I love it here.
the view reminds me of life.
The sky the way it paints over our hands and onto our skin,
The way the color doesn’t mix together as much as an artist would like it to.
The lead in our paints is heavier than we were ever capable of lifting, but it’s all we had.
It’s all we are fed.
We closed our coffins with the nails we’re chewing on in hopes that
You need to be undead in order to make a move-
But I don’t want to kiss death anymore
He leaves my body to rot
My teeth hurt from grinding against him
He has violated
All of us.
We are all iron cast replicas forged in the fires of our own hell.
We paint our bodies with colors of the sky and call it identity.
Nobody likes the night
Everyone is afraid of the dark
Why am I afraid of the dark but find so much comfort in the makeup of hell?
We call ourselves artists,
There is no artist.
There is only nature and our mimicry,
We feed on the idea of existing originality.
Why don’t we open our coffins?
Let’s swallow our nails and puncture our throats
To allow the nervous words to spew into one another.
Till death do us part-
He’s not getting between us.
We are survivors in a world imprisoned by
The impressionable weight of shackles
And strength to carry them.
We are convicts in that we are happy together
So that cannot be.
But in this moment.
I love it here.
The view reminds me of you.
The way the sky paints itself and the willingness to relinquish power.
The way I don’t want it to be easy to touch you
The way no one can touch you.
Painting doesn’t make me an artist
But it makes you a masterpiece.
I can lift you over my head
And in this moment.
Life is worth living.
Tag Archives: poets
Capgras Delusions and You (The Body) – Matt Grydzuk
Degauss the stars like cathode ray tubes using only your hands
The body first thinks explicitly in omens, or foretelling the end of things
Sleep less than intended; corporeality was tailor-made for you.
The body is just a suggestion, though, like the outline of existing
Akin to the stars lacking crystal clear imagery yet making shapes
Yet causing images in the night
And I sat and watched them unfold, shaking mildly, how beautiful.
How beautiful, the suggestion of form;
The existence of existence
Like wisps of stardust off the tips of your fingers and the rest of your outline
You are a degaussed constellation.
How beautiful the burning sensation; the smell
How beautiful destroying the innards
Like dying stars or a comet moving faster and then it’s gone
Creating outlines creating memories making
Sentences with your movements but no words.
How beautiful linguistics; complete sentences with two independent clauses
Intertwined to make the sun rise.
Watch it leave you like blood from the mouth, like stardust from the nose and eyes.
All other things beautiful like the suggestion of an outline; like actually falling asleep.
The Positivity in Glass Jars – Brooke Safferman
Four jars made of glass, lined up on my window sill
The mint green,
the pale rose,
the totally clear,
the almost-purple.
The way the light shines through them makes me giggle
Sort of like the way your smile shines through my emotional walls of glass
Once so strong, now I’m so fragile
Your delicate touch could crush me with too much force(accidentally)
“Stay positive”, they say
So I draw on a smile with my lipstick tube but
Before I leave my room to enter the world
I pause to look at the positivity in glass jars.
Maple Key – Harika Kottakota
My magnum opus was a maple key,
Imprinted pond ripples in amber
A hundred journals worth of sins
Rimmed it with azure
My maple key rode majestically
Upon the southern breeze
Tornado in the Church bell and
Flames around the riverbend
Devout insomniac, I stalked
My maple key barefoot into
Jasper mornings–too ethereal,
too intricate for untrained eyes
I watched its azure streak lotus
By lotus, but never land
Without a star’s conception
In sync, that’s right–never in jest
Home Alone – Haley Ingram
Home is were the heart is.
Veins and arteries interlocked
Stronger than the hands you used to make me think twice.
Looking every direction
Never quite understanding why
And never questioning the use of the word
love.
Because questions were just another way of getting your deigning breath into my system;
Recognizing the sound as if it was a morning’s alarm.
As if every failed attempt of pronouncing our name deafened you to anything that sounded like a cry for help.
So I’d run and hide.
You didn’t quite like that.
You didn’t like the idea of your words being so loosely held,
So you shortened the chain
and I shortened my veins.
Every time.
I ended up with an empty muscle and a pathetic travesty of emotion.
So I’d run.
I didn’t hide, I drank and drank
The rain hoping to forget the hand that fed me
Because it pushed me from dancing.
I ran in the street that I never learned my lessons in because I was taught by the book
The book you never wrote
But followed so vaguely until you decided to add a page
from the bark our tree,
To write accommodations for the mistakes you refuse to have made.
So you slice a sheer and process your final say.
But your words are not strong enough to resist gravity-
You never recalled the impossible regeneration of deadweight.
But it’s okay now!
I didn’t die at my own hand and I
SUPPOSE
Letting go is a natural cause
So I can still make it to heaven-
I am a fallen branch.
And darling,
You cannot recycle broken limbs.
There is no hospital for a broken home.
This home is too perfect to be broken,
So I understand your frustration when my skin didn’t cut the way you intended me to.
Maybe it’s because of the countless rejections of becoming closer to you.
When I was afraid at night.
When I drove myself to be near you
But was shoved in the positioning
Of our portraits.
Maybe it’s because when I touch the grass you fear me growing too fast. Is that why you’re allergic to weeds?
Perhaps all of your spoken success I will never feel in your memory.
When my life(or lack thereof) started to weigh you down you grafted me back onto to your hip claiming me to be a loved one
And marking me number 4 in your 99 cent pen.
A chain gang of-
Love.
Family.
The sweat from your grip is enough to wipe off the labels you give me.
I can slip from your eyes- your ball and chain eyes-
And the world I offer this disregarded muscle
Will never be as dangerous to you,
As the home metastasizing to it.
The Fri(end) – Ugonma Ubani-Ebere
I had a friend once.
He was a Marine.
Kind, funny, and a streak of some mean.
He listened to me, and heard my dreams.
The darkest secret tucked in the abyss of my heart.
He swam in and found it, but did not rip me apart.
His soothing voice lulled me to sleep.
His loving arms rocked me when I used to weep.
Through the moments when I left battle wounds from being a complete bitch
He did not complain, he stitched up the wounds with understanding and without a hitch.
My friend was great, he was one of a kind.
Awesome person, with great morals, and a great mind.
Friends like him come once in a lifetime
But what is a lifetime, when your friendship is hanging on a lifeline?
I had a friend once.
He was everything that I had hoped him to be.
He liked me for me.
I’m a little awkward you see.
A little too wild, and sometimes too carefree
I never had a guy friend because they somehow predictably
Would fall into my unfortunate spell.
My very wide smile, my undefined personality, my fragrant smell,
Deep in their eyes, a love story fell.
A love story that would never come to fruition
Instead a friendship would fall victim to diffusion.
Crossing the thin line between friendship and lovers almost always caused bitter confusion.
Who said girls and guys could never be friends?
I did because they always fall victim to my unintentional web.
One day, my friend fell into my unintentional web.
I intentionally led him there and I wept.
Nothing was ever the same, and I had to take part of the blame.
I unfortunately had to also take some of the shame.
We had too much chemistry which caused a combustion.
We never recovered, because we did not know how to function.
Now he is gone, his memory is a concussion.
No longer can we hold a conversation let alone hold a discussion.
I had a friend once.
He was everything that I had hoped him to be.
His only mistake….
He liked me for me.
the adventure I wish I could have – Elena Barrera-Waters
spring break, I’m flooded with everyone’s pictures.
all of their shots of the waves at the beach,
or of the castles or the food of the new country they’re visiting,
or the ski lifts above those gorgeous green pines.
it’s a little bit hard,
to be able to submit my own to this
grand collection of memories when I know that you
won’t get yours.
it’s not my fault, i know that.
but more than anything, I wish you were here.
I wish you were my adventure,
or at least a part of it.
One On My Mind – Brooke Safferman
Dancing into the twilight,
Stars ablaze, much like your wide-open heart
Twirling into oblivion, you are the only
One on my mind
Gold and red and silver and bronze
Fistfuls of thick hair that I’m always so honored to
Touch
In the morning light, By the fireside, with the hot chocolate and the blueberry pancakes
We’re all slightly overcooked but without a flaw, all the same, you are the only
One on my mind
Curled up in Paradise on a couch,
books are the only sand and sun we need
we pay no matter to the clocks on the wall
the only ticking is the sound of our heart beating
one heart, we are two of the same and you are the only
One on my mind
And the bliss is never-ending.
You respect me on the days when I don’t even want to look at myself, and
You know about things I never would have dreamed of:
Palindromes and the perfect angel food cake; crossword puzzles and blanket forts
But even with all of this newfound knowledge, well, you are the only
One on my mind.
on space junk and stars – Ivy Junpier Manchester
“If the universe was more celestial than theory and technicality,
you would be the Sun,
and I?
the moon,
mere space rubble,
waiting to be illuminated by your presence.
A collection of asteroids clash,
Showering meteorites,
And even Halley’s heart melts.
You make Earth, Pluto,
Billions of people
deprived of you,
Stuck in winter,
missing what they never knew,
forever craving the idea of you.
you swear
on Jupiter or whatever god you believe in,
I’m different,
but I’m no one,
another fan, 93 million miles away,
still imagining our fates intertwined,
like every constellation,
spelling out your name.
And there goes the story
of nobody’s star.
Vagabond – Alexandra Mayer
His voice reminds me of Botticelli.
You know… pastel angels, naked and soft.
The sun:
A bleeding grapefruit–
Its scarlet juices seeping into wisps of yellow, violet and blue.
I love him. I love her too.
Home–there are just so many of you.
The road rushes back.
My memories are watercolors.
These years drip into each other.
Nothing but hazy hues.
Stretches of Sand.
My lips in the rearview mirror.
Unphased, shedding layers like a python.
Sometimes they strike without warning even me.
Jeep paters to a stop.
Barefeet burning.
Black pavement.
The stench of bonfires and summer.
He calls me over,
with eyes like wildflowers,
and points to the flickering embers that litter the shore.
They’re pulled away by white knuckles
dragging light back to sea.
And Time slips out the back
because we won’t pay enough attention to her.
Inkling 