"pickling" poems
These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.
O I cannot explain what happened to them!
They are proper in shape and number and every part.
They sit so nicely in the pickling fluid!
They smile and smile and smile at me.
And still the lungs won't fill and the heart won't start.
They are not pigs, they are not even fish,
Though they have a piggy and a fishy air --
It would be better if they were alive, and that's what they were.
But they are dead, and their mother near dead with distraction,
And they stupidly stare and do not speak of her.
43.1k
The boy haden't bathed in over a month
His **** crack was itching and burning
His underpants were soaked in slimy, wet muck
And his toes a thick jam were churning
His armpits stank worse than a fat pigs raw ***
His breath smelled like rancid fish
His hair was so oily, matted to his head
His own mother wouldn't give him a kiss
"Enough!" he cried as a passing fly died
When he raised his arm to exclaim.
"I must bathe right away! I am long overdue!"
"I sure hope the washcloths are brave."
"To the bathroom man!" He shouted as he ran
And his underpants sloppily squished
"I will remove this filth and brush my green teeth"
"And my mother I will kiss!"
"The closet's ahead!" He said as he sped.
And he stopped there to get some stuff.
Some soap, some shampoo and a towel or two.
But he knew that it wasn't enough.
Look though he might, to his horror and fright,
Not a single washcloth could he find.
Then panic set in 'cause the stink of his skin
Was driving him out of his mind.
He looked yet again but to his chagrin
The washcloth shelf was bare.
The washcloths had run off
For they would not wash
So filthy a boy on a dare
"Oh what will I do!" "Boo-hoo, boo-hoo!"
The boy cried as flies swarmed his head.
"I'd **** myself but I already smell"
"Far worse than anything dead!"
Then one washcloth came back
Holding it's nose and a sack
Of bath salts that smelled like dill.
It said to the boy "Go pickle yourself!"
"And give me a nausea pill!"
So the boy rejoiced and filled the tub
With water, hot as he could stand.
And using the bath salts, he jumped right in
And the pickling began.
He lathered the washcloth with water and soap
And scrubbed with all of his might.
Away he washed all of the filth
'Til none was left in sight.
He washed his hair and brushed his teeth
And dried and dressed himself well.
And the washcloth exclaimed as it hung on the tub
"Holy crap! that was pure hell!"
So the boy now clean ran to be seen
By his mother he loved so much.
And she gave him a kiss and said "This is pure bliss!"
"I can kiss you and keep down my lunch!"
The moral I'll tell you and true I will be
So no one will say that I lied.
Don't wait a whole month to take a bath
Or you washcloths may run and hide.
Aug 1, 2012
Aug 1, 2012 at 7:53 AM UTC
he, hardly fit,
sleeps fitfully
he, like a baby,
up and down at 2am
the cerebrum racked,
like a street *** so needy,
for a low caloric,
non-alcoholic snack
pickles - the almost zero solution,
dill in particular,
or even the slightly bad boy cousins,
the buttered variety
so in his customized original
100% sleeping skin gear,
standing in front of the shiniest fridge
gleaming,
his unfortunate reflection somewhat
steamy,
indecisive, which, his pickle, to to choose,
which to eat, completely complete,
to celebrate his dietetic restraint
so she, the yoga ballerina lioness,
finds him upright but not uptight,
leaving him in an awkward
so to speak, poem, pickling,
naked and speechless,
as the mouth is fully engorged
and on point
she summarizes
most eloquently,
the ****** and the crudités and the et. al.,
with a succinctly pithy observation:
*"ah, I see (me wincing),
still crazy after all these years*
...and other stories*
Apr 2, 2017
Apr 2, 2017 at 8:03 PM UTC
A repelling sensation
Permeation of sound
Or temperature
Impossible
A moment, a day
Eternity
Organs slow, pumping
Softly, so as not to awaken the real
Vulnerable and courageous
Becoming a partnership between a drip of fear
And the end, arriving as
Seas fill ridges and valleys,
Crevices of corpses
A new bite on each blade of
Crumbling spirits
Pickling at each span of one's own whisper
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 11:22 AM UTC
Blood is thicker than water.
I'm nine years old and my mother had sighed us both up for a dieting course.
At eighteen I still see how interchangeable fatness and ugliness are to her.
I still have to stop myself from thinking of skipping meals after I ate "too much".
Clinging to the fear of the slippery slope that serves as my only guard.
I see it in my friends too,
comforted by their opposition for what my mother had embraced like gospal for the helpless fools.
Blood is thicker than water.
I like the hairs on my body.
The short and soft strands that cover my legs, blonde and black and all too
natural.
Removing them leaves my legs red and prick-prick- pickling for days but-
My sister laughs through a wrinkled nose,
My cousin tells stories, horrified, of women like me,
Mother says it's unhygienic and would not let me leave the house like this.
I haven't worn shorts in years.
But my friends' confident 'fuck you' to everyone who isn't them,
who dares control their bodies and shame them into pain or hiding,
makes me feel like one day I might wear them again.
Blood is thicker than water,
I find it hard to talk to people.
The thought of discussing anything more than trivial matters makes my lunges heavy in my chest.
Talking to my parents- a heavy led filling what seem less and less like lungs with every passing second.
Talking to my friends- the heaviness doesn't always go away, but the weight doesn't get harder to bear.
I heard my mother tell a friend how her kids talk to her about everything.
A bitter laugh never tasted so much as the sea.
Blood is thicker than water,
Since I can remember myself, I never wanted kids.
Took me years so unveil why.
The dismissal cut deep when Mother assumed she knew me better than I do, a cruel arrogance for what she must only consider her property.
'You'll change your mind and give me grandchildren'
A payment for my life-
"Interest" she calls it.
Blood is thicker than water,
When I came out to you, dear parents, you once again ignored me
as if I hadn't tortured myself enough,
as if it hadn't taken me years trying to accept myself before you turned your back on me with cruel dismissal.
As if I don't still struggle.
All I have left is to fall back on my friends' support again,
being caught in their loving embrace without ever asking to.
They say you can't choose your family but-
the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.
May 28, 2020
May 28, 2020 at 2:29 PM UTC
Some days I think I could love you
If the grass was green enough
If I didn't associate your musk with the flannel
I search for at every goodwill
At every thrift store
Trying them on relentlessly
Button up, button down
As if each little plaid square could shrink my ******* smaller
Stretch my back vertically
Aesthetically speaking.
Some days I think I could love you
If was smaller and wiser
If I could believe in nothing
Rather than the absence of something
Every time I close my eyes and pray once more
Beneath the shadow of the hospital-tainted shower curtain.
Some days I think I could love you
If I remember the piercing blanch
Of whiskey burning in the back of my throat
If I recall the tears in your eyes on a mid-May afternoon
Standing closely in a gravel parking lot
Telling me "See ya later" instead of goodbye
Kissing my forehead, nose, and eyes.
Some days I think I could love you
If you told me it didn't matter how prominent my collar bones are
Or that it didn't take the catalyst of pickling my insides
******* a lonely man while you were away
To make you want for me.
Some days I think I could love you
When you trace the lines of my waist
Asking me not to lose any more weight
When you tell me I'm beautiful
That you envy my heaven
When you ask to see me simply to hear my thoughts.
Some days I think I could love you
If you told me you loved me
If that alone didn't set you apart from the rest
Aligning yourself a whole in one with the others
Only greater.
Some days I think I could love you
If I couldn't recall the misshapen line
Between a large vocabulary and eloquencey
Between a man and a frightened boy
Between an eating disorder and self-motivation.
Some days, I think I might love you
If I could silence my mind of all the fragrances of adultery
If I could leap elegantly past the fear of such a concept
Without wondering how I appear to you compared to the rest.
Some days I think I could love you
If I could forget that you can't
If I could remember how to open my own hatch
Without fear, as the key
If I could remember to love myself.
Some days, I think I could love you
Some days, I believe it.
Some days, I don't.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 2:58 AM UTC
Well well well sailor
Tucked the gun back into your pants
Panting all overcome
With obsessive you don't know what
Here I am the future mermaid
Isn't it where the drowned go if heaven spits them out?
Don't know if they'd accept.
Cheers to you frightened
Never a complete silence in the open sea
Sing yourself a song of solitude
Next time you wish to put me back in place
Where you belong
With your fear of stupidity.
Or maybe... Maybe I won't leave
Yes, I probably won't
I tried once or twice before.
Alter ego is not for me to choose
My doppelgänger gangsta crazy beach.
So please, if you decide to have a snack
Out of my good intentions
May I suggest pickling?
So it may last you through lifetime
Of self imposed misery.
Add lemon so it's not too fishy
And salt generously with your f...ng tears
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 1:10 PM UTC
#The quill's sodden ink evaporates
while this bell jar encapsulates
leaving these dreary words to permeate
only to rain back down and stagnate
this terrarium, my lonely estate
pickling eyes that spate
people peer through the glass only to deprecate
while I slowly start to acclimate
two horizons squint until light dissipates
allowing the darkness to overtake
monsters crawl out to dilapidate
snarls and growls devastate
this is fate this is fate this is fate this is fate
is it too late is it too late is it too late is it too late
echos verberate echos verberate echos verberate echos verberate
this is fate and it is too late these echos verberate and I ruminate
I ruminate and ruminate and ruminate and ruminate
with a languid gait
a countenance set straight
while I desperately try to create
a happy blissful sunny green free state
it's not too late it's not too late it's not too late
meditate meditate meditate meditate
don't let the glass alienate
pick up the hammer and swing
till the glass ***B E K
R A S.***#
Oct 1, 2018
Oct 1, 2018 at 10:09 AM UTC
Thursday to the shopping list did add my tremulous bequest,
Honey Nut Cheerios, great was the anticipation of a marriage with cold milk,
product of the oats and the cows that made this nation really, really great,
but in the Manahattan organic commisary seems this
so called food is strictly verboten,
so she brought me home on Friday some imposter named
Grain Berry?
this pseudo Cheerios tainted with Onyx Sorgum,
intended to give me heavy metal poisioning surely,
and rob life of joy by slowing down my sugar absorption rate,
and the plant fiber contained was purportedly natural,
as if there was another kind!
clearly a plot on my life by the Bannonian alt-right, for it,
this "whole grain toasted oat cereal,"
supplied more free radical protection
by sun activated antioxidants!
I am a real man,
I love my artificial flavors and colorings,
how better to preserve my pickling, briny brain
than in artifical perservatives!
From West Texas came this grain,
surely they will appreciate the insoluble fibered irony,
while I eat cold cereal for Friday dinner,
SHE is eating steak rare at Gallagher's Steakhouse!
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 8:32 PM UTC
I've come to love
and know
the color blue to mean
not a Blue Monday
Blue Note or joke
and don't much care to sing the Blues
or for that matter
give them
because truth be told
most of the time
I want to caucus
with those
pumping and stumping
for a Blue Hawaii
or the warm blue waters
pickling poetically
the clam shell white bottom
of Palancar Reef
Whit Howland © 2019
Jul 14, 2019
Jul 14, 2019 at 3:32 AM UTC
unlike some psychadelic advocacy
concerning chimps...
how about "hunting"
for chanterelle or honigpilz
and then pickling them?
no good?
well... my idea of an evolved
chimp, or taking psychedelics...
wrapping a leather belt,
over your eyes...
beckoning the absolute night...
that the simple,
silk, or cotton blindfold of
the Versailles court, simply can't,
replicate...
no latex... no condoms...
leather belt,
prior to a boxing glove
hiding the knuckles in
st. Andrew's X...
but then... over the eyes...
leather...
and yet... people ingest
psychedelics...
yet... do not feel inclined to
pay secular respect of:
NOT HAVING TO *******
WRITE ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCE!
having read what was or wasn't
said?
let them pass the needle...
i'm pirate ******* happy
with a bottle of *****
no... my psychedelic
experience?
wrapping a leather belt on
my head and over my eyes...
now...
oh my, oh my my my...
i'm starting to see the lost
excess of colo(u)r!
i'm seeing it!
i must have been a Daltonist
all along!
given:
how can you actually add...
to the given colours?
i've seen one sadist give an LSD
tab to a cat...
i'd love to give such an example
of a "human"...
the mad cow disease virus...
just to see him break-dance,
and find himself...
with a few broken extensions,
should he survive...
my idea of psychedelic drugs?
a leather belt,
strapped to my head,
heavily over my eyes...
preventing me to blink...
given...
that i see the world in colour...
my absolute psychedelic
experiment?
pitch-black,
and then...
a return to: alice in wonderland
eyesight.
Aug 1, 2018
Aug 1, 2018 at 11:18 PM UTC
Our purest selves
Reaching deep
Warm and wild
Our blood thunders
Tearing through elastic highways
Driven by that rough, rubbery pump
Congregating like pack animals
Evolving thick as thieves
Rough and oily with dull wit and sharp tongues
Minds crackling with electric waste
Droning in the distance
Responding to wide signals
Follow follow follow
Driven by primitive urges and flights of fancy and pickling liquor
Rough clumsy fumblings in backseats
Stolen moments behind straight backs
Populations pour from our bodies
Often devoid of purpose
Leaving us with shredded dignity
And tired blue collar hands
Where our dreams come to an abrupt halt
It is all we can do to live in the present
For in being ill we have drawn a line through our future
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 5:54 PM UTC
Maggots wiggle around
on the ground,
squirm,
shiver
despite the bright,
mid day rays
of amber penetrating
their coelomate bodies.
They are
Sectioned off,
Dissected according to
Volume,
Mass,
Amount,
Worth,
Originality,
Attraction.
We put them in pickling jars
High on a shelf.
Close the door,
Lock the lock
And send the key
To rot unremembered
In our stomachs.
These memories
Of maggots
Rest not in our minds
But rather
Our stomachs.
We digest them
After we ****** them,
As breakfast
Always comes before
Ravaging.
However,
the memory lives on
in nostalgic bubbles
of hydrochloric acid
and pH under 3
in walls of flesh
not quite dissolved;
each section
still tastes
the same as it felt
when it lived on the surface,
wiggling on the ground.
May 11, 2010
May 11, 2010 at 3:09 PM UTC
You know when I was a kid we used to have seasons
The bitter biting winds and cruel frosts of winter
Seemed to vanish overnight
Green shoots would appear as though by magic
Biting winds replaced by a gentle wind and cold lashing rain
Replaced by a gentle breeze and warm spring showers
Summer appeared over the morning horizon
Crops were ripening and we swam in the streams and basked
In the warm summer sun
A time for camping and family picnics
To our young minds the hot dry summers
Seemed to last for eternity
Then almost without warning the leaves turned from green to russet
To yellows and reds
Apples suddenly tasted much sweeter and there was an abundance
Of all things edible
Mums were suddenly busy
Pickling, preserving, making jams
That was also the time the Christmas pudding was made
What glorious halcyon days they were
Suddenly it turned colder
Spider webs gleaming under a coating of night time dew
Early morning frost on the grass
Glinting in the morning sun
Like a million diamonds
Where oh where have our seasons gone?
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 7:24 AM UTC
Cameron's a Klingon.
Star trek or Shrek
it's all make believe.
You wanna believe it?
okay,
makes your day
I make my play and
vote with my coat on
I'm gone.
Apr 23, 2016
Apr 23, 2016 at 3:38 PM UTC
anguish (as a species)
is a most fearsome animal
came to visit my abode
it is bigger than life and
at once too vibrant and too shrouded to define edges
save the glittering Chesire rictus that splits its skull
like broken mirrors
reflecting original sin as if you were the author
it characteristically blinds its victim
before inserting a single spine into the cardiac muscle
paralyzing both beat and brain
you may open your eyes once
(it will allow you that)
before the end
so you may appraise its shark-like maw
jaw dislocating wide wide wide
to afford room for your entirety
when it closes,
it is not like going to sleep.
it is no gentle light.
a worser fate, it lets you live
in the acid of its belly
peeling away your skin
pickling your eyes
until from yourself you can draw a sword
tear from the taut and distended skin of malice
and ******* forgive yourself.
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 10:32 AM UTC
s
grateful
glass
rock
hurled
into
house of
stone
i
lone
box
forgotten
fallen
from
truck
s
wound
sealed
by soldier
with
single
sizzling
shell
t
bored
baby
waits
Mom
in room
with
white
walls
e
chicken
pickling
cars
curl
not to
crash
r
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 2:05 PM UTC
He sits alone
sticky fingers grasping the bottle
warming his stomach
and pickling his brain
It's almost empty
there
acid clears the body
His thoughts are flitting
weaving in and out of memory
too
turbulent
his heart is madness
always was
He takes it out on us
I know
for I have never wronged him
and when I do
he kills me.
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 10:39 AM UTC
Fisherman's intro, from "The Floral War."
FISHERMAN
Well well, what have we here? Some field of view:
The turquoise circle of the dazzling sea
Blazes her setting of bright-banded sands,
Where on this first, chill morning of the year,
Our sun arises to peruse his course,
And I, to tease my living from the deeps.
Come, gilded fishes, hither to my net,
You shimmering schools of perch, soft octopi,
White-shingled shad, and jade-scaled terrapins,
Plump, krill-fed dwellers of the pickling brine,
Come now to me. To pray you have no fear
Would shuffle with the truth, as I intend
To angle for your lives, yet spoil me,
For I who come to act unneighbourly
Am poor, and strapped, and only bother you
Compelled by leaky-seamed necessity.
I have my wife’s own hatchery at home,
And you, my friends, must make their maintenance.
So, rush my meshes and forgive my faults.
Whoa there! What vision’s this? Green goddess, say,
What monstrous marvels wander on your face?
This cannot be! I am awake, and sane,
Yet seem to see a wading range of hills,
A chain of dizzy-peaked and scraggy steeps
Whose groundworks bob like buoys in the surf.
Yet now this restless reef flows closer still,
Resolving as spray-freighted citadels,
Wave-buttressed towers romping on the breakers,
Their canvas banners snapping at the breeze,
Whose men wing down from ropes to pace the decks,
And screen their eyes as if to locate me.
I’ll hustle to my chieftains with this news,
And let their cry of ominous novelty
Alert each ear from here to Mexico.
My life thus far was bright and fancy-free.
Oh, why must change then come to quiet me? Exit.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:43 PM UTC
I'm scared and I'm seeing my heart scattered on the ground..
No one is pickling up the pieces
It was only being stumbled and consecutively being stepped on..
Apr 15, 2017
Apr 15, 2017 at 9:45 AM UTC
Pickling is a process
And so is sticking with some showy shrew.
Stewing is a process
and so is showing me that I'm like you.
It's takes a *** of water,
It take showmanship.
Laughter into laughter,
into improvised loving moments that slip.
Slipped into a joke, and
sliding into a smile.
I don't have to try.
Because you, your soul
I can beguile.
Maybe not no ones.
But that don't matter to me.
It's the game that I had chose to play,
because your eyes are all I see.
Jul 8, 2019
Jul 8, 2019 at 8:43 PM UTC
know better than
to fall for a poet, and
a poet to any other:
we are oceans where
deserts should be
-drowning-
And the allure to swim
seems swimmingly swell
but the ocean is not still
it swells. Cacti pickling
where
coral reefs budding
should be.
Yet sand is
sand and it
sinks all the same
so yes, within
-I suppose-
there is
some desert
suffering from me
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 6:48 PM UTC
there are lots of other things going on
like
other arses sat on A bench
eating apple pie
or cherry pie with whipped cream
ground black coffee
handed with a well informed framed glove
and
the pickling of green tomatoes
smashed into the face of want to go futher
like a lot of it
the lot of it
Sitting on a ****** bench
paying for it oooowwwww
toooooooooo
malled into my brain the sadness
Nov 2, 2017
Nov 2, 2017 at 4:29 PM UTC