"ossified" poems
this is a medical emergency ossified
in utero part the hair to cover
pink earwax scar innervated this
cochlea this ******* that steals
the spotlight and rooster’s comb
braised sockets for teeth wired through
the rafters kissing corner braces
shallow chromium double-eye poke
like a pile of face bones stacked
paul bunyan forest slide and jump from
the peak to the pool shallow and
undisturbed to dunk your face and
see future pure voodoo spirit board
and voice box locked with tongue-ectomy
removal of cough through neck hole
cardboard cut stickers in half to
write ***** I’m done.*
Oct 16, 2015
Oct 16, 2015 at 4:24 PM UTC
Oblivious is the man who claims decorum of extrapolated omnipotence.
The man who has ossified rationalism into an inexplorable ruse.
An attempt to transmogrify inchoate minds, characteristic of apparitions.
Providing illusion as the answer to an obsequious concrescence of naive followers.
Oblivious are the men who follow this decorum.
Their leader keens to their needs.
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 1:09 PM UTC
"What price love?" The scholar asks
"Is it lust which breaks the bone?"
The rock he hefts leaves him bereft
Ossified as stone.
Here we have the question
As we lift the weighted pall
'Tis it better to have loved and fully lost
Than to never love at all?
SoulSurvivor
(C) 7/2/2016
Jul 2, 2016
Jul 2, 2016 at 4:12 PM UTC
do we know whose bold hand proffered the apple?
both languished in paradise, wander and eat,
making love their primary preoccupation...
do we know who named the animals,
the trees and birds and flowers?
when stewardship became dominion..
do we know what knowledge means?
recognizing your ****** seems a small price
to pay for the world of emotion -
lust's sharp intensity,
the fierceness of anger
or a kiss...
do we know the humble serpent
-God's creation- was to blame?
curiosity perhaps, or boredom more likely,
ensconced in a gorgeous garden
living know-nothings
their idle exploration of Eden.
who wrote this story? who made these myths?
what is now an ossified creed was then
a nascent religion; many claiming the one Truth.
beliefs in faith-based fact flourishing -
all the debates on divinity.
the Garden, The Woman, the Snake and the Tree
this account survived, recorded and writ for ages
a myth that may never have happened..
this ancient story lives on to
confirm the sin and
rattle the soul.
Mar 2, 2012
Mar 2, 2012 at 12:57 PM UTC
Betty Coutu drives a mean Rambler
takes us public school, heathens
to catechism on Saturday morn
Smokes a cigarette like a prima-ballerina
Shifts three on the wheel
drives that clutch to the floor
with her thick leg
Makes the engine roar
a little
“to warm it up”
Turns with the grace of swan
Pavlova or belladonna
Something of beauty
just to watch her
three-finger the wheel through a turn around
all while taking a drag
exhales to ceiling
to music on the radio
Elvis? Roy O, Patsy Cline
circa 1959
Betty's hair is short, uncombed
but she's not without lipstick
lights her smoke with amazing matchbook skills
Calm
like a woman who does it often
takes on wear
with I'm in love, and I don't give a care
She shifts and turns
cigarette balanced like gossip on lips
or between
those first two fingertips
Smoke swirling
amid kids squabbling and whining
in the back seat
No belts back then
till Dad got home
to keep them in line
But, I bet on Betty every time
to get us there
I want to drive like her, so badly!
I sit beside her-- ossified
watching
her smoke and handle
like a total expert
I am distracted
and will surely fumble
my catechism answers
for the nuns
cataclysmically
She drops us off by an icy foot slide
I swear to God to stop back later when we're done
...with prayer and penance
recitation... and resolvings
to sin no more
Once we're out the door--
back to that forbidden foot-slide
Always had a plan for fun
So did Betty's son
the hemophiliac
Bless myself like an Olympian
and pray for Johnny
before he joins me for a run
hemophilia:
a medical condition in which the ability of the blood to clot is severely reduced, causing the sufferer to bleed severely from even a slight injury. The condition is typically caused by a hereditary lack of a coagulation factor, most often factor VIII.
