restless things

enough with you i
scream decades.

(4.1.26 / written 10:50 pm)

after the deep end you spiral

forward with hands reaching back to your face
tear-rusted, slacking deeply, with peeled skin dead on top of
whatever-days-ago shredded skin— that's now just a face in the mirror.
you play scavenger: probing in to inspect what should be drained & smoothed out.
since your face turned to clay after the clock's ticking couldn't keep up with how much you moved ahead.
fingertips harden into stones to set it's good place.
  until you can't tell if you're shaping the face you
  wish you had, or the face you have.
then backwards with hands fistful of nothing you face
tomorrow.

(4.2.26 / finished: 11:09/11:50 pm) note:

Spoiler

i took out a bit of my portion to the ending so i finished very late

painful knees / sense to pray / faint

much of my senses are still felt
on the cusp of my low will to live
and this hunger to stay living safe.
long distance walks hurt. sweat
always cling beneath the knees bent
wanting answers. worlds walk pass
me, never slipping through fingers aching
the weight of holding nothing.
i breathe in mist of dreams, wistful of
nowhere to live in other than
just here.

maybe i could've been a dog walker, walking
without any question of my steps.
or a store owner, keeping trinkets safe more than
seeing what's to left to save, giving more
than being a hand-out, keeping change
for your thoughts more than stealing eyes.
instead, i pry in these other lives,
not pray for another.

the body's embroidered with veins tracing to
elsewhere you can't see, but is full of blood
under skin still seen to be touched,
prodded, and to know what pain means
not embody pain.

(4.03 / finished: 11:00 pm)
(untitled)

you let the door open apart, so sunlight sings through
the crescent. it crystalizes dust scattered in the air
that we forget, but never leaves for you to just breathe
in gold. since it's dusk: the window to the horizon
kneeling for the sun set on boat clouds.
before it will sigh for the moon, you tide on its brightness
drifting into not its body, but into elsewhere. into night.
as if your chest could net the peak of day,
you lift your chest to the dark and racket its moonlight.
thinking, maybe, if you could open your chest apart,
you can find what makes you not
the sun.

(4.04)

on becoming milkweeds

relentless slumbers embedded on sheets
nearly abrade my dreams of flight:
my steps sloping downwards, shaping a mountain
to walk upon. then settled on earth's bonds between
hands & knees on healthy grounds and roots
taken heed by an outsider finally out-of-bounds from
their childhood home. my heart's ridden deeds hope to melt
into the scorching core, by skin-in-silt kisses, like ancient
bones cremated in the memory of earth. so crust on my lips a
fruitless red ooze into crushed lipstick-stains on rootless
warmth. until i've ripen at last, for my spit sweeten.
fleeing human, becoming milkweeds.

(4.05 / finished 6:05 pm)

april's purple

rainy blues & poppies spews
gloom & blooms—
melting ice & belting warmth
infuse for day & night refuses
to be without dew.
jean jackets & raincoats
for upswing breezes &
wring scarfs, yet spring.

Spoiler

[tw ref self-harm and abuse]

4.6.

restless night(&day)

something i said (or thought) drawn quick as a breath
in & out, this body's gone slack, sloping, slipping—
through my conscious dripping through digits ticktic
kclock in the clock. stopped & then brief it goes crickets
the silence too quiet it makes sound so i think the trains
their distant runs echo like whale's noises the cats prickly sick
how are we still? as i mistake night and day until they merge
and blend into a day ill let pass into night i will be day in.
things just spin. keep spinning into a forever hug you
will be fine always says earth. me though i turned my arm
and chewed it up like shish kabobs. i cut these prison walls with marks
to tell the days apart now. forever hug it said. like the people's loud happy
conversations you nearly mistook as your mother when she beat
you. echoes & all that even when distant (or restrained
since months ago(it feels like weeks)(sometimes it feels like
before then)overandover again)). i think i'm dizzy no

Spoiler

im sleep deprived i havent slept all day

(4.07 / finished 11:19 pm )

lost & found

these ragged nails
crippled by ample water, flimsy
and loosely molded by pressure,
can't sail boats on ripples
in soaked skin pressed into
these leaves on purest apples
refusing to flail a rigged breath
until they sweat rain, naked in wind
to palm what weighs them sore.
soaked.

4.08

you write a million poems
a thousand bad poems in-between
you picked to infest an oyster's belly
to create sweet wine out of rot.
dozens of inches grow
at your fingertips.

4.9.

don't mind me, good stranger online

just blowing off steam with sweaty fingers
tipping off feelings with a hiss from the letters
on keys of a board slammed against a stream
teaching what's human to words on a screen

Spoiler

i seriously keep writing my poetry very late

4.10.

what does the sunlight feel like?
it feels like light.
   what does light feel like?
it feels like warmth.
   what does warmth feel like?
it feels like thousands of butterflies
crowding, tripping just to kiss you
freely, or smothering you dry
in their tinkering shadows
to suckle your wounds,
then shadows next— all that
casts on you, to make space for
the sun in your palms
who seems to be full of light,
a stomach home to butterflies,
crushing
on you.

Hi lucky!

I love the atmospheric mood in April’s purple - and the repetition of the ampersand because I always think it makes poems look sophisticated.

I love the pairings within the poem, “gloom and blooms / upswing breezes” and related lines make for such an interesting picture. Nicely done!