"retches" poems
A hymn to paired planethood: Venus hits Pluto
as death, in cold orbit, collides with biology
smashing to fragments: demonic astrology
(more a black hole than a love-star, it’s true though).
Cynical cure for Eve’s womanly grievance
Concupiscent consequence: lust’s bitter fruit –
ah the thought… changing Sin into mere inconvenience.
Margaret sang her seductive refrain
about weeding the garden and progress and light.
Her sisters should view her with scornful disdain
but instead have adopted her murderous rite.
With sang-froid she promoted her racist eugenics
(as if she had never herself been a fetus),
condemning her heirs to postmodern polemics
while nurturing ardent desires to defeat us.
Suppressing the lives that she flushed down the drain
she would liberate Death – and resistance was vain.
As a midwife to modern life (though on the “anti” side)
Old Matron Margie racked up quite a legacy
singing the praises of sanctioned infanticide
calling the shots for the coming sick century.
Planning, quite calmly, to “cleanse” certain races
her zeal was empowered by murderous graces.
She labored to bring us such pearls of subduction:
“dilation and curettage”, “women’s autonomy”
“viable fetus”, “procedure”, a “suction”
Hippocrates retches to hear the taxonomy;
words that turn Life into mere reproduction.
She enters the realms of the ****** and the motherless
roundly condemned by her feminine otherness.
Man’s first protection: the God-given womb
which no infant should have to regard as their tomb.
Dismembered dark cherubs, assembling, greet her
as demons (in scrubs) holding baby-parts meet her.
Long may she burn with the medical cynics
this mother of Moloch, this founder of clinics.
Convenience is king when abortion’s the Queen
and the profits swell big with each nubile teen…
yet the fruit of such carnage remains to be seen.
I send her this song as a funeral wreath
and a card inked in blood. You may read what is there:
“To the Matrix Supreme of our culture of death
from the souls of the infants you slew on the earth.
May your torment increase with the children you bear.”
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 9:09 PM UTC
chronic insomnia keeps the shakes coming steady
blunts steady the coming shakes
this world can't handle the whole
portion myself into fractions
i need you because you give me someone to be
your hands around my neck give me room to breathe
this comfortable pain
this questionably sane
these schizophrenic musings
my amusing bipolar bruisings
these anxiety retches
my borderline sketches
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 3:59 PM UTC
The tallest tree stands guard in the park
He keeps out the wind with the thickest of bark
And all of the trees for miles can view
His thick curving branches holding so true
But in this park, alone is he not
For he must have company contained in his lot
And all of the trees for miles besiege
A chance to stand where he scatters his leaves
So one by one he picks his crew
An elm, an oak, a pine, and a yew
And all of the trees for miles brew spite
That they were chose not to be at his right
And slow but sure, his trees conceive
And then of their duty, they are bereaved
And all of the trees for miles make haste
To see the new saplings that are now placed
They know for sure that some can not strive
For he consumes the most sun to survive
And all of the trees for miles conspire
To rule his park when he retires
And the smallest of saps looks on in rapture
And knows at once, his park it must capture
And all of the trees for miles look on in gall
For this little sapling is the smallest of all
For years he awakens and each day he stretches
But in pain of this growth, the poor sap retches
And all of the trees for miles must grin
The sap keeps fighting, though told he can't win
The sap matures, and ends an adult
Taller than all, he begins to gloat
And all of the trees for miles are shocked
The sap beat them all, his potential unlocked
Many moons pass and all can see
The impending death of the old tallest tree
And all the the trees for miles don't know
What they will do when his wizened self goes
And when he expires, the sap is the king
And his cries of victory echo and ring
And all of the trees for miles can view
His thick curving branches holding so true
But the sap can not hear all this admiration
And endlessly strains in exasperation
And all of the trees for miles can see
He's so much worse off, being this tree
But up on his pedestal, his glory can blind
And he can't see know his particular bind
And all of the trees for miles just wait
For the last of his life to dissipate
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 11:20 PM UTC
A locked box has the bodies of three different birds, all blue, all lyricists, all beautiful and stuffed with Xanax and newspaper. I paid my childhood best friend's brother to taxidermy them, stitch up their stomachs once and for all.
My closet only has memories. A bracelet with a feather on it that smells like fear, looks like betrayal, **** dealer, track pants, self-proclaimed whiny ***** A painting I made when I was six. All the pills I stole from my boyfriend, thirty-seven. All the pills that would've knocked my world out cold, skin cold, heart still, pulse still, veins finally at rest. A knife a psychopath gave me. Yes, he was a romantic, and yes, he did ruin my life, so in essence, still just a romantic. A fox hat I bought standing next to one of my under appreciated best friends, recovered anorexic. He's at college right now, falling in something close to love, probably another early grave. A too big teddy bear from someone I thought was the formula for the speed of light once. He's trying to force feed pills and slip **** into all my friend turned surrogate son's sentences. I am wishing I could lay a curse on his name. His mother already did it for me.
A drawer beside my bed, packed full of **** Candy wrappers, gum, crumbs, marks of my self-proclaimed obesity, all 120 pounds of me feeling like the weight of the world and everyone's eyes. My inhaler, because these lungs don't want me to run. Pictures and letters from the ones I love, because I'm a romantic. Plastic dinosaurs, dried flowers, pennies, dimes, lotion, Neosporin, a deck of Tarot cards.
I'm just a vessel for all the things I can't fit inside my mouth. I can't tell into you what I've seen, I can only pull out the receipts. I can give you the ****** tissues my boyfriend handed me. Tell me how your stomach retches. I can give you the poem a crazy person wrote me. Tell me how you feel his void. I can give you my heart. Tell me how heavy it all is.
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 1:37 AM UTC
all night my sister
retches in the toilet
a bug crawls around my own stomach
nothing like hers
i sneak into the kitchen
drink madly from her cup
and swallow her half-chewed food.
god i hope i get it.
those 3 middle schoolers got salmonella
from the kebab place down the street
now
no one ever wants to go i understand
but i
stop by as often as i can.
god i hope i get it.
i only ever see her going into or out of the bathroom
eyes welled, teeth yellow, lunch bag empty
i reach inside my throat
i want to be
like her
but tears leak and ***** doesn't.
god i hope i get it.
last night i finally did. i
shoveled food into my mouth, unable to stop until
my vision blurred and when i
knelt down and watched
murky colors mix with the ceramic reflection
i just felt deceived
the bug was still within me
crawling, creeping, ceaseless torture
unwilling to ever leave.
god i hope i lose it.
Feb 2, 2025
Feb 2, 2025 at 11:36 PM UTC
The comfort of my own
barren pain
retches sights to the follies
that from onset
have raised me in chains.
I gouge in what might have
come out,
in fear of free-falling
into the core of
potential Without.
Propelled into depths
death has forgotten,
my blank eyes adjust
to riches
of numbness like satin.
Exhausted and pale
I release my last wish
to gaze up at darkness
where stars burn
like *******
Mar 10, 2015
Mar 10, 2015 at 10:29 PM UTC
Collect the bones of the poor,
And let there bones build
the walls to keep out
the retches,
the undesirables,
the different.
And then realise that the wall
contains you.
For we are all poor in different aspects,
be it dignity,
be it humility.
Be it the virtues that make us who we are.
We should never look at another as divergent,
for we are all apitamy of
our own diluted reflections.
Everyone is insolvent in the walls we create,
We just have to learn never to build them
in the beginning,
and realise we all take the same footsteps.
No one walks differently from another in life journey.
May 25, 2019
May 25, 2019 at 6:08 PM UTC
If we had our way, hidden lives and loves would
up out of the ashes in which we
g live
n
i
r
p
S
So build me a staircase that
retches your
t u to be
S p au
t t
r i
a f
e u
h l
- -
g b
n e
i a
t
and leave the love bit
wrapped up between the
two
of us
like a warm sock on chilly winter toes
Aug 9, 2011
Aug 9, 2011 at 6:47 PM UTC
Us in Stanzas
I sat down on the bench next to you and noticed you were smoking American Spirits instead of your typical Marlboro. I asked how you were doing and in the middle of your explanation you told me you really just needed a friend instead of something romantic. I smiled politely and silenced the scream in my throat as you read me two more of your poems. Then we got burritos.
My friend hesitates when he confesses to me that he knows you, and you’re ******* crazy. He tells me that you once tried to open your veins in front of him, and release all of the poetry inside of you. I call you and you don’t answer. I spend the night worrying about you in a way that makes me sick, but not as sick as all the beer and **** By the time I realize I haven’t eaten all day I’ve been on the floor of the bathroom for two hours, as my best friend holds my hair. In between my violent retches I flawlessly recite Yeats’ “No Second Troy”. It’s funny, the things we remember.
I can’t help feeling that now I’m a stranger who knows what your twitching leg feels like on top of mine as we sleep. Sometimes I wish I didn't spend those nights with you on your bare mattress.
The next morning I go to breakfast with my friend and her boyfriend. I don’t like how uncomfortable their happiness makes me. I order what I always do, and even though I’ve been so empty the first bite makes me feel full.
I never told you, but I still have pictures of my ex-boyfriend on my phone. I’m sorry, but the taste of his name had barely left my mouth when you kissed me. He was covered in tattoos and my parents never liked him anyway. My mom asks how I’m doing, and says she really hoped you would be different. I don’t tell her everything. I tell her these things happen.
There is still time for you to be okay; I’ve been good, I’ve only panicked in the time between seconds. “Actually text me,” I said to you before you went home. You were nauseous and wanted to sleep it off. “When have I ever said I would text you and didn’t?” you ask. “Once or twice,” I said. “I haven’t kept track.”
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 8:48 PM UTC
a hound stretches on a stoop
frozen, lacking a cadenced pant
sun splaying its last beams against
skin, warm tin and damp rigor mortis
the letch inside stammers,
retches
his yellowed nails scratch scabs
on flaking elbows
dried snakeskin platelet scales
too much residue
of asbestos and mildew, of
burnt gilded pages for heat
'cause they were of little use
to illiterate plainclothe'd sleuths
and the crows outside caw
with anemic splendor as
their ***** broods grovel
the inebriate inside
draws open dingy curtains
for the sun was finally subdued
he opens the window
to a finicky drizzle
and was interrupted by horse & buggy
and the tangling of her rosettes
transfixing voracious, beady eyes
as objects of interest phased out of view
we heard all this through the grey horseshoes
trudging through forgotten alleyways
all too loud and dramatic
we watched from fog outside
the ****** tavern where they drank
blood straight from the stomachs of lampreys
downing life, agnostics proudly clapped, with
death and decay on a parsley'd dinner plate
lingering in the hospital waiting room
for an embellished platter of viscera
to fill vacancies, with burnt rot
with a sterile, surgical tang
and jagged accoutrements
all are gorging lovingly,
already anticipating dessert
each solitary phantasm of a person, slouching in booths, on stools
smirks knowingly at the song that's now playing on the a.m. radio
while positioning their utensils, scooping, filling cavernous maws
and they all smiled
as their eyes gasped
as those outside
chipped their teeth
on rusted forks, and sighed
the dead ounce of liveliness failed to
take hold of its slouching bags of bones
and the coyote howled at the sound of the siren curfew
so listen carefully to the inflection of static hissing
the joyful crackle of disembodied voices
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 12:19 AM UTC
I am throwing up
and i do not know
if its because
i am sick or
because you made me this way
jealousy retches from my body
but
my diseased mind
will not leave me
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 3:14 PM UTC