"exhalations" poems
except that you have
attached your parfumed,
par~col~odored exhalations
into our shared airs,
with uniqued fumes,
thy airy
essences
to thine own chosen words,
in combines never before
seen or heard,
but worn by you,
draped from chains abound your neck,
dripping from thy tongue,
dropping from thine eyes,
leaking from your pores,
from fingers in rose gold
adorning rings bright shining
so more, so unique,
impossible to misidentify
as anything anybody any anything,
but
yours, yours…yours,
but not belabor this
fact basic,
disguise your name,
hide your fame,
make your locale,
somewhere in the unreachable,
unreal,
multiverse,
none the less,
and allthemore,
cannot escape,
the ultimate reality,
when first you press that
keyed
SEND,
you have parted, done with,
an immeasurable
small but grandeured piece of
your unique self,
if that makes you anxious,
here my eyes crinkle sympathetically,
am please to blurt
this major alert:
u have nothing to fear,
too late, too late,
you are now made,
part and particle,
past participle
futured history in
the particulared,
longest continuum
on this tiny, tiny
planet
oh well,
just thought you'd
like to know,
despite your guises,
your are now
100 per cent,
immutable ^
10/5/25 staying alive
Oct 3, 2025
Oct 3, 2025 at 8:23 PM UTC
the Silence became
like an old lesson learned
a broken heart intones
a voiceless song
resonating a refrain of Silent echoes
in a voice that never heard a word
yet spoke so clearly ... lingering
in realms of subtle ambiance
soundless remnants
stacked neatly as
building blocks;
another brick in a wall,
already too tall to see beyond—
growing like a bunker
without a sense of safe harbor
as the Silence became
time and space,
a stillness beset the melancholy air
as if a world without song
foreboding an unpredictable storm
beget vestiges of broken windfall,
reticent leftovers hushed after a gale
s i l e n t l y
an acorn fallen — became a mighty Oak
a wind-broke twig — became a weeping willow
a neglected child — became mother nature's son
the Silence became
a blind prophet —
in its voice held forth
smatterings of truth
and undertones of an unrequited
fool’s hope
the Silence became
a strong, abrupt rush of wind
uttering voiceless exhalations of breath;
a hovering dawn mist
befallen after a summer storm—
surrounding all in all
bedewed in a feigned peace
... the unabated sounds of silence
become
Jesse Stillwater ... July 20th, 2018
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 11:44 AM UTC
I’ve finally stopped
writing
unrequited letters;
there were too many
wasted breaths
left unsent
Lapsing intentions
befallen on timeworn
tawny crumpled pages;
aging like spent flowers
in fading earth tones
and rumpled paper regrets
Multi-hued words uttered—
mummers of voiceless exhalations
spoken without a sound;
indelible spilled ink
left behind,
lays fallow for so long
A love once new, and
a growing silent ache—
a hungry heart
left for dead—Déjà vu
We leave a lot behind,
fallen leaves in unspoken ink
a restless soul laid bare
by a passing moment's
random gust;
atrophied
like unwritten poetry
stifled stillborn
in a wadded up paper lament
jesse stillwater ... July 2018
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
I had not been born yet.
Still, I can see you at your labor -
alone, scouring the meadows
for the stones -
lifting their gray shoulders
from the moist earth -
pulling them from the
green grasp of briars,
goldenrod, and
Queen Anne’s Lace.
The smell of the earth
must have filled you with
your own childhood memories -
of plowing fields
and cold mornings
trudging across barn yards
mud thick on your boots -
promising yourself
that someday you would leave
and never return.
I can hear the pick axe -
the sharp strikes
against the stones,
and the dull thud
when the earth
swallowed the blade -
and the deep exhalations
when the stones tumbled into
the old wheelbarrow – new then -
that now leans rusting
against my garden shed.
Some of the stones were so large -
far too large for one man –
how did you move them?
I look at the old photographs
and you seem so young –
so much younger
than I am today - and so thin –
staring off-frame beyond the camera.
What were you looking for
in those fields?
I can see you sorting the stones,
stacking them -
building and unbuilding
and rebuilding the walls
and terraces
until the walls were true
and the terraces level
and planted with dogwood,
birches, soft grass for bare feet,
and bordered with roses.
Did you know
that you were building my castle?
That the highest terrace
would be my tower and keep?
I remember calling out to my
knights, my legionnaires,
and tribesmen –
rallying them in defense
of the citadel – ready for
the coming siege.
I also remember looking out
across that verdant kingdom
for the last time -
no longer a king or a boy –
and miles away, across the river
to the west, I imagined
the new home that awaited us.
I couldn’t know
how far away it would be
or what it meant to leave.
This morning,
as I looked out across
the garden that I have built,
I felt the weightlessness of time
and its gravity
settling me into place.
For a brief moment I had
the sensation that I was standing
on the shoulders of
gathered stones.
(for my father, Guy Spencer.)
Tom Spencer © 2015
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
"There is a stillness that floods the moment"
a sky full of stars
***~~~
for you, poet, you
~~~***
*there is a stillness that floods
that exact moment,
the cutting chord moment,
that oddly has no
resounding chords
~
a stillness
that, simultaneous,
happily, sadly, accepted, lost,
all immediately,
by its very knowing
released acceptance,
for that is when
depression and joy,
a 1-2 punch of
raging quietude floods
the exactness of that moment
~
this shock of the calmness,
albeit brief,
jolt of kind,
jolt that slow mo's
pulsing prior air gasping
~
it comes when thinking*
done,
*it is done, yes done and I am undone,
having surgically cutting off
a limb, never bloodless, but
still relief waters flush the wound,
a granted, gifted joy floods,
permitting its escape tween the sutures,
in exhilarating exhalations
~
throw it down,
your extracted best,
lift up,
the fleshed out silhouette,
present it to the court and corps,
a farewell glance push,
finger caressing the send button
with ****** anticipation
for the lovely loving,
a vintage of the pre-regret
of completion
~
the poem is done, gone, ****** eliminated,
the light of eyes so peculiar to that moment,
when you have birthed a new born poem,
an acknowledgement of the stillness of a
closing loss,
the parting, the coming,
of a
peace of you
must too, be noted,
all deserving of equal rights*
~~~
July 12, 2015
NML
Jul 12, 2015
Jul 12, 2015 at 9:06 AM UTC
**the sighs in our chest that emanate from a different kind of
breast cancer**
wrote these words prior,
then, certainly uncertain of the exactitude of their meaning,
clearly unclear of their useable intention,
yet the too real wrathful sensations
that inspired their caesarian creation,
the sigh's very own exhalations,
floatations devices for the interned-no-longer emotions,
escapees via the crevasses of chest ribs splitting open,
return to glory thanking me for freedom given
let posterior eloquence suffice, let brevity guide
my self's interior diagramming,
lengthy explications and deep analytics, I leave to you,
the astonished medical examiner and the horrified mortician
chest ripped, my hand reinserted, the blighted scourges,
the abscessed cancers, the obsessive relentless cankers,
asking shamelessly why have I returned to the crime scene
*the sighs are air-borne, ready for air plucking,
all cloud seeded, deeded for poets to seize and commence,
to plant and invent, a mountain top trickle to a mighty
river of poems to be recovered and discovered,
unrehearsed and unleashed
but you and I have unwished, unfinished business,
as of yet unwritten, one last poem to honor our
mutually assured destruction,
for this day will be
rewritten differently*
Oct 14, 2017
Oct 14, 2017 at 10:11 AM UTC
Beyond the lights and glare and joyous cheers
Outside the pretty things prepared to tear
It glows without joules or generators
Without lists and traditional movies
between gathered gifts and exhalations
mini mall masses travel plans, traffic
makes meaning of monotony, trees of woods
burning bright before menorahs first light
unquantified warmth while tilted from sun
unnamed it's ether a summoning drum
Before Christ birth or Alleluia sung
Close your eyes and see from glance where it comes
More precious than 34th street miracles
the motivation of cold breeze on leaves
The reason for seasons found in unity
Where shepherds staff birth red white epitaph
Where plants of poison rosy the living
When wise men exodus for genesis
Seven lights or Nine or just one big star
matters not the name or time frame in bloom
indiscriminately celebrate the Ohm
Dec 22, 2015
Dec 22, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
The Quantum Poetry Theorem
from a long time ago,
a thousand poems a priori.
**Dedicated to you, Albert Einstein and the cast of TBBT, special thanks to the OWS movement.,
But especially to the few, the brave, geeks who write poetry in word and in equations.**
Scruffy, yet ennobled,
my own 99% invade and
occupy all my senses,
in my eyesight encamped
sensing opportunity,
the 99 demand
that each shutter eye snap,
all nominal exhalations,
every quantum minutia perception,
be live streamed,
direct tv to you
Everything I witness,
transformed into an
acoustic guitar rocking vision,
a levitation of poetic expression,
set to a primitive three-chord
rock & roll overture,
and my iPad,
appointed Recording Secretary,
compiles exhalations as ecrivations
a preservation society of the verb,
strings of words emanating non-stop
within my head, from a guitar playing
twenty four seven, ironically,
expressed mathematically
Street strolling,
busy brasserie bar,
a Pinot Noir arrives,
a large pour of
stanzas and a
napkin upon to scribble
mind in ferment but
A Capella smooth cool,
my bossy brain requires
incident reports,
a "write me down, please,"
and
no matter how much I drink,
ain't anti-matter enough to
stop my eyes from seeing
every human interaction
as a poetic, probabilistic,
verbal equation,
quantum expressions of sensory upload
The brain revels and reels from overload,
no mas, no more,
poetry fatigue incurable,
caplets and ointments,
string theory,
can't cure or explain
the compulsion I feel,
and the 1% of me
protests my
overtaxed mental capacity,
and
hear the, see the, masses,
the shouts, the placards,
outside my home,
shut it down, no one cares,
no one wants your transplanted mechanics
in their eardrums
Huzzah, found in my gut,
a Grand Unifying Theory
to coordinate, gauge and harmonize
my internal asymmetries,
yes, a coupling factor required,
but still,
one equation that explains everything!
my fatigued, pointy, index finger
refuses to tap any more,
my Theory of Everything,
and my poetry, forgot, overlooked.
in my library buried,
black holed, forever silence-stored
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
It's dark
It's cold
It's damp
It's empty
No.
It's gloomy, no light of any kind
Heat extinguished, just like hope
Dense, choking air, a sense of dread
Nought but the sound of breath and a beating heart.
No
Fog shrouding the area, blurring lamps flickering, wavering
Rustling leaves and fear, like ice pouring through veins
Rotting, decaying wood stench filters through the air
Blurred shapes, thunderous drumbeats and hasty exhalations
Once again I've fallen asleep in the shed
Oct 5, 2017
Oct 5, 2017 at 6:48 PM UTC
365Nectar #8 Crescent City Blues
Tues. Oct 1,2013 10:21 P.M.
In the deepest attic
the thumping blues
paint pastel portraits
of the Crescent City
In burning ripples
words slap strangers
taking refuge in Armstrong Park
Slender, **** and Shorty
growl muted tones that ravage old bones
whip thru Mid-City
and saunter thru the Garden District
all just practice to sizzle in a wild tap dance in the Quarter
High steppin Indians
march toward God
and defy gravity.
Roaring second line
being led by woman powered Pinettes Brass Band
hold rush hour traffic hostage for days
belting greasy mingling tunes
in the eye of the dusty moon
A pitch black struggle
with the old moon
liberated old souls
entangled in soaked strings
and sobbing fingers
A quintet churns and
challenges the loneliness of pain
Strumming fingers
make out with
humming strings
under a starry blue grey sky
Stomping down long black Oak-lined roads
blowing thru shotgun homes
like winter cold howling
lifting heavy weights
from shoulders
like the sun shifting against bad weather
the blues lady
open the veins
of drunken roses
Lungs full of tears
Irma holla's, cries, and moans remedies
north south east and west of a street called Desire
Oh Etta
At Last
Dim Misty light
cast a heavy shadow
on wiggling spirits
as they cast off pain
Allen Toussaint
in smokeless blaze
tips the night air
Kermit blows
Dusty blues
seducing suffering souls
bounding them to each other in bliss
Whispering around town
in a perfect velvet midnight
sweet exhalations of song birds from corner joints
dance the Ruffin groove
fiery trebles wave at people passing by
Down right ***** blues
muzzles twilight
trombones,tubas, and trumpets
lay harmony
under the harmonious thunder
of the Marsalis Masters
and low down deep
in a musty sleepless corner
is the missing Bass-man..
hung over.
Copyright ©2013 Crescent City Blues
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 11:41 PM UTC
The Prism Through Which We See Clearly
~
light saws our untrue selves with acute angles,
piercing our holistic pretenses, daily disambiguation features,
our sheltering disguises into our essence refractive elements
this is not a cute rainbow poem - run from here
it is a dissection of our true nature
why belabor, why elaborate?
through the prism
you color-coded self, tracted,
a mapping of your intersections,
what each color speaks, needs not an explication,
your hidden humanity comes to my eyes, in full revelation
at last I see you clearly
the lost and black withered limbs,
the stirring, leaping, enflamed flaring, never ceasing, breathing elements that mark your singularity
did you know your eyes are constant singers?
through prism, each note heard distinctly, as it rises uplifted,
your song, mine for observation and weeping exhalations,
your song, the production number of thy own composition,
through prism, our interior visual disinterred and released,
here I must cease, for what seen, grievous weeping deepens,
from the glory and the pain my blurred wetness overwhelms
the clarifying crystal useless when tear coated
through the prism,
before the full length mirror,
my own, unowned, never could be owned,
'mirror mirror on the wall,'
warped weave of tissues, mine,
the song sounds, mine,
from lungs disgorged
myself, diagnosed and displayed
of what I see, spitting speech
ceases and desists,
the only thought permitted, repeated,
where is my shelter now?
5/13/17 6:49am
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 7:02 AM UTC
I waited on the front porch,
My knuckles demanded entry,
The door swung open a
Little too fast, or
Not fast enough
His eyes carried a
Salacious appetite,
His lips moist from the
Slow curling of that
Relentless tongue
Before words could escape,
His arms, those steel arms,
With dancing tribals
Caressing his biceps,
They abducted my body
As he stampeded through the house,
Carried me to his satin sanctuary
He threw me down into
A pile of black and white clouds
Who eagerly invited me,
All in the next breath,
He turned me around, pushed
My face into silken sheets,
He had his way, a pirate
With newfound treasure
He yanked my ear
With Rigid teeth,
My neck, his personal towel
For the wicked words that bled
Out the gate of his mouth,
My scalp throbbed from
Malicious fingers glued
To my fragile, mahogany locks
My hands bound in
An unbreakable grip,
So much that I couldn’t get
Rid of the sweat that rained
From his electrifying aura,
It only brought me closer
To seeing stars that I
Desperately craved
Moaning exhalations
Seized my vocal cords,
Tingling sensations
Stung my raw body
As chains of colors
Slashed through me
Sensing my release,
The barbaric pattern
That drove his body,
Turned into a boat
On a stilled lake
He spun me around,
Let my chin rest in his hand,
Our chests rebelled for
The abuse we forced
Our bodies into
I didn’t care,
This man was a feral warrior,
Who shared blends
Of pain and pleasure,
A brutal humanitarian,
He didn’t make me see
Stars, instead,
I saw the whole galaxy
Jul 3, 2013
Jul 3, 2013 at 4:09 PM UTC
~~~
*dedicated to the three, who read this first
(S.B, J.A., & T.M.R.)
and know it all too well*
~~~
more than ever presumed,
more than ever thought realizable,
indescribable attainable,
a modernizing magic powder,
synthesizing my intemperate body
~
at last, all ego falls away,
now but corn husk mulch,
detritus, non-toxic nuclear waste,
for growing better visions,
fruits undiscovered
~
write for me,
my recordings, my blog,
not to differentiate,
to substantiate,
to integrate
your gasps imagined,
mine realized,
exhalations upon lips grazing,
the soil of our rainforest
wetted by
living smiling,
eye droplets,
forming a singular stream
~
write for you,
sharing too close,
are you my first or second skin,
for there are no spaces
~
satisfaction discovered that is insatiable,
this pleasured seeing,
this pleasured sharing,
this poetic reason,
to exist
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015 at 6:23 PM UTC
(be-tween and be-twixt)
———-
the most precious but precarious item
in our possess, value far above rubies,
this love overflows, but it drowns me
from within, for it has no home for
pleasured sharing and goes wasted, excreted
in tears and exhalations without destination
condition incurable, and the doctor advises,
projects, a life span rangebound from
***be-tween
and
be-twixt,***
imperative that this love be
disbursed, pressure relieved,
fluid and gases shared,
send it forth,
Doc behests,
nay,
begs,
you’re a decent human,
tell your tales,
follow your motto,
write those love poems,
always leave them laughing,
and give them love in smiles
all-the-whiles
bringing joyous relief to your clogged arteries,
all this the bare minimum,
for you must moreover grasp and clasp
your body to another, for this
the best transfer transfusion
of all your needed love needs
go be needed, be great, be lessened,
be all three
and never walk alone,
with just hope in your heart,
for the heart, automatically refills,
and this the best, medical opinion…
for all those with too many love poems
requiring expulsion and extrusion
Jul 22, 2023
Jul 22, 2023 at 9:14 AM UTC
It happened in a flash!
Down a winding mountain road.
A trio of vacationers,
Basking in snow-draped vistas
Pulled off for a photo or two.
Their tires quickly locked in icy snow
And after the whirl of spinning tires,
The undeniable truth sank in:
They were most sincerely stuck!
In moments, multiple door slams
Echoed across the valley,
And an ad hoc commission
Convened and began to shovel.
A half hour of elbow grease later
Amid vapor-clouded cries of:
“straighten the wheel,”
“slow on the gas” and
“all together, on three”
The car eased back on the pavement.
No one called "meeting adjourned"
But as quickly as formed,
That ad hoc gang of lesser angels
Dissolved into the greater band
Of good folks bonded together in life.
E pluribus unum!
Jan 29, 2022
Jan 29, 2022 at 1:22 PM UTC
Touch
You cannot lift or load it,
over your shoulder, throw it,
to best assay its weight -
is it ponderous, full of big *** gravitas
or a snack, a parfait desert,
a haiku delight?
You cannot touch it,
but it can touch you,
It can grasp both your shoulders,
shake you from complacency,
put its hands upon thy throat,
gasp emit, a scream demanded,
paint whimsy lines on thy face,
from ear to ear.
See
With yours eyes, by a mere glance,
true reveal its length,
stanzas multiple or an itty bitty ditty,
but this gives no value clue,
Ogden Nash vs. Tennyson,
in two minutes make you laugh,
in twenty, make you beg, mercy!
Smell
Some Poe poems do stink,
befouled mushrooms in
a dank place, some require nerve to read,
but your olfactory be ill suited for
poetic deconstruction and criticism.
Hear
Wake you with kisses upon thy face,
inject love poems into thy ears,
straight to the brain verbal crack *******
yet even the hearing the whisper
of words from my lips,
is an insufficient,
sensorily speaking methodology,
of how a poem, to best comprehend
How then?
If touch, vision, smell and cursory hearing alone
can't essence capture, what then, weary reader,
is the supposed Laureate's approved analytical tool?
Taste
Each letter, a morsel in your mouth,
Each phrase, a fork full of pleasure,
Each stanza, a full fledged member
in a tasting menu,
Perfect only in conjunction
with the preceding flavor,
and the one that follows, and the one that follows.
Taste each poem upon thy tongue and then pass it on,
you know how....
Each word, whether chewed thoroughly,
or lightly placed upon a bud for flavor,
needs the careful consideration of your mouth.
Feel the light pressure of the tongues tip
upon the roof of your mouth
and the exalted exhalations of
air rushing past thy cheeks
as you messenger breath from
your chest to be shared with the world,
over the poem's interpreter, your tasting lips.
*As I lay each word down,
a brick by brick edifice construct
of mine own design, I am sated, fulfilled only,
when with I see your lips move
as you savor my words,
my taste you share,
and we are closer for it.*
***Deaf, dumb and blind,
all such travails can be conquered, assailed,
but when I cannot, no longer anymore taste
my poems upon thy lips, then I breathe no more.***
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 4:22 PM UTC
a carnival of hords in withering grass
the high priestess tongues the beast
wet mandible
on a dragging
death gowned doll
like a cyclone coils paradise
trans mutative
prismatic unfurling's
passed bones of confusion
passed scorched refuse
of radiating spiraled phantoms
the more gods, the more demons
battle angel symmetries
in Taoist jaws
galactic lurking's
into parametric infinities
escalating war like cloud light
rush glittering arms of affliction
exhalations like upleaping sail fish
drizzle sooty rain
shellacking tinsel rhinos
on hieroglyphs of the barbarous
a transfixed guttural prana;
apostasy
between advances and retreats
in chimeras earth quake palace
death: a new begining.
Jan 19, 2019
Jan 19, 2019 at 7:51 AM UTC
give me the pleasure of knowing
that i can please you in ways that not even you can
i want to detain your innermost secrets
i want to become more familiar with your body than you are
tell me your favorite fingers
let’s discover your favorite toy
i want to know which spot makes you shiver
i want to know which spot makes you moan
i want to know exactly what type of stroke makes you shake
i want to know which spot makes
your eyes
your hips
your head
roll
so that i know precisely when to roll you over
and vivaciously assault you from behind
while i croak romantic entities
and watch them travel down the notches of your spine
and wrap themselves around your earlobes
and curl their exclamatory hands around your throat
and reach around your body
and diligently massage your ****
while the planes of your forearms give out
due to the weariness of supporting not only your body
but also the head on your shoulders
whirring with the fact that this moment is almost
too large for you
just like the member pumping
in and out of you is
and just like that member
these moments were at first
difficult to swallow
let me stop
and take a moment to admire the way sweat
gives your curves a flattering spotlight
and provides the candles in the room more reason to
applaud and reach their crowns in the air
almost as if to detach themselves from
their own wax and join us
in order to extinguish
the fire deep within themselves
by allowing me to drown them in their own juices
just as you have
i want to admire the way sheets of sweat
glaze your skin
in the same way your juices glaze
your opening
let me enter you
as you pucker your mouth
bite your lip
and beg for more
i want to know exactly what makes you
denounce me to the dirtiest of things
give me a title only worn by those wearing sweat
and exhalations
scream my name
pull those eyebrows together
and spread those legs further apart
and let the part of me
that isn’t me
(but is me)
deeper inside of you
let me carry you to ******
afterwards i'll lean down and bury my mouth
between your legs
and taste what meal your supplementary pair of lips
have prepared for me
i want to digest my libidinous progress
and mount this triumph in my heart
as the first of many
powerfully lecherous
conquered temptations
k.n
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 7:56 AM UTC
Your determination puts me in anticipation as I'm patiently waiting for you to surpass my expectations.
Your aspiration gives me elations that keep me covered in perspiration from the constant titillation of good vibrations from you mental exhalations.
I swear my admiration can't fit in an equation to find the summation of my adoration plus your negation to be an imitation, hot **** your dedication is amazing.
I'm contemplating if you can be to me what the mighty sphinx was to the king Ramses.
If I'm out of line, please don't push back in, I'm going out of my mind like hair that needs relaxing.
Keep me on my toes and I hope that this feeling grows cause only God knows the ropes to keep us ever close.
Just don't say no when I go slow in my one woman show, to have your heart glow, go to and fro like my prose on the ocean flow.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 3:55 PM UTC
It is a silver snail between the lips,
cold as a quarter bitter as a penny,
Not even the aftertaste of chlorine.
Patchy F# smoker’s exhalations
Grit the teeth and the ball of cork
lolls in its belly.
Look down your nose
it looks back at you,
Blurred.
Look back at you.
On sticky tile bare toes clenched,
and chin lowered to chest, pool-parched lips
Took the Acme Thunderer and—
Blew.
echoes whipped from ceiling to surface to
bare-slick backs of streamlined swimmers.
Spines curved into fins—
Lungs collpasing slow as a circus tent
Even the bubbles tittered with reverberation
Faster.
Not a splash as pointed feet flicked at the ankle
Casting expanding triangles of wakes
And lips kiss-close to the plastic lane line
Breathed.
And finger-tips yearned for that two hand touch.
And now—
Blow.
Only shivers of sound.
Just spit it out.
That unmusical clang as it hits the desk.
Exposing distresses of is and was
escher-impossible to tell which is which.
Waiting for that hollow echo
of high ceilings and deep water.
Sep 29, 2012
Sep 29, 2012 at 8:57 PM UTC
Virginia Nicholson
How To Build A House In N-Dimensions
1. Begin with lines, pencil to paper (if they could exist) drawing graphite arrangements, N-space reduced to one, a structure viewed in slices. Imagine the bathroom off the foyer, the den off the dining room, viewable only as inked lines, dit-dit-dah, a contractor’s Morse Code.
2. Progress to carpet squares, linoleum tiles, the coral paint pairs well with the eggshell trim. Dit-dah-dit becomes something useful to the non-contractor, “door” or “Master Bedroom” or “x hundred feet of pipe.” Envision the imagined patterns hidden in the bathroom floor, the kitchen hardwood.
3. Move to volumes, solids, conic sections, height. One story, two stories, a basement, an attic?, take advantage of the introduction of 3D. Upgrade the closet to walk-in, needs more carpet squares. A snapshot of a family barbeque, Charlie’s height 1D penciled in to the 3D door, marring 2D eggshell paint.
4. Adding time, the house is built, ages, gets sold to new families with little Charlies of their own, new markings on the cupboard door, 3-foot-2, 3-foot-5, 4-foot-9. Grass fades from Kelly to sand to Kelly, saturation a cosine function with respect to time. The Zoysia starts in one, breaking ground in two, growing in three, a well-manicured 4D experience.
5-11. Include the things invisible to us, objects on the order of 1 meter, orders of 10E-2 to 10E9 seconds. Five to eleven drip through leaky pipes, seep through porous flooring, get lost in iron-rich soil and oxygenated exhalations. Five to eleven stay hidden, wrapped up in Calabi-Yao manifolds smaller than graphite hills and valleys marking little Charlie’s height, stronger than the 2-by-4s and stone foundation keeping strong in 4D. Five to eleven circulate undetected, seven dimensions shrunk to sub-pinpoint size, keeping seven dimensions of unexplainables covered until their traces are seen in the blades of Zoysia.
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 5:20 PM UTC
warm wine flowing through my body
(Cabernet being ironically the same color as what gives me life)
directed me to my room
at approximately 11:25 pm that Wednesday.
A light in the left corner painting a pleasant and inviting
gold
I tumble into my queen bed
laughter airily escaping my lungs, exhalations of exhilaration
Ruffled a string of words into a message.
Borne of unadulterated joy and hopeless seclusion,
radiation from my center came out of my fingers as
**** me like the angel I am. I am true beauty and divinity and deserve to feel like a goddess"
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 11:35 PM UTC
as promised, a tip for and to nolly
•<>•
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
•<>•
it is as if I've been stripped bare and their is no air or
barrel handy,
bankrupted by exposure of my less-than-clean ***** secret,
scrapped from under my tongue, my genuine creativity,
it is no different than yours or hers or anybody else, but
"I need to believe," he screeches, "say it ain't so!"
time again to tally up the wins and losses,
check the standings, the numerical columns,
nope, wasn't selected to be MVP or even loved by the
algorithmic ridiculous secret sauce
"poem of the day" blah blah blah
bottom line: "You’re Pretty Normal"
comfort or consternation, exhalations of relief,
or just another nail in the shutting of
your depression coffin calculation
this no longer unspoken arrogance undressed
brings me to a quiet place,
where you are welcome to sit beside,
this puzzle together, nuzzled,
perhaps more soluble
they don't make Advil for the mind,
so read the good ones,
and be reminded of this
your published spoken courageous poetry need satisfy
only you, and no one more
*in there lies the rub, the vive la difference, we identically different,
no longer a secret,
every poem is the difference you make*
August 2017
in the sunroom,
Shelter Island
<•>
BONUS POEM!!!
Nolly's Haiku #17/#70
with good knowing that
distress and forethought,
are its mother and father
that this poetic output but a derivative
of your unique self,
see,
maybe, you be
maybe
just wise enough
to curse the birth of poem at age seventeen
but just wait Nolly,
till you are seven tens, and poetry's folly,
make you even more practiced in cursing,
still asking, why
and getting the sendoff, kiss off,
of the one true answer,
nobody knows
so scribble a life time when you start at 17
and when the ripe and wizened answers in your old age
have yet to arrive
*then you can call yourself an accursed
wizened but wise'ed old poet*
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 12:03 PM UTC
With my head pressed on your chest
I listen to your breathing;
The rhythm of each breath
In harmony
With the pulse of each heartbeat
Like the lyrics of my favorite song.
Slowly waves of sleep
Wash over me
And the crests of my inhalations
Fall perfectly in tune
With the troughs of your exhalations,
And we drift off into different worlds
Together.
Jul 2, 2015
Jul 2, 2015 at 6:20 PM UTC
Cradle me in-between the
suffocation
of your lies.
For when I breath a new...
I know that every word is spoken
with fresh breath.
Not tainted by
the past exhalations
of what were
expelled from you..
Dec 15, 2018
Dec 15, 2018 at 4:19 PM UTC