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Carlo C Gomez Nov 2019
Words are tricky like pillows,
They can just as easily
Provide comfort
As start a fight.
Carlo C Gomez Mar 2020
You're an afterimage
You shine so bright upon me

You're an inducement
Your eyes draw me forth

You're a vibration
Your voice shivers my spine

You're a compression
Your legs wrap about my will

Here I am now
My fatal sweet
Waiting to be consumed
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2020
Roll right to zero, give your tanks a stir

Fixed star to fixed star, running counter clockwise to stability

Beckoned and bewildered: first move, second chance

This incandescent satellite, so large and bright in the window

Like pieces of refracted light, infinite bulbs turning on

Empyrean, enveloped in moonshine, rendering them fit to recognize God

And should destiny be lunar luminosity and agile reason (or a seller of love)

I'll take to orbit and go for burn, peering through a mental kaleidoscope

To see the altered anima of my thoughts free from the pull of gravity
Carlo C Gomez Apr 2021
~
Love is the painting
every heart hopes to achieve,
sifting through seldom
looked upon pictures,
we came upon this masterpiece:

The little boy pensive
just to hold the hand
of his darling,
and skipping along
we played to this game,
giggling in each other's ear,
yet, with only sweet innocent thoughts.

The daytime summer sun
meant a twirl in the air,
a ride on the swing,
and an ice cream to share.

As children love
was an amusement ride,
just leisure fun we never took seriously,
as adults love achieved art,
developing a magnum opus
rich in its own poetry.

The young man proud
just to hold the hand of his darling,
and strolling along their game matures,
they whisper in each other's ear,
yet, with each word the balance
of their intimate thoughts so rest.

The dazzled moonlight of evening
means an aura in the air,
the anticipated kiss it will bring,
and maybe an ice cream to share.

We were never good at every sport,
but somehow this one
came so natural for us,
and so we too were an art
unto ourselves.

~
Written June 28, 1989 in Williams, Arizona.
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2021
~
"Satellite, oh, satellite
who sits upon our skies
how deep do you see
when you spy into our lives?"

This is for when
coyote called
into the ether
connecting heaven to earth
For when
glasnost sang
and velvet revolution
twinkled in the humming air

This is for when
the quiet hedges
of lilies and remains
came out of darkness
For when
the misty curtain man
shopping for codes and antiquities
poisoned the salt shakers

This is for when
a spy in an alcove
twisting the thermos tops
to his dark-eyed sister
shelled the transmitters
of Radio Free Europe
For when
his wife refused

This is for when
working in the glass structure
of a Cold War
made spider and I
a measured room
an arc of doves
For when
the last step from the surface
was the end of a thin cord

~
Carlo C Gomez Mar 2020
Hear the drumming?

On point
Off note

No tea
No sympathy

Battle drum
Stratagem

Clouded
Shroud

A waving flag
A wavering comfort

Peacefully
Pierced

Sharp pain
Dull wound

Pretty house with a white picket fence and dethorned rose garden, the bread crumbs lead to selfish tendencies

Detach
Separate

"Cut the kids in half"

Part for daddy
Part for mommy

Let them cry themselves to sleep
The drums shall stop

Divided worlds
United cruelty

Bedtime
Bedlam

Rush of blood
Knives out

The drumming never stops
Sudden isolation swallows them whole...
Carlo C Gomez Jul 2022
~
Black as coal.
Moth or myth?
It helps with the lights out.
And travels by thought.

Cleopatra enters Rome,
Dropping names,
Reciting pagan poetry,
Knocking on forbidden doors.

Nicole sees shadows
Of her former self
Staring back at her,
Rock paper scissors,
The color of three.

Give and take after take
On the burning soil
Of a blurred crusade.

Typewriters
And other assorted weapons
Form white lies and alibis,
Calibrating the dusted variations
Of a caught-on-camera obscura,
It is a dark waltz,
Some small hope still,

Yet there's a comma after still.

~
Carlo C Gomez May 2020
Under the bow
of a failing nebula
floats a time capsule
full of unused bandwidth
and disappearing summers

Swimming-pool eyes
they're in remission
discovering Columbus
on the starboard side
of this standard suburban saltbox

Fragility and risk is this
cosmic companionship
rowing to latitude
through dark matter
seiche or refracted

The oncoming tide
will mean a migration of steep passages
"though shiny, sculpted pebbles
spoke of frequent waves
the sea was docile that day"
Inspired by the poem "in love with to the north sea (swinburne)" by fellow HP writer, beth fwoah dream stclair.
Carlo C Gomez Feb 2023
How did we settle for so little?
When did we migrate back
to the sea floor?

At one point I saw
our last days as children,
at one point I saw starfish
shored against the ruins,
drowning in ten directions.

In the empty space
we used to breathe,
something other than remaining:
a life in tides less current.
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2021
~
It began at sea

this music box

playing your calliope

fingers churning

like a paddlewheel

~
Carlo C Gomez May 2023
~
Optimize
Arborize
Centralize
Personalize
Give recognition its own library
Its own USB port

An evening of multiple connections
Hardwired and soothingly modem
Transmits my thoughts into you

I know your voice
I know your body
And how they work together
To leave a clear network to my heart

~
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2023
windowless day,
particles of strange salt on his brow,
generator man
on the coil,
double-sided,
a love for radioactive honey:
a storm in a teacup...

but for some reason
could not reciprocate
due to the metallic taste in his mouth,
and so he seemed driven
to build his electrical dream,
and took comfort from his pigeons,
the “lightning machine,”
the hair on his head bristled
as he discovered his purpose
in rings of glory that died
as flags of dust...
Fallout from nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s and '60s is still showing up in U.S. honey, according to a study in 2021. Although the levels of radioactivity aren't dangerous, they may have been much higher in the 1970s and '80s, researchers say.
Carlo C Gomez Oct 2022
~
Storms make grey the sea
And erode the surface of the shore

Cold resentful icebergs
Outside my window
A field of sinking liquid caskets
Closing in on me

I hear the sound
Of toy pianos underwater
Remnants of their music keep
Washing up on achromatic beaches

Songs that made love shine
Have fallen into shipwreck
A missing charter's rusted hull
Casts the one color heaven allows

Storms make grey the sea
And erode the stages of the sun

~
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
He has a card up his sleeve
A chip on his shoulder
And a monkey on his back
Other than that
Life is a bed of roses
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2021
~
"...Though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil..."
-- Psalm 23:4



This Achilles' heel
— die for yellow
the abruptness has come
sick shoddy steam engines
bellow

Big blue undone
don't bite the sun
seek out satin
adrift in the flatlines
of this soaring dystopian stockpile
just as the flaming Icarus
fell in exile

Unlock the nearest far
but lose a hand in the cookie jar
cockpit burn
— what new color
do we learn?

Promise me you'll live
beyond yellow
and on re-entry I'll play
the hedonistic fellow
falling from the summit

— Breaking atmo
with so great a speed
like it or not
I'll soon be eternally
freed

Starburst
and static talk
ionized trails
and blisters of aftershock

Remembering the capsule
under the tongue
remembering the break-up
under the sun

Sensing fascination
in an endless stretch of graveyard
Duke of the avant-garde
this abstraction is now
my calling card

We're at the threshold here
reshaping into debris
and I'm wondering
just so wondering
if you will ever find me
STS-107 was the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle program, and the 28th and final flight of Space Shuttle Columbia. An in-flight break up during re-entry into the atmosphere on February 1, 2003, killed all seven crew members.
Carlo C Gomez Apr 2023
her hesitating beauty
over a hundred days
each a silk thread
each a dark pearl

kissing specifics
in the empty space of a matinée
hologram of the new sun
burning like prime meridian, the hunter's star

ripples of inhibition, making waves
and confessions in
the deep end of a pool

always submissive with a smile
like holding her breath underwater
Carlo C Gomez Apr 2023
~
lost library books
and broken lunchbox thermos,
her childhood under a forgotten
leaf on a pond.
she's attracted to the sound
of the breeze through her hair,
inner-city birds recommending
she listen with her head underwater,
to experience it as a fish might.
this is inescapable.

blood roses in the snow,
her unemployed martyred
fingers in the factory.
the manufactured years go by
at a price too great to recover from.
for every flash of beauty,
there is a hint of anger; a dash of violence.
this is inescapable.

her sleep-flower recital
in a dew-swathed spring morning hospital,
some kind of faraway pink funeral for
dead trees and traffic lights.
treasure impaired clouds capture
an isolated moment in time.
perhaps several moments.
perhaps several parts of the same moment.
this is inescapable.

~
Carlo C Gomez May 2023
she is inescapable
fringe coefficient
a strange perfume tonight
lips to the phone
he took her on a laptronica trip
bitters and Absolut and pistachio
listening to the frightful sections of an unused movie score
and playing a new game
—studies in paralysis
no sympathy, no violins
just musette and drums
just an avalanche of images
frame-by-frame
Carlo C Gomez May 2023
~
stationary now
duct tape loves
mouth and hands

inside removable interiors
heliocentric discontinuities:

the racket club
and the backstroke
the rabid club
and the hallucinogenic backchannels

swallowing too many placebos
on his balcony
facing away from the sun
blank diary entry
open on the table
'from despair to where?'

stationary in the trunk now
he says it will all
make sense soon

~
Carlo C Gomez Mar 2020
Waterworks are failing

Nile faucet tears

***** powder salt

Plague blood wine

Fermented analgesic sea

Swallow Ebers papyrus

Swallow ******'s scroll

Raze the periscope, this is no crusade

Born blind under duress

They sink mid-thigh in pools of acronym

Copper pennies at their toes

Can't wish for things they haven't been
taught to believe

Steal them instead

They'll get a parade for far less

But then again the winds might turn

The sea might divide master and slave

And there they shall be peeing their pants

"In caelum fero--we make our mark"

You picked a bad day to fight, Egyptian
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2023
thin. paper thin.
here is a bonus. (or is it bogus?)

the order of release.
the order of dead pages gliding in the wind.

advertisements for adopting a lonely asteroid or building fire extinguishers in your spare time.

the rain of acceptance comes with dark clouds of shipping and handling.

just check the appropriate box and send it in. send it in now!
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2019
Growing up
She loved staplers
They kept things together
Nothing was ever lost

  Then one day
  Mommy & Daddy
  Became unstapled

Now she favors scissors
They cut things apart
So many things lost
Starting with her
Carlo C Gomez Feb 2020
You save
all your sweetness
for one lousy special day each year

But then
hardly notice her
the other remaining 364 days

Tell me truly
how this is supposed
to ever preserve any kind of love
Carlo C Gomez Jul 2021
Son-of-Sam-I-am

with a ghost of a chance perchance

to stalk the block

where unsuspectings walk

Die-cast metal guy-am-I

all alone I sense the stone

reaching in to break the bone

Another one done for fun

Aren't I the fortunate son?
Carlo C Gomez Jan 2024
~
Bring your whirlwinds with you;
in the snow angel summer
bring Margot the sun.

In the hour of red glare
a rush to pick slowberries
before getting caught up in the silk.

Prisms, mirrors, lenses!
strategies for combatting visibility:
keep your eyes closed,
face away from the window.

The myriad threads of people in hiding,
they eat their own web each day,
and yet something always shines
in the heart's secret annex.

Men and women are
separated from each other,
the girls are on a train
to the Bergen-Belsen,
"white founts falling
in the courts of the sun."

Margot now cries quietly;
so silently she weeps over
sunshine and hate.

~
"white founts falling in the courts of the sun" is a line from 'Lepanto' by G. K. Chesterton (1911)
Carlo C Gomez May 2021
~
If I am treason,
it’s you I kiss.

If I am desertion,
it’s you I blame.

If I am persuasion,
it’s you I rob.

And when we kiss dutifully,
smile in simile,
just whose road of promise
will it be?

If I am steep,
it’s your future I will not climb.

If I am winter sky,
it’s your way out beclouding.

If I am compromise,
it’s your eyes that hold no conviction.

And when we drift apart in apathy,
evade with euphemisms,
just whose road of decline
will it be?

If I am consternation,
it’s your dream driven away.

If I am turbulent sea,
it’s your ship high upon waves of doubt.

If I am fruition,
it’s your tomorrow that is sunk.

And when we drink to this tragedy,
get drunk on alliterations,
just whose road of surrender
will it be?

~
Written March 27, 1996
Carlo C Gomez May 2021
Come rhyme with me
In a bit of
Harmony
But suppose
We juxtapose:

Lemon drop
Bitter
Tear drop
Bawl
Sundrop
Flitter
Raindrop
Fall
Duck
Duck
Goose
A­ little heaven on earth
Before all hell breaks
Loose
~
Carlo C Gomez Jan 2020
Pay dirt
Pay phones
Pay the sitter for her time in hell
with the twins
You'll never earn enough
to call long distance
Unless you move to Italy
and live the dream
of making heart-shaped pizzas
Another in response to a poem challenge from Elizabeth Leone Laird. See her poem "Clarity" and take the challenge!
Carlo C Gomez Feb 2020
Glare at me all you like,
I won't throw you
the detonation charges.
You'll have to find another way.
I lost sight of things
from the very beginning.
Blindness is such a relative term
though. I can see you,
I just can't see me.
Why? I can't justify.
Bias will fry us
for sure, but at least
it'll be a clean burn
--spiritual and environmentally safe.
Giving up cannot be an option,
so I will soldier on.
Death should be its own reward,
but I always hoped for more...
Life is a series of battles. You win some, you lose some. Which means it's more about how you fought than anything else.
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2023
~
Enchantment under the sea
noted places that used to be

