"blackening" poems
Better that every fiber crack
and fury make head,
blood drenching vivid
couch, carpet, floor
and the snake-figured almanac
vouching you are
a million green counties from here,
than to sit mute, twitching so
under prickling stars,
with stare, with curse
blackening the time
goodbyes were said, trains let go,
and I, great magnanimous fool, thus wrenched from
my one kingdom.
53.4k
The hills step off into whiteness.
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.
The train leaves a line of breath.
O slow
Horse the colour of rust,
Hooves, dolorous bells ----
All morning the
Morning has been blackening,
A flower left out.
My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.
They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water.
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my entrails seaping crimson blackness into my heart
Bitten by the rotting incisors you force into my flesh
My body seeking your gaping void
mere mortals describe as a mouth
Your dark hollow soul blackening Cutting my thin cold skin i let you in. Feeling our flesh merging in this torturing oneness,
Filling the cavities of endlessness.
i yearn to feel you feasting upon my clammy cold covering desiring for the essence of your inner being to take me whole devouring my crescent moon in undertones of a wild demonic frenzy
Extracting dark passion from your soul Staring into darkest nights of your mind's cavity.
Through your soul, a black gaping hole. Darklights seeping through my sanity.
searching for a searing flame
it matters not that my etheral love is a force from another plain
i can only believe in the feeling of you
Perpetual fear of being hurt long i went through.
This torturing love you wrung me through.
my cold dead heart lingers in a state of confusion
serving only to terrorize my mind
forever playing tricks on me
for a soul ive left behind
Nov 21, 2010
Nov 21, 2010 at 4:39 AM UTC
A blackening morning bleeds and deepens
the opening of iron lungs. Paperweight
bones threaten gaiety and the smell of sleep.
Such sadness pours inward, it has chosen
the wrong body as cold folds over the world,
so it feels real, stained frost in vacuous black.
The pure leap of malignity agitates
the interior of a woman's red heart,
melting like embers.
In the sulphur, words dry while water
slides down. Drips and thickens.
Gaping hole exposed- too early for the dawn.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 12:53 PM UTC
Surveying
northern autumn afternoon
Pitcherelli, ex-marine, body-builder,
Lussier, long-haired father of three dark-skinned children
and myself, sharp-edged loner, ex-lover of a fair share of
women
are belly-laughing in the dying sun. Clouds.
The crew, in timber.
Laughing
over recent visits to marvelous cities where
we could not keep ourselves from touching the terminal buds
of numerous exotic trees
and attracting ridicule of stylish girls and tame boyfriends.
Pitcherelli before the Albany bus station
shaking hands with a red pine planted thirty years ago.
Lussier, one hand in a child's hand and the other
feeling scabrous bark of urban woody plants.
Myself among partially shaved heads and leathery aromatic
jackets
getting close to the hairy bud of an unidentified poplar or
sycamore.
People
laughed, but we laughed best
back on our mountain
under the blackening weather.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 12:53 PM UTC
I wander thro’ each charter’d street.
Near where the charter’d Thames does flow
A mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man.
In every Infants cry of fear.
In every voice; in every ban.
The mind-forg’d manacles I hear
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackening Church appalls.
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls
But most thro’ midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse
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You were forever finding some new play.
So when I saw you down on hands and knees
I the meadow, busy with the new-cut hay,
Trying, I thought, to set it up on end,
I went to show you how to make it stay,
If that was your idea, against the breeze,
And, if you asked me, even help pretend
To make it root again and grow afresh.
But ’twas no make-believe with you today,
Nor was the grass itself your real concern,
Though I found your hand full of wilted fern,
Steel-bright June-grass, and blackening heads of clovers.
’Twas a nest full of young birds on the ground
The cutter-bar had just gone champing over
(Miraculously without tasking flesh)
And left defenseless to the heat and light.
You wanted to restore them to their right
Of something interposed between their sight
And too much world at once—could means be found.
The way the nest-full every time we stirred
Stood up to us as to a mother-bird
Whose coming home has been too long deferred,
Made me ask would the mother-bird return
And care for them in such a change of scene
And might out meddling make her more afraid.
That was a thing we could not wait to learn.
We saw the risk we took in doing good,
But dared not spare to do the best we could
Though harm should come of it; so built the screen
You had begun, and gave them back their shade.
All this to prove we cared. Why is there then
No more to tell? We turned to other things.
I haven’t any memory—have you?—
Of ever coming to the place again
To see if the birds lived the first night through,
And so at last to learn to use their wings.
