"unstitched" poems
Gendering Woman *******
Beautiful, anatomical part // Ugly, anatomical part
Natural, pleasurable // Burdensome, loathsome
Female Symbolic // Femme Symbolic
MALIGNANT HEALTHY
fearful, tearful, wretched // joyful, hopeful, euphoric,
bereft, wept, grieving // embryonic, rapt, relieving
leaving, loss // believing, gain
m a y b e - d e a t h r e - b i r t h
BI-LATERAL
MASTECTOMIES
Operating Theatre
SURGEON ANAESTHETIST
cleaning/ cutting/ knife/ scalpel // doping/ unconscious/ airway
blood / tissue // hypotension
loss/ damage // shock
drains // sinus rhythm
stitches // pain deadening
tight binding // reversal drugs
POST-OPERATIVE
a l i v e a w a k e
draining, bound & stitched draining, bound & stitched
DRAINED
~ UNBOUND
-- UNSTITCHED –
Empty chest Flat Chest
FREEDOM from Disease FREEDOM from Dis-ease
© M.L.Emmett
May 19, 2016
May 19, 2016 at 12:28 PM UTC
Somebody has unstitched my heart.
Pulled the thread and let it fall apart.
And I'm empty now, it's all hollowed out
And I'm trying to breathe with the lungs I'm without.
It wasn't me, and it wasn't you,
Life did what living tends to do,
It stretched the seams and split the sides,
And I felt nothing here inside,
The only thing that's telling me
That things aren't how they ought to be
Is the seizing stop of breath
Inside my outside heaving chest,
And a familiar ache along
The seam that seemed to last so long,
That now across my ribs agape,
Allows my reason to escape,
Along with not a little blood,
To seep beneath me in the rug.
I could tell you I'm surprised,
But that would surely be a lie,
I feel some grimly got relief,
To succumb finally to belief.
I'm not sure that you understand
I'll be waiting here until the end.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
I live where a man rubbing
White shoe cream on his leather loafers has ulcers
From malnutrition and constant cassava.
Where a man’s sister loves his Fossil watch
And avocados, but gives
The whole fruit to her hate child.
The road is walked in the morning by
Rwandans, the jerry cans on their heads wetting their chests
With water from the spigot, half an hour away.
Nike shoes are unstitched, laces
Washed white daily and
The drinking water is gone by seven p.m.
I live where black people go thirsty keeping
Their sneakers white; throats dry each morning
While lacing their shoes.
Jun 10, 2010
Jun 10, 2010 at 1:03 PM UTC
I wish it was easier for
people to forget, if things left their
mind as easy as they let
them in, tough skin
wouldn’t wear thin
as easy as it is right now,
my past is full of imperfections
and bad decisions, leaving unstitched
incisions beneath the brink of sanity,
but who’s isn’t? every time falsities
start, my mind races
with my heart to contemplations on
when to finish, they tattoo the past
of others on their insecurities,
fuelling the fire that burns a hole
into respect and reputation,
creating a vicious cycle
of revenge and envy,
each gossip verbally vomited
into naive ears pulls the marionette
strings of perception into the road normally
taken, two roads may have diverged
at a yellow wood, but when the ignorance
burns yellow to ash, the road less taken
seems blocked, so the next time you hear
something about another, don’t be too quick
spread the word, the game of
telephone can get a little distorted when
the next phone call
you get is that they
were found hanging from
a rope.
MJB
Feb 17, 2016
Feb 17, 2016 at 1:37 AM UTC
Dream is but a life,
Severed from congruence and chronology.
Did I imagine my memory?
The adolescent blizzard,
The tar pits of first love,
The prepubescent honeycomb,
The shedding of innocent skin,
The infant cobweb spun by genetics.
Death at the leg of my mate,
Birth among a thousand siblings.
Climbing to the ground
From the sky where i was buried,
Resting in rapid eye ether,
Transparent atmospheres solidify
With ruby whips of gravity.
My reflection in your fingernails,
My face askew in distortion,
Your hand's a house of mirrors,
Peeling at my silhouette.
I'm drinking fire,
As we cremate the sea.
Nirvana becomes panoramic,
The air ripples.
The topaz pillar i held becomes my body pillow,
And I wipe the sleep from my eye.
The dream unstitched,
We sew reality back up,
But the thread gets thin
At night.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 4:59 PM UTC
coming apart
at edges unstitched by sharpened memories of the loss
I'm bleeding out of every seam seeing what playing relationship costs
and it seems I'm destined
to bleed until I've paid again and again for what I bought and lost
I'm coming apart
trying to remember where it's gone, why I deserve
every stranger ****** hard night and unmeant word
and why it seems I'm destine
to choke on every revelation the loneliness serves
this is what I get, these scraps and echoes
this is what I get for believing there's more than people show
this is the price of every kiss and comfort I got to know
the debt is always having to lose it while the healing eases too slow
I'm coming undone
reliving in dreams that I know the closeness of a familiar touch
remembering that I'm buried alive and the soil's weight is too much
to scratch my way out of this destiny
with my own heart hating my decisions and holding a grudge
for a gleaming moment I found myself
for one shiny moment my tears and patches relearned trust
but what's cut of the same damaged cloth will always be what it must
and a moment was just enough to make me forget the scissor's final ******
I'm falling apart at threads worn fray
reliving so many years in the regrets born every new day
and always tossing well coins to wish the hurtful questions away
why me, why them, why now, why wouldn't first love stay?
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
Inside this
depth of the perpetual,
I hold onto the light,
learning that
it is not an illusion
but a constant
fire within
hard as metal
simultaneously lava soft
no longer boneless,
lumped jelly
in a flaccid bowl
Instead I am bowled over
with new power,
plugged into
my own electric universe
in rushes of ******** voltage
that was always waiting for me
to see it
to allow it inside
the tissues of my body
to flow up and through
intestines, muscle, heart and bone
threads from
a glowing orb
that slake
and snake through me
like a river's glory
leaving the spirit on edge for more
and I am ever grateful
to take that light
spin it into a gift
unwrap it slowly
drape it
over me like
a flowing,
unstitched garment
pour its liquid-tipped velvet
onto my follicles, sensitive
tender luminosity
touching all the right places
its silvery essence
flooding me in
drips and slips
healing all the lost
and lonely places,
desolation's imprint
hollows of brimmed-over
despair
I have become
a quivering, stellar bud
bursting forth, each day
burning into new
rebirth in quenching torrents
ripe as ovarian silk
soaked in
cellular juice
inner seeds ready to be flung
unto the earth
into the wilderness
into expansion
ready to
bloom
and bloom
and bloom
again
Jun 24, 2017
Jun 24, 2017 at 2:10 AM UTC
*I heard painful derision of the nightfall
drawn me to seclude my talent
into the unknown place where it was not born futile.
It has been years since you ate my mind;
since we met in that strange road
where all melancholies diverged,
you have been my relief, my friend
and my witness when I was crippled by tears.
I seldom asked the mirrors, why should I continue?
If there are thousands of people outside our worlds
who could create you better than I,
who could make you more attractive than my pen?
Why should I continue my dreams?
And so I almost gave up, surrendered in peace;
I always wake up on the wrong side of the bed.
I was sailing edges of the oceans
just to seek for a masterpiece,
but I was fooled by my selfish intentions
and so I laughed at myself for length,
for there were a bunch of times
I could not even bestow you a single word.
I was totally bruised; buried my feet on the ground.
Others love my poetry, others just trifle,
others read it aloud that no one can hear,
others in facade of silence.
It matters no more, I have critics then.
I write not to impress, but simply to express
my undefined emotions, and unstitched fantasies.
Well, composing you is little bit hard for my part,
but you were a butterfly in my heart.*
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 5:11 AM UTC
Emily will take her cedar box
of hidden poems
throwing them on a Sou’ Westerly breeze
in a New England Spring —
They will be snatched and fly
daring, dainty flutter byes
across the stretching continent
the Great Plains and New Frontiers —
The Sun — rising in ribbons
Mountains dripping scarlet sunsets
vast Miles of Evening Sparks —
as the Hemispheres come home
to early Night —
they’ll be read by lonely cowboys
drinking whisky, in the sagebrush
Indian braves campfire smoking
Sung in Saloons by husky-voiced dames
can-can dressed and a whole lotta grit
and gumption.
Emily, lightened of her load
unknotted the Skein of Misery —
Universe unstitched —
in this moment of escape
Landscape will listen —
Shadows will hold their breath
until the words are spoken.
Emily’s skipping down the stairs
of that morbid, cold wintered house
with its bare Slants of Light —
rushing out the door
throwing herself on the Open day —
Telling True, but slanted.
