"runoff" poems
Time is fleeting
as the spring river runoff
that gushes out to sea
A heart trickles out
a moment,
minute by minute,
in a timeless ink drop;
unmeasurable expanse
immured in spilled ink ―
manifest in the lexicon of poetry
For only purged words
cannot quench this thirst
that is loneliness;
it's a hunger that gnaws
like an unsatisfiable ache ―
a starving emptiness
all hearts
do one day taste
Left in the sight
of doubt
and eyes that fail
to believe what they see
lain fallow in the silent
indifference
Lost in a lingering void
unburied all around,
bespoken out loud
alone in plain sight
a feigned understanding;
reticent letters shape
reluctant words
to hold forth
enunciated breathe
The only words
that still echo unstilted ―
uttered words
indelibly felt
from lips once sweet
as daybreak dew
upon musing tongue ―
tasting the only
voiceless truth
that ever broke my heart
a vanishing wave
that moved an ocean
deeply ...
Jesse Stillwater ... 06 6 2018
Jun 6, 2018
Jun 6, 2018 at 2:38 PM UTC
Okay
Let us take a moment
And break this down
If you don't believe
In global warming
By now
You're probably not
Going to come round
But perhaps
We could take a step back
To when pollution was indeed
A matter of fact
Such as
The black factory smoke
And runoff waste
That fills our water ways
Coal soot that fills our lungs and skies
Sewage that fills our bays
Poisonous smog
Settling over our industrial cities
Toxic chemicals giving birth
Have you no empathy nor pity
"As our"
Emissions are ever choking
Scorching the earth
Can we start over
Sure it's no big deal
Can we at least agree
That pollution is real?
Jun 2, 2017
Jun 2, 2017 at 7:33 AM UTC
A leaf spirals downward,
Over covered heads and uncovered cars,
Children sleeping in grass
Drool dripping from their gums,
A football field seeing practice
Where someone's leg
Was recently snapped in half,
Overflowing sewer grates,
Dilapidated septic tanks,
Wastewater disposal facilities
With a runoff into
A river filled with needles and rocks
And bodies,
And it hits the ground with a silent explosion,
Until the wind sends it off and sets it somewhere out of sight.
Like when a glass bottle
Shatters on a bar top and
Sends shards soaring
Into the eyes
Of onlookers,
Everybody knows what's next.
Did you hear?
Fall is here.
The boy who starves so that he may be warm
And the girl who freezes so she may not starve
Have a chance encounter
And bask in mutual despondency.
They share their warmth,
And they share their food,
And neither has enough of either.
But even at their demise,
The sun still goes up and down
On the horizon,
Painting a scene of ignorance
Or apathy,
And lying.
The heat will dissipate soon,
What with Winter coming,
But it does not matter:
Everything is already frozen.
