"epidermal" poems
Indelicate is he who loathes
The aspect of his fleshy clothes, --
The flying fabric stitched on bone,
The vesture of the skeleton,
The garment neither fur nor hair,
The cloak of evil and despair,
The veil long violated by
Caresses of the hand and eye.
Yet such is my unseemliness:
I hate my epidermal dress,
The savage blood's obscenity,
The rags of my anatomy,
And willingly would I dispense
With false accouterments of sense,
To sleep immodestly, a most
Incarnadine and carnal ghost.
6.1k
your clean lips and serene eyes
are instruments
they, with fearless precision
play
those neatly folded tufts of skin on either side
are speakers
they, with unnatural ease
amplify
the epidermal pyramid sloping symmetrically
amid your instruments
is a songstress
she, with innate necessity
sings the song of life
your head is a concert
music to my troubled eyes
©Jason Cole
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 10:22 PM UTC
We’re all reptilian; our skins slough free
Each hour, a few epidermal cells cleared
Sliding away so silently that we
Don’t even know that we have disappeared
And then the dermis – it steps bravely up
The hypodermis in its place stands to
All cells and capillaries to duties new
And slowly, slowly, there is a brand new you
But what is truly important every day
Is that we don’t slough our dear friends away
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 3:59 PM UTC
We sleep with the duvet above our heads.
Alveoli struggling, but heart thriving,
Steadily inhaling your exhalation to the rhythm of your lungs.
Scents of what were coffee, cigarettes and beer
Are just metabolites; caffeine, nicotine and aldehydes now
But the one thing I cannot break down,
Is how you can lay so close to me
And I can still miss you.
Harder than when I was miles away.
So many words exchanged that could be explained with one touch.
When I hold you closer it’s more in hope
Of waking you than for comfort.
True, a cruder move than when you
Whispered to me and kissed my neck.
You’ll never know how happy I was to feign sleep for just a few more moments.
But its eyelashes not your iris-less eyes I see
Just eyelids separate you from me.
Funny how a thin layer of epidermal cells,
Can make me feel further away from you
Than the plane, bus and train it takes me to get here.
We sleep with the duvet above our heads,
Alveoli struggling, but heart thriving,
steadily inhaling your exhalation to the rhythm of your lungs.
Only CO2 left to share now
Means your oxygen deprived cells force you to
Slip further away from me, unconscious,
Of how much I miss you.
Jun 15, 2011
Jun 15, 2011 at 9:56 AM UTC
Darkness is plotting
Slyly lurking in a lackluster room
Paralyzed by fear
A tree branching its limbs
Clinging to the light like
Lingering liars who lose
Luminous truths
That breach our boundaries beyond boarders
Electricity fires through their veins
Epidermal inferno
But they are frozen
Still... life-less
Unforgiving truths that stab
Through the hearts of its audience
A fair show
Culminated by thieves
Nobody is safe, not even you!
Run.
Oct 11, 2018
Oct 11, 2018 at 11:37 AM UTC
to have been lead through
slumbering paddocks by
held hands; hope, the
deity, nonexistent and relentless,
i felt alive-
was i but the subject
of her meticulously-planned humour?
was i the joke,
or the punchline?
boldly ripening into
mistaken aphasias, i
find my melting thoughts
matriculating into sharp
movements in the dark:
curves patterned,
ribcages' separation, a gaussian blur of
intertwined epidermal rivulets,
your soft, slow imaginings becoming
tiny flecks of graphite smeared
a page's width, intricately sown
across skin, that light trickles
through a sliver in the curtains
to wordlessly illuminate.
seventh memory: a peeling away,
a mandarin on the kitchen counter.
watching stars disappear
from atop the balustrade, we sit
mere fragments apart, yet
at great distance, like
the fog of the cities we carry out
the moments of
our regularized lives, within.
finally, i become translucent.
yet,
what have the stars become?
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 10:33 PM UTC
I tell you all
I lost my soul one morning in October
still i can feel it trembling
with the mucous in my throat
the liquor coating of an empty stomach
denying re-entry
an expatriate exiled to the outer realms
the cells spoke to me in my elusive haze
what atrocities you brought with you the night before
volatile liquids
and billows of chyme decaying smoke
it was you who erased that patch of flesh from your cheek
the sidewalk merely a catalyst
a surrogate mother to your infantile stupidity
fathered by a not so impotent bicycle
what became was a dance with gravity
and you tried to take the lead
but that possessive ***** refused to give it up
and in a drunken stupor
thrashed you about
leaving you to the jagged teeth of concrete
costing you some epidermal friends
those whose sole duty it is to protect us
and your foolishness allowed their dismantling
so now we allow yours
so they did
with one swoop of my head
my body purged my soul into the poisonous sunlight
my brain a series of bombastic drum solos
i died there in my bed
soulless and aching
a drink in my hand....
Oct 6, 2011
Oct 6, 2011 at 4:26 PM UTC
i was sitting drunk alone in a yellow flannel on a dirt
and patch grass hill beside an empty picnic table when
you sat down said hi my name is sam and i'm tripping face
that was no secret judging by the size of your pupils and smile
i asked to borrow a layer from your lip-gloss and
you happily obliged after verifying i had my circle-circle-dot-dot
you laughed hard and said you'd never been this high before
when you let me finger you on the ferris wheel with
the scene from the hill a distant seven minutes in our past
you watched with tears in your eyes
and smiled as i pulled my body
away from your candy thighs when the ride stopped
and stuck my sticky fingers back in my mouth
you said you listened to music better with your shirt off
and sure enough your ******* perked up like antennae
when my fingers slipped under
your half-shirt like an innocuous splinter
in the great pink epidermal amphitheater
you proved to be a nudist burlesque queen wearing
a hailstone necklace and a gold coin skirt that jingled
when you walked or skipped or rubbed your *** on me
i felt so immediately attracted to you
and i still do i can see you when i close my eyes
dancing free in a delicate psychotropic mushroom haze
whispering slap me silly as we walked hand in hand down the hill
you kept talking about your girlfriend being jealous
of my fatal blue eyes as the music drifted like breath
between us your hair was heavy with the smell
of mushrooms beer sage and rain
we took several overpriced shots of tequila and i lost
another six dollars in drink tickets when
we spent a whole dj set lying in the grass in the dark
with the lights from the stage spraying over
our heaving naked sweaty chests with my
hand in your gold net skirt and your tongue in my ear
the clouds were knotted ropes of wet white cotton
the sky became the sea and your fingers found my
feverish lips like a cool prayer
i looked up through the oak tree porthole
to find the strangulated sky
whirling in on itself like water
in a washing machine and i
let a dolphin carry me away out to where
the waves were boiling and wild
the stars salty and deep
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 10:01 PM UTC
Does nothing matter?
Is matter nothing but dancing shattered galaxies pushing and shoving each other?
And on Earth, is it worth thinking?
That I'm just a piece of eternal dirt thinking that I'm just a piece of dirt thinking?
We're all just stars, tasting humanity for an instant.
In all its fallacies, we're systems of suns that love ****** without resistance.
With the assistance of Christian values and armed pistols.
Harmful as ignorance is blissful, we're still missing the deal.
We're still ******* away the real position to feel. We're still wishing down the same ol' wishing wells
and hoping to Christ they're real.
Worse than guns, it's the waste of freedom -- It's unequal -- to **** the hungry from a distance is still evil.
I fly atomically and everything else is informal.
What's normal? Where's God when things get so awful?
He's epidermal - like an antigermal lotion. A magic potion to nurture the thought that we're important.
We're all just stars, answering a call to be Human.
Let the cold bars that hold the others down remain open till my life is dormant.
And our heads are still cluttered and cloth covered.
Filled with an age-old confusion straight from ol' Mohammed's cupboard.
They fool us with cooked messages from book passages that preach love.
Scare us into being apparatuses of a God above.
That's why society is shattered. It's what's wrong with the world.
The perennial infancy of thought that's forced unto our boys and girls.
Such unclarity, that's baked into our childrens' recipe. It's insanity to think that we don't just turn back into energy.
I'm not religiously inspired to forgive,
nor have the insidious desire to live to inspire religious permittance.
I prefer a future purpose undiscovered.
A death dimension still covered from religions' crazy buffer.
May 19, 2013
May 19, 2013 at 8:55 AM UTC
Dark, toned muscles awash in sweat
With beads of liquid maneuvering
Through the collection of dust
Creating paths that were inhuman at a glance
But in depth were signs of immeasurable power
The searching slice of the shovel, feeling for the loose stone
A bone perhaps, in the core of earthen veins
That solidify life, weaving it into the folds of eternity
Slowing the soul until only a small tempo in the symphony of time remains
Harbored forever in the memories of others
The smoke carried particles of dust
Dead skin that had parted from dying shells,
Empty of red and full of black
The pores of all eyes
Infected with the memory of sculpted dirt
He stands sentinel, over the man-made wound in the epidermal layer of green
Watching the sun fall behind a scattered horizon line
Creating calculated contouring by shadows
Between patches of light that illuminated the insignificant descent
Of helpless pebbles
An older, breathing soul stands and reads from a weighted tomb:
“The price of living is to face an end
But the privilege of life is worth the price itself”
Then the parcel is lowered
The dust swarming into places yet untouched
A tirade of platelets rains down
Stemming the flow between this life and the spinning of the Earth
Shrouding the parcel in spattered reds and browns
Protecting it from the wrongs
Sealing it in the stillness of simplicity
With a final look back
The gravedigger turns in the direction of the sun’s masked glow
Forging a path between the peaceful earthen tombs
Making his way towards family and home
Where life continues for the living
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 11:07 PM UTC
You're the sin of me,
A claustrophobic situation
And I can't breathe.
I'm an epidermal hot mess,
With a side of downers
To suppress.
A hypodermic allergy.
Charge me with my felony.
Caused by this anorexic magazine.
I'm starving.
Brothers; Our own flesh.
Nail me to this cross
And watch me burn.
They want us to be self reliant,
And give us controlling rule.
Impossible standards
In a
Hypocritical disease head.
They give us psychotheism
But take away our earth.
We're supposed to be coexisting,
So give us equality in worth.
I am my own
Anarchist Antichrist
Feed me
To
The broken system.
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 2:30 AM UTC
The lot of us strangers trying too hard to stay aloof in a narrow corridor plagued by awful trendy folk music blaring out of unseen speakers and I shrouded in silence wore it a pseudo-epidermal layer taut force field writing this poem so to be a little more pretentious than most by opting not to check social media and the selfie I posted this morning not sure how many likes it's gotten since an hour ago but I'm not going to check yet Everyone here looks so miserable and it's barely 8 AM the Kate Gosselins and Ben Afflecks grab their coffee like a servant grabs the King's goblet to test for poison there's this mumble of a thank you seeping out of frozen lips and half opened eyelids harnessing dull hazy eyes and they drudge back to their hybrid cars with their five dollar savior and amble down the gaping highway that consumes their soul and all the while shoulders never touch and eyes never meet and we stand idly in the waiting room watching the alchemists conjure up our poison thinking about our selfies and how much we hate ourselves and our lives but honestly I just wanted my first pumpkin spice latte of the season celebrating the first cool day of the year in my denim jacket I resurrected with glee out of the elated closet in the middle of September so I say Beware you miserable cretins you obligatory acolytes of the virulent elixir one day you'll wake up and no amount of coffee will purify this cesspool you've lain yourself into like a regretful baptism you didn't believe in.
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 2:09 AM UTC
Old dinosaur man go sniff
Spit on three fingers so that I can have a kiss.
No, doctorosaurus- this isn't a hit
It's been a miss since long ago.
Slow; she's waiting on you.
Reptilian creature, fixer of blue
Imagines my groove to soothe himself.
There is no sedating the truth-
You want to use this.
**** little temptress
In a skintight sundress.
I'm a hot mess
And you want me.
Epidermal- under your skin
So easily.
May 31, 2019
May 31, 2019 at 1:22 PM UTC
Dip me in vinegar, see if I solidify
Show me something sinister, maybe I'll be liquefied
Then you can take your acid bath
In me, the soluble sociopath
And once you're rid of the imperfection called skin
You'll be your own flawlessly fleshless twin!
When, not if, your comrades are departed, broken, spent
You'll find blame in the beauty that is
Your lack of integument;
I know life lent's lonely, led by the epidermal amputee
But I can guarantee, if you'd clean your drain
You'd still find remnants of me!
Mar 1, 2014
Mar 1, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
I thought new hands on my skin
would burn
My skin is healthier than ever
Apr 4, 2019
Apr 4, 2019 at 2:42 AM UTC
You are not supposed to rip pages
out of books bound by human spines
or all of the pages will fall out
and disperse across the ground
like autumn leaves exhausted of trying.
I learned this the hard way.
If there is a cure or concoction
to heal a brilliant mind
I crave it,
because finding medicine to express
my mutilated madness
is like dying without understanding
the allegory of mercy.
He wants to understand what hides
under soft satin skin and apathy.
I see it in the way the crumpled lines on his forehead
form question marks when I cry
because there was never a reason
nor answer
as to why my heart always seemed
to perpetuate the memory
of autumn.
No, he will never know, curious as he is,
because skin is miles
and miles
and miles deep
plummeting down to a hollow core
of sickness
of sorrow
of solitude
that could dissolve all of his worries
but never my own.
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 10:48 PM UTC
I want to laugh right now...belly laugh until my muscles ache...I want to jump through puddles...the ripples danceing around my ankles...I want to run down hillsides...the air tugging at my skirt like a restless lover...I want to feel the kiss of an ocean breeze on my face...the salty air dancing across my lips...I want to feel the warmth of skin against mine...wrapping me within a blanket of epidermal bliss...I want to go within myself and stay a while...exploring my humanity and coming face to face with my own existence...I want to kick and scream and cry with reckless abandonedment until my cavernous soul falls limp from exhaustion...I want to touch my face...eyes closed... and view myself without the boundaries of expectation...of redundance...of normalcy...I want to see myself in a different way...a different light...a different scope...
Jan 11, 2013
Jan 11, 2013 at 2:56 PM UTC
A leaked sanity
derived from a single unintentional stimulus
She immediately drowned in her illusions
A cascade of ecstatic emotional state
Led her to unexplained exhilarating lub-dubs
She entered a trance
An imaginary setting of pseudo-relationship,
originating from a deceptive analysis
Butterflies lodged in her stomach
Like drifting into the sweet tranquil breeze of fall
Odd feeling brought by an accidental impulse
an addictive sensation, continually sought
Like an ice cream that thaws
and never did she regret for this
Like a bud that delayed its bloom
She is a fixated lass
fast-tracked into maturity,
Depriving her of being subjected to adolescent giggles and anguishes
Coping for deficiency,
to undergo short-lived fascinations
It was never an ordinary night,
for it would happen only but annually
It was extraordinary
where angels descended from heaven
She looked at him
as a critical thinker *** philosopher inside a venerable physique
His intuitive notions flowed
keeping his cleverness inhibited,
ingenuity simply emanated
Decisive metaphorical analogies were mesmerizing,
in the depth of the gyros and sulcus
in his intellect she wanted to drown
The mystery of his smirks
she wanted to decipher.
In the profoundly of his personality
she wished to be familiar.
Electrocution!
Extreme voltage in her physique
sanity almost dripped
She cared less about reality,
forgetting about lucidity and rationality
A plethora of outlook insurgencies
led to confused convictions
Nothing big really happened,
just a matter of split seconds summarized as a simple skin-to-skin contact
an exhilarating interaction between epidermal layers
A premature ventricular contractions.
Jan 28, 2016
Jan 28, 2016 at 10:11 AM UTC
People say our present is the only reality
But I have found myself traversing the deepest seas
Sprawled on a blanket of stars
somewhere within the epidermal regions of your mind
(what lies beneath?)
What a shame,
Words do no justice
To the privilege of voyage
and of discovering that travelling
over cups of coffee
and a good night’s sleep
is but little cost at all.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 8:33 PM UTC
No fentanyl, midazolam or propofol.
Operation: childhood destruction using
non- sterile gloves.
Removal of parts of the brain and heart,
septic nightmares infect the mind.
The body shivers, loses control.
Gangrene of the soul.
Antiseptic, aromatic soap,
scraping the epidermal dirt.
Scratching so hard, unable
to get rid of the hurt.
Happiness decapitated,
enters the cemetery gates
pointing with her morphine-coated fingers
to her tomb.
Chronic torture and no remorse.
A pre-meditated ****** of dreams and hopes.
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 2:54 AM UTC
for years I have given field maps and guided tours to travelers seeking adventure and yet I have never explored for myself the epidermal greatness that protects bones, my, blood, my organs
each freckle, a landmark of monumental proportion
yet one is no greater than the other
(except for the one on my left collar bone, that one is my favorite)
each scar, a canyon with secrets to share with those brave enough to venture down into
I need not compass, nor backpack
all I need is to get completely and utterly lost
(in myself)
-
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 1:57 AM UTC
“If you play baseball, you’re gay.” he said with a stupid grin on his face.
And that time, I had had enough.
I told him, “Shut up, I am tired of hearing you say that.”
For this wasn’t his first time using gay as an insult.
I should have said more.
I should have told him that to him, it’s just a word,
But to those of the homosexual community, it is demeaning.
The fact that our society has become alright with allowing a term that defines something life changing like one’s ****** orientation as a term of slander means one thing.
Our dictionary is out of date.
Our dictionary is out of date because words like gay, *** queer, and ****** are common practice
We let these words flow from our mouths like a river that has broken through a dam.
They are ceaseless, coming forth without an end in sight.
But they are just words, right?
Stick and stones, right?
Wrong.
It is true that sticks and stones break bones, but not so much that names will never hurt anyone.
Because they do.
They may not hurt you or me, but you and I have thick skin, our skin is armor clad.
But not all were fortunate enough to get a such an impenetrable epidermal layer.
Some only received paper to cover the flesh and bones they call a body.
So you may say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me,”
but to those with paper skin, they have never had sticks or stones cut so deep as words have.
A stick can not scar your soul, a stone can not ******* your self image.
But words can affect someone for life.
I know this is true because I know teenagers who it has happened to.
I know a girl who is one of the most beautiful young women I have seen
But she believes otherwise because inspite of my telling her so
She has been a victim hiding in the bombshelter of insults for far too long
Without makeup she does not feel pretty, when she is sick she wants no one to see her face.
She has become a statistic in a society that thinks sticks and stones is a one-size-fits-all policy.
Or what about all of the men, women, and children who take their own lives every day?
Or even the one’s who take their paper skin and shred it with a razor blade?
Try telling them that names will never hurt them, try telling them that they don’t need to do what they do
Try telling them that they are beautiful.
Because I can almost guarantee you that they will tell you
“You’re wrong”
Mar 9, 2014
Mar 9, 2014 at 9:41 PM UTC
You and I
walk together
beholden to the moonlight
to day's light and days late
destined
to remain here
though not forever
I with you
and you with me
intertwined
with complicated ties
holding us together
in threads
Though not forever
You and I
skin deep
layered with lifetimes
of epidermal decay
visceral wounds
neither one will confess
though not forever
We walk together
Separating
you and I
I with you
seeking connectedness
knowing the truth of our existence
though not entirely
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 1:31 PM UTC
I'm reading old letters, yellowed with age,
The voice that speaks to me as I read is weathered,
Aged, and yet in clear syllables tells me,
All about life 70 years ago, when the world
And her people were at war with themselves.
Through the voices I heard while reading,
I glimpsed the chains that tied
My country's people in their skins, and engulfed
Their minds in suffering and shame.
Curious thing this epidermal tinge that a shade too dark, shackles a man
Down to the dust, robs him of pride
And breaks the spine of unborn children.
My grandfather's letters are old, dying sheets of paper,
His memories are moving clouds of silken mist,
Which swirl and glide as he remembers
The days of his youth, carrying a satchel to school,
Because his dark skin, the condition of his people,
Their status as the Subjects of a King they did not know,
Forbade him from walking in boots and a better school.
The moonlight shines through the window,
70 years have passed, and a shackled spirit now roams free
Broken chains lie in the dust and words exist in history books,
But my grandfather describes freedom best.
Sep 21, 2015
Sep 21, 2015 at 1:17 PM UTC