"skewering" poems
child of two moons
the harvest wheat grows
diamonds
on its stalks
daughter of the broken king
your carousel’s chained bears and albino
peacocks scream at night for
their release
lonely lover
the keyhole is rusted since he last
touched you
the oil getting rancid
martyred saint
your doe heart has an arrow of Cupid’s
skewering through a demon’s
confession written in fire
weeping widow
your maid took your cup of tears
to water the lilies giving
root at his grave
sanguine seamstress
do not stitch the bird’s
wing that has bashed
out its brains
non-existent soul mate
your fingerprints stain
my poems
with star grease
lover whose number I lost track of
I feel your footsteps ricochet
within my bones please
stop running I’m trying to sleep
Mar 23, 2014
Mar 23, 2014 at 7:03 PM UTC
Gracefully over the squares, as a blonde or a brunette,
she makes moves that not even a queen can imitate.
Always active and taking the initiative,
she likes to fork.
She does it across the board,
taking with ease not only pawns, but also kings,
and a bad bishop or two.
Sometimes she feels like making
quiet moves,
at other times, she adopts romantic moods,
and makes great sacrifices.
But, being hers a zero-sum game,
she often forks just out of spite.
An expert at prophylaxis, she can be a swindler,
and utter threats,
skewering men to make some gains.
Playing with her risks a conundrum,
and also catching Kotov’s syndrome.
Nonetheless, despite having been trampled
by her strutting ways
my trust in her remains,
unwavering,
until the endgame.
Oct 1, 2010
Oct 1, 2010 at 1:37 PM UTC
I cannot explain all the pathetic measures
my eyes will take to avoid your gaze,
all the paths my legs will journey to avoid bumping into you on my way home.
All the ways I knead my hands to the bone and all the toothpick excuses skewering my tongue.
And I cannot explain the way your presence deflates something inside my chest.
I don't know what to do with all that empty space. It echoes.
I fill it with the thimble's worth of pride that I scrape together,
every meager flake of validation I pick from the floor. I shovel slopping handfuls of sawdust
to try and soak up some of the shadows
but everything dissolves in that oily void, green and hideous.
God, it echoes, and everyone hears it.
I muffle it with my radio silence.
I look at you and I see everything I hate about myself
under a microscope.
Every blemish, every scar, every gaping hole
that you lack.
Stop, look. Here. Wrong.
Hear?
I blind myself with radio silence.
I don’t know how to live with an eternal reminder that I am incomplete.
You, and the place you hollowed without even knowing it.
Green and monstrous.
It echoes and everyone hears it.
I love you, but I cannot explain my radio silence.
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021 at 3:38 PM UTC
I wonder if you're in his arms right now
And it makes me
Sick.
It's been nearly a year
And it hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It hasn't gotten easier.
It always did wreck me, that I could wake up in the middle of the night
And wonder if you were in bed with him
Right then.
It always destroyed me
Because I never got that.
I never shared that with you.
You...
You were the only person
I ever wanted to sleep with.
And yet
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
You weren't the first.
Because you left.
The night it happened
I never told you I cried
Because you weren't the first.
(I wonder if I will cry
Every time.)
I wanted you to think
That I didn't care, that I could do what you did.
But inside
I never felt a thing but empty
And I will always be devastated that
You weren't the first.
And maybe
Maybe you won't be anything
At all,
Maybe I will never be that close to you
Ever.
And that's why nights like this
When I sit alone and wonder
If you are with him
Right
Now
Crush me just like always.
And inside I can feel my bones crack and splinter
Until I'm a pile of twigs and dust
And I change the channel on the television instead
Of splinting them back together.
Because I sort of want to stay crushed.
Because you are still
The only person
I want to be that close to,
The only person
I want to have
All of me.
My skin belongs to you
And to this day whenever anyone else touches me
Part of me secretly wants to push them away.
And I know I will have to live with that
Through your love affairs
Your marriages
Your children
Your divorces
Your choices
Your life.
I will have to live somehow
With that beating right next to my heart
Knocking it out of time, hitting it like a punching bag.
Tomorrow I will notch my chin higher.
Tomorrow I will smile.
Tomorrow I will be strong.
But tonight?
Tonight I don't want to pretend
I'm okay with it.
And no matter how high I turn the volume on the tv,
No matter what I read or listen to or draw or write,
I know that I will not be able to drive from my mind
The skewering thought
That maybe tonight
You are in bed
With him.
Nov 29, 2013
Nov 29, 2013 at 12:04 AM UTC
Rubber soles squeak without pretense on air
Fills the floor and the dwellers' ears
With the simple note,
Deafens them all with empty afterechoes.
Not a single meanderer would care if he
Pulled out a gun.
Instead he pulls out a knife
(a paring knife to be exact)
And selects a chair near the door.
Begins to shear the hour.
The knifeblade gleams behind his eyes,
Skewering seconds,
And he continues not to exist,
Murdering minutes.
Someone physically there remarks a draft
So he rises to shut the door,
But reconsiders and retreats
Back to his homestead seat.
Crossed arms and crossed legs.
However evilly uncomfortable,
The figure must be statuesque like the air must be.
Fifty-eight. Fifty-nine. And then sixty arrives
And he rises like a seagull in an operating room
In a grand gesture. He smiles to no one and
Retreats back to his burrow or wherever he lives.
But no one considers old, mad Mister Gray
Though he comes and sits queerly there day after day.
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 7:14 PM UTC
true submitting to demands of neurosis curves to the sound of the force of the force fed horizontal forced impressionable for back ache for mystic soliloquies or morsels of black fungi distilled fat and oils silver obsidian dragons dust agony panoply of **** feeding axis and disturbed screaming mosquito
ledges crumbling arts dissolving back arching needle spine spinning hovering roaring crackling cumulus demands
ideal reduced form mountain shivering clapping breaths maximum fulfilled broken bones and shattered psyche forced unconscious patterns in vicious tongues in absolution watered and paint plucking ******* abbreviating one in out and rage deciding or stumbling into oblivion some decisions or preternatural prophecies fueling dueling serpents arrange pedantry forced entry excessive force forcing logic skewering shaming wailing panting wasps
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 11:06 PM UTC
I learned bravery when my first kiss
Was the one who used force
Who took advantage of my developing body
And turned my morals into mind rot
When my body became cavernous
With stalactites and stalagmites skewering me from the inside
And my heart poured out through a hole
Like soup
And you
Swallowed it whole
Post Script:
You devoured me on first sight
You saw my craving for knowledge
And my body as an advantage
You did not know this then
You gave up your current
For a new model
Gave me letters and flowers
And then trouble and hate
Pain and ‘no lipstick’ ohh wait that was the other guy
It matters not because you both fall into the same category
Mistake
Your strength could never match mine
Because I grew from my past
I learned from my flaws
I turned them into armor
While you turned them into excuses
You left me broken in other ways,
But not as broken as you’ve made yourself
You turned to drugs and alcohol
Looking for answers in acid
And lost your soul in the process
Not that you believed in one in the first place
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 1:48 AM UTC
My heart writhes of pain, in the chilling fire
The fire for which she gathered, tinder
My quill and his ink froze, in the chilling fire
The fire which she gathered for my pyre.
My vellum sits bone-dry, in the chilling fire
Her fire, which burns my voices to cinder
Every fortnight, I see her glistening eyes
Reciting a monotonous sonnet of grey
That sonnet would never ever suffice
In sheathing me from her stagnant voice
As she smothers my final embers of life
As she “graces” me staleness from life’s fray
Her brushed hair, smooth in bronze.
Her florid face, baroque and supple.
Her lips, curled to a fluttering smile
Her gait, silent, steady and subtle
Her eyes, icy daggers skewering my heart
Her fingertips, flames freezing my breathe
I await in void as her hand rests on mine
Glaring the gloaming sky with heavy eyes
She drained my soul into a dead mine.
But... she birthed my precious Daphne
A shallow stream began from my dry eyes
“I miss our waltz, I always did, Ania.”
The ink on my quill began its flows
My heart repose, as my Ania mellows.
But sorrow, clutch me, she was my Ania
I shall see her very soon, in our meadows
We will have our Final Waltz, Ania
Yes, Ania; Our joyous waltz to Follia.
Aug 19, 2020
Aug 19, 2020 at 2:28 AM UTC
I pull my shoulder blades together
and stick out my chest
as I lengthen my arms to spread my wings
and I look up to the sky
as I wear a bullseye
on my back
and I can't see you from behind
but I sense that you're there
and as I inhale the sky
I see my fellows fly
forming a "V"
and I want to take off
and fly behind, on the side
that's shorter than the other
and yes, I know that you're still behind
I haven't forgotten
You with your crossbow
aiming an arrow
squinting with one eye
at the bullseye on my back
and me, I'll squint with both eyes
My left squinting at the sun in the sky
My right squinting in fear of what's behind
and as I anticipate your arrow skewering
the soft spot between my wings
My right eye is surprised
at the hail that gets dumped on my face.
Dec 13, 2011
Dec 13, 2011 at 7:10 PM UTC
Whenever I think of putting pen to paper
Intangible thoughts into words
And translating the foreign tongue of my heart
My body starts to shake, my cold blood begins to boil
And tears fill my eyes, but they refuse to flow
Explaining depression is like trying to conquer writers block
Unfortunately, I suffer from both
To my parents, I’m just stressed
To my siblings it’s typical me
And to my friends, it’s taking a joke too far
My mother says she doesn’t understand
Depression doesn’t exist in her culture, but patriarchy does
So, I smile and say it’s nothing, but the ***** in me rears her ugly head and screams
‘Look at me, don’t you recognise the face you wake up to everyday
The feelings you were taught to stomp out and ground down for your husband’s morning coffee
I am you…’
But the coward in me smothers these silent pleas
My father is more eloquent than my mother
He brandishes words as if they were swords
But throws them like poison daggers, twice as deadly
So, he twists and mangles my words, skewering my perception
The heart’s silent screams turning into never ending tears, turning into rivers of blood
I tell him how much I despise him and how I wish I were dead
But one look at my mother’s stricken face, her warning glare,
Reduces my courage into ash and I degrade myself further with an apology
My siblings are a confusing, unpredictable bunch
My brothers don’t know what’s going on, but they understand
How I envy their innocence and ignorance
My older sisters are more complicated
One is my rock, the only thing keeping me from ending it all
She says she’s been here before, that I need to be strong and that she understands
But that only makes me feel guilty for never being there for her
She’s leaving home soon and all I can think is ‘What about me?’
Our eldest sister is a nassistic sociopath
She thinks she’s helping…
Now I don’t have many ‘friends’, but I do have a Best Friend
When I tell her that I’m depressed, she doesn’t ask me why
On most days, she’s my polar opposite, the Yin to my Yang
She’s as skinny as I am fat, loves horror movies which I hate
She can’t stand anime, this is her only flaw
But on some days our stars align
And it’s eerie how much our life experiences mirror each other
To my other friends I just laugh everything off
As if curing this emptiness was as easy as getting over a broken heart
May 29, 2019
May 29, 2019 at 7:33 AM UTC
What are scars but life lines engraved in my hands, etching across my skin, imprinted on my mind
Ink stains on my slate
Dark shades seared across my face
Permanently skewering my sight.
I squint so hard to see the light my eyes turn red and still nothing
I cry my heart out and see nothing
I light cause a lights my light.
It’s just easier to spring when a cherry blossoms
Jul 24, 2019
Jul 24, 2019 at 1:27 PM UTC
six and one I saw, doubtless
others were in the reeds
the seven sensed I was there, and made their
pyramid wakes on the pond’s surface
before taking flight to flee from me, a two-legged,
wingless, clumsy giant
what fat, finite clump of cells in a mallard’s mind
commanded webbed feet to stir, wings to flap?
somewhere, deep in pink folds in
their perfectly sculpted skulls
hides a memory of what we flat earth
walkers hath wrought
skewering them on crude sticks, roasting their flesh
on ancient, mystic pyres
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 6:08 PM UTC
when he opts for the obvious again
this time I think will be the time
I finally pipe up and say what needs saying
that while I hope this fish dinner
satisfies you the taste of the sea creature
on your lips that salt and vinegar mixture
it ought to be me next to you on the sofa
smiling or laughing at some ****** TV repeat
fork skewering the gone soggy chips
tips of our fingers stricken with grease
but worth it because our hands
will be a ruler’s width apart
and so while I wrap your golden gift
slip the fiver into the till
as you puncture a Coke
I concoct my line of choice
something about fish
or how I’ll batter your wife
Jul 19, 2019
Jul 19, 2019 at 12:19 PM UTC
Like a switchblade my middle finger flashed out
Angry, self righteous, without any doubt.
A weapon or protest stabs innocent air,
skewering injustice and all things unfair.
Well oiled and oft used it stands at the ready,
Resolute, on point and ever so steady.
It leaps forth with such speed I could swear the air sang
with defiant rebellion and an audible twang.
It appears on the seen without much provocation,
except for my own insecure invocation.
Ah those were the days with scalpel like ease
and Errol Flynn skill I’d carve all that I please.
A happily buoyant juvenile revolution,
which had much to do with my evolution.
But now quiet and still in its scabbard it sits.
Tired, wrinkled and dull like my wits
Slightly arthritic and just a tad slower,
My weapon of choice now a disdainful glower.
Are there simply less things that annoy me enough
to expose prodigious digit with a great huff?
Do things matter less with the passing of time?
My insurgent uprisings reduced to sad rhyme.
Has peace come at last to this humble shell?
Tranquility now no more raising of hell?
My memories defiant and still fresh, they do linger.
But now it’s unlikely that I’d lift a finger.
© Copyright 2017 Robert C. Leung
Jan 28, 2020
Jan 28, 2020 at 3:30 PM UTC