"heirlooms" poems
I believe it was the sawdust of summer when I found your voice in a shadow of a song it reminded me of my past hurt. You sang so beautifully of lilacs and photogenic water, you build harmonies powerful enough to save angels in a storm.
Quickly I caught on and held tight to your butterflies you called lyrics. You spoke of love like you had a doctrine in it. I thought for men love was a learning curve. You proved me wrong. You did not just create music and magic you birth colors out of sound and called them stories.
You blurred the lines between reality and fantasy. I bet your music is similar to the way God speaks. I bet you discovered a guitar inside of a black deity and the piano inside of a white devil's broken heart.
Prince, I bet you can play anything even the fossils of flowers.
Your music is an endless drug, a purple high. Listening to you made me feel like all four seasons cuddled up with a kiss.
Tell me when did you get tired of playing love songs?
When did balancing the moon and a microphone become all too much for you? Who choked the life out of your vocal chords? **** I would give almost anything to hear you live again! To wear your songs in my ears like Heirlooms. Oh Wait, I think I get it. Is this how you go beyond means of self to teach us dead silence is music too?
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 9:11 AM UTC
i hail from heat, heat
in the heart and in the home, in the head and in the heel of the
sword that swings for both justice and action.
i inherit this love, this life and these virtues like heirlooms.
i inherit this boldness from you
i inherit the air of a highborn lady, while not without the humility of a low born daughter from you
i inherit gentle hands of craft into fists of rage and fire that melt away sorrows from you
i rise and fall, for from you
i breathe.
unspoken it was passed down, and yet it stirs and whispers to me in my bones of
ancient thought and force,
passed down from kin to kin, from one blood to another of
temperance and will
that flow like tradition—
a book written on age-old sandstone pressed eons below the earth,
text mapped in bloodlines over a body, not alone. never fading.
you bid me to rise from dust and ashes into the woman of your forging,
and so with a kiss between my brow for
farewell and fortune
i may live with your light tucked into my heart,
because my inheritance lives within me.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 11:51 AM UTC
With a warm load of folded laundry under my chin
I head toward Daniel’s sock drawer
Pulling on the carefully crafted handle I see
My grandfather cutting and planning the cherry tree
Dropped by Hurricane Carol in 1954
Wood shavings fall about his work boots as he
Shapes each panel, never using a ruler, all by eye
Boxing the frame, sizing the drawers, sanding surfaces
By hand, hence 60 years of grandkids and great grandkids socks
The drawer closes effortlessly with a sound
Of living heirlooms and heritage
Of legacy and family
A sound that everything is safe inside
That memorials are made to last
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 8:55 AM UTC
A timber night in a dark way can't stay for long
plowed down, scorched down - must be torn down
kings of city pipes, dusty concrete heirlooms, read a bible to sleep
Wake in the morning, sun rays shine through dust ridden books
Morals, condoned in heart shaped smoke clouds
Greed's arms will swell rejecting midnights' hiss' "Where will they live?"
'Sirrrrrrrr' 'Homeeee'...... Floating like gas particles, words lost.
A stand alone will die to unknown prosperity
ropes straggle helpless branches
Clenching their last breathes, the weeping skies sit silently
Hateful hateful hunger, feeding the bodies thirst
Our midnight Cowboy song goes: Manufactured green, leaving scorched earth barren, unwritten torch, unseen
For we saw what we wanted to.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC
**the banner photograph that the poem references is off now, but...
The poem is about a photo I took, outside looking in, where the window and an interior mirror, both reflected me, outside, outwards, but caught the interior of the house within, and the interior of our lives, which was my intent, but the poem came later....
a self portrait,
a reflection
in a window, in a mirror.
a man stick figure
within and without.
me hidden, armed,
iPad spyglass
one upon the other,
unaware of observation,
introspection / extrospection.
man, external,
grilling striped bass,
woman, internal,
kitchen caught slicing heirlooms,
a dressing awaits,
peach salsa,
the seagulls inform me.
Outdoors, indoors.
bay,
in the background.
living room, kitchen,
in the foreground
couching, crouching, cooking,
a closeup and landscape,
of two lives.
so the photo treatment,
introspection / extrospection,
upon reflection,
a poem ouside-insight.
a moment to reflect upon a reflection of a moment.
this how I see things,
and why not you too?
Double vision.
outside, looking in, inside, looking outward.
then,
at the point of intersection,
a memory recorded,
always recording,
paths, moments,
worthy of note.
such a note, here,
record of a photograph.
preserving my preservation.
tho photo blurry,
what you see,
is what I see.
lives of symmetry
summer symmetry is my life.
life is my summer symmetry.
exactly.
August 2012
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 2:14 PM UTC
Already the month
of August 2018,
May never become
a je June'm
(Forget-me-not)
time of year,
especially for nouveau
homeless and,
penniless residents,
(now more like worrier),
who reside in the
(burnt to a crisp)
Golden State where,
towering uncontrollable
wild fire infernos veer
really did tax mental,
physical, and spiritual
oye vey iz mare (to
the bajillion power
of Google Plex) their
heirlooms, mementos,
and trappings of
das kapital lifestyle
went up in smoke,
which tragedy didst seer
the eyes (yes, iz traumatic,
but also the air)
looms with toxic
particulate matter,
though concerned former
propertied owners
(now ashen faced)
as utter grief doth rear
a scorched (bumping) ugly head,
yet the onset of Autumn,
(and the main
purport of this poem)
(oh my dog, that twill be
in approximately three weeks,
when Eastern Orthodox Church
denotes beginning of ecclesiastical
annum mull house
for straight or queer
(these times opening
doors to LGBT, or GLBT
(an initialism that
stands for lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender),
nonetheless history
replete with app pear
chock full of factoids such as:
September (Latin septem,
"seven") with near
exhaustive steeped in
pagan glory of antiquity.
Ancient Roman observances
for September include:
Ludi Romani, originally celebrated
September 12 - September 14,
later extended to
September 5 to September 19.
In 1st century BC, an extra day added
in honor of deified
Julius Caesar on 4 September.
Epulum Jovis held: September 13.
Ludi Triumphales held: September 18–22.
Septimontium celebrated September, and
December 11 on later calendars
September called "harvest month"
in Charlemagne's calendar.
September corresponds partly to
Fructidor and partly to Vendémiaire
of first French republic.
On Usenet, September 1993
(Eternal September) never ended.
September called Herbstmonat,
harvest month, in Switzerland.
The Anglo-Saxons called
month Gerstmonath,
barley month, that crop
then usually harvested.
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 5:00 PM UTC
Let me know the sweetness of the canopy. The gentle cygnet garden you express in rows. I drift upon the aching embers of the bark of midnight's supper, its kingdom of darkness that I lay upon. Suspended in the air, rocking steadily on a distant plateau, tilling the granules of the earth in my map-lined hands; I pinch the rocks and sand kernels naming places as I snap my fingers. I go to the top of the city I know, a small yellow house in a crowd of tall aspens- and the Catholic church sends me soda and small biscuits, and the Hebrews help me be a better man.
I go to a place which has very small rooms. My legs are like a giant world-sized forklifts that carry the heirlooms of my parents in and out of this universe into another. I make a stride to catch a glimpse of you in passing. I tilt my eyes. I hope that I can see how beautiful you are, once more, if only I lift my head towards the way in which I know you, or the way in which I once had.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:43 AM UTC
...Our bodies,
clothed,
our souls,
naked,
our Selves,
exposed,
under the glow,
so sacred,
the glow,
of the deep red moon,
in it’s eclipse,
in our eclipse,
more than epic,
everything all of it,
love crazy as a lunatic,
this is honestness,
in all honestness,
all of us,
involved not embroiled,
incense,
and oils,
timeless heirlooms of pheromones,
undertones of unknowns future plans postponed,
the core of our chromosomes covered in ecstatic moans,
the world our throne ET finally phoned home,
emotions amplified no microphone,
thrown into our sensory’s cyclone,
zoning in the zone she shook me to my bones,
bones,
ashes,
dust,
memories,
amnesia memories,
for as quickly as she’d appeared,
she vanished in an instant,
gone like a forgotten prophecy…
from The H Trilogy Vol. 1
available worldwide
∆
Jul 24, 2016
Jul 24, 2016 at 6:08 PM UTC
Sanded down,
handed down
heirlooms
for boardrooms.
Directors prospecting for
antique positions,
commission based,
cyanide laced contracts,
small print that annihilates,
dilating the pupils ,restrictive
and
pencils that scribble out names in
a ledger.
Forever indebted,
a debit individual.
All residual profit
reinvested,
future proofed
heirlooms.
Jan 2, 2015
Jan 2, 2015 at 1:48 PM UTC
Fall to me, all you streets of Rome,
With your embrowned oils from torched walls and breccia of shadows,
The pizzicato of stairways and afternoon slowly closed
Like the thick, leathery-echo from this book of all roads.
