"oaky" poems
Ulrich finds comfort in knowing
he could seek a lethal dose of medication
to hasten his death.
Ulrich was standing
next to the governor on Monday afternoon,
sun pouring in the oaky office,
as he signed
the bill into law.
Doctors and hospitals
and state officials
are scurrying to prepare.
Soon, the state Health Department
will get forms ready.
The lethal medication
is a liquid that the patient must
self-administer.
Hastening death;
akin to
yanking out feeding tubes
and removing respirators,
is not suicide, they say.
The underlying illness
would be listed
as the cause of death.
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 11:18 AM UTC
I used to love
the ripple
of her.
I Cherished
placque suns.
I walked amongst
the withered oaky clouds
reaching to the earth
in capillaries
of lightning.
I made
****** on journeys
in the night
to the
licquor store.
I could take refuse
and morph it
in my hands,
because they were
her
hands.
She was the gravity of neutrinos,
I spun
and
spun,
and threw off layers,
as her bra
lay on the floor
and the laces
of her ******
lay
whitely
in the corner of the room.
I could've been anywhere
in those final seconds,
the club with it's thousand
orbitals of dancing brilliance,
the park
with it's millionaires
of hate,
the senseless
desert
of my
heart.
I was in the rainforest
feeling the universe
in droplets,
and my pores screamed.
Destruction
is something to reminisce over,
and I moan
like a cat in the night
with it's broken leg.
I moan
like a dwarf star,
getting smaller
and
smaller.
Apr 2, 2012
Apr 2, 2012 at 7:57 PM UTC
tap the vein
the very flow
a fizzle-POP
the gears whir
dry-eyed in the garage
suckling that oaky rind
spin the clocks
if so inclined
the mothers plead
but She still calls for you
repo the lung
the liver too
this sickly sweet memory
this one too many
this cool kid
strutting streets in denim jeans
--
c
Mar 9, 2018
Mar 9, 2018 at 11:32 AM UTC
My gums hurt-
the toothache is hard to swallow
when we
mend the broken bones
with the loose change in the couch
and the buttons from
worn out cargo shorts.
Take standard biology,
an ideal economy,
and authentic authonomy
with a grain of salt.
We can't find or feed
while we bleed.
It seeps from cortexes
into yesterday,
into today,
into some
puddle
huddled around the fire
for warmth.
We melt just as the ice cubes
in your lemonade
on days
where
nostalgia has no
tranquil, oaky shade.
Stand at the length of lions.
Its breath is about as tolerable
as greed is swallowable.
While these dreams go hungry,
we feast.
While wolves
eat our spines as meat,
we are sheep
turning yellow from the heat.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 11:06 AM UTC
a Saturday afternoon love song
<>
finally the breezes have sheared the humidity,
away, away, out, out sluggish, do nothing thoughted spots,
so peculiar to a Saturday August afternoon,
passing like a last exhaling breath,
quiet like, no receipt, no return, no raising of the turgid, languid lungs
one more time
alone with quiet contemplation for sole companionship,
observe a regatta of sailing board boats, silenced passerby's,
orderly and regal, the wind keeping them tidily single filed
their empowering wind makes me prone to
thoughts of singing,
Leon Russell's A Song For You,
up next on the playlist,
but the squirrels beg off,
the rabbits hide away 'neath the deck,
the craven ravens retreat to the highest branches,
alone, laughing at their impolite, unsubtle slipping away of the
dearly departed
earbud a semi-solo performance, a duet,
me backed up by
Leon and the river-baying waves,
a city boy singin$ rockily,
in a place where a city boy has no earthly business to be, ^
especially singing,
chanting to everyone, no one in particular,
listening real careful like to the words of two oaky, growly voices,
leftovers from the Sixties, sing a song to the ones they love
*"I love you in a place where there's no space or time,
I love you for my life, You're a friend of mine
And when my life is over, Remember when we were together,
We were alone and I was singing this song to you"*
sometimes it just doesn't get any better,
under the wings of the sky and its multi-shaded blue blessings,
don't need counting, enumerating, all kind of blending going on
the old alone days been on the mind,
those laser clouded future gazing hazing days,
when you listened to music non-stop, but never sung along,
strange though, I wept then, and weeping now,
can't quite make the connection...
*guess my singing is still
just that bad*
<>
August 13, 2016
05:50pm
S.I.
Aug 13, 2016
Aug 13, 2016 at 5:38 PM UTC
In dreams, I’m where the music plays.
I’m listening to the laughter, like it’s in another room.
My drink is dark, bitter and oaky tasting
and the peanuts taste like soap.
There aren’t any napkins.
Others are lines of light and shadow.
I feel an anxiety that I gnaw on,
like a dog works a bone.
My dream’s conflating memories.
Suddenly Lisa’s there,
she comes up from behind,
“Aww, your tag is sticking out,” she says
but before she can fix it,
I hear tower bells ringing.
It’s my alarm.
Jan 24, 2024
Jan 24, 2024 at 5:35 PM UTC
radioahead is on now and now its going what theeeeeeeee
ooho noi ** oh boh oh nho hnoh ooh oh nhoo
whrejhrhehrehrherhehrehrhehre
whwhrahhwerhehrheh
worafdhajrdjfldfjadjfkadjkja
YEAHHHHHH
UGHHHHH
SECOND COMINNG SEACOND COMING SECOND COMING
no no no no no no no
I had a revelation on the train
GOD has revealed himself
he hides behind flirtation with death
oh he hides
and the music
keeps going
and I have nothing
but the vibrancy of youth golden locked golden key that turns but I am a clumsy troll on top of a mountain, clumsy troll on top of the mountain wearing a frowny face, frowny face
and he drops his giant club in the ground
to sob and cry
because he couldn't get
his soup and wine
oh no
NFJNFODIJFAJDOJFAIDFJAIDJFAJDaf
dfaDOfjafjdf
a
fdjf
adjjf
adjf
jjaf
dfjafaj
adfa
AFFJAFFAHHHAHHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAaaAHEe
r
herh
heRRHEHRW WEEEE GOOOOO
lets go goleto glkegoetleeoaerj
doa
fj
dlfja
lfdjk;
fja
k;jf
dfja
df
j
af
aAHNNDONEEE EODNEEE GONEEE ALLLLL
SPOILED
HES" wearbing a frowny face he's wearing a frowny face
he's crying because he's left to the mountain
in this video game world
press b
press b
press b
press b
press b
press b
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 8:00 PM UTC
father-watching
faraway
triggered sweet by
memory plucked
from twinge of
heart at
husband whiskers
sprinkled in
the sink
father
slow transforming
out of sight
whisker white
a-creep through
long-time
beard of boyish
blondish-brown
sprouting
scraggled out from
ear and nose
and knuckle
round
eyes a-cave
and sunken deep
in shaded-over
cavities
for inward looking
more than
out
with no more
footballs
flung
about
and no more
children yanking
on the waking hours'
daggy trousers
for weeping
over old-time
music secret
in the dark
up with the
birds
down with
the sun
midlife
rush at last
a-hush and
calm in its
surrender
done
bones exposed
of parenthood
held frail a-clung
by gristle grey of
simple habits
coffee thick
and silky
run with
milk
and crispest
crusty bread
torn up
for dipping into
hearty stock
with olives
cheese and
ham on top
a drop
of something
oaky sipped
and languished
a-crawl with
thoughts of
father own
disintegrating
boyhood memories
coddled close
and satiating
with daughter
unbeknownst
father-watching
faraway
© 2017 Adelaide Heathfield
Feb 20, 2018
Feb 20, 2018 at 7:53 AM UTC
He was a Redwood tree in California,
born and raised in Missouri and
chopped down Virginia.
His spirit was oaky strong
and wrought with the wisdom of ancient bark,
but dead four years shy of fifty.
That was my father.
But a tree fell today.
A tree whose roots were rocked to
their core with hit
after
hit.
He raged while I danced around
the trunk of the father I remembered.
Hoping, praying that maybe the impact of
little feet on soft ground could
rock a forest back into rhythms of strength.
Feet do not make roots grow deeper.
Feet tear roots up.
I found him curled up and crying in the closet.
I should’ve looked for him sooner.
So let me answer the riddle:
the answer is
yes.
When a tree falls in the forest,
and no one is around to hear it
I assure you
it makes a sound.
And when they ask me what my greatest regret was,
when I am older than he ever lived to live,
I will tell them that I was not
with him when he died.
I will tear into bottom lip
like roots tear dry ground
and tell them that I was
branch of his branch and
vine of his vine, but I do not know
what he wished to say to me
in the last moments this earth afforded him.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 9:54 PM UTC
I stand up straight,
just like she taught me.
I'm calm.
Collected.
But the table ahead is
hurtling through space,
a thousand miles to
the tick of a clock.
And the tick crawls
slow and alone through
the hairy forest. Oblivious
to the car chase ahead.
I turn the glass upside down
and pour the Cabernet.
Oaky flavours spill to the
floor and consume my world.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 3:34 PM UTC
lately when it rains
and it pulls at all
the earth, humid and
oaky,
i wonder if it brings
the same out in me,
summer sweat, the
whos and wheres
buried down deep.
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 2:22 PM UTC
I have yet to make sense
of the muddled inks
that create your irises
A sort of a
composition
in chocolate
and oaky warmth
- not brown.
When searching
for a metaphor to describe you
the idea that circles back
and which I can not
nor will ever
be able to disregard
is that of an ice sculpture:
something for which you spend hours,
building up
only to watch it melt
helplessly
paralysed
I watched you
with her
helplessly
paralysed
I watched your temperature rise
and that husk around your heart
begin to thaw
like the way it did for me
And when I couldn't watch you anymore
when the pain became too great
that I had to deny myself
that pleasure of looking at you
with your chocolate composition
I turned away
and imagined you
imagining me
You are an ellipsis because you are possibility
You are plums stolen from the ice box
You are the forest, so lovely, dark and deep
You are the paragon of art
You, you talk like winter rain
You are like firm red grapes
like stretching
like that sunshine on winter mornings
but also like moonlight
in all its grace and purity and
love
you make me want to be a poet
if for reasons no more than wanting to impress you
They say that there is a place
on one's chest
that, when struck, stops the heart from beating
Feb 20, 2014
Feb 20, 2014 at 4:38 PM UTC
I spoke to a girl with questions.
Silky black hair up like a pine tree,
cappuccino skin studying me
perusing thoughts like vinyl sleeves.
Petite and slouched against the wall
I did not catch her name,
cozy aimless no-name.
New star, squinting glances,
eyes rolling around like owls.
My beard was brustling
like a wildfire up my cheeks.
Maple eyes, oaky eyes,
ebony eyes, rosewood eyes,
burning the dead wood within me.
Oct 7, 2018
Oct 7, 2018 at 3:15 AM UTC
when we moved into the new home
after the divorce, things were
still rocky, we had just
“left” them in the dark
still don’t address them, not a phone call,
not even
now, not after even a *********
deathinthefamily
they are like the side of a house
that never gets light
the side of the house against a cliff
and we live in the sunny sea side
windows open
they are threadbare ghosts
like an old wedding gown
used only once
moths also eat holes in my grandmother’s brain and she forgets things
but perhaps maybe she will start to remember
the reasons she loved my mother instead of hated her.
they live in apartments above beauty salons
and in oaky gentrified railroad towns
but I am a **** but I think
it’s justified that we cut
them off like a sore, well
it’s obvious. Because they
didn’t treat my mother
well at all
And that is
unforgivable.
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 29, 2016 at 7:53 PM UTC