"caging" poems
I'm a ****** of ambition
a clairvoyant
whose true sight can only
seer through my objectives.
I am juxtaposed from my life--
from passion and experience
feeling is a concept
that lingers outside the realm
where I reside;
by choices I was forced to make.
It has bibulous proportions
that consume my cravings
and intoxicate the senses--
So can we believe to be free
instead of circus-elephants
who plunged their trunks
into a trough of indecision.
Where caging and pushing
each other to perform tricks for the audience
is the normality of existing--
to be the scampering mouse
that lives outside their barriers
causes them to fear us
to stampede and
stomp until
there is only obedience.
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 9:48 PM UTC
I have this tingling up my spine
This voice that pleads at me daily
This nagging that won't subside
I hurt myself
Saving you from a hell you created
I'd rather hurt you
Showing you what you deserve
I've made a beast out of myself
Caging things to enjoy the craving
Giving into one sin to make another subside
My hypocrisy sickens me
Yet I revel in it like a fine wine
In the fact that I can do this to myself
In the fact that this can be done to me
In the fact that I hide it so well that no one ever has a clue
I feel myself cracking down the center
Only half of myself can stand to hold back anymore
Only half of me is becoming smaller
Becoming nonexistent and loving it
Our contact is less
Making these voices rush on me like waves
Your face brings the images
Your voice brings the motive
Your actions bring the pain
You are the cactus I cling to
You are the thorn beneath my skin
You are the wound that I let fester
You are the cancer spreading within
May 30, 2010
May 30, 2010 at 2:53 AM UTC
my whispers,
they float over the currents
braving the undulating waves in our overture...
around their necks, hung time-worn pendants
whispers...
struggling to convey my sentence
like wreaths adrift perhaps with hope
like a requiem filled perhaps with remorseful penance
but more like weakened footholds on a slippery slope...
this dream...
only spoke grandly of sprawling blackness
where nothing did gleam
only thoughts heavy but...
oddly weightless
except for...
a repertoire of transgressions...
raucous and obnoxious
mischievous taunts that pull me back
caging me,
enslaving me,
smothering me senseless
that was my consciousness
where second chances exist...
in faint sporadic eruptions
through the heavy curtains of uncertainty's mist
finally awakened by hastened breaths
heavy and laboured
as like previous temporary deaths
I could hear my heart
thumping...
beating...
fighting...
to set its beats apart
breathe deep...
allow the new day's air sink in
rise fully from sleep
wake up
and...
let today begin
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 8:01 AM UTC
I've been building these walls for so many years. I'm not quite sure if they are keeping people out or caging me in.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 12:42 PM UTC
Minimum wage at a sewing factory
the air thick with the smell of cheap dye
and the determination of making ends meet
raising three kids alone in a foreign country
where no one speaks your mother tongue
breaking down the wall of cultural restraints
so your daughter could pursue her dreams
giving her the freedom to soar
even if it meant caging yours
our favourite meals even after a long, hard day
the embracing aroma of spices as we enter the house
insisting you are not hungry
so we could have the last bite
falling asleep to the lullaby of your voice
reading through the crinkled pages of Urdu stories
your endless, fearless support as we grew up
if only we could see ourselves through your eyes
for what you have endured, words can’t express
your resilience, your courage, your love
-to the strongest woman I know
Mar 10, 2020
Mar 10, 2020 at 8:27 PM UTC
Muelle de Binondo Street,
Barangay San Nicolas,
Old Manila.
My dad's fate
Will always be muddled
With nostalgia:
The mid-afternoon
Traffic of fruit vendors,
The toothless strains
Of my grandfather's voice,
Bouncing off
The warehouse walls
Like folding cardboard,
The ceramic gallops of horse-
Drawn kalesas taking him
From school to
My grandfather's offices,
Every day and back,
Up and down
The cardboard box river
To Tondo. There, he hurriedly
Buys ten
Asado buns
From a stall across the
Street from their
School - a voracious
Schoolboy
Forever late for class, forever
Putting on basketball jerseys
Too wide for him,
Basketball shorts too
Short; body
Always too gangly,
Too long-limbed, wide eyed
And fleet footed
For his dreams to catch.
He once could dunk.
He is still a baby boomer -
Scared of firecrackers,
Weird penchant
For popped collar shirts,
Pointed shoes, and
Sequins - he, was an avid
Lover of stars - his old
Dust-strewn bed posts
Giving way, I imagine,
To iron bars caging
The luminous starry night,
Floating high above
The sewage
And the freight trucks
That weigh him so.
They sang to him.
In the tune of
My mother's voice -
The only album
He ever possessed.
Song set from
His favorite band.
"Apo Hiking Society."
His favorite word,
Was "leap."
A disciple
Of MJ, Dr. J,
And Magic,
Samboy, and Jawo,
Icarus on hardwood
And leaping
From the free throw line.
"Son," he once told me,
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."
He was always afraid of heights.
It wasn't until 41 that
We made him ride a roller-coaster,
That he had even seen a roller-coaster.
"You gotta leap
"If you wanna live."
I think my favorite
Memory of my dad
Is still him wringing my fingers
At Space Mountain with
Eyes so tightly shut
That we forgot
Our fears,
And screamed instead:
So.
This,
Is how the stars look like
When unbolted
By folding cardboard,
And iron bars.
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 9:32 AM UTC
humans paint the galaxies;
stars poured by the gods
on a piece of dark, endless canvas.
the nature talks about freckles and moles on a maiden's skin
and how interesting connecting dots into intricate shapes is.
humans boast about love.
all the mediocre melodies to woo, cupid unleashing arrows,
and the cries written on minor scale;
blacks and whites of the piano.
the unexplainable look on one's eyes.
things they left unrecorded though—
ones the studio of the universe releases an album of:
motorbike roars as a boy speeds through countless others
that are deemed insignificant,
compared to the thought of his mom waiting at home.
for centuries and more centuries,
the poets go on about emptiness.
the caging abyss, they said,
of sadness. a dark place.
but seasons whisper the stark difference
of breeze nibbling on your skin
and of the dropping temperature of winter
harshly piercing your senses like knives.
dancers waltz to the moonlight,
reenacting silent screams and insanity.
but withering flowers' petals got themselves caught up in a game of tag with their own kin.
it's funny how humans talk about the comparison (as i am doing right now)
of the art we make and the art that is already there before us.
when the universe tries again and again to teach us
what kind of little majestic things we are, what kind of little majestic things surround us.
(must say, we're quite dumb. unable to understand.)
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 10:53 AM UTC
They're like prison bars guarding the windows to your soul.
The soul you don't think is deserving of freedom but
I think is worthy of everyone to see and to meet and
to love.
They're like white picket fences caging the wild horses of your personality.
the horses you think to be too feral to be let loose but
I think should be released so that people could know
you like I wish I did.
Jul 17, 2013
Jul 17, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC
A red raven calls as her dark blood runs true.
The roar of the night, and the sky still cries blue.
And heaven can't claim the tear stained soul
Caging the pain of a smoking white coal.
A longing lost heart that grasps for life
Strings clinging tight to the blade of a knife.
Mar 26, 2013
Mar 26, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC
The Story begins with silence and black out, a void. Not darkness. Nor anything that attempts to define nothingness, because it’s nothing. The blackness or void is only a metaphor representing nothing. Within this point, so close to simultaneous you’d think they were one in the same, a light emerges, emanating divine, pure energy and love. Its intelligence and complexity expands and fills what was once nothing with beauty and truth. At this moment, all is whole, fast as thought, strong beyond comprehension, gentle as a whisper and furious beyond all flame. The wild spirit of happiness is real and alive! The void was never the enemy, only a point in which to be born. Duality can only exist if unification finds an enemy within itself. The enemy is reflected by the segregation and space created between divine and mortal. This space is developed by Ego.
This entity “Ego” is the essence of self resistance, absorption, chaos, consciousness…hate. The inner antagonist rises and begins to cut and eliminate the threads attached to creation and spirit. A mirror that envelopes and contains the living spirit. An orb caging vulnerable souls spread throughout the expansion of life and suffocating energetic flow. The universe and it’s creatures that lost connection being virtually incapable of seeing one another ever again while the enemy exists.
The instigation is tolerated by those who always continue the journey. The emasculation of Ego, commences as the divine resonates it’s vibration as a weapon like a solar flare, piercing the Ego. Then the inner spirit begins to open up and claw its way out. The Spirit sees that vanity is leading the despair of self pity into the heart as it remains a vessel dwelling in a false world channeling a false force. This awareness makes The Spirit lifts up, against and out of a matrix constructed within the crystal ball cage that refracts the true sun’s rays. Together, The Spirit and The Divine begin to crush Ego. Ego begins to flatten, compress and then combust. Through the flames the chord of love between The Divine and The Spirit bursts like a shooting star towards the kinship’s re-established nexus. The collision creates what was pure and full in circulation again and the expansion becomes an infinite motion harmonizing with the void in an adventure that goes on forever. When Ego tries to slither back in after a nearly insurmountable time of hiding between the gaps that contains new life, it is given no room by anything in thought, theory, in any form of existence.
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 7:40 PM UTC
— for the American Mustang
Strung up on one leg, bled dry while alive,
unloaded off trailers crammed full
of the crippled and blind —mares
giving birth on three legs, foals trampled
by stallions, and a wave of fear
hovering over tossing manes
like the sea after Moby **** surfaced
for the first time. Last year,
135,000 horses died —
rounded up in hundreds and sent
off to slaughter like feeder goldfish,
three stops from Canada
or Cabo, displaced from plains
once revered for their livelihood.
In 1969, Vonnegut
wrote, “And so it goes…”
In 2061, our children will ask about the wild
horses who used to live in their backyards
as they catch the last fireflies and bottle
them up in jars, flickering and dying
like tired bulbs giving up on electricity —
2015 sees Henderson, Nevada grasses paying tribute
to power-plant-lines and a suburb built
on Tralfamadore fiction: house-mounds
and picket fences caging domesticated dogs,
curb-lined streets and caution signs, billboard
warnings of humanity’s fixation with progression,
combined like coffee with an overabundance
of half-and-half and too much sugar — only 99 cents
at Dunkin down a little ways, and home
to the dreamers who forget the word freedom.
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 4:05 PM UTC
I lie strategically in place
Innocent framework fused
With royal carapace
Frail and allknowing fingers clenched and intertwined,
Mimicking the honest silver circuit in the night sky
As candid as the shore
Each slumbered and delicate breath
Vitally delivered from those sublime lips
Both damp and potent
I get a candied wind of
An accidental consolation
To my crippling worry
Sorrowful, I am, my love
For eavesdropping, but
My reveries are your keepsakes
And I,
Watching you sleep, carefully
In A placid coma, caging waves of covenants
And exhaling tokens of a life once dreamt of
I envisage the unvarnished truth,
your marrow as my sustentation,
Your veins, My lifeline
Where each filament of platinum and sorrel remain entangled and sprawled in forever, impeccably
And how drawn out and vexing
My intervals of lingering for you
Have been
And then you leak a sigh in a dream
And exhale a veil of whispers
Directly to my ribcage
And I simper, cradling you tighter
So you can breathe my craving,
My contented tribute
To my one veritable sentiment.
And I seal it all in the midst,
Of a drifted and slumbered and deathless
Kiss.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 7:24 PM UTC
Every moment, minute or day,
we spend our waking life breathing in life
enjoying memories and cherished people around
making love and making laughs
the sweet sweet breeze, and the peach colored skies
All of it so sweet it makes our teeth hurt thinking of it
like so many photographs and records we shared
All of it in a single breath and a blink of an eye
Isn't it fun and happy?
Isn't it so perfect and so simple?
Isn't it what we wanted to all have?
Isn't it what we long for and did have?
