"petticoats" poems
Elephant seals
gross and flabby
ignorant of protocol
ponderously scratch.
Uniformed unicorns
importune
tame peacocks
wearing pink petticoats.
Fluted columns fade
at twilight
into the secrecy
of a passing thought.
Toy soldiers
on parade
fragile, glittering
lost.
Dec 13, 2014
Dec 13, 2014 at 1:09 AM UTC
For Max
O cruel, drunken soul, darling tigress,
Come to my heart, you lethargic beast!
I long for my trembling hands to caress
Your thick and glossy fleece.
In your petticoats filled with your scent
To bury my poor, aching head,
Inhaling your flowery fragrance;
The sweetness of love now dead.
I wish to sleep, to dream perchance
As sweetly as death’s embrace,
Without remorse, my tongue will dance
On your coppery body and face.
To bury my sobbing for hours
Nothing equals your bed’s abyss,
On your lips lies oblivion’s power
And Lethe flows in your kiss.
Like one resigned to meet his end,
I’ll face my fate delighted;
Docile martyr, innocent condemned,
Whose fervour with pain is ignited.
I shall **** to drown my malice,
With nepenthe and hemlock blessed;
Placing my lips upon the chalice
Of your pointed, heartless breast.
Apr 27, 2017
Apr 27, 2017 at 9:08 AM UTC
The artichoke
of delicate heart
*****
in its battle-dress, builds
its minimal cupola;
keeps
stark
in its scallop of
scales.
Around it,
demoniac vegetables
bristle their thicknesses,
devise
tendrils and belfries,
the bulb's agitations;
while under the subsoil
the carrot
sleeps sound in its
rusty mustaches.
Runner and filaments
bleach in the vineyards,
whereon rise the vines.
The sedulous cabbage
arranges its petticoats;
oregano
sweetens a world;
and the artichoke
dulcetly there in a gardenplot,
armed for a skirmish,
goes proud
in its pomegranate
burnishes.
Till, on a day,
each by the other,
the artichoke moves
to its dream
of a market place
in the big willow
hoppers:
a battle formation.
Most warlike
of defilades-
with men
in the market stalls,
white shirts
in the soup-greens,
artichoke field marshals,
close-order conclaves,
commands, detonations,
and voices,
a crashing of crate staves.
And
Maria
come
down
with her hamper
to
make trial
of an artichoke:
she reflects, she examines,
she candles them up to the light like an egg,
never flinching;
she bargains,
she tumbles her prize
in a market bag
among shoes and a
cabbage head,
a bottle
of vinegar; is back
in her kitchen.
The artichoke drowns in a ***
So you have it:
a vegetable, armed,
a profession
(call it an artichoke)
whose end
is millennial.
We taste of that
sweetness,
dismembering scale after scale.
We eat of a halcyon paste:
it is green at the artichoke heart.
16.7k
Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple
Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean
The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell
Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright
One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,
But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak
Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,
Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.
Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.
Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.
Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.
I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I
Am a pure acetylene
******
Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.
Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old ***** petticoats) ----
To Paradise.
11k
*Angel torches
filter sunlight
across a vast
horizon
of sea foam
petticoats.
Where
topaz touches
glittering
cyan
&
spirals
downwards
through the
deepest dark
blues - no body
can exist within
jewelled sapidity.
*
Sep 12, 2013
Sep 12, 2013 at 4:04 PM UTC
I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a ******
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.
The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.
I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.
How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!
I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.
I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
3.8k
The Pansies curtsied deeply, in their flouncy purple dress,
To the yellow Jonquils; and then only to impress.
And Amaryllis hides her newly naked-lady stem,
But her bouffant clothing opens, at each thrill of puffing wind.
The Bluebell always bows her head, when saying any grace,
Though Iris has Apollo's tears, fresh on her upturned face;
While Daffodil has sunshine, in her ringing petticoats-
Poor Honeysuckle is quite gone; all eaten up by goats.
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 6:42 AM UTC
The autumn winds ***** her mercilessly,
as idle hands lunge for delicate petticoats.
Their ugly, pockmarked howls pinch her deeply
with each new limb they expose,
until her tears drop like leaves, unheard
and become soiled.
By the winter, she’s left leaning awkwardly
like a slapper against a lamp post.
Her body but scattered, bent baguettes,
freeze-set with the frigid, nightly chills,
which preserve her stark immodesty
and her malign revenge.
Yet spring adorns her with tentative protruding buds,
glazed like freshly shellacked fingernails,
as her body itches with the swellings of youth
and foliage fastens frills around her chest,
summoning the dewy-peach lustre of virginity.
Now she basks in our wanton, forgiving glares.
As the summer teases, she writhes Lolita-like
in a raincoat that clings to her, just so.
Her barely concealed fruits spilling out,
as the sun caresses her skin hotly, until she ****
with that cacophony of lilac bells gawping, grape-like,
ringing out the sweet moans of her petite-mort.
Oct 7, 2020
Oct 7, 2020 at 10:53 AM UTC
Thought I'd seen it all in a crowded room
I hadn't seen anything
Least of all truth
We talk about the things
That day and night and our light bring
So tell me just a bit more
about you
Don't leave me to my own defenses
Leave me up against a wall
While I recognize
the reason I keep coming back is you
It's always been
you
The streetlight sputters like a flame
Maybe it senses our sincerity?
that here and now is where we're meant to be
Side by loving side.
Sep 4, 2011
Sep 4, 2011 at 10:49 PM UTC
*Like fairy dust caught in dappled sunlight they dance.
Swirling gracefully like a ballerina pirouetting
on a child's music box.
Graceful specks of fine dirt engrossed in cloaking
surfaces smooth and coarse.
Like petticoats caught in a summer breeze
rippling, and dipping, causing a sneeze.
Dust motes like a kilt swirling,
whirling in the kaleidoscope of daylight,
engross you in devoting a poem to their dance.
Those molecules, atoms of time passed.*
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 4:30 AM UTC
Little Penelope Persnicketty was a girl that grew up down the lane.
Her Mother doted on her so much, you would think her insane.
She took such care of her prized daughter pet.
Father never mentioned in the picture, a World War II vet.
Penelope Persnicketty was rather peculiar.
Every single thing she owned was pink, even down to her school ruler.
Petticoats, lace and stockings all a flamingo hue.
The dresses seemed so old fashion, never saw anything new.
She always seemed like a damsel in distress
Mother Persnicketty hand sewed every dress.
When she wasn't sewing , she held Penelope tight.
We rarely saw her out of her mother's controlling sight.
There was one thing Mother Persnicketty couldn't control.
It was puberty ravaging Penelope's little soul.
Hair appeared places it shouldn't.
******* Penelope wished for them but couldn't
Finally, the secrets began to unravel.
The Persnickettys packed up for some European travel.
In the fuss, we saw the forgery and what else her Pandora hemmed.
Made a daughter just by writing in the letter F instead of M.
May 14, 2010
May 14, 2010 at 10:53 PM UTC
A damsel, fair with braided hair,
Her beauty wild beyond compare,
Came bustling to the summer faire,
Her petticoats a-flowing;
She settled there, upon a chair
And watched the young men stop and stare,
But none of them would dare to dare
To coax her with a-wooing;
In her despair, she gasped for air,
No one it seemed would know or care,
Her beauty hid a deep despair
That she was not a-showing
And unaware how to declare
The secrets that she dare not share,
The damsel left to who knows where,
And no one is a-knowing
How came a damsel quite so rare,
With beauty fair and braided hair,
Alone with no one's love to share,
Her petticoats a-flowing
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 9:05 AM UTC
I saw the rest of my kind scour against the streets, hands calloused-laden,
wizened by erratic explosions – nondescript music analogous to silence;
terse sleep stiff in wind, homes filled with tension, arrow-headed men
quiver through the busy streets as tatterdemalion as stray dogs.
inverted triangle, sidereal vertigo, mutilated rose and the beheaded tulip.
the ambiguous spiral of the downcast climb. I see all men maddened
by wine over the rooftops.
choking in dank light – the night exudes its flayed machinery.
an empty bottle of whiskey and a body stripped of skin melded with fright
raised higher than the maladroit sky.
I, whose name is but an algorithm of formlessness. I, whose silence is but the contemplation of stone. I,
whose voice toboggans like a tender ramshackle of incantations
filling tubercular pockets with spare hope yet none are we but only poorer.
whose fingers are but tired girls tousling in bed lacquered by sunsets – whose nails are paler
than a ****** of moonlight, whose homes are inflamed hemmed in by petticoats,
whose eyes set affixed to no avatars in juxtaposition of parks
falling madly in love with everything that glints.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 1:08 AM UTC
Modern words do no good in love.
Cars, jeans, mini skirts, flirting, and texts
Pale in comparison to
Carriages, slacks, petticoats, courting, and letters
We traded something in for our knowledge, industry, and democracy:
Romance.
Love and beauty and honor have flitted away
On wings of steel.
Is true love possible in a world
With such shallow, lacking words?
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 9:05 PM UTC
Poppies after rain
Waving scarlet petticoats
A garden can-can
Aug 23, 2021
Aug 23, 2021 at 10:42 AM UTC
There, in the light of a summer, long gone, lie shadows of laughter, remnants of love.
There in the dust rings, echos of recall, sunspots flaunt blue yonder above .
Recalling eyes that wept for the fun of it, cried with the tragedy,. Teardrops of crave
Surges of memory washing in wavelets cleansing, scarring, riding the wave.
Oh for that feeling of splendid simplicity running in sand at the surge of the tide
No place to be, no timetable proffered, freedom on little boys giant slippery slide.
Ice creams, apricots, luscious and juicy frolic with maiden’s free blonde, tousled hair,
Frothy short petticoats bounce in the sunshine, youth without traces of worry or care.
Breathless in nights of gathereing twilight, breathless falls this magical air,
Wondrous in such lilting beauty, soft hanging tones of Autumn fair.
There in the light of summer gone, shadows of laughter, remnants of love,
Memories flood to overflowing, indigo glints the starlight above.
M.
The Satins of Autumn Approacheth…
February 21 2019
Feb 20, 2019
Feb 20, 2019 at 11:28 PM UTC
/sword
in the way
by the well
it is said
she will rise from the blue
and it is true
...chilly mossy air
petticoats and nighties
little torch
and walloping gumboots
pig tails and
bandaids
the little girl went running
the rust of the bucket
the shadows cast by the hidden moon
a bolt of lightning in a far away tree
scare her a little
but she goes on
..at the well
she points and whispers
and there is the ghost-ish-thing
with its sad sad eyes
it tells the girl of the slashes
and deaths the swords
and the wars
have caused in its time and
it tells the girl
to stop the wars from happening again and again
...the little girl often visits the ghost
she is not frightened as the ghost has never sought to harm her
instead she listens, and learns
the ghost is her teacher
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 5:54 AM UTC
I left serious procrastinating by Liverpool Street station,
And skipped into Spitalfields
Looking for ludicrous.
In this place,
In the city but not of the city,
Lissome youths in black skinny jeans
Loiter by stalls selling things that no-one needs.
Rockabilly chick,
In my splurty outy dress,
Petticoats flouncing,
I twirled and giggled
Through the Goblin Market
Into the Water Poet,
And curtseyed gracefully,
Accepting a liquid offering,
Prepared to hold court.
Later, we may find sustenance,
Or resume the dance
On sticky floors.
It's time to let go of plans, responsibility and care,
To run, to laugh, to pirouette, to dare.
Leave me here
Or join me,
But beware
The labyrinth is tricksy
And the way back
Is by no means guaranteed.
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 4:07 AM UTC
Fairy blossoms
climb through my dreams
cascading over moonlight
and statuesque fountains
purple parachutes
pirouette across the
gloaming
in a twinkle
the laughter of evening
bells
and swirling petticoats
caper through the garden
till dawn
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
Mr White Rabbit
Take me down
To where the grass is greener
And the Queens are meaner
I'll follow you anywhere
Down that Rabbit Hole
Cerulean skirts and white lace petticoats
I pout and I cry
I sulk and I lie
Eat me, drink me
I don't know what to think
But I do think
That I pout and sulk and cry and lie
Too much
Pour me a drink
Tea in a teacup
Quibbles wrought in mercury
Perhaps not retrograde
But perhaps a renegade
I believe in fairy tales
I believe in tall tales
I believe in animal entrails
I believe, I believe, I believe
In magic and in mythology
Wonderland, oh, Wonderland
Take me to Wonderland
Let me wander through
The Land of Wonderland
Come with me
Come down the Rabbit Hole
Mar 31, 2018
Mar 31, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
Vermilion teardrops:
falling in waves like
anguished petticoats
rustling down the year's
corridor into winter;
the palace gates are bare
arms, living kindling
unscarred in pools of fire -
with Chronos' breath to set
the mood,
glowing in every torch
the charred remains of
a living kingdom
fall to ash.
