"calcifies" poems
The sea stretches tight on a slight, white horizon
unflurried by waves, by the clean, boneache moon.
The water rests awhile, passing slowly through the ribs of continents,
its deep, deep chest booming with the cries of extinct fish.
I am not dead, though the salt has lifted me out
and away, its sting green-silver like a safety razor edge.
It rubs away chromosomes, the earliest layers of skin
and remakes me pale and raw as a baby’s spleen.
The land abandons me. The last little fishing vessel
returns to its village, bearing upon its sun-slick floor
the heft of my cells, my tiny stillborn children.
I know I’ll never be a mother;
the salinity of my blood has risen steadily
these past million years;
it itches against my arteries
and calcifies in the deeper pockets of my lungs.
I tower over grassroots, vivid as a corpuscle,
drinking from the local well and dreaming of lysis.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 12:22 AM UTC
Deathless laying - strewn -
your hand gripping the bone
in my shoulder.
Mixed are the decaying
shards of skin from
bodies
Everything almost touching
again reduced and
mixed in formation
and your hand
calcifies
to me
What in blank skin covering
the eyes - which twitter
and in their chaos -
accentuates our inhibition?
Ripe tears fall
never
into
the face catching
follicles
instead
I swam across to the
heartinents in your chest
and my
mother would say not to
fall into grips that
free emotions like
port, port that enters into
worldsea and drifts across
faded hurricane winds to encapsulate
icewinds in
jars like
coffins closing off to
blind light and opening
peoples airways to scream
of fear in love
Free of sight
in wine-flooded dreams
you lay
and I rest as hands
knot over the
abyss that opens for
brooding thoughts
that drip
out of my mind
as I lay my insatiable
eyes to rest.
Jan 23, 2011
Jan 23, 2011 at 4:17 PM UTC
I am no rock
my heart
is not made
of tiny bits
of stone
it will not
be crushed
like a pile
of ground-up bone
it might be
washed upon
shores
like the most
miniscule of
treasures
found in sand,
unseen to
naked eye
yet so full of
iridescent magic
in a spectrum of colors
a secret world
unto its own
those almost
invisible shapes
jeweled corals
of earth
up from
sea bottom
in foamy
rebirth
but I will take it
(yes, my heart,
in rawness
and thunder)
and hold it
and nurse it
before it goes under
I will rock it
and soothe it
before it calcifies
as the ocean
invites endless
salt from
my
eyes
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 8:50 AM UTC
Reticent, morning hides
behind boles of alder, the air
escaping his lungs
Calcifies in my chest.
A caustic mist mists
Over the rivers pane. Thick
White trails into fine liquid
Black, interring the
slight, torn body. Orange sky-swell
Washes incandescent green:
Dark sienna burns
A path to the waters scorched
White stone. The wood
Holds no sympathy: alacritous
calls knife the sorrowful heart.
Mar 9, 2012
Mar 9, 2012 at 9:24 PM UTC
It isn't so much
broken, as muscle is
unlike bone and
does not fracture cleanly.
It will not heal completely,
when damaged, no matter
how well it is set.
Bone calcifies to mend itself,
and adds new minerals
and elements to make it stronger yet.
Muscle, however, turns to weaker ends
that lack its own elasticity.
It mends itself with collagen,
and becomes more prone to injury.
Jun 27, 2010
Jun 27, 2010 at 1:45 PM UTC
Vines of apathy stunt the growth of many
Listlessly moving through their day
Burdened by our way of surviving
Cold, without empathy
Where has our compassion gone?
Things cannot console you when you need a warm touch
A hand to hold
A sympathetic ear
We, all of us, are made of star dust
Cosmic stuff
Coursing through Big Bang engineered veins
Yet fluoride calcifies our connection with that energy
Pineal gland silent, radio waves dead
Nature is in harmony, was
Until us
Now she has lung cancer, poisoned waters
Fields of dust that go on for miles and miles
What have we done?
Clean energy, Eco-friendly products
THE KNOWLEDGE TO GROW OUR OWN FOOD
Is at our fingertips
Big Corporate wants you to stay dumb, numb and greedy
Feeding their insatiable need for more with your own
If you look closely, real close
Starting with your own actions and priorities
You will find that what once was a co-habitation with us in the mix of this great planet
Is now us at the top, alone
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 9:01 AM UTC
Locked by the fingers, but something still runs free.
Stirring up seeds in a place that can't be seen.
Above us the sea sizzles, the sky burns at our feet. I'll hear her voice for centuries.
Taste her lips in every fool I kiss. Breathing malaria into my hips.
For what no man can be she is, sees all, feels all and brushes it under your feet.
Her rust fingers find the zing of metals; from first to fourth mirrors burst, life calcifies.
There's still sand under my toenails, salt crystals in my eyes. Marooned where too much lives and in the surf I'll lie.
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 7:46 AM UTC
If he isnt fully there for you
are the fragments of what you do have worth keeping?
if your not fully there for guys then are you worth holding onto?
being torn between what you want and what you know you deserve
lost
frustrated
drowning with desperation to grab onto something thats real and will help you to float.
why is it so hard to meet the right guy
someone worth my while.
maybe it is because my fear holds me from fully submerging
each additional break
calcifies the shell
even thicker and thicker
until one day
it will be unbreakable.
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 3:48 AM UTC
His list is long— as he pauses on life
and Mount Wellington's shadows shift.
Those stealing life's song out of young shoots
breathe the longest
while his beloved dies young.
Scars bleed droplets, not gushing
like Cataract Gorge
when scratched, or touched afresh;
not given space—
how he was stung is remembered.
He tries to be the sunrise
over Bruny Island,
but redback spiders imbibe shadows
lying dormant
assessing risk, ready to strike.
Wounds murmur in the Tamar River
objecting, having heard it all,
wearing down joy's clouded lightness.
Rasping scrubwrens warn
while falsity sharpens its spike.
Flattery's forked tongue is honeyed
as leatherwood, but synthetic—
He resists its bait, casting it past the Derwent;
his skin crawling at false charm.
He retains his grounded sense of self.
Time doesn't wipe it all clean to heal—
it calcifies into chilled stone
like Cradle Mountain's fissured misted face
with sticks of pine trees burnt
while eucalypt gums regenerate, partially blind.
His garden grows wild now
through rambling cracks
as grasses from a cemetery head-piece
sport defiant blooms
of an unaccepted genus.
Memory is a compass
pointing due north
past Port Arthur's harried walls
and Antarctic gales
as tales of unfinished lives see, and wait—
Jan 15, 2025
Jan 15, 2025 at 6:01 AM UTC
The rain falls
Washing away illusions
Old "truths" shown to be flawed
Old "safeties" hiding a threat
Gone, the hidden threats of yesterday
The rain falls
Watering the foundations
For a new truth blooms
And new safeties shown
With the false securities gone
The sun shines
Burning away the lies
For they grow brittle
When shone under light of truth
Shattering at the slightest touch
The sun shines
Feeding the truth
The tulip-blossoms grow
More real as more time passes
Whilst under the revealing sun
A helicopter seed
Seemingly lifeless
Falls to the ground
Just to lie there
Abandoned without its twin
A helicopter seed
So full of life
Falls to the fertile soil
Waiting for the rain
To grow a maple strong
The old world
Shown to be flawed
Calcifies and shatters
Dissolves and washes away
Until only the true remains
The new world
A world progressing
Sends roots into the remains
Seeking out that dissolved truth
Letting a new world flourish
May 10, 2019
May 10, 2019 at 11:02 AM UTC