"cramped" poems
i hate that i’m lying in bed
with a cup of tea
and can see myself in the future
in our bed
with a cup of tea
and you lying next to me
and i hate that i can see myself turning out the light
and laying my head to rest
on your chest
i hate that i can see us sitting at a little round kitchen table
next to the window
you in your black rimmed glasses
scrolling through your phone
me with my hair tied up and one knee draw up to my chest,
eating a bowl of oatmeal as the sun creeps its way
into the middle of the sky
i hate that i can see us side by side
brushing our teeth in a cramped bathroom
in front of a foggy mirror,
listening to music as we get ready for the day
i hate that i can see us walking out the front door,
i hate that i can see us kissing goodbye
because i’m lying in bed
with a cup of tea
thinking about all of this,
thinking about you
yet i’ve already kissed you
goodbye.
Jan 7, 2015
Jan 7, 2015 at 12:50 PM UTC
Mama should I trust the Government?
Men in charge,
With suits and ties.
Mama, do they know whats best?
or are they selling
pre-packed lies.
Mama should i get a job?
sell my soul
to the money train.
Mama is it true in fact?
man can't live
of soil and rain?
Mama why do i feel sad?
kept cramped within
the city walls.
Mama how do i go on?
When all arounds me
crumbles, falls.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 8:21 PM UTC
Sometimes we wish... Wish to go back.
Back to a time when everything was pure... Back to a time when everything was new... Back to a time where days were never blue.
How could this thing... This perfect thing.... This perfect concept of thinking... This perfect imagination, become cramped with realities.
With truths. With lies.
We line up desperately, waiting... Waiting to get out... Waiting for the day we can do what we want... Waiting for the day we can leave.
The more we grow, the more we know... The more we want to go back... Back to the day when we knew little and imagined more. Back to the day when sweets and hide and seek were all we needed.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC
Trapped inside a box.
Everywhere I look,
I see confined emptiness.
My limbs are yearning for a moment's stretch.
Trapped inside a box.
My arms are rendered useless,
as they lay squeezed against my sides.
My neck is straining in it's cramped position.
Trapped inside a box.
I cannot breathe,
my heart pounds against my chest hoping for freedom,
How can one be trapped inside of a small box, when their body is in the midst of a wide open plain?
Anxiety.
It is a box.
A box that cripples rationality ,
trapping you.
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 2:21 AM UTC
A tale of many cities confined within
Deep dark secrets stacked in.
Lies, the world presume as sins,
That’s how the story of ‘The Black Box’ begins.
Cramped amid the four gloomy walls,
‘The Black Box’ is what he calls.
Looking to unscramble pieces at the bottom,
He rolled up his sleeves to the problem.
Not knowing, this can put him in a ditch,
And ‘The Black Box’ can act like a *****
He went on in the search for a prize,
Unaware of this forthcoming surprise.
He knew, many have tried to look inside,
To find a package of perfection in the hide
Disappointed to see the shattered glasses,
They closed the box to put it with a stack of more boxes.
Still, he preferred to move ahead,
In spite of knowing he will lose his head.
The minute he thought he was nearer to precision,
A way distant he was from the actual incision.
The time will come, when he will have his threshold,
Sooner or later, he will have to fold.
After all, no one can alter the history,
No matter what! ‘The Black Box’ will remain a mystery.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 11:23 AM UTC
There’s no other choice but to wear them,
The drawer offered nothing but these.
An odd pair of socks might be quirky,
Odd sizes don’t normally please.
The one at my ankle was spotted,
The other was striped to the knee
The latter two sizes the smaller,
The former quite large by degree.
This mismatch I thought to keep secret
And cover the dissonant pair.
I chose from the wardrobe some trousers
And shoes, with considerable care.
My ruse would conceal the divergence
From prescribed social standards of dress
And none would be any the wiser
My discomfort I’d have to suppress.
Now, it’s harder to mask discomposure
When physical pain has attacked.
The small sock had cramped my toes tightly
That blood didn’t flow, was a fact.
My colleagues regarded me strangely
For they could see nothing amiss
But I could feel cold perspiration,
Anxiety I couldn’t dismiss.
It was then that I felt a strange itching,
The striped sock began to descend
And round my right ankle it wrinkled
And bulged at the trouser leg end.
Dismayed at my great consternation
But clueless to what was awry
My friends made comforting gestures
Need of which I could only deny.
The moral of this story’s transparent
Socks are always best worn as a pair
Their nature is in the relationship
Which provides a well-balanced air.
And take the trouble to remember
Be congruent in all that you do
For disparity will often bring discord
And that path, you’ll certainly rue.
Oct 11, 2009
Oct 11, 2009 at 6:43 AM UTC
The day you died I went into the dirt,
Into the lightless hibernaculum
Where bees, striped black and gold, sleep out the blizzard
Like hieratic stones, and the ground is hard.
It was good for twenty years, that wintering --
As if you never existed, as if I came
God-fathered into the world from my mother's belly:
Her wide bed wore the stain of divinity.
I had nothing to do with guilt or anything
When I wormed back under my mother's heart.
Small as a doll in my dress of innocence
I lay dreaming your epic, image by image.
Nobody died or withered on that stage.
Everything took place in a durable whiteness.
The day I woke, I woke on Churchyard Hill.
I found your name, I found your bones and all
Enlisted in a cramped necropolis
your speckled stone skewed by an iron fence.
In this charity ward, this poorhouse, where the dead
Crowd foot to foot, head to head, no flower
Breaks the soil. This is Azalea path.
A field of burdock opens to the south.
Six feet of yellow gravel cover you.
The artificial red sage does not stir
In the basket of plastic evergreens they put
At the headstone next to yours, nor does it rot,
Although the rains dissolve a ****** dye:
The ersatz petals drip, and they drip red.
Another kind of redness bothers me:
The day your slack sail drank my sister's breath
The flat sea purpled like that evil cloth
My mother unrolled at your last homecoming.
I borrow the silts of an old tragedy.
The truth is, one late October, at my birth-cry
A scorpion stung its head, an ill-starred thing;
My mother dreamed you face down in the sea.
The stony actors poise and pause for breath.
I brought my love to bear, and then you died.
It was the gangrene ate you to the bone
My mother said: you died like any man.
How shall I age into that state of mind?
I am the ghost of an infamous suicide,
My own blue razor rusting at my throat.
O pardon the one who knocks for pardon at
Your gate, father -- your hound-bitch, daughter, friend.
It was my love that did us both to death.
6.6k
Our love was like that blanket fort,
your mom told you to take it down but we liked it so it stayed up.
Later you wanted another in the fort that was built for two and it came crashing down on top of us.
I decided to let it be and accept it's failure.
We tried to live with out it.
The blankets were still out and tempted us with every look, you finally asked me to rebuild with you.
After hesitation, I saw it brought you joy and that's all I wanted.
We had a tough time getting it to stay up on its own but once we did it wasn't bad, just not the same.
The inside was smaller and was much more cramped.
We realized how much it had actually changed though outside it looked roughly the same, and no matter what we did we couldn't get it back.
The first great fort was gone and it was time to take this one down, for it caused us too much frustration and too many tears.
Our blanket fort was taken down and it seemed like all that work was for nothing.
Yet now we can build something more permanent and learn from our mistakes.
Hopefully to each find that person who's blankets keep us warm.
w.j.w.k
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 6:35 AM UTC
Citrus trees, tomatoes, and fertile soil
Garliconiongingersoy
and ant spray
Contentment
Cigarettes and hate
Aqua Net
White school paste
Bitter slimy spinach
and blue ditto ink
Confusion
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Baseball glove
Mown grass
Fresh popcorn
Sadness
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cramped, stale cars
Claustrophobia and
Cat litter
Loneliness
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Petroleum
Locker Rooms
and Perfume
Indifference
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Cigarettes and hate
Smoggy skies
Salty beaches
Beer trucks at each end of the block
Love
And...
Blessed...
Divorce
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 3:13 PM UTC
Cramped in that funnelled hole, they watched the dawn
Open a jagged rim around; a yawn
Of death's jaws, which had all but swallowed them
Stuck in the bottom of his throat of phlegm.
They were in one of many mouths of Hell
Not seen of seers in visions, only felt
As teeth of traps; when bones and the dead are smelt
Under the mud where long ago they fell
Mixed with the sour sharp odour of the shell.
4.8k
oh my beautiful,
so cramped up inside.
please don't cry.
Mar 25, 2015
Mar 25, 2015 at 9:50 PM UTC
But why did I **** him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,
As my fingers sink into the fair
White skin of his throat. It was I!
I killed him! My God! Don't you hear?
I shook him until his red tongue
Hung flapping out through the black, queer,
Swollen lines of his lips. And I clung
With my nails drawing blood, while I flung
The loose, heavy body in fear.
Fear lest he should still not be dead.
I was drunk with the lust of his life.
The blood-drops oozed slow from his head
And dabbled a chair. And our strife
Lasted one reeling second, his knife
Lay and winked in the lights overhead.
And the waltz from the ballroom I heard,
When I called him a low, sneaking cur.
And the wail of the violins stirred
My brute anger with visions of her.
As I throttled his windpipe, the purr
Of his breath with the waltz became blurred.
I have ridden ten miles through the dark,
With that music, an infernal din,
Pounding rhythmic inside me. Just Hark!
One! Two! Three! And my fingers sink in
To his flesh when the violins, thin
And straining with passion, grow stark.
One! Two! Three! Oh, the horror of sound!
While she danced I was crushing his throat.
He had tasted the joy of her, wound
Round her body, and I heard him gloat
On the favour. That instant I smote.
One! Two! Three! How the dancers swirl round!
He is here in the room, in my arm,
His limp body hangs on the spin
Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm
Of blood-drops is hemming us in!
Round and round! One! Two! Three! And his sin
Is red like his tongue lolling warm.
One! Two! Three! And the drums are his knell.
He is heavy, his feet beat the floor
As I drag him about in the swell
Of the waltz. With a menacing roar,
The trumpets crash in through the door.
One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell.
One! Two! Three! In the chaos of space
Rolls the earth to the hideous glee
Of death! And so cramped is this place,
I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three!
Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles me!
He has covered my mouth with his face!
And his blood has dripped into my heart!
And my heart beats and labours. One! Two!
Three! His dead limbs have coiled every part
Of my body in tentacles. Through
My ears the waltz jangles. Like glue
His dead body holds me athwart.
One! Two! Three! Give me air! Oh! My God!
One! Two! Three! I am drowning in slime!
One! Two! Three! And his corpse, like a clod,
Beats me into a jelly! The chime,
One! Two! Three! And his dead legs keep time.
Air! Give me air! Air! My God!
4.6k
Never allowed to grow
Beyond ornamental,
Small perfect leaves
On small well pruned branches;
To please the eye
Of miniature torturers.
Cramped in a micro life,
Roots restrained
Within un-natural boundaries.
The promise of a tree
Never really fulfilled,
Beyond a whisper.
Fussed over relentlessly,
Like an O.C.D.
Perfect shape and form,
Trained from natural beauty,
To sit on a shelf
Hidden from reality.
Oct 7, 2019
Oct 7, 2019 at 5:55 PM UTC
Our eyes filled with wonder
Our minds twisted in change
Much like hobbits going afar
Then returning to sweet home
Our lives were changed forever
We rode slow and flew so fast
In tin cans from here and to there
Never taking off our shoes
Hardly touching the ground
Hardly touching Africa
Hiding behind camera lens
Wearing our face in masks
As a people not African black
Who worry not the future
Living easily in time’s moment
Like sardines aligned in tight
Wild creatures within confines
Electricity, steel, and wire
Tall fences stopping escape
To other worlds and realms afar
Except the leopards of night
Who easily roam across
All defined or artificial borders
Escaping cramped tin cans
Basking in Africa’s buttery light
Except for our African guide
With Christian name of Dexter
But named actually as
Tichayambuka Nekutenda
Nenyasha Chikerema
More comfortable sleeping in
Deep bush amongst beasts
Without down comforters,
perfumes, socks, or shoes
Living life in happy quiet freedom
A man raised speaking Bantu
in a small Shona tribe
Born in the Zimababwan village
Of Mutekedza in Mashonaland
East in the Chivhu Area.
From his father’s family
Given a totem of Zebra Brown
Then recited in love poem daily
by his proud mother
To affirm him as a man
Although he must also
be like the leopard
Unconfined in simple borders
Or tin can walls all around
Able to traverse the world
We as tourists were and are
Salty, smelly, near rotten sardines
I see him smile
And I laugh, and I know
Ndino ziva anorarama se mbada
© 2017 Jim Davis
Nov 7, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 at 1:02 AM UTC
the problem with dorm rooms
is that there are hundreds of
people
se p ar at ed
by paper-thin
walls
never interacting
only existing simultaneously
(which, is a cosmic interaction if you think about it.)
sometimes I lay in my bed
face against a cold paper wall
and I
think: what are these other people doing?
in this awkward layout of beds and desks
in the earlylate hours of the nightday
are some
sleeping frantically working
drunk in their beds laying frustratingly awake
awkwardly masturbating awkwardly ignoring the awkward ************
having cramped sex sleeping in the lounge to avoid said *** being had
crying and homesick consoling a homesick friend
too high to sleep too exhausted to be awake
or are some just as awake as I, wondering sleepily, what I am doing on the other side of the wall?
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 5:00 PM UTC
it is an honor
to love
and be loved
by you (only you)
i wanted a hippie van
and you wanted to make me happy
so you took off your Vans and grabbed a marker
we wrote "don't worry, be hippie" on the fabric until our fingers cramped
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 1:55 AM UTC
It's almost 10:30 pm and I am thinking about the woman on the radio
who sang about how she's made of "dirt and stardust"
and, sleepily, I wrote those lyrics on the back of my sketchbook
And about how I wish I had an
accent,
every word drenched with butter
or spices
the flavor of my country
but instead I just have
grease.
As I'm writing this the flashlight's
spot of light
is half-spilling onto my wall,
"Helena Beat" is stuck in my
head, and has to stay there because
I wrote it down.
I know tomorrow I will wake up
with a cramped hand
and remember that I wrote.
look back on it, and think that it is
stupider
than I
thought.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 7:39 PM UTC
(This poem was discovered etched/burnt into the interior woodwork of a viking ship of around 800AD, discovered in the north of England in the '60s. Quite possibly from the northernmost islands around the area now referred to as Archangel, and originally written in what became known as Runic/Russo Scandinavian, it nevertheless resonates clear Saxon/German tonality. Given that it is one of the first examples of early Runic, and indeed that the actual letter-shapes are unclear, the poem has been reproduced below, using broad phonetic license.
As far as can be determined, the content appears to be a somewhat ribald message from the ships leader to his wife. It was not uncommon for women/wives to accompany their men folk on long voyages. Given cramped conditions aboard, the conditions were likely to be insanitary and it is this condition that informs the subject). WJL
Das andrs zu-almen su-cara
Archezum des hafta confagra
Der ecra zu alpe
En pecra nachte schalpe
Viel ondra der zulpa te bag-ra
Und zortem pur ordour cloabera
Eh-min-te ah solbra schactarar
Sul-phereth zum tinctum
Abroath ah den penk-tum
Bai anthe con anthe ebactah-ra
Zorbuhr genkst canke zer vilk-um
Solginster zep ecra der nep-ehlcome
Calmen-de ser paarte
Eh zin bah die faarte
Confide ah can-de zum schtinc-tulm
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 5:23 AM UTC
Colorado,Colorado,
I wish I was in Colorado.
Where puffers stand in line
to have a good-old-time.
I wish you were in Colorado
and puff away your blues,
and have a restful snooze.
Where people laugh
out loud and make their puffers' cloud.
And people stop and stare
into thought provoking air,
and talk about the deeper things
in life.
Sensuous summer fills
my mind
between my munchies
all the time.
My tastebuds shout in glee
with popcorn near my reach
and soda made of peach.
Colorado, Colorado,
I hear you callin' me
forget about that tree
of good and evil be.
And smoke away-at times-
those nasty nursery rhymes
cramped between
folders made of black.
Colorado,Colorado,
I wish I was in Colorado
to get a mountain high.
Where puffers' stand in line
to have a good-old-time...
Since not allowed to light
we're allowed to write:
"Let the **** reign forever"
Aug 24, 2014
Aug 24, 2014 at 11:02 PM UTC
Rain falls on the windscreen
in shades of grey brown and fogged-up blue,
car become boat in the rain-clogged road
floating away like in a Monet,
into the evening mess.
Frayed nerves, rules break, as dangers lurk.
The wiper slow tells its tale own.
Irrelevant discourse, irreverent songs,
the FM trend for DJ fame.
And we have two 'rivers' in our city,
swelling in refuse, bolstered by the rain;
And we have two beaches in our city,
soak in the surf, if you can ignore the rubble;
And we have many parks in our city
where litter garlands our heroes daily;
The last patch of green, cramped between
rising heights all around, accursed of
dump and construction junk,
steals a dying look at the moon late.
A walk in the woods, by the mist, by late evening.
A stroll, warm, through a field covered in snow.
Nice paintings on my concrete wall.
I'm told, the money plant is good for one's health.
Trees, a luxury for our wealth.
These are all good developments.
Hyper malls round the corner.
Home prices, soaring to Kepler.
Please pour in more investment into my country.
Guaranteed, riches grow in multiplication.
The markets are all about manipulation.
Sep 12, 2013
Sep 12, 2013 at 3:47 PM UTC
It was raining. It was cold. The sleeve of my shirt sticking to my skin, my flats wet and ***** from the mud and rain.
Suddenly, the rain stopped pouring down on me and a shadow loomed over me. I looked up, I saw him.
He was the one who shield me, rather than shielding himself. Held me so close, just so I wouldn't get wet. We laughed at how ridiculous we look as people stare at us. Cramped together under the small pink umbrella; our shoulders touching, our hands touched slightly.
If I knew what he had thought at that moment,
I wouldn't know what I'd do.
{ E.I }
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 6:13 AM UTC
I don’t have faith.
I just know that I belong to my Savior Jesus. I met her once when I was 11, at her humble single wide in a cramped trailer park and she made candied walnuts on a hotplate. I didn’t find out until years later that she paid for my scholarship. She had passed on by then; I wish I could have thanked her.
He arrived at Juvenile Hall at 7:00 pm looking like Mrs. Santa Claus, to take me into her home for a year. I made some sarcastic teenage comment about the stupid country music on her car radio, and she tolerated it with a smile; saying ‘its not stupid, its simple.’ She showed me what a caring family looks like and didn’t kick me out for being a ******** gave me chores and a curfew to show me I belonged.
When I had no family or boyfriend in my life, I lived in a maternity home until my baby would be adopted. Jesus was the stranger in the hushed hospital room holding my hand, after the medics couldn’t find the heartbeat in the ambulance, which was confirmed on the maternity floor, and I was taken to another floor so my crying wouldn’t upset the other mothers. The room was small and dark and alone, and the clock on the wall took an eternity to move two minutes, for the entire night that I was in labor, the longest night in my life. I didn’t remember someone holding my hand; I was so drugged for pain. She showed me her arms two days later, so bruised because she didn’t leave me.
Jesus was the woman from Planned Parenthood on the other end of the phone, listening to me when I called the Women’s Clinic asking how I could find a doctor. ‘ I just moved here, and I work at a minimum wage job, and I lost my baby a month ago, but how do I get a post-partum exam when I don’t have a doctor, or any money, or insurance?’ I was very matter of fact about it, I mean this was my circumstance and what to do? She arranged a birth control exam because the state would pay for that, by a doctor who would give me the post-partum. She also referred me to a support group. I had been alone but she found me people who understood and could sympathize and help me accept grief. I look back on that now; there were no sign-carrying Christians or Churches arranging the adoption who helped me, she was the only one who cared.
Jan 29, 2013
Jan 29, 2013 at 2:36 AM UTC
Leave us in a bedroom
a locked room
both bound by a fleeting veneration
but no tangible definition
and windows will fog up
with excess anxious laughter
and phlegmmed throats
til the glass transforms
transparent to translucent
so the outside world becomes
an informed guess about
which coloured shape is going
where.
The door handle will twist into the room’s
home grown central nervous system
backed by rising voices
rising pulses
assuring ourselves it is
everybody outside
who is trapped and not us
because ‘cosy’ has scribbled over
‘cramped’ between the sheets of peeling
wallpaper and bodies upon bodies upon
bodies only excites.
We will stay in bed
cocooned around this single duvet
and distracted into its folds because this
is how we choose to spend
free will. Don't
murmur about the locked door
and even when it opens for
lack of air or food
so we tentatively tread through into the
open, or perhaps closed,
I beg you to
grab my wrist and pull me back and whisper
tear yourself up
decrease with me
because this will always be the one place we’ll happily suffocate.
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 8:38 AM UTC
How do you swindle the light?
This would be the greatest grift.
An ongoing experimental conn
where we all remember,
who the mark(s) is,
pretending, just in case,
behind the curtain,
sleight of hand,
behind the back,
if there is no wizard in the back seat,
just in case...you'll tell the kids:
'it was all for them.' So they could sleep.
Childhoods are just safe houses for hope.
In play roles come easy,
in assortments, and unpackages, separate;
but everyone knows the rules,
their part, they remember
that fairness is sacred to play.
Some games get played
and some gamers’ play is accidental.
The game like the carnival is vacuous,
inhaling all into its eye,
exhaling into its calm, swindles like a carney,
jettisoning all into the extinction of gratification.
The mystery lies in the conspiracy.
System can beat game, house, odds,
conn the conn and you can go home a winner.
The Universe is a big casino, you see.
And all you have to do is get up from the table,
cash in your chips, and figure out where your car is.
The house always wins, you’ll say.
But therein lies the reason we play.
Which you're sure to figure out in the lot,
cramped delineations garner thought,
you'll realize that therein lies nowhere.
The conspiracy lies in the abyss,
A place where villagers lose their cattle,
Costumed & uniformed, singing gray prayers.
Crop circles are diasporic clusters of hope.
Where science fiction invented the cold war,
Between ghosts created by radio waves.
A mass hallucination produced by trauma?
Dellusion v. Illusion
Nurturist v. Naturist v. Projection,
As long as it’s a weapon!
Destination unknown-
But just in case, let’s create something that can destroy us all.
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 1:27 AM UTC
Relieve me from this label,
I cannot belong in this cramped space
That you decide I fit in
I don't understand why anyone would want to be confined
To just one thing.
You tell me I'm this,
Not that.
But why can't I be both?
Or neither?
Why conform?
Why conform when I feel so free just being
Me.
Feb 14, 2021
Feb 14, 2021 at 3:15 PM UTC