"adders" poems
I
Is the total black, being spoken
From the earth's inside.
There are many kinds of open.
How a diamond comes into a knot of flame
How a sound comes into a word, coloured
By who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open
Like a diamond on glass windows
Singing out within the crash of passing sun
Then there are words like stapled wagers
In a perforated book-buy and sign and tear apart-
And come whatever wills all chances
The stub remains
An ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge.
Some words live in my throat
Breeding like adders. Others know sun
Seeking like gypsies over my tongue
To explode through my lips
Like young sparrows bursting from shell.
Some words
Bedevil me.
Love is a word another kind of open-
As a diamond comes into a knot of flame
I am black because I come from the earth's inside
Take my word for jewel in your open light.
8.6k
They have an app for everything
Apply this apple application vigorously
I need an app for this confusion
Where’re all the apps for my delusions
Hallucinations seem pretty nice
But I rather control them with an app
Delirium is no friend of mine
They control it with an app
All of these buttons produce bad business
You’re the ones who push them, I’m the witness
They take their pictures with an app
Photoshop the eye of the beholder
It’s the witching hour
They shout it from the watchtower
They climb up and down the ladder
They train the cruelest adders
With or without an app
Jul 18, 2012
Jul 18, 2012 at 10:09 AM UTC
I
Half of the fellow father as he doubles
His sea-sucked Adam in the hollow hulk,
Half of the fellow mother as she dabbles
To-morrow's diver in her ***** milk,
Bisected shadows on the thunder's bone
Bolt for the salt unborn.
The fellow half was frozen as it bubbled
Corrosive spring out of the iceberg's crop,
The fellow seed and shadow as it babbled
The swing of milk was tufted in the pap,
For half of love was planted in the lost,
And the unplanted ghost.
The broken halves are fellowed in a *******
The crutch that marrow taps upon their sleep,
Limp in the street of sea, among the rabble
Of tide-tongued heads and bladders in the deep,
And stake the sleepers in the savage grave
That the vampire laugh.
The patchwork halves were cloven as they scudded
The wild pigs' wood, and slime upon the trees,
******* the dark, kissed on the cyanide,
And loosed the braiding adders from their hairs,
Rotating halves are horning as they drill
The arterial angel.
What colour is glory? death's feather? tremble
The halves that pierce the pin's point in the air,
And ***** the thumb-stained heaven through the thimble.
The ghost is dumb that stammered in the straw,
The ghost that hatched his havoc as he flew
Blinds their cloud-tracking eye.
II
My world is pyramid. The padded mummer
Weeps on the desert ochre and the salt
Incising summer.
My Egypt's armour buckling in its sheet,
I scrape through resin to a starry bone
And a blood parhelion.
My world is cypress, and an English valley.
I piece my flesh that rattled on the yards
Red in an Austrian volley.
I hear, through dead men's drums, the riddled lads,
******** their bowels from a hill of bones,
Cry Eloi to the guns.
My grave is watered by the crossing Jordan.
The Arctic scut, and basin of the South,
Drip on my dead house garden.
Who seek me landward, marking in my mouth
The straws of Asia, lose me as I turn
Through the Atlantic corn.
The fellow halves that, cloven as they swivel
On casting tides, are tangled in the shells,
Bearding the unborn devil,
Bleed from my burning fork and smell my heels.
The tongue's of heaven gossip as I glide
Binding my angel's hood.
Who blows death's feather? What glory is colour?
I blow the stammel feather in the vein.
The **** is glory in a working pallor.
My clay unsuckled and my salt unborn,
The secret child, I sift about the sea
Dry in the half-tracked thigh.
3.9k
On a slow train
out of the Savannahs sudden exile,
the sunlight swallows me,
a calligraphy of days, hours, minuets, now
inscribed on my limbs,
syntax gives over to a dry, dry sound,
and parched, the aftertaste of sloe gin
inhabits my ribs, the lay of bones,
a labyrinth of absence,
and this velvet ache
at my wrists, a pure burning,
burning the memory red,
words swell and crumble with a kiss,
what absence, Soul of Winter,
what absence is this, spreading
over roadmaps, soliloquies, nights
stretch into mornings, always mornings,
as my fingertips pull daylight from an orange
in dream alphabets that soon dwindle
to vowels, the word, harbour, bends
the old alder beyond what it can bear,
so many ways, you say, to live like a prisoner,
at home, the rooms
are all windswept, reckless
chairs overturned , abandoned
in this, the evenings parable,
love is no more
than a syllable in a bottle
of shattered blue glass,
a poem written on the underside of a childs teacup,
their jump ropes curl like adders
at our feet, the thread
from where I dangle
in doorways and twilight,
as I bide time, perilous
over train tracks, your fingers
trace tally marks along my vertebrae,
the hollows darkening in a pathos
of blue rheumatism,
and in the carnivorous tremor
of my body breaking
like the spine of a book,
the paper gone pink at the edges,
like azaleas and bruises,
erosion, after all is the altar of the body,
and there are scars beneath my temple,
and this ache, still, in my wrists,
unbearable when it rains,
ghosts inhabit my lungs,
wrung from the silence of shut windows,
eternal clotheslines and linen
span for miles across the Savannah,
and the early frost is at last,
calling me home....
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
The Queen of Absentia rises from royal
stool to watch the moon set sheathed
in broiling cloud as she skips whirling
adders that hiss in fat jagged coils, their
hollow blades jutting death in sprinkler
sprays of misting veils and her
head is hypethral; a Gaudi shipping
container soldered in reptile curves,
licked by arrowheads of falcate flame
as she rounds its laughing corners;
an adderaled lab rat, eyes black funnels
drinking electrodes pulsing crimson and
the stars are crackling in the pan as she
sees planets torn shrieking down Hell’s hungry
plughole as fallen Gods divide by zero
and the clock’s skittering claws scratch
prophecies of consequence of poorly
sewn seams, but she smiles like a risen
crocodile and says,
‘you’re just jealous cos the
voices only talk to me.’
And again she dives as unwanted
advice gibbers up out snapping drains,
and power points shoot sharp blue spears
lighting substrates of ancient horror, inchoate
but fattening before her eyes as she
sits, wrapped in ghosts, guarding her
ochre tea in its chalice of steaming bone,
trying to sell herself a ticket to
tomorrow’s sunrise, staring at thunderheads
bunching up satin over sodden ninjas sprouting
cardboard hair, slicing down legions of
roaring pearl as death hunts hollow-eyed below.
Her Majesty holds court, amid the percussion of
steel and plate, a matador to shadows
that clasp their hands and dance around, as
clouds hammer rain to the ground.
Jul 23, 2012
Jul 23, 2012 at 6:44 PM UTC
~for you, girl~
words have definitions; shades; moods,
even within the contextual moment,
the coloration sometimes is discolored,
one person frantic is another’s
normal
passing fancy
insanity
quiet
overwrought silliness
frantic is a continuum’s conundrum
and oft the hubbub coverhup lends
a veneer of urgency importance
when knowledge acquisition is iron
irony, best when well chewed, quietly
considered and consumed with the
perspective of addition and subtraction
what we know is more than yesterday,
and less than what we will one day own,
for the only purity of learning is that’s
final refining is never ending
the artifice of deadlines,
gradation vis-a-vis
all the rest, is not a
distinction worthy of
distinguishing
your human value is beyond compare
exactly!
the greatest of valued adders to the world body of understanding put the race of
ego to one side, and so should we all,
not
be ****** in by the imposition of qualifiers
you are quality, and that is the only
qualification you will ever
acquire and require
and in my naïveté
I reflect looking back
and give you here the
free use thereof,
of its worth, you will
determine
but in summary judgement:
always keep thinking
ridicule is ridiculous
but best when applied
by oneself to oneself
with a
*** did I really think:say that?”
and laugh out loud at our human
foibles, especially our own,
with a wry smile, admitting
some of things we conjure up
in all seriousness are
are the funniest things we’ve ever heard
Dec 5, 2024
Dec 5, 2024 at 11:13 AM UTC
i cracked the code. god'll forgive me. ' you ' shut up ! do not cross
where the scarabs calf their adders
be more black than the last
vast strip of night
across miles and miles
of wide expanse
be more
advanced and
water tight.
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 10:49 AM UTC
I’m not a Cricket or a Locus,
We don’t even look the same,
My antennae are far shorter,
And my wings are pointless,
I jump…no…hop,
I hop from place to place,
I make a noise much sweeter,
And drive them all insane.
All the birds they want me,
And the Adders too,
But I’m much smarter than those fools,
They don’t get near me,
I’m not afraid for my life,
Though I don’t live long,
I know that I’m a leaper,
And I’d better hop along.
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 5:58 AM UTC
With our lips we keep our lips sharp
pursed whetting stones to push the air
over the bleeding edge
of feigned civility.
caught up in whiplash we act in tandem
jamming signals from signs
that read " don't tread '
carping 'bout the vitriol of honest venom
our black adders subtract to replenish
frothing at the mouth of the Ganges
To be at last
diminished.
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 2:49 PM UTC
****** sharp nay! blunt
A sword tamed with cruelty
****** wounding my hand
For five years! I can now let go
Adage!
Blunt the sharp edge
No fear! enough warmth
****** first pretty flowers
****** then adders!
Mine plea
****** out! appease my voice
Adage!
With a trumpet Singing the truth!
****** performed magic
"Paved" the maddened path!, "sobs"
"Lowered" the hidden cut!, "sobs"
"Admonished" false approval practitioners!, "sobs"
"Amused" my growing siblings!, "sobs"
A blossoming flower apprises
Colored with lines of liberty
Preaching smiles! adage!
Breaking the spell of thorny roots
****** gone future
Roots come future
Blood soiled hands gone future
Smiling painted flag come future
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 8:41 AM UTC
As I pass through the wish e washy
Politics of my superficial mind
The many false faces
My eternal being remains
Frustrated by the ineptitude
Of my political , dishonest mind
As my oceanic being is covered
By a sheet of crusty cold ice
The great masses in my being
Feel disconnected and disillusioned
By the elitist aspects of the
Political mind who live on top
But as I begin to feel my internal council
A silence from within vibrates with
As the many chattering politicians
Scurry and busy themselves
I begin to drop deeper, to know
My many political shapes
How I dream to know the many
Characters of my political being
As to understand the lawmakers
In is to understand my life
Where do I find the honest council
And who are the corrupt lying voices
That whisper in my ear and make
Secret deals behind closed doors
Far far away from my conscious mind
Who is that mischievous characters
Always causing trouble the black adder
Although I do feel large and honest
Politicians within my soul
For they all sit around a long table
That stretches from my solar plexus
Up into my deep open chest
Dressed in light blue I hear them
Tirelessly working shuffling
Their many papers
Recording and studying making their
Many decisions and communicating
With all my many distant parts
Finding a new intimacy with my self
I unlock many doors within me
As I search to please the
Great masses within my soul
On entering the outside world
My being shuffles past the many
Black adders with a chuckle
As he begins to enjoy
Their mischievous ways
My political mind becomes
Purified by the the emotional
Depths of my being , as I am
Infused with a deep ocean blue
From my bottomless heart
As my path in this world
Becomes lubricated in a rich oily blue
Like a giant blue whale I effortless glide
And as I meet the other I stand
Within my my golden heart
As my depths live on the outside
For I carry my heart on my sleave
As I search for the other a thousand
Golden streams from my heart
Descend into me
Penetrating all of me
To find all my honesty
As I seek to unlock the other
By unlocking many doors in me
The political mind can be mischievous
But it can be a great servant
When in touch with our deep blue depths
And the golden threads leading to our heart
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 2:50 PM UTC
There are so many questions
like, is love an invention?
Is peace a prevention,
of the wars of deception?
Will I lose myself if I have no one else?
Will there be nothing left
if I hold my breath?
I can get lost
if I'm not willing to learn.
I can get cold
if I let the fires burn.
All of the bridges
that I've tried to earn
might as well not exist
if I've nothing to yearn.
There's a gun in my hand
and in my soul
There's a gun in my mind
when I lose
control
But the gun in my heart's
on a deeper
roll
I don't know how to stop
bo-boom-bo-boom-boom
Are there answers?
Or are we destined for cancers?
Are we dancers
in a minefield of adders?
Will the snakes keep us warm when we're asleep?
Will they bind our wounds,
and leave us with our souls to keep?
I've been in the pit so long, it's home.
A battleground so thick, yet so alone.
I've lost my mind, but I haven't lost my heart;
it doesn't know how to speak
without the will to say what's hard.
It's gone soft,
a gentle, hopeless thing.
Without a mind, how can it even sing?
So it's armed to the teeth
in the confusion of the storm.
The world is dark
there is no more a norm.
Will a heart lost at sea ever find its mark.
If you don't know what I mean,
just look at where we are.
There's a gun in my hand
and in my soul
There's a gun in my mind
when I lose
control
But the gun in my heart's
on a deeper
roll
I don't know how to stop
bo-boom-bo-boom-boom
The gun never stops
bo-boom-bo-boom-boom
Find a way to stop
bo-boom-bo-boom-boom
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 11:23 AM UTC
Vipers vipe another's life
by the flavor of their bites.
Constrictors construct another's death
by stacking slim breath upon breath until no more is left.
Adders addle able bodies into meal,
and Rattlers crackle should you come too near,
but not in here.
Boomslangs sling their back jaws into prey, to chew the venom in.
Black mambas leap even at thawed white mice.
This is where a permanent tranquilized matinee meets a life sentence,
all year long and every year hence.
Fang glands churn and produce venom to no productive use.
Serpent jaws pitch surge and yaw to locate the same frozen rabbit as yesterweek and the procession of all the weeks which preceded.
Though kneeless, to me they seem to be kneeling,
praying for prey to cross their path.
I make my way past the Coral Snake, Anaconda, Python and Asp, all lax, medicated or meditating on this wilderness where their hisses are merely reminiscent gasps.
Through the anesthetized malaise, we observe the faces of a most ancestral and mammalian fear, and they can gaze back at us, but rarely do, reduced as they are to being expensive jewels, on display behind the fingerprint smudged windows in the Snake House.
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 5:38 PM UTC
A long night of long knives
Stinging more than legion adders
Stinging-death from depth
Burying men in unmarked graves!
Down flows in torrents the power
Quaking earth in tremors
Devouring darkness and its powers
Exposing the earth in glory to glory
Till death is dead , and its venom are buried in eternal infernal damnation
Till earth is buried in luminous glory!
May 2, 2021
May 2, 2021 at 11:49 PM UTC
Just Look After You,
Can't See How I Love You,
Can't See My Concern.
Lit At Both Ends, The Candle Burns.
Take Time For You,
Breath & Think True,
Don't Force A Reaction,
You'll Burn From The Traction.
Footsteps & Tip Toes,
Pit Falls & Trap Doors,
Life Is Snakes & Ladders,
In The End We All Birth Adders.
"Anti Venom To The Poison Born From Me,
A Potion To Stifle The Storm Formed From Me,
A Promise To Go Back & Return To Me,
I Pant & Sputter It Hurts To Breath."
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 3:02 AM UTC
Snakes and Ladders
Forever starting anew,
Seen circles of adders
Biting their tails
To the bone and through.
You got to move quick
In that place and have forethought
Forefront,
Otherwise you'll fall short
When your works not nearly done.
Beware the Ivory fangs
Flashing in the night.
Let fear butterfly into strength
And sight so you can
See which path is right.
Find a ladder
To lead away
From what made you
Madder,
Remember the feeling
Don't daunt
But it matters.
Snakes and Ladders
Beat at its own game,
You choose yours
But I threw the board
To the flame.
Nov 24, 2017
Nov 24, 2017 at 1:00 PM UTC
on a thunderous cumulonimbus night
appear hungry thundering satyrs
ferocious in devouring anger
roaring hate and fear in venom
trammelled our hearts
in the fang of fear and pangs
into heaven heart
we shoot our faith arrow
in triumphant songs
down flows rain in flood of mercy
down flows rain in flood of vengeance
trapping adders and scorpions
in venomous oven of death!
hallelujah in festival of songs
rendering the air glorious
in cacophonous joy and lulabies
spreading the infinite hand
of the deliverer on our land.
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 27, 2019 at 12:12 PM UTC
evoL
Look at this man.
Do you know what I'm after?
Do you know what happens
when screams replace laughter?
You're a platter.
...couldn't be improved with fried batter.
...but does that matter
when you intentionally make me madder?
Tears, rips and tatters,
thrown swears and adders
slice up the cadaver.
Blood splatters.
What is it that you're after?
Is it somewhere up this ladder?
The higher that you climb
the more your life gets sadder.
Looking at yourself,
you know that you're mad at her.
...and your sad matters,
...but only to sad havers
of bad batterers gathered
to have their fractures spattered
with words designed to flatter.
That's love backwards.
Nov 6, 2021
Nov 6, 2021 at 1:34 AM UTC