"metastasizing" poems
unsure, uncertain,
of the laws invested
in the realms and reams
of poetry ingested,
am i addict,
or supplier,
retail consumer
or
wholesale supplier,
a mom & pop candy store,
or a metastasizing intelligence
that takes any thing, and all,
a solitary letter,
an instance of a sighting,
a gasping palpitation
and reformats it into
a hehe literary madhatter^ piece
you supply, I demand,
I supply, boy oh boy,
do I ever, but you never,
come to me directly asking,
write me a poem, thick or thin,
witty fitty or an overly looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong
e~pistle (a/k/a e~pistol)
yet the trade goes on and om,
the marketplace never closes,
except when periodically the
gatewaykeeper is slow to pay his bills,
and the trading centres are global scattered,
young entrepreneurs try to sell a single
piece, as if it was breaking news history,
and tired old men, review their lived,
eager to memorialize, so it's ok to forget,
in retro!spect perspective,
the mirror who cannot lie,
states affirmatively, you are
both ****** and dealer,
a corporation scientific
of ancient biblical origins,
a psalmist, a deacon,
a lyricist, but thankfully
not a singer,
an essayist who writes best
when ****** by tawny port wine,
who snatches inspiration with
equality of equity,
(wait! that's wrong,
the equity of equality,)
where he can
find, ***** city streets, the deaths
of heroes, the sunrise calm miracle
he drinks in daily, by rivers, by seas,
by estuaries brackish, and streams
of watered purity, the riveting bays,
the individualized glisten deflected
into my eyes, that each
contains one pure blessing within…. nml
Sep 27, 2025
Sep 27, 2025 at 9:24 AM UTC
LET
THERE
BE
LIGHT
a
fierce
sun ******
vapors
into
a
thunderous
sky
which
wept
sixty
sextillion
tears
creating
a
riddled
calibration:
the river
time
we
came
cells
devouring
cells
metastasizing
into
life
first
cruel crawlers
then
stealthy stalkers
wicked walkers
and
finally
THE
terrible talkers
blasphemers
bending
time
asking
WHY
it
flows
?
we
are
they
who
have
no
shore
to
which
to
moor
on the river,
time
Nov 19, 2015
Nov 19, 2015 at 8:46 PM UTC
The white cells,
seemingly not fearful of
oozing,
festering,
metastasizing,
fear black cells,
wearing hijabs or dreads.
The white cells
are fearful of the brown cells
that **** and process their chickens
and mow their lawns for them.
The white cells fear the red cells
though they like moccasins, canoes,
and wild rice soup,
fear yellow cells
may be smarter than them
so they label them
***** and Chinks.
The white cells
don’t seem to mind
asphalt-coating,
starlight-stealing,
convenience store sprawl
devouring healthy green cells--
alfalfa cells,
forest cells,
swampy, boggy cells,
black-eyed susan cells.
The Chamber of Commerce
calls it growth,
progress;
but this town
needs a tourniquet,
maybe chemotherapy.
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 3:17 PM UTC
Bright buds hang precarious on their limbs. Their hundreds of digits green and supple sway as the winds try gently at first to shake them from their perches. They snap back, their ties elastic, always bending.
The wind struck harder the third time. It caught them off guard, swinging back to face the sun. It barreled over them like a train, limbs snapped like bones under tons of industrial revolutionary steel, the cracking brings tears to the eyes of passersby.
They were so green, so verdant was their exuberant friendship, covered in rosy flesh and sturdy bark, ring after ring of tribulation and triumph, but it fractured like a wish bone. She, Persephone, prosecutor of Her, Demeter, was judge of them both, prisoner of herself.
Solitary confinement.
She tugged at her half, she needed the wish, She need for Demeter to see that She needed wishes just like the rest of us.
Demeter, jury. 12.
Her crime: attempted impartiality, balancing a utilitarian ideal that we can divide our attention based on who needs it most. She cannot be tried on account of her inability to read Braille ciphers in gestures, ****** expressions, and Tumblr posts.
Demeter tugged at her half, but only enough to show the other that she was there,
but consistently there.
