"moleskin" poems
*be ever gentle to thy words
treat them, your tools, well,
cleansing and protecting,
wrapping them in cloths of chamois and moleskin
that they may be well conditioned and
pour forth with a temperament clear and viscous,
reflecting their high honors and a noble lineage,
they are well-intentioned to exist far longer
than your meager temporal life,
upon this ever hasty, ever perpetual, orbit
give them all respect, their fair due,
they are treasure immeasurable,
for which you have been granted guardianship,
custody received from others to be gifted onwards,
yours, but for the duration
so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction
more truffle than trifle,
find them in the dark forest of your life,
use them sparingly, just for soaring,
take them from the roots of your trees,
shave them with a paring knife,
counts them in bites and measure them in grams,
even in grains,
for words are the seasoning of our lives,
agent provacateurs that can modify the moment,
bringing out to the fore
the flavor of the underlying
speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor them at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them*
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 6:01 PM UTC
Back to the scrawling pad
a cheap red notebook
wide ruled, with the perforated pages in it
in case I wanna punch one out easily
Those moleskin daze were measly
Thinking I'm creative and potent
but spending two years
to fill those tiny pages
Please, help me
reinvent the feel and manifest it
to real, accomplishment
Songs, verse, or vice grip words
to change a nation with
- to start a new nation with
Bokonon Bhikkhu
hurling Pikachus down from Mt. Olympus
land on the concrete with lemming splat
Get the metaphor?
I don't. Make your own up
I just an absurdest
A poor boy humming Queen
and writing rap atrocities
Nah, the rap "apocalypse"
minus all the apostrophes
Write so much anything anyone says
from now until oblivion
was just quoting me!
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 12:38 PM UTC
broken glass embedded in backs
causing blood stains on crisp Calvin Klein shirts
from wrestling limbs on kitchen floors
licking ears as sassy retribution
for passive agression
and acts of contrition
greasy hair
unshaved legs
fur
on fur
mouth
on mouth
on moleskin
on holographic jewelry owned by us
bougie bohemians
highbrow artists
--with--
low-maintenance interests that include
blow, opiates, fringed scarves, "velvety",
all the pills you can fist into your mouth,
a wannabe lou reed, your friends' band,
and **** **** ****** **** gallery openings.
Take a picture, it won't last as long as this work day
but we have to have our money for the water--after the eight ball and taxi, of course.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 1:48 AM UTC
I was recently told that writing makes the reader more empathetic. Not very often are first impressions based off the magical machinations of the inner mind; rather, these impressions are superficial and surface deep. So here I am placing pen to paper, gliding the still drying ink across the smooth college-ruled lines, hoping another portal is opened, hoping that maybe someone will look beyond the surface into my multi-faceted universe where my true self lies. But what if I'm not entirely sure what completely lies in that realm? The portal is dark, deep, and damp, and my pen lacks the source of light needed to peer through to the tunnel’s end. Every drip of ink to touch the moleskin deepens the portal further into the tunnel-like abyss, like the never-ending layers of an onion, or the timid, velvety petals of a rosebud that's anxious to open itself entirely, petal by petal, with each needle sharp thorn acting as its guardian. Writing to gain the reader’s empathy is a form of vulnerability, telling even your most uncomfortable truths. There’s more to me that I have yet to find, but with each drip of ink, I regret nothing. Pens don’t have erasers. Every stroke is permanent. Why should I desire the empathy of others? So take the odiferous onion, or the irresolute rosebud that I am, because although I’ve captured your attention in so few words, this writing won’t promise your empathy.
