"fossilize" poems
The decaying mansions of English language
Rot and recede
into teenage grasses
with each unspoken year
The hired help have left their hair unmown and surrendered their uniform dress
Content with the neglect of nature
taking its timely course
When the architects and master masons of linguistics
Survey their forgotten plans in the heaven of English literature
They are not dismayed
but patiently sit and sit
The pristine edifices of the classics
Once grand and clad in deferential brick
Stand scaffolded and unread
The doors unlocked, ajar and hopelessly inviting
Into the library of the English canon
The dusty cloak on the carpets of grammar
Sheets thrown over the disused armchairs of archaic words
Echoing the plink of the out-of-tune pianoforte of the perfectly crafted short story
Bathrooms of formal poetry
With the rusty plumbing of metre and rhyme
Whereas the temporary outhouses,
hastily arranged huts of slang and idiom
are adorned by the living grasses of new forms,
creepers of half remembered dreams
mulching leaves of half formed thoughts
forests of half forgotten loves
writhing in living incompleteness
Which will in turn harden and fossilize
And we can then rue the passing of our once organic lingo
Dec 14, 2009
Dec 14, 2009 at 10:18 AM UTC
when my faith is tested
i recoil into the lurid nest
by moonlight, by the sound of a lyre
whose blood whispers dank currents
into the low hillside.
and over the hillside
pour screaming maenads
who pluck from the damp ground
snakes for their altars.
a timid peak out of my grotto reveals
a crawling sailor scattered on the rocks.
Apollo’s choir releases hymns
from underneath dark sediment.
i am secure inside the den
the man writhes on the shore for help
but even if i let him in,
i will consume his rooted soul,
so he dies one way
or another.
foot
steps
does he really wish to
become absorbed by this
dark cloak? where he will kick
and drool and never again
see rain stretch over the Aegean?
as i have not seen past this
constant haze of lead,
an infinite bang on a finite drum i
played long ago into infinity?
and the swirls
of infinity
shedding outward like the
tresses of a fire haired fae.
a sprinting sugar fae,
the wind inside the hair
outside her head,
blowing behind her.
she dashes through the wood
until her feet fossilize
within the rock below.
one day several naturalists will find
the slabs of granite
and make a map of elegant
collarbone etched into hardened stone.
all the while i will guard this cave, alone.
and if my foes send winds as
messengers, i will saunter in
amusement, with an olive
on my tongue
the wind cannot destroy
the seashore,
the moon and sun
command the tides.
Sep 27, 2011
Sep 27, 2011 at 10:00 PM UTC
I am Ether
and it's hard luck these days
with nobody making you famous
There is a lead cloud pregnant
with memories worse than burns
raining like errant artillery
I have to bite with my best teeth
to rewind pleasure and fossilize
painful reputations
You put murderers tattoos on my
social membrane by a diseased loop
Obviously I run like a rabbit and
backflip and rip in half the sky
Anonymity boils
Jarry shoots his ephemeral pistol
outside the theatre at fictional
Paris of your half dream
these ghosts circle your nerves
bleeding christmas sugar
gasping kerosene charisma
atop the peak of repute
May 2, 2012
May 2, 2012 at 8:10 PM UTC
dropped hard to the floor
the crumpled sound of dead weight
his cracked skull oozing
lifeless body releases
blood, ***** and seepage run
the stench of death fades
bones gnawed clean by sated rats
start to fossilize
just another new entry
in his basement collection
Del Maximo
© September 18, 2009
Jan 23, 2010
Jan 23, 2010 at 2:22 PM UTC
espy me now,
vivify me now,
beautify me now,
satisfy me now,
gratify me now,
tumefy me now,
mollify me now,
clarify me now,
classify me now,
sanctify me now,
immortalize me now,
deify me now,
rubify me now,
crucify me now,
mummify me now,
reify me now,
codify me now,
ratify me now,
glorify me now,
magnify me now,
mystify me now,
minify me now,
justify me now,
stultify me now,
stupefy me now,
falsify me now,
nullify me now,
villify me now,
vitrify me now,
calcify me now,
ossify me now,
fossilize me,
forget me
and
walk away.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 4:16 PM UTC
Inside my body is a garden.
a piercing wound is closed by
Vines curling around the chasm
Pulling the two folds of skin ever closer.
And as it heals
A red rose blossoms, like a pink scar, otherwise.
This garden breathes
Its gills are a dewy’d, petal’d wonderland
Veins stretch like roots
Tendrils that ever entwine my flesh-soil
And bones like coal
Fossilize.
Into the depths of the earth they
Lay and wait.
The dark that keeps the cogs turning.
But what the eye cannot see,
it cannot truly hold beauty.
No beauty such as the blossoms
Sprouting from my wounds.
Aug 16, 2013
Aug 16, 2013 at 10:42 PM UTC
Fossilize my heart
in a sticky Southern summer
Shiver and sweat an uncertain future
103 degrees (With heat index?)
I can’t tell if it’s my fever
or if the hills are undulating
Freeing themselves of wrinkles
like hanging bedsheets
As they sway, I brace myself
Close my eyes to the dance
Still each painful breath,
seal every beat in amber
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 8:41 PM UTC
I'm so sick of metaphors about sunsets
We took the scenic route to fall in love
A sunset was just the beginning
We saw the sunset in our rearview mirror and kept right on going
We fell asleep at a motel before the sun set again the next day
And love wasn't having something to talk about every minute of that three day road trip with the radio broken
Love was going to the bathroom, the only privacy we could find, and still wanting to walk back to the car
Love was hidden somewhere between that last stop for a large fry and not caring if you took your shoes off
So I don't love you like a sunset
I don't love you like love is on a timer that's going to run out
I love you like a tree that is going to grow for hundreds of years, and then fossilize
I love you like a mountain being ground on every day by the wind and still standing
I love you like the ashes of a fire, all the bits left over, someone you have to come home to
Mar 6, 2018
Mar 6, 2018 at 10:18 PM UTC
baby i crave rose-petaled
cigarette romance,
let the smoke rise from my lungs
and curl through your canals
caress you in dark alleys and
lead your lips to embrace hushed defeat
reflected in the moon-lit puddles at your feet.
baby i desire the electric plume
of your poisonous touch,
every meeting of our skin causes volcanoes to erupt
spewing lava from my eyes but
my phoenix feathers will keep us
from plummeting asunder.
baby i get lost in the technicolor
pictures playing in slow-motion-reverse,
where sugar coats the screen
from the edges inward, building mountains of
sticky residue for my memories to fossilize into.
baby i chase after loud-mouthed contradictions
with pupils the size of dimes,
i fall in love with vagabonds
and flippant lost causes
who commit heartfelt crimes.
baby i'll track down every demon in you
and take them all out to lunch,
i'll piece together your black hole tar soul
collage of a universe waiting to burst forth,
and i'll hold onto the remnants of whispered secrets
until my museum of you turns back into a live exhibit.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 11:02 PM UTC
Elohim decay
feathers fossilize
spinal columns scream
porcupine trees and pulverized spleen
a runaway stallion ***** ******
burning all trace of his steps
tetralogy of sun and steel
satyrs and samurai plunge swords and members
into quivering bowels and nymphs
chrysanthemum petals turn to snow in May
dusting the mask you wore to confession
where the abbott sank a gluttony fist in your robe;
you coughed,
leaving a mist of golden ***** all over the door
of Kyoko's crumbling house.
Izanami-no-Mikoto passes over
leaving the lovers to rot
where they hang.
The sound of waves blur our view
modern aesthetic is not enough
falling sand
a psoriatic kiss
beauty and youth
withered blossoms
on trees bearing only cherry stones
Shōgatsu begins
with mochi deaths
Kimitake's ghost wanders the palace
loinclothed
head in one hand
sword in the other.
Feb 20, 2021
Feb 20, 2021 at 2:45 PM UTC
She is panning for forgiveness
through the darkest sands of time
minerals from charred bone
fill the silt, left far behind
Remnants of tarnished memories
let guilt fossilize the years
how she longs to melt those frozen crystals, back into her own tears
Cry for the silence
Cry for the screams
Cry for the freedom
that forgiveness finds
in dreams
Feb 28, 2023
Feb 28, 2023 at 1:04 AM UTC
Toe-nail clippings fossilize
As they fall
Stone-set by rise and
Evaporation of a
Million Seas
May 9, 2024
May 9, 2024 at 10:20 AM UTC
My tears never decay into another form of empathy,
instead they fossilize into lacerations sketching
upon my parchment and my regret is unspoken.
Words were meant to sooth upon reflections but mine
are putrefied, lingering in stagnation upon where they
feel on the floor, outlines of deceased vocalizations hushed.
All feelings now feel uninhabited like an empty room
with but a window looking out to nothing. I'm realizing
that I was never really here only in musing that is fading.
Feb 26, 2017
Feb 26, 2017 at 11:42 AM UTC
late sunday morning
dining chair, scratched and antique
fossilize the past.
Dec 18, 2019
Dec 18, 2019 at 11:09 PM UTC