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Best Poems Written by K8 Pterous

Below are the all-time best K8 Pterous poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | K8 Pterous Poem

An Untitled Slam Poem That Addresses Gender and Also Being a Lesbian

"Oh," she whispers, "but she's here with a boy!" Her words, especially the painted blue one, stick to her palm covering her lips and mouth, I lace my fingers through yours and this happens simultaneously on opposite sides of the room, we look at each other and smile, the suppressed laughter in our mouths a balloon blown so full it's about to pop,

It pops.

You're not all boy.

We laugh because she saw you from far away, she saw you and your hair that basically spells out either, 'lesbian,' or, 'boy,' across your forehead.

I look at your eyes. I tell you: Jesus, she thinks you're a boy and she thinks I'm straight we've neeever been in this situation before.
We laugh.

And, oh, that waitress that one time said, "thank you sir," when you handed her your credit card, her words overflowing with poisonous flirtation, spilling out of her mouth along with a biohazardous receipt, Her fingertips brushed yours as she handed it to you,
She didn't know. Painful ignorance.
After she left, you asked, "So is she a lesbian? Or..."

I didn't have the heart to tell you that she thought you were all boy.

I also didn't have the heart to believe the waitress didn't know she was feeding us poison.

you acted like it was nothing, but I, like, internally growled or something because the only two people who are this protective over someone else are moms and girlfriends.

She whispers, "Oh, but she's here with a boy!" and the blue word caresses our cheeks like your thumb and mine, currently participating in some sort of passive aggressive thumb makeout session because that's a nervous habit we have when we hold hands.
And we have the words "boy" and "lesbian" written across our foreheads, so it's a good thing I focus on your eyes.

Details | K8 Pterous Poem

Sticky Fingers

I can only write on the computer.
And I suppose that that’s not really the right thing to say, because people are going to say that I really am part of the next generation who survives solely by technology.

I really do try to write on paper, but I can only use pen because pencil smudges too easily and the end gets so dull,
So when people say that they can’t send me a link to one of their favorite poems because it’s on paper, my respect for them goes up by about sixty percent.

The part of writing on paper that scares me the most,
the part of speaking in real life that scares me the most

is that I can’t delete words.

On Microsoft Word, I can go back and add words into the middle of my poem, I can look at it as a whole and as a half and everywhere in between,

I can delete half of it and forget about, and that half will be lost forever.

But the way my fingers sometimes stick to the keyboard reminds me, I think, that the words that I’ve deleted stick with me forever, no matter how lost they are.

They’re not in some vast, infinite vacuum of the internet-

but stuck to my fingers because that was the only physical presence of those words at the time they were given life.

(Baby ducks follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch,)

And it’s some weird, modern folk tale, how the words got life, and how the words died.

So maybe if I’m the only one who can’t write on paper, then this word carrying curse is the punishment?

It’s a special flaw that makes the protagonist unique but relatable, (along with making her not able to spell anything and not able to talk to people)

And if poetry is just rambling and writing is ranting, then what are words.

The cancerous cells in a slice of bone marrow?

More likely some hellish creature that comes out of everyone only at two in the morning,

or the sticky stuff that I feel sometimes on my keyboard (or is it my fingers?)

Because my sticky fingers are a word’s physical form,

and if you think about it, you really can’t ever touch a word. They’re either soundwaves or dried ink on a dead tree, or pixels on a screen.

(or on your fingertips or your tongue.)

And I carry them with me everywhere, on my tongue and on my sticky fingers.

Details | K8 Pterous Poem

I Would Like To

i would like to 
be a perfect one to
be a Katherine the Great to 

be     able to 
w  a t ch the screen as i type but i am n ot
i am unable to watch what i type for fear that it may be 

terri f ying that i would look at it and a smell of sedating lavender would overwhelm my goddamn system to see that a
smell of
y ou  would overwhelm my system it is maddening that you ta ste like metal that 
your tongue is made of bronze- you are not the Athenian I once thought you were, for I am Homer and you are Alexander the Great we have
different values

because I am 
Homer and you are Alexander the Great though you believe you are Livy you believe you are 
Walt Whitman you believe you are 
something new you believe you are something wonderful and you w an t to believe such.

and I want to believe such. 
I
I will make you into a poet if that is what you wish. 
I will turn your bronze tongue into a paper one I will turn your blood to ink so when it is spilled in battle it is spilled on paper I will turn your iron thoughts to 
cloth I will turn your steely voice to the sound of a typewriter i will 
do
 whatever i must do in order to get you where you wish to be i will
if only you would teach me
to be
a Spartan.

Details | K8 Pterous Poem

Braille

I remember seeing
rich, chocolate eyes that invited me in
with hospitality and comfort like a hot chocolate
on a particularly cold fall day.

And that
the sun turned your skin to gold and
it was still soft and
sweet smelling.

Your delicate
crown of hair a
halo
of abandoned beauty a
physical form of the words
'reckless abandon'

and I remember your skin under my fingertips your
hands in which i held tightly so as to not let you slip
through my fingertips so as to tell
you
i won't let you go.

I remember seeing silver skin
dark, black eyes the color of
night with
small yellow sparks
as stars

i saw them.

i saw them and i saw that
the moon
dyed your skin ivory
we were in an old silent movie i saw
your lips moving and i made up the words i saw
you in black and white and i made up the colors.

you spoke in the song of the mourning dove
you spoke in ancient tongues that i loved that i had forgotten.

I saw the poetry written on your skin on your palms
and i felt it
etched into your bones i read it
like braille.

Details | K8 Pterous Poem

Stars

And in an instance,
I realized that we were not only one in the present
but that we were one in the past

We have always been one

And that the same strings that attach stars in a constellation
attach us.