"cork" poems
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy
As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
41.9k
six lanes
in a sight line
past the cedar shims
and trim tempered insert
past the washed mural
and water stained tiles
covered eyes
fight for focus
over cork strung ties
and dark distant bridges
foot crawlers on lemon pegs
teaming
under clouded halogen light
dreamers contend
in a variation of chant
(throwing it off in a
drawl sequence)
a glimpse of the guard
and warm towel assignment
forge comforting relief
in a task filled day
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 9:17 PM UTC
Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.
I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!
That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine
the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.
26.1k
having the low down blues and going
into a restraunt to eat.
you sit at a table.
the waitress smiles at you.
she's dumpy. her *** is too big.
she radiates kindess and symphaty.
live with her 3 months and a man would no real agony.
o.k., you'll tip her 15 percent.
you order a turkey sandwich and a
beer.
the man at the table across from you
has watery blue eyes and
a head like an elephant.
at a table further down are 3 men
with very tiny heads
and long necks
like ostiches.
they talk loudly of land development.
why, you think, did I ever come
in here when I have the low-down
blues?
then the the waitress comes back eith the sandwich
and she asks you if there will be anything
else?
snd you tell her, no no, this will be
fine.
then somebody behind you laughs.
it's a cork laugh filled with sand and
broken glass.
you begin eating the sandwhich.
it's something.
it's a minor, difficult,
sensible action
like composing a popular song
to make a 14-year old
weep.
you order another beer.
jesus,look at that guy
his hands hang down almost to his knees and he's
whistling.
well, time to get out.
pivk up the bill.
tip.
go to the register.
pay.
pick up a toothpick.
go out the door.
your car is still there.
and there are 3 men with heads
and necks
like ostriches all getting into one
car.
they each have a toothpick and now
they are talking about women.
they drive away first
they drive away fast.
they're best i guess.
it's an unberably hot day.
there's a first-stage smog alert.
all the birds and plants are dead
or dying.
you start the engine.
11.1k
There is a body floating in the water of Lake Michigan again, but no one is willing to fish it out. There is a body floating in the pond near my subdivision again, but everyone already knew that anyway.
I am sitting eighty miles away, overlooking a city that is not mine, thinking about how the moon outside my window is the same moon that you can see from down below in your partially frozen-over dirt bed. I am thinking about the vampire that sits in his apartment, chugging two-to-three bottles of blood a week, and wondering if he is haunted by the same ghosts as I am.
It’s taken me eighteen years to realize that I was infected with a different variation of his curse all along—I am less human and more lycanthrope than I would like to admit. I am not like you, I am not like him, I am my own breed and that terrifies me. (There are black cats prowling in my heart and fragments of mirrors in my liver and salt that bleeds from my heels when I walk.)
No matter how many rabbits’ feet I tie to my keys, how many dreamcatchers I put above my bed, how many cloves of garlic I hang over my door, I am never able to rid myself of the chill that goes hand in hand with the phantom you left here.
Mother, I think I killed a man two full moons ago and I haven’t been the same since. I threw his body into the lake and watched him drift out into the unknown, watched the kraken drag him down, watched the water spew him back up like a cork. And now I need you to make your way back to the land of the living to sit by my side. I want you to cut off my head and make me a trophy animal. Create a rug from my fur. Eat my organs and freeze the rest for winter. Use me for your own survival. I just want to be helpful.
I want to be everything the vampire was not but my fingers are breaking from holding on too tight.
I should let go.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 2:06 AM UTC
If it weren't for the consistent badgering of radical america your roots your nourishment would enrich the very soil our ancestors turned,
but pests and pesticides alike have yet
to be relinquished,
"autumn" has consumed us as smiles fall-- the hazmat suits leave us bare to the weathered reality,
except you,
umbrellas and storm sheltered words nurture loved ones -- you are worth the wait,
with conflict resolve you take off your helmet and gear we are not prepared for such violence -- shielded eyes from falsified truths you bloom and blush,
you are beautiful,
a perfect storm your wrath the 5th element -- uncontrollable you are free as "winter" resides on your shoulder,
she is awakened and unapologetic,
a God among us,
frightfully we are safe we have waited for your wine to runneth and pop goes the cork,
as the war begins your throne you sit with confidence.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 12:06 PM UTC
"And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."
--- Leonard Cohen
I'm the most surprised person on the planet.
Your coming to see me off at the airport
has my mind scratching glass seeking words.
Why is it that in this relationship,
you seem to have gotten all the speaking parts?
You're well aware that I have loved you
for the better part of two years,
bottling that emotion, afraid to pop the cork.
Your eyes implore mine, rotating like
a searchlight over Baghdad seeking
the stealth laying carnage to your heart.
Twice in the last week you've made it evident,
the Grail was mine, but for the drinking ---
That and finding a shorthand for adultry.
I'm guilty courting the love of a married woman,
made worse, you're here at my departure
telling me we aren't free to choose who we love.
I know my desire must die of thirst,
so I turn, boarding pass in hand,
the last words I ever hear from you,
Write me! --- Thirty-five years later I have.
Jul 2, 2012
Jul 2, 2012 at 12:54 PM UTC
You can trip and take me down
You may hurt and make me cry
Even back me in a corner
Take it all from me, you’ll try
Make this pain inside my brain
Till the water works run dry
I’m confused or now insane
How I was when I was high
Spit at me and give me shame
Say that all my words are lies
Just a pawn inside your game
Hell is where I’ll burn and fry
Strip me till I have no name
In this shell to rot and die
Try to make me something plain
But will never say ‘goodbye’
Acting weak is how I feign
Have for you a big surprise
Nothing for you but disdain
Keep me down or so you tried
Not pathetic or so tame
Life I’m taking back is mine
Thunder roaring is the train
You’re a joke and one that's wry
No more constantly a strain
As I look out at the sky
Cork that’s popped from crisp champagne
Rising up and now I fly
Dec 8, 2018
Dec 8, 2018 at 2:28 PM UTC
rich soil
fleck with a bit of black
dark chocolate
parched summer soil
glossy chestnut brown
unvarnished oak
mahogany flecks
apple pips
varnished cork
dessert palm tree
flecks of acorn shell
his eyes
the most beautiful pair
of eyes
she has seen
Jan 20, 2020
Jan 20, 2020 at 3:55 PM UTC
It looks like a redcoat –
this bottle of pink fizz, and its cork
dug carefully from the peak.
I would drink to you some champagne
but you would tell me to have whiskey.
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 12:06 AM UTC
1628
A Drunkard cannot meet a Cork
Without a Revery—
And so encountering a Fly
This January Day
Jamaicas of Remembrance stir
That send me reeling in—
The moderate drinker of Delight
Does not deserve the spring—
Of juleps, part are the Jug
And more are in the joy—
Your connoisseur in Liquours
Consults the Bumble Bee—
4.3k
I have a confession to make, I said. I drink to forget all
That my failings and foibles beget. Sobriety
Sends me to most fitful sleep. No rest for he who in his unwaking hours
Mulls over the wine of his life, which he sours
With his own cork of guilt and self-conscience. All mine self-confidence
Derives from Contradictions repressing. Catatonic sleep of great notoriety
Is my limbo, my heaven, perchance my sick death. The
Removal of a blot on the face of this land should solicit, I fear, cornet
Mouthed angels to sound clarion of victory. If I was religious
I should become a flagellant invigilate most excellent
Flayed as the poacher would the pheasant.
And the landowner would the poacher.
Silence from both. I take a drought from my drink, she a small sip.
She looks at me and I look a way.
Do you want me to pay for this? She asks. Just the tip
Quoth I. Another drought and a sip.
Another.
I break down. I have nothing to believe in,
To believe in foul dogma to wash my soul of sin
I find repugnant. Belief in Progress and people and
The wonder of Nature is akin to praying to the inconstant sand
Castle made by the hand of a passing child.
Belief in my girlfriend! More my love’s greatest failure
To grant her the care and affection she deserves
Due to my sand castle of pride in which I do serve.
And thus do I say, to purge all my lust
There’s only one way, in Self-disgust I trust.
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 4:42 PM UTC
A cuckoo sings its first spring voice
The cider maker cracks his cork on this year’s choice
English apples presented from pre years press
Picked and selected to impress
Bottled and ready for drinkers wide and far
Vision distorting with every jar
From orchards up and down the land
Drinkers search the best in town
Scrumpy be the drinkers rot
Weak willed should try it not
A test once tasted of a brewers fare
An enjoyment discovered but just take care
For once you have past the half way mark
You’ll soon be singing and dancing with the larks
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 12:54 PM UTC
I fell out of time
into wavery scarves of seconds
glittering of snowflake anticipation, and
minutes of quiet purring joy.
Tonguing thickening clouds of breathsteam
he has always been a familiar stranger;
every joint is a champagne cork, white
marble smile that bubbled
over wooden lips. Tell a story
in ten words or less, tap fingers pointed like guns
twice against her hot temple, smile
and half a tooth still ****** Tell a story with one
word, bang, and sock away the other nine.
Turn to a cat and say, I’ve got your tongue.
We sat together on our heels in the smoke
and snowfall, the plumed weapon of breath
melting. Cars slide into the lot, ice over easy.
The alcohol tasted like soap. It is not enough
for maybes and not-know-hows---grating
cheepcheap common sense, fail me now.
Maybe you didn’t write LOVE on her
battered wrist but LIVE instead,
maybe you stole all the magnetic a’s
off the fridge, you’re not the one
who highlighted instructions on a macaroni
box, so you broke all the chalk and wrote
the name of your childhood dog above the sink.
Maybe “hostile” is a fuzzed blue comforter
three months past laundry day, every lint
ball sharp as the word “cut”, the word *****
the word “scream”. Maybe I’m naive, sentimental, but
I believe in a common kindness
like the common cold running thin
in threads of worn-out heart chambers.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 12:07 AM UTC
2 million way to go green.
0 number of people we want to
Die for a reason we can easily fix.
Only time will tell, but in this
Late hour, please explain to me, What is time?
Longing to live peacefully,
Again, when times were simpler and the
Rain didn't fall so hard.
Now sitting underneath this
Old Cork Tree,
Shaded from the falling rain; the
Evening looking beautiful, I call out, *"Give me a pen & call me, Mrs.
Benzedrine!"* And now
Laughing; soaking wet, from standing in the rain.
Everywhere I go, people look at me like I'm a nobody...
Even though, I'm more of a somebody then them.
Don't lose control on reality..... it's all a dream, anyways.
Feb 5, 2011
Feb 5, 2011 at 5:32 AM UTC
I'm really sick.
Like ***** is going to come out of my mouth--
an eruption of **** from my ears is due.
I've laid too long dormant
and one by one the hot spots of my petty jealousy,
indignation, and
mistrust are at boiling points:
The Ring of Fire, they call it.
Yellowstone
I'm the ********* Yellowstone caldera.
The great rim,
****** up and blister scarred,
knock-kneed from falling out of bed in nightmares,
weird from the predisposition to volcanic shittiness
(not in a romantic way)
but none the less active,
or reactive.
This vexation is as old as grinding plates.
This repulsion is as old as the poisoning of Aristotle
My head is the Spartan scythe
because I'm a new sign in an old world.
I use old signs to poison this newly dug well between us
But not well can I keep this message
banner
******* billboard to myself.
So let me just wrap the code from ear to ear,
in plain text where you can see
the cypher: **** your red dress.
You see,
those blisters are the gravity between White Dwarves
pulling at skin, and earth, and ending thrown halfway across the universe.
I knew I'd seen you before,
there at the edge of the Oort Cloud
where we tell people we just met:
I stopped eating
I was hurt once
I was ugly too
and no one was really listening.
You and the rest of our red dresses meant too little.
But still then why do you whine over the hungry, and hurt, and ugly
and spit in my face for being there at the Edge,
and for loving the thrill in listlessness,
the passion in mundanity?
And that ******** about the shallowness of victims?
You didn’t learn a thing
traveling and trusting and falling out of beds.
Your drunken honesty is your sober lack of layers.
This isn’t a far reach of space,
your torn dress and cork heels won't work here.
Don’t bring that littleness here,
you're the only one not really listening now.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 12:25 AM UTC
I nibbled my apple right to the core
But my lunch box was empty, I still wanted more
So I thought, what the hell, there’s no one around
And I chewed it all up and swallowed it down
Upon the next day on my way back from school
The bus had broke down, I felt awfully full
We were all simply stranded with no help in sight
I was going to burst I had to alight
Now my house wasn't far, a ten minute walk
But I just couldn't wait and I hadn't a cork
So I slide down the bank to a spot underneath
And when I had finished I found me a leaf
Now ten years have passed and right on that route
Stands a proud apple tree all laden with fruit
So just with my bottom I managed to grow a tree
And now reminisce with my poo-a-tree poetry
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
I had horrible dreams of her last night
of a Mother red haired with soft hands and fine skin that demand
her two boys' respect or the cunning not to be caught in contempt
of her as she doesn't mind burying her head in the sand
if they kiss her before she slips under her dune comforter and sleeps
for a selfish safe-keeping with a smile but is the kind of lady
who pins her lip corners on her cork board cheeks daily like a cast list
while she cooks turkey for all cleaning the wishbones before her plate
to use as window-sill ornaments until her kids come home so they might fly
or at least not to waste the magic on herself but they hide blocks away
in the parking lot shadow of the auto-repair shop's spinning sign
from the Sun and sky
Jul 22, 2014
Jul 22, 2014 at 3:26 PM UTC
The Rhyming Shuffle
Feeling all alone,
life is on postpone.
No one seems to care,
time is now to beware.
Stick me with a fork,
in my *** is a scented cork.
Farts smelling like a rose,
watching bodies decompose.
Climbing up Jacob's ladder,
peeing a lot cause of my bladder.
Calling me an Uncle Tom,
shaving my hairy palm.
Addicted to Candy Crush,
brain turning into mush.
Tired of always snapping,
I deserve some ***** slapping.
Grass is always greener,
with the little old lady from Pasadena.
On board the love boat,
left me with a sore throat.
Saving money is impossible,
spending is just unstoppable.
Writing rhymes is all I know,
all my ducts are in a row.
Going fishing without a pole,
one to many hits from my bowl.
Dying of old age,
took my final bow,
on the center stage.
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 2:12 PM UTC
they lived
like the only customers at a funfair;
weeks caroselling
with swollen rise and fall,
like the horses forgot
to gallop in circles.
they had their own world
of haunted houses
and helter-skelters
but the stalls were all out
of candyfloss
and, as they slotted coins
into cork-rifles,
they shot themselves
to pieces
without winning
a single prize.
Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
It was a glass of liquid sunshine
If I were to believe the waiter
My senses would be flooded
With essence of vanilla and
Glimpses of the land.
There would notes of citrus,
Faint odor of old leather
And deep berries would overwhelm.
If I shut my eyes
I could relish the peppery finish
And the buttery after taste.
I would be a fool to overlook
The healthy dose of tannin
Balancing the sweet cherry, plum and cassis.
The wine swirled in my glass
The fragrant bouquet filled my nose
I’d be lying if I said
The anticipation didn’t create
A certain aura of arousal.
Not just the sunshine in this glass
But all four seasons inhabited
My crystal goblet,
And the sheltering moonlight
Was in there too.
This wine surely has character
Like Gandhi or Churchill perhaps.
And legs. What legs.
Slender and vibrating
Long and glistening
I could stare at those legs
Until dessert.
Having passed the cork test,
All eyes were upon me
Lifting the bowl of undulating liquid
To my lips.
I sipped.
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
You wonder why I cover my heart
With a shawl so heavy and thick.
You don’t even understand how impenetrable
It is.
You wish I’d take off this mask
So you could see my soul.
See the pain
The hurt
The anger
The shame.
If I removed my veil
What would you do with what you saw?
Would you laugh?
Would you sigh?
Would you try to help?
I didn’t want to find out
What reaction you would have.
I held everything in.
You thought you knew how to bottle things up.
Honey I invented the cork.
You thought you knew how to hide.
Sorry to break it to you dearest,
But blackout shades?
That idea was mine.
You weren’t about to get in.
I had it all on lock.
Held tight like Fort Knox.
Until
I didn’t.
The windshield cracked
There was a slit in my shades.
A leak in the cork.
The mask
It fell.
I broke down.
You broke in.
And now I no longer wonder
What you would say if I spilled.
And I know for sure,
Thanks to you,
That I’ll never slip up again.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 11:16 AM UTC
I sipped my wine at the dinner table.
"Honey, please pass me the salt."
I looked up to see her staring back at me,
her eyes glistening in the candle light that burned ablaze.
The joy consuming the fire in her soul,
driving her with lustful intentions of passion and excitement.
I ate my meal at the dinner table,
"Honey, please pour me some wine."
I removed the cork with a 'pop' sound,
that echoed in the quiet room space.
Looking over at her now,
her voluptuous lips chapped from dehydration.
I handed her a glass of wine and watched as she took a sip.
Her lips dampened now,
a burgundy color stained upon her lips;
I could almost taste her sweet kisses from hither
as she teased me with a smirk of pleasure.
I devoured my dessert at the dinner table.
"Honey, please bring me some pudding."
I put down my spoon and reached for the bowl placed
in the center of the table that divided her and I.
I extended my hand to reach for the spoon,
but she stood up quite slowly and leisurely made her way round the dining room table;
her left hand index finger lightly caressing the table-top
as she walked around to meet me.
I found her to be standing right on-top of me.
My mind racing.
My heart palpitating.
She grabbed me by my inner thigh and massaged my neck
seductively,
moving in closer her eyes centralized my lips,
her body prepelling its way towards my cornered space.
She bites her lip and thrusts inwards on me now,
Oh darling, whisper sweet things into my ear drums now.
*** She said, spoken so gently.
"Alright", I said.
but before I left,
I sipped my wine at the dinner table.
Nov 22, 2020
Nov 22, 2020 at 5:03 AM UTC
The cork eases out of the twisted green glass.
Bubbles erupt from the neck,
A million tiny perfect diamonds tumble over one another, kissing the air.
With a breath of Midas, it turns my crystal chalice a deep, frothing gold.
It is liquid movement indefinite and the golden
Ocean whirls and spins a delicate storm in my glass -
I blink for just too long and the fizz climbs in my ears,
Like a sweetly growling throat,
It slowly opens to an ecstatic ebbing exhalation.
Now to my parting mouth.
The chalice gently draws the heat from my swollen red lips
and it is crisp and cool as the cut glass it curls in.
Where does
my chalice
end and this
pool of weightless
gold begin?
Temptation changes its name to thirst.
Another and another and another down my throat.
And the storm in my chalice surges over the rim,
And the edge begins to sing to
where light and dark become
the same thing!
And now empty –
The glass is damp and cold.
One bead of vapour left,
To slide down my chalice’s neck.
And I take my glass
Back to the sink.
Aug 12, 2012
Aug 12, 2012 at 9:15 PM UTC