ephraim - Hello Poetry

walks in prose every step a story needing no narrative to attract one's gaze a fluid tale of toes sweeping all away with a saga no words can express. speaks poetry with a mindful voice aware of the power of words to break a mind melt a heart birth a nation or like sandpaper to skin exfoliate layers of trauma that cling to the soul like a sailor to an oar from a sinking ship knows that Love creates an unexpected storm in a sea of tranquility wedding passion to desire impulse to expectation and when withheld desolates the very core of being gutting the meaning of existence and with the detached ease of the wind blowing leaves through crescent moon lips breathes magic and mysteries, unfolding petals of a dark red rose whose thorns do ***** when pulled from the mud then kisses the place where the thorns draw blood.

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Oct 31, 2025

Oct 31, 2025 at 11:37 AM UTC

ephraim

FOR (insert name here), WHO

walks in prose every step a story needing no narrative to attract one's gaze a fluid tale of toes sweeping all away with a saga no words can express. speaks poetry with a mindful voice aware of the power of words to break a mind melt a heart birth a nation or like sandpaper to skin exfoliate layers of trauma that cling to the soul like a sailor to an oar from a sinking ship knows that Love creates an unexpected storm in a sea of tranquility wedding passion to desire impulse to expectation and when withheld desolates the very core of being gutting the meaning of existence and with the detached ease of the wind blowing leaves through crescent moon lips breathes magic and mysteries, unfolding petals of a dark red rose whose thorns do ***** when pulled from the mud then kisses the place where the thorns draw blood.

35

i still let him in though he be a stranger i gave him a smoke he gave me a hammer i struck up a match and he swung it hard now i have cancer and two broken arms the skin of his face peeled away like a caul we fed it to neighbours who lived down the hall i made him a mask to wear to the bars now i don't see me i only see scars he went for a walk i followed me home we took out the garbage then took out my bones stacked them up high in the corner to see together we made a skeleton tree. he brought me a mirror to prove I’m not dead the mirror just showed me the back of his head we found some paint thinner and drank it with dinner I laughed and he cried and we died in our bed

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Oct 31, 2025

Oct 31, 2025 at 4:19 AM UTC

ephraim

DISSOCIATIVE

i still let him in though he be a stranger i gave him a smoke he gave me a hammer i struck up a match and he swung it hard now i have cancer and two broken arms the skin of his face peeled away like a caul we fed it to neighbours who lived down the hall i made him a mask to wear to the bars now i don't see me i only see scars he went for a walk i followed me home we took out the garbage then took out my bones stacked them up high in the corner to see together we made a skeleton tree. he brought me a mirror to prove I’m not dead the mirror just showed me the back of his head we found some paint thinner and drank it with dinner I laughed and he cried and we died in our bed

32

You are a bonfire I gladly drive my stake into, bound for death.

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Oct 28, 2025

Oct 28, 2025 at 12:59 AM UTC

ephraim

Love letter

You are a bonfire I gladly drive my stake into, bound for death.

4

we're speaking in tongues. In the whispered language of snakes we strain to map the course of each other's words. The struggle to parse a world evolved from shared confusion ends too often in silence. Oxygen petrifies in our lungs suffocating desire snuffing out the flames that burned bright in our eyes and on our lips. The descending cold cannot be quantified. Time flows sideways speeding us down roads leading away from now. By our own trembling hands we are forcibly led, along paths dissolving into hot, sticky anxiety that scratches the insides of our skulls, echoing past migraines. Instinct drives us a respectable distance apart to each claim a corner of the room. A patch of carpet becomes a bed of nails. Kitchen chairs become life rafts on an ocean where floor used to be. From our imagined safety we stare at anything but each other. Eyes, still hungry, intestines knotting, our big beautiful dreams swim around inside us, sharks drawn to blood. And despite the circling danger we accept that love is a gamble, a game devoid of logic pregnant with unfulfilled dreams questions unanswered, where fears, earned or irrational, accumulate over lifetimes, every orifice overflowing with bile purged from each obliterated romance. And with the flood comes knowing, that one's life just like one's love, and one's prey, is most tangible most valued and most dangerous when cornered.

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Oct 28, 2025

Oct 28, 2025 at 12:47 AM UTC

ephraim

Sometimes it feels like

we're speaking in tongues. In the whispered language of snakes we strain to map the course of each other's words. The struggle to parse a world evolved from shared confusion ends too often in silence. Oxygen petrifies in our lungs suffocating desire snuffing out the flames that burned bright in our eyes and on our lips. The descending cold cannot be quantified. Time flows sideways speeding us down roads leading away from now. By our own trembling hands we are forcibly led, along paths dissolving into hot, sticky anxiety that scratches the insides of our skulls, echoing past migraines. Instinct drives us a respectable distance apart to each claim a corner of the room. A patch of carpet becomes a bed of nails. Kitchen chairs become life rafts on an ocean where floor used to be. From our imagined safety we stare at anything but each other. Eyes, still hungry, intestines knotting, our big beautiful dreams swim around inside us, sharks drawn to blood. And despite the circling danger we accept that love is a gamble, a game devoid of logic pregnant with unfulfilled dreams questions unanswered, where fears, earned or irrational, accumulate over lifetimes, every orifice overflowing with bile purged from each obliterated romance. And with the flood comes knowing, that one's life just like one's love, and one's prey, is most tangible most valued and most dangerous when cornered.

55

is strung with cowry shells. 108 perfect eyes pass one by one between the Scylla and Charybdis of my calloused thumb and Saturn finger become glaring vulvas, wide moist swollen alert, issue an unyielding flow, of salty tides swallowing earth's shores grain by grain by minute grain. Through cadenced lips recitations toll like church bells calling the faithful to rejoice or mourn. Words, smooth as river caressed stones dream of diminishing to a morsel of sand, dying in the belly of a bivalve mollusc, to be reborn as a black pearl on its tongue. Ocean waves grow fat consuming continental bodies claimed by us and ants alike which sadly, are visible only from heights reached by poverty-stricken men who, unmoved by the riches under their feet must walk the cold, dead face of the moon to feel alive.

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Oct 27, 2025

Oct 27, 2025 at 5:54 PM UTC

ephraim

MY MALLAH

is strung with cowry shells. 108 perfect eyes pass one by one between the Scylla and Charybdis of my calloused thumb and Saturn finger become glaring vulvas, wide moist swollen alert, issue an unyielding flow, of salty tides swallowing earth's shores grain by grain by minute grain. Through cadenced lips recitations toll like church bells calling the faithful to rejoice or mourn. Words, smooth as river caressed stones dream of diminishing to a morsel of sand, dying in the belly of a bivalve mollusc, to be reborn as a black pearl on its tongue. Ocean waves grow fat consuming continental bodies claimed by us and ants alike which sadly, are visible only from heights reached by poverty-stricken men who, unmoved by the riches under their feet must walk the cold, dead face of the moon to feel alive.

34

I bear hope in a heart lacerated by punishing whips of grief and bereavement. And like water from a finger-woven basket, it spills through the cracks mudding the earth beneath overworked feet, slowing my stumble towards that place of rest I seek but cannot see.

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Oct 26, 2025

Oct 26, 2025 at 4:32 PM UTC

ephraim

Untiltled

I bear hope in a heart lacerated by punishing whips of grief and bereavement. And like water from a finger-woven basket, it spills through the cracks mudding the earth beneath overworked feet, slowing my stumble towards that place of rest I seek but cannot see.

12

She feeds his starving hands Closes trembling fingers Around ripe nectarine ******* The nut hardness of her ******* Make stigmata wounds That never heal. She fills his famished mouth With her lips and tongue Living Hors d’oeuvres Marinaded in blood and saliva Then drives him head first To graze in the garden south of her navel. He eats of her fruit Drinks from her stream Till he is satiated and spent His cheeks and chin A colour field of pulp and nectar On a canvas of Frankenthaler. Behind velvet doors of her private gallery She mounts him. He is famished no more.

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Feb 23, 2021

Feb 23, 2021 at 1:07 AM UTC

ephraim

Feeder

She feeds his starving hands Closes trembling fingers Around ripe nectarine ******* The nut hardness of her ******* Make stigmata wounds That never heal. She fills his famished mouth With her lips and tongue Living Hors d’oeuvres Marinaded in blood and saliva Then drives him head first To graze in the garden south of her navel. He eats of her fruit Drinks from her stream Till he is satiated and spent His cheeks and chin A colour field of pulp and nectar On a canvas of Frankenthaler. Behind velvet doors of her private gallery She mounts him. He is famished no more.

22

Cat scratched from sleep unravelled laundry sacks birth limbs yawns trumpet yesterday's echo shofars of Rosh Hashanah announce today's new year. The early morning snowfall, white palm print heavy, wet blinds fluttering eyelids still choked with cobwebs spun in last night's dreams. The pale smile of winter dawn elbows a shining path through white rabbit cotton tails stacked shoulder to shoulder peerin through my window like a hopeful child with empty pockets at a candy shoppe milky breath fogging the glass.

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Feb 22, 2021

Feb 22, 2021 at 3:35 PM UTC

ephraim

Winter Morning

Cat scratched from sleep unravelled laundry sacks birth limbs yawns trumpet yesterday's echo shofars of Rosh Hashanah announce today's new year. The early morning snowfall, white palm print heavy, wet blinds fluttering eyelids still choked with cobwebs spun in last night's dreams. The pale smile of winter dawn elbows a shining path through white rabbit cotton tails stacked shoulder to shoulder peerin through my window like a hopeful child with empty pockets at a candy shoppe milky breath fogging the glass.

19

Dying, as water runs all around me, singing like those cool rivers flowing. Mouth watering duet It beckons me, and yet, how can I drink from the same river twice when I'm thirsty for something more from this life? Carrying my longing like mustard seeds to a place of rest under copse of trees a dying fire on the beach limbs of driftwood left by the sea. You can thirst for the ocean try to swim, you might sink though you may long for the ocean you must never drink.

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Feb 22, 2021

Feb 22, 2021 at 3:34 PM UTC

ephraim

Left by the sea

Dying, as water runs all around me, singing like those cool rivers flowing. Mouth watering duet It beckons me, and yet, how can I drink from the same river twice when I'm thirsty for something more from this life? Carrying my longing like mustard seeds to a place of rest under copse of trees a dying fire on the beach limbs of driftwood left by the sea. You can thirst for the ocean try to swim, you might sink though you may long for the ocean you must never drink.

22

the poet who leaps into the void understands that the first step taken towards understanding the incomprehensible must to be proportional to the fear it instills.

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Feb 22, 2021

Feb 22, 2021 at 3:33 PM UTC

ephraim

The first step taken

the poet who leaps into the void understands that the first step taken towards understanding the incomprehensible must to be proportional to the fear it instills.

10