"rib" poems
I am black coffee with curves of sugar.
I am a spoon of chocolate
I am soul food
I am a wombed man
The rib of an african king
The golden crown of the cosmos.
I am full moon or a sunset
I am light,
I am a spark,
a flame,
a bonfire,
I am fire works.
I’ll leave traces of smoke in your nostrils.,
Just so you’ll recognize my presence when you’re seeking me.
I’ll shelter myself between your veins just to make your heart beat a little faster.
I am the revolution of love.
I am a silenced desire.
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 12:37 PM UTC
No sprouted wheat and soya shoots
And Brussels in a cake,
Carrot straw and spinach raw,
(Today, I need a steak).
Not thick brown rice and rice pilaw
Or mushrooms creamed on toast,
Turnips mashed and parsnips hashed,
(I'm dreaming of a roast).
Health-food folks around the world
Are thinned by anxious zeal,
They look for help in seafood kelp
(I count on breaded veal).
No smoking signs, raw mustard greens,
Zucchini by the ton,
Uncooked kale and bodies frail
Are sure to make me run
to
***** of pork and chicken thighs
And standing rib, so prime,
Pork chops brown and fresh ground round
(I crave them all the time).
Irish stews and boiled corned beef
and hot dogs by the scores,
or any place that saves a space
For smoking carnivores.
21.8k
It’s the kind of sadness where your rib cage
Contorts
And twists and
Snaps.
Depression doesn’t float through my veins
It crawls through my bones, with dagger hands
And winding movements.
I cannot breathe.
And yet there was nothing taken from me.
Jun 16, 2019
Jun 16, 2019 at 11:41 PM UTC
Flesh is heretic.
My body is a witch.
I am burning it.
Yes I am torching
ber curves and paps and wiles.
They scorch in my self denials.
How she meshed my head
in the half-truths
of her fevers
till I renounced
milk and honey
and the taste of lunch.
I vomited
her hungers.
Now the ***** is burning.
I am starved and curveless.
I am skin and bone.
She has learned her lesson.
Thin as a rib
I turn in sleep.
My dreams probe
a claustrophobia
a sensuous enclosure.
How warm it was and wide
once by a warm drum,
once by the song of his breath
and in his sleeping side.
Only a little more,
only a few more days
sinless, foodless,
I will slip
back into him again
as if I had never been away.
Caged so
I will grow
angular and holy
past pain,
keeping his heart
such company
as will make me forget
in a small space
the fall
into forked dark,
into python needs
heaving to hips and *******
and lips and heat
and sweat and fat and greed.
17.2k
You say doctors will
make the best poets.
They will search your emotions
by the skin; cutting open to reveal
and revel
with surgical precison.
They will play with
heavy drugs and blades--
nothing shall hide beneath
the armors of bone and muscle.
They know the anatomy
of the heart too well.
They will find the things
you have hidden in your chest.
I say
doctors will never be poets.
They are too mechanical,
too fast with their edges
and ridges.
They cannot see the pain
as pain but merely as an anomaly.
That sadness is black bile
not melancholia.
They cannot sing to you
but only clammer in medical jargon.
Poets will use their imperfect words,
and perfect rhymes
to find the secrets of your rib cage
with ease.
They will find every flaw
of your broken body
and make it the best story
you've never heard.
Doctors,
they will put love to define as
a momentary rush of adrenaline,
an arrythmia for another human
caused due to an imbalance of the heart rhythm.
Poets will tell you
that love is the first jolt
of life for them.
They will say love is a state of euphoria
that takes those irregular rhythms to perfect symphonies.
Doctors say that
veins carry blood
devout of oxygen.
I say that they carry your broken emotions
to their feelings factory
to mend it within its beautiful catacombs.
All those doctors
will find and fix you
with perfect solutions.
And these poets
will do their best
to be your perfect solution.
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
I don't believe in soul mates
What I do believe in
Is people that connect
On some deeper level
Immediately upon acquaintance
And not meaning you agree
On where to eat for dinner
But the connection where your heart
Seems to slip out
Of your rib cage
Because it's found a home
Outside of your chest.
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 2:57 PM UTC
Mourning on school mornings
as you take your children to the bus stop
hope their hearts won’t stop
bullet shells drop
and moments of silence
will never balance their cries
or your rage
or put others at ease
it will never
combat the kids in the halls
saying “we don’t care”
with a rib cage full of hate
it will never
get those of ignorance to think
the people cant listen to moments of silence
so be louder than the gunshots
because I’m tired of listening to those.
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 11:23 AM UTC
Failure is the hardest emotional hurdle to overcome.
It means the end of the adventure,
And worse,
That this particular end is your fault.
Failure means a creased brow, fidgety fingers, and knotted stomach
It means confrontation
And admission of guilt.
Failure means you didn't succeed.
When failure sneaks up on me at night,
Seeps into the skin on my back,
And wraps its slimy hands around my rib cage
When I'm in its vice grip
And I can't breathe
Will you give me CPR?
Aug 20, 2015
Aug 20, 2015 at 12:17 AM UTC
She left Reno
in a satin slip
the color of hot coins
pouring from slots,
wearing chewed-up tennis shoes,
mirrors multiplying her,
the marquee burning out
letter by letter,
a hush pressed between her teeth
as if saving the last note.
I followed,
a gangly shadow,
mother’s voice in my ear:
"life is not a freeway exit."
But she was the exit.
She drove west
through a glittering throat.
In Tonopah she was a waitress,
red stains on her wrists,
sleeves tugged low,
coffee pouring thin as blood.
In Barstow she was a sun-bleached Madonna,
halo blistered, mouth lit in stained glass.
At a gas station in Needles
shimmering into a coyote’s shadow
and slipped behind the pumps.
Then movement along the fence,
low, quick—
gone again.
Casinos blinked like electric relics.
Truckers called her sugar,
greedy hands counting her ribs
as if she was the paycheck
sweating in their fist,
but she slipped away each time,
her silhouette already moulting-
a serpent skin, a smoke-trail,
a saint’s shadow burning off the wall.
By Malibu, the night
had softened to velvet.
The pier at Zuma
leaned into the Pacific
like a broken bridge.
She sang to me—
low, cracked—
then let the slip fall.
Her body cut into the dark tide,
no disguise.
I waded in after her,
ankles bruised by rock.
Water lit with jellyfish,
each pulse a warning.
I stopped where it deepened,
felt the pull take hold.
No exit left,
just the Pacific’s mouth
closing around her.
Sep 1, 2025
Sep 1, 2025 at 8:08 PM UTC
Maybe it's the poet in me
that believes
that after all these years,
and miles,
and songs,
that you might untangle yourself from her arms,
tug on the string I tied to our fingers before you left,
and find your way back
to me.
Your heart
is pulling you across the ocean,
to ports with open arms waiting for you;
and I'm left here wondering
why it wasn't enough
that I would have tore out my rib cage
and made it into a boat
for you to sail yourself there in.
I would wait here,
at this port
that is both where you have been
and where you still are,
until I turned to stone.
It's the poet in me
that can't let you go.
Jan 22, 2017
Jan 22, 2017 at 5:18 PM UTC
I don’t know if you know
I carry you
in an involuntary sigh
in a constant exodus of yearning
and in the frantic deepness of all
nostalgic thought, shaking time and distance
to place me near you
in the closeness of your warmth
remembered
I carry you in sorrow
precipitated
in the absence of your voice
and in the memory of your rib cage molded
in the shape of ardent weakness
my embrace
I carry you, the braille at the tip of my fingers
life drawn in lines on my left palm
and in the carcass of calm interrupted
by the pounding of a heart’s ill-time
I don't know if you know, but
I carry you in the crown of memories consoled
and in the spine of excess
where I fall, between involuntary sighs
defeated
in your skin remembered
from the confines
of the heart
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 2:46 AM UTC
As Stong as the An African Elephant
Yet were are supple and elegant.
We are persuasive talkers so our words are very Eloquent.
Crafted From man's rib and An earthly element is How God made the first Wombman in the old testiment.
During the worlds development
We somehow begun to be irrelevant
Forgetting that we were designed as a help mate who is heaven sent.
We shed Bloods for days sometimes a months without dying.
Raising our children to Be Ladies and gentlemen whom are edifying.
In our wombs a human life we are able carry.
We are informational like a human dictionary.
We store resoureful pieces of data like a library.
Created with brown sugar, warm honey, cocoa and Gold.
Out spirits are Radiently Bold.
Our bodies are temples that can't be bought or sold.
We have a Story that must be hear and told.
We are the beautiful flowers in the month of May That Springs up and blooms in middle of noons day.
We flourish just as the fluorescent blue jay, Whose mood is Joyful and gay.
Our Skin absorbs the sun's Incandescent. Ray.
Some may say, Our hair is ***** but Actually, Our hair just happens to defy gravity
So we wear it upon our head proudly like a Crown
because Living in socitey's prospective of what you should look like will weigh you down.
You will stay stuck on being lost when you already have been found.
Be about your fathers business and know you are Heaven bound.
We are run life's race with meaning and purpose in our pace
Even our walk is embedded with grace
Nature's beauty smiles upon our face
As We Wear God's love like a Pure Gold necklace that's trimmed with lace.
The Strength we've gain
Turned us into warriors from living the through the most Excruciating pain
Thats the Reason we humbly pray as we sing and dance in the middle of the storm's rain.
Our humility will continue to remain.
We are women of Virtue
I wrote this to encourage you
Never let no one break, hurt or discourage you know who you belong to.
And who deserves a Woman of your statue.
For Being black Is Exhilarating
And being a woman is Breathtaking but Being a Black Woman is an Honorary Identity that is Legendary.
Nov 18, 2016
Nov 18, 2016 at 9:21 PM UTC
I lull the salt
and the rain
with the company of
sour visitors
perpetual silence
stabbing me in
my palms
I strung it together
with thin white exhales
In the morning
I become tangled
apologetic veins
a rib cage and
a buoy, white endless
silence
tangled at the root.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 6:51 PM UTC
Found myself at a dental clinic...
He was the best there was.
Unorthodox and eccentric,
But to the specialised craft, he was boss.
Ran through the bits and bobs
Like any normally would.
The poking and prodding and the mandible X-rays.
Everything cold and clinical, so was the mood.
Strange was what happened next...
Specialist and I then stood facing each other.
He leaned close and pressed his palms against my rib cage.
Held them there over a few breaths before it was over.
Then a brief chat, small talk initiated by the man.
Bespectacled and exceedingly chatty, small in stature.
Talks of politics and odd human behaviours...
What started off as friendly turned into a heated banter.
I then realised that along with his decorated credentials,
Was his propensity to be condescending and arrogant.
Him being the best, I thought I could let it all slide,
But soon enough I opted out of being a willing participant.
Couldn't stand his abrasive cockiness!
I snapped out of being cordial and passive thought.
I wanted him to just stop talking!
I went, "Well, are you going to fix my teeth or not?!"
He was stunned momentarily...
I suppose he hadn't seen that coming.
Then his features softened to a blank
I could almost read the unspoken words he was conjuring.
With an exasperated sigh of resignation,
He uttered his next words swollen with regret
"There's no need...for you only have four years left."
It dawned upon me that my timer has been set.
And then I woke up...
Oct 25, 2014
Oct 25, 2014 at 2:21 PM UTC
Did you know that if you don't stretch in the correct way, you might end up thwarting the entire purpose of your workout and suffer unwanted injuries?
Doing pre-workout stretches thoroughly will determine whether you are benefiting from your workout or whether it's worsening your muscle tear. Here are the major stretching crimes that you should never commit.
Not doing a proper warm-up
According to gym instructors worldwide, this is the most commonly committed crimes in any gym. A warm-up is a must before any kind of workout — cardio or weights — and must ideally last at least 12-15 minutes.
Assuming that stretching is a warm-up
Stretching and warming up is not the same. You need to warm up first, before you are ready to stretch. A slow jog or brisk walking on the treadmill is a good warm-up.
Rushing through your stretching exercises
Stretching should be for the entire body. You cannot skip any parts. Involve stretches that work your lower back, shoulders, calves, stomach, quads etc. You should not move from one stretch to the other in very quick succession because that may cause untoward injuries. Try to hold each stretch for 20 seconds. When you breathe deeply and hold the stretch, your muscles get trained to tolerate the maximum that your limbs can go to.
Giving stretching a skip after a workout
You have done an hour of strenuous exercise and now you just want to rush out of the gym; that is a huge mistake. Spend some time bending and stretching after your sweat session. Then, do a cool down before you leave the gym.
Not stretching every day
You need to be your flexible best always and that can only happen if you stretch daily, even on the days that you aren't gymming. This ensures that your gym days are more fruitful and that you make the most of them.
Not breathing properly
Breathing right is a very important aspect of stretching. Breathe naturally while you inhale through your nose, expand your rib cage and upper abdomen as you fill in your lungs. When exhaling, breathe out through your mouth, preferably making an audible sound. This relaxes you. While stretching, you need to breathe out when you are exerting, that is, when you are actually contracting your muscles.
Doing static stretches
Never stand still and do stretches that work only one muscle. You should rather do stretches that work a group of muscles — like a lunge that stretches your upper hamstring muscle, your ankles and also your glutes.
Ignoring pain while stretching
When you are in the middle of a stretch and you feel pain, stop immediately and consult an expert. Your stretch should make you feel a gentle pull only, not immense pain. If you are hurting, you are doing it wrong. Rest a few days and then go back to working out under a qualified trainer.Read more here:www.marieaustralia.com/formal-dresses
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 5:40 AM UTC
I put on my dress and smooth the creases under my eyes.
It just falls right, falls right on the curves of my hips
And hides the shadows between this rib caged heart.
For that moment, it reminds me less of myself
And more of you.
Jan 28, 2015
Jan 28, 2015 at 8:26 AM UTC
Well, unfortunately, I am completely comprised of empathy
and my heart is so broken seeing yours break because of me.
It's a vice grip just inside my rib cage ******* with my heart,
in some moments, it stops and I think it won't start.
All I want is to make everybody happy,
but that's not going to work if you want me;
and if that is all that drives your soul,
you will be let down and it will take a toll
on your ability to face the day and conquer it with a smile.
I know that you've done everything; gone beyond the extra mile.
I know there are so many good things that it's almost hard to say no,
and then sometimes, goodbye hugs are almost impossible to let go.
However, I've thought hard about this, since knowing you,
and I know that I would not be happy, and that is sadly true.
I can honestly feel how much that truth hurts,
it hurts more than I can describe with any words.
I feel guilty; I always wish you to have anything you seek,
and I'm a sucker to please people; it's what makes me weak,
but if all you want is my unconditional love for you,
that is not something I can give, not something I can do.
I can't be in a relationship if my gut tells me not to,
and I get a negative instinct when I think of us two.
I know you want to take care of me and just love me,
but I feel so wrong taking and not giving back freely.
I know you know how I feel and I wish you'd see I can't change,
I just want to stop hurting you, and stop our chest pangs.
I am sorry for the friend zone, but I can't cross these lines,
there will be another who will save you, everything will be fine.
Feb 13, 2015
Feb 13, 2015 at 10:11 PM UTC
I cried at the breakfast table this morning
my father carefully explained,
"wives must be submissive to their husbands"
"housecleaning is the domain of the woman"
"God created woman because man asked for a partner"
This past semester I wrote two papers
One, a fire and brimstone sermon
I quoted Anais Nin
sending the creators of sexist commercials to eternal suffering
**** them!" I said. "May they burn in hell."
For the women they portrayed were doormats
Misconceptions
Monsters
The other, the role of women in the 1920s,
No longer confined to the kitchen
they dropped ballots with their new freedom
they wore short dresses and short tresses
fingers wrapped around cigs
they quoted Wilde instead of Alcott
they danced until their feet hurt
I read of Anais Nin's "new woman,"
her partnership, not submission to man,
I craved a room of my own, neigh demanded it
For sheep stayed in the kitchen,
The Woolf had a study.
