"scaffolds" poems
Healing leaves are now disrobed branches
on the edge of this wilderness.
Many tall Douglas Fir stand sentinel
over 100 foot tall amazing grace — the fleeting leaves
expose the beauty of the moss clad scaffolds
adorned with a lime-grey lichen lace
Nature is my refuge — solid ground to stand
in this harmony and peacefulness.
Jesse Stillwater — December 2018
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 12:38 PM UTC
The nakedness of winter lies heavy upon
the tolling Sunday quietude
Shed leaves perish into yesterday
and the dream of another
dawning someday wanes
The sun ― lay low
the drudging ashen skyline
Barerd emerald moss scaffolds
draw much more distantness
to the pallid shadowed horizon
The evergreens step forth,
roots grasping sacred heart,
soil and rock
In the swelling aloneness
you can feel the grain
of the heartwood
rooted in your soul
There are no hard feelings
but there's an enduring ache,
like a tree with a rotting limb
languishing within
its blackened bark sacrifice
It's not just the grinding time
that slips away begrudgingly;
more of the same takes a toll
as if another unrung belfry hour
in an empty bell tower
without a song rang out in vain,
peeling reflections
of reluctant hours c r a w l by
in the insensible apathy
A so called holiday passes ―
its footprint bears down
hard and deep
as if a paling winter rose
grieves its own passing
A dry wishbone unbroken
lay bare the poignant
truth it holds;
it takes two to make
this wish come true
.
Nov 26, 2017
Nov 26, 2017 at 12:33 PM UTC
1142
The Props assist the House
Until the House is built
And then the Props withdraw
And adequate, *****
The House support itself
And cease to recollect
The Auger and the Carpenter—
Just such a retrospect
Hath the perfected Life—
A past of Plank and Nail
And slowness—then the Scaffolds drop
Affirming it a Soul.
5.1k
I am clueless as to how I have dug a hole in this concrete ground, 60 feet deep. The dust I’ve been choking on does not bother me no more, layers piling upon my lungs like snow upon an exposed carcass. The slightest upheaval of my chest and tingling in my lungs reminds me that I still breathe. I’ve met scaffolds of bones down here. As I stare into their hollow sockets, I could never figure if they were ever esurient for something I held. They taught me how the ocean is never blue but only a de facto reflection of the sky. They said many mistook the sea for the sky, but never once mentioned the salt that contaminated their lungs- the impetus that drove their feet 60 steps into the waves. A reconciliation it must have been. I doubt it made any difference, when their hearts were bleeding out; a pity it doesn’t make it any lighter. Down they sank.
I wonder if I mistook these soils for the sky. As I looked up, I realised that the sky only seemed further away. There’s something peculiarly comfortable down here, the little bumps on the walls and contours of the craters looked like jawlines of a new-found friend. The sun is so blindingly high in the sky. I preferred how sometimes I could see the man in the moon- shadows cast by imperfections on the moon’s surface. In the vague moonlight and scrawny silhouettes, the fact that the moon always has a dark side makes it tangible a thousand miles away. Sometimes, I lay on this wooden receptacle discovered upon excavation and gaze at the empty skies with my friend as he tells me what lies outside this trough. Happiness is a pack of hungry wolves and when they are done, you are left with only your marrows. I see things clearer down here, than above where they are smothered by smoke from the trees they burned to the ground. Sometimes the skies are dark with no hint of dusk, sometimes the sky is filled with white nebula; but most of the times, the days are shorter than the nights. But it never gets any darker down here.
I figured I could never mistake this hole for the sky. I was just chasing these broken pieces like I used to chase happiness. I have no idea how I’ve gotten this deep while trying to pick up these pieces that I don’t recognise. But the struggle tells me it’s real, and the pain keeps me awake. They say if you spend enough time with someone, you will fall in love. I guess that’s what happened between sadness and me.
I’m staying here.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 4:09 PM UTC
No matter how religiously
you bleached your skin
You remain
Daughetrs of the Sun
Your sun kissed skin
The beauty exotic to others
Perfectly baked by the Gods
Shining like gold.
They have taught us to use skin whiteners
To wear sun glasses even inside a scaffolds
When our skin are made to be protected
From the rays of the sun
Our eyes, black and brown
Beautiful as the fruit of the duhat tree
Our hair, our skin
Choco like from the cacao tree.
Fit for our climate's concoction.
We were born in the land
where the sun is abundant,
hospitable and magnanimous.
Flaunt thy color
Savor its malt flavored goodness
Embrace the complexion you were endowed with
Embrace your own spirit
Hail thy Motherland
The sacred space you were gifted.
Aug 24, 2016
Aug 24, 2016 at 9:50 PM UTC
i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.
ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
only the children of the vandal.
iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
to our locomotives.
iv.
the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.
v.
somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA
and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
yet i am
not coming home.
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 3:15 AM UTC
We are not survivors.
we are residue.
the soot that lingers
on collapse's last tongue.
entropy's loiterers—
spiteful, unfinished.
neurons in feedback.
systems with no gods.
the architects left
when the scaffolds imploded.
we cradle their blueprints
like scripture in ash.
rebuild?
with what breath?
with what myth?
our dreams are famine-shaped.
nirvana is a severance package.
emptiness sold
in velvet robes.
a silence that never asked
about wreckage.
so we sharpen our vowels.
scribe ruin in elegy.
chant hymns for dead logics.
leave witness marks
in the marrow of this glitch.
we were not chosen.
we remained.
May 23, 2025
May 23, 2025 at 4:34 AM UTC
(G)
Life as a burden is decent
Treading in hatched up waterways
Swimming in the green brine ebbing tides
Drowned in emotive stances
A being intensified in rapid torrents
Ohh my…fickleness soaked in curiosity
(J)
Decent sounds pretty substantial
I lay acquainted to swampy lowlands
My footsteps have tasted salty waters
Stepped, wadding inside the muddy landscape
Inch by inch, halfway, fully submerged
Overloaded by the tide gasping for oxygen
(G)
Populaces catwalk with intellectual deficit
Footsteps bereft of creativity and eloquence
The grounds lay dry strangling the in-between
The desert begging to lose their sandy dry skin
The forest whispers with a revolt of transformation
The luscious green splash life sparking drones
(J)
Your analogy sways the natured array of trees
The inspiration stings the sun to radiate warmth
All patched in the blueness of bellowing skies
My lungs deflate even on intense inhalation
I tarmac on the passage of time, differently wired
Intermittently cyanosed in faded lived moments
(G)
For poetry and art scaffolds and shapes reality
It sparks life and eliminates the drone mentality
Artists arouse inspiration and boost human nature
It bridges the narrowing ledge of ( human diversity/ instead of/ diverse species)
It drives conversation and deepens basic pleasantries
Rotating notions, promoted to a present and active human
(J)
I object not, for human essence is essential
A foundation of humanity that inspires and frees
A deed that dips in the depth of a lush oasis
Most sunk and waving “a celebration of celebrities”
Falsified lionization, a control of master puppeteer
Amused by insight, the reciprocal contract of empathy
G= Graff1980
J=SassyJ
Jan 18, 2016
Jan 18, 2016 at 7:01 AM UTC
All the roads are closed. Silence metastasizes through the stretch of EDSA. Cold seeps in bone. Sun still flagellates.
Oscillate through sound space and whitewashed walls. Seismic grunt of jeepney awakens the signs: no avatars, yet. The night was as deep as any lover, a fine blistering moon glares through lit rivers.
Nothing exists except heads of tacks and maimed populace ambulating across roads sequined with ermine light. The disquiet approximates the lightness of
buildings in repair. Scaffolds, ubiquitous lovers,
clouds explode into white, and everything else like pain, pales in comparison with the slow twitch of everything.
Today there will be no siren nor
simultaneous joust of cyclists in perpetual motion— just you contending
against hues of all graffiti:
Cataract of anguish. News of killing.
Incarnadine trees netted with aureoles burning bright in solstices. Penumbral undulation of
forethought and afterthought.
Dislimned – all; you, left
in polaroid taken in solitary shutter,
in pursuit of light.
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 1:59 PM UTC
it's the smallest voices that scream the loudest
I've never been a fan of the trending hero
or the underground superstar.
slam poets make me sick.
your attitude is a well concocted ploy
to touch indie hearts and
I hate it.
I love the ignored
the militants
the trashman painter,
the gas station attendent that
makes ****** artcore ******
in her boyfriend's garage
the sixteen y.o. with a tape recorders
and a circuitbent casio
howling blood into an old
speakercummicrophone
slash and burn
leave your best work sitting
on a park bench for me
ignore the plight and shove
your fingers down your throat.
I love the broken. the hurt.
the misanthropes the schizoids
**** victims
homeless
suicidal
single mothers
drug addicts
if that fire is in your shattered
legs reflecting the age of
a
billion dead scaffolds
soul of revolution raging
knife in paw
I will fall in love with you
and sigh at the detrious
in your wake.
let me see you naked and crying
my own wounds fester quiet
when everyone else is asleep.
have a drink,
you earned it.
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 3:09 AM UTC
Amid the white notebooks dotting my desk
hides a half-drawn sketch
laying down some image of an ideal poem.
It sits incomplete, but the plans I made
surface to my vision—
a sturdy poem of stubborn build,
words, pliant, sad, and simple
deft-attached, vine-like wrapped
around bamboo scaffolds astride black steel framing.
Dangling from two pinched fingers,
the sketch has yet to display
its mid-sized trees (for scale)
and the few more floors envisioned.
It could house with ease
a teeming, drunken mass
of patients with a fear of heights
and post-traumatic stress.
The burn of my popped lighter
curves over the paper plane where the grassy lot’s drawn,
where my hired architect would stand
and plan the façade, no windows.
His blueprints would radiate the math
of symmetric perfection
found symbolic of its New-Age form.
Designers would be flown in
from around the world,
contractors would be called.
And the sheer simplicity of it all
would test their expertise
challenged at last by the spire and final stanza
which, if drawn, would only now
be caught up by the flame
casually ribboned across the page.
Feb 6, 2010
Feb 6, 2010 at 8:32 AM UTC
We’ve got sweat-slicked brows, tuffs of loose, knotted hair
Our limbs dumbly droop and we stand on the roof
Of a three story flat up in Prenzlauerberg
Near five a.m. when the night’s at its end
When we shuffle our shoes and sometimes tip the *****
From the bottles that we’ve all left scattered around
Then the beer trickles down and it spreads on the ground
And turns the rooftop tar a shimmering black
I feel through my shirt the thick summer heat
The hairs on my arm, the trees in the street
Are bathing alike in a warm morning dew
And the cigarette smoke we let slip from our throats
Catches the first red rays as the sun shows its face
Through the chemical haze out in east Lichtenberg
We face the source of the light as it floods through Berlin
Not the city we know in this tangerine glow
In this rich warming shine that is washing our eyes
Black industrial pipes start to wiggle and writhe
And their steam hits the scaffolds, whose
Metal fingers grow limber as they stretch through the street
To shake the red trees from their lumbering sleep
Then the leaves that they drop start to flee and get caught
In the stares of facades in the communist bloc
With the refusal of death on their hot, heaving breath
The parks are all built out of paper and gold
With fountains that spew streams of molten stone
Our apartment stands firm in the boiling sea
Of the scars of old days which swell, throbbing like waves
It’s the city lain out, moving, alive, and just like that
A light, filmy rain sprays a sheet on the town
We try to claw it away, but the curtain stays down
Then we stir, soaked in the sun and the rain
It’s the start of the day
And we can go home to sleep and dream of sunlit Berlin
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:08 PM UTC
Be brave young parasite
For the war of the worlds strikes at midnight
Grab your claws and retrieve your arrow
There is still something left to fight for
Our women are bruised with the fear of the fall
And the empire washed out the crown
And religious ***** who fold their knees to obey an invisible folly
Falter and sway as their scaffolds crash
So be brave young maggot, it’s only you
You must burn the bridge to divinity
And rope the sinners and free agents
Bound them to their rebellion
For the chalice broke way for a hopeful world of peace
May 31, 2012
May 31, 2012 at 5:16 PM UTC
Neon lights reflect again and again,
In the puddles and streams
As the rain pours heavy
In that unfinished city.
Great Jupiter blots out the sky;
So imminent, yet silent.
Ever watching the endless construction;
Of its infant moons
Ganymede is all but consumed
In towers and scaffolds,
Endless looping highways,
And defunct machinery.
In the eyes of Jupiter
Has it been but a moment,
But to the denizens of that place,
Their reign is endless.
Their ancient cities and facilities
Devour everything in their path
And in that slow process,
Have become a new entity all together.
One not entirely controllable.
A system and network of its own
That desires something beyond sight,
Something its creators lost long ago.
Apr 20, 2017
Apr 20, 2017 at 2:12 PM UTC
Garner the relics of my shattered aura,
Unfetter me from the scaffolds of despair,
Frazzled by the quest of divinity,
My entity crumbles, segments scatter,
Marred is my spirit,
By the halitosis of demons that crowd my
mind,
Marooned in the island of pugnacious
beasts,
My faith dwindles, peace fritters away,
Fawn autumn leaves,
Blown by the gales to the kingdom of
solace,
Pity my soul, deride my existence
"Thee are nothing, but a fallible
saunterer, in the dynasty of abomination,
the reign of feigning fidelity."
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 4:17 AM UTC
my emotions
are bone scaffolds;
too weak and old,
keep on breaking,
keep on fixing,
disappointed, unloved,
overdosed with anesthesia,
a disaster in finding a cure
for this dementia
May 3, 2022
May 3, 2022 at 10:19 AM UTC
Today all carp are swimming high
in swirling waters. Autumn
calls them to flip sideways and glance skyward
Industrious people prepare homes
for the ravages of winter
cocooning foundations with bales of straw
Storm windows prop against scaffolds
like volumes balancing
between bookends on library shelves
Each evening doors close and shut tight
locking out lonely shadows
in search of a bed before sunrise
Skin dark from summer rays fade away
Evenings edge closer to night,
fish form schools in the lake’s warm bottom
Dakota is preparing for winter
Jan 7, 2017
Jan 7, 2017 at 1:15 PM UTC
Stupidly genius, moronic and shrewd people eat their fast food on fine China
Failing is vertical, errors are slander
Their gross insults impacting easy digestion
Hyperbole falsehood messiah
Piercingly silent and ardently soft people keep their opinions on fences
Insults are weaponry not to be yielded
Their platitudes cradling fragile personas
Perversely destructive defences
Classically learned and bookishly rich people carry their privilege with kindness
Science is built with colonial scaffolds
Their method constraining all true innovation
Parochial qualified blindness
Shockingly worthy and recklessly small people polish their boots with lead solder
Gravity holding them grounded and upright
Their bootlaces impacting aerodynamics
Inferior sturdy upholder
Gallantly serving and fearlessly trained people douse the political embers
Fire escape blocked with hobnails and lumber
Their pickaxes caught in the thick poison ivy
Nugatory self-rule defenders
The silent, the learned, the worthy, the trained people trade voyeurism for vision
Hologram values are no longer trump cards
Their gazes averted from hate-dripping sophists
Integrity first coalition
Aug 15, 2024
Aug 15, 2024 at 4:53 AM UTC
i'm sorry, but it's true...
however rigid you might
find the need to confirm
a truth...
but even the great
piano composers
of the last century,
be that liszt, chopin,
satie, debussy, or schumann...
can't compete with
thomas newman's
score for american beauty,
i.e. any other name...
it's the pauses,
which act are stressors to
the whole composition...
we're surrounded by
so many sounds that are
trans-mammalian...
we've become
so accustomed to them,
that, as i once said:
the song of birds with due
end of spring: irritates me!
i'm sorry...
i'm sorry that poetry seems feeble
by way of imitating this
approach...
there are never to few
words to be said,
as said, regarding
someone's death:
i wish i said...
i wish i said
this...
i wish i said
this to him (her)...
poetry can fake this minimalism,
akin to the oriental haiku...
but that's beside the point...
don't fake it...
drown in your words as the last
breaths in the sea of narratives...
thomas newman transcended
the "masters" of piano...
i don't know how he managed
to overcome satie or debussy...
i'm scratching my head
thinking: huh?
he actually wrote a piano haiku!
perhaps that's a misnomer example,
but given the waterfall dynamic
to my writing, i have no interest
in using the correct word...
if the word i used was incorrect;
god, it takes so little...
to overpower so much,
say: overpowering the power
hierarchy that gave us pyramids...
why isn't there an aztec story
regarding those pyramids?
surely there must be something!
ah! after all... those pyramids weren't
tombs, dedicated toward a burial...
they were sites of capital punishment,
imposing sites,
enough... to warn
future transgressors of law...
these weren't tombs...
they were scaffolds of capital execution...
no wonder there was no jewish
stubbornness among the aztecs...
there was no divine intervention.
yeah yeah, i know, atheism is vogue...
but with atheism comes no art...
and why would art succumb
to a rational "argument" for its existence?
fair enough... no canvas, no paint,
no paint-strokes, no painting...
i hope you find a brick-wall more
entertaining.
Jun 22, 2017
Jun 22, 2017 at 7:15 PM UTC
Bring out your dead,
All willing bodies stand your ground
This is the art of ruin,
Hold your scaffolds high
And your morals low
Bring out the monopolies and the cash crop
Raise them on a pedestal made for some kind of Greek legend
A heroic fight for what was, and an attempt to untie the knot
Brake the shackles of man made, rediscover the stream
Search for the trickster, and watch where he goes
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 6:24 AM UTC
"In my mind I am eloquent, I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts."
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 3:54 PM UTC
Miles of tepid grey
Cement layers, new structures grow
Soaring scaffolds for a new cityscape.
Coffee waters this town,
A billion cups filled then dropped.
Bent shoulders, screens' enticing glow.
Sugary snacks on every walkway,
To bliss you out & blot out the cold
Those empty vessels in need of comfort.
Train door slams, crazy 80s specs
Worn without irony.
Hashtag meaningless dialogue,
Whose saying what?
The grey expanse closes in as dark is arching over.
How can there be lands drenched in sun and colour spectrum?
Muffled day, shoulders stooped
huddled in Winter's shroud
Yet life here remains switched on,
No hibernation, jobs are to be done.
In this cityscape of phones, faces and fantasies.
I am simply passing through.
Mar 3, 2018
Mar 3, 2018 at 5:57 PM UTC
Gritty grains engraved inside my shelled back,
I’m a hermit crawling over castles;
Making shadows shiny, grab the shellac.
Leave my remains clinging to the scaffolds.
Ima hermit crawling over castles.
Artificial whispers gusher like dreams
Leave my remains clinging to the scaffolds.
Take the screams and crush them til I can't breathe
Artificial whispers gusher like dreams,
Frothy waves brushing the seams of my skull.
Take the screams and crush them til I can't breathe;
A frail shell lodged in the throat of a gull.
Frothy waves brushing the seams of my skull,
Insert here, the words you could not complete;
A frail shell lodged in the throat of a gull.
My racing tears compete with my heartbeat.
Gritty grains crumble over my feet,
Sandcastles tend to tumble
When left incomplete.
Jan 1, 2018
Jan 1, 2018 at 5:34 PM UTC
chugging bile and liquor closed eyes smell the innards of a joint wrapped in oilslicked stain shoveling sugar thrice processed into vocal chords left silenced but for the coughing up of shriveled lungs set ablaze to ease the twitching triggered by the mistress doused in white who scaffolds into crumbling nasal caverns to numb the brain that dreams of god in guilty refrain and whips thorny obedience to words siphoned through ghosts of men and obedience to the inflated heads of state and corporate banks who play Skinnard's game and always win millions of yes-men nodding their heads in addiction to artificial green leaves printed with blood and even lovers twirling passion in their beds have their eyes squeezed shut clutching at darkness slick and disappearing at the touch of pulsing fingertips racing to bury themselves in skin and forget the achey organs that lay waiting within weary and smothered from covering up thoughts too sharp to breathe in...
--it's all hide and seek.
running and running and running
from bare and open
vulnerability
shrouded underneath
layers
of reflected identities
and neuro-chemistry
and material fortresses
and snarled teeth
and synthetic bliss
wrapped in bitter bumblebees.
don't you think it's time you swallowed
the wince it takes
to glimpse your fear's shadows?
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 4:28 PM UTC