Sep 1, 2015
Sep 1, 2015 at 6:46 PM UTC
We are always running
These streets holding us
As we hold hands
Your hand in mine,
We are running
We are running,
Not following anyone
Not following anything
We are unique
We are pioneers heading west
Not chased but willingly chasing the sunset
Where the horizon and the sky meet with a seamless kiss
We are hoping that they aren‘t the only things that love
each other so much they can be together without
leaving a mark
Not tearing or wounding or cutting or finding any cracks
and fault lines, perfectly matched
One falling into the sea
One rising into the clouds
And on and on and on forever
Dripping off the edge of the known world
Who can know our world
Who could have chased us this far
We are alone in the wild
This rushing and running
Running from the streetlights falling away far behind us
Our hands tight like a taut rope from our shipwrecks
We are pulling one another from the depths
Neither an anchor
But both anchored together
Sinking
Sailing
Storming seas of sidewalk puddles and pavement bleeding
together
No edges
No seams
No feet
No legs
No bodies
All running heart first shoulders back, eyes closed
Winds whirling around us
Running not following
Holding not falling
Chasing and ending somewhere in that kiss of sky and sea
Finally finding rest
Wrapped in a peaceful footstep folded-up asphalt blanket of
each other‘s peace and preface
The only unstitched and perfect seam is the horizon that
God wakes up and puts to bed where we find our
heads were tucked in
But our hearts weren‘t allowed to end
(c) Marty Schoenleber III 2012
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
Pinned my stomach to the sky
Strung it up with tinsel and filament
Carved kisses into my sternum
With elastic lips.
I can feel you fading from me,
Morsels creep away,
Nothing holding them there
Any longer. I feel less sad.
It is somehow worse.
You had long since left.
Where did the memories
Of me go when they unstitched
From your head?
My heart beats
Like a stillborn child
Against its mother’s womb.
I am an uninflated punching bag
You have hair like chocolate fire
And a sun inside your face.
I stared as hard as I could,
Burned your chapped lips and brow
Into my retinas, you left
The ghosts of your arms
Around the back of my neck.
I, petrified,
Pretend you are a still-life
And paint you onto my eyelids,
With faded ink from
childhood picture books.
My stomach is a canopy
Of starless sky pouring half
Digested everything
Onto the robins in my chest.
I see you and smile,
But maybe you missed it?
I am going to a movie
With a girl who wants to kiss me.
I am gathered up inside
All of her arms.
She cries to her friend
In the backstage bathroom.
I do not know how
To make the words happen.
She finds me beside her
And her mouth is on fire.
I wish my hands were holding
The soft of her cheeks.
She says:
I thought we were going to be together.
I know I have a heart,
Because it is trying to leave me.
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 1:57 AM UTC
A beginning of a text
A begging sloppy test
Living dreams of lost
In sunken messy world
Who will take us there?
The other side of the wall
A place of open hearts
Unstirred and unstitched
The 'Jezebels' stare at us
Peeking, itching the peaks
As we lose they triumph
As we touch "ours", a pull
The exile dwelling tiresome
Sweaty drools, hunger pangs
Spotted blood stains rules
We crawl from the beauty
Where is the bounty Nile?
A plentiful stock of nutriment
Hand in hand, a moonlight dance
Joyous basket to hold and nourish
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 3:16 PM UTC
Threads of cotton
corkscrewing
through blankets,
blending flesh
with fabric.
Flicking rain
drops off the
surface
of window
panes,
penciling my
name over
your skin with
my teeth.
Tremoring fingers
tracing your
silhouette,
sensing your
rapture wrapped
in
apprehensive
heart beats,
hanging on the
fibers folding
over our
unstitched
bodies
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 10:19 PM UTC
The snuggled smoke that flourished through the wrapped trees of distress,
Surpassed the frenzied flowers that my lover had once possessed.
Neither rain, nor comforting words nestled the neglect of those tears,
Who hid behind the books and the consumption of countless, crazed fears.
Amazed and awed what lies through the window of those memorable drives,
Only to end up with the inevitable filth that dripped from her eyes.
I constantly searched for things to drown out the waves of misery,
To keep her head above the washing water and vicious visionary.
Perhaps, myself, to acclaim her sensible wants and needs,
And to lay the pebbles on top of the dusty path of weeds.
Certain that this was the becoming of a new beginning,
To love a person more than myself, discovering a silver lining.
Time became our fearless friend, yet our worst enemy,
Through the constant battles of her past memory.
Becoming unstitched from each other’s blanket that was once sewn,
Left I to cherish the warmth spent and loaned.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 6:22 PM UTC
Dearest infested, do you too reminisce on that fated night,
When the beauty of your unstitched gaps in that storm’s occasional light
Shone brighter than my heart
As I held your severed hand in marriage.
Recall my fingers slipping under those sheets
Aching to pull you closer to me,
So close, I could feel in between your skin and bone
For me to caress your blackened inner soul.