Until we turn dark, and all the colors turn grey
until we see what we were and see what we are now
Until we crumble in each and every word we hear
until we succumb to the arms of Depression itself
Until we grab that **** bag and stuck our puny heads in
Until we reach for that medicine cabinet for the pills we need
Until we take some drugs and ease our pains
Until we reach the moment darkest in our darkest days
Breathe child, my momma would say
breathe it all out and breathe it all in again
I keep breathing and breathing and breathing
until it becomes a routine that my muscles have mastered
Breathe out the bad thoughts
Breathe it back in
Breathe out the bad thoughts
Breathe it back in
Day by day, it cycles, an endless horror show
Night by night my hands tingle like shaking jello
I can't seem to remember what my momma told me
Help! somebody please, help me breathe
The relentless hands of anxiety and depression
The unforgiving laughs of insomnia and ADD
the same sh*t that I go through, night after night
Caging me in like a tiger in a circus show
Until we see the calm and grasp it like a baby holding a rattle
Ever so tight, yet ever so clumsy
The light shines and we see clearly
What we have become and start breathing in rhythm
My lungs fill with air every time I breathe
Yes, but as I fill my chest with life...
When I exhale, am I breathing out my life?
So tell me, Am I both living and dying with every breath?
Am I already dead but my body denies it?
Am I a walking corpse living in an empty shell?
Am I a machine destined to be one so lonely, so shattered
That I cannot anymore---I cannot anymore, breathe.
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 1:38 AM UTC
Tiny flowers, songs in violet shades played, ringing round oaks
spilling on the mossy lawn
Songs of birds swirled sweet the air
and flew the cold of winter's caging, gone the snowdrops melting
Sunny - yellow willow, ever graceful
flowing breezy, leafy vines
sing soft of life, sweet the air
of your budding time
Tomorrow's path of hyacinth will bloom
to light the days, sweeping fragrantly all the hours of moon
tulips of apeldoorn bursting red, in a field of Spring, how sweet the air
soon far off in scented hills of green
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 12:39 PM UTC
The condensation slowly begins
To eat a hole in
The cotton of my jeans
And I've been through this enough
To know
I'm not alone in it
But I can't help but feel empty.
The dripping grass emits it's gasses
filling the air with the sweet smell of
freedom and October;
The plants releasing their last breath into the world
before the snow comes
and brings death upon us all.
Even in this facade of freedom I feel trapped
Caging myself within the confines of a small
One-bedroom apartment that's supposed to be "home".
The soaking corpses of thriving flowers
and the sweet tickle of chirping crickets
are drowned out by the overwhelming sadness
that's begun to overthrow my lungs,
echoing throughout my limbs as it
sloshes through my eardrums and soaks my shoes
Dear god, why am I still hurting?
It's been 9 years and I still can't escape.
This depression has stolen every last part of me.
Until it's all I have left.
And yes, out here, I feel free
Away from the judgement
Where no one can touch me
Connected with the Earth
Simply observing all that surrounds me.
And of course I can hide from my anxiety
But even feeling the cleanest sand between my feet
And deafening my mind with these crashing waves around me
I can't run from the demons eating at the tatters of my soul
Because they will find a way to lure me back in
To disconnect me from the beauty that surrounds me
Leaving me dying alone on the cold, dark concrete
that lines my broken memories
Bleeding out these sins until I no longer feel empty
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 8:24 PM UTC
don't create distance between us,
like painting oceans between the skies & lands
unreachable,
like,
branches caging you from beneath your deepest
secrets.
and no amount of rain is enough to make the
drought in my eyes leave, like all the people
we said goodbye to
at train stations & graveyards
that soon became as empty & cold as
the bottles she'd drowned her sorrows into;
setting skins on fire & smoking death into the lungs
like snow-kissed bodies whispering love songs to ghosts
oh dear Bukowski, girls like her don’t learn to
walk through fires
they are fire-lungs & burnt skies,
haunted nursery rhymes bleeding out of souls
like volcanoes & violin screams.
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016 at 3:07 PM UTC
It was July and something inside of her began to thud. small and light as a pulse grew from a seed at the bottom of her belly, weaved and braided with veins, commandeered organs like ivy on headstones. washed up and sprouted from her chewed down fingernails, popped blood vessels in her eyes. she thought, 'if this isn't dying then it must be blooming.' this new presence was abashed by the absence of Arabic script and an African summer. it wept at dogs as they panted; they could let go so easily- a few deep heaves and they're back to pure. easy and breezy and not the sad, harsh tear of skin below shoulders, the bruises creeping over wrists and the shredded esophagus. the soiled heart and tar-heavy soul. it panicked more and more as the calender blew past. it sobbed as tomorrow became today and today became yesterday.
i lived a hazy summer. brown skin and hair that turned red at the crinkly ends as it baked. i walked through cornfields and slipped on husks. landed on my back and erupted in giggles at the snowglobe sky protecting me and caging me. incense and gin were as consistent as the advent sun. music blaring and bodies bumping and no release. no escape. my little book of plans was solid and secure. and then smashed. ripped. no poetry and braids. not dreamy just silly.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:23 PM UTC
How about we start at the base
Ground zero
The place of destruction
The beginning of the action
My brain
If you think you can take it
Go ahead, step on in
Welcome to what will probably be
The most traumatic experience
Of your life, yet.
It's a chaotic chronic
A twister of pain, little gain
No production, simply destruction
Addictive personality
Worrisome and stressful reality, honestly
I don't know just how to say it
Or how to express it plainly
So I'm gonna wing it
And hope you people can understand
That I'm truly not all there
Sure, I'm responsible
I'm a smart kid with a bright future
But I don't know if I want that future
I don't know if I want myself either
I'm internally deranged
I like the idea of wasting myself of throwing myself in the flames and playing hopscotch in the smoke rings
Of wandering oblivion
And living in eternal suffering
No, I'm never gonna be a drunk
Never going be a ******
Never gonna trade my soul
To the only one who knows
Just how far I really wanna go
I'm not gonna dive off that cliff
Into that endless abyss
That holds the cold embrace
If the sweetest, purest
Most adored lover's kiss
I'm gonna keep to myself
Leave behind the inhalants
The smokes, drinks, and capsules
And hold my daddy's hand
And stay my little girl self
Meanwhile, on the inside
I'm lighting your home on fire
Throwing your kittens in the river
Slaughtering your children's dreams
And revealing your secrets
Satan can keep his contract
I'll keep my soul, just like you want
But I'll inwardly express the pain
That is my life
Signs of a serial killer, right?
Well, remember
Whatever I become
You made me
Aided the monster
By caging me
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 2:17 AM UTC
Remember? Do you?
*The verses of the Mahabharata,
Where Draupati begged to let her go,
Where being a wife of the Pandavas made her no different from the unmarried women.*
Remember? Do you?
*When inside 1 in 10 houses,
A little girl complains to her mum,
It hurts me in there Maa.*
Remember? Do you?
*The night,
When a girl lay all naked and battered on the road,
When a friend of her's was as helpless as the lost kid at the course.*
Remember? do you?
The nights when people marched with candles in their hands,
The days when we witnessed protests.
*Days after days,
Months after months,
Years after years,
Didn't you,
All of you, tried to build us?*
The ones who were too small to understand,
The ones who were capable enough to understand,
And the ones who understood what all this actually meant.
*From the cheap comments passed
To the guidelines to dress-up,*
You filled our heads,
With the thoughts which were never meant to be there.
From all those sad old lines to the new generation trends,
You made us cautious yet scared.
While there were dreams to be accomplished,
And words that were unsaid,
*Your efforts to build us,
Made us question our own existence.*
*With every tantrum and argument we throw,
We have something for you to know, you know,*
Caging us won't do us any good,
While letting us live without the not so needed guidelines will do.
Set us free and cage the ones who needs so,
For the day you would realise,
*Is merely a hypothetical concept you would know.*
Jan 22, 2017
Jan 22, 2017 at 2:01 AM UTC
I need to **** my own brains out.
**** the inside of my thigh
/
If self harm existed,
I'd be the definition. Even as a child.
Epitome.
I was the art of chaos.
Reviled taste in the mouth of structure of humanity.
In the eyes of hurricanes,
death emits it's life from my heart chasm,
a dark laceration that continually deprecates the vision of self and image.
When one revokes such practices,
when one covers such motive to make others happy,
destruction of the dreamer will ensue.