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 6:49 PM UTC
he told me i was living in fear
and i thought i wasnt supposed to be here
a sign hangs above his living room couch
"the police ruin everything"
i want to disagree but i control my thoughts
i build a wall between them and my mouth
the same one he built
and her and them and we and us
i can tell by the furrowed brows and tell tall signs
by the words that come out only when we drink our nightly wine
i climb on top of him
in his room of american flags, broken records and leopard ware
faux patriotism and hipster runoff mixed with nonchalant dishevel
i kiss his sweaty neck
my mind is always down south
even now
where my toes peep out of my socks
curious of the present moment and the theme of tomorrows thoughts
Sep 13, 2012
Sep 13, 2012 at 9:32 PM UTC
Your borders
are mending fences
And false fiction
is the elevated
runoff of the headwaters
of your dreams
And the people black framed
in the cages
of the eternal moment's collapse
Will gather generating
candle light wisdom
of those
who deny existence
Sep 13, 2015
Sep 13, 2015 at 2:50 AM UTC
Hello mom, I know we haven't talked in a few years because I left without saying goodbye but I've been thinking of you a lot lately, I'm sorry I left in a hurry but I wasn't strong enough to stand there and vent my reasons without telling a lie and I'm starting to regret it, well I dont know I might be. I saw my reflection in the window of a passing car and it reminded me of when you would make me stay home from school and lock me in the closet filled with mirrors after you would beat me and get too drunk to stand, I remember going to school after a morning when you'd turn up the heat on a faucet and place it over my hand, I used to wait in anticipation for when the skin would boil, bubble, peel, and fall. How could you think I'd forget about it all? Like when it would rain and I'd run outside light as feather, excited to swim in 30° weather when it was really you holding my face in a giant puddle filled with bugs that would slither out from the gutter runoff so can you blame me not being able to keep it together? I grew up with everything except love, every time I tried to chase the idea of it you would wrap plastic around my head but I was so small that I never realized it was just a rubber glove, I remember everything. I tried so hard, I even tried when I saw you crying one night after you got beat by some man I put my hand on your shoulder and said it'll be OK, you screamed then bent my wrist back and threw it in the blades of a moving fan, that's the real reason why I left and ran. I know I missed your funeral but I dont feel bad, I'm sitting in a hospital talking to specialists and they keep saying I just dont remember anything and that's what really makes me sad but its fine because when I get depressed, mad, or want to swallow a fist full of pills I just look at the scars you left on my legs when you pushed me into an oven when I was four. How can they say I dont remember anything when I can recall everything? I dont know but I'm writing this letter so I can clip it to the crime scene video they show me every day of your body parts washing up on shore near the old harbor, but I guess ill probably just forget until I see this note again so I'll have to repeat the same routine forever and force my brain through this mental labor.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 11:48 PM UTC
she comes from the foam
the knife from her gut
hidden in her rolling cloak
taking steps along the shore
her coral hair
catching the light of the moon
she stumbles across a bonfire
a party for a prince’s fiancee
introducing herself to the couple
the girl stares past them at the slowly tossing waves
the lead her to the castle
giving her nicer clothes, a shower
the graceful princess
her gilded gown glistening
as she teaches the beauty of the sea
to brush her hair, use a fork
she walks with them.
...
the atrocities committed
by her new family
oil in the oceans
disastrous runoff
carried by the currents
putting the sea, her sea
to a slow and painful death
at night, she crept into their chamber
her knife unsheathed
shimmering, poised above her captors
she moved to strike
stopped, by a sea witch
the cruel being smiled
her teeth, cracked and crooked shells
striking a deal:
a life for a life
the sea maiden would be turned
a daughter of triton, son of poseidon
fins instead of legs
protecting the ocean, her home
from the inside.
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 8:12 PM UTC
Are there strategies to displace binge eating
with binge doing?
Wouldn't it be swell to get $ for binge coding?
something like:
poem.each do |word|
money = word.compose(your.wordstream)
end
More efficient monetizing of your thoughts.
More efficient cars and buses.
Correlarry: more paved roads, driveways and concrete surfaces,
therefore, more runoff pollution.
It's not the end game
yet, but a vast,
complicated middle game
with closed centers
and deep positional
Play.
Will our grandmasters make
a mistake real-time playing?
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 1:18 PM UTC
Sarah Wilson's blouses
and unmentionables
hang one-hundred feet
above the vacant stomachs of strays
who sniff suspicious puddles
of dumpster runoff
and rainwater
little broken suns
drip down brick mountains
beneath condemned fire escapes
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 10:41 PM UTC
Abandon's clay roiled, doubled what pulse
of life...in tune and out of.
Pathological music derived from music...
ecstasy--whose recompense is a sound
loss of selves.
Multiform unto archetypal gods--Dionysus
first among, Apollo last among...eviscerated,
trophied, slathered upon these rotund
Grecian ladies and gentleman.
Hallowed names depart the incontinent
circle, forgone the synoptical scarlet lettering
of name...transcendence.
