Latest Posts by pytas-poetry - Page 2

To He Who I Once Loved

I promised you something, laying on a curb in a tiny town, bits of broken asphalt digging into my back 

I made a vow under the stars holding your sweaty hand in mine 

I cleaved my heart to yours through a conversation to rival those had by ancient philosophers looking up at the same moon we beheld on that fateful night 

I promised to hold you in my soul even as my body got used to being held by your hands, large and unsure aginst my waist feeling like maybe we were too young to truly love 

I remember that night the snell of the freshly cut grass of the suburbuan maze we wandered deep into the night 

Do you remembeer the years to follow? Telling me I was special but treating me like normal 

Do you remeber breaking my heart? 

I kept my promise but not in the way you may think, I still think of you, the reminder of what we were still makes me cry and I still pray for you I pray for who you may have been and who we could have become but 

my dedication to those promises has been fading even as the skin you touched sloughs off my body in sheets of replacing cells 

Maybe by the time all of it is gone I will be ready to break my promise 

A Warning to my Future

Look at my Pinterest boards, no seriously do, 

you will find a person covered in tattoos

 upon further exploration, you'll find a transcendent nation 

of a person, or a place or a word 

you'll find quotes and myths, logic and a missing piece 

travel and a mission a need to leave and a desire to stay, 

Knowing that to complete your purpose you have to go and do and see and become before you can make life all that you wanted 

you must leave 

you’ll see recipes and plans, and gardens and the sands of time slipping around the squared edges of the screen 

you’ll see clothing I’ll never wear and ideas I’ll try to write for then lose the inspiration that comes in the night for me and only me 

Reviewing the organization (or lack thereof) you’ll realize truly that I pin what I love 

so one day, my darling I hope I’ll pin you too

Nightmares Part 4

I was alone once more the journal was left on the table that had mysteriously appeared beside the bed the day the walls changed colors. I was afraid. I felt the compulsion to write, but when I picked up the pen I wrote obsessively, like I was attempting to make the words stay by willpower alone. The only way I could stop writing was if forced, otherwise, I would forgo food, drink, sleep and other necessities in favor of writing. They left me, the doctors left me to write for the eternity, never stopping me, I wasted away. The words taking all that I was or could have been. I died a husk, totally drained and floating in oblivion.

Nightmares Part 3

The door opens to a small grey room with only a table beside a bed to furnish it, a girl sits at the table writing ferociously in a journal the only thing visible about her is that she is exotic and has been beaten and tortured other than that she could have been any girl in any room and any journal because you could not see her face for the tears and the hair spilling over her head and into her eyes. As she writes a woman comes in and asks her a question, without hesitation she replies savagely. The woman seems unimpressed and strikes her then walks out leaving the girl laying on the floor with blood-mingled tears running down her face. When she looks up all of the walls have transformed into glass and on the other side there are men, taking notes, she looks down and seems to notice that the floor has suddenly become water. She begins to swim, the climate continues to change and the men continue to take notes and the girl continues to cry, and wail, and try, and survive.

Nightmares Part 2

When I awoke there were 3 men in the room. They all looked very different: the one closest to the bed had skin like muddy water with eyes the color of a blood moon and longish hair the color of the evil night, he was dressed in a white long-sleeved shirt with a tweed jacket over it, and a pair of bloodstained trousers were barely hanging onto his muscular legs, he had no shoes on, he could not have fit them over his massive paws he had human hands and lupine paws; and a collar that barely fit his huge neck. He was by far the most normal of the three.

The man closest to the doctor had bleached skin as if he was already dead blood was running freely from his eye and nose he had numerous brands on his chest and upper arms his fingertips were claws he wore no shirt and his disproportionate muscles were left for all to see. His pants had gaping holes in them where raw wounds were seeping through the gaps in the material. He wore a belt that was a chain and ran right through his body, held by an unseen force that kept him still as death. He wore shoes but they had holes in them where fur and claw peeked through the stained leather. A dark force surrounded him. The one nearest the door was the most frightening. He wore only a blood-stained loincloth. The parts of his body that were visible under the blood were covered in black, dusty, foggy scales. He had no face, but where it should’ve been was a mask of dripping red liquid that was too thick to be blood but thin enough to drip down to the floor he had no hair and claws for nails he was barely humanoid with no neck and bumps in awkward places. The doctor herself was the strangest person I had ever seen. She had ashy skin and long gray hair it looked like she had turned into ash there was no color in her entire body except for her blood red eyes. She was the most terrifying of the three because it was as if she was a black hole sucking up all life, hope and all things good in this world she was the darkest being I had ever seen. She was alive and not alive she was dead yet she was animated and walking around. She was a terrible puzzle a calamity if you will a person, yet a beast, someone who literally killed the mood and made her own sinister presence felt.

When they approached the bed it felt as if an eternity had passed when in reality it had only been a couple of minutes. The muddy-skin man spoke first; it was as if some of his speech had been removed his voice was a mix of gravel and an avalanche. Then the doctor spoke her voice was lilting and deceivingly contradictory to the words coming out of her mouth

“If you do not cooperate you will be scheduled for immediate termination. I do not care how valuable you are I will; kill you if you decide to rebel.”

I did not reply not wanting to talk to the horrible doctor, not wanting to obey but afraid of rebellion. As they moved closer, the doctor with a journal in hand, a sinister looking device became visible. When the men carried it into view I, at last, realized what it was, it was a suspension device, it was for keeping heavy things in the air for extended amounts of time and often used for torture.

Nightmare Part 1

The most peculiarly specific smell of a hospital in Maine assaults my senses. I hear absolute silence, and then, frantic scratching. I am in a white room, strange stains surround me splattered on every surface, and I sit on a plain white bed, writing furiously in a leather-bound journal with yellowed curling pages, as I write the words disappear just before I can read what I have written. A man walks in, he is tall with darkish curly hair and caramel eyes, clothed in white scrubs with a yellow eye logo above the pocket and covered in the same stains. He takes the journal and leaves me screaming in anger and crying in fear. He deposits the journal outside the door in the visible hands of a man unseen. He trots over to where I lay, picks me up as if I am a rag doll, holds me close, and whispers in my ear It was a strangely familiar voice that brought back memories of days spent playing in the sun and lying in fields of wildflowers. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying.

He softly brushed my forehead with his lips, set me down on the bed and left. As he closed the door I heard screaming, muffled gunshots then silence. Utter and complete silence, I called to him with my voice till all my voice was gone; and shaking I called to him with my mind. When there was no answer I accepted what had happened for he had not answered the call that only death can silence. As I left the door the tears would not fall, the tears would not come and the only escape I had was in sleep.

Oblivion

there is no such thing as oblivion. We are enduring we have souls that live on after our corporeal bodies run out of reasons to endure. We are eternal. We were created, yes created; to live on forever in some form whether life or death we do endure souls are forever things not just here and now things. Oblivion is a myth. Oblivion is impossible unless you don’t exist. Because, as Newton said, every ACTION has an equal and opposite reaction; living is an action, an action that creates another action that creates another action that creates many more actions that never end unless an outside force acts upon it and an action as powerful as beginning eternity would need an action as powerful as a beginning to bring oblivion about. And besides that, we are remembered.

We are remembered by people and then when those people die we are remembered by the people who were told about us and even if we become a legend where events are altered and names are changed and no one can recall who exactly who I was the places I was will remember me. My footsteps will haunt the places I’ve walked. The mountains will remember when my eyes looked upon them. The trees will whisper to each other and say “I remember the girl who stroked our branches and caressed our leaves.” The rocks will say “I remember the girl who cried out to the creator alongside us.” The wind has memorized the shape of my face, the sky holds the color of my eyes, and the stars know the whims and whispers of my heart; the earth will remember me. The earth will remember you. Hallways know every foot that has touched them. Walls can recollect every mark made on them by hands big and small. Cars know who has been pushed up against them and kissed like their life depended on it. Bleachers know who has sat upon them and who has stood in front of them but rarely sat because they were too excited about the event happening. Every single thing you touch with your fingers you leave a piece of yourself behind when you pick your finger up.

Life is like that as well. You leave cells everywhere, you leave pieces of yourself everywhere for others to unknowingly pick up and carry with them until their days run out then someone else will pick up their cells and your cells together. You see? We have all connected through so many bonds that it is impossible to break them.  The way we talk, eat cereal, walk, read, write, type, poop, sleep, shower, love, feel. All of these things each and every person does in a perfectly unique way so if nothing else you will be remembered by the universe for being the only person to do things exactly the way you do them so that no one else will do ANYTHING exactly like you. Ever. End of story.

Where I am From (again)

I am from warm hugs

From sweet child O` mine lullabies and a star wars bedtime story

I am from rowdy boys crowded around a bridge ready to jump

I am from puppies in a bin baying and crowding around a mother basset

I am from apple pie dreams and hands older than me and stories spoken over

Laughter and the smell of food cooking in the oven

I am from the morning

Warm sunshine smiles and daisy chain afternoons

Brothers with too tall bodies and too small sensibilities

Confused and wonderful

I am from a garage

Alternative rock, the smell of grease and men and fixing the problem

Pieces clicking together like a puzzle

I am from a field

Scratches bug bites and high grass

Scrapes and bruises falling out of trees and into fun

I am from costuming

Bright sequin, improbable characters, and laudable performances

Lines not quite memorized but somehow funnier that way

I am from competition

Racing past a sibling or cousin to get through the kitchen first without being scolded by that one aunt

To

Racing through the air trying to get to a ball just beyond my fingertips so I can pound it into the ground before it’s blocked

I am from a kitchen

Smells that evoke nostalgia in every southern heart

All the sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmother gathered in the kitchen with bustling mouths laughing as they cook turkey, potatoes and cranberry jam and the menfolk watch football and the kids play a façade of the game of the day

I am from elegance

Being taught table manners, learning how to walk in 6"s and how to do my makeup from a favored aunt for the prom

Learning how to be a lady

I am from vibrancy

Spinning sepia-tinged memories filled with stars dreams and sadness

I am from a field lying between my parents learning Draco, the dippers, mars, and planets chasing the sisters and running from Orion’s bow

I am from the stars

A new adult wandering the earth

My head in the clouds with lofty ideas, hopes, and longing to be the cause of change

I am from a promise

A promise to learn

A promise to live

A promise to laugh

A promise to cry

A promise to succeed

A promise to fail

A promise to be me

Fall (in retrospective)

The leaves come falling down like lovers hearts and children’s knees

Everyones getting engaged and loving each other

People are preparing for the long cold winter

People are cuddling with loved ones and reaching out

Dress up as ghouls and ghosties to scare away the demons in our own minds, fall is a time for reflection, the leaves are changing color as is the people’s hair. The temperature lessens, the frost slides into the cold mornings and covers windshields in intricate crystalline tapestries. The rain falls down, the monotony of school starting is broken up by dreary rainstorms and brilliant shining brisk days full of cold sunshine. As the seasons change humanity is reminded of their own inability to control the world around them, photosynthesis and the water cycle and all of the wonderfully terrible things about fall remind you of all of the wonderfully terrible things about yourself.

Sometimes

Sometimes I get desperate, 

Sometimes the world screams too loudly and not loudly enough, too loudly for the music to drown out, but not loudly enough to drown out the chaos in my head. 

Sometimes it feels like the black cauldron is swirling in my brain, in that interminible space between the right and left ears there exists a tempest, a whirlwind that only I can hear and I have no miranda to request that her father stops his dreadful awefilled arts. 

Sometimes I play music on my phone, no headphones, the volume turned all the way up and I just lay in the dark waiting for the music to seep into my brain listening to the souls of those who feel like I do the pain of the world. 

Sometimes I hold my phone speaker up to my neck like a knife, not to harm but in a effort to heal, in the way that a surgeons scalpel opens to heal or a syringe enters to heal I try to force the vibrations of the music into my blood. 

Sometimes It’s not enough 

But sometimes ... It is

Self Medication

Caffeine, Sugar, Copious amounts of sleep, food etc. 

“I had a crappy day and all I want right now is a glass of wine”

“I can’t believe Brandon broke up with me, I need ice cream” 

Coffee, Bitter and black running down a throat while heels black as her coffee make threatening click clack on the tile of her office in anticipation of a stress filled day. 

An ADHD diagnosis accompanied by a denial of medication while leading to a dependence on Mountain Dew and Monster energy drinks that chew away at stomach linings just as surely as ritalin chews away at personality  

Trolling bars buzzed and horny looking for a one-night stand to forget powerlessness and rejection. Looking for release of negative emotions. Looking for an answer to the question “God, why are you so bitchy? when was the last time you got laid?” looking for something in others that they themselves lack 

Why do we feel the need to self-medicate? Is it that we really just can’t cope with the world around us is it that reality is so painful that we desire and require some form of escapism and change to the norm and harsh truths that fantasy shields us from. 

Video Games, Harlequin Novels, Lord the Rings, Marvel Movies all forms of escapsim and self-medication. 

Humanity requires distraction, but why and what would happen if someone rejected distractions in all her beauteous forms?

The Not Yet Now

The future past flashes forward in my head, I see blue eyes and long shaggy hair in my periphery with a warm hand on my waist the strength of the hand matching the strength of the musk on the hoodie that protects my wet swimsuit skin from the evening chill. 

We’ve spent all day together and a warm feeling enters my heart and my vision blurs as I come back to reality after seeing one of my fondest memories before it happens. The trees in the rove I lay in whisper “Lover you’ve returned to us” the river refers to me as daughter, the waterfall beckons “Child, come kiss your grandfather” while the wild mountain bid me fall into its warm motherly embrace. 

I am the child of the wilds raised as a meek human and thought to be of angelic broods

More Beginnings

Humanity is a Poison 

Sunlight is all I know

I was born in the sun, I AM the sun, its radiant rays heralded in my birth and that memory will be with me until the death for I was born in the heat and light of the sun to be hope and peace and to combat the cold dark miseries of the world 

People don’t realize that the earth, our terra firma, is alive. Totally and completely, it breathes and cries and sings and lies. The trees are inexplicably conscious and carry dreams and messages from times long forgotten. The River is even older, it whispers to me and sends me dreams of warm afternoons gone by and of stormy seas that are yet to come. The river is the embodiment of time, it is beautiful always changing always flowing and never ever stopping, perhaps sliwed but never still 

We the few can see them, the lonely hearts, the spirits, the wandering lovers cursed to bring love to others because they lost their true loves in life

Those of us that can see our fae friends all we feel is the loss of their soul, we aren't new, in fact, we are the oldest. we have been around the longest of any of the races 

we are the dryads, we who are kith and kin to the angelic presences and demonic influences because we are bred of both

we who find solace in the wild places 

we who hear the language of the rivers and listen and know the whispering conversations of the trees

we who find out comfort in the waters of the world, the natural people, those who see and hear the truth in the words of the wilds of the world 

"I think I have cancer, no really I think I have cancer" she said as she shook his shoulders trying to get his attention

"babe last week you had the avian flu and the week before that you had ringworm and the week before that you thought you had meningitis"

"seriously though look I have a growth on my neck just below my ear" she pulled his hand around to feel what she was talking about, he felt the spot and yes there was something there

"okay, I'll call the doctor tomorrow and we will get it looked at" they went to bed peacefully and awoke with all the trappings of the next day forgetting about the previous nights conversation, she mentioned it a few more times and each time he promised he'd go with her to her doctors appointments, or remind her to call the doctor so they could go get it looked at

-but they never did, just like he didn't believe her when she was convinced her cough meant avian flu and her spot on her arm meant ringworm and her headache meant meningitis but this time... they should've

The Red Backpack

I want to love that deeply and that fully and experience every aspect of life but I hurt so bad! 

Why do I hurt so bad? Writing helps a lot but what happens when the words stop helping

what? 

Could I make it as an author

The Red Backpack

Time slipped away

        We knew, had known, will know

She had years, then months then days, then none.

She went first

Skipped into death like she had been waiting for it all her life and I suppose in some ways she had,

I couldn’t handle it

I sold the business, the house, the car, I lived out of my backpack                       She loved books so I hitchhiked from library to library always picking up ones we loved. Then we’d sit down at one of the tables, two old coots living out of a beat-up red backpack and read and talk about everything

We got some odd glances often funny stares. I didn’t care I had my beloved back then I’d come back to myself and realize that I was once again just a lonely old man talking to an empty chair

Then I’d pick up that old red backpack once more and search for her in the next dusty corner of the next dusty library in the next dusty town

The Red Backpack

What do you do when it hurts this much?

I don’t even know where the pain comes from. It’s a combination of loneliness and longing I think. But why? I thought I was perfectly happy, I have nothing to be this upset over! 

I am blessed, so why do I feel cursed?

Why do I feel like every person on the planet is mocking me? Why do I feel so alone? What’s wrong with me? am I really lying to myself that badly? will I end up like the man at the library talking to someone no longer there I imagine his story 

Have you ever watched the death of a soul? 

I’m not talking physical death, I mean knowing someone and falling madly in love with their passion and then realizing that passion has left when you see them again 

Their eyes are flat and dull 

the spark is gone

When exhaustion overcomes ingenuity 

when that which you had loved has faded 

"Sit down" she said

"Stop fidgeting" he reminded

"I swear if you don't stop MOVING" they threatened

until one day one didn't

The teacher didn't say "Sit down" or "Stop moving" she said "here, when you get bored or finish an assignment I want you to describe to me what you are going to do on the playground"

This simple kindness to a small hyperactive child turned into teams of paper preoccupation detailing the grand adventures of various heroes, heroines, dragons and ponies as they battled vicious creatures discovered new locales and made friends along the way fostering forever in me a childlike wonder for the magic of the written word.

Where I'm From

I am from packed out bleachers and cheering teammates, momma's delicate hands covered in popcorn butter as she cheers me on from the concession stand but before the spikes and serves ....

I am from a quiet gym occupied solely with paternal affection, a father teaching his most precious treasure the game he loved all through life, small hands being held by callused ones showing how to dribble and shoot when attentive intention turns to giggles and those calluses seek to tickle forsaking the familiarity of the sport

I am from weary shoulders a woman running for her life from a madman, taking her gypsy brood from the bloodbath that her home became, her clutching hands desperately grasping those of her daughter and sons an sons running as far and as fast as she can away from all she knows

all she knew

to a new life,

to save her life

and mine

we invented and perfected the idiosyncrasies of the odd art, we are odd and we are not 

but are the vibrant dread, a constant antithesis of all we should be, we are alive truly yet floaters in a world we did not design and we deign to love 

the universe of our creation we are forced out of by the necessities of those who have and always will persecute that which they know not of and all are naught to understand 

Ours is a life of certain uncertainty and frustrating simplicity

- J.M. Bodenschatz