Poetry & Me

Cameras

I wish my eyes
were cameras
and each blink
the staccato
slap
of the shutter
closing.
I wish my stare
recorded motion
and the silent
stirring of
life.
When they close
all I captured
would stream
across the
red screen
of my eyelids
and light up
the dark.

Tyler Knott Gregson

(via tylerknott)

Gutter Rainbows

Gutter: A channel at the side or in the middle of a road or street, for leading off surface water.

Rainbow: A bow or arc of prismatic colors appearing in the heavens opposite the sun and caused by the refraction and reflection of the sun’s rays in drops of rain and/or splashes of water.

Very rarely have both these collided.
A metaphorical oxymoron,
If you will. Gutters. Dark dingy places, where,
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reside.
Rainbows. Making  everything blessed and pleasant. 
If the sun can transform gutter water,
To rainbows, that we can enjoy.
Then why can’t it transform our lives?
Have you ever
Felt melancholic
On a hot summers day?   
When the grass is green
And there isn’t a cloud in sight?
Everyone around you is smiling.
But you’re the only one
Who isn’t. When that happens
You’ve hit rock bottom.
However, rock bottom has,
Gutter Rainbows.

HZA

As If Thighs Were Parentheses

What my fame affords me
I will use to spread the light
that is caused by the book
that burns to clean the air
at night.

There are some
that would save
the book and others
that would write.

There are those
who would die
for it and soldiers
who would fight.

I have learned
of this book that burns
that it cannot be helped.

There are words
that will catch aflame
as others tend to melt.

There are phrases
soft turns of speech
that shake flesh to the bone.

There are ways
of our saying things
that shape truth into poems.

Or perhaps
they outline a shape
that is already there

like the face
of my sweet beloved
framed by unruly hair.

And these strands
are just words combined
to comb through with
your eyes.

They are wigs
over mountaintops

-the snow
that draws
the eyes.

They are there
when you see them not.

What man sees
his own heart?

He is drugged
and then put asleep
before he’s cut apart.

And procedures
like this only done
when arteries are clogged.

Spills and waste
down the mountainside
with forests cut and logged.

All the trees
now shaped
into books
and building-
blocks designed
will take shape
from the mountainside-

the forest of the mind.

And the mind is an active place
where climate will control
means of growth and the greenery
that springs up from the soul.

And the soul
it is like the soil
-as i am into u.

What begins
as a seed of thought
now manifests as true.

It takes time
for a rock to melt
-to decompose a corpse.

And the soil
is full rich with time
like mountains rich with quartz.

Full of charge.
Full of energy.

Full of nutrients and life
sucked from death
which is overturned
and risen to new heights.

Over time
life repeats itself-
the cycle of the wheel.

And the will
is a driving force
to feed, defend, and kill.

What it kills
takes a different shape
as consciousness transforms.

Laws emerge
to defend new life
and thus new crimes are born.

And what’s born
from a spinning wheel
is willed and welled
to shape.

Forms emerge
from the sculptors hand
nuanced by love and hate.

And the hate
is grown out of love
of comfort and control
and is shaped by the overgrowth
of fear/hope decomposed.

We compose
with creators hands
the music of the mind.

We choose words
like piano keys
to ease thought into chimes.

And we chime upon everything
and every sound we hear.

We diffuse
all times ticking bombs
to distill hope from fear.

And the hope
that we plant we tend.
We water, trim, and cut.

Like the grape
on its path to wine-

we smash beneath our strut.

And we strike chords with expertise.

We lean into each note.

We give time a new signature.

Small hand on big throat.

All the gun barrels
placed in mouths

all the tongues
fingers
parts

can account
for the silent times
where words
play no part.

Love is art
of the give and take
the build and break
the bends.

It is found in
a simple kiss

the laughing bliss
of friends.

And our friends
and our enemies
are much more
than they seem.

They are tall
booming beams
of light with their own
hopes and dreams.

We form teams-
nationalities-
taking sides
with our own.

We commit
to our fantasies
our prayers
and our poems.

And these poems
how they turn to dust
how they blossom with time.

They are like seeds
the farmer plants
with bare hands
in the mind.

And my mind
feels the brush of wind
takes strangers in
notes signs.

It is coaxed
by the pretty face
Egyptian lace
the kind.

And it broods
in it’s silent place.

And stirs
when she calls.

And it prays
for a peaceful space.

And answers to Saul.

But it knows
it knows none of it.

And it blurs
by the feed.

It prefers
all the gentler things
and cyclically bleeds.

And it bleeds
flowing streams of words
through the silence of night.

Softest page
of her inner thigh.

She asks
“What would you write?”

I would write
of a burning book.

How each thought stood alone.

How the words had formed families
sheltered from the unknown.

How the unknown would come again
for the words could not hide
truths and meanings
they held within
when the pen
took no sides.

And the pen
could be fingertips

softest tongue
against flesh

little toes
against calves
and necks

behind ear
with soft breaths.

And the writing
became the walls
and proposed new design

until silence took charge again
and disposed
of the mind.

How she laughed
when I told her that.

How she smiled
and she stirred.

How the room
took a different light.

How the lights
beamed and blurred.

All the lights
of the city gleamed
as if all burned at once.

All the thoughts
gently laid to rest-
the bequest of new Suns.

And the books
that would hold these thoughts
were the Suns that now burned
in small rooms that were
just like this
where we basked
and took turns.

And the spotlights
that shine on me
navigate every touch.

I am moved
to the darkest space
where small stanzas erupt.

And eruptions
they blind and quake
when too close
to the site.

As if thighs
were parentheses
holding silence
in light.

Saul Williams

“Farsickness” by Meghan Harlan

lifebyproxy:

 rough translation of fernweh (Ger):
        the opposite of homesickness.
 
Imagine a love turned out
as bread best cast
to the rivers, feedings
for smaller, far-flung things—
fire-flights of stillness,
forms alighting, then airborne,
until the breeze begins
to feel like hunger,
the wayward sweep of desire—
for the holy wheel
rotating foot, breath, and earth,
the pilgrim’s chaff,
frayed and heliocentric,
in need of distance
as a horizon of prayer
to both call and receive.

To The Mothers

This is an ode to all of those
that have never asked for one.
A thank you in words to all of those
that do not do what they do so well
for the thanking.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the ones who match our first
scream with their loudest scream;
who harmonize in our shared pain and joy
and terrified wonder when life begins.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who stay up late and wake up early
and always know the distance between
their soft humming song and our
tired ears.  To the lips that find
their way to our foreheads and know,
somehow always know, if too much heat
is living in our skin.
To the hands that spread the jam
on the bread and the mesmerizing
patient removal of the crust we just
cannot stomach.
This is to the mothers.
To the ones who shout the loudest
and fight the hardest and sacrifice
the most to keep the smiles glued
to our faces and the magic spinning through
our days.  To the pride they have for us
that cannot fit inside after all they
have endured.  To the leaking of it
out their eyes and onto the backs of their
hands, to the trails of makeup left behind
as they smile through those tears and somehow
always manage a laugh.  This is to
the patience and perseverance and
unyielding promise that at any moment
they would give up their lives
to protect ours. 
This is to the mothers.
To the single mom’s working four jobs
to put the cheese in the mac and
the apple back into the juice
so their children, like birds in
a nest, can find food in their mouths
and pillows under their heads.  To the dreams
put on hold and the complete and total rearrangement
of all priority. 
This is to the stay-at-home moms and those that
find the energy to go to work every day; to the widows and the
happily married.  To the young mothers and those
that deal with the unexpected announcement of a new
arrival far later than they ever anticipated.
This is to the mothers.
This is to the sack lunches
and sleepover parties, to the soccer games
and oranges slices at halftime.  This is
to the hot chocolate after snowy walks
and the arguing with the umpire at the
little league game.  To the frosting of
birthday cakes and the candles that are
always lit on time; to the Easter egg hunts
the slip-n-slides and the iced tea
on summer days. 
This is to the ones that show us the way
to finding our own way.  To the cutting
of the cord, quite literally the first time
and even more painfully and metaphorically
the second time around.  To the mothers
who become grandmothers and great-grandmothers
and if time is gentle enough, live to see
the children of their children have
children of their own.  To the love.
My goodness to the love that never stops
and comes from somewhere only mothers
have seen and know the secret location of.
To the love that grows stronger as their
hands grow weaker and the spread of jam
becomes slower and the Easter eggs get easier
to find and sack lunches no longer need making.
This is to the way the tears look falling from
the smile lines around their eyes
and the mascara that just might always be
smeared with the remains of their pride for
all they have created.
This is to the mothers.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-

(via tylerknott)

[3/30]

i’m looking for the point where

discovering bodies

started sounding like some CSI shit

like we can only be unearthed

as corpses

caution tape ribboning lake trees

skin and lips blue

bones hollow

like that’s the only time we’re waiting for someone

to find us

why can’t bodies be

discovered like planets

solutions

vaccines

for being a being

for every time you’ve fallen

in love on the subway

riding every moment

like you could found a nation

on it

(via drzzl)

April 7, 2011: Boston, Aaron Smith

(via april-is)

Boston
Aaron Smith

I’ve been meaning to tell
you how the sky is pink
here sometimes like the roof
of a mouth that’s about to chomp
down on the crooked steel teeth
of the city,

I remember the desperate
things we did
                   and that I stumble
down sidewalks listening
to the buzz of street lamps
at dusk and the crush
of leaves on the pavement,

Without you here I’m viciously lonely

and I can’t remember
the last time I felt holy,
the last time I offered
myself as sanctuary

*

I watched two men
press hard into
each other, their bodies
caught in the club’s
bass drum swell,
and I couldn’t remember
when I knew I’d never
be beautiful, but it must
have been quick
and subtle, the way
the holy ghost can pass
in and out of a room.
I want so desperately
to be finished with desire,
the rushing wind, the still
small voice.