Discipline

Love Note

I wanted to leave you my love--
a dried and pressed leaf,
an old photograph,

on the weathered stoop of that place
where you live. But then
I remembered your condo

was a high-rise in the center of town
and it would be better
to text you

with these new French emoji
that are so cute
and so instead

you can treasure these tiny pictures
and imagine them as words
I perhaps spent some small time thinking of.

Rainfall roulette and games for suits

As the dogs led me on our walk, I took a chance and left my raincoat behind despite the threatening clouds. The sky turned from dappled to grey but I stayed dry, although my legs were damp from dogshake after we past the creek.

In the woods, the air was quiet as nervous birds flitted silently from tree to tree, uncertain if they should hunker down to feed for a few more days or move on afore it gets too cold.

Across the border, the wanta be leaders of the flock, all dressed up in party suits, are playing a different game with stakes almost as high. And while I don’t have a vote I sure do hope that Hillary trumps Donald.

Metaphor

Baby, I apologize
for looking up your skirt
as if your naked thighs

somehow comprised
The Meaning of Everything.

Let me instead
hold your body like I wanted
you welded into my life
as a structural component,

the steel that holds up
whatever tower I might hope to be.
And if that means sometimes
I want to rub

anxious fingers along
your magnificent wallpaper, well,

hell,

you are quality material,
and I love
the stroke and fluff

of your skin as much as
those iron ribs underneath.

these made for beautiful reading this morning. thankyou, poets

We

We cannot expect people to ignore
pain or forgive trespasses.
Some sins go beyond words
and more often than not
it’s not the thought that counts.

Exoneration is not automatic
for tragedy's audience
if we are caught leaning
against locked doors.
We must prove we are human
by seeing humanity in all faces
and races. We must not deny
the suffering of others
from our perch on the white wall
of privilege. A place built
with prejudice, greed and mortar
of first world apathy
that feeds the fetid hopelessness
of hundred year old wounds, bleeding
beyond the artificial boundaries
of prisons poorly disguised as gifts
that beg the question-how can we give
what was never owned. We pulled
you from your mama’s arms
and told you she was not your mama.
Dressed you in our image
until a stranger stared
from the mirror but still
that was not enough.

We had to save you.

Stuff you with everything we knew
but you were already full
so to make room we cut
you open. Took our egocentric blade
and scraped away against your inner skin
and skull until you were numb
and hollow, killing who you were
meant to be and forcing you to fight
to rise again. We failed to realize
that when you punish a child
for the simplicity of their innocence
and speaking the only language
they know by locking them in closets
they are not alone in the darkness.

It takes us all.

When you surgically empty
a person of their spirit and core
you cannot help but leave
holes so when you triumphantly pour
the chosen path into this shell
you won’t see a smile of gratitude
but instead a mix of tears and blood
falling to the floor, pooling at our feet.

History points to that stain
and our red footsteps as we scurried
back to the wall, pretending
we had the best of intentions
occasionally throwing stones
when we are followed, proclaiming
we don’t owe you a thing,
you did it to yourselves
and everyone should just get over it.

Damn katie,

And why arent you running for president?

Donald would be well within his rights to ask for my birth certificate if I tried to run for president. But thanks for the sentiment, Tod!

Moitié-moitié

Does absence make the heart grow fonder?
I'd guess for some this saying's true,
For others, though, the heart will wander
Away in search of someone new.
(If you require an explanation
For faithlessness as aberration,
Remember heart don't run the show.
For some, the organ's down below.)
In my case, though, absentia matters;
I miss the object of my dreams
Though be I fond or sad just seems
Semantics when my heart's in tatters.
Romantic? Yes, and squishy, too—
As gooey as a cheese fondue.

Nice work, Tzara.

Your words appeared in my dreams
splashed across the screen
of my subconscious
saying things
I didn't want to read
arresting me with their existence
creating conversations we never had
wounding my sleep
and treasured in your absence

Do you want a title for it?

Lyricalli said:

Your words appeared in my dreams
splashed across the screen
of my subconscious
saying things
I didn't want to read
arresting me with their existence
creating conversations we never had
wounding my sleep
and treasured in your absence

Click to expand...

"The Green Fairy"

Bloodletting

It should be nonsense
to a modern mind

Yet I feel you burning through my veins
pulsing under skin
too tight

without enough room
to contain you
in me

I understand the instinct
to split skin
allow the toxin to escape
from the cage of being human

There is flirting temptation
in a shiny blade
to feel the pain
watch you run in rivulets

but how much of me
would you take with you?

Take a line...

She walks in beauty, like the night,
Her hair a tangle, her eyes so bright
She really should go home and snooze
She's done too much and blames the booze.

Apologies to Lord Byron for the first line.

Piano

Sometime between eight and
ten I wrote “I hate piano!”
in my exercise book and
that was the end of lessons.
No great loss to music but when
I chill to Jarret’s Koln Concert
or sit in the cheap seats
listening to the soloist play
Bethoven’s Emperor Concerto,
I wish I hadn’t done that
cause it wasn’t, isn’t true.

My throat hoarse
from silent screams trapped
behind clenched teeth
the taste of swallowed bile
that rises again, again

The pain behind my eyes
throbs the drumbeat of your name
as it echoes through the hollow
in my chest

I've lived inside your love
your anger and your loss
taken your laughter like medicine
frozen moments falling
in the embrace of your sighs

Now I hear the mumbles about time
healing wounds, letting go
but this is all of you that's left
and I want it burrowed in my bones

It fell heavy
swirling in patterns
that made me dizzy
and bit into my skin

I took it in fistfulls
and hurled my pain like snowballs
to watch it burst on contact
scatter like glass
shrapnel piercing deep
into tender tissues
unprotected from the onslaught

Exhausted, sinking slowly
into contemplation of this new cold
carefully tending collateral damage
attempting to stem the flow
with regret
knowing it's too late
to prevent the scars

We could argue for hours
the difference
between leaving and
being left behind

attempt to calculate
who hurts more and why
evaluating all the variables
as if such a math exists

I'd take every
painful
stupid
minute
of it

We'd still have a problem
without a good solution

Between crumbles away
when your rock
feels like a hard place

What we have is missing
pieces and misunderstanding
an unbalanced equation
where what we want
never seems to be the answer

There's loneliness
even in shared pain
trying to figure our own sides
separated by lines we didn't draw

The Grove of the Evangelist

One of the great charms of birching lies in the sentiment
that the floggee is the powerless victim of the furious rage
of a beautiful woman.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne

You spare the rod, you spoil the child,
So Algernon was never spoiled.
He loved the switch, to be defiled.
(Don't spare the rod! recoils the child,
But strike with fury! Be not mild!)
So this blonde worked and that blonde toiled;
They shared a rod and soiled this child
Till Algernon's bare backside boiled.

Nature of the Beast

The dead poets have it wrong.
Nature is never still or silent
and she has never been at one
with the beast.

The wind and trees wrestle
in canopies as clouds commute
to other skies dotted with vultures
riding thermal waves while they wait
for the end. Chipmunks shriek
in outrage, racing through ferns
while frogs line boardwalk trails
with circle splashes, rocking
lily pads and launching dragonflies
into the sun. Spring water hits limestone
quieted only in places by mossy carpets,
throw rugs of green against the grey
and brown. A pine cone drops down
through time and buries itself in soil
to birth a tree whose roots spread
like stairs across the forest trail.

Living stairs used by greed
wrapped in flags to climb and take
the top of mountains cloaked in metaphor, ignoring
natural reflection seeing only the lack
of their own face staring back from the green
as a manifesto to embrace the entitled
inner parasite who whispers
over the wind in the trees, drowning
an infinite chorus with a pathetic fallacy,

it’s all for the taking if it can be taken.

In our futile search for a perpetual pulse
amongst the up and down of existence
and desire to build against impending dust
we ignore the circle and the fun
of falling sideways into the undefined.
We fail to see nature
has never been still or silent
nor was she ever meant to be consumed.

She is all.

A composer of a symbiotic symphony
and we were never meant to be
more than one note in her song.

I remember running
to hide behind the sofa
for being human.

I remember memories crumpled
and experiences destroyed
because they weren’t yours.

I remember
the names you injected
into me
that erased my own.

I remember
surviving with silence,
anticipation and moving
anywhere
but home.

I did it all
carefully
without shouting
without bruises
with a smile.

Because it's normal until you know it's not.

I was unaware
the smartest sadists
never bruise or smack.
They are surgeons
who cut
out little pieces
of your light
and ask you to swallow
your own blood
to hide your own demise
as you dim
dim
dim
die
a
bit
more
until you aren’t sure
if you are
anything
more
than a carved shell
that may collapse
into
a lack of self.

A white sheet
draped over a table
where people assume
something is
still
under the surface.
They assume
the table is there
but if you peel back the cloth
there is nothing.

Even the sadness has gone.

it hasn't gone, it's there
a hiding child under the bed
tears into the quilt
screams that rage unseen
unheralded
unfelt

Un describes that place
the quiver in tour throat
uncontrollable sobs
the questions
what if I am all these words
slammed into me
carved into the flesh of the psyche
your nothing
your worthless
your pathetic
your just un


unlovable
untouchable
undervalued

well Fuck you
and all that you are
fuck you a little harder than yesterday
because
if I don't rage for myself then
I will be this thing you're trying to create

now I'm uncontrollable
uncharacteristic
does this make you
uncomfortable

because the hardness
you ground into to me
the callouses on emotion
worn down like hand that world
a sledgehammer day in
day out

understand that now
you are nothing and I
can cry
tears of joy
because I survived
under your foot

now I can stand and scream
fuck you
right into your face

because now I understand
you were less in life
and needed
something a small as I was
to stand on
so you didn't choke on your own shit.

I will come
when you stop
thinking it's enough
to trace the hour
glass lock that encases
me and instead you circumnavigate
the cell bars of my skin
with the secret
words that release
me from societal chains
and the prison
of personal construct.

I will come
when my body
is free
but you have taken
my mind.

Because I was too slow for the 5 senses thread:

Sight: hearse
Sound: something that pops
Scent: exhaust
Taste: booze of your choice
Touch: hand

Below
traffic pauses
as a hearse with red balloons
flying out its window
creeps through the intersection.
People wait for each other
when time is irrelevant
and life is reduced
to the need to hold
someone’s hand.

Above
I lean against the condo railing
and watch as one balloon
escapes and rises high enough
for me to read
I love you just before it pops.

I am alone.

Only exhaust fumes are strong
enough to climb twenty stories
and share the one by four balcony
of my box in the sky.

The tattered latex rains
back down on the mourning
and I hope the loss
has not left anyone
all alone. All our boxes
the ones with walls
and the ones without
mean nothing
minus someone
to help us figure out
our proclivity of looking
up when we are down
and down when we are up

instead straight
into each other’s eyes.