Torrent upon torrent of ambrosia down the
throat...skyward runoff of chins...scribbled
down the primordial bloom of ******
O sylvan gathering, crowns of laurel graduate
thee from materiality...a shuddering
beauteousness--broke shafts of light clash
lovingly from luminous head to head.
Here...the extenuating circumstance of
consciousness appropriated quoad sacra.
Feb 2, 2015
Feb 2, 2015 at 1:12 PM UTC
A term of endearment
A pure bread
Pedigree
Imbecile
The firing squad on parade on the thoroughfare
The death squads are on patrol for run on sentences and chemical runoff
The peer mediators tell us all to calm down
The rapscallions try to push us into their get-rich-quick schemes
And the shut-ins settle down with their mail ordered brides
The wallflowers tell everyone to go to hell with great brio
I guess I'll see them there
It won't be much of an endeavor
It'll be like a dog finding its way home
The blood brothers perturb everyone else
Telling them their open blood pact is BYOB
Then starting a be-in singing Come all ye faithful and Kumbaya
It all comes full circle, monkey see monkey do
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 5:26 PM UTC
“The Unveiling”
A name so inconsistent for what it represents:
The pinch of the IV injection
The instant heaviness in my head
Wobbly knees
Being assisted to the “Treatment Room”
Its bitter sterility
Shedding my clothes
And all sense of control
The chill of the cold metal bed
The goose-bumps crawling over my skin
The stick of plastic beneath me
Luke-warm water
Slow pealing of ****** bandages
Sharp stings of pain
Quick to come again
And again
Soiled runoff dripping down my legs
Pop music playing over the speakers
The discomfort it caused me
Yellow curtains
The little boy on the other side
His screams filled with agony
Clenching a towel between my teeth
How it didn’t help either of us
Slowly examining the new skin
Black, blue, and bleeding
The smell of its rawness
Nausea
Hot tears on my cheeks
They burn
A team of doctors
Their impenetrable staring
Hearing them mumble, “It looks great.”
My disagreement
The gnawing desire to ask
Why
They give an utterly gut wrenching experience
Such a grandeur name
Mar 4, 2015
Mar 4, 2015 at 7:42 PM UTC
Caught up in the urging undertow
swimming against the stream's surging swell
awash in swirling back eddies
succumbing to natural undercurrents
relentless ebb and flow
we are not helpless
to swim against the leavening tide
lest we be breathlessly swept away
when spring melts the winter solitude
the creeks do sing of rise and fall
yearningly drawn by a deep well of gravity
as high fountain snow-melt waters mingle,
steal away on the rise; migrate
unrestrained runoff rolling unturned stones
against the wind to the sea's abiding drum
oh river rouse from deafening silent winter slumber
oceans beckon to the confluence swell,
where all great journeying rivers diverge in perpetuity;
meld where the tide water’s restlessly lie
absorbed, unsung, infused unto - -
ever rolling currents roil
it's not the weight of gravity carried
nor the distance coursing burden's thorn
a faith in believing in this journey's unknown destiny,
how the shouldered load is borne
I was lost, alone in life's raging river;
in the river I did not drown ...
© ---
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 6:38 PM UTC
Watercolor recollections,
Bleed away with rain
With the brilliant colors
All longing fades away
To have you hold me.
I miss you
And our hours together
color on pale canvas
like the face paint we used last Halloween
And I’d laugh when you’d tickle my nose
My hollow screams rebound
from every brick of our studio
Fragmented cries of someone not whole
You are in every direction here
Each canvas smeared with paint
is another trinket in your shrine
Like driftwood sculptures bobbing in still water
Long buried memories surface
But no blissful moment emerges
those are buried with you
We fought that night
Like wolves for their young,
Father’s for their daughter
Vicious and unrelenting.
Neither of us really won
But I long to forget
Cobblestone words, sharp
Driven from you in anger
Forced out of your mouth
An orphan wrenched from cold, dead hands
So I place our paintings on the doorstep
And the rain becomes an eraser
The color fades
Like runoff water from mountains
And with our watercolor creations,
All memories drain away
And I’m left with nothing
But smudges of paint on my skin
Inside our paradise.
Oct 9, 2013
Oct 9, 2013 at 11:47 PM UTC
Yale’s friday “spring fling” was a soggy success - both as a concert and super spreader event. My groove-spirit was dampened by weather and a final I had the next morning.
I pose here tonight, in the chill residential courtyard, on my green sport-brella beach chair, like Canova’s Pauline Borghese, relaxed, canned dirty-martini in hand, still untouched by the covid menace - as if I’d taken sagacious care in avoiding it.
The waxing crescent moon is strutting its familiar runway, like a vague, ambient night-light, but what should we expect for free? Maybe it’s saving itself for warm, clear summer skies.
I can relax tonight and binge on the moon because the school year is over (for me).
I’d been in a coffee-fueled study-trench for over a week, finishing my last assignment paper with my last gasp of academic energy. It illustrated what could be crafted in a vacuum void of originality. I filled it with ideas, gathered like runoff-water, from deeper sources and tailored the paragraphs with care, weaving by sleight, the 3D illusions of depth, breadth and substance. It was very well received. taking a bow
I love the feeling of being done with finals but still living on campus. It’s casual, adult and relaxed - close to life as I dreamed it as a kid.
My room is disassembled and I’m living out of my suitcase. Movers will come and cart off our stuff Monday. Leong and I will head south - like wrong way birds. I hate goodbyes but knowing these are temporary helps. Most of my summer will be like one continuous sleepover.
Happy Mother's Day!
May 8, 2022
May 8, 2022 at 11:04 AM UTC
1
we ran outside
gathering the hailstones
before they could return
to rain
2
spring thunder storms
refreshed the
runoff ponds
the spring peepers
chorus chirps
3
soon, to be Indra, Lord of Heaven,
the God of War as well as Storms and Rainfall,
starter of war
a war which shall engulf
the planet and
perish all
4
in solid,
ice
which shall melt
and drown the littoral lands
lands peopled in the
billions
and so shall follow
disease plague typhus dysentery
death
in its many shapes and sizes
5
in drops
flows from your eye
6
according to religion
holy water
May 11, 2012
May 11, 2012 at 10:27 AM UTC
My face distorted,
my mouth twisted and
shrieked under the broken remnants
of night.
I shook, shook, shook.
I finally wasn't numb.
Be thankful you didn't see her.
her face did shatter,
her fragile frame quaked,
in her driver's seat immobile,
directionless once again.
We talked outside of coffee shop,
she was cute,
I looked like hell.
"No, no you can't."
She said in reference to my eye's honesty.
"I was supposed to be strong."
She quivered,
Her mouth locked open,
she was more real than I had ever seen her,
through her cracking voice
she spoke with absolute wisdom,
and it magnified my misery.
The previous night found us
on the stairs outside my apartment.
We smoked,
she started a heavy talk,
I was relaxed,
introspective,
ready to release the last
bit of cancer she swore
she could eat.
Two moments cut deeper than
anyone has ever cut me.
The first was when she released
a melancholy howl,
and spit, "You're my best friend"
through the tears and the runoff
from her nose.
The second is when she threw the bracelet.
The reminder would be too much,
then she somehow slipped the "Be the change" ring
into my back pocket.
I didn't want them as reminders either.
I put them next to the mosaic she made me.
The one I never bought a frame for,
the one that pleaded our favorite Beatles track,
"Don't Let Me Down".
I built her up
to let her fall.
A Tower of Babel to wreck through
secrets,
nomadic revelry,
and speaking in barricades.
Aug 19, 2010
Aug 19, 2010 at 9:20 PM UTC
i love it so much when you see a looker and walker in the sun and wind
looking straight ahead or slightly down
with eyes sliding up sometimes to see again for the first time the tops of buildings always entered at the lowest runoff point
sliding down sometimes to interrogate turnless stones
this eye wandering distracts and more sharply attunes the looker and walker to the smile
the smile that is trying to kickbox its way onto the proscenium of the eyes, mouth, and probably the hands and the whole body
and to the spark that started all this kickboxing in the first place
Oct 12, 2010
Oct 12, 2010 at 6:45 AM UTC
he pressed any farther and I might explode
bleed with internal bruising
or go home
or sit in my car in the rain and cry
drive out each street in the smooth electric dark
I would have closed myself
in a padded box
ran heavy into the fog
sank deep into wide open black pupils
out of reach
to be impossible to touch
but feel every single thing
like a white burn
or a long knife
to
stare at you and not say a word
not say a word all day
i’m in the middle of an ocean of reaction
and it is perfectly still on the surface over mile long depths
and you’re pounding on the windows of an empty house
slamming your fists into the three inch thick ice of a frozen lake
screaming and roaring as you sit there quietly nervous
I hear you
and you hate me a little bit because you love me too much
but there were swift and silent teeth
sharp as noon
ripping through our paper trails
through my skin and my veins
to my bone
I'm being taken by tremors.
pour your burning coals onto my head
spit into my evil eye
me
Judas
knowing God as guilt and
spilling over with guilt
I drove out every street in the middle of the night
I was coronated by the rain
glistening
with shoulders hanging from the sky
I spun around and around in my head
the trees danced and pulled at each other and at me
and I entered cathedrals
wandered into hallways alone again
with softest footfall
kneeled to cruel earth,
and slowly washed away with the runoff
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 3:14 AM UTC
Sea pulse asurge, your pores brace for influx:
the scrub of sixteen salts whose rigid karma
scrapes us down. So sound the signals
(likely sales) from shoehorned sleeper
towns. Their patron wasn't long for earth;
a grid (what genius!) takes a bow,
puts slideshow on, and all we hear is how.
When sunlight stirs again we'll chisel
feeble errors, chip a bullet
out of stone. We'll see which skulkers
have a six at home, and toast
the night in sheetery. When devils
drain the foosty runoff of
your prim report to primal center,
sweep up white-horse myths bleached out
of paved-gray lots. Submerge in steam
of favor, frenzied in unseen replies
(no sharper catching eyes as coffees,
tipped to spoon in drowse-A.M.s
from furtive nights) -- Behold (unsold to rights)
uncensored action, living truth!
Untempted nine-percenters,
go-betweens for stunning tens
ground out of poison pens.
Abrade with noise what was to clean our lens.
Oct 1, 2018
Oct 1, 2018 at 11:58 PM UTC
***** beats, kids barefoot in the street
Running up & down across two yellow lines
In little parks with iron fences, dead grass
Surrounded by broken fences & empty houses
Rotting off their own foundations
Slowly the foundation crumbles,
after the frame is long gone.
Slowly the grass reclaims concrete,
transmutes into soil.
With roots as deep as oily puddles,
runoff after the downpour.
Waste your life in four cornered rooms
Contain your life in ceilings & floors
End your life under cheap sheets
There is a garden out back, full of weeds
Strangling out sunlight with noxious yellow flowers
I've turned over that soil so many times
But only weeds grow
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 5:10 AM UTC
I will cut down this tree,
to make the stake where I write your name.
I shall bury it in earth,
and mark the place your memory will stay.
The flowers may come with time,
but not with me.
Only runoff will unearth you,
as I will run away.
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 7:49 PM UTC
Sometimes I think to myself that maybe you are actually rain and you are evaporating in the heat of the moment, when I need you the most. Those lips have eased cool words from your tongue like runoff, and your mouth has carelessly dropped beaded kisses onto my throat like a foggy window pane, and you can see through me just as easily. And after you've stormed into my room and I've felt the thunder of your fingers shaking me to the core, you still linger on me like the smell after the first spring showers. And thoughts of you precipitate in the form of acid rain, inside my head like the ***** city downpours and my brain is just a brand new Corvet left in the parking lot. You have redeemed me, refreshed me, corroded me. I can see the lightning in your eyes every time your hands are hovering over me, and now all I can do is count the seconds until I hear the thunder.
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 12:44 PM UTC
waiting weightless
waitless
1/18/15
8:43am
' hand rest chest
thumpthump
thump ''
' that heartbeat is a
metronome of waxing and waning
rhythmic tides and it's an '
everchanging time signature
to my overture overture and '
hand off and unsettle and '
thrown into uncontrolled rubato~ ''
' fizzy brain
spinnin dizzy
spinnin circles
spiral spiral ''
' life over my shoulder
strapped to my back and
I'm flowing like a river
down the elevator ''
' opening down
the seam and out ''
I step and roll heel toe
heel toe '
eyes flick side and side
glass door push open and
box and glass door push open and
push open push open and
open... ''
' cold streets are
the downbeat to sleet '' — '
it's frozen roads going backwards
and I'm going backwards with all my lackwords ''
...slushroadslick. '
I'm returning and leaving
like a medicine wheel spinning
and there's a dead grackle soaking
next to the curb slippery
with toxic runoff... '
...crystal water
melting '
my shoes slide from left
to left and I've up and left and
I'm climbing down the
right side of a staircase
and it's a case and it's a way
that stairway
and that last step
is 9:13am last step flat
and platform dead and
sleepy benches waiting for
the listless waiting
for the waitless ''
' waiting , waiting ''
I hop on and hide... '
the silence is sacred ''
the eyes are averted
and it's one of the
thousand different silences '
it's one of the rumbling ones
but then it's broken and
it's broken by an angry one '
and we're all alone in a railcar
with seven others, we're all alone
and she breaks it, ' she breaks it by
spilling angry nothings into the phone
that she pushes tightly to her skull '
and she grips it and she breaks it and '
and she breaks it and '
I hop off and run...
and once again I'm a
thousand different faces waiting '
but right now we're two
watching watching the
hopping sparrow ' and
it is so alive with it's
warm fluffy feathers
soaked with life ''
'
and everyone is shuffle shuffle pacing ''
' but every body stands still with eyes saccading...
sweep sweep, '
stay where you are,
in your lateness ''
and your action
is in your inaction
weightless... '
waiting to
hop on
Jan 19, 2015
Jan 19, 2015 at 4:41 PM UTC
As Heaven and Hell filled your glass you gave me the the gift of laughter and raised my spirits several times.
Those stories about a plethora of assess, wild crazed friends, and a hard painful life intrigued me for countless hours.
Never are you just a simple shade of black or white your always that insane drunk artist that mixes up the paint.
Your advice and experience taught me new colors that I would have never been able to imagine before.
Unlike me your a true writer that’s unaffected with the STD of being just a poet, but you still just might have the clap.
Your works are ****** great so don’t you EVER stop trying to get your stuff out to this twisted world……..
Because if you quit I will seriously be obligated to punch you and I know you’ll still be able to easily kick my ***
even though you probably broke your hip after you got out of your walker and unplugged your dialysis machine.
I’m not a mascochist (Unless I get a *** of cash or your a pretty Asian girl) so please for the love of god never make me do that, and hell I really like a lot you so I’d really prefer not to put a .38 special deep into your chest cavity.
Keep staying crazy you son of a ***** and although more than likely as your future attorney I’ll sure as hell stay busy,
but your my big brother and I ******* love you man so don’t you ever change.
P.S. Don’t hog on all of the good runoff ***** unless they are too chubby.
Sep 23, 2017
Sep 23, 2017 at 8:10 PM UTC