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.
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The first time I watched a beheading, I was thirteen. It was an American soldier. I can’t remember if it was from Afghanistan or from Iraq. The video was put online, and my brother brought me into the room when our parents weren’t home, and he pulled it up. The video was grainy and buffered a lot,…
5 
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 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 There’s a skeleton forest outside, unsheathed of its leaves, that has punctured the sky. It’s bleeding the first snow of the season. I heard a Christmas song on the radio while on my way to work, but instead of reminding me of what’s to come, I felt, with the heaviness of ice on branches, all the things that I’d lost. I thought of the cookies I used to leave out, and the stockings that lined the stairwell of the old house, which my brother and I would check each December morning for a small trinket or sweet. I thought of the romances that kept me warm during the colder nights, and of the absent embraces that made me one with the stars that shivered on the clearest of evenings. I thought of the times mom and dad had to work Christmas Eve, and of the boy I used to be, but the stoplight shifted from red back to green, and like the wipers on my windshield, I swept the melting snow from my eyes.
22 Drink, beautiful mind, drink to feel the emptiness collide with the finish line. You’re still breathing? Good. I am breathing through corrupted lungs, usually I heave blood along with my voice box, so that I won’t be able to sing anymore. I see a future in your lenses, you’re not bleeding like me,
you bleed with feelings, your oxygenated crafts leave me to feel weightless. I feel tickled by your ambitions. I have a masochistic persona, I breathe in chemicals to kill my brittle sight, a radioactive force pushing against my revolution. I am painted blue, I am running out of everything good, I am a shrinking system.
Beautiful mind, I count on you to bring me back, would you bring me back? Some say a new age is coming to consume us all, I just want to be a part of the fiasco, a festival of prayers and consolidations.
I am so tired of the condensation, and I just want to disappear into the pollution, come get me out of the rot, you are my only one, my only one,
my only solution in this garden.
12 Old love stays exactly that – old in my bones. It aches. Walking, I think:
Black frame glasses, dark classic hair, sharp facial features, love of my life, eye color unknown…maybe hazel, thin frame, broad shoulders, musician’s hands, walking towards me and now by me, smells like musty pea coat, shaven, he doesn’t even know, a cruel doppelganger, the love of my life, gone, he doesn’t even know.
As I’m walking back to 1 N. Bedford St., Apt. 007, I feel this obsession overwhelm me. It wasn’t him. It can never be him. He doesn’t live here and hasn’t for a long time.
Opening the door to my apartment, I hear my two cats approaching. Sesame, a fat tabby with a shave spot on his right side from his last visit to the vet, and Loki, a grey and white kitten of 9 months who one moment reminds you of a cute baby bunny and the next a gremlin. I have a third cat made of ashes, Poppy. He was Sesame’s brother.
~ Mel YoYo
5 I’m careful when I walk down the street, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk, knowing what it’s like to feel down-trodden, splintering, cracking at the weather’s whims, with no say in the matter. The way the rain clings to the street makes it look like sweat, a city’s-worth from working overnight, awaiting the morning replacements who flirt wide-eyed with their ceilings and the romantic concept of sleep.
The cigarettes in my pocket count each footfall, a constant clicking, like a clock at midnight, reminding me of my mortality, an anxiety that only smoking seems to soothe. That reminds me — the faintness of the tapping means I need more. I turn into the convenience store, hair clinging to my forehead like plastic-wrap, like these fluorescent lights that they probably also use for surgeries. The place smells exotic, that is, something that we’re not used to, and the Indian spices in the air press the back of my taste buds each time I breathe in.
Behind the counter is the daughter of the store owner, dark-skinned, luminous, like burning coal, relentless, unquenchable.
“More of the same,” I say, with this mirthless smile that makes it sadder than if I hadn’t smiled, which is why I did it.
“Smoking’s bad, you know?” There’s still something of an accent in her speech, and it makes me — not exactly swell — but pulse with a bit of heat, borrowed from the embers of her slightest movements.
“Sure it is.” But what I mean to say is that I’ll quit when her accent does.
10 Just lay with me in your thinnest dress, with the skirt that surrounds your soles. Be naked except for skin. Feel the moon wash off your make-up and my fingers in your hair, and let me shampoo you with the shadows while I shower you with kisses. Offer to me your tears — both the liquid sort that rhymes with fears and the rips in your fabric that make you feel like you’re fraying. Forget your worries and unstitch those fastened knees. Thread your fingers between mine, and let me do some patchwork.
20 - i fell down because of the crack on the ground so i held breath so i wouldn’t cry out loud. it was hard. it was really really hard, and jaimee’s voice told me to believe and i asked her in what and she couldn’t answer so i broke and started to cry. i reached out my fumbling hands to find mary’s leg, and she lifted me back up, kissed me on my cheeks, and said, “be more careful next time, bumblebee.” and then she continued to talk to james. i reached for james’ cheeks and i poked at his eyes. he laughed and brushed my hands away, but my hands were there long enough to know that james’ blue eyes softened for mary; maybe fairytales do exist in real life, and i finally wiped the water from my eyes.
- i like having my cheeks against the ground. i can sometimes hear the footsteps from the giant who lives in a even-more-of-a-giant bean stalk and sometimes i can hear the mouse’s padding footsteps. i heard footprints, too. i can feel the sighs of the pebbled Earth. james told me about how this man named Jesus splattered wet mud on the eyes of a man who was like me, and james said that the man jumped up in joy and told everyone about the roses he saw and longed for late nights to just sit and watch the world unfold in front of him. so, i rubbed my face into the dirt to see if i could get some of Earth’s breaths on my eyes; jaclyn laughed at me and said that dirt will never work for your dying eyes and mary just brushed the pieces of the dirt away and whispered to me, “don’t worry, we’ll just try next, we’ll always have next time, right?” i always liked it when her hands ran through my sparse hair.
my hands touched her rosy cheeks but they felt wet lakes so i asked her why and she couldn’t answer without choking from her broken letters.
- i asked james what the stars felt like when we were camping in the woods. he said that they’re hot and they’re on fire every day and i said, “that must hurt” and he said, “yeah, of course, bumblebee. but they’re strong. like you.” and i crinkled my nose as he touched it with his index finger like a magic wand. then mary added and said, “but why do you ask us? you see it everyday, bumble bumblebee. you’ve felt it before, too.” (she adds an extra sometimes when she feels just more…. extra) so then i asked her if it was the black painting i see at the hospital every day and james and mary suddenly stopped talking.
- afterwards, the doctor said that everything might turn black soon because he said that he was turning off the lights, and i said “but, sir, it’s been this way ever since nurse sally wheeled me back to the room.” and i only heard the door click and my nurse sally choke like mary did that one time i fell.
- some people say that there is 1 out of a million chance that i will be drawn from the drawing, and i always ended up being the 999999 out of a million to not get it.
- they also say that there is only 48% chance that i survive through the side effects of leukemia (for me, with the addition of the eyes); i ended up being the 52%.
- mary was beside me. i asked her if the storm was going away now, and she ran her fingers through my hair one last time and grabbed my hands so that i can feel her head nod up and down.
Amy’s Note: This is so beautiful and heart-wrenching.
(Source: strawberryminefield)
25 I know a girl who wiped the sky with her fingertips and painted it with strings and her voice. And she commanded it with each pitch and each melody that flooded out like the Nile, the sky changing color and swaying to her mood until new clouds leave the nests of rain and come to watch her in the sun.
I know a boy who doesn’t smile he much. He says it’s because the moon came one night and let it ride on its back, lounging in its craters. He said he fell in love with the moon’s face and gave it his heart. After, he fell from the sky, open hole in his chest, moon dust in his veins.
This girl when she was changing skies, was trying to find her heart. She knew it was somewhere, and she believed it was in the clouds. She was told her heart was useless, that she was not enough of what the world thought she should be. She believed most of this, but not all. So she continued to sing with the hope she had left.
This boy still did not smile even in the day when the moon was hiding from him. He was walking, kicking up the dust with his feet when he saw a beating heart in a tree. A fleshy, red and beating heart with beautiful plump veins and thick, healthy blood. He grew excited and placed it in his own chest, thinking the moon had pitied him and dropped it down onto the Earth. But it did not fit.
The girl was singing in the night, and the moon hummed to her voice but it did not match the beauty and tried to outshine her. But the stars all looked in her direction. She never sang at night, but her sadness had overwhelmed her, black and blue. Something stopped her voice - a beat had erupted in the night, flowing with her voice.
The boy held the girls heart in his hands. He stood dumbfounded, gaping at the absolute beauty of this girl, and he knew the heart had to be hers. He approached slowly and gave it back to her,”I believe this is yours.”As the moon saw her former lover, in anguish she dropped the boy’s heart out of her crater and it fell in the water.
“You’re missing a heart too.”The girl said, looking toward the water. A heart was falling, and as it hit the water the impact sent the stars into an array of colors and they whirled around and sang. The girl ran to the water, ignoring the protests of the boy. She dived deep into the soul of the river and grabbed his heart.
