"sloughed" poems
Routine tests
failed
Number Four reactor
Walls melt, floor buckles
Gamma disaster
one half million men mill
by the banks of the Dnieper
Level Seven Event
Unprecedented disaster
Flesh sloughed off
Rounding the corner
cellular structure instantly scrambled
eggs toast and jelly
Gaze upon the elephant's foot
Bathe in green glowing brilliant stochastic calculation
Mutant dogs roam the tainted halls of Prypiat
Disparities reflect
true death toll unknown
Concerned Scientists shed their lights
on the encircling environment
Glittering glass carpets coat abandoned streets
Creaking Ferris wheel slowly turns into madness
Toxic twin of Fukushima
Thyroid Leukemia Cellular Damage Tumor
the caustic clouds still settling today
Generation after generation
dead women and children
Global impact particle spread
none have been spared
even into tomorrow.
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 5:07 PM UTC
I think I've been a little lost lately.
Maybe more than a little.
This dull ache takes shape of your voice.
It lulls and tugs repeating familiar soothings
Past words of comfort now are readily sharpened
As I close my eyes and attempt to drift
Yet, I am tethered to the waking hours
How I weep for neutral slumber
Denial burns a fire deep into the hours
As I evade past recollections of your touch
Floating in bitter melancholy
This eternal blending of the not easily forgotten
Slowly I begin to peel off the layers
My protective armor, now as brittle as parchment
Easily sloughed off leaving the inevitable truth
vulnerability seeps to the bone
Then words that acted as knives
Become my salve as I (defeated) apply
Wrapping myself in the old familiarities
Gently cursing you (me) for feeling so raw.
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 11:33 AM UTC
If you ask me, he lit the match that set the Moon on fire
It’s not a myth; I was there, when I had no home
And I walked in Saturn’s ring rain for so long it sloughed off my skin
I marched, trying to flatten the crater I’d made
Because I was ashamed of it
I was the last meteor to hit his heart; the loudest
But that was so long ago
The quietest revolutions are usually the most violent
If you ask him, I smelled like Genesis and Revelation from the inside
******* insatiable
I slathered honey on my cheeks and boiled my blood
so hot until my arteries turned charred black
I licked my wounds from the impact and discovered just what the hell was poisoning me
If you ask me, I didn’t know him last night and I won’t know him on the last night
But my God, he inspires me
May 22, 2019
May 22, 2019 at 8:28 PM UTC
Please.
Avert thy gaze
lest you want me
to place my eyes
upon your very soul
********** you down
to the sparks
in your bones
Stripped bare,
your cells will unravel,
the very tectonic plates
of your being
shifting and tripping
under
the ripe dew of my lashes
Please, do not spread your
silken milky way
of treasures,
all of your precious jewels
exposed to the light
of the darkest night
in mysterious pleasures
For they will reflect
in the blues of my retinas
You will be speechless
for the lack of need
for words
I will only handle them
with utmost care
unless, of course
you want it rough
and flung out into the ether
dashed upon rocks of our
liquid beings
in the mewing
writhing wild
of the dark hours
And I
will take the delicacy
of your petalsilk
and ****** it into
planes of healing
It might hurt,
just by pure release of pain
but I will rock you
after your skin has
sloughed off
to reveal earthen wombs
and ***** and scars
that are only made of the
fibers of our stars
I will rock your
tender vibrations
until your very soul
quakes and crumbles
trembling into the bright
the exposure of darkness
mixed together with light
So let me
gather you up
into the fragile sinews
of my very layers
of flesh
of heartstrings
of broken
and holy
incantations
let me pull you to me
in a whirlwind
of sacred and
blushing
spells
that roll, like
silent thunder
into the potency
of night
Dec 1, 2016
Dec 1, 2016 at 4:34 PM UTC
My body
a carcass
to be sloughed off
in death
like a crab
sheds its shell
or a butterfly
it's chrysalis
finally free
Sep 7, 2012
Sep 7, 2012 at 6:14 PM UTC
The cause of ignition is inconsequential,
no trigger to let loose the hammer- Only,
I become a passenger, a **** cur.
Softly as a dancer, on swells of change,
undulating to the jangle and clink
of lives being unlaced,
splayed apart in bitter irony,
displaced into objectivity.
You take it personal,
as if, I am just a faltering piece of personality.
Dropped like salt in the Devils eye,
I'm just over shoulder- needing the fall
into comforting familiarity.
I'm unfeeling, mute and defensive-
peeling self back to where we merge.
At the base I know I am one
but cruelty makes our hands feel like four.
I am my own dark passenger depersonalized,
sloughed off in stress and
bound in unrecognizable life.
Apr 20, 2013
Apr 20, 2013 at 4:33 PM UTC
the life I had
the one unmade
by knots of love
bound and gagged
for all my failings
take the blame
there is no mending
hearts estranged
layers sloughed
to make for new
leave behind
what I can't use
in forgiveness
find recourse
release the tether
of remorse
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 11:18 AM UTC
she says I'm too young,
but sadness manifests the same
so I place my broken jaw
back into its broken place
a modern epimetheus
dragging my prudence by the reins
confronted with the trouble that'd been steeping
for years on the fire
and like the ferris wheel that spun every summer
that I lost interest in
as I sloughed more and more of my childhood skin
I look off into the fog, salt and sand
'n the moon perched so highly,
a king in the sky
sending off its armed stars to cut through the night
****** from this nonage fantasy
by the bitter taste of tobacco in my mouth
maybe I can't love anyone
not yet
Jun 22, 2018
Jun 22, 2018 at 12:53 AM UTC
I sit here again
with a beer and a cigarette
communing with a lost soul
my own?
someone else's?
I read scripture and the
words dance around me
a thousand flights of fancy
on the page
my incense burning
this pure incense burning
this pure understanding
of the cruel nature
of humanity
of friends, heroes, lovers
I write it all down
try to solve it
it stands before me
a picture of my steps
to this point
I have reached the point
of unabashed unregulated
distorted reality
my daily life
the breathing
the eating
the sleeping
it doesn't seem any more real
than this life I live
in my head
or somewhere in my heart
and I long to touch the
part of me that is real
but I am so disconnected
flowers in the winter still grow towards the sun
and such is my soul
leaning leaning
toward the everlasting source
reality fails me
and lights go dim
and I cause the moon to glow for a light
somewhere in this dark night
and I can't stop believing in a God that doesn't exist
but which pushes further down this tunnel into the hell
of my eternity
and I can't
find simplicity
can't find purity
it's all convoluted
I hate the game
shifting pulling
begging for release
and somehow I am
an ember in a fire
bent on burning out
forever
and I have a soul
I have a heart
someone acknowledge me in this newspaper grey world
I am flat lining
where will I go after
this life has sloughed off my skin
I know I am endless
and I am bound for a world
where opinion doesn't taint reason
and somehow
I will be there
where the sky meets space
I will be there
somehow.
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 7:20 AM UTC
For some reason
I remember Snoopy
—Don't ask me why
For I couldn't tell you—
I remember the Snoopy t-shirt
She wore
And that I got really excited
Because I love Snoopy
It's strange
What you remember
What bits and pieces you keep
I remember her reading
Shyly spilling words at the front of the room
And everyone
—Everyone—
Leaning in to hear
That soft, enchanting voice
I remember keys
Lots and lots of keys
A whole hand of them, in fact
An art project I watched emerge
As she wielded a hot glue gun
It's mostly the poetry I remember
—And her smile
But who doesn't?—
I can see her standing at the mic
Enthralling her audience
Mesmerizing them
Keeping them hanging on her every word
She was a star
There was no doubt
A poetic star
We talked through her poetry once
Tweaked it here and there
Changed some tenses
Fixed some commas
But most importantly
We decided
That when "night sloughed off its veil"
It should be day
Once more
Nov 27, 2010
Nov 27, 2010 at 6:33 PM UTC
Miss Haversham has shaken
off the cobwebs and the deadly dust.
tore down the tattered curtains
moth-eaten and frayed
She’s flung open the windows
thrown away the detritus of decay
into the path of passing winds
napery tossed down to the garden.
Even the mice have run for cover
as she tears off the raggedy sheds
of stained satin and be-ribboned lace.
