"gelling" poems
a polar vortex
swirls eastward
on Siberian Tiger paws
bounding over
Appalachian Highlands
gobbling geography
gelling Great Lakes
spawning Erie blizzards
sculpting Wabash ice floes
clogging commerce all
along the Ohio River Valley
this voracious
juggernaut’s wide maw
bears icicle teeth
laughing as it swallows
Pittsburgh, Little Philly,
and a Big Apple, before
gorging itself on
generous portions
ladled into
simmering crocks
of steaming
Boston Baked Beans
growling
blue arctic
air blasts roar
bursts pipes
savages the heat
of blasting furnaces,
bubbling boilers, hot
belly stoves frantically
drinking oil, flaming gas
burning wood and
burping soot
the blistering
jet stream claws
screech a slashing
stratospheric hum
as Frigidaire blasts
swallows breath
brittles limbs
chafes cheeks
gnaws earlobes
crystallizes tears
nibbles nostrils
cubes snot
numbs toes
bites digits
diving sub zero
gradient subdues
batteries to
deaden states
delays buses
derails trains
cuts power
constricts veins
preys on
vagabonds
and animals
get the homeless
off the street!
bring the animals in
check on your
elderly neighbors
don’t get caught outside
and shut the **** door!
do you own stock
in the Public Service?
beware the polar vortex
and next months heating bill
Sonny Boy Williamson
& Otis Spann
Nine Below Zero
Oakland
1/6/14
jbm
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 2:43 PM UTC
You ever have those days when you'd rather take the long way home?
With headphones on
Ignoring your heart beat
Trying not to crack like promises and iphone screens...
Well honestly,
You ripped the spine off of my notebook paper skeleton and crumpled it into the shape of your fists until it was nothing but a broken haiku:
What is love without
Lighting matches in the dark
Drenched in gasoline
You wear the whites of your eyes like flags when we touch
Like giving up is an option
And I'm trying to rewind the cassette tape memories to the beginning when smiles decorated our faces and I didn't know your full name or that you love orange juice and comic books
We're just kids in love with following fault lines to their breaking points and drawing assumptions on sidewalks while it rains. Raised on etch a sketch commitments that fade when shaken
We have no connection to the word 'stay'
**** the Christmas lights in your eyes, they don't stay up all year like I had hoped and I wore red lipstick to stop myself from kissing you and you stopped gelling your hair back like permission for me to massage your aching head, knead out any leftover thoughts of 'slow down'
But that was centuries ago and by centuries I mean lifetimes ago and maybe our souls have agreed to meet in some silent studio where you paint me abstract on subservient canvases and you'd feel like Salvador Dali as you melt clocks on my wrist to leave our moments up for interpretation...
We will not touch again, we had our last hug and the bass of our pulse has weakened so the memories don't keep us up at night
They have become elevator music in the back of our minds because we don't want to forget the sound of 'I love you'
Like astronomers falling in love with a blank sky, darling, it's in our nature to chase after the stars that chase after the moon that chases after the sun that chases after the world that chases after this idea of love.
Lets fold our empty spaces into intricate origami haikus like...
We ran out of glue
Stationary paper cranes
We burn down in flames
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 8:51 PM UTC
The scallops squat
in their queer little cesspool,
small moon-white
skulls, vulnerable
like bare flesh
and hissing and spitting
in their juices,
gelling on the edges
like late November lake ice.
Dumpy little membranes,
they're applauding! -
percolating and foaming
at the mouth, and quickly,
now roaring - ecstatic
in a watery grave
that looks and feels like home.
Sep 26, 2012
Sep 26, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
I wish that I could,
Encase your hands in my hands,
Whenever you need me to come,
And you need to feel me present,
Present near you in your vicinity.
Freely in my arms,
You are falling carefree relaxing,
Fall tension-free in my embrace,
Gelling well to my calmer body,
Play in the lakes of salty water.
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 2:22 AM UTC
90 today...you would have reached
This milestone....if it had not been your time.
Strength to push through had ran out on you
Your 'end of days'.....your personal ordeal
Had caught up and dealt a blow to your wellbeing.
Yet you clung to life for 15 days as I watched
You fade away trying my best to give you what
You needed and keep you safe with your dignity
Intact......in your final hours .
The clinical cocoon became your home, our home
In your 'end of days', where we gathered daily
At your bedside preventing you from being alone.
Hospital corridors became familiar acquaintances
Gelling our hands to fight the germ war
Testing out the hours to see if they would be
Kind to you and grace you with favours.
We could not change what was meant to be
But we all tried, how we tried, to rally you round
Until you took the decision.....enough was enough.
Your departure broke all ties, you paused whisking
Away your final breath and you.........stopped
Cut free and sailing toward your new destination.
One where we could not follow to hold your hand
Leading the way to ensure your safe arrival.
With the finality of your life's end
You had entered and begun the after life......
It leaves me wondering how you are
If you now know the great secret to......
Your 'end of days'.
Jul 25, 2012
Jul 25, 2012 at 5:24 PM UTC
She’d gone on her own to the party,
But sadly, for she was alone,
Her partner had left her in limbo,
Had not even said he was going.
A month had gone by, with never a word
And nothing to say why he’d gone,
She looked in the mirror for why she was spurned
But life, as it does, carries on.
Nothing had changed in her that she could see,
She still had her beautiful hair,
Her lips were as full as they ever could be,
Her eyes had that hypnotic stare.
Her figure was slim, and as firm as it was
When her partner decided to leave,
If there was a problem, it had to be him,
Which left her no reason to grieve.
The party she went to was stranger than strange,
With Bogans, Goth make-up and Greens,
She guessed that their ages for most of them ranged
From middle-aged matrons to teens.
A pair of Goth sisters were eyeing her off
And flattering her, to deceive,
‘My, there is a beauty, the best of the lot,
I’d fit her, I think, with a squeeze.’
They twittered and tittered between them, the two,
Whose beauty had long gone to seed,
Whatever they’d had, it was plain that it flew
When excess took over from need.
They fed her with drinks and exotic confects
That she hardly liked to refuse,
Her hold on the present was slight, I reflect,
Her sadness was yesterday’s news.
The ugliest sister, whose name was July,
Rolled in like a mist to her brain,
The cunning of eyes and a whispered surprise
Made her think she was going insane.
She felt herself ebbing, and losing control
As July held her hands in her own,
And then somehow gelling with tissues and cells in
Some fatness that she’d never known.
She watched through a mist as the girl she had been
Laughed loudly, and then turned away,
Embracing the sister, that other unclean,
‘We’ll get you one, some other day!’
Her body felt loose, like an oversize suit
And her lips could but slobber and cry,
‘What have they done to my beautiful youth,’
As she turned to a mirror, to cry.
David Lewis Paget
Mar 9, 2015
Mar 9, 2015 at 11:24 PM UTC
On a Saturday morning
I write,
as rain outside cleanses earth.
While rain feeds plants hungry
As rain calls all to umbrellas
And while eyes swell
to let me know a poem is gelling
to be released.
On a Saturday morning
I write,
as a bathroom run is ignored.
While my hunger has to wait.
As the moments melt away.
And while my fingers dance
on keyboard making way
to birth a poem.
Apr 20, 2019
Apr 20, 2019 at 9:59 AM UTC