"scrawls" poems
there’s a network of vigilance
around the guarded causeway
of walla walla
the stacked cinders
and smoking rails
leave nothing
but black hooded fate
gray halls
and razor scrawls
mark the hellion crust
abandoned overtures
and dead fill
cloud the horror
and retribution
of this hell hole
bloaters and skin heads
(with wretched memoirs)
shout incessantly
from the second floor
adolphus greely
reading over the
rights of nantucket
and banging his head
on the bent steel bars
with pockets pinched
and tumblers dangling
the stone walls soften...
a seminal moment
crosses the roo house
as mother mary
and the good painted warrior
loosen a finely tuned grip
Sep 18, 2018
Sep 18, 2018 at 2:04 PM UTC
You make my skin crawl,
Like writhing maggots beneath,
Like the innocent child's scrawls,
Tainting my canvas, my skin.
Your words, they pierce me,
Like the ***** of a needle.
Caressing, so fatally,
Over the scarred, raised skin,
The years of mistreat,
Has treated me harsh,
Showing meat so starved,
Brittle bones over skin.
The world! Such a joke,
Made of him, her and you.
My existence, mere smoke,
Our stories, nothing but skin.
For skin show where we've traversed,
The roads we have trod,
A beautiful canvas,
Of cools, brights and skin.
I am proud of my masterpiece,
It's whittled into my skin.
From the lines embossed to my chest,
To the intricate blend of colors,
The white spiraling scars,
Etched deeper than skin.
Here I stand,
Here I scream.
Proud of the bands,
That bind me as one, my skin.
Sep 15, 2014
Sep 15, 2014 at 9:03 PM UTC
If I get lost, promise you'd leave me be
Let me walk alone in my circles
I'll find my way back...almost instinctively
Through looping thoughts and scribbles
If I should trip, promise you'd let me fall
Scrape my knee and scream a voiceless scream
Weight of the universe may seem crushing to shoulders so small
I'll walk it off and regain newfound steam
If I show signs of buckling, promise you'd let me collapse into nothing
Let me fold into myself...into an unnoticeable speck
There is solace in this space when the walls are caving
Soon I would reinvent and renew from that wreck
If I suffer a cut, promise you'd just let me bleed
Let the black of my soul gush out
Within it I would find the seed
To which all of my rantings are about
If I should begin to write, promise you'd read my scrawls
Take them as they are and not to heart
Just thoughts versus words that mean much or nothing at all
They'd stitch me anew when I start to break apart
If I keep losing myself, promise that you'd let me be
The circles I tread are very much predictable
They'd always lead me around... Don't treat me differently
Just stay where you are... I'll come back round, fresh and able...
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 9:47 PM UTC
It's been a long time
but the ink scrawls & lines all fall into place
an expressionist
glimpse into urban dreams
somewhere in the past
a typewriter sounds
someone is writing
a masterpiece
which will never
be published
in a land
soon to be bombs & flame
meanwhile my lines
make out the city of my dreams
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 2:00 PM UTC
New year, new future, new performance on life's stage
New book, new chapter with a brand new page
New friends, new plans, scrapes from new falls
But...
I am the same, I am still me, penning the same ****** scrawls
Jan 1, 2015
Jan 1, 2015 at 10:31 AM UTC
They resemble photographs,
And the pages within a book
And the perfume she uses to
Fragrance her skin;
They embody song lyrics,
And the jewellery that adorns her wrists
And the gentle twists of her hair
Secured with a scarlet bow;
They're entwined with her laughter,
And the words she writes on her skin
In ink,
And scrawls eagerly
In the back of an old notebook,
In order to keep herself from
Forgetting.
Jun 4, 2013
Jun 4, 2013 at 1:58 PM UTC
The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.
A bronze rain from the sun descending marks
The death of summer, which that time endures
Like one who scrawls a listless testament
Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,
Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon
And giving your bland motions to the air.
Behold, already on the long parades
The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.
And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies
Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.
2.9k
for Barry and Tina
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But I look to my father’s hands and see
all twelve-thousand morning mists
he has seen.
A gristmill heart, grained hands
and workshop walking feet are
all hidden from view.
He writes in capitals, written
with precision, and crosses the T’s
as he goes along,
So not to prolong the sentence writing chore,
making more time, conjuring up the minutes
to potter around and mend unbroken objects.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But I look at my mother’s hands
and see remedies read about in those magazines,
all to look younger in the staff canteen.
A watermill heart, smooth iron fingers
and contoured, sculpted chiselled
corridor feet are all hidden from view.
She scrawls her sentences; they become the tide
hiding letters and numbers in the swell
of punctuation and dotted I’s,
The T’s cross themselves and she moves on,
another phone call to attend too or
a new BBC this-time-more-accurate historical drama to view.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But if you keep on going, stay out of strong sunlight
so not to rot, those years will pass
as a striking blur leading to coastal Big Sur
roads, where the next 50 miles
bring just as many smiles as the last 50.
Nov 2, 2013
Nov 2, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
age 6
you said “this is what friends do”
and placed a kiss on my lips
tell me how a kiss on the lips
became hands in pants
became “you can’t tell anyone”
when you saw my nervous excited scrawls about what we did in my diary
age 6
shame?
but I thought this is what friends did
I know now I’ll never tell my mother
age 7
you said you’d catch me a salamander
“okay”
I slip away a little more each time
age 8? 9?
these years are a blur
I know your brother touched me too
still never got that salamander
age 10
your fingers still ghost my skin
year to year
“i won’t bully you anymore if you be my girlfriend”
enough is enough
i slam my full body weight on those ugly hands
age 12
“I know what you did”
says your friend
I haven’t seen you in two years
yet you still come up to haunt me
age 14
“hey, you still live down the street? We should date”
how do you not realize what you’ve done
age 22
“Was he hot?” an old friend asks, probably on drugs
I show him your picture, shaking
later on I break an 8 year silence to ask you why.
“it didn’t happen again after that”
“it had a lot to do with age”
why can’t you just say sorry.
age 24
I still think about the things we did
you did
friends don’t kiss
friends don’t put their hands in each others pants
And I’ll still never tell my mother
Jan 7, 2023
Jan 7, 2023 at 2:18 PM UTC
Newspapers are only covered in ***** print;
of despair and distress and danger playing master of our moves.
So I can’t talk to you through that.
Paintings are for love songs left unsung;
they are the inner kept journals of unrequited dreams,
scrawls of abuse or lumps of hurt, growing like tumours.
You wouldn’t understand.
So I can’t talk to you through that.
Music is only for the sunlit realm of lovers found;
of certainty and confidence and devotion above the sordid,
tangled affairs of wayward souls.
Living in a fantasy to escape the loneliness aching in soft spots inside.
So I can’t talk to you through that.
Letters are lost in nostalgia;
a celebration to be had, words unspoken for decades,
births and deaths, reserved for life events detailed in the past.
So I can’t talk to you through that.
Movies are just reenactments of dreams;
stunning heroes, masters of skill, justice seekers,
adventures of awe, loves broken but patched together with stronger yarn.
A world of little lies to helps better cope with heartache and grief.
We can’t immortalise ourselves in something
when it runs the risk of breaking.
So I can’t talk to you through that.
But I can do something much harder
then writing or filming or singing or painting…
I can give it all up, over to you.
I can trace patterns across your shoulders as you wake,
our special language which tells you I love you, I’m trying to trust you.
I can write you little notes, decadent words and sultry ideas,
and make a trail for you to follow to me.
I can be vulnerable in your arms, more than skin and internals
and a framework of bones.
I can be more real with you than I have never known to be possible.
It’s not just me showing how much I need you by the length I hold your kiss,
or how long it takes for us to disentangle ourselves from sleep, how often
we see each other naked.
It’s more the heart I dare draw on your skin with my lips.
Aug 7, 2016
Aug 7, 2016 at 7:48 AM UTC
Insomnia in a serving,
I have it with a head full of thoughts.
Ready pen in hand,
contemplating where they should land.
Caffeine in a gulp,
unruly chatter in the background as soundtrack.
Landing words haphazardly in ink...
Scrawls and scribbles of what I think.
Coffee breath in a cup...
A delectable complement
to a favoured pastime.
Enjoying this very moment,
as I jot down this last flavoured rhyme.
Jul 19, 2016
Jul 19, 2016 at 9:59 PM UTC
it is Little Amy’s
first set of crayons
and so she grabs one
and scrawls
like mad and crazy
on the sketch pad
on the floor and on the walls;
and the crayon discovers
in a matter of hours
what humans take years to understand:
life is short
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 4:37 AM UTC
I used to think
the heart was only a piece of
paper.
What else?
While you go through the motions,
he and him leave pencil marks.
Scrawls and doodles, just
hasty mutterings in the marginalia.
You know,
those little hearts with
those little initials
you find in little girls' maths books?
Your eyes don't stray from these scribbles,
ever, no, never,
but
you vow to yourself that one day there'll be
ink
scrawled across that paper.
Black or blue
heart-stamp.
Vivid.
And nothing else would matter anymore.
What the fairytale should really say is
once upon a day
he'll walk in and grab that sheet of
paper.
It'll disappear into his coat pocket forever.
And you won't even know it
until
that paper will crumple,
black and blue, black and blue,
out, out, out of his coat
that he's left behind in the closet.
A souvenir,
a lost cause.
That is your heart,
that is your heart.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 4:01 PM UTC
I cannot keep these careful circles
Wet cheeks and sheets of scrawls
He loves me, he loves me not
Roses diminished for your apathy.
Take this curtsy, like you did my bones
From hand to hand, now dust to dust.
Our last melody, this simple swan song
Forget the lot and I'll remember you not.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 4:46 AM UTC
Dear Ambidextrous Man,
I hear you write words with both of your hands
How does it feel? How does it feel to fight with your hands?
One scrawls your joy, while the other your pain
Together they paint a dull world of gray
Luxurious, lovely, lustful letters
Flirting together on fragile lines
Thick contradictions dancing around
Weaving in... and weaving out...
Potent words piercing the pages
Eloquent chains that tactfully twist
Clashing together in colloquial cacophony
A civil war complete with friendly fire
Black... White... Black... White.... Gray
Dear Ambidextrous Man,
How does it feel to fight with your hands?
Awfully good...
Awfully good...
Awfully good?
--Christian J. Clark
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 2:47 PM UTC
We stand unrobed where daylight splits the air,
Her thighs a bramble, mine are smooth and spare.
The mirror's glare reveals what we both share:
One breast a plum, its twin a rounder pear.
Time’s cursive scrawls on skin we’ve learned to bare—
Her stretchmarks ripple, tides, my palms embrace.
No clues hide the faint silver in her hair—
My thumb traces the laugh-lines on her face.
Past phantoms fade—two clocks now beat as one.
Her skin, once chilled, now thaws beneath my sighs;
My stony silence ripens into sun;
Time-frozen hearts melt in each other's eyes.
Your mouth—a fig split ripe—now drinks my moan:
We fuse to one fierce sun, no dusk, no dawn.
Feb 8, 2025
Feb 8, 2025 at 5:19 PM UTC
She’s a writer.
She’s doing time, handcuffed in the dead of night,
locked up in prison with just the lonely voices of her mind.
And the demons of her past are wardens,
floating in corridors, keeping her in sleep deprived misery.
She’s a writer.
Every word she scrawls is a letter to her broken heart,
because with all due respect, it is an idiot.
It falls for the wrong people, it longs for the wrong places.
It shatters and she is forced to resuscitate it daily.
She’s a writer.
She didn’t choose it, every poem and story is a risk.
Work is accomplished by the light of constellations
and ink is just the blood of her soul pouring out on a page.
She is brave, in one of the quietest possible ways.
She’s a writer.
And that’s how she stays alive.
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 3:12 AM UTC
I've been sifting through
the scrawls and scribbles
written on some whim
passed by, not followed up
like lights that shine too dim
anyone can write a poem
it seems innate somehow
anyone can write a poem
except for me right now
Dec 30, 2015
Dec 30, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
An empty drinking glass is pressed against a wall; amplifying the voices on the other side. My ear is pressed to the words, ”outside is a secret key” - I can honestly say, “I hear…" Your words, idealizations, sentiments, selected scrawls of graffiti-type promise and viewpoints echo through the wall. Over and over. Championing outsiders…
Are there WALLS WITHIN WALLS? Can we walk through them? ARE THE WALLS ERASABLE? Will the walls tumble down? Will the walls polarize? WHAT ABOUT CRACKS IN THE WALLS? Can they hear? Can we leap over them?
DO WE build them where everything and anything follows and flows?
DO WE build them where something's nothingness tethers vapors with souls?
DO WE build them so molecular melodies of light and dark can collide unopposed?
Are these word walls of dust? Can we move them? Can you angle between these walls? Will the walls speak a wealth of quiet surprises, poems, and meditations? Do walls give birth to improvisation?
Now some of these walls, in their moment are with no rules, self-constructed, circling dramatically, and might prove more resistant to erosion. These are often troubling walls, no voice, no strength of decency, no laughter, which place freedom at stake. That and survival. One can be easily manipulated or yanked by an image of the truth swirling in the brick blackness of the wall. Discomforts relish now. Walls such as these are very deep-rooted and passed on for generations. Yet even those barriers eventually give way once we read the super fine print etched into the wall - a word salad of B.S., idiocy and hypocrisy.
Reach for spray-paint and enlarge your wall… maybe it enhances your world now with colored aerosols of wall portraiture's that capture rebellion and mirth. So many Walls, AND SO MANY QUERIES…
I heard a poem say, “Step out from behind one (wall) and FIND YOUR REAL SELF” – or maybe it whispered “jus walk through that door in the wall.”
Your tightly strung trampoline of words has provided a springboard for me to bounce freely over the many walls we build around ourselves.
by "ooznozz"
Aug 10, 2017
Aug 10, 2017 at 9:06 PM UTC
And the strangest part is,
sadness is just a voice inside your head.
At three in the morning,
arriving to work at the bakery,
it can be the only one—
blathering in grumbles,
writing in scrawls,
citing the bed
every twist of the bread.
It can be the cold, white hum of the halogen lights—
although sometimes at that hour,
especially during the winter,
the baker works solely by the light of his oven.
Then, things become different.
Then, there is the sound of fire,
the smell of heat,
the casting of a warm glow
onto the empty metal sheets dusted with flour.
It is during these precious few moments
that the baker realizes
that he is standing on the surface of the moon
during a lunar eclipse.
Aug 9, 2010
Aug 9, 2010 at 12:27 AM UTC
My desk is scattered with
notes, drafts, prototypes,
of my love letters to the world.
Ugly, thin spider-scrawls
of hieroglyphic ink,
pleading for my future self
to flesh the bone,
of the skeleton in my thoughts.
Beside them, the trusted red wine
to chase down the pressures
of the world, hold them in line.
Each sip, a godsend,
each bottle a promise
that love will never end.
The simple pleasure of a desk;
a confounding beauty,
the collage to your life
and all that preoccupies you.
Your personality is laid before you;
each picture, beer bottle, notebook,
a fragment of yourself.
My desk is scattered in
the loves, hates and frustrations
of my place within this world.
Ugly, thin spider-scrawls
of unintelligible ink,
pleading for some higher power
to flesh the bone,
of the skeleton that is myself.
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 8:59 PM UTC
I am not a gentle tide
I am the storm
Breaking with the waves when they crash to shore.
Novels fill my head
I choke on my words
My scrawls turn to scars.
I am intensity
Emotions flaring red
Scorching your lips.
Mar 11, 2014
Mar 11, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
Smile with a touch
Growl an innate hunger
Climb the pillar
To see
At the cropped top
Lies the crown
Thorny and sublime
Creation bows
Zeus sings
Cries of Osiris
Echo his name
Pulling away the enchantment
Veils tear
Truth gleaming fourth
Constricted scrawls on papyrus
He is here
Setting us free
Throwing down shackles
The sun has risen
Nero has sung
Peter languishes in torment
First a laugh
Another kiss
A second betrayal
True to the construct
Doom is here
Armageddon begins
Jan 11, 2018
Jan 11, 2018 at 2:30 PM UTC
The sound of flesh tones
takes me back to you,
somehow.
The flavor of your words,
the smell of snow
sending your skin crawling;
windows pain and
suffer in ice.
We perch precariously
hardly inside my car,
bleed into night
breathing delicacies
into the hollow air,
our hands full of each others'.
If this poem had melody,
it would sound alarms.
Sickly sweet thumps from
drums dripping discord
hard lines
lead down
lead down
lead down
Keys to carry our
lock-boxed thoughts
overseas, we
are just unaccustomed
to these breeds
of attuning, intoning,
singing serenades
in shameless shades
like ghosts of each other
found only here,
some haunted isle.
I hear your breath in the fog
See your body like a moment
Taste you bitter in recital
like some copiously black coffee
which your tongue taught me to love.
You burn my hands,
my lips,
my lungs.
You burn.
Syncopate and center,
taking this legal pad
for some sort of joy ride
to break all the rules with.
Warm now beneath tips
of pen and ink and finger,
blues bleeding;
You stay, still
stuck in my mind,
impervious to scrawls,
and immune to memory,
yet found in songs of
another's composition.
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 3:07 PM UTC