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CharlesC Sep 2012
a day
with contrasts faded
hazy smoke from
distant forest burnings
skylight diffused..
traffic at rushhour
a monotonous din..
such muffled appearances
invited a more
exacting look..

white paint splotches
accidental decorations
to a darkened parkbench
suggests here a distant
supernova explosion..
a motorcycle pistons'
high pitch report
self identification
in the traffic din..
an airliner's orange
contrails laced the
gray cloudless sky..

then a sudden appearance
a haloed quartermoon
light enhancement
with circular glow..
yes contrasts seemed to
speak on this day
bursting the haze...
walking experiences...took a couple photos...see blogsite...
Mymai Yuan Sep 2010
I was born a sickly, screeching baby, two months earlier than expected. The doctor and midwife did everything they could to keep my little limbs moving and to keep my tiny heart beating, fluttering like the wings of butterfly.
“Is it a boy?” my mother whispered through her pale lips, as they bathed my naked body in hot water.
“No, ma’am, it’s a girl” The midwife struggled to add on something that would make the wailing creature seem more desirable. “With exquisitely shaped feet, so perfectly miniature”
She let out a croak of conflicting emotions: the joy and pride of a newly-founded motherly love, the fear of presenting a girl as a first-born, the relief that the hours of agony in childbirth were over and the dread of facing her husband once he found out about me.

My mother was not healthy after my birth for a long time; and when I was only one and two months old she fell dangerously ill, and the house whispered footsteps running to her room late at night and muffled voices of different doctors. Mercifully, she survived but was left barren and forever unfertile.
I can not imagine my father’s fury. He believed in having sons to carry on his old last name of thirty-one generations; it was his religion and had I been a son, I would have been worshipped as a god. I can imagine how my mother prayed and thanked her ancestors that her dowry was of a large one.

He could barely tolerate being in the same room as me during my toddler years. Every time he entered a room I was playing in, nurse would sweep me to our garden out side; answering to my startled queries, “Be an obedient daughter, don’t bother your father and don’t ask questions”
My body had been born frail, but my natural spirit was as healthy as could be, full of inquiries, wonders of the world around me and everyday I would learn something new just wandering around the neighborhood observing things, with my nurse trailing with a worried eye behind me muttering, “Girls are not supposed to be exposed to this” she spoke the words as if they were sour, “you should be sitting at home and accompanying your mother.”

Every day at dinner, the two females of the house, me and my mother, were silent while my father ranted on and on. My appetite being very delicate, I often just sat there as still as I possibly could and listened to my father talking about politics, jobs, money. Things he called ‘men business’. I longed to ask questions about these ‘men business’, especially ‘university’ for I had an inquisitive sort-of nature but was refrained with a sharp, piercing look from my mother every time I opened my mouth and sometimes, she pinched me under the table leaving purple splotches which flashed, “Don’t question your father”
Sometimes, he would talk about the future he had decided for me, “You will marry off, sixteen at the latest, to some one rich and beneficial to our family. You will do as I say till I marry you off, and then you will do as your husband tells you.”
“Yes father, for I should repay everything you have done for me” I replied as sweetly as I could.
“Yes, you’re a good daughter. Bear lots of sons for him and your house will be one of happiness.”
I was proud that he had given me a compliment. “Yes father, for it will make you joyful as I always wish to make you so”
My childish heart did not understand why my mother turned her head down while her left eyebrow twitched, and why that night, as she tucked me into bed, I thought I saw a tear roll down her cheek and why as she kissed me that night she whispered, “Do not love me so; love your father. The men in your life are your gods.”

My physical health would constantly limit the desires of my free spirit. I could not to do what others who were as free of spirit as I was could do, and couldn’t socialize with them and the rest of the children in my neighborhood had their siblings to mingle with, causing me to become the pitiful outcast.
I saw children around my age, around seven or eight, climbing trees and wanted to do so as well, but my white feet did not have grip enough to grasp onto the fat branches.
Father caught me once trying to propel myself up a tree and his expression was both of a resigned anger and sadness before he turned him and his face away and back into the house without a word.
That night, mother told me not to climb trees ever again. I noticed a faint bruise on her cheek bone that had been covered with white powder.

When I was eleven or twelve, and was allowed to wander further out into the neighborhood with my nurse I saw the boys fishing in the nearby pond and wanted to do so as well. Starting that day, every week I pocketed the three coins mother gave me until I could buy the best fishing rod in the little store and ran as fast as my skinny, weak legs could carry me to the pond. I mimicked the way the boys flung the fishing rod out over the water but the metal pole was too heavy for my pale, shaking arms. I tried over and over again as my nurse watched, biting her lip in anxiety. I held the fishing rod with trembling sore arms till  I felt a bite; I pumped my small arms to reel it in, but they were so tired and I was far too slow, losing the fish I had spent half the day trying to catch. “Ah, just bad luck, don’t worry! It was a smart fish, I tell you!” nurse exclaimed, though her eyes flashed a look of pity and I knew she knew it wasn’t just bad luck or a smart fish.
In anger, I sold the fishing rod to one of the boys for two-thirds of the price I had bought it for. He was delighted with the bargain and I watched with a lump in my throat as he caught three fish with the tug of his healthy, muscular arm within fifteen minutes. “This is a beautiful rod, and the pond is just filled with fish today, Little Sister!”
Wanting to spend the money jingling inside my pocket, money that to me was just a reminder of a painful memory, I headed off to the collection of little shops close to my house where I was guaranteed distraction. Nurse, sweating and complaining of the heat, followed me.
An ageing man with a bunch of filthy hair working away on a piece of thick, rough paper with wondrous colors inside a shop caught my eye as I peered inside the window. He turned the picture upside down and continued blending in the dark colors of the shape to create a shadow along the curve of it. I entered the shop. “What is that?” I asked of him.
“A face” he replied back absentmindedly.
“Doesn’t look like one to me” I confessed with my honesty.
He looked up at me, “No, it does not to you, and maybe, neither will it at the end. To me, it looks like an angle of a faded face. But slowly, with time, it will become clearer and clearer, yet only to me, and as it does, I will be able to choose more colors to make it yet more beautiful. The outcome of this painting is entirely up to me.”
I felt my challenging self rising up. “But what if you imagined a certain color in your head but couldn’t find it or be able to mix it to your mind’s perfection?”
“Then I would create my own paint color.”
“You know how?”
“No, but if I could not find the paint color already made I would make it myself, and no matter what, would learn how to. So far I have always been able to compromise and mix different colors to please me.”
“You do an awful lot of shadowing light colors with dark colors”
“Why do you think I do so?” he questioned me this time, with bright eyes.
I pondered for a moment to give as good an answer as he had given me and then told him my answer.
He nodded with impress, “Yes, yes, absolutely right. I never thought I’d hear that from a child” and looked at me with his head cocked in curiosity.
“What would you like to buy from here, Little Sister?”
Still deeply interested in our conversation I pulled out the coins I had in my pocket. “How much stuff can I buy with all this money? I’d like those crayons, I’ve tried them once before and they are so creamy and smooth.”
“Oil pastels?” he asked, a little confusedly.
Feeling ashamed of my ignorance, I nodded. The tutor father hired evidently bent to father’s strict rules of what should be taught and what would not be taught. Father disapproved of women painting, and would’ve dismissed nurse had he known that instead of taking me out for a little walk to smell the blooming daffodils, she in fact let me explore the environment around me to the best of my ability even in disgruntle.
The man gave my red-patched cheeks and undeveloped translucent frame a sympathetic look and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “Little Sister, I’ve a whole basket of oil paints that I’ve used but rarely and so are still in perfect condition. Would you like to carry the whole basket home for all the money you have in your pockets?”
I handed him all my golden coins, “But first I must see if I like it.”
“You won’t be disappointed” he chuckled and walked with an imbalanced limp to the back of the store. I noticed a wooden stump protruding from the bottom of his long, black pants. My heart throbbed achingly; he was ****** limited too. I turned to his painting and smiled from deep inside, a smile I rarely wore.
He came back tugging a huge brown basket filled to the brim with sticks of oil pastels, some longer or thicker than others. He lifted an orange one up and showed the tip of it to me, which was stained with a black mark. “Sometimes when you blend colors this will happen, but it’s easy to rid off. Just softly, and patiently rub it off on a cloth until it disappears.” He demonstrated upon his black pants.
“Thank you. It’s kind of you. But...I can’t carry this home myself. It’s heavy.”
I turned to nurse and smiled my best pleading smile.

