Tag: Jackie Wright

A Misprinted Poem (The Author Got The Story Wrong)

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When did you know you’ve lost my pen entirely?

Did the snake hiss gently,

Swallow the tail in its entirety,

Or glance with a thousand mile stare like it’s tired of me?

The tiniest acts of defiance were punished.

Yet, my trust knew no bounds.

I told you how the stories of my other villains got published.

So I have to wonder—is that how you got the idea?

You decorated my walls in white ink,

Pushed aside my hope and will and slipped right in,

And when I told the others, they said—it’s all blank.

I was looking for hints as my soul sank,

But I couldn’t find them.

My tongue froze over like the Inferno, one in a billion chance,

As the diary pages lost saturation.

Death was reaching out its coldest hands…

You set the books in my mind on fire,

The library was gone in a heartbeat.

The firefighters were calling me a liar,

A child looking for a hint of some heat.

Stop!

A pause, a breath, and I’m out of the door.

Not sure who dragged me, but there are only my footprints on the floor.

Each day I dive into the blues,

Each day I become paler and fainter, and more unmoored.

Your grasp on my neck is so tight it almost feels real.

Then, a day comes where I don’t hear you.

I look forward to a meal.

Healing, growing, almost healed.

I stay close, yet never too near.

The axe drops on your neck, at least that’s what they say.

Maybe my lips twisted into a smile, don’t quote me though.

I get another good day.

Then another.

If I stay really silent on starry nights, I can hear you pray,

But you know I won’t answer until you do.

When did you lose me entirely?

Did you think I had it in me to go quietly?

-Jackie

Hear My Words

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Your love haunts me like a dusty piano playing hymns in an abandoned manor.

Your gaze is a delirious fever dream that makes me forget my morals and manners.

If I learned my lesson not once but twice, why do I yearn for you each evening?

You are the one I think about when it rains and when my lungs cannot stop heaving.

When this comes to an end, like all things must, will you still hear these words?

Will you burn your life up like an old house, or will you tell me you got bored?

We both know you have wounded me, and I have cut you open with my snarls.

When we look back at ourselves in twenty years, will we want to erase these scars?

-Jackie

Beyond Repair

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Photo by Mario A. Villeda

Loveless phrases are spilling out of me like a curse.

My only vice was despising cruel people in reverse.

Thoughts carry me like doves, they carry me in a hearse,

And if I cry for help, I will be murdered by a nurse.

Horrendous images project on my eyelids for days.

Wise people left me for dead but some still chose to stay.

The cracks are spreading like the horsemen of my dismay.

I am far beyond repair, do not warm up the clay.

-Jackie

Bed Rot

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Shadow of a person wearing a crown
Photo by Kristal Tereziu

Thoughts of my younger self haunt me like fury and bloodlust.

Back then my pale neck ached from carrying sapphire crowns.

These days every sentence feels like a trap that will snap me,

And words slide in between my ribs until I bleed nouns.

My smile is drawn on every morning, not that it matters.

There are holes in my story but no one checks alibis twice.

There is a rope wrapped around my waist leading ambitions nowhere,

I wish this sadness was not a knife, wasting me slice by slice.

Those hot tears I once cried now give me frostbites each morning,

The bed rot consumes my heavy bones each night.

I used to think that sunrise could cleanse my chest of this sickness,

But it takes more than time to get to the gleaming light.

-Jackie

Insomniac

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Coherent thoughts escape my bloodshot skull and drying tongue.

Red stars form into constellations while tar fills my two lungs.

I stay up haunting ghosts and braving flea-bitten memories,

And sun might rise in a few hours but I must find a new remedy.

Caffeine, wine and white agony mix sweet drinks in my chest.

Why does dread taste like candy but hope hisses like a pest?

The crowd of people on the bridge turned out to be just smoke,

But every person I talk to takes my delusions as a joke.

I do not sleep until the fist of god knocks me unconscious.

I pray to my own moral compass, asking it to stay cautious.

The night comes and fate runs me like a hamster on a wheel.

One of these days death will consume like an overdue meal.

-Jackie

Honey Honey

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Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels

Honey, the kids aren’t doing alright this time around –

Our screaming from dusk till dawn is not like the movies have shown

And The Death Watch is making its rounds.

But honey, it’s not that gruesome, we didn’t hit hard –

The big sister got what’s coming, the little sister learned how to sprint

And how to keep up the guard.

And Hun, it’s not unusual, violence is what keeps us together –

A vulture and its prey… Which one of them is the killer? Do we even care

If they’re birds of a feather?

Honey, the little one seems traumatized, should we be quiet –

Or should she learn the rules to being her mother’s daughter already

Before starting a riot?

Oh, Hun, she’s not taking the yelling and fists too well –

Are we not normalizing the scenery enough with the props and all?

Will she hate us if she dwells?

***

“Honey, Honey, the kids aren’t doing alright still, I’m sorry to break it.

One of you under the ground, the other continuing the legacy of trauma –

It is not my place to strangle your stamina or shake it

But you could have picked a better melodrama

Than the lives you ruined by trying to make it.”

-JW

The Circle Game

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Photo by Rahul from Pexels

Oh, be careful reflecting your self-worth on me.

One second you’re editing me, the next you’re neck-deep, drowning in hate for yourself,

You no longer have the sense or the means to not be self-destructive,

and visibly

There’s something that needs to be reattached to your ego, but you’re sitting on your ice shelf.

Cold. Eager to watch me cramping in frozen waters.

I won’t though. You’re riding the high horse,

Sipping on insecurities which only makes it sadder,

Pretending I had it bad, but you’ve got it worse.

Be careful reflecting your self-worth on me.

I don’t appear in mirrored reflections of superficial surfaces,

and visibly

You’re upset I didn’t wait for you while the selfishness passes.

But I don’t write my poems for you. I write them for the masses.

-JW