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Oct 2017 · 833
one thousand melancholia
King Panda Oct 2017
strong is the still that
reverberates
over old space,
the cold
drought of petal dreams
I chalked
on the garden hose
nozzle,
the mask
just one string
away
away…

the night we touched
was like

                
*    

                   *
  *   *
*
      
*

*
*
(stars)

those daddy-rolled feelings
on my back as
you licked
my spine.
Oct 2017 · 1.5k
and once more I have cried
King Panda Oct 2017
I hear your name through the pistons
the howl of ruined trees
the dust of colored healing
now dark
circled on the center of my pillow
tail curled under the body
a camel-**** rise and fall of breath
barren as an un-sprouted cherry pit
and my scream was far away
when I heard about you
*dead
Oct 2017 · 1.2k
a coming and passing
King Panda Oct 2017
fall hoppers kick to grass
as I walk down
sun-bleach lane

the anhedonia I felt yesterday
is pelted by the wind
away
away
to the breeze beyond
trash-bin creek

I walk past
a meddled roadside lover
kissing her own bloodied hand

must have been
bitten by the white-thing
panting at her feet

the image comes
and passes
with the balanced
autumn sunshine

I touch the twist of barbed wire
that guards a
re-habitated pond

a drop of blood
wells and surfaces
a moon-blazed penny

the dulled copper sting
of flesh and money
merges in the glory
of shortened days

all is accorded to the fleeting
nature of my heartbeat

that which comes and passes
Sep 2017 · 2.5k
love chameleon
King Panda Sep 2017
I kiss secrets to your fate

a forest tree of lights amongst

velvet curtains

I don’t think about

your consciousness

when you are kissing me

but imagine your

tattersall expression

resting on my flannel

you

perfect love chameleon

you

queen of extremely small kisses

I catch you looking with

a sideways eye

always twisted in my memory

a corkscrew willow

a head of tangled roots

pulled from the moist soil

I lean in to blend

kiss?

why not.
Sep 2017 · 2.4k
lady lady
King Panda Sep 2017
I pluck you a crocus
and all life becomes
a legend of the body

a torch-whipped storm
pastel in its fire
buries me in you

when I hand you the stem
a shake
and the yellow stamen

loses its dust

lady lady
forgets its bug
when I place the flower

in your vase

spots wiped black-less
insect no more
lady lady

the inspection of autumn
bulb-less growth
and a string of red

***** and betting its stripes

a tiny mound of dirt
obscured by rotting leaves

the last of you reaching for my hand
Sep 2017 · 2.5k
fall
King Panda Sep 2017
it’s a kiss of
blowsy fate:

the yellow leaves
float and
hold the
moment of
brown-blue
crunch
under new
tennies—
cool

and the kiss
of an old
mattress flipped,

a pumpkin vine
twisted,

a musty basement
coated in
lavender mist—

the breadth
of nascence in
my mouth:
Ginger

I think was
her name

and the ash
of my cigarette
smokes
the blown
sidewalk.
Sep 2017 · 2.4k
no sickness
King Panda Sep 2017
I was not sick
and needed no

convalescence

no rebirth
or panning
view of

bloodscape

the black

gasp of dawn
it offered

never
drew

no sickness

no hospital
beds

or starched sheets

no goodbye
rain

or last shot
of whiskey

it unended

when the
sickness of

the mind
rolled in

with its fingers
shaped like a gun

and a trash bag
for my jewel

give me
no sickness


I begged

and robbers
there were three

beat me down and
left me like a

headless buck
Sep 2017 · 2.2k
the naked entomologist
King Panda Sep 2017
I find you
the lappet moth
like slug or bat
with fuzzy ears
stuck dead with
nothing except
the toxins of
my fever
abnormally
high and
boiling
how

perfect it is
to be under
your legs
bugs
or none
my fingers will
do the
crawling for
any insect
camouflaged
in the skin
dig

the nails
now
bits of flesh
under
tiny specks
of blood
gather
and your net
snags
words I’ve
never uttered
Sep 2017 · 5.2k
a taste of tears
King Panda Sep 2017
a little boy sits on
the top of a staircase

