"mites" poems
The cheese-mites asked how the cheese got there,
And warmly debated the matter;
The Orthodox said that it came from the air,
And the Heretics said from the platter.
They argued it long and they argued it strong,
And I hear they are arguing now;
But of all the choice spirits who lived in the cheese,
Not one of them thought of a cow.
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Something rattles in the soul.
It must be paid attention -
it is the soul, the only sure thing -
and rattled in return.
Slow begins the dance of tongues and hard news.
I learn a thing I never wished to learn.
Afterwards,
a dance of tongues in the ensuite
begins a sudden rapture of claiming.
Nails mine, skin mine
to make a pink impression on.
Bile in the back of the throat, mine.
Fear of death, mine. Oaths and oaths,
mine, too. An exchange of humility,
knee for a knee. The rigid wall at your back.
The wall at your back.
The night which enriches
bluer out of the blue air,
not the action of
the world moving at all.
The particles of water in a birdbath divide,
decide among themselves
to marry each to each, to reproduce.
They become an ocean.
They drown the birds.
My mouth fills with feathers,
teeth itch with the tiny mites
running between the shafts.
I am a bell, and you are a country.
I am a bell and sound from far away.
Hands touch the broken vase in her parts, the toes,
the eyelash, the sunken wreck, the crowd of dead,
the treasure.
They say
all this
as if the map was drawn
and burned
and came again
in char from the tablecloth
to all our wonder.
A single miracle can last for weeks in the mouth. Sometimes centuries.
I will spend eighteen days in the void of grace.
What begins as a pain in my shoulders
will grow into a tree and bury me.
I will want promises, promises, promises.
(water, water, water)
I will never be satisfied.
Looking always for permanent loss it becomes easy to simply
misplace.
Your caution leads to strange decisions.
You put your keys in the fridge.
I would like to say I knew the words:
I cut the lock of hair, I drew the blood.
The hex was removed by faith and chaste reflection
but everywhere I look, there is a confusion
of hungry birds and beggars
and I forget the spell,
or what chaste reflection even is.
Anyways, something breaks. Not my doing.
Suddenly, I am just noticing sky again.
I am transcribed back into English.
My first decision is to wash my car,
and next,
to learn what faith meant to anyone.
Charmed, is it?
Something rattles in the soul.
It must be paid attention -
it is the soul, the only sure thing -
and rattled in return.
It has nothing, really, to say.
It only rattles.
May 10, 2018
May 10, 2018 at 10:24 PM UTC
Nodding, nodding 'pon thy stem,
Thou bloom o' morn; nodding, nodding
To the bees, asearch o' honey's sweet.
Wilt thou to droop, and wilt the dance o' thee
To vanish with the going o' the day?
Hath the tearing o' the air o' thy sharped thorn
Sent musics up unto the bright,
Or doth thy dance to mean anaught
Save breeze-kiss 'pon thy bloom?
Hath yonder songster harked to thee,
And doth he sing thy love? Or hath he tuned
His song of world's wailing o' the day?
Doth mom shew thee naught save thy garden's wall,
That shutteth thee away, a treasure o' thy day?
Doth yonder hum then spell anaught,
Save whirring o' the wing that hovereth
O'er thy bud to sup the sweet?
Ah, garden's deep, afulled o' fairie's word,
And creeped o’er with winged mites, where but
The raindrop's patter telleth thee His love—
Doth all this vanish then, at closing o' the day?
Anay. For He hath made a one who seeketh here,
And storeth drops, and song, and hum, and sweets,
And of these weaveth garland for the earth.
From off his lute doth drip the day of Him!
3.4k
The details of your DNA are settling into
my brain like dust mites chasing
each other around and around in
search of a field of gravity;
sometimes I'm stuck and sometimes I like to run away
but occasionally I force myself to stay in the same place for more than a few minutes
occasionally I am the right place and the right time, and occasionally
that is enough.
It takes me a while but wouldn't you know, I have stopped
being a doormat for everyone whose baggage weighs
more than mine;
wouldn't you know, I don't think they carry
it right anyway, and their feet wouldn't feel
so heavy without the steel and armor;
I'm trying to play follow-the leader here,
taking tips from an invisible authority
I don't know any such role model to exist, but
sometimes I pretend I do just to
have a place to put my hands or my feet when it's
cold and they're tracking snow in;
my pulse is slower before midnight
once the dark falls I can't sleep
I can't sleep but I do know how to place blame
fitted heavily and perfectly to sculpted shoulders;
I can't sleep but I know exactly how much
plaster it takes to patch up a wall at roughly this height,
I know exactly the number of messages left on my machine
unanswered, ignored
molded word for word into
little stick-its in my brain.
I don't know sleep but I am very good friends with
her companions,
drowsy achy steady pull
of exhaustion dragging behind my eyelids
matched hand to hand with its
lovely counterpart,
red eye restless itchy frustration
burning hot under my skin.
But don't you know, I am only
this person once every
12 hours or so,
just wait it out, I'll
come around.
Aug 12, 2018
Aug 12, 2018 at 1:40 PM UTC
You hide in plain sight as does day when engulfed by night
For darkness is simply…. The absence of light
You claim to have special enlightenment
And that your knowledge is for the better good of the people
Pledge your allegiance and your success will be imminent
Break your pledge and your death will be discrete
So why would you become part of something so “elite”?
With only one thing in mind; to see the human race in defeat.
An interminable amount of subliminal messages
Hinting at events that are destructive, demoralizing, and deceptive.
9/11… was it really an act of terrorism?
Or was it just an evil plot… something you guys expected?
Al-quaeda and the Taliban… roaming around in the lands of Iran
But on the land I walk some say it’s a misperception
Just a façade in our brain so the government secrets are protected.
Michael Jackson… and the Kennedy assassination
Were they both untimely events in American history?
Ghandi, The King, Malcolm X, Princess Diana, Shakur,
Paul, Marley, the Kennedys’, Lennon, Fredinand, Lincoln!!
All of whom were either at your feet or tried to make your secret secrete
These deaths… from assassination to suicide… were all… “unfortunate” to the human eye?
Or were they “fortunate” for the Eye of the Beholder?
But why go to such great extent to have these powerful and influential people wiped from the human race?
To keep a secret that has been soooo well kept for hundreds of years?
A secret society that is not so discrete… anymore
Hidden in plain sight and away from the human eye…..
Trying to keep a disguise that will lead to our eventual demise
You aren’t doing the world any favors
By keeping an explicitly intricate order in store
You’re favoring your own world under one order
By intricately deceiving the minds of innocent citizens
So, you hide in plain sight, the light of the earth
A light you hope one day becomes permanently dark
Cause once again, darkness is only the absence of light.
With no light, we will be forced at the feet of your might
Despite a fight, with no light and your might, we’re all just mites stuck on your flight of new world order.
Well let me just end on this… **** THE ILLUMINATI!
Oct 24, 2012
Oct 24, 2012 at 12:52 PM UTC
Nearing great compost pile,
that steamy heap,
insatiable hunger hits guts.
And I know fortitude for journey
is contained in wealth of
centipedes, predatory mites,
rove beetles, ants,
nematodes, protozoa,
and **** of wriggly worms.
Virgil waits for me, as he did Dante.
He takes form of a sowbug,
but with whole of worldly wisdom.
Shows me circles to which I will fall:
organic residues,
primary consumers,
secondary consumers
and further tertiary consumers.
An ancient pyramid decompositional
processes the scaling down
before the rising up. Each eating
excrement of another before them.
One I become with slugs and snails.
Invertebrates shred meat from bone.
Flies make airborne my bacteria,
carrying me off to feed birth of
future fungi.
I am reborn over and over.
Never more have I known
anything more Godly.
Intestinal juices of earth, enzymes
and other fermentation
taking me down,
pushing me out,
transforming trash of my existence
back to Eden.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 6:49 PM UTC
Today though everything at phone call away
But the hackers are few steps away.
Whom to rely whom to not
Even if the call is just for confirmation or not.
How to rely on the calls I know not.
Written documents are the best.
I think postal services or couriers are the best.
I cannot narrate any hackers story
Chances are there they may hack my story.
I have kept everything tight lipped.
