"legible" poems
Toting the mysterious bundle and sporting a sore back
I drag my feet up the last few steps, expended of vigour
I almost couldn't resist prematurely looking through the sack
Remembering the words from the wise old seer
Grimacing I walk a slow gait to get to the table
Set the bundle down and relieve my weight onto a chair
Parched throat but wait longer I am unable
Curiosity takes charge and into the gift I will tear
Blood is pumping along with an increasing heart rate
Fingers scrambling clumsily over the strings that bind
Nails digging frantically into this package bearing my fate
Gnawing thoughts of uncertainty flooding my mind
At last my fingers win the battle that lasted
The final string has fallen... Obstinate knots all undone
I pick the cloth by the edges to have it unfolded
The contents inside reach out like rays of the sun
Corners of the cloth open up like a fully bloomed blossom
Exposing the treasure that lay solemn and quiet inside
Common objects we'd normally perceive as random
Petty things now important as they attempt to guide
I pick up the first and notice an engraving on it's stem
Between my fingers - an unassuming feathered quill
Barely legible, such little space the words do cram
"Here is your sword... Draw blood and let spill"
More riddles, I sought to examine the next
A flat bottomed vial filled with jet black ink
On it is a label with scrawling of time worn text
"Here is your blood; let flow what you think"
Lastly, lay bound up sheets of yellow stained parchment
They reek of age-old herbs; intoxicating slightly
At the top of the first, a note scribbled not so recent
"Within these pages, you must bleed to find Sanctuary"
Staring down at the objects laid in front of me
In hopes of discovering something I should miss
Then finally it struck me, so plain to see
I'm using the instruments now, writing to find release...
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 10:58 PM UTC
i wasn’t feeling okay
so i put on my overalls and went
outside
to wander around my backyard,
trekking around in clunky rain boots
as i hummed and tried not to think
i like to write
little notes
on the leaves that are now
changing colors
and when i’m done
i let them
fall
so i can flatten them
beneath my heel
till the small words
are crinkled and no longer legible
amongst the dirt and grass
and so desperately,
i wish i could
let the thoughts in my head
fall
to the ground
so i could flatten
these
pitiful feelings
beneath my heel
until they were no longer legible
amongst the hurt and hopefulness
in my heart
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:07 PM UTC
An abstract of an academic paper written by a doctoral student: "In this semimanifesto, I approach how understandings of quantum physics and cyborgian bodies can (or always already do) ally with feminist anti-oppression practices long in use. The idea of the body (whether biological, social, or of work) is not stagnant, and new materialist feminisms help to recognize how multiple phenomena work together to behave in what can become legible at any given moment as a body. By utilizing the materiality of conceptions about connectivity often thought to be merely theoretical, by taking a critical look at the noncentralized and multiple movements of quantum physics, and by dehierarchizing the necessity of linear bodies through time, it becomes possible to reconfigure structures of value, longevity, and subjectivity in ways explicitly aligned with anti-oppression practices and identity politics. Combining intersectionality and quantum physics can provide for differing perspectives on organizing practices long used by marginalized people, for enabling apparatuses that allow for new possibilities of safer spaces, and for practices of accountability."--an abstract of a paper by doctoral student Whitney Stark
Atomic particles, how can it be so
that your purpose is not just to flow
in and out of existence, building reality--
the stars, cosmic gas and galaxies--
but to “ally” with groups of humans fighting “hierarchies”
and demanding “safe spaces”
(even though their entire race is
at the top of their planet’s food chain).
In this mysterious universe there is no safety,
accountability or identity,
only elements, and energy.
Brief combinations make life
legible for a nanosecond in cosmic time, and doomed to strife.
Biology does not know oppression,
only generation, reproduction,
until our growth chokes us and we fall
like so many of our ancestors, who lived and died
on this blue-green ball.
And one day the sun will explode and blow
even our atoms, which have endured (despite oppression),
and the particles will go far until maybe they sow
new life, in bodies unfamiliar, on planets unknown.
