"permafrost" poems
Sometimes beneath close eyelids
I quest to bring you back
As if you were driftwood floating
Downstream on your back.
I dip my hands beneath the veil
And dry away the death
And from my parting, weeping lips
I give you back your breath-
Just like the rising sunset burning
In the summer sky
Paints and saints the mountaintops
And casts their colors bright.
*Unrhymed Notes:
Sometimes I dream I can bring you back
Just as simply as dipping my hands into the water
To retrieve a floating piece of driftwood;
Dry the death from your skin
And breath life back into you
The way the sunrise reanimates
The Dark Mountains
Each and every day.
I see your Ocean eyes open
Embrace you like I'm trying to
Fold you into my skin
Where I can keep you always
And feel your summer peach warm flesh
Tangible against my permafrost fingers.
If the dead could talk
Nothing profound would leave your lips
They'd only quirk into a Cheshire smile
And you'd tell me to let go
Relinquish
Move along and stop standing still
Life is for the Living
Death is for the dead
And dreams are for the foolish.*
"You *******
Aug 27, 2015
Aug 27, 2015 at 3:08 PM UTC
(from “A Love Song” by William Carlos Williams)
<•>
familiar that apple google and amazon
have me under 24 hour surveillance
e-specially now
as I am in their
geosphere of influence
but sending me a love poem of WCWs that isolates my locale, my intended inebriation status,
and is addressed to me personally (“you”),
that’s just creepy
so charged am I, obligated to oblige,
to counter-compose a love song of mine own,
under the pinot “influence,”
(in a manner of speaking)
which a love taught me to love
what if,
a new love song ecrit,
to an old and loverly land,
a woman-land designed to be desired,
no difference -
kissing a new girl first time,
a wet and unforgettable
compote
when falling
on the neck of your one beloved anew renewed
now I tremble-tread
for the line of great predecessors,
“the land lover scribes”
skilled in natures homaging,
is like a line out the door,
around the corner as if
a new flavor ice cream
has just been isolated and mined and I...
<•>
*I,
but a novitiate
in a far away, wild untamed world
where my nature taken by her nature
cannot deny paying my just due:
selvage
late middle English, from self + edge
how perfect!
“an edge,
woven on a fabric during manufacture,
intended to prevent unraveling”
the pacific coast air
the irregular shoreline - expanding/receding,
god’s own forestry reserve,
the cascades, a goal on the horizon,
country roads where ancient wheat stalks grow wild
all a tonic intermingled, an alcohol to
imbibe through mouth nostrils eyes and skin
all will be my own selvage!
preventing the eastern unraveling disease,
a nearly incurable permafrost low grade
kate spaded infection,
brought along with me for decades,
my loon June companion, now stalling out,
lost from my happy head
a vineyard on every corner,
marijuana growing next door,
rivers that change like children growing up and down,
cheek to jowled property line
live the berries and the hazelnut groves,
god’s hay bales wrapped in plastic
like marshmallows dotting the landscape*
all daring you to say
I could
love
it here
Jun 8, 2018
Jun 8, 2018 at 3:26 PM UTC
Crafty, they say, He's getting crafty
crafty with my lies and my made-up meals
crafty with my sound-blocking tactics
crafty with hiding the burning lines of white and red.
Baking, they say, He's getting into baking
baking my binges
baking my restriction
baking my omad
baking my sad-looking low-cal low-fat low-sugar low-carb high-protein
'meal'.
Crochet, they say, He's getting into crochet
crocheting ankle warmers to make my legs look skinny
half-finger gloves in an attempt to curb the permafrost that has begun to
knit itself around my bones.
Healthy, they say, He's getting healthy
as i workout until i faint
and do sit-ups until i have bruises on my spine.
fruit and veg and vitamins take priority
and suddenly i have taken an interest in running.
Sep 18, 2022
Sep 18, 2022 at 12:40 PM UTC
*That permafrost runs grounded,
soil as iced as tempered tundra sands.*
I called you when I got to Rio.
There be a savior alight on a mountain top.
Five messages and a cigar. True to you in my fashion.
Fit brown head in the bathroom, goin' a'gettin' ahead and not behind.
Five messages and a cigar. Shoe-shining. Nods goodbye.
Them Brazilians are sure to be shoe-tappin' good–
I leave some messages.
I smoke a cigar.
*Ringing rang raw through the apartment's hide,
twice and again. And then twice more.*
Feb 19, 2014
Feb 19, 2014 at 4:31 AM UTC
Ground zero again. Ghost ties to old moods
now that you have found happiness,
or at least the line of best fit.
Lips interlocked incessantly on the astral beach,
over the September permafrost
where I held up the chains of my cell
just long enough to kiss you.
Chambers of blue blood, of blue feathers
interspersed in the lining of our pockets:
I felt I could fly when I finally met you.
Heard the callousness, the human history of suffering,
when the chains overwhelmed,
when I fell back to the ground.
You were my fortune in the wishing well,
but now our tongues are rearranged,
all passions now platitudes,
another name or witness to wish me well.
Ground zero again. The foundations exposed
on what might have been love.
Monoliths of steel and scorched earth.
Broken vessels sail by in the night, influence of wine;
words are tempered but the intent remains.
You remain. Extinguished shadow in the skyline,
phantom limb of loving arms. I cannot find the stars.
I cannot reach out to anyone in the space you left behind.
Dec 6, 2015
Dec 6, 2015 at 2:32 PM UTC
The loneliest librarian is in the
heart of darkness
I saw him, old, bearded
on three sides book cases
on the open side, a desk
he faces outward into the darkness
drawing notes at their best.
Look away! in the distance
an army and her generals gather
Up ahead, a conqueror
metal jangles, saddles horse
Cries the pony boy:
I miss my mother
let me go back
what does this all mean?
Studying now, the librarian,
notes in check, own pen
scratching, no metals
only and only
his mind and an ink-filled well
Spearhead, arrowhead formation
a king and his khanate lean forward
into the permafrost, snow lashing
wind blows against but cannot stop
fierce wild will
and only the willows weep
Cries the pony boy:
Radically, may I be afraid
of the dead, arms asunder
so much love! so much love!
what does this all mean?
And far, far ahead of this army
librarian sits, silently
loving nothing, everything beside him
he scribbles notes
A love letter? tiresome if so
upon closer inspection...
At the center of the dark dark forest
where a lonely man rides in his kayak
lantern fixed upon a frame, making his boat top-heavy
he bobs back and forth across his body of water
he is haunted
he is lonely
he is a skeleton
Now grand general crosses the Styx
Ice clumps brushing gently against his ships
cold enough to **** a horse, set blood aglow
with blue, so cold it could not rot.
To valley forge!
to valley forge
to forge a future.
And pony boy cries:
What does it mean?
my father is gone, gone before this war,
he once said, it must be, be,
Did he mean...
Finally, up ahead, the librarian draws
untraceable lines, he knows the army is at his door
lonely, shaking, only the conqueror made it
and he is almost dead too.
Scared, sacredly, he finally hands the librarian his match
and sobs, softly, under breath
"Time, time is, time without,
time too
starts anew."
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 12:42 AM UTC
I'm just getting in the bath,
Someone else wrote the letter,
I don't want to make a. Mess.
Draw me the water
I point at the tap
Burden no family
Hold my head under icecaps.
Merkel Cells, diluted sensation,
The end of fingertips cant feel your
Flesh.
Shriveling in the cold,
Shivering to stop freezing,
But I cant. What am I doing?
Can I want this now, errectores pilorum erected.
Have I set motion to,
Cogs in a watch I cant adjust.
my lungs mark absolute zero
this is me sitting in chemistry class
english
10th grade
asking sam to suffocate with me
every alvioli is pinned by ****** as thick as knitting needles
my chest is permafrost
my sternum, antarctica
the ribs hollow out
capillary beds lose all the haem
out of their erythrocytes
I'm losing St. Elmo's Fire.
The baths still panting out,
Water roars, gushing spout.
Proud the current sweeps me through,
The porcelain lining this white hell bathroom.
It's bone cannot hide from my blood,
As if I'm isotope 226 of Radium.
Heat seeking marrow.
My serum is Hodgkins Lymphoma,
Tearing through sheeting tile,
Like a young cancer child,
Afflicted,
Leukemia,
No chance,
No good blood left,
To let.
Soon, it will all be gone, and the rivers that
freeze in my arms, and the ribs that are icicles
form, and the atrial canal is not like Venice,
it is the Rhine in winter, the Volga during
the solstice.
Spring will never come again.
Spring slipped its head into the bath water, like my own.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
do you ever start chinking away
breaking, cracking the stone, hard mineral, steel cold
barrier of your heart
so it'd be impossible for someone else
to do it for you?
white wine pungent, soft
clinking glass against an empty chasm
sunlight
hard wood draped in sleeping veneer.
cascading drapes against
violet
dark
stagnant bruised skin left alone and slowly freezing over.
smoke leaking through whispering
dry lips chapped with desert words
lack of moisture creating canyons
hidden inside desperate mouths.
it's breaking like a frozen over
ashy, navy, drowning lake.
my own fault,
i always start breaking my own heart.
my own form of life insurance.
it's fogged over like a magnifying glass,
cracking across the two foot surface because
the strangled fish can't breathe under all
the permafrost and ice.
i'm waiting impatiently for summer;
i hate this cold.
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 1:39 AM UTC
You will be argonaut
one more of the supernumerary
trodding upon the cindered ones
come before you
limbs wooden and somite
encircling a moon
tumescent and blue
in permafrost garrote
on constellations edge
tottering over synapse
mocking
like a mime on highwire
your guilt
lupine in its longing
sawtooth timberline in vivisect night
down promontory
to frozen wave
the broken spoke of your step
on sleetslick carapace
past the preterit
embalmed hide of the world
into the silent millstone
berserk
to return emptyhanded
and changed
Nov 9, 2012
Nov 9, 2012 at 2:36 AM UTC
I've grown so cold
Your branches snap
I wish to embrace you
I don't like causing pain
But ice doesn't hug well
Nor a strong tree does it make
Sep 22, 2025
Sep 22, 2025 at 11:11 PM UTC
Permafrost can go
As deep as
2 miles into
The earth
Way down there
Are these plants
Still alive and
Waiting to be
Discovered or
Thawed out
There's all this
Living stuff
Underneath us
Just waiting to bloom
Dec 18, 2021
Dec 18, 2021 at 2:45 AM UTC
It was called the rooftop of the world
And I stood closer to the heavens than I ever had before.
The permafrost chill bit at my fingers
And the silence,
Oh the silence.
But I felt at home in the sense
That I had everything I needed.
I was closer to those things
Which I had previously thought
Impossible to reach.
I felt the presence of my mother,
And the memory of my father.
This place where peace is found
Gave me a new sense of life
In all of its meanings.
I couldn’t tell you what we’re here for
But I know that it starts and ends
Somewhere in Tibet.
Feb 21, 2013
Feb 21, 2013 at 9:28 PM UTC
Little dandelions poked their heads out of the graveyard in my chest
And proclaimed to the permafrost and broken branches
That they weren't afraid of death
So my ribcage shook, the structure burst, the foundation crumbled in
And the dandelions laid flat, made foolish
Never to be seen again
May 23, 2014
May 23, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC
On Saturn's day, his body quakes,
the lights go out, and the craters form.
He drinks the rye to ease the shakes
and watches as the cicadas swarm.
His records are warped from cellar air,
his walls are stained nicotine yellow.
The night creeps in from beneath his chair
to taunt and **** this charming fellow.
Fifty years of motherless meals
and fifty years of loveless mistakes.
Fifty years of seasonal wheels
and fifty years of screeching brakes.
Fifty years of challenges met
and fifty years of swallowing pride.
Fifty years and not dead yet,
and fifty more before he has died.
He draws in deep from his old cob pipe
and exhales the smoke toward the fan.
Once the orchards are good and ripe
he'll go outside and tame his land.
Until that day, he's mighty content
with sitting back and wasting his time.
These are the last days before his descent,
there is no call for reason or rhyme.
Fifty years of unpaid rent,
and fifty years of tall tales lost.
Fifty years he can't repent,
and fifty years of permafrost.
Fifty years that won't come back,
and fifty years of worn down soles.
Fifty years of catching flak,
and fifty years spent digging holes.
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 6:29 AM UTC
...it's like a separate entity
One that doesn't like me
In fact, it tells me it hates me
As it berates me then blames me
I'm at a loss and lost
Can't even tally the cost
It's burned every bridge I've crossed
And left a heart encased in a permafrost
©2024
Apr 9, 2024
Apr 9, 2024 at 3:43 PM UTC
This Christmas is cold.
Even as the moon is scalding
To the heat of the stars
In the humid air
Of the hidden sun.
My heart reaches out to closest flames
But they are in full-fledged fuel
For their own
Feisty foolish fellowships
Furiously festive in the ignorant bliss
Such is the permafrost
Of no welcoming arms
And so, I host Revenge
Who welcomed Bitterness
In my thoughts
While suffering from the sinister snowstorm
I alone perhaps have made this night cold
Cold enough
To trick me to sleep
In tears, only my dreams are warm enough
To thaw but a single thumb
Frozen and Alone
I fade. Evaporating into the clouds
I am part of what will be
Rain, wadding the earth
In a pool
I will remind them of loneliness
I
Will be the cold
Next Christmas is cold
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 10:04 AM UTC
Remain complacent and confused
Content to be lost
With a heart that stirs
In the permafrost
Run on through the empty streets
Hands open
Eyes closed
Breathing in the cool air
Growing numb from the cold
Still don't let your heart thaw
You'll feel one beat and then another
Warmth so different from the frost
Just the thought it makes me shudder
I was burnt once before
Dark hot fingers scarred my soul
If my heart goes warm again
I fear it'd shatter
Leaving holes
Run into the unknown
Seeking a freezer for a heart
Before it's beaten by the world
Forever covered by it's marks
It's grown so dark you'll never see
But do not dare to light a match
For if you do you might feel warmth
You might consider turning back
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 5:26 PM UTC
The incandescent Sun
is eating itself alive
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The helium will compact
to a carbon red giant's core
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Earth's heat is depleted
by geothermal extraction
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The geysers are drying up
and the pressure sinks in subsidence
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The permafrost decomposes
and prehistoric methane effervesces
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Yellowstone caldera hisses
plumes of taunting toxic gases
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The sea-floor volcanoes
purge their way to the surface
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The aurora lights the sky
as solar wind ravages the magnetosphere
They said it's too small to matter
too small to matter
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
Quick steps
hurried
breath
like
frosty
clouds
transparent
between the
stars
where
the moon
once
resided
iced in
heartache
and
sorrow.
Love
is
lost.
No deep
footprints
to guide
it home
and snow
has covered
our lungs
not
a word
uttered
on the
tundra
not a song
sung
in the
northern
lights
where guides
walk
like spirits
transformed
into
shadows
lingering
on
the
edge
of
consciousness.
I scream
a
guttural
call
reminding
me
of
the
animalistic
beast
lurching
across
the
bareness
of my
joy
I accept it
accept
the
thoughts
that
roam
tug
pull
push
****
at my sanity.
I’m no
longer
a
part
of
your
summer haze
the
bitterness
of
winter
has
set
deep
in my
bones.
Deep
in
my heart.
A
permafrost
that no
one
can thaw.
I
am
only
a
hopeless
soul
to
wander
alone
in
the
cold.
And
I
accept that.
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
I’m nothing but a monolith of ice and gravel.
Stuck in these wintry doldrums.
Waiting, waiting for the time
when the birds return home and
Sol’s warm light puts life back in these bones of permafrost.
It is then she’ll come dancing and singing
like the days when we were young.
