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Heather Butler Mar 2012
The crochet needles are stuck
in my teeth.
The hooks settle in my throat,
dripping with
saliva and *****.

The calendar winds its way
through the winter months,
and it is still winter,
but it has been hot like spring(s).
The crochet lingers.
The white thread
consumes.

I love you, but that is all I ever say
anymore.
I miss you.
The blood drips down the alley
and God smokes a Cuban.

Death laughs. Death reds. Death dog.

Death to the death-heart, the dead-heart;
and I will ensnare your---
I will ensoul and be ensouled
because I am God.
I am God smoking a Cuban.

The wedding bells get caught
in the cilia,
and they are frozen.
I am deaf. I am death I am God without a Cuban cigar.

I'm sorry as I pick the dirt
from my fingernailed coffin tomb.
The abort-fetus clings to your ******.
You love your ******.
I never really liked mine.

The crochet grids lie in
woven embroidery dreams,
hot as fever,
cold as the call of the void.
Jump. Jump.
It is not autumn here.

But here, see, *I'm sorry.
Auntie Hosebag Nov 2010
Stage Design/American Drama


Down front on America’s stage—
awash in a universe
of light arranged by
the ultimate technician.
Come closer.  Anticipate
spectacle.

First sun-splash
on these shores fashions
fool’s gold of surf that heaves against
foam-smoothed, lobster black,
slick rock beaches of northern Maine/
bubbles about black rubber boots of men in boats—
another day, another dime,
shivered away in ancient rime—
adrift in fog on the black
                                          glass
                                                   harbor
                                                               surface.

Grand Canyon sunrise
          EXPLODES
               copper and white/
                    orange and green/
                          blood red/
over many thousand pounds
of brash brown
        dirt—
in every direction/especially down.
       Soldierly shadows armed with swords
       of slivered sunlight hack through scrub
       like so much meat, to each day’s final
       battle at the canyon’s rim/
while a mile below the torment
called the Colorado
turns silver and gold,
black, blue, and
thundering
mud.

Louisiana bayous trickle chlorophyll caramel over twisted hickory sentinels, monumental elms and sycamores—even the alligators.  More mystery here than far-flung nebulae—and everything fighting back ***** green kudzu.

The Badlands of South Dakota, striped like the surface of a ***** peppermint planet—sizzling in the sun, bone cold in the shade—knobby tan canyons wrapped in ribbons of rust that dribble sounds one can neither recall nor reproduce.

Same phenomenon frames dawn over spongy folds of tall green cilia ocean called simply The Plains.
Kansas, Nebraska, horizons so far away thunderstorms creep along like dark, threatening slugs.
Distant night fireworks laden with punishing hail hide tornadoes and winged farmhouses in the horizontal gloom.  In the morning—those sounds again.  Critters?  Wind.  Ghosts, maybe.

Spectral mists of the Great Northwest cloak clear-cut sores on Nature’s sacred,
fragrant, deep green shores, falling steep to the creamy Pacific.
Light's a plaything here.  Big Sur
renders color to gem, sparkles
down the coast
to rusty Golden Gate and grimy LA,
where the sun goes down brown
and the rain shines
like gun metal.

Georgia soil—
homicidal redheaded cousin running loose, looking for trouble—
grows swampy hardwood groves/
leaves hung limp from humidity/
masking antebellum secrets/
offering sanctuary to voodoo practitioners and moonshiners alike.
Magic, danger, ******, and ghosts
of slaughtered slaves wander tight-packed old-growth forests.
Some say the soil is red from ancient conflict,
unanswered pleas for mercy drowned
in the drenching rains
of hurricanes
strayed north from the Gulf of Mexico.
Others claim tears of countless mothers will never leave
Civil War blood completely dry.

Northern New England foliage--
master maples drunk on fresh cider/
psychedelic finger-paint exhibitionists high on
the year’s last harvest,
intoxicated by Nature’s largess/
symphonies of scarlet, tangerine, lemon, even purple--
regal birds migrate over lakes so blue
you could chip your teeth on them,
and a diehard hemlock conducts its final green opus to a sea of primary colors.

Iowa is quiet and corn, obscuring whole towns and the lives held captive therein.  All the green on Earth is planted here; all the sun, all the sapphire sky feeding knee-high-by-July crops, bleaching spare white churches, white picket fences, white-on-white generations and all their vanilla dreams.

Linger beneath Montana’s cobalt crystal canopy to know why it’s called Big Sky.
Stark, Crazy Mountains chase stuttering clouds above treeless, tumbleweed towns,
bathed in the same blues as Wyoming, blown through a wild man’s horn.

A wink of sunlight
mirrored in unseen peaks
perhaps hundreds of miles away—
snow so white/Rocky Mountains so hard and gray—
behind a universe of wheat flatness beckoning the eye to infinity, slowly,
slowly, the Continental Divide rises
from the horizon like a monster parade balloon filling with gas on another continent.
The Flat Irons--majestic stone slabs lounging against Boulder's nearby foothills--
were cursed by ancient observers.
One peek at their precarious slopes compels you to return.
Been back three times and I’m still not sure I believe it.

Southwestern deserts’ blaze,
haze, and halo—spotlights hot,
focused on towering sandstone totems.
Deep gashes of flowering canyon, adrift in the flat and barren,
rage water, mud, and death during summer storms.
Scrub and sand, dust and desolation, land unfit for demons.
Get thee behind me, Arizona.

Endless, straight, lonely two-lanes
carve the lunar landscape of west Texas
into parcels of wasteland, miles marked by
bleached carcasses of ranch animals
and their predators, some hung
on fences as a warning
that people really do
live there.

Cities have their place,
                    their places,
                    their placement--
but my heart can’t pound to the beat of traffic
like it does to waterfall spray.

