"caulk" poems
I can’t wait to be a hundred;
turning over the thoughts
and plots, of Caledon
floating on Zimmer inserts
and dusted Florsheims
three steps forward
in a dream woven
summer afternoon
Through the barn doors
and bee keeper flats
assimilating voices
from Sachems
and Forbes
and Hope Healers
coming and going
as the countryman
comes and goes
You can feel it
in a place like this
the 3 in the tree memories
of Allis Chalmers
and combine parts
of Sundrim poppers
and shallow carp fields
of patterned lawsons
and fading caulk
(on the ripped and rolled
frontier seats)
it’s a wishing well
for the peddler
and bold hydrangea...
both peeking their way
through the rusted
grinders wheel
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 11:55 PM UTC
#STICK’EM UP with LIQUID NAILS
DANGER ! EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE
See Other Caution on Back Panel:
I’m hot for you Cowgirl – you’re so flammable my glue-gun starts to melt; my screwdriver starts twisting when you loosen that low-slung belt. You make me feel like laying re-bar in a freshly-poured foundation. Shoot me up with that caulk gun baby – I need you like salvation. Ten and one-half fluid ounces – pull off your top, pop a love-cap in me. Fingerin’ your trigger while the job is gettin’ bigger so take me for a ride to the hardware store, honey, cause I’m seeing red and feeling white on your golden background’s sheer delight. Hammer me a heart-full, spike me on a cross of blonde, I’m hanging ten, surfing the tube of your magic wand. I’ve been in love ever since I first waterproofed my seamy undersides with you… stand over me in those red, red boots, you Liquid Nails Girl – and from your pure white Stetson let righteousness unfurl. You won the shoot-out long before you even drew, my dear. Lost hope of the Wild West, Final Frontal Feminine Frontier – there’s only one side of you… your GOOD side. Just one look and your fearless gaze silences the foes, my blooming prairie rose.
YEE – HAW ! Be my angel, be my dream, my valentine rodeo queen, be my bodyguard, my therapist, long & tall & hard & wet – be my Liquid Nails Girl forever and I’ll ride right into your sunset…
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 9:28 PM UTC
This seems to be a lifetime journey
I'm sure more than a few can relate
Doing my best in this formidable quest
In search of the perfect toothpaste
From grocery aisles to shopping malls
To mom and pop roadside stands
Standing in line at the 5 and dime
There's no corner that I haven't been
Looking for the flavor to which my teeth savor
From blue to green to red peppermint
I've tried bubblegum and for meat lovers, bacon
Even the new cinnamon no rinse
But it's not only the flavor that's concerning
It also has to do with the foam
While brushing my teeth in the morning
I look like a rabid dog on the roam
So it's back to the store in search of much more
I feel like Frodo Baggins the Hobbit
From top shelf to floor in this my Middle Earth
Until the elusive paste I have got it
Yes, my friend like you I'll keep trying
For the toothpaste that removes any doubt
But until then I'll toss them into the bin
Saved up for the day I caulk my house
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 7:40 AM UTC
Caulk these broken bows, please
whether salt or fresh water,
it has weight, presence
and if allowed to pour in
it will sink me
Trying not to think too much
won’t work
as the only perpetual motion found
in this empirical life
is in our anxious minds
so as life jackets go
it’s a no no
To ask for a shipwright is unfair
but to have you there,
tar brush in hand
is enough
Sep 4, 2021
Sep 4, 2021 at 5:25 PM UTC
Death is inevitable
Choosing when is not
Launching from the shore
Place the oar deep into our regrets
Haul away from lifes spinning current
Death is something to earn
Justify your parents joy each day
Explore those eddies in your travelling feet
Take the hand of your rudder
Placing certainty in the direction of travel
Death is not an end but a staging post of a earthly pontoon
Experience lifes engulfing tributaries first
Find your anchorage for each night and day
Caulk the small cracks that appear daily before you explore a watery bed
Leave no small seepage pass unaccounted
No day deserves to exist without your helping hand
Bravery is making this world what it is with your presence
Apr 23, 2023
Apr 23, 2023 at 8:22 AM UTC
You are not broken, but all of the boys who
want a fixer upper find you.
They mistake their hips for hammers,
and their kisses for nails.
Their fingers, cold and impersonal,
as much hoping for a crack as
they are making them,
find the nooks and crannies,
and press caulk into them.
Shine them with whispers meant to
bring back the natural glow of a healthy woman.
They balance their hips on yours,
like that yellow bar on the mantlepiece,
is the wood straight?
is the construction sound?
No, they whisper, no it's all wrong.
Back to the drawing board, then.
This time, they'll build you right,
they promise.
Sand down all of the splintered places
where the last boys hands gave out before
your corners were womanly curves.
Dip your eyelashes into fresh black paint,
watch it drip onto your cheek
and leave it.
Watch it drip down your neck
and paint over it.
They don't believe in luck,
so they fit the curve of your hips to theirs,
not meant to be, not yet,
but you will be.
Their hands, coarse and broad,
turn your bitten, smudged lips
into things straight from a *****
open and lush and
beg me, baby.
So you do.
You use all of the words he put into your mouth like rocks:
all honey and sweetie cakes and let me love you.
They broke your teeth going down, but
they taste like the sting of a slap coming back up.
You use all of the soft places that he made on your body:
let him fill them with caulk until they are unrecognizable,
until you, too, are unrecognizable.
You show him the constellation of scars across your shoulders:
whisper do you love me now? with your hand prints wide
across my spine, the sting of your sander against my waist.
You teach him about desire
with open legs
and open lips
and the tattoo of his touches on your body.
You teach him about sadness with sharp,
corners that are shoulder blades.
He doesn't recognize those, asks himself
if he missed a spot,
so you show him your splintered teeth
broken back
burned thighs,
ask him if he wants to try again.
Don't wait for an answer.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 11:53 PM UTC
do regular maintenance
on your soul
clean out the blemish
and the soot
soak it in solution
dust out the corners
of your mind
handle it with care
and buff the edges
caulk the cracks
polish the windows
of your heart
throw out the excess
and leave only the joy
furbish the frayed fringe
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 8:42 AM UTC
poetry comes and goes
opens and flows
spills into streams of prose
amidst the musical rows of my thoughts.
forms and rhythms
which melt and morph and sing into being
the abstractions of synaptic connections,
write into existence
the chemical signals of neurotransmitter gossip,
and transfer to the Symbolic
the electrical impulses of the Real
scratch and peel the caulk
from the edges of The Faucet,
turn and wind the wheeled handles open,
open, open.
Past lefty loosey and into
the outpouring of pent up pressure;
raw, and juicy.
Poetry is *** death and magic.
The art of training the mind's faucets
elastic.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC
Caulk like chalk lines
Drawn on a brick wall
draws blocks together
like ionized particles;
and so the dust whips
up from the pavement,
onto the flat mast
of a tricolored flag
which rests in public space–
but not without movement,
but not without tension–
would fall without knots.
And so our good people,
held by conviction
prescribed by no doctor
swallow a large dose.
Fellow faces they crumple, yet
it’s poor taste to mention that,
and so the tongue is tied;
we speak not.
White cloth like chalk lines,
Red strips like bricks fall
Three-fourths down a half mast;
good people feel sad.
Hands over mouths breathe
through cracks in the radio feed,
like freckles on a sunburn bleed
when cancer starts to spread.
Good people see the bad
and so white faces turn red,
the tragic intrudes on public space
and yields nothing said;
With chalk drawn in broad lines
Knots in arteries tie,
And so I share in death
with all passers-by.
Chalk traces human shapes
—hollow forms on the street—
a dream in waking,
immutable quaking,
beneath a a flag where all colors meet.
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
my computer is dying and you're gone and i'm glad but you keep trying to poke your way back in through tiny cracks that i ought to seal but instead i leave open because if you found them closed you would ache and i can't do that even if it is what you deserve and i am already moving on because someone else appreciates me and i appreciate me and you didn't so you're gone and i'm glad and someone is quickly appearing in my peripheral but i don't want them to be you and i don't want to want them because of you as far as i can tell i just like them and so you're gone and i'm glad but you keep seeping in through these cracks that i should probably seal soon because it's rather annoying to see little bits of you here and there and i don't want them around because i'm moving forwards and i don't want you around because you're gone and i'm glad and if you'd stay gone i'd be gladder
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 8:55 PM UTC
people only knock
for the warmth, outstay
their welcome,
i've never wanted to
love quickly
i want to lay each
brick, caulk every corner
and be
sure
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 11:37 PM UTC
I paint
People are my canvas
And I paint
I cover up the imperfections
Caulk the cracks
And I paint
I paint
Purple circles
Lines of agony
And I paint
And I paint
Greys and browns
Against peach and tan
Striking red
Against pink
And I paint
Dark
And I paint
May 9, 2010
May 9, 2010 at 6:48 PM UTC
8:55 A.M.
Wednesday,
December 3, 2014
Eyes dry, stagnant like a box fan
in a windowless room in summer.
Del Monte plastic blades—black
on the serrated side—dice rotting
pizza tomato trash air.
Stomach like a battery acid pond.
Flannel, Dockers, hair slicked
tight like road signs, tossing oyster
crackers to acid ducks. The sky's
on fire.
Clouds textured like *******
and never-ending like Escher.
Jet planes carry ***** comatose
patients into the sun to burn
out like a light bulb
a few flickers of life gone.
Hands dry, faulted like missing
bathroom tiles at Exxon-Mobil/
Sunoco/Shell beneath the metal
sink where crabgrass sprouts
from the cracks like
cheap caulk from Second-Hand Hardware.
Bent nails, rusted patching trowels,
ants in the quick-dry drywall mix.
I'll never reach Nirvana.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 9:58 AM UTC
the kindergarden down the road
had a revolt
and the children insisted on self directing story-time
two thirds in
the hero abandoned their quest,
turned into a bubble
and evaporated
the adults insisted a story needs a proper conclusion
but they knew better
walk by
light in the distance
bares at me
is it moving?
...
no
it's not.
ah-
it's gone now
...
no
there it is again
there gone
there gone
a silence becoming
and a silent vacating
unnerving comfort
the skateboarders down the road
chiseled all the letters out of the road signs
till all the tourists were helplessly lost
/ excuse me,
/ sorry,
/ what way to the lookout?
\ you're already at it
\ just keep going
a wail
oscillating
bares at me
a bird or a car siren?
too organic for a machine
too regular for life
…
never mind
head home
the church groups down the road
formed an action committee,
after the flood
even had some humanitarian in
to give a slide show
but the software was updating
so we ended up watching the loading bar instead
while the kids played in the puddles outside
the asphalt damp
is borne to me
figures keep passing through
unformed spaces
with unfathomable ease
alacrity
fragments pop glitter
valley sparks
of disheveled winter
pass by
tumble down through
grassy banks
to the vermillion ocean
caulk the lungs
and drift
Oct 31, 2016
Oct 31, 2016 at 1:14 PM UTC
when you go through something trying all the good guys and do-gooders flock to you. they wring metaphorical hands and ask if there's anything they can do, like some baked ziti or wadded handkerchief will caulk your cracks.
then an acceptable timetable for healing goes by and they lay pity eyes on you give you that how're you doing honey smile, but their baked ziti didn't serve as the salve they'd hoped and you're crumbling fast and maybe that pity smile is your solution so you tell them.
you tell them how many times you count the cracks in your ceiling before falling asleep (27) you tell them how many glasses of wine it takes to feel decent again (at least 4) you tell them how many hours it's been since you last ate (56)
and they wish you ate the ******* ziti and blew your nose in damp handkerchiefs because an acceptable amount of time has passed and you should be healed by now, but what they don't know is your timetable is inverted and you work in wrong-way highways. they don't know that time is scar tissue much more delicate than the lock-box you've put him and all the things he did in, and each second chips away at that box and the essence of him is seeping out like acid that melts through all your barriers.
the good guys and do-gooders don't want to open your broken-heart bank and let all the bees out. they want you to eat the ziti and say thank you like it actually fixed something.
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 11:03 AM UTC
3- female threaded shutoffs for water supplies
1- Tub P-trap with nuts and ****** for 1 1/2 " DWV pipe
2- tubes white caulk
5-gallons nuetral wall paint
52 square yards carpet
1- white window blind
4-1/2' cpvc connectors
1- six pack Olde English 800
D- cell batteries for the tune maker
1 small bottle Ibuprofen
The Complete works of Shakespeare
and the time to get it all done.
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 6:26 PM UTC
New York! –
The poets you have bred are few,
And how to rhyme they’ve not a clue –
Oh, fork!
(I know that word should sound like ‘muck’,
But that would make this effort ****
Well, talk –
Why do the poems in your style
So often form, of crap, a pile?
We balk
At ‘crack’ as drug, or woman’s part,
With dreams of giving life to art,
You dork!
‘Here’s looking at you, kid’ – oh, please!
That Hump-free quote is as is cheese
To chalk
Compared with Danny, who’s ‘oh … Kaye’,
And Allen, in a ‘Would he’ way.
To walk
Fifth Avenue, where storm clouds ****
The countryside with ticker-tape …
Pop cork?
‘Bronx hill new moan here’ was the cause;
But Central Park is where to pause
For torque
As that’s the place you would unwind
To wrench from vagrants, that you find
May stalk;
But, anyway, your poets stink –
Their barrel, they do need, I think,
To caulk:
Your school of poets, meter log,
Like what you get in synagogue
Of pork!
Sep 20, 2015
Sep 20, 2015 at 7:41 AM UTC
There was a smile that broke the world,
Appeared upon a tryst,
I found the edge of what was love,
I fell in its abyss.
The hallowed smile that broke the world,
Her eyes a vertigoic possessing swirl.
A walking ballet on invisible felt,
Froze my brain, and made my heart melt.
The perfect smile that broke the world
left me carelessly gawking on idle,
My words always so cool were bridled,
My ears filled with caulk to others.
The alluring smile that broke the world,
Its edges curled into a ball,
Its lips coloured cherry like leaves in the fall.
Its corners sharp like assassins knives,
The simple smile that broke the world,
Once only a joy to me,
Its memory will remain protected in lifes fabric stained,
Comes out each jubilee
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 3:12 PM UTC
Sinister curtains
drape an unsuspecting window
of moldy caulk
and hairline cracks
letting cold in, cold out,
splitting plastered walls
around a faded outline
of an empty frame,
slanted on stretched wires,
where your picture
once rested
Cloth of blackened residue
dangling from rusted rods,
un-soft fabric in dust crammed air
sifting unnoticed,
settling around knick knacks
leaving shapes and fingered designs
on silent end tables
staring up at
this dark veil
that hangs
with you
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 11:17 AM UTC
I’ve gone all small from outside
and inside, I am giant and cosmic
drifting in and out of my own skin
I respect the silent descent of color
as evening, slinging it’s heavy moon
slouches it’s mood over the sky.
But I am left luminous, just as stars
absorb like spider eyes onto surfaces
a caulk, carved for something sake.
I am unimaginable, all inverted features
swallowed into an uncomfortable skull
smarter than a brain that barks.
There are things to interpret about ghosts
besides their flushed up wail’s of waiting
the ferocious erosion of re-existence.
Aug 3, 2014
Aug 3, 2014 at 3:46 PM UTC
god made man to re-caulk the bottom of the bath tub for his daughters to splash in,
man made god to send his stillborns someplace nice.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 9:42 PM UTC
i am planting seeds between tiles on the bathroom floor.
fingers bloodied,
ceramic grouted dust caked under nails
as I dig inch-deep holes
into the cracks and place,
oh so gently,
small dark seeds into the soil of
this apartment's skin.
i am on my knees
praying,
i am on my knees
planting,
i am just
on my knees.
I use toothpaste to bury them,
i caulk them into place with
my own ingredients.
i take a shower
water puddles under my feet
and i imagine the seeds drinking it up,
gorging themselves on my
***** water.
***** because i haven't showered in days,
***** because i sweat,
***** because i am me, and it has touched my skin.
and i imagine that one day
i will walk into the bathroom
to find a field of blue mums,
marigolds, lavender, daisies, and
clover
bursting up through the seams in the ceramic,
staining the walls, reflecting light back onto
my skin and i'd feel-
god, i don't know-
i think i'd feel alive.
Oct 31, 2020
Oct 31, 2020 at 11:01 AM UTC
Who are you
to tell me the verdict
of a case
held within a suitcase
enclosed by vines
and repression?
I suppose it's somewhat
of an obsession,
if one can be so apathetic.
It's not pathetic.
I understand a panic,
but when the sirens sound,
would you even care?
Would you sit me down
on a slab of cracked concrete
and be able to caulk and sew
anything that would seep?
Or would I be left at sea?
I suppose one without emotion
cannot feel empathy.
So with my lowly, unholy,
hollowed-out chest,
I lie on the melting asphalt
pooling
and
always becoming warmer
to sweat through
another fever.
Sep 11, 2015
Sep 11, 2015 at 3:40 AM UTC
Chew them up and spit them out.
Focus now. Now talk.
Nope — can’t speak the words aloud.
My mouth is filled with caulk.
Visions of words play out in my head
But I can’t get them to play nice.
Instead things have to be left unsaid.
Or I will pay the price.
Can’t risk it. Can’t say it.
It’s wriggling out of control
Can’t chance it. Can’t do it.
Can't say anything at all.
“Chew it up, and spit it out.
Spit it out. Spit it out.
Chew it up, and spit it out.
Spit it out Already!”
Spasms before they leave your lips
You’re ******* the words up
You apologize again for it.
An overflowing cup.
****** distortion. Mental exhaustion
Teeth clamped down tight.
Depression sets in, the fear sinking in
You try with all your might.
Chewing on yourself again,
Embarrassment creeps in.
It’s not about if it will happen,
The question is “when?”
“Chew it up, and spit it out.
Spit it out. Spit it out.
Chew it up, and spit it out.
Spit it out Already!”
The muscles are darting,
oh no it’s starting,
Your hands begin to shake.
Your tongue slides left,
Your neck bends right.
How much more of this can I take?
You want to run
You want to hide
But there’s nowhere to go.
You can’t run away from it,
Your face you have to show.
You try to stay as still as you can
So no one else can see,
You just want to cut out your tongue
But speech is a necessity.
“Chew it up, and spit it out.
The song must be sung.”
Can’t chew it up, or spit it out
This disorders got my tongue.
Jan 29, 2020
Jan 29, 2020 at 12:15 PM UTC