"drier" poems
How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!
How it clatters along the roofs,
Like the ***** of hoofs!
How it gushes and struggles out
From the throat of the overflowing spout!
Across the window pane
It pours and pours;
And swift and wide,
With a muddy tide,
Like a river down the gutter roars
The rain, the welcome rain!
* * * *
In the country, on every side,
Where far and wide,
Like a leopard’s tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,
To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!
16.7k
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap, scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos,
Flush that sparkly Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain Sludge out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood & Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an Aeon
till it came out clean.
Allen Ginsberg
Boulder, 26 April, 1980
.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
solivagant (adj.) (english) wandering alone
Solivagant Traveler
Lost in a desert where affection is the water
I can't decide if its's been months, or maybe longer,
Since I laid my eyes upon you,
Or the mirage I perceived you to be.
As if you were a cactus who's affection is guarded,
by skin too sharp, and thick to bleed.
Sitting in this plateau surrounded by drier things,
dead plants and dusty bones.
A solivagant traveler is what I'll be.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 6:30 PM UTC
Homage Kenneth Koch
If I were doing my Laundry I'd wash my ***** Iran
I'd throw in my United States, and pour on the Ivory Soap,
scrub up Africa, put all the birds and elephants back in
the jungle,
I'd wash the Amazon river and clean the oily Carib & Gulf of Mexico,
Rub that smog off the North Pole, wipe up all the pipelines in Alaska,
Rub a dub dub for Rocky Flats and Los Alamos, Flush that sparkly
Cesium out of Love Canal
Rinse down the Acid Rain over the Parthenon & Sphinx, Drain the Sludge
out of the Mediterranean basin & make it azure again,
Put some blueing back into the sky over the Rhine, bleach the little
Clouds so snow return white as snow,
Cleanse the Hudson Thames & Neckar, Drain the Suds out of Lake Erie
Then I'd throw big Asia in one giant Load & wash out the blood &
Agent Orange,
Dump the whole mess of Russia and China in the wringer, squeeze out
the tattletail Gray of U.S. Central American police state,
& put the planet in the drier & let it sit 20 minutes or an
Aeon till it came out clean
4.7k
Maybe you find your center
On a couch beside a divided highway,
Where asphalt ribbons melt together
In the beautiful mess of the day's last fire,
Where light falls on upholstery
In a manufactured Southwest pattern,
Best suited to drier air but somehow
At home on a Wisconsin shoulder,
Watching the world go by
In metallic paint and autoglass reflections,
Moving too fast to catch all the names
Of almost-forgotten rivers crossed:
Rib River,
Rat River,
Jump River,
And any number of State Name Rivers.
Or maybe you find your center
On the other side of a plume of red granite dust,
Where the asphalt ends and the rivers
Are more than almost-forgotten signs
Beside a divided highway.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 12:05 PM UTC
You're so greedy
They said
Pick a side
They said
You're such a ****
They said
Their words like knives
My blood spilling freely like insults from their mouths
I can't choose
I'll never choose
To choose would be to lose half of myself
All I want is to love freely
How can you hate my for that?
How can you cut me with your words and expect me to heal?
Nothing is wrong with me
Nothing is wrong with me except the deep cuts your words leave on my heart
I can't stop the bleeding;
The only way to stop it is to choose a side, but that would leave an even deeper scar
But
those knives were not aimed for me
No
they were aimed for the word above my head
What I call myself
My own label
Bisexual
I'm just the person below the word
My body taking the hits
Bruised and bleeding tears of frustration and sadness
The knives will not stop
Make them stop
Before my blood runs drier than the sand in the hourglass that is the only one that knows how much longer I can take the pain
Make them stop,
before it's too late
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 11:36 AM UTC
You asked me to write
a poem that killed
all the parts of you
that make you love yourself less.
But darling, I don't
know if anyone's told you:
The things that make you
afraid to show yourself
make me love you
all the more.
And you may talk
about how much you hate
the bumps and ridges
splashed across your skin,
but you also talk
about how much you love
the mountains in Colorado.
Do you think that the earth
has ever cared
that it has drier parts
or areas with a little more texture?
Do you think that Nature
ever wanted to cover up
the parts of her that weren't perfectly smooth?
If the water stayed still,
and never rose or fell
the oceans wouldnt be quite so breathtaking
because waves would never crash.
And you might think you're covered in tsunamis,
disaster zones left in the debris of your disease,
but don't ever tell me
that a home in that aftermath
isn't still a home.
Because with or without the water damage,
the part that makes it important
is the things on the inside—
and no, I'm not referring
to things in a home anymore.
Now I mean your heart,
now I mean your passions and your past
and ever single word
written in the story of you.
So darling, you might tell me
that you hate the bumps on your skin,
but there is something amazing
spelled out in Braille
written on just the outside cover
of one of the greatest stories I will ever know.
The thing about Braille like yours is that
it can open the eyes of a blind man
without even needing any magic.
And the thing about book covers is
that you'll never really know
how much you love a book
based on the words on the outsides of it.
But darling.
I need you know know
I've read you cover to cover
and I absolutely think
your story is one of the most beautiful ones I know.
With or without the tsunamis or Braille.
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 11:15 AM UTC
did you die,
Ophelia?
did you drown yourself?
I heard you looked
pretty and glorious
in your best dress
and with flowers
all ready to meet your Maker;
they tell me it was so beautiful
one could only cry to see you in the water…
did you **** yourself
darling Ophelia
because I told you to go join a nunnery?
did you think
your love’s words
meant a nunnery is the same as death
and so honored mad Hamlet’s words that way?
you could have chosen a drier type of death,
you know – though death by drowning,
dearest Ophelia,
dying in a stream and being wet
you save the living the trouble of washing you…
did you die, did you drown
darling Ophelia
thinking
Poor, poor Hamlet is gone mad…?
…thinking….
There is nothing left when a noble soul
goes insane…
did you die,
Ophelia?
did you drown yourself?
or is that just some new fashion you’ve invented
darling Ophelia
of taking a beauty bath?
Sep 29, 2010
Sep 29, 2010 at 1:21 AM UTC
Cold-hearted world
Nobody seems to care
I held you so tightly
When I was once there...
How this emptiness
Quiets your voice
Drier than dry
A love once moist...
I'm lost in darkness
Without your glow
I grasp for your light
With borrowed soul...
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 11:00 PM UTC
Three day old
Store-bought mac and cheese,
That has been reheated
Twice
But the cheese and macaroni
Have started to separate,
The cheese clumping together,
And despite the scortching corners
Of the dinner,
In it's store container,
There are large sections
That are as cold as the fridge.
It's like you warmed it back up
Using nothing but your
Low powered hair drier.
It tastes like poverty feels.
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 9:20 PM UTC
I am tossed upon the tempest
I am tested on the tide
I have heard the ocean restless
I will by the sea abide
But I long for drier shorelines
Far from sandy bottoms deep
For a tower wrapped in rose vines
Above a sunny keep
I have played in water shallowed
I have frolicked in the spray
But while this sea to me is hallow'd
My heart draws me far away
My soul is meant for moonglow
My heart the sunny glade
But my home lies far below
Where the coral reefs are made
And never shall I leave it
This realm of wave and foam
For my dreams may be on land lit
But the ocean is my home
May 18, 2016
May 18, 2016 at 7:46 PM UTC
(it's cliché to admonish clichés in their entirety)
I. (love)
We are meant to live the clichés;
we are meant to resuscitate the words,
and rehabilitate their wounds
into a fertile viewpoint
where we build respirators from clichés
to filter the virulent dust kicked up
by the marching pigs.
(re-invented clichés offer back breath
in an exchange of circular breathing)
The swine contort love
into armaments of antipathy;
they push buttons,
squeeze triggers,
pull pins,
and aim where it causes the most damage.
Even though we are natural born hypocrites,
we don't have to let that knowledge corner us
into using love as a weapon.
The pen is mightier than the sword,
and I wield both;
I sharpen the quill on the blade's edge.
If need be, use the pen for a counter-strike,
but only channel love in defence.
II. (poetry)
The pigs march to a beat
of nuclear blasts
that bring poetry's flag
nearer to half-mast.
Poetry should stand on its own merit,
instead of leaning on shanks that hide behind smiles
constructed with aspirations of popularity
that churn out lazy, aspartame-laced lines
devoid of accountability and integrity,
or lean upon smiles filled with slivers
from far too much fence-sitting,
too worried about the trending majority,
to see the complexity within simplicity
and clarity,
or
propped-up against degrees
while writing poems that are drier than the Sahara:
husks of lines tumbling across dunes,
only to be imploded
by atomic-pork mushroom clouds,
their fallout marring parchment
into a poisonous terrain.
.
III. (dreams)
(revive, twist, and switch the clichés )
We must not fear saying "never".
Surrender to love, but never surrender
to the jealous captains who attempt
to hook and net the defenders of Neverland.
With compasses of conscience
beating in hearts kept young,
navigate through the smoke and mirror-smog
emitted by the marching pigs.
(we must never give up on our dreams)
Dream about the courage needed
to love everyone and everything,
including our enemies
who conduct genocide
on the language of a purer intent.
Dream about word-seedlings
pushing through the arid rind
of dying poetry,
in hope for a more organic fruition
to grow in our hearts and minds,
so that poetry gains back its strength and vitality
to once again stand on its own merit.
+/-
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 6:38 PM UTC
There you are, boy, all apatter with
‘Whats the matters’ and those rainy eyes that
look out but don’t want to be looked into
for too long, drier now, memorising cracks.
Forget those useless stomach-drops you feel
you ought to feel, stand taller, be prouder.
Say goodbye to your knees from me, closer
then, the map of falls that took the gravel
with the breeze that were vision’s blinker-walls.
Thank you for the memories you put away
for rainy days, my repository, the
treasure trove of touchstones you didn’t skim.
Every tear and every maple seed you threw:
I still want to make sense of it all for you.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 4:42 PM UTC
You've always been forgetful
You'd forget to turn the lights off
You'd forget to close the toothpaste
You'd forget your clothes in the drier
You'd forget to charge your phone
You'd forget to feed the fish
...
So I did all these things for you
You see, I was convinced that showing you was better than telling you
But you never saw it, now did you?
*- Sometimes I'd forget to do all these things on purpose,
so I would remember how it felt like to be with you -*
I secretly hope that you can't find your clothes
and your fish die
and your electric bill reaches a 100 billion dollars
Just so you could see
that I was good for you
You know what? No. ________
NO, NO
NO
I do secretly hope that your phone dies
and your clothes get lost
and your fish die
and your toothpaste gets dried up
But only so you could learn the importance of what I used to do
to recognize your faults
and to try and improve, not for me
but for you.
... and I'm not talking about the toothpaste here
*You can't demonstrate the change you want to see in someone
if they don't even understand the error in their ways*
and so,
I don't want to be the person
who struggles to forgive and forget
I want to be the person
who lives with no regret
knowing that us, ending,
was for the best.
and the best
of each of us
Jul 16, 2015
Jul 16, 2015 at 1:38 AM UTC
I have a pack of letters,
I have a pack of memories.
I could cut out the eyes of both.
I could wear them like a patchwork apron.
I could stick them in the washer, the drier,
and maybe some of the pain would float off like dirt?
Perhaps down the disposal I could grind up the loss.
Besides -- what a bargain -- no expensive phone calls.
No lengthy trips on planes in the fog.
No manicky laughter or blessing from an odd-lot priest.
That priest is probably still floating on a fog pillow.
Blessing us. Blessing us.
Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul?
Propaganda time is over.
I sit here on the spike of truth.
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory
that slides in and out of my brain.
No one to hate except the acute feel of my nightgown
brushing my body like a light that has gone out.
It recalls the kiss we invented, tongues like poems,
meeting, returning, inviting, causing a fever of need.
Laughter, maps, cassettes, touch singing its path -
all to be broken and laid away in a tight strongbox.