Turn your back to the fire in sufficient twilight and a mountain range sharpens into a line—
coyotes prowling, howling on the perimeter.
To spy on a wild animal lost in thought.
The sight--and sound--as swans alight or leave a hidden pond.
Northern lights and swamp gas,
everywhere the stench
of Earth.

This
is what matters—
all around us—
this alone.

Not politics,
not religion,
not countries.

Just this—
stage.
This is about the fifteenth iteration of this piece.  It keeps shifting from prose to poem and back again--or worse.  I lost control of it long ago.  Please help me rein this ***** in.  Workshop?
Benjamin Apr 2018
I could hold it in a breath,
bury it inside my chest,
watch the cilia react,
a current sent with each contact;
alas, I cannot keep it in
considering the broken skin;
with crimson ink, this razorblade’s
a fountain pen, I scrawl away:

“Hear me now, in sight of God,
first all is still, then comes the flood.”
The little blackbird hushed her song—
she could sense something was wrong—
pitchforked lightning bent the trees
and fireworks consumed the leaves
where my better angels hanged—
this, the Province of the ******.

If you were kept inside my chest,
you’d have slipped out with the rest,
while the vultures had their fill
picking piece by piece until
I’m left bone-bleached in the sun—
all the others turned to run;
but you were steadfast through it all,
from the spire to the fall.

The willow whispers from outside
where my history resides,
ghosts of angels hide beneath
the wilted branches of that tree—
I still catch glimpses of the scythe
from the corner of my eye,
but morning’s come, I cannot sleep here
in the shadow of the Reaper.
Gigi Tiji Oct 2015
floating heartbrain
silly cilia stickin' out in all directions

antennae with fingertips extrapolating the surrounding situation

form dictated by the circumstance of inward pressure in correlation to outward pressure in conjunction with the trajectory and spin of itself and all others surrounding

indescribable without it's surroundings lest it be left lacking; it is the result of touch
the ethics of touch

it is the reception of signals from all directions; a hodgepodge of waveforms
a hot tangled spaghetti dinner forever forcefed to the happysad hungerstriker grateful

forever hateful
love is all we need
love is all we are
grateful
for hatred

pain gives way to bliss
sensitive cilia
feel me
feel you
feel all
Bryce Aug 2018
In the linoleum dungeon
Sparkling swiffer creature
Squirts the floor
Calls polyphemic odors
Opening

And the crazy stench of allspice
Biting lime and draconian breath
Burning the nostril coins
Copper shield bending the cilia
Oven mitts plastered with narcotic grease and decomposing meals
Of yesteryear
Unclear
She speaks between steaming inspirations

Hoo-huh

Exhale the fire

It's'a hotta pasta lasagna
As the helicopters flap their handy rotories
Fast fractal birds
In circumfereferential motion
Cool down our mouths
Ice cubes in the juice
Plop a shot of gin
With that silly child's grin

And the room slowly cants
Begins to spin
As we laugh at the spots we cannot
Pin

Staring at the stellar mountain chains
Thrusted stone
Busted metal
Stabbing up into the sky
Competition

Where is the home beyond the horizon
Where we ate good meals
Not made alone
With parental guidance
As the days were stolen
By the erosive time
That spinning wheel

Well,

It's deep in us now
And the cells metastasized
Realized
That heaven is hell.
Coralium Feb 2021
greying cilia
framing lively child's eyes
with youth not ceasing
our elders might have lived through what for us soon might be to come
CM Sep 2014
afternoon hanging heavy,
caressed by a tomato soup fog,
tired carpet, fleshy velvet couch
both aching for validation.

ten photos of the same dog
speak Latin all at once

a desk in utter disarray,
fishbowl walls slimy
and coated in shame

a bookcase crammed with
stepfather books,
trying too hard, too much, too soon

giant cilia lined lungs swing from the ceiling,
******* in and out and in and out and in and
all of the oxygen and

it has already been an hour,

$150,
a check is fine,
see you next week.
Mike Arms Feb 2012
Three blind babies in the caterpillar nest
The songs turn their limbs
Torrents of Mandarin wash over the silk
Watercolor cilia crawl toward the tomb corners

Awake at the Kremlin with fluoride eyes built
to take in the exotic
pour the ***** and the women and masterpieces
launch into the frozen countrysides

Lapping of the close water
moon shrouded in a prismaic screen
the shadow of salt
beside the beast of south China sea

Amnesia spreads dripping thrands
answering only to the ocean
the language of caterpillar
shout from our arranged marriage
mEb Nov 2012
When I see humans of abnormal disproportions
I automatically want to classify them as ******
As guide myself onto the metro, repetition daily
I choose my seat accordingly
only to discover that the B.O stench of the sad
non-hygienic human before me has left their putrid for me to taste

I call this death of my Cilia
Michella Batts Sep 2011
I am from my mama's toes,
as my dad
walked out the back screen door day after day,
its rusted hinge screeching.
A reminder of the torrential rain of argument
falling on my little head

I am from pine trees
of sap and sticky sweet
and the seed ticks. Climbing to the top
checking your neighbor for where they’re hiding later
I am from a southerly wind blowing
the smells of an unkempt garden as flowers grow tall
and strong, while families fall apart like the suffocating weeds next to the roses

I am from the strong arms of 5 different oaks
holding me up like my father was supposed to
the branches of those who tried to fill
the pothole covered road
in my heart, but never could.

I am from my brother’s teachings,
and long walks in a warm rain
always ending too fast.
The sword fights with a long haired bohemian
who stole my heart in a flash of lighting
that I took back with a parrying blow

Smoked filled rooms
as I pretend to be someone else,
and learned of life in a binary universe
trippin on my spear as I fight through life

Forbidden to get dull
Less I lose the fight
My brother’s disappointment; ringing in my ears

I’m from the struggle of believing
in not believing.
My life, proving to be the site of one’s parents,
setting out Christmas
as they realize Santa isn’t real

I’m from a humble beginning
and an arrogant pride
that has given me freedom
to go where those haven’t dreamed

I am from the life I have chosen
to make for myself
I am from Punnet squares
in the back of class
sitting next to a friend

Wanting to know what my kids look like
ff they’ll be as good as I hope
like my mama dreams

I’m from rain on a leaky tin roof
putting me to sleep
making false peace

I am from the water
that rushes through my veins
as I break through the walls
and join in another world, of fish and muddy water

I am from escapes to Neverland
in the moments were I remember
I’m a kid and you’re a kid
and I laugh because I don’t always have to grow up

From my mom’s lemon pie
I hail
like the sugary sweet stickiness
and the ****
pucker you lips boys
lemon.
and the fried chicken

From a stove that hasn’t seen
the fanciest meats
but left us with a five star feast
at my parents hands

I miss when I came from
a smoke filled house
detectors going off
fat back and grilled cheese
burning in the pan.

I like to think
I am from a world
and all I learn
all that made me grow

I am from distinct beginnings
as my life separated
but I have but one
means to an end

I am from a fire place
and screaming wood beetles
as we pressed their backs
but that’s a happier time
that I know I’m from
but can’t remember
I was too young

Now I am from a firepit
Tall
as our conversations
our father singing drunken tales
too beautiful to believe
to fantastical to forget
sparks flying at each crakle
like fairies of fire
cascading in the air

But also from his wrath
the anger
nights spent in a room crying
wishing I could leave
clinging on only because I had yet to learn
I didn’t need him.

So I came from silence
between me and him
longer than forever
louder than the Nazgual
screeching out at us through the TV
a movie my father and I shared, so we could pretend a little longer.

I am from sneaking out a window
not to leave
but return
to when me and you got along
the asphalt
raking out hands
while we climbed to the top
that frightfully tall roof.

the stars leaning in to catching our fall.
the forbidden bottle passed between us.
the world looking like a nicer place
until we crawled back in the doors of reality

From the tear, resting on the edge of these words,
as I recalled your laugh
the real one
the music of it.
cried because I have not yet heard it
someone stole it from your soul.

Maybe freedom can bring it back,
or only further burry it
were the mad men buried it.

I was taught to live
as though not else mattered
the autonomy offering freedom
but still cling to what we had, for however long
our childhood
not as great.
grown up too fast.

Queen Mab holds my origins too
as does Fantasia
and Disney.

Eargon and Sapheria
swords of blue flame
holding my attention
locked away in my mind
as I watched their adventures
and others go by.

A House of Leaves
containing confuzzeld wonderment.
my brother making me challenge
what literary told me was possible
enjoying the complexity
and escape

I am from the Moulin Rouge
the green fairy of absinthe
with same
long haired bohemian
sitting next me, holding my hand

I came from a Secret History
bunny, laying flat in the snow
Dionysus holding the blame
the Greek world with bigger secrets
6 people of a strained friendship

I am from a radio
and an Ipod
the CD player and TV
music being my soul

Ambient, Pop, Grunge
House, Rock, Jazz, Classical
Blue Grass, Country, Electronica
A multitude of noise, dying to a lullaby

Headphones
soft n’ squishy
pressed tight to the drum
drown out the world I beg
they comply
my fingers moving along the click wheel
for a new assault
cilia fibers dying off
you know the world I am from
we shared it often times
and yet you are shut out
the world of 2 sisters
roads walked together.
but I am not from you side of the street.

I am from a dirt road
made long ago
that you will sometimes wonder on to.
but run back
to the smooth and familiar
Pavement.
you are absolutely necessary and utterly unimportant.
you are not important because
everything is important and important means
you are better than the mud
you are not

i can say this because
i want to be content. and to be so
i think i must owe myself to everything. because every little piece makes the puzzle, every tiny drop of paint changes the color, whether
you or
i can see it. down to the atom, every rock that
i step on, every bird in my ear, every bearable sting of guilt felt from swatting a fly, they have worked in perfect proportion, each paint drops precisely suffused to the present shade of my experience. and if
i am to be at peace, my life should not be measured but
i must be accepting of
everything as it comes.
i find this possible in realizing that the stretch in my smile and the tears on my cheek are all just as needed in shading me. no single experience makes the man.  and to be accepting of the summation
i must accept that every single experience in my collective past was utterly necessary. every single experience, and each minor detail of each experience, and how they  scatter on the surface like little melting beads, and how they eventually sink and mix; all single molecules of paint diffusing in the only proportion to make the present shade of my life, none more important than the other, down to the atom, ultimately equal.
not in quantity, but in quality
everything equal. what it means is that
i love you. but
i love the sweat greased ball bearings of dirt in my boot
i love the percussion of infection drenched nerves in my foot
i love the salt stick of your skin and staunch of your cough as you beat through the barreling wind. and
i love the invisible river of shivering brush waving like cilia down the valley. into the bioluminescence of our L.A. colony.
i love you if you love me and
i love you if
you hate me.  because even your hate will drop like paint into me and change the shade to something
i have not yet seen.
i know we have different eyes but
i think this works for mine.
i will love you in equivalence to every molecule
i breathe.
utterly unimportant and absolutely necessary.
Lyzi Diamond Oct 2013
The most sinister sounds exist in your head
or they are in the walls too, scratching and
clawing and gnashing gnarled teeth to
intimidate, initiate conversation. I, like the
elephant man, can't get people to look at me.

Crawling in the walls, crawling in the walls.

Body noises, bodies making noise all on their
own, no contact necessary, no touches, none
small swift sweet brush of fingertips on freshly
shaved legs, these noises follow marbles down
tubes of recent cell growth and death and the
burnt cilia from one or two nights up too late.

Who wouldn't want the danger? Who wouldn't
be seduced by the threat of extinction, the on
and on challenges of basic survival? I don't know
that I want to know the people who would lie
down during the apocalypse to be taken up to
heaven or who hang on to thoughts of angels
in clouds out of fear. Stop apologizing. Just stop.

