From up here
At night
There’s light
From each window and bulb
And I can see all
It’s the sky laid out at my feet
A black floor with sturdy boards
Covered in stars and supernovas
And I’m wondering
How I would feel if one of those bulbs
Burned out
From up here
At noon
The new
Light from the sun shrivels
Beings into ants
And those ants
Into dots
And as I measure
Each one with my fingers pressed together
I wonder
How I would feel if one of those dots
Stopped moving
From down here
Those dots turn into ants
And those ants into beings
And I’m seeing
How they don’t plan on leaving
And it’s their will to stay stubborn
That’s giving me this feeling in my chest
This full breath at death
That I can’t help but see
In the dimming flickering bulbs
And these have exhausted their light
Slow burning embers in glass
And it’s past the past
Even those that’s all I see
It’s past the past
But that past resides in me
So I bleed gasoline
And I spit out plaster
To patch up these holes caused by frequent disaster
And I piss out what ifs and it burns
I dig for answers only to find worms
And it’s past the past
But his words push like square fingertips
And he’s a child when it comes
To putting things where they belong
So my ears are bruised
From misshaped sentences
Hammered in until they are forced through
And my ears ring with a father’s brandied breath
That I can smell all too well
From this side of the phone
While he holds this home prison
For a savior set to sacrifice
Nailed to these two by fours
By people she loves
While people she loves dim
While people she loves shrink
While people she loves can’t hold their own bowels
And vomit in the kitchen sink
But she’s a martyr turned pissed
Stomping her foot and talking crazy and sarcastic
You know what I want?
Marijuana
A big fat bag of really good pot
And I’ll get stoned
And then I can go hang with all the hippies
And I’ll wear hemp dresses
So if I need a really good high
I’ll dance around a hemp fire
In the nude
With Moonflower and sunbeam
And this is an anger she needs
A flash flood of concentrated hate
It smells of sulfur
But it tastes great
And I am the man-child
Born of right and wrong
Pushed to grow up
By hands that failed to care
But I ain’t mad at the fleeting fingertips
Or at the shifty eyes
You see I learned from him
How to sacrifice
And I learned from him
How to bite my tongue
And I learned how to work
And I learned how to argue
And I don’t care about money
Thanks to him
But the beast runs rampid in these veins
And I am neither proud nor ashamed
I’m just a burning bulb
I’m just a moving dot
And I will never become
What I am not
So I paint bitter ugly
On the back of my eyelids
So I will never forget what he did
first, i think you have a typo:
"And I cal see all"
anyway, i like the few bits of rhyming that add a nice touch but aren't overwhelming. the last lines of the first two stanzas i particularly enjoyed, too.
"It smells of sulfur
But it tastes great" is another especially noted moment. "past the past" reads really well.
this poem encompasses a lot of feelings. i find that the mood changes from wondering to searching to righteous anger to self-reliance to self-downplay (i like how you tie it back to the beginning here). from this poem, i can tell you are an interesting person with an interesting (to say the least?) story.
Submission Name: Bitter Ugly
