"needles" poems
Nan,
I wrote this poem for you to keep
As you lie peacefully asleep
To share the stories you once told
Sat in your chair growing peacefully old
I will always remember those days
When I sat up to the table studying the maze
Of thousands of puzzle pieces in my gaze
However I was never fazed
Because you were always there to guide the way.
I will always remember your trips out and about
Although never adventurous I felt,
McDonald's and M&s; without doubt,
Were you favourite places to walkabout
I will always remember your creative flare,
Your knitting needles and you cross-stitch squares,
how you could sit and chat, yet knit with care
Always seemed so unfair
But most of all, I wrote this poem to say thankyou
Not just from me but from all the family too
For the wisdom and knowledge you once shared
For showing you loved us and that you cared
I wrote this poem to say goodbye
As you watch us from up high
I remember all the fun times we had
As my friend and as my Nan
And I miss you more than words can say
I hope we can meet again someday
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 5:37 PM UTC
Oh! There it is!
The blood of my Mothers’
Sins
Blossoming on
My white sheets
Like a bouquet of English roses.
A shame -
Laundry day had
Been yesterday.
My thighs have been painted
Rouge -
They blush
Like my cheeks
When my gaze
Lingers on my body
Too long in the mirror
As I put on my Sunday dress.
The needles in my
Lower back fill my
****** with blood -
I am a woman now -
And as such I must
Wake before the sun
And wash my sheets
And my body
Before anyone has a chance
To smell the iron and the shame
Between my legs.
I have never been so
Acutely aware of my body:
My sore ******* feel like
Overripe tomatoes ready to burst,
My stomach bloated and taking up
Space I’m told is not ladylike -
My head throbs, my limbs ache, and
I continue to shed my insides.
How is it I never noticed
The cry of my body before?
A week of blood
Before I have served my sentence
For a woman
Who dared to disobey -
I clean the stains
And wash myself
Away.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 2:32 AM UTC
You used to tell me that beautiful things come from pain and adversity.
Like motherhood, unconditional love, and true stories.
As I stood in the middle of a room painted white,
Staring at the remains of rolling hills burned to black,
I saw you staring back at me.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Shining against your bones
Velvet black
You’ve changed
And changed and changed
Yet your love still remains
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Whiskers are the needles on a compass
Always pointing to the azure sky
You used to sing when I cried
Rolling your r’s over rrolling hills
A haunting melody startling black birds into the night
Feathered constellations against a sliver moon
And lips pressed to my salty cheeks
You told me that your favorite skin tone was chocolate,
As you laid out in the sun hoping to melt. “A quarter black” is what you say when you want to feel proud,
Even as you tell me stories of how your mother was called negrita,
The girl who stood too dark amongst the crowd.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Black like the broken wings of mothers before you
Who had hands with scars from cotton seeds
And blue veins like uprooted trees
Stretching all the way to their tired knees
Burnt fields like black panther fur
You criticize your aging beauty
Speaking in envy of the color gold
Like you are a broken bowl in need of kintsugi
Yet silver snakes still slither
Over the pebbled river beds of your black curls
Dripping down the small of your back
Until they reach the base of your ivory spine
Burnt fields like black panther fur
You criticize your aging beauty
Because you never thought
Cocoa lips and sun spots painted on sculpted clay that never cracks
Could ever look as stunning as it does on you
You told me that it is better to speak my truth then tell pretty lies.
So I told you mine and you cried,
And cried and cried.
But look where we are now,
Standing beside each other with the same eyes,
Just different reflections.
Burnt fields like black panther fur
Tongue like a sword set ablaze
Tempered in pools of milk and honey
Blood red sun grazing the tops of your eyelids
Still reminiscent of those in old photographs
Where you saw the little girl you search for in me
Burnt fields like black panther fur
I am sorry I made you cry
But even when our backs are turned
We are still
Black birds singing in the dead of night
Free
Thank you mama for my broken wings.
