"flails" poems
Bittersweet, get me going.
hold your breath over my neck,
it really
lets me go,
twists my tongue.
Talk to me
like an angel
but,
touch me
like a convict.
disrespect me,
neglect me,
abuse me,
but,
with a voice I can't refuse.
Bittersweet, like a rose infused.
Bittersweet, keep me going.
my heart
flutters and flails when I hear you in my ear.
Whisper me **********
but,
***** me
like a ******
****** me,
reduce me,
fool me,
but Bittersweet,
make me feel *****
Like you're in school
and I am turning thirty.
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 9:56 PM UTC
I'd rather die than listen to your poetry.
**** pellets of perfection,
Forget rhyme, rhythm or talent,
Leave that **** for the poets,
The saps and the *******
Don't start with that alliteration.
No pantooms or odes.
I'd rather place my head on the chopping block.
I'd rather watch blood with such high viscosity,
That it flails and leaps toward the opened mouth,
Pleading "no more! No more!"
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 1:02 PM UTC
Doctor, Doctor, did u hear?
There's a new infection coming near.
It starts with a flush and then a blush,
Then gets down right scaly in a rush.
It's nothing other than the dreaded disease,
It's called Dragon **** if you please.
First you're numb
About the bumb.
Then you itch!
What a *****
Then out grows the scales,
Watch out for the tails!
Just heed this warning, secretaries out there,
Dragon **** can catch you unaware.
Look out for the numbness, the itching, the scales.
Avoid the dryness, the burning, and flails.
There's nothing worse to work all day,
Draggin' **** is no way to play.
Jan 13, 2011
Jan 13, 2011 at 4:49 PM UTC
The wobbly love bits
woke up when the morning is
still fogged by cold purple-hued
freshness
She covers her face
but reveals those baby eyes
to follow you with
mirthful wonder
and she flails her wobbly fingers
and wobbly arms
with playful waves
and her mother
takes away her blankie
And she is dressed in
blue, and that sort of
beauty all crammed inside
that little brand new human being
can be quite
overwhelming
Her few feather hairs
and happiness-crinkling eyes
and mouth in a laughing sort of circle
and her invisible neck
and super puff-loved
cheeks
And love-hearts
fill the air
and spread joy
though your bones
and nerves
like warm sunshine
that melts
yesterday's despair
and dissipates
all the tiny
agonies
within
her radius.
-To Alice
Jan 7, 2016
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 10:25 PM UTC
heartache is
a penny, leaving
greenish glows
in the palm of my hand,
its slick caress a kiss
against the inside
of my pocket.
its weight yearns
like a kindergartener
whose voice
wasn't heard,
who knows
everything there is to know
about outer space,
something she can feel
wrinkling, biting a hole
through her chest.
and this tadpole heart,
it struggles and flails,
gulping to life
between words
it never knew
how to say.
silently,
somehow,
this monster
in my mind
falls gently asleep
with the tide.
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 2:28 PM UTC
Fissures cut through thick mocha fur, saturating
The forest floor with stark crimson. The deer flails,
Broken, knees buckled, breath shallow and emerging
As vanishing steam in frosty November air.
He falls on a bed of sugar maple leaves, illuminated
In dappled sunlight and fulvous hues.
“Must’ve been the coyotes,” my brother whispers,
As my pocketknife meets the stag’s throat. Gentle
Auburn clouds and freezes time, the body falls still.
My father says, “Sacrifice is a form of worship, but it is only through
Mercy that we may show passion for what we believe.”
Coyote bites prevent carvings from going to Buxton’s General Store,
But what nature produces it also receives.
Ants forage along the split underbelly,
And a red-tailed hawk carries away the entrails.
History defines the antlers of deer as symbols of the Gods,
And men would wear them atop their heads.
I collect only them, still draped with threads of velvet,
Knowing that years from now, nestled inside the perimeter
Of wind-beaten fences around the family farm, beyond
Moss-covered slopes and the Wishing Rock,
Will be the bones of a solitary stag.
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 1:50 PM UTC
“Every act has meaning. Accident is a word born of confusion.” –Agnes Whistling Elk
Some memories are like crude graffiti
some gray in museums
still others, vulnerable chalk on the pavement
all fade
dawn makes no promises
it never has
If you’re afraid of what the night will bring,
or worse, you know
what it’s like to be young and out
of control
leaving a scent trail of blood and flowers
for the monsters of yesterday to follow
just let them
the fighting makes me so tired
Rust in the sun until rubies form
cry through the night until you have diamonds
pressure makes us perfect
because it made the cracks that
make us imperfect
fear is ancient, normal, mundane even but
fear is the anticoagulant
Meanwhile, I am very busy
construction’s going on in Hell
disrupted by
random clouds of
revolting, revolving gravity
knocking girders loose
violent vertigo
claiming kingdoms
work horses slide
into black holes
yellow tape flails as
white flags
cranes arch and spark
swing into the dark
silky black tar bubbles,
pops, seals
everything is
untimely interrupted
and later
ungainly speech mocks
the tombstones growing in the lake
Pain is like a good book
so hard to put down
separation of critical
moments crystallize
until everything has a compartment
and no one can touch each other
Decades old daydreams stink stale
like sour seeds in green fruit
lilies could grow out of so much
manure.
Rot bleeds through involuntary walls
The past is sweating,
afraid of what I know
May 17, 2010
May 17, 2010 at 11:40 PM UTC
You're disappointing, you've never lived up to all I've imagined you to be. You're a failure. A loser. Wake the hell up. Wake up. You're letting this monster control you, you're letting it beat you. It's like you're it's ***** Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME? You're it's ***** It has you on puppet strings, and I watch as it flails you around. You think you can't win, you are giving up. I'm watching the light die out from your eyes, and it's frightening. Oh god, it is frightening. You sit at this bottomless vortex of darkness and you let it consume you. You let it. YOU LET IT. Listen to me, listen, listen, listen. This is frustrating, I want to shake you, I want to shake you. You're breathing, I know you can hear me. You think you can't climb out and you think you're done for. You think you're dead. You're not dead. YOU'RE NOT DEAD. Think, think. Tick, tick. That's the clock, time is moving, it's still ticking. It's ticking. Do you see the mirror? You see it, I know you do. Look, look at you! You incompetent human being. You piece of **** You're being selfish, ******* selfish. Stop wallowing in self pity. You're a failure, a failure. Wake up. Wake the hell up. I know you can hear me, I'm right here! Right here in the maze of your mind, and I'm banging on your skull. I know you can hear me, I know. Wake up. Wake the hell up. WAKE UP.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 2:54 PM UTC
Upon the stale wind, her body flails again
I came walking through the field
to learn about compassion
She was blonde and the last heart in town
The moon bathed her from within
What a loveless dream from that tree
touching God's skin.
Her feet above my head, painted in mud and above the sugarcane
And if I didn't love her so, I'd be able to walk from this pain
But I recall her warm breath the last time we kissed
The air tasted of a broken soul that I failed to fix
Blood under her nails, scratching freedom too slow
If she was yelling for my name, then I'd rather not know
It might as well been me who hung her above the stars
I did not give her enough of me and it will haunt me for years
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 6:02 PM UTC
I think yesterday is years away;
Between one and the other,
Between fathers and brothers.
So sisters and mothers
Blink feathery at their watches.
Hums like a hummingbird
Flails to a shrillness,
And a polyphonic fearing panic
Pulls us all back by chance
To the chancery.
Somewhere after grandfathers
Before grandsons,
Like Robert Frost being a modern
Not modernist—
There’s the last of the conceivable eros—
Conceived by sleeping
Resource and resourceful
Poverty with all the impressionism
of the gardens and allegories
at a dinner party.
