"blotted" poems
‘To bed! To bed!’
Said Sleepy-head;
‘Tarry awhile,’ said Slow;
‘Put on the pan,’
Said Greedy Nan;
‘We'll sup before we go.’
(from Mother Goose)
They sat at the kitchen table as
The candle flickered low,
And Greedy Nan put on the pan
To indulge her sister, Slow,
While Sleepy Weepy Annabelle
Blotted her book with tears,
And thought of her Beau from long ago
Who she hadn’t seen for years.
‘Why doesn’t Roger notice me,
Why doesn’t Alan Dell?
I’m wearing the dress cut low for me
And I’ve hitched my skirt as well.
I’ve a pretty turn to my ankle, so
You’d think it would drive them wild.’
‘But men are a mystery,’ said Slow,
‘And Alan Dell’s a child.’
While over the pan stood Greedy Nan,
Was cracking a turkey’s egg,
A lump of yeast and a slice of beast
And a single spider’s leg.
With a wing of bat and an ounce of fat
And a toe of frog for the spell,
She needed to turn her sister off
From her crush on Alan Dell.
For Greedy Nan was the eldest girl
And would have to marry first,
The other two would wait in the queue
Or their fortunes be reversed,
The omelette sizzled, and in the pan
She added before they saw,
A piece of some Devil’s Trumpet plant
For the mating game meant war.
She sliced the omelette into half
And she served them up a piece,
‘Didn’t you want?’ said Annabelle
But Slow enjoyed the feast.
‘I’m not that terribly hungry now
I’ve cooked it up in the pan,
I think I’ll just have a slice of bread,’
Said the scheming Greedy Nan.
They finished up and they sat awhile,
And they mused about their fate,
‘If Greedy Nan isn’t married soon,
For us it will be too late.’
‘I’ve set my sights on a country squire,’
Said Nan, without a blink,
Lured them away from her secret fire
To confuse what they might think.
‘The room is woozy, spinning around,
I’d better get me to bed,’
Said Annabelle, while Slow with a frown
Saw Dwarves dancing in her head.
But Greedy Nan was cleaning the pan
To clear all signs of the spell,
Her back was turned to her sisters, spurned
For the sake of Alan Dell.
And when he came in the morning
Greedy Nan was sat by the door,
While Annabelle and her sister Slow
Were lying dead on the floor,
‘I didn’t mean it to **** them, Al,
It was only a simple spell,’
But as he cuffed and led her away
He frowned, did Alan Dell.
David Lewis Paget
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 8:01 PM UTC
I'm tested everyday,
Tempted to throw away
The sanity that's kept my mind at bay
If inconveniences are shadows,
then troubles are ink-blotted water
trickling through the canals of my temporal lobes
which causes me to follow
any thoughts of failure instead of success
better to wallow in bed then get dressed
I almost forget that I am blessed.
I aggress the trickling pain
by staring skyward
like a man seeking the opportunity
to fly
soaring above the problems that cloud the eyes
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 6:20 PM UTC
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
10.6k
The Amazons fractured her skull
while he was busy
introducing himself, with a handshake
and a teapot:
'Good Morning!'
A tuneless whistle,
an anthem from nowhere
falls on deaf ears,
eyes faded to pastel
like a warning poster
after twenty copies
and acid rain.
Not an episode from real life
just an ivory circus,
the sport of savagery
Tired.
At an end.
It wouldn't happen in Blighty.
A dark heartbeat,
a steady drum
The pen is mightier than the spear,
blotted shapes in the rushes
Inert, unheard
No time for farewells
Nov 22, 2012
Nov 22, 2012 at 6:02 PM UTC
Spartan shield wall, impenetrable & fortified
Persian soldiers, dying by the thousand
Spears pointed outward, catching flesh & blood
Persian soldiers, dying by the thousand
Sun blotted out by Persian arrows
Persian archers, killing them all
Spartan soldiers, fight to the last
Persian archers, killing them all
Spartans all fallen, not one left alive
Persian soldiers turn back home
Spartans left immortalized, final stand
Persian soldiers turn back home
Spartans, three hundred strong
Spartans, still standing tall
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 6:02 PM UTC
kisses on your warm sweet mouth
tender lips caressed
exploring your ******* and raised ******* ..
belly and thighs enveloped
those eager dark delicious places that i covet so
your musk erogenous
the path to your hungry soul
eater of the poison apple
your eyes widen bright with delight
a strange synesthesia you say
your smile a hypnotic alter
you prone
back arched
belly willing
as i drag a curved blade slowly across your winsome flesh
worshiping you
breathing your warm breath into my mouth and nostrils
come now
you coo
i am sheildless
then little strangles that excite
to see how you do
will you love it
adorations twisted mind
she demon
a wizened dizzy Venus
please yes
her **** drenches the bed
a warm viscosity
legs widen
feet piqued
*****
exotic delicatessen
Heralded
i enter with long sweet butter strokes
the sabbath of desire
I swear
i wont let you suffer...
never !
why you say?
because i love you
lovely scythe you call
as if lulled to sleep
whispering dreadful incantations .
i ache to close the curtain
to lifes scalding chatter
wrap me
in a raggy shawl
impale the throat
like ive alway dreamed
a last exhalation
flood gates pour forth
as deaths dark fold
dissolves all
i rock you drugged
absinthe and wormwood
a last ***** of candles flame
white gauze cinched
lips on a lost mouth
eyes a static pyre
i linger
wishing you still plush
an animated glow
so that i could feel your arms,
now milky white relics
only to take you all over again and again and again
dreamer of the abyss
yet you stand
aberrations, smoke ghost
sacrificially swaying your hips
calling from Hades
dancer of ritual copulation
i melt like wax in the sun
wither
and die myself
marriage Italian style
dead bells in love
blotted out by the Sirens of Mara
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC
they danced in a dream
of bending shadows
face down
begging ***
all hungry back door paradise
ankles strapped on a foot worn floor
paint faced in whorey nights
with pin needle eyes
beded
blood crimson neon's
cut curtains
like kissing claws
so their bodies wouldn't forget
dark pleasures lightening
and biting tantra tantrums
they swallowed mad ***** blossoms of hell candy
breathing the others inhalations
foot sniffing ballet arch
in fastened Japanese melting red slippers
gazing upwards rectums prayer
solar eyed insurrection
finger by finger
clutching wrists like the grave
for bloods salty cove
an injured landscape
a dire pink desert
like bogs hold bones
a rave for a slave
covered in yellow ocher rubber sheets
soft on the feet
x rated amputee costume
made of blood and spit
look mommy no arms
a bellied tattoo
of hennaed homunculi
burning Candomblé Jejé, skull
black eyed beauty hissing
while accordion throated
rip tie tighten
another notch please
a dizzy *******
down silver fluted gullet
in a steamed up bath house
party of blotted sockets
*** kitten
kissed dead girls thighs
tremulous and stretched
a shimmering serum
like wide tubular channels
as pontoon edges slit
through midnight howls for velvet skinned girl
who thrills
her head a veiled Jehovah
saliva wagging tongue ****
a stuttering ****** dance
a hula hot momma in rubble
slapping hot lipped kisses
over starved darkness
along telegraphs avenue
melting eyes like butter
a globed pudding spill
******* drool drops of gold
and black river gladiators
slaughter lies
with every long stroke
between cascading squeals
paraphilias mausoleum
like tumbling eels
a scapegoat pulp fiction
chiseled in cement
******* rips
drip drip drip
babbling **** bubbles
**** spasms ooze like a hot glue gun
fire spats soil cherry clover
Jan 12, 2019
Jan 12, 2019 at 3:39 PM UTC
my eyes
tongues of desire
a soft gauze
upon drenched red silk
stigmata
a river of marrow
flower of blood
creel of moist honey
hold not yourself apart
I kiss your wound
bell moon
crescent ravine, dark tears
like a spay of stars
arched spine
your raised ****
like scrambled eggs
curves to the heavens
a steep canyon aching
weeps blue darkness
legs wide in souls shadowed grove
tattooed pistols and knives
pierced by my autograph
for every letter, scimitars plunge
jeweled ******** ringed
sweet tarnished petal
gashed mouth; flower de luce
memories that burn
blotted like an eye in ink
to fly winged *******
your face
hieroglyphic of weird
crimson smear; cackle
with feet below hell
wanting to live
like fire in the sky
hot witch riding a broom handle *****
scummed mouth
the world soul destroyed paradise
and your form
hideous kisses
falling red ribbons
i am puddled;
a runny yolk
shameless for your open hollows
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 12:13 PM UTC
I
I stole my brother’s car and drove to Phoenix in the dark.
The blue-green glow of dashboard gauges, the biting scent
of roadkill and desert marigolds. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Insects slapping the windshield, incipient rain.
Keep driving. Drive until the sun blooms.
II
Some days were more dire than others. CCTV footage confirms
I pawned a shotgun, a Gibson guitar, and my wife’s engagement
ring at the pawnshop next to Fatty’s Tattoo parlor on MLK Boulevard.
The typographically accurate Declaration of Independence
inscribed on my back also confirms this.
III
I ran the tilt-a-whirl at the Ashtabula county fair,
fattening up on fried Oreos and elephant ears,
twisting behind tent ***** with a one-armed
contortionist with strawberry-blonde hair.
IV
I derailed in a dive bar.
V
I disappeared in a city lit by lavender streetlights,
where buildings blotted out the stars and the traffic
signals kept perfect time. I picked through trash bins.
I paid for love with drugstore wine.
VI
I closed my eyes on a mountain road.
The sheriff extracted me from a ****** snowbank.
VII
I holed up for weeks in an oceanfront motel, dazed
by the roar of the breakers. Each morning I drew
back the curtains and lost myself
in the crisscrossing patterns of whitecaps,
the synchronous flight of sanderlings above the dunes.
I dreamed of dead horseshoe ***** rolling in with the tide.
VIII
The moon over my shoulder
tightened into focus like a spotlight.
One night the barking dogs undid me.
I caved in to the candor of a naked mattress.
I grew my beard, an insomniac in a jail cell,
clinging to bars the color of a morning dove.
IX
I coveted the house keys of strangers.
X
I opened and closed many doors.
I sang into the mouths of storm drains.
I stepped out of many rooms only
to find myself in the room I just left.
Despite all my leaving, I remained.
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 1:45 PM UTC
I absorbed,
Blotted misery,
Lapped with eyes,
Soaked-up transgressions,
Mopped-up history,
Was steeped in trials,
Ingested triumphs,
And truly assimilated.
But the ground is saturated,
My prints fill
With the brine
Squeezed out.
I am the salt on the earth,
Parched and cracked.
You preferred candyfloss;
I dripped the last drop.
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 8:20 AM UTC
a storyteller's perspective, steppin' off the ordinary edge, into the unknown
An unsent letter lay on the rustic log cabin floor
A cold wind musta’ blown through the cracks the light comes in,
where it laid fallen, half *** crumbled, yet never a wadded ball;
never an unspoken thrown paper stone, a befallen regret was all.
Silently atilt and leaning against the canted wall's slant
behind the gathered dust a squeaky hinged burl wood door
A timeworn tarnished copper wind up clock roosted,
an old lip smirched coffee cup time stood still;
an empty bottle of gin sat near the bed post headboard
where the ink stains and blotted spillings let the memories in.
Stained pages torn and bent like fallen paper wings
returned to the unread sender … postage due, south a heaven sent ―
A sullied envelope, gnawed and mouse chewed,
for a nest of new beginnings ―
just read: Lydia ... ♡
... followed by a scribbled empty heart
The time aged brown tattered tablet paper left behind
stifled like the unread heart it holds upon the threadbare pages
of smudged tear’s ache and spilled gin
The weathered rock hearth fireplace filled with spent ashes,
hand rolled cigarette butts, traces of an aching lament;
scratched up old vinyl records lay ***** and tired out,
from a time of sweeter fallen fences, a musical bliss, and
a lost angel's abandoned red slinky party dress,
aside a busted off black velvet high-heel stuck sullied
in a hollow knothole in the ancient barn-wood floor
a sparkly pearl pink jewel entangled in a spider web
An unsent letter lay on the rustic cabin floor
A cold wind musta’ blown through the cracks the light gets in
The final unread words silently said:
*"We lost our way,
it all went wrong,
it all turned bad"
..."This is the outcome when someone you love
up and throws you away"
...“I’ll reach out from the inside
I’ll rise up again and do without”
..."You went out into the world
with an untamed hankerin’ ―
like a carefree restless gypsy breeze
and come back worlds apart"*
The Unsent Letter,
just whispered words to the dust in the wind
in quivering ink:
...*"how can I ever unremember you...?
a thrown stone sinks wordlessly as a rock...,
an old wood bucket with a rotten hole the heart,
fallen forgotten, rock bottom as an empty well"*
just signed: ... ❤ August
January 1st, 2017 ... august ... wild is the wind ♡
Jan 1, 2017
Jan 1, 2017 at 12:20 PM UTC
Your words claw out of my eyes,
And fall translucent into the clasped palms
Of my hands.
Listen, listen carefully to the muddled sounds.
Hear the tiger's paws trample the dusted paths of
The vacant streets;
The arcane acres of blotted ink
Sitting beside the ruminant hordes,
Choking on a drawer of silver spoons.
We see through the wall's hole;
A soothing fire raging, yet we cannot touch
It's flame.
STAND IN LINE, take a number
Our turn will be coming soon.
Be the street lamps beneath the redwood's shade
Be the porch swing on the moon's surface.
Be Atlantis, lost and found.
Listen,
listen
carefully...
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 12:09 AM UTC
I've watched too late; the morn is near;
One look at God's broad silent sky!
Oh, hopes and wishes vainly dear,
How in your very strength ye die!
Even while your glow is on the cheek,
And scarce the high pursuit begun,
The heart grows faint, the hand grows weak,
The task of life is left undone.
See where upon the horizon's brim,
Lies the still cloud in gloomy bars;
The waning moon, all pale and dim,
Goes up amid the eternal stars.
Late, in a flood of tender light,
She floated through the ethereal blue,
A softer sun, that shone all night
Upon the gathering beads of dew.
And still thou wanest, pallid moon!
The encroaching shadow grows apace;
Heaven's everlasting watchers soon
Shall see thee blotted from thy place.
Oh, Night's dethroned and crownless queen!
Well may thy sad, expiring ray
Be shed on those whose eyes have seen
Hope's glorious visions fade away.
Shine thou for forms that once were bright,
For sages in the mind's eclipse,
For those whose words were spells of might,
But falter now on stammering lips!
In thy decaying beam there lies
Full many a grave on hill and plain,
Of those who closed their dying eyes
In grief that they had lived in vain.
Another night, and thou among
The spheres of heaven shalt cease to shine,
All rayless in the glittering throng
Whose lustre late was quenched in thine.
Yet soon a new and tender light
From out thy darkened orb shall beam,
And broaden till it shines all night
On glistening dew and glimmering stream.
3.6k
Holocaust Poem: "On The Slaughter"
by Chaim Nachman Bialik
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Merciful heavens, have pity on me!
If there is a God approachable by men
as yet I have not found him—
Pray for me!
For my heart is dead,
prayers languish upon my tongue;
my right hand has lost its strength
and my hope has wilted, undone.
How long? Oh, when will this nightmare end?
How long? Hangman, traitor,
here’s my neck—
rise up now, rise and slaughter!
Behead me like a dog—your arm controls the axe
and the whole world is a scaffold to me
although we—the chosen few—
were once recipients of the Pacts.
Executioner, my blood’s a paltry prize—
strike my skull and the blood of innocents will rain
drenching your pristine uniform again and again,
staining your raiment forever.
If there is Justice—quick, let her appear!
But after I’ve been blotted out, should she reveal her face,
let her false scales be overturned forever
and the heavens reek with the stench of her disgrace.
You too arrogant men, with your brutal injustice,
suckled on blood, unweaned of violence:
cursed be the warrior who cries "Vengeance!" on a maiden;
such cruelty was never contemplated, even by Satan.
Let innocents’ blood drench the abyss!
Let innocents’ blood seep down into the congealing darkness,
eat it away and undermine
earth's rotting foundations.
Al Hashechita ("On the Slaughter") was written by Chaim Nachman Bialik in response to the ****** Kishniev pogrom of 1903, which was instigated by agents of the Czar who wanted to divert social unrest and political anger from the Czar to the Jewish minority. The Hebrew word schechita (also transliterated shechita, shechitah, shekhitah, shehita) denotes the ritual kosher slaughtering of animals for food. The juxtapositioning of kosher slaughter with the slaughter of Jews makes the poem all the more powerful and ghastly. Such anti-Semitic incidents prompted a massive wave of Eastern European emigration that brought millions of Jews to the West. Unfortunately, there have been many similar slaughters in human history and the poem remains chillingly relevant to the more recent ones in Israel/Palestine, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. Keywords/Tags: Holocaust, poem, Bialik, translation, slaughter, massacre, God, prayer, executioner, hangman, blood, innocents, justice, false, scales, injustice
Mar 12, 2020
Mar 12, 2020 at 4:00 AM UTC
A fragile shell of what once was,
decimated beyond comprehension.
Shards of a old life slipping away,
into the silent empty space.
Memories of loved ones,
eluding desperate hands that reach and seek--
For what is buried beneath the dust.
Submerged in perpetual darkness,
the stars have lost their light,
the moon has lost its glow.
Every infinitesimal shard of your very essence,
is engulfed in the empty space.
The empty space that exists outside time,
awareness,
and matter;
Hides in the desolate corners of your mind.
A invisible fog covers your soul,
stealing it away like a thief in the night.
And you are left unreachable,
a blank page in a book full of blotted ink.
The ones who loved you with every breath in their lungs,
surround and overwhelm with tear filled eyes.
Utterly helpless as you disappear.
Years pass,
and
you
Fade.
Vanish.
Evaporate into the empty sky.
Dead to yourself.
Dead to the world.
Dead to the ones who loved you most.
And though your gone, an empty space lingers in your wake.
-Esther L. Krenzin-
-Roguesong-
Nov 11, 2018
Nov 11, 2018 at 9:21 PM UTC
Glances in passing and nothingness,
I'll drop out and take up gardening.
And you are so cool, all German bred,
and sometimes braided. I see you, so
well-read and rather regal. ***** blonde
nuclear, alabaster, aluminum rods -
electricity dripping from the soles of
your shoes. This classroom, my own
ink blotted incubator, the radiator sits,
flatlining. Your jaw as two razor blades,
your shoulder blades, broad, gentle.
I wonder how you look in the morning,
How you look at yourself in the mirror.
Do you practice smiling, and
how often do you wash your hair? Oh,
you exist in glass, and I will not try to
know you. Leaving this poem limited,
and yet. Your jam drop mouth houses all
well-spoken soliloquies, radical requiems.
So, what would happen if we brushed
shoulders in passing? Your little accent.
Accident, we appeared in the same
huddled mass. Literary plugs in the
drain, and your new American. So,
why don't we just go walking on
airplane wings? Some transcontinental
affair. Frequent flyer ******* stranger.
Feb 27, 2017
Feb 27, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC
Just like Goddess Kali
I am feared when not
understood
my enemies know my loving passion are my kids
those demons slander me
fearing the mother
goddess in me
I gave life and inadvertedly heartbroken waived it
I give life
birthed my children
against all adds
motherhood apeaces me
injustice enrages my dance
I am Goddess Kali Karijin
~~
Precious daughters
Elena Rose Jeanette fear not
I save I protect I write
it's my frenzied dance
surounded by demons ferocious
you and me won many a
gruesome wars
to protect you three your
children alike my light
I have deamed
Remember Mother Kali
I love you miss you
more and more
and for you my life I lay
~~~.
The goddess mother
(excerpt)
~estranged from kids ~
~~~~~~
"The stars are blotted out,
The clouds are covering clouds,
It is darkness vibrant, sonant.
In the roaring, whirling wind
Are the souls of a million lunatics
Just loose from the prison-house,
Wrenching trees by the roots,
Sweeping all from the path...
The sea has joined the fray,
And swirls up mountain-waves,
To reach the pitchy sky.
The flash of lurid light
Reveals on every side
A thousand,
thousand shades
Of Death begrimed and black."
love & motherhood apeace me.
~~~~~~~
By: Karijinbba
inspired
by Hindi ink Durga-Kali
Shiva Lord's Wife
revised 06-5-19
~~~~
May 31, 2019
May 31, 2019 at 11:27 PM UTC
These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.
Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or His woe?
2.8k
forgiveness for self is a thunderstorm ferocious,
cracking sounds so god awful fearful
that one questions his-her sanity,
an overage so unnatural that
only nature could create it
it is a moment momentousness
when the exhalation of exhaustion,
the winner and loser, both you,
surrender ne’er knowing
which you is which,
life’s son of ***** or just a plain jane mothering version,
either way you say to yourself got to
get past that lousy stinking
love affair
win the race to clean slate,
where the end is insight where everything replaced
in its used to be placed
goaded into melted nothingness,
goaded into believing that’s a real thing,
that when you finally get there,
enough is enough,
get out of jail ticket will work,
but it ain’t never free,
even if you paid for it in
what you call
throwing bad after good,
monopoly money,
nope, ain’t never free
no idea what to put in the second empty closet,
who needs an attached to-the-wall-tile
toothbrush holder with one extra emptying space,
where to hide picture albums in a space
outta sight, outta mind, you still can find
why you didn’t care enough to
daily mat-wipe street shoes before
riveted in place
before entering your own! apartment and no,
you are consciously unconscious immobilized by
the missing calling out of her “don’t forget”
in the car’s ashtray,
a red kissed blotted red lipstick
tissue that needs discard-action,
but you incapable of either,
those collected records and cd’s,
her teasing your old fashion ways,
reluctance to let go
so you read
“that to forgive one self doesn’t forgive forgetting”
and it hits home, home run, score to the core,
since you wrote those words on a sun rain afternoon,
a punctuating thunderstorm day
refusing to decide
which
haunts worse
<>
Jun 30, 2019
Jun 30, 2019 at 5:04 PM UTC
THE GYRES! the gyres! Old Rocky Face, look forth;
Things thought too long can be no longer thought,
For beauty dies of beauty, worth of worth,
And ancient lineaments are blotted out.
Irrational streams of blood are staining earth;
Empedocles has thrown all things about;
Hector is dead and there's a light in Troy;
We that look on but laugh in tragic joy.
What matter though numb nightmare ride on top,
And blood and mire the sensitive body stain?
What matter? Heave no sigh, let no tear drop,
A-greater, a more gracious time has gone;
For painted forms or boxes of make-up
In ancient tombs I sighed, but not again;
What matter? Out of cavern comes a voice,
And all it knows is that one word "Rejoice!'
Conduct and work grow coarse, and coarse the soul,
What matter? Those that Rocky Face holds dear,
Lovers of horses and of women, shall,
From marble of a broken sepulchre,
Or dark betwixt the polecat and the owl,
Or any rich, dark nothing disinter
The workman, noble and saint, and all things run
On that unfashionable gyre again.
2.6k
Pools of anguish overflow
a solemn, silent dirge
From the opaqueness of my soul
all my fears converge
Pretty lights on the horizon
blotted out by rain
Is this desolation
or could lucidity be so plain?
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 7:34 AM UTC
*Some chapters in life
Are better left
Untouched
Undisclosed
Unfinished...
Some chapters in life ,
If
Revealed
Or
Accomplished
Will leave many a chapters ,scarred , blotted and totally messed.
Some chapters in life are better left unread ..
And that is how , life's most important chapters are addressed .*
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 7:32 AM UTC
this
sweet-eyed
breathtaking
catastrophe
of mine
hoarding
clutter to the
ceiling fan,
filling void
somewhat
while
trying to
understand
how involuntarily
she crumples
like paper
littered
on the sidewalk
of my brain,
riddled with
scribbles
and nonsense
words,
her ink
blotted
voice like
feathers
under pressure
being
pressed against
whatever
white knuckles
her neck
and
hot talk
from
cold chests.
ingenious
security
boarded up doors
and
one-way glass
windows
to
watch
from inside.
for a moment
she calls
out to me from the
woodwork.
she almost
reaches
for the lock,
she almost becomes more than just paper
Sep 3, 2017
Sep 3, 2017 at 12:17 AM UTC
I still think of you
when I hear a song that moves me
And wonder what it would follow
on the tape I wish I could make you.
This is the standing stone
on an emotional landscape
that has changed as fast as technology,
seen music shift from soulfood
to occasional backdrop
and solitary teenage bedrooms morph
to joyful family homes (thank God).
I wouldn't go back -
but here's a song, unexpected, blissful
which can't quite touch me as it should
Because I can't press 'record',
watch the reels go round
and imagine you listening
when the tape crosses the country
and fetches up at your front door.
No more padded envelopes
nor blotted biro liner notes;
no more declarations hidden in plain sight
in ninety minutes of love
I knew no other way to send.
Sep 17, 2011
Sep 17, 2011 at 3:02 PM UTC
In this moment
I’m a petal of rose
Often mocked that I am one
By other flowers
Who look up to the same sun
I feel plucked from my root
Mangled and ****
I was born bare
That which was my beauty
But in this crude exposure
trapped in some snare
My skin burns in ******
I feel ghastly blows of wind
And wailing typhoon
Dent rustic parts of my skin
Scream its cacophony louder than my whimper of pain
Making me beg for a light drizzle of rain
I wonder how I would be
If I were a dandelion
I could let my fragments loose
And watch their flight
Into ethereal sunshine
I’m a trampled rose
Like the woe in Christ’s song
I’ve plagiarised the words
It seems
But this is how it feels
To be forlorn
And I have a mind of my own
Alas! That’s what I thought
Until I learnt that it’s supremely influenced
tainted and stale
Like a can of delight
Only store bought
off a bargain
What if I were only a little flower
whose shoot grew
Piercing out of a rocky crevice?
A small star
trying hard to shine its hardest
in its constellation
Blotted with sparkling lights?
How can I make myself known?
Do I have to?
Is it a sin? To be alone?
To be a petal of rose and please you?
Can’t I be my own?
A flower that doesn’t have a Latin root
That can shy away if touched
And bloom when in mood?
No, I really don’t want to stick to a season
And have visitors
gawk at me then
I want to be really loved in person
Even when I’m dying
and my stalk is bent
now, I wonder
Does a flower think so much?
Does it write a poem
When its feelings are fractured
And they need a crutch?
I’ve seen it be
Just lucid and carefree
And, all of a sudden
I’m jolted with an epiphany
of simply being.
Aug 9, 2018
Aug 9, 2018 at 3:45 PM UTC