"pungency" poems
I've never felt a red rose,
never pricked myself on a thorn,
never smelled it in or got lost in eyes.
My mother has a red rose -- my father gave
it to her, and it is beautiful, and it is kind, and it
is loving, and it is something I have never seen.
This pink rose is something trying too hard to be red.
Slashing and ripping at clothes with sharpened words,
claiming it’s merely the thorns of a red. This pungency
is blamed upon me: I can not handle the sickly sweet
succor stuck under my suffocating nose. He holds me
by the chin, condemning eyes borrowing into mine, grip
tightening. This pink rose is dead, withered, wilted
and weathered by the storm we’re caught in.
Everyone sees red where there is none
-- o r p e r h a p s t h a t ’ s j u s t t h e b l o o d ? --
this pink rose has me trembling, fearing
his appearance and his eyes; knowing
he’s stronger than me, but the
uncertainty of “would he?” scares
me more. I can’t leave because
that same knife he used upon
me, he threatens his own
skin. It’s such a small
world, such a small
town, such a small
neighborhood,
such a small
building.
I can’t walk these halls
with comfort or safety
anymore, not with those
eyes burning blame into
my back and face.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 10:28 AM UTC
Throw away the calendar
Lose those different dates
Lose that wrist watch, lose that clock
It’s almost half past late
When the angel of corpses arrives
He wants them dead not alive
He does not discriminate
He wants them virgins, he wants men’s wives
He wants boys young, he takes men old
He comes in sneaky, he barges in bold
And first pries your fingers off that little hope that you hold…
On to
He's heartless, he wasn't born to…
Show mercy
That’s because he wasn't born at all and has no heart
Lord have mercy
With the angel of death, the pungency of death comes
The caked blood that was initially wet, red ponds
And time ceases to matter, days lose importance
They say ‘time is a healer’ but this agony will keep doing a slow dance
Refusing to pass
A lingering curse
Victims suffer in silence
So with that said
Let’s use the little time we have… to avert from any shape or form of violence.
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 7:13 AM UTC
If I was dangerous
would you then remember me
remember my cologne
recall its taste?
If I build self-esteem in harsh terrain
and force feed you my pungency
could I be in your primary thoughts
sit in first place?
If I was a contortionist
and took your emotions with me
would I matter tonight
change your life?
If I could be everything you dream of
and make you fear its urgency
can I take you home
temporary wife?
Nov 17, 2010
Nov 17, 2010 at 6:55 PM UTC
In this all encompassing darkness
Hope turns to despair
Not a single ray of light gleams
Deafening silence pervades…
Only wolves are heard
Mourning death
But of whom…?
O father!
Protect me
For I cannot bear
This sullen, sickening air
Stinking!!!
With the pungency of rotting flesh
Of humanity.
I see headless zombies
Stamp bullet ridden chests
Amid pools of blood
Leaving a gory trail…
No father! No!
I dare not look beyond
For this ‘Ghastly Spectacle’
Blurs my vision!
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 5:20 AM UTC
Goodnight anthropocentrism—
Mitochondria swim in your stardust
But Contraverse awakens on the
Frontiers of the Valerian Kingdom
At the gnarled staff of the Oil Sage
Taking root between the Earth’s furrows
Springing forth fountains of sweetest Nard
The Jewel of Jatamansi emerges glistening green
In it the eye of the beholder finds the
Seeds of a once forbidden dream
Germinating in the juices of this Gem
Out of it the silent roar of a thousand fields pressing
Aromatic oceans through bursting buds
Of Lavender pagodas rapturously trumpeting forth
Framed by stacks of soft sweet musky Sage
Broad and leathery like elephant’s ears
Curtained with a soft cascade of Orange blossom snow
The sweet kiss of Neroli on your brow
Imbibing the senses with paralyzing pungency
Tangling tendrils to heartstrings
And pulling us beneath Rosewater pools
Floating breathlessly ensconced in a dream
Primordial songs whispering wordlessly,
“Wake whenever you’re ready . . .”
