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Jim Hill Feb 2017
At Singing Hills*

Down upon the earth, boy,
brushing dirt from broken flints.
The woman, tall, in khaki pants,
slowly stands and squints.

Down upon the earth with
pockets full of stones.

A hundred yards across the land
where knife-grass spears the sand
a bullsnake sleeps in sunlight.

Speak of arrowheads and Utah,
you,
with dignified excitement;
speak of ostrich eggs!

You and I, she'd say,
Galapagos!
Where armored turtles
heave their bulks across the land.

Here Mother Earth lies naked
to her bones.
Flint bones,
in sun as white as lamplight.

With your Thermos cup in hand
talk of arrowheads again—
or Galapagos—
Where giant turtles rule the land!
wandabitch Oct 2012
102212
Indian soul I want your bow
Weapon of peace
Instrument of thieves
Gift of the gods
Curse of the slaves
Children of fate
Wait
Revenge finds thee
Sets you free
Rest now
The Widow Jul 2016
What mighty importance
rests so fat on the shoulders of you

that i'm refused
the right to lay love where I want it grown?

Bonds can loosen
Loads you've carried furthest can be shared

I know Trust is earned
but it's Earnest too, when I demonstrate it purely,

Laying all my bones
at all your doors as promises and gifts

I'll even renew - if you want -
That honest vow to remember all your birthdays

to Topple on your soul
If you need the weight of someone not you.

Can we be side by side
In a blurred rush towards the singularity?

or Am I the ***
you lead to water - am I the water itself?

Don't let me place-hold
or keep the seat warm for overdue truths

There's no need
to balance each other's acts of self sabotage

Or to pretend
Either of us is any more than what we are

We both understand
That grace is to us just brightly coloured feathers.

Please let us be safe
Together, in that disappointing mess

And let me work
on Those snags of control and owning and having

Because I don't remember
how you became confection behind a window

What made me
Treat you as the best since...sliced boys

but My diet did change
I didn't want to spoil you for lesser bread

and Now a hunger
and rot collide in the vacant spaces you're yielding.

Is it an upset
to cry at your objection to my care

Or when I kick
and scream at the labels you stick to me

When you call me
callous Hysterical and paranoid to preoccupation

Incurring open fire
and pointed barbs about your ***** Mother

Who ruined you for women, love
You, who will only ever be half aware of this and that.

I'll go willingly though
on display, to be mocked in silent penance

For What else next
but to try to hold you to me

To try to sit as still
As time and light do for me when you move in my direction

and Be as hard
as your endorsement makes me.

But for all the noise
Of our collapsing walls and siege machinery

The poison
that may never fully be drawn.

You are here.
I am here.
What else are we gonna do.
Tiffany Norman Oct 2014
Moths float out from behind
an opened, warped door.
I push my face into your clothes,
hung heavy like pearls
in an antique shop.
Stale and familiar,
the scent follows me
like a lost little bee.
It buzzes even after I leave.

Hopscotch down the hallway
to find dead crickets
in the bathtub.
Scuffed wallpaper camouflages
a cobweb. Metallic vines
curve around bursts of petals.
I’m certain you chose this pattern,
but I don't know.

Memories are few.
I fill in the holes with honey
and arrowheads.
Indian feathers and
an old brooch.
Piles of pie.
Did you love to bake pie?

Games of bridge
on that old, scratched table top
with a musty deck of Bicycle cards.
Each deck a photo album
of your face.

Your raisined face.
I remember holding it in my hands.
“This aint a walk for old womans.”
And out the door I go.
Empty handed and independent.
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
What a rash of time we've wasted.
Drunken, displaced it all.
The hiking trails up solemn, summer
ridge lines. Jagged arrowheads lifted
out toward the sky and we feel gifted.

A crack in the rock a millennia old.
The dangers of going it alone;
the spy who came in from the cold.

Two open throated eulogies and scatter her ash.
Two years of time spent together, now memorized pash.

Sifting through sight lines of our mediocre city streets.
Sweating up the summertime together-alone,
and getting twisted as we jam to louder growing beats.

We took our hands and divined a place on the timeline.
Steady rocking for two revolutions until
she set over the horizon beyond the sunshine.
Look for her and see her in every which place.
It's never her figure and never her face, but
shower curtain blurs and the curls in hair of other girls.
She exists as every brunette that I'll never forget.
Not that I'd want it.

They say, "She loved you. That much is clear."
What a romantic gesture to abandon me here.

If you can read this from your heavenly repose. My heart has grown fonder and still it grows. I'm sure you can see me,
the struggle of having to be anything at all.
Your number is somebody else's now. There's nobody to call.
Summertime gives way to Autumn,
I'm sorry if you hurt having to see what I do now.
The glyphs in my mountain roots.
My rotting bark and lost spark.
My constant stops and false starts.
My swelling, my welts, the harm I cause.
You're not to be blamed, darling.
Not a single word from my tongue nor do I entertain
the thought of others who wish you disdain.
I've lost a bit of myself in the guilt and the shame.
Truth be told, I'm not sure I'll recover and be the same.
A jilt is one thing, a turn down is fine.
But I lost who told me she was mine.
I should've doted more and been more attentive.
You fell in love with me because I was romantic.
So where did I fail you and how can I improve?
I just want to make you happy,
I just want to show you.
There was no need to quit the way that you did.
We could have taken a break,
you could have hibernated, hid.
But it's fine you chose the way you did.
Now you're the punchline of my dark jokes.
"Oh, I'm sorry, no, I only kid."
Repeating myself like I've forgotten what I even said.
Loving is hard when you've never felt it.
But it's harder than that when you feel it and lost it like I did.
Do you think you can forgive me?
I don't know if promises will be kept forever.
poorly written poem about an anniversary i hate to be alive for and the two years before where my life peaked

six years is much too many,
but still i'm here
sadly
ConnectHook Feb 2017
Southwestern Dis-United States of Memory*

Piñon smoke and sagebrush, voice of New Mexico night driving into an Arizona dawn rising over dreaming pueblos, low-ridden plazas, kivas and ruined cities’ rubble traced and highlighted by sunlight, Anglo angling into Aztec toward Zuni over arid zones… A to Z to El Dorado; a voice covers the high hills with a dusting of snow—every word hangs in the notes of the song: music to fall apart to, breakdown to, hurling the soul  into the bottomless well of psychotic nostalgia: *música de cavanga
, falling into the depths. Melody pushing to the threshold of a bar and leaving you there with cash in your pocket and no ride home. The warmth inside beckons—you step across as the song fills, swells, intoxicates, then excavates the wall of the dam until it collapses. The fatal mistake: you read too much into the lyrics of shallow love songs. The deathwish beast of despair arises, the flooded plains dazzle your eyes, the Indian girl smiles on the rim of the grand canyon, the tattooed cholo pulls a knife in the trailer park, the dark waters under the bridge murmur and surge with regret; el río de Las Animas, Durango CO, Aztec calligraphy on the wall: Las Cruces, NM; Clifton, Morenci, Globe, AZ: stepped pyramids of copper tailings, gang-warred walls in fallen barrios covered in Chicano hieroglyphics, the ruined huts of shepherds and cowboys, pit-house dwellings’ flaked arrowheads and pottery fragments scattered forever in the coyote laugh of desert dusk. Crepuscular colors on the names of mountain ranges: Santa Catalina, Sangre de Cristo, Sandia, each one a separate sunset delirium—then you ride through the night to the city of palm trees and the orange-lined boulevards of Heaven.

The singer herself grew old but her YouTubes live forever.
Voice of Linda Ronstadt, especially her early stuff:
♥ Evergreen (pt. 1)
♥ December Dream
♥ One for One
        etc.

           I ♥ THE STONE PONYS !

https://connecthook.wordpress.com/2014/04/11/lindisima-voice-of-linda/
DJ Goodwin Jul 2012
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.
copyright 2012, David J. Goodwin
Jul 13, 2012
Rea Dec 2021
18
any ground 18 stood on crumbled as all once-great nations do.
the flame of hope that had kept the lights on
turned and burned down the wooden roofs,
while the archers left arrowheads in flesh.
lakes of insurmountable grief covered the ruins of who she once was.
in moments of cruelty, she could feel the bottom of the waters,
could feel the glory of the old self.
the wickedness was that she did not possess the strength to lift it up again, could not resurface glimmering gems.
left without sight and taste, doomed to the brush of fingertips.
Every year on my birthday, I write something to summarize that year. This is part of my ode to 18. Good riddance honestly.
sandbar Jan 2013
I always thought one day I’d write something worth reading
So far, just lines and lines, used up catchphrases
I slumber in the pine needles and breathe in the scent of cut
Juniper
Bathe in the shadow of sundials as the day fades, turns smiles to
moonlit slumber
In the green grass among the dead leaves I lay my head and listen to
leaves changing color
On the cold sand I listen to high tide turn to low, the rolling of the rocks and the
breaking waves of foam
The birds in the trees sing of bamboo forests in her backyard, blue room where she
collected rocks and lucky charms
Books with pages torn out, arrowheads she found in the field, a feather in
her hair
Pale blue eyes which reflected my dullness, reading Camus by the door
She used to read to me, when the sun was sinking and my head was spinning from the
last cigarette
And hold me like a child, hold me with my eyes shut and my lungs screaming to speak one
simple phrase
To grab the pen, to open my eyes and speak symbols onto the page, make my ballpoint
sing
To read a word worth reading, to write a line worth writing, this is my desire
There is no peace at all for the wicked.

Stinging, ruthless words that pierce through mind and heart
Swiftly, precisely, from lips of clay depart
Arrowheads dipped in green poison find their way
To an unwary target, without delay.

There is no peace at all for the wicked.

The tongue is a sinister, crushing weapon
Who dares resurrect one fatally bludgeoned?
“He deserves my verdict!” Rage seethes in defense.
“He smashed my fortress with the least reverence.”

He is without excuse.

Yet the comely victim-prince says, “Follow me…”
He with the sad, compelling eyes
And nail-scarred hands offered gently, steadily
To a soul vanquished by frantic, chaotic “I”

He whose dazzling raiments from the throne hang
unused
Willfully submits to slight, beating, abuse
As leather sandals cushion dusty, wounded feet
He weeps; Fallen creatures smite head and side–they bleed.

Still the comely victim-prince says, “Follow me…”
Now, therefore, beyond excuse,

Man is guilty.
spysgrandson Aug 2013
near the surface,
just beneath the sounds of our feet
among the bones, are arrowheads
maybe a spent cartridge from the bluecoats
who brought a strange thunder,
disturbing the a cappella birdsong,
deeper
hidden in eons of darkness, unperturbed,
until now, by the shallow, scratching efforts
of the creatures above,  
a black organic soup, remnants of plants
and animals who once breathed  
like we, we who now voraciously drill
through the tired but tenacious skin  
to reach a rich marrow, one we resurrect
to blaspheme in our mobile ovens
and scatter ashes
on a deaf and dying rock  

Post Script:
The earth never forgets.
Whatever we do to ****** it is recorded, often in ways undecipherable to man, but etched  permanently somehow, somewhere.
Does the earth seek revenge?
Or is it retribution, or a reckoning?
Anything that has the power to recall every act in infinite detail and in perpetuity has the potential to respond.
Maybe a propensity to respond?  
Is the earth an angry god?
I do not know, but
the earth never forgets.
Third Eye Candy Jun 2014
Are you not what i always wanted ?
if so, i am thankless and crib death mysterious.
i am ****** and clarity
if you are not to be
what's mine.

you are confounding compounded. a rough in the smooth crime.
a jinx in my saving grace... and a loon.

if it be so, that we cannot connect
then let me set my sparrows to arrowheads
and fell the beasties of my wayward
skylarking -
so they may know a noble death in mid-flight
where the downward
and the Midnight are -
eyes, still chirping absurd love
at your dissonance
with cold
blessings.

but give me this.

keep my hands in your robbery.
intertwine my fingers to lay prints
on whatever you stole from god.
let me share the fall
and the fault
so that we may yet share
a single living
Sting.

elsewise,
the ruin and the peck
is only your wound
chirping
and my song is mute
as a victim
in a flock
of ill.

or a grain of hope
in a scarecrow's
eye.
Terry O'Leary May 2016
The flames of the furnace (well-travelled by wind
slowly glazing the rags of gray women chagrined
at the sight of a hair fleeing tresses now thinned)
sometimes billow like waves flooding naves through the night,
when the lightning peeks in where the tension hangs tight
while the lanterns, alarmed, appear fulgent with fright.

Having lost both his hands, and now dancing for dimes,
Captain Hook haunts the alleyway's rivers of rhymes,
sometimes singing or prancing to mimic the mimes
with white faces contorted to pillars of pain,
as the ringmaster murmurs “we're all the insane”
and the inmates dunk donuts in droplets of rain.

With their hammers in hand, in their plum pinafores,
Satan's soldiers of fortune wield powers of Thor's
leaving blood on bent bodies, the tombstones of wars
lining highways and byways  with manna and gold
for the mastermind movers, survivors consoled
with some pie in Valhalla (or so they've been told).

Above boulevards, battered with batches of bricks,
flys the Duchess of Dawdle on waxed candlesticks;
while she watches, debauches, her ****** tricks
as he talks (on their walks in the summer-day parks
where a parrot kneels praying, a parakeet barks)
’bout the buffed brazen beaks of the latter-day larks.

Hoary goblins glow gruesome, they leap from the loft
to the hard-hearted rues, shedding tears that they've quaffed
through the night of the dead as the clarinets coughed
and the keepers kept watch so that no one escaped
dingy dungeons where priests and their puppets hide caped
behind walls lined with tulips and justice hung draped.

In the Garden of Eaten, where apples once grew,
lie the bones, somewhat blanched, from the last barbecue
and the snakes strut like storks down a lost avenue
along tracks  like the cracks on the mask of the moon
all alight with the shadows that seep down a dune
as the firefly crawls from a crimson cocoon.

Phantom trains travel tunnels (dispatched in all haste),
voiding tickets to nowhere, it seems such a waste
to see roadblocks with red lights at dead ends misplaced
at the base of the bowels of the bottomless pit
where reflections of life seem so ****** counterfeit
from the back of the eyes of the blind hypocrite.

Lady cockroaches, camped in the Countesses' beds,
are commanding crusaders to fit arrowheads
to the ends of burnt bridges suspended by threads
from frayed thongs of diminutive bald balladeers
taunting Cerby, the three-headed dog, serving beers
to the pagan disciples of bold puppeteers.

The oceans lay barren, the garbage dumps filling
with fracking and cracking and lead water spilling,
for milling and drilling are thrilling but killing
the birds and the beasts and the tea leaves, soon falling,
yet gurus roast chestnuts but can't heed their calling
while mauling and crawling on knees while they're brawling.

Unshorn sheep in the meadow are led to the bay
to be brainwashed and fleeced, trusting donkeys that bray
of the virtues of demons that haunt yesterday,
while the vultures deflower the turtle dove lanes
where the blood trickles up and the cruel crimson stains
Easter eggshells and feathers – that’s all that remains.

One eyed bees pilot lines through electrical storms
and blind hornets hum hymns when they're swirling in swarms
while the rest are repressed as the blue marble warms
(regent Queens losing sight that the end has begun)
and for eyes of the ewes, veils of wool have been spun  
and the wasps fly their flags from the **** of a gun.

Seven trumpets (attempting to echo the horns
of the Siamese goats and the three Unicorns
giving birth to the mirth in the temple of thorns)
sound the bugles of sorrow inside of the sea
of crazed lies of the wormwood afloat like a pea
in a pod of dark dolphins that can't disagree.

Often bellowed by barkers, to crowds with no faces,
are words (in their aftermath, leaving no traces)
of picnics and parties in limbo-like places
on paths to perdition where pundits are preaching
and sirens belch bullets while pirates prowl, breaching
the shadow's barbed branches, with whistles blown, screeching.

They're dissecting dissenters that dare to annoy
and then trample with jackboots sent in to destroy,
until taming the toes of the last Gypsy boy
who gets caught in the craw of their cold catacomb
with no rescue by running nor staying at home,
and no freedom to breathe, only rough roads to roam.
Megan Jones Apr 2019
December 18th, 2018
I've been running down this
Snow-covered road
For fourteen miles
With arrowheads
Pierced through
The bridges of my feet

Extremities turning blue, then black
You can't turn back now, face it-
"Twelve inches overnight", they said
We reap what we sow, echoing...

A whisper ran beside me
Running off the road - into the woods
I followed-
Until we reached the lake

Frozen almost to the center
I laid down, began making snow angels
Looking up at old light and dancing trees
I hope the ice cracks reach me-
Before they do
Kayley Brayz Nov 2019
(Part 1)




Standing on the mountain,
Slaying hordes, creating a blood-splashing fountain,
My sword slicing and slashing,
The bones broken, the bodies slayed, the blood gushing and splashing!!

When the foghorn blows, I know they want war,
My power will unleash itself, my sword will slay, no matter who they are,
Be it my mother or my brother,
For me, there is no such thing as fighting for each other…

I believe that in very corner there is anger and hate,
Talking about my sword, it you shall rate,
It is of fine diamond, sharp as the sharpest stone,
Swift enough to slice an apple in the air, and sharp enough to slice off any bone!

I watch with glee as the silver knights roar out the battlecry,
I watch as they grip their mighty swords, and start dashing, running to me, wanting to die,
They gallop on their horses, the ground shaking and trembling beneath their mighty army,
Maybe there is too much of a score, but surely to one knight I will make a death all charmy…

I grip my fine sword, as my eyes pierce the view, my head covered by my hood,
My face darkened by the hide covering my head, I'm death itself, standing on these lands for up to no good,
My green luminescent pupil-less eyes judge that of the knights there is a one-hundred four score,  
As I stand there, dressed in my black hide, my fur boots, I remembered how I used to say, "The more tough it is, the more gore…"

Suddenly, with a blink of an eye, we are face to face,
The horses shriek at me, as I leap at the knights,
A sword pointed at my heart, an arrow at my head, and swinging for my head, there is a rusty iron mace,
I grin, knowing that ****** will I make the nights!!

The eyes lock for a moment, the moment tenses,
There is anger in every heart as we stare, not just give nervous glances,
The time freezes, it's like in a slow-motion,
And suddenly, I basically activated an anger-rage potion!!

My jaws snap open, and air ripples around as my roar that is heard thousands of miles away explodes out of my jaws,
The knights' ears ring from the loudness of my roar,
The diamond sword tighter I grip with my finger-like claws,
And swing to my right at lightning speed, slicing the heads of the knghts' being four!

Blood gushes in a circle, while I give them no sign of good-luck,
My sword slashing, the clash of metal, my sword stabbing each knight like a duck,
Piercing the skin with my sword, I rip out their intestines with a flick of my hand,
The arrows zip at me, the arrowheads piercing my skin like it is sand…

I feel my bones snapping from the arrows, but pain doesn't brings me down,
Pain only makes me more angry and stronger, me it doesn't drown,
I'm a ghoul whose strength is not explained,
As I slice the knights and dodge the arrows, I remembered how when I fought, the blood rained!!

I stab a silver knight, driving my sword right through his ribs, ending his pain and troubles, then flick my hand and cut off one's head,
An arrow pierces my temples, but yet I'm still not dead,
Dodging swords and arrows, I slam my fist on the ground,
The air ripples around me, and the air pushes off the knights and arrows around!

My cloak swooshes from the force of the air,
I'm made of tough muscles and skin, fair?
You, an army of two-thousand-four knights, versing one thing that looks like a ghoul,
I'm too powerful, and already a thousand knights are slayed, ye fool!!

I came here for diamond, treasures and gold,
I'm a thing, I have no age, so I'm neither young nor old,
I'm empty inside due to my powerful god-like strength, making me heartless and cold,
As I stand there with muscles tense, blood pooled on the grass, I watch the knights standing, mighty and bold…

I call them warriors, I call myself a ghoul,
As I get back in battle, I slice off one's arms, making him from pain just drool,
He falls on the ground as my sword finds his head, the fall breaking his rib bone,
As I slice off heads and arms, legs and waists, dodging arrows and receiving blows of swords, I speak in a demonic voice, "You ain't alone!!!!"

Slicing bodies, smashing bones with my fists and legs,
My sword creating a gushing fountain of blood,
Smashing ribs like they are shells from eggs,
You are fighting someone, who in war is a god!!!

As the arrows slice right through my skin from the force of the archers' metal bows,
I squat, my legs bented as I dodge all the blows,
Suddenly I push off with my legs, zooming into the sky,
The air ripples around, pushing back the knights paces away, as I zoom to the stars, up so high…

I gradually slowen down cause of the gravity, as I start falling down through the mist,
I face the Earth as I start zooming and searing through air  back down, my diamond sword ahead of my head, clinched by my ****** fist,
I see the army of a thounsand, gawking and looking up at the speeding comet in the sky,
"Here I come to gain my gold and make you know only one word, 'die'!!!"

My sword finds the ****** ground, as the ground explodes in a tremendous explosion and boom,
The flame unleashes and covers the sky, covers the lands, bringing upon the army a burning doom,
From space one could see how a big chunk and piece of Earth has exploded with fire,
Few minutes pass, and the as the smoke and fire clears, the victory is given to the hooded figure, giving others what they deserve and need to desire…

Slayed is the army of two-thousand and four,
It was rather too quick, I wish for more,
At least mine is all the treasures and the ore,
There was no other way to gain my treasures, so I gained them with gore…

I stand in the crater, formed by my victorious fatality,
If they want to steal my gold, they deserve such a brutality,
I'm death itself, and a ghoul,
If you spot me, remember to give what I want and don't be a fool………



-Mishka Wayz
This is created by me,  yes. It was hard to do this but at least I did it. This is a fantasy which I created.

The ghoul, is a guy, but he is so sinful and evil, and full of darkness and gore, that he calls himself a ghoul. He thinks he is a thing. But anyway, his name is Scardebego Whipsidol. Yes, I created the name and poem myself and everything is created by me. Sorry if there are any typos or it doesn't makes sense.
Also, Scardebego's strength is unexplained, and he is selfish for treasures. He slays anyone who dares touch his gold. He had a mother btw, and a family, but he was cursed by his greed for gold and treasures, that's why he killed his family and that's why he is so powerful and god-like, but sadly, dark and monstrous.

He can breath underwater for 78 hours until death  (3 days) (He has fish gills also)
He can burn alive for 78 hours until death  
He is dead only after more than a billion arrows (The poem takes place in the times of LOTR, but if it was bullets, he would die after a million of them)
He dies in acid and lava and mercury after 78 hours
He can live without his body parts for 78 hours (Head, legs, arms) (Also if his chest is torned open)
His full speed is the speed of lightning
His voice can be demonic and deep at times, and sometimes he can roar so loud your ears will shriek from the loudness that you won't be able to hear after a time (You might go deaf)
He sometimes doesn't speaks at all
His bones only break if he falls from the height of the moon
If his bones is broken, he can easily snap it back into place and his bone heals over time
His eyes shine at random moments, but mostly his face is darkened by the hood, making a hollow black-like void

No copywriting please



There. Cheers Lol
Kally Nov 2012
And ‘panic’ doesn't nearly describe:
Pure oxygen turning sour in lungs,
Meals threatening a return from the stomach,
Twitchy fingers and wobbly legs,
Soreness of a tense body,
Laughs-turned-sobs,
Eyes adorned with purple rings,
A destructive adrenaline that welcomes blood.

The red bag has been replaced (just as I was).
No longer do my weapons sit alongside your arrowheads of safety and legitimate love.
A black casket is their new home, shiny and perfectly angled.
It hides in the farthest reaches of a drawer,
beckoning my hand to let the metal topple out of its dark casing.
Three generations of proving that I’m alive,
that I’m capable of feeling something other than
the feet of someone on top of me or the sting of words meant to be innocent.

And yes, I am stronger than I once was.
But I’m stronger in a different way, in a different sense of the word.
Yes, I am weaker in spirit and weaker in a way that makes
daily thoughts into nightmares.
But I am stronger in body.
I am ready for the war this time, and I swear to Orion that I won’t let
my lack of muscle mass or the words ‘replaced’ and ‘forgotten’
etched across my thighs and hip bones hold me back from fighting.
I will throw punches until my arms lay limp and
I will kick until my feet are bleeding and my toes are broken.
Toothache Jan 2020
Passing around a fatal flaw like a joint in a hot box,
Refreshing baths of Coca~Cola and regretful indulgence
We are wasting away in a paradise of my creation

Poems tinted grey through abstinent romanticism,
and an inexplicable undertone inherent to my prose.
As everything starts to return to a drumming constant.
It all sounds the same.

We've been sunbathing in porcelain skies and empty daydreams.
Drab and dreary and acid washed.
Interrupted like a beach by the sea,
By the little pieces of drug soaked warmth that act as comforting distractions.
A smile or a shoulder or a sunny day to drink from.
Summer and solitude, the likeness of warm bodies in a cold pool.
So.
Compose me an opera of Soda Cans and of choral song. Synthesise two bass lines and slow drip coffee and pollen and folk.
Make it for me so I can watch you as you work.
Let me listen and bask in its ludacris vanity, and clean shallow waters.
How I would relish the time spent muddying the current. Destroying the tide I desired out of boredom.
And black hot frustration.

Flowers painted in acid and acrid accounts of repetative revalations in the context of rude rosy cheeked romance.
Blonde haired ignorance and one dimensional delusions.
Blue eyed terrorists armed with air and arrogance.

Give me seatwarmers and handholding
Or corvettes and convertables.
Give me arrowheads and heart attacks
Humble my bones with a cardiac

!F.R.I.E.N.D.S.!
SITCOMS
ADJASENT PLOTLINES
mumble rap
AND ***** TALK HOTLINES
four letter words with little context or meaning and selfless expression that's often demeaning

Its September in January and it rains for a day
And despite all our efforts
The days waste away
sandbar Oct 2010
Sun rays roll down the green grass & ochre weeds
Yellow, bitter, flowers, litter the hillside
Long red rays turning pink as split figs
Orange as hot coals, blue as the ocean
Then the bustle of twilight, such noise
Streaking headlights fade into receding redness
Carrying their sound with them, down the road
Figures, sillouhetes, wander by me, quiet conversations
Wind stirs their outlines, rustles their clothing, their hair
Bringing me the scent of dust, of split juniper
Darkness descends, but it cannot ***** out street lights
Or the flourescent floodlights, glaring artifical brightness
Or the blinking red eyes of radio masts
I'll peddle back now, chased by headlights
Down black asphalt roads, black as the night
Radiated heat, gathered from this boiling day
Sweat pouring down my face, into my eyes
Breath tearing at my chest, blood racing through veins
I have to outrun the night, to make it on time
To that quiet destination, a little room on the second story
With a chair, a desk, a shelf full of unread books
A yellow notepad, a pen that doesn't work so well
Arrowheads and unshaped stones, a bullet on the dresser
My grandpas old knife, a symbol of the ****** Mary
Your charms that you carelessly left behind
A small tiled room with a shower to stand under
Watch it drain away, dirt & soap, all of it
A face stares back at me, changed, distorted
A reflection in the mirror, a reflection that was me
r Jun 2018
I used to keep a bell jar
full of old fine fishing line
arrowheads, gold coins
and stuff not easy to find

like cherry cured shine from
my mountains of Tennessee

buried in a lunch bucket
twelve paces from the coop
waiting for the moon
who took his own sweet time

slower than a long night
listening to the same hoot
of the same old hoot owl
in the same old dying tree

knowing it was the end
of my days on the Creek
me, I could see it coming
like a dead star's light

from so long ago
I couldn’t possibly know
which old road I’d follow

so holler at me my
friends, my loves
from time to time
wherever you be

whenever your heart strings
are feeling a need
to tell this spirit of mine
your sorrows, your joys
or wishes for
better tomorrows

and I will from somewhere
be there with open arms
and ears and a heart

sewn tight with that jar
of invisible string
that binds our lives together
forever and longer than that
light from a dead star still
burning on shining so bright.
Keep on rocking in a free world, my friends.  

And james, you old coot, yes you,  put back on that black beret that looked so cool and get your *** back here to write HP some lines of your fine poetry.
Sombro Mar 2016
Skies stretch sparks to light the damp ground
And I watch, chuckling by the lambs
Lapping the waves that smack tastily at their feet
And bring in the harvest for the day.

The sun bows its head
And sea makes its sleep
For it to hide amongst the bubbles
Until the Night claps it awake.

Footprints stretch up the beach made
Of arrowheads and other cobbled things
You're there, you're there
Pulling me to your place.

Warm, shivering houses, of
Wooden overcoats and salty lashings
Made wind by fervent tides
Desperate to huddle in and hear stories

Of your uncle, your father, your brother's ruddy cheeks,
But you have eyes with me
And we lend them together to the fire
To hear of orcs, of brochs and angry kings, far away.

The howling streets meet no one,
And pirates prowl their decks to see
A glimpse of my island girl
As she holds my arm cased in wool

Blond hair crying to the floor.

For I am a story, you see, I know what I have when I have it
And salt, quiet lamp-lit salty living
Make ancient ages while keeping,
The mainland for themselves.

Good thing I have her,
So I can share in what she calls home
So I can lie in the lavender in Summer
And cry with the Winter rain when she's gone.
A spontaneous poem, really, but one I liked writing.
Joseph Valle Sep 2012
Worded arrowheads
are fastened to shafts.
They rain down on
our Love-fed ears.

Bowstring at ready
pulled back high-sky,
They strike down all
who lived this earth.

My soul, infringed,
asked, "How can this be,
with heart shut tight
from melancholy?"

Closed cold, a shield,
I thought could withstand
the force of a blow
guided not by your hand.

The force of a blow
guided not by your hand.
In time the sands
will salt our land.

Your words will crop
my sagging skin
and feed the ground
with hollow chest.

Death for the young
never-held as best,
but for this earth
a heart at rest.

But for this earth,
put Death to rest.
The price of youth,
pays for the best.
The delusional expectancy of arriving to a unified decision under a false, and somewhat mysterious banner leaves the tender footed Neanderthals to drawl and crawl towards their inevitable demise, at the hands of a lesser evil, catering to their cowardice, the ultimate usurper.


Barriers formed and forged in concrete molds left behind by a war mongering ancestry devoured by their ****** progeny.

An enemy approaches…

Throne rooms held in recessed hills, concealed in a shroud of fog, left off by the chilled steam stewing off yesteryears loss.

Heroes transported on expensive tapestry, in banners provoking deeds of old, and the memory of their meaning.

Hold in masses of collected honor.

Catapulted horrors break the line.

Strains of panic retreat in woeful singularity.

Fear infects the herd as arrowheads of cowardice break the chain-mail guard.

Women and children pushed behind a diseased king as he purges his principles in the face of death.

He seals the entrance in stone.

A son, known for his great misdeeds, and vast misfortunes takes step before his small family as the army approaches.

In a hallowed tomb as a mere boy, he heard the tune, uttered from the devil’s lips.

A summoning song.

Here he sings the treacherous tune as the sounds of heavy marching fill the halls.

The last barrier breaks.

Shrieks of terror erupt.

Demise is at hand.

Men lose their valor as they turn and flee, only to be met by a concrete reminder of their inevitable fatality.

The child’s voice grows demonic as the words begin to devour his soul.

There’s an odd presence in the room.

Death is prolonged…momentarily.

A void is opened.

The army begins to flee.

Victory is at hand.

Then the illusion of their invasion lifts, as soldiers, once more than visible, turn to ghosts, and finally fade from battle.

Cheers break out, only for a moment.

A hole opens in the center of the room, at first no larger than the size of a pin, but it expands outward at an alarming pace.

Guards scramble to funnel their people out of the breach.

An evil comes forth, once barred from the walls of this land.

It antagonizes the people with tales of its delusional sorcery.