It wasn’t enough.
Snap.
No marrow could be found.
Where flesh was meant to be dripped rot, an odor of resentment filled their nostrils, it choked Demeter, as Persephone had been choking for years.
This resentment, this cancer, this jealousy, it grew inside of Persephone like a tumor, days from metastasizing, the spread could have killed them.
Amputate.
You two are a tree. Bright buds dangling from every limb, they are still soft and green and supple at their ends.
You two are still growing.
Persephone will cut out this cancer, and She will heal herself, scar tissues covered by broadleafs.
You will soothe them for her. And you will see past the rosy flesh what pain it may hide.
And you two will grow. Roots firm, faces braced against the wind, and limbs always turned towards the sun.
May 3, 2013
May 3, 2013 at 5:36 PM UTC
Read the Printed Word!
It is liberating and overwhelming
(to the point of
hot
tears)
to know how long I have been letting people drag my body through hot coals
while denying their abuse only because
letting them mistreat me
was only a way to
mistreat
my
self
But as I have stopped hurting myself, I have become aware that
while I dare anyone to try to hurt me— I say this with a fire glint in my eye--
that I have been opening myself to the worst of people.
I am seeing myself in a better light—
I am powerful
I am beautiful
I am sacred
I am deserving
I am independent
And I don’t need people who I never really needed in the first place.
I’ve gone nineteen years sacrificing myself and it cannot go on. I will not let it go on. My consciousness is shifting, my inner self is awakening and stretching its muscles.
Vomiting up this cancerous, petulant, bone-blackening self loathing, cutting out this metastasizing inability to love myself, is painful.
It is the worst sort of agony
{and my body can take a lot of hell}
but when have I ever shied from pain?
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 4:55 PM UTC
Marines call to say hello,
impress. I'm over 35 but my boys
19. They could go: Hide!
One moment spent tying a shoe,
another dying, gunshot wound or poisoned food.
Events in their mere chronology
make no sense.
And the details of yr dad's life don't either.
Late night
quiet cigarette smoker. But next day,
the butts cleaned into the can. Who does that?
Lady in a skirt or overalls rolled up - cigarette smoke.
Now it's yr dad.
Yr dad who
watches for war.
Even if Uncle Sam disbands, dissolves
we the people will still be here and stay involved
with North America. The purple mountains majesty
and shining seas
little people, big people, brown, red, and white. Addicted
to action movies.
Perhaps there is no choice. One must sit, sitting still
as a buddha, sitting bull.
I can imagine myself and all others - drivers, voters, runners -
little fetal muscles
at first. Metastasizing. What's it called when the cell
at the tip of the *****
or organism, divides, and the ***** grows? It's called
girl on a bicycle.
I find I make no sense. Her **** a practicality to her, is
delicious to me
a miraculous sea lettuce or snapdragon. You've heard it before.
A moral dilemma
wrapped in robes and silks and odors. Yet, come close,
and business beckons
work gets done, life goes on, hair grows in, we go on
vacation
the Marine Corps calls, desperate for new fetuses to teach
purposeful workmanlike killing
I'll do my own killing, thanks, when violence comes to the
neighborhood
if I've got your back
your back's gotten and if I'm on point, the point's taken.
One world under God invisible with liberty and justice for all who
Art in heaven
what the hell's his name.
Nemesis.
Hysterical.