Mar 22, 2011
Mar 22, 2011 at 1:49 PM UTC
The waitress doesn't smile
The cabbie doesn't speak
The salesman is all business
(This hasn't been his week)
The boss is rude and angry
He drives us all to tears
The barber flails his scissors
And almost cuts my ears
This band of moaners and groaners
Is no treat for a happiness glutton
The only grin I've seen all week
Was on a "SMILE" button
Jul 9, 2015
Jul 9, 2015 at 4:46 PM UTC
Running for a thousand places
Running for my very hide,
Running to obscure the traces
Run from those I can’t abide.
Pursued by the claw of guilders
Pursued by the Bank of Greed,
Running from the Ruin Builders
Run from those whose lust is need.
I’ve worked to build a modest holding
Worked to feel a pride secured,
Family of love enfolding
Sanctity midst world endured.
Feel manipulations brooding
Moneys lust does intervene,
Those who have it all, concluding,
What is mine is theirs to glean.
Claw back by manipulators
Claw back by the fiends of greed,
Implacable cold calculators
Cut with Law to make me bleed.
Running for a thousand places
Running for my very hide,
Run to flee pursuing faces
Run from that I can’t abide.
Anguish at my walls collapsing
Wailing of my bride’s despair
Futility’s tomorrow lapsing
Monstrous as it flails me there.
Standing in a freezing stillness
Standing in this hall of time,
Forlorn in a prisoned illness
Greed has vanquished me and mine.
Marshalg
For the forgotten people who have been ruined by those, who call themselves the mighty.
Auckland N.Z.
9 February 2013
Feb 8, 2013
Feb 8, 2013 at 10:37 PM UTC
The marks of her tears are
Etched permanently on her pink cheeks.
Her beautiful lips ******
Even when she shrieks.
Her desperate cries go on and on.
Her voice is now hoarse.
She begs us to stop but
Ends up provoking us even more.
We **** her.
And watch her bleed.
Beauty itself invites destruction.
So isn't she responsible for our deeds?
She flails her arms.
She screams.
She tries to fight.
She cannot challenge our iron might.
There will come a time when everyone will know, she says.
We slap her across her rose-tinted face.
Everyone already knows, but there is no one to fear
Because everyone is an animal out here!
Someday she will fall silent forever
After cursing and begging in vain.
And though we are the plunderers of her treasures,
Do you think we would bow down our heads in shame?
We wouldn't mind pressing, for the last time,
Her dead woman's arms under our iron hands.
Yes, we would **** for one last time, her wealth.
She is, after all, just a piece of land.
Jun 10, 2012
Jun 10, 2012 at 2:46 AM UTC
Where Phil's ship set sails
With the biggest whales
His legend has tales
And he spouts no fails
In the depth of nails
His hammer has gales
With winding winds of hales
He keeps to his trails
Leaving quests that impales
Five consecutive NBA finals scales
With LeBron and Leonard's pails
He fetches more water to rescales
With Lakers, his thirst now flails
Bringing hope his ship prevails
Logan Robertson
7/15/2019
Jul 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019 at 3:32 PM UTC
Whatever is coming out from the chimneys
is catching the light in the distance,
it trails across the auburn tree tops that are
shedding autumn and getting ready for
the already-here winter,
then flails and falls down.
The train carries on
as does the couple next to me,
they're on about
what they've done and achieved in Leeds
throughout the day;
they paid for a first class carriage
but ended up in carriage C next to me.
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 9:54 AM UTC
Just home from work
and I'm still not quite here.
When it was morning,
I walked out on Tracy's simmering mood
and into her thick June sky.
The elephant's trunk hangs from a cloud
In sepia, it seems
there can be no explanation, but a dream
Scale out of whack -- no longer confined, no turning back.
In color,
smooth rampage just born
The trunk flails and takes aim.
Storms through the corn.
Coming for me to reconcile the blame.
I'm still not quite here.
In the afternoon,
as Tracy's sky dims to deathly grey and ghostly white,
I ran back to her worried eyes and reflected them back.
And directly, the stampede consumed my regret.
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 1:25 PM UTC
They took you across the home
like an uncharted furniture as the walls lost
gait and stumbled.
Before I could shatter a word without
compunction, they took you before my eyes laid
lattices – they faltered, officiating over space that
fails infinitely when turning you away before
I could understand, say the day again happens
and my grievous art flails like a ******* child.
a deep dream within
a shallow sleep occurring within sundries – miscellanea
collected together, put to question but no answer folded
to be sure in its destination other than where they took you:
the air minting the world on your face wanting to move
and remind a fate of decay: to be malleable within clay,
and hunger for a face they stole from me.
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 2:47 AM UTC
it’s one of those mornings
where I just want to run,
mama.
I get up, only to
brush my teeth,
comb the knots out of my hair,
and put on dainty heels
(to make dainty gestures
to important men
in business apparel)
and spend eight hours
using my false eyelashes,
bright voice,
and candied lips
to appease the disgruntled populace.
my inner goddess flails her arms
recklessly, bruising my heart,
my lungs,
my stomach,
my soul,
her cage.
every day
I hear her sobs
emanating from my core.
is this what you raised me to be, mama?
a little bit of a
slave to the system
and sucker for the city?
if I were to throw it all away,
what would they call me?
what would they do to me,
were I to abandon
my heels for bare feet
melting into the damp Earth?
like some ancient character
in a brilliant mythology
I want to let it all burn
just to rise from the ashes
all over again.
Oct 5, 2012
Oct 5, 2012 at 10:50 AM UTC
when i cordoned you off
with Gorilla Tape and lilac vine
once i was done attaching encrypted files
of pearls upon that sultry salt of your inner-thighs
once i’d borrowed bonds
off my favorite banker’s portfolio
so i could waste myself in their earned interest
ratios
of blood bourne by centuries of
hapless gathering oppression
so i could use them in mosaics of swollen sand
that i could lay
like sea-glass shards under your
ebbing feet as useless parchments
i swallowed you in all your swollen spasms of fragile oblivion
until that bottom of this tongue lept amidst surfacing juices
obliterating and obligating all that ever decayed amidst obelisks
your whispers
(hatched from your
breathy endorphins)
shook me into
mine own
desperate shudders
astride our gathering humidity
and i gathered in
your needle-nosed
plier
eyes
-rust encrusted grey
incisors-
wrought from melted andirons
mixed with slug
trodden
soils
of hinterlands i was
never
to penetrate
as if i ever slammed
you
with yore spinning flails
into night’s emerging chasm
of charcoal sprinkled
with inner-orange peels
and their attempts toward
all that is illuminating, wistful, brief, and
precious—
i am your son, i am birthed from your sal i vations. i am twisting, still, amidst these rudiments of brine...
Apr 7, 2016
Apr 7, 2016 at 2:20 AM UTC
Serpent flails; shallow water.
Joker smiles; never speaks.
On top of the mountain,
Hands grasping each other,
One behind our backs.
Gazing into the jokers eyes
The serpent clenches the hand behind his back.
His last defense.
Pulsating blood; pushed through uneasy veins,
Sideways glances,
Grips tightening,
Eyes locking,Tongues melting.
Our goodbyes; easy.
One dagger.
One rose.
Covered in a single tear of crimson.
Perennials:
Never to be given away to a serpent.
Dagger concealed behind him.
Once a voluptuous rose,
Left now to die, decay.
Blade:
Rose,
Fell,
A tear from the only one left laughing
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 7:05 PM UTC
Trust has lost its potency.
Words clumsily bump up against meaning,
Groping for reason the darkness of good intentions.
Clinging to the old wives tales of sincerity,
We hold a hollow pedastool above
Or weary, aching backs,
Hoping for someone to come and relieve us
Of our empty obligations.
Atlas has long left his perch,
The world slowly tumbled off his sinewy frame,
Shattering upon the cold hard face
Of reality.
Language has lost its clarity,
Muddled with distorted alliances
And miscommunication,
It's flails hopelessly, gasping for air
Before plummeting back down
Into the deep water of tragedy
And modern day relationships.
There's no room anywhere
For carefully constructed prose,
Or spontaneous laments of passion.
They've all been pushed out
To make room for something intangible.
Something not there enough to grasp it,
But real enough to trace its
Shadowy silouhette against
The cold hard walls that encompass
Innocence lost.
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
telling too many terrible twisted tales
running riders right off resistant rails
selling sailors sailboats without sails
flipping forbidden findings til it flails
bending bedlam beast of burdens bound
killing king kind is kindly crowned
selling seats to such sights and sound
feeling the fallen fears are found
vending voracious vindictive vices
paying predictable pragmatic prices
selling substituted selected slices
drumming on dormant distant devices
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 2:51 AM UTC
There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.
They left their cottages there at dawn
As the sun was on the rise,
Wandered out with their ploughman’s lunch
And rubbed the sleep from their eyes,
They carried their sickles across their backs
Their ******* hooks and their flails,
And who could read took a crumpled book
To read with a half of ale.
They bent their backs to the task ahead
Of reaping the sheaves of grain,
The clouds were billowing overhead
And they said, ‘It looks like rain!’
The sun went in and the sun came out
As the shadows flitted across,
They stooked the sheaves at an angle so
The rain would drain from the crops.
The rain held off ‘til the afternoon
When the men were streaked with sweat,
They sheltered under the Sycamores,
Laid down their tools in the wet,
The wives were busily cleaning homes,
Preparing the worker’s tea,
They didn’t look out to the barley field
‘Til the sun dipped into the sea.
They didn’t look, it was almost dusk
When they noticed something wrong,
The men would usually come back home,
They’d hear them, singing a song,
A silence settled upon the land
And the wives came out to stare,
But nothing moved in the barley field,
The men were just not there.
Their faces white in the pale moonlight
The wives sat still, and stared,
The stooks were seeming to move about
And the women, they were scared,
The stooks lined up in the barley field
Like a pack of hooded ghouls,
And lying right in the midst of them
Was a heap of reaping tools.
There’s a silence out in the fields tonight
Where the barley sheaves are stooked,
Their shadows stand in a menacing line
While the wives at home are spooked,
They peer from windows, they peer from doors
And they lock their shutters tight,
There isn’t a man in the valley’s span
For they didn’t come home tonight.
David Lewis Paget
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 3:29 PM UTC
No one feels more alone when feeling alone in another darkened hometown.
He went and wandered,
kerb crawled and begged,
asked for four quid
then left when he got it, though
two pounds less than he wanted;
away, away, away, away, away,
away he’ll go again,
vagabond turned drifter,
God talking, kneel praying, church attending, Amen.
When the already sirens
start up, wind up,
swing around merrily in their
egg shell cups upon and above
the panda-car-cop,
he’ll wake to wander again
until the day his body flails
and gives in, drops to the floor
in a melodramatic stop.
For this forever New York,
with its high rise chimney tops
and siren's scare,
is no place to sleep without
a home to go home too.
Feb 26, 2013
Feb 26, 2013 at 10:22 AM UTC
Tomorrow is a shattered mirror,
blinking at me, showing the sun's teeth,
as though fending off starving stray cats.
There was no sun today,
I worked while it slept below
its sheets made of the empty fields
that lie east of my home.
Dereliction, undiluted, joins ranks with the
birds who have forgotten winter is coming.
Blotches of paint on stormcloud canvas,
like Jackson ******* began painting the October sky
and gave up after three or four flails of his
glorified, dripping brush.
Although there is a reflection here,
it is a dream now. The details have been
misplaced, and we can only recall major
landmarks and plot twists.
The surface, however, looks the same
as it always has,
and will go on doing so,
through the death of tomorrow, and her child.
Oct 14, 2012
Oct 14, 2012 at 1:22 AM UTC