"scabrous" poems
Surveying
northern autumn afternoon
Pitcherelli, ex-marine, body-builder,
Lussier, long-haired father of three dark-skinned children
and myself, sharp-edged loner, ex-lover of a fair share of
women
are belly-laughing in the dying sun. Clouds.
The crew, in timber.
Laughing
over recent visits to marvelous cities where
we could not keep ourselves from touching the terminal buds
of numerous exotic trees
and attracting ridicule of stylish girls and tame boyfriends.
Pitcherelli before the Albany bus station
shaking hands with a red pine planted thirty years ago.
Lussier, one hand in a child's hand and the other
feeling scabrous bark of urban woody plants.
Myself among partially shaved heads and leathery aromatic
jackets
getting close to the hairy bud of an unidentified poplar or
sycamore.
People
laughed, but we laughed best
back on our mountain
under the blackening weather.
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 12:53 PM UTC
I look down at my feet,
toes adorned with chipped nail varnish,
a pitiful plaster clinging to the sole,
and I grimace at the
purple marks, reddening blisters,
cicatrices of stories long forgotten.
The ***** of my feet are thin and worn,
my heels rubbed raw from
shoes I have loved and shoes I have detested,
faded scars from childhood accidents.
I have aged hating my feet,
the discoloured skin, dotted with odious callouses,
my throbbing, wrinkled soles.
They have grown with me,
from tiny clumps unrecognisable as a foetus,
to wide, long size 7s.
My toes are misshapen, twisting this way and that,
freckled with sun kisses from foreign countries.
They’ve been battered and bruised
repeatedly,
victims of my hurtling abuse and mortal neglect.
I have punished them
with verruca socks and freezing ointments,
pin ****** small shoes, razor blades, nail clippers and
not once
have I nurtured them, soaked them with praise.
These feet have walked me up mountains,
aided me in athletic championships,
withstood six inch heels on weekends,
ran me through marathons,
enduring my never-ending physical torment and though
they may buckle,
with weeping blisters and aching pains,
dry skin, broken bones and sprained ankles,
they will recover,
rebuilding the scabrous skin.
Regardless of how unstable my life may become in later years,
whether I am stranded on a deserted island,
or walking the ***** streets of the city, no room to call my own,
my feet will always,
undoubtedly, lead me to safety.
And when I am old
and withered, an exhausted heap of human life,
with my last dying breath,
I will thank my durable, reliable feet.
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 11:28 AM UTC
He stakes my arms to the wall, with binding hands.
I feel his desire through the strength of his grip, he
presses against me and I can’t move. I meet his eyes.
He smiles. I smile.
We kiss to form a scabrous, common bond.
I feel bound up in him and we remain, as such,
too long, too rude, too rough - and free for all to see.
It’s enough to draw curious eyes and jealous sighs.
We stop for air, to reestablish equillibria.
Our immediacy is too giddy - we’re too flushed
for words - the libidinous overtures of ***** birds.
It’s just a kiss, or two - too few - measure them by
pleasures blush - but now, we to the dance floor rush
to join the crush - YES, fun is enough.
Feb 28, 2022
Feb 28, 2022 at 10:08 AM UTC
(i)
First gaze: the arms of your waves
choke me
I swallow an abyss of blue.
Just as I am about to hit the bottom
your voice brings me up, an anti-gravity
I float up to the surface
Starry, starry night
I realize that stars come from waves of the deep, blue, endless
o e n a c
c a n e o
created by refracting rays of light from the sun, the real sun, a sun
I had never seen before
Some of the saltwater is trapped in my lungs,
fingers of light poke their way into me
I am shining with brilliance
the burning glow seeps through skin, bones and heart,
while your hands carry me, tenderly embracing.
(ii)
You told me to forget, so I forgot myself.
as soon as I stopped looking at the hourglass
the words evaporated out of me.
I watched as my condensed
voice spiraled up into the air - silencing me
during sleep a cloud appeared
above me; the sponge absorbed
my vaporized words.
it didn't take long
(the sand had not hit the bottom yet)
for the cloud to grey
(iii)
Rainballoons burst
onto the street of regret
The scabrous asphalt glistens
memories of unspoken emotions
(like the sweet touch of your gaze)
flash by as lightning strikes
... the only illumination here.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 10:54 AM UTC
I'm scared, so scared, of something indefinable.
I need you to hold me, but
I won't ever ask.
I understand the power of a spoken dream,
A hidden longing dragged from the shadows
To dissolve in the light.
Tonight
I am lonely, I am hurting,
Raked by Never's scabrous fingers,
Hungering for hope.
If I begged you, would you, could you, come?
Spirited before me by the strength of my need?
No matter; sleep, our restless tossings
are well earned, this is a just and righteous anguish.
