"boxy" poems
We're working on a job together
Actually, we're building a set
And yes, there's been many other times we've met
You weren't so nice to me, but since this job there's a gentler turn
I see it when you approach me, you show a softer side
And when the others leave, you approach me closer, with a quicker stride
Today I had no doubt, it was easy to read between the lines
You came in quietly, and I'll be honest, you weren't looking fine
As we talked, you seem so fascinated, I felt so watched
This was definitely being taken up a notch
So we arrived at a part of the set and you asked me if I liked the plan
I didn't particularly care for it, but honestly it didn't remind me of a man
You said, it's boxy, sharp corners, a masculine design
"Maybe you'd like it curvy," you say, and I'm looking at your sight line
They say you can tell where someone is looking from a hundred feet away
Well, this was much less feet than that today
I knew exactly where you were looking
I knew what that look meant
And yes, I liked it better curvy
So maybe your advice was heaven sent
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 3:01 AM UTC
A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 9:09 PM UTC
When, like a running grave, time tracks you down,
Your calm and cuddled is a scythe of hairs,
Love in her gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,
Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed tape
Of the bone inch
Deliver me, my masters, head and heart,
Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin,
When blood, spade-handed, and the logic time
Drive children up like bruises to the thumb,
From maid and head,
For, sunday faced, with dusters in my glove,
Chaste and the chaser, man with the cockshut eye,
I, that time's jacket or the coat of ice
May fail to fasten with a ****** o
In the straight grave,
Stride through Cadaver's country in my force,
My pickbrain masters morsing on the stone
Despair of blood faith in the maiden's slime,
Halt among eunuchs, and the nitric stain
On fork and face.
Time is a foolish fancy, time and fool.
No, no, you lover skull, descending hammer
Descends, my masters, on the entered honour.
You hero skull, Cadaver in the hangar
Tells the stick, 'fail.'
Joy is no knocking nation, sir and madam,
The cancer's fashion, or the summer feather
Lit on the cuddled tree, the cross of fever,
Not city tar and subway bored to foster
Man through macadam.
I dump the waxlights in your tower dome.
Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot
Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift,
Love's twilit nation and the skull of state,
Sir, is your doom.
Everything ends, the tower ending and,
(Have with the house of wind), the leaning scene,
Ball of the foot depending from the sun,
(Give, summer, over), the cemented skin,
The actions' end.
All, men my madmen, the unwholesome wind
With whistler's cough contages, time on track
Shapes in a cinder death; love for his trick,
Happy Cadaver's hunger as you take
The kissproof world.
3.4k
I'm a little funny looking
I must confess,
all chunky boxy & truck-like
with 2 big old horns
that look quite deadly
but really we just
use them for show mostly,
oh & digging around
in termite hills,
I do hear though
that you humans
really cherish them
for folk cures &
help with your
***** & such,
you know
important
scientific stuff,
but then again
we can make a fearsome
fearsome charge
at a land-rover
full of folks
all with their
cameras & such,
at least we used to
till we became
fucken extinct!
Mar 26, 2017
Mar 26, 2017 at 11:16 AM UTC
If love was something edible
What kind of taste would have?
Would it taste sweet, or sour?
Bitter, or salty?
Would it be an ingredient, or the main dish
Would it be healthy, or unhealthy?
How much would it cost?
If love was something audible
What kind of sound would it have?
Would it sound loud, or soft?
nasal, or boxy?
Would it be a song, or an album?
A speech, or a dialogue?
Where would be the most likely place to hear it?
If love was something tangible
What kind of mass would it be?
Would it feel wet, or dry?
Airy, or moist?
Would it be heavy, or light?
Painful, or pleasurable?
How useful would it be?
If love was something visible
What color, or shape would it have?
Would it look like a rose, or a war ship?
A diamond, or a **********
Would it resemble the day, or the night?
A bunch of stars, or a few roaches?
If it was a person would you trust it?
If love had a smell
It would probably smell fishy.
Jan 17, 2015
Jan 17, 2015 at 7:07 AM UTC
I am so sick of this smog,
(And the plane has only just landed).
Gray and gold, it smothers the city;
I already miss cotton-ball clouds
In a sky that is blue, just blue,
Floating.across flat green fields filled
With yellow-topped corn and spindly windmills.
The flatness is immense here,
But clotted with a wreck of suburbia,
Boxy ranches and sudden apartment buildings.
Instead of a harvest, the backyards are filled
With cement and fetal-curved swimming pools.
Every bit of it looks about to crack
Under all this weight.
The palm trees that used to look exotic
And spark my mind with other people’s sold memories
Of India, Siam, and Hollywood,
Are now tacky, too tall,
Hovering over the highway wall.
They look like a locust infestation.
Even the white windmills
Seemed more benign, their blades
Whipping around and around
As if they were ready for a fight.
Ten months is too long for LA,
But it would probably be too long for heaven, as well.
So when I settle for good,
It will be in a house
With a winter view of the river,
A highway drive from the city.
This valley, though sometimes empty, is filled
With both silence and cement,
Sunshine and snow and thunderstorms,
And the only house that matters,
With a winter view of the river.
Jul 4, 2011
Jul 4, 2011 at 5:06 PM UTC
The way
Miss Manners
sat
on the school desk
when the teacher
was out
of the room
or before
he came in
hands on each side
of her thighs
flat
on the desk top
her white socks
hugging her carves
and black shoes
toe touching
and the knees rubbing
each on each
and Boxy said
nudging you
giving her
the eye
wouldn’t mind being
her bicycle seat
and the sunlight
lit up her hair
angel like
sitting there you thought
the hands small
palms down
the fingers
slightly spread
the nails
pinkie white
unchewed
and Boxy whispered
bet she’s *******
his breath
easing out
sweetness
of bubblegum
wouldn’t mind
kissing her ***
he sniggered
there was
where the sunlight
caught her profile
that contrast
of light and shade
the nose
the lips
slight spread
and where
the sun lit her
a halo shone
around her
****** head.
Jul 31, 2013
Jul 31, 2013 at 1:45 PM UTC
he only sees the beauty in things he already knows. although I’ve never heard him say that word. he gets Pink Floyd and he gets Bruch, but he read the first 2 pages of Gone With the Wind when I put it in his hands one day, and told me it was crap.
I swear he only feels nostalgia when it’s familiar and I swear he can’t wrap his brain around what lovely harshed pale things are.
he’s very judgmental, and he’s curly-haired and he smells like whatever the opposite-of-miserable is,
and he’s got something that’ll make your eyes twitch. It’ll make you seethe and know.
something you can’t bear to hold for too long but you want to.
he likes fried foods and shrimp, he wishes I knew how to cook and he knows that I can’t for my life. he knows the difference between fine and clumsy,
he wears a watch. It’s black and boxy, and his socks are always funny-looking. He has this one pair, it is dark with green stripes, and he has this other pair they are hot orange and spotted with small horses, that are reared backwards like they can’t bear it anymore.
his mom is crazy and he’s the strangest person you will ever meet and he’ll make you laugh at the first few things he says to you.
his couch has got bunches of quarters and nickels wedged underneath the cushions and his recycling bin is sticky, filled with empty Coke cans, and he plays the violin; he’s got sheet music all over his room printed from illegal websites, probably.
his windows are always open because he likes being outside in the cold and hot, and he wakes up in the dead of 3 am to close them because he always forgets and it’s just so cold and he’s only wearing a t-shirt and boxers.
he says secrets because he doesn’t think they’re secrets. he says **** and he says
hello, how are you doing? and he speaks in a way that is refined, almost like a lecture,
and the first time you meet him you wonder for a minute if he’s British. and if he lives with his family in an apartment somewhere deep in the dark artsy part of Staffordshire where he sleeps and drinks coffee and gets bags under his eyes and plays computer games and sits under the sun wearing pajama pants and is intelligent and hates studying Latin.
but then you realize he is very homeless-looking at heart, and it’s just the way his voice forms words and the way he talks. and he has a high laugh
that you like.
Nov 12, 2010
Nov 12, 2010 at 3:56 AM UTC
she's in the whoosh feel her span through time it's all relative across dimensions and into space bigger on the inside smaller to the seeing eye walk around her you'll see but step inside and the venture begins she's an old girl stuck in the form of boxy blue past her prime yet still as sturdy she'll dematerialize at will speeding through rifts explore her corridors and discover her anew enter other realms, pasts and futures she's been at the beginning and to the end of time her companions many yet the one who's steady is a mysterious man one called Dr but no one knows Who except her for they've been together through ages only to get to say hello toward the end she's a reliable old girl who's traveled many worlds she's seen thing and heard tings you'll know her by the sound of her whoosh as she comes and goes.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 4:45 PM UTC
and as i tap on my keyboard making noises unspeakable i notice that
somewhere between the Y and the I is a U, and I wonder why apple would set up such a cliché
a metaphor I would want to use in times like this where my writing is vulnerable and uncouth
i can’t even be angry with you, against you pressing on your V line since
i knew the movie was bad
i mean i just knew it as soon as the VCR ****** in the thick, boxy, tape
that this film was going to be just like the others— immature and messy,
you were unable to articulate the simplest of my sentences
insert line here
you didn’t even look new, you weren't even an opportunity
you told me you were willing to be the elevated beam in my single music note that we would create harmonies even my mother would like to hear
but she hated you
and you didn’t understand why I liked Bach more than Mozart, or why I didn’t like Mozart at all
you weren't a gentleman, but I am beginning to think those don't exist until well into our 30s
when our hearts are tender enough to feel empathy
you don’t deserve a poem, or the image of heaven
the capital letters you rained in my text messages made my eyes open a little bit wider
i went to cvs and i bought the twix the blanket and the *****
we used to do that together
asian men still write me poems for the morning, i walk out of dorm rooms with water that never knew the cold
and my head it; pounds from dehydration, its been a while since I’ve been in love
but some us are
in love i mean
the dumb ones, the despicable ones
how are they achieving something the kids with 4.0 gpa’s couldn't make an equation for
insert lines here
and why the hell do i keep looking at my phone, waiting for your name to shine bright telling me what to do what to say
insert lines here
why did you sleep with her, on her, side by side, parallel making hexagons and trapezoids keeping me out of the loop
why did i say ok
Apr 9, 2017
Apr 9, 2017 at 8:00 PM UTC
Thick pretty smoke stacks chafe the faces
of stand-alone city youngins
kneeling on side streets with their knees in murky drain water
on the ***** asphalt, circling a dented stop sign.
And next to the sun-worn mural of Jack Kerouac, burning fumes
and sugar strips throw a film of
distortions on the eyes of the already-blind
censored minds of middle class America.
It’s 1964 and the times have changed. The music just got good
and there’s this thing called freedom.
That’s the word on the street, and it used to only ring a bell
but recently there’s a beat of a drum never
heard over these boxy radios, never seen on TV shows
and it’s not left to anyone — no moms, no teachers,
no dads, no kids, no beavers. ‘Cause now,
that makes no sense.
And the only thing that works is a four-letter word —
B.E.A.T. — and it spells out recovery in any light.
And people love the smell of unwatched life, even through
the choking smoke clouds intoxicating
the air with high hopes and fingers shot higher,
like a bird with new wings, flying over things
as crazy as kids praying to an eight-sided red warning,
beat-in, ‘cause someone wouldn’t be stopped.
Mar 1, 2014
Mar 1, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
the empty static
on the old boxy television
show the sorrow
of a million lost souls.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 11:42 AM UTC
When I was a child, I walked on my toes,
as if to be taller than the world.
My parents took me to a specialist
who showed me how to step normal;
heel to toe, always heel then toe.
When I was in the band, I rolled
carefully, from heel to my toes.
Body stiff to support the melody.
Each step to the beat; smooth,
as only a solid sound would require.
When i was a Marine, I marched again.
Slamming heels into the ground
with each cadence call. Punished
for mistakes, I stepped with others.
Always, our blows landed as one.
When I was drunk, my sister said
I stepped like a duck. Bent knees,
leaning through my hips over flat feet.
Small steps; churning through
every upright inch I could get.
When I danced, I had to switch
back; toe to heel for the foxtrot.
Kick through the step and slow
slow. Leading my partner in life
through the maze of turns and hold.
When time for the epic tango
the steps regressed on me.
Passion dictated by boxy frame,
high shoulders, as I looked away
from my lover along curved plane.
When I step no more, I can only hope
my footprints will be remembered.
Guided by innocence, illuminated
by hope, I stepped with a purpose
of living life; always moving forward.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 12:23 PM UTC
on sunday, i sat in our kitchen with my dad as the pale april sunlight streamed in and we watched as the brasilian government held the vote over whether or not to impeach the president dilma rousseff.
my brother’s at college, my mom was at work; it was just me and my dad.
a family friend told me once that my dad loves his country more than anybody they'd ever met.
i remember, we ate apple slices as we watched the government vote on the fate of the country. i am 17 and my dad still slices my apples, cuts my grilled cheese sandwiches into triangles, calls me querida.
my dad gestures at the TV, we both talk with our hands a little too much, and tells me that you can tell which way the politicians are voting based of the color they’re wearing.
the worker’s party, partido dos trabalhadores, called the PT is wearing red. they're the ones that vote against impeachment, eu voto não.
my father marched for that party in the 70s, 80s. they were born of the opposition to the military dictatorship of his childhood. he glares at the TV screen, now, like he’s angry for the promises they broke.
the TV in the kitchen is practically a relic, a boxy fourteen inches, older than me. we have a satellite dish in the backyard so we can get globo, the biggest television network in brasil. neighbor kids accidentally chuck their ***** into it, hitting the dish and scrambling over the fence to collect their toys.
on the TV, ricardo barros walks up the microphone. he’s a congressman from my family’s home state of paraná. my dad says, “hey, i went to college with him!”
they both majored in civil engineering, went to university in maringá.
i remember i laughed. my dad knows so many people that he can find acquaintances on the TV. i asked my dad if they were friends. he laughs a little, too, says it depends on how ricardo voted.
ricardo voted yes.
my father was 7 years old in 1964 when the military took over brasil’s government in a coup. sometimes i wonder if for him this whole thing feels sort of like de ja vu, history repeating with a new face.
i don’t ask.
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 8:13 PM UTC
A boxy adapter with rounded edges
Manufactured to channel power—and yet,
Power that is not theirs. Only to channel it
To channel my Windows to the world
To close their Great Wall on our
Silicon valleys?
AC currents charging this Stylish Design i7
Distracting me
From the Capitalist-embodying communism
Red ruling over depths of blue
Screens, screens of bluelight-damaging sight
The sight to sea beyond
What goes South out to see
Pulling the plug on our freedom of type type type
Keep your distance—we can power your technology.
With Ching chong net worth, networks, and netted to worthless than
The need to work, school, hopes
and dreams.
Velcro strap, bundling up wire after wire after
They wiretapped their way
Through our bluescreen pristine.
Censorship, the anti-coronavirus
But virus? We don’t need your quarantine.
Now over 99%, fully charging us all.
For the mediocre price of freedomless speech
Who is in charge?
Oct 20, 2020
Oct 20, 2020 at 8:22 AM UTC
taken back today,
to a time of ignorant simplicity,
of sunday afternoon's fluid routine.
the venue might change,
but not often the steps;
an early bath to wash one's hair.
a take out feast of chinese for tea,
followed by chocolate icecream, in a bowl
in front of the old boxy tv.
we three, two big brothers and me.
lined up acording to age. waiting,
for walt disney and his wonderful world,
to take the tv's stage,
we would watch the play unfold.
enraptured one and all.
for mother dear,
a hour's peace,
mostly, but not always,
free and clear,
of squabbling brawls.
if we had been good,
we often times could,
cadge some extra time.
to see the bannana splits, have their funny fits
and laugh at the weird cartoon bits.
then time to brush those teeth,
and into bed to read,
quietly, for an hour.
a goodnight kiss,
and tucked in tight.
to sleep away,
the dreamless night
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 3:20 AM UTC
your heart, I wish I could see it laid out before me,
like when I watch a cellist play their part beautifully,
wood and sinew, bow and flesh,
enmesh,
in a dance, where notes fall like a wash of tears,
which run down, laughing so hard at the sadness,
as notes ascend and descend.
the chest rises and falls,
and all I want to see, in truth, is your heart,
the cello braced for news good or bad that
you are about to share, but not your heart,
please don't play me for a fool, I'm not an
instrument too, that you have found boxy,
and poorly made with materials that age fades,
what will you do, when I can no longer hold
my tune?
your heart, I need to see the path you are going to walk,
so we can go side by side, no secrets, our touch is real, with
no distance, so we can in whispered voices, talk, not like the
bow that makes those strings sing, or the pressure of those
fingers to get the notes just so, no...
Like the notes on the aged sheet music, the dark spots and lines
now fade, here and there but remember, the music we once moved
to, now moves us in our memories, treasured and measured beats,
your heart has shaped them, whole notes have become half notes and changed my life...
now reveal to me will we ever share a destiny?
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 2:03 AM UTC
I don't quite understand why the sun on my face or the hot pavement on my feet makes me feel free.
Because skin gets burned.
I don't really know why the boxy shoes that judge and snarl make me feel beautiful when I dance.
Because they broke me.
I don't really know why mcdonalds french fries and country songs that I hate make me miss you.
Because you were more than that.
I don't get why they say the light always wins the darkness or why the dark always scared me.
Because now the darkness feels like home.
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 1:22 AM UTC
I am captive to the blank page before me.
Unable to write.
I cannot free myself from ink squiggles, text in straight lines;
My feelings are mute; the white page - frozen silence.
The words - forced out of the ice; knocking an ice tray against the kitchen counter.
The cubes later clank to cool a glass of juice or wine.
Dissolution, icy essence melting, relations in the world.
Feelings blocked in- cubes until they are released from white boxy space.
Force fields of Electric power keeps them frozen. Then the cubes, released, melt and cloak the glass in perspirative beads, crystal on crystal.
Release of emotions, the beads puddle on the table and the floor, my eyes too perspire until I see no more only feel the cool trace on my face.
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 1:57 PM UTC
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly-
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her *******
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-clothes on my forehead,
and then led me out into the air light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift – not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-toned lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.
Nov 12, 2019
Nov 12, 2019 at 10:54 PM UTC
Secret thoughts like raindrops
on the rings of Saturn,
things forever lost
float into mind
on rivers of golden words
written with budding lips,
scribbled by satirically serious fingers,
or pounded with mechanical keys,
portable, painful, with ribbon tedious to thread.
My darling Olive
with your boxy frame,
sky white skin
and sticky fingers.
how methodical and slow
our fighting dance.
How joyful
the new agonies that await us.
Joyful new crimes, joyfully jogging type bars, joyfully resisting
joyful beneath
Shuddering, trembling,
flowing over with sweat and ********
Pulling men to flame
ripping off their wings
Ripping men into
meandering, lost thought vehicles,
perpetual machines of confusion and shame.
Ripping men into ribcages,
pulling at the sinew
until we actually have become moths.
Flesh turned inside out
With the smallest words imaginable.
Men slunk to sand
With the smallest words imaginable.
Determination set to dust
with the smallest words imaginable.
Women shredding men into typewriter ribbons,
with the smallest words imaginable.
“I Hate You”
pulling cupboards out of walls,
breaking bathroom faucets,
“I Love You”
pulling the skin off
like socks.
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 6:22 PM UTC
I look in wonder at all I see
each flower, tree, bird and bee.
All these amazing things on earth
that fill its air and all its girth.
But what do we civilised animals do
we cut them, burn them, shoot them too.
We ravage forests for our own needs
ignoring harm we do to breeds.
We only think about ourselves
of stocking up our winter shelves.
Or eating so we get so fat
you don't see 'animals' doing that!
We fill the skies with poisonous gases
killing each other with bombing passes.
Destroying wildlife habitats
to build new roads and boxy flats.
That stop the waters soaking in
and flood the lands that we live in.
And then we have a conference
where those who care get all incensed.
As promises and targets are pencilled in
with chance of action's wearing thin.
In years to come when it's too late
we'll wonder why we let it wait.
©Joe Wilson - There is only one Earth...2014
It's getting a little late...
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 11:04 AM UTC
Like Harry Potter, the sorting hat (my mom)
has placed me in a ****** crimson colored school.
It’s disorienting, as I go about, the logos are wack.
Poor little rich girl
no beachside lovers
this interminable, scorching summer.
I’m swept up by scholastic spirit.
Can you hear it? Cause it’s deafening me,
on this cool, dry, Boston orientation day.
As we finished our morning 8k jog,
the sunrise blossomed, painting hot lava clouds
with hues of yellow, orange and pink.
We’re traipsing unfamiliar paths,
it’s not what we’re used to, the roads are uneven
and the architecture’s all boxy and wrong.
.
.
Songs for this:
New Toy by Lene Lovich
Better After All by Jonatha Brooke
Now At Last by *****
May 27, 2025
May 27, 2025 at 7:40 AM UTC