"jostled" poems
A rotten leaf among the other fresh green leaves,
Another wolf abandoned by its pack,
Another twig jostled by the river current,
Just another reject of society...
That's my only label in life.
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 11:14 PM UTC
I can't wait till I'm awake..
Plugged into the wall.
Nothing noted until the shell of the capsule
collapses under the weight of your trembling hands.
No there is no notation for what was said between us, just figure-less voices and a strenuous pain that strained our throats for the fear of nothing being communicated between the exasperated gasps of what was less than incommunicable silence.
Ugly is not a word but a feeling applied with meaning, applied to a certain truth about that metallic taste in my mouth, that tearful pain jostled in my chest and that consuming fear.
I know little of what this ugliness could mean other than it harbors shame in my corners. This shame is not inborn in anyone, but it builds it's presence as a drunken braggart who shouts obscenities and believes he is a prince of highest regard.
His ugliness is in what he slings from his tongue and his criticisms of all who in his mind toil about. But he is simply a angry troll with no heart and delusions of grandeur, frittering away time.. for time stands as an eternal judge and measure.
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 12:11 AM UTC
Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I'm not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever's hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne'er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare's plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
10.9k
Strange reflections, indistinct flickers whipping past, caught out of the corner of my eye.
An eldritch feeling takes over, as if to say this is what it to feel like to watch time pass by.
I lay witness to a whirlwind of intricate memories being swept away, jostled getting lost between the spaces.
The remnants of a hurricane filled with moments doomed to oblivion, intertwined inside an eternity of forgotten faces.
Anxiously I sit inside a cage of my own mold as I contemplate if this place is a sanctuary at all.
Finally realizing that those reflections were small glimmers of the pieces I let go during my own painfully beautiful fall.
Weep not for this wayward stranger, the trial and tribulations are something that we all must soldiers through.
Diligently stripping layers away, remaining hopefully that the journey will lead to something magnificently brand new.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 3:50 AM UTC
1100
The last Night that She lived
It was a Common Night
Except the Dying—this to Us
Made Nature different
We noticed smallest things—
Things overlooked before
By this great light upon our Minds
Italicized—as ’twere.
As We went out and in
Between Her final Room
And Rooms where Those to be alive
Tomorrow were, a Blame
That Others could exist
While She must finish quite
A Jealousy for Her arose
So nearly infinite—
We waited while She passed—
It was a narrow time—
Too jostled were Our Souls to speak
At length the notice came.
She mentioned, and forgot—
Then lightly as a Reed
Bent to the Water, struggled scarce—
Consented, and was dead—
And We—We placed the Hair—
And drew the Head *****
And then an awful leisure was
Belief to regulate—
3.2k
Treading water
so calm and peaceful
tranquil water
rising
falling
rising
falling
as if the water was flowing
to the tempo of my heart
inhale
exhale
my tranquil waters are disrupted
something is not right
the water slides past my ears
suddenly
I am jostled out of my daydream
the ripples turn into waves
they want to engulf me
feel me tumble in their depth
and feel me gasp for
breath
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 12:24 PM UTC
As the wind speed of mind increases, he loses weight
sees the clouds ethereal nearer and crowd in which
he too jostled like an imbecile, becoming far off dots
selfishness, greed, jealousy,pride, lust , avarice and violence
self-pity masquerading as love, all this still tie them down
some among them fornicate words, turn them in to ******
this happens for ages, but none has the power to stop the rot,
look at those mindless wonders that dance in **** we watch
in horror but pretend as if we are delighted, to keep the peers gleeful.
Don't you want a journey of your own through inner landscape
no more be a kite,begging for the mercy of those who pull the string
who fake ******* think something and pretend contrary to it, dupe.
"I am sky bound, levitate, a cloud heavy with sadness,still buoyant,
I would rain,when feel drained, assume the white cloak of purity.
I am the earth and fire,wind and water, limitlessness of the space"
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
The radio clicks the worn out song
of days gone by and governments gone wrong.
Its static, the rolling of clouds before a thunderstorm.
The newsreaders rustling papers,
High pressure systems on the move.
The hush of the people as they gather to listen
Breath bated, held back by obedient tongues
The bulletins are nicotine bullets,
they're so incredibly easy to get hooked on.
News comes down the wire like commuters on the tube
Jostled and shunted along.
Through underground networks it spreads
With absolute efficiency
And yet the platform on which it departs is more than often wrong.
Outside the park swings are empty,
There is nothing unusual about that
But the kids sit by speakers with their hands over their ears
The high frequency waves dance around them.
This day is marked down as one they wish they could forget.
The headlines blazed into their minds,
More dead.
Oppressed.
Injustice.
Religion.
Elections.
Disasters.
Tornadoes.
Politicians flustered.
Corruption.
Famine.
And Hollywood Blockbusters.
And now we move on to the traffic
Two hundred more just come in from Pakistan
They say there's a pile up in Europe
There's an awful lot of wreckage on the road
and now they are left with no place to call home.
The M1 is running slow again, no surprise in that
Row after row of red brake lights
Join them together to make constellations
And you have your very own metropolitan galaxy.
Because who needs the stars when we have brake lights!
And who needs the moon when we have Big Ben.
Down the telephone lines comes a battalion of lies
“Honey... I'm going to have to work late.'
If you listen very closely to the nine o'clock news
You can hear the reporters wristwatch
And every five seconds that tick on top of his pulse
Marks another slice of news coming in.
The little hand chases the big hand
You cannot tell the time with just one.
The details escape somewhere between
The real world and what's put down in papers.
The trouble with black and white
Is that you miss all the shades of grey
And if you've never seen stars
Then brake lights, are just brake lights
And disaster is just another day.
Sep 21, 2013
Sep 21, 2013 at 9:46 AM UTC
I want to be thin as a whisper,
To be feline and **** a cat with long whiskers,
To have length and width but no depth at all,
Not one bit of fat and to walk model tall,
I’ll take drugs, gobble Kleenex, drink only weak tea
Whatever it takes, to not ever be me.
I want to be loved like a pillow, feathered and light,
Held close to your cheek, cuddled all night,
To be soft squished and moulded into all kinds of lovers,
A prop up, a padding, a bump under the covers,
A cushion encased in a bright burst of stars,
I can’t wait to be normal, I’m slightly bizarre.
I want to be lost in crowd of loud celebration,
To be swept up and away in a mass of flirtation,
To be jostled and felt up, the hands of rude strangers,
A joyous outburst, wet kissing ex-changers,
To abandon my will, flee from restraint,
I can’t be, I could be, I am what I ain't.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 6:59 PM UTC
Paratroopers free fall,
'chutes coiled and caught in a grease ball afro curl
reaching down perplexed ****** frames.
Diligent chortling mimes trapped in handmade indecision cages, tapping a telling tune of tired games played day after day.
A right brained boy with a head full of clout
miscommunication with a leftist expat from the north
to the south.
Jostled connections send out fizzling sentences
through blown speakers and an overheated circuit -
Bored of the excuses whispers the nameless
without a reason there isn't a purpose.
Shoot an accusing glare past Father Time
overlooking treasonous discouraging crimes
Open those whale blubber caked eyes
to the other side.
It's not what this has done to you
but what this has done to us.
The hitchhiker gave up, traded his thumb for a seat on the bus.
Never was he lost, but given more than one chance.
He, no, she, no we
were thrown away with his walking stick and his waterproof nap sack.
Will we cross this road again?
And pick up from where we began?
Or never turn back?
Always was he lost, but given one too many of a chance
But was it worth it?
Upholding the "right and proper" stance?
Feb 15, 2010
Feb 15, 2010 at 12:08 PM UTC
**Topsy and Turvy, hassled and harried
jostled among a jungle of jumble,
so busy they beavered, in search of a bauble
upon all the shelves, so deftly they delved,
... within the lair of the piffling frippary.
They ambled and rambled, so giddy they gambolled
and sought for that trivial trinket or trifle,
they rummaged and rifled, their eagerness stifled,
through struggle, they strived, from nine until five,
... within the lair of the piffling frippary.
Staunch but stressed, their zest so hard pressed
for until discovered, found and recovered,
they muttered and spluttered, and audibly uttered
within the lair of the piffling frippary,
... persuing that piece of paltry frivolity.
Now flagging, they floundered, not finding the foible
in shambles they rambled, revealing reluctance,
and ceding, conceding, they threw in the towel
on trembling, tottering knees they now tumbled,
... out of the lair, of the piffling frippary.
... ... ...**
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 10:42 AM UTC
Curled up in the passenger side, my moccasins rested on the edge of the seat.
Projecting heat pleaded the piercing winter from under my skin.
My chin fell slowly as ash insulated my heart.
My lips would part as second-hand soothing soot
Grew arms and cradled my soul like the look
A newborn baby receives when wrapped in adoration.
A suffocation as an indication I was not alone.
Strangers. Soaring together for forty-eight hours.
Oblivious to dangers our adolescent wings never noticed.
Our only focus was on each other.
At first, words of conversation refused to be discovered.
But all at once we slowly uttered
Our pasts until his demons appeared in front of me.
Surprised I could still see through the windshield ahead,
I did not dread the broken being to my left.
Because who was I to judge the stranger
Who’d unknowingly love me as if his life depended on it?
Have you ever been in love with a Thunderbird?
One that flies solely in winter blizzards?
Fueled by chain-smoking cigarettes
And Dunkin Donut cappuccinos with five sugars.
It never once regarded the threat
Of driving through life
At ninety-five miles per hour.
I fell in love at six in the morning, wearing a borrowed jacket.
Coated in sleep’s drowsiness, we floated on clouds,
Dodging white paper coral trees and buried houses.
I fell in love when the world stood still
And the snow descended along with our sanity.
Somehow a Thunderbird granted me amnesty from myself.
As humanity remained asleep, with stealth
We drifted through back roads in horrific elegance
That jostled my brain until my mind was rewired to my heart
And has remained that way since.
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC
In the depths of shadow and sin
Lay a hopeless young fowl~
Born into dalliance with darkness
An ephemeral beginning nonetheless,
But soon claimed for the one below~
How fetching such hardship!
Kindled hope had been jostled away,
The young fowl never noticed~
For how innocent it had been!
Innocent and oblivious.
How blind the bird was, to what could have been!
One can not miss something one never knew.
The glamour was short lived
And lead to depression
Oppression~
How melancholy, that fledgling
A heart shaped hole in its breast~
But hidden from unseeing eyes
Alas, one day a single teardrop
From god's halcyon manner
Caressed feathered cheek~
To the bird's empty breast,
And sprouted a rose, of all things!
Blooming blossom stretched
Phototropic love lilted from noir caves
Filling young robin's heart and soul
With hope and such peace!
Today, not tomorrow, was the beginning
Of the young bird's healing
The wing had been broken so long~
Such relief!
Mellifluous relief
In beautiful petrichor,
Young spawn took flight,
to face sunlight at last.
Apr 6, 2013
Apr 6, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
Unchained day beneath dumpling clouds in a baby boy broth
I tumble from the snake's mouth into the belly of the bullfrog
kicking across the river in fits and starts of sloshing and falling
great mirror arms reach imploring
asking the sky to see their brilliance
as steel-grey bracelets encircle one wrist and
then another
and skyward we turn
and vomited unceremoniously from the bullfrog's mouth
I slog easterly through the setting concrete of the new-fettered day
kicking across the avenues in fits and starts of staring and falling
shiny electronic arms reach imploring and
ask the stars to hear the cries
as invisible chokers encircle one's throat and
then nothing
and skyward we turn
and jostled and sweating as fresh popcorn into the gluttonous hall
I ride the current past the kiosks and shuttered kitchens of boutique cafes
kicking down the rapids in fits and starts of surfacing and falling
a majestic and world-weary arm reaches defiantly and
shakes a fist forever at one moment and
then knows
and northward we turn
and
the girl shared my Luna bar
and
the phones were passed around
and
the woman had no shoes
and
the conductor took no tickets
and
the women shared their seat
and
the man gave her cab fare
and
the woman went home with no purse, no keys, no shoes
and
the girl went back to Buffalo
and
still we turn
and
still we turn
and
our shackled arms raised against the sword reaches
necessarily and
blocks the blow as if we were one arm and
then holds
and
still we turn
Sep 7, 2011
Sep 7, 2011 at 8:08 PM UTC
What is this hold upon me?
It constricts and stifles every thought that appears,
with a chloroform rag drenched in discontent
Mild perfectionism, if such a thing, and procrastination leave me
frequently wondering where the time went
The questions I ask myself repeatedly
never receive answers with credibility
A rhythm with no rhyme; a melody in offset time
A misty meaning behind glossy eyes
that I’ve tied together with endless lines
of verbose attempts to explain my mind
No feeling is palpable, no imagery fabricated
Only an idea of what could be,
of what I cannot grasp,
and what I cannot convey
So I’m left with this clouded mind
jostled by ambivalence
(this word ceases to elude me)
on a maladjusted playground,
teetering and tottering on the fine edge
of sanity in this bleak reality
Mar 9, 2012
Mar 9, 2012 at 12:17 PM UTC
Sauntering casually,
jostled by shoppers,
teatime bargain hunters;
curses of common folk
ringing in my ears,
out of tune with
the cries of the traders.
Two for one here!
I say, two for one here!
Embattled in the
throng of a slow
moving crowd, shoulders
heaving, swaying to an
inaudible beat. Tired
faces marking time,
quelling inner frustration.
Get a move on!
Please, just get a move on.
Now it’s raining,
incessant needles
prickle my face.
Suspended water droplets
dangle from striped
awnings, reflecting
trapped, busy, images.
Caught in a moment.
Spattered, in a moment.
Then I see her,
the fruit-stall girl,
her words and gestures
touch me like music
rippling over my skin.
Secret caressing fingers,
bringing me to life.
She doesn’t see me.
No: she doesn’t ever see me.
I’m almost mesmerised,
by the light catching
the white curve of
her neck. Her hair,
like spun gold, dancing
on her ruffled collar as
she serves with a smile.
Your change sir.
Don’t forget your change sir!
I turned for home,
head bowed, shoulders
stooped; no crowded bus
for me with standing
room only. A slow
solitary walk, past
dark, dripping gardens.
Her face for company, how
strange: her face, for company.
© Paul Chafer 2014
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 6:09 AM UTC
familiar
there's no space like home
no company like a handmade family
no way of love like the handsome routine
no elbow room like the familiar
a spell of life til
an itch takes to the brain
and inches of ***** tape spool
ideas of wetter play
haemorrhage and pool
and it's jostled
Aug 23, 2025
Aug 23, 2025 at 10:12 PM UTC
I own a
black t-shirt
that proclaims
(on the back):
**Disturbed Veteran
Do Not Approach**
When I wear it,
mothers clutch
their children and
I am rarely jostled
in check out lines.
You'd think
I was a *****
asking to shake hands.
Mostly, they pretend
blindness and just
walk away as they
did long ago
when the war ended
for them.
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 9:23 AM UTC
The wild current flows, stopping for no one,
As I reach out to grasp what was left:
A hint, a memory waving by like deja vu,
Random access memories;
Perhaps I've imagined it all.
Here I am grappling again,
With that titanium door bolted shut,
Safeguarding anything that tries to trespass it;
One word, a grunt, a slight nod, casual shrug
Indifferent smiles
As you flow over rough and rocky terrains,
Boulders sharpening your edges,
A gaze here and a whimper there,
Your mind jostled, warranting rhymes,
As my heart gets trampled by the one you love.
Lucid dreams morphs into lucid visions,
I try to see what you see through the eyes you possess in the islands of your heartbeats and the crimson nerves coursing through your veins,
Alas the curtains come billowing down shut, "Nothing to see here, go on back home folks" and the circus ends for the night---
Not till a stubborn tug in the depth of my soul says it deserves
A slight hope that one day you would weave me unconditionally in your reflections,
To navigate the mountains together---
But for now, the ringmaster declares the show's over.
My weary heart has seen it all, heard it all, always sleeping with one eye pry open,
The other eye shut in prayer this wouldn't be the norm,
As I hold on tightly to the current, wildly rushing through the fabric of time,
Leaving no traces of faces behind but a faint tapestry of a memory
By the lake, held tight,
Supported by wiry artistry,
Calm on the surface but paddling nervously underneath like those waddling ducks,
Your lips and eyes melting into mine,
Asking me to be yours.
19.2.15
Shalini Nayar
(C) 2015
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 11:02 AM UTC
They decked their bodies on the hexagonal stairway,
That primed up into the heavens of boulders.
Decked boulders,
Eyes from the dead shoulders,
That ran the dust of time and concern,
With double ambiguity;
That ran the cobwebs of melodrama,
Of Purple voids
And dainty scars,
There were just blocks.
There was no God.
No Owl.
No leaflet or Foliage.
There was just a dainty scar
That cervically opened
Into a white expanse of rugged and dusty fieldstones;
With the waves expanding their circumference
It was hard to keep the shells afloat.
Rosebuds, it looked like,
The little ***** that dug out of dung holes,
Everywhere on the white crystalline beach;
Rose budded footprints of an animaline saint.
It might just not be the little *****
Then the dust rose up.
It amalgamated into the purple haze
That became the tender feet of cupids that embedded
Their rose-budded footprints along the shore of the sea
Sea that circumference the earth;
A Chinese fishnet flew out of the foliage
That, that is drugged in a an embrace
Gently over the ocean’s tiny footprints.
The fishnet was not targeted or focused on oars
But it was the Oars
That roared an echo
That conjured a Wraith
With Ate by its side;
They roared in unison
In a screaming echo of the overdue night before.
One with desperate fledging oars,
In a senseless sea
And,
In an endless churn;
Then the sky drifted apart
To clear the grey remains,
That of a nuclear battleground
Of the last world
It skid along a steep drift
And found a purple pathway.
The pathway took enough time to open them
The dingy awls of ancient machine plates.
Entwined and unforgotten,
These had made a rounder depth into its omnipotent boulders
Than the mongrel-ic infrastructure of the present world;
Mongrels of a primitive category of potential.
The wisdom that was as ****** as
A bloated hyacinth in its first blossom;
It took a speck of a quarter wink.
Chaos followed obstruction,
And the dust jostled out in the jiffiest.
It was a strange new octopi.
With blades for pearls.
With fangs for lustre
With gigantic dilation of a black void of pupil;
How could it run through?
It phantom-ed the serpent in one plunge;
And a single spasm.
Then it exploded.
A million nebulas bristling with a zillion kind of rainbows,
Rainbows of hydrangeas in elixiric daze at the tip of each finger.
And,
Starlets.
Then it was all purple.
Cosmotic falancho on a curly fledge.
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 5:34 PM UTC
Sleep-nestled in perhaps,
she unfolds comfortably
in-woven tales—
cocoons
self-spun over-long ago—
till head-to-toe rapt,
her mind swings to-and-fro,
up-tethered with a single strand.
A silky pod it floats some-
time jostled by the sing-song voices,
of snake-tongued sirens—
seeming unattached—
that each day drift in,
and try to lure her out
with their stories of fabled lands
and distant faces.
Yet, warmly tucked within
her soothing dreams,
she sleeps on not
eager to join in clockwork worlds
or their storybook readings of love.
Instead she’ll await her own
free-form scenes to unfurl
outside on painted wings.
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 10:22 AM UTC
The son of a carpenter climbed a cross
And Saturnalia was lost forever…
Slaves, adorned in masters clothing
once drank out of the golden goblet and goosed the mistress
vied with paupers for King of Fools
banged pots and pans, slept with sloe-eyed boys til morning
poked, prodded, pampered, kissed, and loved again
The solemn lords of the city peered from their heavenly contemplations
and felt, like a worm in the mysticism of direct communication with god
a bit of remorse, a hint of resentment against the marble steps,
a yearning for the dance, for the abandonment of the senses
for a pageant worthy of those ***** old gods
MITHRAS, BACHUS, DIANA, DISCORDIA.
Before Christmas pushed jostled and shoved the holiday
out of the way,
we opened our homes to all the poor
they become the masters for the day.
while we ran behind with dishcloths and wild cries of
DON”T BREAK THAT
and infused with a small perverse pleasure
took our masks down for a night -
I will play sly servant lass
while my staid husband is forced into corners
with women who struggle to keep their teeth in
And their children fed.
If there were no Jesus,
the tree would still go up for the Norse
the presents still go out for the British
the children still adored for Saturn
the feast still cooked for the old Germanic tribes –
humility, guilt and being saved, saved, saved
saved from the drunkards in the streets,
saved from the firecrackers, the happy children, the Yule log,
saved the togetherness, the topsy-turvy of this most celebrated
happy out-of-control neighborly Solstice ancient block party-
That came from Christ.
Thanks Jesus, you old scrooge.
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 11:08 AM UTC
Heat and pressure build
Slowly I am filled
Jostled by my brethren
I can't wait to join them
As it gets more violent
They rumble with sound
Harder to stay silent
Feeling so profound
So close can barely focus
Overcome by stimulus external
Finally it happens...POP...
Surprise, I was a popcorn kernel!!!
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC