"fractures" poems
On my skin I wear the bands of shielded sun.
Commitment to the heart makes this skin colour run.
With one liberal hand, I tear down these branches being hung,
to shower in yellowed leaf confetti.
These forest roots ran like hair line skull fractures,
under canopies blooming red from the sunlight rapture
and now these trees leave their taller brothers to fall as ashes,
with ivy on my ankles, stifling hope up to my chin.
Living memories, my forest sheltered, scrambled for home;
small pretty beasts, unrefined, breathing caricatures with bones.
Screaming they beg for attention, inattentive to this situation as a whole.
Our own view is all we can consider.
This house of cards built on paper-cuts, from the trees before.
I'm now growing wiser to my winter freeze and your summer thaw.
I need all of these things I hate about me, and they can never be ignored;
a psychological pre-disposition, the only one I can afford.
Sep 1, 2013
Sep 1, 2013 at 10:59 AM UTC
Why is it we cure pain with pain?
A burn with utter incineration?
A cut with mortal stabs and fatal slices?
A tear with larger rips and further shredding?
A break with complete shatter and growing fractures?
A love with a deeper, truer, more honest and raw love?
Nov 16, 2014
Nov 16, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
If I were only me I would drive to San Francisco
and jump off the big orange bridge.
I might do it if I knew it
wouldn’t hurt them,
but I can't because it would
so I keep fighting all
this **** that haunts me.
I have eleven reasons not to do it,
eleven people I will not name,
eleven reasons
not to hit the water at 86 mph,
eleven reasons to avoid massive internal bleeding,
to avoid broken ribs and punctured lungs,
to avoid …telescoping fractures……
asphyxiation by blood and……
….telescoping fractures……..
Eleven reasons to avoid 4 seconds
of second guessing.....and telescoping fractures…..
Eleven reasons…… …....................OK twelve.
Eleven people in my life I couldn’t do it to.
Twelve including me because I know I won’t like
the sound of what it might sound like,
the difference in my mind between the sound
of fractures and the sound of telescoping fractures,
a terrifying sound, enough to keep me away from
San Francisco, not to mention the big orange bridge.
I lie awake at night with numbers racing around inside
my head, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour,
4 seconds from rail to water, 220 feet to fall,
24 hours in a day, 86 miles per hour at impact.
I keep counting and sleeping fitful frightening sleep,
endure nightmares of falling, flying off the big orange bridge,
reaching upward, the bridge getting smaller and smaller,
and every morning I wake before impact still a martyr
for all of us.
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 1:03 PM UTC
"Hey, how are you you doing?"
"I'm doing okay..."
I'm okay because I cannot describe all the different ways I'm feeling apathetic.
And I give you that smile that hides all the hairline fractures in my heart.
Every wonderful longing is swallowed alive,
I'm transcending my emotional capacity to live and love.
All my cheer is shallow and without substance,
Naught more than a cooked marshmallow:
Sweet and crisp without any nourishment.
My wretched self allows me to suffer thus.
Isolated when never alone,
Alone when in true love,
Irreversibly broken,
Choking on my frozen dust.
Jun 15, 2016
Jun 15, 2016 at 11:46 PM UTC
In the evenings
the deer would emerge
from the edge of the woods
stepping over the tumbledown stones
of walls left untended-
they'd leave tracks through the snow
in a wandering line that led to the last apple tree
in the field by Orchard Street.
I remember that now,
staring at this antler I've found
in the clearing between the cactus
and sun bleached stones.
The lines of the antler
flow into the fractures of my palm-
two thousand miles from snow,
and two thousand miles from
the blue evening glow
of a shivering world
glazed over by twilight…
And the deer-
magnificent, pawing the snow
searching for apples that had fallen below-
emboldened by the frozen sweetness of autumn.
They were graceful even in flight-
when cars with chains
jingling and crunching the ice
rounded the corner
down Orchard Street.
Today I've tracked over two thousand miles
in my own wandering line-
the lines of the antler
flow through the tangles and hollows of time.
Sometimes I stand in a clearing,
sometimes hidden by trees,
sometimes I scratch below the surface,
and I run- but, less gracefully...
There are walls I've left untended
and some I've crafted too well-
it is through forgotten tumbledown walls
that memories come-
I thank grace
it was into this clearing they fell.
Tom Spencer © 2017
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 6:55 PM UTC
I was told my wings would sprout at the right time, when I needed them the most. I keep leaping off balconies and rooftops, hoping that they will spring out of my spine. I have broken bones hoping, but once fractures heal I jump again. Disappointment never felt this good.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 4:25 PM UTC
Skinny *** Poem
(8/11/2014)
Every kid wants to be something when they grow up.
They picture perfect future families with puppies and kittens,
but for me something was missing.
I just wanted to be happy.
Maybe my vision wasn't so great though,
because 'happy' looked like it had 6 letters to me, and spelled 'skinny.'
People used to throw bricks at my glass house.
Shouting that I’d be skinny enough to slip through cracks.
Cracks of life,
cracks of struggle and strife,
cracks of everything not nice.
They'd tease me and say I looked like I smoked crack,
when I'd lose weight,
I'd gain it all back,
in the form of their extra hate.
But I didn't feel skinny on the inside.
Although I had skinny bones and skinny skin,
brittle enough to break within.
Under the pain of that pang
as their bricks shattered my glass house.
Tell me, have you ever been afraid of words?
Thoughts can be terrifying but once turned to spoken word,
that in turn will turn to shouted word,
that in turn will turn to incoherent nonsense.
Which starts a sensation of ear drums ripping,
being sawed in half immediately,
no time spent ticking,
by shrill shrieks and violent vocalizations.
As if a sound wave could burst your body parts faster,
no, more efficiently than a barrage of fists.
Because it will know exactly where to strike,
in fact, it will sneak through your solid surface,
into every single crevice,
knowing where the best place to hurt is.
All it takes is a whisper strategically said in your ear,
'skinny.' 'skinny.' 'skinny.'
I could feel it float away from me,
carried off by the wind.
As if a sound wave could carry an army of statements,
piled up and armed with bayonets of every decibel level,
ready and willing to siege each individual joint crack and muscle ache,
being pushed under imposed stiffness.
It will ooze out your pores, as if your fat face was an instrument amplifier.
They thrived on the thrill listening to my shrill shriek.
As I stepped on shards from my shattered glass house,
And stared into the million fractures,
each a broken reflection of the million me’s I could be.
But none of them skinny... enough,
skinny for everybody else,
but never for me.
I’d envision each day, blood drops staining my glass carpet.
Each ounce of that luscious red,
each day left my body filled with an ounce less of dread.
An ounce less to fit into a size small shirt,
and 30 inch waist Skinny jean.
My body became my own private ****** machine.
Every kid wants to be something when they grow up.
I just wanted to be happy, I mean skinny.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 5:07 AM UTC
We climbed from bedrock
to Idyllwild the home
of Pines to Palms
and Suicide Rocks
but not for us
only for those
poor tired souls
for whom the world's gone
flat
refusing
the night threw
itself boldly into the fray
of winds which blew
from storm to calm
so this morning we awoke
to a placid knap
slipping on snowy piste
to turn cold snaps
hot
spiced Nepali tea
sipped from ice
nipped cups
I see promise
picks up
from backward leaps
time forward flips
breaking free range igneous
into pan
piped sizzling
congenial song
that carries on the tree line
like spring
water sprung from
creeks to go scurrying off
with wet socks
until pulled up
by old school granite skies
hanging pools out to dry
in sopping blue rinsed sun
ahead any bald rocks
or hairline fractures
are long since dialled in
as baseless fears
knowing this mobile age
can merrily slip like air
through numb fingers
while baseline hands declare
“hold me close to gather”
edelweiss echoes gone
rappelling through time
the route we've chosen's
to be tied to each other's
peaks in the way of sun
and moon
come what may
be it creases in our skin
or crevasses
we'll win the battle to slim line
any overhanging ridges
so I take care to tighten
my girth hitch to top notch
and hold firmly
to both your conviction
and reach
that setting
out to move mountains
we call home
achieves more than
staying home
and calling mountains
so bright
you have me forget
all things too trite
banal office hype
shopworn old hat
mowing lawn weekends
too dishy to be clichéd
you polish off the stereotype
slam the Dior on out of shape
and dull as ditchwater tripe
keeping a victorious secret
or two in the slip knot
too tranquil shade
taking allure to new heights
we'll never drop
down from
tonight
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 11:03 AM UTC
Your soul was always isolated from
the world around you—from the very beginning. Time
alone was something you valued (as should we all)
but your isolation took on many forms—many
hungry shadows looming over you at all times.
A collision of iron and steel left you
immobile, and by the standards expected of
women, useless: your womb would never swell,
and you would never experience the pain of
bringing a child into this cruel world.
The fractures
and the wounds healed, but you
never recovered.
In the face of impossibility, you still
tried in desperation; leaving you in cold
unfamiliar hospital rooms, where all you
can see is an alien landscape; where all you
can think about is the reasons you are here,
and the reasons your baby will never be.
It is a pain in your heart that leaves you gutted
like the iron handrail that embedded itself
through your ****** The bed is soaked
with your tears and your blood; it is the pain
of knowing that you will never hold a baby
who sees you as God; you will never experience
the love of a child, glowing with innocence.
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 10:58 PM UTC
He lives in a time of plague.
The tag team of cholera and dedication killed his father, for all Dr. Juvenal Urbino knows, his father was faithful to both work and love.
The good doctor knew from an early age that his work would be his love, and from a slightly less tender age he discovered that his love of flesh and the body ran deeper than mere science could take him.
He met Fermina Daza in the doorway between clinical curiosity and obsession over her doe’s gait, and as he walked through his heart made room for a new kind of dedication.
He thought his devotion would be equally as precise as his practice.
Fifteen or so years of marriage, between years in Paris they bled together like a Van Gogh after a rainshower, the intricacies of their companionship were jointly held in a contractual cradle, but neither of them felt obligated.
Dr. Urbino was before my time, but my story will know the life of Carlos Mucharraz, Pre-Med major, they both dedicate themselves to their love. I’ve never seen her, but I can imagine Carlos likens her gait to that of a doe. He fawns over her from 17 hours away, for nearly a year.
Like a Texas dust devil, he sends his love through the air to Minneapolis to brighten her phone screen and her day.
They’ve only ever spent time together twice.
I’d like to think of his devotion like a boulder, immovable, but twisters slither across prairies as wicked winds push them towards seas of lust, but I’d like to think his love flew above turbulent skies.
I thought Dr. Urbino as a rock.
He must have thought of his fidelity as a disease. His father died fighting cholera, and Urbino would not let his affliction of faithfulness **** him. He thought himself ill, and the mantra of his practice taught him one thing only: cure.
In a slum of San Juan de la Cienaga, pants around his ankles, holding a mulatto girl’s legs around his waist, he crumbled like stale bread as he plunged himself into infidelity.
This man of granite broke and fragmented, his sin etched a crooked cobweb of fractures into his back, I wonder if the beads of sweat stung his spine, or dulled the pain.
But maybe I should put my faith in dust devils.
Humans may be able to shatter the hardest stone, but no one commands the sky, for it straddles North and South, East and West, Fort Worth and Minneapolis.
Jul 1, 2013
Jul 1, 2013 at 7:20 PM UTC
Quaking Earth shattering Revolting
And I'm in the middle of it
My heart is at least
I didn't realize or notice that it got so big able to lumber out of my chest
I guess that's ok because I can't do anything about it
Just like I couldn't do anything about the fire rising up behind "me"
You aren't with me I don't get to hear your laugh anymore
Sprinkling down through ivy covered walls
You aren't with me
I've realized that a lot
But I also realize that when I get up in the morning
Or in most cases never going to sleep to begin with
The moon a lovely
Complicit pale lover
Never questioning me
Never worrying me
Listening when I need to talk
And instead of telling me what to do
Or telling me what I'm doing wrong
it just listens
I knew it wasn't a mistake when I fell for your pale face
It was a mistake when I started liking someone
Who's face didn't stay impressively passive when looking at me
It was a mistake to fall out of orbit
For someone who never wanted to be free
From the confines of gravity
To come into my sky
You know sometimes
I can still see your shadow
Just out of the corner of my eye
The way your hair would fall
How your eyes would even enrapture the sun
You aren't mine anymore
But the sun still deigns to rise
And the moon still loves me
I can't get back the love and adoration
I gave you over the past five years
And as I said I still see your shadow sometimes
But you aren't mine
And that's ok
Because even though you never cared
About being the meteor that knocked me out of orbit
I still cared about you being happy
Even when it wasn't with me
Even when it isn't with me
And each day since
I've gotten off of the ground
More and more
So thanks
For the broken insecurities
For the things that I never wanted
Thanks for submerging me into a vat
Made out of stress and emotional pain
Thanks
For the new sense of orbit
And the new outlook
And that sometimes
Dreams shatter
Possibilities shatter
But that's ok
Because when they shatter
The fractures
Lead to new doors
Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018 at 2:02 AM UTC
complexity
is your beauty
simplicity
your mystery
interdependence
sustains you
once upon a time
we dipped bowls
into your waters
and brought up
draughts of life
now
Skipjacks go
fathoms deep
into endless
depletion
charting
entangled
dead zones
broadening
into a sea of
inertness
your delicate
eco-essence tips
toward oblivion
effluvia farmers
layer mechanized
blankets of
nitrates on your
sunset shores
weaving
green tendrils
of algae blooms
strangling the
entanglements
of all links in
your miraculous
food chain
the EPA
proscribes
a Jenny Craig
pollution diet
to halt the
slaughter in
oxygen
challenged
dead zones
where rockfish
are garroted,
oysters get drilled
by screwworms
and azure tinted
soft shell *****
dance soft
shoe taps
lifting a tinny
chorus of sad
Piedmont Blues
the flat-lining
watersheds
voiceless
warnings
tremble
rocking the
purged nests of
screaming ospreys
in vocal protest
of a sinking
Tangier Isle
anointing it’s
tombstones
of unvisited
cemeteries with
multicolored
guano
fitting
alkaline
tributes
to the lost
inhabitants
and forgotten
languages
sinking into the
brine of gray
brackish tides
Delmarva’s fine
intra-continental
balance skewed
by the oozing
industrial swill
of Frank Perdue
chicken farms
ruling the roost of
sanctioned sustainability
tinging clear watersheds
of finger lakes
set in splints to
repair dislocations
and complex
compound fractures
that may never heal
again
Music Selection:
Taj Mahal: Fishin Blues
jbm
Oakland
6/7/12
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 8:36 AM UTC
I can feel your heart ache under your soft, warm skin as I glide my fingers along your gold-mended pottery fractures. Skating on the glaze you've let me peer beneath to reveal your raw materials. We used to use air and clay and water to speak, now we communicate in a wordless language, born of naked otherworldly splendor. — and that planet, your body, I long to explore.
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 12:14 PM UTC
kids march to school,
merry, hands linked,
socks strangling calves,
backpacks swelling with milk teeth,
dangerous smiles.
in the centre they stand,
fronds shivering overhead,
buttress roots clutching earth
like they know what’s coming.
bags dropped in a ring,
offerings to something older
than the walls they study in.
fractures komorebi,
and in its faded gold
i see pareidolia,
grinning from the leaves.
the tree is temple and witness both.
the trunks sway in a rhythm
older than speech.
a tree at the border warns:
don’t take pride in the faces—
power is the thing they can’t hold.
if, my friend, you see the tree
cast out its own,
know those who give the orders
are across the ocean—
safe, distant, very clean.
owls, fat with promises,
every five years
stuff a new child’s face
into the stump’s rot
and call it a future.
the old tree votes unanimously
to shed its skin once more—
they call it progress,
call the rot reform.
loosen your roots;
the wind doesn’t care
which children
it strips for kindling.
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 7:50 AM UTC
#
shackled to a notion
rubbing through wrists
in rusted remains
of beautifully easy
it's a slow bleed
through insults slung
in fear the unmaliciois
only noticed in hindsight
calling the innocent a *****
doesn't breed hate from love
the duke-yeilding cowardly lion
flings back like a monkey
##
breaststroking a marathon in tears
wading through pain I never caused
pelted with double-barrelled denial
THIS IS NOT WEAKNESS
there is no waver on my solid ground
torn flesh and compound fractures
cannot break harder than history
still, gavel strikes
in sucker punched cracked ribs
that look like a past that ain't mine
###
keep hacking off pieces
maybe I'll fit into those pretty boxes
your liars left as gifts
nasty reminders that trust has sharp teeth
maybe that's just you
biting back any hand that gets too close
pandering in placating platitudes
ain't my bag
flattery fails to flounce from unfettered friends
####
can't be beat into submission
with unspoken broken rules
can't run from a truth in plain view
this is what it looks like
to believe what you know over
what you've lived
I'm not running
I'm not biting back
I'm not going anywhere
then again, why would I
I'm not the one afraid to love you
https://soundcloud.com/user-166761247/a-fourth-in-time-to-cracked-selections-of-music
Dec 25, 2018
Dec 25, 2018 at 8:04 AM UTC
Where the whole that was
has finally
fragmented,
descending in an open, unremarkable blaze.
And so pieces of me shall collide
with the ground,
implanting fractures
few shall discern.
And the winds of days
and nights will continue to
persuade the dirt unto me
so my morose roots will not grow,
infesting a world undeserving
of my inadvertent pollution.
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 7:03 PM UTC
Face of MADNESS , gather your twisted strength
Stench like sadness? (Do)n't confuse, its greatness
Sway through the fractures and disjointedness
Disembodied manifestation, useless phenomenon
S(cul)p(ture)s hammered into DisFuRme/nt
Castrate salient pieces of that body
Spew inhuman lexicon insinuating i-n/co\here/nce
Slaughter the (harm)ony within cadence
Screech! H o w l! Growl!
Rel(easing) murderous miseries within infected entr[ails]
R A G E, count{less} bullets turning fl{ashes} of sanity to CAD(AVE)R(S)
De[generate] ripping throat of conscio(us)ness
Feb 24, 2013
Feb 24, 2013 at 12:31 AM UTC
I am a wine glass in your palm
I know you'll let me shatter
Breaking into a million glass fractures
Doesn't seem to matter
"Oh darling," I hear you call out
From the inexplicable black void
Over which I delicately balance
Despite my attempts to avoid
In my heart I know the choice I've made
And I know that choice is you
All the realisation in the world
Wouldn't make me say we're through
White sheets, blissfully innocent
Stained with your sickly pale glow
I've got to have you, I know I shouldn't
What happens next, you already know
Nov 16, 2018
Nov 16, 2018 at 9:06 AM UTC
I have used up all my tokens
and squandered all my pardons;
all that’s left is tarnished pyrite
and a jewellery box for two.
For I will tear your heart out
and feed it to the coyotes;
you may be the one for me,
but I’m no good for you.
As the field runs crimson
I’ll proceed to crack your spirit.
I know that this is foolish,
but love - this is all I know.
If the moon would make a bargain
on the dust that seals up fractures,
I would strip my backbone
reaching out to make it so;
I would mend each tiny crevice
- plant hydrangeas in the darkness,
but without a new foundation
it is all still frail and makeshift;
and each compounding weight is
all crushed-guts and shattered-statements.
Again we’re set a whirling;
we can’t recognize our faces.
The strongest tree is only paper
and my convoluted nature
is just a fallacy I’ve built to house,
my fear of what is true.
So, we’ll dance until our knees split,
you’ll repeat that we’re a unit
and as I kick the chair out
choke a final, “i love You.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Amidst staggered breaths
my fragile frame converts to dust.
Oak entombs the ashen ruins
of a long awaited
Us.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 6:43 PM UTC
The sand within this holy hourglass does record the unrequested gift.
Mankind’s mortality contained within transparent boundaries
that fool fresh minds with the fancies of freedom and yet,
like the sand, force us all towards a similar fate.
As Newton’s law prevails I contemplate:
those futures forever out of reach,
isolated by that invisible divide.
Our purpose predetermined.
We only live once,
no more.
Once:
soon to be no more.
Can I fall through the floor?
Can I ascend when tables turn?
Can I escape through fractures made?
Can I exist forever in the space in-between?
My cries are inaudible through the glass unseen.
I hear the gentle waves of home – white sandy beaches.
My younger years sink into the haunting heap of my history:
incontestable like the gravity that fuels this wholly natural process.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 5:53 AM UTC
And I did it once again.
Skin picked and shaven,
Cakey frosted ivory,
Faceless, nameless,
Plasticity contusion.
Littered in the detailed fractures of a swelling stem,
Those skeletal twigs of intangible incestual wings,
splintered in stacks underneath his bed.
Apocalyptic comfort found in the veins of what remains...
Pineal shame,
Puny white me,
Post-karmic, futuristic-retrospective cosmic plan, slowly creeps towards me and offers its long inflaming hand.
Cricket twitch, echoes in the distant introspective glitch of my momentary intuition.
A bitter drip on tongue descends,
Tunneled in an unwanted exploration.
That sour pitched cacophony uncomfortably sung,
Through the ghastly cold touch of a righteous cockroached thumb.
Repugnance,
Spreading the stain of an untouched soul,
Quicksand, morphing me into dust.
Devouring the white and into the red I rust.
Nov 24, 2016
Nov 24, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
writing is simple.
it's like popping a pimple.
one of those nasty ones that
makes a certain clicking noise when it fractures
and another certain splatter when the indulgent ooze lands on the mirror.
writing is as easy as this.
just like taking a ****
i could try to hold it in as long as possible
but eventually
something will leak out, the dam will burst.
writing is like getting a *******
i'll do it where other people can see me
if i have to but
if some guy walks up and tries to strike up a conversation
i will not shake his hand.
writing is a *****
just like that ever-present itch
in the back of your throat
when you have to cough.
writing is like getting off.
you start out slow, exploring her trenches
then quicken the pace, begin hurdling benches.
then, an hour and a half later
you're smoking a cigarette and
trying to remember what just happened.
Oct 19, 2011
Oct 19, 2011 at 10:33 AM UTC
Born woman. Go on.
It's farther than it seems,
but okay.
Credit card's been stolen.
Go on.
Above all, remember,
whenever you cry,
husbands roll their eyes,
and children worry.
Go on.
The father that was yours
gets killed by a lung disease.
He loved you, at least you think so.
Go on.
Drink, smoke, do drugs.
Go on.
Drag your crippled bones
to work. Hate your boss
behind her back. Smile
to her face. Go on.
Eat. Don't eat. Get fat.
Get skinny. Go on.
Time fragments.
Space fractures.
Lives intersect.
Wombs bloom
with new life. Go on.
Wait.
Hold on.
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