if it were up to me
i wouldn't be here.
i would have left
a long time ago.
but others expect things of me.
things that i have to do.
and so i do them.
and i'm not dead yet.
from the minute we are born,
we are treated like clay.
carefully handled,
molded by the hands
of each person we come
in contact with.
so i'm sorry that i can't
undo the dents and imperfections
but they aren't my fault.
blame the girls who made me feel
useless.
blame the guys who made me feel
unlovable.
blame the teachers who made me feel like a
failure.
but i'm not dead yet.
i keep pushing, persevering,
praying.
praying that someone will see the
strain in my smile.
the way my leg shakes
under the desk.
the way i pick at my fingernail beds
the way i pull out my hair
the way i hold the knife to my skin.
i pray.
and i pray.
no one ever helps.
no one ever comes.
but i'm not dead yet.
and you can thank me for that.
She placed her dreams in starshine's bright design
where she believed the galaxy would guard them
from incidents and accidents that might shard them.
She trusted stars to lifelong harmonize love's song.
Wearing confident styles, she traversed fickle miles
before finding a grand love that would surely thrive.
Now, she barely manages life or pajamas without strife.
Gone is her strong and else she wished meant to belong.
Her frantic emotions fast crashed in gray-bashed static
and just her sofa holds her in tear splotchy folds.
Wishing to be free of depressions dark torture spree,
she lives with heart bruises and painful mind debris.
Numbness blurs her pathetic in swirls of decrepit
that pick at her feel-fabric already shredded traumatic.
She cannot define when their end started its doomed sway
but recalls when he left with her 'besty' on a final, total away.
My mind racing behind a cloud of smoke. The systematic deterioration of my life's work. yet most of the time I sit smiling, open minded to the possibility's, and to the actions that require an opposite and equal reaction to the options that lay dormant . Nothing came to mind. Rather id watch my own demise then be called to make a claim on another's life. So back to my decomposition a composition I'm very familiar with. My aid might be just inadequately enough to began the healing processes of someone who needs the primordial elements from my destruction to find the reasons and meaning in their own lives. I know I'm not obligated to pick at the scabs but my empathy wont allow them to hurt alone. Those influences that persuade, to succumb to healing. To not watch the final grains of sand funnel down. To accept that by holding on there is not another turn in this mortal life of flesh and bone. Even the prettiest of flowers must deteriorate to live again, to blossom`
What can I say
I dream about dead things
Skeletons in my closet
Hanging on hangers with names of people I no longer know
They whisper remnants of the past
Of times that were filled with laughter and joy
Now they’ve become sour
Everytime they speak I push their voices out of my mind
I carry dead flowers with me
To remind me of all the love I once had
I drag a black trash bag behind me
It holds every idea that I threw away
Every idea that I deemed bad
I envy dead things
They exist without being disturbed
Like a body that’s decomposing
Lost and wanting to be found
But not all bodies are found
Sometimes I want to rot away
Lay down on the forest floor
Waiting for animals to pick at my skin
Tearing me apart one piece at a time
Waiting as the Earth reclaims her Son
I was born with a beating heart
But I was never truly alive.
I am my mother’s verbal punching bag.
When she has a bad day, I pay the price.
I can’t stop her daily verbal attack,
Because nothing I do will e’er suffice.
The things she says are unforgivable;
Her insults are like acid on my hands.
Her kind comments have always been minimal,
But what else would you expect from my mom?
I pick at my fingers to help me cope,
And oftentimes, even that makes her annoyed.
So, for the sake of my skin, I hope
She’ll be a person I can fully avoid.
Her verbal abuse is shown through my fingers,
Through the dried blood and dull pain that lingers.
The knife is against your throat and I don't think I'd regret it
Stop picking at my skin
Pull your teeth out of my neck
Leave me somewhere between life and death
Pain and emotionless
Good to know I don't have to fix this
I know respect
Your blood will stain my hands and the collar of your top
I'll pick at the little meat on your bones and keep the rocks in your pockets
My knuckles cannot be whiter, permanent stains in my vision
Your face so far away or non existent I can't remember the shape of your eyes
The auld fella’s auld fella left the tech
after Ripening for sixteen summers.
Camden-Wagon-Gravity landed a
shovel and a pick at his lonely boots.
‘DIG’. he knew that Language. and by God
did he dig. there is a dignity
in breaking your back To Stuff A Ganger’s
Pockets, And His Belly With Rich Porter.
That aching rhythm of pick and shovel
Made certain - he would never reach his height.
sure look at him now, all stooped and bended
A Tunneller’s Posture. There Is A Man!
Breaking New Ground, Smashing Sediment and
Poverty. With every drive, slam and crack
You made Certain we would never go back.
Thanks to underground suffering and penance
and pain. Schoolday’s are over.
You’ve broken the Chain.
Dentist appointments cause me to linger,
Someplace betwixt dread and the blackness,
Fright’s version of despair,
Wistful and aching with silent prayers,
Silent, silence, soundless – still,
All the reasons, the responses, the requisites,
For those hours, endless times
Spent, losing my mind,
With mouth opened to oblige
Fingers pressed against my gums,
Forcing the enemy’s needles,
Taste of lidocaine, breathing in and out,
Through expanded nostrils,
Urgent moments, flooded with apprehension,
Distracted by the metal instruments,
Dreadful apparatuses,
Some intended to scrap at my enamel,
Pick at my fangs,
Some meant to dislodge roots,
Extract a tooth, - a part of me,
A portion of my flesh, my body,
Buried deep in my gums,
Where silent forces sing of dark horrors,
Will this dentist ever finish?
It seems like I’ve been in this chair for hours,
Looking at my watch….
Can it have only been five minutes!?!
Some way from the Firth of Forth
A shoal of glittering mackerel
Swirls and sways
Swells with the sea from silver to black
Flashes white and back to silver and grey
A humpback whale
Juddering its leathery jaws together
With a throatful of panicked fish
For a moment it bobs in place
Then sinks down slowly again
To await its next prey
But some fish get away
Dash, dash, dash
Gannets with wingtips a-black
In fizzing copper-green dive bomb
Pinning their wings back
Weaving, spiral bubbles rising
They spear the blank-eyed fish
And paddle away
In the tidal pools by the beach
Where the tiny sea herds crawl
Hermit crabs pick at morsels
Washed up by the tide
Snipping with their pincers
To nibble mackerel tails
They ward off competitors with their giant claws
Crabby-crawl tiny sea herds
Squabble in the pools of the micro-sea
But steal when you can the more beautiful shell
Of a crab that is greater than thee.
Shattered shards of a broken kaleidoscope
Scattered and taped together
Different visions
Black and white
Full and empty
I’m not human
My face is twisted into a smile stretched thin
My soul unraveled and torn, clinging onto its last thread
Who am I?
Pieces of a long-forgotten psalm
Coerced together to create a distorted whisper
Clashing, scratching, something unholy
Bloody fingers pick at the scraps of my personality
Which one to choose today?
Mouth full of white lies
Can’t you hear me cry?
One day they’ll all come back to strangle me
Nowhere to hide
Eyes everywhere, staring, provoking
Pushing my limits
Slowly losing my sanity
Thrust into their box of righteous virtue
Invalidating feelings and emotions
Formed into stone
Shattered pieces of a broken kaleidoscope
Each piece a part of me
I don’t want to see
There are faces
that stare out of an inner dark
that are featureless and have
no name. They haunt memory,
some prodding a nerve
sending a regret off
in search of a home.
Others pick at a wound
not quite healed somewhere
in a hard to reach place
of a life. There are those
faces that are lost somewhere,
trapped in a moment,
unable to move on.
I never saw your face,
your brief existence covered over
by a label wearing the anonymity
of just a surname. That
was the way they did it back then,
stopper grief with denial.
Your lifetime was measured
in minutes. You would be
forty five this year.
My mind often fills
those years with dream,
wondering what we could
have done, the meaningful
and silly stuff a father usually
does with a son.
There is a place I sometimes
go to stare into the face
of an unfathomable silence.
I whisper a name
but there is no reply.
A hungry cat
might pick at a rat
But she'd prefer to
feast on a fish
Whereas a dog
refuses 'puppy chow'
If he espies
some meat on a bone
As for me, I'm not picky
I'll eat what's put on my plate
As long as it's still edible ~
to Heaven I don't want to be late
I scratch symbols out of a matted beard.
Fingertips as smooth as wave-worn pebbles
rattle on an invisible shoreline,
the sound is a kind of speech
a language that only spume and spray understand.
Seven days a week I listen;
rarely does the water translate
any intelligible meaning.
Nevertheless images rise
like dead half-eaten fish.
I pick at the bones and wish
for more impossible things.
My maths teacher said I'll be nothing,
Algebra and calculus caught me dozing.
My Chem teacher condemned me too,
For chemicals sent me straight to the loo.
In physics I was called dumb,
For machines made my mind numb.
Nothing but words excites my passion.
Lyrics and sonnets the real temptation.
Dickens and Ng?gi I read overnight,
Shakespeare I pick at the morning light
Devour volumes with a curious mind
Swallow what my intellect can grind.
Oh! Deliver me from the power of words!
I'm bound in unbreakable cords.
Words call, mesmerize then seize,
And enslave before I realize!
There's the mirror we look at
to pick at spots,
The mirror we dress by,
to see the lot,
The one to cream and
shade the eyes,
The one to try out
feigned surprise,
The one that travels
and shows fatigue,
(Your eyes have circles,
your teeth are green.)
But the truest vision
of ups and downs,
Of sideways bulges
and hairdo clowns
Is the one that hits you
with dismay,
The shop front window
on a sunny day!
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