hers
he was nothing before she took the blade to him but when she was done he had become something more hers. artist: Hing Chui
Category: poetry
an inch closer
there is a certain time of the day, shifts as the days grow longer and shorter the sun, growing tired of the view, content that a few moments sleep won’t hurt anyone, begins to set i follow her lazy journey, envious as she grows closer and closer to the object of heart’s desire as she […]
hoarse
as the words rang, a clarion call of golden bells, over a field of wildflowers that span the land, from sea to sea, in every shade of your lips, your tongue, your throat, your sometimes the need to press against you, knowing i will want to bite your lip as my traitorous lungs demand oxygen […]
The Fool Ferments update
Look at this beauty. The fermentation is bubbling. A lush foam rises when tamping. This is day four of the process, and after a sample, it is delicious. I’m going to let the magic continue for a day of two longer. love me
a win
i like to go outside and sip coffee while the darkness still sits impatiently over the world it is quiet no planes overhead, no cars on the streets, the apartments are all silent around me in these moments, it is the just the words and the silence, punctuated by strong coffee i heard the door […]
shipwrecks
we are all shipwrecks some of us have yet to find the reef while some of us have already sunk we carry the unmarked graves in our waterlogged bones moss swaying in the cold currents of the past telltale signs of emergency repairs half finished as the rot returns all to sediment where all the […]
four thousand lashes
This is my four thousandth post. I understand how insane that is. I do. Sometimes the magnitude of sharing so much pain is too much. But sometimes the emptiness is so deep, all I can do is sink. When I awaken, I cough half formed thoughts onto the sand. Then I dive back in. I […]
coaldust menagerie
emotionally he was a collapsed mine he was a finch in a cage as the vapors swept from vents in the coaldust menagerie of soft feelings spreading across the tears in his paper maché psychosis he was the last survivor tearing scraps off the lucky bastards that were more eminent in their demise never realizing […]
prayers to the emptiness within
i never imagined having enough words to write four thousand poems never imagined anyone would care on a globe of indifference but as it sits throughout a life lived alone with brief moments of glorious connection i have written thousands of bloody prayers to the emptiness within and my mouth tastes of citrus and i […]
ring of mushrooms
even in the stillness of necessity the ceaseless action rifles through absent damnation the worldsphincter collapses in upon itself to facilitate the progression of error she sat on the bench, mouthing along to the song filling her head, as the jackals crept through the brush it wasn’t a singular event that led to her systemic […]
anxious
anxious anxious fettered brain filled with dandelion dander shallow breaths anxious so many thoughts at the same time. i can see my heartbeat in the leaves of the trees i see my soul in the oil stained pavement i see my reflection in the fun house mirror never knowing the face that stares back i’m […]
and the sky opened
and the sky opened a pearlescent spiral began to jut across the dusky gloam insidious derailment of causation in the duality of remorse and the sky opened trails of virescence leak through the aether of insincere remembrance casting the globe in the humid regression of angular denials and the sky opened derision plummets from the […]
soar
anxiety and depression have always been part of the recipe that created these foolish poetic meanderings now there is a sense of letting go of falling in of acceptance being accepted a burst of colors in my chest a lack of dwelling in the shadows tentative steps into the sun’s embrace without fear of the […]
somnambulist’s sojourn
it is in the silent moments of catching my breath that you slide around my brainstem and squeeze between songs as the backbeat fades only my heartbeat and your voice as the seconds turn to hours there is a feeling of a somnambulist’s sojourn ending as i awake securely bound to your words
her pulse on my hand
she coils gently in my bruises with the sweetest pain i inhale her wildflower dreampollen in waking dream the world is quiet except for her pulse on my hand an orchestra that fills the night with the softest shimmer
comfort
in my head songbirds flit about your head the woodland creatures lay gifts at your feet in honor the clouds always part so a single ray of light shines upon you somehow in reality you are better there is a deep satisfaction in your existence that massages my soul so when i see a songbird […]
johnny appleseed
he was a modern day johnny appleseed casting his soul across the infertile earth with every turgid ode tossed to absently spin in her disengaged sense of entitlement all while blindly spilling his secrets into the wind unaware intent can never be determined by the emptiness when i love you stopped being more than eight […]
poet’s quiver (a collaboration with EC)
I’ve been a little bit of hell (she is heaven) with a tender side but always making mouths bleed (i lick the crimson dripping down her chin). I have collected a quiver of sacred words (her every verse casts divinity), arrows dipped in poets blood, but vengeance isn’t in me so they fly through the […]
