"scrapings" poems
Pale scrapings of people
with lipstick ringed glasses
and cigarettes burning,
and laughter trickling up and down
their knotty throats.
What is this,
a gathering of henhouse critics?
My father's voice in the back of my head,
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you
can not do that than pretend.
I am standing
just outside the gallery
beneath the shadowy bough of a birch.
The moon is floating in the sky's dark lap.
Faraway I can hear the ocean sigh.
Now father, I am asking,
what smile are you wearing?
What color are your eyes again?
How many teeth have you lost?
Don't you think I want a kiss.
Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I don't
want to stand and pretend you
not dead while the wet, champagne
mouths of the living tell me how wonderful
your paintings are.
As they crook their fingers and strain their necks,
lose their vocabulary inside the artwork's depths
and colors.
Father, I want your reputation to outlive the pursuits
of others with their iron-on reviews after an hour's
worth of browsing at a lifetime of your work.
Father, are you crying?
Stop that sound.
2.2k
I thought, "holy **** man, look at yourself". The only change I ever witnessed for 3 years was the scrapings left ringing out on the bar rail. Always reaching out to a pocket for god and finding nothing. "I guess you can't refund the drinks, right?" She didn't laugh. I watched my circle get smaller, tired of the antics and my drinking became the **** of a joke. I watched my circle get smaller, my vision blurred like the future lining with a black viginette and with every drink I watched the bartender familiarize. Another? tap tap an empty bottle uses its manners and mine, with a painted smile. Until close she would become my therapist, and the salary was almost the same for the two after I left. After close the cooks offered sympathetic invites and lackluster conversations at the strip club next door. They laughed and drank and like ***** hawks watched their prey scale a poll like the fire they were fighting was inside. I saw no spark, no love given, no love received. I found it hard to love, when hating myself was the only thing I loved to feel. The grease stained fries were tickling the back of my throat on the last night I went. I found myself puking next to a coke head doing key bumps and I asked through hiccups "does the smell back here not bother you?" he said "what smell?". I wiped my mouth and stumbled home somehow. I kicked broken pieces of pavement and scoffed at the curb-sides hugging garbage. I realized through the streetlights that my shadow wasn't the only darkness following me at night. Out of cigarettes and out of my mind I resented this city for having so many bridges. The screaming trucks below gave some sort of comfort with my feet tangling with the breeze. The stretching hands from out-of-place highway trees grabbed at me and I felt the world rotating. The night that changed me, a three am crosswalk flashed its hand at me, but I kept walking.
Jul 13, 2017
Jul 13, 2017 at 9:30 AM UTC
She was the face of the century.
We'd all believed the age of heroes was past
but she was the real thing -
brilliant, brave beyond belief and wise,
and the planet - the whole planet -
was proud to have her as ambassador.
And when the broadcast arrived,
proof that we had spanned the solar system
and set foot on another planet,
every Earthling eye gazed, every ear strained,
so as not to miss a word.
"..."
Martian sky. Red dust. Second transmission.
"...
"I know...
"I know you are watching me.
"I know that this is the moment,
"the moment you have waited for.
"Seven months ago I left you. It's hard
"to hold your breath for seven months!"
Across the globe, people laughed and gasped.
"Seven months."
A pause.
"Seven months, and enough money
"To end poverty
"across most of the Earth."
Heads were scratched.
Where was this going?
"Well, everyone, here I am.
"I can see you, you know. A star,
"A dot in the black - that's you.
"And that dot -
"Oh, that precious, beautiful dot!"
Eyes moistened. Friends embraced.
"Where every speck of dust is a home
"for something.
"Where even the forgotten scrapings
"Of last week's dinner
"plays host to LIFE!
"Air to breathe!
"Water to drink!
"So many, many things to love!"
Thirty two seconds of silence.
"Why did you send me here?"
Fifty three seconds of silence.
"This is hell."
And with that
she placed the camera on a tripod
stood before it
and removed her helmet.
The once fierce eyes
quickly bulged and reddened
skin puckered and peeled,
frost scorched and suffocated
lips, best known for forming momentous words
turned first blue then purple
and blood flowed freely
from her nostrils.