The small war of an especially inept empire. The world's too big
to swallow as the Krauts and Nips found out. Empire
is self-correcting. Them dark-skinned mustachioed *********
who can't fix their own electricity seem to be kicking our *****
pert good. As did the ***** before them. All to the good. A
good lesson to know and then we all become friends following
the brawl. We apparently cannot skip the fight. It must
be fought, and **** the girls.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 8:24 PM UTC
second match lit and gone
cinders burn and hearts forlorn
the curse it summons haunts the head
with terrors of happiness that could have been
yet light seeps in through half-open eyes
though distorted with tearful disguise
as pain brings no warning, leaves none secure
as jealousy hidden in palms, submerged
the blush leaks in, roses bloom in the fall
the demise of your companions the source of it all
as you dream of the kiss you exercised on your lips
with the faint gossamer trails of a butterfly's bliss
the chill of winters creaks in your bones
the scratch of a pencil strengthening your woes
no amount of perfume will cover the cologne
no amount of tears shed with forget what you've known
four times the curse has struck the heart
and bled loves juice through every part
through wrecked veins and bruised bones
metastasizing, leaving you all on your own
through love's gentle heart brings peace to the world
a violent disguise for the pain it truly burns
candlelight vigils carry sorrow no longer
for love's vicious hand strikes down younger and younger
given sunshine rays to be brought to the soil
trotted on by millions worrying of their sorrows
problems; as if they have so much
insulting those who dare not live, dare not touch
the shreds of life they hold so dear
and those in tow they hold so near
tears. wet drivers run dry
is it always truly better to try?
sk
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
trip flare
and they are in a singing,
soprano sea of light
my heart thumping, baritone,
my eyes digesting this metastasizing meal
choking on it, until
the guy beside me opens fire,
emptying a magazine before I flip
from safety to rock ’n roll auto
both of us now filling the killing
fields with tracers,
whizzing shouting shadows
in this sorrowful symphony…
the light fades
in the newly darkened pit
the crawling ebony clad shapes
stop,
the conductor, long gone
to another stinking stage,
while here, the blood dries black
and I have new mournful memoirs
of the music of madness
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 6:49 PM UTC
the world is adorned with a million windows
the bleakest night has a thousand eyes
daylight shines into the globes darkest corners
truth will ultimately expose all lies
NASA’s satellites circle
Tropic of Cancer latitudes
cameras pinpoint the disease
metastasizing in the body of Homs
from stratospheric limits
sensitive lenses read the names
magic markers have scrawled
onto white sheets covering the dead
YouTube gets Oscar consideration
for grisly cinematography
a real-time visceral docudrama
of panting fascists gleefully tramping
through the desecrated streets
coolly administering a coup de gras
to a city on its knees, pleading release
from an **** of incessant bloodletting
twitter records desperate tweets
the batting wings of endangered flocks
furiously thumbing into the blogosphere
calls for UN intervention that falls on blind eyes
BBC reportage,
the global gold standard
for journalistic excellence
scoops the stories
of London based FSA partisans
awaiting repatriation to scatter
Bashar’s Kodachrome killers
Has the All Seeing Eye
who has graced us with sight
laughingly curse us with vision?
Does the
One Caring Eye of the Universe
bless us with perception
to haunt us with images?
Has
The One Thats Sees Everything
blinked closed the eye of compassion?
Has the horror of Homs
become too much even for
The Universal Eye of Love?
the opened eyes
of a dead child
reflects our
cold winter
of indifference
demoralizing
dehumanizing
a watching world
Music Selection
Grateful Dead Eyes of the World
Oakland
3/2/12
jbm
Mar 2, 2012
Mar 2, 2012 at 12:04 PM UTC
It’s been a week - things have been happening - I’m going through it. I’ve become nostalgic for two weeks ago. I got screamed at, I lost my AirPods case and I cracked my iPhone screen, so I’m several levels worse - I’m a sad human. I’m writing this at the Apple Store while a friendly Apple person renders me whole.
The Ukraine situation has everyone unnerved. Draw a card - Pandemic or WWIII? Please, protect my peace. So there’s a level of “screw-it” now.
Friday night, I’m in a bad mood and when someone says “Come-on let's go clubbing!”
I’m - “Let’s GET THIS.” Later, we’re at a club, and it’s INSANELY crowded, like a moshpit. It was ABBA night. It did not escape me that this is exactly the type of milieu I’ve been avoiding for years. Did I mention the WWIII level of “screw-it”?
Ok, moshpit, you could hardly move, you definitely couldn’t hear, and Anna dropped her phone - we were sure that it was gone forever but 30 minutes later a hole opens up and there it is - like it’s just been sitting there waiting - so, there ARE miracles.
The list of life’s demands grow by the moment - reading, homework, laundry, dinner, upcoming midterms. I had a rock solid plan for a Saturday night of fun but assignments and necessities destroyed its integrity.
After a heroic effort and completing everything, I felt a fast-metastasizing boredom, so I wandered outside my room, hoping for company and distraction - it was 00:30 AM - and for for once - no one else was there! Where was everyone? Hello zombie apocalypse.
So I did what anyone would do in that beat - I cued-up ”Miraculous,” because Ladybug’s always there for me.
Mar 6, 2022
Mar 6, 2022 at 6:53 AM UTC
Yes. I wielded the knife.
Coated with my word poison, I plunged it into your soul and the dagger spread like cancer through you, I could see it metastasizing every time you tilted your head to let your hair cover your face.
If I could take that blade and plunge it into my own heart now, I would before my next beat.
I would take back the cancer and smile as the tumors fought for residency inside of me, if I knew that you would be in remission from my cruelty.
Sometimes it takes three months for the recoil of punches thrown to take its effect. When it does, laying on your basement couch, trawling through an online poetry forum, your knuckles will fracture and your finger bones will cleave in two like firewood.
I doused you with the lighter fluid I spit and set you ablaze with the words I wrote. I watched your tears turn to ash.
And then I lit another match.
I turned my back as you smoldered, now your anger fed the flames I sparked.
Now my bones are brittle and dry, my marrow now tinder for you to set aflame.
Burn me with the hellfire I put you through, I need this self-assigned penance, and you deserve to watch me burn.
Take the charcoal that remains and draw yourself in perfect mirrors, sketch out the picture of yourself that I should have showed for you.
I once promised you that I would, remember?
I am so sorry.
I stood there, the whole time, with a water bucket in my hand.
I had your reflection, and I spilled it on the floor.
Set me on fire, let the crackling of my bones beneath the weight of the flame be the lullaby as you sleep.
Ten thousand apologies are nowhere near enough.
Aug 22, 2013
Aug 22, 2013 at 11:05 AM UTC
I breathed you in
like the smoke from my
last cigarette;
it was bitter-sweet
to taste you on my lips.
And although I never had anything
all-that-useful to say,
I'd like for it to be known
that I still
love you.
even if your cancer
is metastasizing
in my
heart.
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 1:28 PM UTC
Malignant cancer
That you are
Metastasizing within my body and soul
Displacing the tissues of me
With your dark and threatening disease
From my blood you feed
Shiny, sharpened scalpel
To remove you from within
Pressing the blade against my tender skin
Trying to gain the strength
But I continue to let you take
Jul 8, 2011
Jul 8, 2011 at 4:43 PM UTC
I've been living in sadness,
Deep inside my heart,
My blood aches in my veins,
And it tears me apart.
The mention of your name,
Sends me hurdling down,
And leaves me with nothing
To rely on, except the ground.
My eyes fill with tears,
My heart and brain fill with fears,
Yet it's been so long;
Almost three and a half years.
The worst day of my life,
Was the day you broke my heart,
You ripped it out and
Tore me apart.
I'll never forgive you,
For the pain you've caused me,
I've suffered for over three years,
While you never shed a single tear.
You weren't hurt,
Of course you were alright,
While I spend most of my time,
Crying myself to sleep at night.
All the tears I've shed,
Along with blood from my veins,
And the bottles I've drank,
Are all linked with your name.
So remember, Chris,
The next time you get inside
A girl's metastasizing heart,
Don't cut your way out;
Because, it will tear her apart.
Just let her heart grow,
Swelling in your illness,
Pretty soon the love will **** her,
And you'll be held as a witness.
Or maybe they'll convict you,
Of your torturous crime,
Getting girls to trust you,
Before you rip out their heart and spine.
Now remember, Chris,
I fell deeply in love with you,
You said to me, those three words,
But it was meaningless to you.
You throw your words around,
Like you did with my heart,
I loved you then, I love you now,
I haven't stopped loving you, since the start.
So farewell, my true love,
The past four years have been great,
Just kidding, they've ******
Because it's also you, that I hate.
Yes, I hate you and love you,
It still confuses me,
I want you to suffer,
But I still want the two of us to be we.
I hate you and I love you,
I don't know what to feel,
It'd be nice if I just woke up,
And none of this was real.
Too bad I can't do that,
Just erase a large part of my life,
My world since you left me,
Has been a continuous strife.
A strife is too small,
Without you, it's been a war,
But were you the enemy,
Or what I was fighting for?
You're last words broke my heart,
Like an atom bomb inside me,
You ran off to avoid the shock,
While I just laid there, dying.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
a different sort of cells
i'm metastasizing
a cluttered profusion
of blundering paint
richly glowing veneer (
the stars were saying just yesterday
pricks gnireviuq fo ! arrows tneluproc
they gangled hard onto the
dense particular knowledge of the crisp earth
) this was also never
but always
or should so i say:
dreamy steam
puff of unquenchable haste
time goes wiggling
riggling
some ecstatic worms
in our soil bedded flesh
we soon marry
in prim and loveless clambering
Jan 14, 2011
Jan 14, 2011 at 10:22 AM UTC
everyday his melancholy metastasizes
as he grow exponentially emotional
and their words continue to tantalize
until his feelings are unproportional
they are split up and segregated
happy to the right, sad to the left
and though they were once integrated
all that he feels now is depressed
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 9:04 PM UTC
when the perennial essential question I proposed,
a temperature taking surely,
a simple request re loving me, yes
it was a dueling pistol shot,
a returning, pressing, single firing
interrogatory of a burr of a bullet
"how"
she stood in weak opposition
she demurred, evaded, jooked,
pre-tensing with a faint, a feint,
a desperately disguised,
claiming of the fifth,
a refusal to self-incriminate,
with a childlike repetition
"unsure..."
but was she ever,
ever sure,
ever knowledgeable
for the poem was
"of the people, by the people, for the people,"
we, me, she,
of course, being "the people"
-
that our love
"shall not perish from the earth..."
this particular poem,
this particular address,
was about
the struggle to maintain
our union
-
"our unfinished task"
it was the
first shot and the
parting shot
it was the
warning shot,
mesmerizing,
metastasizing
into a
death shot
simultaneously
the poem was,
this poem
the acknowledgment,
of the beginning
of the
perhaps epilogue,
maybe even the commencement
of a eulogy
a breathewell,
a fare-thee-well of this,
as well,
one of his
happiest guises
writer of
only love poetry
Oct 28, 2016
Oct 28, 2016 at 4:48 PM UTC
insatiable entropy
cracks metastasizing
where do I belong? sternum bends, crushed
a black hole, in the center of my eye
takes light to a different universe
one that already came to the end of eternity
was too weary to keep expanding,
and stopped
now rips at the center of my being
teeth of a wild dog on a rotting carcass,
ever starved by its own blackness.
my agape dusted lungs can’t fill my panicked heart
chained to all these stones
where can I go? to drown out this demon
how long with this weight
frantic dragging to soft-mud bottom darkness
struggling ****** in crocodile jaws
will I go still?
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 6:38 PM UTC
The Addict:
It was just like opening up a window
Just a peek outside was all I needed-
-at first.
Just barely taking in what was in front of me
Grazing my chin against the windowsill
I was afraid at first
Afraid of what was out there
But that didn't stop me from looking
Each time I would look out that window
I would
poke my
head further
and further
out.
Out of consciousness
of my humanity
Until, finally,
I fall out the window
out of my life
and into oblivion.
The Drug Dealer:
Like a cancer,
I started out small
an outlier to the whole
a single cell.
Growing
Consuming your hard work, your resources.
Giving nothing in return but toxins and sorrow.
Metastasizing
Increasing my grip on your life
until I consume you.
It will take more than just wishing
to get me to vacate.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 8:49 AM UTC
And I heard you say that it’s hard enough to love me as it is.
As if the holes in my ears
Are holes in my character.
As if the music vibrating my ear drums
Could strain the heart strings
Of your love for me.
As if the clutter in my floor
Is a sharp pain in your side.
The fact that I’m growing up
Is a tumor, pressing into your skull,
Metastasizing throughout your body.
As if I’m killing you.
Just the thought of me could send you into cardiac arrest, that no doctor could revive you from.
You are sleeping in a coma.
Psychiatrists have cut you open
and picked through your brain,
and you have yet to awaken.
Some days your eyes will flutter,
and for a brief second I can breathe.
Filling my lungs with the stale oxygen,
only to realize
it will never be the same.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 5:22 PM UTC
you will only look for which road i have
passed, with girth of oceans startled
to hip-curve, bow-legged darling
hiding behind pretense of rose frailty.
when words ripen, they fall.
from vaudeville of fools to silence
in all its exactness, i take my place
amongst people in stations, machines
adorning rotundas, courtyards to a flourish of twilight-bells, the men with retinas spry behind cloaks of smoke—
plain, **** drunkenness assaults
the billion-blooded sea, each line fraught
with inebriation: a god is borrowed with
what light fruits from a slow nature, quick
to burst and torturously maimed in stride.
fated to arrive at one morning —
being in total placeness and making merry
once again, the dreary face waiting at
the portico of days collected.
when these words start to wind-hover,
a string of birds will appear clearer,
mounting umbilicus of lines.
as in hounds shear the metastasizing dark,
going back to chagrined kens,
i make truth out of the tragedy:
trace the source of this stream and find
my trampled body, floating with
the sandalwood. when the still, clenched hand clock-punches,
make real the insignia of my arrival:
words start with limbs to cross
this scalped Earth which moves suddenly naked, leaning in, gropes you
in stillness, resuscitating the moon from
the working of insolvencies we rear
in derelicts of days.
drags it closely to ends — left trundling
in woe's wearisome vessel. and if in
this newly thatched home it screams,
let this voice deftly shred
so i may once more lie straight to your
half-illuminated faces, a call i
only hear.
Dec 4, 2015
Dec 4, 2015 at 10:02 PM UTC
Metastasizing guilt, you bring along the past unable for you to move on. Leaving the present in an awful state.
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 12:28 PM UTC
It’s the wee things that get to you,
the things that they – the invisible
“they” – don’t think of or deem –
what an egghead word – import.
Like the many languages Pope Francis
speaks to the poorest of the poor – just
books away from Revelation and the
end – apocalypse, they call it?
Like the simple task, simpletons do it
in political campaigns for the simplest
of the simple – cost deferred until a
position be taken if it isn’t ******
Like the contours of the manhood of
the waiter leaning tightly against your
table – as he asks again if you want
your salad with French or Italian.
Like the death of Romano III, a cat of
nineteen, lying alone on a warm rug –
or it was a cold shoulder, the mother
lode of forgiveness.
Like the birth of an heir or heiress of
a circus regnant – a cut above the
silliest of the silly, dancing in the
streets to a playwright’s tunes.
Like the circumcision of a newborn
boy – a social decision on an *****
that doesn’t know itself until puberty,
an unfair decision by a man.
Like the baptism of a child – protection
against purgatory or is it the shoreline
of the Jordan where wading isn’t kosher
when the teenaged lifeguard is absent?
Like the final couplet of the last sonnet
of a poet – her celebration and self-worth
still unrhymed, its meter and iambs
unborn until next week.
Similes slant to the similar, metastasizing
and growing outside the box – oh, ****
the poet says, her wings clipped by a
little thing like a pep rally.
© Lewis Bosworth, 2013
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 7:15 PM UTC
I thought I could do one thing that matterd
mincing flesh and chewing animal fat
ripping the spine out of the catch of the day
only to find that the creature you thought you dominated has stolen your fragile spine of thorns, metastasizing itself as you and spitting venom in all of your *****
Aug 31, 2015
Aug 31, 2015 at 9:22 PM UTC
knotted
to be blind
to feel twisted
memories metastasizing
catalyzing
you go as quickly as you came
each fleeting meeting swifter than the last
that pressure permeating
postulating
it's alright
i'm still upright
Nov 16, 2021
Nov 16, 2021 at 9:46 PM UTC