"molting" poems
Chewie hasn’t touched his food
I hope he’ll be o.k..
It hasn’t been the same for him
Since Leia passed away.
He’s a melancholy Wookie
as anyone can see.
He mopes around the ship all day
And he’s molting terribly
Twas bad enough when Obi-wan
was struck down by Darth Vader.
But it’s no surprise when an old man dies
That’s expected, now or later.
Our Princess was a force you see
Bringing gales of laughter
which is why we want her here
and not in the hereafter.
He’s a melancholy Wookie
as anyone can see.
He mopes around the ship all day
And he’s molting terribly.
I hope one day we’ll meet again
In Mos Eisley’s Cantina
That gold bikini may not fit
But we’d still be glad to see her.
Jan 28, 2017
Jan 28, 2017 at 1:42 PM UTC
Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.
In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.
I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.
I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.
Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:28 AM UTC
A bird in an aurulent billed mud-face,Living as a four foot two inch dragon in a San Franciscan cave,
Lifts off from a hot breathed murmur of Gideon.
Even in night the whole grandeur of movement
Soaking in red beeping heart-pangs
Fasten to the thrusts of his arms.
This post of vainglory was the opening of the year.
In July's open pores,
On a spatial plateau of Dodonian oak.
The Penguin
Unveils his weakened voice.
Flattening into a wide arrow
Draped from Carina he
Sails Westward. Barefooted through the Anavros
Molting under deep helplessness and melancholia.
With his inlaid eyes faced askance
The penguin broods
Among the day's songs
Cast into the poetry of the lyre,
Stretched upwards from Paradise Bay to Colchis,
Where his ebony wings
Soak into the palms of Peleus
Suffering only where the arrows have flung.
Downside up, with children in a pocket of blood,
Among supergigantic siren songs and muse poems
Sewing teeth into a spot of Earth
Races towards a column of toppling strakes.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:48 AM UTC
the end is now in sight
terror comes encroaching
don’t let the perilous dusk
douse the flame that leads you
the dream inside you burns
yet darkness wants to dim it
when you want to quit
hear the summit calling
and when’s the sky’s sunlit
and faith is at its brightest
the blackness strikes again
the apex is still higher
tho’ energy now spent
you vow to keep on going
just when the crest you’ve reached
you slip and fall now dangling
hanging by a nail
a famine then come robs you
feed on your inner will
to see your destination
you break free and go on
the wind strikes now the hardest
resist not but take flight
set sail to elevation
your spirit will not break
your eye’s upon the zenith
but next the snake will bite
let passion be your tonic
it burns right through your veins
your skin molting peels off you
metamorphosis has changed
the venom to elixir
then illness strikes quite fierce
you sink into a deep trench
reach down throw up your twine
towards the light you see it
no strength left yet still walk
you are not to be broken
stop gasp and catch your breath
you are at the top now
a phosphorescent light
envelops all around you
spin it into gold
throw rope to those still climbing
you who’ve scaled the mount
tho’ scarred have high ascended
fear’s an illusion here
love’s altitude has conquered
never give up hope
tho’ night is at its cruelest
hang on to see the sun
the pinnacle is magic
©2016janetaylor
May 19, 2016
May 19, 2016 at 11:48 AM UTC
I come face-to-face with my Shadow
hungry
devouring
depraved.
The lupine
before a full hunter moon
bristles.
Hot saliva
falls
from hurtful pointed rows
in pearls.
This
in Goodge Street Station's
Underground
where a poster
promotes
The Hunger
a page-turner
The Clown in Soho:
3 Chocolate Martinis
4 lagers
1 gram of *******
300 press-ups
7 mile run and
1 sachet of Kamagra
… the night begins …
I howl with delight
- that’s me -
cracks open
a smile
yellow eddies swirl
in thrawl
to that shadow beast o’ mine.
This monstrous
I
can never satiated be --
a beast to straight jacket under the influence of the waning and waxing moon
and on the night of the carmine moon
release
My phone rings
(Excuse me, while I take this).
‘Hello, am I speaking to Ashley?’
‘Depends on who’s asking,’
I respond
licking my lips.
‘You Ashley Chapman?’
I like this kind o’ game.
‘Like I said,
who’s asking?’
Frustrated he repeats, ‘Confirm your name.’
I yawn and tell him as savagely as I can:
'No!'
Wolves
know 'no'
to the pack.
But as in Beauty and the Beast
(the Cocteau 1946 version, of course)
beneath that thick molting hair pelt
beasts have culture
and feelings, too
(a lion's heart?)
and mostly
(occasionally not)
given
space
food
The Den
a willing mate (or two)
we’re okay
affectionate dogs.
For when all is well with my shadow
-- no problem
in peace
in chains
'til the looped moon!
Oct 8, 2017
Oct 8, 2017 at 1:38 PM UTC
There's a certain kind
That holds you hostage
Way up there in the bleachers
In a red-light district
Cold and cheap
It lures you because you're lurable
Attach and you're stuck up there
In a certain kind
Of dilapidated ivory tower
It's only later on
When you're broken
When the nights have woven
Their history and the light
Has drained
Only when you're pushed out
Only when you're shoved off
Only then does the truth
Begin to talk
Until then it's been silent
Though gradually loosing appetite
For despair, denial, dilemma
Only when unhooked
Does that fierce, quite dismissal
Begin to beg for something else
Only then does
A certain other kind
Begin to go wild for itself
You wonder how yourself
Moldy and molting
And mad with lies
Had so deceived its own
You wonder how
If there is a god
S'he coulda watched you bleed
With self-betrayal
And sat there idle
While you slowly crumbled
But admit it
You were terribly cocky up there
In the pink and belly-full
***** and hookered
If G O D woulda spoken
You woulda spit in the face of divinity
And you probably did
So that certain kind
Watched and waiting
For another
Certain kind
To choke the bejasus outa ya
'til you slowly faded to full stop
And dropped to your knees
To a certain other kind
Aug 23, 2017
Aug 23, 2017 at 6:12 AM UTC
heated flavors and
icy noises, up in the
high strata with
a singed mind of
transcendent swallowed thoughts
your molting feathers
fall down to the cobble stones
proclaiming the words
of your mind
up in this planetarium of
a passing breeze
you replace the stars
with gleaming clumps
of barb wire and broken wings
that rattle through the night
screeching frequencies
of your lost-in-precipitation mind
you see the dreams
of the masses
devoured by green,
which clash with
the medley of floral souls
within your grey matter
you breathe out a brink-filled
sigh of infinite--
all those emotional droplets
in that spiderweb mind.
perhaps one day
they will see with your eyes
or even the eyes of your eyes
but for now you are stuck
shouting at them to love
a love greater than that of Lady Black herself
but their ears are stopped up
with the spoon-fed lies of how
to live and they settle for
contentment, and not
passion
Dec 21, 2013
Dec 21, 2013 at 2:23 AM UTC
Angels make the bouquets
I see as I thumb through this Chagall book
life is served on a bed of blue sky
aspirations made of soft shells
like molting *****
these flowers bloom risking penury
to offer a glimpse of eternity
make themselves windows of the blooming tree
a prism in a subjective room
they chose their lives in alternative
and reflect themselves as canals of rainbows
I sip a glass of wine and ponder this page
the museums of silken selves the artist left for us
Chagall painted old age so devoid of color
and vitality
because he knew as we age
we empty our imaginations
into the angels
who then arrive
holding flowers
for the young
Dec 5, 2017
Dec 5, 2017 at 1:07 AM UTC
Helpless
A friend is in pain and I can do nothing
Tears flow of indecision…straining life, staining life
My heart breaks in two…then shatters on the salted dreamscape floor
Coming out of my own skin, ripping the stitches, molting along hollow tree branches
Miles between, so many miles, so much time falls from grace
Breathing is hard, tethered at the moments lost, the suffering imagined
Pacing the floor…finding worn carpet and hidden questions beneath a shallow basement
Wishing the words, those **** words, feeding the solution…would come
Hoping for anything, something, even the tiniest of splintering compassion I can offer
To help ease this weight resting squarely on the shoulders of the weakness that engulfs her
I have no answers, useless, like a block of wood in the offering plate on a Tuesday night
My mind is a vacant lot of empty parking spaces…handicapped and no hang tag
My eyes blur of forced darkness amidst the crowing raven circling overhead
I pound my fist into this meaningless existence breaking every bone of contention
Drowning in my own fear, treading water beneath the surface
Clenching my teeth in a vice like fashion
A friend is in pain and I can do nothing
Helpless
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 9:09 AM UTC
Recollecting the recent years past.
