"nuzzled" poems
Galaxy gardener sailing a ship,
through endless horizons it makes a trip.
She/he looks into the inky canvas blend,
then scatters some seeds in the spacial rend.
What does await this brave lovely soul,
when we see the universe's gears roll.
Ionizing radiation penetrates through,
while watering can always holds true.
Space turf gingerly shovelled over seeds,
her/his forehead adorned with water beads.
Nitrogenous nutrients now nuzzled into,
the serene slumbering seedlings to be.
Galaxy gardener greets growing greens,
lively lushscious leaves forward leans.
Wormhole worn star systems she/he fixes up,
as does she/he proudly prune her/his wondrous crop.
Many a plant has grown under her/his care,
yet she/he never feasts on the fruits they bear.
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 1:49 AM UTC
Basking in postcoital bliss, talking between the sheets
catching our breath, giggling with laughter treats
Laying in the afterglow, tangled in the sheets
sweating cooling skin, and completing greater feats
Blissful in post euphoria, feeling quite appeased
finding comfort in warm arms, putting me at ease
Still sighing, touching, tasting, nuzzled in content
reveling in the splendor, our minds and bodies, spent
Let me drink, this moment in, before we turn to clocks,
wishing only to start again, as seconds ticking mocks.
Snuggling together, eyes and hands so locked
wishing for ourselves, more hours, on the clock
Mar 9, 2017
Mar 9, 2017 at 2:21 PM UTC
My body’s a fire
Waiting
To be burned
With your caressing gaze
All teased
Tormented
Nuzzled fantasy
Makes me
A bad girl
Eager to please
Your ***** sensitivity
Tie me
Choke me
Tell me Daddy
How will you
Discipline me today
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 7:50 AM UTC
I stuck chickens in my baggy tie dye shirt
nuzzled on the couch, coffee in hand.
I enjoyed a deep conversation with a willow tree
and asked how it felt about the other species.
I slid cookies in the back pocket of my tattered jeans
before biking through the morning air.
I smiled at old Ted in the nursing home
with a wink, he smiled back.
I dribbled the basketball with the strong scent
of campfire coming from my backyard.
I danced in the shower
the warm droplets falling on my skin.
I smoked in the sparkling cove
with strangers that became my friends.
I flew off the high rocks
and submerged into cold crystal waters.
I looked into those faded blue eyes,
and chuckled cause' we do that.
I balanced on the fallen limb
and hopped up onto the beautiful stump.
I giggled with my sisters
cause' we made some really mean jokes.
I ate spaghetti with my friends,
and laughed so hard we choked.
I tumbled over tree roots
got back up and kept on trailin'.
I thanked God for this life
and he said you're welcome.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 10:55 PM UTC
Moving amidst my Ramona chapter books,
I make out your movement, M, the moody turns
Of your mounts and valleys, the moniker of
Family names, you marked me like a maternal
Emblem of the generation’s matriarch,
You mingled amid reminiscences of former matrons
Maria Helena from the Midwest,
Who crossed the mountains in a wagon,
Madeleine, a migrant from Marseilles,
Who baked warm loaves in San Francisco,
And her own daughter, my Mimi,
Who muttered merde while she drank martinis.
In my own time, you materialized in
Marjorie, my nana, and Maria, my mom,
The women in which I knew you growing up,
Then Molly, who made dreams out of
Magic and Movies and Marie Antoinette,
You embellished my most favorite things.
In my monogram, you aimed my impulses
in your masts’ diametric directions
Towards competence, towards imagination.
In your middle ‘s mysterious compartment I make snug
With magazines and novels and mugs of hot milk.
You nuzzled me in moments of melancholy, then motivated me
To meander among your fundamental family,
The sumptuous L of melt and mélange,
The meticulous N of man or monk or money.
Even W, which matches your mien in mirror
It warped wicked witch while you
Milled maidens and damsels, so I imagined
The mutilation of those two majuscules formed
My image of womanhood. M, Molly Smithson materialized
From a meek mademoiselle into the mistress of mischief.
May 20, 2014
May 20, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
i am not the girl you will fall in love with upon first sight
i am made of late nights, busy days, and a long hard past
i am not a pair of legs
i am the sum of all my thoughts
and everything i aspired to be when i was little
i am not a pair of almond-shaped eyes
i am a soft kiss on your cheek and your face nuzzled into my neck when it's 2 am and you can't handle everything
you will not fall for me upon first sight
but you will fall for me
slowly
as you get to know me
and i wouldn't have it any other way
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 10:06 PM UTC
I have a blue blanket, it looks corduroy but it's synthetic polynesian cotton.
Considered by some to be polyester. After the ninth year of ownership I started
Telling house guests it had always been mine; but secretly knowing it came from my
Ex Kristina who left it with some of her other things in 2005 in my grand deluxe Evanston
Apartment. In like some really awesome way, I could fold the corners together to see little blocks
Of the Universe form cubes in the fourth dimension and gain a better understanding of my own
Little black shmata. Top drawer, white dresser, in the back with the leftover girlfriend underwear between
My first ever stuffed animal dog/rabbit.
Amazing how these thinned and frayed azure threads had held so many midnight conversations Together- maybe fifteen other girls had nuzzled with Kristina's blanket. Last year the guilt set in. You Watch a girlfriend, say, ratchet through your room naked for something soft to put over her to listen to
Some half-stanza from the new Yeats critical and that, do-I-tell-her feeling comes over you. Blue Polyester really had a way with women. My last serious crush, the one of six months, the one from the place that was close to where I worked six days a week, would you believe, she had not interest in that heap of thread, under my pillows spying on us sleep for twenty-four long weeks.
"Drop in the bucket" the sixty-year-olds say. I say, bring me my ******* fourth dimension blocks and cubes ************ I want to visit the existential, I want to experience the hoo-ra and Ga-Ga those kids throw around on Milwaukee waiting for $150 NBA slippers.
Wednesday is my day for telling the truth.
2:00p.m. sitting in the front of her alizarin El Dorado.
"I have something I have to tell you," I said, my mouth practically filled with marbles as I barely could Utter the words: it's not going to work out.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:51 AM UTC
Last week, Cortney moved into a four story apartment
with seven twenty-something year old roomates, all boys.
The men share the first three floors.
while Cortney has the enire top floor to herself.
I spent the night there saturday night.
And around 10:00pm
a twenty-three year old boy
Blonde, baby faced, named Kevin Smith
stumbled drunk into Cortneys penthouse room.
Kevin smith removed his pants, and crawled into bed with us.
Kevin Smith nuzzled into my face, pulled me close, and rested his hand,
firmly on my ***
Kevin Smiths breath smelled of *** coffee, (and a man who regularly brushes his teeth.
Good Job Kevin Smith.)
At first, Cortney and I assumed Kevin Smith was each other.
after further, mostly-unconcious, inventory of our limbs,
we gathered this was neither the case, nor a hallucination.
Cortney flopped dryly for her cellphone and shined it's light at Kevin Smith.
"What the **** Shouted Cortney.
No response from Kevin Smith.
"What the ****
We got out of bed and put clothes on,
laughed at how ridiculous it was
that a drunk stranger just grabbed my ***
while an unconcious Kevin Smith laid in Cortneys bed.
Kevin Smith sat up
"This is really telling. I uh..."
Cortney cut him off
"Get out."
As she turned on the light.
"Can you guys call my phone?" Asked Kevin Smith,
"No." Said Cortney
Get out of my room."
physically pushing Kevin Smith out of her room.
Cortney held up Kevin Smiths drunk zanax filled body on the stairs.
preventing Kevin Smith from otherwise falling down said stairs and dying.
Kevin Smith showed his appreciation by saying,
"High fives all around"
I watched Cortney strattle drunk Kevin Smith awkwardly, yet also motherly
down the stairs.
I leaned over the railing and high fived Kevin Smith.
"I just want you to know," mumbled Kevin Smith
you guys are my friends.
You don't need to.. I got this".
"No, you really don't" said Cortney,
"if you fall down or throw up on me
you owe me $20"
Cortney delivered Kevin Smith to his bed.
Kevin Smith mumbled something, and Cortney returned upstairs.
"What the **** Laughed Cortney.
"What the **** I replied.
Dec 11, 2016
Dec 11, 2016 at 9:16 AM UTC
the air is heavy
with an unspoken desire
for his tanned skin
upon hers
a shady block
of warm breeze,
a dusty corner
and her back against it
- heaven.
gentle kisses that tasted like summer
now dot her memory
along with flashes of squinting
liquid honey coloured eyes
framed within lashes
that remind her of the sort of thing she'd like want to feel fluttering against her shoulder
first thing
on a sunny sunday morning;
a nose that she'd like to have nuzzled against the crook of her neck
all swatches of filtered sunlight
and unfamiliar hands
soft lips and hurried goodbyes
- imprints of a translucent yellow
Jul 7, 2015
Jul 7, 2015 at 8:06 AM UTC
*you nuzzled your head
unto the shoulder of my soul
tears streamed into my heart
steamy moments of resolution
lingering breaths of quivering whispers
stolen moments of life's endurance
wafting through athanasia's elusion'd moondust
dreams of uninvited icy cloudbursts
plunging wing'd poetry into posterity
remembering future's sacred pinings
like fire gasping under waterfall's torrents
i wished upon a snowflake before it took flight
appease this illusion yet one more night*
Dec 28, 2013
Dec 28, 2013 at 12:40 PM UTC
Hail, sister springs,
Parents of silver-footed rills!
Ever bubbling things,
Thawing crystal, snowy hills!
Still spending, never spent; I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.
Heavens thy fair eyes be;
Heavens of ever-falling stars;
’Tis seed-time still with thee,
And stars thou sow’st whose harvest dares
Promise the earth to countershine
Whatever makes Heaven’s forehead fine.
Every morn from hence
A brisk cherub something sips
Whose soft influence
Adds sweetness to his sweetest lips;
Then to his music: and his song
Tastes of this breakfast all day long.
When some new bright guest
Takes up among the stars a room,
And Heaven will make a feast,
Angels with their bottles come,
And draw from these full eyes of thine
Their Master’s water, their own wine.
The dew no more will weep
The primrose’s pale cheek to deck;
The dew no more will sleep
Nuzzled in the lily’s neck:
Much rather would it tremble here,
And leave them both to be thy tear.
When sorrow would be seen
In her brightest majesty,
—For she is a Queen—
Then is she drest by none but thee:
Then and only then she wears
Her richest pearls—I mean thy tears.
Not in the evening’s eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the Sun that dies,
Sits Sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
Does the night arise?
Still thy tears do fall and fall.
Does night lose her eyes?
Still the fountain weeps for all.
Let day and night do what they will,
Thou hast thy task, thou weepest still.
Not So long she lived
Will thy tomb report of thee;
But So long she grieved:
Thus must we date thy memory.
Others by days, by months, by years,
Measure their ages, thou by tears.
Say, ye bright brothers,
The fugitive sons of those fair eyes
Your fruitful mothers,
What make you here? What hopes can ‘tice
You to be born? What cause can borrow
You from those nests of noble sorrow?
Whither away so fast
For sure the sordid earth
Your sweetness cannot taste,
Nor does the dust deserve your birth.
Sweet, whither haste you then? O say,
Why you trip so fast away?
We go not to seek
The darlings of Aurora’s bed,
The rose’s modest cheek,
Nor the violet’s humble head.
No such thing: we go to meet
A worthier object—our Lord’s feet.
2.4k
Five days a week
for six months now
I have crossed the street
from work
to the little shop
that sells sticky buns
pork nuzzled by pastry
and perused the food
something for lunch
and almost always pick
a baguette brimming with chicken
chilled cucumber disks
a sprinkling of lettuce
plus a muddy-coloured latte
for that extra afternoon kick
though today is different
I’m feeling ruthless
a shimmery packet of salt and vinegar
waits for me to pluck it
from the shelf
squeak it open
the lady says hi and I reply
with a we’ve spoken
five days a week for six months now
and it’s about time I told you
these small encounters
brighten my day
a rotten cliché I know
so I leave quick with my grub
but a tiny grin on my face
unwrap the baguette
take a satisfying bite
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 11:23 AM UTC
My child said today,
“You’d be rich if it wasn’t for me”
and she then smiled that goofy smile
adding, “Why did you have me then? I’m so expensive. ”
And when she later shimmied like a long lean cat
on a thin fence, I replied, “This is why I had you.”
