Are you sure she's there? Yes, but sometimes I'm not quite sure.

by S.a.Sunlight

I flipped through the pages
looking for signs of her
But all I found was age and death
Smells of must and book breath

And they breathe with such intensity
As we always wake up books from their sleep
Morning breath
Day breath
Night breath
All books breathe the same

So I left the books
And hit the streets for a new start
I was always told
That they were the better kind of smart

I rode the streets
On busses and taxis
I saw them from my
Redlines and Greens

And they’re always exhaling
But they never mutter the answer
The pavement will sigh at your loss
But give you no sympathy

Where are you? Where are you going?
Where are you taking me? Where can I find you?

And maybe I made you up.

Sometimes I’m not quite sure.

The Pulse of the Nighttime

by turtledove

I wish I had the most beautiful voice
So all the arias invented for lovers
Would be sung for you

Whenever I open my mouth
Big crickets escape
Chirping the story I didn't want leaking

I spend the time I'm supposed to be singing
Chasing the crickets
They tell the story
And I don't remember

About the nights I said no
and more about the ones
I didn't have the courage to speak

The melodies are trapped
Since I've been here
And when she tells me to form my vowels differently

I can't tell her that I'm just trying to keep the crickets
out of the piano

wrigley

white horse

In Georgia we fished with shovels
Kissed girls named ivy
Sarah, Susie

We would spit into ponds
And watch hungry gold mouths
Swallow

And only once, in a bed with a girl
Who clung to me sick and tight like ivy
Did I see someone swallow that way

That hunger came through her throat
A lions roar, a car dying
It Choked me, I couldn’t kiss
Blew into me with the heat, the dust
of a train underground

We would watch the fish die
as children. Their bodies flexing
Their scales were never diamonds
They were dirt, or leaves or stones

Amber and Orange

by starlight


past crumpled pictures are folded away

into the dresser under
wrinkles angled into shirts
worn-out patterns of prints

worn out,
the water pours down
into the drain
washing away,
the black ink that stained my hands
from trying to draw memories

the sad smells
of the wood burning
amber and orange
the melancholy movements
it displays

Ashy dust kissing the carpet
the soft cracks of broken logs
lulling me to sleep

cleaning up my room

by shira

there was one old song
whose spinning i would pray to
i'd face my record player
in my dusty, curtained room

i tried to rearrange my bed
and get rid of all the trash
that my child-hooded head
thought up to hide and leave behind

i rubbed off all the crayon
proclaiming my best friends on book ends
and blew out sickly wicks
i lit to burn all of my secrets

my hands and feet now touch a carpet
that's been replaced because of dirt
of when i neglected to notice
i wasn't always so pristine

not entertaining any child
who'd step foot in sleeping quarters
where its master
dreamt of horses
running off of grazing cliffs

You stood me Hostage and made your Demands.

Written by Kester Henrick

Pull the trigger
and watch the bullets fly.
They're accusations that appear false, hidden in each of the words that we write.
Metaphors, because our similarities aren't clear enough.
Yet we say our personalities, like specters, are transparent to the point that we can't talk any more.
Did we even mean what we said?
or were those words ghosts too.

--

The only way to get anywhere
is to suck up to the one who will give you the most you can get in life.
Regardless of love and personal feelings, just as long as you come out on top.

I Used to Love Watching My Breath Crystallize

by Surreal as Sunlight

It's a calm,
Mid-July night
And I've just turned out the light

In the moonlight I'll rest
Suddenly I can see my breath

And in the air there is death
And in the air there is death

The windows are sealed tight
And the willow branches are not swaying
I feel a drift to my right
There you are my beautiful, staying

And I thought you were gone
I've been getting on just fine so long

But now you've walked through the walls
Like it wasn't a thing at all

I built them with such strength
But to haunt me, you've come at any length

And you're singing
You’re singing my name
And you're calling
You're playing your game

So come lay here on the bed next to me
I'll pretend to hold your hand
I'll pretend I can feel your grip
And all my secrets, I'll let them slip

Come sleep in my arms tonight
So that I can wake up holding nothing
Just like every morning
And it's true, now you are nothing

But still, you haunt me, today
Please come haunt me, today.

a whole lot of poems

michael thomas swanberg


You remember me as a child
The quickest runner
My feet falling in time
With my heart
My lungs burning salt air

I was the quickest runner
And the one the girls all
Wanted to kiss
Even my teachers hugged
Too hard, too long

She said to be ten
Is to have the whole world
Wanting to kiss your lips
Your cheeks

And me, the quickest runner
The world loved me and light
Burned off the surface of water
Concrete danced on afternoons
I ran


---------------------------------


I REMEMBER

She wanted to fuck me
She didn’t want to spend the night
Or listen to the way that afternoons
Crack their knuckles and wait

Me with my hands all in rings
Her with none
Two tattoos
And shaved

I had been drinking since sunset
Feeling like I always feel
And I wanted to lay my head
On a pillow next to something

But she got up and went back to her room
When I wouldn’t fuck her from behind
And I slept as though under a spell
My dreams were all of home

----------------------

Georgia

As kids we were all maps
And wood
The days walked blindly into other days
And we breathed in trees
The leaves so green it hurt
Green as hard as water

I never looked in mirrors then
I was defined by how high I climbed
How I ran
The dogs barked and I listened
I knew the dreams of fire ants
The hallways they walked through

-----------------------------

The death of a boy and a girl and a boy


I don’t know if its right
To climb into your bed
But I know that when I do
My soul is calmed
Your sheets rub against me
And I feel at home if only
For the hours between when drinks
Wear off and paperboys show up
And I am forced to
Go back to a life where I cant imagine
Ever waking up next to you again

I'd rather be Seen than Heard.

Written by Kester Henrick

I go to sleep
and wrap myself up in poetry hoping you'll jump in bed with me.
Holding on to each others secrets.
Bound by our similarities.
But if we only talk once a month
share a song and a smile
I can go to sleep for the time being.
Even though I want to be alone, that doesn't mean I don't need you.

--

Take a shot to ease the pain of seeing what we had.
Take another to try and gain it all back.
A bullet in a bottle.
Self-Inflicting wounds bleeding our past mistakes onto the ground.
This won't bring us back. It's only self destruction.

--

Podiumed high above, a Miss-Know-it-All sash worn at a slant.
Take a bow and wave to the crowed below..
but you'd see better with a lowered nose
and you could've kept me but choose to ghost my existance.