This blog is a dedicated space for poets of all kinds. Our aim is to share the work of those hidden in the writing community and of course some from our favourites. We try to find new talent, as all of the staff members have different, diverse taste. Thank you for visiting -- Let the inspiration flow.
We track the "poetry" "prose" "spilled ink" and "creative writing" tags.
Irresponsibly and skillessly. Where at all. That was the first sign that something was off, something was off and wrong. He rolled over with an exaggerated lift of his legs. There was no reaction. Looked down. No dog. Looked over. Not anyone. Looked around. Only rectangular swaths of street lamp light reflected in a mirror. The formless shadows of unfamiliar furniture.
9 
I met him and I was eight and I knew his name before I knew his face.
He is the sun, or the sky, held out of my reach by terrain and distance and my name means earth in French and I loved him before I knew I did.
Cobalt is the colour of my underwear my first time that wasn’t with anybody I loved, wasn’t with him. It’s the colour of his jaw after a game in January that meant I wasn’t going to see him for a week.
“M” is the letter written like a sinking bed on a crumpled piece of paper. It’s a frown masquerading as a smile and it’s “I love you but I need to let you go” in August before the sun rises over the trees in the East.
Love is the absence that reminds the heart to think and the mind to feel. It’s the blue street lamp that returns when you do.
(Source: neglectfulfox)
40 Home, for me, is the smell of mom’s cooking. The sort that saturated my clothing, that made me aware of it when I stepped outside, and expanded like a cloud to touch the corners of every room in our little apartment. That sometimes made the neighbours and our smoke detector sneeze because it was…
11 Looking for ways to pain the numb, I sat on the floor and played with the red flag of my mailbox body. I didn’t know how to pretend to be full, so I took a knife to a pumpkin and got up to my elbows in guts, wishing I had that many, wishing they smelled as sweet and looked as ripe. I lit a tea…
26 I moved back with my parents when I was six. I’ve forgotten most of the things that happened around this time, but I remember my grandfather taking me to his workplace in the summer—a parking toll both. I remember sitting on his lap and fanning the two of us with punched parking tickets, watching them quiver in the heat like pale yellow kites. I decorated his dusty windows with mixed dates from his red time stamp, smudging them with my tiny finger prints as he folded paper cranes for me out of bleached parking receipts. There were photos of me peeking from behind the cash register, transparent stop-motion frames that casted pastel silhouettes onto his cluttered desk in the harsh sunlight. He smelled like sweat and steamed rice and it was so hard for me to understand him because he always mixed Cantonese with Mandarin, but I remember being happy anyway.
* * *
I gingerly pushed open the heavy screen to the balcony, watching dust bounce off the black wire and fade into the air. The sky hung heavy and lavender and the cars flashed over the highways like a broken string of Christmas lights. I climbed onto the railing and stared at the peeling paint, trying not to cry.
We were helping my grandparents move into their new home, an apartment for the elderly downtown near the border. My father had outgrown his tolerance for company and kicked my grandparents out. I watched my grandparents pack their belongings into two suitcases in thirty minutes earlier that day, ready to cram seventy years of living into a claustrophobia-inducing one-bedroom apartment on the twenty-third floor of a building called “Oullette Manor”—which was hardly appropriate. The place looked like a high-rise prison and reminded me of Tetris blocks of newspaper print.
“Eileen? Do you want some peaches?”
My grandfather was standing on the balcony with me, holding two peaches wrapped in dampened paper towels. The baseball cap I bought him in second grade was hiding the wisps of his silver hair. He was shrunken and crippled underneath his coat, but I saw him gargantuan and whole in his love for his granddaughter.
“I’ll change dad’s mind. Please.” My voice cracked and was shredded over the roar of rush hour traffic.
“What?” My grandfather was seventy years old and almost deaf. “Come inside for peaches, Eileen.”
I clenched my eyes shut and shook my head. I waited for the door to slam shut.
He couldn’t live here. No, not my grandfather, not the man who sliced kiwis for me in the spring when my eyes were crimson with allergies, not the man who taught me how to properly fold dumplings by their creased waves, not the man who cut out every single one of my newspaper articles and had them laminated even though he didn’t understand them, not the man who sat patiently for hours in the library as I read the Nancy Drew series, no, not in this place that stunk of cat food and abandonment and cigarette smoke and disease and claustrophobia and factory smog and my father’s polluted heart. Not here. Never.
I later begged my mother to talk to my father. She swallowed silence in the face of his onerous tyranny.
“It’s your own father!”
She turned away and left me alone to my newfound hatred for my father in the bedroom that used to be my grandfather’s.
