"embossed" poems
You make my skin crawl,
Like writhing maggots beneath,
Like the innocent child's scrawls,
Tainting my canvas, my skin.
Your words, they pierce me,
Like the ***** of a needle.
Caressing, so fatally,
Over the scarred, raised skin,
The years of mistreat,
Has treated me harsh,
Showing meat so starved,
Brittle bones over skin.
The world! Such a joke,
Made of him, her and you.
My existence, mere smoke,
Our stories, nothing but skin.
For skin show where we've traversed,
The roads we have trod,
A beautiful canvas,
Of cools, brights and skin.
I am proud of my masterpiece,
It's whittled into my skin.
From the lines embossed to my chest,
To the intricate blend of colors,
The white spiraling scars,
Etched deeper than skin.
Here I stand,
Here I scream.
Proud of the bands,
That bind me as one, my skin.
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:03 PM UTC
Your fingerprints are embossed on my heart
Forever to be known to my soul
Your insignia, your mark, is placed in art
Never to tarnish or grow old
A slightly raised indention of your spirit
Your mark upon my heart
Emblazoned by the hand of love
A masterpiece of art
My heart will always bear your prints
As a reminder of what’s true
The place you’ve left your mark of love
Belongs only to you
May 15, 2010
May 15, 2010 at 9:31 PM UTC
Empty skies embrace
Sparse cloud formations
The blues fade and overlapped hues
Sparkles crested in fickle delight
Lazy outstretched yawns of natural light
Sun’s glare glazed under Moon’s appearance
Embossed against the translucence of blue space
Everything up there is calm today
No rush or race or interference
Gentle indifference drifts to the West.
Staying dry for us
The beautiful simplicity of being Sky.
Stop and look around.
Cyclists trickle on painted pathways
Student groups pontificate about life
and the lecture they should all be at,
Lunchtime sprawls and **********
never ending spurts of schoolchildren
delirious for sausage rolls and E numbers.
Everyone in a rush to be someone
Going somewhere with purpose,
and yet,
Be indifferent
to each other.
The bland complexity of being modern People.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 12:53 PM UTC
Three days, is what the HR rep said, somewhat sheepishly,
As if she was fully aware that boxing up one’s grief
In a span of a few dozen hours
Is a matter of wishful thinking
And certainly she sympathizes
(Indeed, as she speaks,
She spreads her hands in such a way
As you half expect doves to come forth in full flight)
Empathy being their stock in trade,
But the law and the handbook say three days,
And then you need to have your head
******* back on and looking forward.
Eventually, the mail brings fewer envelopes
Marked with embossed flowers
And subdued and tasteful stamps,
The usual flow of solicitous inquiries,
Pre-stamped and pre-sorted,
Inquiring as to your credit needs,
The condition of your windows and siding,
Resumes apace, and more than once,
In fits of inappropriate black humor and frustration,
You scribble, in bold thick strokes of a marker,
The addressee no longer resides at this location.
You return to nine-to-five,
Though your ghosts keep their own hours,
Stopping by to visit on their own schedule alone,
Prompted by the tiniest of things:
The dog scampering to its feet in a hurry,
As if someone was at the door,
The discovery of a long-unused pitching wedge
Standing expectantly in the back of the closet,
A song from long ago which was beloved
When you lived in the pairing mandated by Noah
Before you entered the shadow world of ones and nones.
Sometimes you give into the giddy madness,
And rise to waltz around the room,
Careening about unsteadily, clumsily
As you have yet to completely master
The difference in weight shift and distribution
That is required of a solo act.
The timing of these visitations
Often disrupts your schedule and sleep patterns,
And you think that perhaps tomorrow you’ll call in.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 10:38 AM UTC
Those constellations that reflect,
In the illimitable rainforest, dark and damp,
Are those, if truth be told, galaxies?
Or glass chips embossed in your guise? O! beauty!
Dec 22, 2020
Dec 22, 2020 at 1:56 PM UTC
This moment wont last forever
I know it well. I feel it fading.
It rushes through my fingers like grains of sand;
But, I enjoy the sensation.
A beginning cannot be celebrated
without an end, and
A life cannot be cherished,
unless it it lived.
That is why I treasure them.
This moment, and,
all the moments we have together.
I don't think I would love you as much
without the setting of a thousand hours,
hours we spent with one another,
hanging like a starry backdrop,
behind your head.
All this time, has embossed you onto my heart.
Pressed down like a stamp, gradual but essential.
Now, you are part of who I am.
And so is this time, together, right now.
I know this moment wont last forever, but-
That is what makes it special.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 7:15 PM UTC
A seventies child
Born in Wales, one of the four
Countries of The UK.
I remember brown as the colour
of the day.
Fabric embossed wallpaper
all the neighbours names, who married who,
who was carrying on, the alcoholic, the beaten wives,
Even, get this the peadophiles (or kiddy fiddlers as was known)
Dai the milk, Mair the bread, the shop of infinite items.
Rugby practice for dad, baking for mam
(Cake and babies) gossip over the garden hedge
Fish on a Friday a Sunday roast, hot sweet tea.
Bubble and squeak, post delivered before you
left for school. Mist on the mountain, dew on the grass.
Welsh valley life, sounds idyllic
but scratch the surface and a darker colour
than brown emerges. Petty squablings leading to
familial feuds, the Williamses don't get on with
the Joneses, and as for the Pritchards, less said the better.
School, local, no not for me. I was sent to a Welsh
School, taught and learnt the language denied to my
Parents by English politics. Cat amongst the pigeons there.
Did I think I was special? Ideas above her station. That's what
the neighbours say.
Well, you all had the option.
Dr Forbes FRCS
Delivered babies buried men and women
Loved by all, especially his lollipop sweets.
I wasn't a child to get ***** or rip wrapping paper
off of gifts, I liked to go under the stairs (like Harry Potter)
and read. I left the dirt for my sister born 4 years later.
Then in 1982 came my brother, tidy my mother describes it.
'74,'78,'82 poor dad to have to wait I say!
More pubs than chapels, more walking than driving
more rain than sun, more music than ever was sung.
The '80's came, and we had strikes, no electric, candles
toast made with a toasting fork over the fire.
No mines, no steel, no jobs.
Picket lines, dole queues, women in work
latchkey kids, Thatcherism, ******* times.
Falklands war, IRA bombs, Royal weddings
Tory rule
But, the fire in the dragon never went out
and Tom Jones still sings his heart out.
Cymru cysglyd gwlad y gân, deffrwch
nawr, dyma'ch tro.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
The broken biscuits lay in a tin
An ordinary oblong tin
With turquoise pattern
And pink embossed flowers
Gold edged to finish the job.
How many times I visited
That tin on the middle shelf
In the top half of a cupboard,
Sawn door, to allow for fridge,
And quietly took out the tin.
Broken biscuits were my delight
All shapes and sizes tasty bites
Wafers, bourbon, custard creams
Rich tea, digestive all suited me
Sometimes fig sandwich, pleased.
Love Mary
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 7:05 AM UTC
A patriotic fervor producing fealty
A noble cause compelling loyalty
Paired with a callous indignity
Brash enlistee plunges toward destiny
Honor's badge worn with impunity
Duty's moniker embossed with magnanimity
Insatiable bloodlust quelshing all insecurity
Unbridled ego clamoring a garrulous enmity
Toward the villains who shattered blithe serenity
First skirmish, pageantry displaced by gravity
Mettle varnished with aura of invincibility
First battle, fallen comrades question mortality
Successive battles, severed limbs, caustic wounds challenge credulity
Fragile mind being conditioned to atrocity
War's heavy mantle now shorn of indemnity
Threatening mind's sanity, hearth's perpetuity
Once faceless foes now scream their humanity
Once noble leaders brim with insincerity
Supportive countrymen now fickle, distant entity
Cheering press now rank with duplicity
Only solace, hardened comrades equanimity
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 6:03 PM UTC
She ******* constantly about
cigarette smoke.
Of course, when she’s drunk, she
smokes all mine.
And while she’s complaining
she’s taking snipes that
I wake up at six in the
morning to dig out of
ashtrays—walking miles to get.
It’s laughable.
She sits there with a
***** **** hanging
loosely from her hand and
says,
“I don’t like my
apartment smelling like
cigarettes.”
I say,
“Then don’t smoke.”
She says,
“Why don’t you buy some
real cigarettes—I’ll show
you what real
cigarettes taste like.”
Then she storms
off, all *** and hair flying.
She comes back with a
pack of smokes and a
cigar box.
“I paid two dollars for this, you can
put all your ***** butts in here.”
It’s actually beautiful.
It’s made of cedar and
would look great with
a cactus in it.
There are wood shavings at
the bottom, her
money would have been
better spent on
a dollar pack of rolling papers.
I’m field stripping the
snow embossed butts and using
cut up pieces of the
yellow pages to roll
cigarettes that I’m able to smoke.
She doesn’t have
a clue.
She only smokes when
she’s drinking.
Mar 1, 2023
Mar 1, 2023 at 7:19 AM UTC
There is no rain to chase.
What is lost is lost.
There is no time to be retained.
What is lost is lost.
There is no gaining back what's gone.
What is lost is lost.
I only keep the memories
that have been embossed.
My body's stitched together with this chaos.
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 9:50 PM UTC
We gather together to
form one elastic skin,
to create a blank moment
embossed in all we can't say.
and like glass, this gilded action
provides us with little reflection
wrapping and yoking
our clear and carnal intention.
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 9:42 PM UTC
Green glass
but it's French
which makes it
verre vert.
The French should like that.
They appreciate
their jeux de mots.
Not a statue
of a man
but it could be.
Not a piece of art at all
except
I have made it so
by saying it is one.
Its qualities
are visual
and tactile at once
the material heavy
(over a kilo)
not so much transparent
as translucent
the colour
from under the sea
the surface curved
smooth
glossy
the shape functional
admirably suited for its purpose
its name
embossed on the back
(or the front?)
giving a clue.
L' ÉLECTRO VERRE
redundant insulator
from an overhead power cable
found object
(objet trouvé)
from the garden
of friends
in the Alpes-Maritimes.
This souvenir
potential paperweight
ornament
sculpture
is more than all of these.
Souvenir after all
is French for memory.
Sep 22, 2016
Sep 22, 2016 at 12:21 PM UTC
Nana thinks the magazine is the devil.
“THE PEOPLE WHO DREW THE BLESSED ****** MOTHER OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST IN A BIKINI ARE GOING TO HELL.”
Whatever you say, Nana.
When we left my Nana made us tacos and tamales. She gathered all the food in the house to send us off and took all the cash she had and stuffed it in my pocket. She purged the cupboard of all the bananas, plums, nectarines, and apricots and placed them in a bag with two bottled waters a coke, a diet coke and sprite.
She told me that she loved me and that she hated to see me go. That, “I had just gotten there” and that she would “miss me so much.”
Before we left she sent me with a card that was “very important”. It was a picture and a coin embossed with my guardian angel that she bought at the church gift shop.
My nana loves me more than anything else in the world.
My nana still calls you my friend.
Jun 28, 2013
Jun 28, 2013 at 5:33 PM UTC
Strumming the untuned strings, he stares drunkenly into the setting sun of yesteryears songs, sung of lost dreams and the birthed ambitions of the dark, dark days to be.
Happily, he tears up in the fortunate tragedies, of the reclamation in his dreams, as he seethes out the damnation of his steeds, galloping gallantly through his being.
All seeing, in the finite fleeting when he sings, of strummed dreams to the rhythms of heart beats lost, embossed on the epitaphs of kings.
Sad songs of dreams once had.
Be glad for that, which does not **** you, only to bestow upon you, the gratitude of the weirding ways, in passionate display for us all to play nice.
Shake these dice and jump aboard this bus of wandering poetry, from the porches of poets singing to the sun.
From the morning Moet, to the afternoon beer run.
we sing of dreams
of better things
we blaspheme
and spin the scenes
of our murdered dreams
and just clean the guilt away
I am so awesome as to be devoid of fault.
I am a god that cracks the asphalt.
I am the angel signing the clause, of deserved harm.
I am the indentured servant sounding the alarm, with the charm of a Trojan horse, forced to adhere to the most righteous path.
The first
The last
Laugh of inevitability
Honing in on the ability to capture the longevity of dream warriors, in the lock of predators, in the employ of a senator, from the center of the heart, to impart on you the fear from thieves caught in the plight of those fraught with the graces of an exterminator, exterminating the pro-creators of your world. Soldiers unraveled in the lavished gavels of real criminals drowning in their own subliminal theories of the self imposed heresies of intention.
Free will
A fragile blessing
I cracked, all so long ago, as i gently bestow my belligerence upon your innocence and **** it all away.
I'm the ******* son
Strumming for the only one.
Once.
Before the lore of the storm.
Born of the swoon of a gun.
More than one.
Once.
As the day faded into night, his strumming turned plucking, as he slightly eased from reprise to silence, in the whisper of nights words, easing him into the blur, of sleep.
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 3:46 PM UTC
I once met a viking girl,
who hailed from Norway.
I usually wouldn't have bothered,
but there was something special about her
I couldn't fully grasp.
It was like some weight had been lifted
to relieve my tired body
of it's former failings.
There was a magic she could wield,
some massive dreadnought of power
she kept sheathed in ornate leather.
Sometimes, when she was nervous,
her fingers would brush it's scabbard,
tracing the embossed symbols,
unaware of what she was doing.
And then this longing would overtake her,
leaving her eyes vacant,
momentarily...
As if her vessel had been abandoned
as she expanded
well beyond it's threshold.
During these brief moments
when she'd slip away,
I saw things I couldn't explain.
A furnace of starlight,
encased deep in the Norwegian ice,
alongside the warships of her ancestors.
Usually well-guarded,
out of habit
or necessity.
Before I was consumed entirely
she returned from her reverie,
tearing me away
from that solace.
I wonder now
if she was aware
of what happened.
Those secret woodlands
will haunt me
long after I've gone.
Long after life has left me,
and into the outstretched arms of eternity
and the worlds that follow.
And like some dream,
it still escapes me..
how so much beauty
can be reserved
and contained.
It sickens me to know
that what I'll remember most
was the physical form she'd taken,
and not the things
that truly mattered.
Not the magic she used
to tear me asunder,
wide open and spilling..
helpless in it's radiance.
Not the gentle breeze
that expanded from her wake
as she passed me.
Because it's easier
to be shallow.
It's easier
to forget.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 8:23 AM UTC
This moment won't last forever
I know it well. I feel it fading.
It rushes through my fingers like grains of sand;
But, I enjoy the sensation.
A beginning cannot be celebrated
without an end, and
A life cannot be cherished,
unless it it lived.
That is why I treasure them.
This moment, and,
all the moments we have together.
I don't think I would love you as much
without the setting of a thousand hours,
hours we spent with one another,
hanging like a starry backdrop,
behind your head.
All this time, has embossed you onto my heart.
Pressed down like a stamp, gradual but essential.
Now, you are part of who I am.
And so is this time, together, right now.
I know this moment won't last forever, but-
That is what makes it special.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 6:18 PM UTC
Pages of thin onion skin, delicately touched
with the lilting script of a fountain pen.
Coarser pages of sturdy stock filled
with strong characters of printer's ink.
Binding woven with threads of friendships
Dipped in the warm glue of sisterhood.
The poetry of life fills the pages,
sing song limericks of childhood
followed by lines of romantic verse.
Tears stain tattered pages
where losses deep are journaled.
The title embossed in gilded gold,
you shall find "Woman" inside.
Mar 23, 2010
Mar 23, 2010 at 1:33 PM UTC
Venice was a place for sudden ******
a stiletto plunged in velvet
vengeance tied in a knot of silk
piracy on any dark canal
robbery under quiet bridges.
Water laps the crumbling walls
salt hunger creeps up
seeps between stones
worms its way through cedar
settles in the sagging shelves
where old books bound in leather
edged in gold, embossed with crests
are best left well alone.
In these libraries of the lagoon
chapters and paragraphs
sentences and phrases fragment
nouns lay down with their verbs
creating images from metaphors
startling and sublime, but hidden
kept in these word-chambers
they slide away in time.
Each passing month, each day
restless and uneasy
festering in this state of decay
Venice is still
the place of death.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 24, 2015
Nov 24, 2015 at 8:09 AM UTC
Moth eaten land
thrown on water.
Strings of thread tie them loosely
together.
Pigmented
red and green
embossed with hilly sections.
Thin air
thin words
thin reflections.
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 29, 2011 at 9:51 PM UTC
You're so dangerous with your profane paraphernalia
Your pelvis postures pandering favor
The line of your stomach embossed by the fire is like a pasture for me
So paranoid with your pacifistic lust
As you proceed to please me with your posture so slightly
And I attempt to pursue oh so politely
You make me perk up like a peacock just with one peak
You're aware of every petty palpitation you can feel just under my sleeve
You play me like a piano, so plush with your lust politics
Pandering for a pardon of my ***** talk poignancy
I part you like Pluto from your orbits serene hum
I'll pleasure you, pleasure you until you're purple like a plum
A pastimes poetises to be written with pleasing lead
You plan every move like a predator in my bed
You're polarizing, plump, and pampered like a pageant doll
Pilfering every plausible pause with a pose of voice, your moan
Seizing the post with your post - modern pompous pouncing
Prompted like Pisces to postulate your prognosis
Lifting your posterior like the pun of a phaliccy
Pillaging me like a pandemic, a plague
Something to be paraded by paganistic plauds
Your pale skin is like playwear for sins
You're pinning me plastered with the play of your grin
Such a pretty motion picture to paint in the prison of your promise
May 17, 2014
May 17, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
*Firelight Affairs & Atmospheric Starlight,
Rainbow Instincts Enlightening Her Satellite Twilight,
Quivering Symphonies & Colorful Voices,
Lyrical Abstracts Of Her Monochrome Noises,
Prismatic Rage In Her Eternal Sage,
Resonances Whispering Her Voices Onstage,
Vertical Ensembles Of Her Ecstatic Fashions,
Witty Odes Enlightening Her Arrested Passions,
Prancing Temptations & Provoked Mysteries,
Entrancing Her Artistic Waves & Surging Tapestries,
Storyteller Flares On A Perpetual Lease,
Intoxicated Mirrors Of Her Spiritual Release,
Lucid Memoirs & Condensed Revelations,
Inquisitive Glances Of Her Cupid Flirtations,
Crimson Armors & Her Reflective Scents,
Illustrious Serenity Embossed In Her Scenic Ascents,
Fluoresce Echoes & Her Scenic Prelude,
Coalesce Spotlights Guiding Her Summer Nudes.
- 01:24AM -*
Apr 17, 2017
Apr 17, 2017 at 3:00 PM UTC
A Borivali slow,
Was on platform four,
Being young and swift,
With least bit of strain,
I boarded the train.
There wasn't place to sit,
So amidst the uproar,
I stood at the door.
An aged lady of seventy-four,
Indulged us in a tale of yore.
Of a frightful night,
When her entire world,
Was ruthlessly hurled,
Into fear and plight,
Into treacherous gore,
A tale so abhor.
with fine detail,
She narrated her tale,
And had us engrossed,
Our minds embossed,
She was a slave,
Who tried to save,
Her body frail,
Which was put for sale.
"A young girl of thirteen I was", she said
"Physically alive but mentally dead.
I was sold like cattle,
My modesty stripped,
soul ripped,
My insides would rattle,
As I would be led,
To a different bed.
In words I cannot convey,
From where I drew strength one day,
During the dastardly act,
I took my chance and attacked.
I fled the scene,
And ran all day,
Tried to escape far away.
Partially clothed or under a veil,
Being a woman makes you frail,
We are a prey to beastly eyes,
Unheard are our cries.
My story will make your heart sink,
And force you to think,
While you soundly sleep,
There are women who weep.
Somewhere there is a woman
trying to escape,
From the clutches of victimization and **** "
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 3:48 AM UTC
From the visions of sparrow vanguards
that fly insatiably onward.
From the tombs of ancient hearts draped
in flowing, moth-eaten fabric.
From the fighter jets stalling somewhere
above solitary and succinct farmlands.
From the bottom of a broken purple
sunset that lies embossed on my brain.
From the silliest half-thought left
unvoiced in the vagrant light of a damp
and desolate lamp lying in a landfill.
From several mouths at once.
From oracles cross-legged in caves.
From the gills of a catfish on a hook.
From mythical forgeries and the perjurer's tongue.
To the subdued hope resting in a
trembling hand gripped round its pen.
To satisfaction that is oneness that
seems to never arrive but is there
all along.
To the peaks of the Himalayas.
To my spidered desk light, shallow with doubt.
To my flustered and torrential page.
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 9:39 PM UTC