The Daily Writing of Jackie Wright

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

By the Arête

9. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

It’s been eighteen months since I’ve touched a scale to deal with the itch.

For full seventeen months I haven’t been called a righteous bitch.

Weighing myself is still a daily task for me though, don’t be blinded,

The things I get done feel like nothing and I start getting winded.

The constant rush to be leading is leaving me shattered in the evenings

But now the broken mirrors won’t really reflect what I’m eating.

There are pros and cons for having a hunger, and that’s a fact.

No matter the hunger, at the end of the day you feel like you’ve signed a pact.

Some mornings my life’s hanging on a string by the arête

As they’re stealing my ideas, copyrighted with blood on the concrete.

Some nightmares wake me quicker than seeing my bile in the drain

And I keep reminding myself that the self-pity has died in vain.

I have changed. It is not the same.

***

It’s been one billion little lies later. My brain has gone quiet.

I’m not wanting to diet but it’s not a riot.

I’m ready to pave a way, striate.

-JW

Not to Sound Banal

8. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

I always fall for people that I let too close to my chest,

As if vulnerability is some kind of drug I need to test.

My empathy is the worst of my foes, a real placebo effect –

It has misplaced my senses with fragile defenses,

Impossible to detect.

Have been feeling defective, yet finding new ways to cope,

Subsisting by flirting with people whose morals are broke.

Now I’m sure that whoever likes me can never be whole.

People with ideals are as far from me and as frigid

As the goddamn South Pole.

It’s been strange how I’m feeding my egos with lovers I tease –

With some I’m just playing, but some I put right on their knees.

We all know that worst things in life come strictly in threes:

One lost soul, one misguided bishop , one sin

Well hidden in the diocese.

Let’s take a ride, baby, let’s rocket right through my bitterness

Masked as temptation, poorly hidden in wraps of my selfishness.

I would still take home every soul who has lowered my walls

As I’m not capable of walking away from tragedy,

Not to sound banal.

-JW

The Three Half-Truths

7. Feb, 2020 jackiewrightauthorLeave a comment

Anger is never a loud clamor covered in a cast iron case–

It’s a lot of dissonance trapped in a narrow space.

An Olympic arena filled with control freaks

Or people who followed because they could not sleep.

It’s always been about how you tell a story, not about how you live it.

Three sour half-truths make poisonous decoy a gimmick.

Give or take, the fog is raising and building a cruel circus –

You know too much when I’ve barely scratched the surface.

***

We know each other through shiny shower heads and hotel parking lots,

And we know that neither of us is the breadwinner type when coming up with devious plots.

My bloodline branded you as one that has a wondering eye, no Lasik,

And your wife would agree when you touch my thighs, so pervasive.

I’m too weary to concentrate on those calling me a schemer or escort,

Too tired of senseless forgiveness about taking it one step too short.

All I want is your hand in mine but what I get is risible ire,

An irritating need to keep you as my wonderful, wonderful desire

Whilst the world goes more haywire.

-JW