Canvasing poems on Hello Poetry

Juliana Aug 2013

You have stars in your hands
and you hold them like grenades.
The boats tattooed on your thighs
spread out like finger placements of the G major chord.
Synthetic drugs make chains
tying your first and second fingers
around the mechanically rolled paper,
canvasing your throat like too much sea water,
each breath as rough as the veins in your arms.
Close your eyes
there’s pollen in the air
spread out like imperfections on the skin of an apple.
Solar countries keep foreign coins
sewed into their cotton sails,
they put their money into the navy.
You have a comet in your circulatory system
leaving bright spots under your skin
a reminder to gather the sunshine back under your eyelashes.
Hand soap in ketchup packets
make bubble bath islands
and unhappy lips.
You’re as talkative as a poem and
as expensive as a poppy
with homemade constellations on your back,
staining your lumbar muscles with cherries.
I can’t wash off your fingerprints
with my favourite shampoo.
I’ll swim across the Georgia Strait,
dodge your dinghies and
make a home in handmade ships
where I’ll practice erasing scars from my arms
and washing the soap from my hair.

Emanuel Martinez Sep 2012

The Conqueror

How come your body of warmth
  Boulder of boldness and hope
    My limbs in vain, fold
      In and out of its hold

Smoothness and strength
  Making me hang stealthily below
    As the muscles in your arms
      More than tickle, grip, supporting my back

Frolicking, commanding every enclave
  Exploring this landscape with precise measure and expertise
    Cherishing every arch, every curve, every carving
      Like the greatest monument,
        You guard me against all elements

And every time you press this lips
  Cautioning against the unleashing of nirvana
    Tinkling with mere existence
      There's a launching of infinite catharsis

Even when this land becomes regimented and bound
  Enclosing every possible escape
    Encroaching, expelling the very efforts to liberate
      You pause in front and gaze into the power of my eyes
        Extracting every trace of repression and restraint

Canvasing, surveying the infinite value of this place
  The conqueror, the lord, the trustee of this land
    Has come to stop pondering the chase
      He's built the greatest monument, he never planned

September 18, 2012

Connor Sep 2017

paused during a cloudy day, reading Sanshirō

In the caring arms of
candles, bathe
the sky with Autumn pools,
canvasing yards.

Sacrificial intruders, gently
swimming leaves, crying acoustics, Baba Yaga spins
her satin cobwebs in the wake
of morning

(funeral rites a few streets over, hardly paid mind or body)

we are protected now by a sauna, simmering hot stones in our chests-
-burst forth with passion!
ragged romantics gather
reaching upward to their forbidden idol (since lost)

coffee, bitter dew on garden, fountain parasol to overcast
dispersion/carving blade/nuptial rumours/nobody translates the sick/everybody is coddled by loneliness (wolf, a deathmouth which has never known satisfaction/mute & watercolor)

shop signs faded white, shoeshiner replacements, faces transposed, day drapes with smoking curtains
prematurely & ur smile
is tortured by animal
vagrancy

lips (siesmic breath)

lips a
talisman recieved in charity

another fertile morning kept fruitful for those who value moments & glances

lips the household fables,
the native porch! (pity)

lips o spirited child clutching hollow whistling images

lips o bedside manner

(I am a feverish mountain branded with snow)

lips cream of dust,
lavender flicker,

(speaker's immortal verse/showering violets)

lips eager to shake hands
& dance
with violence as they
undoubtedly know how

Yonathan Asefaw Jun 2018

The Odyssey of a Birdbrain

I scribble about planets strewing from the face
They’re hip-hop graffiti or spiting images of
exo-lifeforms.
Abstract wavelengths circling from heads
canvasing an earth unlike what i’ve
kaleidoscope before
You’ve s e e n it.

The face
The endless kamikaze from exoplanets
swaddling behind bulging eyeballs.

of supernova’s and B-72 solar systems
My birdbrain.

Praise Nesvinga Aug 2020

Passion

I know how your lips are macadamia husk amber, rosy and crimson, lubricious and subdued like silk sashes, radiant and warm as cloves in burlap sacks.
Their live, insatiable kiss, moist and breathy, rouses quick and electric heat, brushing softly and passionately like butterfly wings.
The feel of your waist, tender and delicate like the half-curled frond of a sun washed fiddle-head fern, sizzling and thermal under my hands.
Fingertips tracing the figuration of your rhythmic contrasting thighs, navigating your rounded hips with familiar fascination as your skin orchestrates an exhaled symphony of inaudible passion.

Scattering nascent rays of unfiltered moonlight, yes your unfathomable, unbaked clay eyes form the immortal art of a perfect soul with a swallowing incomprehensible depth.
Swirling warm and edged with a muddied silhouette canvasing the luminescence dancing in your irises with a soft glimmer, conjuring lucid eyes that betray this poet.
If I could touch your face, to be a fleshy passion fruit on your tongue, to be the skin inside your palm, to be yours and tender as steak imagined off the bluegill's pearlish bones.
O' show me the detail my love, the intricate structure of your faultlessness and the languish against my slow chapped power.

Your infallible inerrant hands, touch in a slow successive tactility as though arching away at every bone, inciting and conjuring upon approval even from the very last toe.
Your embrace is the most exquisite distress, sweating, feeling an impetuous volcano strain at its peak inside me, urging to explode my steaming self over you
That voice that floats off untethered as the corners of your mouth tilt up like commas around " beautiful phrases ", glazing with human light and espousing them to your lips.
Adoring the twilight of your skin, it's brilliant light tone beginning to blush evenly, each cell inspired to push toward that ruddiness of purpose and that sigh.

In neither absent nor a pensive mood, the bliss of your solitude, the grandeur of your ever happy self, tossing its head in a sprightly dance, you are my passion

For Nelida Ndaubvonga

Colm May 2020

Warm and alone in the wooded wilds (free)

Do you ever find yourself
(when beneath canvasing trees)
Standing alone in the singular comforting heat
Of the of the only illuminant rays to find
Their way through the clouds of leafy green?

Do you? I did
And it felt so immaculate to be
Warm and alone in the wooded wilds
Where I was free

<3

Alina Sep 2020

Paranoia

The fresh air, the sunshine, and the anonymity of the unknown.
Outside you can be adventurous, free, or held captive by fear.
The constant anxiety of never really feeling safe.
Because even when you're surrounded by smiling strangers and crowds of people you’re still alone.
Kidnappers, killers, and pedophiles, knowing they exist sends shivers down my spine.
Some days I enjoy going outside, the greenery, the sights to see, and my favorite thing the sky.
The wisps of clouds canvasing their simple but elite contrast to the sky.
No filter, no limit to the wonders they project to my eyes.
Whether it was clear, stormy, night, or day I was never unsatisfied.
I wish I could hold on to the feeling forever
But the irrational fear of being taken or the thoughts of a tragedy always spoiled the glee and brought me back to reality.
The world is not safe, there are bad people, people who want to harm and hurt.
They never even give families a chance to say goodbye.
There are good days and bad days.
Days where I don’t give myself the chance to step outside and see a peek of sunshine
Or days where I can let myself go to a park, laugh and have a good time.
It’s not outside that is bad or harmful, but the paranoia that instills fear and chains me by a leash.

— The End —