Wait for Yesterday

by tinny tulle


They will leave you
Gone from your life
But remain in your memories
Forever

Waiting to be pulled from the depths of your mind
When you are old and lonely
Memories of being carefree and stupid
Memories of better times

Then there are those rare souls
Enduring thick and thin for you
Always at your side
Until eventually they die

What do you do then
When your children put you in a home
With no one to care for you
No one to hold

You reach into the depths
Shuffling through the photos in your mind
And wonder where they have gone
Where did your time together go

They say friends forever
But really how long is that eternity?

Sisters

by: shira

I took your words for truth
Tonight
When we talked
It's been a while
And I'm sorry

I'll hold onto them
To save my life
I didn't use her's to breathe
Because she's an imposter
Who might love me more
Who's always known me more

After all these years
And for the nineteen you had to think about it
Before I came along
It was decided that you're my whole
And I'm your half
You're my sister
I am yours
I don't want to drag you into it

I'll call again
Soon, I love you
Goodnight

Nobody likes a naive poet

by: shira

My poetry
Wants to tell you things I can't
But these words manipulate me
Into thinking I'd let you read them

Don't be mistaken
I mean no harm
I meant no attachment
And that's all I've accomplished

I hate the way I love
I know it's young
To let yourself feel
And that's why they say I'm naive

I'll take you in a second
If I can make you smile for a minute
There's time between
Instinct and decision
That should be bathed in flames
And admired for its smoke

Oh, I still want you now
If that makes you happy
Since I've forgiven
And done my best to forget
They say I'm naive

Facts of life

by: shira

Baby
You're beautiful
Pink fingers
Bright toes

Child
You're fidgety
Climbing fingers
Steadfast toes

Adolescent
You're asking
Bound fingers
Late-escape toes

What
Are you
Answering and wondering
Simultaneously
Your hands and feet can run or crawl
In equal happy countenance

Adult
You're grown
Stubborn fingers
Even toes

Simple Enough

By Hopeless Hopeful


The heart cannot be trusted.

It will lie to you.

Don't recoil your hands

by tinny tulle

Looking down into the dark pit
With your hands wrapped so tightly
Around that barbed wire
How do you feel?

What do you see?
Your future of loss and discontent
Or dreams always malnourished

Your mother stands behind you
One hand on her hip
The other shading the sun from her eyes
Only wondering why
Why you must suffer
Why you must endure this pain

Slowly you raise your head up
Staring at the glaring sun
And withdraw your hands from that wire

Loosening your grip on the one thing you held true

The blood on your hands won’t always remain
But the scars inside will remain forever

Frosting

by line dry only

you make no moves
to reach the ocean waves
you salt and spray
the turquoise cravings stay

you attempt to dream the way
when dreaming won't give into action
you frustrate yourself to the point of
exhaustion turns sour

you recluse of original creation

you master of crystal imitation

you take no pride in your self-segregation.

Uncomfortable warnings

by: shira

In a recently jaded state
Fickle optimism no longer boasts
Its trusty brightness
Just squints through green envy
At being replaced by reality

I’ve aged thoroughly
And realize I still love you
This isn’t the philosopher’s qualm
Just one person’s mess for two
Lies like elephants are never forgotten
When you’re the alone in remembering

I used to think that love was blind
Never-ending unless need be
And now I need to end this
But you keep coming back
Without knowing
With no knowledge of my ways about you

Blue Sheets struggle

by line dry only.

I touch your hair
it blows in the wind
You can't get it back
the emerald eyes have disappeared

they say all babies are born with blue ones
i kept mine, to contradict your style

you'd be a little patient too
if all you ever shattered was
black and blue

you wrinkled, you faded drastically
soft woven silk, satin pillows
and all the blue sheets struggle

you're a new green leaf
drying and moldy on the bottom underside

i'll be redundant if it means
you'll rescue me from domestics

look somewhere else
and taste your ambiguity

transcend into this organ
pacifist into a chorus correspondance
mistake me misplace me mishapen me

there have been complications
you shiver in the sunlight
she brightens with a flash

you wilt beneath the ending

Resembling your Parents

by: shira

They say I look just like he does, and she does
And I say you’re wrong since I can’t see them from before
They are merely parents free of young ideas

It’s cruel when I compare myself while flinching
Mom and Dad give me something every day
The air they determined I would breathe, their creation with instructions

I can’t be like him, I love her more than he does
I can’t be like her, I love him more than her
I whisper to myself that we are happy on the inside

They never sat me down to talk, we always stand or slump
The kitchen chairs catch the best conversations
Loud and quiet
Sweet and bitter
Red and yellow

You look just like she does, honey, you look just like him
Slap me one more time, please
I crafted this body myself
With open thoughts and minds and holding hands with strangers

You little bitch
Chin up
It looks just like your father’s
People pay money for chins like those
And I paid none for mine

Flat chested like my mother
Gives us something to bond over
And my sister’s like that too
And her father isn’t mine

See your hands, they work just fine
Guess who they are from
Your eyes aren’t blue like theirs
But they’re from your loved despised

At the table in the restaurant
You said you weren’t like her
She cried with both her eyes
Always wide enough to let the tears out,
Just like yours

When you say she’s beautiful
Does that mean you are, too
No I am not beautiful
Comfortable will do

And we all love each other
Just as genetics write
We’re destined to resemble our greatest critics
As they help us to ourselves

They searched my car

by whitehorse


the ugliest kid i ever met
dealt acid
although i met him
when he was just a fucked up yokel

with his shoes on the wrong feet
by choice
so that his toes pointed out the other way

THe most beautiful kid i ever saw
was at a drag show
standing with his back
to a wall and his chin high

a tight shirt with the collar flipped
and i was breathless

and all the children on the bus
ran to the side to look at the accident
but i stayed in my seat

and hoped the dead wouldnt look at me

he didnt see the window

by white horse

the doctors cried all night
because that baby died

the one they had been working on
for weeks
trying to teach it to breathe

and you would have felt heartbroken
to see those little fingers
wrap around the doctors pinky
take it to his mouth
like a micraphone

and the whole hopes of a building
can rest upon one person
like the church
and like this child

born to parents
faceless to it
born to parents
hardly

the world is a harsh place

but they learn to fly quickly
birds i mean

and just like the children
they get buried in shoe boxes

masking tape

by mts

i fell in love
when it was least convinient
when my life was a mess
and my hands hurt from strings

i fell in love when i fell
off of the swings
off of childhood conversations
where no one knew what id mean

i fell in love
when i put down my pen
and picked up the phone
and started talking again

i fell in love
when the distances collapsed
into a six minute drive there
a six minute drive back

and i fell in love
because i was alone
because my brothers had left me
and she was my home

the sound a zipper might make

by whitehorse


what do you stress
the s in yes
while you are having sex

or making friends
with business men
who search for dividends

im not content
with drinking gin
until my feelings bend

i need a plan
an anchorman
to feed me common sense

see i was taught
that what we bought
just might change what we got

i never thought
that movie plots
might be offending god

and kids get shot
but so do cops
and husbands in the lawn

and nothings wrong
its only the same song
but not as strong

WE will get there when we get there

whitehorse


if you can read this
then your dying

thats what a bilboard said

but they didnt tell the reader
all the other things hes doing

if you can read this then your breathing
losing friends and losing feelings
taking gasoline
and burning up a hole in the sky
that will be as red as the makeup you apply
to your lips
thats made of whale fat
chopped up by korean fishermen.

who might go home and fuck thier wives
or listen to opera
wash thier hands of everything
life has to offer
and sit and stare at a tv screen
and wonder how they could ever think
that they could become an actor, anyway.

so if you can read this
then your lying
to yourself

because this isnt poetry
its just one more bilboard
on the highway
that you just kind of read.

Error 7, one ten oh four

by: shira

The screen is
A little blue box of reprimands
Error 7, one ten oh four
I've shut down the system wrong

Waiting, I can see the sky out the window
If it weren't so cold I'd be out there too
What keeps me from raw beauty
Is hating inconvenience

In one single day I see a million things
Hear a hundred laughs
Smell one thousand jokes
In one single night I hold with all of me
Who I want to see
At my funeral

Error seven, one ten oh four
She forgot his special day
He mistook her for a thief
They turned backs on their beliefs

Sure we all make mistakes
I've forgotten all my worst
They come back to hurt me
When I've hurt someone

Error 7, one ten oh four
Children sing for everyone
Grown ups live by the book
Every time I make a mark in any
I shudder

The biggest error I've ever made
Was shutting down wrong
I should have kicked and whispered strong
Instead of obligedly shivering

Error 7, one ten oh four
It's not too late for me
To turn it all back on
And wait for a better screen

Of course

by: shira

If you really want
You can have me
But only if you really want
Because I will never force

I’ll believe you when you stay
And we are happy
Just together
Nothing else

If you really want
I’ll stay

for some boy for some day, i guess

by: shira

Give me you to keep me here
I’ll be so bold to offer something too
All I have
Is all I am

I want to give things to someone
So much that I am forming conversations
With a sleeping shadow
Who I’ll wake with a kiss
And then another one

If I saw you walking
And I stopped you for the time
I hope you know
It’s because I want to remember when I met you

Race me and I’ll run
Guide me and I’ll stumble
And catch you anyway
Ask me and I’ll answer
All I know
With what I’m knowing

Intake

by tinny tulle

No one cares anyway
When you are standing there
With your back against the wall
Alone again
Wishing you were someplace else
Anywhere else than there with that red cup in your hand

Striving to fit in with the people you want to become
The friends that you won’t remember in five years
But the times you will never forget

THe glass was shattered like,,, oh fuck it

by whitehorse

all poets get drunk
but they never right about it

because the clarity is lost in the liqour.

it hits thier tounges and they are no longer special
they stare at crowds and wonder

what they would have said

what they would have though about that cloud.

all poets get drunk
because its hard to look at life

and not be overwhelmed with guilt
they are forced to recored it with adverbs

cut out car crashes because shattered glass
analogies are used to often

all poets get drunk

because how else can you describe the sunset
as the happiest time of your life.

a jewish father

by whitehorse


you said that lesbians own dogs
and homosexuals own cats
because they both represent the sex
that that person wants to be

except you called them fags
and the women carpet munchers

and you said that they should be forced
to tell the world that they were gay.

like a badge? i asked
how about a yellow star?

as the ghost of mathew shepard
steps into the headlights of your car

so we are driving through the ditch
and i am looking at that tree

thanking god that since im dying
hes taking you out with me.

semper fi

by whitehorse

my parents packed gallons of water
for the year two thousand

but it came and went
without computer faliure
or christ

and i suppose its like every other year
since he was crucified.

since buddah just ate rice

since Muhammad dried his eyes

and picked up a sword and turned religion into something worth fighting for
the crusades were like a plauge

and we wonder why iraqies are sore at us

for fucking up thier land so we could spread a christian untity
but jesus was born to their sand
their saying do you think this shit is new to me

i came from where he was from, but he doesnt live here now
he lives in America and europe, in fucking redneck towns

who raise the flag that flew at gettysburgh and got shot down
by the belief that color skin isnt something that counts you out

and boys in my classes are going to war.

because the taliban, and the towel man, are much more dangerous then before.

close encounters

by whitehorse

people dont get abducted by aliens
nearly as often as they used to

its seemed we have figured out the universe
as best as a god fearing nation could

we took one look at all the stars, planets, life
and shrugged our shoulders

theres a game on.

i dont learn math, i learn life lessons
but i suppose im not doing well

because i find it hard to live in my own past
let alone someone elses

so while my teacher tells us stories
about his glory days

im watching the sky, waiting for aliens.

Could you be my February?

by Turtledove

You can make the hot chocolate
I'll light up a fire
We'd snuggle up together
on the big sofa in the living room

Holding our mugs tight
And each other tigher

You can tell stories about
when you were younger
and all the plans you have for later
And I'll add plenty of marshmallows to your mug

Our sweaters would be kissing.

And I'd admit... I don't know how this goes
I still don't

I'm always dreaming of the indoors
You're always saying
you'll show me how. this. goes.

We'd never speak of Valentines.

doctor oh doctor

by line dry only

your life is sopping wet
and you're dying in here;;
on this duvet covered bed
with the pillows turned down
jade blanket lying across the
doorway
you have no fear, you will

disappear

i don't want to think about
all of the times i felt alone
alone like --
"somebody, know me-
or I'll die living an eternity as a
star"

cold, and lonely
out there for everybody to see
sometimes, i don't like you gazing at
my habits, my habitat, my blinking eyes
maybe it's not my fault that i'm alone
by myself, forever

ok so you take things a little too far
and i exaggerate my pronouns

i want
somebody to scream,
somebody to live,
somebody to stop pretending that the life they feed us
is the only option
and that their dooney & bourke bags
are the best thing since the rubiks cube

and.. i must say. the rubiks cube...
well that's pretty sweet.

but who am i kidding - preaching to the choir
like you all should know how to live

how to breathe when you forget you're breathing

what a hypocrite i am,
of course i know how to live
when i'm using a flat screen computer with state of the art high-powered internet
and i live in naperville.

yeah.
sure am experienced.

you've turned into more than a monologue
a dialogue of clouds and whispering wisps of
nothings you've acquired over the years that you've
spent
utterly spent
wasted with nothing left but your eyes

and blue is fading too
you are fading through

Now As She's Shameful

by: shira

Your self-depreciation just loves me
It burns my eyes too, but it's hard to breathe
And I'll march to the beat of your stocking feet
To keep up with this twirling, dangerous heat

Turn off the flame, it shoots out in sparks
It runs out of guns with bullets like hearts
That bleed when they break skin that was touched
By a love that you just couldn't take

I see your skin and I want you to win
As you lose everything you find belief in
Turn out your pockets of pennies and dimes
Cancel your dreams of money to buy
The biggest, best place to call a shack for one and a home for all