"ringed" poems
Shake out your shining tresses, Love
Undress their dark contour as the pink stars rise
And drowse around the smoke-ringed moon,
Like roses in a whiskey glass.
Take time to dream a dream, my Love,
Tresses fallen across the curve of your face --
Sleep away the late summer moon,
Spooning the stars asleep in pink lace.
Lay down your weary bones, my dear,
Stretch out on vanilla feather-winged dreams
My whisky rose petal kisses blown into the night
Finding you on glittered opalescent moonbeams
Grab hold of pink-starred sweet slumber
As silken tendrils puddle upon your chest
Tangled up in each other's lithe limbs
Our blissful hearts beat together in tender rest
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 12:20 PM UTC
Numb bodies
Numb brains
All sitting in a single airplane
Black-ringed eyes
Fresh new suits
Going the same place
Diffrrent jobs to do
Traveling alone
(The wrong way to travel)
Traveling with selfish intentions
(The only way to survive)
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 9:09 PM UTC
For 21 days I saw changes wrought
by the freedom of 22 years
Secrets of razor wire straight and taut
Speak of those who continue to fear
I saw nature’s beauty in land and face
As black heel continues to rise
Via school, ambition they prep for the race
Even as secretly despised
What’s changed in Soweto? I did not live
But photos and newsreels survive
Pictures of shanties bulldozed to give
Whites room to extend their hives
Now malls; monuments to white retail
Built on Mandiba’s words
Polished chrome and marble hail
“Happy” workers in a black-faced world
Monuments ringed with vendors tribal
Carved goods for sale and cheap
The rands they make do not rival
What multi-nationals’ continue to reap
Happiness is shallow until sundown
When the curtain of decorum lifts
Showing reality’s new shanty-town
Where space and plumbing are gifts
I wonder if He would be okay
Seeing his people so used
As pawns for labor with little say
As black is seldom excused
The young know the time is now
As old hatred’s in shallow graves
To be unearthed by book and plow
Keeping dreams from stunting and fade
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 8:48 AM UTC
And we’ve all been there, me and my lovers,
we’ve all see our fair share of troubles.
cause Romance is Chance in the form of a Dance
and I’m sorry to say I still move like I did fifteen years ago.
Macarena with me and I’ll sweep you off your feet,
maybe someday I’ll learn to waltz and blow you away.
Until it all comes crashing down.
Because inevitably it all comes crashing down
even the Flintstones died millennia ago.
My Anna Marie, I’m sorry you left,
Europe ringed and you answered,
I guess we couldn’t afford long distance
(is that even still a thing?)
and I couldn’t wait for you,
I was too young and too ready to love again.
Dear Jenna,
Darling,
as much fun as you are
we move at different speeds,
and mine’s stuck in the slow lane.
I liked *** on the second date,
but I wasn’t ready for the **** three weeks in.
God knows I’d never try and change you
even he doesn’t have the ***** to try.
And God bless you Tiffany,
cause it ***** to die,
but it ***** even more
stuck here saying goodbye.
Bachelor Status reaffirmed:
**** sites filled to capacity
with self-made men of audacity
come to satisfy their proclivities
“Dear phantom girlfriends,
you’re here to gratify
Please entertain us in our fantasies
and our impossibly similar tendencies.
Also, it wouldn’t hurt if it’s all free.”
Jun 11, 2015
Jun 11, 2015 at 12:40 AM UTC
We're on a train
in London's subways
and everyone stands
with a dead-eye peer
down the carriage, so
please, hold my hand.
They're all like apes,
hung on bamboo poles
and strung vine-straps,
hunkered over the small
space I have to myself, so
please, hold my hand.
I think you've become
just like them, Daddy;
a ringed-eyed orangutan
or narrow-staring lemur.
You've become much less
human it scares me, so
please, let go of my hand.
Apr 21, 2014
Apr 21, 2014 at 4:18 PM UTC
I
You came to me in the robes of Cyclamen
But how can I bring you a bouquet of red chrysanthemums?
When I have not found any white chrysanthemums in the bouquet of your heart?
Do not pluck the petals of my pure daisies with your eyes closed, lest you would be fooled by your wild guesses.
Because, you do not need to set your foot on twelve daisies before you can see the dawn of your spring
I will give you neither white nor red daisies after the last swallow of summer has flown away from your alcove, lest your dreams of them in autumn leave you heartbroken in winter.
In my wanderlust quest for Ivy
I did not find you in the bloom of Orange Blossom or in Lemon Blossom
But I found you entangled in the paphiopedilum orchids of Phaphos with a garland of Peach Blossom dangling from your ringed neck
Like a rose entangled in your own thorns
Then I disentangled you before I led you to the lyceum of my Muses
They welcomed you with the petals of Apple Blossom cast at your bleeding feet. They wiped your tears away with the golden petals of yellow roses and bathed you in the pool of the Coral Rose.
They covered you with the Peach Rose and led you into the bed of my Rose of Persia before I came to you with my bouquet of the white Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley
II
My heart is a bouquet of red roses
Red roses in a vase of Michaelmas daisies
As flowers bloom in the oasis in the desert
Red roses will blossom in my heart
So, here I am my dearest dove
I have come to your nest to rest in your *****
I have come to you my sweetest love
Where the roses in my heart will blossom.
For my heart will no longer pine
Nor will my enchanted spirit whine
For as long as you are mine
You will forever be my Valentine.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 5:12 AM UTC
my eyes
tongues of desire
a soft gauze
upon drenched red silk
stigmata
a river of marrow
flower of blood
creel of moist honey
hold not yourself apart
I kiss your wound
bell moon
crescent ravine, dark tears
like a spay of stars
arched spine
your raised ****
like scrambled eggs
curves to the heavens
a steep canyon aching
weeps blue darkness
legs wide in souls shadowed grove
tattooed pistols and knives
pierced by my autograph
for every letter, scimitars plunge
jeweled ******** ringed
sweet tarnished petal
gashed mouth; flower de luce
memories that burn
blotted like an eye in ink
to fly winged *******
your face
hieroglyphic of weird
crimson smear; cackle
with feet below hell
wanting to live
like fire in the sky
hot witch riding a broom handle *****
scummed mouth
the world soul destroyed paradise
and your form
hideous kisses
falling red ribbons
i am puddled;
a runny yolk
shameless for your open hollows
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 12:13 PM UTC
My fingerprints tell a story
on occasion I'll glance down at them
Careful yet unobtrusive rings of life
Much like the tree that grew in the yard
of my childhood home.
Tonight these circles within circles
trace the outline of your body.
Your spine.
Your hip bones.
Your ribs.
Every muscle tense and then relaxes
under the strength of my extremities
I'm horrible at saying goodbye
I'd much rather lie here and
outline your body for you.
My fingers the chalk outline at a crime scene
Fugitives are always careful about fingerprints.
They're easily picked up by white dust
and foreign gloved hands
But this time, I'll leave my ringed prints behind
I want them to know I knew you.
Feb 16, 2012
Feb 16, 2012 at 8:34 PM UTC
1670
In Winter in my Room
I came upon a Worm—
Pink, lank and warm—
But as he was a worm
And worms presume
Not quite with him at home—
Secured him by a string
To something neighboring
And went along.
A Trifle afterward
A thing occurred
I’d not believe it if I heard
But state with creeping blood—
A snake with mottles rare
Surveyed my chamber floor
In feature as the worm before
But ringed with power—
The very string with which
I tied him—too
When he was mean and new
That string was there—
I shrank—”How fair you are”!
Propitiation’s claw—
“Afraid,” he hissed
“Of me”?
“No cordiality”—
He fathomed me—
Then to a Rhythm Slim
Secreted in his Form
As Patterns swim
Projected him.
That time I flew
Both eyes his way
Lest he pursue
Nor ever ceased to run
Till in a distant Town
Towns on from mine
I set me down
This was a dream.
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Orcas in Puget Sound
Along the road, abandoned wild apple trees bend
with their heavy loads, dusty skirts of blackberry bushes
purpling fingers, piercing flesh
mouths ringed with berry juice, vampires all.
Along San Juan Island salmon leap clear
out of the briny water, just yards ahead of their predators,
Orcas, dorsal fins curving shiny black, sluicing and slicing
the surface like sharpened knives
They have bred with one another for 10,000 years
trolled these waters through famine, earthquakes, world wars
through shifting continents, glacial avalanches,
through the extinction of whole civilizations.
