"pricking" poems
Lost Love
He remembers that day
many sad years ago
it was sunny out,
but soon a storm raged.
He returned home early
from work,
eager
to rest and nurse a cold.
Eager
to see his gorgeous wife
fix him a delicious soup
and give loving care,
a remedy not.
He caught a surprise.
Was it then a hallucination?
To see her ex's car
in front of their house,
fanning the flames in his heart?
Or to imagine the house shaking,
or to hear love noises howling
from the rafters of contempt,
as her fireplace warmed tempest.
He sure hoped then... it had been a misfire
it wasn't.
He slowly opened the front door,
walking decrepit and sad,
like he was in hospice care.
He could see the final script
playing out,
more so the tragic ending
the trail of clothes,
her ex-boyfriend's scent,
calamity,
and approaching closer
the devil speaking louder.
He opened the bedroom door
to their parts caught in honey jars
and scarlet red on his tainted wife
over bed sheets of shame.
Their eyes catch,
both flush, and tearful,
as breathing stopped,
his melancholy eyes asking why?
Why?
What about the future lily pods,
our family, house, kids
... and you sell out.
What about being fresh
out of college with our dreams,
passion and honor...us.
What about the bonds,
pinky swears, pricking of blood
marital vows.
Her eyes had no answers.
She cried, loudest
as her ex-boyfriend bolted
not before passing the mill.
He closed her door for good
that mournful day,
dismissing darkness,
opening his wrath for her
in his mind, yet
what words or light can be exchanged?
Uprooted and lost, he walked
scarred over and over
by her promise and lost love.
That was thirty years ago
and he still walks with her
ghosts, and it still pains.
LR-5/4/17
May 4, 2017
May 4, 2017 at 11:31 PM UTC
A wildflower.
Rejected and ignored by the world.
I spread no fragrance, I spread no love.
I want no one, I have no one.
My life is like of a wildflower.
Nobody cares, nobody loves.
Nobody sees the thorns pricking me, nobody feels the coldness freezing me.
Just a ray of light touches my pale skin when the dew falls, and suddenly disappears when the tall trees wakes.
I wish, I wish, I wish if one day I was blown away with the wind to a garden of wildflowers,
live a life where everybody sees each others' flaws, but breath the same air, nourished by the same soil and spread the love they never got.
Oh, to be in a garden of wildflowers, hidden from a bouquet of roses.
To fit just to keep her safe from not getting pricked by the thorns in the roses.
Everything that looks beautiful, smells pretty or makes u feel a rose,
ain't happiness.
'Cause no one knows what she has to go through just to get the love she has always wanted.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 4:40 AM UTC
There is a feeling inside my heart that’s hard to explain
A hole, an empty void
Whose presence I feel strongly
Having nothing can hurt deeply
It’s a feeling that ******
And doesn't stop pricking
Where will you run?
To failure, guilt, and hurt?
The emptiness will follow like a shadow
Sometimes you'll use words to let it all out
Other times everything will go numb
But the feeling of emptiness stays
Silently screaming
Asking to be filled
You ask how
It says figure out
The cycle is exhausting
So you quietly close your eyes
Hoping to escape from it all for a while
After all tomorrow is another day
And the sun might shine
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 1:21 PM UTC
he used his hands to touch around my pure bare smooth skin
and told me it was supposed to feel magical,
but what is magic without a shinny golden lamp?
he rubbed it three time and continued.
he told me that i was a princess, untouchable to others, but him.
set on a perfect seated throne.
that seat was made just for me.
he ignored every blood drip drop
and shoved the glass slipper in as if it fit.
he whispered into my ear
and told me, i sounded like mourning birds chirping
as i screeched horridly being poisoned by an apple.
it felt like a needle pricking in and out of my skin.
laying there in eternity, still and steady.
wishing i could forever sleep.
but how can i sleep forever when he is the beast that has held me captive in his castle of words?
“the princess is supposed to kiss the frog and he will turn into a prince.”
i kissed the frog.
no.
i did even more, but he was nothing like their stories.
his story was different from the books.
he told me it was my fault that i was a singing siren.
i was just too desirable,
so he had to pull me out of the water and show me something new.
Dec 3, 2021
Dec 3, 2021 at 6:57 PM UTC
All I see is up
The pink flower stretches to forever at the sky
I stare wishing to be among the clouds
Its anterior filters the sun’s warmth upon my soft arms
I sit upon the dark, sodden, summer earth
I am all to myself. Alone.
At home under their stems
So benign am I encased by the pink flower
The pink flower trembles under slight hand of a summer breeze
Honeyed are its petals,
But dangerous is its center
Pricking my delicate fingers
If I am not careful
Yet I watch a dragonfly land on it with grace
Fragile insect legs grip tightly at the miniature pointed peaks
Wind caresses wisps of hair around my petite face
I am like a fairy
Not knowing the wonders of the world
Only the kingdom of the pink flower
Moisture sweetens the air
Drenching it with the breath of nature
Almost as if a mother is breathing comfort into my small body
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 4:51 PM UTC
You’re a thorn in my side, but at the same time that
You’re stabbed into my skin,
You’re also making my sides split in laughter:
You’re so funny when you remind me that
I’m the one who forced you into my side,
That I could very well pluck you out and throw you down but
I’d always go back to that spot on the ground where I dumped you,
Picking you up and pricking you back in
As we laugh together at my pain.
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 7:51 AM UTC
There the merry hologram glowing blue purple blue
Cactus human cherry on a stool
Beyond the window he would not look
Inside the sky made of wood.
The barber talks to his ferns
The flowers he understood
The living they earn
Sparkling its rough nails of your barber.
The breath and life he will spruce with apple-pie order.
He listens to
Each one story
Always about a time
A time which was cheery.
He looks piercingly to all their prickly
What he touches intently
To turn the time that latches onto your head which started feeling heavy.
Lifted into glee so jolly and carefree.
A man
Or the boys
They finally stand up easily.
Capes dusted
Top hat powdered
Their voice of fears collected as tips
For pricking up his ears.
The door that opens in the end
The swirling light that beckons
Hair became a way to lighten ---
When times get rough and belligerent
Cut it off, rugged and ruffian.
The barber hears him and all
The others like soldiers
They share their laughs
Troubles leaving shoulders
Leaving like a waterfall.
The barber knows everything
The barber knows all.
Oct 6, 2018
Oct 6, 2018 at 10:54 PM UTC
I heard every word you said.
Still running through my head.
Your words like a needle, slowly pricking my skin.
Prodding, picking finally making themselves slowly in.
Staring off into the street, I knew I had to walk away.
I could’nt bear stay nor listen to another word you say.
Ashamed to have felt something more.
My heart grew heavy and very sore.
I slipped away, blankly into space.
Disappointment and anger staring me in the face.
I’m like a sock.
A ***** one.
However, twasn’t ***** at first.
In fact it was brand new. Really, a very nice beautiful sock.
It was comfortable too, and fit you well.
You wore it so often, the fabric became thin.
Eventually a tiny little hole made its way in.
At first the hole wasn’t bad.
Sometimes it drove you crazy and even mad.
Yah know that feeling when all that sand gets in?
Though irritating maybe it tickled, even made you grin.
Boy! Did those socks get a lot of use, they were great.
You still loved those socks.
They were getting rattier and rattier every day, but you used them anyway.
They were THE socks yah know? You see them, and you know you JUST want to wear them.
So you wear them, you have a run, a WONDERFUL day ,in fact, in those socks.
Really, you always have nice days in those socks, they were just so comfortable!
You know how things get old? Well those socks got really old, I mean REALLY old.
Looking at them- “Man those socks are the best, putting them on now.”
You wish they would last but you just didn’t know how.
Excited to start your day, you put your favorite socks on.
But, **** one sock really ripped with a giant massive hole.
Such a disappointment, you can’t really enjoy them anymore, they were better when you first bought them.
MAN, that hole got so irritating.
Not only sand came in but now pebbles and big rocks.
That **** pair of socks!
Not willing to throw them away cuz they were THE socks.
You washed them and put them in a far off box. Still ***** worn, and torn. Maybe you will use them again one day.
But, I don’t want to be your ***** socks.
I walked away.
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 6:33 AM UTC
The flowers will bloom, when will this child inside me bloom?
The vines have thorns.
Will these thorns keep pricking me?
I can't even really feel them.
Will I heal?
This deflated heart is waiting to be pumped with your love for all the right reasons.
This ain't no treason.
The emptiness in between the walls.
Spaces between my teeth.
Can I just feel again?
Make me feel again.
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
Damaged trust and marriage schemes
Held hostage in each others' dreams
Pinned to walls but flailing still
Forgotten values, failing wills
True love waits, we tell ourselves
True love gladly stacks the shelves
True love sets conditions and
True love does the dishes and
Slowly, slowly, we forget
Just why we're here and who we met
Another notch in wrinkled frowns
Where I keep getting lost and found
In roller-coaster ups and downs
I'm lost and lost and lost and found
Missing flights and toxic tongues
Catharsis found in tar-filled lungs
I lost myself in who I wasn't
And in what true love does and doesn't
Not quite gaslit, not quite safe
Playing back the ancient tape
We envy death for constancy-
Besmirching our own consciences
We forgo our emoluments
Too traumatized by precedents
But hush you tell me, no one knows
The pretzel-bending ways we grow
Forever twisting round and round
Lost and lost and lost and found
Now freaking out, now breaking down
Now glaciers found in evening gowns
Now agonizing 'Who am I?'s
Now dying fire in your eyes
At last the sunset settles debts
We tally up our last regrets
Relenting to incessant ghosts
Abandoning essential posts
'Til all that's left is loss and hurt
It burns and burns and burns and burns
And now I choke on orders filled
And mourn alone the youth we killed
I scrape the comb across my nettles
Pricking feelings, bleeding mettle
Finally free from ups and downs,
I find myself on solid ground
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 2, 2018 at 10:52 PM UTC
Moments of life,
Moments to explore,
Moments when I go crazy,
Moments when I need more.
Moments that are mine,
Moments that I do not own,
Moments that are heightened,
Through thoughts and no thoughts alone.
Moments penning poetry,
Moments by the sea,
Moments smelling flowers,
And the thorns pricking me.
Exquisite Joy
and Exquisite pain,
Moments with another,
feeling his grasp on my mane.
Moments where my thoughts are in knots,
Moments of release where I see just stars and dots.
And then sweet oblivion,
And floating gently above the tree,
Moments where I open my body and soul,
And am bound and totally free!
Jul 23, 2019
Jul 23, 2019 at 11:35 PM UTC
Bundled up and toasted
Stare to the exorbitant heavens
A dimmed electrifying spirit world
Leaving only one trifling light on
A slight single frozen tear
Rides the broad frigid air
To the glaring reality below
The silky cotton takes time
Flowing through a lingering life
Of chilled floating bliss
It taps the up turned nose
Tiny frozen feet make a stand
An intense tickle flows through the pumping veins
Leaving a feeling of pricking cherub kisses
Nervous life lungs squeeze
Releasing a single reclined breath
Concrete relaxed steam
Rubs the tufted sapped lips
Dissolving into the hazed sky
She has arrived
Mother Winter
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 5:09 AM UTC
Piercing my belly button
before I passed out,
a tattoo artist told me
that piercings are ******
I am reminded of this
in my surprising discovery
that pricking one’s own finger
is also ******
in a slightly demented,
***** sort of way
Jan 24, 2014
Jan 24, 2014 at 12:23 PM UTC
an ancient lyric, come to haunt,
no longer a shield, now thinner,
of gossamer consistency,
a tissue-thin papyrus,
“my poetry to protect me”
the poem words always were
a clarinet reed, capable of singing,
a highest pitch voice for turning
blades of clean steel clean away,
now blunting paper bunting, penetrated.
re-formed my shield, re-purposed,
into a stabbing instrument offensive,
my poetry pricking tearings in my worn
thin fabric tapestry, woven from linen
excuses of why I can’t, why couldn’t I.
this is life. moats becoming drowning
pools, castle walls reversed to entrapments,
wrecking machines, boulders hurling,
medieval defenseless against modern rhymes
giving away to free verse horde onslaught.
too late to apologize to myself, alas, my words,
my protectorate, island redoubt, now ruined
by doubts treachery breech birthed from within,
these verses hollow point bullets engineered,
Caesar’s words clarified, you, et tu, are Brutus
too, two, for the price of one, betrayer and betrayed.
Jun 21, 2020
Jun 21, 2020 at 5:44 PM UTC
Hot and licking.
Clot and pricking
Jubilantly unrehearsed.
But cools. Now a curse.
Waning the soul.
Draining the whole.
Too much a tax.
Is this. This raining wax.
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 9:34 PM UTC
these memories
each one sharp as a thorn
yet so supple
a new chapter of life has now begun
do I leave my past behind?
closing my eyes
remembering every single one
pricking and prodding
trying to find my happiness
but that is something that I have left behind
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 4:24 PM UTC
She stayed up quite late many nights
Pricking her fingers raw sometimes
Telling herself that it did indeed matter.
She would thread a ribbon with such care that it seemed as if the ribbon was her own life
And each stitch with such precision!
Lined with words, with nouns, the adjectives kept together just perfect
Yet no one would wear her sorry stories
No, no one read the tear-stained woven fabrics
In such brilliant hues that even a cardinal would be jealous.
Scarlet after all is such a lovely color.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 8:23 PM UTC
I am counting twelve pairs of ribs lining the perimeters
of my torso
Boney Me
Asthenia fingers
Wasted knees and knuckles
Pricking the hard chords on my chest-guitar
Misery eyes -- Dashing around in dustbin sockets
My head like a raisin with skull-shaped framing
****** inward
Looking at the dead animals guilting me
Looking at the withering plants begging for water
Evil food.
Attracted to the mirror
I know only this
Only what I see -- And I see a sow.
Lost in this possibly regrettable movement
Towards
Skeletons
Boney Me
Looking at the evil food
I tell it that I hate it and that it will never be me
I tell it I want to be like the flossy ones on magazines
Thin to skinny to boney
Boney me smoking an e-cig
I defeat the evil foods tonight
Surviving on primal back-up spirits
Surviving for the hope of closeness
Maybe
I can waste away all this skin
And finally see my own heart.
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 11:32 PM UTC
And there she was
A rough scab on a smooth perfect knee
With a chalky cigarette between bony fingers
Chipped red painted nails
Matching crimson accenting glossy white walls
She knew she was dreaming
Because of the ****** sun in the middle of the room
Chapped lips crack with scarlet, staining teeth
Surgical gloves reaching out from her beating heart
Held in by pale marked skin
Needles pricking gums, calling upon beads of ruby
Incisors and canines fall out one by one
Heavy tongue tastes gory wine
Indifference and apathy sistering one another
Stitches hold right-handed fingers in permanent crosses
Though an opal ring falls through
The shattering crystal lights the room ablaze
Intangible flames lick the ceiling as it rises and the floor sinks
An ever-expanding room flashing over and over in endless continuity
Like a repeating reel of film catching on fire
And then she was gone
Nov 15, 2022
Nov 15, 2022 at 4:12 PM UTC
always had that feel that a poem could be born
when you're doing nothing lazily munching popcorn
because doing nothing is everything, it's not a void
but a streaming popcorn welling inside you can't avoid!
in sunlight and shadows in pricking pinching weather
the nothing that knows no rest doesn't give you a breather
doing nothing is the busiest time it's everything to savour
like your spicy popcorn that lends living a flavour!
doing nothing is the most fertile time for a perfect brew
munching your popcorn thinking wildest things to do
When bored of doing nothing that in His head earth was born
God surely conceived it when He was lazily munching popcorn!
Sep 24, 2013
Sep 24, 2013 at 8:12 AM UTC
I can feel myself drifting
Drifting away from the world and reality,
Drifting away from all the happiness
Drifting
I can feel myself drifting.
I struggle to grab ahold of something,
anything,
To keep me grounded,
but there isn’t anything around.
Empty space surrounds me,
it swallows me whole.
I feel my breath start to slow,
I feel tears pricking at my eyes.
I can feel myself drifting
Drifting.
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 10:07 AM UTC
It’s not a bad goal
to be the kind of girl who
Rumi writes about.
So unknowingly
this bright muse interpreted
to touch and inspire.
But me? Never meant
to be the subject of art—
an object of thirst.
See, I’m the poet,
existing somewhere alone—
a penchant for soul.
Watercolor thoughts,
manipulating the lines
between joy and pain.
It’s not a bad goal
to be the kind of girl
who becomes Rumi
either.
Jun 17, 2015
Jun 17, 2015 at 4:19 PM UTC
Tricho-tillo-mania.
It rolls quite nicely off the tongue
Like the type of disease one with
Deep seated fears and complex facades
Would possess
When did this bad habit begin and form?
Has is always been silently lurking within this body?
Ready to pounce on any destructive opportunity
That would arise from my gut
Tricho-tillooooo-maniaaa.
I can overcome it, I know I can
Wait no, an hour went by and oh
Another pile of discarded hair on the floor
Again. And again.
If this luxurious mane of thick, dark hair is so
Admirable and wanted.
Why can I not stop plucking it from the very
Fibers of my skull’s skin?
Tricho-tillo-mania.
Keep it up and there will be naught
A single strand left on top of this girl’s head
My fingertips are aching and raw
Pleading with me to stop this
Nitpicking of these brown straws
Even as I type my nails
Scratch and burrow into my flesh
Pricking and prodding for what?
I wish I knew so I could tell you.
Trichotillomania.
Maybe my innermost desire
Is to rip this bruised skin and broken hair off my body
Until I am nothing more than a hot, ****** mess
Of congealed, dripping, internal organs
And a new case of polished, refined
Poreless, porcelain skin
and ruby- red sensual lips
Could **** me up and out of it
A perfect stranger would emerge
Free from my vice and sin.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 11:23 PM UTC
there are branches fingers of a dead will tendrils waving into a roaring white nothing wine into milk declaring themselves trying to make their realness known but reaching further into nothing and pin pricking out of the air texture to nothing like stained glass on a cage it gave us like in the beginning was the word and the word was like pretending there is an aether and they guard it and if I race through their gaps
Wake in nothing.
Put on my debris.
Cup my hand to The Sun.
Sit in a stone room and touch myself.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 7:04 PM UTC
It had rained all night
And drenched the land outright
Leaving puddles and pools,
Here, there and everywhere.
But the morning saw
The sun blazing ever more bright
I watched the water
Flowing silently away
With no ostentation
Along channels, furrows and waterways
Cavities, crevices and culverts
And through ditches and drains
What little remained,
Seeped down unnoticed
Through innumerable pores unseen.
As prisoners from narrow cells
Suddenly released into boundless space
Or troops from a garrison
On a spurt of fresh attack
The children shut indoors
Came out in gangs
To romp, jump and play.
Unmindful of anything,
They soon lost in a wave of giggles.
But how sudden was the change!
The sky over cast with dark clouds
Fired out like a water cannon.
Once more the rain,
Cascaded down with greater vengeance
Each drop weighing gallons
And the silver needles pricking deep
Making the children flee
In directions all round
Like autumn leaves
Scattered by the wind!
The rain continued to pour
Inundating the low lying lands
Oh! Mother Nature
How erratic are your moods
How unpredictable
How like a child throwing tantrums
And how quickly appeased!
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 5:36 AM UTC