"burlap" poems
my fingers have become bored with
the quicksand of routine
they prefer to dance erotically over my typewriter
frolicking like naked ballerinas
over an ancient stage
spilling their secret thoughts
onto blank page,
after their day job
threaded together
over my lap,
or bending over to
reveal the contents
of my burlap sack
they have taken instead
to jumping over cracks
in the nothing of night
stifling the sound of silence
with assortments of clicks and clacks
punching in the perfect pitch of keys
to leave Beethoven blind
from this symphony of notes combined
and just like that at last
they have unfolded some rhyme
unachievable with ink and pencil,
without the stencil of time
dictating to work inside the lines
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 7:07 PM UTC
I was on my way to a party
Dressed in heels and a crop top
When I entered the corner store
To purchase some snacks
And on my way to the cashier
A man standing in an aisle
Browsing through peanuts
Glanced up and stopped mid-search
When I clicked past him
And proceeded to uncomfortably stare
I walked into the gas station
Wearing dark wash jeans and a v-neck
With my best friend at 2 AM
When two drunken men stumbled in
And began eyeing us up and smirking
My friend leaned in to me and whispered,
"I'm really scared."
Overhearing her, one man elbowed the other
And with a smile on his face taunted,
"Oh no, we're scaring them."
I was at the laundry mat one night
Wearing shorts and a baggy shirt
When a middle aged man across the room
Kept gawking at me from over the washers
Uneasy, I went outside to smoke
To which he stood at the window
And kept a close eye on me
I called a friend and stayed on the phone
Because I was afraid to go back
And get my clothes alone
I stepped out of my vehicle
In my sweatpants and flipflops
To grab some cigarettes quick
When a white bearded man
Was already at my heels
"Hey, how're you honey?"
I quickly replied, "fine".
And hurried into the store
Without looking back
It seems like every time I leave the house
It doesn't matter what I'm wearing
It could be "provocative" or a burlap sack
I always end up feeling threatened
Heartbeat in my ears
Cold sweat on my back
So don't blame it on my outfit
Don't blame it on my actions
Because I'm not asking for it
I just want to be left alone
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 8:34 AM UTC
If I had last words they would be…
Well… I mean… I see in those streams of invectives
I see especially people who drink, eat, sleep,
who make all human functions
Which are quite rather ******
And I shall say that they’re heavy
It never stopped being heavy
I noticed
I’ve read so many verses and particularly
verses from the 17th century
Verses, so-called courteous verses
I found 3 or 4 good ones in thousands of them
There’s little lightness in man
He’s heavy... isn’t he
And nowadays he’s extraordinary in heaviness
Since automobiles, alcohol, ambition, politics make him heavy
Even heavier
It’s mostly like that, he’s extremely heavy
Maybe one day shall we see a mind rebellion against the weight
But it isn’t for tomorrow
For now... we’re heavy
So I’d say indeed
If I had to die
I’d say
Man is heavy
That’s all
Oh! They were mean but...
Because they were heavy
They were heavy
They were heavy… jealous of a certain lightness
Jealous... jealous like a woman who wears a clothing burlap
instead of another who wears lace
Like someone who owns a workhorse
instead of a thoroughbred
Jealous...
Jealous of being heavy... that’s all
Crippled...
They weigh... they're crippled
Heaviness makes them *******
Therefore we can beware of them
They’re ready to do anything
Oh sure
They’re ready to do anything
And to activate heaviness
They drink, aren’t they
So when they drink, they turn into sledgehammers
It’s frightening, isn’t it
Sledgehammers without control
Yes, they’re especially like this
They activate... increase their weight
Instead of making themselves lighter
Oh! They’re not in Ariel’s side
They’re more like Caliban
More and more
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 1:49 AM UTC
Call me by another name.
Call me waspish,
or boyish,
or fountain-mouthed.
Prate about the crooked,
curved curls of my red-ribbon tongue.
Whisper myths down spidered-ice hallways
about the melted wax love games
fixed between dust-dressed candlesticks,
and the unfaithful rumors
of wine-stained table cloths.
Call me by another name.
Call me button-eyed,
and hollow,
and brittle-garden crucified;
Bind my face with burlap
and replace my spine with
a wood-splintering post;
dry my veins gold
so that my flannel fetters in
the tornado-dry breath
of fraying hay.
I'll fight off autumn winds and
the gossip of crows.
Don't fuse my footsteps to the echos
of Lightning Bearers and Stilt-legged Shadows;
Fasten my shoelaces to the
anchor dreams of drowning cannonballs
where I will only spell stories
with the sharp skin of coral reefs.
Call me by another name.
Call me typewriter-toothed,
or backwash,
or eight-legged.
Just prescribe me a name
that I can live up to.
Feb 14, 2011
Feb 14, 2011 at 10:58 PM UTC
Don't sleep
Don't sleep
I begin to
Like you
A little bit more
I shift and sigh
Say your name
Fatigue rolls
Somewhere by
But, alert I
Imagine
So many paintings
To make for you
You mumble
Childishly
Your laughter
Is glittery
I wish
For so little
I wish too
Intensely
Dont wipe me
With a stiffened cloth
Soaked
In turpentine
And a hundred hues
Dont stir me
I might be disturbed
Out of skill
Out of thought
Onto a burlap scene
Grotesque
Picturesque
And so, so true
Don't move
Or I might too
I might too
Become a facet
Among the facets
Of your horrors
I might
Become art
Might become
Beautiful
In that strange
Black way
Of art
Dont sleep
Talk to me
Speak to me
Let us be
Normalities
Let us
Hold
Technicalities
Forget
Sentimentality
In the silly blue painting
Of an eyeless pretty
Smooth and porcelain
Perfectly closed
No night
To mourn into
Dissolve into
To stumble,
To tremble into
Don't sleep
I become too much alone
Shrivel, burnt sienna
I cannot move alone
I become the paintings
That I fear to paint
I become the sombre
Debris of your laughter
Cold, blue
Featureless
A moonlit night
Nothing but red
You don't know
That I like you
In my head
Come back
Come back
Apr 30, 2023
Apr 30, 2023 at 6:10 PM UTC
It starts like a beige tuft of fibre
Protruding from a large burlap sack.
As we pull it from the hidden source
It gradually reveals itself.
Simple and unassuming,
A uniform, coloured strand
Which we gather up into a tidy ball.
Sometimes another strand is tied
Onto the one we pull.
A different colour?
A change of texture?
And so we pull that one anew,
We build another coil,
While the original strand awaits.
The interesting new thread,
Reveals itself from the hidden reservoir.
The fibre slides through our fingers.
Slowly, when there is resistance.
Quicker, when it comes loosely.
Now coarse and wiry
Now soft and slippery,
Now thick and tufted.
Tough Scottish highlands perhaps?
Or rural Ontario?
Sometimes the hidden source seems like it may be
A hand-knit sweater that we are pulling apart.
The strands are still kinked and twisted in places,
Echoing a memory of a shape it has held for years.
We recognize bits here and there too.
Colours and textures from our own story.
"I had a pair of socks like that."
"Remember our scarves from those cold childhood winters?"
The collection of small skeins increases.
From a sheep's fleece, yes, but now too
From Alpaca, camel and rabbit.
Cashmere from Pashmina goats in Nepal?
But at last the final strand comes free.
You feel the weight of the coiled wool,
And see the diversity of the colours.
And for each coil
We remember again how it appeared
How it felt.
How the strands
Came together
And apart.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 10:13 AM UTC
Light hands thread wool and silver,
duck cloth and burlap,
the concrete and dirt under the wood.
Your bold heart betrays your mouth.
Your chest is a bellowing gong
against your sisterhood-cotton-patch.
Could the river cry to your empathy?
or would you stuck-stay-stubborn
and hard-stoned to your unmoved stoicism?
You have the rich-filthy-love I look for.
Truth hearty and sacred like the
sincerity I didn’t believe in before you
showed up creeping toward my front,
announcing yourself as unending,
giving the stomach promise of stay-sure flight.
Sep 5, 2013
Sep 5, 2013 at 10:27 PM UTC
Soaked senses tell me
the top of the "mountain" is dry
like ice.
With a hyper-awareness
I clatter along,
with a warm coating
of ever-changing plaid
warmer than flannel-
burlap bones
wrapped in velvet veins-
and all of these observations
report to a head of fuzzy stars.
So when this stairwell
feels like a scene from the Cold War,
with its chilled chipping cinder block,
violent eruptions,
and moaning drafts-
a cause that my allies
in the self-flushing latrines
have long forgotten-
I will understand,
as they will,
and you'll just have to trust
the facts reported to you
from yours truly.
-Gonzo
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 7:26 AM UTC
4AM-
a boy runs across
the four-lane roadway,
eyes like rare stones,
face burlap-creased dust,
jean shorts, a dolphin backpack
meant for someone smaller.
I track in my car,
take the exit that curves
around an abandoned encampment.
I find cement steps,
but the boy is gone.
Only smoke remains:
a hooded figure curled
in a doorway of a derelict building,
an empty tent split by knife.
The world recedes,
layered, unbroken.
another vision settling
into the mind,
a thick silence I fold
into the others.
Sep 4, 2025
Sep 4, 2025 at 11:09 AM UTC
I met a Carnival Arsonist
burlap sack around her
fiery heart, force taught
to start fires
bright, to distract her from stars.
Always sat in her ashes
Marlboro hacked up her passion
until the ferris wheel called her
to get a glimpse at her burns.
Each night it's siren syringes
hallucinations injected noises
bending over foreclosure
turning up folders
found an old phone her
Owner planted to spy.
He popped her first red balloon
kept the dart pressed in her side.
Manic Panic won't let her dye.
Her highlights don't hide her lies.
"I'm Fine" always "I'm Fine".
Built thick walls of timber
to guard to try Tinder.
Tender to two tired hearts
begged strangers to beat her
"Play a game, win a prize
Play a game, win a prize"
Poured gasoline on the
carnival, watched it
burn from inside.
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 12:22 PM UTC
The old fire place
was least 90 years old
It came with the cabin as the story unfolds
it was a log cabin with a stone chimney
the chimney ran all the way down in side
Where near was a chair where the bearded man reside
Now as the story is told
The wood was cut and properly stacked
Along side the fire place was a burlap sack
we looked through the window and what did we see
lots of toys and a Christmas tree
dancing elf's were all about
was a huge locomotive train sitting on a track
going around and round click clack
bells were ringing
The angles were singing
Christmas chimes were hanging
there was even a drum set banging
our child eyes were all lit up
as we lean against the window pane,
looking in and seeing the tree filled with candy canes
as the little elf's drank out of Christmas cups
There was Santa loving it so much
wow their getting ready for the Christmas year
** ** ** we heard him say
as his long white beard was white and gray
we have to make the toys
for all the little girls and boys
dancing and prancing running all about
Mrs Clause is in the kitchen hearing her shout
baking cookies
pies and candy canes ties
hair pulled back with her apron on
Singing Christmas songs
The little else was singing along
wrapping presents and filling socks
Near Santa chair hung the Christmas clock
oh how exciting this Christmas year
awaiting for the reindeer to appear
on Christmas eve night that's coming near
Santa string the wood in the old fire place
warming the cabin for the season race
whistling and singing all night long
Christmas eve the reindeer came
Dasher and prancer,
Donne,r and blithesome
Rudolph the famous reindeer of all
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 9:29 AM UTC
i was going to write a piece using the word we entirely too often. talk about the slip of your palms down my cheeks, the floaty high after you don't sleep for forty-eight hours and then skip gallantly through the albertson's parking lot. i was going to write this immense prose with weaving metaphors and phrases that begged to be spoken. a piece with a moral, about a boy and a girl, or maybe two girls, or an animal and the voice that haunts it. about a willow bride with gauze wrapped firmly around a puncture wound. describe the inner monologue of a park bench. but maybe not, because that would be deleted.
i could write you a letter, because you know who you are. or the empty waterbottle that is staring mournfully at me, or burlap sacks, or the words that i speak of constantly but never speak.
Jan 3, 2011
Jan 3, 2011 at 6:14 PM UTC
I was doing research in Hubei
Where they executed Yu,
That deity soldier glorified
By Buddhists, Taoists too,
I sat perusing manuscripts
That dated from the Ming,
And came across a reference
About Yu’s finger ring.
A ring of gold so broad that it
Would fit a peasant’s wrist,
For Guan Yu was a mighty man
His ring, an amethyst,
Set round with groups of diamonds
It was lost the day, they said,
That Sun Quan had ordered them
To lop off Guan Yu’s head.
They lost it for a thousand years
It turned up with the Ming,
Was lost again in battle with
That mighty force, the Qing,
I’d heard it round the market place
A whisper, now and then,
That ring, it might have surfaced
In the village of Maicheng.
I scoured the streets and alleyways
For signs of old antiques,
Researching as I went, I walked
Around the town for weeks,
I found a backstreet corner shop
One night, and open late,
Run by a dodgy Chinaman
A total reprobate.
He had links to the Triads, they
Would come into the shop,
A shifty group of gangsters with
Their stolen goods to pop,
From where I sat with manuscripts
Up on the second floor,
I’d look straight down the staircase
Watch them come in through the door.
One day they brought in a bundle
Tied up in a burlap sack,
Threw it down on the counter, said:
‘What do you make of that?’
Fang Zhang then opened the parcel and
He pulled out a giant hand,
The flesh the texture of leather with
A monstrous golden band.
The ring was almost immoveable
The hand, with fingers spread,
Could grasp a maiden around the waist
Or crush a warrior’s head,
I held my breath as the Triad tried
To disengage the thing,
And all the while the diamonds flashed
On that massive golden ring.
Fang Zhang paid over a block of notes
That looked more like a brick,
There must have been a million Yuan
From what I saw of it,
The Triad left and I caught my breath
Fang Zhang had pulled it off,
He threw the hand in a ******* bin
And then I left the shop.
He hid the ring as I walked on through
I had to get some air,
I’d caught a glimpse of a famous ring,
A thing I couldn’t share,
They’d say it didn’t exist, that I
Was dreaming, if I tried,
They thought that it had been lost to view
The day that Yu had died.
I went back down the following day
The Police were there in force,
They stood out front and barred the way
From normal ***********
They told me through an interpreter
Of the ****** of Fang Zhang,
His face was black, for around his neck
Was a massive, ringless hand!
David Lewis Paget
(Pronunciation: Guan Yu - Gwon you
Hubei - Who - bay; Sun Quan - Sun Chu-arn
Qing - Ching; Maicheng - My - cheng
Fang Zhang - Fang Shjang (soft J))
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 9:26 PM UTC
Sometimes, if I try, I hum between the tumbling
Hills of the world bracing domesticated beasts.
They graze and grunt all over again,
Entering slumbers following the daily sweep
Of lactic creeks, thin enough to guide tree roots.
Dusk is explained by the party of two, embracing the dividing sun.
Look left to see coral reef skies swim attempting to grasp what is to the right of the Sun:
Silhouettes outlining prayers flattening dimensions of rugged Mosques
Still dusty from wheat flour and patterned by uncooked lentils, that
Slipped through missing seams of Burlap, blackened from the hearth
Malleable as a result of dependency.
Though only half of my sight functions, I reason that
Earth shifts without you. Watching centuries and some odd
Years of changes, I yearn to know where you have gone.
I peer from the peacock’s tail, feeling the pulse of the
World tick away as the fearless pray to someone new.
Your countenance, I interlaced with feathered fingers
Depicts movements, curves. A shame to be without
Language to fill the contours of a nebulaic expression
Or swindling modifications.
You put me here. My eyes anyway.
Expecting me to retire along with buildings for your worship
Powdery paint has spilled and faded along with
Others who have modified your appearance, their someone new.
Even as the shadows swells
A million replicates of Io, moo and sway home, tired from the
Beating sun, to which eyes remain fixed.
One momentary memory visits.
Vision simulate traces of wonder, travelling on
Pathways believed to be conquerable. The people have learned
What I have not. They pause, breathe.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
My Mistress' Eyes Are Everything Beneath The Moon;
The crimsom of her lip is as the shade of blood;
If coal is black, why then her thighs are cream;
If skin be burlap, white silk is her body.
You have never seen masked daisys, black and blue
But she creates blooming poppies on my cheeks,
And no perfume upon the earth compares to her scent
The exhalation of my mistress is as jasmine and honeysuckle.
I hate when she is silent, yet well she thinks,
All other sound is dissonant compared to her voice.
A godess I first saw, as she passed me;
My mistress levitates and glides across the air.
All the horrors of hell, are fine, if her memory remains in my mind.
Her magnificence is selfevident, with words beyond compare.
Aug 1, 2012
Aug 1, 2012 at 9:26 AM UTC
Here's a story about a gang of grannies
Who knocked over a ***** hose store
They were nothing without their support hose
And they just couldn't take it anymore
Late one night at an old folks home
A few grannies were hatching a plan
Their varicose veins were getting in their way
Of catching themselves a man
So they decided enough was enough
And they'd reclaim their feminine wiles
And there happened to be a ***** hose store
Down the road just a couple of miles
Now if they got caught what would it matter?
'Cause it was a very small price to pay
And even if they gave them life in prison
Well that was probably just one more day
Now the leader of the gang was ninety years old
'Cause she had done this once before
She'd served a little time in granny prison
For robbing a false teeth store
Now their purses were their weapon of choice
Cause that's something they knew how to use
And if you've ever been hit by a granny purse
Then you know it can leave a bruise
Anyway, off they went to claim their prize
For it was much too late to turn back
Dressed in only their housecoats and slippers
Their purses and a burlap sack
To make a long story short they pulled it off
Just in time for the old folks dance
And you better believe those grannies looked sharp
In support hose and pink hot pants
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 2:33 PM UTC
I feel like I am A New Orlean doll
With my burlap and my threaded seams
To view the world.
My fingers are stitched
And immobile.
I feel like I should scream—
Scream to wake
Scream to crack the atmosphere
Or scream to come alive.
My mouth, however, is dumb.
I feel like I am in someone else's shape
Someone who has wronged
And will be wronged alike
With needles I ***** myself.
My embroidery comes apart near my chest.
Blind woman's stitch binds me to his hair.
He turns and drops when I am rendered air.
Feb 7, 2010
Feb 7, 2010 at 3:07 PM UTC
i've seen the wings of coughing angels,
bent, snapped off between fingers,
like wishbones.
i've blanketed them with burlap rags
of red and blue, so neatly stitched,
only to discover they were
bewitched
by men on ships.
and with death on his lips,
he laughed
at their ****** backs and spotted foreheads.
and he never bothered
to cover his tracks,
when sneaking into their beds.
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 12:57 AM UTC
On a twisting, winding, rutted track
That weaved from under the pines,
A figure came in a burlap sack
Where the crossroad intertwines,
I could only see the bleeding feet
As they peeped from under the sack,
And the hood hid every feature that
Would deem it a Jill or Jack.
There was purpose in that stolid walk,
And determination fixed,
I thought to offer a helping hand
But my feelings there were mixed,
There were leaves and twigs on the figure’s back
And a slime that looked like mud,
I thought that it might have been attacked
When I saw that the slime was blood.
Nothing could stop its slow advance
As it plodded into the street,
I reached on out but it just walked by
So I thought I’d be discreet,
The day was settling into dusk
As it reached the village square,
And just as the ancient gas lamps lit
It gave a cry of despair.
The cry was that of a woman lost,
Was more of a hell-fire screech,
It echoed up to the steepletop
And I thought of Caroline Beech,
The girl who’d gone to the woods one day
For a picnic of pies and mince,
The basket lay for a week and a day,
She hasn’t been heard of since.
The figure stopped and its arm flew out
To point at the Baker’s door,
I saw his face at the window lace
As pale as a painted *****
The sweat stood out on his beady brow
As he hurried from room to room,
Locking each door and window now,
And shivering there in the gloom.
A crowd was gathering in the square
Surrounding the baker’s house,
‘You’d better come out and show yourself!’
But he was quiet as a mouse.
The men of the village burst right in
And they ****** him down on his knees,
She put one ****** foot on his head
And he squealed, ‘God help me… Please!’
‘I only wanted some love,’ he said,
‘But you just pushed me away,
I’d never have hurt a hair of your head
If you’d loved me once that day.’
And that was enough for the surly crowd
Who called on Oliver Beech,
To bring a rope from the stableyard
For a lesson they had to teach.
Her father fastened the rope around
The cringing baker’s neck,
Just as the daughter’s burlap sack
Collapsed to a heap on the deck.
There was nothing inside the hood or sack
As it lay there on the street,
Only the footmark stains of blood
From the murdered woman’s feet.
They dragged him down to the wood of pines
And he showed them where she lay,
Under a pile of autumn leaves
He’d covered her with that day,
They left him hanging above the spot
As they bore her gently home,
Now there is no baker in Warley Copse
So the villagers bake their own.
David Lewis Paget
Nov 19, 2013
Nov 19, 2013 at 4:15 AM UTC
in an old burlap sack
he kept his "fancy things"
remnants of a life not coming back
dead flowers and wedding rings
in his pounding chest
he could still feel the pain
sometimes the worst is for the best
sometimes a loss becomes a gain
Apr 2, 2015
Apr 2, 2015 at 5:21 PM UTC
Yesterday, while waiting for a bus on the corner of Newbury Street
I found God.
She carried a burlap sack over her shoulder a map of the world in her right hand and a bottle of whiskey in her left.
She asks me where I’m headed and I tell her I’m running.
She tells me she is too
She says: “ It all started when I was a kid, I held the solar system in my palm and took the colors from the palette of galaxies and finger painted the Earth.”
I took something that was nothing and made it everything.
And every day since, this world has thinned me.
Asking too much out of something too little.
I fear the darkness that was created from the light I produced.
Some days, all my body can do is act like the Earth and tremble.
And in the deepest hour, my heart grew heavier than the sky that watches us all so I let it go.
I let the pain rain down like morning dew getting caught on people’s cheekbones.
I want to purify the air and our oxygen of all that is unjust in every atom.
When I look into your eyes I see bigots,
I see sexists,
And killers
And I want to want to rid our days of the night but I can’t.
So instead, I hit children.
May they stay forever full of laughter and light
Of pigtails and play-doh and gummy worms and popsicle sticks.
white dresses and untied shoelaces.
In a world where guns double for dignity
Where love is a receipt
Where self-worth is measured by grade point average.
Dare not the dark fault their fair eyes.
Dare their souls not fall victim to the tainted being that is our sleepless nights and alleviated anguish.
When I look into your eyes, I see hate. But when I look through them, a see a child.
And so I lose myself on the bench of a bus stop on the corner of Newbury street.
Watching the world tumble down like a toddler learning to climb a staircase.
In my absence, the polluted cloud that makes its bed on our sky dissipates among the rain storms.
Should you run, you steal light from this fading life.
And I say to her
Show me how to be the bravery I ever so seldom see in the world.
I wanna lift bridges with poems
And I wanna lift poems out of my warm breath.
And she tells me
What rocky roads you have in front of you.
What hands you have yet to hold.
But I’ll tell you one thing
You’re already something
And something’s better than nothing
And that is everything.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 5:47 PM UTC
When ships set sail, their masts held high
Daunting flags, painting the sky
With rails gold rimmed
And sails sharp trimmed
A crowd appears, waving adieu, goodbye
Thunderous roar, unequaled praise
Wind catching sheets
Anchors raised
A bell rings softly and waves do lap
Against the hull of a wooden throne
From far off shores this scene is spied
With two friends of oars we've always tried
To reach for that deck
In fervent eye
Climb on board or surely die
Tattered clothes, sailors cap
Smudge on cheek
Shirt of burlap
We push off deck
Yet crowd is gone
A journey ventured with bright sun dawned
Water ripples with our wake
Small and steady pulses we make
Though we row to catch schooner bold
As we creak of wooden old
Land gestures for us to stay
Why venture out on choppy bay?
Whispers roll and caustic laugh
With sun beat oars a line is set
No motive sweeter, nor regret
Sweat beads mix with salty froth
Cutting across the water green
Battleship chugs with billowed steam
A voice escapes you as you scream
Sputtering away, with muted cries
And oars but stop
Far from home
As head does drop
Splintered hull tears apart
We're left to cling to shattered planks
And fight to stay afloat
Alone
With far off yacht a speck
Atone for water slapping neck
We groan with defeated boat and deck
Driftwood in salty surf
Connecting with shore
We walk back to land
Imprints swallowed by golden sand
A new rowboat to be procured
Again we build to flag down our Brig
And stand upon its polished bow
We persist to where we are but now
As we strive to grasp victory bell
We strive ever onward
To sail with our destined
Caravelle
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 9:36 AM UTC
Iodine damnation cleanses Alice--rock-and-roll medusa
alone in the field,
she waits for the flies to eat the spider
--the third testament of law
divinely christened as low as $19.95.
Hell is where
Schrodinger throws the bodies. Revived Alice is in a burlap sack
embedded in the cubbyhole
of a mortal anthro-rubix,
the small garnishes that spot livers during cancer.
"Hello and welcome
to the resting place of all Blues songs."
speaks the curbed lips of Gluttony. A name that vomits
up rebellion, like cleansing the glucose off
fish-cleaning tables.
Alice touches her eyes rolls them
--fortunate galleries,
broods deeply on the jaws of her receptors.
"After the last drop, the hard boiled spoil
and the cats won't eat 'em. Neither will I," Gluttony spews, "You all show up
as do I, magnifying the cruelty of digging,
digging,
digging
that follows me and you to the bitter stem
and rough petal--throwing this rose,
that rose,
here and there inside the carcass of lust.
The scalding photograph of a guerrilla war playground
hangs over
the mantle of a prideful garden.
"Pulp wisdom
looking back at the names of thieves/murderers
of simple thought
over-turning scars of fallacy
in that garden.
"Picking,
picking,
picking out the best arrangement
so it doesn't look like I went
through a drive-thru
for what to say. 'Hey.'
'Yes?'
'I love you.'
'You too.'
Something in between
what you, I, and the others were looking for
has uprooted bushes--the tilled chest of my sister
and lover--disarrayed, dirt thrown
to the side.
Fibonacci colors patterned
across the moist earth
to distract you and I, all from the dread, and all
the relief
of ripping apart the white, pink, black, and red."
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 8:48 PM UTC
My heart was pieced together like a patchwork
Just like the rest of me
Made from parts of ticking time-bombs
Stitched and stapled together in a mass of voracious viscosity
Violently vilifying the way
The thread streams me seamlessly
from one person to the next
Each feeling they will be the center-ring circus master
Until they realize
The sewing needle is simply passing through their square
The seamstress ran out of string with me
Resulting in relapse burlap fistfights along the edges
Left me searching for salvation each time
The bells chimed to open the day
Left me in the company of
Misshapen shadows hidden along broken back hallways
Back-and-forth handshakes to make sure
The other was still there
Night after night, staring at your creation in the window
But not during the day because monsters like the dark
It’s not that it’s easier to sneak and scare
I just know the faces of disgust and terror
And I don’t need that right now
When that’s the same face I want to rip from the mirror
That night should have been stormy
For all the things that I did
To your masterpiece
Pulling at strands like they were nooses around my neck
Each time like removing an iron bar from my cage
Until the burlap sack flew apart flapping like vultures
Leaving nothing but the sheep in scarecrow’s clothing
Unraveling my sense of time until the clock struck
3 times an echo
Once for the creation of your abhorrent abomination
Twice for your meticulous sense of the grotesque
And three times for putting a soul you saw unhappy
Into a prison so much worse
When I was on your bench
My words came choppily and broken
Because I couldn't finish a sentence
Without second guessing everything
Waiting for a punishment after every word
So I wouldn't interrupt
The beginning of your sentence
With the middle of mine
You put my heart together piece by piece
Cross-stitching over the years of my childhood
Connecting a pair of glasses with a two-tone sense of humor
Building a bridge between arms wide open and a shotgun blast
But now the words flow fluidly
Because now my thoughts are seamless
Put together skillfully like a seamstress’s caress
No more anticipating the end before the beginning
Now that I've come full circle
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 2:51 PM UTC