Holly O'Brien

The Affair (poem)

It's so easy for my mind to forget while your hands are against my skin/

Still my body seizes the memory/

Trapping the tang of your tongue as I taste the last of your wine stained lips/

It's a mixture of sweet and sour, just like us/

Your embrace keeps me wet, pounding me like warm rain/

I bite into you so desperate to get inside yet we remain closed off/

Making the plight seem innocent for what we choose to ignore/

Never stopping to realize we are chasing our lives with one night/

This One Heart (poem)

I think of spending nights with you/

quietly as we lay with nothing to say

because our hearts would have already spoken words that would have

transformed into airs of passion that we could only breathe/

Just by looking into each others eyes we would see the things that went unseen,

like seeing a star up close we would see the beauty within each other we

had never paid attention to/

and all of the heartless emotions that we

thought belonged between us would melt, becoming a puddle of things

we've chosen to forgive/

but for now we are spending our nights quietly,

reminiscing on the thought of a past for our future, leaning into the sound

possibility that beyond all of this thinking our souls have already begun to

share this one heart...

School Girl (poem)

Release from this cage that has me bound/

Where doorbells ring but no one ever welcomes you/

Where teachers teach but never listen/

Release me from this cage, this institution that kills you if you fall out of line, that single file that distinguishes the strong from the weak/

Where if you speak, they only hear who's speaking louder, who memorizes the best, they are smarter/

Where difference is not unique but a sickness that is contagious unless it is corrected/

My escape is through the route of my genius, which has not been taught what or how to think but it is oblivious and only knows how to seek beauty, and it creates beauty where there is none/

For in an institution there is none until you step outside...

Battered (poem)

I breathe

But the intoxicating scents that I am inhaling against my will punish me with sickness

Lies and doctrines thrown at my face and spilt in my food

I am battling against an unknown enemy

And I take the blows as if I deserve them

These things make me weak, they make me fear everything

Too lazy to die, I am usually surrendering with much dignity

Expecting a prize when I never even valued myself

Bleeding Heart (poem)

You are my placebo

A karma out of sync

trying to catch its tone

since it behaves like a riddle

tying my mind in knots

loosely fitting around my cranked out heart

Used too much and broken down to fragility

Easy flow
Take it from me
It's not like feeling in reality
It's not like seeing something you can see
It's like paper
It's like pen
It's like thinking back again
It's like colliding now and then
Easily
Provokingly
Until it starts choking me
Until it starts releasing me
Piecing me...together
Like sand in a sandbox
Like windows in a castle
It's there
but do we really notice?

Easy flow
Easy life
Easy makes it hard

Dissatisfied (poem)

All alone
With no one to
call my own

Times were wasted
when I thought
I was giving my heart
to you

All those quiet
closing doors

May you remember
yourself as you
remind me of my
short comings

My crippled emotions
which gave you
reasons to leave

I am left here
crying, hurting over you
Whose to say the sun
will rise again?

Is it not
the moon and the stars
the draft of the night?

My feelings are
only caused by
one thing
....your actions
they deny my well-being