"windpipes" poems
I was born to a woman who smoked cigarettes
and since I was a child, I tried to inhale blueberries until they
stalled my windpipe.
My mother taught me that word –
windpipe – after she coughed for hours upon hours. I
was so happy that day, imagining how I must have swallowed
windchimes for the doctors who helped birth me
in December’s final snow –
how I hoped they believed I sounded pretty, although
covered in that sop adults call life juice. Life juice sounds nice
but I had known babies who
came just as sticky as me and never got to breathe.
Windchimes, you know, the things
beautiful ladies in ankle-length dresses hang outside,
my daddy lived thirteen hours down the interstate and I knew
somehow that he owned one.
In my dreams, I touched it
and pulled on it. I twisted the copper-ends up like my
momma’s hair and pretended we were with my dad by some
lake where the breezes are heavy enough and I
am small enough for them to carry me up, up, and away.
Everyone insisted that windpipes are inside
while windchimes stay out –
I fixed that problem, too. I tried three times to plant chimes in
my ears, unglue parts of the skin there from myself
to make room for dangly jewelry. A tiny
slit was all I needed, but it would not stay open for long
and I never got to swing my head
pretend I possessed the ability to create music like how God
let my momma grow smoke. I never got to exhale.
Sep 15, 2013
Sep 15, 2013 at 3:34 PM UTC
Behind the house with the fragmented windows
and the corroded pipes
and the cobwebs and ages under the stairs,
she buried herself
under the earth and grime
until the roots contained her decayed soul
and encased around her brittle scarred limbs.
Until the dirt crept down her windpipes,
until her tarnished lungs were suffused
with ashes and dirt.
Until roots replaced her veins and
smothered her cracked ribcage.
Behind the house with the fragmented windows,
under the grass and gravel,
that was rougher than
her mother’s dispirited retorts,
where she once capered and skipped, and never thought
would become her grave.
By the ethereal creatures she played with
in her younger and more susceptible years.
Dig up her bones but leave her soul.
Who would ever want cruel contaminated beauty
as a periphery for such a fouled soul?
It was when she stopped falling asleep on the way home,
when her nightlight ceased to make her feel safe,
when a lover’s unlawful kisses replaced her family’s amity,
when a lover’s lethal passion parted her lethal loneliness,
when home became a person and not a place,
was when she buried herself
behind the house with the fragmented windows.
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 9:22 AM UTC
We stood in the darkness, sharp air
piercing our windpipes, and rubbed
our hands together. Your eyes trailed across
the empty skyline, life fading from behind azure pupils.
I brushed back my hair, breathed – the white smoke
spiraling up 34th street and into our old bedroom,
over the paisley bedspread where she stretched.
Her gold curls laughed, bounced, and then stopped abruptly.
My hazel bewilderment met her manicured eyebrows.
I knew.
She realized.
So I moved toward her shadow, and she blinked. I reached
across her petite frame, and left the ring on our old
bedside table. But I took
the flashlight,
because I am still afraid of the dark.
Dec 17, 2010
Dec 17, 2010 at 3:38 PM UTC
My mind is filled with screaming thoughts, all swirling in a torrent of relentless negative ideas, that wish to fill me with the panic i've come to know on a more than intamate level.
I've started to realise they're muffuled.. as though i'm unconciously smothering these intruders, tresspassing of course being an extremely high offense in this world i don't quite remember creating.
Just sitting here listening through the fog as they try to rant at me all of the quaint little pessimisms they can think of, their voices growing quiet as i slowly steal their oxygen. What a murderer i've become, pressing upon the windpipes of my anxiety , so emotionless and uncaring, as if such a violent act were nothing out of the ordinary in here.
i know what you all must be thinking, because of course some of the voices are having the same ideas.. "She's snapped!" well perhaps i have, i'm not entirely sure about anything at the moment, but if i'm essicently killing a type of pain, then doesn't that make me benevolent rather than malevolent? fixing by destroying the main alements.
Shouldn't that mean i'm healing rather than breaking?
.
Nov 5, 2011
Nov 5, 2011 at 12:27 PM UTC
Conquering the mind is the human that is unseen,
And we become victims of our thoughts.
Hearts' unable to speak,
Though their emotions burst out,
Like black paint getting thrown on white walls.
Then they call out to us "Color Blind".
Cool, challenging, optimistic thoughts,
Unable to defend the bruised eyes and the fearful fingers,
That brush gently along the rough edges of its challenge,
Success to the forgotten soul,
Rings like a loud echo following a vacant darkness.
Indeed the delight of brokenness,
Is treasured and stored in the back of the mind,
Calling out to its very best friend, “Hopelessness”.
Heart still unable to speak out loud,
Almost unable to move.
Then suction takes place.
The impurities begin to dance and mingle,
With those major veins in the heart,
And the bruised eyes,
Finally express the bed of painful roses.
Every gulp that is take,
Feels like rusty iron filled with ******
Sliding down our windpipes,
That feels like its directly to the heart.
A blizzard that we could never see our way out of,
Until it passes over.
© Robyn G Neymour
Jan 5, 2011
Jan 5, 2011 at 3:11 PM UTC
i know
that it is easy
to feel mediocre
and alone.
but at 30,000 feet
the world is so small
that you can count
the waves of the ocean on your fingers.
do you know
that it is hard
to let you see
what i've found?
breathing is easy
when you are above the clouds.
our love is trapped in the clutches of time-
seized in a moment,
lost in my windpipes,
i am busy catching your breath.
we can cut through the atmosphere.
meet me by the moon
to listen to the morning murmur.
i can only offer you so many escapes.
it's too hard to fix you.
why shouldn't i hide
if i am the bad guy?
and all you want to do
is say goodbye.
i etched eternity into your cracked skin.
i traced familiarity into your bruised bones.
but i am not a savior
nor an angel, it was
merely good timing.
atlas did nothing to deserve this.
even the divine must suffer
even the divine must fall
under the weight of the world.
all we have is each other.
asphyxiated and astringent,
each kiss is an exchanging exhale,
and our lungs convicts.
we'll dig our way out together.
i have only hurt you in secret.
i have only hurt myself in stupor.
but i tried, at least i tried.
i am trying.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 7:51 AM UTC
just know,
light footed boy
faint hearted girl,
glory morning dew
teared umbrella
bristling in the
fierce passion erupting like piano keys
ignited by the spark
of shared candles
dotting the palaces
our maddening pursuit
love
the soreness bristling
on the bottom of my feet
my coarse voice
and tired windpipes
my love for you ceased,
teared by the ricochet
of my failed daydreams
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 12:42 PM UTC
though i’ve never smoked a cigarette
i’ve always loved the smell of tobacco.
it reminds me of shows in seedy concert halls
and the gum my father chewed to get sober
minty-fresh nicorette replacing the scent
of the wine that imbued his every breath.
i recall my grandpa, the way he sat on the porch, surrounded
by nana’s garden, listening to the songs of birds
the stub of his last cigarette, poised between frail fingers.
as it withered, he withered with it.
their walls stained yellow from the nicotine
like some vintage sepia photograph.
through synesthetic memories, i can taste the
way cigarette smoke wafted through the summer air when
my friends and i sat on our back porch, reminiscing,
nostalgia suffocating, tightening its grip like a vise about our windpipes.
i’ve never even smoked a cigarette
but they always remind me of who i used to be
before i lost what was left of my innocence.
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 7:02 PM UTC
this is hell because I say it is.
