"piecemeal" poems
Love trusts, lust twists
Love rains, lust drains
Love reaches, lust catches
Love couples, lust combines
Love retains, lust detains
Love relies, lust relays
Love cares, lust caresses
Love binds, lust blinds
Love floats, lust flees
Love belongs, lust longs
Love ascends, lust descends
Love fames, lust defames
Love creates, lust recreates
Love commands, lust demands
Love chooses, lust chases
Love boosts, lust boasts
Love at heart
Lust in mind
Love in lust is good
Lust in love is better
Love likes privacy
Lust looks for piracy
Love opens lust
Lust closes love
Love is slow, lust is fast
Love is steady and stable
Lust is mobile and fragile
Love is reliable, lust is liable
Love is long, lust is short
Love is homogeneous
Lust is heterogeneous
Love is defensive
Lust is offensive
Love is precious
Lust is pernicious
Love is supportive
Lust is supplementary
Love is refined
Lust is defined
Love betters life
Lust batters it.
Love has character
Lust has conduct
Love wins over
Lust weans out
Love combines
Lust divides
Love is cool
Lust is crazy
Love is peaceful
Lust is pleasant
Love is wholesome
Lust is piecemeal
Lust comes first
Love becomes best
Love is progressive
Lust is aggressive
Lust laminates
Love illuminates
Love is slow n steady
Lust is hasty n nasty
Love is dense, lust is tense
Lust is conditioned,
Love is air-conditioned
Lust is lovely to begin with
Love is lustrous to end up
Love heals, lust wounds
Love owns, lust disowns
Love is onus, lust is onerous
Love is basic, lust is allowance
Love conforms, lust confuses
Love binds, lust blinds
Be aware of love
Beware of lust
That comes like
wolf in sheep’s clothing
Let the fair blend
of love and lust
rule the roost
Feb 4, 2015
Feb 4, 2015 at 5:15 AM UTC
My Estranged Dear
Why couldn't we piecemeal the past
The pieces that crashed
Over dinner and a cup of joe
Over the branches that glow
Why did the leaves fall from their limbs
Before the Autumn hymns
Before their time
Our days lost in chime
Why do two hearts sever alone
Confetti tomorrows falling to stone
Why my estranged dear do you dread
A benevolence served over broken bread
A posse of good nature willed
In fall of olive branches milled
To my estranged dears
Collectively over the years
I sat in front of the mirror
Farther away than nearer
Pondering the same sad old song
Of where golden went wrong
Was it being on the ruler of the river
With no catches to deliver
Being next to our campfire
Small flames freezing your heart's desire
Was the heat of the night
Dancing in plight
Were the words I spoke
Just a convoy of smoke
Was it sleeping in the restless tent
Your pent up passion spent
On black bears in others, you see
And not in me
To my estranged dears
My eyes were blind to your fears
I admit with regret
And knowingly I know my debt
Yet I can only wander on the past
In hopes that an ember is cast
A ruler I was not
Though vetted by such for naught
Logan Robertson
8/11/2018
Aug 11, 2018
Aug 11, 2018 at 7:02 PM UTC
Sprang forth with no branches or leaves. Small roots.
Bore mangoes, papayas,guava and bananas. Hybrid, mid limb grafting.
The trunk is a figment but it stands non less. You see
my family tree never was and always will be.
A roadside shade with low hanging fruit.
Was never planted.It was a deposit from the bowels of an exotic bird
of the jungles that sampled at leisure the offerings of the rain forests.
The Hardtack and marmalade came on ships with the kings business
Mixed with the Nigerian Fu-Fu ,the Aztec maize the Mayan legumes.
and all points of the compass.
Old Joe Denegri, The Blancaneaux , The Cattouse, The Melado, The Pinks
The Flowers,The Orozco and more. And boundless from the ***** of opportunity.
Piecemeal and untethered. But it is the tree that I must cling to.
However rough the bark.
The sap runs heavy and slow in the humid Belizean heat.To meet the earth.
Cool breezes blow a haunting disharmony. A sweet unity in chaos.
The soil is rich,pungent and forgiving. Soon, A bell tolls in the distance.
The Sea mists my dreams.
A stairway of coconut fronds to azure skies.
Nighttime smells like creation.
The still slackened pace.
The small rat race.
Tempest in a teapot.
Urban-rural.
Coolie gal.
Creole boy.
New Chinese.
Old African.
Ubiquitous Espania.
Garinagu. Mosquito coast.
Children of Mennon.
Old Basque faces.
Things we call races left with small traces
of what?
My tree, her tree, histree.
I am you and you are me.
I see me in your face and you see me.
We are and will continue to be.
Blended.
a hybrid. An orchid wild.
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 5:02 AM UTC
We shall keep the poor poor.
We shall be on them like
a master's whip on the backs
of slaves; but they will not
know us: we are too far and
too near. We shall use the
patois of patriotism to patronize
them. We shall hide behind our
flags, while we hold only one pole.
We shall have the poor fight our
wars for us, and die for us; and
before they die, they will **** for
us, we hope, enough. In peace,
we shall piecemeal them, and serve
them meals made of toxins and tallow.
For their labor, we shall pay them
slave wages; and all that we give,
we shall take back, and more, by
monumental scandals that subside
like day's sun at eventide. We shall
be clever, as ever, circumspect and
surreptitious at all times. We shall
keep them deluded with the verisimilitude
of hope, but undermine always its
being. We shall infuse their lives
with fear and hate, playing one
race against another, one religion
against a brother's. Disaffection is
our key; but we must modulate our
efforts deftly, so the poor remain
frightened and angered, but always
blind and deaf and divided. And if,
perchance, one foments, we shall
seize the moment and drop his head
into his hands, even as he speaks.
This internecine brew we pour, there-
fore, into the poor to keep them drunk
enmity and incapacitation. Ah,
eternal anticipation! Bottoms up,
old chaps! We, those who rule,
shall have them always in our laps.
We are, as it were, their salvation.
Tod Howard Hawks
Jun 9, 2019
Jun 9, 2019 at 7:28 PM UTC
Raisin colored Island, how the waters pruned You too, lazy coconut day, climb with rope tied feet and lack the fear of heights. Such terrain as if every part of the world shared a piece to make you. I praise your autonomous solitude, rest assured amongst the South Pacific Blue.
Piecemeal makes much more simply than succeeded individuality. A Euro here, a Euro there, the Rail can take you everywhere....Well, Eastern rules are slightly stern, seems time stood still in terms of brood, but, betwix the contrast of the artistry it is hard to be angry with Tradition.
Goa, India I will never forget You, how could I, You raised me, my mother tongue was Konkoni, the shore side village was Home for me. Later in life coming back shaded a more solemn hue, it is my Heart that couldn't handle it, the Truck ride through....the major transit cities, those who have seen, you know what I mean. It did not help to have to leave my childhood memories and GodParents behind for the hundredth time. I miss you Madrina.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 7:56 PM UTC
and so they fell …
Tears as pearly quaver
Salty in their pas de deux from her realize
A can-can polka in strip tease of soul bare
How vibrant, albeit transient in masquerade, their desire
A dance of miniscule quandary in micro adventure
Frilly knickered, in slivers of the truth
In folly, a spent of friendship abandoned
Curtsey now, in diversity of no embrace, why?
…for our lives are but a piecemeal of conversation
Random etymology in lesson
A three penny opera with no beg your pardon
The once bemused attar of forget me nots
Their fragrance now heavy in the air
…and the diminutive whys, wander rhetorically, in and out
of the bungle bungles of reality… because they can-can
Apr 1, 2012
Apr 1, 2012 at 3:47 AM UTC
Find constructed love
a piecemeal beauty
on those winding roads toward
Memphis
within rolling hills of
kudzu
the south, of red roads
black birds and white
in the swamp
a shock
cotton fields span
quiet, still the machines sleeping
the sun seeping
the car were in, **** covered
streaming
tall black and pastel along cars
friendly
I also saw a prison
carved in a hill side along a skinny
road, Mississippi
barb wire gem stone shine
white sign,
do not pick up hitch hikers
the humidity, heavy guilt
on dried clay
boiled peanuts
sightseeing in a
crime scene
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 2:45 PM UTC
I’m grateful for everything I’ve been given
you say, squeezing my hand. And I stare
at your perfect skin.
Your words sound like forever, but eternity
isn’t something I’ve read about.
Stuffy hymns sung on pitch
but with no inflection.
Your voice is flat,
and it’s then I’m glad
I wore this dress.
I have seen loss-
and that’s something your naivety
can’t grasp.
I scratch at the skin,
because it’s pulled too tight.
I can still count the stark white stitches.
Still ride my fingers along
the valleys of my arm,
tracing out a maze.
It will never change;
the way it glares when I’m naked
next to you.
Next to you I always feel exposed.
Keep wishing to be invisible,
but you won’t close your eyes.
Don’t kiss my skin,
it’s not soft enough.
Don’t turn the light on,
you’ll be disappointed.
You run your fingers
along the canyons of my arm,
trying to smooth away my imperfection.
But I cover it up.
I put up barriers;
I protect you-
you’re not ready to accept the damage
I’ve sustained.Too harsh
for your blindly faithful eyes.
Still numb-
your efforts would be wasted.
My fingers caress privilege
when they graze your chest,
but me,
I’m patched together,
my feelings handed out piecemeal.
That’s what I keep trying to tell you.
There are just no parts left
for me to give.
You can touch me all you want,
but you can’t bring life back ;
forever petrified in place.
Don’t thank me, I’ve given you nothing.
Nothing delicate left here for your lips to taste.
Don’t thank them, They’ve made you believe
in perfection,
in salvation.
There’s nothing sacred left here for you to worship.
My skin still too cold, your words all fall flat.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 3:25 AM UTC
Through the coffee steam your eyes were so clear they almost broke me in half.
I took a long selfish look as I told the side of your head about my mother.
You holding your gaze on my windshield
watching the wet lights blur one mile at a time.
Through the curls of your hair I heard you whisper that you didn’t want to leave.
Didn’t want to add your shoe size
to the prints leading away from the kid who’d see the inside of a coffin
long before he ever saw his family again.
I pulled over to force your hand through my sternum, pierced
each finger with a ragged heart tendril
built in the image of winter trees seeded far from the water line.
In this way, information is filtered.
Even with a cup tied to another cup by taut string,
you still don’t get a clear sound.
I shook my head, thinking of reasons to say your name. A taste like dusty paperbacks
flecked in cane sugar.
You got the boring name because your parents birthed you full of splendor,
knew you would never need the extra flourish of a conversation starting nametag.
The kind of person who deserves someone that will die of malnourishment if your plane ever goes down.
You’ve gotten soft old man,
You are no conqueror.
Will never drown out the roar in her 5 a.m. mind,
can do nothing to comfort the black eyes
and longneck bottles left wandering her past,
with your piecemeal shards of charm and wit.
Part of your winter still clings to my dashboard and frosts my knuckles
each time my eyes close driving home, dreaming about painting red flags green.
Even after I watched the last drag curl out of your lungs,
you never tasted like smoke,
so I filled my lacerations with your nicotine
to hide inside your numbness,
while our bare skin rolled across sheets
looking for new cold
knowing this is not true sacrifice,
but perhaps my final squander.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 4:04 AM UTC
Read, sailors, read
Try your best to make blinking your only sleep
Time is so tightly wound that
All the blinking, crying birds could not fathom
You have been given a mighty, starstung ship
With sails so wide they could cover your reality
Use these sheets not to sleep, but
Fly them like monster kites
Rest, doves, rest
The fear that you feel at the bottom of your breast
Will be spat out like a pacifier
In time
On time, you'll glide into familiar arms
No farms could reach you there
You're no chicken, no better but
Your claws no longer scratch earth's flesh
Your hands have no need for dust
Peace, hawks, peace
All your empty handed armies have no hands
Softly stroking your mud won't do
It has taken its own shape
Of some concern to your mould
Speaking of which, moss grows soft
It has its own place but
Beds are for sleepers
You, friend, are a weeper
Time, patience, time
There is so much time you should not rush
Rather, be pushed by the hush
Come home to your family
A weary, winded traveler
Pull up a windmill
Grind up piecemeal
Some flesh cracks
and crystals don't relax
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 2:51 PM UTC
As my illogic breaks, I'll robot make
to be this soul's chamber,
robbing a piecemeal joy from misfit toys
tossed out for fine tuning
by toddlers cheery mad to gorge on fads.
I'll take their T-Rex head,
with droopy lids that wink as if to drink
the world's wide-shallow stares,
plug its plastic prongs in torso of tin
while twin squeeze-box arms splay
to tie magnetic bows round pads below
gold, plush lion cub's legs.
This moppet of mixed breeds I'll learned feed
with animate cunning
to be ruled by charmed laws that give it pause
when whole-sum circumstance
tangles fuzzy circuits. Then a circus-
wire's unbalancing act
I'll paste from templed flesh to doll enmeshed
by transfuse rigging,
and as coil comes to slough, just as I'm off,
I'll flip that gilded switch,
implanting my spirit into a bit
of copper-hued country.
Mar 31, 2010
Mar 31, 2010 at 9:49 AM UTC
opening up an eclectic ruddy random selection of books to the sound of classical concerto dimmed to 'whelming' (neither under nor overwhelming), is like entering point after point to perspective to new brain after old brain after subject to object to alluvit, the few, the many-- 'on July 21st, 1936, Lockheed test pilot Elmer C. McLeod, with Amelia as copilot, took the new Electra up for its first official flight..' 'This is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought the Humph to the Camel..' 'A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance..' 'More and more, I suspect that Buddhists and shamans are correct..' 'I liked Bloodworth and in the spring we were going to play outfield together on that Lowell team, he whose name for years had mystified me when I saw it in Lowell High and Lowell Twi League boxscores-' 'if the world at large found it impossible to believe the truth of the Holocaust, even when provided with incontrovertible proof, Berliners presented with piecemeal evidence, rumour and hearsay were bound to dismiss such talk as enemy propaganda, or perverted fantasy. As Ursula Von Kardoff recalled after the war: 'we were realistic and pessimistic. But Auschwitz?'- '"Twenty-five centavos."
"Twenty-five centavos," repeated the Syrian in a firm voice with almost no accent.'--
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
the *** needs stirring,
the stitches have been
removed, or melted,
and the scars fainter,
daily…but, my words
have been clogged,
swallowing difficult,
and heartbreak is
non-curable and
the sad songs
combine the exercise
of crying and dying,
you can feel it piecemeal,
chips of you breakaway,
and you are just lessened…
all the variations of less,
redound cross my lips, but
there is no one here, no one
in my life…and yes he’s gone,
the one who lived faraway
but was intrepid in his love,
and solid in his affection,
but ardor cooled, distance
intervened, but I still have
that short skirt he adored
and close eyed images in
my cerebral cortex, and how
I wish someone would write
a poem
exclusively for me, selfishly,
and my mom calls less frequently,
she,
doesn’t know new words
to instigate healing, to break
me open and let positivity
return…butI having learned
much,
and my selective mode
is different, crap it’s true,
been made over into a sad sack,
incurable romantic…and that
part tarnished is the only part
of me that is growing by leaps
and winks and sighs and…
makes
the sadbad move aside…perhaps,
you’ll write me a poem, soothing,
gel cooling, and… no mas…
Jul 27, 2024
Jul 27, 2024 at 7:27 AM UTC
I used to be hidden in my room
choking at my mouth's roof
as if stuck within a stutter,
exhausted from existing, hinging
like a wind-chime battered by a hurricane.
Then a troubadour with honey hair
had me humming to his ear-worm
of a melody, depicting a choreography
that jolted my legs into frenetic mania
like an early talkie starlet's.
For years, I have memorized
this intricate chord structure,
immersed myself in its crescendos
until I could belt it backwards.
It's the only song I know by heart.
There is this one tune, though,
if you can even call it that,
this atonal reverberation that alerts
the darkest corners of my mind,
a slowly muttered siren song
leading to lands I never want to visit.
I can never fully decipher
the lyrics to an entire verse.
It's the excerpts, scattered
like dust mites in a concert hall,
that try to nibble at me piecemeal,
romanticizing the revolving door
of self-destruction, bruises
veiled as smudged calligraphy.
So please excuse the minor notes
that hiccup from my vocal cords
every other half moon or so.
It's just the ebb and flow
of awkward drumming
that disorients the ear,
causes me to trip up
on the patchwork of refrains
we've spent so much time weaving
into heavenly cohesion.
Above all, please remember
that no static or din
will ever shoehorn its way
into our ironclad harmony.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 3:53 PM UTC
THOSE WHO RULE
We shall keep the poor poor.
We shall be on them like
a master’s whip on the backs
of slaves; but they will not
know us: we are too far and
too near. We shall use the
patois of patriotism to patronize
them. We shall hide behind our
flags while we hold only one pole.
We shall have the poor fight our
wars for us, and die for us; and
before they die, they will **** for
us, we hope, enough. In peace,
we shall piecemeal them and serve
them meals made of toxins and tallow.
For their labor, we shall pay them
slave wages; and all that we give,
we shall take back, and more, by
monumental scandals that subside
like day’s sun at eventide. We shall
be clever, as ever, circumspect and
surreptitious at all times. We shall
keep them deluded with the verisimilitude
of hope, but undermine always its
being. We shall infuse their lives
with fear and hate, playing one
race against another, one religion
against a brother’s. Disaffection is
our key; but we must modulate our
efforts deftly, so the poor remain
frightened and angered, and always
blind and deaf and divided. And if,
perchance, one foments, we shall
seize the moment and drop his head
into his hands, even as he speaks.
This internecine brew we pour, there-
fore, into the poor to keep them drunk
with enmity and incapacitation. Ah,
eternal anticipation! Bottoms up,
old chaps! We, those who rule,
shall have them always in our laps.
We are, as it were, their salvation.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Jan 6, 2023
Jan 6, 2023 at 1:00 PM UTC
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
My eyelids are glued shut. This can’t be right,
It’s not like I had much to drink last night.
Just a glass or two of much needed blood,
A sip to stop the ever-growing flood
Of bills and work and more bills and more work.
Five times seven.
Thirty-five.
Five time seven feels better.
The soft bed digs gravestones into my back;
A dull fire, a gentle kick, a boneless crack.
An itch starts on my side and crawls down low.
My fingers claw where my shoulder can’t go.
Left and right and left.
Stop.
The pain again.
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
There’s a monster in the mirror.
Canyons of worry crease a trapped youth
Too tired to care
About the red-eyed, bearded, fat demon
Caught in the glaring stare.
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
Spits of blood and white ocean spray
Strike the porcelain, scrubbed away
By the force of released denial;
A genie leaving a white plastic bottle.
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
Tingly.
There’s a lie in my mouth.
A denial of advancing age,
A bulwark to encroaching disease
Set against rotten cores.
There’s a lie in my mouth.
I try not to care.
The waterfall washes away the ache
In a cascade of warmth. The lake
At my feet fills with white foamy hills
Surrounding a naked giant’s ankles.
For a brief time I forget about
The bills and work and work and bills.
My clothes are tinged with sadness,
Their misbegotten brothers don’t dress
With them anymore; so set in their way
They can’t see their youthful crimes today.
I try not to care.
My chain smiles at my dress,
Approval sits smug on her face
As I pass the test.
I try not to care.
Boxes tied in bandages for a wounded ego
Are passed piecemeal for a so-so
Attempt at gratitude.
I don’t care.
Where’s the gun?
I retreat to work, laden with gifts unwanted
That make more bills more work
And drift through the day.
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
Five times seven.
Thirty-five.
Five time seven feels better.
Thirty-five.
Happy birthday, you’re alive.
A filled cake I don’t like.
Presents for my dad.
My son bought me my dad’s socks.
There’s a funny taste in my mouth.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 1:03 PM UTC
Truly gifted poets
Straddle their crafts early on
Some even in adolescence
They have been cursed or blessed
To be kings and queens of utterance.
I never dreamed of becoming a poet
It was furthest from my mind
Then in a sudden twist of eardrum
It happened in my Mid-thirties.
Out of the recesses of Time
Came the lure and a hook
Shining in enchanted brook
And before i knew it
My heart was snatched
And my movements flustered
When i bit on ambrosiac bait
Drenched in Muse's wine
Drugged and drunk
On sounds and images
I struggled in a pool of words
To assemble what held me infused
To make sense of orphaned views
Swaying between shade and light
Like dancers deprived of audience.
My poetic rapture began
In frenetic rain of ink
preposterous in direction
A poetaster rapt on vapid rhymes
With sounds of poetic crimes
But my craft developed
In piecemeal fashion
And rendered my pen composed.
A minnow of long ago
Has grown into a mackerel
And longs to become a whale
In the ocean Ars Poetica
Though it seems a pipe dream.
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 2, 2018 at 1:09 AM UTC
We shall keep the poor poor.
We shall be on them like
a master’s whip on the backs
of slaves; but they will not
know us: we are too far and
too near. We shall use the
patois of patriotism to patronize
them. We shall hide behind our
flags while we hold only one pole.
We shall have the poor fight our
wars for us, and die for us; and
before they die, they will **** for
us, we hope, enough. In peace,
we shall piecemeal them and serve
them meals made of toxins and tallow.
For their labor, we shall pay them
slave wages; and all that we give,
we shall take back, and more, by
monumental scandals that subside
like day’s sun at eventide. We shall
be clever, as ever, circumspect and
surreptitious at all times. We shall
keep them deluded with the verisimilitude
of hope, but undermine always its
being. We shall infuse their lives
with fear and hate, playing one
race against another, one religion
against a brother’s. Disaffection is
our key; but we must modulate our
efforts deftly, so the poor remain
frightened and angered, and always
blind and deaf and divided. And if,
perchance, one foments, we shall
seize the moment and drop his head
into his hands, even as he speaks.
This internecine brew we pour, there-
fore, into the poor to keep them drunk
with enmity and incapacitation. Ah,
eternal anticipation! Bottoms up,
old chaps! We, those who rule,
shall have them always in our laps.
We are, as it were, their salvation.
TOD HOWARD HAWKS
Dec 30, 2022
Dec 30, 2022 at 4:56 PM UTC
once,
I
had a
rabbit,
like you:
saved from the gutter,
as lightning fell piecemeal.
escapism,
all shining eyes,
all tiny scraps of flesh.
and we
let
him go,
but I can never let these things go.
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 12:35 AM UTC
Light breeds shadow
In the form of fear
Consuming my immortality bit by bit
Creating a fiend
That guzzle up my happiness
Till the deepest core of my conscience
Remorselessly
Piecemeal
I am dying from my own trepidation
That agitates me
Whether to choose malevolence
That is sweet and warming
Or to choose benevolence
That is pain and suffering
Only the saint's heart will find its way
With the least tainted loopholes
Gifted by the brute to the paradise god has created
Destitute and feeling obselete
Failed to be absolute
I seclude myself
To a silence so deafening
And the temperature is dropping
While the loneliness is creeping
In fetal position
On this oversize king bed
With blue bed shed
But no blanket
Vainer, i thought.
Jan 11, 2016
Jan 11, 2016 at 10:29 AM UTC
He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 1:43 PM UTC
He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.
Aug 4, 2012
Aug 4, 2012 at 1:18 PM UTC
I found myself meandering through churches of
political discussions-debating the ever stale rights
of each citizen dissolving into the crowded bars. Clinking
glasses with more feeling than their fingers on holiday.
Someone began to say “Life is…” and I stopped them
right there, because who wants to sit for bad ideas when
today is really for travelling to heaven and
I'm sick of sinking into the landscape. I am
already a hundred miles through the cracks in
the world; we’re really all just piecemeal bizarre
occurrences.
You appeared in my passengers’ seat while
before I thought I was just thinking about taking
a road trip to you and all this time I've been
driving through New York City with God.
For the first fifteen minutes all you could comment on the
was how shallow the lights seemed and I've got to
be honest, I never heard the rest because I was too busy
trying to decipher the Latin phrases that overwhelmed
your skin. Next thing I know, you had tears on your chin-
talking about how you wished all women could understand that
their blood is the same which pumps through wild geese.
Dec 25, 2013
Dec 25, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
He shuffles his muffled way through cardboard aisles,
Oblivious, sheltered, speaking in a mumble of tongues,
His piecemeal truths search for all that is meaningless,
Where he carves a gravestone—arguments in the rows.
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 9:18 AM UTC
It’s a marvel—
how the human heart
can continue to want that same something
that so willingly smashed it to a thousand pieces.
It’s a wonder how it still beats
as it watches that something
meticulously plaster each of those
one thousand fragments onto its
mural of damaged conquests.
But the heart is in good company, I guess.
At least its own pieces have a commonality
with its surrounding neighborly shards.
Together they can be sharp and exude mystery—
no longer desired to be touched or examined
by the pairs of eyes that closely study their edges.
That something? He steps back.
With a grin ear to ear, he
enjoys the whole of his piecemeal creation.
With his beautiful hands,
he forces all of them to fit together,
Reminiscing as he watches them dry,
cementing them to memory,
telling his tales of pushes and pulls,
of warmth and chills.
Damage, his only true medium,
he finds much easier to manipulate than oils or pastels,
and that something, he is a master of his craft.
He contorts each of us into his own work of art,
fixed for the public eye with sticky regret
and dried by the countless nights of cold wonder.
And we wait, patiently, until his craftsmanship folds.
Until the plaster chips and crumbles.
Each of our pieces falling to the ground
in the hopes that someone will
pick us up, pocket us,
and appreciate the sullen beauty
in something that once was whole.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 2:37 PM UTC