And when she then made up her own word, bestfuzzer, to
describe a friend, I said, “This is why I had you.”
And as she curled into my belly on the bed
nuzzled my neck, and blew holes in my hair,
I whispered, “This is why I had you.”
She has forced me to reinvent myself
to plumb the deep waters of my reserve
my sanity, my will to live even
and bring up one more shining fish
one more favor, one more drive across town
one more strange meal at 2 am
And in cleaning away the thick of leaves, dirt, and grass
from my grandparents’ headstones
I become them, their bones my bones
Their struggle my struggle
How much we could have saved in not having children
would nevertheless have impoverished us in other ways.
We are driven by dumb unseen forces
as ancient as soil to create our children –
accident, intent, it doesn’t matter
so I pay homage to my grandparents - tired, frightened immigrants
barely out of childhood, with the stench of their parents
on fire singing their nostrils
Why did they persist?
What drove my grandmother to marry a man she’d never even met?
to bear his children, to suffer his beatings?
This is why I had you
Because I was lonely
*Because I was *****
Because through you I sewed myself back together
Because you are my destiny
And when my child asks why I had her
I breathe milk and honey into her mouth
jostle the stars until they ****** like wind chimes
pulling the continents back together again.
And when she asks me,
I can only offer up the scoop of my palms and
the ticking of blood in my wrists as reasons.
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 5:05 PM UTC
In the instant it takes a shutter to click and close, you will be gone.
We collected pictures of our perfect pretty smiles, your pearl teeth bear in front, while my lipstick lips, curled into butterfly wings, charmingly drift through the summer air. You are there, you are still there, where I left that you. Before the future became the present and you were no longer here, still there. You are where I cannot reach you.
I held that memory on the tips of my fingers, flicking a lighter close to its edge.
Your hair fell so perfectly over your forehead, but somehow, I still wanted to push it to the side when I looked at the photographs. I guess habit doesn't cease in an instant like the snap of a Polaroid or beat of a heart. When I looked at our pictures, I still wanted to whisper into your ear how much I loved you, chin nuzzled into your neck, fingers draped across your chest, your heart, your warmth. Nothing is permanent. Not even promises. Not even the visions of the kids, the house, the daytime dish washing, and night time monster watching, kids curled up in bed and us, checking on the floor, searching for what is not there and it's funny how even now, even though you're gone, I still find myself doing the same thing. Just alone.
As it caught fire, I watched our perfect lives fall to ashes in the shoe box at my feet, I saw the flash of your eyes and reach of my hand, choking me as it went. They didn't burn as easily as I thought they would.
Im hanging new ones in their place, but the dark spots behind the frames still remain, and your name is written in them.
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 1:54 PM UTC
I'm fixated on keeping my mouth busy.
Sticks of gum leave their packs like cigarettes.
An addiction.
I peel the skin from my lips
with pearlescent spades
and think about
softer edges
Your mouth
Like snow on Christmas Eve.
You taste like spiced wine
and wear ribbons of black liquorice.
Nuzzled in your neck-
I breathe cool peppermint.
We collide as galaxies.
I become clay
Your delicate hands
slide across my form
as I bend and sway
at the mercy
of your creation.
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 7:16 PM UTC
She frolicked through trouble, and dandled with mischief. Alison Wonderland; everything I wished I was and so much more. Ever emanating her doe-eyed façade; proclaiming our jests mere “mischief.”
Yet, an unspoken verdict (Foretaste? Conception? Notion?) had cloaked the truth: wickedness rippled beneath our parade.
I nuzzled her contours; my peripheral eye – nailed to her profile, her blueprints, her chassis. I stalked her mirage – dancing with vapor.
She glissaded about, no fool to my truth, varnishing my mantle.
I belonged to Alison: perpetually at her side. Our couplet became a “we.” So, We regretted nothing. We veered for the pyre: caroming(skimming?) those embers alit with vice.
She narrated my mental seminar. Discarding my dogmas to uphold her own; and thus, my mind was hers.
My mind was her mind.
Alison made heads turn, and mouths water, as we sidled – hand in hand – down the street. She was my Christmas morning: each colloquium – giftwrapped with finesse. She personified paradise, she illustrated utopia. Hatching our Carnival; netting us, enamored, sidling the Carousal. We’d skim, we’d sail, her halo – my fossil. Her lips, her eyes, her hands… they echoed the innocence of a child. Niave, innocent, and giftwrapped in wonder.
Little Miss Wonderland: my very own fairytale. She was mine alone; she was mine to keep.
Did I want her, or did I want to be her?
Alison Wonderland.
Her aura – so celestial – paralleled my prose. When she banished my husk – Maple Thatcher – I cackled good riddance… And I grew a new personality to accommodate her own.
For, without Ali – devoid of our we – I doubted the very existence of me.
On my composition, she bestowed rhythm. She gave tune to my silence; her chimes, her cadence. My ink was her song – fusing a symphony. A symphony of Alison: the melody to solidify our tryst.
My mind was her mind.
And yet… somehow, I missed a carriage – or two – aboard her train of thought. For, the same felon spiting my existence, was the angel I loved to life. Gladly, I huffed, and I puffed, and I blew Maple down.
Fused against Alison, I needed none of Maple.
Carnival infatuations…
Alison Wonderland.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 8:04 AM UTC
At first when it happens
it's like a spell, I cast it, it moves me, and I use it.
To the youth with it. Some hollow-gutted frogs' yolks and thrice its weight in pigeon carcass and fly.
Gruesome fruit loosies.
Then somehow the trance begins, the anecdotal watch stopes moving, to the hedge-burn up to the meadow go the witnesses, moving under the guile of fresh addiction. Wicked words, fiery,
a conflagration.
Burning us up. Two in two out. And just as they get it right, the moon hollows itself out, the sky undergoes a change, a nuance splits open the gut of the world and comes indifference, apathy,
anxiety.
A poem comes.
It crashes down over my head like an arrow-carved apple, from the Natives. Bending me on my side, my flat side, where I have lived one-hundred years on my side, my left leg nuzzled in between you and the blankets we bought at the thrift store on 26th and Valencia. And it worries me, now that they shift from top-floor to basement in some corner of the Salvation Army. No one owns that magic. They touch the bruised knots of its cotton fibers, and for what-
a throw blanket in a common room.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:36 PM UTC
Terror-rium
We had an aquarium
A river, a lake, a sea.
On our desk—the ocean.
Our exotic fish, fished
from the very river, lake, or
sea which we have now.
On our desk—we provide forage,
food, plants, water, and fish.
The aquarium had us.
…
We had an insectarium
An arachnid, an insect, a butter
-fly. On our counter—the air.
Our countertop full of flourishing
flowers, fluttering wings of broken
butterflies, falling from feed, because
they drink—and we pluck their
wings, tape them to tapestries to
stare. Say, how pretty they are.
The insectarium had us
…
We had a terrarium.
A desert, a savannah, a floor of sand.
Our room is lit by a woodland, a
jungle, a place we’ve never been.
African violets decorate our reptiles,
all scales and shells and condensation.
It rains today—the lid which collected
our precipitation. Our pebbled floor,
formed over our marbled kitchen.
The terrarium had us
…
We had an arium,
and we destroyed it
to keep them on our desks,
nuzzled between family portraits and pens,
to remind ourselves of what
We used to have and
what we’ll never have
again, but at least they are
pretty, and no one needs
National Geographic to stare
anymore. We have our countertops.
...
