"knickknacks" poems
Pained like windows,
Widows hang on walls.
Eight-legged nightmares,
Trying not to fall.
Knitting webs,
Made of lies,
Trying to be clever,
Trying to hide.
A tangled mess
Of silken strings
Homes filled with knickknacks
And mismatched things
Always rebuilding
What was new yesterday
Relentless pest,
Find a new place to stay.
Feb 26, 2014
Feb 26, 2014 at 11:31 PM UTC
Once an addict always an addict
And I'm back in the attic
Blowing dust off picture frames and knickknacks
Stirring up old feelings and panic attacks
These memories so fragile
These demons so quick and agile
None of it ever goes away
Just covered until a cloudy day
When my soul decides to do some housekeeping
But this is something no spring cleaning
Could ever completely sanitize
Until I come to realize
That this is no longer me
Just remnants of what I used to be
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 12:35 AM UTC
**** this coffee's really sour
I've been drinking it for half an hour
Wanna hear a poem
Wanna hear a poem
Wanna hear a poem about a cauliflower
[Cauliflower's foolish
It doesn't fit the theme
I'm sick of all your nonsense
I'm tired of your memes]
Woman selling knickknacks
I'm not eating tic-tacs™
Your words were put in brackets
Check out my rhyming tactics
I see that you're not one for fun
Your a cloudy day, I'm the shining sun
My absurdity
Is the key
To happy for eternity
[You're clearly deeply broken
And only you can cure
Your fundamental problems
But really I'm not sure
The only one who conquers
Is one who really tries
So stop with the gorillas
Since everything will die]
Maybe you don't understand
My foolishness goes hand in hand
With making things that are the best
Like giant squids and turnip fests
Order, chaos, streets and bogs
Them, White, Color, Talking Frog
Odd on top but clear below
From ash and fire life will grow
Then again I see it's true
I am right and so are you
Maybe we both have a claim
In this crazy poet game
**
Okay]
That didn't rhyme!
[It doesn't have to]
I love you
[Mmm hmm]
Sep 7, 2016
Sep 7, 2016 at 5:46 PM UTC
A huge crowd thronged the temple premises
Its vicinity, already bursting in color
With people in hundreds streaming in
The young and the old clad in festal attire
With fire in their hearts n' festive sheen in their eyes
Not driven by piety, mostly to enjoy the fanfare
Festoons decorated trees that lined the compound
Colorful lamps blinked everywhere
Sacred bells, chiming intermittent
At the auspicious hour, as devotional songs rent the air
The chief deity was brought out of the shrine
And was placed on the caparisoned elephant
Accompanied by pulsating percussion ensemble
The devotees cheered witnessing the majestic entourage
Within them the fervid spring of joy swelled
Colorful umbrellas were unfurled
Drawing synchronized patterns in the air
Under the glare and noise, the heat and sweat
Amid the tumultuous beat of trumpets
And the rhythmic sounding of cymbals
The crowd swayed in psychedelic lassitude
An army of hawkers had already set up shops
Each made it a time to earn some bucks
Selling knickknacks and goodies to tempt children
From ice creams to popcorn and colorful balloons
Children ran around licking cotton candies
Some enjoyed blowing up soap bubbles
And iridescent orbs landing softly on their hair and dress
With dusk fall, the ceremonious fire work began
The crowd stood aghast at the pyrotechnic display
Scintillating colors and confetti of sparks painted the sky
Shooting spears rose high and fluorescent rainbow colors
Came dancing down, fire wheels swiveled on the ground
Deadening roar of crackers and thunderous blast of *****
Tore the sky announcing the sleepy world;
‘It was once again festival time for the people to rejoice
Apr 24, 2017
Apr 24, 2017 at 9:25 AM UTC
Anxiety gnaws at the walls...
tearing at the black, blue, and yellow wallpaper.
The blasts pick up...
hovering shelves filled with knickknacks befall,
crushed as the hurricane begins.
Journals and notebooks strip themselves...
rippling throughout the chamber.
Jars filled with captured memories, moments, litter the floor
...erratic hops around bonfires
...flower wreaths
...crystal giggles piercing the atmosphere
all become mundane puzzle pieces scattering the ground.
And I rock back and forth in the middle...
what worse penitentiary, then your own thoughts.
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 1:04 AM UTC
for L. J.
<•>
first time my heart crushed, and
pieces broke off,
and rode the interstates of my body,
the very real kind,
was somewhere
in my later teens.
many breakings came
all life long later.
remember each face.
different kinds of breakings.
some mean and ugly,
but the ones,
that made me weak and mournful,
those hurts are in a steel case kept
near my left ventricle, with copies in
my sewing box
full of handwritten poems.
you want to know if there was (like yours)
that one, that still sneak peeks
into your eye's fantasy
when you lie next to
your woman of the last decade?
thankfully, no.
but the flavors of the regret,
the highs of
pain so awful, never forgot,
are ensconced, recalled, memorialized
only in my love poetry.
touchstone ribbons and knickknacks,
I have hid so well, don't remember where,
but not the who or the when.
*hear your ask, the answer plain
the title encapsulated.
but when I accidentally hear
Johnny Rivers sing
"Baby, I need your lovin'"
strangers do not understand
why this man who has
seven decades and a day of poems kept,
walks down the street weepin' and smilin',
but you will ken, as I well ken your askin'.*
amend my title.
easier, someday. easy never.
ever.
5:58am
10/1/2017
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 6:19 AM UTC
In my childhood bedroom closet
There's a little white ledge
And I kept on the edge
A collection of the trophies I'd won.
The trophy most prized
Was a small rubber guy
That sits atop of a pencil.
Graham booth was the boy
Who gave me the toy
As he smiled a goofy smile.
He looked like a 10 year old Backstreet Boy
Not a Howie - but a Kevin. Or a Brian.
My other trophies include
- I wouldn't want to exclude -
A small piece of rock
That I got
At the Bytown Museum
In grade 4.
Ms. Lewis' class.
Graham Booth was there
(With his boy band hair)
And he told me the rock was
Quote "neat"
End quote.
Sweeeeet.
My beloved knickknacks
(Oh! And a box of tic-tacs)
Weren't the only things hidden in there.
Under the front right corner
Of the soft white rug in my closet
I kept
My soiled underwear.
There were 2 pairs of underwear
Hidden in there,
One purple and the other ones blue.
The blue ones -
Well they weren't great.
Was it something I ate?
Couldn't put them in the laundry basket
In any case.
Couldn't tell my mom
For the look on her face.
She'd wish "Could another child
Take this one's place?!
She's ruined her ******
What a big disgrace.
Those beautiful ******
One purple, one blue!"
So I'd let no one see it:
My closet of secrets.
Some treasures
And some other ones
...Poo.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 4:21 PM UTC
America.
Oregon.
Eugene.
***** hippies,
Homeless kids,
Handcrafted knickknacks
For sale at Saturday Market.
Rain
Rain
Rain
Rain some more.
These tourists cannot
Perceive how happy
The rain makes me,
When their droplets of
Life fall and surround me.
They do not have
That Oregonian Blood.
I have ducks in my heart,
And rain water
Courses through my veins.
I am a Country Fair girl.
I am a Eugene Girl.
I will be an Oregonian forever.
Portland may not be
As quaint,
As *****
As close knit.
But,
When it rains,
I get chills.
I kick off my shoes,
And I dance in the
Glorious lifeblood
of my home.
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 4:44 PM UTC
One day Frick when to the place to buy some stuff
While Frack stayed in the area to do some things
Frack tossed out some junk
He used the the whatchamacallit to clean the thingamajig
Pick up the odds and ends
And he scrubbed a doodad with the thingamabob
Frick purchesed some knickknacks and bric-a-brac
A few sundries
A couple of tchotkes and trinkets
Some whatnot
A gizmo
A gadget
And more miscellaneous paraphernalia
When Frick got home Frack asked "What'd you buy?"
Frick said " Oh, this and that" "What'd you do all day?"
Frack said "Just a hodgepodge of etcetera, etcetera"
-Tommy Johnson
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 7:46 PM UTC
My nose runs through plastic flowers,
dad close behind, brother
somewhere— camouflaged— in front of me.
Our prey is close.
The savanna grasses
dried and woven into baskets
but we stalk through them all the same.
As we close in, crouched among hippos
crocodiles and wildebeests
pushing orange shopping carts, we crack up,
roar, our prey hears us and we duck
into the nearest aisle of knickknacks
before she turns around,
all the other animals glaring
but Dad doesn’t care
because his cubs aren’t fighting
or fussing
they’re hunting with their father.
As our prey nears the checkout
we pounce
and she gives Dad that look:
I thought it was Mom’s “I can’t believe
you made the kids **** me” look
but it was the
“Everyone’s staring at us” look
As Dad just smiles
mane waving in the air conditioning
and pretended to eat Mom’s neck.
Mar 10, 2011
Mar 10, 2011 at 10:21 AM UTC
There are billions of stars in the sky
I named one
I loved it
I would lay beneath the night sky
and talk to my star
It's silence comforting as it listened to my woes.
I wanted to take it away
Store it in a jar
Up on a shelf
Among all the other knickknacks I've had since birth
Then it never would have disappeared.
Funny how the little space it once took up
could leave such a gaping hole
Threatening to swallow me up
as I continued to lay beneath the night sky
Full of billions, and billions of stars.
One night I'll lay down
And the space where my star was will no longer be empty
But full of happiness my star had given me
And I will be grateful I ever got to love my star
Before I look upon
The billions and billions of other stars
All different, all new, all unique
And I'll ask one
If it would like to keep me company for a while.
Mar 1, 2020
Mar 1, 2020 at 11:04 PM UTC
I.
Intimidation.
When his voice raises
I flinch
7 doors, 3 walls, 1 car
and dozens of small appliances and knickknacks
all know the consequences of this rage
There is a small knot in my back, too
that shudders
but that was just an accident.
"You know I would never hurt you, right?"
Maybe.
Maybe my head believes you.
But still
my body
flinches
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 12:30 PM UTC
and we’re back there again,
moved some seats around,
why change something
not broken I said.
Your eyes,
topaz ovals watch me
as I take off my hat,
a treat for a change
from that shop
on the high street.
Conversation,
a roll of sticky tape,
the novel,
your very first
with chapters, a title
and a pretty front cover
is moribund, liquid words
that don’t mean what they did
six weeks ago.
I tell you I write
but the pendulum wobbles
between A* and a C,
if nothing much happens
there’s nothing much to say.
The coffee bites my tongue,
flames zip along my bottom lip
like the strike of a match
as you talk
about these names
with no faces
in your life, bubbles
on the scene.
I know before long
they will pop and be gone
but keep quiet
for I am one of them,
floating around longer than most.
The water
still hasn’t boiled for us yet,
it probably never will,
what I have to say
stays stored in my head
sealed up as Christmas knickknacks,
DO NOT OPEN
in black marker
on the side.
You’ll read, you’ll see,
you’ll no doubt laugh,
once a pen pecks my page
what has started
must end.
You kick me back awake
under the table,
I must have half a book
already.
Sep 14, 2013
Sep 14, 2013 at 1:41 PM UTC
In college, I had a friend that we called 'dad'
Because he made awful jokes and puns
And he herded us wild things
But whenever we came back
From holidays you could expect
That all of your knickknacks
were on your bed artfully arranged
And when you were down
He would commandeer
My roommate's horse puppet
(Yeah, you read right, she had a horse puppet)
And do voices and 'bite' you
Until you complied
Apr 6, 2017
Apr 6, 2017 at 12:10 AM UTC
someday it will be willed (have I told you lately that I love you?)
that the poetry ceases,
no more birthdays notated
calendar closed, the xxx’s axed,
kitchen junk drawer, a consignment store,
no longer needed, the futility of saving
knickknacks, maximized, the no lasting
value proposition, realized, eulogized.
pictures of beautiful automobiles,
decorated with beautiful women,
will forever be last year’s models,
one calendar too far, not long enough
no more of
have I told you lately that I love you?
wrote you plenty love poems so, hereafter,
you won’t be bereft, left farklempt,
arranged one-a-day, on a timed delay,
so many more that will appear in your
inbox until you too, no longer choose open it.
no more “sirprising” I love you statements,
taped to the milk carton, it was so willed,
the daily counting, record keeping, who first,
how many, secretly added to a grocery list,
in stuff that was so beloved, exasperating,
making you just right amount of crazy, smiling....
someday it will be willed, so,
here’s the first of many more....
Jul 18, 2020
Jul 18, 2020 at 4:19 PM UTC
It’s empty
here—and I do not mean
empty as is usually implied
regarding the barren apartment of any
minimum wage-earning college student
having just stumbled into society
from her mother’s house.
Naked walls stare dumbfounded
at their lonely inhabitant, itching for the embrace
of some picture frame
to kiss their forsaken skin, and soothe
the subtle damages of time,
embellish their existence
with purpose
lest they confront the world
bare as they were born into it—
but that is not the reason why
it is empty here.
I like to think
that time will collect itself
like my fondness
for useless knickknacks—and will eventually react
with experience to create the byproduct
of familiarity, and thus
I can finally call
my lonesome apartment
‘home’— but the reason
it’s empty isn’t because
of naked walls or unfamiliarity,
or even because you aren’t here.
It’s because there isn’t a ‘you’
to even be missing—I abandoned
the house haunted by every ghost
I have ever called ‘you,’
and let my walls bear nothing but
the naked plaster of
an empty home.
Jan 25, 2014
Jan 25, 2014 at 2:19 PM UTC
I'm sure that
When the world ends
The sky will be beautiful
One of those days
That looks like a
Dollar store
Painted landscape
In a chipped and dusty
Golden frame
I'm sure that
Everyone will probably
Have gone to work or
To the pool or
Out to eat or
Just sat like some
Seem to do
I'm sure that fog
Will settle on leaves
And bark in
A forest
Where deer and
Birds will graze
Unseen
Undisturbed
I'm sure that
The people
Will think about
All the stuff that
Sits in their houses
The cornucopia of
Usesless **** that they
Spent all of their lives
Trying to amass
I'm sure thoughts will
Wander to the
Dusty knickknacks
On bookshelves
Filled with those
Books that they
Meant to read
About the
Pots and pans
And cans of spam
The gourmet
Frozen meals
The fridge
The stove
The whole house
Melting into goo
They will think
About watching their
Ambitions
Hard work
Time
Money
Love
All going up
In flames
Subsequently,
It will
I'm not so sure
That you will be
With me when the
World ends
If that's true
The world has
Already ended
And I may as
Well be a pile of goo
In some wall street
**** birds mind
As the skyscraper
Crumbles from
Beneath his feet
Aug 12, 2016
Aug 12, 2016 at 7:59 PM UTC
I count myself
in coffee-moons
and pretty ladies kissed
I've never kept a tally
but I know the ones I've missed
Lying awake
for withering
and living
a life
without
my cat
among the porcelain
as careful as I should have been
at the teetering knickknacks of your love
I know that I'll be changing soon-
I feel my memory
disappearing
I'll mail a slender letter
of hope to find you reveling
in dragoncloud
sunflower weather
with a man who needs your doting
while I count the coffee-moons and miss
the lips I once loved kissing
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 10:30 PM UTC
When the house is asleep in the deep of the night, that is when I cry.
They don't understand because they aren't one of my kind
A reject of the default,
the broken inside.
So hurt and useless in a world so small We wonder if anyone cares at all
Our plea is the same lead us out of this hole they've dug for us
Our souls are empty knickknacks sitting on a forlorn shelf
Waiting for someone to love us and pick us up from this hell
I see a distant wish granted though it will be too long
So read what I write
this empty hopeless song
for when the house is asleep in the deep of the night, that is when I die.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 1:40 AM UTC
You said to me: "I'm in love with her."
Your eyes closed as you let out a sigh.
"I'm in love with a woman that's not you."
I broke to pieces.
My love another shattered vase in my museum.
A museum you'd abandoned.
How am I supposed to make you feel if you walk away?
You left me with endless knickknacks of memories and statues of passion.
I am your museum,
but you decided to build yourself another history.
"I'm in love with a woman that's not you."
And I'm in love with a dead man
whose only breath lies in dusty artifacts.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 10:54 PM UTC
she is an unrequited reverie, a fractured piece of porcelain; even her sharp edges sparkle with the favor of the gods.
she is a curator of abandoned dreams and forgotten memories. her mind is the museum that treasures them all.
she is a keeper of knickknacks and old letters and quilts. she listens to the stories they have to tell with devotion.
she is an explorer that never left her home town. her travels only take place in her mind, but they are filled with adventure.
she is a lover without a beloved. she shares her heart with any who will have it. she never worries about running out of love.
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 6:03 PM UTC
For years I have sat in this house,
Trapped in the cabinet of forgotten reminders.
I have gathered dust.
The iron in me has turned brown.
But I have not forgotten you.
The other knickknacks don’t understand.
I was always there for you.
You were always on time because of me.
To school, to work, to even your friends.
I never let you down.
The master of time, beside you always.
I still watch you as the years have passed.
Dancing around, falling in love, and getting undressed.
The way you towel dried your hair before bed.
The tears that have fallen from your face.
I was your constant in this life that time was on your side.
And then, the source of my feelings was lost.
You killed the battery in me.
You forgot about me.
After all I have done for you.
I hope time drags you; into endless impatient waiting.
I hope time forgets you! And see how it feels to be powerless.
You’ll lose your sense of time without me.
How will you know when you need to be somewhere?
You won’t; and I will laugh from the comfort of my forgotten brothers.
I hear the door bang and you are gone.
Your phone buzzing on the bed.
The tv stuck in standby.
You’ve left all your time behind...
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 1:43 PM UTC
Driven through a division,
Going in and out of dimensions,
Fighting off my demons.
Call that cross road decisions.
Dealing with typical Cross family addictions.
With my spirituality getting constantly tested.
For all I see is the devil,
Which makes me wonder,
If God is even interested?
Interested in whether or not I’m bested.
Bested by ingested toxic substances.
Guess I have to be careful where my choices are invested.
Because in an instance, I may never regain consciousness.
Maybe that’s why I was told not to take my life for granted.
But I’m struggling with once again being that “kid”,with unwavering faithfulness.
For when one becomes an adult,
It’s as if hopes been indicted.
With promises expedited into brokenness;
burning pure hearts with acid.
How drastic, that we are just facets for molasses.
Spilling over into the masses.
Parading smiles stapled and plastered on everyone’s faces.
But we got to look beyond the scenes,
Instead of being caught up in the schemes,
As things aren’t always what they seem!
Woven wool threading over eyes like a seamstress,
Pretending we are all good, Sike! Such lie’s, unless...
Perhaps we are all saps, pining over delusions instead of facts,
Packed with wax in ears, ignoring non-fiction for Knickknacks.
For we all get caught up in this spin cycle eventually.
Sep 14, 2019
Sep 14, 2019 at 12:59 AM UTC
I think I will keep you
on a shelf,
bright among the books
and knickknacks
You sing a visual song,
a parrot's lament,
but you are too wild
to let loose
Oct 1, 2020
Oct 1, 2020 at 11:18 AM UTC