"hunched" poems
there’s a barnacle scar
deeply ingrained
on the basalt stack
at mark thirty two
whispering summer winds
scented oil
cotton and roe
drift
as waves brush
and shape
the sandstone shore
the briny air
and lost erratic
set a tone to this
pollyanna portrait
it's andrews undulations
and gifted benches
its concessions
and traces of the barry burn
its sculpted driftwood
and sanko lines
make this picture
almost perfect
children play
as venom spews
from the caterwaul pair
those odd looking mates
casting smiles
with arrested despair
settling shots
swiping bugs
dipping and darting
as photo men
and muscles
and long neck seabirds
make their turn
the hunched hoody
and his sorted sidekick
get their fill
(of moss and rubble ~ chubby and kelp)
nice to meet your acquaintance
the pho man would say
an odd drop
and ironic turn
from those horrific corners
of timeless desperation
down by cannon bridge
harbor seals
and carriage horse
are fronted by
raven shade
jolly tides pause
in quiet bays
(with curious looters
and *** pickers)
sand merchants
and field totems
all streamed by the light
cirrus strands
blanket the
outer edge
hovering craft
and shimmering willows
bolt the evening frame
blood orange
and tethered
with a filtered glare
bottle-nose dolphins
and seabirds
(and shifting tides)
are all settling in
for the long night stay
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 11:21 PM UTC
Head hunched forward,
Brain plugged in,
Cyberspace awaits.
Fingers clicking,
Eyes scanning,
Detached from reality,
My hourly fix.
Oblivious to the world,
Incommunicado
From flesh and bone.
Mar 10, 2016
Mar 10, 2016 at 12:16 PM UTC
* * * * *
* * *
*
Faces of friends, of people i met earlier
are glittering stars on this late evening's
dark blue sky...their smiles are tattooed
in my mind...they're hunched, going
lower by the days...slowed down by years.
it must be hard and painful...the arching,
the drooping of the neck, the curving spine,
they endure all, 'til each day's end...they rise
each new dawn...do what they still can do,
lest they stagnate in their aging ponds,
diminish to a state, where food, pills, or
forgotten information are forced on them,
......like drugs, injected into the veins
........................
these wee hours bring back the years...
they have been good...never mind the
hard times...there were, there are good ones
life is a long, wide stream of changing hues,
flowing on and on....my water bears the
colors each new day brings...gray, at times
with sadness and gloom....other days,
blacked by despair...some summers, red,
roseate with glee, or green with life and
hope...blue, when trust is spilling, and
the tranquil sea and sky overwhelm,
with a promise of stability..........white,
when accepting......the unacceptable...
........................
the amber grains and i, are alike
ripened enough to be plucked
be pulled out from an existence...the
signs are known...shown...yet, i wait
for when it is due to happen...and while
waiting, the stalks sway, play and dance
and enjoy the sun and wind...and i,
while i still can...walk, jump, climb hills
and valleys in this mammoth space
of land and water.............called life
...................
the sounds of my days, i still hear,
i am a lute, a harp, a cello...playing
off-key.....out of tune at times,
my strings are my graying hair,
i still can't stop dying the gray
i still want to highlight the dark,
but, one day, all these will cease...
............
one night, my face will be in one of those
many stars...glittering on a dark blue sky
sending a smile, to my loved ones.
...................
(there is no other way,
but forward
all are headed
towards an end.)
Sally
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
June 26, 2018
Jun 25, 2018
Jun 25, 2018 at 11:31 PM UTC
when you went away it was morning
(that is,big horses;light feeling up
streets;heels taking derbies (where?) a pup
hurriedly hunched over swill;one butting
trolley imposingly empty;snickering
shop doors unlocked by white-grub
faces) clothes in delicate hubbub
as you stood thinking of anything,
maybe the world….But i have wondered since
isn’t it odd of you really to lie
a sharp agreeable flower between my
amused legs
kissing with little dints
of april,making the obscene shy
******* tickle,laughing when i wilt and wince
15k
There are grapes in my path
This abundant trail
now invisible as if we never were
Here, to pick and preen, salvage and reap
for pleasure and pain
I picked you some flowers,
I baked you a pie,
labors of love
with your own hands
connected to earth.
Breaking backs, and clinging sweat
Under wool, denim, straw, and cotton
Keeping more out than simply the sun
Depleted soil
Exhausted soul
Bursting with juice
Bountiful and hand chosen
And you in a hurry just drive by
Dust in the wind
Skin of clay mud
Day after day,
A boulder among the rows
Hunched in fields
Blistered and callused
Searching for more
Ripe for the picking
Migrants moving
Servitude by season
Benevolent harvest
Handpicked strawberries
By chocolate covered hands
destined from birth
closer to earth.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC
The light is on, I can see her through the window.
Like clockwork,
A shadow passes, cup in hand and hair in a bun.
The routine continues as the days melt into each other.
That shadow has become a friend,
A companion I meet on the path I walk.
She has no name and the only story is the one I have created for her in my mind.
A story of sadness,
Of a lonely silhouette the world has forgotten.
Why is that her story? Why have I not given her happiness, love, companionship?
It is in the way she walks across the lighted window.
Her head hangs down as if she lacks the strength to hold it up against the world,
Shoulders hunched as if she hugs herself because there is no one else to do so.
It is in the way her hands seem to grasp the mug,
As if it is her only anchor in this life.
It is in the way she stands, dark, against the light around her,
As if she is trying to light a fire from ashes.
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 11:19 AM UTC
sometimes i wonder if god keeps a record
of all the times i have been left,
all the times i have been unable to leave.
i wonder if he thinks to himself,
"when will she learn?"
as if he feels my heartache too.
i picture god with a furrowed brow,
hunched over a typewriter,
beginning me again and again,
a mountain of crumpled paper at his feet.
but somehow -
he always ends up at the same point in the story
where i am all ****** palms
and half-hearted hallelujahs
propped up on bruised knees.
spitting up blood & teeth at his feet screaming,
"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?"
but he doesn't answer.
and i catch myself wondering if the silence
is his way of punishing me for making a deity out of you.
after all, the bible says he is a jealous god.
i could've sworn there was a verse somewhere
that said you weren't allowed to love anyone other than me.
but now that i think about it,
i probably took it out of context.
if i could add a parable to those already existing,
it would be how your chest
felt like church under my head,
and how i thought to myself,
"this is how it would be if he loved me back."
or how you fled my bedroom like a crime scene.
i am still bleeding.
i won't tell you how many times
i cracked my heart in half
trying to be what you wanted.
how my lips on your skin felt judas.
now i am waiting for god to begin me once more,
hoping he'll leave you out of the plot this time
because i don't think i could stand to lose you again.
see, rumor has it he knew you'd leave
and has been trying to make it up to me
since before we'd even met.
my song is one of repentance.
the wood finish from abandoned pews
rotting under my fingernails.
i made sacrifices you didn't ask for.
i have never known
whether my inability to abandon people
is more a strength or a weakness
but so far everyone i've ever loved
has turned into an exit wound,
and myself into a flickering no vacancy sign.
- m.f.
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 6:04 PM UTC
I sit here on the 2nd floor
hunched over in yellow
pajamas
still pretending to be
a writer.
some ****** gall,
at 71,
my brain cells eaten
away by
life.
rows of books
behind me,
I scratch my thinning
hair
and search for the
word.
for decades now
I have infuriated the
ladies,
the critics,
the university
suck-toads.
they all will soon have
their time to
celebrate.
"terribly overrated..."
"gross..."
"an aberration..."
my hands sink into the
keyboard
of my
Macintosh,
it's the same old
con
that scraped me
off the streets and
park benches,
the same simple
line
I learned in those
cheap rooms,
I can't let
go,
sitting here
on this 2nd floor
hunched over in yellow
pajamas
still pretending to be
a writer.
the gods smile down,
the gods smile down,
the gods smile down.
Black Sparrow "New Year's Greeting" 1992
8.6k
287
A Clock stopped—
Not the Mantel’s—
Geneva’s farthest skill
Can’t put the puppet bowing—
That just now dangled still—
An awe came on the Trinket!
