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.
There’s a poem intertwined in the stray strands of your beard, and a story tucked into the tears along the gem of your favorite ( and only) jacket - you know, the one you love to loan me when I’m shivering.
I hear a song between your eyelashes and I can’t help but him along.Can you hear what I’m singing to you?
10 
We try so very hard not to see each other.
We avoid eye contact with other people, we’ll really only speak to people we already know. Our gaze slides from the faces of those around us as though through thin air, we barely exchange with each other. Why is this? We’re all the same, we’re all people, yet we blush if we chance to meet another’s gaze, and we’re uncomfortable being too close to people. We forget that everyone else is like us, we fancy ourselves special and everyone else foreign and unnatural and distant.
We’re determined to be lonely.
8 Some people are born missing limbs, but we’re born unable to keep from aspiring towards awe.
The we I mean are the writers of the word, the wordsmiths of the world, who wield as weapons their vowels, while constantly forging consonant shields. And the awe I mean is all around us, for we are translators to the wind and experienced astral projectors. We are the souls that won’t be silenced, that will aspire to echo through time instead of wrinkling in life.
We are the oracle scribes to the beauty beheld. While some notice smiles, we can see secrets - or stanzas and verses that keep nothing hidden. We make fickle admirers, for one day we’re loyal to night, the next we’re proposing to first sunlight, because when you’re infatuated by the moment, it’s not all that easy to be monogamous. We are the fierce romantics who would place you on a pedestal, and then a cross if you double-crossed us. Perhaps only figuratively - but possibly not.
And we are the keepers of street corners, the pavement preachers, who make the rainclouds our ceilings, and the rains into showers. It’s not always an easy life, especially when you can spell bread but not buy it, so this message I would share with all of my kin, with those who would perish of hunger over starving their souls — they might make it so we can’t pay for the liquor, but they can’t take away that we can piss on that.
Our subject matter doesn’t matter, it’s the creed that connects us, this belief that binds us, that we should die with the pen in our hands, and unfinished stories in our hearts.
And perhaps, because of this, we will live on, too — in the thoughts of the lovers of the written word.
In the ongoing history of the evolution of the martyr.
Now and forever.
Wor(L)d without end.
Amen.
17 You were the insecure kind in high school, the maddening sort that couldn’t accept a compliment, so it surprised even me when we started talking in the cafeteria. You were in the year below me, but I was behind by a century, because I thought myself broken, and you didn’t know it yet, but you were the return of Florence Nightingale.
We got to speaking on the phone, which progressed to you falling asleep on the phone, but between our greetings and your dreams, we talked about the things that made us feel human - about the things that made us wish we didn’t have to be. I learned how to hear when you were smiling, and that your words come out honestly when you’re nearest to sleep.
One time you told me that you sometimes touched yourself when we spoke on the phone, and I said I didn’t believe you. I listened more closely when you fell asleep that night, but all I heard was your snoring confess that it overheard me when I thought that — damn — I might actually be falling in love with you.
It turned out that all you wanted from me was a lullaby, because you outgrew me like your night light.
Looking back on it now, I figure we all have the one that got away, but you remain the one I can’t seem to get away from.
Janice’s note: Poignant
36 I’ve been thinking of taking up smoking. The woman at the top of the subway stairs, leaning on the bannister while it’s starting to rain, she looks like she’d rather keep smoking than stay dry, and she seems the sort of person that someone could be in love with.
I watch her from the corner of my eye as I climb the steps, the left-handed lady whose ring finger seems encircled by flame when she raises the lighter to reignite the cigarette between her lips. Made of gold and encrusted in jewels, shackles are still shackles. Our eyes meet, but there’s someplace I have to be, and she has someone to wonder who she’s spending her time with, so I keep on walking.
A flicker of lightning and a cough of thunder has me thinking that God’s a smoker too. By the way the rain’s really starting to come down, he might be a drunkard as well. I make a run for it, breaking mirrors called puddles with every other one of my footfalls.
My lungs give out at the convenience store down the street from our place. Breathing hard and riding on a whim, I trade the churning night sky for a flourescent ceiling of lights, sealing the deal with a bell chime when I open the door. It wasn’t my lung capacity that caught your attention, so its dwindling shouldn’t turn you away. I pick up a pack and decide not to hurry as I slosh along the sidewalk that leads to the apartment.
I head up the stairs and our door’s unlocked. You’re sitting with your feet on the couch and a book in your hands. I feel the pain of almost wanting to laugh when I see the way your glasses have slipped to the tip of your freckled nose. You make a bookmark with your finger between the pages as you look up at me sopping in the entrance. With a smile like a bullet that turns my heart into a victim, I feel suffocated when my chest is pressed up against yours. You wrap your arms around my waist, and in doing so discover the carton in my pocket.
You fish it out, looking confused. “You don’t smoke,” you say.
Neither do you, but your hair has the smell of an ashtray again, so whoever you’ve been seeing behind my back, he definitely does.
I kiss you on the cheek and step out onto the balcony, not simply to smoke, but to sip from a straw the remedy for living.
37 Amy’s Note: This is a prose poem if I’ve ever seen one. Lovely.
In the longing to belong, I sip whatever glass you hand me and though it’s contents are ice cold they warm my esophagus as they slide their way down. Slowly, with every drink I take the room becomes liquid and I am reaching out for you across the kitchen. You’re seated at the table, discussing business. Out come the bottles and the bags, the scales, the knives, the credit cards, the lighters, the rolled up twenty dollar bills that find their way into the bottom of your pockets.
In the longing to belong, I watch and count the lines as they appear on the table, thin, crooked, white, gone within seconds. I reach instinctively for your car keys but remember that I can’t drive standard, and realize I might be a bit too tipsy to drive in the first place. You call my name for a few seconds before I snap out of this thought and walk gingerly across the room to your outstretched arm, fearing that one false step will set the world out of balance. You stage-whisper half into my ear, half into my hair, and ask if I’d like to take a little trip with you.
In the longing to belong, I nod, and take the twenty from your hand. I’d watched you so many times so I could imitate the way you dipped your head and pushed your sinuses back. You laugh, and wonder aloud if your influence on me is such a good thing anymore, and then you ask me how I feel. Normal, I say, but then I shiver mostly from anticipation. I reach for your hand to hold, weaving your fingers with mine so that should I lose my touch with reality I’ll be grounded to you. By the time I’m headed for the come up, I feel my soul sinking down.
23 Dear L,
Have you forgotten me so soon? Or have you retreated from my kindness because you can’t handle your own gravity? I feel like sometimes, you are afraid to succeed, and in my eyes, you see your success reflected. Is that why you have turned away? To avoid my gaze? Or have you left to pursue your greatness?
I want you back, L. I miss you. Helping you stand tall made me feel relevant. I felt like I was something powerful, something important. The weight of your arms around me and your head on my shoulder made me feel balanced. Now, I am all askew, wandering in circles. I feel like the vastness of the universe is swallowing me up without notice. You made me feel noticed, L. I wish you were here.
I hope that wherever you are, you are flying high. Soaring above your insecurities, like you deserve to. I hope that the words rolling off your tongue are captivating those around you. I hope you are believing in yourself. Even though your hand has slipped from my grasp, I still believe in you. Though I can’t see you in distance, I know you are illuminated.
Shine on, my friend.
-Coco
(Source: lyricalpuppetry)
27 Miniature waves of emotion settle in a drop, they roll down reaching out, reluctant to fall. The throat becomes sore, it stings as it pulls back as it tries to freeze the drop so it never falls; as it tries to stop something it can’t stop.
Waves of emotion fall down a steep slope, still warm. A river follows but soon breaks under a skinquake. It shakes off the rest, forcing them to land all over the chest.
Laksh’s note: Skinquake is officially a word.
(via readingme-deactivated20120129)