We, I, you, we,
Recognise the power of a lost, unspoken dream.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 6:08 AM UTC
lost ardor, long hidden beneath these initial wastes
pinpointing the mines and matters, estimations and worth
your excavation operating on the surface of my bereavement
without any evaluation of its dolorous costs or the extent
of these ductile veins, rivers through our subterranean natures
your shadow requirements, eroded and befouled
now, neither my eyes nor I much love your dark
epicardial secrets, projecting deposits of debris, the chloride fragrance
of our secrets, hidden fires underground; your love, all and away
digging, mining proposed new lovers out of us both; gravels and
pain and gas; ferrous exploration; uranium reclamation anew via
caustic layers of ore and deposits of once-flowing love
alloys of dead flowers and waste form my rocks
seething into scabrous life like bantling cacti after a lover has risen
such risks always require a proportion of love be livid, recoverable;
threads of passion dissolved in the complexities of the body
grains of unconsolidated minerals evoking love and potash
yes, secret metallurgists like you pose acidic dangers
to my soft endocardial things
Jun 23, 2019
Jun 23, 2019 at 12:59 PM UTC
Small house
isolated, scabrous.
Chickens in the doorway,
half-naked children in the yard.
Never enough.
Gone before it gets there.
Echoes of laughter
mark the morning.
One child after another
darts inside to beg
a mother’s kiss.
Daddy swings his kids
round and round, throwing
them over his shoulder,
where they giggle with glee.
I guess they never read
the government pamphlet
that diagrams their
socio-economic space
at the bottom of society’s
pyramid.
Don’t need no pity here!
Jul 23, 2015
Jul 23, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
Help me shatter this day. Our bodies make
transitions unbearable. All of us here hiding secrets. By design,
we are silent. It takes me days to fully sing.
We think walls are our doing, bridges our undeniable shame.
There are things following me: the bird soaring, another one flat on
the roof, and the other atrill on umbilicus of powerlines.
This day is composition – let this day atonal. From where I sit,
daily pursuits key in difficulties – eyes closed deep but not aslumber,
are purblind: gauge me in this order: feel the world scabrous like Braille. In a world of continuing
breakage, what is there to hold together.
If not, a debris pattern. A held rigor in suffering – there is that
crisp, sweet taste in the air again like some air winding out of ***
Look at me through dappled windows as reflection of an oncoming storm.
Help me splinter this day. Placate my tremor of, and fasten me dearly
set beyond the grooves of this day. I teach myself a coruscating example – to reach for
and break. To stop you climbing, plodding your way to a conclusion,
waylaid you in your place and summoned your fiddling of chance – the duration is
lined by obeisance towards an endorsed situation issued, not accrued.
We are somewhat conveying this burden to equal our weight. Must we
be afloat, what hoists our rebellion? What must we be
to endure, to witness these wondrous beatings ballast our gravities,
no warning of, and against reliance. Is our being here what we determine.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 12:13 AM UTC
Waning scion
encroaching
a course
An Isolated course;
coarse is its skin
blind-sight is its eye
with flutist wind
whistling its mind
Sly stars dripping
under fogged
horizons
the moon shuttering
light,
fleeing from the
gaunt wood
where I reside
Night,
shroud of
razor black
oozing pustules
of defect and blight,
mind snaking through
bowels--
grisly bowels kept in
swamps
kept in dark and damp
kept underground--
stone underground
Sprouting
out splintered
atonement,
slumped on a
broken wall
Gray above,
light humming
under feet,
through scabrous
stone and sodden clay
One hope lingers:
plunge worrisome
hands into the
viscous floor
Tugging fingernails,
bartering
screams with the wind,
grounded pain arises through the dirt,
latching to my veins
Injecting the soil and stone into my
twitching heart, feeding the cells with
native essence
Purging the human from
the silken skin; spraying it into
the sediment home
Bedrock welcomes my sight
and my trench
shapes my stale body.
Becoming soil and rock
and worms and root
offers a listing breeze
to the now formless thought
The dirt is in me
The rock is in me
The qualm is without
Oct 10, 2018
Oct 10, 2018 at 1:20 PM UTC
This heart will last me a lifetime
If only because when it fails,
I fail,
But this heart, barely half way through its span is already much damaged,
For whilst the attack that did not claim me
Left no visible disease
The slings and arrows of emotional assaults, betrayal
And cunning, low and savage attack
Have left an invisible mark,
Every selfish unwarranted ******
Leaves a hole which heals slowly,
Oozing my life's essence all the while
Until the damage is patched by a layer of hard scabrous tissue,
A crude patch to mend a hole
Yet limiting the function once there found,
A tiny or not so small area which is not quite the same
And cannot fully carry its load any more,
A small damaged piece of me,
That fails
One such part? Hardly worth the notice and
Already as always forgiven,
But it is not just the one small part is it?
It's a fine network of such holes with the occasional larger ****
Where the stab was sawn and worked and
Widened with savage glee
Yet still healed or healing and still already
And as always forgiven
But the whole of me that part not stiffened and dead
Is smaller now
That shrinkage is not visible to the outside world
Nor will it be yet the shrinkage of useable
Worthwhile working tissue
Leads only one way and at this ever increasing rate
Of damage the end is coming close,
But who cares?
Well no one it appears
Because the attacks and the wounds are neither slower
Nor stopped,
So soon instead it seems
I will,
My heart will
Stop
Stopped
Oct 27, 2021
Oct 27, 2021 at 8:23 AM UTC
studious skinny scruffy scribe
Scathing, scolding, screaming,
scorning, searing, sniggering,
sociopathic sarin soaked skewed
squirt, sputtering, squawking, sleepily
staggering, stabbing, swaggering
sweltering sadistic, sarcastic,
savage, systemically systematically
stigmatized, supersized saber sharp
schick shaving, shunned, sabotaged,
scarred, scorched, smote, sanguine,
stippled, speckled schizophrenic
sensibility, spurring, seething,
somewhat stultified, sophisticated,
spellbound spirited scabrous
schlemiel schlemazel, stenciled,
sundered sniveling sanguine storied
snakebitten sojourning ********
skeptical shoddy sophomoric
screwball, subtly sagacious,
stunted, sclerotic, scrappily
shuffling short, Shylock
styled sideburns Semite,
sainted Shasta sipping
shriveled sad sack,
sullenly syncopated, synthesized,
slobbering sybaritic, scruffy
sheepish sketchy scalawag,
Socratically scrutinizing, seizure
stricken, stoically sneezing,
shamed Skidrow skeezer, shifty,
sweaty, sham shaman,
supremely spidery, schmaltzy,
sylan seeking subsidized succor,
self shuttered, sequestered,
sidelined, shiftless, shabby,
semantically snazzy, soldiering,
shrieking, skulking, somber,
stooping, Segway scootering,
schmart spendthrift, Swahili
speaking, straitlaced, streamlined,
spongebobbing, sandal shod
sealegs, squarepants sporting
spectacles, sedate, sensate,
sentient, ship shaped,
shanghaied, salubrious,
slithering, snakish, stuttering,
sluggish, smashface scarred,
sober, solitary, sangfroid
skidamarink singing, Shamokin
speaking scrivener, scuzzy,
spunky, starved, submissively
suicidal, sunburned,
salaried shuffling senescent
snoutish soundcloud shutterflying
snapchatting schnorrer.
Sep 1, 2019
Sep 1, 2019 at 4:32 PM UTC
#yesterday’s hungry smiles
carry divine ripened comfort
perfect lines—always—perfect
where those familiar sounds
merely whisper
draw locks onto memories
embrace soft autumn-worn help
racing then beside bruise-sore dawns
seen in everlasting looking-glasses
a chance to cry
the same daydreams pass
and sleepy overlooked hearts
ebb among overly scabrous breezes
borrowed labors lost
bitterly calling
unlit golden trees
rent, fallen away from warmth
shaped by these crimson hungers
lifting our fine new hearts
and rising desires#
Jun 20, 2019
Jun 20, 2019 at 11:15 AM UTC
Shaking my head as I shuffle through Nod
And wander through darkness on scabrous old feet
Where the fruits are forbidden, and might I add strictly
But the knowledge is ever so sweet
I’m Under the Influence of sir Malcolm L
And M. L. von Franz has me under her spell
Seeking the change that I wish I could be
While my dear inner Ahab I struggle to quell
To search by escaping through tropics and trenches
Determined to make every ocean my home
My singular purpose: the potion that quenches
Still I drink that I could theme alone
In this watering hole will I bury my hatchets
A sickness that’s cured is an ailment forgotten
So choke every sorrow and drown your regrets
A soul that remembers is cursed to go rotten
With penalties and interest forever compounded
I’m astounded to watch how my recollection grows
The proverbial wisdom that’s also called madness
Is purchased on credit and paid for with woes
Drifting asea to steer clear of collectors
Engulfed instead by tempests my own
Echoing voices demanding comeuppance
From the depth comes a cry that disturbs every bone
These howling reminders are issued below
From under the surface by more than a beast
My pirates on deck keep me bound to the mast
Always in earshot and never released
Mostly a head but with hardly a face
My nemesis, massive, can scarcely be seen
Not to be measured through time or in space
From his cousins’ cadavers our data we glean
Less than a man, I stomp on my stump
And promise to silence the primitive brute
Guided by starlight, unable to sleep
Harpoon at the ready and eager to shoot
**** the torpedoes and to hell with the crew
Set sail at once for the wide open blue
Don’t be seduced by this monster in white
His message is wicked, no less than it’s true
He feeds on your anger, you’re never too old
To listen instead of exerting your tongue
Or shaking the hinges of Davy Jones’ locker
On the floor of the ocean where Melville met Jung
Aug 15, 2024
Aug 15, 2024 at 5:14 PM UTC