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 12:17 PM UTC
********* the frayed edges of this
worn down heart
from hope
and yet fed by the taste
of you
Honey dew tangerines
take shape of leaves
falling
from the sky the way
you took my hand
and took a dive
with me
I'd stay under and wait for you
like the pine trees waiting for
the others
to wake
after winter
I'd hold my breath for you and count to 365
3 times- unless there was a leap year
but I'd still count that day
It'd be the one where I saw you
The one where you held my hand
and watched time travel faster than
my anxious heart waiting for your
return so I could
nestle you in my straw sheets
Stiff, from not enough love
sweet, because no man has
been here,
except for you when my
eyelids fall victim to the weights
of emptiness
that feign them of your presence
Fall victim to my mind's imagination
protruding from my scalp
my iceberg
and carved thicker than any
of the mastered tattoos
that stain your bones
Carved like you are, all crisp
and folded neatly into squares
where you're slipped under my
left breast
buried here in the nook
of my rib cage
and mimick the parakeet
of my heart
calling to the only bird who sings my song
Calling to all lovers oceans apart but
woven so intimately inside
one another, a basket
of every item you could ever need-
Empty
but built through
frayed edges of worn down hearts
that inhale each catty-cornered breath
to survive
Singed ends
proof that your match
has lit my birch for it's last time
Proof that this is frozen like the permafrost
embedded within my rib
Proof that you'll stay with me through the thicket
of ice and
fury and
frost
before slipping away and leaving me with
the lilies of Spring
risen from the warm rain
you'll toss here from
the salt stained sea
renewed and refreshed as our hearts
choke and
gasp
and shriek
but
our bodies calm
as they perform their miracles
and heal
and mend
all of the sutures
that love has stung
us with
I'll heal from the frostbite you poisoned me with
but not without the deepest of scars
from your high velocity crime
on my soul and the ink bleeding
through my skin
But, she'll keep quiet
for you and
she'll wear her battle scars over
her left breast and wear
them with dignity
Have you loved like this?
Tell me, have you taken a dive
and held your breath?
Have you run down your heart
until all that
is left is
frayed edges of this worn down heart-
a parakeet chained to the cage
of my ribs
singing a song waiting to be sung
singing
to a lost Lover
of the lilies of Spring.
Jan 20, 2011
Jan 20, 2011 at 5:54 PM UTC
A flower that last saw the Sun
when Neanderthal was on the run,
scientists have carbon dated
and ,now, successfully cultivated.
No shrinking violet, this plant, I know
bloomed thirty millennium ago.
Just a tick in cosmic time
Its fate with man’s was intertwined.
It was found beneath the permafrost,
a treasure in a squirrels lair.
In cryostorage it remained.
The squirrel forgot that it was there.
Ten Thousand years beneath the plain,
then came the centuries of ice and rain.
The game died out. That same fate befalls
the tribe of the Neanderthal.
Now the flower blooms again-
An ancient beauty born anew-
In those seeds, a living spark,
just don’t expect Jurassic Park.
Feb 21, 2012
Feb 21, 2012 at 10:27 PM UTC
Tim Hecker
And crowds
A match made in heaven
Earphones in
I glide through the crowds
Each glitch becomes
The next person (a glitch in nature)
Each hush
Becomes a waft of permafrost air
And the rhythm blends in with a thousand feet and faces
Elements become
Hustlers
Bourgois ladies and their little dogs
Stern old men
A lost looking child
Or
Those two girls - restrained by mall security
People try to untangle my expression
I am euphoric
I am exalted
By my music video
Playing just for me
Here
Now
I'm beggining to like these people
I hope the music doesn't wear off
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 6:12 PM UTC
Drip drip drip
The sunset cracked the surface of her permafrost heart
Drip drip drip
The candlelit feast fed the flames of the passion denied
Her heart as fossil frozen away and yet the smell of summer experienced
Seeped deep into her countenance and so it was the melting of the snowman
Drip drip drip
His touch pierced the outer wall
Her lips freed to his drip drip
Her hands held in passion drip drip
The melting of a permafrost heart
A little from the edges freed then more and more breaking fee
To beat free from bonds of frigidity
And so the ice melted piece by delicate piece
The woman fossilized, the man rebuilt in heat of a summer.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 8:35 AM UTC
A blanket of
fractures,
ample rigid structures
A liquid
s
e
e
p
s
the t cold
r
frigid o fragments
u
g
of h the
north
Where tufts gather in the sherbet of -frozen- dust
The glistening indigo amongst
the platinum
blanket
I shiver.
The cutting
wind
admires the empty
shell
for I stood
there
Gazing at the
noise
Cut black.
In transparent fallacy
The temple of glass amongst the cold
golden
sun
speaking to -me-
referring
pointing g
looking at n -me-
i
ris
up
in an
warcry
i t n e v e r s l e e p s
but
I
awaken.
Dec 21, 2017
Dec 21, 2017 at 4:11 PM UTC