Empty mailboxes and coffee stands,
Time dripping like sheen grains of sand.
My face is a mirror to your illusion,
My face is a mirror to your grand confusion.
Silky dresses and muted city skylines,
Breath leaking out after lost hindsights.
I assume your beauty is here to stay,
I assume your beauty puts me on display.
Harsh words and unwritten sentiments,
Broken hopes leaking from overused pens.
Your eyes poke my brain until it’s bleeding,
Your eyes suck the ink dry every evening.
-JW
Living on the edge of an astronomical clock turning backwards.
The time isn’t real, nor is the space – we’re simply bad actors.
Leaping through the worst past and present can offer, spinning
Back into my oblivion patched with torn memories, singing,
Re-enacting old scenes while the hour hand’s draining me to the bone.
Might feel obscene to these petty people living in their heads
All alone.
But I go up the minute hand, I chase the escape wheel and fall –
Hanging in the flow of the time by a blue thread, dirty and small.
Jumping after each palm reached out to me but I’m somehow missing.
My spine is rubbing into another manipulated reason to stop hissing
And get back to giving all my warm blankets to those who bow
So low to see the last inch of hope leaving the body I liked years back
But now barely know.
I cling to the second hand, almost being ripped in two by the heat.
The change of algorithm is washing my brain of sins and of greed.
Running up the hill of no escape, right up to the promised rope –
You might think I’ll make a noose but by know you must know
I’m not a trope
And I’d rather tie the ends together to keep my own brain intact
Than give you another graveyard fairy-tale of a ghoul eating the hero of my favorite tale
In the second act.
-JW
Remember the money on the table, the bloody coins?
I didn’t touch it. Didn’t read the red talking points.
You stared in disbelief, as if I’ve cut you open for good.
You bit down on my fingers for pleasure
Just because you could.
Remember the jam-packed streets and our rendezvous?
It wasn’t a fortuity that I left the room raging blue.
The damage was limited but scarring was there to stay.
“No excuses for you to be insufferable again.
If you weep, I don’t pay.”
And once again – I stay.
-JW
Where I’m from sorrow is taken as a precautionary pill,
It’s overused to create some sound while the world stays perfectly still.
Where I’m from street names are whispered, never yelled.
The babies are washed in acid and bleach, their shoulders are never held.
Where I’m from fluorescent lights have been forbidden for years
So gather your things – let’s walk to the neon sparks with all of our peers.
Where I’m from laws are not about restoring justice or peace –
They simply drip ink until the culprit is caught so it puts villagers at ease.
Where I’m from blackmail is applied evenly on every soul
But only the ones who run so fast their heels turn red make it out whole.
-JW
You’re an oil painting left in a shed to decompose,
The loneliness eating up the corners, pulling at your clothes.
You’re a sunset too bright to photograph for a fool –
The lizards are taking it in but you’re too precious to ridicule.
Your hair is grayer than foggy graves, flowing aimlessly.
Sentiment is a booked club, when I try to check in – no vacancy.
Your suit fits you well but so does the box cutter…
When you hear my knock, you might want to declutter.
Can you feel me entering, can you hear me tripping on steps?
Are you running or this is one of those mornings
Where you so tragically overslept?
-JW
I cannot fall asleep before I’ve created another one of these part-time sentence sketches.
The grey clouds are forming a cradle but I refuse to enter. Too far from static and background retches.
Some acidic light spills on my spine, it makes me live through it all again, pulsating,
But it barely rings a bell anymore. I tied a rock to this wraith and sunk it by tirelessly creating.
I cannot sleep before I know that I’ve saved another day by being drained, not going down the drain,
And if you asked five years ago, I would’ve declared this sanctuary insane,
Maybe changed my name to Jane.
So here I stand, alone in the dust bowl of traumas that made me, of black bat licorice spat in my direction,
Cascading through shallow storms, calming my insomniac mind with bad rhymes, trusting your discretion.
-JW
He first saw you the night you turned nineteen,
Bleach blond fantasies, mind desperate, yet keen.
Outskirts of desert formed your idea of love –
Now you have a pocketful with nowhere to shove.
He seemed to forget all the lessons you taught
And maybe too often he called you a fraud.
The years will fly by, the betrayal – remain.
The time will teach you to breathe but not to refrain.
He now has a mansion and a Las Vegas wife,
The most cheerful things that money can buy.
You can’t help but take it in, moment or more,
Before spiraling, throwing out all you deplore.
…He knew you never stood a chance against a goner,
Too lonely to cry for help, too scared to dishonor.
But you didn’t go back to the deserts he mudded
So maybe, just maybe, you’ve always known that’s it better
To run for cover.
-JW
Walking the streets feels lonely since I’ve been doing it to pay rent,
So many strange faces and worn out places, so many mixed messages sent.
The blood doesn’t ache – but the heart breaking for my wasted youth stings.
It’s been a while since I’ve stopped running or held a pair of kings.
Shadows over my shoulder building up in an unholy, black avalanche,
Yet everyone’s convincing me – look back, it’s a dove holding an olive branch.
No friends out there left to betray, but my loyalties don’t lie in the past.
Only so many bites to take out of me, I wonder –
Who will be the very last?
-JW
We’re the personification of a thunderstorm after a heated summer day.
Relief is entangled in fresh air. The daisies in my cheeks are longing for rain.
As soon as the first droplets hit the chalky ground, a lightning strikes.
With the weight of my love I push you up a hill, disturbing the butterflies.
We’re the embodiment of warm July evenings turning chilly in the blink of an eye.
Fruit trees are tired from reaching for sun-kisses. The earth is bone dry.
When the thunder rumbles over the lonely fields, you’re carrying me deeper into the twilight zone –
Might as well run through the dark, the rain is so heavy it feels as if we have blinders on.
We’re the epitome of the golden hour paused by some biting wind.
The chimes are rocking back and forth, calling me saint right after I’ve sinned.
Rosy sky trickles down so quick, burns our skins aimlessly, like a pint of lava.
But we’re taken by the touch, we don’t see it.
When they’re asking which vices to erase, we both whisper “nada”.
-JW
No longer noticing airplanes over your house, it’s lonely these days.
The sky is empty. Only two pink clouds and a few lost sunrays.
Used to imagine that planes were stars guarding your thoughts.
Wished on a shooting hope but it didn’t work.
Horizon is covered in blank spots. A goddamn mirage.
The view out of my window seemed picturesque back then.
For a stranger passing it looked like a dollhouse, time and again.
Now the walls are too pale and the dust settles on my skin.
I’m pulling my hand away from the trigger so often –
Not often enough, much to my own chagrin.
The sunset feels Photoshopped, and I don’t know what to say.
For the first time I wanted to take your hand, I wanted to stay.
Now my foolish body is filled with butterflies with nowhere to run.
We might not have the stars or the airplanes, and screw that –
I really wish that I’m still the only one.
-JW
The Daily Writing of Jackie Wright 