Tag: original poetry

your name on my tongue 
(the only fruit i will not eat)
is overripe,
no longer sweet– past it’s prime
and overdue– 
my heart no longer aches for you.

your name on my tongue doesn’t taste like anything anymore // a.s.m

there are places
i cannot look at myself
even when i am alone; 
please don’t
touch me there.

please love my naked soul,
please do not force
my layers off, do not force
my clothing off
before i am ready because
this body is the only thing that
i’ve ever been able to call my own
and i am not ready to
give that up yet; i’m not quite
ready to let you in.

i am learning how to grow
my own boundaries from
the dust that has finally
settled, and this body is
the only vehicle i can drive.
i am not quite ready to
share it yet.

i know you see beauty,
but the mirror paints stories of
pain and struggle and learning and
growing and scars and
bleeding
that only i see, and you can never
own that.

i don’t want to belong to
anyone but myself.

i cannot sell my body and
you cannot buy it.
i am scared to share something
i have only just learned to
love and care for because
with just a touch
you have the power to 
break it.

my body is the only thing i’ve never had to share with everyone and i cannot find it within myself to let go // a.s.m

hands grab hearts
only when they are ready
to be touched;
a middle ground where
nonsense forms beautiful truths. 
i am speeding down
the road to
eternal madness, and
all i can see is poetry
on the horizon.

too weird to live, too rare to die  // a.s.m

do you see the red stamps
underneath your own
on that screen?
dismembered mountains
pay the cost
to save the trees.

what about the wasteland you
leave behind?
a place called home.
we destroy others to destroy
our own: to crash cars 
because we smudge our
fingerprint stamps on screens
while driving.

we kill the mountains in an effort to save the trees // a.sm

i am not higher
in my silence; 
i am present. 
i am listening
to chatter that does not 
matter, to emptiness 
disguised as words. 

i am not lonely 
in this darkness; 
i am at peace. 
still in my shell, 
comfortable in nothingness, 
as everything dissolves 
into one
nothing.

meditation // a.s.m

lines from the world above 
break the surface of the sky and
shatter into a million stars. 

the north star is a lie.  
it’s a death trap; it will 
hook you, it will make you
bleed. 

don’t you ever wonder where
everyone has gone?
following stars that promise
them something beyond return; 
stars that throw your children’s 
entrails back into the sea. 

soon there will be nothing
but sandy bottoms. 
killing is what will kill us, 
eventually. 
and we will only know this
when it becomes too late.

a letter to the blue fin tuna // a.s.m

clockwork heart
beating to the rhythm of 
your affection, 
i am everyone else’s 
property but
my own by the age of
four.

a mannequin child
a dress-up doll, 
a dog small enough to 
carry in a purse. but
i don’t bark– 
i’ve been well-trained with
self hatred and
your back to my face. 

i bet you didn’t know 
you’d shrink– disappearing; 
the sun drying you
like a raisin until
you shrivel.
i no longer feel
so small. i no longer seem
so weak.
you no longer seem so right.
you are not my god anymore.
 
i will run barefoot
across the yard with
my hair down and shirt untucked.
i will breathe a little
too deeply and know for once
the only lungs
i can burst are my own.

mother // a.s.m

where have i slipped
between these cracks
that god intended for us
to sink into?
where have i gone to?
a place between my body and the sky. 
safe. 
soft. 

i can still hear
them, though.
laughing right
outside my window.
and my stomach against
this mattress is pulling me back
before i am ready to go.

i am never ready to go from here; 
where poetry flows in the streams,
where a mind is at ease,
where raw hands find peace.
you won’t cry in the night anymore here,
i promise.

there is a place of stillness within // a.s.m