"inflection" poems
Revolution
is a confiding smile
that reaches from
deep within the heart
An outstretched hand
up and out
to give a life forsaken
a new start
To seek and search
far beyond
and glimpse
a brightly shining path
Yet then to look behind
and back again
to be assured that all
will know the way
Rebellion
is a knowing look
a glance from eye to eye
A slight inflection
of radiant joy
in the tenor of a sigh
The quietly warm
and whispered word
with a gentle breeze of hope
Revolution is a beautifully
harmonious triumphant tune
that just won't leave
you alone
-R.
(06)
-TX
Oct 21, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 at 4:08 PM UTC
You asked me my name in your first remark
We sat on opposite ends of a question mark
You were dashing - made me pause,
me, this independent clause
standing alone,
I made sense on my own
But I answered you anyway.
Ellipses.
Now you are the verb in my heart’s contraction
I am the subject and you are the action
An Interrogative with a Declarative reaction
An Exclamatory and then an Imperative attraction
Ellipses.
Your lips ease
Me, the direct object of your affection,
but never sentenced to an apostrophe’s possession
perhaps more true- a plural “s” suggestion
and the excitement behind an exclamation point’s inflection
The semi-colon understands
We can be on our own, but we want to stand
together
where our letters
aren’t fetters,
but the typesetter’s
better measure
of linguistic pleasure.
We communicate through metaphors and similes
Like the birds and the bees
We speak across homophone lines
to keep a census of our senses at all times
Because words said aloud have allowed
us to find meaning behind the utterance of sound-
mere words and phrases
jumping off of pages
into brain and heart and soul
when the parts become a whole
And with the syntax, punctuation, grammar, and usage
I’m a hopeless semantic always trying to ****** it
Language- yours I understand through the myriad.
Words can’t capture you. Period.
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 10:50 PM UTC
they say that love never dies
could never curl and bawl and cry
love is the purest of all emotions
even turbulent and torrid
it is pure, never horrid
but I'm tired of loving you
or seeing your jaw, you finger, your tooth
and feeling a rush of fear
that i will never escape from this anxious pit of unclear
good intentions and impure thoughts
so i do what i am taught
i slog through the love, the lust
the misplaced affections because i need, i must
be graced with one smile, a small glimpse
even if my feelings you already dismissed
i was going to tell you, don't you know?
i was going to knock my feelings off their petty throne
i thought that maybe if i let it all out
i would not feel a gout
of excitement for the forbidden feelings
that maybe i could stop pealing
in laughter at the smallest thing
when i thought you weren't looking, as i watched you sing
that i would have the control of my buzzing desire
but now i refuse to fan the fire
my friends still egg me on.
Valentines Day is on Saturday, what could go wrong?
I've found that people are great at giving advice
when it wont affect them even once or twice
but they know that you know off my misplaced affection
you see it now in every inflection
she lied and told you behind my back
and then asked me to cut her some slack
when now that tenuous friendship we once had was broken
and i only ask you to give me a token
of admitting your silence
rings out louder
than any no
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 11:51 PM UTC
keep my heart in a mason jar
above your bed
take it down and look at it
from time to time
then watch with a frown
on the day the jar slips through your fingers
and plummets to the hardwood
with a crack & a shatter
"sorry" you'll mutter
with an almost interrogative inflection
but you won't pick up the shards
you'll stare blankly at the contents - my heart
it's messy, not what you wanted
stains from the girl with the mason jar heart
will haunt the floorboards and echo in the walls
and you'll wish you'd been more careful
when you had her in your hands
- m.f.
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 2:31 PM UTC
Spinning on the north pole.
Truth be told, it's being pulled
in all directions thus the spinning inflection.
A prosaic misdirection.
4 cardinal directions but when they conflate
you get eight. If you prorate
in-between you get sixteen
directions you can take.
The only mistake you can choose is standing in place.
At the pace your face is rotating on your flesh case,
your bones will displace. your mind will efface
from it's designated space.
Don't be a waste. Move along.
Pick one of the 16 directions you can take
Whichever one you pick is the road you belong.
Just get to where your going before your swan song.
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 4:33 AM UTC
my mist expires in your atmosphere
linen sheets adhere
around my throat, no fear
smell pheromones in the air
it's crystal clear, my dear
i am amiss without you near
self-controlled
white-knuckle hold
now conquered
cold and longing to spy a songbird
if only for a single moment
and nothing longer
i am somber but mighty fond of her
strong enough to say it still
and stronger now to do
smart enough to ponder it here
but dumb enough to squander it too
red hearts are lies
beating blood flows blue
it is true, did you hear?
i'm amiss without you near
i thought we were musketeers
turns out you're the puppeteer
pulling my strings, was as I feared
another way to ingratiate and endear
while I'm tied here waiting to hear a footstep
to take the next step
another level for this intimate project
but from this aspect with all due disrespect
you subject me to intense neglect
you're a ****** architect speaking scintillating dialects
only I can connect but I am a bad girl... so I guess I deserve it
my favorite show now that you mention
is when you are standing at attention
you brighten your eyes and your voice changes inflection
my indiscretion becomes your intention
but I digress, and bite through, throughout this blissful rendezvous
as we float like a feather into the bedroom together
past dawn until noon
it must be true
i am amiss without you
Jul 16, 2025
Jul 16, 2025 at 11:16 AM UTC
It’s cold and quiet here, sitting on the moon.
Watching as the world spins by, making its rounds.
Even with the stars shining, there’s still a sense of gloom.
The beat of my heart and inflection of my thoughts are the only sounds.
Where are you, sitting on the moon?
Alone, I feel as I rest here, I’m afraid it’s true.
As I lie on the moon, cold and alone, I've begun to feel attune.
Though I’m afraid feeling alone would not change if I were with you.
A strange place to be, sitting on the moon.
You can rest with me if you’d like, this isn't beguile.
Though I am afraid we would not be able to commune,
I would not mind if you came by the moon and stayed awhile.
It’s cold and quiet here, sitting on the moon.
I've never felt more content than I do on this grey mound.
I would not mind a silent visit, even if you just passed through.
And as I took my final breath, I couldn't help but smile,
Sitting on the moon.
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 2:36 PM UTC
When great aunt Maggie passed away years ago, the one thing I really missed was her angelic voice.
The swaggering, sing-song lilt of the mid-Derry accent was as sweet as the confections she used to pass out to us as kids:
The inflection, the intonation, and the slight lisp she brought to it was so gloriously unique but was never heard again.
I often wish I could go back with a tape recorder to capture it in all its glory and relive how wonderful she was.
Now all I have is a untranslatable memory that can't be brought back to even vaguely approximate what it meant to me.
And now here I am again with the same obstacle.
The same tones, the same inflections albeit through a different light have just been extinguished before me.
This time there was no digital device rushing in to capture our time before it ran out.
No instinct for preservation was forthcoming - we were too busy having fun & 'being here now'.
No, once again I am bereft:
All I I have is here (in my heart) and and here (in my head)
The loved sounds I miss will always resound there albeit without backup
Voices lost but not forgotten.
Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 8:04 AM UTC
Your words crawled through my auditory cortex like caterpillars, preventing me from hearing anything other than the inflection in your deep voice. As your body inched closer to mine, they took residence in my chest cavity, building chrysali that hung off of my ribs making it more and more difficult to inflate my heavy lungs. They cocooned themselves as I too wrapped myself up in you. Suddenly, your lips were on mine and your hands were counting the vertebrae down my back, scaring the insects from their resting place, resulting in chills up my spine. The newly emerged butterflies flew out of my sternum and up into my throat, longing to be closer to you. But then you pulled away and they instantly died, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth.
Aug 6, 2014
Aug 6, 2014 at 10:26 PM UTC
Honeysuckle running deep in nostril's recollection
Wafting nectar dripping in air, please stop
Must stay present, no time for memory swap
Sneaking in, yellowed dreams, desirous confection
O purgatory, keep me still, deviate no such inflection
Causeway flash backing egg yolk, and lemon spectrum
Road lined in runners, speckling scintillation
This loose maddening of honeysuckle titillation
Reverse your tendril's twist, quivers an ungated septum
Covers, green to yellow transitions, honeysuckle bedlam
I cannot dance down this lane for fear of you
Your ringlets curl, clasp, coil me
On such road of alluvial soil I see
How can I? Must I, escape steer of dew?
You're honeysuckle memory of all I knew
Mar 9, 2016
Mar 9, 2016 at 9:58 AM UTC
A call with intention
A voice with inflection
≠
electric words
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 7:30 PM UTC
A coffin, my love,
Built of porcelain bones,
Under your weight, they endlessly groan.
One breath, my love,
you oscillate in my lungs,
you intoxicate where you've stung.
Your venom, my love,
Sinks with every inflection
Of your unvoiced rejection.
A garden, my love,
Full of flowers turning black,
hiding smiles full of cracks.
.
Cut my skin, it's you I'd bleed.
You're the resting place I've come to need,
I'm the shell of a girl left to be freed.
But you didn't see,
you couldn't see,
I peered into your coffin,
and I couldn't find,
I didn't believe,
That in that place,
there wasn't a single trace,
Of me.
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 5:32 PM UTC
I awoke alone,
after a horrid dream.
I turned to your face
to feel something comforting.
In the spot that graced your silhouette
were sheets weighted with regret.
My misdirected inflection
coupled with the misconception,
that 1+1=1 not 2 you see,
when the correct formula
is 1+1≥3
Fact is I lied.
When I pronounced "love"
with greater strength than "as long"
Fact is I lied.
When i said unconditional.
It is the beauty in song.
My regret lies in lack of earlier cognition.
This is not the first time this has happened.
Which means I never learned a lesson
inferring to my lack of a mission
or understanding,
in a man's mind muddled.
I took the position
of sitting down in the struggle.
My body fatigued, eyes bloodshot and wary
I refused to see your definition
of affection realized in the lines of the abstract.
Fact is I lied.
When I said forever;
Knowing I am temporary.
Fact is I lied.
I never finished my sentence.
A more complete thought is "one of many"
The complete truth is my love was uniform.
Designed to let any woman fill the mold.
I lacked passion.
Which gives direction in a sandstorm.
I gave up my attempts to understand why water is wet.
Returned to my dreadful fantasy
wherein my heart would contort and deform.
As I told the truth to you
in a Scarlett and Rhett fashion;
We caressed in a snowstorm.
The message cut deeper than I could ever myself.
Fact is I lied.
When I said I would be fine,smiled
and drank in the last light you would reflect.
Fact is I lied.
When I said it was me
It was the both of us I wished to confect.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 10:34 PM UTC
Spotlights on us
seemingly illuminating
and otherwise blinding
can't see the audience
can't tell the difference
between time and space
different manifestations
of each other creating
infinite mandalas
poured into rivers
tones rising out
of and falling into
silence
I trip over words and pick the sounds out of the scrapes in my palms
I make motions to pick up the gravity but my actions are glitchy, disconnected
an abstracted cadence
remote inflection
radio nuance
rhythm break
modal static living in stasis
ants on a screen as grains of rice
with bubbles in a glass of beer
merging like two tones
harmonizing on a
secondary tonal plane
move me like a modulation
end me like an infinite crescendo
I am suspended
over several tones
just let it go
and I am resolved
follow where the voices lead
Dec 26, 2014
Dec 26, 2014 at 10:22 AM UTC
One of the most humorous conditions that a creature could burden itself with is a somnambulant desire to be to it’s own liking .
Maxillary extrapolation although a positive political expectorant is likewise a practical partiality .
I prefer to be philanthropically phenological although rational impedance is my histophysiology . My present participle is practical pragmatism and tertiary transcendentalism . Xenoplasticly speaking I feel alone but plausibility is a probationer in reflective self awareness . Atrociously impetuous I proceeded amidst heinously horrendous heckledom . Adequate inflection is a relevant relative to retaliatory regression but I digress . Paraphernalia is a practitioner to plausibility’s cause and should be assimilated through cognizance not perfunctory preferentialism .
Hegelian humanitarianism must supersede political subterfugalism or all may be lost in quagmire .
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 3:48 AM UTC
In 2005, I had $101.
Sweet Blue,
eyes green,
waiting.
Dilating.
In 2005, I had $101.
Sweet Blue,
is what I called you.
God of Euphoria.
Mother's Milk.
In 2005, I had $101.
Sweet Blue,
had a street
value,
of twenty-five
a pill.
I bought four,
and thankfully
the dollar bill,
was crisp enough to roll.
A different world together,
holding hands.
Greedy for the feeling of calm,
I would grasp tighter,
hand eventually crushing hand.
Morose disposition spirals through a cut straw.
A last straw; an unwanted kiss.
Hand holding hand is a symbolic image,
but don't confuse the inflection of these words.
This is about
the deteriorating hands.
This is about
the deteriorating nostrils.
Not so much about cheap thrills.
Not so much anything,
forgetting,
drugs ****
Jun 8, 2013
Jun 8, 2013 at 8:28 PM UTC
~for r a/k/a rrr a/k/a woody~
“I will always remember you”
raise you hand if honesty
yet lives inside your muscle
memory of brain, of heart,
there is no one here who hasn’t
uttered them fool lying words
with difficulty we struggle to up
raise faces and places, moments
and images no longer mirrored
within the frontmost places of
our recollection, that searing then,
itself scorched, lichen+moss covered,
our greatest pains, pleasures sworn
allegiances to these razored inflection
points, now scoured by rusty hazes,
and we wonder what has become
of us, what we valued so to savor
as forever memories, their names
gray lady shrouded, and there is
no internet site to aid in self-recovery,
for our selfish selves have been altered,
time, new loves, guilt and other stuff
intersect with mind’s eyes and no mas-
more synapses paths instant linkages
I know you will vociferously argue but
it is almost physical, our shame at losing
them and ourselves, in the morass that
time digs daily deeper for what grieves
us is that losing as the end rushes to close
our story, makes us pick up pen and finger
scratch as best we can inside the lines on
our faces that are/had proofs, witnesses,
that once, we were there at the places,
whose names are no longer mapped any
where, so deep, no archivist’s submersible dare
fathom those fathom’s darkest we would need
to explore without the possibility that we
might implode if we sunk so far to rip apart sea
forests we knowingly, secret-planted to coverup
her memory, the words spoken, the oaths
and promises, we swore, for instance, simply
by saying, “I will always remember you”
p.s. and my self-shaming so great, that my
asking for forgiveness is buried so fast, it
may, not ever been real, just another fiction
Jul 6th, 8:36 AM,
Jul 7, 2023
Jul 7, 2023 at 6:42 AM UTC
It took a hastily-made hangman puzzle
to **** you, a present-day friend
of mine to simply whisper
that three-letter word
as if she were restating the gospel.
Ironic, then, that as you were dying,
I felt an era-long noose loosening.
I remember finding skin pores
mistakenly labelled as sinkholes,
every confession warranting
a "believe me, we knew" after the other.
If you had spent any more time,
an indefinite amount of days
deciding to stay lurking
in the corners of the closet,
out there in the rafters
where no one could hear you
whispering poison into my gut reactions,
I might have sprouted
a kamikaze bloodline,
a raucous rhythm in the ranks
cackling louder with each year
of silence, each span of secrecy.
Although your plastic inflection
vanished with a collective
unlocking of the joints,
your cryptic sentiment still loiters
while my common sense is sleeping,
and I remember to repeat,
three times like Dorothy,
that moment I could only
be my true self on paper.
Sep 12, 2011
Sep 12, 2011 at 4:40 AM UTC
Gilded cage so small and tiny
Even singing comes out whiny
Stinking of fake fresh and piney
Tis the season
Leaking water warm and briny
With good reason
Christmas cheer and glasses toast
Loved ones smile and laugh and boast
I sit perched upon my post
A tinsled column
Invisible reluctant host
A heart that's solemn
A longing for a love so distant
The melancholy is persistent
A smile could erase it in an instant
On a face cherubic
For my heart is not resistent
It's theraputic
So that smile that is perfection
Is mirrored in my own reflection
Without a thought about rejection
Hallucinations
About the subtlest inflection
In Salutations
Surrounded by the merrily intense
With drunkard tendencies immense
A bar with all accoutrements
They pound tequila
Drinking away the sacraments
Oh yes, I feel ya
Merry time with old Kris Kringle
Guests all lubed enough to mingle
Mistletoe hangs and sleigh bells jingle
Gifts homemade
Tables adourned and glasses tingle
Gold brocade
Still I sit all caged and flightless
Blind to joy all sad and sightless
Drink could make it hurt a mite less
I'm going backward
Laying here all limp and lifeless
Broke and fractured
Surrounded by the fake and vexing
Artificial and quite perplexing
Reality they are rejecting
The devil may care
Bellies bare and muscles flexing
Lost underwear
So ******* dancing to the jukebox
Lost alone here in the boondocks
There is no snow upon the rooftops
Ahead they forge
Find a room before that thing pops
It's so engorged
Neighbor ***** all dressed in orange
Wearing gold to make the poor cringe
Stripping time to fill her syringe
I'll be her hinderance
Still too drunk from her last binge
Faulty remembrance
Ridding riff raff from the party
People still drunk on Bacardi
Noxious gasses burp and farty
With toilets makeshift
Worn out makeup on the smarty
She needs a facelift
Time to let the people go
Too tired to keep watching the show
Drinking hard and walking slow
Verbose yet listless
Honey I don't want to know
It's not my business
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
i'm making up powerful lies
my woman has x-ray eyes
staring past my pen
at my subtle suggestion
fictitious facts start to climb
new lows for the same old rhyme
no limit no
hesitating inflection
i know i can not convince
my self to deny existence
but some day all these words i mince
will from my soul a truth evince
*in time
these kinds
of crimes
change lives*
there's a quiet theft now between you and me
as i spend your time through our privity
i've been measuring my self in this light
squint at how bright
i'm looking up and down for the sky
pride holds me down
below the storm
blood on my crown
can i shift form?
just be reborn?
yes i've been making up powerful lies
and i'm still hiding from her x-ray eyes
but my shoes have worn thin
chasing door to door grin
i know my mind is a sin
but watch me mask my chagrin
*in time
these kinds
of crimes
change lives*
there's a quiet theft now between you and me
as you steel my mind through our privity
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 5:09 AM UTC
A friend has a problem with his computer connection
The dashed thing keeps losing its inflection
To wits end my friends computer did drive him
And last evening the picture was rather grim
At some time later tonight he'll be online
Hopefully his computer connection will be working just fine
It has been a frustrating period for my friend
Having his link to the outside world taking a lend
Observing the sidebar of the computer screen
There is not a sight of him to be seen
A search party is required for scoping my friend
As his connections seems not to be on the mend
This hour the outlook is very very bright
My friends connection is lighting up the green light
His woes have been sorted and he'll be a happy chappy
Not being able to reach him has been rather ******
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 12:33 AM UTC
The sands become my tomb
As I lay staring
At natures mirror
Memories invade my gaze
The mirror depicts a face
Staring back
Is this the face of the man I was?
Or the glare of the stonecut man
That I've become?
Etched from marble
Or maybe granite
By the horrors it's seen
This sandy grave consumes me
And my glare turns upward
Inflection of this mind begins
The mirk above does not churn
It does not waver
And I realize I'm alone
The Vast reflects back at the stonecut
Mirroring the emptiness
In his eyes and soul
The realization of internal emptiness
Is deafening in the silent night
Has revenge done this to me?
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 1:21 AM UTC
She is the object of affection
No matter how wide the selection
She gets in your head like an infection
She"s sweeter than any confection
But there"s a certain section
That I"m vying for inspection
Please no rejection or defection
Let me make a correction
I just want a you collection
Pardon the change in inflection
But I can"t hide the ********
Because when I look in your eyes and direction
I see more than my reflection
It's simply...just perfection
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 4:06 AM UTC
Peeling myself off the floor with shaking legs,
My head's spins and my bones feel lead heavy,
I grin through ****** teeth as the question begs,
what happens to the river when you break the levee.
****** knuckles, bent noses, and black eyes.
Dissociation hides behind a smirk and a dimple,
that practiced mask that self loathing buys,
I say I'm getting better, like its ever that simple.
You see I'm an expert at burning bridges,
a true to life true crime social arsonist,
I bathe in jet fuel to clean my stitches,
Just another on fire narcissist.
So leave my mirror be, cause its a cracked reflection,
the bad guy won my mental election,
Please don't trust his smiling inflection,
and save yourself from my infection.
Apr 4, 2019
Apr 4, 2019 at 6:00 PM UTC