The urge is overwhelming –
to see my battered skin break open.
To feel, believe, that I’m alive –
might thaw my soul, so frozen.
I’m cold, I’m numb, am I even real? –
or a figment of someone’s mind?
(For) no matter how much blood I spill –
(there’s no) feeling left that I can find.
I’m lost within a realm of souls –
where all but mine can matter.
I hate this suit of flesh I’m in –
it’s torn, beaten, and battered.
I’m branded as the “useful one” –
but all the same, disposable.
This hate could fill a sea —
(until it’s) shores should burst and overflow.
My loathing, not for others –
although they care not of their sins.
But if I must be honest –
I hate this soul which lies within.
I never understood –
why I was treated as an outcast.
I guess I’m just too sick –
perhaps it’s why my friends don’t last.
"...in spring, the most delicate feathery yellow of plumes and plumes and plumes and trees and bushes of wattle, as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here, in the Australian bush."
— D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo
Paraboloid totems of evergreen hope, upside down,
Sparkling white trinkets, sparkling white dears.
‘What do we need to do now?' you ask
I got my husband’s winged gift around my neck, a blue stone dragonfly.
Isn’t my green dress an ornamental kingly shroud?
Both stormy and luminous, the cuts on my arms are still caked in dried blood;
You are sad: your heart bleeds into mine with a bit of emerald dust and ruby red sunrises;
The doctor is the Rose; I am the Flame.
You are all marble, Plato, self-contained;
I am grotesque, decaying, Lilith-born.
My scars are greyhound clouds or maybe trim poodles
Whose slightly wolfish eyes will bleed
A blazing cornucopia of yellow wattle sprigs;
Doctor, your heart is a gold mine and joyous as Spring.
I should be dead by now,
Not eating micro waved Banquet
Pot pie for dinner past 3 AM,
Count maximum hours of sleep
Before I see my therapist tomorrow.
Living should be long over and gone:
Heart attack, suicide, massive stroke, or
Drunk-drive-death at eighty miles per.
I waste the god’s time and crap on mine:
A bowl of Frosted Flakes before
Reruns of “Cheers” every weekday at 12,
Then throw-away nights alone.
I should try harder to lay it down in the mud:
Drink ’till I’m blind,
Don’t pay rent or for TV,
Stop treatment, therapy, church, and love,
Quit Duel Recovery Anonymous meetings,
Tell God to leave me the alone,
Return to self-injury,
And basically don’t give a flying about
Anything, me, or the thought of a god not there.
I sit in a corner,
it feels like my only home,
not wanted anywhere,
at school i just sit,
ignoring the names,
tryin to forget the looks,
at my house,
i try to avoid the fights,
i'm unwanted company,
everywhere i go,
the hurt,
cant be said,
the tears,
cant be seen,
my only form of release,
is self injury,
i cut my wrists,
burn my skin,
scratch at every little mistake iv made,
alone in my corner,
the only place that feels like home.
10-8-11
With that awesome aura
of competence about her,
against her cool confidence,
he'll have to walk on water;
her lethal, legal logic makes
his best arguments leak,
and now he's thrusting his whole arm
in the dike, so to speak,
with water spraying all around him,
he just wants to cry,
but he's got no one as a scapegoat
to hang out to dry.
Her expertise kicks up in him
a dust-storm of mute wrath,
like dull anger throbbing
as murderous thoughts' aftermath;
his pique hisses low, wanting
to roar as fiery fury,
but he must control his blaze
to forestall self-injury;
he must feign congeniality
and endure all of these
and swallow what's left of his pride,
pleading, "Your Honor, please."
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.