"prickly" poems
Some say love's a little boy,
And some say it's a bird,
Some say it makes the world go around,
Some say that's absurd,
And when I asked the man next-door,
Who looked as if he knew,
His wife got very cross indeed,
And said it wouldn't do.
Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,
Or the ham in a temperance hotel?
Does its odour remind one of llamas,
Or has it a comforting smell?
Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,
Or soft as eiderdown fluff?
Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
O tell me the truth about love.
Our history books refer to it
In cryptic little notes,
It's quite a common topic on
The Transatlantic boats;
I've found the subject mentioned in
Accounts of suicides,
And even seen it scribbled on
The backs of railway guides.
Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,
Or boom like a military band?
Could one give a first-rate imitation
On a saw or a Steinway Grand?
Is its singing at parties a riot?
Does it only like Classical stuff?
Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?
O tell me the truth about love.
I looked inside the summer-house;
It wasn't over there;
I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,
And Brighton's bracing air.
I don't know what the blackbird sang,
Or what the tulip said;
But it wasn't in the chicken-run,
Or underneath the bed.
Can it pull extraordinary faces?
Is it usually sick on a swing?
Does it spend all its time at the races,
or fiddling with pieces of string?
Has it views of its own about money?
Does it think Patriotism enough?
Are its stories ****** but funny?
O tell me the truth about love.
When it comes, will it come without warning
Just as I'm picking my nose?
Will it knock on my door in the morning,
Or tread in the bus on my toes?
Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.
43.4k
A sea of nettles and nails that scream their injustice at you
People who seem like they've shaken off their prickly outsides and their hatred
Turning to congratulate them
Embrace them
Before you find the truth beneath their pillowy covering
Nails can be blunted and nettles can be softened but they remain below your surface,
Waiting for the right moment to be sharpened and grow back their stings
I see your injustice and I raise you my peace
It hurts to tear out your nails and to burn off those nettles
But oh god does it hurt more to walk your tender, soft body through that forest of pain
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 3:36 PM UTC
Some day, if you are lucky,
you’ll return from a thunderous journey
trailing snake scales, wing fragments
and the musk of Earth and moon.
Eyes will examine you for signs
of damage, or change
and you, too, will wonder
if your skin shows traces
of fur, or leaves,
if thrushes have built a nest
of your hair, if Andromeda
burns from your eyes.
Do not be surprised by prickly questions
from those who barely inhabit
their own fleeting lives, who barely taste
their own possibility, who barely dream.
If your hands are empty, treasureless,
if your toes have not grown claws,
if your obedient voice has not
become a wild cry, a howl,
you will reassure them. We warned you,
they might declare, there is nothing else,
no point, no meaning, no mystery at all,
just this frantic waiting to die.
And yet, they tremble, mute,
afraid you’ve returned without sweet
elixir for unspeakable thirst, without
a fluent dance or holy language
to teach them, without a compass
bearing to a forgotten border where
no one crosses without weeping
for the terrible beauty of galaxies
and granite and bone. They tremble,
hoping your lips hold a secret,
that the song your body now sings
will redeem them, yet they fear
your secret is dangerous, shattering,
and once it flies from your astonished
mouth, they-like you-must disintegrate
before unfolding tremulous wings.
Apr 19, 2016
Apr 19, 2016 at 10:37 AM UTC
Prickly pokey
I guess I'm kind of hokey
cacti are my jam!
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 2:00 PM UTC
Mistah Kurtz—he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We ***** together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
17.9k
My mind raw and twisted,
The soft spell of my fingers touch the leather skinned whip as I expel it against your juicy little ***
Moments like these are my favorite, when your with me.
He strapped my ankles, wrists and all, to demand a bitter strength ignited in his intentions.
Another spank from the whip, tingly, prickly but yet so swiftly.
Few bruises here and there...
but your little angel love's every last bit of your masculine touch.
Feather me up, through tickles and such,
take me by the hair, and pull me towards your lavishing warm chest, where the sweat trickles down the arches of your ribs.
Feeling you pulsate when your ***** is in me,
as I make you c*m....a little closer to another specious night filled with adventure.
Jul 24, 2021
Jul 24, 2021 at 6:51 PM UTC
Love poems are stupid,
Because in only a few months time
They’re likely falling to pieces;
Out of juice, out of line.
However, I’ll still write in my spare time,
But would rather focus on cacti,
Because no one gives them
Their time to shine.
I love you, sweet cactus
How you love when the sun shines,
I love you, sweet cactus
Your agave so devine.
I’d rather write about a cactus
All prickly up it’s spine,
Because that cactus is alive,
That cactus is mine,
That cactus will last
Longer than you and I.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 4:56 PM UTC
gee i like to think of dead it means nearer because deeper firmer
since darker than little round water at one end of the well it’s
too cool to be crooked and it’s too firm to be hard but it’s sharp
and thick and it loves, every old thing falls in rosebugs and
jackknives and kittens and pennies they all sit there looking at
each other having the fastest time because they’ve never met before
dead’s more even than how many ways of sitting on your head your
unnatural hair has in the morning
dead’s clever too like POF goes the alarm off and the little striker
having the best time tickling away everybody’s brain so everybody
just puts out their finger and they stuff the poor thing all full
of fingers
dead has a smile like the nicest man you’ve never met who maybe winks
at you in a streetcar and you pretend you don’t but really you do
see and you are My how glad he winked and hope he’ll do it again
or if it talks about you somewhere behind your back it makes your neck
feel pleasant and stoopid and if dead says may i have this one and
was never introduced you say Yes because you know you want it to dance
with you and it wants to and it can dance and Whocares
dead’s fine like hands do you see that water flowerpots in windows but
they live higher in their house than you so that’s all you see but you
don’t want to
dead’s happy like the way underclothes All so differently solemn and
inti and sitting on one string
dead never says my dear,Time for your musiclesson and you like music and
to have somebody play who can but you know you never can and why have to?
dead’s nice like a dance where you danced simple hours and you take all
your prickly-clothes off and squeeze-into-largeness without one word and
you lie still as anything in largeness and this largeness begins to give
you,the dance all over again and you,feel all again all over the way men
you liked made you feel when they touched you(but that’s not all)because
largeness tells you so you can feel what you made,men feel when,you touched,
them
dead’s sorry like a thistlefluff-thing which goes landing away all by
himself on somebody’s roof or something where who-ever-heard-of-growing
and nobody expects you to anyway
dead says come with me he says(andwhyevernot)into the round well and
see the kitten and the penny and the jackknife and the rosebug
and you
say Sure you say (like that) sure i’ll come with you you say for i
like kittens i do and jackknives i do and pennies i do and rosebugs i do
9.1k
Sonoran desert
sacred, hot breathed
scorch of footsteps, blood red sands
sun bleached bones and skulls
this wash a hallowed holy ghost
an unnerving place of hiss and fire
molten sun to dry the water
a drowning fever of prickly sweat
last night the Yaqui man you met
undulating in a purification ceremony
lashing energy cords cut
he is laughing like coyote, wild eyed
green the velvet desert peyote
awakened you have come to understand
a universe within a fleck of sand.
Oct 14, 2015
Oct 14, 2015 at 6:11 PM UTC
my cactus waits patiently for summer
stuffed into a *** by the window
rain or snow cactus sits meditating
so deep you would think asleep-
would be more fitting. but I know better
get too close and cactus is alive and willing
sharp as ever and prickly with it.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 8:18 AM UTC
Delicately pink hearts gently unfurl
From nests of lively minds;
There is nothing weak about Southern women
We are supposed to wear ugly dresses,
Enamel bugs,
French scarves that wrap around and
Tie us all together from the inside out
Football and sassy new haircuts might not make faces look younger,
But they can lift spirits
And just because you spend all day advising others
Of their secret trials
Doesn't mean that you can hold your family in a cage,
Golden and happy though you may want things to be.
Remember that if you feel new, an outsider,
Your personal tragedies seeming too much to bear,
You will always find comfort in laughter
Especially if laughter through tears is your favorite emotion.
You might not pick up boys or money,
But friendship steeps in small salons
Like sweet tea.
Prickly sarcasm and pessimism aren't always the hallmarks
Of a heart devoid of caring,
It's just a natural response after two deadbeat husbands and
Three ungrateful children; somewhere in all of it is a promise
Of hope.
And even in a barren womb new life is discovered,
And even in death joy is found,
And even through pain,
Sisterhood blooms,
Delicate steel petals enveloping grieving hearts.
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
Show in contented rest
bringing ghosts
company wished greenly
how did you know?
Bleeding on too long
they had to be cut down
from hooks and ropes
in order of feeding.
Liars causing problems
complicated sacrament
with slickness
under blackberry briars.
Safe from hawks
stay in Juicyland
where it's prickly
free from ****
This song triples guessed
foxy playing hard
around leafy bush
only snake does not miss.
Dance my badger spirit
agile amongst complexity
ward off and wander.
Kangaroo mouse prance.
Survival in stickers
only seasonal escape.
Where to hide from
next your sly rival?
Apr 6, 2016
Apr 6, 2016 at 10:40 AM UTC
There are hearts of gilt,
And there are hearts of sin
There are hearts that lose,
And there are hearts that win.
There are hearts of stone.
But if my heart was anything,
It'd be a cactus.
Prickly and unwelcoming with tight alien-green skin,
That never fails to swell to accommodate whatever grew inside unseen.
With love it'd bulge,
And it'd shrink in the absence of love.
(But with the right care it could bloom the most spectacular flowers.)
There are strong hearts,
But even strong hearts give in.
My heart is a cactus heart,
My heart could keep it all in.
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 7:00 PM UTC
Are acceptance and approval synonymous terms? It is important that we give adequate definition to that which blocks our winding garden path, where foxgloves, lupins and a multitude of botanical dreams can blossom into a gorgeous array of ****** captivation.
If we embrace that which is repugnant, then possibility may not be confined to the cradling arms of the mistress of death.
So, my judgmental and moralistic companion from the sands of Jupiter – if your daughter is a raunchy stripper, then keep your expectations on the leash and preserve your anthropological connectedness, otherwise you may veer into prickly thorns of certain detriment and thereby lose her attachments.
It is incumbent upon us to nourish those fragrant plantations with a careful approach, so that beautiful reproductions will abound in a bouquet of resolution.
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
Paltry people project putrid opinions, propelled from puny pinpoint brains, in their pint-sized prickly pineapple pulp heads.
If they stopped and stayed silent, stood still and listened, stuff some significant people said would seep in, and seem simply superb when seen with acceptance and socially sensitive skills
Feb 3, 2010
Feb 3, 2010 at 8:14 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
O Buddha, the gold vein of thy sermon of mercy ran through gloom-gorged, rocky hearts, and illumined their darkness.
Thou loftiest soarer of renunciation's skies, beneath thy God-lifted eyes, the kingdom of sense-comfort, the rivers of gross greed, the vast and lust-scorched deserts of desire, the tall trees of temporal ambition, the cactus plants of prickly world-worries—all melt into invisible smallness.
Buddha, the arc-light of thy sympathy sought to melt the hardness of cruel hearts. Once thou didst save a lamb by offering thyself in its stead.
Thy solemn thoughts still silently roam through the ether of minds, searching for ecstasy-tuned hearts. Seated beneath the banyan bodhi tree, thou didst make a solemn tryst with the Spirit:
"Beneath the banyan bough,
On the sacred seat I take this vow:
Let derma, bones, and fleeting flesh dissolve;
Until the mysteries of life I solve,
And receive the all-coveted Priceless Lore,
From this place I shall stir, never, nevermore."
Thou symbol of sympathy, incarnation of mercy, give us thy determination, that we may seek truth as doggedly as thou didst. Bless us, that we may be awakened, like thee, to seek remedy for the sorrow-throbs of others as we seek it for ourselves.
From: Whispers from Eternity
A Book of Answered Prayers
1949 Edition
4.8k
Psychedelic spokes
Spinning out from
An undetermined center
Periwinkle powdered
Spines that invite
Me to feel
Making a point
At my prying fingertips
From smooth to prickly
Quaint you are
When your fragrance
Murmurs a tone of earth
A lotus of the desert
Silently beaming through
A plump body
An infant
With little
Needs
©Copyright 2014 Written and Edited by Racquel Davis
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 11:26 AM UTC
~
in sympathy, in honor, in horror
with those whose heads are shaved
against their free will
and to uncover
my nakedness before you,
as prisoner, as victim, as poet,
nothing must come between us
even this:
*and yet,
the prickly stubble head resprouts
soon enough,
spring floral efforts
an annual reminder,
that even undisguised and exposed,
my bald palate plate,*
is just another nether hiding place
~
May 27, 2015
May 27, 2015 at 5:39 PM UTC
Let us paint our canvasses on WOMEN!!
Curious I stand to unravel your perception of a woman
Would you weigh her as a piece of wonder or a gruffly aggressive thunder?
She is extraordinary, gorgeously efficient, solely independent!
The love she embraces is wider than the infinite heaven and deeper than the fathomless sea.
The shallow world with its profound hypocrisy,
Banters with a judgemental frown.
The world has changed, and so has she.
It has known the beautiful rose, tarnished by its prickly thorns,
Only the delicate rose, the world, with its abysmal critics, abides by to adorn.
She knows her paths, truly determined to achieve her goals,
Her patience deserves a salute, her tremendous sacrifice only to satisfy our souls.
Dare never to shred the lovely red petals, not knowing her darings!
For also the thorns in her are perilous, to blemish a wound till your last.
With her chin up and a gaze so ferocious, ocean of wisdom she is vast.
She rises, she grows, taking a free flight, venturing to claim new heights,
She is benevolent, a ray of sanguine sunshine to your forlorn nights.
Walking proud, believing in who she is, glimmering like a star!
Born strong she is, refuses to be judged by her scars.
She is the teller of her tale, over fears and worries she will prevail.
A miracle of God, with a sweet lingering fragrance she leaves a trail,
Of patience, commitment, empathy, and unfaltering fortitude !!
by ~Mihika Rohatgi
Mar 7, 2021
Mar 7, 2021 at 10:50 PM UTC
Only the closest
people to my heart,
know my love of the
cemetery.
Oh how I yearn
to walk its endless
pathways and through
its fresh-cut prickly grass.
The quietest place on
the whole entire earth.
A symbol of love
and grief all wrapped
together in the black
box of death,
tied with a silver
shining bow
of memories.
And what better than
the cemetery and,
you?
You didn’t even flicker
at my thought of having
a picnic in the cemetery.
And thats when,
I knew.
May 6, 2012
May 6, 2012 at 9:40 PM UTC
i use the knife he got me for everything.
it lays in my bed in place of him when he’s gone.
i twirl it for him through the phone
i pose with it in the pictures he begs me for
i use the knife he got me for everything.
even as he drifts away I use the knife he got me for everything.
i look at as the moonlight hits it like a flash picture in the night.
i use it to practice different knife tricks so he’ll think I’m cool
i use the knife he got me for everything.
i use the knife he got me for everything now that he’s gone.
i hear it calling my name as a command in place of him calling my name with love
it cresses my body with prickly kisses where his lips used to trail.
it spills out crimson in place of the tears he caused when he left
it stays in the hand he used to hold when my body goes numb and cold.
I used the knife he got me for everything.
Sep 12, 2022
Sep 12, 2022 at 8:51 PM UTC
Some people like fall, but not me.
It's full of death and decay, the gorgeous pieces of fire drift
from their skeletal homes and burn out into
sodden mushy brown paper.
Hard smooth and brown pebbles, spiky holey bombs, and twirly helicopter blades fall from the same skeletons and hide
beneath the paper, waiting for an innocent victim,
lying in the perfect position to slip someone up so that
they lose their bags and packages as they themselves go
slip slide crashing into the ground.
The victims are sure to rise up again, but with some bruises and bits of soggy brown, stuck all over their clothes
In fall, all the blooms of color decease, all fruit and vegetable and good green things die and leaves the world sodden mushy and brown.
Some people say they like winter, but not me.
It's a cold cruel and heartless season, robbing any last trace of life
from all helpless and left-behind creatures.
The vegetation becomes glazed over with melting glass and is the
one spot of beauty, as the only green left resides on prickly evergreens, housebound plants, and the occasional tacky
coat.
In winter, there is no way to leave your personal fortress without mountains of clothes, and so every person becomes a
chapped lipped, red cheeked, stiff fingered puffball.
Every time you jump into a mound of the white fluff that accompanies the dread season, some is bound to creep into your shirt and boots, freezing whatever it touches, and then ever so so slowly flowing along your skin, one of Gaia's little tortures.
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 10:19 PM UTC
Nobody got anywhere in this life
throttling bums,
and robbing hotdog vendors,
but a Saquatch eating a knish on top of a flipped bus
is a sight that sticks to the roof of your minds eye.
Let's eat caramel apples down by the seawall,
trade tall tales, and lizard scales,
run for the hills, but settle down in the shadow of the valley.
Prickly pear and agave nectar, nopal cactus fruit,
blended together, you can hardly taste the tequila.
I'll boost you onto the roof, and hand up my guitar,
and you'll help me climb up,
singing and chanting till the sun knocks us off the room,
we'll go pool hopping, with ski masks on,
and steal lawn ornaments,
and eat churros, and drink egg cream.
and kiss under the Brooklyn bridge.
I just gotta go throttle this ***
and rob this hotdog vendor.
If there isn't a sasquatch
I'll be home by the apocalypse.
Then we can get naked,
and set off the sprinkler system,
and dance in the halls.
Until the sun explodes,
and 2+2= 37.
Sep 8, 2012
Sep 8, 2012 at 4:26 PM UTC
She was like the iron pyrite
The teacher asked them to examine, and describe;
Cold, dense and prickly,
Difficult to love.
Given the right light
And a gentle handling,
Oh, how she'd sparkle,
But in that place, expectations and sensory overload
rendered her lumpen, and resistant.
Removed from her books and her inner world - all she needed -
And placed in a maelstrom,
She was bewildered and forlorn.
Un-cooperative, they called her,
And the teachers loved the other gems instead,
Pretty little nuggets; Ruby, Jasper, Jade.
Two years of discouragement and dislike
And even the tentative sparkles had darkened.
The other gems enjoyed each other
And moved away from her magnetic pull,
sensing difference.
No outright meanness, not yet,
But hints were brewing, whispers had started
And she wandered alone, in the playground,
Talking to the seagulls, and singing to herself.
The teachers only wanted conformity
And called her parents to voice concern
about her lack of friends.
Had they asked her, allowed her to have a say
She would have told them it didn't matter
But they were determined that it did, to them, if not to her,
And her parents were added to the burden of people
Worried and disappointed, watching.
She knew now, she was different, she had always known but never minded,
Now it was a problem. She didn't fit,
Like that scratchy purple uniform, around her chubby waist
Food didn't judge, dislike or condemn.
That life ended, and a new struggle, in a new school, began.
This was harder; the meanness was apparent now,
Difference wasn't tolerated
And someone wandering alone was a target.
She found a place to hide, behind a staircase, with a book,
But they found her, removed her and patrolled her only refuge
Forcing her to submit to the torture.
Every day was a war zone,
So she found another way, and embraced ill-health, stealthily
Spraying deodorant directly into her own face
induced asthma attacks; and not all those ear infections were real,
She was an accomplished actress.
She got through it, millions do.
She found her own place, her own friends in her own time.
Among Onyx, Jet and Tigers Eye
Her darkness didn't mark her out as different,
And all that fake illness
Was great prep for theatre,
Where she was able to return to her inner world,
And no-one cared if you feigned madness
Or embraced the real thing.
Difference was celebrated,
The whispers now, were that she had a great stage presence,
And a talent to be nurtured,
Not a difference to be despised.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 4:35 AM UTC