"bedposts" poems
In those days all thinking took place in his heart.
It had no favorite suburb, no shelter that was home,
immersed, as he was, in the Mojave of humanity,
memories of only former places through which he'd drifted.
Yes, there were women, storms of passion, brevity in bed.
Today, they only took him back in time,
reconstructing scenarios more of actions never taken.
Bedposts served as bivouacs for the nomad.
Here in this desert water assumes a circumstance,
the nomad becoming as fond of it as ambition.
Here silence need not be kept at bay, rather welcomed in,
though it looks down upon him in uncertainty.
Out there on the horizon he hears a sigh,
a mother tongue corresponding to his own.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
The taste of your sweetness,
Still lingers on my tongue,
I am an addict for your dew,
Remember the first time I pleased you,
The time my lips pursed between your folds,
That purr that escaped,
You knew I loved to hear you moan...
Then there was the silence,
You sensed what was in store,
As my mouth fluttered across your wetness,
and my lips engulfed your other lips,
You spoke and told me I'm nasty
But your taste I can't resist,
or how your diamond peaks at me,
Awaiting a tantalizing encase,
To be wrapped within my tongue,
Light strokes upon the center,
Twirling around the cape that no longer keeps it sheltered,
You hated when I teased you,
I could not resist when you said,
Please. Don't. Stop...
As if you knew being craved was my weakness,
I told you what you wanted to hear,
I'm not here to play games,
Firmly wrap your legs around my head,
Bring your garden to my face,
Every drop of dew is a present to my sheets,
Will you be my submissive?
I will handcuff you to the bedposts,
Before I let you run away,
I missed the way your body would spasm for me,
I promise to take my time if you honor me another night,
I only wish to say this blessing between heaven and your thighs.
Oct 21, 2015
Oct 21, 2015 at 11:46 AM UTC
"But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!"
-- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux.
He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth
And lay there heavily, while dancing motes
Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams,
And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes
So that they could not open fully. Yet
After some time his blurred mind stumbled back
To its last ragged memory -- a room;
Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd
Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink
Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs;
The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice,
Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote;
And then . . . well, they had brought him home it seemed,
Since he awoke in bed -- oh, **** the business!
He had not wanted it -- the silly jokes,
"One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!"
"You'll get no fun then!" "H-ssh, don't tell that story!
He'll have a wife soon!" -- God! the sitting down
To drink till you were sodden! . . .
Like great light
She came into his thoughts. That was the worst.
To wallow in the mud like this because
His friends were fools. . . . He was not fit to touch,
To see, oh far, far off, that silver place
Where God stood manifest to man in her. . . .
Fouling himself. . . . One thing he brought to her,
At least. He had been clean; had taken it
A kind of point of honor from the first . . .
Others might do it . . . but he didn't care
For those things. . . .
Suddenly his vision cleared.
And something seemed to grow within his mind. . . .
Something was wrong -- the color of the wall --
The queer shape of the bedposts -- everything
Was changed, somehow . . . his room. Was this his room?
. . . He turned his head -- and saw beside him there
The sagging body's slope, the paint-smeared face,
And the loose, open mouth, lax and awry,
The ******* the bleached and brittle hair . . . these things.
. . . As if all Hell were crushed to one bright line
Of lightning for a moment. Then he sank,
Prone beneath an intolerable weight.
And bitter loathing crept up all his limbs.
1.7k
A chair in the corner sits huddled with the shadows,
while a second chair lowers itself by the door.
A window between the chairs hangs silently on wall,
as the curtains whisper with the wind outside.
Towards the left of the window is a shrunken bed,
with bedposts like redwoods and the body of a willow.
On the bed is a bundle of fabrics and tweed,
twisting and spinning amongst eachother.
Joining the first chair is a spindly wooden table,
with wobbly fingers and with only three legs.
The top of the table is clustered with trinkets,
pinecones from Alaska and feathers from Pompeii.
Littering the floor are denims and glass,
clothing and pieces of vases strewn under the door.
Thrown under the second chair is a pair of old shoes,
weathered and worn and left to die.
On the walls with the window is doodles and sheets,
drawings of childhood tapped in the space.
Paintings on the plaster are dusted with flakes,
burdens of memories of past and future.
In the center of the room stands a coat stand of mahogany,
standing tall and strong in the ruins of its lost kingdom.
Unaware of what goes on outside of his window,
all he knows is the dust and objects trapped with him in the room.
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 4:08 PM UTC
Sometimes when I pick up the pen
I feel my 5 ft 7 and ¼ inch frame
perk up like David at the sound
of Goliath's slurs.
I swear i'm 6'6"
and ready to dunk the basketball
straight over Wilt Chambelain's head
made soft by the kisses and **** yous”
of the 20,000 he probably never called back.
Sometimes when I start to write I believe
that I am invincible like James Cameron's
submersible in Titanic's
C deck sifting through soot and broken china,
floating over smoke stacks and rusted bedposts,
or reaching out my robotic arm to open
up the door to the radio room that once
buzzed with hellogoodbyes.
Sometimes I feel like the soldiers walking
behind that little napalmed angel screaming
down that dirt road in Vietnam,
oblivious to the fire of my words.
Her cries shrink me back down to size.
But most times I feel like I'm hooked
up to a lie detector test in the dank basement of
an FBI facility, blood pressure rising while
the polygraph line traces
the outline of a mountain range
no one has ever hiked.
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 10:19 PM UTC
she is an asylum,
her walls drip blackness
writing every word
that neglected
to slip past her
teeth,
she sleeps on
piss-stained spring
mattresses as the
clod tiles bite
at her heels,
hair and skin hide
beneath her fingernails
as palms are twinged,
the padded walls
whisper screams
of coercion; wrists
bound by silence and
tightened by insanity.
to bedposts
rusted,
her hands retired on
ridged thighs
hugging her
goosebumps with
convulsions of agitation.
her mind
scratches melodies of an
insomniac,
the flickering lights choke
her vision and blind her speech.
a room of contradictions
irregulating regularities
intoxicating sobriety
hallucinating reality,
the muffled screams
that weave through
the fibres of the
pillow clinched tightly
in her lap harmonize
algorithms that pull
each padded wall
towards her howling
being — centrefold the room,
as the walls hug her body
she awakes and paints
antonyms to
perpetual despondency
Aug 23, 2015
Aug 23, 2015 at 4:53 PM UTC
My love looks scintillating on you my blue
With just a hint of black
When my rough love meets your tough love
And the two wear us smooth again
I mean
There has to be something to justify how ugly I am
Be ugly with me
And grind sandpaper skin
Til we can shake the shavings away after the sheets dry
You’ve always wanted to know what it looks like when ugliness leaves you
It looks like dust illuminated inside beams of light
After you’ve decided you’ve collected enough
How good did it feel
When you notched my bedposts with your vampire teeth
Dulling them down so that you couldn’t draw blood anymore?
Not even with your words?
You said that becoming human never seemed easier
Let me second chance
Your too tough tugs
With my lizard tail laughter
And I have two cheeks to turn if you need a third
My shoulder is only cold
Because neither of us know how to hold the other
Being
Beautiful
And Nice
And Capable
Take practice
So I am sorry I rub you the wrong way sometimes
Just that
This kind of black and blue
Looks good on you
And these faded bruises means
We’re healing
Jan 17, 2012
Jan 17, 2012 at 6:45 AM UTC
*A shadow on the upper right lobe,
its probably nothing*
Its close to Christmas,
I think about our first
and how purple it was,
sunflower medallions
and George Winston.
I grew my hair long
and wore camouflage.
We ought to run a few more tests
My guilt was more than
I could carry back then,
gallons in half gallon buckets,
blood splashing onto
white carpet.
*We'll get a little more blood on
Tuesday*
The waiting game was nearly terminal,
the kids and I exchanged gifts in the Sears
parking lot. When I got home you held me.
We need to talk in my office for a minute
I cried about the choices they made.
You were never unkind. The rosaries I
made were hung on our bedposts,
they hang there still.
The shadow on your lung is a tumor
Its been five years. They're adults now
and old enough to hear about death.
I'll schedule a biopsy for after Christmas
I don't think I'll tell them.
I don't think I'll tell you either..
maybe just once we'll have a peaceful holiday.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 4:46 AM UTC
I compose me
try to pull teeth and grey elements
Ash and grey elements appear during supper
Words and personalization become law
Become a creed
A fool bringing moss to market,
Shawl holds tight while eyes pierce concrete,
wide at home and closed while here,
In this home
A shack with spoons
This late hour steams from crowns of heads,
or crowns on heads,
when darkest,
only mist is seen in crowns on bedposts.
Black panther melodies scar institutes
Whiter power anthems are nothing to speak of
I bet it is on three laurels
A magic marker nodding off
It is a drinking whiskey game I win
But I think I'm going to Hell
Kiss me before I am in Hell
Finding many things burnt but not char
I can't find what that word means again
This song and title I can't put back together
Oh, I could call
If only,
Oh,
I knew it all
A neck to breathe down with the gauge I bring down
Could suddenly cut ourselves short
This vegetable garden could produce marrow
Not knowing it was a crime
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 9:41 AM UTC
The proximal end of my soul is no longer safe
Decay has dilapidated the space
The raveled fragments fester
Leaves wilting with vinegar burns
Where I have tried to **** the infestation
And found I was only killing myself.
I can remember when my mind was softer, but not safer,
Hiding in the hallway to the den
Watching the scene of the desperate father
pulling his dead son from burned rubble
My child mind imagining
Blooms of orange around my bedposts,
tendrils of cinder and smoke,
Placing my hand against the back of the door
To feel the phantom heat.
And now I hold the matches to my own bed
The quiet comforter can only stifle them for a moment
There is not enough weight to press
These dreams out of myself
Maybe I still crave heat because it is the pain that is also comfort
It is the fear and the foment, the ailment and the aid
It is my body asking for enough feeling
To know it is alive and safe
While my mind is screaming fire
in a crowded
theatre.
Sep 17, 2021
Sep 17, 2021 at 9:12 PM UTC
*Courtesan rests upon satin pillows,
placed so many for weightless fare
Treasure box of lace and fragrance spilling out into her hair
Rich red velvet drapes the contours
of her silhouette
against the backdrop of an argalis mountain landscape
Thick rouge stain encircles her mouth and cheek,
now smeared askew as evidence of talking bodies friction
She wonders where he goes when he is gone~
He often wonders how good it feels when she comes into his candelabra room
Bedposts tell no lies...yes, this is true, mind you, no other girl would do the deeds he required of his staff in hand.*
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 2:13 PM UTC
I painted the bedposts and bedside whiteboard
beside the baseboard, the outlet occupied
by a power cord, the bookshelf, both coffeemakers,
the power strip duct-taped to the brick wall,
the bush outside, the sidewalks, the brick,
the steel fences separating traffic
babble from pedestrian small talk,
then filled the wall in, gave the oak posts
enough depth to hold up four coats,
a backpack, and a shoe lace, swirled
in the condoms and coffee rings
inside the microwave, sketched a Sears
Apple-Jack-colored record player plugged
in, turning dusted Beatles records
like the cosmos, like the snow, squirrel-
hair, and leather-leaf bush outside.
I masked off the concrete, the asphalt,
and construction yard sidewalks,
penciling dead mosquitoes in the cracks
and $2.39 Rock Salt Slush along the edges.
I measured the fence, so each stake hit
the vanishing point like cigarette butts
in cement cereal bowls of cat litter.
But I ran out of paint before I could fill
the mouths of motorist **** yous*,
the car barks chasing dogs
to the chain-link guard rail,
doorbells and mailbox flags
being flipped up, pay phones
clashing on metal receivers,
church bells, footsteps,
some guy breathing,
and a red-light button Wait.
Maybe it’s for the best.
Mar 5, 2015
Mar 5, 2015 at 4:36 PM UTC
Your tongue used to sneak in my mouth
like the old days, girls climbing trees to sneak in an older boy's bedroom:
he had a single bed and plaid sheets she would think of
in the same way she thought of wrinkled bubblegum wrappers
but neither tried to taste good for the other. The
boy and the girl just were what they were, just hidden in each other.
My hands could be the bedposts, my hair the headboard,
my skin the blanket she will dig her fingers into, thinking what is home
what is home - somehow it has become a
tap on the window, a whispered I am here, hello.
You helped me to get over my fear of silence,
my chirophobia. When everything was meant to be quiet, when we have
nothing to say, you would pour honey down my throat
and hold hold hold me tight
so tight that it would seem everyone knew. I imagined turning on
the television, there would be an image of us lighting up Times Square:
you would calm the whole wide world. It took us years
to realize that we have the kind of love that is always, always okay.
The girl shimmies down the tree, an old oak
so tall she feels like she has dropped fifty stories before she finds grass,
she feels like she has lost fifty feet worth of body and flesh.
His window is open, her lips separate, it silent and
it is okay. She mouths, I miss you
then climbs up again almost desperately, completely dependent on her
legs to pump air into her lungs and breathe through the pores -
blackbirds see up vines up her skirt, and twigs
bruises like wide bushes and then his hands like a nest. What is home.
Your saliva grew like moss against my cheeks,
I once bit and bled in my sleep, had nightmares so I could hear something
but you gave my teeth a garden to pick vegetables from
and I stopped needing traffic to rock me
to bed: your tongue used to sneak in my mouth, now I have its words.
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 2:43 PM UTC
The wind has been howling for days and days, searing the clouds and her mind,
It tells a tell, tale that will slice her lungs worse than his words-
Her lips bleed in the frosty wind, slow, her feet trudging, incapable, her fractured legs leaving crimson traces burning in agony
Huffing, escaping, running, crying out, hear her desperate plea, but this actions have silenced her
Death lurking behind the pine trees, acres of snow covering up the lies.
He said, he doesn’t love her anymore, already had every inch of her in his mouth,
His **** in her mouth, again and again, feral eyes watching it unfold a plan successful, forcefully, trapped, chained her to the bedposts, scarred on the outside and charred from inside
Tearing petals off, from the roses he gave her, one bright afternoon, he loves me, he loves me not
He said he did, naive girl, moved to Siberia for him, where did loving him lead her?
She laughs, like an asylum patient, a tortured madness climbing the veins of her soul
Poor little lamb, he is carnivore, tearing off her skin, divulging into her body.
**Look at her destroyed, frayed
Look at the ghost of a girl**
Who walks through realms of life, the wind is still, mourning in the loss.
Her bruised body all shades of blue and red, lifeless. He ate out of her too much, he ****** her life out.
At frail attempt at an escape, bittersweet atleast, darkness claimed her on the hands of freezing terrains, not him.
Look at the countless wolves howling, consuming the remnants in a mad glee.
Jul 17, 2013
Jul 17, 2013 at 4:29 AM UTC
You are my corrupted dream.
An intended perverted fairytale.
The break rolls in.
Your fingertips white with selfish memories.
Addicted, with fabricated smiles after dark.
Time pours faster.
The embers cling to balconies and bedposts.
Stepping gently from another unwelcomed sunrise.
We sink into an inevitable blindness.
You ****** into abandon.
Awaiting a slow bitter collapse.
Full speed cold front.
No stopping the fever.
Four walls, two ways to burn them down.
One pitiful habit to sober the spell.
Melodic moments raise their weary hands
And rock the city comfortably.
Feb 20, 2010
Feb 20, 2010 at 1:09 AM UTC
the break rolls in
your fingertips white with selfish memories
fabricated smiles after dark
time pours faster
the embers cling to balconies and bedposts
stepping gently from another unwelcome sunrise
we sink into a soft inevitable blindness
****** into abandon
to await the slow bitter collapse
savor these polemic kisses
we have already died a few times
just to feel alive
Feb 21, 2011
Feb 21, 2011 at 10:12 AM UTC
The farmhouse
also awakens,
pine floorboards
and joists unsettled,
plaster walls rattled
by midnight voices.
In certain rooms,
the lace curtains
sift moonlight
with graceful fingers.
Shadows making their rounds
slink past doors and bedposts,
curl into unlocked keyholes,
uncoil time across the duvet.
Just outside, familiar silver trees
conduct an orchestra of illusions:
branches graze the metal roof,
tap tap tap on windowpanes.
It goes this way for hours,
sounds of a haunted choir.
When sleep comes
my dreams are like
balloons brushing
against razor wire.
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 3:27 PM UTC
I am just the lightbulb
Swinging in the attic
If you would just
Shut up
I am the static
Little ghost
Show me your play things
Tall bedposts
You are always swinging
That's the record
Play it again
If you speak up
You'll only blend in
And I wish
I wish to **** I was someone else
Take my bottle from the shelf
Grin, kiss, smash me
But here you are
Lily hand
Sail my ship
Read my stars
Kiss me
Crystal ball
Palm reader
Your eyes say it all
Your lips say it better
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 2:53 AM UTC
Tremors held in the young girl’s face
Quaking in exquisite lace
Pulsing in place
Hip locked base
Ejaculatory race
Spermicidal mace
Thoughtless porcelain dolls
Shatter as bedposts hit walls
Reverb in the halls
Landlord calls
******** stalls
Waiting on drained *****
Thick housing in a fat cat’s den
Seal on the locked pen
Revolving door of men
Seems to break the Zen
Memorabilia of Cheyenne
Windup to go at it again
Shower sprays flakes of gold
Washing off latent mold
Rubbed off in the hold
…These men are old
Temperament’s cold
Cost of being sold
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 9:14 AM UTC
i wasn't at least surprised
by your callous gaze on me
another name, another notch
on the bedposts where you can't sleep
i learnt through that december
that a kiss can be empty after all
that a label i so easily dismissed
really does means 'just friends' and nothing more
i know it silently haunts you
losing the first honest thing you'd ever known
but it's hard to sympathise with a boy
that swears love to girls who then walk home alone
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 10:07 AM UTC
I remember the supervised showers
The crushed ice
The cries at night
The feeling of losing control
The idea that earbuds with the right twist and ties could make me die
The sewn on pillowcases
The weapon in scissors, mirrors, handles, sheets, bedposts, bags, shampoo, straps, glass, pens
The misdemeanor
The boy who’s anorexia was his slow suicide
The girl with two siblings that killed themselves
How everyone wanted to **** themself
The 7-year-old that only cried
The lime green hallways that haunt my mind
Dec 9, 2019
Dec 9, 2019 at 4:57 AM UTC
I have seen friends tie themselves up to the bedposts of lovers
who would never give them a second thought
If all their pretty untouched skin wasn’t right there
To bruise and taste at their convenience
we have been told there is no other way for us
to hold any value as a person unless someone wants us
I have seen friends cry so hard they puked
as they untied themselves from those bedposts
their wrists had been rubbed raw
and they still left their heart behind in hopes
he would return it with his own in tow
I have seen friends make themselves
names in a little black book
A faceless body
They will let you treat anyway
you want because it’s better than alone
I have seen friends
Break themselves for this twisted messed up version
of love that’s being sold to us
- Who taught us how to do that to ourselves
- Everyone, everyone, everyone
Jul 27, 2021
Jul 27, 2021 at 10:17 PM UTC
Last night
the earth spun
too quickly,
making chaos
of my senses.
The churning stole
away sleep,
making ghosts of coats
draped on bedposts;
demons of the
sheets against my skin.
How inconsiderate the morning,
to all but rush to my aid.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 7:52 PM UTC