[x]

the speed addictthe speed addict knows if he stops moving,
he will die. so when inertia takes hold
his heart falters and his head slams against
a future, lit by the dashboard. he hears
his veins stuttering like gears grinding out
a staccato refrain, while the wheel spins and
goes numb. as his breath twists away from his grip,
rasps a hollow plea, he slides on a rail
towards impartial angels leaving rainbow sparks
in his soaring wake, and meets blazing lights.
the addict dies twice. one is nev

Picard writes a love poemThe ready room of my heart
is waiting for you, number one.
Resist and I'll lay down phaser
fire, raise shields and fire
photon torpedoes. Come with me
and we'll dive into Risa's
sherbet sunsets, spill kegs
of blood wine on Kronos and fool
around with a dabo girl at Quark's.
Let's not continue our holodeck
fantasies, pretend each kiss
and caress are hollow as photons.
Let's do the real thing, warm up
the warp drive and engage.

Strangers In The NightThe conifers played the piano the night you died.

On reflection, because of what happened, I expected there to be rain and stricken bolts of lightening. A perfect storm for an imperfect night.

In reality, the sun set in a perfect ball of glowing embers. There was no need for fire, catastrophe would occur that night in many other ways.

Our paths had never crossed before. Or if they had, we never knew it. I hadn't heard your voice, and I didn't know your name. Your voice and your name would never combine to enlighten me that night, nor ever again. The most important moment of your life, and possibly the most memorable of mine tugged us rough

churchlord you spun me out
of morning rays and mexican
china, out of paper elephants
and camomile flowers. you took
the tongue
and ears away from a deaf
mute and gave them to me
so i could hear the others
say speak the word of jesus
wide-eyed like children, so that
i could say my name is emily,
my name is emily but i can't
remember who
i am.

lord you gave me green
whisky when all i needed
was a glass of water in
the middle of the
night and arms instead
of a parting knife.
you wrote me a poem and
put it inside me and
the words smelled like sex
and tea leaves, carrot-flowers that
will emerge from the dirt
someday
smiling an

things i have buriedbatches of badly folded letters from my grandmother's
apartment, all tightly scrawled russian, smudged ink.
the luna moth my brother caught when i was seven,
its wings becoming a chartreuse stain on his palms.

the mark of every song that has ever made me feel,
each differently shaped and stitched together
to form the patchwork of resilience that is my heart.
sepia photographs, antiquated polaroids,
with nothing written in the white spaces
where stories of moments should be.

narrow granada streets, their uneven cobblestones
turned hazy with august's heavy heat;
the familiar taste of tears etched into frown lines
that i am too

winter has swallowed the worldwinter has swallowed the world today,
his blistering fury biting at faces

and speckling tree trunks and window
panes. he disguises all things, provides

a pure slate of marble dust that blankets
every surface. when he finally settles down,

all things settle with him. the pine forest
has become a herd of mammoths, weary branches

quietly sweeping the ground below.

Caughtin the helium of a night
where constellations ignite
the blood-spattered atrium
of a late summer's sky,

I find myself a comet
shooting the urban grid
in an urgency as I race
a suicidal rim on two wheels

in the blackness between the fires,
my red-shifted thoughts crossing
light years out-of-body
and outliving me

till the awareness of you
slingshots me at Mach speed
to await your arrival
long before it happens,

caught at the last light
so close to my destination,
inhaling the danger of you,

where to idle the demon
begs disaster, even if the
interlude proves a watershed –

by Neptune's light, I will
wish to death

When God Sleeps.I. So it comes to this: pangea tearing itself raw
from our throats to pour into squares of newly open sky
where the stars grew aches and darkened lakewater
once bloomed into bruised winters. Somewhere
beyond the thick of snow, prayers are strung
on moon-rattled winds
and birds' teeth tear apart the poetry
of our hands. They will raise something beautiful
from these ruined words.

Continents shift slowly. They are
dirt-bound titans, these beasts;
rootless giants that mold themselves
to fit the vision we hold inside our heads. Oceans sigh
and their tides crawl ever upward.

II. Our shadows become umbilical
in certain light. Unknown children cas

less than a dream.i can't be the sun if i'm only a candle.

i can't be the myths of greece and the legends of troy if i'm only beginning to write my story. i'm not diamonds spread across the skyscape or dreams saturated with salty rain, i'm just a girl. i'm trembling fingertips and insecurities buckling down on my intercostal muscles until breathing becomes a labor of love instead of a hum of habit. i'm tearing apart diary paper because i can't stop moving and regretting; i'm curling my toes to withdraw when the stakes seem too high.

i'm not everything you're hoping for and i'm not worthy of poems getting scrawled in wet midnight sand; i don't des

EulogyThe dream-catchers are handmade
but each bear the same mark of boredom.
On the reservation,
the dirt is red and separated from the turquoise on sale.
The tops of the mountains have been scraped off
like whipped cream from pudding cups
of beautiful alien rock.

"Plateau," my mother says.
I am not sure if it is a name
or a command.

The lightning storms are brighter in the desert.
I sit perched on the horizon,
the edge of one loss to another—
given up my love, all my bottled water.
The mountains carry their own babies in the muddy puddles,
against the wind they huddle,
but their semi-circle somehow is just one great smile.

How To Spell "Love"String my vertebrae together
And personally adjust
Each subtle curve.
Steal the words I finally said
Though they may be more than you deserve.

My "love" and your "love"
Are just a few letters off.

Outline my clavicle valleys
In shadows cast by candle light.
Let the folds of my ear
Bend the currents of

The woman with the garish...The slugs chewed jagged crowns
out of brand new ecru tulips,
and the rain filled them up
like teacups
until they drooped,
made lazy by the weather.

But Spring blew smoke
like the woman on the park bench
smoking a Pall Mall
and whispering into a black cell phone,
her bright red boots toe-deep in water.

Her umbrella, spine flicking drops
into the flower beds,
irrigating daffodils
yet to bloom,
made the park look gothic
and lonesome.

But when she left,
her breath steam
against the air,
boot heels clicking
against the stone –
The flowers peered up,
Blinking against the rain.

Trinity RoseAs a teenager, he was the artist who painted sunsets just to see them bleed their light through acrylics, dandelions beheaded in the frost to prove that you don't need hands to come out of the world scathed. He created beautiful women with their hair over their eyes and their tummies sucked in and rose vine tattoos sneaking up their thighs only because he wanted to show how you become tainted.

His theory: you look as helpless and fragile as possible and then you open all the windows and the doors and a violent man walks in, or a vengeful wind.

That came from a sixteen-year-old mind high on hormones and a lack of experience.
That came from

things i've yet to tell you.i.  last night i woke up just in time
    to pronounce myself dead.
    i figured, at the very least
    i deserve to say it first.
    i figure i've earned that much.
    instant death- or
    death in an instant-
    allegedly painless.
    they try to tell you
    earnestly
   "she never felt a thing"

ii.  ryan,
     remember that
     your heart beats until it doe

AngelesThey sent an angel, of course. They did every year, and the angels fluttered back with broken wings, pearlescent skin chipped like old porcelain. It was easy enough to repair the cracks that leaked blood like quicksilver, to mend the fingers bound in strips of cloth where sections had gone missing. But the angels were never quite the same again. Their eyes darker, warier, like pearls dipped in ink. Their golden hearts a pale dying amber within their translucent chests.

(Sometimes at night, you can pass a clump of the ones that have been sent down, clinging together, their sleep interspersed with screams, wordless sounds like the child-cry of

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More from ~niedec

the mirrorThe Mirror

I look into the mirror
But a face I do not see
A window into blackness
That slowly swallows me

My skin drips into nothing
My soul is cracked with mud
Pure water from the faucet
Flows into clotting blood

I stare into the darkness
Caught in its mystic spell
And my contrition tumbles
Within my private Hell

I cannot e'er escape it
My screams no one can hear
My guilt-stricken complexion
Is trapped inside the mirror.

- Caleb

can't escape my mindCAN'T ESCAPE MY MIND

I feel the rain, it's cutting me
And everything inside
I feel the pain, can hardly breathe
Am I still alive?

The sorrow life can bring
Encircles everything
All hope is left to die
While it is watched through tearing eyes
The saddest part of all
Is that while my world falls
I have nowhere to hide
I can't escape my mind.

Nothing mattersNOTHING MATTERS

This world is a sinful place
In which all things must surely die
Spat upon by pouring rain
Bleeding in a wondrous lie

Nowhere to turn, nowhere to go
Tears begin to fall in thick'ning mud
We look through eyes of hypocrisy
Drowning in our sinful blood

Nothing matters

Anymore

Happiness shattered

Against the walls of our own minds

Splattered

Everything we've ever known

Battered

By our thoughts

-Caleb

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Destroy This Poem

by ~niedec, Mar 4, 2008, 10:55:33 PM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Urban & Spoken Word

Destroy This Poem

To the person grading this poem
To the kind, patient woman hovering over this with a pen
Waiting to say kind, patient words in response, do me a favor:
Stop it.
Don’t Patronize me.
I did not slave over this with hammer and anvil
Shaping it into a masterpiece.
I didn’t paint it onto the ceiling of some church,
Going blind from the pain and the stress.
I didn’t even turn this in on time.

And while I’m writing this in my fifth-period economy class,
You can bet I’m not concerned with iambs and troches and Italian terza rima.
No, I’m concerned with how much water is left in my water bottle.
This isn’t a masterpiece.
Who are we kidding?
You’re not going to hurt it, and you most certainly aren’t going to hurt me.
Stop it.
Don’t patronize me.

I want you to destroy my work.
I want you to rip it to shreds with sadistic dominatrix glee.
Tear it apart from margin to margin;
Laugh openly at its crippled, struggling body.
Stab through its sputtering heart with the sharp edge of your pen.
Piss on it, for all I care.
Mark it as your own.

I want you to handle this poem with all the delicacy and surgical precision
of a butcher in a slaughterhouse
of a serial rapist
of Caligula ripping a baby from his sister’s womb.

Jab a knife through the soft flesh of its stomach
And gut it like a fish.
Watch it gargle to breathe as letters pour out of its wounds.

You want persona?
I am the speaker.
This is my humpbacked, pulsating blob of a poem.
And you are Jack the Ripper.
You are Charles Manson.
gnitirW. yM. lliK.

This has no meter.
No beat.
No style.
No lines that long and linger for the comfort of a smile.
No form to be worth your while.
it dont evn rime.

Its imagery lacks depth and imagination.
No, it does not show potential.
It is not “clever” or “good” or “interesting.”

Quit feeding it lies.

And if you dare write “nice”
Or “good image” one more time in the margins,
I swear I am going to snap.

This isn’t going on anyone’s fridge.
It does not deserve a “super” or an “A+.”
It deserves to die.

And as I’m finishing this up in class,
Do not be concerned with how I feel.
I’m thinking to myself, “let’s flush this fucker down.”

So as you’re sitting there, kindly, patiently reading
This beer-shit guttural splattering I call a poem,
Please just be honest.
Who are we kidding?
Stop it.
Don’t patronize me.

Destroy This Poemby ~niedec

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Urban & Spoken Word

BREAKING NEWS UPDATE:

HO-SHEET, a DD! I'm absolutely grateful for
all the wonderful comments and +favs and whatnot,
but this is probably the most ironic piece that could
be featured from me. Ah well. It's kind of awesome
that way.

If you're curious what my teacher thought, she said
that she knew she shouldn't call it good, but that she
wanted to, and that good critique is hard to give as well
as take. There's a very fine line between what's good and what's bad, and then a finer one in how to express that. Her example was a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti that compared writing a poem to walking a tightrope. Anyway, she then said that maybe I could take out the line about "I just said 'fuck in a poem I have written for school,' because it was somewhat redundant. Other than that, she said she really couldn't think of anything, and gave me an A.

Also, big shout-outs to , my wondrous girlfriend, and , an amazing writer, poet, and friend I've always admired. Go check out their work. It's definitely worth your while.

And, of course, big thanks to BloodyFreakingMary and fllnthblnk for the suggesting and featuring and whatnot. I'm incredibly grateful, guys.

Here, have some cookies:

This is another poem I wrote for my AP English 12 class. The assignment was that we had to write a "tell 'em off" poem, where we--obviously--tell somebody off. Unfortunately, I'm not really the angry sort. I really don't know how to tell somebody off, because if they bother me, they're not worth the effort and I'll just leave. I really don't think anyone's ever seen me pissed. Mad, maybe, but outright pissed? Never. Then I had to think of who to tell off, and no one came to mind. I could probably tell off the girl I liked, but I didn't really want to. I really can't be pissed at her, and every time I tried to write a poem going in that direction, it just made me sad inside. I'd feel miserable and flop down on my bed and refuse to move--Caleb the social starfish, I guess. That image makes me smile. Plus, I'm kinda sick about having poems referring to her in one way or another, or any of my artwork at all. I know that it'll probably happen anyway, and it does, but I'm seriously not doing it on purpose, and I try not to encourage it.

That said, I decided to write about how my teacher always comments with "nice" or "good image" on my paper. I know she's busy, but even one line of critique would be nice. So I decided to write a poem about that. The first poem was actually called "fuck censorship" and was fairly graphic for a school assignment, and I was going to turn that in. But I wasn't happy with it, so I didn't. I wrote this instead, and it's the epitome of "don't try." I really did write all of it in my fifth-period economy class, recorded it onto a CD ten minutes before school started, and typed the poem in my third-period art class (I have English 4th period.) Then I asked the teacher for a paper clip and clipped the CD to the paper and turned it in. I said that it was spoken word, because I thought it would be more interesting. Then I told her not to listen to it during my class period, and to wear headphones when she did. Also, in the copy I turned in, right after the "let's flush this fucker down" line, there was an ellipses followed by "I just said 'fuck' in a poem I am turning in for school." She told me that line was stating the obvious, though, so I took it out for this copy.

Oh, and the "dominatrix" line is from an inside-joke between

and I, because our teacher always decides to wear leather boots. XD

Also, the "beer-shit guttural splattering" line is based off of a quote I like by Charles Bukowski. He said that a good poem was like taking a beer-shit. It all comes out fluid, all at once. You watch it, kind of proudly, and bask in its fumes, and then you feel a little sad as you flush it away. So that's where that line came from.

All in all, I'm amused by this, and I hope everyone else is, too. Enjoy.

Daily Deviation

Given 2010-04-24

Destroy This Poem by ~niedec is clever, good, and interesting... or perhaps not! This poem demands you realize the value of honest feedback. ( Suggested by !BloodyFreakingMary and Featured by `fllnthblnk )

~~mad 0 0~~

~Kbuff1999 Mar 31, 2013 Hobbyist Artist

Amazing job. Truly remarkable.

~blackblade201 Jan 3, 2013

I think i love this poem you say its crap others say its beautiful, a masterpiece, or as you say nice, good image and what you can add is it is really hilarious and i guess that economy class is really boring to you to write this. thanks for sharing the poem

~niedec Jan 4, 2013 Hobbyist General Artist

Well, I wrote this when I was 17 or 18, and I'm almost 23 now, so luckily, that Econ class has been gone for a while. It was really boring, though, and ultimately unhelpful.

To be honest, if I were a teacher and someone handed this poem to me, I wouldn't quite know what to say, either. I think that's what made it fun to write.

Also, you're welcome.

~blackblade201 Jan 12, 2013

well i am glad that i am (so far as i know) is not taking the econ class so i will not be writing a similar poem to this. So what are u doing now that you are 23 instead of 18

~ironicpink Nov 9, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I +fav'ed this poem ages ago. I'm the sort of person who when I fav something, goes back once in a while to search through them, read the poems, look at the pictures ect... however, every time I do... I read, and re-read, and re-read this one.

just thought you'd like to know. :]

~niedec Nov 14, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Oh my god, that's amazing. I know I have no real reason to complain, but I used to get discouraged that I had so many views on this compared to +favs, because I thought people were just looking at it, deeming it uninteresting, and moving on. Then a few people pointed out that maybe, just maybe, the people that like it keep it around to re-read. And, sure enough, that's what you did. Pretty damn cool. Thanks for sharing.

Also, sorry for the late reply. The better a comment is, the more time I take on it because I want to say something important. This usually results in comments never getting answered, because I drag out my reply until it feels awkward. Avoiding that now, though (as seem by my saying stuff.)

Btw, if you love this, it's pretty much directly inspired by Taylor Mali, specifically his performance of "What Teachers Make:" [link]

And while we're on the subject of slam poetry, to me, this is my favorite slam poem ever: [link]

~countryxgirl Sep 28, 2012 Hobbyist Traditional Artist

WOW! thats all i can say to you!

~demZdem Sep 16, 2012

this is absolutely fantastic. i shall not write "nice" or "super" because that is not what it is. it is fucking brilliant. and i love the part with
"jack the ripper" (Black Butler!

) amazing poem *clicks favorite button*

~niedec Sep 17, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

lol. Happy you liked it.

~SailorMeowMeow Sep 11, 2012

WOW I LOVED THAT!!!!

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