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 3:11 PM UTC
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly
Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.
Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.
Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,
Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,
Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We
Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking
Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!
We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,
Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:
We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
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I.
I’ve swallowed too many I love you’s
to be afraid of coughing up blood.
They cut you on secret.
Who knew it was drinking gasoline
and sawdust and every little inflammable thing
and then sitting down cross-legged
in the heart of a howitzer; soft.
II.
You are a soft explosion.
You are streaks of a rebel orange
in a sky that is supposed to be blue.
You are steel rods in the curve of my spine,
holding me straight.
III.
I love you’s are like death notes written in ash:
you’ll have to smoke your way to it.
Smoke cigarettes, journals, curtains,
and yourself to get that much ash in your lungs;
trying to blow smoke rings into your finger;
my ceiling knows more about my sadness than you do.
IV.
Saying an I love you once will have you
chanting “don’t leave me” on a rosary;
love will take your bones and leave you
lusting for somebody whose back
is the last thing you’ll see, and whose
skin you’ll think you left your keys in:
and now you’ve locked yourself out
of your own house, in a storm
whose sirens wail in your ears and remind
you, you’re hopeless and homeless.
V.
I love you’s leave no exit wounds,
no shell casings, and when the time comes
you’ll be telling them all how his bullet
ricochets in your ribs,
but emotion never made up for evidence
in the court of settlements for a broken heart.
VI.
Telling someone you love them is like cutting your jugular
and not expecting to bleed out.
VII.
I love you like the pages of a mad girl’s journal.
VIII.
The moon turns from an ally
to the haunting image of science and realisation:
you share the same sky, but no longer the same bed.
And astronomy keeps ******** you over
when you look up at the sky
and no longer understand constellations.
IX.
Love makes it more getting-back-at-you
than getting-back-together-with-you.
X.
Every time you taste blood,
you’ll know you kissed somebody
with teeth like needles
and they cut you everywhere; they
bit you, they bit you, they bit you
and you kept letting them.
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 10:29 PM UTC
The photos were leaked today
They were of a **** woman with brown skin
Love making as she stared straight into the lenses
I was showed by a man who did not know how to react once I had been shown
My reaction was not shock
I merely stated "That's baad"
I did not know how to react to the staunch cyber-bully who was sure he was doing himself a justice by being so open about his anger at the naked, brown, humiliated, naked, shamed, beautiful
I am shamed by his shaming
I am naked by his **********
I am beautiful by myself sometimes
Sometimes I take the tape off my camera and position it near my bloom
I am not alone in this activity and yet I feel alone in an intimate situation, feel less alone, in a private situation.
Sometimes I work it so that every part of my dark lips are shadowed and my fingers seem to work for a living rather than play
My body is not a string
It is a temple of dark things
It is a ossuary filled with the dust of former lives
It is not to be dangled for cats for play
It has no puppet hands
Or puppet face
It smiles because it sees you smile
And she frowns when she sees you laugh
It is alive
The misfortune you hope her body will bring her is shame
I hope it will bring other people enlightenment
The fault is not in her
The fault is in the malicious, villainous, caricature of man who is hallow and made of maddening bells
Every time you disturb him he rings in announcement "This lady I had once an intimate relationship and she abused me. Here is her punishment."
We are all cavernous tunnels with lights to shoot out of the pins and needles sensational feelings we do not desire this but we must desire to be freed from being owned by this
We all think we're exempted from shame until we are ashamed
There are no exemptions, only more bells
They ring, until background noise renders them obsolete to us
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 10:43 AM UTC
It’s all you’ve ever seen
in a midnight’s dream
the zero sum games
and exorcised demons
asinine plunges
on tunkwa brides
phantom fingers cradling
the ragged red dress
shadow hands
clasp at the floodgates
lava fields boil
through scorched amber veins
needles pierce
the look out
where flames dance wildly
over boneyard grounds
deep red pedestals
behind bleeding walls
empty halls and doorways
throughout the sinful nest
bulging eyes and blood rush
in a dark crimson sky
a funeral, before I die
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 2:14 PM UTC
I can be a sadist
I can be a ****
I enjoy a bit of pain
I'm often filled with lust
I want to be the Top
and to be topped too
I'd love to tie you up
or to be tied by you
Push the right button
and I'll be your subby
or grant to me control
I may lock you in the cubby
Stick me full of needles
or I'll put some in you
zap me with electricity
I may pass the current through
Whip me, flog me, spank me
I too can you impact
I'm happy to do whatever
and that's a ***** fact
I can be anything for anyone
pretty much more or less
it all depends on circumstance
and on what you confess
So let's stop prevaricating
and get on with the fun
let me know where and when
and which way round you run
Cynthia Pauline Jones 25/10/13
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 5:24 AM UTC
Perhaps the earth is floating,
I do not know.
Perhaps the stars are little paper cutups
made by some giant scissors,
I do not know.
Perhaps the moon is a frozen tear,
I do not know.
Perhaps God is only a deep voice
heard by the deaf,
I do not know.
Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the tablet of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.
There is an animal inside me,
clutiching fast to my heart,
a huge carb.
The doctors of Boston
have thrown up their hands.
They have tried scalpels,
needles, poison gasses adn the like.
The crab remains.
It is a great weight.
I try to forget it, go about my business,
cook the broccoli, open the shut books,
brush my teeth and tie my shoes.
I have tried prayer
but as I pray the crab grips harder
and the pain enlarges.
I had a dream once,
perhaps it was a dream,
that the crab was my ignorance of God.
But who am I to believe in dreams?
14.1k
I got a tattoo last night
Did it myself, all needles and ink
Sterile like the bathroom floor
And wet rags dyed black and pink
It was a little picture of a house
Sitting on top of my left hip
Pinpricks of ink pushed into my skin
And not once did I let the needle slip
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 1:15 PM UTC
All strung
out
on
sadness,
empty shells
of needles
that injected
the next defense
to keep me going
splayed upon
the coldness
of metal
somewhere in a place
lower than
the floorboards
of the nether regions
of a private hell,
where no one sees
the truth behind
the doors of
beaten swords
of silken pictures
in frothy shades
of effervescent green
a smiling happy family
in which the
sounds of drowning
can only be
vaguely heard
a faded gurgle
in an ocean of sighs
Somewhere, there,
the pain in my veins
spreads like
a self-administered
drug
only it's not
my prescription, at all
just a parody
from the very
sick doctor
who shares
this house,
meant to
be a home
one who thinks
he knows it all
but knows nothing
In this dreamlike weaving
of staring blankly
into alternative spaces
when all is so heavy
that even breathing is a task
I suddenly remember
who the **** I am
and push my gaze through
the ceiling cracks
to look up at
the stars,
receiving their
shadows
of light
like a blessing
upon my
nettle-stung
tongue
and
rise
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 5:27 PM UTC
Lefty , I can't imagine how he got his name
Always did things backwards . . . so . . . . .
I was not surprised when he up and went away
Never said why , when , or where he had to go
Now he is growing old where as they say
"Only God Knows"
What are clouds anyway ?
Water vapor in the sky ?
