"punctuate" poems
i’d rather write about the freckles on your back than think about all of the ways in which you quite possibly don’t love me.
i feel sick at the very thought of you picking me apart the way you did; fingers grabbing and stroking in a catastrophic symphony of skin and vulnerability.
let’s read between each other’s lines; share my sentences and punctuate my paragraphs with your mouth; because i can breathe easier on the mornings where i wake up wrapped around you.
because my moods change like the ******* seasons and the spinning in my head doesn’t want to stop.
you tell me that i should probably get a therapist because no one that thinks about all the ways in which they could **** themselves has an ounce of mental stability.
i tell you that i have been to four.
names faded into a blur with hazy snippets of conversation remaining.
20mg.
30mg.
you tell me that trust issues and scars aren’t endearing and i tell you that neither is counting up the potential number of pills needed to dissolve your body into the living room carpet.
let me sink inside your skin and make a home in your flesh;
i tell you about the nights where i lay awake in the bath turning the water red.
tragic, isn’t it.
you tell me that this isn’t how my head should work and i tell you that i already know. everything you could possibly tell me i already know.
i know that 400 calories a day isn’t normal, and my hands shouldn’t shake all the time.
i know.
please let me stitch myself into you, even just for a while; until i no longer feel dizzy and my world stops spinning.
i don’t need you to tell me that it will be okay, because honestly i don’t think it will be and, that in itself, is okay.
let me stitch myself into you, because my own skin can’t take it anymore.
let me call you back when my voice stops wobbling and my vision straightens out, but honestly, i’m terrified that it never will. what if this is it. headaches and tears and shaking and blood.
and the debilitating, gut-wrenching feeling of pure and euphoric emptiness.
tragic, isn’t it.
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 2:41 PM UTC
1026
The Dying need but little, Dear,
A Glass of Water’s all,
A Flower’s unobtrusive Face
To punctuate the Wall,
A Fan, perhaps, a Friend’s Regret
And Certainty that one
No color in the Rainbow
Perceive, when you are gone.
12.7k
From the green hill, blows downwards
a wind, gently titillating the languid trees
of this dense forest,the rustling of the leaves create,
an impromptu tune, proving they are taut strings,
yielding willingly to the sensual fingers of the wind.
Super moon,while raising, listens keenly awhile
as if she had never heard one like this before.
The wise silver owl, sitting on the high branch
keeping account of every stroke of night,with an imaginary wand,
as the conductor, catches the emerging mood that seethes
within the million pieces of orchestra that gently merge,
get exhilarated, finds a pause to punctuate it with a timely hoot,
the moment freezes, falls in to the repository of time for keeps.
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 12:39 PM UTC
ah, enslave without compassion
bound ancestors you must impale
go seek and show no mercy
let those who escape carry the tale
all the sufferers bearing witness
to their ministers spilling their blood
staggered screeches from bleak recesses
regicide plotters bend to the dust
with unmitigated conquest and **********
trample them under your tyranny
slimy enshrinement brings into question
what's divinely lamented for
scatter populations with ruthlessness
let them choose sycophancy or sword
reappoint difficult commanders
for instigation unbroken awaits
kept in frenzy, they whisper confusion
never quite sure of their fate
with unmitigated conquest and **********
trample them under your tyranny
let the cowardly unlock the gates for you
to heroically claim what's inside
crowds you abhor kneeling in wonder
all the world is your ****** bride
punctuate the roads with tollgates
***** monuments to broadcast your name
all your banquet's guests are your enemies
entertain them with one another's shame
with unmitigated conquest and **********
trample them under your tyranny
with unmitigated conquest and **********
trample them under your tyranny
under your tyranny
Jun 11, 2015
Jun 11, 2015 at 2:32 AM UTC
(trying to write away this heat)
squirrel solstice
squirrels curled
in maple nests
are promises
built of acorns and seeds.
bunched in sleep,
they await the snow
that comes after night fall.
whisker twitching
twenty feet up,
squirrel dreams occupy trees.
in monochrome season
those gray and black bundles
brush snow from limbs
and punctuate the sky.
Aug 16, 2010
Aug 16, 2010 at 3:20 PM UTC
I’ll split the hairs, I’ll split an atom
And never leave the bedroom.
I most identify with December,
Not because of the crushing temperature
But the lack of cosmic dawdling
Is no more mesmerizing than a frozen phoenix.
And as she arrives by train from Phoenix,
I study who she appears to be, the atoms
Composing her auburn hair with dawdling
Authenticity shout “Take me to the bedroom!”
While the wedge of geese in this temperature
Head to the Southern Hemisphere’s December.
The common chill of this morning in December
Prevents us from rising from out the covers like a phoenix,
And our blankets like ash defend us from the temperature
That stills the vibrations of the atmosphere’s atoms.
I curse the insulated walls of the bedroom,
Trapping in heat and discouraging our dawdling.
A rafter of turkeys outside my window are dawdling,
Printing their runes on the documents of December
Between the thickets surrounding the bedroom
While the sun, golden like the plumage of a phoenix,
Awakens in my bones every dormant atom,
Instilling in me courage to brave the temperature.
I follow her, dressed, from the bedroom
And her footsteps serve to punctuate the temperature
Like the smoldering beak of a phoenix
Too busy being risen for dawdling.
She leaves, by train through the chill of December,
Me daydreaming of fission. The splitting of an atom.
I’ll split an atom daily, safely within the bedroom
And sleep through December’s pitiless, hollow temperature,
Waking only for dawdling until Spring is a phoenix.
Mar 24, 2010
Mar 24, 2010 at 10:16 PM UTC
Do I have any talent in poetry?
Can I write a good series of monometers?
Let’s
See
They’re
****
Are those even monometers?
How the hell should I know?
Maybe I can write a decent enjambment
Let it flow with no punctuation
Let it soar with no interruption whatsoever
Let it flow let it flow let it flow
Ah **** it!
Flowing is for sissies!
Let’s punctuate this bastard!
Let’s add lots of **** to this!
Maybe, perhaps, supposedly!
All these worthless pathetic lines!
These are the things
That people may love
These are the things
That people may define as talent
This **** I made
They may say
I made from my talent
But to me
It is a massive piece of crap
Let’s add more **** to this!
Let’s add themes!
Love, darkness, hatred, abuse!
I’m sorry I left you baby, please come back!
It feels so black in this cruel horrid world!
**** you! Cocksucker! Bitch! **** I hate you!
Hit me again! Hit me again you ******
These are the things
That people may love
These are the things
That people may define as talent
This **** I made
They may say
I made from my talent
But to me
It is a massive piece of crap
If that isn’t talent then what is
You may ask
I answer this with a laugh
Poetry takes no talent
You silly fool
It is a simple sharing of heart and soul
Why lower it to a talent
It’s demeaning
It’s sickening
It makes me want to *****
Close your eyes
Let it take you in
Love it
Hate it
Praise it
**** it
Cleanse it
Vulgarize it
Whatever you like
If you ever want to be
A talented poet
Then don’t take my advice
Use structure
Use themes
Make your voice easily heard
But at the same time silent
These words
That people may love
These are the things
That people may define as talent
This **** I made
They may say
I made from my talent
But to me
It is a massive piece of crap
And really doesn't need talent.
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 12:33 AM UTC
I
In the cold silence of the area
Rose a lonesome cafeteria,
Outside of it hooded forms -
Scaly horns -
Perched on white, plastic chairs
Like fifteen owls on a wire.
II
A grey-green bird in the distance
Sang a three-note song with insistence.
He sang on not to the white folks
But to the cold he tried to coax.
He sang to a spot desolate -
Sure thing, he sang to punctuate it.
©LazharBouazzi, July, 2017
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 2:00 PM UTC
i have 5 -
two by my mouth
two on my cheeks
and one in my chin
(plus others
in places you can't see -
elbows and knees and
secret spots)
and they burst when i smile
and when i cry
and when i speak, the two by my mouth
punctuate what i say,
with little pocks and creases -
puckish and
emphatic.
i have 5
two by my mouth
two on my cheeks
and one in my chin
(plus others
in places you can't see)
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 12:35 PM UTC
dear, you cut me off mid-sentence.
for all my skills, techniques and terms
here's a thing i can't find a way to convey.
a narrative even beyond comprehension to it's protagonist
a girl without a simile or metaphor applicable?
somebody to leave me laconic, short in syntax, unstructured.
will we discuss possessive pronouns now?
for in subtext, i am the possessive one.
i'm so lacking verbally
but i'm sure you'd understand it contextually
to punctuate: i can be the ellipsis, the implication of my omissions
but you're in my text as the most eager mark of exclamation
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
white clouds swell up
anvil bloom
a lowering gloom
scuds by
stacatto drops
on the windshield
punctuate
powerline sway
radio crackle
sparks
sheets of tenor sax
and blunt
gusts of cool
I lower the window
and steer
into the storm
Tom Spencer © 2018
Jul 8, 2018
Jul 8, 2018 at 8:33 PM UTC
Would a blue ballpen without ink just lie
To die, like the children of our past needs,
The mouths of their thinning souls leeching
Our piety, our profanity, our tendency to build society
Off faces and masks,
Individual fragments of ourselves.
Would one give a thousand pesos to he who smears
Windshields with soap to take a few coins hostage
Or to she who exhibits a gaunt infant, an offspring
Of want, not wanted, the wear and tear of a rough
World manifest on emaciating juvenile skin. Would one
Give a thousand?
Would one commit a kiss?
When mere change can buy a pen with its full blood,
What then is the worth of the bleeding, the bearded
Blind on the somber sidewalks of forgetfulness where
Without ink, it ceases to be blue, and unable to write,
He has no need for a pen.
The world is writing his story,
He is only there to punctuate with his blood.
Jul 12, 2012
Jul 12, 2012 at 11:56 PM UTC
1.
There was the tremor of leaves,
a rustle of bayonet grass
parried the multihued calm
of dawn's smeared light.
"This is what we trained for," the captain said.
We hunkered behind stacked bags of sand.
2.
Filigreed shafts of light pierce
the bullet perforated leaf canopy,
bellowed yells punctuate the swirl
and buffet of turbulent air:
“Contact”, “2 O’Clock”, “Incoming”, “
"Moving”, “Reloading”, “Ammo”.
3.
Fingers twitch, the grit of soil
twisted through their grip;
moon slashed carcasses glint, spent shells,
Earth exhales a vermillion mist,
rising, echoless, in this cathedral of leaves.
Sep 28, 2018
Sep 28, 2018 at 1:19 AM UTC
Challenges punctuate our lives with question marks.
We ask ourselves, “How long?” So we dream.
We wonder about each other. So we believe.
We concern ourselves with each other’s welfare. So we pray.
We doubt our wisdom. So we trust our hearts.
We second guess ourselves. So we act in faith.
We question our tomorrow. So we cherish the present.
We fear the question marks that have punctuated our lives.
So we build walls;
Walls to hide from our fear, walls to hide from our frustration,
And walls to hide from our feelings.
Let us never build walls that would cut us off from the world,
Or from each other.
Within the circle of our fellow strugglers,
Our thoughts are punctuated with fewer question marks,
And from time to time - a simple period.
Here with each other, it's not as difficult to wait for the answer.
And the walls don't seem as challenging to climb.
Whatever our question,
We can dare each other to dream.
And in this time of testing, we can hope for the answer,
An answer that will be different for every one of us.
An answer that punctuates each of our lives
With an exclamation point!
©2014 Michael S. Davis
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 11:12 PM UTC
Rake-thin Humble hoes subsistence soil
Planting green-topped onion bulbs,
Camino divides the field forcing Humble's Husband
To till distantly, he works slower, and is of bulbous girth,
A red Reebok shirt adorns his back whilst she
Wears the hand-me-downs her grandmother had worn.
Their house is built of stone like bone,
Ground-sewn and dug fresh centuries before,
No siestas punctuate their endeavors.
Passing pilgrims groan under weight of sack -
Whilst Humble counts the years before her bones
Are interned in preparation to shelter future generations.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 9:08 AM UTC
In England brown birds make dusty circles on overcast days,
The ground blankets itself in moss and cappuccino leaves.
So when the sharp lemony sun fills the breeze with warmth,
And white cotton clouds punctuate the sky and my eyelids,
It feels like home
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 6:13 AM UTC
Frayed and grayed
Oversized and overused
Why you still hold onto it,
has everyone bemused.
Freckled and speckled
Like a cinnamon stick
warm winter stories
Keeping it thick
Pale fingernails, peak through the sleeves,
Tears and holes decorate the wrists.
From between cupped hands
Rise cinnamon flavored mists
Warm memories ride down your throat
Thawed hearts melt with every sip
Cinnamon specked bubbling froth
Settles above your lip
Cinnamon flavored laughs
Punctuate the conversations
Spicy aroma tickles the nose
Sniffing for winter’s indications
Warm memories on cold nights
Fill up the empty holes in your sleeves
Packed with stories soaked in cinnamon
And the sweater becomes fuller with the memories it weaves
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 2:23 PM UTC
Every vein and exhausted cell in my brain, ankles and lower back- my body bleeds out I hate you.
Like broken record players.
I scream: "I hate you" for making me look like the kind of monsters I would run away from.
I hate you
I hate you
I hate you
I hate you
I scream louder to punctuate a full stop.
Then my voice finally cracks, perhaps making empty escapes for oxygen to come into my burning lungs.
Broken everywhere and everything.
And behind me, the sunrise was the colour of bad blood.
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 8:24 AM UTC
Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
available for the world to break once again.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC
~
*prelude.
did you know that English stands alone as a written language requiring the capitalization of the word "I"... yet makes no similar provision for “we” or “us; a sad statement of self inflation. it was after learning this that i abandoned the rule in my own poetry.*
~
my i’s averted,
lowered, diverted,
reduced in size,
an exercise of
large proportions;
breaking down the me-isms,
finding room for we-isms,
to take the larger place;
create an i for seeing,
the case for simple,
smaller being;
no need to punctuate,
instead eliminate this
compulsion to inflate;
’tis my i-drop moment,
my i-reducing ointment,
these pupils are dilated,
deflating i and me,
enlarging we and thee;
finding that in i-reduction,
the eyes are widely opened,
thus to better see,
what i really need to be.
Oct 10, 2016
Oct 10, 2016 at 12:49 PM UTC
I punctuate with close precision,
aware of where
I'm placing my semi-colons and
dashes,
using Oxford commas
like a grammar geek.
Your punctuation always bothers me
but you, with your misplaced apostrophes
and oddly abbreviated words
that you cradle in speech marks,
never care.
You were constantly callous in your conduct,
your handling of punctuation marks.
I assumed you never understood
the significance I attached to your words.
I could feel the excitement
and anxiety and apprehension
build in my belly every time
with your exclamation points!
I could feel my brows furrow together
deep in confusion,
every time you sent me just
one little question mark?
I suppose I never did tell you this
but when last month you ended your sentence
(accidentally, of course) with a dash,
well, I knew then that we’d be for ever.
and when last week you sent me
a comma to end your speech
I knew for certain that
more was to come.
but I see now it was silly
to attach such hope to a hyphen
because yesterday you concluded
with the biggest full stop I've ever seen
and let me know that that was all.
I felt that period’s punch
deep inside my gut
like you were trying to make me
throw up my jam and toast.
I had never before known
one small,
simple
dot
to be so powerful
and hurt so much.
It did though,
and you couldn't even tell-
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 3:56 AM UTC
I spot my reflection in the silhouette of your eyes.
Like a mirror, you are me and I am you.
In this lonely hour, and in this hollow room,
my eardrums fill with piano notes and rhymes,
as everything around me suddenly goes quite and silence blooms.
I come to realize our love is nothing but
meaningful lyrics hung upon abandoned piano keys,
and unuttered syllables written
amongst a music sheet.
Yet, the symphony plays perpetually,
loud and clear, demanding to be heard, to be felt.
It lifts me up, swirling me in your galaxy,
and every so often, I approach to tear off the mask you've been hiding behind,
till there's nothing left but musical debris.
I strip you of salvation.
I unleash your wholeness.
Rondes and blanches and noires
punctuate and embellish your figure.
They are a halo.
They are mine.
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 3:56 PM UTC
Oh, I see—you liked it when I used that big word, huh?
You want me to use some more?
Mm, let me just grab my pocket Thesaurus.
Yeah, that's right baby, I take it everywhere with me—
I find it quite useful in these… situations.
Right now, I could give you seven variations
of the word ****
Seductive
Arousing
Provocative
Sensuous
Mmhm, you liked that one, didn't you?
Libidinous
Suggestive
Titillating…
You'd like more, I can tell,
but I need you to want it.
Let's go somewhere quiet
and thumb through
my college style manuals for a few hours.
We could talk about sentence variety,
the Oxford comma, some syntax,
and mm, if you're feeling real good,
maybe even discuss the proper usage of a semi-colon.
Just know, I've been saving semi-colons
for, you know, that special someone.
If things get a little steamy, we can go down to the basement
and I'll show you my Scrabble board.
I'll set you up for a triple-word score,
and you can put together some of those high-scoring,
two-letter words that really get me going.
Oh yeah, I think I'd be into your strategy.
When the game is over, I'll lean you back,
come in real close, and whisper some Neruda,
some Cummings,
some Dickinson
softly into your ear.
Afterward, I’ll trace lines of Hughes and Whitman
down your naked spine with my fingers.
I'm sure you know it's only polite
to return the favor.
It's just an idea.
I know it sounds good.
Trust me, I'll be gentle—
But baby, believe me—
I could punctuate you in all the right places.
Mar 28, 2014
Mar 28, 2014 at 12:58 PM UTC
the wrong atmospherics of transmission
move in uninvestigated chaotic archives
red and pink turbulent storms swarm across
deep space frequencies in imaginative
currents of pulsars
that are translated into phases
each represented in diverse
conflicting modes of expression
in obsessive grooves of consciousness
cut up components of recycled narratives
audibly fixating on vibrations
that sound across the universe
in diffused spirals of manic fluctuations
converting archaic symbols into equivalents
of dust surfaces that oxidise in intermittent epochs
and deposit a rediscovered earth
an expansive transferable construction
of accidental providence
that allows for expression in artificially generated realities
hallucinated images that float
across the consciousness of the cosmos
producing visions that punctuate rational thought
become preoccupied with the conception
of interplanetary transpeciation
counting the chronological diversity
of those that occupy the black, blank
vacuum of space
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 7:54 PM UTC