"cheapens" poems
On being asked, Whence is the flower?
In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook.
The purple petals, fallen in the pool,
Made the black water with their beauty gay;
Here might the red-bird come his plumes to cool,
And court the flower that cheapens his array.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then Beauty is its own excuse for being:
Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew:
But, in my simple ignorance, suppose
The self-same Power that brought me there brought you.
2.5k
I met Virginia in a wave of sleet.
On Decatur, a hundred winters ago,
with a black iris, black hair in ponytail,
with a tongue like a nightcrawling widow,
Virginia whispered tornados behind the backs of the
grey-suited saxophone players, going blue in the cheeks,
under their blackface.
Under a flimsy sheet of moon sliver sky and a dim streetlight,
Virginia kicked a soda can along the cracking concrete.
With each bar we passed, I hollered, "Thank God we're alive!"
and danced a shapeless jig.
Near Williamson cemetery, Virginia's white knuckles laced into mine.
"The amount of time we have cheapens whatever purpose we have,"
Virginia hissed.
I caressed her serpentine neck.
A lone car's high beams
made Virginia's silhoutte tower above the cemetery gates,
made Virginia's black irises madden to poisonous yellow.
She loosened my grey necktie.
I let down her hair.
A sea of collected strands fell
like a closing curtain.
The distant saxophone ascended to heaven,
leaving me below,
leaving me below,
leaving me to spend the night bellowing for above.
Oct 15, 2011
Oct 15, 2011 at 4:35 AM UTC
An open letter
to those poets
who align
to the center:
*When prose sits in the middle
it resembles gift-card drivel.
It cheapens your work;
your use of italics irks.*
Choose a side.
I don’t care if it’s
left or right,
Or center-right
or alt-right
(whatever that is).
The indecisive
have a lot to answer for
us being divisive.
Did that centered
poem you wrote
distract you from
casting a vote?
Stop fence-sitting
in-between
and enjoy a
splintered 2017,
from one side.
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 9:22 AM UTC
the earth is more important than money;
why cheapens the planet to make money
that has to be spent on the planet anyway;
what have u accomplished; what have u
added to the advancement of civilization?
lethal pollution, lawlessness, war, poverty,
open physical assault, all for the sake of
money, greed, starvation & desperation;
[exploiting stolen natural resources
rendering them useless toxic waste]
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 12:26 AM UTC
Words bolt out but no ears hear,
Bending vowels of drained attention.
She smiles in racing blossom intervals,
the atmospheres of bending bludgeons.
But still I am in love with her, fool me.
He who talks without lips moving.
See the juvenile mouth extrapolating
to judgements faulting into aching.
I wonder, well sometimes I do think,
what fashionable jungle I'm to be?
After all, she finds life too busy
to wonder long about such as me.
Immobile with soundless ambition,
the rocks grow but not in splendour.
So this is how it must convert to action,
that she succeeds where I blunder.
Oh well, so that is how it will coexist,
with words drained and solitary existing.
"Be robust" I murmur to myself, with
heart closed and cognizance brooding.
"Goodbye, my former fellow traveller!".
I am off to request novel occupations.
You your way, and I, unhappily waving.
Exhalations the only sound which cheapens.
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 11:28 AM UTC
The first thing that happens
is the world collapses.
That is, it reduces down
but only I seem to notice.
Everything becomes flatter,
the depth stripped away
like rotted lumber,
like when they gut a building
but leave the historic facade,
and I feel like I'm limping
postcard to postcard
until eventually like I'm peering
into a discarded diorama,
where everything is smaller
than it should be,
the crudest copy of itself, and
everything is bounded
by shoebox limits
I can sense them everywhere.
The second thing that happens
is that I avoid everyone.
I avoid my mother on Christmas,
I can't look my therapist in her eye,
I cancel a date because
I can't handle the contact.
I touch my skin and it's like
touching paper that's been creased
hundreds of times -
old pulp that frays and splits.
The third thing that happens
is that I lose interest.
I put in whatever minimums
the day requires
and not a scratch more.
I put my mail aside
and watch crows
gather on the branch,
facing the valley,
black eye to black eye,
base wings folded against
the sleek unbearable body.
The last thing that happens
is that life cheapens.
It's hard not to notice,
since the papers and the news
and everybody's phone
blasts forth the parade of death.
No one is spared, children,
animals, the happy, the hale.
And soon these thoughts -
that life ends without reason,
that God has retreated from the world,
that no step is worthwhile -
begin to bleed in my head.
They lead to the paralysis
of a patient wrapped in gauze,
leaving only the eyes free to move
and notice the great black wing
that scythes into the valley,
feathers dark as stout,
the sun setting in its usual
incompetent way, the wing
so graceful that it might be
the only beautiful thing,
falling out of sight,
into nothingness,
down the slope
into the stale dusk,
into the exact center
of a limitless depression.
Dec 28, 2017
Dec 28, 2017 at 3:29 PM UTC
In silence now, lost all senses and time. mistaking favor, to whatever God I'd leave behind. Embracing a cold night. White hands paling rip around me pull my head down and to the side. for all my sobbing surrender, screaming, whaling, voices his favorite lullaby. My kind of lonely rejoices an impaling goodbye .The dozens in dimes paid for, The Devil throws a grave rose mockery in my sight. Horrific benighted, there's no pretending our knowing who gets through. Now gazing into me, "you see how much God's love remembers you?" "Sneaking around him is nothing new." "I'll lift your eternal warnings." Thinking my dying hearts no place for a soul to reprimand, and warnings always stand. pointing to look to the promised land, from here we see coffins of glass poking through the sand. Devil rolls his tongue, contorting the messages to lies. Sighing, "only selling closure for the broken, and before they die, they're always asking for new, agent blind less, pain enabled, and filters to my lies, you know there's always a truth in what I do." All actions have paid for, misery prayed for cheapens a forced fed compromise. knees cracking the ground, clasping hands and hollow eyes, agony stayed for, pain in magnitudes you could never never describe. take the gate keys to your burned down bridges," enjoy the blue night cold before white hot ignites the sky.
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 7:29 PM UTC
Just as Minnie gets in the mood
to play the Debussy Violin
Sonata her mother says the
photographer is waiting and
so she has to go along to the
lounge and pose and have her
picture taken and as she stands
there with her violin dressed
to the nines the photographer
says no do not smile it cheapens
the effect and so she stiffens
her lips and stares at the young
photographer’s moustache and
her mother says do has the man
wants dear and don’t pout so
and so she ceases to pout and
gazes at the box camera and man
hidden behind the cloth his hand
visible and do not move he says
hold it do not fidget dear her
mother says and puts her hands
on her shoulders and places her
in the position her mother thinks
the photographer wants is that it?
her mother asks the photographer
smiling in that way she smiles that
gives the impression of an imbecile
yes yes he says that is it and so she
stands as placed the sensation of
wanting to urinate suddenly upon
her and so she squeezes her thighs
together her knees touching her
hands gripping the violin trying
silently to keep the ***** in.
Jul 5, 2012
Jul 5, 2012 at 8:17 AM UTC
We are surrounded by wonder
Saturated by it
A glorious sunrise
Languid palm trees swaying
Beneath the introspective moon
The sublime poetry
Bled out of a thousand broken souls
All laid out on my news feed
Day after day after day
Social media cheapens it
Our whoas become mehs
We are deadened to what used to be wonder
What brought our ancestors to their knees and tears
Is now ignored for notifications and other drivel
5 MIND BLOWING FACTS ABOUT **** ***
CLICK 'LIKE' IF YOU LOVE JESUS
YOU'LL NEVER LOOK AT KALE THE SAME WAY AGAIN
Please.
Now wonder takes a new form for me
It blossoms when you blink open your eyes
As I kiss you awake
Wonder is anxiety twitching your lips side to side
While you twiddle your fingers.
It's your pinkie hooking around mine
And your head resting on my shoulder
It ebbs and flows in the sway of your hips
As we waltz to your Spotify playlist
It shines in your eyes
Pleading with me for calm
When my temper flares
It lurks
In your smile
In your snore
In your snort
And a thousand other quirks
That you dismiss as annoying
Let the trinkets of nature and man mold over
Let social media lay waste to meaningful interaction
You encapsulate wonder fully.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 12:09 AM UTC
"No. It's okay. Sounds like you need somebody to talk to."
That's true. Just like, the wind here is biting cold.
My ten-times-broken knuckles make me feel old.
I always know when the weather is changin'.
I brace the gale with practiced patience.
Just like, if you hear something often enough, it cheapens.
"You're so strong." 'You're stronger than I am."
Just willing enough to be wrong, that's what I am.
Willing enough to see me in you and know that it's true that we are the same, separately.
The weather up here is different.
For the first time in my life, I see seasons.
"Everything is connected. We are parts of the same whole."
Just like, when the neon leaves fade to death
to live in perfect spirals...
giving the frozen air a soul ...
I see the parts dance together.
My peace is in these trees and hills... in these winter chills.
I could be free here.
But there is real fear
in harboring that escaped chaos.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
There's a gun in Your hand
O son of the sun
That hushes Your voice and
Cheapens Your words
There's a gun in Your head
O sun of the son
That blinds Your vision and
Deafens Your ears
There's a gun at my heart
O son of the sun
With a gentle squeeze
You trigger my ache
Give me the gun,
O sun of the son
For it is my turn to aim
Apr 11, 2012
Apr 11, 2012 at 7:28 PM UTC
Saw you
go in
those *** shops
in Stockholm,
she says.
We sit outside
a café in Oslo
drinking coffee
and eating
creams cakes.
Just looking
at the books.
Why?
What so good
about the *******
in the books
and not us
other girls?
I sip the coffee
and light up
a cigarette
from a pack;
she takes one, too,
and looks at me.
It's a matter of posing.
Posing?
Yes, how they pose.
She frowns,
sips her coffee.
We can pose
like they do;
it's more than that.
I study her features,
the eyes focusing,
the lips part open,
her hair curly and tight.
It's the way
they look at you
from the photographs.
How do they look?
Haven't you seen
those kinds of books
or mags?
Why would I?
Curiosity?
Never looked.
I inhale cigarette smoke.
I saw my first girly mag
when I was at high school,
when a friend brought
one to school,
and I thought:
what the heck's that?
Don't you find
it belittles women?
Some I saw weren't
belittled any place.
I mean
as a ****** gender,
Dalya says,
grabbing me
with her eyes.
No, it's just dames
posing in the ****
or in skimpy gear
showing what God
gave them,
I say.
It cheapens women;
makes them objects
for men to pore over
with their eyes
and see as just that:
objects,
she says.
I drain my coffee
and put the cup down.
Another coffee?
No, I’ve not done
with this one.
I raise a hand
and a waitress comes
and I order
another coffee;
the waitress walks off,
her black dressed ***
swaying.
What was it
you were saying?
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 4:10 AM UTC