"scrawlings" poems
Yank myself out of bed
Peel the film of sleep from 'round my head
It's 4:00 AM
And all the world is dead.
It's 4:00 AM and all the world is dead.
From the streets every man has fled.
But in hours it again shall be
Brimming with potential; energy set free.
I assemble my appearance.
Staring into the mirror,
I say to myself: "One last time.
"One final tour."
The door is open, before it I stand
To face morning's faint chill
Surrounded by paling blue.
There! The first bird's trill.
The air is sweet
And free of smog.
The faintest fog
Is draped on the trees.
The empty street beckons
And freely I obey.
I have things I need to do
Before the commencement of the day.
I pass the playground on the corner,
Where I wasted time as a child.
Where many a battle was fought
And we had adventures in the wild.
Past the playground and to my left
There is the river bank
Where I went fishing with my father
And my friends and I made our mothers mad:
Where we lit our little fires
And we had our first drinks.
Where we shared our first joint
And came to talk and think.
Our school is down the way.
We all can safely say
It's the place where we first learned
Classes and books have less to say than the real world.
We became:
Artists.
Athletes.
Academics.
Our achievements
Are scrawled upon
The stone walls
That lined that same river.
A little further on,
And there's the little store
Where I kissed my first fleeting love
Just outside the door.
I keep walking, I keep walking,
Until I reach the shore.
I put my back against a rock
And rest on that sandy floor.
The life that I'll soon be leaving
Lies behind me asleep
While I watch the sun lazily rise
Over the mysterious, unexplored deep.
I built myself in this town
And it built me as well.
But I cannot stay much longer:
In a few hours I will bid it farewell.
Will I ever make it back?
Will I ever return
To trace the scrawlings by the riverbank
With bare fingers full of nostalgia?
Nothing at all is sure.
Therefore I must take this last chance
To make my final tour.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 8:25 AM UTC
Why do I feel compelled
To describe you as imprinted
On the bone face of my skull?
Am I in there, rattling
Around with each curt nod
When you offer me your time?
Hurled against the stretches of the mind
The head's own incubator
Some Palaeolithic cave
Where the only inexperienced scrawlings
Are your portrait
In this cave I have invented film
Starting with a rickety old Zoetrope
Of the first smile; lips bracketing
The teeth, enabling
The tongue, to churn out
The voice, your nuclear voice
Hanging my Nagaskian heart by a hair
I haven't needed irradiation
Like the hand-canter of a harp player
I have been plucking my scalp
Hardly Lilith but perhaps
Deforesting Eden
Will tempt you from Eve.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 5:18 PM UTC
The libraries and bookstores of the world
Are stocked with pleasantries:
Prim, proper, peach juice-oozing volumes
That made the grade.
These books are all well and good,
And are not unworthy of examination,
Simply because they were deemed so
By a jury of your peers.
Make note, however,
Of the myopia inherent
In limiting yourself
To the savoury.
Observe:
Past the shelves of
Well-lit,
Worn-covered
Thoroughly thumbed delicacies,
There is more to be seen.
Do not hesitate to approach the shelves
Wreathed in thorns and security tape
And kept under dim bulbs.
The books that lurk there
Are sealed tight
And wear jackets plastered in sludge:
Sludge laid thick by heavy-handed brushstrokes.
Prying open the padlock
Will sometimes reveal
Further grime coagulated upon the pages.
Further prying, however,
Will split open tomes
Scrawled with fractures of light,
Lending to the eye
An illumination unique
To such tarred works.
Do not fear these banned books,
These veiled wonders,
For they contain pure, unscreened scrawlings
Soulfully wrought upon simple scraps of paper.
It is within these that truth can be found.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 7:58 AM UTC
I travel into the great unknown
Through kaleidoscope tunnels
In marshmallow homes
Silly putty writings
Unfold in my lap
Scrawlings from fairies
Under my hat
Bubble gum people
Walk by my stoop
They'll do it again
My day is on loop
The tea was Earl grey
Then it turned blue
I've had a strange evening
How about you?
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 8:59 PM UTC
ive been drawing for you all day
impermanent scrawlings on the white board
im just trying to keep my hands moving
so my students dont have to see me weep
because today its not going to be pretty
one of those hard lump in the throat ones
i would have taken pictures of them
the doodles
but you know how i am with technology
all thumbs if thumbs werent the only thing you needed
you keep coming to me in my sleep
and in a cold sweat i search the house
for your wet foot prints
and now your visage is imprinted
in orange and yellow dry erase
camera phones clicking behind me
performance art that hurts
wild and swooping gestures
leaving tracers to be erased
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 12:21 PM UTC
i cant read
so i just write
i quickly become tired
with your work
i would much rather pace
wear down the blades of grass
in the familiar place
i cant read
because while the graces of poets
philosophers
and scholars
make pretty the page
syllables dancing
atop meticulously pressed parchment
while this happens
through their beauty
i only think of you
toss the tome aside
and imagine all the ways
i can express
the things that capture and drag
the fingertips to their home
back to the place where i feel full
loved and laughed at
where i carouse and cherish
this was never about the "reads"
never about the ratio
of lit to likes
it was only ever about me writing
you love letters every day
ten max though
fact is, half of these ********
scrawlings these
are returned to sender
but crying alone
is far better than pretending
pretending you were never upset
and begging for something you need
begging doesnt only work if there is a listener
i cant read
i cant read our future
i cant give you house keys
a front or back yard
a cat box
a leash
i cant read
i write.
all 106 of them
garbage some think
but its garbage
i sealed with tears
and stamped with a kiss
spritzed with cologne
(if i wore it)
i cant read
star charts
memos
concert bills
calendars
no parking signs
or the expressions of cats
but i can write
pour out every guttural spasm
scribble every inspiration
leer and laugh toward
a glowing screen
mute and accepting
of the drivel banged out below it
i cant read
i can write things though
some things
good things
things
see what i mean??
i cant even write.
"things
good
things"
hay-seuss x-mas!
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 9:18 PM UTC
It Must Be Done Lovingly -
this title comes easy,
leaps from screen,
jumps in between
my eyes,
where poems electric start,
starting line tween the
head and heart circuitry,
followed by a
thundering silence
of say what...
the notion, face smacks
a five fingered lighting bolt,
feeling the meaning, the ******
but the body, the text, not,
the explication, the purpose singular,
not so much
it's gonna make me work,
this entitled commandment
"it must be done lovingly,"
sure, words from heaven sent,
what does it mean precisely
it doesn't come with liner notes,
just empty sleeves,
no compact disc,
to explain it well
to your ill-written soul
brain pulsating images, lyrics, tunes,
mr. memories working overtime,
but no catalogue,
thematically a disaster,
blue lined paper
crawling with scrawlings,
notes from a blues guitar,
jumbled bojangling riffs discordant
whipped,
boy's locker room,
towel whipped
gonna give up,
exactly what
is the it
that must be done so,
with loving attention
crap cutting, beat the bush,
you know what's driving,
snap, crackle and pop,
it is arriving
with mega doses of
insatiable pain
you don't love her anymore
you knowing,
that she needs
the knowing,
deserves the certitude
of the bad news,
but cowardly lion
don't got
no idea
how to tell her
so the words
on the page
resonate,
with badass emotional clarity,
a guiding light,
do it lovingly
makes no perfect sense,
but it's sensible
and almost perfect
mr. memories speaks up
at last,
in a sad voice,
the old times flash,
drawing for you pictures,
lending strength,
and whatever else you gonna need,
from history and
tell her her lovingly,
you don't love her anymore
surrender your flag,
hand over your weapons,
you were good at loving her,
some long time ago,
but
No
don't say it with stale raisin bread reasons,
soiled explanations,
just hold her in a way,
the way you used to
that has grown dusty rusty
from lack of use
that will explain everything,
better,
by doing it
lovingly
Mar 1, 2015
Mar 1, 2015 at 7:51 AM UTC
The scrawlings of a madman
Stuck in my head
They aren't meant to be seen
And certainly not read
Insanity through carvings
The life that I led
For the period of time
That I lived my life dead
Black rivers of nonsense
Like the blood that I shed
The words on the paper
Hang by a thread
The scrawlings of a madman
Slain in my bed
Poisonous ink
My appetite fed
Just ****** and repeated
My limp body spread
Crystal white sheets
Now dripping with red
Ripped open too wide
From the places I bled
The logical lunacy
Fills me with dread
The scrawlings of a madman
All wisdom has fled
Turn the next page
And forget what I said
It seems I forgot
The demons I wed
The scrawlings of a madman
Came from my head.
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 9:20 PM UTC
My strange lover came to me last night
Late December murmurings,
Bruised lips
and Hooded Eyes
*[And in the morning when he is gone,
She finds ink scrawlings staining her sheets]*
Sep 28, 2016
Sep 28, 2016 at 8:47 PM UTC
i am surrounded by,
drowning in
things.
the people are absent,
there is no warmth,
no love.
the frigid and dank skeleton of a house
is what i call my home.
these words, the texts and scrawlings may give me
solace
momentarily,
but i feel ill and lost.
hadn't i found happiness before?
My heart is sick of being in chains.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 12:16 AM UTC
Puppy videos on Instagram,
snarky relatable memes,
pretty pictures pinned to my board,
filtered funny tweets.
Bashful poetry and uplifting words,
whispering truths to the cosmos,
a few shows, binge-watched,
peppy dance routines,
movies, music, art,
time-consuming scrawlings.
These are some
weapons in my arsenal,
my anti-venom
against the toxic approach
of tedious,
stifling
boredom.
Apr 6, 2018
Apr 6, 2018 at 8:42 AM UTC
write
write when no one is around
write when you know no one will read it
write for you
and only you
the rawest, purest writing
is found in old journals
notebooks
scrawlings on napkins and shards of paper
write when you you've had your first kiss
or what felt like your first kiss even if it was the hundredth
write when you're falling apart
let your pen fly across the paper
and let your emotions bleed out
because when you are done
and tired and numb
you'll have a piece of art
write just to ******* write
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 12:42 AM UTC
Flicking through yellowed pages
Of words written by younger hands
Of tormented scrawlings
Of tear-soaked memories
And love-eyed tales of autumn
Hoping to find something new
In what mattered back then
Or how the world looked
When seen through a mask
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 6:05 PM UTC