"leathery" poems
When you love someone who doesn't love you back your world ends.
When you love someone who doesn't love you back you keep pumping love. You are so oblivious and eager that you give them so much love. No matter what they won’t give it back.
When you love someone who doesn't love you back. You feel nothing but absolute pain and sorrow. You feel like there nothing left except the love that won't be taken. Your love is so strong and there’s so much that it floods you.
When you love someone who doesn't love you back. You feel hopeless because of all the love you gave this person and how much you'd do for love in return. You'd give them all the time in the world, all the love in the world. You still do this relentlessly even though they wont give you five minutes when you need that five minutes.
Being in love with someone who doesn't love you back is a burning red pain. It's a pain like nothing else because no matter what you do, no matter what medicine or treatment you give to that pain it's still there. It's there when you see his face, hear his voice, remember his touch. It's always there.
When you're in love with someone who doesn't love you back, you don't have to worry too much about them intentionally hurting you. That's because everything small memory you've over analyzed hits you across the face over and over. You're constantly hating yourself because this one person was so important to you and now he's gone. “I should've done..” “Why was I so..” “No wonder he doesn't..” Those thoughts are toxic and seizes up your body.
When you're in love with someone who doesn't love you back, you get so ******* close to hating them. You hate that they've ripped you open, eaten you up and have left you to decay. You hate that they have let you hate yourself more than you could ever hate them. You hate them because of the things they gave you which weren't all good. And the things they stole. Like crying on their shoulders which they gave, but your pride they took.
When you're in love with someone for the first time and they don't love you back, you never want to fall in love again. You never want attachments with anyone because of this substantial pain that is constantly there. You never want to kiss with love, talk with love, witness love. You never want love unless, it's that one person you love. That's the only thing that matters. Love had a horrible reputation, it's either make it or ******* break it. Not take it.
When you're hurt by someone who can't feel pain, you wish you never fell in love. Never in lust, never started talking, never meeting. You wish you could erase their smell so you wouldn't ever have to think about why you remember it so well. You wish you can't vividly remember how their arms felt and how they were once so welcoming.
When you love someone who doesn't love you back, you are pathetic. You cry in bed while replaying your first kiss, first date, the time you fell asleep together. You can remember every feeling from the first time you felt love to the first time your heart skipped a beat because, well, it was ending. You remember the goosebumps running down your back when you last touched his hand as you left his car. That was the last time you'd be in his car. And that was the last time you touched his leathery skin that was wet from your tears. And that was the last time he would know how much you loved him.
You replay every memory over and over until they're worn out. And after they're worn out you can't ever get new ones. You love this person and you will for a long, long time. But they won't ever love you. They won’t get those stomach tickles when you hear their name. They wont miss having their chapped lips against your neck tickling you elegantly. Because to them that doesn't matter, they didn’t feel love.
When you're in love with someone who doesn't love you back, it's almost impossible to stop loving them. No matter what you do. No matter what they did. No matter how it hurts. No matter what, you will love them.
When you love someone who doesn’t love you back, you are incapable of stopping because you are paralyzed.
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 9:59 PM UTC
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.
11.3k
Surveying
northern autumn afternoon
Pitcherelli, ex-marine, body-builder,
Lussier, long-haired father of three dark-skinned children
and myself, sharp-edged loner, ex-lover of a fair share of
women
are belly-laughing in the dying sun. Clouds.
The crew, in timber.
Laughing
over recent visits to marvelous cities where
we could not keep ourselves from touching the terminal buds
of numerous exotic trees
and attracting ridicule of stylish girls and tame boyfriends.
Pitcherelli before the Albany bus station
shaking hands with a red pine planted thirty years ago.
Lussier, one hand in a child's hand and the other
feeling scabrous bark of urban woody plants.
Myself among partially shaved heads and leathery aromatic
jackets
getting close to the hairy bud of an unidentified poplar or
sycamore.
People
laughed, but we laughed best
back on our mountain
under the blackening weather.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 12:53 PM UTC
The old woman ran a leathery hand through her cropped hair.
"Yes, you may weep for the fields of green, as they were gorgeous yet thought to be boring."
She rocked back and forth and her wrinkled face contorted into a smile for the first time in the conversation.
"You may always cry for the tulip fields as they were devastatingly beautiful yet loathed."
And yet, as soon as her face had lit up like a thousand suns, it was once again devoid of expression.
"But, nonetheless, reserve your pity for those that loved he or she that burned out,
for every lover of Icarus knows that it is better to be hated than to go unnoticed."
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 4:56 PM UTC
Unmoved by your arrival from the west coast,
ten thousand little things are different.
It’s October and the trees are on fire:
a forge that you won't notice, 'til you're gold.
Your Kicks don’t leave footprints on these cobbled streets;
even the children have old, leathery hands.
Try to paddle-board the Eno and the bass go belly-up:
that river’s for scattering ashes and making moonshine.
All they sell at Aldi is ethnic shampoo,
so now your hair twists like the roots you’ve lacked
'til now, because all you’ll ever need is two hands:
for prayer, and work.
Life moves on like a cigarette’s drag,
while somewhere Hope’s fiddle strums;
Take off your headphones and
go put your ear to an oak.
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 9:27 PM UTC
Dusk!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,
These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*
Fibrous wings furred like a moth,
Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.
Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,
Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.
Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.
No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.
Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;
Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.
Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;
Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.
They live in darkness, centipedes do too,
Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.
Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,
Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.
Wind turbines endanger bats,
Like fans endanger lightning bugs.
Only one percent of bats are vampiric,
Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.
Dawn!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Bats are bugs, aren’t they?
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 5:04 PM UTC
Jake the Snake
F J McCarthy on Jan 9, 2009
Jake was a snake, who felt incomplete.
For all of his friends all seemed to have feet.
Jake had no feet and it made him so sad,
As he watched his friends run with the feet they all had.
The raccoon and the squirrel had big furry tails,
But all that Jake had were leathery scales.
Jake watched the birds flying up in the sky.
How wonderful indeed to know how to fly.
Jake watched the fish as they swam in the lake.
Swimming was one thing that was easy for Jake.
Sometimes he would swim, then lie in the sands.
He’d think how he’d look with feet or with hands.
One day he was laying in the sun on the sand.
When he heard such a noise he could not understand.
I must see what is wrong , Jake said with a frown.
For something is troubling the whole Forest town.
He saw all of his friends by the rocks on the hill.
Then he saw mother Robin and she looked very ill.
He asked his friend Mr. Rabbit why Mother Robin was crying?
“Her baby fell out of the nest while she was out flying”.
“How is the baby, was he hurt by the fall.?”
“the baby is fine, but he’s trapped in this wall”.
Jake studied the wall,and looked at the crack.
“Has anyone tried to get baby bird back?”
The chipmunk and squirrel said the crack was to small.
And not even the mole could dig through that wall.
Mr. Field-mouse said “I could fit through the crack.
But the bottom is deep. How would I get back?”
Then Jake started thinking and in the blink of an eye.
“I’m the thinnest of all so I’m going to try.”
Jake asked Mr. Raccoon to lend him a hand.
They climbed up the wall and Jake told him his plan.
Mr. Raccoon held Jake’s tail and lowered Jake down the hole.
Just then baby bird let out a wail, for Jake had found his goal.
“Climb on my neck ” Jake said to the bird “and hold on really tight.”
Raccoon pulled them up as the whole forest watched this wonderful Marvelous sight.
First came up baby and afterwards Jake.
Then everyone cheered what a wonderful snake.
He’s saved baby bird and everyone knew it.
Of all the forest animals only he could do it.
The chipmunk and squirrel and even the mole.
Had not a hope to get down that hole.
Yet Jake with his body so long and so thin.
Saved baby bird from the fix he was in.
Jake felt so happy, he didn’t need feet.
Or a big furry tail to make him complete.
“I am very complete”cried Jake. “I’m so happy to be just a snake.”
Then baby bird said in a voice rather small.
“Don’t make that mistake, your not just a snake.
Your my friend and a hero, your Jake the Snake.
The very best snake of all!
May 17, 2010
May 17, 2010 at 7:10 PM UTC
I crossed paths with a dragon today.
Smoke blowing from the holes in her face.
Suffering from the heat of her own exhaust.
Instead of flying above me gracefully, she hobbled before me.
Like her snowy white wings have long since given up on her.
Once strong, leathery skin now grown soft with weaknesses.
Like a piece of broken armor.
Her eyes still held their draconic glow.
Blue and forceful.
Like waves crashing upon a shore.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 1:52 AM UTC
Cherry blossom time
thirty stories in the air
delicious people
Melted trains and tracks
resembling grilled cheese dribbling
down leathery hide
Steel Lego towers
tingling anticipation
tasty high tension
May 27, 2013
May 27, 2013 at 9:42 AM UTC
you are just girl enough,
to be a real man...
so stand by me,
be a, be my man-girl,
shave that leathery face,
close and tight,
so I can kiss it smooth,
in front of everybody.
Go off to war, Cyrano,
write me love letters of
incredible tenderness,
poems as yet undreamt
come to me raggedy-man whole,
just enough girl in my man,
to make us both,
deliriously,
weep publicly.
Go ahead man,
write your beloved,
songs of the wars that worry you so,
that you don't show,
you think, I don't know,
but I am tough man tough enough,
plenty~enough,
to be yours,
not just the
woman, but that woman,
your beloved.
that bulge in your rear pocket,
not your wallet,
it's just some pocket tissues
you've been saving
for our reunion.
if you are afraid,
be not, be relieved,
you are just
girl enough,
to be a real man,
and I,
*well, I am tough man tough enough,
plenty~enough,
to be yours,
not just the woman,
but that woman,
your beloved*
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC
*We bask in light when morning comes, yet tremble in the night.
Halloween must be the cause to give us such a fright.
Ghosts and goblins haunt the streets where moans and chains abound.
Ghouls and vampires lurk in shadows, scared of holy ground.
Werewolves stalk unwary victims. Frankenstein is loose.
Ogres, trolls and spectral zombies hanging by a noose,
Gorgons with their "stoney" eyes and bats with leathery wings...
Mummies wrapped in yellowed cloth with rotting flesh that clings,
Pirates, gangsters, space invaders, just to name a few,
All in search of "Tricks or Treats"(or just a head...or two).
Beware the time when darkness comes. Be sure the door is locked.
But most of all .... to just be safe ... keep lots of candy stocked.*
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 10:41 AM UTC
In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
I'm walking up and down Beacon Hill
searching for a street sign --
namely MERCY STREET.
Not there.
I try the Back Bay.
Not there.
Not there.
And yet I know the number.
45 Mercy Street.
I know the stained-glass window
of the foyer,
the three flights of the house
with its parquet floors.
I know the furniture and
mother, grandmother, great-grandmother,
the servants.
I know the cupboard of Spode
the boat of ice, solid silver,
where the butter sits in neat squares
like strange giant's teeth
on the big mahogany table.
I know it well.
Not there.
Where did you go?
45 Mercy Street,
with great-grandmother
kneeling in her whale-bone corset
and praying gently but fiercely
to the wash basin,
at five A.M.
at noon
dozing in her wiggy rocker,
grandfather taking a nap in the pantry,
grandmother pushing the bell for the downstairs maid,
and Nana rocking Mother with an oversized flower
on her forehead to cover the curl
of when she was good and when she was...
And where she was begat
and in a generation
the third she will beget,
me,
with the stranger's seed blooming
into the flower called Horrid.
I walk in a yellow dress
and a white pocketbook stuffed with cigarettes,
enough pills, my wallet, my keys,
and being twenty-eight, or is it forty-five?
I walk. I walk.
I hold matches at street signs
for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house in the suburbs,
two little kids
****** up like pollen by the bee in me
and a husband
who has wiped off his eyes
in order not to see my inside out
and I am walking and looking
and this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.
Pull the shades down --
I don't care!
Bolt the door, mercy,
erase the number,
rip down the street sign,
what can it matter,
what can it matter to this cheapskate
who wants to own the past
that went out on a dead ship
and left me only with paper?
Not there.
I open my pocketbook,
as women do,
and fish swim back and forth
between the dollars and the lipstick.
I pick them out,
one by one
and throw them at the street signs,
and shoot my pocketbook
into the Charles River.
Next I pull the dream off
and slam into the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled up
notebooks.
3.6k
Let's face it
its more ******** warfare
culturally they are used to faking it
as thimbles and chipolatas in ninety seconds
do not reach first base much less seeing stars on cloud nine
hence they woke and fake the reality they chose be it feel or fright
in woke solidarity against frustrations they cloned their made-up foe
what better than sturdy shining Mandingo loaded and tied up
there for the having to your heart's content
presented to you the untamed beast
the wild moor tooled hot and ready
raw animalistic unfettered passion
rock hard we can name him Rocky
that goer that delivers every time
the one that is all your men aren't
and can never be cause he's gifted
sleek like dolphin in rhythmic glide
tasty like fresh clean mushroom
Arabian stallion if ever there's one
with absolute pedigree and class
take a break from the mediocre
from the wham bangs no can dos
from the floppy quick-draws saps
imagine the dark horse with the most
in smooth soft pink leathery velvet
tis your secret your guilty pleasure
tis the obsession you made into a war
the fantasy that plays in your heads
tis behind fervours that haunts you
that you so well disguise in hatred
telling metaphors slip out Freud
hold him down, grind him hard
wear him out, let's wreck him so
the sado masochistic 'punishing him'
give him a hard time, it all says a lot
you twist innocent sentences into
****** innuendos and innocent actions
are falsely given ****** meanings
as morn noon and night you toil
you troll and agitate for attention
yes you twist turn bite and nibble
in Freudian throes you talk love
you glaze unrequited love relentlessly
you close your eyes and dream sweet pain
yeah! get real, its no psyche warfare
its a flutters obsession, it's the classic '
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
its how you float your boats and and get yer thrills
you better face it you're all addicted
It's an ******** War-fare and you all know so.....
Jun 22, 2021
Jun 22, 2021 at 7:11 AM UTC
Like so many
Lemmings
they rush to southern climes for
greener pastures
year round golf a
Slower pace
Cheaper prices and
Tropical temperatures
Leathery
Tanned
Unnaturally taut and
Sun-spotted
they crowd the local haunts and
Clog the highways.
At best they tolerate whoever is not
Pensioned or
Privileged
At worst they ban the
Underage
Unfortunates
from their gated communities
and social gatherings
The pendulum has swung from a time
when the Old were at the
Mercy of the Young
to the present
when Youth is
Oppressed by Senescence
Once democracy’s backbone they now wax
Conservative having obtained their
Slice of the pie
Now there is no pie
Mother Earth has been trampled to death and the
Toiling hands of those who
Stoke the fires of industry are
Blistered and discouraged
Feb 26, 2017
Feb 26, 2017 at 2:27 PM UTC
My toenails are metallic blue.
My feet are scrubbed and soft.
An older Asian woman with leathery skin
And crazy soft hands
has polished them to perfection.
She told me about eHarmony
Her slut-clothes
Her elderly boyfriend.
In an accent I could barely understand
She told me about her life.
She rubbed my calves with lime green
Exfoliants
And lotioned my legs
With cream-colored juice.
Her nails were French-tipped
And long.
She flicked off the excess polish with them.
She does this dozens of times a day.
Dozens of pairs of feet.
I wonder how many people have heard her story
And know about her rich boyfriend.
How many people have felt those soft hands
On their toes.
I wonder where else those hands have been
On her old boyfriend.
May 19, 2010
May 19, 2010 at 7:18 PM UTC
Just because they have disappeared
does not mean that
i'm clutter-free.
It's a cluster-free, a clusterfuck of ******* insanity.
My uncle left right after
my Grampa's funeral,
split like a chicken's *****
"he's in the airforce
or some other human-processing factory,"
Ma would say to me.
My aunt mable,
dipped out
dripped out two kids
then split
like a pillsbury biscuit.
My aunt pat's mom,
left Aunt pat on Aunt FLo's doorstep,
in the sole of her instep,
stepped out on a kid
and a husband
with a left shoe,
the right one
was left behind.
My pops
was forced out,
I saw him drag Ma
through the halls,
saw him whip her face in
with the brass-end
of a leather belt,
everybody's face was leathery
when the cops came in.
There is a litany of disappearing faces
in my family picture, a litany
of the disappeared
who reappear
over thanksgiving and christmas dinners,
when we wax nostalgiac
or hurt
over turkey,
gravy,
and biscuits.
Over love
and how many are missing.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 12:24 AM UTC
Fall to me, all you streets of Rome,
With your embrowned oils from torched walls and breccia of shadows,
The pizzicato of stairways and afternoon slowly closed
Like the thick, leathery-echo from this book of all roads.
Fallen, smoldering empire of storefronts and back-shop heirlooms,
Your lupine hills unbound with milk of cur in the wind and woods,
To your fallow fields rowed deep by a conquest of oars,
To the deepest silence and soot-muted oneness of Pompeii,
And a sky that is an ancient coin, without worth,
But still rubbed smooth at the edges by overfond lovers.
Jun 14, 2019
Jun 14, 2019 at 4:16 PM UTC
I stared catatonic nonstop and could not pull my eyes away or scream
except for the great internal scream and I felt like death was upon me, or nearly so.
And my body asleep but my mind twisted and my eyes awake wide-open
and no dream this was but real things and then my thoughts put outward
and all these things terrible formed into death-shadows
and flowed down through the fabrics above my head.
Flesh undulating in darkness that creeped
and I found ten seconds of courage to sit up and stare
at the wall as the rippling fabric became a thousand black snakes
crawling down from the ceiling and out from my dreamcatcher
that did nothing at all but release these terrors from the wall.
And I thought it was sordid wind that came in gusting through my window that made my sheets become like a mechanical sea
but it was not so, and these vile snakes poured out like *****
from some gaping maw above and went underneath my bed
and all through the floor to the four corners of my room
and then came together again above on the center of my ceiling
and murmured death-talk and horror-faces from the walls and ceiling
and even closing my eyes would bring nothing but flashes
of demonic children and things with no jaws or eyes
hollowed out and terrible ghosts I procured and almost choked out laughter because this was it and I've finally gone and gone mad
There was a man at my closed door wearing my jacket that hung on a hook
and his face was the face of a skull that hung above my door
and from the corner of my eye the man with the door on his back with the coat still attached walked with silent step toward my bed, and I turned to look at this figure
and instead of snapping back against the wall like all nightly visions should;
he stood there, and as I stared at him I saw slow moving black legs receding against the wall
but the horrors of his feet were ten thousand worm bodies and black leathery fingers of bats and crawling things
and my carpet floor was no longer static but a creeping madness,
and my body trembled as if it were being continuously dropped
from heights a hundred times over and great odious black
pillars and monoliths slid steadily up the corners of my room with arms
that then burst out to the middle into nothing but a smiling cheshire grin
and I could not move anymore and just stared until my mind went numb
and like the first sunlight upon the last fog before dawn, I awoke.
Nov 28, 2013
Nov 28, 2013 at 9:56 PM UTC
A Golden Brown Mexican Royal Eagle proudly soaring and gliding on invisible æther:
Human Eyes from the ground: dark, attentive, following the Raptor's deadly arc as it ascends:
The Mexican Brown Royal Eagle spots
A frightened Doe:
The dark eyes from the leveled plain:
a startled double-take,
follow the rapid Eagle's spiraling descent:
The vaporized cloudiness slashed;
A cinematic flash
of hide torn
and shrieking delight
are jumbled,
and echoed
through the void:
The Raptor is
Voluble butcher
As it devours,
Sinewy flesh,
Peeled from broken bone
leathery skin and
curved horn;
The Dark eyes moisten
While the scene
Fills His Eyes;
What Beauty juxtaposed:
Death And Life Are Just
A House
Inhabited by
Swift
Or
Quick
The Fortunes Named
In The Game
Called
Life Or Death.
J Eduardo Ramos©
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
I crossed paths with a dragon today.
Smoke blowing from the holes in her face.
Suffering from the heat of her own exhaust.
Instead of flying above me gracefully, she hobbled before me.
Like her snowy white wings have long since given up on her.
Once strong, leathery skin now grown soft with weaknesses.
Like a piece of broken armor.
Her eyes still held their draconic glow.
Blue and forceful.
Like waves crashing upon a shore.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 1:53 AM UTC
There's the mosh...sordid details that thing...
creeping of sort...retelling...to stay in focus.
A silent film whose black borders encapsulate
a slab of skyward white.
Visages...opening...opened...to interpretation.
"The apparition of these faces in a crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough."....ashen...
daguerreotype of a Zen Garden.
All of nature's pretties cast in an occult brew...
stirred, and stirring...composite sketches posted
and burned upon lampposts.
At large...ritualistic making-of-face...illusion
trafficking the ever present primes of lives...
"the center of which is everywhere, the
circumference nowhere."...attestation o' mugs.
Visages...plucked from a year of our lord,
to be...rendezous of all light's putting to...
years thereof.
Alien unto thyself...oogly boogly, yet mirror-imaging...
behold/beheld/beholden.
By sleight of Hand...visages, who'd otherwise
be as soon pruned and leathery, inanimate under the
sun.