I read poetry
Sexton,
Plath,
I wept for their starved, depressed selves
caged, suffocating inside the clasped hands of a man.
Loved like rib-cage jails.
Adrienne Rich made me angry,
her daughter-in-law
forever trying to fit into a box
she was always too big for, spilling
at the edges, her shaved
legs like "white mammoth tusks"
I was finally
happy with my womanhood.
****** ****** ***** ********
they are mine.
******* free to move unrestrained,
jiggling under my shirt.
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,
they are mine.
mine.
I am not ashamed of what I am
because there is no shame.
I am woman,
I am girl,
I am lady.
I am a creature
with a voice
a mind.
a creature who endured much abuse,
continue to endure.
I am woman
and I don't have to be wife or mother
unless I want to be.
I was not created for man;
I was created for the same reason he was,
to serve the same great purpose on this tiny blue dot.
I am not rib.
I am ****** ****** ***** ********
******* free, unrestrained,
Wetness between my thighs.
Menstrual blood,
I am a per.
I am a wo.
I am a hu.
Man and son need to back down,
collaborate not dominate,
speak not command,
for when less are forced into silence,
the maddening scream
hidden inside skin and bones and muscle-meat
becomes song.
this world of car horns and tire screeches
crying and wailing from raw throats
angry protests of indignation
could use a little music.
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 6:59 PM UTC
There is nothing more unsettling
than a teenage Christmas.
The coming of age
when adults find their inner child again
and you have to try and get rid of yours.
11 is fine.
Part of you still believes Santa put the presents under tree.
12 is also okay,
just a little less pixie dust stirs in the stomach on Christmas Eve.
13, 14 and 15 are tricky.
You don't want to look babyish by getting too excited,
so you shrug it off and ask 'Santa' for a mobile phone,
a laptop,
a TV,
until by 15
you ask for the most 'grown up' present of all.
"I just want money."
The words burn your lips and tongue like acid,
a yearning for the sensation of a gift you can unwrap
tugging in your rib cage.
You can't buy that.
16, 17 and 18 are Christmases tinged with nostalgia.
Little ghosts of the younger you run down the stairs on Christmas morning,
feet clad in slippers and Power Rangers pjyamas askew,
whilst you follow in procession,
almost a funeral.
It's not that you don't like Christmas.
It's not that you don't love your family.
It's not that you don't feel a fire light in your belly when you bite into a mince pie,
it's not that the battered Christmas videos your family replay each year don't still make you smile,
it's not even that you've gotten too old for it all.
Have you?
Slippers and tiny fists batter against advent calender doors,
begging you to open them.
When you're 19 you do.
You let them out and let them rush to rip open their presents under the tree.
You let them eat their selection box first before dinner.
You let them cry when the Snowman melts
and you let them laugh and not mock heave when your father chases your mother with mistletoe.
You let the ghosts become holograms you can play in your mind like a projector and slides,
no longer a need to leave holly by their graves
but a chance to remember and smile.
You let them be happy.
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 10:08 AM UTC
A Red Ruby, if placed upon the chest, can melt through your rib cage and engulf your entire body with flames.
It's delicate appearance of a heart was purposely constructed that way, in order to desire with a fierce blaze.
Red Rubies were made to crystallize your eyes and make every single sensual thought behind them harden until they crack and find its way into your blood stream and into your love making.
Red Rubies are a euphoric gemstone stimulating your need to love and give into the desirable.
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 5:16 AM UTC
We are the girls who walk around with little bird bones,
rib cages ready to snap when we spread our wings and
fly away
and for my next act,
I shall disappear little by little until I am ash.
I’m not eating for four days or until
I can feel the ***** that is my stomach start to shrink
I used to refuse food for weeks
it amazes me how self-indulgent I have become
I am ready to eat spoonfuls of air
spin my hair into a models top knot and
know that water is a privilege not a right
a million screaming girls saying
“but im not hungry”
while a tiger flays their insides open at night
Kate Moss said "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels"
and I suppose she is correct
What happens when you learn the tongue is a muscle not to be used
What happens when sustenance is no longer needed
When the mind decides
the very thing that keeps the body alive is a punishment
What happens when you refuse a necessity of being human
Apr 15, 2014
Apr 15, 2014 at 9:57 AM UTC
people **** people
with nothing but fingers and hair
and their very heavy breath.
their breath like a crow beak
before crucifixes of straw. like a tightening banishment of a lung.
remember when we would blow it
onto our car window and create that
consistent mirth of fog to
begin in?
the bodies riddled with bullets that flank
the highway are no such thing.
the schoolchildren lying face down in the corner of the closet are no such thing.
they are just winter coats with schoolchildren to fill them
for the time being.
no amputation of what’s mine
will aid them into the grave.
no mass communication grief. so
why would you call it a mass grave when in truth it was just a pit i dug to fill with crowds of people who died under the pretense that they had previously done so,
that nothing was new under the sun.
and when people **** people like people
do with their instruments
as ways of extending themselves into the world and into the marrow of our body
obliterating organs of people with their stretching of the muscular rib, shoulder.
one eye closes firmly.
it’s nothing but a hand gun
as if to say a hand eats the gun
and makes it whole.
as if to say the reinforced metal door
exit plan for people who are being killed by other people clicked shut and locked
15,000 years ago and i can’t quit slamming what’s left of me into it.
your kid is very dead.
but then again so is mine.
suppose they killed each other.
suppose they both made the mistake of dragging their small, stupid bodies through the trajectory of another body in the first place. in the chip aisle of a gas station maybe. in theaters this christmas.
in the midst of a good song that began playing on the lobby radio
just a minute before,
oh yeah before,
things really got going.
i saw people killing people
on television the other day
with their
whole bodies,
devouring themselves like surgical gloves
slick with oiled consumption
and bleeding out
and i could do nothing.
some kids died just because
and they told me so and i was told nothing could ever help them because they were just people and they were dying.
“breaking news” ended up just being people again.
in those moments, i was eating breakfast.
our houses were very quiet and needed me in all of them, grandfather clock over CNN, clarifying what has already been
committed and committed again.
the cipher was others lost blood.
Dec 9, 2019
Dec 9, 2019 at 12:24 AM UTC
Do you mean the ones who live on the other side?
Clear across the ocean, two miles in from the tide?
The ones that live with little means or the ones that live like we were meant to?
That work, play, stress, fear, and cry, just like we do?
The men who were created from the earth and the women from Adam's rib?
The ones who fall asleep staring at the same galaxies wondering if we're all there is?
Do you mean the ones in straw houses near dirt roads?
That learn how to survive on the land and wear the clothes that they sew?
Others and me,
I'm sorry, pardon me... I'm just slightly confused
Because when I think of them, I think of me
I can't separate the two.
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 1:54 AM UTC
It’s strange to think we fear the darkness
when we are younger,
A form of innocence that we harnessed
I’d much rather prefer.
Now that sounds crazy but hear me out
it’s something that you’ll see,
When innocence is gone you’ll come about
to find it hides in me.
That same darkness resides in you
I dread it’s greater than,
The darkness wrapped around your room
that you feared at age ten.
It’s something that grew inside your mind
and clung to your rib cage,
With every breath you come to find
the wars inside you wage.
It hides in every crevice and corner
bound to your bone marrow,
It tears apart your soul and worse
sometimes it even shows.
So I’d prefer those simpler days
with light came faith and trust,
The flick of a switch can’t keep at bay
the darkness inside all of us.
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 10:45 AM UTC