#poetpardy
You were small, could fit in my child-like hands, and I remembered thinking of all the ways I could show you I loved you.
You were sick and covered in sores and fleas. They did not care for you the way they had promised. You shook uncontrollably when I had to give you several baths and medicine. I didn’t even have time to feel sorry for you, I just wanted you to be better.
You cried for 6 days straight. Every night when I turned off the light and put you in your bed, you’d whine so much that my father would come downstairs just to yell at both of us, which never stopped anyone from crying. It wasn’t until I gave in and put you in my bed that I understood that you just wanted to sleep on my chest.
You were unhappy when I had to move away from home. Mom said that you didn’t eat most of the time and you slept in my room where my bed used to be. I tried to see you as much as I could, but I regretted leaving you every single day. When I looked for another apartment, I made it clear that you would be with me.
Now we sit outside together and you are in my lap, staring at everyone walking past us. I think of all the nights that I hoped you were happy. I think of my 3 am crying fits that you always comforted me through.
We are finally together and at peace. I hold you in my aging hands. I think of all the ways I can love you.
-bijou // hnl 2019
Doubt
I doubt my head
But my paintbrush doesnt.
My paintbrush rejoices every time it parades across the page
My paintbrush loves what I create with him
.
I dont feel creative
But my guitar doesnt know this
My guitar only knows the smiles it has brought to people
My guitar only knows the feeling of my fingers dancing across its fretboard
My guitar loves the sounds I create
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I hate my past
But my lover doesnt
She doesnt see the scars the way I do
And where I would hate the scars I left in myself she presses her lips agaisnt them
Where I would see pain and mistakes she sees the hand of God shapping me to who I am
My love doesnt see my past, only my future
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I doubt myself at the best of times
But what I create, those who love me
It has always been enough
For they dont see my doubt
They only see me
Poltergeist Love
You cant see me
You cant see the painstaking effort I put into moiving your life forward.
The hours spend holding back the roof about to break,
Or pushing a box a tissues near you when you do.
You cant see the amount of hours I work to keep you feed,
Or the amount of meals I give up so you wont have too.
You cant see the scars I gained holding the world back from hurting you,
Or how none of them hurt as much as the first time I had to watch in horror as you experienced the reality of this life for the first time
I have given you my poltergeist love
Unseen but experienced in every little bit of your daily life
Knowing that as long as your happy and safe
That I have done enough
Even if you cant see me.
M.E.
You are either a hundred miles away
Or just within my arms
You’re either music on the radio,
Or my playlist in my headphones.
You’re either the laugh I have been needing all day,
Or holding me when i have nothing i could possibly say.
You’re not two things though,
You’re just home, and thats all I want you to be.
A thought
I think
That I know
That my thoughts
Are in my control
Till I think
Then my thoughts
Are scattered and silently
Loud, all at the same time
What a place it is
Inside this mind
My heart has cracks and scars around the center from where knifes were once plunged
I grip my pillow like friend to keep myself from coming undone
I watch memorys like movies still laughing at the funny bits
Still crying at the hard times, that made it so I knew how not to quit.
I found meaning in book pages and quotes by Phill Ochs
“Every bad thing has also happened to better men” I would remind myself between the rocks
Thrown at me by unknown assailants, some of them later became my friends
Some of them would haunt my mind the nights I would burn the candle at both ends.
I gotta keep on moving, so I write poetry just for me
Then I share it with everyone in case it helps them through honesty
So I will keep moving foreword, untill the man in the mirror
Is a man ruled by his heart. And never by his fear
Push up
Aimed at the ground,
I fall with out putting in any effort to stop myself.
Push up.
I dont see a reason to get out of bed today,
The noise of the world is just far to loud.
Push up.
I cant seem to catch my breath between the pouring confessions to a friend,
That I havent been alright for weeks.
Push up.
Today im going to try again though,
Today im going to force myself out of bed with all the strength I have.
Today I am going to make it an okay day instead of waiting for one to find me.
No matter how hard life knocks me to the ground today,
I will push up.
Good poetry is like good music
It doesn’t demand your attention
Instead it brings attention to your soul
Everyone wants to be
A shade of gold and silver
While I would rather have
A heart that is opaque
I want when you look at me
To see the faint outline of what is inside
So your brain has to decode
The fuzzy image that lays behind
I’ll show you if you ask,
But first I want you to see
That there is more on the inside
Then what is clear to see
Read me
Inside and outside.
Know my thesis as well as you know my cover.
To those who dont know me describe my font like only you know it;
To those who do, decypher the odd bits that they dont even understand.
Read me inbetween my stanzas,
Between the lines where even though im not saying anything directly.
You still understand me.
Let me be your author.
Read me.
5, 4, 3…
It was five, five before you would find your time had long run out at the end of the line, and with a rushed goodbye be wisked away with both of us wishing that you could stay.
Four, on the floor, as I searched once more, all my studio apartment, for your charging chord. To be the hero one last time; to see that awestruck look in your eyes, and make one last worry dissapear in time
Three, had to be, you and me and he, not allowed to get to close, but still wanting nothing but each others company. Sneaking hand holding in the back of the car, as we shot across distances, however far.
Two, me and you, black and blue, torn up from a day that hell had surely grew, but both of us knowing what yesterday knew. Just how to get through this, when it was just me and you
One. Second to none. A number infinately more than zero, but only by a small sum. The amount of days left together. We will spend it on the run. Or we’ll spend it in the sun. Thinking up all the things we should have done.
Zero, back to five, I wish you didnt have to go. But you’ll miss work and school, I know, I know… But I’ll still be tracing the outline of your silhouette, and I close my eyes as it grows quiet in my head. And I’ll dream of you, come on you stupid sheep. Five four three two one… Sleep.
Pause
A soft wind blows through the grass,
As soft as her fingers through my hair,
It rattles the chains of the nearby swingset,
Accompaniment to the quiet sounds of trafic on an empty street.
Her smile is cool and gentle,
I see its outline while squinting up at her,
The blue sky halos her head like a crown,
My head is resting on her lap.
I kiss her hands as she smooths my stubbly face,
The whole world erases itself, save this park on the side of the road
It’s a good afternoon….
(A)maze
I dont think I’m alone
I’m just alone in my thoughts
Behind these eyes
Is a maze in which I am lost
But behind your eyes
I see only you
So I’m clawing my way out
To get lost in you
Melted
Our past was as clear as footprints in the snow,
But summer came and they are long past melted.
The memories we have are like castles in the sand,
Till waves came in to reclaim what we built with.
What we had was a log cabin of dreams,
But damn if you didnt love playing with matches.
Our heads were in the clouds and the breeze took us away,
And now were left too seperate to fix this.
Every night feels like an ocean ride
When i fall asleep next to you
Softly held by the tide
When you hold me like only you do
The welcoming warm of the sea breaze
Is the soft sound of your breathing
The lazy current that pulls me
Is knowing i have just what I am needing
Every night is a ocean ride
when i fall asleep next to you
Softly held in the moonlight
By the one i love, you
Party Prints
Stale soda
Cigarette ash and candle wax
Lingering scents of sweet drinks
and burnt food
The last reminants of strangers
composing themselves as they leave
Scattered confetti
Stained napkins and scattered sharpies
I still have the number you gave me
Cell phones left in the two or threes
Filled with texts and calls
To say they will return to retrieve them
Red cups
Laid like fingerprints across the lawn
Of a wonderful night
Now long gone
Bite my tongue
Should of bit my tongue
Held back those words vile,
no matter how badly I wished to say them
Tastes like raw meat
Fulfilling in a sense and sickening
Flesh that fills the mouth animalisticaly
Just to be spit out and rot, no sustenance
Only salmonella
Infecting the ears of the target,
Que instinct as we bite and gnash one ‘gainst the other
Words cleverly crafted,
Employed to bite, to tear
What good was this waisted remark
If all our love for another goes to the dogs from it
Bite my tongue
How can you spend all day
Throwing your life to poems and proses
How can you waist your stay?
In a lovely location with your head writing lyrics
Well honestly I can tell you today
I didn’t waist it writing, oh don’t be mistook
To quote what Douglas Adams would say,
It takes much longer, to not write a book
Die from 9 - 5 in the sun
Every sip of water tastes like salt from the sweat that coats my lips
But I can’t rest yet.
Have to eat, eat or I will be sick, and they don’t let sick people work
And I need to work, at least for another day,
Two Tuesdays, plus a Monday in-between
Enough to make rent, just gotta make rent
My skin is burnt, I have aloe at home, gotta stay in the sun for just a hour more, one hour then I can eat.
My stomach is already against the idea of eating,
I gotta rest, but I can’t rest now, if I rest now I can’t work,
If I can’t work I can’t eat, can’t eat can’t work, can’t work can’t have a place to sleep, cant sleep now gotta work, work so I can eat
Can’t eat yet though, gotta work
I gotta get out of this rut,
But to do that I gotta work,
I gotta get out of this work,
I gotta do alot of things
I gotta eat…
Cant eat now.
Have to numb the will to live
To live outside of work
Can’t afford to live, to expensive I’d never eat,
Can’t eat can’t live,
Can’t eat can’t work,
Can’t work can’t sleep
Can’t sleep cant live
Can’t live…
Can’t..
Live…
Can’t…
Work…
Live…
Sleep…
Eat…
Poetry
You have been my fervent love
And my desperate cry,
The music of
All my dreams and sighs.
.
You were my comfort from
My deepest sorrows,
Awaked this heart numb
With pain and no strength for morrows.
.
You fill life with unique magic
Turning darkness shinning bright,
Moving strangers with both tragic
Stories and hope’s and love’s delight.
.
I can’t describe the feeling
Of your muses whispering in my heart.
Your words, Poetry, I feel I’m stealing
But please never from me depart.
.
- S.T.S.