"clinks" poems
I remember they once told me that
music is the best time capsule
It's where people keep their secrets and feelings;
of their insecurities, their mistakes, their sadness, their first cut,
and even the wounds and bruises that invisible to the eye
It's where people let their wildest dreams alive;
of the one they can never reach, the one that will never come back, the one that got away without proper farewell
It's where people store their most sacred memories;
of their first kisses, their first love, their first dance, their first bucket of roses, their first heartbreak
So they were right after all,
Music is dangerous, yet addicting; it can either tear you apart or put the pieces back altogether, it depends on what kind of ghosts living inside the interlude
Thus, be careful who you listen the music with
some melody is louder than the others
**
Today I played the music box you gave me on my seventeenth birthday
How odd it is to realize that music sometimes can be a time machine, how every strings and clinks bring me back to you—towards you
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 8:56 AM UTC
This is a song to celebrate banks,
Because they are full of money and you go into them and all
you hear is clinks and clanks,
Or maybe a sound like the wind in the trees on the hills,
Which is the rustling of the thousand dollar bills.
Most bankers dwell in marble halls,
Which they get to dwell in because they encourage deposits
and discourage withdrawals,
And particularly because they all observe one rule which woe
betides the banker who fails to heed it,
Which is you must never lend any money to anybody unless
they don't need it.
I know you, you cautious conservative banks!
If people are worried about their rent it is your duty to deny
them the loan of one nickel, yes, even one copper engraving
of the martyred son of the late Nancy Hanks;
Yes, if they request fifty dollars to pay for a baby you must
look at them like Tarzan looking at an uppity ape in the
jungle,
And tell them what do they think a bank is, anyhow, they had
better go get the money from their wife's aunt or ungle.
But suppose people come in and they have a million and they
want another million to pile on top of it,
Why, you brim with the milk of human kindness and you
urge them to accept every drop of it,
And you lend them the million so then they have two million
and this gives them the idea that they would be better off
with four,
So they already have two million as security so you have no
hesitation in lending them two more,
And all the vice-presidents nod their heads in rhythm,
And the only question asked is do the borrowers want the
money sent or do they want to take it withm.
Because I think they deserve our appreciation and thanks,
the ********* who go around saying that health and happi-
ness are everything and money isn't essential,
Because as soon as they have to borrow some unimportant
money to maintain their health and happiness they starve
to death so they can't go around any more sneering at good
old money, which is nothing short of providential.
4.5k
When I walk out my door, I hear the birds sing in silent symphony.
At the bus stop, the sounds of low humming engines and rolling tires.
Outstretched clouds of pure white follow horizons.
The percussion of rain clinks on boulders, drumming quietly.
Bee's wings play muted notes on flowers, sweetly collecting.
There is so much more than radio static and dull ads full of ditties.
Nature's ensemble invented the beat, rhythm, and the harmony.
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 2:12 PM UTC
I looked up at her, “Do you know why people drink too much? Why they push themselves over the limit?” It was a sincere question that I wanted to know the answer to.
She set her drink down, looked around the bar, and pursed her lips. Her eyes stared right through me, perhaps searching for words. She looked at me again, with her mouth barely open.
“Not everyone drinks to get drunk, or have a one night stand. People drink to forget. People drink to cope. People drink to be ghosts of their past. Every shotglass that someones drank, its a cry for help. If you listen closely, you can hear what they say through their ***** and salt.” Three clinks from glass hitting the table shortly followed.
“Did you hear it? They said ‘I lost my job’, ‘my boyfriend cheated’, and the most common one that I hear, ‘I’m unhappy’.”
Her eyebrows shot up, a greater understanding shining through her eyes. “I think thats why so many shy people are so good at art. They’re not good at expressing themselves in words, so they do it through lines and colors.”
She stopped speaking for a moment.
“It’s like…your favorite alcoholic drink says a lot about you.”
And with that, she finished her margarita, stood up, and left.
I wonder what that said about her.
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 6:45 PM UTC
the radiator croaks
like bourbon and Barnaby Jones huffing ******
in a lead Zeppelin; and heat clinks like a spider's tooth
on a moist towelette. and the stars hold a bounty of something deeper.
a dread helpless, in mean peace with a vital vital Truth
with no choice, as yet; but a marred County, of Big Thinker.
and you can hear the wrinkles on an Angel's *** and prove
the useless rude. and politely
unseat the morning sun
through the levolor
minds
during eclipse.
during a near
miss
from the dark-side
of a rogue
moon.
the hard way.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 6:51 AM UTC
Moist and monochrome, clouds are gathering
On a Sunday afternoon.
Look up idly from my browsing, at the building 'cross the pool
Winds picks up, the monsoon breezes
Lick at the curtains twelve floors up
On the terrace, woman standing
Arms outstretched, grasp the rail
Legs stressed back, footloose in sandal
Lightly muscled, slightly formed
Kimono slips from lighted shoulder, designer ****** strawberry brown
Fabric glides across the hip-line
Revealing all to me below
Wearing nothing on the landing
Hint of shadow, ***** mound.
From the sliding doors behind her
Steps a man not quite unseen
Waist encircled in one movement, undergarment stripped away
Rigid stillness then the thrusting
Tension mounting at the breath
Woman gasps the O shape forming
Through her silent, varnished lips
Mahler moaning on the ITunes
Waves are forming, silent sound
Thrusting, busting, flexing, ******* arching back crescendo reached
Sun comes out, just at that moment
Roads diverging in the wood
Disconnecting, and uncoupling
Might and maybe should and aught
Trembling fingers, taught in temper
Blink the eye and pop the top
Shaking hands that hold the taper, to the unformed smoking spliff
**** the wreaths in, breathe the thought out
Bottle clinks across the teeth
Unbelieving, unconcealing
Unrelieving, unreleased
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 4:38 AM UTC
Drunk on nostalgia and it's running through my veins tonight
It burns like alcohol, I convince myself it'll be alright
Shot after shot of colorful past memories
The glass clinks as I place it on the table
My hands reach out for something stable
Drunk on nostalgia and its running through my veins tonight
It burns like alcohol, I convince myself it'll be alright
Tipsy and rather wispy, I grasp forward toward you
Nothing is clear, oh dear the world is spinning
This is my inner demons winning
Drunk on nostalgia and its running through my veins tonight
It burns like alcohol, I convince myself it'll be alright
It burns like alcholol
It burns like alcohol
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 11:02 PM UTC
The ball goes down the lane
it clinks on pins
and down they go,
the shoes fit just right
and everyone you know is in sight,
being taught how to spell the letter R
of your name by your great aunt Vi,
seeing your funny aunt Marlene,
being with your grandma Ross,
and going to Sammy's Restaurant
for grilled cheese,
and the pharmacy for pink Trident gum,
all this under one roof.
I run to the lane
the ball goes down the lane
I run to the counter in time
shut off the lane
and CRASH!
no pins fall
the sound of the ball ricochets
from one end to the other;
my mischievous ways fulfilled,
and God I loved the Fanta pop
which my dad, the manager I was
proud of, readily supplied,
the place is now gone
but it's life still goes on
the pins crash even louder,
the disinfectant shoe spray still as smelly,
the oil of the lane still slippery,
and the grilled cheese still as good;
and carried on to the current day...
Georgina would have been proud!
http://www.robross.ca
Nov 23, 2009
Nov 23, 2009 at 11:46 AM UTC
a lone something in the sky
flies near, just by mischance
dazed by the smog,
bowing
and diving
downward
into the parting, cracking,
quaking
bellowing of tar
from the firy, sputtering lungs of these alps
eons worth of cries released in mere mouth-ajar gasps
of the earth diverging and converging
into the debt of always running clean,
running me
always downward,
as in the deep
deep
tessellations of rock
I become.
too still for my own good,
I guess –
another voice on the ash-flow tuffs of
breath to fill the mosaic
of sinewy
stripe-patterned goodbye and bygone
plating into the deep,
deep,
deeper caverns of the unseen sea
slipping off the mantle, an accident with intention,
as an echo caving downward into
nothing,
nothing,
more
nothing
polluting the depths from the palisades,
scripture rupturing lowshore into
surrounding tissues like
igneous stone
dreams of clinks ringing,
of noise
a voice
on the ash-flow tuffs
in the always running-clean water
the purity of which I intercept,
the clear-ness of it;
a sinners window.
through what's left,
I see the clam
another mouth for and of the sea
unseen,
the pearl
as unsoiled as ever
Nov 4, 2021
Nov 4, 2021 at 5:19 PM UTC
Moist and monochrome, clouds are gathering
On a Sunday afternoon.
Look up idly from my browsing, at the building 'cross the pool
Winds picks up, the monsoon breezes
Lick at the curtains twelve floors up
On the terrace, woman standing
Arms outstretched, grasp the rail
Legs stressed back, footloose in sandal
Lightly muscled, slightly formed
Kimono slips from lighted shoulder, designer ****** strawberry brown
Fabric glides across the hip-line
Revealing all to me below
Wearing nothing on the landing
Hint of shadow, ***** mound.
From the sliding doors behind her
Steps a man not quite unseen
Waist encircled in one movement, undergarment stripped away
Rigid stillness then the thrusting
Tension mounting at the breath
Woman gasps the O shape forming
Through her silent, varnished lips
Mahler moaning on the ITunes
Waves are forming, silent sound
Thrusting, busting, flexing, ******* arching back crescendo reached
Sun comes out, just at that moment
Roads diverging in the wood
Disconnecting, and uncoupling
Might and maybe, aught and should
Trembling fingers, taught in temper
Blink the eye and pop the top
Shaking hands that hold the taper, to the unformed smoking spliff
**** the wreaths in, breathe the thought out
Bottle clinks across the teeth
Unbelieving, unconcealing
Unrelieving, unreleased
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 6:15 AM UTC
December tenth stares from a wall,
At a girl with night-colored hair and
Eyes the shade of a twilight
That blurs purple into the darkness.
The girl looks out
At the blurred edges of this night’s snowflakes,
Falling softly past the windowpane
And down to empty streets below.
It has been more than a month since her birthday,
Her escape from fourteen
That twirled around the clock
A hundred or more times before
Finally stopping.
Maybe not a hundred times,
It was only one month
Repeating again and again
With thirty days of sunshine and one of rain,
Only one of rain.
Madoka always dies on rainy days.
A teacup clatters,
Not quite the clinks of shattering glass,
But startling all the same.
The awakened girl looks into
Kind eyes and golden curls left free to spill over a friend’s shoulder.
Still intentional in all movements,
The golden girl continues setting up the rest of that midnight’s meal.
Tiramisu melts upon tongues as
Two friends sit in silence,
And two survivors let their thoughts soften with the disappearing cake.
The quiet reigns,
Until the twilight girl leaves
With the waking of dawn’s light.
A soft “thank you” drifts with the snow behind her
While unnumbered days rise up ahead,
Forever blocking her sight of what’s to come.
Sep 15, 2018
Sep 15, 2018 at 6:41 PM UTC
It's September; cold in the copses,
Feverish in the kitchen.
The sink clinks and exorcises
The china like an Italian sonata.
My lips merge into ether
At the sky, a periwinkle parallax
With the pork lard carbon monoxide
Clouds, at drive with suicide.
My Buddha hisses at the window,
Ripping the tentacles off weedy carrots.
The knives are clever & precise
Hiding in their handled shoals
Like luminescent Jackanapes
Out for the thrill of the ****
The **** of the stake of steak,
A 'Cow'ardly act.
I wrap the red & dead
Into a Beef Wellington.
It is not pretty at all;
But neither am I.
I'll drink tea to keep my peace,
Swallow my spirituality like a pain killer.
The teabag sags its straggled string,
Scolding me.
The pillbox is dead on the edge
Of the ornamented kitchen sill
A lot like me; sullen and teasing.
I wanted to roast my head like a potato
If the pudding *** over boiled,
A cauldron of sugar and cream
Fattening me ugly and crazy.
The weather is miserable; I mustn't lie,
It's enough to make any young woman want to die.
Stirring my thoughts with the dishes,
Trashing potato peels like my wishes.
And the stacks and stacks of kill-me pills
Surround like troops in their barricade cupboards.
I have no allies,
Everyone is asleep;
I curl up like a fat snail and weep
Blackening the words of the miracle-working Priest.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 8:56 PM UTC
Metal softly clinks on ceramic.
Fingers joggle embossed grip,
elevate blades toward moistened hide.
Darkness covers the corner
opposite antique coaster bed
disheveled by fitful sleepers.
Her hair, twirled into tangles
flows on the pillow, nasal noises
mask the music of his movements.
Any light might arouse her,
awakening her to revive
last night's squabble.
Their endless feud
over contentions long forgotten
encircles their days.
Blades glide over chin and cheeks.
Shaving quietly in darkness
avoids anger in the morning.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 3:03 PM UTC
He rises from his grave underneath the looming arm of the willow tree.
His armor, once waxed to a blinding lustre, now rough with rust and dents, clinks and breaks the silence of the narrow land between the sea.
The ground is soft and disturbed, from where man came he has also returned, only to have risen again.
The one he loves is found elsewhere; he seeks while his heart, as withered as his chain-mail, aches.
In love we die to ourselves, like sleep before waking.
There sings a dream within a haze amidst the lucid glow of images, recalling a time where what was once real has long since passed.
Since that passing, decay has taken hold of his life, like wisteria to a pocket of lattice.
The ground was cold, as chilling as his broken heart, and what reason there is for his timely waking is known only to the God who watches above.
The sun is warm and colors the sky in burning orange, just before it sets behind a cloud.
In his mind he sees his love, her shape, her touch, her smile, and opens his eyes to the willow’s trunk.
There in the bark, he sees his love, her shape, her touch, her smile, and with his worm eaten hand, unsheathes his sword, brittle yet as sharp as in the day of its forging.
He says a prayer in an ancient tongue, and whips the air with his sword and stabs the heart of the willow.
Like an earthquake’s rumble the tree splits in two.
In the opening holds a skeleton wrapped in yellow lace.
He has found his love, yet weeps for she is not the same.
She is not the same.
She will never be who she once was.
She has returned to the earth, where all men go to die.
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 5:38 PM UTC
's favorite meal is not children as you may expect
it is old people, the elderly near death
they taste better to him
he fantasizes their whole lives with every bite
whose heart like bottles or ransom clinks against
itself eating the useless parts of its own stomach
rotors of bone hum about revenge
the earth clones pale enigmatic cyanide
my spawn sweat bourbon and bleed sweet milk
I'm the Tower
Look Look
let us hold eachother here until the dark blossoms
into an invisible canine snarl
crushed by feathers at a
tomb-encrusted countryside
wax swans bleed from
their eyes and bulls inside run
in circles around ancient ice prisons
Look a clock
century weary mariners
gape in disbelief
at a yawning dawn
of cadmium
on the tongue of
a bristling free roaming
continent of
gothic salt
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 8:31 PM UTC
He goes to the basement, without a word he flys
To grab a sufficent sourse of numbness
To write freely and speak not so clearly
But to engage of times of the unknown and times of Modern times
The weather tide, the things of our demise
And the music rides, and the glass clinks
Goodbye to on time
hello to sweet dreams highs
Rummy is a card game
*** isn't for the hard weak
It's not win to fame when you're
Slugging back ***
It's not fun, it gags and try's to overthrow your reflexes
To misconcept your reasons
Why *** is for pirates and not for mere kitchen writers
Sep 2, 2015
Sep 2, 2015 at 5:30 AM UTC
The body of a woman's neutral fineness embraces the chords of my steel guitar; laughing about all the points that I've been chasing after. Or just running away- no more for today. Christ, you slipped but lied too many times before, and while you plunge your wrists into your knives, I thought we had a second chance. But that was before, you throw sticks and stones and store your anger in the three fingers of the drink that clinks against our first date when I bought you a 25¢ ring. It was a children's vending machine, that brought me three years of happy things.
I don't want to be fake with you anymore. So go and find your Milky Way. I'm staying dumb, Britni I'm in trouble. All the stakes are different when you are chasing yesterday's killing.
And even the sound of the gunshots don't overcome the voice of the human tongue, in violence and war and all that's abhorred, even the smallest vesper or prayer a whisper of three little words can always be heard, even the faintest whisper can always be heard, as long as the voice that says it is honest and pure.
I was too tight to drive with your hands over my eyes, even in Inverness valley and South Santa Cruz, the wheelbarrow of berries I brought home for supper, ingested in each little bite we cut in half, was the best of the worst time that we ever had. And always we were. In love. In parking lots, playgrounds, at concerts, on airplanes, in bedrooms, custodian closets, laundry mats, and carrying our nap sacks, while we attempted to sleep and hide all night in the Shedd Aquarium. I just should have known better, it'd wouldn't be easy, with you I'm always wrestling sharks with a mirror, your pink sugar perfume from the chains on my wrists tied up across the room. While you didn't trust me I was always at home. Trust isn't love unless it's enough, unless it's enough to quit drugs. It's symptoms are the same as that of great madnesses.
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 8:05 PM UTC
I start with a backhoe, displacing
brain-sized clumps of earth.
A few fickle particles escape
between the imposing metal teeth.
The mechanized bucket clinks
against a rigid texture.
I grab a shovel, bending my spine
to the task at hand.
Pretty soon the shovel only scoops up
unsatisfying fistfuls of dust.
It is cast aside for the broom,
revealing the smooth shape underneath.
A dingy film is spread around
by the coarse fibers of the broom.
I grab my toothbrush, furiously scrubbing
the chrome-plated formation.
Now all passersby
can bite my shiny metal
victory.
Jul 10, 2012
Jul 10, 2012 at 7:31 PM UTC
#When moon like an empty plate
mocks the hunger
the famished bones hunt for a morsel.
Clinks of cutlery fires the belly
aroma of meals calls like a melody
*there's a table full of happy faces
chewing and chuckling and chattering
picking eating dropping and littering
their plates are full aha never less
food after food over food always
a fire in oven a bed of clean sheet
never they're they're never short of heat
eyes that are heavy droop easy soon
behind tightly shut windows to the moon*.
Snuffed out will ***** out all traces of light
they break into wails rending the night
nothing now moves over the dead town
except the bones with moon as the crown.
Nov 23, 2016
Nov 23, 2016 at 8:47 AM UTC
Inhale all of those felt bones. Observe. Skeletons will dance in the dark for you..
Hang them up. Tilt your head. Curl your hair. Bite your lip. Wonder at them, feel them
as a thing
too.
Wonder at
how they
diminish us
with such
gentle clinks
of their being.
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 3:26 PM UTC
When my heart beats
aggravated and aggressively
through my chest and clinks
my muscles, my blood flushes
my flesh and fools my mind
into thinking it is more than man.
When the words will not walk the plank
it isn't due to being dope or blank
perhaps it is my agitated state,
Flushed with flustered feelings
flooding forward and festering in the fetal position
inside my cells, banging the brains out of each membrane.
The last of my nerves being burned by a blessing
in disguise, as they often come,
When I bite my tongue.
Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 5:26 PM UTC
They say we have two halves of a whole brain.
Two sections that govern our actions
Like tyrants that ride horses with reigns made
Of nerves and weald weapons that shoot out sparks
Of neurons across our synapses
The lands of our minds that dips and rises like the Andes mountains
Amoung cerebellum fields
Where nervous horses hoofs trample
Nervous systems flowers and bend their stem
Into an L shaped pendulum that swings
Unevenly over corpus callosum oceans
That separate left and right.
Art and reason.
Two separate sets of war torn warriors fighting,
One with methodically measured maps
Marked with red flags between concurred lands of logic
And one with holistic metal armor that clinks and clanks
Around soldiers making music for them to march to
They fight over proper ways of reason
And creative formulations
Of treasons that ought not be crossed
Their trenches the rivens in our brains
That wet rot their feet with slimy blood and
Membrane juices
The left speaking in tongues
That right cannot hear when not
Set on staff lines
Or painted onto animal skin canvas
That once covered similar brain battles
Between right and left
Only to be cut and sectioned off
In improper fractions that yearn to be whole.
If only the sides would sign treaties of peace
With pens that pinch fibers together and bind
Halves into wholes.
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 6:44 PM UTC
We drink wine
As the weary wings of the dove
Labor over restless graves
Weaving between the carnival cruises
Drifting along the red canal
Three hundred cubits long,
Fifty wide and thirty tall
Rivers red overflow
The cypress whip cracks
Licking the ****** hide
With a serrated tongue
Ripped from gnawed ******* Raw
From the desperate lips of brothers and sisters.
Rivers red overflow
With the whimpers of last breaths
Muted by the blade of violent delight
And teeth grinding machines
We sit in our squeaking rubber boots
Cutlery clinks and clacks, saws, severs, slice.
Rivers red overflow
With an anguished unholy
Screeching sound
Deaf are our saintly ears
We drink wine
As the weary dove
Returns empty beaked
Once more to his perch
And preens his scarlet feathers
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 10:56 AM UTC
I trace places you used to touch
Looking for echoes of your fingertips
I light candles where you used to stand
Trying to recreate the warmth you exuded
I wrap your sweaters around my body
Mimicking the sensation of your arms around me
I listen to the clinks of wine glasses
Pretending we're back on our first date
I stare at your lips in your pictures
Wishing I had kissed you longer
I thought losing you would get easier
But I miss you more every minute
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 11:11 AM UTC
The ice it clinks
the straw it stirs
you're making drinks
that won't drown her
She's up all night
you put her to bed
but she puts up a fight
falls asleep with the drink in her hand
Sneak out for a smoke
she's fast asleep anyway
when I came back, she awoke
baby why'd you go away?
But shh you're there now
she's already passed out again
with her little body curled around
yours, she's asleep with a grin.
s.mndi
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 12:05 AM UTC