Move slow through tall grass on hands and knees.

With one light slow breath I can pass pathogens
to unsuspecting commuters on the 7:05 train
who will pass by hundreds of people in their day,
breathing heavy from flights of stairs and some
pollution in the air and some emotional turmoil
that will likely resolve itself right before collapse.

Understanding imminent destruction has a
strange power reminiscent of floodlights
coating a thousand heavy construction sites
covered in some damp **** ***** snow.
Angela Mary Pope Dec 2013
When I see you these days
It's not as if I don't feel you
Because I still feel you
In everything I touch
That doesn't feel me in return
When I touched you
I felt it
through the knots on my back
and the cilia on my lungs
that have been singed off by smoke
And when you touch me these days
what I feel most is
all the scars on my body bursting open
Neobotanist Aug 2021
eating figs
eating ***
eating flesh

i swim through my mother's veins
and peel back layers,
distinctly feminine.

i see me.
i feel me.
i taste me.

we hold delicate
yet strong and vibrant lovers
in our mouths,
inflated candy eggs—cosmic nectar.

foolishly gazing at our sordid massacres:
flesh upon flesh
seed upon fleshy seed

visions of nightquests
sing-songing liquidly

i vanish into wormholes,
fiery transformations,
and bitter leaves,
which weep through silver pores.

feverishly, we pick apart the stems,
dropping them away.
hurry, hurry!
we're so impatient to get these figs
into our mouths.

heads crane forward
and tongues ****** first.
hands follow, fingers last.
crush down once, thrice
on earth maternal—
it's not juice, it's cream.

siddhis speculatively come forward
and burn triangle patterns behind our eyelids.
she is freed again from past recollections,
elegantly fighting off disease—cellularly—while drumming solos,
gnashing figs,
and caressing twigs with toes.

i invite you to breathe me in—
soft, solid air,
stale with anticipation
but honey-lemon sweet,
and empty besides.

we pour sweet broths into banana-leaf cups
and drink beetles out of sugarcones,
traces of ectoplasm dribbling down our chins,
violetly forgetting the echoes of
peppermint vapors,
and nourishing our bellies
with heavy, pregnant plant mothers.

i long for excess,
and i can never get enough.
besides,
it is the summer of figs,
and we cry openly
at the beads of sweat
forever forming on glassy surfaces.

i taste-touch with my fingers
and feel-taste with my tongue,
and still i feel that we aren't close enough,
so i invite it to enter me and become me,
and now
i am fig.

it's as if the cilia-seeds
and tender pink spots
expect the pressure.

it's true:
we expect this solid, gravitational pressure
and they rip off wings,
just to bathe in our nectar.

she hadn't known true ecstasy
until this violation of figs,
until her madness imploded secretly
like their demure insides,
and all she could think about
was jelly pulp and pale achenes.

so saccharine, you say,
wiping your mouth with a sticky hand,
and wiping your hand on stiff denim,
but really there's even more sweet to come later.

green-plump
violet-plump
pink-pulp
swallow

i hear it before my ears do.
i see it before my eyes do.

i swimmingly tesselate
and wade through the liquid air,
particles dissolving around me.

there's some give,
and i'm able, you see,
to be here in this palace of
pent-up pleasures and lastly,
comes stillness.

she weeps hatred from her body
so it doesn't seep
into her half-digested fig:
the fig of all figs.

caked with dried mud and chocolate,
we emerge
and fall off effortlessly
into angles of light.

dust rises like a prism
along pre-choreographed
provocations of smoke—
steps cascading for spirits of anjeer
to patter down
into our realm.

feed me, they say.
and so we do.

we break open the figs
with childish fingers,
tasting before offering
on little plates carved out of spoons,
melting coconut lashes and spidermilk
in the process.

the oven creaks quietly,
and raindrops lift gauzy veils
from drowsy eyelids
on sleepy mornings.

pulling waterwords
from unification,
fiery feelings die down
until they're just a glimmer—
a glimmer of softness,
with wet embers tantalizingly
dripping fireworks,
like childhood.

waves murmur something secret,
and the whispers only take 5,000 years
before they reach your ears,
yet you still startle and awaken,
sweat on the brow,
and glisten your way through,
splashing sloppily through
paper screens
to deliver messages.

iron tea kettles sit in dying ashes for far too long.

in my visions,
i saw ripe, bursting figs
hurtling across starlit skies,
blossoming beautifully
before dropping heavily and with sound.

and suddenly it was summer—
radiant, glowing summer—
with our skin dissolving upwards
in the golden heat,
sparkling dramatically
in the decaying light.

i wanted to pull something out of me
but the strings were tied to my organs.

slippery insides meant less danger,
so we tiptoed on grains of sand
and grains of rice,
and black beads,
and black beans,
and pearls,
and magnets.

we tripped through hours,
while minutes crawled to a close,
and sifted fine blue watersilk
until it exploded with mollusks.

i am a clam
and you are a gallon of fir tree sap,
delivered every wednesday,
to embellish our
fried and crispy things.

almond-shaped plumes and
majestic, purple heliochromes
blaze saturn rings coldly,
while the fruit falls apart—
first at the center—
and our gaze lingers on mother:
she is
dancing,
and dancing.
Klaus Baumgarten Jun 2014
wither goest he?
traveling, traversing, rehearsing
the good doctor lingers in the doorway out
sometimes forgotton, but always, ever, perpetually
omnipresent
dictations and suggestions, hunches corrupting
helping one last time to cauterize, sterilize
cutting off the umbilical cord to humanity
nothing to slow it down, nothing to hinder, nothing to feel
cilia burned, silly-a me to allow it
is it a neccesary burden. a beast with a broken back
still slogging, blindly, towards an imaginary finish line
hoping there is only darkness there. rest. peace
he misses his shell. the whole world is asbestos
this is his hell. the soothing water sputters the flames to smoke
and miles away, tonto points and deciphers.
"*******" is what it says, soaring eagle
the white man is so trivial
primitive in his circular command center, melting legos to heat his hearth
hiring ****** to eat his heart
a trapper keeper. a pointed rose. a poisoned tip. a mental rip. a freudian slip
this place has no ***.  I mean.. class. class is what i meant.******
surroundings never touch the surface of my skin
and quantum physicists only complicate this perspective.
**** your logic! and **** mine worse..
why must everything be rehearesed? this is a curse.
a verse of a song I sing with a gun to my head
Alin Feb 2015
Farewell Sickness
You left me!
Invaluable was the darkness cherished
the beloved heart
body, mind
and half of my age
all of it
devoted to your love only

and secretly

You crowned me to your queen of darkness
I grew up slowly in our palace
where
I could hide
and
Stay
if I wanted to
always with you

Our home
the holy eidolon

but a shelter for me
as long as you were there

There
was where
we honored  shadows
by becoming shadows

The Black Mountain
of your teaching
was made of the absolute
Color of our eternal love

but Love
You forgot one thing
or didn't you know me well?

Dedicated by desire
I climbed that mountain
Kept my promise
To see  the irrefutable
To be the unconditional

No
You weren't there

You haven't made it that far?
or was your share to have me ebb

There was Black
as absolute as you said

Stroke my face apart
and I fell
at once for another
at an opposite end

One I became
with the luminous cilia
of a man
a plain man
made of brightest light

All of a sudden he came
All of a sudden he left

Seeing all of me was possessed

That loss slowly turned me to a sheer pain
covering my home
with an opposite color of white
I got petrified
by an equal fever to your love
and
A battlefield were my heart
lodging the war of the tantamount
of identical charge
repulsion of the supreme
dematerialized matter
cracked the eye
and I died

Colors of all wavelengths
between black and white
fill that deserted heart now

Yet there is a new spirit
sleeping inside
Soon she will wake up
and sing
an ancient lullaby
of life
not remembering
but with a knowing:

*I am of dark and of light
not necessarily of good or of bad
whatever you make me
I will be
which matches to which
by any color of absolute  
you’ll be bewitched
but virtuous
make a difference
by your poetry
let me be your
one magic word
until truth is met
in heavens
Title is inspired by Man Ray's 'Noire et Blanche' (1926) . I tried to remake a picture for a photo contest recently and that effort also produced this poem :)
Jason L Rosa Mar 2017
To be is breath
is depth wind cilia dance

The wet concrete street that shows
where the storm once danced last

Technicolor oil slick streak
breaks black asphalt monotony

Like the swirl of the milk and sugar
in the otherwise black coffee

* **

I'm reminded that rest, the real kind
is both solitary and shared

And when you can't sleep, we can't sleep
a shared insomnia from a shared dream

memories of cobalt ennui
plague the spaces between twenty fingers
twenty toes

with gold dipped intentions and egg-shelled breath
the plague of fallen petals of effervescent rose
"I'm reminded: the rebels find each other
the tribe collects around the fire
shares cowboy coffee and stories"
-Teej
CommonStory May 2014
My eyes open
I'm dazed
Silence, nothing
I inhale
Clogged suction
A shivering static vibrates through me
I exhale
A short whimper
The tightness and heavy feeling strike My chest
My body stiffeness then numbs
The rustle and whiswtle turn to a dying gasp a hissing howl
My eyes close
"Where's My inhaler?"
Shifting hands like cilia feel through the dark
Panic
Adrenaline
Suddenly an L sharped item in my grasp
"Shake" "shake"
"Puff" "puff"
Exhale
Sigh
That sudden euphoria
Relaxation followed by a loss of  conciousness
Sleep and dream

Waking in water
Gigi Tiji Jan 2015
"Gratitude is the attitude,"
the fat priest said,
as he was getting ready
to spready his leggies for you.

He was tryin' to
sum up a hymn 'r two
before he finished suckin'
yer cryin' cockatoo

and I don't have to tell you
that it wasn't nice, dude!
'Cause well, you weren't singin' like you used to,
or how he wanted you to, you bad boy you are
confused and forgiven but no longer can you feel innocent,
you're a sinner you ARE a sinner, and He MADE you that way,
in His image he MOLDED the clay, NO! Not 'He'!
Everyone. Every single one.
You.  

**** the use of these patriarchal pronouns in reference to The Great Spore Spitting Blossoming Mushroom Flower that we're all giving birth to and dying from simultaneously and, seriously, I'm a little bit tired of these petty **** terms with which we're supposed to identify each other. You can't define my identity with your silly communication system, that's an internal state that I externalize on command and sometimes not! Sometimes it just comes out, but it NEVER comes from the devil's mouth, unless it's my own **** devil. Give me a new ******* pallete. I pray for a sensitive tongue.

For God's sake we make ourselves and we make each other.
For God's sake if we make ourselves out to be failures, then we are making God a failure, and what's that? Laaame! But what's That?! What's that I feel? Is that some discomfort with the usage of the word 'God'? Is that a lingering connotation from the days of THIS IS WHAT GOD IS, nothing else, NOTHING else? Well **** that too! That's an endless maze you won't find your way out of until you scale the walls! SCALE THE WALLS! I make God in my own image, but I don't OWN the image. You've gotta BE the God you want in this world. Sometimes I do it when I showah 'cause I have the powah. Sometimes I do it when I'm chillin' with the great lake spirit and the great tree dendritic spirit cilia that reach up and out of Gaia like loving arms awaiting a tender embrace from a lover after years of reaching for something that cannot hold them but truly must be BEHELD. And so I learned they are always beholding as they reach.
That there's always more to behold.
And so that's why they grow.
So that's why we go,
it's why we flow.

So let's make it a collaboration.
Let's make it a celebration!
We can behold it all forever.
We can behold it all together!
Well, sometimes. Not always.
We all need space, y'know?
It's healthy.
Bryce May 2018
When Bach and Amadeus
Died in their sleep and agony
I wonder if they knew
What they had achieved

Was it worth the cost?
When the Alps were 145 centimeters
distant from today
and the earth still folds your music
In between its subducting page

I want your great stratovolcanical violins
To extrude pumice and grindstone
to crush sweet music in between
Mt. Rainier and an unknown garden
made somewhere deep
in my quantum dream

The sky takes your notes
It is a great teacher as well
and swell, it does

It tells
me a quadrillion dreams
in every iterative puff of smoke
In every collapse of possibility
of every cat ground to paste upon the street
and all the ones that purr locally
In the arms of some caring soul
A lesser spirit dreaming
In the arms of their god

You play with a broken leg
or an unattached eye
or shaved cilia
And yet still
Your skill
Outmatched
none but ourselves
JC Lucas Jul 2018
per aspera, for the love of god
let me down
the oil of the asp,
the bee in my bonnet
in a needle
rolling deep
in the hay,
the raspy cough
from the hayfever on my
cilia,
on the kitchen counter,
in my mind.

Let me off this bottomless ladder
you *******,
you fiends.
Richard Yeans Apr 2019
I just sat on the ******* bathroom floor
For 15 minutes
Listening to my breath faintly wheeze
Through the last cilia in my lung

I felt my chest rise and fall
Shallow

I take notice of the cold-*** tile
And the ache in my back
How my right bicep is throbbing
From a dogbite last night
How my knees ache from years of fighting
And my head pounds like a church bell
From lack of drugs and nicotine

If happiness is the cessation of all desire
Then please Buddha convince me
That my desire to walk the **** out of here
Is more insane than sitting on the ******* floor
Doing nothing.
A scent (and sixth sense predominates),
when apple boughs
and other aromatic flora
laden with blossoms and fruit
gently assail cilia of the nostrils,
aside from aiding distinguishing
pleasant or unpleasant smells
additionally incorporate complex structures
of the paranasal sinus mucosa
in which function
critical linkedin to respiratory defense.

Cilia beat in a coordinated manner
to clear the paranasal sinus cavities
and upper airway of the mucus blanket
that contains the pathogens and debris
continually inspired in normal respiration.

Avast extent of following poem
crafted a couple plus years ago,
when foretaste of temperate weather
covered swath of eastern seaboard.

Courtesy climate change
(think global warming),
I would forever wish to exchange
unseasonably warm temperature
(10 plus degrees Celsius
in Schwenksville, Pennsylvania today)
for brutally cold subzero windchill factor,
no matter unseasonably warm degrees
way out of expected range,
of established “normal”
far to balmy, undoubtedly
for the likes of old man winter
furious his blizzard snowbound
weather forecasts shortchanged.

Once thermometer readings rise
even smidgen one moost not minimize
Earth way out of balance,
an inconvenient truth
I haint gonna catastrophize
as bajillion acres plus
one after another ocean dries
even the skeptic cannot turn
third eye blind and believe contrary lies,
when every species practically extinct

and self proclaimed éminence grise
doth trumpet and stubbornly tries
to claim plethora unearthed resources
as sudden goldmine
against wages of sin
former traitor joe
(biden his time) redeemers actualize
to catalyze nth industrial revolution
teaching as heresy
ecocentric, which material basket

of deplorables power mongers bowdlerize
concurrence toward meteorological
trend most all people agree
toward adapting, experiencing,
and witnessing increase -
fair in height degree
bestowed upon Thomas Newcomen,
Richard Arkwright, Samuel Crompton,
Edmund Cartwright
and James Watt first Industrial

Revolution conferred as honoree
appellation not necessarily
in retrospect donned as noble pedigree,
now hundred of years
later downside we see
of belching, coughing,
disorging... yes siree
foul, (née deadly)
cancerous, gaseous, malodorous,
noxious, poisonous... pollutants.

Decreased dissension
grudgingly did abate
and one doubting Thomas less nasty
toward the braying donkeys in general,
when Democratic contender
clinched the electorate majoritty
unclouded protests muted trumpeting
base aggressivity, depravity,
and incendiary proclivity
for hunted prey (slapped

with felony charges that H_ lied
on a federal form
when he claimed being drug-free
at the time unnamed person
purchased a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver
in October 2018)
hastening Grand Poobah to abdicate
irrefutable proof generates
contentious voices to accumulate
additionally disappointment  

resolving global warming
activists linkedin over Green Party
blessedly to administrate
hoop fully figurative tide
will turn and aerate
political atmosphere whereby
progressive minds will affiliate
otherwise business as usual,
cuz spewing deadly particulate
will only aggravate

dire straits, where
webbed wide world series
of unfortunate events will airdate
prophetic apocalyptic fate
especially if nonprogressive
stodgy former el presidente
number Cuarenta y cinco
commander in chief re-elected
flush with bigotry and hate
increased chance (chants) ripe state

for revolution avast swath
of population to amalgamate,
and overthrow anachronistic government
absolute zero survival unless dramatic
nondestructive strategy eschewed
to supplant exploitation and mandate
radical transformation, which dramatic
shift off grid if lucky requisite
Earth friendly manufacturing
can possibly ameliorate.
Satsih Verma Jun 2017
Don't print on the body
a pattern, grayesh red.
Damask rose?
The cilia will propel you
into the tunnel.

Clowns have assembled
on the street, to write
the history of fall.
Acts of kindness are being
translated into profanities.

You are hurt by the
petals, thrown at you.
Kingmaker, why you have become
a joker?

Red lilies?
Do you like the buttercups?
Eyes ago, there was a bouquet.
I am not sure, why you were walking
on nails.
Andrew Rueter Mar 2021
A strand of your hair borders
my ocean of tears.
Grains of sand mold together
forming mud.
You stand nonchalantly on the berm
staring over the vast nothingness
of the waterway nether.
Ocean floor follicles utilize
microscopic cilia.
Tiny motile tendrils propel me
along rock bottom.
Octopi submerged in sand banks
wait, coiled callously.
Ambush tentacles envelope me while
pulling me into the bell.
My depths always seem
darker than yours.
Claustrophobic.
Suffocating.
Narrow.
Caverns and coves collapse, caving
in before I ever find them.
I'm tied to tumultuous tentacles tangling,
blocking my butterfly stroke to the beach
where your hair washes upon the shore
like seastruck flotsam building barricades.
Hurble B Burble May 2019
Pssshhhht, shhhhik, clink clink clink.
Pshhhhhhhhhht pshhhht psssshhhhhhhhtttt.
Chccck clink clink clink shhhhhhrkt
Pssshhhht.


Ah, Liquid art.
That smell.
Toxic.
Nostalgic.
**** my lungs.
Tie-Dye Cilia.
Rainbow fingertips.
Beautify.
Annihilate.
Destroy.
Create.

Psssshhhht psssshhhhttt shhhhhhik.
Clink clink clink.
Pssshhhht.
Kate Livesay Jan 2021
Our footsteps dominated a small part of Pisgah National Forest in the Summer heat. Reading maps from local hiking stores, information tough as plastic Nalgene water bottles. Letting the snails make their way across the trail, watching spiders construct their webs in an articulate manner. Licking the dirt off your leg to compare to your natural skin tone, squashing ticks and eating ants. Conversations of back home, discussion who dates who, how one got in a car accident, and how one's football team lost in overtime during the Homecoming game, thus distracting from the pain presented by trekking up and down the trail. Peeling off wet socks at the end of the day to relieve pruney feet, taking care of blisters and bug bites which dominate the skin. Turning to your friend in the middle of the night in the tight, snuggly tent, deciding whether to wake them up to see the stars, and before a decision is made on your end, they get up and ask you the same thing. Time moves slower.

Having to drink the excess chicken juice during dinner as no waste would be produced. And being attacked by a hive of yellow jackets that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. The pain. Running three miles with a forty-pound pack on your back in the pouring rain as lightning is chasing you, just to arrive at your destination at a lower elevation right in time for the hail to invade. And the lightning. The feeling of the ground rumbling as you see the bolt strike a tree multiple yards away, the sound blasting off every cilia left in the ear.  And the strangers met on the trail; the only topic of the conversations were the bears and the weather.

I witnessed everything. I woke when the sun rose and I slept when the sun set. Everything moved slowly with the assured fateful speed of the stir-fry being consumed after a long day of milage, like the snail making its way across the trail, like the spiders constructing  their webs.
Doth strongly waft, sting,
and nauseate about me
olfactory nose flying zone
bombarding cilia of
nasal passageway analogous
to displeasure wrought by

crashing, deafening, exploding,
ear splitting xylophone,
also synonymous isolated like
barenaked lady within
remote location of Lake Woebegone,
voluntarily forced to bathe

in brutally cold
mountain waters oxbow lake
vaguely resembling out
size topographical wishbone
rescue unlikely since
bajillion miles from radio tower,

thus state of the art
electronically sophisticated videophone
good as worthless resignation,
sans fate linkedin tubby
mother nature's cryogenic specimen
more'n murmuring undertone,

where huge Arctic glacier overshadows
infinitesimally microscopic human,
one speck kin zee ditched
**** sapien subsumed
under superfluous tombstone
as frozen fountain head,

where Atlas shrugged,
nonetheless incongruous yen
to purge mine offensive odor,
where civilization footprint
sole lee mine alone in wilderness
thus farcical reason (without rhyme),

atypical, farcical, and poetical title,
yours truly didst stirrup and spur
inexplicable search for soapstone,
yet prospect to don measly frame
without gay apparel

(beastie boy bit figurative bullet,
and buttressed body in buff)
immediately augmented primal scream
to trumpet heebeegeebees
(teeth chattering yodeling
rendition re: stayin alive)

from this Rhinestone
survivalist cowboy wannabe,
began feeling comfortably numb,
and immediately prone
to become human popsicle,
especially when sub zero temperature

immediately froze water splashed skin
(like glassy sheet of ice)
glancing viz albedo effect
as blindingly white
snow capped mountains outshone
albino crags, offering

absolute zero, yes none
reassurance with insulated moonstone
sleeping bag useful
as yolked with lodestone
around neck - slow death by
freezing this knucklebone,

who sought cleanliness,
(and panacea to immortality)
joining exclusive polar bear club
(Ursus Maritimus very selective,
and only chose me) even
at expense of more'n

just frozen jawbone
plus Jack frost bitten cockles turned
deep purple as inkstone
used to write re: scrawl epitaph
on icicle glommed headstone.
Victor D López Jan 2020
We alone in the universe?
Inconceivable! Absurd! Illogical!
So why the silence?

We’ve been screeching “We’re here!”
For the better part of a century,
Sending our best and worst broadcasts,
(Mostly the latter) that have now traveled,
Nearly 100 light years in the Milky Way.

A-bombs and H-bombs also send out clear signals.

They know we’re here.
So why the silence?
Could it be they did respond and are here?
Perhaps.

But two other options are likelier, I think.
One, that they saw, heard, examined our broadcasts,
And did as we might if we discovered,
An island populated by billions of rabid baboons.
Unpleasant. Dangerous. Irrelevant.

Another possibility is that they cannot distinguish,
Our primitive signals from the general background noise,
And natural radio emissions of a static-filled universe,
Any more than we could hear the most ardent efforts,
Of a paramecium vigorously thrashing its cilia,
In an effort to let its existence be known to the universe.

No, we are not alone.

We can’t possibly be.

We are just not worthy of acknowledgement,
Or perhaps of notice.

Worse yet, we might be like a cancer cell,
Attempting to communicate with the body it inhabits.
Whether it succeeds through its efforts,
Or is discovered by independent means,
Is there any question as to its likely fate?
googling inept kickstarted lame outré jaunty hokum

(alternately titled:
Random screenshot within me noggin
instantaneously transforming,
née devolving into gobbledygook.)

I got born with poker faced physiognomy,
no matter yours truly doth not play cards
though self same person impractical joker
shuffles thru life without (think silent owl)
gives no hoot, though reckons Halloween
mask permanently affixed bonafide tragic/
comic features ofttimes resignation chiefly

communicated, one luckless boyish looking
goodfella, (a veritable greybeard, albeit or
kissed striated uber wordsmith yawping zee
lot misanthrope) chronologically edging two
ward the edge of night concerning mortality,
meanwhile fudging primitive protoplasmic
prurient predilection emblematic of proud
primate, i.e. **** sapiens 1% Neanderthal.

At birth, yours truly a tangle of arms & legs
scrawny bundle of lovely bones linkedin as
hypothetical extinct creature halfway in
evolutionary line between modern human
beings and their anthropoid progenitors, an
atavistic penchant to scurry along on all his

four indistinguishable limbs rooting around
for grubs using quasi snout (visualize) multi
sensory proboscis (adorned with coiled cilia)
evolved for touching, tasting, snorting, and
(sniffing out) smelling faintest molecular jot.

Mutations begat courtesy
in vitro fertilization gone awry
amateur Doctor Frankenstein wannabe
horror, he did decry
innocuous experiment genetically
designing generic guy
wrested out bubbling test tube,

manifested nsync with no lie
feted date regarding celebrated
jumping frog of Calaveras
County - chosen birthday
one primate roaming July 2nd, 2020
approximately CCXLIV orbitz
after initial 1776 fourth of July

ushering, igniting, exploding
contentious, prodigious, riotous
racial quandary paramount
issue conscientious Earthlings contend
obliged regarding minecrafted
dissension front and center
across spectrum of humanity

necessary burning issue ****
sapiens unavoidable progressive
equality mandate to occupy
even attention of Holden Caulfield
made household name
courtesy J(erome) D(avid)
Salinger's Catcher in the rye.

No matter yours truly peculiar
looking packaged, oddly
pickled, and puckered, thus
token scapegoat (no kidding),
this ole buck (bully me)

shunned, ostracized, penalized...,
(when just good little boy,
nor baad *** man) never privy
to good luck, cuz I always feel
(felt) excluded, intimidated,

and marginalized (yes in part
resembling a being from an
alien nation (and/or
outer limits thereof)

preferring the twilight zone,
especially when dark shadows
crawl along edge of night,
where nocturnal ghastly
emanations issue forth.

Mine easily becoming hypnotized
allows, enables, and provides
ingress for spectral constituent
shape shifting material
courtesy Matthew Scott Harris,
which disembodied ethereal flotsam
phantasmagorical spirited phenomenon
coalesces around me

gently cocooning, engulfing,
and fabricating yours truly,
whereby I become
transmogrified into an unfurled
magic Harris Tweed Scottish
welcome mat flying
to and fro, hither and yon.
This pencil necked geek
did hair thru the long grapevine
actually following false tidbit
originated within imagination i.e. mine,
while stationed at Macbook Pro
laptop - time already inching close

to hour of rise and shine
yikes still no ****** poem,
though with futility, I keep try'n
past bewitching hour, where body,
now incumbent to get supine
hours after taking warm shower

feeling gloriously, exceptionally,
comfortably, admirably... relaxed,
when captain my captain asinine
idea arose with futility to opine
albeit, ludicrous, outrageous, ridiculous...
carafe out loud if you dare

boot... be ready to make beeline
hive got muppet Hen son powers divine,
no matter yours truly drones design,
nonetheless me thought wine
not share blurb nsync with tickle me Elmo,
who awaits at intersection,

where Sesame Street crosses Pine
unless scariest beastly monster appears
sending shivers, viz small cilia along spine,
though profound this ain't,
only with collusion will
yours truly resign.

In toto now attempt made
to explain primary peculiar poetic bent
composed by vested apoplectic gent,
no matter mental energy he spent
dashing off above irrelevant "ine"
cuz he reached wits end to explain cogent

initial following crux not tangent
to preceding ****** effort in vain spent
devoid of sense, sensibility, or amusement,
thus no continuity despite fervent
effort made to stitch seamlessly
all above, and what comprises rhyming content
all I ask... please be tolerant and lenient.

Symbiotic microbial organisms dwell
within shirt collars interstitial spaces... expel
microscopic pincers to grab well
anchored, harried, styled... hair follicles
constituting tough protein called keratin
poised to strike back, minus stray, tell
tale loose strands easily retract

within scalp pulled tortoise shell,
subsequently scurry pell mell
even those thickly coated with Brylcreem gel
yea, those slippery hard to grab yell
low orange strands with
hair raising pluck subsequently fell
eventually baldly snagged, tugged, uprooted...

formerly hirsute bigwig(s) kvell
issue hair reed clangorous rebel yell
denuded pate(s) appear(ed) shiny and swell,
and resembled see thru billiard ball
clearly (self evidently)
lacking substance within hollowed shell.

Lemme resume kick starting
purported poem neigh
no more stalling, hesitating, fumfering... okay,
thus without further delay
imagine whichever prez
comes to mind standing
about six foot three, and
approximately doth weigh
two hundred and fifty pound orangutan

hood doth don orange-blond "fake" toupee
pensively jabbering, issuing, harrumphing...
(analogous to first Chinese brother
who swallowed the sea)
initially gesticulating comically, then furiously,
and finally impossibly loosed ocean at bay
no chance for treasure hunters to get away.

— The End —