"vonnegut" poems
Sparkling petals slice through feet of wanderers
Dashing hopes and slitting tendons
Each day she visits
Sprinkling books and soda-filled sponges among the wire vines.
The sizzles excited her
And she smiles in spite of her sizzling feet
Pleased in her harmless sabotage.
The suffocated earth shutters beneath
Layers of circuit boards, damp and rotting
Steam rises from the core
And crinkles the pages of
Jane Austen
Dr. Seuss
Kurt Vonnegut. Her mother’s journal from pregnancy.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
Life can be painless
Provided there is sufficient
Peacefulness
For a dozen or so rituals
To be repeated simply
Endlessly
Your genius does not fail you
It allows you to understand the
Truth of the situation;
Which makes you--at times--
more tragic than ever
And your genius,
like all geniuses
Suffers periodic fits
of monumental
naïveté
Hi-ho
Listen:
Where is Grace
When milk and blood
Are about to be added
To the composition of the
Stinking ping-pong
***** being manufactured
In Grand Rapids?
Schizophrenia
The sound and appearance
Of the word fascinates
It sounds and looks to me
Like a human being
Sneezing in a blizzard of
Soapflakes
This much we know:
You made yourself hideously
Uncomfortable by not narrowing
Your attention to details
Of life that were immediately
Important
And by refusing to believe what
Your neighbors believed
Hi-ho
Let your imagination continue
To be the flywheel on the
Ramshackle machinery of the truth.
But not the ‘awful’ truth
The ‘beauty’ in truth
Because we are a part
Of a system that is very
Restless,
With people tearing around
All the time
Every so often,
somebody stops to put up
A monument
Ours is a country where
Everybody is expected to
Pay his own bills for
Everything,
And one of the most
Expensive things a person
Can do is get sick
Grace:
Because if we stay here
We’ll do one of two things
(or both!)
Build a Commune
Or do like Collin Heise did:
Make the main thing that we
do be this:
Move seventy-eight
Thousand pounds of olives
To Tulsa, Oklahoma
Even if we can’t
Improve the quality of our surroundings
We’ll do our best to make our
Insides beautiful instead
Piebald Roadtrip-writing, baby
Hi-ho
You are the turtle
able to live anywhere
even under water for short periods
With your home on your back
A particular comfort in
Realizing that it so often feels
There is no order in the
World around us
That we must adapt ourselves to
The requirements of
Chaos instead
Remember:
We are healthy
Only to the extent that
Our ideas are
Humane
To you
To me
To ourselves
To We
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 9:05 PM UTC
And you left me like a baby flower choking
On dust, and loss of future blooming,
And tremors like Eos's tears
On the stillest vernal pool -
It was as if you stole my life and simply
Went - or put me on my little sailboat
That sang of youth and an hourglass, a
Duet composed in the ***** crystal of purgatory,
Between my insatiably wild stronghold and
The rosy maiden, blushing, full, yet
Dumb, willingly deaf to red flags,
Praying for a partner to make a golden
Lady of the wood and water
And light, so warm and shimmering under
The forest's pine-down cover - what a
Big, hasty mistake, to keep yourself
Hollow and blind to the day's good things, to remain a
Man alone, wistfully misplacing a love
Who showed the loyalty of a crimson kindness, and who
Was always singing bliss and beauty and glowing into your ears,
So stuffed with lies, bitterness, ideals, and
Full like drunken leeches - all this, and the coldness, the stubbornness
Of the oldest mule, to stay isolated from my
Loving eyes, to make time with our sorrowful
Echoes, yours and mine.
*vertical quote from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 10:26 AM UTC
So I am about to be a free man again, to wander where I please.
I find the prospect nauseating.
I think that tonight is the night I will hang Howard W. Campbell, Jr., for crimes against himself.
I know that tonight is the night.
They say that a hanging man hears gorgeous music. Too bad that I, like my father, unlike my musical mother, am tone-deaf. All the same, I hope that the tune I am about to hear is not Bing Crosby's 'White Christmas.'
Goodbye, cruel world!
Auf wiedersehen?
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 1:02 AM UTC
What's happening to hello poetry?
I don't need to know when the next soccer game is
And if I can watch for free.
Only football I know is American like the pride that's in me.
My blood doesn't boil the native sounds of my country.
Since my motherland is the Dominican
But America my step motherland won custody and raised me, since the age of three.
Don't forget is not who made you but who you fed you, who clothed you, who saw your first shot to a basket, who saw your first catch, who kept your body warm when you got another cold, and so on.
This is "Breakfast for Champions"
Just ask Kurt Vonnegut
What's happening to hello Poetry?
Show your art
Get your due diligence
Don't sell us your dreams don't broadcast your business unless is a story, book signing or deal.
I don't need a spell to make a girl fall in love. I got these words
For and to whom I might propose
Love or an indecent occasion of lust.
Let my words be the for front on this site but they're second to my actions.
Since I don't speak much b'cause my Latin accent.
What is happening to hello poetry?
Private messages by strangers who don't write or speak words.
Claim is urgent and as a poet
You know kind hearted, love lost, And so on...
You just might want to message their Hotmail.
Sad story under prosecution
Sad story the relation is abusive
Mocking the painful truths of some of us artist.
Just wanting a piece of the pie
But when I order I even eat the crust and never leave crumbs.
Take offense or not I just don't give a ****
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 7:44 AM UTC
My Lucifer, unwitting Muse, dog-eared Vonnegut,
afrobeatnik third eye, howls escaping
from your headphones, wailing about secrets, about infidelity,
about analyzing life until there ain’t nothin’
left. Then you shuffle by in your black and white Adidas,
hair in twists, wearing the striped sweater
of nihilistic intent, quoting the rants of Holden Caulfield
in your blog like you never didn’t know him.
I never asked to know you, to want who I can’t have
when I can’t even love myself. And every fiber
Of my being yearns for reciprocation. What is there
to return? What is there to feel, you meditate on truth,
fallen angel in the parlor of rebellion, blasphemous goodbye,
bright and morning star simpering like crickets in the palms
of daybreak. Your musicality radiates from subway chatter
and overheard profanity down El Camino Real.
I take in your ballad at my post office mailbox,
in the abandoned echoes of daydream monologues.
You’re a philosopher, exploring theory of mind, a cartographer,
mapping the labyrinth of your deepest desires.
Tell me again about desires, demonstrations of divine sadism. Tell me
about human empathy, the animated faces of wordless expression,
the metaphysics of free will, my beginning and my end,
alpha and omega, my fortress in the land of chic.
Blasphemous hustler, let your idealism simmer, your wit, your mojo,
I come to you an amateur, a neophyte, a lowly scab
in the strike against ignorance. Give me my melody, my song,
my one-hit-wonder of all that is cliché and unknown.
But I can’t be the other woman, your girlfriend, your aspiring
Playboy bunny only 10-bucks-a-throw. Your highness-who-yells-
his-ideas-into-the-ears-of-echoes, your every quirk spellbinds me.
Each day I wake to your entourage vibrato.
I am held captive by your brooding stare, empress of liberal
doves. You visit in my dreams when the sky is a force of darkness
viewing light through peepholes, your flaws an aphrodisiac, a love drug,
a fast hit in the basement from the ecstasy of words.
Aug 1, 2012
Aug 1, 2012 at 5:37 AM UTC
I grew up in a home
where words like "atheist" and "agnostic",
if uttered, were shoved under rugs
or place mats or quilt-work sentiments reading
"God Bless This Home"
And so I too, would hide from those who hid
from God.
But then amongst the distaste and disregard of things
less than God,
I Became An Evangelist!
Ah, yes!
Because whose soul doesn't want to be saved
by a thirteen year old with a clever Christian
saying on his shirt that's a size too small?
But not only that, no.
I dragged my friends along with me.
We were, in fact, a regular children's crusade.
But I was a little bigot.
I pushed away those who
pushed away God,
shocked at the thought
that anyone could not believe
in what now seems
completely
unbelievable.
I even scorned the science teacher
who had the audacity to introduce
the evil of evolution.
I was on fire.
But then the Devil himself
put Kurt Vonnegut on my lap.
Yes, I accredit my loss of faith
to a crazy science fiction writer.
At least, he pushed the first domino.
And my God, I was afraid.
Afraid of feelings of distance
Afraid of questions that never seemed
to have an answer.
Afraid I was losing myself.
I struggled with the traditional questions, of course:
Why would a benevolent God send good people
to hell for not believing? Is he that insecure?
If he is omnipotent, wouldn't he know what
he was getting into when he created such sinful
little *****
Why should we be indicted simply because we
were born?
How does He expect me to give Him my entire life?
Fast forward about four years.
I'm eating lunch with my oldest sister,
a philosophy major, no less.
She tells me how she experienced almost
the exact same thing I did.
And after an inward struggle of four years, finally I had the courage to admit my Agnosticism to myself.
I simply did not know.
How could I?
But now I'm left to deal with my friends,
and most of all my mother.
I should not feel guilty for my beliefs, or lack thereof.
I am an agnostic.
I am a humanist.
I am on fire.
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 7:42 PM UTC
— for the American Mustang
Strung up on one leg, bled dry while alive,
unloaded off trailers crammed full
of the crippled and blind —mares
giving birth on three legs, foals trampled
by stallions, and a wave of fear
hovering over tossing manes
like the sea after Moby **** surfaced
for the first time. Last year,
135,000 horses died —
rounded up in hundreds and sent
off to slaughter like feeder goldfish,
three stops from Canada
or Cabo, displaced from plains
once revered for their livelihood.
In 1969, Vonnegut
wrote, “And so it goes…”
In 2061, our children will ask about the wild
horses who used to live in their backyards
as they catch the last fireflies and bottle
them up in jars, flickering and dying
like tired bulbs giving up on electricity —
2015 sees Henderson, Nevada grasses paying tribute
to power-plant-lines and a suburb built
on Tralfamadore fiction: house-mounds
and picket fences caging domesticated dogs,
curb-lined streets and caution signs, billboard
warnings of humanity’s fixation with progression,
combined like coffee with an overabundance
of half-and-half and too much sugar — only 99 cents
at Dunkin down a little ways, and home
to the dreamers who forget the word freedom.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 4:05 PM UTC
After smoking my first pack
Of cigarettes
(Cheyenne Cherries, $2.09 at Marathon)
The novelty wore off pretty quick.
It didn’t feel cool anymore,
Didn’t make me feel important.
The cigarette was just something
To stick between my fingers,
**** between my lips,
Inhale and feel something
(feel Hell)
In my lungs.
A prop.
It was just a stick
With a red, smoldering ****
A piece of tobacco
To play with before the ember
Ate way down to the filter
And singed my fingertips.
Now, I think I light up
(Cheyenne Cherries, $2.09 at Marathon)
Because the smoke is so
******* enticing. It’s beautiful,
A kinesthetic work of art
(like a ballet),
The way those silver
Tendrils curl so languidly
From the tip into the air,
So graceful, so smooth.
When I smoke
I can’t help but to imagine
I’m watching a group of dancers.
Or something.
And I think I light up
(Cheyenne Cherries, $2.09 at Marathon)
Because there’s nothing better to do
Half the time and at least
It flouts the boredom
(for a few minutes or so),
At least it interrupts the
Relentless monotony of Life.
Kurt Vonnegut mentioned
Something about smoking
Being a noble form of suicide.
Well, so it goes.
Oct 18, 2010
Oct 18, 2010 at 11:32 AM UTC
Maturity is knowing what your limitations are…(my daily chore)
<>
“Maturity is knowing what your limitations are. Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.”
Kurt Vonnegut
<>
maturity comes when you cannot,
even try, to fool oneself,
indeed, you preposterousness,
make you laugh hardest
at your very, fully owned, selfhood
preening mirror disguise
Is this a poem, a lamentation, a pithy regurgitation
of Vonnegut, and you say: “Don’t care, it’s words
that gotta come out, be released to empty the heart”
a daily excess removal of that daily overflow of the
days first words when new day light and nighttime’s REM
sleep overlap, and the music starts of a life time of favorites,
and like a pleasant thorn direct into your temples brain,
the leaking, then the spilling spirals unstoppable onto the pages, and the first true relieving exhalation comes with
the excited exorcism of the stones of your life, come outside
your body and there is a freshly born stripe upon your face,
not yet a scar for it is yet to ripen by healing, but it is your
creature for loving…and it is good company with so many
prior guests who have checked in, stayed for a moment’s
observation, departed after getting an extended checkout
time, joining the many who came and went, disappearing
in to the internet’s ether, where we one will join them eventually,
though you smile at that thought, cause you’re mature
enough, baby, an all growled up dude, to know that when
you reached that stage, you will be, non-stop laughing
at *** serious you imagined you were, and wondering out loud
why it took so long to recognize that mirrored visage as
one big ole fool with a smile upon his face…
p.s so much for that promise to take a break from beating
yourself up, but you know what, it is pleasing, in that way
when upon the grand occasion of waking up to another
unexpected day of living deserves a deep, but rueful,
laugh out loud and others’ look at your self and argue to
only mischievously agree,
you are indeed,
still crazy after all these years…
Jul 8, 2023
Jul 8, 2023 at 8:24 AM UTC
After smoking my first pack
Of cigarettes
The novelty wore off pretty quick.
It didn’t feel cool anymore,
Didn’t make me feel important.
The cigarette was just something
To stick between my fingers,
**** between my lips,
Inhale and feel something
In my lungs.
A prop.
It was just a stick
With a red, smoldering ****
A piece of tobacco
To play with before the ember
Ate way down to the filter
And singed my fingertips.
Now, I think I light up
Because the smoke is so
******* enticing.
It’s beautiful,
A kinesthetic work of art
like a ballet,
The way those silver
Tendrils curl so languidly
From the tip into the air,
So graceful, so smooth.
When I smoke
I can’t help but to imagine
I’m watching a group of dancers.
And I think I light up
Because there’s nothing better to do
Half the time and at least
It flouts the boredom
for a few minutes or so,
At least it interrupts the
Relentless monotony of Life.
Kurt Vonnegut mentioned
Something about smoking
Being a noble form of suicide-
Well, so it goes.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 11:40 PM UTC
Derk! The Harold angels sing.
The muffin is my savior. Jesus lies.
Pacific Islands. The screaming of fires.
Rulers. Words. Meters. Feet.
The magnetic field is the only field.
If I could trust baseball, I would.
But cereals, Vonnegut, lies.
-ectomy. The ubiquitous suffix.
Suffixes make the world hell.
-ism, -itis, -like, -tude, cease
your
silly
constructions!
Constructions
are
power
I will smash
bye bye now
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 6:51 PM UTC
Joy Kogawa’s Obasan,
Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle,
Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby,
The Ninja Handbook…?
Dalai Lama’s Open Heart,
Haddon’s Curious Incident,
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment,
Brook’s World War Z…?
*The Life of Adolf ******
Crichton’s Terminal Man,
e.e. cumming’s poems,
Jon Stewart’s America…?
Dante’s Divine Comedy,
Leonard’s Rules of Writing,
Poe’s Complete Tales and Poems,
Book of Useless Information…?
Smith’s Junk English?
How to Lose a Battle?
The Ultimate Guide to Spider-man...?
I’m beginning to have my doubts…
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 10:20 PM UTC
The eccentrics and the madmen do cook up this routine world.
Scrambled eggs on an old *** simmering.
You're a bloke, ya yolk!
evoke my jokes!
now scramble my sides!
and leave me to choke!
consume me like you do all things else in this life!
As Vonnegut would call it
"A Breakfast of Champions"
Apr 12, 2015
Apr 12, 2015 at 12:11 PM UTC
post it online
while you hold your wine
hold your whine
why don't you
tell me?
tell me about it
about ****
and girls with *****
about how you read Vonnegut
how **** makes you feel weird
but you snort coke
and you're trying to grow a beard
and your broke
and wish you lived in Europe
or in the 1920s
tell me *******
animal mothers
about your great luck
how you don't give *****
and your jokes are like minorities
poor and unappreciated
defeated
i'm bleeding
delete this.
You and 12 friends like this.
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 11:42 PM UTC
I’m always yelling at myself
For the things I took for granted
They said to save yourself
But I called them cowards
And threw it all ahead
Screaming, tomorrow will be better
Better
Much better
Every day that’s not today is destined for greatness
A steady decline in sadness
Until one day my tombstone will read
“EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURT”
(That one’s Vonnegut, but I bet you knew that)
See, my flux capacitor’s broken
And I’ve been reading this **** backwards
I just want to go back
I used to be such a show off
Collecting my experiences just to line them up on shelves
Lists of proof of my own beauty
My bright future
Proof that I’ve been loved
Of all of my different selves
I like that one the least
But miss her the most
Now I try not to leave the house
And when my phone rings I get really anxious
Now I feel like I’m always fighting
But there’s nobody around
So I’m fighting with belt buckles and doorknobs
And I resent the people who make those things look easy
Now a part of me feels angry when my friends ask me out
They don’t understand
That’s not self pity
They’d understand if I told them
But that would require answering my phone
And I just can’t do that today
I know I’m being selfish
Self absorbed and petty
But my heart has finally ruptured
It couldn’t hold all of the empty promises I’ve filled it with
And I’m tired of fighting
Now all that my shelves hold
Are stacks of reasons why I want to go back to bed
And the only list I have
Is filled with concrete evidence
That tomorrow will not, in fact,
Be better
Not better
Because today is worse than yesterday
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
we use or misuse each other
we don't ask as often as needed
the eye of the needle
the sky is closer
storms are wiser
waters sleep in the seeds of wind
everything so holy entangled
sweet deceit in lustry illusions
glamour for amour
cover up for unforseen
the unbearable unknown
everything so wise
like the eagerness of colts
So it goes, said Vonnegut
casually I am your anything
a strange causality a presence
this cocoon of desire
of course, urgent lover
next day another mirror
friend in the afternoon
a simple woman in the morning
slippery oblivion by midnight
unearthed hieroglyph
all night wide
foe and moan &
foam of laughter
SOS in a bottle
but not of wine
holy **** from time to time
not a dime piece, but she is
a penny for your thoughts it is
you can make and you can take
the cinema on/of my skin
let's speak with our ribs
for the sake of mimes
I could be your slave, but wait
when bus sirens fade away
incandescence is my name,
the patience of graves
of grapes
Feb 11, 2023
Feb 11, 2023 at 9:46 AM UTC
they say god is perfect.
that holds true for me, too.
no concept contains me in totality.
Stirner wrestled with the undefinable:
an indefatigable Unique,
anarchic,
lacking category.
Camus perhaps said it best,
"i rebel, therefore i exist."
i strive to personify resistance.
i find the answers
in harmony with Counterparts,
defining *The Difference
Between Hell
and Home*:
"i am what i am
and i am an outcast."
an outlaw,
a nobody
akin to Nietzsche,
returning infinitely—
stretched like so many grains of sand
on time's flat surface, orbiting
eternally around the creative Nothing
at half-past 3:00 in the morning.
a singularity,
deconstructing
Derrida's Différance.
a nomad on the margins,
wandering aimlessly,
roaming perpetually
with Deleuze and Foucault,
an astronaut arranged
along the endless frontiers
of an ever-expanding cosmos.
Vonnegut recognized
the periphery affords
a radical view
to the few who choose
to embrace that which cannot be Known.
a zero-sum game
between Death and me,
staving off manic-depressive ennui
if only momentarily.
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 2:55 AM UTC
when I was younger
I got into staring contests
with the sunset
despite dire warnings
I challenged him
I thought I would live forever back then
or maybe I just wanted him
to blink
out
before I did
I fear death
I grew up a Christian
reading about Narnia
and there was one man
after escaping ten years of living
in a nightmare
as relief from his waking horror
he was given the gift of sleep
without dreams
forever
now
as well as then
I struggle to comprehend
how this was a reward
to fall asleep
and never dream
and never wake
this is death as far as we can tell
in my childhood
this was the only exposure I had
to the idea of VOID
and now it yawns wide open
at the feet of this newly formed atheist
and I am afraid
‘I never asked to be born in the first place’
-Last words of Adolf ******
(per Kilgore trout
(per Kurt Vonnegut Jr.))
the sunset is deep deep orange
and summer is fading
from green
to red and yellow
then to brown
then to white
I’m thinking of Christmas
watching a hawk fly
silhouetted against
the now hot pink clouds
to the sound of cicadas
and a whisper
of moist and cooling air
winter is hard to get through
then again
so is summer
the sky above me is the shade of lavender
I fell in love with
when I couldn’t find anyone
who loved me back
I was taking a bus trip from December
to late spring
everyone else was asleep
and I watched the sun rise
through palm trees and ferns
if the afterlife is composed
of floating through my time in this life
Tralfamadorian Heaven
I will be content
I am living now
Oct 16, 2013
Oct 16, 2013 at 2:11 PM UTC
something about you. something about october
the dried up leaves and the way everything feels quiet
in the middle of the day
like living inside of a vhs tape that hasn't been rewound
in a decade or two
makes me want to start visiting the cemetery
make friends with the forgotten
when we ended up walking the dogs there on accident
it felt like coming home
i'll bring my books and a bag of dried cherries, peanut butter
bars of dark chocolate wrapped in gold foil, sunflower seeds
the nightstand with the warped wooden drawer
that's always getting stuck
where i keep the half-melted birthday candles
and a box of matches, just in case
prop my pillow up against a headstone
read vonnegut until i fall asleep
grow closer to death until it doesn't scare me anymore
i used to think ghosts lived in mausoleums but now i know
they live inside of a twenty-four-year-old who watches
the same vampire movie every time it rains
just to feel safe inside the familiarity of the past
i'm still the twelve-year-old girl
just waiting for something to happen to her
i burn my skin in the shower just to feel less alone
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 3:32 PM UTC
There's something about you,
Like a Vonnegut tale,
A beautiful thing
With odd little quirks
Around every corner
And in every page.
A glowing light
That sometimes flickers
To black.
There's something about you,
My dear,
That's just out of reach.
So it goes.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 11:19 PM UTC
I'm walking laps around my apartment complex.
Passing a red-headed girl with a bottle of Corona,
a few Johnny Rebs talking adderall,
headlights, streetlights, lighters,
swirling, combining, but never providing enough bright.
I'm still bearing a slight headache from Saturday night,
but finally past the nausea.
I spent the day conversing with Rachel's family.
The domesticated, scene of warmth was a sharp
contrast to the hell I put Rachel through in
the waning hours of night.
I woke at 9 this morning to find
her barely covered in a ratty,
blanket, no pillow under her
ruffled hair, her eyes burnt red,
asking if I was okay.
I thought she was overreacting.
She shoved water in my face.
She said, "Drink it, ******
Like she'd tried a few thousand times before,
and apparently she had,
I just didn't remember any of it.
She had saved me around 4.
She cleaned off a death mask
of filthy ***** by force.
I wouldn't comply because
I wasn't coherent.
Tonight as I touch each crack
of the pavement with my sole,
the rest of the human family
is pounding beer, suckling the barbeque
off their pudgy fingers,
and howling at a nation divided between Cheese and Steel.
I'm stuck in the trough of existential contemplation.
Old Mr. Huxley self-medicated with mescaline
and said he discovered the "is-ness", and somehow
found contentedness in "everything is".
That never made much sense to me.
Bukowski found god in ******* and drinking beer.
Vonnegut said when god created the world,
man asked what his purpose was. God was surprised,
and he replied, "I don't know. Make one up."
Feb 6, 2011
Feb 6, 2011 at 4:53 PM UTC
strange
isn’t it
how
memories
pique our moods like
mountains
bursting
through the
stratosphere
only to be sent
plummeting to the
depths of an
abyss
darker
and
deeper
than Marianas Trench
at the flip of a
switch
subtle triggers
found in the way
someone laughs
or when a co-worker
grins
out of the corner of
his or her
mouth
i see you
in the characters of the
literature and
films we used to critique
over coffee
hiding in the vestiges
of Daenerys Targaryen
or
Mélanie Laurent
you are France
an entire country
unto yourself
the smell of the sea
clings to your skin cells
in ways i
only wish
i could
you are in every
solitary
letter of Helvetica
whispering
softly
of things that
were
of things that
are
and of some things that
have not yet come to pass
you float
in the carcinogenic smoke
of cigarettes
a silhouette
corporeal particles
i exorcise
with equal parts
relief
and
regret
every night that i
paint the town
in neon colors
of vibrant life
i write your name
when i
vandalize
and fantasize
that you are
somehow with me
maybe floating happily
in the molecules
of aerosol
spreading across the
concrete
you’re in every song
by Brand New
like the residue of
dew drying on
the leaves
in the
mid-morning
light
lingering
even as
the sun calls you
home
the way i lingered
on your doorstep
to make sure that
you made it safely
back inside your
home
i’ve come to find that
i am equal parts
melancholy
and
blithe
and
i think that i
can finally say
i’m getting better
but
to borrow
a page
from Vonnegut
i’d be lying if
i said i didn’t still
catch
myself feeling
sorry
about the things that
no longer
matter
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 10:11 AM UTC