Then thanks the young boy who brought it forth.

A world is soon devoured.

The end.
SøułSurvivør Jun 2017
Three children brought
Onto earth
Three children did
He rear
Three children made
From His own genes
From stardust we appeared.

From the foundation
Of our lives
He sent us to school
Possessed of his intelligence
And HE was NOT a fool

Great aptitude for reading
This is how he taught
The books my father gave me
Produced much
Higher thought

We went to places
far & wide
Hawaii was like heaven!
We went to Montreal
For Expo '67

Various religions
We were to understand
We went to see the kivas
In the native lands

We went to search
For arrowheads
We looked for
various traces
Of native habitation
Appreciating other races

He tried to teach me math
Using the flashcards
But I was into writing
So he let me be a bard

He loved the
arts & sciences
He loved agriculture
He grew up
deprived of it
So he taught us culture

We took the piano
He helped me
make a start
Writing my own music
He encouraged my art!

I'll read him this poem
We will then discuss
How he has the  
GREATEST legacy

For my dad has *US!
Happy Father's Day!

And to all the single moms out there... you're a FATHER TOO!
One wears the wages of sin
As war's protecting bibs
Where arrowheads of flight
Cannot pierce the pump within

Taste the salt upon the sea
The sea where sins are drowned
Upon the hearts that sit on sleeves
The head of smiles we crown

Back across the cross we bear
Hear the pounding of the condemned
Perhaps we will never be more
Than the crown of thorns we wear

So the cherry tree has fallen
It's bark black with disease
Lime should cure the problem
I will be planting trees
What was the inspiration
for country ponds , for carefree
bodies of water nurturing native songs
Filling young hearts , blue mirrors with tall pine edges ,
carefree days 'neath cozy river birches
Dragonfly prancers and rock bass river dancers ,
sultry bullfrog diddies , red clay marsh , rolled up
britches , sacks of sandwiches , straw hats ,
cardinals , egrets , herons , chickadees and finches
Rain cooled July breezes , row upon row of knee high corn ,
blackberry , blueberry and dewberry thorns
Songs of the creek , of highland hayfield and crystal clear rivers
Tales of arrowheads , tomahawks and hawk feather quivers
The confluence of neighboring streams
The story of piedmont dreams
Copyright March 14 , 2017 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Sequoia Sawyer Jun 2017
Rattlesnake*
      or *of zealous sapphire


An era of old and golden skies,
in a desert of silent-film sienna,
ragtime sepiatone and a pyrite sunrise,
pinstriped wiseguys sold the valley sand,
fit in felt fedoras and shaking leather hands
on namesakes ornate with glowing jewels,
a boulevard curbed and paved,
concrete stiles and marble tiles upon
a cosmic palisade of glass, inlaid
and framed in miles and miles
of brass and brightly colored burning gas.
A glamorous new epoch burst forth,
avaricious in its incandescent gloss,
when they raised this monument
of the brightest kind, we gained,
and some gave a dear cost in trade
for the cones inside of our eyes.

I am a chemical reaction
that reels recklessly
between dancing Stardust
and downward spiral.
I am charisma so coy.

We've all slivered shades of silver
and sugar coursing through our veins,
spears poised upon the ancient prairie,
blades of bone, bending bows, and
coursing prey on prehistoric plains.
Mixed in us and inherited still, this thrill -
the chill, the chase and the payoff,
the risk and the waiting, the praying
your scent, your sense, or dollars and cents
aren't fatally spirited away.
Lately, the ferns are thinning
so we've traded them for sins
and felt of the same color,
our hoards of arrowheads and clubs
printed now upon paper cards,
reticulum tuned not for tracking or furs,
but spinning and flashing,
whistling, whirrs, and winning motorcars.

I've a heart that's Horseshoe shaped,
a lucky charm I risk on,
and win and lose on,
and always hope
at least for an even break.

The triumphs of man are the product
of cams and crankshafts, pistons and oil,
plumes of shadow spewing into the sky.
Westward ran the rails, stacking bricks wide,
raising sticks high and uncoiling telegraph wire
into the furious bustle of industrial-grade hustle,
an inchoate flag, perfect suits,
three card monties, and filthy collars
all of zealous sapphire.
Generations admire at the Union's gate
the stately electric minarets pushing skyward,
towering metal tracks ushering light
onto a sphynx of quartz, pitch as pusher breath,
delta at the neon roads,
where chrome locomotives out of Chicago
braked in the glow of this phosphorescent portico
once plated in droptop Eldorados.

My parents are celebrated people,
so I was celebrated in kind
my birthday blazoned
over my hometown Plaza.
A worthy place and worthwhile time.

I drive this canyon oftentimes alone
and watch the sparkle of the valley unfold before me.
It's a sea of glittering scales, hissing "welcome home,"
I'm secure in this coiled-up crotalus that so adores me.
I'm always seeking critique.
TS Garrett Feb 2017
Such a simple synonym of a great yellow house

