"lampshades" poems
Homecoming body:
A grey cardigan strips down,
bonding skin to
night’s air,
penetrating
Chevrolet safe havens
drowned in lover’s spit.
My Mind
thanks Google,
enabling electronic bibles
to leave disciples stifled
with religious quotas,
an excuse to quote us —
“Trouble at the Border,
read the former
court room reporter
working for the,
sensationalized,
through remnants of
blood stains in our eyes.”
Midway through Chapter 1 —
reeks not only of
of *** in the backseat —
but of Venezuela’s shorelines.
Of her high school hallways.
Of the intrigue of the unexplored Mexican neighbor,
her freedom amidst constraint,
where Visas
lease us
advertising campaigns
for maquiladora made lampshades.
Despite their protest,
common sense
lent comparisons,
a consequence
of stories told in reverse.
They hover over Venezuela’s familiar curves,
her long black hair straddling my shoulders.
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 8:00 PM UTC
Expensive handbags,
Pensive listening,
Nothing I say is ever worth
Mentioning.
Swing on this
Hinge-- a see-saw of
Heartache
Bruised on the *** by
The frozen snake--
Never to thaw
And never to break.
Exquisite lampshades
Hide the luminous
Color,
Now a dingy
Dim of disrepair
Order.
Visit a fairytale
Where honey flows in
Waterfalls,
The smooth will soothe the
Heartless work and
Falls.
Tangled cloth again today,
Moth eaten and angled,
We ride in the dark
Convinced our little playground could save
A heart.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 8:20 PM UTC
mercy
you're rising now
tempting the lines
of personal decadence
uneducated
with numbers
just feeling
and wonders
unearthed and exhumed
by treacherous admittance
four years of commitment
composed of sinful self sacrifice
caused us unrest
left us unchanged
corrupted and pleading
for lampshades and cradles
nesting in suffered sheets
why are you alone?
beginnings break free
when you battle the best part
mercy
you're alive yet unwell
in your dreams for fair weather
Dec 11, 2009
Dec 11, 2009 at 8:26 PM UTC
Our lampshades at midnight shine like amber moonlight,
like late august and amethyst; brief pulses of electric-cotton bliss.
They brand our bodies like ***** poppies
in the newest blue before the sunrise.
Dear, lay still as we shelter inside this warmth
Stay silent through the night, lest you need to speak.
If so, then whisper with your palms cupped 'round my skull
So i may feel your syllable kisses dance past the hair of my ear
To feel and know that this not be a dream
Nov 12, 2017
Nov 12, 2017 at 4:21 PM UTC
The night sky is wrapped in curls of black
and the air purrs, fizzes with the sound of hot
fluorescent lights, choking the air with vacation colour,
blinking fast like there’s something in their eyes.
Gulls guffaw in circles over 174,
where inside old wallpaper is torn
and dated lampshades dangle from above.
Two pegs on a line outside my box,
the bed is rickety and isn’t as fit anymore.
The novices, the returnees
seek silver and gold in the oasis
before their feet sting in scorching sand.
Win what you lose, lose what you win,
hold onto it before it tumbles back onto white cushions.
Money hiccups out of ugly machines
when they have a session of indigestion.
Young girls, carefree and cute walk around in a daze
as chubby men waddle along the pavement
thinking of that next pint.
Lined up at the bar with peanuts and bottles,
the large screen projects to all.
A clink of glasses and a click of snooker *****
past nine, past ten, past eleven as well.
And then the plug is pulled out,
everybody settles down to sleep,
but we all know they’ll do it again
when tomorrow’s summer evening calls.
Aug 6, 2012
Aug 6, 2012 at 8:18 AM UTC
(part 1)
Have you forgotten us?
We, who, taken from our homes
Our families and friends
Were shunted like cattle
In railway boxes fit for pigs
Yet treated worse than either.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who were stamped and numbered
Stripped and tortured
Bruised and beaten
Used as playthings for perverted men.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who were stripped naked
And bundled into innocent looking rooms
Whose clinical stench
Belayed their hidden purpose.
Have you forgotten us?
We, who screamed with terror
Drowning the laughs
Of those outside
As steel faucets
Belched forth death.
