we are most alive in dreams

i’ve never held my breath,
for this long before now
and i can feel
my skeletons bearing down,
their alabaster bones
smiling slightly inside my gaping chest.

what a contest
we’ve decided to play,
back and forth,
like a game of catch
with our own severed heads,
spritzing fingers
and faces with blood
while the music plays on,
free form orchestra jazz,
salty and asperous-
the maestro gave up
a long time ago and
half the band is dead.

we dance our dance of death.
we dance our dance of death.

so beautiful, under
the watchful eye of our
careless actions, feet
becoming trapped under the weight
of our useless,
midnight musings.

the night is a murderer

and we can’t seem
to free us from ourselves,
saying, “you leave me when i’m most vulnerable”
and the words drift
away into smoke, my eyes
entangled beneath everything
i’ve done wrong, like
deformed children being thrown
over cliffs to their deaths,
no one understands except the one
piling the bodies high.

i’ve written this
so many times, my hands
are growing weary with guilt
and my heart
is starting to flood with all the tears
i’ve watched you cry
because of me.

i am the cancerous ocean,
constantly keeping water in your sinking ship’s hull.

i am the book you never wanted to read,
my words confirming your every fear about me.

i am the nightmare that won’t leave your sleep.

i sat here for a long time,
about the things i wanted to say
and the things, that
i would choose not to,
carefully siphoning
through my words like,
only wishing on the brightest of stars
on the clearest of nights-

when the moon touches down
along crinkled fingers and toes,
searching for warmth
among the bodies and the souls it sees.

i sat and i thought,
to myself, jotting
things between the lines
of my mind and the lines
of my hands, watching carefully
for my skin to eat this ink-

n o t h i n g ever came
nothing e v e r comes

except the things
i already knew, nothing new,
just wasted thoughts on
wasted space and
i’m running out of flesh,
to carve out my sins
and remember all i’ve done-

but it’s been growing back,
like deep sea cracks
spewing lava, forever
building beneath the prying eyes
of all the things we’ve never seen,
progressive effort of
memory playback on a backdrop,
mottled with mold and
calloused late nights,
scribbling and coloring myself
into the perfect poem.

i hope to live to see the day,
when i can capitalize from the start
and end with a point.

Give yourself to this moment.
Do you know what that means?

If you do, then die;
if you don’t, then suffer…

You can’t walk the path until you become the path itself.

when i was in sixth grade,
recess was still a joy
given relaxation, before
gym class was used to
scout for athletes-
lame ducks allowed to sit
in the kiddie pool

it was just beginning to get warm,
and i remember i was wearing shorts
the humidity hanging
around the classroom,
as our skin cooled with
a helping hand of sweat-
as i pulled out my chair,
there sat a note
stuck fast with scotch tape
directly in the center-
in big bold letters,
written carefully
and neatly was the simple phrase:

DIE TODD DIE

i remember being confused,
wondering, who had penned
such a note
such a thing
such a phrase

but i didn’t die,
i simply existed
from then on, until now
still living and not dying

i gave myself to that moment,
waiting for death to overcome
my tense body, his cold hand
reaching through my bones
to clutch my fluttering heart

but he never did

i lived, in that moment
and i know what it means,
but i didn’t die
and i won’t die to live
i have suffered, following a path and
becoming a path,
that grows as i grow with it

collaboration with anonymous

here’s a haiku, that
is about love and also
says, nothing at all

take
your sorrows
and bottle
them
up tight

so the cap
bulges
and the threads
snap

taunt like
dental floss
as you
pull out
your own teeth

you look
so pretty
with blood
on your lips

come here
for one last kiss

deep summer-

the corn stood like an army,
tying a knot around
the earth, breathing
with our lungs and singing
with our wind

we cleared a small path,
and wound our way through,
loosely and
carelessly, like
the weave
on your seer sucker dress,
catching my fingerprint whorls
and hot breeze-

i could almost taste you then,
as you stared through
the arms of lazy stalks,
your eyes the color of a nuthatch’s belly,
plays tricks on my sight-
first dark brown and then light,
as the sun ran it’s fingers
against your scalp-

goose-bumped flesh,
as the back of your hand
touched my lips, sour
from sweat like creme fraîche
and the song birds played on,
the orchestra of summer, mixing
with our voices and keeping our secrets
buried within the roots
of the potatoes sitting idle,
under our bare and earth caked feet.

we were just children then
and now it seems so far away,
stars have passed my eyes
and i miss those hot summer days-
i’ve only seen you once,
since that last summer home,
before fall term began
and you skipped off to Rome,
paisley skirt gracing
your tan legs, sunglasses
perched on your head
and i hate to sound so cliche-
but i swear-
i didn’t know you then…

where was the girl,
i had come to know?
so innocent, vibrant and piercing eyes-
i couldn’t see them then,
when you waved goodbye
and i’d hoped to see you again.

but still i am here,
the corn passive and yet,
my only friend-

i wear tears on my sleeves
and my mask is wearing thin-
my voice is gone,
without those sweltering summer days,
i try and i try but still,
no voice carries-

i am only a mime.

word prompt from mabberlypark