"cellophane" poems
like cellophane wraps hard candy
like ink loves to dry
like hot sauce drenches noodles
like sunrise casts shadows
like band-aids sooth cut flesh
like irons crease linens
like origami folds paper
like water floats boats
like a tempest loves a teapot
like syrup and bananas drench waffles
like spoons love soup
like cats love fish
like french fries love ketchup
like wild girls dance
like a crow loves road ****
like eyes love beauty
like a circle loves a square
like buttered buns fit a bikini
like a kissed mouth hungers for wet lips
like moths love a flame
like dogs love ********
and like ******* hug butts
like howling ******* pulse hearts
like vampires love blood and castles
like dark grapes ferment in bubbling cauldrons
like madness loves a straight jacket
like a ***** loves a ****
and music gets you dancing
like suns fall through cobalt night all smashing diamonds
that's
how i love you
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 2:53 PM UTC
It happens. Will it go on? ----
My mind a rock,
No fingers to grip, no tongue,
My god the iron lung
That loves me, pumps
My two
Dust bags in and out,
Will not
Let me relapse
While the day outside glides by like ticker tape.
The night brings violets,
Tapestries of eyes,
Lights,
The soft anonymous
Talkers: 'You all right?'
The starched, inaccessible breast.
Dead egg, I lie
Whole
On a whole world I cannot touch,
At the white, tight
Drum of my sleeping couch
Photographs visit me-
My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs,
Mouth full of pearls,
Two girls
As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.'
The still waters
Wrap my lips,
Eyes, nose and ears,
A clear
Cellophane I cannot crack.
On my bare back
I smile, a buddha, all
Wants, desire
Falling from me like rings
Hugging their lights.
The claw
Of the magnolia,
Drunk on its own scents,
Asks nothing of life.
9.1k
Cellophane wings beating
against the heavy summer air,
back and forth, all day long,
the blue dragonflies
chase one another across the pond-
their tails turned up
like neon scimitars
poised for a ******
that never seems to come.
Occasionally, a truce is called,
and they settle into place
on opposite sides of the reeds,
momentarily oblivious to their war.
Twice their size,
the red dragonfly idles in the sun.
From time to time it leaves its perch
to challenge the silhouette
hanging from the iris blade,
its spent skin,
as if it were a bad memory
rising from the green depths of the pond.
Below the surface,
the fish school together- a current of gold
slipping between the lily pads,
each aware of its place in the stream.
My reflection circles them all.
Drawn to the water
that both mirrors and obscures
I lose my place for a moment-
hovering between obligations and idleness
on cellophane wings.
Tom Spencer © 2015
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 7:39 AM UTC
Your hummingbird heart keeps panicked time;
a quick-step march of hollow beats that bruise
the arching breadth of your ribs
(ribs caged by cellophane layers
of capillaries and fever hot skin-
don't you worry that those bones will
someday burst into fresh air, make their mark on
the rigid landscape?)
It would escape if not for my weight
pressed down like stones;
my body locked between shivering limbs,
come in from January's cold to clutch at your fire.
You are only slow
When sleeping;
When your sugar water has run low.
I drilled a hole in your dish
And drained it away.
Jun 10, 2011
Jun 10, 2011 at 7:17 AM UTC
Stupid infidel!
Transport your riches
To the lands of the believers.
For petroleum...
To make
The cellophane wrapper
That you will throw away,
When you buy a new mobile,
Even though your old one still works,
And you eat your mcdonalds,
And listen to Nicki Minaj
Infidel *****
And drive in gas guzzle car,
As you throw the cellophane out window,
And sext your girlfriend.
And crash your car into telephone pole.
Wasting your life!
Aug 14, 2012
Aug 14, 2012 at 4:59 PM UTC
These are the hard times,
the long stretch of coal-shed days,
the corrugated nights of the antinomian.
I retch at the old doubts and the panoply
of dustbins clattering bright,
their watchers simian in the morning ****
I dress as though dredging up greys,
monotone deep in the GB tradition:
now sandpit tea with oil stain floats
silt dreads the mass of a seven year clay.
Four weeks of shadows drown wind in a storm.
And dreams of my cottage
in days of such calm and late summer happiness
as brought cut corn and strawbs
and horse manure in hugs
until like Zulu tribesmen the birds appeared.
Hunched with expectation
Spears smiling like baddies they rushed me.
I woke pouring sweat like a workhorse
the weakest of defences laid up
my face pulling cellophane over French windows.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 2:07 PM UTC
.
*And so he sits
once more
folding his life
into an origami box.
Paper walls,
cellophane ceilings.
Counting out syllables.
Sequenced
to twist-fuck the mind.
And quietly
he sits
ghosting the room.*
© Pagan Paul (04/03/19)
Mar 8, 2019
Mar 8, 2019 at 5:55 AM UTC
The shimmer of blue changes
As you dragonfly move,
Your cellophane wings
Fragile, yet brings
You to me,
I cannot see the world
As you do, true?
You can see mine
Just fine.
The sunlight
glints as the
Colour changes
To a different hue.
one moment
Green
The next
Blue
Dancing with you
As you float then soar,
is impossible ...
As you pitch and roll
Leave me entranced
As you exit...
Without saying so much
As goodbye,
Must mean,
You will,
Be back,
Soon.
Please.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 11:15 AM UTC
The bright sun’s rays
Are dappled as they strike
The manicured greensward.
He, tall, lithe, teeth all aglow
In cream slacks and pastel blouson,
She, fair and fairylike in acres of shimmering gauze,
Alight from the auto
At the site of their ‘manger al fresco’
Let us call them Justin and Jocelyn.
The basket is heavy
No matter.
He lifts it clear to carry
She gasps, he grins.
In minutes the scene is set
The rug, the plates, the glasses
The pate, the cold chicken,
The fruit….the wine.
He deflowers a bottle of Moselle,
Wishing it were her.
Guessing as much she blushes.
Ants retreat to nests
Wasps attack alternate targets
Flies zoom elsewhere to feed.
And all the while the sun
The golden sun continues to dapple.
The rain is not quite horizontal
As Joe and Judy
Run from the bus stop
To the stony beach.
Not quite horizontal
But driven off the sea it tastes salty.
He, ordinary, average, in a dampening grey mackintosh.
She, hair bleached in a sister’s frock and jacket
Holding hands,
And hold each a sandwich
Cellophane wrapped.
Squatting against the seawall
They eat.
Wet eyes flash bright signals.
Joe has a small thermos
Its vegetable soup,
And somehow a hardboiled egg appears,
To share.
The rain continues its attack.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 11:58 PM UTC
God she was beautiful
Crystal wings made of cellophane
She was so eager to leave when the winter froze her to the glass
That she pressed against her lips and inhaled
Just so she could see the colors again
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 2:59 AM UTC
This is not about you.
This is not about
the transmutation
of your jail celled mind
wrapped in self-help
and cellophane.
This is not about
your new found
discovery
discovering me
and my afflictions
according to the
white man’s diction
a dictation
of my past
extracted
and examined
under the microscopic
power of time.
This is not about
your self-defined
enlightenment
when you made
a deal to unearth
the truth of HeLa
coated in dust
covered particles
of HeLa
on your nightstand
and I laid
in a grave
unmarked.
This is not about
my big lips
and thick hips
under ***** covers
running a sweat
fever on my thighs
shaking feet in stirrups
and the pain was rich
after a tight pinch
and I didn’t know
what part of me
had been snipped
to grow cold
and never die.
No, this is not about you.
This is about me.
A historic legacy
left to thrive across the time
less chains of nucleic
tidal waves
Covalent bonds
could never rival
the strides of this soul
miles beyond
the distant
COLORED ENTRANCE
something brewing
inside dividing
inexplicable replication,
readying for harvest
behind a dried tobacco field
Jan 3, 2012
Jan 3, 2012 at 3:21 AM UTC
Ivory skin,
alabaster nerves.
Daisy chain veins,
lily petal fingertips.
Eggshell skull,
cellophane lungs.
Brittle ladder ribcage,
punctured balloon heart.
Spineless ***** child,
with his birds' bones and naivety.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 3:31 PM UTC
supple and orange to the taste
like a water slide to a desert
in a wild goose chase
just a hair short of a bone
ninety nine of the smallest ones
cracked open ventilating
dancing vapor
a slow shift in flowing feel.
soak up the gray
you turn to cellophane
only on the inside
you're alright
the ball keeps on rolling
around that big old fire
the cushion smiled
warmed by your seat
pressed into a drowse
you catch the change
wonder the time
about that
settled cataracts
smooth rolling cadillacs
big old Adirondack
smiling in the cottage.
Dec 18, 2014
Dec 18, 2014 at 4:52 PM UTC
Becoming... hmmm...
what am I... becoming...
is this the enlightenment
of my trip? hmm...
journeying through the seasons
of inner time and place...
therein which lies... a space....
not that sort.... not the sort of the
spicky icky spacky... space...
it's the... hmmm... sleepy space...
I sit and wonder... this place is where I... ponder...
fabric... the fabric of this life...
I AM FLOATING INTO THIS CHAIR
CONCEPT BANDS
CONCEPT ALBUMS
THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SEE I AM JUST LIKE TIMOTHY LEARY
... but that... that is only a character.. the outlook I assume in..certain moods...
that state of worry... that's what I mean.
I am the wind
the sea
...
speak friend,
enter...
speak...
speak to me.
'I see we meet again... hmmmm...'
The music keeps changing my moods, you see...
Subconscious... I must be more mindful...
'Increase mindfulness'
I must bring the feelings... out
don't shove them away...
don't shove me away...
on this normal
squashy day
Love your dark shadow love the wolves
streams of consciousness I must cut up all of these streams
I worry too much about the future... am I crazy? or just afraid of being...
telepathy
Here's this concept that I have that represents all of these feelings that I have that I tell
to you and you receive as whatever feelings you associate with said concept
and hope they match up
I only write when I have something to preach... a sermon, you see..
yet I write every day...
to preach a sermon to me
'Does it make me bad?' this way I am?
does it make you.. mad?
mushy swampy bog filled mushrooms
I sag into the soppy plants in me
this world is my swamp
and this swamp is me
into the swampy swamp I romp
All day I ravage roam
I stomp
jive my vibe...
Exotic exodus execution
into the deep reeds
paddling the little cellophane canoe
Must... move...
Must... go...
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 1:21 PM UTC
My eyes are beyond polluted
By the overflowing inanities
That paint wordless post-mortems
On yesterday's lost fantasies
Rolling over lifeless as dead certains
When obligations fall into disrepair
And the king of all invocations
Awaits power sitting in an electric chair
As darkness shrouds the uninspired
In triumphant ticker tape parades
While the bewildered beast becomes the feast
A million glasses in toast are raised
To the jesters unequivocally blasphemous proposal
To the queen of all frustrated converts
Who Once Upon a Time willingly surrendered
To the impresario pretender
Who fooled the world by laying siege on the empty house of cards
And with all the power granted
By the grace of obscenities triumphant screams
Separating me from reality by infiltrating my failing vision
With the polluted overflowing inanities of these cellophane dreams
Sep 21, 2016
Sep 21, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
I wish I still smoked
**** yeah
It's the ritual
the need to make time
to die a little
opening a new pack
shiny cellophane
the lid flipped back
paper seal for freshness
pulled out to reveal
20 happy moments spent
inhaling, coughing, thinking
the soft packets
where you flicked the
cigarettes out like movie
stars and the Marlboro man
who are all dead now
roll ups, kit form bronchitis
liquorice flavour papers
combining childhood flavours
with adult life takers
the smell clinging to clothes
and hair dragon breath
but we all looked so ****** cool
so adult so grown up
so ****** clueless, *******
on our manly pacifiers
I wish I still smoked
**** yeah
just don't have the courage
some how
Feb 28, 2022
Feb 28, 2022 at 5:12 PM UTC
(for the unknown You) –
Sweep up a mound of achievements;
layer dogwood and newspaper beneath;
find a small, secluded shoreline to sleep an endless sleep;
shovel money (in at least twenty currencies),
some status and fame
onto the funeral pyre’s unremembering flame;
write furiously with computer or pen,
fill out the days’ whitespace with enthusiastic fantasy;
revel on a fallacy (or three);
win the gladiatorial games in the Corporate Arena;
rediscover a bit of ancient folklore;
set up nice altruistic societies to make orphans feel infinite;
plant a little garden – give guidance in its growth;
build four or five fine-but-small boats
with richly decorated keels;
fight for something worth believing,
though I’m still unsure what that means…
A(my) guess: lyricism and poetry and prose,
musical composition, simply being kind and open;
A suggestion(for You): lay Your hand on a patient’s slowing heart
in a cancer ward, catch their tears with a jar
and meditate on better things to do;
give the old folks a laugh;
steal the Elgin Marbles back for the Greeks,
or, for the memory of ancient Greece;
find where lay a psychopathic fascist’s bitter ashes
and give them to the conspirators for closure;
(for me) place letters on the graves
of John Keats, Percy Shelley,
Wystan Auden and William Yeats;
rescind, abolish, annul, invalidate
my station in God’s dysphoric, existential reverie;
heap up beautiful words and send them off to sea
inside a laptop on a cellophane-wrapped raft;
(for both of us) think thoughts uplifting;
smile thirty-three times a day (or more);
plan for the future of ourselves and others;
give just a bit of love to our mothers;
sweep the kitchen and the city streets for free;
by your garden plant a tree.
Beyond these things for us to do,
be proud-yet-humble, open-eyed and acquiescent;
just accept; all things inanimate and animate, accept.
Jul 4, 2012
Jul 4, 2012 at 7:58 AM UTC
The Lung.
The broken bone branches hang heavy off knuckled tree. As cold and uninviting as wrapped meat in cellophane prison cells and those sweating milk bottles left on doorsteps. Women cry with the blackbirds as day breaks, rousing their reluctant nests.
As the shadows trawl in from chicken farms and slaughterhouses, across the squalid estates and past a debt collectors party. A ***** drinks his soot like coffee and waits for another years tide to retreat. Holding pith less ambitions and unmentionable qualifications, stewardess pass, uniformed thoughts and averting faces..
The rusty playgrounds sink into the fermenting wood chips, and a plastic bag runs through the scene; only to commit suicide in the oil ribbon canal. The chemical clouds thicken into a duvet of sky whilst arrows of a natural sun run home with tears of fear on their hot faces.
Down here the street lights flicker, and the patched uniforms drape off children sick with the flu that hit the school like a plague. Herding like cattle into the classrooms, to learn about the natural world
that is most unearthly to there reason.
Lunch bells ring from factories and the sky has drained to a sick -off white. The chip shop sells butties with no sauce nor bun, which machine like men guzzle and slurp.
The car parks lay stagnant in the distance and pigeons too fat to fly lay droppings on the bronze statue of a crying hero. As the roaring stops from the factories and high visibility coats are hung, the sky bruises and the men fill the pubs, until wives with children hung on washing lines drag there sweat soaked frames to the table, only to indulge them in a row.
Night creeps in, bringing with it the hooded figures that flutter along the streets. Music plays from a vacant building and seems to brighten the night.
A silhouette is seen standing on the edge, watching the busses bellow run like migrating snails, filled with the elderly and too young.
Cigarettes infest the streets creating a carpet of ash and litter. The city survives, remaining grey, never blinking, never heard.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 6:20 AM UTC
I walk down sugar-coated streets,
stumbling over rumor weeds poking up through the cracks
and fearing the whispers that I think I hear.
I watch the candy people walking around,
******* each other dry one way or another
like leeches with sweet teeth.
They make sour faces,
like ******* lime soda through a Sour Punch Straw,
but they keep ******* because there’s nothing else to do in Candyland.
I have to look really hard to find the sweet people.
The gummy ones, the melt in your mouth chocolate ones.
Sometimes I find them half-eaten and discarded like office lollipops
and sometimes they’re melting under everyone’s Red Hot gaze.
Sometimes I only find wrappers
and I get so angry that I think I might melt myself.
Because these people have been eaten.
****** nibbled, gulped down
like nothing more than a quick Kiss that means nothing.
But no matter how small they were, they still mattered.
They mattered to someone,
but now they’re just slick remnants on cellophane or foil.
And what hurts even more is that I couldn’t save them.
I’m not Princess Bubblegum,
I can’t protect a candy kingdom.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t try.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 1:25 PM UTC
I paint my face with tears
because I don't want to wipe them away.
I don't want to vanish my pain
and save it for another day.
I don't want to be known as my pain
but I am my pain.
My pain is the glossy finish
that my tears leave on my face.
My pain is what covers me.
My pain is what you see right through
'cause its clearer than cellophane
What if I don't like the sticky feel my tears leave behind?
What if I don't like the shame my pain brings along?
My pain is the scream into both ears that keeps me up at night.
Its the rush in my arms that makes me stab myself when dark.
Maybe if it wasn't dark you would see the red my eyes show;
crying out to you,
wishing you'll know about the pain that took me.
But when the light shines bright I spread my pain clear
like the armor to protect me,
or more likely it's my shield to hide behind.
But sometimes I shut my eyes
and they forget to reopen
and I just lie there
because maybe I don't want them to.
May 21, 2018
May 21, 2018 at 8:47 PM UTC
The times I spent with you,
Are like times spent in magic portals,
Through which I stepped into,
To remove myself from reality,
Like a cellophane tape from paper...
And I have brought that dream
From the other side of the portal into my reality...
This reality unfortunately,
Cannot merge with the existing reality,
And therefore remains hidden from everyone,
With the exception of those,
Close enough to the bubble I have created,
To either silently notice or to be curious....
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 1:42 AM UTC
i’m fighting with gravity
to the death- until my head rests,
empty as my belly
on this false-porcelain floor-
skin waxy as laminate over
these heavy hollow bones
waiting for freedom-
liberation from this sullen casing.
i shake, manic-
blood pressure in the basement,
nauseous from diet pills and anxiety.
jittery, stare at the ceiling-
a spider, stick-limbed, teases me,
but here’s the silver lining:
no curds or whey coating
my shining insides.
i am stronger and brighter than ever
as black swims in my vision-
light-headed from malnutrition,
i wrap fingers around my wrists
to make sure i haven’t escaped my limits.
the mirror doesn’t lie, but it won’t snitch.
we’ll keep this surreptitious.
spilling my bloodred guts, my blood,
won’t make me wither,
and confessing won't save me either.
this red ribbon stays tied around my wrist.
secrets kept keep me stable
clinging to my only success,
self-confidence cellophane-wrapped
in my absence, my transparence.
the whispers don’t mean a thing.
i am frantic on a wire frame,
white noise on parade.
the ground can only hold me for so long.
i'll sprout wings from my ribcage
and float away.
Jun 21, 2013
Jun 21, 2013 at 7:53 PM UTC
To be loved is to be seen
And I never realized just how invisible I felt
Until you came along
And saw me in full color
Jan 27, 2025
Jan 27, 2025 at 11:59 PM UTC
Parading past in the emperor's robe,
I looked with wonder at the fool,
Left, right, right left,
Out of step.
I stood too close to the sewer cover,
A stench was in the air.
Behind and above on a balcony,
Leaning on wrought iron,
A woman's voice, drunk on demonstrations,
Called out, bouncing off balloons,
Never look a clenched fist in the mouth.
Sep 6, 2018
Sep 6, 2018 at 10:01 AM UTC
My eyes
are bags of mucus hanging by cellophane membranes
to my skull which is now structured like a wet sponge.
My tummy protrudes out from the rest of my abdomen,
a gelatinous layer hiding away a chiseled core
which may be deteriorating into oblivion at this moment.
The skin rests and hangs a little over the top of my leather belt
which somehow manages to fit three loops in from the first hole.
My neck hangs heavy like the ears of a sad elephant.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 12:55 PM UTC