"onionskin" poems - Hello Poetry

This is the ladder---your first steps into the height. There are no apples. There are no angels. There is only broken shadow and socket; a rounded house of milk and voltage. Now, as you unscrew the bulb with fingertips, listen for the sand. It is sand from ancestral beaches were all families of glass have been blown. A beach where dinosaurs are continually struck by lightning. Continue swiveling until the blown-out bulb is free from the ceiling. Come down, but do not look down. Use the eye in each shoe to find the lower rungs. Place the old bulb in with the dish of pears. The new carton of bulbs are close by, sleeping. Unwrap a fresh bulb from its onionskin pajamas and ascend the same ladder previous. Using your musical hand, insert the threaded end up into the unthreaded beginning. Turn gently in the direction of sunrise until snug. Pull the chain, for the light of God's echoing equation will now sing. Squint and descend.

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Apr 24, 2014

Apr 24, 2014 at 8:13 PM UTC

stephen-lindow

CHANGING A LIGHTBULB after Julio Cortazar

This is the ladder---your first steps into the height. There are no apples. There are no angels. There is only broken shadow and socket; a rounded house of milk and voltage. Now, as you unscrew the bulb with fingertips, listen for the sand. It is sand from ancestral beaches were all families of glass have been blown. A beach where dinosaurs are continually struck by lightning. Continue swiveling until the blown-out bulb is free from the ceiling. Come down, but do not look down. Use the eye in each shoe to find the lower rungs. Place the old bulb in with the dish of pears. The new carton of bulbs are close by, sleeping. Unwrap a fresh bulb from its onionskin pajamas and ascend the same ladder previous. Using your musical hand, insert the threaded end up into the unthreaded beginning. Turn gently in the direction of sunrise until snug. Pull the chain, for the light of God's echoing equation will now sing. Squint and descend.

1

This book is full of my father's eye lashes He treated the pages rough like his sons pinching the daylights out of them, I remember mud and grease on calloused thumbs and you can still smell Four Roses bourbon in the morning through the onionskin He would not weep he knew most folks never kept their word Anyway, his death came through like a hitchhiker You could see it coming like the slow light of a faraway dead star.

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Feb 3, 2018

Feb 3, 2018 at 7:50 PM UTC

r-2

Book of my father

This book is full of my father's eye lashes He treated the pages rough like his sons pinching the daylights out of them, I remember mud and grease on calloused thumbs and you can still smell Four Roses bourbon in the morning through the onionskin He would not weep he knew most folks never kept their word Anyway, his death came through like a hitchhiker You could see it coming like the slow light of a faraway dead star.

21

teen angst drips leisurely from every clause,every verse I read and hear here, like bittersweet honey metaphors pooling on the sidewalk like Summer rain. >how fitting.sadness and hurt raining on our savage revels of youth that were doomed from the start. I remember watching the Summer rain fog up and blur the car windows as Grandma drove me home on the last day of sixth grade, breathing more freely already, now that the burden of fake smiles and schoolwork was over. I thought back to last summer. Oh,that homely bookshop in Columbus was a reader's paradise. a labyrinth of books,endless fantasy worlds to dive into.I wanted to stay a little longer,just a little more, more, more-- I was so naive . Maybe I still am. But you can't hide behind what isn't real) paper is simply so onionskin thin,and raindrops are so cold and wet and heavy. >We left eventually, strolling back to the hotel in the Summer rain .

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Aug 29, 2015

Aug 29, 2015 at 11:42 PM UTC

SilverBullet

Summer Rain

teen angst drips leisurely from every clause,every verse I read and hear here, like bittersweet honey metaphors pooling on the sidewalk like Summer rain. >how fitting.sadness and hurt raining on our savage revels of youth that were doomed from the start. I remember watching the Summer rain fog up and blur the car windows as Grandma drove me home on the last day of sixth grade, breathing more freely already, now that the burden of fake smiles and schoolwork was over. I thought back to last summer. Oh,that homely bookshop in Columbus was a reader's paradise. a labyrinth of books,endless fantasy worlds to dive into.I wanted to stay a little longer,just a little more, more, more-- I was so naive . Maybe I still am. But you can't hide behind what isn't real) paper is simply so onionskin thin,and raindrops are so cold and wet and heavy. >We left eventually, strolling back to the hotel in the Summer rain .

31

Where midnight is bright as day and time never does slow down I find myself alone for the first time ever, walking along where nobody knows who I am and they wouldn’t really care if they did. Because they’ve got their own stories to fabricate and skeletons to bury beneath onionskin layers. Two in the morning with my head stretched to the sky and I find myself falling in love with a stranger. Central Park is a castle with horse-drawn carriages and suddenly I’m a scarlet-cheeked princess waiting for my naked cowboy to rescue Me so we can run away and live in a quaint Brooklyn townhouse where the children play ghetto games. I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Leave me to myself so I can wander the splendid city streets. The man with wrinkles covering his ebony face and his ragged, dusty clothes too big for his slender body sneaks a glance and sly grin at me before he picks up his golden saxophone and serenades the subway passengers, bringing sunshine and sultry smiles to their dark faces. He’s had a painful, wretched life and the pain of losing a son, his first baby, to a grenade in a Middle Eastern desert where the sun burns the soldiers’ skin as they spend hour after hour, looking for weapons they’ll never find. The look in his eyes is clear. Making others smile, in the middle of the city subway is his heart’s content. I drop a bill into his beaten up case and move along, but that sweet sound overwhelming the hot, ***** air I’ll never forget. I swear I can almost touch Pluto from where I sit, at the Top of the Rock, and the stars are an arm’s stretch away. I can see past the Manhattan skyline and into Jersey. I’ve seen the whole world tonight. How I wish I may, how I wish I might stay. Give me the crowded streets and boutiques for keepsakes. I’ll pack them tightly into tissue paper and each night when I’m ready to fly away from the small town girl living in a lonely world sort of life I’ll make a wish and fall in love all over again in a city where nobody knows my name.

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Aug 9, 2010

Aug 9, 2010 at 9:23 PM UTC

ashley-centers

Falling In Love

Where midnight is bright as day and time never does slow down I find myself alone for the first time ever, walking along where nobody knows who I am and they wouldn’t really care if they did. Because they’ve got their own stories to fabricate and skeletons to bury beneath onionskin layers. Two in the morning with my head stretched to the sky and I find myself falling in love with a stranger. Central Park is a castle with horse-drawn carriages and suddenly I’m a scarlet-cheeked princess waiting for my naked cowboy to rescue Me so we can run away and live in a quaint Brooklyn townhouse where the children play ghetto games. I don’t want to live the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Leave me to myself so I can wander the splendid city streets. The man with wrinkles covering his ebony face and his ragged, dusty clothes too big for his slender body sneaks a glance and sly grin at me before he picks up his golden saxophone and serenades the subway passengers, bringing sunshine and sultry smiles to their dark faces. He’s had a painful, wretched life and the pain of losing a son, his first baby, to a grenade in a Middle Eastern desert where the sun burns the soldiers’ skin as they spend hour after hour, looking for weapons they’ll never find. The look in his eyes is clear. Making others smile, in the middle of the city subway is his heart’s content. I drop a bill into his beaten up case and move along, but that sweet sound overwhelming the hot, ***** air I’ll never forget. I swear I can almost touch Pluto from where I sit, at the Top of the Rock, and the stars are an arm’s stretch away. I can see past the Manhattan skyline and into Jersey. I’ve seen the whole world tonight. How I wish I may, how I wish I might stay. Give me the crowded streets and boutiques for keepsakes. I’ll pack them tightly into tissue paper and each night when I’m ready to fly away from the small town girl living in a lonely world sort of life I’ll make a wish and fall in love all over again in a city where nobody knows my name.

26

..and we can only give what we can give. I opened myself and handed it to you in trust peeled back the layers of onionskin as they fell upon the ground. My heart, in shining pieces, glows like diamonds fresh from the earth raw, rough yet ever-true pumping blood and lust giving it so darkly yet with infinite light. My heart, yes, my heart Only this is what I have to give to you. How I wanted to catch the pulses of light to cup them in my hands and hold them like precious chalices made of fine materials. Yet they seem to have passed so **** quickly along the overhead beams like a conveyor belt in a love factory. How I wanted to capture their flames like fireflies in a jar so many points of luster an inner glowing up into the realms of faith of wisdom of kindness of pleasure How I wanted to light you up and be lit from within for our points of darkness to meet and explode as shooting stars bound for the same orbit expanding until they could enfold it all. Now it is up to me. I must calm the heart and mind caught up in turbulence, storms of inner fires I must calm the winds lest my deepest self blow away I must save myself before morning and let sleep caress my inner wounds let the bounds of lovingness forgive me as I forgive myself for loving.

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Feb 11, 2016

Feb 11, 2016 at 1:55 AM UTC

lora-lee

What I Give to You

..and we can only give what we can give. I opened myself and handed it to you in trust peeled back the layers of onionskin as they fell upon the ground. My heart, in shining pieces, glows like diamonds fresh from the earth raw, rough yet ever-true pumping blood and lust giving it so darkly yet with infinite light. My heart, yes, my heart Only this is what I have to give to you. How I wanted to catch the pulses of light to cup them in my hands and hold them like precious chalices made of fine materials. Yet they seem to have passed so **** quickly along the overhead beams like a conveyor belt in a love factory. How I wanted to capture their flames like fireflies in a jar so many points of luster an inner glowing up into the realms of faith of wisdom of kindness of pleasure How I wanted to light you up and be lit from within for our points of darkness to meet and explode as shooting stars bound for the same orbit expanding until they could enfold it all. Now it is up to me. I must calm the heart and mind caught up in turbulence, storms of inner fires I must calm the winds lest my deepest self blow away I must save myself before morning and let sleep caress my inner wounds let the bounds of lovingness forgive me as I forgive myself for loving.

72