"ascribes" poems
I wake up
Each morning,
Head to my closet,
And arm myself
With clothes
Thick as brick walls.
I rummage
Through various
Pairs of greeve-like
Pants
Looking for
The right foundation
On which I
Will build
The day's
Exoskeleton.
Fix my hair
Like the rest
Of mankind.
Hair that
Acts as the cloak
That ascribes me
To anonimity.
Before I leave
I put on the
Weight of
My outer person,
The one which
I have carefully
Built out of
Various yous
And none of me.
The skin
That I Have worn
To see my soul
Forlorn.
I go, parade myself
Like a sentinel
Emblazoned
With all the
Merits;
Look and behold
A hero that
Beckons to all who pass
A hero who
Hides all the dross
Of the Inside.
The inside
of whatever is left
Of my
Dying kingdom.
I go as a bastion
With jutted spears
And sharpened pikes
Wounding those
Who advance
Whether in peace
Or in strife.
No, I will not
Let anyone
Through the gates
Of my starving
King.
All my life
I was being
Built as a
Stronghold.
Father, as a mason,
Taught me
That strength
Is measured
Through how
Much pressure
My structure
Can endure.
Mother, as an artisan,
Raised me
As a dam
That will not break.
Taught me
That my worth
Is measured in the
Volumes that I can keep.
Suffering be now
The mortar
That binds all my griefs
Together.
Pain, *****
Barricades
Around my thirsting
Prince.
Comrade,
Stay as a facade;
Hide the muck
That have accumulated
Throughout
The years.
Lover,
break me down.
Strip me of all
My armor,
Break down the walls.
Turn my spears
Into soft dandelion *****
Wade through the tar
And see
Through the veil.
Unseam
All my scars;
Bleed me dry
Until you reach my core.
See me for
Who I am.
Witness the king
That I have
deprived.
Caress the face
Of the prince
That I have denied.
Satiate my famished spirit,
Oh, you, lover of my soul.
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 8:18 AM UTC
well, that was hoped for, otherwise water would have no
universal quality, that ascribes it to provide for, every single species
of animal; but, mostly man.
bugt how does water in ice-cube form, travel outside of its
"container": either a cermaic cup, or a glass,
to form a water-ring beneath the container?
water in, ice-cube form?
i'm pretty sure that water without ice-cubes,
settled in form at room temp. wouldn't create a water-ring
beneath the container...
i have only one answer...
water in ice-cube form behaves like liquid nitrogen...
liquid nitrogen forms a cloud while it evaporates...
water can have the properties of liquid nitrogen,
in ice-cube form, it will evaporate, like liquid nitrogen
out of its container, whether ceramic, or glass,
and form a water ring, beneath the container...
obviously water doesn't behave liken liquid nitrogen
in the all familiar spectacularness of extremes...
water is more subtle when compared to liquid
nitrogen... you can't see water evaporating...
like you might see liquid nitrogen do so...
but how else would water, contained in a cup of either glass
or ceramics... create a water circle at the base,
if it wasn't in liquid nitrogen imitation guise,
that was less spectacular and, "invisible" to the naked eye?
May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 at 1:20 PM UTC
carpal tunnel
born of first-serve lets
and second-serve ace
comebacks --
from
sloughing off
winter coats
to share between
twelve --
my wrists are
less than echoes
and may have
been little more
to begin --
suspended
by gossamer,
brass-covered
lichen
and ticking fungi,
like man, (with his
whirling gears
and mad metals)
replaced
nature's course
with an automated
system --
i would rust
just to crack
but they keep
me too clean --
my sunspots
have fled to
warmer pastures,
i am milk-buckets
on overcast farm
dawnings, but surely
even they have seen
the light of day --
splashed my face
with wine
and rooibos
to see if i
would stain
like the canvas
metaphor
my generation
ascribes to --
maroon dispersion
in terra cotta wash,
twining around
a spiral course --
the folly of it
went ignored
'til my lost and
floating freckles
gathered at the
drain and clogged
the sink to overflow.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 2:03 PM UTC
Life’s Discards
What arises from a seemingly affront the house abandoned but a visitor arrives and calls for meaning
From chaos she perches on a suitcase in the center of the room wood paneled walls and a white stone
Fire place serve as the backdrop it gives the place its first telling impact a value is suggested put sight to
The test now family items strewn about only make up debris but just a time in the short past this room
Was filled with everything that engendered comfort now the flow is a negative one that runs down
Through each piece that suggests wicker chair you once were deemed precious and worthy of serious
Attachment now you belong in a trash heap but for the heart and mind that is left to assess it is a weight
Of brooding as you fix what at first just speaks of a simple travesty we feel and are moved by forgotten
Things without life or means to speak they convey essential truths they argue for endurance and a
Common thread that shows continuance even though they are abandoned and are thought to be
Worthless by the previous owner the stranger will carry them away in her mind and memory as items
She can’t forget because she elevated them to a place of endearment in the very disorder of ruin she
With tenderness without words ascribes to them a worth even if it is just costly shadows that now enter
The mystery and intrigue that intrude into all of our thoughts at times of contemplation where ever
They arise in the dark evening or at morning twig light this room and others like it make up the physical
Dimensions of that subconscious world the swirl and excitement that crashes against our outer lives
That gives it untold riches meaning without understanding but a buttress a force that defies attacks of
Various kinds we are more bemused than overwhelmed and that power rests in many things but a lot
Are just yesterdays discards
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 2:28 PM UTC
A lake,
This day is placid, calm, at peace
But could be rippled, tossed, and chopped;
Submits to change, the winds increase,
From glass to wave white topped.
A quill,
Adrift, from wing’s one shake,
Will not soar, but float;
Reacting to emoting lake
To ride, perhaps to quote.
A pen,
From lake, to quill, to pen then ink
The quill’s flight afloat it scribes;
To find a cause, a purpose, a link
When in a poets hand ascribes.
©Michael S. Davis 2013
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 12:10 PM UTC
to Dani
remember when, you do not:
you are a ground slicing the center of
this home.
the long divide the furniture endures.
in front of the colossal tv
bodies spilled like water.
20 minutes was all it took – your name alone,
a potent hygroscopy.
when close enough:
dissipate. You took all the green the foliage could,
soldered to your body a forest it manifests.
repeated, if not a newer foundling:
the space you take for acquisition ,
the faultless tenancy you mistake as counsel.
every saved for, and gleaming space
aspires for venue – translates to an arena for snapshot.
[some mundane depiction ascribes for you to be known]
years later my portrait still hangs perpetually
on a modern furniture from a contemporary skillset.
take this declaration.
years later, leapt to this day and forward:
the surgery of galvanized steel is reminiscent of a departure.
the tedious laborer smiling through bonsai pots
carrying out lobotomies. The afternoon more sterile than
your face as if operation. This town knows you by practice
and habit: all of it sepia, if not leaden.
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 10:39 PM UTC
Whenever i meet people online,
i am reminded again that at the
core we are energy. My mind
ascribes characteristics of hidden
faces that i can't be sure
are verifiable, a blank palette
where every "Alice" looks like
the first "Alice" i ever met,
and every "Steve" like the first
"Steve" and so on...
like when Rose Tyler lost her
face to The Wire, and Doctor
Who had to reclaim it for her.
The Wire was so very hungry,
famished even.
And i am so very thirsty,
which, if you think about
it, means that The Wire
and i have nothing
in common at all.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 12:55 AM UTC
A.
drone this day empirical
from where we were once the we
rained from, a high excursion
which savvy the drop, weighing in, a fault
trying to convince the day when Sun
embellished from the ravine of your hand,
a catacomb secured by the rolling
of your body like a boulder keeping
a minute sacred, christened an evinced noon
that was your repetitive finding. onto
a netted frame caught, dripping out of
a felt space in need for graphs to measure
from, a well unnamed which presence
resembling your body, resounding
the fluency of what the physical ascribes
an iamb of a crowd inverted, diminishing
and inflected in a day's livid sigh
housed in a jar that is a mouth
words assemble an ikebana willing
a delayed color that was a lack.
held a device that was a sky
or a gleaming face with a high price
claiming a solstitial -- when I went
to your home it was Saturday all
week inside my ribcage chiming worship.
plastered to a sheen all is equal underneath
equatorial tracing a sphere when
I found stroking the innards of a calendar
it is November. it is Saturday.
