Hate Stains & Acid Stings.

At 1 O'Clock- I think, I hope- I looked for you.

I looked in the space between 

Your house and mine,

And when I couldn't find you there,

I looked for you again.

I looked in the space between,

The bathroom and your bedroom,

And when I couldn't find you there,

I looked for you again.

I looked in the space between

The BIG OLD CLOCK and the wall,

And when I couldn't find you there,

I looked for you again.

I looked in the space between

Your Momma's paints and the mousetrap,

And when I couldn't find you there,

I knew it wasn't 1 O'Clock after all.

Our houses make an 'L' when

You look from up high,

And everything looks flat.

In your bathroom we found a stain,

Your Momma said was hair dye,

But we knew was blood, or hate.

The BIG OLD CLOCK

Was made in Indonesia,

And the dust's all on my sleeves.

Your Momma can't paint no more,

Since your daddy threw that stuff

On her face, and then ran.

Remember how we sat in your bathtub,

And looked into the hall at your BIG OLD CLOCK,

And waited for the 1,

And counted down,

And watched your Momma clean the kitchen

And cry. 

She cried so loud. 

So, so loud, until my daddy came,

And we sat in the bathtub,

And made up stories

And thought about how blood

And hate always stain.

And you cried. 

Tired. Tired. Tired. Tired.

So... So... tired,

Making my way home 

Through the toenails 

Of the famous.

People who gather on

My jealousy's lawn

Aren't famous,

But they're on the billboards too. 

Plucking out my hairs

Heralds a flock of poultry,

Flying? Away in fear,

Of my tweezers. You're next

And don't you try fly,

I clipped your wings, 

So it will hurt if you

Run. I'm sorry.

Today was okay,

Alright, just fine,

Fair and middling,

Which is marvelous.

I forgot your name,

So I left my pants on,

Despite your hands on my zip,

My bleeding knees on gravel.

Bleeding knees that

Scabbed and healed, 

Until I picked them clean, 

And then until they bled. 

THINGS can only get WORSE.

Warning, warning, warning, warning, warning.
Bad, and bad, and bad, and WORSE.
Things will only get worse from here,
Your heart Is like a balloon.
Your heart, like a balloon,
Is swelling,
Your heart is swelling,
Not from love, but
From pain,
Not from love from Pain, But From
Painfromlovefrompain
Lovepainlovepain
LoPaLoPaLoPaLoPa
Lplplplp.

Will You Be? I Think Not.

1. I know you won't, you know I will,
But you don't know what I
Can do, and you're so sorry that I
Won't give, and I won't live, and I
Won't be there to submit to your will.

2. I've heard some things about you,
But I don't know what to think,
I know that you can think,
Will you tell me what to think?
I know I don't know what to know about you.

3. There are sometimes people to be,
And sometimes people to not,
I think that what you love is not,
It's complicated when it's not,
Think it over, what not to be.

Weird one
Style is:

First line, last line have common last words,
middle three lines have a common last word,
The words must have been featured somewhere in the stanza previous,
And the product of these last words must turn into a sensible title.

COINED: The Ellis Sestina! It shouldn't be called an Ellis Sestina, because the stanzas have *five* lines, but whatever. It has a similarity to Sestinas.=)

Worms.

!ALTERNATIVE TITLE?
The Way in Which Sex Becomes Neither HERE nor THERE.


It’s not something that I felt,
Rather,
I just vomited it out
One day,
All over
Your
Lap.

I was terribly
Apologetic,
And you were awfully
Sweet.

And here I was,
Saying Nothing words
In a Nothing chorus
OF EVERYTHING
That you felt

Which somehow had
Made its sweet way
Into my head,
Like some macabre
Little worm.

Isn’t it rather fitting,
Then,
That those worms
Would munch on the
Edge of your face in my mind

Once you’d left?

And I swear to you
That not I have- not anyone has-
Touched where you liked to touch.
I’ve been too busy catching the worms.

IT; THAT.

