Category: poetry

A Single Rose

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Whimsical headlines of breaking news pop up on my screen.

I don’t see them – it’s another evening where the world seems so mean.

I hate everyone I’ve ever known again as they simply don’t listen,

They just sit there and watch me burn, pretending I glisten.

Nobody knows me but they act as they do – the effort’s all mine,

I made sure to write down their habits, old crushes and zodiac sign.

There’s these paragraphs floating and building a story in my mind

Of each person that I know – their life stories, and what they left behind.

I could write a book about every human I’ve ever cared about at the slightest

But I don’t think it ever worked both ways, their ideas of me remained lightless.

Out of vices most difficult for me to carry, egoism is the one to crush my shoulders –

When I’ve told you three times and you insist on not caring, it’s my mental state that smolders.

But if it’s not the case, and out of nothing I’m feeling this rage…

What do you know about me, then? My second name, hometown or age?

What’s the book I read on the train when I was 15 that was missing a page?

What foods do I hate and why do I avoid bars at all costs?

What’s the color of my bag that I once so stupidly lost?

Do you know these answers, do you know the most?

Or are you just another ghost

Stumbling up on the pieces of someone you once called close

To put down a single rose?

-JW

Notes on a napkin

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How do I let you go?

Have asked myself a hundred times, a thousand times more

Than would be needed – if I had the intention to stop wanting you,

Not longing for you anymore.

I don’t and it drives me insane.

There are these ticks and anxieties I get when you speak,

But I know that the anger will fade

And next morning you’ll still be the thing I seek.

How do I forget how much I love you?

I hate you still about the things you said a week ago

But I can’t wait for you to uncover another cover that I blew.

You sink me just to keep me unharmed – and afloat.

There’s nothing I need more desperately than you by my side when it gets rough.

You’ll never learn about the times you saved me – as it’s not enough.

I feel like I can climb into your mind sometimes and all I find is devotion,

Seasoned heavily by damaged goods, looking for that special potion

That will get your huddled shoulders one more opportunity to be sincere.

You still don’t get it but your shortcomings make people cohere.

Your smile works like poison as it makes me die a little in my sleep –

But that’s another vision I’m not allowed to keep

When I finally wake up and you’re not there.

Were you ever really squeezing my waist, were you really here?

I don’t know anymore, and hopefully – one day I will not care.

You’ll be just a name I don’t want to hear.

So how do I let you go? How do I forget you?

How do I wake up one morning willing to regret you?

Will you leave yourself if I ever let you?

Do I throw a little funeral and see where the wind carries the ashes?

Is it going to be an open road or a city with bright neon flashes?

Do I just sit and watch as the time passes?

How do I let you go?

-JW

playing jesus

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Three days ago I was head over heels for you. I was craving

Passion so disloyal it had a hit on my moral savings.

The fire exits were blocked and Missio was playing –

I couldn’t make sense of myself, but the reviews were raving.

Two days ago I had envisioned our first crash together,

Like two junkies, and you giving me a jacket in cold weather.

Or did you hate the plan from my very first dream, altogether?

Was it just me thinking of two cigarette buds as of birds of a feather?

Yesterday you had to enter the room twice before I noticed –

Out of the low hanging fruits, you reached for the lowest.

It must’ve really stung when you saw yourself falling out of focus

But don’t call yourself the victim when your alibis are bogus.

Today you shot your warnings and ended up gravely heedless.

It’s funny to think – I don’t know a person that I could need less.

Despise that the warmth of your neck still leaves me speechless.

Must’ve been a nightmare if I decided to fall for another one

In a desperate need to be jesus.

-JW

Frosty Paws

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To all the people in silver armors, high end saddles and low end taste

I bow so deeply it cracks my bones. They’re the meanest dragons that I’ve faced.

Too faced – everyone lacks one perspective as they see all the plot holes

And all the ways to get the deal through. Chasing money like stumbling foals.

Frosty paws get stuck on unsafe paths in places where stopping is a sentence

Of life spent is rotating fields of nothing – so you better run from that fake vengeance.

But how come we trust the system after it fools us twice before the alarm starts?

Did we simply nod when they said – you’re the target, circumstance is the darts?

There are 500 ways to write yourself out of the simulation this very second –

How could it be there’s only one narrow line you decided to reckon?

Furthermore, is it pure luck we’re born starving but manage to keep it at bay each morning?

I don’t know a lot about mourning.

But I trust that every fool in shiny helmet who chases money is doomed

As great ideas seldom come to minds very well groomed.

I know a thing or two about getting my frosty paws trapped in grounds

Where you never want to be seen by larger crowds.

It’s cold out there for us who don’t believe in glitz of serving

The ultimate purpose of always earning.

How much are you learning?

-JW

What Would Have Been

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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