We want so much, when perhaps we live best in the spaces between loves. That unconscious roving, the heart its own animal.
Tracy K. Smith, A Hunger So Honed (via: skinthepoet)
please could you be tender and I will sit close to you let’s give it a minute before we admit that we’re through
hard feelings/ loveless, lorde
see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.
why the fuck would you say that?
i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.
how’s that? a superpower?
not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.
when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.
she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.
i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.
when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?
talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…
i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.
that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.
they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.
when all there really is, is an everlasting void.
- @skinthepoet
by Jason
maybe i have been thinking with my heart far too long rather than my mind and i have been speaking from my soul rather than my mouth and i have been seeing with my bones rather than my eyes and trust me when i say i love you more than the air i inhale
k.m (via fluohrine)
skin open the poet to find out how books have been deceiving you: not all hearts pump blood; some, expand in rhymes & contract in line breaks.
skin open the poet to confirm the rumor that between the liver & the spleen lives a tiny being; an imp, absent in daydreams -a social drinker- & a lover of the sax.
1.- take the poet’s arm, & rip off a tear of skin. behold a waterfall of metaphors soak your shoes in summer’s breeze.
2.- on a surgical table, lay your poet down in such way that his pointy nose threats to drill into the ground. & with the help of a sharp knife, split the meadow on his back into two nations that might have lost it all in war. proceed then to spread open these lands, & discover that a poet’s spine abides as marble columns once did in falling rome: oh the burn or the glory? 3.- light a match & heat the poet’s earlobes to 95 °. careful, the smoky smell of blue winter shades might stupefy your brains whilst the poet’s head gets caught in flames. if so: no stress, your poet’s mouth muscles might stretch into a smile, but do keep in mind it’s just an involuntary contraction. or not.
4.- once the fire’s out & the buzzcut’s ready, grab your baseball bat & crack the poet’s tibia by the half. hollow bones & secret chambers. see that rolled up paper hidden in there? take it out & read it to the skies; correct, it is nothing but the transcripts of the poet’s conversations with the moon. tally marks for bleeding hearts.
5.- as a final act of this medical extravaganza, severe the poet’s head & hold it between your hands. do you feel it slowly floating, as if being drawn toward the clouds? stitch the head back in place using a silver needle & a thread of slurred speech. remember poets heal on empty illusions & broken things.
that is all for poetic anatomy 101… …now wake up the poet.
- @skinthepoet
five weeks before you broke my heart, i had this dream where my father stood in front of me. two generations lost in close-knit shadows, facing the other in the midst of a nightmare & staring deep into the vortex of each other’s eyes.
in a rusty voice, he recited to my face every lie he’s ever told.
his childhood, the seize, the running, my mom, his misery.
in the rhythm of his words, in the flow of his lies, his lips began turning black.
Lie after lie, his lips, a shade d e e p e r in the obscurity.
turning my back on this show proved useless, as my neck was stiff & my legs, knee-deep in thick soil.
stare & listen, while tears water the ground
i tried screaming, as to suffocate the torture of his words with my own shriek. but my mouth was sealed closed & my hands, disloyal to my commands.
i woke up a fountain of cold sweat, sobbing.
….
two nights before we murdered our love in cold blood, we met for drinks at a bar à vins. the gleam in our eyes yelled to the entire world how traces of ancient grapes ran in our blood. god were we playful while life was onto us.
sneaky little romance
we talked about it all that night: gravity & flying, friction & fire, language & riddles. for the 500th time, you corrected my pronunciation of the letter u. & in the stretching of your mouth, i fell victim to the evident art in your beauty; jawlines dancing in perfect rhythm; an enigmatic symmetry traced in your face.
on our way home, we walked the streets as if sidewalks were made for peasants & we had just been crowned kings. laughing, stumbling, holding onto each other.
in a deserted street, you wrapped me in your arms while murmuring in a secretive voice:
i love you
we both smiled.
& under beams of moonlight, while my eyes hunted for your eyes, i noticed red wine had stained your lips black.
- @skinthepoet