"scrabbles" poems
He had a habit of forgetting
That the knife should be
At his left,
Unlike others.
Every morning, she would
mechanically
switch the fork with the knife.
When they finished lunch
she started clearing up
and noticed the knife to his right
again.
That night,
after their routine drew to a close,
They talked.
Slowly, at first.
A touchy subject walks in.
It's time.
Even as the air is knocked from her lungs,
She gets up and scrabbles on the floor.
Nails scratching the carpet.
Eyes scanning the horizon, now black.
Her brain decides to get up,
Her body disobeys.
Her body disobeys.
Isn't that what put her here in the first place?
So what if she is pretty?
So what if her eyes are sparkling emeralds?
Her belly renders her defenceless
from his onslaught.
Isn't it her fault
that it is empty?
Isn't she wrong to want
independence from him?
Mentally, physically, emotionally?
He owned her, didn't he?
He owned her, didn't he.
He explained to her the benefits
of obeying.
Her pretty face wouldn't have been
all those ungainly shades of black.
Her eyes wouldn't have been encircled by blue.
All she had to do was obey
and not tell anyone
but obey.
Her brain rebelled.
Her brain rebelled.
Her body, for once, obeyed.
She stumbled through the hallway
She knocked down her favourite frame-
Their daughter on a pony.
Kitchen, her sanctuary.
She broke her favourite China.
Hurled her utensils.
"I arranged them last week, you *****
And then she saw them.
The knives.
The knives.
They were inviting
Her hands were pale, waiting.
His heart corrupt, hating.
"Knives to your left, darling."
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 8:39 AM UTC
Something lives below my skin,
It’s burrowed down, deep within
It burns my body, wearing me thin
And that ***** won’t ever give in
It scrabbles and rives, as I tear me apart
With nails like knives, so close to my heart
I claw at my limbs with fingers that seek
To split open my flesh, the tissue so weak
Blood busts forth as I tear at the itch
As I work hard to get rid of this *****
My nails dyed red, I can not stop now
The need so strong, to exorcise it somehow
Covered in scars, scabbing and sore
As I cry with the pain, limbs ragged and raw
I pause for a moment waiting to see
If it is no longer residing in me
Holding my breath, maybe its gone
If I can’t rid myself of this wrong
This dark demon will drive me insane
But it comes crawling again and again
Something lives below my skin,
It’s burrowed down, deep within
It burns my body, wearing me thin
And that ***** won’t ever give in
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 10:58 AM UTC
the pornographic nature of poetry
freaks my head with images and wordplay
i adore it so
like a lover i cannot stop feasting on
my lips caress each syllable like **********
my heart rushes like the first glimpse of her face
thunders in my chest like each stanza in my hearts mind
the pornographic nature of poetry
silken smooth and sweaty
hard against the pen
pushing it forward fast
slowly withdrawing
each breath is a vow of love everlasting
each sentence is a heartbeat
feel it so strong
swift and sweet
the pornographic nature of poetry
i wake in dawns light
with it on my lips
a taste of the words so tender
a rushing of the soul to find the very center of my lovers heart
feel it in the brush strokes of the pen
as it scrabbles across the neat lines of the page
thrusting ever forward to the perfection
to the true expression
to the words that my lover smiles for
the pornographic nature of poetry
lurid and sweet
nurturing and deep
Nov 23, 2015
Nov 23, 2015 at 8:06 AM UTC
Every morning is full
of rain in the heart of winter.
The drops clatter on the roof like faraway chimes of goodbye,
the wind, whispering, nudges them with its words.
The fugitive heart of the wind
beating with loving silence in the clouds of our hair.
I like for us to be silent and let
our eyes say everything.
Yours tell mine how to remember you before you were,
mine guide yours to read your name in letters of smoke among the stars in my soul.
So much dies between the lips and the voice, something,
of sparks and wings, of sorrow and oblivion.
Suddenly the rain surges and scrabbles at the window.
Let us see how many skies we can press into every trembling drop,
and when the sun burns through each one,
the way a shadow cannot take on weight,
we speak only in terms of light.
May 12, 2012
May 12, 2012 at 8:34 AM UTC
cover all doddles, hearts & scrabbles
teenage love evoking the inner child
innocent for now with a liberated soul
cover all doddles, hearts & scrabbles
teenage love evoking the childhood pain
swings couples where former child’s tears spilled
cover all doddles, hearts & scrabbles
teenage love has dramatic different faces
i don’t long to see ugly doddles and scrabbles
only the pretty hearts
i might paint the walls white
cover all old doddles, heart & scrabbles
draw our love story, me with my new partner
& pray, there only is pretty hearts.
Dec 19, 2021
Dec 19, 2021 at 8:30 PM UTC
loathsome murk, drawing me into taint,
trailing off into the black mire yet again.
vine-brother, i hear your leaves trembling,
what poison seeps from you now?
clotted earth webs your lashes;
when i scrape it loose, the ground cracks,
your breath curdles me backward,
into the ditch’s gullet.
hands like tarnished winches,
i wrench, stagger, cling,
yet your seepage slicks the corbelling,
brine of iron thickening in the throat.
i thrash like a rabid,
limbs cadging against sodden turf,
nails serrated on the gristle-clotted earth,
and still you scream,
your wither drips sicklier now,
i see it contort, i see the murids writhe
through the filigree of air.
crows; oscillating, tacit, assay my hands,
perpetually assay, quantifying
how fealty decays in my fingers.
falter not, the fault feeds me yet, they caw.
vine-brother jumps into the cracked loam,
hell opening like funeral pyres beneath him.
he sags, sap-wet and ***** with earth’s grit,
tears mingling with the dust as they leak from his cracked lips.
his hand, crawler’s cold, scrabbles for mine;
i, slack-jointed, pulled into the churn of mire,
find myself dragged into loathsome murk.
Aug 18, 2025
Aug 18, 2025 at 4:43 AM UTC
An oppressive, heavy darkness
Stale, musty air tinged with a touch of madness
A bone chilling cold
Assaults his senses as he awakens from sleep's stranglehold
Alone in his cell
He slumps with tears making tracks of dirt down his face
In defiance of the gloom a brightly lit shrine occupies a corner
A shrine filled with mementoes of his past
He drags himself towards the shrine
Casts his eyes about till they rest upon a key
A key for a door in a cell with no doors
A key that's engraved with the words
"Freedom lies in the way forward"
He scrabbles away from the shrine and slumps against a wall
With a blood curdling keen he wails
"The future is too daunting for me!"
As he claws his face with dirt filled nails
So he is still there sitting alone in his prison
With the key mockingly bright
Waiting for him to grab it
And escape that prison of his own making
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 10:04 AM UTC
A splinter of time is felt in carpet treads
And your smiling question look
When you know exactly what it is
I want
As you are always there in tails of light
From ivy shining gold on
Waiting trees in evening's thinning presence
As I wait now.
And from this place I watch myself
And see the knots and pain so clear:
They are all the meals I eat that
Parents ate that all the silent unnamed
Faces round this table now
That were and breathed and tasted morning air,
And are not.
Breathe through me.
Now feel all they meant to say.
I stroke words with mouse's arrow -
But feel no easy daylight common sense,
Blessed and cursed to know
Elating separation from the scrabbles
In shallow city seas of present
Struggle to survive and breed.
And yes I know there will be more -
More fresh and blue high wakening days;
While earths of slow engendering wait
Content to breathe alone until I
Stop
To breathe with them.
Aug 14, 2010
Aug 14, 2010 at 10:54 PM UTC
The dog scrabbles
in the lady’s arms,
tongue flopping every which way.
‘He’s only young’ she says
as a bark coarse as sandpaper
rips through the cabin.
A man with teeth
briquette-black
chuckles at us, at the mutt,
its hair like chestnut
paintbrush strokes
slapdash around the mouth.
The lift judders to a halt.
We go one way,
the dog goes the other.
Oct 14, 2016
Oct 14, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
Today upon these very fields
Meadows of green and flowers yield
As breeze stops dead and from the leaves
Comes a young girl in khaki green.
Her dress is light, and her song is sweet
As she picks her way on dainty feet.
But she is not the first to trek
Through fresh-scented woods with curling breath
In khaki green amidst the sea
Of indigo and white and brightest green.
For as she scrabbles amongst dirt and stone
She finds in her hand to be a bone.
Unknowing of the man that shed it like
A moulting woodlark born for flight.
Unknowing too is she of the dew
That clings to blades of grass as slew
Were brothers of flesh and blood and heart.
What once was clouded red is glass.
She rises as the night descends,
Skips home with grubby hands and dress
But she is the only one in khaki green
Whom after those woods was ever seen.
The forest left to whistle and sway
Waits for the girl tomorrow-day
When she will escape its clutches once more
Dancing on the graves of twenty-four.
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21, 2018 at 6:16 AM UTC
i write more
about boys with
names my mind
scrabbles to remember
than i do about the
women who broke
their backs to cast
my bones in steel
and teach me that
i am no fragile thing
and i don't know what
that says about me.
Jul 17, 2015
Jul 17, 2015 at 9:05 AM UTC