The boy felt life in him again as he felt gentle fingertips take his heart. Soaking wet, the girl who could change the sky brought him his heart, holding it like it were her own. As she placed his heart inside, her fingers softly making sure each artery and ventricle were connected, she said,”Smile a little. Your heart has been brought back to you. I have brought it back for you.”
The boy smiled. And it was a real smile, and every fiber of his body beat hard, blood splashing in an ecstasy of knowing that the fingers that had touched his heart oh so gently like hers had were the ones he would belong to.
(Source: undeveloped-apathy)
60 we were “lowkey” but i struggled to keep someone as wonderful as you a secret. i wanted to share you with the world and proclaim you mine. you were the first to ever kiss my insecurities and since that day,i’ve learned to wear them as trophies. my lips marked their territory on your skin. in every conversation,you left me feeling like a bride wearing glass shoes. the hood of your car felt like home as we gazed upon the stars and your chest made a cave i could fall into for me. and although i have repented to Him,i still can’t help but wish for time to repeat itself. i remember i would secretly record your voice as you sung to me,and now i listen to the same songs and cry tears of shame. i am ashamed to say you were my most beloved sin. my favorite sin.
sometimes,i walk and catch your shadow steps ahead of mine and my heart skips a beat. i remind myself you aren’t here,not anymore. yesterday,i swear the wind whispered your name in my ear and i know i’m going insane by the thought of you but i wish the ground didn’t open up and swallow you so quickly. i wish time wasn’t against us and i wish the clock slowed down a millisecond for you and i. i wish the tree bent herself in order to avoid you. god knows i would have bent my own spine if it meant the car would steer away from your tragedy.
there are so many things i wish i told you,but now words mean nothing to me.
i wish you were here.
(via juweriya-deactivated20121012)
8 I looked across the jello-y water of the pool every day of August, rain or shine, and didn’t look away from its shimmering flatness until something came to break it. Sometimes it never rippled for an hour or more, until a leaf or a gum wrapper blew in. That broke the spell. The water, when it was still and set against the aquamarine paint and the gray sky, looked too stable to be liquid.
I clocked in at the Bluegrass Neighborhood Association Pool every day at nine and never left till seven unless there was a big storm. It was a cold summer, August had yielded to fall prematurely, and all the children and the other lifeguards had stopped coming. Hungry, bored, with college on my heels, I grabbed up every shift. No one came. I stared into the water. I brought three books each day. I switched the pump house radio to NPR and floated, watching the grass beyond the fence, listening to Diane Rehm’s creaky voice, or to a special rebroadcast of the musical 1776.
I made lists of classes I would take, careers I could have. I almost hadn’t been allowed to go to college, I’d been caught shoplifting and smoking and cutting class almost too often. I’d fantasized about leaving the town since I was little. Urban exploration, booze and research laboratories and becoming a graffiti artist— that’s what awaited, I was sure.
I rode my mom’s 1975 Schwinn Collegiate down the road, past greenhouses and miles of corn fields. Each day I biked fifteen miles after swimming all during my shift, then ate a loaf of rye bread crammed with dates. I shrouded my adolescent hips and tailbone in new flesh and muscle. I shook off the girl who didn’t sleep or eat or go to class or exercise and tried to replace her with a strong-boned academic.
One night I swerved in the dark to dodge the splattered carcass of a raccoon. My bike skittered, and I fell. There was a red barn with the Ohio Bicentennial seal painted on the side and a house with no doors or windows and grass up to my waist. My earbuds had fallen out in the crash. I heard a kitten mewling.
It was tiny and wet. Its ribs looked like my sister’s had when she’d been hospitalized at age three, and five, and six, and seven. It was sweet and scared. I coaxed it over to me. My mom detested cats; that she’d refuse it was all I could think. She’d been forced to tolerate a cat for twenty years already; She’d say her term was done.
I raced home and packed a plastic bag with cheese and turkey. When I’d returned the meat was already hot and the cheese sweaty. After twenty minutes of clawing through brush the kitten couldn’t be found, so I left the food scattered about, and pedaled home certain it would die.
The night before leaving for college was the most celebratory I’d ever had. I stayed up with a friend who wasn’t going anywhere, slipping vodka into orange juices in the smoking section of the restaurant where she worked. Some drop-out we knew came by with swisher sweets and menthols and our skin was coated in stickiness and smoke.
My mom and I drove two hours in the sunrise, pumping the disco she liked. I was going to the biggest university in the country, in a real city. I had just changed my name. My mother’d just bought a new condominium, and I told her to get the two bedroom, not the three. That I wouldn’t be living there was my reason. What if you want to visit, she asked? I’ll use the couch, I said.
I’d just seen my father for the last time ever. He mowed the lawn outside the pool where I worked, avoiding my glances from up in the lifeguard’s chair. We never spoke, but sometimes he left me apologetic notes scrawled on legal paper.
When we pulled into the University parking lot, I reflected that the now-defunct summer was the first I’d ever liked myself. That I liked who I was becoming. I’d read and written a lot, taken care of myself and not taken any shit.
After I was moved in, when I said goodbye to my mother in the parking garage, I collapsed into a mess of wails and tears. I hugged her too long and secretly, silently told her not to go. I shook as I waved her car away, then hid behind a parking barrier to sob more. I didn’t go back to my dorm for hours, for fear of being seen. I had not expected this. She hadn’t known what to do. A black fist of mourning clutched at my stomach. I’d been wrong. I’d been totally wrong.
Amy’s Note: I’m a sucker for postmodernism, and this fits the bill perfectly.
(Source: erikadprice)
9 My grandfather has a collection of model trains in his basement. Hundreds of little engines line the wall, a menagerie of plastic and loud primary colors. I asked him as a child to show me the one he loved best.
“The one I keep losing,” he laughed, “my train of thought.”Passing through town several weeks back, I stopped overnight at their old Victorian brownstone. We talked well into the late hours, my grandfather finally excusing himself near midnight. Handing me the same cup of chamomile tea she’s been making me since childhood, my grandmother fixed me in her steady gaze.
“Where are you going, Mallory?” She asked. Her accent has always acted as a hot compress, drawing mine to the surface, but in recent years that seems to hurt more than help.
“I’m not really sure anymore,” I said, “I think I’ve derailed.”
She sat next to me, legs tucked up underneath her, the couch dwarfing her small frame. It’s odd to see a presence I once thought so large and commanding as a child with adult eyes, tiny next to me.
“Your grandfather always travels on trains twice; both there and back. I think that’s true for our entire family, every journey we take is one day retraced, returning.”
Through the steam rising over my cups’ rim, I watched her quietly, her only grandchild who has never rushed her words.“I hope,” she began, “I hope one day you take a train you don’t ride back on. I hope you purchase a one-way ticket and keep moving forward and you don’t come back to those old haunts you’ve known. You are more than what you’ve been, you are braver than where you’ve lived.”
In two years I’ll be done with school. In two years I’ll be in a train station, ticket in hand, and in two years I’ll be gone.
Amy’s Note: This is so applicable to my life right now, and really is good advice for anyone. I don’t always like stories with really clear morals, but this one does it well.
(Source: jackkerowack)
26 She asks it with forced lightness. She wants there to be sympathy in her tone. “Oh, you poor thing.” There is none, though. She cannot cover her frustration. “Oh, you slow shithead. Can’t you tell that I want to leave?”
A common question. “Where’re your baggers?” Translated – ‘I’m observant enough to see that you don’t have a bagger but not enough to see that you don’t keep the bags under lock and key. I’ll just stand here and watch, and-wait, why aren’t those ringing up at $4.99? The sign said ….”
This lady isn’t the worst. She could have brought her two sons, and the three of them could stand there - or the two sons could start asking her about their evening plans an who was going to get the car, and both of them would be wearing gray tanktops to showcase their biceps (not worth it) but they’ll shirk out of lifting a single yogurt carton, taking a single bag - even the one with the bread. That would be close to the worst because your mother reminded you that the reason she had kids was so that she wouldn’t have to bring in her groceries.
You have discovered a lot about where you live. Bananas are popular. They’re also cheap. A surprising number of hunchbacks, too. Everyone has some physical ailment. “Do you need me to lift up the water?” “Do you need this watermelon?” They’re really asking you if you’re going to make this poor, old, feeble lady pick up her heavy stuff again – oh, and shame on you if you do.
Not everyone is like this. There is the lady who must live off cilantro and peach tea. Her eyes barely break the counter, and you want to tell her of the famous actress she reminds you of, but you don’t know how she’ll take it. There is the gentleman who comes in each night for a six pack and slowly counts his ones as he sets them on the belt. Actually, he hasn’t come in in a while. You wonder if he’s dead.
here is ice cream melting in three different parts of the store, and you’ll find them later. You’ll find the bag of fifty styrofoam plates missing about thirty and tucked behind the apple juice. The spilled plastic box of neon-colored toothpicks.
You are a snob. You know that, right? You hold the fried deli chicken bags with your fingertips and gingerly set them at the far end of your counter. You roll your eyes with every frozen pizza, every LeanCuisine that comes through. Why don’t people just cook more?
(via noconsensusonaname-deactivated2)
5 