I'm goin to die inside of it
now you cant stop me cuz the tourniquets,
not your hands upon.
mine it is.
safe treasure to lie on
I stay here in the masking tape
taped up against it.
holding close till death's quiescence
escape is impossible
the collapse of body is
take in step
depth torn from ones ***** creates humans.
we cream humans out of our windpipes
through the words we hate the words we love and the words we ingest creating years long relationships that **** ourselves and our partners and our health and happiness
all for you little miscreants
we sound bite
death falls upon head bands
death holds its hand waist span for creeping death on our limits of bands measure expanding fissure on my backs expanse of nerves
they torture true \
every day with every move
these kids spill their hate
I gave them from the feelings
I felt they inherited with every song that I soothed them with
I hate this
I **** and peel my skin I slip my slime I steal life from every hoove I walk around the animals life
I slave a forth from my head
I tithe this tax
I slurp it all up to invigorate from the death I
feel I **** my self.
death to the dishonor I have done myself
have I grown true humans, ill never let
my self, off of the hook that if shoved in my pelt,
will I lose all the worth and the building I've dealt,
to the structure the skeleton of this tower I've built.
till it crumbles,
till its stagnant.
Oct 28, 2018
Oct 28, 2018 at 12:57 AM UTC
Don't die from old age,
It's illegal.
You'll be arrested,
Jailed for a life sentence
With no parole.
You must die from cancer,
Pnemonia
Or some other acceptable
And legal disease,
But not old age
With blunt sight,
Withering bascilli in windpipes,
Conflicted consciousness
With
Unsteady steps.
These must be symptoms
Of a greater malaise.
So,
Take heart,
You cannot die from old age.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 11:10 AM UTC
with every breath i took
my lungs filled with you;
and for every second that
your heart was closed to me
I taught myself how to breathe
again.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 7:13 PM UTC
Its a tricky word to say
Trying to force it out of my mouth is like swimming in a lava bay
Impossible
Not available
No, no its to soon
Or is it to late?
Every night i'm with you
gazing at the moon
Every night we make love,
Our souls, await
For a time
For a place
Looking into your soul
Is like staring into my own
from dusk till dawn
from day till night
I have to to say this word that strangles my windpipes
But which L-word do you want me to mutter?
Large?
Language?
Luck?
I got it!
I'm in lesbians with you
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 3:28 AM UTC
I hear the tick
and the click
and the beat of the drum
the sound of thudding
within my ear drums
It beats loudly
as the music strums
Softly and slowly
your voice hums
a beautiful tune
I must have assumed
that beautiful tune
was your heart beat
making music for me
You must have been amused
Now all the chords have been broken
The violin plays the saddest song tonight
Forever entwined within the notes
radiating from your subtle lies
This is the part in the chorus
where I fall to my knees
and plea for a different reprise
Kindly ask my heart
for the sense and sensibility
To start a new life
Those masterful musical notes
you wrote, are deeply embedded
Within a monstrosity of tangled
windpipes and heart valves
© 2013 Christina Jackson
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 11:20 PM UTC
You sang to me
Your voice lingers
in the stillness of the air
and it travels
in the the quietness of the night
seeping through every inch of solitude
on a cloud of soft melody
that cuts through finely
and enters the cracks of my heart.
You sang to me
Your priceless expression
when you force your voice
out of your lungs
eyes closed and hands squeezed
as you mouth the lyrics
that matches the darkest secret
in your deepest jar of hearts
You sang to me
the walls heard you
as the meanings of every note
sank deep inside my soul
as it tries to decipher meanings
like a rubik's cube
twisting, turning, looking
into your cryptic eyes
for a sign.
You sang to me
that voice I shall never forget
the veins on your neck
as the song of despair
travels through your windpipes
will forever be scarred
in my memory
how it pops up searching for me
how it expands as your blood
searches for me in your head
how it flows indefinitely.
You sang to me
heaven awoke and hell broke loose
because I remember the songs
the choice
the timing
the kiss
the accentuated lyrics
the duet
the melodic waves of sounds
that completes the vagueness
of the room,
the darkness
of our hearts,
with an unbiased
yet unspoken
sets of words.
But you sang to me
and that was enough.