Have you forgotten us?
We, the millions of children
Who like rotting manure
Were bulldozed into
Bottomless pits
Turning them into mountains.
(part 2)
Have you forgotten us?
You, who protest so loudly, so bitterly
Against the use of animals
In scientific experiments.
No one protested
When they used us.
Have you forgotten us
You, who care so much for your old
Your sick and your disabled,
Our old were clubbed to death
Our sick were left to die
Our disabled were used for sport.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who lovingly protect your children.
Ours were wrenched away from us
Ours were used for ****** perversions,
Ours were skinned alive.
No one protected them.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who found the camps
The massive ovens
The mountains of bodies
The hoards of hair and teeth
The human skinned lampshades.
Have you forgotten us?
You, who murdered us.
Are you deaf to our cries?
Were they simply orders?
Were you just soldiers?
Didn’t you really know?
Have you forgotten us?
You the world we left behind.
Can thirty years really dull
Your memory of it all?
Did it really happen?
Wasn’t it all exaggerated?
(part 3)
So now we look down
We thirty million or so
At the indifference
The political cover-ups
The bland excuses
The half-hearted attempts at justice.
The murderers who live
In luxury and power
The monsters of earth
Who created hell
The generation who forgot
The generation who never knew
The generation who will never know
The jackboots
The ********
The Nazis’ salute
(part 4)
Yes you have forgotten us.
Mar 31, 2010
Mar 31, 2010 at 6:58 AM UTC
It’s 1:21am on a Thursday night and there’s no rain
where there should be.
There’s no weeping over the seven-colored earths
and the erosion of the skin is building up.
I have a mouth full of stumbling words,
nervous and absurd,
like wax flowers and plastic china cups;
bottles of placebos.
I have masks on the walls
and body parts on the floor.
Dim light from violet lampshades painting worlds
with minimal effort, but with profound meanings
that pretentious collegiates speak over bearded elders
while stuck in fishbowl towns, separated from the oceans of
metropolitan beliefs.
*Pulling nail fibers from fingertips with crooked teeth,
a habitual ritual christened from a darker half.
Waves of feral multitude plunging the streets
As riots of people made of fire chant the names of fallen angels
And personified martyrs.*
Episode after episode of plot-thickening exposition,
the weight of which is but a feather to the pull of the moon.
To **** my privates to a saddened resolution that’s
sweeter than a mutual **** for the sake of love.
*Penetrating me with needles as thick as bones,
Brittle as sculpted phalluses made of teeth.
Drilled out from the cavities and clamped iron
that make me grind and ******
In my sleep
out of nightmarish extremity.
Or persistent calamity.*
She’s dead, wrapped in plastic
And fountains are pouring mercury
Profuse silver-stained drooling
Ostracized from sane certainty
*The thunder of guttural bellowing
In the chasm of bed sheets,
where leather bound demons
split ***** hands under ice knifes
Muffled voices
And embryo faces
Tearing out primal smiles
Tied with black laces
In a public amphitheater.*
She’s dead, wrapped in plastic
And fountains are pouring mercury
Second time I’m seeing it drool
With a last moment of certainty.
It’s 1:41 on a Friday morning and there’s rain.
Finally.
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 11:15 PM UTC
I see you slipping away behind the cupboard
I see your eyes reflect the moon
Those glassy eyes, shining like crystal
made me remember dew drops of June
Hey little mousie
Don't be afraid
I have cheese and shelter
And a bit of cake that i made
Don't slip away in the darkness
You're the only one that i have
I won't jump and scream
Shouting from the top
**** it! there goes the rat!"
My dear little mousie,
This house is vast and dark
Why don't we go near lampshades
And not play hide and seek for a start?
