"afterbirth" poems
back home in the dire hope where the lens is unclean
but the sky is **** where the numb trust is broken
mostly from the rainfall lately
and the meager tools
are as useless
as a wink.
there. there i toil in the afterbirth
of a previous misadventure. censored and reduced to a miracle
that has no reason. There i plod the chaste road to wanton Elsewhere
and arrive most gone
from my seldom
yes.
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 11:12 AM UTC
born with a halo shattered
human afterbirth in dirt
withered wings, feathers tattered
protrusions of pain and hurt
only an angel can be born
held by the devil's hands
flesh becomes hard, when its torn
only an angel understands
Dec 27, 2016
Dec 27, 2016 at 9:53 AM UTC
The engine is killing the track, the track is silver,
It stretches into the distance. It will be eaten nevertheless.
Its running is useless.
At nightfall there is the beauty of drowned fields,
Dawn gilds the farmers like pigs,
Swaying slightly in their thick suits,
White towers of Smithfield ahead,
Fat haunches and blood on their minds.
There is no mercy in the glitter of cleavers,
The butcher's guillotine that whispers: 'How's this, how's this?'
In the bowl the hare is aborted,
Its baby head out of the way, embalmed in spice,
Flayed of fur and humanity.
Let us eat it like Plato's afterbirth,
Let us eat it like Christ.
These are the people that were important ----
Their round eyes, their teeth, their grimaces
On a stick that rattles and clicks, a counterfeit snake.
Shall the hood of the cobra appall me ----
The loneliness of its eye, the eye of the mountains
Through which the sky eternally threads itself?
The world is blood-hot and personal
Dawn says, with its blood-flush.
There is no terminus, only suitcases
Out of which the same self unfolds like a suit
Bald and shiny, with pockets of wishes,
Notions and tickets, short circuits and folding mirrors.
I am mad, calls the spider, waving its many arms.
And in truth it is terrible,
Multiplied in the eyes of the flies.
They buzz like blue children
In nets of the infinite,
Roped in at the end by the one
Death with its many sticks.
6.2k
Many a miner has gone
into the deep pit
to receive the dust of a kiss,
an ore-cell.
He has gone with his lamp
full of mole eyes
deep deep and has brought forth
Jesus at Gethsemane.
Body of moss, body of glass,
body of peat, how sharp
you lie, emerald as heavy
as a golf course, ruby as dark
as an afterbirth,
diamond as white as sun
on the sea, coal, dark mother,
brood mother, let the sea birds
bring you into our lives
as from a distant island,
heavy as death.
4.8k
born with a halo shattered
human afterbirth in dirt
withered wings, feathers tattered
protrusions of pain and hurt
only an angel can be born
held by the devil's hands
flesh becomes hard when it's torn
only an angel understands
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 3:18 PM UTC
Which Is Greater?
I break a vow.
A serious vow.
In a place, in this site,
Where the fluid pain
Is the water of the world,
The element that is crux,
The amniotic liquor of creative flux,
The morning juice,
The afternoon caffe,
The first beer of the day,
The liquid that we rinse and spit out our every day,
I will write about pain,
Arrogantly, as if there is any unused combination of
Letters, vowels and consonants left unspoken, *****
Having sworn not to, for pain is cumulative.
Asking myself,
Which is greater?
The pain of creation, inception, origination and birth,
The pain of wreck and ruin, destruction and death.
Homework Self-Assignment: Compare and Contrast
Suddenly, I am expert.
Creating a poem a day is very painful.
A poem that is the sum of
Reflection, research, and purging.
Once I wrote:
*The poem is the afterbirth,
A conflicts resolution, an outcome,
Battlefield debris, the residue of
An exacting vision, a sentiment surging,
And your army of words, inadequate to the task,
Fighting to capture that insight flashed,
Each word a soldier, disheveled,
Crying, let me live, let me be saved,
Let me make a poem,
Let it be inscribed upon my victorious flag.
The poem is the sweat left upon the brow,
Having exercised the five senses,
The salt of struggle and debate,
It's completion, each word,
Both a victory and a defeat.*
Suddenly, I am expert.
My mother is dying.
It is a process. Days pass,
She neither eats or drinks,
Yet she lives on.
I watch each labored exhalation,
A subtraction, a countdown,
It is as if she was returning each singular day,
Every word e're spoke, every dream dreamt,
she ever possessed to the atmosphere,
One breath at a time.
Is that painful?
It is for me.
Now you complain. They're different, not to be compared, et cetera.
Pain is pain,
Whether it is in the service of creation, or
Creative destruction.
Once I wrote:
*With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poem's birth diminishes me.*
So, one and the same?
Nope. Yes. But. Cannot one be the greater?
Yes, one is greater.
When I lay on my deathbed,
I will exhale the answer
Into the atmosphere
For your retrieval.
Jul 19, 2013
Jul 19, 2013 at 7:06 PM UTC
born with a halo shattered
human afterbirth in dirt
withered wings, feathers tattered
protrusions of pain and hurt
only an angel can be born
held by the devil's hands
flesh becomes hard when it's torn
only an angel understands
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 7:00 PM UTC
You have heard it said that
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
But truly I tell you that
I am that I am that I am that I am
Dripping with Jehovah and stardust we fell to earth
Pieces of atmosphere pieced together
And who can trace the mythology of our chemical compositions
Or rewrite the narrative of our anatomies?
I fell to earth soaked in Yahweh and covered in snakebites
Black holes where the fangs sunk into the astronomy of my freckled skin
All the galaxies of my body each with their own elliptical orbits
Connect the dots to form two wolves in my milky way
Romulus and Remus –
My ******* bear venom white as the purest lamb
Whisper astrology and
Remember the day we built Rome by stacking corpses
Remember the day when all the stars burned red for us
But that was millennia ago and
I’m not your Venus anymore –
I’m nobody’s ********* Venus anymore
It was the age of Pisces and we came out drenched in Messiah
You found me picking painted roses on asteroid planets
With a blonde-haired child and a fox
In the garden green snakes and white roses
Thorns and soft pink ribbon-tongues
Fangs and velvet petals
Two drops of blood in the white sand like Mary,
I bore a son and named him Ares
I named him Mars
I named him Set
Boys will be boys will be boys will be monsters, you know that
I am that I am that I am that I am.
Swim down deep enough into the black waters and you’ll reach the heavens
Keep drawing blood from thorn wounds and you’ll drag out the atmosphere
Stare out intently into the abyss and the abyss will stare back into you
These are the things we knew
When we reached the outer boundary of the cosmos
And realized how hydrogen is nothing but celestial amniotic fluid
We, motionless
Smothered by God and Carbon and perfume and poison
In this ****** we named universe
On this fetus we named Earth
I am that I am that I am that I am
Truly with you until the end of the age
Until the afterbirth of star matter gets tossed out with the baby and the bathwater.
You have heard it said
A rose called by any other name wouldn’t smell as sweet
But truly I tell you
A rose is only as beautiful and fragrant as its thorns are sharp
And if you want to know what fills the space between protons and electrons
The gaps between breaths
The light-years between planets
Then listen to the sound of your own heart beating
Counting down the gestation period of our own reality
I am that I am that I am that I am
I’m more than a Rose.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 7:14 PM UTC
(insert generic death metal song title here one)
Human blood bath
Soak in ********* and human waste
Got a taste for the diseased human race
Acid melting face
Drink from the spewing flesh
Gurgle and gargle to the dying beat
Of a victims last gulp of tarnished breath
(insert generic death metal song title here two)
Skull cracked and bleeding
Blood **** filled wounds seeping
Immaculate Christ unjaded
Aborted abortion
Born and bathed in afterbirth
Blown and constipated in foreign ***** matter
Torn from arms of zombie flesh
Decaying in the hot summer sun
Baked in the hot summer sun
(insert generic death metal song title here three)
Trash my intended victim with nothing better to do
Than torture **** **** and torture some more
Death does not last in the flesh
Emancipated from life
Just a breath away from dying
Hang on to the threads of the noose
Strangulating the frustrating last gasp of air
Torture **** **** and torture some more
Out of boredom and out of time
Boredom kills
You better watch out
I’m coming for you
(insert generic death metal song title here four)
Hollow eye sockets
Wretched
Reeking
Filthy ****
Plastered on crimson caked hands
****** dirt beneath the fingernails
Scratches scraped in the walls
From bodies dragged thru the hall
Down the stairs to the killing room
Meat hook art show of disembodied
And disemboweled corpses
Dismembered in some horrorshow freakshow
Bowl of human remains cooked on the stove
For this years All-You-Can-Eat chili fest
Lick savory lips with salted tongue
Hunger pains from cannibalistic urges
The brain tastes best when paired with a good wine
Eat, drink, and be merry
Tomorrow you’re on the menu
Sep 17, 2011
Sep 17, 2011 at 2:23 PM UTC
The mountains are silent
serene
solid in their poise.
Birds laugh in the branches
over those living each day
spirits borrowed
at the prelude to all creation.
Take heart,
love will hold us together
uprooting discontent from the soil of our dreams,
a diligent gardener
devoted to maintaining all
which is beautiful,
all that is ugly
yet magnificent.
And
We with tangled souls
are deemed the unlucky ones,
who've arrived at the revelation
of our own insignifcance
in the greater scheme.
This unknown plan
(This is but the beggining)
(a cosmic comedy).
In the afterbirth of your re-emergence
You are cleansed and pure
but this is not the cause
of this unending cycle.
Hope exists inside you
a lighthouse of levity
no force can deconstruct.
It is part of your humanity,
much in the same way
you are a part of me
and
I
You.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 9:46 AM UTC
Purchased at a drug store,
The cheap doll takes her first breath
As you remove her shiny afterbirth.
Her eyes are closed -
And they stay closed -
So that she doesn't have to
Endure your
Stupid grin.
Aug 19, 2012
Aug 19, 2012 at 1:27 AM UTC
I don't remember the first song ever made
I was not there to taste the sweet marmalade
dripping to this earth like rain in September
when it rained out from the afterbirth of
The first clever musical endeavor.
It was not i.
I was not the first to sit back
And rap my knuckles
Or tap my feet to the sweet rhythm
Of chirping cricket orchestrals
All written on the spot and never
Even thought about again. Like secrets
Carried to the grave of every short lived section
Of six legged minstrels.
It wasn't you either.
Just like you weren't the first to be inspired
By a cone spiders spiraling spire
Of a trap set for all music makers.
I was not the first to hear the melody
But if I could've been,
I probably wouldn't have taken it to memory
Or woken from my revelries
Because not everything new to me
Is the most beautiful flower you'd ever see.
But I could never rouse a lie like one that states
I wouldn't hum it off handedly later when
The sun went to wake the other side of the world.
And the orchestra whirled and settled into their
Whittled orchestra seats.
I wish I was there.
I wish I was the one who first
Was stricken speechless amid giving countless speeches when they first heard a cricket chirp in time with a meadowlark.
and Sparks danced amid the silence,
Too humble to adhere a single silhouette of sound
or even hint at the presence of an audience.
The sound wasn't meant to have applause
Or be critiqued of its brilliance.
Because it was the beginning
Of the resilience of the never ending sound we call
Music.
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 3:19 AM UTC
*reflecting on
what drives me
the sensuality
of her willing sacrifice
every inch
a supplicant
feminine vulnerability
a badge of courage
how gorgeous
she is
my little dancer
*** perfect
foot perfect
body flexed
**** drooling tears
vessel of the Goddess
caresses that
turn a pitcher
into
Aladdin's lamp
dream maker
a philosophers stone
Aphrodite's afterbirth
hysterical elasticities
she my savior
let me eat her like Christ
sublime posed flexed
**** open
ready please she whispers
to be impaled
bat thighs like spread wings
inside dark brooding interiors
ready to be engorged
blood like ink
octupussies arms
that **** and pull
that write i love you
in writhing gasmus
Our suns last gasp
tumultuous
igniting soul quakes
eats its own
with
kisses of fire
tremulous
taking all life with it
oh jewel of night
scrambling a thousand moons
swallowed
by hells
shimmering constellations
like starved arterial glistening *****
no mercy
in the glitter of cleavers
yet all
ecstasy
ecstasy
ecstasy*
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 1:33 PM UTC
You came too soon, the four of you,
into this world. Your mother,
recognising the feeling,
did what she had to do
to give birth to you,
cleaned you,
disposed of the afterbirth
in nature's economical way.
But you had no experience,
no knowledge of how to be kittens.
Almost still foetuses,
furless, unmoving, cold,
you did not stimulate
her maternal instinct.
She did not recognise you
as her babies. Lying against her belly,
you did not know how to suckle,
and she, not ready to feed you,
walked off.
You had no future.
A bucket of water, I thought, would speed
your departure from the life
you had barely started.
But you, recognising the element
you had so lately left,
were at home in it,
swam untroubled under the surface
like tiny, pink sea creatures.
Unwilling to watch longer,
I gave you a quicker end.
Your mother, unlike me,
resumed her life
as if nothing had changed.
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017 at 2:28 PM UTC
Have you ever stepped out of bed
Awaken from hibernation
Unravel from your cocoon of blankets
Lift arms and pull muscle from bone
Soft cracklings like the afterbirth of new wings
Well I spent the night
Spent fourteen whole hours someplace else
Flickering eyelids
Spasmodic twitch
I only wanted to forget the warmth of your palms pressed against my skin
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 9:49 PM UTC
And the sun is rising.
A crisp winter dawn is giving birth to this great city.
Rays of light kissing one way signs with promises amidst the building chaos.
The ear-spitting labour song gathers momentum and breaks into a cacophony
of horns panting, rails screeching, breaks shushing,
crowds pushing, rushing to the sound of can I get a hoagie?
a bagel, black coffee, eggs
scrambled into the pulsating clouds
light with smiles and heavy with the fuming of exhaust pipes
contracting to the crowning of car bonnets and head lamps and taxi cab signs
dancing in a place, to a pace and a rhythm constructed, conducted
by a lone woman in blue with benign brown eyes
leading a symphony of brake light beating, feet pounding, bus groaning,
venders sighing, newborns crying, school bus squealing,
pedal revving, fingers drumming, foot tapping pedestrians building
to erupt in a crescendo of a man asking to buy a cigarette for a dollar
and refusing to accept it for free.
To a heavy building door held open by a New York giant inviting me in;
welcoming me to the raw, ragged, rich, beautiful carnage
of the afterbirth.
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 9:39 AM UTC
born with a halo shattered
human afterbirth in dirt
withered wings, feathers tattered
protrusions of pain and hurt
only an angel can be born
held by the devil's hands
flesh becomes hard, when it's torn
and only an angel understands
Dec 22, 2014
Dec 22, 2014 at 3:53 PM UTC
Running Blind Madness
Eyes Wide Heart Pounding
Spirit Lifts Senses Live
Theres Thunder IN THE Atmosphere
This IS A Free Arena
A Gateless Auditorium
Open Fields
Open Wide
Forking Lightning ON THE Horizon
This Natural Inebriation
IN Dynamic Resonation
Anticipation OF THE
Consternataion
Hells Beasts Abound
Snarling Snouts Sounding
Heavy Hoofs Pounding
Crazed Dashing Hounding
IN THE Chaos That'S Surrounding
Hells Beasts Abound
Torso'S Writhing Flailing
Grit Bucking Flailing
Crimson Flow Tailing
THE Gore OF THE Impailing
I'M Knee Deep
IN A River OF Blood
Fleshen Heap
IN THE Reddening Flood
Sodden WET Flesh
Whip AND Turn
Trace THE SKY
With THE Carnal Rain
WET THE Earth
With A Reddened
Stain
Sodden WET Flesh
Whip AND Turn
Trace THE SKY
With THE Carnal Rain
WET THE Earth
With A Reddened
Stain
Sodden WET Earth
Besot With Death Mirth
Drown THE Earth
IN THE Afterbirth
Every Beast THE ****** Herse
DON'T RID ME OF THE ******* Curse
IN AN Ever Rising River OF Blood
Causing Chaos With NO Remorse
I AM Power IN Full Course
Wreaking Havoc
Sump
WET
Dripppin'
Torn
This Bloods LET BY MY Horn
I'M Sopping WET
MY ****** Horn
I Feel Like I'M NEW Born
Drumming Quakes Pounding
Shaking THE Foundation
Lifting Spirits IN THE AIR
I AM GOD Everywhere
Helter Skelter IN THE Chaos
This IS Pandemonium
Freedom Forms
IN THE Void
Electric Flux Obliteration
Pure Intoxication
AS Evil Incarnation
This Revelation
IS Anihilation
Apr 10, 2021
Apr 10, 2021 at 7:55 AM UTC
You're quite the trickster,
With tall pair of gin and tonic.
Shall we dance a set or two,
Before you assail me
In the dark, with objects
Stowed away in your
Glove compartment?
I promise to walk into walls,
Become pliable in your arms.
You even have my word,
I'll lose control of all
My faculties right about
The time you begin ********** me.
And I will wake up
In the morning,
With no memory
And no underwear.
You can then move
Carefree, on to your
Next hapless victim.
While I merrily go about
My day in the numbed womb's
Afterbirth of that last sentence.
Forever to ***** at
Flesh and membrane.
Sincerely quiet,
Candace
Nov 20, 2019
Nov 20, 2019 at 11:23 PM UTC
Ripped
crumpled sheet of paper tossed to the floor
remnants of writing...
yet to be completed
clues
everywhere...
lipstick smudges halfway up the page
a Kiss Given
for the Hot footprint of Life.
This ones for Desire.
Rage.... Red and Heavenly
like the eggs of an unborn salmon,
Translucent Illumination
ready to be swaddled in its own afterbirth,
No rocks in site to hide them under.
Heavy in their fullness
Drama of life and death.
Wisdoms Great Suffering knowledge
It will all come to an end
and mean nothing anyway
Such is the husbandry of the Stars.
and yet they remain Lovely...
Twinkling Visions of God-ness.
Wonder Crystallized.
Life Immortal.
And So It Is
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 9:31 PM UTC
Let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how scarred they are;
how the callouses seep
into flesh, become part of me,
rubbing circles underneath the hood
of my uvula.
So let’s talk about my knuckles,
and how they’re only the starting point
for throwing up apples,
golden, red, green,
bitter and sweet,
all of them mine, to be choked
back into me.
So let’s talk about Mary-birds,
and the sacrifices they make
for their children,
and in doing that, let’s talk about *****
and how beautiful the sheen
of afterbirth looks in the toilet bowl,
and how often self-destruction
tastes like sacrifice on the way back up.
So let’s talk about my knuckles,
again, and the visceral scraping
against teeth,
and how much it feels like giving up
to not sit by the toilet
waiting for a sign
that this is somehow enough.
So let’s talk about being good enough,
and how I’ll never feel that way
until my knuckles mingle
with milk-white bone,
and how the rows of pews
are pearlescent,
tainted yellow,
with smoke and bile.
So let’s talk about talons,
and vultures, and everything that happens
after death, and let’s talk about
how one day the sea will swallow us whole,
and let’s talk about the belly of the beast,
and let’s talk about Jonah,
and oh - sorry - the sermon is over,
and the priest is taking confessions,
so let’s not talk
anymore.
Aug 9, 2020
Aug 9, 2020 at 6:52 PM UTC
My feet tell the wheels to spin recklessly beneath me,
but I need more gas to keep on traveling aimlessly.
Fuel pumps like mothers feed mechanical children,
Recycled umbilical cords with vapor-free nozzles.
Lingering smells of vinegar, melted tires,
dried *** and gunpowder like the afterbirth of a new generation.
To each his own,
where global contention resides.
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 7:08 PM UTC
i'll tell you something: every day
people are dying. and that's just the beginning.
the death which spreads its fingers
on their lips is nothing
but a window.
once they step outside the pain,
then anything is possible. the universe
is just a big old vacuum and
no matter
what you do, you’ll never stop the
constant spark: the entirety of all
existence. forget about
your birthday cakes, your lakeside strolls,
your speeding tickets and project deadlines
-those were all just vibrations
that came out of the light.
and i’ll tell you something else: on the day
you truly die, you will plunge into
a lake of dancing triangles. and when you swim
through violent ripples melting to a bonfire
drumbeat, and you reach the rocky shore,
you will find yourself a squeaking pup
in a fuzzy wolf litter, a striped shell collecting
erosion from the golden spiral, an infant of a Lithic tribe
whose members scooped you out of the
harsh winds and left nothing
but afterbirth poured like puddles in their
foot steps along the Bering Strait.
Nov 6, 2011
Nov 6, 2011 at 10:21 PM UTC
Look at all the ***** that I give
I labor through each, contraction after contraction
pushing through the breach
Nine months of waiting and hours of screams
will not be stillborn
This way, when I give a **** someone will appreciate it
Someone will be there in the delivery room
cradling my hand as I spasm across the sheets
They will coo and observe over my sweat streaked shoulders
waiting for the feels
But maybe, just once, once my **** is free
sliding from me in a wash of catharsis
after the placenta peels free and the afterbirth escapes
maybe it will be cleaned and weighed and wrapped
and laid upon my arms
maybe then I will feel the feels
I will contract the disease of affection
a want for this **** that I carried
A stubborn resolve may just rise in my throat
and not a single **** will I give
Oct 23, 2012
Oct 23, 2012 at 3:14 AM UTC