrific amalgamation, and I’ve been here for too long.
The screen is dark and blank, I can’t see anything past it here.
Here in this empty space where it all was.
Jun 11, 2020
Jun 11, 2020 at 2:03 PM UTC
The midnight tides wafted between cityblocks
and shops, rolling the wheels of each bus,
and we stood as if in an orchard
with the moon's light gently rippling on us
filtered through leaves of apple treetops.
We couldn't unstick from our heads
(or one another's) words of
the same song on repeat.
First we both caught it, then caught
ourselves out kissing. Repeat.
There is a symphony rumbling beneath my feet.
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 9:25 PM UTC
Here’s my letter to you.
I hate you.
I love you.
I yearn for you.
I can’t stop thinking about you.
I draw your face on bread slices and squish them underneath my feet.
I see you in the windows of cars passing by.
I see you in the exhaustion of the wind that blows through crumpled newspapers.
I hear you in the doorknob that won’t unstick.
You are the chalk beneath my fingernails.
You are the way my coffee swirls when it burns my tongue.
You are everywhere.
I can’t undo you.
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 1:00 AM UTC
The tape, as I unstick it from its place, rips off plates of paint from our crummy, moldy walls.
My heart wrinkles a little.
I fold the tape over the corners of my collage. Lay it down over my everest-sized pile of clothes-to-trade-for-souvenirs.
I sigh.
It is quiet.
A cockroach scurries out of a shirt sleeve. I flick him lovingly off the bed. The only one to keep my house company these days.
I start pulling out notebooks, so much. So many. Too many things I collect and funnel value into.
I must decide which to take and what to leave behind in the ******* bin.
Back at school, I chuck half the pile, almost violently, into the trash and stride away. Stay there then. Have it your way.
Only a few minutes before all of this, I bragged about being ready to go home, washing my hands of this ridiculous place.
But it only just occurred to me then that by leaving Africa, I will be facing a whole new life. Like a neo-Alice, falling further down the rabbit hole. I am being sieved, strained, pressed until the juices of energetic volunteerism is squeezed dry.
I have only heard rumors, of course, but I believe that what I will be facing will be maybe even more terrifying than it is here.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
There's a problem with my components
They're all separate and won't fit each other
I wish all my chemicals would create something original
But they refuse to mix
Like oil and water I'm unresolved
There is no solution
Open the bottles carefully
Pour a measured amount into my orifices
Try to mix them perfectly
But you added something malevolent
And now I'm all explosive
And imbalanced
Unstick the ideas
Unmix the chemicals
Let's try again
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 8:46 PM UTC
Tires,
They spin faster,
And fast on the ice,
Never seeming to stop.
Your life,
Flashed right before your eyes,
Faster then the tires on the ice.
You have grown older,
Have made something of yourself,
But the ice never changed,
But the tired got off the ice.
Then the ice melted away,
Like your life slowly does,
Day after day.
It slowly happens,
But seems so quick.
Your tires soon unstick.
You life flashes,
Time to say goodbye,
Goodbye you,
Goodbye tires,
Goodbye ice.
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 3:32 PM UTC
sentences,
words,
syllables,
sounds-
unstick your lips/ push them around.
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 6:40 PM UTC
Your truck isn't stolen.
I got it stuck in the field.
Keys are in bowl.
We will unstick it tomorrow.
I picked a quart of blackberries.
Had to walk back in the rain
P.s.
Tyson got a new toy.
Jul 6, 2016
Jul 6, 2016 at 8:42 PM UTC
Sometimes my mind is a broken record
My thoughts stuck on repeat
I've been trying to fix it
unstick it
bring it back
to playing music
glorious symphonies
but usually it just takes time
and in that wait
I must listen
to the pain
of my yesterdays
over and over
screaming for help
and I know that that pain is over
but it is the only thing I can hear
it becomes so real
Oct 30, 2017
Oct 30, 2017 at 6:31 PM UTC
sitting on the toilet
taking a ****
because there is no nice way to
say i am emptying my body of the
garbage that i have shoved into
my gaping maw of a mouth
today
tonight
it’s dark out
but i’m not sure what time it is
everything is blurry
my eye is gummy
i can feel the staples
pulling out when i blink
in and out
they stick and unstick
a timeless rhyme
but ******
i saw the vanity scissors
through the slit in the back of the drawer
and i thought of taking them to my wrists
and throat
and thighs
and arms
wondered how sharp they would be
didn’t care what was caked on them
i just wanted to let out
this demon smoke
trapped under my skin
it tries to seep out through my mouth
but gets caught between my teeth
maybe that’s why they have a faint
greyish tinge to them
the red lining isn’t gums anymore
it is simply self hatred and destruction
and the skin of this innocent girl that
i use to floss my teeth with
because you must keep fangs razor sharp
when all you have is nubs for finger tips
and my toes are useless cuz all they
do is crack and splinter and bleed
my fingers fly across the keyboard
but not fast enough
falling behind
slipping on the trail of spilled ink
a purple and pink and red and orange
and cotton candy blue
mess running down my thighs
all i bleed now is a broken string
of i am so ******* sorry
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 2:54 AM UTC
When I was young I thought I'd lean in
And help everyone I saw.
I'd take on troubles and burdens and
Cares like a postman scooping up today's
Mail from a big blue letterbox.
But I found the metal singes my fingers and forearms
And the envelopes leave paper cuts.
My blood drops in crimson drips
On the letterhead you carefully crafted.
The stamps unstick and amble, impotent,
Down the sidewalk,
Blown away from me
On the slightest breeze.
It took me too long to learn--
Other people's troubles are their own
To pass along.
Jul 17, 2019
Jul 17, 2019 at 5:16 PM UTC
turn the page
turn the page and leave it be
let yourself let it go
I know
I keep telling myself and
I keep hearing from them
my mom and my dad
my therapist and my friends
turn the page
just one page
just one at a time
and soon enough the sheets will be clean again
I know
I know and I’m sorry
I’m trying, I am
and I know it doesn’t seem hard to turn one page
but my fingers are bitten, barren, and ******
and so dry you could use them to sand a bench
so dry that any time I try to turn a page
it’s difficult to grasp a sheet
my fingers slip off
and I never turn just one
I always skip a step and
go too far
I go too far and think I’m okay,
think I can forget
but the point of turning pages isn’t forgetting
and my journal wasn’t written neatly in pencil anyway
it wasn’t even stained permanently with sensible ink
there’s blood on my pages
mine and his and hers
and tears of course
mine running blue
his running purple
hers running black
all of them plucked from my shoulders and arms
combed from my hair where they fell
when I screamed my impermanence
retched my insufficiency
screeched and hiccuped and sobbed my uselessness,
when my cracked lips and raw hands and broken frame
begged to not be forgiven
and all they did was nod and hug me
and cry on my shoulders and arms and hair,
cry from beautiful eyes that told me I was loved
eyes that left when I told them to leave
and stayed when I told them to stay
eyes that saw me
that knew me
that told me I had worth
that told me they loved me
that gave me everything I didn’t deserve
that were hurt by me beyond repair
but forgave me anyway
I want to do it for them
those specific pairs of eyes
so I’m trying to turn the page
I’m trying
but there’s so much blood
and it’s not all mine
and I’m trying to remember what you told me
about licking my fingers to unstick the pages
but wouldn’t you know my mouth is drier even than my hands
either from the medication or from talking too much
or maybe from not talking nearly as much as I should
but whatever the reason at least I'm trying and
I know they’re glad I’m trying
because they know there was a time when I wouldn’t have
and I’m constantly unsure whether
I’m going back there or not
back to when it was like that
when I wouldn’t have tried
sometimes I think I am
sometimes I want to
sometimes I find myself missing the familiarity
so I stop brushing my teeth again
stop eating food again
stare at my ceiling and cry silently again
think about every awful thing that ever happened
and watch as my nightmares of pink bathtubs
turn into fantasies again
but their eyes
their eyes that spilled over and told me I was loved
that forgave me
that did everything they didn’t have to
they want me here
they want me to come back to them
and I think I want that too
I want that for them
maybe even for me
so I’ll just have to keep trying
to get that page flipped
one page at a time and maybe
maybe someday bathtubs will just be for baths
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 3:34 PM UTC
Go Away Love
Love, oh love, where do I start
You mislead me, you abused me
You trick me into your devilish lies
You give me a false sense of hope
Because every time I talk I feel I am getting closer
But I am actually drifting farther apart
Driving a deep wedge from our love
Why do I bother trying
Why do I ever love
A plastic heart that contributes nothing
More manipulative than the best lawyer
Because when my hopes are high
They go sinking down the drain
I can’t give up the fight
When I need to give up the fight
Fight or flight, I just wanna fly away
This game is too insane
Everyday your obsessed with the same person
Your eyes glued when you want to unglue them
Go away love
Go away every lonely night
Crying into my pillow
Thinking obsessively about them
But they won’t answer
Every moment cherish
To make an impression
But impressions won’t be enough
You know they don’t care
Despite how hard you try to forget
But you are too determined
But you just need to forget about it all
Forget about them
But love attracts to you like a magnet
Every suction sticks
When I want it to unstick
What is it so attracting?
Why do I want to come back for more?
When I know I will fail
Fall head first with no cushion
I try to go with the flow
Try to be myself
But nothing will work
Nothing will fit
The puzzle pieces won’t match
Go away love
Your worth nothing to me
You lied you cheated you played me
You used me as your punching bag
You use me as your test object
Too see how we will react
To the rejection
To the thought of failure
I am onto your ***** tricks
I know what you want to see is failure
Why do you want to see me fall
Why am I test subject
I am human too
I need love too
I don’t wanna dable and go
I desire the same affection
Yet my heart is the greatest liar
My heart is the greatest sinner
Everyday it tries to pull me in the wrong direction
Why do I have to suffer this force
I just need to let go
But I can’t let go
Everything falls down like a broken cliff
Thinking and shaking
Staring into your eyes
Awedropped
But knowing
That my goal is impossible
My standards set
And knowing I can’t meet those
When my heart tricks me I can
Is why I spend my nights
Looking at sad comics
Thinking I will be lonely forever
Mind manipulates me
Guess my mind is a sinner too
My whole body becomes Pinocchio
Lying that I can do this
That I can receive love
From someone that my heart connects too
But they don’t connect back
So I just wanna let go
“No don’t let go”
“There is always a chance”
“The odds may work out”
But they never work out
They always come back to haunt me
So let’s face reality
My love won’t love me back
So all I have to say is
Go away love
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 4:14 PM UTC
In our youth
When we scraped our knees and elbows
Raw and red
We would run to our mothers
Frightened of the first taste of the attribute
That would haunt us like a shadow admist
Our grown up lives
Into the medicine cabinet she would reach
Placing soothing kisses over
our barely present wounds
Placing soft sticky Band-Aids on our scraped up limbs
It was a quick fix
Comfort and safety wrapped up into one
Paper packaged medicinal amenity
And each Band-Aid would make us yearn for more
An addiction it became so quickly
We became oversensitive to pain
One sharp tag and we went fumbling for the box
A peeling piece of skin
and the world was topsy turvy
Until it was covered and forgotten
When we finally felt
Real and jarring pain
The wrappers surrounded us
A mountain of useless snow
And all the Band-Aids would unstick
From the amount of blood seeping out of
Dagger cuts and bullet holes
And we go back to our youth
And remember when life was sweet like an August peach
And pain was something talked of movies and ghost stories
And we cry our salty tears
Begging to go back when a band aid could fix everything
And we wonder
When that power left
And this despair finally set in
The band aids unstick
And fall to the ground
Like we once did
In our youth
When we scraped our knees and elbows
Raw and red
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 4:39 PM UTC