[x]

Rock BottomThey say a rolling stone gathers no moss,
so when I shudder to a halt
The rocks in my feet continue to grind.
I feel the sand in my lungs
and the regretful mist silting in my heart
as the waves come back in
reaching eagerly for my legs, spooling, churning
over me. Rooted in my misery.
I know the rocks in my feet will help me drown.

ShockwaveFoetal
Trying to fold the pain up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Curled up
Protective
But the shockwaves come
Pulsing from inside
Destroying cells
Radiocactive
Curled up
To trap it between the paper cut limbs.
Trying to fold the pain up.
Foetal.

MutantHear me read it

I am a mutant.
   | My skin does not sallow in the sun
   and I do not blush jaundice through my cheeks.
   | I do not have extra fingers, or toes -
   although my spine;
      it boasts an ironic vertebrae,
      it is a long tally of the hearts I have broken
      and when I straighten my spine the bones Pop out of place.

Of ForestsPinecones are the skeletons of foetal trees.
They are the hopes, desires and dreams of a forest
reduced to the brittle, breakable bones under it all.
They are the unburied memories of loss.

In absence of a poem.I chewed my pen to the nib
and swallowed the ink thoughtlessly,
but no matter how long I thought,
I couldn't say what you mean to me.

I tried, I tried and I tested,
every word in my diminutive range,
but I screwed up more pieces of paper
and happened upon something strange;

I noticed words, which have served me,
for all of my formative years,
had no power to convey my gratitude
for the times that you dried my tears.

Whenever I doubt myself (often),
You're the one who tells me I'm wrong
You lift up my chin and remind me, wait
for the good things that will come along.

I can't find a way to express how
you are the saving grace in my head.
So

A chance secondI lie awake, staring at the cornices.
3AM: my fingers worry at the corners of my sheet.
My anxiety worries at the corners of my rib.
I bite and tug and huff out my misery
As the silence keeps me awake.
I lay with pressure of your absence
Pressing down over my nose and mouth.
A soft asphixiation of the heart, of the sanity.
It is a hot grey night in London.

You are awake, startled by the sunlight.
7AM: you can't lift your weighty skull from the sheet.
The day sirens, but you stay, settled,
Under the weight of your shroud, your loss,
Only the silence keeps you awake.
Unknowingly, for the first time in weeks
We are unintentionally in sync;
Laid

BlackI chew on the blubbery meat of my tongue,
But it revulses
So whenever I swallow I gag.

I try not to inhale the acrid hiss of discontent
That seeps out of the corners of my mouth
And runs a river down my chin;
It reminds me of peaches. I cry.

I have digested the venom
The black rotten root of my own plague;
Ingested it. Injected it. How quick I am to accept death to me.

As organs revolve, revolt, regurgitate
I caged butterflies in my abdomen
As if lushness couldn't catch them there.
I knew better.

I ple'd to the sewn-in stars and their makeshift tenants,
For salvation and for suicide.
They offered neither.

So I sit and stew in these bodil

Sometimes, it's the little things.He always told me I was deep.
An unfiltered distillation of a humanitarian ocean.

He accepted me, gills and all -
He knew that I needed my eccentricities to breathe
under the seascrapers of pollution
that hung over my head.
Or he said he did.

At the end of it all,
he tugged the gills open to expose me;
my innards trailed across the coral reef
as I swam trustingly forward, hoping for the best.
I tried to believe.

I believed him, gills and all -
But eventually, he left me, with holes in my sides
Where he had spooned out my intestines
To tether them to a boulder.
I tried to breath

ScarsSee the sharpness of my tongue-nib
As the metallic taste in my mouth draws out
A barking cough, forced out
By the dirty nicotine lining my lungs.

See the blade of stubbornness
That slices across my cheek bone;
An amalgamation of all the times you pushed me.

See the residue in my eyes,
The remnants of all those times you forced me
And I forced myself not to cry;
Those tears condensed into a thick blinding syrup
That colours all things red.

See the crinkle in my nose,
The wrinkles on my heart
As I remember how you didn't love me. (Don't love me).

See the burns on my psalms
And fingerprints singed off
By all the times you called me nothing

Of Nuisance LeavesHear me read it!

Leaves clutch their ropy fingers around the tree's limbs. The zesty leeches bloom, crack open overnight and slip silently up the nearest oak or maple. They pierce the crunch of bark and penetrate deep into the rubbery veins.

They feed. They pauperize plum and peach until they are heavy and brown; heavy laden with the stolen sap.

When at last they reach their fill the tree can finally shake them off emphatically, desperately, until at last it is clean again. The tree reaches its black bones to the sky in praise and as a new year begins vows never again to be the victim of leaves.

GrowthI remember the day I caught him 'gardening'. His cheeks stained cherry with the brisk wind that trotted beside him up and down the smothered garden path. He dropped a seed as his feet brushed past each other. Up and down he walked, a solemn lieutenant. I asked him what he was doing and those wide sky eyes reflected the ice as he told me he was trying to grow flowers for his mother. I looked at the seeds spilt on the snow and told him that they could never grow in these circumstances. I will never forget the clench in my heart when he responded, with a child's tongue; "I know".

The White ThingsNothing is as far away as a minute ago.
No matter how hard you row against the tide
we can never reach it, never return there.

It's hard to sleep in the light of my regrets
that creeps through curtain and barriers
to rot away and bleach all things white.

It's hard to sleep knowing that no distance
is as far away as sixty small seconds ago.
Immalleable, we rot, and things turn white.

HAIKUWRIMOCOMPLETE 2013

February 28th, 2013

Dire desperation
A feeble whimper for help;
roar of these raw times.

February 27th, 2013

Gluttonous ash cloud
sucks the moon's blood
and swallows the night.

February 26th, 2013

Bark! An explosion!
Angry bodies escape the
network of lung cells.

February 25th, 2013

Silently cloning,
multiplying, honing in,
determined to kill.

February 24th, 2013

Tea and sympathy
readily available
for my dear sister.

February 23rd, 2013

I will hold my breath
as the north wind does the same
waiting for your love.

February 22nd, 2013

He hovers behind;
Hamletian apparition.
Always following.

February 21st, 2013

A lo

Get upHear me read it

She sat on the edge of her bed staring at the floor. Within her scope of vision there were many things she could look at. Many things to think about and process. There was a slate blouse that had wilted at the bottom of her bed, or her pale foot placed beside it. The foot looked unnatural there, with no pressure to grip it to the ground it looked unbelonging, like a cast aside prop. Yet she did not look, or think, or notice.

She just stared, blindly, for an hour, her thoughts were obnoxious and churned the paltry paste of self-disgust in her heart muscle, but they were relatively quiet as she repeated over and over in the fo

ArtI tapped yellow and rouge onto his high cheekbones.
I wanted to dull their sharpness. Dull his shine.
I swiped royal and tiffany across his forehead,
An impermanent reminder of how precious he was to me.

A fuschia flush down the bridge of his nose
dipped into the corner of his eye - he went cross eyed
and I laughed, dropping pink glitter on his collarbone,
he became serious as I pondered. He wanted to be Art.

The sun rose on his temple, I wanted to give him life.
I wanted every day to be a riotous sensation for him.
I left his eyes as they were so he could look at me,
I guess that, deep inside, I wanted to be Art too.

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Social Butterfly - Draft One /Social Butterfly

I know how to calm someone down
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Even if it is their favourite thing to do.

I do not know how to stop eating
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Social Anxiety Disorder 101 - Draft One /Social Anxiety Disorder 101

There are some days
When a forceful knock at the door
Can debilitate me.

Paralysed in the bathroom
Hands buried in a towel
Face whittening against the tiling..

Frozen in the kitchen
Pressing my body against the fridge
Trying to become furniture..

Unknown person listening intently
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My heart is a violent struggling hostage
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After all, these days
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Sandstorm - Draft One /Sandstorm

A cruel gale whips my flesh with sands
streams of finely grained memories
tumble against my skin and burn it raw

sand storm, sand storm, I am lost in you

I open my mouth to speak my mind
but more sand fills it and I cannot utter a syllable
as memories fill my mouth and choke me
as I am consumed by the suffocation of meant-to-be

sand storm, sand storm...

sand flushes my eyes with scratches
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sand storm, sand storm, You are choking me

I can fight the s

Red Beans - Draft One /Red Beans

I stayed in Italy for three weeks,
and I met her
Lost and beautiful

But I couldnt tell that,
In the harsh European sun.

She was just a girl
Filtering her way through the market
Fingering spices and cupping red beans
In her pure white hands.

Just a girl.

Later, she was just the girl
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and now, she is just 'that girl'
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Roses /I brought you roses

and came back each day,
to watch them decaying

and tried not to liken them
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Responsif - Draft One /Responsif

My scars are not tallys of the past
but foretellings of the future
death has marked me as his own
these are my brandings

I am set aside for misery.

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Hard.

by `KathrynODriscoll, Jan 18, 2013, 8:40:28 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

On days like this it is hard to move
It is hard to dress myself.
Blouse a chest plate; dress me in chain mail.
- with the helmet on it is hard to see
it is hard to open my eyes, or lift my chin.
On days like this, it is hard to be human.

It is hard to raise my hands, to button
or to brush my mangy hair.
It is hard to construct the image of a person
out of these destitute materials.
it is hard to pump clotted, crumbling blood.
On days like this, it is hard to be human.

Hard.by `KathrynODriscoll

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

©2013 `KathrynODriscoll

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~Ricardo-Orozco Apr 9, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I love you're vocabulary! Thanks for broadening mine

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`KathrynODriscoll Apr 10, 2013 Student Writer

You are so welcome. :d

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Mood: Love

~Vendori Feb 25, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

amazing poem !!!

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`KathrynODriscoll Feb 26, 2013 Student Writer

Thanks Vendori!

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*raven-dust Jan 31, 2013 Student Writer

So inevitably able to relate to this. Never before have I seen feelings and emotions so thoughtfully and strategically placed in words.

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`KathrynODriscoll Feb 1, 2013 Student Writer

Hugs you. I'm glad that you liked this, I'm sad that you can relate to it though.

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~cskadoz Jan 29, 2013 General Artist

welcome to my world.

love this! affecting effective imagery!

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`KathrynODriscoll Feb 1, 2013 Student Writer

Welcome to mine too ! </3

But thank you for the comment and its good to meet you!

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~UsoppLover4EVER Jan 23, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

This is amazing and exceddingly accurate! :3

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`KathrynODriscoll Jan 27, 2013 Student Writer

_{Thank you, it was a hard week.}

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