"crayoned" poems
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Just as the earth puckered its mouth,
each bud puffing out from its knot,
I changed my shoes, and then drove south.
Up past the Blue Mountains, where
Pennsylvania humps on endlessly,
wearing, like a crayoned cat, its green hair,
its roads sunken in like a gray washboard;
where, in truth, the ground cracks evilly,
a dark socket from which the coal has poured,
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
the grass as bristly and stout as chives,
and me wondering when the ground would break,
and me wondering how anything fragile survives;
up in Pennsylvania, I met a little man,
not Rumpelstiltskin, at all, at all...
he took the fullness that love began.
Returning north, even the sky grew thin
like a high window looking nowhere.
The road was as flat as a sheet of tin.
Somebody who should have been born
is gone.
Yes, woman, such logic will lead
to loss without death. Or say what you meant,
you coward...this baby that I bleed.
6k
When my mind is feeling
like it's floating underneath a painted ceiling
and the windows crack
to take me back
into another
dream
and the ceiling's just a scene that's crayoned on a bathroom door
but the beauty of the dream is that it shows me so much more
than I would know
that's where I go.
When the hallway drifts into a serene sea
I'll be
there.
In the shaking waking hours of dawn before I'm born again
when the night becomes some distant fix upon an orbital
I absorb it all
and put it in a cardboard case.
In case I want to look again into that other realm
that overwhelms my senses
and makes less sense to me
every time my mind floats free
underneath a painted
ceiling.
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 3:44 PM UTC
Get out your sponges, stippling brushes and pens,
It’s time for makeover-Monday-night to begin.
Think Winky Lux, L’Oréal, Urban Decay,
Maybelline, Armani and Fabergé
It’s a black magic realm where brushes are wands,
where a carnival of colors are carefully crayoned.
We have palettes aplenty, in kaleidoscope hues,
to create fashion looks, both bold and subdued.
In the realm of makeup fashion, where trends never end,
we remodel each other - for fun - when we can.
Tonight, our new friend Jammie has come to watch us play,
and he even brought two bottles of chardonnay.
Lisa has a ‘Miss Rose’ case, like she saw in Bernadette Peters’
dressing room, on a backstage tour of the Shubert Theatre.
Konjac, Kabuki, Doe foots, Spoolie, Lisa’s got legit tools to use.
“When it comes to makeup,” she says, “always avoid dupes.”
That night I was the chosen face, the excited living canvas.
Lisa’s a practiced artist, her process is brisk and never tedious.
She painted my lips a crimson cherry, alluring and brightly sensuous,
my brows were moonlit art, my cheeks a midnight adumbrated edifice.
Lisa created a special look, where rebellious edge met elegance.
We took some snaps, then I washed it off - but Jammie was impressed!
Jun 6, 2023
Jun 6, 2023 at 10:51 PM UTC
Morning drops like a parachute,
circumnavigating
the irrational things within her.
She drew the grim cartwheel
--crayoned images of kids in closets,
and blackens them into
illustrations of war.
She sleeps on bleak days
with young cameras,
Lucy under the tongue,
rosaries at the border
feel like pins and needles
to an adrenaline sorceress
in giallo approach,
her eye in a labyrinth,
the eye she lost in the Crusades,
filming streets below
the color of dark Roman wine.
It's a staring contest,
waiting on rooftops
in stages of collapse,
there she lives or dies
at the dividing line with the grave.
Jan 20, 2024
Jan 20, 2024 at 5:51 PM UTC
restless summers swimming in lemonade
my shiny janes and your
mud sloshed loafers
swayed like the gulls of our
crayoned fence of a sky
daisies you would crown me
with rings of weeds i'd wed you
lightning bugs stain my lashes like my
fluorescent tears you brush away
dewdrops on my rose embroidered cheeks
i continue building forts armed with flashlights
with puppets of shade that guard me till morn
again i am locked within my tower feeling your
weight of shining armor as you take my locks as your stairway
but the night fades within you
i let down my hair
but you are not there
Aug 21, 2015
Aug 21, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
A darling girl of three
Violet ribbon cradles golden hair
They fuss over her porcelain skin
Blushing cheeks and baby blue eyes
“Eyes you just want to steal,” say They.
She crayons pictures of castles
And heroic princes.
Her little dolls are played
Then locked in their little dollhouse
A fair girl of fifteen
Mornings she is taunted and condemned
By the mocking mirror.
She stares
And draws a smile on the vacancy.
Head, shoulders, knees and toes-
Strings attached to all.
Puppetted by the fetters of Expectation,
She smiles, and acts,
And dresses in little outfits
To please Them.
A charming girl of seventeen
Immured little fingers cradle the wiled world.
A Crayoned face fronts the masquerade.
Mangled in tangled strings,
She offers her heart and scissors to a little blonde boy
And cries, Kiss it better.
He smiles and smooths her brow
As his honeyed whispers tear her open
And he ties a heartstring.
He stitches her up with the thread of Promises
Leaving ribbon-scars delicate as lace.
Blueblack bruises blossom across
And stain her porcelain skin.
She shatters
While screaming his innocence.
Thieved eyelight
Makes for a jaded girl of eighteen.
A darling girl of three
Plays with toys
As They toy with her.
Just another broken doll to be.
Nov 2, 2011
Nov 2, 2011 at 7:52 PM UTC
I am scant a savant and know it
I do I am just a wannabe poet
A shrew a devotee of
Poe and others
I wish for their talent
And notoriety
At a loss for words
Occasionally I just
Go ahead
And make them up
Dream up a verb
Ending in q
or a noun with no subject
I do
And shame is a good
Descriptive word
Adjective or adverb
I think I am sane
As I digress nightly
into a colored light fest
Of was crayoned
flesh
On the canvas
Dec 3, 2018
Dec 3, 2018 at 1:44 AM UTC
.
I wish to live on the white page,
Cumulus as cloud, be all puffy,
Pure in new world without guile,
My thin body as bounty, cloud eyed
Sky of unsullied page, true kingdom
Of imagination, without euphemism,
Nor malice, but truth, cleanest light,
Where a child's drawings are welcome
Always, waiting to be rainbow crayoned,
Coloured sheen as the dawn appearing
At blackest moons' end, sheet of seraphim
Created, dreamt of wood and earth and sun.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 9:19 PM UTC
The white snow turned to black
my heart pained
no! no! no! no !..heart attack
no! no! no! no !..heart attack
the feeling inside was all to see
put out this fire ....look at me
my mind was lost into the black
no look
no!no!no!no!.. heart attack
put out to sea set sail to sink
another soul lost out to drink
red eyes in view no looking back
no look
no! no! no! no!..heart attack
Remember Jim? not many do...
one day all will stay unglued
a stone unloved.. a crayoned name
times like this time nothing changed
no looking back no time to fear
no ! no ! no ! no ! heart attack
no ! no ! no ! no ! heart attack
Feb 1, 2012
Feb 1, 2012 at 10:10 AM UTC
(Jenny's Granny's house. Ayr.)
Where seasonal root veg soup
Warmly journeyed our throats
Granny Jean, skin translucent as glass,
Sheer, showing tendril veins beneath
Crinkled cliff-edge lips at Jenny's budding womanhood
She knew hers lay as barren
As insignificant as the pale Mojave borderlands.
Brazen-cheeked dolls and pastel bears
Audienced my transition from slip to sundress
Back in the lucid haze of the pensioner's kitchen
Where dust particles hived like antique film grain
Sat Jenny; painted lips like crisp apple skin
Freckled cheeks hollowing atop
Her milkshake's flimsy plastic straw
Raspy, bubbly ***** filled
The kitchen; appliances groped
By the pious smite of the sun
The kind of light they say never to walk towards
Then, a weathered cough and the stiff moan of a rocking chair
Just to jest fate
Was none of our business yet; I was taken by the hand
We pass many exhibits
On the austere lilac fridge:
"Mr. & Mrs Richard D. Barclay, wed on 11th of Oct 1961"
And crayoned from her own hand, aged 10; "Me and Granny B"
A waxy glyph on lemon sugar-paper not always in memoriam
But among the moth-wing wallpaper lilies
For now
Dust dunes like mattress ghosts
Collect in mushroom clouds above Jenny's sudden weight
While I feed myself to the mirror
My frock, flesh, hair all seep
Into the totalitarian whiteness of our room
And I am happy if this is my course through life
I know I'm no one
I try on, as I shake goodbye,
Jean's hands; fire-crafted leather baseball gloves
They do not fit just yet but
When my hands no longer sheen in the virtuous sun
When I feel citrus hand soap grate into each wrinkled chasm
I promise you, gran, I will remember
Even the Mojave desert will see rainfall.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 8:42 AM UTC
I
being crucified
died.
You did not see me fall
or see the memories that dripped my blood down the concrete walls of yesterday and when I lay there still and broken by the empty stores and unlit lamps,franked as if by postage and the stamps that stamped upon my shattered soul,I felt
whole.
In pieces and yet pieced together,the man you like or not it's up to you whether you do.
I remain a reminder of the pain now gone and one remembers a touch too much at times,
hard and easy times,crayoned soft times,lead pencil lines that tore across my skin,tin tack look back time pressing in on me,
but you did not see me fall or bleed, recognise the need,stem the flow,
it was I who stood aside and watched me slowly drop and couldn't stop the embolism,attacked by criticism,the symbolism all but knew and I,and I
was crucified bled out,read out cuneiform until it dawned on me that you could see and I was but a symptom not the cause.
Jan 27, 2014
Jan 27, 2014 at 6:40 AM UTC
isn't it the way you're aging?
lines like a childs picture of crayoned rays of the sun.
isn't it the way you twinkle?
when the redness creeps to my face from latest mistake.
isn't it the way you drive that truck?
one arm straight on the wheel, one arm tan from the sun.
perhaps it's the way we're quiet
in the quiet that fills the room with puffs of white clouds.
surely it's the way you mindlessly,
stroke my arm when you try to make a point.
isn't it the way you work the day?
a mans work, tired and aching at the end.
isn't it the way you erase?
all of my horrid tempers and childish demands.
isn't it the way you love me?
in that space between my stellar and my odious.
and aren't i grateful,
that your broken pieces match my broken pieces.
isn't it an exquisite thing,
that your fragile ego looked for my fragile soul.
isn't it the way a story ends?
two old people left alone in the big empty house.
isn't it the way the best one ends?
when the children grow up and we hold hands at the park?
isn't it a lovely thing,
a sublimely confounding lovely thing.
sahn 5/11/14
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 9:06 PM UTC
She'd crayoned indiscriminate orange cheer and saw that she'd later been placed high up on the fridge door. From experience she knew that this meant that she had created something of worth, something with a 3-year-old's indiscriminate love, kept in place by a bright red magnet right next to a half-finished shopping list.
At their next visit she pointed and laughed - it was still there, though a little askew and over-caressed, judging by the finger-grease stains. Her pride was self-evident as she presented the picture's yellow counterpart and watched it being mounted with a matching magnet.
This time she noticed the tears, so had to ask her mum what that meant.
She quickly learned and later at the Royal Academy she was ready with a handkerchief when her grandfather teared up staring up at the family portrait in her signature sunshine palette. She enjoyed the smile as he reached up as if to bless the elevated portrait with his familiar caress and grand-paternal pride.
But the repeated queries about the bright red spot that featured on most of her portraits went unanswered.
May 15, 2023
May 15, 2023 at 12:43 PM UTC
BABBY DADDY
in your tiny hand
I become a crayoned man
much better than I am
Bluetack'd to the fridge
I an icon
made holy by my child
"I love my b a bb y!"
you name me in rainbow
all my "d's" look the other way
May 4, 2019
May 4, 2019 at 3:03 PM UTC
Hieronymus Bosch, who was only four,
Had toddled right out of my life,
I didn’t know whether he’d gone on his own
Or left with the trouble and strife.
She’d rave and she’d threaten to fly the coop
As she said that my ways were strange,
But whether she’d bother to take him too
Would have meant a remarkable change.
‘Why did you pick such a horrible name,’
She’d say, as she ladled the stew,
‘You gave him the name of a painter insane,’
(As he baited the bears at the zoo).
‘How can he live a commonplace life
With a moniker he can’t spell?
You’ve sentenced your son to eternal strife
Like that panel, a painting of hell.’
Hieronymus, he didn’t care about this,
He wanted to picture his world,
He’d flop and he’d slop in the mud, in his bliss,
And paint, till his toes had curled.
I knew that he’d be a surrealist when
He played with his mash, and was cute,
He swished it around on his palette to look
Like a man with a nose like a flute.
‘That kid is so gruesome,’ the wife had exclaimed,
‘He’s set on a roadway to hell.’
He’d crayoned a picture of me and her sister
Entwined on her favourite bell.
‘He isn’t like others,’ I used to exclaim,
‘He sees what he sees inside out,
He doesn’t like others, like hair-splitting mothers,’
And that’s when she started to shout.
I’ve searched and I’ve searched for Heironymus Bosch,
I’m trying to follow his trail,
The long line of beetles he captured in treacle,
The dead dog that’s eating its tail.
I know that he’s not with the trouble and strife
For she went into hiding in Greece,
He should be called Chester, the lad’s such a jester,
I guess I’ll be calling the Police.
David Lewis Paget
May 30, 2015
May 30, 2015 at 3:21 AM UTC
How it is to be a child.
A creature forged in forges
of crayoned little drawings
A spirit of an open soul
a heart that's always soaring
Don't tell them yet,
don't tell them yet,
how cruel the world can be.
They'll never know,
they'll never know,
if we never let them see.
Mar 17, 2016
Mar 17, 2016 at 11:17 AM UTC
.
I wish to live on the white page,
Cumulus as cloud, be all puffy,
Pure in new world without guile,
My thin body as bounty, cloud eyed
Sky of unsullied page, true kingdom
Of imagination, without euphemism,
Nor malice, but truth, cleanest light,
Where a child's drawings are welcome
Always, waiting to be rainbow crayoned,
Coloured sheen as the dawn appearing
At blackest moons' end, sheet of seraphim
Created, dreamt of wood and earth and sun.
.
Aug 9, 2019
Aug 9, 2019 at 3:34 PM UTC