"knits" poems
a september bride her hollow sounds
fearfully echo on the leaf strewn trail
with intonations of a blushing bride to be
she makes a graceful vision
obscured only by her hamfisted collection
of undesirable father figures
who stand round the groom and brow beat
him with dire dreams
but his eyes are for her alone and
the tigers of her sensual rainforest
"lions, tigers and bears...oh my!" she whispers
into his eager ear with a sardonic grin
her hollow sounds both haunting and beautiful
they will stay with me as a soulsong
long after history has devoured her
namesake and words
a quick poet of the three line shoot from the hip haiku
pink glossy eyes all damp with remembered tears
she is the quintessential september bride
the long summer nights swayed her
the longer cold winter may undo her
but it is a girlhood dream that
she knits with papier-mâché knights and
bubblegum queens
she waits for me there
to officiate the proceedings
with a bottle of red wine and single red rose
wrapped in the tender notions of
loves sweetest kiss
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
The universe embraces
As the world spits you out
The earth it braces
As society knits you out
“Please bleed for me,”
We know you have a disease”
Shouts the eyes of twelve cobras
Leaning in their courtroom seats
Volcanic
Androgynous
Raunchy
Delicate
Torment
Ecstasy
Free
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 6:15 PM UTC
Pity would be no more,
If we did not make somebody Poor;
And Mercy no more could be.
If all were as happy as we;
And mutual fear brings peace;
Till the selfish loves increase.
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.
He sits down with holy fears.
And waters the ground with tears:
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.
Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head;
And the Caterpillar and Fly
Feed on the Mystery.
And it bears the fruit of Deceit.
Ruddy and sweet to eat:
And the Raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.
The Gods of the earth and sea,
Sought thro’ Nature to find this Tree
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the Human Brain
4.6k
I said it, because it felt so nice to say and
because I can say it very well
-in the moment I meant it
but it's a bitter familiar spell
I've memorized the phonetic stitches the
spacing that knits a magic fleece that
when draped over the shoulders of the mightiest
turns them back to boys, gives full release
the belief
that love, real love, can be-
I can teach any man to fall in love with love...
just not in love with me.
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 5:26 PM UTC
An old man sits
on the edge of the bed
just after he's tucked in his grandson
He fiddles and fits
While his old gal, she knits
And his boy sleeps, soft and handsome
But what is this?
He can't help but think
As his grandson rolls restlessly round
What sort of ploy
May claim my boy
When his pops is dead in the ground?
His wife, she shakes head
All afluttered and red
Claiming that he's been a fool
For Death, he comes
For every which ones
As sure as summers for school
But wife, he cries
With tears in his eyes
As his boys turns roughly about
"What will become
Of my dear grandson
When a grandfather he is without?"
His wife, she smiles
Is silent awhile
As her needles go clickity-clack
"This boy, you see
Is our legacy
And a family he never shall lack."
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 10:14 AM UTC
I wouldn't tease yet please strings
attached to feelings knits; fitted kit
Threaded girt; my seamless fill...
Legal my pedals; Tender my renders
In blossoming bloom I oath my feels
You blow my blue to life's true & truth
Its more than one Virgo's cream; sweets
Just wanna hold you till the sun is blue
Its all about a Virgo's creamy dream
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 9:36 AM UTC
A golden thread connects us
Although it seems impossible it could be that long
It seems to stretch across continents
It joins up the water and land that lie between us
Threaded through airports and harbour walls
It effortlessly knits up plains and cities
A golden thread connects us
Although it seems impossible it could be that strong
It sketches a random pattern, known only to us
Disparate, otherwise unconnected backpages
Mississipi, Dallas, Mountain View, Santa Barbra
Stoneybatter, Skerries, Paris, Milan
A golden thread connects us
Although it seems impossible to think for how long
It stitches and gathers up time; so when you said
"It could be a thousand years or five minutes since we met"
I knew we both thought that forever is possible
That everything previous would make sense of our present
A golden thread connects us
Although it seems impossible to see how it could
From a distance I saw you go through revolving doors
The golden hair caught my eye, flowing as you walked
I was a man trapped, saved only by one fact
That a golden thread had snagged on my clothes
Feb 16, 2014
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:14 AM UTC
384
No Rack can torture me—
My Soul—at Liberty—
Behind this mortal Bone
There knits a bolder One—
You cannot ***** with saw—
Nor pierce with Scimitar—
Two Bodies—therefore be—
Bind One—The Other fly—
The Eagle of his Nest
No easier divest—
And gain the Sky
Than mayest Thou—
Except Thyself may be
Thine Enemy—
Captivity is Consciousness—
So’s Liberty.
3k
if you pause for a moment
to look around
really, really look
and truly see
all the beauty
in the chaos
then suddenly
you may catch a glimpse
a slight twinge
in your soul
whispering how
absolutely necessary
your existence is
to the universe
the fabric that knits you together
flows through
each and every
spirit that passes
every single day
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 10:02 AM UTC
Poetry is the string
looping through and
weaving out
the needling pain
It knits a beautiful
patchwork, coated with
colorful patterns
our fingers trace
threads of our lives
create designs
a shining::
shimmering::
or dulling
our emotions blend.
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 2:05 AM UTC
I get sent socks at Christmas,
So I can have safe walks.
When I tell my friends about this,
Everybody talks.
There is no innuendo,
Nothing to confess.
Without those cushioning blankets
My feet would be a mess.
I know a friend who knits socks,
In many different hues.
So long as she keeps knitting,
Our feet won’t have the blues.
So Wendy sock it to ‘em:
All that stitch and purl.
Make them good and roomy,
So our toes don’t have to curl.
No chance of any frostbite,
With these things on our feet.
For comfort on a cushion,
These socks just can’t be beat.
Paul Butters
Aug 16, 2017
Aug 16, 2017 at 1:06 PM UTC
In the water
in the ocean
and in the sea
the litter that
subsists
eventually
knits together
far
in the corner
away
from the body
And while it surfaces
within the water
in the ocean
and in the sea
Litter never
rides with waves
for in our
rightful states
we ever
bind
Dec 5, 2016
Dec 5, 2016 at 11:26 AM UTC
*"On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree.
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever."*
- Bai Juyi - A Song of Unending Sorrow - 300 Tang Poems
+++++
The first day they met he gave her the poems
he'd carried all the way from China, a young boy
with a dream and 300 poems a thousand years old
...on the seventh day of the seventh month...
How could she not fall in love with him?
And his sculpture... carved with fire,
the strong, bronze back now frozen,
arms raised in wild and sensual supplication.
Were they his arms reaching for her?
He'd kept it hidden for twenty years,
waiting for someone, the right woman to give it to
And he'd told her,"I knew it was meant for you."
How could she not fall in love with him?
Each night before she sleeps
she reads a poem and traces her fingertips down
the cold beauty of that graceful spine
*Wish he were here
wish this was his back
curving around me
curving around me in my bed...
whispering the poems of his ancestors*
She knits her loneliness into scarves,
soft pink wools like clouds of candy cotton,
rough mountain wools that smell of heather and winter solitude.
Years from now, she'll wrap them round her neck to remember
how he once kissed her.
Didn't she write a poem about it?
and this is her dream:
*they meet when they are young,
they fall in love,
they fall in love and marry,
they fall in love and marry and have ten children,
they fall in love and marry and have ten children and grow old together,
they grow old and blind and deaf, and still in love, they fall into the final sleep together
and their children's children's children will remember their love for a thousand years.*
It's just a dream.
He will have children
but not hers.
She'll die alone,
she wrote that poem, too,
thirty years ago.
karma, karma, karma
stealing heaven
she writes:
what does this world mean to me without you?
utter loneliness
Feb 1, 2011
Feb 1, 2011 at 1:49 AM UTC
You are the star that pierces darkest night
When new moon doesn’t rise or shine her light.
You are the melody that knits night’s sweetest songs,
The resting place my lonely heart belongs.
You are the star. You are the star.
You are the juicy peach plopped in hunger’s outstretched hand.
From the ocean of my tears, you are the sight of land.
You are a mountain stream rushing through Death Valley’s thirst.
You are the biggest, fastest, slowest, best and worst.
The very end of ends, and always, Absolutely, the first.
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 11:48 AM UTC
the trace of you is still sensed
faint but there;
when I arise in a daze,
dizzy, bedazzled, hazy,
from pleasant dreams
the thoughts of you evade my mind
in the glory of dusk and dawn
to evoke, certain emotions
that I never thought could exist
talk, pause, think
speak, laugh, blink
cradling myself by building a nest
of memories I pick from my mind
pluvious weather,
the pitter patter,
the knits on the sweater,
reminds me of you
but what trail of constellation
does not remind me of a star,
that is you?
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC
Isn't that what it's all about,
the synthesis of
discontent and momentum?
Abandonment
defies the unity
of perception,
while time knits
atomic moments into
molecules that thread
perception's needle
The fabric of reality
should be so fortunate
to tear
that it might be patched
with a square of
Pandora's consequence
The chaotic repair
initiating
the synthesis of
inertia and bliss
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 8:37 PM UTC
Metabolism consumes the wood, tree, mountain, slope.
Breath is the smoke of their togetherness.
Where can I rest myself?
Surrounded by the slow, wooden eaters of time.
Heated cedar smells sweeter than bread.
Our hearth devours the cold of separation.
Built around it are the grey boards of house.
The tree knits into the earth to hold a mountain in place.
A leaf rises from the petrified core.
So many to occupy the bald, everlasting slope,
I think I'll pause to press one into a book.
Jan 8, 2012
Jan 8, 2012 at 11:28 AM UTC
You absolutely do not get the honor of burning a numerical value on her self-worth.
You certainly do not get to measure that assumption from the hem-line tailored on her thighs. Or the daring dresses she wore because it made her feel a different kind of beautiful.
She is not asking for it. What she will demand for is neither your attention nor stares. She wants respect.
Can you do that?
Oh, and when you are emboldened by your 'witty' validation that she is a **** or of promiscuous nature, all down to the clothes she wears on her back.
Don’t.
Cotton stitches against warm skin. (She was enjoying a walk.)
Silk swathes on slightly chilled bones. (She forgot her jacket on a Wednesday night out with friends.)
Thick knits adorn even more layers of cotton. (It was a winter night.)
Their cold lips pursed by the late hour, scream silence.
With that validation, you normalise and excuse the acts of **** soul-destructing ****** offences.
For you have blamed the victim.
You excuse a depraved psychological state.
The veins that choked from ice and no’s. You have forgotten.
Rapists and ****** offenders do not get the luxury of being excused.
Neither do you, ****
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 8:52 AM UTC
Behind the sky the Weaver knits
All beautiful and ugly things
Together as with perfect wit
She severs and she stings.
Each and every little soul
Safe to her downy back she brings
While their forgotten lullabies
She strums on silver strings.
Apr 24, 2021
Apr 24, 2021 at 12:31 PM UTC
Once I tore a piece from the back of the Sunday paper.
The piece told a story of an old lady who was being kicked out of her knitting class because she insisted on bringing her cat each time.
I didn't necessarily like the story, but I heard my father, upon glancing at the title ("One cat that won't have knits"), proclaim questionably "who is going to read this crap!?".
I decided then that I would read it. I kept the story in the back pocket of my worn jeans.
I felt bad for that lady- maybe she didn't have any friends at her knitting class?
But mostly, I felt bad because I knew that no one was going to read her story.
I probably won't have a story of my own in the paper any day, and If I did, I wouldn't want it to be about bringing my cat to knitting classes. But even if that is what it was about, I would want someone to read it. I'd want someone to gasp over it, or laugh, or rip it out and keep it in their faded blue jeans. I won't have an article, but I will have a story. I just don't want to have a story that a middle aged man, sitting in his dressing gown and slippers, drinking hot coffee would scoff over, and ask "who is going to read this!?".
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 7:44 AM UTC
Babushka doll, you're an acid vase
Empty as church mornings
Devoid of all feelings;
You unravel your sullen smiles,
Ill-bred and unclean.
You are not complete.
You lost your babies.
Now you're alone.
Darling, darling, darling, how does it feel?
To feel the root of brute in the stubby heel,
Your silly scarves lost in the wheel.
Just peel off the cabbage roses
Petal by Petal,
Dismember yourself.
What a laugh!
The air has asthma,
The sun gives it T.B.
Oh dearie me!
It wheezes kisses heavier than a lecher.
Saboteur of my days,
Why must you hurt what you can?
Because you hate me, hate me.
You are an acid vase full of hate.
I can see your ruddy heart like an X-ray.
Unstick yourself from me.
I don't want you,
Your scarlet lips
Lake Baikal eyes,
or Eastern European knits.
The rings shed their gold.
Knock knock,
Dead at 30.
The last twist of the knife.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
Hate never wins
It burns itself out on a hundred victim pyres
consuming the souls of the haters
whereas love burns eternal with the spirit light
A silver thread which knits us together
They are many, but we are one.
Love connects people
In their compassion, the knowledge of how a mother feels
When her child is taken
Lives with me, although my children are but a phone call away
I feel her pain, her loss
I want to be able to turn back time
Give those children back to their families
I don't want one to suffer as I know they are
I want to be able to hug them and say it's all right
I want to be able to step into their lives and heal it
And I can't...
But we are one, though they be many.
I can't bear to think about the sudden end
The fear, the pain, the last thoughts
I can't bear to imagine what it's like
To run for your life
I can't bear to think about the families
Learning that the goodbye they said happily
Was the last one to be said
Learning that the goodbye hug
Was the last one to be felt
and they couldn't know it.
We are one and they cannot break us.
Hate never wins
Darkness is a prelude to the light
Dawn breaks
Chasing away the night
What endures is the love,
Hate never wins,
For we are one.
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 7:20 AM UTC
From the depths of the heart
The mouth speaks
Says the Holy Book
From the tunnel of the Impulzez
Thy fingers scribbles
Says Me
Spurn the wheel and the thread knits
As the niddle picks and the fingers oversees
Hard ground kills all seeds
Hard ground; the sower's serial killer
Hard Heart; the lover's impulse killer
A touch, a word, a thought, a scent
A hug, a smile, a Hi, a cry, a tear
I may scribble a billion words
Which may not tender your sores
I may love a billion times
It still may not tender your woes
Its all in your heart
What you call it
Is What it becomes
I call it Love
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 10:56 AM UTC
Mother knits scarves in soft wool.
Daddy creates suits in steel.
Auntie makes a mess of strings.
Played with a bow, a twiddle, a fiddle a serious riddle.
Uncle strums his guitar, while he's coughing catarrh.
From the **** he smokes.
While playing with kippers and older men's zippers.
Pretensions of kindness, while fetching their slippers.
Money hunting, baby bunting, wrapped in boas of stripy snakes that choke, crush and strangle, dangling lust on a string, it's his sort of thing.
Uncle carbuncle, peril to both pusillanimous child and men of great age.
Daddy knows and he's so enraged, steel suits beat the outrage of misuse and abuse, through the family and mummy knits more scarves in soft fluffy wool. ****** old fool, never does anything by halves, it's all covered up by soft fluffy wool scarves.
(C) LIVVI
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 12:53 PM UTC