leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Never

I have never been called a crook

but I remember the crook of your

smile like a detour sign I failed

to yield to,

sometimes I imagine car crashes

like foreboding day dreams ,

stolen moments of peace

that keep my jaw stiff and

eyes fixed,

I have never been called star struck

but I remember the cosmos in the aquamarine

that surrounded your pupils,

drowning in them like a bobbing apple

ready to be picked by hungry teeth,

I have been called sharp,

yet somehow never noticed how sharp

your tongue was or how cold your

body of water could be,

I have been called many things,

some true and some empty,

I remember my wounds, my

war cries , but I am

many things learned and a pulsing

warning,

I am peaceful mourning.

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

F. Scott Fitzgerald / The Beautiful and Damned

[leftypoet]

Selfie

I took my phone out today , tried to take pictures of myself smiling but my eyes couldn’t lie and I became frustrated with a tired smile. I adjusted the lighting 3 times. I Forced laughter that sounded like a sputtering muffler on the road to its last drive. Still, there was appreciation for the rawness , for the real me that was present today. Maybe these pictures don’t need smiles , maybe they need stoic ,maybe they need to look like a trick everyone knows is happening. I sit here wondering how two people can be strangers after 5 years of every day. I sit here looking at my solo pictures and wonder if she ever remembers my laugh, my smile, all the real shit that happened because there once was an us. It’s ok to remember; I regretfully declare as my frozen grin is stiff and sullen. Snap snap snap. Until I put my hand on my face and allow my eyes to peek through. The light catches my pupil , is that a spark? A moment of tomorrow ? Soon there’s 56 pictures on my phone. Of black and gray and poser hipster poses. My beanie cocked to the side , my hand hiding the slight bulge of the second chin I’m trying to rid. And then I laugh. Real and heavy. This is me. Today , it’s ok. The pain in my eyes just make the genuine light a surprise. My soul is full of poetry and pictures

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Divorce Decree

It’s almost been a year

since I could say “ we”

And had to learn to say “ I”

or to not reference you every time

I heard something that you liked,

You were all consuming and it’d be a lie

to say I didn’t find a way to trace everything back to you,

It’s almost been a year and

And I’ll have to stop torturing myself

with “ this time last year”....

This time last year or the years before

3 houses, 3 pets, 2 engagement rings

and what I thought were 2 soul mates.

It only took you a couple months to rip down the facade that five years built

You were a caricature, a frightening

figment of someone else’s imagination.

It’s been almost a year , and I’ve kissed different lips, I’ve laughed full bodied ,

the kind where your mouth is open , but the sound is trapped somewhere inside;

And that subtle metaphor is my life.

but here you are ever present in lingering

day dreams and memories when....

when I cried more more than I laughed, it’s

Almost been a year since I finally understood why heart break was so dramatic, I’d roll my eyes and say no

Not me. Never me. Not us. Not our love.

Until it was and then it wasn’t.

and it’s almost been a year and I’m

fucking fierce , I am a quiet fury

That vacillates between secure and

unhinged, and it’s been a year of

breadcrumbs , tracing back clues

Of all the reasons why I never should have

loved your kind of love ,

and I am better for it, battered , bruised

But better, and this isn’t a love cry, or

yearning for what was lost ,

It’s been almost a year now and

I am growing at all costs.

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

“you are the poem on the tip of my tongue, a memory i force myself to swallow before everything begins to taste like you.”

— Noor Shirazie, Into the Wildfire: Mourning Departures

[leftypoet]

There are too many bullshit poems

I could write, swirling around in a

purgatory of contemplation ,

But it’s the same lines, same stale

sentiment , how many times can I write about your eyes? Or the stars? Or slow

moving time?

or the fucking searing red angst flowing

under my skin,

I have highways for veins , transient

blues of blood that can’t breathe

I could write about my drumming pulse

again , write a trite line about a broken

heart,

pen my personifications of a familiar

anxiety,

I could pick you apart,

talk about your words like mechanical

clockwork,

But none of it would suffice;

it’s all filler , simmering beneath scalp

and skull

I’m so much more than an errant

ink blot, of porous paper and greedy pen

but even when that ache becomes dull

I find myself here, thirsty to begin.

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

“Call what we had an oil spill. Call what we had dirty laundry. Call how I pulled your face from the concrete that evening when you wanted a vehicle to tear open your body like Thanksgiving dinner, manipulation. Call my name now and you will not hear an exaltation, but a eulogy of every negative aspect you can relate to a relationship. Call your anger venting when we both know it is you accepting the destruction of your own being. Call what you and your new girl have pure spring water. Call what you feel for her awakening. Call it revelation. Call it enlightenment. Call what we shared poisonous; ivy crossed with stinging nettle crossed with nightshade. Call this disastrous persona you carry something holy. Call yourself beginning anew, and ending later. Call yourself magic; all starlight and coal turned diamond. Call our ending the meteor that avoided colliding with your planetary body. Call my name a singe against your skin. Call your absence blessing. Call this end retribution. Call her name poetry incarnate. Call my aura an alarm you never learned how to switch off after my leaving. Call this final. Don’t call me.”

— don’t // Haley Hendrick 

[leftypoet]

In Time

I used to tell her that when we grow

old and grey, that I hope I die first

So that I did not have to go a Day with

out her, my morbid musings of a devotion

stronger than any love before

and somehow now we are strangers

walking our days by choice on two different

planes of existence ,

days that were stolen away from me ,

From us

Caused by errant whims you never cared enough to truly explain

and now I wonder if he promises you the stars

The way I gave you the certainty of all

my hour glass grains

maybe I did die first,

because time teases me with a timid ticking

that feels too surreal to own,

I am neither present nor foreboding,

And you,

You are replaying in slow motion

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

I keep finding the same sentiment

in dust pans and I've never been much of a cleaner,

I'm sweeping the pieces of me

that felt too dirty to hold,

but these hands are tired,

these hands are not mine.

they look too old.

Was it God you wanted to see

on dirty knees or was it

the certainty of comfort

that came from my own cracked

shell?

I've only ever been pieces

held together by life's collective dirt

And I'm clean now,

can't you see me shining?

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

I need

The high of love is too many hits off the bong where my head is spinning My heart is pounding and I keep saying ‘this is ok’ It’s going to be alright and I am all ready with a frozen grin and Smirking lips , and my words Sound like songs and her hair and Hands are electric currents into my Soul. We are magnets. We are god damn Invincible. My stomach does roller coaster flips and I’m flying. But it wanes. It wanes until the smoke Isn’t swirling and the sweet smell of that Good shit is gone And then there’s just two people Sober and sometimes somber And I have to learn how to dance all over again, I have to memorize steps that I was never taught. And I want her to make me high again with out lighting a match. And we are just two people trying to hold on to that first sunrise instead of knowing that the dark is only a day away and it’s the in between that we should be mastering, Because we are settled sparks; embers glowing but not growing Breathe into me I say, I’ll grow for you I’ll bleed the red of the brightest flames That’s the love that I need @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Your poetry is beautiful. It speaks straight to my heart. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Your words are so appreciated and thank you for reading my Work!

[leftypoet]

Dig This

There is an overwhelming sadness

that envelopes me like the crinkled

love letters you penned for appeasement,

I thought your heart was filled and bursting as mine sang to you the brimming brightness of unnamed potential

but you can’t change what you already

know,

I thought you were art, our clays

molding to the ebbs and flows of a growing landscape,

Yet, you are cold hard steel with sharp edges,

and I could not make you bend just as you

could not warm with my embrace,

I’m digging deeper down this rabbit hole

my artists hands raw and bleeding,

Searching, searching ,

for something that I now know

was never there

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Winter

I plucked you from a tree,

A low hanging branch with

the sweetest fruit I’ve ever seen,

I did not realize you were a rotten

treasure somehow not fallen

from its limb,

tasted the juices of you

And you offered me your seeds

With promises to grow a new you,

A new me,

now I am left with the deepest, darkest

roots that grip my insides with

twisted memories ,

every season is a reminder of

what never should have been

and I am sitting here in the

bare bones of winter

hoping for my rebirth

to begin.