This was read at the University of Kansas on May 10, 2013:
http://shannonathompson.com/2013/05/10/contest-winners-and-poetry-from-my-ku-reading/
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 6:43 PM UTC
Blue mountains secure my skin.
Veins stretched with dismal flowers
sprouting, covering this internal land.
Anchored toes to the horizon waves,
which are now these sculpted silhouette peaks.
Blind in the darkness,
with nothing but your hand to guide mine
back home; to the ocean of your eyes.
Late night stars with us underneath, lay me to sleep.
Early morning warmth; from your body against mine.
My head nuzzled next to your kind skin,
arms wrapped around your back.
I fit perfectly on your left side,
you could be the missing piece,
as I listen to your soothing heartbeat.
Because of you,
Waking up with a smile is more addicting
then Starbucks coffee on my lips.
The sky is vacant with diamonds when I look up.
Shooting stars have fallen to the ground,
illuminating across the city skyline.
No longer underneath the same veil of moonlight.
Shivers infest my spine,
I want to surrender to your warmth and wake up with a smile.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 6:53 PM UTC
Regretfully crawling out of a warm blanket to meet a snow covered field.
My cheeks absorb the cold as it seeps through the window.
Begging for no attention, living for nothing but my gaze, a lonely fire grows out of a healthy little pile of embers, nuzzled away in the snow.
The growing stillness over the untouched field reaches through my window and meets me with embrace.
You are the captivating landscape that suspends me in time.
You are the fire that dances only for me.
Jul 14, 2022
Jul 14, 2022 at 11:02 PM UTC
It was as common as grey slacks on a pensioner
Though smelled much, much better,
The shampoo she used, that is.
Used in abundance my numerous others,
But
None did justice as she.
Tempting chocolate tendrils skirting down
Colliding with shoulder and nape of her milky, silky neck.
I have kissed her there,
Nuzzled,
Suckled and slept.
Blanketed by her scented threads of security.
A sort of role reversal.
The supposing weak protect the strong as they sleep
And dream of where they are.
Sep 17, 2014
Sep 17, 2014 at 7:24 PM UTC
The goose is a curious animal.
It does not trust me, even now, after months of trying.
Months of holding a trembling gosling who nuzzled me.
It now has not trust for me, even though nobody,not one person, has ever harmed it.
It tilts it's silly head and stares at me and tries to figure if I'll try to catch it.
I thought, foolishly, there was love in this beast.
But a goose is not a boy.
It doesn't care if it upsets you.
Doesn't care if you just want someone or something warm near you for comfort.
Which makes it much better off, in the long run, than a boy.
I can force a boy to care.
Oct 6, 2013
Oct 6, 2013 at 1:34 AM UTC
The leaves dance for the breeze,
birds hop and glide from tree to tree.
Cicadas throaty song and the crickets cracking chirps,
the vibrations sent into my ear
in a humming tornado swirl.
Life moves with ease, if you let it.
A memory recalled and the scene brought back
found in the sleek motion of a pouncing cat.
Shown to forethought, brought under the light
a recollection lost to the wind
lit in hollow tones of hazy purple.
Nuzzled between the layers in those forgotten days,
Life will pass with ease, if you let it.
Turn turn turn,
the globe on it's rotating limb it turns.
Light shines, line fades,
time aches but quickens its pace.
The flame it should burn the blurred heat
rises in mist all around,
I can't i can't i can't
feel the flame forming, lashing at my feet.
The shoreline night breeze sends my bones
shivering and knocking and aching,
can someone tell me why
the horizon will not stop shaking?
A look above,
breath found within the shining eye
of the crowded moon, behind a blooming star
their retreating dance in tempo with the lights
as they shake and dim.
Clear and vacant eyes,
Cleared out and left to rot
in the twisting tumbling weeds
of memories you thought you had forgot.
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 5:15 PM UTC
I. The Fireflies
There was once
a time when the fireflies
had made a home out of me.
One evening,
long after the sun
had surrendered itself
to the hazed horizon
and the pregnant moon,
they had come to my window,
golden freckles of light
twinkling playfully
in the dimness.
What exactly
prompted their gravitation
towards me,
I will never be entirely certain of,
though I have my theories.
Maybe it was the
warm glass of milk
sitting on my bedside table.
Or maybe
they had simply mistaken
the peppers of stardust
laced atop my eyelashes
for their own kin.
Or perhaps–
and most likely–
it had been
the murmur of poetry
on my lips:
…watch how they dart about the trees
in whimsical harmony,
how they rise up towards the dark sky
in the hopes that, someday,
they too will become one with
the constellations that blink
so brilliantly in the blackness.
Yes,
Perhaps this what had captivated them so–
a homage to the fireflies themselves.
Perhaps this is
why they had drifted towards me,
as if in some fanciful trance,
weightless as paper lanterns.
And how sweet they were
as they twirled about the ringlets
in my hair and
nuzzled their small frames
against my cheek
and fingertips.
How sweet they were–
that is,
until the bees came.
II. The Bees
They made lightning bugs
of my fireflies,
whose soft luminescence was replaced
with a violent stream of sparks,
one resembling something close
to the bursting of a fluorescent bulb
And so came the lightning,
the firefly’s only defence against
the approaching swarm,
their only ammunition
in the impending battle:
fireflies versus
bees,
both in want
of my nectared
marrow.
But the lightning
was no reasonable match
for the bees,
with their
large, gelatinous figures
and the persistence
of their stabbings;
annihilated were the fireflies,
carcasses crumbling to soot,
their innards,
still glowing,
smeared across my collarbone
like war paint.
Victorious and
humming menacingly,
the bees then crawled
into my ears
and my mouth
where they proceeded
to feast on their spoils and plunders:
the honey,
that they so cruelly
stole from me.
And once the honey was gone,
so were the bees,
bellies full,
antennae sticky,
their use for me
fulfilled and therefore
discarded.
III. The Spiders
The final hosts
were drawn to
what the bees had left behind:
the inconsolable emptiness
of my being,
They marked their territory
with cobwebs–
spun carelessly
into my arteries
and windpipe.
Breath dwindling and
heartbeat diminishing
I tried to remember the fireflies–
the light–
as the arachnophobia
threatened to devour me.
Feb 4, 2018
Feb 4, 2018 at 7:19 PM UTC
as promised, a tip for and to nolly
•<>•
“Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else.”
David Foster Wallace
•<>•
it is as if I've been stripped bare and their is no air or
barrel handy,
bankrupted by exposure of my less-than-clean ***** secret,
scrapped from under my tongue, my genuine creativity,
it is no different than yours or hers or anybody else, but
"I need to believe," he screeches, "say it ain't so!"
time again to tally up the wins and losses,
check the standings, the numerical columns,
nope, wasn't selected to be MVP or even loved by the
algorithmic ridiculous secret sauce
"poem of the day" blah blah blah
bottom line: "You’re Pretty Normal"
comfort or consternation, exhalations of relief,
or just another nail in the shutting of
your depression coffin calculation
this no longer unspoken arrogance undressed
brings me to a quiet place,
where you are welcome to sit beside,
this puzzle together, nuzzled,
perhaps more soluble
they don't make Advil for the mind,
so read the good ones,
and be reminded of this
your published spoken courageous poetry need satisfy
only you, and no one more
*in there lies the rub, the vive la difference, we identically different,
no longer a secret,
every poem is the difference you make*
August 2017
in the sunroom,
Shelter Island
<•>
BONUS POEM!!!
Nolly's Haiku #17/#70
with good knowing that
distress and forethought,
are its mother and father
that this poetic output but a derivative
of your unique self,
see,
maybe, you be
maybe
just wise enough
to curse the birth of poem at age seventeen
but just wait Nolly,
till you are seven tens, and poetry's folly,
make you even more practiced in cursing,
still asking, why
and getting the sendoff, kiss off,
of the one true answer,
nobody knows
so scribble a life time when you start at 17
and when the ripe and wizened answers in your old age
have yet to arrive
*then you can call yourself an accursed
wizened but wise'ed old poet*
Aug 13, 2017
Aug 13, 2017 at 12:03 PM UTC