"nitrate" poems
Deranged rocks, spread in albeit magnetic threads
rattle the sky's mirror with impatience.
Lay her feet on the ground, the young girl did.
The touch of her soft, dampened scarf
kindled the metamorphic calm.
My veritas found its unwanted shrine--
The dreadful peace that let it dine,
upon the well-being of its host nest its swine.
The ****** amalgam in her eyes
led its produce down her wavy brown vines.
They hid her cheeks, and brought down traited drops
of long-withheld tangy crust
towards the lavender ascot.
She grabbed onto her feet,
warm and wrapped with white cotton and wool heat...
she caressed the ornamental fabric,
swerved her fingers along its threaded magic.
Their lacy innocence familiarized her and made her smile,
whence the memory of her veritas triggered in her mouth's isle.
She lay her hopeful eyes on the silver-nitrate clad scarf,
covering the now-calming rocks' quaff.
Of my reflection her face saw only loss,
for her recognition seemed forever trapped in virtuality,
in moss.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 11:39 AM UTC
In my dreams there are smoke
detectors and crashes and lies.
There is a kiss in an atrium right
before it catches fire. There is placate,
stay straight, evacuate.
Neodymium nitrate always smells
a certain way and always looks
a certain blue. Why does an alarm
go off after I dream I've kissed you,
but never if you kiss me?
What doesn't my brain want me to see?
As Orion slinks into view
I stand mixing solvents at the centrifuge.
There is always a healthy dose
of things I don't know. Always something
for Orion to pin with her next arrow.
If I am not here, asking questions of the world,
demanding answers from what I put
into test tubes,
the next thing could be you.
Mar 8, 2019
Mar 8, 2019 at 10:55 PM UTC
She is silver-nitrate and coal.
An Egon Schiele painting
stretched on dream
and sullen sparking glances
tipped in gold.
It is starlight, burnt through a velvet field
that chains me here.
It is honey and hot wine
that haunts my sleep,
by the onomatopoeia
of obsession.
With a lunar caustic kiss
she hexed me.
Woven in her six-sided circle
those rubies in the
hollow of her neck
and fingers that shimmer
like ice.
The Sphinx of Eros.
That heathen curl.
Smoke to hide the ivory!
Spoke to lock the memory!
Caught in click clack shutters
by the silver foaming pond.
Froth from the chambers of
ebony rough hewn hearts.
O starlight!
That raptures me hungry
for bloodsoaked lips
red as fury!
And I sang;
O lord & commoner, I sang!
To the weepings of a sombre, sudden,
stinging violin,
in empty vinyl crackle
from music soaked in paint,
with a voice
like burning velvet.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 1:51 AM UTC
Willie sat by the side of
the river in a philosophical
mood under a weeping willow.
Midway, between the two
banks, was a small island
only paddling distance away.
Debris from a previous flood
had accumulated on the low
foliage of an uprooted tree.
A funnel of cold air from the
ten arch bridge made a wind
sock of a plastic net nitrate bag.
In all his time, Willie had never
ventured on to this little islet,
even wondered if he should flag it.
Off with the shoes, rolled up the
legs of his trousers and slowly he
negotiated his way over the stones.
On exploring the land mass, which
was an isthmus of a mere ten square
meters, he decided to return to land.
Just before his disembarkation, he
noticed a large denominational euro
note caught in the gills of a dead fish.
Eureka Eureka money and food all
in the one catch (was his thought as
he made his way back).
The sodden state of the 100 euro note
was what guided ******* wise decision
to take it, as was, to the local Credit Union.
In the queue whilst waiting for a vacant
teller, everyone was admiring *******
dead fish.
Eventually, at the desk, and known to
those working therein, a 100 euro note
was not his norm and created suspicion.
After tendering the note attached to the
Trout, that had apparently been fowl
hooked up the river by Johnny Logan,
The lady behind the desk called for the
manager, who immediately held the note
up to the halogen fraud lamp.
Willie had never encountered anything like
this when he made a 5 euro deposit once a
month to his savings account.
He enquired of the manager as to why he
was holding his fish and 100 euro note up
against the bright light.
The manager responded, “ It is the policy of
all banking systems to check high denominational
notes for visible water marks “ !!
Sep 5, 2018
Sep 5, 2018 at 4:01 AM UTC
When the tides crash and the waves retreat,
Doesn't the salty breeze make you feel poetic?
When the lightning clashes with its own kind and the thunder chases it,
Don't the sparks make you feel poetic?
When the wind blows and the leaves dance in the air,
Doesn't the autumn season make you feel poetic?
When the clouds disperse and the stars appear,
Doesn't the galaxies make you feel poetic?
When the rain falls and the mist forms on your skin,
Doesn't the nitrate smell make you feel poetic?
Because when i look at you,
and you look back at me
in the same way,
I know i feel poetic
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 8:30 AM UTC
Smoke and butyl nitrate
burn the membrane of your nostrils.
Unzipped trousers down
the crush of leather at your feet
spilling your anger and your desire
on the stranger knelt before you
trying hard to remember to forget all of this.
