#beautifulwords
In your pretty smile—
I meet yellow shivers;
footprints pressed in my words,
the lesson on how to speak
resting on the tongue’s first steps.
Darling…
my perfect sentence.
Our sloppy kisses
leave tears naked & sticky
on the edge of the world.
Trying to forget you
from the top of my head
is above dementia.
Snuggling close on the sofa;
saying little,
speaking volumes.
Magazines sprawled across your skin—
you have too many issues to press.
And me?
I'm just your newspaper headline;
giving my forehead extra head lines
thinking up another story and an excuse.
Because a lonely one
always dreams of two—
especially after hearing,
“I love you too.”
7d ago
May 27, 2026 at 3:11 PM UTC
She struck me
out of the blue,
the way that most beautiful songs
find you.
It plays out of nowhere,
normally when you're out and about—
one foot out the door,
slipping through the holes
of a random speaker.
Before I knew, I was nodding
my head.
It's already full of things
that don't matter.
My head and the thoughts
That go through it.
Her voice cuts through all of that,
a song you want to know the name of,
so you can hear it again—
one that you hope doesn't end too soon,
but still delicate enough to not
notice when she tips away.
She's a song,
a uniquely beautiful woman
that you notice before she walks
away.
There's not enough in the world
that makes sense.
She pulls me in and confesses
that she's just like me—
the way that most beautiful songs do.
I knew that I would chase her
before she walked away.
Dec 25, 2024
Dec 25, 2024 at 3:29 AM UTC
Attic lily she is,
Crafted from Michelangelo's hands,
a gem eyes fumble to adore.
Shapes, lines, curves perfectly placed on her body to sing harmonies that echo perfect anatomy
Attic lily she is,
a dazzling dream,
but her soul hugs a dead sun.
She's a sculpture of fair marble
built with a jungle of thin strings to fill her entirety, like a cat's cradle adorned with twines of roses to mimic completion.
Attic lilly she is,
Naive,
she thought losing a few petals for the happiness of others was kind
A rose for him, a rose for her...
Selfless,
she is all but a mirror,
for her smile has always been a reflection of others.
Performer,
she wears a face with printed traces of happinesses to shadow the gloom breeding under her own.
Attic lily she is,
strong built independent woman
but secretly prizes to be caressed in hands with a feeble touch,
...to be pursued with a genuine smile
..to be treated worth more than an art piece in a gallery that eyes dart on and forget about the second they walk past.
to be checked in on when her soil dries out.
Attic lily, she is,
for no one notices her unless they need something from the attic.
Jun 19, 2023
Jun 19, 2023 at 1:04 PM UTC
I had tailored denial for my heart
and for each new sun, that fabric became home.
I had lost taste of the lips of love
Until...
I started dreaming again...
...it feels as though she'd never left
Igniting obscure euphoria bereft of my heart
And...
I'm trying to convince myself...
that it's just another night when she ruses
me with pills of nostalgia.
Pulling strings that remind my body of the excitement when our skins knead.
Teaching my heart, again, how to skip a beat.
I'm trying to convince myself that it's just another night...
...but she is now an anchor in my dreams,
dragging me to what it felt like
to be in love.
Dec 14, 2022
Dec 14, 2022 at 8:24 AM UTC
We were all connected
In a very real sense
The universe packed
So infinitely dense
Then instantly exploding
Bursting at the seams
Singularity in harmony
Blown to smithereens
Mar 3, 2019
Mar 3, 2019 at 4:18 PM UTC
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question…
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to ****** and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? …
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep… tired… or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 9:25 AM UTC
Not an amulet, an off white vertebrae; bone.
Brass wire, a loop at one end.
It bends as to make sure this will fit.
A gauge that measures mesmerization,
And we both must get along, but
Not because we're not tough enough:
Most of us aren't soft right yet.
So many stiffs, folly after folly.
The whole carful of loose cadavers,
Dangling, their feet hang with wet snow
And carnage,
Not even musk deer pop up,
They've all gone. Roosting in a parabol,
With X's sprayed to their groins.
Burning pop couples
Doing it like laboratory mice. Capybaras
Hiss, my own burnt blood is also
Flocculating.
Turn the cup upside down and
See the fire's balmy lachrymal opaque
Moss while it does not drip.
This is the story of man you asked me about;
Devoid of a muzzle, fur onto his chest; coarse
Hair in a garland.
It is the God of a tool that buzzes into the night.
A plateau for this most sensible study.
We feel another coming.
And when you awoke, your larval tongue
My eye mush, a song of verse and melancholy.
This half list of greatness, a tally we both wish to see.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:38 AM UTC