"eking" poems
*eking out the ultimate gasp in my last breath of impulsion
i collapse without a touch of grace at race's end
how i made it i will never know
dazed and in bewilderment
i reminisce upon my journey
an aggregation of barricades assailed me
with iniquitous decadent delight
seeming to writhe in triumph at my possible demise
capitulating as it devoured and spewed me out the other side
i humbly reassembled fragments of my near annihilation
temporarily rehabilitated
i recommenced the toilsome climb
to the treasured peak atop the mount
when in would come the tempest with its furor
and render me asunder
mere exhaustion is not the word
for death experienced recurrently
ground to mulch and back again
screaming, pleading, surrendering
proved futile as i newly met the same demise
near incapacitation i miraculously emerged
and scraping pulled myself with broken heart and bones
scratching my way through the darkness
toppling at the pinnacle
to victory's end
with exhilaration it dawns on me
the long dark night is over
i passed the test to realize
it is not the finish line
but only the beginning
©2016janetaylor
May 1, 2016
May 1, 2016 at 5:22 PM UTC
**Out and about
Amidst the hustle and bustle
Of ultra-modern cities
Is a phenomenon that escapes my mind’s grasp
Penniless famished hoi polloi huddled together almost in unison
Arms outstretched eking out a living from begging
Pitiful downcast eyes that tell stories untold
A sad sight to behold
Begging the question
Haven’t humankind a shred of tenderness?**
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 3:05 AM UTC
You are not alone,
but you are
then you're not,
They turn it and tumble it.
Ecking, every last drop of you.
And you wish you were.
Resist.
Imagine the Cloud
No eres solo,
pero estas solo,
entonces eres no.
Se la vuelven, y la voltean.
Eking todas las gotas de ti.
Y deseas que eras.
Resiste.
Imaginás la Nube.
Inspired by Francisco DH's Cray Cray & Silent Writer's work as well
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
A rose that only knows sunlight
Can never understand rain;
A heart that's only known gladness
Can never understand pain.
Eyes that have never seen darkness
Cannot comprehend hope;
Passions that have never felt torment
Are fires that can not be stoked.
But wisdom that hearkens to anger
Will someday turn its cheek;
A bold king of cruelty
Will someday join the meek.
Though the good and the bad
Writhe in confliction
Inside us all
Is a whole conviction.
Two parts to a whole,
Two sides in the glass,
The push and the pull,
The future and past.
We stumble about
Our hearts divided in twain
Eking out answers
In our fight to remain.
We ask ourselves
Whatis wrong?
What is right?
Too scared of the dark
To embrace the light.
We cannot be happy
Without having been sad
We cannot have good
Without the bad.
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 6:52 PM UTC
Smoke scintillated by ***** lights
Scent of cheap beer and cigarettes
Arms and legs and heads and butts
mashed
mangled
mingling
In a space ejecting bravado
responding to the auricular bludgeons
plucking veins and boiling blood
arms and legs flailing like spiders
hammered by raindrops
Calloused voices scream through feedback
eking out of anguished amplifiers
while jungle drums synchronize hearts
to their frantic pulse
New friends old friends celebration
in sweaty embraces chanting screaming
stumbling outside the gates of eternity
sidewalk where we gathered round the sordid soapbox
and cast beleaguering gargantuan buildings
and endless cataclysmal streets
into abeyance
to prance along these old sidewalk cracks
stumbling along cigarette butts and beer cans
efflorescing under amative neon lights whose bombinate glow
tingles our skin and dazzles our eyeballs
rolling back into our skulls in the wake of ecstasy
billowing over our ambulant bodies
Friday nights
Saturday nights
Sunday nights
skipping school on a week day
braving city night life to find us in the nooks
they forgot to sweep out
where trash collects and pretends
to be unwavering and implacable
for a moment
Til it's back on the streets we spill out upon like puke
like the beer sticking to checkerboard floors
and we float home on the feedback high singing in our ears to sleep
dreaming of these ecstasies as something perennial
in punk lover's dreams
Pure when we're filthy.
Nov 24, 2016
Nov 24, 2016 at 11:46 PM UTC
Can we jam, brothers and sisters?
Dare we meet at the impalpable chat room
that exists beyond our third heaven?
Dare we to speak in tongues and timbres,
our skin taut across hollow shells,
our veins strung across cadaverous bodies?
I'll grab my drumsticks if you grab the guitars,
and there's somebody on the bongos
slappin' the skins with zealous fervor--
where my tambourine girls at?
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten our forlorn hero
sitting behind the keyboards--
Tickle me those ivories with pious hands and aching fingers,
shake em down sweet Jerry Lee!
And so we begin--
I lay down the drum beat that bops heads and scatters feet,
and the bassman always on top of things
slaps and slides and skips and sizzles
hot diggity dog!
I hear that sweet guitar scream and moan,
praying for death under hazy lights
and we all coast with eyes rolled back into our skulls
and torpid lips drooped open over slack jaws.
Not a word is said from a human voice,
we speak through hands and feet,
basking in colors eking from every kick drum stomp
and the desperate wail bleeding from amplifiers.
Feedback sings and screams, fighting the silence we taunt
and hold at bay.
Around every corner the colors trail
coursing through our vesselious bodies
propelled along the dizzying venture.
We somehow spot every pothole and take detours,
embarking down backroads and backalleys--
We can turn the wheel,
but don't think for a moment we know where it's going.
And the mirror's have all vanished,
we know not from where we came.
Someone shouts from the discovery
as we exit a phrase to enter serendipity,
toying with destiny, clay in our hands,
stretching out the ****** perennially--
We laugh as the gods try to remind us we are Man.
And the screams and the moans
sensing the ****** is getting close
so there's a crescendo I ramp up the tempo
ahhhhhhhHHHhhhHhHhHhHHHHHhhhETERNITY IS NOW AND WE HOLD THE KEY TO HEAVENS GATES AND TIME STANDS STILL AT HIGH NOON IN THE TOWN'S SQUARE WHERE TRIGGER FINGERS TREMOR AND WE SPEAK TO GOD ON HIS PRIVATE CHANNEL COMING THROUGH WORN SPEAKERS CELESTIAL CREATURES IT WOULD BE SACRILEGE IF WE WEREN'T SUDDENLY SO HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY HOLY
So I say again, brothers and sisters,
can we jam?
SO I SAY AGAIN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
CAN WE JAM?
SO I SAY AGAIN, BROTHERS AND SISTERS,
CAN WE JAM?
So I say again,
brothers and sisters,
can we jam?
Jul 10, 2016
Jul 10, 2016 at 12:39 AM UTC
Looking meticulously on a river scene of beautiful Wednesday afternoons with all of life’s luxury
Out the window is a tree bent and gnarled with visible age twice my own
The perfect metaphor of life merely eking by, postured against infinity
As another, warped by the waves and turned to termed drift wood, also catches my eye for its existential merit
As it’s all been said before perspective is our only peculiarity
At the point, or lack there of, between all and nothing
Our minds spontaneous self-revelation is miracle enough for any, god fearing be ******
As over grown and lush as the under-leaves have become it seems like a waste to cut them out now so we might as well pump them full of fertilizers and hope for the second coming
Of knowledge and growth that began in the stone age bottle necking and splurged on drugs and money during the industrial revolution.
While trying to remember the ugliest parts that were and always will be me
Lets get free, really really free
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 5:57 PM UTC
I look in the mirror and see a void
An outcast, doomed to die alone
I have no hope of love’s sweet comfort
I have a house, but not a home
I yearn to feel the hand of friendship
On arm or shoulder, or to touch my face
But I know that my next true comfort
Will be to welcome death’s embrace
No sons or daughters to mourn my passing
No family that gives a ****
I see no point, I have no future
To death’s cold hand I would submit
My death would do the world a favour
One less useless waste of space
But sadly I believe in karma
So must let the reaper set the pace
I plod along this pointless path
Hopes and dreams, lost in the mist
Eking out my days in sorrow
While awaiting life’s final farewell kiss
Mar 5, 2011
Mar 5, 2011 at 3:54 AM UTC
I called her
At three am.
I asked her if
She was awake.
She lied and said
That she was.
I had woken her up.
"Take me somewhere,"
I asked her.
She had a car.
I didn't.
I didn't think
She would actually
Come because she
Hated mornings.
We were in college
Then, and I met her
In the parking lot.
She held a cup of
Coffee and was
Dressed in a hoodie
And sweatpants.
In the darkness,
I couldn't see
Her eyes.
I thought she was
Still asleep.
Was I ever wrong.
She opened the door
Of her car and
Slid in, lithe as
A cat.
I had never ridden
With her, so the
Moment I climbed
In the car was
The moment I learned
Something unusual
About her:
This girl I knew,
Or thought I did,
Drove a stick shift.
She was the only
Girl I knew who
Could drive a stick shift.
"Are you sure that you're
Awake enough to drive?"
I asked her.
She turned to me,
And, now, I could see
Her eyes in the light
Of the dash display.
I had never seen her,
This shy academic,
Look that wild.
She was alive,
More alive than
I had ever seen
Anyone.
She drove like
She had been born to,
Like it was her one purpose,
The one thing for which
She lived.
The empty three am interstate.
The space between three and four
Thousand rpms.
Incredibly loud music.
I could see the appeal.
This was life.
This was living.
We came back to reality,
Back to school,
As the dawn broke.
"Thank you," I told her,
But I didn't know what for.
I couldn't make a list of what
She had given me that
I was grateful for.
I didn't know if I was grateful.
Having lived in that high,
I couldn't go back to
My life, eking out my existence,
Without such intense torture,
Wanting that high again.
I had lived and
Now, I was addicted to life.
All because of a
Quietly wild girl
And her stick shift.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 1:22 PM UTC
Poetry may not do it justice.
Their brown feathered heads bob,
their feet dig, clumps, grab and rob,
clods and sods, while tearing Earth.
Their heads twist downward and eyes
peer at what was unearthed and prized.
They were scratching out a living, peck
eking out an existence, even though peck,
they were paid in chicken feed, peck, peck.
They were the chickens of the loafing shed!
He worked with glass then later in front of the glory hole,
several hours a day and many, many years of hours total
over two and a half decades, annealing like his glass.
He pulled the sweetness from each piece with furnace fire, air and motion
staying level-headed while the raw molten ocean gathered on the honey dipper
of super-heated soft and borosilica masses were built from inside out, from
the crucible of the masters imagination.
Each year, all glass masterpieces all,
but three it averaged
would not make it to the market, fall or
fractured, shattered,
not a thing to be discouraged.
Cooling, heating a tricky thing,
Light blue pieces in the pan disassembled by natural forces,
so unlike their dreams, which have become tangible,
at 1100 degrees C, just don't touch the beauty, quite yet
this is the glass blowing reality at loafing shed
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 10:25 PM UTC
I remember days of struggle
eking by by working my ***
off in some fact'ry and going
ten more bucks in debt every
month before the oilmen
declared war on humanity
and the white MAN could not
take this **** Any more so he
quit and 50 million illegals
that were here against the law
were given citizen-ships and
allowed to stay because they
wanted to work (for less than
anyone else would)
as we were all tricked into
supporting our enemies in war
by the american media because
they were told to do so
such nice t.v. scumb-bags
always doing what they are told
Apr 1, 2017
Apr 1, 2017 at 2:45 PM UTC
I came to You carrying a bowl:
white clay set with tourmaline
and green beryl like the sea
precious
simple
sacred.
A silvery glaze you poured
over cracks in the clay--
mistakes I have made
perfecting
illuminating
scars.
Swirling in this vessel,
as I stumble toward your hall,
is a liquid dark, seething:
fire and ink
filth and steaming sludge
and something
slithers
just below the surface
living pollution eking out its existence in a putrid potion.
I can hardly lift it anymore.
with weakening arms I collapse,
but strive to hold the basin yet
my hands crushed beneath its weight.
With a shattered voice I call to You
You
who crafted the bowl:
Mercy! mercy...
Desperate for rescue
before the evil lurking within
drags itself out to consume.
*What You made
I poisoned,
And what in life You gave
I filled with death.
Empty the vessel
and unmake the beast.
Renew and restore,
Maker of All.*
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 5:29 PM UTC
Did I happen yesterday?
Did I see the sun?
Did I happen yesterday?
Where can I find a nook
To tell you what I stole?
Did I happen yesterday?
Intoxicating run
Purpled ink flowing free
Instead of eking blood
When shall we say the things we know?
When do you let me in?
Did I happen yesterday?
Is telling life a sin?
Mar 10, 2011
Mar 10, 2011 at 7:50 AM UTC
the world fits most easily in rain between
the close thighs of light
eking just slenderly
one ephemeral rill of ****
penetrating
to eagerly spill
dawn.
(the though world
in rain fits just
in just the loose tenseness
of muscle unbounding
from bone, wide
)with
a sliver
of
neat
ssenlriG
Nov 19, 2013
Nov 19, 2013 at 3:29 AM UTC
you might think it discriminatory,
but i just don't understand trans-gender,
or meta-gender, or para-gender or
ortho-gender... there, the four winds...
but as a man i couldn't imagine
putting all that effort into adorning
myself like a woman, to look prettier...
an article about the 1971 music scene:
'acts were building careers, not eking
them out; they all looked fabulous without
help from make-up artists and stylists:
the elegantly wasted look, now expensively
emulated in fashion spread, could be
achieved by simple neglect.'
it's a discrimination from the stand-point
of: well... i'm not joining this St. Thomas Parade;
and i guess that's the reason for much
of Islam's hostility, it brewed up and boiled
in european women somehow...
Samantha said: 'what's happening?!
why aren't we dating, going to restaurants,
why is he using my make-up?!'
Abdul said: 'honey, bomb bomb bomb boom!'
Ahmed said: 'here's our opportunity to groom
the youngest disgruntled & confused!'
well it worked... but i still kinda
wished she / "she" / hmm made it into the final
of that karaoke show.
Apr 3, 2016
Apr 3, 2016 at 12:33 PM UTC
As she lies, comfortable, ******* up, queerly quaking, impaled on his much larger joy
Moist sugar, eking steadily outwards
Moist salt pumping eagerly in
Part of him missing
Part of her gained
As her hands rip into the spaces on the back skin of this treacherous boy
She is happy
Tense and loosened by their shared ******
Ripping Ripping
Ripping fingers enter into the wetness of each eye, I
Rip myself left from right
Rip myself logic from left
Pounding flesh into stone, slow
Steady pounding, rhythmic
So rigid the hot blood in this chest
Then falling, failing, flopped-flaccid
Into a pile of folding skin, nothing within
Cut clean off this wretched mere mortal ****
She is happy
The lier will lie with him no more no more with me
Death is not destructive enough for thee
For I am the selfless
I am in love.
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 11:27 PM UTC
Forcing passers by
Curious for peep stand,
Swelling a throng
By every square
Or a roadside
Using his right leg
A nimble right hand
With the other holding
The artefact items hard
A hand-less man
Makes attractive tables
and stools
Hammering nails
and cutting woods
The way the task demand,
A task many normal people
imagine to handle hard.
Those who appreciate
his talent
Throws coins—
A tip for his pocket,
While some buy
The artefact items
He puts up for market.
Aside from eking out
a leaving
He hits home
The psychological dome
“Disability is not inability!”
In a similar case
An art mentor
And an apprentice
Draw many a
wonderful picture
With his mouth
the latter
In a manner
Attention that capture
Hitting home “Some qualities
If deprived by mother nature
Other qualities man could nurture!”
Nov 8, 2017
Nov 8, 2017 at 2:01 AM UTC
"What happened to her?"
It's better if you Don't. Ask.
See she wears Depression on her face,
In bloodshot eyes and dark circles,
In early age lines and pale cheeks,
In bitten, chapped lips.
You want to ask, "what happened to her?"
But it's better if you don't look too closely,
Or the spider-web cracks across her porcelain mask
Will break
You can already see the black smoke eking through
Joined to the shadowy frame of the one who walks beside her
Caressing her filigree skin and flicking a lighter.
She says, "I want someone to take the pain,
**** it, smoke it, love it, beat it, praise it, blaze it, lemon-glaze it,
Kiss it, kick it, shoot it, carve it, wear it, taste it, light it on fire."
But all we ever say is "you're looking so much better now"
So much better now.
Like a marionette in a little side show, colorful, with ribbons.
A broken smile, and sad, sad eyes.
So beautifully tragic, it must all be for show.
Though the silver she draws with, its ink a bright red,
Is more telling than any lie she has fed
Fed on, cried on, choked on, drowned with, like a gluttonous pig.
So what happened to her? And the life she once led?
Those honeyed dreams turned to mutinous greys in her head?
It's better if you turn away and smile,
And pretend your heart inside isn't as dead,
She only wears the pain most hold inside, swallowing a painful life from a flask sewn into the flesh of her hip,
It's better if you didn't ask.
Jun 15, 2017
Jun 15, 2017 at 6:04 PM UTC
Oh no. It used to be here somewhere. I swear it, I’ve no reason to lie.
"Here" in some abstract sense, though. Not "here" like "I can pick it up with my hand."
Here in a way I could just feel it eking out a path around my neck
working its way, all at the same time, down the spine
and up across the skull
to my ear
I think, maybe, you took it with you when you left my house some weeks ago
Not to be cruel, or coy, or potent. Just because that’s the way these things work
Just, I got a little too used to it. Thought maybe it could be my own
But its yours, and it comes and goes along with you
You need it. I miss it.
Your sweet breath.
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 4:54 PM UTC
drenched
and slapped on the solid
hunch of a man
colors eking out
of each pore
spilling in crooked
zig zag lines
along his
contours
the sun will
evaporate my stain
the wind will push me off this edge
right back down
on the solid
hunch of a man
colors eking out
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 9:19 PM UTC