[x]

Drinking in The AfterlifeFor someone who had killed herself, she was awfully cheerful. She was sitting at a small, one-person table in the corner of the pub, twiddling her hair and giggling. There was a bottle of beer on the tabletop. If I hadn't known that it was untouched, I would have thought she was drunk.

"Something amusing?" I asked, having walked up to her.

She jumped and looked towards me, her eyes finding mine. She smiled somewhat sheepishly. She was such a pretty girl. Why she'd killed herself, I couldn't imagine.

"I just can't believe this," she said. "Who'd have thought there'd be pubs in the afterlife?"

I nodded in understanding. "Indeed."

She tucke

acousticyour soul is an acoustic
black and white picture
movie reel
captive sunlight
never yielding to release
giving shadows a new taste
of elegance, quiescent
the tranquil luminescence
that can trap a heart
in the photographic emulsion
or celluloid undertow
of slow motion
just as flammable
as a subtle combustion
kindling a rustic tongue
to move a languid expulsion
ladened with sorrows
carried like crystal shards
in a humble sun catcher
hung above a familiar window
prizing inconsequential matter
into flecks of golden dust
reminiscent of
beauty and
love~

keeps me up at nightmy worst fear is that
no one will be there to push
you out of the way

catch the stars to remember her wishesi.
she rememberes the little things first.
her favorite color is purple
she likes blueberry pancakes,
and leaves pennies face-up on random street corners.
even with these pieces, it feels like
a huge chunk has been torn away that she could never retrieve

ii.
there are scars on her person
she does not remember getting.
her body is a map of memories
she does not know how to read.

iii.
they say she used to be calm and collected,
but now she is hot and fiery,
and they don't know her anymore.
but that's okay, because she doesn't know herself.

iv.
she misses the sun,
and the bad school coffee and English projects
and her own b

Wait For MeDo you see the world in different colours ? Or do you see the world in black and grey?
Alone in your thoughts
How many others have stand where you are today?

Just wait for me now
A safe return is all I want
Break from all these chains

All these roads that I have taken led me to nowhere
Left me here standing at life's edge
There is just one thing left to ask, just wait for me

Broken mirrors can't hide from my shame
It has been years
Shattered into a million pieces
Wait for me there is still time

I haven't gotten back on my feet
I have hit rock bottom
The only way now is to go up
Please wait for me

But I will ask you once

againi.
disappointment smeared
in tones of comparing and
contrasting, faded
against the forefront
of split faces.

sorry. your indifference
speaks of unmet expectations.

ii.
my skull crushes like crumpled
paper in a frustrated fist.

edgy,
i pause and cringe:
where are my defences now?

the same time rolls around
quarterly. a baby's handwriting
reminds you,

iii.
you were once but you are
no more.

iv.
this life is too tight around
my hips and i am too
small to comfortably
pluck a
star from the sky for you.

it's been a while and
i am already
done.

looking for the exit sign1.
three hours of crying passes, and you are still the same person.
your face is swollen double the size and your eyes are bloodshot, stinging like they're well-used pin cushions. your limbs are stiff from curling up, your throat is sore, and you are here just to die when the world gets sick of you.

2.
fifty strikes is not enough. try again and again and again but it will never never never help. it will only splatter the floor with red secrets. it doesn't free you, it doesn't heal you, it doesn't save you.
you are still you.
and you can lie to everyone else until your lips rot off, but you can't lie to yourself anymore.

3.
one hundred

Simon Says Go Off YourselfThere's a half-empty bottle of wine on the coffee table. Blackstone. Cheap. I know it's cheap because it gave my dad nausea last night. Cheap wine does that to him. Why he drank it, I don't know. He's such a dumbass sometimes.

Lindsay, his new fiancée, sits on the couch behind the coffee table in her black nightgown, a lit cigarette between her fingers. She's not supposed to smoke in here. It's bad for my asthma. It's also against regulations. But of course, she doesn't care.

She passes awkward glances at me between each hit. I stand in the threshold to the front room, my arms folded, staring down at her, not knowing what to say or do.

a hospital bird with soot in her lungsshe slept through a car crash
that almost killed her,
through whitewhite walls
and dreams
where her lover dies
nobody thought she'd make it
but she woke up a few months later
with flowers in her hair
and ash in her airway
trying to remember how to start all over
but forgetting to remember how to live.
fall slipped from her open eyes
and winter crawled in for a long hibernation
of not-quite-cold-enough-for-snow
to her the clouds looked sick
and pale like they might
let everything inside them out,
but she opened up wide instead,
spilling blood where there was none to be spilled.
her heart slipped down the street
and with unsteady hands
she stitched in a bird and cut off its wings.

Broken Hearts Still BeatingThe lightning-spliced sky illuminates my bedroom
and I'm crouched in the corner, embraced by the dark,
thinking of how there could have been a chance
for me to wake up next to you, your emerald eyes
webbed with emotion, your body limp
from jerking in your sleep. I imagine ruffled sheets,
broken lamps, and permeating heat.

I think of how we could have jogged together
along roadsides and doubled over with thorns
in our ribs at your feeble attempts to whistle Dixie.
I'm collapsing inward, reminiscing on the truths
I should have told you and how every boy I pass
has your face, your dark brown hair, your lips.
And I cry. Oh, do I cry.

twelve fifty-nine pm
and it is an elegant dance
of destructive capabilities, this.
a warped and heady hide or seek
for one parts joy and three parts safety
all wrapped clumsily up
in a single word of slender irrelevance:
love.

there is no real pinning down
of the race towards the hardly known:
the way some sprint with
boundless energies and
hopeless desire, the way some
take ample moments to preserve
each footstep,
the ones who fall and pick themselves up
and fall and fall again -
there is no label honest enough
or thorough.

and still,
we deem four letters
as a standard.

The WillowThe tears stain my pillow dark, as they always seem to do
in the depth of a sleepless night, when I find myself missing you.
Longing for your warm embrace, I can't find comfort in any word:
everyone wants to feed me lies, but so far not a part of me has heard.
I reach out and grab the edges of child-like joy that was like a home.
But freed without your love, my lonely heart is left to roam.
I see your face in dark storm skies, I feel you in the warm summer rain;
but as it drips through my fingers--- like your love I can't obtain.
When people realized I am lost, they turn and choose not to see,
still, I know I am still the same, just

just a girlimagine hearing the yowl
of a door hinge in the gloom of
the night.

you break free
from the sugary brain syrup
of your dream to see
him standing there, haloed by
the moon like a hideous angel,
wheezing and smoking a cigarette.

he blows a smoke ring and
displays his crumbling teeth
in a beastly parody of a grin.
alcohol hovers in a cloud around
his head. you feel an electric
spider of fear dance up your spine.

like a lion, he moves in
for the kill.
he is already hard.
he yanks back the covers,
a moth-eaten blanket that smells
of semen and mould,
parts your legs with ease and
invades your warmth like a
battering ram.

JohnI raced a crippled boy today,
out in the sun,
bet him ten green bottle-caps his legs
weren't dead, had simply forgotten the thrill
of flight: the fight.
And out in hotter-than-hell heat,
he dumped his safety brakes
and I dumped my sneakers,
and together we hit the pavement running;
hindered by wheelchairs and blistering feet.

For thirty-seven seconds we were equals;
two people strung up in a too-loose noose of hope,
released by an opportunity.
It was three blocks of screaming, screeching,
agonized agony for both of us,
and I'm sure my feet will never feel again;
just like his legs, suspended before him.

The whole neighborhoo

Brittle HeartI'm so tired.
Breathed the tiny voice, half-whispered, flitting in agitation,
On brittle wings unfurling,
From the scarred breast,
Of savage frailty.

Come home.
Beckoned the unearthly call,
Delicate as a mother's kiss,
Fluttering, soft as a sigh,
Airborne and ephemeral,
To envelope,
The shadow child.

Wait for me.
Came the petrified cry,
Resonating in anguished waves,
Rolling across ageless time,
To puncture the earth bound heart,
Of its distraught mother.

Let me go.
Came the gentle whisper, released in the final breath,
Out of a cage of tainted flesh,
And sun bleached bones,
Carried across uncharted waters,
On unforgivi

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keeps me up at nightmy worst fear is that
no one will be there to push
you out of the way

RecklessHe hurt himself, falling for her.

Too Cold for HopeHe stares out the window. It's a quiet night. He can faintly see the snowflakes falling in the darkness, peppering the ground with white. His breath fogs up the glass. Silently, he takes in the scene.

She's not coming back, old man. There's no need to keep waiting for her. She's gone. You're here by yourself. No use hoping otherwise.

He glances at the digital clock beside his bed. The time shines bright red against the surrounding gloom: 2:15 AM. He doesn't have to be up for another four hours. Should he go back to bed and try to get some sleep? No, probably not. There'd be no point. Slowly he steps away from the window and walks out of his

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Submitted: October 19, 2012
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Burial

by ~TheEmptyChest, Oct 19, 2012, 9:09:16 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

_{The mud caked my fingernails.
My hair slipped from inside my hood,
blowing across my face.
The wind shifted the leaves on the ground—
a collage of yellow, red, and brown—
and the earth crawled around me.
The rain fell hard
and the wet grass grabbed at my ankles.

The hole I dug with my own two hands
was between two trees where you and I
used to sit and talk about superheroes,
videogames and high school bullies.
I thought the location fit.

I pulled from my coat pocket
the heart necklace you gave me
the year before you said goodbye
and drove off, leaving skid marks
on the vacant street.
I dropped my heart into the hole
and buried it.

As I walked away,
the rain still pouring,
I picked the mud from inside my fingernails.}