"retractable" poems
Anxiety is an animal
Anxiety is a carnivorous beast
Anxiety grips onto you and doesn’t let go, digging its fangs in
Anxiety has painful fangs
Anxiety has claws (retractable)
Anxiety sits on the edge of a table, meowing morosely
Anxiety digs its claws in when it doesn’t want to do something
Anxiety reminds you it needs feeding
Anxiety hisses, bites and scratches
Anxiety eats ferociously, draining you.
Anxiety gives you disdainful looks
Anxiety reminds you it needs feeding
Anxiety has tiny fangs
Anxiety reminds you again it needs feeding
Anxiety looks down at you with its hairy body from the top shelf
Anxiety will sit with you, out of spite
Anxiety is only doing so to remind you he needs feeding
Anxiety might fall asleep
Anxiety might bite your hand while you fall asleep, he needs food
Anxiety is fed
Anxiety might possibly maybe if you-are-really-very-nice allow you to pet him.
Anxiety falls asleep
You fall asleep
Anxiety reminds you he needs feeding, loudly.
Oct 12, 2020
Oct 12, 2020 at 11:38 AM UTC
tumeric tucked twixt the members, the digits the fingers the thumbs
it's solivagent aromas
make their home
dormant,
yet retractable;
neutrons
known
many moments to millimeters
the soft rust color fades
oh,
i haven't even noticed the time passing
when will i notice my own grave.
© 2015 Kate Volk
Mar 24, 2014
Mar 24, 2014 at 1:38 AM UTC
Adrift on her very first voyage
With the sea coursing in through her bow
Lay the cruise ship, the S.S. Lumbago
There was scarcely a chance for her now
But Ahoy! On the western horizon
In a flurry of yellow and green
That ender of blight and a damsel’s delight
And he’s always on cue for his scene
It’s Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
It’s got seating for seventy people
And the service is well above par
There’s an adequate medical unit
And a modest but elegant bar
What more could a man ever dream of
In a Luxury Budgerigar?
Well…
The forests of England were burning
So the foxes escaped to the city
The badgers had taken to looting
And the squirrels had formed a committee
But who should arise from a manhole
With a confident gleam in his eye?
That destroyer of woes with a spring in his toes
And he’s quick with a witty reply…
Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar!
With adjustable hose pipe attachment
It’s got wheels like a feathery car
The forests were dowsed and the fauna re-housed
With a three day retreat at a spa
It’s a thing to admire and surely acquire
The Luxury Budgerigar!
But…
Susan was stricken with sorrow
Twas her darkest, most fearful hour
A spider had wrestled her out of her bath
And set up his home in the shower
But who should jump out of the wardrobe
With an innocent look on his face?
That singer of shanties, remover of *******
And first in an obstacle race
Sir Patrick Stewart!
And his Luxury Budgerigar
With a sucker for spiders and beetles
That deposits them into a jar
There’s a tiny wee restaurant to feed them
It was given a Michelin star
A remarkable thing with retractable wings
Is a Luxury Budgerigar
So if you should be in a pet shop
And you see just the critter for you
Please heed this advice: make a note of the price
Then proceed to the back of the queue
When you ask for your preference of creature
Should it whistle, slither or waddle
Do as Sir Patrick Stewart did
And opt for the Luxury model
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 4:51 PM UTC
Frail demeanor of library index cards
packed with Dewey’s decimals
stared upon so many times
some of you stigmatized with graffiti
“Read This” and “Don’t Read This”
as if the vandal knows
I wish to ****** each one of you
good precise direction you give
care in punctilious hand print
of maimed athenaeum tenders
all with long stretched noses
bridging reading spectacles
eyeing out naughty gigglers
stigmatized themselves by
rolled up quaffs
with pushed in pencils
or retractable ballpoint pens
writing implements held so delicately
while you were ascribed
O index cards of my shielded youth
how you protected me, informed me
Guided me on treasure hunts
where my imaginings still take me
away, in isles of knowledge
information coded in numbers and letters
Yours is the power
Apr 28, 2016
Apr 28, 2016 at 8:21 AM UTC
My words are cutting themselves again;
razoring their loosely-sutured syllables,
deep as white-eyed bone.
The suave dipththongs butchered
to the cadence of bloodletting
in hemorrhagic oppositions.
Stapled-closed sentences, smeared with Iodine,
and subcutaneous sentence diagramming
for the retractable scalpel
swiveling along the edge,
of the well serrated cliche.
Once I pressed my wordy flesh
against the wrong side
of a paring knife, while paying no attention
and suddenly,
and without warning
it gave, like an over ripe peach
to the cleaver-
and after that, I was hooked.
Oct 31, 2011
Oct 31, 2011 at 11:05 PM UTC
love you.:)
when deep inside it's
'I'm not sure'
fake electronic love
vague posts of
'this is what I want to tell you!'
yet you has no name.
in person a plastered smile
wearing masks of
'everything's fine'
'no of course it wasn't you'
words hidden
ambiguous
easily retractable
secret
was that post for me?
well then this one is for you
answering vagueness with vagueness
in this fake electronic love
with hearts beating
to nothing but cowardice.
Sep 14, 2011
Sep 14, 2011 at 12:46 AM UTC
Our hands our calloused.
Raised old too young,
Too much, too fast to function.
Beliefs and needs
Underestimated in light
Of the weight of life.
Unenlightened self-importance
Breeds nuisance for intelligence
Struggles are active and bound
Revised, undeniable, retractable,
Forming, foaming at the mouth
We flow truth into new strife.
For those who can see through the plastic,
We made it out alive, with luck.
I try not to think of those days when
Dripping, pouring, outward noises
Made me their benefactor in shaking off
The incandescent light from garages long since passed.
I remind myself to shower, once more
This time, with every small drag I smell Propane...
Like leaves carnivaled in a spiral moth,
But it's just the smoke from my cigarette...
So maybe it is Propane...
I find this world to be quite amusing.
My body is a temple for the act of living once.
I am not concerned with long life, I'm mortal.
Experience all and see all, and thereby
Learn the meaning behind the words
That are written in peoples' eyes
So you can be trusted, too.
As long as you can trust yourself,
You'll see the colors realign
Unlike the mother who spoke before me
I will be the father this time
Swerving, slurring, shivering.
Can you hear me? Are you reading this?
**** not away those shreds of extra skin
Always remember how cold it is for me.
Try to conceive of a place for you and I
I will be sure to be asleep when the clouds
Erupt into showers of our pure enjoyment...
I invite you, too.
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 6:10 AM UTC
Legs astretched like venomous broomsticks
Fangs drooped lazily like a calm nosferatu,
Those eyes gold as sun on styx, treasures
that spun flame between his every blink--
Sandpaper tongue dragged over black hair
Nibbling his own wrist momentarily, then
Locking sleepy eyes on you, ascending fleece--
Retractable moonbeams flex teasing attack
then kneads, falling like a lullaby back into
uncapturable dreams; purring in the spirit of poe.
Jan 30, 2022
Jan 30, 2022 at 3:55 PM UTC
Have you noticed they are at it again?
Idiocy, insults, back biting and ********
Infancy in a petulant mood shouting
'cant cook, won't cook, shan't cook'.
And the recipe :-
Take one ex-minister (slightly embittered).
Fold through with a poison pen (neither retractable nor redactable).
Add a pinch or two of smouldering resentment.
Allow to stew and ferment for about 12 weeks.
Then warm through with an almond glaze of scorn
and liberally spread over several pages of resignation.
Finally wrap in a filou of vellum, and seal.
An ideal meal if you feel that your line manager
really needs a punch filled packed lunch.
And don't forget to garnish and serve with leaks
to the press and media.
Enjoy your meal Prime Minister!
Warning: This recipe contains home truths, scathing criticism,
ambition, nuts, betrayal, regret and crocodile tears.
Aug 30, 2023
Aug 30, 2023 at 9:33 AM UTC
playing cat and mouse
you flex your retractable claws
and ponder the worth
of the catch of a day
if, regardless, your bowl is full
while I
await for my fate
await for the gavel to fall
and the flocking birds of thought
sitting on the timeline
watch
the crows pecking flesh of what yesterday
still was a viable dream
but today has become a roadkill
under the steamroll of indecisiveness
browning grass on damp fields
knows not of next spring
and the dead leaves on the ground
do not remember the lust of summertime
fool, fool is the one that cares
and fooler yet the one
who refuses to let go
life will not pause to wait
and snow
will cover it all before long
Feb 9, 2010
Feb 9, 2010 at 7:24 PM UTC
Doors open; Infinitely swinging both ways.
I've been waiting breathlessly to speak with you again.
But please don't come, if you cannot stay.
I'm at a loss for words, wordless again.
And please don't promise, if no promises you're willing to make.
This never happens, as I always have something to say.
Please just love me; simply because you know my name.
For unknown reasons, you've left me speechless again.
For now, hope is all I hold, in this hopeless abode.
Forever resting, in this empty home; I call my heart, the roaming gnome.
© 2013 Christina Jackson
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 2:16 PM UTC
Doors open; Infinitely swinging both ways.
But please don't come, if you cannot stay.
And please don't promise, if no promises you're willing to make.
Please just love me; simply because you know my name.
For now, hope is all I hold, in this hopeless abode.
Forever resting, in this empty home; I call my heart, the roaming gnome.
© 2013 Christina Jackson
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 11:01 AM UTC
If you stop for a moment and retract from life
you feel the tangible squeeze
the pull in the soul which endures torment
life itself can never be content
so i myself become disgusted at what happened
what is happening and what is going to be
nonchalant as it may seem to the focused mind
it becomes a painful wasteland of ignorance
ignorance is bliss
reality is pain
non-existence is faulty
Dec 16, 2012
Dec 16, 2012 at 7:35 AM UTC
Retractable ballpoint poem and prose set
in chrome with gold-plated clips,
handcrafted designer opening lines,
and elegant black lacquer finish.
Dec 9, 2015
Dec 9, 2015 at 3:58 PM UTC
Personal Tragedy has also been
My greatest form of entertainment.
When I was younger
I used to take apart
My retractable pens,
Just so I could put them back together.
I am no different with myself.
But I might have lost the spring.
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 1:06 AM UTC
I pledge to write for an inner peace movement
To fill the void left on the blank page of a story we could not complete
I pledge to write more beginnings than endings, and if words fail to meet me where you left, I'll wait with the patience of a bookmark, holding down the gap we left pending
as if locked in stalemate: light paper vs dark ink because the way of the pen is the no-sword style of contending that deflects the black and blue thoughts that leave bruises where we think.
I pledge to erase, or at least, start over, only to toss each cumpled piece unfinished onto the pile of things I have no answers for- only hopeless questions, mailed into the static of heartbreaking silence, until it clicks, like a retractable pen, and finger flicks from an audience follow as this throwaway piece hits the mic on its head, drawing feedback, the static giving way to meaning and the audience now there, tuning in as if waking up while dreaming, now clicking, snapping, leaning forward as antennas to the right frequency we're streaming, snapping together now, a thousand pieces of a hidden picture completing, I write to throw captions around my own confusion, and watch them snap like photos of what I'm seeing beyond illusion on this train of thought leaving, the coast starlight from LA to Seattle, the lines of a notebook as my railway leading toward our emancipation from battle.
We are free from the places we are told define us. I write to move past them. Poems are what we leave behind us, in the graffiti'd nowheres of subway tunnels between the lights of the places we were meant to see.
Poems are the spaces between.
My mission is write
for you to read me.
Sep 15, 2019
Sep 15, 2019 at 2:00 PM UTC
There I stood, cobbled together of flesh and blood
Raptured only minutes earlier, now in despair
Words that take seconds to think and speak
Cause years of pain and destruction
Accept that I am not without blame
But why are words not meant,
And not easily retractable,
Incapable of evaporation
Like a broken man’s tears
Jan 17, 2015
Jan 17, 2015 at 8:25 AM UTC
Louis took a cold shower
after sleeping in all afternoon,
thinking about those sweaty
summer bedsheets from last year.
Her skin was always soft
and he used to run his thumb
downward along her hip-bone,
setting vibrations along fault-lines
and stifling any sound with a kiss.
He turned on the radio
and brushed his teeth, removing
the taste of sleeping pills and
last night's cigar.
A mono-brow was forming beautifully
and he had finally grown a beard.
Now it's beer for dinner,
wine for dessert, and John Coltrane
rasping loneliness in stereo.
Louis admired his backside
with the retractable mirror,
reminding himself that old lovers
could never forget that ***
He reminded himself of his poetry,
his dog; his back-catalogue trivia
of white-boy lyrics was sure
to make him a desired object,
far away from her loving arms.
He turned on the ceiling fan
and dried out to the jingles and adverts
that interceded the music
he'd never cared to listen to before.
The sad guitar and Indonesian flute
spun webs of memories in hypnotic
circles, keeping pace with the motor above.
The picture ran clear in the half-lit room.
Louis burned all his notebooks,
for all the good it would do.
Aug 5, 2014
Aug 5, 2014 at 8:04 PM UTC
Synthetic lawn
radioactive pine
With a retractable garden hose
& A 1 car garage
Offset
With pearly laminate
and a bare wooden gate
The doorbell is now
A zoom monitor
& The dog
Is in its plastic hut in the corridor
While
The child in the upper window
plays Minecraft
Alone with the halls silent with decadent dust
They turned my childhood home into a mausaleum,
But the truth is, it was no better then.
We were still suffocating in the immense nothing
Sep 18, 2023
Sep 18, 2023 at 5:48 AM UTC
I’m scared
And I’ve got these occasional
10 feet thick ice walls that sprout up around my heart
For when the thinking about it gets hard
And the breaths I breathe are barely there
And I can’t even thank the trees for giving it to me
When I feel it hit my chest and it hits harder and harder
Until all I notice is the harshness of it all
And once I do
Like a cat scratching on a door
I’m trying to punch the walls down
But once they’re up there’s no getting in or out
Wisdom teeth
Retractable, receding only when they’re ready
Sometimes I just wish it was easier just to sit
Not every action needs a reaction but I’ve already planned out 500 different ways this could go
And I can’t find a solution for them all
Panic attack narrator with shaking hands
Exposing herself to no one because
it’s much easier that way
If what they see is me
I hope that no one ever has half the opinion of myself I do
That’s too much hate to try and pretend to handle
I still laugh and blow out imagery candles
Because I dislike the smell of burning wicks
And I still have the same opinions as me
But something else creeps in when it smells left over food
And I just want to not provoke it anymore than I already seem to do
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 5:52 AM UTC
I looked in her eyes as if to say, “It didn’t have to end this way”
And in the focal of those dark centers in the bright pretty eyes
And I begged her once again, for nothing between us was unforgiveable
But her love had already gone, stolen by someone else, non-retractable
And they tell me she had long gone, yet this entire long I thought it my mistake
And I begged her once again, telling her I could not stay without that smile
The dimples in cheeks, that bright look in her eyes, her long legs,
I could not live without her, so I begged her once again
Telling her, all my background, and the love had missed all childhood
She could not do this to me, I deserved a second chance, and she too knew it
But her heart had long gone, I was here and she was there.
With her version of the love of her life, I explained myself
Telling her if it were in misbehavior, I would change
I knelt, I begged, I wrote poems, talked to her friends, prayed hard
But none would change, none would deter, for her love for me had long vanished
I could still remember the warm stare in her pretty eyes
I would still see her charming gait when she moved
I could not help it, even after some years, I begged her once again
I was ready to forget she left me, that he took him in his arms and kissed her
But this too was a long shot, it all amounted to vanity, she had left
So it did not matter, If I begged her once again
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 7:39 AM UTC
wake me
shake me
out of this febrile trance
furtively pilfering my
heart's ancient treasure
once guarded
by comforting spirits
of warm hopes and
beliefs held beyond reason
never questioned
by the minds tribunal
the jurors seated
in the cranial court
knowing eyes silenced
by misguided faith's rhetoric
never minding
the persuasive muzzle
often ignoring serpent's
retractable tongue
always turning from
the dark corridors
light banished
by modern-day pharisees
cloaked in mantles of treason
patronizingly diluting
what can only remain pure
painted with pious platitudes
away
far away
i must sail from this folly
an orphan of mystical doubt
the frost and cold tempest I feel
cautious sensibilities
a tenuous guide
through these gray
realms I traverse
trembling hands
grasp transient hopes
striving to shape
deeper meaning
disciplining lazy
traditional beliefs
that hang on like
phosphorescent
spiders in the dusty
lofty
rafters of memory
deceptive iconic silhouettes
faded de-spiritualized
superimposed on a
human-made landscape
a beautiful picture
gold frame and all!
absence of religious
pop-culture faith
eclipses peace
i shudder at the prospect
of this purge
preparing for burial
what must die
the end of an age
burned in effigy
a raging wilderness
I now pass through
I stumble by many
a familiar and
unfamiliar fane
longing to be clothed
with a mantle of peace
a vulnerable yet
strong spirit I guard
let not trivialised faith be
my misleading guide
and if it is all meaningless
alas! it may be
still I must forge
ahead to the sea
ever mindful that rivers
return to where
they have been
separated at birth
i often hear roaring waves
crashing and gentler waves
lapping on shore
but a body of water
is not always the Sea.
Aug 27, 2024
Aug 27, 2024 at 12:08 PM UTC
Wonderous lustful sips of magic aiding in my abandonment of your memory, clinging onto my heart with retractable claws while the blood pours into a vile.
Reenactments of past unsuccessful battles fighting for power having lost lives as the ultimate sacrifice. Prideful shadows of shaken spirits begging for normalcy, hiding behind warrior's images never to appear inferior. Strongest survival teqniques arise grim consequences.
Barricaded beneath rubble
In the core of your tropical tsunami. The aftermath, devastating as is every ending of our endeavours.
Apr 21, 2015
Apr 21, 2015 at 11:12 PM UTC
She bore no weapons
But that of a pen.
A retractable blade,
That was deadlier than it seemed.
She armed herself
With paper.
Her shield composed of books,
And with these tools she changed the world.
And you can too
But for better or worse
That's up to you
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
Parable of Torvisco: “branched among the thickets of ignorance, their foliated stems speak of the white blood that has fallen from the souls that resiliently endured the solitude of their limbs and who enjoyed their ruddy bark and the pubescence of the Daphnes that gawked at over them turned into Laurel, she being a spatulate flower of Vernarth, like Apollo elliptically adoring her with the underside, and something fuzzy hiccuping over the teachings of someone who is not loved. Being the Daphniform Torvisco, of appressed retractable sepals that are pronounced on the laurels in Dafnomancia of the pubescent Torvisco on the first ************ of Daphne, leaving the ovoid crusts near the foliate stolon of the grayish spurs on the fins of the Pelecaniformes Petrobusjos, leaving the Malloga the lice. of their plumage that they are eaten by laurels, as a carminative antispasmodic digestive degassing, in the flora of the intestinal Torvisco engulfed by their pride and eagerness of nobility.
Parable of Sacred Bud: “first the animals and the buds that emanated from the inflorescences were venerated, as gods of the occult sprouting from the long-lived saps being miscellaneous family taxonomies that were consecrated to gods trapped by the mists of their foliage, over the colonies of other species with outbreaks of bud expiration in the distant buds of the leaves, towards non-renewable woody plants, for critical tempering to germinate on the dogma of woody herbaceous plants, as sacred shoots of ferns without their cell walls. Here is the tree of evil and good, sprouting one of each but as hyper-sprouting, which deceived the eyes of those who wanted to cut it because of the human snooping in bloom, on the shores of Medea's hands, growing on the shore of a headless river deity, who was not yet poisoned by an Olympian gesture, agreeing to have long fragrant and rosy hair on the pubescent teenagers who dared to call themselves Medea "
(Prócoro redoubling his sinister imagination of the Rosé of the Witches and grotesques, he was still ecstatic at the expectation of the extensions of the Rosary of the Evangelista San Juan simulated in the crowned Torvisco, for purposes of the genetics of the world in the hands of pubescent bodies that were embodied in the bodies and their stolons, like retrograde shoots going towards the spheres of the pelecaniform Petrobus and its little lice that resided in it as vital alarms. Structuring thus, the grazing that ran from its wings with vigorous fine pediculosis, which was abstracted from the scalps Medea decked out in megalomania in the sprouts of the Enchanted Torvisco)
Jan 23, 2021
Jan 23, 2021 at 6:16 PM UTC