"cased" poems
In time you’ll recover and absolve
push those scorned impressions aside
hammer down the jaded edges
and sing
that delightful commoners song
the one you sang so well
in what seems a lifetime ago
You really had it you know
that fiery disposition and nimble cunning
those butter chords and derelict style
we could see it -- we could all see it
it was all it took to turn the evening tide
(and rile that buck fever)
heads bashing
tongues lambasting
middle fingers high
and raising Cain on those may fly statesmen
There were no rules
when it came to your survival
no textbook rally or common bond
no structured songbird or bravado stage
you either made it, or laid it
“life by the ***** Mr. Poppy would say
a kaleidoscope of dreams
with rich colored imagery
hardened artisan seams
in a carefully woven motif
But something got lost in the needle point
something sinister and distorted took hold
the quirks and street genius
that were your lifeline
gave way to grunts
and squeals
and chilling night crawlers
the colors faded quickly
to a cold confining grey
There was no grace in the new world
no retribution or switch back
no salvation or accorded finale
only edged platforms of blackened steel
that kept you cased
in a silent vanquished cell
shivering cold with fear
night without day
all in the shadow of death
But time heals all
and the polish sneakers
and open sores are long gone
(though the roman nose and shallow cleft remain)
indeed the falconer beat the widow maker
this go around
and I’m hopeful it won’t happen again
and if it does you’ll see me
standing hand on heart
with that old verse in hand:
he ain’t tainted
or silly,
and most certainly
not forgotten…
he ain’t loony
or fixed,
or a product of his self-doing…
he’s just a straight shootin’ guy,
who had the most of it
figured out
Jan 29, 2017
Jan 29, 2017 at 8:38 PM UTC
In tunnelled darks, pastes of reminisce
Outward disjoint points to irrelevance
Spooned and coned in cold mountaintops
The darks of sorrows and trails of struggles
Persistence patterns of self satire in gloom
Sunken in identity crisis of broad oceans
Stormy seas spotlighted by beatific stars
Trajectory of spilled ice in recurrent motions
A mere past cocooned by fears and tears
Clouded in thoughts that cruise and decline
Greyed white imprinted by sudden sadness
Madness echoes on arched ancient bricks
Checkered maniacs of fulfilled passions
Filed and iced in cased prolific memories
Cascades of sunshine tickles to warmth
Orchards of glow that bloom and grow
Picked, ticked and unpacked from boxes
Attacked, nurtured and stored in bliss
Eventful lessons unfolds in untold augury
A mission as the known permeates and fade
Windowed eyes all line up in parade
Mirrored lights digest the haunted haste
A stranger to self, an ally to another
A dance of bright entwine a twist of blur
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 11:48 AM UTC
Horrid and morbid, bitter, glittered and littered memories! Automotives, adaptive captives, movies, motives, Natives, locomotives, obsessive and possessive. Some awesome, brilliant, different, ignorant, persistent and resilient. ****** and exotic! Some memories are eccentric, fantastic, futuristic, magic, logistic, optimistic,
plastic, realistic, tragic or sadistic. Some random sizes with hidden prizes! Blameful, gainful, lameful and painful. Dreary destinies, diaries, inquires, weary rivalries, stories and theories in memory.
In theory, memories made from cheers and fears, jeers and tears!
Of amends, amens, omens, gems, hymns and stems. Memories
abbreviated and dedicated, deviated and medicated! Memories cased,
edited and erased. Evangelically, eventually everyone inherits! They’re like tiny merits! They spike the psych. They strike and are unlike. Memories of bites, defects, dislikes, effects, fights, flights, insects, logics, neglects, objects, plight, projects, protests, recollects, reflects
rejects, respects and suspects. Memories of fate and hate! Some are not great. Memories of schemes, screams or themes of dreams that seem. Memories of small, memories of tall! Memories in despise, memories
of lies. Memories of wise; beyond the skies, as I close my eyes…
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
Retail-hunter gatherers pick
clean processed bones, digging graves
with their shiny teeth, studious in
their reveries as they drone
past worlds dumped in the thresher;
the trucked-in fields of film-wrapped
gore splayed lustily before the managers
wound tight in Machiavellian design.
A shepherd herds his flock of
wreathed iron back to its pen, its
skeletal tangle lit in riotous gold by
swords flung from lambent eyes of
pre-dawn’s shunting chariots
Cages shunt and bobble like tugboats
chugging stoic up swimming pool lanes
of nondescript tile, cheered on by shouting
colours to float through archipelagos of
paper towel and chocolate blocks past
the vegemite diaspora, and the arctic
wastelands cased in sliding glass fields of
perfect steady storms as wraiths baked in halogen
ask silent questions of the silverbeet, while
Lana Del Ray’s voice falls like
nightshade—slutty and serene—coating
shelf stackers in a Piaf sadness as the
shelves reach their arms out for more.
The check out chick hatches
a sense of déjà vu as carrots
and biscuits drone towards her
mind berEFT of any twitching
sense of POSsibility that wised
up and flew this leering coop and
deep in her catalogue of grey folds
something stillborn and waxen is
perched on gleaming steel, reeling
out her guts like cassette tape with jerky
nightmare arms and laughing like a
banker watching ***** films, mornings
dull cerise an invocation through
auto-jaws as she bursts out to warble
with magpies in car park’s climbing fire.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 9:23 PM UTC
a nacreous tossing around at
the sides, a dappled silver
sunlight if looked one way, an
apocalyptic gloam if another,
exhaled from a seeming
mouth, feeding on what has
already eviscerated an unfelt
***** a predator certainly its
own prey, a heat certainly
poison-breath on a cheek
falling when a meretricious
lover spouts that spurious
hypocorism, and also just a
wavering, iridescent puddle—
cornered, soft as a liquid steel
echo of a futile struggle
rolling around, bouncing off
a wine glass, and a porcelain
table edge, while a listening
head shakes, looks down
despondently, gloom glowing
out the hair, a voice jaded
since birth saying some
thing about differences, or a
helpless slender strap of hope
hanging itself on the way two
other eyes look at it across
checkered watered wings, two
swirling god whorls, two
effulgent galaxies the color of
melting pine bole circling
around in living umber striae,
pulling its gaze, raising it, as if
they, they were blazing truth
cased behind lithophane, and it,
only an aporetic puddle now
of tepid ocher, a mild earth
stone placed in a hand, asked
what is thought of it and the
response: yes, yes of course,
before foreign distance splutters
its face, and it retreats from
its meaning imparted to every
thing (with the vulnerable
precision of a swaying finger
tip) to the baby lanugo of a
delicate floating, through
human rills, of what is horizon
docked, dead, not merely
deciduous—forever jilted with
breath bulging as when beating
a flopping eyeless fish to
half-dead, head tilted up a
throat trying to pry itself
free, trying to live by
streaming snagless, airful,
without spirant sound of going
lost straight from the hands—
then a short chop of fullness
finally expunged and sputtering
like an escaped tuft of
shackled wonder soaring up
the sky in a puff and soul ring.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:43 PM UTC
Cumulonimbus smudged over sunlight
with dolphin grey
thumbprint
No clouds here, just 10 million
orange midnight suns
we're talking late
'til heavy eyelids drag us groundward.
This city seeps and trickles down
to sleep in groundwater
wet-haired, waking, throbbing sunrise
cased in eyes half-closed.
At most, we hoped.
At best, we strove.
At worst, we overworked ambitions
wanting, waiting, watching closely 'til
5 ticks until alarms.
At least we slept awhile...
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 2:13 AM UTC
She was a wonderful liar.
She wore a mask everywhere, a mask of lies, that is.
Lies were created every second.
She wanted to break free.
She wanted to actually have someone know, but they were words cased inside her that she couldn’t say.
She didn’t like talking to people wanting to get into her business with herself.
She just was there.
She wasn’t even a personality.
She didn’t exist.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 10:42 PM UTC
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.
2.1k
last night scraped painstakingly
from the fissures in my brain
scraped like ink from wood-latch boxes with
fancy carved roses on the top
chewing apart memories with
your nails clenched into my hand
I am falling out of love all over again
clicking keys and snapping wrists
ripped strings and fractured minds
slipping into different facades
of distances that felt closer
six trembling months so
long
touching your palm
with a face that isn't real anymore
pillow cased fingertips touching cheeks
bumping elbows ripple through ponds of
tension seething just under the skin and
details throb in my temples
I have vanished from the city skyline
I am taking back my couch, I am stepping on dried roses
pilfering paint from butterfly wings
frankly darling sweet pea
there were these picnic baskets and sunflowers
bitterly lamenting to everyone but printed on both sides
of your business card it says "heartbreaker"
and printed on both sides of the fortune cookie it said
"not your business, move on move on"
stitching holes in my cheekbones, I
haven't got the heart to put up walls
haven't got the nerve to break them down
still painting you into my sunflowers and I am
so wary when I scrape elbows
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:33 AM UTC
It’s 30…
it’s 28 degrees outside,
or so says the rust-cased thermometer
on the balcony.
The blizzard we’ve been expecting all week
is a churning grey mist in the distance—
it is easy to see from the balcony
if I look through pine boughs.
The woods expanding below our mountainside balcony
are also home to several swanky condos;
evergreens and birch all down the mountain,
and a dusty snow falling in the valley below.
We are all familiar with the reddened barn
staring at us, perfectly opposite our balcony,
commanding a small field
on the little mountain across the dip of the valley.
But the blizzard is swallowing the neighbor mountain
in its snowy march towards the balcony.
And the lazy, drifting flakes above the pines
are shook into a frenzied dance.
A group of skiers, lost and floundering in the white
near the buildings lodged in the woods below
understand that cold, chaotic feeling I know
as the valley blurs in whitewash.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:20 PM UTC
Short-Termed Maiden of one's Friendship's expect
Then blast my Will to incapacitate
For sharing those Clouds; Though rained your affect
Were twisted to Pure Actions constipate
Just weakened I am to even advise
Why such Hallowed Plug pulled this New Sparkle
If Profile be cased and just inconcise
Ask the Author first if you be Humble
Though such Clues do bear, un-needed to Probe
If my Key was too Foreign for your Door
I suppose, like his Age, you chose that Road
Where Blokes just party and stomp on the floor.
The Korean was right; His Dance we can learn
Though never again your Trust I can earn.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 2:44 AM UTC
i used to sleep on my stomach when it was upset,
now i smoke these cigarettes to fill the void of a little boy destroyed,
you say we are friends though no response to text messages,
statuses of shut up, your words are all hogwash its true,
i don't love any woman by you,
though the search continues and i've tried other venues,
the only place i should be is your room.
i put my heart in an ice box because of you,
our love was once fresh as morning dew
and my heart has always been gold,
though it may seem freeze dried and stone,
i'm used to this feeling of alone,
your arms should've always been my home,
your words are all hogwash, and all of my heart left is blue.
i remember the day that i knew,
hey you began exercise, ***** you can't run from the truth.
Alabama slammers need slow vermouth,
through all of the drugs we've consumed,
and all of the stunts with your crew,
i can't feel for another there's no other woman but you.
Josh and i go hunting for cheek,
see a foxy lady and yell, 'juice'
can't help but think of brownies and knowing Kristen Stewart was doomed,
my heart it only beats for you, i know it sounds sad but its true.
to all of the hearts that i've harmed,
i never lied and said i was in love,
though thats what i wanted and i'm so, so sorry,
i can not forget her, brown eyes are all similar,
i should hide my poetry, words sometimes come to me,
without any sympathy yours cut right into me,
like that of a guillotine, intent for a head off of me,
i never thought harm to you, might of lost my temper for that i am sorry,
dried all of my tears on tees from salvation army,
hey you seem to blame just me, but did you watch the tapes on the TV screen?
im not sure but maybe that might be why i still love her,
no you're not ready to be a mother, we could have been family,
just leaning, waiting for you to come back to me,
god ****** lower cased, your crooked lower teeth,
i want my tongue inside of your cheeks,
but you'll never know until you read, all these things i've wrote since you left me,
this all sounds so self-centered, that was never me,
anything i did wrong was not make you happy
cause that's always what i want to see, maybe when i'm the man i am supposed to be,
cooking, tennis, teaching anarchy, your words are all hogwash,
my eyes are all that you need.
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 1:01 PM UTC
April is their month.
They've sat,
Patient,
Throughout the winter,
Those sturdy oval buds,
Sometimes cased in ice,
They don't seem
To mind.
Are they awaiting,
Tax time?
These jewels
Keep company with
Their pretty pink
Cousins,
The Redbud.
Why does the dogwood
Ask
For our attention
So?
Perhaps because it
Blooms so early,
When
There is so little else
To see.
Perhaps it is the legend that,
From the poor dogwood,
Came the wood,
From which was fashioned,
The true cross.
More likely it's just,
The timeless beauty,
Born-in beauty,
From long ago,
Needing no
Adornment,
And not a bit
Of pruning.
Touch it with a knife,
You'll invite disease.
Let it grow ***** nilly,
It will give you,
Perfect beauty,
On its own.
Wild,
It sits beneath
The forest cover,
Like a craggy,
Wasted twig,
Dwarfed,
By its bigger cousins.
And then,
Before any others,
That slim and subtle
Beauty
First appears,
As an
Exquisite miniature,
Creamy yellow flowers,
That open,
To bleach themselves white,
And show the
Blood red crosses
At their center.
They are
Gems,
That change,
Day by day,
So leave your camera
Home.
You cannot catch
Their beauty.
Instead,
Imprint the view
Upon your mind.
They'll be back
Next year,
More beautiful
Than ever.
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 11:17 PM UTC
there is a broken thing
reformed in amber
disarranging the spectrum
of sensical causal motion
nail biting following
migration patterns of neural
activity and we bless the few
who cut clean and learn early
those bespectacled masses
cannot intuit the limited scope
of aversion to blurry pink clouds
gussied up in peripheral vision the
pineal gland controls circadian
rhythms gushes dmt when
we die i wonder i
wonder what that (vestigial)
little pinecone knows
that we don’t
cased in spongy
grey matter and i don’t think
much of time as metaphor but
my watch strap broke
yesterday i hope
that is
important i do
nothing so simple or complex
as love but(i carry it in my heart)
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 8:44 PM UTC
Lost and Found
A labyrinth ever darkening passage man’s impossible journey and quest with the back drop of rich vibrancy of life being expended at
Every turn the steps consume time the natural life cycle is the goal live it up push the boundaries but never stop and really see where
The twist and turns are leading they lead you on but they are not delivering you only bound for the burning now lost yearning.
The soul the great empty store house neglected only holds cobwebs and loose memories this royal holy sacred place
There are drawers where just air exist these were made to hold garments made of spiritual golden thread derived of what he said
Glass cased cabinets were to hold awards and trophies never realized the soul held subject to the body grand deeds it misplaces
Scrolls gather dust just minor writings allowed poking out of a cubby hole the great treatise that marks and maps heaven are lost
Sundry bowls goblets dishes made for feasting on divine meats and delicacies still wrapped there delights never enjoyed
In them would be found nourishment the making of muscle vigorous activating power over powering mans outer appetite
He could store those weighty words that could sway hearts of others by the truth how greatly they should be employed
Only silence answers arguments reason divine instruction missed life’s activity saw no need for quiet mediation soulful empowerment
Slip among the vestiges of lost opportunity they stream out like empty gowns out ward winds only they do fill saddest waste
Contrary beliefs to what are plainly shown the entire fulfillment a wayward life craves to be entertained not instructed in what’s right
The truly dedicated have their soul’s store house abundantly crowded with spiritual food all cataloged ready for any and all taste
Subject to the demands of an orderly disciplined mind and heart you find richness in this walk and in forever’s sublime state
Nov 24, 2011
Nov 24, 2011 at 3:05 PM UTC
I’ve been isolated for the longest
Have I gone crazy?
Or Have I just become aware of true reality?
It’s hard to make out what’s real & not
Honestly, I doubt people will understand its true meaning.
It’s compelling
Understand me, the true is sailing
Time is hanging from the tips of our fingers
The world is covered in a thick cloud of famine
Lingering and starving without even
Realizing it
Their bodies are empty
Minds in cased
Souls sold of twenty
This world lives inside an empty
Little box
Kept inside an empty room
Last thing to say, this world is doom
Humanity?
No, people lost their sanity
People only care just for vanity
Look between the lines
There is so much animosity
This world has lost its true colors
This world is black & white
The love and joy is completely out of sight
I tie a rope around my neck
Hopefully it keeps tight
I say one more prayer
I close my eyes and I say goodnight
Jan 17, 2013
Jan 17, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC
To the doctors in the room
I'm a mental cased, half-crazed Insomniac
on three days of possibly self inflicted mind space
who can't decide on medically induced comas or Prozac
To the supervisors in the room
I'm a potential hazard, a walking disaster
bird-brained enough to end as scrambled gizzards
who potentially could be as useful as worthless shinplaster
To the women in the room
I'm a useless *** nearly morbid
too tired to mow the lawn in the mid-morning sun
and too lazy to help with laundry, cooking, or raising kids
To the friends in the room
I'm a constant joke, a hilarious prank
mumbling non-sense with little need to be provoked
laughing hysterically as they watch as my mind goes blank
To the voices in the room
I'm a genius, an exasperated visionary
I've have debated the complexities of owning a *****
and the movements of my thumb is extremely revolutionary
Jun 20, 2011
Jun 20, 2011 at 6:12 PM UTC
Skies stretch sparks to light the damp ground
And I watch, chuckling by the lambs
Lapping the waves that smack tastily at their feet
And bring in the harvest for the day.
The sun bows its head
And sea makes its sleep
For it to hide amongst the bubbles
Until the Night claps it awake.
Footprints stretch up the beach made
Of arrowheads and other cobbled things
You're there, you're there
Pulling me to your place.
Warm, shivering houses, of
Wooden overcoats and salty lashings
Made wind by fervent tides
Desperate to huddle in and hear stories
Of your uncle, your father, your brother's ruddy cheeks,
But you have eyes with me
And we lend them together to the fire
To hear of orcs, of brochs and angry kings, far away.
The howling streets meet no one,
And pirates prowl their decks to see
A glimpse of my island girl
As she holds my arm cased in wool
Blond hair crying to the floor.
For I am a story, you see, I know what I have when I have it
And salt, quiet lamp-lit salty living
Make ancient ages while keeping,
The mainland for themselves.
Good thing I have her,
So I can share in what she calls home
So I can lie in the lavender in Summer
And cry with the Winter rain when she's gone.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 6:56 PM UTC
Lamp light glows through drops of resin
Trapped life in heavy honey
Honey that flowed from ancient trees
Your pale finger touches the smooth
surface of soft stone
Eons of treasure in cased in sap;
into our brief tomorrows
you wear these fragil jewels...
The drops of resin like you
preserved forever in a beautiful
magic from the past...Rarefied
Feb 3, 2011
Feb 3, 2011 at 9:56 AM UTC
Lost and Found
A labyrinth ever darkening passage man’s impossible journey and quest with the back drop of rich vibrancy of life being expended at
Every turn the steps consume time the natural life cycle is the goal live it up push the boundaries but never stop and really see where
The twist and turns are leading they lead you on but they are not delivering you only bound for the burning now lost yearning.
The soul the great empty store house neglected only holds cobwebs and loose memories this royal holy sacred place
There are drawers where just air exist these were made to hold garments made of spiritual golden thread derived of what he said
Glass cased cabinets were to hold awards and trophies never realized the soul held subject to the body grand deeds it misplaces
Scrolls gather dust just minor writings allowed poking out of a cubby hole the great treatise that marks and maps heaven are lost
Sundry bowls goblets dishes made for feasting on divine meats and delicacies still wrapped there delights never enjoyed
In them would be found nourishment the making of muscle vigorous activating power over powering mans outer appetite
He could store those weighty words that could sway hearts of others by the truth how greatly they should be employed
Only silence answers arguments reason divine instruction missed life’s activity saw no need for quiet mediation soulful empowerment
Slip among the vestiges of lost opportunity they stream out like empty gowns out ward winds only they do fill saddest waste
Contrary beliefs to what are plainly shown the entire fulfillment a wayward life craves to be entertained not instructed in what’s right
The truly dedicated have their soul’s store house abundantly crowded with spiritual food all cataloged ready for any and all taste
Subject to the demands of an orderly disciplined mind and heart you find richness in this walk and in forever’s sublime state
Aug 29, 2012
Aug 29, 2012 at 2:24 PM UTC
Hello old friend
I've come to see
How time has fared
For you and me
From distant days
In white trilby
With metal cased
Laboratory
You've kept well I note
New cobbles, posts and signs
Adorn your ancient routes
Some familiar names I see
Comfortable but cool to me
Some names hollow or tired
Some refreshed and bright
French antiques have shut their door
And Kwiksave now a factory store
Butcher, baker ghostly corpses
Faced yes, but blank and still
Emma’s cookware welcome calm
A mess of pots bright and warm
Some old rogues still lurk
Catching breath ‘til evening
And time for more
half hearted cooking
There's money spent
It's the rural modern
I like and loath it all at once
Which isn't fair because
It is me that grew old
Uttoxeter changed
For better for worse
I mourn my youth
But glad still more
For remembrance sake
Jan 24, 2010
Jan 24, 2010 at 9:46 PM UTC
the remains
of a hope so deep inside
reveal a lifetime of lies
that was fed slowly
and grown with an
impossible precision
by those silly mouth noises
by lust-laced lies
by bold faced betrayals
of hearts and minds
discover cathedrals astride
genuine greed displaced by
***** deeds, any price is cheap
when love like that is led
over and over again
to dead ends.
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
Cross-legged in tall grass writing songs about blues and trains and leaving
Tap-dancing on stone where below is the place they turn to dust
Capturing cringes and laughter and shadows and highlights
Hugging and fitting like comfort
It’s a cruel cruel tear,
I am deliriously happy for your wings to spread
And sorrowed at the anticipation of distance
You see, I love you more than I can explain
Which means that even I don’t know how much that is
So I could never use words or colors or music to tell
But there are some things I can explain, and I will
Here:
You are more beautiful than watching flowers fold to sleep when the sun sets
You are more contagious than green is to yellow and blue
And you act as a magnet to all the things I want to be within myself
It’s a prized prized life,
I share my blood with one so unique
While others can only scrape the foam off your loyalties
You are my companion and my friend and my white rabbit and my glass cased rose
And my sister
Apr 8, 2011
Apr 8, 2011 at 10:47 AM UTC
*You have said it all
And known it all.
What I think or write now,
Is just a fragment of the divine sea
Of your flying thoughts
And your cased words.
You have lived the lives of us all.
And what I live now,
Is just one life,
Amongst so many you've already been through.*
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 10:36 AM UTC