his laden, waterlogged
eyelashes droop

his vision fogs
with salt

his heart pulses hot/cool
snowmelt

throughout the body

there are missing
people

no mother
no father

no brother
only boy

locked in house
too scared to sleep

while snowflakes
fall in unfettered

air
there is joy in storm

if one can see it
through the tears

there is comfort
to be had once

the emotion cools
and tree branches are

unburdened from the
weight of ice


movement happens
up the stairs

dear sister
who the boy forgot

was there
places her hand

upon the boy’s
quivering back

"We call it snow
when the parts of God,

too small to bear, contest our bodies"


and angels tell us
to taste the tears

before they freeze
on our red-rubbed

noses
here, taste your tears

says sister.
*they’re salty, aren’t they?
not all these words are mine.
the stanzas in quoted italics are taken from Max Ritvo's poem, Snow Angels.
All of you should read his only collection of poetry titled, Four Reincarnations. It is amazing.
Aug 2017 · 5.6k
belief
King Panda Aug 2017
god meets
mystic: the
swing of winter
and lakes frozen
over.

god meets
Judeo-Christian sinner
whose eyes sought
lead along the lake’s
shore.

heavy.
heavy.

god meets sin:
a welding of
metallic vines and
out of tune music.

god meets underwater
Vulcan as he swallows
a laugh. gasoline
tops the lid
of the lake.

god meets the
fire that wicks the surface
until the body bubbles.
King Panda Aug 2017
my hands swelled
blue and purple

to match the
glassy doe-eyed

stagnancy.
I saw a pair

of cocoa
moon rocks

heavy with
music and a

queen bee trapped
in a flash

of departure.  
mine and yours

one in the same
corpulent and

greased trembling
at the lips.
Aug 2017 · 4.1k
the trace fossils of you
King Panda Aug 2017
death:
an abnormality—
deep prints left by
heavy boots filled with water
and washed away by
summer’s end.

grief:
a metal
sensation denude of
coldness—swelled up again
and again from life’s ***** driving
deeply.

I suppose you couldn’t
help but steal away.
you (now endangered
ghost) left your
trace fossils moted,
gray and cold.
our memories of you
divorced from the
mountain’s path—
a wound raised
higher and higher
to a crystal peak
where your soul
was plucked cleanly out.

we built cairns to
mark your going
and stories to signal your
inevitable re-arrival.
we welcomed the heavy contact
of fire felt in the
middle of the chest
and watered
arches cut beneath
the eyelids.
we felt the frigidness of
lit feet gliding
above mountain frost
and set forth your
eternal journey
to the solar eclipse.
but somehow
we lost your trace fossils
frozen in the rock.

where did you go?
who found you?
why?

these are the questions
of extinction of the
physical body
but the soul is
unmatched in
its uncertainty.
if it exists, it leaves
upon time of death
and reenters when looked
at through shielded glass.

soul:
a mountain
view, black and polished
by an unfurled moon. its
brother sun not far
behind.
RIP, my dearest friend. You will be forever missed.
Aug 2017 · 3.1k
home
King Panda Aug 2017
I am unsure of the geology
of where you’re from.

I expect there exists
shelves and sheaths

pale grey-yellow
like serum in the blood

and rocks resembling
sun-weathered lobster

carapaces.
all of this enclosed by

a festoon of green pine—
its regalia cut sonic

and naked
wrung and wrung again

by august.
on the edge

a cabin is hemmed on
the skirt of ocean—

spikes of molding logs
propped and resting

akimbo.
a wave comes in.

a wave goes out.
a wave stays to shake

your hand.
introduces itself as

sensate verge
and wonderment.

home.

I can only imagine what
it is for you.
Aug 2017 · 1.7k
outside the casino
King Panda Aug 2017
I place my bet
on strings pulled

by the sun.
crows in their

black plumage
are silhouettes  

suspending
mustache sunset.

my pockets are
empty—

no lint,
crime

or cash.
I am broken

but will not run
into the darkness.

no
let me maunder

with the ephemera
of passing day.

