"lapidary" poems
My parrot is emerald green,
His tail feathers, marine.
He bears an orange half-moon
Over his ivory beak.
He must be believed to be seen,
This bird from a Rousseau wood.
When the urge is on him to speak,
He becomes too true to be good.
He uses his beak like a hook
To lift himself up with or break
Open a sunflower seed,
And his eye, in a bold white ring,
Has a lapidary look.
What a most astonishing bird,
Whose voice when he chooses to sing
Must be believed to be heard.
That stuttered staccato scream
Must be believed not to seem
The shriek of a witch in the room.
But he murmurs some muffled words
(Like someone who talks through a dream)
When he sits in the window and sees
The to-and-fro wings of wild birds
In the leafless improbable trees.
12.7k
Here we stand in the chamber of our spirits.
Her revival was one that neither of us could predict.
In her mind, the final act of this troubling play finished ages ago.
As her soul was strengthened with precision equal to a lapidary
I reflected on the integration of my thoughts towards her life.
In the next moments, she mizzled away from this realm with no warning.
Yet to my surprise, her aura lingered on like a phantom.
Through a conscious rebirth in the astral plane, I feel her presence now.
For a single instant of time, I see her fading before my very eyes.
By order of the ruthless universe, our destinies remain shattered.
May 28, 2014
May 28, 2014 at 2:34 AM UTC
river in the joyful times
river in the elegiac
you give and take away
in your eloquent tongue
wagon, sunlight, lawn chair
subtle victories that make me smile
breathe and melt inside arms
that hold tight to the lapidary
memories that stud themselves
in my brain and the photos
not being old enough to go to the festival
interrupted, the soft fall into the river
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
Beneath the woven moonlight
And the glistening lapidary against the sapphire eve
Like ice-flakes on a dark hood
For as great as my nearsighted eyes can see
With a cigarette in the driveway
And the feathers of those clouds falling down
My breath and the smoke runs away with the zephyr
And I’m alone again in this pretty how town
Without a sound
Waiting for you to come back around
Without a glance for the ground
Waiting for you to come back
Like the farmers wait for their flax
Or the women tend to the millions of moths
That sound like rain on the roofs
Or that sound like the crackling of my cigarette burning
Breaking the silence beneath the woven cocoon
Light of the white philtrum moon
It’s her and I and the clouds falling down
And just that single solitary sound
Waiting for you to come back around
Hoping you come back soon
(c) 2015
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 10:15 PM UTC
a guy sits here
hair a twist
no ordinary man
but a case
whatever prefix fits
he knows no limitations
seeks no thrill but fear
holds no memory dear
brains grasp simply too frail
such a broken outside
and gargoyles pier
however
he tranquilizes them
anytime someone comes near
yet the people abstain still
no shame, no cheer
they simply cannot see what purity
he has in his crypt
intimidated
severe
so let us move forward and glaze over the thick
move towards the misery which anguishes him
nonsense is sensical, whimsy at best
rational is of logic and dreary
detest
********* and thumbing
he frantically does his best
pulls his hair out
pulls his hair out
closed fist
punches chest
"where is she
where is her
name i cannot confess
for it escapes me...
not because
but rather-"
due to his distress
he stopped and sighed
violence
cried
broke down
then bled
red from his eyes
i want her
the sad one
shy
hurt inside
abused, accursed
diseased but undisguised
she'll love me
she will
there's nothing there to hide
she'll make me forget myself
sing or dance or
romanticize
"i want her...
a baby's friend
the neighbor's newborn daughter
the baby friend that came over
as an infant, i saw her
i kept the same heart
but its been through a lot
and now its done with slaughter
i kept the same heart
its growing apart
i need the neighbor's daughter"
it seems as though convinced
he truly had the heart of a newborn
ambivalent
knowing no complexity
purely hurt or comfort
either way's a shoulder
diamond or dirt
seemed to be bipolar
so he seeks the same
not the opposite
that would be a shame
because no one else can relate
to someone who feels the world
has turned its back on fate
he seeks out this girl
overlooking
all the beasts in his way
with evil colors they mask their face
appear to appeal, they may
but he knows better
their defenses fragile
they attract a plethora
to which they expose
like a sinister rose
the black rock in frame
the black rock so hard
shapely carved
to which its "blacksmith"
inscribes no name
a black heart
he sighs
which holds no light
might as well not exist
Dec 30, 2011
Dec 30, 2011 at 3:39 AM UTC
In fog or flood,
it has to look like news
and not wear down too soon,
not be abandoned at the shipyard;
hunt-and-peck it to death,
it remains invisible, so readable
that it does nothing to draw
attention to itself,
leaving only the content
in its lapidary wake.
Mar 4, 2025
Mar 4, 2025 at 10:04 AM UTC
the boy with tousled black hair met my gaze and cocked his head to the side. "come here", he mouthed with a grin that allowed his fangs, sharp and glinting, to come into view. they were like diamonds and i was a lapidary, fueled to engrave him into my memory. the other boy beside him was too busy placing kisses all over his pale neck to notice i had moved closer. eventually, he stopped. his silver eyes flashed into mine, and his lips barked a kind of laughter that brought a slick of sweat to my palms. "Claudius, who is this?"
Claudius stood up, his voice mocking. "our appetizer."
the urge to run kicked me to the stomach, but my feet couldn't sprint quick enough.
he pierced his fangs into my neck, and i drifted.
Apr 16, 2019
Apr 16, 2019 at 6:41 AM UTC
My mother’s second cousin
went to a fine university,
majored in anthropology,
and wore Italian wingtips
and a black fedora pulled
down rakishly over one eye.
I hear he was a handsome man.
He joined Toastmasters
and spoke extemporaneously
to small crowds of strangers.
He packed a leatherette
bag and went bowling
every other Sunday night.
He took his children camping
and taught them to catch a fire
with magnesium and tinder.
He mowed the lawn
with lapidary precision;
neighbors admired
his yard: brilliant green,
sharp as an emerald.
He played the spinet piano
in the hallway after dinner,
the metronome clicking out time.
His black suits—
immaculate skins
of a domesticated
creature—smelled
of cigarette smoke
and fountain pen ink.
But, according to my mother,
something went wrong along the way.
He began to hunger for something that clawed
just beyond the evenly trimmed hedgerows.
He smiled at night, listening
to malevolent creatures leaping
from rooftop to rooftop.
He began to hate his wife’s
brown dresses: *brown is
the color of compromise*,
he seethed to himself.
His voice became quieter;
bowling became a bother.
Eventually,
he left his fedora hanging
on the coat rack in the hall.
His neglected wingtips gathered
dust in the bedroom closet.
The pockets of his favorite suits
swelled with cryptic notes, written
to himself with stolen fountain pens.
One night, when the children were sleeping,
he set the table and killed his wife with a spoon.
I hear he was a handsome man.
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 10:37 AM UTC
Silver drops bestow a calm upon me;
Autumn has come, and each thing goes slowly.
Let those raindrops succumb to the World's lips,
So the World's noise will shut up finally!
Don't blame the jewel for unpolished shapes,
Blame her wicked and rich lapidary.
A face that shines bright but who is no star,
Has too darkness, who's illusionary.
Autumn arrived and flocks of cranes leave us,
While Ruyâ'î rests in his reverie.
Oct 5, 2016
Oct 5, 2016 at 3:41 PM UTC
she was the gem
that shined bright
in your eyes;
but today,
you compared
her with trash
one man's trash,
is another man's
treasure;
perhaps you've
not seen her value,
or you're never a
lapidary to begin with
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 6:25 AM UTC
girls in lithe dresses
still in photographs
they hurt like daggers—
being this young
hurts like a dagger, too as
their eyes divine something
in me,
or their hurtling way of being so
ineffably in place
and i, placeless,
skin flushed hot
like receiving a multitude of tongues,
this juvenility,
everything around me is lissomeness
just— tryingly closing my eyes
hoping to be awakened by the roaring
of blood in vein,
put to sleep by a lapidary brush
of hum: a delicate soft-petalled song
but i am a child
lost in a field
of various flowers.
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 1:06 AM UTC
My face
Stole the skin of a diamond
To tote as it’s own mask of
Sheepskin.
Me, being the ever-ovulating orchestrator
Needed to pin the tail on this donkey
Only to rationalize why it is
Only in our nature to scrutinize
Our flaws, like a jeweler.
Each facet is forced to plead their case
While in the back of their mind’s eye
They know they will only be allowed on probation
Until the abuse from the lapidary starts again.
Tell me I’m not a real diamond
But then have the courtesy
To shatter me
Back into young, unglazed sand
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 8:01 PM UTC
You make art late at night,
early in the morning,
whenever you can etch out the time
to carve a glinting facet
on a gem
that's trimmed, dopped to a wooden dowel,
and bevelled
to eye-grabbing beauty.
Aug 18, 2017
Aug 18, 2017 at 3:15 AM UTC
No matter how dire it gets,
no matter how despairing,
no matter how forlorn, how hopeless,
no matter how little reason there seems to be to go on,
Kendrick Lamar spat fire and spoke truth,
at least for a few years,
as did a few hundred other contemporaneous artists
who laid it down on the track.
Emily Dickinson
did not stop for death or thee,
but prolifically tackled issues
of universal import in her lapidary recluse's verse.
Chakaia Booker turned shredded tires into museum centerpieces,
hunted spirits, eluded the chimera of consumption,
forged reclaimed rubber into toughness,
a rough-hewn canvas for a displaced people.
You can have nothing going for you,
nothing substantial to look forward to,
nothing above to guide you,
nothing but averted eyes on the street and professional shame,
but still be transported away
by a few glorious minutes of song or poetry or sculpture.
When there's nothing else, there's always art.
No matter what, there's always art.
May 5, 2018
May 5, 2018 at 4:29 AM UTC