"sheathe" poems
How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:
Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak
For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make
A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'
Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:
She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake
Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.
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A series
of short puffs
from a rekindled
cigarette expertly put out
on the half
reminds you of your
fastidiousness
now you feel like **** as you look
at the wreckage site
of a desk that
is your own doing
That is what you do.
While your ego
floats like the unmelted
coffee you put in cold water
Hardly dissolvable
to anything normal
missing anything temporal
You lash out once more
waging a war
with a nation
of thoughts
You kick the furniture
to send the dust flying
That is what you do.
You attempt to sheathe
an intricate wound
patterned on your
knuckle, as detailed as the
dystopia of your
own human agenda that
can be trivialized by just
"I haven't been myself lately"
when somebody asks
because you're afraid
they might see
you find it
hard
to
belong
Slowly, the dust resorts to settle
on the bedroom floor
And so do you.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 4:31 AM UTC
I would cover you head to toe in the most dazzling darkest of lace
but you shine so brightly that even the darkest of fabrics and cloth
could never sheathe your radiant glow and contain your luster
I wish I could hide you away in a place so very dark, so secure
I'd bury you in a billion rose petals to blanket your eyes, your lips
to keep you from the world of temptation, lust, and sins
If only I was selfish enough to take you a million worlds away
away from this unworthy and inadequate life of insecurity
fear of losing you takes over my being, I fear someone else will see
all your beauty and light seeping from the flower beds
glowing from under all that lace and spilling into the world
filling all those tainted people with thoughts of stealing you away
but I can't keep you to myself, I'll not allow such selfish actions
I can't keep the sun, the moon, and the stars from the earth
you are needed for warmth and sustenance, to control the ocean
You are the light that decorates the night sky with illumination
as if the sky was kissed by glitter, you make up every constellation
you are my shooting star, safe to view and wish upon from afar
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 11, 2019 at 10:57 PM UTC
Tear asunder
the hatred and disbelief
and you will find a sapling
crawling under your skin
digging deeper as you breathe
finding its way to your heart.
-------
Close your eyes
and feel your pulse
as it weakens every moment
finding light from deep within
as the blood
gush and wreathe
In your soul that has been rifted apart.
-------
Rest your mind
and think
of the carcasses that has once surrounded you
and how long the time has been
when you pulled the sword out of its sheathe
and the battle has yet to start.
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 5:26 PM UTC
On this inclement day,
Night sheathes light.
Seamless transitions,
Wake my dreams.
It's neither nor now.
Just one moment before.
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 6:15 PM UTC
No, no! Go from me. I have left her lately.
I will not spoil my sheath with lesser brightness,
For my surrounding air hath a new lightness;
Slight are her arms, yet they have bound me straitly
And left me cloaked as with a gauze of æther;
As with sweet leaves; as with subtle clearness.
Oh, I have picked up magic in her nearness
To sheathe me half in half the things that sheathe her.
No, no! Go from me. I have still the flavour,
Soft as spring wind that’s come from birchen bowers.
Green come the shoots, aye April in the branches,
As winter’s wound with her sleight hand she staunches,
Hath of the trees a likeness of the savour:
As white as their bark, so white this lady’s hours.
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A rose has no intent to harm you, but she does nonetheless.
With no desire to hurt, she can neither feel regret
You asked for more and it gave no less
But you left her your heart when you met
I had no reason and no way to explain
When I walked away and took all the blame
I could not describe the intimate pain
And you knew all along our love wasn’t the same
With petals concealing the thorn underneath
The shy doesn’t dare to demand be left be
For had she unveiled the pain behind the sheathe
No one ever would grasp for the branch that broke free
So quilt in her likeness until you don’t care anymore
And patch her with pictures when she starts to look worn
Then you’ll lose sight of her beauty, forget what you cared for,
And you’ll wander away, remembering her only for her thorn.
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 11:50 PM UTC
envelop my heart
enfold my being
cocoon me in kindness
cover my doubts
encompass my thoughts
cloak my vulnerabilities
shroud my fears
enclose me in Love
shield my tenderness
encase my charms
veil my uncertainties
engulf me in your arms
swathe me with tenderness
encircle my energy
sheathe me from harm
envelop my heart
enfold my being
envelop my heart
envelop me
Copyright © 2015 Christi Michaels.
All Rights Reserved.
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 8:41 PM UTC
I shalt weareth a barong Tagalog, mine tribesgirl in terno dress
A diadem upon her head, hemmed from living amongst the dead;
Her inferno blaze, is satin oriental sheathe, rubies on her Lilly feet, she entranceth me, in serpahim seed, a muse to mine meet.
She's Dalisay, in night and day, her Kinaadman not of earth
A child from tropical tree's, I kneweth her, cherub baby by birth;
The Tadhana of ourn creator, stitches ourn etching realm's
I shalt be her on her side, In death and hell, I'll taketh the ride,
Falling deeper
Into her eye's......
©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©あある じぇえん
Aug 6, 2015
Aug 6, 2015 at 4:26 PM UTC
You told me I'm a lion,
That concerns itself much too often
With the opinions of sheep.
I worry too much,
Let's be honest.
I apologize too much,
And it hurts not to say sorry for that.
I am afraid
Almost constantly,
But overcoming my fear
Drives me
To be
Who I am.
If I am a lioness,
I am a queen,
And then I ask of you,
With a crack in the demand of my voice,
Be my king?
You claim I could not hurt a fly,
I could not hurt a soul,
But it is a choice,
Can't you tell?
To sheathe my claws
And not bare my teeth.
I could choose to be vicious,
I could choose to be cruel,
But vapid venom has no interest to me.
I choose to show weakness,
I choose to be vulnerable,
I choose to be
The me I accept.
Maybe I shouldn't concern myself
With the opinions of sheep,
But some sheep are wolves.
Though,
I suppose,
With the king of the jungle
At my side,
There's no need to fear
A pup that's too big for his britches.
Sep 13, 2016
Sep 13, 2016 at 4:57 PM UTC
soft soliloquies cannot touch me
for the mountain tops have blurred in the stratosphere
and still deny their shadows from the fog
and sink like marionette martyrs to the ocean floor
and sway refused forfeit flags painted as seaweed
--
stiff joints acost
and above, an albatross!
roams discreetly through the sky
yet all hell's dead
wretched through molten lead
succumb to false alibi
(and fate's caress never questions why)
--
your
bamboo words
and
tourniquet hands
bear loss of convicted man.
and
piano strings
like
forgotten things
have cost all the contraband.
--
--oh, but sweetly they had fallen
the petals which forgot the sun
and faces the moon while acrobats
form the constellations of the sky
and so— so weakly it had passed us by
but yet had still seen the sails of clouds
adream of every lost sunken shroud
ever shining by.
--
defeat me, hang
a noose from every ceiling
--and maybe i'll change my mind
or faint like festered wounds
trailing down the hallways
--and maybe i'll forget the way
you made me see it
clearer than mirror rooms
and moulded like day
(your lungs full of clay)
breathe me out or
sheathe it in
complete me, hang
an emptied world from every airway
to rust all the ventilations
to flood all the irrigations
and condense into the black hole
you left behind.
--
words called windows walk on sunday lanes
toward sideways tree roots with hallow'd veins
and iced over stairways that have no name
or excretories called inventories that fell on dead ends
or ghouls that catapult just to make amends
then rise from idle tidal waves with the bends
perhaps even holes called souls can confine
and mists like cysts fail to intertwine
and fall away as heaven feigns to maligne.
—and oh, how sullen scenes do compromise
the way our flesh restlessly burns and fies.
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 6:34 PM UTC
i've a pale carnivore,
slaying passively the night
in my cotton ember
and with velvet detergent she sprays me
***** loose hinges cravenly and pink
and disheveled lips
i split
unmutable vast minute vines
snare exactly my naked burning crust
an shuck absolutely
the dull sheathe of my so
unlovely
****
Nov 19, 2010
Nov 19, 2010 at 1:53 PM UTC
An aura of every color.
Mystifying.
Yet, you sheathe it.
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 1:16 AM UTC
The love that rose on stronger wings,
Unpalsied when he met with Death,
Is comrade of the lesser faith
That sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood
Of onward time shall yet be made,
And throned races may degrade;
Yet O ye mysteries of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,
If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,
To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
To fool the crowd with glorious lies,
To cleave a creed in sects and cries,
To change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old bareness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours. I see in part
That all, as in some piece of art,
Is toil cooperant to an end.
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When did it start, I wonder.
When did the black form in my stomach, in my soul?
Was I born with hatred in my bones?
Why am I the one unable to sheathe the darkness? They all grip the cool metal, but the knife’s edge was sharper for me.
I slip and fall and cut myself on the pleasurable blade of self-disgust over and over, unable to catch myself I grasp blindly into the darkness, reaching for the familiar shapes I’ve always known.
But they all are finding their own balance, ignorant of how I lost mine.
I hate yellow.
Jan 14, 2019
Jan 14, 2019 at 3:54 PM UTC
The way you put me in just to pull me out..i was like your katana.
Feb 12, 2015
Feb 12, 2015 at 3:23 PM UTC
fingers caress like
etched calligraphy
leaving teased
imprints
drenched...
in shameless seep
as lips sheathe its bud,
heatedly erupting
raging forth...
upon tongue; its fragrance
titillating senses, hands
travel length of curvaceousness
in hungered voracity,
trembled peaks rise
exploding
fondled...
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 12:57 PM UTC
I was taught to be a knight;
tattered favor streaming from my lance tip,
and agéd honor my saddlemate.
That this was the ultimate,
and through service and sacrifice,
Love would be bestowed.
But my sword rusts to its sheathe,
crusted in ancient blood.
The iron heavy and burden
encasing the dusty heart beneath.
Upon my weak-kneed steed,
As I quietly pine,
I begin to wonder
Will a damsel ever rescue me?
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 2:51 AM UTC
humanity is at constant odds with freedom.
it varies in definition – one man’s liberty is another’s snare. there is so much that is preconceived, that precedes and influences human thought, it makes freedom seem self-indulgent — a vehicle for ego-stroking and inflated sense of purpose.
freedom is simpler for others. it’s the one objective way to live — it’s the only way to live.
and maybe i’ve become too accustomed to the weight on my wrists that i refused you, vehemently opposed a chance to fly out from my cage into the new world. was i supposed to be thankful? i didn’t even know i had wings.
you released my usual tight ponytail from her tower upon my crown. black waves crashed upon the shore of my shoulders, i couldn't help but feel drowned in them.
you bared my skin from the safety of my clothes. you assured me that your touch was better armor for me. but there’s not enough free flesh of yours to cover what i wish to hide. a small ice age passed through the room every night, chilling me so deeply that not even your cloying warmth can stop the shiver of disdain traveling my spine.
you freed me from the comfort i used to have. you relinquished me from the safety of being me.
i tried to see everyday as a chance to grow comfortable, and everyday i had no choice but to be a stranger my own house because every chair was taken by your wants and every wall painted with your desires over mine that there was only standing room left for me.
i felt liberated in the way a captive animal roams its enclosure. i was king of a small domain, but a pawn to a larger kingdom. but i’d much rather liken your love to being an animal lead to slaughter with no wool over its eyes. it’s freeing, just not in the way you’d want.
when i finally gathered enough scraps of courage to tie my hair up again and sheathe myself in layers, i retreated back to my cage, not with my tail between my legs but the feathers on my chest ruffled with pride.
i believe more now than ever that freedom exists in the captivity of self. let me throw away the key and waste away in comfort.
Jan 2, 2022
Jan 2, 2022 at 11:41 PM UTC
I remember the thunder
Cascading down your spine
The night that you told me
Our love was now all mine
I remember a bang
Then nothing else
I watched you
The magician
Work your last trick
And out from your hat
A serpentine
How could I not have heard the cries
How could I not have read the signs
Howling wolves come late at night
Procure their next delight
I was a paper plane
And you were the eye of the hurricane
I was a skeptic slip
And you were the robe beneath my feet
I was a butterfly with a fear of falling
And so you clipped my wings
You were the ink
Spread out on sheets of unused paper
Line after line
Stroke after stroke
Vestal canvas
Tainted over time
Now I grab your fingers
Now I run away
Now I'm swirling in slabs of sapphire
Falling wave after wave
Now I'm crouched beneath my sink
Crying
Now I load old pills in my gun
Take aim
And fire
Cremate all of
My desire
Now I walk on all fours
Primal
Sleeping on the debris
Of my defeat
And watch you sheathe your two front teeth to taint your next great masterpiece
May 10, 2015
May 10, 2015 at 7:24 AM UTC
The essence of roses lingered
as the petals of her lips
and the thorns of her teeth,
scathing,
scratching my surface,
retracted like claws to a sheathe
as the cat behind her eyes
left no mark on my skin,
but tore the flesh apart
so no blood broke through
but its drowning flood
dyed the rose, and
the rose died
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 10:40 PM UTC
This feeling is
No longer tradable
With rigor mortis
In the cartilage of
Tiny-spider-toes
All-patient-pink.
And that beguiling notion,
Wearing an anthem
From Tartarus--
Evolves us as readers-
As we touch the bark and know--
It's the snow that tells us we're cold.
Spreading norn's with sheathe-less
Silence crafting cobble-stone antics,
Through visceral attics
And cankering taste-buds.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 6:20 PM UTC
America, I cannot close my eyes
Nor sheathe my skin color-
Which is that of which she was
Built upon-
Which was that where my ancestors
Were left under supremacists.
Look out and see the restless
Peoples rising with tides
Flourishing under nothing's banner,
How the planet has shrunken
Destroying proud origins
And lamenting the absence
Of patriotic diversity.
America I cannot look
Out in the wilderness of words
That cross this poet daily
And not fathom a poem that
Crosses borders and enigmatic
Skin tones, that water breaks
Itself upon the stone,
Yet blood would stain its surface,
Yes the sacrifice of fools.
I cannot close my eyes
Nor change my skin,
Here in the land of dreams
And the spinster's lamenting
Polishing blue and red tears.
America, much angst is flowing
From open wounds from yesterday
And tomorrow that comes crashing
At the precipice of dawn's early light.
I hear your pain America,
I watch with a selfish pride
At the pain we share,
The differences that unite us,
The words that explode in freedom,
Your stars are not lost
Upon the impenetrable sky.
In your depths you are one,
In the bitter difference of eachother
Filled with children and uncertainties,
We shall not fall gently.....
America, I cannot close my eyes,
I see the beauty of our nation,
America I cannot change my skin,
Nor would I care to.
America, beautiful mutilated rose,
I am convicted as a patriotic
Fool,
America I cannot close my eyes....
America, I will not.
Nov 9, 2016
Nov 9, 2016 at 7:36 PM UTC