B.
he comes from
low wattage this night's post
a wonderful polyp
to begin a
blight
apparently so from a cut blackest gutter
carrying an ample water virulent
when taken in and again in
a savingslight of metamorphosis
climbs vertical so the winged moon
is a black bird in the blackest
cage / baltic a different fraternity
of land with the same pictorial
this lovely stillness calling it work
a flood could mean pernicious is blood
brewed from this climate
it is here past Mandaue hillsides dreaming
if place were rumored as same-silent.
May 28, 2016
May 28, 2016 at 7:45 AM UTC
I.
On the surface easily gliding,
are my hands. I keep on the table
an ajar carton of cigarettes. Then slowly
becoming in my pocket, taking form of a hand,
a crumpled cinema ticket when straightened,
ironed by plainsight, walks with lines, the end credits roll lasciviously like an estranged lover
whose face I can almost touch.
When let go of closure, air thins and I move
secretly with fluency. This is how objects
escape my grip.
II.
In front of the eatery, a transit.
I had a dream once in a depthless sleep,
a figure in stilts studded with guilt.
The face next to me, disquieting the music
of currencies, naked in sound as the truth shaved
like a beast. The nearby tarmac resounds with
another throng of absence. As a substitute
for beings shackled to duty,
the oncoming woman assumes theirs,
borrows their faces of dreariness and ***** a thousand times like white sheets harassed by
the wind through opened windows.
III.
Define space as a venue for collision.
Say when a red-haired woman straddling
a duffel bag and myself confused as a peripatetic.
She ascribes her presence to my footing
and from where she left off, I take form
of her expired movement.
Found strangeness is that space
is what happens when remembered. But hold no
bearing and rear contrivance,
trying to be bold by definition -- space solicits
the in-betweenness and then transmutes
an occurence,
say the volatile shape of a hand when
clutching and releasing, the fugitive manner of
feet when avoiding puddles, the unsolicited
reticence of a troubling question.
IV.
A man carries a take away and is now
amongst the populace, waiting under a shed,
housing a familiar language. Home.
But first, trivialized. Haggles with the cab driver,
trying to transact a being angled towards home.
They agree to a fault, money's perfume clinches the fingers and is given to a calloused hand.
Air once stale, is now succulent with the
resonating memory of a child's excited laughter,
and is now presumably waiting behind a gated
home. Like the palm of the hand, the number
of times the vehicle trundles within
the nearby avenue is the force it enkindles
with rest. He is home,
unloosens his clothing. Like a fine specimen
freed from a vitrine.
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 6:05 AM UTC
upon waking from a splendid plunge
into the depths of deep dreamy restful sleep
anchors away set adrift this body electric,
which succombed instantaneously
(without counting sheep)
nor joining the make belive rank and file world
with the likes of little bo peep
an immediate notion arose
to latch onto and ignore
this most delightful, flight of fancy deed
(not ***** nor done dirt cheap),
but a natural function
one cannot overdose nor excede
the USDA quotidian requirement,
where cares and concerns
of an uncertain world freed
yet an asolute bare necessity for stayin' alive
plus richly textured unrivaled vista devoid of greed
additionally cost and gluten free, NON GMO,
zero caloric effortless need
(words of caution to take seriously to heart),
and note that if one doth not yield, but sure to read
the small print affixed like a label each mind
forcing to squeeze out every metaphorical
drop of open eyed juice
perhaps resorting to **** or speed
that silent slurred speech, physical lashing,
head dropping fatique
will invite Halloween aparitions, delusions,
grand hallucinations, et cetera
as if one smoked wacky ****
the forces of anatomical and physiological
heft will take charge ahoy
and blast at top notch nautical surge,
will wrest control against blistering,
festering against withering heights
delivering balms away at feeble attempts
to retain losing battle to remain alert oh boy
no matter how much effort summoned,
(even feigning wakefulness as a decoy)
the trappings of oblivion
i.e. sinking into profound dreamland,
whether an individual ascribes to be Jew or goy
which Maxwell House maxim
“the key to better relationships may be more sleep”
no mortal ought to take lightly,
but pay heed lest the grim reaper doth creep
stealthily and scythe lent lee steal
a haggard skiff of flesh and bone
whereat corporeal essence no more
will there be for the soul to keep.
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 2:21 PM UTC
Young love,
You seeketh amour' in all the wrong places,
For canst thou not see?
That thine rapture you seeketh ascribes right in front of thine own veranda you perch upon!!!!!
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC