"bottleneck" poems
My lips can no longer hold back.
The muted tones cannot bring out the infinity that hides
discretely
points
to an exit sign.
Certainty waves goodbye. My only function now is to collapse it.
To put the past behind.
The barred doors allow the bottleneck to tighten for a few hours,
but memory has a way of sounding the alarm in the morning
when the early birds rise,
armed with ancient lessons
that remind me they're the ones who are eating well.
I want to come up from the dirt and drink from the well.
My low-life self can no longer heed the worm's advice:
"Sleep all day and you won't get eaten."
Out.
Out with your tepid voice and halfway disposition.
Out with your elevated mind, your profound commitment to the mediocre task
of enlightening the little people.
The empire you fabricate may stay stitched for a while.
But the clothes of emperors always burst at the seams.
A workaholic, addicted to the common
you're winning your converts with tired dreams, vicarious imaginings of those finer roads, well tread by shoes that are not your own.
You don't believe in the masses. Fine. But get the **** off
your throne.
Reciting badly drawn poems at four in the morning
(it could have been worse e.g. I could have wrote "mourning")
looking to insight myself,
not into a passionate frenzy
like Bacchae drunk on the moonlight.
No -- I want piercing red. That's what I want to be.
Want to show the heavens how I use the precious wine.
Sip it.
Out the undulations go.
Sweating out the great myth that time forgets when it flows.
My pagan-witch ego has put me on the hunt for blood tonight,
and the full moon is giving rise to ****** undulations,
washing up teeny-book explanations
of loves once lost.
But I'm far from my being,
and from the infinite ocean.
And the only sound I can hear right now is my one hand clapping at the curtain call,
retiring my broom,
bowing goodbye.
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 12:23 AM UTC
Bio chemical creation tracing the steps of evolution through the fetus
The blood trail seeps into flaccid lakes of genocide
Bottleneck effect on government induced laboratory experiments
Questioning the interrogated under kaleidoscopic examination
Believe me when I tell you to leave me alone
Reconstructing DNA strands of Darwin’s transgression
Molding to the perplexity of the world
Apr 24, 2011
Apr 24, 2011 at 8:58 AM UTC
A snifter of brandy leads to another
Soon I'll be tipsy, melancholy and discover
that two brandies do not an alcoholic make,
but a bottle? Now there's the shake.
This brandy brews the blues.
It's Amber caramel softness soothes your soul,
but screams the blues.
Your muse is lost in this bruise of blues
Like a long note on a saxophone disappearing.
Let's take a ride on down to the crossroads,
I'll bring the bottle, you bring the bottleneck slide.
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 2:22 PM UTC
Sewer rats bottleneck into a Carnival of Depravity. Due to the bizarre circumstance of their fingers, they allow their limbs to become limp. As Valkyries, they are aware of the juxtaposition of their clown pantaloons and their hobnailed mudboots. In this benefit carnival, a ferris wheel runs amok. Within it, GI’s holler their way through the vermillion skyway, zippoing the dented carapace with their M16s. In a true practice of youthful bliss, the 5.56 returns to the cosmos. However, the bullets, streaming out and homewards, are soon constrained to the circular path of the wheel itself.
“Centripetal farce!” goes Lance.
“Hey what, man?” whimpers Mr. Clean.
“Well, y’see: centripetal fOrce makes an overwhelming amount of sense. So much so, that when superimposed on the Carnival Cavalcade™, it must make no sense, for it’d shake us all up something mad.”
“So, the bullets aren’t real?”
“Oh, they’re plenty real. Just touch it, it’d melt you, starting with the neurons, cat. Other than little blue reality though, it’s out there. Its dancers are not chained to any concrete block of nature.”
“Oh, they’re sufferin’?”
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 11:38 AM UTC
Well the end is near
Or so they say
But I keep waking up every day
I put my hands
On my face
I think it's time I got out of this place
It's too hard
To go with the flow
I think I'll stand here and watch it roll
I'm tired yet
I'm wide awake
I'm much too young to never make mistakes
Where is the fantasy?
Can someone promise me
That I'll never grow old until I die?
Where is the promised land?
It must be gone again
Dropped in the sea like one big lie
I'm not alone
And I've checked
But I'm sipping wine by the bottleneck
Take me home
But not inside
If I can't open doors I might as well die
I took a pill
Let's take a ride
When reality fails just look inside
I don't like
What I see
But at least I can say I am always me
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 7:56 AM UTC
there is a fire, somewhere.
the sun/sun making mad love to the mother earth like hey.
hey to the water,
hey to the waves,
& all bits below.
endless mad love.
& electric, sing the youth.
swung the tooth of photosynthetic children trickling like tributaries
into/onto/toward all worldly tufts.
prisoners of the wild.
prisoners of the city, yet swords of something like the heart.
like an amber ale popped spare
& nowhere but up,
baby.
old cassette-tape
as bottleneck netting. this is
stellar
fishing.
who’s wet khakis?
mine.
visitors from the great stars and lush.
tall nettle, tall tent-
city &
popping sap campfires. acid-
dropped and cooler cocked.
rekindle this
bliss,
cosmos.
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 6:26 AM UTC
Smokey Edge, Georgia.
I Wait in the diner. Not long ago Whites Only.
Now filled with black folks.
Mom would say “persons of color,”
that would include the two Hispanic truckers
and the Chinese cook.
Mom said “don’t go, no need to”.
She’s never been.
Gives me the silent treatment
while murdering Chopin on tortured keys.
Cousin Ed slides into the booth.
Across from me he glistens sweat,
wipes his forehead, grins, squeezes my hand.
“Hi cousin Citygirl, “ and adds “Chocolate au lait”!
Mocking, or teasing, I don’t care.
“Ok, double espresso” I say.
Red on white No Trespassing sign rusts in the grass.
Vine assaulted shack is all what’s left of it,
the Juke Joint where grandpa played
banjo with a bottleneck slide,
making it screech and sing.
Where the women Bess sang and danced.
The one he talked about incessantly,
when he had forgotten who we were.
How he pressed into her, ****** her behind the joint,
how she smelled and laughed and rocked the blues,
how she put her lips to the glass of bathtub gin, just so.
Short crepuscule gives way to night. Mosquitos come thick.
“Listen up Citygirl, hear the sounds, ghost drums and strings.”
I hear grandpa’s banjo, the slide’s screech, Bess sings.
I smell the funk, the sweat, ripe heat, the Blues.
I put my arm around his waist, grind into him
I want him hard, in me, lick his sweat.
He pushes me away, “hear up Citygirl,
I‘m not grandpa and you aint no Bess.”
Cristina Umpfenbach-Smyth March 2012
Oct 23, 2012
Oct 23, 2012 at 3:24 PM UTC
......................
Toscar
Crash!
Two red cells,
Smash!
Blood and teeth -
Mash!
Upper lip?
Rash!
...........
Boy In Barfly
Oh yeah, like that - your tongue’s a feather
Flamingo pink,
Wet with weather,
Drowning in the mouth of me.
Cherry stems
Locked together.
.......
Aw.
"Please?"
"No".
"But I -"
"Go."
"Just one kiss? I’ll make it quick!"
**** off Arthur, you make me sick."
.........
Photobooth
Julia is on my knee,
Grinding like a toy.
Her hands are at the back of my neck
And she says
"Come on then, boy."
and flicks *** ash at my lap.
FLASH!
.......
Jack
I love the taste of your spit.
I like it when you let it drip
with me pinned beneath you like a doll,
my mouth open like a ****
letting you drown my crooked teeth
letting you dribble your DNA down my bottleneck throat.
******* hell Jack!
You are a terrible kisser...!)
.......
Dee
We’re both naked,
But I don’t want to do anything but kiss you.
Not right now, anyway.
You’re so fragile, darling,
And so small,
And your mouth is the pink wax seal
On the envelope of my life.
