"picayune" poems
passion
thirst
hurt
ephemeral
physical
cold heat
hunger
water walking
brutally real
physical
skin colors
words spontaneous
devious planned
desire desired,
physical
concrete
parchment thin
muscled strong
catch a caught
physical
making
creating
cresting
cannot live without
physical
electric
shocking
eclectic
varied
realized
why? stop here?
eyed
fingered
tongue tasted,
ear sensual
dreamt
famous
buried
tragic
comedic
gaming played
unsafe
at any
speed
languorous
fire immolating
physical chest pains,
incurable
incumbent
to possess
otherwise, death
fingernails poking
knuckle kissing
lips wetting
blood exchanging
oh yeah physical
foreign native
young old
permanently temporary
infinitely finite
definitely unending
nowhere
no expression
dying dreams
best better
agonizing
agonizing
unrequited
offer everything
receive shoulder
colder than hell
defensive
offensive
cape laid
walk on me
chivalry
until we hold each others fingers knotted
until I stroke your hair unexpectedly,
until we agree to hell with all the rest
until we say the say the same thing simultaneously
until we come together
when we have satisfied each and every one of the above,
freely confess
know nothing of love
but the picayune details that make us greater
greater than greater, greatest, then and only then
we, might have a few clues
Sep 16, 2025
Sep 16, 2025 at 9:47 AM UTC
she writes me from Paris
wanting a command,
exactement comme moi
all her own.
to scribe.
in “a style with strength”
exactement comme moi
exactly like me
where the ideas percolate
for the precise gestation period
and the birth-born poems a-coming
without and within silent no belabored pain,
making the child appear as if it was only waiting
already, on its own good time. for saying thank you
for your patient waiting and who is really in
command?
when the overwhelming light orders “write”
I am gone from yesterday and the safe of picayune
does that sound like I am in
command?
you wish to command?
join the navy, the army,
become a paratrooper,
command in poetry is illusory,
for it comes from the bell tower rage of madness
of what my ancestors planted and bequeathed genetically,
and I have wasted the better half of a century appealing for
relief and making it clear who commands and who is the
“poetoftheway” slave
rejoindre la marine, l'armée,
devenir un parachutiste,
commande en poésie est illusoire,
car il vient du clocher de la rage de la folie
de ce que mes ancêtres ont planté et légué génétiquement,
et j'ai gaspillé la meilleure moitié d'un siècle attrayant pour
soulagement et en précisant qui commande et qui est le
“Poetoftheway" esclave
exactement comme moi
exactly like me?
exactly.
Feb 25, 2018
Feb 25, 2018 at 5:56 PM UTC
got hellhounds on my trail
my blood is in their nose
my fingerprints are on some sandpaper
in Arizona
All my money
in an empty bourbon
bottle
At the bottom
of Picayune bayou.
I know it's you at the end of this blind hallway
Robert Johnson
I finally feel safe to be overcome by fear
and hounds
Jan 5, 2012
Jan 5, 2012 at 4:07 AM UTC
Finality in sodality
I can't believe this is happening
it's happened,
Once or twice before but
its getting easy to ignore
The folklore behind said words:
Noise of fidelity in the thick of empty echoes who whisper “resolution”
Elocution for the pollution of picayune particulars
Skip the singulars;
Trip the light of day under the sundry array of the mistakes you play everyday
I suppose
some songs will always be sung
Hung tongues from foreign beaches
Within reach, you said, all the time, but
I wouldn't be here
i shouldn't be here
(I wouldn't be finding the time)
i shouldn't be trying so hard to catch a rhyme
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 19, 2013 at 4:43 AM UTC
Do you see me?
I’ve been devouring poetry,
by the line,
by the page,
by the book.
No poem has been overlooked.
I’ve been feasting
on free verse,
blank verse,
perverse
cascades
of stanzas and rhymes,
a banquet of words
on which to dine.
I’ve been swallowing ad nauseam,
scarfing down similes,
masticating metaphors,
gormandizing poems aplenty.
Rhyming couplets,
I’ve contained them.
Sonnets and epics,
ingested.
Lyrical odes,
digested.
A thousand lines
to make you swoon.
I’ve tasted them all—
the potent and
the picayune.
Villanelles, check.
Sestinas too.
I even hiccupped
my own haiku:
Icicles melt on glazed gutters.
Water drips, prolific, bits of sunlit seeds
promising lilacs below the eaves.
Do you see me?
I hate to ask, but I’m afraid
something poetic has happened.
my head is a tureen
brimming with stars
my arms are utensils
in a darkened drawer
my chest, a room of last resort
my feet are stressed, in short
Such prosody is blinding.
Can you tell me why
my eyes are bleak?
Or why I no longer
blink?
I sense the sear of fluent tears
composing on my cheek:
endless drops, black beads,
consumptive stains of ink.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 10:22 AM UTC
Adding minutes to a lifetime (saying magic words)
**”And you, dear poet, friend of many years,
have given me so many inspirations, birthed within
us words,so oft, and so well, that your pithy observations,
manufacture time, add minutes to lifetimes**”
<>
wrote these words without thinking,
they’re sweet and neat, trivial but incomplete
but upon rear mirror review, Mr Poet
re-thinks, perhaps deserved of another serving,
curvy white, soft-to-the-lips, a moist vanilla kiss,
excellent ice cream in a sugar cone, words irresistible
for the sweetest poem sparks multi-coloration-explosion
of sprinkles ‘pon a skin’s surface,
uprisings of what lurks in the centrum of your
embodied universe and disembodied soul,
shockingly uprising from an internal fulcrum,
sea~tossed flotsam of a jagged life, now, all recovered
words sprinkling, beach treasures, and yet,
adding minutes to a lifetime…
*reliving old reels, is time recaptured, creating a
certain robust additive to thine cranking and
cranky engine, that’s logged much more than
a picayune hundred thousand miles on a voyage
of e i g h t decades, you employ ten fingers to
calculate your fugue of multi-voiced numerations!*
*can it be? it cannot be! millions upon millions of
minutes, possess and passed, yet highlight feature
films, enabling reliving so real that by watching,
seeing, believing, re-reading it is as if one is earning
life extensions…*adding minutes to a lifetime…
*‘tis true, rereading every small scrip, every poem,
returns one to prior-places, each a datum,
a particular spot, a point upon a schema of integrity & integration,
that rule the visions, a message of individualism
in the largest context of a true vision(arie)*
“chacun un point dans une peinture pointilliste…”
“each a point within a pointillistic painting…”
*in a few years, a stumbling upon shall here return me here,
and I will smile with great gratitude for the life extended,
accepting with gratitude,*
these few seconds, a last lasting chance,
to say some magic words
with a great vanilla whispering
adding minutes to you life as well
nml
May 7, 2024
May 7, 2024 at 3:56 PM UTC
an argent
moon will
soon betray
an anxious
picayune till
the sergeant
has captured
such incident
but their
noxious foment
as rife'll
stoke desire
with hoofs
and guffaws
swaggeringly wade
their passes
in sanctity
Dec 8, 2018
Dec 8, 2018 at 1:10 PM UTC
I hear the train in the distance
The clank of metal speech
Grazing over roads that have known better days
I hear the rasping cries of the conductor
As he calls out the names of places
Places where I might or might not want to be
I hear the whistle, a knife through the air
I hear the train in the distance
And I close my eyes
Trying so hard to forget all those treasures
All those picayune sparkles
That used to be everything for me
Keeping up my endeavour
To forget everything
But the train in the distance
I stand
With a smile that’s been there
Just there
For so long
That it’s ancient with the lines of stagnancy
I stand
And just like always
I do the right thing
Even if it might not be
The right thing for me
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 7:23 AM UTC
is weeny people
having thoughts that
are immense, vast, oversized for their age
for their teeny, picayune bodies
but that isn't the problem
it's the elders not acknowledging them nor their thoughts
it's their need for self destruction
it's anxiety, depression, Weltschmerz all over again
it's not being enough
but feeling
way too
much
Jun 2, 2018
Jun 2, 2018 at 8:36 AM UTC
*sometimes writing poetry
purges the brain
like the mourning toilet ritual
like shock treatment
or a whopping good lobotomy
gets the cockka demons
and snails out of my ears
refreshes like
sweet dreams dryer sheets
and gives one a sense of having
accomplished something
when one has not
i'm purging
the hobgoblins of deep grooved nuro patterns
a stunted caged mind
that keeps me safe
like a lidded box
for small entertainments
trivia and vast ****** ****** of *** prancing
girls on girls
leggy acrobats begging me for diabolical
**** and tongue gymnastics
a small time writer
haunted by picayune ideation's of craft
daunted
in the midst of nowhere
i seek the asylum
of
rangy jungles and great stone cities
that languish in depths
of word mists vainglory
as i hide from dark storms
fearing doom
and mythic hells
fumbling through
labyrinths
vacant, isolated
a crying mouth*
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 5:02 PM UTC