"overfull" poems
we are strong people - full and sure
our purposes are not in conflict - just out of phase
we share the need to achieve
and to find new solutions
we are intense people - busy and needed
our hours are overfull - our agendas undone
we share the delight of discovery
and endure our learnings
we are expectant people - determined and convinced,
respectful and cantankerous
we share an expectation of excellence - of success
though unprepared and unbelieving
we share the need for trust and commitment
we share the dream of excellence
Jul 21, 2012
Jul 21, 2012 at 11:15 PM UTC
Passing through mid-century
these jazz oneironauts reached Apollonian heights
while society drifted into Dionysian drunkenness
the merchants caught on too soon
The most beautiful parts of humanity
enamored to serve the ugliest:
The merchant class, the bourgeoisie
Buddha’s undeserving in charge
If only in past centuries
those noble princesses embraced
even more lowly patronages
all this potential today could be staved off
Saved from the drive to be commodified
People stopped buying jazz as it reached its height
No more smiles to appease the whites
Jazz for the few
the noble, the individual in the know
Until this too becomes the simulacrum
The Ornette Coleman on the bookshelf
to signify your snootiness
your refinement from wealth
Aging Dads in thousand dollar sweaters
kicking out their 22 year old kids
for being ****** addled hipsters
meanwhile Bird on Verve is nodding out
and Dad’s girlfriend pops a Percocet
to deal with all the stress
Jan 15, 2022
Jan 15, 2022 at 10:50 AM UTC
Oo, have I got a song for you. While you whittle away time learning to play instruments I've run the gun and figured how to inject my spirit in it. Has it been for you as easy to forget as it has been for me to leave the love where it belongs and move on with healthy hope, pelvis at the rope, grinding life into a pulp with each push and pull. The cold in memory for you serves as my instigation to remember you for warmth.
Life is just kitchen like it was before
Conversation runneth over,
Our glasses overfull with celebration
Why don't you come to my door?
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
you were the kind of hope
that soothes an aching soul
just the sound of your name
makes my bones feel whole
maybe i never got the chance
to tell you
that the kindness you carry
so delicately on your shoulders
and the rooted rhythm of change
you’ve had to learn to dance to
has created _waves of hope_
maybe i didn’t tell you enough
that the love in your eyes
was exactly what
i didn’t know
i needed to
know
your l o v e
your _goodness_
a glass overfull
and it has over poured
into a soothing memory
a blanket of comfort
where i can find peace
so i snuggle into the loss
comforted by the knowing
that out there exists someone
as honest, as brave
_as soul-shaking_
as you
this alone has moved me
deeper into myself
_a soothing to my soul_
you’ve reflected
e v e r y t h i n g
i needed to see in me
and left me only with
tiny bruises
of _what-ifs_
the always wondering of
what we could have been
but these growing pains
are mine
i will kiss them
and sometimes
i will cry
i will fall asleep alone
to the rhythm of my own
heartbeat
to the peace of knowing
what comes
must sometimes go
_________
the world keeps spinning
let it take what it must
to make room for
what will
b l o o m
with even more beauty
than any life experience
has yet to do
embrace all that has left you
stretch out in this new space
of self discovery
keep hope & be eager
for all that’s yet to
u n f o l d
Feb 2, 2021
Feb 2, 2021 at 2:28 PM UTC
loneliness: in my dreams
we go on adventures
you, without a face or a name
travel with me as we raid corporate
offices and write children’s books
and turn tables searching for truth
and liberation
you strike deep roots, deeper roots than I could
ever fathom
sometimes I try to deny you the earth’s blessings
sometimes, loneliness, I try to pull you out from the soil
but I can only claw so deep into the earth before I am tired
sweaty, in the hot sun, the sandy soil sliding back down around
your rootspace
loneliness, you are not the same as despair
loneliness, you are not a perennial
I should let you grow deep and wide, I should let you
take over the entire garden
Do I even have the heart or soul left to grow anything
else this year?
One of these days I might regret stymieing your growth
I would wonder what your blossoms would look and smell like
What your fruit would taste like if I gave
you time to bear it
What nutrients you might leave to nourish a rootspace in my soul
That could be filled with love, laughter and
a future so distant and so near I could know not its name
loneliness: let’s be friends
I’ll leave fear and longing behind and we can bear on
together,
Our cups overfull, our hands acheing with energy
The sand, the soil, into the forest together
We discover a world I would have never known without you
And I will learn to carry you not as a burden but
as a blessing
Since it’s been so long since I’ve known your name
Why would I deny the opportunity
To savor your bittersweet flesh in a hot afternoon?
It will take time,
But I have all the patience in the world
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 2:28 PM UTC
she bleeds,
hard and dark, bitterwords
and angry scowls,
from the depths of her lazyboy chair.
age has stolen
her laughter, wit and compassion....
pain is her worldy possesion,
it blinds her to all else.
she used to laugh and smile and i miss that, so much,
and i wish that, my boy
would have those memories
but we have become,
the whipping boy,
to her frailty,
her scroogelike attitudes,
her impatience to,
be done with it all....
this is my sacrifice,
my burden,
willingly, lovingly,
shared by my lover and child...
but, oh! somedays,
it is like,
carrying a bag,
overfull,
of sharded glass,
that pierces my back
and stabs at my heart.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 5:16 PM UTC
again your words garner tears
i am fought from within
between wretched smiles aching with the shame of words i've shared
listened to, copied, written, "shared"
and yet never truly shared
those doors are gone: i have shared
and one has listened, shining love as hot to bear as sun...
refracted in my tears the warmth
is as a solar flare of unexpected love--
distrusts flung of self for undeserving care,
i waver-wallow, sing another cracking grasp,
slurp my sniffle-ramen soup to comfort ten-year wounds
all open now, shining, wincing in the sun.
i would bare my bones, it seems,
in urgent need to stamp the world an honest love.
what have i waited for? better words to come and scare us into final sum?
a final balance done, as if a math could send us there?
where? where has the daylight gone and come?
how old this starlight sinking from
i try to laugh and fail,
giving fame another final finger-flipping off
as that one girl said once, long forgotten, "cradling
her last fledgling flying ****
and kissing it on to fated final flight"
yes. discovered now by one, i heal in single sun
i beg from those in shade or hurting from my blindest words a balm
a balm of knowing deep i seek to undiscover harm...
a balm of knowing deep the wholesome love of self that overflows to all...
Mokume told me, "love them" as i struggled with their hate,
he asked my love as to her love for me,
he asked me of my love i held for her--and which was more,
the love of self or love of her
and so i wavered in the meanings love has come to bear
while he taught stridently the meaning of Yoruba masks,
the bowl atop the symbol-studded head
the brims so overfull they shower all who look,
or dare to touch its bursting river-majesty
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 1:46 PM UTC
my reach now often fails my grasp -
confusion replaces regret,
obligation taunts me from tomorrow -
to do again what was done before.
how then might i notice and do -
with ambition so withered?
how might hope be gently held -
to better keep promises?
difficult and grateful days go by -
what more than these stories am i?
pervasive fatigue now my companion.
i awake, underfull of thought,
and overfull of sadness, i remember -
a bird singing.
Jul 21, 2012
Jul 21, 2012 at 11:03 PM UTC
Under the wires
with all the beautiful men
gods gone under under the gutters
culverts overfull overly discarded the
crux or crutch core of ultimate beauty and
discarded power in blasphemed curses of harrowing tales
of more horrible horrors too to overly too harrowing to be forgotten
but still and still and again and again the beauty and beauty the love and power
the pain the harrowing silent pain silently swallowing of the most horribly wasteful
distasteful disgraces unmentionable not upon a tongue but a single one alone disgraced
by some mass illusion of the collective disgrace as if cast from some garden not here at all times
not at hand but by our own here now by each our own; devils/messiahs either all to real or what ya kidding man...
another harrowing day
with the beauty and pain
of beautiful man
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 10:36 AM UTC
We came from dreams
Arrived in our beds
Having just been separated,
we formulated plots that would return us to each other.
A switch from the subconscious sparked miles between us.
We talked through wires until it was no longer tolerable.
I went to find you, and found myself with you, the journey blurred.
There were others. They were all beautiful. But then darkness took our
sight.
And everything was quiet.
I had never known beauty unseen, unheard.
but...you touched me
You felt me, like a cloud feels a mountain peak before taking the highest point away from the rest of the world's...sight.
Like a confused thing on a strange planet...but not frightened.
You touched me with want.
And I wanted you.
To know all of me.
Including the bad parts.
And I wanted you to add to me, things I didn't even know yet...
The sad parts.
And a moment was a year to me. And I was wise for a second.
We left. your room. out into the night. the others around us, expressing such joyous jubilation.
And still I couldn't derive joy from their moods.
My capacity for happiness was overfull. All you.
Bring back the sight. Bring back our voices. Remember the touch.
Undying.
Our souls touched.
The whole night long.
Until we had to leave.
Because we were afraid of a supernova.
so we hurried back to our respective beds
and that was the fastest I ever fell asleep
and I know you did too. because I saw you there
In that room. In my room, in my head, in your bed, full of dreams.
Dos mil y seis. Yo fue yo...fue yo y tu. Me odio.
Dec 19, 2010
Dec 19, 2010 at 5:27 PM UTC
Brings a feeling of helplessness
And all of the leftover Christmas cookies
Are not satisfying but cloying.
Our bovine grazing leaves the kitchen ravaged
And our stomachs are overfull
But still we eat,
Finding ourselves only hungrier.
Our minds, our senses, need refreshment
And our desperate starving spirits moan ceaselessly.
Our skin is pallid
And desiccated by the artificial heat.
The sun hasn't shone for days.
To where may we escape?
Oct 19, 2010
Oct 19, 2010 at 1:02 PM UTC
Using these words I make a world I understand.
Inside is a friend to hold my hand,
so off we go, pen and man!
Away we blow dust and sand
to reveal beneath a shining sheath!
Draw your sword! and come aboard
this trail of blood.
My mind will flood paper with ink
and down this road my blank will shrink,
and weight unload from a heavy soul now pierced,
overfull.
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 4:03 AM UTC
little ***** and rings
of metal move
as he talks
three studs,
on his eyebrow
wander like a slugish
overfull caterpillar
the bullring ring in his nose,
condenses with each breath
of the frigid winter morn
and his earlobes swing and dangle
with blocks and spheres
of a dark wood like substance
I ask him, does that hurt,
he deigns not to answer.....
We get on with the matter
at hand, his idea for a thesis;
with regard to dramatic reflection
in Shakespearean adaptations
He speaks of Othello, Richard III
and Romeo and Juliet....
the use of water, sunglasses and mirrors
I ask if he believes there is 70000+ words
in his exploration of reflection....
all the time watching the metal caterpillar
try to escape the forest of his eyebrow....
He sighs, and the bullring mists over
the ears lobes waggle and waft around.
He states not really sure......but he likes the idea
I send him off to look for other plays
Shakespearean or not that he could include
in this work.....and to come back in a month
with a precis and chapter plan....
He leaves, shoulders slumped, muttering
and I think....I may have added one more peircing
to his intellectual life
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 5:16 PM UTC
The day has been stressful,
And my head feels overfull.
This blank page before me taunts me,
I can't seem to work thoughts free.
Alas, I'll write of this woe instead,
Begone dark thoughts within my head!
May 16, 2022
May 16, 2022 at 1:39 PM UTC
A spinster from Flint once opined
In her day the suitors were kind.
Though sister was gone,
They didn’t stay long.
An overfull parlor can grind.
Apr 17, 2024
Apr 17, 2024 at 2:21 PM UTC
The wind is getting in but not out. we know this because we see the curtain rise
we love our mismatched furniture
we love our scraggly hair
we love our couch with the cigarette burn in the second cushion from the right
and our ever constant stream of dishes that we wash ourselves to make our room mate smile
we love our valentine's day door hanger
we love our nonfunctional bicycle
we love our half eaten box of cookies
and our overfull incense burner
and making puns about our incense burner
we love our phonebook that we found by the door today
we love our friends
we are joyful his day
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 8:29 PM UTC
For some forgotten seafarer
On a flaccid wreck somewhere
I, too, am lost and shattered
We’re both stranded, the hard concrete
Made for our searching: in spite of all
Silver crown, dubbed beauty
We searched, through the frenetic infrastructure
Long-distance romance, fingertip pounce
The cobwebs that lay huddled
Was it you, to become me?
Flew west to build a nest
In the forests they’ll find me
Wave goodbye to all you know
A new face, on this painted white landscape
Tiny miracles elusively overfull
Ecstatic flight and fresh linens
Beckon, home awaits
Daisy inquiries
Of eternal youth and temperate vigour
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 7:59 AM UTC
I dreamed, i had a dream, i nightmared
Live and awake and i dare
to speak when
like twilight burned bright
in passing of night
turns dim again
I was so in a haze
i didn't know what a haze is
so in a haze
i didn't know what day it is
so take a pleasant walk with me
one overfull of clarity
Come!
Won't you relive my hell with me?
The two minutes and thirty seconds after i awake
Gears not engaged - i had no hope then
my reality broken
by one that for those moments seemed so solid
in sleep even the wise can be fooled without knowledge
even our instincts can fall asleep
not recognize the illusion slipping like sleet
through cracked senses
like sight misses midnight
blue walls surrounding me
like hearing misses everything so i hear only stillness around me
like touch misses warm cotton sheets and heat
I am dancing madly in my restraints
I am a lunatic, entwined sensually, with misery and my mistakes
Mar 10, 2012
Mar 10, 2012 at 6:04 PM UTC
When the walls come crumbling down
And there is nothing left to hide;
When my head is overfull with thoughts of you
And there is no room left for pride;
At last – not too late, I hope – I will be able to admit
That when I said I didn’t love you, I lied.
Jun 15, 2013
Jun 15, 2013 at 6:35 PM UTC
My mind over full
Where to restart
My plate staked high
With pain and tears
Long ago I used to have
No plate
My mind full of songs
Dec 21, 2016
Dec 21, 2016 at 8:18 PM UTC
sometimes we need no beginning ; or ending. only meeting them
at the right moment, when the stars or the gods / or the gentle and raucuous earth, overfull on maudlin sorrow / move us into this moment. you ease into my life as if you never left / you will stay; 'til i forget when you came and when you leave again and i follow and we circle, like stars, atom and dust to dust to hopeful ashes, always reaching, reaching for the moment
we meet /
again.
hello: welcome home.
Sep 6, 2017
Sep 6, 2017 at 3:11 AM UTC
The liquid is surreal.
I thought this unnatural perfection was reserved for films flashing before your eyes,
But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The water rushes freely, defying my imagination.
Triumphantly it flows contrasting the lazy trees it gives no heed.
Bursting over every obstacle, it
Caresses the mountainsides it calls home for just a moment,
Falling ever deeper into the gorges it crafts masterfully with time as its tool.
It ceases for no one and its color is unmatched.
O river of sweet liquid ice, I admire thee.
I stand on the edge of the riverbank and I marvel,
Time means nothing to the beings here.
The indigo fluid escapes grasping,
Like so many forgotten memories.
As my blurry cerulean reflection stares at me
I am conscious of the eras that have passed this place and left it untouched.
From whipped cream snow, to buttered sunshine days.
This setting transcends understanding.
There is no want for love,
No desire to sin or stay pure,
No lust for money or material worth.
I watch as the sun’s beams in their death throes
Discharge their savored finale upon the river.
It burbles back with a satisfied sigh.
Shadows envelop my wonderland, as I cascade into sleep.
Obstructed by the dams in my mind the despair builds into a reservoir.
Brimming, threatening to break, and I am
****** from my slumber.
Tears stream silently into the darkness
Escaping my overfull well.
Azure beams dance softly at first.
Anxiously they swim in their own light and
Suddenly come forth proclaiming their own birth.
Reveling in their existence as a new day starts, and
Again this place holds the power of ages.
They join me here, basking me in their glory, and
Out of the ashes of yesterday’s sorrows
Gushes a mighty river of joy.
Apr 5, 2016
Apr 5, 2016 at 8:36 PM UTC
Sometimes when i'm writing, it feels like a glass half full, with fingerprints and stains, standing neglected for days on the living room table; and sometimes i flow, like a cold bubbling stream of water pouring into an overfull cup in the kitchen sink.
Aug 17, 2019
Aug 17, 2019 at 4:47 PM UTC
I.
We ***** our tents on the hardpack
of the town’s airport,
rows of stakes and guidelines
like a fishing wharf in the tundra;
the mail plane comes at one,
an overfull vulture circling above
before looping North towards
the Gates of the Arctic for the approach run.
The landing is
a front row rock concert
where the bassist only knows one chord
and the drummer is still setting up:
the tone resonates in the ooze of our marrow;
that is to say, the landing is simple,
drifting over alpine fir and spruce tops
with ballet grace
before cutting power
and slamming wheels to gravel.
II.
Yesterday’s rain feeds the Yukon today.
Its hands reach for a hard cloud ceiling
and its lows, its troughs call my name,
call my name, call my name,
endless waves in the river’s center,
arcing with storm energy
and grip strength.
III.
Other planes come, and leave,
and helicopters set down near us.
We play cards in their wind,
drink camp coffee that strains
through the teeth and plugs the gaps;
we watch and we wait
for seats that never come,
waiting to leave this airport runway,
waiting to fight the big fires.
IV.
We hear the boats before we see them,
curving around the clay banks
and we line our packs along
their aluminum walls.
We sit in plastic bags
to keep dry of river spray,
I hear my name again,
and another mail plane
takes off. The hardpack vibrates
under the wheels, the engines scream
their one note show,
and the DC-3 sinks off the runway towards
the Yukon – and us – before catching itself,
then slowly, so slowly we can almost touch
the silver belly, it growls to the North
and loops South towards Fairbanks.
Apr 6, 2020
Apr 6, 2020 at 7:34 PM UTC