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 3:50 PM UTC
An irreverent force
armed in localised wars
Flames of rage displayed in waves
Some strings attached
to bring about more force
Shattered glass and burnt bricks
won't fix what a voice is worth
But irrelevance when oppressed
blinded with contempt seeks to vent
So many mistakes are blamed to
create what is made of the states
Powers that be have a responsibility
to assist those in need without them bending the knee
Jun 4, 2020
Jun 4, 2020 at 6:33 AM UTC
The rain would usually bother me
but today I'm tired
and sickness and intoxication are both wearing off
so each little droplet does nothing to phase me
from my half awake daydreaming state
staring into others faces,
just aware enough to turn when they turn.
Most days I would study each line-
the smiles, the wrinkles, the way their hair parts
just trying to understand each of them.
Today I'm looking just to look at something moving
so I don't look at the concrete
and fall asleep, bored.
The three other classes on this end of campus
are each let out early
and file through this bottleneck
quietly enough that I only notice the last few as they walk by.
She looks up from the ground and sees me.
Saying nothing, she smiles in a way that makes me wonder if she's looking past me,
I look, there's nothing there.
I smile back for a second, as well as I can.
Later I catch her smile again from a crowd in the hall.
I stop for a second,
not physically, I keep waking.
but, I keep my eyes there, smiling.
she's already looked away, so I don't worry.
It comes harder to me today- studying a face,
and her's is one I've never been able to figure out,
so I give up and keep walking.
Am I a friend to her,
or something more?
Am I what I wanted to be
years ago-
A thought in her head before she falls asleep?
Or am I just broken because I think this hard about a simple smile?
Feb 12, 2013
Feb 12, 2013 at 2:45 AM UTC
and here I sit, at the bottleneck.
a postdoctoral headlock squelched
in an economic ice age.
what idiosyncratic feathers
will we evolve to make stolid
careers ****
is it possible these colorful
plumage have unintended
consequences of flight?
early real down
or Icarus waxed illusion?
Oct 29, 2016
Oct 29, 2016 at 11:53 AM UTC
Lover, understand
That my tongue and my eyes rarely speak the same language
But when they do, the world burns
Sometimes in honesty, sometimes in ferocity
Aren't they the same thing?
Tell me to leave my world behind and run with you
And I will drop my razor blade
And you won't understand
And just like that, the dreams
Dry
Up.
(Telling you my secrets is beginning to feel more claustrophobic than it used to.)
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 4:52 PM UTC
there is no sun, no west,
no east.
night falls, morning comes like
clockwork.
but,
what does the night hide?
and what does morning make new?
i don't know when you wrote this
poem,
or if when you wrote it you
had a song-to-be in your head,
but i've rarely (at least not
first-hand) seen you wander into
the night; rather, you - much
like i often do - ignore possibilities
that another morning could bring,
and choose to grasp
a bottleneck as if you could choke
yesterday's throat. i would know -
i've blamed a lot of yesterdays.
and you went on to say that
rays of new sun beam onto
beauty that rests, as if it were
potential energy.
beauty is kinetic.
beauty does not rest. it is a killer,
and a victim, as it suckerpunches
you, and cowers. beauty is
not love, and love is not a victim,
and doesn't cower. those may be the
only differences, but i prefer to
think that love may have its
redeeming
qualities.
i don't care how sunny,
it doesn't shed light on a
**** thing, clears nothing up
anymore than night hides things.
but you were right:
"somewhere in time
something is lost"
but what did you lose that you
have not re-found and lost
again and re-found and....
there's no hiding, man.
we were always more alike than
most, and
i know what you're looking for -
love, for "things" to make
sense, for that orange-y
haze of childhood innocence (yes,
in my mind, childhood was orange,
carpeted floors, "playing house" (and
"doctor") and an electric *****
by the hallway that no one ever
played) to return, for the "real deal" -
whether in the form of a woman,
an oblivious grin, fruity drinks
on a remote sandy beach, or finding out
the hard way.
i'm finding things out the hard
way. i'm missing "things" (people,
smells, strangers (not to be confused
with the aforementioned 'people'), and
everything else i knew would
be missed. i'm realizing that
all the time in the world
doesn't necessarily mean an abundance of
inspiration. i do dishes wherever i go.
Dec 23, 2011
Dec 23, 2011 at 12:01 AM UTC
speak
lie to me
the meterbox is leaking
black teeth stretch through bramble hearts
look
draw me an ocean
swirling
swirling
find space in spaces
and drown in them
there
the doresh haTorah
writes his code
stamps his envelops
enveloped in folds
suffocated in empty spaces
touch
clasp for her
radiant flesh
anchored in robes of sung feathers
blood pools at consecrated feet
a slave to the idea of sin
but always withering its invite
spit on your forgiveness
taste
a plum
solid but porous centre
fermenting mud
stinking bottleneck
smog your beaded eyes
gloss over and choke
hear
the unfathomable word
polysemous and locked
in hermetic seals
speak
shout
call to them
any direction will do
you know
you know what they say?
he'd beat his kids
**** his daughters
gnaw their scalps
but he can never remember where he put them
can never remember their faces
isn't that funny?
isn't it?
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016 at 12:19 AM UTC
Swinging rhythmically; bloated and unsteady,
He nudges at the doorway of his desire,
And descends into darkness,
Carrying his heavy load of lust.
Beyond the bottleneck,
From where warmth and light beckon,
He hears the trill of girlish laughter,
The sound of sanctuary at play.
Pausing briefly; head cocked to one side,
He sighs with resignation,
Deposits his craving clumsily,
And withdraws deflated and defeated.
Once again.
Mar 17, 2019
Mar 17, 2019 at 5:44 PM UTC
the reverse of prostate?
******* through a bottleneck;
oddly enough the ********
helps, plus ********
makes you less sexually warring...
it's like an added ********
i'm adamant on this point,
cut the excess skin off, the males
become mad like caged ducks...
keep it... you get a surprise.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 1:36 PM UTC
Under the train station from across the road
one musty midnight after a late dinner, I saw him.
He was alone. He watched jeepneys pass by. He
stared at the road. He remained still when
the other workers walked past him.
He held a 7-up or maybe a Mountain Dew
by the bottleneck & brought it to his lips to drink.
He was sitting on a stool too small for him
& so his legs were spread open.
He put his free hand on his knee, in between
fingers an almost finished cigarette.
His work suspenders glowed under the
plastic fluorescent light of Althea’s burger shop,
& beneath he wore a red shirt that
fastened his torso tight. When it was time to
ride my jeepney home, I looked at him for a moment
before getting on, & it could be that
he looked right back. When we
moved forward I tried looking again
but saw he was looking somewhere else.
Manila, 2018
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 9:57 AM UTC
hair dashing vision deploy sud featherless\
motion in active taste bud slipped on eternal\
tip of my tongue whistle lunge internally\
**** drizzle dripped seating scampi intestine\
grip swung intensity hitting uvula grump\
the bedroom slippers pajama snap running\
throat hiccups stuck doll sitting smudge crap\
pat tack in scratch mouth I due alley loop mucus\
packing trunk wood you irritate stove chappy baker\
hunk the lock spinning the sling cling on schnapps\
surviving by the beer Craving Peace of ear confession minding\
the sake of better judgement intrigue maleficent impression\
spite traditional contraceptive contradict hypocritical Kitab rewrite\
Ktab inducting paschen arrange friction pronounce tissue adjudicated\
hit or miss mission issue clevis tension ******** metabolism buoyant crevice\
sullied virginity abolishing hip ripping meat window damp moist cherry\
fur confined steed Structurally Mounting **** transcoding soil instrumenting\
matrimony ring band regent gown slapping *** crack Larry the Cable Guy wed\
Din Din Baby Fat Naming like/
be Naming Baby Shat Chat/
bei spin nozzle creek up/
drift bottleneck swifty/
dream line bleachers/
above the body top/
under tummy tuck/
wackbush stroke/
c ******** broad/
Jul 9, 2017
Jul 9, 2017 at 3:37 PM UTC
It's like the reality of falling leaves:
In autumn, people seek them out
Their perfected performance of death
A leap from ten stories in a party dress
The taffeta catching the up draft
No one gathers to see the aftermath
Of carnage covered by dirt and water
Taking beauty and churning it out
Brown sledge grunted up by the earth
Spit out, mangled, the marrow exposed
It's always the same
The crowds bottleneck, shove, push
To see the start, but at the end
Everyone is looking for an out
Such happiness for what follows hello, for
Everything that comes just before goodbye
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 1:23 PM UTC
God protect us, from the law abiding citizen
roaming the world, like a demented denizen
Keeping us in line, in life, and everywhere
holding others back, a vigilante type of dare
Society caters to the lowest common fools
unable to understand, a breaking of the rules
When did it become acceptable, to keep others in check
just move aside or away, and relieve the bottleneck
That stop light at 2AM, no traffic anywhere
machine telling us to stop, as if, our brain's just weren't there
Dec 16, 2016
Dec 16, 2016 at 10:28 AM UTC
As each grain slips through my fingers, carrying with it a frame of my life,
The sound of each one joining its already rained and unretrievable brethren forces an epiphany to the front of my mind.
Open your hands, let them fall, let each one be where it will and know that it is the perfect spot for it.
The stresses of our day to days seem dwarfed by these grains of chronology,
When in essence they are the same and quite the opposite.
Life has come to a bottleneck,
Thick and thin has gone past analogy into religious symbolism for me.
The things we do in the next months, will decide our immediate future.
The things we do during our immediate future will decide everything.
But that could be a blessing, we were never very decisive people.
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 1:02 PM UTC
Together, we woke up
In our secondhand metal bed.
Fell asleep together,
Wrapped up in our ash gray sheets.
My piano hands held yours as we slept.
I had this addiction to living our three years of pain,
Where we were at our best, our most ecstatic,
Our hands grasping tightly at the other’s
And becoming strangled and clammy.
We could have fought through anything.
We fought through our first trip to New York City,
When we came back to our home,
Our shiny, chrome bed was there – ready to carry us in our sleep.
After you moved out, I looked for the polaroids we took.
They were hidden beneath the mattress
Which has been stained a dull red
Because of the rusting on the metal of the springs.
I didn’t look at them, though I wanted to.
I imagined that the photographs, too, have rusted.
Lying down on the chilled bed-
Devoid of the warmth of two lovers,
The cold air circulated around me, slowing the opening and closing of my hands.
And it filled up the stagnant vacancy in them.
I grabbed the edge of the bed and
The rust scales flaked off onto my hand.
I wiped it off on the mattress,
And wondered how much redder this bed could get.
A cradle of flame enveloped the bed.
I ripped up the floorboards-
Scratched with your nail marks and dented from our play fighting.
The blood from where I hit my head staining the wood,
Matching the boards to the red scales on the frame.
I boarded up the door,
Trapping the remnants of a bonfire bed.
As the crackling of the burning bed quelled, I pried the ashen nails off the shielded door.
I lied down on the ash-metal frame, pretending we’re still there-
And I started dreaming.
Images appear of you and I, sitting crossed legged on a queen-sized mattress-
Holding hands-
And a polished metal frame,
Lined with astral sheets and a hand-made quilt with our initials patched into the top-left corner,
Discussing the plans we made together,
Of how you’ll travel and see the world,
Maybe Dubai, Amsterdam, anywhere but here, really.
And how I would wait here.
My wishful eyes open across from what should have been yours.
But all I see is the emptiness in my piano hand.
Apr 25, 2018
Apr 25, 2018 at 8:28 AM UTC
I can't think of anything, once again
The bottleneck in my brain dilutes every scheme
I close the book, then count to ten
The idea slips off the precipice and I could scream
Mar 10, 2017
Mar 10, 2017 at 11:00 PM UTC