January 2012
114 posts
5 tags
Drags
There’s a gag reflex on the first inhale of the first cigarette I’ve had in months. A closed throat and pink lungs. A punishment in peeling skin and hang nails. Winter hands and fingers, cut up but never quite bleeding. There’s a lonely leather glove balled up in the pocket of my coat. Big brass buttons and one hanging by a thread at the hip. A second drag and I am the...
3 tags
false lashes
i admire the way my false lashes float like black swan’s feathers on the surface of my soup and fake fingernails sink like sugar cubes in my martini i feel less heavy now
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3 tags
Shadow Box
everything you see, freckles and light fragments, tiny teeth, tangled hair, spinning copter blades and tangerine smiles, will melt in the rain it’s all made of sugar our blood and skin and our sundresses and snakeskin suits it’s sugar and wax and it will melt everything we know is tucked inside a shadow box an acrylic navy paint night sky splashed over the bottom of a shoe box and...
2 tags
Building Walls
The words ‘I love you’ chipped off of my lips as easy as ever and the wind carried them in your direction. I barely had time to watch your eyes darken before I was being thrown backwards by the force of something hard. A wall, 100 feet tall shot up out of the soft Spring ground like the roots of a radish, encircling you. It was strong, sturdy. I pushed my fingers against the...
3 tags
Barefoot
in my sleep last night there was a rush of air down the chimney, a wintery howl, a moan and a soft layer of soot was scattered like moon dust across the hardwood floors your footprints were there this morning, pressed into the mess, their filthy trail leading down the winding staircase heels and arches powdering each step that was careful not to touch down on the boards that would creak, scream...
1 tag
The Weight
Uninspired, I seek your body in the dark and find you naked and on your belly. The wooden slats in the shutters paint moonbeams across your back in a bar-code of light. Each panel of your skin holds a splatter of freckles and birthmarks like paint specks and tiny suns. I imagine you being the blueprint for the galaxy. The Creator placing bits of glitter onto a sheet of velvet, held between the...
3 tags
postcards don’t do a thing for my heart the rain has made a blur of your thoughts and i’m left with a mess of blue ink running rivers into my prints wish you were here, with love from some place that really isn’t too far off from where my mind is today and only a train ticket away from where it was just yesterday and i know you didn’t mean it, whatever it was you said...
4 tags
Puppet Show
your skin grows all around me like it’s my skin you’re just a comfortable cocoon for me to nest in.
you know i used to have big dreams of growing famous now i’m dying in your hands completely nameless.
4 tags
And I Fell For It
stars wish they burned brighter clouds wish that they were lighter birds are wishing to fly higher and you used all your wishes on becoming a better liar
Happy PayDay! 30% off Tired Foxes: Volume One with coupon code SHELFSTOCK305. I love you. xox
2 tags
Passing Through
I’m always watching them from this seat, in this diner. The most beautiful girls in the world spend their mornings here, lost or hungover. They’re all running, from home or one night stands, in rumpled clothes and morning breath. This morning is no different. She’s got hair longer than most of them and there’s the sweetest trickle of brown water (passed off as tea)...
4 tags
Cambridge & Town Cars
collect calls from the side of the road bravery and bloody lips i hike my skirt only after 2am and this is all there is to life wood bones that i file the imperfections out of until i’m left in a pile of dust the diner took the spanish omelet off the menu and the forecast says warm rain for weeks i shiver and gulp cold coffee that sits like mud i think about cambridge and town cars add sugar...
4 tags
Plastic Wings
there’s a blonde boy with plastic wings around his shoulders and pills under his tongue he’s dancing above the room something like flying, in tennis shoes with dollar bills and fingers tucked into his waistband his lips bleed from the heat his hips move to the music, flying or something like it desperation in deep eyes from the swelling of deep pockets and this plastic angel, whose...
3 tags
Children's Ward
She is so delicate. Everything about her is fragile and sweet, licked with sugar and tinted pink. Her cheeks are rose petals and there is lace gliding down the pale bumps of her vertebrae. She walks on her toes. Her tears form pearls on the tips of her lashes but they never fall, they just glisten and collect ribbons of light like silk. She leaves a light dust on everything she touches, like...
4 tags
This Is Why I Love Words (More Than I Love You)
I have tried before to weigh the weight of two loves against each other. And at your request I’ll try again, but I grow so struck with grief at the task. There is love of the tangible. This is a love I know well. This is a love we all know well. I love the things my fingers know the feel of. The linoleum and city sidewalk bricks. I love the ocean and the moon, the gold flecks in green...
3 tags
Toward Poets Past
I am my flowering jealousy. It billows like sugared smoke from my pores and stretches out over my bones and becomes my skin. What you see is just the pink embarrassed blush of envious greed. It is a pure lust that makes my spinal cord salivate.
You write just for me. I keep your photos above my bed, lit up by the love-glow in my eyes and tiny book lights. Little cities rise up around you...
4 tags
Train[ed] Thoughts.
I caught the first train out. Bruises kissing the backs of my knees and the sky still dark. Rain. Rain, but not pouring down rain. The kind of rain you might not notice if your skin wasn’t so sensitive. Barely morning and everything is grey and I’m noticing the cracked leather of the seats and the blur of the trees and the stream of consciousness that I pen is influenced by the...
4 tags
Let Us
let’s be love let’s be alone let’s be full from starlight alone let’s bite our nails let’s smoke everything in sight let’s capture prayers and fireflies let’s flush this bottle and let’s take these pills let’s drink everything let’s fight let’s kiss let’s call ex-lovers and read them the lyrics we wrote on each others backs...
1 tag
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goodnight xox
3 tags
3 tags
she pressed a tiny porcelain buddah with a jeweled belly into my palm, a hospital room, vomit stain sheets and paisley blue
she told me to wish and her hair was falling out i was 8, or maybe 9, pale lips the city looked like a photograph inside a fingerprinted window frame
she no longer smelled like cigarette smoke and that’s all there was no matter how hard i wished the jewels came...
6 tags
RE: Please Stop Writing About Me
Dearest,
You know our story. You know our every deep-line detail, every last cab ride and kiss, public sexual escapades and whiskey turned over to vomit outside nightclubs. You know the lines I don’t write, couldn’t write. You know the points in the lines I do write where I had to stop, bite my lip and hold a breath in for a count. You know the dirt under fingernails and the grit...
4 tags
there was the rattling of the thin metal as the screen door slammed behind you my hands, knuckles bent, wrists sore submerged in dishwater fake gold rings safely settled on the shore at the side of the sink i watched the moon take on the glow the sun left behind and heard the cat mew for milk the soapy water had soaked through to every layer red and raw i let them drip onto the wooden floor and...
4 tags
2 tags
Tomorrow
I have the ability to talk the importance right out of things. Tomorrow will be here in a matter of hours. Not just tomorrow but that tomorrow that’s been bubbling on my tongue for nearly a year. Time moves so quickly and so slowly that I fall into potholes and nose bleeds. A conveyor belt of tomorrows and a drunkard operating the damn thing with two big greased over buttons, red and...
2 tags
my hips will never be as heavy as my heart.
4 tags
Seedy
in this diner there are rings around my eyes, the bottom of porcelain coffee mugs, the fingers of corpse couples, and the neon sign flashing ‘open’ a waitress wringing her hands and the whole scene makes my skin crawl like i’ve misplaced my bones
3 tags
Fair Trade
i’ve got broken bones and bondage burns, your memory in the shape of scars around my throat from your dirty fingernails
you’ve got a new girl with a ribbon in her hair and a total distaste for your blood
2 tags
Runaways
In the bright haze of a city carnival in Spring we grew drunk on apple flavored vodka and a poorly rolled joint passed between our lips like a kiss. You paid a bearded carny ten dollars and a smile to stop the Ferris wheel at the top. Our cart rocked with the wind and my head spun like cotton candy around a paper cone. You lit me a cigarette and placed it between my teeth. My lipstick smeared...
4 tags
your voice is gravel under my tires and too many cigarettes but you can still lull me to sleep like the tinkering of toy angels
2 tags
come to me please in the guise of a lullaby or as the wind blown branches of the sycamore tree against the windowpane come to me in the powder of a moth the kiss of a loose lash gliding down the bridge of my nose come to me as a full bodied spirit in your favorite suit coat smoking a ghosts cigarette or come to me as a flickering of light next to the moon i’ll be here, rooted to the earth...
2 tags
Fragile Spirit, I’ve heard of people doing sweet things when their loved ones die. Things like sprinkling their ashes into black ink and tattooing it into their skin, the shape of a heart or the scrawl of their name. I’ve heard that people sometimes cry for the rest of their lives and walk through the streets at night biting their lips and digging crescent moons into their palms with...
3 tags
Because You Like It,
i bite down on the blood capsules between my teeth and try to smile
1 tag
All You Do Is Hate.
Someone out there loves you, they say. ‘They’ being those who don’t know you, of course. But you don’t care. You’re too busy rolling and hunching your shoulders over that rusted old Remington. You rip sheets from the damned machine and the ding of each line is like a toothache. You stuff your pages into trashcans and tin jars and while you sleep I read through...
2 tags
Lullaby
stranger, you’re my lullaby tonight i’ve been dipped in honey and milk warmed up and left to slumber in feathers and you, stranger are a beating heart tucked inside my grandfather’s radio reading me melodic poems in snowy static there’s a tin in your voice, stranger i want to thank you for this lullaby but when morning peels this heavy sleep from my lashes you will be but...
3 tags
Tiny Things
Lint balls from your wool sweaters are starting drier fires in New York laundromats while you’re at the cafe next door with earl grey eyes. I can feel the heat and smell the fabric softener from Boston and the smoke is coming from under my bed where the monster hit snooze because I haven’t slept. I wrote you a letter and left it in a subway car and I’m not sure yet if I...
A Rant for Writers.
gildedisntgolden:
tiredfoxes:
i write ‘cause i was born without a tongue or spine [take that as you will]
^I believe that this is a common misconception about writers- some of the bravest people who walk and have walked the earth. What about Shakespeare? The man or group of men, whatever you choose to believe, who challenged political events of his/their time at risk of treason? And Poe?...
6 tags
i write ‘cause i was born without a tongue or spine [take that as you will]
4 tags
We Made It
when was the last time you sliced your finger on the splintered wood of a card catalog, the yellow reaching your bones like nicotine? i like your red hair and the touch of a twitch your joints have shock therapy when i touch your exposed wires to my lips we write books together that will serve to fill the shelves of big city art libraries only to dull the echoes of the gasps and screams from the...
4 tags
We danced. You and I and twin stomachs of vodka. Danced with ballet flats ribbon-twisted up our calves and danced with patent leather, cloves, appetizers and strangers with cigars and early autumn. A lighted tent, a pit stop for tobacco and Red Bulls and sticky-finger BBQ potato chips. My floral dress and your glasses. Fingerprints. Pop music and back bones. I danced my curls loose and baby...
3 tags
i’ll write a poem to make it better for you
or i’ll press flowers between the pages of a bible, break my front teeth on cinnamon bark, put prayer fingers [and cold symptoms] in your tea, gold dust from paint chips in your throat, deflate my lungs and smoke through machines, breathe mechanical smog and starlight for you
if the poem doesn’t help
2 tags
When I was 18 I was turned away from a tattoo parlor by the ocean. I wanted something childish, something small, a heart or worse, a meaningless flower with perfect-curved petals. On my hip.
I can’t do it, he said. Your hips will grow. You’ll gain weight or get pregnant. It will stretch. I don’t want my art to stretch.
Now I’m pressing my own fingers into that...
poeticallyundead:
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3 tags
2 tags
my lover left me calligraphy and origami plastic skulls and heavy metal candle holders crusted over with melted wax three year old halloween candy hidden in the backs of sock drawers a sweet tooth, a paper cut chipped china, coffee rings and a letter dear me, i took the guitar and the photo albums the pictures are by the sink good life, you
i chew molded candies and leave chocolate fingerprints...
5 tags
Paperback
My grandmother’s fingers were nearly useless. Arthritis had eaten the bone right away, down to nothing like maggots over dead flesh, but she was very much alive, at the time. Her hands scared me, all my life They were compiled of loose skin and crooked fingers and they flopped into her lap over her floral housecoat in any which way they happened to fall. Most often, folded in on...
4 tags
I weighed myself this morning, naked and taking the wet heaviness of my hair into account. That’s how it is, counting droplets of water for their weight and calories for their worth. A multivitamin is 15 calories and I still wonder the number in an accidental swallow of toothpaste. I try to sweat off coffee with jitters.
Once you said you liked my shape. I imagined balloon animals...
4 tags
Rats (The Difference Between My Mother And Me)
My mother found a whole litter of naked pink rat pups on the concrete basement floor and nearly fainted. It was 10am when she called me at the office with the emergency.
Come quick, they’ll be walking soon. I don’t want them upstairs.
I excused myself from meetings and took the freeway home and let the wet roads and autumn leaves pull me around corners and to a skidding stop in...
