"seizing" poems
there is a monster beneath
the lofty, billowing sheets of my bed
beneath the mattress
the box spring
the carefully crafted wooden frame.
[he lives in the shadows,
in the obscurity there.]
i should feel sheltered...safe,
underneath these sheets,
[like my mother’s arms
tucking me in tight,
don’t let the bed bugs bite.]
but when my arm dangles off my bed,
when i commit that fatal mistake,
i feel a draw to the ground
more forceful than the force of gravity
seizing my hand
paining to pull me under.
and i know it is the monster.
i feel his yearning
for the blood and guts of a child...
his desire to rip me apart
like a lion does his prey.
i take back control of my hand,
wrap my arms around myself,
feigning safety.
for as we all know
that monster could very well
clamber, creep out
climb onto my bed
and swallow me whole.
i don’t know why he hasn’t yet --
perhaps he likes the challenge
of waiting for me
to be susceptible enough to
forget myself
and leave my arm suspended
for more than
just a moment.
i am curled up into a fetal position
paralyzed by my fear.
the anxiety invades my joints
so that i cannot move anymore.
i fall into a fitful sleep
and wake up to sunshine radiating
through my window,
casting the intricate patterns of
my curtains on the rug.
during the day,
the monster cannot survive.
but when nighttime falls
the darkness returns,
my trepidation returns
and the monster is alive.
well, again.
Nov 11, 2012
Nov 11, 2012 at 2:54 AM UTC
In nineteen hundred forty-nine
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai-shek's army ran away
They were waiting there in Thailand yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way
First they stole from the Meo Tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting ***** to send to The Man
Pushing junk in Bangkok yesterday
Supported by the CIA
Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief brain
He took it to town on the choochoo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA
The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how
Chief of border customs paid
By Central Intelligence's U.S. A.I.D.
The whole operation, Newspapers say
Supported by the CIA
He got so sloppy & peddled so loose
He busted himself & cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an ***** load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold
Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA
Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & *****
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till ***** flowed through the land like a flood
Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA
The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. Intelligence came into Laos
I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosovan
All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA
And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran the Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars
It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA
All through the Sixties the Dope flew free
Thru Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshal Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting confiture for President Thieu
All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA
Operation Haylift Offisir Wm. Colby
Saw Marshal Ky fly ***** Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of ***** Tricks
"Hitchhiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix
Subsidizing traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the CIA
January 1972
10.1k
acid flashback in the trees
frenzied branches feathered leaves
swaying seizing in the breeze
forming shapes that his mind sees
scattered thoughts attention free
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 4:53 PM UTC
Here is the city—
its worn-down mountains,
its grass and iron,
its smoky coast
seen from the high roads
on the Wicklow side.
From Dalkey Island
to the North Wall,
to the blue distance seizing its perimeter,
its old divisions are deep within it.
And in me also.
And always will be.
Out of my mouth they come:
The spurred and booted garrisons.
The men and women
they dispossessed.
What is a colony
if not the brutal truth
that when we speak
the graves open.
And the dead walk?
8.2k
Music
Passion, wistful
Devouring, seizing, engulfing
Mellifluous voice of the soul
Fluid
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 7:05 AM UTC
Sometimes I wish I was Margo Roth Spiegelman
I want to be able to follow my heart and do the things I've always wanted to
I want to dance with wind
Feel the grass beneath my feet
The stars to blanket me with sparkle
And the moon to light my face
I've always wanted to run
And never look this way again
To be the captain of my own soul
Seizing all the hours of my day
I have feet because I know I wasn't meant to stay on the ground
I wasn't given wings because I know I am no angel
But I knew I was destined to fly
Jul 14, 2015
Jul 14, 2015 at 10:07 AM UTC
Two fine films: The Lost City and Blood Diamond.
I joined Blood Diamond during a village massacre
and said to my wife A gun in every home.
Those devils would think twice
before razing the village and seizing the boys.
A well-regulated militia.
The local militia the most interesting moment
in a strong film with motive (economic, emotional), action (chases,
fights) and a **** sexless love story.
Use of violence by the local militia for a limited purpose: protect the
community, the young
from the janjaweed. The crop from the ****
Limited scope and defensive posture
but armed and coordinated, cooperative, the men (and the women)
side by side.
Warriors at the gate, you will not run, you will not bargain.
Just violence = limited scope, defensive posture.
Great music. Cuba, Africa.
The Lost City, when the communists tell the club owner under threat
of violence
No saxophones in the band. The saxophone!
Invented by a Belgian--Look what the Belgians are doing in the
Congo!
When the state's violence is turned against the citizenry
for non-violent acts.
This quiet neighborhood, July,
undergirded by violence, force. That's a given--
any farmer, custodian, EMT will tell you that.
Without just violence
Gandhi's scope, and King's, might be vanishingly limited,
negligible (but not non-existent)?
Regarding King
the matter is simple -- he was non-violent but dependent upon
federal force to counter the South's violence.
No doubt without the larger force, the non-violent would be
overwhelmed by southern violence.
Here, non-violence was a tactic, not an ethic.
Gandhi, however, had no violent partner to protect him from the
British. Or did he?
1. There was the potential violence of the population, which Gandhi
restrained but could release which the British feared, and
2. It was the restrained (limited scope) violence of the British that
allowed Gandhi to exist rather than be extinguished--this restraint
was a (British) cultural imperative (limited scope) as well as
emanating from Britain's view of India as a protectorate and
valued citizen of the United Kingdom (defensive posture).
What about violence or threat of violence to compel compliance with
community
as in mortgage foreclosure, driving without license, drug possession.
Perhaps it is necessary violence to maintain orderly commerce, the
common space, and preempt bad behaviors associated with
otherwise neutral, private acts.
The defensive posture is the common good; the limited scope is
forgoing deadly force.
But the citizen, too, must maintain a disciplined, armed non-violence,
in case the state (the janjaweed) engages in an unjust, autoimmune
violence.
Hence, a gun in every home.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 9:56 AM UTC
I am not the master of my writing
-
my writing masters me,
seizing me when the seizure is a sure thing,
it dictates to its enslaved scribe
what it desires this utensil to reveal and expel -
the contraries
who having battled to a ****** draw leaves the battlefield trembling with indecent indecision; the optimal conditions for its macrobiotic invasion of my brain stem;
the she-muse offers me two choices:
she wants a poem writ forthwith
on the lyrical expression
of depression and refusal is
non optional
so I fantasize escape and that becomes
her property as well;
evidence against me to be used at my trials,
the one where there is no statue of liberty
from the limitations of prior bad acts;
I offer the she-muse two choices:
give me a cabin with WiFi
and self-enforcement of solitary confinement and
tie me up with the rope remainders of broken bonds,
bonds that tied me up worse
when they were broken
and the peaceful withering
that won’t disrupt disturb nobody
from a distance
my other choice is to bury me
forthwith next to my parents
and shutter my constant tearing eyes which are drop-resistant
muse says that’s no choice
I own your voice stilled or not,
will bill your soul’s account for
denial of poetic services
weep; i don’t want the noises that curse this troubled
bodyship don’t want recollections good or bad
the muse-bitch cackles with insanity of delight
for she accepts this writ as partial payment
on her commission, whispers I love your
lyrical expressions of depression
that ****** recognition algorithms
alert me that seizing time is nigh
there is no on/off switch for one like you:
father son and holy ghost
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC
Pomegranate dawn, lay me down
Ivory moon, call to me
See that I may never touch the ground
Float me by on symphonies
Leave me in the haze, the cool of day
Wake me in awe on summer nights
Chase demons away with all your shades
Make darkness flee in the moonight
Keeping dream and dreamer both alive
Silently fading away
Ivory painted moon seizing my nights
Pomegranate dawns embrace my day
Sky studded with stars, burning now
Jay's egg blue painted morn
Falling to my face, dust on my brow
Waiting days ache to be born
Never will I again cry alone
Ever still will you carry me
Seeking just to rest in a place called home
Cabins by the crashing sea
Risen in the day to warm sunlight
Rocked to sleep by sheets of eve
As the ivory moon bid me, sleep tight
And pomegranate dawn awakens me...
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 3:57 PM UTC
I keep telling myself that if I lay here long enough something's gonna swallow me and it's not because my heads been somewhere else lately it's because I sleep on the floor. Even when I don't. I sleep on the floor. The mattress has holes because mattresses get holes sometimes when you don't have blankets to cover them and you're too cold to put the cigarette out on anything other than yourself or what you have to sleep on now. Last year I'd spend every day in bed with a little bag full of drugs and a map to the bathtub just in case I forget what I took two seconds ago because I think it happened yesterday and I take more. And then I'm shaking, not because I'm cold this time. I'm seizing and nobody is home because everybody leaves me for preachers or church or a campfire or someone prettier. This part is foggy. I remember again a bathtub, an empty hotel bathtub and my mother and I say mama did you leave the door open on purpose and she says I went to church. She went to church. She went to church. Bathtub. I sleep there. Even though we are in a hotel I sleep in the bathtub because I like the way my anxiety sounds when it echoes. I like to hear it. Play it back. Memory. Back to the only house I've ever lived in alone. I'm seizing. I stop. I hear you. I somehow forget that it's 4 in the morning. It's my birthday now, nobody knows but it's my birthday now, teen years behind me but still a teen year drug addiction and you tell me to look out the window so I do. And the sky's on fire. I don't fall asleep again for three days but the sky's on fire. And so am I. And so are you. And I don't want to go back to the place I go to when I see the faces but I put myself here. I push and push and push and then I act surprised when something falls off the edge. I'm alone now. Even when I'm not. I'm alone.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 9:14 PM UTC
Somebody has unstitched my heart.
Pulled the thread and let it fall apart.
And I'm empty now, it's all hollowed out
And I'm trying to breathe with the lungs I'm without.
It wasn't me, and it wasn't you,
Life did what living tends to do,
It stretched the seams and split the sides,
And I felt nothing here inside,
The only thing that's telling me
That things aren't how they ought to be
Is the seizing stop of breath
Inside my outside heaving chest,
And a familiar ache along
The seam that seemed to last so long,
That now across my ribs agape,
Allows my reason to escape,
Along with not a little blood,
To seep beneath me in the rug.
I could tell you I'm surprised,
But that would surely be a lie,
I feel some grimly got relief,
To succumb finally to belief.
I'm not sure that you understand
I'll be waiting here until the end.
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 6:25 PM UTC
He rubbed his weary eyes...
What trickery could this be?
Was it a signboard draped in disguise
Or the reflection of light off a tree?
Seconds ticked as he drew closer.
The lady materialised to rule out prior suspicions.
His fingers wrestled over the rusty brake lever,
Wheels squealed their futile objections.
The lady wore a face he could barely see...
She had long tresses that bore an alluring fragrance.
Her beauty tipped the scales allowing him bravery,
Unafraid he asked, "Miss, may I be of assistance?"
Her voice seemed to ride the subtle night breeze,
Coating his ears like sugar laden candy.
Soft and demure... Yet laced with a hint of tease,
She had said, "I'm stranded in the dark as you can see..."
"What luck!", he thought, seizing the opportunity
He removed his sack to make space for her.
His heart raced being in the damsel's good company,
The lady slid herself onto the rack before they both rode together.
As he pedalled hard, he felt a tap on his shoulder.
Her voice came again, a tender little whisper,
*"I live rather close... Not far off from here...
A little over the hill... Just over yonder..."*
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 5:59 AM UTC
Insecurities are killing me
They are seizing me
They are stronger than me
Stronger than my own self
Stronger than I imagined
I can't escape from them
It's like I'm a prisoner
of my own body.
Sep 6, 2013
Sep 6, 2013 at 10:11 PM UTC
Sacagawea's Capture
As I strolled the Knife River trail
a dust cloud swirled and fell
and earth lodges appeared by the score
extending from the path to the river banks.
Hidatsa women sang at their chores,
husking corn -
beading moccasins -
scraping a buffalo hide.
A band of hunters dismounted
and released their ropes -
dropping two deer and an elk
by the hanging rack.
Triumphal shouts from the river
turned all heads to the shore
where warriors, returned
from Shoshone fields,
lashed up canoes and dragged
their human spoils up the rise.
Several squaws reached out
from the gathering crowd
seizing two of the squirming children.
A Shoshone girl with terror in her eyes
cringed as a warrior raised his arm.
"No, tell your Hidatsa name!"
Sobbing she choked through broken tears,
"My name is Sacagawea."
I bolted to breach the walls of time
to face death in her defense
but a new whirling cloud intervened.
When the dust fell away
all the lodges had vanished
with all the Hidatsa villagers.
Kneeling down to the Dakota grass,
I caressed a circular hollow
etched deeply in the silent earth.
August 6, 2010
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 5:28 AM UTC
My mother enters the kitchen, says that her hands
are dripping, begs my father to finish his work
at the sink. I observe, for a moment, the expression
upon her face which seems conflicted between
a desire to laugh and a need
to feel clean.
I interject that clearly her fate is to have
dog placenta on her hands for all eternity.
Her disgust and amusement seem equally to rise.
After she has washed herself, she speaks of
Ponyo's last intermission between long
intervals of birthing to nap three fleeting minutes;
another contraction gave way to a wriggling
new mole who squeaked and groaned with
bizarre endearment, seizing my heart and causing
its mother's head, after jolting awake,
to go limp.
Mom says it's sad-but-sweet. Dear dog
has spent herself six times already in increments
which, as they increase, draw her spirit still closer
to a totally inevitable chasm of fled energy;
as soon as she falls asleep, yet a new indignant mass
of living parts swaddled in loose skin and wet fur
shoves its way outward, forward, world-ward.
Ponyo is not selfish. Immediately after birth seven,
she begins to lick her offspring clean and nudge it
towards her belly, where it may feed itself.
"Only just got a break, and already she's
back to work."
I'm one of five children my mother has carried
and raised--and for a human, five are many!
I'm afraid to give birth even once, despite
that a greater want of mine is to hold
my own child someday. I wonder if that
is motherhood: discomfort and indecision
concerning the worth of the effort in labor,
in birth, in the weak moments thereafter--
stroking one's child's downy, collapsible head
and feeling a need to protect her, to nurture her,
that is more pressing even than the so-
alluring whispers which Sleep may breathe--
and even beyond these moments, when I have said
to my mother that I hate her (because
to me, it was obvious that I did not,
and was too callous, obtuse, and insensitive
to think that she might just believe it)
and then missed church the next day to stay
with her when she felt ill and tired--if this
is motherhood, I wonder. It must be more even
than I could ever have thought like wanting
to laugh and to wring one's hands
(and even just to go to sleep)
all at once.
Apr 14, 2012
Apr 14, 2012 at 11:05 PM UTC
Clueless, full of oblivious reasons
Seasons washing away unknown regions
Lesions inside my soul, you’re teasing
Seizing, forcefully squeezing, my heart
Torn apart, ignorantly smart, but senseless
Defenseless to your love, push and shove
Haven’t lost balance, surrounded by absence
Too many years since, love differenced the equation
Self persuasion, wondering where you were
Noticing the abrasion worn on my heart, epiphany
Lacking dignity, imploring for your sympathy
Running in place, suffering from anguish
Losing hope, praying for vanquish
Heart losing strength, this isn’t the end
Exceedingly forcing myself to pretend, it’s done
I have won, I’m strong now
It’s over, I’m gone now
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 5:04 PM UTC
There is something painfully wrong about
a mother’s cry.
In those seizing moments,
while her nose twitches
and her eyes bleed red
and she lets tears smear
jaggedly about her face-
there is something so unsettling,
so
out of place.
You perceived her once invulnerable,
but now you find
that behind her divinity are familiar fears
that overwhelm her omniscient mind.
When your own Goddess
can’t be free from corruption,
that even the holy
have weak heels and poisoned matrimonies;
that is
agonizing acrimony.
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 3:55 PM UTC
Closure invents a reason to let go;
that hoped-for last **** is
anything but
Life is cataclysmic.
Seizing an imagined moment
in a now that ends
before its beginning
signifies a slavery to transience
so complete and pervasive
that words heave and shudder
in its withering folly
Timeless puzzles are incompletable
by artifice; rather, resignation
to disparate pieces,
and identification with neither
the pieces that didn't fit,
nor those that did
The period does not
complete the sentence.
The sentence ends
when it is finished.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC
In the moonlight, high in the Lemon Gum,
perched under the arching ghostly branches
two eyes of jet peer from a snow-white mask.
Tyto Alba, the Barn Owl, with heart shaped
****** disc, edged with ruff of stiff feathers.
Mottled pearl-grey body feathers above
the moth like plumage, purest white beneath
her slim legs are bare on the lower half,
with small feet that end with deadly talons.
Nocturnal, she roosts in the heat of day.
You will hear her screeching in the cold night
hear the scream before you ever see her.
She can see in the half light of humans
night vision even in total darkness
pinpoints her prey by listening to each sound
the desperate, scuttling little creatures make.
She is a well designed killing machine
with hooked beak, powerful feet and sharp claws.
Her flight feathers have softened edges
to make her deadly flight near soundless
She swoops silently down without warning
seizing victims with her claws, biting deep
into their neck arteries, puncturing
their most precious organs for a quick death.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 4:08 AM UTC
Oh do not die, for I shall hate
All women so, when thou art gone,
That thee I shall not celebrate,
When I remember, thou wast one.
But yet thou canst not die, I know,
To leave this world behind, is death,
But when thou from this world wilt go,
The whole world vapors with thy breath.
Or if, when thou, the world’s soul, goest,
It stay, ’tis but thy carcass then,
The fairest woman, but thy ghost,
But corrupt worms, the worthiest men.
O wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world, had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire,
That this her fever might be it?
And yet she cannot waste by this,
Nor long bear this torturing wrong,
For much corruption needful is
To fuel such a fever long.
These burning fits but meteors be,
Whose matter in thee is soon spent.
Thy beauty, and all parts, which are thee,
Are unchangeable firmament.
Yet ’twas of my mind, seizing thee,
Though it in thee cannot persever.
For I had rather owner be,
Of thee one hour, than all else ever.
3.5k
My mind could not conjure up the notion that the word, the name, meant something. A-n-n-a. I looked. I looked: she stared back the same. Unknowing, unfamiliar. I wanted to remember, I wanted to.
7 a.m, in the crawlspace underneath the house, flashlight grasped in my hand, sweat from my forehead plastering my hair against it. It smelled like dust. I inched forward on my stomach, writhing as a worm. My body seizing against dirt and webs. I yelled out her name. Just to see. Just to test if my mouth still knew how to speak.
Anna.
Anna.
There. In the corner. I flicked my light against a box with tape on the side and her name written on over it in marker. I whispered it to make sure. Anna. One more time. Anna. I sunk my face into the ground. My breath, soft from my lips but coarse in form, disrupt the filth, made me cough. I crawled over to her with ease, as if the bones in my body were pushing me, the muscles guiding me; these pulsing veins, telling me.
When I opened the box, the first thing I saw was her, smiling back at me in the form of a memory. July 1996, our wedding framed around sanded wood, with splinters etching at the sides, aching for a hold on them. And I cradled her, despite this. Despite my skin giving in.
Anna.
I almost forgot.
My head was hurting again. I blamed it on the suffocating of the casket underground enveloping me, not the staples buried into the skin of my skull, not the remembrance that underneath piles of dirt, her body was just a stack of old bones with only a stone to tag her as proof she was once living.
Anna. My Anna. I cradled the picture against my chest. I clung to her.
My light began to flicker, a spider crawled across my finger. Anna was diminishing, like a ghost, like a gentle sweep of navigating headlights turning a corner, creeping away, and suddenly gone.
Anna. A-n-n-a. I shut my eyes. I could finally remember.
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 5:04 PM UTC
when I’m with you no matter when or where,
I feel like it's storming outside.
which sounds odd but given the context,
given me,
you’ll find that I mean that heat,
I mean that electric tingle humming
at the base of my neck when you touch me.
That unexpected boom of thunder when we kiss,
knocking me off center,
making my ears ring.
The comforting cadence of the rain, the world around us,
there but slowly drifting,
unimportant to the arms around me
keeping me warm.
when I’m with you, I feel like I've been nearly hit by a car.
which sounds awful but given the signs,
given the proof,
you’ll see I mean that fever,
I mean that flush of giddy Oh Thank God at your nearness.
That wild relief when your eyes catch mine,
calming my heart and taking my hand.
The trembling of my limbs, my fragile sense of being,
so much stronger now,
bolstered by the presence at my back
keeping me safe.
when I’m with you, I feel like a deer staring down a gun.
which sounds terrible but when I explain,
when I describe
the pounding of my heartbeat,
the breath caught in my throat,
standing perfectly still as you’re perfectly still.
That link between us,
hunter and prey,
seizing me ****** heart, mind and soul.
The unspoken truth, knowing deep in my bones.
This is my ending.
Forever I am done for by your eyes on me,
keeping me here.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 2:26 PM UTC
We gather in Old London town,
the time is getting late.
The fog is slowly coming down,
the year is eighteen eighty eight.
The Leather Apron stalks this eve
ladies of the night beware.
Such things he does you wont believe
and for your welfare he’ll not care.
Hello Mister have a heart,
a girl has got to earn a crust.
A shilling for this fine old ****
for you look like a gent to trust.
In her hand the coin doth shine.
Does she lead this toff astray?
Here’s a quiet place that’s fine,
as she walks up the alley-way.
Face to face and eye to eye.
The victim happy to be plied
with vigour she lifts up her skirt
but now her hands are occupied.
Seizing strongly at her throat
he strangles her till unaware.
Unconscious although not yet broke
he lowers her by head and hair.
Now insentient on the ground
the Ripper sets about his work.
In the dark without a sound
there is no detail he will shirk.
He keeps the body to his left,
her throat is sliced from side to side.
The woman’s family now bereft,
whilst she lies here without her pride.
Left to the nights illumination
Jack executes his deadly art.
Performing such skilled mutilation.
and leaving plus one body part.
Daylight opens up commotion,
"Whitechapel Murderer", strikes once more.
The peelers haven’t got a notion
who it is that killed this *****
Scotland Yard are in despair
as they try to Investigate
their credibility beyond repair
for they cant find this reprobate.
Eventually the death toll, five,
the murders now come to an end.
Folk are free to live their lives
but could you trust even a friend.
Over an hundred years or more
professional research is far to late.
Jack, can we ever know the score?
"No... All you can do is speculate."
Aug 27, 2014
Aug 27, 2014 at 4:26 PM UTC