Standing on a cliff, my daughter and I
watch the Orcas churning the water - studies in grace
the largest gem on the necklace of a great food chain
and when we sleep we too chase
the great King Salmon of our deepest dreams,
the fathers we lost, the currents that bear along children
Translucent jellyfish, palm sized, breath below
sideways exhale, convulsive inhale
umbrellas opening and closing a thousand years or more
sliding through forests of brown kelp where mollusks cling
We have clung like this to one another, with my body
thrown over hers for protection and her exhaling away from me
If Mama Orca keeps her young close, so will I
If there are salmon to chase and harbor seals to command, so we will
Arcing in the late August sky
slapping and parting the surface, over and over
the whales, lords of the Sound, swim in our brains as we sleep
sparkle against blackening waters
You are of my body from my body cleaving there for 10,000 years
Whatever quarrels there are on land vaporize
In the presence of these creatures,
arcing against all that is temporal, vicious, small,
studies in power and grace
The tide pulls out, skimming across rocks and oysters in their muddy beds
But this need to care for you remains as big as an Orca
your appetite for adventure as voracious
and I watch you, my child, disappearing with summer
into high school, into womanhood, into
the salty, light-dappled ocean
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 4:15 PM UTC
Night covers the pond with its wing.
Under the ringed moon I can make out
your face swimming among minnows and the small
echoing stars. In the night air
the surface of the pond is metal.
Within, your eyes are open. They contain
a memory I recognize, as though
we had been children together. Our ponies
grazed on the hill, they were gray
with white markings. Now they graze
with the dead who wait
like children under their granite breastplates,
lucid and helpless:
The hills are far away. They rise up
blacker than childhood.
What do you think of, lying so quietly
by the water? When you look that way I want
to touch you, but do not, seeing
as in another life we were of the same blood.
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Where are our clowns
With baggy waist-coats
Filled with promises;
Clowns wearing
Borrowed crowns.
One plucks a rose
In his white garden,
To pin on his lapel;
He's a squirter
And it shows.
One's in the square
With large red shoes
Putting on a show.
But feet don't fit,
Soon he'll trip
With tongue-in-cheek ego.
One has rhine-red ruffs
Around her neck,
Her GNP
Surpasses debt;
Her audience finds
They too get wet.
A three-ringed circus
We're wise to regret.
One in the Yuan
Has a red nose on,
A harlequin clown
Asleep in red dawn.
But tweak his nose
And the tent comes down
On the Big Top Shows.
Mar 6, 2015
Mar 6, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC
I saw a gigantic tree.
Uprooted and on its side.
The great roots forming a mane for the snarling ringed face on the stump.
But the fallen beast is taken, it’s husk a Home.
A vibrancy of weevils, ladybugs, frog hoppers, Cockchaffers that’s skittering, scattered like a smashed ant farm.
Around its base were prehistoric ferns,
Curled and scaled like sand lizards’ tales.
Reminiscing the demise of the tyrannosaur.
When dust clouds darkened the sun which warmed their claws.
The skittering skinks, slow worms and other small lizards, who need far less to survive, then feasted upon the monsters’ flesh and found a home in its bone structured palace.
As whale sinks,
Distorted into a globster of its former self,
It hits the sea bed hard in oil-Black darkness.
The hagfish burrow, starved for millennia.
Brutally tearing at the befallen banquet.
Mouths used to scraps choking on steak.
Getting their guts knitted as they squirm over each other to grasp some sashimi.
Dripping saliva as if we’re sweat in the ruckus.
Yeti crab pinch, as do isopods
But get only mucus insulting their jaws.
And they thought they helped to cut up the portions.
Soon all that is left is a skeleton.
Hanging in a museum for future generations to see.
Once again, dust gathers, from bombed out sand.
Erupting in the air as giants hit the ground.
We may soon again see darkness fall.
As the rayiys is skinned.
But no tears are shed.
We all cheer none the less.
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 6:07 AM UTC
Peacock hues adorn your hair
And curl around the candle flare
Your eyes are emeralds ringed with gold
With fingers wrapped in paper folds
Running through a taller forest
Singing with a choir of blue
The only way that I can walk
Is through a taller forest with you
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 6:27 PM UTC
Monsoon Rhapsody by Nishu Mathur
I am rain on a summer day
Drenching drowsy, lifeless buds
Stirring them to a dancing wakefulness
Washing leaves dull and dry with dust
Dousing fire in a desert ringed inferno
I am the drizzle on a pale moon night
Easing into the heart with music
The melange of water humming with the wind
The splash of puddles in fields of barley
Gently filling thirsty river beds craving for a flow
I am showers before monsoons
Impregnating the air with soothing droplets
The hint of life in an oasis of colours
Breathing moist on a farmer's bronzed skin
Tingling the world with shimmering emerald
I am sawan, the monsoons
Winding my way through a chorus of clouds
Thundering my presence into the sea of renewal
Cascading on sandy shores that glisten with light
Whisking away waves of gold with jubilant darkness
I drape the land in arrays of greens
Scent the soil in my fragrance
Dance with the rhapsodic dance of the peacock
Wreathe petals into flowers that vine
And curve in the soil of growth.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 7:47 AM UTC
Here's to all my Aussie friends.
You fought with bravery and honor
at Kimberley, Passchendaele,
Gallipoli, Romani, Crete,
Tobruck, Milne Bay, Yongju
and even in Vietnam.
And I know why you did it.
Abounding in your back yards
were stalking cassowaries, spiders
that rot your flesh, invisible
but lethal jelly fish,
Coastal Taipan and Brown snakes,
not to mention saltwater crocodiles
Great White sharks, Stone Fish,
blue ringed octopi and
the odd Marble Cone Snail.
War must have seemed safe
compared to he horrors of home.
Here's to you mates. Fair Dinkum.
I would have been on the first
transport out, too.
~mce
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 9:33 AM UTC
I poured myself out onto you, ink on vellum, your
skin gravelly, your alluring purr as smooth as silk and
soft as velvet, but as you folded me in your arms, my words
were lost like cries in the wind. For once, in a long time, I looked
at you, truly looked at you. I looked past the thin sheen of sweat at your
brow, like the dew on the blades of brown grass in the hot summer mornings.
I looked past the spray of freckles that dusted the tops of your cheeks and the bridge
of your nose, the freckles you loathed so much when you were just a boy because they
reminded you of flecks of glitter. I looked past the blonde locks that ringed your face like a
golden halo. Your hair is longer now, than it was, when we were kids, but I doubt that even
now, you’d let me braid it. I looked past all the little details I’d noticed about you
when we were growing up, and now, I saw a man with amethyst eyes and a
longing washed over me like a wave, pulling me down with the undertow.
I long to know this you as I once knew you, so well, like the back
of my own hand. So, with salt and foam, sweat and ink and in
every sweeping wave, drag me into those lovely amethyst
eyes. If the eyes truly are the windows to the soul,
pour in like a light and flood on the floor. Show me
what you’ve become, because, while I easily
recognize your flesh and outer
appearance, I long to know
you deeper than looks
could ever go.
Sink me,
show
me.
Feb 24, 2021
Feb 24, 2021 at 8:23 PM UTC
Just this morning,
I was thinking of you.
Yes, you crossed my mind.
It was wonderful.
Simply beautiful, concerning my thoughts about you.
I called you.
You acted surprised.
When I stated you crossed my mind.
Then I hung up.
No other words said.
Then the phone ringed.
It was you questioning about my call.
And I only stated, I love you.
Which was the original purpose of the call.
Cause you crossed my mind.
When you set upon a certain time to speak.
It takes the fun out of the surprises.
When your love interest crosses your mind.
I can imagine the smile upon your face.
As you go through your day.
But you must admit one thing.
I'm on your mind.
As, you were upon mine.
Dec 20, 2012
Dec 20, 2012 at 9:29 AM UTC
oh, hera
look upon me with your
piercing green eyes and
tell me of your woes,
of the fallacies you spin
around your ringed fingers;
tell me so i can learn how
to make the men drop to
their knees too
Dec 4, 2017
Dec 4, 2017 at 8:31 PM UTC
3rd Grade, Awards Assembly
Children are filed into the cafeteria in almost orderly lines
Giggling about silly jokes that make no sense to adults
But for awards, they are silent, and expecting.
Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, finally
The little girl with her shiny black shoes waits for her award telling her that she qualifies as smart
And she receives perfect attendance
8th Grade, School Computer Room
Awkward preteens set in blue plastic chairs
Friends clumped together around a single screen
"Secretly" googling ***** like it's a crime, though everyone knows
But in the very back
The girl with her black bag full of books checking her grades online
Has her nose to the monitor and worry in her heart
Because just perfect attendance makes her a disappointment.
Junior Year, Home Bathroom
Soapy water soaks the floor and into a dollar store rug
The bath is half empty and tinted a rusty shade of red
And sitting on the floor with her knees to her chin, carving A+ into the scarred skin of her arm
Is the girl, almost a woman, with her eyes messily ringed in black, who doesn't dare cut too deep.
Killing herself would mean losing her perfect attendance.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 12:13 AM UTC
Thugs
Go to Stanford.
And the construction workers
I've seen
Are more likely to spend
Their downtime playing
Video games
Then smoking the ****
And I've seen my
Fair share of manic,
Wide-eyed young Filipinos
Like myself,
A little browner,
A little more beautiful,
I'm a little more racist
But
It's not okay.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I guess what I simply want to say
Is there is a simple joy
To watching fingers
Of all kinds
Mold and shape futures,
Whether it be in the form
Of softened concrete slabs
Or the hard writ
Of word,
Whether it taste
Of exhaust smoke
And leather
Or orange juice
The school
Is the sky
The blue sky and the
Fields and university
Is a gold-ringed
Fist and in this
Respect we all have
Our PhDs.
And as for this sheltered
Unsheltered rooftops
Holed like ozone
World we've all built together
Well,
We try to find words for it
And collapse.
Dec 16, 2014
Dec 16, 2014 at 10:34 AM UTC
Dear Colette,
I want to write to you
about being a woman
for that is what you write to me.
I want to tell you how your face
enduring after thirty, forty, fifty. . .
hangs above my desk
like my own muse.
I want to tell you how your hands
reach out from your books
& seize my heart.
I want to tell you how your hair
electrifies my thoughts
like my own halo.
I want to tell you how your eyes
penetrate my fear
& make it melt.
I want to tell you
simply that I love you--
though you are "dead"
& I am still "alive."
Suicides & spinsters--
all our kind!
Even decorous Jane Austen
never marrying,
& Sappho leaping,
& Sylvia in the oven,
& Anna Wickham, Tsvetaeva, Sara Teasdale,
& pale Virginia floating like Ophelia,
& Emily alone, alone, alone. . . .
But you endure & marry,
go on writing,
lose a husband, gain a husband,
go on writing,
sing & tap dance
& you go on writing,
have a child & still
you go on writing,
love a woman, love a man
& go on writing.
You endure your writing
& your life.
Dear Colette,
I only want to thank you:
for your eyes ringed
with bluest paint like bruises,
for your hair gathering sparks
like brush fire,
for your hands which never willingly
let go,
for your years, your child, your lovers,
all your books. . . .
Dear Colette,
you hold me
to this life.
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i had always believed
the beauty of the stars
glittering the night sky
could not be surpassed
but those other galaxies
swirling and rutilated
within the moss agate
of her ringed irises
showed me once again
how little i knew
Dec 1, 2023
Dec 1, 2023 at 10:55 AM UTC
Pale scrapings of people
with lipstick ringed glasses
and cigarettes burning,
and laughter trickling up and down
their knotty throats.
What is this,
a gathering of henhouse critics?
My father's voice in the back of my head,
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you
can not do that than pretend.
I am standing
just outside the gallery
beneath the shadowy bough of a birch.
The moon is floating in the sky's dark lap.
Faraway I can hear the ocean sigh.
Now father, I am asking,
what smile are you wearing?
What color are your eyes again?
How many teeth have you lost?
Don't you think I want a kiss.
Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I don't
want to stand and pretend you
not dead while the wet, champagne
mouths of the living tell me how wonderful
your paintings are.
As they crook their fingers and strain their necks,
lose their vocabulary inside the artwork's depths
and colors.
Father, I want your reputation to outlive the pursuits
of others with their iron-on reviews after an hour's
worth of browsing at a lifetime of your work.
Father, are you crying?
Stop that sound.
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