Mar 24, 2019
Mar 24, 2019 at 7:31 PM UTC
Exceptional grins of jagged pearly whites
adorn skeletal masks
suffocating your mangled breath
as curled fingertips scrape against dirt.
Flesh, charred and soiled
hangs brilliantly from serrated bark.
Bleached bone barbed at the spine
where charcoal dragons dig infected beaks to feast.
A single mountain of shadow stands
before lacerated skies
a portal of inviting mayhem and madness
concrete pathways twist to its starving mouth.
Horned beasts hobble on disfigured limbs
dragging their sins across heated ground.
Hungry for souls dipped in blood
the scent of rot disperses like fog.
Rickety witches stir boiling cauldrons
with ossified tendrils,
saliva oozes from cracked lips
as you're watched from a distance.
No escape from the blackened sludge
as it wraps on the nape of your neck,
gurgle out pitiful screams of fright,
welcome to halloween.
Nov 2, 2012
Nov 2, 2012 at 12:29 AM UTC
a pale neurology
within
pale iron gates
painted in pallid shades
of steel, gold and myrrh.
locked within recursive delusions of grandeur
like granite, horizontal and brittle
snapping within their multiplicities
lost within blindness' entangled waves.
drowning at the cusps of its own banality:
vacant plasticity
homeomorphic sludge
betraying nothing
of the mystified real
but an idempotent of
projected projections,
of a recursively flickering reel,
an echo-chamber,
of pale
gated communities.
aether.
flesh.
bronze.
iron.
silver.
gold.
gold.
ink.
(tape)
flesh.
silicon.
pale.
pale.
ether,
aether
(void)
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 7:57 AM UTC
**** if I know.
I scarcely understand much anymore.
I am but a puddle of coherent reminiscences
oozing across the floor into decoherence and
diffusing into maximum entropy.
We are in Hell:
all is Maya,
all is Mara,
all is Dukkha.
Yet, we are slaves
who love our chains.
And I am a lifeless, fetal,
**** economicus,
mortifying de rigeur
in the ossified skull of a
long forgotten **** sapien.
If only those kinship instincts could've
survived the havoc we've wrought.
Look at what we've done.
Look at what we do.
**** for money.
**** for oil.
**** for land.
**** for 'justice.'
**** for God
**** for 'the cause'
**** for the sake of killing,
and pave over what's left.
Leave a few trees and bushes for our
dystopic terrarium.
'Our Synthetic Environment,'
old Murray[1] called it.
Now, walk into the forest.
Be there. Stay there.
Do you feel it?
Any of this nonsense we call
'civilization'?
Or
is it that you feel something more. . .
poignant?
More true?
To a point where our heated debates
appear as no more than frivolous diatribes?
When do we stop all this narrative solipsism
and get to the ******* point?
None of this is real.
Our thoughts are not our own.
Have they ever been?
The Spectacle [2] reigns supreme
as we idle spectators
speculate idly upon it.
Borges's fable of the cartographers [3]
has reached its apotheosis,
and we are its unwilling
and unwitting victims. . . .
Jan 13, 2021
Jan 13, 2021 at 2:01 AM UTC
wheat in color
a tan adobe
almost red
a genderless
bone
hollow and
ossified
I donate this
day to you
I enmesh
my soul
into the air
the harvest
all the while
standing
still
Jan 15, 2017
Jan 15, 2017 at 4:32 PM UTC
Gravity seems to cease in mid air,
Time began to rewind like the VHS tapes we used to peruse.
Lost to the hopelessness of remembering all that was spoken,
Still trying to grasp what I was destined to lose,
Hungry for that which will fill the emptiness,
Clandestine decisions create all the rules.
A black hole type of control,
I went maniacal and shortly afterward became betrothed; enthroned though alone.
The bigger picture will soon unfold,
That night on the country road,
Driving the whip-it was an evening so cold.
Fairy Tales told in the fool's forest sparked
Demons perverse and sordid.
Fight or flight was being sorted,
The plight was horrid, closely courted,
Shield and sword defended horror.
Pretend to mend the chip on your shoulder,
Put up those walls around your border.
In short, the more you fake your disposition,
The closer your back gets to the corner.
Tire tracks in the grass led to the tree line,
Screams transcended smoke and steel,
Like hot steam rising from a forsaken teapot.
I wish facts weren't so ossified,
Because the force behind discourse and pride
Is hacked, controlled, and lost to time.
But truth remains in purest rhyme.
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 2:50 PM UTC
a pendulum swings too wide and clicks vicious out of time
low brooding in a sealed place that parochial visitors never find
beautiful burden of oval things in an old, worn basket
tartan rectangles neatly capped in your salvation drink
empty nest on a cool, summer's day offers some relief
four sets of foliage gives nice tunes for the little princess
ice chips clink hearty like ships in the dream tumbler
a friend revered turns fiend when eyes burn on horrid tiles
a plate cracks in down slide and ossified barracuda get split
a spooky reminder gets played slowly on a vintage turntable
once fine songs given for free to unwieldy strokes
round and round on the turning thing
and just like that, off you go, like a seal
on your flippers
away from here
Dec 11, 2013
Dec 11, 2013 at 11:06 AM UTC
Gentle winds in the rustling leaves
Remind me of your skirt behind the silent glass
I can’t help but chuckle helplessly
The memory exploits this welcomed fault
Though my mouth would never speak it.
Injurious pasts have ossified the skin
Sentinel stone is what remains, sojourned to Ascalon
Misery in the granite ***** stoic in emotion
I drew this targe so flighty, back turned to the alter
To find my steps at the Temple Aphrodite.
I would protect those who love, those who hate
For I stood, the interstice, n’er affy to one
Neither credence on this sealed tongue.
Priests of joy, your vines they spent
In time they found those cracks so well
Bloom in lush across the hardness
Of generations’ sediment
The heat and stirring from below
Pushed to the sun and carved in my aspect
Nurtured by those sweet waters of your stride
The language imbued from the portrait of your mind
Infused with my coldness found within
And crack and crumble as they light falls low
Such debris may let love in.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:33 AM UTC
To give me a voice is to give a flower to the wind.
To help me create beauty out of pain was unexpected, but I say thanks and thanks again. Though I do not know you anymore I sometimes close my eyes and hear your voice beyond the door. I remember whispers of better tomorrows and your lips faintly kissing the day away from my wearied cheek.
Though I do not know you anymore your ghosts live around me. They are there when I cannot breathe and push me further down, but recognizing their mistake they are the hand that helps me off the ground. They feed my darkest demons yet encourage my wildest dreams.
No longer do we speak, but your words are etched within my veins. Every wound screams like you while the beating in my ribcage echoes songs sung softly in your sweet tenor.
We do not go a day apart. Your actions stand firmly in my mind and your promises weave in and out of my heart.
To ask for a change would strip me of skin, muscle, and bone leaving nothing but an empty soul and meaningless name without a home.
No matter how hard I try I cannot relearn a language that has been ossified.
No matter how hard I try I cannot forget the eloquence of walking and running for the first time.
To step with brand new feet, to speak with a brand new tongue, is something that cannot be done.
I can remodel and refine this body and this mind, but traces of you will linger my friend.
To make another understand that I cannot love without loving you is to turn my life on end. And though I do not know you anymore this voice that you have made for me will send that flower flying over the seven seas.
Though I do not know you anymore I thank you for making me free.
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 12:06 AM UTC
pale shadows of flung anger
fault towards your toothless call
economy of silent fury
shell your bones
shell your bones
crow feather
ggarbled fflight
plot by plot
fall
quiet spill
the knell ossified
brittle ruptures
of foam pour
take it out
take it out
take it out
take it out
speak in silence
lacerated gaze
**** or have killed
bifurcated for your own good,
possibility will be revoked
the only choice
blood on your hands
or blood in your throat
till all
the
internal haemorrhages resonate
and spill the world to dust to dust to
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 8:40 PM UTC
Transmogrified
by winter squalls,
the branches of the sycamore
have ossified into a cathedral
of snow.
A red cardinal alights
there—a spot of blood,
a feathered clot of sin.
Hush. Listen to the limbs
where he has perched:
the nascent cracking
of winter’s church.
Jan 3, 2017
Jan 3, 2017 at 3:48 PM UTC
The broken branches
The barren tree
Bereft of insects
And fluttering leaves
Ancient oak
White and tall
Legendary
Among them all
The base was brown
Now calcified
Or is it ossified
Till it’s fossilized
Where ostracized
Lovers carved their name
And promised
To return again
Where children
Once reigned
In make shift forts
The tree now holds
The many eons of echoes
Masses of memories
Soon to be released
To you and me as we please
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 5:53 PM UTC
Remember black winds of November nights,
rattle your bones, chill your marrow,
quiver time's arrow and rip the world's white
veil from a skeletal face. Throw
it. Watch it fold, caught on the cathedral,
high church of the ossified faithful,
whose whispered prayers will calcify us all.
Unveiled, the world is bones without a soul,
rattling as it grinds, creaking as it turns.
A flag flies / Calcium collects in urns.
Sep 14, 2020
Sep 14, 2020 at 6:59 PM UTC
if the theatre breathes like a rancid lung
it must exhale into the rafters;
ledger-scent and sour of iron...y,
and hours congealed into one bleak bruise.
then it must be that only (i) inherit a vessel
as one inherits a house wrecked by fire:
walls still too warm with other lives,
wallpaper peeled into letters that spell me.
never (my) name.
heart-beat / heart • skip
(these syllables only ever tally debts.)
(my) palms are tax-collectors with gloves far too soft to grasp mercy.
(my) ribs are two little vaults where accusations slumber.
and there are ceaseless receipts folded inside the sole of (my) shoe.
evenings most beautiful
with rain pouring down their face,
have stopped pooling and now,
they sediment, layer upon layer...
in the strata of one’s rues,
as ossified bulwarks for crimes (i) never learned.
a braided tongue of smoke
knots through (my) chest,
insisting on words (i) never even conceived,
sighing a confession to a jury of
absent eyes.
they led me to the scaffold
palisaded oak, blade polished to a sunless gleam,
and the (crowd), silent as those ledge
pages,
watched
as i was sentenced for the mere act of knowing.
and even as the head fell,
i felt the phonetics of my existence
spill like tarnished coins across the wet cobblestones,
and the (spectators), formless and meticulous,
gathered them as though i were (theirs).
Aug 15, 2025
Aug 15, 2025 at 9:46 AM UTC
Not a rock
carved smooth ovate
immutable in ossified intent
but an egg
quiescent peacock hues
hatching in YOUR imagination
Nov 11, 2024
Nov 11, 2024 at 5:20 AM UTC
Cowled Charon,
Arise and attend;
Thanatos summons.
Invoke anew, Styx;
Ripples...solemn, sombre.
Ferry departed souls
To Hades' shore
A coin awaits thy ossified hand.
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016 at 1:48 PM UTC
As dawn's fog yawns
exhausted jaws call upon
tomorrows and beyond.
Pondering somnolent solitude's
honest and solemn qualms,
the calm before
ancient eons old atomic bomb;
clouds becoming bells of bronze,
air a balmy sauna,
strands of photon blonde
don tree awnings
and lush bladed lawns
strong enough to rouse flora,
fauna frolicking along,
faults and all their wrongs;
summer sunrise,
curtains, drapes are drawn,
phenomenon a drama
of God's pawns,
audience applause
the crawling pulse
of this cosmic throng.
