"armadillo" poems
Daddy takes me to the greenhouse,
behind our rotted trailer, deep in sovereign backwoods.
Marsh voices, thick like tupelo honey.
The coo of a loon, hiss of a cottonmouth, shiver of a snapping turtle.
The silver of swamp lilies lip the land in wild haze,
a veil of ochre moss tickles my nose like gauzey ginger ale
and soil clings to my ankles like a lonesome hound.
Daddy’s greenhouse is a shed, a haven.
A milieu of magic and fleur-de-cannabis
where pixies pull my curls and gnomes dance
under mushroom parasols.
My hands dip into a hollow of muddy earthworms.
I feel akin to the yellow blood of a butterfly
or pale jade of perplexing geckos.
Daddy is a shaman.
He trims holy blooms that come from spirits
who sing in the wind like the whippoorwill at dusk.
Snipping sticky bushels, he pads tufts into his pipe,
carved in the shape of a sullen armadillo.
I watch him inhale.
His breath
stiff
as a braid of mangroves.
He exhales a ligneous cough.
I don’t mind,
much.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 3:18 PM UTC
O pulchritudinous, for infinite climaxes
For bilious spasms of pigswill
For puce Popacatepetl pedigrees
Above the perverted pampas!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk, from brothel to gay red—light district
O pulchritudinous, for spaceman bottoms
Whose **** throbbing tapeworm
A toucan crossing for slipperiness spifflicate
Across the intergalactic space!
America! America! Allah enrich thine ev’ry vice
Reinvigorate thy ****** *********** inside monolithic ectoplasm, thy merrymaking inside pyramid!
O pulchritudinous, for freaks got fat
In disentangling feeding frenzy
Who more than ***** their brothel slobbered over
And velvet glove more than backbone!
America! America! May Allah thy blonde exhaust
Till all rave reviews be disreputableness and ev’ry come superhuman
O pulchritudinous, for chauvinist muscleman
That smells wide of the fourth dimension
Thine lathery brothels lick
Polished using giant armadillo excrement!
America! America! Allah excreted his curses on thee
And bang thy ****** in company with Islamic monk from brothel to gay red—light district
Mar 25, 2010
Mar 25, 2010 at 5:22 PM UTC
Sinking Silently,
Crossing The Tracks,
A Complexion,
Blending Like Complimentary Colors,
Caged Like An Animal,
Attacked Like A Victim,
Batting My Wings Like A Moth,
But Grounded Like A Penguin,
Spreading Out Beautifully As Peacock,
But Ugly As An Armadillo,
Breaking Inside,
But Already Broken,
Like Shards Of Glass,
Forced To Be Writing In Class,
No Home That Is Safe,
No Feeling Of Peace Walking Down The Hallways Of Hell,
Surrounded By Meaningless Faces,
Wishing To Be Free,
As A Caged Bird Does,
Singing Until My Lungs Burst,
Feeling I Will Never Lift This Curse
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 9:22 PM UTC
Not too distant beach tree sways in distance
Mandala Rorschach blot patterns dance like celebrating Salish drum circle
There's a hallow college sound of crime show to my left
Bickering with the occasional crush of,
**** my job is stressful."
A sleeping armadillo composed of quarks reflective within a drop of water
Fallen from the bottom-bulged North 49 canteen
A foot and 3/4ths away the snow-white generic of a ***** coffee mug formerly host to a Tetley green stands silent
Reminiscent of the eternal stillness of a mountain range
Fibonacci's name rings inexplicably from tilting branches
And I can't help but wonder if I would be grasping his hand in grasping a branch.
19 years alive and I can't help asking if I've grown-up too fast
Or simply grown into myself.
I feel old
young
and somewhere indescribable most of the time
and it's funny I cannot even fathom the length of 22 years.
A deflated balloon yellow like trend pants or sunrise sits like dejected missile
No longer screaming towards Gaza
No longer screaming.
A Holiday Inn Express pen sits with a ready-call number
Part of its mustang flame
If its quality of penmanship has any parallel to hotel service
Perhaps I'll stick with hostels.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 2:34 PM UTC
the world is a wild and weary place,
fully sunk in spiral ******
fully strummed in skin water waves.
bound by death from the very first verse:
first love.
first this.
go forth my machines, be fruitful and jettison.
color says hang at the edge of our lips.
smell the books.
remind us; books.
& before the big blue vast takes it all, that
sunstruck lomographia light,
transposed no-makeup california girl, she
walks before me along the boulders of the wharf.
real summer breathing.
our bodies, piled
and starbleached ripe. [like heap of buffalo skulls]
maybe then a futuristic dinner, where everyone gathers in floating space pods
singing hymns beneath,
above,
between
the lights and music.
reality is: blacktop shards against my knees,
something burning as it trickles to my chin, man of me
living the city glisten, city green
& pink.
city midnight and barely breathing.
destroyers, we are.
and what? what am i, father? man of industry?
man of workwelded science? secure as the armadillo,
armadillo picket fence.
am i of halfbreed phosphorus?
americana?
built on love and hate and television.
nat geo channel: [a gecko licks dew from its eyes
on the coastal sand dunes of namibia]
money. women. go west young man.
be a hand tightening ribs.
be a quaking echo of mammalian design.
a paradigm of seed my fire.
quest for fire.
for uncut diamond; like foggy strawberry rock in the africa-boy's fingers.
or cut steel; phallus of toyish death between a brazil-boy’s fingers.
pulled teeth; bits of wet fruit in the young afghani’s hand.
& icecream trolley; pedestal etched iron; denim and *** and
microwaves ::::::
white man: what I got ? what I got ?
manifest destiny: gold bricks and beer.
blood soaked socks.
cyprus burnt umbers.
tribes decomposing at the bottoms of styrofoam cups.
like coin-op wormies.
& eighteen inch circumference blades make round rolling high pitched songs deep in the skin of old mother earth.
old baby cakes.
old life in slow motion, all motion, all
of particle cannon treatise.
40 ounce bounce.
watery us
below.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 2:17 AM UTC
For Robert Lowell
This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,
rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.
Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,
or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it's still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,
receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.
Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair
of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.
The ancient owls' nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!--a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
2.9k
What a nice name for a bird.
I bought a bird.
Tuesday mornings seem to fly away now.
Thursdays often nest in my eyebrows
and every second Sunday I could find reason to sing.
The bird took my soul.
and flew away with my money.
I should have never bought a bird.
Feathers ****
Next month I shall buy a dog, or perhaps a horse, maybe even an armadillo.
But the dog will run, the horse will trot, and the armadillo will roll;
All away.
Pets ****
Next year I shall find a wife,
and the the month before a band of pearl,
but what If I should run away?
what if I would ****
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 12:47 PM UTC
See, see the tiny sky
Marvel at its big puce depths.
Tell me, Tony do you
Wonder why the armadillo ignores you?
Why its foobly stare
makes you feel churned.
I can tell you, it is
Worried by your giffengididdle ****** growth
That looks like
A mold.
What's more, it knows
Your pantsy potting shed
Smells of ******
Everything under the big tiny sky
Asks why, why do you even bother?
You only charm garlics.
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 6:05 AM UTC
There were gnomes within
The abyss
Crying because they had
No way home
Cowering below water
Trout wipes
Spawning the souring eggs
They laid
Sun-shower clouds spawn
On and on and on
Crying beyond the fathom
Of the Heavens
Armadillo shrimp sunbathe
The bubbling sea bath
Trout wipes' infectious wrath
Drift off current
Tremble off the beat
Induce a treasuring smile
Recover from the bipolar company
Trout wipes
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 9:12 PM UTC
I am soft and mandible:
fresh clay, the inside of an oyster, the belly of an armadillo.
vulnerable. tender. the anti-sharp.
everything is blurred. dulled. hidden
behind a gossamer haze and ambient noise.
a photo out of focus. one eye closed and ten feet back.
dizzy. so dizzy. disoriented.
there is no logic here. no rules. no laws.
and that’s what makes it horrible and incomprehensible.
the transplant recipient still dies. the man in perfect health
suddenly has cancer.
the proned patient flipped back to supine for intubation
codes and dies immediately.
nonsense. it’s all nonsense.
it's easier to take a breath and
compartmentalize.
Aug 15, 2021
Aug 15, 2021 at 8:37 PM UTC
God is good & God is great
He hates queers that levitate
Momma said that God is dead & I can touch a thousand men
We're not hippies, we're just dumb
We do drugs. We Have fun
(No Brains!)
Obama, I wanna go-bama
I know you know I wanna
go-bama to a sauna
in the Bahamas, bring iguanas
Obama, I think
I think you know-bama
I wanna go, I wanna wear pajamas
in Bahama mama sticky saunas
(No Brains!)
I don't know how to think
The clock goes " tick tick tick tick"
Gotta speak quick, gotta think big
Gotta beat kids with a big stick
God told me I wrote the bible
Jesus had a black disciple
Jesus got behind the wheel
He'll make Obama great again
He'll make it rain and bring the pain
He'll make it make it make it
(No Brains!)
Jesus cured all my diseases
He taught me what cottage cheese is
Analingus teachers taught the preachers how to feed us
eat a fetus
Jesus teaches
(No Abortion!)
but I don't really think that it's that important
but if you really think that its that important
there's pre-abortional baptism
America runs on fascism
American chicks like circumcision not activism
if it lacks vision then
police could release the crack
in the ghetto snacks
in the ghetto shacks
In the fellow stacks, it'll make a better tax return
I'm like,
(No Brains!)
It's metal, baby
Obama, I wanna go-bama I think
I think, you wanna know-bama,
I wanna go-bama I think
I think, you wanna know
It's metal, baby
Don't touch me, I'm beautiful
Touch me touch me, I will sue
Don't touch me, I have a crush
Watch me crush, watch me ****
Armageddon veterans take armadillo medicine
I eat you like venison
Watch me crush, watch me ****
Apr 12, 2016
Apr 12, 2016 at 10:55 PM UTC
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
I remember morning
Peeping through the curtains' awning
As I just lay there
With my gal just begging for it bare.
Every Texan city
Where I've dropped my pants
Ain't so ******* pretty
Without love and romance.
I'll ne'er forget Amarillo
Every night I'd grease her *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.
Is this the way to Amarillo?
Where I kissed an armadillo
Crying over her huge *****
And sweet Edna's ***** hair.
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And the girl who ****** me there.
There's a church bell ringing
Welcoming the KY-gel I'm bringing
Though I may be poor
I'm the guy who's coming to do her.
Just beyond the highway
There's an open door
And I can't stop running
To **** that little *****
I can't forget Amarillo
And Edna's mighty *****
I dream dreams of Amarillo
And the girl who ****** me there.
Which is the way to Amarillo?
I've been weeping on my pillow
Clutching to her huge great *****
And sweet Edna's public hair.
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
And sweet Edna's ***** hair
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Wah wa wa wa wa wa
Lovely Edna's ***** hair
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 10:16 AM UTC
You say I don’t need a poem
to capture the day in a frame and tuck it
beneath my pillow
But I’d like to have it there in case I forget
the way the armadillo on the side of the road
lay belly up, beer bottle in paw
a redneck's respects for the deceased
or the feeling of three in the morning
pounding in my skull, soaking in memories
trivia pursued and articles of obfuscation: the elucidation of the world
seen through bottle-green binoculars and heard
through the neighbor's windchimes ringing out diminished sevenths
and questions I don't want to answer
or even ask out loud
I want to tuck it in my wallet
for times that I can't remember your faces
or the scent of your shampoo, or the order of keychains
on your keyring, or the times we drove to East Jesus Nowhere
and you ripped the leaves from my calendar, ticking
and turning my seasons by the mile markers in the cement
I do this to engrave it in my cerebrum
the nights we ran outside in our pajamas in the rain
and danced for a while, then danced some more,
turning and leaping and spinning and reaching
and falling down to weep for no reason
mourning the morning
among the sharpened blades of grass
You laughed at me once
remember that? how you scoffed and snatched
my paper from my spiral and stuffed it in the trash can
telling me not to write fiction in history class
but it's just as much history as every other Jefferson
another amendment you'll never read
But I forgive you. you're not the first
to tell me to get my feet out of the clouds
because my head's already gone too far for saving
or to attempt to stifle my addiction to
the scratch of pen on paper
the scent of ink on tree
the pulse of blood in my brain
I cling to syntax like religion
keeping the words pinched in my fists like pixie dust
hoping if I say the right abracadabra
the pen will turn to a wand
and I can paint you the details
one day at a time
May 15, 2010
May 15, 2010 at 8:40 PM UTC
I can become an armadillo any minute.
Every negative I see is one more inch of my spine that curves into a ball.
I can put up a sectioned yet rough exterior
But if you take a jab a just the right crack of me.
I become nothing more than water and dust.
A fragile flesh your predator mind can tear apart.
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 11:20 PM UTC
rest in peace, armadillo pancake.
you died swiftly, thank goodness
at the hand of my left wheel
tail still attached
the plates of your back folded into you like wings.
farewell, my ridged armadillo splotch.
i think of you every time i dodge your smudge of color
and every time one of your brothers wanders by
walking clueless into the same predicament
stunned into pancake-hood forever.
alas.
rest in peace, my flat friend.
you will not be forgotten.
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 11:46 PM UTC
Whats that over there?
An Armadillo!
Whats he doing now?
A Scented Pillow!
Filling it up with lots of Potpourri!
Selling it down by the roadside!
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 12:11 AM UTC
with
her
heart full of joy and laughter
orange light
bounced
back and forth
with
its
reflection
than
skipped across
the
melodic surface of
the
yellow bamboo river
while
the
armadillo sunset
blared her
brass coronets
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 8:42 PM UTC
I've been told by some that I should allow myself to submit to a higher power.
I've been told by some that I should allow myself to completely surrender myself to the drugs on which I am...
Pompletely Cowerless.
Chompin' at the bitcoin for a hit -
Groin split, oh so tender -
**** it with tin foil so you can walk out the door without sounding the alarm.
**** it with armadillo dandruff so that the Migh and Highty gemi-dods of foral mailure and tetail reft might pity your chleek seekbones long enough to get that bimmering shooty to the sawn phop so that you can Havid Dazzle-Off those pitiful pieces of plastic and fencehorth vondez ru with the dead boy crew; stew you boil cook that dead boy brew; get it all in through the strands and tubes; melt face down down to towndown..... ******
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 7:56 AM UTC
For awhile now i’ve been trying to find some sense of solace
or some place of serenity in a haven that only i know of.
I’ve filled countless pages with the ideas and notions
that would shape and build those walls of my haven
to keep all the things that would render me broken
and hurt away from my world and sliver of sunshine.
It’s gone now. That haven i claimed.
pushed aside like an unwanted fly,
someone else claimed my haven.
My haven of words, of language, of prose and poetry.
The only escape i knew i not only loved but was good at.
The only thing i ever felt a sense of pride in doing.
The only place i ever felt i belonged. My haven.
it’s gone.
she took it. just like she’s taken so many other things from me.
my strength, my joy, my self-worth, my childhood, my soul.
without my haven, i’m an armadillo continuously rolled up
so as not to feel the sticks and stones raining down on me.
the armor thickens and the bones stiffen in place.
It’s not so easy for me to be gentle now.
It’s not so easy for me to unroll my armor.
All i know now is this life without the walls of my haven.
no sense of joy in words, in language, in prose or poetry.
outside the sunshine, outside the haven, there is only numbness…
Jul 29, 2010
Jul 29, 2010 at 9:12 AM UTC
Arcane;
red morte…
a
dear
incident
looming;
laconic
odyssey.
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 3:02 PM UTC
Absorbing root matter,
assenting dementia,
inspiring luckless lives
onward.
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 2:58 PM UTC
He was a dillo. A simple dillo
Chillin in the forest. Young dillo. A dillo, so cunning.
Running. Suddenly.
Trees aflame."O man"
That's what the dillo says.
"Hot dam."
The dillo says
as he sees the beavers.
Burning and running in circles,
burning up like a fever.
"Get in the water beaver!","Beaver!"
"Get in that water ******
"Nah, we okay, my dam ain't, but I cannot tell really.OH fate, My face is melting off, what is life for oneself, in this health let this ****** die now?"
Dillo so sad, but still says with no doubt "Love of life is worth the pain so here's how I'll help"
Running quick, grabbing the ****** with both hands, sending him to the water with him, flames spew about but get cooled down, wash, drowned.
The ****** still lay dead, a blow to the head, a stone from when he was thrown in, lodged jagged.
The dillo cry more, "oh how can my spirit soar, when my world gets burned and chopped to the floor, and everyone I love, I am killing unintentionally, I am so torn, should I die, let go of my will like the ****** oh."
Should I lay to waste and burn, or continue to find my way out this jungle?
Amplified by a passion of life the dillo runs faster to find what is right, which he might... For fighting to live is how he lives right.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 3:51 AM UTC
After riddling mad.
Austere dreams
indulge
long layered
overcoats.
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 3:01 PM UTC
an armadillo
falling in love
with an ant;
evidently
a tragedy
in the making.
A nightingale
getting enamored
by a crow;
certainly is
a comedy
in perfect proportions.
an elephant
trampling
the tropical jungles,
falling head over heels
for a blue whale,
even if for a while
is an adventure perilous
he and she
falling in love
without rhyme or reason
propelled by a heavy dose of passion
is love at first sight, the height
it is thought, of a romantic liaison!
but tragedy and comedy
with all probabilities of
incompatibility lurk in human minds
till it strikes with out any signal of warning,
if the two, supposedly madly in love
are not certain, of the reasons, of the love that struck them,
and swept off the feet, in the inebriating love season
Nov 17, 2011
Nov 17, 2011 at 11:49 AM UTC
Turned in my hand
Pine cone every perfect detail
Like a pattern
Something of armadillo
About you
Love the symmetry
The natural grace
That makes my head
Swim
So natural
Like the way you smile
Like the way I feel
When you smile
Do you ever do
Anything less
Than be piney
Or coney
Sure you don’t try
Sure you don’t
Feb 15, 2011
Feb 15, 2011 at 12:13 PM UTC