I burned the dregs of her awful surrender until there was only my crude, black resolve to never sell myself to anyone ever—not even for love.
Janice’s note: I don’t have the words to express how poignant this piece is.
45 The cherry of my cigarette burns a fiery red, maybe some strains of orange.
I feel like I’m inhaling the breath of the sun in minuscule form.
Whispers turn the smoke into songs and illuminate beneath the
Moonlight. It’s like an aurora show leaving the collision of our
Atmospheres that belong to these winter winds,I hold my jacket tight against my body, I can feel the cold inhale me.
Warmth escapes through my nostrils and cloud the bottoms of my dreams.
If only you were here to see this beautiful sight I know the stars wouldn’t
Want it any other way.
(Source: lunaa-delcasadore)
5 It should’ve been ideal. It should’ve been perfect. The perfect guy on the perfect date on the perfect night. Instead it was irritating, and it all started with orchids. My corsage. I’d insisted upon them, because I was a spoiled brat and my dress was a lovely deep violet, velvet and satin, and only orchids would do.
The instant you placed the expensive corsage on my wrist, the itching started. Halfway through dinner I noticed a rash extending to my elbow, crawling upwards from the locus of the furious red ring the corsage itself had made around my wrist. Rings echoing still others I’d sought to hide. I took the thing off. It took several more months for me to remove you; the onset of your rash was more subtle and less immediate.
To this day I tell people (if it comes up) that I’m allergic to orchids. I don’t touch them and I don’t let them touch me. But still I think they’re the most beautiful things. And still I don’t know if I’m allergic to orchids, or if my histamines were trying to tell me something.
61 you’re addicted to cigarettes.‘“i love you so much, i’ll quit if you ask me to-” i laughed at that. i told you that you could continue, do what you pleased. who was i to stop you from slowly killing yourself? that’s a choice you have to make, not me.
i’m sitting with you on this smoke-scented early morning, watching you burn the days ahead of you like the ignited tip of an unfiltered cigarette, still saying no words. you put your head in your hands. you say,”i have no self worth”. you’re lying to me between those blackened lips of yours. you know you do, it’s me who couldn’t stand in the way and bite your fingers for you.
(Source: biocurator)
19 Something is missing.
And I am drinking the cold air with a violent thirst, acknowledging the signs that have led me back here. My arms grip the railing of this abandoned house with lightening bolt hands and celibate thighs. Chaffed. Reliving brightly colored birthday parties and home movies recorded on Super 8. I can smell the chemicals of expired polaroid film and the breath of pot roast dinners with steamed baby carrots. And I remember us spinning, the world becoming a green and blue blur. I remember how lost our footing was and how we collapsed to the hardwood floors, our stomachs in stitches. Our feet abrupt and teenage clumsy.
Gone are the days when permanent addresses brought a sense of safety and heating bills did not exist. These years now vanished into faux suede wallets. Tucked away like diner receipts and ugly photographs of former selves.
Strange how at five years old the world seems much more alive. Our tiny fingers taunt around our mothers. Our hearts in the right place, at the right time. But now, we are ancient. Textbooks for arms and legs like spinach leaves.
My chest is a paradigm. Heaving, caving, heaving, and caving. Unnaturally jealous of the Phoenix and how unpredictable it is. Always growing from the ash of another. Appearing just as the sun peels away from the clouds.
Janice’s note: Wow. I love this.
15 Dearest,
Before you begin with resolutions you won’t keep, you should try starting the new year hungover instead of hung up over someone — with alcohol poisoning instead of lovesickness. You should find a way to belong to yourself again. To inhale and exhale without sighing.
Midnight is where dreams first kissed reality, who now waits at the altar for a bride that won’t come. Leave the ghosts in the past where they belong.
Wake up tomorrow with a headache, to the sun through the missing blinds. Roll over to find that your bed has doubled in size. Find that the light has turned the rooftops into mountain summits, because the sky could only be this clear above the clouds.
In literature, for reasons unknown to you, sacrifice in the name of someone else is always more noble than self-preservation. Pull your bathrobe close. Embrace that being single doesn’t have to mean being incomplete.
Love,
Yourself.
24 I try to put emphasis on my affections, placing my heart on scales to show you the weight of your name tucked in it’s chambers, (I love you as much as the moon longs for the sun’s kiss on it’s dimming surface) with beats wrapping words around my ribcage hoping that you find something to hold amongst the syllables because four letters just isn’t enough (my love for you is as constant as the rolling tides caressing our distant shores) because we are five thousand air miles and eight hours apart, I wish for you to feel me, just as I feel you (in the way the sky feels the stars, prickling with heat as they illuminate the darkest spots of the night) while I search for similes and metaphors you can fit yourself into, kissing each and every one to taste the stories that are written in between my lips.