Forgive me my dear friend;
if I don't treat you well online
I know not which all phones got hacked
As someone may be calling from your voice or not.
A day will come where even dust may be hacked.
Be careful to dust out the mites that stays in your rack!
Dec 17, 2016
Dec 17, 2016 at 10:41 AM UTC
They kept her in the attic with the rest of the nonsense
An improvised pen and paper of fingernails and floorboards.
Cracked windows rusted shut from years of disuse
Chapped lips pinched shut from years of neglect.
Broken mirrors on the floor from outbursts no one heard
Shattered eyes blinking hollowly because no one was listening.
Patterns traced on dust covered windows letting bars of light shine through
Therapeutic
Sunlight outlining shadows that shouldn't be there, dust mites that should.
Daisy; the name she gave herself after forgetting her original.
Daisy; what she'd call herself should she ever get out.
Withered; what she became.
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 1:22 PM UTC
as the sun left your sight,
"stay longer" said, with no might.
but when the moon came to sight,
you stayed longer, through the night.
the evening breeze bit your skin like mites,
the wind was chilly and passed like light.
"I love you" said, with all might.
"Will you please stay in my sight?"
Said the moon, to the sun.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 4:55 AM UTC
The king and queen cried
“Bless us! We cannot conceive!”
And “blessed” they were.
Their heir, a miracle, a vision of royalties.
And so a celebration was in order
(as is most pertinent in events such as princess births)
to adorn the little lamb with gifts.
“Gifts”.
Whether the blame lies here or there
our princess lamb heir stands the most to suffer
in cases such as forgotten friends.
Or unforgetful vengeance--
So spite screeched an everlasting “CURSE THEE TO DEATH ON THE ***** OF A SPINDLE!”
And with a turn of its heels shock
set in.
...shock
sinks
in.
The well-intentioned sprite attempts to soften the wolf’s blow on our little lamb heir--
Only a nap--
only it would seem such in the conjecture of events.
Now no longer is she princess baby heir then does a spindle come alive
X winters later!
(convenient, one might say--in all the land one’s but burned, temptingly locked away in the curious tower)
Insert fainting sounds.
Insert crowded gasps.
Insert “told you so!”
And the sheep follow our little lamb’s sleep.
One hundred year sleep.
Hair follicles sprout a slimy green, and not-so-royal fungi flourishes--
brash brambles tuck in the herd as if to say
“Sleep tight!
Don’t let the mites bite!”
But not our little lamb.
Reassuringly beautiful princess lamb heir keeps
like red wine.
She is only to be drank up from the
right cup--
a proper lamb.
Prince Lamb.
Whose worries consist of much different things than our lamb heir--
but for another ‘lore.
Our Prince Lamb dips, sips,
lips on lips
and she is awake!
Beautiful princess lamb knows exactly what to make
of all this?
The sheep herd rises,
and their “joyous” bleating reverberate
and penetrate
cold castle walls and break down the thorny cover.
And they lived happily
(and most originally)
ever after--
as sheep tend to do.
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 11:02 AM UTC
We’re in a snow globe without any snow:
Black zebras with white stripes,
Beds without mites, children smoking pipes,
Men are mice wearing plastic vampire teeth.
Cages are cheap, get two for one free.
Feb 13, 2010
Feb 13, 2010 at 8:55 PM UTC
3am the Enemy
3am the demons come out to play
coursing through the soul
the heart- it’s prey
The mind- the playground
monkey bars
and jungle gyms
a place where ‘what-if’s’
hang and linger
the air is pungent
and regret permeates
the night humidity
all but makes the stench lesser
putrid like rotting garbage
like the doll you
had to keep you safe
as a little child
that since should’ve been thrown
away
years ago.
the haven for mold
and dust mites
and other things toxic
3am
human’s one true
enemy.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 12:21 AM UTC
A million twinkling stars
On a purple-grey sky.
A million strands of grass
On a wet brown land.
A million mites of dust
In the air I breathe.
A million specks of rust
On the bench in front.
A million rays of light
From the lamp-post proud.
A million dreams in sight
In the overwhelming crowd.
~Moniba.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 12:58 AM UTC
She sat beneath the high-noon blinds
The light too garish - spilling bleach
Not the soft song that falls behind
Far-off horizons of aural beach
No, this was hill-light - mountain-light
It was harsh, abstract, Cézanne
Cutting deep into each crevice - dust-mites
Irradiated at dawn
Overlooking every balcony
Of barking mutt - of barbeque
She craved for an epiphany
To change how she perceived the view
To find some meaning in the pools
The bars - the plastic awnings
She muttered, “I am such a fool”
Then took a drag and kept on longing.
Mar 18, 2015
Mar 18, 2015 at 4:10 AM UTC
An old rag doll gather dust in attic corners
Mites and spiders making homes of old memories
Stained with happiness, dust collects over it
The young girl who once played with her sun up to sun down
Is now married with children
The rag doll left forgotten
The mother left with nightmares of leaving a friend behind
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 3:13 PM UTC
I.
Prideless, they tore railroad men’s brown *******
lurking the thirsty Kenyan banks.
Red moonlight sluiced from brambles and linen skins
pressing upon tawny flesh, igniting fire of feline eye.
Imperious, they patrolled the union jack encampment
lingering in shadows of long-labour’s dreamless sleep
until the smoldering campfire morning
when one hundred hammers lean in one hundred corners.
II.
Maneaters in glass houses can’t throw stony glances—
the power to haunt having run off with the ghost.
Now, they reign over the acrylic savannah
sneering—not out of regal disdain, but mild discomfort
from dust mites nitpicking at tautly taxidermed pelt.
Rebel eyes that halted an empire now cast
dull marble stares at fossils in the floor
and derailed trains of un-terrified school-children
near a hissing robot-box called Mold-A-Rama
spewing magma into plastic tyrannosaurs.
May 10, 2010
May 10, 2010 at 8:06 AM UTC
the woman with ancient eyes cradles her rosy-cheeked daughter,
wide-eyed and bursting with the innocence of the youth--
she is a tenement child, raised gracefully in the shadowed slums of her father's mistakes,
wears a tattered dress, spinning alone in a whirlwind of dust mites and silenced laughter.
and when she hears tales of the children with taffeta dresses and China dolls, she
smiles--
out of love, replacing envy with euphoric contentment, because
she has her mama's eyes, the voices
of the fatherless children
singing along to her same song,
shouting cries of hope against the crumbling walls
of a broken world she is beginning to heal.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 9:55 PM UTC
You think stepping on other woman's relationship,
makes you badass?
Oh dear think twice,
Karma will make you realize.
Look how lowly you are,
Staying a committed man's sidechick.
Stop kidding yourself,
You ain't gonna be the one.
The mites in your head,
keeps eating all your tiny brain cells.
Don't fool yourself,
You can never get my man.
Aug 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017 at 2:36 AM UTC
My body is vertical
parallel to my mattress.
My ears pick up the mites
eating away at my dead skin
the dust mites prowl the forests
of my eyebrows.
My body is emaciated
the head to heavy to hold up
my collar bones are fragile
the aching is dull and resounding
vibrating between shoulder to shoulder.
My stomach is a sloshing sack
spilling acid in waves through my
esophagus,
burning away flesh.
Burning away my flesh
and will,
darkening my years of life
lived full, happy and long.
Oct 25, 2010
Oct 25, 2010 at 4:43 PM UTC
Me and dad used to watch bats;
lie on the grass in the gap
between the house and hedge.
Shards of glass
against the barely black
half-light of July.
Flying in drops and dives
twisted kites
tossed on stormy skies.
Sat on the deck
we’d hear, under the gable
the static click
of sonar, like ships;
taut sails,
riddled with mites and ticks.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 6:10 PM UTC
When tears seep out
it doesn't smear
the cosmetics I use
to cover and accentuate
as is expected of me
a little urn
tasteful walnut box
paw print on pottery
I admit, I shook it
to see if anything rattled about
but thankfully there was silence
Sometimes we lose
what we most want to keep
Every living thing
is precious
irreplaceable
I want to get a little black kitten
with some white on his chest
but it won't be my little black kitty
it won't be the one I found
on a road
next to the beach in Haifa
covered in tar and fleas
skin and bones and ear mites
and who became
a member of my family
my Shakour
Aug 7, 2012
Aug 7, 2012 at 9:09 PM UTC
Earth: our ominous all-mother,
she, the greater good:
the interminable fountain out of which stems life and vivacity itself
always reaching
and grasping for the abstruse azure heavens above.
her hair never stops growing. the mites and parasites never cease to fester her scalp. She is growing and changing and rotting and dying. but where death comes, there is no long interval until more
life.
the liveliness is everywhere; it promotes to all faces and regions and niches. Multiplying, begetting, propagating. all for the greater good of our orb and its inhabitants. Most dwellers are humble and solicitous toward her, and learn to keep a vigilant eye
as she can be so
forceful and violent.
She does have, however, one rascal who believes that the globe belongs all to Himself.
He is the man.
He has a masterful gift, yes. He is profound and competent. He forges the impractical query into a conclusive answer. He, however, is also egocentric and pompous, and He sees her as a specimen to which
He has the rights to dismember and pervert.
He makes a mess of her unique vistas. He tramples and stamps on her face, running about as if she were the coliseum in which the gods gather to view the Species fight itself to extinction. He works her to the
core, always asking for more, more, more, more,
until she has little left to give.
But she never loses courage in His asinine and moronic views and His sprawling village,
for she created Him
out of herself
she is the framework out of which the mind is able to mundanely manifest itself.
Without her, He would be nothing.
And she is so immeasurably loving and benevolently caring and forevermore giving; for
She is life, she is love.
We are love.
Feb 13, 2013
Feb 13, 2013 at 9:19 PM UTC
who will read aloud
my poems
when I'm gone?
that old unfriended thot,
a nagging merry query
was for awhile forgot,
put on the back of an upper shelf,
where dust motes and mites
fear to trend
thoughts,
that I thought
I had dispensed with,
letting time
build illusionary wry walls,
fooling World Trade Center tall
morose forlorn,
pensiveness of
red ant armies,
incapable of
black marker redaction,
there is always one
a lingering malingerer
a sole fado singer,
playing woeful jazz in
the Quarter
on an empty emoty street,
dressed and guised
as the soul of a solitary
cancerous cell
"survivor"
cur overlooked,
biding time,
the surgeons gone,
the drugs flushed,
radiation burning
no more
begins then
the unholy
trilogy cycle
worn out, overused...
invasive categorically relentless
maybes,
what ifs,
then
oh goddamnnotagain
because believed, on knee,
I oathed that
loathed, raven nevermore,
ought
that
cracked door would be open
yet like the
New Orleans levee aged locks
hurricane succumbed
overflowed, overcome,
keyholed, infiltrated,
falllen to the enemy,
mes enfilade,
rumps up the black flag of
surrender
brain sneers
periodically,
like every other
minute, ok,
second,
coyly asking
penny for your
worthless thoughts?
just when you believed
"no mas"
was a prayer that had been heard,
teeth kicked in,
body snatching
hordes and boors
bad boys and ******
sitting high in the
saddle again,
grinning torturous
tarty smiles
at who,
at you, fool!
you're as alone in that place
as insufficiently as that
impoverished overused
word can ere convey
the nagging realization
that when asking
no one answers
when your thinkings
perish you
your cutesy sweatshirt reads
last standing poet alive,
stabbed ded by awful-truths,
you failed and
all the black cats,
have fled the neighborhood,
just when need was greatest
who will read aloud
my poems when I'm gone,
has been silently answered
by silent applause,
the last theater goer
shuffles out, and turns
and extends his middle finger
his review leaves a
singular impression,
he looks familiar,
gauntly ghost,
he has accompanied me always
and his finger is his
triumphal parting shot
Aug 15, 2014
Aug 15, 2014 at 5:25 PM UTC
Me and Dad used to watch bats
lying on the grass in the gap
between the house and hedge.
Shards of glass
against the barely black
half light of July night.
Flying in drops and dives
like twisted kites
tossed in stormy skies.
Or sat on the deck
we’d hear, under the gable
the static click
of sonar, like ships;
taut sails, riddled
with mites and ticks.
Jan 5, 2013
Jan 5, 2013 at 7:52 PM UTC