or, a relatable lament. or, a creative complaint. or, an open invitation.
There are so many seeds that never bloom. So many ideas that don't carry enough momentum that they can sprout into a fully formed idea, into something artistic that can be shared and explained. This is a tiny portion (seriously it's less than 1%) of the orphans that have been sitting around over the years. They've been collated and parsed from old scratch pads that have been turned to drafts, from notebooks and post-it notes, from bulky notepad files sitting on external hard drives and old cell phones. These are my favorite unborns. The quips and blurbs that are closest to my heart. The best unrealized literary parts of my mind.
Things I can't turn into poetry.
- Tell me a secret.
- If I fall asleep please keep talking. I can still hear you from down there.
- You might be the only bible that someone will ever read
- Every stranger was a fortune cookie, a vague and cold comfort I could never quite remember
- The cracks on your lips...these are the lines between love and hate
- How much paradise can you buy before you're forced to sell?
- If you ever found paradise, would you have the heart to invite a leper?
- Sometimes a moment will drown instead of me drowning into it. (Jane)
- It may be true that there's a driver behind the wheel
but it also might be true that the wheel itself is the driver
- The only monsters here to haunt you are the ones that went unfed
- I am bare, I am a ghost just to watch you
- I had seen the whole thing coming like a ghost train. Here I am on the tracks, still bleeding, taking phone numbers, haunted.
- My hands are mistaken for the fruits of my labor
My heart is mistaken for the arms of a stranger
- and your shadow knows how to cry
- What doesn't kill you will follow you and try again
- Falling on somebody else's sword is more satisfying
- And as the dreaming was danced, a sound went out (Arthyr)
- We press the deathless weight of these heroes against ourselves, begging them to perform.
- I've never been more real than my mistakes
- isolated pawn
- denial is a powerful illusion
- "There's no good kind of festering, Finn" - Jake the Dog
- The shadow is going away. You can breathe again. The past is closed.
- That's the problem with sky gods: they never know which way is up
- But there's a liklier chance there will be a dead baby lying on the shoreline somewhere upstream the next morning. (Zephronias)
- A Song for the World's First Nymphomaniac
- My mind is on strike, my heart needs a story
- add injury to ecstasy
- Fear manifests as silence
- your soul does bleed, the blood pools in your dreams
- ...but everybody believes in angels.
- Let's undress just like cross-eyed strangers
- Coincidence Rises, and Gratitude Walks
- He quoted Patti Smith under his breath mumbled his way through the living room and collapsed in the far corner of an inconveniently selective memory
- Broken ankles are waiting for you to get back on your feet
- There's so much that we need to do, but we can start by saying goodbye.
- Ashes are not shadows. Ashes are not ghosts. Ashes are not holding the songs that the fire used to sing.
- Like white light? Or a long low moan that turns into laughing? Or the holes in Jesus' hands?
- It's tough learning how to divide your wants into your time when you've gotten away with dividing your time into your wants for so long
- If we could help each other
Would we let ourselves?
If we could help ourselves
Would we let each other?
- Waiting for the day all my dreams about myself get tested
- Is this a cocoon or a tomb? Each comes with the risk of secretly being the other.
- After a thousand thousand brief awakenings, the presence of unloved divinity never fails to wound. (the man formerly known as ToasterLeavings)
- They only listen with their eyes. It's done. Someone turned the television off. Someone killed the internet. It's your world now. It's over.
- All gold is fool's gold. Every paradise is a fool's paradise.
- Forgot one: Three of us is enough...it's the simple stuff I need.
- kaleidoscope eyes and heart drumming parades and something I'll be ready to give you one day
- Love is not the soil upon which this garden was constructed. Love is the water which sustains the life. But it cannot heal you or save you. Love simply prolongs the process of life, and that's all love wants: to survive. I want more than what love can give.
- Everyone is a ghost of something. Everyone is a dream that has slipped through unseen fingers.