I think it is so much more
I think they are recycled tears
Of every broken heart that ever be
Falling to a desert below
My cactus flower
Blooming in the night
So none will see
She keeps her love close
Protected by her needles
I sit and watch her bloom
And before the sun has begun
I leave looking for lefty
And the reasons I quit
Are the excuses I choose
Between the desert and the sea
Where the cause will be
Clouds keep winking at me
The circle is broken into pieces
I speak in deserts of sand
Drown in seas of lingering waves of pain
And I have no clue where lefty went
Only remember a cactus flower blooming
Without the thorns between the two
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 4:28 PM UTC
Waiting all alone
waiting on this cold table
waiting for the doctors and the drones
I feel the scratch
of the itchy cotton gown
on the narrows of my back
as it climbs up and down
Displayed I lye on the medical tables hard cold steel
It seers into the crevices of my bones
I ponder the lone window and wonder if it's real
I listen for the bleep and bloop of medical tones
Nurses walk by in a mechanical grace
poke and **** & tap and touch my face
and then proceed to leave without a trace
with no hint of knowledge of my medical case
Waiting all alone
waiting on this cold table
waiting for the doctors and the drones
I'm a big girl, I'm a big girl
I begin to chant in a simple rhythm
as small as a ball I begin to curl
I'm abandoned inside this glassy prism
The dead silence creeps inside my brain
I want to scream to fill the deadly gap
but the cold thick air of silence brings pain
I comfort myself and say it will be ok
My breathing begins to quicken
my eyes dart around the room
only comfort is the fear which I am stricken
my sight goes bleary as darkness looms
Waiting all alone
waiting on this cold table
waiting for the doctors and the drones
Tears sting the corner of my eyes
I want someone to hold my hand
Oh God how I want to cry
but the only thing there is the bleeding arm band
The test begins with the thickness of barium
It slides down my throat and clings to my esophagus
It tastes like chalk and pandemonium
they want me to suffocate I guess
I chug and chug as the pictures are snapped
x-ray upon x-ray of my stomach and my back
Drink more Drink more They tell me to do
Nervously I shake and say, anymore and I will puke on you
Waiting all alone
waiting on this cold table
waiting for the doctors and the drones
Even more poking and prodding ensues
but of my stomach, ribs and *******
I lay rigid as a board from the pain of each touch
I grow weary of this tiresome rues
The tests are done
and the coast is clear
I am left alone
to dress myself in fear
Dismissed and discharged to walk away
they file my chart with a robotic smile
now for the wait of endless days
I'm lost in my mind's land of emotional exile
Waiting all alone
waiting on this cold table
waiting for the doctors and the drones
Pins & Needles Pins & Needles
I wait for the results
Is it stomach cancer, an ulcer or both??
In the dark I am kept like followers in cults.
Nov 2, 2010
Nov 2, 2010 at 2:34 PM UTC
I laid my body on the tall grass.
She wrapped me in a rustle of green.
I closed my eyes in the shadow of a tall pine,
curling up so the pain wouldn’t spill beyond my heart.
Consciousness sinks into nothingness.
I feel the particles of my “self”
breaking into a million molecules.
I flow through the grass and seep into the earth.
Now my body puts down roots,
nestling against the pine that weeps with resin.
My emotions pass through the trunk of the tree.
The thread of memories is a long earthworm,
crawling through the empty
corridors where once blood pulsed.
White bones remain still,
slowly dissolving into the vessel of eternal life:
Earth, water, air, lost particles of light,
and my longing for the final union.
Doubts hollow a chamber,
soft and warm – my new home.
When my dream ends,
I will dwell in it.
Now I am the pine.
My needles, bark, and resin
radiate invisible light
for this space, for this world.
Yes, I was once human.
Aug 17, 2025
Aug 17, 2025 at 8:16 PM UTC
She left Reno
in a satin slip
the color of hot coins
pouring from slots,
wearing chewed-up tennis shoes,
mirrors multiplying her,
the marquee burning out
letter by letter,
a hush pressed between her teeth
as if saving the last note.
I followed,
a gangly shadow,
mother’s voice in my ear:
"life is not a freeway exit."
But she was the exit.
She drove west
through a glittering throat.
In Tonopah she was a waitress,
red stains on her wrists,
sleeves tugged low,
coffee pouring thin as blood.
In Barstow she was a sun-bleached Madonna,
halo blistered, mouth lit in stained glass.
At a gas station in Needles
shimmering into a coyote’s shadow
and slipped behind the pumps.
Then movement along the fence,
low, quick—
gone again.
