"illegible" poems
820
All Circumstances are the Frame
In which His Face is set—
All Latitudes exist for His
Sufficient Continent—
The Light His Action, and the Dark
The Leisure of His Will—
In Him Existence serve or set
A Force illegible.
4.9k
Sleep is timed to the minute,
my breaths let out lazy smoke
icicles make goose bumps into paragraphs
books written on my arms through yellow mist
bare feet in the morning on my rooftops
counting international planes in the sky.
My migrant bones take to the sky,
each moderate minute
that passes by on my rooftops,
increases the rawness of smoke
like lung-fulls of lemon mist
spewing a nebula of paragraphs.
In the murk of paragraphs
red papery ashes explode into the sky
leaving a cloud of syllable mist.
The last fragile minute
reduces my shivers to smoke,
a winter shell of shoulders on rooftops.
Double exposed film across rooftops
turn silhouettes into paragraphs,
a congregation of vapours and smoke
speaking soliloquies into the sky.
I am minute,
dissipating into canary mist.
Billows of ocean mist
make my fingers melancholy on rooftops
where a tidal minute
freezes salty foam paragraphs
a vacation from the sky,
my mossy perch and violet smoke.
Heliotropic smoke
spirals against dense mist;
fine rain blinding the sky
soaking lemonade rooftops.
My bed of paragraphs
curls into an illegible minute.
The lilac smoke in my eyes is almost minute.
A mustard mist wrinkles the paragraphs,
like the purple sky dropping over the rooftops.
Feb 16, 2014
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:46 PM UTC
Down by two
the bruised-blue flesh
of the bronze butterfly's
escape through sacrifice,
flays the emotions..
Unwholesome the silence
that goes before her,
a sound like the heart
bound to beat like butterfly wings...
Gently her absence quick
upon me, inhales the night
and swiftly, the dark
sees only ease to relinquish
her candles sheathed in glass
epitaphs that collapse like veins
to fill the fluent air with the spare
embrace of the blue elements...
Down by two in the bottom of the ninth,
two out, two on, two strikes,
the soul's too tragic abhorrence of details
fails to deliver the impossible syntax
of apocalypse, on the lips
of a courteous Christ, crucified
by light, the night fades
far into the furthest exile...
Under a tropic of cancer,
her un-obscured brilliance
pierces the vault of heaven's vast
gathering of angels,
and their illegible scripture...
Shatters the soul in one primal
instant grand slam dream, quicksilver
through her midnight moment's landscape,
every cherished feature in flight, the light
of the bronze butterfly's escape
through sacrifice, to the silver flame
of moonlight's crucial adieu....
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 1:08 PM UTC
#
This depressive choreography
of flames
f i k r n
l c e i g
consumed in the geography
of bodies
b i c k e r i n g
Tongue's embers licking
the innocent cheek
words like poniards
P R I C K I N G
leaving this dance at its
pique
Now left a s m o u l d e r i n g
soloist on the stage
a dance so sobering
watch this fire's rampage
burn his own pyre
I gave into the rage
burn his own desire
another illegible page
tossed to fuel the bellowing fire
the end of our golden age
#
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 10:52 AM UTC
i wish i told her
how much i loved her poetry;
her poetry was music to my ears
and calligraphy to my eyes,
no matter how messy her handwriting.
each was a masterpiece,
each was a song,
each told a story,
regardless of how illegible;
and i can't stand knowing
that i'll never get to fall in love
with her art ever again.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 3:12 PM UTC
i never really know what to say
how to say it, and how to get the heavy
vowels and consonants off my tired tongue
in an equal demeanor
and no matter how much i plan it,
no matter how much i skim my
hands through seemingly silky waters,
words become rigid
as they roll helplessly
out of my cardboard mouth
i want to be clean and straightforward
clear and understandable
but i always seem to come out as
a jagged line or illegible handwriting
my mumbled words and thoughts
that lay behind my paper thin skull
stand still like secrets
in whispering houses under the moon
and they beg to be let out
i only wish i could speak as easily as i write
because words have much more meaning
when they are finally let out of cages
made of paper and pen
Apr 2, 2018
Apr 2, 2018 at 10:45 AM UTC
For the girl who used the umbrella as a walking stick,
this is for you.
No limp and leg slide followed your wake
just the upright roar of footsteps on pale shale-
Cambridge cotton stones that reflect and reverberate
the sound from around into the ears of the passerby.
I cannot wait, nor hold it in,
the urge to scribble 11 numbers
onto parchment paper, old receipts or
or that wilted vapour notepad paper,
that nestles in the jeans.
If I had, then we’d be at a meal now- a dining experience
just for two.
22 numbers and one letter was written,
illegible and wrong.
I forgot which phone number worked
and forgot which one you could reach me on.
**A poem from the upcoming poetry pamphlet, published by http://www.coffeeshoppoems.com, entitled "Leather Clad Warriors", available soon for £3. That's only 300 pence.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 11:19 AM UTC
some say im cynical
satanical
that my minds mechanical
diabolical
spoken essence erotical
detestable
jaded imagery hypnotical
unstoppable
liable to solve the unsolvable
while prodigal poets drown in their nautical modules
im a criminal
a cannibal
storming the street like an animal
shooting cannonballs
through prison walls
splattering the generals
in bathroom stalls
hostil
leave you poppin pain pills in the hospital
uncontrollable
my temper is flammable
mumbles illegible
choking you with your pentacle
leaving onlookers speckled
the abominable
mental protocols unstoppable
the unfeasible constable
shooting up the card table
willing and able
to call your fables
and smash apart a label
i raise babies in unstable cradles
let you bleed out
like cracked ladles
engorged in unholy wars
exploring
the corruption of the core
deplored
uniformed for
the clash of the double edge swords
taking control of vocal chords
a meet of the hordes
of the horned
misinformed
adorned
in sunlight
trying to shine
just 1 line
at a time
until my life signs decline
almost time
light and shadow combined
Horus and set
by hindsight blessed
yet to contest
to the rest of this mess
by melancholy caressed
as i arise unrest
from the cess
of the un confessed
blessed
Jul 9, 2012
Jul 9, 2012 at 6:14 AM UTC
Onetime I let a boy inside my ribcage
I warned him upon entry that the path to the space between my lungs was a oneway ticket
that I had never smoked a cigarette,
but the walls inside me were tar-filled
and sick
that sometimes my heart failed to beat with my brain and instead fell into
perfect
uneven
synchrony with the faucet
where I threw-up cherry red the other night.
Onetime I let a boy with a knife inside my ribcage
and I had seen the knife
and I didn't care
he climbed inside me so gently
like he belonged there and was just taking his place
like a missing *****
he made me his home
reassembled my insides
vital pieces of me now resting on his body,
depending on his body
one hand on my heart
the other on my throat.
Onetime I let a boy with a knife and a bottle of bourbon live inside my ribcage
he cleaned the tar off the walls
but didn't cure the sickness
I think he liked the smell of it.
One night he carved his name everywhere
spine
clavicle
esophagus
and I pretended to sleep
cut
nick
slash
he tried to claim me
he tried to clean me
but lost souls can't be claimed
and I'll never be clean enough
my heart follows faucets
not boys
and that scared the boy
so one night he poured the bourbon down the throat he held
and I didn't stop him
and I almost drowned
gulp, gulp, gulp
slash, slash, slash
cursive illegible sorry's
over every spot he had once cut his name into
and he kissed the wounds
and I woke up heavy.
Organs are worthless without their host but
Onetime I watched a boy tear his way out of my ribcage.
Knife and empty bottle in his place,
nothing's been working right in there since.
I haven't let anyone in there since.
Mar 24, 2015
Mar 24, 2015 at 3:57 AM UTC
*Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is
as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip
of my words. My language trembles with desire.
-Roland Barthes*
My language is a skin I have outgrown.
It sloughs off in flakes,
leaving letters or the occasional
ill-suited, illegible word
trailing behind me.
I pick at adverbs and articles
hanging from my fingertips;
This morning I pulled a whole phrase
off my arm like a sunburn.
My language, once alight,
now settles like cinders
on the ground,
around the shower drain,
upon my sheets;
My language no longer serves me.
Peel my vocabulary off my back,
tear my diction from my shoulders,
and my syntax from my chest;
Scratch the punctuation off my face—
my lips are chapped with parentheses.
Tomorrow I will have shed my language—
Unbound from an ill-fitting lexicon—
coughed the alphabet from my lungs
and exhaled the last serif
like cigarette smoke
to find the world new,
uncontained and undefined.
Apr 7, 2011
Apr 7, 2011 at 4:15 AM UTC
Lost my air from a parting glance, a split second that haunts my
memories
The crunch of gravel beneath our bare feet, tired arms
around my neck
Dancing drunk in the morning, waiting for the dandelions to unfold dying
arms
Feta cheese and Greek olives, hummus on flat bread, a sip of
merlot
A kiss with dim eyes under live oak branches, a parting breath,
exhaled into open skies
I turn under the disc of the sun, chased by moon and clouds,
the clear quiet of night
I surrender my thoughts to the dead leaves, broken branches,
my holy totems
I lay my voice on wild grasses; let it float down, drip into
running water
I write my words on ***** walls, tomorrow scratched to illegible
nothings
Outlines of small hands on colored paper, hard to believe we were all
children, once
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 9:17 AM UTC
The ****** is in hospital with full blown [illegible] one year later
One year ago today
I killed the rose
Because something was wrong
Jan 26, 2019
Jan 26, 2019 at 6:00 PM UTC
Tread the bourgeois carpet
of 5000 feet
caked in airmiles
Enter the ornately crafted
nondescript facade
passed the chap in the tall hat
Rank and file -
standard issue pleasantries
Sign the guestbook
of illegible memories
Acclimatise to the room
of temporary devotion
devoid of belonging
or emotion;
the ruthless economics
of designed practicality
The impending ideology:
that what you pay for
you dont get to keep
That nameless hotel
dressed in uniformed vulgarity
is the fourth to be welcomed
as Home this week
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 4:14 AM UTC
If you've ever broke out into hives, you would understand what it would feel like to be one.
If anxiety has ever stripped your veins,
If inspiration has ever lacked the blood leaking from the depths of you that explode like title waves against rocks, you would know what it would feel like to be stung.
I've realized I haven’t been aware of transfixed rage and clenched hands trying too hard to hold on to something that loosened its grip a match and a half ago.
The fluid in my liter told me it was never really meant for cigarettes; all they ever do is deteriorate.
There is blood covering my sheets and evidence to cover up my gruesomely blank eyes.
Everything is coming back to me and it makes me wonder why I've ever given up.
They say that words sting and if bumblebees killed themselves after hurting someone else they’d be a lot more like me.
This is ripped and crumbled paper in the form of a mental breakdown.
You have composed me of jolting pupils and false accusations.
I’d rather be writing in my journal.
I’d rather be scratching down illegible ink marks than doing what I’m doing right now.
If you can hear that, it’s the sound of windows breaking.
It’s the sound of your heart forcing itself to shatter
It’s the sound you make when all you want to do is become a drone to vivid darkness and a loss of senses.
I would be a lot more like bees if their venom could actually put the living in their suitable graves.
I am substituting pain for pleasure even when I feel nothing at all.
I don’t want to be a bumblebee anymore.
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 9:42 PM UTC
I had the most scary,
awful,
horrifying,
sickening dream last night.
It was a dream that my grandmother had passed away.
Died.
She was gone.
And I
wasn't
even
there for her.
I was told, no, informed,
through the most insensitive,
impersonal means possible.
A simple, three worded,
text message.
I don't remember how much I cried
in the dream.
Or if I really even shed a single tear.
All I know now, as I scribble down these
scattered thoughts
in a handwriting almost illegible,
an attempt to rid them from my mind,
is how I feel with my mind racing through the possibility of such an event.
My stomach hurts, every muscle in my being clenched in a
sudden stress,
a tactic to hold back that urge to purge myself
of all contents and feeling whatsoever.
Both hands are cramped as one braces me
against this abnormally warm and now uncomfortable bed,
the other struggling to write while my forearm
throbs with discomfort.
My breathing is off.
There is no normal steady rhythm to it;
rather a scattered pattern of inhales and exhales
both long and short,
often separated by uncharacteristic
pauses.
I've dealt with death before.
More than once,
many years ago.
(I'm still dealing with it.)
I understand that it is very much a part of life,
and the rest of us must continue on,
void of voice or choice.
It is the cruel awakening.
And my relief at waking to the most normal of texts
from dear old Dad
and the realization that my fear
had only occurred
in the depth of that unconscious realm
ruled by sleep...
I just cannot ever explain.
I can only remain horrified that I would dare endure
such a pain, even in imagination.
And yet,
as the day's busy agenda begins to take over all else
and I am only too eager
to push the dream away
and let it disappear into nothingness
as I mentally prepare for today and this week,
I've already decided...
I think I'll call Grandma today.
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 10:30 AM UTC
Thank you, Thomas Edison, for your invention.
That we may use it as an analogy
In perpetuity.
In concept.
In cartoons.
No risiduals earned on this I'm afraid.
Epiphanies are so rare there would be little earned anyway.
They come on like rushing wind
Some we are lucky enough to grasp.
Pet Rock.
Chia Pet.
The Snuggie.
Others are squandered.
At the bottom of a bottle or glass.
Lost in the illegible syntax of a bar napkin.
Thomas Edison once bemused that he never failed.
He simply found a new way it wouldn't work.
What I wouldn't have given,
to have been among,
his bar napkins and empty bottles.
May 24, 2015
May 24, 2015 at 1:07 PM UTC
LITTLE MOMENTS OF MY LIFE ILLEGIBLE LIKE SCRIBBLES ON PAPER.
THE CHILD WILL NOT STAY BETWEEN THE LINES ANYWAY.
DANGLING ORNAMENTS JUST REMEMBRANCE OF THOUGHTS PUSHED BACK.PUSHED BACK,
YET STILL HELD ON TO, WITH OR WITHOUT KNOWING
THE PAUSE, REWIND, AND FAST FORWARD HAVE BECOME THE NIRVANA FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM.
CHEW THE FRUITS OF LABOR
AND PUSH IT INTO THE HOLE IN THE WALL.
CHEW THE FRUITS OF LABOR AND PUSH IT
IN THE HOLE IN OUR SOULS.
WHAT IS LEFT NOW SLOWLY WITHERS AWAY
AS DUST IN THE WIND,FLYING IN OUR FACE
TRYING TO BLIND US.
WE MUST BRUSH OF THE DIRT EVERYDAY
Apr 19, 2015
Apr 19, 2015 at 2:38 AM UTC
I once held a pen in a calloused hand,
a pen which I compared to you.
With that pen a story was wrought,
a page of my life through and through.
Much like the dying sun,
there is brilliance before it sets.
With my heart I'd say it was the same for me,
the page was as beautiful as it gets.
I wrote and I wrote,
I wrote till my hand bled.
The pen; never-ending as it was,
brought the page to life when the book was dead.
The pen gave birth to feelings,
so ethereal, yet so tangible.
Feelings never written in the book again,
every other page jumbled and illegible.
Unlike the previous pages,
this one wasn't scribbled upon.
This was a piece of endless art,
crafted by that pen each and every waking dawn.
The pen moved, it glided across,
writing, shaping those words.
And as the page filled with her,
It was then I realized what really hurts.
It was the fear, it was the scratch,
writing the closure of the beginning.
I would fear the ink was running out,
it would seem like the page was already ending.
And for all the joy it brought,
and in all my persistent revelry,
I had soon forgotten of the ink's transience,
and of my malicious ecstasy.
It spread, oh lord it did,
like a poison in these veins.
The page soaked too much of the ink,
it ruined itself to the pen's disdain.
The page became fuller,
with the wan and wax of the moon.
Even when I would not write,
sprawled across were pretty words of doom.
And as it so ended,
with the page having no more space,
The pen, untimely, was forced to stop,
with the book shut on my grave, derived of any trace...
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 8:45 AM UTC
The terrifying teeth chatter into the crimson lips of a wound up smile, chattering along the very risen table top that draws all small toys to their finite dooms. While breaths sour hour upon hour, each idling ear suffocates the last gasping breaths of its epicurean syllabic tongue, drizzling down the stomach like melt water from a cubic glacier in an ornamental silver tub, and sternly quibbles the stem-like dactyls drawing rose champagne into a fissure of the brain's tumescent humming.
Each finger tips' nail rouge and red, each dry crevice sewn into the knuckles, and a leaflet on sadism near the scratchy illegible lines whittled on the topside of the wrists and the slalom runs of the ankle. The ankle sinister. The ghost-like hallow sockets of where eyes could have once be seen. Plaster and albicant-like dying death white skins forbade from the Flushing streets where the jazz dance once began. And with each nellypotted hop, three useless nuisances could not carry the bridle towards each nearly favorite sound that curiosity enslaved man to lean towards.
The women weirded out by corners, plastic-wrapped furniture in outdoor corridors, where sinners veil their retreats into state run triage centers. Fake plastic countertops built from fake plastic trees. With an M14's muzzle stiffening and shuttering, she who vents off her cured romances will always find herself flaccid on rubber knees. The disease of the plea, is once more an affectation of not falling for royalty but instead the royal we. There is this weapon of fraud that perplexes geneticists, that enslaves heterosexuals, where albeit nor the time or place, she venerates the libations that her mind creates, she lubricates her cells, dressing, her skin ripening, heaven trickling across her humble nape, where gentleness is only a fool's disease and need.
She. We. Heathens of eternity bowing our breaths in grand hyperbole see. I see she, and she sees me.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 3:28 AM UTC
Through cold New England January's air
I saw him (Frost) squint,
iconic
from across the East Portico,
culturally symbolic
on a platform above me (I was twenty-eight).
Years later I knew the paper
he held hard to read,
his hotel's old typewriter
running low on ink
the night before.
The illegible poem a preface
to the one Kennedy requested -
the one he'd read years before (ca. 1942)
in the Virginia Quarterly Review,
eyes watering.
Frost stood there, faltering
in the new-fallen snow's reflective light,
half-blinded,
and I was twenty-eight as I thought,
"Kennedy:
cultured man,
sycophant, or...?"
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 3:49 AM UTC
I'll miss the day we were crawling down main-street at 4 a.m
after we slept in the guest house and danced to CCR.
Tossing our beer cans in the neighbor's trash,
and singing with every molecule of our bodies
at the passing train
that deafened us from 20 feet away.
We ran wild beneath the overpass,
climbing the engines lying dormant on the tracks,
pretending we could fuel them up
ride across the nation in a rusted box car
write our names between the colors of illegible graffiti
and shout against the wind as we rolled through the hills.
And what a shame we didn't chase that passing train the way we could have.
What a shame we didn't let it carry us away
with nothing but our flannel jackets
and cut off shorts,
the lighter in my pocket,
and the thirst for a nice adventure.
We sauntered back to the diner,
exhausted by the scenery and faces,
our buzzes vanishing to the neon signs
of bars, seven bars on one street,
and the smell of coffee
as the elderly hobbled in with the morning paper
clutched between arthritic fingers.
Tomorrow, and everyday after,
a train will pass through town at 4:45 a.m.
and I can hop on the caboose any day I desire.
Each birthday slithers by,
flicking it's tongue in my direction,
tasting my youth.
And I glance again at the disintegrating old man
sitting alone in the window booth
wearing the face of a jailed old bird
with clipped wings and the grievous expression
of an ***** gent.
He would pass one day,
leaving a dusty, crumbling shanty to his children,
a box of crinkled newspaper clippings full of obituaries,
and an empty seat in the booth by the window,
where someday I will collapse in the a.m.
take my coffee black
and cut my husband's name from the paper,
wishing I was on that train
shedding this loose blotchy skin
for the rough hands I had
the day I chased the engine to the edge of town
and regretted the moment
that I turned around
and came home.
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 5:44 AM UTC
there is a door
obscura
in my mind
a black ocean
that smears alizarin mist
between love
and the dissolute
i hear
a storm of thick whispers
a breath calling
in free fall
my malleable lover
plays voodoo poppet
carousel of lady buddhas
diagramed unholy ***** *****
with scumbag eyeballs
contort for eager ruin
an ornamental cadaver
bejeweled
in a lake of tears
give me flesh
smell my rich ****
bouquet of **** the *****
transfixed eyes of flames
spread legs wide
thigh spillway buttered
loving the snag
and strangle
of a silk tourniquet
watch me shunt
and glassy stare
a glittering doll shimmies
blood bauble
and flapping tongue
torrent of curving jaws
clever teeth
to tear
and lips to be torn
a cockeyed brain
drowning in
illegible consciousness
for foot slaves
in a sweat and ****
magick show
body of irresistible horror
in descending spirals
to love
in the grotto
of furies
imbued with prayers
that fill the spaces
in her throat
martyr of transfiguration
she falls as
dust falls
i depend on her
tapestry of shuddering lust
in moist air
locked behind
a blood stained door
marked no exit
this savage pageant
Aug 24, 2020
Aug 24, 2020 at 12:27 PM UTC
my mind is in knots.
there are so many twists and turns
that I can’t seem to follow
and I’m getting frustrated.
where is the start and where is the end?
and why is it so confusing?
i can’t sit still—my legs want to get up and go
but my brain is too tired for that right now.
i stay seated and try to untangle what is
the big grey lump in my skull, trying to figure out what it’s trying to say.
but it’s illegible and i can’t,
like a foreign language I don’t recognize.
hopefully as i spill out on to what was a blank sheet of paper i can break through those knots and maybe comprehend the load of thoughts running through and around each other in the space of my body that has been assigned to them.
i only wish i knew for certain that there would finally be a break through and that i will know what I should be knowing.
gathering myself might help as I feel as if
i’m spread across a massive surface that
i can’t seem to find all the pieces of myself on.
but how can I find myself when I barely know myself?
when i find out, i’ll let you know.
Aug 10, 2018
Aug 10, 2018 at 1:25 AM UTC
I am dumb and stupid, I'm opposite of you,
The illegible mistake I did was to compare myself with you,
I know I m a fool I can't be compared,
Still this stupid heart is dumb n unawared.
I have been in your home at your folk's place,
With me the earlier nurse was replace,
I become friendly with ur folk's there,
They helping me out was totally fair.
cooked at your home in the light less candle light,
I walked with you on the road in this romantic night,
I stayed at your home with your families and neighbour's cat,
I slept at your home's wooden bed.
I liked your parents as my own mom and dad,
But one sided love always has ending so sad,
Even though they give me love and affection..
I am never worth for your love n your folk's attention...
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 11:18 AM UTC
I forced my razor knife down
into an anniversary coffee cup
crammed with pens, pencils,
two pairs of scissors, and one
roll of color film I'm afraid
to develop. I jammed it in blade-
up so I'd have to deal
with the hard part first
like a blank page before
an accidental tongue slip
drips ink and makes the page
pretty. Some tree I've never met
and some pink dye died for me
to cover this pressed pulp
in illegible squiggles;
and I'll be
damned if I let it down.
'cause I'm drawn to things
without opinions. Sketchbooks,
inkwells, rubber band bracelets,
a mixed-nut dragonfly rested
on my trampoline net. // Cut it
free // cut it loose.
Find a brick behind the shed
and smash it dead,—preteen me—
young Wordsworth me.
I pulled the sepia tape from Queen
cassettes and finished the glossy
plastic off with a vise grip in Dad's truck.
Old Brucey had mustard pinstripes
down the driver's side, all the way down
to the Germania General Store.
He was a blur to me before I could buy
my own Dreamsicles. Passing the chicken feed
and the resident, caged dachshund couple,
I saw his face for the first time. Seventeen-years-
old, staring at my grandpa through picture
and plate glass panes.
The angels he swore were real—the ones he payed,
praised, and prayed for every Sunday and everyday
the sun shined and everyday it didn't—
were now less deserving of heaven.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 1:00 AM UTC