"dully" poems
i find myself
starting out waiting room
windows,
my eyes follow the footsteps
of the strangers below
as i dream about below apart
of their everyday monotony,
because what may be a
dully, normal, tasteless
indifferent thursday to them
would be an adventure
to me
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:09 PM UTC
I found myself fracturing beneath his fists,
Beauty beaten in hues of blue, purple and black,
Like clouded midnight skies, full of rain.
My eyes becoming pools of stars,
Glistening with secrets of pain,
Shining dully into the darkness of our nights.
Saturated with his snide, stingy, cruel colors,
I soaked in his venom,
Becoming canvas for the art of abuse.
And wasn't it beautiful?
These tears in skin hindered no smile,
Bruises like paint, enhancing face,
Pupils shining like diamonds,
Rough and worn, but precious.
Aching bones breaking to rebuild themselves,
Tongue red with biting back curses,
Rosy lips curved and sealed against apologies,
Flesh as hard and gray as stone,
Sharpened against wicked whims and foul words,
Aren't I beautiful -
In all my rainbow tones?
Sep 22, 2021
Sep 22, 2021 at 10:43 AM UTC
I'm having tea with Life,
And his band of Disappointments.
They dine at my expense,
And they're a hungry bunch of guests.
Tea turned into Supper,
Where the Disappointments drank
My finest wine,
And Life wiped his cruel mouth
On my tablecloth.
You can't have supper without dessert,
So they ate up more of my
Food for thought.
And if you stay for dessert,
You may as well spend the night.
So they did
And burgled my pantry of hopes
For a midnight snack.
One night was lovely,
So Life cackled, "Why not stay two?"
And two turned to a week,
And a week turned into
My sickeningly merry guests
Moving into my dreams,
And inviting in Doubt,
To live with them too,
And of course
Pay no rent.
So I watch my chaotic household
Of a skull,
Where Life has made himself at home
And brought all of his friends.
I stare dully at my ruined
Dining room of thought,
Which they have dominated.
And look wearily for a spare idea
In my raided cupboards.
I've never been one
To evict friends,
So I suppose they're here to stay.
But learn a lesson from me,
And don't ever
Have Life over for tea.
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 1:38 AM UTC
She hates that she is a woman
The putrefying weakness perceived in the curves of her body
The naivete shown in her blues
With the unintentional flutter of butterfly lashes
That refuse to meet the glances of those that pass by
The fear-- Of what?
That stereotypes are true?
She doesn't even know
And it sickens her.
She sickens herself.
She hates that she is white
The blandest vanilla
The marble statue
Somehow revered
Worshiped
Privileged
But simultaneously overlooked
Boring
Unimportant
The Caucasian mongrel
In light of the fact that her People
Have no proud history
Which she can name herself heir to
She hates that she is middle class
Not poor enough to struggle
Not rich enough to be free
Just situated dully in the middle
A footnote in the statistic
That they tell her she must use
To identify herself
She hates that her belief system
Has to be called by a name
That she has to choose
To be a part of a group
As part of her "identity"
And she is not allowed
To stand by her own integrity
She hates that she is American
The pudgy, loud-mouthed, laterally-speaking nation
The brashly jumps into conflict
Guns blazing
As its political system decays
In the stench of its overwhelming debt and corruption
But in truth
She hates
That they force her
To whittle her essence down
Into Gender, Race, Class, Religion, and Nationality
A vomit-inducing statistic
As if there was nothing more to her
Than the facts surrounding her existence
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 6:11 PM UTC
Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me.
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Howard Dully was twelve years old
when Dr. Freeman felt so bold
to dig around inside his head
a wonder that he isn't dead.
The year was 1963,
when Howard had his lobotomy.
He never even had a clue,
of what his parents planned to do.
ORBITOCLASTS
The name Freeman gave to his personally designed
lobotomy knives.
They went under Howard's eyelids 3 centimeters
from the mid line and parallel with the nose.
Driven to a depth of 5 centimeters he pulled the handles
laterally, returned them halfway, and drove 2 centimeters
deeper. He touched the handles over the nose, seperated
them 45 degrees, elevated them 50 degrees, and at this point
he probably
smiled to himself.
For now they were parallel,
and ready for photography before removal.
An angry stepmom arranged it all,
she made the final judgement call.
They labeled Howard as insane....
opened him up, and juggled his brain.
Howard survived because he was still growing.
Not fully developed,
his brain would keep going....
off in directions he couldn't control
but never condeming
the depths of his soul.
Not long ago I read his book.
I felt intrigued to take a look.
I hope, dear reader, you do the same.
Remember his story,
remember his name.
Aug 16, 2018
Aug 16, 2018 at 6:05 PM UTC
Heavy head.
Heavy hands.
Heavy heart.
Through my worries it slinks in.
My hopes are beaten
To a thick dry pulp in my heart.
Dully, I sit heavy heavy.
Movement is all impossible.
I am a marionette with cut strings.
Rough and tattered curls.
Ripped and torn dress.
Stoic, so so stoic, yet searching.
Where is the light that once was?
Alone in this mire, I shed my tears.
Secluded and rotting in self pity.
There are no maps, no decisions.
I am lost without guidance
In this game of life limbo.
I don't know when I'll leave.
This is my own prison.
Dec 25, 2010
Dec 25, 2010 at 11:31 PM UTC
Today I took a walk with you in the woods
it was foggy, drizzly, overcast
and the sun dully shone through the tangle of tree branches
that curled around us like a nest
we walked hand in hand
and the light rain settled into your eyelashes
melancholy dewdrops dripping from the clouds
I've seen you cry. They looked nothing like tears
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 11:20 AM UTC
There lies a closed door in all our lives
In love or friendship, hardships or tries
Between you and me, there is one such door
Which I long to open rather than look through the hole
But there it stands, gathering rust
Waiting to be re approached, like our trust
For you, my dear, don't have the key
And I'm too scared to find out what will be
We try in vain, the hammers of words
To break the barriers, to re emerge
But all it does is dully ache
And slowly away our memory it takes
So I look through the hole
With a hope that's nauseating
That you too are looking through it
That you too are waiting
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 11:24 AM UTC
Volcanoes in your eyes
when you cry
that erupt
and burn my mean words into magma.
You weep so dully
I wonder if that says something
about your pain
because
it reminds me
of the way people laugh on sitcoms.
Still,
I am sorry
for your eyes red as my anger.
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 12:01 AM UTC
It's coming it's returning
The empty feeling that I get
I'm tossing and I'm turning
I'm feeling like a shipwreck
Empty and abandoned
An empty hollow shell of want
I've crash landed
A shell of what I was once
Please give me my pain
I need the truest agony
Just don't let it wash in rain
To let my own emotions flee
Dully I watch
As I go by many places
My emotions stop
In an empty sea of faces
Tell me how
How to feel empty
Tell me now
How do I again see
Everything's so empty and pointless
Life doesn't even seem worth it
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 4:56 AM UTC
Encased in talent like a uniform,
The rank of every poet is well known;
They can amaze us like a thunderstorm,
Or die so young, or live for years alone.
They can dash forward like hussars: but he
Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn
How to be plain and awkward, how to be
One after whom none think it worth to turn.
For, to achieve his lightest wish, he must
Become the whole of boredom, subject to
****** complaints like love, among the Just
Be just, among the Filthy filthy too,
And in his own weak person, if he can,
Must suffer dully all the wrongs of Man.
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I once felt like words gave me power
Like they gave my quiet shell of a self a leg to stand on
Now I feel like I have none left to speak, to write
I've been drained of verbs and left broken -- immobile
My adjectives fall soft and simple, even the deaf don't pretend to hear
It's strange
Being so far removed from the one you called yourself
I don't know what there is left for me to say
It's like being a young musician on stage
And people have slowly stopped cheering as they realized
You have no more tunes left to play
Yet I've stood frozen, stuck, despite myself
I'm waiting for them to come back
The words
The crowds
The self that I used to know
That I thought I did know
I haven't a clue to where they've left, to where they'll go
But I hope that they find it
The messages they seek
I can no longer provide them
My inkwell bone dry
My spirit missing it's former vibrance, now dully meek
They once called me wicked
I thought it ironically sweet
That for someone so bitter
Many worshiped me
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 10:59 PM UTC
I remember how sweet your lips,
your cupid's bow,
the very corner of your mouth was
after we made a mess in the kitchen.
(Flour dotted cheeks and noses, the great big wooden spoon sitting dully in the sink, egg-shells laying lonely in the pastel pink ceramic bowl I insisted on buying.)
We made lemon tarts?
Jan 18, 2015
Jan 18, 2015 at 7:25 AM UTC
Two linked sugars
make up a disaccharide.
And that’s what we are-
simple, plain table sugar
dully passed back and forth
to sweeten our taste.
Sometimes I'll accidentally
switch the shakers for breakfast,
hand you the salt
just to change up the spice.
And sometimes I regret
the bitter words
you exchange in return
for breaking the boring
status quo.
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 12:43 AM UTC
i truly disgust myself
you love me more than i deserve
i left your *** for a pretty boy who promised to marry me and take care of me from the moment we met
and you begged for me back
your lips touched mine only hours after he kissed me goodbye
and i still cringed when ours finally met
you can guilt me into anything
i couldn't leave you bleeding on the pavement
tears cascading down your face
I never knew you cared so much
i told you this and it just made you cry harder
but still i long for lust
i used to feel so much passion towards you
if you left me, i surely would have taken my own life
but now, numbness tingles dully through my body
i go through the motions in the hope that you wont notice
i no longer feel the way that made life worth living
i miss knowing that there is nobody better than you
now i spend every day debating whether i should stay
something doesn't feel right
but you love me far too much
and i know you'll take good care of me
so long as you neglect that i truly am disgusting
Sep 27, 2013
Sep 27, 2013 at 2:42 PM UTC
The rain was dully falling
and the cats were hidden
Under high rimmed cars
with the lights turned off
His Mother was out calling
when the lightening struck
And his charred body scars
were stains on the new road
They sat inside and watched
furor in the streets; mourning
With the television on real low
eyes fixed on smoking remains
Street cleaners came and washed
adolescent flesh from the street
Ajar window ******* put on a show
there's a certain perversity to death
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 1:24 PM UTC
Two linked sugars make up a disaccharide. And that's
what we are. Simple, plain
table sugar, dully passed back
and forth to sweeten our taste.
Sometimes I'll accidentally switch
the shakers for breakfast, hand
you the salt, and you hand
me a spice so harsh that
my tongue curls at the unexpected switch.
I do not prefer the boring, plain
predictable exchange of taste
I followed for so many years back.
So I turn my back
to you, hold up my hand
as a shield of what you would say next. "Have you lost your taste,"
you say, anger overshadowing your faded love, "that
I've grown plain
to you?" I knew then to make the switch
into freedom from the same scene replayed. I get up and turn the light switch
off and leave you in the dark. "When you get back
from work," I say to the plain
dining room, "you will find this ring off my hand."
I can barely see your eyes glowing in the only source of morning light. "That's
absurd," you exclaim. "All because of how I want my cereal to taste?"
I shake my head. "It's not the physical taste. It's the taste
of you that makes me want to switch
out of this marriage. You aren't giving me what I want, and that
is my reason to back
out of this. You offered your hand
to hold mine, to support me, but it's all so plain."
I continue, "And isn't it plain
to see that my taste
in relationships lack passion? I give out my hand
to anything that flicks the switch
of love. You give me the nudge to turn it back
off." With that
I exit the house and try to restore my taste the way I had it back
to my actual preferences. I switch from the plain
safety and run with the risk that I never had at hand.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 6:31 PM UTC
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
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Laid now on his smooth bed
For the last time, watching dully
Through heavy eyelids the day's colour
Widow the sky, what can he say
Worthy of record, the books all open,
Pens ready, the faces, sad,
Waiting gravely for the tired lips
To move once -- what can he say?
His tongue wrestles to force one word
Past the thick phlegm; no speech, no phrases
For the day's news, just the one word ‘sorry';
Sorry for the lies, for the long failure
In the poet's war; that he preferred
The easier rhythms of the heart
To the mind's scansion; that now he dies
Intestate, having nothing to leave
But a few songs, cold as stones
In the thin hands that asked for bread.
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In a shrill corner
with overcast clouds dully wasting the day
for contemplation washes in brackish waves
flood mouth and eyes
I tell you but
no better words hover lazily
like dust caught in light
In the shrill corner
held with fierce intensity,
the best way small palms can clench.
you were some treasure I'd finally found
which might slip
from my pockets, of threadbare fabric
burying between the thistle and trash
by the sidewalks' path
by my own oversight
you make a promise
I can’t swim to the bottom
for fear of what truth might look like.
Consumed without discretion.
without abatement.
smoke and ashes will settle
into bloodstream and bone
leaving fossil traces
If one day you want to slip between the fibers
to be among something new
I will understand
let you pass
with fists clenched.
around their flesh
I will make a promise.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 4:27 PM UTC
Traveling the hollows,
Of this deep, damp, mountain,
Seeking treasure in mother earth,
Placed eons ago in times unknown.
Lanterns shedding light,
Illuminating the dark depths,
Casting elongated shadows,
On the dark tunnelled walls
Soft gold metal woven in tendrils
Through ponderous tons of granite.
Given away by the presence of
Shards of broken quartz,
Shining dully at my feet.
Why is this golden metal so precious?
Why would men give their lives for it?
Indeed, beautiful, rare, mysterious.
But I find myself captured by the reflections,
In these quartz crystals.
Not only quartz, but diamonds,
Emeralds, rubies, sapphires.
Heated and compressed over millenia,
Awaiting discovery in mother earth's,
Deep dark recesses.
Brought to the surface,
Faceted, polished, mounted.
Dazzling, sparkling color,
Eye-catching, elegant, mesmerizing.
Jewels.
Sep 19, 2010
Sep 19, 2010 at 9:17 AM UTC
I know a girl that piles on the necklaces
“Makes me look pretty,” she says
She’s all nervous, high-pitched laughter that jangles
as she fidgets with her armored collarbones
Rose red rashes bloom around ivory flesh,
She scratches at her skin inflamed
Ring ring ring around her pretty little neck
With those posey necklaces and gemstones
She smiles fondly at each reflection
of chains and rocks entangled
Wrung wrung wrung of beauty is she
Bitten so fiercely to her ivory bones
Her laughter hacks into little cough spurts,
and the metal winks dully as it strangles
Ring ring ring around her rosy little neck--
she piles on more necklaces.
Jan 16, 2018
Jan 16, 2018 at 1:31 AM UTC
when I go
it will be
impossibly late
and I’ll leave you
not multi-talented bars
or pairs of randy ingots
itching to procreate
in a splendid explosion
of golden delight
what I’ll leave you is
a stale-air larder
filled just this once
by dully packaged thoughts
and duller feelings
when I have them
they could only couple
if enlivened with musical prodding
or the sigh effecting benefits
from hands full of mood-altering
pharmaceuticals
so please yourself instead
and don’t
put them to any use
bury them deep
better yet
pile them high on Pyrrhic pyres
where the gathering scorch will send
down leaden puddles
while precious platinum curls rise
up to trickle trickster tears
my greatest possible reward
Sep 3, 2010
Sep 3, 2010 at 8:54 AM UTC
(A Pharaoh Speaks.)
I said, "Why should a pyramid
Stand always dully on its base?
I'll change it! Let the top be hid,
The bottom take the apex-place!"
And as I bade they did.
The people flocked in, scores on scores,
To see it balance on its tip.
They praised me with the praise that bores,
My godlike mind on every lip.
-- Until it fell, of course.
And then they took my body out
From my crushed palace, mad with rage,
-- Well, half the town WAS wrecked, no doubt --
Their crazy anger to assuage
By dragging it about.
The end? Foul birds defile my skull.
The new king's praises fill the land.
He clings to precept, simple, dull;
HIS pyramids on bases stand.
But -- Lord, how usual!
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