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 5:11 PM UTC
You’re the cold side of the bed
Come monday morning
A quiet whose screams echo those same words
"I dont love you.
Anymore."
A putrid piece of magic.
Coated with the pungency of sin
And id dance with you
But these feet are like no other
Vilified and scarred and lefted
And lost beyond repair.
And i’d sing to you
With the shot voice upon which
David danced to
But i've left my voice behind
Traded for a moment of what i call justice and
I’d offer you a drink
But alas, all I bear are these
Battle scars
and foreign thoughts
And all these empty bottles
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
Caustic doorway blues
The fog sets in,
and the moon doesn't glow
when brick structures crumble
Rats in worn carpeting, writhing
The screaming from pensive terminals
and insects live on dead wood
trees felled in hollow rounds
This is the end of something warm
These are days of hydrogen loneliness
and grey skies applaud the tarmac
Pornographers snap pictures
of silhouettes in garages
and the playground hears no love
when gunshots deafen the trees
and the old mattress is sodden
Stale alcohol pungency
near the alleyway, dormant today
But the lights are still glowing
in the house by the canal
where somebody's memories still linger
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 4:34 PM UTC
Grandmother,
Do not feed me with the scent of tomorrow - it has a certain pungency that I cannot stand. After all, I am still full with the taste of this bitter residue lurching in my stomach left by memory.
May 21, 2015
May 21, 2015 at 10:01 AM UTC
Carla said we must talk about love.
If it doesn’t define, it doesn’t exist, she said,
And pulled the two nearest stools away from the bar.
Has anyone you have ever known- anyone-
Ever offered you even a pitiful explanation
Of this bewildering word
She asked me,
In that way she has
Of not asking me at all.
She lit her pipe,
Her first exhale a ceremonial cloud,
A white tobacco fog,
A linger that purchased my childhood memories,
The pungency of three fingers of scotch, neat, at dawn,
The south face picture window ablaze with
The painful flood of an early sun,
A tin can stereo in full lament about cowboy love
And the inevitability of betrayal,
My father off key,
All his memories a libel and a calumny.
If I say I lust for you, you know what I mean, Carla said,
If I question your loyalty there is no obfuscation,
If I tell you in my sleepy voice the wine is delicious,
You are tempted to sample,
But if a man tells a woman he loves her
What conclusions will she abide,
Carla asked me with a stare.
Do you even know anyone who can utter the words I love you,
Without feelings of hysteria, near mental collapse,
Or worse-farce, she asked.
We tell people we love them to calm them,
To manipulate them,
To play magic tricks on them, Carla said,
Love is an adolescent stage,
A toxic teenage mix and of oestrogen and testosterone,
Romeo and Juliet were children for ***** sakes, Carla said,
As she drank half of her breakfast scotch,
And began to blow perfect smoke rings
In the mirror still stale air
Of the Rock Hen all day, all night, all the time bar.
I just know I love my dog, I replied,
And I held my finger up,
To see if Carla could circle it perfectly with a smoke ring,
Which she did.
And I don’t even know why, I said,
I guess I love how he needs me and doesn’t resent it,
Even as I disappoint him and neglect him,
Forget to feed him, force him to *** in the rain,
He still wags his appreciation with gusto.
Perhaps we can only love our dogs,
Carla replied,
Or perhaps we should all have tails,
And she ordered us lemonade and tequila
With scrambled eggs, french toast and a *** of blueberries.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 11:27 PM UTC
Like tiny cabbages, they look
a green and leafy fare
and with butter, cooked
steamed with utter care
Ware not the subtle flavor
or pungency of scent
but you must be prepared
as gaseous, their intent
Roughage but a name
for things passing through
to the bowels, it's all the same
just vegetarian-al glue
Spare your loved ones the attack
retire to the loo
after all my friends
there's nothing else to doo
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 8:13 AM UTC
I've noticed just how much of our talking waits
until bedtime - as if until then
we have lacked permission to pause
until we've undressed and bundled ourselves
into our duvet time-capsules.
Alas, it’s then
when the competing urgency of sleep rises
and meets our log-jammed thoughts
it’s then when our fight fades,
when our wide meander sprawls,
exhausted of its pungency
And its then
when our ability to cement thoughts
cracks in the face of creeping sleep
rerunning its classic dreams
and rebuilding forgotten worlds
that we’re fated to later abandon in the shudder of dawn,
and the demands of a new day.
And so, we delay any conscious introspection
and leave our contemplations to our advancing Sandman
as we slumber and sleepwalk in his wake.
Aug 19, 2022
Aug 19, 2022 at 6:03 PM UTC
Among the flowers of my Persian carpet
vines sprout curl twine me into fields of silk
and wool. Sliding through warp and weft,
I hear the rustle of thread grasses, and
my nostrils fill with the pungency of feral cats,
I taste the dryness of dust, and the dampness
of a blue silk river runs through my ears.
A blend and blur of color mark the horizon
spots of russet and black resolving into a hunt
undisturbed by my addition to the scene.
Arabian steeds damp dark with silken sweat,
silent as Attic shapes, prance and wheel
through date palms and trees of fiery-fruited
pomegranate. Turbaned caliphs, bows slung
across their backs, chase a leopard forever
peering over his shoulder. An arrow loosed never
hits its mark eternally suspended by woven
threads. Trees stand in an expectancy of silence
as I move within zig-zags of light and shadow.
My arms slide round the leopard's golden
ruff and I am bound by threads of color
to be hunted forever through fields of silk and
wool, chased by frozen horses, another
player in the weaving fields of Bokkhara.
Nov 3, 2010
Nov 3, 2010 at 6:21 AM UTC
Jetting away to your far away home
I'm left with your fragrance and image alone,
To sit on the chair with a scotch in my hand
Miserably aware that I can't understand,
Why you left, why you cried,why you sped for the door
Leaving pungency there in the sheets on the floor.
The aching emptiness, hollow inside
The confusion and rawness of pain, I confide,
That I'm lost. Tomorrow is pointlessly there
When I wake up to find that your gone, in despair.
Just yesterday, we lay spent on the bed
Entwined and sated, unseemingly spread,
And now the ghost of passion's done
When then, we were so wetly one.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
26 October 2009
- From "Watching the Ripples Radiate."
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 1:52 AM UTC
I come home each night,
And inhale and suffocate into the fragrance that is you.
Breathing in the residual, yet powerful and attracting aroma,
Upon the correspondence you sent,
An almost invisible heart,
Scribed in your perfume,
Distorting the paper and rushing to my head,
'She is like this', I say,
An association is established,
And expectations reign,
Catching a wanted and needed breath,
A sorta kiss from far-away,
It exudes a deep rich pungency,
That is alive and not manufactured.
It alivens me with hope,
That awaits your presence,
So I can, at last, breathe you in completely.
Jul 13, 2013
Jul 13, 2013 at 6:11 AM UTC
in state of REM a succubus looks
upon me as if, I'm tainted; the
intensity of his stare mars my
soul.
besmirching...
every thought of self-elucidation
and I cringe under his watchful
eye; raking my skin with daggerlike
curiousity, sniffing, while I crumble
in openmouth terror.
he descends upon me swiftly; eyes
darting from head to toe piercing me,
into a trance I fall, as if, Dracula has
entered upon spread wings
transforming...
to full humanlike form and stained
teeth sink deep in vein *******
life's blood like a cool soda pop
fizzling with every sip.
savoring...
its pungency in dark delight,
smelling me like I'm a blood
tinged rose.
dripping...
and I awaken upon soaking wet
sheets in trepidities blood
curdling screams.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 12:52 PM UTC
We married in the back of that old Rambler in that syrupy summer. Kitkitdizze mortared under pestal of our tires and its grind made an aroma of peculiar pungency. The moon was plump as an unshelled fava and I was about to peal her. This was all the commitment ceremony we needed. Stars be our witness. Outsiders we were, and the cliffs of the Malakoff Diggins where we did our rambling. I initially met her at her wedding to him, whence she gave her away, though rumor had it she and she were once an item prior to he and she ever meeting. Still, more ****** talk spoke of them being a three. This was all good with me, being that I had had that other he who was still bound to that she who had two hims herself. Lucky gal. Notice, I'm not naming names here.
It was our life and we lived it in polyamorous faultlessness. Gurus, rock stars, poets and other worldly scholars were all in the club. As gluey as all that free love was, most became unstuck in their ways. Hot, hot, hot sticky June crooners. Man I can't wait for summer to come again. Who's getting married in the morning?
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 1:08 AM UTC
Inhabiting the space between
Chaos and harmony
Entering the warmth of
Scarlet rivers
Indulging in verdant
Pungency
Soft lips of
Salt and honey
Meet mine
Haplessly embracing
A plate of cheese
And wine
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 2:31 AM UTC
Jetting away to your far away home
I'm left with your fragrance and image alone,
To sit on the chair with a scotch in my hand
Miserably aware that I can't understand,
Why you left, why you cried,why you sped for the door
Leaving pungency there in the sheets on the floor.
The aching emptiness, hollow inside
The confusion and rawness of pain, I confide,
That I'm lost. Tomorrow is pointlessly there
When I wake up to find that your gone in despair.
Just yesterday, we lay spent on the bed
Entwined and sated, so seemingly dead,
And now the ghost of passion's done
When then, we were so wetly one.
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
26 October 2009
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 2:39 PM UTC
Empty bottles
a sodden reminder
of how my thoughts
drain as quickly
as these ten beers
Smoke lines the wall
like preying snakes
and the pungency
attacks the nose
and every intake
laden my lungs
The ashtray fills
the packet lightens
coke stains the glass
with residues of ***
and my digestive track
looks much the same.
Jan 26, 2010
Jan 26, 2010 at 12:01 PM UTC
***Peer out the frosty crack'd windowpain
translucent poetry in fractured hand
vintage thoughts rise from a steam'd
cuppa emphatic billowing overtures
prelude to the days's negotiations
darkly processing as ink bleeds
out through cynical purse'd lips
embers of dark eye's glean'd glow
mind field's traffic steadily high-season'd
blinking lights dimly reflect'd thunder
gingerly flavor'd pungency's flair
smacking on a charm'd lick of despair
speculating rain'd on parades chagrin
put on another *** of stimulating spirits
peppering a **** melodious harmony
pen'd a snappy sparkle with a bite
left out on a din'd windowsill overnight
hullabaloo's brouhaha made a boisterous clatter
bedlam nearly snared the disquiet of will's disposition
dancing moon lover's save another testament'd hue
witness'd by evidence within a cafe's smoky allusions
covenant's bargain within the scheme of another frosted avenue
forced to whittle time in disguise flying above landscape'd rhyme
sword'd dilemma's cut another frothy fizzling perspective
twilight closes illusion's blinds on facades picturesque view
delusion's of a torture'd poet stirring in frenzy's flurry never slumbers***
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 2:16 PM UTC
Columns of water smoked over
The lake last evening,
Leaving a sun-soaked
Wet-dog pungency. But wagging.
Fatted newborns are
Claiming trees, digging holes.
The worms are doomed
Beneath the green.
Snouts are grovelling
Where they belong.
This was a blithe storm
Passing through.
My sun is eclipsed by you.
After a calming period.
Especially after seeing
You again, seeing you're happy.
That's a rising barometer
For you.
I see it in your hands,
On your ring finger.
Being congenial is different now.
But I am persistent
With my lieu time.
I will be resistant
In my windbreaker.
