i have dirty fingernails,
you noticed. what can i do but assume
that you love me? and if you say you don’t
then you’re a liar. because who takes care
to look so hard at the nail beds of hands
they don’t love?
Tag Archives: blank verse
The Look of an Old Book – Iman Messed
I’m afraid of prying eyes
and I no longer wish to be coherent
but i’m not sure i have cause to worry
i think it all depends
on whether or not
my heart is made up of words
i checked
it’s not
sometimes i read so much
that my heart is as heavy as that tome of shakespeare
you have hidden under your bed
that my tears smell like musty libraries
and my tongue can’t reconcile anything
save plot holes
(untitled) – Karlee Sanders
give up
give in—
no
<give more>
<give generously>
you’re nothing
you’re worthless—
no
<you’re worth the sun and the stars>
can’t—
no
<can>
don’t—
no
<do>
good thoughts are preposterous—
absolutely not
<good thoughts radiate positive vibes>
ks
(untitled) – Karlee Saunders
I never knew just how much I would miss the glances we would give each other every now and then as we walked
nor did I expect my hands to feel empty with every move I made
I didn’t realize the things I was taking for granted before he left
but now his eyes are filled with infatuation for another
and I’m still here
ks
Heat Wave – Iman Messado
the heavy days of summer are over
the pregnant rain
and the ripening leaves
and the lazy breeze
embrace your still sleeping form
lying in the emerald grass
the heavy days of summer are over
sticky globs of strawberry jam
on thick cut meaty bread
gallons and gallons of too sweet iced tea
bumps and mounds on children’s legs
young blood running freely from cuts and scrapes
the heavy days of summer are over
sleepy eyes – inky, deepest black, almost celestial
i wonder
if i stare long enough
can i reach in
and pull the universe out?
i want this heavy, heavy summer to last for an eternity
and i see it in your eyes
Hey – Brooke Safferman
Hey, you say,
I just called to tell you that I love you.
Or do I? Do you? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.
So I laugh, and hang up, and leave you hanging,
Like you always do to me.
This power dynamic,
It’s sick and it’s twisted and deliciously unbelievable
Like the kind of chemistry that they try to show in those old shitty movies
That you love so much,
You know, the ones that you always go on about
with all of your obscure references
that we all roll our Young and Fresh and Free eyes at
But your own freedom is something you crave
You’ve shown me how lost you’d be without it
Oh, but how you would find yourself if you gave it all away!
To someone you can trust,
To someone you could try to believe would never hurt you
But promises are dangerous things, I know.
Oh trust me, I know!
But I will never give up on showing you
What an amazing person I think you could be
If you would only let yourself become the guy you’ve always wanted
You were always too afraid to even try, you say,
Well, I’m here now.
So don’t you dare take my hand because that’s not the way we do romance.
What we have is dipped in arsenic, in benzene,
Like a shortbread cookie with the chocolate, oh,
The coating melts on my fingers, and my tongue melts in your mouth
It’s so damn easy to ignore the way anyone else has ever tasted inside of me
And I smile when I forget that you liked my friend
And you smile when I forget that I liked yours
And we come together, wrapped up in the salty smell of angst and adoration,
And we know that what we have is real, but that the movies tell us lies.
Hey, you say.
Hey.
Regalities of Plainness, pt. 3 – Bryn Bluth
His face is sandpaper, his hands a safe-house. he passes by and I fight the urge to put pen to paper then and there. Even if I did, his face shifts this way or the other, avoiding me, my gaze, unable to be captured by something so worldly as a ballpoint. He is a poem, his hands the second stanza- not the kind you’d hold so much as the kind you want on your shoulder, holding you back from harm and pushing you toward opportunity. He is a poem.
Graffiti on the Berlin Wall – Alexandra Mayer
Another day passes outside the window of a plane
I cross dusk with 170 strangers who hold each other’s hands or thighs when the clouds quiver.
And I can’t stop thinking about your fingers running through my hair
or the way your eyes knocked into me that July.
You made me feel like feeling itself was cracking from my chest
and hurtling across the universe,
becoming every iron, nitrogen, oxygen, n’ sulfur soul that lost the sunset to the sunrise
in thoughts of “I want you”
Because your lips burn cosmic explosions into my skin:
a creation story.
Now, heads drape over the mountains
like the twinkle lights you hung out on the patio for Christmas–
You tried to play Claire de Lune on your harmonica
and remember that you loved me.
But you left 8 months later
on a Tuesday.
7:53 p.m.
The pool lights stained your words teal
and smeared my eyeliner into a glimmering sort of heavy.
You said “late summer’s nostalgic,”
noticed the fireflies had all gone,
and I could hear crickets whimper to the sun,
“don’t go.”
And I never wanted another falling moon or set of sandpaper hands to hang onto.
You said I felt frail
like a dandelion you were keeping
from the wind.
And then you just let go.
That night, I woke up laughing,
as 1,000 tiny suns sprouted from my lips,
already dreaming of drifting.
Crossing through purple skies
like telephone wires
rushing to the seaside.
Paris stole my lipstick.
smeared it across cheeks
and hostel sheets and wine glasses, Merlot,
turned my teeth violet and my heart
a violent sort
of love you,
maddened by the beauty of it all.
Like I could chase train tracks
into the self I wanted
into Budapest, or Berlin.
A decrepit sort of art,
like you could tear
my heart into dusty fallen parts
and I’d just become more,
and faces and feet would flood through me, paint
bucket lists on my thighs and think of freedom.
I was never meant to be kept from the wind.
A Simple Thought – Aksel Taylan
We spend a lot of time in our short lives thinking about the long term. What’s going to happen to me in ten years? Fifteen? Thirty, even? In severe cases, we let this presumptuous worries diversely affect our everyday actions and choices. This principle has a number of glaring flaws, but the main one to focus on is that the future hasn’t happened yet. You are writing your own novel; you are the only one with a pen. In other words, it is fully within your capabilities to control most of what happens in your life. However, we fail to understand that not all of it can be controlled. People get in car accidents. People get deathly ill. People are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Why, then, should you let these worries take hold of how you express yourself if we don’t have absolute control? Sometimes, doing something wrong allows a person to grow, to become stronger, possibly even teach others the right way. The right way, which everyone hungrily seeks, cannot be found without failure. Take a left when you think you’re supposed to take a right, eat raw cookie dough, or even, if you’re feeling really adventurous, stay out an hour later! Fight the norm with all you’ve got, because succumbing to the proper choice makes for a dull, uninspired life. Need I remind you, you only get one of those. I think it’s in your best interest to make it count.
Her – Iman Messado
She didn’t move mountains–
she couldn’t swim rivers–
she didn’t know how to fly figure eights around the redwoods of California—
Her eyes weren’t romantic–
And the curve of her lips was rather sinister–
She wasn’t the least bit interesting–
the left pinky toe held more mystique than her entire head of thin brittle hair—
She walked like an old dog that knew no tricks–
Her voice was a high whine–
her hands were large, knotted and manly—
yet she was enough to drown me in the lakes of Venus—-
she was enough to singe my eyelashes in the heat of her gaze—–
she was enough to make me drink from all the moon’s glory——
her name was indistinguishable yet it is all I can mumble in my sleep——-
Inkling 