"caulked" poems
I bent my toes over the tub
like talons on a sunbaked branch
and clenched the curtain
in my gloved hands.
I sprayed Tilex on a scouring
pad and scrubbed the black mold
riddling the ceiling and caulked
edges of the shower like leprosy.
My lungs filled with nitrogen,
oxygen, and argon as well as
sodium hypochlorite and hydroxide,
spores, and mycotoxins.
I staggered backwards, trying
to find solid ground but found
only a dazed, curtain-wrapped
fall to the cold linoleum below.
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 12:02 PM UTC
He recently shared something with me about holding hands. Everything written in the piece was true. From the start, his hands have made me feel safe, nurtured, needed, adored, wanted, and healed.
See, I rarely let anyone touch me before. Human touch was not something I craved until him. I didn’t know how much I needed it until I wanted it, but he did.
As he reached for my hand yesterday , as he does countless times, I began to notice things on a deeper level. I saw the structural beauty and strength of his hands; his skin color, his beautiful fingers, the veins, the hair pattern. I reflected on how many keystrokes they typed and words they’ve written. I thought of how many times they played the sax and played video games with skill and passion.
Then, I remembered this past year. Those hands created a beautiful room for me in his home. Those hands literally moved ALL my physical belongings exclusively on their own. They held my hair as I was sick with my head over his toilet. They actually mopped up my cats’ ***** when it was overflowing at my old house.
They have painted, caulked, sawed, sanded, created, recreated, cooked amazing meals, chopped countless veggies, cut every piece of meat he served me, taught me to use his PS4 controller, dried my hair, colored my hair, massaged away my pain, and given me love I didn’t know existed and more.
His hands have been blistered, scraped, calloused, cut, pricked, sore and he doesn’t complain; they never stop giving nor does he.
And I’m so grateful and honored to be the one whose hand he holds forever...
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 4:55 PM UTC
There she is
reflected in this tiny droplet,
I see her laughter her pain
Her struggles and joy
Crisp and flawless like her love.
I am in there as well
The dreams dashed
The dreams unfulfilled
The future waiting to unfurl.
A teardrop is a marvelous thing
Like a bird’s eye
The future and the past
In clear view
Nothing obscured
Nothing hidden to protect the innocent
Or the sensitive
Or those trying to forget.
Sharply I see her good
Embracing her imperfections.
What is the formula one employs
To solve the mystery of love?
My rational mind is left wanting
Wavering and vacillating between
Apples and oranges
But in this teardrop
All is made clear
The fog and fissures
Are wiped clean and caulked,
Respectively.
The world I need and the world
My heart desires
Reflects with blinding light
With precise clarity.
From this crystal half dome
My blurred doubts are brought
Into focus
My entire world resides there
In that one tear of joy.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 2:54 PM UTC
icicles through my arteries
and a frown resting upon your face
lines losing control
nothing left to be misplaced
i want You, i want You
and lead bits in a plastic bubble
graphite poisoning: your love's humor
wriggling and embracing trouble
she's gone, drunk on confections
and darkness consuming
chocolate wrinkles brushing birthmarks
a skinny boy fuming
be Mine, only Mine now
perch on caulked sandstone blocks
stitched sleeves will scrape bricks
and bricks pulling locks
let's don masks and hastily pretend
the atmosphere is painted with limit
serifs blurring my vision
drive your spaceship into it.
Sep 25, 2012
Sep 25, 2012 at 11:20 PM UTC
I have come to realize that sunsets are
archways into a mourning and deft Earth.
Urban streets become hunting grounds –
growling crass echoes to her ears;
eerie red eyes.
Swimming in this sea, the fish come to feed –
fields upon fields of endless black concrete
caulked with hands reaching from shadows
shan't see us. Artificial lights,
like showers, swing.
She is unyielding: a light in nothing,
null to the very gravity she bends.
Belle, eyes that swallow fireflies,
fight a darkness that dawned in her:
hurt by dulled sheen.
Walking close enough, providing armor,
our coats barely touch: nylon on her wool
would give a warmth street lights can't give.
Gifted by moon's light, only then –
then I see her.
A flower, healing yellow, on her cheek
chiefly blazon the frailty of her skin.
Skiffs could take her from bottom,
but, she’s sun grayed; a soft hidden
hymn of the moon.
Oct 31, 2014
Oct 31, 2014 at 10:39 AM UTC
some days i write
rafts and barks,
kayaks and corricles.
some days, a mere log,
set hopefully upon the water.
some days, dories and yachts
pinnaces, sloops, ketches and tugboats
on rare occassions,
great two and three masted ships,
schooners and galleons
filled with treasure..
more often scows, punts
and barges,
work man like and useful,
but not alway pretty
all painstakingly,
crafted...
with planks of words
nailed together with punctuation...
and caulked, with my soul...
sanded down by thought
polished, oiled and varnished,
with love...
then i set my sails,
my inspiration,
to the mast of poetry
and push off....
into the great white yonder....
hoping my xebec...my catarmaran, my dinghy...
my log...
will find a fellow waterman....
sailing, on this...
the ocean of words.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 2:57 PM UTC
*I stay up at night, late into the AMs riddled with guilt
Over how I grew too fond of one petal plucked flower
Watched it slowly rotted,decaying praying not to wilt
As I admired what once were stems in a indelible vase.
I hear of the ambience, lit up in a different hazy smoke,
Forced to let what I feel cascade into obvious oblivion,
Keeping clear calmness behind a messed mask that chokes
As the days drew long and the nights drew even longer.
Sunrise doesn't rise soon enough, and sunset sets too soon,
For fiery shadows built a furnace from my cold walls,
And before I could awake to the moon, I awoke to noon,
As you held every bit of a different burning candle light.
I'm sorry that I paved the pebbled pathway that you walked,
If I could reverse the sands, unsift across my hands,
Or captured every droplet of grain, wishing it wasn't caulked,
But I made the road that you tread on with you feet.
I'm sorry that every step you took only led you further,
And though I know you didn't want to be near after time taken,
I had hoped I could watch you stay afloat on a life preserver,
Rather than watch you drown, taking nothing but yourself.
I'm sorry that the days drawn out a different tale,
If I could bend time and stick it back together,
Just to make things better and watch as things unflail,
I'll always know I tried my best to give you my shoulders.
I set fire to your life, watched the smouldering ashes cast away into the air,
And for that I am sorry.*
Jun 27, 2016
Jun 27, 2016 at 8:44 AM UTC
Almost blue
like some stained-glass Christ
that never felt the saving sun burn
his caulked stigmata soft like
cinnamon toothpaste in the creek
bed.
Were his robes Robin's Egg, or Giotto
like the clergy wanted?
And when their fake pearl bracelets
rattled, fishing out cheap change
from brass-clasp purses,
did Christ stoop to gather
the sixty-something-year-old pennies
from in-between the arm rests
while they sifted through
the silver?
Almost blue
like a southern / western overcast
that never calls New York in advance
to schedule time to sweep up
the sky, standing on cold water flats.
Buys a Southwestern ticket straight thru,
walks past Madison marketing
her ***** underwear to anyone—everyone—,
buzzes in, third floor, apartment B-6,
but the door's locked, and the canary
curtains dance out the window like a house
fire.
Almost blue
like the Dawn dish soap
glass I neglect to rinse well.
But more like a lazy oil stream in a gas station
parking lot beneath the perforated banners
yakking in the still-cold March midday
about $12 sheet pizzas or unlimited
free coffee for $1.19 a refill.
Money better spent on a pack of Marlboro
Blues saxophone squeal by the plastic-
wrapped firewood by the almost-
blue wiper fluid and the antifreeze peaches.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 2:15 AM UTC
I.
you're cracking me up.
you are not cracking me up;
you have caulked my cracks.
II.
countries like play dough:
controlled by the hands that mold,
not mountains that fold.
III.
to those that marry,
happy anniversary!
enjoy your divorce.
IV.
then i had a dream
that my teeth were falling out,
how ******* cliche.
Aug 12, 2012
Aug 12, 2012 at 4:28 PM UTC
Sneaking smoking into diseased lungs on wet lonely spring nights
Jumping! Free falling,
Heart in stomach
Twitching in sleep as birds begin to sing
And strictly internal weeping
On trails less travelled.
Thusly, I am
Cold like asteroids
and
out of orbit
Chardonnay until
I can reject reality
Sleeping naked sweating shivering
And teeth grinding into
My tree trunk soul
I will see you
one day
Worse for the wear and tattered
And I will be caulked and
stuffed like dead dreams
But with you,
I want
to curl inside your decaying cavities
And breathe smoke out of my own coughing lungs
to smooth you to sleep
Your head on my hipbone
Is time blinking her eyes
in a seismic convulsion –
The outlier of our data
and
we have finished before we’ve begun
Despite the marrow in our bones surging in the tide to
one another ourselves
Moss could grow on our interlacing fingers
And have more intention
than we,
Skulls and vertebrae
Click-clacking off beat
To the tune of no drum
Algal lined membranes
effloresce and become
rainforests of decay and renewal
drip dripping on the tip of my tongue
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 8:29 PM UTC
in a xebec,
we sail...
seas,
of turqoise, teal
and cerulean blues...
with horses white and alabaster,
galloping in wavelets,
beside,
the creaking mahogany,
hand caulked hull.
the brass once shining bright
is now speckled,
by the salt of posiedon's
briny brow
above the masts.
one two and three,
hold the lanteen sails,
set free, in a flurry
of canvas hysteria.
full and billowing,
now,
they propel us,
gently onward.
you and i recline,
undecorously,
on a plethora,
of bright morrocan cushions.
like bees,
busily rummaging,
among the flower petals.
as the sun sings the days
lullaby,
in the east,
in notes of tangerine and buttercup yellow.
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 2:53 PM UTC
and that's because the yachts of time have sailed
I failed to keep them in the port
they caught the early tide to slide
across the wide blue sea
and somewhere deep inside the hold against the bulkhead where the *** is kept and where a thousand ****** slept and dreamt of Blackbeards gold
I sold my innocence for grog.
To dog my days I could have cut and clicked or sliced and picked a thousand ways to die
I chose to close my mind and find escape in the escape
heady tasks among the empty casks and empty eyes that eyed me
across the wide
blue sea.
These were the sailing ships
I saw them on some movie clips
nations within nations without limit of the land.
We get old
some will find the gold
some will search a lifetime
finding life in time
and
the yachts will sail away.
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 2:17 AM UTC
Occasionally notably one may travel and find,
Gawking carelessly on a barn in their midst,
With fruits and grain scattered throughout,
Suffused with the sweet scent of the wheat,
With caulked vapors floret above at days end,
The sundown spreads its beauty upon the lands,
And the obstinate blackbirds singing above
Among the glistening river the burbots jump,
One could never forget the daffodils cordage,
The scent of tilled lands afore one in ones travels,
And consistence a rancher with furlongs of cattle,
Or that old apple cider press in the old southern towns,
But where is the canticle of spring to come around,
Hours pass into days and the days into months,
Where are they when will this wonderful season come,
As the sun percolates warmth upon the flowers to grow,
Carved work by hand of famed craftsman farm gates,
The gates cast round fettered before my eyes,
A prognoses is all too clear of what lays afore me,
Winter will follow the fall as it always will do,
Spring summer and fall will again be part of the past,
As morning comes from eve amass the rooster’s crow,
I guess one can be compared to seasons born and bloom,
It is then we have experienced the seasons at their optimum,
As the canticle of seasons have been attained”
By A. Guzaldo 07/06/2018 ©
Jul 6, 2018
Jul 6, 2018 at 7:15 PM UTC
Actually, and after,
Beds, before, bravely built
Came cross crew, caulked, caved
Dove, dived, dug
Entered, expected every entrance ever.
Finally, few first felt
Gaul, grace, grossness,
How high her heaven held
In interspaced indifference.
Just jokes,
Kiddies kidded
Like little liveries. Like lost little laughs.
Most meet
Not next, not never, not neat, not nice.
Only over onager onery.
Please place people, perhaps past pain, past peaks, past pimples.
Quit quivering,
Right rangers, running round ranges
So soften such seals
Take tough touches
Under udders, undulating urges.
Very verified visages.
Why worry? What's worth when worrying?
Xenonphobic xenons xeroxing
You. Your yummy, yearly
Zone, Zoo.
Jun 21, 2019
Jun 21, 2019 at 9:24 PM UTC
It’s been longer since we spoke
than the entire duration
of when our summer-long
conversation
ate away at our aching minds,
our cracked and caulked hearts.
While frost settles on my car
in the morning
on my way to work
like none of it ever happened.
My heart, too, is cold.
I have never known anyone like you.
I’m quite sure I won’t meet another.
Your words, my own thoughts
poured from you. My heart soaked in every letter, every pause and breath.
Fleeting dreams sprouted
from every seed our like-minds planted.
My life’s spring. After my life’s winter.
A promise of a never-ending summer.
We’ve reached another seasonal winter.
But just as seasonal spring is a far off date
So is our summer.
Dec 4, 2019
Dec 4, 2019 at 2:08 AM UTC