"grapples" poems
_"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."_
-Maya Angelou
My soul is a sweetie:
She’s a cute but ****
with an infectious smile,
an enchanting personality.
She wears dark colors,
slightly goth makeup,
and thick-rimmed glasses.
She likes candles, tea,
sweaters, and cannabis,
and goes on long walks
in the woods by starlight.
She’s cool and confident,
outgoing and fun,
and as beautiful as
a moonrise reflected
off of a frozen lake.
She’s me.
But I am not her.
She’s the me inside
of the me inside of me.
She cries when my mind
grapples with the bounds
of the mental illness
that gives her life.
She screams in pain
when my mind tries
to rationalize her
and explain her away.
And she glows with joy
whenever I try
to grow closer to her.
She’s the part of me
I never asked for,
whose existence hurts
like a deep burn,
but nonetheless makes
me truly be myself.
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 11:57 AM UTC
Clarity has claws
Within her pouncing, padding paws
Laps up goat's milk raw
Grapples a teddy bear to songs
Tied to a robe's string
Well, she plays with literally everything-
Her eyes say exactly what she means.
No **** Clarity is a cat I call to come back
I find myself pleading for her return-
With the promise of a salmon snack,
In exchange for lessons learned,
But I only capture glimpses of her white and black
As she flashes by the doorway,
Always only doing things her own way.
Since her trust is hard-earned,
I coax her cleansing burn.
She climbs up my bare leg
With her razor sharp needles,
First thing in the morning without any warning
Clarity,
Why did I beg you to come near? ! don't tear !
I only wished for your soft vibrations in my ear !
It's so impossible to change your nature
I wasn't bleeding before you were here, but your message is pure
You only come running when you're hungry!
&Would you really eat me if I died?
The way you watch with such wild eyes,
(I'm sad to know I shouldn't be surprised)
Your tapping tail compromises your position,
Your crystal clear intention
To play with your prey before you ****** and eat them
Clarity,
embodying the way her name hides and smiles, pounces for a scream
as if she were mean!
Sneaks off to surprise her next unsuspecting victim
-
Tummy full,
Warm purr, a welcome buzz
She comes, she plays with, she eats my ego, she loves, she kneads, she purrs, she leaves, I plead
ah, Clarity
-Hayleo Liz
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 10:09 PM UTC
Look at yourself
All *****
Blackened with a sour demeanor
Rip the top off
Take a look inside
An endless carousel
See the stars
And be thrown to the next page
Never to come back again
The stories for the next chapter
Clenching to previous excursions
Remnants, recollections of once new beginnings
Once you start you can’t stop
Can't turn and have second thoughts
Once you’re out
You’re gone
Falling to pieces
Smoking, dangling
A mental spasm
A lapse, relapse
Push them away
They speak too loud and bright
A half baked scheme
It’s something to pass the time
Hedges of red
Busted fence posts
Inconspicuously
Punctured shell
To the roots
Vibrations to my brain
Purple furlough
Roofs fall
Pedal till they bleed
Bleed dry to the bone
Till the bone breaks
And the pain grapples me into submission
We ignore the fruits in front
Of us for the mirages
We pretend are real
Putting In hope and taking out lies
Riding the ignorant air of pride
Crawl in desperation to continue
It wouldn’t lie
Stick to the plan
Raise the voice
So they hear and believe
We won’t stop till it’s found
They won’t stop till I’m in the ground
Buried, out to pasture
Fresh fertilizer here
I hear his deceit meshed
Deeply in his voice
Yet I fool myself to
Believe due to my denial of doubts
It won’t let me continue
Smile for no reason
When I think about it
Disorientation follows
Don’t utter another word
The grass is dead on both sides
So let’s make them equally green
Plant the seed
Pack a lunch
As we walk, we remember
The lesson we were taught to never
Tread here
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 12:52 PM UTC
It's telling looking through
the window’s eyes ;
a room with a paling grey glass view
befogs the clouds reign inside the storm
Often feeling misbegotten regret
for the unfiltered passing glimpses,
whetstone honed and splayed ;
raw hues of a latent life exposed
There's an uncertain hidden shame
in the unheard truth
starving out in the cold;
dwelling in a petrifying silence
of a common hunger
the lonely do ache
Merciless hunger pangs
manifest and shake
with an unrelenting bitter taste ;
loneliness grapples and grips
like a silent earth quake
rattling a rib caged heart — writhing
as Autumn bares the trees
A jagged ambiguous fault line
ripples through the hollow echo ;
a bolt of lightning caught in a bottle
strikes — silently contained
swallowing the unspoken words
in a greater good
This broken merry-go-round
keeps turning round and round;
the great mandala spinning on
like a worn out hamster-wheel
without a conscious trace
of going anywhere out there
The place you come from
is gone when you leave it —
even if you really never
feel you were from anywhere
but a thousand unmarked mileposts
from out here somewhere adrift;
a pilgrimage towards understanding
why sometimes I don’t know
if I know who I am — or could have been —
waiting on a threadbare prayer
One-day the winds of change
will shapeshift — bye and bye ...
"When the light that's lost within us
reaches the sky"
Jesse Stillwater
November 2018
Nov 1, 2018
Nov 1, 2018 at 2:16 PM UTC
.
Fazzy moams on wivvel crusts
carry jazms on flocked pavs.
Rinkulled witty over sark
unburcoaled plinks of bloo.
Serry nark are they cronking
and fillipas grapples in kloque.
Verx on spappled gurns are they
torting through gattering weems.
Fernol wend the schism klone
Glolling fast in clutty pawk.
Scenty flox drozzle by teas
Nisting on cowt rinnalled dawn.
Yurish casts of nash pigoon
stoz over hinty-hanty bynum.
When in merdeen lemp quimsy
dilly noff flyx and wempwarble.
For loofin under korots mingle
At the imtem tong fallop.
Shoozy bales of cremp deflate
and gwample rooks the plisties.
©Pagan Paul (22/06/16)
Mar 8, 2017
Mar 8, 2017 at 7:45 PM UTC
Shrooming in the last light
Gold ignites the trees
My gaze is the eternal compass
Of broken Time
Truth grapples with my mind
As I photosynthesize in the residues,
The residues of the last light.
Jan 31, 2013
Jan 31, 2013 at 9:36 AM UTC
There are Angels among us
Metaphorical Angels
They have no wings to fly
No superhuman powers to call upon
And no ability to remain unseen
They dance to the tune of human need
Become a crescendo in this dark time
She leaves her little one asleep at dawn
With aching heart and weary eyes
For even Angels tire out
She enters Hell where monsters roam
Little creatures with verocious appetite
Leaving lungs and lamenting in their path
She stands her ground and grapples fear
For even angels are in need of courage
She gathers the sweat and blood and tears of strangers
And soothes them to life or death
Yet while she suffocates in misery and mask
Selfishness abounds outside
And those restrained insist on fun
They gather together in revelry
Kissing flesh and adoring sun
She sees them on the nightly news
While she strokes her daughters brow
And comforts her with unfulfillable promises
Yet though they have the right to be free
They make her burden heavy and sad
With more victims for her ordeal
Yes, they have the right to take the loaded gun
To play roulette with their stubborn lives
Yet when the game involves warheads and virus
They invite death for others too
Who did not choose to enter the deadly casino
For even angels die!
May 23, 2020
May 23, 2020 at 6:48 AM UTC
a shadow geist
out of the passing of time
reaches in me
grapples my heartstrings
tugs me away like a
like a stranded coastliner
and as it goes, I go,
and as you watch
in the darkness of interstellar space
you dim
to all but a faint sparkle
undifferentiated from other stars
but I won't confuse or lose you
I'll remember you
Even if I don't
I'll make something up in
place of the memory of you
I can't help but feel sorry
where am I now
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 1:04 PM UTC
the wood floor a sea
of contradictions
wake there with a disassembled
sense of last night
the fragments of a womans kiss
lay there pink lipstick clinging to its vestiges
shards of a rain swept street
and the quiet of a november thunderstorm
pools of darkness uninterrupted by the wind
pieces of a man laughing without humor
this wood floor holds the key
but to discover truth in the
littered expanse of bottles
benith the layers of dust lain down
by the years
the wood floor becomes a trap
a puzzle prison
the mind grapples with
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC
The only legacy of maturity is insensitivity
I will die old will think nothing of it.
The young tend sodium springs
All the while watched by the barren.
Muted observers to life labours conceiving gasp
Unwilling to interpret.
Bald cries to heaven go souls dug with grapples stuck.
Silence takes precedence in the right seat
Unlawful is the wrong
Red is the left
Old knows all is dark.
We run water to rid false colour
Run it until we are dry
Run it until we are black.
Apr 25, 2012
Apr 25, 2012 at 9:00 AM UTC
What keeps their ball still rolling?
her innuendos he grapples with,
his enthusiasm she can't fathom,
ambiguity does the trick!
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 10:30 PM UTC
1221
Some we see no more, Tenements of Wonder
Occupy to us though perhaps to them
Simpler are the Days than the Supposition
Leave us to presume
That oblique Belief which we call Conjecture
Grapples with a Theme stubborn as Sublime
Able as the Dust to equip its feature
Adequate as Drums
To enlist the Tomb.
1.5k
Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirts of happy chance,
And ******* the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star;
Who makes by force his merit known
And lives to clutch the golden keys,
To mould a mighty state's decrees,
And shape the whisper of the throne;
And moving up from high to higher,
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope
The pillar of a people's hope,
The centre of a world's desire;
Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,
When all his active powers are still,
A distant dearness in the hill,
A secret sweetness in the stream,
The limit of his narrower fate,
While yet beside its vocal springs
He play'd at counsellors and kings,
With one that was his earliest mate;
Who ploughs with pain his native lea
And reaps the labour of his hands,
Or in the furrow musing stands;
'Does my old friend remember me?'
1.2k
Caught in the tangled, death of weeds
I hear the shots ring out
It has begun--
between the fading day of sky and hollow
crackling ice beneath my feet
Again, resounding shots above my head
with baying hounds
and threat of voices blazoning the prey
I do as I have always done--
make a run for it….
and always, in the past
I seemed to get away
My soul is sinking, this time
along with boots in ******* mud
-soaked panic-sweat
clambering up a bank in naked peril
numb with cold
Heaving breaths billow
onto frigid air
Stumbling sluggish
Moments cling
Inertia--
grapples for an edge...
With all my body's strength
exhausted longing
I heave myself back...
Fear floods out
like birth
into the lake of waking
A long time there
I lay
paralyzed, dumbfounded
Oct 20, 2017
Oct 20, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC
Fantasy grapples with reality
Distorted and mangled ideas
Waiting to infuse the drudgery
Into the freshness of fantasy
Churning viciousness into potion
Gifting death to the believers
Let the imagination become stronger
To make fantasy bolder than reality
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 8:54 AM UTC
the haaaannnggg in hangover grapples
my chest like another sad defeat. some
created battlefield felt my angel control
nothing, control nothing. I cry at constant
implication, and the choice is yours again.
you, with your busy life, pick my heart like
a puppeteer having not yet noticed the strings.
I pull in all directions and wonder why I do
this to myself; why I look for pegs to stick the
strings together, hand you a puppeteer's hand-
book and tell you my world is always ending
whenever you're around.
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 5:58 PM UTC
**the depths beyond light
of dark primordial fears
ensnared in a trap of
winding dangerous paths
'tween passion and fire,
horizons like ink clouded seas
of menacing madness and
drunkenness' sanity midst
psychobabble's inquisitions
rushing rampant to devour
an overgrown hypothesis
of imagination's luxuriance
and anesthetics' coherency,
taming perpetual motion
of windswept emotions
lingering in shadows of
moonbows after resolute
mind bending storms of
teeming reigns &
elusive transcendence
amid skillfully evasive grapples
beyond liberated rationality**
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 9:29 AM UTC
Hanging from the rockface
fingers chalked, knuckles white
breathing in the view.
Feeling the rush, hearing the roar
gulls circle above, as you run below,
small against the landscape
kicking up sand and laughter
begging to join me up here
pleading to play with grapples and knots
no fear of falling, no fear at all,
there is no danger in danger when you're 6
Not when your Dad is Spiderman.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:24 AM UTC
Dark waters kissing my feet
Calling my name as if it was a dream
All the surroundings simply bleak
Despair surrounds the valley so serene
Still the beauty cannot attract
As much as at ruins of castles, remained intact,
Flooding water clashing against its walls
Still the trembling castle stands tall.
Spiritless winds leave trails on my hair
My hair flying only till the winds blow
Then the unsettling silence dons to dare
As the whispering winds vanquish their flow.
I seek for silence
But now it's uncomfortable
I have nature but whispering violence
Which sadly grapples
The misery and mysteries of this incomplete ruin.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 5:07 PM UTC
Fear spreads like a chill
It ripples over my spirit
The way the autumn wind makes my body quiver
Fear infects what heals me
Sleep turns into torment
It's sweet embrace offers shallow solace
Fear makes rest strenuous
Nightmares find my weaknesses
My soul is shredded instead of sewn
Fear caresses my madness
If I take the sweet ******
I risk finding the dwelling of my terror
Fear grapples with need
I am addicted to sleep
With more ferocity than nicotine or alcohol
Fear is strong at night
The darkness feeds it
The infinite space gives its vastness advantage
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 1:32 AM UTC
Memories are like fireflies in the dark of her loss
Where love grapples to know bounds only the spirit can cross.
I experienced the intangible breath of her soul
As it escaped and created this invisible hole.
Her small, fleeting life showed me that I can't always hold on
But precious things must be cherished even after they're gone.
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 3:41 PM UTC
*you ask why I linger here long
and do not return to the centers of power
and human endeavor…
it’s all but a life of conditioning and structures…*
if you ask me,
human enterprise and human life
are tiresome…and mediocre…
it is a life of basics and self-interests
and finger-pointing
and it is all partial and focused
that grapples with ******* of the parts
but misses the whole…
and one never sees the hubris within;
the errors, it seems, are always elsewhere…
but see, there is no change
without the change in oneself
and so it is that I linger here long
to observe and to see within myself
to see within, and so understand…
for within this chaos of one
within one
there is always but a pointing to the externals
and so the world goes on, and has always been
a world of groups built on mutual lies
so one can feel special and chosen and blessed
and recipient of Highest Revelations
within the group
and feel O so right
and feel O so safe
and feel O so true…
there is always but a feeling – but not the thing…
there is but conditioning and a building
and that structure is added to on and on…
and so I linger amongst these mountains
and streams and trees and the open
and I observe these with no preconceptions
and linger in that which comes of no future or past
and I observe myself, my mind, my thoughts
and what it is that is called ‘I’…
and so I linger here long…
Jul 27, 2011
Jul 27, 2011 at 5:55 PM UTC
with cords electric, you've strung me stinging, with them, me. your mouth
is an apple. your mouth is a fragrant cavern.
in which is my my mouth. mingling. from them springs a mountain
of wind. your hands are, on your wrists, pale spiders. on me slung. your web
of cool scuttling love. on my belly.
you go supple. into palms. they are a colour. your colour. the colour of death
just before you live. you are strenuous. a boundless taught moment. of unugly caffeine. i am a noise.
and you are a colour. you said it in me. big and tiny. in my tiny bigness.
and in the backyard. by the sleeping pile of forests. you draw the hammer
of your guns. and i wilt.
sprouting. effortlessly. infinitely. eating the gilt purse of your pinkest tiny.
and we are like wind. who grapples with leaves. and they touch like
lovers. we are like that.
like health. like sickness. freshly shearing. every molecule of our bodies
onto the indigo eaves of eve. quickly, carnivorously, slaughtering light.
let's then just be.
in quiet. and symmetry.
cords electric. strummed with fallen night.
Apr 30, 2011
Apr 30, 2011 at 3:17 PM UTC
i.
Kathy tells me about god in the bathroom stall.
She tells me about the time when he told her
that we’re really all just suffering together.
“I was at Harry’s basement party,
drunk leaning against a wall, standing by myself,” she says.
She says she can taste the suffering the most when she’s standing in church,
eating one of those **** communion wafers.
I laugh without knowing; I’ve yet to eat a communion wafer.
ii.
When Kathy gets really drunk
she grapples at my hand
and forces it to her skin.
She says my hand sobers her up
more than water does. When I touch her forearm
it is as though I am touching a dead infant.
When I touch skin I am thinking about standing outside
in air that could only be so cold in the summer,
my body all bare, my body standing outside
of a loud and lit up house
with me whispering, “please don’t touch me, just let me shiver,
just let me faint here peacefully.”
When I think of skin I think of my grandmother and her wrinkles,
of generations of wrinkles.
Looking into the bathroom mirror
I see the body of my grandmother and the face of my mother.
I am desperate for a toilet.
iii.
Kathy knows about the days when all I do is eat.
She knows about how much I like peanut butter,
about how my skin sags from my ankles,
hangs around my wrists. But still
she holds me when I must *****
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 4:14 AM UTC
A poet is an ordinary human being
But he always thinks of others’ well being
He often grapples with the problem of rhyming
And aims to post his poem with great timing
A poet usually writes with great passion
And he is a person of great emotion
He may have certain personal blemishes
But he tries to write with beautiful flourishes
A poet promptly responds to what happens around
Her knowledge of the world is very sound
She lives with the quite common man
But thinks like a superman and supra human
A poet has great social responsibility
He tries to present the reality
He may suffer from vanity
But he is never devoid of humanity
Feb 13, 2011
Feb 13, 2011 at 4:37 AM UTC