IT works like this.

There isn't what IS,
But could be.
Just when, and how?

There isn't what is,
And Can't, Where Won't
But COULD BE!

Just when,

And

For God's Sake,

!How?

Sometimes I think it would be practical,
And not at all unlike my present state-
All things considered
And cost well concerned-

To write with the ink
That flows from my fingers.

My attention span warrants
No less,
No more
Than a novella!

I would explain, but...

For now, now now now,

I want the bits of you I like
To live in a box;
And the bits of me
I want you to know
To live there too.

It will have to be platonic, of course,
Because THAT KIND of thing doesn't
Happen without
The bits of eachother you
DON'T LIKE
Mixed in as well.

The Pattern

To see the pattern,
To be one with the pattern.
Oh, Lord,
To be the pattern.


These are the days in which our hate will fade,
Replaced by feelings of
Repetitious
Resentment.

January is behind me, I've come from the past.

The Past Series Extension.

1.
January is behind me,
I've come from the past,
At last,
My feet are free.

2.
I've come from the past,
This will not last,
January is behind me,
And December's ahead,
But I couldn't tell you
Where I left my head.
I've come from the past,
This will not last,
I've come from the past
Thiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlastthiswillnotlast.

3.
January is behind me,
I've come from the past.
I know you
Planned out your words
Because you're always
Glancing in the mirror
And shaping your
Vowels.
I'd know.
I've come from the
Past.

4.
January is behind me,
I've come from the past,
But you always wanted
The future.
What was it you were saying?
That you tried to be trying,
But there's something between us,
You just couldn't cure us,
Finish your speech,
Please,
Tear off to tomorrow.

I'm coming from the future
To tell you that your
Baby looked into
My eyes yesterday,
And he said this to me:
"Don't lie to your future,
Your past will know."

I came from the past
Last week,
But I just missed you,
Otherwise I would have
Told you that
My baby looked
Into my eyes yesterday
And said:
"The past would tell you
About the future,
But it's so close behind you
That you don't even notice it."

Today, I looked into the mirror,
And I looked into my eyes,
And I saw the present.

Down the Block?

He never woke when she did,
Not that he'd know either way,
But he liked to imagine
That she got up
And got free,
Just like he wanted to do,
At five and rolled into
Her day skin,
like it was Meant to Be.

It wasn't that he was lazy,
And it wasn't that he couldn't get
Out of the Night-Time
Frame of Mind,
It was just that he never
Left his day skin.
Even chained to his bed,
He cannot sleep
Until she wakes,

Down the block.

Pessimism.

You don't know
Where I've come from,
And no one will tell you.
I will give you this,
Optimism eats at you,
Over time
Pessimism feeds you
So you can feel
Again in the nightfall,
Even though you know
It'll be gone
Again in the morning.

Only a Finger

I'm not nothing but a finger,
I'm-a pointing to your feet.
My Mama told me to breathe,
But I ain't got no lungs, no teeth.

So I just sit bending,
And I wonder could you please,
Trade with me a knuckle,
For a pair of them feets?

I can't leave my body,
Not that I ain't tried,
But them doctors said I'd Grow
Like a Flower, and I ain't once cried.

So I'm always gonna keep
My new feets in some dirt,
And stay in the sun,
Until my knuckle skin hurt.

Car in the Water (The Style Triplet)

There's a car in the water.
And he's in it,
I was going to call out,
But I didn't,

But the rain will keep falling,
It just goes the other way.
And I keep on succumbing,
To the sweetest delay.

We'll wait in the bar,
If you're buying, I'll buy,
We'll call in his car,
While the rain hits the sky.



Okay, so maybe it's not a style triplet, since verse two and three are really bordering on eachother in style.

Whatever. I tried =) Thanks to Dave for his help with the arrangement of Verse Three.

Dreadful Sorry: The Better Version

January is behind me,
I've come from the past.
What were you saying about
The grass next door
Before I closed the door, downcast?
I know you won't
Be here again.

As you turn to go.

"Please don't leave."

A glance.

"Baby. Don't move from here,
Don't listen to Them."

Holier Than Thou.

Where does one begin?
Your love lies in the numbers,
And you were always so good at
That vox pop
Bullshit.

Today,
I saw
Jesus in the bottom of the casserole dish.
I scrubbed and I scrubbed but
He
Just turned into
You.

Your mother always said you
Were a good boy.

Dona Eis Requiem Sempiternum.

Latin taken directly from pieces of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Requiem.
My own interpretation of the biblical horror of the so-called apocalypse,
And what I'd like to do if it ever were to come.
It's a bit of a thinly-veiled, critical, anti-christianity rant, really.
But a well-informed one.


Kyrie eleison.
Christe eleison.
Kyrie eleison.

Lacrimosa dies ilia
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus,
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona els requiem.


You can feel that,
Dear God, how you can feel that,
A thunderous hum,
Terrible and enticing all at once,
And resentment, shock, horror
Hit you like a wall of water,
But there is no doubt.
For once in your life,
There is complete
Certainty.

Dies irae, dies illa
Solvet saeclum in favilla

And disintegrate to ashes it does,
The whole earth- which you
Considered to be all
That was,
And all that could be-
Is crumbling before your eyes,
And all around you
People are laughing.

"I told you, didn't I?"
Smiles a derelict...

Quantus tremor est futurus
Quando judex est venturus

The Judge, who sits upon Its throne,
With the mass of human population before It.
At first, It was just a blur of white and gold light,
But now you see It,
And 'It' is a man,
Just like the derelict,
But with nostrils flared,
And a billion eyes like cold flame,
And a billion pointing fingers,
A billion ears,
But only one mouth,
With a voice too terrible to hear.

To his right,
Smaller, but glowing twice his size,
Another man sits,
Leaning back, smiling,
Arms open to those of us who trickle through to him.

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,
et lux perpetua luceat eis,
cum sanetis tuis in aeternum,
quia plus es.

To his left,
A woman, so tender, and pure, and beautiful,
That you cannot help but stare at her, and
Sob for her,
As she bends her head,
And clasps her hands,
And cries,
For those who are pushed in droves
Away from the smiling young man...

Dona Eis Requiem.
Grant them rest.

Ante diem rationis.

Preces meae non sum dignae,
Sed tu bonus fac benigne,
Ne perenni cremet igne.

Away from the light,
Stands a towering,
Terrible figure,
Neither man,
Nor woman,
But the darkest red of blood,
And none of the wideness of the
Woman's eyes,
But a tightness to them,
Nothing but slits,
And a smiling, sneering mouth.
It is so seductive,
That mouth,
That you, even now,
Wish to run to It,
But yet cannot watch it.
Surrounded by Fire and Ice,
All at once, Freezing and Burning,
And the screams of your kind
Leak from the very innards of this
Being,
So that Its voice
Is made up of a million
Cries for mercy.

Horrified,
You turn your head back to the Lady,
Who smiles sadly,

To the Young Man,
Who bows his head,
Hands on the heads of the worthy,

And finally,
The Judge,
Who suddenly holds your gaze,
And no other,
And
All his ears disappear but two,
And
All his eyes focus on you,
And
His hands lower as the thunders quieten.

And that is the point at which you realise...

You realise that all is lost for you.
And for a billion others,
That only the children
And the very old
May now walk into the temperate warmth,
And all the rest must
Freeze and Burn
At once.

And so you leave The Judge.
And you wave to The Young Man,
And you bow low to The Lady,
And walk to the shimmering,
Nothing Entity,
And hear the patter of feet as
A billion others follow you.
As you reach the edge of the light,
Just one woman waits,
A woman of no virtue,
She still glows like an angel,
And her skin is the purest white.
She asks why you walk away from judgement
While you yet still have a chance at eternal happiness,
For just the price of ruefulness.

And you tell her
That if The Judge truly created you and all others
With a sense of Free Will,
And let you and all others exercise that will,
Then certainly,
Now, if ever, was the best time to show The Judge
What you could make of that gift.

"Lady," You say, "I will not subject myself to all of his whims,
Only to be further told to beg His forgiveness for my
Sinful Soul,
And lie, contrite and grateful, at his feet, for all eternity.
He will observe me as I use his gift to the best of my abilities."

And the thunder follows you as you brush past the lady,
And walk to the right-hand
Of Your Own Will.

(The Judge: God
The Smiling Man: Jesus
The Crying Woman: The Madonna
The Being of Fire and Ice: Lucifer
The Woman of No Virtue: Mary Magdalene
You: ...?)

LRS reprise.

There's a circle made of red,
On the wall above my bed,

It sits there on its own,
In the corner of my eye,
And I dial on the phone,
Tell the lady I'll just die.

She tells me that I ought calm down,
But while she talks I hear a sound,

The circle turns to me with a sigh,
Says "Take me down I need a break,"
Says "I just want to see you smile."
I'm trying to pinch myself awake.

The story of the Little Red Screw.

There's a circle made of red,
On the wall above my bed,

It sits there on its own,
In the corner of my eye,
And I dial on the phone,
Tell the lady I'll just die.

And I've never known its use,
And although it's no excuse,

I can say I never need it,
But one day when it's gone away,
And it's just a little knit
In the wall, I'll only see grey.

Eyes Bluer than I.

Ha. I didn't actually mean to rhyme half of the last paragraph.
It was honestly %100 an accident.
I'm a poet and I don't even know it.


"I need my thoughts louder,
These days they're all
Whispers and mumbles,
Like teens at the back of a bus.
They are mindful of the ears that surround them,
Deliberate, astute.

And this is why I said
I feel like a criminal in my own head,
Eavesdropping on my own thoughts,
Catching only half-words
Of my very own dreams,
In my very own pipes.

And, petite blue,
How I wonder at you,
With your aptitude for hearing my words
Clearer than I do,
When suddenly I'm split in two;
When our eyes lock across the room."

It's half past nine,

To pass the time,
Might you melt your
Fillings into rings?

The night is old,

To fill the cold,
Might you burn your
Scriptings in the wings?

Dreadful Sorry.

January is behind me,
I've come from the past.
You said
"We will not
Leave this place.
We will not
Go from here."
You said
"Baby, don't listen.
Don't move."

Like a Train.

Ash that spirals in the air
Will go on to settle
By the unmoved stones of
Iron tracks.
You dip your eyes against
The ash,
And the glinting of a
Window in cold morning light.
The train twists like a snake,
Thundering.
Scattering the ash by the stones.

The ants panic, like they
Don't know
Any better.
As if this doesn't happen...
Every
Six
Minutes.

You swear that you love this,
The cold existance,
The long-limbed
Women with well-built
Men, But your mind
Lingers for a moment on
The scorching heat of the
not-quite desert,
And a
Snake
That twists through the grass.
Like a train.

Witness.

You are a witness to this.
There's a pain and an ache here.

My veins are pushing at my skin,
And beads of sweat appear on the bridge of your nose.
But not to be deterred,
We continue, like a dance.

Constant avoidance, eyes that dart away,
Poles that cannot touch.

I know you, and I know you know it,
But I know you know I know you won't admit it,
But I don't need you to say it aloud,
And I'll continue to deny it.

Lethargy.

It starts in a place very nearby to where you are now.

Maybe in an empty field with drying grass and a car shell,
where the cicadas scream
Somewhere close at hand,
finding water where you cannot.

Or,

In a lower-middle-class fringe suburb estate,
houses upon houses,
walls that scrape against neighbour's walls,
the smell of dog and Market Surplus soap.

Or maybe it's in the McMansion that your stepmother loves,
Quiet and cold,
Spotless in 'cream', 'champagne' and 'pearl white',
Buzz of nothing and silence in your ears.


This is where it comes from,
Although it seems to burn from within yourself,
The sense that the world is hurtling toward
That sinister word: "Finality",
And that you musn't be there
To witness it.

Terminal Velocity, the reprise.

You'll know this feeling
One day,
When your head is
Hurtling towards
The wall.

They say your
Heart is in your mouth

But in truth,
it flies against your
Ribs
In a desperate
Bid to get
Free.

Everybody was in black.
I was too, but I wore that
Colour you liked
On my lips.

They walked out before you,
But I stayed behind,
To tell you about the flowers
Your mother chose.

They were blue,
And I picked one,
Following you out
Into the courtyard.

The sun was white,
And my teeth were red.

Weird Looks in Waiting Rooms.

"One
Day.
I am going to collect
Every
Single
Eraser shaving I can
Find.

Don't you wonder where they go?
The little oblongs of rubber.
They collect at the corners of your
Desk and at the bottom of your bin,
In the lining of your pencil case.

One
Day.
One day I'm going to drag
Each
One
Up in a single sweeping
Gesture.

There's a tiny eraser that
Lies teetering on the edge
Of the gap that
Parts my desks.
It will fall.
But when it does,
I'll tell you:
The little shavings
Do not follow it like friends.
They lie there just the same.


...

I've been searching the whole
World now.
I have a pile
As high as my Knee,
And I know it can be as
High as my arms,
But tonight
I will use it as a pillow
And think about the ladies,
And the strange looks
I get
In waiting rooms,
As I peer into their bags,
And empty out their bins."



Thanks to Bleydy for inspiring me into writing when she said: "She was in a waiting room giving me weird looks."

Tack.

Wow. Talk about abrupt. I realise that a heap of the dialogue in this is a bit difficult to know whose is whose.
Ah well. It's basically irrelevent.


"Do you know where we are?"
A pause.
One of her long, unkempt eyebrows inching to the mould-ridden ceiling.
"I'm not here for the conversation, boy. Really."
"Just answer me. Do you know where we are?"
A twitch, her long fingers flying to the floorboards for a carton of Golden Gates she knew wouldn't be there.
"Hell, I don't know why you're still here."
"I mean, physically, we're in this room. In a two-inch mattress on hardwood floors."
He tapped the boards for emphasis. Or perhaps good luck.
"But where are we?"
"Shit, man. I don't know what to tell you. The greatest city in the world?"
She was starting to think about getting up and starting at this hangover...
"I guess. The greatest, you think? I've seen greater"
"I wouldn't know. Been here since I was a kid"
... But it was still kind of dark outside, and she never got up before 12.
"Really."
He was making her uncomfortable, she realised, with all his talk.
"You wasn't this weird at the dogs, kid."
"Well, you weren't this pretty at the dog races."
That did it.
She got up. Slowly.
As if he was holding a knife to her.
"You're afraid of me?"
"No. You're just weird, is all."
He smiled, got up, and followed her to her tiny kitchen.

He was there the whole day. Quiet like, watching her read the racing section in The Chronicle. She didn't look at him, unnerved that he was still there. Naked, and wholly comfortable, as if she was a ghost in his home, one he had learned to convince himself wasn't really there.

She hadn't noticed the pen and pad in his hand. But it had been there, and finally, at 5 in the evening, as she was dressing to start off for the races, when she turned to ask him if he planned to shadow her to the dogs that evening, he was gone.

And there was a scrawled note on her stove. It wasn't a note, for real, but she couldn't say for sure it was a poem, since it had no rhymes.
Up
The top, he had written the name she'd given him, and she really liked how that looked on the old paper, so she used one of her glittery earrings and tacked it to the underside of her tiny kitchen table, and watched him walk -still naked as a babe- all the way down Haight.

A Wave that Breaks.

Yes. This is it.

In a sudden and jarring response,
Like an overturned table.

China that tinkles to the ground,
Over the tiles,

In your flesh,
Under the walls.

Into the gaps
Like a train.

That, which but hurtles
In the right direction,

Never turning off,
And not certain that

All is clear
Ahead. A tunnel.

Save our Ship.
Save our Souls.

Sugar Water

Muscles are fighting-
Eels through weed-
To escape the
Thickness.

Water mills around
And freezes
To your tiny
Hands.

This is it.

Runs like liquid,
Still yet solid.

Terminal Velocity.

Terminal Velocity.


He brought the car around,
Drove it past
The soundshell-
Silent, if you ask him-
But for a leaf
That falls in a slow,
Aching imitation
Of humanity.
There is nothing
To imply that he was
Anything more
Than a tourist,
Parking his car on the
Loose gravel and
Quiet,
Staring
At the leaf that
Fell to the ground.

And he felt like he would never
Reach Terminal Velocity.

St. Patrick's.

You said you felt like an
Empty building,
Shelled and
Ready for demolition.

Well,

If you are that building,
I am the scaffolding that
Scars your
Face

Roman Candle in Hibernation.

I sit still
-Which is unusual
In itself-
Contemplating movement,
But unconvinced of its necessity.

This paralysis.
It eats at me
For hours,
Until, at dawn,
It has me wholly.

Stuck here.
Motionless in one spot,
Able to move,
But unable to conceive
Movement.

Needing to leave
My patch of horror
And misery,
And ignite
Into the air.

But, well,

I'm losing it by now,
Wishing there was some
Metric measuring system,
A way to evaluate
Gradual Insanity.

Getting Behind.

I don't think right.
It's like opening your mouth,
Knowing that there's something to say,
And finding only a deep well of thin and musky air.

On Waking Up.

Ew. I generally despise second person present tense, but this just came to me. So. Yeah. You can feel like you're reading one of those stupid choose your own adventure books. This one can be called 'Choose your own adventure; Salvador Dali' =)


"There's a wall between yourself and the clarity.
To describe it, one would no doubt call it a wall of mist,
Because that's what they see when they look forward,
But it's a wall of sweat,
Warm and languid.

You're trying to push forward,
But you reach the sweat wall
And it gives like transparent flesh,
Depresses, then rises again
Identical to before.

Furious, you tear at it,
Pressure building in your head,
In your hands, In your mind,
And you start to believe
the wall is real.

You can feel something else now,
Something that starts near the back of your throat
And rises, bubbling to the surface,
Like some biological volcanic eruption,
Travels up, and leaks out red.

Like a switch, you're out,
No more fleshy barriers,
Or mounting pressure,
But now you're out,
And you don't know where you are."

5 and 5, lines and verses. =) I don't like the number 5, but it was 5 or eight, and I couldn't make eight, no dice, no way.

Rah, I'm fairly certain this is the product of too much 'The Knife' and Stephen King.
Oh, and that second last verse isn't about anything deep and psychosomatic. It's just describing a blood nose.
Because I often experience horrible dreams, only to wake up to a blood nose.

Phillipa R. Ellis. =)

The King.

"Perhaps I should be like Stephen King and insert myself into my writing." Said the teen aloud, whilst tapping away on her Generation Four iBook.



Well, I think I'm funny.

Edito:

I took out the line that said "but then," She said, "I suppose I already do"

Because it was unnecessary.
This is way more subtle.

No Mirrors in Space

This goes with Stroke. And is actually called You Can't Marry a Dead Guy. They were written at virtually the same time. Crossing over in my head and shiz.

"I don't think I ever gave up on
Marrying Elliott Smith,
Even when I found out
He was dead.

I think I was so
In love
With the idea
Of him

That it didn't really matter
About that,
And despite legal
Technicalities,

I think I still think
That I
Could One Day have
What I want."

Kelly made me post it =)

Blasphemy of Aztecan Proportions.

The sun shines like a God,

But while our lives rely
On the orbiting motion
In which it is imprisoned,
It asks of us nothing.