"scurf" poems
I was a shirt filed with straw and rags.
Pants that hang loose. Jeans cuffed pinned uncomfortably.
Nothing to think of; a hat filled with straw.
The inability to walk. Pinned to a board.
Hickory oak.
Chest disproportionate to a small waist.
Sleeves flung in the wind.
Left standing still; a face motionless.
Pinned to hickory oak.
A shadow left in an empty field, the boundaries of a checkerboard shirt.
The insecurity of straw hands.
Pickett fences to the feet of crows,
Still she'd visit often.
Distance cut short by dark heavy wings.
She'd caw in my silence,
Not knowing the ability to smile I stood against purpose.
She refused to run, poking fun at my hat.
The clothes that hung loosely in the wind, scurf tied tightly around my neck.
Feeling her ***** the strings of my chest.
Strands of straw filled by her need to find a home.
Was there anything there at all before that moment.
Becoming shelter to the way she pried.
Mar 22, 2017
Mar 22, 2017 at 7:11 AM UTC
Once on the kind of day called “weather *******
When the heat slowly hazes and the sun
By its own power seems to be undone,
I was half boring through, half climbing through
A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
I paused and rested on a sort of hook
That had me by the coat as good as seated,
And since there was no other way to look,
Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,
Stood over me a resurrected tree,
A tree that had been down and raised again—
A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
As if for fear of treading upon me.
I saw the strange position of his hands—
Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
Of wire with something in it from men to men.
“You here?” I said. “Where aren’t you nowadays
And what’s the news you carry—if you know?
And tell me where you’re off for—Montreal?
Me? I’m not off for anywhere at all.
Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
Half looking for the orchid Calypso.”
1.8k
I hold so much hatred it feels as though the taught skin layered upon my chest might rupture open,
All to reveal my ribs worn frail and thin from the boiling, thick, acid anger that gnaws at my heart
How does one extract this burning from one's chest cavity and push it out their fingertips?
I crave those red lazer beams that reflect out fingernails and bounce far off into the galaxy,
away from this broken body that contains them.
People tell me it can be done.
Just picture the waves lapping upon crusted sand, taking with each retraction the scurf of yesterday's emotions.
Imagine clean, crisp, Antarctic skylines filled with pure glistening oxygen, untainted by life's noxious fumes.
Yet still if I open my mouth I fear I may ***** up every toxic thought cloud that permeates my skull.
So blinded by thoughtless emotion and the inability to explain away the fearful behavior it produces.
So sometimes I climb back into the corner of my mind.
Sit there till my extremities are numb with the inability to feel any longer.
Sit on the world,
dwelling on every ****** life event,
til the tiny taupe toothpick castles I once so cautiously and carefully constructed,
are burnt to ash by tiny tissue paper dragons.
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 1:32 AM UTC
I see lines of you in the silhouettes of the scurf of a world without you
I hear your voice calling my name:
In empty hallways,
Serenades,
And odes written on deathbeds,
Declaring that your final words should "I love you"
And as I lie dow unfamiliarly in a bed without you,
I curl up and imagine that you are here,
And as I drive back to you-- home, across dark landscapes,
The headlights of the oncoming traffic reflect off my glasses and beam through dark air,
And your voice calls my name one final time in the lonely hotel room behind me
Jan 30, 2018
Jan 30, 2018 at 11:43 PM UTC
They criticize her and make her hate the moment
Her dignity and pride is stolen
They break her stance and potent
She does succumb the omen
They offer her zero condolence
They laugh and mock and curse her
They call her ************
They call her a ****
and other names of such
They drain her to danger red
They call her witch and theft
They make her hate herself
She scurf her face and wept
She cry herself to sleep at night;
Hoping that things would change
She 'd told herself that things 'd be right;
One day my pain and scar would fade
and if she would never fly
She said " I’d rather die"
She strive to reframe her picture
Her heart and soul is injured
She strive to reframe her name
So she 'll overcome her shame
Now the path to succeed is open
She's out the heat of oven
She smiles behind her rolex
Her foes is rendered goalless
Her shame has turned to fame
And her life is not the same
Her haters now adore and love her
Now none of them can stop her
Their hate and game and hurt
is the reason for what she'd turn
Jun 26, 2018
Jun 26, 2018 at 5:27 AM UTC