She stands naked in the barren room
Estella has prepared a soothing bath
perfumed rich with oils and fragrant attars
to steal the acris stench of unwashed years
coaxing the arid brittle crust away
saving the soft delicate skin beneath
viciousness, sloughed smooth
and vengeful purpose passes.
She is reborn a Botticelli Venus
standing in an open shell
long hair shining and wrapping around
her creamy skin, voluptuous
curvaceous, slippery with life
newborn yet wiser for the years
of reflection, ready to deflect
romantic nonsense and live
free and breathe again.
© M.L.Emmett
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 4:39 AM UTC
PAST
The lonely kid who didn’t have friends because of an overbearing mother
The rebellious teenager who wouldn’t go to church
The high school theater ****** who sloughed his grades for acting
The high school senior who graduated by some miracle
The gas station attendant who hated his job
PRESENT
The half-man mess of emotions trying to grow out of childhood
The last minute student who’s trying to trying to fix his mistakes
The unemployed wreck of a person trying to find his place
The love-stricken jack of all trades that can’t settle for imperfection
FUTURE (hopes)
The successful IT who just moved to the United Kingdom
The artist who can accept that his creations are beautiful
The writer who isn’t tortured by a lack of self worth and anxiety
The adventurous romantic who travels the world by his side
FUTURE (fear)
The bitter man who couldn’t let go of all of his pain and hurt
The old man who couldn’t learn to be a part of his own family
The man lying on the bed, neither dreaming nor thinking, just lost
The shell of a man who never tried and only failed himself in the end
Apr 25, 2012
Apr 25, 2012 at 3:25 PM UTC
city heat in hard
black attire, superconductive
glow of a serpent chasing
its tail.
asphalted lay of holy land--
whose bedraggled pulse snorts
in ****** laughter.
roadside augurs fester while
tying the laces of traffic, through
passed out archways.
bird's beaks are broken open,
in mad waterless monologues.
as the nucleus of this wizened apple,
casts oblique shadows... for curly cue-ing worms
flirtatious doom.
sped billboards imminently flattening the world,
under a Columbus-blue sky.
going, going...gone!
ice cream trucks mangle dueling theme
songs, sloughed off by sensational tides of kids.
distraction's lustful lick, an informationless
tombstone busy with curves.
here, whole-body shaves of renouncement...
and steady showers of salt, will make
worthy the truest Himalayan meditation.
Jun 17, 2018
Jun 17, 2018 at 12:34 PM UTC
He wanted to drown
Not in liquid, but in sound
Raucous rapture bellowing beneath
Hands too heavy to hold his own
Heartbreak.
These lions labeled ladies
Making ****** hearts sing.
The candid caucus of cartographers
With eyes too cold to cry
Mapping and marring,
Partitioning paradox with every stroke
Witless wizardry without
Love and longing.
In a circus tent he found
That circuitous catharsis
Amid tremulous trapeze swinging
Watched by the sloughed skin of sinners
Vice and virtue muddied by malice.
Exploratory tongues
Giving preface to loneliness
Too tranquil to be twisted
Too torpid to be tangible
Romance recondite,
Sold to us by our world
Leaving us with nothing but
Fantasy and
Broken bones
Jun 18, 2014
Jun 18, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
Our thoughts are pure without any body
Or clothes hiding one, in the trees or sky
Or by wall peg to hang its tale thereby.
Our body is cloth cast off and away.
No tail hangs by this body perfect pure.
Its meaning burns as food in intestine
Its light envelops trees and hills for sure
But in the end, is just sloughed off skin.
Beyond hills of clouds we wear another
To hide nakedness of skin from our thoughts
There we emerge from all-knowing mother,
Entangled in philosophical knots.
Our body is earth of dust seeking sky
Looking for soul that leaves it high and dry.
May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012 at 12:37 AM UTC
i pick up the instrument
cold but not aloof
angle and roll my wrist
watching one thin voltage of line
zip up and down
from tapered metallic crown
to broad black foot
glint of bald brilliance
swimmingly alone
one singular streak so very true to itself
reacting to this act
uncut
struck
am i
by the lean careen
i am unstuck
agreeing to its scheme
exact
cupped
i fashion myself
written down
code scrolling upon my being
informing conduct
with form of fury
it glows with obligation
it knows no theory
i do not try
i let it scry
history's sloughed golden bones
hover above vision's groan
i slip it in the inbetween
wings shook violent
no longer lame
ferocity of aha gained
two saturated pools
consent and
circle the hurt drain
only hue of heal of remains
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 4:13 PM UTC
Not a woman,
on a dust dry morning
death put it's flag in me
bones crossed
a line, thin
you tread
as I sat up
in a ghost white sheet.
Not a woman,
moon-mad and haggard
full to the top with drugs
a lizard stuck in it's half-sloughed skin.
Not a woman,
on a dust dry morning.
Oct 18, 2018
Oct 18, 2018 at 1:15 AM UTC
This woman’s love
Never caught up in the honeyed rush
As his gaze rests on the rhythm of her
Breath caught faltering
Lace at her breast can’t hide the fervor romance
The ephemera of blushed lips at fluted throats
Where bejeweled birds hover
Translucent
The summer luster of flitting wings
A dalliance in honeysuckle heavy with nectar
Fruited blooms and dew drop studded vines
The promise of heady mornings resonant with expectation
Of the day.
A fawn panting at the feet of Diana
Chase this dreamy ecstacy
Fling logic from a cliff with eyes wide open
Braced for impact and giddy for that little death
This woman’s love is war.
The ragged standard on the battlements
Bload soaked and stained with the sweat of my brow
Red earth and grit under cracked nails scrabbling
For one more split seed to sustain me.
This woman’s love is hard fought harvest
Wrestled from fallow ground
Ribs distend from weighted heart and lungs that burst
Feral words held hostage
And hips surrendered to the burden
Of flesh and bone made one
Knit in darkness before I knew you
A legacy that sprouts wings and fangs
And eats its way out through my soul
This woman’s love is birth and death
And all the sobbing chaos kept from you behind clenched fists
I would rather drown in the maelstrom than bring darkness
To blue eyed hope
This woman’s love is the slow decay
Of selfish dreams
The sloughed off mantle
Little girl dreams and daisy chains in trade for knowing
We created something beyond our selves….
Life will not be denied its effervescent bloom
As halos form in our hair and life becomes the salient blur spinning
Remembrance and forgetting
This woman’s love was worth the battle
Days settle soft at my feet
I obey gravity and the hope of little things
Babies in my arms…
Your happiness is my own and I win
This woman’s love
Is you.
TL Boehm
09/27/2013
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 2:07 PM UTC
My mind is an unquiet graveyard;
uninterred mistakes stare up from their open barrows
Milk eyes clearing to glass
As the anxious banshee crosses over them
keening notes drifting
linen strands of her raiment twining around their wrists
Dragging sloughed skin into the murky light
Of repeated examination.
I could be a queen of solitude
if not for this.
If Pandora's voice box were broken
hinges rent, screws loosed from their cavities, wood split
the demons might still, displaced.
Hope is not the last thing in my throat
she was the first to go
with a song unsung
an alto never strong enough to last
beyond the first few flakes of oxygen
I inhale in the morning.
Aug 14, 2021
Aug 14, 2021 at 10:36 PM UTC
strike sparks off the hill
tumble down charged, fall
an electric river.
Captured photon tracks
dot glass, world atom
accelerator.
Lost particles,
paper thin blanketed
homeless huddle
in doorways.
Tiny explosions
of heaven's tears
across the nailed lake.
Day ends as fishermen
fold up their green chairs
by a splashed evening water
glowered, puddled.
LURED BY RAIN AND SHADOW
navigate by rain,
gobbets in motion,
their rhythmic fall and beat,
every drop a note,
on pavement,
tarmac, wood,
tile, hollow metal,
close your eyes,
listen to the music,
varied semitones,
blind, you navigate
by the landscape
described by percussion.
Can you hear her contours,
tell the leather, lace
and cloth she wears
by arrangement of sound
in the downpour?
A time when you don't
want the rain to stop
until you can inhale
her sweet fragrance.
And open your eyes.
shadow breathes
see how your shadow moves
across the arc of her arm
your shadow breathes to kiss
away the cold up to her neck
across the cool leather couch
she lounges on to reveal more
of her thighs than is sane
for the blood pump inside you
and your lips press into her neck
and the rise of her ******* through
her little black dress, and thighs
that fall open as you kiss an ear.
A ROSARY
of raindroplets down the window glass.
Contemplate the mystery within
each of these splattered dribbles.
Each holds grains, dried sea salt, dust or smoke ascended skywards from water
or land into swirling eddies of air,
each holds dead cells sloughed,
perhaps by lovers fingers, or
by beasts slouching to Bethlehem,
each holds a prayer for life,
a hymn to its origins, a curse
of flood, a blessing of light.
Apr 29, 2016
Apr 29, 2016 at 8:26 AM UTC
The smell of fire was ever fresh on the air, smoke seething in dark grey circles around the sky. Round and round and round, like a patient bird of prey. The concrete bridge felt warm, as if hell lay just beneath its surface. I could remember hearing screams, sounds of shrill shrieking panic. But now... nothing. Nothing but the silent crackle of not so distant flames. I felt warm, feverishly hot. I slowly turned my gaze to my arms, half expecting to see a half blackened skeleton with skin sloughing off by the fistful. I saw soot, soot and sprinklings of ash covered me. I looked like a snowman made in hell. Dante must be laughing right now. The world might be burning down around me right now, but the only thing I could think of- was how badly I wanted to say "boo!" My sheared lungs tried to chuckle- and I instantly regretted it. My body immediately slumped, as if some great god had wistfully flicked it from where it slouched against the bridge in a fit of whimsy. I would have laughed had my throat not suddenly erupted in flame. I swear I could feel the embers dotting my air canal lighting up like fourth of July fireworks. Holy **** Ouch is a ******* understatement. As the pain slowly started to subside, somewhere within my now crumpled heap of a body I got will power to open my eyes again. My mistake. Not 10 feet from where I lay- curled into my best imitation of a ball- lay the ash coated corpse of sloughed skin and splintered bone that I knew as Anna. I screamed. And this time, the agony couldn't stop me.
Oct 15, 2015
Oct 15, 2015 at 4:18 AM UTC
White feathers of snow tufts
plume themselves upon icy branches
marred by frost's biting advances,
stoicly waiting to be sloughed.
Rainfall in a torrential downpour
crashing upon all of the branches
cascading waterfalls of second chances—
again and again, drop to the forest floor.
Sparking flickers of light through clouds
can only barely illuminate the kestrel
that finds fit to prey on the sparrow I let slip.
Midsummer draping me in a lethargic shroud
swaddled around heart and lungs to slowly settle,
the lucky charm momentarily escapes my grip.
Apr 24, 2023
Apr 24, 2023 at 10:53 PM UTC
A snake sloughed its skin, draped it on an apple tree branch and slithered on its carefree way.
A fox passed by first, sniffed and realized that the snake skin held no value.
A wolf heard of the parched snake skin hanging about, but shunned it as it had no blood.
Man took the snake skin and sewed a fine pair of gloves for his lily-white and innocent hands.
Oct 9, 2015
Oct 9, 2015 at 5:14 AM UTC
A demagogue is loose upon the land.
Draw fast the curtains and switch off the light,
Mothers keep your children close at hand.
What is that odd footprint in the sand?
What sloughed skin glistens in the night?
A demagogue is loose upon the land.
Mark well that stranger tall and tanned
Whose smile conceals white teeth that bite.
Mothers keep your children close at hand.
O do not accede to his demand,
Prepare instead for instant flight.
A demagogue is loose upon the land.
Things may not go as we have planned,
The world feigns deafness to our plight.
Mothers keep your children close at hand.
We've felt the breath, observed the occult brand,
Now all the facts assemble in plain sight:
A demagogue is loose upon our land.
Mothers keep your children close at hand.
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 8:27 PM UTC
Once bound in steel inviolable
repression bands are soon unlocked
when influenced by passions rule
which previously firm pride forbade.
Already drawn to fully span
the sadness sloughed and soon replaced
to manifest the plighted faith
by novelty of love’s first bite.
Dec 24, 2018
Dec 24, 2018 at 9:42 AM UTC