I have learned
To wait in queue.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 11:57 AM UTC
Impotent wedged flaws
Wrathful and miserable
As you drip pungency to feel secure
The blood slices are passed out for the mourners
Your vulgarly suspended in the air
All your misdeeds that you refused to see
Your secrets didn't shrink or disappear
I want to assassinate your cartilage one peel at a time
The deceptions you entrenched me in are bleak,fatal and weak
Your just a obscurity that nobody needs
Paralyzed into the horizon line
Close to the pale sky
Although no matter how hard you try
You'll never get there
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 9:53 PM UTC
Sir Michael sat on the riverbank, quietly,
sure beyond question that he wasn’t there.
Feverishly he searched the running water;
There it was, his jumbled reflection, blurred,
he couldn’t trust his eyes anyway.
Michael perfumed his hands with the soft wet mud,
deeply inhaling the earth’s pungency, and there were his fingers, his palms—
faintly, unconvincingly, incarnate.
The odor pulsed with Michael’s breathing,
hands fading with each expulsion of air,
reappearing with the intensity of their scent.
Sound.
Pursing his mouth, Michael whistled loudly, and
basked in the physicality of his atonal cry.
Ah, he inhaled again, there were his hands;
exhaled through tightly sealed lips, there were his ears,
outlines in a coloring book, filled lightly for a moment with
a vibrancy, a shrill whistle.
Sliding closer to the edge now, peering into the quivering
canvas of hazy mirrors—this was not enough;
he held his breath, and let go.
Touch.
The icy water ravaged every crevice of skin,
each pore suddenly illuminated, existing.
Air! But there was none; Michael’s lungs
filled with his own reflection.
Air! But there was nowhere for it to go, Michael’s body
began in the water, and would end if he surfaced.
Sir Michael fell to the bottom of the riverbank, quiet as death,
sure beyond question that he was there.
Here I am, he thought.
Mar 22, 2011
Mar 22, 2011 at 1:40 PM UTC
A redundancy,
I smell disdain.
No escape from the pungency.
A failure to break the chain.
A hole grows,
Inside while only one knows.
You, the keeper,
of the inner weeper.
Why wasn't there a difference?
No time to change?
A guess made from inference.
With 10 years, how strange.
Feb 21, 2025
Feb 21, 2025 at 9:26 PM UTC
Each day after school, and on many off days, I walked to my father's shop and took a fresh loaf of light-brown clay from the back-room. My father uses clay to record accounting information but he always had enough to spare for my needs. After dinner, while the clay was still warm and moist and malleable, I cut a slice about the thickness of my wrist and then kneaded it with a marble roller until I fashioned it into a roughly rectangular tablet the thickness of half my pinky finger and the width and length of a man's face. Sweat rolled down my brow for it was hard work but it was a work of love. I then worked quickly with the stylus to etch my thoughts on the tablet before it hardens.
A thin tablet of clay loses its moisture and malleability much quicker than a thick loaf. That is why I only fashioned another thin tablet after I had finished etching my thoughts on the previous one. Most evenings three tablets sufficed but during rare times I could not find inspiration and I stared with futility at the clay loaf and all I could see was its monolithic lifelessness and inertness.
On other rare evenings I became a geyser erupting with inspiration and I could no longer see an inert loaf of clay in front of me but instead, I could only see it as infinite forms superimposed one on the other and forming its body, and I then cut a slice from its effervescent body and I inhaled deeply from its pungency and consummated our relationship.
I adore the pungent aroma of fresh clay. I have come to associate it with a work of passion in progress. But I also adore, with equal measure, the subtle aroma of clay tablets after they've been sun-baked into a permanent hardness. Each day, before I departed for school, I laid the previous night's tablets on a table in my room and let the sun's searing light, through my west-facing window bare and bright, bake my tablets and give my thoughts permanence. It was during that fateful night, when I let in the moon's milky-white through that same window, that the whispers emanated from within the recesses of the soul. But it is the sun's strong light that baked these eternal whispers onto my clay tablets.
May 19, 2020
May 19, 2020 at 11:48 AM UTC