"punctuates" poems
Forever neglected
Forever dismayed
Forever deafened
By the cacophony of the trade
The antiquated digger stands by
A sentient guard of the worker
It watches as the tree slowly dissipates
Its life slowly crumbling
As the voracious chipper
Devours the tree whole
The worker stands by
The digger stands by
The chipper chips away
The taciturn worker remains
Ruminating the existence of the world.
Why was he put here?
For what reason must he stay with these hallowed construction tools?
Do they feel any remorse for the change that they've enacted
On the world around them?
Are they aware that they transgress the laws of nature?
The bellicose chipper
Wages war with nature
As the people watch so distantly.
Its sound makes the neighbors quite belligerent
Yet the zealots watch attentively.
The pure ignorance
The pure neglect
The blatant apathy
Is something to be seen.
Whatever could possess you
To follow in the footsteps of the worker
To feel his pain as the trimmer
Chips away at the trees' centuries
The sound of shattered glass
Punctuates the air.
Perhaps there has been an accident.
Apr 15, 2015
Apr 15, 2015 at 9:33 PM 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
A valiant woodsman of God’s green earth,
An ever gentle soul,
Treads nobly through the forest’s edge,
To conquer hill and knoll.
Morning chill, punctuates warm breathe,
Condensing on cold steel,
A rising sun greets a friend of old,
With beckoning appeal.
The singing birds, call quick to arms,
Warning to those that hear,
The woodsman’s made his presence known,
To this they must adhere.
The ageless warrior nestles down,
A clearing by a brook,
From iron sights, he takes a bead,
A short but lasting look.
Ten points in all, the target grunts,
And directs a gazing eye,
A trigger’s squeezed a slight indent,
The woodsman breathes a sigh.
A crack of thunder, a flash of light,
The beast is crashing down,
The woodsman offers praise to God,
The forest makes no sound.
A resounding victory born this day,
Upon much hallowed earth,
And from majestic creature lost,
Does spawn a sacred birth.
The woodsman leaves, more quiet than came,
In humbleness and awe,
To tell a tale of conquest sought,
To share of what he saw.
Oct 22, 2010
Oct 22, 2010 at 11:20 PM UTC
Because I don't live in a vacuum
there is a black hole inside of me.
And it devours words from outside-
pulls them from their mouths
and into the depths of me.
Every line beckons internal anarchy.
Every syllable punctuates my doubt.
I
am
their I
thoughts. am
their
words.
And I would that within didn't come from without.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 12:39 PM UTC
*Quiet night, the darkness illuminated by a silver moon
Punctuates my solitude, exposing thoughts restrained by day.
Tip a toast to all I have loved and lost, much too soon
Closing in upon the time, I too, will slip away.
Silver moon, carry me on a winsome dream,
That a night zephyr might take my heart
take this love I hold inside, delivered as a moonbeam
through distances beyond the plotted chart.
Bring my Love safe passage, held within your song
that he may feel my presence, hearken to my call -
an embrace to touch him, hold him fast and long –
to have his heart think of me, in all he can recall.
Silver moon, these gifts must travel true
they must bear up to last throughout the years
to fulfill a need and share as time comes due
memories to comfort a once lost love’s soft tears.
© Lin Cava*
Oct 19, 2010
Oct 19, 2010 at 4:33 PM UTC
A white abstract silence falls heavily like phosphorous snow… odd and oblique with nervous intensity of random limitations… sensitive and fragile in its unremitting generosity…A fluency of motion of imaginary realisation in silent turbulence descends in tenebrous shadows of illusion detonating the unconscious… the symmetry and exactitude of silence beyond all compass…. an intricate camouflage… meticulous and consistent.
Disinherited it tries to sanctify the air….. a silence in where stars evaporate vibrational loud and inquisitive…. freezing time by the velocity of its inner momentum of silent adrenalin.
Concealing its true identity isolating me in unknown realisation of what is to occur.. It resonates with constant tension waiting for unpredictability’s of indispensible voices that don’t speak….. This is a realisation of the imagination…. a vibrant insensibility…. density of unravelled thoughts that vaporise within me causing a vibration that fractures the equation of time and space in the burning crucible of my mind.
Intractable proportions of silent thought…. hovering… a constant mirage of irrational calculations….. This silence forces all the tears of consequence to fall upon my face with no avail…..Then in this thunderous silence see graffiti on white walls…abstract and meaningless….Like primitive lives…those with meaning yet possess no meaning… an ungovernable democracy of fruitless endeavour… of non factual fastidiousness… a glimpse of life and its fallacy.
Yet the words were spoken and written… by whom… And for why.. Now the silence punctuates and instructs…. phosphorous extinguishes itself and hides behind another truth…..The noise of the world cascades in torrents deafening… attempting to defeat… subordinate the senses in atavistic cruelty… Prowling searching for the silence… but it has gone…. disappeared in the imagination of my inner self…. an abstraction I call me….. But I know where the silence has gone….
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 7:07 PM UTC
She who is the agent of chaos
Knows not why she does dance
Shyly she poised on her tiptoes, bare
When I saw her just by chance
She, my Shiva dances atop the highest of the Himalayas
Humming and hoping I watch alone from below
And I wonder - how does the dust feel betwixt her toes?
How does this earth resist from swallowing her whole?
***** a compass, she traces to encompass
A circumference within which she does reside
There, she spins, twirls, pirouettes a vortex
And the dust obscures her from my salacious sight
But I can still hear her
Blinded by the grit and deafened by the gale
I hopelessly follow the sounds of her anklet bells
But to scale these peaks with my bare hands, I slip, I fail
And fall forever into her infinite fractal spells
A feather, I drift towards her fictional siren calls
Travelling through echoes of silence and spectre
She punctuates her poses in the shape of question marks
Interrogating me, when she knows I cannot help but surrender
Who are you I ask, my agent of chaos?
Mute and vengeful she turns to strike like a cobra
With one blow she breaks her own spell
And refracts her remnants from fractal to mirror
She who is the agent of chaos
Danced a waltz upon my throat
Speechless and breathless I was rendered lame
But he knew it’s really all the same
Aug 3, 2012
Aug 3, 2012 at 6:11 PM UTC
The grandfather clock in the hallway punctuates the darkest moments of my life
Not the plastic passing of time but the deep resounding timbre that you only find in proper clocks
Proper clocks with keys and not batteries, with brass faces and ornate hands.
With roman numerals and not numbers, chains and weights and wheels and chimes.
A sooundtrack lost in the hysteria of day that, but as darkness falls
it becomes the very essence of a sleepless night
.
.
Tick
.
.
Tock
.
.
May 18, 2010
May 18, 2010 at 4:36 PM UTC
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen."
Young, we understand
the world, but not ourselves.
Old, we understand
ourselves, but not the world.
Between falls the mysterious
and baffling substance
of our lives. Confusion
marks any real life
of consciousness.
Certainty is the lie
we believe in to smooth
the transition. Death
is the period that punctuates
the end of our sentence,
when we finally know
what we really know
in silence.
Jan 14, 2017
Jan 14, 2017 at 6:25 AM UTC
all weight
and meaning
is not to be found
in the substance itself
there are spaces
between words;
pauses and pregnancies
or an absence altogether
that contains more
than semantics ever could
the trouble is finding
a balance that punctuates
the message appropriately;
otherwise you just
seem lost
or
disinterested
Oct 18, 2021
Oct 18, 2021 at 7:21 AM UTC
Children of the echo tree
Can you hear me?
What punctuates your mind
How survives your kind?
Does the bell ring in your head
When your dreams turn dead
Children of the echo tree?
All you live is a reflection
Of what was said before
Echoes of silence
Echoes of violence
The tree of echo
You are so empty children
Echoes of unoriginal
Not even shadows
Oh echo tree’s spawn
Created all alike
Can’t you see it is you, you hurt
When you scheme and spite
Children of the echo tree
Where does your master sleep?
All copies
So empty
Children of echo tree
What your handler shouts
You repeat it back to me
I see.
The echo tree
It controls you with empathy
Traps you so wickedly
Your stained finger
Displaying your wasted effort
Your reward
More words to echo
How deep you do fall
Children of echo
Who will save you?
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 5:45 PM UTC
A waxy, dimpled orb in my hand,
A tiny sunrise, sweet and sharp.
One nail-blade incision and the
Peel tears away when you find the foothold,
Then coursing acid fires through your cuts and bruises,
Burning and tasting wounds with sharp recoil taste,
An acerbic spark.
Pith lodges under my nails,
Tang cloys beneath my nose.
The fruit now pulled apart, the ceremony over,
Segments of the sun lie exposed.
Eat half and half a year you'll remain.
The stringy web of white
Latticing the fruit-flesh
Is a pain to unentwine
What with the juice.
An explosion when you pierce the pocket,
And the gamble of what the burst will be.
Hedge your bets by eating the tasteless ones too.
Then the bathos of a pip
(the pebble inside the fruit, too small to be a stone)
Punctuates the sweetness you'd been enjoying.
Now the fumbling spat to get it out.
And after all the effort it's flavourless,
And you ask was it worth it?
Wasn't even really orange.
May 26, 2016
May 26, 2016 at 4:22 PM UTC
To the ferryman I pay another favor.
Shake his hand and walk from his mooring.
Walking the familiar path through the mire,
Keep your head high and ignore the sinking.
Every step back from the water,
An eternity of wretched squelching.
How many times have I walked this path.
Memories of youth and owning softer bones.
The aging shows now not just inside,
But clawing at the skin and hollowing of the eyes.
A distant heartbeat now darker punctuates each squelch from my feet.
Vultures and monsters lock eyes with my shadow.
Not quite dead but far from living,
I ponder the payment I keep on making.
How is it I can turn from the boat.
The answers are fleeting almost a whisper.
My eyes are drawn down by softest suggestion,
And through the darkness I see the bones and flesh breaking.
My chest burns and bleeds bleeding crimson upon the reeds .
In horror I wail soundlessly into the mud.
Hands dive to every break Clawing over every wound,
Feeling the scar of every knife,
Faces born to every memory.
The hurt the only feeling that remains.
I turn to look back at the creature I left,
A tear rolling down a fleshless face.
Caressing his own heart,
He raises his head and at last our eyes meet.
“You show me love with every heartbreak,
You come to me lost and with torture aplenty,
So broken by your own mind,
I make that which tortures you mine.”
The Ferryman opens his palm and shows me his treasure,
My own heart beating and bleeding with poison.
“Walk free from misery and grow anew,
I will wait again to trade away the pain the world will gift you.
But know this my love I cannot save you,
For in your chest beats my own broken heart,
Torn by every time I free you.”
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 8:08 AM UTC
broke, scared, high, uncared - ******
too in love with love to let him go.
hands ripping skin around fingernails to shreds.
contemplating the existence of religion and of ambition,
(remember they say work is worship,
your purpose you cannot shun).
fingernails scraping the desperate bones between which a beating heart once bled.
in the shadows of the darkness you see the past -
another second passed, time flying so fast, one cannot last.
treading tip-toe across a tightrope
stretched thin between your rising expectations
and his fla(il)ling patience.
nature’s infinite scream tearing through dimensions, leaving you haunted.
there’s a lot you hoped you’d never be in your twenties.
slow, shallow, low, hollow - stop.
diaphanous landscapes leaking into memory’s slippery crevasses.
no longer aware of the here and now.
battling desperately against reality’s sting.
questioning the bitter metallic aftertaste that punctuates
every seemingly-cheerful conversation.
self-worth slashed into strings of cynicism
hanging around a sorry neck.
inhaling air thick with the dregs of a life
suspended between conflicting timelines.
the past and present collide angrily to disfigure the future.
the past and present, two words that cease to exist in the future.
glassy eyes staring proudly at shattered crutches scattered around cut feet.
there's a lot you never thought you'd be in your twenties.
bold, bitter, brave, better - ready.
ready for the solitary walk,
a lifelong talk with only the voices in your head for company.
ready to dance to the vibrations that distort carefully laid plans.
ready to survive stormy seas on stormy nights
with no lighthouse waiting to shine on.
ready for what's incredible, what's impossible, what's magical;
only not for what's mechanical.
ready to face more no's and less yes's
no heroes and angry villains
but carry on anyway.
ready to say yes when your ego says no,
ready to say yes when your brain says no;
never ready to say yes when the heart says no.
there's a lot we've become in our twenties.
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 10:03 AM UTC
Fill me with music.
Let me brim with your melodies, and cry out lyrics.
Taste the guitar’s strings on my tongue, feel them strum your body into ******
Fingers pressing against my keys, lifting vibrations from the very base of my core, and coaxing them from my mouth.
My torso acts as violin, and your lips a bow. They leave me humming for you, deep and legato.
Your tongue flicks against reeds of sensation. Punctuates key changes and where your instrument shall come in.
I, the band, is directed by you, the maestro, until you are ready to finish our song.
I feel the heat of your symphony radiating into me.
I sing soprano only for you.
Together, we are an orchestra.
Jul 10, 2013
Jul 10, 2013 at 10:35 PM UTC
I blink, a wrinkled fold of skin
Holding back and damming in
What's betrayed in my brown gaze.
A thoughtless instance, this womb-light instant
Punctuates the days
And the autumn ringed origins of two parallel rays.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 12:34 PM UTC
Bleak, black billows of discouragement
Toss over me like wily waves,
And I feel jostled and unjustified.
Reality of my fallen state
Heaps like bitter salt on a throbbing wound;
Tormented, tattered, torn.
Coursing through this madness
Blind to the next blow.
These tempest waters ****** me to their funnel,
Yet still Your light punctuates my tunnel.
Nov 7, 2011
Nov 7, 2011 at 8:26 PM UTC
The night casts its long shadow over my flesh and blood
Yet, my body chooses not to fall into the natural rhythms of slumber
My eyelids are made of stone and are locked securely in place
My imagination runs amok and dreams fill up my void
The song of crickets punctuates the conversation with myself
Days long since past are still fresh in my memory
I feel like ideas are surging through my head ready to burst through my eardrums
But my arms and legs do not match my metaphysical wishes
They are numb and useless
Like a slow river, the bed seems to carry me to eternity
Gently taking me to a place far away
I need to rest so badly
The pangs of responsibility echo through my being
I have things to do; I have people to meet
It’s a curse
To never be able to match the cycle of the light
To bear witness to the passing of time
Locked in a coffin of consciousness
Ah, the sun is back; time to drag this empty husk out of bed
Light pours through the blinds, in an endless stream
No, arouse yourself from this folly
The shadow still remains
You were always wide awake
Hopelessly thinking of tomorrow
Pondering this night until daybreak
May 19, 2016
May 19, 2016 at 7:22 PM UTC
The sky...
A canvas of blue
as I climb up
-on the roof
laying beside you
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
I counted more-
than one to ten,
dreaming of oriels
till all is well
Up a Hill...
Were I gaze
towers of cupola,
a heavens place
were we dreamed,
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
To Venus, to Mars
of dancing stars
a wishful reverie,
circling above thee
Then I blink...
Twice to think,
and opened freely
seeing all of You
in tangled vines
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Coasting up above
loosing mimes,
an aurora night
on New York's sky
Time traveled...
As eyes passes-
to were it humbled
on fountain trails
and bluish vales
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
Horizon unwinds
hands that bind
etude punctuates
'twas a circa of mine
Morning rung...
A fadeless runic,
I fell out of flung
following sheets
my bedding's reap
∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
A story unsung
lips were unkissed
wondering why
Love was not found
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 6:22 AM UTC
Your feet got tangled
in your own **** name
Layed
nights out end-to-end,
now you're the oldest one here drinking
in this dingy, shaking basement
by at least "a couple years or so,"
so shrink from searching eyes.
Strike up that ****** band again--
your teeth have grown tall enough
to ditch this ride
Outside,
some drunken crusty's
trying hard to pick a fight
and shadowed necking in the corners
punctuates the "Got a light?"s
like drowsy eyes and
yawning sighs parenthesize
the way you check your phone a thousand times
"Hey, don't you work tomorrow?"
Yes, I ******* work tomorrow and...
Though all these fresh-lit fuses
sizzle--
--starlight studs in leather night--
the morning leaves you spark-singed
paper, sulfur lungs
and sagging eyes
The stairway's ******* crowded
with a thousand younger yous,
feet creak the upstairs floorboards
cue the crooked smiles in familiar hues
But pigs have pens
and feet have boots.
Old hats need heads
and birds, they need their roosts
So let the lines fill in
on this fermenting face
and lay this craggy grin
into its worn-in place
beneath these creaking stairs
and let this basement shake.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
You know how you see couples walking
along quiet cobbled streets
or along the silent flowing river
or under the yellow hue of street lights,
hands intertwined as if performing a mating dance,
while looking into each others' eyes
as if decoding the subtle message
being transmitted from their partner's soul.
Have you noticed how their bodies seem
totally in harmony with each other
and how deep eye-squinting smiles
take almost forever to fade
like the colour out of the red shirt in the sun -
slowly and almost unnoticed.
In the semi darkness that envelopes them,
their eyes are usually locked in a happy embrace
and the dark circles in their eyes gets wider.
Every now and again, there's a tender touch
that breaks the flow of whispered words
and punctuates muffled blissful laughs.
In such moments when I see these couples
I search the corners of my spleen
for a drop of a similar memory
and imagine how it would feel
to hold hands with someone
along quiet cobbled streets
or along the silent flowing river
or under the yellow hue of street lights.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 5:04 AM UTC
That child,
seems to be reading to my old dog friend.
Can we teach a dog to read and see the significance
some men find in syllables unsaid?
In print,
Sibilant denture whistles, perk no ear
silent esses no ear can hear, un spoken esses essentially
signify nothing, simple noise.
But a good dog will respond to the slightest whistle, as if…
A sibyl said listen,
hear the wind enter the world once with
inspired expired whistling sound found in song
this way,
this is the way,
Say plain the sound of each sign.
Alpha Beta, Aleph Bet, Ayee Bee
See, these let words be saved as signals
Letters, let silent sounds hold meaning in
signs of sounds men can make,
Like
Ah. or baah, which certain ruminants make as well…
A man can say ah, and mean plain nothin'
and some dogs can too,
but when dogs say, ah, it's often
a yawn gone into a groan like a stretched out
awww as the back arches
backward and front paws stretch out.
Tail swishing slow sweeps
swirling dust mites in a shaft of morning light,
more wind than any butterfly wing or
humming bird wing could stir.
"Remember", his brown eyes say,
this posture always meant,
"let's do some fun,
go for a run,
follow a scent"
But then, another yawn
and a shake. a glance from those knowing eyes,
signifying, signing , if I am happy, he is, too.
A dog friend then punctuates, by curling down into
a black and white comma
with a bit of golden tail
covering the nose
twitiching ante
cipitating a chase that leads to this new place,
where new sounds can sound
insignificant,
dream time humms,
not worth the effort to hear,
since we are not going anywhere, today.
Ah, be, still.
Tomorrow is the myth.
My dog swears that's true.
Today, or never, and
never's fine. He Yawns.
Aug 27, 2022
Aug 27, 2022 at 4:37 PM UTC
a room full of grandmothers,
night-gold —
espials of eyes
syncopated.
take this thread and fissure
me love-struck.
tenderly the walls are white,
the mood: all malaise of trees in autumn.
Christ's redness in hymns
ho-hum angelward as rain
brings a discalced memory
close to sand by shores of repeated waves, where the gull tirelessly
punctuates
the water with its centric beak.
all youngness and beautiful
rising like cunning equinox,
slow auburn of eternities commits
to angels denied.
sharing something a memory would
espouse in lips dry like tropics,
looking down on familiar abandon,
reaching out with their hands and making
no sound, felt yet always, in tender
hours of night.
Dec 5, 2015
Dec 5, 2015 at 10:27 PM UTC
No moon tonight, only the depths of a fathomless darkness, pitched black,
and in such bleak emptiness, the sound of the swirling wind becomes my focus,
whistling through the trees, rattling gates and fences, skimming rooftops,
strange noises as if the nights very teeth were chattering with fright.
Now, the warmth of bed becomes my sanctuary, sheets pulled over a weary head,
yet within such secure confines, the nights rampant breath punctuates my slumber,
sounds of ghostly whispers carried on ethereal waves, names of ones long since departed.
Sleep eludes the hypnotic lure of the ticking clock, yearning for the distant glow of morns new light.
Sep 5, 2014
Sep 5, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
Being apart punctuates our lives with question marks.
We ask ourselves, “How long?”
So we dream.
We wonder about each other’s whereabouts.
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.
When I think of you,
My thoughts are never punctuated with a question mark,
But always with an exclamation point!
No question is too hard to wait for the answer.
No wall is too hard to climb.
Whatever the question,
You are the answer to all of my dreams.
This time of testing demands an answer,
But, you are the answer that punctuates my life
With the exclamation point of your love!
©2001 Michael S. Davis
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC