
Irene Poole Sep 2017
you ask me

Do I Feel Different Today?

today, day of days
when the child outside becomes the child within
when those seven billion billion billion atoms have more or less successfully completed nearly seventeen million kilometres of earth


in space around a ball of blazing plasma and all I want is a break from it all for just one second
breathe in
make a wish
blow out the candles
see each little light blink into oblivion until the only one left is the sun and

Do I Feel Different?

I am still
written on my 18th birthday, as I cross the line into adulthood
Irene Poole Sep 2018
I think I’m angry
With you
The double dichotomy of words
Both with and at
All encompassing the ever growing redundancies of phrase upon fragile phrase
Hand upon hand
Your hand a sliver in my heart
It beats
Beats like a funeral drum as the fires and pyres are lit
Beats like fists on chests
A piercing war cry
“Cry for help,
No one will hear you” stuck in the quicksand
:a fly in honey:
“Oh honey what have you done?”
I think I’m angry
With you
I’m angrier without you
Irene Poole Oct 2017
I was trying to start
 a conversation, an education:
a way to reach the dark-hearted ignorance
 and nurse it back to health in knowledge
my consequential words
slammed against your brick-walled brain
the china shop to your bull-
Wasn't sure if I was going to post this, due to the political nature, but here it is. Sometimes all the work you put in to a well-crafted argument seems futile when pitted against an uneducated and close-minded opponent, but it is still important to try and have conversations with people who have opposing views from you. I felt like this feeling was better expressed in a poem than in an angry Facebook rant, thus this poem.
Irene Poole Sep 2017
You only seem to care when you're drunk or otherwise impaired
but maybe you're just scared of commitment.

These promises you make when we're barely awake always seem to fade by daybreak and I can't take this anymore.

If you play with my emotions always bringing me up and then down and I never know if you'll be found with some other girl,
then maybe I'm not the one you should run to when you want to have some fun at a party.

I am enough for you and if you can't understand then maybe you don't deserve to hold my hand and tell me that I'm beautiful.

These words I say to make you pay are not enough because words need actions but you never act
instead you live your life of lies never caring who you disguise yourself as or who you make cry.

You only seem to care when you're drunk or otherwise impaired
but maybe you're just scared of commitment.
Irene Poole Sep 2017
have you ever cried upside down?
felt the tears stream up your face
down with gravity
and into all the wrong places?

felt the droplets, cooling as they race away from their mirrored origin,
slide over furrowed brow
across forehead and temple to dampen the sliver-thin hairs—
the ones that glow when lit from behind
—and rest where skin meets strand?

you have not felt these things
how could you have?
your world is always right side up.
Irene Poole Oct 2017
We dance to music only you can hear
under the pinprick sky

The air crisp and cool
the beginning of a season
prompting our closeness to embrace away the cold

You twirl me around through the garden
bringing me away and towards
in serpentine motion

I almost trip
but your arms are there to catch me
I stop looking at my feet and gaze up to the night
see the half-moon shining
just like you

We start humming a jazz standard
You know more of the words than I do


We hold hands
your cold fingertips past your cutoff glove
warming in mine
walking in time
to the song
so involved in the melody that the lyrics keep on flowing and I know it's only a song and you were ****** and I was sleepy but still
you said (sung) it

"In other words: I love you."
starry nights out in nature with good company are the best

no copyright infringement intended on the use of the lyrics from "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)"
Irene Poole Nov 2017
Passing headlights paint-
ing highways down shuttle aisles,
Whitney wants to dance.
This came to me when I was on the bus to the mall tonight and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" was playing on the radio. Even the littlest moments in life can be poetic.
Irene Poole Oct 2017
Playing the waiting game
Each one dancing around the other
Uncertainty building like a storm cloud with each passing
Is this real?
Was this whole thing a child's game
Cat and mouse?
Crickets sing their song to the moon
Cars pass
The empty parking lot bathes in street lamp glow
What happens now?
Waiting for someone to show up for a first-time meeting is a feeling that puts me on edge. So I thought I'd write about it.
Irene Poole Oct 2017
Do you ever feel like you're in a fantasy land?

Like the sky is just a bit too blue
The grass is too green
The clouds are too perfect
And the shadow of that lamp-post 
Falls at the exact angle so that 
Everything seems painted on, if only for a second? 

Then you look around
See little imperfections upon the passersby
a wrinkle
a cough
a lop-sided grin

These little flaws make us real
Make us human.

And so the fantasy land flickers and fades
bringing you back to the beautiful reality. 

You are here.
Sometimes the world seems so beautiful it can't be real, but it is! So take a minute to appreciate your surroundings.

— The End —