"sheeting" poems
whispers the stubbly face of the old grandpa,
or I'll blow fierce little airs all over your rigidly
pretending-to-be-asleeping cute little facey,
then tickle your kissable little
lips
and make farty noises
for the rest of the day
she, irresistibly, bursts out laughing
like the roaring lioness she be,
whose cubs might be threatened,
and laughingly squeals, oh poppy!
it's all your fault, you grumpy old poet,
you made me put the *** in my
peej's!
and how his son,
the father,
on permanent overwatch,
growls below annoyingly,
"great,
now we'll be late,"
and
threatens to tell the
attractive single second grade teacher,
upon whom
he has a semi-secret crushing,
to which
we two devils scream out,
"oh please, oh please"
knowing she will find it quite
charming, and maybe even him,
tooing,
the single attractive father-man
who, could be ripe for a
twoing
><
and poppy twinkles,
thinking that no
matter what you
call it,
that thing,
is all-around and
in~between us while
he changes the young lady's
sheeting
Sep 18, 2025
Sep 18, 2025 at 2:31 PM UTC
I'm just getting in the bath,
Someone else wrote the letter,
I don't want to make a. Mess.
Draw me the water
I point at the tap
Burden no family
Hold my head under icecaps.
Merkel Cells, diluted sensation,
The end of fingertips cant feel your
Flesh.
Shriveling in the cold,
Shivering to stop freezing,
But I cant. What am I doing?
Can I want this now, errectores pilorum erected.
Have I set motion to,
Cogs in a watch I cant adjust.
my lungs mark absolute zero
this is me sitting in chemistry class
english
10th grade
asking sam to suffocate with me
every alvioli is pinned by ****** as thick as knitting needles
my chest is permafrost
my sternum, antarctica
the ribs hollow out
capillary beds lose all the haem
out of their erythrocytes
I'm losing St. Elmo's Fire.
The baths still panting out,
Water roars, gushing spout.
Proud the current sweeps me through,
The porcelain lining this white hell bathroom.
It's bone cannot hide from my blood,
As if I'm isotope 226 of Radium.
Heat seeking marrow.
My serum is Hodgkins Lymphoma,
Tearing through sheeting tile,
Like a young cancer child,
Afflicted,
Leukemia,
No chance,
No good blood left,
To let.
Soon, it will all be gone, and the rivers that
freeze in my arms, and the ribs that are icicles
form, and the atrial canal is not like Venice,
it is the Rhine in winter, the Volga during
the solstice.
Spring will never come again.
Spring slipped its head into the bath water, like my own.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 11:34 AM UTC
O peaceful moon, shining gently o'er the fields,
In your soft light I see a tree, a hedge, a glistening pond;
And the soft night sounds of rustling reeds and swaying boughs
Intermingle with the nightly warfare of a million creatures.
But hark! From the new housing estate across the park
There comes a rather different sound. Through an open window
Comes the healthy thwack of flesh on flesh and muffled shrieks of joy
As Isaac and Wendy Bumsenfotze indulge themselves un peu.
Isaac's got his gasmask on, and his rubber flippers too
And (speaking candidly) looks an unattractive proposition
Especially now his skinny chest towers o'er his massive ********
All four mighty manly inches of it from tip to curlies.
Lying trussed up on their bed, atop its needed rubber sheeting,
Lies Sam, their well-trained patient pedigree crossbred donkey,
Upon whose good-natured, hirsute, unsuspecting person
Nameless atrocities have often been performed in Eros' name.
What are they going to do tonight? I bet you'll never guess.
Well, Wendy's strapped her ***** on and intends to use it first
On Ikey's waiting well-lubricated back end
And then it's Sam's turn and ***** the R.S.P.C.A.
And while Sam is getting poked by loving Wendy,
Old Ike will not be idle: camera-phone in one hand
And mail-order sjambok in the other, he'll record
Their motions and lacerate them both simultaneously.
Underneath his gasmask, Isaac gets a bit sweaty and excited,
And once their party's over all three will doze off:
A truly lovely scene. But they will be soon by woken by
The morning sun glittering on Wendy's cast-off legirons.
Dec 24, 2014
Dec 24, 2014 at 11:45 AM UTC
Sleeping rough
like a leaf blowing
across the pavement.
never knowing
where I'll settle
before the breeze
of others discontent,
brushes me from
my resting place.
I wonder like a cloud,
never stopping
in one place.
I'll never rain down,
all that's kept inside.
I'll never have
a sliver lining.
Just one with hues
of regret, of better times.
You can hear
the rustling
plastic sheeting.
The breeze is light here,
We can stay
for a little while.
Leaves fallen
from the tree
will never be still.
Ever moving,
Ever restless.
When will we again
see from a higher elevation
other than below there feet
crumpled up like a fallen leaves.
Nov 5, 2018
Nov 5, 2018 at 4:22 PM UTC
The glimmer in his hair, those kaleidoscope eyes,
Isn’t he lovely?
With lustre and humid afternoons
We jumped on plastic sheeting
Till our cyclist’s thighs and drummer’s fringe
Ached for the next day’s meeting.
Yen for one such as you,
Sidled up in the overtaking lane.
A flashing red passed me by, mouthing
‘Mother and child reunion is just a song.’
And with that I wished for you,
Non-existent, imaginary you.
But for now, marmalade sticks together
A household of three companions
As we wait for our January highs
And commiserate November rains.
I’m the one of them who wishes
That she could sing Wonder’s song aloud
To you. Imaginary, non-existent you.
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 4:57 AM UTC
Hail the hobo King sitting on his throne of
A stripped ford, engine no longer their
Dismantled of all that was worth a dime.
His subjects bring offerings of dinner trash
Food, fresh from the dumpster. Given to
Those of ill health and malnourished need.
He sits in clothes matted with his trails of
The moments his feet have hit the pavement.
Of life not as others had the chance to live.
He wandered the land every concrete jungle
Knew him as the hobo King, no crown gestured
His head, only the word, the word of mouth.
Settling disputes of those in homes of cardboard
Of wood and used plastic sheeting sheltering from
Those who would do harm and the relentless cold.
He wonders the streets, knows the secrets of each
City of the unseen spaces where those whom roam
Now lay. The vulnerable have a guardian a keeper.
Ignorance of those who do not see that which in
Doorways sleep, of huddled masses under bridges
Buildings to keep dry and an uneasy sleep.
He is the hobo king a crown of matted hair he
Wears, always does he have time for those
Less fortunate because he is one with the street.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 6:56 PM UTC
I'll write and say same words I've said
ten thousand times before
Until I don't believe
that I believe them anymore
Because riding on this carousel
means spinning one's wheels
into moist ground
thought I had some traction
but it seems I thought too soon--
So I am off of the rails
Off the wagon. Off to nowhere.
'Cuz it's, "Onward, lads,
to one more night spent
covering ground's familiar footsteps
and sheeting snowy sidewalks
in the dollars we don't have."
And we'll lay 'em kinda thick
press our prints in Presidents
pro bono comes advice
from the corners we can't heed,
but por argento comes the cure
we choose to **** our heads with
I'll pick a place, polish my boots
get far as my front steps
where I'll sit until the summer rolls around
and sweat rolls down in sheets
Short sheeted best hopes,
shortened thank-you notes
and lists of ****** quotes
lay around and resonate
on floors and facebooks,
tabletops
in summertime,
when it rolls around
But, now, it's winter
and we're all 364 1/4 resolutions older
--at 33 revolutions per minute,
and 16 ounces at a time,
we can almost cope.
Now, it's winter and the sheets are
still too warm
Now, it's winter and we sheet the
snowy sidewalks
in Presidential faces
in the dollars we don't have
and the cure we **** our heads with
keeps us safely insane
'Cuz in a world built by psychopaths,
the sane don't always last.
And, if I'm the last one out?
I'll sing a song and **** the lights before I go.
Feb 16, 2013
Feb 16, 2013 at 12:46 AM UTC
Like the pages of a book
We took to read an authors mind
Our lines define us
In a way
They say what sometimes we've forgotten
Or neglected
Or reflected upon many times
Our lines tell us the story
Ourselves in all our glory
As we bolted down that hill on a skateboard
And did somersaults on the concrete
Or slid down steps on plastic sheeting
Left bleeding where the board cut into wrist
When it stopped at the bottom
And we didn't
Our childhood misadventures notwithstanding
We are still standing looking back in time
Through our lines
Our cuts and incisions
Our many decisions that left us souvenirs we can never throw away
But never would anyway
Because what else tells stories like scars do?
Of what we've been through
What we've seen to
And come out the other side
Just to hide our reminders
As if we don't find them satisfying
A blemish on our perfect skin
As if there's such a thing
As if you'd want such a thing
Like you'd bin a book of poetry because of its lines
Or throw out a painting because it was no longer a perfect white canvas
Perfection lies in the imperfection
There is beauty in the brokenness
The flaws in the flawlessness
The differences and nuance
That are lined upon our skin
Akin to lines upon the paper
Taper off towards the end
And then the storytelling starts
For what is art if not a story
And what are lines if not art?
Dec 11, 2012
Dec 11, 2012 at 5:40 PM UTC
Pit of eternal darkness,
Festering inside my soul,
Lost to a new sense of bleakness,
This warmth brought to cold.
Regret and sadness from the void,
Feelings that I never felt.
This facade once destroyed,
Feel the pain that is dealt.
Why this pain in my chest,
Stinging and sharply beating.
Is there any cloth or vest,
An armor or sheeting?
Is it possible to go,
Unimpeded by my evil,
To the place were time is slow,
And without this ache so ill.
How can I feel what was lost,
Tucked and forgotten,
Paying for that true cost,
See what my mind distraughted.
Sep 10, 2014
Sep 10, 2014 at 2:21 PM UTC
To Ed
What child were they
When piercing squeal
Grabbed the foreman by the *****
What child were they
When putty tears
Smeared and blobbed
On the sheeting?
Running from
The construction pit
The thrill of sand and truck
Implodes.
Metal **** makes decent scar
That keeps the girls’
tongues a-wagging.
‘Always heed the ‘Keep Out’ signs,’
The stony man booms at the boy;
‘I told you not to wander where
Granite pavement yields to digger.’
Years ago, that child, was I and
Diggers now are doors and roofs;
Then here, one day, my own boy falls,
And blood comes oozing from elbow.
Running from
The construction pit
The thrill of sand and truck
Implodes.
But, how should I, with damaged tools,
Be the
Grafter Dad
He’s seeking?
Oct 18, 2021
Oct 18, 2021 at 2:28 PM UTC
Poem 2
Sweaty Little Fingers
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive.
"That's not a fish! It's a tadpole!"
1,2,3,4,5 once I caught a tadpole alive
I loved the little fella and I wanted him to thrive
but he was too small for me so I made him dive
back into the water.
1 little frog hopping around. I bend and lift him from the ground. I wrap him up all safe and sound in my sweaty little fingers
2! There's another one! Better than the other one! I'm gonna catch him before he's gone so he can be a friend to number one.
3. 2's a company, 3's a crowd. But I were only five and I just didn't really get how you could make a company with only 2 people working there (true story). So I picked up another one.
For after all, I've already got 3. I've never held four frogs before! Tiny little forelegs held gently down, just so they can't hop around.
5 little frogs staying alive.
Singing "I, I, I, I'm stayin' alive!"
...Except, they were baby frogs, so it sounded more like "peep, peep"
...And their dance moves were more like...(demonstrate movements of a frog)
Anyway...
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little hopping fellas all alive,
I set off down t' 'ill to show mi mum,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little hopping fellas still alive,
Runnin' all the way and havin fun,
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little hopping fellas just alive,
I have to lean my hands ont' gate t' oppen it
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little hopping fellas ... alive?
I run to mi mum where she sits
1, 2, 3, 4, 5 little hopping fellas ... Not... Hopping.
"Mum?"
"Aww son..."
"What ave I done?"
"Come 'ere son"
"Awww mummy!!! I killed em! I feel like poo!!!"
"It's ok Matthew I know what t' do"
So we went outside and did the best things you can do with 5 non dancing frogs and 10 sweaty little fingers.
We wiped off t'guts ont' garden wall, rubbed em ont, grass and went to build dens out of corrugated, asbestos sheeting instead.
Ah the good old days
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 5:05 AM UTC
Rain coming down sideways
sheeting on the window pane
fogged up glass humidity high
casual conversations earnestly spoken
all the while studiously ignoring
the couple in the middle of the room
Stealing kisses completely
in their own world
oblivious to children's homework and
business people's envy
steaming cups of coffee
can't compete with
heat from their coffeehouse kisses
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 11:23 PM UTC
In a clearing,
amongst the scran 'n frame
of winter's naked trees
that bow this way 'n that
to the capricious wind,
sits the screen house
all closed in with its seasonal wrap,
plastic sheeting translucent like an iced lake,
but vertical and wavy
when the breeze blows through here,
but inside the sun gathers
to collect itself in its own pleasure
and asks the question,
"Why is it so cold out there?"
===
* My best friend from Maine emailed me
a photo of his screen house in winter that
he built on his fifty acre property with a view
of the coast 8 miles away.
Jan 30, 2011
Jan 30, 2011 at 6:35 AM UTC
Sailing Night Queen
He cast and she luffed, her trestles ablaze gently caressed on a breath of summer’s breeze,
Held spell bound she shimmered and shuddered in moons gaze
Her crown seized diamonds above in endless cosmic miles sprinkled with translucent dusts,
Across the scattered velvet horizon, as above so below diamonds flowed,
And emerald Aurora’s feasted upon a distant lonely night rise
Brilliant white decks and curvaceous bow, lovingly slicing glass voids below
Mysterious and silent, her hull embraced yins cool labyrinths
Her keel a perfect balance, dancing deeply down in sweet sea juices
Stainless rails glittered around her frame, dressings for a queens’ gown
Sheeting tight, he watched his love sail on smoothly, entranced by the endless sparkling void,
His body still,
── immortality is, love bound
© Arnay Rumens / AN T2014
Dec 27, 2014
Dec 27, 2014 at 4:58 AM UTC
Rain, falling in broken-goblet shatters
That splash and ricochet on the sidewalk
Wets my unprotected shoes
And slithers through my stockings
Chilling more than just my feet.
The "Monkey's Wedding" sun peeks through
At intervals to fire up rainbows
In the drops that move too fast to study
Here again and gone again
This dark and bright will blind me.
Rain, now sheeting like a ***** shower curtain,
Cuts off the view of what's ahead
And soaks my flimsy parka.
I never knew an Autumn storm
Could smell so strong of winter.
All the leaves that clung so long
Are beaten from the branches
To land on me like snotty tissues
From a nose blown somewhere in the ether-
And I feel tainted by them.
Rain that looks like it can fall for days
In places where its rhythm is unknown
Becomes a dirge as I trudge on
With soggy clothes and cloudy temper
Contemplating years without a Spring.
How I wish my stout umbrella hadn't
Vanished at the party, but I left it
In the hallway when the dancing started up,
And when I headed out into the storm
I couldn't find it anywhere.
ljm
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017 at 10:53 AM UTC
The 101 slopes like a spine bent too long.
Camarillo yawns wide in the morning hush,
valley stretching slow, hills bare-shouldered,
fields glistening, half-asleep, half-prayer.
Lemon trees blink slow, bruised gold in the mist.
Figtrees call a name behind a rusted gate.
Sagebrush whispers gossip through chainlink,
its breath full of stories that outlive the tellers.
To the east, the nursery stirs,
plastic sheeting *****
row tags flutter in the wind.
A thermos, abandoned, rests by a wheelbarrow.
Mud boots, discarded,
stand like sentinels
against the wood plank wall.
No footsteps follow.
I never asked where they went.
Matilija poppies raise their paper-white heads,
and the raspberries, furred with morning dew,
shiver, just slightly,
as if remembering friends
they were no longer allowed to say.
A coffee roaster hummed somewhere distant,
low and steady, warming the wind.
That scent I never could shake,
burnt and sweet.
I could almost belong here again,
but it’s not mine without them.
I worked inside this valley with my back.
With my knees.
With the same hands,
now soft on the wheel,
muscle memory steering roads
as if nothing ever left,
as if the ghosts still ride along.
I pass a strawberry field, stitched in silence,
no voices rising in laughter today,
no corrido escaping from a shirt pocket radio,
no teasing between the furrows,
no calloused hands tossing tools,
only the soft ticking of irrigation
and the hush of work
that now waits for no one.
This silence has been swept, labeled,
nothing out of place but sadness.
I was here with them,
but only as a pair of eyes,
that never opened wide enough.
The strip mall stands like a broken promise,
painted stucco, faded western wear,
alongside roadside markets
missing the opening crew.
Still, the hills lean in to listen,
velvet green with memory,
quiet as folded hands.
Even now, under this sun,
the dust knows who knelt here.
Who sang into the rows,
who fled before sundown,
their names erased from the ledger
but carved into the earth.
And in soil’s hush,
their names still root and rise.
Jun 19, 2025
Jun 19, 2025 at 5:24 PM UTC
He’d lain in the septic, hospital bed,
Was terminal, slipping away,
‘He won’t last forever,’ the nurses said,
‘Will probably go today.’
So they put him on a morphine drip
To ease the man of his plight,
‘He looks so grey, and is on his way,
I think he’ll be dead tonight.’
But deep in the slumbering fellow’s head
There wasn’t a shred of gloom,
A party was raging within his bed,
And filling that hospital room,
There were friends and folk he’d always known,
A neighbour he knew as Jim,
And there in a party dress, on her own,
That wonderful girl called Kim.
Would she even give him a second glance
He’d thought, in a sort of dread,
He’d seen her first at the village dance,
And now she was deep in his head.
Her lips were full and her eyes were brown
And her teeth were even and white,
He thought that his courage might let him down
Then swore, ‘she’ll be mine tonight.’
He nodded his head to a favourite tune
As tremors invaded his pillow,
Balloons were popping all through the room,
He stood by a favourite willow,
And Kim was paddling in the brook
That bubbled and babbled, madly,
He took a breath and a long last look,
He knew that he wanted her badly.
She turned and smiled, and walked to his bed,
And gave her lips to be kissed there,
She shimmered and swayed as his vision fled
And he stood alone by her grave there,
His smile was soft as the lights went out
And a nurse looked over him gravely,
‘At last he’s gone, I knew him as John,
He went to the other side bravely.’
They stripped his bed and they laid him out,
‘I remember his wife,’ one sighed,
‘Her name was Kim, and she doted on him,
It must be a year since she died.’
‘Who knows what happens to those who pass,’
A nurse said, folding the sheeting,
‘I’d like to think they’re together at last,
If just for a moment, fleeting…’
David Lewis Paget
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 11:22 PM UTC
Flowers bloom yearly
then die. We make beds
for beauty, sheeting them
to make love. Lovers coil
wrapping skin, sweating to
make a future enshrined with
devotions to their own.
Damp ground tread on by
feet running to demand what
they want for themselves. Running
over flowers pinking towards the sun;
wild, growing without struggle, until
they are trampled.
Jan. 26, 2009
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 10:39 PM UTC
i had a dream i was crushing jugs of buckwheat honey
beneath my palms, and the plastic fractured and crumbled
apart like wax, spilling across the wooden shelves, piling up at
the edge before sheeting down to my feet, ending in tawny spirals--
that i was fighting with God, who was at the top of the stairs, hidden by the turn in the hallway, doing laundry--and how I stood on the first step as the vision wobbled and knew I wouldn't make it in time--even if I took the steps by threes.
He was saying something, but i couldn't hear him. Something about me, maybe, but the dream was ending. The dream was ending and God was in my house, doing my laundry--
I woke up from the soundest sleep I've had in years.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 9:45 AM UTC
My desires of a dream, in the sheeting of time.
I am wrapped over, by a harsh reality.
A morning sunrise, upsets dark looming eyes of fears.
Gutted by the feelings of butterflies in my stomach.
The knots of being tied to flesh.
Belittled by facts of my experience not reaching up to this word
of Love.
Seems only a word slipping out of the tongue to wet ears.
Pleasurable to be heard by our once youth.
But not of their deserving.
But what of the old, that has impressed the new, I haven’t
the slightest clue.
May 11, 2022
May 11, 2022 at 3:58 AM UTC
The drive home was a blur of tears and rolling landscape.
You called twice, and both times when your face showed up I couldn’t bear it.
I didn’t want to talk to you.
Didn’t want to hear your voice and relive how it sounded,
when you asked me if I still loved you,
and that despite how I felt
you still loved me.
How your voice broke when you choked on our parting words.
The foolish hope in your voice as you kissed me goodbye on our last day.
I wanted to call the earth to rise up over me.
and pull me under.
Despite our many words,
Our assurances,
I struggled to focus on the road through my sheeting tears,
The words dropping heavily from my lips and falling,
To the pit of my stomach.
‘We are not okay.’
And the lists started writing themselves
In a shudder of memory,
Despite my screaming at them to stop,
They settled in clouds through the air of my car,
Even as I refused them,
My lungs heaving on them,
My heart fluttering.
I pulled over.
I couldn’t see.
I wish I could tell you,
To share with you,
What it took to make me stop.
The tyres slowed to rest
As the sounds erupted from me
I was helpless in the tide.
The thudding of fists on the wheel,
the wracking heaving,
the thin rivers running together into roaring falls.
And
as the storm passed
the thin wail threading through the gathering stillness.
I drifted.
In my dreams he was waiting for me.
I ran to him,
fell into his arms and buried my face into his chest,
my hands like claws gripping him to me.
‘No no no no no no’
I couldn’t stop the words pouring from me, a last desperate refusal,
that I didn’t know the answer.
‘It’s not supposed to go like this, you were meant to stay. You were supposed to be the one! What’s wrong with me? Why doesn’t it work?’
I felt myself separating and heard the pieces of me ****** around our feet.
And you just encapsulated me, warm and golden,
you kissed my crumbling hair.
I couldn’t look at your face,
too afraid
I’d see the cracks forming in your skin.
You didn’t say anything,
just talked without words like you always do,
speaking about a sadness,
a love,
an acceptance.
Peace flowed from you and steadied the ground,
my shaking legs,
my shattering body.
I wept and tried to crack as the warmth held me together
and then,
started to dissipate.
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 6:15 AM UTC