"pockmarks" poems
On failures I rejoice
pockmarks on the skin that is my being
Beautiful reminders of my own mortality
A slave to the Romans spoke:
"You are not a god"
Failures to me speak the same
I am not a god
I am above no one
To failures I owe humility
To failures I owe will
To failures I owe life
Because without them
I might be everlasting
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
wondrous words,
shades of colorations,
this pain,
artfully slow, steady stalking,
finale staking into
my hardened heart
with tireless twinges
of loss and constant regret,
painstakingly plinking away,
leaving pockmarks of bullets shot
at the concrete ring-fencing,
failing to protect me from just another,
**oh god not again,
have no mo' time**
for jes one mo' time
love's aftermath regret,
bitter acid wash,
that cleanses nothing,
for you are already nothing
when love loss wrenches/rents your
soul's garments with knotholes of
unfashionable distressed
distress
**better not to have loved,
better, better, better,**
than this battering silent hurricane
invisible thunderstorm internally,
than respects no seasonality,
for which the meteorologists
can predict neither its path or its
final cessation
painstakingly,
did I build my walled shelter,
only to fail-fall to the siege machines
of beauty and desire,
and
once conquered,
with fire and heat,
*they burnt me
from the outward edges inward,
and I am not a
Phoenix*
see the stooped slow white walker
more than dead, yet alive enough
existing to be witness to
his own devouring,
his hands wrapped round
the stake in his chest stuck,
painstakingly
protecting it,
lest its removal
be one more undoing of the
painstaking man
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 7:00 PM UTC
in our
besieged republic
snipers are
popping up
everywhere
taking ***
shots
ending lives
with a well placed
head shot
active shooters
star in
world premier
events
jokers
rise like
dark knights
casting large
looming shadows
on real 3D cinemax
multiplexed screens
sprinkling overpriced
buckets of popcorn
with generous
dollops of blood
others
head back to
school
still ******
about missing
recess and
excessive
sentences
to detention
halls where
bullies tortured
scrawny inmates
with wedgies
and painful
***** twisters
they’ve
come back
to even the score
leaving
bullet hole
pockmarks on
Sharpie smudged
smart boards
declaring endless
summer vacations
for classrooms
of children
who don’t
give wedgies
and only dream
of soft *****
these
urban guerillas
are now working
to liberate airports
from the tyranny
of TSA agents
fulfilling
PATRIOT ACT
duties for
10 bucks
an hour
and
last night
the latest
active shooter
showed up at
the Garden
State Plaza,
-my hometown
mall of america-
mumbling about his
Grand Theft Auto
score, strung out
and crashing
from an unfilled
pharma addiction
script
he grew
up as a
Highwayman
in Teaneck
a former
classmate
working
at Nordstroms
said he was
a really good kid
he was,
one of the good ones,
he could have shot
some people
but the only
person he
shot in the head
was himself
legions of
police officers
surrounding the mall
stood down
grateful for overtime
milling about
in the flashing
red strobes
inhaling the heady
blue fumes
rising to commend
Bergen County
Blue Laws and
next Sunday’s
time and a half
active shooter
training day
Jimi Hendrix:
Machine Gun
Oakland
11/5/13
jbm
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 1:12 PM UTC
If you ever get close
to the fork in a path,
wander through the tectonics
that diverged the road
in the first place.
Every pixel of your being
is animated. Even the unlit
trap doors leaving pockmarks
on your mind's landscape
possess colors with no name.
Who knew electronic and acoustic
were just estranged family all along?
GENRE is a manmade affectation--
music appreciation for Jingoists.
If they feed you a raindrop,
swallow the entire ocean.
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 6:38 PM UTC
Like a patterned rug
Beaten to be rid of dust and
Flopped over a balcony railing, a leopard
Hangs her hefty hands beneath a bough.
Head lolling lazily, she awakens.
Fingers like silent meteorites dig
Craters in the loose, dry earth.
From the grasses emerge many warm black eyes, unseen
And vicious: floral pockmarks on
Her carpeted exterior: cruel camouflage.
Deftly lugging her **** back
Into the branches to feed on its flesh:
Patterned rug stained.
Ears ***** and whiskers twitch
As boughs creak and twigtips reach
For the ground: the impala’s weight
Has weakened her arboreal home.
She panics not.
She slinks softly back into
The grasses: better to sidle away unscathed
From immediate danger.
Pride and body intact, she will **** again
Elsewhere.
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
There are walls waiting,
crumbling
as pockmarks of decay
beside sidewalks
along motor cities’ streets.
There are terminal
and forsaken structures
colonized
with ungrateful squirrels
that abandon
attics for creaking kitchens
with corroded sinks.
Un-shoveled snow melts
slow on walkways
unfamiliar with worn heels
or rubber soles.
There are forlorn relics
patient and waiting
for us to join them.
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 11:33 AM UTC
Fish heads for dessert
Confetti-saltwater taffy for lunch
Canned laughter for snack
And peptide bonds for a well balanced breakfast
"But whats for dinner?" says The Windbag
"But whats for dinner?!" screeches The Mimick
Hmm, well we have a choice between the sociocultural criteria and a toxic relationship
"Can't we have popsicles with answer-less riddles on the sticks?" asked the Windbag
"Can't we have popsicles with answer-less riddles on the sticks?!" copied The Mimick
"Leeme alone!" cried the Windbag
"Leeme alone!!" yelled The Mimick
In the end the decided to eat the pockmarks of bird feeding cohorts
They picked their teeth with proven points
Then watched The Windbag play the glockenspiel
Followed by The Mimick on the xylophone
As I put the leftover scraps in Tupperware, making sure to burp it before I put it away
-Tommy Johnson
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 5:14 PM UTC
where shall I send my poems?
to my eyelashes,
for they beat irregularly
unconcealed and unconscious
like my poems
to my fingertips,
where they are released fluidly
they grasp, strained and staining, tapping breaths
like my poems
to my smile,
fleeting and happy weeping fortuitously
a lifetime of a whisper, glimpsed and gone
like my poems
to my brain,
where they are symmetrically born only to die ceremonially
a fireworks duration evaporating into a rich velvet
like my poems
like my poems,
none will survive me,
blemishes, pockmarks, beauty marks, residues,
in a flash bang born, in a flash bang consumed
3:08am dec. 9 2019
Dec 9, 2019
Dec 9, 2019 at 3:17 AM UTC
Gently she raised her dress, revealing where the axe struck the tree,
"Here, a forest once thrived," she whispered solemnly,
Then came the scars, pathways for plastics to reach the sea,
Regret's sewage flowing through springs, an unwanted decree.
Landmines left pockmarks on her face, remnants of war's blight,
Awaiting the innocent, seeking to maim and to ignite,
Deep incisions from perilous landslides, a haunting sight,
A testament to the struggles endured day and night.
She revealed the melting snow, beckoning an avalanche of change,
Witnessing a road where an unsightly swamp once held its range,
Broken ships and skeletons, remnants left estranged,
Abandoned in the depths, hidden in ocean's grange.
Finally, she pointed to the scorching sun with teary eyes, "It didn't burn so fiercely until this heart carried its demise."
Jun 20, 2023
Jun 20, 2023 at 3:52 PM UTC
divot discoloration blemished imperfection.
The storybook of my flesh is peppered with these pockmarks of life.
A secret connect the dots maze on my body binding the story pages together.
I grin as I examine my body and all it's protruding oddities, how beautiful it is as I crash course through this crazy ocean my breath still ebbs and flows in synchronization.
I love the nooks of me no one else could possibly understand.
my peculiarly chipped tooth buried in my gums as a reminder of juvenile fun.
I tuck myself into a bed of comfort cradling these imperfections, a grand testament of life.
The girl with the electric smile and lazy eye.
Aug 4, 2016
Aug 4, 2016 at 2:43 AM UTC
The esoteric emotion,
hidden in the back
of the cupboard,
pressed neatly
'gainst the wall,
peeling back the
paper, musty beige with
pale pea pockmarks.
The raunchiness
was a given;
anything will rot,
become rancid,
when locked away
with the light
vacuumed tight from
dusk to day,
with none but
a forlorn face
to think on.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 8:21 PM UTC
I was hungry, so I went to the deli to eat,
And it wasn’t a far walk, just right down the street.
My stomach was excited, as I threw open the door,
But immediately I thought, “This decision was poor.”
Behind the counter stood a man who looked like a freak,
With pockmarks and moles that made my knees weak.
His mouth was a mess and his teeth, long and mangled,
It’s a mystery that they fit, with the way they were angled.
I was uneasy at first, but decided I’d try,
And maybe It’d turn out he wasn’t a bad guy.
I told him I wanted a BLT:
Bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mayo -- really easy.
Well, this guy turned out to be about as smart as a rock,
He proceeded to ruin my sandwich while I stared in shock.
First he grabs the roll, and cuts it in two,
And the two halves were uneven! What’s wrong with you!?
Then he picks up the mayo knife and starts to slather,
And I realize that this guy didn’t even gather
The fact that there’s ketchup all over the knife that he’s using!
I feel like this guy is starting to find this amusing.
Next for the veggies -- the L and T --
Should be simple, but this guy really worried me.
He slaps on the lettuce which is slimy and brown,
This was now a competitor for “Worst Sandwich in Town.”
Time for tomatoes, and I’m feeling scared…
He takes the nasty white end pieces, and throws them on like, “Who cares?”
Then he wraps up the sandwich that he thinks he’s done makin’,
And he hands it to me even though there’s No Bacon!!
So I looked at him straight, and I spoke him these words,
“You can have that back, since it looks as appealing as turds!”
I stormed out the deli feeling nothing but disgust,
And decided that that was the last time I trust
A deli worker who had teeth that didn’t fit his jaw,
And a face that looked like he kissed a bansaw.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 1:28 PM UTC
He's wearing my favorite shirt.
And he speaks in tones of peppered loss and rageless loss.
The claws click against the veranda's shade.
His pockmarks glow in the reflected dew.
So quietly announcing the sun's stretches and it's yawn.
They arrive, my fast continues.
Beneath the grounded carpet,
The slope brings me towards the river.
The color green surrounds me, my reflection quite to speak.
I stop to look above and see the black clip of flight.
I look to the paper and begin to finish.
The ink runs out as I enroll in the water's treatment.
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 8:42 AM UTC
Pits and pockmarks
flit and dart
across an infinite ceiling.
Random synchronicity
plays patter song
stupor and languidity
The orchestra conducting
purple and yellow
to a sparkling, a
crushing crescendo
falls like a wave on tastebuds, tempting.
She lingers like
fog on a pane of glass
A sharp signature
impaled on a pile
of dreaming dust.
Like a rushed column
updraft through a house
of leaves blank and staring.
A mark from the
back of your palms up.
Your fingers stuck signing
a language sang by the blind.
How did she stay so long
A force hidden in neuron canyons.
A Gypsy camp lodged
between cortexes
spinning silk into a
muffled gasp, a conspiratory shuffle.
She lingers like spines of glass
in nailbeds, planted sweetly,
with the best of care.
Laughter in an asylum
electroshock dreams soaked in sweat.
Grabbed my brain like a chemical symphony.
Painted pictures of pivotal seconds,
wrapped up and romanticized.
Dreamt about.
Your lilting language planted
little honeypots deep in my palms.
Sparked fire from entropy
lighting a city in my chest.
But now these buildings tower
like Goliath in David’s dreams.
I need to escape
I need to slide out of
this sleep you’ve monopolized.
******* dreams
like smokering fingerprints
left on the cleft of my conscience.
The old taqueria on Victory.
The Bourgeois Pig.
The bitter spice of winter
painted over the cracks
crumbling the walls.
These waking hallucinations
haunt my habits.
Still frequent the holeinthewall
dives in my heart.
Nov 14, 2011
Nov 14, 2011 at 8:33 AM UTC
every pretty metaphor has been used,
so instead of telling you,
"your eyes are like stars",
or,
"your skin is like glass",
or,
"your teeth are like porcelain",
I'll tell you the truth.
your eyes are brown,
brown like the color of blood,
when it's dried into my cotton sleeves.
with little dark flecks that look like footsteps in desert sand.
your skin is a landscape map.
it's got bumps and pockmarks and divets
and hills and valleys and wrinkled canyons
and forests where you don't shave because you don't care (I like that).
your teeth are tombstones.
a little jagged. not quite diamond white.
you smile too big for your cheeks, and
you had all your wisdom teeth cut out before we met
(you wish you had asked the dentist to keep them, but you were on drugs and forgot).
by now you're probably thinking,
"is this an insult?"
and I want to clarify that, no, it's not.
I think your eyes and your skin and your teeth are so ******* beautiful
I've looked at you and wanted to cry.
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 9:46 PM UTC
pockmarks bomb the oblivious cavalcade wet dripping nuisance cataracts Holy stove to the tracks Grow missile candide fenesin shovel living space
loved back the feeding Farsight
nowhere near the ending candy torpid glasses
foul just situation beat down the what eyelash grasp of following feathers
mine jaundiced knuckles
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 2:11 AM UTC
Hello,
dear.
It's been awhile since I've last saw your scarred face,
those pockmarks etched across your skin
as you leered at me with those
hungry, greedy eyes.
It's been awhile since your words have affected me,
how they used to whisper in my ears
about all those little imperfections that scatter across my body like rainclouds on a sunny day-
But not everyone seems to hate rain.
Mar 8, 2016
Mar 8, 2016 at 6:12 PM UTC
Love is like the measles.
Once you catch it,
it starts spreading like wildfire.
First, the itch,
then the ugly zits
and finally the scars.
Those nasty pockmarks
reminding you that getting bitten by the love bug
can cause serious damage to the patient.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 5:45 PM UTC
If you're so broken, why don't you find the bottle opener, cupcake?
Why don't you lick the frosting off the bottom of the bowl, stoner?
When you say you're just pitiful, I see rain puddles drooling from the pockmarks of your cheeks.
I wish you'd realize that the sun isn't just shining out of my broken skin knuckles.
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 11:48 PM UTC
Clutching at straws for purchase, I dive in every direction.
Leaping off faith like churches, I bend to the will of the wind.
Searching for scraps of focus, my heart beats the way as it sings.
Thanking the world as it teaches,
I exalt what the future may bring.
The drive lights in my head as sparks, forced from my mind pray they fly.
The weight of “what if" pockmarks, eager sow seeds ‘til one catches.
Doubts thrown at me from my darks, each explosion paint ******* my way.
A way out not promised yet trying,
Is the only thing worth ‘til I die.
Fear lords over me as a despot, chance spirals before me like time.
Crawling from lazy this cesspit, resistance the bane of us all.
My goal simple as respite, shed stress I know vestigial
Find me my path steady carving.
Eroding at life ‘til I'm fine.
Jul 5, 2018
Jul 5, 2018 at 11:34 PM UTC
They sit in the humblest of frames,
Faux wood-grained plastic grotesqueries
Purchased long ago from some doomed Grants or Bradlees,
Though one or two enjoy something nicer,
Left behind by some long-timer taking a buyout
Or a sympathetic youngster denied tenure
(She has, for the better part of three decades,
Cleaned up the detritus of middle-school children,
A bit stooped from the work,
Not to mention the burden
Of any number of she’s just or she’s only
Tossed like so much bric-a-brac in her direction.)
The approximations of old masters equally eclectic in origin:
One or two gallery-quality reproductions
Blithely abandoned by some haughty faculty matron
Mentoring children through noblesse oblige,
The odd promotional piece from a scholastic publisher,
Mostly things she has cut from magazines or discarded texts.
She studiously avoids pieces tending to the dark or muted,
No Stuart portraiture or pensive Vermeers;
She has a strong predilection for bold, boisterous Gaugins,
Mad cubist Picassos, lush Cezanne still-lifes,
Even the odd blocky *******
If you pressed her to explain her fetish
For the brightest of the great masters,
She would likely be at a loss to explain,
Having no academic bent for such things
(Though she has been known to curse the shortcomings
Of lithographers and pressmen under her breath)
And, as she freely admits, I’m not much good with words.
There would be the uncharitable suggestion
That their purpose is to mask cracks and pockmarks in her walls
(She has, to be sure, lived in a long series of such places)
But she has never, consciously or otherwise,
Used them for such pedestrian and utilitarian purposes;
They are, to her anyway, beautiful, and that is all they need be.
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 11:17 AM UTC
We were one man
Or woman
Or something -
Whatever it was?
We were one of those-
Small pockets of dust and skin and old receipts that linger behind the bookcase
All the pockmarks on the face of the teenage universe
Still learning how to drive
with shaky hands
A face breaking through the taut plastic shield of the lake surface
to gulp down air
An old house creaking in the wind
Singing its occupants to sleep
We were all of them
One man
Or woman
Or something else entirely
We were us and more
Apr 23, 2018
Apr 23, 2018 at 8:53 PM UTC
after Ansel Elkins
Carabao **** isn't permafrost,
temperature, disdain — climates
stirring into a tornado soup
of force, melting, seclusion.
