Every problem that I've ever had has turned rotten in my mouth.
A stone or a bezoar stuck in my throat.
A heavy dark bird resting solidly on my chest, softly chiding me to accept, accept.
House of life and death,
Security and emptiness.
It's all one and it's all nothing while life seems to promise forever.
That stupid lie we tell ourselves while we're still too young to know.
I don't want you to go.
I don't want you to go.
Please keep me young enough not to know.
I don't want you to go.
Category: Poems
Stagnation Vacation
I’m writing songs in the wake of our four years.
I’m writing songs in order to bury you.
Our final few months were spent dragging along our former selves.
No room to adjust to the growth and no chance to heal the scars.
During this time I loved the shell of you. Waiting for the inside to match what I saw of your exoskeleton.
You had the ability, you have the ability to fight it and you don’t.
By the way,
When you said you wanted a threesome I didn’t know it would include your mother too.
No acknowledgement of relationship until you decided you were through.
And now that you’re fucking some other bitch you have the nerve to say get over it.
You said that you loved me, and that “we got to”. Some empty words are never true.
You gave up. You stopped trying. I hope you got my letter.
We Got To
You tamed me that’s plain to see,
What happens to the tamed once you set them free?
They’ve lost their wild spark,
You’ve laid claim to their tender heart.
So darling why can’t you see?
What you saw as kindness is killing me.
This was meant to be the first verse or two of a song, so that’s why it reads as a little cheesy. May or may not get around to finishing the melody, just wanted to share a little since I’ve been gone for so long.
Almost-Haiku
Dreamt you wanted to mend things
Woke up in a sweat
Whispered “empty promises”
And slept.
Possibly Everything
Cleaning up corpses on the freeway,
Bloody spatter for miss November.
Moving on from Hollywood.
We’ve missed November, I’ll start when it’s over
And over it’s been in my mind again.
So it goes, lost in the wind.
Circling back, dropping the pin,
In a room too full to notice it’s ran out of gin.
Startled into recompense;
Turning it over til it all makes sense.
November was missed and I’ll start again,
Buckling under the rain.
So it goes, running thin.
You’ve grown too fat, you’ve gotten too short, the mind scolds the broken heart.
She’s working around it but nobody notices the note left out in the bin.
So it goes,
Missing November,
She found it hard to remember,
Her way back into life again.
So it goes.
Don’t stop me.
This one was kind of a mish-mash of ideas on my drive home late at night, hence the sort of jarringly different stanzas as the tone of it changed once I got home to work on it.
I tried adding little transitions between stanzas as a way to make it flow a little better. Not sure how well it worked but I liked it enough to publish it, so.
Thank you for reading!
-T.D.P.
Sometimes Nothing
I’ve felt skin hot as steering wheels
Bursting through a sickening cityscape
I see you leaving—don’t forget your tears
There is dust on the dust of your slight renown.
The Hazards
I want you to know that I’m trying to hate you.
To put every little thing you’ve done into a box and throw it into the river that made you realize you still loved me.
Let it sink to the bottom along with your near-death and dissolve into spent memories settling into the sediment.
Sway and move with the current.
Lost love,
Lost time,
William and Margaret,
A watery marriage bed,
Left to drown under the force of a Mother’s love.
But I pulled you and I called you here,
And now instead of saying goodnight, I’ve finally found the breath to say goodbye.
Bitter in its Sweetness/Estranged
Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud;
You left me and I’ve nowhere to go.
You carried my heart with you,
You carried it in your heart.
When the door closed and the sun set
You took my heart with you,
You carried it in your heart.
You told me I was whatever a moon has always meant,
And whatever a sun will always sing is you.
You carry my heart with you,
You carry it in your heart.
And I wish you would bring it back.
An In N Out Dreary
In memory you are lost
As I second guess the cost
Of sickness spreading faster
Unmitigated disaster
Dwelling on those winter days
Brand new love a dizzy haze
Walking far into the night
Knowing we were quite the sight
In the timepiece of my heart
Hoping something new will start
Waiting til the stars align
For you again to be mine
Tryhard
Sometimes I convince myself that my teeth could bite through metal
That the razor edges would do nothing to the soft parts of my mouth
That I wouldn’t bleed
Sometimes I think that I could crush glass between my fingers
That the glazed sand would find no purchase on my soft tissue
That I wouldn’t tear
Sometimes I imagine that if you were here I would be able to stand it
That the sound of your voice would be nothing but a residual melody in my mind. Your face an inkblot.
That I wouldn’t crumble.
But I know, I know, I know.
The moments tick by and I know.
I bleed, I tear, I crumble.
I am no match for the dreams that play in my head
Woolgathering 