The 87th Year

I just don't know anymore folks, these were real feelings that will never die. But happiness I can feel again. That's worth something...:)

The Eighty Seventh Year

It seperates then presses us together. Cracks your back but heals the spine. Blows your mind condenses every explosion in a bottle. Organizes confusion but throws it together. Like pickup sticks. They stab you. Mame you. Make you lost. Make you scream make you cry. Cause you to go crazy. Cause you to love. Hurt you. Turn three seconds to three forevers. You feel lost, feel angry. Iscolated from your own hands but more alive in a world where you never existed. Holds every particle of your being hostage believing in love. Your family over there when once you were close. God another place. Friends stand apart from your own fingers and cold winds don't even raise your lungs. Alone isn't even an explanation when it cannot be spoken. Like drowning but taking your first breath in a world you know nothing about. Hurdling life and blood. Spills into your chest lowered it to the earth after dying of what never did happen. Circles you run then stop when the hole is 10 feet deep. Cradling your head screaming until your throat, feels like fire and hell itself. Squeeze feeling out your fingertips. Rip the hair out. Dig wrinkles into your own eyes. Dance and fall. Fear, but stabbed itself, stabbed yourself. Staggering into another morning where tears became wine and wine became your escape. Ripping out the pages taping them back. Time is of the essence when cold days straddle your entities. The button lights up as your sweater tears. But your scream sucked out just the way zeal was hunted, slaughtered, scattered. Hungrily we searched for love. Appetizers and punching your own haunted stomach. Squeezing your knees against a bitter chest then running so hard so fast you still can't fly, still cannot leave your own body, still can't forget. Shaking so hard as the days end then turn to something new. Left awake your window disappearing. The wall crushes in, there's only a little time. Time is forever but only until yesterday catches up. Until tomorrow spreads its minutes into the 87th year. The ending year. 87 years standing waiting on platforms, behind broken bottles, inside tumbleweeds. Then the image fades you're left there standing, back the same and 87 years couldn't come quicker. Pleading on knees never burned holes in the jeans like this before. Opening a can of bliss never was so scarce. Insanity never seemed so real. Never felt possible. The white pale dying heart. Stating in such a simplicity your own mind forgets to comprehend what even happened-"It Hurts".

Reviews

[Lawrence Parlier]

Yes, yes, YES! This is the one Madeline.
I have to admit I didn't completely "get" your prose style. With this piece, your style emerges. This absolutely needs to be read in this form. It sets a lightening pace and and drags you straight through your reality, Daring the reader to come along and watch. Seperating yourself from the poem serves in this.
"Blows your mind condenses every explosion in a bottle."
"Isolated from your own hands but more alive in a world where you never existed."
These are great lines. They push the reader into the middle where you really turn loose and the emotion is laid completely bare.
The nine lines starting."Cradling your head screaming until your throat feels like fire and hell itself." just punch into the reader and drive the point home.
And you end the poem by making it abundantly clear that the feeling will never truly fade and your own submission to it.
"Pleading on knees never burned holes in jeans like this before. Opening a can of bliss was never so scarce" Brilliant! It pushes the reader back into their own headspace with the bittersweet whimsy of the lines to the rye nod at the end where the firestorm of emotion dare not be expressed, only symbolised. A tragedy in itself.
Well done.

[Reaper]

"Opening a can of bliss never was so scarce."
Bliss sometimes is the best way to life. Its not practical but it works for people sometimes.
Great poem, a happy tint to it morphed into your normal beautiful style.

[Kelly Scheppers]

I so agree with my good friend, Jill...you have so much insight going on here, and being so young, you've truly only begun to scratch the surface! Writing takes nurturing, just like anything else. I wish I could have written like this when I was 17!

Hang in there, sweetie!

Kelly
: )

[PaperLife]

I guess there's not much significance as far as the number, I think I meant more of... what feels like 87 years packed into the short life I've lived. That I go back and forth in a way. Like... at times I don't even feel my own age but then I feel so old...

[j]

well i dunno where your information comes from but you need to chuck that source. and i'll tell ya, if Thomas says it don't suck, you better pay attention. ;)

you say you're only 17?? goodness. i've not seen this much insight and volatile/candid emotion from most mature "adults" who claim to have a c.l.u.e.

this piece moves at the speed of light, stakes its claim on all things impassioned and never once apologizes. it is truly grand. if ever i saw the promise of a talented writer ... the ink stops here. and i think if i discover the word "sucks" once more from you as it relates to your own writing, i may have to come over there and stuff a sock in it. ;) i am curious about the significance of '87' years though.

ps -- this is probably more "prose" than poetry.

incredible work, young'un. ;)

[Thomas Fitzgerald]

It doesn't suck, it has a taste of opulance and a direct message, well done, good read.