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
I stare at the ceiling
drained
by all the things I didn't do
Tasks and obligations are notecards
wedged between collections of thoughts
slowly taking up space on my shelf
until nails give and wood splinters
Favors are rough, leathery bookmarks
dominating Bible-thin planner pages
straining and bending
until schedules fan out
in a fat, perfect circle
of endless anxiety
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 24, 2016 at 2:12 PM UTC
It's gonna get colder when you leave.
The ground will harden
And the trees will sleep
And the world
Will wait.
Underneath the snow,
Life
Will wait.
The wind will search for you in every face
Biting and frantic
But find nothing,
And in despair crack across the ground like a whip
Stirring up little ghostly eddies of ice crystals.
The snow will catch the branches and drag them down
Asking
Why the silence,
This year?
None of that summertime laughter
To light up the ice and make it sparkle.
The days will pull darkness around them like a thick coat
And slink by
In a hurry to be elsewhere,
Still too long, and too strange.
And then
Just when we've all almost given up,
Winter will soften, just a bit.
The rains will come, like a good cry you've been holding your breath against
For months,
And the snow will wash away
And the ground will be ugly and scarred,
But bare at last,
And the land will begin
Slowly
To bloom
In anticipation of your footsteps there.
The sun will hold its line in the battle against the night
For just a sliver longer every day.
The first flowers will shoot up through
The last little patches of snow,
Light green and fragile.
The world will wake
Yawn and stretch,
Is she back yet?
Is she here?
The cherry blossoms on the tree in my backyard will unfurl
White and delicate and frothy on tough, leathery branches
And we will all see that maybe
Everything is going to be alright
After all.
Is she back yet?
Is she here?
And summer will stroll in, laughing,
The moment you set foot on this soil again.
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 5:04 PM UTC
The white fluorescent lights buzz over my head, as if a method of determined annoyance.
Studying is a truly lackluster operation
Students methodically find ways to keep themselves distracted
Looking around, trying to catch glimpses of how others are managing their time so well, a frantic approach to studying that I have single handedly mastered
A very tan incongruous man, seats himself with the Miami Herald in hand
His skin has a leathery texture
He is a tall and gangly, strange looking man of at least 50
3 inch thick sideburns, red corduroy pants that reveal his mustard yellow socks and brown-black shoes
Button-down shirt with the vertical stripes, sure to match every color with the rest of his outfit
Off-white straw fedora hat with a forest green trimming,
He sports a fabulous mustache, that puts every biker’s or Italian baker’s whiskers to shame.
Something tells me he's not a student
Seated across from me are two foreign women that are studying the English language.
I know because they are the only ones talking, pushing my diversion from work a little further.
The sky is turning grey outside the colossal library windows
I’m hungry.
That kid in the corner keeps staring at me.
I have been here too long.
Jan 25, 2010
Jan 25, 2010 at 4:28 AM UTC
Clearing ivy,
pulling up handfuls of
choking bindweed,
uncovering delicate
wildflowers in
neglected garden corners,
and there’s this
tiny bird
lying in the dirt.
Feathers sparkle
pretty and golden,
as fairytale light
falls through
parted vines.
Surely dead,
but then
- like Snow White
surfacing from
magic apple-induced
dormancy -
the bird moves,
woken by the kiss
of sunlight and
being witnessed,
and seems to breathe.
A gloved finger’s
exploratory, leathery ****
a moment to realise,
then disgust,
sharp recoil.
A wing lifts;
gleaming feathers
parting reveal the
crawling mechanics inside,
the writhing, parasitic mess
behind the sick illusion,
the briefly faked miracle
of something
like life.
Away over a fence,
Union bunting
***** erratic and jarring
in a neighbour’s garden.
In a stuffy town hall,
the town band is practising
God Save The Queen, but
still can’t keep time.
Our betters wave to us from
high palace balconies
and golden coaches, and we
cheer them for it.
There’s such hunger, such
pain and desperation out there,
you can feel it, if you
forget to stop yourself.
There’s so much tragedy and injustice,
you have to go numb or go crazy.
There’s no future we can see,
and the past has been rewritten
to reflect the views
of focus groups,
fascists and fantasists.
And there’s a bird
lying in the dirt,
garlanded by fragrant petals,
feathers flashing like jewels,
so dead
it looks like
it’s breathing.
Jun 3, 2022
Jun 3, 2022 at 7:31 AM UTC