"mural" poems
six lanes
in a sight line
past the cedar shims
and trim tempered insert
past the washed mural
and water stained tiles
covered eyes
fight for focus
over cork strung ties
and dark distant bridges
foot crawlers on lemon pegs
teaming
under clouded halogen light
dreamers contend
in a variation of chant
(throwing it off in a
drawl sequence)
a glimpse of the guard
and warm towel assignment
forge comforting relief
in a task filled day
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 9:17 PM UTC
Every blue patch on the sky keeps an eye,
cherishing clouds dancing, hovering over.
The songs of deep blue ride the heady air,
only to be stunned, all of a sudden,
at the first sight—
sung down on a perfectly placed mural.
The Queen of Sheba tiptoes this way;
King Solomon leans to the ground,
only to find seas of silent blooms
musing, dipping in sun-kissed dews—
on gently tilted roses that will not fall,
not from this picture-perfect, navel-high!
Velvety, the rose rises from the ground;
the forever-green Earth hangs low,
in the dew on the rose that will not fall.
Blossoming, eyeing an acute high,
evermore hopeful to scale upward,
toward the faraway, awaiting heaven's pool.
There, the spotlight does not move—
neither north nor south, nor up nor down—
until Queen Fathima, the Queen of Heaven,
steps on the "as above, so below" slope.
There, the newly resurrected Earth will be primed,
its minted atoms vibrating beyond bounds,
rising, for the first time, atop the navel-high.
Perfectly wrapped, the atom's circle finally turns on—
the stepping stone that holds no pi-decimal hole.
Pure Scientia hangs on the door of Paradise,
awaiting the numerically perfect Queen Fathima to step.
God willing, she will work in beauty:
the most sought-after, perfect works of art—
the lost masterpiece, not in translation,
but hidden within the pi-decimal abyss of Earth's depth.
Lo, the gleaning Sleeping Beauty peeps,
trailing the role model Queen.
Fathima—the first woman to enter Paradise—
walks the walk: perfect, straight, numerically precise.
As if she always knew, back from the Earth,
of the murals ahead, hanging on Paradise’s wall,
mathematically exact!
Mirrors of imagination, new wonders on Heaven’s way,
etched in the murals at the golden section, navel-high.
She zooms past the ever-spinning atom’s perfect span,
cemented at the entrance of Paradise.
Yet leaves no footprint—
for she never did, even on the sublunary Earth.
A new wonder blooms in the classic old eyes:
oh, Pi, still irrational, still pondering,
at the measured, eternal navel-high!
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 5:02 PM UTC
A sprinkle of blue sparkle
off the lapis lazuli sky.
A throw of stars
from the full moon night.
We will take in abundance
while rowing the waves
once in the River Nile.
Hear! The crave of oars
breaching the shore.
Reaching out and close
to the pyramid foundation.
That’s scientia is pure rigid
yet so open loose.
One dozen milky ways
can hover in rhythm
over this stony knot!
That doesn’t mean
the Mintaka stars will give
up their shares at all
They will sit on the top.
Without the pyramid moving
a step from the true north.
Between this relative sublunary
and over the moon mural
if and when one spaces up.
The silent Moon takes a pause
humming the prehistoric lullabies.
With a patch of the blue sky
and a starry sprinkle from the night.
Maybe then we will take a break in
behind the closed doors of the great pyramid!
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 9:40 AM UTC
Tongue in cheek I detest you
Hand over foot
Make a peep *****
And I promise I'll ****** you
Bad tact I'm a cesspool
Festering in the nestle of your daughter's
well developing *******
Everyday I follow her home from school
This unnerving pervert unearthing fervor
making ya catatonic &
giving your heart murmurs
Nurture the thought
It's just the tip
(Of the iceberg)
Gotta stir the paint before you make a mural
Ma'am, I'll purloin your ham purse until my burial
Don't be a sourpuss
It's final
I'm vile
And I swear I'm not a *********
Want some candy?
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 7:23 AM UTC
Im watching over them...those freaks and perverted beast...the dark flesh that owns the land..I save them from there doom...keep them out those tombs...my job is to protect the sick...as I sit...I glimpse and I see a ray of hope...
Purity...from the ***** of my imperfection...I began to be aroused...thought about swooping down, in a single bound..being so cliche'..but I've since grown from my stereotypical ways....Cuz this world here ain't kind to no hero..this worlds only sin painted in a mural...But she could be the one...my chance to save the day!!...But they wanna **** the hero...they say **** the hero....Try to save the hoes...but I think I save a woman...kryptonite to my sins...She could be the cleanse...I could actually win...
-Dairy of a ****** superhero.
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 9:14 AM UTC
Venezia, its musical key of brick and shade
And the canals in rejoining polyphony
Sweeten the dour Church-ear.
From the impasto knife and loose brushwork,
A thumb-smear of waves and gently-bristled strife
Rise to assumption of the cloud-submerged bay,
Mural of cristallo, only-light without landscape,
Made too from the winds of Murano,
Its clayed blowpipe of waterways molding
The lagoon of blown glass and bouquet of colored sea-shadows.
The Tiber lies on its side, like the lion and fox,
Licking its paws at empire’s dust,
A drifting gaze of water that already foresees
The swift-run northward to Romagna,
Where the veined fur of the roe will succumb…
A ripple twitches like one dark claw of the Borgia…
The watercolors of the Arno are a fresco
On the wet plaster of the lips of Firenze, Tuscan fire-dream.
Or like the warring leg in curve of counterpoise,
Sprung foot-forward to the daring world
And arm slung down in stone-victory
From this valley, too much like Elah,
With taunting eyes turned from the Medici toward Rome.
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 10:06 AM UTC
Oh, sad Poet,
cartographer
of the heart,
mapping the geography
where sadness
is the topography
of your soul.
Oh, Cousteau
of the changing tides,
like an oceanographer,
an admiral spying
the enemy on the horizon.
Your sorrow comes and goes.
Oh, builder of sad dreams
in your house of many rooms,
but one door. Like a grave,
a casket shellacked with
black paint, a mural
of a shadow on the wall.
Architectural sorrow.
Oh, you sad Poet,
open your eyes,
paint us a poem of a rose.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 7:17 AM UTC
The slit between the roof and the abandoned house gets me—the moon drowns in his own mystical clouds, wavering and so full of light.
I squint my eyes as the moon hides his presence from me. Almost knowing I had captured it with my own eyes and the grey clouds scattered like waves, consuming my breath and taking it away.
He knows it still haunts me from time to time and he gave his best to give me an embrace—even when my very own existence is running cold and dry and my breath thickens with the mist of unwavering thoughts coming from the night and the stars twinkle at the sight of people looking at them—like a mirrorball entertaining strangers from the club and they shine in their spot. Even when I close my eyes, the moon peaks in its stillness. All the poets used him as their muse, radiating this mellow one could think of when the sun sleeps in her slumber. The poets had perfectly described him in thousands of words and painted him over the mural where I can see him directly and the strangeness of him calms the raging waters in me.
Even when peace is quite chaotic and chaos is peaceful, a trap between the slit on the roof and the abandoned house, squinting my eyes as the moon hides his presence from me. And she haunts me as the sun begins to show herself in ways I am blinded by her light.
In some ways, she shines even when it is night.
In a way, she looks over the moon when he wakes up from his slumber.
In a way, the stars and clouds enveloped her with the warmness of their breath.
In some ways, I couldn’t look at her for too long.
In some ways, I am silenced by her beauty.