Casinos blinked like electric relics.
Truckers called her sugar,
greedy hands counting her ribs
as if she was the paycheck
sweating in their fist,
but she slipped away each time,
her silhouette already moulting-
a serpent skin, a smoke-trail,
a saint’s shadow burning off the wall.
By Malibu, the night
had softened to velvet.
The pier at Zuma
leaned into the Pacific
like a broken bridge.
She sang to me—
low, cracked—
then let the slip fall.
Her body cut into the dark tide,
no disguise.
I waded in after her,
ankles bruised by rock.
Water lit with jellyfish,
each pulse a warning.
I stopped where it deepened,
felt the pull take hold.
No exit left,
just the Pacific’s mouth
closing around her.
Sep 1, 2025
Sep 1, 2025 at 8:08 PM UTC
She slides over
the hot upholstery
of her mother's car,
this schoolgirl of fifteen
who loves humming & swaying
with the radio.
Her entry into womanhood
will be like all the other girls'—
a cigarette and a joke,
as she strides up with the rest
to a brick factory
where she'll sew rag rugs
from textile strips of kelly green,
bright red, aqua.
When she enters,
and the millgate closes,
final as a slap,
there'll be silence.
She'll see fifteen high windows
cemented over to cut out light.
Inside, a constant, deafening noise
and warm air smelling of oil,
the shifts continuing on ...
All day she'll guide cloth along a line
of whirring needles, her arms & shoulders
rocking back & forth
with the machines—
200 porch size rugs behind her
before she can stop
to reach up, like her mother,
and pick the lint
out of her hair.
11.8k
Frustrated heat fills me.
Won't you leave me alone already!
I'm tired of feeling like you're starring..
Free me from the needles your eyes are darting at me.
If you stay for too long, I'll begin to bleed.
Can you not hear me?
Just leave..
Apr 27, 2015
Apr 27, 2015 at 8:00 PM UTC
My parents gave me a pink childhood framed with lace and luxury--
but a black stain has spread there, deep as the amount of time
I’ve spent thinking about what people are capable of, and how they can stand
hanging a mirror in every bathroom, because water cannot clean people
of the lie they told their brother or the betrayal inflicted against their friend,
some wrongs of which may never be realized, but will always remain
in the form of a new freckle on my left cheek or shadow beneath my eye.
And I am sorry, because I should have sooner heeded my mother’s words
when she told me I was the moral compass grounding you stonedust streets.
Your childhood resembled a light bulb broken before it tasted electricity,
no one taught you North from South and how different the terrain may become
when you find yourself in the mountains with only sandals on your feet.
I had been that for you, and you told me as much every weekend we spent
riding in the bed of my father’s pickup truck and shouting against wind-gusts
that threatened to carry our voices away from one another--
I have sinced learned there are many ways to **** a person.
I killed you when I stole your sense of direction like floorboards from beneath
your cracked and bleeding feet, and allowed you to fall--who knows how far--
landing in a pile of skin-biting needles and leftover sediment,
the very bottom of brown-glass bottles strewn across the floor.
Staying would have saved you, I’m sure, and I’ll never forget that I turned away
out of fear, cowardice, because I hated the sight of your skin-and-bone crowd,
friends in name but not in heart, and left you lost among them,
And you who knew no better remained, your humanity
expelled with each smoke-laden breath and then evaporating, nonextant.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 7:45 PM UTC
dont take drugs to make you calm by sticking needles in your arm
dont sit there waiting your a fix as the drugs begin to mix.
think of those you leave behind when your the one thats been unkind.
dont sit there in despair think of those that really care.
once you start its a deadly track say no to drugs and get life back.
Feb 12, 2010
Feb 12, 2010 at 11:17 AM UTC
I am too close for him to dream about me.
I'm not flying over him, not fleeing him
under the roots of trees. I am too close.
Not with my voice sings the fish in the net.
Not from my finger rolls the ring.
I am too close. A large house is on fire
without my calling for help. Too close
for a bell dangling from my hair to chime.
Too close for me to enter as a guest
before whom the walls part.
Never again will I die so readily,
so far beyond the flesh, so inadvertently
as once in his dream. I am too close,
too close—I hear the hiss
and see the glittering husk of that word,
as I lie immobilized in his embrace. He sleeps,
more available at this moment
to the ticket lady of a one-lion traveling circus
seen but once in his life
than to me lying beside him.
Now a valley grows for her in him, ochre-leaved,
closed off by a snowy mountain
in the azure air. I am too close
to fall out of the sky for him. My scream
might only awaken him. Poor me,
limited to my own form,
but I was a birch tree, I was a lizard,
I emerged from satins and sundials
my skins shimmering in different colors. I possessed
the grace to disappear from astonished eyes,
and that is the rich man's riches. I am too close,
too close for him to dream about me.
I slip my arm out from under his sleeping head.
It's numb, full of imaginary pins and needles.
And on the head of each, ready to be counted,
dance the fallen angels.
Sep 23, 2014
Sep 23, 2014 at 6:53 AM UTC
to exonerate the clippings
they took the back road to oswega
the tudor house rabbits
had long lost their heads
(presumably to the *****
and what remained
of the landscape
was dead
and dry
and orange
that happy home
on the brink
of cattle loop
was now gull grey
the needles
and stragglers
from shady bay
remained (in growing numbers)
on the outskirts
of the driven back park
the once fabled town
of horse drawn tours
and dignitaries
was stone washed ~
on the back of it's
government docks
sat decrepit toppers
set against the high tide
beside the lighthouse
and its measured song
flutes and fiddlers
and acoustic sitars
ride the accompaniment
nose rings
and signage
in the hands of
staged protesters
the sickly spit strewn
with tidal run
and ocean bags
hedgerows trimmed
along the sea side
rolling hills fade
adjacent the chuck
mint juleps
and flop hats
peak on the parade
clydesdales
and royals
blinded in the back
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 2:41 PM UTC
Sledding, a white flurry of glitter
Glass trees throw soft needles a-sprinkle
A blissful silver rocket. It all flies by
Sparkles of diamond on the ceiling or sky
Radiant light, its fate to be wrinkled
by the dim labyrinth of this shining prism.
Gray aurora, dancing in the diamond rain
Iron curtains hide the truth
Glass and pains of steel, in a prism of gray
Do you see windows or mirrors?
All I see, a magnificent pane
A merry toast! To all I say cheers,
with a smile worth its years.
Lift your brittle glass as you would lift a curse.
And drink heartily from the once molten, crystal sand.
Drink the guile and drink the hate
Drink the lies of shame and berate
Drink to see that a flower in gray
is a prism for life, not a fancy bouquet.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 5:29 PM UTC
Nine years and still
we cradle our grief
carefully close,
like groceries
in paper bags.
Eventually the milk
will make its way
into the refrigerator;
the canned goods
will find their home
on pantry shelves.
Most things find
their proper place.
Eventually the hummingbirds
will ricochet against scorched air,
their delicate beaks stabbing
like needles into the feeder filled
with red nectar on the back porch.
Eventually our child
will make her way
back to us. Perhaps.
But I’ve heard
that shooting
****** feels
like being
buried under
an avalanche
of cotton *****
For now it’s another
week, another month,
another trip to Safeway.
We drive home and wonder
why it is always snowing.
Behind a curtain of snow,
brake lights pulse, turning
the color of cotton candy,
dissolving into ghosts.
And with each turn,
the groceries shift
in the seat behind us.
From the spot where
our daughter used to sit,
there is a rustling sound—
a murmur of words
crossed off yet another list,
a language we’ve budgeted
for but cannot afford to hear.
Mar 10, 2017
Mar 10, 2017 at 10:04 AM UTC