Sad Poems

Speech Impediments

2010-03-18T01:16:00.003-04:00

Breadcrumbs. And stalled motors. Drive the lost. Patience. And torn dolls. Illustrate the cause.

Wearing the hours around her neck. Like hundreds of miscarraiges. I don't know. I test the time machine. For more of us. The replica. The heavy sheet. That covers the open door.

She sleeps like a child. She wakes up like woman. The difference she says in purpose. The fractions. Still revising. Failing flesh. The motors. In the machine still humming. As she loses herself in it.

Not then. Or now. Or here with them. But someday. When all the buttons are pushed. And then is as weak as we are now. This will all make sense.

All these machines will be useless. And we will laugh. At the moments they once used to threaten us.

Perpendicular

2010-03-17T00:48:00.002-04:00

Barefoot despots. Tilling parasites. The controversy. In thinning subjugation's. Distilling life from foul corpses. The art of hatred. Moving the idle. Numbing the rest of us.

She counts backward from one billion. Each digit a stone. Breaking the surface tension. On too still waters. Frozen stairs. Betray the cellars without windows. Everything is down there. Nothing is.

Finding solace in the pause rather than the ritual. She counts. The missing doors. The empty attics. The wolves and the children. Coaxed by the fairy tale. Left to presume. Ambivalent footprints. On the way to when.

The math in hysterics. The ghosts in feeble patterns. Soft wood. And little houses. We wear under our skin. Loose stitches. Cull the blankets from soiled beds. She counts backward. From one billion. She pretends she is close. To one.

She is.

Closer than she knows.

Conditions of Certainty

2010-03-16T01:27:00.003-04:00

Time sputters. Slit throats. Sift these lives through meaty sieves. Time vomits. Sick. With too many lives. Innocent and guilty of the crimes we commit. The rabbit pokes from its hat. But we see through its magic. The curtain stands between. The illusion and the belief.

This high pushes us too close to heaven. Too near to the devil's depths.

Wading through the floods. The fallen trees. Searching for light in interminable darkness. It is our power. We light the world and we shroud it in darkness.

These feeble machines will always fail us. Bone and skin. The sweet of flesh betrays spoiled prisoners. The cages we cannot see. How are we to escape them?

This ugly world is too beautiful to disdain. Even in my captivity. This weak ladder which promises the surface. How am I to trust it?

Time dies the same as we do. Sliced across the neck. Time lives that same as have. Wondering what is next.

Potions Presumed

2010-03-15T01:59:00.004-04:00

We dug. For hours. Discouraged by the wind. Counting the cars. As the road gave up. We fought with the portals. As the future admitted. It didn't know.

Big masks. Little faces. The monsters in their cages. Learning the locks.

She tries the window. No one's there. She tries the door. There is no knob. She questions the fire, but it rages on.

The world is hostile. The road there more so. She tries them on. Choking neckties. Useless men. frozen in their tuxedos.

We are close enough. To admit. That the world doesn't listen. That these time machines we covet will betray us. That how it began will exceed the arithmetic. That insists we are getting close.

Speed Limits

2010-03-14T00:48:00.004-05:00

Overtures in dusk. The pallor of her skin. Not content to trust. The small eyes the world would offer. The machine on her wrists. Turning. Coldly burning the fuel. Of splitting stitches. The when. Proving otherwise. I was. Am not. Soldier on the plateau of if. This war was ours to end.

Turning the clock back. I see so much blood. The scabs pulling away from certain flesh. The monster charming the child. In candy words. And broken promises. The monster. Selling windows to the blind.

I see.

The fallen ladder. The door on her back. Coming open. Widows on the porch. Discussing dead husbands. Captains with their foot on the clutch. Letting them pass.

Ruminants

2010-03-14T00:20:00.002-05:00

Limping ghosts use the open window as their crutch. I see. I don't. It's near. It's close. Nothing and everything. These blank spots in my skin. Following the scars. To the places I almost lived. The door is open. The house is empty. No one's home. The winter's over, but outside this window, the trees are still dead.

We're supposed to wake up, but we don't. Face in the glass pretends to know. Where we're going. Where we might be. Nowhere. No place. Healing bones and missing flesh throw their parties for the dead. Crutches walk on us. The words seep out. As she undresses. Auctioning her open windows for one more chance to see. What's out there. What's not. The void. The content. The faces. Stranded in the broken glass.

The window in my skin. A zipper coming undone. The world reflected. Shattering with it. As the stones hit. Little holes at first. Then big ones. Let the cold find us. Making it impossible to see. Beyond the pieces.

Pouting

2010-03-12T00:55:00.003-05:00

Content prisoners worship the walls. Keeping them in. Keeping the world from finding them.

It's bland. This blade. Constantly stabbing. I bleed. The blood dries. And we start the cycle again. Scarves around her neck telling the time machine when to stop. Little rips in pantyhose creeping up.

The hours arrive in bottled passions. Frustrated stupors mixing with seldom and gin. She measures the moon by its distant from darkness. She weighs the truth by its empty wrappers.

Pencilled in maps and crayoned blouses. Dress up the world in places to visit. A time line of feathers disperse through the wind. While she imagines what the button would've looked like had it never been pressed.

Teeth

2010-03-11T00:22:00.003-05:00

The diamonds in the sky seem small from this far away. They're no bigger close up a disembodied voice explains.

The earthquake doesn't happen. It always there but I only feel it sometimes. The disaster is not sudden. I just ignore it for as long as I can. Hot water on the stove. Little packets of dead leaves waiting. For the pain to bring them back to life.

We swallow. As if all these small things belong to us. We take. Assuming it is our right. To consume the leaves we can pick. To eat the animals we can tame. To run the world as we see fit.

True. The world is ours to take. But what will we do once we've used it up.

She fills her nights composing manic fairy tales. She clutters her gallows with anemic protagonists. Half villain. Half hero. Not remotely whole.

Telling her stories in jagged truths and fetid opinions. Chasing the truth away in sticky zippers.

Mission Statements

2010-03-10T01:10:00.003-05:00

Working with the clones. On random identities. The astronaut between her legs suffocating. Too close to the sun.

Tripping on the steps. Numbers. Like atom bombs. Taking us back to zero again. I'm not real. I'm just the ghost of a girl. Who once visited your island. And now cannot find a way to leave.

Fussing with the levers. The buttons. The throttle stuck in first gear. The hours explore. Feeble strangers. Across dimensions. The dream is had. I want to wake up, but I can't.

It's yesterday she yells. Wake up. Do it over before the math remembers. I'm only a fraction. Pull up. Hard. Brace yourself. The dead have not landing gear.

Penetration

2010-03-09T02:08:00.006-05:00

Choice comes in many facets. Choosing. As it were. To be alone. To be touched. By anything you had hoped might remember. Solving the puzzles as the logic comes. In hysterical outbursts. Of empty apartments. And leaky roofs.

Lazy friends. And entitled men. Bored with the cycles of menstruation.

Choices she says are only an illusion. We've already decided. To be loved. Or to wish that we had been. To be poets or mothers. Or lesbians.

A broken world. Full of broken people. This hope that remains. Is my only weakness.

I wake up in the dark and she wants to turn on the light. I wake up in the dark and wonder how she she knows the difference.

Disappearing Ink

2010-03-09T01:41:00.004-05:00

We're sorry. We always are. These shitty wings don't work and these beans ain't magic. Rage protects. The hurt child that cowers inside us. Love is a difficult emotion to process. It tears down. It builds up. We're weak and we're strong because of it.

We're lost. We're defeated. Because. Ultimately that's what life does. Use us up. Bits of the machine to be processed. Teasing time lines give us pause. But little changes. We're sorry. Always. For soemthing. Someone. Braids in her hair. Reluctantly coming undone. Because the rubber bands have broken.

Mothers explaining to their children. Who they are. The cycle of defeat finding its rhythmn amongst ordinary people.

Was. Am. All we are. Clamoring to contain. The seeds of doubt. The pursuit of demons keeps me busy. While I wonder what you want. I know, but don't understand. How life is enough.

Telling stories. Climbing stairs. Looking in attics. For boxes that are no longer there.

Tipping Scales

2010-03-08T01:19:00.003-05:00

There are walls. There are windows. I couldn't tell you the difference. Except that looking out. Seeing is its own prison. Looking out. To find. The world waking up again. Is another reminder. Of how little I have left in here.

We chase the sunsets. With eyes half closed. Blaming the sun for our blindness. When the fact is. We don't even look.

We dream. In rapid sequences. Hungry animals gnawing on the fences. That separate. The needy and the privileged. We tote with us. Those heavy bones. Searching for the focus. The window has exploited. Combing through the dead. For pieces of skin. Big enough to be our blankets. When life forgets the winter should end.

I sleep beside her. As if she might know me when we wake up. From this awful nightmare. That is us.

I don't say anything, but hope that she's listening. As I break the glass.

Together. We try on each of those demons. Together. We decide. It has already hurt enough.

We waste years pretending we can measure. Each other.

The Law of Averages

2010-03-07T00:49:00.003-05:00

We don't say anything to each other. Though we speak every day. Dirty mirrors pretend our faces. Wet shoes. In place of our footsteps. Are all that remain.

I should've been gone. But I didn't leave. I should've been orange, but I'm still red. Teasing those same old scabs. The vanity of love not withstanding.

It was always too close. Broken egg shells in the nest. Useless yolks. Spilling down the tree.

It's winter. It's how dead things are distinguished. I pretend to live. To fool it. I pretend to live for many reasons.

The least of which is us.

Charmed by Defeat

2010-03-06T00:21:00.005-05:00

Matadors on the edge of the red. Tease the horns of the beast. The red is the paradox. The thorns are the truth. The blood is evidence. That the victim is not who we think it is.

I don't wait for the snow to melt. I shovel it away. Assuming. Always assuming. The sun will not rise again.

I let them stick the bull. Provoking it. Because I want it to win. I see the red. The billows of bright satin as they entice the horns. A lazy suicide. A series of skin. A time machine without a pilot.

I give them the future. In little cuts and picked scabs. The blood lets us know. We're not too lost.

Dolls in their plastic shoes. Their fabricated dresses. Stages. Momentum. That jolt of skin. As it ponders the clock.

Every hour. Every minute. Accountable to the end.

This time machine. Steadfast in its decisions. Those dirty clothes still wearing her.

The Trouble with Parasites.

2010-03-05T01:32:00.002-05:00

Often the remedy is simply more of the sickness. This flesh. Like little elevators through warring dimensions. Time pondering. The growing infection of love.

Couldn't we tell these same stories in the words we already have. Rather than stumbling through the time lines for poor substitutes. Couldn't we just wear. These torn t-shirts. And admit that naked is better. Blind dolls on the edge of the mountain. Their plastic breath in echoes of when. I could say where I was.

It was under my skin. Movement and sacrifice like a wall of broken mirrors. The leeches spoiled by my blood. Losing their grip.

I am nothing without them.

The Patent Office

2010-03-04T00:48:00.004-05:00

Dimensions determined. By the absence of when. We were ever that young. That naive. As to believe. We would tell these stories without hurting.

The monster. The caution signs. Proliferating. In idle cuts. The drug. More myself than I am. Torn belts on her heavy pants. Test the scorch marks for evidence. That she was. And should be remembered.

The arrogant fantasies of stubborn fists. Imagining the world in circles. Seeing it in boxes. The story is geometric. More sides than I can keep up with. The autumn plays against the summer. As the winter persists.

Wanting comes in thick bundles of wet firewood. The ghosts check off the items on their to do list. Because sometimes it's just over.

She stands in line for her patent. Writing down every end she can think of. Knowing they've all be used.

Her Attics

2010-03-03T01:29:00.004-05:00

The stairway on its tiptoes. Straining to see. What is right in front of it. The world in colored blocks. Testing her confidence. As she examines the evidence. The wolf puffing. While she hides in her straw house. Bricks falling all around her. Catching none.

Her painted fingernails. Rife with counterbalance. The texture of the world. Like film and skin. The repulsive bleeding into the sweet.

Ripe fruits. Their meat speculating on the realities of us.

The taste of possibilities.

Saltwater

2010-03-02T01:10:00.004-05:00

Cost. In stumbles of skin. Measuring. What isn't there. The island. The drowning. That takes forever. And only minutes. As she forget the world that has already forgotten.

Little poisons coax the sick. With promises of rescue. And worlds so different from the one we're stuck in. Teasing the monster. With blue ink and bluer riddles. Beating the answer. Into submission. While these weak gods fester in the marrow. on broken bones.

It's absolute. This deafening mystery. As the sun rises over the hills. In a caution of skin. It's crutches. Chaffing her breads as she struggles with absentee legs. It's crawling. Up to the edge of the island. The water fighting the urge to let us stay.

The sweetness if the ocean. The bitter of the waves.

Infinity... Maybe More

2010-03-01T00:54:00.004-05:00

It's only alone. Letting you know its there. In little itches and weak splints. For too many broken bones. The random villains and derelict heroes. In the sparsely populated kingdom of our hope.

The tornado in her fist tells her the darkness will be coming back. And she'll never know when. Or for how long.

Her stockings in their cylinders. Opening the locks. Islands undone. Along with the men that would want them. Tall trees and telephone poles. On a collision course. With the lights out she knows it's only loneliness. That makes the world this small.

Touching the glass with a delicate hand. As she collects. Each piece of window. And begins to solve the puzzle. Of which came first. Sight or blindness.

Funeral or corpses. Gods or men.

Not that she doesn't already know.

Sad Vultures

2010-02-28T00:42:00.003-05:00

We waited for the lights to come on. Drinking and taking sleeping pills. Talking to each other in riddles. Making tea and pretending to go to sleep.

Watching the world surrender a snowflake at a time.

Calling the monsters by name. As all fables are given to point out the obvious.

All these poisons are too weak. The morning always finds me alive again. All these swords are too fragile. They break again the thrust of my skin. Leaving merely indents where the fatal wound should've been.

Selling stems to disenfranchised flwoer petals. Toiling dead gardens. For new approaches. To this extraordinary abysss.

Rotten Apples

2010-02-27T00:24:00.003-05:00

The fruit on the ground. Blaming the tree. The white in the air. Condones my blindnes. As I instruct my eyes not to see. Shovels and sages. More accuracy than compassion. Pencils and scissors content in their wisdoms. Of wrsits. And scars. And other such obvious treasons.

I wasn't waiting. I just thought you might like to come along.

Where walls collide. Like torn paper dolls And fingers break against the calm. Of nervous blades. Too close to cut.

Imdebted to these suttering mountains which let me see.

Everything.

I bite into the world. Prepared for the sour. Stunned by the sweetness.

What Happened

2010-02-26T00:33:00.005-05:00

Waiting for the wind to listen kept her busy. The things it would say not so much. The catapult on the back of her thighs. Straining. To contain all that violence. Miles of skin. Blank chalkboards. Begging to be scratched.

Causality and collusion in volunteering her thoughts for experiment. One time line. Then two. Then a hundred. A universe of champagne spoiling over her lips. LIke beads of sweat down the backs of burdened men.

Death comes not in the somber garb we assign it. But with a humor and a sarcasm befitting our narcissism.

Talking to the wind in obvious metaphors. She's not surprised when it asks her how long it has been.

It doesn't matter what has happened. A thousand times we've already done it. What's the harm in doing it once again.

Watching the Weather

2010-02-25T00:25:00.002-05:00

It's always winter. The cold doesn't forget. Stolen skins. Nor the things that died inside them. It's just snow. Until it isn't. And we shiver inside our empty houses. Telling stories about how cold it gets. In all this darkness.

With the windows open.

It gets warm sometimes, but the cold is never too far. We sweat. We chase the hot air as it seduces idle fists. Dirty mannequins. Lost in a world of windows. Seeing nothing. Seen by everything.

With the window open it's not as cold as it was. The world in heavy gulps. The chapel at her throat. Gods scrambling for understanding. Of the glass. This portal. This dismal throne. Through which everything submits. The winter. In failing prose. The snow in drifting poems. It was always this cold. I'm only now noticing.

How long the winter is.

Impossible Angles

2010-02-24T01:13:00.003-05:00

She woke up to hare. Had fallen Asleep to the tortoise. Anyway. It's all the same she said. Neither is going anywhere. Apple cores and banana skins toy with her discretions. A little house. Amongst many. With the lights out. With the meaningless people sleeping inside it. Dreaming up reasons to live another day.

The patterns. Poised on her crotch. The numbers. Obsessed with her cough. Little diseases. Finding for the motion. In dead things. Stopped escalators. Painfully close to the top.

Tall nets between them. As they pass the game back and forth. In a series of clumsy overhands. Idling in the hour. The year. The minute. The last part of the story pausing to finish.

The last of the bricks fallen down around the pig.

The angle of the sun ripe to burn us.

Decisions

2010-02-23T01:08:00.004-05:00

Two stones hit the Earth. Each one from a different world. Each one a different size and shape. Two stones. one hole.

Pebbles and math. In variances. Of potential means. Beneath the skin. Observers spoiling the experiment. The contiuum. Barking lovers on the edge of the bed. Tease the martyrs from squeaking hinges.

Instigations. Rotting fences. Sing their lullabys. To complacent infants in the garb of men.

Two stones hit the Earth. One is broken. One is whole. She carefully inspects them both. And decides the difference is in her. Not them.