My dear, feeble, mousie
Don't go near the mouse hole
For there lies the mouse trap,
And our little rendezvous will be untold.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 4:10 PM UTC
Here is an etiquette guide for your happiness
all of the parts of your soul which haunt you in the moments before sleep
you are allowed to be free from them
do not grab your thinnest blanket
your pillow that is self-pity
buy blackout curtains and darker lampshades
and move into a cramped apartment with your demons
But do not buy your demons a home
Spend all your viability on stardust, white light, and kindness of strangers
Knit scarves for your worth
Friendship bracelets for confidence
Buy plots in the forest for your faith
Cook five course meals for love
And when you are ready to make peace
Invite your demons over for tea
Feb 7, 2015
Feb 7, 2015 at 4:45 PM UTC
Check in impatiently
hauling light luggage -
downturned eyes,
bundled fifties,
skull packed with sickly
sugarplum notions
Stiff key-card door and
three hanger closet -
leave your mittens, jacket,
and conscience dangling
Towels
cotton-knit sandpaper
no softer than well-trafficked
threadbare tawny-port carpet and
your hands and feet pretend
not to feel it
nervously,
a bit numbly,
you notice her standing
with glacial stillness
moments away from
the foot of the bed
Two crooked lampshades and
dim headboard lights
close their eyes when
the mattress springs
first compress,
the air tingling
with dustbunny snowflakes
This room is too dark now,
something like snowblind,
but you don't really want to see
do you?
Frostbite when she touches you
and somehow this bed
is more welcoming
than your own
you'll remember her
february fingertips
and hailstone hair,
a sensation of northerly winds
strange how heavy the comforter feels
sprawled across your skin
you envision an ice slab,
see it suffocate
a slow-flowing river,
and your breath quickens
if only because your lungs
have been crushed
then, just before hypothermia,
she leaves,
lights off,
wallet lighter,
you stay whiteknuckled, lightheaded,
half-consumed by a snowdrift,
beneath the duvet -
dazed
your tongue sits confused,
having asked for peppermints
and been given ice cubes instead
and when you finally rise,
and thaw your limbs
and try not the slip
on the black ice
she always leaves
by the door,
Try to forget
you paid
hourly rates
and shed your clothes
that you might find warmpth
in a blizzard
Feb 7, 2018
Feb 7, 2018 at 6:29 PM UTC
Decidedly blase, as the hours tumble past
If divinatory; as the strains of old fugues
That once roused us to incoherent victories.
Never mind that the **** crowed thrice,
Ere you forgot our names-
And lord, the company you keep
Locked in that old hobnail chest;
How you'd be disdained, were it known
The lampshades here drink old *****
Under a goat-grey sky, at morning
And your key's sloppy turning, meteor-like
On its slow approach, at decoding the lock.
But sleeping fitfully now, on the porch,
Your muddy shoes can tell no tales
Of your evenings holy grails.
Mar 6, 2010
Mar 6, 2010 at 3:44 PM UTC
This is the illusion
of flowered wallpaper
and flowerless vases,
the masked truth
behind luxurious lampshades
and towering bookcases;
Do not be fooled
by the furniture,
this house is as empty
as they come.
Apr 16, 2012
Apr 16, 2012 at 10:05 PM UTC
We grew the earth, grew it around us and grew into it.
We grew into pairs of shoes after pairs of shoes
and we grew into our names.
We learnt to tie the laces of our shoes
and to tie our tongues around our names,
and the names of other things, other people,
and around other people's tongues.
We planted our cultures, cultivated them,
and they blossomed into traditions
and stereotypes and generalisations and rituals.
We broke in our shoes, broke the ice,
broke our voices, broke promises.
We broke glasses, hearts and bones.
We built hierarchies, looked up, looked down, bowed down.
We broke down into dictatorships and demonstration.
We found solutions like democracy
and diplomas and delegated.
We fixed fountains and freight trains
and falling trees in the forest and faucets that leaked.
We formed partnerships, made promises,
pledged to parties for both politics and both parents.
We made marriage and then we annulled, we divorced.
We fabricated the faiths that we fed on.
We invented stopwatches, reality television,
pedicures, lampshades, philosophy,
greenhouses, dictionaries, exclusivity,
feng shui, hand-holding, ****** medication,
street art, lawsuits, lingerie, car boot sales,
snow days, karaoke, comics, psychics,
boarding schools, toast, baseball, psychiatry,
bird-watching, plaid, research, stag nights,
slasher movies, salads, and interventions.
We wanted and we wished and we waited
and we wanted for more.
We were growing faster than we invented.
We were outgrowing ourselves
and our earth
and our shoes
and our names.
We forgot what we had found and fixed and formed.
We broke down and went broke.
We are waiting to invent a new way we can fix ourselves.
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 8:43 AM UTC
When I finally find
myself in the dirt
say
some 52 years from now
give my lampshades
and frail autographs
to my lady
with her married scorn
and scarred hands
that have held my own.
Only in death
will I see her clearly
as the day I met her
and
in our plantation house
you can find a tin cup
a stray look and
her sentiments
I never overlooked
quite carefully put.
Her ancient beauty
quite unnerving
and her eyes
ever fearful of my demise.
In my crystal clear
version of the way things were
you'll see her letters
that I have kept
still breathing hard
and holding fast
against my chest.
For
I have never loved another
quite like her
sharp teeth and red lipstick
on my dress
and
when we were married
the whole town came to see
what true love could
really mean
to us:
as thieves
as unbelievers
in all things.
Constant sorrow will follow
America
but not her
immortal and etched
into every doorway
of the south
and inside of my body
breathing out.
So much for I have lived
to succumb
to become the dirt
she dances on
to watch for her
in every crowd
spell her name on my tongue
breathing loud
and fast inside of her love
and her blouse
that stands forever
inside of our plantation house.
Jul 7, 2017
Jul 7, 2017 at 11:20 PM UTC
Running thoughts like water
Is flowing off my fingers,
It taste sweet like a candy cane of Santa’s sack.
My pen bleeds sugar
And I know it’s all because of your smile,
I’ve wrote poetry even without a rhyme.
My palm releases warmness,
I’ve written words from my lips
As remembering your sweet embrace.
If only I could dance,
I would love to do that
But all I do is to write with a pen on my hand.
My mind is singing lively
While hugging your gift Teddy
In the middle of the night while everyone’s asleep.
In my blank notes under my lampshades,
I am writing a poem for you,
A poem talking about your greatness.
I have lots of masterpieces in my pocket,
All thanks to you as my fuel,
I’ve written books because of you and only you.
Aug 28, 2021
Aug 28, 2021 at 1:24 PM UTC
The music blares loud enough to shake the car,
loud,
but not clear, because the cable is kinda screwy
so that every time
he hits a pothole
the music melts into
teeth rattling vibrations
and the breeze gushes in through the temporal openings
threatening to blow
the card parking pass
out the window
into the vast pleasant outside world
the sun burns down from space
turning the world warm with childhood nostalgia
and chlorophyll green lampshades
hanging from chocolate brown trees
paint the world with an aura of emeralds
and the spedometer plays Apollo
rising higher on its arc
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, ect.
the rush of speed becomes deafening
and the hot asphalt road rises,
dips,
meanders,
and he controls its will
with the easy gliding of the leather steering wheel
and an easy smile
driving with the windows down
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 12:48 PM UTC
We as night,
Greet the-moon-with-stars.
And I the lampshade
Tried to tell you
Something--
But my memory-
For-gets.
I attempt to feel,
Though-my-skin
Is stifled--
As it networks
Into-me--copying,
Parasitic fungi.
From embryo days
The sun starts to
Cry membrane.
Losing menageries.
Sep 20, 2014
Sep 20, 2014 at 6:44 PM UTC
Lives in the mouths of cannons
engineering themselves in laughter, smelling, changing, in the tip of a firefly-before it thinks or truly lives. Glowing, in the buzz-hum with a perfect way of rolling
over each other in geometric bliss-mating
like shadows flying from the hands of a tribesman, in the ceremony of his eyes – - explaining to his love
that she is the stealth of his blood, and that the camera watching has lungs too, like you or ‘I’. Stripped negatives from chests sing from a line of animals hung in a black room
the only thing to remind the city of its eternal face, wetness clinging to each peg – all augmenting themselves, transforming drains into ventricles and aorta’s-opening, the sighing pool-mass we see has a curve along its far corners – slight – returning its shape to us inside the battery, and eons of humbling war, and the vat contained molasses,
and the occasional faces of god
in flickers, of red saluting static, across the landscape.
Our time is linked as the day shifts, workers conducting the days lips
joining sculptures uniformed in nakedness
steam glides across the deepening pool,
rhythms of the earth belt free from knowledge and chaos,
no life vermin,
no energy separated from birth,
or the simpleness of walking beside you
Where we always are,
in the climbing paths of voiced and unvoiced back world flowers, which hope without thought,
and never begin
until they are named,
and known within cell,
microbes repeating their art.
A nightingale crossing paths with a worm,
all of the lampshades tensing at once,
holding the air up
completely still
transcending a tight fist until it bursts into a tree
placing its roots in the burning ground by melting its ice
illumined
traces near the opal shaped glass
where we purge our minds
of transport beyond our own
intricate company
settling into one
and hearing nothing
that is not here
belonging;
with us.
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 8:02 AM UTC
Our bodies are lampshades
Dimming our true potential to shine
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:09 PM UTC
on top of a mountain, dressed
in purple and frozen in December air,
we were flying through western Oregon
with our shoes in New England and our
hearts in the forest.
you would shake when I saw your skin,
turner both softer and more rugged as I reached your bedrock,
eroding like sea glass when you showed me what
makes you tug tighter in the dark and
sob at sunrises.
your tears were velvet garden shears-
I don't remember how much blood there actually was,
just that it poured out of both of our bones
with a symmetry that my eyes never spoke of,
and that it still stains the skin of myself
and everyone I've talked to in the last eight months.
you are a ghost under lampshades,
like a florescent fairy in love with tying
the night sky into nooses.
you are libraries,
volumes filling viles with memories of moments when
the darkness left your bones,
only if for the flicker of a flashlight in the backyard or
of a match,
giving me minute fractions of eternity
to see your disposition light the sky larger than stars.
you are teethmarks in my skin,
scrubbing with salt and white
body wash and oatmeal without sugar,
warming our endlessly evanescent December.
******
filling the ceiling with blue whales and
mountain ranges,
i am a stain on the map in your backseat,
buried under used napkins and neglect,
while your wings take you back
to Oregon.
Aug 14, 2016
Aug 14, 2016 at 5:15 PM UTC
Hidden withdrawal
Into the chamber of dusk
Into the dwelling of dust
Under lampshades and blinds
Dusky and dull
Lie the soul
Lost
In the heart of a man
Without purpose nor life
Lie the words
Screaming to come fourth
But hopelessly sunk
In the abyss of his soul
Lost
Are the words he once found
The sentences once bound
To his life
Former to his strife
And to his pain
Now he dwells
Among all forgotten shells
Of past fate
Lost
Wandering thoughts
Dulling into dust
He wonders how
He ever came
To be lost
Jan 16, 2012
Jan 16, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
We are the-
Unattainable
Lampshades--flickering
On and off-
In-and-out
With
And without.
--And her skin
Is all I can breathe.
I write in cartilage
Memoirs just to feel
Unfeeling.
But we love unfairly
Until digging nails
Into walls--
Becomes beautiful
We-the-unreachable
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 7:45 AM UTC
we never put lampshades
on all the lights in this house
I'm never sure if we meant
to stay or if we we're always
looking for a way out
Dec 18, 2023
Dec 18, 2023 at 6:36 PM UTC
The tension is rising slowly, as the blood pools beneath fingernails
I can hear the ropes start snapping, brittle as a leaf
The bells begin tolling, the vultures swirl amid the frigid air
Of the televised devastation of the week
I hide my true intentions, I do
Somewhat well, if I must then
Admit to something,
I didn't really care too
Stop me if you've heard this one before
Or heard it better, somewhere else
---------------------------------------------------
Sending money through the wire
Never ending crimson flow
Past the thoughts of victims
Intuition caught in undertow
Masqurades with musket powder, kegs
And lampshades tinted red
Festering my own psychotic
Philanthropic need for death
Sending money through a wire
Rising slowly through the smoke
Laughter bursting through the cracks
Of somebody's final joke
Celebrations, conversation
Windowpains and slitting throats
Powers set to loosen grips
But destitute, watch me still choke
I think its time we could talk about the ending
Open the intent that we're pretending
Its something to be said aloud
Lost within the frigid clouds above
Oceans slowly forming up above
torrents under spoken like a flood
Oceans slowly forming up above
The mainland
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 6:04 AM UTC