Tony Scallo: Favorites

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Muggle Ginger

If you are uncomfortable when you look in the mirror,
keep in mind:
We spent thousands of years
trying to convince the earth
she was flat.

We wrote her maps as evidence of the things we saw;
and she believed them.
She cried tsunamis, and had earthquake breakdowns.

Keep in mind: the Sun never gave up hope.
The earth will keep spinning and breathing
the star-dusty space void of encouragement.

Next time you look in the mirror
and second-guess your potential divinity,
remember you will keep shining and living.

Because the Sun is out there
believing in you,
compensating for lack of the human capacity
to treat each other empathically.

You don’t need proof or approval
to be exactly what you are;
Eventually everyone will see
your infinite beauty.

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Marrow

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Connor C Blake

Marrow

I wish I could unsee myself.

And then come back in a little while and lay untrained eyes upon the skin I’m forced to wear.
Would it all look the same?
I’d trace all the lines to their ends and find something I didn’t hate in my appendages.

There’s truth in them bones.

Under layers of ligaments, blood, and a whole assortment of other lies, they lie in wait.

They know we’re just borrowing any time we find and we never really owned that breath we try so desperately to hold inside.
There’s a reason for that chill running down your spine.
But I brushed it aside and left my bones in a closet while I found a new place to hide.

I want to let them out but they’re buried so deep under piles of ***** laundry and sorrow-soaked organs.
And I’m worried that with each new ache time makes that I won’t be able to shake them back awake

But I'm still alive.
And so if existence is resistance then maybe I can still win this

So I’m going to tear it all off,
The tattered rotten garbs that so desperately cling to my bones like parasites along for the ride,
Eating up what little marrow remains inside.

Maybe then I can chisel this monkey off my back and finally make myself perpendicular to the ground,
And show gravity that it’s not always that easy to keep me down.

And anyway, I’ve been looking to lose a few pounds.

Listen to my performance of this poem here: https://soundcloud.com/connor-c-blake/marrow-1

#melancholic #depression #tear #beauty #melancholy #skin #bones #body #naked #spokenword

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Robotic

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Connor C Blake

Robotic

Intellect without emotion, someone told me once. That's how they described me. That I had more wit and sarcastic charm than I could ever need, and yet I couldn't do anything meaningful with it because I lacked anything real…..like empathy, selflessness…or love. I was the cleverest robot in the world.

The truth is I do have emotion. Bounds of it. It pours out of me through cracks I forgot to seal when I walled myself in. And any attempt it makes to grow a garden is flooded by preemptive rain clouds, conjured up by a self imposed reality wherein the world sees my face in the daylight for what it really is and burns down my garden anyway.

I am no robot, I just hide behind cold metal plates and careful calculations, as if I could possibly predict consequences to chances I never take, moves I never make, and broken down walls I never break. So that the outcome is that i'm the loneliest, cleverest robot in the world, who discarded his humanity for a safety net and a bottle of cheap thrills, a bottle he uses as a telescope to see the rest of world because it looks better through the glass.

#addiction #depression #alone #anxiety #scared #angry #emotional #robotic #self-destructive #robot

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Poisons

Sep 2014 Tony Scallo

Ellie Shelley

Poisons

In this pencil, crouch words that have never been spoken
As I lay the lead to this paper all the shame of me wanting you to like me slowly comes out, letting me write about how I have this terrible love that I hate, and it’s all for you.
I have let harm be my drug, picking my poison from yellow little bottles to numb my self of this pain
pain
pain is what I get when I see you but ******* see through me
these words are flowing out of me, this shaming is surfacing and all I wanna do is scratch it off, scratch away the feeling of this love this hate this shame this agony of loving the one who will never love me back or hear how much i love her
She won’t know about the nights I laid awake wishing for her
But then I think about the night I kissed you, I see now how wrong I was, I loved you so much I could bear being so close you so far, and words would have never been able to begin explaining how much I loved you
I had seen your eyes gleam and I had hoped it was a gleam of hope but looking back I can see your eyes we’re filled with disgust
I had loved you, and I still have a yearning in my heart to walk you to class
Kiss you in the halls so everyone knows your mine and I’m yours
I want to be overwhelmingly cliché and scream my love for you from the rooftops
But this shame is bubbling up reminding my that my head is in the clouds and I need to get my feet on the ground
This love is coming up to my mouth and I need to find a way to clamp it
shut so I won’t speak words you’ll never accept
But these are just words in a pencil, and they float
These are just words
Hiding in a pencil
But they will be spoken

#depression #pain

Oct 2013 Tony Scallo

Dance Of The Alpha Male

Oct 2013 Tony Scallo

Showman

Dance Of The Alpha Male

I hate nature sometimes.
Like sugar plum fairies
We dance
Around each other
Waiting for something to happen
Over power. Over woman.
Falling to our primal instincts
We are better than that
We are more than that
I hate it.
The way we are stubborn.
We are too busy fighting.
Fighting time
Fighting fear
Fighting death
Fighting each other
The hands of the clock ticks away
Death wraps its warm arms around us
But that I suppose is why we dance