Fallen, smoldering empire of storefronts and back-shop heirlooms,
Your lupine hills unbound with milk of cur in the wind and woods,
To your fallow fields rowed deep by a conquest of oars,
To the deepest silence and soot-muted oneness of Pompeii,
And a sky that is an ancient coin, without worth,
But still rubbed smooth at the edges by overfond lovers.
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 4:16 PM UTC
The light quit working in the jukebox,
the melodies' surrender,
a commonplace extinction,
against the salt and the breeze
of your false Mediterranean.
The burden of your rational soul
in a world of extremes
has torn your spirit to tatters-
tatters littered across
your Toronto abode.
Divided amongst the heirlooms
and emptied bottles.
This desolation you
sought to translate
for the harmonious pulse
of the dial tone.
Hazy,
is this ancient mind,
a smoking fallout of
yesterday's parties
to be discussed over
lukewarm coffee
and cigarette butts,
while the shivering streams
and green plains become
commodified for a higher power.
Dan, my dearest friend,
I loved you
ferocious and freely,
fanged and supremely,
and as your mind coagulated
on a couch,
microphone in-hand,
I felt nostalgic for
your clumsy alcoholism,
and clumsier guitar strumming.
The white fog descends,
the city is hungry--
no longer can it expand.
Toronto eats itself
with you inside,
shall I write you a postcard?
Shall I kick down your door?
Shall I let you join the bones
you so beautifully alluded to?
Whisper, my friend,
amidst the soft croon of
the saxophone,
whisper, my friend,
of a Europe gone defective,
whisper, my friend,
for an apocalypse of sun
to release us all from
the white fog slowly burying
our Toronto.
Feb 9, 2011
Feb 9, 2011 at 7:18 PM UTC
i would compromise
--i compromise. i appear to i mean,
with peace-demeanor customized for show
paraded there and there, obeisant nonsense
in a confidence of meek to render compliments
crowding infancies of all
for the sake of art
i bend my frame about cliche
to have a human dragon claim
"the real persists unknown"
and gather at a sacred dolmen
fascinating morals sung beneath the stars and sun--
you said there was a butterfly
tasting at my skull, shaking with uncommon music too..
its skinny, immigrant feet abuzz
within the world they called a One, wings on pause, my eyebrows in flight.
a blanket iris cries warmth
in clusters hung ripe, filming over all
a native ceremonial, falsepolitik
i pluck at them atop a fence
obscure for comforts masking truth
discarded, found, fashioned
into furniture for candled houses
built with children's sons
where families try to see
a clearing in the warping
mirrors saddled with a dripping time no illustration comprehends
. wooden beams help it rise and dim,
the sunny lie, genuinely fake,
authentic trick of aeons hidden in the true
-- growing young, stemming back
to foil brighter undiscoveries for otherwisely
patient basements full of heirlooms,
sheik dining areas all
nodding over cheap wine we still manage to squint up at nothing at
in apple layers
symbolizing tidy crimes invented ceaselessly,
serving existential voids--
grace, fall, stumble catch
acquired tones of oak or berry--
other fruits would do, or none,
as i still feel
praised by your rejections --
when indifference gains a sweetness
like a novel vengeance won
i am indulging villainy
workshopping staling norms,
garden dark as cultivated loam.
where i am words
mooding intellect to torment,
faun complexity awry
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
Sit back and over-analyse
the lies that you were serving my mind.
Providing a way to relate
and trying not to overcompensate
for my lack of you,
I should have known you’d
***** and moan enough that
in time,
I could make your whines rhyme.
(Maybe that’s why your speaker points
were always the lowest.)
In this debate,
rate my way and rate of diction,
because truth is stranger than fiction
I sigh
cause I’m lying through my teeth
when I say “I’m okay”.
Sit back and wait for
what you think you have to say
We wager away our
bad experiences,
nearing another night of searing
dreaming
playing make-believe
with a ballpoint pen.
Remember the way all this started
with an oration and the weight
of what came to be a bad break up
make up
break up
wake up
to a world where you two don’t fit together.
Force your cracks into each others’
like broken heirlooms
Shake off the dust,
Can’t shake the thought that you’d be happier
without me.
I can’t see through this cloud of doubt without
an explanation,
an answer to the chance
that I can’t distinguish
the morning dew from her rose petals
that she tried to drown you in
from your tears.
“If this ain’t love
then how do we get out?”
Get out of this mess,
regress back into an obsession
with death,
and destruction,
let me provide some instruction
on obstructing these thoughts
that threaten to consume
what I assume is your last shred
of sanity.
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 11:12 PM UTC
summers bleeding and wilted sunflowers pour from wounds
we cant see the cake for the trees
but darling well make it if the angels rip hair from our heads
can you feel mist whipping through your sinal cavities
and wrapping your fingers in layers of burnt cotton
i could press contractions against your cheek
and stare your heartbeats into submission
but i wont darling can you see the ocean now
were awfully close so shut the door
i dont want to see family heirlooms in the bark
of trees too old to die
i wrote you paragraphs and notebooks
you could never read them because i
i cant burn christmas trees without shuddering
the metro is starting to grate on me get
out of here this is no place for you
we dont have a plot because we are
not characters and there is no conflict except in here
Oct 31, 2010
Oct 31, 2010 at 3:13 PM UTC
laying on the table
burnt out,
contorted fossils
your lineages penises
dried up artifacts
lying in wait,
lined up neatly
10 in total
a collection regal
arranged for a visitor to see
my father
his father
& his before
crispy yams worth their weight in gold and in favour
'As you see Douglas was exceptional. . .
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 2:30 AM UTC
Crisp summer breeze tickle wreaths of May blooms
Yellow flats traipse blocks where blue ocean looms
Serene waves greet shore's walls in fervent kiss
Moon's afterglow brush the scene in pure bliss
Fine sand witness time like dateless heirlooms
Brine's musk basks nightfall in coastal perfumes
Woven foams' calm poise in fond reminisce
With each cycle's ending, they go amiss
Red heels graze concrete in sultry whispers
As the salt-rimmed glass plays in my fingers
Gotcha!—my hapless victim for tonight
Caught my breath, it only faintly lingers
In front I stand, a door with four ciphers
"Aphrodite, save me" begins the plight
Apr 6, 2020
Apr 6, 2020 at 12:04 PM UTC
keep this.
it's yours. you might enjoy the rambling brook with both toes.
we can't sleep now. this is how jailbreak is **** Salomon's Mines, all yours.
say what you will. i got you. relax and configure
the dark nook of my profile...
come at me at an angle, and i'll arrive untethered; coping with real ****
stitching heirlooms to re-breathers... pinning neon
to your gold tooth.
all dribble. no bib.
just an avalanche of weightlessness, jamming signals. a sumptuous void,
undulating in indefinitely... keeping me sane and losing my things.
in ivory towers of strange radio
this is eclipse....
gone nova.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 12:26 PM UTC
a costume party in my father’s house.
my mother
in her Sunday best.
little old
hermetic
me.
loudest brother
in the attic
with a stick.
in his mouth.
my most housebroken
sister?
basement, on a stack of bibles.
other siblings, non locals, dogs, my father…
all in the mind
of your private
nudist.
Apr 17, 2013
Apr 17, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
How long did it take you to craft that ring?
did it start with all the pressure with the promise of a gem
did you cut it with your tongue like all that you condemn,
did the band wrap round like the words you snare
or was it wholly circled and you just the heir,
It looks tarnished and beaten with sickly green hues
but it still sparkles in the light every time it moves,
it makes your hand look pretty wrapped around my neck
with all its worth its just an aesthetic wreck,
A shine so bright but you can see right through
a pathetic lineage, thats all they knew.
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 3:46 PM UTC
Oh, how I pity my poor pessimist
Do you not mind what I scribe?
Does curiosity never approach you
When I know you can't sleep at night
If you do, I hope you discover
That I write simply- you & I.
With my being beyond the horizon
In these words you must rely
A carpenters daughter,
(It's true) I was never taught, how to fix the lonely
But I assure you dear
You won't be in the slightest disappointed
My entire life is an intricate patchwork
Of multiple afflictions
Through hotel rooms & glamour
Abuse & drug addiction
*"Through bathrooms & ballrooms
On dumpsters & heirlooms"
Baby, we'll be fine
I know in my minds eye
We'll be fine*
As for the sea
I feel the vibrato,
A ripple when you're lonely
But the tides will greet you, excited at the pier
To bring you back home to me
For darling,
I long only to bury my tear-stained face
In the man too far to say he's home
I do not choose the life I live but it's the only one I can call my own.
*One day
I promise
You will wake in bliss
Between ruffled sheets
And my petite, contented figure
The pessimist will embody nothing
But the purest form of happiness*
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 8:35 AM UTC
I have hidden incognito a decade in this desert,
enscounced in the Bad Lands of a wasted life,
evading both politics and the Bureau of Statistics,
immersed in maths for senseless games of chance.
I forget promises and birthdays with equal disregard,
attempt mental reconstructions of past events,
seeking the forgiveness I have no power to grant,
all my atoms expanding heirlooms of critical mass.
The gravitational attraction of lifelong friendships,
dithers perception at the horizon of a span of years,
warping the wormhole space between our arms, our minds.
I need only for you to ask that I should stay.
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 11:31 AM UTC
Blown glass heartbeat,
With an extension cord, the vibrations are distancing themselves,
Between macabre and *** luck and **** luck- And affection-
Are heirlooms cry of antique tears.
San Francisco Chronicle:
“Boeing kidnaps…”
And my soul bottled up in an hour layover heist.
Boeing adult-naps.
Texas.
Texas.
Texas.
Amarillo beehive hair across the aisle, smoke and honey.
It stings my tongue, kisses my lungs, legs-crossed on the highest rung.
The Miller High Life-esque, reclining on a quarter moon.
Here we are, patience and mercy.
Here we are patience.
Here we are.
Here.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 5:45 PM UTC
I feel sick.
The taste of cigarettes
In ash-colored air -
The two are non-sequential.
Cigarettes taste like home.
The good part of home.
The part of home
That silences my mother’s mouth;
Preventing the vices of its tongue
And the stresses that cause them.
Over generation.
Over generation.
You are your mother.
A compilation of love
Forced by proved masculinity
In your open cavities.
And my father said...
Well -
He didn’t.
Words failed him,
As he failed us.
Silence and cigarettes.
Over generation.
Over generation.
Aug 17, 2012
Aug 17, 2012 at 6:06 AM UTC
“My Hero, Shes The Last Real Dreamer I Know”
She Taught Me How To Live, With Outstretched Palms Reaching Toward The Sky Like Branches On Trees. She Sought Sunlight Like A Love Drug, And Fought Disaster With A Unknown Word In My Vocabulary.
It Was Something Called Hope.
She Smiled, Only When She Meant It, And Told Me That Happiness Is Beautiful. Taught Me That Its Easy To Find, Exchanged On Street Corners And Sold In Candy Stores. She Taught Me To Give It Away Too, To Hand It Out Like Heirlooms To Memory.
She Told Me To Give It To People Who Needed It, Like Cancer Patients And Babies With Broken Families.
Devastation Followed Her Like A Storm, And I Always Stayed Ten Paces Behind. I Could Feel The Rain Before She Ever Could.
But She Told Me To Tape My Eyes Open, And Wait For The Oncoming Storm. It Was Like Lightening Inside The Contours Of My Skull, And My Hand Would Reach For Her's, Beauty Fighting With Perfection.
And Our Hands Would Meet, Fingers Threading Together Like A Zipper Of Prayer.
She Had Wounds. Ones We'd Learn To Heal Together, And The Renaissance Of Reality Was An Eternity Spent Being Left To Our Own Devices, Turned Deity Upon Ourselves.
She Also Taught Me To Not Be Afraid, When She Had Betrayal Written On Her Skin, And Words Like “Back Stabbed” Rung In That Air, She Knew It Had Happened So Many Times, A Transformation Had Begun. No Longer Human, But Something Else Entirely.
Her Children Taking Root In Soil, She Knew The Empty And Aching Wounds Were Like Holes In A Watering Can. She Was Meant To Be Who She Was, From Where She Had Been, And Going Only Where She Chose To Go. She Is Beautiful But Vices Hold Grips On The Insides Of Her Ribs, As If She Is Too Afraid To Inhale.
But She Is Beautiful.
Fear Takes Solstice In The Weak And The Wounded, And She Has No Stock In Fear. Love
Is Like Blossoms On Roses, But Thorns Draw Blood Just As Quick As Needles Do, And We Learned That A Long Time Ago.
She Taught Me That Devastation Is Beautiful, That Hope Can Not Be Fished Out Of Wishing Wells, And That When Hour Glasses Get Glued To Table Tops, Time Is Not Measured By The Breaths We Take, But By The Moments That Take Our Breath Away.
She Tells Me Shes Proud Of Me, But I Want To Her To Know I'm Proud Of Her, And Distance Stretches Between Us, A Distance The Size Of Bravery.
So To The Woman Who Told Me That Dragons Do Not Exist, And Then Led Me To Their Lairs, I Love You.
I Always Have. And Always Will.
Feb 27, 2012
Feb 27, 2012 at 8:16 PM UTC