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Broken Poet, dying trees and tragic endings

You left me 3 days after Christmas,

While the lights were still sparkling on the

Tree we picked out and decorated,

Bought me a good book and gave it to me with a smile , and now it sits on my nightstand and I stare at it wondering if I could handle the forever of reading the last line of the last page , because than there’s nothing left of you that’s new ,

Except this new you ,

This traitor with the same kind eyes I

fell in love with,

The same forehead I kissed goodnight ,

The same arms that held me at night and gave me peace,

And now your hand wears no ring ,

They’re busy packing all of your things

while I still beg to put in the work

you were miming a happy wife

And silenced anything I could

have molded into a stronger us,

I swallow my pride to try to trace

back all the happiness that built

home and life and now our

future is an etch a sketch you

shake to erase ,

With flippant disregard where

Empathy does not exist ,

I’m thinking of all my past distress,

My resume of poetry that felt like the darkest path I’d ever penned and now

They are only caricatures of half heartbreak

That would need to be edited with more adjectives than I’d care to embrace

And there’s always a last line , I just

thought our story had so many

pages waiting to be written and

I can’t open any books right now , ours or mine.

@leftypoet

[leftypoet]

I Can’t

[from my journal- 2014]

I can't write about this.

I can't write about the taste

of infidelity's mouth,

or the insanity of hands that

squeezed and pulled hungry hips

and open thighs.

my hands were not my own;

gripping transparent lies.

nails drew confessions on

my back, and I hoarsely

moaned "no marks" as

my own wetness pushed into hers.

I can't write about her head between my legs as my own rested against your pillow and the only name that

burned in my mouth was yours.

my tongue was hot desert sand;

this cum drunk frenzy was a mirage

of self sabotage.

I can't write about my love for you

right now

I can't think of anything but my love

for you right now,

these sheets lay dirty and

I try to forget what I've done,

is this what it means to love,

my kind of love?

[leftypoet]

You’re a slow burn,

The dangerous kind of crazy that

doesn’t howl at the moon

No, you’re a stargazer

promising wishes on dead light

a spark that died reflected

in the aquamarine of your eyes

millions of years before you

destroyed my pride ,

And your pull was a tide

that hugged me like a

warm summer night,

even when the waves

of your love came crashing down,

I stuck my neck out further

to keep us alive,

But there are women that dance

when the music is good

And then there are some that just

like to make noise

- @leftypoet

[leftypoet]

Broken Poet, dying trees and tragic endings

You left me 3 days after Christmas,

While the lights were still sparkling on the

Tree we picked out and decorated,

Bought me a good book and gave it to me with a smile , and now it sits on my nightstand and I stare at it wondering if I could handle the forever of reading the last line of the last page , because than there’s nothing left of you that’s new ,

Except this new you ,

This traitor with the same kind eyes I

fell in love with,

The same forehead I kissed goodnight ,

The same arms that held me at night and gave me peace,

And now your hand wears no ring ,

They’re busy packing all of your things

while I still beg to put in the work

you were miming a happy wife

And silenced anything I could

have molded into a stronger us,

I swallow my pride to try to trace

back all the happiness that built

home and life and now our

future is an etch a sketch you

shake to erase ,

With flippant disregard where

Empathy does not exist ,

I’m thinking of all my past distress,

My resume of poetry that felt like the darkest path I’d ever penned and now

They are only caricatures of half heartbreak

That would need to be edited with more adjectives than I’d care to embrace

And there’s always a last line , I just

thought our story had so many

pages waiting to be written and

I can’t open any books right now , ours or mine.

@leftypoet