"notched" poems
Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,
the three of them frozen:
Enrique by the world of beds;
Emilio by the world of eyes and wounded hands;
Lorenzo by the world of roofless universities.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three of them burned:
Lorenzo by the world of leaves and billiard *****
Emilio by the world of blood and white pins;
Enrique by the world of the dead and abandoned newspapers.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three of them buried:
Lorenzo in one of Flora's *******
Emilio in the dead gin forgotten in the glass;
Enrique in the ant, the sea, and the empty eyes of birds.
Lorenzo,
Emilio,
Enrique,
the three in my hands were
three Chinese mountains,
three shadows of a horse,
three landscapes of snow and a cabin of white lilies
by the pigeon coops where the moon lies flat under the rooster.
One
and one
and one,
the three of them mummified,
with the flies of winter,
with the inkwells the dog ****** and the thistle despises,
with the breeze that freezes theh eart of all the mothers,
by the white ruins of Jupiter where drunks snack on death.
Three
and two
and one,
I saw them disappear, crying and singing
into a hen's egg,
into the night that showed its skeleton of tobacco,
into my sorrow full of faces and piercing bone splinters of moon,
into my happiness of whips and notched wheels,
into my breast troubled by pigeons,
into my deserted death with one mistaken wanderer.
I had killed the fifth moon
and the fans and the applause drank water from the fountains.
Hidden away, the warm milk of newborn girls,
shook the roses with a long white sorrow.
Enrique,
Emilio,
Lorenzo,
Diana is hard,
but somtimes she has ******* of clouds.
The white stone can beat in the blood of a deer
and the deer can dream through the eyes of a horse.
When the pure forms sank
under the cri cri of daisies
I understood they had murdered me.
They searched the cafés and the graveyards and churches,
they opened the wine casks and wardrobes,
they destroyed three skeletons to pull out their gold teeth.
Still they couldn't fine me.
They couldn't?
No. They couldn't.
But they learned the sixth moon fled against the torrent,
and the sea remembered, suddenly,
the names of all her drowned.
20.5k
I. Neptune’s Theater
A rock spins through the universal tumbler
and its warm blue pools calcify
as turquoise Neptune in his cloudy blue bath bath
builds a lace castle with his fingertips
Sculpts a submerged eden of crimson and emerald
where painted parrots chat up cardinals
butterfly and angel fry sway with wave pulse
and foliated coral fingers beckon from arched windows.
Neptune’s children are flat and bright, spined and notched
free yet entangled in lace mesh ecosystem
beneath an array of bioluminescent stars
as a gangly pretender watches and blows bubbles.
II. Sapien Siege
The hot acidic hand of death grasps
the mesh rends and tangles
the ecosystem shattered
reef’s loosed children scream beneath planet’s stars.
Butterflies impaled
cyanide-swooning damsels
mesh-tangled angels hauled heavenward
coral to potash, corpses to coal.
The pretender to the throne blinks
rubs blurry lenses,
kicks plastic fins
and moves on to the next show
Unseeing and unaware
of the luminous filament in his wake.
Self-appointed divinity,
deus ex machina.
*******************************************************************************************
Ann says: All of the animal and human characters in this poem (except Neptune and The Pretender) are named after coral reef fish. Coral reefs, one of the most diverse ecosystems, are expected to be largely extinct within one human generation. Deus ex machina is Latin for “God from the machine.”
Copyright 2013 by Ann Marcaida.
Jan 23, 2013
Jan 23, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
360
Death sets a Thing significant
The Eye had hurried by
Except a perished Creature
Entreat us tenderly
To ponder little Workmanships
In Crayon, or in Wool,
With “This was last Her fingers did”—
Industrious until—
The Thimble weighed too heavy—
The stitches stopped—by themselves—
And then ’twas put among the Dust
Upon the Closet shelves—
A Book I have—a friend gave—
Whose Pencil—here and there—
Had notched the place that pleased Him—
At Rest—His fingers are—
Now—when I read—I read not—
For interrupting Tears—
Obliterate the Etchings
Too Costly for Repairs.
5.3k
They've been working on this for years
Inside the government
To try a replace the brain of man
With that of a purple eggplant
This idea to me sounds genius
If you know what it is that I mean
People round here might start making sense
Pass the veggies if you please
They called all the top notched scientists
And vegetarians throughout the land
To see what would be the best variety
In this eggplant transplant experiment
They settled on the aubergine
Great Brittan's joy and pride
When it comes to the perfect eggplant
Those Limey's will not be denied
They were afraid if they went to the private sector
That person would surely be missed
So they grabbed someone unsuspecting
Inside of the government
They told the low level employee
A bit of truth mixed with a little white lie
They needed him for his vast understanding and knowledge
Plus they'd be serving cookies on the side
They added a little something to the cookie dough
That knocked the governmental genius to his knees
Plopped him down on the gurney
...Let the experiment proceed if you please
They cracked his skull wide open
Where upon they couldn't believe their eyes
Right there inside of his cranium
Already an eggplant did reside
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 4:34 PM UTC
Translated by Przemyslaw Musialowski 11/3/2019
My homeland - dear land,
where for the first time I saw the sun
and where I came to know God;
Where my father, brothers and mother kind
taught me prayers in my maternal tongue.
My homeland - villages and cities,
planted from the times of Piasts among Lechic fields;
Rivers, forests, flowery leas and meadows,
where larks sing their sweet songs of hope.
My homeland - our forefathers' glory,
Chrobry's Notched Sword and Cecora Mace,
Knightly Spirit, noble and brave,
bitter defeats and victories great.
My homeland - quiet green fields
for centuries trampled by hostile armies,
burial mounds and sad graves
that have covered our freedom defenders.
My homeland - heroic spirit of the Polish people,
that by miracle lives amid hunger and cold;
- hope that always blooms in hearts,
with work for the fathers, and song for the young!
Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910)
Nov 3, 2019
Nov 3, 2019 at 11:32 AM UTC
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
“This is the way,” laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river)
“The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.”
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
4.1k
Its faded pink parka,
Stretched tight across its shoulders
Even in the summer twilight,
Crinkles, stale newspapers and plastic bags
Cacophony with the rhythmic
Thud of shopping cart wheels.
Its rotten malt liquor stench--
Astringent ammonia sweat
Runs in rancid rivulets down
Decaying skin on decaying face.
Pimples and pus and
Meth-notched teeth.
It offers a drink
In exchange for change.
My pockets jangle noisily,
But I offer only empty hands.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 9:09 PM UTC
She was crying.
So he approached
to lessen the anguish,
her life has notched
He exchanged her tears
with his cozy smile;
to calm down her nerves
at least for a while.
The language of tears
has always appealed him;
as to the insects,
the sundew's gleam.
Innate was this nature of his
to weep for the poor,
for the women, for the children
and for the downtrodden, to be sure.
But with hollow chauvinism
then, the men ruled the society.
And accounted weeping as a sin
resulting from inferiority.
They disliked the boy
and his uncommon ways
to heal the sufferer,
to their utter dismay.
They called the boy
and asked him to change
his beliefs and ideology
or to be ready to estrange.
The boy couldn't understand
how his actions have been
outrageous in their view
and thus sentenced as a sin.
He stood against them
and let the proposal decline.
He advocated his logic
to those ****** swine.
But their ears were concealed
to even the rumbling thunder.
Intoxicated by masculinity
they committed blunder.
The men enraged
and reached for their knives.
They shouted, they cursed
and skinned him alive.
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 3:50 PM UTC
Its sun-bleached pink parka
Limply hung over slumped, thin shoulders
Even in the summer twilight,
Crinkles, stale newspapers and plastic bags
Dissonance with the jarring
Rattle of shopping cart wheels.
Its rank malt liquor stench—
Astringent ammonia sweat
Runs in rancid rivulets down
Decaying skin on decaying face.
Pimples and pus and
Meth-notched teeth.
It offers a drink
In exchange for change.
My watch has never been more riveting.
Jan 14, 2012
Jan 14, 2012 at 1:15 AM UTC
If I were not a person who dealt in words
the same way others dealt in currency
(or maths
or measures
or facts
or any number of infinitely more practical things)
If I were not a person who breathed in the flow of letters against pages
and thoughts against spaces
I would never love an artist
because no matter the medium of the life
cra
wl
in
g
beneath their skin
No matter if they hear notes in the flip of her hair
(or paint galaxies of the breath against her cheeks
or create worlds hinged on his fallen eyelash
or build monuments to his unguarded laughter
or sway to whatever melody her eyes serenade beyond flickering boredom)
no matter the medium they substitute for the oxygen they inhale
Their hearts
do not exist
—cannot—
outside of the muse they substitute
to pump their passions through their veins
And if I were not a person who dwelt between the strokes of the letters
and devoured the length of meters
I would never love an artist
because their lives are forever forfeit to their muse
sold, clapped in heavy irons
to a desert oasis you cannot reach
because you cannot be his muse, if he has notched you onto his belt
For an artist would never endanger his muse, no matter if he loved her
(or worshipped her
or tortured her
or reveled in her
or whatever multiple definition love has contracted)
If I were not a person who knew the woes of seeing more
than what the world might first offer
But I am.
And I understand.
And I would never love an artist
For I belong to my muse and so does he
and She demands
that no competition come from the love
She allows me
outside Her chamber doors
and an artist's brilliance is competition indeed
And I can only ever love an artist
who
might
forgive
And who might understand
If I told her she is my muse no longer
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 5:46 AM UTC
I have had this question
That's been bouncing in my head for quite some time
So while I'm at it I just thought
I might as well ask it in rhyme
Out of all the Disney characters
I feel compelled to ask
How come Pluto is the only one
That ended up getting the shaft
Let's start this off with Mickey
Who rules the Magic Kingdom with all of his might
Although with that high squeaky voice
I believe his underwear is notched a tad to tight
Then there's Daisy and Donald
Whom I can barely understand
It still though is quite clear to me
They speak in a language known to man
Poor ole Pluto I wonder
What goes through his mind
While his tongue is lolly gagging
With his tail keeping in time
And what about that Goofy
Who can barely dress himself
That dog carries on conversations
Even when there's no one else
So go ahead I tell you
Take a look at the whole batch
And you tell me that Pluto
Is not the one that got the shaft
While I'm thinking about it
There's the planet Pluto out on the edge
When did we decide to kick it off
Of our planetary ledge
But I digress because it's Disney
To whom I throw this question at
But believe you me it's NASA
Who will be at the center of my next rant
So out of all the questions in my life
That I have ever asked
There is no simple answer to why
Pluto got the shaft
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 9:08 AM UTC
We read “Captain Hook’s collection of psalms,
And other songs to sing along to.”
Nothing better to do off hand,
But revel in our own arrogance.
And, we notched holes in leather straps,
To expand at the waste.
Drive through diets replacing lessons-
Of keeping elbows off the table.
Of speaking only when spoken to.
Twenty-one years plus a little change.
And, daddy says-
Everything I taught you is replaceable.
And, daddy says-
Mistake is a just a word.
Hasn’t got it figured out either,
At least he admits it,
Choking down another cigarette,
Says: here’s to now.
And, don’t break your back if you don’t have to.
Technology affords avenues
Different rivers to float experience
Overalls and baseball caps
And the tree house that broke my tibia.
Talked through tin cans in this age,
Of golden innocence.
Now I’m Facebooking and twitting or twittering
Or… who the **** cares?
No one I care about.
Rivers given way to raw sewage.
And, even dogs eat their own ****
This cat called my computer a *********** box-
If the shoe fits,
Clichés get the hits.
Search: Blonde **** Big *******
5 million 38 hundred and 2 results.
Neon Bibles erupt in the sky.
Today I am a believer in the quarter pounder with cheese
Tomorrow in gasoline for 2.85
Midas made gold
Now he wants to change my oil.
They call that economics
Or advertising.
And, suddenly my sneakers aren’t good enough
Voice on the other end reassures-
My ideas are manic.
Paint a scene of terror.
Laying waste to iron giants-
Tearing down systems in place to restrict
Setting fire to everything-
Rack it up to fulfilling.
Rack it up to rebuilding.
Dismal haze, red glow to ash filled sky,
That makes mom clutch the good book-
Saying its time to go home.
How she knows her redeemer lives.
Clarity reigns supreme
And, daddy says-
Son, you’ve been watching too much TV.
And daddy says-
You catch more with honey by rule.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 1:37 PM UTC
There're swords,
lots of them,
and long-bows,
with fresh, eager arrows
jostle with notched expert axes;
legendary hair frame braided beards
flowing into refilled tankards
drowning curses through broken teeth
gnawing at poor personal hygiene
across the stench of the public tavern
as granite-stares challenge
bone-shattering laughter.
-
All as anticipated -
there's Orcs about
and the prescribed heroes assemble.
-
-
Slow rolling leaden mist cloaks howling creatures at dawn
from deep within the forest,
then disabling rain falls at dusk
and steel clashes with steel in the storm…
-
All these exploits ferment short of full strength
and stretch onto a wide Winter screen
before facing the final critical battle
for a 12A Christmas.
Jul 12, 2016
Jul 12, 2016 at 4:01 PM UTC
Huge elm, with rifted trunk all notched and scarred,
Like to a warrior’s destiny! I love
To stretch me often on thy shadowed sward,
And hear the laugh of summer leaves above;
Or on thy buttressed roots to sit, and lean
In careless attitude, and there reflect
On times and deeds and darings that have been—
Old castaways, now swallowed in neglect,—
While thou art towering in thy strength of heart,
Stirring the soul to vain imaginings
In which life’s sordid being hath no part.
The wind of that eternal ditty sings,
Humming of future things, that burn the mind
To leave some fragment of itself behind.
1.9k
Eager, ***** I washed my hands of you
in Rippling Creek on the 1st of January --
the beginning of the beginning.
As you turned to driftwood,
the friends and cross-eyed strangers
asked what was I thinking when I let go of you.
My mouth stitched by bongwater haze
all I could do -- watch your notched body soak.
Now on the 18th of September,
sitting in Fox Hollow, USA,
the shiniest of suburbs --
the sober of the sober--
In honest,
I say I'd rather have you alive and hating me
than dead and loving me.
If I lied in the grey dawn,
it was out of love.
If I lied in the grey dawn,
I was out of truth.
I'm alone
fending off vultures prying in with fake Facebook profiles,
taking threats from fathers who long ago went blind,
and this much I promise to you and Fox Hollow, USA:
I will quarantine the past.
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 6:46 PM UTC
788
Joy to have merited the Pain—
To merit the Release—
Joy to have perished every step—
To Compass Paradise—
Pardon—to look upon thy face—
With these old fashioned Eyes—
Better than new—could be—for that—
Though bought in Paradise—
Because they looked on thee before—
And thou hast looked on them—
Prove Me—My Hazel Witnesses
The features are the same—
So fleet thou wert, when present—
So infinite—when gone—
An Orient’s Apparition—
Remanded of the Morn—
The Height I recollect—
’Twas even with the Hills—
The Depth upon my Soul was notched—
As Floods—on Whites of Wheels—
To Haunt—till Time have dropped
His last Decade away,
And Haunting actualize—to last
At least—Eternity—
1.6k
It was a simply soothing sound.
Seemingly surreal, severing the silence
With even sin surrendering to the sublime symphony
Of sirens signifying salvation.
Leaving legs lying limp and lifeless,
Losing a life I'd have liked to live.
Leaping, laughing, or lounging lazily
I fear for my future
Forever fighting ferociously.
Because four fearsome phantoms
Brought bars, blades, and bats
To beat my bewildered brother and I blind
Before we both blacked out from blood loss.
Now there's a knife notched in the nape of his neck.
He'll never know the nuance of another night;
But now I know the necessity of the nightmarish noose
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 1:32 PM UTC
it was that i was. gurgling a valorous *** of cells at the bottom
of the notched brick habitat of sickly algebra. and i and. with all
the dirt meticulously skeletal. trenchant chaotic lips blathering
skinny vocal animals. the smooth monkeys pinstripe about the
square in my needle city. well and i am an we. with your habitual
pocket of blood and dust in correct lumps small and large proportionately
spitted on your ideal, at my hips your hips(hand in hand). we walk
bythe specific straights towering sky breakers hollering reflective
skin. the neon electric residue of light smacks my eyelets. and
some ****** **** with the night air agreeably. but i,m a yours
and only. yes. so let's make some drips of clear tremulous benedictions
to this vibrant lovely hell
Oct 6, 2010
Oct 6, 2010 at 12:07 PM UTC
When God created me in His image
He notched in just enough flaws
To make me realize
I am only human
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 1:02 AM UTC
A greased pig at the county fair,
A roller skating tween chips her tooth,
The junky's pupils: pinned.
Heavy-lidded gaze notched up: a higher degree of horror.
Ecstasy and agony: life's charged poles, opposing,
I, dysthymic before the blister of try,
have touched too close to life's hot center,
A cliché, a disposable metaphor,
The insulin syringe (use once and destroy) of metaphors,
Oh restless boy (you're a man) you don't see it?
Beyond the sour vinegar of feet and let's pretend,
the mildew funk of gym-stale ****
the recess bells gave way to sirens.
Oh, valor—Toro—pinned Pamplona,
Gored by c**k, though, not by bull
Cause see it seems—yes, Spain then.
Nothing written really happens, see,
mind to bear this burden.
Tense of verb fit the charge in air,
a crunchy taste like seizure mouth, the sockets blown
some smoke slips out the corner of my mouth, my eye
regards you trying to seem real.
2011
Aug 17, 2011
Aug 17, 2011 at 8:18 PM UTC
He reclines in his brittle chair carved from his own grief,
Not very regal, but heavily resigned to the aches.
The weight of silence cleanly cuts through the air.
His hands, now mapless, no longer seek.
Memories he left behind in clouds, were few and brief.
Books cradle their breath upon the shelf.
Never once a glance as he knows their unchanging tone.
The windows screech with tempered light
As regret drips down the pale pane of ivory bones.
His posture reflects the weight of years notched in his belt.
The leather groans, stretched too thin like his sense of self.
The hour never bows a whim to beg his name.
Dust circles, never sure as to where to fall.
His suit of choice is a reliquary of loss.
Each button, a distant memory hard pressed in shame.
The air is stained
The room too small.
A silent gasp
The last breath falls.
May 19, 2025
May 19, 2025 at 11:15 AM UTC
your warped limbs
dance under the sway of your breath
your notched fingers
wind around the minerals of your toes
you are light
and your capillary rivers
pulse with nothing grander than life
you are an everlasting cycle of rebirth
your heart is heavy
and although you tremble
benevolence remains in your eaves
mother,
you are taken for granted
but your tidepool eyes
and mossy complexion
are the work of nothing less
than the waves of the cosmos
Jul 3, 2016
Jul 3, 2016 at 9:57 AM UTC
Have you heard the ghosts that whisper after words,
Like buzzing wasps?
What basks in the senses,
Tasked with pretenses,
What gasps through wooden lips,
Perched on limp wrists,
Risks to burst,
Like bustling beasts,
Unmasking the notched face that exists beneath.
Jul 3, 2012
Jul 3, 2012 at 7:51 PM UTC
My love looks scintillating on you my blue
With just a hint of black
When my rough love meets your tough love
And the two wear us smooth again
I mean
There has to be something to justify how ugly I am
Be ugly with me
And grind sandpaper skin
Til we can shake the shavings away after the sheets dry
You’ve always wanted to know what it looks like when ugliness leaves you
It looks like dust illuminated inside beams of light
After you’ve decided you’ve collected enough
How good did it feel
When you notched my bedposts with your vampire teeth
Dulling them down so that you couldn’t draw blood anymore?
Not even with your words?
You said that becoming human never seemed easier
Let me second chance
Your too tough tugs
With my lizard tail laughter
And I have two cheeks to turn if you need a third
My shoulder is only cold
Because neither of us know how to hold the other
Being
Beautiful
And Nice
And Capable
Take practice
So I am sorry I rub you the wrong way sometimes
Just that
This kind of black and blue
Looks good on you
And these faded bruises means
We’re healing
Jan 17, 2012
Jan 17, 2012 at 6:45 AM UTC