"shimmying" poems
oh, my god,
stop praising little girls for being "tiny" and "slender" and "willowy"
for being skinny.
because the scale offers validation
and eating cheetos and twizzlers and cookies and candy without gaining a pound becomes an accomplishment
a sharp and boasting laugh
ha, ha! i can eat all the **** i want
and still be /skinny!/
because a girl will feel pride
in her ballerina legs and bony joints
and guilt
in her best friend wishing she were as small.
because "skinny" stops being an adjective
and becomes a definition.
because being skinny becomes
owning stacks and stacks of size zero jeans
but ******* and shimmying and squeezing your *** into them
(god forbid you buy a size two.)
skinny becomes looking flat in the midsection
but only if you eat triscuits for lunch that day
becomes seeing the outlines of individual ribs
but grabbing with a grimace the layer of fat and skin that covers them
becomes standing with legs spread apart and back tilted and eyes squinted
and looking maybe kind of like a forever 21 model,
until you sit and your thighs melt into huge endless expanses of tissue
becomes avoiding the bathroom scale because you told yourself two years ago you'd never get above double digits.
becomes knowing that most girls would **** for your body, or for the absence of your body - for the carved out spaces where flesh could be.
becomes feeling guilty, feeling ridiculous, feeling ungrateful
becomes never admitting to anyone that you feel anything but skinny.
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 7:38 PM UTC
ELSIE FLIMMERWON, you got a job now with a jazz outfit in vaudeville.
The houses go wild when you finish the act shimmying a fast shimmy to The Livery Stable Blues.
It is long ago, Elsie Flimmerwon, I saw your mother over a washtub in a grape arbor when your father came with the locomotor ataxia shuffle.
It is long ago, Elsie, and now they spell your name with an electric sign.
Then you were a little thing in checked gingham and your mother wiped your nose and said: You little fool, keep off the streets.
Now you are a big girl at last and streetfuls of people read your name and a line of people shaped like a letter S stand at the box office hoping to see you shimmy.
1.6k
Sitting inside a cloud of shisha--
with subtle hints of strawberry shimmying
through the midnight moonlight,
the incandescent embers
radiate from their core
forming ancient runic shapes
reminding me of a time beyond the concept of before....
when elders spoke with ashes in their words
traveling to worlds within looking through
the windows to each other's souls
where the rhythm of a heartbeat
and the melody of breathing cacophonously echos
through our gray matter canyons.
A time when millennia passed by in milliseconds
as everyone danced like a flame grinding on a candle wick
wailing with ecstasy--
every bead of sweat slithering from head to feet
arousing like a maddening kundalini explosion--
a honey-like nectar glowing throughout our body
pouring out of us brilliantly brighter than any white-hot sun!
I think
this might be a reason for my fascination
when it comes to inhaling fire--
despite my earth-natured tendencies
I'm still hypnotized by the first gift to mankind;
light.
Jul 23, 2013
Jul 23, 2013 at 6:41 AM UTC
I look up at the skylight
Rain drops coalescing
The reflection of a few drops
Dancing on the wall
In the breeze
Which is more
A gale
Howling and loud
Outside
Destroying trees
Somewhere
A silvery strand of a cobweb
Dances and shimmers
In the pale sun
Playing hide and seek
The silence in my room
So loud
The thunder outside
So far
The daffodils on my windowsill
Have died and dried
Papery petals, a brilliant amber now
Green stalks greedily still drinking
While the petals thirst
The tops of the trees
Through my window
Freshly showered
Move like a woman
Dancing for her lover
Seducing
Shimmying
And yet
I think of Delhi
Desertlike and brown
Hostile and cruel
The dirt streaked faces
The shining eyes
Of the beggar children
At crossings
The eunuchs who bully
The traffic, the fumes
The noise that deafens
The rich women who flaunt
Diamonds and lovers
The clubs for the haves
The stares from the have-nots
And I come back
To the music of the rain
On the skylight
And the chirp of a bird
Somewhere far away
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 6:53 AM UTC
'I think you know what you need to do'
he says. Shut the **** up.
You don't know what it's like to live
your whole life
walking on ceilings
then have to adjust when the meds
swivel you upright
feet on new floorboards, eyes on old skies.
It's a little backwards, I know
but I'm so ******* ****
& when everything is spinning,
the way my shade of lipstick smoothly glides
under my cupid's bow & the
shimmying twirl of a mascara wand
give me some sense of control.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 9:46 PM UTC
Eleven thousand
three hundred
sixty one miles away
in a place I’ve never been,
you are thinking
of all the places
you have never been
or haven’t been,
some for seasons,
some for years.
A Paris pomegranate sunrise
from the Pont des Arts,
bright colours shimmying
at the pulse of romance.
The blood cell rush of Shibuya,
Tokyo at night among
a river of strange symbols,
blinking TV screens.
Prague dredged in frost,
feet-chatter on cobbles
past the Jan Hus memorial
under a cool periwinkle sky.
Glossy tulips in Bilbao,
metallic curves,
trill of syllables
by the teal Nervión.
I think of you, far away,
same planet, different spot,
the future washing towards us
full of scrambled images
and white noise,
a trickle of hope at your toes,
through my screen.
Dec 28, 2016
Dec 28, 2016 at 4:33 PM UTC
With-
my bites so small they are almost
kisses
lined up like the dead: hands tied, blindfold blinding.
With-
lips that miss a touch by the width of a breathe...
just by that much-
the amount of air it takes to gasp your name.
With-
moist that rushes out of me-
all parts of me
to grasp your parts of you.
Moist from my perspiring shimmying lips-
moist that forms in a valley between my *******
and meets the moist like dew on the hairs of your chest.
With-
tiny bites on your neck right in the soft spot
right below
and right behind
your ear,
mirror to the place I tuck back my hair
nervously
like I do
when I am
With you.
**** your bottom lip like a
honey crisp in tiny bites-
and
savor all the juice that drip
drops
drips from your tongue.
With you, within.
With you
Within.
Sahn
10/10/14
Oct 12, 2014
Oct 12, 2014 at 11:43 PM UTC
I
I'm trying t' find my ID.
I think I'm missing it.
This thing,
This bright, shining light,
It's hiding in my blindsight.
I'm swimming in mist,
Trying t' find ... "I"
First I'm living
In my crib;
Clinging wrists.
Flitting my crib,
I'm Shy
Crying, whiny twit, missing bitty,
With stinky kids, kicking kitty.
I'm missing my crib.
I'm piling thinking bricks with big kids.
Slimy, smirking ***** hiss 'n' spit.
I'm sitting still in ill-fitting shirts,
shirking sight.
Hiding might blind ****** kids crying, "It's billy!!! Skinny **** 'n' smiling in fits.
"Try finding kind kids x"
Finding "whys" in rising minds.
My mind grinds.
I'm kicking tins, spilling drinks.
Sitting in IT,
Sir chillingly insists "it isn't "fly" spilling drinks! "Shy" brings skills. "Why" brings ills."
I'm still shy.
This crib's tiny.
Tiny minds, blind by bling.
Fit chicks with big ****
Thick ****** thinking with *****
I flit this Brit ****
Brisk flight,
I find "I"
Simply shimmying "ir(o)n lik(e) li(o)n in zi(o)n".
In Brit, I'm still shilling it,
Finding thrill in it,
Hiding 'til it lifts.
I'm brisk fixing it,
I'm hiding in drinks,
Finishing in clink.
Trying things,
High by night,
Slinking by, finding light.
Thinking "this is it!! I'm in!"
Tricky light. Light trick. Sight trick.
Lying in my mind
It's still ****
Is it?
His birth...
This child is my kid!
This brill kid!
I'M in this kid!
Big grin :D
First kid is big kid,
Mid kid is silly kid,
Quickly hitch my Miss.
Third kid. This kid, this girl is my girl.
Brill kids!
I bring my bling by flipping kids thinking bricks;
Fixing bits in thinking ink;
I'm finding it stinks.
Kids drink slick skills.
My mind chills with mind filling drills.
Kids grinding, crying spills -
"Sir, it's **** innit?
With missing mining, missing mills,
Im plying skills by filing bills."
I'm plying skills with mind pills.
Mrs "I" is criticising my id
Im minding my Ps n Qs
Biting my lip
Fists tight, shifting slightly
Slinking nightly
This is ****
Hit slight hitch
Hit BIG hitch
"'kin *****
I finish with my Mrs
Kids split 'twixt cribs.
Kids trips fix splits.
Kiss lips ***
"Night night x"
"Light?"
Click light.
Right, "night!"
I'm hiding my ills in girls.
IT pimps, swiping right.
Primp ****
Minging swill.
Fit chick.
Swift flirt.
Flirt, kiss, flirt, kiss.
Big ****
Tight slit.
Milky spit.
Wiping ****
Hiding ***** sight in mind,
I find it sticks.
I drift
Stick tight
Fighting my plight
Grin
"It's 'right"
Missing my crib
My ID
I'm finding my mind
Sticking with it
Fighting silly flirting ****
Try finding inspiring sights
My kids
My crib
My Inking
My Writing
My mind
My eye
I'm kind
I'm "I"
Oct 28, 2016
Oct 28, 2016 at 8:03 PM UTC
Sitting on the cold grass
today makes my stomach
hurt. The sun that would
normally warm and greet
my dreary disposition
only keeps the wind at bay
long enough to play the
jacket game:
Pulling the sleeves of my
royal blue petticoat
with big black buttons,
onto my arms, shimmying
it until the collar rests
at my neck, as a makeshift
cheaper Snuggie.
Then as the sun peeks out from
behind the clouds, warming the
ground, I'm shuffling off the rolled up
blue sleeves, pushing the jacket into
a heap at my feet.
Feb 21, 2012
Feb 21, 2012 at 3:06 PM UTC
The cemetery trees are dancing in the wind.
Shimmying unapologetically
like a chorus line of boozed up
Burlesque dancers.
Some are tall and regal with pointed crowns,
Isosceles dresses, neat and tidy,
Complete with Pine colored tutus.
Whoosh!
Like entering a room sliding
On your knees.
Whoosh!
Like someone breathing fresh life
Into you.
Mysterious but holy,
Divine yet impermanent.
Whoosh!
Strong yet fragile,
Gliding with the wind
In this game called life.
(and death)
Some have solid legs
And big shiny afros,
Showing everyone how
It's REALLY done.
Bump. Grind.
Confident yet elegant,
Bump Grind.
Full of themselves in the
Best way possible,
Bump! Grind!
Living. Being. Rejoicing.
Others have tassels
dangling from their limbs.
Shimmy! Shake!
Shimmy! Shake!
Teasing me with their
Devastating beauty,
Shimmy! Shimmy! Shake!
Revealing my longing,
My passions,
For what?
I don't really know.
Shimmy! Shake!
Feeding me an elixir
Of fresh sweet hope
To drown freely, once again,
In immortal youth.
They all weave themselves
In the wind.
Acknowledging my existence
Through movement.
Using interpretive dance
As a symbolic conversation.
Happy to see me,
Welcoming me to their land.
Welcoming me home.
Welcoming me to
NOW.
.
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 12:07 AM UTC
The shimmying shrubs
The gliding winds
The arm wave of the saline waters
The b-boying frogs
The popping, locking, ducking birds...à terre
Them, breaking into an allegro
The nature was a symphonic metaphor today
A dance lesson, that I did let lose and learn
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 9:17 AM UTC
The smoke of my death certificate fades into the ether of the night
It is not my first.
It is not my last.
The beacon amplifies the smoke
It dances in the gleam of the incandescence
To track its path is to count the sands of the Sahara
It waltzes like a paranoid ghost showering upwards
Shimmying like an epileptic schizoid on a carousel
Jostling in an undefined constraint
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 1:51 AM UTC
It was our 1am rendezvous' that were my favorite secret to keep.
Sneak out, lock the door,
drive to your apartment where you were waiting for me before I raised my hand to knock.
Our greetings were stand offs but even before you turned your back to let me in
my hands were around your waist, my lips to your neck just relishing the chance to be
near you again.
You would snap at me each time I raised my arms to you like a plaintive child
but you came to me anyway
and I pulled you down tumbling into your sheets.
The finale to our sordid dance.
Sometimes we never kissed and simply talked until our lips were chapped
and we were tired of chasing each other's tails.
Other nights you had a hunger I couldn't deny and our words were our clothes
that we shrugged out of and dropped onto the floor.
By 7am I was up shimmying out of your sheets with a kiss on your cheek and nothing else.
You told me you liked how I never looked back every time I left.
I learned that from you.
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 11:01 PM UTC
E.J. pulls the last one out of the box,
slowly now,
with his forefinger
and thumb.
The fore
is square.
Almost cut.
Like he'd taken a box-cutter
to it after inhaling
all that BUD Light
in that dangling,
shimmying
hose in the truck.
The thumb is normal.
He lifts the Pall to his lips
with the deliberateness
of a crane operator
laying the last brick,
before the whole thing
burns to the ground
in fluttering, liquid ashes.
The fore is useless,
so square
that the **** dangles
even when he pinches it.
And E.J.
looks down at it with those watery
fire-choked dog-blue
eyes
and
exhales a
spectre.
Jun 28, 2012
Jun 28, 2012 at 12:41 AM UTC
So bright.
Shining through regret, pain and horror.
Shimmying between the clouds, dancing on the ground.
Tantalizing.
Scary.
Yet, my curiosity is insatiable.
Looming in front and back,
Playing roulette with my days.
I love it.
I hate it.
But I can never get rid of it.
It will always be around me,
I can never outrun it.
My future stands.
Planted.
Firm in it's belief that it will change my life.
Rubbing it into me that this, this is the one thing I cannot plan for certain.
My future tempts me and frightens me all at once.
What else is there to do but dive into the adventure headfirst?
Aug 20, 2012
Aug 20, 2012 at 5:02 PM UTC
I tripped through a life filled with trashed crevices
Leaving me with a holey heart & mind
Tonight I sweep up the rest of my wines
Hearing no voices
Tonight only mine
Alone in thought, taught but not
Form lays dead,
Stinking,
Dead in my bed
She came over last night drunk
Asking to be wed
I said no
And told her to ******* go
She wept as I swept
I laughed at the terror filled tube
As she poked at her left swollen ****
I propped up a book
An insult she invented & mistook
Collapsing transfixed membranes waddle faster then she does
Corpses lay lighter when not embraced by an angel's fun
Towards the end of the night
Toads croaked outside my door
Seemingly & distractedly bored
By this women's torrential teary down pout pour
I poured a drink but she did not drink it
I made her food but she did not eat it
I slapped her face but she did not show pain
I kissed her mouth but she did not kiss back
Our Sun rose,
She stood there still froze
I collapsed on the floor
Grabbing my back, my sack
Exhausted,
I took a naked floor morning nap
I awoke at dusk
To vowels shimmying close with consonants
Similes giving lap dances to metaphors
All dancing like overpaid whore's,
I wanted more
But Form
Who had once stood frozen
Had gone,
Disappeared
Had vanished,
"Never,"
I thought...
"Her..."
I must have been
Soo drunk
Too lazy
Soo stupid
Too young
But at the time,
She wasn't any fun
Feb 7, 2011
Feb 7, 2011 at 8:05 PM UTC
Laid to the tree,
Which shivers with every blow,
A few leaves shimmying down
Before their time,
Their green already starting brown,
Another slash of a knife
Across the cords of the hawser
That binds us in life and love,
An ominous cracking creak
As our hulls inch further apart,
Every forgotten little thing
That means nothing to you
Is a wedge, and even those
That do matter? the forgetting
Doesn't matter to you,
And this is why we are
Diverging and inexorably parting,
Because all you see is you,
Your sole perspective is viewed from you,
No empathy or care,
And when the tree falls,
The moorings part,
And you find yourself alone
On a lonely sea,
I doubt you will understand
But sure as eggs is eggs,
I know you'll say
It's my fault.
Aug 13, 2024
Aug 13, 2024 at 6:38 PM UTC
peak skill wafts milky aroma from ******* Eros they win
an apt pupil dial lates with a twin
thus…two orbital allies – seek carnal *** sass sin
while sunk kin their sockets, they scan yar scenic skin
drawing interest sharp as a pin
while testosterone pump kin
not cease…thus juiced hum ma gin
slicing ether of sea like an ocular shark fin
past yar eyes darting from toes ta chin
where ****** fantasies shift their shape
letting daydream let me lips braise the nape
of neck before shimmying with invisible escape
resorting to atavistic antics per great ape
within me twenty first skein of muscle and bone
especially verboten iced creamy country where
this pal wannabe wants to drone
and in fair weather or foul would pine to hear ya moan
upon me milking tropic of cancer as ye lie supinely prone
regaling tulips and rivulet dribbling over miniature mossy stone
aware when proboscis nearing bulls eye by your purring tone
ecstatic I located an erogenous zone
mentally book marked careful not to slide nor slip
a live as one googly eyed earth linked yahoo excites
pheromones on the outlook for purr act perch per verboten trip
could don role of aim mesh applying his little buggy whip
of ca horse heading to bird in hand
*********** paradise or some other place grand
dill a quaint as would be surmised as this animal
a carnal, excitable, guttural one-man band
seething with hormonal secretions
unfairly forced into a coe wide dill cell bait
coveting to reach the integral female bad land.
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 6:01 PM UTC
Back at the start for the last time.
I get our drinks before you arrive,
£1.10 more expensive than when
we began dating, which sounds strange,
that word, ‘dating’,
it was only convening for cider,
a JD and coke twice a week after work,
you correcting the spelling
of children born post-Miracle of Istanbul,
me in front of a screen
splattered with numbers
imperative to any name but mine.
Now it was amicable.
Before, not at all.
A sort of swell inside me,
a boiling kettle, the shock tiptoeing through me
when you said enough.
I wanted to hurt you. Absurd.
I felt an uninvited sensation,
a sanding of the ribs,
a brain stapled again and again.
Later, I discovered you felt it too,
if not more so. I softened
like a block of fudge in the heat,
the fury dissipating as cigarette smoke.
You walk in; I get a different shock,
a cold jolt inside me, a voice that says
within an hour it will be over,
a footnote on the CV of my twenties,
April 2013 - October 2016.
You look great, more of an effort than me.
Lately, I’ve let myself go, no surprise.
We talk and laugh. I ought to shave, I know.
Joke about late-night Monopoly,
a fraction of our love, always ours.
The realisation it is a first time last date,
the closing of the door, the final word.
For a second, I am enthralled
at the thought of you, naked,
standing in the doorway to my room,
chestnut hair shimmying down your back.
It won’t occur again, not in that room,
not in that flat, not anywhere
besides a flicker of memory.
Our friends are getting married.
We’re not.
I think we both knew
it would crumble before long,
our relationship a headache tablet
dissolving speck by speck.
Pool, like we used to? you say.
Sure. Three games, I win two one.
Could we restart? Turn it off then on again?
I dare not ask.
I leave you to get the tube from Chalk Farm
as the half-blotto strangers
blare delight at an Arsenal goal.
A hug is too awkward,
shaking hands even worse,
but a hug is the gift. No kiss.
Seven seconds.
The back of you is how
I’ll remember you, walking away,
hands in pockets,
not looking back.
Oct 5, 2017
Oct 5, 2017 at 2:52 PM UTC
It’s a heat that skims
off from the ground
and soaks the bones.
Music burrows
into the ears of suited men,
eating calorie-clogged burgers,
dripping onions
and then you’re in
a restaurant with blue tiles
hugging someone you haven’t seen
in six years
and time slips as treacle
under lights
in the bowl you sit in
with UFO’s blooming on the ceiling
like mammary flowers
and there’s a woman
with a bra on her head,
blonde hair like a mini blizzard
as for a moment
a throng of teenagers
in stripy socks
share sweat to Fleetwood Mac,
bees shimmying at something pretty.
It’s a scene you couldn’t picture,
except you could,
everybody has their phone out,
a flurry of colours
and drumming that drums
into your skull
like a shot of adrenaline.
Businessmen outside
swallow wine,
sit on the tube with blue ties
and rustle
the Evening Standard and its headlines
streaked with gloom.
Ticking towards Tuesday,
another man
eats another burger.
The hours pass,
the heat stays,
the music remains.
Jun 20, 2017
Jun 20, 2017 at 10:31 AM UTC
Death undoes itself like a woman undoes her dress
With knowing look and shrewd-salt of beguilement
Of supple shoulders and bared back, of life shimmying
Down the legs of the longest dark road of disappearing.
Mar 8, 2020
Mar 8, 2020 at 2:47 PM UTC
Huddled by the bypass entrance
The sun glared at the Earth's
Asphalt facade, walloping it accordingly
Cameras sat patiently on the
Sign-beams like congregant birds
Waiting to snitch on someone
Behaving out of turn
Those adoring paparazzi
Admonishing, admonishing
Wannabe-rapper-wannabe came crawling
Out of the watering hole
Still parched yet gasping for air
Looking like he'd been swimming,
Looking like he'd been up against a current
That traveled generations wide
"Spare change, anyone,
Spare a quarter, help
Little old me?"
Tsk. - Doors locking
Tsk. - Glass shimmying
"I'm not out here for fun, man"
The whimpering stray
Bitch-slapping the open air
"Well, **** you all, any way"
The drone of throttled engines
Rubber to road and fleet vanishing
He's melting, on the wing of the onramp
He is being drunk whole
"Man, **** you all, any way"
An echo's trace as the ghost ships depart.
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 5:09 PM UTC
Are everything
But they know sleep
Until the mirage ends
They weep
A glimmer of hope
The faintest smell of dope
Is shimmying rope
A disgust of sports relegated to
The earth
Crying
Jun 23, 2018
Jun 23, 2018 at 1:25 AM UTC