"radius" poems
I'll be eaten alive one day:
one day, i see it in my mind
so close to closure along an empty street
late at night
(owls just retired and birds
not yet up),
orbs of light tethered to tall electric poles
cast dappled circles on cracked pavement;
illumination and safety
(for that two metre radius).
Stepping between them
like a girl child on stones
across a garden,
I anticipate each missed step
as sinking into sand or frightful waves.
Singing drunk back-alley lullabies
i'll soothe the skelebabies in their sleep,
their poor crusted noses snuffled against
a cold shift of air
(their private torment plastered over billboards
with corporate logos and dim colours,
suggesting the city's lights have gone out and
the local government is in frantics.
That is, after all, what you'd focus on)
Girl child games were so tipsy and magic
(and so close to real coldness);
between two orbs of light i'll slip
through the cracks
in the pavement.
THE END.
(eat me alive,
eat me alive,
eaten alive by the
wolf at the door)
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 6:36 PM UTC
You-
you have a lot on your plate
and me-
I am just pushed in next to the others
that weigh you down while you're trying to carry
a thanksgiving meal of responsibility
and at the same time not be crushed by it-
You don't like it when your food touches.
So there I am waiting at the edge of all the chaos
trying not to step over boundaries or cross the line
I am just another thing thrown onto your plate
of responsibilities.
I am a shadow.
A walking disaster.
And I try to avoid all the things
that are so ferociously trying to bring you back down-
but all I do is end up making it worse
making all your **** end up touching
so it becomes a mountain upon your shoulders
that eventually turns into a chip upon it-
you have gone concave-
you became acute when you were once so obtuse
so full of life
so 180 degrees out of everyone else's ******* box
and I closed you in.
Made you realize what you needed to make yourself small
so you could eventually fit the plate just right on your shoulders.
I try to take the weight-
try to pick it all up myself and do something to help you get through
but I just end up touching everything-
You don't like it when your food touches.
You-
you are concave in my convex world
always looking inside yourself-
always hiding away inside of the parts of yourself
I will never see because I'm too busy looking outward
to find something I can do for you.
We are trigonometry-
which is the only type of math I was ever good at in school
but I can't seem to find the right angle anymore
you are too scalene and not enough isosceles
there's no symmetry in the way you look at me-
there's too many different sides to you.
I'd like to think I've seen them all
I'd like to think I've solved what degree
every angle you feed me turns out to be-
but it seems that the angles aren't what I should be finding.
You're just a circle-
I can find your radius
but I don't have enough of you anymore
to find your circumference.
We will always be abstract.
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 1:16 PM UTC
Morality isolates and fenders bend.
Circumference learns, “half-way” but fails to take the name
“Radius,”
And when she lay a meter nigh
With child, my child;
I still and will feel horribly alone.
Curse my iron fist and rusts the middle knuckle,
When another weeps, not for I, not for you but the gods assumed,
“Heaven,”
And 3 floors above my own;
Tucked lies the pain, regret fills fetal;
I still and will feel horribly alone.
So comes the autumn, the fire prior, “Styx,”
Upon borders that could only separate, “fatherhood,” so partitioned,
“Winter,”
And 3 floors below her own –
A pillar wrought persistence and abandoned, my hedonism;
I still and will feel horribly alone.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 8:22 AM UTC
O, mosquito for taste of blood you seek,
For miles and miles you fly, within radius,
To earn a warm and idle skin to *****
By day in cravice dark by night with us.
O, mosquito you small but deadly thief;
On wings of silence came you trespasser,
A drop of blood you've stolen whilst to leave
Me unawares that I'm being the loser.
Alas, you left behind a virus strange,
Of potent evil concoction which spread,
And corrupted my veins by this exchange:
My good liquid for diseases I dread.
Like being bitten by a winged vampire,
My body shaking my soul is on fire!
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 8:03 PM UTC
Ku terlelap seperti lalu lintas jakarta, berjalan dan berhenti, dari padat menjadi kosong. Yang tak tahu pergi kemana. Gambar-gambar yang lewat begitu saja seperti cepatnya kereta. Lampu-lampu jalan yang menerangi aspal hitam. penjual-penjual yang menjual minuman di lampu merah. Pengamen yang bermimpi membuat kemacetan menjadi hal musikal. Keringat-keringat dibalik helm dan jaket kulit. Tawa-canda dibaluti pendingin didalam mobil. Bis-bis kota dengan kepenuhan penumpang. Orang-orang yang mengumpat jika kau dengar dengan seksama, umpatan mereka begitu indah, tak ada seorangpun di bagian dunia lain mampu menirunya. para pedestrian yang semakin tergeser eksistensinya karena tak ada lagi ruang bagi mereka. Stasiun-stasiun yang nampak menakjubkan ketika sepi. Spanduk-spanduk keagamaan yang dipasang sembarangan sama layaknya dengan iklan-iklan yang berteriak ke telingamu tiap radius 10 meter. aku terlelap bagaikan lalu lintas jakarta. Aku tak tahu kemana.
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 1:55 AM UTC
Guys with long hair have agendas. And if they don't, they're stoners and 'agenda' a really long word, man.
Guys with long hair are the poetic types with acoustic guitars and incense in their dorm room and they hold their hair back with a pen behind their ear and they use it to write in a leather-bound journal about girls who smoke too much and have soft ***** so they can pick up more girls who smoke too much and have soft *****
Guys with long hair are the metalheads who sit in the back of class and use their hair to distract from the fact that they're wearing poor-quality ironic headphones that project Alice in Chains to everyone within a four-desk radius but no one's going to say anything because hey, that guy's a creep.
Guys with long hair are the classical types that play expensive instruments and have beautiful eyes that you can't see very often and have to keep ponytail elastics on their wrists, their wrists that never stop moving, conducting, tapping, curling, because Chopin slows for no man, no matter how long his locks.
And if you poured all these guys with long hair in a test tube and melted them until the agendas broke and forged and changed colors, you'd have him.
I found him in a smoky sweet basement in a house where everyone belongs but no one should actually live. I braided his shoulder-brushing hair without asking and saw his smile like a chunk of snow the size of your high school falling off a mountain, fast and white, huge and more important than anything else around.
I found him again in a different basement where only musicians belong. He invited me into the closet with the piano and it's like he asked me to crawl inside his head and hang out for a while. He casually mentioned his favorite angry bands while his fingers brushed keys in an order they seemed to know on their own, tendons and strings.
He says things that deserve to be handwritten in leather-bound journals. He holds your wrist with one hand when you shake the other because people have become desensitized to handshakes and don't feel the human contact of it anymore. He hugs to the right because you're supposed to hug heart-to-heart.
"People are going to judge based on what they see anyway. Might as well make sure they're right, sort of."
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 6:15 PM UTC
“Put pressure on it, it needs more pressure”
Holding your wounds shut
That senseless force is what took you away
Pressure- to be... whilst not desiring to be
You saw the clouds moving in greyscale
I saw the hills below scattered in shades of green,
Cavernous, shadowed, cryptic, familiar-
We were advised to go as the crow flies
I cried to a nameless God that your crow’s feet
Were from insurmountable happiness, not the pressures endured
I’ve forgotten much since the storm some-178 weeks ago
Though my body remembers yours over and over again
My skin has yours imprinted, correlated
Forged into one point on the axis between here and there
You the X, I the Y
The Earth crept between the crevices, curling
Through the distance between the Right radius and ulna
Elbows breaking knuckles, blood remains to be spilt
Blood doesn’t connect, if anything it merely separates
Scarecrows don’t help much when the crops won’t grow this year
Ants crawled out of the barrel of a shotgun
Observing the process of cleaning bones after tragedy
Follow the moss to find your way North with no direction-
Sometimes on the other side it’s not greener,
It’s more terrifying than ever before
Terrain untouched, unspoiled, sacred-
Climb up the trees with me, find your quiet
We won’t carve our names but we’ll find our niche
You’ll have quills and I’ll have armor
Not even the thought of stolen arrows,
Lost time through distance,
Or perhaps a slew of chemical imbalances
Can reach us up here
I chose to glue your pieces back together with mud and straw
Taken from the fallen, the loved and now distant memories
You may be an abandoned military base offshore
What was once used by many-
Witnesses life again, life of a different kind
The vegetation will ease its way into the cracks
Constructed when the foundation began to decay
It has a beauty of its own, one of self-sustainment
An everlasting beauty that connects itself
To the surrounding extravagance, often times ignored,
Death isn’t the only way to be forged into nature, remembered
Fear doesn’t always win, nor death do us part so soon
I hope your skin and bones remember before the end
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 1:34 AM UTC
i tried to overlook
but like seedlings, you germinated
roots around my phalanges (like a dandelion)
from where we last touched.
