Aerin's late-night poetry-press

[One-Eye]

I only write poems when I'm sleep deprived, or procrastinating, or in this case, both.

Surgery

If I could extract half my brain,
Leave it in a shallow hole,
Grey matter melting in the rain
A wrinkled mass, unwanted soul

Without the tangled net of nerves
The twisted trap of unchecked thought
The overbearing Self to serve -
The ordered script of Is and Not

To be so simple - eyes that see
Without becoming cheats or spies
And ears that hear, and not decree
Who speak the truth, who can’t tell lies

And no love dropped between the cracks
Of synapses who can’t define
What it is to feel, or to relax
And thus abandon or decline

No, only pure connections now
Between the mind, the soul, the heart
No more struggling to somehow
Unite a person torn apart

And yet -- in nightmares, trapped in dreams
Ghosts would remain of what had been
And castrated, tortured neurons scream
For the person they’d been part of then

And dead alive, human beast
Fractured self, rebuilt awry
Madness lurks, it never ceased
A fury boils, cold and dry...

But I would extract half my brain
Dig out the tumors of my soul
To leave a monster, half-insane
But only half - and not the whole

3/15/03

[liam]

wow... i'm left absolutely speachless, its great, i wouldn't change anything

[thirdhour]

Is has a certain...rythm to it that i really like

[liam]

its great

[happening fish]

[sandsleeper]

[One-Eye]

Escape

Count from one up to ten
set the clocks back and pretend
hit restart, the finish line
will disappear and you'll be fine
Erase the words on the page
kill the actors, clear the stage
change your outfit and your age
leave the planet, leave your cage

Injected sex, electric food
set the thermostat and your mood
bodies are considered rude
talk is cheap and touch is lewd
Hold your breath, hit rewind
go back to the starting line
life's a race and you will run
count from ten down to one.

4/17/03

[sandsleeper]

you've done it again. that's sweet how you got it to come full circle. plus i thouroughly enjoy the line "kill the actors, clear the stage," is it a Shakespearian allusion to whole "all the world's a stage" thing? it works very well in that poem.

[happening fish]

I've run out of words for you, Aerin.

[clumsychild_]

all i can say is wow

[One-Eye]

Found these in one of my old notebooks. I have no idea what I was smoking when they were written... most likely a whole buncha crack.

I don't know who I'm trying to impress anymore
   It used to be simple
The world divided by yellow caution tape
   And me, enshrined imprisoned
      Watching the videos on repeat
         Until they were my canon
   Had to the keep the demons at bay
      And surround myself with
         unwitting warriors
   Who would laugh at the lunch table
And I was glassy-eyed and screaming.

5/29/02


Reality is like a novel based on a dream
   Everything in sharper focus
   but without the moments

There is where I never lived, will always dwell
   and it haunts me like
   a nightmare escaped
   and manifested into somewhere

I barely imagined
   like a butterfly -
   my chrysalis has disintegrated
   but I go, I go

to the land of the caterpillars.

5/29/02


There was a voice that would call to me
   in my self-titled prison
      and I heard her and I believed.

And here in my self-imposed liberty
   a million voices collide
      and the forms in the desert shift in the wind.

5/29/02


Dreams have rained on my landscapes
My portraits and still lifes
   priceless
and never the same.

5/29/02


I was abducted by reality
   but I was the one who put the gun to my head
   and blew away my innocence

5/29/02


Daylight breaks
   my eyelids shift
I will awake, finding
   this
a dream
   or
      a nightmare

Either way, gone.

5/29/02

[ArlieKoz13]

I was abducted by reality
   but I was the one who put the gun to my head
   and blew away my innocence

5/29/02

I really, really like that one.

[One-Eye]

(I was cleaning out my harddrive and found this. I'm telling you, it's <i>weird</i> to find something that you know you must have written, but have no recollection of doing so.)


Tracing circles in the dust
Saying "This is life" and "this is us"
You're digging up stale metaphors

Your symbols rotten in my mind
They drag up what I left behind
And you're telling me there's something more

Than surfaces and polished sheens
You're telling me to look between
The schemas wrought by heartless men

But I build walls, and I reply
There's nothing higher than the sky
And this is how it's always been

You erase your circles on the ground
You glance above without a sound
And say, "I know how wrong you are"

Well, you can glorify our souls
And you can lean on lofty goals
Just don't tell me of the stars

[happening fish]

That's awesome. It reminds me of a period I went through... very cool.

[One-Eye]

tomb

I remember when mirrors weren’t reflections but windows
To a frozen reversal of here
And when a pair of trees became columns
Framing a doorway to neighboring spheres
I remember scrawling maps leading to buried treasure
And reciting chants to keep ghosts at bay
I remember weeping for fear of the curses
That seemed to follow me every day.

But mirrors are now tools in the quest for perfection
Maps aren’t for treasure but to navigate downtown
Trees are for shade, not for summoning magic
And chants before tests help get knowledge down.
Curses are for hurling at the bus that I missed
Or for muttering at strangers who stare
And the only ghost I believe in is that of myself
But I try to pretend it’s not there.

6/19/03

[happening fish]

Holy shit. It's perfect.

[starseed_10]

genius.

[Axtech]

I love it. Absolutely love it.

[starseed_10]

exactly.

[Candy-coated Fake]

Wow...this is amazing stuff. And I though I could write...ha ha.