But chronology's period
more like a comma, pause,
as falling autumns quick bygone,
then a wave of frigid wand
and winter's frostbitten trauma haunts;
maudlin waters frozen wanton,
fossilized to icy ponds,
ossified swans mourn silenced songs
their unspoken sonnets
for want of
warm renaissance.
Jan 15, 2024
Jan 15, 2024 at 3:40 PM UTC
Funny how the feeling comes and goes
Could it be, you’ll stop haunting me soon
You know some days I think just like a loon
But, in the end, give me one good reason
To stay,
The hanged man
Broke loose from his noose
The castles in peril
The queens mean
And the subject sterile
So,
Down dog down,
Don’t make me scream and holler
I swear I won’t put you in a collar
And walk you around like a puppy dog.
I only wanted to keep you close to me
Hopelessly, I see for wanting a dialogue
Do one and one make two?
Am I still a friend to you?
If not, please tell me what I did or didn’t do
Because I was always trying to be a friend to you
Was I overbearing in my caring?
Did I say too much or not enough?
I know you hated my gushing and mushing and my leaning on you
But you know, if truth be told
I know you don’t really care
It’s true
If I said you act like this because you don’t really care
You tell me it’s not true
But breakthrough, it is true
You don’t really care for much.
It’s not really a lack of sufficiency
But it could be
More like a chosen, frozen stringency contingency
**** it, don’t we see in everyone else
What we don’t see in ourselves.
Because you know the highs and lows
Is that why the feeling comes and goes
It could be true of me as well
Why do I have to follow protocol?
It’s your call, you know
Slayer of untruth
Wreaker of havoc
Assassin unfastened
I’m knee deep in denial
The jury has declared a mistrial
Don’t know what’s ahead
Maybe my deathbed
No magical carpet ride, try instead
Ossified, petrified, vilified
Rider of the dark night
Looking for a guiding light
Frozen, chosen neophyte
On the backside of truth
Cockeyed seeker of
A fountain of youth
Found it in a bottle of vermouth
It was short-lived
Started to fizz
That is
What I’m trying to say
Do you understand now
If you do, please tell me
There’s nothing I can do
I’m me and you’re you
If you understand
If you do, please tell me
Do one and one make two
Or is it a roadmap
Am I a doormat?
Have I
Forsaken myself
For the love of a lover
Or is it just a cover
For not liking me.
May 19, 2019
May 19, 2019 at 6:52 PM UTC
When it happens, it happens quickly -
a small crack will appear
and the ossified personification
of one of your most revered gods will crumble.
And that is when the true magic will begin.
When you realize that what spills forth
is not all miracles,
beauty and wisdom -
Much of it is ugly, disappointing, even petty -
and all too human.
Oct 22, 2016
Oct 22, 2016 at 3:55 AM UTC
I am a sentinel
Poet of stone
Sitting apart
Sitting alone.
I do not twinkle
No star made of glass
I do not think
About things of the past.
I'm no wooden flute
Played with feeling and ease.
My breathing on earth
Has long ago ceased.
I'm no longer able
To hear, nor to talk
But when I move
YOU WILL HEAR ME WALK.
I'm not man or woman
I'm not boy or girl.
I no longer see
With the eyes of this world.
I cannot touch
And I cannot feel.
But I can exist
I assure you I'm real.
I am an island
a massive stone head.
An ossified remnant
Of the long-ago dead.
I haunt the gravestones
They draw me. They lure.
I am so like them
I will endure.
Yes, I'm a stone angel
Your flowers I see,
But I cannot smell them
For I cannot breathe.
Yes, those stone markers
A metaphor be.
Those silent stones
Are actually ME.
Soul Survivor
Mar 1, 2014
Mar 1, 2014 at 7:15 AM UTC