Jul 27, 2015
Jul 27, 2015 at 4:39 AM UTC
hallucinations of wildflowers and flooding windpipes
yesterday
a fig
today
a bell jar
Apr 16, 2022
Apr 16, 2022 at 11:55 PM UTC
Dear ******
I have a comparison for you,
You are like a cigarette,
Tempting, poisoning,
But extremely addictive.
You are the cigarette that takes the lungs of young innocent girls,
Revealing yourself from a packet consisting pictures of revolting warnings,
But still, those young inquisitive girls take you,
Thinking, 'it won't hurt just to try a little bit'.
******* in firmly at the filter,
Until the burning dry substance begins to go transform,
Into a thick grey cloud it turns,
Dangerously slithering down her fresh flourishing windpipes.
At first, it feels a little foreign,
But after each cigarette she devours,
She becomes more obsessed, needy,
And damaged.
Soon, the tobacco is the red blood running through her veins,
And like any other of your soiled victims,
She desperately tries to call for help,
And she really wants to stop.
But you drag her...
You drag her further,
And further into the blinding smoke until she can't breath no more,
She can't breath the fresh, virginal air that those beautiful, god-made trees release every, single, day.
And when she's lying in those pure white sheets,
Sunlight illuminating through the crystal clear windows,
The trees singing their last beauteous melody for her youthful soul,
You are inside that wicked packet, waiting for your next victim.
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 1:36 AM UTC
Theres a Baptist church frame
empty of hearts and joy
plenty of sky above
like an empty pool of coy
its energy is vague
its people once were alive
tourniquet windpipes alive in the velvet hide
they sung the words of richness
danced on illness
war chains like rains
flooding brains for some mystical temptation.
They severely wanted a way not to die,
so much that life solidified.
And took them.
They thought they had colourful plans
of cloud street *** pits
hundred yard flower gardens
manicured by a tanned super freak
of atomic wisdom.
Till a sharp bit of plasma burned them to the floor.
It was a summers eve 1957.
The breeze let off a little steam and sent them straight to heaven.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 2:39 AM UTC
I laid down
He laid next to me.
My face was in the pillow but I knew he was facing me.
I told him he was stupid
He told me I was more stupid
We battled like this
With raspy voices
Windpipes drenched in alcohol
The lingering aftermath of **** in his lungs
I could hear it in his voice.
That rasp was the most beautiful sound to me
In that moment and in every dream I've ever had of that moment.
I just never thought it would be him.
Our battle drifted off as he fell asleep
His last words were uttered in a raspy daze
"You're an idiot..."
And with that he put his arm around me, resting his hand on my arm.
I felt warm
Cradled in the most complicated and innocent moment I've ever experienced.
I didn't fall asleep that night
Aug 7, 2014
Aug 7, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
The night sings through
Tree leave windpipes
With mild cool breeze
In the front yard
On white sand
The night paints
With silvery paint,
Borrowed from the moon
Night invites me out
With its enticing wonders
Seen on the CCTV
I wish I know
How to repair
My wheelchair
Apr 19, 2019
Apr 19, 2019 at 1:28 AM UTC
another attempt at this
this soliloquy
oh, hello
I haven't realized you were there
my feelings are everywhere
I ponder of decadency
curses, blank verses
my idiocy worthless
wander for that
drop of sanity
restrictions soon born
from nonsense jurisdiction
thoughtless truths
aspired from fiction
try desperately to wade through
diction to carry my weight
to wade through all this hate
crates beaten blind too straight
a compass to identity
I need to find my way
I cannot possibly begin to say
how astray we are from amenity
my journey in adolescence
I feel like once before
a child of eight
I dreamt of terrible
marvelous skates
weaving simplicity
complexity in outer space
rocket ships realities traced
now to spines of crates
drowning to the lid, lost salty straits
yet what is once
will never begin again
look at me now, eight
I live to see light of day
and end with kissing white *****
of those medallion ivory gates
filthy green dollars
as they clip my windpipes
to hush our voices gone hoarse
in constant delay
smothered so we stray breathless,
worthless in constant replay
a desolate lampshade
shattered shards of what
remained of eight year old dreams
a second chance too late
a second path too vain
my liberty to express
those wooden crates, open
passionately
constantly drift astray
in those seas of dismay
have no fear for me
the stars will now
guide me the way
it's going to be okay,
my precious eight
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 9:13 PM UTC
Spoke with an angel in a nightmare,
her voice out of tune with the weather,
she weeps so pretty,
but when she sings.
Time stops & the bones,
of the waking world shatter.
Forlorn,
eerie,
soprano soundescapes
the windpipes,
an eclipse forms from her wallowed pout.
The pouring of light emphasizes on
sorrowful words spoken,
the world places a sympathetic ear to
the chest of the sky.
The pounding doesn't stop.
Sky is slate,
a skulking cat,
with slit eyes.
The introduction of a silver tressed girl
and her delight
for crimson,
red and sheets of whiteForeign
fables pour from
the wrists,
dripping down the elbow.
A pirouetting figure,
with dandelion wisp limbs,
struts past to sing of her disease.
Legs swing in the urge to
jut off a 1,000ft building,
the chilly breeze used to be endearing,
but once you're screaming-
"You are my sunshine,"
in a desolate parking lot.
Wearing happiness
under the eyelids,and a powdered capsule between the lips.
Telephone wires no better than a noose,
choke back everything you want to say.
Weep into the static sound,
nobody's listening.
nobody wants to know-
what's on your mind.
Grabbing at thin air,
mistaking it for potential
or meaning.
Angle the reflection of the mirror properly--
there's a hollowed out torso with;
protruding bones,
that absently cut the days into,
hours, minutes and seconds.
I wanted to break my jaw this week,
I'm not using it for anything.
But chewing my words to never be regurgitated
into anything but rejected suicide notes.
Those letters never fit well,
and the phrases are cliché.
Atleast all those wadded ***** of paper
are weightless in the winds,
like the wings she wore upon her back.
That I desperately wanted
and the red inked margins—
wounds I haven't the courage to make.
So I've cut myself to pieces,
rearranged them more than once,
And just break
and break
and break
and break
and break
Aug 2, 2017
Aug 2, 2017 at 3:25 PM UTC
*father does not rule for long
he is the wicked child's plaything
id's robot slave
a sacrificial money machine
he is baby ghoul dressed
in a costume of culture
regulated by the iron fist of war
the world souls industry
he's made to ware a uniform
with little silver spiked buttons
drawn rigid to the throat
windpipes nag
and cruel shoes shinning
decorated in a suit of fire
that feels like a shredded
hair shirt
with a power choker tie
and a nifty haircut
costumed
a real cloths horse
he seeks the approval of the sold out
and had his wings pulled off
long before he had whiskers
another workin stiff
buying his freedom
one insult at a time
fathers loyalty rests with the child
that's where evil pleasures lurk
first comes the devil
daddies real father
he is
the old man
chaos his name
a bodiless monster
a disorganized dream work
with seething expectations
a somatic octopus
a grabbing insatiable hunger bucket
daddy was born tomorrow
to get along and go along
to listen and obey
a reluctant inmate
daddy says
you gotta suffer
so you don't have to suffer
we all end up
****** dry
like bone moths
cowards huddled
or homeless dread
and quickly dead*
Aug 2, 2017
Aug 2, 2017 at 8:29 AM UTC
You had me in a corner for awhile..
falling for all the same routines time after time and I let you keep me there..
how does it feel?
When you are the one ignored?
when you are the one pushed to the edge of breaking?
when you are battered and bruised begging for mercy and none comes?
How does your poison taste dear love?
Is it a familiar taste?
Or has no one ever dared to put it to you?
Does it trickle into your thoughts in every waking second or is it a prickly numbness refusing to leave you?
Can you feel it eating away at your pride? The way it ate at mine for so long? Does it catch in your breath crush your windpipes until you feel the darkness surrounding you?
Tell me love does it hurt?
Feb 15, 2019
Feb 15, 2019 at 7:42 PM UTC