The Figures hunched, with pain—
Then quivered out of Decimals—
Into Degreeless Noon—
It will not stir for Doctors—
This Pendulum of snow—
This Shopman importunes it—
While cool—concernless No—
Nods from the Gilded pointers—
Nods from the Seconds slim—
Decades of Arrogance between
The Dial life—
And Him—
8.1k
A slow walk up Centennial
and I still can’t find the place
it's menacing cold, and muted
and the street sweeper and winter breeze
move the Turkish blend and dust pack
A novice mixed duet plays
Brahms on broken strings
the erhu and overcoat
veiling a blue heeler and sphinx
Maggianos is settled in the center block’s
luminance and seasonal drape
it's festive warmth bringing home Bedford Falls;
the flavour and character and social circles
Annie’s playing and the keeper's singing
(his word pool and slander
raising everyone in arms!)
the crowd chants and mayhem breaks
as crawlers and contemporaries
smash their steins
Dark alleys and dripping holes
hold a grim reminder of the pierced underside
paddies flutter and forge their words
with a broad manifesto
Night gardens come alive
(slowly sapping the respite)
hunched figures and ladies in lace
shuffle inside the big orange door
Oct 19, 2017
Oct 19, 2017 at 11:25 PM UTC
Let me love you in Silence,
I want to watch you,
observe all your pores
and spots where fine wrinkles have settled.
I want to see you
dance daintily like a flower
or grunt and hoof your way through space
like a grubby animal.
Either exalted or halted,
I want to hold you,
to cup your soft surrendered hands just like a clam shell,
and to cocoon
your weary beating body.
Let me love you in silence,
from afar
like a deer
hiding in the forest,
peeking out at the mysteries of the world.
I want to love you deeply
like the ocean loves the land
as she kisses its gentle shores
and runs away all too soon,
called by the moon.
I lay on the dusted hardwood of our home,
your washing the dishes and the fragrant smell of soap fills the air,
I lay underneath the door frame
tracing my eyes up and down your sweet body, your strong back hunched over. Hard working arms cleaning,
oh the little love secrets I keep to myself.
I want to run through meadows picking the most vibrant wildflowers
so I may lay them at your feet,
gently
quietly.
This yearning in my soul
words do not know this love,
these intangible feelings exuding.
I want to bathe you
in a claw foot tub
and in the silence
watch your eyes grow wide,
I want to see the wonderment
of a whole galaxy of stars glimmering inside you
before noise ushers such things away
before noise pulls me from this fantasy.
This dream that we are living,
it exists,
I know it does.
You can live it too, please please,
just close your eyes
and let love linger for a moment
feel loves sweet breathe
as she breathes in silence,
as she breathes
inside of you
and inside of me.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 7:17 PM UTC
Two-daughters succession go astride
One hunched in apathy
The other in defeat
I could have seen beauty in progeny
Before it was
Crushed
By artificial gravity
Smelling of blood-stained pittances
And a taker’s philosophy,
Their lunch-box notions
And plastic dreams
Rattled the bars on a shopping cart.
Do they, I wonder,
Feel their ease at pain? Or luxury, woe?
Though their smiling faces
Were promised, now reach
To Paradise,
I can seem them
Crushed
Beneath them, too:
Updated, upgraded, brand-spanking new
All they ever hoped to be,
Customized
Head-to-fucking-toe.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:24 AM UTC
Cool black night thru redwoods
cars parked outside in shade
behind the gate, stars dim above
the ravine, a fire burning by the side
porch and a few tired souls hunched over
in black leather jackets. In the huge
wooden house, a yellow chandelier
at 3 A.M. the blast of loudspeakers
hi-fi Rolling Stones Ray Charles Beatles
Jumping Joe Jackson and twenty youths
dancing to the vibration thru the floor,
a little **** in the bathroom, girls in scarlet
tights, one muscular smooth skinned man
sweating dancing for hours, beer cans
bent littering the yard, a hanged man
sculpture dangling from a high creek branch,
children sleeping softly in their bedroom bunks.
And 4 police cars parked outside the painted
gate, red lights revolving in the leaves.
December 1965
5.5k
When I was thirteen, I had a running coach.
He was short, lean, and muscular.
An Italian man
with a whistle hanging around his neck,
farmer's tan, and below his black widow's peak
sat silver aviators, propped upon his shiny beak.
I ran miles and miles a day, but,
no matter how much I'd run
he never followed. He always trusted me to
stride my roads and lift my knees high
during the kick at the end of the races
against myself.
"If you want to run
you gotta drop that baggage," he'd laugh
between sips from his water bottle
as he towered over little me,
panting and red. We both stood
tall under the blazing sun.
I couldn't comprehend exactly what he meant,
I mean, I told him,
"I have ultra-light, top-of-the-line shoes,
compression shorts and athletic toes,
a hairless chest for maximum speed,
sweat running rivers down my spine,
legs that never exhaust, and,
above all, Coach,
a spirit that can move mountains." His response,
silence and a smirk.
Who was he to teach me about running?
"You're weighing yourself down boy,
you gotta drop that baggage."
It was his motto for me
every time my time would increase,
because, you see, when running,
increase is bad. Except for hills.
I can still hear his voice in my head,
"Uphill, increase exertion."
He never ran with me, he just told me to go.
He showed me the route and I did as expected,
six days a week, sometimes three miles, sometimes ten,
day after day, again and again,
shoulders hunched and me out of breath,
"runners high," they called it.
I hated running, I hated my coach,
I didn't understand why
anyone would want run to anywhere.
Not now. Now, I love it.
It has become my hobby, a specialty
for when one grows up,
your body is built for it, and your mind
has been ready to run since junior high.
It starts as a seedling, when you're barely able to walk,
and by the time your cardiovascular system
has been assaulted by packs of tobacco
and rolled marijuana, it blooms green.
That's when you realize:
Running is easy.
And coaching?
Don't even get me started on how easy that is.
Aug 17, 2012
Aug 17, 2012 at 1:12 PM UTC
"Have you talked to dad,
since you've been at school?"
"Nope."
"Are you coming home
for thanksgiving?"
"I don't know."
Josephina
breathes in a crackle
over the phone.
New York,
a cacophony
in the background.
A background of cold,
and
people talking
while walking
while hailing a yellowcab with a left
and slow-rolling heads locked
onto the phones in their right.
These people enter taxis,
not knowing if they're ever
going to reach home,
or the airport,
or union square,
just going
on the promise
that they won't become
road-kill.
I can't feel it in my yellow apartment.
If anything,
my yellowcab
idles.
Through the receiver
A squad car
rings nervously,
then
after a lungful
of garbage-smelling air,
it becomes a full blare.
A pause
of
noise
always ensues,
just for a second,
the entire corner
becomes a silent silo
of human beings.
"How's new york?"
"you know,
dad called me
and asked about
how to get on a diet,
can you believe that?"
Yes,
I can
dad is a fat ****
a pink, white belly
of a man. And a few
sandbags for chins.
"That's good."
"So I'm not going to see you?"
"Probably not."
"Well, you should call dad,
talk to him,
he loves
you."
Some conversations,
acheive nothing.
The same
tired, dead things
get run over.
Road-kill.
Josephina believes she is the spatula
that will bring back
pancake squirrels
and
pancake relationships.
As much as you don't know
about me and dad's relationship,
I can give you a kodak moment.
A snapshot,
of a hovering man,
pointing at his son's neck,
searching for the misplaced vertebrae,
the lack
of fear for the world
--"the right kind of fear,
the fear a man
should have
of himself"--
and a son,
hunched,
small hands in fists,
a heavy haul of muscles
pulled into a dark brow
right over black eyes.
This picture
will suffice.
Nov 23, 2011
Nov 23, 2011 at 4:59 PM UTC
These are the hard times,
the long stretch of coal-shed days,
the corrugated nights of the antinomian.
I retch at the old doubts and the panoply
of dustbins clattering bright,
their watchers simian in the morning ****
I dress as though dredging up greys,
monotone deep in the GB tradition:
now sandpit tea with oil stain floats
silt dreads the mass of a seven year clay.
Four weeks of shadows drown wind in a storm.
And dreams of my cottage
in days of such calm and late summer happiness
as brought cut corn and strawbs
and horse manure in hugs
until like Zulu tribesmen the birds appeared.
Hunched with expectation
Spears smiling like baddies they rushed me.
I woke pouring sweat like a workhorse
the weakest of defences laid up
my face pulling cellophane over French windows.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 2:07 PM UTC
Sometimes I don't like what I see in the mirror.
Love handles over the jeans like grubby hands picking for the last slice of pizza.
Sometimes I don't like the words written on paper.
Words hunched over till 5am that still come scrambled as my breakfast.
Sometimes I don't like how I kiss you.
My lips not being able to move in the way your hips do in those jeans.
But...
Sometimes I can't handle love that I see for myself.
How I find every scar on my skin a Van Gogh of flesh and memory.
Sometimes Laughter can not help but shuffle its' way from my chest.
Every facebook status a Emmy award winning season of words
Sometimes I can not wait for the next day.
When I get to taste the air in my lungs only to have it taken away again by the sun.
Sometimes a love/hate relationship is good....sometimes.
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 7:55 PM UTC
I never could quite imagine the day
When a creature quite as wry and presumptuous
Would break so serendipitously.
She lay ruptured in the desultory plantation
The Stygian colour of her fur rebelled against the sage of the contiguous earth
And her eyes mimicked nothing but the pain that consumed her current thoughts.
Her body was transfixed in an inert trance
The fur on her hunched spine quavered in a subdued zephyr
Quiet insecurities were hid well in her tranquil pained state.
The moon intently watched me
Waiting for me to alleviate the agonized entity
But solicitousness was blank in my frozen psyche.
The moonlight pierced the fox with intimacy
I grimaced in the realization I had failed the universe
With my perennial void mind broken in vain.
The fox gathered some stoicism
The blessing of the moon granted requital
As the fox proceeded to maul my perception.
I accepted my retribution with ratification
As I was the soul who violated the creature
A skirmish that clung to grandeur.
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 4:47 AM UTC
You sullen pig of a man
you force me into the mud
with your stinking ash-cart!
Brother!
—if we were rich
we’d stick our chests out
and hold our heads high!
It is dreams that have destroyed us.
There is no more pride
in horses or in rein holding.
We sit hunched together brooding
our fate.
Well—
all things turn bitter in the end
whether you choose the right or
the left way
and—
dreams are not a bad thing.
4.8k
deaf and dumb
are the passers by,
the visitors as well
gladly would I fill their ears
with the wisdom of weary worries,
tedious torments, but I fry their meat,
smashing it until it screams
the sizzling symphony wafts to my bulb
stirring memories of the steer, the ****
the beatific butchering, and
the killing fields of my youth
while others see only my hunched back
and wait for their greasy grub
I ask why there is no atonement
no sorrowful song for the slaughter
of young ones in faraway lands
who fell under the “noble” knife
or
the bovine beasts whose skulls
were there for the bar, that dropped
with sublime indifference
as it stilled their
magnificent silence
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 11:23 PM UTC
the worry is nothing compared to curry
i had a tiny taste of it yesterday
the worry is nothing compared to those who are ok
because i'm not
the worry is just like myself
hopelessly hunched upon these sorrowful pieces of heart i poured out
the worry is just like the clouds than run across the sky
the ones you never see ever again
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 11:37 PM UTC
The bar was full
in the basement of my mind
and i read the manual, my buddy hunched over on a
stool beside me.
“it’s a cinch he said”
not really, though, because people don’t speak in dreams.
(i ascribe to them 50‘s slang expressions)
my beer was magically empty
and others were magically full
studying alien life forms
in this book
this manual
and wanting to puke.
dreaming is stressful
and so is life.
where is the best place to hang
a bathrobe?
Jul 1, 2011
Jul 1, 2011 at 11:08 AM UTC
My voice is nestled within a river
of transitions, positioned
in endless sets of pre- and post-
parentheses. Pre-revolutionary,
post-Missing Link. Post-postmodern,
pre-postmodern revival.
I sit in a somersaulting purgatory
sandwiched between evocation
and paralysis.
My hatred is exhausted, shoulders
hunched over a guillotine,
cursing with its tongue sprawled
dead and dry at an imaginary hunter,
a mass of bones clumped
under the rug I keep pulling
from my own two feet.
Will you hack through this cocoon?
Have you got the muscle
and the patience?
Nevermind that bedtime story.
There must be some wounds
of yours, those placed beyond
the verbal tanline, that need
immediate bandaging.
Can I get you anything?
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM UTC
The moles on your hunched back
form themselves into constellations
each dot connecting to its neighbor.
I've become endlessly starry eyed
gazing at the wonders of your galaxy.
Feb 6, 2013
Feb 6, 2013 at 11:59 PM UTC