"douses" poems
*Absorb the silence around
Know the silence and it messages
Connect with the inner self
At rest is the soul and mind
Moments that reveals the truth
Silence douses the flames of uncertainty
Rendezvous with silence
As silence is there to be deciphered*
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 1:24 AM UTC
and i am eleven again
feeling like tomorrow
is a couple yesterday's ago
smothered in cayenne pepper
hot enough to take off taste buds
and tonight i am eating a meal
only worth burning
it tastes like my parents anniversary
it tastes like a zinfandel
left on the counter too long
it's a bad story, see
there's no silverware
'cause my mom sold it
to keep the lights on
and somewhere in heaven
somebody in a suit
doing commentary
on this fiasco
is telling someone else
in a suit that
"you have to eat love with your hands"
so we sit, four plates on the table
for the two of us
my brother's long gone
dad's even further away
& he's not the one who's buried
i carry both their names like anchors
that i cannot unmoor from
while she looks at the empty table
and says something about the news
she says something else
but she's not talking
we aren't proud of this, see
my dad likes to wax his car
he's proud of it
and my mom says
she sees a lot of him in my hands
says, i touch the things i find
like they didn't belong
to people sleeping in the ground
she says i touch photo albums
the same way-
you know,
i never used to believe
that history could repeat itself
not until i could
fast forward seventeen years
and still wake up to smoke alarms
how i would go into our kitchen
to find it empty
and the dinner smoldering
& my mother in her bedroom
looking through family photos
like it's a just another summer day
and the sirens are just the birds
i don't ask, i never say a word
in this moment
i am an archeologist
afraid to dig up the past
cause history repeats itself-
you see
my brother is dead
and my father is gone
they have been for some years now
and my mother
sometimes forgets
and sets their place at the table
like they're still here
and in the confusion
ends up ankle deep
in pictures of how it used to be
she let's dinner burn
and douses it in red pepper
hoping i won't know the difference
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 6:42 PM UTC
Writing letters in Spanish to Penthouse magazine because everything sounds better in español.
It was a beautiful loving thing before it all exploded like a train wreck.
Are you furious?
A country that douses itself in English and then drowns you at the hearth.
Cherry vanilla
Obsessive compulsive
Mint and lemon-grass handwash
The only things that matter?
Thoughts from when I first woke up this morning... Still in that fuzzy bit where you don't open your eyes and no matter how you're laying, it's always comfortable. A feeling I take for granted. I think about you kissing my ******* and not about how you're falling in love with my best friend; but if she's happy, I'm happy. Good morning.
Jun 22, 2016
Jun 22, 2016 at 4:17 PM UTC
"There in the midst of it so alive and alone
Words support like bone..." Peter Gabriel's "Mercy Street"
Orion abandons the sky
dropping his club
casting his belt toward the horizon
Just once, for a moment, he glanced away
from exalted ****
his vanquished prey
He’d seen the picture—
A girl of sixteen
lying awake—muses in her head
eyes shut, arms thrown back
behind pillow
Tee shirt stretch across lean chest
Hips mingle with blankets
She is scattered there
among the minions of her hair
behind her mouth of unkissed words
_______________
McCaffery's Coffee is open late
He’s seen the picture
Muses in his head
His arm almost around her
Hers on his shoulder
Small—feather-light fingers
lift the hair of his neck
Reaching around her
his hand searches and slides
along her silk-draped hind
...and the view he has is amazing!
_____________
Music— and waves pounding and lapping
at the life he fears....
Little boat stranded in gray mists
till a thousand tiny birds alight
in a peppering and fluttering
stir of time
in greens of brine
as the sun pries through….
