"chaffing" poems
Though the first carried more miles, the second day of the hike was totally and unapologetically uphill.
When you ascend, hiking becomes the zen of endurance.
First, you are stripped of all the pleasures of hiking. Your excitement is boiled into lactic acid. Your love for the trail is baked, hardened and dehydrated into thoughts of laying down in the sun until the heat shrivels you into an unconscious raisin.
Try as you may to put on your “isn’t hiking just a slice of heaven?” face, strangers passing you on the downhill stride can only see your “PLEASE GOD, HELP ME OR ******* **** ME” face.
As much as hiking really is a small slice of heaven, there is no denying the living-death of taking 10 straight miles to the knees under the chaffing hell of a 50 pound sack in the relentless sun.
But when you’re back in an office, sitting on your cushy little ergonomic chair, you long for the sweat and the torture that forces your mind to the ankle deathtraps of mountain terrain. To the deep valley behind and below you, and the crystal basin at the foot of the granite Giants.
The worst thing you can do is ignore the pain—that makes it relentless. Instead you focus on the pain until you become it. The only thing left is the moment between each step, when you remember why you are here and what it is worth. Every time your foot touches dirt, it leaves twice the footprint. One on the mountain and another in your memory where you will safeguard the misery of your ascent and hold on for dear life. One day, when your knees are too weak and your body can no longer table your pack, all the pleasures and joys of the trail that you once thought dissipated in the steam of uphill toil will come rushing back with the magnified strength of every year between you and the present you once knew and respected enough to actually live.
And if you didn’t, if you let it only be pain to get through and not to focus or dwell on, then that is what it is and will always be. A dull memory of pain, dark and somber and incomplete.
Sep 23, 2015
Sep 23, 2015 at 2:41 PM UTC
There's an awkward thrill I feel
like wicked-wet rabies –
Oh. Ah. Oh.
To gaze over photos of the woman I created.
With my warped perception,
saturating and cropping everything into delicious
oblivion.
I am the knife as well as the ingredients
that sauteed her together in a camera flash.
She sits hot like heaven.
And I want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
The woman I created, I hang up like perfected rotisserie
and fall in love with her accidentally every day.
Looking into those precisely underlined
tiger-sex eyes of startling navy. Knowing their true dullness.
Hissing at the free-swinging curls
and the hours behind them. Loving the lie.
The flowy top and sleek trousers gliding down lovely as Niagara
over chaffing chub; all hidden. And thighs; unshaven.
And that topical smile everyone likes to see, waiting to plummet
into suicide like a kite hanging in one tight second.
Her image is my greatest
False accomplishment.
I hang my portrait up on a wall of the internet
for people of the world to migrate to
the photo exhibit, my little show-off room.
They make offers and toss compliments
with their “I like this. I like this." nonsense.
They don't know that the girl in the portrait, she
isn't organic. They seem not to notice
that she is something of a chemical flower.
Her face is my face, only with whiteout poison-paste
smoothed over twice.
And they want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
Gazing upon her believed-to-be beauty, as I hang my paintbrush,
she bites her body still as a painting,
bruised and needled
into perfect frame. She cries
like Jesus Christ, as she is stared at, but not seen.
I am the artist as well as the object.
And the woman in the portrait is
nothing,
but dot after dot of manipulated color.
And we want to
stare at her picture all day until she comes to life.
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 9:52 AM UTC
The Lehigh is chaffing
at the shoulders of her banks
Swollen
with mood of mud
brown and flat and far too fast
She tore those young girls
from their rafts
Decorated the trees
of a midstream island with them
hanging on like the leaves and silt
once did
Their cries swallowed
as she roared past
harvesting souls with clinging hands
Chosen
to be victim
Chosen
for a reason
to be spared
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 7:58 PM UTC
Untethered. Somehow,
once I become untethered
to the prison of this life,
I can see to focus more intently
on what is most important
if I pay attention to this inside,
what I am, instead of focusing on
the tether or what it’s tied to.
What would happen if
every single last one of us,
all the billions of souls,
human ones, alive,
all untethered
at the same time?
And what if we let our
untethered hearts
lead us to the destiny
we didn’t see
from all the chaffing from
the too tight tethering?
The vision I see is
something like a healthy,
humming, honey-bee hive
on our larger human scale.
Isn’t every working part
so individually, blissfully alive?
I suppose, if the goo is honey,
it's so much better than if it’s ****
or congealing blood.
That is, if we have to have goo, which
here on earth, yeah, I’m certain
it’s a universal law,
we really do need goo.
