Category: poetry

To Stop The Duel

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How did it go from me never settling for anything less

To me being the angriest person you’d meet on a workday

Because of the stress?

How did my pain become a part of someone’s reality

When the only truth I sought was the ability to stop ignoring my alarm

Because of my fragility?

How did my nightmares about failing

Involve into daydreams of bailing

On the life I know – like I didn’t build it, at all,

As if I was someone’s undeserving thrall.

I know it takes two to tango but why can’t I stop the duel

When my feet are on fire, yet numb,

But they keep adding the fuel?

I know it’s my desperation speaking when I have no time to eat

As they munch away on my future and money

But try to keep it discrete.

I know I should’ve pushed harder,

Knowing this tale is a two-parter

And I didn’t have anything to lose back then.

But it still felt like hell when the clock struck ten.

How do we pretend and keep avoiding the questioning?

It is much easier, of course, to ignore the reckoning,

But is it promising?

Have we become the jurors and prisons for our own sentencing?

The background noises are quickening, they might become deafening.

Call me when the standards are settling.

-JW

The Coast is Not Clear

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Photo of Pok Rie

If you took a peek inside my words, if you glanced through the mendacious keyhole,

You’d see the truest parts of me and how they each play a role –

My own heart can’t be trusted as it’s often acting as the mole.

I’m just a broken person, your narrative won’t ever make me whole.

“Believe me” can be harsh words to yell when you’re cornered,

Especially, when there’s not a single supporter in your corner.

It’s hard to feel fulfilled surviving on some empty calories,

Depending on a lust for blood coming from all the crowds you please. From your enemies.

Tired of walking the line but you can’t step away from it either.

“All your exits are blocked, honey, go and take a breather.

It’s going to be just fine. Now, go get in the freezer.

It will help with the burning fever of becoming a leader.”

***

Fingers are trembling, touching the broken screen –

Can you ever feel truly seen? Or do you only get your spleen

And a vivid red spite to go with it, waiting in line for the guillotine?

I can’t believe I didn’t end this when I was fifteen.

On a more hopeless note, it’s been two days since I last took a shower.

Been working so hard on proving my worth to some superior power

Which I’ve never believed in or prayed to in the first place, but what’s the use

Of being an atheist if you’ve always preferred some systematic abuse.

Called myself “worthy” on the bus ride home, but that’s simply a fraction

Of the fights I have to win with my demons. This is the first wave, the first contraction.

What we need is a true call to action, no abstraction or extractions

Away from the truth – with its burned edges and imperfect boundaries.

We will not sleep on this – or do what we’re told. I beg you, please.

At this time there’s so much pain we have to help ease,

So many smoking guns we must reach in order to seize.

Life with a price on your head was never for the influential –

It’s meant for the power hungry on the barricades, the so called “nonessential”.

Climb faster and aim for the higher ground, avoid the pestilential.

One day more to fight the confidential. To answer the existential.

To fasten our credentials.

To get the attention

Or pack the essentials

And leave – like we were never really here,

But I really hope they hear.

My dear, they will not always adhere.

One day they will learn to confront,

Even when the coast is not clear.

-JW

Sugar of Lead

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Photo by mentatdgt

I want to open you up the way you tried to open up my guts.

The way you bled me dry with all the feedbacks and the interrupts

While simultaneously dreaming of me as some cold cuts

On your dinner table – too bad you were always a klutz.

I trusted your instincts the way I never trusted my own.

The only sounds you want to hear from me are quiet groans –

It’s never easy to admit I’m not silly and that I have grown.

Yet the hardest part to bear is that I’ve set silence as your ringtone.

The farthest part from truth is the closest to reality. At least – mostly.

I don’t dream of lives or of deaths because I don’t sleep.

Don’t shush the lion inside before the propane cranes rise above me

And knock the crap out of my conscience. That’s one thing I should keep.

But nothing is sacred when a victimless crime takes its place.

The only rights or wrongs in this scene are how you set the pace.

As the lack of air will cause them some trouble when I puncture,

They will deem myself as a culprit when I’m really just the vulture.

Isn’t it the culture?

I lose structure.

My loose morals do rupture –

But I won’t break unless they capture.

A few good men

And loose pieces in my head.

With all due disrespect,

You die the way you make your bed.

Red. Inbred. Unthread.

Whatever’s your excuse, you’re not mislead.

This is the place you should pray to drop dead

Before fed the sugar of lead.

-JW

Sympathy for the Seventh Sin

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Photo by Burak K

Hey, just wanted to see how you’re doing today.

The last time I called I hated you like a lion

Hates to kill its prey.

I’m not religious but every time someone mentions you, I sit there and pray

Hoping you have the means to move on without me there, every step of the way.

But I don’t know what it means to move on. I get finicky.

My pillow gasps and screams your name right back to me.

The strangers all around this place have branded me as “gutsy” –

If they don’t see my crippling heart, what else do they not see?

Your beaming smile was printed in my memory. Then cut out as a simple clipping.

I must’ve been a monster when I stabbed myself to start the snipping

In order to get every last piece of you away… Too bad I forgot the stitching.

All for nothing. The numbness didn’t last. The insides are still twitching.

Do you even understand what has been done?

How many times the water’s under the bridge

But you once again pull out the gun?

And with my own hand you push me out on the ridge…

Will you have what it takes to pull the trigger? Or will you stand there, evasive?

If offered my tied and bleeding tongue, would you know where to place it?

What a shame it is to fall for someone with a soul of tin,

To have this deadly sympathy for the seventh sin.

What an abject itch it is to live with you, without ever having you.

It was nice to talk but I must go. My empathy is due.

-JW

Red house by the Silk Road

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Photo from Pixabay

Some choose to follow the same predicament, the dusty pavement.

The particles are getting their brain rusty, but it’s a statement –

To be hollow, or not to follow? What’s the difference if time is borrowed?

I have such hunger to fearmonger. Don’t need to write down your area code,

If needed, I’ll remember the red house by the Silk Road. If needed, I’ll reload.

Some choose their steps like they’re graven, not to wake the death raven,

But feathers fill their lungs gravely. How bravely they cave in

At the slightest of touch… I clutch my madness and run away, blindly,

I’m alone together with my thoughts, oh, please don’t mind me.

Treat me unkindly. I need my feathers ruffled, nightly.

Some choose to stay put in four walls until something better calls –

The drying paint is shriveling the souls like bright leaves during falls.

It might be a stunning scenery but I prefer one wall broken. Helps the greenery.

What a pity I am, so well made and shiny, but unbound by machinery.

I bet they would cut out my heart – if it wasn’t a thievery.

Some choose to never leave me be.

-JW

Routine Riptide

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Photo from Pixabay

Isn’t it romantic – how we verve by a shattered screen for long hours

While the Insanity Watch serves us the career that isn’t really ours.

It sounds like a plan – while you lay low, the profits go high,

And the greyer you become, the bigger is the imaginary apple pie.

The story is not about ambition, it’s about what you expect in return –

‘Cause they will settle for nothing less than depression and a sudden heartburn.

“Don’t take yourself so seriously. Smile. But not that wide, be decent.”

Why don’t you want to see me grin? This facial pose is pretty recent

For me, at least. I also never rolled my eyes before I started in this position

Because it takes the 360 degree view to take in all the disposition. Plus, the factual fiction.

This can’t be real, right? Am I really asking or am I making a deal with the devil?

At the end of the day, it’s about the heads you sever

While dealing with the pressure level.

Yet – I’m not good at it. I often revel.

Rebel.

***

My bloody nose is treacherously tickling, blood is trickling.

The sunrises smell coppery. Evenings – soaked in bleach, whittling

And turning the last white blood cells into goo. Have I lost it completely?

Is it supposed to be resembling dying, or is this really death, masked discreetly?

I would prefer if you don’t answer. The silence is much better than your breath –

The moments when your rotten mouth is speaking,

I’ve always viewed with so much disrespect.

All I look forward to is the next taxi to take me away to a place around the corner.

A place nearby where the tentacles can’t reach. Where I have built a border.

The dim prediction that I’ll break in the process lingers, right above my shoulders.

But if I once built palaces for people that I hate… Then for myself

I will be shifting boulders.

-JW

Just another FOB song

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Photo by Mike from Pexels

Maybe I’m a one trick pony or a misfit

But baby, I don’t get it, how your face makes them lose it –

How you’re just all that and your love’s been “such a blessing”.

I’m sorry, is there something vital that I’m missing?

I guess you’re fine on most Monday mornings

And your kitten heels lipstick never keeps it boring.

You Lovelace your way into everyone’s story

Whilst empathy for you remains an unknown territory.

Tuesday evenings pass and you make me sickly mellow –

Your pale blue veins turn strictly amarelo.

It’s hard for me not to break your jaw on Wednesdays,

The second my slap lands, we will part our joint ways.

On Thursdays we hate one another, that’s the rule,

‘Till our hands touch fingers, like in middle school…

Fridays mix blatantly into the weekend blues

But you leave your shirt open, and you forget your shoes.

On most days I still don’t get what they see in you,

When the world is a Romeo to your biting Scorpio.

So fearless and honest, a straight shooter to heart –

This reality’s yours, and we’re here to play the part.

…

“The waves in your hair look marvelous moonlit.”

Indeed, I’m a one trick pony and a misfit.

The Endless Cycle of “Not Enough”

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Photo by Lucas Ettore Chiereguini

Being patient through most days while you abuse the peace tenderly

By dancing on my nerve ends as I sink into the lethargy.

I often wonder – can I go any deeper than this, can I go beyond?

Is living just a prolonged torture as we wait to go back where

We once belonged?

Most mornings sound static to my ears, it’s not music at all –

The noise is so maddening I run through the streets while the others stall.

I think about whether they even sense the chilling breath on their necks

As they navigate filthy boulevards filled with human made bottlenecks.

What a wreck.

When the afternoon sneaks upon me reminding of far better times,

The emptiness in my belly has grown so strong, ready to paralyze. To bury lies.

No matter how hard I’m trying to outlive the benumbing gallows inside,

It seems clear that the judgment will fall over me as they say my appeals

All have been denied.

Nothing taste quite as bitter as evenings. The silence swaddles my hair.

All I want is to be left alone…yet I also want an affair. Is this fair?

My thoughts run through foggy meadows, they stop at the no man’s land.

Some evenings they come back home. But some – they sell cannons

As contraband.

Nights are not made of time as I struggle to keep myself on the clock.

Please, don’t get me wrong – nights are still a goddamn chopping block.

I never needed a time of day to get even darker, as if I wasn’t dusky enough,

As if I needed the starlit sky to remind me how the cycle repeats, as if I needed

Another reason for giving up.

Can I just rebuff?

Please, let me out. It’s been enough.

-JW

Love Witch: Vol 2

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Photo by Charry Jin

A distant dawn is spilling light over horizons,

But I’m only waking up when I hear the sound of sirens.

There’s cheap vanilla perfume lingering between our bodies,

Pretending it is sane to look for love in hotel lobbies.

The curtains on our stage remain closed. We’re not ready to ask questions

As you feel deep regret and I’m still fighting my aggressions.

We’re done. After tonight we’re done. The moment sun rises

We’re as good as two strangers who have been through a crisis.

The morning sun hits my face, and I’m ready to flee this absurd scene.

Your eyes meet mine. You also know this has turned obscene.

***

I wonder – if you feel nothing for long enough do you

just hate everybody? Or are you just too tired?

Looking for love seems like too much effort

to put in someone who will never be desired.

But then I meet these people who I shouldn’t touch

as it’s wrong to steal something that’s not yours,

and I sink my teeth in them and I make them blush

so red… But is it my fault they put themselves on all fours?

It is he who adores, it is he who ignores

The warning signs, redder than his cheeks.

But who cares about my heartless Siren’s screak?

I’m the one who made him weak, for weeks,

just like a modern day love witch, so to speak.

Hope they burn me during dawn, as they should.

Hope I reborn as someone from Hollywood

that makes their livelihood by being no good.

-JW

A Goodbye Note on the Fridge

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Photo by Aleksandar Pasaric

It’s 2.30am and there’s nothing left in this world for me to fix,

Nothing I can do to change what’s been done, no knock-off tricks

Left in my sleeve – I’m fresh out of cheats to unlock this next level.

I’ll pack up and run. You’ll stay here to watch the dust settle.

To our past I feel sorry, my trembling arms are still holding on so tight.

But, then again, from a hundred wrongs you can’t make a single right,

Especially during the night.

Don’t call me lucky, my reality’s a free fall without a parachute.

I live on black coffee and spoofed memories of the lovers I mute,

My home is where I lay my head – but you can’t make running your friend.

You were right when you said I’m so fake I could run for president.

But, I swear, when I closed the door I didn’t mean to burn the bridges –

No point for explanations though. Just hope you won’t become religious.

“The Runaways” was playing the evening we crossed paths, it’s funny

How the moments you treasured seem foolish now, and less than temporary.

You never seemed to notice the worlds I built around you in my mind

So I built some without out you, pretending we would be just fine.

My fantasies became so real I couldn’t grasp.

And suddenly you knew, but you never asked,

Pretending we could be just fine…

***

It’s 4am and in fact, nothing needs my fixing.

I’m broken, true, yet I’ll stick to my vicious cycle of affixing

To someone that holds me together,

Only for a little while,

Like we’re birds of a feather,

Until I find a new place to start a better life.

One day I’ll make it right.

-JW