She slumped, fell,
knocked over the camera.
End of transmission.
The whole broadcast had lasted just seven minutes.
She was already dead by the time we heard the first word.
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 2:01 PM UTC
Let joy shall crash upon you like the waves from the
sea, heavy and full of unexpectedness.
Let love drift to you like the soft smell of hyacinth
from the gardens below your window.
Deny not the furtive scrapings of passion always
clawing and biting their way into your life.
Allow life to be lived as life, not as scripted verse, not like this.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 10:05 AM UTC
15th,
the time of the month
when a master card american expresses a visa reminder,
hey your passport gonna get cxld!
don't leave town; you got debts due from living life
to the fullest or the lesser, the black & white soda of
mixed up scrapings and dreaming disney fantasias
7 decades is a whole lot of 15th's
many rent/mortgage notices due,
'postage not included' notices,
(in case you were thinking of cutting a
first class stamp size
corner)
the worst word rent, rents,
and not only on the 15th,
smiling - got to rent me a poem someday,
what is the cost, guessing I'll find out on the 15th next
all the time,
lip limp from weekend to the next Friday,
just just making it through, barely,
month to the month, year to tear, dear and dare
15th to the 15th, teenth to teenth
and what is in betweenth
fully forecast a final call, last call will come on a 15th,
made sure there will be enough left to cover the outstandings,
another outstanding word I love
just enough left to mail me and my ritings,
take care of the responsibles, the non-disposables,
my last months rent, covered, my rep intact,
but no more, no one last yellow taxi ride
***the postage to return me
to my next forwarding address,
and even the cost of this poem,
got it covered***
3:23am 8/15/17
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 3:14 PM UTC
Huddle
And shiver
And scowl
turn away now
from snow-sunburnt faces
in cracked and frostbitten window panes
A chance taken lightly
won't wash away so easy
when the years mislaid thicken
and lips no longer speak freely
So I'll age, here, in silence
and dance with ghosts of better days
cross yellowing pages
stitch Bighorn peaks to the snowy plains
Your brown eyes were wet.
My greyscale soul had shattered.
While you left and forgot me,
I divorced from all that matters
Teeth grind
ears dull
days fade out
Shuffle
And stumble
Sit down
hunch away, now.
A strange face in red light
dissembles truths out of frosting frames
A proverb so simple,
"Not all is gold which glistens,"
Could have lived in the shimmer,
but I never listened.
So I'll dream, here, out westward
sleep next to bones of better days
let my drunken memories
trace bus routes back up to Winnipeg
Your brown eyes were wet
as roadway stitches unraveled
My blue eyes filled with question marks,
then they hardened up into gravel
I'm echoing footfalls on stairs
in the night
You're our spectral laughter in summer
bathed in cups of wine
Fade out.
Teeth grind. Ears dull. Days fade out.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 5:02 PM UTC
i cannot seem to write anymore.
gone, the days of furious penning
that delivered a trail of thoughts
to your door.
now, my inkwell is full of air
and dried crumbly scrapings
of purple berried residue.
and this paper? yellowed onion-skinned
husk of memory, too flimsy to withstand
the heavy strokes of my pen.
no, i cannot seem to write anymore.
here, thought floats through my head.
i play ****** and grab, clutch at nothing.
swimming, swimming words,
a wispy film before my eyes.
Nov 17, 2011
Nov 17, 2011 at 10:45 AM UTC
If life was but a game
I might as well be entertained
But the masses of ******** stand out
Reluctantly,
I leave my thoughts to be someone it seems only you want me to be
An unbound book bound to the shelf
To see what is calling me
Is it just another confused memory?
You ****** me over and gave me every key i'd need
To make up the tale that love exists inside of meeeeee.
A whispered call to distant dreams
They have been wasted,
And where the pitch-black aisles of forest's night had hid eternal things,
My inspiration had run dry,
The moon is floating in the sky's dark lap.
Pale scrapings of people as far as the eye can see.
