"ratcheting" poems
~~~
Happy Hanukkah Brother Nat!
~~~
*this poem is not for young lovers,
seasoned soldiers of the heartfelt only need apply,
give me my merry mercy-naries to save me
from criminal holiday insouciance,
shoot me with the rounds of caring,
that come so fast
and last as long as I can
nod and wink...*
~~~
used to drink inspiration
from Manhattan sidewalk rain riveted cracks,
turn half overheard street conversation snatches
into half decent poems by Nat(chez),
professors turning phrases, upbringing a brain ratcheting,
choreographers, dancing in body and spirit and word,
in summation, a thief of opportunity...
these days, the pattern prevailing,
the El Niño de Natalino,
is drawing up works
from the wealth of messages and comments,
my troubadours, my y'all youse guys, share,
so as I compose,
not knowing where this goes,
I'm just simple knowing,
that a heartfelt reach out,
addressed as
Happy Hanukkah Brother Nat!
deserves the recognition of its sweet intent,
in a lyric all its own,
like a traditional festival
Hanukkah jelly donut (true1)
t'is the seasonal affectation of salutations
all commencing with happy,
never struck me as anything deeper
than surficial superficial,
but this time its textual emendation -
the inclusion of genuine brotherly love,
loops, Humpty Dumpty cracks and swoops,
and here I am fastening word combos,
when the clickty clack of the clock
says uh-uh, poem in the making,
natural verbal child birthing, sleep hours docked,
and here I am,
begetting instead of shushing
a day-older brain to get-thee-to-a-hideaway...
*this poem is not for young lovers,
seasoned soldiers of the heartfelt only need apply,
give me my mercy-naries to save me
from criminal holiday insouciance,
shoot me with the rounds of caring,
that come so fast
and last as long as I can
nod and wink...*
sooner than later it will be the Fourth,
and in my eyes a day-deserving of a fireworks spectacular,
though the month matters not,
the sentiments of brotherhood and live love,
independent and freely given,
deserves enhanced ignition recognition
and herein supplied...
you had me at the greeting so fleeting,
then ask my advice,
is there to be had a greater compliment,
so my mien and demeanor are now modified
an oath sworn, till the infamous 31st,
every passerby and child
will be bequeathed a shockingly rowdy,
Happy and Merry,
sincerity coated
and tinged with you know what...
~~~
Dec. 3, 2015
nyc
11:12 pm
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
Cooped up in my humble abode and privacy unheard of before and now.
The friction of my shoes emerged to undesirable friction of my four walls.
Ratcheting up of worries about my future, I pondered when would this pandemic end.
My predicament sent me reeling so I convinced myself to juxtapose with countries reeling.
A short joy on the end of my collegiate life soon accounted to the fueled uncertainties of the job market.
Success used to be landing a remunerative job but now they said, landing any job would be a blessing.
What about my dreams? They ought to cease to exist.
It is no longer about dreams. It is about being alive.
My demise, the demise of an industry, the demise of a country and the demise of the world.
The ghastly truth of how my simple action of staying at home would impact the safe havens of many.
A true test to my character in avoidance of getting positive from the test of COVID-19.
For I know I am not alone.
Apr 26, 2020
Apr 26, 2020 at 3:54 AM UTC
Creases cemented in skin of ages,
bending forward ratcheting wrinkles
piled like a car crash, systemically dried
routing for moisture moguls, malfunctioned,
marked measures of time spelt skin attack,
pillowed ruts run deep, prolonging
their birthmark, plumping....out on a date
with new age spaces yet to be filled
Sarcasm streets, filching frowned brows
suns' stolen chastity, lifting out brown
messages spotted at random
grey mandarins, juiceless, bribing
to be heard, a manifesto hidden,
shrivelled prunes wallowing in dried skins
reaching out for the bottomless custard jug
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 4:13 PM UTC
They keep ratcheting up the pressure
They keep hatcheting for good measure
They keep laughing at their leisure
They keep blasting guns for pleasure
Creating a series of tubes
Where every which way I lose
There's an existential
Differential
From my potential
That's unintentional
For I want to be better
Than the scarlet letter
That's my resume header
And my pain embedder
But there's a series of events
That keep happening
That leaves everyone incensed
They start attacking me
Until I take my mask off
They uncomfortably back off
Get in their rocket and blast off
Until it's humanity I'm the last of
There's a pattern
That gives me purpose
So I climb a ladder
Of fruitless searches
For a freedom purchase
From a shame merchant
Who offers the joy of fantasy
At the price of a crushing reality
So I can hear Satan answering
As a doctor trying to cure my malady
I feel shame
Then humiliation
This repetitive game
Provides inspiration
To avoid every friendship
Because my love will end it
And bring a torture endless
So either way I'll be friendless
After I reluctantly ask
And they say no
Am I still expected to bask
In their beautiful glow?
I see a range of emotions
From pathetic pity to anger
Always leaving the notion
I live in a city of strangers
And walls of concrete
That can't be beat
One must take a seat
And accept defeat
Then repeat
Apr 17, 2018
Apr 17, 2018 at 4:04 AM UTC
A CONFUSING DAY FOR CUCUMBER FISH
I’m not being able to escape this, in parts, either on the slip where the drifters weigh themselves against daily chores, or to the perch, where against the millions of suns striking into the cabinets where devoted criminal ****** *** offenders aid and abet their children:
flying kites, tossing bread crumbs to water fowl, playing tag, hide and go seek, or
Cooking food, drinking cold alcoholic beverage, and listening as a friend with a guitar sings about the child born in the mountains as a man, only to find the world as a legend.
Still there is no escape. There is only the peril of night stretching 99% of our brains across the tepid sky, only to wait for the light of those suns to fade, and then only have to worry about the dross and muck on every fingerprint of every man from this place or the next. These are fingerprints that ooze the familiar green devil whose face familiar ages our futures before they can even happen. Then we succumb to the bitterness of these years on the perch, the stoop, the step, wandering around the chollas in nothing but a pair of aquamarine boy’s briefs. This is not insanity. This is the product of insanity. This is not losing, this is the product of living under a government that has been taking what it could not afford, and who trades in what hurts rather than helps what ails rather than aids.
This is the ratcheting heard inside the bruised and frail hearts of many. The pain inside their backs and legs and arms and heads is real. It smells real. It sounds real. It feels real, but no one here has ever known what it is that is happening, therefore they do not understand the great costs being played with when these oozing poison-stricken fingertips start playing at the game of life, or they start playing at the game of their neighbor’s life. There is an outcome of sunset still yet to be seen, and that is the inescapability and uncertainty of millions of children being born today, tomorrow, and hereafter. The children tomorrow should not have to worry about washing someone’s fingerprints off of the skin they have yet to be born inside. Stretching across the dusty and quiet streets, if this Wild West is closing its wildness out and isn’t doing anything but wandering west, there isn’t a committee of sanity that will prevail. Especially as we choke through the gravely heavy metals meddling with the untold stories of tomorrow’s sons and daughters.
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 12:45 AM UTC
February 8th, 2018 - 11:06pm. In. An. The. How much deeper will this go? This desert. This baron land and escape from the moonlit evenings’ effervescent engineering of short-lived Neanderthals. These voices are enough to split our hides through and through like an cheese grater, that pants-boots combo chases us into the early morning forecast. I need to get out with her. We need to get out from here. We need to go out from this place. There are hexes and hieroglyphs places matte with ill-defined Finnish designs. There is the yolk and that which copies it. There is the phone and the web of tangling eyes whose corpus is mimicry. I am the notes and the music is taking me down, down, down. Whether it’s our dreams or the sweats that keep us ratcheting our bodies beaten eyes hooked to the cadavers we once chose. Now it’s up to you to choose. This is the fuse that we’ve let loose, maybe your furnace can curtsy and observe these sad blackened buffoons while they make us shrivel up and go hide back in our bed cocoons. This is a zoo I tell you and you tell me. This is a zoo of mayhem, hedonists, and 400° degrees. These are the tiny beds we hide in until they melt us down, into the heirs of our highness, our luxuries quick to abscond.
Feb 9, 2018
Feb 9, 2018 at 6:55 AM UTC
servicemen ingested the wrath, leaching through unsuspecting bodies
in a time capsule it sat in idleness, waiting to affect their aged bodies
no safeguards were in place, the testing went on without accountability
the red dust of the outback irradiated, protective cladding not on bodies
years later cancers were reported, nuclear particles ratcheting up
damaging the organs and bones, in frail manner were their bodies
a mushroom cloud hung low, the aftermath of British testing
the servicemen but lab rats, no one had regard for these bodies
friendly fire came to Australia, back in the nineteen fifties
Maralinga a tragedy in the making, its dire fallout stayed in bodies
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 10:27 PM UTC
Take it -
Just take it easy.
**** he makes it easy)
With flattery, fluttering
eyes sliding,
all the way up my thighs
then melting me
back down
when he calls me “baby”
just rolls right off
that wicked quick tongue,
like nothing
“baby”
ratcheting up my heart
my breath
my blood
“oh baby”
melt me down again
“baby”
like its no big thing
but it’s everything to me.
Apr 29, 2014
Apr 29, 2014 at 4:04 PM UTC
Tell me of the mystified Isle's,
the dampening subheader
splotching itself upon
a concrete rug
that calls itself
"AMAZING.
SO PATHED, SO SMOOTH, SO GRANITE,
GRANDEUR, AND GRENADE-THROWN
A M A Z I N G G G G."
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 3:53 PM UTC
Pressures,
forces,
twisting levers—
gears ratcheting down
little by
relentless
little
against a box with
no walls
and no way out.
May 10, 2020
May 10, 2020 at 7:54 AM UTC
Cool, calm,
Not dangerous when
Viewed from a distance,
But unspeakable depths that will drag you
Down,
Down,
down.
Into my ratcheting currents and
Demonic tides at a depth hard to imagine.
And scenes you couldn’t imagine,
At least in my life.
I’m more and less than people think I am.
Unexpected,
Unknown,
And often invisible.
My hands are frost and
The icy mask I wear is melting into my flesh.
But I feel that mask slipping,
Collapsing to the ground and
Shattering,
Freeing the person I am.
Maybe wrong,
The frightening individual I am,
As dangerous as an iceberg,
Could be beautiful too.
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 1:00 PM UTC
Iridescence on the neck
of the boat-tailed grackle
is a trick of light.
Much the same
as the swirled acid
rainbow slitherings
of oils on water -
slick - metallic
the call.
Much the same
as the prismed arches,
aloof,
heavy airs slashed
by gut level
blades of low suns -
never there, but chaste
and chased by the eye.
The blue jay hoards
no pigment blue,
but gray conspires
the barbules,
interlocked
to lift the remains
of the speckled shell
under any light or lack,
slackened back,
flashed on limbs and wire:
back to the clutch,
back to the hatch,
back to the wide red cups,
back to the ratcheting call -
the screech of all things blue.
Aug 27, 2019
Aug 27, 2019 at 5:53 AM UTC