Reveling in the conquest
while feeling strangely unsatisfied.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 9:44 AM UTC
Darling sister,
with your hair the purest shade of carrot
falling to the middle of your back,
and eyes the clearest blue,
and freckles splattered across your nose and cheeks
like the angels couldn’t stop blessing you once they started.
You look far too much like a ghost of my past.
Your sparkling curiosity,
your tendency to stay up far too late
because you just can’t put your book down,
not yet, because it’s just getting good
and you want to know what’s next.
The innocence of your smile
and the heartiness of your laugh.
You look far too much like a ghost of my past.
Forgive me, but you are scarier
than any monster in the shows I watch.
Because when I think about how you crave my approval,
how you cling to my company
like it’s the last time you’ll ever see me again,
and how you say, “Will I be like you when I grow up?
We’re just like twins! We’re sisters forever!”
It feels me with liquid fear,
like silver nitrate is being pumped through my veins.
You haven’t seen the darker side of me.
Not all of it, not the breaking down of my very psyche
as the world prepares to squeeze the live out of me
the way we squeeze Jell-O through our teeth
because we think it’s fun.
No, you don’t see the times where I don’t want to face the world.
Instead you see this quirky older sister that you probably always wanted,
I know I did.
I want to be that older sister, the one that you look up to,
the one that takes you places and teaches you things and
helps you understand how to survive in this world.
But I’m scared that I can’t.
I’m scared that one day I’m going to fall,
like Sherlock off of St. Bart’s.
But unlike Sherlock,
I don’t think I’ll be getting back up again.
I don’t want you to see me fall.
I want to be The Boy Who Lived for you,
and **** it if I’m not going to try.
Sure, I’m terrified of all this role model stuff,
it’s not easy, not by a long shot.
But you need me and I’m going to do the best I can.
Love,
Your Big Sister 4Ever
Jun 8, 2013
Jun 8, 2013 at 10:53 PM UTC
There was always at least five feet between us. It was actually a good thing in the preliminary stage. We could lock eyes without the urgent need to look away too soon. The intensity was containable in those five feet.
(speaks very fast) And then my stupid self went around and quickly covered four of those five feet. It is the laws of mitotic cell division god ****** You do not grow four feet in a day. You grow inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter. Ask him about that literature assignment. Shakespeare is responsible for excess glutton in today’s pick up lines. Wait for your friends to dare him to kiss you on a Truth and Dare. Wait for him to want to. Then, tell him, maybe, I like you.
That, in that one foot perimeter, I could see golden flakes in the circles of his eyes when clearly they are brown should have been the first sign that it was a bad idea. Five feet was our perimeter. Five feet was where we stopped. (points to own body) Five feet is where I stop.
For, I will never be anyone else but me. I will never experience, firsthand at least, what it is like to be a lanky six footer who hunches because she doesn't know what to do with her body. Or her exhilaration when she finds the basketball court. I will never experience being the Egyptian boy who has a chemistry counter in his kitchen, who asks his maid to buy him potassium nitrate. I won't know what it is like to be his maid who almost got arrested for asking to buy potassium nitrate (a component of explosives) in Egypt. I shall never experience courting like the characters in a Jane Austen novel. And how nice it must feel, feeling beautiful.
And I will never ever experience, what it is like to be his girlfriend.
Apr 19, 2014
Apr 19, 2014 at 9:03 AM UTC
Men are ******* each other over with no waiting,
Yet we still can pass proposition eight, the hating
Inspires new generations of children by baiting
Them with lies, telling them that it’s not too late
To save themselves from the others, standing on soap crates
Preaching God and the morals while the kid decorates
His pages with blood and his sorrows, writing straight
But thinking he thinks sideways, and the pressure’s too great
To overcome because the hate won’t let him live at a normal rate,
His heart beats on a different beat, not rap or country, but he creates
Music of the soul that transcends the forced ideals he ate
Directly from the mouth of the pressures, the hate,
And does not give up even in the most dire of straights
Not giving in to what some old man describes as a fate
Not of his own choosing, telling him who to date, don’t gyrate
Those hips it could be **** so he grows up under an ******
Of false appearances and flawed beliefs, never feeling he can escape
From the hate, isn’t it great, this world we so decorate
And doesn’t it frustrate that no one can relate
That he’s on a never ending track on a train full of freight
In order to power an engine of hate, sating
His thirst for individuality by the fires that proclamate
His burned identity and when given the chance to extricate
Himself from the chaos of the tracks, it just exacerbates
Everything around him, all the hate reanimated
To the point where eighteen is the same as eighty
All he needs is a bullet, a gun, and some potassium nitrate
To stop the violence and state as his own mandate
That he is free from the belated strangers berating
Him for eating off another man’s plate
****** over by the hate, but wait,
It’s too late.
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 2:45 AM UTC
The thin, clear layer that forms on rendered fat is glycerine.
You can mix it with nitric acid to make nitroglycerine.
Mix that with an alkali nitrate and something like sawdust or paper mush and -Boom!-
Dynamite.
I learn things when I listen.