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 8:48 AM UTC
With bodice wound around her girth
And petticoats all a sway
The lady rode past me on the road
In the full flung rays of day
She tossed instruments to the ground
Trumpets, thermometers, gyroscopes,
Then drove her vehicle onwards
Her gloved hands at the wheel *****
This with lighter load she went
Up a glacial hillock
Up and up and up she went
Bringing only an inlaid clock
Into the sky and above the land
The fantastical vehicle drove
A sharp laugh rang all around
And from this world she wove.
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 9:50 AM UTC
why don't we all do the primal thing
take off our clothes and reveal everything
not a stitch of clothing did Neanderthal folk ware
they allowed their naked bodies to breath the air
nudist colonies are the last bastion of bare skin
the people at these places never fail to grin
without dresses and pants they are a happy crew
all of them putting their kit out on view
it is a norm for us to take in the sunshine whilst bare
and a law should be passed to permit this fair
we've been overly wrapped in fabric for years
no wonder we've been without any cheer
the straight laced may not be too keen on ******
but may I remind them it is such a liberty
shedding the coats and petticoats wont do any harm
and showing a little of our bodies isn't cause for alarm
our forebears of a by gone era were not glad
they ran around in the buff and never did anything bad
those who wish to be in a state of undress
take off your attire and don't feel any stress
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 8:05 PM UTC
*december 10th 1982
1am*
sleepless in the the neurotic wastelands
she has fifty two cards
each has a face none of them are mine
but the jack of hearts is there and with her childbearing hips
they could pump out a couple of rug rats
start their own little civilization
here on the backwaters
she gives me a ride to the edge of the glades
and drops me off at a truckstop in the rain
december 10th 1982 4:22am
the salt of the earth diner on route 1
with the waitress chewing gum at the counter
staring off into the distant light of highrise miami
a sheen of sweat glistens on her deep tan
but its not as sticky or deep as her mind
thats wandering out in the Catskill mountains
looking for Johnny Appleseed
december 15th 1988 10:00am
doves take flight in the
soft white afterglow of day
with a stir of wings
and her tender lips let slip
of her longing for innermost peace
her eyes seeing nothing but
the golden glow of some distant day
some half remembered day
the time i wait for
summers sweet song
has been far too long
this is a winter world
december 15th 1993 1:00pm
leaning over the balcony rail
she shouts her smiles down
to the regular faces on the rows road
petticoats of fine linen
and her hair up
shes a sea of smiles
as they all shuffle in to see the show
Broken Bernie and his girl Christa
who snowbunnys down to the neon Florida sun
round this time of year
december 13th 1996 6:00pm
desperado's gather in the setting sun
hunger in their eyes
between the rock and hard place
and with a hard eyed thought they
move into the town
she pours him a cup of coffee
and lays a hand softly upon his shoulder
urging him to stay and leave such things
to lesser men
but he knows he must rise to the call
to do less would be treason to his nature
to do less would betray everything he has stood for
today, now
the words waiting on lips as i stumble out of sleep
make little sense at least to the waking mind
but the world makes little sense when fully awake
so this dream fragment hardy seems out of place
wearing a stove pipe hat chewing on a whales tail
and chatting with Abe Lincoln
my guess would be he wanted his hat back
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 3:20 PM UTC
why don't we all do the primal thing
take off our clothes and reveal everything
not a stitch of clothing did Neanderthal folks wear
they allowed their naked bodies to breath the air
nudist colonies are the last bastion of bare skin
the people at these places never fail to grin
without dresses and pants they are a happy crew
all of them putting their kit out on view
it is a norm for us to take in the sunshine whilst bare
and a law should be passed to allow this fair
we've been overly wrapped in fabric for years
no wonder we've been without any cheers
the straight laced may not be too keen on ******
but may I remind them that it is such a liberty
shedding the coats and petticoats wont do any harm
and showing a little of our bodies isn't cause for alarm
our forebears of a by gone era were not clad
they ran around in the buff and never did anything bad
those who wish to be in a state of undress
take off your attire and don't feel any stress
Apr 9, 2013
Apr 9, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC