[x]

Shadows of a Mannequinlife seems to want to laugh in my face
as I am stuck –
like a cloud strung up in the sky –
and all I can see are my memories, ruined
stars in the night,

.

I wish I could help you
but anything you mention of it
causes shivers to rise at the back of my neck and

nevermind,
it's too selfish to tell you.

.

you were who inspired me to get better –
and now you're who's unseeingly tempting me back.

along with the rest of the world,
of course:

.

the sky sometimes makes me feel so trapped –
we're all ants beneath a blanket,
squirming to free themselves as it lowers
and suffocates everyone
in their own personal h

to remember livingI find myself
in the cracks of the window,

the ones that rattle every time
someone slams the door,

and gripped in gritted teeth
followed by crossed fingers and

a wish that will never
be granted.

my days are numbered
with ordered dates

and a plan I'd written with spidery
ink, somewhere high

above our heads,
embedded in the language

of starlight and galaxies;
I keep

a weapon under my blanket
in the hopes that someone will bleed

from the shadows
and take the decision out of my hands.

when I was young,
my father

stuffed my ears with horror stories of real girls
until I sobbed,

my vision blurry,
because he taught me a less

the girl who lost her feet.she is the type of girl to bleed a number of different colours
instead of the too-common red; to dress the stars up in smiles
so they'd stop crying starlight on the earth;
to clean her mind with the dustpan and brush she hides beneath her
bed sheets when the sunlight disappoints her, and the
sparkles of the water don't look like anything but water anymore.
she knows the secrets of those who'd long ago stitched their
lips shut with lies of insubstantial beauty and inferiority,
because she's been around the block a few times and can identify
Mrs Nosy from Ms Heartbroken right down to
Mr Loneliness –
and she is the kind of girl

struggle1.

breathing
spikes in my
vision, I
grasp at the
eyelids
painting
ugly pictures
and tug
tugtug –

2.

seven years
of bad luck
is worth
shattering
the mirror
by throwing
it to the
ground
and dancing
on its
grave;

3.

dirty
memories
crowd the
corners of
my eyes
and I scratch
them away
with a
sharp-edged
knife.

4.

bones are
not that pretty
and I'm
not going
to let him win
by acting as
a trigger for
my fading
away;

5.

I'm strong
enough
to fight
against the
disease
inside
my head.

knead.I. measure

with hands of frozen fingertips,
dunked in the cold too many times
to count,
and i find the clouds of flour that
somehow floated up through that thick
skull of mine and into the
brain matter underneath,
and white-white-white glares with
a pain as sharp as needles in my bare back –
the pelt of too-hot water –

II. combine

in the gloomy morning, listening to
the rain meet tin above my head,
a different kind of melody –
and my hips groan,
complaining with an audible voice inside
my mind, warning me not
to walk too fast,
so i stand with the bowl and the
wooden spoon, biting lips to
keep from spinning

mourning happinesshe opens his
eyes when the sun
kisses him goodbye,
giving the
world a reason
to weep. if everyone
knew farewell
doesn't mean
forever and RIP
written on the
chipped-paint
bathroom wall
isn't enough,
then perhaps death
would keep its
head down and
forget the
infatuation
it nurtures for life's
warm breath.

.

the people in the hall-
ways whisper
about him when they
think he's
sipping oblivion
from its bottomless
bottle,
but really he knows
what they're
saying and
just doesn't
care. how can he,
when the
emptiness can-
not be filled?

.

death must
think an awful
lot of itself
when all it does
is taketaketa

punctuation secretsher hands are
parenthesises
cradling secrets in

between;

her spine splinters with
hairline fractures
and
breakages in a feeble will

screeching at a
period,

weeping with the apostrophe,

and smiling as she
hops, skips and dances
across the needles
in a ground

that continuously
spits out ampersands

to string together her secrets.

now that i remember,he liked to watch
the spiders tangle in
their own nets,

almost as if they
were the hearts he

strung up,

like the veins knotted
into desperation,
breathless sighs
against his cheek until

they ran out of
thread and slowly
let go of

make-believe images

of love.

of expressed sorrowi.

"i'm sorry," he said and suddenly, it meant so much more. the word 'sorry' had faded in my mind, because everyone says it after they've broken my heart, and their insincerity crumbled the word until it's nothing but a powder. and the word simply stinks with lies and untold truths, like the tins at the back of your cupboard, staining a circle on the shelf - though i guess they never go bad.

ii.

but i found out that actually, he isn't sorry,
because you know, no one ever is. the word shouldn't have even been made; perhaps the creator of it is one of those people who say sorry, sorry, sorry all the time without thinking of it. but then, i

after midnight.the nightmares dangle
in front of bruised and red-lined eyes,
taunts and hands that creep
under paper skin in dream-land –

( the minutes trace
lines up the knobs of her
spine:
right up until they

reach the fur of hair
on her neck,
when her eyes fly open with
hollow bird bones
as eyelashes .
)

the bed sheets are coils of
rope as she struggles against
the stench of h

drowning yesterday Signed:
blue-blue thoughts.

we're running on
backwards,
eating breakfast in the
evening and
collapsing under blankets just
after dawn –

how can you peer through blackness
and somehow be able to live?

can i
ask you
a
question?

i'm not sure why
everything is so blurry

swallow the stillness1. my bee's-wing feet blister
with the step-step-stepping on the minute's
hand, entrenched in a monotonous
bloody-grin dance to conform to
a clock face's expectations.
it finds acting out only leaves it gasping in
one place.

it's better, they say –
it's better to keep your hours short
like the babies who cannot sleep and
never learn to grow –

i don't know how many hours i've been
keeping to the end of the universe
because my clock, it broke
down under the pressure and stopped
running
alongside me.

2. dear dusty futures –
you spread like bugs when the
light splutters out in a

through gritted teethEvery step sends a shower of red through
my blurry vision, cracks lined down
the bright day. The scent of salt,
metal and heavy-lidded nights soak
under my nostrils and deep into a weary
whirl of thoughts. My left hip

is tearing back open as my body
creases over, an old lady with a hand on
her waist to steady herself, wrinkles
clouding her face. Do you see

the secrets in my eyes? I shuffle forward,
tug the waistline of my pants
down, so it will stop rubbing me raw. I
can't ease the pain.

I lock the door behind me, isolation
itching like sleepiness at the corners of my
eyes. Unbuckle the belt, yank them
down, and breathe as th

gotchai'd like to scrawl poetry all over the walls
but my heart is hanging
too heavy in my chest.

-

i'm on tenterhooks;
counting my footsteps, let's pull
the trigger before the gun turns
away.

yes, i know there's inspiration here
somewhere –
if only i could write a letter to my shy
poetry, declaring stitched-up
love like it's the last time i'll ever
hold a pencil in my hand –
but i think maybe my paper has already
been burnt to ashes,
my pencils snapped in half
and the words taped to the insides of
my toes.

-

i'll paint lightning storms on my
cheekbones
and tattoo a farewell over my eyes because

drawing on windows

slipdizzy sunbursts paint her vision
black –

someone find her a saviour
because how can a masochist split open
her ribs and rescue the heart
when she wants to watch it
s-
s

-stumble in its beating?

she used to think the most beautiful
thing in the world was the sun
as it blazed in glorious triumph
above a world at its
mercy:

but now she knows everything is made
from imagination
and the desperation of a mother

losing her child

to the intricacies of a mind too
twisted for the innocent
to handle.

she broke her neck
when she sat down on the path,

a knife in her hand to carve the
rocks from the dirt
and an SOS to the sky

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More from ~jikivigoig

tornado lovei think one day,
i'll watch your head explode to
paint the walls:

(but honey, you're like a tornado –
no one's ever going to catch you –
they'll never cage you with energy like yours)

you deserve:
the honeycomb smiles on scented wind,
the world at your fingertips
because you must be extraordinary,
your joints laced with originality;

perhaps

one day, i could properly craft you into poetry
with words extricated from
your marrow,

but not now –
(because you're like a tornado, honey:
i can't catch you in my words,

can't contain such beautiful destruction.)

dependence1. it's been two days
and i am crumpling under
the hands of withdrawal:
shivering, i can't shut my own
thoughts up
and the days are dragging
their feet.

2. they itch when they heal
like someone's hiding in the
crests of my hips,
tickling with time-worn, coffee-stained
teeth – and i'm running on
someone else's life because there

3. is no background ache,
like there should be;
and i'm stringing together scars
with a blunt-tipped pencil,
drawing galaxies just below my
waistband,
like i hold a universe somewhere
inside, seeping over the
boundaries.

4. when i stuff the blades
in my mouth,
they taste like cobwebs and

the ghost [under your feet]how can i tell you
i am nothing?

when i find comfort in the spaces between
words, the empty breath of
sleeping children –

but i wanted you to
search for me,
to travel to the ends of the earth
for the promise of love i broke the moment it
left my lips –

and, oh, i'm just the
ghost standing,

barely a whisper of air,
a creation of memories only

it's not home if it's not falling downI.

i grew up in a home that was like a patchwork quilt:
on the outside, we were not the same as the cookie-cutter family
because i don't remember a time we sat down to eat dinner together at our
dining table
and we kept far too many things so everything
overflowed and toppled into
the scratched-out borders we could never quit
erase.

II.

my siblings and i, we had to make up games to play inside
because our backyard grew grass up to its waist;
and one time we shared a room of five and i was the one stuck with the
floor to sleep one when nanna dived underground and poppa
found himself alone and came to share our home.

there was al

two steps back 1.
the sadness creeps into
the lines of my face and
swings on my eyelashes
until they snap
and catch themselves on
the slimy surface of my
tired eye –
and blinking doesn't
make the pain go away.

2.
i can rub at my eyes with
closed fists until
they swell into bruises and
redness but the broken
eyelash finds it
hard to escape when
it's glued down and oh,
who knew it was
hurting when i can't
even scream?

3.
isn't it strange to think
the world goes on when you're
stuck as a permanent
eyesore?

4.
the mirror is glaring back
as i pluck the eyelash out with
metallic-scented

under coversi am the book whose cover has snapped at the
spine and is stained by the fingers of those
who weren't careful enough;

i am the one who will rip apart the words you
label me with – like they were printed out in 72-size
font and stapled to the front of my shirt –
as they read and whisper to
each other, their breath butchering the already-bent
letters;

and i can feel sweet lips on mine
as i grin and watch the venom spread from
my fingernails to the ragged tips of my hair and
down through the veins of my feet –

hold me up a little more, keep my eyes
pointed to the weeping clouds and freeze
the raindrops on my cheeks

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from me to you,

by ~jikivigoig, Jun 20, 2012, 3:28:58 AM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

dear someone
        across the world,

            it is endlessly sunny here
       and the grass is sometimes brown
  and the water pipe burst earlier,
                   leaving the taps lifeless –
                        and tomorrow, the sun
           will rise at 4.30 in the morning –
       oh, wait
   it already is tomorrow:
                            it is almost 1.00 early
                                     morning and my
                   eyes are crusted deeply with
             fatigue and many late nights in a row.
      i can smell ink and paper and
   my shampoo, and somebody just dropped
                                        something
                                 though they really should
                                    be sleeping;
               i have secrets tucked under my sheets
and an urge to write itching under my
                          fingernails, even though
                    everything is bathed
              in half-darkness
                                  and i can barely see the
                                     words on this page –
    so, my elbow is sore and my stomach even
                    sorer but someone is
            hurting more than me somewhere –
                                          perhaps even you –
       and we'll never know each other but
                           i just want to say, i can feel the
   earth sleeping and awake at the same
                 time while my eyes
freeze themselves open.
                         i hope you're feeling better than me.

                                                        sincerely,
                                             someone from
                                                              the other side.

from me to you,by ~jikivigoig

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

©2012-2013 ~jikivigoig

Another one from one o'clock in the morning in case it wasn't obvious.

Not sure what I think about this one. It's just the babbling of my mind when it's tired and hungry and sore spat onto the page.

*glossolalias Jun 20, 2012

beautiful. i have no words.

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~jikivigoig Jun 21, 2012

Thank you so much.

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