"careened" poems
Lincoln Highway moved
more like a dance than a road
It drifted like the wind
corroded the earth
to guide me home.
The colors of the coming autumn
careened down, painting
the asphalt canvas below.
I had left Latrobe less than an hour ago
but crossed into a distant world
where the overgrown homes of old
remained among the ancient trees
breathing and watching me.
Weathered red paint running down
dilapidated barns like wax
melting from a candle's wick.
So star spangled Americana
it would not do it justice
to refer to it as just the sticks.
There was something profound happening;
the "American Dream" was dying here
and I was to bear witness
as the shinning city on the hill
fell into the metaphorical sea.
Spellbound in this catastrophe,
my ego still finds a way
to make it all about me.
I could not help but wonder
if Andy would remember
our talk about technology;
if Eamon and Bridgette would forget us three
walking hand in hand through the wood
and down the tracks,
battling back the inebriation
in the cold, hard black of a September night.
If these moments meant anything
to anyone but me.
My eyes locked on the horizon line
that rested atop a mountain peak.
I thought about how I left you,
left you three words short
of having me complete.
And I'd be lying if I didn't say
I contemplated running back to you
to speak what went unsaid
because home is not a place
but a thought in one's head.
You were home but I kept on driving
past the bones of a dying dream
letting my dreams die a little too
quietly inside of me.
Oct 1, 2013
Oct 1, 2013 at 5:25 PM UTC
When I met you,
my heartbeat fret--
something was incongruous.
And once frantic words
careened out of your mouth--
I saw rapid fire machine gun
rubber bullets bouncing everywhere.
Neighborhood dogs desperately yipped
and barked and howled
as your attempts to weave a conspiracy laden
tragic web of a storybook life into a net
to trap those who will listen unravel
before me.
Storm clouds darken around you.
The cacophonous pandemonium of your voice
and slithering slender body
are fascinating to watch as headlights dance
by while you whirl in the middle of the road,
***** drink in one hand
a plucky smile--
your green eyes glow like melting peridot.
With a train wreck personality,
your frolfing at a busy intersection
influence over some is astonishing!
The next morning,
through a haze of listlessness,
I understand what you are;
Succubus.
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 8:44 AM UTC
the only boy i ever loved
is awake while i am sleeping
the tinman boy lives upside-down
but in my tongue i keep him
while screens have saved us tenfold times
i still sit and mull your visit
those days spent tangled in your hair
i won’t admit i miss it.
you drove stick-shift but held my hand
jumped guardrails and pythons and nerves
painted me with waterfall clay
and careened around my curves
your tongue is strings on violins
and i am no virtuoso
each rusted joint creaks heartless songs
while my will swings to and fro
you’re tension like a tinder box
or a match-head ripe for striking
i can’t speak freely of your hands
but found them to my liking
i hope i am not novelty
or distraction wrapped in ennui
i, for one, am enthralled by you
and how you can’t sing on-key
raggedy thoughts bite (just like you)
of distance and futures and you
sentences always end with you
except when you want them to
the only boy i ever loved
is spiteful and tragic and sweet
the tinman boy lives far away
at least until next we meet
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 7:27 AM UTC
bullets in brain cells
trenches twisted, turned.
his brains a battlefield,
but to hide it, he learned.
mind stands as a temple,
tongue rolls, a black sea.
she was never a fighter,
and neither was he.
she painted him skylines,
rainforests, black rain.
but the art on the paper
could not match his pain.
she danced on pianos
wrote him ten love songs,
he fell down much further
and dragged her along.
however it was not
towards her that he fell,
instead he careened into
mindless, deep hell.
so he pulled the trigger,
and ended his war.
left the young girl alone
just wanting him more.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 2:32 AM UTC
Art is good
medication so you'll
deal with this creatively.
You've careened into this so
make the wreck,
the chaos
bloom on a page.
It might even help.
You're going to be a comic book artist
because in the face of such things
words fail and lips
falter, and you
want to knock your head comedically.
You want
to conjure silly star-loops for
smashing into this
feeling.
Knocked-out.
Reeling.
Draw, draw out
and ink in your malady.
Crash!
The worst is when
your heart is the caricature.
A full-page feature,
a splash,
of high-strung colours
begging to be neatened.
Splash!
Your
cartoon heart. An
image of a fat, crimson
apple
like a clip-art pic, got
a little worm poking through
it.
Eating, eating away
to leave a love
or loss-sized hole.
Fat white bubbles announcing
hurt!
so graphically.
Go on and
draw it more lurid. If
the feeling is here, you might as well
feel it.
Let the slops of gaudy red
and green
bleed and
bleed
out of the panel.
Stain it, stain
the gutter
where time happens.
At least it gives the comic
a heartbreaking!
twist.
And then you turn the page.
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 12:51 PM UTC
my soul was black hanging on a graffitti fence
down by the corner street
where crack and needles punctuated the alleyway
with no hope.
brother hid from brother
and sisters wore mini mini mini skirts
to draw the danger from the honking cars
into the pool of light cast by the one surviving
bulb
on a lamp post of desolation
he had slick hair and sharp notches
on his belt, danging chains
that reminded him of time inside
the dungeons where he gained
his qualifications in years behind
the bars of justice.
Out on the street, it was mayhem
a blue car siren-ed off into the distance
careened across the road
and vanished into upper class society
where they ate pink cakes and sipped herbal teas
as morning cleaned the streets of darkness
the sunshine grew the window sill
stacked with marijuana.
It was just another day to be alive.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 11 days ago
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 1:52 PM UTC
I'm just a casualty of your carelessness,
the road **** of your love,
the curve that you could not quite make,
the shrunken blood-stained glove.
While you careened with wild abandon
upon those tree-lined country roads,
I grabbed the car wheel frantically
in desperate need to hold
onto a steady safe existence
a life line to salvation
and now it's you who toes the line
while I support creation.
Nonetheless,
you are the life line to my love,
I'm your unexpected guest.
There's nothing you can do to me
to put me out to rest.
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 11:21 PM UTC
I’m from rearranged furniture
I’m from “asleep in the bathtub”
I’m from biting hands over
store-bought candy.
I’m from vinyl-white-siding,
No better at keeping in heat
Than keeping out punks,
Four guinea pigs named
“Gamber,”
And a spotted rabbit.
From searching for answers
At the bottom of a bottle,
And not stopping, to think “maybe,”
When the answers aren’t there.
I’m from thrown phones, and
Broken Home,
And diseases they have
Yet to cure.
From layoffs, to layovers, to
A car, that careened
Down the street that I lay in,
And broke the door off its frame,
Leaving an impression on
Unshakable wood.
A Golden Orb-Weaver
On a storm-door handle,
Painted purple and black,
And a blood-curdling scream.
From a run to the backyard
And irrational fears
And the accidental rhyme
Of your mask-haunted dreams
I’m from people who loved me,
Without knowing how,
And people who couldn’t,
Without saying why.
I’m from loving her, a
Little too hard, that when we finally
Broke, We both emerged.
Scarred, and scared.
Groundhogs, and rabbits, and
Cats that weren’t mine.
Being told, at times,
Simultaneous, that I’m
Less than, yet
“Above grade level.”
*I’m from baring the blunt-force,
To numbing it all out.
I’m from jazz, chess, and
Tonic water. I’m from
The Wolftones classy sound.
I’m from turning up the
Music so loud, that when
The world covered its ears,
I tried my best
To listen*
.
I’m deciding to recreate the world
As I see fit.
I’m going to do something important,
special,
Before I die.
I want to invent. An
Existence I feel more content, in.
There’s no wagon to fall off.
Just looming things,
And avoidance.
I’m deserving of the option to keep
Calling it as I see it.
Advocating character development,
And suppressing my own hamartia.
Experimenting with sobriety,
And the ending of days.
Fighting off the Great Greyness, unstoppable,
Laying down land-mines, and
Bear-traps, on the
Terrain of Winter.
*I’m going to turn the music up
Louder still,
Until protest, drowned out,
Is inseparable, from
Cheering.*
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 7:29 PM UTC
She died a sudden death
at least the the bullets impact
slammed the door.
but I cant say for sure.
I hope so.
I dreamed her in repose a few months before.
I am not a dreamer nor do I think I have a gift.
I saw her with ruffled lace around her throat
asleep still lovely in profile a hint of a smile.
The mahogany half lid removed. just her face
and I shuddered knowing it was a dream as I dreamed it .
You know when you know that you are dreaming
and choose to let it play out. That was the case.
I left her to her own devices knowing they were fatal
in the long term but not so long after all.
I knew she would find the rainbow even told her so
Her death wish was on display the day
The brown van careened around the corner
The blue sedan in pursuit shooting blindly
she stood and watched the show go by
with no regard. I looked up at her from where I
sprawled and knew for sure then that she
hoped for the rainbow.
Diana was her name.
Out of sync with her existence.
Boy how did she last that long.
She told me once and never repeated
one warm California night as we sat on
the level roof of an adjoined building from her apartment
we sat and watched the pinprick stars far away in the
black velvet sky drinking cognac as the city lights cast from afar.
she told me.
She told me and I cried inside of a father
who took her innocence and made her prove her love in a twisted oral benediction.
Then It all made sense. We never spoke of it again and her scars glowed purple and pulsing
from within.
All heart and soul.
Caramel eyes that held love always
Never anger or even pain. That
was buried as deep as the hole
she has lain in for years.
This is as close as I have come to saying goodbye.
She drifted backwards.
Old and new acquaintances
Toxic .
The end was brutal.
The rainbow at the end of the pain.
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 12:31 AM UTC
Encased in metal, their bodies careened towards the city. The grinding, the metal on metal screeching, quieted their thoughts.
Head against glass, crowded and foggy, the mother in grey plots her scheme to the nearest bottle of liquor. The man with guilt in his eyes, clutches her hand and wonders when he can get away.
They coast past creeks of muck and cigarette butts. Two bodies on their way to the next hour.
The small girl sleeps on her mothers chest breathing foul ash from the air. Her father smokes with his hand behind a book and exhales sour remorse from his worn lungs.
The mother with heavy eyes, avoids wishful thinking. She has never relied
on luck, so she sits, encased in metal ignoring faces and avoiding eyes.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
My soul is an empty crisps packet
caught in the sour mood of a shouting wind
She snarled and I careened
— a drunken trapeze artist
That moody spirit let me fall upon a mountain top
at the feet of a brick of a black man shouting
he has seen the promised land!
My heart cracked as an egg that slipped from the bench:
his people still stumble in chains
My shouting mistress carried me aloft and I fell
in the slit of a rock upon another summit
where the finger of God scratched Hebrew into stone
The wizard’s face burned as the Lord’s shadow
passed before him as the orange tears of a volcano
I know, I heard him call up to the Almighty. They’ll
melt their earrings and innocence and cast a calf
Beneath the roar of my mistress’s temper I heard the
wizard plead like a lawyer, forgive them Lord
They don’t yet know
That temper carried my dizzy soul to another peak and
I beheld a young man slap the Devil on his left cheek
Get thee hence, Satan, he said, rejecting a throne
offered by that beauty with the stinging face
I heard the wind hiss and I cringed awaiting another crash
I broke my fall like a child off a bed and marvelled
at the sight —Oh God what a sight!
ten thousand prostrating candles hurling shadows from a cave
and ripping sleep off a man with the bugle command, Recite!
My soul my soul! I am overcome. I begged the wind to return me
to my home and she took pity and swept me in a final gust
Apr 22, 2016
Apr 22, 2016 at 10:26 AM UTC
Through a pane of glass
life dissolves into its essence
Through a pane of glass
creation speaks
I never thought it would be this way
I chose to go
along for the ride
while this mad world
careened off the tracks
And yet creation
the godhead
persists
expands and contracts
unperturbed
I struggle to understand
the code
I peer intently
into the enveloping dark
And at the end of this inquiry
I find only music
and silence
upholstered through and without
by a sweet sense of peace.
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 9:31 PM UTC
The city had been as frenetic as my circling thoughts
Everyone shoving by in a hurry
While my heart careened around
Untethered and chaotic and
Terrified
Fumbling for the right beat while you fumbled your keys
A wildfire of opportunity among the grim apartments
We flared to life
Surprised and laughing and
Breathlessly tangled
And for a wild moment
I felt I could stay suspended there in the dizzying heat
We both know I ran instead
Felt the unfamiliar flames licking up my back
And panicked
In my most chilling nightmares
I retrace my steps
Scream soundlessly to rewrite the story
To linger on the sidewalk with you
To stay, just a little longer
Only to watch our phantom selves
Shatter the fragile magic that could have been
In my wildest dreams
I’m still gasping against your chest
My name is still raggedly on your lips
Like a spell
Like a prayer
Like a promise
Oct 23, 2022
Oct 23, 2022 at 9:55 AM UTC
Reflections on own timeline
are neither easy nor fast
as one needs a special mirror
to look back in the past.
A river flowed
for a decade long
as it careened through
the jungle land.
For long it forgot
its own beautiful song
its own little joy
that it had carried along.
And it never looked back
for the past was gone
as it looked ahead
to the sea that beckoned.
And then it saw
a brook run by
a little young stream
singing high.
The brook knew not
to where it went
neither did it worry
through ascent or descent.
But the brook had speed
which made the river see
what the brook’s future
would one day to be.
The river knew the brook
would with time grow
and be its own river
with depth it would flow.
And then the river realized
that it was once the same brook
alive, singing, flowing carefree
unlike today’s look.
Always busy running
the river never knew why
all the joy evaporated
as time flew by.
So the river beholds the brook
as it passes away
and wishes before it grows ahead
the brook enjoys every day.
- Dedicated to Tanvi Jadwani, my mentee (http://hellopoetry.com/tanvi-jadwani/)
Feb 26, 2014
Feb 26, 2014 at 4:46 AM UTC
The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Strapped to the hollows
Where your daddy and kin
Pulled coal from the mountains
And mine shafts within
The hum of the smokestacks
And the fog of the earth
Wore at your senses
And questioned your worth
While the cracks in the family
Like the cracks in the hills
Were as easy to slip through
As fortune’s goodwill
So you took to the bottle
And you took to the boys
With a thirst for the throttle
And the late barroom noise
While your mama and daddy
Sat at home by the phone
Sendin’ prayers for their youngest
Toward the gold plated throne
The folks down in Loudon
Remember too well
The night you rolled through
In your dust caked Chevelle
And the way it spun out
On a stray slab of ore
And careened down the slope
For the cold valley floor
The dirt in those hills
Never merited much
Beyond the black rock
Buried deep in its clutch
But the same soul that sprawled
Beside granddaddy’s grave
Was the same soul consumed
By the soil that day
When the April rains whisper
Their song to the pines
And the distant train whistles
Its lonesome steel whine
Deep in the thunder
Behind the grey hue
Your memory glistens
Like the late morning dew
The last of six children
You made your way late
Through the humdrum of life
In the Volunteer state
Pining for something
Your voice could not name
A dream and a dreamer
Too restless to tame
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM UTC
One night when I was eighteen
I was drunk on beers and East end accents
in a Basildon garden lighting fireworks.
I seared my thumb
on the base of a sparked *******
which careened into the fence and dried grass,
igniting in deep welted pain
and a smallish fence fire.
Inside my skin sits once again the same ache
ignited by a spark you nurtured,
which burned us both down,
as beautiful and unruly as the rogue firework and the flames.
May 6, 2017
May 6, 2017 at 5:31 AM UTC
there was once a brick hearth
and my skinned kneed,
wild flaxen haired,
innocent self would sit there
to feel the fire’s warmth radiating through the stones.
there were ghost stories told
on picnic tables at state parks where
the calloused barefeet of my childhood
struck the dusty ground as i ran towards
not away
when i followed vitreous streams
with frigid soaked clothes clinging to my skin
all the way to the river who now holds these memories
for me.
there was a sprawling old mimosa tree
whose diaphanous flowers would float
feathery petals
to decay on the ground.
How that tree must be a part of me somehow
from the scrapes my soft infantile skin
endured while trying to clamber up its branches
not for a moment tainting my insatiable appetite to explore.
there were steaming hot afternoon thunderstorms
a quotidian race home from the bowels
of the verdant green forest
dodging heavy raindrops
pregnant with the weight of coming years.
those years were the smell of fresh lighter wood
the acrid feel of smoke in the back of my throat
popsicles in the pool
and warm sun-kissed skin.
those times were blanket forts at sleep overs
the salt on sunflower seed shells
cracked in the dugout at softball games
they were the lilted drawl that curled comfortably
around eternal southern colloquialisms.
bike rides to get skittles and coke
at the gas station at the end of the street.
the wind in my hair as I careened down
what will always be known as
Thrill Hill
at some point my bike rusted
when was that?
the pool sat alone and unused
and evergreen forests became a passing image
in a dream
scraped knees turned to razor slices.
but my body will always carry the recollection.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 9:32 PM UTC
I had a dream a while ago in which I shattered to pieces
my porcelain feelings screaming, as my fragile being, my ego
careened into the abrasive floors of a street. My chest became
my cremation chamber when your eyes stabbed instead of kissed
me, charring my skies and calcifying my heart until it crumbled
in defeat.
You left me in this dream; and I became an orphaned soldier,
because your arms have a way of sailing me home, and I
was left stranded with my cheek to the dirt
they're
the entrancing warmth I feel as I open the entrance door after
what feels like a montage , surgically patching my broken days
into weeks and months, but every patch is the same **** color
every patch the burial ground of scattered death
dirt
tears
dirt
have you ever slept with a quilt so dull it's covers disown you
under it's hollow body?
It's difficult to describe to you verbally the intensity of
what I feel for you, my volubility vulnerable to flaws in the
jaws of inexperience and tangled in destiny's hair, but I can
say I choke under the heavy smoke of my ignorant mistakes,
I cry for you, your pain, I wish I could steal it and make it
my own but it seems that too is a dream.
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 9:37 AM UTC
if the sky were torn
-which it is-
the stitch
inside your oblique
would take the glow of
sun beclouded
and
make it
its own
a cut carved into woundnomore
numb
is
not a thing
itself
it
waxes wanes waves
of photon streeeeaaam
crepuscular crawl of careened being
pilfering
life force
vamp ***** siphon of tor
it is yours
to have
all of
it
awaits your gait
sidelong face lips pursed poised
antidote to troll
you are light
on your
feet
because you are
i think
light of soul streaked
and
smeared across the Verse
you hold space
and black holes inside
one small dixie cone cup pinky out
you are
writer
written down
this glyph is
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 7:23 PM UTC
Her sweetness-laden face,
beckoned with a grace,
A wishful ray of hopes,
inconspicuously morose.
He read it with an ease,
The Pinings cached in crease,
Swaying like a tremor,
Agog for a breather.
Whilst unfurling the crease,
He feared his irrational leash,
Careened before her eyes,
And pulled his hands back inside.
He thought he had better,
Leave intact the wrapper,
For a sudden quietude hurts more,
Than a phlegmatic uproar.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 10:56 AM UTC
There's just
Too much sometimes
These faces and
These twisting lives
Which are spent well,
Lived well, brought along
With a proper kind of zeal...
There's just
So many of us that
The unity overrides the
Solemn outcast
Money made its
Way into my life
But not really
I tried...
I really did try
To care about the stuff and
About everything
It could give me
Maybe I'm too stupid
Maybe I'm not old enough
Maybe I'm too much of
A barbarian to need nothing
But something that was
Given to me or that I stole or
That I got on the cheap from nowhere
I see the future
As only a dream of a
Better present with more or
Less bearable troubles
There is nothing that
Exists that cannot
Be beaten
Or solved
There are many of us
With feelings that
Are only lost in the wind
Tossed in the stream
Careened as the Spring
Changes Her colors to the reverse
I hear the hearse of Death
But the gallows rarely seem
To fall on the reborn or saved
Their angel's with their harps, their
Wings and their rings smile into
A crowd that only lives for a detour
From damnation into a safer salvation
Pain shows to be such
A deal breaker
When discussing the
Pro's and con's of
Which side you'll
End up on
Irony crowns
It's holy humor
Of Lords once again
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
I stare at the million wrinkles on each hand
a respectable women once told a smaller me
this means I am a wise soul
but I didn’t feel very wise
when a million taunts and laughs at school
followed me around at recess
until one day
I careened off my green bike
and landed among the sharp little rocks
that bloodied these hands
as I felt the pain slide through
every line in my palms
I knew this was life
and that I would have to try again
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
father awakened
beckoned by bathroom in night
his death approaching like headlights in
rear-view
in cars he careened into cornfields so
long ago
in women he obsessed over
poured over while rolling tea
in records he flips through
languidly
suffering alone, retracting into song
crucifix still hung over his jaded bedpost
lotion still sits on by his bed
where he lay debased and tempted
by nothing
while his house breaths fissures
and crumbles
where his legacy sits truncated and dusted
in books of song
carpet collecting impressionistic stains
stove top counting days with soot
medicine cabinet reminds of his frivolous
youth
when he was foolish and paid bills
before he was afraid to climb his creaking
stairs
before he delivered flowers to the funeral
home
before the acetaminophen ate his soul
May 14, 2019
May 14, 2019 at 6:33 PM UTC
"I don't know what the words
he speaks to the walls
in hushed impatience mean.
A perimeter of experience
perfectly seamed
between the real
and unreal.
A portrait of the forest
with no leaves."
It goes like this:
Our noise
The wreckage of being alive
Will eventually grass over into something natural
and unadorned.
Taking our self-interest away.
Emptying decades of ego
drip by
drip.
Forgetting the birds in the trees,
how vast a neighborhood felt passing by school bus windows,
and the way dew beaded
in front the hospital when they said
“We’re out of options.”
Sorrow,
however human,
has always staunched itself just beyond each hallway’s end.
A vastness terrifying and grim.
Like the inedible gristle
from a cheap steak
forever rolling between gapped molars.
Eventually the coping mechanisms fade,
and we accept the bristling fact
it’s never going
to get better.
Bide time ruminating,
how our bodies careened off one another.
Something primally magical
about the curve of bones
concussed by freckles bloomed in desert sun.
And how time has left each appendage
standing suddenly disconsolate
and devoid of humanity.
The odd one out,
picked neither for shirts
nor skins.
You gradually get worse at self-preservation.
Faltering when remembering words
or what side of the bathroom door the handle is on.
Movement eventually follows, leaving you bed-bound.
Taking note, your immune system quietly packs it’s bags
and slinks out the back door slow
so you can wither to an unencumbered close.
I want my sloughed tissue brain
to struggle against a thin strand of humanity,
fighting the fade of your presence
harder than the fact I can no longer spell my sibling’s names.
Will yours remember me?
Or will it stay tied down elsewhere,
bruises being choked into it’s pliable facade.
A miasma of crop tops and denim skirts.
It will arrive,
certain
but unannounced.
The culmination of a life well-lived.
Feedback, white-noise, static,
silence.
Peace as stark as a womb.
Yet when I close my eyes now,
all I see is the gnashing of teeth.
Oct 6, 2019
Oct 6, 2019 at 11:33 PM UTC