"reverb" poems
The blunt surface and wooden *****
Confined within impenetrable walls
However reverb dangerously.
Numbers reappeared to disorientate me.
It was the lion I sought advice from
For a dove that had been travelling with a rose
With a weight as heavy as its wings
Against the torrent of winds and sky.
I counted the time as if I were a clock.
Gently did it leave while I was not looking,
Its music turned down by long fingers
That lightly grazed the glasses
Like tracing back the steps that I at first hastened.
Never again will I see with my lashes curled by
Its own Evening Dew.
I only pray that the silver soldier marches
Next to me with armor close to my chest
Close to my eyes so no gaze could ever penetrate.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 11:47 AM UTC
an average human creature should such a mythical exist
in a lifetime will celebrate about 2,200,000,000 heartbeats,
billions of heartbeats per minute (I prefer moment)
but like everything so essence human there are
those very few heartbeat moments,
the ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
that you total truly remember,
recalling the cream and sauce,
swell and the hell,
of the pounding so slow so hard,
each one a volcano of
a moment until that day
you don't remember-anything
when she said yes and you're shaking and beating in a
honky-tonk rhythm cause you were heart undressed unsure
and truly afraid of a rejection that makes a heart stoppage
disallowing visions, to be exponentially happy future imagined
you're feeling your heartbeat
in your knees going weak,
when the doctor says:
congratulations healthy swell
and/or
some years later,
I'm so so truly sorry, hell
when they hand you a long handle shovel no instructions needed and that scoop of earth weighs two tons and the sound of slow reverb in your head hurts like hell and you lack the strength to move and they move you aside quiet gentle like
but inside the temple of the two headed hydra-heart,
it's the rock and roll of slo mo, the violin crying, the drumming of
heavy metal chords plucked so slowly, it's you froze screaming
a billionaire of heartbeats you are,
but only ten or twenty maybe forty total in a lifetime
you total truly remember with the perfect clarity and
forever renders into your own unique orchestral symphony,
your true net worth, the stripes you wear
upon your shoulders skin,
the tune when you hear it and melts you into rigidity
you fall to your knees wherever you are,
that is where you will find me,
just listen for the cars horns blaring
cursing the man lying in the street, re-listening to
ten or twenty maybe forty heartbeats total in a lifetime
you alone total truly that concert set recall and
the win-loss record inherent, inhiment,
in both of them, tears and the rents, all there in the tunes,
of forty beatings you took,
somehow it feels like here is, there was,
the answers to
where is shelter for the heart,
the answers that have gone and come and gone and someone says,
I don't feel a pulse
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 2:55 PM UTC
Ambrose
Ah-kin-
MOO-sir-ee
Lifts a trumpet to his mouth.
Deep breaths blow notes
at right angles
into space.
The sound is worn denim.
The sound is Lauren Bacall.
The beat is urgent and syncopated
just like his last name.
Ambrose
Ah-kin-
MOO-sir-ee
Rests a trumpet by his side.
Reverb:
Ambrose interprets the persistence of sound;
reflections build up and decay
until the sound is absorbed
by the surfaces of this space.
Inhale.
Ambrose,
pulls the trumpet
To his mouth
once again.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 2:02 PM UTC
Still today
Danang. Saigon.Tet.
Mi Lai. ** Chi min trail.
All and more on reverb
The unwinable in black body bags.
Dam.
Just like Cronkite's musdtache goimg on and on
Drafted into the wood chipper
The buzz saw. for what.
Then the embassy buggie.
Choppers listing into the sea.
Half baked. Blood on ground.
For what.
Visit Vietnam. A travelers paradise. Half price
now with great accomodations.
Cambodia too.for the price of one.
Kamir Red.
How many dead?
For what.
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC
i pull in to work
pour in the door like a refugee
fumble in my bag for a
microchipped key fob.
it lets me in the third entrance,
slurring curses that reverb in the hall.
i stumble to my desk, clock in
with my computerized time card
and make my way to the coffee ***
it always has this smirk, like it knows
it's my saving grace.
i hate the coffee *** for that.
i hate the coffee ***
insert earphones
High Violet by The National.
sounds penetrate my ears and swirl
in my head,
sending sparks from the microchip
situated just behind my eyes
that tells me there are only grades and work
and television and pin-up girls.
monday morning, i will file a complaint against
myself
i need truth through camera lens
i need honesty
i need deeper meaning
a drunk girl kissed me under gilded mistletoe
once
when i was 16.
i need more than that.
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 2:40 PM UTC
Increase The Pace (Side A)
Rhythmic pulsations invade comatose receptors
Lingering in the thick summer smog
The onset of tribulation commences-
Increase the pace.
Reverb ripples through
Hot wet lungs,
Love and Hate
The beats resonate...
Scared vinyl skips:
Repeating visions of angst,
Violent red chords
Rolling off shredded steel strings,
Acting as mania’s fingers…
Feet trapped in rebel rubber soles
Draw on littered concrete floors
Lonely like before
Noble souls abandoned this
Scene of raunchy rust,
gravity grabbing
as our wrists touch.
Increase The Pace (Side B)
Rush to Eden-
Greeted by harsh halogen
Bleach, eating out your sinuses,
water swirls as it slithers
round the basin
heavy door mutes the static,
holding back waves of thick smoke.
Blood shot eyes soothed
By branded potions,
Clarity cleanses
Dismembered demons
Crazed revelations infect the night no more
Forced silence seeps into aching eardrums
Breath forced from lungs
Adolescent epiphanies
Swirls down the drain,
Flying around chrome chains
Dust worn as protection
Drips into the sewers,
Flushed away
Forced silence reigns true
Voice of the bass-line
Forgotten anew.
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 5:39 PM UTC
Submerged in the empire of your tide
Trying to feel unobtrusive, let me saturate
Lips filling with the brine
You pop sweet oxygen bubbles
Chewing gum at its finest
Pulling candy from my estuary
Blue blood sweeps from between my fingertips
Floating face through
Eyes open into yours
The deepest tide-pools I've ever seen
Slipping into the tangle of
Your fingers
The swivel of refraction
Shattered warmth diffused in frosty capped overture
Oh to be a native of you
Never needing a map or a light or a guide
Swallowed without notice
Nothing but another wave the endless
March of tumbling reverb
The only reaction possible to your vocal chords
The song of the ocean
The simmer of the tide
Mar 24, 2013
Mar 24, 2013 at 9:39 PM UTC
Love may be a four letter word but
today it sounds more like
your breath when we're close.
Today it looks more like
your hands endlessly moving
and fiddling with things.
Today it feels more like
your arms around me in the middle of June.
Today love is an overreaction
but I like it.
Today love is said more like
"You should stay here with me."
or "Do you want the rest of my drink?"
Today love smells more like
wet grass and guitar reverb
and air conditioned cars.
Today my head is more like
"I don't even know you."
but my heart is more like
"Who the hell cares?"
Today love is more like
you.
Aug 14, 2012
Aug 14, 2012 at 8:57 PM UTC
You stuck around, rose above from depths below but you are no hymn.
Vision blurs, shakes.
You are no god, yet ruler of us all. I write to you, i feel for you, i sing to you.
Worship is never far not even in silver scared dogs. It was not the wine making you shake, only pupils dilate and a silver and yellow face. Reverb on voice that echoes through the chaos of cloud kings and flames that died to make us, melting gradient, shimmering dusk. Don't tell me otherwise. Don't correct me if I'm wrong because no one knows even that much. A thought makes us believe and swear truth, and a doubt proves lies we once justified. Doubt the shimmering dusk, correct the melting gradient. Red pen isn't strong enough to hold me down. Silver and yellow face, goodnight.
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 4:38 AM UTC
Rapture, growing voice around the corner.
Crisp new diphthongs, sorry rounded vowels
unrehearsed. A twanging reverb. Certain
loosened phrasings shock the doorknob, like
'Clara...octaves...failings'. When I lift the
latch it's broken trailing consonants
streaming past the ceiling; bassy treaties,
sighing falling clothes and chord-crushed feeling.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 11:32 AM UTC
everything was so mundane,
no sound,
no name.
the silence watched over us like a hawk,
resting it’s talons on the trees above.
there was no thud,
no beat,
no reverb.
the machines did not whir,
or click,
or crackle.
the strings never hummed,
the girl never sang,
and the child never played.
neurons following a set circuit,
run,
stop,
go.
the sun always set,
yet it had never risen.
hardwired to the equipment,
but the machine never worked,
because the processor was coated in a mundane molasses.
moving through gray honey,
black and white retinas perceive gray things
for our slow-moving hands to paint.
the words were the same,
the day never changed,
it was, and always will be
the same.
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 6:47 AM UTC
hands
clasp
grasp
yours, mine or a stranger's
line of life, line of head, line of heart
it is said that the hand is the map, and the heart is the guide
but how come whenever it is that you hold my hand you also hold my heart?
(in your hands)
feeling the strength of your hold
on my heart
and my hands
letting go
of my heart
but please,
not my hands
I need to keep that clasp
and grasp
and hold I have on you
I need to feel your roughness
and clamminess
and softness
between my fingers
yours fit so perfectly
what if I never find another fit?
what if the next fingers are too short, too long, too bristly, too smooth?
I only remember yours
and what if their lines tell too different a story?
what if they crossed an ocean to find me,
or have never picked up a knife,
or have never lost themselves in another?
and I am left holding my own hands
too familiar
when all I yearn for are yours
I should have never let go of yours
even that one morning when you said it was too cold to hold mine
I should have locked yours between mine and assured you that I would make you warm
now I am grabbing for something in the dark,
a phantom limb; your hands
I wish I had clawed up your wrist to your elbow to your shoulder to your neck
and held on
because my hands are empty
nothing I hold bears weight
nothing I touch, feels
nothing I stroke shudders
nothing I scrape bleeds
my hands hold nothing
my lines of mind, head and heart have blurred
I can feel the reverb of my heart's beat as it left my hands and fell into yours
they are bony and frail and stained and drained of colour
what do I do with my hands?
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 3:41 PM UTC
Even alone in our graves,
we're surrounded by bodies
memories seep through dirt
like groundwater.
a marble quilt stretched
across our eventual bed
what a dream we'll find death!
deja vu on repeat in our heads:
ticking clocks still clack after their
battery heartattacks
just reverb in your eardrums
as real as phantom pains or
the shame you feel when they
state all your claims in
my court of appeals.
if we breathe, we receive the past's blessing we crave--
desire.
demand: hungry open palms of our hands.
So I stroll their napping grass blankets
my minuet appreciation
for the invitation to your bed
but my dreams are still too foggy
for my heart to be dead.
Jun 28, 2010
Jun 28, 2010 at 5:29 PM UTC
It was an atmosphere
It was an oxygen mixed with southern fog
Southpaw gloves tied in sailor knots
Waves of golden grains in ocean wind
The rolling hills behind property lines
It was the question you asked
not with words but in the way you breathed against the window glass
as I leaned against your Corolla
And we sang under the overpass
It was graffiti
It was graffiti
It was the cavernous concrete cats with purple hair and acid wash jean jackets
melting the light of their city's street lamps into the obsidian void of moistened pavement
It was the way the reverb spread the major seventh across the sky with burnt orange cascading into the violet of the minor ninth
which reminds me of crickets and summer nights (and violins and cellos and midwestern jazz bars)
and how bar chords are a guitarists way of flipping off a crowd-
surfing the web for an answer to why I'm still single-
handedly the handsomest man in my car currently.
It's the cloth in my empty passenger seat
soaking up the air of my A/C heat
and the scent of the soil spilt from the succulent I was given at a wedding last fall
and now I don't know if my trunk will ever smell clean at all
But I'll let this night be interstellar
I'll take a bath in the Big Dipper and write you a letter about Orion's Belt
or how I miss the stars sparkling in your eyes making contact with the E.T. in me.
Phone me home, darling.
I'm lost at sea.
-W.J. Thompson
Mar 30, 2017
Mar 30, 2017 at 1:13 AM UTC
I am another you/
Together we make One/
You are another me/
Separate we make none/
I am another you/
So when you make a frown/
You are another me/
I weep too, feeling deeper down/
I am another you/
When your eyes shine and show your smile/
You are another me/
My heart dances a jubilee, lasts quite a while/
I am another you/
You speak how I am/
And you are another me/
I reverb how You are
I am another you.
The whole soul reflected/
We are all so connected/
˙ǝɯ ɹǝɥʇouɐ ǝɹɐ noʎ
Oct 23, 2012
Oct 23, 2012 at 1:07 AM UTC
i remember when I first hear her voice…
just that one simple word
“Hello”
And my mind became whole…
Filled with images of
Us walking hand in hand through the
Chaos wielding nothing to protect us
But the other’s smile…
As our voices reverb on the walls surrounding us
Returning the beauty back into the eyes
Of those entranced by the serenity
Caused just by her presence
I remember gazing into her eyes
And sharing the first kiss
While riding across the bridge
On that big cheese bus…
As my lips touched hers…
And our thoughts unified…
A rainbow of emotion
Shone into our lives…
And the passion forged then
Shall grow forevermore
I still dream
Of the vows
We spoke of making…
I to her
Her to i
Of eternal love
& pure devotion…
But the bond fell short
And the feelings fizzled out…
But I’m waiting for they day
They re-ensue
The time is now
Our bond’s re-forged…
I’ll have her back here in my heart…
As this plethora of
Prismatic…
Emotions eminates outwards
All that’s left here is
A flower blooming
within
Sep 12, 2009
Sep 12, 2009 at 4:10 PM UTC
To flow
Lost in the mind of unattachment~
Relation floats to the top,
Bubbling in iridescent mounds.
Blood spinning full body,
Taken ancient ritual
To lands unknown,
Abyss flies,
High collapse,
Forms dissolve to absorb.
Human knows, mankind blows its ashes
Into the sea
Where fish nibble surface gifts,
Crawl to form surface, lifts
Familiar exotica,
Erotica basks
In sunshine frays,
Grays may blend broken rays
Off the pleasure. Desire
Bubbles & brews to the top,
Furling into forms to which our touch is born,
Our travels sojourn,
Ever sifting, filtering the moon & the sun.
Feeling joy form & torn,
The reverb sung & proverb born,
Chug on, truck on
Traveling Celestial Mist.
The smoke sends its message to our ancestors,
Thanks & quests, may we rest &
Face our tests &
Jump off the highest crests &
Flow down through the darkest depths.
Fearless, shall we be, tearless, never be.
The taste & the smell, Earth’s story we shall tell & retell to our kin,
Our progeny rebel against the story of sin,
Announce the return to our dance, making sense of the din.
We may collapse the columns, but in deep truth
The cycles form regardless of ruth.
With that knowing smile,
A goddess wraps her finger
Round his golden locks,
Open, as always, they dangle and glisten,
If we would listen,
The fear would instantly disappear,
Jeers against the queer would shift into gear
To endear us to the weird &
We would cheer!
The dampness will burn,
The heartache will churn,
Our souls still yearn for
That moment when we lose it.
The bruised tips healing in the instant,
The shock waves reckon this is it
& the feedback expatiates past the limits.
We already have the wildness,
The bliss of expansiveness,
Still spinning in the Spiral Ever Endless.
10/28/12
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 3:19 AM UTC
Like water, like flowing rivulets,
notes fly from fingers fast on frets.
Slippery sinuous shimmering tones
(complemented by brash bluesy Bones).
Like storm’s thunder and lightning a chord
brings the sky to us on earth—
or is it that we fly , then die until the rebirth
in gentle reverb of a note two octaves higher?
Strange how rain coexists with fire.
Drench us in the cascade born from your desire.
Sep 6, 2016
Sep 6, 2016 at 8:03 PM UTC
With outstretched arms
a blank canvas for you to
fill with your color
hues of sentiment
whisper the words only
lovers dare utter between
confinements of silk
tangled diction echoes
reverb of hidden messages
hearts choked
I promise you it won't only
be this time.
eternity
the beauty of
confession
I swear im not going
anywhere.
pour your fears and trust
into the kisses that grace the
barely open lips and skin that keep
us apart.
Your face the sky in someplace
when I sank somewhere
halfway between asleep and awake
my fingers etched between yours
laced with good intentions
not intended to be misconstrued
please don't go
I wasn't finished
Jan 16, 2010
Jan 16, 2010 at 12:46 PM UTC
Towards every sound, I can only move.
My eyes tied back masked in the fog.
No light shining through
No one to guide me.
Like a glacier in the vast abyss floating towards nothing.
Only accompanied by the echoes of yesterday.
-Kore
Mar 22, 2021
Mar 22, 2021 at 4:04 AM UTC