over time and frigid winter weather, the roots
spread. around my metacarpals, intertwined
between my ulna and radius, all the way up
to my humerus and scapula.
by the spring, flowers sprouted just above my
collarbones, embracing my mandible.
little wilted blue petals surrounding me in my bed
each sunrise, but by noon, new petals already have
attached themselves to the receptacle.
by summer, i pluck their petals for amusement. as
they drift away in the breeze i can't help but to
remember you. us. we. and another thing i haven't
determined is whether you have forgotten me
or not.
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 7:39 PM UTC
The wobbly love bits
woke up when the morning is
still fogged by cold purple-hued
freshness
She covers her face
but reveals those baby eyes
to follow you with
mirthful wonder
and she flails her wobbly fingers
and wobbly arms
with playful waves
and her mother
takes away her blankie
And she is dressed in
blue, and that sort of
beauty all crammed inside
that little brand new human being
can be quite
overwhelming
Her few feather hairs
and happiness-crinkling eyes
and mouth in a laughing sort of circle
and her invisible neck
and super puff-loved
cheeks
And love-hearts
fill the air
and spread joy
though your bones
and nerves
like warm sunshine
that melts
yesterday's despair
and dissipates
all the tiny
agonies
within
her radius.
-To Alice
Jan 7, 2016
Feb 15, 2016
Feb 15, 2016 at 10:25 PM UTC
professor Burke and professor Lee
two mathematicians who could not agree
loudly voiced their differences at half past noon
having daily lunch at the Greasy Spoon
the subject on the fateful day was Pi
and they could not see eye to eye
a disagreement on the thousandth digit
had Burke turn red and caused Lee to fidget
said Burke “No you are off by one!”
spat Lee “Your math is poorly done!”
Burke shouted, “Lee, you have gone too far!”
reached toward the counter for a candy jar
but his hand instead encountered pie
a hideous gleam sprang to his eye
he flung the pie with all his might
hit Lee full face, eyes wide with fright
but Lee recovered and found more pies
Boston Creme took Burke between the eyes
apple, custard, lemon, berry
pecan, pumpkin, key lime, cherry
pies of every kind were thrown
plates' radius squared remained unknown
the police arrived to break up the fray
took the two meringued men away
many hours later in the quiet cell
with pie for ink and tempers quelled
the two stood looking at the wall
upon which lay their equation scrawled
said Burke, with both their faces long
“Well, what do you know. We both were wrong.”
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 11:20 PM UTC
if silence
is the gateway
to the highest truth,
animals glimpse this truth
far better than humans do....
that inherent tranquility
embedded in
the radius of their own silence,
be it a lion or a dog!
after all,
“dog” written backwards is
indeed “god”
© 2019
Jul 26, 2019
Jul 26, 2019 at 10:46 AM UTC
If I moved a muscle right now a window would break.
If I took a solitary step the tiles beneath me would crack.
Submerged in the oscuridad save for a small pulse of luz called optimism because that’s just how I was raised.
I know I can’t pretend to make an oasis
Because how well did that work out for me last time
The lightbulbs can yell and scream and punch the air
But nothing will make them turn on without a power source.
I can’t be breathing hard or else the candle stub I have left will blow out I have to
Guard it but keep looking for my next step using its meager light trusting
That the beacon I look for is not further than the reaches of my
Light that I will with the remaining shards of my life to keep on
Reining now is uncertainty that is
diametrically opposed to the concept that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow I promise so let me stroke your hair and shroud you until it does.