I questioned the Devi
and she only giggled.
I had to admit, she’s right.
Then, I accepted a goblet of
her sweet honey wine;
and it didn’t hurt all that much at all
growing the rest of my little wings.
Buzz, buzz, buzzing about
our wonderful beehive,
blissfully drunk on Mother’s
Divine Honey Wine.
Feb 4, 2022
Feb 4, 2022 at 8:24 PM UTC
his infamouse words still echo
dangerously in my head
'quack quack'
his rubbery skin chaffing my mind
as he trundles through my waking dreams
his beady little painted eyes
dont fool me
behind thouse innocent baby blues
this rabble rouser plots
world **********
through mans dependance on bathrooms
a rubber duckie in every household
a rubber duckie to rule them all
the all seeing duckie
'quack quack'
i see him there in the bottom
of the tub next to my girlfriends hairbrush
grin painted on his
ugly little duckie face
Oct 16, 2013
Oct 16, 2013 at 8:18 AM UTC
Neither girl nor male… So what am I? Am I the so-called perv aiming to invade the wrong bathroom? Am I a heretic aiming to impose my wickedness onto the world? Am I the clocking stares they give me? How about the result of a broken home or a broken heart? Does my mere existence force you to reevaluate your identity? When all I'm trying to do is figure out mine. Neither girl nor male… So you tell me where I am to relieve my bowels. Or am I to stitch them shut for your comfort? While I'm at it, shall I stitch my eyes shut as to not burden you with running mascara; which further assaults my "feminine façade"? I'm sorry to burden you with my fake ***** of which a second of labor (turning your head) would relieve you of your distress. I'm sorry you'd rather slave away starring and clocking them. Clocking me. I am sorry that I was born male yet refuse to live up to such expectations. I am sorry that despite my best efforts I cannot pass for how I feel. Believe me—for the life of me—I am trying. As punishment for lack of natural ******* I stretch my skin to form a pleasing cleavage. As punishment for having the wrong body type, I wear a cage around my abdomen two sizes too small that cuts into my rib cage dare I seek the comforts of sitting down. As punishment for being born with a male anatomy, I crunch my disheveled sack of nerve endings between my chaffing thighs. Dare my body have the audacity to ***** itself for any reason I bend the muscle, in such a way never intended, between my legs just to have one less aesthetic reminder as to what I am not. Your clocking stares painfully remind me that I may never be seen as how I see myself. But ****** do I try. Until I do, I am condemned to be neither male nor… female.
Jul 30, 2017
Jul 30, 2017 at 4:05 AM UTC
I lay beside you at night and hear you breathe
measure the slow way your inhale fuels your exhale
I lay awake and wonder
what it might be like to lay in a bed without you there
Your hushed and heavy breathing
has become a rhythmic and haunting reminder of our union
Once bliss to my ears
the knowledge of never having to be alone
this night music haunts me now
I run all day
run from the reality of my anxiety
run from the feelings about us I don’t want to feel
I run all day
but when I lay next to you
I cannot escape the tearing longing to be elsewhere
I have seen what my eyes were not meant to know
I have tasted a fruit that leaves all other food bitter in my mouth
I must eat and drink of our love
the sustenance to which I ascribed myself in matrimony
But now I lay beside you and hunger and thirst for another life
the rough bonds of our union chaffing against my flesh
cutting into my heart with tough circles
and tight knots
When the silence comes
I hear your breathing
and I fear these bonds will strangle me
shudder at the pressing doubt
that these coils will ever again feel like security
With the sun I dream of futures for myself
I busy myself with tasks and assignments
goals and lists
appointments and responsibilities
so much that on good days
I can almost forget that I am bound
Yet every night the rising moon signals me
I must return “home”
the place we now share and call ours
jabbing at me that I am not my own
I will never again be my own
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 6:37 PM UTC
My dissatisfaction does not come from you,
It is not a reaction to your moods or your sometimes bleak outlook,
Nor your terrible self-imaging.
I remember laughing late into the night.
I recall with clarity falling in love with a woman who loved the world we found ourselves in and we laughed till we cried drunk on life and each other.
I sometimes wonder where that woman went.
At times I believe you when you say you whither within a relationship.
At times I believe that is part of my curse.
I do not choose a woman who is content to bake cookies and clean the house,
Though you do those things,
I chose you in your glory with all your lust and love and life.
Yours is a heart meant for freedom and no matter how loosely connected we are I am still the tether to which you are leashed,
And you are chaffing.
I do not want to let you go,
Nor have you asked to,
Yet what are we to do when the life you once celebrated is now oppressed from the summer heat?
I cannot offer shade cool enough to calm the fire smouldering inside of your breast.
Thus my dissatisfaction does not come from you,
Rather my bleak understanding of our future,
One I hope you know that I will do everything I can to discard.
I would have you happy and content.
I would have me the same.
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 6:03 PM UTC
Chains on my heart, squeezing
Chains on my legs, chaffing
Chains on my mind, breaking
Chains on my soul, crushing
Babylon is my prison
Shared with my reggae crew
The keepers all bald
My visitor: you
My poems bring freedom and fat reggae beats
A ***** island boy, I walk these streets
On my street, I see baldheads: curse those neats!
They can pay big rent, mines late 2 weeks
I get home and water my tall herb bush
Its heavenly branches provide me with kush
I pack up the bowl, sip smoke from the chalice
I feel close to JAH he erases my malice
My chains are broken, dust in the breeze
The only way to stay free, smoke more trees
My liberated spirit rises up as I cry
United with JAH we Touch the Sky
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 12:19 PM UTC
Where is the sound
That once gave meaning
To my name.
It seems lost in the echoes
The sound of a
Crying shame.
I try to pinpoint the time
Channels I was
Passing through
When I could interpret pre-echo
When each syllable
Rang true
When my offspring was purer
Relative to
Innate impurities.
Girl, boy vastly interrupted.
So much for blood
As a surety.
Belly fire lessens with years.
Caution blows back
In the wind.
Flirting with status quo delusions.
Slogans & logos
Slowly rescind.
Pure thought tainted with church & state.
Leftist & Right Wing views
Scientifically spliced.
This new world creation seldom takes sides.
Calculates the outcome & always
Dresses nice.
I’m halfway there, queasy still
Rhetorical views beginning to
Make sense.
Cautious malaise on either side.
Starch chaffing neck
Outcome offense.
I occasionally hear my voice
That blew with caution
In the wind.
Volcano dormant still pushes the crust.
Delusions sicken me back
To the fringe.
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 3:44 PM UTC
I don’t understand can’t comprehend
Just feeling alone,
disconnected again
Stuck with tears in all but my third eye
Chaffing these feelings up against this pen,
Can’t seem to move or bend without the break
I don’t understand a pain that doesn’t ache
To heal is to reopen and pass thru with love
Our wound aren’t the only evidence of abuse
Physical proof often separates the elders from our youth
Stuck between choosing alcohol or self abuse
Go in search of a sweeter way to rot your tooth
Chase away the fear, and the anger
I can't handle this section of your chapter
Where you just want to avoid all the love, and the laughter
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 3:19 PM UTC
Turn me out into the night
a rainy night.
Turn me out into the schlap of asphalt.
Let me spin my wheels.
Sometimes I kiss my own hand
to feel alive--
Other times I turn out
That chaffing concrete runway
They call a heart.
I run in the rain.
May 24, 2012
May 24, 2012 at 4:26 AM UTC
spin—for a moment even some yarn
in which we both give a ****
and we spend long, quiet evenings quoting
out of biographies of JFK or Bryan Ferry
and forget for a while all the things
we hate about each other, the things that
make us spit on the ground when they
come to mind;
forget them and maybe make love like
normal people. not against the counter before work
lifting your pinstripe skirt—rolling it up, really,
over your *** to gird the top of your hips.
(chaffing crown of ****** thorns)
maybe instead give me more than
5 minutes
and let me bury my face down in you and
you can wrap your legs around my head
to keep me there as long as you please.
and maybe later i'll laugh, sitting against the headboard, long-hand writing,
at something one of my characters has said and looking up
from an account you're working on you won't
understand my laughter but you will be
glad of it.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 11:26 PM UTC
Perhaps if
i had finished picking at all the sharp insecurities that leave fingers raw and ******
If i had finished picking at all the sharp insecurities ; cause bones casting shadows beneath my skin.
If i had finished picking at all the sharp insecurities
cutting them out of me with her
sharp words,
Over and over and over
Frantically scraping
Scraping
Pasting
together some sense of security with my
repetition
Beating it into existence with my
Persistence.
Saying it over and over and over again
I wouldn’t be
falling
Yellow, brown, purple, blue,
Bruises where my knees make contact
With the stone floor,
With concrete,
With the stairs to my bedroom dungeon
My panic shaded shackles chaffing my scrawny wrists.
Fear can hold you captive
I know there is no monster on my doorstep
No one sees it
But i hear it breathing there.
I feel it waiting for me.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 5:06 AM UTC
BUCKLEY BOY
Caressing half-sounds
Stumbling your stories
Under star-snake glories
Round the flickered embers
Did silence shake you
And tear you apart
As desperate loss
Tracked endless plains?
Dying in your dreams
When the cord tightens
Did your execution
Proceed as seemed it must?
How many atrocities
Were buried in the sand
And laid aside
Then brought to hand?
Years without kindred
Did you lose control
Find communion dead
And cease expression
Traversing the empty spaces
In dark companion?
Did you long for traces
Of what was told?
In the waste and fever
Did regret ride high
Chaffing the leaver
Chiding the loser why
So many roads were tried
Through trackless wastes
Where stream beds lied
And haste led back?
Walking on the edge
Of no escape
Left on hillsides
By your last mistake
When the dark broke in
Was an icy flaw
The token endpoint
Holding a wider line?
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 12:12 AM UTC
I awoke with a ribbon over my eyes and
The sunlight peeking through,
When I blinked, the gossamer, sticky sweet
Stuck to my eyelashes
To be pulled across the kingdom’s valley
And smiling mountains
All that which belonged to me.
This fictitious sunrise, a kiss to the sky
Chaffing my flimsy lips
As it slips lower.
And to breathe
Is to give up,
Letting it scream into the heavens
Letting it mist between my lips
Letting a sleeper dream with eyes open,
A wooden chord waits to be played
Between tame fingers
Too young to even wake.
The rainbows at the window clawing to get in
Cast shadows across my brow.
Tiny hands patting anything within reach
Let the ribbon slip,
A waterfall of silk streams down,
Petting my skin as it goes by.
It lets go of the melted beauty
Cemented to my lids
And follows the curve
Of the face it takes each day,
Back to the sunset,
A knife through the heart.
Dec 4, 2011
Dec 4, 2011 at 2:01 AM UTC
The ground shook yesterday,
And the limb I perched upon
Bowed and threatened to break.
The sky above darkened with clouds
As moisture gathered in the air.
My fingers loosened from their firm grasp
Round the branches to which I clung.
And as the sky lit up with nature's fireworks
Of crisscrossing patchwork lightning
I stood up and spread my arms.
The wind picked up and beat icy droplets
Into my chest and cheeks.
And in the moment before I fell,
I yelled.
As the breath escaped my lungs
In a violent echoing release,
I closed my eyes and steadied myself
And then stepped off and flew.
Oh what a flight it was!
And the ground caught me
Like a frypan catches the tossed up pancake.
And all life was beaten from my body
And all my demons exorcised.
And then my eyes peeled open
To see the white ceiling above
And i felt the starched sheets
Chaffing my sweat-soaked skin
And I realized I have to live the day
All over again.
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 9:58 PM UTC
don't bother to hold me hair.
and ****** why do I feel the need to lock you out,
I don't want to have to share.
I don't.
I have carried you on my back,
trying to help you,
and now I am empty and I can't focus on your pain
like you want me to,
I'm empty and I feel the harsh brush of bitterness climbing up my throat,
to form the acid on my tongue,
and I bite it back,
but my insides rage war,
And I love you.
we've been through,
death,
divorce,
****
***
Sarah,
but I'm...
barely breathing,
and I'm not sure you're seeing me anymore,
this breath is waning and I can't focus on you,
any more
or maybe it's so hard to past the news feeds of your life,
I resent that I have to ask you, to care about me,
I thought you know me,
but maybe you know the "me",
I used to be.
and can I just say whats on my heart,
I wish I didn't have to teach you how to love me,
you get me on so many many levels,
but jump back to the basics,
I dont want to be the supply and demand of my own needs,
You say you've never felt more closer but I'm not sure if you know I breathe.
I want more from you then this, how many times have a put your needs before mine,
And I can't do it this time,
and find love,
in life's leeches,
thinking I'd be the cure,
and have sat and rage war beside you,
but my insides hide,
you're hurting me cuffing my wrist chaffing this heart
and I'd burn this if it didn't help the bleeding of my heart
i'm sorry all I want is for you to be
happy but all i see is the water now that surrounds me,
I jumped in to save you,
but I have,
and I didn't save a vest for me.
were just drowning together no one better off then before,
but i no longer want to commiserate together, though I'm in love with the storm.
Dec 6, 2012
Dec 6, 2012 at 7:01 PM UTC
Is this friendship or something more
Feeling this way is like breaking a law
When the words you speak go straight to my core
oh how I adore
The things you say I just can't bare
For how could my loves, love compare
To do this to him would be much to unfair
My feelings for you are unsure
Heart trapped and needing to soar
Chaffing against the chain leaving me raw
And ever so sore
I feel so guilty but who could have foresaw
That I could have ever wanted something more
Should I, would I, could I ever show him the door?
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
Ten minutes ago,
I looked fabulous.
My hair was so pretty
And neat.
Not wetted down
with sweat from the top of my head
to the *****
Of my feet.
Ten minutes ago
I looked fabulous.
Even though traffic
Was angry and tight
The AC cooled my face and
My eyes
On my drive to here.
My thighs were not chaffing
And my underarms were dry.
Ten minutes ago
I looked fabulous.
My linen suit was pressed.
I was so pleased
With how I dressed.
Now ignore the wrinkles
That plague my skirt.
I will not cry
Nor look hurt.
Ten minutes ago
I looked fabulous.
My answers memorized.
My potential on the brink
Of being realized.
I was not rushing and
Falling up steps.
Ten minutes ago
I looked fabulous.
Nov 8, 2023
Nov 8, 2023 at 8:36 PM UTC
Oh dear oh dear
I'm laughing
My life away I fear
So much I'm chaffing
From the lungs
I can see my abs
Forming rungs
I chase chocolate labs
Because I want to taste
For myself, in my haste
I try to skip
But the trip
Is short
Like a skort
Beneath a shirt
As I flirt
With death
Out of breath,
Cause the tears
Are too real
From my laughter
As the sad clown nears
And I hand him a happy meal
Hope he likes ranch on his happily ever after...
Dec 29, 2012
Dec 29, 2012 at 10:04 PM UTC
spying out the windowsill
eyes strain to see the storm of the hour
whispering winds warned this tower
my widows rain down the hill
spitting on my windowsill
the sea eyes my tower, chaffing to devour
the chivalrous waves join the shower
strappingly slapping my stones
bruising my walls but not breaking my bones
I'll shut the windows, barricade the door.
I'll talk to my shadows and speak no more.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 6:22 PM UTC
Indecisive excusing behaviors and believing against hope
prayers or wishes
***Didn't know
couldn't fathom
I'd be rejected then imprisoned***
Cofused misleading
implications await this bitter bed
Black roses & blistering thorns
crowned the conquered queen
*Mangled chains tearing chaffing swollen wrists
Ankles held fast on this tainted flea infested bed
An ***** haze clouds all around no sounds forth coming
drugged induced
intoxicating lazy lulled senses
Heart's slowing down
No one can help
caught trap and stuck
"Love's" captured me again
but little does he know
I'll be dead before
the sun's first glow
Copyright ©
Ayeshah K.C.L.N
1977-Present
All right reserved
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 8:55 PM UTC
Keep your keeping where i can see it.
i will let you know i've had enough charlatan
when my eyes break from trying you.
I retreat and advance.
but that is the pattern of unspoken people.
the web of your truth is the ladder
that ascends to the bottom
of all glorious
null.
but me.
I am the duke of dead blocks.
i live here, chaffing windmills and knots.
i slum the cheerful. go where the going
is more gone....
If nothing happens, I can't be here.
but if you do
i must love
you.
I plot my course
through -
like a whale with no song.
just a hunting party
dismissed for the weather
and the wrong
wrong.
Mar 20, 2016
Mar 20, 2016 at 6:43 AM UTC
Tomorrow I’ll start my diet again.
I say disgustedly to a friend.
No point today, I already wobbled.
The chocolates were asking to be gobbled.
What’s one more day of aching knees?
Hey hon, could you pass the cheese?
Why do they make these clothes so small?
No room to move in this dressing stall!
I’m too tired now to exercise - plus
It worsens the chaffing of my thighs.
Yes, please! To extra whipping cream.
We can add panels and take out the seams.
I deserve a splurge and to treat myself!!
One more nibble for my mental health?
Is it just me, or does my belly look round?
Stripes should face up not lying down .
These jeans must have shrunk in the dryer?
Tilt the camera angel down. Hold it higher!
Airplane seats keep getting smaller.
Why wasn’t I born just a little bit taller?
Hey babe, would you grab me a beer?
I’ll start my diet again in the New Year.
There won’t be any excuses then.
Dec 25, 2024
Dec 25, 2024 at 9:51 AM UTC