No other will be capable of feeling the softness of your carcass,
Melted on my fingertips, ever so slightly crawling with goosebumps
From the maggots that shift in your decaying tissue,
Eating away at the core of your sweet bloated insides.
On that very bed, you hosted life beyond your bug-infested corpse,
Your unsaturated beauty animating a love as equal to mine
When lightning struck the tower’s wires
And pierced my heart with cupid's bow.
Oh how that shock stung my nerves!
Manipulating my madman mind into a loving machine,
One that could only want for your rotting embrace,
Which leaves the scent of death in every corner of my brain.
Did you notice the way the dark of the room hugged you so modestly,
As if you were already his?
And then you held out a cold hand towards me
Calling for me to put my ring on your delicate finger.
I remember your instantaneous joy,
Curiosity twinkling in your lifeless eyes,
Blushing from a heart pumping spoiled blood through your frozen veins,
And that smile, only a creature inhuman could smile so divine.
You, my sweet, have captured me in your rusted fingertips
And how you carry yourself across the bleeding carpet,
Dragging your decaying remains into my arms,
Making me unable to withstand being without your infected kiss
How irresistible you are before me
Adorned in white sheets, draped across your discolored chest,
Dried blood blanketing the edges of your lips,
A beauty that’ll never age, forever preserved by death himself!
Devour me now, my love!
Take me to the grave you plan to reside
So that I may lay next to you
Six feet under our wedlock.
Sep 4, 2024
Sep 4, 2024 at 12:56 PM UTC
Today I began to hem,
rein in the threads that grow free
when left unstitched
I ticked a set of books
and, though I love my charges,
my heart hurt
My language is another,
my experience of this globe
unutterably different,
though geographically the same
And I want to help them play the game, I do,
but I don’t trust those
telling me how to
My instincts,
honed by humans I trust, unless
I’m lost in my own Truman Show,
show me the right way to go,
divergent from this current shitshow
The pedagogy of care
is somewhere way, way
over there
Jan 4, 2022
Jan 4, 2022 at 11:39 AM UTC
You know
I held you
I felt you
I wrapped you up
And unstitched my skin
With invisible scissors
For you to slip into
To imbue
Like glue
I stayed
steadfast and ready
I held on for dear life
Through your restless night
My feet contoured around yours
My arms a blanket in your dreams
Small brown birds
For hands
That fluttered
A delicate mess
Of visions
To loud for your
Eyes
closed
Your head in my shoulder
Body curled
You
So small
So big
Love
Needing
And me
So wanting
To be there
In truth
Consoling and Chaste.
I breathed you in
And presented my presence
Like never before
I opened a door
That then became dust
A shadowland trust
Forged dark in the dawn
Of y(our) sorrow.
Feb 9, 2010
Feb 9, 2010 at 2:21 AM UTC
*I love you
Please don’t let go of my hand
Are you ashamed of me?
Wait stop
What did I do?
Don’t
Please don’t squeeze it so har-
Ow!
That hurts please let go
What are you doing?
Stop please stop pushing your
Fingers between my collar bones
What are you doing?
Please stop, I love you*
This isn’t love, not at all
There isn’t a single bit
Of affection on his fingertips
When he shoves you on the floor
That ache that you feel when you touch
Your bruises? You tell yourself it’s love
Manifested so deep
Only something as intense as pain could show it
I know it hurts
It hurts when he calls you names
But it hurts more to think
That this isn’t love
Not at all
You’re doing everything
You can you’ve held him after
He hit you when he cries and
He swears he will be a
Better man.
“He can get better, I swear.
It wasn’t his fault,
I shouldn’t have done that.”
Darling, stop.
Stop bending over backwards for
A boy who only wants
To break your spine.
Stop giving him forgiveness undeserved
And apologies unnecessary.
Stop covering your bruises and
leaving your wounds unstitched
Stop bleeding for a boy
Who will never clean up the stains
Stop crying for
A boy who only laughs at your tears
Stop
This is not love.
Not at all
You’re too beautiful for these bruises
And dark circles under your eyes
You’re too strong for these wounds
You’re too important to let this
Boy take away your life
This isn’t the love that you deserve.
This isn’t love, not at all.
You are more than
Your bruises and you are
More than your scars you are so much
More than the names he calls you
And your tear stained pillow cases.
Honey, dry your eyes.
Stitch your wounds.
Straighten up your spine
You are so
Much more than this.
Say goodbye
Because this isn’t love
Not at all.
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 8:47 AM UTC
I walked right on into your life,
Stormed right on in through the closed and creaking doors,
Knocked down the walls
Wearing come **** me boots
And a packer
Unpacked and willing
Smiling like I’d already swallowed the canary
I put it out there you know
To meet you
To have you meet me
To meet my maker
My Love Set Match
I volleyed the ball straight
Into the wanting
Court of your heart
And waited
Breath bated
For your solid, resounding return.
I stole inside you while you slept
Unstitched your skin
Climbed in and
Sewed myself deep and everlasting
inside.
I spoke softly to your shadow
Through your dreams
Until it grasped my hand
And now, like glue, I am stuck to you.
I smeared my love
Across your chest
With wet kisses
And a love bequeathed by lust.
I handed you my trust
And watched as you unwrapped it
And placed it lovingly within your own.
I tore down my walls to get to you
I walked through fiery insecurity
And swam through fear infested waters
I battled demons
And won
I lost my voice
And sung
Of two souls
Found
Two hearts bound
And a love all enduring connected.
Sep 28, 2010
Sep 28, 2010 at 5:49 AM UTC
pandora opens her chest at midnight:
it is a box left out in the rain,
a wound unstitched in despair for october,
a small voice hushed by forlorn hours.
and dead gods forget so easily,
but
pandora still opens her chest at midnight
and the walls huddle to look at an ugly wound
left open to bleed all over
dusty pink cosmos flowers.
and drapes huddle, too,
to look at a nest of sorrows creeping about,
as though a wake, a vigil,
a somber watch that only ends
with all of my bones breaking.
but dead gods forget so easily,
and dead girls forget so easily,
and i forget so easily
all the aching hours that had kissed my skin
and their graceless, moonlit pull,
and i am left to lie
languishing on soft, breakable spots.
and so pandora closes her chest:
a box to never be opened, a vault behind a frame.
a flash of stray light on a wound sealed shut. safe. secure.
there is no space for conspicuous melancholies.
there is no space for anything —
there is no space for hope.
and the gods forget so easily.
Sep 23, 2021
Sep 23, 2021 at 5:47 AM UTC
We are the wild ones, so curious and superb. Hyper-expectations, mainly magic and its' feral treasures, we all welcome aboard. We are the technicians of the sky, messengers of the infinite moons. Inside the scythes and harpsichords, explosive reiterations of gravity and inner body magnetic yearnings.
We are stacked and galavanting in stockyards, whips at our sides, leather roughening its unstitched oiled calf hides up the hands onto these ethereal imaginings of utopian unicorn, walrus, and seahorse.
We represent the catalog of diversity. You are not as hidden as you think and you must not be. We of the wise wrestling candles off of our staffs, we count the mountain rich mountainside. Red, clay-capped, snow and hidden saplings adjusted against the rows of the peaks and plateaus.
We are named for our perversions of nature, our tolerances towards myriad injustices spanning our existence's time-sensitive minutia. We may be the kings and queens of Lollibellum, our flights have landed, our hands filled with duct-taped newspaper wrapped packaging and knock-off designer bags, a cardboard box with a few books that survived the burn.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 7:17 PM UTC
*The fabrics of your mind,
unstitched by the scalpels of a carious tongue....*
May 22, 2016
May 22, 2016 at 10:46 PM UTC
when i curled up at your touch,
there was no rearview mirror in your eyes
Your hand’s a gift-wrapped fantasy
Your face an apology
for a crime that was not yours.
rather, i feared
that if i yawned open (creaking)
the love trickling out would be yellow (and reeking)
my bones unstitched, you’d run away (shrieking)
(i’m slick with sickness on the floor)
can’t shake this (him), rancidly grasping
grinding (and swallowing) and caving, collapsing
my body a coffin lay innocence rasping
rotting and ruinous and wasted and worn
i love within a cage. Don’t open it;
i don’t want to see what’s inside
May 21, 2014
May 21, 2014 at 1:53 PM UTC
Blue screen
behind a snowy blur
Blizzard outside
cold silence in here.
Forgot
the weight of syllables
On channel 2,
I'm disconnected and numb.
With all the eloquence
of a bitter, frozen smile,
Let me draw a map
with mismatched memories
With all the subtlety
of a fumbled operation.
Let me trace the tale
down unstitched avenues.
This year
I'll try for something like real feeling.
Ghoulish nostalgia's only eating me alive.
And if I could only take my lumps and leave 'em...
...leave 'em far behind,
I might start moving on.
Onto something
current,
something warmer
that's enduring.
Let me try to trace my tale
down these unstitched avenues.
And I'll get back to you.
Nov 29, 2017
Nov 29, 2017 at 9:46 AM UTC