poemtown

[poemtown]

a little bit

i am scared of a few things:

small spaces, tall skyscrapers and ships,

but sometimes i can't help but to sit and observe for a bit;

it's strangely calming to feel little,

like a fish who is about to be eaten by something it might've seen coming;

it won't feel as much as it would in a shallow bucket, suffocating.

all it can see is the sky, dirty walls and a few of the other fish that didn't get a chance

to feel little for very long in the endless ocean.

but what am i scared of, really?

maybe it's the fact that towers can fall and boats can sink,

though it can't be that simple when i really think;

do you ever think about how slow a high-rise building falls,

or how slow a grand vessel sinks when you watch from afar

even though inside of it, everything is happening so fast?

surely, it's scarier to be inside.

or maybe what i'm scared of is this:

do people get to feel little in their last moments?

@poemtown 27th February 2023

#poemtown #death tw #collection; crossroads

[poemtown]

monarchy

my bright baby born under the sound of

red hot church bells beaming their minute

upon the rows and rows of beings like you,

hoping, praying for ruin, to taint the bright,

to swoop away the miracle's memory at night

with peoples that sing and metal that rings

not like a bell, but that of a polythene god

fluttering in the wind, torn by time

its message eaten by the crows.

@poemtown 26th February 2024

#poemtown #collection; sandbox

[poemtown]

daan

what if i breathed life into the earth

with the very same blood that you cursed

now replenishing itself with the vigor and

desperation to become, naïve but so new,

what if i projected a different future

with the very same time that you turned

over and over in your hundred year spectacle

seen under dusted spectacles, held in my hands are

great big plans that will never come to fruition,

what if i relived it? the same sure and short lives

of children that could never grow for

nobody would pick them up to see the world;

what desire would there be for me to

reach so high?

but at the very least,

what if i started afresh?

with all of you in my pocket

flying on a wish we could never express.

@poemtown 18th February 2024

#poemtown #collection; wheels

[poemtown]

mortality

how can the fire not forgive you when

your very tears extinguish it? oh, how each

lash of your bright eyes forms the points of

stars, sewn into the sky with threads that have

long faded into unknowing humanity;

how is it that the descent of what was

once the beholder of gravity, is not wept for

other than by you? how is it that your skin still

blackens at the fingertips, while you seek

that same warmth again from that which has

taken it away?

yet, i will whisper into relentless infinity,

until the blaze will repent aloud before

your very eyes, in its own wretched anguish:

"oh, be forgiven, humankind!"

so that it may reach you, light years away,

so that the tears may never dry.

@poemtown 13th February 2024

#poemtown #collection; sandbox

[poemtown]

desh

and how the calendar flips so that

my old hair whips through the wind on

green car journeys, maybe an hour too early where

we drove around the empty mud roads;

though it was dark and the headlights were

taken up by the sleeping sand i could see

myself standing in the rear view mirror;

i'll see you when the hour's up.

@poemtown 29th January 2024

#poemtown #collection; swings

[poemtown]

symphony sham

oh stricken functioning creature that plays me

like an old guitar

so out of tune that the sound

is yet to travel far

will it ever? well remember please

that you will never please

the amateur who wants to

have a go themselves

when the strings turn to keys

@poemtown 29th January 2024

#poemtown #collection; wheels

[poemtown]

omnipresent

tell me i'm so perfect you'd kill me if you

had the chance. if everything was in place and

nobody would remember my face after

you took me away, nobody but me. tell me

you'd kill me, and it would hurt, and you'd

throw that person's body without thought into

a shallow grave, along with everything that it

carries: blood that has stilled, shrunken muscle,

an old house key, and a pen that

doesn't work but wrote the evidence of

my existence that you were sure to destroy

before you perfected my place in the world,

permanent and never to decay.

@poemtown 30th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; crossroads #forgot to post this one 💔 #death tw #murder tw

[poemtown]

graze

mother, pull the shawl over my shoulders so

i feel sure smooth roughness of your fingers

through the fabric that is cool as the air but

warm where your sorrowed skin stains it with

intention that has no condition but to

stay with me until the fabric warms with

the touch of my own heartbeat.