Nov 24, 2013
Nov 24, 2013 at 11:33 PM UTC
i sit
wondering
if
Fahrenheit 451
is called
Celsius 232
as my moleskin burns
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 3:16 PM UTC
You can only dream of
places I have been
Mentally,
All the things
I did for my family,
All they did,
instead of helping me,
Is trying to
put sense in me,
When I come to a point
Where I am
about to plead insanity,
A room of variances,
Out of body experiences,
Mental *******
Heart full of spasms,
The ones
my past couldn’t fathom,
This ain’t a struggler’s anthem,
But I can’t help but,
Generalize,
And I can’t undermine,
That I felt heaven,
At least on my fingertips,
I found hope,
At the brink of disbelief,
Don’t blame the postman,
If you put the wrong address,
Life is a *****
depending on how you dress her,
Let the broken glass,
Mess up the dresser,
Rosewood, Redwood, any wood,
If I could I would,
The more I clench my fists,
the more sand I loose,
But I choose not to,
just my screws,
My life is like a travelogue,
No just ticket needed just travel along,
Like a broken pen and a moleskin,
A DSLR and an eye to watch closely,
No backpacker,
Just a bad actor,
Modern day rye catcher,
Self financer ,
A mere puppet on the string,
That life hangs by,
finding questions to some bad answers,
Putting up with bad promise makers,
When a promise may curse,
Life is just a makeshift,
Life is what you make it,
Or make of it*
Mar 7, 2011
Mar 7, 2011 at 11:49 AM UTC
You had two pet rabbits, one named Mickey the other Maurice,
who lived on lettuce bits and behind thin metal bars.
A caged environment set up on the study's wood floors,
with books and a red couch to keep company
and your mom, because she would finish her graphs and stats
on the mahogany desk living in the corner of the room
and she liked the rabbits purr and delicate noses
and would hold them and pet them
when she put down her pen and moleskin and accounts
because, although caged and bought at Pet World
in the strip mall across from Adult World
on the other side of Interstate 67, these rodents gave her comfort,
reminding her of Maine and Jonathan
who abstained from going and killing for sport
with his brothers when they went, in pickups
with buckshot and murdered deer and rabbits,
because she still missed Jon and bought these fluffy
white creatures for 47.99, a good deal,
and they came with a little rock house
that they could sleep and burrow under
like Jon and herself, snuggled in Maine,
away from Palo Alto. So every time I come over,
to have *** and eat dinner and listen
to what you learned to play on piano,
I stop by the study to see Maurice
and Mickey and feel the presence of Jonathan
and the sticky suburban sadness of your mother,
while keeping a secret promise close to my heart,
that I'll never become an accountant.
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 6:54 PM UTC
Who’s that man in the black coat?
He always gets off the 11 p.m bus
and whenever we’re two *****
brown and ripped seats away
I can distinguish the smell of smoke
in his hair and the rain on his eyeglasses
Every time he sits down two *****
brown ripped seats away from me
the yellow neon lights
stuck on the roof that he has to avoid
by bending, catch the rings in his beat up
calloused hands
I can see his fingers holding an overflowing moleskin notebook
and I am yet to approach him
about his name
when all that fills my conscious is the question
concerning the stack of papers in his hand.
p.e.n
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 5:33 AM UTC
insipid, her blue eyes her blue dresses. the only-ness of her. her laugh like oleander.
she was Strong and Independent and she Didn't Need Me, but she had me anyway, for a minute.
i am cross-legged on the ugly wool blanket we made love under first. the first of many but empty.
i am cross-legged and my fingers restless, invisible piano keys trilling to the wee hours. many but empty.
the skin of my index finger bitten raw, the skin of my lower lip bitten raw.
the pretension of her jabs at pretension. her manufactured offbeat passion. her cat, her moleskin notebook.
ordinary, but only. insipid but aquamarine and clear as bells. she Didn't Need Me.
the first of many. and empty.
Feb 10, 2013
Feb 10, 2013 at 7:52 PM UTC
You got me hooked on Moleskin journals.
It might not seem like much,
but when you consider that it's the vessel
into which I daily pour myself,
Like some bank account, holding all my emotional savings,
it's a pretty substantial influence.
So thanks.
You got me hooked on being known.
Not the "name her favorite color/album/flavor" kind of known.
The "ask me how I am, because you hear the trace amounts of fakeness in my laughter" kind of known.
Before you,
I thought being loved was like being admired but on steroids.
Now I see it's more like
a quiet walk
home from class every evening.
there are a dozen other ways,
different bike routes or
back roads you could take
but you would never think to.
Your day would be incomplete without the path your feet
first were drawn to,
you can't bear to miss it
the winding bends in the road and the blossoms you always pause to breathe in.
both familiar and new every evening.
May 29, 2017
May 29, 2017 at 12:41 PM UTC
„...my men in moleskin caps and generally envested in the kind of shabby paramilitary fashion in which one pictures the advance guard at Teruel. Upon proceeding inland, we encountered teams of what I declared native-cannibal-warriors, who, despite being outwardly quite docile, were clearly displeased with the unannounced invasion of their little isle. I began pointing my finger at the savages and emitting ‘pow’ noises, causing the natives to rather cooperatively collapse to the ground by heaps. Having cleared the beachhead, I then realised my love for our apparent guide to this strange paradise, an ermine-like species without any name that comes to memory. I held her close for perhaps five minutes, stroking her luscious, snow-white pelt and ignoring the jealous glances of my subordinates. An anxious look told me she had something to tell me. I bent my ear close, only to receive a sudden impact of her delicate, immaculately carven jaw. Shocked, I relinquished my hold, and she immediately bounded to a low-lying tree behind me, pawing the fruit dangling therefrom with a feline relish“
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 8:32 PM UTC
It is a flat day.
Behind me, golden water continues to rise.
A step beyond and I will break my mother's back.
I feel the sum of jokes untold and lies misunderstood.
On the edge of this fear, do believe.
A new correction.
Centered and balanced on my forehead.
Unpack my mind.
In Leopard skin or Moleskin.
Anything but,
Something forgettable.
The tide has come.
I will say goodbye.
In my own way.
Will you rise and fall?
During my rest, will you continue life?
Or will you begin death again?
Baby, I am he.
Without curls and without the illusion of honesty.
An American flag.
If his country will do nothing as one child freezes,
it is only natural to swaddle with its flag.
Baby I am falling down real fast.
Baby I am moving and my eyes are closed.
Baby I am seeing a light.
And baby, did you know?
You were all I had.
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 10:22 PM UTC
Sometimes I am more than convinced
The only thing keeping me tethered to the wet, dark, autumn dirt
Are the whorls and swirls on the pads of my toes.
Circuitous and tangled, curling up and in one another,
These are the only lines holding me firm to my world of moleskin notebooks, keyboards, plums and tea cups.
It seems such a tenuous connection.
Perhaps,
I will wake one morning to find myself subject to the laws of physics once more,
And feel the reassuring press of gravity on my shoulders,
Secure in the knowledge that I will not loose my self to the cold, black, unknown-ness of space.
Until then, I am here-
Proverbially barefoot, toes digging into the cold and sleeping soil,
Trying to get a grip.
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 10:55 PM UTC
We were both writers.
You with a fountain pen and moleskin notebook
I with anything I could scrawl on -tears always just at the edges of me
and in this way we began to author our life together.
We put pen to paper that first night
drunk on gas station liquor and on not feeling so alone.
Our hungry bodies filled page after page
with what I would come to believe
would be my magnum opus.
In your wedding vows you said that we would
“work together to fill the pages with
conflict, desire, pain and all that makes life real
so that we can appreciate all that makes life good”
You were not much of a co-author though
preferring instead to write alone at night while I slept
How many times did I revisit a previous chapter
only to find that you had introduced a new character
or a dark and bizarre plot twist without my knowledge?
Eventually these discoveries would become as predictable
as the indignant denials
eventual apologies
and promises that would always follow them
lather, rinse, repeat
Over years these edits and additions
would knock the air from my lungs
completely shaking my confidence as a writer.
With cramping hands I would try to rewrite the bad parts
though my scribble marks did little to mask the words beneath.
Words that once had flowed as easily and copiously as I had for you
now came only in fits and starts
each new chapter torn from the bones of my bones.
How many times did the ten eyes we wrote in
watch as writers block turned to writers rage
producing furious missives that would tear holes in pages without warning?
Still even as my teeth-torn hands turned arthritic
I couldn’t seem to just put down the ******* pen
Because it was our story
and because I loved it
and because I loved us
and because I loved you.
I ended our story with a semicolon
Its already faded form staring up from my ring finger
a reminder that I could have chosen to end my story but didn’t.
You once told me that a good author always employs irony
and I have always been a better writer than you’ve given me credit
;
Nov 18, 2019
Nov 18, 2019 at 6:00 PM UTC
I'm writing this out in my diary
Which could be better known as your
Personal biography
Since every ******* line
Is about you anyway
My dear
And I'm dipping my pen
Into my veins
Harvesting blood for ink
The same way you ****** the life
Out of my lungs
And called it your own
I'm splattered across these pages
Just like your name
So impermanent, so unnecessary
Well, it's just like I never said,
You always were the best
Waste
Of my time
Always were the worst ******* thing
I put myself through
And you never needed me
The way I needed you to
The binding on this book is unraveling
Even my moleskin
Has had enough of you
I'm trying to rewrite the memories
Ripping out the pages
Just more kindling for the fire
In your throat
Stuff it down and pray to the heavens
For just once
You shut the **** up
And choke
I unfold the dog-eared pages
Wondering why I marked
Them in the first place
A common theme - Hatred
For all those times you
Stuck a ******* needle in your arm
Without realizing
You were poisoning me too
And I'm still wondering
If you ever once
Thought of me
When you shoved the plunger down
Or if I was just another ghost
You didn't want to think about
I snap shut my diary
Not wanting to read any more
Not wanting to relive
What little amount of pain
I've managed to forget
Not wanting to reinfect myself
With the thought of you
I toss the scribbled out book
Into our backyard fire
Burning up everything I ever felt
For you
Vowing to never again fall
For another liar
Apr 10, 2012
Apr 10, 2012 at 5:59 PM UTC
I used to know you through more than our fiber optic nothings:
As wild hair and ****** knees, a moleskin and a fountain pen,
A teeming scowl and harrowing slur of a laugh, seeing every word spoken.
As children on the cusp of something in the stick of June, I knew you—
Strong and blinding, you reside in a dark and colorful maze.
Lost or found, I imagine that you are sending cigarette smoke signals
Wafting up, indistinguishable through the city smog,
Out the window of an apartment in which you do not reside
Or snaking through the metro, slouched over in a grey haze, unaware
That you can still stand taller than the rest of us.
Jul 27, 2015
Jul 27, 2015 at 2:25 AM UTC
nothing left
saved
ugly words
etched
moleskin
mont blanc
inks dead
dead vision
stares
blind
acoustics
deafening
ring
engine
fumes
cough
choke
coffee turned
cold
- A
Sep 8, 2012
Sep 8, 2012 at 3:07 AM UTC
“The Road to Hell”
I am surrounded by blank pages.
With scorn, they mock my inability
to fill their gluttonous gullets.
Notebooks, journals, and diaries jeer
with disgust and desire; even the
looseleaf paper stares longingly
at the collection of pens and pencils
I have amassed, a stinging tribute
to my stayed hand. Each time the
moleskin is opened, he gasps,
hopeful, only to be crushed as I
jot a quick note, perhaps a phone
number, or a few names. The foreign
beauty with the hand-pressed paper
has not once been opened, and lusts
to be used — as a post-it, a sketchbook,
or kindling, she does not discriminate.
Each celebration of a birthday — be it
mine or Jesus Christ’s — is merely an
excuse for more lonely pages to join
the ranks, collecting dust and growing
feeble. A mysterious hand pain is
merely a convenient excuse, for the
truth is that I have never been a
consistent writer — not on paper, at
least. My fingers are suited to typing,
and the keyboard assuredly gloats
daily to the lonely paper of her
usefulness; Microsoft Word of the
multitude of poems, short stories,
essays, papers, musings, and
assorted writings he has fabricated.
Indeed, if the road to Hell is paved
with good intentions, then I shall
descend in a carriage of blank paper.
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 9:03 PM UTC
In the sinful garden I was aroused,
My toenails dug into Earth as the yew to the moon
Crouched with legs lambent of the blue glow.
I clawed and sank into the abyss the edifice allowed.
Violet sky and clouds abloom
Crawling towards its moleskin bound and sewn
Ginger stained and fig darkened
Our assemblage of sentiments sank
Into the fire-molten pit below.
Further into the soil beneath, pressed with bark and--
Ages of space that left some pages blank.
Your sharp mountains of ink through soil began to show.
Alas, I beheld in its fullness, a body which beat I stopped to harken
A tremor my arms, hands, and fingers began to make
With a gust of wind, brush of limbs, the dust away was blown.
Cuticles gushing red as I clung to our words, but away with a night lark.
After that short mirage, off my knees and into the sky I flew
My heart bare and untamed, as the soul from the skin under the moon.
Sep 23, 2019
Sep 23, 2019 at 5:12 PM UTC
Let my tombstone read:
"wish you were here"
'cause even when I'm down below,
I'll be thinking of you, dear.
s.mndi
Jun 17, 2014
Jun 17, 2014 at 6:04 PM UTC
from open skies to blooming flowers,
through my darkest hours,
through pain and persistence,
to my lack of vision,
tossing and turning,
something four walls couldn't confide,
till my veins collide,
from fingers through her hair,
to my "I just don't care"
if words could lie,
my failure to comply
my actions speak louder,
but through these pages I found her,
my stare into nothingness,
but I settled for nothing less,
than an ocean of words,
mend wings for these birds,
more than a speck in the sky,
the tears that never saw the cry,
fears that never saw the light,
but the light walked me through the night,
more than a pen that I am holding,
dear moleskin...
May 16, 2012
May 16, 2012 at 9:47 PM UTC
you deserve a thousand poems
written about every crevice of your body
about your seamless existence
I wish I could write beautiful things for you
and
I wish you wrote positive things about me
your words are always lovely
but
the subject matter makes me want to
disappear into the folds of your
half used moleskin
I'm sorry
I can only cure your writers block
with
sorrow
Sep 18, 2013
Sep 18, 2013 at 9:50 PM UTC
In the conversation you had with your sisters and friends
over coffee and chitchat,
you described me as perfect, a gentleman
adorned with a cloak of eccentricity,
Tagged along by a shadow who has has never been
in the dark or seen anything but the light.
At this time, your accent lifts as you described me.
"Perfect gentlemen don't exist", everyone retorted.
So you go on and on about
this and about that
And this too and that.
Till even the least enthusiastic
Buys a ticket to watch me.
So I perform. I perform. Only this time
I wear no mask on the stage of enticement.
I laugh out loud and carry the bottles.
I sing out loud even when my voice is muffled.
I play along, like a skilled ocarinist.
I blab about life in the slums and the impending economic crunches,
i brag about my dreams and the few nights I don't snore.
In the same conversation I had with myself,
Sitting to a bottle, a moleskin and pen all by myself,
I tell myself how much of me hasn't changed,
How my thoughts never changed
Despite my unkempt beard and bad breath.
I tell myself how the-same I am,
Only this time, I'm wearing a different shirt
stained at the pocket with oil from yesterday's tofu fries.
May 18, 2014
May 18, 2014 at 5:33 AM UTC
to keep poems in
to get poems out
to keep my thoughts in
to get my thoughts out
to keep secrets in
to get secrets out
to keep myself in
to get myself out
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 8:18 AM UTC