"paned" poems
We attempt rescue, unable to bear
the stardust-coated dragonfly
beat, beat, beating
frantic on the glass.
We entice him to perch
on our extended lifeline-broom
nurse him in a box, where he flutters
quivers, lies quietly blue.
My son cries bitterly
as we place a minute cross
upon the dragonfly grave
while intoning our final goodbyes:
*We honor those who have fallen victim
to this fatal architectural trap, lured
by skylights of enticing white-light death
and the paned illusion of freedom.
In admiration of winged determination
and perseverance in the face of futility
we carefully tend the fragile, curved bodies
lay them here to rest under the mock orange.*
years of gauze-weighted detritus
swept beneath these ponderous shrubs
a reminder - what seems like freedom
often isn’t.
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 11:16 AM UTC
and
just like that
I am falling
unfolding in your eyes
layers of shadows unraveling
in polar-laced
spirals of hunger
deep freeze melting upon tongue
an icy build-up
thawed in seconds
for my very cells burn
beneath your gaze
as you take in the fullness
of my presence
despite the smoky,
glass-paned haze
My presence-
suffused with
the darkness of silk-
I want it to graze your skin
the most gentle feather
stroking emotion
coaxing out the
delicately-wrapped
firestones in you
spinning them into
a frenzied lava-slaked ocean
and then those unexplained,
flurried lattice flakes
that somehow soothe and cool
within this inferno
of just-missed proximity
My essence
is cast like a net
over you
as we dive into
the volumes
as I pull the
heated visions out of your mind
feel your heart's closest
most tiny reverberations
little beats barely heard
yet in some unlikely way
pump blood into mine
Undo me
as my wet blue pools
dissolve into yours
my trussed-up implosions
flowing out in air-spun tempest
Unwrap my defenses
a soldered-up dam breaking
a glass tubular bell
hairline fracture quaking
Strip me bare
no need to even touch me
for the vapors of
your voice
remove the layers
of debris
like the steam of earth
irons out
the blackened quilt of sky
to reveal
the altar
of our
stars
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 4:07 AM UTC
The back up with
A crooked neck bent
Towards Hell
While his lips tightened sternly
as a Victorian urn.
His face barely recognizeable
ever since the penny-doppler showered
A wandering click
that skipped
no birds on his fence.
In a glass paned massacre, forever fossilized
between childhood bullies and prom-night feel-ups,
there was a consciousness that feigned
once a week, cockled in creationism and the Eucharist.
His passions -- clam shells flanked by the ripping tide.
His intellect -- a solitary warble amid ***** blue notes.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 11:47 PM UTC
A dream tree, Polly's tree:
a thicket of sticks,
each speckled twig
ending in a thin-paned
leaf unlike any
other on it
or in a ghost flower
flat as paper and
of a color
vaporish as frost-breath,
more finical than
any silk fan
the Chinese ladies use
to stir robin's egg
air. The silver-
haired seed of the milkweed
comes to roost there, frail
as the halo
rayed round a candle flame,
a will-o'-the-wisp
nimbus, or puff
of cloud-stuff, tipping her
queer candelabrum.
Palely lit by
snuff-ruffed dandelions,
white daisy wheels and
a tiger faced
***** it glows. O it's
no family tree,
Polly's tree, nor
a tree of heaven, though
it marry quartz-flake,
feather and rose.
It sprang from her pillow
whole as a cobweb
ribbed like a hand,
a dream tree. Polly's tree
wears a valentine
arc of tear-pearled
bleeding hearts on its sleeve
and, crowning it, one
blue larkspur star.
