Feb 2020 – Page 2 – The Daily Writing of Jackie Wright

What Would Have Been

19. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Would it be so wrong if I grabbed your hand?

And if I did, where on my body would your arm land?

Would it make someone cry if you touched my lips

with your gaze for one more second?

I don’t mind at all if in your life I always come in as second.

Would I take it too far if I never looked away?

Your eyes were stuck on mine, and I wish that they could stay.

Would you still make me laugh if we weren’t just friends?

Would you like me without jewelry and playful pretends?

With every moment you’re bringing me up from the underwater.

I can’t wait to take the first breath, to not feel stuck.

Please pull me out. And do it faster.

Reach for me and take me out of the rut.

The space I’ve kept has been there for too long.

Please, squeeze my fingers three times, like in that song…

***

Would it be so wrong?

Or did you fake it all along

And is it not me that you long

To pull close? Could be, I suppose.

But would that be so wrong?

-JW

Leaving the Sin City

18. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Photo by **Anni Roenkae** from **Pexels**

Crime infested holy cities filled with lovers gone mad out of satiety,

Hidden in sparkling sacred water, writing their penal codes of impropriety.

I’m too tame for this lonely town of looney tunes – I don’t have much hope in society.

Yet – I can’t make it alone, so please pardon my selfishness and compliancy.

Too long I’ve traveled these roads on my own, lost track of it a few mistresses ago.

I’ve never loved anyone that I could have but their ghosts still follow wherever I go.

It’s hard to carry those shadows down dusty fields or wily mountaintops though –

But there’s nothing more dangerous than taking your past for granted. So I carry it,

Through the ice and snow.

On weekends my brain takes me to a place I want to wake up in when I’m dead.

Sadly, it doesn’t make any sense – the sin cities I fled hold me by a phantom thread,

They pull me into the bright carousels of cheap whiskey kisses. The tap tastes like led.

When your temptations call for you, you pay for them in the skins you shed.

Otherwise, they might take your head.

-JW

Another ABBA song

17. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Photo by **Retha Ferguson** from **Pexels**

Sudden sparks of passion and subtle love is all you’ve wanted to give

When everything I asked for was honesty – because I don’t have time to kill.

To my caring sentiments you never respond with effort, but the second I turn

Is when you decide to crawl back? Are you finally out of women to burn?

My jokes you don’t understand when they’re teasing.

The only time I’ve seen you cry is when I left you desperate and freezing.

But I’m done with the chase, and you hate me for daring

To not hold you down until I hear swearing. Or tearing

Of my already sore patience when it comes to you and your kind.

If you thought I would fall, you’re the one that’s out of the mind.

And I’m sorry it’s only your shortfalls we’re addressing.

However, all you see in me is another girl – in a different dressing.

Or is it not like that and your lack of answers should sound intriguing?

But then again – you must be the only soul whose red signs I’m not reading.

You know, I wrote this when another ABBA song was playing on the radio

In my neck of the woods. Where you always lose me – and I want to let it go.

Yet the way you swallow me slowly, re-do the interior of my moral code

Makes me think twice before leaving, before hitting the road.

Maybe your insanities are keeping me from overload.

But maybe in the series of my life you’re the most tragic episode.

(I would’ve bowed at the end – if the life lightened the load.)

-JW

Fantasy of Teal

16. Feb, 202016. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Your words flow like a river. They spin me out of control, they carry me down

To the lowest points of the shore. Make up running, making me into the clown

You know I am – deep below the surface. So you keep shoveling the soil, faster,

Or as Fitzgerald put it – we beat on just to fall back into the past, to become a disaster.

There is this immeasurable darkness inside of me when I see your face, I feel reckless.

You are the one to sympathize, but you also beg me to wear a hangman’s knot as a necklace.

How full of oneself can a person be? When does the pride begin to overflow?

Just as a shallow basin you drip on the floor each night before you start a row.

We argue about the system, we beat each other black and blue for the thrill.

People say that I look happier but we both know you kick in like a bitter pill.

The high you give is worthless if you keep dragging me deeper in the waters –

But I guess that is what you get after years of ditching belief in holy fathers.

I never trust a story with a happy ending because there is always the next chapter.

When you first fell into my nets, they called me a serial cheater and a captor.

Look at us now – selling our act on the street corners for a dime. You – closing the deals,

Me, kneeling on the red brick road, making sure that my psyche heals

Before you once again keep my head underwater with your heel.

What’s not to love about life spent in a fantasy of teal?

-JW

Faux Grieving

15. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

When the light has left for the day – and so has reason,

I patch up the cuts in my stomach, clean ichor from last season

Of the witch,

Where I was the last one standing up to them, soaking wet,

With filth under my fingernails. Yet they didn’t see me as a threat.

They read into my words but they misconstrued the meanings.

Dictionaries are useless when it comes to faux grievings

And holding onto to things so tight they pinch your carotid

Until there’s not a single vessel left that’s solid, unrotted.

“Choose your fights carefully,” they say, guns blazing.

The ironies this world can teach deserve a proper razing –

Unless, of course, all things corrupt are also built from good intentions,

Spoiled by too much trust and lack of attention.

