"plaster" poems
late night by the holland sill
white framed and frilled
alongside the meadow
down by the grand
where cat fish
and cow pies
and silly yellow bees
make their stay
there are swings now
and empty barns
(with quiet corners
and broken walls)
echoing chambers
that speak of the past
...and little dogs
not big ones
the plaster cracks
and wheat sways
from a warm west wind
it’s about time
for that late afternoon pour
you know how it cleans the soul
old percy would say
and flanders
(the holder of those pigs)
who fed us good
with sow and milk
as we plowed the
dusty fields
into the
hot summer sun
i can still hear the screams
of river shore dreams
the grand slams
and flints run dry
the barks
and breaks
and bends
a world past
with forbes
and dolls
and crab apple trees
think i’ll take a trip
up the back lane
they’ve cut the brush
and opened the line
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 4:46 PM UTC
black as night
chiseled stone
spirits ramble
orphans roam
lover's eyes
masquerade
9 to 5
come out and play
drop of blood
alabaster
frozen heart
encased in plaster
open mouth
parted lips
shared breaths
sway and dip
swish and flick
atmosphere
moody blips
no need to fear
stormy skies
vivaciousness
gentle touch
tenacious kiss
cotton candy
flushed and wild
sapphire eyes
mother's child
wide grin
break apart
fleshy dawn
beating heart
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 10:26 AM UTC
No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb
Nobody knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.
A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.
Between plaster and jasmins, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say "siempre",
"Siempre", "siempre": garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my death.
11.4k
I've walked the beaten path
Sinned in the ways of every religion
But the only salvation I'm looking for
Is in the smiles I'm able to place on your face
So when you read my text
Listen to the way I'm telling you I like you
Listen to the message in the complex smiles
The kissy faces
That seem to be endless
You can't call this puppy love
This is the way you were meant to be loved
So baby let me make you happy
I'm not asking for the physicality of a relationship
I'm asking to put this band on your finger
Look in the mirror
See my complete reflection
Because this mirror is your eyes
Baby let me make happy
There's nothing I'd rather do
Honestly you're on my mind
I've only talked to you on occasion
I don't don't want to send coded messages
In the texts that make you smile and want me
I want to tell you straight up
Baby I like you
I'm not innocent
I'm not expecting you to be
I'm just asking you to be mine
Let me make you happy the only way I know
Let me be the sculptor
Plaster smiles on your frowning face
Strip the clothes from your mannequin figure
Let me make you happy
In and out of the bed
I'm only asking for a chance
Baby let me make you happy
I promise you'll never be alone
Even if I'm seventeen hours away
My heart is in the pillow you hold tight
My cologne is in the sheets you wrap yourself in
You can even wear my clothes
Go insane and let me walk in
On you making out with a pillow dressed like me
I'll smile and I promise
I'll love you the way that pillow never could
Let me make you happy
The way the other guys failed to
When they ******* up the chance you blessed them with
I promise baby
I'll never hurt you
My shoes are in the closet
They're not going anywhere
My suitcases are unpacked and laying in the dump
Three states away
The distance you wanted in the first place
Between me and my second love
You know I had a tendency of packing up
Leaving in the middle of the night
When your slumbering hand wandered on my side of the bed
Looking for the warmth of my skin
But Baby I promise my walking days are over
My running shoes are too old
They don't fit anymore
Let me make you happy the way you deserve
I understand if you don't want to do it
I'm not going to cliche it up
I'm not going to beg
I'm just going to tell you
I like you
Ask you for only one thing in this relationship
Let me make you happy
It's not much but let me make it my sole purpose in life
I don't need a god or gods and goddesses
All I need is the heart in your chest
To be my altar
To be where I tithe my sins away
To give praise to the heart that saved me
Let me make you happy
I'm not a complete ****** like the rest of them
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 3:12 AM UTC
I was acquainted with a raucous older man while I was still young and as impressionable as plaster-of-paris
Malleable as I was
He left a mark
And now
I watch you wearing baldness with classy elegance
and donning beards with ease, easy on my eyes
Can we fly through space safely?
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 2:05 AM UTC
Lou,
You're an orphan now.
The deciding vote
In your favor,
The good kisses,
The latent reconciliation
Linger in this thick room.
You won't need to clean chimneys,
Work in a blacking factory,
Get your ears pinched, and your **** kicked.
You've laid out a fine plaster effigy
In this cherry box;
Yet Enzo's nature is hidden:
His personal tears
And public laughter
Aren't in this demeanor
With rosary weaved into the basket of his hands.
We've polished our shoes,
So we stand and discuss
The crucifix wedged
To hold up the lid,
And how we follow our fathers' footsteps.
We knew it to end this way
With our fathers' generation.
*But you must know your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his...*
I too am orphaned, Lou,
And we'll continue on
As orphans do.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 10:04 AM UTC
His hands lie resting avoidant, anxious like trapped dust on top of the shelf waiting to be swept
His eyes turned away looking at the plaster wall as if the wall was his only companion in the room
His smile is hidden from its owner scared of the punishment it may face
His heart is overcomed by all the talking in brain, all the **** thinking like a disease
His knees bends like a single corner of a shy square
His whistles are often quiet but when frustrated they are balloons getting furiously poked by a needle
His footprints are subtle small occupants of my mind, and he is my everything
Yet if he would be in my heart, his square shyness would not fit in my round heart
Dec 2, 2013
Dec 2, 2013 at 1:52 AM UTC
let us toast,
my dear,
to making it this far.
even with our tortured minds
and glazed eyes;
hell,
who would've guessed it?
//
it's a good thing you don't wear mascara in public.
then again,
maybe it doesn't really matter.
you only cry when you're alone.
and i'm sure you're more broken than you seem,
though you still manage to get up and
plaster a smile
onto your cold, blank face
each dreary morning.
//
i am not the poster child of happiness,
or wealth,
or intelligence.
(they don't know that, though.)
failure is in my veins,
mistakes written into my skin
with permanent marker --
the same one they use
to write all those A+s.
//
is it really faking
if we believe it, too?
bravo,
bravo,
look how good we've gotten --
believing our own
little
white
lies.
but little white lies
never hurt nobody.
//
right?
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 10:18 PM UTC
Freezing dusk is closing
Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
That can no longer feel.
But the carp is in its depth
Like a planet in its heaven.
And the badger in its bedding
Like a loaf in the oven.
And the butterfly in its mummy
Like a viol in its case.
And the owl in its feathers
Like a doll in its lace.
Freezing dusk has tightened
Like a nut ******* tight
On the starry aeroplane
Of the soaring night.
But the trout is in its hole
Like a chuckle in a sleeper.
The hare strays down the highway
Like a root going deeper.
The snail is dry in the outhouse
Like a seed in a sunflower.
The owl is pale on the gatepost
Like a clock on its tower.
Moonlight freezes the shaggy world
Like a mammoth of ice -
The past and the future
Are the jaws of a steel vice.
But the cod is in the tide-rip
Like a key in a purse.
The deer are on the bare-blown hill
Like smiles on a nurse.
The flies are behind the plaster
Like the lost score of a jig.
Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
Like money in a pig.
Such a frost
The flimsy moon
Has lost her wits.
A star falls.
The sweating farmers
Turn in their sleep
Like oxen on spits.
6.8k
Why do you still occupy
the nooks and crannies of my head?
Drifting up through the cracks in the plaster
bent nails and poor construction
hammered hastily into place
How do you fill
my vacant minutes with shadows of you?
Your outline walks beside me on the street, wound up in my headphones
the echo of your daydream touch
a humming static on my skin
How still do you fall asleep beside me
when I am wrapped in the disquiet of a restless night?
How do you ease yourself into my brain like its nothing
and hide among synapses that try so hard to lose you
And how still to lose you?
When the thought of you occupies the wasted time
that escapes order and control
and slips under the floorboards
And in that quiet and that dark
is where you and I occupy,
held together by the wandering nature of thoughts,
that find their way into the nooks and crannies of my head
The thought of you is indifferent to my hasty plaster work,
and
the thought of you is intoxicating.
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 6:49 AM UTC
(Pompeii/Florence, 1997)
Vulcan was real, alive as you were,
you and your language, long dead now.
Your town was prosperous, with its paved streets,
bars, bath-houses, brothels,
mosaics, painted walls, graffiti.
Your domestic gods too were real to you;
they had saved you before,
and when the superhuman hammer blows shook
your houses, you repaired them,
decorated in greater splendour,
erected a temple to your protectors.
But Vulcan was not appeased - years are not long
to the lord of earth and fire.
This time he struck swiftly, sending you death
from his mountain, overwhelming you
as you ran. Your garden
gave you no protection,
hot fumes choked you,
hot ash surrounded you,
sealed in your tomb as you died.
The ones who excavated your town
marvelled at its completeness,
and in the ash that filled your garden
they found hollows.
Filling the hollows with plaster,
they found . . . not you,
but echoes of yourselves,
like statues in a museum.
We came to see you, and after that
to the Academy, standing in awe
at David's perfect marble humanity.
But we were troubled by the others,
the uncompleted ones, the Prisoners,
their twisted limbs, hidden faces,
frozen in the act of emerging
from the stone, recalling too painfully
in their unfinished creation
your own agonised poses
as you died.
*"I had seen birth and death,
but had thought they were different."*
.
Aug 26, 2016
Aug 26, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
Clayton
How I know you
Paternal parenting
DNA infused
Carbon contribution, to my physique
Father
In everything
My skin, eyes toes,
Unfortunately; inside my mouth
Spitting plaster-walled
Copy-paste personality
The same
Intimately
Close-dangerously
Different
Me a bold-faced fraction of ill abated love
Something that didn't work out
Photocopy
Blond-blasphemy of useless flesh
Reminder of her
Mom
Enough!
Teeter tottering
Tip-Toe tangling opinion
Excuses
Words fermented
Rotting-rigor
I know you.
Slit-eyed palefaced ****** of bigot ideas
Bearing pronged poker
Clicking glinting-clawed finger fondling fake religion
Suppressing supplement thought
********
God's love the good life
Living a life to be proud of
Excuse me!
For not being as I am "supposed" to be
Eatting rancid lies
Your reality relative
To kiss-ass preferred siblings
Who like the taste of ****
What you shovel
Hung on lipsucking harlot, hinged hip hung-over
Descending oppressidly upon willing wanton will of man
Letting cracked-cackled toothed
Field Gap-smile
Decide your next move
I know you
I see what you push into hidden corners
The bias, nasty film of your character
Under whitecollar shirttails
Citizen, Patriot
Americas American
I know you
Your oppression
Not new
As underhanded and seedy as it was
And still is
I know you
As much as I'd like not too.
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 4:18 PM UTC
Over on the crescent wing
The bitter gales bring waves of rain:
Listen. Frozen windows sing.
Enraptured by the searing pain
Like pestilence in hurricane.
Buildings rise up to the halls
Impenetrable planet-bane
As summer lost, and spring withal.
Then the writhing storm-clouds bring
A storm of ice and wind again:
The sun rears up, but sets during.
And past the steel-laden plane
Silver orbs first wax, then wane
Then plaster to the mighty wall
Midnight buses, lane-by-lane,
Of nature not, but city fool.
Ascended like a spiteful King
The whispers rise, then sink in shame
No sound is here, no, not a thing.
Soaking in like liquor-stains
The buildings survey their domain
Not city-life, nor life at all;
They wander in the pouring rain
Where love is lost beneath the sprawl.
Tears and laughter, much the same
All are whispers, doomed to fall.
Dystopia without a name:
Not so distant after all.
Nov 14, 2018
Nov 14, 2018 at 5:19 PM UTC
An urban legend of sorts they said, of a tree, of a
branch that took any weight given. it has nickname
It had a place in secluded nature where no one seen.
**"The *** tree,**
"Really,
"Ye but you have to watch your step,
"Why??
"Well lets just say its a well fertilized ground,
"The earth and plants feed well on the,
"Sap,
"Seeds,
Not from one but the many, I heard the branch
Can take any weight, a gentlemen of plentiful weight
Tested the legend and got stuck **** naked
Not for a,
"Moment,
"Minute,
"Hours,
"Was he stuck, birthday suit and all,
His lady friend had jogged off with wallet and all,
Its on YouTube,
Called tree hugger nudist,
There is loads of dents little *** holes,
Some say its all the ***** *******
So many hard ones poking dents,
indentations forever of ******* against this tree.
"I've been their done that,
Really,
"Never again,
"Were standing on this branch,
"What's that look for,
"Nothing,
(Giggles under breathe)
"Getting into the moment,
"Thought sap,
"Tree sap,
"Was seeping in to my hair,
"Don't stop what happened stuck,
*"Pants down skinny **** man up tree,*
(giggles loudly)
"Dude I'm 6 foot 5inches,
It was sap of a different kind,
(Gags in mouth)
No Fudging way,
Yep that's not the worst,
"How the hell does some one seed a tree that high,
**"It was like the tree was ******* itself,**
"Old juice, sap, Klingon,
"What ever I throw up on her,
She bit down,
I, we feel three feet out the tree,
"So that's what the plaster cast is from,
"Is that why your walking funny,
Twenty nine stitches its like something
From a Frankenstein film,
Never again my friend a bed is where ill be from
Now on, she fell in a puddle of Jib juice triplets
She had all three different, DNA tests on all
Who visited the tree.
As a video recorded of all who entered,
Just not the naked bits seen.
**"Nature can keep its *** tree,**
"I'll be lucky if mine works again,
"Mine isn't wood its a limp branch now,
*"Dude you got ****** by wood,*
"Bitten limp by teeth,
"Unlucky bro,
"Hahahahah,
"Rather you than me,
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 5:36 PM UTC
We flourish in this partial reality.
As I quietly touch your face, your lips, with my thumb,
Begging to know the thoughts you never utter.
Perhaps this suppression is a favorable one,
Where after my uninformed dreams will run wild with hope,
And your affections are safely concealed by
Plaster walls and my contract to mum.
We really do thrive here.
In this vacuum.
I dare not think of when we must leave it…
When nights like this one
Come to a close.
We will only be able to dislodge quavering,
Reluctant sighs.
For we have so often recited the volumes of our hearts with
No words.
Always saying everything by saying nothing
At all.
Only fit for heaving heavy desperate breaths--
Airy, impalpable syllables.
On a silent quest for time’s
Antidote;
Struggling to exist permanently within
Such small moments.
Lips.
Hair.
Skin.
Snippets of life to which we cling.
Nov 28, 2011
Nov 28, 2011 at 1:10 PM UTC
The dough in the pizza pan
Becomes my heart.
And with my hand, my fist,
I strike it and flatten it.
I force it to change,
Plaster it into limp pancake.
With my palm I knead it,
But the pain which should ebb out,
Will not separate and flow away.
It stays inside the dough,
The flattened,
Moulded,
Hand-mangled dough!
Dec 11, 2014
Dec 11, 2014 at 5:40 PM UTC
you swept the ashes of winter
lit red and ****
drawn naked with smoke
and coal
still glowing
in the shadow of paper flowers
pressed to walls of plaster
and stone
5.1k
Venezia, its musical key of brick and shade
And the canals in rejoining polyphony
Sweeten the dour Church-ear.
From the impasto knife and loose brushwork,
A thumb-smear of waves and gently-bristled strife
Rise to assumption of the cloud-submerged bay,
Mural of cristallo, only-light without landscape,
Made too from the winds of Murano,
Its clayed blowpipe of waterways molding
The lagoon of blown glass and bouquet of colored sea-shadows.
The Tiber lies on its side, like the lion and fox,
Licking its paws at empire’s dust,
A drifting gaze of water that already foresees
The swift-run northward to Romagna,
Where the veined fur of the roe will succumb…
A ripple twitches like one dark claw of the Borgia…
The watercolors of the Arno are a fresco
On the wet plaster of the lips of Firenze, Tuscan fire-dream.
Or like the warring leg in curve of counterpoise,
Sprung foot-forward to the daring world
And arm slung down in stone-victory
From this valley, too much like Elah,
With taunting eyes turned from the Medici toward Rome.
May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019 at 10:06 AM UTC
One each end of a shelf
Victorian figurines
A boy and girl
Like crystalline
With stiff edged lace.
Never fell in love
But still precious
Bought by a Godmother
Who did not have children.
Then the plaster dancers
Spied in a box of my father’s
Given by a poor grandmother
Loved these two
With their net “tutus”
Such graceful arms
Long pointed legs
Felt their life twirling.
The difference between
Two worlds
The rich and stiff
Poor but beautiful.
My bedroom shelf,
With a poster of
**** Jagger,
in the middle,
smiling.
Love Mary x
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 2:21 PM UTC
Here I am, leg in plaster
Nurse with a needle, after me
Forgot the brake, can't go faster
Now all I get is woe and misery
CHORUS
I got those wheelchair blues
Suffering those wheelchair blues
Hear my wheelchair blues
I'm singing those wheelchair blues
Rushing to get that elevator again
Going quick and my hands are sore
I'm just too slow, because then
I end up crashing into the closed door
CHORUS
I got those wheelchair blues
Suffering those wheelchair blues
Hear my wheelchair blues
I'm singing those wheelchair blues
Showing off and think I'm clever
Should have taken my painkiller pill
You won't stop and wish I never
My fault for trying to go down hill
CHORUS
I got those wheelchair blues
Suffering those wheelchair blues
Hear my wheelchair blues
I'm singing those wheelchair blues
At last I can get out of the chair
But things will never be the same
Because now it just ain't fair
They've given me a Zimmer Frame
CHORUS
I got those wheelchair blues
Suffering those wheelchair blues
Hear my wheelchair blues
I'm singing those wheelchair blues
I got those wheelchair blues
Suffering those wheelchair blues
Hear my wheelchair blues
I'm singing those wheelchair blues
copyright Chris Smith
Nov 8, 2009
Nov 8, 2009 at 12:16 AM UTC
you see through me
and I through you
and father, too
has always been that way
the limits of my sight
being cradled in the Shanghai night
when
outside, teeming masses flowed through
the black wet shine of asphalt
like ants en route to the mound they cannot see
…while you and father created me
after,
with the curtains tipping on the sill
and the warm wind calling
but not knowing your names
he blew smoke into the Asian night
while you watched the grey placentate plumes
swirl sweetly to the stained ceiling
adorning its placid plaster with mystic memories
and the forbidden scents I will never smell
for you and he would never tell
what rhythmic rhymes you made
with the masses plodding along
oblivious to your milky movements
while they stirred in another darkness
Nov 12, 2011
Nov 12, 2011 at 2:49 PM UTC
The redneck got arrested last night.
The ******* was barking back at dogs
and belting shots of scotch well-before sundown.
You could say he and the sun were collectively sinking.
Nights like these
breed pregnant silences
between the outbursts.
I sit poised for the next eruption
as a child cloistered under covers for fear of thunderclaps--
Another howl,
(presumably bellowing for beer)
then he's batting his live-in lap-straddler
around the apartment beneath me.
With every strike
the drywall learns a lesson
this ignorant *****
can't get a grip on:
some things never change.
The world will change around them
like tissue growing around a bullet fragment.
The cops come,
the cuffs go on,
and the problem is put on pause for an evening--
but he'll ascend the stairs with the sunrise.
They'll reconcile,
because misery does want for company.
He'll promise he'll be different.
She'll actually believe him.
They'll be back to battering their plaster
with the reverberations of ******* and arguments.
She can't see that a drunkard's apologies
are counterfeit currency.
I took it for common knowledge.
Perhaps it is...
Perhaps, like living in tornado alley,
they cope with ceaseless shit-storms
because they're just too lazy to move.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 12:36 AM UTC
We lived briefly outside and at once
all of our one lives one innocuous evening.
I think it must’ve been a round ten.
We’d gone, really and already, in every sense,
a-stoop-smoking to clear the air of Murakami
and his personal identity. I guess we knew
we’d end up breathing significantly
before time came to shepherd us back in.
On the stoop, aglow in rosewood smoke,
in the streaked light of our chosen nostalgia
and strawberry hope, we pointed to things
we really saw—everything—pressing their
dimensions sharp through the buttery plaster
of our personal identities, like certain words
I happened to glimpse, in and out of Murakami.
I was startled when a car cut through the viscous
street in front of me like a hand underneath a piece
of cloth. It bent still shadows around a perfect
globule of movement and returned each to rest
only after each of its past moments had passed.
That’s when I saw my smoke trail slowly leave me,
unapologetically, heading across the invisible prairie
on its horses to drink by the bending river in the street.
It asked me if I knew, now, why I should come along.
I pointed and asked: What was that I just saw?
Where?
There by the street. What was that?
Oh, that was just
antlers on a fire truck this past Wednesday.
I don’t understand.
Of course you don’t. You won’t remember I said it.
Then why’d you say it?
To remind you you’ll forget.
Oh, I see. Thank you, then. I was about to
forget I’d forget. Now I know
I never will.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 5:46 PM UTC
Each passing day brings me closer to the date,
Where we'll plaster happy smiles and pretend to celebrate.
Have I done something great? Is that why we're here?
Or are we really celebrating the passing of another year?
One year, 52 weeks or 365 days,
It's just an excuse, a corporate cliché.
But don't worry, there's no need to celebrate,
Each day brings me closer to my own ****** fate.
HEY, it's my birthday!
& when it passes, it'll just be another day...
Trailing behind are my lost teen years,
No Mama, I still haven't conquered my fears.
Don't worry, there's still some life behind these eyes,
I never did understand the celebration of the fact time flies.
With masked faces surrounding my 20 candles of lies,
It's hard to tell what goes on in this light
With the flickers of the candles, tricking my sight.
Am I blowing out the candles?
Or am I blowing out my mind?
Don't bother now, there's no time to celebrate,
Love can't save me from my own ****** fate.
HEY, it's my birthday!
& when it passes, it'll just be another wasted day...
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 5:17 AM UTC