Featured / all

Photographs by Tyler Bey, VOX Teen Staff

‘Adieu’: A Poetry Collection

by share

Wedding House

Hello again shuttering oak,
Who’s leaves gleam in fresh tears,
You were there when our suited Cadillac
Ran naked down the pitch black isle
When Nana had long hair unleashing
Like doves,
Gleaming hot box,
Sweet cigarettes in the velvet seats.
That old suit piles the dust from our waiting
Those tree leaves twinkle like tears
And shattered dream stars
In the sun’s aging heat waves.

Nana thought I was crying because of something real
But it was the wedge of time that split me to droplets
Split me further from that circle park
Where the kids grow up on themselves.
I grew up on the pitch black isle turning grey
With the rotting tires to witness it,
On stray dogs in the part of town
Where animal control wears navy blue

No Nana it wasn’t a girl,
Or a bite from one of those loose dogs,
No that’s not it.
I am not in those Halloween polaroids.
The ones where time filled in
Instead of splitting those other children.
There’s no prints of me
From meeting their wooded porch,
No photos of me in the dusty air
of their restored 100 year old homes.
Their parents don’t recognize me
Because time didn’t stitch my loose ends
Like it did their children.
My freys unleash into the wind just like Nana
And we become twinkles in their children’s books
To give their families fullness.


New Year’s

My glass full of water dematerialized,
I thought I swept away all those lightless arrowheads
Penetrating my weak places,
But I found them again in Mars colored circles
On my feet.

That smoke smell in my hair,
My only testament to how I become
The Whole Thing
A grand ritual:

Papers like die
That color wheel spinning
Rolling
Lighting sweat glitters over empty eyes
Each inhale a rebirth
A swaddle like smoke clouds over the moon
A lamaze exercise as I pretended to spin
And hide my resentment of the evening star,
Born and reborn again without trick die.

That alien and I shared couch purls
Those side glances wood to an ancient fire
My only reservations are the ones I have to keep warm;
The forty percent I skinned off the dogs
To shield myself from that New Year’s wind-kiss.

Why should I cross that other path
To the poppy-pink lake?
Why should I put on that dry skirt for the dance?
The drums are still the same
Around that ritual circle.
Fire, skip me, fire,
And those skirt straws go right to the roaches.

There in my garden,
Blooms something I never planted
Prize flower in my minds eye
You are different in the ground
All those hypocrite prayers are just hot air
Fueling the clouds for rain,
Rain for this weed blooming.

The buzz was gone overnight.
Those blazing flames, glittering eyes,
Now turmeric dust.
My hands stained black pepper,
After I washed my hair.
I suppose I like you all very drunk.


Privacy Gr33ns

In the sweaty pit of the back seat
A ghost found its way between my lips.
No it wasn’t the faint wisps of pleasure tingles
Like fireflies fleeting
And waxing in the summer moonlight,

Nor the whispers of music
From scenes we saw in a shared dream.
No it wasn’t the stick fire at our fingertips,
The paper burning like film into the Hollywood smoke,
A dream inside you that stinks a little.

Movie star
I hear music in your starlight.
Those beams plucking, super speed,
So slow like harp strings
Reverberating us to the next plane.

I peeped Gaia
Through your tender keyhole
Undressing,
Holy bodies shimmering
Past the sun in a spacecar,
Musty with cotton candy mouth.

Talking feels like breathing
And breathing feels like flying!
I’m your little prince
And If I close my eyes I can feel your
Cosmic touch;
Adams hands,
Feeling my mud colored ribs,
Not ashamed of the animals watching.
We’re the only ones in the world right now.

Out the window I eyed a fleeting birdie,
A gray swan gracing the babbles.
I tried to catch him,
Couldn’t catch my breath,
He smoked me out,
I blame the bad joints.
Goodbye country birdie.
Sorry I never kissed you goodbye
pretty birdie.


Surrender

Floating objects
Lofty concepts shuffled like Uno cards,
Shot out in a confetti gun like I won a game show
Fake money fluttering,
Each passing my gaze in breathless intervals
CPR thuds like a suitcase rolling over sidewalk,
The foreverness between high heel clacks,
An observation of space
Leaving me suspended in dreamlike vastness,
Bowing to that which exceeds the intervals of life,
E pluribus unum, and timeless death.


Lucifer

Javelin like a pig tail,
If one tries me I’ll leave them red and blue
Send those animals after me;
WEEEEE OOOOOOO WEEEEE OOOOOO
I ain’t scared that’s a playground sound
mixed with the noise you’ll make when we get our hands on you:
OOOOO
OOOOO
Who’s the monkey now b*itch
LOL


Freudian Slip

My hands are still warm by night
From groping towards the sun on my knees.
Is forgiveness something outside of myself?
And what about that other illusive ask,
The one always behind door number two
when I’ve chosen one,
or three when I chose two?

The air was laughing when I realized
it was just some trick;
My answer was never coming
and that was the answer itself.

I’ve given names to all the flowers
Enough to fill my guestbook,
And line the altar when I’m betrothed
To a watched pot:
a freudian slip.


michaelangelo

I was a frightened, shattering child.
I let many fake cousins squish my soft feet
With the passenger seat drawn all the way back
Touching with our thirsty egos
Pushing power in the hot dark
Whispering like bacteria,
Spreading premature strangeness
Through our bodies.

It happened some in elementary too.
My actions surprised me back then;
Maybe I’m only scared of grown men.
Is this why my hands and breathe are still so
Shattering? So full until the smallest breeze
Turns them back to sharp pieces?

Last night,
I met a 6ft cockroach in a public bathroom
His thin limbs erect to a sleazy posture.
I smashed him and was splattered with that infamous milk
Supposedly rich in protein.
It tasted like f*cking battery acid.


Posledice/ Cherophobia

I’m still waiting on your message.
Your name is butterflies in the cloud,
Leaving three dott trails,
Until it arrives at my surprise,
A buzz like a sweet bee,
A signal beam
Waiting for my eyes.
Your long breaths are both a teasing flaunter
And a reminder that this too might vanish.

I’m so far from the pictures my mind took in a dream.
I discovered it accidentally watching a movie:
That hole where the ants come from.
Carrying pieces of my dream’s dinner to nowhere-land.
I think I’ve based my life off the books I read as a little child.

That big blue school will close its doors a second time
And I’ll be sent tumbling down those abysmal stairs,
Stuck climbing a foggy mountain
With no signals or specific sounds.

The mole on my own face I never saw,
Now that I see it I want it gone.
I can’t take being a different person everyday.
I didn’t realize how much that
Beetle boy hurt me,
That ponce, leading me down his beltline,
So far till all the others were statics until
Dismissing me like a vision of the world ending.

I’m so far from those visions of certainty.
Have they faded or were they always
fragile like I’ve always been?
A kiss of wind away from scattering,
A foolish wish,
Leaving me with the bitter consequence of ambition.

Maybe I’ve based my life off the Pokey Little Puppy.
Maybe I’ll move to Europe?
Or perhaps I’ve always wanted that other life
Nestled between the forever lawn and vintage smoke.
Maybe I’m just afraid of everything I really want,
Suspicious of my own contentment,
Afraid of peace and happiness


Adieu

A sun set behind my childhood
bedroom evernight
Before I left.
I seldom saw it in its fullness
The faces behind those blissful sounds.
Instead I met the silhouette man
Every night to get a glass of water
When there were no smiles or giggles.

If I’ve learned anything from my fathers
It’s the language of goodbyes,
The way to find eyes,
Like a gaze out of a taxi,
Dwindling until I’m consumed
In the vastness of absence;
The iron ocean,
I’ve arrived.
Or have I always been here?

The thought never really begins or ends,
I’ve always been leaving
Everything and nothing
At the same time,
Just like the admittance that
I really do miss you.

Even before that taxi ride I did.
By the time I realized it it was too late,
I had already found myself
In the land of addiction to straight
White lines,
Standing on a cliff greeting the waves,
Wishing that second life
Adieu…
Or have I always been here?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *