"hemline" poems
It was her grandmother’s,
on her step-mother’s side,
not really a relative at all.
A hideous thing, it was,
crudely constructed yards
of yellowing ivory, with
giant creampuff shoulders
and a scratchy hemline.
The bodice was decorated,
sprinkled with dull gems,
crusty pearls.
The veil was, by far,
the worst offender.
A gauze with blotchy
brown stains, misshapen
holes, gnawed by rats.
She bit her lip as her step-
mother wrinkled her brow,
poking at the skirt, the train,
hoping it would burst like an
odd bubble or
mushroom at
any moment.
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 6:03 PM UTC
Mind your manners
Mind how you speak
Mind the hemline of your dress,
and the curves of your *******
Mind your business
Mind your make-up
Mind your desires
Mind your men,
because don’t you know that
‘behind every great man lies a woman’?
Mind your mind,
for your thoughts even,
are too risky for our youth
Mind your Truth
Mind your Self
Mind your entire beautiful Being,
but please
for the love of God,
don’t mind this when we’re in bed
--PY
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 2:55 PM UTC
Your cruel crimson lips
Blood dripping from your finger tips
My love a shattered work of art
The result of my broken heart
Splatters of scarlet hope
Mark the sheets where we eloped
My love a discarded virginity
The result of my mistaken affinity
Garnet was the decadent shade
Of the dress that veiled my vestal glade
My love a slippery hemline
The result of my relentless pine
The rusty curls on your head
Delivered me willingly into the bed
My love a handful of tangled hair
The result of my wanton affair
The flowers he sent were red
Reluctantly, I told him you were dead
My love a half-hearted lie
The result of my wandering eye
A ring offered, of ruby and gold
Silver is better, but I was sold
My love a rehearsed song
The result of my doing wrong
A burgundy kiss for a charming knight
A wedding of chastity white
My love a perfected role
The result of my injured soul
An artificial cherry-flavored ***********
Sloppy second copulation
My love a feigned first
The result of my unquenched thirst
The sheet is stained with merlot
Out with the trash, then he will never know
My love a memorized line
The result of my spilled debaucherous wine.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 2:53 AM UTC
Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow,
From coiled lips of your wolf-god Apollo
Whose dawn-padded paws to starprints roam
This temple-tribute to thought-illumined roads.
Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow
Of wave upon wave of your brushings-by,
From staff to sandal-fall to cloak hemline,
For rhapsodes, your song-odyssey to sew.
The Greeks built the sun,
Upon scaffolding~acrobaticon~
With pear-skinned lightness to glow,
Or like leavened bread from the woodburning stove.
Blow, Lyceum grasses, blow,
The sun lies old on its famine-cracked pillow,
In spittle of gold and yellowed phosphorous,
With the gods past-blown to ruin.
May 25, 2019
May 25, 2019 at 11:00 PM UTC
On really good days
I'll leave a crisp five
In the back pocket
Of my ratty blue jeans.
That way when my future self
Feels as fragile as spun sugar
But tastes like burned bitterness
And needs to shake herself awake
Drag herself from chore to chore,
Convince herself that collapsing isn’t a cure,
[Though doesn’t the cold tiled floor feel refreshing?]
She’ll only have clothed in comfort:
Her baggy gray sweatshirt,
Consuming her body whole,
Making her shapeless,
So maybe she can shape shift,
Into a bird or a bat or a pterodactyl,
And make the most of her new wingspan,
Flying further from her fractured reality,
Into a fabulously far-fetched fantasy.
Her ratty blue jeans haphazardly thrown on,
So worn that there are holes in the knees,
Frayed hemline attesting to the tired trampling,
But when she tries to shove a ***** tissue,
Into the back pocket hoping it’s mere placement,
Is enough to leave the memory behind her,
She’ll stumble upon a long forgotten monetary love note.
Yes, you do love yourself,
Yes, I know it’s rough now,
In fact, I guessed it way back when,
But life is just a series of juxtapositions,
And maybe you’re in a hole dug so deep,
That you’ve burrowed out into China,
And now look, really look,
You’ve got a world of exploring to do!
But if you’re not yet strong enough to
Climb the Great Wall,
Don’t you worry,
Building endurance takes some time,
But until then,
Here’s a crisp five,
Go buy a Kit-Kat,
A can of Sprite,
And a cheap horror flick,
And never forget,
I always love you.
Jul 28, 2013
Jul 28, 2013 at 9:02 PM UTC
I am the deer
Large shimmering eyes and slender limbs
A fawn with spots still on
Like the baby’s breath of the meadow in which I lay
Mocha fur shining in the morning sunlight
Face wet with dew from the chill of night
I am the deer
Mangled on the side of the road
Intestines on display for the vultures above
Legs twisted into a sick jigsaw puzzle
Killed by the man who worries about the machine
And drives away with apathy unwavering
I am the woman
Long, toned legs
Striding down a city sidewalk, wind in her hair
A statue, a monolith, an icon
Like a being carved from polished marble from the raw earth
A face of beauty incarnate
I am the woman
A dismembered body with DNA foreign to herself
Lying in a lake, the soil, a vat of oil
The threads of clothing cut too short like Fate’s own hemline
Killed by the man and his ego who worries if blood washes out
And walks away with apathy unwavering
It is a tragedy as old as time
That Mother Nature birthed daughters
Jan 31, 2024
Jan 31, 2024 at 8:34 PM UTC
Have you noticed the old pagan gods
are in fashion this year?
It's like that hemline thing,
a rising economy
raises all skirts.
Jan 17, 2011
Jan 17, 2011 at 10:17 PM UTC
I shut my bedroom door
now engulfed by the bindings of paper and pen
and I roll my chair to grey desk
stacked high with Dickinson, Bronte's three, and Alvarez
I pull out my writing tools and begin to contemplate
ideas that dare not be discussed in the public of society
Why is it that God must be a man and
What make the human taught ideal of modesty such a binding force
flow through my brain and I breath again
without measure or discernment I am free
in my freedom i think
back to the conversation my mother and I held this morning
A girl had stood in our line of view her hemline resting mid-thigh
My mother had turned to me
"Ellis look at that girl! I can see her ****** face aghast
I nodded
"It is disgusting that girls these days dress so provocatively!
Thank God I have a modest girl!"
I nodded again
and I thanked God.
-Modesty Is A Human Construct
Feb 16, 2019
Feb 16, 2019 at 7:33 PM UTC
I dreamt of travel disruption last night
and haven’t woken up since; know that though,
a whole ****** of crows hidden along
the hemline of a coat was not the
reason I was late, nor were black stamps spat
out through mirrored windows, panes unmoored from
frames in the wake of two late goodbyes: one
said at a check-in desk disguised as point
A; the second, central, wrapped around an
orbit of children where they now lay.
This news- again, it is news- is an air-
bag of ears, of interviews, listening
so we don't have to, colouring pallor
in post so the ghosts of aftermath do
not go unnoticed when we believe it
may not of have happened.
I'm going to buy out the sky right of
tragedy and skywrite,
vandals of companionship are not tolerated below this message, or above.
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 12:53 PM UTC
I have never been a fan of the way jeans hug too tightly. The fat on my body has always found a way to spill over the button or stretch the seams until they are near ripping. The way we have constructed things to hold in what we cannot or do not wish to see astounds me. Jeans are like the confinements of connection where one person connecting with another person is like two legs joined only briefly at the hemline. I am a truth too hard to swallow, the type that cannot wallow in confinement. I do not know bounds; I have never been good at colouring within the lines. Where we know we can only hold so much before breaking, we constantly seem to be biting off more than we can chew and filling the jeans more tightly than we mean to. I am constantly spilling over the edge with anticipated words and phrases that are often too much of a burden. I am stuffing and stuffing and stuffing that leg full with promises I can only keep within the boundaries set by the fabric of your blue jeans.
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 7:05 PM UTC
Eve convinced Adam
to eat forbidden fruit
in the Garden of Eden
Helen of Troy's face
launch'd a thousand ships,
her lips instigating warfare
Sumptuous curvatures of
women's hips and bossom
lure honorable men to disgrace
How dare that trollop
where a pair of trousers
accentuating her buttocks!
The micro-hemline
corralled a wandering eye
to the elegant calve muscle
The female figure is
warmth and seduction,
yet devilish and misleading
History and myth
reaffirming sweet satisfaction,
but reeking of disaster
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 9:48 PM UTC
Seafoam green out of the corner of my eye with a windsor knot, sleeping in the window seat, on the windowsill perched like a crow waiting on the spoils of a burger and fries. Stupid whiskey flask follows me from town to town in my breast pocket navy blue with a 40-R in the hemline to let me know the mediocre, average life I should’ve traced along the stencil of… a greywash and black existence. Several openings in the vent by the window ran up my face in a reversal of every law Newton ever jotted on parchment paper and sealed with gravity and a drop of wax. He must’ve wondered about regular things often. Like emotion. He must’ve had it figured out. He must cook one hell of an Alfredo and win a lot of chess matches to tackle something like gravity.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 6:42 PM UTC
Etch my name, in thy heart, dear
Caressing in quiet love !
The melody overflowing mine,
Attune your anklets in its rhythm, fine.
Encage my humming bird,
With love and care, in your
Castle’s courtyard.
Don’t forget to tie my band,
To your bangles of gold.
Honour a place in you hairdo
A forgotten flower from my vine.
A shy mark of pious vermilion,
Let, in my memory, add,
To the elegance of your hairline.
Adorn the delights of my mind
With your fragrance.
****** my avid life and death,
In your perfectly magnificent stance!
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 9:31 AM UTC
If you're the kind of girl that boys want to shout smiles at on the street
Nod politely and return an upwards glancs
Don't release the keys because his words wraped you up in a poem
A haiku, a hymn, a wispered promise
Do not confuse a welcome back from heaven touch
For a foreign enemy of your hemline
Take his compliment and move on
You are not a treasure
Not his treasure
You're a pretty ashtray to someone who lost his sanctity 6 blocks back
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 8:49 AM UTC
Etch my name, in thy heart, dear
Caressing in quiet love !
The melody overflowing mine,
Attune your anklets in its rhythm, fine.
Encage my humming bird,
With love and care, in your
Castle’s courtyard.
Don’t forget to tie my band,
To your bangles of gold.
Honour a place in you hairdo
A forgotten flower from my vine.
A shy mark of pious vermilion,
Let, in my memory, add,
To the elegance of your hairline.
Adorn the delights of my mind
With your fragrance.
****** my avid life and death,
In your perfectly magnificent stance!
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 12:02 AM UTC
My neighbor’s live oak is a modest tree;
She stands now in March
Fully leaved in a brown fur coat,
Waiting patiently for sap to rise
And push new leaves
To hide our eyes.
I have watched her now
Six short years,
Every year the same.
A chaste three feet of trunk exposed,
Her hemline proves her to be the
Modest Canadienne.
Her crisp brown cloak
Rises to the tip
Of her leafy beret
As she stands prim and straight.
My shameless ash trees
Shed their clothes and stand
Naked in October winds,
Brittle in January,
Lifeless in March,
Grudgingly putting forth
A summer supply of leafery
Long enough to prove
Existence.
But she, the oak across the street,
Is beautiful and coy,
Covered in rich deep greens
Or solemn browns
With hardly a day between
Her changing.
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 29, 2011 at 7:55 AM UTC
yet you don't seem to see
all that grazes your cheek
and tugs at the hemline of your shirt
it's not as simple as raising lids
you must permit the same small hand that nudged your shoulder
to crack open your ribcage and scavenge
around, to tangle arteries and nerves
into a yarn ball to bat this way and that
and you may find it incredibly insolent, but this uncouth kitten
is to be caressed and nurtured
for he will be the one to lead you
towards all that Is
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 3:40 PM UTC
I live in a body that’s no longer mine
You shouldn’t stress, you look fine
Friends tell me from time to time
I add to my water half a lime
I look for weight busters online
My hips still choke my waistline
It costs me a pretty dime
every day when I’m on lunchtime
Riding farther from my knees is my hemline
Surely there’s another way to cloud nine?
Jul 1, 2019
Jul 1, 2019 at 10:20 AM UTC
10. I don't have enough peace of mind because I know that people I love and so many more have been ***** or assaulted.
9. I don't have enough time to tell you why **** culture perpetuates that my hemline means I'm asking for it.
8. I don't have enough ignorance to somehow accept and laugh at a **** joke.
7. I don't have enough tolerance for "we were wasted" and "she didn't say no".
6. I don't have enough audacity to ask people what they were wearing, if they were sober, if they had yelled for help, if they had said no when they were attacked. A victim is a victim.
5. I don't have enough strength to give to people who have been hurt like this- all the strength in the world sometimes is not enough.
4. I don't have enough comfort for people who have been hurt like this- how do you comfort someone who has been hurt in such a demeaning, invasive way? Is there comfort at all?
3. I don't have enough voice from my lungs to yell about why we need to teach our sons and daughters about what it means to consent, what it means to respect another human.
2. I don't have enough support for the people that come forward, yet I also don't have enough sympathy for the people that are too petrified.
1. I don't have enough words for how much my heart aches for survivors, and how much hope I have for the people out there who persevere and overcome what has happened to them.
For every reason I gave, I also know a person who has been assaulted or ***** Try to give me 10 reasons why I shouldn't put up a fight against **** and **** culture, against respecting others, against people who attack others. Try to give me 10 reasons why I shouldn't speak on behalf of people who sometimes spoke but were not heard by a blatant disregarding partner, stranger, neighbor, relative, parent, sibling, best friend, co worker, acquaintance. Try giving your 10 reasons to the 10 girls I know and then the 10 girls and even guys they know. Try telling a survivor that they asked for it, they wanted it, they should get over it, they should dress differently, they should let it go.
*I do not have enough fingers to count off the people I know that have been ***** or assaulted but I have enough humanity in me to fight the people that made me start counting in the first place.*
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 4:53 PM UTC
My wardrobe's full of sparkly dresses
But I don't know anymore who to wear them for
My life's excess has sustained the press
I asked for more, became their darling *****
They gave me a glass cage and called it a home
Put me on a cross and called it a throne
Danced like a ballerina in hopes to please
The hungry abonnés should fulfill my wish
Spotlight on the stage replaced my sun
I'm a property of everyone
And I sometimes think I do regret
Selling myself as a marionette...
Ruffled hemline dresses, different shiny gowns
Nightly royal dance ball in different shiny towns
Smiling to impress and not to express
A damsel should not let them see her distress
They gave me a noose and called it a necklace
Told me to patch up my porcelain crevice
Broke my fingers to make it fit into the shoes
Stitched my lips into a smile, romanticized this abuse
Camera flashes replaced my stars--
A price to pay for a superstar
And I always think I do regret
Selling myself as a marionette...
Arms tied with hard strings
Lips sealed for the ventriloquist
And I do, I do, I do regret
Selling myself as a marionette.
Dec 23, 2020
Dec 23, 2020 at 1:39 AM UTC
A Child Walks
A child walks along black veils
covered all his little fingers
with noise of a child it plays along
the hemline of so many
meadows of his home where he belongs;
But in truth it is them who
Doesn’t want to you to see
the filthy grime that blankets the Earth;
He'd sit on logs like pulpits listen
to the sermon of rights and wrongs
Its starting to be his favorite song
how life goes on
nothing seems to matter in his little life
put your veil back on the man cried out
but who can help but peek when
you hear torture?
the screams of suffering and agony
that you are told to ignore.
I feel sorry for this little boy;
In his darken hours
he found power to say no more of his
Fathers words of pains
as he walked away with that look on his face
find God he cries out,
His name is Jehovah and he makes way
even for a lost child like me
they are among us the dandelions of thorns.
Poetic Lilly Emery / Judy Emery © 2004
Jan 13, 2017
Jan 13, 2017 at 9:42 PM UTC
Letting go
letting go now
lettingggggggg
Oh
not now there's a programme on
and I'm hooked up to the wires.
She fires my imagination and
it wounds me,
glad she's not a good shot,
but no one gets off scot free
and she fires another fantasy
to capture me.
Someone took a bite when my eyes
were on Eve
who can it be?
there's only Adam and he's
plays innocently.
can you see the joins or
any marks on the hemline?
is it Eden or time to move on?
Well
it's frightening when the hounds
are snapping at your heels
and the kids are yapping thirteen
to the dozen.
I'm just a lightweight
carrying freight
in danger of falling.
who's there to save me?
save me
and
I'm in the dark.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 3:03 PM UTC
A child walks along with black veils
covered all his little fingers
with the noise of a child, it plays along
the hemline of so many
meadows of his home where he belongs;
But in truth, it is they who
doesn’t want you to see
the filthy grime that blankets the Earth;
He'd sit on logs as pulpits listen
to the sermon of rights and wrongs
It's starting to be his favorite song
how life goes on
nothing seems to matter in his little life
put your veil back on the man cried out
but who can help but peek when you hear torture?
the screams of suffering and agony
that you are told to ignore.
I feel sorry for this little boy;
In his darken hours
he found power to say no more of his
Fathers words of pains
as he walked away with that look on his face
find God he cries out,
His name is Jehovah and he makes way
even for a lost child like me
they are among us the dandelions of thorns.
- Judy Emery © 2004
The Queen Of Darken Dreams Poetic Lilly Emery
May 29, 2020
May 29, 2020 at 1:40 AM UTC