"pectoral" poems
sleepy eyes open glimpse high ceiling red wood beams house built in 1920s glance out window tree tops blue skies mountains in distance flock of birds flying east chirping sounds passing car engine accelerates inhale deep breath through nose stretch legs plantar dorsal flex feet raise arms over head stiffness in shoulder feel strange sensitivity in right pectoral above ****** cautiously examine with hands feel coarse lump growing more like nub smell moss glare down at growth protruding from chest panicky by soreness rise from bed to mirror on closet door tree stem jutting out from chest inspect dark bark like calloused growth little leafs budding this cannot be race in nervous tantrum run to bathroom suffer painful weight pulling me down clutching carrying foliated limb with arms see myself in mirror horrified stagger back to bed lie on right side branch resting on mattress breathe anxious breaths reexamine pectoral area feel sinewy roots spreading under skin across chest up neck down over stomach waist legs forget how to get home disorientated nauseous exhausted what is this flora invading me ******* kafka metamorphosis post-modern hyper-real narration without accountability jorge luis borges metaphor without mindfulness fairytale run wild jean baudrillard simulacrum psychosis room now filling with plant undergrowth stinking of earth dirt gooey slugs worms shells bugs festering climbing towards windows voracious for light warmth moisture blocking out morning sun entire body trapped in tangled twisted leafy twigs excruciating pain fright lungs gasping suffocating encroaching darkness fatigue loss surrender wake up 4 AM from nightmare scared to fall back to sleep
Mar 6, 2010
Mar 6, 2010 at 3:45 AM UTC
What I Mean When I Say Chinook Salmon
By Geffrey Davis
My father held the unspoken version of this story
along the bridge of his shoulders: This is how
we face and cast to the river — at angles.
This is how we court uncertainty. Here, he taught
patience before violence — to hold, and then
to strike. My fingers carry the stiff
memory of knots we tied to keep a 40-lb. King
from panicking into the deep current
of the stream. Back home, kneeling
at the edge of the tub with our kills, he showed
the way to fillet a King: slice into the soft
alabaster of the pectoral, study the pink-rose notes
from the Pacific, parse waste and bone from flesh. Then,
half asleep, he’d put us to bed, sometimes with kisses.
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 6:27 PM UTC
Silence
A pain ****** my left arm
and I open my eyes
I am lying
in a wasteland,
wasting away
A vulture's beak presses
deep into a mangled flesh wound
made above
my right pectoral muscle
I feel the eyes
of the vulture,
staring into me,
and I feel connected
to it
I think,
if this is the end
of everything,
then I suppose
it's not the worst
way to go
The vulture picks at me,
cleaning my innards
with it's bloodied beak
I feel nothing
Nothing inside me,
nothing beyond
me to envision
These days
are silent,
albeit my screaming voice,
and I wonder
if the atmosphere
trembles subtly
while my lungs
collapse
Light is only in my eyes
reflected by the memories
I'd walked through
in my years,
and the trees
that line
my path
bend
I break
There is little solace
in this heavy heart
knowing it has been beaten
and beating
for something
more
With the vulture
having emptied
my decomposing body,
we fly
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 12:52 AM UTC
i heard my mom use the L word
when i was telling her
about my personally forbidden escapades
with the boy
my doctor
who i’ve let see
a framed picture of
an iota of my wounds
but still cannot bring myself to call
my boyfriend
as if the word is somehow poisoned
as i’ve convinced myself
in my loneliness
that the idea of that
feeling that most definitely isn’t love
was the stinging venom
burning through my veins
melting my skin to
waxy torrents coursing
from gaping wounds
butchered into my supple dermis
trying to escape my corporeal prison.
my body seizes at the utterance
of two syllables
because i am terrified that
the house of cards that
hold up that word on such an
unnatural pedestal
will crumble
evaporate into the
ether hanging around me
keeping me drunk on
that piquing ache churning
reaching deeper than
the bedrock of my stomach
that my incessant pepto can’t touch
a blowfly burrowing itself
into the mucosa of my abdominal cavity
that i know is filled with my
vital organs
but feels more like a vacuum.
he’s not my boyfriend
even though i tell him to turn over
in the darkness of our
shared slumber
so i can be the big spoon
and he can teach me how to breath
his respirations in his back
pressing my chest into
inhalation
just as my head on his chest
rises and falls
with him
my pectoral moon
pulling my tides
surrendering to the
inevitable turn and living
in that imperceptible moment
between inhalation and exhalation
a silence wherein
we are one
and i feel like his skin
could perhaps be mine.
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 2:22 PM UTC
¿De qué raso, Potencias, cómo era
la celeste muchacha adolescente
que se me irguió un día de la frente
para llamarse siempre primavera?
Sólo me queda ya la luz morada
del ocaso que en junio llueve hielo,
y que no busca el esplendor del cielo
sino el descanso tibio de la almohada.
Cada sueño más lento en breve sueño,
sin países, jardines, ni el empeño
de recorrer los mundos más distantes...
La flor que corto empieza a ser nocturna.
No tendré nunca más la flor diurna
que era mi pectoral de oro y diamantes.
751
He looked at the cuts on my leg and
Quit talking.
I could feel him staring.
Are those because of...her?
I nodded. And felt shame.
Stupid. I know. I shouldn't have done it. I muttered.
He shook his head, told me
It wasn't stupid.
He smiled.
I've got some pretty gnarly ones too.
He lifted up his shirt and across his left pectoral were three or four deep white scars.
If people ask I just say a dog attacked me or something. Nobody really knows...
I nodded. Understanding.
Later on that night I
Kissed his scars above his heart.
I heard him sigh
And I fell asleep
Wrapped in his arms.
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 6:04 AM UTC
When I cover your name
Tattooed on my left
Pectoral,
I look pretty much like
Me from right before
I sat down in
My brother's tattoo chair,
Eric Church playing on
The stereo,
Your face on my retina, like
Some beautiful snow blind-
Ness, and nearly as
Deceivingly temporary.
*"You really want to
Do this, bro'?"*
Machine in hand, *"It'll be
There forever..."
"So will she. Write."*
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 2:49 AM UTC
She is a good butcher
The knife steady in her hand,
Although she’s never quite gotten the knack
For hacking in one swing.
Tried once and hit bone – elicited screams.
Prefers instead to slice carefully
Weighs each cut of the knife
Watches the blood well up
Saliva pooling in response.
His pretty little ears she nibbles on
Followed by his lips she samples at every moment
Even his nose she presses kisses to.
There’s so little fat to him
Just how she likes.
When she gets too hungry to wait
Sinks her teeth into the definition of his pectoral
Rips away the muscle chewing gleefully.
He is a rich source of protein
Her body has been craving.
Finds what is so often boasted between the legs of men
no delicacy at all as some treat it.
Loves to lap at his iliac crests
Wear down to his bones and crack them between her teeth
**** the slick, nutritious marrow.
Finds a certain contentment
In the consuming focus
The preoccupation of her hands, mind, and mouth.
May 20, 2018
May 20, 2018 at 1:59 AM UTC
I awoke from a dream on the first day of summer.
I dreamt I killed a man by the hammock,
he bled and bled profusely.
The sun has nearly melted its surroundings,
the blood boils and reeks of iron.
The phone rang on the wall,
pale, clean, loud.
I've got the gun! and fired it.
it struck his chest
with such precision, like a ******
tearing through his skin, then his pectoral
muscle. He dropped like a an anchor
into a body of warm water
and fell flat with a thud, a diver striking the surface,
eyes fixed on the screen,
expressions stoic on the faces of anxious opponents.
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 6:24 PM UTC
Skin on skin, fingers intertwined, lips crashing like waves on shore,
forgetfulness in each and every action as they dance
in this basement with a hole in the drywall and the scent of stoners in the air.
Her lips are smooth and warm, his are cold and… and harder somehow.
His lips are magic, soft bruises ****** onto swan necks,
Hers are fiery drumbeats and the backbone of bass,
hers are magical kisses at 4 in the morning that feel like flying through the sky,
freedom even greater than the birds carry into dawn.
If light had a feeling, it would be these drink-fueled lips and their dance.
Her skin is coated in memories.
It dresses itself in scars,
clothes the too-much of it she has in worry.
It is her armour, and it is her weakness.
His skin is clothed in Nike, pale abs hidden by a swoosh,
a little baby scar just underneath his left pectoral muscle from falling out of a tree at age 6.
His skin does not care about her scars, nor does it notice its own markings,
his skin wants to consume her like his lips already do.
He does not care if she wears armor or pain.
She lets it,
He takes her away.
the dancing becomes something more than dancing,
moans float through vodka-coated tongues,
originating in weed-smoke polluted lungs.
The song fades from earshot, even though the speakers still shake with the drums.
They came to this uneven carpet and hole in drywalled-room to grieve,
but distraction feels so, so very good, certainly better than their memories,
and one dance turns to 3, turns to too many,
their pain is buried underneath the blanket laid out on the floor.
The album ends and the speakers fuzz with feedback,
but she sleeps as if she is dead--
and death is what brought them here--
he rolls over her to fix it with a flick of the wrist.
The music begins again,
but it is gentler, softer, now.
A lullaby.
And he follows her into the ever-changing landscape of dreaming,
her pink-tinted chest as his pillow,
hand resting on the edge of the worn,
black blanket that covers her stomach to mid-calf.
Their skins rest, and the pain fades away just as the stink of sweat and smoke floats away,
lost in some other part of this endless, liquid-dark night.
Apr 27, 2018
Apr 27, 2018 at 2:44 PM UTC
Why must I sleep upside down just to wake up right,
At dusk I see sounds just as ghouls come at night,
I'm trying to be immortalized.
And remain with immune from immoral mortal lies,
Ans see the divine with my own 3 mortal eyes,
I just hope all my bonds are covalent,
And my health's in good stock,
I just hope all my thoughts are coherent,
Why I start to feel like the new Tupac
Or like the son of Odin,
Washed clean in frank's ocean,
I walk like thunder but every night ***** every day up.
Everyday I think about the things I gave up.
I think like yo -
What if all my heavy sighs i had to weigh up?
What if I got lost and time forgot to wait up?
Took a hiatus in Hades, what if I never found a way up?
Every night I think like "yo, what if I gave up?"
We wishin on the same stars - just on different nights,
I'm on a mission, same start - we just on different plights.
A lab rat stuck in an elaborate labyrinth,
A wunderkind stuck in his own wonderland,
Wade Wilson with no blades to wander with,
Majin Buu meandering in his mental maze,
Thor with no Mjolnor, no cats to thunder with,
I'm more Marth than Icarus and I made it out the pit.
I read somewhere your dreams don't give a **** about your fears,
Cause sometimes they the same thing,
And that schemes come about from peers,
Cause sometimes they after the same things.
This the type of **** that don't get no hook,
I was filling my lane but life had hit me with the no look,
highly unprepared - I bobbled and fumbled it,
Had to remember my affirmations - I uttered and mumbled it,
It go like:
What happens to the words that you never say?
What happens to the games that people decide not to play?
What happens to the moon in the middle of the day?
What happened to the other 49 shades of Grey?
What happens if Captain Jack never got to parlay?
What if Barbosa never found the 9 pieces of 8?
Or better yet like,
What if Peter Pan never landed?
What if I squeezed the lemons that life had handed?
What if I realized I'm at a disadvantage?
What if I finally admit that I'm damaged?
If you don't heal what hurt you - you bleed on those who didn't cut you.
This important content.
This is a message from my impaired cortex.
This is the imported fears complete with a weird flex.
This the pectoral on my body of work.
Jan 18, 2024
Jan 18, 2024 at 7:52 PM UTC
wildly winding mountain road
descending elevation blurs
careening towards freedom
the darkness seems to follow ~
white knuckled and madly steering
screeching wheels struggle to grip
gaskets swell with petroleum pressure
radiator coolant hisses and spits ~
a long exhale on a straight stretch
a droplet of harsh mortality
leaves the temple
and travels its own downhill journey
twisting along the neck
banking on the pectoral incline
picking up speed slaloming belly hair ~
slamming the transmission into first
engine whine echoes
howling moan bounces off canyon walls
as the cramp in my colon reaches
maximum ache
I drop the metaphor and head to the toilet /
Jul 7, 2016
Jul 7, 2016 at 5:19 PM UTC