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Lisbeth stands watching
The artist as he prepares
To sketch. Her elder sisters
Stand in shadows whispering.
Her younger sister plays
With her doll on the floor.
Their father said to do as
The artist instructed and
Don’t misbehave or be rude.
The artist stares hard his
Dark eyes searching their
Every move and expression
And body gesture. The elder
Girls mutter in shadows
Their hands over their mouths
Their blue eyes like shallow
Pools. Ready? The artist
Asks putting charcoal to
Paper his fingers blackening.
Lisbeth says just as we are?
The artist nods. His grim
Features express do not disturb.
The youngest sister plays
Ignoring the artist her eyes set
On the game at hand. The girls
In shadow turn their profiles
Set to mystery their hands on
Their abdomens like guardians
Of virtue. Lisbeth wonders as
She watches the artist’s stiff
Moustache and beard the slow
Movement of his mouth as he
Mouths words and stares hard.
The last artist employed some
Year before younger and less
Brutal in expression and manner
Had drawn them each in private
Rooms and set them down on couch
Or bed and kept their images inside
His head. He was dismissed and the
Drawings destroyed and nothing said.
Lisbeth had thought it just a game
Something done as lover might in
Private corners or lonely spots on
Quiet nights. The artist sketches.
His blackened fingers move and
Made their mark. Their images
Captured. The scene set. One sister
In the shadows yawns the other
Stares in still contempt. Lisbeth
Poses as young girls do. Nothing
To show of interest and nothing
Hid no secret self no other you.
That’s it the artist says we’ll begin
The painting another day maybe
Next week if all is well. The girls
In shadow look away and resume
Their secret games. Lisbeth studies
The artist’s blackened fingers as
He rolls the charcoal sketch and
Puts away. He gazes at her standing
By herself a glimpse of smile and
Glimmer in her eyes like small fires.
He closes the tired lids of eyes
And smoulders down his old desires.
Apr 19, 2012
Apr 19, 2012 at 8:26 AM UTC
i was born all naturally
formed in a lax factory
im actually
a hack with ******* in my nose, practically,
every day, haphazardly
stumbling home, half asleep
i cant tell whats happening
vision begins blackening
im whack like kriss kross
crack like rick ross
major brown boy to houston
be like, "yes, we have liftoff"
dont like me when i'm ****** off
cause ***** i'm bruce banner
or maybe i'm bruce wayne
either way, i got mad manners
tearing down walls like berlin
preaching like its a sermon
potential begins to burgeon
i'll cut you up like a surgeon
killing in place of coercion
so you better lower the curtain
my head and my body are hurtin
so tell me how quick does the world spin?
i'm taddling on ya, you can call me a toddler
but the snitchin n' **** is somethin im never fond of
and i never grow up, cause i'm the neverland smuggler
peter pan turns into one of my best customers
i never grew into my head, im not cocky
never had the eye of the tiger, im not rocky
growing up i never got in fights or caused a lotta ****
but presently im screaming **** the world", i've got a bone to pick
i've gotta problem and i think its the probable cause
you hold me captive, keep me trapped in your facets of laws
looks of repulsion are what cause me to brandish my claws
constant compulsions reminiscent of prodigal flaws
i've gotta problem and i think its the probable cause
see im a goblin shark i'll sink in my nautical jaws
im not a joker im a jester with lesser facades
wrought with insomnia cause drugs are american gods
Mar 10, 2017
Mar 10, 2017 at 1:39 AM UTC
Orcas in Puget Sound
Along the road, abandoned wild apple trees bend
with their heavy loads, dusty skirts of blackberry bushes
purpling fingers, piercing flesh
mouths ringed with berry juice, vampires all.
Along San Juan Island salmon leap clear
out of the briny water, just yards ahead of their predators,
Orcas, dorsal fins curving shiny black, sluicing and slicing
the surface like sharpened knives
They have bred with one another for 10,000 years
trolled these waters through famine, earthquakes, world wars
through shifting continents, glacial avalanches,
through the extinction of whole civilizations.
Standing on a cliff, my daughter and I
watch the Orcas churning the water - studies in grace
the largest gem on the necklace of a great food chain
and when we sleep we too chase
the great King Salmon of our deepest dreams,
the fathers we lost, the currents that bear along children
Translucent jellyfish, palm sized, breath below
sideways exhale, convulsive inhale
umbrellas opening and closing a thousand years or more
sliding through forests of brown kelp where mollusks cling
We have clung like this to one another, with my body
thrown over hers for protection and her exhaling away from me
If Mama Orca keeps her young close, so will I
If there are salmon to chase and harbor seals to command, so we will
Arcing in the late August sky
slapping and parting the surface, over and over
the whales, lords of the Sound, swim in our brains as we sleep
sparkle against blackening waters
You are of my body from my body cleaving there for 10,000 years
Whatever quarrels there are on land vaporize
In the presence of these creatures,
arcing against all that is temporal, vicious, small,
studies in power and grace
The tide pulls out, skimming across rocks and oysters in their muddy beds
But this need to care for you remains as big as an Orca
your appetite for adventure as voracious
and I watch you, my child, disappearing with summer
into high school, into womanhood, into
the salty, light-dappled ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
Perhaps there are 100,000 forms of darkness,
100,000 forms
of what they call depression.
I know one
or two of them.
There is no suffering scale, no way to compare
the suffering of one
human being,
or one illness
to another.
So we hold candlelight vigils
build totems to gather the universe and pull
back clarity around one another’s edges
But I can't burn sage inside me.
It may attract the bad you hide from. Or
is it the good that scares you?
The world beyond the bond
of hearts is a town
without pity.
A dull inhumanity of systems failing the people
we don’t look at.
In this way the brittle tethers of association are tested.
Hand in hand greeting the blackening sky, bearing
down like the face of a missing child’s parents,
staring at one another
knuckles clasp tight.
Your smile the remaining mirror at the end of the world.
If you were here, or I there
I’d be home right now. On the inside
we’re both waiting for one
another still.
Because I’m the same,
but not.
I am ruthlessly forgetful.
Names, birthdays, work schedules.
But I know the way your hair looks in motion.
The way your face looks
refracted through a cigarette ember.
How when your mood shifts,
the church in your eyes
becomes torn, battered, and bare.
If we could just give
another go-round.
It would be different,
Remember,
your best.
Where you are, might
be, may go.
When it used to feel so good.
Apr 27, 2018
Apr 27, 2018 at 11:58 PM UTC
My Kite
The view of purplish branches upon the trees and
Looking beyond grassy mountains on the horizon
Bring back memories of my childhood days,
Wading in a nearby creek and flying my kite before a sunlit sky
And then recalling the wind beginning to blow.
Magenta leaves would decorate
Branches of both growing and fallen trees-
Wild geese soared above and deer were running freely
While my kite was carried upward by the wind
As highly as those trees would ever grow.
My kite I believed would carry that mysterious spirit deep inside of me
Into which I had placed all my faith and trust
The tail of my kite seemed to cross the sun, though far above me
I feared the demons’ of the woodlands following me as I walked-
But with strong assurance I pursued my kite wherever it would go.
Dark clouds began to cover the sun one day and
Branches upon the trees were seemingly blackening
While lightening sharply illuminated the sky
I believed a storm was rapidly approaching.
As fright and haunting disbelief inside of my mind began to overshadow. .
I have told others that my kite held within my protective soul which was always with me
Because I saw it to be an angel dancing freely in the sky
I believe my kite held inside the spirit of a seraph,
That saved me from all that betrayed and hurt me
As the voices inside of my mind had often told me so.
Years have passed and that wind was always fierce and deceitful-
Breaking the string with which I held my kite-
I sadly watched it as it flew higher and higher towards the sky
Until it disappeared behind those approaching darkening thunderclouds
Vanishing beyond my sight- leaving me frightened and alone below.
Years have also passed since I lost my kite which I believed was my guiding illumination
People would laugh and say my mind had escaped reality
Now I can see that there is no one to save me from those demons of this planet
I still hide the pain of loss of my spirit of salvation behind laughter and a smile
But that does not erase the void I feel inside and that is an unrelenting sorrow.
Claudia Krizay
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 7:19 PM UTC
Read the Printed Word!
It is liberating and overwhelming
(to the point of
hot
tears)
to know how long I have been letting people drag my body through hot coals
while denying their abuse only because
letting them mistreat me
was only a way to
mistreat
my
self
But as I have stopped hurting myself, I have become aware that
while I dare anyone to try to hurt me— I say this with a fire glint in my eye--
that I have been opening myself to the worst of people.
I am seeing myself in a better light—
I am powerful
I am beautiful
I am sacred
I am deserving
I am independent
And I don’t need people who I never really needed in the first place.
I’ve gone nineteen years sacrificing myself and it cannot go on. I will not let it go on. My consciousness is shifting, my inner self is awakening and stretching its muscles.
Vomiting up this cancerous, petulant, bone-blackening self loathing, cutting out this metastasizing inability to love myself, is painful.
It is the worst sort of agony
{and my body can take a lot of hell}
but when have I ever shied from pain?
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 4:55 PM UTC
The carpenter sits in his rocking chair as he thinks,
as the sun drowns itself into the dark clouds, he waits.
Waiting for something to tell him that he is no longer a boy anymore,
that his maturity and humility have been masqueraded
Into a body that resembles him.
Every night, when he eats, he sits alone
His plate as round as the moon,
He lights one candle on his dinner table.
Most nights, when he is drinking heavily,
he walks to the back of his house,
sits in front of an old wooden bench,
gazing across the lake and he picks up a book,
construing ideas and proposals that he fails to recollect the morning after.
He reads poems to himself, poems from books.
Poems about the nature and history of the human condition,
about the muscles and the tendons in our bodies
that bend and crumble and shiver at our disposal.
Bottle in his left hand, book in his right.
And sometimes he switches hands to highlight his drunken dexterity.
Clinching his book of poems as if they were his children,
too afraid to go out into the soft fear of the electric night,
and he was the wild one to present to this world.
He feels abandoned, dismayed,
and he no longer sees a light at the end this tunnel,
like someone or something is closing it,
leaving a crevice wide enough just to test and to tease
his willing and purpose to escape from it.
He feels a burning in his chest
as he trickles down the last drip of scotch onto his lips,
tasting death like it was tapwater.
It's midnight and he has to wake up in six hours,
wake up to a routine where his work becomes unnoticed
because he doesn't have the ***** to stand up for himself.
So, he sits and he waits for something to happen,
something fantastic or supernatural to help him grow wings
so he could relieve the tension on his shoulders,
his bones realigned to fit the being of gods.
He closes the book, walks back to his house
and blows his one candle at the dinner table,
blackening the room to fit the clouds of the night.
He lies in his bed as he engulfs his body with his comforter,
hoping to never wake up in a world that will not hesitate to laugh in his face.
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 9:28 PM UTC
The crescent moon has been sighted
Lantern of hope has been ignited.
Doors of mercy have been opened
And the devils have been chained.
It is the month,
Where clusters of sin await repentance
And good deeds worth are multiplied.
The month
In which we abstain from food
From dawn till dusk;
Empty stomachs
But tongue heavy from thikr.
A month
Enlightened with Allah's vast mercy
And extreme prosperity,
Tasting rewards
And bathing in immense blessing.
So choose to
Break mouldy habits
Reform the fabrics.
Reboot your entity
And Recharge your faith.
Choose to strengthen the backbone of your lives;
The pillars of Islam.
Recite the book that has been bonded with threads of faith
and encrusted with pristine words of Allah.
Choose to unshackle yourself
from the blackening shackles;
Untangle from messy mirage of the world
entwined with your wrist
And braid it into ladders to heaven.
Choose to join congregation at prayers
To pray to Allah seeking his affinity
Asking for forgiveness and pray for agility.
Choose to handle tough times with sincerity
And dig faith in one another.
For strength and forgiveness
can be found under his love
And this can be the month
That can bring you a step closer to Allah.
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 3:21 AM UTC
she was a bird on the water
she was clouds reflected
she was trees sighing in the wind
she was sunlight through Venetian blinds
she was dust motes circling lazily
she was Sunday morning ***
she was smiling at me in the mirror
she was bonfires under a pale moon
she was tidal waves of emotion
she was whirlpools of conviction
she was typhoons of jealousy
and I was there too
she is the silhouette of a cigarette pressed to my teeth
she is my shadow cast behind me in the setting sun
she is blue-tinged smoke silently filling the room
she is burning my eyes like chlorine in a crowded pool
she is bars of the cage where my mind is kept penned
she is electric fencing wrapped around my heart
she is buckets of tar drowning me in my dreams
she is written in cursive on the insides of my eyelids
she is slowly shriveling my liver and blackening my lungs
she is living in all the mirrors I look into
she is becoming brobdingnagian prose
maybe that's just me but,
I'm not there anymore.
So why is she still here?
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 5:22 PM UTC
Let me write a happy poem
and paint it seven colors
Red for the burning passion
and orange shows emotions
Yellow for the friends i made
and green for peace and truce
Blue showing the calm ocean
that steer my ship slow motion
indigo wings that help me fly
so high in violet sky
Seven colors to paint my life
and hide the blackening rife !!
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 1:31 PM UTC
I find that chromium-vanadium steel,
while holding glimmer and shine
through much abuse,
is harder to hone
to that razor-like edge
that truly makes chopping a breeze
(watch the fingers, please),
merely mangling fine fruits
and tomatoes, instead.
(just tilt your head, thus)
It's a tool best left
for whacking at meat,
as its heft and its strength
make short work of bone;
more cleaver than scalpel,
if truth will be said.
I've always preferred
the high-carbon alloys,
though now out of fashion
in today's haute cuisine.
While rusting and blackening with age -
not the type you'd put on display -
the blades stay as keen
as the day they were minted,
and wipe down nicely on sleeves.
Oct 23, 2010
Oct 23, 2010 at 6:48 PM UTC
The journey began under a cloudy sky with rain hovering over the horizon. – Going back. – The painter saw the vision. Was it real? Or Was it just the shadow of the storm? The painter saw the canvass. Forms danced before his eyes. Thunder clapped in the distance. The brush moved to the rhythm of the storm that only the painter heard. A lifeline from the clouds like an umbilical cord. – Going back. – The painter focused again. The clouds thickened, blackening against the horizon in anticipation. – Going back. – The painter saw himself. He’d stopped painting. Now going back. – Going back. – The painter wondered. The painter asked himself. The painter took a brush, squeezed paint on the palette; color after color – a new variety. – Going back. – The unknown. A new beginning. – Going back. – The white of the canvass and the blackening sky. The storm. Pure color. Mixing color as the storm moved closer. A clap of thunder. The painter looked at the sky. The painter dabbed the brush onto the palette. Rain began. The brush danced to a rhythm. Thunder claps. Sweeping across the sky; sweeping across the canvass. – Going back. – The painter looked at his painting. The painter looked at the sky. The painter was happy. – Going back.
8/13/19
www.bruclevine.com
https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B07485W4Q1
Aug 15, 2019
Aug 15, 2019 at 1:16 PM UTC
The smoke filled air
Burns my throat.
Ash fell like snow last night.
Yet here I sit
Outdoors
Filling my lungs
With smoke of another kind.
As without,
So within my blackening lungs.
Sep 8, 2025
Sep 8, 2025 at 12:11 AM UTC
The neighborhood's gone to ****
and no one seems to care the doors
are blown off from the tempest
blackening the air. Swanson sleeps
with Harbors who takes Johnson in her mouth
while Johnson picks spare change from
the cushions in his couch. Brinkley's
unemployed but subservient to Mrs. Langer,
while Desmond reaches for two shotgun
rounds and places them in the chamber.
Boom went the weasel and Jill's on
methamphetamine
while the neighborhood we knew and loved
went harshly down the stream.
The months can be a ***** and the year's
have been a *****
the neighborhood's gone to ****
and I'm finally crawling out the door.
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 1:14 PM UTC
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
what remains...
charred piles of torn up memories
Exposed fragments bitter and lost.
Your Mortal fire burns
every piece, Deadly in its wake.
Is it ok?
Us, a tumor Malignant in nature, benign in fiction.
Your flourescent blue
engulfs until full
eating away all.
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
Viperous, you lash
your tongue blackening my heart,
Fatal strikes one by one.
A blaze, your eyes bore into my sole,
Threatening to peel away the love.
It's snowing, particles drop to then end, smothering
my lungs arousing,
an Impending thought that we were not to be.
Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust.
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 4:30 PM UTC
I go to public places to be alone...
I sit amongst the crowds,
listen in to their instigating alluring words,
Exhaust myself with the false pretense of social-comfort
And think about death.
As it has always been and how it will always be-
More potent than human interest, temptation, enticement or fulfillment.
In the depths of these crowds I surround myself with
The culture of the unconscious.
Nothing has ever mattered but the collected cognizance of
The fact that no human being has the internal ability to become immortal-
And nobody who belongs to the crowds worries about that. As,
To be comfortably existent means to be uninformed about your own
Insignificance.
When I am aware of my own body I am more afraid than when I am not.
I watch myself from a blackening screen,
as I destroy what I was born into until it becomes
A habit instilled within both perspectives.
I let the crowds ruin me with glances and words and drunken love
That they will not remember.
I exist as a vessel, and let the pain of my future determine the pain of
My present.
I seek to hide within the dark of a night like this that has experienced my absence and enjoyed it but,
Their glances make me feel so present...
..I can only hide within myself
by pretending that I am outside of myself..
Watching from a blackening screen...
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 5:55 AM UTC