Aiming a revolver in the sky is not a choice many get to make

Although we’re told that going our own way is a piece of cake –

Wedding cake, probably, as there isn’t a faker symbol in the business

Of selling out souls for pennies at time, just to end up with a grimace

Full of ghouls and a grimness.

-JW

Airplanes and Neon Lights

14. Feb, 202014. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Photo by **Hasan Albari** from **Pexels**

I look outside my window each night and see airplanes landing over your house,

Their lights blending with the night sky. I am standing by the frame like a loyal spouse –

Protecting your gravities, stopping engines from failing at my own expense.

This sunken faith of mine has never touched the deep end. It is losing oxygen and common sense.

However, it hurts stunningly. The view is too precious to go into it blind –

And the neon lights across the street remind me of your gleeful eyes meeting mine.

Sometimes I stargaze a bit too far – so I fall, forgetting that you are out of reach.

How easy it is to overlook the distance when your instincts are soaked in bleach.

I know it is hard for you to maintain the illusion that your blinds are shut on these nights

But it is not my imagination making up the fact that you have not slept as you are picking fights

With the only good thing you had in your life. But is it my fault? Not shutting the curtains

When you so desperately needed the spark? Do not lie if you are uncertain.

You need me to be by the window, and you do not want to wait for it anymore.

I guess the first time that I touched you, it was clear – you do not mind some glory or gore

If it means holding my palm in your hitched hand for a bit longer.

At moments like this I wish I could be a complete loner.

But I cannot be – so I throw my pride against the foggy glass

Hoping it breaks your chains, at last.

-JW

If I Would Have Fallen

13. Feb, 202013. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Another day spent in rose tinted blackout glasses, not seeing the stars.

Raspberry and lime kisses land on my neck, too bad no one’s noticing the scars.

My palms are trembling as neon sky lands over the city, so sweet and so sticky.

The marks on my shoulders are pulsating at sunset. They’re bruises, not hickeys.

Every breath I take rubs you up the wrong way – and you won’t stay neutral.

I’m slowly turning into you though, but I guess the experience is not mutual…

People I knew continue to talk like they enjoy sticking in my craw. Such amateurs.

When new dawn arrives, my conscience is on its knees. The rest is a blur. Or a slur.

With every word you speak I learn one new reason to step away from the car crash

But suddenly your grip feels too fond so I hold on, tie a bow around it and add to the stash

Of things that I should’ve burned to completion when I noticed the tenseness.

Yet – here I am, standing by your window at 3am, without any control, defenseless.

I wish it was different. That kisses didn’t hurt

And words didn’t line up to sound this absurd.

I wish I was angrier. That my bites were sharper,

So abrupt you’d never try me. You’d scarper.

-JW

The Violet Lotus

12. Feb, 202012. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

It is another Sunday morning where you sleep in while I watch the news –

Our apartment building is quiet, yet it bubbles as if it never gets the blues.

At 9am you have made my side of bed into your dream sanctuary. I do not notice.

My daydreams are getting harder to bury. The throb in my chest does not let me focus.

It is one more Sunday morning – you sleep in while I am dyeing my hair.

The neighbors have left for the weekend so that is one more glare I can spare.

Before 10am you are building a fort out of pillows. You do not notice.

The nightmare will hit once you open your eyes. They will jump to a note and a violet lotus.

It is the same Sunday morning – you cannot sleep but you stay in bed, silent.

Four white walls you own and nothing else. Blindsided. But never violent.

After 11am Monday morning you enter the office. They do not notice.

Insomnia has taken you under her covers. She lets you be restless while the world feels hopeless. Bogus.

You remember the note by the lotus.

***

“If I ever stop loving you, please don’t wake me up.

It’s been 8 hours since I walked away

And it feels like a cover up.

If you ever stop caring, please don’t let me know.

It’s been 8 minutes since I wanted to return

But time is a one-way flow.

If they ever learn how I broke you, let them eat me alive.

It’s been 8 seconds since I’ve closed that chapter –

And they’ll let you know that I survive only when I connive.

Let them contrive.”

-JW

Bruised Elbows And Lost Tempers

10. Feb, 202011. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Why do I have to write exhortatory poems about you every night?

How do you cut me to the whites of the bones and act as it is alright?

The craving inside is not quitting, it is only rising through floor, filled with rage.

We both know that as long as we care, we will not be able to turn the page.

Each night I walk for hours to ensure that I am not the broken one –

It was you that bought and loaded, and pointed to my head that lonely gun.

I am not sure how to make peace with my bruised elbows or lost tempers.

Tomorrow it will repeat – you will set it afire, you will not hesitate to attemper.

My saddest day was the one I learned people I love can be villains, too.

Falling in love with strangers was easy – it was you who woke up the madness of coup.

One thing you forgot in the midst of this war is how I lack apprehension.

I close my eyes not fearing your ill intentions

Covered as cheap loathing –

But it is not a sheep’s clothing.

More like a foreboding.

***

Love does not feel like exhilaration.

It is a senseless act of passion

Committed for your own defamation.

Exactly like high fashion.

-JW