Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Coop Lee Apr 2014
the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******,
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
                   go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.

color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.

& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]

maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
                                                       above,
                                          between
               the lights and music.

reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.

and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science?   secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.

  nat geo channel:  [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
                                                                ­  on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]

money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.

quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and ***; and
microwaves  ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.

blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.
previously published in Susquehanna Review
http://media.wix.com/ugd/387c1e_b3d8de732bd84e88923496bcea98bdb1.pdf
Martin Narrod Mar 2017
Heaps of her across the deserted plains, oily fingers reaching up and over the horizon until all of the numbers fill her pockets, her father worried, and her muses covered with goat-head's thorn. Where does she start to fuse her needs with the weapons in their suburban corolla of lilacs and wanton redolence? It's the opacity in her finger nibs and the dozens of names she felt closing over her legs sideways, until she awakens in the night to take the blood dripping cotton tissues off of her face, off of her bed-side dresser table. She can't even paw forward or undress her wetness in haiku. Everyone she knows doesn't know her. Everything she's seen, doesn't seem to be there for her anymore. That's the trade they told her to barter for, the golden seals and vitamin needs she's gobbling up by the palmful every morning by seven.

Seven for the circus or the mimes, seven for the cloves hanging from the door and seven for the queries that strike back her abcesses and cost her seven by the quart and seven for the plastics. Seven dancing backwards towards a rook or a *****, seven inside her chest playing guitar with David Bowie, seven at the doggerel, and seven for the stitch and the obtuse- only a creature of seven might go for her, in a spot of doves, crank, and soda it is poison, seven is her ***** line, her sexuality, her sinfulness, and her latitude over and over again. Seven makes her want for tomorrow, seven takes tomorrow and throws itself up against the wall, pledging a game in the summer, seven to a trip of caramel and dukes, seven for the prince and the painting of the two of them, seven for the winter, and for the shadows that stretch curiosity past the breath of a summons', seven for the day and seven for the evening, seven scratches her ears and pulls out her hair, seven is the ring and the blue phantom buried somewhere far, far away, green is what's left, but seven knows which way the rain comes and who is going to follow it through.

There is a numbness that radiates on the fringe, a tickly discomfort not even a narrator could let out or down to a name on the mountains near the **** plateau that conquers her nuance, and shakes the both of them to core of the fight. This is not a flag that costs us in coins or in dollars. This is the worry chiseling our shapes and our buttery hips, a stacked set of crazy in a photograph off the leash of only a few. And it calls them to the night when it's only three of us left, until every cord is untied, until every verb is set in its caste, or ringing out to the tremolos of rapture, and the musicianship of pepper-jacked sneezes in the ambers and umbers that although startling, we've all learned to convert our averages in order to swing under the storm, and baby each of us with an elixir of myriad captures, images, and violent abuse.

While the words can yield, and the festivities can hoard each of the simple new experiences against travels of women, and pictures from Mussorgsky riling up soft drinks and evocations towards the center where all of us sometimes will let ourselves, let loose. Something horrendous and cold plugging into the sugars, something quiet, nearly a friend of reminders, crustaceans and ocean making this top-down beach of faces for all to shake and roll with or set forward a cacophony of abuse. Until in a breath she calls for the infinite intuition sheltering her and our window from the pain of misuse.

That is the photograph where we have been looking to live, here is the memory we spent our minds trying desperately to relive in the shade and in the snafu, against the bark and the piano keys treating our rise. Within our skin and our pupils, our silver bookends and/or the mammals we don't use names for but for whom we've been introduced to.
Cast the first stone
We moving the streets like we queuing for judgment,
In divided societies searching deviants
We have lost our moral compass
Our demons navigating hell
Place called Home
It rains umbers.

Corruption termed mismanagement of funds
None willing to lift a heavy stones.

I was told scorpions inhabited stones’ shadows,
So I won’t cast the first stone
But remain in judgment for their curses
I will move the street till sunset.
Judged.
I have poems painted like the Pyramids on my skin
They sprink like umbers, burning demons on my sleep,
Am a god.

Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image"
Genesis 1:26
Little Wren Sep 2016
It's just me and a thousand bugs this afternoon
Enjoying the autumn usher in the browns and umbers
The earthen kiln, ashes burnt like the ground, the trees on fire.
Decay begins here.
The sky is thinner, clouds inhale the last plumes of warmth
Circling in the cirrus above.
Propeller seeds and crackling bones of leaves
I sit in the shivering sun
It's just me and a thousand bugs
Scattering across my knees and arms
This afternoon, in the waning life of light.
Butch Decatoria Feb 2021
Dying of fires
The days /
reflections
on surfaces of oceans...
Burnt Umbers, blue & blood,
Mixish
Muted, drowned.

The sinking sun
wounded. Down

For death sees red
before dark fall / Ruin...

It is the sensation of ripples
when supple lips, pink linguist
leaves poetic syllabic pining
—live wires touching
Nape, the meek taste of tongue, shyly
lifting countries to new conquered kingdoms
of skin—
gooseflesh and earthquakes
blood as lava
rushes in
kabuki cheeks
secret joy begins.

Red so parched
Those sudden seas
of thirst
parts /
As our senses / must
breathe...
(like art)

Magic whispers kiss
because touch impassioned
is red and wish.

Lovelorn letters
poetic bliss
Spontaneous wings born
In each ache and void
Loud trumpeting of words
when distance fails
the hearts which beat
Feel speak
red
the oceans felt
the tides that ebb
hurried pleas
desperations
red

when letters
lose the dying magnitude,
the importance & impetus
that love must free...

Great clarion songs
of hearts are red
as are all
kisses (scarlet)
even to air
and dead
         begins on such lips
Red.
Revised retitled.
Butch Decatoria Sep 2017
1.        Dying of a day /    
reflections

on surfaces of oceans

burnt umbers blues and blood

the sinking sun

                       wounded

                             death is red

before the dark  /

           ruins...



2.

It is the sensation of ripples
when supple pink linguist
leaves poetic yearning

fires touching
on nape and taste,

lifting countries and new
conquered kingdoms
of skin

gooseflesh and earthquakes
blood as lava

rushes in
     kabuki cheeks
          secret joy begins

red and parched

sudden seas of thirst
parts / our senses / must
breathe ...
(like art)

Magic whispers kiss
because touch enpassioned
is red
    and wish.



3.

Love lorn letters

poetic bliss
     spontaneous wings born


each ache and void
trumpeting words

when distance fails
the hearts which speak

red

the oceans felt
the tides that ebb
hurried pleas

desperations
red

when letters
lose the dying magnitude

the importance
and impetus

that love must free

clarion song
of hearts are red

as are all
kisses (scarlet)
even to air
and dead

begins on such lips

red....
Michael Jul 2018
Hear our voice
From the east, west, south, and north
Hear our independence
This July Fourth
Like flowers in bloom
In the night
See the chandeliers
Hang in the sky
With crescendos and
Reds, blues and whites
Explosions and commotion
In the battle lights
In the bomb blasts and bombast
Crimsons, umbers and beige
Like the dawn’s breaking light
Mauves, cobalts and jades
All the high-lights and sky-lights
Caught by the American’s eye
It's In the fodder of the diviner’s rod
In the wizardry of July
Copyright 2012
Butch Decatoria Nov 2019
RED
Dying of a day /
reflections
on surfaces of oceans...
Burnt Umbers, blues, in blood
Muted, drowned.

The sinking sun
wounded.
death sees red
before the dark fall / Ruins.

It is the sensation of ripples
when supple pink linguist
leaves poetic pining
—live fires touching
Nape, the meek taste of lips,
lifting countries to new conquered kingdoms
of skin—
gooseflesh and earthquakes
blood as lava
rushes in
kabuki cheeks
secret joy begins.

Red and parched
Those sudden seas
of thirst
parts /
As our senses / must
breathe...
(like art)

Magic whispers kiss
because touch enpassioned
is red and wish.

Love lorn letters
poetic bliss
Spontaneous wings born
In each ache and void
Loud trumpeting no words
when distance fails
the hearts which speak

red
the oceans felt
the tides that ebb
hurried pleas
desperations
red

when letters
lose the dying magnitude
the importance
and impetus
that love must free

clarion songs
of hearts are red
as are all
kisses (scarlet)
even to air
and dead
begins on such lips

Red.
Repost

— The End —