The monotonous dead clog me up and there is only
black done in black that oozes from the strongbox.
I must disembowel it and then set the heart, the legs,
of two who were one upon a large woodpile
and ignite, as I was once ignited, and let it whirl
into flame, reaching the sky
making it dangerous with its red.
2.3k
expecting the ride of a lifetime
hype guy with the pimped out kith jeans
and the shoes that cost god knows what
but he pulls me off of him so he can
carefully unlace them, while i get drier
than a desert waiting for him
like, ***
show up in sweats and a hoodie so i can
steal it next time, man
May 23, 2018
May 23, 2018 at 5:57 PM UTC
It's the smells,
The woody, earthy laden lift in the air.
A scent guilded in memories of twigs breaking under feet,
As I walk to the One Stop with my dad,
Wet, amber leaves stuck to his holey shoes,
The air is damp and unfaded, but lightly coated in the smoke from his roll up.
The smell,
More floral now,
Warm, heavy rain drip dropping onto vast leaves in Mexico,
The floor drier and peppery compared to it's English cousin,
My eyes locked onto the stars through pointed dancing clouds,
As if the sky has been dipped in glitter and laid out to dry in the jungle.
And now its moss,
Moss and pine and your hair.
It's both of us gazing through the foliage to catch the eye of a bird,
Our fingers brushing and clinging,
I can feel my mouth lift,
As you pull me towards your nose,
And whisper 'I love us.',
We walk,
Warm in one another's stories,
With wet socks,
And pink cheeks,
We inhabit the trees.
Jan 13, 2019
Jan 13, 2019 at 7:05 AM UTC
The honeybee delights in her perch
Crooning ageless songs to the tussore silk petals
A low thrum in the sweet saffron ****
A brush of honey around her entrance
She is the fae
Moth, too
Stumbling to reach the pendulous light in a drunken merriment
Dancing shadows over dry walls
A thin imitation of butterfly
Who is fae, too
Centipede and silverfish
Body full of a thousand darting eyes
Cautious, careful, carried
On the tips of toddler's fingers
Crawling, cradled
In the impregnable hands of a careless child
Wingbeats like a dreary applause
In the dew-soaked trellis
The labyrinth of gossamer thread
Arachne is prideful.
Escape, escape,
There is a minute sound of a spider weeping
Dry, Like sand through an hourglass
As she wraps the children in viscid cloth
Drier still are the ghosts crackling as tiny feet
Navigate the cicada grave
Skin grows tighter and tighter
Summer is over now
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 12:03 AM UTC
it costs a dollar twenty five for the drier that leaves your clothes still damp
but the lemons on the tree are perfectly ripe
and the wind chime sounds like
namaste.
though the clouds are thinning
it’s just cool enough for sneakers
and warm enough for tank tops.
gram is in the basement
dad is at the liquor store
and mi madrastra es talking with
the man who rents the apartment upstairs
exchanging recipes
and munching on chicharrones.
today
I live in the Santa Clara slums
and
feel as at home as I did
in the rain.
Apr 17, 2011
Apr 17, 2011 at 4:47 PM UTC
The west coast is ablaze
A conflagration reconfiguration
Efforts heroic as forests fall
And cost of lives lost
Homes no more
Neighborhoods gone
**** and dust
Terrains reframed
The new world:
Fire cyclone zones
Hotter, drier, bigger
The culprit: us
Aug 22, 2018
Aug 22, 2018 at 8:45 PM UTC
French kissed by the sun
Those warm lengths caress
Cascading down your body
Drawing forth your scent
Pushing goosebumps away
Like wearing something
Pulled directly from the drier
Covering and an all over feeling
Static electricity, sorted down
Stretching from hairs to a shimmer
Working a caramel, from the oven
Warm through your fingers
Gooey, sugary and messy
Stretching from hand to hand
As you play, a thick treat
Fingers play, and steal a kiss
Work delicious candies
From unspeaking lips and
Silken thighs, against chest
I eat a caramel candied dipped
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
i was perfectly empty
until we met
and you became my fill
pouring me your all
all against my will.
and yet
all i became was
drier
just as
you were leaving
colder
just as
i was healing
and as i find another
perhaps then
i'd be emptier
still
Nov 19, 2018
Nov 19, 2018 at 12:53 AM UTC
I am writing this poem as a letter of reference for my uncultured heart,
Unedited and uncensored and
Unlike the affections I so willingly gave you.
You read me your poems
As if I were the first girl to receive them,
And boy,
Did I receive them.
I took them and their delicate lettering that traced
My name written boldly and profoundly in the center
As if the world was handing itself over to me.
To: Olivia
From: Jupiter
No return address.
I kept your smooth words and slipped them into my coffee,
Tucked them underneath my pillow case,
And folded them into a book I virginally scribbled in.
I found them scattered across the night's sky
And sewn into the shirt you loved on me.
I planted them in good soil waiting for spring.
My good, rich soil.
Untouched and unused.
I Watered them carefully and buried them with a warmth
That the sun itself couldn't radiate.
You lit me up and I was burning so wildly for you.
For you, Jupiter.
My garden was beautiful, full.
Plentiful.
Abundant.
Good, rich.
Untouched and unused.
And little white lilies began to sprout and dot the I's of your
I love yous,
I miss yous,
I was thinking about you,
I love you,
I miss you.
I was thinking about you.
I love you.
I miss you.
I was thinking about you, Jupi.
But drier than your recycled sentiments,
My soil
Became parched and emaciated
As more of your lilies grew.
My coffee became bitter,
My pillow case as soft as sand paper.
The small, black journal I carefully pressed flowers with
Now stained and sopping wet with Your cheap ink
That ran down my skin and into
Creases you left your finger prints.
Your lilies, though small and sweet,
Were deadlier than any poison ivy
I'd ever touched previously.
The little plot of earth I saved for myself
Was now a pile of your cigarette ash
And venomous weeds.
I burned so wildly for you,
But without you.
For you,
Not with you.
I was another one of your American Spirits,
Smoked, put out and
Tossed into the grave of another fruitless harvest.
Taken, left, and used.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 12:46 AM UTC
It's late and I'm tired
But I can't go to sleep
There's too much to do
Too much I haven't told you
Too much I want to hear
Too much to listen to
Too little to waste
There are adventures
not yet experienced
There are voices
unheard
There are thoughts
unvoiced
There are songs
unwritten
There are kisses
unfelt
And I have adventures to experience
And I have voices to hear
And I have thoughts to voice
And I have songs to write
And I have kisses to feel
And I have you.
Oh, you.
Who are you?
I certainly haven't found you yet
Actually, I thought I had, but you went away
Now I fear I will never see you again
Oh, you.
You with your saddened eyes
You who have endured so much
You who deserve so much more
You who I try to help but
You who shy away to
You who are gone.
gone.
gone.
It does not make my thoughts any clearer
It does not make me feel any better
It does not make my eyes any drier
to write.
But it does help the sunshine keep a little longer
It does let your kisses linger in the shade
It does help my weary head resurrect
The light from whence we came
And I know that someday you will return
And I won't let you slip down down again
And my time awake is time well spent
So I cannot sleep.
I cannot sleep.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 6:49 PM UTC
I can’t bare this, it’s pathetic.
I know I shouldn’t say what comes to my head.
I hate it. I have to. Yet, look at me in this moment.
My lips are chapped and my eyes can’t take this,
my lips are drier than they have been before.
I feel sick again and probably karma,
coming back to bite me on the neck.
I feel the clock ticking away,
the time is going quick and it makes me sick.
I feel like crying for the time I’m wasting, please forgive me.
Please don’t forget me. I don’t want to be isolated in this world anymore.
spend too much time regretting decisions instead of making more.
My eyes are my weakness, they scream all the words I don’t want to say.
My lips are liars and my words are too. Don’t forgive them.
You suffered so much, it made me bleed too.
I wanted you to be happy, so please do.
If it means suffering, then I will disappear.
I can’t bare to see you happier without me, how selfish of me.
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 11:58 PM UTC