swaddled in the shadows on a flat patch in the backyard

a refuge resting of bric-a-brac and ornamental knickknacks

with a paint chipped porch that beamed once a brilliant white

a birdhouse filled with straw the previous owners left behind

a plywood room banished with no insulation and one lonely window

something of substance, with grainy walls to hold me up

a quiet place to talk to myself when the sun goes to sleep

where the imagination springs open deliciously

behind that old closed door that creaks

a cube where prayers share the stale air with the stillness of time

improvised shelving of old milk crates battered as gypsies

like migrating baggage nomadic through the years

that rainbow hammock hanging loose from the rafters

a husk to lift a weary back, a sheath to house the soul

a shaky legged easel from my love, nested into its very own corner

reflecting outward like a mirror so I might better see myself

the plastic man of gold  modestly retired above the window seal

the only trophy I ever felt I ever earned

an electric heater rattling its nonsense in the cold night air

amusing any shivering listener who cares to be warmed

A string of soft incandescent lights that dangle overhead

perfectly framing the faded native masks like vibrant yellow teeth

wilted candles scattered amongst the odds and ends

there wax bellies spattered on the floor to keep the paint drippings company

a mess of tousled brushes protruding from the dented silver can

wearing disheveled hairpieces to match their eccentric ways

the squatting antique box with its stitching and fat brass latches

enshrined as a tiny monument to the mantis and the moth

secrets scribbled on the dead parchment crammed into their tombs

journals that became maps on my journey to myself

icons harbored naive and coarse

to be plotted and stationed, rearranged and cherished

a cocoon that bursts from inside out

viscera stashed in a capsule to be kissed and romanced

the stacked canvases like a house of cards

leaning in tired on the supports of their brothers and sisters

the faces of reincarnation hanging on pushpins

those abstractions surreal in all their horrid geometry

the pirate ship, the aerosols

the old machine that holds the rotten gumballs

bolts and screws and arrowheads

a native tongue that enriches the enigma

not merely a physical escape of hoarded trinkets

fitted ad hoc with all the contrivances to tinker away the while

more abstractly a spiritual gathering of subdued memories

a space becoming itself a philosophy unraveling the details
JoJo Nguyen Aug 2017
For me we it
comes realizing later
that Chris Cornell is gone
same as Dad but different still
we have our Garden
of Sound with weeds sprouting against
the grim Cutter hoping
for a missed experienced

Maybe the refugee's trauma
have dried all the tears on
lonely crowded airfields
of a long ago Vietnam seeding
salt from a Grandmother, mother,
father, aunts and uncles,
paladins in our child eye dry
because of the stampeding Thestrals
we shouldn't see

And now almost 50 we know
better the slings and arrowheads
of fortune the calcifying currency
souls make by roughing the round edges
of damning tears scattered like petals
over littered cigarettes killing
us softly because they've metastasized
from intellectualized Lung ****
to a flowering carcinoma
Amanda Blomquist Sep 2016
We begin to touch from fingertips to flesh, that’s how we introduce ourselves. We’re naturally compelled to to feel each other’s energy.

My fingertips are encoded with my identity. They are imprinted with twist and turns, a blueprint of my chemistry.  

They extend beyond my reach. Grasping at life, taking in everything it returns. They may be burned while touching the flame or met with warm hands just the same.

My fingertips dance gracefully over goose-bumps and soft skin. They feel the rhythm of deep breaths and skipped heart beats that begin to beat again.

They palpate rough stones in cool river beds. They caress raw edges of ancient arrowheads.

My fingertips have healed broken hearts and past regrets. They mend sore feet and weak spines. They feel for the lone tear drops that are intertwined with high fives and laugh lines.

Like branches seeking light they reach out for love. Past tangible offerings seeking all the things that can’t be touched.
2016 homage to a body part assignment
A W Bullen Jul 2022
Arc
Taste
new words
to see
it through.


a pseudo
synaesthesia
grown easy
on the eyelet,
fits, apparently
awake

the derelict
convictions
say,
it cannot be
this much is all

The All, we are
to ever have
and less the time
to take

Seems aeons
since the badlands
let, their Agincourt
of arrowheads,

projecting from
the epicentred
tragedies
of Your


a softer
vector
than before

yet, pertinent,
as ever

Their
ambient
trajectories

descending
back to you
Jonathan Surname Aug 2018
You were a girl and I won the privilege of watching you grow.
So darling, the porcelain; how trite a description for you.
But it made you smile, always. Even when I didn't put
any inflection in my tone.
It was enough for you that I said it, and only sometimes meant it.

It was Summer, if I remember of any proper, when we met;
or, rather, spoke, for the first time.
Then the Spring where I lost the last line of your beautiful mind.
And that willful fruit bloom from your high hanging branches.
You used to joke, "Don't steal my sap, but lick my wounds."

Arrowheads fletched from your leaves and flew unsoundly,
toward the open eyes of glimmer for those of whom you
allowed near. I caught each one and bled, and with my
oily fingers I drew wilderness and art on your bark.
Spring was meant for you to bloom, my darling.

Maybe you didn't hear, or know. You forgot things sometimes,
like to stretch your arms toward the sun and siphon goodness.
A gentle axe tap to remind you. To make you familiar with,
the pain of the care. The stone was heavy and often deflected.
It's Autumn now. Our favourite time of year. We never got to
make bouquets with your hair.

Winter is coming. You would hate that reference in a poem to you.
Novels are always better, "Except Kubrick!" we would say in unison,
and how you, this time, would always remind me of the night I said
something wittier than the rest of all my life. You cheered up a suicide
because you feared the same loss twice, as all old wounds heal sharply.

How did you do it? Give me laugh lines.
So deep they soak in water and are vibrant.
I don't blame you, all things in nature must wilt.
The markings of calendar, and I know when the rains
wash away the snow and leave blades of grass heavy
you will be there in support, lifting the tiny sprouts with a fingertip.

That they never felt before.
written for my late girlfriend,

— The End —