TyeDye's Notebook

I hope you guys all enjoy this thread of poetry



The Coldflower Quest

Sometimes I'm afraid
I'll forget everything.
I try to remember, but all
I can seem to think about
right now, are my bare
feet on the cold linoleum.

I guess I remember
standing in the cold
floral section at Jewel.
I saw a woman buying
flowers and I thought
"Who's sick?"
but her housedress
didn't tell me.
She didn't ask me
who was sick either.

And I guess I remember
cutting a soggy path from
the shoulder of the road,
through the ditch,
across the lawn,
a patch of snow,
to the white screen door,
gripping the flowers
like a torch that was cold.

I think I remeber,
but I might be making
this up, that no one was
sick and you
liked the flowers.
Your hair was long
and reflected lamplight.
I said,
"I tried to find masculine
flowers."
You laughed
and it was okay

I know
I left too early
and the screen door
banged behind me.
My car was bright
compared to your low-light
home,
but it was cold.

 

Back or white
Give me some hue, honey
I can tell you over coffee
The story of someone
Who flew too close to the sun:

Give me another
two teaspoonfuls of sugar
Minimal cream
What can I say
But that I can feel it swaying
Underneath me

Can't fight a believer
Facetious conversations
Leads you nowhere
Under god and man
In space and time

Just like heaven sense
I am one of the dying

Give me one more sip
I'll get the tip
If you pay me through
The gates

 

It's half-past two
It has always been half-past two
As much as i will it,
As much as i want it,
The clock hands seem to have resigned themselves;
They are eternally content to lie still,
To hesitate unendingly between two numerals.
I can hear cats prowling on wooden floors,
I can hear the tiniest noise of leaves moving,
And the sign of the owl that sways on the tree limb,
Night after Night,
Outside the darkened window.
A floorboard creaks,
The wind rushes,
And some poor mouse is snatched up,
Living just long enough to sense flight,
A curious, light sensation,
Lending to it a sense of limitlessness,
Of power beyond imagination.
For a moment,
The mouse is the keeper of all the world,
It gives meaning and hope,
It inspires peace and health and happiness.
Then reality returns to the world,
To me, the mouse, and the owl.
And in the twilight hour the sounds come
of quickly crushing bones.
Still awake,
I resign myself to wait.
A dim glow lies across the bed,
Moonlight evading the window shade.
Only three more hours,
Just a little while longer,
And then the sun will rise,
To replace the cool glow with its warmth.
Only three more sleepless hours
until the dark recedes
While the clock still reads
Just half-past two.

 

I keep expecting to run into myself
walking up my December driveway;
another cold girl in a gray coat
bound for my exact opposite destination-
opposite-me, if you will.
Only this time we will not brush
similar shoulders unnoticing
as she heads for the mailbox
and I the garage.
This time we will look at each other
and see our simplest selves:
Stick girls in gray coats
with line-and-got faces,
dimple-less on the icy asphalt.
Maybe we will go inside and have
stick-girl tea, unrestrained by the stupidity
of flesh, or the incongruity of separate minds.
When the conversation thins and we share
stick-silence, we will both nod
and place our tea cups in the sink.
Then i will descend the stairs
into the basement to look for cross-countryu skis
and fate will draw her up into the attic
like a kite and she will stand,
shin-deep in insulatin with the vague but presistent
urge to search for something she can no longer remeber.

 

The house was old
the toilet downstairs gurgled
and the steep stairs creaked
She showed us around
Bringing her scent-Beer and womens shampoo-
into each of the dimly lit rooms
The fireworks outside were loud
and the lake was like an old mirror
reflecting sudden flashes of light
but too dusty to show detail
like the smoked that seeped into the night
the mountians in the distance reflected the noise
growling softly in the distance
and our faces reflected color
sunburned cheeks turned blue green and orange
I sat on the hill,
skirt tucked around my knees,
scratching mosquito bites and listening to the sky

 

I loved what i saw when you cracked wide open
and your babyblue exterior lay in a crumpled heap
on the scratched wood floor

I saw you
scared and lonley

saw the Indian-brown of your chest
color burned into you
by the sun of eightteen summers

it was hot to my fingers
and smooth

you cried into your hands
covered your face with the deep green quilt
I held you as you burned Indian brown blood
shook with the force of your tears

 

8/9 of the way to Colorado,
we stopped at a fruit stand
where they sold produce
and tie-dyed t-shirts.
The fruit sat
in white cardboard boxes
smudged with dirt.
It was hot
The mountains on the horizon
looked smudged too.
The woman running the register
didn't speak English very well.
She had purple acne scars
in the hollows of her cheeks.
She looked about 8/9
of the way through her pregnancy.
I bought cherries
and a tie-dyed shirt,
then put my change
in a jar marked
"por Roberta y baby gracias"
It was 8/9 of the way empty

 

She cries raindrops,
with hints of laughter.
Scotch tape holding together
the pieces of her insanity
not yet gone.
She doesn't wake up to smell the coffee,
but lies in bed dreaming about it.
Insane tactics
as her paper doll world
comes crashing down.
Lightheaded visions of vintage days
As the broken film plays non-stop in her mind.

 

On a tan stained matted down carpet
Sits a box
Poorly managed form years of wear and tear
The now discolored red box
Overflowing with memories of you sits untouched
I stand hovering over the box lost in thought
I reach deep in my torn jean pocket
And pull out a pack of Oasis resturant matches
I effortlessly strike one against the old red box
And clumsily drop it in the abyss of now past keepsakes

 

Every Friday, a woman in search,
Out of depression, born from endless loneliness,
Opens herself up,
To find that one that will occupy this night.

He is found, the search is over.
Now the game begins.
It's not a game really,
They both know how this game ends.

He gives her roses,
She notices the one wilting,
Dying,
As the exchange is made.

The day is fading around them,
This one beautiful sun,
Having made its trek across the unique sky,
Rests eternal beyond the horizon.

Dinner is bought, flirtious glances fly wild,
Sent and received endlessly
by both male and female.

In the care, the decision is made,
The drive home leads to the point of no return,
And the line that never should have been crossed,
Is passed over without a thought.

Voices arise from the ground
Screaming at her "Stop, don't do it!"
But they can't be heard,
The mouths that utter those words
Are six feet under.

Forever silenced by losing the game,
The man and woman are playing now.

They head for the bedroom, tonight's game is over.
The dice are rolled
Chance is left to be tonight's master
She hopes he doesn't have it.
Who knows?
She sure doesn't.

It's over
he puts on his shoes.
She adjusts her make-up,
And fixes her bangs,
Always out of place.

This deed done,
They both lost more than they could ever imagine.

When the girl looks back at the bed,
She remembers what happened there.
One more tongue has been silenced on that bed,
And that tongue is her own.

 

i love these poems.....i tell ppl to be more original....but i think you are the most original writer.....ur poems are great, keep writin

 

Interesting stuff, but I wish you would have worked a bit more on the format of some of your stuff. Meaning make it more easily readible with breaks here and there.

 

Thanks louray....i don't think poetry has many rules because its a form of expression..I like to write about things people wouldn't normally write about...i like begin orginal..and fresh

Kittenx...thanks for posting feedback...but i'm not sure if i understand exactly what your saying?...i'm new on hipforums..and if your talkin about all my poems looking the same its because i'm having some trouble useing the formating tools when posting....I'm used to my poetry in notebooks...never really put them onto a computer...so formating is all fucked up....sorry there is no varity...but in reality there is...

 

I woke up this morning in a Hilton Hotel in Springfield
the smell of hotel jarred me awake
and I was surrounded by the coldness
of those blank, dry sheets
these sheets that had known so many bodies
tasted their skin slightly nightly
only to be whisked away by hurrying hands
robbed, bleached of any memory of the
fingers and toes and legs and
backs they'd known
and I was just the next body they'd never remember
That they'd never know to miss
I felt that blank would enguld me
if I didn't get up that instant,
that somehow that sanitary soul
I had let lie on my skin would wiggle its way
into my pores

So i jumped up and ran to the window
away from that nothingness vacuum
pulled back the curtian
and stoff in front of the window in my underwear
let the sun sock me in the eyes

I forced my eyes open to look my attacker in the face
and saw that beat up blea jean town
feet up
boots off
unscrupulously sprawled out
over the vast flat expanse of
lands green
sitting out on a Midwest front porch
smoking a cigarette
exhalations making overcast
swirls across the sky
I pressed my skin to the warming glass
squinting, staring
at the big brown body of the world
that lay before me
wanting to know every bone in that body,
to taste the blood pumping
through her veins
but brought to my knees by the leisurely
splendor of it all
And I wanted it to see me
exposed in my morning glory
wanted that sun to burn away
the film the sanitary abyss
the hotel bed had left on my skin
I felt the morning pour herself into
like a pitcher of fresh squeezed orange
juice into a thirsty glass
I leaned forward and kissed the window
leaving a faint twinge of morning breath and
orange pulp on the window pane
And I knew
down to the marrow of the bones in my toes
that this sun-kissed morning was the beginning
of a new sort of day

 

I lie in bed
Across the room from my grandmother
Who's breathing, wheezy, into the stillness
That feels heavy, pressing my body into my mattress

I lie knowing that she's awake
Because she's stirring
Getting up and getting grandmother things
Like tissues and nasal spray
But I don't talk to her
Because she's not wearing her hearing aids
And because the few feet between us feels like the
hundreds of highway miles that are
usually between us

I lie ashamed
Because of ways i don't know my grandmother
Who she is and why she reads check-out line romances
I am selfish for the way I think of her
That I'll have to stay home when she's visiting, or change
the sheets for her, or make the bed without any wrinkles

I wish that I knew my grandmother better
That I didn't just think of her sadly,
That her knees ache, or her house is empty
It's sad that the years of knowing my grandmother
Have silenced me towards her

 

So there she was-
with chai crowned hair
and ginerbread breath
from a coffee mug mouth

We drank to our health
with green tea warmed hands
gave tryptophane hugs
after honey trickle pauses
​

 

I waited in the kitchen
where the overhead lights
are pentagonal
and bright

mist floated through the screen
and the windowsill was wet with rain

your hair was blond
and looked out of place
in my dark cavernous living room

your smile wasn't quite right
it trembled at the edges

you had just shaved
your face was smooth
so that your chin
ran into your lips

 

Nice collection you have here! There's a couple of type-os in one or two you might want to fix, but I know exactly what you mean about the formatting. Of all you've posted so far, the outstanding ones, in my mind are "Coldflower Quest", "Open" and "August" - these were really enjoyable. Look forward to reading more!

 

i also liked a few of these... the last one and one or two more... mostly they are too wordy for me, i know some people like that so i wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad thing but...

 

Love your collection here, very good imagery going on in every piece and each one seems to have a living, breathing identity if you know what I mean? these take on a personality, and that's great to see.