(via fossilheart-deactivated20130414)
17 she pole dances around lightning bolts
and swears that love will never die,
“cross my heart”; or better, nail it to a stake,
carve the million stars into it. it will bleed
holiness.
.
you know she ate flower petals and laughed
when they withered inside of her?
“i am so sad”
you who has no army.
.
she has birds in her hair
and an anchor down her throat.
…
…
…
Janice’s note: The last two lines are so poignant. As is the rest of the poem. I really like this.
23 cal was all bones—edges and corners and jutting angles. people would ask, “cal, why don’t you eat?” and cal would reply, “i do, i just have a fast metabolism.” nobody pushed it.
his faucet was broken. he’d complained once or twice to no one in particular and, as expected, it had yet to be fixed. every night it would drip and drip and drip until the gentle melody lulled cal to sleep, and every morning he’d wake feeling twice as tired as the night before. people would ask, “cal, why don’t you go to bed earlier?” and cal would reply, “i will, i guess i just have a lot on my mind.” nobody pushed it.
on a thursday in november, cal walked in on two people in his parents’ bed, one of which was his mother. the other was a man with thick, chestnut hair (brown wouldn’t do it justice) and a waxed chest. cal’s father probably would have called him a pussy. cal didn’t call him anything. instead, he turned on his heel, sprinted to the toilet, and vomited up six saltine crackers. people would ask, “cal, how’s your father dealing with the divorce?” and cal would reply, “he’s alright, but he needs some time.” nobody pushed it.
christmas came and went like a flurry even though cal had secretly hoped for a blizzard. he went to a party and drank far too much and a pretty girl with a blood alcohol content of 0.2 stood on her tip-toes and kissed him under the mistletoe. sometimes he still wonders if it hurt when she was ejected from the passenger seat of his 1996 chevy malibu. people would ask, “cal, did they ever get around to fixing that guard rail?” and cal would reply, “i’m not sure, i don’t really drive much anymore.” nobody pushed it.
cal was 6 foot 3 by the end of his eighteenth year. he felt awkward and gangly and wrong in this big man body that was surely meant for someone else. the doctors said that cal needed to gain weight; they claimed that 118 pounds was too thin for a boy of his height. who were these strangers in white coats to tell cal he didn’t meet their standards? he was pretty, and pretty was thin, and thin was good. people would ask, “cal, are you eating breakfast?” and cal would reply, “sometimes, if i remember.” nobody pushed it.
his mother moved to colorado because she wanted to take up skiing. besides, the man with the waxed chest had a nice place in the mountains and fiscal security, whereas cal’s father was a lazy alcoholic and didn’t mean it when he gave cal that black eye last month. cal continued to forget about breakfast and his parents continued to forget about cal. people would ask, “cal, are you okay?” and cal would reply, “no, i want to fucking die.” nobody pushed it.
cal’s father accidentally slept through the first half of his funeral while a handful of his former peers sat in the third row from the back and clung to one another like leeches. his mother wept for three weeks, wiped away her sorrows with an embroidered handkerchief, and hit the slopes once more. “it’s what he would have wanted me to do,” she’d said. the man with the waxed chest didn’t remember cal’s middle name. it was joseph, by the way. calvin joseph.
people would ask, “cal, are you in heaven now?” and cal wouldn’t say with a goddamn word.
nobody pushed it.
Yasmin’s note: This is such a great piece of writing, truly incredible. Watch her, she’s something special.
14 things to remember when eyes are sad.
1) do not be ashamed.2) wrists have birthed crescents la luna is jealous of.
3) your mother saw a future in your tiny bones. she splits open a pomegranate with both hands in a sun lit kitchen, head thrown back in laughter, hoyoo is always a vision. she is counting on you.
4) your skin is riddled with scars and stretch marks are stars that connect to form constellations bright with stories that you will one day share with a wet tongue. the freckles that scatter your shoulders and dip like the ocean down your back is fairy dust, sprinkle it in breaking’s wake.
5) thank god your mouth is a full mouth.
6) there are books carefully collected that line shelves in your room and library’s and quaint bookstores tucked away in forgotten corners that you can escape into. a cup of coffee and your favourite chair, you spend hours cherishing every letter.
7) the sky, the air, the lonely nights, the path that veers off course and into the woods, the spaces between conversations, cheekbones, the way a soft voice breathes your name - all love you.
8) hey Sad Eyes, i know that you drown sometimes.
9) and it’s okay.
10) it’s okay.
Michelle’s Note: Beautiful, beautiful
(Source: balanbaalis)
67 