"apparitions" poems
lines cut heavy
on a button stretched brow
thick rubber shoes
and dragon canes
fill out the closet floor
gospel sounds
and narratives (drowned)
apparitions set sullenly
amid voices from the past
finger pins
and crosswords
find the favor list
point men and preachers
tip up their tuscany caps
twitching and sign gazing
with spectacles held firm
recurring evening news
and beadledom views
clappers and caregivers
raise a crooked foot
grips and rockers
settle in on the front porch
gertrude grimaces
at an untimely turn
as the gooseberry pie
(with a smidgen of cloves)
chills by the night watch
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 12:07 PM UTC
the other day
I occupied a chair
at a sidewalk café
watching the vanity fair of the quotidian
float by in quickly changing apparitions
an endless flow of different ages, nations, fashions,
skin colors, miens, ****** expressions, postures & gaits
kept passing through my field of vision
it made me wonder why
some people get so furious
when they just hear about
not even meet
the ‘others’ different from themselves
that they start dropping bombs and shooting rockets
I think they rather should be curious
and eager to discover
how the immense variety of humankind
can help expand a locally grown mind
and recognize
that we are all of the same kind
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 5:20 PM UTC
fuel desperation,
and so are valuable
assets in the game
of spinning chambers.
one ***** is all it takes.
you might not believe
a person still wading
through adolescence
could harbor such
malevolent intent.
one slight is all it takes.
age is barely even
a consideration when
haunted by the desire
for revenge or need
of self-preservation.
one fragile moment is all it takes.
fewer years simply
equate to shallower
perspective, exacerbating
youthful impulsivity.
one bullet is all it takes.
Feb 6, 2019
Feb 6, 2019 at 12:40 PM UTC
Here I stand on the intersection
Blocking every apparition
That appears before the collision
Of my unearthed passion
The debris it scattered
And the fragments it recollected
Did no good for our Russian Roulette
And my black dress that sweeped
Aiming blade to each direction
And shadow-chasing apparitions
Here I stand, on the intersection
With the devil’s spawn in front
The sinner angel on my left
The lost brothers of long-ago arts
And the mourning ladies behind in red
If I let my blade slip in front
Inferno is the runaway paradise prepared
Yet if I let my blade to my sides
Heaven hold no place for my stained black dress
And the mourning ladies in red
Have no colors that resembles mine
But that is just an extermination
That won’t even matter
For tragic is just a trapped magic
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 10:31 AM UTC
A story, a story!
(Let it go. Let it come.)
I was stamped out like a Plymouth fender
into this world.
First came the crib
with its glacial bars.
Then dolls
and the devotion to their plactic mouths.
Then there was school,
the little straight rows of chairs,
blotting my name over and over,
but undersea all the time,
a stranger whose elbows wouldn't work.
Then there was life
with its cruel houses
and people who seldom touched-
though touch is all-
but I grew,
like a pig in a trenchcoat I grew,
and then there were many strange apparitions,
the nagging rain, the sun turning into poison
and all of that, saws working through my heart,
but I grew, I grew,
and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat insdie me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it.
As the African says:
This is my tale which I have told,
if it be sweet, if it be not sweet,
take somewhere else and let some return to me.
This story ends with me still rowing.
7k
Darkness, Shadows, Fright’ning screams
Red eyes haunt you in your dreams
With serpent coils and spider crawls
Clouded skies and banshee calls
Cold chills running down your spine
Something’s counting down your time
Monsters wait to draw your blood
Don’t listen for that sick’ning thud
With every turn you hear a howl
Eerie, freaky, creepy, growl
Apparitions all around
Voices groaning underground
Death and phantoms at your neck
Pirates on a grim ship wreck
Something’s coming down the hall
With fangs and claws and dying squall
Darkness, shadows, is this real
All this fear and dread I feel
I must wake up and see the sun
Or this nightmare won’t be done
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 11:15 AM UTC
Violating a placid spirit
Memories transgress
desecrating the sacred.
Memories are
the dark side
of a full moon.
Memories are unsatiated desires
couched on sorrow
entangled in time
a perennial wrinkle on the soul.
Memories are trespassers
possessing neural atrium
wading saline sockets
slithering in to throbbing veins
tiptoeing to hollow spaces
burying all under their eerie weight,
Memories are an inescapable affliction.
In fragmented mindscape
Memories are violent winds
littering the past.
Lurking behind aches
in ethereal garbs,
Memories are assassins.
Or sema
of a swirling dervish.
Hurtling within, Memories
is an avalanche
pounding the abyss
choking the void
one gasp at a time.
Memories are
nameless apparitions
fused as shadows
to the very being.
Memories are an assault
on identity and belonging.
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 6:23 AM UTC
How is it, that I'm so perplexed?
You utterly confuse me
Your words, your actions, your motives...
They leave me dumbfounded.
It's always a game of guess and check
Except, I'm never right
How is that?
Do your words have a double meaning I fail to catch?
Perhaps there is no double meaning,
I'm pondering apparitions.
I'm slowly going mad,
Trying to figure out your game,
A hamster on a wheel,
Spinning and spinning in circles, dizzied.
You are my greatest challenge,
My 1,000,000 piece puzzle,
My epiphany forever out of reach,
My unsolvable riddle,
My terrible sphinx,
You will never reveal the solution, will you?
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 11:13 PM UTC
Dear, let me tenderize you like meat slap the silliness from heat bubbling bubbling bubbling to a boil.
Dear, let me technically arouse you by letting each word escape like exasperation, a depletion of the senses as every finger or pressure point examines your body from head-to-toe.
Dear, let me be no longer ashamed to touch or hold you close, let our breathing and beating submerge into higher thinking.
Incinerating flames that lick the grate.
Dear, let me dive deep into the crevice of your brain, all mushy grey matter, all the same.
Dear, let me slice it open and **** out all the juices, licking licking licking each curve and crevice,
My supple pink snake-like tongue reaching deeper deeper deeper into your mind.
Dear, let me sink into your reality, bit by bit, and piece by piece until cohesiveness lays its eggs inside the deep hole within you.
Dear, let me scratch the surface, trading dimes for dust and pecs for fluff.
Let me swim in the depths of your hectic personality.
Let me get to know you and all your originality.
Let me breathe in your values and slurp up your mature decisions.
Let me caress your life like two bulbous lights that hang from the existence of time.
Let me illuminate you, serenade you, quiz you while ********* your sense of self-esteem.
Dear, let me dream your dreams.
Dear, let me sink my ***** mind games into your wet social brain.
Don’t let the pressure get to you.
Passion may play a key part in the sway!
Let me suckle your sweet thoughts, play with your deriving initiatives.
Let me hold your ideas in the sweat of my thighs, burning with desire to see myself through cobalt eyes.
Let me feel the hot ***** of your ethical intentions and clear apparitions.
Let me analyze your prerogatives and **** with your distribution methods.
Dear, let me fiddle with your political views, (in the “other room”) and tickle your soft solutions on creating a world of doom.
Let me ****** your sustainability, flirt with your progressive mindset, and squeeze your plump ambitions until they burst!
Dear, let me push gently on your sensitive issues with your parents until they become less apparent.
Let me stroke your disagreements with foreign policy until they shriek with mercy!
Let me take you further and touch your blind senses to a pink paranoia of retentive defensive pretenses.
Let me cuddle and snuggle your sense of self-worth and pleasure your brain with mind-bending words.
Dear, let me dance with your intelligence
until we sink into oblivious mind-sex bliss…….
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 11:31 AM UTC
Brazen rusted iron-scent of blood–
there, before him, a river of crimson and failed dreams.
No boat, no oars.
Just plain chivalry and bravery and yesteryears’ scars
that manifest all throughout and within him.
He dips his feet.
There were scattered skeletons
and crunched broken bones
basking under the dunes of the night.
There were ghosts clinging
unto his own ghosts;
creatures against creatures.
The tip of their swords
sinking down to his own tired flesh
in attempt to find refuge
in the treacherous wings of the forests.
He swims along.
And his shoulders were battered
and his mare was tainted–
with dirt and dust and ashes of the enemies;
with memories and silhouettes buried
sent flying along the caresses
of the north winds.
He gasps for air, and stills himself under the ebbs.
Under many moons and scarcity of life–
Scarcity of Life–
the recurring sight of the gaseous light
and the inconsistency of the breath-intervals,
he remains still and proud.
His soles burnt with pain and interminable suffering
as it crossed the stretches of the savanna.
This is his life,
dwelling on the dawn borealis
and stained with apparitions of the past
and demons and absurdity.
He has crossed the river.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
every achy bone inside me a relic
of the former self still inhabiting this shell.
exquisite fossils of the life once lived
my silhouette, housed in rock,
yet the softest part of me rotted out.
the vacancy in my expression
mirrors the hollowed out spaces
between each rib and every "what if"
my lungs carry haunted cries
apparitions you forged in my memory
phantom fingers singed the word
“remember” into my paper skin.
i am still smoldering.
chambers of my heart filled with cobwebs;
every strand of silk an unfulfilled wish.
we are still tangled up.
the spiders have crawled from our throats
but the dust is settling.
your fingers have intertwined
with the segments of my spine,
fists taking root in my chest, cradling a stone heart.
knuckles bent comfortably around each vertebrae,
your hands are cold.
the weight of all my sins is crushing me,
i suppose i should have noticed
when you read the lines in my palm like an obituary.
forgive me.
- m.f. & j.a
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC
This world is full of dreams
many are lost, found
& salvaged by others.
Some fade, starved of thirst;
ghosts haunting minds’ mirage.
But, there are those rare sparks;
shorn flashes of brilliance,
blazing through self-existence.
Yes. Our world full of dreams.
© Qwey.ku
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 9:33 PM UTC
****** Escapades & Moonlight Serenades,
The Crystal Apparitions In Her Sanctified Masquerade,
Paper Trails Breathing Under Water,
Out From The Ember, Her Seductions Conquer,
Silhouettes Of Her Castle Clouds,
Injecting Primal Instincts Out Loud,
Eleven Summers In Her Pseudo Emotive Desires,
Holographic Afterlights & Freezing Fires.
Twilight Light Bulbs Under The Liquid Nights,
****** Openings Of Her Sensory Delights,
Unfettered Mythomania & Kaleidoscopic Highs.
****** Verses Scattering Light.
Divine Impulses & Rainbow Divinity,
Spellbound Chaos In Her Dilated Virginity,
Intimate Enigmas Veiled In Shades Of Insanity,
Makeshift Empathy Resonating Sympathy,
Animated Specters Reflecting Crimson Streams,
Oceans Tides Pulsating In Her Silent Screams,
Static Reveries Of Her Cryptic Demise,
Textured Amplifications Emanating Chronic Lies.
- 03:04AM -*
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC
it's been months since I bothered opening my eyes before the birds have finished their song and the sun is casting 5 o'clock shadows on the faces of those who work and strain and cry and just want to put food on the table for their loved ones. I never thought about what was just below the surface what was edging towards the eerie fog about the lake just as I turned my back. you told me flowers always sprout when rain and snow and hail and sleet and every form of tears god could throw at us whip your face and you're still not crying and why aren't you crying you're bleeding and I'm aching and have you ever thought about how clouds are just vessels for rain and how maybe you're a cloud and I'm a torrential downpour but I'm more like a thunderstorm without the lighting because nothing shines like your eyes when you hear your favourite passage read aloud and I hope you hear my voice in your head I hope that omnipresence you always complained about comforts you when your bed is the last place you want to be and I hope you dream harder than rocks falling down mountains until maybe the figures you see in sleep become real. until the apparitions you claim have plagued your mind are left with no safe house and no real home and you can box them up like pictures and firewood and the couch cushions with the stains on them like Why the **** didn't we get those cleaned. why didn't we clean up our mess why is the window still shattered it's getting cool at night and the blankets are itchy and the grass looks comfier than cots in prison cells and what kind of prison cell is this with birds and lights and piers with boats that never seem to come in and lighthouses that never seem to guide them home. like nothing could ever guide you home, like nothing but light and wind and waves crashing and you'll probably never see the captain again. the ship is never sinking but the captain died many years ago sending smoke signals swallowed up by the clouds who lost their rain.
Aug 8, 2014
Aug 8, 2014 at 10:26 PM UTC
Somebody call Ben Affleck
We got phantoms in this *****
This endless haunted mansion
Their presence pervades
No company
In this lonely labyrinth
Only phantoms
The only figures resembling humanity
Are the corpses of those before
Who couldn't navigate this torturous structure
And of course, the masquerading phantoms
My soul they aim to puncture
I tried closing my eyes
But I just kept running into walls
I tried sleeping through it
But I just sank deeper into the basement
When I attempted to join the phantoms
You were there
You waited until I was hanging there
On the rope
And eviscerated everything
Lycanthrope
The rope in shreds
Your heart then fled
Leaving me alone again
Lying in my exhausted blood
The phantoms sensed my desperation
And took advantage of my disorientation
So I ran to the darkest recesses of the basement
To retrieve my blindfold and sledgehammer
But is my hammer powerful enough?
Will visual impairment abstain the trickery of ghosts?
I put Sisyphus to shame
With the determination I utilize to demolish these walls
But the phantoms are devious
They ***** new facades
Thicker, sturdier, with odder textures
I destroy them all the same
It just takes a bit more time
And time means nothing
To a man who's sole purpose is knocking down walls
And cowering from apparitions
Yet a man means nothing
To a time ruled by phantoms
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 11:54 AM UTC
BECAUSE there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of thar popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length,
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
3.2k
Weighed down
by the world’s
burden
honest eyes only perceive hope of a better earth, beyond the infallible burning
Dwelling within a premature space
reality isn’t what it
seems
years upon years of confounding lies & schemes
Phantoms and apparitions of the fallen
the only thing piecing together the shattered earth that is
falling
How long will the fog of
falsehood
blind us to reconnecting as a
brother & sisterhood
How many of us have to
bleed
the same number of us who
screamed
when our reality came dropping down from where aloft we kept our dreams
Please, please, oh please
How long will it take us to see.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 11:00 AM UTC
Hello there!
It’s me, your prize-winning, intellectual, “gifted” brain!
I’m here to tell you that everything you’re doing is wrong.
Remember that conversation that you thought went well?
You’re wrong. Think again.
Oh, and also, all of your friends secretly hate you.
You annoy them all.
In fact, the apparitions probably lurking around the corner hate you too.
And they have weapons.
Also, you should probably just give up on life.
I mean, you’re a terrible person.
Honestly, I can’t tell you a single good thing about yourself.
How do you ignore the fact that everyone hates you?
One more thing.
Are you suuuuuure your God is real?
Because I’m not.
And… even if he is, you kind of **** as a believer and as a person anyways, so you’re kind of *******
Well, nice chatting with you!
Go on. Have a good day!
And don’t forget what I told you…
Jul 4, 2016
Jul 4, 2016 at 1:50 PM UTC
crimson and magic
to splash without panic
in waves of compliance
for drugs made from science
and sorceress who summon the simple solutions
illusions! illusions!
of grander worth loosing
confusing the process will aid not for coptic
nor catholic
or elsewhere semantics
act frantic in panic
to sob without reason
treason! say treason!
the exit of reason
to wander in wander a fate beyond yonder
set ponder a path set by mind on the map
of solutions and systems
domestic conditions
yet wild apparitions
appear as conditioned - concerns
to a mindset as stern and subtracted
by fractions of actions repulsed by distraction
disgruntled reactions
supposing contractions
created the action
conceived from distractions
The reasons
let change be for seasons
while i stay the rock in the pond
either frozen not gone
as the watcher
still watching
content upon watching
exhaling the notion
that motions for movement
atonement! atonement!
with further consolement
atlas like the breeze of the gavel
let both parties ravel and tug
whether free or debugged
only mind over matter
unscrambles the lather
too see that is free
is like blind sight at sea
with the waves of conforming
to drown is informing
if not then be peace !
for all parties deceased
by a water so deep you could drown in your sleep
Nov 13, 2012
Nov 13, 2012 at 11:16 PM UTC
it,s loose cotton electric ***
copper children
husky sighing t
he
trickle of daughters into the little wet cracks
on Railroad ave. a beggars hand gesticulating empty spans
a river of grins course toward amber
oblivion and jarring rhythms. she's a white idea. a lemon dress *****
her hips are a delicious war of curving apparitions
a dearth of pleasure loaded folds. or else a caustic laceration;
some hernia of capillaries blotting ivory thighs
a
n
d all the children giggle, teeth cleaning pearly cheeks
splay the efforts of their throats all over the cobbles. it,s a night
FRIDAY
yes
Aug 5, 2010
Aug 5, 2010 at 7:36 PM UTC
taunting haunting
“ghosts” roaming
boasting
under sweet disguise;
heart
heard
tale-tell
frozen castles
time wept
appear disappear
apparitions rear
waiting abating
storm swept.
Celestial rite
gyrates flows
insight
Breath awaits
spirit’s delight.
May 11, 2010
May 11, 2010 at 12:28 PM UTC
Oblivious is the man who claims decorum of extrapolated omnipotence.
The man who has ossified rationalism into an inexplorable ruse.
An attempt to transmogrify inchoate minds, characteristic of apparitions.
Providing illusion as the answer to an obsequious concrescence of naive followers.
Oblivious are the men who follow this decorum.
Their leader keens to their needs.
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 1:09 PM UTC
thoughts just slip away
suddenly the whole world around me is spinning
and i’m stuck behind an invisible glass pane
i look down at hands that are now no longer my own
lights are blinding, voices overwhelming
demanding and persecutory
everybody hates me, i need to hurt myself
time is somehow suspended?
i can’t control it
screaming but nobody can hear me
i know that they’re all out to get me
running- not sure where
apparitions of the future
i’m dying
the darkness engulfs
Aug 23, 2020
Aug 23, 2020 at 6:04 AM UTC
mom betrays us.
headlights into the night
& up the breakneck boulevard bluff overlooking town and terminus.
she brings his heart in a ziploc bag,
an offering
to that old burnt-out oak.
[husband\father\corpse]
front porch blood trails forever. she
claims self-defense and the camera-eyes caramelize her
fame & fortune & stepdaddies & book deals & ziploc pb&js & dead dog omens.
when did the heartache begin?
heir\son\brother\body
racing car ****** and fluxed up the boulevard in a ritual reach for daddy and the oak.
the girls are waiting. one two three, seeds.
brakes sabotaged. he
bursts into death, a molten ball of mazda.
father and son laugh there on the brim of here and hereafter.
apparitions uncoiled.
[home movies]
where mercury avenue ends
the woods begin.
& those woods are evil, an eldritch place, she laughs.
even the indians wouldn’t bury their dead there.
america.
caught between the whir of spokes and windshields reflecting
sky and skin, the blue hue
of television flickering on the hands of a family.
grandsons conjure grandmaster demons
on the ply of their treefort high.
the heart of grandma in a ziploc bag.
jupiter and saturn are in conjunction,
twelve past midnight on a tuesday in september.
a school night.
[the babysitter brings over an unlabeled video tape, says its scary]
the children watch.
slumber party screams and pb&js.
ghouls blunted by pungent neighborhood inertia.
son, a ghost returned in rhythm and electronics,
hungry for pizza and pure vengeance.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 12:32 AM UTC