"cliffsides" poems
heard the mountaintop
be scraped clear of snow this morning.
some angry man
shouting up the cliffsides
he said:
"take it all and quickly.
before my hands find the strength to close.
take me into the calm
this thin air carries my tears too easily."
he said:
"you were right about my legs
standing for the sake of looking down at you
scared of laying things bare"
he cried
"i was wrong about you
that the words meant something more
and that things get better in the end"------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"that things get better in the end"
smothered in something icywarm
Mar 7, 2022
Mar 7, 2022 at 6:24 PM UTC
Excuse my drifting-
I didn't mean to kiss you like that,
I was just trying to swallow the space between us somehow
because I think tonight the moon was stillborn.
All the tides seem broken.
The space is dragging with plaintive collectibles=
complacency in yellow-teeth cliffsides, and all the empty shells
in which we'd listened for the corners of our ocean
and heard it ebbing, relenting, reaching.
It rippled on our skins and made us twinkle then.
Now I'm missing you, the grating bottle-glass shards
are what my headaches are made of
and are what fill up my shoes.
When our spines unravelled, I heard rain-
letter-writing weather, bathtub weather,
knitwear-perhaps-on-the-beach weather-
but the puddles were coming from the sun.
I don't know quite when summer blew in.
We would have found canvas chairs in the park.
You would be taking pictures of yellow daffodils
in black and white with your big heavy camera,
and laughing at each sneeze because I'm allergic.
There's really no need now to listen in shells
for the clutter leftover in elegy-
platitudinous phrases, photographs, plenty more fish in the sea.
Words couldn't ever weigh the depths of it.
Only abrade and erode it.
Yours is a world that, for immeasurable gaps
and for whirlpools and whale sounds,
I am not a part of anymore.
But please excuse my drifting.
I will always love the echoes
and walk along the beach in search of shells.
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 11:25 AM UTC
I think the sea will welcome you
For I've seen it in your eyes a hundred times,
And heard it crashing through your voice.
I think it has much to teach you in wildness
For you hold in you the same immense, awesome power
It wields when it crushes ships
And batters cliffsides smooth,
And the same silvered grace
It sways with when the moon trails her fingers through the waves on clear nights.
It does not apologize for its savagery,
For the way it rakes its fingers across the shore,
The way it takes.
It cannot be small.
It cannot be meek.
It cannot be silent.
It cannot be
Tame-
Its gentleness and its violence are lovers, ever embracing
And it has never wondered
Why.
It IS, and it is
Exquisite in its rawness.
It can be smooth as glass, murmuring its great hush to the sands
And yet it can within a moment
Rage!
With no shame, no restraint,
Uncontainable and
Unignorable.
I see all of this beneath your skin when your face darkens and you think no one has noticed.
I see your vastness, pressing out,
And I see you soothe it back into silence.
I see it and it moves me toward it like the tide
With its feral beauty,
Yes-
I imagine the ocean will rejoice to rise around you and hold you up as a part of it,
For there are some people- I've said as much-
Who belong to the earth in a special way.
People whose feet the ground worships
And whose face the wind kisses
And whose fingers the grasses reach for.
People whose eyes
The sea lives in.
I imagine it waits for you.
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 12:25 PM UTC
deep below the crashing waves
that crush the apostles into cliffsides
and way past underwater caves
inhabited by mysterious sealife
somewhere below there are fools' graves
drowned by invisible riptides
And the ocean consumes their remains
indifferent to their demise
and though the living die
the killers still make their living
Even stealing tears from their eyes
the cold depths have no misgivings
And without a chance to say goodbye
The heart of the sea is unforgiving
Jan 21, 2018
Jan 21, 2018 at 8:44 PM UTC
What should you do with a second-hand muse--
inspiration spent, and by his mistress abus’d?:
Feed him some grapes under cliffsides and clouds,
sit him under a tree; read him verses aloud.
Make him a spectre of love unrequited,
tell him of enemies that you’d like smited.
Recount transgressions, and triumphs and losses;
ponder Cruel Fate and the luck of coin tosses.
Tell him of all of your sins now excused--
how the Judge and the Jury have been recused.
And that any dream, urge, or whim can be used--
but you simply cannot go on as a-mused.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 9:00 PM UTC
the anti-siren alarm song
collapses the dimensions of the oneiric realm,
fidgeting infinitesimally,
the tangled engine of acidic tubes
combusts last nights pepperoni bacon chorizo pizza
all of sparta trembles
stalagmites shake loose and dust the bedclothes,
cemented eye-lashes decalcify and split,
as two stumbling gargantuan steps
off the promontory of your bed
lead an unguided hand to the light-switch
the florescent hum gnaws at you
a singular parameter in the speaking mind's running mouth
“caffeinate me”
a hill, no, a mountain, no, a sheer abyss
'the stairs', a godly ascent
an ascent for winged creatures of light
creatures with legs for arms, zeppelin-like centipedes
legs whose construct are Dalían,
nightmarish vaulting apparatuses,
whose step is a bound and whose bound is a flight,
as if all of the thirteen foot-tall steps become cliffsides
and all of the cliffsides become interdimensional worm-holes
as the distance between two mustard seeds grows
and exceeds the circumference of the universal ellipse
we see our premonitions are of infinite potentiality.
resignedly, we take the first step
the next twelve follow succinctly.
we reach the ochre chamber of caffeine
only to be halted by a question
a sempiternal question,
a question of mythic, unverifiable stature
a plaguing question,
a question rooted
in our achey-breaky hearts and nigh-arthritic bones,
rooted in the seeping pathos
of our ritualized morning zombie-shuffle:
but it doesn't get asked today, we drink coffee
the world is right-side up again.
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 10:47 AM UTC
To be
Alone
Lonesome solace where the
Complacent
Sit in a circle
Criss crossed I saw him
Lie in the middle
Smirk wrapped against teeth
As they pushed deeper and deeper inside me
Alone
Void of lonesome
I didnt drive in fear while the knife wielded into my spine
I led the cowardly
Edge of the lake standing
His needle just rested against his forearm
Poison barely made it into
The vein next to
Thick lined tattoo
Said he barely felt pain
The past tense
Was edible
It melted into euphoria
Forgetfulness was a privilege
I could be consumed by moments
Hours
Where his ringing noises didnt
Completely devour
Where he didnt catapult me into
Leaping fenses
Shoving cliffsides
I'm capsized
Defined by an adlib
By bullet holes and
Splinters
Wish I could have wrapped my fists tighter
Made the pigment of my beating heart
Lighter.
Aug 19, 2017
Aug 19, 2017 at 6:53 PM UTC
What a fool to be afraid of falling
Asking for reassurance as though I needed more
than response, a hand held, a kiss planted
drunken nights and sober days
"If love is not passionate, do not participate"
What a fool to not have trust in yourself
a foot hovering above a pool or
Pacing thoughts trying to ride a skateboard
Trust yourself, but do not trust him just yet
but what a fool
To be say it is as though I haven't fallen already
18 flights of stairs, each individual bump
From every single height we have watched the world from
The cliffsides of the Appalachians
The 1800s towers of Bowman
the landscapes that connect beach to sea, wondering when we'll reach over there
An abandoned building east of the city enamoured in fluorescent light
A skytop birdsnest of an arboretum
from the back of old Reggie staring onto pavement in warm summer rain
I fall from such great heights
clamored on each step,
I do not know if there is a bottom
but I surely hope not
Dec 31, 2016
Dec 31, 2016 at 1:26 AM UTC
When the wind hits the sea,
The sea hits back,
Crashing against itself,
Sea spray carries in the heavy breeze,
The sun watches from behind the clouds,
The unsettling water climbs Cliffsides,
When the wind hits the sea,
The God of the ocean strikes the sky
With his trident,
Clouds fill with rain,
And let it go,
It meets the wind and fills the sky,
Side by side,
Perform a storm,
When the wind hits the sea
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 1:25 PM UTC
The reflection of grey light from the sun above the clouds reveals a greasy film on my arm.
A mess I made.
I can smell my stink and it turns my stomach.
You probably still have grains of my dandruff under your fingernails
despite how much you’ve tried to wash them off by now.
I clenched my fists in the chocolate cake loam trying to cover the smell of me
in something forgiveable. But
it didn’t work, and now the soil reeks
of my wretched sweat.
I picture the rings of Saturn.
Concentric circles in the silent dark.
They are perfect and I am filthy.
I picture the umber canyons just before dawn. I picture
cacti living on cliffsides beneath the infinite stars.
They are perfect. And I
am filthy.
Just by living I am filthy.
Every breath I take carries the noxious odor of me.
Diluting the perfect blue sky.
Purifying fire unmake me. Break the lattice of my flesh. Swallow me up.
Make me clean.
May 23, 2018
May 23, 2018 at 8:17 PM UTC
I stand amidst blue eyes.
Hearts, flowers, life, tower around my soles. Creation obeys my pattern.
Unending hills in the cliffsides of my sights' peak silence my dreams, blinding my imagination's capacity. Blinding my livlihood's achievments. Blinding me.
Wind throws growth off coarse. I feel the cold air stain my scars. I feel the life dissipate through my eyes and arms.
Never-ending hate drowns my guilt, proving the impossible to be impossible. Ice, fire, gravel wounds me. Their wounds fuel what remain.
You stand amidst brown eyes.
Ashes, thorns, death, tower around your souls. Creation obeys your pattern.
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 2:53 AM UTC
whales rise from the sea like blimps,
soaring,
we see them from rooftops,
plainly distorted,
through unclean high-rise windows,
in cars, gridlocked and craning
our fragile human necks,
inhaling smog,
blowholes struggling,
against the urban skyline—
they pop
there are no more whales anymore,
more and more, we wanted,
until there were no more
oceans, forests,
plains, only rocks, cliffsides and amenities
in which we churn, keeping our
heads down,
chins tucked safely,
never looking up, lest we see
the exploded whales raining down
on us, a final rain
of guilt and consequence
Oct 5, 2021
Oct 5, 2021 at 3:06 PM UTC
The power of the sea is air born,
its force snapping in my face.
Invisible waves whipping through 4 layers of clothes.
Thrashing Pines.
Shearing limbs.
Natural pruning.
Solitary phantom bashing cliffsides,
spinning leaves, contagious dervish dances overtaking the mountain.
A thousand Rumi letters taken flight
burning atoms, spilling longing.
Moaning captains, ship less,
praying for strength,
fighting night swells,
the power of the sea is swirling sky
kidnapping forest litter
no ransom
an icy thief
cracking lips
piercing skin
howling like the ache
of 80 million prisoners
who wish to be as free
as it sounds.
The endless flying whooshing
happening beyond walls,
sloping through the curiosity of
an entire world,
penetrating dreams like a cosmic ghost.
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 6:08 PM UTC