"grapple" poems
The all seeing iris imperial city
The swiftest of stylus this side of the ‘sippi
The trippiest spittin’ Promethean hippy
Conspiracy theorist of eeriest verse
The despotic hypnotic black flag bearin’ Hearst
Still immersing myself in a poverty trap
As I grapple with lack of fact check cashing crap
Cryogenically frozen emotion vibes flowin’
From out my funk bunker boombox
Overthrowin’
Your global dominion opinion with ease
Shootin’ breezes with Tirailleurs Senegalese
I’m the kid wicked picket sign paintin’ Tom Sawyer
The ill eagle Taino privilege enjoyer
Still swoopin’ in mean on each **** I make clean
Pick the bones dry of serpentine oil green dreams
Then I bury what’s left of your money machines
With the pharaohs of old’s latest pyramid schemes
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 12:10 PM UTC
So I'll have mine
and you'll have yours?
who could ask
for anything more!
grey beards march
the union jack
build a wall
and send them back!
Grudge, sludge
a sanguine view
****** off
and take the cue
hide, plunge
aristocrat
run the field
like an old tom cat
Narrow pass
and capital flow
falling crude
and currency woe
deep depression,
mutineers
the mastermind
of project fear!
Silver spoon
at Hampton court
madness waits
in Davenport
divisible
and off the grid
**** it up
100 quid
Helen’s horsemen
unified
the springbok club
will never hide
plebiscite
in deep despair
an open scroll
Trafalgar square
Grapple, grovel
sentry shame
along the shore
of river Thames
king of wankers
lord of beat
break the rule
of old elite!
Stone the posse
bullets bare
load the chambers
fists in air
voices, faces
haunted souls…
should i stay
or should i go?
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 2:21 PM UTC
Babylon has fallen! Aye; but Babylon endures
Wherever human wisdom shines or human folly lures;
Where lovers lingering walk beside, and happy children play,
Is Babylon! Babylon! for ever and for aye.
The plan is rudely fashioned, the dream is unfulfilled,
Yet all is in the archetype if but a builder willed;
And Babylon is calling us, the microcosm of men,
To range her walls in harmony and lift her spires again;
The sternest walls, the proudest spires, that ever sun shone on,
Halting a space his burning race to gaze on Babylon.
Babylon has fallen! Aye; but Babylon shall stand:
The mantle of her majesty is over sea and land.
Hers is the name of challenge flung, a watchword in the fight
To grapple grim eternities and gain the old delight;
And in the word the dream is hid, and in the dream the deed,
And in the deed the mastery for those who dare to lead.
Surely her day shall come again, surely her breed be born
To urge the hope of humankind and scale the peaks of morn --
To fight as they who fought till death their ****** field upon,
And kept the gate against the Fate frowning on Babylon.
11k
VIOLENCE,
Nothing is as beautiful and as disgusting
To see MEN and WOMEN strike and grapple on UFC is wonderful
leaving everything they have out there with respect
only their technique and skill to speak for them
in the name of martial arts
To see "men" and "women" scrap and stomp on worldstar is sickening
leaving no downed alone,no honor nor respect
only their cowardice and anger speak for them
in the name of Violence.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 7:45 PM UTC
He filled his week bag
with quick picks from the commissary
cover blades and skull cap
canned goods and half stated pearl
liquor bills and bleeders
for the flight of weary
Into the ****** bunks
of the western front
past sivana and nurture sage
past the pomp and ceremony
out of robes and into jumpers
and casings
and masks of gas
Light infantry and yelling men
muscled and scorned
fly boys high in 3 wing flight
mounted gunners filling the night
in hawkers and packards
and scabbard chape
Tarrant tabers and camels
dodge the vicker gun
skeleton hands grease the mill trap
carnage makers mark the rhineland
(buried in bunkers and pile bags and earth pack)
Trench helmets and metal back
under machine fire
minefields burn in muzzle and coil
deep in the shadows
and shrapnel and spear
the razor wire
and dead cold despair
Slouch hats and burning rats
kerosene lamps and droopers
the soldier stares down
the broken lines and limbs
a ****** holds steady
(shelved at a distance)
on ripped and rolled pipe and beam
It was an all in end game
a grapple for the ages;
*** in the fokker pursuit
over rolling hills and fallen comrades
into the bishop bullet
(and sporadic cheer)
which sealed the deal
in an empty field
off the brae corbie road
Jan 8, 2017
Jan 8, 2017 at 6:50 PM UTC
Tar-dark world. The defining color is black, the inky night of her nocturnal hunts and the deep, bottomless dark of her alien retreat.
A watcher of men, she is everything and nothing. She might be too much of something, or too little of something else. Time will sort out the particulars.
There are no simple entry points – she demands engagement, and to be taken as a whole. Her discomfort is over her own allure, her undisturbed surface. It’s more about intuition and gesture than dialogue. They remain as echoes. They’ve made her beautiful in a real way, with hips and blemishes and dimples in her skin.
The imprint of the lives she begins to grapple with as her time on Earth extends, leads her to stop seeing herself as a mere conduit for her mission, and to start developing a sense of subjectivity.
Her life force is overlapping, shaping itself into a pattern of rings that simultaneously suggests a birth canal dilating, the stages of a rocket separating, and a lunar eclipse as seen through a telescope’s lens.
She's a life-form you can’t quite understand, but it’s carrying on relentlessly, like a beehive, moving backward through the constellations at first approach.
Feb 23, 2025
Feb 23, 2025 at 2:06 PM UTC
Gates give galloping giraffes
gin gum
gifted ghost
Goofy gambles ginger beer
grapple games get goods
Gooses groins getcha
group gathering greatness
goat got gale
Grail
Apr 16, 2010
Apr 16, 2010 at 4:30 PM UTC
whereas by dark really released,the modern
flame of her indomitable body
uses a careful fierceness. Her lips study
my head gripping for a decision:burn
the terrific fingers which grapple and joke
on my passionate anatomy
oh yes! Large legs pinch,toes choke—
hair-thin strands of magic agony
….by day this lady in her limousine
oozes in fashionable traffic,just
a halfsmile (for society’s sweet sake)
in the not too frail lips almost discussed;
between her and ourselves a nearly-opaque
perfume disinterestedly obscene.
5.9k
*Wrestle me well, my love,
For we were star-crossed enemies,
And I miss you.
My shoulders miss your caring arms,
My lips crave your pale-red tongue,
A slice of refreshment, watermelon,
My chest searches the rise of your chest,
And my torso longs only, and is only,
For your leg locks.
Grapple me and my lightweight heart,
As the backbone of this world breaks,
As the sun sinks into final submission,
But I will never tap on this love out.
Never.*
© 2017 J.S.P.
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 4:41 PM UTC
For them who dwell in mindful wanderlust,
their love, the road; their home, the road,
To grapple their love, their home,
We dont give them their birth right,
cos we, the orderly chaotic,
they, allow me to rephrase,
say, keep order!!
To hell with the gatekeepers,
Let's hop borders shall we?
before all that's left to hop,
are landless latitudes!!
Dec 24, 2012
Dec 24, 2012 at 10:35 AM UTC
A woman of shear beauty
Her attractiveness being at her duty
She gets any man she wants
Annabelle knows how to taunt
It is the way she walks and talks
Men feel her senses and respond in stalk
Annabelle dresses in expensive long gowns
Her hips are firm and are round
At parties, woman look Annabelle up and down
Yet they never utter any sound
It’s the way men grapple at Annabelle’s feet
Once they see Annabelle men don’t retreat
Annabelle moves every so carefully in her stance
Her good looks and attractiveness with every staring chance
This is how Annabelle’s suggestions advance
Annabelle’s methods in all systems go
Her hips in suggesting just follow my flow
Annabelle’s statement, “Hold on to your man”
I am in control and it’s within my own command
My masterpiece is what you see
It is Annabelle’s canvas that says she.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 8:45 AM UTC
Fervour tapered lingering
On that ******* precipice
Of alleged possibility
Devoured by the jaws of silence
The soul no longer raged
A nothingness that knew no words
Agony’s cold grip
Winter in December
I knew not what to with these hands
Their weightlessness
Weeping willows drowned out sound
Perfected in my dead
Loosening the grapple on the promise
Of a hazy tomorrow.
Dec 15, 2014
Dec 15, 2014 at 11:52 AM UTC
They walk by brisk
Covered in umbrellas
On high heels with ankles
Of no appeal
They grab the shaft
With both hands
As the wind tries to steal
Their umbrage
With agility
They skip over puddles
As I marvel
At the procession
With destined determination
They ****** on
As spiked high heels
Grapple on cobblestone
Rainy day women
In gray coats and wet umbrellas
Under overcast skies
With no hellos or goodbyes
Apr 23, 2016
Apr 23, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
Rhyming in a scheme
You should totally try it
It is not as easy as it may seem
Like finding a shoe that fits
Rhyming cannot be implied
It cannot be faked
It must be applied
It is like a good steak
A rhyme a day
Or is it an apple?
Will keep the lame away
But do not grapple
For it is rhyme time
Time to rhyme
Jan 10, 2016
Jan 10, 2016 at 8:29 PM UTC
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the trodden womb,
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely stumbling
Over the manwaging line.
The seed-at-zero shall not storm
That town of ghosts, the manwaged tomb
With her rampart to his tapping,
No god-in-hero tumble down
Like a tower on the town
Dumbly and divinely leaping
Over the warbearing line.
Through the rampart of the sky
Shall the star-flanked seed be riddled,
Manna for the rumbling ground,
Quickening for the riddled sea;
Settled on a ****** stronghold
He shall grapple with the guard
And the keeper of the key.
May a humble village labour
And a continent deny?
A hemisphere may scold him
And a green inch be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a drunken shore
Have their thirsty sailors hide him.
May be a humble planet labour
And a continent deny?
A village green may scold him
And a high sphere be his bearer;
Let the hero seed find harbour,
Seaports by a thirsty shore
Have their drunken sailors hide him.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the foreign fields of space,
Shall not thunder on the town
With a star-flanked garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-tomorrow
Range on the sky-scraping place.
Man-in-seed, in seed-at-zero,
From the star-flanked fields of space,
Thunders on the foreign town
With a sand-bagged garrison,
Nor the cannons of his kingdom
Shall the hero-in-to-morrow
Range from the grave-groping place.
3.4k
Darkness of night catches me,
Traps me in his grasp,
I grapple,
Trying desperately to avoid sleeps' sticky web,
Evasive action,
Breathe against cold night air,
Filtered through the open window,
Window to my sleepy soul,
Trying to stay alert,
Under a burning weight of two tonne eyelids,
Flicker of a mosquito shadow flickering under night's lamp illumination,
Buzzing manically,
So insane,
Heavy eyes drift,
View of shadow incessant flicking,
Vacant thoughts as topics drift,
Last shiver, quiver, jolt........,
Sleep.
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Aug 7, 2013
Aug 7, 2013 at 6:38 PM UTC
Sometimes I just wanna start over,
to wipe the slate clean and start again.
Other times I'm glad the slate is still defiled.
Why is it so hard to live up to my own expectations?
To fulfill my own aspirations?
To grapple with these emotions?
To deal with this commotion?
Cognitive pollution, sensory delusion.
Mental illusion, emotional contusion.
Chaotic infusion, and ******** institutions.
Sometimes it's hard to cope.
I just want to elope, to float
to make a clean escape from myself.
To go on vacation and not to invite myself.
To lock myself away within myself
with no on else around to remind myself
of how I so seek to find a way
to cope with myself.
Jul 17, 2012
Jul 17, 2012 at 12:12 PM UTC
The wandering hours
Create pondering towers
When instead of talking
You are always walking
Steadily ahead of me
Like you're dead to me
Like a small centipede
Walking for centuries
With the intent to be free
Yet constantly ambulatory
So we become slaves to your movement
When settling would be an improvement
You begin to freely flake
As I start to starve
You say let them eat cake
And my heart you carve
Into servings appropriate for your appetite
While I know something isn't right
But still forced to accept this plight
Of being your minor distraction
Chained by my love's infraction
Of settling on you
I shouldn't stay
But I bet I do
I wish I loved or hated you a little more
So I'd know what to do
As it stands I'm always looking out the door
But I'm unable to move
I want to stick around and see if you do something amazing
Like love me back
Instead of attack
With your acidic apathy
You mercilessly grapple me
And never decide to let go
Of love you never let show
We've been driving down this road for a while
And for the last million miserable miles
You've presented me unpredictable trials
With your nonchalant instinctual style
You've let yourself become extremely impaired
As I understandably grow more and more scared
I feel the answer is in the love we seldom share
But you're never lost when you're going nowhere
And I cannot follow your wandering stare
Nov 22, 2017
Nov 22, 2017 at 3:02 AM UTC
When I discovered I had cancer,
I was told that I would learn a lot
About Life and Death and Time,
But I never thought that I would
Discover what it means
To be intimate
With strangers,
Or anyone, for that matter.
When my insides were cut open like a game of operation,
I told myself:
Be detached.
When visitors came,
We talked about the weather.
When I arrived home, I spent my time
Trying to forget
The experience
Of impermanence
And shared emotions
That I couldn't even grapple with
Myself.
When the person I loved
Left me
I flinched
And then sunk back into an abyss of
Emotionless functioning,
Cutting myself further and further
Off from my narrative
Of pain.
When it was time to go back to school,
I flinched
And signed up for a workload
Heavy enough
To push out the fading reality
Of my condition.
It wasn't until I was sitting on the steps
Outside of a bar that was slowly beginning
To empty out,
As intoxicated shadows gained substance and lit cigarettes against the brick wall.
I sunk down next to friend I had recently met-
My big t shirt inched up above my abdomen
And the lower jagged mark of my scar
Peeked out-
I didn't choose to tell him my story
Until he asked me about the obvious
Stale incison mark that had a presence
Of its own.
Piece by piece, it peeled itself from off my stomach
And liquified into a sequence of events
And feelings
That poured from me
Like a stream of bubbling bath water
Overflowing from the rim
Of a porcelain tub.
That's when I realized that there is something shared and intimate about scars:
Marred reminders of the flesh
That speak to our upmost human
Encounters with our own mortality.
An indecipherable label of sorts:
An unsigned invitation into the taboo.
In a moment of unintentional word *****
At 2am to a stranger,
I regained my intimacy with myself
And my journey.
I learned that while Life and Death and Time
Will always plague our existence,
They distance us from the human experience that is
To feel:
To feel everything in this God forsaken world.
To feel angry at people for leaving when they should have stayed.
To feel compassion at the same time.
To feel intimacy with others.
To feel intimacy with yourself.
To feel love.
To feel pain.
To feel the cold creases in the wooden floor as you make your way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
To feel alone.
To feel surrounded.
To feel the trembling echoes of the past and be able to grab its elusive coattails and shake away the dusty remnants of time and shout that you are present.
To feel nothing.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 1:07 AM UTC
I am making a desicion
to clean my body of
your hollow whispered bruises
cracks in my diaphragm
your words left sizzling there
like acid that dripped from your lips
I forgot the deception that swam from your eyes
I have never been stupid
enough to believe
that you were only one
when there were three.
But we stood and watched that house burn
never feeling colder,
than we did that night.
Im sorry your brother died and took
your parents with you.
So you are an orphan that
demonstrated car crashes
in the mere rhythm of your hands
or melody of your speech.
But I find myself drawn to angry cobalt blue eyes
too often enough to know that
I cannot grapple out of your choke-hold
and frozen fingers will bruise me every shade of your
roaring ocean-like blue.
I can only admire the sapphire in your soul from a distance
and hope the red ruby rage turns to wine and not blood.
I have left my marks on too many wooden floorboards, pleaded with too many icy aquamarine eyes;
from boys with steel in their voices but a fury in their hearts.
Too many fingernails stuck between infinite spaces somewhere in houses
where the silence reminded me of the stillness of a teal lake in spring
your eyes are reminiscent of a grey morning I do not wish to remember
I will leave a mark here.
Oct 19, 2012
Oct 19, 2012 at 8:54 PM UTC
A turquoise fly battered on a red laptop
on whose twenty-inch pane glowed a green apple.
A poet, some distance away from the backdrop,
with the fly and the apple sought to grapple:
What stories? What parables would a laptop
offer Hermes - about an oozy apple
and a fly who understood not that the fruit
on the red laptop is only the image of a copy?
(c) LazharBouazzi
May 15, 2016
May 15, 2016 at 3:03 PM UTC
The writer's life
Consists of looming strife
For a writer's eyes are keen
To the suffering that usually goes unseen
All writers are bearers of truth
Wielding their pens like a scalpel that cuts through
All the **** we tell ourselves
That keeps us in denial
A writer seeks truth incessantly
And eventually comes upon the somewhat ambiguous answer
That all truth originates from Love
How does the writer's analytical mind
Grapple with such a fluid concept?
The writer sees beauty in the invisible
Writes poetry on bathroom stalls
Lives life solely for stories
The writer feels things deeply but doesn't speak them,
But rather scribbles her thoughts fervently in a notebook
The words dancing on the page
As they are released from the tip of the pen
The writer knows, sadly, that even though she writes stories to make people feel less alone
That these people will never truly ever understand her and neither will
She ever be able to fully embody the experience of another human
The writer has wounds that go deeper than you could fathom
When no one was there to turn to,
She picked up a notebook instead and released the toxic emotional build-up in her head
Made art out of her sadness on the page
Through poetic words,
Elusive and enigmatic,
She could tell her story, indirectly
And still set herself free from the ******* of unspoken miseries
The writer's life is a privileged one indeed
For we see things, but don't speak them
But rather transcribe them forever in our memories
Until we find a clean sheet of paper,
And write
Write everything we've seen, heard, tasted, felt, known and intuited
Every struggle and every victory
Meticulously crafted upon the bare canvas
Like a war zone with an abundance of pent up zest
Finally unleashing itself upon the page
So, write, my fellow Writers
Write fearlessly
And our stories will prevail
They will impact even just one person
Who thought they were all alone,
Perhaps like we once felt.
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 2:01 AM UTC
i. you will miss him in drizzles and monsoons, in swells and tsunamis. you will listen to his favorite song for hours; it will hit you every unexpected moment. it will hurt, stab, ache, and you will suppress constant screams with strained lips.
ii. you will collect everything he gave to you and wonder if it is dimensionally real. you will sleep in his shirts, retaste saltwater kisses, and reread conversations as if there's something you missed the previous thirty times. absence does not make the heart grow fonder; it rips it apart and you cannot stitch the ragged halves with no thread.
iii. you will feel his touch presently in everything you do. it will be soft and cruelly comforting. it will constantly and inescapably linger. it will haunt you in early rainy mornings and dark lonely evenings.
iv. you will read endless musings on love and philosophy. you will entirely understand foucault's prison. you will live in steinbeck's tide pools and stars, and relate to simon bolivar trapped in his labyrinth. you will wonder why everything is like this, ugly and broken (and also if you are becoming delusional).
v. you will drink tea that scalds your tongue and stand outside on freezing nights, numb and overfeeling at the same time. you will ask the silent moon a thousand questions. you will see him and blink, head swimming, heart pounding in surges. the stars will wink and the wind will mock you.
vi. you will have blissful afternoons you forget and sorrowful nights you remember. it will still consume you in bouts, devour you in spells. nighttime will become both your enemy and remedy: it will wickedly remind you, yet help you heal.
vii. you will try and fail to make sense of him (and the universe in general). you will grapple with reality and yourself. perhaps you will never know why he stopped loving you: you will keep wondering how some things can just be left broken.
iix. slowly, slowly, you will sprout on your own; you will be tender and nearly whole. most importantly, you will realize his love brought you an entirely different kind of happiness.
ix. you will stop worrying and trying to piece together an empty puzzle. even the deepest scars find their way of fading. your mom was right: stop picking at the scab and your wound will heal.
x. you will learn to love yourself in ways he never could have loved you.
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 2:35 AM UTC
He's Uncle John to you, but John to the rest of us
Got a way of telling stories without the fanfare or the fuss
He can jump into any conversation, has a lot of stuff to say
and every bit is interesting 'cause that always been John's way.
There was one about his summer job before 1970,
paid to push a Swan-shaped boat off a dock in Asbury
With a grapple hook on a ten foot pole, or something of that sort
well he'd push 'em out and pull 'em in wasn't doing it for sport~
The same guy who owned the swan boats, tunneled love across the way
twice a week John worked the darkness, but preferred the light of day.
Played rhythm at the Upstage in band called 'Cory' later
workin' Perkins in West Belmar, took the name from the percolator
Around that time he grew his hair out, it was like an Afro-sheen
mistaken for Tinker, a surfboard chinker and drummer with Springsteen.
Cruisin' down around Brookdale in his '39 LaSalle
Met 'Stinky' Tink at Thompson Park, where he was singing with his pal
Hey John, you look like Tinker,
but now you favor Gere
a live ringer for Mike Richards,
and don't forget DeNir-
Oh, if you can't remember anything from 40 years ago
just ask your Uncle John who knows the time in Tokyo.
Oct 5, 2013
Oct 5, 2013 at 5:57 AM UTC
Wasn't I wanted
When I was there?
Your four sides to these long rides
of your square?
So say it, I don't want your copy and paste
I want your old broken self
Filled with liquor, and haste
The way shelves of fine China used to crash down
Inside of your chest when no one was around
You would grapple and shake, you would fall to the ground
And you'd cry
You'd cry.
Only I knew that sound.
I wish I weren't sour
Wish my thoughts about you
Didn't seize up and freeze the moment that they come through
I also wish you'd stop acting
Like I'm an asset of the past
Like you are happy now at last
You should see the way it hurts me.
It's selfish to act like I'd cross rivers for you
When you know I don't swim, unless you're drowning, too.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 9:52 PM UTC