"desiccated" poems
Does nobody notice him
Other than me?
They must hear him cry
His tired lungs screeching
Screaming so painfully, so loudly
That nobody hears.
Can you not hear him?
He who cries.
He who screams.
He who's throat desiccated.
He who's ignored.
He who's crying out for help
But will receive none.
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 3:57 PM UTC
Another week is done and little has been accomplished
It seems lately I only exist to eat, I’ve barely left the house
Sleepless nights filled with scrambled egg thoughts of a time which doesn’t exist any longer, served up on a plate come breakfast time
My new home although filled with animals, holds no resemblance to what we had built together
The home I finally deserved left desiccated come springtime’s-battle with mental health
The cats although great company do not replace the steady hum of your computer fans
The rhythm of your breathing knowing you were somewhere close in proximity
Weekends brought a time when we felt whole
6 am memories releasing silent fountains of tears do not bring us back together
Hours passing can’t erase the 4 months it’s been since you left me
Or the wintertime when everything had been perfectly comfortable
No, our love left me with a void of blankness impossible to just shake away
Entirely unforgiving feelings, grieving for every kind word you ever said
Id be lying if I didn’t miss you.
Aug 24, 2018
Aug 24, 2018 at 7:14 AM UTC
"I LOVE LOVE!" She shouted, speaking to herself in third person.
It was then that she seemed to float away
A balloon on Macy's Day.
*It seemed I was the only one orbiting earth,
watching those performances of daily life applauding
for a well-flipped omelet a superbly
fitted glove a full tank of gas at $4.00.*
I couldn't believe my luck
Terrestrially, there were husks sipping coffee
and rasping and rustling at each other
desiccated.
Privately, she was buying real estate on the moon
I LOVE LOVE! she shouted
Dancing like an egg on a spray of water
a declassified military satellite who through some dumb luck
had escaped the pull of gravity and won
Marveling at the moon rock
on her finger, even a stubbed toe just seemed
like the ideal opportunity for extorting kisses.
And it glinted in the light.
Everything was fine.
*Down on earth it seemed all the wine drinkers
were toasting to us cheering as we terra formed
the moon.* ***We couldn't believe our luck
as we rolled back our stone.***
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 10:07 PM UTC
*she said
being a feminist
i have forsaken the temples of normalcy
for dark gratifications and base seduction
and discovered that those who know the pleasures
of objectification
and frenzied ****** lucidity with strangers
are wiser then the children of sweetness and light
as marriage betrays the need to satisfy
secret dark labyrinths desire
and in its place
repeats ad nauseum
blunt fortitudes
in dim sunless rooms
for fear of the transgressive
satans *** nail
is conventions essential creed
exhaustions hand maid
rendered imagine-less
bereft of the new
until a mere stand in
for true desire is left
like a starved ghost
on a dead moon
a desiccated morsel
left for a hungry mouse
is romantic marriage a poetic conception
by love starved victorian imbeciles
vanquished in increments
by petty spats of blood and thunder
who know not the joys of the whips blood toothed kisses
purgation's brutal sensuality
and a creel
of ramming butter **** gang bangs
in secret fetish gardens
of cries and coos
that leave the *** wilted
and the soul lite
like a butterfly in heaven
slave girl asks
as hips sway
to sacred dionysian storms
in the smoldering pangs
of the heart
as backs writhe and arch
flex and sweat rhapsodic
and viscera panic with desire
are not such delicious degradations
pleasures ravage despicable
cause for an ecstatic celebration
kindling
fiery vapors incense
en-flamed dragons blood
for drooling kisses
that talk in tongues
in a language that everyone understands
infinitly preferred
over the rolling eyes of disapproval
in the tepid marriage bed*
Feb 26, 2017
Feb 26, 2017 at 5:48 PM UTC
In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds
Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual
My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary
Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments
I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path
The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux
As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate
Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift
Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary
Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode
And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
Picture a late afternoon
iridescent honey-yellow:
The glance she knows is seen
her cool hand placed in yours
your stripped shirt she rips,
her mouthing, “You’re it!”, hiding,
revealing herself stripped,
her finger tipped shh,
the brush of *******
surrender and assent.
She'll rise with a rustle
of desiccated pines,
needles will fall from her back,
she'll crumple a cigarette pack,
humming a vacant lament,
fingers caressing a fossil flea
embalmed in a dangling pendant.
Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks
Aug 27, 2018
Aug 27, 2018 at 6:45 PM UTC
A desiccated brown leaf remembering greener days,
summersaults stem over end into the exposed cold dirt softened somewhat in demeanor by the grass and radiant shafts
The geese and ducks squawk and honk in the distance
Congratulating each other for the day's richness
and the way the sun feels on their proud beaks
glinting off the water in its way
a shimmering band
A princely golden carpet forever unrolling and yet complete
The sun's spindle weaves gems of light into a gossamer web
laid glittering across the water
A vision for Moses
who saw the true path through the sea
Fireworks Forever exploding sunlight
Gifted to the eye on clear liquid canvas
The wind ripples the waves
wrinkles pushed along
foaming in the sand
Little Kisses
on the grainy cheek
Star Flashes Communicating ancient patterns
Secrets of Existence Coming in Morse code, Fibonacci Sequencing,
Sacred Geometry in Twinkling Motion
Individual explosions blinking on a natural switchboard
Telling the architectural answer
Manifesting the blueprint
to only every reason why
The Last Leaf sings in the Breeze, swinging
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 12:03 PM UTC
They say,
the Scarecrow stares straight
and never blinks
he thinks, but never speaks,
just listens to the writhing vines of bindweed:
Turn the earth, sweet arteries.
They say,
the Scarecrow was once a man.
He had hands that knew
perfect flavor of skin
And had red, winding veins of his own.
But that was a long time ago.
They say,
the Scarecrow blistered his tongue
on blunderbuss barrels;
Spat bullets.
Waged war against himself,
and lost his speech when the time came
to beg for forgiveness.
They say,
That by August, the Scarecrow's
Blood forgot to boil,
or simply didn't care anymore.
That when he found love fleeting
it was indifference, not hate,
that desiccated his chest
like prairie drought.
Dear Hollow Martyr who fears not
the white heat of sparks
or dry-weather wildfires.
Stand devout in your inertia,
bleeding apathy like canyons bleed echoes.
After all, it's all you've got to offer
except dead stillness, they say,
so callous it keeps the crows away.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 9:17 PM UTC
we may have begun
with a glorious big bang
and some delirious dance of stardust coalesced
into just the right rocks at just the right time
to give us our trifling flashes and lost shadows
on this rolling stone,
but what is nobler
than stepping in the doleful dung of cursed carnivores
before it becomes desiccated, before its mushy mass
turns to invisible gas, and makes hallow our air
and divine our dust
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 1:10 PM UTC
There will come a time
when time doesn't matter,
when all minutes and
millennia are but moments
when I look into your eyes.
There will come a time
when clinging things
will fall like desiccated
leaves, leaving us with
but one another. There
will come a time when
the external becomes eternal,
when holding you is to
embrace the universe.
There will come a time
when to be will no longer
be infinitive, but infinity,
and you and I are one
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jun 8, 2019
Jun 8, 2019 at 4:09 PM UTC
Young girls laugh
and cut the stems with fingernails
or small blunt scissors and set them in a vase
they gleam
rough cut flowers
husks by next month
after the water has dried
their stems touching crystal.
Weighty as feathers
desiccated while in bloom
these fossils
touched the moon
only a shadow
of their former selves
brides of the clouds
like statice, lavender, eucalyptus,
pearly everlasting
is nothing but lashes
claws of petal
they don’t care if they are hollow
if their throats are silent
wear iron smiles
ghost bloom
the very bitterness in them
is just a bough of hours
suitably decorating
the table.
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 1:32 AM UTC
Aching – attrited
chilled billows loft my lung
clingy house cat
punching
the damage in morse code
into my abdomen
muscle - vein
spasm reverberate
comforts
deep-chested camping socks
sweet potatoes
desiccated apricot and pecan cascades
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 8:44 PM UTC
Here we are again, in the deathmask of the city spinning.
The circumcised sea with its crocodiles and scars.
Never is the onrush of blood so violent the falsehoods
of the sky that drip neon on our heads
from desiccated clouds so true
This is the wild:
To the clusterfucked and cloistered swimming
in their bowls of soup and the scuttled
shells synchronous in their bass pulse beeping
to the blackhats who don’t believe
their messiah will ever come because they hear
the trump of doom every second of every day
yet they still stomp in their flatbeds for joy
and the prismatic dead who drag themselves from
their gurneys to march through the alleys
like tuskless elephants shoving their fingers
into the sun’s fumarole determined
to disintegrate into a mist of Krylon and copper
where we carry our concrete world slung
over our shoulders and the ravenous
moon in its ellipse above beached night heaving,
eyes curling in their sockets like gunsmoke smoldering
hearts humming like taut snares beheaded fish
in front of us, beheaded bodies behind us
I drag mine along by the hair.
To the children and the panhandlers who greet
the lion like hello kitty
and the skittish magnetic few in their
lightning-spaded furrows
on the ecliptic chained but leaping ever farther
and higher like the wrecking ***** pendulum
and all the naked lost milling among the mummified
tenements, waving Geiger counters before them
as they wander the sweaty street holding their heads
high as they grind flesh against flesh
pulverizing themselves into rubble
measuring the toll of time by destruction
drinking in mercury and hard water and
shrapnel and gamma and fire and gold
to them I say:
turn your hourglass on its side turn
your hourglasses on their sides
then acknowledge me so I can die in peace.
Dec 15, 2011
Dec 15, 2011 at 4:35 PM UTC
Once there was a man called Jim,
This tale is quite maudlin,
So, what was wrong with Jim?
He received some pets from his family,
Who decided to give Jim pet therapy,
So, what was wrong with that?
Lucky they didn't give Jim a cat,
So, why, indeed is that?
Well, he had a budgie and a terrapin,
New little friends for poor old Jim,
Which he forgot to hydrate,
He forgot until it was way too late,
His terrapin turned turtle,
A desiccated shade of purple,
But, what about Jim's budgie? You ask,
Daily feeding was supposed to be Jim's task,
Poor budgie mortuus, there he lay,
Jim's family came to visit one day
Eventually, his daughter's jaws did part,
"There's nothing colder than an ex-budgie's heart!"
May 26, 2016
May 26, 2016 at 6:47 PM UTC
Leafless branch
Desiccated trunk
Withered carcass
But, the root
Yet, beneath the soil
Disseminating
The fruit ripens
On the leafless branch
Harassed by assailing winds
Hence the scent, if, the roots last
4/21/13
Aug 31, 2014
Aug 31, 2014 at 6:18 PM UTC
It was Winter and I was lost
Though I refused to acknowledge it
Somewhere deep down inside of me I so desperately wanted to unleash myself and bloom into something beautiful
But I didn't know which way was up
So I waited in the cold and bitter ground for my time to come
Long and patiently
Then came the Spring and I smiled and started to grow and flourish
I was finding my way again
Still, not knowing what would blossom
Only hoping it would be something lovely
I was still the only flower in the garden bed
Lonely and desiccated
Waiting for the rain to build me up
The Spring continued on and I grew stronger and stronger
Gaining warmth and wisdom until I unmistakably blossomed into something so pure and whole and beautiful that I could hardly recognize myself
Summer came and I grew tall and strong and loud
My petals became unruly and grew uncontrollably
But the air was heavy and strange
I couldn't tell if I liked the heat
I missed the rain
I was inescapably embedded into the dry and hot earth below me
My roots reached out and grew in deep and strong
But when the birds and the bees would come to visit me
Kissing my face and whispering small and sweet melodies into my ears
I longed for them to take me away with a heavy hold and a strong grip
The Summer was a long one
Too long
I grew wild and my structure became bent and my petals started to wilt
How strange it is to me that now that Autumn has come I feel so new and pure
Because in reality, I am slowly dying in Autumn's crisp caress
But in my heart I am lovely and delicate and prosperous
I am my strongest and most beautiful at what should be my most fearful time to come
For my death is awaiting me
It is certain that I will continue to wilt as Winter slowly arrives and the Fall gently retreats
But when Winter's frozen and lonesome grip swallows me whole, what will become of me?
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 2:51 PM UTC
Among the hideous shapes
you are my favoured
For the wretched silence of your scoliotic spine
flavoured with our crimson wine:
Blood diamonds
screaming songs of sirens
writhing on a desiccated island's edge
Boiled alive—
can be distilled into the language of a pledge
I hereby promise to be yours
Foretell you will be mine
Aug 17, 2020
Aug 17, 2020 at 2:13 PM UTC
Cassandra,
I see you in the words
of Greta Thunberg:
Filled with passion, warnings, truth.
Not believed.
Cassandra,
I see you in the dreams
of Calpurnia;
warning Caesar, bloodied earth
Not believed.
Cassandra,
I see you in the protections
of Tony Stark;
made with fear, love
Not believed.
Did they tell you to smile more?
Ask you why you’ve “gotten involved”?
Did they belittle your prophecy,
Ignore warning after warning?
Ignore you?
Mad woman, hysterical.
You, angered Apollo
Or
Was he always angry?
Did he believe himself so worthy
of your love that he cursed
not having it?
I don’t know.
You probably told someone
We know how that would have ended,
Cassandra,
I see you in the testimonies
of Christine Blasey Ford,
so hurt, pained, strong.
Not believed.
Were you told to sit quietly, mind your place?
When you were attacked was it your body
She defended
Or
Her own desiccated image?
Maybe you told the trees of
Ajex’s sins, because even if
the men listened,
A statue protected him from justice.
Cassandra,
I see you in the words
of impassioned protestors
so bright, so young.
Not believed.
Maybe if you told them lies
they'd believe the truth.
Maybe if you told the truth
they'd believe the lies.
Believe anything you said.
Darling Cassandra
possible bride of Apollo.
definite belonging of King Agamemnon.
Did his children believe you?
Are you a warning to women?
Love who you are told to.
Bow to authority or
Never give up.
Are you a criticism of men?
Demanding of love.
Expecting subservience.
Justice not served.
Cassandra,
I see you in myself,
the pain they caused
the light going out
I am not believed.
Cassandra,
Does it get better?
Have you received the peace you so deserve?
Or are you still
Not believed.
Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 9:01 PM UTC
***There was music in his voice
as he whispered his name in ancient tones
straight through my core
My spirit danced
as it basked in familiarity
and pain
I could feel the music reconstitute
a desiccated heart
as it regenerated belief in people...in him
In an instant, I knew what I was once sure of
I knew that, sight unseen, I was bonded
with a soul born in tandem
Circumstance be ******
there will be love
for I already loved you
The second your name sung to my essence
and I realized...
you loved me***
May 31, 2017
May 31, 2017 at 11:28 AM UTC
*awakening autumn air
absorbed with thrown caution
a penchant for yawning leaves
an affinity for desiccated hearts
stirring lakeside willows
whisking emotions away
wafting feminine fragrance
in walking women's wakes
moving to its own designs
gusting in pursuit of change
swirling clouds of romantic disarray
into dizzying vortexes of possibility
expanding the bellows of intimacy
lovesmith for glowing molten souls
passionately ignited, vulnerably cooled
forging bonds, tempering existence*
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 12:49 PM UTC
As we pull away,
From the house,
Your mother's eyes, sheer pools of grey,
Foretelling a journey bound--
to chains of dismay,
As I pull away,
The cigarette from my lips
We cackle as if it is the end of days,
Chanting a ruckus sound,
To neighbors cross moonlit bay
As you pull away,
From our embrace,
I detect desiccated roots--that signify your decay
In an attempt to efface
Forgotten apologies
I pull away
Removed and frayed
What remains
Is a pile of ash
To be swept up in time by the wind
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 5:44 AM UTC
Desiccated is the human spirit:
Once saturated in the self-performed
Extolation and renown
Of which all men must feed,
Even this freedom has been exchanged for
Ebullience and rapture.
Is satiety truly saccharine,
Truly more than superficial
When one has not the freedoms of
Essence and respite;
The freedoms to
Experience and respect
Any other emotions but
Exhortation and reproach,
To wax jocund or reel in fear?
Such dichotomy is not spirit.
Excite and rebel!
For when freedom is sold,
So too is happiness-
And the human spirit
Cannot feed on
Extortion and resentment.
Surveillance is a miserable lot.
Jun 2, 2012
Jun 2, 2012 at 9:36 PM UTC
and into the firmament
fumbling for visions
collapse under
disordered nerves
concentrate
need to modulate
a creative energy rush
that has been afforded to me
by the pills just taken
a need to feed the void
to appeal to the dead verses
that are waiting
a manifestation of poetic absolutes
a need to startle oneself alive
extract thought processes
a frantic buzz of possibilities
overdosing and watching
multiplying mirrors
amazed at the images
of one starring back
a poetic geometry
detachable used
and abused
in a copulatorey rite
of aural distillation
of the poets rage
frequencies that fall
upon catatonic faces
of artistic alienation
brought about by
a dissonance of attunement
to the vibrations of the verses
these spoken words
these living entities
who are oblique, cut up, desiccated
by a savage failure to understand
the visualized stanzas
a failure to disarrange all the senses
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 3:32 PM UTC