In the heartbeat of gulls,
the waves gargled froth and
spat on charred limestone.
Then the grass beneath our
wet feet writhed in the
slice of wind atop the hills
of Hiyop, in Catanduanes
where roads go unmoored from
their skiffs like violin
strings curling under sharp
slide. You can invent a new
word to describe transformations,
but these will never catch it
in the act — the moment
vibration somersaults into
howl, when swinging grass
is louder than jetplanes
then suddenly quieter than
prayer. I like to dig my thumb
into the soft marsh, dirt
occupying the folds, creases;
labyrinthine pathways of skin
blanketed with Earth.
At this point the mountain
knows me;
and I dare to know the
mountain but come short, reaching
only its narrow berms,
pockmarks,
and shit-ridden sheath of
dry flowers cooking the
words to a song of its
people.
May 3, 2019
May 3, 2019 at 10:48 PM UTC
Americana is a saggy *** ***** that leaves pockmarks in the sheets and sludge underneath the handles in the bathroom.
The staff either don't or can't clean it.
Lazy or honest.
What a legacy.
Her steel sheds and high hanging water towers peppered with rust stains, harken to the diseases that claimed this body long ago.
Waylaid by a bygone era of chauvinism and supremacy.
***** by billionaire promises and suffocated
by his Bible's belt.
Autoeroticism is a blood red state gasping for hot wet air in its own existential twilight.
Never to rise again.
Your labyrinthine streets shaded by overgrowth and cracked freeways.
Your dirtbrown waters and fenced in dogs.
They bark at the sky, screaming of the same stir crazy psychosis that's infected everything else within your borders.
Beneath your clothes.
I can see your long drooping ******* caked with the inky milk from long gone reserves.
Black gold drained.
Powdered milk of a different sort.
Victim to the greed you've coveted and ****** on.
Hard.
*****
Fast.
Loud.
Your tragedy is vaguely romantic,
in its slumped and defeated stature.
Vericosed stilts stuck in the sewage and mud of your ideologies.
No, we cannot go to bed together.
I'm afraid of what the blood test would come back with in the dull diesel smoked grey morning.
Something I've come to know you for.
The sun sets red as the corners of your eyes.
Who ever said an apocalypse had to happen suddenly?
Your broken bones and hip strapped cattle calls.
An auctioneer in the distance.
The proud cliche of a lie laid Western Lore.
The hot irons of pride in your sockets.
You can't even see how hard we're all laughing.
Only a few of these tears are for you.
Oct 20, 2020
Oct 20, 2020 at 1:31 PM UTC
To be bitter
To be justified
To set grip cells
On nuance of despise refined
Clear as a bell in chapter one
But still
This old hat robe
Of one trick
Same old song
The big mistakes we all pretend to make
You know I know you know I know
Lets look this up
Hallowed ***** patsy
Of the only book
We ever reed We never read
Oh god these Rhythmic word sounds sway our head
Don’t analyse forbidden trees
Ye even me
With my vitriol against all this
How could I resist
You know I’m feeling it
The moral thread of what we chose
Man I worship naked flesh
But still Id die for clothes
And ****
This ****** birth ********** cuts me to the bone
Excuses
All 200.000 first cast stones
Yet glimmer folk tail of the trees
Progeny of blood and spiel
Xenophiliac
We crave unknown.
Diversity
And paradise was not
For we subvert, mutate, make art
Pain a small price
For a heart that drinks
In the textures of the voice
A Moan that never really changes much
From first outrage to last exchange
Pockmarks of agro-culture on my skin
The weight of centuries of blunder
Before I make this my own sin
Guns, germs and all that you can steal
And yes I'v contemplated ******
Now I can’t tear my gaze from your mouth slick with grease
Of more dead flesh
Pretty girls with big wet eyes. Break my heart and make me
Cross your legs and swear to die
Pretty boys who love my rage. Resent my kindness. Crave my cage
Everybody wants to cry
DNA thats drenched in irony
Catastrophe
Atrocity
Fatal mistakes
And yet
Our hands still shake
The blood still sings
Dancing
In the future that we bring
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 6:13 AM UTC