Beyond all of the folly in these steps
We continue this dance macabre in order to destroy the civilized that we see in and around us.
Please take this.
Please ingest it into your ears, and masticate it in the gears teeth of your brain.
Hold heart to hand.
Take a breath.
Hold atrial canals to the rib cage that holds it as a cell that completes your bodice.
If you must seek a destruction. Let it be for self intention.
For self seclusion.
Let it be for your own self imprisonment.
Not the caging of your existence by: a state,
a religion,
a county,
a dogma of any sort,
no to ecology,
no to misanthropy.
"Yay", ye shall say. To self worth.
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 1:44 AM UTC
I can't shake it--think I've been
Lost in translation.
Words aren't enough right now
Maybe they never were.
I go and try to put it down--to speak out loud--
Something's being left out.
All this rephrasing
It is so caging
That's not what I meant
You're getting in my head
I can't speak.
Stumbling over my words
Can't think.
And then they don't understand--
and that hurts
This can't be it--that's not it
The words--the terms--nothing fits.
It makes more sense when I'm silent.
Nov 9, 2017
Nov 9, 2017 at 6:54 PM UTC
I'm employed
But not enjoyed
They're annoyed
Until I'm destroyed
Then they fill that void
With another humanoid
I'm a hollow coil
From lots of toil
Like hot oil
I'm not royal
I just boil
Underneath the soil
I say howdy
Loudly
To the rowdy
That doubt me
And out me
As mouthy
This mistake
Fish tank
I drank
Stank
So rank
My mind went blank
I cannot fight it
My mind on autopilot
The roof I tile it
To style it
Violet
While lit
I am a changeling
That is aging
From waging
A war raging
Against those caging
The rat who's racing
The pain is inner
As a fidget spinner
A ****** sinner
Ate for dinner
For he's the winner
Of the money printer
And my mind of cinder
They broke me
No joking
Just poking
The nope king
While hoping
Society starts sloping
Towards communal coping
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 2:34 AM UTC
The world is quiet, up here by the sky. The wind lingers, filling my nostrils with the smell of the mountain. The clouds wrap around me caging me in a thick white box. The cold misty air brushes over my bare skin sending shivers through me. The trees wave me to come closer and shade me from the whipping air. But I don’t go. The sudden gusts lift me off my feet and sway me back and forth like a feather in the breeze. The grass dances, brushing against its self, humming, singing. The stream slithers through the soft rocks crumpling as it brushes the earth. The rain starts to play as it runs through the field. Then the dark falls on the mountain, and the moon blazes in the night, lighting up the stars. And the world is quiet, up here by the sky.
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 3:14 PM UTC
Flames, flames, fire!
Hearts loaded with embers,
Begone flame, you hold no sway!
Pooled in blood,
The melting moon
Shines far above
Warming your frigid eyes
With shards of night and
Blaring beams of white
Crushing the natural mind
With ballads of war and pain,
Spitting moments of gore through
Abyssal pupils.
Prepare this intestine of youth,
Detach its origin and cast it unto
A forest with one tree.
Then char the strand of mind in which
Fear reigns, scar it with the memory
Of life
Let it kneel
to your flight
And Bring it fore your eyes,
Caging the slithering chimera with
Immense cliffs of ice
Let it look to your matter
Yet never engage your voice,
Fluxing into your cells with terrific
Color,
Breaking off the origin and planting
It’s lessons in between the soul and
Skin,
Offering access to any lost traveler
Drowning in a raging sea.
Embers in your heart,
Fire consuming without,
Fire empowers within
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 1:39 AM UTC
Intense energy, emitting from your prisms
Light reflecting, multi-dimensional beauty
you see, you see, right through me
Hold it close, oh so close, study it, like constellations
in a musky, starry sky
Slightly opened, pour your soul into mine
fingerprints trace, my horizon
Your eyes are wide, engulfing mine
caging my heart,
Taming the wild, beast within
tracing bones, like the branches of a tree,
but oh do they brush against me
inhale//exhale, inhale//exhale
rise, shallow, heavy breaths, put me to rest
with your heavenliness
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 5:32 PM UTC