After the unwritten fulfilled;
I still believe that I was a phoenix.
Even then.
Perhaps one not filled with imperishable flame,
For some beautiful creatures have greeted darkness,
Darkness that haunts the capable slain,
Into a horror far from bliss.
I know this figure was far from divine bliss,
For when eyes gazed upon the dusky feathers from years past,
The blackened twilight feathers were difficult to dismiss,
A clustered reminder of what these wings flew from, fast.
Though of late, those tufts of feathers have begun to transform.
Molting away this figure, marred with memories scarred,
Unveiling inner embers with lavish crimson and gold flame; a reform.
But why stop with wisps of the past merely charred?
For the time has now arrived to greet gracious death with a destructive goodbye,
An opportunity for this phoenix to endure a radiant rebirth,
Now, time is nigh;
For this phoenix to rise from the ashes of her own self worth.
Copyright March 3, 2013.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 4:03 PM UTC
Thunder shakes its hide of rain.
Against the sky, rain retreats.
Rain makes some people lonely
but graces me like a scar.
Rain makes some people just wet.
Against your skin, rain bright-stars.
Rain drifts in deserted rooms
like a speaker suspended.
"Glisten, eyes, and rain freely."
At home flood-rain drowned my dog.
Shake your coat of rain, fly on.
Rain weaves weary paths like the
old Aurelian stone busts.
Forest rain drips, doesn't fall.
Rain runs down softly like a
colorful painted lasso.
Rain breathes on my window sill
like a loaded rifle. Rain
penetrates all skin and bone.
Rain is more serious than
a lover on his deathbed.
Rain can be pitiful like
glowing fire never dead.
Umbrellas familiar
with rain sit forgotten in
closets with old pairs of shoes.
Direwolves prance through rains with tails
held like a tarantula
in molting season beats drums.
Ashpalt puddles boil with rain.
Against the ground, rain retreats.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 3:14 AM UTC
Jailed with all the other squawking birds
confined, it never flew and barely grew
& never knew the mimicry of words
sanguine, foul molting cockatoo in the corner
lowered, bloodied, the lowliest in a pecking order
his owner's a loner, a collector of tinged newsprint
entombed in brick & mortar - nomad minus footprint
and his birds, perched across wooden dowels
proceeded to empty their millet'd bowels
onto sheets of unfinished poetry
correctivewhiteoutmisery
so, he, being miserly, wouldn't shell out the reader's fee
to the greedy posthumous publishing company, yet
another relic in a mortuary of literacy
he was just another faceless, bearded bard
and with the old coffee grounds
he would discard
piling mounds of compost, broken bound
his compositions decomposing in the attic
warbling hiss, winding tape spool. ghosts
searching for signals amongst the static
he awaited revision of his works
ill, amidst the scattered ruins
red ink, gold leaf & carets^
he, impetuous, slumped further into his doldrums
though, all public grievances were withdrawn
crass, he prattled on to his dolorous birds
still oblivious to his defunct words
He lied dormant, comatose
in the 3rd degree infirmary
there was once a pretty lass
who could exhume the pristine
glass contents of his tinsel'd tomb
His malady, he once named Gamine
lived in a stretched-white canvas room
she eyed his burnt pile of vile-dirge verse
as mayflys & junebugs, & smoggy dirigibles
fluttered gently out of her empty purse
she grew on him like a cancer
for she was God's embellishment
pallid and perfect, and he cursed
her love as it ebbed and flowed
her aureole glowed, safely stowed
in an airship's overhead compartment
she was flying home for
there was no other answer
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 12:01 AM UTC
Today it was putting
the shaving cream in my left hand
that reminded me of the time
in my basement bedroom,
prompted by Mighty Ducks
or some episode of Salute Your Shorts,
we filled Eric’s hand with shaving cream
and brushed his nose with some equivalent
to a feather. There was no way he slept
through it. Rather, he played his part,
conscious
that this was the way he saw to fit
in. That moment, we didn’t know how shaving
cream felt on your face, or looked on a woman’s
legs in the shower. We weren’t aware yet
of the hair that would crawl out from us, the scariest
places
armpits and *** frightening
our sense of normal. Or your friend
telling you the embarrassment of her boyfriend’s
mother walking in on him shaving,
you didn’t know that men shaved any embarrassing place,
but she tells you right then (not knowing you loved her)
that it is better when his ***** in her mouth.
The women drag razors
over their legs every morning for a sense of clean
and then the people who dig the razors
into their arms, legs. We weren’t ready. Hearing
about the couple whose marriage counselor advised
them to have the husband shave the woman’s genitals,
her cuts, her sense of emptiness, his wild-eyes. Who do you love
now?
The woman in the peace-corps with legs-
unshaven 16 months.
The shaved teen naked on your computer monitor
or the woman shaving
in the shower next to you, legs, then armpits
apologizing, blushing.
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 3:12 PM UTC
I'm a raw, exposed
crab, molting
a
new skin.
Feb 19, 2022
Feb 19, 2022 at 2:27 PM UTC
Autumn comes in like a thief
loitering 'till the
Last Summer Wind
comes
Fall has begun
loading a full metal jacket
encased, guilded
in cupronickel & lead
eager to break the will of lively
verdant vistas down
returning their beautiful souls
and gentle spirits
back to hallowed ground
drifting, floating...
quoting, noting
poetic words
unheard
trying to veer, deviate for
shared moments...
off without a sound.
Landing over paths
blowing into heaps
swept by wild winds
from angelic wings
drying, dying
I hear them sighing
Hoping children
will jump in them
smelling the bittersweet of yesterday
raked and burned
they are returned
Sitting in gutters and streams
even in death they dream
in molting piles
all the while
these fading embers...
come September
again remember
they stay within us
burning beauty
until ...
valuable things are given
life again...
come springtime.
Cherie Nolan © 2016
Sep 13, 2016
Sep 13, 2016 at 11:52 AM UTC
Total shock, I say, what occurred
At our local aquarium in recent years.
Some call it the type of scandal
That violently shakes two hemispheres.
Henry and Roxy had been an item.
Much older than she, Henry was bound
To guard and protect his little lady.
A more loyal penguin was hard to be found.
How they loved to sing together!
He would belt out and she would intone.
The happy couple frolicked and preened--
Happy not to be alone.
Molting season came and Roxy
Experienced her catastrophic molt.
Henry stood by and guarded his sweetheart.
Of attentiveness he lacked not a jolt.
Roxy's feathers soon returned
And there she was in all her glory.
Then poor Henry started his molt.
That's when Floyd entered the story.
While Henry hid from penguin view,
Floyd caught Roxy's eyes.
His feathers were back in abundance.
What happened next? You can surmise.
When Henry's feathers finally returned,
Floyd had become Roxy's new mate.
They did what penguin couples do
While Henry sadly accepted his fate.
The new family soon multiplied,
And Henry eventually found a new friend.
What started out as an outrageous scandal
Wasn't so horrible in the end.
Scandals come and scandals go.
Some of them are hard to avoid.
Aren't you glad that you don't molt
Like our friends Henry and Roxy and Floyd?
- by Bob B
Oct 27, 2016
Oct 27, 2016 at 8:24 AM UTC
An itch loudly pines
Within
Like molting
Cicadas'
White noise.
May 9, 2017
May 9, 2017 at 4:35 PM UTC
Tethered no more by this umbilical chain
We break through the shell - Burst through the seed
Fingers laced and reaching up toward the big blue
Eyes gaining sight, sight meeting light
We bathe ourselves in the warming glow
Sol's sweet kiss to ease and simmer
Terra's touch to point the steps
We haven't much further to climb
-
Tree of Life - Home - Mother - Bed
Your roots we leave for Eden
Sky of Thought - Dream - Father- Blanket
Your wind will guide our wings
We gain friend in fire, rock, and storm
To tinker with the gifts of Titans
Together we rise and seek the stars
So we may spread the songs and preach the past
-
We go by Gaea, We go by God
Underneath our pagan star's shine
At night, symphonies will charm them
And we dance together until we fade
gain we lay into the palms of dream
The fingers of sleep, clench to a fist
Grinding us down to the finest of dusts
To glow and blow into the zephyrs
-
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 1:32 PM UTC
I believe in the match, white phosphorus,
scratch of Bic lighter spurting like a miniature sun
in the deadpan havoc of the darkest night.
