Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
sandbar Sep 2012
Bills in my wallet folded into wads, unsorted in their random cacophony
Smiles on the faces of those ignorant enough to ignore suffering
Cuts on her feet like symbols in the stars
From her voice I was told the taste of kiwis and ginger root
From her kiss I was sharing nicotine and half exhaled cigarette smoke
And from our silence there is an overlapping ambience of dead noise
From our comprehension we realize our ignorance
From our comprehension we realize out insignificance
It is reassuring to know that you are a compilation of subatomic structures
It is comforting to know your matter is just recycled stardust
From a smile between crooked teeth and chipped molars I find comfort
In knowing that your heart is like a sponge absorbing all my poison
And somehow you exhale such radiance, a phenomenon
I marvel from my spot in the yard, watching sparrows chase
crows
sandbar Oct 2019
Skin deep, funny how flashing lights command attention
In a different dimension, each of us, independent experience
The sphere still spins, this lens is turning more grey, each day
Thoughts spray, out the side of your face, straight shoe lace noose
What's the use, they don't love you anyway
Those grasshopper sawing legs get louder and louder
One day I'll go deaf, they're humming but soon they will scream
sandbar Jul 2017
Blue bubble
Blue bubble
Flower
Green
Stick freshly planted
Plant an entrance to a secret level
Mario
Cactus
Christmas tree
B
sandbar Oct 2010
I walk through this city blue
Writing books of unwritten verse
From simple, daily, conversations
Jotted down on cheap notepads
A couple walks together, same routine
Adopted from uncounted years, together
A cigarette hangs from cracked, chapped, lips
His cane taps out a rhythm, hobbling along
Sounds overlap, reverberate off cinder block walls
Voices blend into seamless harmony
A lonely man sits alone in his apartment
Surrounded by books stacked on creaking shelves
Waiting on a call, just to hear her voice
Cars come but never go, an endless procession
Ebbing & flowing, tides of gasoline & steel
Filling blank lines with mass produced ink
While I watch a game of chess in the park
Strategies countered by intuition, or luck
Blind to the outside world, they play on
Paint chips off walls as blurred faces walk by
Cracked concrete crumbles by paces & strides
Only to be overrun by sprouting, spiny, weeds
Crushed into pulp by careless, rushing, feet
Beats of a jazz quartet, pouring from an open door
Echoing down empty hallways, finding my ears by chance
I'll keep walking, through this blue city, until I find you once again
I wrote a letter to you, my love, to this day its not been sent
sandbar Aug 2019
Slender spider striking, straight from center

The concrete re-enters the common points,

impact retracts skin layers, blood on white

toilet paper

Bent butts on the broke blue table, redshift

reason into regard once again,

our brains spiral and spin,

define truth my friend

It's all about what you make it, sabers and layers

peeled back, full frontal attack

a mouse in a trap

kicking

We're sticking our necks out so far

no fear inspired scars on our

slate gray souls

Broken bowls on the back porch, collecting spider

webs and insect legs and

clausterphobic cocoons

Found the last loon in the ****** bin

flying south, dreaming of a quiet pond

to land in
sandbar Oct 2021
Tossing stones into shallow pools
Putting on these blue socks & walking away,
but these blues keep stalking down my neck
Dropping from my lash, from cheek stained red
Shame and bitter contempt
Sorrow and chewed Nicorette headaches
Dead breaks of trees waiting to burn,
on a match to turn things sideways
Wide days spent dreaming
Long night spent grieving
Childhood spent teething for truth
Rot out tooth on Baby Ruth and root beer
Never close, forever near,
I'll see you around one day my dear
sandbar Sep 2017
Lodestone, lovesouls, the boundaries of my blue blooded lover
Gentle mother with a fresh razor cut, do you know how much you hurt me?
Chocolate and candy on the table of the mental ward, mental *******
Figuring out what works, our ways, our quarks, or muons and gluons
Milk chocolate dissolving on your tongue, not bitten, forbidden, bitte fraulein
Gloria, gloria, shalom, assalamu alaikum, hands out, shake 'em
Pull the sword from the stone, water matters, patterns carved in bone
Love is lone, dove, rain from above, mud, life is not crud, maybe
sandbar Jul 2020
Replanting my soul into a bitter bowl of charcoal
Poking holes in muddy soles to let stagnant water run
Up to our knees, up to our necks, screaming steel tomb
Algae will one day bloom on my bleached bones
sandbar Jul 2019
We're here now, out of the
rain
We're there now, sleeping
sideways
How to brush your ****
teeth
94b
sandbar Aug 2023
Hello old friend
I want nothing to do with you
But here I am searching you out