More excuses than imaginable
Aug 28, 2012
Aug 28, 2012 at 12:51 AM UTC
You ask me what my diet is
and I am reminded that for three years of my life
All I had in my lunchbox
were jam sandwiches
Single slices of own brand bread
with scrapings of red in the center
If there was anything there
at all
And I tell you that I've never had a problem
with portion control
You ask me again how I stay so skinny
and I think of all the days I spent
rummaging through bare cupboards
Looking for something I could have
for dinner
As I tell you that I have always
been like this
You wrap two fingers around my
wrist and joke that a breeze would blow me away
and I can see myself now
11 years old and 5 foot nothing
Pushing my sister in her pram
up a hill on the way home from
school
Straining under the weight
And I tell you that my body had
never failed me when it wasn't windy out
You demand to know why nothing I eat sticks to me
But I can't tell you how my frame
hasn't yet gotten used to being full
of something other than rage
And I don't think I would recognize
the girl who wasn't starving
and stuffing her face
So I tell you that I just don't know
You can't help but ask why I didn't just buy myself something extra
And I smile when I think of the small
amount that I had to spend
and the fiver worth of sweets it went on
that I handed to my baby siblings as I shut the door
to their room
On the worst day I can remember
Because they didn't have to be hungry too
So I didn't eat a single one
But I tell you that skinny is just a memory I didn't get to give back.
Dec 12, 2017
Dec 12, 2017 at 1:31 PM UTC
I entered the world like most of my kind – whitewashed and nameless,
faceless yet searching for a face
to nibble on corn mashed scrapings of my time and place,
just hungry enough to pervade ignorance and grapple at the ripeness
of a more fruitful
truth
acknowledged in a vacuum
where dreams rot and decay and suffocate the eyes,
where an echo reverberates a menacing shriek
that tastes foul and perverse – dried sweat teared in blood
but it stays with me and my kind
alone in the haystack by God and his word
silenced by the power of an unlicensed scripture
these conditions fixate me, us
as they fixate the man behind the whip
as they fixate the land, the family, the working stick.
but I unlike most of my kind
have choked on an inch, and spit up a mile
and wielded a pen to inkblot a trial,
a trial constructed outside the vacuum
offering light, air and room to breathe
in the tangibility of humanity.
Sep 29, 2010
Sep 29, 2010 at 12:07 PM UTC
Before we read or speak or rest further,
you owe promise to a favor–
I want you to walk directly out of your door
during the most lucid scene of day,
or the most haunting moment of inner-night
Walk until your feet come to a
sudden
instinctive
halt
Listen to clamor, or
whatever surrounds you
Lift all volumes of your
puja
quietude
as a psalm
Focus on humanities scrapings
or the long graceful stroke of
matriarchal firman in her most
peculiar
stage
of cankered innocence
Lecture the calamity of her fictionless plot and
digest what the spiritually deaf cannot, and allow it to
find what triggers you the hardest
what
gouges
the prompts threadbare
It may be the indifferent hiss of cars passing
and it may be the expression plastering the jaw
of all of that unprocessed energy
ambling
on
by
It may even be the weather spilt
from her majesties
archaic entrails
Something will eventually do you in
but it ultimately
takes practice at varying degrees
I've done it when I was awake
I've done it in dreams
Either way
there's more mirrored in fragmented cohesion
than it
quite often
seems
Nov 25, 2012
Nov 25, 2012 at 9:22 PM UTC
Words were never spoken or exchanged.
"The GO Train is here."
The only five words anyone there ever thought they needed to hear
besides
they weren't words
they were mentality
the briefcases
purses
newspapers
click-a-clacks of heels
rustling of zippers and keys
scrapings of sandals
rollings of bags
sharp noses
blank eyes
all pointed at their exact target
click clack
click clack
a steady stream
of everyone and anyone
men with full black business suits
girls in Gouci and jeans
ladies in Reitmans
men in checkered shirts and khaki shorts
like ants they piled into the
green and white
snake
dreading the fatal announcement
"last call! Last call!"
they accelerated
full grown men and women
whipping and thudding and click-a-clacking
the wind pushed them back to their cars
the ground screamed "Stop!"
but they didn't listen
a woman
all in blue
who could raise the dead
with her clacking
daintily ran as fast as she could
"DOORS SHUT!" the conductor's voice was muffled
and he followed through
in a spurt of perseverance
soundlessly
the doors closed
At least the adults knew one thing
no amount of noise could open them
so they didn't try
the blue-clad woman slowed to a stop
the GO train had gone
she slumped in the middle of the station
the wind urged her
but suddenly
the train came again
always there
always gone
CLICK CLACK
the heels revived
click clack
click
clack
clack
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 4:57 PM UTC
The summer sun's an auger drilling deep
To sap my will and hasten my decline,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
From when its faintest rays begin to creep
Beyond the long horizon's boundary line,
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
When morning comes, I'll buy my living steep,
But living wilts me 'till I can recline
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep
As if I died, as if I'd get to keep
The scrapings that I'd earned, as if they're mine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep.
Each moment sowing seeds I'll never reap
Comes twisting down around my brain and spine -
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
All wisdom, wits, and words ring hollow, cheap,
Some wilted offerings at a broken shrine.
The summer sun's an auger, drilling deep,
And by the time night falls, I'll pray for sleep.
Jul 15, 2019
Jul 15, 2019 at 2:23 PM UTC
The girl on the train is nothing more
Than an illusion, or perhaps a delusion;
What is she, if not the bitter, bitter dregs,
The last of the burnt coffee, gone cold,
The watered down scrapings off the bottom
Of the cup we call life?
Dec 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016 at 7:54 AM UTC
History of people
The stone walls and vaulted ceiling held memories the light seemingly superficial human identities have
Passed in and out like the outward wind that briefly buffets the outer structure then moves on if only
We could use a tool like the archeologist not to deface or change but take scrapings their work tells the
Grand story of people and place I would like the more personnel their struggles and their outcome we
Can and do learn from history and in time be able to take DNA when the science is stronger to take
From these living libraries through test tubes and meaningful searches that will connect people even
Closer than ancestry search sites this shows your long ago relative was a silver smith and how impressive
If the very searcher himself works in a similar field someday I’m sure they will have applications that
Will be virtual it will be made in the same village you can set in your easy chair and have the unfolding
Of how it felt the highs the lows the commutable variable of life’s most cherished meaning what is to
Exist to be such time and effort is expended in the thoughts of this will serve our posterity what a
Precious stream flows from solid rock just like life giving springs in ancient and modern day where life
Would have to be deferred but out of a pristine valley not only nature but human enterprise is giving the
Opportunity to devise many wonders traceable back through time we lose essentiality when we don’t
Build bridges to our rich past cares can over run us or as they say they can provide stepping stones it is
So easy to defeat someone who has lost the chain links that tells who he is and where he comes from
This erodes his knowing and sense of belonging take careful measures to shore up the present with the
Glories others fixed in the earth as guide posts that will not fail no matter what the storm is now go in
These sacred blessings that hold back fire and flood in them you will feel your stature enlarge nothing
Will be to big you already have been given the mastery of them it’s told in the stone
Jan 27, 2012
Jan 27, 2012 at 4:59 PM UTC
(HORROR & FANTASY FICTION)
Screams of terror,
echoing through the walls.
Heavy chains clang,
and she endlessly sobs.
She shouts and weeps.
The castle remains deaf.
As night engulfs,
she mourns in great anguish.
More and more groans.
Grand voice becomes hoarse.
She stifles a cackle,
as dying hopes prevail.
Horrible fate,
merciless verdict.
Death within walls.
Her real nightmare gnaws.
Soon, mere scrapings,
no hints of cries within.
Handsome madame,
into a rotting flesh.
A living corpse,
between the lonesome walls.
In dark solace,
forever, she will dwell.
Sep 20, 2010
Sep 20, 2010 at 6:22 AM UTC
If I could impregnate myself with my tears
My children would be innumerable and divine
Delicate as the lilacs at my feet
And as giving as my mothers hands
My children and I would dance wildly to the sound of the shaking leaves
And laugh until we cried at the absurdity of the decaying frames of the eternal surrounding infrastructures
I would gather our collective tears and water my children
Careful to sift the salt and reserve just enough for future implantation
My babies would nest in the tight curls of my crown and I would rock them to sleep in the gentle curve of my lashes
Blinking slowly and steadily to ease the restlessness of their being
If I could birth my children from my ear
I’d rest my head on a pillow and never leave
I’d rest my head flat on the soft surface
Turning my head only slightly to the left to give a final shake
Releasing my babies from their sack
I’d let them snuggle against my cheek as I sang to them the songs of the old Gods
And the new
I’d warm them with heat of my breath and nourish them with the saliva of my tongue
I’d listen intently to their soft whispers inquiring about the beams of light seeping through the cracks of the walls
And
The vines sprouting through the floor boards and climbing pillars on the bed
If I could birth my children from the scrapings from under my fingernails
I’d tear at my flesh until there was nothing left but raw nerve and blood
I’d dress them in gowns made from the weaved patches of hair growing across my mons *****
And I’d make them sun hats from the shattered pieces of my toe nails
If I could sink into the soil and grow my babies from my decay
I’d sprout a row of sunflowers
And the many seeds in its ***** would be my youngins
They’d fall away one by one
Matured
And run off uninhibited into the spring
Little pieces of me
Drowning in the sunshine
Free
Jun 10, 2016
Jun 10, 2016 at 2:04 AM UTC
The chief's long skull smoking Pipe
Was filled
With smoke from human capture
With blood from his own scrapings
And with cactus from the western desert,
And as I took a puff....
I kneweth the chief hadst put something magical his mine pipe.....
Because I felt and saw mine soul arise above the Colorado cliffs.
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 8:30 PM UTC
He sits, staring at the wall for hours at a time.
The paint is white, grey, cream, pink, green; peeling. Peeling in pieces, in chunks of time’s scrapings.
The way it peels reminds him of the time he scraped his knee against the raw pavement in the winter when he was seven. It reminds him of the scent of her fingers, held against his nose in the summer, after peeling the onions for their terrible dinners; she could never cook.
There is a cobweb, fine, dusty with greyness at the corner of the rain stained window, and he can see the muted silver moving from the wind the crack lets through. The sky is empty and full, slowly falling. The raindrops are letters; the raindrops are tears, making a sound against the windowpane, a sound against the roof- the sound he longs to hear, but cannot. There is only shuffling above him, the sound of water falling from the ceiling and into a metal bowl.
Tap, tap, tap.
The stirring of the ground above him would make him jealous, and if he could still feel jealousy, it would have been the reason for his insanity.
But he cannot.
And so he drowns in the darkness
Created by his mind
Created by his being.
He sits.
Staring at the wall.
Peeling.
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
1.
In Springtime I recall the lilacs sweet scented
Growing up the right hand fence at the bottom,
Of a rather overgrown and swayward garden.
Each flower part of a composite bloom, opening slowly its tiny
Trumpet like stamens from where the bees suckled
Filling their back legs with yellow powdered nectar
Which made honey for sandwiches at teatime.
2.
On my way to infant’s school I would clasp
Handfuls of sweet cherry blossom petals
The tips of each petal turning brown in the sun
My shoes covered as I kicked heaps of this candy floss
Pink tissue paper along the road as I thought about school
And the day ahead, in my brown Clark’s leather sandals.
3.
The smell of the scrapings of new potatoes floating
In tap water in a blue polythene bowl in our scullery
And on my mother’s cracked, dry and sore hands
Ingrained with the dirt from compost and soil.
I loved these hands rough yet gentle to stroke a face.
Love Mary September 12 /201
Sep 12, 2019
Sep 12, 2019 at 11:49 AM UTC
THIS is the epitome
this is the empty me
I revisit the cavern
to see the small
scrapings, pigments
pulled from my flesh
the child version of all
that was eating me
wheat colored stone
the chaff and the grain
rock against rock
the color of pain
the greedy green
chlorophyll, the part
and smart of my brain
YOU there and I point
a finger like a paintbrush
of despair, yellowed by
the sun and turned to
soup by the falling rain
WHAT sort of thing
could lift me out of this
forever wanting?
a red leveled plow
of your heart digs
at my veins
He is forever
mister dead set
blues for my
pain
May 24, 2019
May 24, 2019 at 2:51 PM UTC