into the abyss

It always seems easier this way.
To go from intensity of feeling that scares me in its depth, to the inability to comprehend anything, let alone feelings--sitting in front of a canyon of nothingness, dropping stones that never sound.
Then it cycles back, and it's all a rush.  I want to smoke a million cigarettes and feel the smooth black squares beneath my fingers as they sail over top.  I want to feel vodka burn my throat and step over the yellow line waiting for the A train.  I want to taste your rejection and wear it like a cloak of bruises around my throat.
Then again into the abyss.  Waves of emptiness crashing into nothing.  I am so barren I never knew the feeling of fullness.
And so it oscillates, the blind man becomes the sniper, the perfect shot becomes the glossy-eyed cataracts receiving all and comprehending nothing.
The tune varies, yes, but the madness is always lying in wait beneath. 
Come to me, the voices say, come and know no torment such as this.

every Morrissey song I know

Jean Rhys

Related Poem Content Details

BY E. R. KENNEDY

I'm preparing myself for an extended period of loneliness

That will begin very soon I think

I've illegally downloaded two new depressing songs

I've placed a copy of Good Morning, Midnight under my pillow for easy reference

I've printed out the tablature for every Morrissey song I know so I can sing them to myself

Alone in my room

Just a few things are needed really

To make me calm

While I figure out a simple, clean, and effective way to kill myself,

With minimal stress for the person who has to find and dispose of my body

But I'll probably never think of a way

Because I'll probably never kill myself

I'll just lie in my bed suffocating myself with my pillows

While listening to the four songs you said were your favorite

And maybe burn myself a little with the iron

On special occasions

And the next time I'm in a subway station,

I'll stand a little further on the yellow line

Or maybe the next I'm at your apartment

I'll try a little harder

Ellen Kennedy, "Jean Rhys" from Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs. Copyright © 2009 by Ellen Kennedy.  Reprinted by permission of Muumuu House.

Source: Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs (Muumuu House, 2009)

only me and the two telephones

The Breather

Related Poem Content Details

BY BILLY COLLINS

Just as in the horror movies 

when someone discovers that the phone calls 

are coming from inside the house 

so too, I realized 

that our tender overlapping 

has been taking place only inside me. 

All that sweetness, the love and desire— 

it’s just been me dialing myself 

then following the ringing to another room 

to find no one on the line, 

well, sometimes a little breathing 

but more often than not, nothing. 

To think that all this time— 

which would include the boat rides, 

the airport embraces, and all the drinks— 

it’s been only me and the two telephones, 

the one on the wall in the kitchen 

and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2008)

My heart.
I cannot describe how tired and small it feels.
I want to scream into air, one million sound waves of hurt and pain echoing away from me.  I want to run to a place where I can feel nothing, where cold can numb what's left of this husk of heart.
Most of all I want you to notice me.
I want you to want me, to hold me and to love me.  I want to be enough, to be your everything.
It sickens me that I am so weak, that here again I am wondering why you are always wanting more when I should be stronger and wonder what's wrong with me that I want to be with someone who is forever causing me pain.
I wish you loved me.  I wish I could picture a life without you, but I can't.  My best friend is a stranger, my lover sleeps alone.
And then brick by brick, there is another wall around this ever-shrinking heart of mine.

Heartbreak Warfare

Lightning strike
Inside, my chest to keep me up at night
Dream of ways
To make you understand my pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare
Once you want it to begin,
No one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare
If you want more love,
Why don't you say so?
If you want more love,
Why don't you say so?

Drop his name
Push it in and twist the knife again
Watch my face
As I pretend to feel no pain, pain, pain

Clouds of sulfur in the air
Bombs are falling everywhere
It's heartbreak warfare
Once you want it to begin,
No one really ever wins
In heartbreak warfare
If you want more love,
Why don't you say so?
If you want more love,
Why don't you say so?

Just say so

How come the only way to know how high you get me
Is to see how far I fall
God only knows how much I'd love you if you let me
But I can't break through at all.

It's a heart, heartbreak

I don't care if we don't sleep at all tonight
Let's just fix this whole thing now
I swear to God we're gonna get it right
If you lay your weapon down
Red wine and Ambien
You're talking shit again, it's heartbreak warfare
Good to know it's all a game
Disappointment has a name, it's heartbreak, heartbreak

It's heartbreak warfare
It's heartbreak warfare
It's heartbreak warfare

Songwriters
JOHN MAYER

Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

I have not written in a very long time.  Fifteen years ago I was convinced I would be a writer.  Now I've had a professional career for seven years, and given everything I have to it.  A lot has changed in fifteen years.  My family is fragmented, I have gained new family members.  I have had ups and downs like everyone else.

I had unpublished old, old blogs I had a long time ago, but now I am going to try my hand at writing again.  It always allowed me some kind of release, some kind of safe haven from reality.  Like anything, if you don't use it you lose it so I feel like a ninth grade student as I sit here typing but I want to start someplace and start again.  

It goes without saying perhaps that the depth of my heartbreak is prompting this need to write.  But I can't find the words to explore that right now.

running parallel to him, and you'll never meet

Vanishing Point

by Freya Manfred

The moment arrives when you say,
"I don't dislike this man,
but how did I marry him?"
Something about his wintry voice,
the way he can't or won't show his face,
and how small and alone you feel
out here on earth's curve,
driving day and night,
never reaching a destination,
until you realize you're running parallel to him,
and you'll never meet.

"Vanishing Point" by Freya Manfred, from Swimming with a Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. © Red Dragonfly Press, 2008. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

I really like this poem.  It's simple but beautiful.

From Verse Daily...

City Beach


Your mouth said so long from so long said high
tide's not a timid girl is what is missing.
I could clap flippers skip the asterisk
and hop a plane. Some mouths say nets and not
nets to trust around anyone's daughter.
Ask what's on tap in the shape of a ship.
A mouth in a bottle is no kiss sealed
to sender. In it remainders and no answer
and a thin relic at that. Any ocean
is old enough to know better. Your mouth
to mine is departures arrivals a flawless ledger.
Some mouths say swim at your own risk say salt
again is stingy dinner. My mouth remains
a faithful measure. Some mouths say shark
in shallow water but I suspect the waves
wash in on empty and someone had to
truck in all this sand from elsewhere here.




Copyright © 2009 Dora Malech All rights reserved
from Poetry London
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission