"bristly" poems
As the glorious LION
Stands strong in stature
Radiating with a presence
Of Absolute rule
The air washed with
A bristly respect
A natural pride
Beams with beauty
He guards the gateway to truth
and only the brave may enter
He is the king that needs no crown
as he holds a royal presence as he
sits in his golden coat and main
Lies spark combust just bounce off
dissolve in all his shine.
As broken men become renewed
Their fractured parts
Collect in the melting ***
Of the Lion's stare
As they are engulfed and swallowed
In the reservoirs of his strength
As the many wounded souls
Find themselves restored
In his majestic presence
As he rattles the very fabric
Of this world
There is no procrastinating belly
Exposed by a lackluster display
No one insults his strength
By creating a make believe world
Or covers him with scaffolding so
That they may alter him
For he is the finished article
And he is never held up or supported
With anyone's emotional ropes or strings
For he no ones puppet
He is never silenced
By the Strangle hold of this world
Tightened with a multitude of gestures
For I hear his ROAR!!!!!!!!
His explosive self expression
As his throat bursts and beams like the sun
Breaking all collars, and his tongue is freed
As a thousand trap doors Open up in him
And boulders are lifted and rocks are shattered
within the sound of his voice.
His Soft pads of silent stealth
Gather for all his wealth
As the power of his pounce
Is governed by both his strength
Of spirit and the honesty
With which he meets the earth
For he owns all of his own pain
And paces and growls to warn
Away any who seek to steal his fresh ****
And diminish him with pretty lies
For he owns all his space
As it feeds his strength
As somewhere in the fury of feasting
Lionesses and Lions
We find our freedom
For his power explodes like a volcano
When his soul meets the earth
As he shakes off all avoidance
To seek only truth
As streaks of white light
And pure Gold glisten in the SUN
As the world's projections
Reflect and bounce off him
There is so much to learn
From a beautiful LION
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 8:17 PM UTC
We know you, and your little dark colors too. A picture book in your purse penned in mustaches on the full faces of your fare. We call you from bed, 8 o' clock in the morning, dog-light you slow wander the Peruvian darkness making jellyfish tentacles with your hands while you feel your way through Salem. We're colder than night and we wake thrice the bits of your day gig. You collapse in a green field of dandelion where thrushes drown you in Brown. We gorge ourselves on mango slivers, pineapple yolks, a half of grapefruit. We know you are close to your end.
On the tops of the cities you call to your lycan friends, the half-sick and muted bray allures them to you, from Bratislava and Mimon, the thoroughfare through the suq. We wait. The foregone untold, the beep beep jug jug swoop sound of the nightingale, in all her dun glory, we wait. Then, as if descending through the moor-lounging silver smoke, the cool stickiness to your fingertips; the fog.
We are there when the blue-less and smoky screen surrounds you, when you shank the auburn Scot hair of the sly fox that stalks, say, a cigarette from your lips. When you take the corners swiftly, gadding the streets. The prize king of vulpicide. You rub its matte fur against your bristly gray beard. And while you lay in your lumps of twelve carat flesh you bleat and you nag. One day you will never come home.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
I am not who I think I am—
I never said I was
Sometimes I’m
a monster—
swirling, yellowgreen skin,
bristly coils of
hair sticking
out,
strumlike underneath
your fingertips—
sometimes I’m
a normal guy,
angry and hungry
with greasy-tousled
greasy locks—
or a subaverage
woman,
curvy and compassionate,
warm *****
beckoning to all
bereft—
most often, I’m a
translucent ghost,
too little there
yet not enough gone,
genderless,
formless,
obsolete
Dec 9, 2016
Dec 9, 2016 at 3:12 PM UTC
Who owns those scrawny little feet? Death.
Who owns this bristly scorched-looking face? Death.
Who owns these still-working lungs? Death.
Who owns this utility coat of muscles? Death.
Who owns these unspeakable guts? Death.
Who owns these questionable brains? Death.
All this messy blood? Death.
These minimum-efficiency eyes? Death.
This wicked little tongue? Death.
This occasional wakefulness? Death.
Given, stolen, or held pending trial?
Held.
Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.
Who is stronger than hope? Death.
Who is stronger than the will? Death.
Stronger than love? Death.
Stronger than life? Death.
But who is stronger than Death?
Me, evidently.
Pass, Crow.
7k
Hear the LION'S ROAR
As the many indignant souls
Find themselves restored
In his majestic presence
As he rattles the very fabric
Of this world as many
Broken men become renewed
Their fractured parts
Collect in the melting ***
Of the Lions stare
So let us all dare
To live life like a Lion
Lounging in the sun
Owning and surveying
His beautiful life
Storing great forces
Reservoirs of strength
To pounce and punch
Soft pads of silent stealth
Gather for all his wealth
His appetite strong
He honors every parts of self
But there is no where
To hide in the cats eye stare
As my many fumbling phoney selves
Dissolve in his melting glare
As I am shamed by a look
As I approach life like a crook
My procrastinating belly exposed
In my lack luster display
As I breath a contempt
For my precious life
Standing strong in stature
And rich in golden shine
Radiating with a presence
Of Absolute rule
The air washed with
A bristly respect
A natural pride
Beams with a beauty
Freed from all that is false
His being effortlessly
Embraces the fields
Of his own nature
As I am silenced by
The strangle hold of this
Bitter dysfunctional world
Tightened by a
Multitude of silent gestures
I sit to listen
To the LION'S ROAR
I feel my throat burst
My gagged tongue freed
My choked throat
Beams like the sun
As I softly delve
In to the LION'S ROAR
An open infinity
Cuts my many collars
Releasing my self expression
As a thousand trap doors
Open in me
Learning from the loving LION
Our self expression freed
And our appetite renewed
We live a new adventure
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 5:13 PM UTC
On cold, October evenings, you can hear the rustling of leaves being blown by the wind.
Your neighbor's dog barking with an echo down the street.
The giggling of children as they play games under the glow of dim street lights.
You are not alone.
And then there's the sunset,
Colors grazing what is left of the autumn leaves on the trees,
it is time for you to situate yourself back into your home.
There's a quietness to your house; bodies lingering nearby but don't present themselves.
You scale the stairs that creak with each step like an eerie tune that brings brief life into the home.
Bristly fur of a cat brushes against your goose bumped skin.
You are not alone.
The stillness of your bedroom,
The hall light peeking through from under your closed door creating shadows in the darkness.
The light representing someone is still awake in the quiet house as you're trying to close your eyes and shut off your thoughts.
Quiet sobbing turned into hyperventilating as the blanket you're clutching, crumples as your grip tightens.
You feel cold and helpless fighting internally with the dark shadows making their way into your mind.
Your gasping breaths are abruptly stopped by the beat of rushed footsteps.
The swinging open of your door creates a wave of light that masks out the nothingness in your room.
Their arms wrapping tightly around your shaking body,
as you gurgle your fears out of your throat,
is that warmth you craved.
"You are not alone."
Sep 4, 2017
Sep 4, 2017 at 8:54 PM UTC
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.
6k
From bristly foliage
you fell
complete, polished wood, gleaming mahogany,
as perfect
as a violin newly
born of the treetops,
that falling
offers its sealed-in gifts,
the hidden sweetness
that grew in secret
amid birds and leaves,
a model of form,
kin to wood and flour,
an oval instrument
that holds within it
intact delight, an edible rose.
In the heights you abandoned
the sea-urchin burr
that parted its spines
in the light of the chestnut tree;
through that slit
you glimpsed the world,
birds
bursting with syllables,
starry
dew
below,
the heads of boys
and girls,
grasses stirring restlessly,
smoke rising, rising.
You made your decision,
chestnut, and leaped to earth,
burnished and ready,
firm and smooth
as the small *******
of the islands of America.
You fell,
you struck
the ground,
but
nothing happened,
the grass
still stirred, the old
chestnut sighed with the mouths
of a forest of trees,
a red leaf of autumn fell,
resolutely, the hours marched on
across the earth.
Because you are
only
a seed,
chestnut tree, autumn, earth,
water, heights, silence
prepared the germ,
the floury density,
the maternal eyelids
that buried will again
open toward the heights
the simple majesty of foliage,
the dark damp plan
of new roots,
the ancient but new dimensions
of another chestnut tree in the earth.
5.4k
Drummed their boots on the camion floor,
Hob-nailed boots on the camion floor.
Sergeants stiff,
Corporals sore.
Lieutenant thought of a Mestre ***** —
Warm and soft and sleepy *****
Cozy, warm and lovely *****
****** cold, bitter, rotten ride,
Winding road up the Grappa side.
Arditi on benches stiff and cold,
Pride of their country stiff and cold,
Bristly faces, ***** hides —
Infantry marches, Arditi rides.
Grey, cold, bitter, sullen ride —
To splintered pines on the Grappa side
At Asalone, where the truck-load died.
4.2k
all day long, their banging disturbed me at my work
startling me from my reverie, lost deep in the world
of I Wish I Had A Heart Like Yours, Walt Whitman
the birds, returned early from wherever it is they hide
during the long winter, have come to fling themselves
against the over-sized picture window in my living room,
songbird pitch themselves into my poet's dull daytime
so that i am moved to rise from my desk, to look out,
to seek a bird flying away, or peer down to search for the
tiny body maybe roosting among the stalks of the overgrown
hydrangea, which captured autumn’s maple leaves, worn
like a Chicago matron's mink to keep the winter chill at bay
and, as the spring surrenders to the warmer days, i mow the
brightly greened grass, innocently cutting row after row,
to turn finally to the narrow strip nearest the picture window,
a mixture of grass, dried leaves and tiny twigs, all mulched
by the power mower, where i discover these dessicated bodies
exhumed from shallow graves at the base of the newly leafed
hydrangea, their stiff, dry feathers bristly, colored a washed
out grey, tiny feet tightly balled, with all the soft parts missing
and the beaks a startling white, as though bleached, bright against
the dullness of the little corpses which seem to have sunk into
the mosses of the yard, so that they lay preserved below the blade
for the first late-spring chore -- mowing the bird bone garden
i sleep with the bedroom window ajar despite the overnight chill
and dream of the memory of birds, their shapes, their white beaks
and, still, the bird songs wake me in the cool green spring morning
May 18, 2012
May 18, 2012 at 8:56 AM UTC
Kiss her. Kiss her. Kiss
her beautiful and let her
nestle in your arms
Bring your bristly mouth
to ours, and give us the stars
we've been waiting for.
Sing. Take the guitar
and strum the strings but careful;
we might fall in love.
You deserve credit
for your courage and backbone.
Boy, you are so strong
You don't always have
to be tough, and hold it in,
be the strong silent type
It's okay. Let go.
Yes, being a man is hard
but you can let go.
Boy, please know your virtue.
You bring food to our famine.
The hunger, the thirst.
Who wouldn't want you?
Whose wicked appetite
couldn't you answer?
If you're wondering,
well, boy, the answer is yes.
She still loves you.
There were signs, signals
but you just couldn't read them.
She still loves you.
Why must you always
complicate love? Just take it.
Just take it and smile.
Boy, are you aware
of how destructive you are?
We could die for you.
Should we blame her?
Blame Aphrodite for this,
this pain and longing?
Boy, you're beautiful.
Limbs and muscle and talent;
we will never understand.
You are not flesh, blood.
You are made of energy,
and you can bring light.
You can give so much.
A feeling, a beginning,
a home, an escape.
You give nirvana,
with a love so tremulous
and complicated.
Boy, you're everything.
The might-have-beens, the maybes,
and the what-could-bes.
You are our focus,
our soothing sense of being,
simple, instinctual.
Boy, you are so much.
Millions of poems have been
written just for you.
We want to know you
collect little pieces of you
and memorize you.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 6:07 PM UTC
1.
Late-spring's dilemma
Is unabridged and sweet;
Beardtongues and fuchsias peer through grass blades:
Blotches on the bristly canvas.
Camellias? Still in April.
2.
Slices of rye shift on my plate;
Miramar’s war machines whip overhead;
My mouth opens into the Gulf of Kuwait;
The toast becomes
Moldering lips of Pendleton.
3.
There’s a single-story house on a hill
That to helicopters
Looks like an easel.
Great canyons open
To the south and west; the street clings to time—
A pianist’s metronome
Waltzes crosswise on an eardrum.
4.
The eucalyptus bends the deafening breeze.
Are you still dredging Coronado's cradle?
(The tide
Disintegrates the illimitable skyline.)
5.
An unlit Anza-Borrego beats about my ears,
Stars piggybacking the horizon.
The cacti shrivel:
Glitter in a hurricane.
6.
End-of-spring guesses
Prey upon a betrayer’s conscience.
Stilted, they flash ephemerally.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
Sasquatch stalking woods
Glimpsed never ensnared
Homonids beauty of elusiveness
Ancestral biped prints
Folklore, hoax , unhindered
ages devoid evidence
Bristly forest devil
Conclusively confirmed
ancient Polar Bear
Oct 18, 2013
Oct 18, 2013 at 3:39 PM UTC
Laying back
I stare at the mustached men
Staring down at me
They all have white hair
And blue eyes
They float on by
With half smug grins
Holding back their pride
Of their mustaches
Some have big fat ones
Some have long wispy ones
Some are bristly
Some sway in the wind
Like an old sock on a telephone pole
Their stern gaze
Judge every face they see
Once in a while
Their faces swell
And get dark and puffy
Then the mustached men cry
And shower the landscape with tears
I wonder what they see
Looking down at us
That makes them so sad
Sep 12, 2011
Sep 12, 2011 at 11:27 PM UTC
hands
clasp
grasp
yours, mine or a stranger's
line of life, line of head, line of heart
it is said that the hand is the map, and the heart is the guide
but how come whenever it is that you hold my hand you also hold my heart?
(in your hands)
feeling the strength of your hold
on my heart
and my hands
letting go
of my heart
but please,
not my hands
I need to keep that clasp
and grasp
and hold I have on you
I need to feel your roughness
and clamminess
and softness
between my fingers
yours fit so perfectly
what if I never find another fit?
what if the next fingers are too short, too long, too bristly, too smooth?
I only remember yours
and what if their lines tell too different a story?
what if they crossed an ocean to find me,
or have never picked up a knife,
or have never lost themselves in another?
and I am left holding my own hands
too familiar
when all I yearn for are yours
I should have never let go of yours
even that one morning when you said it was too cold to hold mine
I should have locked yours between mine and assured you that I would make you warm
now I am grabbing for something in the dark,
a phantom limb; your hands
I wish I had clawed up your wrist to your elbow to your shoulder to your neck
and held on
because my hands are empty
nothing I hold bears weight
nothing I touch, feels
nothing I stroke shudders
nothing I scrape bleeds
my hands hold nothing
my lines of mind, head and heart have blurred
I can feel the reverb of my heart's beat as it left my hands and fell into yours
they are bony and frail and stained and drained of colour
what do I do with my hands?
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
1.6k
it’s the twelfth of can’t-remember
as i find myself marveling at the soft cadence of your affection
fluttering against my cheek in faint echoes of conjured memories,
and crafted illusions which bind me in turn,
to the hollow chambers of misfiring synapses
and daisy-chained coaxials tethering my lips
to this anvil-shaped heart.
the steam rises in wispy forms
from places where all is void
and memories are married with dreams
becoming those smiling faces
left in the picture frame i brought home from the store,
smudged by the cellophane,
and now conceived whole by the very absence
of a loving progeny to call my own -
pieces of me left to bloom amidst the shadows
exalting themselves sub rosa within the absence of light.
it is a moment to taste the waters
and wade out until my bristly chin
is beguiled by the ripples born
of *ulacia's stone finally reaching the bottom,
and cry out little pieces of nothingness
to bounce off of the shoreline,
if only to sate the grumbling deception
that my tears could float here without end or amen,
isolated within these painful shapes of you
to clot the cursive wounds
all the while imploring of elysium
that one day i shall awaken to a strange smell
and realize . . . that i am burning.
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 11:12 PM UTC
There's nothing quite like cuddling you
Early in the morning
While the house lies still and quiet
And it feels like all the world is fast asleep
Your bristly chin rubbing across my forhead
Your eyes smiling seductively with your **** lips
Hungry, yet gentle, your fingertips move across my hips
I burrow down against your chest
There's nowhere safer than here in your arms
The scent of your skin like Linus' blanket to my soul
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
the water grips my reflection
all wobbly head
quavering legs
a swathe of hillside
like an avocado slice
trees squashed together
in a bristly embrace
gluey splodge of cloud
on a periwinkle sky
shimmer of sunlight
across the lake
illuminates your face
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 4:12 PM UTC
A nest of intricate design
A piece of art unmatched in decor
Amid the dark verdure
Of needle like leaves
The gay habitat of a swallow and her brood.
How suddenly it erupts into a clatter of sounds,
As the mother bird comes diving in
With a wee bit of a wriggling worm
Discreetly borne in her tiny beak.
Thrusting it into the gaping mouths
She departs and comes again
And again comes with something
A whirring insect or a twisting thing.
Nothing can appease her ravenous horde
And on she goes ferreting about.
At night fall she alights abrupt
From what infinite heights, God alone knows
Darting into her nest as she hovers,
The din subsides............
First into a fizzle, then into sharp silence
Bundled in her warmth, the little ones
Sleep till the first flutter of dawn
From my window, I enjoy this diurnal scene
Repeating itself in methodical precision
Until someday, into heaven’s insurmountable heights
The young ones take off on tiny wings!
A sight so accustomed, cheery and gleeful
My eyes would soon be deprived of
And the thought makes me ill at ease
A wonder it is, the young ones
Inexperienced though, thrives so well
On catapulted suddenly into an eerie world!
What husbandry in nature!
What Godly solicitude!
The next morn, my heart missed a beat
At what I espied through my open window.
On the ground lay the swallow’s nest
Ripped, broken and blown to pieces
Like a heap of rubble after a tremor.
By its side lay a few downy feathers
The sad reminder of a stark felony!
In an instant flashed past
The grim image of the black Tom cat
That prowls my courtyard in the dark
With glowing eyes and bristly whiskers
Damning that accursed thing
I picked up that wreckage
My mind violently mutinying over
The ‘insolent might’!!
Jun 16, 2017
Jun 16, 2017 at 12:24 PM UTC
The most curious thing in my acre of lawn
This morning, the day when long winter departs
The brown croquet ball of the rash Queen of Hearts
A bristly thorn bush of quills tinted fawn
I watched as he plodded so wobbly on
He snuffled and snorted with hesitant gait
His little nose twitching and smelling the air
He spotted not apples, but he did not despair
The cat had left food which he noisily ate
I watched and I realised how I could relate
The long snooze impending, he had to prepare
Half his life wasted no time for a mate
And prickly spikes would make love hard to share
How sad life would be if each hug ripped a tear
Pain is much worse when you hurt those you lean on.
Jan 18, 2015
Jan 18, 2015 at 11:05 AM UTC
The tiny red ant scampers
In a forest of greenish mold
Its bristly legs carrying
Biological modules:
A head with pincers
An imperceptible thorax
A swelling abdomen.
It has nothing but a laborious drive
A pheromone-induced servility
For the queen: the lazy, bloated tyrant!
The sole purpose being
The laying of eggs.
The noble red ant
Moves on to scavenge
Blind and dumb
Oblivious.
To the ruthless cycle
Of its existence.
Sep 25, 2020
Sep 25, 2020 at 11:32 PM UTC
you rubbed your face against my shoulder
I felt the bristly hairs of your beard
giggling because it tickled
you smiled as I stole the snapback from your head
you took mine and put it on backwards
I fell into your arms and I still haven't gotten out
please don't smile like an angelic demon
because my heaven is your hell
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 1:54 PM UTC
When we find ourselves
bewitched
by the once-again
betwixt a barest bare
season (of not-there)
and the rock-hard
reason (for there-is), let’s
Place the lemon-sour wedge,
where it can be tasted
with expectantly peppered
peeks and the snowy soft pines
for a gifted we we’ve been
too white-elephant
wary to unwrap.
There’s a transplant
future. We pretended
it (to-be
forever sutured to our bristly back-
then), and it meets the it
it was beneath a scrub-brush
Christmas tree we’ve stowed
Carelessly in the cramped space
where our sameness
lets crawl the other. Tinseled,
pre-assembled, past-
their-prime-time specialty
brands of static
clinginess have diminished,
But not-enough,
as the persistence of any-man
attraction shows,
would if it could bring
Whitman’s samplers
of sentimentality
to cuddly bear on a leftover
Choice (What’s-next,
warmed over and over). We
will stick to it,
fuzzy ornaments
on the crackly loud, paper-
thin present. We didn’t give
up but we did give away
Boxed-up angels
in exchange for one red-ribbon
day, its frilly bow tying us
so tightly to
the pressed-down rule
of our highest of highly
evolved thumbs.
Nov 22, 2010
Nov 22, 2010 at 5:51 AM UTC
Remember when we’d slowly grow up sitting on those steps?
Your mother used to come out with cold lemonade on those hot days
And you’d pass me a slice of watermelon.
I’d smile that stupid grin of mine
Complete with missing front teeth.
God those days were so hot.
Sometimes as if answering a child’s whimper
The Rain would just start pouring
And I’d be too proud to dance like an idiot.
But not you.
You’d splash with the gusto and laughter
Of nostalgia in the smile of a photograph.
You would call me over to join you in the puddles
But I’d shake my head.
I don’t want to get wet I’d scoff
And my cheeks would turn strawberry.
Your look of disappointment would turn to a playful smirk
And I would swallow my embarrassment.
You never meant me any harm.
My face glowed crimson and embarrassment turned to shame.
The air started to get cool
And the leaves on the trees became lazy.
We’d collect them.
They were nothing short of arboreal rubies.
The yellow oaks always caught your eye.
They were my favourite too.
My dad yells down the street
In a voice gruff like his bristly chin.
He was outwardly rough
But in truth he was a very sweet man.
Though you wouldn’t know it from my bruises.
I always thought he did it because he missed mom.
She was put in a box in the dirt a week after I was born
So I never knew how her voice sounded when she sang in her studio
Painting the yellow leaves we preciously held.
Halloween would come and we would run with the others from the neighbourhood.
Our faces painted like eggshells.
And we’d dance those secret incantations that only we knew
Passed down from generation to generation from our brothers and sisters.
As we’d go door to door on our quest for sugar
We would always fall behind from the rest.
You would grab my hand with a hearty
-Come on!
When we finally found our fellow ne’er-do-wells
You smiled at me though you were out of breath.
Even though it was dark out
I could still tell your eyes were brown.
Our first dance was in high school.
And just like you
You jumped the gun
And asked me if I would take you.
When I opened my mouth I swear I vomited butterflies.
I was so nervous the entire day preparing.
The process of looking presentable became unbearable.
I pulled up to your house only five houses from my own
(It was unthinkable to make you walk to my car)
When your mother came out
Which couldn’t be a good sign.
Feb 2, 2011
Feb 2, 2011 at 6:32 PM UTC