3.5k
Storm winds from the west
Send us scurrying down the plank
Steps into the dank basement
Sounds become deafening as the
Skies darken
Whatever is happening
Is only visible through a four-paned
Window no larger than a newspaper
At age seven this is all new
Thunder, lightening, storms
Have come and gone
Usually starting in the west
Among growing and billowing clouds
This time the darkness is heavy
Winds blow straight yet swirl simultaneously
A look of fear unlike any he has seen before
Covers his mother’s face
His father, a man of few words and a placid personality
Forces new wrinkles upon his worried forehead
The hay barn slides across the yard
Walking as though each wall has legs
Slowly collapsing, it crumbles into the granary
Once it lands the storm begins to abate
They will survive
Slowly, step by step his father, then his mother
And finally he ascend to view what damage
Has occurred. One view and he knows the answer
The devastation is real and substantial
Oct 13, 2018
Oct 13, 2018 at 1:22 PM UTC
Lead paned windows
beam shafts of coloured light
dust motes floating
spiral upwards
released from
captive carpets
flee
Jul 29, 2012
Jul 29, 2012 at 7:00 PM UTC
no count-downs for birthday parties
no arm wrestles, no jump shots
no go-cart donuts
not even a snowball
where did we go?
blond hair
up to my shoulders
surrounded by jewels
some empty-paned picture frame
couple sprouts beneath a pine
saying "monkeys" for Grammy's kodak
red clay on your feet
pink frosting in your teeth
me, sheathed in my favorite shirt
"I'm the big sister!"
with a butterfly depicting
what I've yet to become
how wrong have we gone?
well, I'll be twenty
once spring rolls around
and brother
you're not far behind
I can't tell time
to change its mind
but I promise you
it won't be changing mine
from the photographs, scrapbooks
I'll forever feel your laughter
just like goosebumps
the brail I'm reading into
let's gaze past glares
straight through white sunbeams
spiking your brown eyes
twice as deep as mine
the truest shades
on the face of the earth
to this very
foggy day
this mirror, this moment snagged
before shutters snap
and capture us, splatter us
on matte paper, or cell screens
with brown hair
up to your shoulders
way to go, little brother
but I'm still keeping that tee
because the only thing
I've always been proud to be
is your big sister
Mar 4, 2018
Mar 4, 2018 at 10:14 PM UTC
It's the conspiracy to conspire,
Think of how the fist or flies feel,
The most enticing truth,
Astonishingly mouthwatering,
Turns out smoke and mirror,
You see, because behind the window paned,
skeleton of steel and wire,
Underneath there is commerce,
In the webbing of marrow, worldwide underhandedness,
Something is always being sold,
What better way to take power away,
Then having scheduled rebellions,
The greatest put on,
Our system only works under thumbs,
from the backdrop works the crippled puppeteer,
behind his blank, vagrant, expressionless lenses,
Behind the grey skin and swilled organs,
Attached to the oil drum veins,
Beats the very same heart of Moloch!
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 10:20 PM UTC
The clock struck a peculiar time
Reverberating on the window pains
When I looked up from the old wooden desk
To the stark white face of that piece
My eyes were caught in a haze
The hands of the clock eluded me
The chair scratched against the floor
As I moved backwards and rubbed my eyes
My ears popped ever so slightly
Light headedness came on to me
I found it and remained conscious
Aware of what would occur should I fall,
Succumbing to that mechanism
I mustered myself to remove the clock
Lifting it from a single nail in the wall
I placed in in the top drawer of the desk
It's ticking was no longer audible
Yet I still felt the reverberation
It bounced and rattled within my bones
A pulsing echo within my mind
Never louder yet with each throb
It grew more and more distinct
Then it stopped altogether
And the shadows grew long in the room
I paned out the old attic space
For the breifest moment
Before the shadows evaporated
Blending and mixing with the darkness
Oct 6, 2021
Oct 6, 2021 at 10:10 PM UTC
Sitting alone at my party
I think of my coworker
With the gubmint 24 years and counting
For 35 hours per week
He preaches personal responsibility
While surfing his favorite political blog
I watch my dog bark at passersby
From behind the safety
Of the double paned window
To be alive is to be separate
To realize it consciousness
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 6:07 PM UTC
Elope me in your thoughts and all this mental pain.
Like a rope you seem to choke me and cut me off from my brain.
I can't make sense of it, nor can I explain it.
I tried to paint the picture from the window I was "paned" in.
Sprained mind thought I still want to reach you,
Teach me to love you, don't preach that I bug you.
Release my anxiety, I "Leach" on to propriety.
Sobriety is getting harder by the day...
Society is watching me, I'm not sure what to say...
I'm sitting in my rocking chair, typing away a blurred array,
I still write about you everyday,
you haven’t read a word I've saved.
I still think about you every night,
Your closeness is what I crave.
When I talk to you I cave, man I don't know what to say..
I feel less intelligent, but hell your smile, I relish it...
It shines so bright no need for embellishment.
I want to see it all the time, so much I feel so selfish..
It's pure happiness in it's prime,
but the crime is that it's for a lie.
You hurt inside, I seem to help.
I'm on your mind, and you're on mine.
That's fine with me, you're divine.
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 2:11 PM UTC
"Where is my Monet?", I say
As I look through the blurred vision of an impressionist day.
A double paned view of reality
Swaying beauty through eyes once knew.
Where is my Monet or be it Van Gough?
All beauty's vision framed newly printed Picasso.
Shadow me done, and once never knew
What others should have seen as they counted me too.
So now, I say no
Not of Van Gough nor Monet,
I see beauty no Rembrandt nor Picasso to sway.
I see a simple little girl with all she will need
To see the world lovely and in the midst of all, succeed.
Jul 21, 2016
Jul 21, 2016 at 4:56 PM UTC
I always loved your hands.
Not in any kind of lustful way, just the look of them.
I still love your hands, henna-ed and smooth
And so soft- startlingly soft-
If my fingers accidentally brush yours.
I used to marvel when you'd lace your fingers through mine-so casual- as we walked,
At how they felt like moonlight looked.
I love to watch you work, the careful way you do everything
Like it's all art, like it's all important.
Hell, you make a sandwich like you're carving a sculpture
And I find myself watching you, fascinated like always,
And I want to laugh, and I want to tell you you're beautiful.
And my smile turns wry
And I say nothing
Because who thinks of things like that?
I have a favorite photograph from long ago
Of your hands as you were drawing.
They've not changed.
That's why I always ask "Is that ring new?"
Because I catch myself noticing them
The way you might catch yourself absently holding a smooth stone you left in your pocket and forgot was there.
I used to secretly wish that someday you'd draw on me in henna
And I'd have the daring to ask you
To leave a handprint on my shoulder
Like a promise.
I've told you you look like a sculpture, too perfect not to be planned
And
I remember long hours in the museums as a child
Walking through a maze of white porcelain and marble women
Wondering how rock could look softer than my own skin.
I wanted to reach out and touch
See if they would be cold and hard like they should be
Or warm and velvety.
And their hands... So graceful and light-
The sculptors of old strove for perfection
Believing that they had not found it in humanity
Always imagining something smoother, something lovelier, something more delicate and more exquisite.
(You weren't around yet.)
Your hands always reminded me of something from that soaring hall
With all its silky looking statues and its ceiling of cross-paned windows.
So when I sit here, watching Art
Make ham sandwiches
It feels so incongruous.
Something here just doesn't belong.
And I can't tell if it is me or you
But honestly
How many people can say
They have watched Artemis sit down at the counter beside them
As if she has no idea she's divine?
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
1 Iron-bodied, you stand giant;
a thousand feet into the air, rigid
metal swaying in the wind.
2 Neck-breaking,
3 Sears Tower -- world-reflecting, glass-paned --
eclipses you, yet pales in your shadow.
4 Your ironwork: murky, camouflage brown
in the daylight, beautiful only by the twinkling dusk.
5 Prostrated, the multitudes hope to ascend,
flashes melding with the hourly light show --
6 Capture the splendor across the city!
7 L'Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Elysee, Notre Dame, ...
8 Euros squandered in trite gift shops,
9 -- Attention les pickpockets! --
10 Key chains, pens, 4 by 6 postcards...
Miss you loads. Wish you were here.
11 I climbed you. And now? 12 I watch
from Trocadero; fountains alive, illusions in place
but observed from afar, removed; 13 Apart
from the greedy, flocking masses.
14 One day, you will fall, and with you
the congregations that kneel before you
to wait in the line of impatient,
shoving, babbling, 15 Hallelujah tourists.
16 And when your feral echoes
fade to rubble on the crucified pelouse,
17 We at the grand marble square
will blink and miss it and wonder:
18 Were you ever there at all?
Nov 15, 2011
Nov 15, 2011 at 12:04 PM UTC
The sun was still rising.
He stood at the bottom
of the driveway,
a shovel in his hands.
His cheeks were ruddy, wind-chapped.
Inside, their baby lay swaddled
in her arms. His pudgy body
was wrapped in a cream onesie.
Legs tucked under her,
she rocked gently in the wooden rocking chair
set in the corner of the nursery.
There were crinkles around her eyes
as she unconsciously hummed
a tuneless sort of noise.
Heavy-lidded, his eyes closed under
her watchful gaze. His breathing deepened
in sleep, while hers deepened in relief.
She leaned her head back against the padded chair.
The sun peeked out behind the brick chimney
when he finally hung his shovel on the peg in the garage.
Stomping the snow off of his boots, he stepped into the warmth
of the kitchen. Leaving his boots on the mat, he paused, listening.
All was quiet.
His woolen socks on the hardwood were silent
as he walked down the hall to the nursery.
Standing in the doorway, he rested
his head on the wooded frame. The chair
was still, their heads tilted toward the other,
his wife and child asleep in the slanting light
spilling through the paned window.
Feb 1, 2013
Feb 1, 2013 at 12:50 PM UTC
The view from my window
is static as stone. Four
high rises mechanically probe the
grey skyline, their scale-like, cemented
girth obscuring the world within
eyeshot. Sickly city trees weep
and mourn, but cannot be
heard through double paned glass
and eggshell white prison walls,
which house by solitary confinement.
Lives are lived hermetically sealed.
Humans reside in spaces better
suited for use as fishbowls.
Who longs for the ocean?
We hide away, smothering
our vibrant-hued colors we
once let each other see.
Go and make rainbows, please.
Jul 10, 2013
Jul 10, 2013 at 2:39 PM UTC
Through the eight-paned stained glass window,
I sit and stare and ponder the snow as though
I am a single solitary flake falling slow with no
Worry of leaving the sky.
I float on air carried and ferried by wind flow
As I gently come to lie on the blank covered ground low
Below the sky stretching grey over white as a plateau
Of heavy clouds on high.
Jan 22, 2016
Jan 22, 2016 at 2:05 PM UTC
I will never remove you from my brain's synapses altogether,
Particles, dust-speckles, piceous ashes of you, broken half of
Where the crowning splinter lies.
Heffalump-bray, Big-bird whistle, and feverish laughter
Sink from your tiny lips.
It's worse than preschool television programming.
Maybe you consider yourself a god.
Mouth-rush, crooked sickle-spine, of the cranes' dead oath,
Or like some hindered devil at the reeds on your tongue.
Seven years I have worked with the crutch, and worried
Like arc-lightning, thickly-paned, frail as a frostbow,
Palely lit uvula at the glowing alter.
I am none closer now. To amend the acres where my feet wallow blindly.
The shivering, baroque, tumuli where my splinters clear my steel-hide.
An orchestral bow of crimson blight,
I had dredged supinely through the pithy Latin vowels.
Like the month of a flower, hitched to the acanthine wings of a moth.
The moon clung to your shivers and sickness.
No longer can I keep my hair to frosty old anarchies.
Nights, heaped on the bowels of a smoky weir.
The blank stones that struck my hands of warning.
Beside the clogged, rancorous doom I had reflected
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 2:58 PM UTC
The Song Of Loneliness Whistles In The Breeze,
Soft And Gentle, Make It End Please,
The Broken Recored Of Misery Repeats Your Name,
Sadly This Record Is Stuck On The Needle,
A High Status Of Fame,
My DNA Entwined With That Of The Divine,
Yet I Am Cold And Alone,
Haunted By Ruthless Demons Nipping At My Nape,
I Sit By A Frigid Glassed Window,
Paned By My Tears Of Pain,
I'm Sick Of Awkward Conversation,
And Honestly I'm Terrified,
Because The Sound Of Your Rhythmic Breathing,
Becoming Closer,
Is Chilling To The Bone,
And I Can Already See Your Face In The Stands,
Because I'm So Broken,
And I Am Distraught,
Because I Can Already Hear The Sound Of,
The Music Of Misery
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 9:06 AM UTC
Looking out this double-paned plate glass window into the gray frigidity and red-leaved bitterness of October in one of the last wild and still-untamed bastions of freedom in the west at the mountains thinking about how even they are moving, my darling, and how the spaces in between them are growing just like the space in between the sun and the earth and the space between all the galaxies all at once and the space between the spaces between the world and I and soon I’ll just be floating all by my lonesome in some swirling pool of- not air, no, not even air, just nothingness and watching everything float away like disappearing city limits from the tailgate of a truck on cruise control zipping across the badlands and maybe you’ll be there but going the opposite way and there’ll be nothing to do but watch it all go, go, go, til it’s
gone, gone, gone
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 7:11 PM UTC
years of a life
encased in concrete
and double-paned bulletproof glass
climate controlled
to a nice 72 degrees
nothing to fear
no place to fall
nowhere to go
home sweet Hell
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 1:50 PM UTC
I look up through burning gleams
at an opened window.
The rippling curtains
wave to me,
begging my attention.
I hear stifled screams.
A woman closes the window.
The hazy curtains stand still and
separated.
The woman stands still and
separated.
A man passes
in and out of the newly paned frame
And then a child.
And then a fist.
Apr 28, 2011
Apr 28, 2011 at 9:48 AM UTC
I am the tiny wine glass
underneath a crisp white cloth
crushed under the wide, leathered
foot of groom under chuppah in a tall
synagogue in colored leaf autumn
in a wedding I'll never have
on a street I'll never see.
I am the dinner plate
being thrown from the edge
of a blue, chipped paint dumpster
on the side of a sparkling parking lot
slick after persistent winter drizzle
that spits angrily from the sky
in a stack of other kitchen
items to be smashed
against pavement.
I am wrist bones of
the minuscule, important variety
in the moment a twig is caught in spokes
and thrown from the bicycle, you make impact
with the brick wall adjacent to the alley
and hear some small cracks
and are unable to lift your
fingers or right hand,
or twist to pull
yourself up.
I am the double-paned
window of a basement apartment
in the summer when hoodlums and homeless
kick glass for fun and seek to scare
innocent movie-watchers as
fireworks pierce and light
the third of July sky.
I am a sad little girl
with sad little eyes that look
out to the future and see something
moving in the distance, a pair of two young
people holding hands, walking on an
Oregon beach in foggy mist,
that blink and realize that
mirages are cruel, and
have no remorse.
I don't remember the strength I earned
though I hear in time, it's relearned.
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 1:49 PM UTC
Like Morse code on dampened glass,
raindrops form a weathered phrase
interpreting this broken heart now
dripping in endless sorrow
of un-breathing days wasted
on paned emotions
Even the midday sun
briefly pushing away clustered clouds
can not erase the stains
streaked of weeping moments,
salted in so many fears
and wonderings…
Shattered, lying in pieces,
transparent mosaics of jagged will
cut deep and wide on this tired skin,
bleeding out in pools of disgrace
as I translate the moistened dots and dashes
to find that they merely ask…why?
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 5:32 PM UTC