Feb 23, 2014
Feb 23, 2014 at 9:57 PM UTC
Although I too have forgotten my lines
today's celluloid seems to be shedding its script
the raw talent confers a lack of oomph.
Only my projection screen follows perfection.
I'm caught in a nitrate web,
with partaken beauty firing
my basement dreams,
onward choices amongst Colleen Moore
and Blanche Sweet
testifies professionalism spoke eloquently without words
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 12:34 PM UTC
Black binders beside the linac, hold photos of those most ill
A diagnosis and a treatment plan, the last hopes of a woman or man
I fix the monster when it breaks, so dutifully with a tool
When I get the call "The linacs down", for that I went to school
Something else will oft present, when the beast is down
A delicate soul, silver nitrate marked, waiting patiently in her gown
So evident she is, and so sad to see. All the women I love personified - compromised, humbled, made pitiful.
As for the binders I'll sometimes note, a new one added today
The mom or dad of a once young boy, with whom I used to play
Each will have their turn in the beam
In desperate hope to be redeemed
And who'll be next on the cancer roll-call?
God **** it, God **** it, seems like us all
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 10:34 AM UTC
Suppose there is no life in space, just us. And we inhabit Mars,
air condition Venus. Hold family barbecues, national holidays
on Mercury. Fly to Jupiter for spas of ammonium nitrate.
And go farther afield in the galaxy and on to other galaxies
leaving behind map-faced men, crow-like women and open gates.
Who will be the first-born human on the moon? News
from the moon colony! And so on, on every planet where
we've visited and established dusty villages or vast cities
over thousands of centuries. Then, will we not have somewhere,
somehow, under some sun's rays become another species?
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
Sit still beauty,
Through still life imagery
And the golden light
Caught on silver nitrate,
In half a second forever remembered
In a frame above your bed,
Catching dreams as they leave your head
While you sleep alone at night,
Dreaming of him,
Maybe of me,
Mostly of them,
And how the memories affected,
And drew you into the
Beautiful portrait you are today,
And I can’t help but notice that
Sunlight always hits you in the
Most spectacular of ways.
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 2:02 AM UTC
You said I made the best mint parfaits,
was part of the cutest couple
wearing my urban cowboy duds
with the sous chef.
We'd immerse ourselves in the suds
at the ritual roundup,
stick amyl nitrate inhalers
up our noises & wait for the rush
to take hold.
I was never bold enough
to cross over the line,
enter never never land
& besides,
it really wasn't my style.
But I'm told
those were the days,
the days when we'd smile
wider than the universe.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 5:00 AM UTC
when shuttle feeds show the earth on fire
and unprovened ashes stray from the pyre
ammonium nitrate will still be there
to keep us unvitiated, cold, and bare.
not that we'll need it, the sun can warm
with its dying light it is no longer "aurum"
but "ater."
lying next to me, a body in destitution
rags and bones and circumlocution
no medicine can fix you, no analeptic drug
only the attraction of the gravitational tug
for when we are done with cosmic consorts,
we will be only sedimentary quartz.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 7:04 PM UTC
It's during restless nights such as these when my mind is at its optimum state
Where I am able to tap into my psyche to excavate emotions and notions once frozen like nitrate
I feel the temperature rising
Becoming irate
The flamethrower steady mediating while it patiently waits
It has me excited but also afraid
Like tight roping a bridge thats charging a toll I can't afford to pay
Or knowing I overdosed on a drug with no antidote
In order to coast its euphoric waves
Causing my heart to quit its job and my pupils to dilate
As Im dethrone from my throne and thrown inside a crate
To be placed to sleep for an eternity in a tumulus grave
But I smile because they see me as resting
When my soul is wide awake
Even though my body is stiffer then a new pair of shoes
I can spend all day seeking for the truth inside the truth
But I'm terrified of the journey and what I might loose
And the answers
Fearing the exposure and what it could prove
Do I have a halo or horns?
Or maybe both of the two?
I need to swim deeper
So I do
Until my lungs fill with water up to the brim
And burn with white fire hotter then fallen seraphim
But I continue to breast stroke into the abyss
Past the wine jars
The greek paintings
Past cities more lost then the city of atlantis
Past the treasures of the galleon of San Jose
And into the door way of what was took off display
And this will be the place where I will drown
In exchange for discovering what was never meant to be found
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 2:54 AM UTC
The place where we sat
Saw our roots, grow into the grass ground
Saw our flowers, bloom under the burning sun
And i, could only see, what you wanted me to
My love was palpable, but your hands were frozen
My love was visible, but your eyes were blind
Numb to it, too much worried about yourself
You let him died, dehydrated, withered
How could i blame you, i loved you...
After the grief of mourning, came the anger
Against myself, due to my crying heart
He cried, not salted water, but saltpeter
Burning my entire chest
Leaving me empty inside, again
Each and every time, flowers still grow there
But as time passes, they fade away
This dark dead cavity covered of potassium nitrate
Makes me an angry and hollow human
Only searching for life to come back and bloom
To the roots we used to grow in another one
Oct 20, 2020
Oct 20, 2020 at 9:13 AM UTC