misusedwords-blog

[misusedwords-blog]

Smoke

Your hair smelled like smoke.

The word keeps on reeling,

keeling, reoccurring, carrying a weight of its own. W e i g h t l e s s. Meaningless.

At first it was a feeling. The color of  the room. Essence of your entire being. The sound of your voice misting across the windowpane, marred by incense stains and dust.

Quiet now, the neighbors will wake.

I go through the motion of mouthing the syllables, enjoying their dance on a tongue swollen and numb, a symphony of ghosts and raindrops driving the song home. Leaving.

The homeless man on the corner cries I love you after fading footsteps

after choking on discarded cigarettes even though he does not know the name that binds them to the earth but neither have the men that laid in my head.

Hands feed gaping mouths that nibble and cry.

I am yours for the taking, feel the body on your tongue, blood fill your chasms, sacrilege of bones and skin and wisps of hues of what should have been. Pray at the alter of sin.

It's all up in [smoke].

[misusedwords-blog]

Departure Steel string thread the spaces between contentment and reality and you're not supposed to stitch a sense of self into the skin of another but I was never great at sewing. Maroon coated needles decorated childhood girl scout meetings.

We pledged on n o n s e ns e No sense. Senselessness.

I still stumble onto your scent in stairways and stalls in Italian Markets, signs of gentrification and payphones that will remain unanswered but the numbers are worn into my calloused fingertips that can't figure out when to quit nervous habits.

[misusedwords-blog]

4.7.16

I dreamt of North Philadelphia rooftops, rain releasing the natural musk of the urban earth, trains rumbling overhead and through the tracks of my veins. Wash me away. I used to want to live in a warehouse, just plants, a journal and a handsome tabby to keep me company until you fucked me in  your bedroom without walls and I walked away with an awkward hug and false pretenses of maybe we’d get dinner some time.

[misusedwords-blog]

Ruins

Cities crumble under our palms. Aching lips arch into vowels meaningless, eager to taste the danger foreign men warned would bear its grimace long before the last train lurched towards the station. Laughter is music grating against debris- coated day dreams. Kensington kisses wrack dissociative minds that try but can't lock eyes with reality.

[misusedwords-blog]

Junkies + Hookers

Junkies and hookers die alone under elevation signs and disjointed, magical lines cloak railroad wrists that still have ground to cover.

Blues skeletons sullenly dance jangling with laughter.

Televisions declare an epidemic, a disease, a six hundred percent increase.

Chemical release and I have been trying to keep pour habits at bay, but am lost in half-drunk beer cans and you know what they say.

Junkies and hookers die alone at least I hope so because you’re not coming with me.

[misusedwords-blog]

Junkies + Hookers

Junkies and hookers die alone under elevation signs and disjointed, magical lines cloak railroad wrists that still have ground to cover.

Blues skeletons sullenly dance jangling with laughter.

Televisions declare an epidemic, a disease, a six hundred percent increase.

Chemical release and I have been trying to keep pour habits at bay, but am lost in half-drunk beer cans and you know what they say.

Junkies and hookers die alone at least I hope so because you're not coming with me.

[misusedwords-blog]

I’ve been tossing & turning in dreamless sleeps and I have been trying to keep a list of all the things I have seen next to my nightstand but I get lost in half-drunk beer cans and pour habits that surely aren’t helping.

[misusedwords-blog]

Pollock

Poetry is frivolous, a waste of time and space summed up in disjointed fragments and fragrant verse. Roses are red, violets are violet but of course! ----- Life exists on figures and fact, the world is exact, careening around the sun at 18.5 miles a second. Jackson Pollock smashed colors together and called it innovation. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches repeatedly thrown against white walls by disgruntled toddlers would roughly have the same effect and I believe they call that a temper tantrum. Untitled 1-10, lifted from the notebooks of lazy students mindlessly doodling instead of minding lectures of truth and mind you this hangs on walls of museums showcasing the art of a generation that I did not ask to be born in, that handed the world beat poetry and new york schools of misused words, molding sounds into whatever meaning you chose. ----- Numbers are real. Sometimes and others irrational and imaginary, but always concrete and Science is real and equations are real but not always true because Q is greater than P if Q is equal to five and P is equal to negative three is false, but fractions are real and we are real. At least I know I am because I can touch my body and it is soft and warm, tickling fingertips and I have not collided into your molecules just yet. ----- An object in motion will stay that way unless acted upon by an outside force. What propels creativity? There is no formula to test its relevance to the world and there are people who claim it is therapy. Trees in the woods lean on each other for support, that is all. There is no supple dance of leaves on branches and song is just noise. ----- I am real but is art? 

[misusedwords-blog]

Man comes home. Wife prepares supper. They eat together

every night, her a little less. I saw it glow on the television in the middle of the den, “Family Matters”

or “Full House”,

I can't remember but it was echoed in the strides of my mother.

A real man opens doors, brings home the bread and earns to have it buttered with a delicate knife, a delicate wife to to create spoils of grandeur to toil away the night.

Childbearing hips are gifted with ovaries for a reason, procreation is key to survival.

August 8th, 1920 women earned the right to vote.

Equality.

Stop a pretty plaything on the street to....compliment. I try to coerce

a smile, to make her day brighter and mine.

Females earn 78.3% of their male counterparts.

You can't believe every fact you read online, even if it is true we need to protect the fairer sex, heavy lifting and mundane tasks.

My princess you are much too gorgeous to be anything less.

[misusedwords-blog]

My mouth moves over hail Mary's that my mother taught me, fingers on the roasary numbed in winter's trechery. I read online somewhere that a heartbeat is detectable twenty-two days after conception. What would have happened had the immaculate virgin stuck a hanger up her holy temple and murdered the messiah? The three kings would be singing funeral hymns for the murdered instead of mentions of mrryh. Take a pamphlet or support the death of millions of uborn children because another mouth to feed is more important than your sanity. 

[misusedwords-blog]

Ghosts

The torah does not offer much insight on the afterlife. Marred mirrors are cloaked in fraying edges to prevent spirits from slipping in the cracks between the light, uninvited.

There is a woman sitting shiva in the home inside my head.

Seven solemn nights for such a supine soul

and I wonder if she knows that it's been filled with ghosts my entire life.

I always wished that I had been baptized instead.

[misusedwords-blog]

Bodies

It is difficult to love a body in which you do not know. But you showed me how to come outside of shower curtains and fantastical dreams. I was always ashamed to touch myself, an exploration of  disappointment smothered in balled up bedsheets, sighs when I should have been sleeping. Sex is for boys and sluts with daddy issues, you do not want it but have to have it musn’t allow pleasure between your lips, powerful thighs are locked shut unless pried open against your will, remember you are the embodiment of sin. I was told that I am broken, marred by hands I never asked to touch too loud to be wanted girls are supposed to be quiet, not squirm under warmth, consent is more than just a formality. It is difficult to love a body in which you do not know, but I’m learning my language and if you’re lucky I’ll teach you the alphabet.

[misusedwords-blog]

Blythe Baird - “Pocket-Sized Feminism” (Button Live) #SpokenWord #Poetry #ButtonPoetry @ButtonPoetry https://fucmedia.com/blythe-baird-pocket-sized-feminism-button-live-spokenword-poetry-buttonpoetry-buttonpoetry/

[misusedwords-blog]

It is kind of fucked up how you could not see someone for months but still think of their cadence every day.

[misusedwords-blog]

Tangerine

We sat by the river until midnight, laughing at the state of our lives. Falling in friendship and uncertainty. There is no word in the English language that describes a feeling of overwhelming sadness and anxiety. “How about tangerine?” You held an orange jellybean in between chapped fingertips, personified sunset with fuchsia lips.

Pinky promises were elementary but you insisted anyway. Tangerine tangerine tangerine.   I'm here, are you listening?

[misusedwords-blog]

If you want to fuck yourself up, write poetry while listening to every record you’ve loved someone to.

[misusedwords-blog]

Portrait of someone who hates winter.