"pincers" poems
Dusk!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Glowing red eyes and glistening fangs,
These unspeakable giant bugs drop into view.*
Fibrous wings furred like a moth,
Big ears are just a membranous extension of antennae.
Flying in search of a flower’s pollen laden froth,
Silent except for the hum and squeak of echolocation.
Trap bats in attics, butterflies in nets.
No rabies feared, no bedbug bites to itch.
Clawed feet ****** and grab like praying mantis pincers;
Bloated stomach slopes like a pudgy beetle.
Jaws manipulate like an ant, excise like scissors;
Soft hair rustles like a wooly caterpillar.
They live in darkness, centipedes do too,
Come out at night like cockroaches tend to.
Skittering through the night like daddy long-legs,
Noses snubbed like bumble bee faces.
Wind turbines endanger bats,
Like fans endanger lightning bugs.
Only one percent of bats are vampiric,
Like only a small percentage of spiders are poisonous.
Dawn!
With a creepy, tingling sensation you hear the fluttering of leathery wings!
Bats!
Bats are bugs, aren’t they?
May 4, 2010
May 4, 2010 at 5:04 PM UTC
I ain’t got no intimate, ain’t got no stiletto heels
Ain’t got no Lsd, ain’t got no smack
Ain’t got no partners, ain’t got no drill
Ain’t got no slapstick, ain’t got no hanky—panky
Ain’t got no Lsd, no slot to mount
Ain’t got no castrato, ain’t got no crumpet
Ain’t got no conjoined twins, ain’t got no nuns or eunuchs
Ain’t got no whipcord, ain’t got no adoration
Ain’t got no ******** ain’t got no stimulant
Ain’t got no ******
Ain’t got no oscillation, no shags
No uniform, no parts
No smack, no drill
No partners, no peccadillo
Ain’t got no stimulant
Ain’t got no whipcord, no propagators
No titbits, no intimate
I jabbered, I ain’t got no uniform, no hanky—panky
No peccadillo, ain’t copulated till one is blue in the face to have a funny feeling
And I ain’t got no ******
Oh, but what have I copulated, oh, what have I copulated
Let me tell what I copulated and nobody’s going to enlarge telescopic
I got my ***** on my face
My extra—sensory perceptions, my knobs
My ****** peckers and my ********
I got my stuck—out tongue
I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My ***** my *******
My thingummies, my cockles of the heart and my posterior
I got my ***********
I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest
I got ***** I’ve inseminated cheerleaders
I’ve got bottomgremlins and hacksawhoodoo
And Mephistophelian juggernauts too like you
I got my ***** my pistil
My ESP, my knobs
My vaginas, my peckers and my ********
I got my stuck-out tongue
I got my tentacle, my proboscis
My ***** and my *******
My ***** my ***** and my posterior
I inseminated my ****** sorbet
I got my thingummies, my talons
My ball and socket joints, my forelegs
My hooves, my pincers and my snorker
Got my crest
I got my ***** I got my slipperiness, my *****
I got *****
Mar 23, 2010
Mar 23, 2010 at 4:29 PM UTC
There are beetles on my skin
Attacking my bark
With pincers sharp
-trying to get in
And as they cover me
Head to toe in a blanket of living death
They tickle in bitter giggles
At my senses, set ablaze
By their exo-skeletal steps
I do not build a scream
For the sound would die out in between
The sheet of beetles
And my trodden lips
Instead I lie still
Commanding them with my negligence
Fusing with their fear-mongering
They take my shape; I don’t take theirs
I am the alpha insect
The form of their nature
And now I stand
In beetled armor
A figure against the sun
My shadow raining over the undergrowth
Reigning over the under.
In this symbiosis we travel
Across valley and valley
Coleoptera-covered Rand McNally
Covering the earth, showing
The dominance of man
The man the man
He who holds the plan
In the palm of his life-colored hand
I am he
The guardian of land and sea
Infected with a voice-in-hand
Who writes eternity
Whose pen is the land filled with ink of the sea
And with beetles of lead
I harmonize
That between myself
And quaking skies
As the world shakes in its roots
During a spacequake
That bends our atoms like dried glue
But then I am not alone
And as I rest on grass of gold
The heroes step forth, dressed in animals
In a dark, ****** harmony
That is the nature of our home, our Terra
The brute beauty in black void
Swimming through time like a turtle
On which the souls of man rest
On golden grass
Our spherical nest
And our evils are justified
By the good of our pursuit of beauty
Though selfish maybe
Though hellish for he
That swims on land
But drowns as he walks the sea
We are multitudes.
We are Gaia, we are the mother tree
The ****** bliss of humanity
Dark and light, both are we.
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 8:59 AM UTC
A red jumper
in the airing cupboard,
thrown over a pipe,
drooping like it had melted.
“Académie culinaire de Toulouse l’enfant”
on the breast in fractured, iron-on plastic.
It was perfect.
Something that wouldn’t be missed.
I took my sister’s wave-edge scissors to it.
I took it to bits,
all but a jagged circle of a sun
full of furry solar storms
of thread ends.
I ignored the red fluff
falling slowly
like so much ****** snow,
mixing into carpet fibres
under my bare feet.
And my heat
Disperses into invisibility
everything but the colour,
like any memory will.
-
A green t-shirt,
it looks up at me lostly,
toyishly small,
from some forgotten shop
bought at some forgotten time.
A childhood comfort still smiling
but not soft anymore.
The front’s all robots smashing apart tower blocks
with tin pincers and laser vision.
People’s screams of indicision.
Staticky speech bubbles,
broken car windows,
exclamation marks.
And a Marilyn monroe type
in the midst of the fray,
bra half-undone,
hand cupped to her mouth
Calling into some furious colonised sky
into which I pinned my sun.
-
A cornish cream baby grow
with grandmother stitched flowers
hours of sowed leaves.
A polka dot horizon
and an orchard's evening shadow
from a lifetime’s washing.
It showed.
So I sowed my mechanical horrors
and it’s crimson fear atmosphere
onto the pastel world.
And now it’s all there.
Jul 12, 2016
Jul 12, 2016 at 8:11 PM UTC
my mind is selfish,
my soul is not.
but my soul is weak,
consumed
by the immensity of my mind.
my self relinquished
to the battering thoughts
that traipse across my soul.
soldiers of the self,
that seize my body
in the vicious pincers
of my mind.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 1:29 PM UTC
Strange times. When I speak of caressing your mantic lungs
I don’t know what I mean, but I know
I would hurl you under proper circumstances.
Darling, one whisper falls from a tree silently
so as not to wake the ghosts from their siestas.
Your robe has holes I can’t write of. I can fathom
getting there, what that might entail, wrapping,
as I am prone to, my fingers around your furry pincers
while I wait for you to read my rights to the ceiling fan
who whirls above our renovated combustions like the glowering
eye of our Lord upon the teary-eyed wicked.
I am not looking to escape through the window, darling.
I am diving for your diamond-in-the-rough, peeling off barnacles,
making moustaches of seaweed. You threw it into that ocean-
sized trough in which you drown lizards as way of
stress-release. I don’t know what I’ll do next.
The poor man. You give me your hand,
darling, and your robe, your robe is shiny like a pubescent star,
and it shimmies like a wagon piecing itself apart, as you
piece yourself apart, starting with your smile, which was always more
like a photograph of a dune in a textbook.
You give me your hand. It is a blue egg
dusted with microorganisms. I sprinkle it with our fragrance,
what’s left of it. I wish happiness upon your sleep-life, doldrums
upon your late-night haunting. I am tired and these
machines are so convenient, bringing me on all-expenses-
paid visits to the site of your burial. Or is it your sister’s?
I quote, my heart is like a walled onion.
The poor man is tired. It is not 1904 anymore.
You are not smiling anymore, darling, but you give me your hand.
You give it in a basket with parsley and cheese
and cut-outs from The Waterlogged God.
You give it almost grudgingly but I will keep it.
You tell me you’ve been dreaming again of train stations.
I wonder what that means.
I wonder about your eyes.
There are many spiders inside the wall, and along it,
and on the chandelier’s fingers, and inside the spiders.
I quote, a dream is worth a thousand dustpans, but you,
darling, are worth so much more than dustpans.
But I grow weepy, as stated. What do those dark blue lines mean?
Your fingers, darling, smell of a dark cloud in an electrical storm.
Your palm is a circus. Your nails ticket stubs.
That one’s from the alligator show. You dislocated your
throat. I had a plan. If you stare into someone’s eyes for
more than six seconds, you’ll want to lick them.
May 25, 2010
May 25, 2010 at 8:20 PM UTC
I.
Steel black pincers circle my neck
Harsh little whispers against my ear
I promised myself I wouldn’t go back
anywhere but here
anywhere but here
Your words string together with the right amount of sting
But baby, your poison drives me crazy
Your venom seeps within my veins
and god, I’m dying for another taste
the hallucinations
you paralyse me
and I see stars in your wake
II.
Pomegranate lips, the colour of Sin.
III.
I have a hard shell to break, and no one has completed the feat so far
But with every touch you poach me
through and through
again and again
Until theres nothing left of my metal armour
Until the skin I once called home is nothing but a soft saggy shell
a shadow from my past
I need to remember who I am.
IV.
Your touches are soft petals
Grazing slowly across my skin
leaving goosebumps in your wake
Rosebud lips caress me gently
Sweet kisses near my cheek
Playful nips tickle my ear
Soft breaths along my neck
And when I finally open up ...
theres the sting again.
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 4:43 AM UTC
Sometimes I imagine that you could use a flat blade knife and separate parts of my body.
Like an anatomical model, an arm in half, a wrist entirely off.
An outmoded coloured wax model. Perhaps, a very old one. A decorated one with human or horse hair, closed eyelids and uncomfortable lips, and like those ancient roman ones, thinning sheens of paint on top.
The blade would slip through neatly, perhaps catching friction as it passes the block of soap texture, and leaves grimy residue on the knife.
You can see the vessels.
They are not clean.
Like my soul there are very nearly translucent scrapes and patches of liquid. Some days the liquid spills out.
Some days I just want to clean out. I want to purge, but I know I will just melt and the mistakes will be just as visible. You will see the marks that look like mouse's claws or pincers where I have pulled apart the skin trying to work out what went wrong. Doing some kind of surgery. Inside tying double sided sticky tape and chips of plastic, driving them in deep and forgetting about them.
When you say those things I can't be big anymore. If I'm tired you make me cry. Salt crisps up my intestines.
You make me imagine what it would be like to plunge a knife into my stomach.
I bet it would be satisfying like the braking of chocolate. Cracking of value bars.
But I have to remember that you are the organs thrown out at the end of the day, sloshing around in the bucket and I deserve to be preserved and anything that had been cried over or crafted is better than a remote controlled car. Stop telling me that it's not.
It's not as if I'm trying to be a petal or a fragment of netting fallen off a ballerina's skirt.
I've chosen to hover above the blades. I am nothing so frivolous. Feeling at home in a web of metal coated in paisley oven gloves. I am safe here. In fact I'm glad that thick haze separates us. You will never be able to find somewhere so tranquil. It makes me happy that there is no possibility that we can meet in the middle. It just makes it easier to keep the space, without the concern of some congealing platelets tethering to a surface which was never there.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 8:56 AM UTC
The feelings that I have
And the feelings that are me
Do wax and wane from time to time
With the rising falling sea
Often swamped within its swell
At the mercy of tidal clocks
One day to dance across a beach
Another dashed on rocks.
Rarely going straight to the point
But approached best from the side
Testing gently, tacitly
Before the pincers are applied
And they can be formidable
With a tenacious grip
So be careful what you wish for
If into the rock pool you do slip.
Evolved with solid outer shell
An armoured place to hide
Because beauty may be skin deep
But emotions lie inside
And the softness of the centre
Can be a dangerous place to go
For it can upset the natural balance
Of what we think we know.
And though we truly feel the pain
Our hearts fight to be true
So we cling on through the stormy days
Just because that’s what ***** do.
Sep 16, 2011
Sep 16, 2011 at 5:12 PM UTC
is this what heartbreak feels like?
i can't remember
if i've ever felt it before
my chest feels like
something knotted
too tight, too much,
unable to be undone
it's under my ribs,
sitting soundly beneath the sternum;
it's in my throat,
like a lump i can't throw up
it's the pincers squeezing
at the back of my eyes
trying their best, though still failing,
to make me cry
it's supposed to be a good thing
that we moved on,
that you rid me from your system
i thought i rid you too
but the confirmation of your fresh start
has made me feel
like i'm getting nowhere fast,
nowhere soon
i've no right to be so undone,
lost the right to hurt for us
a long time ago, but
i guess heartbreak doesn't give a ****
about time or circumstance
it shatters you when it pleases,
and you don't know
if you can fix together the pieces
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018 at 2:49 PM UTC
When sleep deserted me
I crawled out of my bed unseen
To delve into the crevices of the dark
With the curiosity of an explorer
And the near comatose of a somnambulist
I walked up and down the steep slopes of the night
Like a night watchman
Without a lantern in his hand
When my legs grew weary
I sat on a rock
Covered with moss and lichen
Staring at the dark night sky
With no constellation of fireflies
Flashing their torches anywhere
Sitting there, I listened to the song of night birds,
The rustle of leaves,
The howl of wolves,
And the night wind’s rave
Looking into the dark pockets of the night,
I thought of human mind, a deep gorge
With many an uninhabitable corner
Where serpent desires lie coiled
Scorpions crawl with toxic pincers
Predators roam to prey upon helpless victims
The mystery of the night absorbed me
Her muffled sounds, her dark beauty
Her elusive charm, like thick night fog,
Percolated deep into my consciousness
And I floundered in a fathomless sea,
Swirling in her eddies and currents.
It whisked me away to lands far…far!
But on being washed ashore,
I was in a creative delirium
I am now in No Man’s Land
Where everything is in a coma of stillness
Where no light glimmers
No door ajar
And no one in sight!
Here the poet in me breaks open
The somnambulist's comatose
And down way flow my thoughts in indelible ink
Which only I can read
Like a night bird
Roosting among the branches of a tree
I sing of my heart aches,
Of my yearnings and longings
In the barely audible whispers of the night,
My song reverberates in the eyeless abyss down,
And the dark desolate valleys below
People say, ghosts walk the earth at night.
Oh! I am not scared!
I am not eager for the dawn to break,
Nor want to put my pen down!
Aug 14, 2016
Aug 14, 2016 at 6:14 AM UTC
The green crab's countenance,
has an allure so rare,
but those pincers up close,
are a picture of uncivilized eclat.
Mar 31, 2012
Mar 31, 2012 at 6:09 PM UTC
Popping out from slumberous state,
Little buds, you come to life.
Fight, fist, fend the odds,
You’re different; you survive.
Combative, commanding, cruel,
Your army, every restraint exceeds,
As it marches on, devouring
The very platter on which it feeds.
Slithering, slipping stealthily,
Deadly tentacles spare no bone, sinew.
Boundaries are blurred; your territory expands,
Your militia continues to exponentially grow.
And soon, your red flags of victory-
Those flags of death, demise and doom
Are planted everywhere; each bit
Of terrain you’ve invaded and consumed.
There you sit, content, in the middle of all the gloom,
Immortal, indestructible, infinite.
With power of the magnitude you possess,
There’s no force that can give you a fight.
And when flies of decay begin to hover over
Your kingdom, you smile, flexing your pincers.
Thriving on the depressing glow of the setting sun,
You- the kark, the crab, the cancer.
(to the malady that ate my Grandmother away)
May 18, 2013
May 18, 2013 at 11:02 AM UTC
The tiny red ant scampers
In a forest of greenish mold
Its bristly legs carrying
Biological modules:
A head with pincers
An imperceptible thorax
A swelling abdomen.
It has nothing but a laborious drive
A pheromone-induced servility
For the queen: the lazy, bloated tyrant!
The sole purpose being
The laying of eggs.
The noble red ant
Moves on to scavenge
Blind and dumb
Oblivious.
To the ruthless cycle
Of its existence.
Sep 25, 2020
Sep 25, 2020 at 11:32 PM UTC
I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.
I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.
Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.
For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
Jun 6, 2015
Jun 6, 2015 at 2:41 AM UTC
I snuffed a black widow today.
The deadly little lass
had set up her killing den
just under my stony steps.
Unlike her,
I did it mercifully,
stepped on her as fast as I could,
before she got her pincers on me.
Considering her evil ways,
it served her right,
it could have been me.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 7:58 PM UTC
I have it, so do you ,
that bug that gets under your skin.
It itches when it first bites,
then it latches on with all its might.
With hope that its little pincers will inject
its drug in to you. ya may itch, may come
out in a rash, heart beat fastens this
funny feeling that comes over you.
Am I infected I have feeling coming through,
It only takes one bite for the stubborn hearted
maybe two. But when this little bug does coming
it after one thing only to infect you.
We all get bitten at least once in our lives,
its the bug who chooses not me or you.
The words will follow after time,
the itching calms down,
but then I will say to who gets bitten,
"I love you, and you say it back "baby I love you to.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 3:23 PM UTC
clink clink clink
single file one in front
one behind
bad men to my left
bad men to my right
shuffling slowly
down a long white hallway
walls of bars
foul hands poisonous pincers
****** viciously
the air beside me
clink clink clink
single file one in front
one behind
all stopped it is
my time to shine
nameless this number
will answer to no man
lightning fast
i have the nameless man ahead's
head in my grasp
a twist and a snap
then a heavy collapse
clink clink clink
single file none in front
none behind
sudden brutal binds
on my wrists
it is to silence, holding,
solitary i am whisked
whistling
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 4:12 PM UTC
Crawdads have a crazy *** life. There's not
much to courtship and no real copulation. Boring
as this may sound, it's somewhat engrossing
for me. Likely more than any lady crawdad ever
thought of it. I would think most women might
agree. Sadly, reminiscent of **** really. Males
act like ruffians, catching females like prey,
turning them over, and leaving a sticky deposit
on their undersides. Worm like sperms adhere
to her, which she carries with her until she lays
eggs. I've seen this while preparing étouffée.
Not the *** act, just the worms.
Life is a multiplex of convoluted situations.
"Please yes, oh no!" What's going on in those
crusty little heads? It seems such a foreign
lifeform. Still, eerily familiar to what I've found
at the bathhouse. I think I'll fatten up my tail,
wear some antennae and pincers this Halloween.
Mmmm... Étouffée.
Nov 23, 2015
Nov 23, 2015 at 2:05 PM UTC
I SIT AND WAIT FOR MY PREY, PERCHED IN A TREE WAITING TO POUNCE
BIRDS CHIRP ALL AROUND, BUGS CLICK THEIR PINCERS BENEATH ME
I LISTEN FOR THE SOUNDS OF MY PREY
A BREEXE RUSTLES THE LEAVES
A FEW ACORNS FALL TO THE FOREST FLOOR
THE BREEZE TURNS INTO A LIGHT WIND
I AM DISTRACTED BY THE WIND NOW
I LISTEN TO THE CRACKLING OF THE LEAVES
WATCH THE SWAYING OF THE TREES
I AM DISTRACTED BY THE TREE NOISES
SO DISTRACTED THAT I DO NOT KNOW
I DO NOT REALISE THE SILENCE THAT HAS FALLEN
NO MORE BIRDS CHIRPING
PINCERS NO LONGER CLICKING
IF I HAD NOT BEEN DISTRACTED I WOULD HAVE KNOWN
THE SIDES HAVE CHANGED
THE HUNTER IS NOW THE HUNTED
IT WAS OVER AS FAST AS IT BEGAN
A FAST DROP AND SUDDEN STOP
LEFT TO DIE I WAIT FOR THE END
LISTENING…..LISTENING TO THE WIND IN THE OAKS
A BEAUTIFUL SOUND TO ME
YET MY GREATEST WEAKNESS
MY OWN PERSONAL DOWNFALL
LISTENING TO THE WIND IN THE OAKS.
Nov 25, 2010
Nov 25, 2010 at 5:02 PM UTC
How have you been? I hope you’ve been well, but I’ve been thinking about how
A poem does have too much
person in it to be a tree.
Too many clichéd feelings,
too much sadness and inadequacy.
All of it pressed into words
that are too tight because
poems are always a size too small.
You’re right, a poem is nothing
like a tree.
I’ve been busy too, kind of, but I just want to say
Forget the miles,
and give me the woods.
Give me the dark and the deep
and the lovely.
I’ll leave the horse,
it’s better off without me and
I’ll imagine that the woods
belong to no one.
Just give me the woods
and the snow
and the hypothermia.
Give me the frozen lake.
I don’t want your miles
of tired positivity.
I think we were talking about faith last time, but I don’t think that’s quite it. You see,
I don’t need God
to do the battering.
There’s already something inside me
pummelling my cheeks,
leaving invisible bruises
and a lack of air in my lungs.
I don’t want to be ravished,
and besides, even this
monster won’t ravish me.
It really has been a while now since we last wrote
But nothing’s changed,
for the day I was born,
a week early, afraid
of being late,
I caught a glimpse
of the world and changed my mind.
I tried to turn back
but got a cord wrapped round my neck
and nearly choked.
They plied me out with pincers
anyway, wailing:
leave me be.
But I’m alright. I’ll be okay, don’t worry too much. Things happen and
Maybe after that,
I should have seen
that it’s not worth the fight.
Maybe it’s just lucky
I’m lazy.
I’ll write again, as and when I can.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 1:18 PM UTC
There were days
Wonder
I remember
Hours ****** into a void
I crushed a human-sized indention
...into a smelly mattress
There it is...out in the open air
And settled in
Tossing about when the time seemed right
To the left, to the right
Head resting on a dark pink forearm
At the sky or into a pillow
Case stained with drool
A puffed up map of another world
Lethargy's creation
Music drifted through my ears
Useless waves
Never catching
The most beautiful melodies in the known universe
Nothing but a ceiling fan's whirling clank
Yet they comforted me
Kept time as good as they could
Gave me something familiar to grab hold of
Maybe kept me
From sinking, falling, clutching at air
Or breathing in water, drowning
In sloth, apathy, illness, hurt
Jumping into the mouth of a volcano
Fleeing from something I had no name for
Something that had no use for a name
All the more fearsome for it
I jumped...I fled...I flew...
I laid down and stayed down
I didn't even recognize sleep
When it snuck up from behind
I wasn't even thankful
For it brought no dreams
Only a quick, painless transition
A tool of prophecy
Pincers to hold shut my eyelids
Now I ask myself, "How long
Ago
That must have been? How long
Since
I rose from the dead?"
That span of days
Seems as forgotten
As the lost time
Hours into days into weeks into months into years...
Though not sacrificed
So unwillingly
Sep 14, 2010
Sep 14, 2010 at 7:10 AM UTC
observe ----
it hangs
from one single thread --
which in turn
hangs
from a further thread --
itself dangling
from the worn pincers of an old fool
recluse inside his comfy house of laughs
inside a room
where four taciturn gods stand
mute inanimate still solemn blank --
one of which
tilts its wilted head --
and with eyes absent
up inside his thinking thoughts
he sheds warm pools of dark stills --
unspeakable pictures spilled --
onto a being stuck
inside an existence
that has become
fully acknowledged as such
threadbare despair
despairing still
and still
it remains
the simple bloom tumult
that wills and will
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 5:14 AM UTC
Or you, father, pointing down to a Sicilian harbour ―
its dark pincers compressing an eye-glass
of water
Or my skin, watered down by a lifetime out of your sun
yet thick and dark through our blood’s long curing
in white light
Or your silhouette, insect-strange on the black breast
of a Northumbrian hill, our kinship of shape lost
in the white flood-down
of summer
Or that sequoia glade whose green we drank: a tall glass
where dark sank as heavier spirits do, and stirred leaves
made a white effervescence
of sunlight
Or you, black and white, slumped in that wicker chair
mourning your father, steeped in a kitchen’s shadowless
fluorescence, toe-caps scuffed grey
by the glare
Or rain, elsewhere, as white horizons laddered with dark ―
rain as fault-lines slanting the light ― till, here, resolve
the first cold drops, steaming on your curved
back of earth
Mario Petrucci from Flowers of Sulphur
Jul 12, 2015
Jul 12, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC