tombstones

Poetry SLAM! put the pop in poetry. we listen drink down words, feel the edges nick our throats or warm our stomachs. chaotic strings of words wrapped around our wrists shaping our fingers; a claw of commas and parentheses begins writing. writing letters righting wrongs, everything we swore not to tell everything that still needed the gratification of an audience; the letters spilling out of my mouth to form a tidal wave that engulfs the world yet cradles them, a warm breath skipping across their necks, whispering, this is me! this is you! this is who we are, and what we're here for: words that march across highways

every year this happens and every year this fails. we're no longer children laughing leaning, shyly, on the rails. breaking into empty storerooms, sharing secrets on the floor we've both grown up and now, both not honest anymore. months passed, you had your words and i'd sworn they'd be the last and now we act as if old friends; face small remnants of our past. neither wanting to lean, and fall. neither wanting words to mean anything at all.

Waiting in your motherly chair Waiting for the words that will tie me up nicely, As I speak of everything that's all in my head. I hear the words settle, softly, In tracks the others left. I pause. You take a note. The schizophrenics and the phobics The depressives who looked at your wall art too; The greenhouse on a pale blue background It was symmetrical With a watermark In the bottom left. The din of your air conditioner mixing with the technical terms and scratching at my ears. With each bare nod of my head, My mother's pompous blush grows and she glances at the clock; folds the paper, not ready to seal her daughter's f

muggy streetlamps can't compare with city lights that scrape the skies; the cool windows and sloping metal slabs. these rough-hewn sidewalks sweat urban stains. and those suburban sub-standards; picket fences decay, and history doesn't peel like paint. the gritty culture compared to the voicinized scene of carbon copied houses and man-made mountains. (the laminated lifestyle is simply a breeding ground for more glossy minds.) so you can take your supermarket and your cut-out couture. but leave behind the heart you've had bottled in your closet for fifteen years.

holed up in the whole experience of it all. the shift from mine to ours shouldn't feel like such tall towers when i look up at all that is expected of me. a heavy sigh draws my eyelids down to a close and to focus in on the sleeves i clench in my hands. i'm used to accounting for myself and letting the sarcasm speak, and here i am settling the scales of harsh words versus a softer feeling. not to give the wrong idea, it's just one of those things that i do not understand, and do not think i am very good at, at all. there is a hole in the whole of myself and that is where my contradictions come from. that is where i stor

close your eyes and breath in the rubber of the swings cutting into warm limbs; times like these you are the silence and the rustling of the heat waves in the air. close your eyes and breath savor the moments and the movements that you cannot describe; you can only compare and derive from memories of late to set aside to spend when we are old.

you once told me a miss is as good as a mile and it was. that simple smile, and the way you kissed my cheek. the secret words the softly whispered somethings, and all the quiet things you used to think. until one day you up and left. you liked to live without regrets and you did. it's a shame, i wish i could be the same. you know, you weren't that shit, until you were what happened. you are what broke me down. you are what picked me up and threw me down again. someone once told me a miss is as good as a mile and it was, for a little while.

tongue twisters, they never had it so fun honey, your smile makes me want to run i'm baking in this box of heartbroken songs FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE, OH! he planned it all along. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me go now! (FIGHT IT!) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me go now! (RIGHT IT!) star light, star bright remember how you started fights remember you held me face down, FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE! on the ground honey, look, i'm coming round. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me go now! (FIGHT IT!) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let me go now! (RIGHT IT!) FOUR-THREE-TWO-ONE he's on the run and that's where he should be OH it's only just begu

to think the words we spoke were rhymed! to think of the disembodied beating of a pulse, to feel the heat skip over the separated skin. to write of two becoming one when all that's seen is one dividing into ugly numbers. my pocket mirror reflects back, still. your record too, skips a beat. now, crouched behind the cubicle! two clocks spinning on different speeds, hollow ticking; black. white. two mouths with not one tooth in common, memories spout; tongues. touch. one given, one taken. but when the tables were turned the corners still didn't match up; my pocket mirror reflects back, still your record too, skips a beat.

in the self-destructive society; we spray ourselves with aerosol -- (arsenic, arsenic,) and suffocate the ground even more with pavement, thick concrete and trash heap, trashed landfill. we have cybernet lives and still! silent, sad wives living life like they used to - (microwaved souls.) where's the future? where's my aluminium reassurances? the lie detectors sure let this one slip. instead it's still yesterday's headlines! paper cups, paper husbands paper children on fire pile up on the counter, in the garden, on the floor - stifle. free. thinking!! i see you with your manufactured naturals and your bulletproof organic. o