skein
the tangled skein of tumultuous serendipity a bondage, so secure the blue tinged extremities icicles of mourning and loss
40 seconds
40, 39, every forty seconds someone around the world dies from suicide 36, 35, the world is lonely, the world is pain, no one knows what anyone else is feeling 32, 31, broken hearts, broken dreams 27, 26, but there are moments, the first time you told her you loved her, the first time she […]
free
in these moments the urge to write poetry is gone as i sit lost in you the world has become aloft with poetic meanderings as you have become the calm a new inkwell of fascination in which i feel so wondrously free
son(n)et
in your stare, rests the key to a nocturne; a soultorn sonata, born in the night; upon your lips, an inferno does burn; a bonfire that promises pure delight a flare, your image etched into my sight; your sketch of perfection, dripped down my soul; a sense of falling, from perilous height; regaining purpose, by […]
silly dead and their trumpets
how silly are the dead? lined up with trumpets of bone; the wind rattling in their empty skulls bored after so long buried six shallow feet from the sunlight; they lie like lizards on stones to warm their fallow spirits they loiter in stained blouses the harsh florescent glare; trapped in the false walled prison […]
with summer
the nape of her neck the hollow of her throat my lips on her collar bone these thoughts like honey in my mind fill my mouth with summer
sauerkraut (the fool ferments)
Hey there beautiful people. Let’s do something different. Let’s ferment. We are making sauerkraut. It’s so easy. Two ingredients. Half hour tops. You need a three pound head of cabbage. And a teaspoon and a half of coarse salt Shredded Add the salt. It seems like too small an amount. It is enough. Then squeeze […]
susurrous (a collaboration with EC)
the leaves have changed color, shedding the emerald hue for yellows and reds, the winds have cooled and the world feels slower i couldn’t tell you the day, the date or even the time, it’s daytime, the dancing shadows through the canopy tell me that much I looked up to see the swirling of parchment […]
a thousand sloppy cuts
none slice the hardest as the ones that clench the knife in lovelorn anger for they are the ones that know your secrets using them to temper the blade their hands have touched every soft spot know where to cut to stab to plunge to maximize the impact to share the shattering ache that fills […]
pink sky
and the sky was burnished in an ethereal pink as if the dream infected it with the same flush that sweeps my cheeks as the dreammist of writhing limbs fades into an odd sort of contentment until all that remains is the hint of her satisfied smile
jon hassell is not appropriate bedtime music
listening to jon hassell vernal equinox it is serpentine the free notes of music combine in an aural snake orgy that winds its way across my cerebellum until my scarred pink skin takes on a diamond pattern of undulating scales my base grip on being human flees the crackling spine deconstructing the human being into […]
purple
the phosphorescent filament in my mind’s inner recesses ignites with lavender lasciviousness as her lilac heart paints the sky it wasn’t an accident when i tripped over my own dismay to tumble at your feet, more a happy coincidence as i left my heart wrapped in plain brown paper on your stoop as the purple […]
full moon stare
she told me my words were beautiful unaware that any beauty in them was hers reflected in my full moon stare
the ellipses in your smile
i’ve spent so long writing tales of the incredible drowning man a mere inch beneath the surface i can eyeball six feet of rope, tie a noose with both hands tied behind my back in a bad dream it’s become impossible to define me because i have made it impossible to even find me i […]
limbic infinity
the infinite cosmos are the spaces between the synaptical flash in the neural network interlaced within her mind the constellations sway in her eyes the doorway to a soul that has swallowed the astronautical hearts drenched in intolerable ache i am trying to string together enough flashes to imprint an inverse rainbow across her limbic […]
empty roads
the sky is still gray the air is ripe with autumnal daydreams and i love you nothing else fills my fool head as i drive down the empty roads
ceiling
if the ceiling ever spilled the secrets i have spoken to it in the quiet time that shapes the universe your cheeks would flush crimson in the prose i couldn’t put to paper for fear of scaring you away the ceiling knows all my secret poems that i pen in wordless adoration as my soul […]
trickles across the eastern sky
the world is still cast in the last anti-light of dawn’s preorgasmic ritual in those precious moments before the arcs of pleasure trickle across the eastern sky i sit with coffee that reflects the non-radiant veneer listening as the birds begin to sleepily wake in the branches of the old oak i drifted to sleep […]
have to do
it is unexplainable the urge to hold you so tightly your ribs creak just to show you how incredibly insanely undeniably fucking perfect you are to me. this will have to do.
enormity in everything (sometimes)
sometimes the crystals in my inner ear get stuck into this circular sensation where in those moments between frantic allusions you feel the world spinning beneath your feet the enormity of everything the odds that are astronomically against anything. sometimes i need comforted told that it isn’t all just random acts of malevolent disaster. that […]
but slower
i want to do to you what the waves do to the shore but slower
terminal devotion
the rain falls fat tears from the unblinking eye of eternity to wash the land in lackadaisical lamentations when i was younger the spectacle of the church sang to me the pulpit the stained glass refractions imbued with golden light casting harsh shadows as i knelt in supplication before her holiest altar the words of […]
becoming poetry (a collaboration with EC)
If you love a poet, you become poetry. Sometimes I wake up with remnants of words on the soft pulse of my wrist and think maybe he’d left them there. I watched him stand quite still on the patio listening to the little birds. I sat a tiny bit too hard on the soft chair […]
spliced
the fundamentals of gene splicing as applied to the leaking valves of the poetic heart in an attempt to recreate the singular moment of universal impertinence found in the mysterious fog of emotional accoutrements she took a bite out of my still quivering heart, my love dripping down her chin in savage spurts of shuddering […]
dict(i)onary
he is aware of his cracked spine yellowed pages lined with faded ink around the margins black and white illustrations long out of date filled with words he knows intimately like a lovers embrace in bold typeface yet never has he experienced the full definiton except from afar he is a walking dictionary a repository […]
marrowtinged avidity
when the alarm went off too early for such broken sleep i felt the petals still stuck to my skin the phantom tingle of her lips the last dreamkiss lost in her essence hovering along the edge of consciously subconscious marrowtinged avidity i knew it was a dream yet i still felt the bruised reverie […]
spring has sprung
she stood naked beneath the crackling skies as the torrent of words rained down upon her unafraid of drowning as the hurricane swept along her limbs from her fingertips little swollen buds grew green in contrast to the heavy snows of winter still she smiles serenely up at the clouds acceptance written in her eyes […]
Reflection (a collaboration with EC)
I am softer than I think Under the velvet edge of his sharp tongue Belies my explicit ache My heart is not inside me With fingers firmly and deftly breaking me open And he wears it on his sleeve like a lingering fall He is under my skin, I am inside his skull I swallow […]
florist
i tend a flower garden of multi-hued anxieties full budded brooding with baby’s breath depression on moon dappled stems the twinkling flickers of light the sullen reminders of love’s faded embrace as perfumed paralytics drift on the lonely breeze i tend a flower garden that grows across the cemetery of my mind where every interred […]
she was
she was a loosely tied sack of pine needles dripping pitch and half hatched sea turtle eggs she was the punt to light the fireworks the spark that set the sky aflame with hyacinth blossoms in plumeria haze she was a half eaten sausage on the sidewalk swarmed over with ants desperate to appease the […]
etch
in your whimsical dreamrobes bedazzled with infinite latticework to frame the edges of indefinable ache you float off the ground in a state of flux between flight and feral your sharp teeth your indelible desire draped across the hellmouth welling in my vesuvius frame if i could etch my name across your inner thighs pen […]
eternity exists
in your visage it is apparent the gates of heaven hang open the pits of hell lie vacant for no more true expression of eternity exists than the smoldering embers in your immaculate unwavering stare
housecat
thoughts of you are a housecat yowling for my undivided attention yet drawing blood when i dare get too close never satisfied with any nourishment i give as the bottom of my soul shows in the plastic dish
child hands and cartoon hearts
pablo wrote with a blade that always cut twice once through muscle once through the soul sylvia wrote with a sickle that swept the chaff an uneven harvest ended in tragedy hank wrote with a half empty bottle one drink to remind him of the good times fifty to dwell upon the bad i write […]
a fact of fiction
what is left to us now that you have taken the joy of sunrise leaving only bitter memories of light my first exhalation of the new day still carries your name across the azure fields of watery remorse trapped in a spectacle of empty words where you are still the only thing that feels like […]
lost in the waves
the summer began with stale heat that cast an overbearing despair across the land but as the days grow shorter the scent of wildflowers grew while the pomegranates ripen blood red juice soaks through the gossamer wrapped neatly around her supple form her skin stained with the sun’s embrace i long to lick the sticky […]
entangled in hope
i was raised to see the monster so ingrained, nothing else exists wire hangers teach lessons the body absorbs the mind never relinquishes but in her gaze there is something more reflected in those pools of endless brown. i wish to be the he that shimmers in her open stare of affection to shed this […]
awaits
i feel her lips in the quiet moments between thoughts as if kissing her is my natural state swimming through the chaos hoping the next corner i turn leads to her behind the next door that opens her mouth hungrily awaits
systemic adoration
i understand her heart is a diamond but i am afraid of touching it because these hands have only ever known what it means to break if i were to crack the eggshell facade to spill her secrets across the ebon seas i don’t think i could ever forgive myself but i would gladly inject […]
in the consumption of her hungry mouth
i woke to the feel of your teeth upon my throat your breath hot against my skin as i melted into this lake of crackling flame your subtle smile engulfing the rigid sense of self leaving me nothing but embers to float like fireflies at the edge of the night the sun has begun its […]
shadowboxing
still not able to write fiction, the mental block barricading all but a trickle where once a torrent roared unthrottled and free but the ideas are returning, even if i can see that they are just allusions to the illusion that cast my mind in delusion for too long none so blinded as when the […]
reverse prismatic stare
her fingers bleed from bending raw emotions into a seamless beam of concentrated light that pierces the veil of darkness that consumes my viridescent dismay a goddess with dirty soles tiptoeing through splintered thoughts finding the individual threads weaving wonder into the heart of pained abscess her reverse prismatic stare making whole the holy emptiness […]
yew
she was a cabinet of mismatched dishes precariously stacked against the bones of her contention chipped like the fine bone china passed down from shaking hands to orphaned hopes but she is a cabinet of untold wonder with hidden secrets waiting for a curious soul to find untold depths ingrained in the spiral grains hidden […]
daffodil smile
there is a sublime mystery in your daffodil smile an electrifying tingle as my fingers trail along your sinuous petals the scent of your perfume blurs the line between sin and divine if you let me i would kiss your every scar in alternating currents savage and sweet i bite but only as hard as […]
candlelight soliloquies
he paints lives he has never seen imbuing the canvas in all the loneliness dripping along the smeared easel of his soul he dresses paces makes excuses lets the anxiety bubble through his hopelessly compromised immuno-integrity the blinds are closed as his head pounds darkness is all he knows as he puts brush to paint […]
peach
the world is a peach in a chemically altered catatonic state of disbelief. as it sits bobbing in her gradually fluctuating orbit the entropic wave rolls out from the mold laden stem. once ripe now seething with unraveled dysentery collapsing in upon itself as the basic building blocks behave at the behest of binary bindings. […]
coral pink
quicksilver tongue of past refraction humbled by the sandstorm of time the whispered song lures lecherous sailors to the reef made of her prickly desires in hooded hues of coral pink
moon and cypress
i was the moon she was a cypress with her long hair gently trailing the muddy water incapable of seeing my image in the dull brown flow her toes dug deep in the eroded soil as i sat fat and foolish upon the clouds mourning a loss high below her her wood grained inoculation frozen […]
ceramic clown
i was nothing but a ceramic clown spinning spasmodically through the hellnado in the eye of her cyclonic insecurities the fervor inherent in her fever brought beads of sweat across the cleft lip of honesty
negative heartbeat
she kissed me with lips that had taken a cerulean shade the chill as certain as the grave sank into my sunken cheeks uncertainty in the whorls of fog that made me wonder what was dying in that listless kiss of frostbite burning through her vacancy heavy eyelids drift along her morose benediction in this […]
flying chicken
i clutch at love with arthritic hands as futile as holding a stream as successful as a chicken at flight
drill splatter
through tear streaked eyes the lights along the highway take on an ethereal dimension while every atom screams all i can do is wait for this barrelling spectral reconfiguration as the photons penetrate the angst ridden plague that coats the neon speckled hand of the goddess that grips my synaptically challenged disfunctuon
vermont sunset
in that one moment it became so clear that our dna is mixed with something greater even as i lay in the gutter rats garbage and stale piss all around one look at that watercolored sky painted in pastel disillusion called to me the pinks transitioning into purples as the sun turns her blind eye […]
blue stone moon (a collaboration with EC)
Life, based on the one about the woodpile, the bed of leaves and losing my panties. We entered utopia unprepared and so goddamn satisfied with it. I’ve wondered, do you now exist there? Content for eternity? I don’t think it’s only the strong that survive, it has to be only the weakest. I’ve withered and […]
(love)
love is a tool to sell more chocolate it is a scam invented by the pharmaceutical conglomerates to sell more antidepressants it is an ideal insipid poets try to marginalize actualize desensitize in the pathetic whimsy of capturing chemicals in static refrain love is a drug and i am standing in line waiting for a […]
Sunday sketch
It isn’t all bad poetry. Sometimes, it is bad sketches as well. How do you grieve something that never really ceased to be? art. Even if it is bad. xoxo me
broken machines
nothing can ruin a storm of insular misery reflected by the dark gray skies above like the incessant honking of the neighbor’s car the rusted implement of more than one wreck with an oversensitive alarm that grates on the oversensitive fool that is trying to have a good cry in the emptiness of her passing […]
a year of sunday mornings
sunday mornings are about sitting with a book about shaving the scrub from my malformed skull about daydreaming she is lazily lying with her feet on my lap as i tap out the words to describe contentment sunday mornings are about naps in a pillow fort about creating in the silence with coffee music playing […]
how to breathe
i am done holding my breath waiting for her waiting for a big break a moment of recognition i am done thinking that clever word play earnest emotion an open heart a curious mind mean more than a roadside oddity to beautiful women she had been pouring gas to show her disinterest yet i was […]
grave (a collaboration with EC)
I broke, we broke, like moonlight over that shadowy elm, like sunlight under the bedroom door, spilling my insides all over, i bathed in her shimmering aura My petals hit the ground like tear drops, i reached frantically at the airy bits of color, and my stems have broken at the roots, dandelion dander drifts […]
legacy
the earth dies around me the green turns to yellow turns to brown turns to mulch for once the carpet matches the drapes or the depression matches the season or whatever blah blah blah i have never had much but for a minute i had it all so rock bottom isn’t a new locale but […]
smiled
she was as ugly as an old pair of boots but she never stopped smiling i would see her here and there tottering on a barstool at any bar at any time she would yell when she saw me jukebox repairman i would smile order us a both a beer and a shot she talked […]
overcome
i am overcome by everything in papercuts i am reduced until all that remains is the slicing down to the subatomic level leaving nothing but the breakdown
needle into page
hope and sorrow are conjoined the same as the butterfly pinned to the page the struggle the hunger weak defenseless driven by unsated need irrevocably changed after so long as something lesser than what was always inside to finally feel the wind lift you far above the places you only ever existed in in this […]
balter
i dance as if consumed by saint vitus a natural born to balter across the stage of his life awkward limbs just off of the beat but with a smile that says i don’t give a good goddamn about your opinion let me balter to my heart’s content
Hollow (a collaboration)
Why won’t you just die? I remember flinging the words at you like I’d hurled those lawn darts at the neighbor boy when he wouldn’t stop laughing that time I fell and ripped my jeans right in the bum snot and tears plastered to my blotched face as the nurse told me to leave the […]
to remember you by
we were going to get a hedgehog a farmhouse with a well tended garden an alpaca a couple wombats coffee with the sunrise it may have never been real to you but that was where i went in the quiet moments slow dancing barefoot across the living room floor i saw it all so clearly […]
(un)asleep
it’s four in the morning a time for introspection(unwanted) to come stomping down the staircase of my brain stem to kick me out of dream where my soul isn’t burning with loneliness(unending) to stare up at the ceiling as the last suckered tentacle of replayed dreamfuckery stabs deeply the velvet bag of dried spices pressed […]
worms
the couch is a serious of cigarette burns next to all the places she convulsed in the throes of something adjacent to love my hot breath blowing through the valleys of her disconnect between fiction and the den of sin we had created under the strict guise of genuine affection self infliction an addiction i […]
spores
there is a lily growing beneath my tongue it breathes in every whispered ode to love its petals dance on my every word painting them in subtle lavender exposition though my tongue carries the sharpness of the blade of grass to prune the impudence in the garish display when i said forever it wasn’t an […]
bell repairer lament
he spent his life repairing the bells in the church tower long after his mind was filled with the constant ringing he learned to feel tone and timber through his rough hands the bells sang for all in the county to hear with a delicately poignant tribute to the heavens that brought smiles to all […]
vacant worship
i set the cathedral in my mind ablaze unable to withstand another moment in vacant worship unacknowledged the bones of the earth stone pillars that once supported the temple to incalculable beauty to her now a crooked row of tombstones the swollen mounds of dirt where all my adoration tinted bereavements shift in tectonic decomposition […]
a year of saturdays
i want to love you like a year of saturdays lazy days where we stay in bed no expectations no hurries nothing but the need between us i want to love you like the first cup of coffee on a saturday morning like breakfast in bed then a stroll through the park where nothing is […]
bear trap
overcast skies over underwhelmed laconic ramblings the beautiful women of dallas are out in droves this morning with happy eyes over masks i am just waiting for the rain to wash away any trace of my passing huddled in a parking garage grasping at the butterflies in my stomach with a bear trap hoping to […]
cat
i would love to get a kitten but judging by the state of my life i am barely able to keep myself alive i was going to get one before i had decided that she was important enough to leave the world i knew behind before she decided i was not to be part of […]
buoy
he was a rusted buoy sitting on the dock staring out at the sea in which he happily bobbed for years the salt has pitted his skin with blemishes no circular grinder could hope to recover the noble death the one he would have chosen if given a voice would be to sink beneath the […]
deciphered
it’s crazy i am crazy in my head you can decipher all of the clues the things that mean other things that sound like one thing but are most definitely not you know home home is her you know i am an orphan half by choice no one can see me. i am unvisible to […]
beep beep
when i am at the brink the edge of manic swells or negative spaces of depression i say to the universe beep beep, richie when i was too young i read it under the blankets with a flashlight through the night i wanted to be bill sure he stuttered but he was the leader and […]
suspended
the plastic bag hung suspended like a jellyfish in the invisible water at an aquarium i watched you as much as you watched the fish together we watched the crowd holding hands exchanging looks where no word need spoken as the jellyfish hung suspended like a plastic bag in the humid air of a parking […]
dour
sometimes i have the overwhelming urge to shout but the words get tangled on my tongue my brain misfires i blush then turn away some days i choke on the words i wish i could say typing erasing messages never to be seen again it’s quiet in the places that used to ring with peals […]
s(or)ry
i am sorry you don’t want to hear it i don’t want to have to say it but i am sorry even if it is not worth the pixels it illuminates you’ll never hate me half as much as i hate me without you. let’s just pretend i was never here.
rusty bile
i wrote i love you in cursive down her spine tasted her sweat and desire as it dripped from my beard but in the quiet moments when teeth and tongue were still it was the memory that kept me going as cobwebs draped her once loving heart now it is the aftertaste of being pushed […]
Mike's Manic Word Depot 