@poemtown 25th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; swings

[poemtown]

martyr of the mind

i will end the war raging

in great electric crossfire through the

living matter, a sinking ship inside

my skull; there can be no war if

i'm not breathing.

@poemtown 12th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; crossroads #suicide tw

[poemtown]

colic

maybe if i

shut my eyes and

furrow my brows it will stop

the onslaught of salt and water that

collects in runny flattened streams behind

my eyes and stops up my emptying lungs every few seconds, as if

it would do anything

@poemtown 12th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; wheels

[poemtown]

nām

there is a wispy entity that

lives behind my throat like a cough and

something about it makes me sound different when

i go outside and talk

like when im on the public train

i have the urge to shout, like

every syllable letter word sound breath

would go down each carriage and bounce off the walls and

crush under the screeching metal

or when im in the public bathroom

i want to kick its very etymology into the bowl

and watch it writhe and scream its way to

watery hell and wish it bashed its consonants against the mirror instead

or the strangling public library where i

cannot think of a sentence unplagued

by the sound on the tip of my tongue but

even if i ripped it out i swear the way you introduced yourself would

come out of my mouth like a song in your memory — a prayer that,

in its silence beckons: "remember me."

yet when i decide go home it

builds up again like the remnants of an illness,

i hear it behind my lips when im asleep, until

the birds outside tweet — but it is not you that

leaks from outside, not what i knew you by or

not what i said goodbye to

and kept for myself anyway, the sound like

an accent in a language i cannot speak

your name is a remnant, a relentless reality

abandoned at my feet — though

somehow, somewhere,

it is something i hear on every street.

@poemtown 10th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; polar

[poemtown]

visage

there comes a point where

i turn on the bathroom light and

run the water to wash the skin

right off of my face

and watch the day dissolve from clumps that

collect in the basin that fills

and empties itself as the water

drips and dries and hardens harsh

on my face; there is not a trace

of who i was today.

@poemtown 9th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; crossroads

[poemtown]

how the world resumes

the sun comes up no matter how deep i slumber

the earth spins in the same direction no matter how far i run the other way

the fish swim in the ocean no matter how soon i drown

the bugs will not remember my name when i go down under

for monday and sunday have no meaning

@poemtown 8th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; crossroads

[poemtown]

sandcastles

why is the world built on what is fleeting?

grand castles of steel that crumble like beach sand and

have you been to the beaches? washed your clothes in the thin heat and

ripped up old sheets, some time ago

watched the red metal fleets go by

birds in the sky and artillery on ground

giant glimmering wings welded wistful with

the iron of ancient blood

they celebrate you

your mother, and her brother, and even the other side may

cherish the sand castles that fortify the mountains and forests

and when it perishes we will think in

our ceramic houses christened with

the blind blessings of empty generations: "how foolish they were!" when our blood will

build castles that will crumble, return to the earth

just as they did.

@poemtown 8th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; wheels

[poemtown]

the fall of the islander

i know i want it all

live in the same four acaica walls

know the ceiling won't fall

eat warm food when it's fall

but when it's windy

and the windows whine their wallows

sit beside and watch with me

the very same old fall

@poemtown 4th December 2023

#poemtown #collection; sandbox

[poemtown]

by blood

she will hold you

in a blanket made of rough coconut carpet

hoping you sink when the raft comes

hoping you drown before you reach shore

before you're born

they will mourn you

her and her and her

and she may have scorn, still

for something so bloodied and loud

and regretful

still being without capacity to understand

still, she held you

wondering why her blood breathes

and why she doesn't

@poemtown 4th November 2023

#poemtown #collection; wheels #blood tw

[poemtown]

grey matter

i just hope that when i'm washing out my brain

you'll dissolve

and i won't have to pull you out of the drain

because for a while i've been pushing it away

and maybe it's too late but,

how long can a stain really stay?

@poemtown 25th October 2023

#poemtown #collection; crossroads