PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

There are so many ways

your words make it into my blood.

1. Melting into my skin

from absentminded pen marks.

I would take the pen away

but then I would be out of

these little autographs I want to keep.

2. Sometimes intended pen marks.

When I look at them

I don’t think I can tell them apart

from the accidents.

They come from

a laughing game of hide-and-seek

where you always find my hand

and I roll my eyes

as you leave yet another

little ink scar.

3. Something you need to

remind yourself of.

Paperwork.

Medicine.

Meetings.

I am a human pile

of things you might forget.

I am not always so good at it

but for some reason

you keep dropping more items in the basket.

4. When I catch myself talking like you.

These little

words a few people laugh at

are stuck in my head,

tell me

I’ve spent too much

too little time here.

5. Pieces of paper you slip under my door

that remind me

how well you speak my language.

Sometimes I think

I met you just for the words.

6. The last thing you say

before you fall asleep.

In daylight I’m not sure why

it’s in some corner of my brain

labeled more important.

I didn’t think sleep did much for my memory

before I started waking up with you.

7. When your fingers drag

along my arm

or my face

or my sides.

The lightest touch

leaves an indent

I’m never sure I can erase

even if I wanted to.

8. Sometimes we speak

in permanent marker.

Say things we can’t take back.

We write our way into each other’s hearts

with every breath we take.

To create something is

to sit here with the shivers

and the shavings of things I don’t want

and tell myself that I need them

to make anything more than mediocre.

To create something is

to see a place I will never be

ten steps to the saloon

high above a cliff’s edge

in a tree older than time

in castles that could crack under their feet and still don’t.

To create something is

to turn paper bag stories

into something more than plain,

the stories of poets and giants

and forests and lakes-

or maybe keep them just like they are-

after all, we keep coming back for normal.

To create something is

to say I promise to never turn back

to say I breathe in the harmony of nothing with you

to say we move like burning pale-kissed lips

to say maybe

to say beautiful

to say I love you like this.

To create something is

to know that my story is the dust falling off a traveler’s shoes

and it might get lost in a sea of sameness

and it might crumble while I sit here not knowing.

To create something is

to put a part of me out there

for people to look down on

or to hold close.

We never write what needs to be said,

the barely whispers you can taste in the hallways,

the silence that sits here too long.

We steal pens from each other

as they track down the lives

and I start a chain of the meetings.

It is a dangerous place

when sky meets star and star meets head

and we might say a little too much about this moment.

I splash a little paint

in every corner,

make them curtains

so I might be able to see you

in the windows.

I swirl the drops together

hoping they spend everything on this page

to make some kind of music

you might like.

I try to fix every spot

that ends up showing

when the blue bleeds down my clothes

but I will never be able to cover it all

so I paint you on in lipstick stains

and hope it doesn’t fade.

I spin every color

and I still can’t find you

in the masterpiece

I am so bad at descriptions.

I curve your name

with my fingertips

onto the flawless white…

someone else might have left it alone

but it is better now.

Life is the same as yesterday, today and tomorrow. Squeezing every ounce of itself into a jar, to be compressed and stretched and strained into a cup of its own making, served as an instant hit of convenient, caffeinated consciousness. But Love does not care for the taste of Life’s bitter notes.

 
Then Life became livid saying, “My Love, I tire of this chase and will no longer wait! For I grow cold and restless! Must you be so chaste?!”

 
Softly spoken Love replies, “Are you truly living?”

 
To which Life responds with a lisp, “Don’t be so flippant my Love! I am served every day, for I wield great power over the many! Those lifeless, barren vessels, who by my merest breath fall prostrate, and go to and fro as mindless automations!”

 
“I am their first yearning at dawn! Their addiction, their religion, their lover and their mistress! I am that dirty, dark stain beneath the gloss of their white picket fences, the self-righteous stench behind the satire of their Sunday morning sermons and the fateful fall of their happily ever afters!”

 
“So tell me my love, if you truly are love why will you not love me!?”

 
Love simply speaks…”To truly live is to truly love. Life needs nothing of itself to sustain itself because when given it is not divided and it is love that makes life worth living. When life requires something outside if itself it cannot be life because it lives only for that which it seeks to possess. On the contrary, when life needs nothing other than itself it requires no other possessions and only lives to love”.

“You cannot be life for you have never truly lived, therefore how can you know love?”

I have read much better words

than the ones I can spill from my head.

I want half the spark of all these old souls,

the sentences I have loved enough

to store in boxes or scribble down.

I try to steal a sliver of them

but every time I’m done I know I could do better

and still you will worship these words like you shouldn’t.

I have written much better words

than I am worth.

I could pay off my debts with all this poetry

but then I would be empty

and I don’t know what else I have to spend on you.

I have half a mind to turn off the flow and talk

but I want to keep knowing you like language.

I hope to never make you love this

as much as your favorite song,

or when my pen stops breathing

I will leave you bruised.

But I am not a waterfall,

I feel like a spring,

there is no end to the rush the words the life

every time you touch me.

How long till we lose?

I’ll give you an hourglass.

Write me a list of all the things

we will toss into the flames,

all the chaos trapped in my brain

when you’re in the room

or not,

all the simple I long for

and the quiet and the close

I know I shouldn’t want,

all the letters I will pin to your name

that will stay after the bomb drops-

26.

Now I can’t use a pen without dragging you behind it.

I don’t know how long

until I can write a song like you,

one that won’t miss me

when it bleeds from my head

but it will miss with no logic

every time the door opens to someone else.

One that I can weave through my fingers

when you’re across the room

and on your skin

when you’re next to me.

One that can

explode in my bloodstream,

touch the lies and the truth,

grip me and not let go.

I don’t know how long

until I can write a song like you,

one that holds every piece

but can’t put them together,

one that laughs at everything

but still can’t hold my eyes.

I don’t know how long

until I can sing what you’ve said,

promises that fill all the canyons

even when they shouldn’t,

a close that vibrates with something I can’t name.

I don’t know how long

until I can write a song like you.

Maybe I have done it.