"riverbeds" poems
What is artistic expression how do put my soul on a page
How do I stroke my aura’s color if I can’t see it
How do paint my humor and intentions
How do I draw my unbalanced chakras back to balanced and write the energies surging through channels
How do I chalk out my thought process when I am reminded of you
Walkie talkies hidden ontop my chalkie chakra blocked like telephone lines hit by drunk drivers or blackouts during storms
Sunshine burning mustard seething weekend breeding burnouts coming out of retirement like
My soul color bleeding rainbows with big blocks of grey in between Needing the contrast Needing the depth and blurred complications the world is not black and white we all bleed the same rainbow sparks into the same riverbeds breathing and exhaling with the time ticks of our existence of light reflected on the glitter trickled surface of the vibrations of our soul speaks ricocheting through galaxies for eternity.
Can’t phrase anything right
In come spiraling thoughts stories of me stories of we can’t help but trip I fall into thee mother Luna romanticizing the waves of the sea you rub my jaw with your hipster b
Crown king we’re being free
We’re trying queen
Forgot the beauty in the cold
Blackened hearts should walk boldly
Frozen on mountaintops trying to keep our souls warm
Broken and torn plastic bag in the wind escaping entities that block their flow
Exhausted on faking
Keep breaking from trying to make it
Ain’t no fun to be around
I keep all my words in my mouth
The devils got my tongue
I’m feeling numb
All my existence is to ***
I can’t get up out of the ******* ground
Years go by
I’m not feeling myself
Tears come out of me like a leaking spout
No drugs can bother me
My head belongs in the clouds
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 4:28 PM UTC
At his little hippie college
he shows me a *** that looks like a wall
in a Rwandan museum, all skulls, he
learned clay in the Rift Valley
boarding school, on a kick wheel,
still his favorite
My brother is a potter
multicolor plaid shorts
little goatee
Banjo
Japan dreams
girl from Mozambique.
When we were little in Loiyangalani
we made tiny huts out of obsidian
while our Rhodesian Ridgebacks
sniffed the ground for cobras
sand vipers
scorpions
while twenty camels
walked by in a row
followed by tiny replicas
My brother is a potter, says to me
'When I am doing this I am
doing what I was created to do'
He makes a green and blue
candleholder for me which he calls
'The Islands,' light escapes through many holes
which look like sea turtles
pockets of air and
an atomic bomb just gone off
we turn off the lights
in my room in the hood,
snorkel in candlelight
My brother gives me
Rumi, incense, peace flags
We walk the silent night
smoke a clove
look at stars
like we used to do in the African riverbeds
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 6:50 AM UTC
i rope in your lungs
with my fingers,
there is a space
between your bones
and i want to fill it,
pouring in the lines
they told me
before they left me,
one by one,
leaving you
to carry me home
your fingertips,
they are riverbeds --
they are waiting
for the moment
when i can grow gills
and swim with the words
that crowd inside your chest
when you can't find
the right ones
to say
there are stars
tattooed onto the underside
of your stomach, there are
tiny planets swimming
in your blood stream
that i wish i could
dance my fingers through
just to remind you
that there are heavens
stirring in your heart,
this heart,
it chokes with shadow
some nights, but there is
a beacon shining in your bed
that i can't wait to discover,
submerged in the wreckage
our bodies left behind
and someday,
let me stir clouds
into your eardrums
let me breathe life
into the caverns
you've forgotten existed
let me fill your skull
with salmon finding
their way upstream,
you found your way
through the stream
that flows in my wrists,
you kissed the reeds
growing in my blood cells,
and one night, you held
my jaw together
as the sickness threatened
to break through it --
you always knew
how to unlock
the fastenings
in my vertebrae,
the ones who beg
to pull me down.
if somehow
the darkness
in my throat
began to spread,
i know
you would be the first one
pleading
to be dragged
along
with it.
May 8, 2012
May 8, 2012 at 11:20 PM UTC
Her hands are made of sandpaper, and her eyes they look like fear;
And the fragility of her porcelain heart is a sign that death is near.
The demons in the form of thought pick apart her empty mind.
They leave her on the roadside, where she is left, deaf, dumb and blind.
Screaming for redemption from her swollen, dry, cracked lips;
In an act of desperation, she starts to sway her paper hips.
With only one thing left to give, she has nothing left to lose;
She raffles off her body for feeble cash and sketchy *****
And the wrinkles on her face are tiny riverbeds for tears;
Urban camouflage of leather skin and dried up makeup smears.
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 4:49 PM UTC
I never quite understood the meaning of the word lonely.
the quiet of the word ghosting through my lungs
creating a safehouse in my skull
comforted by the spirit of liquor in these dry riverbeds for veins
This plastic sky is viewed from a colorblind childhood
sometimes there are no villains
the side walk chalk is a living outline,
decorated in ferocious shades of grey.
Loneliness isn't romantic,
there is no pride in being proud of your ghosts.
how ever friendly they may be
I am fluent in apologies
I am a crumpled paper pipe bomb,
Loneliness is a mother tongue
its salty words burn my jawbone,
its jaded point dug deep into my teeth
We can only tread water for so long
until we are swept under the tide
where the silence will break
the crown of our collarbones
The joke’s over,
we live to look regret in the face
loneliness, is a jagged edge of a word
its barbed wire cuts deeper than people ever could.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 12:29 AM UTC
I’m at work
Buzzing to get out of there
Out of the fluorescence
And the din of screaming children
As it downplays the howling heads
Of their mothers who
Dream of their children’s exposed
Necks and getting out of the grocery store
Before it starts to rain.
I am Bobcat Goldthwait
underneath
The large hanging lamps,
pale green as barge lights
I make little sounds with my lips
And tongue, little incoherent sounds
To push the time forward .
A man comes through
My line holding a beige patch
Of cloth
Over his exposed trachea beneath,
with a voice like he crushes cement
puts it in his coffee
and ***** it up through a fiberglass straw.,
He drops some
Toothpaste and a brush on the counter
And says to me with that mutilated
Voice:
“there are only two types of *****
Big old *****
And old big *****
His skin is blotchy in the cheeks
like the husks of craters seen from the sky,
and the corners of his mouth
are dry and cracked
snaking and splitting outward like dry riverbeds.
For a second I want to laugh so hard,
That people will think I’m crazy, and
Maybe one of the twitchy managers will have
Me committed.
If he says any more, it’s this:
“You’re young, enjoy it,
if you worry
About the fuckups now,
you’ll Be worrying
until you’re an old ******
and that doesn’t do you any good,
***** hates the old **** ups.”
Nov 16, 2011
Nov 16, 2011 at 10:42 PM UTC
i walk down roadsides n smile at clouds in towering wonder and sit upon hillocks of gravel watching citylights and knowing the same kinds of light shine upon you, too, sometimes: sweet, and in flittering movements. and in this snow-flurry, a single snowflake floats down the river of endless night, and drifts lazy pattern from our respective skins to each other's; i'll clamber up, down, over valleytops and riverbeds
to find you
Aug 14, 2015
Aug 14, 2015 at 7:48 AM UTC
We are the missing, the dead, the lost
Never found, and in the world
No monument exists for us
No flag has been unfurled
We lie in riverbeds and wood
Beneath stream beds and in fields
Were tears of woe ever wept for us?
Did a heart break, did it yield?
We wandered off in cases, some
In others, lured, abductions
Our bodies never found, but though
We caused a family some reduction
In others, we were found too late
Dead, mistreated in a hole
The one who did this thing to us
Until caught, god **** their soul
We lie here waiting for the day
For our remains to be found
We lie in woodlots, basements cold
Buried crudely in the ground
Some of us were lost before
We ever lost our lives
Roaming streets, with no real home
Dancing on a hundred knives
Some of us are living
Still at odds with where we are
We're prisoners inside our mind
And have gone and wandered far
But, those of us, the dead, the cold
Lie waiting for the day
When our bones will be discovered
And then at rest we'll lay
Are there people out there looking?
Many years for us have passed
Are we still an open case?
Or has the time for that just passed?
Do we still have family waiting?
Time goes slowly when you're lost
We lost our lives to violence
And I question at what cost?
Are we still considered missing?
With us the searching will not cease
We lie here, the dead, the missing
Until our souls can be at peace
Apr 9, 2013
Apr 9, 2013 at 11:33 AM UTC
A blur that breathes, growing and abating,
tides of people, entombed in steel,
flowing and fading on riverbeds of tar.
A place of nomads,
all draped in cloth.
A place of symbols,
of concrete and rebar
Sheets of cold, ice grey
Falling spindles, cold rain
A graceful procession
With a bellyful of tears
A dreadful cortège
A heralder of fears
A young forest paved with ancient crushed stones
Nothing left but the inheritance of a thousand unknowns
Nothing left, but old fossilised bones
All that has happened is what I know
And all I know is what will happen.
All that remains is what I know
And all I know is ruin.
Oct 13, 2021
Oct 13, 2021 at 4:30 AM UTC
Goodnight.
Sleep well.
I love you so much.
See you in the morning.
The house quiet and dark.
We break from our hug and walk to our rooms quietly.
The only sounds are my footsteps and the news going in Dads room.
Just another night.
Earlier that day,
I saw you cry.
I saw your upper lip shake like the ground when mountains fall over.
I saw tears rush down your face and into riverbeds and onto your lap.
I watch you turn the other way so I don’t see you as weak.
The man I have known to be the heatless ******* is the person who needs heart the most.
He needs my heart.
His daughters heart.
His girlfriends heart.
His heart is an endless pit of pain and guilt
but he keeps a firm smile on his face.
He breaks down like the rest of us.
He gets depressed too.
Hell, with what he is going through I don’t know what I would do.
But this man goes to bed every night hoping to see his daughters beautiful face
Hear his sons voice over the acoustic guitar
and the ******* chickadee’s waking him up at 6:30 every morning.
He goes to bed in tears.
Worried,
His daughter’s depression has gotten worse.
His son feels.. abandoned.
His girlfriend overwhelmed.
His heart is black from the ashes of bombs being dropped on him almost every day.
His hands red from slapping destiny in the face and taking his own road in life.
His wedding ring that he still wears because he knows how much it means.
His son,
Worries constantly about him.
He worries that for once more his happiness will be stripped from him like white paint on an old wall.
Painted over and over and stripped only to get a new coat of paint.
The walls are getting tired of this ******** and just want to be left alone.
He worries that one day he won’t be the same.
He worries that sickness will drive him over the wall and into a land he doesn’t want to see.
His father is a strong man.
But he sees the worst things that could happen.
He is breaking down.
Father goes to bed but stays awake throughout the night
Hoping that she hasn’t left him.
Hoping that she isn’t sick.
Hoping that his son is happier than ever.
Happy that he gets to see his daughter.
Truth is,
His son idolizes his father.
He is a true hero.
A decorated veteran in the war called life
and his battle wounds are crippling.
But ****** his feet still work and he can still walk.
He has the biggest heart imaginable,
his son worries about his father.
Goodnight.
Sleep well.
I love you so much.
See you in the morning.
Apr 21, 2013
Apr 21, 2013 at 12:00 AM UTC
I was looking at your chest x rays on the lighted wall
Your straight spine centered behind your rounded ribcage
Looks like busted churchgates
from all the times you let your ghosts go
And there are bees buzzing in your shoulders only
you aren't cold this time
So much faith in what I do with words
Willing to love me like a half written gospel
we are filling in as we go
And I want to write us poetry
like the first man was asked to play the first piano
Come
dance with me to my deathbed
I am afraid
That one day I might kiss you
like a deaf stethoscope
that no longer hears your heart
That this language will grow stale
Along with your faith in me
but my knees
are riverbeds for prayer
And I carry my chest heavy like a library
full of books that hate the silence
You should know that
being a poet is more than just a choice
and maybe my body is like a library
but when I pray to you
I'll never use my inside voice
Just like I know that god used nails
to make the iron in your blood stream
That you'll be strong even when you're old
and even then
I still want you to believe in me
When we are like trains that no longer run the tracks
when we've fully mapped the topography of our bodies
But some days
our engine chests come back
and I write a poem about you that is new
And you listen
To my huff and rumble
you lift your tea and saucer with shaking hands
I close my eyes
and hear our train coming
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 8:25 PM UTC
i want: an elbow-crook to rest my head
a cigarette to share,
naked forms in riverbeds
and universal train fare.
i need: breastplate percussion under my ear,
a breathing on my spine,
a sunrise built -- my eyes to sear,
and send me to my sign.
Jul 16, 2013
Jul 16, 2013 at 4:10 AM UTC
“I have loved you so much that I believe I understand you a little.”
Marcel Proust
we are wearing our glowing skins
full of unwoven whispers
or au contraire
we’ll have worn them
-who knows
in poetry, not in theory,
anything is possible-
one of us could say
“take this animal
out of my eyes, teeth, bones
for wild flowers
to grow in my sockets”
and I’ll say:
“for my eyelids to rest
in the shadow of your breath
and my vertigo, indigo
in the nest of your palm"
-words are just riverbeds-
see you - the sea in me
at the echo point
of blood
I’ll wear rivers
lipstick
bluebirds
in this poem of touching
every cell is spinning
its nucleus of numinosum
while the day breaks open
into the heart of trees
-words are stones of silence,
unintelligible altars-
I was in love
with a vertigo man
last time I checked
blood has its madness
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 2:43 PM UTC
The man at the studio doesn't like us
we aren't pretty as the teens
not dazzling like the newly weds
our faces are pretty grim
smiles are once a river
foreheads dry riverbeds
eyes hold no commotion
but he does it for money
and winds up quick.
We walk to the river
where under the grey February sky
she plays with our reflections
babbling and breaking us
into unreadable pieces.
Feb 16, 2017
Feb 16, 2017 at 10:00 AM UTC
i want to let my hair grow long and tangled
and weave flowers and moss between the strands
so i can feel like i'm a part of something living.
i want to learn to love my broken vessel
the way i love the wild.
i want to sink my hands in rocky riverbeds
and feel every kind of earth between my toes.
i want to learn the constellations
so i can point at pictures in the night sky
and not feel so alone.
i want to paint myself
in mud and freedom
and scream in my own voice,
triumph ringing through the trees.
i want to bask in the sunshine and radiate
light and strength and wholeness,
absorbing beauty and reflecting it back into the world
in new arrangements.
i will climb high and
sing loud and
march on and
fly,
until at last i can sink back
in well-earned exhaustion,
hallelujah seeping from my skin.
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 6:19 PM UTC
Your nails stain my skin like Alaska,
grains beaten into my elbows from riverbeds
and the crossings.
“Have a drink with me, my treat.”
I remember you from way back,
listening to Dave Matthews Band
while we emptied out veins in the front
seat of my Volvo.
Revolting, we voted independent and
we decided to never come back to the night
where Alaska was even a possibility.
Jun 17, 2012
Jun 17, 2012 at 6:40 PM UTC
Is it cold there I wonder just beneath her chest does the wind howl with a bitter sigh
is the land covered with frozen riverbeds holding back icy tears
a flurry of unused emotions hardened into ice showering everything it touches in a hail storm of self-pity
A pint of warm whiskey chips away at the frost bite numbing the boarders of your heart
but it only leads to a blizzard of regret
The harshness of this tundra burns through flesh and bone and sinks into a man’s soul suspending it in a seemingly endless winter
where longing congeals into sharp jagged shards of glacial malice
Yes it is very cold there, but I remember better times when the cool air twirled around me embracing me more like an old friend instead of passing through as an unforgiving gust that chills already achy joints
I would lay there flat on my back, and sink into the velvet snow,
indulging in bliss as I am taken in by inner warmth
Catching crystalline snowflakes with my tongue as they melt into something that tastes of something salty and sweet
ending in rapture with a shiver then a sigh
I would imagine, hope and pray to never leave her winter this home my frigid paradise
I would imagine being her absolute love the only warmth within this white abyss
No matter how cold it gets I’ll be here, I would say as I lay on my back
and stare into her pale blue skies
Jan 19, 2013
Jan 19, 2013 at 11:39 PM UTC
May our minds overflow
to the seas of the soul
as we love and we grow
may our minds overflow
from their riverbeds, so
two halves become whole.
May our minds overflow
to the seas of the soul.
May 30, 2010
May 30, 2010 at 5:34 PM UTC
I need different arms and elbows;
these are used, they fall asleep
at night and I wake up
without them, worried
and wondering if my arms
might be oragamied
into a crane,
flying shadow puppets
stuck to the walls
that can’t find the window.
They scoop cupfuls
of clay riverbeds
over each other
that dry into casts
and click against the floor
as my arms make their way home.
I’ve threatened to leave them
under such conditions but I’m certain
they’ll leave me first.
This new apartment—she’s cheap
and ***** used up.
lazy ceiling tiles pillow down
and yellow, watching me half-heartedly.
Then somehow you,
always full with something,
your shoulders
taking up the whole hall,
phonetic laugh and roomfuls of teeth.
Upon seeing you, I wonder
how ancient pieces of broken church
feel against calluses, what it will sound like
to give birth. There is a word for this
in Siena, allupato.
The wolves starve
and feed.
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 11:34 AM UTC
The only way I can see
is by touching the world around me;
the faint scent and crunch to images
that linger around my fingers.
They are my hounds
who sniff and howl--
at the other animals around them
each crackle and groove
sends each dog into a frenzy.
Diving right into the riverbeds,
underwater is supposed to be where all is unknown
but right before the tips of my eyes are only questions:
is this the right land of water
where I can open the blinds to let sunlight flood in.
Reminds me of Rome
where pillars do not only stand in front of buildings,
they float into the sides of my body
ricocheting and piercing me at the same time--
the only reminder that this is a sidewalk
is the large crack that starts at my front door
and ends some where near an Oak tree.
Someone's daughter has gone missing
yet these hands yonder the forest to find her
seeking the essence of philanthropy;
but how can they expect me,
to find someone,
when I can't even see myself
as I'm mislead through the shadows of these trees.
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 5:19 AM UTC
I swoop down suddenly
my stomach drops
then I'm blown on
over dry fields
and cracked riverbeds
dust stinging in the wind
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 6:17 PM UTC
call up in spring, maybe maybe maybe
maybe,
I've caught mine in the stream:
hollow things.
hollow, hollow, seeing and free
directions, contortions
cool down, riverbeds of
flowers that sun made
in dark spot phase turning to
alive alive alive alive alive
breathing cold warm cold, nothing
any
more
ripples like the stilts feet fell through to
carve square pegs in the holes in my
skin and feign ignorance to let up
sunspot light fading writhing
keeping me alive alive
alive alive alive
all through
this gold
cursed
night
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 4:04 AM UTC
Skipping stones, Breaking bones
Jumping stones on riverbeds of jones
Dancing to the Stones while smoking bones
Crashing cars under the stars
Driving cars through concrete jars
Shooting stars way above convertible cars
Warm air passes through there
Cool brisk air blesses Blue Day'd fair
Oh where art thou fair, It was there soon it will be here
Dancing away the night dressed as a modern day knight
Way above floats a kite, Oh what a blessed sight
Closing night, don't put up a fight
Dressing to the nine Bump and Grin(d)e
You looked so devine, I shall sit a while and pine
Through the withering pine, We shall go at nine
Enjoy me for awhile as we sharpen the crocadile
Hot waxed tile, Drinking oxen bile
Stay around while, For I am about to get on the dial
Video spin DJ Twist up a jay
As we begin to sway In a new way
Never gay Today I will stay
Enjoy don't be a toy
A girl and boy listen to Tolstoy
For Orbison of Roy will begin to destroy
Apr 13, 2010
Apr 13, 2010 at 6:10 AM UTC