"paneled" poems
no novocaine, no experience
the nurse on break
tells me to "wait right there."
the big lights above the pleather chair
my pale skin illuminated and glowing
under rays of white white light -
and I'm tied down like a
banded submissive
to a blacker than black chair
it's only me and invisible monsters
in a game of
cat mouse tick tock
tick tock
sweating, I realize I must move
there's no other option for this lab rat
I feel like
All I've ever been, is here -
sprawled out in the open
hand choked of blood and oxygen
I cannot take this
I cannot take this!
Something in my mind turns off
Something in my mind turns on
I chew the soft parts away easiest
it slides in my mouth
my teeth are cold and wet now
Chattering and lurching sounds
come from my mouth & teeth
as the splinters of bone
crackle away in my bite.
It took either a minute or a day
But it was over.
And so,
I left it there
tied to that black chair.
I opened the glass-paneled door with an exit 'bing',
and I was happy I never met the Doctor.
Apr 5, 2012
Apr 5, 2012 at 1:52 PM UTC
The way i look at you
I look at you like the roaring fire that we sat together by whispering the tune of the prison we subject ourselves to because that was when i felt every bit of your rare smile projected onto my skin
I look at you like I look at the night sky that we looked up at that one night when you told me you might never come back because looking at you makes me feel a little bit nostalgic in the best way i can muster to interpret you
I look at you the way i look at the waves crashing on the rocks because you bring so much chaos to my fingers when i type out that response to a one word text at 11:57 on a monday night
I look at you like I'm looking at the wooden paneled lodge i survive on because i linger off of every syllable you don't say like i linger off of every moment i don't spend in that room with you on the moon
I look at you like I look at the view from the boat when arriving each morning because i dissect every word that slips from your tongue like I dissect every detail of that island etching it into my brain the way i scrawled every detail of you into my mind, your rough hands, your tanned back, your blue eyes, and the curve of your lips, your coffee order, your taped up converse, your sunglasses, just you
I look at you like you are where I want to be 24/7 because thats what you remind me of
otm.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 12:23 AM UTC
Old paneled walls, worn and weathered
Infinite grains of sand littering my wood floors
The mud that dirties my pant legs on a rainy day
Slimy, soggy, mold-ridden bananas
Rot, Rotten, Rotted
All lead to the essence of brown.
Oct 15, 2010
Oct 15, 2010 at 1:17 PM UTC
Old paneled walls, worn and weathered
Infinite grains of sand littering my wood floors
The mud that dirties my pant legs on a rainy day
Slimy, soggy, mold-ridden bananas
Rot, Rotten, Rotted
All lead to the essence of brown.
Sep 7, 2010
Sep 7, 2010 at 11:12 AM UTC
The elevator opened on the 46th floor, to a small foyer and one plain, grey door
The door opened and a young girl, 10ish, in a blue, polo, tennis dress, said, “Hi! I’m Karen, you must be Anais. Will is around here somewhere. Aren’t you pretty, though? You go to school with Lisa? No wonder Will likes you.”
She skippingly ushered me from a bright, windowed, off-white, staircase entryway, into a deep-red, mahogany paneled library. A persian cat was soon underfoot, purring and winding around my legs.”That’s Misha,” Karen said, “just shoo her away if you don’t like cats.”
I stooped down to pet Misha who eagerly offered herself to be petted and admired. As I stroked her charcoal fur, Karen said, “Let me get Will,” as she scampered off.
A gold framed, impressionistic painting, pin-lit in bright crystalline light, hung over a fireplace. In the painting, two girls, in summer hats bright with startling red bows and yellow flowers, were sharing a book. The colors were rich, deep and swirling - it looked very much like a Renoir (I know my French artists). He’d done a whole “two girls” series. I drew closer - it wasn’t a print.
Though dazed by the opulence, I hadn’t missed what Karen had said. Will liked me. I longed to interrogate her about how exactly she knew Will liked me, and what form, exactly, Will’s liking took.
I know Will and Lisa (who would be joining us in a minute) are just friends. Not that it matters, we’re heading back to New Haven later - but Karen’s statements were capable of activating a girl's guy-dar.
Karen, wearing socks but no shoes, came to a sliding halt, on the wooden floor, by grabbing the door frame to stop an otherwise complete slide into the library. “You guys are going to the Ritz for lunch?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder, in a way that indicated that she knew the answer quite well.
The Ritz Carlton is a block away and our mission was to grab the food and bring it back here to eat. “Mind if I join?” she said, before I could answer her first question, all wide-eyed, blinking impatience.
“I don’t mind at ALL.” I said, Karen whooped and was off again down the hall. “I’M COMING TOO!” she yelled. I chuckled, knowingly - I’ve been there - I’m a little sister too.
Nov 27, 2021
Nov 27, 2021 at 12:41 PM UTC
Today I straightened all of the hairs on my head
whether they needed it or not. I like being organized.
Ironing out the kinks in my leather jacket with a baseball bat.
I try to cut the blues from the spinning record,
flicked numbered matchsticks across vinyl to
set the fleshed room on fire,
don’t touch me, I’m a real live wire.
Being on top of my **** is like handmaking
beeswax candles, I twist & turn, carving wax
in the air—There is always more to do, I
always tried to cross t’s and
sort the junk mail from the paychecks,
accidentally dropping cigarettes into the piles of post.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched you
lick postage stamps for the outgoing flood.
The laundry gets done even though I’m
too tired to pull my key out of the door.
I am in control of my own destiny.
I smoke Coca Cola & drink cigarettes for breakfast
because I don’t roll out of bed on the right side
of any given day, and
yesterday I put my foot
through the television
because tap-dancing on the shards
of the wood-paneled tube from dad’s first marriage
sings gnashed-teeth harmonies
with the microwave’s low groan at 3AM—
I used to eat cold spaghetti in torn jeans and nothing else
while you flipped through channels on basic cable
to hear the collage painting the end of the world. You were
always an empty can that year, you saved
orange peels to fill with oil to burn—
your name whispers itself into the grease hissings and
I hear it over the skyline and I cannot seem to find a match
to strike to light the last crumpled smoke in my pack—
All I want to do is send you photographs with singed corners,
photographs of your letters, attempts to burn away
any sight of you, ways to cut&bind; the flint that ignites
the only bonfire in my eye.
And sometimes I wish I could just scream at you until
the flowers crawl up the brick walls of your apartment;
my kitchen smells concrete like celluloid ashes and
if I snap my fingers to break broken promises and
floss my teeth with violin strings I might not miss you
anymore.
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 8:56 PM UTC
seeing faces
in the wood-paneled walls
of my bedroom
again:
laughing ones
make love
in the passionate brown
of night wood
and
screaming ones
bother me--
sneak into my
dreams
to disrupt
the blue slumber
of my
ignorance
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 8:26 PM UTC
A cabin den
paneled in knotty pine
slick with thick varnish
jellied in mid-ooze
& running down the grooves.
A festive group gathers
around an electric fireplace
talking up old work stories
in mid-December.
My dad sits dead center
for the camera
wearing the face he wore
when in the company of adults
his long sleeves rumpled
and his collar askew
one arm straight up,
a bottle of Blatz in hand
commending
the buzz.
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 2:44 PM UTC
She invited me into her palace of art,
Where everything signified something else.
She wore a silvery gown,
Covered with a million miniature mirrors.
I was badly dressed.
“Beautiful lady, be my love
and heal my soul.
My life is fragments.
Make me whole.”
“I made this place to stand apart,
A window to a world purer, deeply felt.
Everything here is for you but my heart.
Don’t get the idea that it’s going to melt
Later on.” Music played.
Nirvana. Or maybe it was “Deacon Blues.”
Twisted letters carved
On doorknobs offered clues
To someone else’s mystery.
“Then be my muse,
Teach me the language of clouds
The coded words on the ceiling’s vault.”
A digital river flowed beneath
A winding stair down to an analog sea.
I asked “Are these ‘caverns measureless to man’?”
“Yes,” she said, “But not to woman.”
I wandered through room after room,
One printed, one painted, one sculpted, one
Paneled with friezes like the blazing tomb
Of an epic queen deified by the sun.
I saw a near-empty room with a single chair.
The light defined its form,
its form escaping into light.
“Is this real or a photo?”
“Yes,” she serenely replied.
I came to two doors. One said Discipline,
One Desire. “How can I possibly choose?”
“They lead to the same place,” she said.
What was real and what wasn’t flowed together
“You’re starting to figure it out.”
The innocence of a woman’s arched back,
And the wisdom of children.
The solitude of a lonely pier.
I knelt and I thanked her “Was all this for me?”
“I made this to give away. Not just for you.
What have you learned? Let’s review.
“Art is a shield
Against falling glass. Art healed
My divided mind, which used to devour
Itself, giving away its power.
Art is hunger, a piercing lack.
Art is a ride on a gull’s back.
Art is a dodge, the as of the mirror.
Art destroys, callous clearer
Of old order. Art is a dance,
a surrender to chance.
Art is not all seduction and fire
Or tethered to your desire
(Except when it is).
Beyond the dazzle of you and me,
Art is a failing light for learning how to see.”
I said “Now I understand less than before.”
“Then you’re ready.
Imagine starry ways beyond these walls.
Use an innocent eye.
Confusion calls.”
I never saw her again.
But it was enough
to start small.
She tempted me like an empty page.
From this immense vacuum, I write.
Jan 5, 2019
Jan 5, 2019 at 1:50 PM UTC
Little soul - are you satisfied?
She's crying over him,
He's leaving because of her,
You're trying to keep him here,
And he's struggling to breathe and nobody likes to face the truth
And I should have answered the call
and I should have
Little soul little soul you're going too far
He isn't yours to sweep into the pond
Your eyes cannot see into the correct situation's panacea
evening glow, oh! so pure and whole
aeration of the dust-packed pores inside
Little soul, Little soul - no.
Don't go there
Don't wander into -
LITTLE SOUL!
I saw you open the package before the allotted date
styropeanuts, strewn cross't wooden paneled flooring
white infinity symbols, floating in rusty red blood
I told you the truth would set you free
And I warned you what it would do
Little soul.
Little soul.
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 1:10 AM UTC
We are the bearded men in union halls
grown tired of the world as it seems.
Until our demands are met,
there can be no more search for truth.
We’ve grown tired of the world as it seems
from folding chairs in union halls.
There will be no search for truth—
we’ll gaze at our navels and curse.
From folding chairs in union halls
we shall pontificate our malcontent.
We shall gaze at our navels and curse
these indelible holes in the Real.
We shall pontificate our malcontent
at the crack in the wood-paneled wall
that indelible hole in the Real—
it must be filled!
The electric moon in the wall
streams in seductions of blue shadows.
It must be filled!
we cry.
The seductions of electric moonlight
make thinking difficult.
We cry,
but the tears only make un-forgetting harder.
Thinking has become more difficult
with each failed arbitration.
Un-forgetting’s so much harder
when forgetting pays the bills.
All arbitration has failed and
our demands remain unmet.
So long as forgetting pays the bills,
we shall be the tired beards in union halls.
May 10, 2010
May 10, 2010 at 8:07 AM UTC
Yesterday’s gravity
Pulls threads in weaved cloth
Blown and scattering waves
Massive like black holes and small
Like the wings of humming
Birds of Planck length down feathers
On a drifting radiowave
While watching the television in a
Padded
Rooms inside Schrödinger’s box
Contained by hypertension
Like the hairs that grow in fibers of
The cerebrum’s
Neurons which inflate and warp
His hands shook like the rabbit ears
On his old television, wood paneled with
Outdated
Textbooks like his shelves
And enigma is his cited source
In his teleportation box, bedridden
Things in
There are superstrings on the walls
Floating eyes on the atoms of loneliness
Quark fizz, structural quanta on
Yesterday’s gravity
Pulls threads in weaved cloth
Apr 30, 2011
Apr 30, 2011 at 7:25 PM UTC
The swivel, point, leap and cross of her feet on wooden floors.
Bending backwards to break the fluid boring motions.
Fingers clenching and opening to reenact a blossoming flower.
Toes circling around her frozen foot and
Shooting up high
To touch the sky.
Violins begin the piece with calming tones followed my soft piano keys.
As the trombones and trumpets trickle in
Her body leaps and lunges,
Bringing her to the ground with one leg pointed and raised to the ceiling.
Dance with me
And then you’ll see.
Reaching out her arms to touch the viewers in the front row.
Stretching her feet out to gain momentum for her ****** forward.
Her head almost sweeps the floor.
Flutes take charge and she swings her hips,
Only to create a **** whirlwind.
She collapsed and held she shin.
No one moved or made a sound. The hall fell silent.
She spread her body out on the paneled ground.
No sound left her lips.
She flipped over her left shoulder and landed in a split.
The crowd clapped vigorously, cheering.
Her mother was in the front row crying.
That girl I saw enchanted my dreams.
The rolling of her body and the extension of her legs filled my thoughts.
I wanted to be wrapped in her arms with mesh tool tangled between us.
I wanted to learn every motion she knew and replicate it.
Her eyes caught mine and she
Said, won’t you please dance with me?
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 12:13 PM UTC
Life’s Discards
What arises from a seemingly affront the house abandoned but a visitor arrives and calls for meaning
From chaos she perches on a suitcase in the center of the room wood paneled walls and a white stone
Fire place serve as the backdrop it gives the place its first telling impact a value is suggested put sight to
The test now family items strewn about only make up debris but just a time in the short past this room
Was filled with everything that engendered comfort now the flow is a negative one that runs down
Through each piece that suggests wicker chair you once were deemed precious and worthy of serious
Attachment now you belong in a trash heap but for the heart and mind that is left to assess it is a weight
Of brooding as you fix what at first just speaks of a simple travesty we feel and are moved by forgotten
Things without life or means to speak they convey essential truths they argue for endurance and a
Common thread that shows continuance even though they are abandoned and are thought to be
Worthless by the previous owner the stranger will carry them away in her mind and memory as items
She can’t forget because she elevated them to a place of endearment in the very disorder of ruin she
With tenderness without words ascribes to them a worth even if it is just costly shadows that now enter
The mystery and intrigue that intrude into all of our thoughts at times of contemplation where ever
They arise in the dark evening or at morning twig light this room and others like it make up the physical
Dimensions of that subconscious world the swirl and excitement that crashes against our outer lives
That gives it untold riches meaning without understanding but a buttress a force that defies attacks of
Various kinds we are more bemused than overwhelmed and that power rests in many things but a lot
Are just yesterdays discards
Feb 20, 2012
Feb 20, 2012 at 2:28 PM UTC
*Can we talk about
the white paneled walls
revealing the shadows
of demons and ghosts
roaming about in the halls?*
Jul 10, 2017
Jul 10, 2017 at 9:46 PM UTC
I write everywhere
on paper, on stone, on skin
what's the difference?
Each one an be erased
desecrated, torn
nothing is forever
much less this shell
with words as its framework
curses and promises
in the hollow of its bones
what's the difference?
Heart's walls paneled with mirrors
everything is a mere reflection
ribs are splinters with serrated edges
a prison of blades, pain and anger and hate
mouth is a cavern of stars
emptied of illumination to see the lights
fingers are claws of the beast inside
always turned against its owner
mind is a labyrinth of fiends forming walls
against fragility, pierced and perceived
when did it get so complicated?
I just wanted to say I write everywhere
how did it come to this?
why would I want to write about that anyway
about paper and stone and skin
ink smeared with demons from inside
the body is hilariously breakable
words seep through skin as if it were paper
what's the difference?
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 5:52 AM UTC
They march
withered but undying
with mud
fallen sweetly on their faces.
A new sky and a tender wind
grant severance from the sea.
Haunt us no more
with your pikes and arrows.
Blend our moanings and call our names:
the sunflower,
the wind,
the moonshine breaks
a mirrored frame,
a knighted sky,
and iron cast in embroidered lace.
I lay my hopes in
a hinterland of grace/waste.
What will a soul bring
that a body cannot
in sorrow or in death?
When sentiments of corpses
hang high from windows
paneled by offense,
stars fall on broken strings.
Apr 9, 2016
Apr 9, 2016 at 12:33 AM UTC
The window that I can see,
Has no good view
But the glass in its paneled frame
Gives a look thats quite new.
The window has two bifolding shutters
Giving it a charming look
And the white European grill outside it
Makes it as interesting as written in a book.
Though minimum light filters through this window,
It certainly has a charm.
The artificial plants hanging outside them,
Gives it colour and a refreshing sort of calm.
May 20, 2018
May 20, 2018 at 2:50 AM UTC
The colours ran psychedelic in the drear night skies
above a ramshackle house on a country lane
He heard music from the open windows
it was meandering and opaque
Myriad drones flew from a cellar door in the backyard
and a burnt out Chevy housed a family of snakes in the front
"Understand that when you enter-"
A voice came haunted, from a tree in the yard
"... that you will be forever changed"
The door fell from it's hinge, and made no sound on the deck
Everyone was ghosts, pale eyes sunken, yet absurdly alive
Preachers and pragmatists drank beers in the bathroom
discussing Plotinus and Pleiades
Rainbow haired women ran through the walls,
wailing some transient ecstasy and crashing to the floor
eating wildflowers and berries
All eyes washed, acid dipped dreams, screams, it seems, that they were all-
"Hello my name is forgotten"
"Hello, I've forgotten your name"
"Goodbye I must be returning home now"
"Goodbye? But you're already there."
The wooden paneled walls started to peel in the August[ine] humidity
but they kept singing love songs in the kitchen
as the toast burned in the sink
Eat more kosher meat, kid
Hi my name is Doner
But what's in a name really
They squat and lunge in harmonic deviancy
Though by the statuesque running man poses, the dance-floors of hydrodynamic and hydroponic release and reconnaissance were blasted by the man of zen, but only in his third eye, the eye that saw it all
The floors started to bleed, some toxic glue
and the shoes of a tribe were lost there, nobody cared
Bloodied scepter of the soul, rapier of wit
Oh how cruel the searing whip of understanding
and falling away from reality with every dip of stick in candy coloured goo
The morning sun also rose, rosy fingered...
It's all been said before
search for answers on the bathroom floor
or muddied ground
or in the sullied unsound
It's far from profound
because when the night was over
The house was nowhere to be found
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 10:28 AM UTC
I'll stay awake tonight
I'll make sure our memory
stays
alive
I'll wrap it up
hold it close
give it warmth
rock it back and forth
I won't let it grow cold
I won't let it's light die out
I
I will hold it in my heart
let it set me on fire
orange burns flaming blue
finality drops like a gavel
resounding
echo
ring
endsclashwithbeginnings
as sunrises and nights do
my stomach tips
tipsy containing all of you
my lips they
burn
from dragging you in
I smoke you
and
I
I choke on your
sickeningly
sweet
poison
you
fill
my lungs
deflate my kerosine heart
your love
burned me
up
my skyscrapers
down
coldly hollow
winded room
with blown out candle thoughts
lifeless eyes
c rac ked
window panes
the glass you
touched
was frigidly warm
with nocturnal sapphire gleams
my door sits ajar
but you knock continually
banging
my wooden paneled frames
splinter me through
rapture
my shores of endless sores
I
I am
I am begging
you
to light me on fire
set me ablaze once more
power hold of gripping electric lies
did it give you some
sick
twisted
satisfaction to break me
down
to shove my head
underwater
and force me to
drown?
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 11:50 PM UTC
In my mind
a yellow one speed, black banana seat and chrome ***** bar,
leans casually against unpainted drywall
a turned hip’s width from a paneled Caprice Estate
a car so big, all three of us could sleep in the back
lined up straight, sharing a thin plaid blanket, musty pillows
Starcraft popup in tow.
Wind still roars through the top of bare Pocono trees
comforting coal smoke swirls, stinging
as I step inside the kitchen
foggy and warm, formica and maple.
Zippers clack rhythmically,
slapping time in a softly rocking dryer,
steel cake cover rattling along.
Next to the oven
the growth chart is still there,
plotting our course by order of birth
pencil lines scratched in wood
awkward spikes upward, sudden stops
sooner than anyone expected
the birthday ritual faded
we stopped growing up and began fading out.
Did we leave it behind?
To be sanded smooth, a somber start for a fresh family
with their own journeys to take
Fears to face
Growth to plot
Dreams to form
Or will the bike always lean and the coal smoke always swirl?
Mark W. Meehan, PhD
February, 2017
Feb 13, 2017
Feb 13, 2017 at 4:18 PM UTC
Hot, tempered glass shakes peeling paint from
the paneled siding of our house.
Flecks of muted blue drift softly away,
some slipping between cracks in our deck.
My mother grabs and hurls another cup,
Framed neatly in the kitchen window,
she's a furious vision in floral and sweat.
Dew seeps through my jeans,
and a sweet chill runs up the back of my knees,
leaving my fingers tingling.
I knot and unknot strands of grass.
I see her anger and I let the birds dub kinder words.
Turning my eyes directly to the sun,
I wait for thoughts to burn to ash.
I sit outside and hide in the open air,
loving the quiet moments between the shush-
ing of the trees and the swollen beats of my heart.
Such small perfections we all passively observe.
The chatter of windblown petals, the noise
a moving snail makes; they comfort me today.
Tomorrow it’s our big, obnoxious chimes.
Oct 1, 2016
Oct 1, 2016 at 7:51 PM UTC
the walls were once paneled brightly, splashily—
a drop in the bucket or a room on fire
like the roof of pure expression in the form of vivid umbrellas
that now absorbs her every move
when it rains. she is a nicotine stain, no longer trendy,
just old, and compensating with watered-down decaf.
her clothes have gotten grayer every year, and she
blames the laundry. how can she focus
on sorting colors when she’s been spitting out
her husband for the last thirty-seven years?
piece by piece, she scrapes off her tongue and gathers
her belongings, which have also dwindled
to this shawl, not meant for the rain, the cacophony
of hanging birds. it’s lighter, she would argue,
than any raincoat, and almost as effective, giving her
the appearance of indifference, like her eyes,
which used to garner compliments, swift and vicious,
intended to slowly gouge them out. and now she
smiles in negative, like a dream, and reality passes
her by. even the rain is fading out, an audience
where only the smattering applause of stragglers
remains. and she walks slower than ever, not because
she can’t speed up, but because she’s humming a song
she used to sing to her son, and in that moment
she becomes a poem, etched in the language
of forgetting, of dissection. but she can be happy,
dripping as she is with newly fallen rain and
a few loose cells floating in her hair.
Feb 7, 2011
Feb 7, 2011 at 1:52 PM UTC
At the rumble of a badger's yawn
At the crack of a sparrow's ****
At the pang of his weakened bladder
That's when he makes his start
With the scrape of greying stubble
With the shine of derby brogues
With a perfect Windsor knot
That's how my husband rolls
At the slam of the paneled door
At the echo of a muttered curse
At the march of polished steps
It's then that I emerge
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 2:38 PM UTC
subdued by the still of the night
under its wood paneled skies
and myriad of ominous pines
my unconscious mind drifted
seamlessly in a reverie filled
with nothing but you and i,
and as the february air grew
cold enough to numb my feet
loneliness accompanied me,
and i ached to feel your body
pressed warmly against me,
diverting me of this chilling
breeze as we melted away in
alluring frigid white sheets,
i hopelessly pine for you and
hunger to feel every pattern
of your heartbeat, to furtively
watch your chest rise as you
sleep, daring to trace the pair
of sultry lips parted upon me
Feb 21, 2015
Feb 21, 2015 at 2:17 PM UTC