______________
McCaffery’s is ready to close
but the owner, knowing
douses the overheads and turns away
leaving candlelight to crouch and duck
and blink in circles
How long and free we
are allowed to gaze....
so full of wind and riffling water
Stars above and stars below
blooming on the floral silk of night
Vespered lilacs exhale
Votives of warmth
beneath his hand
Silk sweating—
familial in their rocking
Distant lightning loosens eternity
Oct 2, 2016
Oct 2, 2016 at 9:26 PM UTC
Trees hold the deep earth together way below with crooked fingers of the underworld and catches foul above
Upward to the heavens on finger towers,
clapping on winds they shake their dander
And the makers of green bras on mountain tops
They are the landlords of ground,and air beasts, and
incumbent giants of the ages
They whisper being puppeteered by winds of old
They are the alchemists of oxygen
They are dangling playgrounds
They are the Autumn crunches beneath our feet
Trunk etchings by bards, trees reflecting
cultures' dissemination
We walk under penumbras that deny the scorch of summer
as cool water douses fire, so too, shade douses heat
Watching trees in my pleasant reverie I observe how they
help break the carpeted land, bringing about a certain diversity in moving tranquility and rustling of their songs
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 7:20 AM UTC
tea
for the unfinished assignments
for the time of the month
for the boy who douses you with salt
for trying to feel loved
wine
for your tired eyes
for your loneliness, a butterfly
beating its wings on your ribs,
for trying to grasp
what freedom is.
my darling,
don't you love to heal?
don't you love to escape?
Feb 8, 2016
Feb 8, 2016 at 2:57 PM UTC
As I hear her distant laugh
Resonate in my lonely mind
A dark thought creeps up, again
Distasteful, shameful, unkind.
I rejoice in her laughter
Sweetness of which would long remain
Yet – I sense with it some bitterness
That douses my love in pain.
The moment of laughter she enjoys most
Though blissful, eternal, and heavenly,
Comes only when she laughs aloud
To wash away my memory.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 3:22 PM UTC
Like soap, your poetry cleanses my soul.
On paper, I'm filthy from your touch,
and your honey is sticky on my fingers.
But, your words and your laugh are a spring
that douses me in bubbles and gold.
I sip from your tears and sweat,
and youth revitalizes my skin and bones.
You are an oil that enriches
and cannot be rinsed away with water.
You are the dirt that gets under by fingernails
and houses the seeds of a hundred flowers.
Feb 24, 2024
Feb 24, 2024 at 1:11 AM UTC
Coalescing, cuddling life
swimming inside.
Cleansing, like a mother
would a child,
scrubs away
collected stains.
An attention to detail
rinses, washes food,
blessing it into our bellies with an aqua kiss.
A coolness douses the summer heat,
A relief quenches thirst
Of human and animal alike.
A babbling sound, bubbling
into a relaxing,
lazy Sunday…
Sep 12, 2011
Sep 12, 2011 at 1:03 PM UTC
Sunshine warms my aging face
I pray God keeps my loved ones safe.
For it takes a toll upon my heart,
pondering that in time, death will do us part.
Dearly missed are those who have passed on,
I cannot believe it's been 9 years since my son's been gone.
I've often wondered through the grief how it never stayed my feet.
Why don't I join, what I can't beat?
Am I truly moving forward?
What then, am I aiming toward?
I thought I'd die the day he did,
Instead his absence increased my will to live.
What if the bible thumpers are right?
And the truth is if you take your life
the darkness douses the proverbial "light"?
Leaving the soul ill-fated, eternally alone,
Stuck somewhere between Hell's fire, and home.
On this note I've decided not to take that risk,
It won't be long, for life is brisk.
If Heaven truly exists I'll see,
my angel son has saved a place for me.
Heidi Shavill
2013
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 5:47 AM UTC
Talking softly like the last flickers of a fires light,
Spoken as little more than a hissing whisper.
Water douses the cluster of solitary embers.
Eachs ignited, Alls extinguished.
Eachs start, Alls finish.
Talking softly, clouds utter to the stars,
Heard as little by them as the clouds hear us,
Arms out stretched to a vastly empty sky.
Eachs question, Alls solution.
Eachs clarity, Alls confusion.
Talking softly a man reasons with his dog.
The mass of people bustle endlessly by.
Mans best friend sees no logic in his master.
Eachs mystery, Alls solved.
Eachs hatred, Alls loved.
Dec 6, 2012
Dec 6, 2012 at 11:47 PM UTC
My touch can start brush fires.
My fingers are ***** matchsticks,
the kind your mother warned about.
My petaled lips spark against yours
like flint against steel.
My volatile breath, an overcast of smoke
creeping from the belly of my throat.
My twisted tongue douses your chalky skin
with fuel, a gasoline spreading to your logged limbs.
I leave your organs to curdle,
and by morning glow,
you’re nothing but a burn victim.
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 8:45 PM UTC
His letters scatter loose upon the ground,
She clenches fists despite arthritic hands
that rail against the words she never found.
To spite the golden noose of tarnished bands,
she douses tomes and quick lets loose a flame.
A tendril's curling wisp of past desire
snakes toward the sky. Still the ash of blame
survives the ceremony's futile pyre.
What fire ever burns away the dross
or dulls the tempered edges of we're done?
Yet embers coax; they succor heat not lost
to years they burned together each alone.
The groan of ache sounds low within her hips.
One letter saved, pressed tightly to her lips.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 7:16 AM UTC
As the waves crash the spray glows along the ridges.
In a cloudless sky, a kite plays around the sun
in a breeze that can hardly be felt,
as if in slow motion--as if it's growing tired--
just like everything else.
On the beach wall sit wanderers and travelers,
couples and lovers, the happy and the sad,
all come to witness and share
in the end of another Saturday--
a surprisingly warm and clear
December Saturday--and no doubt
Saturn is smiling from his throne.
The birds, the gulls, they sense the transition,
just as aware of the daily phenomenon as we are,
perhaps filled with just as much wonder and beauty as we are,
because birds look better in the setting sun,
just like everything else.
As the sun descends slowly toward the horizon,
as the horizon slowly engulfs the sun,
I look wearily into a new year,
one filled with great hope and great despair.
There's no doubt this country will be struggling greatly.
The question is whether we'll weather it,
like usual.
As I stare at the sun it consumes my vision.
A flaming ball descending into the sea;
the dark negative trails burn into my retina & glide
upward like smoke into the chromatic sky.
The horizon distorts its apparently perfect circle,
appearing like a melting pad of butter;
a mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.
It accelerates toward night as it approaches the horizon.
Its rounded top distorts into edges,
now looking like a house.
And as it douses itself in the sea like a hot iron sword,
it becomes but a twinkling strand of golden beads
on the surface of the waves,
finally disappearing,
leaving only a distinct glow in the sky
where once,
it was.
The wanderers and couples
shake out of their giddy trances & move
into the chilly San Francisco evening,
and I do the same,
wondering whether my final sunset
will be as calm
and beautiful
as this
one.
Jul 30, 2010
Jul 30, 2010 at 5:50 PM UTC
Sensory deprivation douses my days
Neither perfume, nor pictures
to placate
No cadence of a voice contrasted
No distractions, now look away
Ban all Color
chromatic avian avoidance
But It only takes one slip
to oxygenate those sacred sepia images
You were the reason!
you eviscerated “grey”
the enormity of a
pixilated instant:::
the shadow of a look
Arise again, stand tall and seductive,
awaken a cleft heart again
but the pleas go unheard
and
callous knees make for hollowed souls
this crawl so familiar, hallowed, fetching... as I look now, upward at your
carnal,
cardiac,
catharsis
I find that familiar rush
The drilling down of blood :::
Presses through once indifferent veins (my lamentation inoculation... you are viral once more)
Imagined love had seemed so tame.
The cataclysm corners, hidden well in green eyes,
inauspicious,
until
it’s time (to strike)
tensions feast on the remaining light (dusk remains, night yields, but those eyes they’ll haunt forever).
When was the last time I grasped your fingers?
When jungle lust simplicity gave way to
the steady silent ether of complacency
I knew
I had
lost
her
Yet, I still reach for the smell of you on my hands. It’s no longer there. The cruelest of nostalgias to soothe my most masochistic of reliefs.
Nov 23, 2018
Nov 23, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
I don't see it very often
But when I do, it looks like this
It looks like red hair
Tied back in a pony tail
With eyes that no one thought could be so blue
It looks like 7:00 at night
As well as 6:30 in the morning
When the sun douses the sky in hue
It looks like the west
Or the east
Depending on where the mountains are
It looks like the girl three seats back
Who keeps tapping the desk nervously
Worrying about the scratch on her car
It looks like the pitch dark
With the small dots glowing
That you see when you look up at night
It looks like the beach
With the people swimming through the waves
Or lounging in the sand, soaking up the light
I never really knew beauty though
Until I first met you
With that confident smile
That you don't see very often
And eyes that no one thought could be so blue
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 9:11 PM UTC
****** Joe \\ Hero In Joe
They called my friend ****** Joe today
A name I greatly dislike
Said with hatred as if foe
As if Joe ****** them
And cursed their air
A judgment not quite fair
You see they didn't know Joe
They didn’t know his heart
They didn’t know his kindness
They didn't know that Joe lact happiness
Feeling the air
****** Joe lives here…
A name that rattled my bones
Like a barefoot walk on sharp stones
His pains within exhaling out as moans and groans
And Joe kept sticking that stake in his veins
As a way to try and numb all those pains
Sowing seeds intwinted of rage
An empty audience to a lonely stage
No one cared about Joe
And so those seeds did grow
Vines that encompassed Joe’s mind
Trying to fill an endless void
With a drug that would destroy
Leaving nothing but fear
****** Joe lives here…
Hiding away in abandoned houses
Slave to the drug that douses
His life in misery
I myself tried to help Joe
Regain his footing and low
Off he disappeared into the blue
Never to be seen again
But no one even knew
And nothing was really quite clear
****** Joe lives here…
You see the sad factual reality
Is that Joe was real
And in all actuality
He died on a cold day in December
Fizzled flame, ash, and ember
Goodbye to you Joe
And oh
How will they remember you?
Will you be a hero?
Will you be a zero?
Or will you be the same old name
Attached to your unwanted fame
Why couldn’t we have tempted the hero in Joe?
To fight for his life
And vanquish all foe
Maybe he could conceal a tear?
****** Joe lives here…
Why constantly repeat these words?
As if always muttered but never heard
It is to keep the memory of Joe alive
But not only the memory of Joe
But the memory of all those lost will survive
Lost to a truly gifted reaper of this earth
Lives otherwise doomed since birth
This reaper known as ******
Defeated all of the heros in
Those hurting souls
And I pray that Joe lives forever
As if a bird to sacrifice a feather
And that we can severe hate
From this fight against destruction
These words are only but a minor fraction
In this war of attrition that has taken so many
And by the way…
They called my friend ****** Joe today
A name I greatly dislike
Mar 29, 2019
Mar 29, 2019 at 7:34 PM UTC
We’ll give them the glass stares they want,
And they’ll eat us alive.
In the background,
I can hear knives sharpening.
White bones waiting to be
Sliced by a certain solitude.
The walls are blank,
But the paint is heavy.
This room is hard to
Hold up on an
Empty stomach.
So we’ll leave,
(Promise that we’ll never come back)
And we’ll be cold when the
Snow blankets our eyelashes,
Douses our fingertips in blue, but
We’ll wait to be rescued.
We’ll have red crosses stitched over
Our chests.
We’ll stop on lonely our way because of
Something curious.
Splintered between the cracks on the sidewalk is
Sadness –
A drop of rain struggling to run its course –
Winter’s fortitude.
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 3:26 PM UTC
It seems you'll be inside of my head
Until I lay dead
Until I die
You whisper to me you can't make me leave
Goodnight
Sweet dreams
With the memories
That turned into enemies of imagery
Everyone like a bomb
That douses me in exploding shrapnel
To the memories that I can't let go
And won't let me forget
That haunt my every movement
That invade my daydreams
That bring me to my knees in tears
If you love me let me go
Because they are the sharpest knives that reopen my scars
And every time I'm torn apart
You've found a way to burrow to my heart
From there to my mind
Those memories aren't kind
And until they shovel dirt on my corpse
I guess it's my fault for remembering what hurts
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 5:12 PM UTC
*So,
I feel as though,
I messed you up,
Like, I shouldn't have even allowed what happened,
Happen.
I feel like I'm responsible for any hurt you're feeling,
But "I'm sorry" isn't gonna help.
"I still love you" won't change anything.
So,
I don't know,
Did you really want me in your heart,
Even though I was slowly corrupting the innards of your heart,
Slowly changing you,
Making you someone you weren't?
So, do you actually still want me,
Even though I've made it clear,
That things won't end well -
Simply because,
I'm a disaster walking on two feet,
A fireman that douses flames of love,
A selfish boy who only cares about himself,
A hopeless romantic who can turn out to be overbearing...
Do you still want me?
Because I can't see why you still want me,
I can't see what I did to earn your love,
Your heart,
Your attention and time...
I'm worthless -
Can't you tell?!
I'm not good for you...
At least for now.*
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 1:19 AM UTC
The sun slowly sets and the streetlights turn on while
I sit at the kitchen table, trying to take one step away
From the fire and brimstone storm next door.
Sitting next to me is my father and a saltshaker,
He douses his roast beef with it and digs in ferociously.
Last night while I was standing on my front lawn a man
Wearing blue jeans and a grey sweatshirt approached.
He had a friendly demeanor and dragged on listlessly
Whistling a familiar tune, difficult to place.
Walking right up to me, the mysterious creature put his
Hand on the back of my neck and we began to grapple.
Struggling to keep my strength I was thrown to the ground.
His force couldn’t keep me down for long, I got him under me
And pinned him down for a short minute until he mustered
All his strength to push me off and we were on our feet again.
Eight hours passed and one had not overtaken the other
Until with a slight twist he popped my right leg out of place.
I said thank you and proceeded to sit on my front lawn,
Injured by myself.
Mar 5, 2012
Mar 5, 2012 at 11:13 PM UTC
When the love is gone,
you feel all alone.
The spread of cold through your veins,
where once before a fire flamed and raged.
Numbs your soul and douses the fire.
You sit reflecting on what once was,
only to realise that love goes on.
On to higher ground.
On to higher realms.
On to greater things.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 5:05 AM UTC
I'm 'sophisticatedly' sticking a pen
in my mouth, pretending
to smoke a cigarette.
I don't have the courage to hurt
myself, but
I do.
In 'subtle and implied' ways, he
says.
I make watery coffee and convince
myself, my happiness
lies in there,
floating. And I pretend
I'm in a Parisian cafe.
But these are pipe-dream dregs,
nothing else.
I guess they can't substitute the
vividness of being,
living.
Of sharp technicolour experience that can be
smelt.
Dregs, indeed.
Today, I borrowed Birthday Letters by
Ted Hughes from the library.
I'm wondering if
salvias were his favourite
flower.
His favourite.
I can't figure it out.
For his words are only stricken,
messy with the rawness of
too-technicolour experience.
Beautiful.
But sharp
enough to pierce and
poison,
like Paris.
My Paris, your Paris,
our little Paris.
So startlingly, breathlessly
red.
I suddenly know why I have written this.
The colour of salvias,
of Paris,
of me and you,
is my soul's favourite.
His favourite.
And salvias, their fragrance, it
douses the fire that's threatening to
suffocate, swallow my
life whole,
incomplete.
Red is my favourite colour.
And it's yours.
But I really don't think I want it to be.
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 6:13 AM UTC
Cross the line into my heart, and mark it with an X.
For I am yours, and nothing in this world can make me believe in anything less.
Less than perfection, less than the air I breathe, and the words I speak.
I am totaled in this underlying affliction, between pain and glory, surrounded in little words that no one seems to speak.
So here I am, and there you stand.
Standing in the rain that douses you like falling pins and needles, I see you, and you see me.
For that, I am sorry.
Because I am the X that holds you together, the glue that fashions paper bones and weathered hearts. I breathe, and you breathe.
You see, you and I are rattled together in an endless cycle.
A singularity, if you will.
And as dangerous as things may seem, or may come to be...
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Because you are the X that stole my heart.
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 11:37 AM UTC
Sound flows piercingly through the air.
A wave of warmth slaps across my face,
And douses my clothes as it moves
Down
My body.
The harmonies and atonalities
Cause my heart to
Flutter
With arrhythmia.
As the bow continues,
My calm is slowly replaced
By fiery passion;
Hot,
From the slapping of the waves.
I am soaring,
I am free.
Watch me.
Listen as I express
My inner voice.
Jun 20, 2012
Jun 20, 2012 at 9:00 PM UTC