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Her quiet humming lines the walls of the tiny cabin with wisdom and warmth, far warmer than the heat given off by the fire in the far corner. Her rocking chair creaks softly to a beat she knew once before, a long time ago. Thinking back on sunnier days when the sun shone down on fields of green that stretched to the end of time. When life was nothing more than a simple word.
Her eyes are wells, of knowledge and pain that grows with the many years of loneliness. She is alone in the cabin, for she claims she needs her space. Pictures of growing young girls and boys line the wall. A fading photograph of a handsome young marine and herself sits on the table beside her, they are together there, frozen in time. His hat is tilted just so, in the way that she had loved.
Memories so old they are like cobwebs hidden in the far reaches of her heart. She is weary and ready for the twilight that is soon to come. Ready for the night. To rejoin those she knew before.

All my thoughts are forming a Conga Line in my head and I need to get them out or I will go off my surfboard. So's here's a second poem from offreadin's bag of tricks.

I tapped your shoulder
And I enjoyed watching your muscles tense
through your thin shirt
Because through the cloth
our skin collided
and vibrated
Our eyes met

Is it my fingers are too cold
Or just your skin is too warm?

Sorry, if this offends anyone. But this is kind of how I feel, so y'all get to hear about it.

I hate emo poetry
because
life always sucks

Even when
You get straight "A"s
You aced a test
You get asked out
You have a good day
Your clothes fit right
Still
You can't get past your prejudice that
Life sucks

I think will double as an introductory post and the publication of my first poem. First, I'm Zak and I listened to poetry all weekend at the conference, so it was on my mind when I got home. I'm much more of a prose writer. I focus mostly on my cynical, dry and sarcastic sense of humor in it. I also occasionally write lyrics, which are more political and religious.
When I got home, I pretty immediately wrote a poem. I don't fancy it aesthetic or particularly clear, but I like it. Without further ado, I will copy it and paste it from my computer:

Cocaine, heroin, "marijuana"
crystal meth, 'shrooms, ecstasy
they're narcotics.
they warp your perception of the world,
bending light and beckoning darkness.

"I did not sleep with that woman."
"Mission accomplished."
they're falsehoods.
hoaxes perpetrated by those with power.
power over the wills and minds of the generic demeaning metaphors.

The government recoils from the drugs, and the parents recoil with them. Read more »

I see you,
Behind my lids,
As I close them so slowly,
I don't know what to do,
My mind continues rolling.
And as I open my eyes,
As slowly as they were shut,
I feel the tension building,
As tears threaten to over flow,
But why am I crying?
I force them back,
My throat starts to close.
I can't breathe right.
Oxygen comes in by gasps.
My eyes are hurting,
Because I refuse to let them pass.
But one.
One betraying tear.
It's strange,
How when I'm sitting here in Art Class,
And you're right there,
One tear can stab me in the back.
My breathing is still erratic.
I can't calm my self,
But I'm afraid that if I close my eyes,
More droplets can commit the ultimate treachery.
And you're still right there.
But you haven't noticed,
And if you have,
You don't show it.
I doubt you would care.
No.
That's not true.
I think you would,
We've been friends so long.
Probably almost all our lives.
Remember that time in Kindergarten?
When I went to your house? Read more »

March 21. Cancer. Bald.

He took a photograph every day,
Polaroids of friends and family for eighteen years.

One day, Mets tickets and a box office,
the next: a broken spear of grass.

The pictures fill suitcases now,
thousands stacked in an attic somewhere.

They're going to waste away, as he did.

March 23. Engagement ring.

March 25. Wedding.

March 28.

March 28 he died.

Did you know,
That the day you didn't come to school,
I was going to tell you,
I think you're really cool.
And I was going to ask,
If you liked me back,
But that is one day,
That we'll never get back.
Now I sit alone,
In a tight little ball,
Crying and crying,
Knowing you wanted to fall.
And it's selfish of me,
But I think this hit me hardest,
Because maybe I could've saved you,
Maybe I could've changed this.
But you left this world for darkness,
And you took me halfway,
Now I see no reason to stay,
I'll be with you in a few days.

When I cry for you,
Is it for a lost cause?
Is everything I do,
For a lost cause?
I think that maybe,
You think you're lost,
But I think I've found you.

I think I've found you...

Don't trust reality.
Don't think too hard.
Don't believe what you're told.
I know you're cold,
But I think I've found you.

It's true,
You might fall.
You could hit a brick wall.
But after all,
I think I've found you.
So don't be scared,
It's me behind the mask,
I know that you've asked.
You may be lost,
But I think I've found you.

I think I've found you...

I'm sick,
Laying in my bed,
And you call.
You're just the person,
That I don't want to talk to,
In my delirious state.
Any other day,
Your voice would be welcome.
In fact,
Since hearing you today,
I feel a little better.
But you can't hear me today.
Not like this.
I'm sure that I don't know what I'm saying.
Actually,
I just said to you,
After you saying nothing at all,
"I will... you go... Bye."
Then I hung up.
That was embarrassing.
And before that,
I was telling you,
About my snot,
And how its really gooey.
WHY??
I shouldn't have picked up the phone,
When I saw your number...

She has lost them
She has.
The moon in the sky above will mourn and cry
For these words slice deep into the heart
And the moon in the sky above will mourn and sigh
For the night has come once again
And it has brought with it no news
Oh, the moon in the sky above will mourn
For the stars cried,
And the stars have sighed
And the nameless night
Has come
And the moon in the sky above will mourn
When it hears
The stars have cried their silent tears
So tonight will be the night,
That I will fall for you
And I will be impossible to find
For I am lost
Could it be that we have been this way
Before?
I know, cried the stars
So surely I am lost.

I write love poems for people I have yet to meet,
crafting and stacking phrases,
towers of praise and emotion,
building imaginary self-esteems.

I wait for you to amble into my life,
ready to match poem to love
like pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey;
hit or miss.

I am the beginning,
the first time you realized I exsist,
the first time the words "hey there" slammed into "hun",
your first kiss or last.
Sneaky and serious,
frantic and spastic,
I can get it right or I can mow you over.

I might be the end,
your worst teenage romance nightmare;
an arrow into your heart not doing it's job (taking your life),
but rather slipping down into your knee,
just stunning temporarily.

I think you should know,
all females are unpredictable.

I am not alone, exactly
I am alone, inexactly
How could I be
So inbetween
How can I stay
Locked in halfway
For the voices that are there
Always
Are gone
And the people that are there
Always
Are alone.

(A two part punctuation series)

Was my first reflex when I stepped past
Misilover;
I gave you Kennah instead,
putting my usual resevations (not!) behind me.
Now I will pull back my dusty curtains,
do a spring cleaning of the crevases and rooms
of heavy veins that have been
dormant for so long.
I'd like you to know
(I take my time, I like to do things right);
too much gooey regret slogs through
me to play games and
screw with raw emotion.

I like a really clean dose of reality,
a good mug of tea that will sit with me even when it's
twenty below zero;
a standard black leaf brew...
the allure is in the heat and strength-
I'm speaking literally.

I'm familiar wih all types of desires and their seeds,
the basic starting point for anything.
There is the mustard seed who grows
to the largest tree in the garden

contrasting to the seed that falls on
rocky soil, a crazy botanical burnout;
never-the-less, there was potential. Read more »

Now
Now is the time
You have to do it now
You know you do
You got to
Now
This is the only chance
The only chance you have
Time is being chewed up
As you just sit there
Wondering what people think of you
Instead of what you could do
The clock is ticking
You’re leaving it there
Like an unfinished test
Oh great
For now what you need to do
Is for all to see
You’re scared
You’re unprepared
You’re on the spot
So pressured
Oh, how you wish it was over
But you can dream about that later
All you do is close your eyes
And just do it
You soar through skies of possibilities
Your feelings go off like fireworks
When you open your eyes
You realized
Just how much potential you have
When you let go of all
All your inhibitions
All your thoughts
All your peers
All your broken self esteem
You
And your peers
Are astonished
You are proud
You are thankful for doing it
If you didn’t
You wouldn’t have ever
Experienced diving into Read more »

Sleep
It used to be
Something that
Came so easily
But now it's
Something that
I wish I could
Get again
All these
Sleepless nights
Are starting to
Wear me down
I don't know
How much more of this
I can take

People tell me
The world is
My
Playground.
People ask me
How I do
What I do;
Find things
Find places
To go.
How nothing
Stands in my way.

What they don't see
Is the wall
On my toes,
Building taller
Every second,
Bruising my skin,
Spinning my stomach.

My eyes see
Only footprints
Ahead,
Footprints
Of my very own
Feet.
I've been everywhere
I go
And I fall
back
As I move forward.

*This is a song in progress, I came up with some lyrics, but I need ideas. Please, every comment is worth it*

[Verse 1]
I Hear myself and sing
when everything's blamed on me
with one's crying heart
dieing inside
Open up your mind
to one's game in life.

[Chorus]
Carry on with your words
'Cause I knew you would
with all your chaos and tears
When you got trapped inside
The last thing on your mind
I'll be the one to keep your
one disaster in life.

[Verse 2]
Happiness is here again
but this time it's worse.
Hearing my complaints
with your game
it get my attention
quit and stop your
haunting words!

[Chorus]
Carry on with your words
'Cause I knew you would
with all your chaos and tears
When you got trapped inside
The last thing on your mind
I'll be the one to keep your
one disaster in life.

(The rest is to be unknown)

Words.
Muck.
Mixed like:
Wet cement,
Heavy and thick,
Like:
Poisoned
Air.
I want to breath,
I need to breath,
But I won't
Allow myself,
Won't fall into
That cycle
And come out again,
A big bird
Under a wire.

I'm coughing up
all the excuses and lies
and wanting you to stop me.
I want you to go
until I'm finished with this lie
and then come back and
listen.
I want to tell you that I can't
stop
and I can't deal anymore.
It used to be all okay and
it's not
anymore.
We've lost so much
that I don't know which way
you'll turn
and I don't know which way
to go.
You'll never understand
what will make someone
love so much
it hurts. You'll never know
how much I used to
love you
and you'll never know
I did.
So I'll finish this
life
and go away and maybe I'll come back.
And I'll try to listen to
myself
before it's all
over.
Maybe I'll be able to handle
loving you
again.

At my VYWC workshop the leader had us write a few mini-ideas and here are some of mine:

My lost words and actions
Never echoed the way I had imagined they could,
Instead they timidly sunk to a grimy bedroom floor
Where I know my arms will never be quite long enough
To reach them and claim them again.

One word stares determinedly at my beating breast
As if it could form a shape inside,
A shape of an emotion
An emotion that swims in empty lakes and flooded puddles.

The darker sun beats down upon the shoulders of a working class
Who have to punch limbs of Mother Nature
In order to feed the newborns and keep the aged.

One night on 1917th Street,
a strident howl let into the air
it came from the house 13
and guess when those people moved there.....
Friday 13th,
Every since then, shrills and eerie noises tremble from the old house.
Red color splattered everywhere
is it blood? Or paint?
With the window shutters half-broken
it seemed as if this house was haunted
but it wasn't, because if an old lady, garbed in white
lived there for about 40 years not harmed a single bit
no ghosts or daemons would flutter about right?
But this lady was no ordinary lady,
her hair a screaming white
and her skin wrinkled.
She was so thin you could see right through her,
and I know why.
This was the lady that moved in over 100 years ago,
who died a harsh death
in the attic, and there are still blood stains.
A small grave stands right in front:
(Mary K. Morrison, died 1972 who still lives here with us)
Every glimpse you catch of her, she's always holding Read more »

Weaving word webs
through overgrown fields:

Suburbia used to be a farm.

I found the evidence
in a barbed wire fence
out under those luscious green grasses

Your wallpaper was blue and green

I snuck in through the window
A place no one dares to go
The only color was in the kitchen
Now a piece is in my pocket.

Speed Limit 25

Under the plank of wood
Out by my neighborhood
Stolen treasure lurks

I'm not going to lie, but this site infuriates me. I bring subjects up constantly, and people discuss them and say "oh, thanks for bringing that up, i'll make sure to change.. yadda, yadda, yadda".

Yes, I'm a little bit mean, but I believe that I have the right to be at least angry enough to write this.. Again. Read more »

Watching him on stage in
all his glory,
all I can think is that
the guitar fits to his body
like a machine,
and I wonder:

what does he look like at
night,
writing his songs and
weak,
the melody still
raw,
cathartic,
still not quite
alive, and
I wonder:

why do I crave
pain in beauty
like I do?

I don't know how to write about this quite yet,
I don't know how much guilt I've added within the past few days
Where you have been gone and how much existed before:
Not visiting you when I should have
Not calling you on your birthday
Taking our dinner dates for granted.

I went to your apartment a week ago
To bring you a sunflower (they were her favorite, but I know you already knew that, best friends have to).
You weren't home, out to lunch by yourself again.
I walked away without much worry

I wish I had stuck around.

You loved me without question,
And I to you.

I've already lost most of my family in these past
14 years but I guess He wanted one more.

Now you are higher than this pen or keyboard shall ever go.
Please tell my grandparents about how sometimes
I'm still the little child they said goodbye to years ago
And remember how even though our veins ran differently
You were more of a grandmother to me than
She was around long enough to be. Read more »

She smashes windows, but
not for the sound of
glass surrendering to concrete, no,
she does it for that
feeling of
flowers thick with color and
exploding veins, falling
into her hands, a gift
from the beautiful
girls who wear
feathers in their
hair.

She laughs even with her
fingers.
They jitter as she
tap-taps the sound of life
into their
splinter-material hearts,
until they cry
screaming-flavored tears, and
remember what love is.

God-how-she-loves-that-stuff.
The rush.

Maybe that's what it's
all about,
anyway.

A poem I wrote at the conference, with the prompt: write about meeting your older self. This is meeting myself when she's close to death.

She was translucent with age.
White hair fell like silk
into her mouth and eyes, but
she left it there.

Skin lined, chapped,
lips cracked, sharp.
I wanted to kiss her.
I did, I wanted to touch her, but
she was sunken into herself,
and I didn't know how to
pull her out.

Even her eyes weren't
beautiful anymore.
They were dark and
full, yes, but
they were lost.
The pupils didn't work anymore,
they were separated from
the rest of the eyes, and
she couldn't focus.
I think her world was
too much like a
dream, and

she didn't recognize me.
She had forgotten my name.
Her fingers,
cold and sagging, traced
my face,

eyes so dry that when they
swiveled to stare at me,
I could hear them scratching
like flies whispering in
the sockets.

"Do you remember him?"
I asked her,
but she just stared, lost, Read more »

(Note: This is meant to be slammed and I'm trying to figure how to work the whole Podcast thing, so it is meant to be listened to, not read).

I let
The artificial raindrops
Cover me
From painted toe nail up through
My legs-those damn limbs that ran too fast for too long,
To my torso where you once held my hips not too long ago
And the drops keep going
Keep going
Through my head-where my thoughts don't just run,
They walk wildly.
The drops no longer listen to
Gravity’s serenade
But go from the tile floor up,
Reversing all that is
Expected.
Washing out
Each little
Dirty drop of liquid from the sky
That tickled
A twirling dancer inside of me who
Beats a drum,
With every hurt brought to her
She pummels the pain inside of her
In that
Steady
Rhythm
That never
Ceases.
Artificial rain
Washes away the
Real stuff
And the drum beats
On.

It may look empty,
but its not.
A presence lingures,
holding onto every last strand of
life.
Forming nothing in the air.
Almost forgotten.

You may think it to be empty,
but you are not aware.
Open up your mind,
Do you feel it?
Its strong; its torn.
Don't you believe?
Its there beside you.

Hold out your hand,
grab ahold,
and you'll understand.
Soon.
You'll be whole..
again.

i.
It took me this long
to realize,
to truly understand
that you get
quiet, too.
10 months and some odd days
just to see that we have
more in common than
I was willing to admit.

ii.
I missed the feeling of
you every morning.
Like comfort, like
blankets on cool nights,
soft so that it
melts into you.
That kind.
The soft, familiar kind.
I missed that.

iii.
In those
two and a half days,
she hugged me more than
you did.
She kissed me more than
you did.
Not that I was counting.

iv.
I'm only worried because I'm
not, and I know that I
should be.
That sensation of
my stomach caving in on
itself,
sucking on my lungs and
heart until nothing
works anymore-
I'm bound to feel it soon.

v.
She smelled like
his dead mother used to,
incense and flowers, and
I was staring.

vi.
In response to the
question that
keeps pounding against the
backs of my
growing eyes:
Maybe.

vii.
The scissors were in my
fingers, and for once today, Read more »