"incise" poems
*“...Your words were found and I ate them.
They became a joy to my heart. In my mouth—
a sweet delight, but in my belly—bitter...”
--Jeremiah*
...But that night
by dim background of next-room light
I could not see your face
just feel your hush of shadow words
on spine of shudders
Seems we dropped this bomb
that would not stop exploding!
...And I was sure?
that it was right?
because...because....!
Their eyes were slanted!
So they could not see—
the “Good Guys”
VANISH—
WIDE-EYED—!
in its TOO-MUCH-LIGHT
Still your voice insists
in pause and fissioned hiss
that I MUST KNOW
in tender half-life
TRUTH
too pure
too deadly white
I swallow lethal glowing dose
HOW CAN YOU SPEAK
SUCH WORDS SO CLOSE!
EXPOSED!
“...in mouth sweet—in belly bitter…”
Stories? and the Grandma Song
rendered tender—lull of voice
Soul’s cabinet cleared of venial sin
Last of all—the tucking in.....
They say you first get sick....
Seems we dropped this bomb
that would not stop exploding!
And I am invisibly ill—with truth
approaching critical mass
Will angry rads incise their ways?
Will leaden swords of angels drive them back?
In this night—
my bedtime stories fainted at your
whispers...whispers...WHISPERS—
fusing an oblong fear
that I MUST NOT DROP!
but I cannot hold!
Fetal-folded
frail and freezing
under covers— just barely peeking
“Jesus hanging on the cross…Tell me-- was it I?”
Jesus hanging in the cross
TELL ME! IT’S NOT TRUE!
"Tell me, mother
Were you God talking?
I could not see your face
by the next room’s light..."
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 11:40 AM UTC
**November 5, 2010 at 2:59 am
{Inspired by Dr. Boshra 3agban, Nizzar Qabani}
You're a woman;
created from the Greek myths,
wrapped in the veil of my fantasies,
Reborn from all the phoenix ashes,
You're the history of my life, miss;
it bounds u not..no years no seas,
you grant the moon those glaring flashes,
So I never sleep at nights to see thy gypsy eyes,
It's enough to write your name,
Just to be the perfect poet,
It's enough to be loved by thee,
It is so enough for me,
& I'll be mentioned in the history;
As the man & the angel that met,
At the horizon's end,
On the edge of the dreams,
You're a woman;
Carved by an angel's hands,
& made from the diamonds of verse,
Veiled in the golden cloak of my dreams,
A deity from some mystic lands,
Glowing through my murky universe,
Born from heaven's springs & streams,
Your tidal dormant waves through me they arise,
You're a woman;
Greater than Aphrodite & Athena,
You're the endless music of the lyre of pan,
You're the gauzy clouds that may make spring a winter eve,
Picturing you ..Tottering...is the ****** of me,
Thy swift stalk...gazing at you; forever I span,
arrayed in thy mantle of every hyacinth's leaf,
That sings the odes of love in me heart they incise,
You're a woman;
Caring not for time or years,
Neither aging nor death can touch thee,
You're the eternal rose of all the nerieds,
Knowing not no pains or fears,
Thy treads' rhythm lurks through me,
Your love's a religion, belief & a creed,
& my prayers from now forth art thy drowsy sighs,
It's enough to write your name,
Just to be the perfect poet,
It's enough to be loved by thee,
It is so enough for me,
& I'll be mentioned in the history;
As the man & the angel that met,
At the horizon's end,
On the edge of the dreams,
You're a woman;
Drest in the Elysium stars,
With pinions of an angel of life,
Fretting on waters of rivers of Eden,
Healing my feeble searing scars,
Heaping my ardent fires that thrive,
With dewy kisses That're unforgotten,
I've never lived before...now I realize,
You're a woman;
Of wavy hair & wavy weather,
Of blushy cheeks, like of the primrose,
Nestling these lips gushing with love,
I pledge my heart & soul for a feather,
Of thy wing that flips & shows,
Sublimity with that dimpled smile of a dove,
That holds all the answers & whys...
It's enough to write your name,
Just to be the perfect poet,
It's enough to be loved by thee,
It is so enough for me,
& I'll be mentioned in the history;
As the man & the angel that met,
At the horizon's end,
On the edge of the dreams....
******
Jul 18, 2012
Jul 18, 2012 at 2:53 AM UTC
Help me
the drugs don't work
my father touches me
I am too fat
powerless
I incise my anorexic hunger
with a martyr's red razor
rewarding myself
with a dopamine high
mixed with pity and disgust
so I can hide in the up and down
never know my real reasons
project my sadness onto others
and take pills
from psychiatrists
who themselves
believe the shallow island of chemicals
is the solution
and who work only
to keep you sick
when the sun is shining
but you cannot see it
because your frontal cortex says
the sun is not shining
when in fact
it is.
Dec 23, 2011
Dec 23, 2011 at 9:51 AM UTC
Serrations of chimneys
Stone-black perforate
Velvet-black dark.
A tree coils in core of darkness.
My swinging
Hands
Incise the night.
A man slips into a doorway,
Black hole in blackness, and drowns there.
A second man passing traces
The diagram of his steps
On invisible pavement. Rain
Draws black parallel threads
Through the hollow of air.
2k
i.
mahal ko
No matter how long it shalt taketh to meet;
I wilt wait an eternal span.
ii.
amica mea
I shalt be in long-suffering;
To kiss thine feet, on mine knee's and hand's.
iii.
Mo grá
Through ourn waiting;
I shalt taketh thine incise, and warm thee with fire taking thy ice.
iv.
mon amour
Mine spirit is thy window;
Mine soul is open to thee alway's as thy door.
v.
agápi̱ mou
I loveth thee, forever mine queen;
Just sayest that thou loveth me to, forever we shalt be.
©Brandon Nagley
©Earl jane Nagley dedication
©Lonesome poet's poetry
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 8:02 PM UTC
I am the coy smiling handsome man
and my feet beat the darkness away when I rush.
And I rush, in the alleys, sightless,
an actor led by lines of wilting dialogue.
And jasmine litters the gutters, fit to be dredged, the
aroma and the petals streaked with reminiscence.
I rush. I am the man toward an apogee,
a scalpel, with tastes as keen as winter lavender,
and eyes that feel the weight of tastes behind them.
As I dredge the depths for rarer tastes
I rush toward the gutter.
And like the gutters I thirst, in the levees and fen-
In the fen the rush of prey caught
Idling fills the space inside my eyes like oil,
and I dredge the lake for traces.
I am the actor, the dredge, my wit rehearsed
and I am acquainted with the lady of the night.
I smile as she caresses my oily deluged eyes-
And her eyes are filled with bile,
accented by jasmine, even
in the dimmest light of
gutters are rushing to an
apogee, fiercer than I'd like them to
appear, but I am the scalpel, to incise the insincere-
I am the prince, an heir to exacting the coerced-
I watch her eyes like windows from the gutter like a vigil
and hold tight to her breath.
I pour her blood in paper cups
until her breath is weightless-
And I rush, an actor, in the scene that we portray-
I am the giver, the oily deluged eyes that close around the flesh
and rend the fruit from the rind.
Mar 27, 2010
Mar 27, 2010 at 12:52 PM UTC
When pins and pressure plates crawl into my spent shoulders
I clutch madly to crush the offending sinews.
When I’ve grazed the side of my tongue with an accidental death-threat
I revisit the spot and repeatedly incise, until I’m ******* crimson and tears.
When the she-squito shoots me up via serrated needle turning me feastlike
My fingernails compulsively scavenge out the adenosine deaminase.
I sniff the arid bottles of perfumes I love that are no longer manufactured.
I re-trace my lost friendships through the riverside paths we made.
I chop onions and slurp hot sauce until I’m dry.
Maybe that’s why I’m stuck on you.
Mar 26, 2013
Mar 26, 2013 at 3:00 AM UTC
ginko soft they pile, strewn on cobble
memories themselves concretely devised
cloister inward, revise, revise, revise:
debauched meanderings fully marble
escapes to curl the lip, adorable
here and there, whether smile sneer incise
linguistic pirouettes or paler lies
congest that wisdom indefinable --
the moment past moves on to feigning truth
with pretty rhyme, for ornamenting time
with myths to filter in an Avalon,
juggle perspectival paradoxic ruth
with fine meter fine, vernacular chimes,
and resolve the conflict like a dawn
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 9:47 AM UTC
Encapsulated;
Pin drop atom bomb sparks
an incise, rasping raw hiss.
the instantaneous buzz ignites a crescendoing, numbed fuzz belonging to no known octave
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 1:29 AM UTC
I've always ever wanted a muse
with pickled eyes the color of
the dank, polluted snow that haunts the crevices of my city,
Brooklyn.
I've only ever yearned to touch
something bent, but not broken --
like the ligament of your bone.
With what breath do I hold from you,
but fog, smog , sour pears, and a hint of lague
You are the grim beauty to walk the Victorian era
Dashing, lashing --
Oscar Wilde couldn't even spout a witty retort.
Pink lips that incise like the curve of a scalpel
sent Hannibal on his way to salvation
and a voice like the cursive handwriting I could never perfect
Morose, macabre -- these are the terms to coincide with obsession.
In any way,
you have always ever been my muse.
Jan 21, 2014
Jan 21, 2014 at 4:00 PM UTC
Picture me suckling on her elbows, lips enveloping that round lump, teeth scraping up past the skins’ v-fold, you might even want to dress that elbow in dotted pale cerise cotton ******* picture me lapping at her neck, tongue thwapping, spit running down to the corners of the mouth, bright nose pressed firm into the temple, my salacious grin in the wee pit of her eyes,
Yes I am there.
Picture me pawing, growling, climbing up her thin skinny young legs, my junk clambering its way into her grove garden cemetery of Hearse boxes and heart suitcases, where by death nothing grows anymore. Picture heavy, weighty, fleshy flesh tearing to shreds those photos you’ve been keeping of changing diapers in the back of your mind, those pictures on the top of your Steinway, picture me in your picture frames. Picture me I am the perfect imbecilic interstices to incise your pristine sweethearts’ heart, picture me, for I am the beast trammeling your restful sleep. Picture me while I take what I please, picture me as I take and I cleave, fueled by rancor and grief, I am your concerted antithesis of pleas and no’s and pleadings. I am but her best friend till the end. Picture me, woof woof. Picture me.
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 3:27 AM UTC
Slaughter with fangs that love to incise,
lust to ring and roar
plastic zips that smother too tighten,
feast on hindered breath takings.
Pull to gorge against their blessed soulless upbringings.
It's not terrifying,
not bloodless lucid heart beating,
steal the latest last of,
butcher and reel till the crazy flees in fear.
paint splatter smiles,
hang harlot blood stained baby childs.
It's long love lost lusting,
just a carousel killing ride,
a manslaughter ****** scene,
mask me a demon,
kiss me a rotting rose.
For fledgling sake hand me the last shotgun blow.
Breathe me a reason not to die.
Aug 28, 2011
Aug 28, 2011 at 12:27 AM UTC
Pigeon-striped with a polyester hat
How can he look so nice and feel so sad?
“It’s a momentary lapse in sadness
Brewed in prudence and gladness”
Fret not for the velvet shoe that stalks you
Cry a well for all the leather hides
That you wear upstairs for kindred brides
Another lover bred to love untrue
“Is there something else I’d like to say?
Efficiency is drenched in dismay
Jewelled epaulettes on deafened shoulders
Something more incise, I shall solder"
Heaven delivered our coal
Sat atop a gilded pole
Heaven delivered our coal
By lawful life, we are loveless moles
Ruby-haired and lilac-nailed
How can she arouse yet taste so stale?
“Hold my vindication in a brooch
Open my heart in reproach"
Fret not for the saddle in your ‘mare
It will take you to a mining town
There, you will earn yourself a gown
And fall on the soldered stairs
“Is there something else I’d like to say?
I am to be blackened for my pay
Else I resign to a red ribbon
And use almighty love as a weapon"
Sweet life, what’s to surmise?
Moths in the corners of our eyes
Writing as a fly in a frame
Spot the hideous, spotted dame
Watch your place, hold your pace
Heaven delivered our coal
Sat atop a gilded pole
Heaven delivered our coal
By lawful life, we are loveless moles
Jan 10, 2019
Jan 10, 2019 at 8:37 PM UTC
from the cold road: houses visible (without wires)
entrenched in white snow: sherd forest archaeology.
car parked, bananas and bars packed, we hike.
a magnesium flame painting, freezing. a collage. a frenzy.
now, various floaters organized in armies playing war
or grazing, flamingo legs embalmed and crooked
and cooked, charred and glazed in a kiln, kin amid
the cold air, the ground is a movie screen.
the sun, sidelong, bruises our pilgrimage
and lays shadows in place to dissect and incise.
light like a plague, a pear flesh, a frozen swarm of locusts.
the forest opens, we reach aforementioned rural shantytown.
those houses when we parked and hiked to them
were not houses, they were barns, the windows, doors
all were painted in detail on pieces of plywood,
some big movie set gone missing (headline: *found!
deceptive, chipping curtains hung out in the cold*).
Dec 26, 2016
Dec 26, 2016 at 5:47 PM UTC
You have such small,
Gentle hands.
The softest of touch,
As you trace invisible lines
Across my temples
And relaxed brow.
You stare into me.
I’d left windows open
Secretly hoping
That you’d brave
My weak defenses
And seek me out.
Inside, you comfort me
More than the fire
I had waiting for you.
You incise my soul
Drawing no blood,
Caressing open nerve.
Your skill of navigation
Within me:
I sense that you have been
Here—before.
Perhaps in a Time
When Dreams lived, flourished.
So petite in size—
Yet my own passion
Enwraps you and
I feel and breathe
Your every selfless,
Deliberate move.
My eyes, weary
And guilty of your entrance.
They complied when
Words failed to shield
From an intruder
Of Need and Desire.
I shall keep you
Safe, here.
Should you peer out my chest
You will see
The palm of my hand,
Guarding you in.
So fitting you are.
I am intoxicated and
Delirious with the liquids
We are now sharing.
I feel our flesh grafting,
As it always belonged.
I close my eyes,
While you settle in
Your forever home.
I will sleep now, dream
That you someday may be,
More than a photograph.
Jul 22, 2010
Jul 22, 2010 at 5:59 AM UTC
Your heart. My hand.
Your lips. My plan.
Your eyes. My demise.
Your hair. My heart's incise.
Your heart, your lips, your eyes, your hair
This torture you've instilled in me is not fair
They are shackles to my greater cause
But without you, my life withdraws
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 9:42 AM UTC
I saw the bright steel. It leapt from your lips.
Madness come tempted, black, angry, eclipse.
Once we long courses, abounding hardships,
Challenged together; no thought to call quits.
Then came war, sparing
No knife, not caring.
Weapons used knowing
Hate they were growing.
Now The Blade launched.
Locked target, unstaunched.
Why would my death cause
You cheer, your applause?
Fierce hatred burning, your
soul: scorched dune land.
Splaying, filleting at prayer's demand,
The Blade, a weapon convention won't use,
Hot steel released to new heights of abuse.
Mean dark cold ore pulled from lowest of rungs,
Loosed screaming weapon, with all of your lungs.
I sob and I puke, my chest you incise,
Ribbed wall tore open, my heart you excise.
Betrayed and agape,
a lie, said as true,
Avulsion of flesh
you cannot undue.
You dare speak of truth,
while feasting on gore,
Gorging on heart's flesh
still lusting for more?
Gnawing and biting,
perfumed in blood, hot,
Savoring my fear,
your reeking soul's rot.
Biting and chewing,
the taste, the sweet gift
Love ended proving.
This pain, you call shrift?
Colors of freedom,
Speak my vein's plight,
Face red, soon turns white,
'Till blue spells goodnight.
Eternal the rest,
That's destiny best.
I sleep not so blessed,
Your teeth in my chest.
You claim it's okay,
it was not from hate,
Tears shed for me
just carnage's
playmate.
Ruby sobs
marking
the cheeks
they striate
Fearful
in knowing,
in death I
await.
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
It's poison by any other name,so
let's call it the politics
of the insane.
We have a boom
then
another boom and when there's not
enough room
we bomb someone.
So we call it a war and say,
there are militants and terrorists kicking down the door
and today we must stop them,
we must hold them at bay,
so
we bomb families who pray to their own prophets
in lands where
there are profits to be made.
When it all turns to dust we call it a bust
and wait for the boom to return.
A capital Idea from capitalists who sit in the rear,
on their rears and direct operations,
like surgeons with scalpels they incise the healthy,
issue more wealth to the wealthy,
build more machines to distribute toxins
dioxins and cancers sold by
necromancers to the rancid and putrid and,
(what about Euclid?)
an algorithm of this geometry means **** all to me
all I can see is death.
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 7:16 AM UTC
My pinkies don’t bend right.
They get locked in place
attempting to navigate space
so they turn introspective,
going inward.
My aunt is a palm reader.
She looked at my lines,
at the small age of nine,
and wisely determined
my destiny.
My right hand is clumsy.
To be a good surgeon
I needed to burgeon
despite my weak faith
and faults.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 8:49 PM UTC
an accumulation of
the not-so-distant insofar as
a whelm of cafard..
it is something that my hands
have seen with their drones,
something that bloviates
with intermittent speech,
a reaching-for-and-out hauling
of tempests as these
shadows renegade the dark
and join necessities of clarity
to combobulate their hue
into white without any trace of remembering, whatsoever.
yet in this scraping perimeter,
everything is within reach
yet unmoving - teeth do not gnash
anymore to grit their cadences,
mouths are swollen with something. a name perhaps? or a random memory of something we chortled about?
or were they bitten off by the fangs and their unrelenting incise,
suturing the lesions and removing the scabs of these wounds?
something that is purulent in laughter is just as crimson as in pain - these photographs watermarked by an effloresce of blood from which has lived once
in this world full in movement and in flesh now gone.
Sep 18, 2015
Sep 18, 2015 at 2:09 PM UTC
1. Its a sea pebble sky that looms tonight and it reminds me of how very gatsby my innards feel
2. Hah, its darkened to a deadly velvet in these few seconds- what passion!
3. It was in the dairy aisle yesterday that i added the need to incise my skin to the shopping list
4. I especially enjoy times at which the snow has yet to cloak the sheath of a frozen lake- one is able to see perfectly the rocks and withered leaves strewn beneath
5. She always apologizes the next morning.
Jan 8, 2017
Jan 8, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC
at that your, unstartled completely, without
hesitation because hips
(an electric fire; inside me)
SPRings
to my lips
that fleetly depart
my face to be
where they are longing
to incise
the placid unhaired
of your
between thighs
velvet forever
notch
May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012 at 8:11 PM UTC
Precarious crucible
A lip on the edge
A tumour, a node
Surface tension,
On thought’s filament
Spike of zest
Rippling and full of wonder
Do I dare poke a hole
And admire what’s under?
Do I dare incise?
A line, a compromise
A rift, a drypoint line,
The burr is the red sea
Above an intense reef
Of life and death and
Everything in between.
A scarlet paradise
the visceral eden of the
pediatrician’s wall chart
that haunts every child’s dream
calls out to me as a mortal adult
the terror of the dark
itches just as much
as the urge to pull
away the flap and
see what light has not
yet graced
Do I treat my own real estate
like someone else’s property
And follow noble orders?
Or do I cultivate it and
Dig for buried treasure?
Hunt the beach, search for
fossils? Dowse for water?
Cleanse the land?
Slash and burn?
Carve out terraces?
I take my knife
I plow and explore.
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 1:58 AM UTC
Ill never write with the constructs
of ink no matter its shading,
as it has no edges, no fear or freedom.
Instead I use a scalpel to cut clean words
even though not evidentially visible
all cuts have meaning.
But ever metaphorical stain takes
time to show its meaning..
You may not see what I mean
i write in a different manner to
you.
But let time show the interpretation
that was there but never understood
till you looked beneath the incise significance
even if not seen now,
just realise its there...
Aug 19, 2020
Aug 19, 2020 at 5:55 PM UTC