"constrictor" poems
Oh, I'm being eaten
By a boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
A boa constrictor,
I'm being eaten by a boa constrictor,
And I don't like it--one bit.
Well, what do you know?
It's nibblin' my toe.
Oh, gee,
It's up to my knee.
Oh my,
It's up to my thigh.
Oh, fiddle,
It's up to my middle.
Oh, heck,
It's up to my neck.
Oh, dread,
It's upmmmmmmmmmmffffffffff . . .
106.7k
Mighty arms give a tender cuddle from behind
Eternal heater
Sensation of chest and stomach against spine
"tell me a secret"
soft lips on foreheads and noses
narwhals nudge
"I've got a secret ..."
"What's that?"
"You make life, interesting ..."
" … Good or bad?"
"Good ... you show me things I've never done before."
My name is Barnacle, calcified to you
Your name is Boa constrictor, squeezing till the last breathe
Inadequate sum of memories, so
drifting nowhere any time soon
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 3:23 AM UTC
I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul now had complete control.
He fought kicking and screaming
the night the men in white came to take him on his final journey
like a great wildebeest struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken down by young lions. The way so many had said he
probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail throughout his life from the very beginning.
That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed staring out the huge ceiling to floor window of the medical centre at the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of rows of stationary lights and fluid winding rows of transient lights in-between and thought how the light of this window is just one of many thousands.
At that moment it seemed more like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields worlds above this city of light.
My father had spent most of his life just a short six-mile drive from here under the scattered lights of his hometown.
He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"
Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky snake
handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.
It seemed like it all caught up to his body. But it was good to see much of the bitterness and bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.
On that night compassion ruled the day.
I could not say it then but it has been many years, where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.
In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up from a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.
Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard. All I could do then was sit by his bed and lean in close to his ear and sing softly his favourite hymns.
By morning his lifeless
dilapidated body laid in the fetal position. His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.
All I can do now is hang my head and think of how weak and frail we humans truly are.
Like compassion forged with objectivity, weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of strength. We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
the pedestals the former is made of to somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 11:40 AM UTC
I've handed you
every missed opportunity I have ever had with a beautiful,
intelligent man. You are now
the object of my affection, like
everyone who came before you wasn't real,
only practice, but the sting of their rejection
has lasted. It's still burned into my memory.
I am giving it all to you.
Please hold it, for a little while, don't let
my chaos burn your skin, juggle it
between fingers and let it wind around your arm
like a boa constrictor.
You have the weight of the world
on your shoulders, it's up to you to redeem
all mankind, in my mind.
Please, smoke out the bad memories
from the empty, needy cavern of my mind.
Please, replace them with good, with your
jokes, and smile, and kisses on the
small of my back.
******* Bukowski was right, you have
no knife, the knife is mine. But I gave
it to you. Sharp as hell.
Please, don't use it
yet.
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 11:39 PM UTC
You tell me you're empty
And I know you want my sympathies
My acknowledgement of the problem
But all I can give you is the gawking gaze
Of a child on his first trip to the zoo
Leaving smudges on the snake tank as he tries to fathom
How something could be so alien and smooth and powerful.
You tell me you're empty
And all I can think is
That I have not a moment of my life to compare that to-
A day without suffering, without pain or danger,
Without that or joy so intense it tips right back over into treachery
I have no memory of any such day
To draw from for empathy.
I stand and stare at you
Empty you
And I know your sadness should be respected
And I know I shouldn't wonder so perversely
What it must feel like
Not to feel
But I can't help it
I feel like I'm standing on the other side of glass
Staring into the beady eyes of a boa constrictor
Wondering irresistibly
What its embrace must feel like for the mice it devours.
I know you are suffocating
But I
Am drowning
And I wonder
What empty feels like.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 7:49 PM UTC
Fight the fight, and
Rage into the silent night.
Bid goodbye only to
Hubris. Trust in instinct,
Trust in insight.
What you know and can prove,
Not what you hope inside.
Love, guard, and take the word of
Those who are allies;
Act only in turn, when you are more wise.
Barter acting in plain sight with guise;
It is not the sacrifice of advantage,
Nor the trade of surprise.
Keep to your bonds, keep to promise;
Protect the people, protect the country.
Protect the planet; nature, everything.
Uplift virtue, promote democracy,
Prioritize education, ensure & expand rights
Love your neighbor like a brother,
Cherish your community;
Across collective nations,
We can have paradise
Jan 30, 2024
Jan 30, 2024 at 1:22 PM UTC
To craft a poem
is to carve a small wooden figurine
of an Arabian horse
out of a redwood tree—
a trinket
whose sole purpose is to gather dust.
And when comes
the boa constrictor of slow sleep,
you, young author, will have this poem
as the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt
had their treasures—
beads, idols, canopic jars—
accompanying them in their tombs
like a crowd of onlookers
surrounding the silent scene of a car crash.
Novelty items, family members, memories—
words to be whittled down
into useless artifacts.
Aug 8, 2010
Aug 8, 2010 at 5:26 PM UTC
Ugly and repulsive
nek twisted backwards
facing forward
my path twisted
raining sulphuric acid
looking up
eyes and mouth wide open
I'm thirsty..
taken drugs
crack, **** krokodile
the rain biting through my bones
necrosis from the drugs have made their way home.
tongue kissed a komodo dragon
wearing a boa constrictor for a scarf
parasites eating away at my innards
so I don't have to ****
and Imma just go on
floor made purely out of bullet ants
keep walking this path of insanity
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 12:31 PM UTC
The fuzzy hug that never loosens its grasp
Clutching as a barbed wire hugs and puppies cuddle and love,
whiskers and noses nuzzling, the straitjacket loves your mind,
wishes it could just squeeze the nightmares out and streaming as juices from an orange,
but its might only pressurizes, the more you fight the more you hurt,
bruising our precious straitjacket heart, he’s here to help us
take the tasks of fettering hands
just to hug and coil about us
Learn to love them, the society blanket,
the crazy snuggler, the bunny constrictor
Crazy’s not useful and our little straitjacket cures our woes
strangling us within linen cotton folds
simmer our fires
breaking our bronc
hushing our tantrum cry
It’s the mother we Learn to love
Kin that keeps us in heavenly grip
The Straitjacket’s here for all our insanists
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:29 AM UTC
tactile touching
a severed caress
a withered arrangement
the sort that belongs
to an abstract expressionist painting
suspended for all time
like a contemplated constrictor
who has asked
why he wishes to split
his personality in three
but has been denied an answer
instead gazes upon the
disunity of his vision
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
To quarry a foe is
not unlike a boa constrictor's badge of honour,
even better on guilty birthdays!
Gulp like a Landlord,
his galoshes wears thin carrying
the weight of occasional flooding in cellars!
Bev looks good in her Onesie,
only because she likes her time less marked ,
but she sleep 24/7 in it anyway!
Dec 19, 2012
Dec 19, 2012 at 5:13 PM UTC
it has been two and a half months
(really it’s been seven years, three months,
fifteen days, twelve hours, five minutes and thirty-three
seconds)
but my jacket is back.
(except it smells like you)
acoustic guitar, the redolence of ****
and mistakes pungent in the sort of summer air.
but my jacket is back.
(except it tastes like you)
i felt your footsteps, imagined the way your fingers
held my hair, tight, yanking. a doll with loose threads.
but my jacket is back.
(except it looks like you)
your teeth reminded me of the oceans i could never find,
your eyelashes like razors begging to slice me open.
but my jacket is back.
(except it feels like you)
it felt heavy in my bruised hands, your hug
was a boa constrictor killing prey. main course.(dessert)
but my jacket is back.
yet when i wear it,
all i can think is you mounting, hands
rigid, your fingers venom.
i cannot breathe with it on
Aug 10, 2013
Aug 10, 2013 at 1:26 AM UTC
I think about you everyday and I know you think I'm insane. you're the reason I take those pills when I can't sleep and you're the reason I don't wake up in the morning and gag when I eat and I still feel the way you touched my heart (what's left of it) and I remember how you felt pushing into me like the wind blowing a cloud with such force and comfort and is it bad i remember the way your nails looked and the way the hair peekabooed out of your nose like a hare in a hole and your arms soft and strong when you wrapped yourself around me like a boa constrictor with its prey
but let that not be just a metaphor for the way that you held me, I mean you squeezed the life out of me with your anger and jealousy, you used me and ate what was left of the security I thought I had. If you hadn't killed me when you left I wouldn't miss you so bad. You took parts of me I didn't know Id miss, you took parts of me I didn't know I had. You gave me a new name and bad habits. Now I smoke when I think of you and I miss sharing a cigarette with you in the car like we didn't have a **** in the world. We were lonely sinners that no one cared about. Who'd give a **** about the couple that cut each other and snuck out at midnight to make love and lied our ***** off because we didn't have anything better to do. Partners in crime, slowly killing ourselves, slowly killing each other.
Jul 18, 2014
Jul 18, 2014 at 11:15 AM UTC
My bones were vibrating,
Grinding the bite out of my teeth.
My arms wrapped around my stomach
Tighter than a boa constrictor
Trying to stop the shaking
The vibrating
Originating in the pit of my hopeless stomach.
The churning black hole that could erupt at one twitch.
I ****** at the side of my finger,
Avoiding the nausia,
And avoiding the acid nipping at my tonsils.
Chewing away at my bouncing teeth.
My hunched back leaned against the brick,
Spine curved into my shoulders
Enclosing my frozen chest,
My nose threatening to fall off.
And at that time
I wanted to be anywhere
Just to
Get away
From
There.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 10:28 PM UTC
She ascends the plane. The plane might ascend.
She immediately comprehends
How on earth will she stifle her cries
''You won't be on earth'' her head replies.
The metal box purrs and roars to life
She doesn't have time to say her goodbyes.
...Tempestuous earthquakes in the sky
Preposterous thoughts infect the mind
Of falling, falling through the clouds...
Fear take hold and pulls her down...
Faster, faster into the ground...
Awakes. Inhales. A bawling baby fails
To lift her dropping spirits. Exhales.
Relief. No mask required to breath.
The hell that dwelt inside her mind
Was deeper than what's beneath.
Complimentary napkins to the head
On board cardboard digested
Fear is weaker but it clings
Like a constrictor on the wing
'Snakes on a plane' she thinks
A smile that's almost willing
Surfaces, but the plane shakes it away.
Smiles are reserved for better days
For now she's bolted to the chair
She returns to the nightmares...
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 7:50 PM UTC
My Heart has been asleep.
Boa constrictor
coiled --
squeezing
with all his strength.
Heart numb,
there is no feeling
constrict --
tighter, tighter --
I cannot breathe.
He releases my Heart;
he does not want it
any longer.
Heart still asleep --
I cannot move.
To move is to feel pain.
Heart mangled --
he slithers away,
so unfeeling --
he cannot love.
But slowly,
light, dark,
light, dark,
Heart begins -- ever so slowly
to tingle.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 3:51 PM UTC
Feeble is love.
Weak as a kitten.
Indiscreet and tiny.
Hidden in corners.
Lands in laps unexpectedly.
Feisty as a puppy.
With needle teeth he nips.
Needle teeth and eyes combined.
Snares sweetheart, love is blind.
Puppy love hides in corners.
Think love is simple?
He's not.
A constrictor, he is waiting to crush you.
Before he slithers slowly away.
Revealed yesterday.
Departing today.
(C) LIVVI X 2014
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 1:51 AM UTC
So, here's this:
Every third breath is made by a boa constrictor.
He lives in my ribcage, you see,
and sometimes like to see what his musculature can do compared to mine.
If every night star story started with a clear light,
what would happen to cloud cover?
What would happen to all the silver linings?
I felt what you meant when you said sometimes you yearn more for a body to hold,
someone whose arms say more than their breath,
than their breadth.
Boa knew it all along,
but I've just been letting him grow and gripe.
I knew it all along, that it would feel better then worse,
as he grew he'd need more space,
he'd demand more space and take up more space.
Except I always thought space was just a place for stars,
and if you needed to moonbounce,
you always had another planet available.
Except you didn't, and I didn't know if I wanted one, or a different you.
I want bits and pieces, I want to build my own puzzle with preference,
500 pieces that are hand picked by yours truly.
A puzzle is still a puzzle if all the pieces mostly fit, right?
Even in designated cutouts, with enough use they fade,
and become questionable in their habits.
"Are you sure this goes here? These reds are not the same"
"Sure hon, it's been like that for years, it's supposed to be like that".
When do you seek your better fitting other half, though?
Boa can twine, at least. Better to be fluid and versatile, than stock and habit.
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 11:31 PM UTC
How many miles stand
Between myself and the end of time
The edge of space
It crushes me like chasmic pressure
Dividing and devouring me whole
I am swallowed into eons
And digested into molecules
Like reverse osmosis of a soul
Stripped naked and clean and pure
Only to be
Dumped into a landfill
A waiting line
To start again, to try again
And this is
Where I meet you
And you meet me
And I witness our repulsive quantum entanglement
The one that pulls my discordant little heart
Straight into my constrictor knot of a stomach
I often find myself awaking
Into another dream
Of a dream
I once had
Where I was floating
In the water
There was nothing above me
There was nothing beneath me
It was an isolation of my incidental world
A realization of simulation
And then something touched me
I am stuck in this
Mariana Trench of universal consumption
Where something follows
And lingers behind me
Like a shadow that's not
Quite a shadow but rather
A friend
Or an enemy
Only time will tell
We are part
Of the same brush stroke
Made by the
Same artist
That we will never meet
Or know about
Until the painting is incinerated
And we become the same ash
The same particles
We began with
To begin with
I am an
Unidentified flying object
Up here looking down
At my reflection looking up
And all I see is
Nothing
And everything
And you are somewhere in between
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 10:18 AM UTC
I've escaped cupid's clutches many times
I locked my heart away each time he came to say "Here you go"
He shoots his arrows at me, and I block them away
Except for a couple days ago..
My wall had fallen and my heart was broken
"Here you go"
Though I was upset about this, my heart suddenly restitched and I've fallen in love again
Now I feel like I've been sentenced to death
Each moment spent that I can't look into those big, beady eyes of his, I'd rather be dead
I'm just scared to get broken again
But, **** his smile brings all of butterfly world into my stomach
And I can't stomach the fact that I'm plummeting into my own mind's demise
"He'll hurt you like the others" My brain claims
Yet, my heart says otherwise.
I've avoided cupid many times
However, I know I can't evade my fate
So, in this state of mind,
I'm fully bonded by this Boa constrictor of hopes and doubts
Or maybe I'm just overthinking
Maybe I should just listen to cupid for once
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 3:09 PM UTC
With eager eyes
we spin the dice
Nebulous haze
Frantic gaze
Gates agape
Let's start the chase
Everybody's in for the craze
There's no time to waste
Flushed faces
Biting snares
Constrictor snakes
We rush in till we cascade
Not to realize
This is but a masquerade
Chasing our tails
In a daze
We stumble
Helter skelter
Life ask you to be in control of your pace
Stay calm, at ease, and humble
Do not listen to all the drunkard's tales
because no one's going to pay for your bail
Do what's right
until we reach the finish line
With dimes in our eyes
Prepared
for a deep slumber in our graves
-A Race To Our Graves, Margaret Austin Go
Nov 13, 2014
Nov 13, 2014 at 11:34 AM UTC
Some of us never see beyond the veil.
Some of us live constricted
And act rough and unafflicted
Like a crocodile caught in the choke of a boa constrictor
Dying
Everyday
We wish to live.
Some of us never feel beyond our television set
And when the bet is on for the black stallion
We watch with eyes gone wide
And wide
And wider still
Until
The race is won.
It's done!
The illusion was fun,
But it wasn't your win.
It was symbolic and yes
Yes
Yes,
You took sides.
You thought you could know who was wrong,
Who could ride...
But that tide was a movement far distant from you.
And you laughed
And you cried.
You were born
And you died.
In your blank, black worn stare
You decided to confide
In the screen.
A box, a machine
Representing a reality you ceased to believe
Could exist.
Some of us never manage to truly face a challenge
Because life exists freely upon great silver platters,
And the whole great wide world waits like a buffet
Free of line-ups
So all food and thought is conveyed
To your brain
Like old, stale bread.
Somethings not right;
Beyond thought, left unsaid.
And through all doors of suffering,
You kick and you scream!
"This is not how they said it would be on TV!"
So despite all the knowledge,
And your free ******* college
University never taught you to truly acknowledge
The great Godly cosmos
Or the holy osmosis of truth and contraption of stars spread like roses
In minds
Afflicted by
The human condition.
We're all on a mission.
Some of us say there's a great old technician
Who paid our tuition
To the great school of life
Yet admission
was granted
to few.
Contradiction, I find to be honest contrast
Like AdBusters right next to old capitalist class
Or a pet on the cheek to a slap on the ***
Now the bell rings;
Nothing good ever lasts
But the point all along has been to learn how to dance
To the music.
Feb 8, 2012
Feb 8, 2012 at 2:09 AM UTC
This is not the Victorian Era.
Let my body wander where it wants to.
I have no desire to be trapped
like a mouse in the grip of a boa constrictor.
I want to feel free to love
however I want to.
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 1:05 AM UTC