"pinholes" poems
inky black skies
pricked by pinholes of light
above our heads with your hand in mine
as our feet dance - exalted and anxious
upon the tired concrete ground
where we've danced before
the knowing gaze
of the sagely moon upon us
does not compare to the brightness
that gives life to your eyes
and births your smile
we escape inside
from the uncertainty of night
with your hand never leaving mine
and the frantic dance continues
until we are strewn together
cloaked by covers
hearts pressed together
in a duet of frenzied marcato beats
that steadily decrescendos as our breath slows
and our limbs weave and entwine
like a dreamcatcher
bodies intertwined
protected from the ghouls of night
with your hand in mine
we sleep safely
Jan 2, 2012
Jan 2, 2012 at 8:27 PM UTC
Pinholes
punched through
my
canvas of night
An
array of stars
strewn across
Darwin's
blanket of black
Quiet
and
reassuring
are my
Northern Territory
lights
Like salve
to my
mind,
soul
and
inconspicuous cracks
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 12:19 PM UTC
Seeking a Dragon:
“Has anyone ever seen, a lizard who licks the air, smells the sounds, hears the tasty gnats flying ‘round and knows the instincts of his prey while holding fast his scaly-green statue on a hot summer’s day with his eyes like pinholes straight to hell, his hunger an anxious frantic swell he quickly darts after his dinner devouring that faithless sinner?” *
Jun 5, 2016
Jun 5, 2016 at 12:20 PM UTC
Tiny pieces of you
Linger in my very being
Burning embers of brimstone
Sulfur fills each breath
I stop to smell the roses
They turn to ash at my touch
At you within me
Particles spread as I cough you up
Multiplying in the air
Dancing with joy
At their new-found freedom
Tiny pieces of you
Rotting my soul and consuming my spirit
Burning pinholes in my brain
Memories burned away
Shadow of pain still sore, still raw
Lingering, lingering, lingering
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 7:18 PM UTC
Vacuum-sealed in cloudy plastic
Suffocating by design
No claws to tear through
No blades to slice
The coldness of the air seeps through
But no breath can be taken
Peek-a-boo I see you
Creepy clouded faces stare
Known yet quite veiled in circumstance
The harder the struggle
The weaker the fight
Light fades as breath strains
Wishing for pinholes
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 7:22 PM UTC
~~Follow me down the rabbit hole he spoke,
To a place of delirium and fantasy.
Let your mind follow as your body stays.
As goosebumps creep up your skin.
Feel me when you laugh, little pinholes in your brain.
Run free with me dear Alice,
For a trip to Wonderland.
Just rest that thin piece of paper on your tongue.
Come with me, old friend.~~
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 12:30 PM UTC
eyeglasses nestled in the fluffy snow
frosted, with a single crack
bouncing winter sun off my tarnished window
a glint of hidden history from below
it sent me on a journey way, way back
a memory of reflected light
off a tree lined lake where i swam as a child
all day until the moon gave birth to night
and the sky was black with pinholes of white
a remembrance long ago filed
delivered back to me by a frozen emissary
whose lenses are no longer fit for eyes
whose rounded frames are a bit ordinary
but found one final way to be visionary
as a door unlocked by a cold, powdery sunrise
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 1:57 PM UTC
Everything (physically) erased, nothing ever forgotten. Every word spoken or written is engrained in my brain, I will never be the same. Unlike no other you came you conquered you (changed). Seven existential hours that would change my DNA and internal making, making, making what I knew up until then surprisingly malleable. Your words your actions your face your voice filled up every millimeter of me that everything else inside was pushed to the brim and seeped out of my pores. Everything I once was became everything you ever were, ever are. There is a chair in the back of my mind that is reserved for you to sit there and continue to hotwire (my mind) and thoughts into something much better than I ever could have fathomed. Your puppet strings control what and who I am and it is impossible to think there is any other living organism that could possess that undeniable ability. There is a keyhole somewhere inside myself. There is a key inside of you. Keyholes the size of pinholes as vast as Sirius. Small, believable, existing. Keys the shape of orchids and birch as natural as the metamorphosis of roots (into) trees. I never knew what (my) purpose was until you. Or maybe I always knew what I was before you and you opened the windows to the (soul) otherwise known as brown eyes so timid to everyone besides you. The smallest organs became so (full of) nothing but visions of you. There is a special place in my slowly beating heart perfectly executed to fit all of you. A twin bed that only holds one girl has an infinite amount of room for whatever (love) you could continue to bring into my life. The impossibility to (for)get and erase has left me with an endless amount of hope to see you again. The possibility of knowing that you are still somewhere out there and I am still somewhere down here, although unsure where. I cannot ascertain whether or not feelings are reciprocated but I know I know they are. I know you know where you are. I know you know I do not know where I am but you could figure it all out for me. You had it all figured out for me. Plans stretched farther than the 3000 miles separating my red string from yours. Our strings are still connected. There is nothing in the world that can cut them no matter the distance no matter the people no matter the time no matter the place. I know and somehow you know fate will bring our two oceans together. One calm ocean full of creatures so logical and tides so serene they make a beautifully flawed human being known as yourself. One ocean plagued by waves and uncertainty as to what is below the surface that makes up a human being, me. Both oceans surround land full of love. Our continents will merge. Our love will emerge. (You, only you.)
May 23, 2013
May 23, 2013 at 12:42 PM UTC
So much locked within bubbling at the surface
Pinholes of strain attempt to release pressure
Its immensity can't be touched by a million such holes
Desire to discard the cloak grows with every breath
But the fear of being unveiled and naked prevents it
As the molehills burn and the fires are extinguished
Mountains emerge in silence, born of the forgotten ashes
Smoldering embers give rise to the unfathomable
Gargantuan by comparison and seemingly unstoppable
Can such enormity be reigned in,
Or will trying be a harsh lesson in futility?
Never give up or knowing when to do so
Holding tightly or letting go
To analyze or forget
No clear cut paths in the forest of self-destruction
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 7:40 PM UTC
two of them
to my naked, simian eye
are identical twins
though one, a mere millennium
of light years away, performs its
magical fusion yet today
the other disappeared before
dinosaurs devolved; its phantom
photons now without a source
but both poke pinholes
in the blanket of night, gifting
what some call divine light
not I, for if gods were igniting
those gaseous masses, they would both
yet be furious and fiery white
and not tricking my meager sight,
deceiving me into believing, there is
eternity in an eternally dying sky
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 10:43 PM UTC
In the bardo*
you are floating
aboard the barge of couldhavebeens
and moments that were unseen
not the world
not a boy or a girl
lost
Lost boys are found toys for Thor’s hands
to play with
Lightening lick of guitar solo
striking health into blushed cheeks
Soon you’ll no longer need to be
painted
The eye patches will be removed
and pirate life won’t mean
Scrounging and wishing for an oasis
you’ll throw a life saver
throw a light saber
Glisten the sparkzap through tables
laden with all that’s been spat
from vitriolic minds
Listen
sore elbows from nudging bad spirits away
Blades of bone
and intention can saw through sadness
to the light beyond
like the sky’s pinholes
Stars aren't the cuttings of children
the dark is just a covering
Poke a finger through
Don't fear if you get stuck
for it is only the backdrop to a stage
hiding the mass of light
only there to protect us from blinding joy
Like sunglasses
So be one with your sadness
May 29, 2016
May 29, 2016 at 6:02 PM UTC
Still more, in words
In experience
Confusing Familiarity with Comfort
Confusing Comfort with Peace
Reifying confusion, but not successfully
Yielding, on my knees, heart to the sky
Forgetting
Seeing through, a single pinhole in a perfectly realistic backdrop
Pinholes everywhere, more than can be contained
Not containing
Torn all over
Dispelling everything
Stripping away the Stripping away
Trying to stand very still and very quite so I can feel, hear, sense
Perfect realism
Wanting to be convinced by rage
Agitation, but only conceptual
Feeling tight
Feeling rehearsed
Feeling like an imposter
Wanting to impress
Wanting to be convinced of Self, of Realness
Fortified by others knowing, or preferably- admiration
Like being constructed out of sets of other peoples' eyes
Like being made real by propagating in more minds, many more minds, specific minds. In countless beating and virtual hearts, likes, thumbs up
Not wanting to be forgotten, while alive, while dead
Taxed by maintenance and constant imminent collapse
Compassion, like collapsing into a safe lap
Relinquishing
No pretense
Bare being
More naked than when unclothed
Total exposure
Outed, in the light of knowing
Self forgetting and glimpses of freedom
Trusting sighing
Always loving Sad, not despondent, just sad
Feeling continuous
Feeling fragmented
Feeling like motion, like flow
Feeling like thousands of still frames, constant flickering
Grasping at impermanence, visceral
Resting in the middle
Dancing down the tightrope
Knowing perfect poise, brief equilibrium
Reifying stability. Gone.
Everything is hysterically funny
Hysterically
But also, sometimes, just plain humorous
And absurd
Crying
Loving people
Grateful for people
Seeing beauty everywhere
Encountering this, intimate, me, indistinguishable being, but everywhere
Ouch
Awareness
Always coming back
Like an epic
Like a great love story
Like the last wring of that silk dress you weren't supposed to squeeze dry
Feeling like I shouldn't know what I know, like I couldn't. This must be illegal, cosmically illegal
Knowing the inside of my hand
Knowing teenage shame
Knowing being yelled at, towered over, by my dad, in a narrow hallway, eyes glued to speckled floor tiles, feeling small
Loving with my body, with my hands, with my mouth, with my whole entire strong softness
Loving with understanding
Loving with teeth and nails
Music, lacerating
Crying with tears, and snot, and heaving
Becoming one single, concentrated point
Wanting to envelope everything. Really. Actually. Like physically with my body.
Knowing I am not this voice
Or this writer
Or this narrator
Though I am also all that
Aug 6, 2022
Aug 6, 2022 at 12:07 AM UTC
This must be what they mean by growing up.
Skin worn with boyish charm,
but I feel old in my bones.
The holes in my marrow house stagnant air;
echoes of unheard words
and half-forgotten dreams
keyhole-peek through hairline fractures.
There must be something in the wind,
the way the dust is kicked up from
the soles of our shoes
to dance with the last night’s
idle bedtime prayers,
and find intimacy with dew
that will never fall out of love with grass.
We said,
Black out the lights so that I can
catch my breath again…
and we looked for shade under rootless trees
and couldn’t quite decide whether the night sky
was everything our grandfathers made believe
in stories that smelled like cigar smoke
and typewriter ink,
or if it was nothing more than
card stock and pinholes.
And as the footsteps that find comfort in concrete
step over our flickering, kerosene city lights,
We hummed hymns into the
crevices of our collarbones
and serenaded the sky with
our songs of sin.
They interpreted the tip-toeing crescendos
for the hearsay of rats
and the cricket gospel of violin legs.
But what they never understood is that
I came clean with careful lungs.
Listen,
the air was a draft drawn through
an almost silent note of a harmonica,
This Town is more fragile than a whisper.
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 1:27 AM UTC
Distant trains still sound alarms,
Blinds are drawn, people yawn,
It's time to call the day.
The sun's turned off,
The moon's turned on,
The stars like pinholes
Blink till dawn.
The animals are bedded
On the farm;
Beneath this counterpane we're warm.
Today our work is done;
Tomorrow worries not begun.
But tonight I'll sleep
Like the seventh son.
Apr 22, 2024
Apr 22, 2024 at 9:06 AM UTC
gorgeous sparkling pinholes
bejewel the night sky's cape
millions of stunning sequins
glistening diamonds
Oct 23, 2017
Oct 23, 2017 at 5:40 AM UTC
Saturday tastes like bitter tea
Stuck between atoms that cannot be seen
The mirror ripples and the motor bleeds
Wrap up in syran and lie in the streets
The business end is no place to stay
Water from the naval is the only grace
Drink it in and enjoy your night
Your touch is candle wax acid bite
Let me remind you that the company sings
They never stay quiet about the things we've seen
Don't look now but we're about to drown
These are the things I think when you go down
Make skin with my teeth and a hard blast beat
Summer lovin burnin hot rain in the road
Cigarette pinholes and a lump in my throat
We all float on water when we croak.
Choke on smoke, Columbian coke
Serrated knives at the end of a rope
The knots fall off, the calls all stop
And the needle in my neck is soaked
We see the stars on our ceiling
We see fireworks on the walls
The world makes noise when the sun retreats
To weep with the fishes while the movie repeats
They sleep in the fission circle glowing, we eat
The sick on my pin cushion, unfurl, flowing, recede
Be me and see the need to breathe the ivory creed
Planting the seed for the last of my blood
Feel the trees grow in your lungs and free
Yourself from superstitions of heaven and love
Let me remind you that the company sings
They won't keep quiet about things we've seen
Stars on the ceiling
Don't look now but we're all gonna drown
These are the things I think when you go down
Fireworks on the walls
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 1:25 AM UTC
A barren home,
but not of things,
where silence wanders
curiously
down the empty halls.
"Who's there?"
She stands to peek
through door ajar
at the dust ::BOOM::
on the floor. ::BOOM::
Nothing's stirred
and all's in place
and all is still
but subject’s face:
fieldstone hues
and wrinkles too.
A desol't eve
in fickle blue,
she’s marching dusk
with throated heart.
Purpled cirri
and pinholes white
high above her
stalwart ceiling.
Shunted thought.
Listless thunder.
Turn on heel
to pinioned sleep;
a reeling sanct,
an effete lover.
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 10:11 AM UTC
When you were a little girl, did you think love was an easy concept to grasp? Didn't it make you laugh the way that everyone said,
"It's undefinable, it's complicated, it's the root of so much pain"?
When I was a young boy, I used to sift through sand looking for the broken beer bottles
Because I wanted to try and find beauty in something horrible.
So I have done for years.
I've lied, cheated, stolen... sometimes from my own family members.
I used to assume I could pop into your life any time
Like a bad father
And you'd come running into my arms.
Just like a bad father.
When I left you standing at the altar, dressed like June Carter
I remember wishing I could have altered my timeline
So I could be Johnny for real, and we could make it big
People could start writing our names on jail cell walls
"R.I.P. Alex and Sidney"
These are the days where I scatter papers around my room
Pinholes in the carpet from relight after relight
Trying to find the right words to say
To convince you that I'm not the same as I used to be.
I've seen my own eyes gazing at me without a mirror
I've seen galaxies screaming at me and exploding
You pull my heart-strings.
You separate my anxieties.
You are the little bit of crazy within me
And when I let it out it's all sadness and wine
But when you let go, you're just a sugar plum fairy.
You dance and you sing and you laugh like I were a comedian.
Oh, that's right, I am a comedian.
Well, if my job is to make people laugh
Then my last laugh would be you.
This is a bad time, I know
But I still would do anything to rewrite our history.
I can wait a year if you want to run your course
Maybe you'll stay in our little town.
But this poem is to tell you
Your clothes should be in my laundry.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 5:55 AM UTC
The eyes snap open,
Like the shutter on a camera,
Pupils fixed and tracking,
Watching every move,
Never blinking,
Pinholes peering into the depths of you,
Below subconscious,
Leering at your mind,
Keeping record of your every move,
Seeing inside,
Knowing your thoughts,
Knowing what it thinks to be 'you'
A total surprise,
'no one can tell, right?'
It's like beauty,
Obvious to some,
Invisible to others,
I know ,if you know, and dread these dreams,
release me.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 6:49 AM UTC
whipped back across the line
in harsh tones of childhood trauma
vile acidic tongue
lapped and corroded the biodome,
which maintains the constructs
of who I am needed to be
white smoke fills the black space
changing gray as it wafts through
ever so slowly
Patch the chemical burn!
Patch it NOW!
before it compromises emotion
before it spreads and corrupts
the foundation of all
the slightest justification
can stop the seepage
Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies
honesty isn't truth
when used as a weapon
watching the dome slowly fail
smoke seeping through pinholes
waiting for the death of hope
frozen in place by hateful expressions
of those who claim not to care
Feb 26, 2014
Feb 26, 2014 at 10:58 AM UTC
Touch the sky with me
and we can fly, fly, fly
away from these places,
wrong faces, all the traces
of the spaces we created
between our lonely hearts
and forgotten minds;
the parts of us that shouldn't exist
crying in their cavernous
pinholes, echoing
and rupturing in feeling
through the waves of something
more, something undeniable
and true. The pinprick
in which my emotions
are contained
is gargling with a blood
that pours black yet,
as it trickles through
me, I can feel it restoring beauty
to the yellowed valleys of my skin.
Feb 28, 2017
Feb 28, 2017 at 4:01 PM UTC
Am I,
protected and Ignorant?
Instead, choose to
countlessly amount problems.
Often wondering that romance, anyways
blind being without shade:
Sun-gazer;
fry pain from eyes.
As closed eyes turn,
eyes open for curiousity
you punish
No, just no…
Punish you, curiousity for open eyes.
turn eyes closed
as eyes, from pain, fry.
sun-gazer;
shade without being blind.
anyways, romance that wondering, often.
problems amount countlessly
to choose instead:
Ignorant
and
protected;
I am.
Oct 8, 2011
Oct 8, 2011 at 3:10 PM UTC
i could never explain
how speechless I am
beneath the stars, all
pinholes in heaven's
fabric
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 11:48 PM UTC
i have scars of your fingerprints
blemishes shaped like your lips
cracks in my spine
from the sound of your voice
and pinholes in my heart
from the way you look at me
Dec 23, 2011
Dec 23, 2011 at 9:32 PM UTC
We care for her, brushing her tangled locks, soothing her calloused feet.
And yet, an empty gaze never falters, never flinches.
She remains a stone that never cracks.
To see our deeds firsthand is to peer into a void none could bear to imagine.
We moisten her lips with raindrops. We flex her bones with thunder.
A palm to her chest reveals a faint heartbeat. But what can we do?
There are things a soul cannot unsee.
Things forever etched across the mind's lucid eye.
The cries of ghosts and the laughter of someone else,
As there will always be another.
Another to smile when we frown. Another to rejoice when we fall.
A balance is maintained, and we all struggle for release.
If only her eyes could see that.
She swallows once, quenching her throat with dew from a leaf.
At last, a tear forms as she accepts Fate's design.
The chair fades away, and the canopy is pulled taut.
... Those pinholes twinkle unusual.
We each take a hand, and her eyes gleam with life.
"Follow us, sister. These stars shine for you."
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 6:07 PM UTC