I exist in this limbo of heeding the hours that come. The ticking of the clock drudges yet I gulp every last second as it arrives.
I voraciously **** the teaspoon of trust I have left that the
Audience is just watching the plot arc to progress and that
The dramatic irony of some surety is just beyond the radius of the hardly illuminated path beneath my shuddering feet.
Maybe someday I will stumble upon the next candlestick or something.
Maybe someday I’ll find a working light bulb buried in the snow or something.
But here I progress or something.
Un día a la vez or something.
Grappling foot by foot for something.
Something.
Dec 11, 2021
Dec 11, 2021 at 5:37 PM UTC
when I dream I dream in the colors
of the being yet unformed
wide eyes shut
a pseudo-dormant parasite
feeding off of my mother, still.
I dream of oily ashes,
still staining the arms- ulna, radius
reaching towards the empty sky.
For what did they burn?
black on white.
shades of gray.
the man in the turban
stepping from my closet—
the bees swarming from his mouth.
Before my body was ten years old
I knew sadness—
it seeped into my soul
and I could not speak.
For what did I ache?
Jun 24, 2010
Jun 24, 2010 at 4:21 PM UTC
Don’t put me in a box, I am my own teacher
I don’t worship TV idols, I have other preachers
I don't toss a poem to come across as known
friends crossed me, don’t know my own home
I don't speak for an arrogant cause
Or do self-righteous acts just to merit applause
I don’t make scenes to be seen as a person of God
What you see as a skill, I see as a character flaw
I don't use a hype man sell grams to buy fans
I don't scream to get attention other ways for lungs to expand
I don't ********** my talent for people that bystand
Or try to trick innocent people more desperate than I am
Sell a line, sell a book
Sell a dream, sell a scheme
Sell a brother false hope you control his self-esteem
Let a brother talk **** I won’t get mad at all
I’ll just throw a couple stabs like my cousin at the mall
So please tell me what’s worse
being broke or broken?
but before you answer that let me ask you this first
In the place you live, can you quench your thirst?
Do you have enough time to finish a verse?
Remember our time here was borrowed, can’t reimburse
Parasitic
a chemic I been it
I pen it, I penetrate my a pen all day
To descend and mate
My inner state is in the state
to keep on straight,
administrate and illustrate
What people haul with haste till it's in his face
So in the case where i’m in my space
my focus is to chase
Yeshua’s face is faced with the waste of people sending hate
Intimidating to people claiming contention
ostensibly incoherent was air for my ascension
It's plucking a hair ain't it?
who painted the P.I.C cell
in pixels, the pig sells
the witch who picks spells, got hell
Tie a boar to a tree transmitting this
free him a year later he'll stay in the same radius
Maybe it's in the tears
Maybe it's just kinetics
Maybe I do love attention
and writing is how I get it
encapsulated beneath the surface the desire is unknown
You think this a joke
Get shot in your funny bone!
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 2:41 AM UTC
I felt the world at a finger tip,
It tingled
And radiated,
Radius.
Sedated,
I am medicated on absence
And excess.
You are the mirror to me,
My existential mess,
Superiority and minority thought.
Superficial and fictitiously bought,
Buyer from the sold,
Silver to the raindrop,
Water to your gold.
It drips
Fingertips,
Touched the world at a lark,
Till light fled,
Leaving the dark.
I bid farewell to new,
And hello to you.
Aug 12, 2010
Aug 12, 2010 at 1:31 AM UTC
You took a scalpel to me, my dear
Skillfully working your way through the layers
Epidermis to lipids to muscular tissue until
The bone
You carved your name on my radius
Lovers' initials on a tree
Marrow leaked across your hand
A gift of the broken
You tried to sew me up, my dear
Realising you had gone far deeper than first thought
Surgeons hands you have not
A hack job, bound to leave scars
You've left me with bumps
Burns
Itches inside my very being
Refraining from scratching
In fear of what might come pouring out
Oct 14, 2013
Oct 14, 2013 at 5:03 AM UTC
The Dying Romantic Mathematician
“Your trapezoid is vectored to a sphere”
She sighed, “and parallels are polygon.”
“All, all is perpendicular,” he coughed,
“And arcs are so rectangle to sad Pi
Equiangular in the radius
And rhombus has gone Pythagorean.
O canst thou concave the isosceles?”
“Yes!” she coplanared. “Yes!” he gasped in pain,
“Oh, yes, our love is solved for X!"
He died,
Quadratic equations upon his lips
Jan 12, 2017
Jan 12, 2017 at 12:01 PM UTC
My minotaur has mad cow's disease.
The FDA is rounding up each one
in a forty mile radius for slaughter.
They're incinerating the bodies
at the trash-to-steam factory. I hear
gunfire and wailing children. Sharon
next door is in shock. She's been
on her knees down on the lawn
mumbling, "please, please, please,"
for the last two hours. Crimson clouds
bleed into sunrise. How will we
escape the seepage?
I'll stop at the Getty for a car wash
before I pick you up. Have some
sandwiches packed.
O for the love of God,
the moos, the moos.
Nov 14, 2015
Nov 14, 2015 at 9:25 PM UTC
Union and Grand
I moved into this house less than a year ago
and already three gun related murders have occurred
within a three block radius; two of them involving children.
I'm not making this **** up.
Those numbers wouldn't be anything exciting for a population
hitting upwards of the millions,
but this is not a big city.
This is the heartland.
-
The city paid for a series of strategically placed dead ends,
forced turns, and surveillance equipment to be installed
in the area of about a mile surrounding my house.
No wonder they call this place "The Trap".
They keep changing the maze,
and studying us like rats.
-
They had a make-do memorial for the little girl who got shot.
They attached her stuffed animals, cards, and photos to a utility pole
on the corner of Union and Grand. The city had it taken down.
Some kind of city ordinance
from some dusty tome at the town hall.
Kids killing kids, and the shots keep firing.
-
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not what'd you call an activist.
But when bloodshed occurs within eye shot of where you sleep,
you start to get a little irked.
These kids have as much potential as me, and twice as much grit.
Their teachers barely even know their names,
let alone what it's like to be deprived of privilege.
-
I'll stomp this concrete until my feet break.
This labyrinth is my constant reminder and reality check.
I am here, and you are there.
This connection is suspended on silver threads and I am your puppet.
Mold me into your angst driven dreamboat.
Because tomorrow, I'm just going to wake up here. Tyler.
-
This soul has been folded seven times
and I grow tired of this reality.
There was a time when I could scream loud enough to wake the dead.
I guess I'm showing the symptoms
of an accidental child
with a tongue that only tastes art as bitter protest.
-
I'd tear my face off
to know if this is really getting through to you.
The face in the photo is that of the goat; the false idol and deceiver.
A Knight of Pentacles, selling you gold plated garbage.
Odin-kin.
You always feel like I have a secret to keep; my fist is in the air.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 3:05 AM UTC
I am grounded by my own ignorance, he thought, and here, by the sheer complexity of things. This pebble at my feet seems the very centre of a radius - of marks and pathways. Possibilities. It is a thing that connects itself with me. It is very early, before the sun has touched the horizon’s sky.
I recall a poem telling of the perfection of pebbles, their being equal to themselves, mindful of their limits, filled exactly with a pebbly meaning, with a scent which does not remind one of anything, does not frighten anything away, does not arouse desire, its ardour and coldness full of dignity.
I now remember another poem, portraying a pebble placed in a child’s hand, picked up on a pebble ridge. A pebble to place in the pocket where we finger it until it becomes warm. Its shape and certainty is firm and sure. It consoles us. And, as we change and decay, it remains lodged with us: a thing that contains nothing save the mystery of life.
And there is a long prose poem devoted to the pebble. It starts at the beginning of time itself with a condensed cosmogony, describing the formation of the first rock as an allegory of The Fall. It ventures through the expulsion of life, to cooling, to those large tectonic plates, and all the way down to the pebble itself, or, as the poet says, the "kind of stone that I can pick it up and turn it over in my hand". Time is everywhere in this poem: Stone as Time, where the great wheel of stone rolls ever on as plant life, animals, gases and liquids revolve quite rapidly in their cycles of dying. Take this as the poet’s view of humanity: to consider all things as unknown, and to begin again right from the beginning.
We need to take the side of things, he thought. Here, this pebble is time, and where this pebble lies, with its radii of marks, seems at the very centre of things. It was brought anonymously by the tide one stormy night to lie at our feet, and looks at us with a calm and very clear eye.
Jul 7, 2013
Jul 7, 2013 at 1:49 AM UTC
I'm toxic,
And you're too close.
You're closing in,
On a dangerous thing.
Bring a shield,
Or some protective gear,
Because my radiation
Has a radius of countless miles.
You're diving in,
To the deepest parts of me.
And I'm scared you'll leave.
Everyone runs,
When they see that I'm ****** up.
But I'm hoping you'll stay,
If only for just one more day.
You've heard the distant shots
Of war.
But I'm hesitant
To show you my wounds.
The scars I collected,
They're a terrible sight.
But I'm addicted to war,
Like a traumatically stressed warrior.
To be scared,
It keeps me alive.
To fear my own mind.
To worry I might die.
This is how I survive.
What a way to live,
On the edge of falling words.
But I need to feel the burn,
The stinging sensation.
Keeping quiet,
Keeps me busy.
Fire keeps me on my feet.
Running in circles,
The tiring race
Is better than defeat.
May 7, 2015
May 7, 2015 at 12:16 AM UTC
Trinkets
little collected emblems
voodoo figurines
gypsy gold
Blankets
small symbolic weapons
ancient memories
stories untold
Gather
find myself naked
caressing unforgiving ground
but the moonlight warms me
even in the rain
as I lay
Imperfect center to my holy ring
my treasures guarding
but passive
Crawling
crooked radius
Finger space my soldiers
to align with the stars
now gone from your forest green jewels
Zodiac calendar
Perception overruled outcome
The wind blows
I start again
Jul 9, 2013
Jul 9, 2013 at 5:54 PM UTC
my mother was born a gardener
and my father became one
through patient snap peas and
angry red tomatoes
he seeded and watered and waited
while my mother grew hibiscus in the mountains
and plums in the shade
i was born a painter
but its tank me years to pick up a paintbrush
and my brother was born a poet
but i sincerely doubt that he’ll ever show it
i mix my paints on my palette of flowers
and my brother goes to meetings at banks
My other attended the only Agricultural High School available to her within a 40 mile radius of her South Philadelphia home. This was not a coincidence.
My father attended the best athletic conference in his affluent suburban community. This was.
She started out watering plants in fast food joints, arranging flowers for junior proms in the poorest neighborhoods of the city. When my father met her, she only ate lettuce and seeds because that was all she could manage to put in her body.
My father kneeled to the ground, saw the soil beneath her fingernails, and fell in love.
I can only love men who garden. I can only be a daughter of the earth because of them.
I don’t like terrariums because they frustrate me. Life trapped behind glass, that I cannot touch, or feel, or smell. I cannot water, I cannot fathom to even slightly disturb their existence, no matter how desperately I want to.
I’m getting my hands ***** touching old soil. I wipe it on my skirt before I touch the sweat on the back of my neck. I’m planting forget-me-nots and basil. I don’t even know if those go together. But I am putting them deep in the ground and it occurs to me that in a few weeks, I might not even remember them. They might die and become some stupid memory, a part of my dinner party story vernacular, Or maybe waiting for them will change me, will allow me to commit as a meditation on earthen peace.
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
Romantically speaking,
I am not very romantic at all.
My spine curves and
sprouts forth a
humerus that holds
to a radius and an ulna
with metacarpal bones
dangling
downward
reaching for something to
anchor themselves to.
I am not very romantic at all,
it's just that my bones have flourished
curling around you.
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 12:50 PM UTC