The basket was toiled up as nurse undressed me from my shower and father and mother were otherwise occupied. That night, with my precious basket safely under my bed, I cleaned all the multi-colored oil pastels on an old shirt, and as soon as the house was ringing with silence, I locked my door and flicked on the lamp light, and started pressing the smooth colors into the paper to blend and make a picture of kissing colors on a relatively large piece of white paper. A thrill ran from my finger tips and along my arm, and made my palms tingle as I held the colorful sticks in my hand to the paper. I hid it underneath my bed just as a rosy sun was rising.
*
I was sixteen, and I was thought beautiful: for now, at this age, it was considered beautiful to be so pale of skin, so small of feet and hands, graceful to have tiny limbs and charming to have little strength for it was now considered ‘feminine’.
It was three weeks after I had turned sixteen and for dinner, father had brought over an ugly man with a bulging waist and shiny bald head who continually made ****** jokes at the dinner table while he believed I did not understand them. He was infamous for the two wives he had had (before they died from sickness), and how he not only hit them but kept other lovers too. Yet he was desirable for his vast richness. He leered at me obnoxiously, in an attempt to smile.
Father caught him looking at me, “She’s incredibly silent, never says a word of defiance and will be a most dutiful wife.”
“Yes, she is beautiful”
My heart froze and my brain was stimulated to work twice as fast. Him?! Him?! The man who’s wives were killed through an illness called ‘abuse, neglect and disloyalty?!’
I cast my eyelashes down in order to appear a calm, modest young lady while my heart hammered in fury, disgust and a rising hysterical panic. I shot a look at my mother whose left eyebrow was twitching as she stared down at her dinner plate, and I knew she was having the same thoughts as I.
“I would be glad to have you as my son-in-law. You would have no trouble with her, and would be embraced with open arms into our family.”
They continued this path of talk through dinner while he eyeballed me in a way that made me cringe. I felt his foot nudge mine under the table and in haste tucked it under the chair with a little gasp. His eyes glittered at my gasp and I was furious with myself for letting him feel a rotten triumph. Though I had always felt an extremely strong dislike towards him from what I knew of him and sometimes saw of him with an immoral lady, something pushed in the pit of my tummy, and I knew it was pure hatred.
When mother tucked me in she was being strange. On closing my door she whispered, “I love you… so I wish you to know… don’t ever contradict men”

As I was secretly drawing a picture as I did every night till dawn, I heard my father’s voice roar in the dead of the night. In a sudden, I shoved my portrait under the bed and threw all my oil pastels into the basket, hid it, and switched the light off. I heard his voice roar again, accompanied by a thud. I was wild with fear as I crept to my door and pressed my ear against it, barely even shocked at my own daringness as my instinct, love, took over- my instinct of must knowing what was happening to my mother.
“How dare you say I’m wrong!?” there was another thud, and this time I heard a soft whimper. “She is worthless to me, not a son. And I will marry her off to a rich man who can actually benefit this family.” He roared.
There was a whisper which I strained to hear, “He will **** her”
“From the moment she was born she wasn’t made to live!” he yelled.
A hiss escaped my tongue and I coiled like a serpent, flinching as a thud was heard yet again and an immediate cry of pain escaped from both my lips and my mothers’.
A fire awoke inside me, burning my temples and my whole body and my eyes stung with hot tears; tears that burned my face as they splashed down. My whole body was shaking and my tightly squeezed eyes were going through spasms. I was no longer wild with fear, but with anger.
I turned my light back on and tugged my basket of oil pastels out. I yanked my portrait off from a thick of pile of different pictures I had drawn.
My breath was coming in quick short breaths as I finished my portrait to the utmost perfection, using every oil pastel in the basket. Every time I heard a thud, I colored with more fiery… shadowing my jaw line with the fat black oil pastel, in the crook of my ear, the corner of my mouth… where the light shone upon my fore head, how it reflected in the color of my eye and glowed on my cheeks.
When I was finished, the house was deadly quiet again and dawn was breaking. I looked down upon it and realized something that changed my life.
In frenzy I swatted out all the things I had ever drawn and stared at them in an awakening.
The colors on them were the events of my life, the things that characterized it, the decisions. They were beautiful for they had been chosen and controlled by me … I had chosen the colors I wanted and thought best for my pictures; and spent thought over how to blend different colors to the color I wanted.
And everyday, as I worked into the drawings with time, they became clearer and clearer on what was the right thing to do, and how it should possibly look like in the next stage.
I leaned over and kissed the thin lips of my portrait that didn’t look exactly like me for not even the most skilled artists have complete control over what they draw.

Then I remembered what I had told the one-legged man in the shop a few years go:
“Lights not only illuminate, they also cast shadows. The contrast makes you able to appreciate the power of both.”
Now it was time to truly let the light illuminate my life, and let the shadows let me appreciate the light that shines upon me; I color my own life, and choose my own colors.

To pull out the colors underneath the darkness of my bed…
And spill it to the world outside.
Joshua Haines Oct 2015
The sky, black as the eyes that stare at it.
Star-studded and as seamless as new programming.
I look down, the streets molested by fluorescent splotches --
red ribbons of memory evaporate from the lights of motorcycles,
gurgling by.

A homeless, pregnant woman, in a bar, once told me,
"Forgiveness is letting a prisoner free, then finding out that you were the prisoner."

The sunset looks like an explosion of emotions
no one understands, yet.

The smudges on her lips
look like the bruises of an orphan apple.
Ashland, Wisconsin
Timothy Essex May 2010
I like slandering your makeshift forceps.
I hammer you down with watery *** and then spill

the remainder on the couch. Yarg! A diamond’s
worth at least a small intestine, and you

are worth whatever’s left over after night
has upended itself, poured sideways out of its

shellacked crawlspace, and turned the basement sour.
There are remnants of you in the park,

some red stain by the baseball field where,
if you’ll remember, you watched little leaguers

build teamwork, and faint splotches on tree bark
from your lactations which, if you’ll remember, happened

every morning. I whisper your godforsaken name
and am slapped in the head. The children cry

when I smile. I cry when the children smile. Good
heavens. I forbid you from not entering my corridor,

even as I set up a barricade. I like my water scalding,
my passion chilled, and I like you in easy-to-

swallow doses. I like you in my eggs.
Ditto the faucet, keyboard, the occasional lily,

but do not mess with my pearls. I mumble of apodictic
meadows while I sleep. What can I say?

I do not mumble of unclogging your bathtub,
which has a certain foul repute, and has grown

heavy and ugly with your hair, which is everywhere,
just as you are everywhere, and wherever, and so

******* hidden it’s not funny anymore, we stopped
looking some millennia ago, after scouring the drainpipes,

kicking down your doors, dissecting your mattress,
speculating about your burial site, etcetera, and even so

we have not been really looking all this time, have we,
just blaring your name through the speakers,

putting wrong numbers on our calling cards, leaving
uncooked meat out on the back porch as if you were

a raccoon, oh, or a lion, which you are not, or not
quite, though, as the books say, you have honey

in your stomach, and if you could but be
ripped open we would taste and see.
Anya Sep 2018
I used to write with words
Embodying my individual emotions
In splotches of paint
Now
I write with phrases
Stringing words together to paint a picture
No longer simply splatter paint
...
But a collage
Fallen Angel Mar 2015
It crawls underneath your skin.
Distracts you from your friends
from your life.
You can’t help but scratch it.
Your friends try to stop you.
They pull your hands away
the skin on your wrist,
arms,
and legs,
are already red from your nails
they don’t want your skin like paper to tear.
They don’t want to see your blood drip out like paint off a brush.
You can’t help it
that itch is so demanding
it demands to be scratched
no matter where it travels to.
Your wrist becomes bright red with marks from your nails.
Your legs have red splotches over them from digging your nails
into your skin harder to itch through your jeans.
Your arms have red splotches traveling up them
and under the sleeve of your shirt.
Your face is sensitive from your nails digging into it so often.
You can’t win!
The itch doesn’t go away no matter how long you scratch.
It drives you insane.
It won’t leave,
I’m going insane.
The itch is so persistent!
I think I might need some calamine lotion…
Maybe some Benadryl...
I don't know what the deal is but I just keep getting really itchy. Like I am right now and it just travels around my body. It's horrible and driving me insane and I don't end up thinking about it and end up digging at whatever part of my body itches especially if it s my wrist. It was bothering my best friend that I just kept digging at my skin so she kept hitting and pulling my hands away from my skin. I'm just so itchy its terrible!
Alan Maguire Feb 2013
EGG
Life for me began as an egg,  it wasn't really a special egg, just a regular egg shape with some green splotches .So, you were just like the Platypus and the Echidna ?. Exactly like the Echidna and Platypus .Well not quite exactly, those creature are mammals,
I'm more like a lizard, I'm actually part dinosuar.

My mother is a dinosuar like creature known as a Dinosapien, But I'm more human than she was. I'm about 60 percent human , though I do posses Lizard organs , My eyes are ,
My heart and lungs are, So is my ******, my appetite and my tongue

I can taste the air, Just like the snake . Em, but dinosaurs don't do that

How dya know ?, Well because of science and Jurassic park
Yah, I'm sure their both official sources, any way, so how come were having this conversation ?, well that's the one thing about dinosaurs , they were notorious for having one sided conversations with themselves, ya mean they were bonkers ?, no not crazy and once they left the nest ,were pretty much losers, I mean loners.

What about mating?, Well they had wieners ya know, no, not that and what about female dinosaurs ?, well the females didn't care , they just wanted a male for about 3 minutes, if he was lucky maybe 3 and a half, the males were more concerned about ****** contact with the ladies. So, I guess there was a lot of dudes ******* each other then ?
em, I think this conversation is over now
Nora Feb 2016
How distasteful you are,
With your sundry splotches
and jarring imperfections.
Oh, you taunt me so!
Whether your anathemas
are reflected through the mirror or my own eyes.
Oh horrible, hateful, heinous thing!
I cannot bear to stare any longer.
How sickly your color is--
A pallid yellow, like one giant bruise
That has budded and blossomed
In some unnaturally grotesque fashion.
My blood boils, my pulse races
And I raise my weapons to fight--
Two talons--claws honed to perfection.
Be gone, you wretched scab!
And so I tear, scratching furiously,
Until no more of you is left.
The blood is stuck beneath my fingertips,
Or what is left of them.
My sinews tremble, ****** and bare,
As the last of my wallpaper
Is ripped from my bones.
A small tribute to Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Concept is mine, story and inspiration are not.
the electronic dispenser is out of order yet the automated voice keeps repeating it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem it’s not a problem…



i hint to Mom maybe the nightly sleeping pills might contribute to her forgetfulness she replies what? i didn’t hear what you said i repeat maybe the nightly sleeping pills might add to your forgetfulness she answers what? i can’t hear you i say Mom you’ve been using sleeping pills since i was little maybe they’re a source of your fogginess she snaps what? what are you saying i can’t hear you



Tucson 2001 in the heat of disagreement Mom accuses i am the cause for her need to rely on sleeping pills do you understand what that means Mom you’ve been taking sleeping pills as far back as i can remember miltown seconal nebutal placidal ambient (when i was young i took some from your medicine cabinet then sold them to friends) was it always because of me your off-beat weird troubled kid or were there other reasons thank you Mom for all you have given me i am grateful appreciative truth is none of us trust each other these defenses we’ve created will someday turn on us



2010 it is difficult to write about Mom so many conflicted feelings our struggles contentious exchanges expectations criticisms blame all the money she and Dad poured into me hoping i would turn out successfully employed married with children instead her difficult child chose painting writing punk rock yoga Mom will be 90 in October she caught viral pneumonia last month concerned for her i flew to Chicago to see her my beautiful glamorous Mom who lives high up in tall high-rise doorman deskman elegantly decorated 3 bedroom apartment along lakefront my little Mom who’s once lovely figure shrunk in size morphed in shape with arthritic painfully twisted fingers hair color light ash skin spotted with dark purple brown splotches estate dwindled to crumbs my clever shrewd Mom still so talented socially telephone constantly ringing lunch dinner engagements accompanied by frantic loony sister both dressed to the nines shopping returning hairdresser appointments manicures yet memory rapidly disintegrating my poor sweet Mom who now needs my loving protection it is time for me to step up to the plate shield her from caregivers poised to pilfer my vulnerable Mom leaves her wallet in cab loses her glasses forgets events 2 hours ago furious at pharmacy for neglecting to include her sleeping pills i know i cannot change her whirlwind 24/7 world of gossip scandal denial it is i who will need to change sacrifice my simple sparse existence quiet desperation scrambling for pay gardening gazing up at the moon stars adapt to her dizzy drama driven life style in order to look after her



i’ve written about this before a defining moment that haunts me Bayli and i are staying at Toby Martin’s spacious loft near corner of Bleeker and Broadway 1973 Toby offers me job building stretchers canvases for Warhol he tells me lots of nyc women will model for me if i want to keep drawing vaginas he advises me to drop out of art school like he did assures me i will become famous it is October Sunday i am wearing white turtleneck wheat colored corduroy Levis jeans taupe suede clogs Bayle is dressed almost exactly as me except powder blue clingy top we are just art students Toby takes us up to Rauschenberg’s loft on Lafayette Street Rauschenberg is in the Bahamas the kitchen is all industrial size stainless steel coffee stained glass Chemex drip coffeemaker on stove  upstairs on roof many currently trendy painters edgy artists a sculptor who uses dynamite to blow up quarries in Vermont they scrutinize Bayli and Odysseus with voracious glares the men eye Bayli several women send flirtatious looks at Odysseus he feels fright protection for Bayli it is all too much too complex too threatening and in that moment he drops the ball creeped out fearful he takes her hand and they flee back to Hartford Art School but maybe he was wrong possibly Bayli could have handled those depths heights perhaps she would have blossomed i’ve thought about that moment many times torturing myself with my cowardice insecurity adoration for Bayli our love remaining pure never corrupted



a boy/man makes love with a girl/woman once twice in bed then falls blissfully asleep wakes up makes love all night in secluded room in sheltered house on quiet street in sleepy New England town in the morning with Velvet Underground turned up real loud they dance wild then make more love



perhaps my fears insecurities shyness are about a diminutive ***** or concave ***** at center of chest or all my weird physical psychological inhibitions idiosyncrasies not wanting the world to ever find out know a secret between Bayli and me possibly Bayli never noticed but probably she realized my desire longing to be recognized acclaimed yet remain unrecognizable live in quiet privacy i don’t know sometimes i wonder if Bayli loved me like i love her if there was only one twinkling star in her sky like there is in mine Mom says it’s wrong to limit my skies to one star she says Bayli separated from me and married someone else she asks has Bayli ever made an attempt to contact you since her 2nd marriage i answer you don’t understand Bayli is entirely devoted she would never look up or away from her man Mom says open your eyes there are lots of special stars meant just for you in the sky



at some point it becomes obvious the latest is instantly embarrassingly obsolete why would anyone want the latest



let them come these winds of change blowing sands garbage leaves twisting branches bending trees up the coast down the hole displacing erasing everything oceans rising currents colliding mountains crumbling fiery red skies there was a time once but that time is gone there was a girl once but that girl is gone a street a house  a room  a bed once but that street house room bed are gone hunter buried under hill sailor lost at sea he who steps courageous mindful compassionate will pass beyond the terror
Theia Gwen Jun 2014
That boy is warm freshly printed papers
Stuffed in his overflowing binder
That boy is the leaves being painted
In early November

That boy is Pokémon cards skewed all over the floor
Who never signed up for this 'growing up' thing
That boy is a huge stuffed frog on Valentine's
Lessening the winter's violent sting

That boy is obscure facts of the arcane
A curiosity never satisfied  
That boy has an ever expanding brain
And long hands that reek of formaldehyde

That boy is beautiful freckles
"Splotches of melanin" as he puts it
That boy is compliments I don't deserve
And a love I just can't quit

That boy is a long way down
A relationship that's nowhere close to flawless
That boy is worth the fall because that boy
Is my dear Nicholas
Shelby Finger Jul 2019
The early morning light; vibrant and glowing
casts soft splotches of robin’s egg blue across the flesh of your stomach.

Only a handful of short hours before
words
words
words fell rapidly from us—
Catching up on the thirty years that we had existed outside of one another’s lives.
Now, there are no words— only sharp inhales and that which is tactile and tangible.

I take you between my lips
My mouth, your ****
The physical manifestation of the palpable chemistry between us.
In this moment:
I was
made
for this.

The first task of my day, your legs vibrating beneath my weight in carnal anticipation.
ONE - wipe the lack of sleep from the corners of my eyes.
TWO - take a shower.
THREE - get dressed.
FOUR - swallow the pills.
FIVE - drink the coffee.
SIX - Get. The. ****. Done.
But first—
I’ll make you ***.
Anya Nov 2018
I’m meeting a friend tomorrow, one I haven’t seen in some years save for the incidental meeting a week ago that sparked this reunion

My thoughts,      Reminiscent, tinged with melancholy for that time dotted with puffs of whip cream, sugar, sparkles, and joy spilling from the sky

We were mages one moment,
The elements at
Our beck and call
With a flick of our hands

Warrior cats the next
Loyally guarding
Bravely scarring

We lives in our world of monsters, and magic, and peach fuzz

None of the extra complications, the insecurities, the splotches marring our once vibrant and lovely canvas, turning it from a rainbow sparkle unicorn pony...to a mare

More time for text books
         Less time for novels
More time for homework
         Less time for TV
More time for crushes and heartbreak and insecurities and tears
          Less time to run straight ahead without a care in the world

Reality, setting in like large boulders, so heavy and present, jutting into your life, impossible to unsee


But,

It’s not all planes crashing and burning, because now that she’s no longer made up into a sparkle pony, you can see the mare for the

beauty she is
Persistent exertion of body or mind, Drew which is it the mind or the body that puts you in an upper class position way above and beyond the rest. Without a single poem for the rest to read and put to the test, rules are rules. If you aren’t going to play nice and share your shear genius how dare thee critique in such fashion of bashing and sliding your nubs that you call fingers across the keyboards of your choosing whether it be any computerized word document or written prose with empty ink well pen slid across onion sheeted papers.

Allow me to count the ways of your mind being splattered tattered all over Kingdom Come’s pearly white walls, leaving blood puddle splotches in intricate places. Only to spell out words of distraught behavioral patterns and rambunctious ditty flopping. Twisting up words, spitting out tantalizing paraphrases, spewing out last night’s junkets…without even placing your mind in another’s shoes, how dare thee call themselves a poet. Respect dies short of another ******* in the wind, farting midnight anthems of disrespectful ploys.  

Now we come to your body, hmm…what toys are there to play along with, when the heart doesn’t exist in open minded doorways leading to your defeat? Believe me when I say I will hunt you down, with homing devices ******* into place of ever living crevice of your rotting carcass left out in the sun to roast like last week’s luau piggy. Taking walnut crushers to every fingered bone in your body, this little piggy went CRUNCH! This little piggy ran into a CRUNCH! This little piggy went to market square to his surprise he also went CRUNCH!  

Now listen up you twisted little sick **** with a toothpick of an idea of getting your rocks and socks off at turning the world upside down and showing what a wonderful bugle boy you are. Bow down and beg for mercy, because you are now my ******* up storm racer as I place my 8 ton sledge hammer down on your cranium, Lightning may strike…but the force will not be reckoned with my dolled up misdirected **** of misfortune.
©Aiden L K Riverstone
Jasmine Flower Oct 2014
The amount of similies in love poems are ridiculous.
They always remind me of how his eyes are as green as a Christmas tree
or how his hair fell onto his face like a shadow
or that when he blinked his lashes resembled butterfly wings
or that his smile was similar to a crooked coat hanger.

They never mentioned
how his fingers were long and shaky like branches in the wind
or how his shoulders hunched over like a good game of jenga
or how the curve from his chest to his torso was as steep as a hill
or that when I found the bruises on his stomach,
they were like ink splotches all over a beautiful poem.

They left out that his dad hit him like a train
or that his mom lived in the house like it was a bar
or that it would hurt like 16 bee stings
when I saw a line of 16 scars on his left bicep
or that the gasps in between his cries would sound like drowning
or that his eyes can ombre to be as red as an egyptian sunset.

They never warned me that he would come crashing down like an avalanche
or how his constant expression depicted a shattered stain glass window-
every piece beautiful but still apart.

They could've said that reading the headline
"local boy commits suicide"
would numb me like paralysis
or that hearing his last words would echo in my head like screaming in a cave
or that his funeral I would say
"loosing him was like an overcast of rain"
except I lied,
because losing him was like a flood
and that his grave stood out like a redwood tree carved of stone
or how his dad looked at his own hands like looking at maggots.

Love poems never said that I would miss him like being homesick
or that the drive to the cemetery would feel like skyrocketing to the moon
or that I would refuse to play jenga with my little cousins
or how I would hate hanging my clothes without seeing his smile.

The amount of similies in love poems are ridiculous.
JR Rhine Dec 2016
Vast, empty, midnight hour,
hunchbacked lampposts glaring over parasitic black earth
choking its host.

A parking lot,
an ecosystem’s blemish—
hot tar seeping into the pores of the earth
like a stubborn blackhead in a lip line.

When no cars burrow into the blackened hide
like lice
the great absence of life
is an atrocity.

I imagine myself skateboarding across the tier
as the small town cops
watch languidly with vague interest—

A skateboarder’s paradise
where wheels and accomplice minds roll across celestial barriers
blasting infinite pulses
into the microcosm.

What greasy punks have their mother’s van parked here,
huddling by the heat vents
and jerking off into a Pringle’s can?

Empty parking lot
looks like a cemetery
filled to the brim
where headstones meld
over a mass grave—

delineated by white lines,
the apparitions of vehicles and their hosts
haunt the frozen space.

Another horrible excuse
to waste land,
a wasteland in and of itself
where Tom Eliot saunters aimlessly
and buries the dead.

The saddest sight to behold,
this vacuous parking lot
littered with stray shopping carts,
phantasmal plastic bags,
gum splotches,
***** stains,
candy wrappers,
cigarette butts,
used condoms,
lonely cops
and patient drug dealers,
ambulant skaters,
tired punks,
bored teenagers,
somnambulists,
stumbling drunks,
hunchbacked ***** lights
prying for life beneath its sallow gaze—

The air encapsulated within the perdition
stifling,
the pavement below stifling,
a constriction only visible
when emptied of its contents.

A cop wakes from their choking nightmare gasping
to find themselves trapped,
****** in this parking lot
where the walkie-talkie buzzes
with the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The warehouse store
looming above the waiting room
lifeless, silent, dark countenance—
Big Brother sees all in the gaping maw.

Cascading before me,
stretching towards the highway passing by,
waiting for the panorama to finish scrolling,
the treadmill to cease its cycle—
all the while lamenting life’s absence
and reveling in the potentiality it possesses.
Sarah Ellis Mar 2010
The threads, the temple
Sing the rainwater!
Splotches scattered.
A boat? No...
She is now the container.
Then she brings
The handfuls, washed.
Juliana Jul 2011
The evening is set,
the sun bleeds down the sky,
leaving splotches of stars in its path.
The waltzing flames of the fire
reflect into the beautiful eyes,
solemn like plain dark cocoa powder.
They make a gorgeous mirror,
resembling the placid waters of the lake;
imitating the hopelessness of the sky.
A loud crackle sends tiny ginger lanterns
up, to melt in with the constellations.
We sit in a lovely silence
until the last of the flames ebb away.
Darkness envelops us
the sliver of the moon
can’t possibly infiltrate this night.
Quietly, like the tide pulling back before a tsunami
I get an eerie feeling eyes are watching
I am prey to my own insanity until
I can put the face to the eyes.
http://poemsaboutpoetry.blogspot.ca/
Hugoose Feb 2019
Not One Hours Rest, Moon Still Standing Nice and Tall

Stars Still Hanging on, You Ride Hazily and Lazily to The City Train Station

Seeing Faces, Seeing Slouched Shoulders, Seeing Tired Eyes all around you

Waiting and Thinking of Home, Observing Yet Constantly Yawning

In No Time You Are Propelled Forwards and Out Through the City Limits

Metal Container Rattling, No Snooze Alarm for the Rising Sun

The City Dissolves into the Back of Your Eyes as You Hit A Tunnel and Enter the Suburban Void

Suddenly Fantastic Splotches of Greenery Drift into Sight, Dabs of Golden Light Float Like Dandelion Spores in The Air

People Move Up and Down the Carriage Schizophrenically, Fidgeting, Never Considering Sitting Still, Not Even Once

Please Just Look Out the Window

Outside Battered Tree Trunks Lay Lifelessly in the Middle of Wondrous Sprawling Fields

Clouds Ripple Insanely Throughout the Horizon, Livestock Enjoying Themselves While They Still Can

What Follows This is a Series of Dilapidated Sheds and Abandoned Roads Leading Up into the Hills so Jagged They Must Have Been Cut by a One Single Colossal Breadknife
William A Poppen Jun 2015
Nature's contributions cascade along the steep trail.

Numerous white patches and yellow splotches

set on a blanket of green

amid immense coverings

so blue that it seems parts of the sky have fallen.  

Pinks protrude like boulders in a creek

while reds try to hide around rocks and crevasses.

Faded petals,

past announcements of spring

now reside alongside signs of birth,

buds seeking an identity.

Arrays of mature blossoms parade full and ripe

along a path of short lives and slow deaths.

Fallen relics, grey and mossy

display across the emerald carpet,

a memory of another time.
I had forgotten the way to the hut that I had traveled to so many times,
so many days. So many moons, I would say. But no one marks moons anymore, except hunters. And I am not one of them. Nor a gatherer.
I listen to old men tell how they felled the stags. I do not believe them.

I am a wayfarer, to use the archaic words I used to love, the words
I had forgotten, the words of time in eternity, the words of orange leaves
on towering pin oaks, the words of circles of shadows settling on Gavarnie, of snowfall in the Pyrénées. Sever Spain from the Continent.

I had lost the language of the *****, spray-painted sheep scampering
over gray-bouldered cirques on mountaintops, boulders turning into mountains in the shadows, in the fog, in drifts of snow. There are no words for this now. Bleating sheep drown them out, and yapping dogs.

There are no words for the radiance of transcendence. “Climb higher,”
I hear them say. Higher into the haze of clouds. Cirque: circle, circus. Acrobatics on hillsides, balancing acts on rockslides, skimming streams in hard-toed boots. I had forgotten the way to the words, far behind me.

I have come to a gate, a steep stile in shadow. No sheep can pass. Nothing looks familiar; nothing looks strange. I saunter in a cloud
of unknowing. I had known the words: worn, smooth as stone unscuffed by hard-toed boots, slick as snowmelt. Slide from France into Spain.

This is the path of Santiago de Compostela, the route of St. James, who said, “Do not be double-minded, brethren.” I cannot remember if I have been double-minded in my travels. I had forgotten the way. If the words do not come, which mind sees the threshold; which mind circles the fog?

What passes, what begins when we travel? I do not look backward.
The way lies ahead, waiting, wandering away from the words. Splotches
of lichen sprout orange and green. “Go no higher for safety.” No higher.
They do not mention exile or ecstasy or the straight path of radiance.

The cirque circles my words in mountain shadows. I must unlearn
the art of travel, adrift in broken fields of stone. I had forgotten the way to the hut. Rocks obscure the path. Light ensures the path leads upward. Nothing is lost. Words hold their weight. Stags dance above me in fog.
Anya Oct 2018
Category 2,
not too bad...
Swirling, whirling
Pounding, hounding
Rolling, Spinning
But
Manageable

Category 3...
Freight train,
coming from every direction
Major, but nothing new

Just an hour
Hold on,
We'll pull through

Pressure suddenly
DROPPING
Ears constantly
POPPING

Category 4,
...
Too late
My father's sharp
Breath

Pieces of homes
ripped off like flakes of skin
Leaving the ground barren
Only the bear bones
possibly remaining
Till they too,
are forcefully wrenched
apart,

A majestic structure,
now reduced
simply,
to *******

Mother nature
hurling trees
in her
wrath

All-
...
Gone,
in
a
matter
...
of seconds

The roar
mirroring the one,
in my head-telling me to
get
Get OUT
NOW

The world...
a symphony
of rage, ferocity, passion
Violent reds,
splotches of
orange and fuchsia
That,
I unfortunately,
seem
trapped within
As the clashes and roars
Waves and cutting wind
Swirl around me, I wonder,
is this,
what an insect feels like,
stuck in a washing machine?

Come to bed,
my father calls
I go,
reluctantly,
to the pillows and covers
that should be warm and soft,
but to my touch,
appear frigid
stiff

My eyeballs
practically popping
until at
some unknown time,
they shut
and I
SINK
Sink
sink

...

...

Sunlight streams in,
A dream?
Perhaps...
Possibly...
Maybe...
Oh, if only...

Unable to contain the hope,
I leap up to my window-      And freeze

Debris-
not trees,
not homes,
not anything
Just a mass of objects rendered useless and stamped with the label of
-DEBRIS
...
My father says,
No more running water

My neighbor's little blue
shed,
...
in shambles

Yet,
as I step outside
After what seems,
like a long arduous battle
I was an unlucky
Bystander
caught in the middle
of

Yet,
Despite the
churning feeling
in my stomach          The broken battered *******,
the ruined property       The, miserableness
Of the situation

But then again...
As my father,
fervently
prays
praises
Thanks the Lord
...
My mind,
is blown away
As I stand,
In awe
as my eyes take in the majesty
of those few,
solitary,
hundred year old houses
...
still standing
To clarify-I was not in hurricane Michael, this is only my attempts at imagining what happened coupled with you-tube videos.
Samantha Sep 2013
My birthday is today
Seventeen years since another Sunday at 9 AM
On top of a mountain called Ozark
In a land that reminded me of Harry Potter
Called Pettigrew like Peter
It's forests elicited sprites and daddy long legs
Made of me a changeling then spit me back out

I learned what real ice tea was at the age of three
It was my birthday
Doing Pirouettes on my aunts Patio
Again, under Arkansas stars
With faery lights leading my way
I ascended to the brush behind the house
Got lost in the greens and browns of paradise's supply
Returned with flesh painted the colour of love

In an apartment overlooking crab apple trees
Fresh Canadian foliage fostering a well concealed creek
On a 90 degree angle over a dark chocolate cake
My ninth birthday
I drank pickle juice because Vinny said it was limonade
I wore dresses that year
And coveted baskets filled to brim with blossoms
Baked the crab apples into a pie
But preferred mama's banana cream
I wore bandages on my arms
and grass stains on my knees
My tears washed away like Crayola markers
And my biggest inner questions had to do
With what was for breakfast
And the lifespan of a temporary tattoos

14 came with a ******* bow
Done up gaudily in greys with a sad little smile
Three years marked with pink splotches and lines
A subject to hormones and arsenic tones
My birthday
A celebration of decay
And mama still sang, and baked, and kissed my face
And didn't wake when I placed cotton ***** in her ears
Because I was a happy girl

Today is my birthday
And mama exclaims
"No more babies! All four of you are so grown!"
But the mirror still illustrates an odd little show
With a baby face
A girls chest
And a womans hips
An ordinary freak all stitched up
Awkward and too much of everything
But not enough all the same
And inside I know
Is a sea of paradoxical Samanthas
Some stubborn and loud
Some shy and reserved
All with changes to make
Books to read
And places to go
And  only few that are quite wanting yet
To be 17
Carl Velasco Oct 2017
I open a
box of insecurities and
add one
more.
The sound of my voice.
The boys in their Vans
have them fully-formed by now,
chests heaving, with splotches of hair
and the usual marks of transition.
I don’t, I can’t have those
things. I meet the requirements:
I am a boy, I’ve tried it all.

But in my bed at night, sometimes,
the ocean hums its wavelength
of monsters screaming, howling
for a rise up, to see more light.
a cloud formation gargles and spits out thunders.
A shiver reaction. Muffled. Loud. The strike
cracks the lips of our skies,
and it confesses some secrets about
its own insecurities; that there is no more
wonder in silence, that there is constant
stimulation and reduced pondering,
that there is a need to get rid
of the bad feeling.

It says,
when the thunder strikes, listen
up and listen long and hard,
because there is plenty of
chaos from your own making, but I offer
you unannounced, unpredictable,
disjointed disruptions of comfort, and it is
I who make you scared of uncertainty. It is I
who make you jealous about my loud voice,
my formed voice, my raspy, powerful voice,
not the boys in their Vans.
Ian Oct 2012
I think the only way to describe being around you
Is like reading a story that will never stop being written
An endless tale, steeped in excitement and mystery
The kind of story that sets your teeth on edge
The kind that can make you laugh and cry
The kind that loves to make your heart leap and lurch
And every single day is a new chapter, new pages added to this amazing story
The only way to describe you is a painting
A beautifully fantastic painting
A wild painting
Splotches of color and emotion everywhere
Passion seeping out of its frame
The kind of painting you can stare at for hours
One mixed with all the colors you can imagine
And painted by the fingers of a child
But when I really think about it
You are indescribeable
And I guess with you, everything just sort of feels right
Alex Jan 2019
My love,

I fell in love with you when I was young.
I remember that you first came to me when I held a hunting knife in my hand,
In front of a 3 ½ by 4 foot mirror.
You found me in the blood that stained my arms.
You came to me, initially, in sets of three.
I was eleven when you came to me.

It was December, I remember, when people found out I loved you.
My cousin asked about the red marks you leave on my arms,
I yanked my sleeve up in fear and responded “It’s just the cat.”
I never wanted to admit I had fallen in love with the most terrifying thing I could imagine.

The kids at school found out about you around this time-
I’d left my hoodie at home, and I couldn’t wear a coat to classes.
Everyone saw your aftermath.
I am surprised the counselor did not call me in to talk about you.

My love,

You had my aunt so angry with me she started to abuse me,
I remember her screaming at me getting worse every time she found out I had relapsed-
How she got more irritable.
I know that in the beginning she meant well-
But eventually, she just started trying to permanently hospitalize me.

You made her believe I was a freak, darling.

My love,

You found me in more ways as the years went on,
You started to mess with my body image and force down my food intake,
And then you forced my teeth to find my leg in a hospital bathroom
because I couldn’t take you back to your roots
Those roots where I held a four inch blade in my hand in a tiny bathroom
In front of the widest bathroom mirror I had ever seen,
Next to a towel clad window-

You eventually made me bruise myself to the point where I had dark brown splotches over my thighs for two and a half weeks.

My love,
I have loved you for five years this coming October.
It’s odd, thinking we’ve been together this long.
I still remember, vaguely, what we looked like together that first time-
I still see your ghost on my arms.

It’s been a month since the last time I’ve talked to you fully,
I’m not counting the days you whisper in my ears and I pull at my hair, you see,
But I can still see the last time we talked.
It’s the pink little mark down the center of my wrist that reminds me we were ever lovers,
And I’m terrified I’m coming back to you worse than ever.

My love,

You scare me.
I mean it. You genuinely scare me,
Because you make me feel so much better for a few hours until I realize I have to get undressed in front of people,
Because I don’t just have a room to myself anymore.

I have been found out about loving you seven times this last year alone from adults.
But I got smarter than most people.
I hide them in better places,
Scar up my hip bones and hiss whenever I move the wrong way
Or have to peel my clothes from the little marks you leave.

My love,

I love you.
I hate what you do but I love you.
I love that you make me feel better for a few minutes,
But I hate when everything goes downhill five minutes later.

I love you.
I’m sorry.
I've published this on another poetry site, so if anyone sees this under the same username, then it's still me.
Xander Duncan Nov 2014
I really have a soft spot for winter weather
It’s sweater time
It’s scarf time
It’s cuddle time…or a-little-more-than-cuddling time
And it’s sweaters and scarves indoors time because people seem determined to hide the aftermath of mouths that have overstayed their welcome
In the corners of shoulders and collarbones
Tracing tracheas to chests and lingering just out of reach of lips
And because I’ve been taught to hide these marks, I do
But if I could, I would accessorize with necklaces of purple and blue
Passionate hues that grow from teeth and tongues
Can you paint with all the colors of the
Winding veins that spindle into spirals around blood and bones and vitals
Can you decorate the blank canvas of my neck
With Rorschach tests that I’ll spend the next few days
Analyzing and decoding
Finding new shapes just for fun
And then we’ll start again with stripes and spots and splotches
Remembering that the fireworks we call cliché are interchangeable with capillaries
Bursting under layers of skin
To later be concealed under layers of cloth
And people will blush when the consistency in their color is questioned
And they’ll tug their collars higher
But I’ll always have a love for the fact that these are bruises that come from beauty
That these bodies end up damaged in the most gentle of ways
And please don’t put a negative spin on damage
Because I know of people that will spend all kinds of money for outfits that look like they’ve been through hell and back
Because distress is a style and the aesthetic is stunning
And even though people joke as they will
I’m secretly proud to wear a badge of black and blue
On the corner of my collar claiming
You Were Here
And I’ll pin one to your neckline
Signed and dated
I Was Here
And the blood that we’ve drawn to the insides of each other’s skin
Only mirrors the blush that appears on my face when I smile and think
I really am lucky to have you
And it’s sweater weather outside so these bruises will stay confined
Under the snowy scarves we’re told to keep
But I’ll admire this art as it fades through the week
Tracing over physical proof of nights that fall into the past
And scrutinizing the speed at which they do
Adoring the marks that no one else seems to
Because aftermaths confirm realities
And I could never disdain the colors that tell the world who we are to each other
And how we stay warm in the winter
Taylor Lynn May 2016
I want to go back,
to the time in my life where I had not a single care.
To a time where existing,
was much easier than it is now.
Take me back to when I hadn't been touched,
by the harsh reality of what was in my head.
Where monsters didn't dwell within me,
and I wasn't drowning in my own thoughts.
I want to go back,
to where people weren't toxic splotches in my life.
Why can't we go back to skipping rope,
and the only cuts we worried about were scraped knees.
Smoke came from fires,
instead of cigarettes.
Sleepovers turned into ***,
candy into drugs.
Our cups aren't filled with juice,
but filled to the brim with our alcohol of choice.
Keeping secrets was for jokes,
not to make us seem fine.
We were home when the street lights came on,
and now were creatures of the night.
The dark scared us,
now it is our greatest friend.
We were such innocent children,
wanting to grow up so soon.
We had a glimmer in our eyes,
that's now replaced with a dead blank look.
Why were we so eager to want to face this nasty world.
I am no longer that young,
ambitious,
excited,
lively little girl.
I have become a
numb,
anxious minded,
dead,
damaged teenager.
And this is what this world,
and society has done to me.

T.B.
Nicole Mar 2019
A girl, a fool, a sinner.
I dance on tabletops of marble and glass
And when I fall, I fall hard.
My blood on the floor
Stars in my vision
I stand, and I sway, and I laugh.

You see, I bleed everywhere.
Red stains on my sheets,
The pages of every book on the shelf,
The hands of the people who try so helplessly to hold me up.
A bullet wound that never heals
And my clothes are crimson just like my smile.

My fingerprints are everywhere,
****** and smudged,
Because I need to exist and I need it known that I exist,
I need my existence to be scientifically irrefutable
Because if there is no proof I was here… was I?

I am a ghost in the hallways of my own palace
Haunting my own home, a whisper in the walls.
I do not belong here I say in the mirror.
You do not belong anywhere my reflection replies.
I find the darkest corner and bury myself there until somebody comes looking
But nobody ever does. At least, not looking for me.
They’re looking for her, the reflection, the girl I could be,
But I go with them anyway because I can’t be alone for one more second.

A long time ago I was a healer, and people believed that one touch from me could fix
The worst of their problems.
It was a beautiful concept and when I held court there would be a line of villagers
Bowing at my feet, begging for a kiss on the forehead, and I obliged
Not knowing what infected my kiss.
I spread a plague amongst my people and they all fell,
And I woke up one morning alone.

I’ve realized that the gods aren’t invincible.
I’ve met them and seen their faults, their broken pieces.
I studied their weaknesses (and trust me, they all have weaknesses)
And when the time came, I didn’t just destroy them.
I devoured them.
If you’ve ever wondered what ichor tastes like,
It’s a lot like blood. Like copper.
(Ask me how an angel tastes. That’s a story for another day.)
You see, the only thing that is invincible is the teenage girl.
A stake through the heart, a silver bullet, the teeth of Cerberus himself,
They can’t touch her. She dances around them all
With agility you can’t fathom unless you’ve been her.
You can’t stop watching as she rises and falls, rises and falls,
Blood on the stage and her dress and her palms.
Like me, on my tabletop, a chipped-tooth smile
And bruised knuckles that let you know I can fight.

You don’t look invincible my reflection says one day.
Tangled hair, glistening eyes, pink splotches on my face.
I’m smiling but I’m shaking and there is blood everywhere this time,
On the mirror and the sink and the floor. I’m scared of her,
The girl in the mirror, because she is the only person who sees me like this.
She is the only person who knows the truth about me,
Knows my awfullest secrets and yet she stays in the mirror.
You don’t look invincible she repeats. You look broken.

I smile. A true, genuine smile, and there is still ichor on my lips.
Same thing, I tell her.
my first poem in like 4 years wowza
Kyle Kulseth Nov 2012
Write some words on my blank page face
They'll trickle down into my mouth
There they'll be slurred, but still flow out--
          now yours? now mine?
          Shared property?
Joint custody of low opinion
Seems ungainly, seems unwise
     when miles of snowfall separate
               by hundreds,
                      tens,
                    and ones.

Miles of squares and cylinders
Of circles, splotches, mandelbrots
in whites and blacks swarming and buzzing
     warring in the hissing static.

Hissing static, searing cold
Underdressed on Tuesday morning. Shivering
chattering teeth mouth curses, shattering
     winter air with whiskey breath
     and wishful thoughts.

Write words upon my blank-line lips--
     "Disloyal," "faithless," "stupid," "shameless."
They're falsehoods, true, but they're tattoos
I guess I'll wear them for a while.

Such lies flow down my throat
Now nameless but for lies, I'll turn
I'll the crawl the miles home.
Phoenix Bekkedal Apr 2017
bleach
the pink splotches on my not white clothing are because of you

dilute it and you have soap
drink it and you've got death

hum and click your fingernails if they're long enough to reach the table

rub it into your skin and forget your parents' identity
clean the counter with it

bleach
bleach bleach is for cleaning
Victoria Oct 2012
Light filters through our dusty screens
And scatters particles on your sleeping form,
Peacefully unaware and running about
In your dreamworld.
I listen to your steady  breathing, matching
Mine in rhythm  as I let my fingers
Dance across your flushed cheeks,
Red splotches on a pale canvas.
I place a kiss upon your forehead,
And you mumble something in your
Sleepy stupor,  not quite sure
What place to  be awake in.
My limbs are getting stiff,
Stuck in one  position for too
Long, but I don’t want to wake you;
Not yet.
I take a risk, shifting my body
To find a more comfortable spot
Next to yours.
Moving slowly, our skin sticks
Together like a mild adhesive
And you shift as well.
In that place, not quite awake
And not quite asleep,
Your arms wrap around
Me and your lips catch a kiss.
Whispers occur.
I whisper “I love you”;
The sheets talk to one
Another around our skins;
The traffic outside our window,
Down on the street below,
Shouts muffled obscenities
In the small hours of our morning;
The clocks and the clicking fridge
Cackle in the kitchen, and the
Drip-drip-dripping of the coffee ***
Begins a bittersweet smell.

But all I see, all I think is
“Oh darling, how I love you so”
As your breath catches for just
One second, and your blue eyes
Creak open, see me, and the sun
Dances across your face in the
Most beautiful smile.

That, my dearest, is the reason to get up in the morning.
Samantha Dec 2013
I’m not a talkative person
In fact I have sewn my mouth shut
To keep my thoughts
From spilling out
With the force of a fire hydrant
When I do talk
It’s in mumbles and murmurs
I let my words run together
I don’t even remember the last time
I finished a real sentence

Poetry runs through my veins
Every night I unzip my forearms
And let my blood
Spill out onto paper
I’m sorry I can’t bleed for you

I’m selfish
I take, take, take, and take
I buy myself Christmas presents
Birthday presents
Because I ******* deserve it presents

Grace never came easy to me
I stumble over my shoelaces
Like I stumble over my words
Thank god none of you have a pet fish
Because I would probably
Break the bowl

Cigarettes
I don’t smoke them
But **** do I find them attractive

I think bruises are beautiful
Purple, blue, and black splotches
On pale skin
Soreness when you press your fingers
Into them
Give me bruises
And I’ll give you kisses

Your eardrums can and will shatter
Under my screeches of rage
I don’t always scream
But when I do
I turn into a ******* demon

I wear granny ******* casually
Because being comfortable
Is more important
Than being ****

Every bouquet you give me
I will keep
Until they are petal-less
And brown
They will sit in a vase
And decay
And I will use the scent
As perfume

I have a skinny waist
But fat thighs
I’m a size nine
Please don’t buy me size three jeans

Most people’s voices change
With puberty
My voice changes depending
On who I’m with
When I’m with you
My voice is deep with a sarcastic tint
When I’m with your parents
I sound like a ten year old boy

I have a cranberry juice addiction
That’s getting out of hand

Sometimes I break under
Magnifying glasses
My heart drums behind my ribs
There’s a reason why
They call it a cage

I’ve read Catcher in the Rye
Five times and I still
Hate Holden Caulfield

A good day for me
Is finding socks
Without holes in them

I don’t plan on being
A mother
I can’t give you
An heir

My heart explodes
Regenerates
Explodes
Regenerates
Explodes
Explodes
Explodes
Regenerates

I love myself more
Than I could ever love anyone else
And I’ve yet to find someone
Who understands that
Just down by the lights
at brokenland
there is a small patch of wilderness and a park,
where three cats roam.

The first is white with big splotches of grey
as if it built its camouflage
betting last winter would never end
now an easy spot amongst the hill of green.

The second was a dark grey
the color of the shade under a pine tree
on a partly sunny day
or a storm cloud ready to light up the sky.

The third was black head to toe,
body slim like that of a dancer,
and eyes of bright amber that shined like searchlights
even with a sky full of clouds.

The first I saw on high alert
nose up high, ears pointed, standing tall
a dog down the hill of unkempt grass
it’s owner leashed and in tow.

The second I saw on the hunt,
weaving in and out of wildflowers
leaping and pouncing gracefully,
steadily and quickly traversing the hillside.

The third I saw leisurely sitting by the road,
legs folded underneath it on a rotting log
watching traffic like a king on its throne
yet in seeming awe of its steady flow.

I have seen each cat only once
always when I am moving boxes to the new house
and I wonder if they have an owner
among the white row houses off Little Patuxent.
CharlesC Apr 2013
Crepuscular rays
science name for beauty
filtered Light...


Two weak sprinklers
coaxing green from dry blades
desert futility...?  


Steady wind blows
roars in tree branches
motor noise amplifies...


Blue paint droppings
pavement lines and splotches
patterns imagined...


Breathless biker
yield passage on steep path
shared success...?


Uprooted tree
branches to sky reach out
same questions...?


Bright setting light
yucca spears dead and alive
both reflect...


Dead logs
piled and waiting
tree dust...

— The End —