"curio" poems
Vague recollections,
Of curio collections,
Salt and pepper shakers, unused
crystal ashtrays, reflecting rainbows
of northern prairie light on days bright.
A prairie girl, did you miss the place near the Arctic Circle,
your home? Did Odin and Freya call you away from here to
there, or was Thor, or Loki the thunder in your angry voice
that I feared and may have hid under the steep basement
stairs, quietly in the dark hoping you were unaware.
Some of your children, and
your spouse, left before you did,
I know that was tough, and a shame.
You were tougher, though, you did
suffer in you aging frame.
I know you loved us all, I know you knew me too,
very early you said of me "he is a sensitive child", which
I have found to be all too true, many years after you have
gone I miss you, grandpa and dad, Audrey and Vic too.
Did you all find Valhalla at Heaven's Gate?
So I will not stir up the past, nor
will I hurry, through each day, for
I will remember, and smile at those
memories that brought me joy, prose
and rhyme not of a child, but a Viking man.
©DWE032013
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 3:02 AM UTC
I am an exoskeleton
Falling to pieces
Half alive yet entirely dead
Crumbling and translucent
Delicate, and drifts, fluttering
With a single breath from someone
Nearby
I could be crushed or mangled
By a strike of the hand or a flick of a finger
But because I am considered beautiful and strange
I am kept preserved
The world revolves around beauty and
Oddities and I become one of these
Studied anomalies, a curiosity, merely
Because I am not like them
I am Oriental
And Occidental
I am a Southerner
And a Northerner
I am malnourished
Yet well fed
I am thin and short
But my stature belies my power
I am a geek, nerd, braniac, dork, and overachiever
But remain a stupid, ignorant, procrastinator
I am certainly an curio; a
Living
Breathing
Walking
Oxymoron
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 12:37 PM UTC
please to admit, it is
true & not too deep within,
a scientifically proven and a oddly
curio shop fact,
we are all aliens
to each other, despite,
the overlapping of
a billion permutations
of cellular related associations
our individuating palettes
the diversity of our genetics,
other than the physics of sharing a planet,
simplest put,
no one can ever
be exactly the same,
the precisely of you or me,
doppelgängers notwithstanding,
our individuation, so incredibly due
to our blessed diversification, that to
subdivide ourselves from others,
is a downward
facing absolutely ridiculous ideation
and thus we reveal here and (n/kn-ow) that the
only reason we aliens unique nonetheless
can communicate with each other,
regardless of alphabet or character of idiom,
(or idiots of character)
is
*all alien beings love to breathe and speak
intuitively in a pleasing rhyme and meter,*
to the ear of our overlapping physique,
and that is why, every tongue is connectable,
and every alpha produces its own poetic creations,
'tis poetic soundings alliterating glue,
that molds this planet of aliens
from a tower of babel into a
shapely sphere
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 1:05 AM UTC
One autumn day in Providence
I opened up a door,
And entered into a stuffy room
Called "Edgar's Nevermore",
A curio shop with things forbidden,
And things bizarre and perverse,
And obelisks of ancient books
Occult, arcane, and diverse.
I poked around the pint-sized potions,
Inspected a petrified eft,
But made no purchase; and empty handed
The merchant's lair I left.
Returning home, to my surprise,
Like one who'd broken the law,
I found I'd taken a good unpaid for:
A little monkey's paw.
It tightly gripped, with fingers curled,
A flap of baggy sleeve;
And there it stayed, upon my jacket,
When I hung it up at eve.
For many days it didn't move,
And seemed the perfect pet;
But never trust a monkey's paw,
Or this is what you'll get:
I went to bed a drunken evening,
And slept as though I were dead;
And I didn't hear the monkey's paw
As it crept beside my bed,
The monkey's paw that had bided its time,
And waited, still as could be,
To choose this night to strangle it—
My voodoo doll of me!
(Why did I have a voodoo doll
Of me, you ask? Well, I...
Well, let's just say...well...I can't tell you...
I'd blush to tell you why...)
I awoke (with bleary, blurry vision)
To the monkey-fisted grip,
Then died without a single curse
To swear upon my lip.
And in my town I'm still remembered
As that quintessential loner
Who died alone with a mangled throat,
A creepy doll...and a *****
O.O
Oct 29, 2014
Oct 29, 2014 at 3:13 PM UTC
Drinking Guinness from a wine glass
I watch the beetle on his back
rocking to and fro, frantically jerking his legs.
I imagine his voice, squeaky,
a balloon poodle stretched at the end
and spiked with a shot of helium
“help me, help me! Please I have grubs I should feed”.
I throw out a laugh like a Hammer House villain,
staggering from the sofa I am Nosferatu,
teeth bared in ominous intention,
spilling sticky black froth as I ******* my glass.
Wouldn’t it be good to stick a pin through his middle?
Keep him in a glass box? Whip him out at dinner parties
as a curio example of helplessness,
“yes! Look how he wriggles. Do try the stilton”.
Suddenly I’m aware that I wasn’t laughing.
Dec 16, 2010
Dec 16, 2010 at 12:59 PM UTC
I grow old when I have to,
young, when I want to.
I go to reality school with Sandman,
Cupid and Tooth Fairy.
I spin spiderwebs when I’m bored
and sell them off to art houses.
I run a theater in my attic
and put the actors away when I’ve guests.
I deliver single mothers’ babies on Sundays
and name them after my lost lovers.
I trap sunlight in a fishing net, powder it,
mix it with rock phosphate, alfalfa
and feed it to plants in the cities.
I read moods through people’s lips
and tune the piece of sky overhead
to shades of blue, and seldom white.
I put salt in tears, sugar in kisses,
and pepper…to make you sneeze.
I run into the atmosphere to dig out
precious little oddities lost in time
- like dainty coins dropt out of butter fingers,
gift-wrapped kisses flown towards heedless lovers,
paper rockets cut out of vintage tabloids,
and words – all made of gold.
I send them by post to girls with broken hearts,
with a charming story attached to each curio,
as **things lost and found
have a way of restoring faith.**
Mar 23, 2012
Mar 23, 2012 at 4:06 PM UTC
"Most men lead lives
of quiet desperation
and go to the grave
with the song still in them.”
Henry David Thoreau
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*this fearsome cursed thought,
rises fresh daily from
under death's precursor,
when sleep crusted eyelids broken
illusions none,
escapes zero,
go to my grave
with no lew'd selfie
foolish proclaiming
I was the greatest,
tho but an itinerant bit, an Internet curio
this so very quiet man,
sings his way every day,
with these worn tools,
dull, yet shiny from loving overuse,
the very things you
are currently grasping,
words,
his words
as you do as well...
each poem,
oil poured annotating
a new poem king anointed,
a psalmist on the lyre composing
of still waters to lie beside,
of valleys where he shall final rest
delusions none,
my bones and words will in dust meld,
ashes, couplets, dried essences,
a scents that is
this beings, his Eau de Cologne alone,
tints and hints of yellowed pixels,
tired bone and the worn flesh of
maybe's too plentiful,
coulda's, shoulda's,
if only
so in quiet desperation,
and human spirit ignited by lighter fluid burning,
write, and write yet thrice more,
that a leaden life be happy soiled,
each singing a freedom breaching birth,
a glorious failure, yet endeavour'd
to let his unique tune be heard
to my grave down, down,
but one contentment proudly, black-bold-etched,
amidst the forest of daily desperations,
protested he, with tunes herein shared,
marked by no copyright,
other than his name plain,
satisfied that his singing was
loudly heard until his voice,
could be, would be,
stilled only by Father Time*
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 4:04 PM UTC
The pillows do not rest your head although you may be tired
Perfect porcelain statues of people
Tiny trinkets motionless and admired
towels that dont dry ***** hands
Because they are for looks
The dolls stare blankly across the room
Sit on shelves instead of books
The fine china sits in a curio shelf
Alone forever collecting dust
Pretty flowers no one smells
Frozen forever go untouched
antique couches plush and blue
The guests not asked to have a seat
Price tag attached as if brand new
It’s contents staged precise and neat
Take off your shoes at the door
To maintain the integrity close to mint
Walking on eggshells upon the floor
The carpet lacking one footprint
A life size doll house you can walk inside
look but do not touch written in large print
Detailed written warning signs
Inform the cautious and careful inhabitants
A house you wouldn’t want to live in
But a family does reside
A shocking truth you can’t believe
Resembles forms of any human life
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 7:38 PM UTC
Fit to be tied to a ligand gated receptor,
mind you,
right there, in the area below our own aptness
to think and do at once, thus we think without
knowing we are
thinking
things,
new and old, linked by local nodes arranging ions,
in channels previously lacking bridged interchanges.
Instant one past then,
we re think,
if we remain, persisting at or on some certain point,
may we not, mainly almost completely, be self aware?
The gaps insulating our separate selves, as we imagine,
thoughts outside our heads do remain connected rectly
ortho dexterous… sinister off, right on. Switch,
transcendence, sit zazen intently making bits of this
peace.
Inner, breathing conscience, knowing used, to pay
yourself, first
love, neighborly behave, have love as for your self.
I, the boss mind, I, the chooser of destiny from now,
I, ego and id and all, me, you must acknowledge,
I was here when you arrived, in an acknowledged,
innocense, not ignoring a curio juxtaposed, sup-
posed to prompt a why from your own self, why
am I not kind to me.
I am no better than I can imagine proving, to myself.
I must convince me, you are merely watching me be,
in a mind state seeping from a spring I cleaned,
to channel a flow a bit thicker than a seeping…
Sit with me a minute,
measure the brevity,
leave be the reason, I wished to feel you there.
Knowing how I love you, determines the worth
of my own love.
Sep 13, 2023
Sep 13, 2023 at 12:54 PM UTC
My whirligig giggling and jiggling in an ever gyroscopic balancing act of spotting the to and fro, does sometimes wobble recklessly, even falls down. Revealing, revolving, evolving windy patterns and magnetism that spin pointedly upon an axis of gender nonspecific intention, it gets back up and twirls again. Whirls again, girls again, boys again, toys again, an accelerator from beginning to end, how can I be propellant and then, marry, tie it down? Letting loose these inhibitions of how such a perfect plaything may be too perfect, too divine a contraption is scary whirlwind to put my head around. Yet, this desire to go with it, oscillate and make rounds seems truer than any boxed in version of wooden wouldn't I rathers. So there it is, to grace a pirouette with stable partner, might be a portion of the dance, picturesque, but more ensemble pieces may follow. These too add to the brilliant ballet, and we are in it together.
Dec 30, 2015
Dec 30, 2015 at 12:21 PM UTC
A match strikes not for limbo
But for tepid coruscations to warm a soul.
By assumption she is not her own.
The quintessence of a life when received--
A curio to collect dust and fissure.
What will you do
with a heart that is not your own?
Feb 11, 2012
Feb 11, 2012 at 8:17 PM UTC
pure is water
underground
oh la la
set in soul
sings in tome
oh la la
still pilgrim nigh
prayer whereabouts
in-ground
romantically in
that stone hall
oh la la
there tirelessly
ensconced hers
with life
she pensively
peruse her asylum
in ecesis
when bread broken
with wax bean
oh la la
and this d'art
a priori again
her curio
Jun 28, 2017
Jun 28, 2017 at 2:42 AM UTC
a calyx in chaos.
a crack in chalky crown, crimson, cratered, clowns
cry crystal shards....
clothe me in crimpolene
in shades of clinical ivory
and cream.
come hither they cry
and carp, cavil,caterwaul.
come hither, come,
come, come.
cypher the cyan, from the cyanide
castigate, the casting,
of the conversational.
be cognisant, within the
cogs of the clock...
click-ticking..tick-clicking
in chorus, chant of canticle.
be the calm,
within the clemency.
and the core,
of the courageous.
concede not,
contemplate, with conscioncious, clear
the concepts of conotation
above all be
incomparable, capricious, canny and considerate
a conglomerate of cause, corpus and crux.....
both curious and a curiosity.
cause...
creation, cherishes
a clever n' curious, curiosity.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 8:10 PM UTC
thoughts and lyrics
travel onto pages
by a poet, a writer,
author and a dreamer.
Manhattan, her home
in New England,
the land of ideas,
innovation and curio.
dream on, my muse,
for it turns to ambition.
live your visions.
write your contemplations.
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 6:40 PM UTC
You found the truck
attractive enough to her
to keep her standing up after each time you ran her down
Each time she saw you coming
She smiled in hope
And ran to the street, stood mid-lane, waving until that moment when
Your metal smashed her smile
Your rubber broke her fingers
and you had won.
Knowledge: My meager roadside curio is more to her than the fastest automobile hatred can build
And now, you do not drive this way very often, and nothing much makes me happier
But we both know the saying, "If I can't have her..."
And you managed that:
braces she has to wear now
slipped disks
scars all over her body
and heart...
She is a different person, and in that,
you have won,
as you couldn't have her,
and now neither do I.
But there is something else:
You forgot that my love is nearly unconditional.
Unconditional love does not exist.
My love is honest, pure,
Not the hardly-unconditional love most advertises as unconditional.
Not the kind that is plastic, and
flashing on a sign on the side of your vehicle
The one I read through tears
Each time
Her hand slipped from mine
as she ran to meet you.
I love her,
no matter what damage you have caused
no matter how long it takes to heal
no matter if it never heals
and in that,
you will never win.
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 10:14 PM UTC
The pale moon smiling down
The trees dancing tango with the wind
The icy ground biting my back
The shivers whispering for me to open my eyes
Love is a cruel thing
It makes the darkness seem so inviting
The night, enveloping day
The curio of how people thrive
Given the hurt that touches everyone's heart
Love is so mundane
The night wraps me up
Being my gauze
Preventing the blood from hugging the ground
Too much untimely beauty in the portrait of the world
For death to invite me so.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 2:07 AM UTC
Imagine good enough for once
and all we do may do good.
Corny, Provencial, San Juaquin,
come waltz with me,
my tilde, leave us oll rrroling rrs
all ye all ye outs in free, we are only one century
out of tune.
And we found a rready wrrited rreason to say
a used key is always bright.
Freedom of the press, is an abstraction frrom
freedom, per se, being in need of rights,
authoritatively apprrius osity curio
those be noise, not functing scipots, bags of wind.
we are the words that fit the pattern to the card,
for Mon Jacquard, once a soldier,
trained in close order drill,
a thread from there,
gives us software. The fruit of the sci sent to
Mon Jacquard,
words taught his fingers to fight.
There is a right fight.
It is nobody's war. Nobody fights it for you.
Come, let us imagine making peace in a cup,
until it spills,
and coats the world like Sherrwinn Williams.
Feb 10, 2020
Feb 10, 2020 at 3:44 PM UTC
Burn me with thy eyelids
Impale me with thy soul
Show me different kingdoms
Were past life lovers old
A circuit to lie upon thy extremity
A salute of ourn own flag
Blowing to ourn entities
Wrapped tight in cellophane bag
A shrine and a vestry
Wherein well make ourn abode
Ourn manor ran by children
For we'll have two or three at most
You'll be the loyal procreator
I'll be thy homage sire
Memoir's of ourn reverance
Lit to antediluvian mire
Jun 5, 2015
Jun 5, 2015 at 8:15 PM UTC
She wanted to touch the thorns
and every living organism that would brought her to her knees,
subtle and dangerous; a gargantuan curiosity peaked and intervene;
affinity faded into something frivolous,
perspective flashing ruby before dawn broke.
she wanted risks,
and short-live melancholia for her far-fetched disappointment
when she found the magnolia had ceased to bloom
in an early spring,
and by Tuesday
she had forgotten her name purposefully,
a woman's folly always bound to be questioned anyhow.
'twas the beginning of her decadence, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five,
a withered English rose that lovers wouldn't infatuate,
nor they would let her stay at their den.
a stunner devoid of attention;
a story abound of illusion,
unmeasured;
but a gaze in her eyes,
I melt.
never had I seen a creature so free,
never had I seen a curve of smile preened,
and swathed with such glory.
free;
or so as I believe.
free.
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 9:01 AM UTC
Look at this sweetheart, his handcuffed wrists wrestling
Casting his cries on the clouds of Cleverack Correctional
Fighting a soul as fierce as his targeted arrow
That he only felt in his flesh firing his crossbow
What if you needed violence to get emotional?
Despising the very day you came into being?
His skies were probably as blue as a sodalite
But yet you kicked him out of the path of Light
In your fake flawlessness, you threw him into Hell
You denied his delights, he became your fallen angel
Eva, don’t you complain, your son has slain, you paranoid
His classmates, but you wanted to fill your life from this void
We need to talk about you before we look at the killer
Eva. You bear the name of the first woman on Earth
Do you think she could have begotten a monster in her hearth
Aren’t you this sick America, wicked and weary in your woes
You wanted your baby to call you his beloved mother
But destroying what you had become became his vicious vows
And he was on the list. You never read the map correctly
Maybe he was your final destination, your last addiction
You are right when you write that you never found the solution
To the cunning curio he represented- of him you took a dimly
View. But did you once look back in his eyes, lit with desperation?
‘’What do you mean, special?’’ probably is the answer
To his enigmatic and yet so crystal clear
“I used to think I knew," " Now I'm not so sure.”
That inspires nothing but a fantastic fear
To the courageous and curious reader
Can you still feel this unhinged pressure?
Oullins, France
May, 21, 2014
After watching the 2011 We need to talk about Kevin movie and reading Lionel Shirver’s book.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 11:58 AM UTC
He shuddered at my beauty—
sad but flattering, like it is.
And how I long to be a cat,
that lives in an antique shop.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 1:04 AM UTC
I have a subtle secret,
I remembered it,
while I stood watching the wild animals,
they're called the just past children,
my goodness how they dance,
youth romancing wildly,
to the crashing, thrashing,trashing beat.
My secret is a little curio,
I too once was one of those creatures,
just before the present day.
Time caught me on her current,
I can't come out to play today.
Olden joints are aching as burning flames and rigid rocks,
long left behind those bobby socks.
I had none anyway.
Punk rock and new romantics hovered in my day,
I had painted nails and spiky hair,
dog collar sported,
but ne'er a vicar,
but never a dog, I didn't bite.
The old crone gives assassinations of their personalities,
making judgement of their music taste and on their motion,
The truth is only mine to speak,
I was one of them,
seems just like last week,
I'm jealous of their fiery youth,
which rolled into my yesterdays,
their style generation x, y and z,
ultimately just like mine,
Guys in make-up,
some dressed in lace,
ears hung with chandeliers.
Baggy in black, which slogans that match,
feet that jump, lashing and kicking,
raging while kissing.
Memoirs of my forgotten worth,
once crazy musical youth.
(C) Livvi
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 4:13 PM UTC
Fluid time, fluid stone, fluid light
all right, solid nothing,
nothing at all, a solid wall,
with a clustering of curious curio types,
messengers messaging between
whole and part, paid tuition
ars intuitus
rare anachronists insist, words evolve.
Words expand, as children into sage
or wastrel conformed and conditioned
expanding the idea of wedom,
breathing, statistically half in, as half out
breathe,
what manner of man am I, wombed or un?
Were there ever men such as we, who can
share context across history, at earth level.
----------------------
Considering the ant is no childish passtime,
Fulfilling aristocratic duty to learn then teach,
Considered here, linearly, on a thread
one thought wide, picked from circumstance,
to consider sidereally distant, sent from Mars,
between three and twenty minutes of time away,
on an arc affected by cohesive force, eh
grave-definite down, down, down
to the core of our communication organs,
signaling scents accepted as thought projected,
kindly lines, minds attuned as thought accepted.
--------------------
Consider ever, from your vastest sense,
of the gravity bubble we exist within,
you and I, my hearing, seeing, knowing
me and you, my guardian guiding will,
to which I choose to submit, under no threat.
General Common Sense, beauty recognition,
test to tell if the word lord means any true -ing,
Greek men, pure, indeed, wisdoming wedom
mob minds and freedom do not mix,
oil and water, sure as Hell.
Freedom from all forms of tyranny, what holds
our we shape, in our minds? Common sense,
under all the stories contained within this
Goldilocks zone of unintended circumstances,
working out, fine, just iusta think
fine…
is no real answer, it is a code, a social norm set
said, fine, I'll say it, as a code for so small
we'd need ants eyes to see it…
and, lo', we have those,
we have predictable macroscopic images,
graven deep into our idle time drifting state
watching art mock life, and learn life laughs.
--------------------
Mar 14, 2024
Mar 14, 2024 at 1:11 PM UTC
(for Thom Hickey)
It is, one supposes, a business establishment, if just barely
Though more than one would-be shopper,
Having been squeezed against some ancient china cabinet
Or banging an unsuspecting knee
Against some camouflaged table leg,
Has opined that it as if four walls and a low-slung ceiling
Had suddenly thrown themselves about a yard sale,
In any case the place being filled with such things
Which are, if by no means useless bric-a-brac,
Rendered unremarkable, even somewhat undesirable
By their very familiarity,
And in the midst of this rabbit warren of commerce
(Holding an ancient clarinet in his left hand,
Wand-like, a bemused Prospero considering its pros and cons)
Is the proprietor of the shop,
And he notes that you have stopped
In front of some sixties flying-saucer-cum-willow-tree lamp,
And he says Ah, well let me tell you something about that,
Holding forth on its manufacturer,
The curious backstory of its design,
And how he came in possession of several other pieces
At the same time, and of course they have their own tales as well,
And you can't help how this confusion of things of former lives
Has suddenly taken on a certain light, a glow even,
The illumination of shared memory,
The recollection of why such things hold a place
In our pasts and presents, and after you exit
You give in to the musing that there were some items
You did not give due consideration,
Which may necessitate a return trip.
Oct 31, 2019
Oct 31, 2019 at 7:56 PM UTC
Boredom exceeding the limit, I reached out
To the shelf full of cassettes and
Sliding my fingers down the names
Stumbled upon one, dustier than the rest
That one, obviously older, bore the name
'Du Dlux Dlan' (Which you may say rhymes with Ku Klux ****
Something he'd bought feeling a liking for its name
Its quirkiness, as was his wont
I played the cassette, anticipating a flurry of blows and kicks
A curio. to unravel the mystery of its name
The movie , as it turned out, was not a movie
But what I think they call a footage,
On the screen three crosses erected in a desert land, with a man hanging on each.
The three men were bearded, the one in the middle
Looked calm and serene ( as if he'd been tranquilized)in spite of his ****** body, all battered and beyond recovery
The other two, I found , were kicking and whining (in their constrained state, of course.
Kicking with their nails, that is)
Hanging men get their peckers stiff and up, I knew it
There were soldiers around them, occassionally raising their spears and with its tip, tickling the men on the crosses out of their wits.
And then...there was a gunshot
And the clatter of horseshoes
Holding their guns aloft, rode in a pack of three cowboys
Then pointing their guns at the hanging men, they exclaimed:
'What the....., they are nailed to the crosses!"
Wasting no time, they swerved their horses around and rode away, leaving the men on the crosses for dead and me, gazing at the blank screen of the TV and asking:
'Who could the Du Dlux Dlan be?
The three men on the crosses or the three wranglers?'
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 11:56 PM UTC