"linseed" poems
A man once told me
He felt as if he had created me
From scratch, a muse
Conceived by invention,
Rather than the precision of my blood
or the tiny cosmos within my marrow;
He was mine,
But did not belong to me
The path of sirendom
Is paved with gilded lilies,
Soft flesh, and quiet angles
If you let them,
You can drift on through
Your feet hovering three inches above the soil
Saturated ripe with fertility,
Easier than breathing
But there will always be
At least nine of you
In every patch of every field
Preserved in light
The quicksand of reason, immortalized
Delicate whispers convince you
What a lovely work of artistry
An inspiration, the birth of genius
But you are only the vessel
Left empty
But I have never
Belonged to anyone,
No square of grass
Lush enough to rest my head
on a practiced lap
I was not an island to discover;
Sprung from beneath the Mariana,
I was built from the deep place
No pedestal to extend
The unhinge of my reaching arms
I took the long way up
Scratching through earth, long dead
No fruit, carefully arranged
No marble, heavily lidded
The flowers collapsed,
Like your idea of Woman,
To linseed stain
A smashed sunrise
It wasn’t god, but myself
That I met on the other side
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 6:16 PM UTC
on a rainy day your body spread over a picnic table
like an egg yolk, and you swallowed the word profound
again and again.
someone from your past
has gone beneath the ocean, leafless
and you can hear the wailing from here to the saginaw
people begin to breathe blood: they’re choking up, soughing
“be easy buddy” and
“he wanted a black eye for prom so i punched him in the face”
flowers arrived at the door, a ghost, an ear of corn
while everything yearned tall: frames, shadows,
in st. louis you circle a bit of claret earth
spotting your sister’s face in the mirror, leaving linseed and shreds
i could never ask how you are.
the wail is a train whistle, i hear it pauses
for no softness of flesh, these midwestern daughters
she loved all living things.
imagine carefully painting a boat
a pencil in your teeth,
cutting through earth, the nantucket sound
you’re going to take your boat beyond
this firmament, you know, we’re all
waiting through this salty crush
sinking below a winter current
this is all yours now:
mainsail, rudder, hard-a-lee
you darling masters of the sea.
for PW and LE. goodnight.
Apr 7, 2013
Apr 7, 2013 at 8:31 PM UTC
This is for those hemp clad allotment dwelling new-age professionals,
riding the crest of an organic wine wave,
with heads tilted so far back,
showing off their vanilla white, Dulux painted nostril showroom.
11am, it's not too early,
community centre trip,
twisting and stretching,
kneading and rolling eighteen-month old Oscar into a morally righteous,
gluten-free,
linseed loaf of faux intelligensia.
Tofu and thai veg stirfry please,
healthy and nutriousness,
Nah!
it's greasy and delicious.
Cultured, not truly,
it's Anglicized cuisine really.
Less like a political activist,
more like the organic bourgeoisie.
Mar 28, 2013
Mar 28, 2013 at 8:10 AM UTC
How is it three years, and I still have the same dreams?
Can you explain that to me, lovely sparrow?
Clutching olive branch and yew bark
Grabbing in the dark for cold water, sweating down the glass
Bitter chlorine and calcium built up on the face
Mineral finger-paints, broken down with linseed oil and worn palms
Your eyes behind those old glasses, working clay on the wheel
Such pride in glazed pots collecting rain on the patio
Paving stones laid in sand, the last few crooked on account of the cervesa
Dry in the mouth like panting dogs, deadweight collapsed on threadbare carpet
How do we convince ourselves that it is desirable to be alone?
I hold you in my arms in a dream, whoever you are
Pulling all the strands out of a wicker basket, creating uselessness
Chattering keys on a laptop like shivering teeth
Coughing, faceless, men, the embodiment of misery in this night
The most beautiful pair of eyes I've ever seen, what other secrets lie beneath
that hijab?
Just a passing glance, most of the people we see, we will never see again
How is it some make such a profound impression with nothing more than a
smile?
Lying under the Joshua tree, surrounded by dirt roads leading nowhere in particular
Warm water mingles with the sweat on your lip
A sigh that send chills through me
The restless wind, nothing more
Jun 22, 2012
Jun 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM UTC
Supine, wrapped in scarlet,
only eye open, third.
I create her skin, flawless and golden;
her hair becomes the color of midnight
on the ocean,
blood at night.
Suspended, bound in purple,
capitulation, freedom.
These lonely visions, they are cobblestones in my twisted path of memories both past and future, overgrown with weeds of time and worn around the edges; an uneven course winding in and around and back again, with branches, heavy and black,
so black,
on all sides.
Where are you, dearest?
I smell acrylics and oils and linseed
and the windows are open; traffic hums on the hill and your brow is furrowed as your brush caresses the canvas, each stroke, love manifest.
Later, you will sing for me
Fluid, mercurial, she sings and paints
and broods
and pouts
and wipes her cheek with her thumb, smearing alizarin crimson on her pixie face.
Time stops at her beauty
The moment falls into my guts, burrowing into
my insides forever;
the plants by the window,
the deep red smear on my angel,
the sound of camelhair hitting canvas, forever mine now
to cherish and carry
with me as I trudge this
desolate and dreary landscape.
*When I come home,
you will sing for me*
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 5:52 AM UTC
I pull the sweater further down my thighs.
Fabric bunched in my fist keeps the hem tight,
Stops it gaping as I lean, cold feet pressed to his shins,
inhaling steam from thick-as-mud coffee.
Would like to rearrange myself ‘round the warmth of him-
tangle my fingers in his hair.
Clamber into a linseed oil and white spirit scented nest.
But now’s not the time.
Distance is key.
I drink coffee, mind my hem ‘til he’s ready to draw.
muse
Oct 7, 2011
Oct 7, 2011 at 5:27 AM UTC
I have no purpose any more.
I’m a painter who’s gone blind
And a singer who’s gone deaf.
There is no call for what I sell.
I still daub colors on a board
To smell the Linseed Oil again
I hear the music in my head
And mouth the words in silence.
There is no surgery or cure,
What’s gone is lost forever.
And I must find a way to live
In silent darkness, if I can.
ljm
May 6, 2023
May 6, 2023 at 1:07 PM UTC
the languid liquidity of linseed-eased pigment
as the bow of brush stroke sweeps a new hue
over the layer of vermilion,
this feel of silken resistance,
this quality of vividity,
this aroma that countless painters encounter
whilst abstracting sunflower or sunset
is what gives pleasure to my paint.
Mar 28, 2010
Mar 28, 2010 at 3:20 AM UTC
will you
place my face on shelf of trinkets meant to startle you.
paper momentos. and
pewter figurines.
think twice,
or look over your shoulder one more time before you turn to step away
from this
kami-caress-
soul siphoning
season.
or toss me with a
splash into a fountain. meant to splatter up droplets-
black as succulent stag bone bowels.
rinsed over
maidens.
wearing porcelain faces and bedtime.
-rising like a timid ghost from me
in
this
straitlaced summer.
spiced red water.
linseed lull.
easy,
tame hands
can strangle too
turning to indian summer,
turning to the crisp
cool
autumn.
turning
my body to
wet
sinewy
earth
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 3:58 AM UTC
I have no purpose any more.
I’m a painter who’s gone blind
And a singer who’s gone deaf.
There is no call for what I sell.
I still daub colors on a board
To smell the Linseed Oil again
I hear the music in my head
And mouth the words in silence.
There is no surgery or cure,
What’s gone is lost forever.
And I must find a way to live
In silent darkness, if I can.
ljm
Jan 20, 2019
Jan 20, 2019 at 8:51 AM UTC
Life's colors exist in red, yellow, and blue, an unaffordable simplicity existing only on the gray wax paper taped to my pallet. My hands are sweaty underneath my gloves, slick with linseed and paint. Leaves fall and stick to the surface of artificial canvas smeared with the tracks of pigment on my brush.
There I dance, grass caressing my bare feet, hair guided by the gentle breath of wind. An improvisation of ultramarine and alizarin crimson and titanium white, time transcends, though the shadows move. In this moment, nothing else matters except for the performance of light, color, motion.
Mar 12, 2015
Mar 12, 2015 at 10:10 PM UTC
Dubious: charge
The deluxe program in. Obtuse angled and oblong animals. Mecca sexúal, discoverer pulling back the curtain tails in mimicry and peacockiness as the horizon shimmers itself out. Do not eschew unwieldy ostentation towards benign mid-weight colors in the sequel to Blahnik.
Offers in the hesitant, peak winds of Southern-Hemispherical Antarctic weather barometer losses. The ice is like a hive of nameless blue lily pad vessels, each a different magical shade of the water's blue.
She like the uncommon baroque grandeur in an hour of time, herself-
Summons the immense symmetry of her elaborate lavender macramès sheath and entomb her skin, exploding across her body like milk-white daffodils draped upon a morning bow. Linseed and anise encompasses burnt sweet grass on the breadth of pine in a gentle pillow, anchored only by the veins of her red fruit nectar stitched at the grooves in her cool and unpunctuated lips. While anxiety numbing tufts of gentle satins wisp all the worry and turmoil away, pleasing every nerve, sensor, instinct, and exercise of glib humanity intertwined amid the pulse of our uncensored adultness. She glides amid the arcs of ebullient-molecules ribboned in winter synonyms, summoned up in her sensual and illustrious sublime, and the story of how like a horizon muted by organzas falling beneath her into that relationship she carries with her water God into something profound, immense, and totally ******* exquisite, yet beyond all imagining, she is always doing what has been the coolest **** ever to me. That becomes more magnificently indescribable like our amorous fire, incentivizing the luminous beauty of new stars to rush above us, and yet under us too, amidst the simple and perfected automany she so awesomely imbues.
Until the minutes are silenced in our heads and the days are warm with you.
For Sarah
Dec 15, 2016
Dec 15, 2016 at 7:32 AM UTC
Mercury, dissected poetry, and lacerated harmony
Plucked on rib
Singed face from Jupiter’s whim
To entreat battle; Time begins
As Transit, horse bit
and scythe cradle
A sun driven,
whipped to stave
The seeds of gravity, spurn and ladle
Golden linseed per la nave
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 12:47 PM UTC
If you came home, every night
with the smell of oil paints wrapped up in your hair
and turpentine
and linseed linseed linseed oil
I would never have to move again
transported
to the place where it all begins
I don’t need to see
what you’ve created
I already know it,
I see the sparks jump from
tree to tree
this is how the world is set on fire
looking down into my palms
there is a glow
that I had forgotten about
until you brought your smell
into my home
led on by this
against the vale of shade
one person sees and says:
good luck with that! you’ll be eaten alive!
Who do you think you’re kidding?
The next one says:
we are born to suffer, born to die
the ocean wave is just too large
swim brave swimmer, and I feel for you
but against this tide there is no
homecoming to be had-
and the last one sees
the glowing shine of my outstretched hands
making my face an open book
showing just one step or two, and no more than that,
and says:
Is this Light? It must be Light!
The Darkness was a lie after all!
She shrugs her way out
from beneath the oldest cloak
she opens the gate
that doesn’t shut again
and looking down
her hands come to life and light her eyes
jumping quickly tree to tree
unnoticed by most, beneath their load
the spark runs fast
and you hear laughter
as against all habit
the sleepy world is set on fire again
Oct 27, 2019
Oct 27, 2019 at 1:31 PM UTC