Hello old friend
I thought you left so long ago,
But here you are, crying

It must be a dream
Brain letting off stream
Sanity flowing down stream

Southbound or bust
By rubber or rust
Getting nowhere on trust

I’ll crawl if I have to, not even fuss
Turned mean as a rattlesnake,
Heart choked out on dust
sandbar Oct 2010
Box fan chops up the light pouring
through my window.
Distorting birdsong as it rotates around
& around.
Your silhouette, casting a shadow on the carpet,
in my imagination.
Fresh strings on my guitar, standing in the corner,
unwinding, to be re-tuned.
Sitting on my bed, watching shadows run
their predictable course.
A cocoon rests on the sill, artificial framework, escaping
its organic shell.
Only to be trapped by the screen, never
saw a flower.
Just a pair of dried wings, crumbling
on the window sill.
sandbar Jun 2019
This Texas night sky got me
full dipperin'
Tongue slippin' in the grease, frying pans on
the asphalt grit
Hot eggs n shaved legs n french fries,
moonpies and marshmallows
Good fellows, hot bellows under the bronze bull
boiling briskly
A child born in space doesn't age as fast,
lives longer,
and becomes callous to the people
"living in the dirt"
Heather's putting the clothes in the dishwasher
sandbar Sep 2019
Flying unhinged down, scouring all the carbon to clean
Burnt, unseen, hidden under the same clothes you wore yesterday
Swing, sway, find a new way to grind it down into pumice
Pummel puffed lungs through hollow ribs
New rigs, tie up ends, loose, chop off the caboose, fend for yourself
What do you tell, to the ones you were supposed to protect
Trying to recollect if I even tried
But I don't think I did
and I don't know how
to live with that
sandbar Nov 2020
You're my living paintbrush,
charcoal glossy scales
Emeralds swimming upstream,
tried to catch and failed
Printed on thin paper,
your darkly rounded eye
Color of cloudless sky
on shining lateral line
Cut out white fillets
right along the spine
sandbar Jul 2016
Putting pieces of books together
Hidden messages between pages of composted life
Last poem, his greatest work
sandbar Sep 2017
Black and blue and covered in this and you
*****, aches, probably the flu
A fly just landed, landed on you
Swipe away, sneeze into the sunlight
A somber step into the blacklight
Twilight and midnight are quite alike
Bugout moon as a backlight
We strive, we fight, what for
Trying to find the next door and breach it
Living for 4:00 and a beer to get near it
We grab wheels and attempt to steer it
But in the end it's like trying to fly a train
Day to day life is just insane
good luck
sandbar Jul 2020
******* out all the cold coffee
Burning out the last smoke
Scrape that **** off your face,
  dull razor

Waiting on the next inevitable tragedy
Bodies hidden under gravel heaps
Don't have a plan to stay alive
Get in the car,  just drive
Watch planets collide

Guerillas goose stepping through graveyards
No stone unturned
No concern for the collateral
Make those bodies fall
Your kids probably saw it all,
  pixelated, industrial

   normalized

Justice cries as she walks the gauntlet of lances
Begging forgiveness for false sins.
The old women spread cedar ashes, the young dismember limbs
sandbar Sep 2017
He woke up this morning with the idea
he walked from the back of the truck stop
where the spigot was
and thought about killing you
not you in particular
just someone
a you

Hitchhiking with a bootknife
a lucky stone
and a bandanna tied to a lock
waiting
waiting
the ever present waiting

Why did you stop?
what compelled you to pick him up
was it your good nature
or a service to humanity?

Any little dirt road, yeah
turn off here
did you expect it
or was it quick?

So many questions but
not so many
answers
sandbar Aug 2019
Exhaling, another night of smoke and nothing
songs on repeat, moving forward
at a snail's pace
amputation
footrace
We loose lace our lives into liver sandwiches
Prometheus laughs at us
how many times do we
have to touch the
hot
pan
It's one in the same, man, bandstand my soul abandoning the shell
crispy Cicada sound
swells
rushes
Luscious, this feeling of sitting here
over smoke, sticky
the tricks to be
really still
focus
****
It's a still captured in rhyme, passed on to time, taking
bits of thyme
burning
them
Swerve and send the oxygen rushing away
come out and play, warriors
come out
and play
sandbar Oct 2019
Invading with paper mache swords
Paper rattlesnakes, yellow flags
Blood runs thicker, red down stitch
Ludicrously looking for loose cigarettes under the seat
Rinse and repeat, dig in, position, overlapping fields of fire
Intersecting in the wire
Blowing ash off the tip of Camels
Down the drain is where the plan goes
sandbar Sep 2019
Hello blue buttons
on wrist
thin nylon string
bring something
in thin bags
up mountains
of concrete

Eat a handful of pills
no will
just sleep
black and dreamless
cleanly cut off
chemical
cauterized

Cacti spreading wings
over limestone and
juniper berries
now contained in
patio ***
breathless
blooming
that blue
melted plastic
button
sandbar Sep 2017
Two blackbirds on a high line
Screaming obscenities at the rising sun
I wonder what they're saying?
The nape of her neck, whole milk and henna hair
Making love in the cotton cotton cotton
Tea is best shared among lovers
Hot or cold we sip from the same cup
My love, turn on that darkness, a steady drip
Fresh melon on your lips
I want to lick them
eternally
Just kiss my back, my ear, me
It's all I ask
Let me into your watercolor soul
Paint my heart in shades of ocher, teal, and meridian
Any color will do
As long as I paint with you
You alone
sandbar Aug 2019
Brain exploding, like popcorn, hearing you sing
Hot oil, blisters in patches, snatches of conversation
One nation, under fraud, sideways schemes means lives taken
Love shaken down to dust and nothing
There is something, hovering on the edge of imaginary periphery
A sip to see if it's poison
sandbar Nov 2021
Across mountains, on the fleeting foot
Left is forward, right is south, but I dream of north
Of distant peaks, of turbid coast, at the bottom of the end
Swallowing my tail, fishtailing sideways
Walking through the creek, dead limestone spire
Tripping down the lee shored dreams
Crimson port songs, starboard green moon
Bring me to those mountains once again,
to climb
sandbar Aug 2019
Soaking in the sun sitting soaked in sweat
Let me go, oh gentle soul, guide me down river
Giver of all, whetting stones for steel locks, stretched and sharpened
The tarp end vomits smoke, we sit and poke at embers
Who will be the enders, the final players of the game
When the angles get to complex to even stay, much less analyze
A burger and fries another artery dies, cauterized, desensitized
Flays land on the lip of the glass, imparting ****
This cigarette is down to the last hits, **** coffin nail
Move as slow as a snail, strike like lightening
The tightening of the eyes is reaction to chemical unload
Another rock in the road kicked into the gutter
harsh scratching rattle
Pushed from flat into bowl, pressure and precision
You wake up every day and try to envision
things going right
Put your spirit in flight, there is no reason to fight
Be a kid, fly a kite, everything can be alright
if we can just
love
sandbar Oct 2010
A dreary September day, raindrops the size of quarters,
smacking into the windshield at 60 miles per hour.
Passing through this subdued city, a concrete jungle,
grown quiet in the tempest.
Gravel & broken glass tumble over flattened bottle caps
& cigarette butts, into the gutter.
A lone man in a white shirt & blue tie rushes for his car,
stomping through puddles, newspaper covering his bald head.
He must be thinking about getting out of the rain,
or getting back to his office, his tired cubicle life,
or how he's going to make it through another endless day.
Selling his soul & happiness for enough money to support
three kids, his wife & his mother, to put bread on the table.
To have a nice little house in a nice little suburb with a
nice little lawn, a tombstone, a paragraph in the obituaries.
Now we're crawling along the asphalt, the scene replaying itself,
a different story, but the same, always the same.
A figure strolling between dumpsters, looking for a dry spot,
a blur down an alleyway as we speed by.
If it wasn't raining, she'd be on the corner with a sign,
living on dollars a day, enough to buy a few beers &
forget about it all for a while, until the next day.
To many signs with "Veteran" or "I have children"
or simply "Help." To many people with signs.
Then you really begin to see them, crouching under balconies,
one or two at first, do you really even notice?
Just a nameless name, a faceless face among faces, a storyless
story, with so many stories to tell you.
Mismatched shoes, a shirt to small & to thin for this
ripping wind, this freezing, tearing wind.
Under overhangs in any dry place they can find,
a kingdom of soggy cardboard & pipe dreams.
But this is nothing compared to the overpasses,
every single one packed to the brim with the homeless,
escaping from the downpour, trying to find a place to sleep.
The night is coming and the rains still pouring, and the winds
still howling, and I have a warm bed to collapse on.
I have food in the pantry & food in my stomach, & clothes on
my back, & hope for tomorrow, such hope I have, such illusion.
I remember his face, as we sat at the red light,
waiting for the trivial green to wave us on our way.
Old enough to be my father, huddled in his blue poncho, slick
from the rain, shaking from the cold, waiting for the night.
Beard like tangled roots, hair gray as concrete,
just like concrete.
His eyes told of emptyness, of routine, clenching that
brown bag idly, watching the world pass by.
Another name that fell through the cracks, for no particular
reason, things piled up, what could you do?
No job would hire you, you were just a pink slip, then a
foreclosure, then it all went to ****.
Your eyes catch mine, for that brief second as we pull away,
& I finally see your sign, such beautiful handwriting:
"I am human."
sandbar Oct 2010
She is the calmness of night in the burning sunlight
The rain falling from clouds that can't hold water
Salt of the ocean, stone pulled from wet earth,
after the downpour.
He is grass growing from broken ground in the field
The cedar tree pushing its limbs towards sunshine
Clear cold water, cascading down pitted limestone
walls, eroding the face.
Their love is the world, from which all life springs
The beating drum of nature & instinct, intertwined
Inorganic love, brittle as cast iron, rusting itself
away.
sandbar Jul 2019
Everything is too **** dollars
Pills swallered'
Tar shot up
We snot up crusty mornings
Spent in mourning
Miss you Skeeter
Open coffin never stopping words we flossing
Learn to be a boss and casually deal with loss
Find your cause, a little bit of it, bite in the hip of it,
don't let go
Take a ride, see the show, you could die tomorrow,
who knows?
Don't skip the snow cones, lots of syrup
Don't forget to fry eggs, black screaming cast iron
High wire in my soul getting hot and arcing
Leaving clean, straight, blisters
Like veins
sandbar Oct 2010
The burden of silence, punctuated by the rain
Lonely days, happily interrupted by your smile
Charms off your necklace, sitting behind collected stones
From my days of wandering, forgotten days of youth
playing you a song I've never heard before
Chords at random, eyes closed, fret by fret
Your hands flutter through photographs, discolored by age
Snapshots of faces gone or going, only a fuzzy memory
Like crossed out letters, names on a list, slowly piling up
Yellowed pages crumbling, swept away by grasping wind
Sending fragments of thought wherever they chance to land
In the form of drifting lines of verse, carried on breezes
Stomped into mud puddles, flattened by rain
Spilling ink into saturated soil, a stain among stains
Reincarnated in curling blades of grass
sandbar Jul 2019
Pushing chains, working lanes, find a gap and we rush up
Soft, never fast, like a puppy I hush up
Sup from a big cup, Big Red in my guts, breakfast tacos for lunch
Piles of jalapenos and one tattooed on my arm
Right above Bailey I'm a fool, she's gone
Now I am sitting here rhyming out thoughts
Making quick movements, dropping dimes spinning tops
The meat factory never shuts off
The blades keep spinning and chop
Organs and feces and slop
When does the violence all stop
Hypocrites all, slave labor cell phone
Casting the first stone
Two tones of atonement unrepentant right
Slam 3 bones and take fright, lock the board on a 4 blank make 70
Get them crooked eyes, makes you look at guys
different.
sandbar Sep 2017
Nautilus style conch
Rio bravo IPA, fresh pack of smokez
Cows and beets
Turning teal into steal/steel
Faded pinky finger tattoo
Shade in the grove
papyrus by the river
clay and cotton and warm water
A 2 letter word, F.U.
Rigid like a 2x2, or 4
dipped boat oars, scarred, still soar
Shot myself, still sore, folklore at this point
Shoot/score/****/snore/repeat
Two pairs of feet, bare, cleets/socks
please, be discreet, or not, no sweat
sandbar Jul 2021
Speaking into the speaking stone
Listening to the listening tree
Breaking the breaking bone

Half empty green bottles smashed to sharp emeralds
Cans crushed into half stars
Passing cars like comets

In the dark place we find each other breathing
Console me with your tears
Bleed the last drop dry
sandbar Dec 2020
In spite of it all, we stand here smoking
The dark is speaking a common tongue
The rain is beating a common drum
In spite of it all, the fire churns
Young heart yearns for age
Brainwashed rage taught page by page
Enslaved by minimum wage
Final stage predetermined
Doesn't matter how much you're earning
Look at that cigarette you're burning -
Bring that Camel through a needles eye
Same chance as seeing pigs fly
sandbar Sep 2019
Light strobes across my vision, being shown new patterns
on the perfect shiny paint job
you take such attention
in waxing

Train blowing its horn at one thirty two in the morning
moaning out over
miles of razor
live oak

When it all lets out, and the bars bleed back home
we find where
those without
one go

A tunnel into another **** tunnel, never find surface
The train is screaming now, you can hear her ringing in gathered turmoil
boiling up and off and gone
to some other track in the back of an alleyway of a world

Toes curled around the nose, shift center and reenter lane
Hemlock and wolfsbane
triple sixes rolled
on celoo dice
nothin nice
sandbar Jun 2016
Habla nada
eyes on low
beam
Gusano
worm like men
with skulls
under
tattoo'd skin
For once
        Will you trust me?
sandbar Sep 2019
I can't walk all the way to the river again, never again, never again
there is something in the junipers of my mind
haunting from the edge of the dark spot
light dots or maybe haldol, spells in chemical form
a swarm of bad tidings, we keep on surviving regardless
Until one day you don't anymore
sandbar Sep 2020
Contracting sheets of limestone rough, tough rugged eyes among tumbled bluffs
Crumbled stuff, sending you down into the yellowjackets, swatting mad tumble
Mud and algae, sweat, lost glasses, lost off our ***** on some strong stuff
Ending up on the long end of someone else's courtesies, lucky they didn't ****** me
Words are brief, meaningless most times, too centered on our own rhymes
Focused on our own climb, horse blinders on, the world burns on to the beat of the sun
sandbar Sep 2017
Kiss me with your eyes
Adorn me in river stones
Roll me in the weeds
to catch their scent

Love my limp body
on the shores of
the San Gabriel river
south of center

Lance this blister
Call your sister
Chat chat chat
we're good enough for that

Topsy turvy teapot madness
plain grit gladness
split pea sadness
where did the time go

She washes sheets and lays them out on the tile roof
of her 1 room nothing in downtown anywhere
southeast Asia

And dreams of lovers and full meals
Cars and their steering wheels
Being something more than possessed
Independent, blessed
where did the time go
sandbar Sep 2019
Trees swaying, we copy with limbs rhythmic, unhinged
To binge, on something, anything, take your mind off it
A soft hit of green clusters, munchy yellow mustard gas
To follow or to pass, cover yourself with diesel and light a smoke
Going for dead broke around every hairpin turn
Got to go earn that urn, watch the whole world burn
Wait your turn, they'll be eating you next
sandbar May 2019
Long eyelashes, for a boy,
to catch these buckets
dumping
Green rage crushed down in
pill form
snorted
Eyes frothing with madness
tangle my agony
in bramble
sandbar Feb 2020
Throwing pastel darts into the heart board
Pulling up electric dandelions, watch them wilt
A small hole dug in the woods, soul in a glass jar buried
Carried to long, can't feel your legs under you
Ever present antagonist, burning charcoal in each ventricle
A pencil full of dreams shaved to scribbles
All the pencils bend in there
I never want to go back
He might still be screaming
you can hear it in every room
sandbar Jan 2020
Wet drippings flags, upside down, spilling red white and blue
Grease on raw knuckles, mixing with thin ****** cuticle
Tagging your name in inky scribbles on my wrist, please remind me
Fog dragging its fingers through grass, laying down crystal tears
Fears building about years slipping by, another happy death day, candles blown smoking
sandbar Apr 2020
On the brink of mirth, lip split vertical,
bleeding surgical mask
Tapping Nelson's cask,
sipping static ash
Electronic clash, striking through,
silence moves around you like
  clouds
Life sprints away in leaps and bounds,
bound to end up somewhere,
  bound to fate
Juniper seperates me from rocky track,
don't wan't to go back,
  sick of drymouth walking
A boat headed south,
all the teeth knocked out your mouth,
  doubt becomes despair
We pretend that we care,
but our actions bare
  different conclusions
A fusion of different contusions,
condition: Human,
       most likely
  dooming: Oursleves
sandbar Sep 2019
Another black coffee night, getting ready to spin out in ruts and potholes, new goals, spent in sketchbooks of scribbles

Little, off the end, severed, running fast to catch up, knife end ketchup dumb **** pull the trigger

You're bigger now, return to sender, how do I find you and take what you took from me

Silence is all I could see for see for so long, the darkest part right before dawn

Pushed and molded little pawn, strategy gone, **** the rules, only thing that rules is fire superiority

Roaring, please, hold this plunging blood pressure in check, pharmaceutical single serve select

Come correct if you come at all, hear that tree fall in the wilderness, the gentle caress of wind screaming wrong way

One day we just stop being, it will be so freeing, to finally shut off the hardware, gently left there, to accumulate flowers
sandbar Oct 2019
Finally it comes
In waves of pill wrecked anxiety
I try to see another path
An alterior motive
So we've tried to dig deep
But the water is draining from the lake
And the fire is burning on her surface
sandbar Sep 2017
A slash of a smile, kimono stripped shoulders
Koi scale tattoos, Okinawa rainy day blues
Drown yourself in *****, fight 'till you lose
Pale skinned pathological lover
Soulstone hustler, rustler & bustler
Revolving revolvers under samurai dusters
Wild west Tokyo rose blessed
Handwritten love letters on a desk, kiss sealed
A bowl of cornmeal, these things we steal
A lovelock of hearthsouls, sous chef gazpacho
Tasty cannibal nachos, eating hearts in a palm grove
Children gathered round a stone
The feeling of truly being alone
Making tools from your enemies bones
More brutal than any historical score
We sleep, we snore, 2+2=4, once, no more
Coconuts falling on the shore for eternity
Every blade of grass is holy to me
It's the bullet we see that gets us
We can all love each other is we let us
Balloon powered spaceships, liftoff
Raise your sails on the submarine
Big, square, wheels on your SUV
Life is like a tree, just growing
Forget all your worries, let's just get going
sandbar Jul 2019
They don't bite their brother.
Cottonmouth.
Scales sliding over toes, smelling rotten rose
Water hose and purple prose and sage burning
World turning, big organic meatgrinder, composting bones
Two tones of being alone, two bones split out your shin
Living in this big plastic garbage pile
Been doing it a while, **** down that rage
Neutron star explodes and ends the golden age, not even a story on a page
sandbar May 2020
Lazy and lethargic
Loopy and lost
Little dizzy dots dancing through glass
Distorted and reorganized daily
Finding wiser ways warily
Cutting rosemary from the dirt
Megahertz blurt thoughts into blankness
Blankets on the back porch
Roaches in the feed corn
Violating duties sworn
Better to be never born
Steel shorn clean, violently
Violets growing amongst ivy
Mahogany inseparably blending into ivory
Talking more quietly
For you
x.
sandbar Sep 2017
This town has been crucified
Ears like stop signs
Eyes like pitchers, martyrs
The hair tells the story of the Holocaust
sandbar Oct 2019
The dogs are circling
wire interpreted
framed chassis
screaming sirens
trying to hear tires creeping by
occasional
auditory hallucinations
trying to hear the grass gently bending
it's sending lightning down my spine
in the darkness find
retreat from all unkind
unloving
every voice means something
whether you like it or know it
unwinding time
lucid nightmares unbind
wake up late then sleep all day
coffee crush time
caffeine and nicotine
got here unintentionally
Next page