"embroidering" poems
what i cant understand
is how people can write poetry about the flowers
or the sunshine
it just seems so irrelevant
when there are so many more beautiful things to write about
like your dainty, thin, long fingers
and the way your lips emit a tiny bit of air when you pronounce ‘th’ words
your towering, awkward, bony body
loosely, limply entwined in mine
that make up your gentle, comforting hugs
how melodic your voice is, almost lulling me to sleep
your contagious, animated smile
how you write as if embroidering the pages
gracefully, an art
and the words float mid-lines
reflecting how your thoughts float among the clouds
doolally detonations of enigmatic pure excitement
over the most extraneous of matters
your eyes, the captivating bluish-steel of a mid-winter night sky
their flare, and the way they light up when you maunder lovingly of such passions
alas perhaps, poetry about plants or the weather are just as beautiful
but i
would not know
for even the planet, and nature
and sheer beauty of life
seems pale
in prejudiced comparison to your radiance
and how bright you make
my insides feel
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 9:15 PM UTC
I lived my half dictionary life before I could
comprehend compulsory compromises.
Collectors arise, disguises and devices beeping,
chastising my blindness.
Gather geography from Afghanistan and Myanmar
graciously growing gold gilded gift horses,
gleefully gloating about floating far away.
My hoof beats above concrete match my heart’s defeat
across borders and mountains
embroidering cardboard cut-outs
calling deserts, decorating front covers.
Exhaling handcrafted letters for my missing half,
half demanding highest caliber commanders and half commanding completion.
Jade jays joyfully lay arrays of bouquets
fragile flowers decay faraway
in jawbones and jail cells.
Begging farewells in a hotel’s lobby
began my hobby,
early morning coffee and carbon copies
concurringly cocky around his dead body.
Gang ciphers for cartels are
Christmas bells hissing at collars,
half dollars embellishing bar crawlers
godfathers hollering at car haulers.
Atrocities across cities attack,
attachable atrophies audibly ambush arthritic anthologies.
Anomalies begin apologies between apostrophes,
advancing autonomy arousing ancient animosities.
All eluding Antarctica,
giant frozen crests, multi-coloured ice
hidden in my illustrations
anxious for my distant half.
Friday cassettes and cigarettes
deliberately making bets following “M”.
Breaking bindings and finding “beta” in alphabet,
may feasibly end in debt.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 1:51 PM UTC
Because of you
I'm all here
Buried all the pains
Dug a new chapter
Imported new feelings
Seeded hope
Exported all the grievances
Took hold of the promises
Watered the heart
Cementing the broken pieces together
Laminated the smile
And on the wall I nailed it
Began a tireless journey
Wishing for the best
Trusting the eyes
Enjoying the sweet melody
A lullaby I need for a lifetime
Remember those days?
Acting silly and stupid
The ignorance we entertained
The confusion we embraced
Embroidering the hatred
An the mist of pain we got lost
Turning our backs on each other
Anger reddening our eyes
Silence that became a graveyard
Silence that almost murdered our hearts
Intoxicating our feelings
Destroying the taproots of our future
I remember that days
Buried now
Now I smile
For we hold it
In our hands we are molding it
Together moistening the clay
That long ago cracked
With no hope of being a palp again
We have it
We repainted the wall
A new dawn of hope
A beginning of a new chapter
The chills of winter all gone
Summer says hello
With its rain we will puddle
In the mud together
Yes the mud of love we will ***** ourselves
For we buried the past
Oct 8, 2021
Oct 8, 2021 at 5:32 AM UTC
bye, bye, pie in the sky
I made a dream
I made you out of nowhere,
Out of the mountain snow and out of the air.
I was spinning your head
On my spinning wheels
Out of warm sunshine and out of cool moon beams.
For months and months,
I was spinning your head.
I was weaving your hair
Out of silky threads
For weeks.
Carefully pedaling my old fashioned,
Singing
Sewing machine,
I spent nights
Stitching adornments on your pockets,
Embroidering your cuffs.
Crochet crazy,
I crocheted laces for your sheer enjoyment
And for your windows,
Hooked on the crocheting hooks
Way up high.
I knitted sweaters
For your sacrificial lambs
Of colourful wools.
You are almost finished,
My just a dream, just a dream,
I'll let you go
With the African hot wind.
I am all done
With you.
Sorry, I couldn't hold on
To my golden
Knitting needles
Any longer.
(1-16-07)
Oct 14, 2010
Oct 14, 2010 at 3:38 PM UTC
We arrive at the place
Water running off our faces;
Looking like disgraces
Glibly explaining
That it is still raining.
Just a smattering patter.
Not that it matters.
We'll just sit and chatter
Like social Mad Hatters
At a move-down afternoon tea.
We're all hooked on surreality.
The ladies-who-lunch bunch;
Character assassination over brunch.
Some gossip while we munch
Embroidering on a hunch.
Anything to stay in out of the rain.
After all, it's not our personal pain.
It's some other sucker's sorry.
We will forget it by tomorrow.
For today, while we quickly forget
We just sit and watch the streets get wet.
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 3:39 AM UTC
Chopin's Nocturne opus 9, number 2
A sonorous performance,
The mellow yet melancholic undertones of the masterpiece reverbates through the meadow
From the reflective rubato streaking past the flowerbed,
To the passionate conclusion in a whim, echoing through the garden,
The garden in which a willow rests
Its twigs holding a chalice in its embroidering,
Twines glowing in the shimmering of the silver moon,
Its dark-red fluids seeping from the cracks
It gazes through the dark crevasses for an eternity,
A panorama of planets and stars dwindling to dust as it stirs its nebulas,
Clouding its view as in parallel,
Universes as large as needle tips deteriorate to nothing
There's just naught, nothing, nothingness,
The black mass piercing,
Puncturing the veins of the solemn soul wandering through the canyon
Rubato, stringendo, it walks its own pace and in its solitude
The moonlight its guide, the music its guardian
The darkness its friend
The walls enclosed - an impasse clad in an aural hue descending from the stars
An eternal mirror flowing accross the pond
It took a gander in the deep lagoon and saw the galaxy unfold
Sparkling candenzas fluttering through the sky like fireflies
Ever abiding, expanding galaxies within the grasp of its cortex
The moon flows, the stream flows
The sound of drizzling water emanating from the distance
Timeless endeavour snaps back to reality
I found myself sitting in a dim-lit room, glass in hand
The mellow taste of the blood-red wine
A bouquet of fine grapes with cherry undertones
In the corner rests the mirror I gaze in occasionally
Seconds pass and I gazed into an abyss
Minutes pass and I gazed into an abyss
A murky shadow lurking
Hours pass and I gazed into an abyss
A murky shadow along two red stars
Days pass and I gazed into an abyss
A silhouette hued in rubescence grimacing with hollow eyes
Weeks pass and I gazed into an abyss
T H E E Y E S W A T C H M E W H E R E V E R I G O
Months pass and I observed a whole new universe
As I looked at the crevice staring back at me
It smiled and reached its hand
Years pass and I gazed into an abyss
The opaque mass piercing my glassy veil as familiarity reminiscences
A supernova of grief and destruction strokes my back, pinching my neck
The willow is dead
The moon is red
A brittle chalice crusted with blood
Then it fell silent and yet the nocturne faintly lingered in my head
As I stared into the mirror for the first time in centuries
It stared back, bearing the most unnerving grimace
Nov 18, 2017
Nov 18, 2017 at 7:17 PM UTC
A poem begins as a silent beat in the throat,
Like garments of knots splices you shed in the dark
Embroidering them with the metallic thread.
My pulse is a winding staircase of blood clots
Choking in my own crimson mark.
This dusk will cover the moonlight in red.
It’s written in the stars and stains
The line that never ends…
I will run where the furious winds take me,
I will follow where where ever your heart needs me.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 9:45 PM UTC
Zanzibar,
From these waters I picked the salts,
Embroidering my words on their slates,
Asubuhi Nyema Ndugu Nzuri,
The melodies of the moonson,
Has trigger the waves,
They dance to the long drawn song,
NDUNGU
The dhows are taut,
And primed for sail,
Is Sofala set?
Are the docks decked?
What about the sands;Are they spiced?
And the puppet performers?
NDUNGU
Our cronies will soon ingress,
Reach mapungubwe with my words,
Tell him to tailor rapta and kilwa kisiwani,
And put the leopard kopje in order,
NDUNGU
Ultimate,are the bounties swathed?
Kuhusu Ndungu Bora
Zanzibar.
Zanzibar,
Historian E.Lexano,
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 7:30 PM UTC
I hung my apron to dry
let the wind carry it, cradling
cloth with branch claws and
dancing legs all the way to hell
and back, embroidering glory
in each stitched parsley leaf,
I unthreaded each with a brittle needle
used each thin thread to create
my own tapestry.
Aug 24, 2020
Aug 24, 2020 at 9:54 AM UTC
In the State of mind...
thoughts were solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short...
where similes, metaphors and personifications were quarreling with words...
until they decided to form a poem and gave up their natural freedom
in order to obtain the benefits of embroidering praise around her.
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21, 2018 at 1:45 AM UTC
a shadow blue beam of dust
encases me;
they weave through me,
embroidering
gloomy brocades of
steel dullness.
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 10:05 PM UTC
Methuselah went gallivanting around town with some jail bait. When a mysterious person with a bag on their head with the word "Yuck" on it crossed their path. The person began to inform them all about the dark arts and practical black magic.
And attempted to peddle stolen his and her towels to them. Passing it off as homemade genuine hand crafted cloths . When they were just used rags with faded embroidering on them.
Neither Methuselah or his jail bait had the wherewithal to purchase the lousy linens.
Methuselah showed the Bag-headed person his empty pockets.
The person shook their head in affirmation and took the bag off to reveal the face of a woman with no eyebrows and the number "96403" on her left cheek.
She put the towels in the bag and went on her way. The jail bait and Methuselah went to a motel that night to get busy .
The young man at check in said he was sorry because there were no towels in their room.
To both their surprise two bags were there hanging on the rack instead.
One said "Odium", the other said "Pang".
-Tommy Johnson
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 6:13 PM UTC
There is a place
Where moonbeams can be spun into silk
And shadows are as soft as velvet.
Where even time himself has paused to admire
The star-lanes embroidering the sky.
Where whispering ferns uncoil
To have their edges painted silver.
Where flora flirt, and you respond
With the faintest blush -
A playful petal on your cheek.
Where night-thinkers hum in an intertwining dissonance
Weaving a pleasant acoustic haze
Amidst a rhythm discernible to those
In Lunabrink.
Jul 8, 2017
Jul 8, 2017 at 7:46 AM UTC
And
So
Perhaps
Some day
Sun
Bored
Will draw a veil
And sit
Hidden
Embroidering
Some
Sunny
Moon
Oct 21, 2021
Oct 21, 2021 at 3:25 AM UTC
The reek of bourbon vanilla lingering through the sappy tones
Of creased leaves and crooked horns, enveloping the royal grave
Embedded with stone, the coronated statue of vines and thorns
Twirling around the remaining cores
Rotten cells and dark floral gourd, an unstable mass crawling
Amongst the bare, rotten shores
The empty shells howl its name - the king
Of naught
Brought to death on the brink - in a whim
Clasping roots and grasping vines,
Luscious soot and dull amethyst,
The graveyard of which the warriors of Gaia
Patrolled in everlasting melancholy - the betrayal of the monarchy
In which they found pleasure in the guilt of misery
They atone for the death of the reign,
Raining in droplets of sulphur and rosebuds,
Meek of the pink of the roses, embroidering the newfound majesty
Alas, the journey of futility,
The thorns grasp its throat
The emperor has been coronated to cease once more.
Dec 27, 2017
Dec 27, 2017 at 9:56 AM UTC
Loose Knit
by Michael R. Burch
She blesses the needle,
fetches fine red stitches,
criss-crossing, embroidering dreams
in the delicate fabric.
And if her hand jerks and twitches in puppet-like fits,
she tells herself
reality is not as threadbare as it seems ...
that a little more darning may gather loose seams.
She weaves an unraveling tapestry
of fatigue and remorse and pain; ...
only the nervously pecking needle
****** her to motion, again and again.
Published by The Chariton Review, Penumbra, Black Bear Review, and Triplopia. Keywords/Tags: Addiction, needle, veins, stitches, red, blood, ****** dreams, hallucinations, seams, darning, tapestry
Mar 21, 2020
Mar 21, 2020 at 11:22 PM UTC
The sun rose out among verdant still hills.
High peaks, forests and earth stole their eyes away from this charade.
Strands of light refuse to illuminate me.
As the the play proceeds with divine authority.
Each bird is standing on its feet and spreading its wings.
Tigers brandish guns at their young, unaware of the anguish hungrily stalking behind.
And the men with hearts of black gold walk away with their heads down.
As we are all eaten away by ignorance.
The hands of fate stitch together a torn garment of time.
Embroidering its history of suffering.
But the answer to your questions won't be found in gods clothes.
There's a lot more suffocating water in this ocean than treasure.
But your heart withstood the weight of it all.
And its callouses grew over their shadows left behind.
But when it beats, I can still hear the screams
Of your abandonment.
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020 at 12:33 AM UTC
"It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it. Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot. Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth. Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, to absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their *** ~ Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre)
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 11:32 AM UTC
I feel you, syncing yourself with me
I can't help but fall in time with your footsteps
Our heartbeats harmonize as we lie, entanged
I feel you, pulsating, waves on a shore
Relentlessly eroding my hardened heart
Entrancing me; Lulling me into your grasp
I feel
My heart strings
Being pulled by your hand,
Embroidering me
Into the fabric of your being
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 11:03 AM UTC
She sat and stared from the window ledge,
She sat and stared at the sea,
Was sitting all through my childhood there
Since Eighteen fifty-three,
They said that she’d only stand upright
When a sail came into the bay,
When a ship came back from the Indies, or
Returned from Mandalay.
Nobody knew what she did in there,
She knitted, or she sewed,
Perhaps she was sat embroidering
As she watched the old sailroad,
They say she looked for a purple sail
Run up at the mizzen mast,
A sign that a certain Captain Hale
Had sailed on home at last.
She had a gentle and kindly face
I remembered from my youth,
But time went on and her face had shone
With tears, to tell the truth,
Her beauty gradually faded as
The years, they took their toll,
And sadness leached from her pale blue eyes
Before the house was sold.
A ship sailed into the harbour on
A warm spring afternoon,
A tattered sail at the mizzen that
Had lost its purple bloom,
The Captain wandered along the shore
From out where the sea was calm,
And stopped to gaze at a window,
But with a brunette on his arm.
He shook his head for a moment
As at a distant memory,
One of a thousand left behind
In the years that he’d spent at sea,
His eyes were held for a moment by
The eyes at the window pane,
But then he turned to the young brunette,
And went on his way again.
I bought the house when the sign went up
Though the agent said, ‘You’re sick!
I wouldn’t be touching that tumbledown,
It’s just a pile of brick.
Nobody’s been in there for years,
The thing needs pulling down,
You’ll get the place for a song, of course,
But there’s better in the town.’
I went and I picked the key up and
I stood out on the grass,
And stared on up at the window that
Was crazed, with broken glass,
The house was dark as a midden, all
Was shrouded in a gloom,
I felt my way up the passageway
And ventured in that room.
She sat quite still with her back to me
And stared out as before,
The window, it was crazed and cracked
And that was the most she saw,
I walked up slowly behind her, though
I didn’t know what to say,
She looked as if she’d been porcelain,
But now she was only clay.
I had the glazier fix the pane
And I locked that room up tight,
I wouldn’t let anyone go in there,
It didn’t seem to be right.
I put on a Captain’s hat, and stand
Between the house and the sea,
And swear that I see a gentle smile,
But now, she’s looking at me!
David Lewis Paget
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 1:55 PM UTC
I stepped out — to buy some bread.
The rain, a silver needle, embroidering the diaphanous gauze of the atmosphere.
Thoughts, like feral hounds, prowled and dragged me
astray, to the wrong street.
And there —
the abyss.
No grocery here.
Only the void, yawning wide, insatiable, ravenous,
a Grand Canyon, misplaced in the geometric monotony
of concrete blocks — a scar on the skin of the ordinary.
Who sanctioned this?
Who gouged this chasm into the fabric of the mundane,
this rupture in the tapestry of the everyday?
We inhabit a world where everything
appears to matter —
blueprints, ideals, the ceaseless scramble for triumph,
the Sisyphean climb toward some illusory summit.
But time, that insidious thief, that silent eroder,
dissolves it all into the silt of oblivion.
What endures?
Laughter.
Laughter — not mirth, but a gasp,
a surrender to the absurd, a white flag waved
at the futility of it all.
It is the sound of a man
teetering on the precipice,
howling into the void
and hearing only his own echo reverberate,
a hollow chorus of his own insignificance.
But nothing matters only
when you are solitary,
when the world contracts to the size of your skull.
No wife, no child, no anniversaries to commemorate.
No one to observe, to decipher, to adore.
Laughter then is not liberation —
it is the wail of the forsaken,
the cry of a soul unmoored, adrift in the vast, indifferent sea.
Imagine the edge.
The abyss below, fathomless, voracious,
its maw gaping, hungry for meaning.
You can shriek, sob, summon aid —
but no one answers.
And so you laugh.
Not because it is droll,
but because it is the sole retort left to you,
the last weapon in your arsenal against the void.
If we cannot alter anything —
if the gears of fate grind on, indifferent to our pleas —
why even endeavor?
Insignificance is not a curse.
It is a peculiar emancipation,
a shedding of the weight of expectation.
Your blunders, your trepidations, your aspirations—
they are sandcastles, ephemeral and frail,
washed away by the tide of eternity.
Yet there is splendor in the act of construction,
in the fleeting defiance of entropy.
Even stone crumbles.
Even the most impregnable bastions succumb to time’s relentless siege.
Laughter cannot nourish the famished,
cannot solace the lovelorn.
It is a spark, evanescent,
a brief luminescence in the abyssal dark,
a fleeting exertion to convince yourself
that anguish and torment are illusory,
that the weight of existence is but a shadow on the wall.
And it is, perversely, amusing.
Mar 18, 2025
Mar 18, 2025 at 9:04 PM UTC
Of tattered cloth and broken string
Everlasting embroidering
Of scrambled emotions within
Mere embracing of naught that stings
Walking through the darkness and cold
Whatever the paths of thorns hold
Everywhere the messenger goes
Who had spread the few words untold
Through blight and fear the light of there
Where the warmth embraces yonder
No place conceals the will to care
Frigid sceneries to wonder
The place where hopes and dreams amass
The haven where no man desires
To call out the endearing pass
Ending up in burning fires
This is my inner epitome
Of which I would have dared to say
Without any words left to sway
The place I always have called home
Dec 21, 2017
Dec 21, 2017 at 1:34 PM UTC