Spilled Ink

paradigmpoet:

I dreamed you were
Counting my ribs through
The layers of my clothes,
As if the
Fragile longitudes
Surrounding my heart were
Not strong enough,
As if you knew
It took so many
Breakings
For me to be
Here,
Stilled,
Just for
This moment.

There are
So many bruised
Midnights
In the course of
A lifetime,
So many lonely streets,
Rain slicked,
Outside my door,
So many mosaics
Of me
Spread,
Tooth to tendon,
Belly to bone,
The bulging compass of
My arteries cut,
Poured,
Strung across
Miles I’ve traveled, like
A red rubber road
To lead me home.

And each time I
Break I
Grow
Sharper,
Like a trauma
Remembered
In total recall,
No buffer of
Amnesiac haze to
Block the carnage
Jostling the
Blooms of my organs
On their stems like
Blighted roses
In a gale,
Nudging me
Gently
To fly apart
At the seams.

And I do this with
Poise,
With the grace of
One who knows
The shipwreck like
The veins in her legs,
One who knows there is
Air to breathe
Somewhere in
The swiftwater currents
Of this catastrophe.
A surface waits
To break on
Atmosphere,
Wide open,
Horizon to
Glorious horizon.

I can taste this
Freedom,
Like the tang of
Metal
In my mouth.
I dream it like
Forgiveness
Unfettered.
I hold it like
An ocean
Tamed.

I look gently
Into the
Abyss
Of you,
Waiting
For me to throw
My drowned pieces,
Sodden but
Recovered,
Into you for
Safekeeping.
But there is
Evidence enough
Of my survival
Here
In the eye of
The storm.

I want to tell you
These splinters are
All I know of
Bodies and
Hearts,
Incongruous to
The life I was
Promised.

I want to tell you
I am not a victim,
Not a lamb
Being led
To an altar
Of vanities.

I want to tell you
I don’t care to be
Saved.

I care to be
Whole.

autumndragonfly:

You still sit alone at the base of the only willow tree in the city, immersed in the world you’ve never quite learned how to deplete while everyone else hurries by, minds in briefcases and hearts in heels. Only you hold your soul in your hands, eyes shining with delight at the thought that it has remained in tacked over all these years.

When your autumn chilled fingers caress the pieces you’ve handed away so naively to people who always shook you off like rust, you knit yourself a scarf with your brows because this winter will be a merciless one. You’ve chipped yourself for every person who has come and sat beside you, under the weeping branches, to watch your fascination with the pacifically exquisite river.

The man with unnaturally warm hands kept a piece of you in the back pocket of his worn jeans, but you’ve never quite learned how to untie the sandbags from your larynx and hold on to the fleeting words that you know will clear away the cobwebs forming in the corners of his eyes. You aren’t certain if he’s lost you in between his travel though.

You left a corner of yourself in the coat’s breast pocket of a boy eleven stars away. Somehow, you always turn away in shame and flood the ravines of his beige cashmere sweater with your salty tears. You’re beautiful when you cry, where the last words you heard him speak. You wonder if he dropped you in the empty rabbit fields and never looked back.

You gifted the morsel of a girl a piece of yourself when she sat beside you and said, your words are louder than the screaming trees. She taught you how to read the bones of the murdered trees you use as paper, but you never realized she would walk into the river after she trampled merrily over your mind. Perhaps you’ve sunk to the bottom of the river with her body or you’re hung beside her in the stars. You’ll never know.

You’ll always sit alone at the base of the willow tree, eyes gazing over the New York skyline and the glimmering river, welcoming anyone who stops for a moment to sit with you. But somehow, you’ll quite never know how to be the selfish child on the playground.

jambu2525:

And I told her, my cigarette burning my lips to get the words out, “you’ll never have another chance to run away with someone who’s as wrong for you as I am.”

thegirlwithoutapearlearring:

Take me back to the days of being

a puppy in a laundry basket, an Indian princess,

a fairy on the bridge in your neighborhood, we’d create little

rafts out of sticks and grass for flowers to ride under the creek.

Back then I knew I was beautiful, but now I’m not so sure.

Back then I would laugh so hard that I’d roll on the ground,

All my crooked little teeth shining and back then I’d cry

if something upset me, and now I always ask myself if it’s worth

crying over instead of just feeling and back then I’d tell you

all my darkest secrets under blankets late at night,

and we’d stand in front of your full-length mirror, dressed as glamorously

as old Halloween costumes allowed and we’d be models and we’d

sing loudly for our mirror friends, walking the runway of your periwinkle

bedroom, but now I don’t dress up and now I know I’m not a model,

now those days are gone and so are we,

spread thin by the eternal human flaw that is growing up.

unconsciouscontradictions:

we are all so clumsy
with each other with
ourselves

we all trip and spill
on the cold concrete

leave

when we most need to
stay

kennedytwscott:

You are the broken wind
that fills my sails…
and leaves me stranded.
I sailed and I am lost-
and maybe tidal forces
will beach me, save me;
maybe they will rip my hull
and dash me on the rocks.
But the wind’s the one
who put me there.
You’re the one
who put me there
and can now pull me out again-
with or without the tide.

devivas:

Karma is laughing
at me now…

Still fresh from
a cutting rejection
of the most personal
of my affections

I now have a heart
tentatively placed
before my feet
one that I know
I cannot keep

Looking into his eyes
I see everything I
thought I wanted
generously laid out
in thoughtful
sincere measure

But I cannot eat
from this table…

Nor can I rise up
for I’ll be damned
if I cause anyone
that kind of pain
again

citoxiuq:

I’m sitting at my desk where, not two weeks ago, beside this same open window, there was sweat on my forehead in place of these shivers down my spine, and the sunset sky was a three-word poem I almost understood, reading orange, purple, pink.  Now it’s a Russian novel, thick with clouds, relentless, overwhelming, exhausting even to look at.

I wonder if I’m the one that’s changed.  In two weeks?  But why not.

Every day is a silent birth followed by a quiet death, each one amounting to little more than an unfinished thought that sits comfortably like dust on an eyelash — that, combined, becomes the blurring forest from the passenger-side window.

mickeymichal:

I climbed the hill too quickly,
and there I tumbled in a
massive heap on grounded

acorns, the fruit of the
forest, as they rained
more and more with
the wind giving into

the cracked heads
of passersby, I too,
wish I could fall so
high only to spread
my seeds to grow
even taller into the
universe.

Now I know, I cursed,
and ran, and fought
until all the slivers
ached thoughtfully
into deep
scoundrels where
I fell silent
and waited
to be
eaten.

jesusfigurine:

i’m on a quest for the adobe fresh heads of lettuce
no more nails, no more screams or creaking planks
the occasional cigarette and stress management,
management of my life

a garden on my roof, lilies, lilies, fat bleeding carnations,
roots that stretch down through the ceiling warm cement
suddenly new york is just a teeming anthill and a pile
of steel and stench

so this is america everything scheduled to purge
and retreat, strange wilderness tamed two hundred years
ago, this stone head of god
acting as a rubber band upon the wrist

sometimes i think of my sushi bones proof
of the dull buzz of the soul, if unzipped in the years
i have left they’d be a bottle rocket firing through the bottle

a blind nuisance, and blindly i thrive

whoartgos:

Sneak furtive glances across rooms
like astronomers burning midnight
oil. Caffeine and vodka imbue 
murky elixir with familiar aromas.

It’s as if fog and fine mist, tinted 
grey, are the wallpaper to calender
pages. How else would we find glamour
in the crumbling crimson foliage that litters
ungrateful doormats? 

“a satchel of sedatives, a plethora of pills
cures all the sad little children’s ills”
for as long as i can remember i’ve been
outrunning running out the clock

 

toplessnostalgia:

i’d rather be a peasant than a queen
if that would mean that i’m serene
and find a peace to piece the quilt
recording my house being built—

i’m only trying to find some hard rock—
and instead of newsprint, cardstock.
waiting here for her i feel the pull
because my heart is aching to be full

and i want her in bed when i sleep,
so someone’s beside me in the deep.
and if i somehow die before the dawn
i’ll be happy that i found someone.

you strip my royalty and love my core.

rubbishbinangel:

I have scorch marks on my arms from trying to hold
The boy with the sputtering flame for a soul.
                                                 He named me Yesterday.
                                                 Carving the words into my skin with his smile.
Fingers already entwined with those
Of his new Today
                                Eyes seeking
                             A new Tomorrow.

Yesterday.
So similar to the girl he named Eternity
A day too late
                                As her parents tucked her in to sleep
                                Six feet underground.
Collar high to hide
Love bites of a home-made noose.
                                                                Bethany.
                                                                His Bethany no more.

He buried his heart there
In the dirt over Bethany’s grave.
                    In summer white heads of dandelions bloom
                    Seeds of wishes never wished. Seeds of wishes never coming true.
He ran his fingers over old stone
Her name so deep Time could never wear it away.
                                                Then he stood. Wiped fresh dirt from his knees
                                                And walked away.

No one would ever add up to Bethany.
But I came close.
                            When the lights were out he could almost believe she was me.
                            Shadows revealing the face he longed to see.

wintriestmoods:

In and out the world fades
The blackness slithers it’s way in to the present
(It only wants my constellations)

All this bitter gold turns to grey
It prays to keep me away from heaven
In and out the world fades

My thoughts turn into swirls of haze
Confusion keeps my hopes in crescents
(It only wants my constellations)

The red of my heart begins to lessen
I never wanted to decay
In and out the world fades

Loneliness glitters in dark-eaten days
It captures my buried essence
(It only wants my constellations)

Demons crawl and beg me to stay
I’m not meant to become evanescent
In and out the world fades
(It only wants my constellations)

acollectionofsleeplessnights:

“He’s got bones just like his father,”
she said, clamping her hand,
 over the face of her newborn son.

“He’s got eyes that could swell up the ocean,”
she says as she tightens her grip.
And now he grows blue,
and starlit—with surprise.

The nurses rush in,
trying to revive,
his infantile,
frail body.

This is her endless banter,
from her bed,
the story she can’t stop telling.

“Starlit…with surprise” she mutters.
Creaking back and forth on her holey,
blue-stripped mattress.
“My son” she said.  
“Is a star,”
she would say that in group,
and laugh for an uncomfortably long,
extension of time.

At first we assumed she meant,
movie star,
pop star
 —even rock star.

But no she means literal star,
like a sky constellation.

And I’m at a loss “I don’t know what to do.”
He admits slamming the clipboard down,
in front of a colleague.

“She’s crazy.”
He comments,
pulling at his hair.

The man sitting across from him,
chuckles darkly.
“Precisely why she’s here,
my friend,
patience,
shall be your virtue.
Keep it close,
it is your friend.”

3AM.
Sterile halls,
quiet squeaking,
of shined oxford shoes.

Pen tapping,
clip-board marking.

“Doctor, doctor!”
A frazzled nurse screams,
with lopsided hair.
She seizes my white lab coat,
in the fullness,
of her tiny hands.

“It’s …her…”her she manages,
her voice is rising and falling,
in abnormal,
breathless patterns.

“Sit down,
just sit down.
I’ll go check.”

I guide her to a nearby bench,
and break into a run.

3:15AM
Arrive in the patient’s room,
cold and dark,
knelling on her mattress,
with her hands folded in front of her,
laughing, no.
No laughing,
more like maniacal,
soulless cackling.”

Quickly,
I slam on the lights.
Young boy.
Medical bracelet,
gleaming in the light,
patient 3.

Hanging,
blue faced,
from the fan.
 

She starts speaking,
from the bed.
“You see,
someone,
is in here.”

She motions to her chest.
 
“And he will not,
leave me be.
Until there are enough stars in the sky,
and that’s why he sent me.
So I can create things that he can see.”

Forget the media.
I make stars.
Forget the media,
I make stars.”

Frozen,
I carelessly slam off the lights.

3:30AM
Flip open the intercom,
“Room 6.
Elevate the patient’s status.
We need no more stars,
in this night sky.”