Someone turned on the tap
now every couple years
the kids must learn
a new map

So wholly and completely
was the ice caps evaporation
these cities current address
is at the bottom of the ocean
with Atlantis:

There's London
Lisbon
Venice
and Dublin

There's Singapore
Sydney
Montreal
and Tripoli

There's New Orleans
Rio de Janeiro
Cape Town
and Cairo

Don't live in fear, children
but bring your scuba gear

Can't stop the melting spree
we all surrender to the sea

~
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2020
~
"Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement."
~
A mixture
of sinister and sweet,
smoking gun at your feet.
Reclining dead
in a meadow,
or wishing you were
as you gaze out your window.

Bottling undecided dark,
catching keyed-up light,
in random, misleading angles.
The uniform hour
holds Grace, Grant,
and the mystery
it entangles.

Don't look directly
at the camera,
icy blonde afterimage.
Everything you need
is written on the page.
Number 13,
Mrs. Peabody?
Don't you know
all contemporary
escapist entertainment
begins by turning your back?
Lingering on what
suspicious minds track.

The migrating voyeurism
sits as the crow,
wired and unfriendly.
The method is an organism,
an implication, a crossbow,
thought, but unseen.
He will push the girl,
until you succumb
to dream sequences.
It's snowing humiliation
at Winter's Grace,
for out of the male gaze,
invading your space,
you become gifted
at doing nothing well,
in sheer
under-things,

(for inner circles & triangles of fur
are all the rage in Europe).

Yes, he hates pregnant women,
because then they have children.
So leave him
to his work,
to analyze your handwriting,
and build that ramp
directly into your trailer.

His larger than life silhouette
will fill the silver screen
with tension,
trip wire,
and a ****** ambivalence,
that ends with
the violent sound
of someone
packing a suitcase.

He enters by virtue of this door,
and you leave through another,
and another,
and another,
until the final scene
alters your state of mind.

Your pretty little feet
dangling precariously
over the edge...
Carlo C Gomez Jan 2022
~
Long live the king!
That is until—zooks!—a correspondence
from one indiscreet mistress
falls into the wrong hands
and passes before
the queen's eyes
it then becomes time
for a little Shakespearean tragedy

~
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2019
Even if your planets
should align,
the way to her heart
does not begin between her legs.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
Boy saves girl
Girl so grateful she spits
Boy draws girl
Girl humps boy silly
Boy calls girl stupid
Then becomes popsicle
Goodbye King of the world
Girl blows whistle
Steals necklace
Gives everyone the finger
But at least her
Heart will go on
Or some malarkey

Oh, yeah!
Somewhere in there
A boat sinks...
Carlo C Gomez Oct 2019
We tend to see yesterday as an excuse
and tomorrow as an inspiration
to do better.
Carlo C Gomez Feb 2022
...
Dear Mr. P - [stop] -
...
I was your knife in the water, a credit card kept exclusively for killing - [stop] -
I was a gingersnap on your sugar train, a flower-filled glory box to swallow your whole wide world - [stop] -
I was night, night of the electric insects, praying mantis and ladybug — nervous animals, lotus eaters, enjoying a ceremonial after meal
- [stop] -
I was slivers of pseudoscience poisoned by man-made seasons — a new and beautiful and interesting disease - [stop] -
You and me, we are now the same — snapshots in sheared time, before the closedown of our impossibly ****** impulses - [stop] -
...
Best wishes, V
···
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2023
~
No malls on weekends
No feathers for tourism
No stopping to read the graffiti
No having lunch with relative hysteria
No making friends and acquaintances
In the paperless world
And no *** music
You see, the common faith is doubt
All wonder, no reason
The hole in your pocket
Becomes the hole in your head
And the last lawsuit
You'll ever need

~
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
A body of water
Can weigh
A body of work

Like children
You wade them out
To the deep end
But at some point
Have to let go

Sometimes they sink
Sometimes they swim
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
It's no accident
When love is sown
Into a quilt
And wrapped about
Our shoulders
On a cold winter's night
Just like it's no accident
When we toss aside
Such blanketed warmth
When the new dawn
Beckons us to come out
And play

We love only
To betray
Carlo C Gomez Oct 2020
Out of touch with the ground
I walk a thin line

I am in lonely equilibrium
A broken umbrella

Swinging to-and-fro
On this trapeze

Coming untethered
From these elapsing heart strings

New love's dividing line
Depends upon its precise timing

Port de bras
The illusion of imponderable lightness

Take a leap of faith
Reach out for me
Carlo C Gomez Oct 2021
Ah, the fallacy
in talk of tree limbs
and fragments of the broken-apart.

                     Those scars opened a rare window
                     below the cloud tops
                     and into her room,
                     where a new dress of fallen leaves
                     hung in her wardrobe,
                     fleshing out her understanding
                     of how that blemish
                     lingered long enough for
                     her own intentions,
                     hidden behind the frown,
                     to surface.

The myth in her eyes
wishing they could say,
"Might we share this fall together?"
Carlo C Gomez Jun 2022
~
Green reflections
Clouds of pollen
Butterfly mornings
Her face forms in summertime
She sells electric ego
And flowers of herself
Reaping the wild wind
From a haunted garden

~
Carlo C Gomez Aug 2020
Navigating mercy

An asylum harbor from afar

Here, in the gloaming of your closed
notebooks

A faint-hearted horizon

And the wide beam sea

Two days out from despair

The written word will capsize
you, Anne

God is in your typewriter
and where the boats so often go
Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974)
Carlo C Gomez Sep 2020
Eureka!

Raised up & standing tall

She's my port of call

Such a rush

To forcibly ascend

Such a hush

That has settled in

And soon we'll surface

Life in a passionate bubble

Instead of the trouble

Of riding in the back
of a hearse
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2019
Is she like Calypso
in The Camomile Lawn,
knelt down and speechless
by the fire, resembling
Jennifer Ehle so closely,
as the camera lingers
at her being naked as a jaybird,
and quite comely at that?

Or is she perhaps
more like Felicitas
in Flesh and the Devil,
a dead ringer for Greta Garbo,
who brazenly encouraged
illicit love and rivalry, only
to go quietly by falling
through thin ice?

Sometimes the siren's call
is more a winsome variation
in its silence.
Note: for those who don't know, Greta Garbo is widely considered one of the greatest actresses of classic cinema. She actually began her lustrous career in silent films. The luminous Jennifer Ehle, on the other hand, is a current thespian who never fails to captivate. She has quietly become one of the more gifted at her craft.
Carlo C Gomez Dec 2023
~
Time is a dark feeling
—the spell of a vanishing loveliness;
in the present mist
the imperatives in the wind
move less and less.

Haul away the anchor,
this is not a safe place.

Between insufficient coasts
—a land of look behind—
science is dead,
pessimism in the remaining oar,
and flies in the eyes of the Queen.
Their graves decorate the spine
on the east bank
they call Euthanasia,
each crucifix made of plasticine.

There's a discursive quality to the sea,
I can see the pearl fishermen,
the empty dancehall,
victims of latitude and eclipse.

I can see the tattered sleeves
of Edmund Fitzgerald and the pockets
of emptiness inside,
hoping to quell the hunger
of the cruelest month.

I can see an underwater country,
colonized by the unborn children
of pregnant African women
thrown off of slave ships
during the Middle Passage.

I can see myself sinking;
farewell my sorrow,
keeping precarious time
against a backdrop
of silence less and less;
its final sound being
that of seagulls
flying away into the distance
—a force of nature that’s
both solemn and inspirational
in equal parts.

~
Carlo C Gomez Apr 2022
~
With all too
familiar moorings,

holding fast the chain
of sons and daughters,

this hiding place
isn't watertight,

life trickles in everywhere,
hopeful to the bitter end.

~
Carlo C Gomez Mar 2020
Every surface
Every hour
Any symptoms?
Out of water
Out of masks
Any victims?
He's out there
A media darling
Time to panic?
Play it safe, okay
Just don't give in
To the hype
Even if he is
"Hosting"
Saturday Night Live
This week
Carlo C Gomez Nov 2019
Won't you even try?

Brussels sprouts are tired
of taking the blame!

So are artichokes, radishes
and beets!

Kids around the world are giving
them a bad name!

It's embarrassing to be left
on a plate as dinner time spectacles!

You're not gonna die!

But keep it up, kiddo, and we'll have quite
a mob of steamed vegetables!
Carlo C Gomez Jan 2024
~
Then I was a coronagraph

Assuredly shielding the moon

Remembering the solar prominence

Putting those days to bed

Before airing grievances asterisk the universe

Rayleigh scattering overpowers me

Beaches sleep here

Mists inhabit this place

Today my mind has no light, is not part of the saros

I've called off the search, I know exactly where I am

I thought that I was caught by hope and dreams

Then realized I was only passing between them

~
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