Dec 16, 2022
Dec 16, 2022 at 7:43 PM UTC
If that night could remember
it would call him back
to our Chinese restaurant
to fried rice and steaming tea
to our winter refuge of tile and cushions
60s retro black and white
Chrome legs of lacquered tables
with its mural of
our Great Wall
...winding, distant, wonder
If the snow hadn't muffled all
but our voices
we would not be—
so alone
Only I
felt his arm take its chance
around my shoulder
Guiding warmth
as good excuse as any
to touch
Two miles on foot
An arc in time
In lace of white
to hide— what might....
Below my window
“Good Night”
not enough
for troubadour
singing, pleading, stumbling...
(I worry about his long way home)
...and hardly notice...
How gently Time joins Snow
as if they cannot bare
instead, conspire
Decide the crystals
Send the flakes to sift over him
This loss needs snow
to blur his face
to fade from view....
This— tender let-down from the sky
As only snow can do...
Cover with beauty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o6zMPLcXZ8
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 10:39 PM UTC
I want to tell her
But i can't.
I watch the spring rain fall.
A gentle tapping,
Sort of rapping
On the window's pane.
I focus on the sound until it fades.
I close my eyes and remember the day,
The scene is painted in a greyscale haze.
There stands you
Across the room
Enveloped in blue.
Your favorite colour.
It's late on that late winter's night,
And we're with our group.
If I said I knew who was there
I would be lying
Because it was you I was eyeing.
I'll skip the cliches, like
Butterflies
Or, better yet,
"Love at first sight"
Be as they may,
They all came true that night.
A casual glance became
A gaze became
A smile.
Once,
Twice,
Thrice,
Then Five,
We held it for a while.
I take a drink and pause the haze.
Minutes become hours that drag on for miles
We found ourselves in that grassy field
Dotted with trees,
And rabbits,
And owls.
A hot summer day-
The south suffers waves.
Hand in hand we make our way
Through the trail.
We fall behind our friends,
There's something I have to tell.
I stumble and fumble
Through letters to string,
I can't think of what to say.
And you say it's okay.
I smile and hold you close,
A mixed sense of pleasure morose.
Your lips touch mine,
And my heart explodes.
I can't believe we let each other go
We became 'twixt,
Ivy to our bones.
Again
Time lapses
There I am standing
There you are
Hanging
On him.
My rage demanding
His end.
But you come between
Deny instead.
Say I'm not right in the head,
Well, baby,
Love killed me dead.
I turn to walk away
And in turn you turn to
Return to he
Who shook your leaves.
So we've parted ways
And all was well
Until recently.
When I examined
A mural
And saw I missed a shard.
A blue tile
The final part
To my stain-glassed heart.
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 11:34 PM UTC
Don’t cry for me
enough tears have been shed
an ocean filled
with the salt of regret
the pains of my past
can’t ruin you too
the tide is coming
just not for you…
Don’t carry my pain
you have your own
no one needs
the weight of two worlds
you’re still standing
I’m learning to carry
my burdens and traumas
enough for a century…
Don’t focus on me
that’s my job alone
I’m painting my mural
yours already on the wall
you need your energy
I’m finding my power…
Don’t let my pain
let you devour.
Feb 22, 2025
Feb 22, 2025 at 3:03 AM UTC
We are all mere dots in this vast mural:
too fickle and futile
to comprehend the complexities
of existing
where
everything is part of
a design so grand
that it stretches
before and beyond eternity,
a design so intricate
that it weaves together
strangers' destinies
and where
nothing is
contingent and coincidental
nothing is
random and accidental
nothing is
ever
too early or too late.
But
don't just use this as an excuse
to settle in your unfortunate state
because though everything is part
of this grand plan ordained,
our ultimate destiny
is to be something great.
Mar 27, 2014
Mar 27, 2014 at 7:42 AM UTC
Look at us, I'm carrying a basket made of trash
and you're carrying a mouse, well
the dog chewed up your glasses
but you're still rockin it
you have a single drop of coffee on your nose,
we're ready to go to D.C.
I had another where-are-we moment, it was fun.
Good, that's downtown Baltimore right there,
****** capital of the world.
An elaborate mural graffiti.
Wall after brick wall.
A rustbelt city like Grand Rapids
Detroit Cincinnati.
Did you sleep well?
Yes I woke up feeling like a clam in a cocoon.
A sea creature inside of a forest insect, okay.
I've wasted too much time on both desire and regret.
Yellow bridge.
Blue-green supports.
Singer on the radio saying, we're young right now.
There's a healthy and an unhealthy way of dealing with pain,
I'm sorry for my selfish behavior in the islands.
I want to go back and leave a better legacy.
'Word.'
Last night to come see you I drove I-95 N, the overpass
and though the rest of the city was really moving
I was all alone up there, it was like
driving in the sky.
We pass signs saying: Icy Conditions:
bridges and ramps freeze first.
And a billboard: Learning Kick Flips
Takes Work, So Does College
We listen to our favorite island song:
love the islands, love the islands, oh.
You look like a rasta snowboarder girl
There's something really right
about having you in this car
Mar 26, 2013
Mar 26, 2013 at 1:31 PM UTC
Nine months after I was born, the Twentieth Century began to collapse.
East Berlin,graffiti-mural concrete, a jutted enigma scratched
on ordinance maps, the sort found
landscaping westernized Primary School walls.
Where within, labored in real time, the television told my parents
(and everyone else given to social conservation in 1989) that a wall falling down
would bring an end to the gap between the working and the working poor.
Freedom waited for many on the other side.
But of course, History draws up different plans.
Never content to just go out with a bash, or to
fleetingly drift by leaving
in its absence an underwhelmed lull
The bloodiest century yet
left the new world entrenched
in an odyssey of hatreds
handed down from the past
right about the time human suffering became a bit dull
and the peaceful countries were too busy
tripling their money instead.
What does History really teach us and what are the real benefits
of being free, or freer than you were before?
Human ambition, which burns it way out of any oasis of calm,
which calls children out of sleeping in the night
Always seeks out the exhaustible
An inveterate Black sheep leading astray
the ever susceptible ****** lamb
Delusion’s strange bedfellows are the worthiest adversaries
to run away from, to reserve contrition for.
Unlike the inevitability of uprooted animal migration
during a monsoon swell
Can a people with an invested addiction
to the pursuit of happiness
Ever truly be prepared
for the inevitability of rapid change?
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 6:00 PM UTC
These grey walls
That lost their souls
Are soon to be resurrected
By a new kind of art that’s been neglected.
Bring in the color,
Let’s have fun
Change the mural,
Make is shine!
Many might be against it,
Call it fake,
Or even junk,
But for me guys,
This is… art.
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 4:04 PM UTC
Motion makes me homesick, home makes me motion-sick.
I've seen some **** you wouldn't believe in the past month of my young life
I'm happy.
Makes me want more.
I want Guatemala
I want Nepal
I want the States by trains and motorcycles.
I want to make something tall enough to shake hands with god and strong enough to last to the ends of the earth
Or longer.
I want to give the world back all I've taken from it and all the damage I've done.
And then I want to do more.
I want to start a revolution,
live on a farm,
paint a mural,
play a symphony,
shake hands with the Dalai Lama,
write a book,
and be home in time for dinner.
I want to fold a thousand and one oragami cranes and set them free from space and while they float down to Mauritania and Portugal, to Argentina and Cambodia
I want to wish for a reset button.
Not to use right away, but just in case **** gets out of hand.
So we've got a backup plan.
I want to sit in my old age looking down that darkened tunnel and see my own birth pass before my eyes.
I want to embrace infinity without soreness or shortcomings,
without excuses or refusals
I want to watch the universe collapse back in on itself and be part of everything at once.
I want more than I can handle.
I guess that means I'm young.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 1:28 AM UTC
I wish I could give you people something of substance
But the fact of the matter is I just feel so uninspired
And that leaves me to think,
What the hell happened to this world?
There should never be a moment
In any poets life where they can't draw some inspiration
where they can't paint the sky burnt orange on a snowy day
With their words as a brush
With our words as a brush
And All of our stories as our color palate
I think we could paint the universe together
In a fantastic mural of culture, and love
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 8:36 AM UTC
~
*When Pharaoh
checked out at the Red Sea,
odd circumstance made a grab for his vacant scepter,
and kingdom collided
with plague to paint a mural
on the palace wall (or maybe, it was the hotel lobby),
of a dreamer's garden,
his wife in veils, her dance a cordial
invitation to a great many unmentionable things,
the feral sky had blown
itself out, and in muted candle
nightshade, the mistress of war disembarked,
and so somewhere
in those upper rooms, ruler
and consort, hearing the sound of running water,
mystified their carnal
senses by infusing themselves
with a little vigorous morphine of the soul*
~
Jul 26, 2021
Jul 26, 2021 at 2:45 PM UTC
On this frosty morning
the dew-jewelled shimmering grass
calls me to immortalise my naked footprints
on its sparkling green carpet.
The mural needs to be perfect,
it says!
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 10:03 AM UTC
~
*Step into the moment
with bated breath,
There will come
the beguilement
and whispered shadows at play,
they seem to congeal around
conflagration of wills
and spirits considered outré.
And if it should rain
within these walls,
we'll advance south and sneak
under cover.
Fingers will find,
lips will linger and remind.
It will be a slow
recovery this time.
The places we travel go beyond
the arms reach,
they war for supremacy,
they alter and spasm,
they're random, but hover
between us in unity.
This dance we make
is an intimate ballet,
this push and pull
a blissful menagerie,
a wrinkle in time
we call ecstasy.
In kisses christened as luminaries,
appointing our own ceiling
— a mural painted in the keen
colors of craving.
The years of such sweet communion
have built this shelter, this nest,
and here together we rest.
And we are no less surrendering
to them than straddling the heavens
— the gauze of time,
timber and tranquility enmeshed,
and wishing it never ends.*
~
May 24, 2021
May 24, 2021 at 1:54 PM UTC
My eyelids paint a different shade of paradise each morning.
Forced to make a mural of the world I was born in.
Your barren brown and battered blue,
Are only beautiful to those you matter to.
The clouds, in their grey suits, had promised you greener pastures.
We could've taken better care of you, if only you'd asked us.
You're inanimate by definition,
To me you're the only thing truly living.
We're sorry for trashing the house as if it was our own.
We'll clean it up before dad comes home.
All this destruction is something I can do without.
Sorry mom, I'm moving out.
Oct 29, 2015
Oct 29, 2015 at 3:21 AM UTC
thinking about how cops are beating protestors senseless not even 20 minutes from where i live.
thinking about how they block off the streets and stand unmasked, batons in hand, other hand resting pointedly on their gun.
thinking about how it could be me next— another unspecified black face and black body and black existence snuffed out— a hashtag, a mural.
(and those are the lucky ones.)
thinking about how a memorial is the best case scenario for a black life.
thinking about the bodies in the street.
thinking about blood splattering the ground, mixing with paint and obscuring the “black lives matter” lettering on the road.
thinking about the chalk art and loud music in a neighborhood soon-to-be-gentrified.
thinking about how we’ve grown used to the stench of rotting flesh outside our doors.
thinking about the taste of blood in my mouth from my nearly-severed tongue i didn’t realize i was biting.
thinking about the tension in my neck and jaw.
thinking about the way my eyes never seem to close.
thinking about the eyes that will never again open.
thinking thinking thinking.
Sep 27, 2020
Sep 27, 2020 at 4:27 PM UTC
a nacreous tossing around at
the sides, a dappled silver
sunlight if looked one way, an
apocalyptic gloam if another,
exhaled from a seeming
mouth, feeding on what has
already eviscerated an unfelt
***** a predator certainly its
own prey, a heat certainly
poison-breath on a cheek
falling when a meretricious
lover spouts that spurious
hypocorism, and also just a
wavering, iridescent puddle—
cornered, soft as a liquid steel
echo of a futile struggle
rolling around, bouncing off
a wine glass, and a porcelain
table edge, while a listening
head shakes, looks down
despondently, gloom glowing
out the hair, a voice jaded
since birth saying some
thing about differences, or a
helpless slender strap of hope
hanging itself on the way two
other eyes look at it across
checkered watered wings, two
swirling god whorls, two
effulgent galaxies the color of
melting pine bole circling
around in living umber striae,
pulling its gaze, raising it, as if
they, they were blazing truth
cased behind lithophane, and it,
only an aporetic puddle now
of tepid ocher, a mild earth
stone placed in a hand, asked
what is thought of it and the
response: yes, yes of course,
before foreign distance splutters
its face, and it retreats from
its meaning imparted to every
thing (with the vulnerable
precision of a swaying finger
tip) to the baby lanugo of a
delicate floating, through
human rills, of what is horizon
docked, dead, not merely
deciduous—forever jilted with
breath bulging as when beating
a flopping eyeless fish to
half-dead, head tilted up a
throat trying to pry itself
free, trying to live by
streaming snagless, airful,
without spirant sound of going
lost straight from the hands—
then a short chop of fullness
finally expunged and sputtering
like an escaped tuft of
shackled wonder soaring up
the sky in a puff and soul ring.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:43 PM UTC
you look so good
like a goddess
where's the courage to tell you?
do
I know the right words?
An innocence of love like
a bird in the sky,
in its cerulean heaven,
all its purity
untainted.
all the painters in the world
using all their colors
like ravens and vultures,
and the advertisers
using maroon and crimson
like doves and love,
they just don't know.
How you look in a snapshot,
is better than a mural.
I hate that we can't talk any more,
seems decrepit, I'm so poor,
spoiled by the gift of your lost love,
like a pearl in my mouth,
every gulp of the sea
is a tearjerker.
All I want is love and affection
from the eden of your love,
the juice of your apple
a knowledge
only concerning to gods.
The seed of your body,
a peachtree paradise,
each pod dropping to the body of my death,
like the shroud of renewal.
Each new picture of you:
the destruction of your youth,
and the eruption of your wonderland,
is another nail,
another regretful wish
that I'd seen and understood
everything beautiful about you.
Even in the moontide hours,
when the dawn brawled
and your teeth crawled against the loose skin of my earlobes
as you gripped with pearly whites
my lying flesh,
and my lips touched every truth you'd never known.
Only god could ever know the pain of now.
Only I could ever wish I knew your heaven.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
An original creation, that's what you are
in vibrant colors nature carefully assembled,
as you sashayed through your time,till here
now all across the front page one can see you
arousing pleasure that moves me deeply,
done in bold sweeps of a brush immersed in joy
making onlookers stand agape, thrilled
mumbling inanities as none has the grasp
of the quicksilver aesthetics that rules you.
And I, obscure , at the best like a crop circle
done in the secret hours after midnight,
or a cryptic mural on a dull wall, long past it's prime
doodled by an interplanetary traveler gone astray,
a drawing in grey fading slowly in to oblivion,
yet to be deciphered is the benediction,
it carries from light years far away,
it will be gone soon as the light from galaxies far
want to make it their own, little by little each night
Am I not transient and to be forgotten soon?
But you are steadfast and adamant
very rooted in your reasoning
sprung from a center devine, we both
claim together.
"Am I not a woman and lover first?"
Your eyes, gleam, exuding a timelessness that speaks to me.
"I would only dream of lying naked under your
sweet heaving heaviness, to receive the nectar,
the transient ecstasy that gifts me the precious seed
that'd grow to heights immortal,on the bank of the milky way"
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 11:37 AM UTC