"calcified" poems
A seashell
within a seashell
within a seashell
maybe i’m the pearl,
maybe i’m the grain of sand
how would you know
what i am?
layers upon layers
of calcified shine
years upon years
of soaking in the brine
till the scent of the sea
is in my blood
and the song of the whales
is my voice
hold me close to your ear
listen to me sometime
i’ll whisper to you secrets
in oceany rhyme
and if you feel my gentle heat
radiating in your palm
know that it is me
telling you who i am
-Vijayalakshmi Harish
17.09.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 6:52 AM UTC
Mighty arms give a tender cuddle from behind
Eternal heater
Sensation of chest and stomach against spine
"tell me a secret"
soft lips on foreheads and noses
narwhals nudge
"I've got a secret ..."
"What's that?"
"You make life, interesting ..."
" … Good or bad?"
"Good ... you show me things I've never done before."
My name is Barnacle, calcified to you
Your name is Boa constrictor, squeezing till the last breathe
Inadequate sum of memories, so
drifting nowhere any time soon
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 3:23 AM UTC
The sand hides the sun.
Through a fog of particulate silica.
Distorted.
For the first time in my life,
I may look upon that glowing
bearing, for minutes straight.
Innards swallow,
That rock it flings,
Paints on the light.
Now the water vapor hangs,
Amongst its spiny rays,
Creating a mist of cloudy haze.
My eyes must seek to,
Penetrate.
Alas they lose this skirmish fray.
The sun cannot hide its specter.
The doppelganger image always,
Dapper and prim.
Amongst the thoughts in rift entrails of brain,
I think i am my brain. I don't think that when, head cut from body,
Shall my soul reside where my heart was;
Instead I may see, conscious, from where the two parted.
Creating a scar from which to view this hazed sun.
Ever notice,
How the eyes,
Are the only,
Place,
You can,
See from...
I can be an Ammonite with many chambers calcified.
Ghost fossil human head.
A ghost in a shell.
My eyes will carve shapes from the clouds.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 8:48 PM UTC
What you've been waiting for.
The irresistible minerals of our afterlife
Awakened them from their recurring coma.
Radiation descended toward jagged terrain.
A deer was calcified.
I would be too if I was that genuine creature.
Pleading just pleading,
The impact depressed the earth,
Taking me down underground.
I'm outside of your eyes.
(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith
(Originally written 12/4/10
Revised 9/24/14)
Oct 2, 2014
Oct 2, 2014 at 2:46 PM UTC
I have wished for years
That my collarbones would make themselves
Known.
That my muscles would
Atrophy.
And my skin would become
Paper thin.
All for the sake of exposing the calcified lattice
That holds me together.
Holds me down.
I have wished to see my ribs
So that I could better understand the bars that my heart
Beats so fiercely against.
I have wished my spine to rise from beneath sinew
Form peaks against my skin
Just so I can see
What makes a man
What backbone is
See what makes me
Stand
Against those things that I do not desire.
Yet here I am.
Synapses stretched between
Head
And
Heart
Eyes sundered, seeing what my heart can't take.
What my fragile fingers fail to grasp.
I am a graveyard.
Made of stars that decided they were meant for other tasks.
Rub your charcol across my bones
Just to see what stories the universe has told.
For it has lived and died a thousand times, and now
And now, this time around it chooses to call this body
Home.
So although there are days I wish my hip bones would rise like
Mountains
In the desert,
That this soft skin would part and give
Rise
To bones like Aspen trees,
I will accept that my
Clavicles
Are the bottom of the sea bed.
And I am
Mile
Upon
Mile
Of stormy ocean.
Still waiting to explored.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 1:32 PM UTC
I am not dead.
Ha!
I ache.
I curl into a fist.
...Ashes to ashes...
A single, calcified tear.
You heard me.
...The darkness...
Clambake!
Inside a dream, inside a dream, inside a dream.
Don't pet the cat that way.
You sent this to me in your sleep.
DO YOU HEAR ME SAYING NOTHING?
...Nothing.
The end.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 3:22 PM UTC
I fear how much my heart would bleed
To witness real tragedy
To sink in Flanders Field
To collapse in Choeung Ek
To scream for mercy in Nanking
To beg before the walls of Baghdad
A life of insulation
Pain relative to the first world
My heart hardly calcified
Compared to the bones of those who died
Hardly removed from the horrors of mankind
My drywall castle shields each breath
So hardly removed
From the stench of death
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
i have always found myself
in the middle
actually born
in the middle of the day,
month,
year,
decade
(6.12.94)
very well-versed in
what it's like to be
simultaneously rich
and incredibly poor
living in other states
sleeping on the floor
sure
i walk a generational fine line
this gemini primetime,
of insoluble crises
the holy oil floats to the top
we learn
that feigned warmth cannot dissolve
the calcified ego of a leader or their god
you proclaim the name of jesus
but still cry out for someone to lead us
from gray
gay
awareness
today
it's taken time and distance for this to be easy to say.
this is for the ones
who have always found
themselves in the middle,
america, honey, will you meet us there?
Dec 14, 2017
Dec 14, 2017 at 3:41 PM UTC
sip on this game direct from the tree of knowledge
im trapping in the forest; nocturnal like that owl,
im that black panther, ninja on the prowl
highly melenated, ALL BLACK, no darth vader
highly medicated, NO SNACKs, or now and laters...
never chasing paper nor running for the mayor, haters looking for a savior
its clear they don't love their self
I'M riches in my health, stash crystals in my wealth
if your calcified then you don't feel me like felt
you buckle under pressure why purchase cheap belts?
call me Mr wizard as i place you beneath my spell
unlimited vigor feather light on the scale!
even if i were brail, still no one could touch me.
if life WERE a ***** i bet she'd bee UGLY
non the less that phrase stands uncorrect
13 LOVE 13 Raspect.....
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 19, 2013 at 2:49 PM UTC
Things hidden,
like the subtle and iridescent pink
timid, from inside a calcified seashell
mother nature's knowing wink.
So alive and shimmering
beneath the water's lapping grasp.
She's lived so many times
gazing up at ancient stars,
pleasant and silvery in a sky so vast.
I am hidden
looking out at my own sunburnt world
scared to move my hand from my brow
and let the light cast an aura through my tears.
Wishing to things, thousands of years,
so truly far away.
Show me how
to creep alone, along this way.
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 2:23 AM UTC
Yesterday, a cloud burst in mythologies
and the rain fidgeted over the retreat
of a tidal pantheon; deities swept away
by a current, and we stood awhile, watching
the moon elbow out the dusk. Breathing
is burdensome when cars float on water
and corpses leak out of cavernous
basements. Every tablet, etched, in the cold
heart of building code was read again
and then again. It wasn't enough to blame
Aeolian whim or the raging riposte of Apollo,
now that we had marvelled away Gaia's
ozone skirt. Her amnion always leaked
in folkloric floods each time she birthed
a parable. She once asked Noah to build
an ark so he could ride her waves
and we scrape the sky to impale her
in shards where her womb is soft and yielding,
as we sour the air and burn the water and strip
her of her emerald sigh and melt her hills
and silt her wetlands. Mostly it was the asphalt
plastering her yearning that calcified her veins
and arteries, as she died slowly under our feet.
We could hardly fathom her sorrow for the tears
rolled off her torso like an oil slick
and rode far into the subway for sewers.
Sep 15, 2021
Sep 15, 2021 at 4:29 PM UTC
An annoyance generator is my mind,
Unjust in its creation. Lack of sleep,
Deviation, stokes the flames
And gesticulations.
My mind, pushed back
Espies the show, as
Mouth bites back the bile.
Calcified my mask does grow
Inflection states my ire.
I see the change
On targets face, as
Fury hits its mark.
Yet at my core
I query why, I
Don't reign in the fire.
Consumed with wrath,
Mind takes back seat,
Puppet slays the master,
How can I, who claims the throne
Escape from Pandemonium?
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 5:50 AM UTC
A tortoise ripe with lime stone wrinkles
Shakes off the final layers of that sediment
Crystal that had calcified itself to the classic side
Of the shelf.
Like a filthy barnacle that clings to the inside
Of my skull
& whispers phrases of Walden to the black one
Of my mind.
He threw that spider silk
& iron twine around a lion's
Spine as a sign of respect:
Then he yanked as a means to dissect
When it was least expected.
I was the envy & death smudged black
The ***** duffle bags under a skeletons
Hollow hole.
I hate you with every fiber.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 1:13 AM UTC
Blood red lava flow
Steaming water calcified
Metamorphosis
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 1:00 AM UTC
looking down
at the grains of
sand
encrusted upon
my tide washed feet
i pause to ponder
how much older,
and far better traveled
these tiny chips of calcified
life and mountain grit must be...
now i have been to
many places....
L.A. Paris, London,
Dunedin, Melbourne
Hong Kong, Mooloolaba
to name but a few...
but these little bits of
seadust,
have lived lives
and lost,
have travelled
to and fro....
becoming ever...
smaller as they went....
shedding of themselves
to the greater entity.
becoming
one speck among......
bazillions
taken beyond their lives
of solidity by swirling
currents
only to end up as sand
upon my toes.
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 7:02 AM UTC
six slick sardines
swim through silky
ocean blue satin thoughts
chromatea cradled cranium
containing calcified continueums and coral reefs
washing wishes wonderful
on silicon sand chipped island shores
with pious palm pods
placating pontificating
poppinjays...
writing, wriggling,
morning memories...that
meander through a mountainless mind....mine
after too many mojito's on the morrow...
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 7:33 PM UTC
He was a man
A lizard
The one that crawls out of its skin
Camouflaging ‘till it’s sweating the rocks
Keen on what it wants, what it feels
That very moment
Is all that matters, all that fills
Him
His fibs
were a well-tailored fit
But he bit his own head off too often
and stood empty
Like a wishing well
or an abyss,
The pit in which I threw my dreams in
But he couldn’t fit the sentiment
Wishes were demands that bared the skeleton
Their little mouths crunching
and talking to him
He calcified his judgement to acquit the fugitive
And he blowtorched my size, my wit
Until he could no longer
speak of it
or enjoy it
I had been burning for days
Up until the day he palpated the shame
Of the impulse, of the way
a man could perfect his death
Behind the mountain of skin, undressed
the tongue was hissing in his pit
I sat him on the chair, roped to one question
Why did you do it
And if guilt is the sharpest
tool to deface him,
the man
couldn’t look at me
A mallard too limp to admit
his interests were monotypic,
only equipped
to fit his own ****
I should have de-plucked it
Drained and throat-hung it
For the many nights
I made love to a liar
But, I let him keep all of his fingers
so the man
may continue
******* himself
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 11:10 PM UTC
She always had dilated pupils but never did drugs like that.
Only now I realize that her body's been trying to get its soul back.
She's got a calcified third eye with a drawn on one on her forehead for
the fools who don't think deep enough to know she isn't spiritual, because her soul has left her body a long long time ago.
Eventually truth comes to light, and truth is she had no eyes to see that we are so much more than body and bones, and the blood that we bleed.
She fools you with the things she eats, even the sound of her voice can be so sweet, but nothing could be further from the truth;
her eyes always proved that she's hollow through and through.
She still wins though, because only I know, only I felt, only I could see the truth of the real person who lied deep underneath the skin.
She's hollow through and through, having no soul within.
Feb 8, 2017
Feb 8, 2017 at 11:46 PM UTC
each broken bone in my body
has repaired itself reinforced
steel
adamantium
rock and lead
compassion coiled tightly
around a clenched fist
because giving yourself
to anybody who asks
and getting ******** back
can weigh you down
and every lie
each one of them
sang to me
bore my second mutation
calloused skin,
toughened heart
hardened
calcified
reinforced and fossilized
even though I mention your names,
for the first time in my life
I am writing
about myself
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 3:59 AM UTC
Welcome to my crypt
Where dreams dormant lie
Covered in cobwebs
and gathering dust
Calcified veins
Once abundant with blood
Now a coniferous wood
Petrified
May 10, 2016
May 10, 2016 at 9:06 AM UTC
Yours is the haze my friend
& all that is within it confined.
Yours is a lush pink haze
leaden with rotting hope,
with amethysts and emeralds
of fear and caution encrusted.
Damp to the feel and on your face
Nurturing your peace and surrender
as they grow and colonize like fungi
parasitic and spore forming... contagious
they gnaw at your spirit with false contentment, my friend.
Yours is the haze and all it harbors
of lush stupidity and gullible naive comfort.
yours is a web of intrigue, woven by your senses
and calcified by your precious mind.
but blame not your mind, it was merely following orders
obeying authority, your Ego's authority
for your ego is your shepherd and you my friend
you are the one sheep in his flock.
A sheep, lowly, & sickly but this sickness is subclinical
and it comes with an insidious onset.
And you my friend,
you are doomed to relapse again and again.
Be assured, it is a sickness
and it spews from your gentle mouth
with a painstaking stink.
Not long ago your ego was just like you.
not a shepherd, you were both young
smooth skinned and pampered,
breathing in knowledge and breathing out gaiety.
Cubs, equal in status and in innocence;
your paws were smaller then and your claws were blunt
and the sweetest taste was of your mother's milk.
Now power seems much more tempting
safety and stability are all the more precious
and your ego gorges on all...
It grows and swells with the blood and guts of its prey.
Thus trapped you shall remain my friend
so long as your ego's web comforts your spirit
and change startles it, makes it run, flee
it scatters and cowers behind cardboard walls
drapes, silk curtains and the smoke of a burning life.
Stay there my friend, for as long as you find comfort
but when it bores you or numbs you,
don't delay and don't hesitate
Ask for my help, For I am your true Self.
Jun 9, 2010
Jun 9, 2010 at 4:19 AM UTC
Melting
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
Entirely, as spring consumes the snow,
the thought of you consumes me: I am found
in rivulets, dissolved to what I know
of former winters’ passions. Underground,
perhaps one slender icicle remains
of what I was before, in some dark cave—
a stalactite, long calcified, now drains
to sodden pools whose milky liquid laves
the colder rock, thus washing something clean
that never saw the light, that never knew
the crust could break above, that light could stream:
so luminous,
so bright,
so beautiful . . .
I lie revealed, and so I stand transformed,
and all because you smiled on me, and warmed.
Keywords/Tags: spring, melting, snow, winter, icicle, stalactite, underground, cave, transformation, love, warmth
Mar 29, 2020
Mar 29, 2020 at 5:41 AM UTC
Restoration
Rebuilding
Reshaping
Filling in the fissures that have opened up
Between us
Within us
Fissures can become canyons
Sometimes suddenly
With a great roar of sound and cloud of dust
Sometimes gradually
Worn away by a river of neglect and dismissal
Both sides carry these fissures within
Wounds that can fester
How do we close these gaps?
Between us
Within us
First both must see
Acknowledge
Desire to heal
But there are no guarantees
Rebuilding relationships
Righting wrongs
Seeking and offering forgiveness
None of this can be done alone
Without community
In a vacuum
Sometimes the fissures become scars
Calcified and brittle
Painful when poked but otherwise unnoticed
The wound may heal over
But the fissure may never
Completely
Close
Oct 6, 2020
Oct 6, 2020 at 8:16 PM UTC
Eventually this is going to **** you:
I will drop through the cracks in your limestone heart
Filling the spaces that you never knew existed
Until finally, without warning,
The stalagmites rupture your lungs and every breath is agony,
Calcified rock growing drip by devastating drip -
I wish you would have fallen away instead of in love;
There is no manual that could have warned you
That you have to move,
Do something
Anything at all before I bleed all the happiness from your mouth or see
If I could kiss you like an animal
All claws and snarling rage,
Screaming and burning,
A supernova in your arms,
But I am already in your heart and I know I will hurt you without any of that
So I lie with you, and listen to the stalagmites growing deep within, and wonder if you knew that I
was going to hurt.
Sep 11, 2017
Sep 11, 2017 at 7:44 PM UTC