I believe in the neon sign, blare of argon
red like lava. The invitation to come inside a place
where everyone is a saint in rehabilitation.
I do not believe in a steeple. I do have a church:
it is full of cripples carrying their hearts like a crutch.
It is full of ***** fingernails, swollen thumbs,
epileptic prayer circles, a choir of bums, riff-raff,
pulled off the street into the warmth of this fiery song.
We are all martyrs burning, like pyres, exploding
in moments of sorrow like gunpowder. God is not
in this church. We are too far from his icy heaven to hear
the cold menace of his manic threats. We are aflame,
making heaven out of the hells we were born into,
the ones we had no choice but to carry like a deformation,
but making our heavens the kind where work is.
We have built heaven out of pillars of words. We
have scorched even the newest of testaments, sifting
through its ash to divine new meaning of resurrection.
I do not believe heaven or hell are nouns. I do not
believe they are adjectives. They are verbs! ******* it
they are verbs: boiling or churning with photographs
of every failure, every success, every bruised knee,
every severed tie, every father that did not love us,
every mother who could not save us, every lover who
kissed the dark sides of our light hearts. I believe
you make heaven, that you make hell. I believe in
only the fire, crackling like skin molting from sunburn.
I want only to be consumed. The world is too far ruined
to douse this from me. Let me burn. If you look closely,
there are doves in the smoke, my bones glowing branches.
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 12:57 PM UTC
I see
Your flesh
Molting like a
Leukemic snake's.
I've begun to count
The tree rings
Buried
Beneath
Your eyelids.
Still
You salivate.
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 9:46 AM UTC
Naked and raw
I bear my soul to the sea
Freed from a shell outgrown
Apr 5, 2020
Apr 5, 2020 at 6:05 PM UTC
one is in a constant state of reinvention,
molting,
feathers in cascade,
barely hiding ****** and birthmark,
no such garment exists.
one is constantly healing itself.
save for other days,
when direct sun poses no more threat.
eyes fixed to a middle distance,
where one sits shiva,
avoiding the partial gaze of mirrors,
windows through which one may edit,
very slowly, to draw out its best features,
ignoring revulsion and inequity found throughout.
one lives each day worth half of its potential,
other halves wasted,
excess fruit flesh clinging to rind.
one faces itself,
and sees not oneself,
but the ones that entered, paused in unity, and left,
one should not see exits where there are none.
Jul 27, 2013
Jul 27, 2013 at 2:27 PM UTC
This home that is my body
is haunted by the demons
sleeping soundly in my head
My veins pulse in cadence
to the dreams in my mind
Memories of darker days
Nightmares peeling my skin
baring my desolate soul
before my own jaded eyes
My spirit dormant in this life
I walk like a ghost in the night
Spent like my withered bones
Alone in the mass of people
And like the molting cicada
I am the hollow shell
With lungs filled with dust
A heart keeping me standing
while i’m falling inside myself
waiting for the next breath
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 29, 2016 at 10:34 AM UTC
She moans and he writhes
and they shiver on the ground,
Minds reeling through 911 tapes and sirens blaring
and blue-red lights glaring, and mothers screaming
and lovers leaping and parents weeping and
children seething.
Their minds are at war,
every tremor a quake,
every shudder a shake;
They start molting like snakes,
shedding pieces and flakes
of themselves, their identity
their strength and serenity;
become anonymity, silently, frighteningly,
Til nothing is left
but raw red meat
that bleeds straight through the streets.
It's oozing and thawing,
more alive than a drawing,
But much too alive, just wanting to hide,
and melt into nothing under the hot sun,
and be laid to rest with the shot of a gun.
Apr 21, 2011
Apr 21, 2011 at 1:24 PM UTC