"inchworm" poems
Sunday:
Ant Pills
Bear Traps
Cobra Feet
Monday:
Dolphin Lungs
Eel Soup
Frog Limbs
Tuesday:
Gecko Suits
Horse Pie
Inchworm ***
Wednesday:
Jaguar Barbed
Koala Beer
Lynx Lynch
Thursday:
Monkey Chips
Narwhal Fashions
Otter Drugs
Friday:
Porcupine Rehab
Quail Map
Roadrunner Piano
Saturday:
Slug Party
Turkey Slop
Urchin See
Sunday:
Vulture Guns
Walrus Tongues
X No
Monday:
Yellowjacket Fever
Zebra Clowns
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 9:08 PM UTC
Not as eloquent
as a fountain pen,
not as artistic
as a sketching pencil,
not even as bright as a magic marker,
but one smart cookie to your kids.
We have cool names like
Cotton Candy, Manatee,
Razzmatazz and Inchworm,
and are non-toxic sticks of joy
to those little imaginations.
Yes, we sometimes look like
clumps of colored wax
smashed into tissue paper,
and we do break easily
or lose our wrappers at the drop of a hat,
then get tossed in a bag
or worse, become homeless.
And horror of horrors!
We’re reinvented as candles
or reheated into twisted zombies
of our former selves.
And neither do our achievements
reside in a museum or gallery,
why they're not even framed
and proudly displayed on a wall.
No, they're slapped on ***** refrigerators
and kept there by plastic alphabet
magnets that loosely spell
such mundane things
as ‘milk’, ‘cheese’ or ‘daddy is dumb,'
until they fall to the floor
or end up in the trash.
But hey man,
give us a break!
This is our plight,
it’s a harsh existence!
Perhaps we should organize,
form a union for children’s
writing and drawing utensils,
and thus ensure equality
for us crayons?
We realize, more than likely,
this poem's title will cause
some backlash by those
who insist it be called
‘Return of the Crayon,’
because we 'happy sticks', you see,
supposedly don’t take revenge.
Nonetheless, we stand by it.
It is what it is!
Your children love us
and so should you!
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 4:18 PM UTC
Living on the toilsome trail
A mere speck
Without flight
Or even the aid
From a friendly leaf blower
I make my way
Upon my belly
Born to struggle
But shaped to endure
Feb 10, 2021
Feb 10, 2021 at 10:59 AM UTC
Spring. Same plants, same order.
Monday morning, open for business.
Tractor-trailers, day care centers.
Every leaf that’s coming out is out.
To tonight’s town meeting I will go unaware and foolish.
It’s delicious, the unimportance of my feelings.
Even our particular war was small.
Europe had one last a century.
Hubble photos of events 13 billion years ago
Do not put me in mind of the species’ insignificance.
Just the opposite having witnessed the universe’s birth.
But birth from what preceding state? God again rears his hoary head.
They say one must let go and will let go,
God will decide what tragedy you need.
Not every seed becomes a flower,
Not every branch breaks out a truelove knot.
While the ancient Romans wrote of love
The ancient Britons wrote of war.
The Romans should have been perfecting their republic.
No god could do that work for them.
The November moth's the fall cankerworm
Slender-bodied, beige, beginning life as the well known inchworm.
In our war more children may have died than would have had
the tyrant lived in fear and awe.
We'll never know because we can't help being here.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
You couldn't help her
It's not your fault she wasn't meant for this
She didn't mean to hurt you
Didn't intend to do you harm
You tried hard to be there
Through the storms and the seasons
The deaths and the births
But you were always static
Easily tuned out
She said she had to find out for sure
Didn't say goodbye, left trinkets on the doorstep
She didn't even knock before going
Desperate for a change she said
It's not your fault she left
Not because you weren't there
You were when you could
No one could've asked so much of you
You tried until you failed again
Years passed and you're still not good at this
People change too quickly to grab hold of
Couldn't hold her back if you tried too
People are always leaving
You knew this before you were born
Your sister lost herself in the woods
Your Mama stopped the emptiness with a train
Surely it wasn't on purpse they fled
Just a chance you were passed along hands
Played with and loved, safe until you weren't
A throw away kind of freind
She was everything
The light on the blades of grass in the morning
The moves and swirls of sunshine
Your world defined in a coat of gold
You had no one
A steady stream of faces that were gone with the tide
No one was ever tied to you
Always you to them, bound with thread
She became a boulder to hold
Carry with you in your pocket
An anchor with a beating heart
Keeping you tethered in this life
It's not your fault she's gone like autumn leaves
That everyone's been clammering to escape
The world and you too
They're just tired of this place
Don't cry for those that went
They're happier without you to take up space
You were just a bug to be squashed
An inchworm who couldn't crawl
Trouble happens around corners
You couldn't see it brewing in the distance
Didn't do anything to keep them safe
They choose their paths away
You'll just need to live again
Paint a smile across your face to hide the fear
Cover up the scars and scratches
Remake your world withought her
You'll be alright in the end
Though the grass might dance above your head when it all ends
There's those who've made do with less
You should feel blessed at one more lifeless day
And in the end you were just
A **** growing in the flowers
A bad seed that strangled all you held dear
Leftover when the leaving starts
But it's not your fault
Oh my dear it's not your fault
You can't be what you are not
This was never about you sweet heart
It's not your fault and neither is she
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 1:36 AM UTC
he wasn’t so much a peddler
(as many had quietly assumed)
more of a rural shuffler
or social inchworm
than a mover and a shaker
but boy
could he dish out those jabs
and ad lib on a whim
and draw sweet melodies
from that broken 6 string
all night long
carving out reflections
oh, those deep intuitive divinations!
steadily preaching
on the breathtaking joys
and fruits
of the vibrant land
*grow your own
seeds to be sown
clean and green
a nourishing machine!*
silver linings (straight from truth room)
clearly seen
from those uncompromised
garden views
casting his baited lines
from softly pebbled shores
(his nanna, and poppa
were there, years before)
giving grace…
and basking deeply
in the bounty of the fenua
his love of life was insatiable
moving from town to town
to nourish his soul
digging way beyond the deep
for that shrouded purpose
that soulful existence
that many spend a lifetime
looking to find
three boats settle
in the quiet harbor
a net shed basking in the sand
peaceful and serene
(with a hint of emerald green)
Sunset red
with crawfish (and lemongrass)
to keep us
bountifully fed
Nov 7, 2021
Nov 7, 2021 at 4:29 PM UTC
dig in your feet
you are an inchworm of sheets
who lingers on wings
cling to a chrysalis
of charm and discomfort
more patience, less sleep
let your fingers bloom
and your lashes flutter
to catch every river of wind
pull on your socks
leave the window open
Oct 10, 2013
Oct 10, 2013 at 10:33 PM UTC
The fortunate I,
The send-sighted me,
What might have I done
To deserve this to see?
That inchworm in paining,
Though pretty she was,
Has set to cocooning,
In endless becomes.
Such books, she has heavy,
Her heart so it spins,
That silken word cover,
With lux-journal skeins.
Such passion in weaving,
She'll fuel open minds,
And full will this artist,
Soon her medium find.
Oct 2, 2010
Oct 2, 2010 at 10:42 PM UTC
Oh, you swamp me with charm - get out of my head.
There’s something about you - a warmth - like the comfort of home - that pulls at me.
I study your landscape of attractive surfaces like a star chart - logging my weaknesses - to strengthen my emotional firewall. I WANT you but my “wants” just seem untrustworthy after recent deprivations.
To be honest - I can’t afford you - not now. You’re a delicious pastry - with strings - and I need to cut all my strings.
You’re something younger me would have wanted - before the pandemic, when scandalous thinking was uncomplicated and freedoms taken for granted.
Last year simplified my reality.
Over time, boredom melted me like wax but a new me crossed some threshold of certainty - that to flourish - no, just to survive - I must become more than I am, or find I’m less than I hoped.
In 2019 goals seemed way, way someday things - far off reference points to seek out - like an inchworm. Social details occupied me like an unfocused dementia - there was an unacceptable level of childish thinking.
But now I’m an escapee on the run who won’t be taken back alive. Old attachments must be stripped down and the old world made disposable - if I’m to achieve escape velocity.
Jun 16, 2021
Jun 16, 2021 at 9:39 AM UTC
Two thoughts come to mind this morning. The deficiencies in
our systems of governance -
local, global -
and the first two pages of The End of Faith in which he
mistakes political (acts of war) for
religious acts,
but recognizes understanding the workings of the world is not
the same as knowing
the unknowable.
Every new twinge provokes fear but what is there to fear?
That one won't
live forever?
The year of a man is the day of an inchworm and 267 years
on a reverse-
rotating Venus.
A billion of anything is a lot unless it's the distance one must
traverse to look
at God.
How much silence, or tinnitus, can you handle? A chipmunk
cannot for long
stand still.
Once the twinge passes I'm off to the next task: building a
constituency for this compassion,
that solution.
The dialogue starts with a question. To know the question is
almost certainly to find
an answer.
Conflating questions is the commonest of logic errors. No
negotiation unless the
violence ends.
Why not talk while we fight? We can always **** torture or
assassinate
between conversations.
Justice, or retribution if you want, can remain on the table
even after we
achieve understanding.
Nature is my religion, I know no other, and community is my
church.
The sacrament
is policy debate. I attend church everyday. Our jobs are
hymns (the classifieds
a hymnal)
and payment for services rendered is sung praise and
gratitude. Walking and talking
is prayer.
Strategies to limit or subvert discussion are the only evil.
Violence
is one
but not by far the only one. What's the hurry to build a
highway or free
a people?
The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time and time is
the mercy
of eternity.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 9:20 AM UTC
Mom says
I'm an inchworm,
but when I grow up
I'm gonna be a F
O
O
T
L
O !
N ! !
G ! ! !
W R ! !
O a W R ! !
R w A w a R ! !
M R a W a A R R ! !
!!! RaWAwaAaWaRR!!! ! !
R a W a w R ! !
w W A ! !
a a R ! ! !
w R ! !
! !
!
Aug 13, 2024
Aug 13, 2024 at 11:11 AM UTC
an inchworm, up-ing and down-ing its way through my
intestines is not bright
green as it traverses the dark gloomy
lumen of my
insides.
darkness requires complete
darkness, no color, just
darkness, but at least it is
warm.
i do not know if the inchworm can
see but i hope it can feel
comfort in the
dark.
dear inchworm, i wish you
good fortune on your travels as you
measure my insides with
tenacious tickling loops.
Dec 3, 2017
Dec 3, 2017 at 2:26 PM UTC
Like the saying goes... " We have no words for this, so silence will have to die with a pillow over it's face, horrified by the damp dreams, sunk - in; ******* on the fumes of deferred desires, until the whole of the world can hear you scream... but cannot find you. "
We are born into grief with wailing. Then we laugh at our mother's chin.
Groping at the matted hair of her fertile youth.
Smacking our gums in class.
The hard lesson, shimmering in the distance
Like hard candy on a heap
of abandoned houses.
Too stunning is the thing that becomes the vision of our blank stare
into the abyss; as we ignore the essential, to favor a blockade of easy pleasures in the face of hard clocks. Our ghosts are driven out of spite and the hours march depleted of our joy, as we entangle our quaint miseries in dark trees, like kites.
We tug and resume the defeat of our careful sabotage
to glorify the random hell, that nullifies
the pointed quip of a wise man's
emphatic sigh.
we trip on the whip of our masters, and call it a day.
a day for running blind in the tunnels of our entropy
like an inchworm in a blender.
or a seed in a vacuum... damning the soil of the void
and the sunshine that mocks it.
the box is a lost blip of atoms in the Attic,... and not at all -
on the list.
You can have your Birth-Day, but you can't have both.
Your birth is a fluke, after all... And a Day -
Becomes the Night.... like an inside -
Joke.
Feb 15, 2017
Feb 15, 2017 at 4:27 PM UTC
Tiny little inchworm
Moving right along.
But then came a bird
To rob him of his song.
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 5:54 AM UTC
i might just be a catalyst,
a-change-your-life,
fucking-mindblow-you type,
but fear will keep you
steadfast like an inchworm,
slowly making his way.
you are a sunday morning.
we all love sunday mornings,
the car rides with nowhere
specific to go, but when the
salsa-colored sky fades,
we never regret what
we did on that sunny
or even snowy, day.
i am thursday, which is
my favorite day of the week
which is no surprise to those
know who know me well, best.
some people hate thursdays
because it's the cooler,
kissed-half-of-the-basketball-team squad,
older sister of
wednesday, but it's still not friday,
the prom queen, of the week days.
but for some of us,
thursday is the new friday,
and i hope that's how you see me
because even though i'm not sunday,
i will make my way.
i don't move inch-by-inch,
i wouldn't even say i walk,
or even swim at all.
quite frankly, i hate swimming;
i hold my nose with my fingers
after gasping for air because i'm
afraid i'll inhale water and obviously,
die.
i fly like a butterfly, or some
other flighted living thing.
and i'm not one of those black
and white butterflies, even though
i act like the world is black
and white sometimes.
i am colorful.
i am colorful in my words
and actions, which catalyzes,
because remember,
i might be a catalyst,
that fear that will keep you steadfast.
because right when you think
you figured me out,
i will flutter by you,
and you will be in utter shock
with fear or with love,
changing your life
and blowing your mind.
but maybe that's the problem.
maybe you're the one that sees
the world in black and white,
and although this colorful
butterfly is making her way
into your sunday mornings,
you, my inchworm,
are colorblind.
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 7:34 PM UTC
"A stitch in time saves nine"
is proverbial
"Inchworm measuring the marigolds"
is a song
Snippets remembered
from days long gone by
built by a poet
intuiting a story
imagining an ending
a prize-winner
Sep 6, 2019
Sep 6, 2019 at 6:38 AM UTC
Alone is he
He is alone
Prone to danger
To danger is he prone
not afraid
just shivers
walk alone
to nowhere
where he roams?
Inchworm
make cocoon
not be cold
but not see moon
Inchworm
not afraid
just cold
so he walks alone
happily
And shivers
May 19, 2019
May 19, 2019 at 11:47 PM UTC
Returned to worsened thoughts,
Caught in the spiderwebs of restlessness.
Inchworm caught in the trap.
Presuming its imminent demise.
Toothless dogs of emotional wars fought on the daily,
Screaming in my broken ears,
about how little this all means.
Heat-soaked heart drowning in my anxiety's waste products,
just looking for some direction,
someone to mention my name,
in just a positive way.
perhaps I'm deaf,
so please speak up.
I can't even hear,
my own cries of fear,
so please speak up.
I want to see,
that is what I mean,
is more than nothing.
Please?
May 25, 2020
May 25, 2020 at 12:00 PM UTC