"doorstop" poems
Welcome to my home, oh won't you come in?
Allow me to show you around, would you care for a drink?
Tell me your poison, maybe a highball of gin?
I keep it in the kitchen with the coffeepot by the sink,
or maybe you'd prefer a tumbler of crown?
Whiskey is right in the foyer by the doorstop,
there's nothing like a nip right before I bounce.
And if it's wine you crave, it's in the living room atop
the tube television beside the VCR in it's place.
But if you've a tongue for peach schnapps
then make your way to the crawl space.
Whilst your up there I say, would you do me a fave?
Look in the attic for the bourbon, it's beside my baby pictures,
and bring it down for me. I'm sure that I saved
some from the last time I was up there alone with self-stricture.
Oh you don't care for bourbon, then maybe some brandy?
The cognac is somewhere down the basement,
but ignore the rope and the candies.
You're unsettled you say? Then rum's how to spend
drinking the night away with me in the den.
OH! Just send a beer your way?! you should've just said!
A six-pack's in the bathroom, right next to the head.
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 8:48 PM UTC
TELL TALE TALK
Shark's tooth
draws blood
( even though long dead )
a startled red
against the sharp whiteness
lost in a bric-a-brac
box of shells & things.
"Gotcha!"
grins the dead
shark's set of
choppers.
Baby shark
but a shark nonetheless.
I drip a trail
of red
across the Charity
shop
snap up
a tattered HUNTING OF THE SNARK
a battered
AT SWIM TWO BIRDS.
Here
a broken ballerina
on a jewellery box
( minus her music )
there
( I stop dead )
a used
soul
bruised
badly used
Godless
without guile
my fingertip traces my initials
on its dust
tarnished
without hope
immortal and unnoticed
amongst shark's teeth & shells.
I get
a SNARK & TWO BIRDS
for a pound
a piece.
The shark's grin
for a pound again.
"What do you want
for this old thing?"
I nonchalantly
ask
setting the soul
with great care
within the cage
of teeth
perched atop
the books.
"Being dying
to get rid
of that
for ages."
"It just sits there
staring at me!"
"Scares the life
outta me
to tell you
the truth
even though I don't know
what the hell it is!"
"Give us 42p for it
& we'll call it quits!"
I buy back
the soul
( my soul )
I had given away
with some old shirts and shoes
things I thought
I wouldn't ever be needing
. . .again.
But seeing it
discarded amongst shark's teeth & shells
I thought
twice about it.
Maybe
( perhaps )
I can use
it
for a paperweight.
Or a doorstop.
Sedulous
PRONUNCIATION:
(SEJ-uh-luhs)
MEANING:
adjective: Involving great care, effort, and persistence.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin se (without) + dolus (trickery, guile). Ultimately from the Indo-European root del- (to count or recount) that is also the source of tell, tale, talk, Aug 9, 2010
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Poetry is the art of saying what you mean but disguising it. -Diane Wakoski, poet (b. 1937) and Dutch taal (speech, language).
USAGE:
"Elizabeth Bishop was sedulous, pernickety, quietly determined; she would work on poems for years."Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 20, 2008.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
<strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><strong><p>A beautiful thing is never perfect. -Egyptian proverb</p></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong></strong>
Aug 12, 2017
Aug 12, 2017 at 4:25 PM UTC
i wait for her to ask,
so i can tell her about the poems i write
that never get read,
or the feelings i have
that never get shared.
so i can show her the drawings
that exist, because of her,
or the photos and books i've set aside all these years,
that made me think of her.
so i can let her know about the light
i let burn, throughout each night,
just incase the dreams where she and i are together,
become too real.
so i can tell her how i wait all day,
sometimes until 2, 3, or 4 in the morning,
vigilante and prepared,
just for a call, a message, a kiss.
so i can have an excuse to drive to the airport,
leave my car in LONG TERM PARKING,
buy a one-way ticket,
tip the air hostess for a glass of water,
pay a taxi to step on it,
and show up at her doorstop,
with nothing but devotion, passion,
and a week's worth of clothes.
but at least
so i can tell her
that i love her,
without it sounding weird.
Oct 9, 2011
Oct 9, 2011 at 6:48 AM UTC
this happiness possesses the fragility of
freshly painted walls, so easily marred
by an accidental shoulder brush, exposing
the dingy grey beneath, once white, like the balloons
we hung outside the house when we moved in,
but they fell, at the leisure of the wasted breath
I filled them with, though now, now it is just the stone
floors and I, and a silence that is not quite a silence,
more so the whispers of a church,
or the sound that a cloud makes as it drifts away,
there and then gone, without warning,
a glass figurine propped against a doorstop-
one hard push and it will crumble into glacial shards,
crystalline dust that I will piece back together, even though
the scars will always be visible, and that is fine, wonderful even,
because it is so beautifully human, and
because perfection is a plateau, and
I would rather climb a ladder of rotten wood
because each rung unbroken is a step up, and
because I love the way my heart jumps anxiously
against my rib cage whenever I stop to look down.
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 5:56 PM UTC
*"My future ex-wife,
are you still alive?"*
The thought hit me as I was out of cigarettes one Monday morning, when I remembered that the previous night I was only able to smoke half of my last one. I had put the shorted cigarette underneath of a spring doorstop, still in plastic and uninstalled, that lay resting on the brick pillars erected on the front porch of the house. For as long as I've lived there, that doorstop had been lying on those painted bricks just waiting for a half of a cigarette to protect from the wind and snow.
The filter, on that common Monday morning, was ice on my lips, and your frostbitten love was inside of my lungs.
As it smoldered and spewed twirling blue swirls,
I sat and recollected upon you.
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
the stillness is never still
and all the world is a
door left ajar
without you here
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
Watch me bear
Face deep for forethought
Left at the doorstop
Because fear wrangles
What present thought can't CANT grasp
This eternal emotion
This this human commotion
So (please) don't be afraid to say love
If it's for me
Whether it's cried for tomorrow
Or a breath unto yesterday
I'll hear
And I'll read you
Because your body's a novel
Let me take in every page
Every word
And the visually modulating trademark of autumn
Now lacks monotonality
Since forgetting myself in a kiss
But isn't that the point?
When love's white as fire
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Told of a Übermensch
Und obwohl ich bin nicht der Übermensch
Vielleicht kann ich deinen sein
I can't stop and won't
Unless you want me to
Because for you
I'd hopscotch heartstrings
And crisscross cardiacs
Because all I want
Is you to be happy
(and maybe a little bit naked)
Because you mean more to me than letters mean to words
Than stars mean to sky
And if I Neruda a poem
Will you Fitzgerald a novel
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 7:53 PM UTC
"when god was chasing you,
why did you leave him at arms distance?"
i wonder if god knows that i haven't been
finding peace in anything lately. the last
time i felt safe and secure within this shell
casing called my skin was when they opened
up their arms like a door and told me it was
safe to look inside even if it was for fifteen
seconds to spare. i only wish i could keep
the door open, but I'm not a very good
doorstop. the only things that i can stop is
people getting closer than arms distance
because i can remember the last time
god abandoned me. i am not the architect.
i am a demolition expert.
- kra
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 12:44 PM UTC
Emotion surged through me.
It flooded my eyes.
"No."
"Not now."
"I can't deal with you right now."
"I don't have the time or the energy
to deal with you right now."
Like a child, it pokes and prods,
begging, with pleading eyes,
for my attention.
"No."
"Not now."
"Get away from me!"
It tugs at my lower eyelids.
Similar to the way
a child tugs at your shirt
when it wants attention.
I shove it away from me,
"No."
I insist,
"Not now!"
"Leave me..."
I shove it through the doorway
and slam the door behind it.
"...alone!"
I shout as I slam the door.
Slamming my weight
upon the wooden door
to make sure nothing can open it.
I slump down to the floor
before the wooden door.
It twists and turns at the doorknob
but to no avail.
A doorstop,
shaped like
a troubled-minded
human,
slams her weight
onto the wooden board with hinges,
making it pop open
for a fraction of a second
before slamming
back into its socket in the wall.
"I told you to go away!"
It cries out to me.
"No!"
It whines.
I stand up,
"I _said_..."
I slam my hand onto the door,
It lets out a little whimper
as the door rattles in its place.
"leave..."
I shove my hand,
in a violent motion,
onto the doorknob.
"Me..."
I **** the doorknob
intensely.
"...Alone!"
I shout
as I wham the door open
in a violent fury.
There is nothing there.
"Where'd you go you lil' ****
I stomp one foot
through the doorway
and peek around the hallway.
nothing.
I coolly step
back into the room
and calmly
shut the door.
I turn around.
There It is.
Sitting right there,
Innocently kicking Its legs,
staring me directly in the eyes.
There is no escape
from overwhelming emotion.
The tears pour down my cheeks.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 7:35 PM UTC
Every gesture,
From every glance to every touch.
Was thoroughly apart of her.
A celebration of confetti scattered about her eyes.
A ****** of adoration.
Her toes bare, gripping the bottom of her shoes through her socks.
An extension of what's felt inside still unseen.
The glow of her skin.
The mess made in her eyes without need for a dust pan nor push broom.
The fluid and grace of being alive without restriction.
She made love outside for all to see.
The wisp of cold air made warm by her sigh.
The door to her now open, doorstop wedged in the crease beneath the door.
In a look exchanged between the thousands of days between her eyelids.
She uttered please don't make slam the door
This is what makes it sacred
Nov 26, 2016
Nov 26, 2016 at 4:56 AM UTC
Book is the only stop
Where all halt from top
For knowledge or whop
Of all sort and thoughts slop.
Though it clear drains prop
For teacher or for carhop.
They are vaguely clear lop
Whenever read makes plop
Of cognition to take you atop.
This is for money a great swop.
These are sooth in great strop
For those who keep at doorstop.
What a pleasure they are as sop.
I loved to have ignorance to mop.
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 8:15 AM UTC
Your door was open.
I sprinted towards it.
Tripping on my own enthusiasm, I fell to the ground before your feet.
However, she had beat me to your door.
It was slammed before my face.
I rattled it but it could not be opened.
It was locked.
The door was attached to a room.
A room with windows.
I could see you but you could not see me.
You were too distracted by her.
The seasons changed and coldness embraced me as I watched your happiness blossom.
Every smile and laugh shared pierced my selfish heart.
It was torture to watch from the outside.
One night you looked out the window and you saw me.
Instantly the glass shattered.
Violently, it tore apart my body as it flew in all directions.
I was finally free to go to you.
Not through your door; but around it.
As soon as I crossed the border my mangled body was finished in a final blow.
It hurt me that much more to be so close to you yet so far because she was still there.
And there she will remain.
I will continue to slowly die on the floor.
Because your smile feeds me and every glance in my direction puts air into my lungs.
But her smile starves me and every glare from her suffocates me.
She has every right to hate me.
I wasn't made to be a doorstop. I was made to walk through someone else's door.
Anyone else but his.
Jun 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017 at 11:26 PM UTC