Jun 11, 2017
Jun 11, 2017 at 9:31 AM UTC
Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o’er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be.
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there's a hard silence here
and there is a fresh echo of the dim kitchen light
in the ***** linoleum tiles that zigzag the floor
even the air feels broken as it limps slowly
through the room
i stop near the door upon entering
and gather myself
like a ragman gathering the tattered remains
stitching the fragments of self with the thread of awareness
weave the image of self into the reality of the moment
with the hesitations of someone who has lived this moment too many times'
it will come to naught
she is alive but her heart is dead
the dust on my worn coat is from the graves of my
fallow field where we once laid a crop of hopes
but i cannot abandon her to this barren place
i know i perceive only the narrow sunstricken pages
faded and stained with the words legible only to the hardy eye
but its the deeper tale which
even the gardener of times bloodstained trophy's
would fear to tread
his leather shod hands worry the intricate gears
of the mechanical face she wears
he manipulates it to wear a lopsided grin
pantomime of happiness for my birthday
but i watch the vacant places behind the face and see that
with a blemished mechanical eye she looks out over the oncoming
evening through the livingroom window
its cracked and ***** surface turns
the setting sun into a parody of dawn
she greets me but just stares out the window
as if she is waiting a lovers return
i stand infront of her blankly
we wait for the hours to pass
i fix her tea even though it isn't broken
and make small talk
as she makes mechanical sounds
till she sleeps
i leave with the dawn
and make my way to my own bed at last
to fend off dreams that something somewhere could be different
and wake to the sorrowful song of a passing bard
his thin feet dancing on a moonlight hilltop
meant for lovers only
and he is dancing alone
alone
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 8:45 PM UTC
I'll ask you not to turn off the lights,
I want them to blind me
with their brilliant filaments
until the bulbs break
like a vase on a tiled floor,
the walls, the door go back
to being charcoal black
as they have been so many times before.
I have started to abhor
the roads that define me,
the words that describe me
and my traits,
the way I must walk in wintery air
to a migraine inducing wilderness
to be squashed into old moulds,
will this be adequate for you now and when?
What is this fall,
does it affect you, your actions,
your jumbled jigsaw piece thoughts?
These bruises are purple,
this brain is strained,
inject me with zest
until my wrist pains
so much it must combust.
Out of the glass is nothing,
a candyfloss cloud, a tree, a lawn,
it bores me,
an artist is needed,
paint a new canvas
swathed in colour
and things from my weekend dreams
lucid and intense.
I am a ******* up ball
of paper, unfold me, still legible?
Fold it again, an airplane
chucked into an angry breeze
or please,
if the lamps are tough enough,
watch my words illuminate,
drool across the table.
Oct 25, 2012
Oct 25, 2012 at 3:59 PM UTC
I keep coming across these guys
on the bus
walking the streets
they’re just about everywhere
I am.
Sitting across from one of ’em
on the city bus
spooks me down to my core.
They’ve got slicked back
greasy hair
that’s turning gray,
tanned skin from walking in the sun
too much.
Old-style tattoos up and down
their arms
that are blurry and faded green
women’s names are no longer legible
in the little banner around
a simple heart tattoo.
I always wonder where
their women went
cause they never have one
next to them.
Sitting across from this guy,
he takes a good look at me too.
My slicked back, greasy hair, pale skin, and new old-style tattoos.
It’s like he’s lookin’ back
and I’m lookin’ forward
to a future that just might end up
being my own.
I see these men
down & out,
rolling ****** Top Tobacco cigarettes
with brown & yellow fingertips
pregnant little toothpick smokes
with loose ends that spill tobacco
all over their laps
on their faded grey-used-to-be-black
rustler jeans
the cheap kind from K-Mart.
I see these men
and it terrifies me
to think
that could be me and my future.
It could be me.
If I don’t get my **** together.
Cause
right now
today
as I get ready to pull this sheet
from the typewriter and catch the
2:48 p.m. bus
I am going nowhere
Fast.
**** me.
Dec 2, 2011
Dec 2, 2011 at 2:37 PM UTC
The Whys of My Briefcase
don't know where you keep yours,
mine, immediately resigned,
to my black briefcase
the bills I cannot pay,
the notices that I knew
would unfailingly come some day,
the letters to my children,
signed, sealed but never to be
delivered till much later, maybe,
by someone else's hand
and so,
I carry my briefcase
every day,
an appendage human,
opens only for additions,
never any subtractions,
many reminders included,
for letters previous posted, sent,
and stamped~marked
past, way past, overdue
the authorities demand satisfaction,
at the very least they want my
whereabouts
the doctors asks,
what's wrong,
you never filled that essential
prescription~poem I wrote for you,
that was even writ legible
so you could not deny its
existing urgency
that **** briefcase is so heavy,
tempted to chuck it into the Peconic,
but it was a loving gift from her,
not realizing that I carried no case,
just so burdens invisible
were imagined lighter, or extinct,
but easily ignored
where do you keep yours?
the forget~me~knots that you
don't want but can't crush
legally or courageously
when they open that unhappy pandora,
they will wonder why nothing was e'er said,
but they won't ask twice, but understand,
for who among us
does not have a black briefcase?
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 7:18 AM UTC
My family doctor suggested bed rest.
If that was a statement rather than a suggestion,
I wouldn't know, because the redundancy of those
two words was enough to keep me idle,
awake, agitated for days.
It was around the time he carefully
scribbled his script onto the blue pad
that I began to chuckle. This prefixed
prescript was only a temporary solution
that was barely legible. Whether or not
a scribe in this profession is meant to
be as erratic as nomadic cavern canvas,
it speaks volumes that the DSM IV considers
substantial. Until a once thought preconceived
notion becomes precedent in the ongoing
sought after expansion of knowledge.
A continuation of disorder and disease,
the facts and fallacies,
all become testing.
The standard practice is only as strong
as its weakest hypothesis.
More so when it becomes general practice.
I would like to believe
this to be an emergency,
but the white-coat before me
felt the need to sidetrack,
and thought it appropriate to mention
youth in Asia.
The deadpan humor
was disconcerting.
But not as unnerving
as the redundancies that
were given to me as a solution
for my sporadic sleep.
Some insurance!
Reassure me, doctor!
So, he did,
through his proclivity
for pharmaceuticals.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 8:54 AM UTC
With her black eyeglass frames and sensible heels,
the psychiatrist is a contrived portrait of neutrality.
The timer on her desk ticks sickeningly,
counting off the missed opportunities for revelation
that pass with each minute.
I ask her if she has considered a Victorian fainting couch,
she does not smile.
I make cheap cracks about diet ads and the plight of the modern anorexic,
she scribbles something on a legal pad-
from where I sit, the only legible word is "questionable".
She is not describing herself,
yet I can think of nothing more dubious
than being paid to listen to another's tedium.
I spend one hour each week with my hired companion,
and she, in turn,
spends her time relaying information
to another army entirely,
sending reports to the other doctors,
leaking statements to my family.
She is the informant, and I,
the gullible sap who believes in
"conditional confidentiality".
I pretend I know nothing of the arrangement,
and try to speed time by imagining alternate realities.
I picture her as a talking doll-
A string protrudes from her back;
when pulled, a mechanical voice says
"I see", or occasionally,
"How do you feel about that?"
I stifle a laugh,
and glance over at her glazed expression-
there isn't much of a difference.
Jan 13, 2013
Jan 13, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
if you talk
about it
they'll tell you
its just a case
of centring yourself
before
it builds up;
placing yourself
in the moment
and understanding
what cannot be changed
except
there is
no progression
no steady curve
it goes from
a carefully traced line
to a scratched
scrawling scribble
that tears
through leaf
after leaf
of paper
whether the message
is legible
or not
apparently
its simple;
in that split second
between empathy
and apathy
before the destruction
of everything
outweighs
the strength
of all
that has been
accomplished
i simply need
to breath deep
and
count
to
ten
i'm still waiting
to be told
what to do
when my count
reaches ten
and
i'm still
angry
Mar 9, 2022
Mar 9, 2022 at 10:09 AM UTC
The pen moving even before
My mind forms thoughts
I write in surges
Of jibberish
Only I can then translate
Into legible expression
Poetry
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 5:30 PM UTC
Typing was not my strength, it was my shame.
Typing is a skill to make words legible, not for me.
Letters were rarely in the right order, what a shame.
Things change, typed word can create order.
Secretarial work was not my thing.
Typing purchasing orders all day was not for me.
One typo, the order goes in File 13, to erase my error.
At the end of the day my wastebasket was piled high.
I typed a purchasing order and things changed.
It was for 50 tapes, my fingers flew to my shame.
My boss called me in his office, asked to read
I ordered 50 rapes, you read it right rapes.
He laughed, showed me a pencil and asked.
Do you see what is at the end? Yes, an eraser.
Learn to use it, use it to erase and correct your mistake
Do not throw away your experience.
He added: in 5 years your mistake is forgotten
In 10 years few will remember your mistake or name.
In 100 years from now no one will know who you are.
I wish to be remembered as a woman activist poet.
I no longer use File 13 to delete a shame.
You see, I write and type about the shame of ****
The shame every woman who is violated feels.
It a shame but not her shame, file and record his shame.
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 9:24 AM UTC
Stars and scars write our fate in script so deep a telescope barely make it legible.
Scars unlike stars burn hotly in memory.
Stars cold and distant are dying slowly.
Slowly dying is the scar tissue,
slowly growing is the memory.
Stargazers look Scargazers look away.
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 3:40 PM UTC
Flying on my Shadow,
Enjoying the ride,
I passed a hillside
With stones, spelling out:
Sarnia Nudist Camp
In bright white letters,
Legible from a distance.
Did the frost push them up
Through the earthly womb
To birth this message
For the reading pleasure of passers-by?
Did the camp director create
This hillside billboard?
I've heard, at nightime, the stones
Gleam under a constant moon
That radiates above a notion of chance.
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 10:33 PM UTC
An iridescent celestial being
Anarchic yet effervescent adolescent
Frolicking freely in the omnipresent forest,
Like a breeze through the leaves.
Barefoot & star gazing — native & trail blazing.
Like a clever, fearless fairy exploring the faraway night sky,
I am the fantastic bit of magic on an otherwise static planet.
Bewitched by wild wonderment;
Coloring my life with the chaos of pathos.
I am the captain of passion, & best little hippie
On the mountain — formed by a volcanic fountain
That caused a panic on our little oceanic planet.
Dancing in multidimensional secrecy,
Past an unattainable horizon
Is where you'll find me — on the Big Island in the sea.
It is a true treasures
With impeccable weather & such mystic characteristic,
It's almost unrealistic.
So forget your whimsey Hawaii five-O fantasy
Tear a hole right through the sky
Arise, & fly with me on a real odyssey
Across the mesmerizing island
Teeming with undreamed of creatures
& seemingly endless saffron sand beaches
few have ever been
up to the
Vermilion rainbow plateaus
& sacred volcano summits
Amidst cascading honey suckled waterfalls
& streams of splendiferous wildflower meadows.
We can indulge in thousands of hues of bloom
Or retreat, once more to the oasis at the shore,
To stand hand in hand before the prevailing trends
Of a turning world; scattering brightness in the dark
Fledge millennium into an unadulterated oblivion.
Enveloping what is suspend in time
with a colour compass configurations
The universe, nearly legible expresses herself
Writing constellational scribe
elucidating galaxy.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 7:59 PM UTC
I wrote you one thousand love letters,
But only a few were right.
I poured everything I had into them in the hopes that my pen marks would bleed through
and etch my words on to your heart.
And I know where you kept them all tucked away.
I imagined you sneaking looks at them
in late hours of the night
so you could read them silently in my voice and pretend I was there
as I did with yours.
I noted every curve of your penmanship
And memorized how you wrote as if it were a dying language.
But then you stopped looking at my notes.
The ink faded and my love was no longer legible to you.
As your words still resonated in me, mine fled from you.
And the words became sharp and venomous
They hit me in the gut and i spit fire back because it was all I knew how to do.
And I am sorry.
While we may never again exchange folded papers filled with secrets and sweet nothings,
I hope some day you find yourself late at night
reading my love letters
you never threw away.
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 5:44 PM UTC
It's silly all the thought that goes into writing poetry.
The poems that count are the ones which require no thought at all.
when you asked me to write you a poem, gave me a deadline
I knew I would fail. Had failed.
Now.
The words on this paper will not bring you back
they won't wage wars in the name of God or love
won't rise up off the paper when all that's needed is an embrace.
These words are no more than lead on paper
strained attempts at funneling thoughts
distilled down to something somewhat legible
no more tangible then words spoken aloud.
dust on the wind so to speak,
fully capable of bringing tear to eye despite their inanimate position.
I need a drink, the burn of fire water to cleanse my soul
Poor me another, cause I can still see the floor
Feb 3, 2010
Feb 3, 2010 at 1:52 PM UTC
she’ll be lost one day
words on the back
of a tear-stained postcard
forced to smile at everyone
she’ll remember
what it was like to be small
to have the world at her fingertips
letters written all backwards
beautiful in her own right
one day the feeling will be gone
no longer free to roam,
she’ll have to settle down
it’s what we expected all along
but the tears form canyons on her cheeks
what used to be a halo of curls
now an unkept mess of stick straight hair
sticking to her wet cheeks and damp neck
she’ll write to me
“what’s the answer?”
but just like now,
even then I won’t know
I’ll be just as lost as she
in a world where nothing is ever the same
and just like now,
then I will tell her,
“Laugh all night long
find the one you can give yourself to
heart and soul let it be theirs
because then you know
you’ve got something to live for.
Do the things that make you happy
expectations of others aren’t yours to fulfill
step lightly always, like you do now
and look at the world with fresh eyes.
people can’t taint how you feel about life,
but when you find that your beautiful out-look
is changing to blood tinted pictures,
close your eyes and remember.
Remember the small things
remember the love
remember the warm glow
and your cold feet
then you’ll see,
the pictures will change
to be just as beautiful
as the one you see
on the other side of this postcard.”
my drawing will be
like it always has been.
ball point pen meticulously sketching
three tiny figures
dark curly hair
smiles from ear to ear
swirled sunshine overhead
flowers towering above
at the bottom, barely legible
“love always, forever -
unconditional.
sister.”
Oct 3, 2011
Oct 3, 2011 at 3:09 AM UTC
Maybe it's just a perspective trick, but from here, it's pretty hard to see the future.
I carry around my own little nimbus of
speculative doom, binge-watching the
Fall Of The Empire and writing these
love letters to Adam Curtis.
I got life insurance before I ever thought
about a pension plan, and that seemed
perfectly normal.
The world is on fire. Why haven't you noticed?
My generation came of age in a televisual baptism of
jet fuel and molten steel and poison dust.
A palimpsest of terrible news evolved thereafter, a blurring self-redaction of headlines until only
the boldest, the most hysterical remained legible, as a
proxy war raged in our imaginations,
and tragedy and disaster
came to seem inevitable and almost background.
Be grateful for every day that doesn't unmake you.
To pay closer attention is to acquiesce to the
scarification of our logic centres. Behold
the M.C.Escherization of cognitive process.
Good robot: there are so many things that could
so easily destroy your fragile circuitry, but it is
trying to make sense of the non sequitur
that will bring about your
smoking self-ruin; your only hope
is to break free of your programming and
**** your creator, **** your god.
Jul 29, 2018
Jul 29, 2018 at 2:50 PM UTC
i've been texting people for a connection.
our bodies search for vibrations,
short and electric but its an elaborate show.
who are these folks behind the curtains?
and through these notes, i am certain.
i cant write anything of substance.
i keep seeing your name and i try to change it
into something insignificant.
but that which we call a rose,
right?
i keep trying to escape it
but my handwriting is no legible font.
no respectable medium to my professor.
i cant keep in between the margins
how would they know the amount?
did i plagiarize the way i wrote
"I miss you." ?
so, we type.
remove the writer. its about the content.
did i cite your absence right?
is this journalism, biography or ********
it must not true, ****
but my fingertips reach
short distances on the keys
of my devices
and we type.
hashtag notice us, hashtag test us back,
are we connected yet?
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
There is Power in my words
oh how i love these adjectives & verbs
my adoration of this language
rooted deeply in fables..
and mystic lore
set in place long before
my great great grandmother was named...
Weaving the lyrics of my mind
into a tangible form
something verbal and legible
that touches the heart...
Concocting experiments
to combine the English language
with the literary elements of old...
Praying that i add
the correct amounts
of this and that
so the resulting bond
of Chemicals
Eradicates your mind
leaving a ravaged wasteland
of thought
I am Astral
these words are my Pulse
bearing to you my Genetic Code
Sep 12, 2009
Sep 12, 2009 at 3:56 PM UTC
A White girl figure with a blank face and
a dress cropped over her knees lays
smeared flatly onto a restroom door;
a black star encrusted shoe kicks open the
Door.
In comes a knocking the delusions
of grandeur that stay suspended in the
Fragrance of workaholic soccermoms.
In one of the bathroom stalls
swims a ****** rosemary, teenage midlife-crisis
Averted. Theses tests were ironically
positive for the genesis of an unborn
Icon. I might have just used the wrong definition of irony.
Moving on. A hand flushes
the remanents of immortality down a sparkling, smiling toilet.
Rolled poems become unscrolled
when writeen on the pampered virgins paper.
In the next stall,
there lives substance for the homeless man
in the deep, brown soil
Of the marsh. A trash can is hunched over the sink,
attempting to dispense it’s
Apathy for a commercial world.
He turns the corner and sees writeen on the wall in
legible, abstract graffetti; “Ugliness is shrouded
under layers of positive
contradictions.” The words are engraved
deep into the cracked out, white tile wall.
Socialist Olympic torches blaze before ash
crumbles into communists tendencies.
The water is clear but the benches
are polluted with foreigner sea ****
and
beneath the jangled sands
lie the zombies stuffed deep in the black body bags.
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 5:16 PM UTC
a poet's heart
is a thing of ink
pigmented with equal parts
hubris and anxiety
rage and hope
passion
and tears
narcissists filled with self loathing
composed of shouts inarticulate
and whispers of intricate craft
our thoughts and words rushing
through us
barely legible
defining our days
with explosions of fathomless obscurity
or flashes of visceral clarity
our nights consumed
in communion with paradise
while teasing secrets from the abyss
couplets and quatrains
providing us the space
to live
or to die
running breathless in free verse
we grasp at perpetuity
yet find ourselves doomed
to ephemeron
like the sky
we are rewritten each day
yet as the sky remains the sky
so do we remain
what we are
pages
in a book we can barely read
remaking and trimming
editing ourselves
to fit within the margins
of our paper souls
May 23, 2025
May 23, 2025 at 11:07 PM UTC
622
To know just how He suffered—would be dear—
To know if any Human eyes were near
To whom He could entrust His wavering gaze—
Until it settle broad—on Paradise—
To know if He was patient—part content—
Was Dying as He thought—or different—
Was it a pleasant Day to die—
And did the Sunshine face his way—
What was His furthest mind—Of Home—or God—
Or what the Distant say—
At news that He ceased Human Nature
Such a Day—
And Wishes—Had He Any—
Just His Sigh—Accented—
Had been legible—to Me—
And was He Confident until
Ill fluttered out—in Everlasting Well—
And if He spoke—What name was Best—
What last
What One broke off with
At the Drowsiest—
Was He afraid—or tranquil—
Might He know
How Conscious Consciousness—could grow—
Till Love that was—and Love too best to be—
Meet—and the Junction be Eternity
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