I need a friend to
talk to.
Aug 2017 · 3.4k
Untitled
King Panda Aug 2017
the morning sky
performs a hot dance of rain.
ever-growing lime washes away,
white and sour mistaken
by some noses as
aromatics.
a season
of ever-ending frost
absent from windows
and misty
misty
journey
through the rain
without an umbrella.

rain jilts
its luscious sun-lover
behind clouds.
it beheads drops into
the thin morning air
only to be crushed
by the sidewalk.

this excites the worms
who unearth themselves
like fishing-bait zombies.
the worms are then eaten
by the birds who brave
the rain and the slick
sidewalk, once baptized,
now eats their ****.

I step in a puddle
with my rain boots.
there are holes in their
heels, and I feel
my skin start to crinkle.
I think of you
for the first time in sky water
unsubmerged
docked
landed
and lean in
to the liquid veil.
Aug 2017 · 12.2k
pillow talk
King Panda Aug 2017
a crocus opens and
closes with the stream of
midnight moon.

the playmate of exhaustion
crosses the room
in his heavy, black boots
to close the curtains.

goodbye, light.
goodbye, pride of lions
and boy transformed
into a werewolf.

a scratch
of larceny,
the cuddle of
maple leaves rotting,
the magnet spinning
in rocket-ship orbit.

all secrets held in
feathers,
in hair compounded
into strings of
black opal,
and limbs stenciling
comets around
five feet of woman.

nothing in the talk
can suffocate—a quick
and easy birth of
ecstasy and the emotional
sidestep into the dark
of slumber,
seemingly feminine but
dreams strong as
barbed wire.

when to sleep?

a question finger-written
on my chest.
Aug 2017 · 4.1k
self portrait
King Panda Aug 2017
I am common.
seemingly feminine
but shoulders strong
as barbed-wire.
like a chicken I am  
underdeveloped—my wings
weak and unable to
lift me into the air.
I am preoccupied
in self-identified war
with the 875 square foot
apartment and the pasta
that refuses to boil.
on my knees, I
crawl
reconciling rhyme
and reason for
suffering.
the world has gone awry,
I say to myself on an
afternoon bike ride
through wooded
pain, my face
a perfect plane for
scathing branches.
quick and easy blood
am I.
wretched and astonishing
is the rhetoric I
find in the hollow of
my rib.
I am common
but not so when
written by hand.
Aug 2017 · 5.0k
miracle
King Panda Aug 2017
your hair appears darker
when wet.
black, corded,
thick as puzzlegrass.
a companion in contrast
to frosted
cupcake blue eyes and
incense burning
in the ashtray.

memories thrown
in the laundry pile
with the wet towel
swirling upon
your head.
your smile
bitter as asparagus,
staining my *****
for the next two days.
your frame
soft and slender
as balsa wood.

I’d eat your air
freshly oxygenated
and bend you into
an arc.
the waves would split
on your bow
and shower my face
wet
dark
corded
thick as puzzlegrass.
then
from your finger
the standard of a
dove leaving
olive branch in
mouth
into the frosted
cupcake blue
sky.

a miracle in
the eye of the
waning storm.
King Panda Jul 2017
dragonflies melt
into each other.
flowers meld
shaded silver
upon silver.
string whips of
cotton float by like jacks
thrown by children,
unsusceptible to
the force of gravity.

the mechanics of
heart machines
crank awake.

steel knees bend dull and
swollen.

venetian mask with
sterling tongue
skims the tops
of tiny toes
and errantly spring-ed
grasshoppers..

warm bodies
in bubbling steel
meadow—
cool in nature,
stolen like
gold
crafted and
crafted again
in heat.
King Panda Jul 2017
a haw and saw.
a thorn.

fruit: it is ecstasy
never bit and
undeniable.

you slurp—a cat licking
its paws
ruby and clear.
moth and cloud
drape over fruit,
make up sparkling nectar.

love is sickening.
you spend five dollars on
a rose at a bar for
a girl you will never see
again.

she will take the flower and
throw it in the trash
outside with the hundreds of
other roses.

no matter.
they have fruit, and fruit
concludes. it is life
cut with claws.
their beauty, seemingly to
be always in the clusters above.

*******, rose. **** your dew.

they seem to say. that’s when
the light hits and microbial
bleeds to miss ruby.

JAZZ!

at night retrains
beauty, makes it edible.
the rose, changing the color
of its dew—black pearl in
this drape of mystery-shaped
night.
Jul 2017 · 5.4k
magnolia
King Panda Jul 2017
I fear.
I fission.
I flow.
like a sponge,
I become aqueous
when wiping blood or saliva.
like a finger, I lose myself in rings of prints.

I am the ography
of space loosely tied to the
end of a carrot. detach me from
ice and I float to the other side of the island.
I wave at ships passing night or day, captains
drunk or sober, buoys clean or covered in mucky ****.

save me.
I am losing my
mind on these stairs
crawling the ceiling, these
riches made of paper, these children
using liters of glue to stick themselves to
each other.

everyone is stuck.
everyone is covered in barnacles.
everyone is design on my pine tree’s needled hooves.

*a horse gallops four at a time. they name it “power” for the dreams it has of stormy women.
Jul 2017 · 1.5k
cootie catcher
King Panda Jul 2017
you are my animal, and
I am your whip.
what exists between us
is only dust—a milky
center of blood
tessellating
with
heart cells.

I’d hide in your
briefcase and
be smuggled across
the boarder as
a cheese knife
if only you’d look
at me—your animal,
my whip sending
flakes of fresh flesh

midway
along
magnets…but

be careful.
once you catch
crack of my sting

there is no going back.
Jul 2017 · 2.8k
moon rises
King Panda Jul 2017
key into lock
skull-like
iris
blooming
in the corner
vintage red
sipped down
2 liters
of 2006
an amount of
a capacity of
mind
pink
rose
horse out of
water
through mud
moon gallops
across
warzones
couples kissing
and
for a moment
winks in
the horizon
of day
Jul 2017 · 2.1k
in the park
King Panda Jul 2017
"some cry with tears,
others with thoughts"*

sun-way heat beats against
quiet bodies.

my truth left two souls
melding with a splash of
purple—

the mimicry of my cry
surging with
impending ocean.

you who I truly know
last kissed June 7th
in eternal sunshine—go
to beach

and be free.

I’ll wait for you in
the meantime.
credit to the friend who never stops pulling light out of the dark. you've never ceased to amaze me in the two years I've known you.
Jul 2017 · 654
693
King Panda Jul 2017
693
I wake up apart
and exquisite just
having slept nine hours.
there is a stout rain—
fallen, realized—water
on my mind in the
arms of the wind.
leafy is my yawn.
longing is my love.
and my hand rises
to rub my numb face
awake.
I am alive in this moment.
Jul 2017 · 3.5k
somewhere in the forest
King Panda Jul 2017
I’ve forgotten
to be anything but
space—so enraptured
with the black that
the forest was
less than a goose pimple
on earth’s flesh.

I have ignored the
eighth notes
hanging from the pines.

I have forgotten
the snowbirds and whipped
winds.

I have numbed the needles
pocking skin through
my jeans.

I have forgotten green.

I have forgotten green.

I have forgotten green.

now
the light of frozen
flies dims
in your mouth.

now
love washes out
in seasons.

now I eat
sugar-frosted buckthorn.

And I see you
ready to touch
through one
hundred leaves
and foliage.
Jul 2017 · 2.8k
stargazing
King Panda Jul 2017
I imagine I can write about
war—that god and man
have contrasted to the
continually shading
topaz of bodies being
crystallized.

stoic,
tangled planets overhead—
circling as my eyes
fill with infinity-pools.
your edges
fall off when I
look up into space to
see you without
seeing you.
King Panda Jul 2017
a parhelion forms with
the sun’s peaking out,
irradiating your eye
in crown.

there is a sanguine wonder
to your cigarette as
you drag your lungs
across the floor.

citrine is your smoke
crawling across
the bed.

light moves.

a nanosecond passes by.
Jun 2017 · 1.0k
glowpuff.
King Panda Jun 2017
trim and clipped,
a puff on sheets and—
oh my—a parallax
fairies down like
cars being pulled
across an ocean.
I ate you.
three times ten to the
power of light, a cobalt
yellow and megaton
of arum lilies
wreathing your
apple’s bottom.
Jun 2017 · 1.9k
vesper
King Panda Jun 2017
night is precious
prey and
predator.

night is
whisper and
auscultation
of worried men.

night is blonde
bone removed from
the body.

night is stiletto
killer elite.

night is
my brightest
friend.

night,

leave
and take your
bell with
you.
Jun 2017 · 4.5k
hours to waste the day
King Panda Jun 2017
I stay awake—
gas,
ion and
tail.

your ghost strokes
my back, fingers
ski-jumping vertebrae
as my face steams into
powder.

your pith, soft and white:
our star in you—
rove to your low neckline in
fire humming comet.

space is blameless in
this limb of heartbreak.
Jun 2017 · 6.9k
small and incomplete
King Panda Jun 2017
sundog—small and incomplete
half-***** rainbow.
light.
at least once a week for
the clever dreamer,
the girls with no eyes,
the men with small *******.
there is

fortune in the river—it swims
away when I take you breath
down to it in a bucket. and my hands
quilt flawless wade of
nighttime water.

*where is the colored light?

nowhere, sundog.
nowhere.
Jun 2017 · 2.7k
god’s shadow in space
King Panda Jun 2017
a waxing crescent grows thicker
every day—a careening sickle
half-hugged and begging
—below, flying flecks
of salt. The

pang-tamed wile—gems wrapped in
foil and heated in
god’s shadow in space. I am

close to those I love. I am

made of molten jewels.
meltingly.
meltingly. bowl of

wisdom—a dish for
old mints and mammalian
eyes. These tears—

they are mine.
Jun 2017 · 1.1k
which wicks your love
King Panda Jun 2017
settle in the rose—
a hideaway.
my shoulders turn
the air.
my scapula-
smooth moments—
dead.
living.
intrazombie.
it’s my smoke which
wicks your
love—the foolish
gray, unfree and
blind. I believe
I am half—troubles
far. fingers
burning ginger
freckles through
the white page.
somehow
the rock and flint
set you afire.
Jun 2017 · 11.8k
Star set, star rise
King Panda Jun 2017
I could not accept you—star
incarnate, carved and swollen
in the trunk of a fustic—

*****-yellowed and preened—risen
and alive I strap my
saddle to your back. My heels
dig to the dark side of

a price yet to be paid—an eye
of a coursing, being scrubbed
into the spots of grain—heat
eaten by earth. Star set.
Star rise.
Star be

livid and leaven


whispers the cowboy
sitting in a lawn chair on the
front porch—his hat falling
off from crowning, bald-headed

tilt. space and all its wonders.
Jun 2017 · 5.9k
Dog Star
King Panda Jun 2017
you had me when you
skinned my hide—the future
and present of squiggled
intestines tilting with the
rotation of earth.

I am macho—no nighttime.
the summer constellations
throw me a bone and big crunch
as my molars snap with my
jaw.

it takes a year to go around the sun once.
it takes a trawl to fish properly.
it takes a dog to chase the brightest
star.

*Sirius.
Jun 2017 · 817
When light reaches us
King Panda Jun 2017
bordered void snaps
shadowed woman,
shadowed man—
a multiplication of flowers
hang loose as

our lips transpose the rose,
eat the rock. one

quasar fraying my teeth—soft
as I etch your back, perfect
and slender.
Jun 2017 · 7.5k
Your body in music
King Panda Jun 2017
stars and radio master
intercloud motion—1000 light
years in most directions. However,
I am still blind to anything
but you. This

dark matter aloha steps
off my mind’s plane
into the muggy air. A string
of flowers is placed around
my neck, and I look up—
starbursts
spit their rings violent and
central—your body
in music. Now, tropical
space—population

one. A tear rolls down
my face onto the
runway—I can’t remember
the sound of

your voice.
King Panda Jun 2017
picture:

we stand in your office
and the *** crack of a homeless man
glints through the window--
a rise in sweat and speeds
so great they leave a
trail of milk to nurse
my wounds.

the eyes of a frilly moon and
your arms wrapped around
my Orion—

******* reach
for each other in the black.*

painted.

blue feet and sophistication.
Jun 2017 · 2.2k
Black.
King Panda Jun 2017
You scrape my chin
to my profile—your teeth,
the source of gamma ray burst.
Everything massive,
collapsing. Events on the horizon
eating light, getting us out
of the boon. The small things
of us reduced to a
pinprick at the center—a singularity
of gas and cloud.

I imagine
myself being crushed and
strung backwards.
May 2017 · 2.3k
Untitled
King Panda May 2017
wings on barbed wire
wave me hello as the train
travels supernova
explosion through
downtown.

we have spoken words
that meant something,
that gripped iron ends
onto our ankles and kept
us close.

in shackles, we outshone
the entire galaxy.
in chains, we sped through
the world catching wind
of bleeding bird feet—the
sweet chips and chirps now
reverberate symphony
through thick plastic.

And I am on top
of you licking your pores
like charcoal.
May 2017 · 2.9k
Stellar Wind
King Panda May 2017
This is the shape I was given:

a violent explosion of brilliance,
massive,
flaring—a mouth so big that
it could swallow a
honeycrisp spreading the
red skin like
peanut butter.

100,000 years it takes to become and
I will be dead.

star—*

the harp of the wind.
May 2017 · 2.8k
Untitled
King Panda May 2017
Core—molten caramel center but
dead. dead. dead.
Hot.
Bleeding.
Then cool, small and massed. A
little red

button in the sky more than 400 times
the diameter of—I snap
my fingers.


Magician

star
gives birth to carbon, oxygen, and contract
gravitationally toward
the black clasped to
nowhere—an end melting
rock, evaporating ocean, stabilizing
expansion caught in
helium

flash—the metals of yesteryear
believed to exist inside
of you.
Apr 2017 · 8.6k
Flower Crown
King Panda Apr 2017
Smell of lilacs bloom
to no end—a nebulous glow of
purple, perfect, and unperturbed—your
poem of lilies with caution tape
snug in my backpack—
your pollen hundreds of miles
away—a firebrick orange
sung again and again. A cotton
blow unlike anything colorful
—a white puff of dandruff before
the rain—a bouquet for
your spring stitched
stem by stem.
Apr 2017 · 2.5k
Airborne
King Panda Apr 2017
Only the strongest dark lines
cut the vision of your
profile. Your visage—a blazing ball
of gas—atoms emitting light in
every version day.
Apr 2017 · 2.9k
Rendezvous
King Panda Apr 2017
Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I know it lives
in slow songs played
in the backseat of my car.
I know it ripples down
your tongue as I lick, kick
and grab.
I know it shocks your
backbone as I place my
hand under and over and
in-between.

Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I found it
resting on a fallen branch
in a park.
I found it in the bottom of
a chocolate malt.
I found it caught in a
rabbit trap.

Love—sometimes too
abstract, but I see it
in you.
And it smiles back,
amber, un-blistered,
and perfect.

now—

let me **** on those
*****-sweated fingers, and I
promise I will *******
on my vintage Remington
typewriter.
Apr 2017 · 777
Burster
King Panda Apr 2017
You—extragalactic sources
bound into a bouquet of
lilac—your colors used, not actually
seen, invisible but still true.
King Panda Apr 2017
The universe at its right angle
changes you into
day. Yet again, next year
you will look the same—  

unpunctuated

line of zodiac
in easterly motion
makes its highest path to
you in winter.

Sunlight pours down to earth from every angle.
You emerge with your mouth.


The universe’s only apparent movement.
Apr 2017 · 7.4k
A prelude to moonlight
King Panda Apr 2017
Before I lit a match,
I turned on your light.

Before I bought a book,
I took you into my arms.

Before I had her printed
on my skin,

I knew she was you.*

It was night. There was
nothing in the sky—not

even black. The world
was a pale gray, and the

bats—the color of smoke.
Then you came—a woman

from space, dusk
with yellow armor. The

moon resting on ocean. Your
halo, a burning wreath of

gold. You, finally. You who
I’d been waiting for—the girl

who sneezed the black, the one
who said, “goodnight.” You,

my moon and stars.
Mar 2017 · 4.6k
Morning in Austin
King Panda Mar 2017
No sun this morning. Rather,
Austin struck gray
Thru and thru.
There is a bite to god’s madness--16 years
Of sun before I came--16 years
Of fall, rain, fertile soil raised by
Red star.
You, obscured in morning, take my
Love out my mouth, my messenger in railed
Kisses.
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