"molted" poems
Freezing a glance
Wind cuffs down-white heliums
Sweeps contrails
Separates cirrus across the moon
Cresting wave tormented
wind against steel
movement in movement
sprays of hair
Blizzard of petals from the apple
Furious snow
drifts off— garage roof
Fog that haunts the river on the coldest nights
_____________
The walk across the alley
took—
so long—
A lifetime from the doorway
of someone else’s impatience
Prints of motion
record the loss
a single set in snow
But there!
on the icy, shoveled surface of night
lies the snowflake of a bird
impossibly molted
Song of a feather
caught—
Flailing! Helpless!
More than lovely for its lying there!
Lying there!
Mar 12, 2017
Mar 12, 2017 at 6:38 PM UTC
The moth with newspaper wings sat under the arrow lungs of the eyeless
blood dripped falcon, more whole than the super-glued roman sculpture.
Next door a 50’s con held up church with a roulette table in the kitchen,
and boarded up the massage parlor
downstairs.
The eye of the man was a centrifuge of ducks, mallard and hen, spiraling
outward into evaporated roach-ground
asphalt.
Next door, slits in the picket fence displayed perfectly formed **** & broach,
empty shoes made of feet below, blending
fields.
The marble foundation formed from twine lollipops and fuzzy candy tabs,
ice-etched to the frequency of splintered seashell
angels.
Next door through the forest of knives a spaceship bearing gargoyles peaked
bodies through collages of faces in technicolor sepia
mitosis.
The heiress molted into tiled pieces, her own dog and sunhat caught in blizzard
cuneiform, kaliedescoping again to fractalled inchworms cemented in motion.
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 9:55 AM UTC
I saw the sun steep
into the seascape ―
lonely as a drowning
wave
on still-waters
the dimming of the day
rescinding evanescent daylight .
fading with the slack tide
lost at sea ―
a gloaming moment
let fall from
the remains of the day,
like some other passing
sea bird's molted feather
drifts away untamed
I sit silent as the driftwood
lingering at the watermark,
watching a random gust
erase the footprints
of another recurring day,
bearing abandoned memories
and vacant heartbeats,
atrophied in the drifting sands
and I see you walking
towards the abating
midnight sunset ―
but I know
you're just a mirage;
like the dimming afterglow
of so many waning moons
elapsed
ever-changing tides grow low
and promises made lightly
do ebb away
Scanning the distant horizon ―
a blindfold heart
mooning all at sea;
parsing a deserted shoreline,
wondering if love
is too late ,..
to stem the tide ―
harlon rivers
30 May 2018
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 12:59 PM UTC
At 5 I was convinced I was
a flower
whose vocation was imitating
their final hysterical
wail
once Winter awoke from its
anorexia.
I pleaded my case with
a botanist
whose seamstress wife consented to stitch
a tutu of Kadupul
flowers,
like a fairy godmother warning of their death at
dawn.
At 16 I finally danced
their goodbye,
petals whisked off as if molted
layers of skin
and only when at the end I stood naked
did the concept of death have
definition.
Jun 7, 2014
Jun 7, 2014 at 7:13 PM UTC
No parenthetical this time in my rhyme, I'll lie flat the baseline like, Here are my cards, bro. Take a look at them all, bro. Get started with just the light kinds of gospel like, Bro, did you know I got a **** down there? Taken aback you say, What? Bro, did you know I'm packing a tackle, though so modest in stature, bro, instead of a package I joke split/second to cope and still manage to crack a satanic smile as I call my most modest hose a gigantic, titanic ****
Word. You got nice lips, still, though, how bout you look up and get down on me, yo? Word is that I handle it with alarming aplomb considering how I present myself to the world. So what I got a culturally appropriated slab of ink tattoo yo. Just a guy trying to get along with the little he's got, and then on top of that I like to slide my **** n stuff. How about me too? Cause I can get down on you if we both repeat **** like we believe it. You got ***** bam, and plump curved fat just as all the girls growing up had, fashionable hair and even a soft face. You, girl, I can bend you over. Sure, be glad to bend you over.
Rough riding baring face to the wind on highways
I never thought I would be here deciding
Do I believe in others' abilities enough to believe that they know me as
If they would know a human?
Get close, pry in, to my life,
you'll find a lion, lonely, dragging coats of molted skin
with wire stolen from her other lives,
the desperate lioness devours the food she can.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 6:29 AM UTC
A pure white feather floated to the ground
it made no sound.
Was this from my guardian angels wing
comfort to me bring.
Picking it up felt really soft and so pure
now lonely no more.
Or was this just my active imagination
creating this sensation.
Hoping angels were watching over me
that I could not seed.
Maybe fantasy yet nice to think this way
comforting each day.
In truth simple a molted bird feather
but hope that lasts forever.
The Foureyed Poet.
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 7:27 PM UTC
The cicada husk of the crescent moon sheds in cyclides light,
Molted whispers of life, spread like perfume behind the ear,
Or like silver earrings unadorned and scattered around the night-lit table.
Here too, the garden gown of Babylon lies heaped in soiled ruin,
Beaten down to sand at the foot of the bed of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Though the dunes are its aerial, root-bound springs,
Though the underground nymphs tend with cicala wings,
And underspurt of incessant summer song to lure
The resurrection rose of Jericho to bud once more,
In desert-faith for the hanging garden of a full moon.
Jun 19, 2019
Jun 19, 2019 at 1:08 PM UTC
Cicada’s chorus,
High among sycamore’s green tendrils,
Crescendos of summer,
Cacophony of 7 year sleep,
Memory seeps in and out.
Lapping waves of recollection.
Exo-skeletal molted shells,
The remnants of prior lives,
Crescendo of song,
Celebrating new things,
Higher possability
Among branches of summer’s throng.
Peeling back the browns and yellows
Of Old man’s changing wig,
To look within
And glean the mystery
Of summer messages remembered by me.
Jan 3, 2011
Jan 3, 2011 at 8:24 AM UTC
Oh wilderness' soul ― I Beseech thee !
I feel your deepest awakening secrets stir
Whispers uttered in immortal Winds
Calling to the Fountains of my soul
Standing the hairs of comfortably numb
Spilled breath bestrewn upon frayed Mortality
Oh wilderness' soul ― I Bequeath thee !
The ashes the deepest Oceans my heart
As circadian Tides have ebb and flowed
Forsaken feigned love’s misbegotten guise
Now chastened sightless before an unseen labyrinth
Beset by a human blindness that decays all light
Oh wilderness' soul ― I Entreat thee !
Cleanse this molted flesh ― time shed ―
Artifacts of perfectly imperfect traces
Reminders of things we strive to forget
For in the self-loathed aching Silence
I feel the urgent pull of Wilderness' Soul
Reaching out ― Benignly
to Entomb my Heart and Soul
Someone you used to know April 1st, 2017
Mar 31, 2017
Mar 31, 2017 at 7:49 PM UTC
The black night’s ebbing tide
erased the only remaining hints,
the cresting long ocean swells
did not cleanse without a trace.
Adrift and lethargically bobbing
seaweed entangled teakwood box
of water-logged photographs, drowning,
surrendered from the heart of the sea
Like molted wild feathers cast ashore with the tide
to the coarse specks of rasping sands,
Darwin's dream in an emptied sea-bubble popped,
dissipated into its own haplessness,
bestrewn about an untrodden seashore
Washed out snapshots of life’s disregarded minutia
enchained to an ordinary forgotten Kodachrome moment
left out to the consequences of the ever fickle tides,
abandoned happenstance spilled by chance
upon another undiscovered world
The warped and bloated wooden box encasement,
hoary with swollen furrowed woodgrain s,
wearied by an enduring measureless moment adrift;
as if an ill-fated message in a misbegotten leaky bottle,
corked with marooned good intentions,
and images of disappearing dreams
flung out shipwrecked in barnacled azure glass
beneath a sky so far away
someone you used to know
Mar 4, 2017
Mar 4, 2017 at 9:37 PM UTC
I took a vacation from myself
And my standard personality
My vices and virtues left behind
I became someone new
Sheded my skin
Evacuated my shell
Molted my feathers
And wandered off to the abyss
What I once called the truth
What I once named false
Both thrown up in the air
Now I see which falls into my lap
Sharing ****** pleasures with men and women alike
In an illustrious ***** affair
Smoking herb, dropping out and drinking the forbidden wine
With no second thought
With no regret or remorse
No rules
No laws
No restrictions
Rebelling against myself
And whatever is given to me
But why?
How come?
To test limits
To break through
To a place of nothing
No gods
No kings
No me
To test myself
My boundaries
To abandon my comfort zone
And take a trip to the edge, then go over it
I’ve been to the land
Of discipline
Of self control
Of obedience
And conformity
Faded out to the valley of shadows
Nowheresville
Population me
I’ll return
To my roots
Soon enough
With the knowledge
Of how far I’ll go
How deep I care to let myself go
How heavy a load I can carry
Loosening my grip of reality
Only to adjust it
To a level of pressure that suites me best
Make changes in myself
To be the person I want to be
Rearrange my life
And see what I actually believe
So until I come home, peace be with you
If I’m not back in ten minutes
Just wait a little bit longer
Dec 15, 2013
Dec 15, 2013 at 1:04 PM UTC
The amount of people that I’ve scoped
through my own lenses, mirrored with optimism
weighed against the reality of who people are
beneath their cotton t-shirts is immeasurable.
I want everyone in my picture frame,
and I’ll twist the moral ladder to get there,
because I’ve been taught, ever since I was a little girl
in ballet shoes with my hair coiled neatly at my neck,
that there is far more beneath the glitter. That the light
can be blinding and it takes more than a promising silhouette
to bring people back into the good. I’ve slept with molted men
who’ve slithered into my bed on a nice compliment
and an “original” idea, and I’ve kissed their sore parts
hoping that the sweetness would pour from the cracks
in my lips and be absorbed by their scales. I’ve taken
triple chances on people who said I’ll do better,
and that they’d be better if only I could blush their cheeks
with my own electricity. I’ve harvested the sliver of memories
from each relationship I’ve kindled and melted them
into a *** letting people sip the potion for themselves
and find a special, solemn rebirth in the wake of my aftermath.
I don’t know how
to have a conversation without saying thank you, or *really,
you’re being too kind,* when really I’m the one who’s flicked kindness
from my fingers like leftover water. I’m the one
who’s branded her own version of band-aids, who's healed
those who I could fit in a tiny shoebox back to their own
self-proclaimed hugeness. I’ve beaten myself down to ***** clay,
and that’s why you
have found it so easy to mold me. It’s why I lay your socks out in the morning,
why I drive my mind back and forth in my sleep, why I’ve always been able to rock
your pretty little heart back to me. You captured the remaining ember
left drowning in the wax and made a model of who I used to be
before I let everyone else wear me down.
Jan 6, 2015
Jan 6, 2015 at 5:32 PM UTC
I still remember the moment you let go
Wearing my navy, Notre dame gold encrusted sweater
I remember how your eyes glistened and glazed over
The hazel jewels covered in a breath of dust
As you clutched up for someone to save you
To save us
And I stood there silently quaking
Unaware of the rivers flowing behind your melancholy cheeks
That poured out from your eyes and your mind, your heart and your breast
And spilled all over the sanctuary floor, abandoned
How you clutched my angst splattered teen t-shirt
How you concealed your suffering subtly in the crest of my shoulder
How I was so thankful for your strength
And the open hole that held our hearts in that moment
Sealed in the next
After one last embrace as one
And the bones broke as they were slammed against the pestle
As we separated and molted, given new skin
And put on the same monochromatic, dull eyed smile
Just as the day we met
And our hearts hurt, our lives reformed
Our paths split
Our eyes cold
And we were fine.
Jun 2, 2011
Jun 2, 2011 at 12:59 AM UTC
Sorrow is a hot flush of prickle
salt filled pearls that spill over
the dry reds of your cheeks.
Sorrow is the swollen ache in your
throat that tugs down on the corners
of your mouth:
gravity that seeks to bring
nose to grass,
forehead to gravel:
the little razor
that dig into your blackened flesh.
Sorrow is the way your own arms
seize themselves:
freckle to freckle,
hand to hand,
all identical and opposite.
Sorrow is knowing that
all sounds coming out of your
own mouth and all self-caressing
comfort is utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
vain.
Sorrow is the cool glass
you smash your brow against
in reflective attempts to cool
poundings in your temple
and calm the only constant of life:
drumming, hot-blood pumping
four-chambers that will one day
Fail You.
Sorrow is dirt you inhale
into your starved lungs when
it buries your head in
earthy embrace
awaiting your thrashing to grow still
as you’re shushed like an animal
before butcher until
your hair blows gently
in the wind.
Sorrow is the way pain like fire
licks every crevice of your sweet skin
until molted scars like old corpses
swallow you whole
making you utterly
and irrevocably
and inexplicably
unrecognizable.
Sorrow is the eyes of your friends
refusing to meet your own
until the flicking of blues and greens
and browns and blacks
to any place besides
the empty whites of your own
is dizzying
is numbing:
an electric buzzing of static
in grey matter.
Sorrow is an invisible hand
wrapping gently around your neck
pushing you under the oceans
of your own briny making
until your foam kissed lips
are blue and cold—
parted slightly in a dead hope
that someone will revive them.
Sorrow is the vice clenching
bloodied tissue of
your battered
and bruised heart
tightly
and tighter still.
Until it is stagnant.
Until it is inconstant.
Until it’s too late to tell anyone
what
sorrow
is.
May 6, 2012
May 6, 2012 at 4:05 PM UTC
My name drips from your tongue like honey
Honey
Why is the only question I've ever asked of you
You tore the skin from my bones when you left
You carry around the molted layer of the person I was with you
And you call her Darling
You caress her in your mind
This make-believe
China doll self
You always did say we were just too much alike
Funny
How being without you made me more like you
Plagued with the thought
Of becoming the person who hurt me the most
I wonder what pushed you too far away
You used to call me a cynic
For saying I loved you with all my mind
And none of my heart
Well
At the moment
Darling
I'm feeling cynical as hell
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
just molted
new body still sensitive
your fingers brushed through my hair
my perspective is questioning
birds eye view to warped perception
confidence then second guessing
snow angels in the backyard
tears in the diary
smoke joints in the backyard
fears feel so fiery
your fingers traced my cracked heart
my fingers drew you and your scars
i just molted
new heart still sensitive
Aug 18, 2023
Aug 18, 2023 at 11:35 AM UTC
I often wonder how you’re doing
but I wish I didn't care
Even though you never told me you were leaving
with a mouthful of words left unsaid
Still circling back to touch the growing space
between ― twice you broke my heart
I felt you slip away in autumn gold
fading like the morning dew
Love can drift away like a molted feather;
wonted flotsam swept afar on stormy seas
Some things are better left unspoken,
when silence speaks twice
louder than words
But love lies with a whisper; tears of sombre sorrow
won’t wash away the distance in your eyes
These are the days of a rising tide's breach
when, I could walk deep into the ocean
with no one else but memories
to leave behind
April 2018
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 11:21 AM UTC
i, a textilian*,
politely clambered up the faces of mountains
as the valley revealed herself to me
her ready desert face, waiting
to be devoured by ravenous, wandering eyes
the nape of her neck, her chest, her thighs,
slowly~ and all at once
but i, the textilian, drowsily slipped under soft shade
it was only a brook but, it felt like a wave
and the deep creek carries me away,
then brings me back, to this sacred place....
it is nice to wake up to the sun
in your face
until slowly, and all at once, i was awake
and my clothes were on the ground
letting sweet redemption crawl back into my pores
beneath that sky, between those rocks
giving my self away
no mystery, just us three
just hello
hence i, the ex-textilian,
like a newly-molted reptilian
more like an undressed chameleon
in all my ecstatic toughness and alcoholic delirium
have learned more about what it is to be naked
than i've known since i was born
slowly~ and all once
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 11:37 PM UTC
hearts,
shaped awkward
and angled into points,
drop like hair falling on a gown
graceless as feathers in rain
molted from birds leaving home
one season too early
and one morning too late for the worm…
black bend shadow in a corner facing left,
when she peeks,
her face
like her handwriting
curves
and her contour becomes his detour...
when he speaks,
his lips move like typewriters.
the smacking,
like fingers on rusting, archaic keys,
turns her mood
‘67 radio dial style:
up
L O U D E R...
but she is slow motion,
soft, surreal and in fear of circumspection
and he is a reel,
black and white and in need of projection…
May 22, 2011
May 22, 2011 at 6:09 AM UTC
As daylight dreams reach
for dark
under a K-light sky
so must the
world return requited,
kited,
new ,
no one knew but me and you
I will not beg of thee in XYZ
chromosomal hormonal after-tonal
A giant jelly fish ate "To Wong foo with love"
a bit of it's electric lightening flash turned
my skin to glass,
molted down Queen cream
in crock-odor-ium,
it may be a word, it may not,
it maybe your Marshland smile.
I'm going to emerge orthodontia
in crystalline wings and when I do
I hope it won't blind you
like your heart
like your heart forgot
how to pronounce my name and
sunlight forgot to wash the sand
into bleached wood
a drift
from where I cry away
from that small dark part of me
that resembles photosynthesis
in green or gold memories
..of i'll never leave you
even when my tongue has become
a pin cushion for all the things
That get stuck to it
in the dark shifting of
under garments and sleepless
every things
that crawl the endless length of me
as a nightly ritual
of sacred dance.
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 12:49 PM UTC
by no means an account that a mother can be proud.
gave birth to a fluid sack of incestuous snakes all ***** each other down to one.
and molted and hardened and grew wings to fly to a borrowed attic
to cocoon into a bug of an uglyish man.
a pitiful sunken-in man.
a missing teeth man.
has secrets he shares with no one walks the streets but the government has on paper.
and has secrets that only he and his ded kno, burried and grown to soil, and watered.
children he had suffer as he suffered at the calloused hands of the Cruel.
makes no waste cuz he saves fresh and old to be reused one day and for what he dont kno.
has the illness of child still reaching for candy.
and mouth warped around the shape of drugs.
misconnectioned wires show the glimpse of a ghost life,
and walks giving off the fumes of a shut-down asylum lit from its burnt-out and muttering bulbs.
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 3:50 AM UTC
i guess i'm done with apologies- what good did they ever do?
it's time i leapt before i looked, in order to move
despite fear rooting me in this swamp. yeah, i've been festering
here in this basement. apologies if the shrieking pestered
you. i was merely releasing stuck energy- in this agony, i seem so rude.
now that i've molted, i've no time to speak of my callow mistakes:
i can only swear silently to make up for them and for the time i've wasted.
let's face it, i'm nameless and my teens have passed me, but i've not missed my opportunity.
i'll prove it to you with this hopeful departure from the cliff.
i am no man or woman, not like you. i am woven of memory and birdflesh.
my hollow bones surely will grant me the gift of flight if i try my hardest.
if i leave you bereft, my second-best solution was to disappear, so there's that-
if i do not succeed, at least my failure will spare me the embarassment.
yeah, **** saying sorry, cause nothing ever came of it.
i could've said ten times more with my deeds- if i'd had the strength.
i guess we all could've tried a little harder than we did.
please just let me go now. i'll call if i've made it.
if not, well, **** saying sorry- cause i've had it.
yeah, we all say things we really mean, then sober up and forget to be honest.
i know you would've come if you'd remembered making the promise.
i won't say a word, no, i won't call you on it.
even though it's nowhere close to fair, we tried our hardest-
i swear we did what we could- so **** it.
i'm sick of being apologetic.
Feb 3, 2016
Feb 3, 2016 at 1:49 PM UTC
Sending shivers down my spine
Veins as numb and cold as the Ganges
We spoke of faith and love trudged along
When you whispered your thoughts into me
I have been a forlorn sinner
With sins of troubles that nudged me tight
The embrace of wind brought you back
To the time I called you for dinner
Our obscurity gives me away
We look but shun, bury the night deep down
Today, my light flickers as I stand
For the molted facade is my new play
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 5:25 AM UTC