"exoskeletons" poems
this night was different;
there were more moments spent looking back then forward,
panic always pulsating in the crook of our throat
like some giant, out of breath beast
waiting in the hollow sweat, and gnarled tree branches
reflecting black against the slightly purple sky.
it was too quiet to mask our
echoing footsteps;
boot on pavement
no rain to soften the blow.
we made it in thirty minutes to the gas station,
where we unzipped our jackets
and let the lace show out of our drooping shirts
blinking like a warning sign
to the drugged up cashier,
words mumbling over his body,
strings mixed up.
men entered and i saw that look
that i always see
in men who look at me;
its hungry, a type of lusting mouth with no
feeling,
**** trusted more than his heart.
the kind of look that says,
“i want you feeling my biceps in the back of
my truck,
and i want to feel your tightness all over me,”
the only problem is i play along,
pretending to be seductive
and then leaving with an agonizingly frozen stare, and
a quickened pace
just to show them who's actually in control.
a pack of Newports exchanged over the counter,
another lighter;
this time with a green and red flower on it;
dahlias of the night.
exoskeletons of black jackets and tights
like some shadow riding vagabonds,
inside guts made out of
swallowed cigarette smoke
and bravery.
we smoked and walked,
watching as headlights flickered toward our slim frames,
and men leaned out from trucks
with salivating mouths like dogs,
inviting us to their burning desire
in the cold, shrinking night.
under the layer of skin
that tells the girl beside me that it would be stupid
to heed to their invitations,
i admit to myself
that all i want is for a stranger to wrap around me
and kiss my smoke stained lips
with a different fury,
so i can whisper a fake name in the depths of their ears,
and show them that i will kiss
better than all the women that have
wrapped themselves in
their limp bedsheets,
and leave them wanting more as i disappear into the night,
leaving nothing but a longing burn
on the tips of their tongues.
but i don't give into my fierce desires,
and we simply turn around,
smoke five more cigarettes,
and climb up the fence
to **** her hand,
and run across the raging freeway
like the Klamath itself.
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 12:44 AM UTC
driftwood skin
sea glass eyes
****** guile
raw and toothless
husks of promises
trawling for exoskeletons
you were mine
i was yours
but i am not one
to let wounds fester
even first cuts
are licked clean
with time
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 11:28 PM UTC
Today I witnessed a ****** in the cobwebs
The swift and crafty arachnid ensnared suspended cicada
The cicada several times his size spun into his spindles
Soon a drained addition to the cemetery of exoskeletons
It twitched but with an air of hope long gone
He embraced his fate long before forced by spider fang
The stalker surveyed him, perched like vicious acrobat
About to perform his grand finale among the dust and decayed wood
The drawn out death captivated me, stole my attention
Like the gallows in the streets of times past
I watched and felt the transmission of energy and life
The power to spare a creature, but I let the world turn freely
This one lived and died similar to you and I
The universal experience of limited time
Bacteria to insect to man to deity
Some day we are mummified and disintegrate in the attic
Nov 27, 2010
Nov 27, 2010 at 8:19 PM UTC
it is dark with you
I squint to see supernovas
on yellow stumps
the wispy silver ripples
fall the wrong way
nothing is left but
tobacco exoskeletons
you brood against velvet arms
sinking into the chair
the stone in your chest is heavy;
immune to April plumage
spilled nectar
and the smells before rain
Mar 11, 2013
Mar 11, 2013 at 7:46 PM UTC
i don't know
gleaming like an apology
what i want
your scraped pomegranate summerteeth
these winter days, i used to
a pointillist sunset,
wish i could inhale
don't tell me that muscle
the wide wide world
is made whole by breaking,
just to breath it out
back bent toward abstention
into your mouth, once,
none so present as yours
i never really knew
(and cracked holy monuments,
strength
vines their unlaced exoskeletons)
just that i wanted to be strong
atlas was no gardener
for a nebulous reason i cannot
to hold up is not to tend.
remember
where could it be written
i'm leaving for
why would anyone say, why would
a very long time,
a poet teach the heart survives by breaking?
but you have to go
that in black ink my love may still shine bright
away
to come back
Feb 1, 2015
Feb 1, 2015 at 12:35 AM UTC
The cranes cling along the sea cliff
yellow spiders perhaps made skittish
by the rolling morning mist.
they swing and strain with (do I detect?)
a nervous urgency until
noon
when the sun half shines through
to draw the fog and warm
fragile yellow exoskeletons.
There are plastic bags now in the dog parks, cameras
grow on top of poles.
Exercise equipment planted in the gardens, at the edge of the sea
(certain I would have noticed them before).
These towers must be taller, then.
I've seen them at work for a year and a half,
they must be–
with all that nervous energy.
Tire tracks from heavy trucks.
A bent rail, discarded candy bar.
Morning sand on the sidewalk
where secret midnight bricks were laid.
And here, maybe, a new banner flies:
"Se vende." To sell oneself.
To give oneself away.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
the trees whisper
rustling, gilded intonations-
spilling secrets like honey
into the productive blue sky.
sunlight lurches through the trees
and cracks my foolish skull,
sending all of the thoughts
I had left alone in there
spilling over the golden
dappled forest floor.
you seep into my periphery,
delicate and half formed
amongst the moss and the earthworms.
I smile at the exoskeletons of
decaying memories;
crawl, crustacean-like,
sifting for something more tender-
dredging up phantom images
that flutter lazily across my eyelashes
and come to rest in greedy palms.
breathless mirth
and incorrigible melancholy
commingle in your shadow
and hold me fast.
you and I live and breathe
in the same stratosphere
and I don't quite know how
to let it go.
I miss you, and the words
twist around my fingers
like a rosary, pausing
at the accidental stutter
of my naked heart.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 10:18 PM UTC
last night I was reminded of the warmth beneath your skin
reminded of the way we match up together
reminded of your frantic kisses
down my neck and over the ripples of my collarbone.
I am reminded of your naked body pressed against mine
our skin hugging our curves, making our exoskeletons melt into one
lastly I am reminded that a part of me missed this
a very small part of me I only want to show you
and no one else.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 12:22 PM UTC
Isn't it coarse how those with brains
like paintings or poetry,
stay the most silent?
Their pen strokes and key strokes
and voices
evoke images that put reality
to shame
and yet they express
just less than is required
to distinguish body from cold stone;
being from statue.
They only have themselves to blame;
Perhaps the world too
as unforgiving as it is.
Though it remains that they
are silent:
Their being may be
boisterous
yet they themselves remain quiet.
Their soul and their bones
who creak with the very moans and beauty of this world
are muted and it...
It makes me terrified
And sad
I want to call out:
"We cannot hear your soul
when you try so hard to repress it!
We cannot become close
if we have nothing to connect with,
except this
hollow,
melancholic shell"
Where have you left your magic?
If you have left it, let us retrieve it.
If you have forgotten, let us remember together.
If it has been stolen,
I will quest with you to find it.
No one should be left silent.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 9:45 PM UTC
Ant people is what they are
teeth clattering together
out-coming syllables of
insensitive, insufferable nonsense
Pinchers cleaning after a feed
Some revolting alien dialect
Smash them, then
into the gravel
back to the maze-caves of the Underworld
the holes from which they jitter and twitch
but then pause to stretch cold joints
long, black armor-limbs
blink blank eyes upon the new sun's light
They too bask in its rays, like I
awakening the mind for another grind
warming sleepy muscles to pursue crumbs of bread
Like I
So smash, no
let them crunch and spit out uselessness
Just play instead an in-head voice-over
a compilation of wonderer's revelations
Let them crawl, let them be
slowly exoskeletons shed to flesh
antenna's recede to shags of brown
framing lively eyes
pupils recognized as Human
Humane
Words are intent
should be meant as the sun
beams to progress the colony as one
We are the same
Feb 4, 2013
Feb 4, 2013 at 8:46 PM UTC
Out in a cabin in the back
woods once again
what speaks louder that words
are my words and the masses just whisper.
Rabbits **** bears,
timber
exoskeletons
crack, porcelain
underbrush
surrenders, those red strings
nudge me
to acknowledge it,
the Shakespeareans are creeping in on purpose,
i've tried too hard to please this hardwood floor.
Excuses: I am--
--walking on the body of a
violin
--measuring the plucked
requirements of the craft,
a melodic one.
--forgetting my voice.
I met your envelope
of panic
switch--vapor lights
staring down on my skin.
Pink elephants
bound on crosses strung up in red
--you stitched their brick hearts.
I was welded
to the screen door by the touch
of a one-way street,
epidemic voices are farming the cure for salvation before our cauterizing
muzzle flashes
--the outline of your fleeing justice.
I smell rain and why I fell in love with you,
--you never write when you're angry
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 7:20 AM UTC
If I could save even one person, maybe I would speak.
、、、、
Her flesh wrapped around her like kudzu on a tree, parasitically engaged in what others yearned for.
If you can't rely on blood, who do you have left?
So I stayed. Because no one would come near. How kind she was. How gracious and loving and loved.
、、、、
Her skin became cold. The very ***** dedicated to masking her advanced structure became like a marble slab left in the snow. That flesh that cradled her meaningless meanings hardened like the exoskeletons she imitated.
She was an insect through and through.
、、、、
And even if cold was the absence of heat, the left-behind contraband someone else came to cherish, she emanated the very invasion that enveloped her.
She radiated her icy salvation.
、、、、
And so when the time came that I was able to touch her...
When it was upon my own flesh I would feel what she refused to feel, she grasped onto me.
As if she longed to drag me into her abyss with one last throe, one last labor of love for her blood.
、、、、
My fingers never fell off, but I was frost bitten. My organs never failed, but I was shredded apart by the sting of the sobbing wind.
、、、、
I didn't become her marble carcass like I should have.
、、、、
She didn't take me with her.
I couldn't save her anymore.
Not even if I had devoted my life to doing so. Never again. She left me behind, and I was cold too.
、、、、
My skin is not chilled to the touch. My muscles are not the remnants of a frozen cicada shell. My skeleton is not made of the icicles left to melt in the sun's triumph.
My tendons ache in the wake of an ancient breeze that blew by far too late.
、、、、
I am not a slab of cold marble.
、、、、
I am a starkly darkened visage to behold and not be held, forever turning over and over,
never ceasing and always yearning for that which never was, and that which will never be.
I was only for their sake. Never mine, even if I pretended.
、、、、
This endless daydream that expands before and behind me, that twists in tendrils that are deplorably mine and
soak in the oily water that inisists on being my keeper... I will not let go of the ribcage it offers to my grasping hands.
I will bear who I am. I am my sickness.
、、、、
I will plunge into the needy and engorged expanse of shifting flowers and lodged viscera.
I will continue to encase and cease.
、、、、
Forever in my head.
Forever in my skull. Forever tapping in my cage. Forever clipping my scrawny wings. Forever sincere.
、、、、
I loved her, and I couldn't
save her.
She was dead, and I couldn't save her.
She was alive, and I couldn't save her.
、、、、
What remains?
Irreparable me.
Dec 10, 2019
Dec 10, 2019 at 9:35 PM UTC
Mamacita
Coke-bottle figures are motivation
to get close to you.
I arrive to Spain clinging Molotov
Cocktails
(it’s not Spanish but least it’ll do)
to see blossoming tulip dresses
I bend kneecaps to Barcelona, Medellin,
Buenos Aires, Santiago, Puerto Rico
Mexico City, Madrid to get
a sense of your flower-nightlife
Swallow Iquitos, hills of white
rice fields.
Conquistador I bachata-bachata
love you gyrating exoskeletons to
Reggeton
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 4:58 PM UTC
My stomach is a graveyard
Of exoskeletons
Bubbling, inside the acid of your hatred
Killing all the moths that dip and dive
Guised as butterflies.
Chaotically crawling, I squirm and I writhe;
Like a parasite trying to root myself deep inside your mind.
Let me hide in the wrinkles where your secrets lie,
And I'll lay my own for you to pry,
So you can see and feel the way
You exorcise the demons I try to **** everyday.
In this dank, ***** cage that tastes like asbestos
And weighs like mold; where rodents have made a home
You've scraped each layer of filth and carved a throne, for you to sit.
You make me feel less cold,
A little less sordid;
Like I'm useful and important
As if I have some kind of worth.
Please erase from me your damning antipathy.
I just want to hear your heart sing,
To feel my pulse when you're happy;
Even if I end up left alone
In insect wings and rat droppings.
-SLuR
Jul 16, 2017
Jul 16, 2017 at 8:03 PM UTC
this city is scattered with
the exoskeletons of skins i've outgrown.
it's strange to grow out of someone else,
the skin we shared for years, months,
no longer holding me captive.
i don't remember
how or when or why
our souls split.
all i know now is that
my heart no longer misses it.
the hopeless mortality gets to me,
because i don't want to let go of you
but the utopia is out of reach.
i'll forever be shedding my skin
and leaving it behind
and watching you get smaller over my shoulder
as you barely mourn the loss of a friend.
May 22, 2021
May 22, 2021 at 3:39 PM UTC
Lawrence Hall, HSG
[email protected]
Even the Oak Trees are Dying
“Wildfire…evacuation of nearby residences under way”
-news bulletin
Poor drought-dead leaves in mockery of autumn
Wind-rustle across the lawn as the dried husks they are
Rattling like withered exoskeletons along the dust
Or The Ancient Mariner’s dead sailors upon the deck
The exhausted earth is hot from a summer of drought
Cicadas have no hope in their poor songs
A drifting dragonfly wobbles in its flight
And the weather reports are but cruel teasings
The sour smoke of a month of forest fires
Chokes even the stars, who in despair do not appear
Sep 3, 2023
Sep 3, 2023 at 11:38 PM UTC
It’s nighttime, the crickets are chirping. The faucet is dripping. There’s light coming in from the street through the cheap vertical blinds that came with my apartment. My bed is uncomfortable, my back is itchy, my neck is stiff. My bones hurt and my mind is running through everything I did wrong today. I forgot to eat breakfast, I stepped on a beetle and I sweated through my shirt during my walk to work, I forgot to print out the form I was supposed to, I made a joke and my co-worker didn’t laugh, I came home and I ate a dinner with too many calories and picked a movie that my roommate didn’t like, then I went to bed without doing the dishes or washing my face.
I shift my body under the covers, but it doesn’t make me more comfortable. I’m still itchy. I see bugs on the ceiling but I know they aren’t really there so I just watch them crawl over each other, squirming and clicking as their exoskeletons brush against each other. They writhe, defying gravity. They drip like water down the wall and puddle on the floor, and the fear I experience isn’t real but it feels real because my body doesn’t know the difference.
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 12:51 AM UTC
#cocoons as windows
disguised as tea, disguised as silk
that protective solid, a one-way order
no outside touch
outside, morning
organs ***** larval, the sticky crevice
recalled from leafy fluids
making sin from sin
corroded sins
untouched, unwatched, remain concealed
remain in another forgotten cocoon
yet they still yield silk
another silk
of morning sweaters, coarctate, twig solid
offering cocoons of another casing
another skin, another order
resisting order, reminiscent
hard, evolving, exarate, growing teeth
to touch and tear at exoskeletons
another fluid appetite
cocoons and fluids
the remains of caterpillars and wings
every secret allowed, accumulating effort
and one-way mourning
morning as a window
mesh-like, yet opaque, and exquisitely final
morning: everything to the cocoon!
I facilitate my order#
Jun 15, 2019
Jun 15, 2019 at 11:22 AM UTC
Each day, the horrid insects return.
They pull me
downwards, away from all I know.
Ten thousand tiny wings,
thirty thousand minuscule legs.
They drag me,
body buzzing with the life they give
into the twilight of dysfunction.
The slow, bulbous doubts, the ghastly
creeping terrors, the venomous dreads
and spindly, chitinous uncertainties.
They eat me
Gnawing away at everything I am,
Until I look in the mirror and do not see
A familiar face staring back.
So I **** them all, without mercy,
Until not a membranous wing still beats.
I flood their wretched exoskeletons
With the cleansing, toxic mists of
Insecticide.
I drown myself in the poison, pushing
away the deep dark and swimming upwards
towards the gentle, comforting light of day.
My head breaks the surface, gasping.
But as I breathe deep, I do not turn back
To see the trail of butterflies
Floating dead among the carnage.
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 20, 2019 at 10:13 AM UTC