"landmine" poems
Civilized life is rigged, O land-dwellers!
With landmines hidden
in trails of Society's doctrine,
'Too often is it stepped on,
Too often does it explode.'
Blowing constitutions to smithereens,
Where you then rummage within your nucleus
to piece together your scattered jigsaw,
Misplacing your natural elements,
Overcasting your ability to side with beauteous aspects in simplicity—
Of those ethereal-resplendent butterflies.
Disillusioned on land thus is you (the complex you).
Let go—
Rise above your materialistic graves—
Walk on air!
My kindred wisps
Walk on air!
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 4:56 AM UTC
In a fit of pique truths were written.
In a moment of reflection all was deleted.
Platitudes were written back instead.
Who am I to speak of the dead?
A wife was ungrateful with truth.
Did a pen pal want
what the sacred vows of marriage
Make unacceptable realities?
For whom would I have written? Who would it have pleased?
Staring at a fresh e-mail in humbled wonderment
that someone would give decent pretense to care
I -safely back from war- now ask: what do you want to know?
Do you really want to know?
Is it my place to tell
of seeing a man's insides
on the outside
of a vehicle who's occupants he unwittingly saved
by stepping on the landmine instead?
The mine splattered the survivors' vehicle in red.
Is it my place to tell
Of listening to the medic's confession?
Hearing him speak of tasting the blood in the air
like pennies on his tongue.
There's a tale I haven't heard sung!
I met my Shadow
I embraced him so deeply that I
As I had existed before
Ceased to be.
The naive child thinking it was Light
The Predatory Survivor others (cowards!) may judge as Dark
Were forged together
Stronger perhaps
Time will tell
As the alloy of two selves is unified by a personal hell
Cheering at outgoing steel rain
Laughing after the whizzing of bullets is a memory
Running, racing to donate more blood
Mourning the fallen while bathed in the dim red glow of chem lights
Watching honored corpses loaded in near darkness for their last helicopter flights
Is this what you wanted to hear?
Perhaps you knew.
Perhaps you imagined you knew.
Regardless
For your consideration
Thank you
For your innocent
Well-intentioned
Beautifully petty
Gloriously naive
And honest letters
Thank you.
Truly
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 6:18 PM UTC
She is a landmine, of profuse love;
No precautions necessary.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 11:24 PM UTC
How will we progress today?
Will we risk life attending Mosque,
Or have an affair with our spouse's boss?
Will we take the dog out for a walk,
Step on a landmine, use plastic straws?
Perhaps we'll play with our kids today,
Or call Amber Alert, wait scared, and pray?
Will we defy authority with a righteous tone,
Or leave our tail tucked, like a dog with his bone?
Will we gauge goods today for our Vegan menu,
Or show a distention as millions today do?
Will we drive around town for cheaper gas,
Or choose our pickings from picked-over trash?
Do you sling eggs and sausage for sub-minimum wages,
Or attend a visitation in a tortured MADD rage?
Will you tee off at eight, or do a spin class,
Or sit solitary watching the hourglass?
Did we place our script at the shiny drugstore,
Or wade across water to Jordan's fair shore?
Will we question the teacher at our kid's school,
Or play Avatar falling off our bar stool?
Did you set a reminder on your AI phone
For chicken delivery to your suburban home?
Will you lift copper tubing from construction sites,
Proclaiming your station in life gives you right?
Do I recline in my La-Z-Boy for a nap with a book,
Or teach someone to live with a line and a hook?
Will you take out your family,
Are you last on your list,
Will you reciprocate a handshake
Or raise a gloved fist?
Our words can't bind all our wounds,
Few are born with silver spoons,
We're not wrapped in silk cocoons.
A metamorphosis is coming
To this world of gloom,
A rousing group flight,
And it can't come too soon.
Feb 1, 2019
Feb 1, 2019 at 9:36 AM UTC
He's a thundercrash thorncake
Can crush you with a handshake
Juicy as a rare steak
Feeds my dreams
Owns a chartreuse shotgun
Is taller than the noon sun
Has me coming undone
Licks my pain
He's a cyanide thrill ride
A rollercoaster landside
Likes it by the bedside
Fills my ache
I am his and he's mine
Like succotash and sunshine
Exploding like a landmine
Save our souls!
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 11:08 PM UTC
Saw someone drop their phone
and laughed at them.
I'd like to watch the world drop
their stupid/smartphones
and have to look at each others
stupid goat like faces and gazes.
Remind me what heaven looks like,
all I remember is that I'm a scumbag
with moral insensitivity and
you are my nightmares off the page.
Simultaneously a classic,
also a contemporary gore piece.
A landmine seized by epidemic.
Walked away with an insincere
"I'll see you later",
and I responded with a sincere
"Whatever."
Maybe I'm destroying myself in
character slowly but it takes
so ******* long still.
I cheered an old man who crossed the street alone.
I'm getting too close to yelling at a manager,
and losing a job I need to much.
Too close to the edge, but
when I think about it I always am,
and when I think even harder
I hate everything so much.
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 7:43 AM UTC
Draw upon the breath of stars, and scorch my heart with fiery scars
Scars that linger from my past. A past that lies with lies and outcasts
Tied to fears of fearing flaws...insecure…. like never before.
Paradise, a sweet reprise to heartfelt sighs and moonlit nights
Starlit sheets and reddened cheeks, eye to eye and tightened thighs.
A face that takes my breath away.
A heart to steal my soul today.
A smile to stop the world from spinning
A laugh to make my head start swimming.
Disarmed, with you in my arms words lose all meaning.
Eyes pierce mine and landmine my mind
Lips seal mine and line my life with diamonds
Priceless and unbreakable diamonds.
A gemstone life.
Emerald eyes. Pearl skin, Morganite lips and flawless fingertips
Overdosed on what I want most, coming close to those and doting shows.
It shows through rose tinted sight and might just last if lasting lasts at last.
Dreamlike days and sleepless nights have shrouded my sight with blinding light
My eyesight has been gored.
Just one more day until my sight is restored.
By she who has been long adored.
Apr 28, 2015
Apr 28, 2015 at 6:17 PM UTC
loving you,
is like walking
on a landmine;
suited with a
vest decorated in
dangerous explosives
one wrong step-
and it goes 'kaboom',
just like ticks
of warning from
my puny heart
you hold a machine
and prepared to shoot;
as if I've not experienced
the after effects of this war,
just so I could win,
the peace treaty
of your affection
Jan 10, 2018
Jan 10, 2018 at 11:38 AM UTC
taste
like the feeling of walking out the door
and taking in that clean, bright air
slightly scented with chlorine
by the hot poolside
deep, sky blue water
so cool
wade in
green beans snapping in your mouth
sound
like that last step
meant to be stealthy
touching down on a landmine of twigs,
the falling
of a thousand miniature trees, in sequence
with an axe.
almost,
the juicy crackling of a
campfire, after it's consumed
that accidently drooping marshmallow.
forgive it
as it blackens, warps, and crumbles
it tried to hold on.
green beans snapping in your mouth
smell like dry
ice vapors, that float, free
as a spirit, undefined,
like glass shard cuts
of freshly mowed grass,
breathe in that vibrant green,
discarded and scattered
like an answer blowing in the wind
through the waves of a spring
field, full of thin whistling reeds,
hanging wind bells
on the eave,
dripping with rain.
Listen to the
sweet, nothing-tang tones
delicious
silent-music
can't quite describe
the sensation--
green beans snapping in your mouth
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 9:15 PM UTC
The underlings stare
In submissive awestruck
Subjugation in landmine-filled
Landfills, are stuck
In the trenches, the feces
The carcass-strewn muck
Where the vermin-spawn ****
As they're taught how to work
And to fend for themselves
Like the Fall of Dunkirk
As the imminent doomsday device overhead
Incapacitates them
As mere prey to a web
Of a global dominion
Ambition connection
Subconscious hive-mind
Buzzing out the objection
And phobia-spreading
Pandemic misanthropy
Greed in disguise
Subsidizing atrocity
Not for me,
I am
The justified treason
The reason the man-hunters
Close open season
The cease-fire peacekeeper
Proliferation
The water war's rising
Desertification
An MIA runaway
AWOL defector
Still haunting the tombs of detente
Like a spectre
With what I assure
Mutually in the end
When I send go-aheads
On the ICBMs
And avenge the dependent expended
Caught in
This crossfire for-profit
Arms race it has been
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 27, 2018 at 3:33 AM UTC
To tell the story of the nice-guy
is to tell a tale of unlost innocence.
There is no complexity that circumstance can’t remedy. There is no effort
to niceness; only a ****** world that blossoms
on genetically mutated ideology, growing larger than generations past.
Tomorrow, in Houston,
a butcher will wake up to slaughter a cow he may have named.
There will no be no tears when he grills steak for the wife he wooed
and the children he prescribed himself.
Three daughters,
from fifteen to twenty-two.
Tiramisu for dessert.
Ten guns in the cabinet beneath the stairs
and innocence buried behind the woodshed.
Pretend now, that you are forgiven.
Mistakes fade like snow angels, regrets
float like chemtrails.
You love you as much as the world always did.
You have not seen friends struck down by powders or lunacy,
you have only lived in the glow of their light. Hearts remain full.
The word swagger hasn’t been hijacked by hip hop
and bluejeans still mask imperfections. Sunsets are memorable,
and so are first dates and last kisses.
Sun won't blister fragile shoulders.
Fields blossom just in time to suit your irregular taste buds,
satisfying sweet corn cravings on Christmas.
Forget your father’s words
or a stranger's hand.
Forget improbability, impossibility,
impotence, importance,
impatience
and improper goodbyes.
Forget the tears cried alone
into ***** filled sheets at midnight.
Forget the effect but remember the cause,
camouflaged like a landmine of good ideas.
Forget the fights and slow-turn walk-aways
that turned words flaccid.
Forget friends ******* ex-girl friends
and amphetamines crashing into hallucinations.
Nice-guys vanish like good ideas,
lost in the shuffle,
looking for pen and paper,
just like house cats die
on the forth of July,
and all that’s left are ashes
on a mantel
alongside fraudulent grins.
Oct 29, 2011
Oct 29, 2011 at 7:42 PM UTC
I now know
Why little girls crying
Into teddies say they're
Dying.
Now I know that none of
My songs of heart-
Break were real. I had
No idea.
None.
It's like holding your breath
When you know that that car is
Not going to
Stop.
It's the chill down your neck when
You learn that somebody
Just like you
Passed away. Suddenly.
It's the feeling of knowing you're
Losing your grip on the roof of
A burning
Skyscraper. Air.
A soldier, a landmine.
Looking down to see
That your body
Is broken.
Broken.
I now know why country music
Is so close to God at all times.
Why amputees grieve over
Lost limbs.
Why girls cry and boys drink.
It's going to bed, certain that
The sun will not
Rise in the morning.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 12:10 PM UTC
(Give me a London girl every time…)
*- I want to push my hands into your hips and smack you back to front against the wall, bunching your **** little skirt in my fingers, unclipping those fifties plastic beauties that cling to your thighs and I want you to be a right proper girl for me, a right proper girl -*
(…I’m gonna find one, I’ve made up my mind…)
So she got her phone out and
Smiled her Madonna-Gap smile,
Fine lines floundering
Like speech marks
Either side of her mouth.
So romantic!
A girl with a face of
Punctuation!
***** pennies,
she said,
Your eyes are
*****
*******
Pennies*
She would finger the holes
In my tatterdemalion
Charity coats,
And my shop-bought medals.
She would jab her fingers
Against each point
Of the Burma Star,
Spookily,
As though it were a
Pentagram.
She’s a washboard,
Her ******* are thumb-tacks
In a cosmetic shade of
Gold,
With a crucifix stamped
Like a dagger glyph
Right between them,
like a silver sneer,
on her precious metal chest.
*- I want to take your photo -
I want you in Pippi Longstockings
And to angle you just so, my no-knickered **** with her goosebumps on show -*
I’ll never forgot when she told me
She owned a leopard-skin
Pill-box hat ,
And I said
* “You’d have to be dead
Not to fancy that…”*
I’m not sure how aware she is though,
Of how many people
Tongue- to- the -floor want her.
She plays bored on purpose!
I’ve watched beautiful boys
Go to pieces
Trying to entertain her
With a curly straw.
She’s a real cheekbone feline,
And around her pupils
Rages a ring of jagged orange,
Like a jester’s ruff.
And I think of all this,
Whilst she stands there,
Moving from toe to toe
In her zig-zag heels,
And wooden bracelets,
And her little lycra
Landmine that
Shop assistants sell
To girls like her.
And then she clocks me.
and she doesn’t say a thing -
she just swims smilingly over
Through a parted gaggle,
Letting me grab her
Like I mean it,
Spanning her waist with my
Hands like
A corset -
And the fairylights
Are just smudges
Across her sequins,
And her mottled shoulders are
Ten shades
Of mostly white.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 9:35 AM UTC
Can’t wait to be seventy
With knees that hang
Like fleshy skin tags
Over my knee highs
And Custard feet
All squelched into my Clarks.
No prunes
In my grocery basket
Just lots of cheese
Chocolate and beer
Which will make me gassy
So I’ll ask for a backrub
To get my wind up.
I’ll say those things
I’ve always wanted to say
And not come off
Like a social landmine
Because people will just think
I’m batty.
They’ll smile
And nod
And make corkscrew gestures
Behind my back
But I won’t care.
I shall say
**** a lot
Because people
Will not expect that
From a portly granny
With a blue rinse.
But I shall never be unkind
Of all of the ugly words
You can use
**** is probably
The most benign.
I shall read great books
Filled with ideas
And speak to the deaf geriatrics
In the old folks home
And say things like-
So what did you think of that?
And even as they
Clutch their hearts
To prepare for their exit
From this world
I shall say-
I feel that strongly too
And in this way
Everything shall
Be part of my interlude
It shall all be about me
Me
Me
Me
Jan 17, 2010
Jan 17, 2010 at 1:05 PM UTC
Everyone is looking for a savior.
Yet, no one wants to save her.
The clouds turn gray and the memories fade away.
Imprints of bodies are all that remain.
And no one really wants to go to war.
Yet everyone wants someone to fight for.
When really,
Flames lead to dust.
And ashes smear your cheeks.
The air reeks,
Of broken,
muddied,
dreams.
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 3:34 PM UTC
How will we progress today?
Will we risk life attending Mosque,
Or have an affair with our spouse's boss?
Will we take the dog out for a walk,
Step on a landmine, use plastic straws?
Perhaps we'll play with our kids today,
Or call Amber Alert, wait scared, and pray?
Will we defy with a righteous tone,
Or leave, tails tucked, like a dog with his bone?
Will we gauge goods for our Vegan menu,
Or show distentions as millions do?
Will we drive around town for cheaper gas,
Or choose pickings from picked-over trash?
Do you sling eggs and sausage for sub-minimum wages,
Or attend visitations in a MADD rage?
Will you tee off at eight, or do a spin class,
Or sit solitary watching a sandless hourglass?
Did we place our script with the shiny drugstore,
Or wade across to Jordan's fair shore?
Will we question the teacher at our kid's school,
Or play Avatar falling off bar stools?
Did you set a reminder on your AI phone
For chicken delivery to your suburban home?
Will you lift copper tubing from construction sites,
Proclaiming your station gives you right?
Do I recline in my La-Z-Boy for a nap with a book,
Or teach someone to live with a line and a hook?
Will you take out your family,
Are you last on your list,
Will you reciprocate a handshake
Or raise a gloved fist?
Our words can't bind all our wounds;
Few are born with silver spoons.
We're not wrapped in silk cocoons.
A metamorphosis is coming
To this world of gloom,
A rousing street flight,
That can't come too soon.
Sep 21, 2021
Sep 21, 2021 at 8:11 AM UTC
A caterpillar had the feeling
That change was coming
That time was stealing.
To embrace the metamorphosis
It wove a cocoon around its chest
And choose our wall to take its rest.
The young are thoughtless, often cruel
And I was no exception.
I would have destroyed it but
for Frankie’s intervention.
Frankie lived in the corner house
He was older and quite wise.
He taught me that this green cocoon
would change into a butterfly.
He bade me watch, he had me wait
to see the wonder taking shape.
We saw the Monarch first take wing
once caterpillar, now a King.
Several summers passed us by.
I still lived but Frankie died-
He was nineteen, Young and brave
A landmine put him in his grave.
He died just before Saigon’s fall
His name’s inscribed upon the Wall
Corporal Frank Evangelista Junior,
beloved by mother and mourned by sister.
He was too good, too young to die.
He would have been a butterfly.
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 22, 2011 at 5:11 PM UTC
My mum tells me to be careful as I close the front door
Every footstep the tick of a bomb about to go off
And I know that she will worry until she hears me return
That maybe this time I wasn’t careful enough
But I know Careful
Careful is a woman who walks in our skin when the door shuts behind us
Faceless and watchful
With keys jammed between each finger
And her honey voice is flowing through a perpetual conversation with the home screen of her phone
Her gait wide and her hood up,
hair down but tucked away
She never looks up
only shifts her eyes from left to right on a pendulum trajectory determined to read the cadence of the shadows
Like they are palms or tea leaves or a CCTV in operation sign on the front of a shop window
On the walk home
She is always moving
A waterfall rushing down the steepest drop to get back home with all her foundations in tact
Careful is always waiting for the other shoe to fall
She is texting texting texting details of her plans
Where she has been
where she is going
what is the license of the taxi she is in
Are the doors locked as soon as she shuts them?
How salty is too salty for a margarita or a tequila or a glass of water
Can anyone vouch for the milliseconds that her drink was out of her sight?
She has a pair of earphones attached to nothing jutting from her ears
and her key clawed hands wrapped tightly around a can of pepper spray
And her car is parked right outside the building
Careful is always a woman living in a war zone
where the enemies can be the ones that she has trusted most
Or strangers that cast long shadows
She is a landmine that is always in danger of being stepped on
She is made into a three star salad that the jury reject because she was underdressed
Overexposed like the photos that Careful should never have sent
Because even she knows that she cannot exist
A woman is always careful
But never careful enough.
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 2:27 PM UTC
You make me hurt inside.
This kind of hurt that steals my breath and upsets my stomach.
This hurt is so big that I often wonder how it fits inside my body. Maybe that’s why it hurts so much, because it’s too much, because it’s tearing out of my guts.
I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you hate I hate you hate hate hate hate hate hate.
I want to not know you, I want to forget you, I want to never hear of or even think of your existence again as long as I breathe.
It comes in massive explosions, this hurt.
A landmine in my body, it goes off when you touch my thoughts.
Twisting, searing, high-pitched hurt.
I want to be left alone.
Please please please please please please
Just leave me alone.
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 2:08 AM UTC
& the salts just keep on spreading--
between Palestine & Israel,
millennium of a-saults burn in their hell--
collectively bringing bodies down
as a salty sacrifice screeches venom out
into the air,
& acidic sleepy nightmare scarring the earth dry.
& the salts just keep on spreading--
& the salts just keep on spreading--
what hope do we have as
you keep building your salt walls
--it's like a middle finger clawing a scab.
keep shaking hands with cheese graters
slicing papers of ancient seas scrolls
where knowledge could be foretold
of love and peace young and old--
but the salts just keep on spreading--
but the salts just keep on spreading--
all over the world into already perfect countries--
dividing a world into your words
like a dead fish floating in your sea--
wrapped in parchment to be served
as a poisonous choice for dinner of all our minds.
makes us feel like we're walking on a landmine field,
points jagged piercing unyielding fear shrapnel in our brains.
but the salts just keep on spreading--
but the salts just keep on spreading--
and we wonder why our lands keep drying out.
putrid, salty sour milk words
burn the back of our throat
yet we hope to find water --
we hope the moats of these salty
words protect us.
but what happens when the water dries up?
the salts just keep on spreading--
the salts just keep on spreading--
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 11:59 AM UTC
While i was learning to savour the new taste of cashew and walnut in the autumn of that year
you were learning to eat the bones of your neighbours' dog as you fled from an earth gone moist
the leaves of war were torn from the jungle as a cavalry of shrapnel burnt away the air
you were learning to hold your breath while i was doing the same in a suburban swimming pool
when the dust of your family filled the lids of your eyes
being left to see for yourself held quite a different meaning
while your skin seared from the heat of warfire
i was feeling the warmth of a shopping centre in winter
when you went without feet, a landmine exploding your underneath world underneath
i sprained an ankle at basketball
the words of an american god spat forth from an automatic weapon
and you saw the tongues of the lamb inviting you to feast in a foreign language
and while i drew in crayon on the kindergarten wall
you were drawn in the crosshairs just before the smell of cordite
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 8:06 AM UTC
Driving down a small country road.
The year is 1946,
Brand new truck,
fresh off the line.
A warmth embraces my hand,
My fingers intertwine with hers.
A spiderweb of emotions and flesh.
Golden engagement ring rubs against my knuckle.
The newscaster on the radio telling us about another day without a glimpse of humidity.
She turns the radio down to where the muffled voices are barely audible.
"I love you." She says, observing me from the passenger's seat.
I look ahead at the road still.
"I love you, too." It took me a second to think about her French accent.
Desiree, her name.
Flew over to America after Paris was bombed by the Germans.
I was the only person who took her for who she really is,
Wonderful.
Bombshells are strewn about,
Thames Riverside, England, 1943.
My leather war boots are poorly placed on top of a landmine.
Hospital beds are more comforting than a mothers hug.
"Sargent Jack, you're going home." The nurse says.
Off I went, that night I was sent back to Missouri.
I bought myself a new truck.
A 1946 ford.
Fresh off the line.
A warmth embraces my hand.
I look down,
Memories are slipping between my fingertips like blood from an open wound,
the wound being my mind,
not my head,
my mind.
Thoughts strewn about like bombshells.
Disorganized,
Written off,
Buried and left on the battlefield,
the corpse of my sanity awaits for nothing.
I'll never make it back.
Aug 2, 2013
Aug 2, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
-I stand in a corridor and scream-
there is no echo, I am not screaming,
the scream is a landmine,
taped to every last pore of my flesh.
I make clawmarks, pulling skin off.
but the pores go on forever,
but my fears keep flowing,
like the white breaking porcelain
on the shoreline I drown in,
-I am alone-
and,
and the clock's killing me,
in slow moves, toothache,
and the rising tide of that sea.
-I am a field-
littered with bodies, just like mine:
I've discarded each of them,
when I don't want to be me.
but I want to be me.
I just don't feel this way, with any consistency.
so,
I just need some small anything,
need your love more than everything,
but who am I kidding;
you'll never love me.
-I am left to my misery-
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 7:22 PM UTC
*Yellow people were everywhere....
their eyes were thin and their bodies were scrawny
A ********** strolled by me....
she promised me a good time
$200 for 1 hour
and $400 for 2
Oral costed extra....
A man was eating octopus
next to him, another man was eating a dog
he claimed it taste like chicken...
gravel kissed my feet,
and a M14 cuddle with my hands
a pack of Skittles snuggled in my pocket
some cigarettes and canteen full of whiskey
also accompanied me....
I smashed the leaves with black boots
and camouflage married the trees
A body stared at me
a star shaped hole through his head
two kids burned to ash,
and a wife with her throat slit laid next to him
No tears were shed.....
A Vietcong with his arms shot off
he coughed up blood...
he whispered, but the whisper was inaudible
I put a bullet through his chest...
No tears were shed....
a good friend of mine...
stepped on a landmine
his body went every which way
a arm went left
a torso went right
and his head went backwards...
No tears were shed....
My unit entered a abandoned building
they saw a young girl.... her clothes were ripped,
her screams echoed, five men took turns with her...
my M14, loaded, five bullets, silence
and a pool of blood.....
no tears were shed...*
Jan 17, 2016
Jan 17, 2016 at 8:46 PM UTC