"reimagined" poems
It's not the time of dandelions;
they've all been blown away;
those fragile fragments now remind
the shooting stars of day.
And though the seedlings blown away seem gone;
they float as static light and air along
as pieces of a never ending earth –
a universe recycling its dearth.
All matter is
and always is.
A dandelion
may be his
smile. And think – drink water from your sink –
it may be reimagined stars you drink.
Aug 7, 2012
Aug 7, 2012 at 1:11 AM UTC
I was there
Beneath it all
Stubbing my nose
Catching my eyes
On the most soulful of gifts
There was a promenade
Then music
A chef in a tall white hat
Shouting at the top of his lungs
As cracked eggs
Desperately tried
To reimagine themselves
As whole again.
They did not wish to change.
I am a poem
And I am nothing
I am a man
And I am nothing
I am a before
Yet to embark
On an after
Could this be it?
I think of
What could have been
If I had done this
If I had done that
And switch
Paralyzed.
The horizon
Fades at dusk
And is reimagined
At dawn
How I wish
I were content
To be ok
With such a simple
Routine
Progress
Achievements
Recognition
Advancement
Awards
Realization
The ***** turns to tighten
To hold
Only to rust
Be forgotten
Put in the back of the pantry
Read from afar
The days of the sun
Are over
Darknesses lengths
Are upon us
Taste of the hubris of the moon
Its position is fixed
Such a fact, such a reserved space
Where will the moon go
But anywhere
But here?
And of us?
Where will our bones go?
Our me minds?
Our fleeting psyche?
The I is none other
But the billionth petal
Of a flaming sunflower
In a field
Surrounded by the identical
Taste ash
Mixed with honey
As the buzz of the bees
Fade.
Aug 14, 2018
Aug 14, 2018 at 2:25 AM UTC
I believe in a past
that never existed.
Always willing to tell
others they should
be sad they missed it.
For what never lasts
can always be reimagined,
engineered ad-hock.
For me, the door to
the past is always wide open.
But, the one to the future
I cannot unlock.
so please don't give me the key
I don't wanna see beyond
what went before.
I believe in a moment
of imagined purity.
To close my eyes
on the acts of cruelty,
that lead to this modernity.
Only seeing the light that
concealed the night,
and the chains of *******
For the good,
that is all I see.
Because I need to see
that good in me.
so please don't give me the key
I don't wanna see beyond
what went before.
Jul 13, 2020
Jul 13, 2020 at 6:22 PM UTC
trust in the shape of a key,
good god how corny is that?
satisfactorily nonsensical, a Pharisee phrase,
so offal illogical,
it borders on the poetically reprehensible
who has time to state this stuff,
pretend it is worthy of something respectful,
work it into a Nobel Prize awarded script,
nominated for "really bad ****
an ordinary hardware key, brass gleamy,
and the squealing grinding noise
heard while a blank progenitor is reimagined,
so so annoyingly ludicrous in this century
of plastic replicators but the noise,
comfortably familiar as a sound of
things being made
run thumb test over the cuts,
as if your thumb should know
what order the points and bevels,
the toothy gap spaces should be,
the correct disorderly order of the teeth
there are very few locks on a farm;
indeed the front door key
has not
been seen
in many a year
what's that you ask?
ok ok - I get it - in harvest time
it is early to bed and earlier to rise,
conclude this mystery key,
red winter wheat needs laying down,
stop your word seeds germinating
there may be few locks on a farm,
everything rusts so quickly anyway,
but stop to comprehend just how many locks
the human body employs -
at least 613,
maybe many more,
and only one master
for them all
a shiny gleamy thing,
strangely,
its cuts and grooves seem to
spell a word
trust
go figure
1:05am in the city
Sep 28, 2017
Sep 28, 2017 at 1:18 AM UTC
Sometimes I can’t imagine normal adult things happening to me
Like buying a house, a new car
Being a bride in a wedding.
Getting a “big girl career” beyond retail.
Wanting kids.
Because I haven’t had normal things happen to me.
I was robbed of many things,
A childhood,
Development.
Love.
And a lot of the time I forget I’m 26,
Wearing a made up, misplaced childhood,
Still locked into teen age.
It’s not a resurrection of the dead.
It’s a reimagined gift to myself.
I am my own body guard, protector, nurturer.
I am allowed a childhood.
And I am allowed to have adult things happen to me.
I’m 26.
Sep 21, 2023
Sep 21, 2023 at 8:37 AM UTC
wild night videos
for the dark web
3 Atlean men
and a girl
she got it
by a mob
of Moroccan **** rockets
and will pine
for the rest of her days
screaming to the hells
in a reimagined language
the regression to Lilith
**** *********
the world
when hell touched paradise
***** and man handled
shot by shot
mouth to ****** to ****
split and folded
tooth and nail
to drive the ****** tides
of the world
***** monsters like
T Rex
force a ritual infliction
butter meat of dreams
pain sensually
reworked into pleasure
blister-hot and oh so sweet
married to a paradox
like feeling bad
about feeling good
give me your ankles *****
an unveiled immediacy
right off the bat
i got just the girl
confiding in me
so ready to die
like an Aztec princess
to be the star
like a peacock
in an engorged circus
blizzard of jealous snakes
strangled fanged and spewed
a swansong exhibition
in blood-soaked ponytails
a bobbing head
and choke throat ***** picnic table
with mayonnaise wounds
mediating power
in a psychoanalytic fetish
death is not death
but performative submission
her body ransacked
in tooth marks
and red tipped *******
steaming eraser head
pulses
a **** soaked
chicken on a plate
eradicating reality
are you gonna eat that?
pass the ***
collapses time
lust
custodian
of human archeology
**** piñata
bearing gifts
of squirty pork gasms
******** and cuchifritos
corpus of ****** horror
as liberation
crosses-temporality
and breaks the vessel of time
oow
Nefertiti where are you
a tongue up the ***
sniffs
Prada's Candy Perfume
**** blinking licks
up there where havoc lives
in **** **** farm country
Oct 5, 2020
Oct 5, 2020 at 2:28 PM UTC
Instead, I give you
simple tragedies;
how you will
never remember everything
and the more you live the
more there is forgotten.
Sewn optical cords
seeing the reimagined
through blurry suspicion,
stifling doubt, and
****** buttons.
Metallic words
cutting skin like butter.
The knives will sink
slowly into our
chests and we will be
exactly too far away
from anyone to
do anything about it.
How convenient.
A set of hands,
their cross-stitched fingers
frayed at the ends,
entangling. Still,
they will stumble
to pick up the pieces,
to fix the seaming
in the strings.
Feb 5, 2017
Feb 5, 2017 at 11:20 AM UTC
*No we can't have it all
But we can have nothing
Nothing in common
But the weight of the world
Watching in awe as beside me you fall
And the embers, they smolder
For an hour or a day
As the breath Ignites once again
Consuming the smile
Before it is ever born
So, to the flaming death of joy we toast
Taking in the screams
On the descent of all who falter
I watch you fall in silence
Sharing a pain that consumes everything
You are focused on nothing
I am focused on you, oblivious to all
My loneliness beaten back by your own
If only momentarily we glance past each other
The air too heavy to revive all that is dying
One cannot follow what is right beside
Bathing in the aftermath of despair
Weight of the world, of lost souls,
Of the intangible yearning to feel
There is only loneliness for fear of sharing
Afraid of loosening the grip on the comfort of stagnant pain
or facing the nothingness of the unknown
We look but do not see anything save our own pain
No, one cannot follow what is right beside
I'll hold your pain if you'll hold mine*
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 1:12 PM UTC
When I was small,
I picked out an Aquaman action figure
Out of a bin at the secondhand store
He was missing a leg
Most of the paint worn off at his joints
But he was brand new to me
And what my mother could afford
I made up a story
About how his enemies had hurt him
How he'd defeated them
Became stronger
Was world reknowned for his powers
I loved him and this love fixed his brokenness
One perspective change made all the difference
I am like this.
Not broken, just reimagined.
Sep 30, 2018
Sep 30, 2018 at 12:29 AM UTC
seven wonders: the phenomena of the human condition in seven parts
1. the broken heart
the “humpty dumpty” syndrome, where you couldn’t be put back together again
the replaying your last words until I *****
the part where I was drunk on your lips
and now I’m just drunk.
the part where you pretend this pain isn’t tangible,
that you can’t die from the break; from the flowers growing in your lungs
2. lost
a child, wayward
a blank space and the search for gravity, stability-
it’s the theme of your nightmares,
the thud thud of a tiny, panicked heart.
but, you don’t know the real definition of lost
until you’re a nomad in your own cranium
3. loss
4. disaster
nature obscura;
picasso reimagined.
the breeze pushes the seat of a swing set,
and in that moment nothing aches more than the way that swing misses children,
or how the ground yearns for feet.
chernobyl: a mass eviction
5. war
desolation; annihilation. this is what we’ve become.
I don’t believe in god (maybe nobody does), and
in this game of chance, a tango on a tripwire
there is no space for a deity;
telling ourselves that fighting for your country is a salvation
as we try to justify holocaust
6. ignorance
as the sunrise sets the clouds on fire
you try to reject the possibility that not all is good
it’s a comfort;
it’s bliss;
it’s your coffin and your funeral
7. death
better to burn out than fade away
a spray of stars, smouldering ash
we all have to go one day.
Feb 13, 2017
Feb 13, 2017 at 11:36 AM UTC
“**Few people know how to take a walk. The qualities are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good silence,
and nothing too much.**”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
<>
A late-in-life walker, the words above resonate in my mind,
with a check, check, check, check and a voluble ding, reading
and nothing too much”
many a poem mine labored, birthed arrhythmically walking,
eyes see verses, verses fill the mouth, mind desperate as
the feet unceasingly trod round new corners, new visions,
Emerson’s words remind my well worn weary path daily renewed, a vocabulary child re-newborn, and how to keep all this forever,
until tomorrow, and nothing is everything all too much carried over
and nothing too much”
speaks to an openness in every orifice, be prepared scout-boy,
to adapt to nothing too much as hours earlier now recalled are ancient history, mind staggers at the minuscule differences tween yesterday and this exact moment in this exact place that has been reimagined, deserving of recording, notating, and my desperation struggle to
semi-successfully delineate, report, on all these
mini-magnificent miracles countenanced, overwhelms…
the brain furnaces/furnishes a thousand thoughts, a million worries,
slew of infinity-sized emotions like love of children, so it’s confusing to window-peeking strangers watching for the walking man with tears pockmarking his cheeks, unaware that his each stride is a story, a unique grace forward and too, backwards, history mine, reviewed, graded, and the comfortable shoes, the old sagging clothes well worn and beloved, fit like gloves, whispering in the good silence,
a lamb sacrifice to the
**good silence,
“human, your foibles and deeds, admixture of
blood inherited, a morality crafted by ancestors,
so the next step is
alway$*
and nothing too much” and everything…
Sat Dec10 2023
Shell Beach, Central Park, in my mind, and nothing is perfect
Dec 10, 2022
Dec 10, 2022 at 8:02 AM UTC
~
*It's all about
to become reimagined
along a foreign coast
Embattled shorelines
an archer on the beach
girl in a sling
facing the other way
playground martyrs
Random acts
of senseless violence
the warm taste of human failure*
~
Apr 21, 2024
Apr 21, 2024 at 2:17 PM UTC
To heal
is to create
To heal is to create a
new and improved version
of what was left in a pile of
shattered emotions
To heal is to break free
from the chains
that held you back
for so long
To heal is to learn
how to breathe again
To heal is to
feel alive
and to start anew
To heal is to become
a masterpiece;
a mosaic of pain and heartache,
reimagined into the most beautiful
thing to have ever existed
Mar 30, 2017
Mar 30, 2017 at 4:20 PM UTC
I won't ever be the beautiful little flower
You had sitting on display
I think I finally broke
After being dropped too many times
Shattered into a hundred pieces
Let's try to pick them up
Put them back together
Almost like a puzzle
Wait, don't forget the super glue
Is this even working?
Where does this piece go?
Ouch...that hurt
Some of these are sharp
Careful now
Be gentle not to hurt yourself
Okay there we go
I think that's the last one
Not quite like before
But you know, I think I like it better
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 1:24 AM UTC
Excerpt from my newest book
The demon gods of pathos
Book by David John Clare
The lost works of Aristotle reimagined
I'm a lost lamb on the dark side of the moon hiding in the forest that can't be seen through the trees hmm is there a man in the moon? The only moon in this solar system with no name! On a long and winding road that leads to no door.
Like putting two mirrors together that echo for infinity. Trying to figure out the Aristotelian rhetorical question as the demon gods of pathos hover above us in alien spacecraft.
Like the time I felt I was abducted off the streets in Bangkok only to find I was in the hospital after getting beaten senseless by a late night gang who bashed my head in the doctor said my neck was broken
I thought he was joking as I was choking on a neck brace how disgraced and sad my life had no worth I was hoping I had left this earth to join the demon gods of pathos...
D. Clare
Jan 30, 2015
Jan 30, 2015 at 9:39 PM UTC
let me crack open your already fractured skull,
and clean up the mess inside
these nimble fingers of mine
ache to be laced within yours
and i let me tear
the pages of a broken childhood
from your family photo albums
so we can write a new story
of kissing all the boo boos
and searching for the monsters under your bed
we can take the flashlights
out behind the rows of pine trees at night
and let me make shadow puppets of a life reimagined
there's a breeze that flows
through the familiarity of this feeling
you can find it in the kitchen sink,
this shattered old bathroom mirror,
and a living room that never really felt alive
they don't matter anymore
and it's as if you never even lived here at all
and the boy stands in front of me
in the shadows of a second life
with a fractured skull and menthol breath
stringed with words that roll off his tongue
like barbed wire
because you don't even know yourself
and you're a fighting for a chance
at a life worth living
but these things will pass -
in and out of a melancholy mind of yours
while i remain on the bedroom floor
of the house you spent years trying to escape
cleaning up the mess inside your head
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 12:20 AM UTC
Dismissed Earth reconfigures with tongue
Binary reality simplifies through eyes
Barren body reimagined as fine wine
Hollow holds on cold text
With warmth behind false ideas
Carry out reversed scripture
Speak louder and louder
By choice
Indecency and despair
Three piece suit, satin stitches
Running sweat off worried hearts
Sweet honey suckle blood to bare
Love in a shadow box display
Echoes of an empty shell
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 8:42 PM UTC
Today you were
anguished, with what ordered sentence to fray
into organization. Shimmering splendid thigh
of noon numbered, overtakeless I peering
through a gray eye of storm. Ambulatory motors
whir double ballasting ground / AC Cortez was nothing like any other held captive loosely frolicking
the summer gone through a bat of an eye
reimagined, engraved into / what for is this
inheritance but a dangling stucco of a home. Else
the newfangled man will have skin ripe to borrow
denying the statement. I could no longer raise
tomorrow and fall for, a form broken in
by a crossing of the river I smell turpentine
bearing the casualty of paint because color when
seen as absence of something, a thing worth
mooring to where we were and kept
for the next docile minute, mourning what but
a closed preserve drowned by a hand
deep between what was once just once and
a continuing strangeness, one's own rearview
but insatiable affront. Today you were
spoken of, not to, once again this weather
is here heavy with debris, less than ash fit for
return curious as perfume clinging to
soiled collar learning every breath a crevice the
body seeks to fullness feeding on some sense
of abandon -- today's news gasp for clearing
which you weighed in today as you were
again and again and again just as sound is
but a remainder of a tremendous leftover.
May 26, 2016
May 26, 2016 at 9:56 PM UTC
How does it feel when all your dreams are crumbling before you? I breathe ashes and dust; my lungs are clear.
My heart – my traitorous heart – beats a steady rhythm.
How can I feel? These words aren’t enough. Looking out of these eyes, writing with these fingers, breathing with these lungs.
Lay your heart bare on the table, and bleed.
And after, with my inky life-blood leaking onto the table, it’s not enough. I slice my soul apart, and it is never enough. How can any sequence of words be more genuine, more real, more vulnerable?
We are replications; forged in deceivers’ minds, we remake ourselves.
To stamp on my pride, my honour, my soul again. To deem myself a number, lesser than.
I’m so tired.
I’m silent, wordless, floating – no, drifting – in this oblivion, this space between worlds. The wooden floor is steady beneath my feet, the ceiling light bright and cold. What else can I do but describe? Words are so meaningless.
A construction, a reconstruction. Memories like smoke, flimsy like those summer days I have imagined and reimagined a thousand times. A summer flock clinging to wet skin, the scent of grass, the sun. Which one of these is real?
Fragmentation does not make for a good story. Sequences and plot and purpose. What senseless wandering is this?
Insubstantial. Inconsequential.
These empty eyes like fish peer unblinkingly at the ceiling.
The stench of death follows you. And what do you know of death?
I can build a thousand broken images. Incomplete and insubstantial, they float away.
Every sketch, every iteration. All false, all true.
All not good enough.
Nov 27, 2021
Nov 27, 2021 at 8:11 PM UTC
You would have to smash their skull open
Gouge their brain out
Scatter it into pieces
Reach out, reach in
Climb into their skin
Wear it; take it
Breathe the air they breathe
Feel the blood coursing through their veins
Feel every beat of their heart
Reach through their ribs and grasp it
That thundering, pounding heart and
Make it beat with your own hands
Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump with every squeeze
Inhale every gasping, shuddering breath
From lungs crushed by every compress
Snap their wrist with the force of your grasp
As you take their pulse
That thrumming, faltering pulse
And make it your own
You would have to dive into their head
Step straight through delirium
Into the twin windows of their soul
Take those lovely, lovely eyes
Between your fingers
And hold them up to look through; each
The ultimate magnifying glass
Pierce their clarity straight through
As you refract the light away from you
Aqueous humor, vitreous humor
Flowing down a waterfall of tears
Tears of emotion? No
Tears running through flesh
Perfect fissures of imperfection
Can you hear it?
Thudding spasms
As they leap; a drowning fish
Choking on their own life
While the red crimson scarlet pours out in rivulets
So thick you could wade in it
Fanning out into a surreal image
A ****** halo
A renaissance painting reimagined in flesh
A living, dying mural
You would have to listen to every whisper
Each shaky inhale
Every wheezing, hoarse exclamation
Every shuddering gasp wracking
Their frail, jittering frame
As you pump air out
As you force air back in
Push down hard and feel; memorise
The rush of air as it leaves their straining lungs
Because then, only then
Will you be able to see through their eyes
Breathe their every breath
Feel their heart beat
Make their life-
A wrapped present so, so fragile
-your own
Yet
For all that you try; all that you do
You will never
Never
Understand their mind
Never
Understand their view
Never
Understand them
Sep 29, 2016
Sep 29, 2016 at 9:45 AM UTC
Lifeblood (Poem 1)
They called me the sun. I used to rain my light down upon them like it was my lifeblood, torn from my veins and arteries for them, for them, for them. They took it and hid it away, my blood, using it for their own gain. Some might have screamed Praise the sun! but for naught, as their brethren took and took and took and I was left a withering husk of my former glory, no longer golden, clouds on my once-fair brow. There was no glory in dying alone, without a battlefield or comrades. And for what? They complained, complained, pushing their hate towards me, for it was too dry, too hot, too much, too much, too much. How would I know? They wished for me on rainy days, hated me on the sunny. I was never balanced, I was always giving and taking too much.
To A Moonlit Dream I Can't Recall (Poem 2)
I dreamt in slow waves, shining so bright that the dark was chased away from the fair sheep I tended. My brother was off with his own, dusty with his own exhaustion when the day broke over and bled into the night. He was never much for talking, but when I spied on him, hidden in dark groves, he was alight, fiery with his own happiness and pride, until the sheep began to complain and the clouds crept in to watch. Wolves, were they, but I paid them no mind, for my sheep ran where they could not follow, to gossamer hills filled with hopes they could never express elsewhere. When my fingers ran in ribbons through their wool, the fair strands separating and splitting, dewdrops on a window pane, I sheared them, weaving tapestries of what they created within the confines of themselves.
When my brother came wandering in one day, his arms ****** with his own life, splashing golden on the tiles, I could do nothing. We were our own shepherds, we could not take each other's flock. The day could not replace the night, as I could not replace my brother. I could do nothing to assist him, could not ease his pain. He would have to continue bloodletting, to give his sheep his blood until he was drained. My teardrops were on the fire until the night spread in thick tendrils on the floor.
Jan 7, 2019
Jan 7, 2019 at 10:26 AM UTC
We met as travelers
at the crossroads
but you had a plane to catch
and I was already home.
Oct 5, 2016
Oct 5, 2016 at 10:54 PM UTC
When I close my eyes
I am consumed by darkness
I can feel the tide spiralling
Pulling me down into it's depths
A tornado twisting and grasping
I am no longer in control
I have become one with choas
One with the shadows
It's like noise is everywhere
But I'm underwater
Muffled voices slither past me
Garbled tones swimming
I know it's there but
To me it means nothing
Nothing is real and
I am one with everything
Until I open my eyes
There's too much concrete
I am here once again
Awakened in emptiness
Jul 8, 2021
Jul 8, 2021 at 9:54 PM UTC