"atrophy" poems
Conjunctions creak, the adverbs ache,
nouns bear more than they can take.
Verbs are screaming for Ben-Gay
while pronouns atrophy away.
Adjectives have lost their bite,
possessives just give up the fight.
The subject's upset, naught agrees,
which weakens metaphoric knees.
Contractions all together moan;
the objects better left alone.
Ah, life is at a frightful stage
when poets and their poems age.
Feb 9, 2011
Feb 9, 2011 at 5:34 PM UTC
Drip yourself into a cup
Fill up your body with antiquity
Let the collagen insist
An allegory of Capricorn
Memories crystallised
Settled in
Forevers harvest
Insensitive
Misconstrued chemical
Collective symmetry's sin
A condition, livid
Fleeting in Human imagery
Ships break
Loop our tongued
Hands, tossed in Dramamine
Whittled in a succession of malleable fashion
Talent spilled spread in supper
Collate our atrophy
And drink from baroness
Flavours tarnished
Super-collider
Blood soaked in Gematria
A garden of totality
High brow comparison
Entitled in your vacuous stigma
Forever burning
In the lesser key of Solomon
28 daemon
Tessellation in trigonometry
Temperance towards an infinite
Champion of mind, complex
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 9:57 PM UTC
Seasons pass, tempered by insalubrious fervor; treasonous design remiss of fate
An echo of prior songs resonate somber atrophy; mourn the passing of constant defeat, stained by triumphant dissonance and disdain
Fear strides along the broken path, left alone and solemn and crass: Through sour feats of vindication, tones of plight become dismissed
Surfeit, the sound of temptation rides upon the crest of dawn, blinding darkness like calming waves caressing infinite stretches of sand: soft and warm; kind and welcoming, embracing in its gentle touch
Sentience hides behind a creeping fog, whispering secrets of life eternal, bearing gifts wrought through sensuous candor
Two threads lost, now found; slowly bonding, uniting purpose, rhythm, rhyme, and reason; born from the same cloth, garnering habit, singing in harmony what echoes from within
Beautiful, intelligent, staunch with profundity; stark, handsome, wholesome, and good
The call of a true home may finally beckon..
Dec 13, 2017
Dec 13, 2017 at 2:08 AM UTC
once more
layers of casing
are torn
papers culled
windows gleam
sheets smile
the cost is high
if not see
when to stop
can I find north
after all
I’d asked
so life’s paths
once veiled
in yesterday's grime
dispatched
to the winds
reveal
another vision
refreshing as
spring rain
seeking every fissure
quietly lodged boarders
not paying rent
evicted
as another corner
begs mastery
along with
a neater place
it dawns on me
atrophy
is the order
of things
vacate for a few
short paces
and face
it all again
wrenching me
from the lulling
status quo
of my stilted
blindness
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 6:49 AM UTC
He lies flat on the rooftop
looking at the stars.
Useless worlds birthing and dying
he muses
the colossal magnificence of waste
if atrophy is the verdict
why create a complex web of universe
just because someone from an island
would stare at them
in awe of the beauty
seeking a key to the riddle
himself a grain of dust
lost in reading the firmament
and not grasping
of what significance
he is
within his shrinking space and time
in an expanding universe.
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
I can feel the gravity
savage sadness grabbing me
like a stabbing agony
panicking heartbeat rapidly
like a drastic atrophy
my own tapestry of travesty
applicable calamity
catastrophe is my canopy
the faculty of tragedy
with no strategy for amnesty
the laxity of sanity
I can feel the gravity
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 4:57 PM UTC
the barker in charge
is sniffing markers
& the dog's the one
in the shock collar.
good god.
I'll come back
tomorrow.
galapagos, I'm sorry.
rocketship jalopy
wrote a handbook on
banana boat cutthroat
reconnaissance exotica,
abominable
beast of tropic atrophy
broke folk casualty engulfed
in telescopes & TV shows
being monitored thru a monocle
the theatrical apathy & topical misanthropy
can anybody understand me?
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:47 PM UTC
Consume speed,
rid auxiliary weight—
no love handles,
no fat from rearview—
just frame,
pumping heart,
place where man can sit.
Muffin-top women watch me
quiver under skin,
unshakable desire
to chew fat from their bodies—
never know if I’d
swallow or spit.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 7:15 PM UTC
elephants stomp with stone-laden feet
back and forth, back and forth,
creating cracks in my already-battered skull,
weakening the very foundations of my sanity.
their trumpeting echoes through cold corridors
flooding my thought capacity to the brim.
a tightrope walker stretches me, thin -
i feel the shifting pressure of her nimble feet
treading the territories of my weathered frame,
back and forth, back and forth,
my skin reddens beneath the incessant crossing
as the sinew within me starts to atrophy.
in my chest cavity there is a ring of fire,
manipulating my lungs and feeble heart to mere ash.
two golden eyes seen beyond the flames,
ready to leap through them - without the
inconvenience of fear weighing down his agile paws,
both capable and likely to tear my veins to shreds.
a grisly strongman has my bones in his grip.
he smiles malevolently, gloating his strength over me,
squeezing the life from my cartilage - awaiting the snap.
i am cognizant of the sound, but i won't flinch.
next, the imminent collapse of my vertebrae -
i feel them crumble to dust. he laughs.
but it is in the pit of my stomach the ringleader sits -
commanding me into subsidence with every crack of his whip.
i want to meet his eyes but he only averts my gaze.
his twisted circus nearly through, the audience begins to dissipate.
i stare through the blurred smoke, desperate for his visage -
when i see on one of his faded lapels, the embroidery spells out your name.
-m.f.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 12:03 AM UTC
I called her Molly Bloom.
Then the final blossom fell from Molly
As I sipped over the lip of morning.
She grew on me.
I grow into things as well.
I was once worried about my height,
But I had large feet,
Not to worry.
I grew as the present slipped.
Hair was important
To grow.
It appeared, slowly, on arms,
Pits, lips and legs.
And groin pains followed.
Atrophy and entropy grow,
Take root like my historical assimilations.
I daily **** out apathy.
Molly was different.
She was presented with love,
And received with indifference,
Then I cared too much.
She was my Bloomsday
When I raised her ashen petalled face.
Should I vacation on Reunion Island
Where they make great ***
I could pestle her blooms to reinvigorate myself.
Or kid myself, believing her shadow
Will open in the sun.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 2:18 PM UTC
i have been swallowed by
my own reflection;
bones protrude through
pallid thin skin,
organs caving in
my stomach hoards a
swarm of bees,
buzzing through the
empty cavern that is
my translucent flesh.
i am a ravenous dog
teeth bearing,
devouring only water and air
i purge myself clean,
spill out empty calories
and irrational rumination,
skeleton hanging out of
a hollow casket,
appetite smaller than my waist.
i am freezing cold,
lanugo littering my body,
wanting to throw myself
in a fire,
to feel the warmth
that others feel.
i am a void -
this body is not my own.
Mar 17, 2021
Mar 17, 2021 at 10:16 PM UTC
Wandering under
woodland leaves,
my mind confined
to winding suture lines.
Paths of pink nerve tissue
cherry blossom trees,
dendrite branches wave
in a heavy breeze.
Myline bark, an axon stump,
rooted contents of my skull
continuously growing,
a tangled plexus of
neural connections.
Twisting, turning,
a knotted blockage.
Pathways, rippled in roots,
a crossing synaptic stoppage.
A suffocating strangle,
choking corpus callosum
decaying mangle.
Branches atrophy,
shrivel and scar.
Root terminals suffer
hormonal harm.
Forest trails quick fainting
when lost in overthinking.
Feb 17, 2019
Feb 17, 2019 at 11:29 PM UTC
My hands are shaking
My heart is racing
My feet are pacing
They think I'm faking
My bones turn to stone
It's all I've ever known
My muscles atrophy
Pain got the best of me
It's invisible and deceitful
Failures made me cynical
Solutions are only temporary
This body of mine is the enemy
Inflammation spreads like wildfire
I'm tired of being so tired
Nothing stops the torture, but
I'm fighting like a soldier
My body rebels
It is a prison cell
Trapped in my own hell
Gunshots fire inside
I really have tried
Oct 19, 2018
Oct 19, 2018 at 3:30 PM UTC
I have wished for years
That my collarbones would make themselves
Known.
That my muscles would
Atrophy.
And my skin would become
Paper thin.
All for the sake of exposing the calcified lattice
That holds me together.
Holds me down.
I have wished to see my ribs
So that I could better understand the bars that my heart
Beats so fiercely against.
I have wished my spine to rise from beneath sinew
Form peaks against my skin
Just so I can see
What makes a man
What backbone is
See what makes me
Stand
Against those things that I do not desire.
Yet here I am.
Synapses stretched between
Head
And
Heart
Eyes sundered, seeing what my heart can't take.
What my fragile fingers fail to grasp.
I am a graveyard.
Made of stars that decided they were meant for other tasks.
Rub your charcol across my bones
Just to see what stories the universe has told.
For it has lived and died a thousand times, and now
And now, this time around it chooses to call this body
Home.
So although there are days I wish my hip bones would rise like
Mountains
In the desert,
That this soft skin would part and give
Rise
To bones like Aspen trees,
I will accept that my
Clavicles
Are the bottom of the sea bed.
And I am
Mile
Upon
Mile
Of stormy ocean.
Still waiting to explored.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 1:32 PM UTC
Death descends like the statement of a credit card;
life goes on in eight columns, sometimes six,
dropping out should have been an option, instead my
world is turning pages while I am just sitting here
listening to atrophy whisper through a megaphone:
“It’s better to fade away than to burn out, let
champagne supper turn to bile by breakfast, bark up a
fake plastic lemon tree till she hurls pomo grenades at you.”
The streetlife serenade is recklessly tempting,
in the club the girls in ***** shirts come and go,
talking of Felu, Neru, Derri… da, what inertia!
Sitting in a club with so many fools(,) playing to rules,
Hell is a blank generation with no vacancy,
I’m doubting Thom: meeting people isn’t easy,
Them clones in rubber souls from fab India
try to impale me right next to the paintbox,
In she walks, head going nowhere close to the oven,
eyes me like a Pisces riding shotgun on a WAG,
says growing older in the rain ought not be done all alone.
Bring on the moonshine, dancing days are here again!
Happiness was Scotch Mist, now it’s suddenly a goal,
It’s past AM on a holiday, do I wanna know if this
isn’t, like always, just un-certain platonish bromance?
Or will she journey with me till the end of the night?
Optimism is fleeting, afraid to commit, tends to elope,
Pray that she lingers long enough: I need a feel-good poem.
There’s a restaurant at the end of the universe,
I’ve heard the well-done steak they serve is actually rare
but their awesomesauce can make us live forever,
we can make it there in time if we slide away right now,
and if in the morning we don’t know what to do,
I’ll toast the bread, I’ll make the bed, she can make my day.
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 3:04 PM UTC
Agony of the fantasy, so lazily, with no probability
the ecstasy so randomly seen with eyes of atrophy
my heart beats so rapidly for the sake of catastrophe
so i gallantly step on the travesty of the compatibility
i casually see my casualty through eyes of calamity
searching so actively for a canopy of rationality
my mind thinks abnormality is better than conformity
actuality meets versatility or circumstantial amity
thinking elaborately not organically, of reality
a tapestry so naturally put together differently
visually vivid quality is a visible consistency
no commonality, critically crushed by normality
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 3:51 PM UTC
In my nightmare, I was standing in the dark.
The wind bellowing around me, like somone screaming.
I was told to lift the mountain with my bare hands and not leave until I did so.
My insides lit up like a little sun was there, threatening to burn me up.
Sour claws of nausea rip my innards, as if they were teeth gnawing on my raw flesh, being burnt by the sun within.
Ignore it.
It will pass if I focus on the task.
That was my first mistake.
Still, dug my fingers in the ground and began to lift.
Hands began to burn and scream, sweat turned to smoke and muscle strained.
Teeth gritted, I pushed passed the pain, focused on the mountain and I.
Smoke mixed with the wind and the darkness and the screaming, bellowing through the nightmare.
The Sun burns hotter.
Mustered up every ounce of strength I could.
And I lifted.
Heaved the heavy mountain up to the Heavens.
The pain shook through my body until.
Finally the mountain and earth separated and the void between is quickly filled with air.
The weight pass from my hands to my shoulder.
I had done it.
At last almost Atlas-like.
Standing there, mountain remaining on shoulder.
But now what?
The sun still burned, hotter than ever, that blasted furnace.
And in the moment, my attention did lapsed and my body slacked, prelude to the collapse.
What was I thinking?
The wind screamed around me and I began to shake in the dark.
A fake Atlas, with the weight on his shoulder unbearable.
The pressure was too much, too heavy, and too late to do anything.
And the sun burns on.
I want to run to the nearest pier and jump, to disappear beneath the waves.
Stop the burning, end the atrophy of my muscles.
I’ve done unhappy deeds and now I want the most human of needs.
The end to my pain.
That’s the truth.
I yearn for it.
The sun burns still
I let go of the weight and allow gravity to do its job.
Flattened as the mountain was reunited with the earth.
Thought I could carry the world on my shoulder, but I am no Atlas.
I can't even carry a mountain.
I tried and look where I am now.
I am shattered.
Brittle bones becomes broken and turn to dust.
I have given all I got, thrown in the lot.
Soon my skin will rust and rot away.
Soon there will be nothing left to sustain such a fire but the sole desire for rest.
The sun within continues to burn me.
Until I am nothing but smoke, bellowing in the wind.
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 4:44 AM UTC
They say to take time with wounded hands, because they like to feel
But who the **** listens to THAT anymore?
We live in a world where ambivalence is feared, instead of felt
In sickness and in health there are just some secrets hidden by stealth
but people
people don't keep promises anymore...
Could you look me in the eyes and honestly say, that you're aware of the creatures that will try and chase you away?
Demise promises to whisper them sweet songs
Chemical induced lullabies to keep them at bay
at bay
and out of sight
But only if you say to me just like they used to that " Hey, everything is going to be okay"
or
" Everything will be alright "
But I suppose all this **** is in my head
Day dreams sewn with chronic anxiety and manic depressive thread will only make the button eyes for a teddy bear better left for dead.
And this toy you found was already water-logged and torn
and little boys who claim to be 'all grown up' tend to get easily bored
because for a 'man' who said he could love me through any weather
you sure didn't put up a struggle when water made the veins turn blue
atrophy
through
and through
along with your 'forgotten' 'love' letters
But I suppose people just aren't meteorologists anymore
and for your sake
I'm glad you found someone so much better.
God knows I wont
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Don't call it silver
It is so utterly grey
Your banner waving
To humdrum anthems
Of countries upset
By the way you say
Patriotism
Loyalty
Words that are never
To be written in grey
Whose fibers cannot
Be found in your atrophy
You will die quietly
Not as a martyr dies
Never as red as the
Blood-stained uniforms
That blanket so many hills
There are none that you would die on
It is a shame you share
The color of stone
One might mistakenly
Paint you trustworthy
Nov 18, 2013
Nov 18, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
I can feel the gravity
savage sadness grabbing me
like a stabbing agony
panicking heartbeat rapidly
like a drastic atrophy
the tapestry of travesty
applicable calamity
catastrophe is my canopy
the faculty of tragedy
with no strategy for amnesty
the laxity of sanity
I can feel the gravity
Feb 20, 2017
Feb 20, 2017 at 2:47 PM UTC
Apart in my lust
I separate
Disconnect
Break
There’s an infinite space where these fingers once entwined
I rise above my own flesh just to watch it die
Languorous apathy
I slept as death whispered
Through the murk of my self-inflicted
Desolation
Regressing until my heart withered from its bones
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 2:28 AM UTC
You're laid out with a blank stare
with dreams of becoming a millionaire
on the couch where you're ensnared
stuck in what you call a nightmare
Sorry I have no sympathy
to your muscle atrophy
while you lay in envy
I just can not pity
so I invite you to the city
to come experience poetry
its what helps me feel less ******
No thanks, just let me wallow
while my soul feels so hollow
I will not, can not, follow
I have lost my bravado
go on you wild desperado
to your El Dorado
At least one of us has found gold.
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 8:37 AM UTC
Violent roses
give me woozes everyday
I'm hammered on my own
something
is always slipping through
a filter of justifications
language misrepresents me
I don't think words that
spread ideas like intrinsic responsibility
are relavent outside of cults of personality
So I'd prefer to say
through a filter of new ideas
of what safe thoughts are in a fear house
reinterpreted
Soft violet soup
gifting a brainhorse with a two by four
or convictions falling
out of atrophy
or perhaps
a lack of neccessity
I don't know
maybe
a letting go of an abusive tack
that pressed you to let go of joy
Oh I don't knoowoh
To find yourself a damaged adult
with a mind aimed at forgetfulness and
forgivefulness
A new rage forms in tandem
with a promise
to a menacing question asked
by those who unfetttered their wallets
but that was ages ago
and now it's time for a letting go
at least that's
what the last night alone begot
but who is past that inside lie
that furthers time
well I can't see anyway
So **** it I'll lose it or die.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 4:19 AM UTC
The yucca plant from my mother’s garden sits
unattended and on the verge of death next to her
eldest rose bush, now wildly overgrown and lightly
blushing in the cosset of the midmourning sun. Its
withered rosettes droop down to its bed of maroon-stained stones
in crisp, harum-scarum patterns as if the plant is spending its life
like currency trying to touch its toes. I oftentimes
find myself wondering if the reason behind this
slow rotting of mother dearest’s garden is hidden within her
five-year absence. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say
her nursery missed the d
i
g
g
i
n
g
of her weathered hands.
She was the biosphere of my world; I suppose that
it only makes sense for the earth to match my thirst. We
sit side by side, that yucca plant and I, as we struggle to
nod our heads towards daylight while we rise on
the side of the house that is more or less
cloaked in shadow; the side that she would sunbathe
on during scorching late afternoons. Perhaps without her
body giving shelter, all her garden is doomed to
atrophy like muscle in the sunlight.
I find irony in the way that my mother’s favored plant
was the “ghost in the graveyard;” a perverted parallel
to the game that she never wanted us to play. I think it to be
sort of sardonic that her pride swallowed the possibility of
a cure being found within that ****** plant’s roots. She,
a third generation American girl,
had blood as muddled as the mud
that buried that yucca’s heart.
The boundary line between Mother and
nature coalesces into one:
Gaea
six feet under
melting into soil
I hope she becomes seawater.
Apr 5, 2014
Apr 5, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
darkness signals the
retreat into
the shell
of sea-side
sounds.
they whisper
innermost thoughts
of blindness and
profound seconds
of suspended
fallen flowers.
the recluse
can see more
in the deepest night
than the lightest
day.
thoughts circle with
the stars, as the
atrophy of apathy
begins
and the menagerie of
faltering frowns
follows.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 3:02 AM UTC