"sloughing" poems
a quote of Bernard-Henri Lévy
~~~
the divers’ recovery, diverse,
shipwrecked salvage from different locations,
auctioned to the highest bidder,
tho the excised excerpts are exceptional,
none come to do the bidding,
for the provenance of words
belongs to all, and to none
~~
“so oft we trifle words,
expel them from the country of our body,
without passport and earnestness,
as if they were the cheapest of footnote filler,
day tourists, to be treated as leavings,
refuse for daily discardation,
barely noting their fast comings and faster disappearance,
but leaving not, a mark of distinction”
“the addicted pleasure words granted to we privileged few,
like every enslaved soul to the mind, which I am, I am,
evening dreams, midnight thinkings, sunrise seeings,
how can I infect and thus protect the young to the liberty
to love the crafted content of our human essence to better
comprehend that a moment caught on tape of our shared
words is a holiday, a celebration for the ages...and every molecule,
becomes a human tuning fork in concert, in pitch identical, in blood tainted with the simplicity of we are all the same, only words, this will transmit”
“murmur me, with soft downy charms,
these words discovered
recoursed and intended well to
pointedly offset and contradict
their very own tumultuous discovery uncovering,
tear tongue me
with calming, lapping word wages,
hymns harmonious and fine homilies,
a call, a request,
a bequest
to sedate my shrill life
“some cells, microscopic, preserved digitally,
aged to imperfection, thrash my eyes,
making me speak in tongues I do not recognize,
but fluently possess, no wonder there,
the memory place fairly empty,
room aplenty for passerby's and the imagery
of the vaguest of dearly departed
skin is not the only mot shed,
sloughing of woeful words”
“speak them slow and distinct,
for they arrive slow to you,
a trickling of refugees for your sheltering,
harbor them as full companions,
protected by natural law,
provision them well,
prepared and ever ready for a quick departure,
moor these words at the embarcadero,
for the next restless leg of endlessness,
which they themselves will inform you
will last longer than eternity,
long after there are no humans to speak them”
Mar 27, 2019
Mar 27, 2019 at 4:55 AM UTC
I see an angel slouching,
In the sky, as if heaven
Were so heavy.
Seabird, where do you come
From? Is the earth too much,
To take all in?
I know how you feel sailing,
Above it all yet drawn too,
As I am drawn.
Wraith, I want to feel that place
You are winging from here,
As now, forgetting.
*But it's so hard to fly,
Unlike you, just easily,
I will close my blind eyes
And trail your mission starry.*
I will tread in air backwards,
Deep into sky heavens,
Sloughing all the way.
Jul 8, 2016
Jul 8, 2016 at 12:48 AM UTC
every moment
is continually shedding itself;
sloughing off the skin of time,
dying, into the past,
to freshen in exposure,
this moment.
to live, really
to breathe, by
impermanence.
constantly transforming,
the body is never solid,
here, there, as atomic flashes,
electrons popping in and out
of existence,
an appearance made,
to depart, in a flicker.
all turns off, like this,
always, eventually,
momentarily.
threshed and stripping
bare chaos
voraciously burns,
returning through extinguish
on smokey black horizons.
sinking, into
tendrils weaving,
knitting by fray,
tapestries engendered
by enveloping decease.
you feel this
don’t you?
unconscious
as much of it may be.
it is the nearest of near,
and dearly intimate,
passions corrosive kiss,
oscillating, opening,
to retract, in flow,
pushing in
to pull away,
thanatos is eros
together, apart again,
together-apart,
here-going.
the heart is aware,
supremely aware of this happening,
even when the mind is fooled
by apparent stability,
and the soul surrenders to
it's inevitability,
even hungering for
divine destruction,
as basic an urge
as the creative impulse.
to be composed
is to be subject to decompose,
fertilizing compositions
in cosmic chasms.
our lungs darkly shining
with every fall of the chest
mirroring,
each breath
one breath closer
to the final breath,
each exhale
a letting go
of what can’t be held
forever,
the expelled
foreshadows annihilation,
on the fading road, towards
this mortal coils entropic end;
a preparation.
to live, surely, is to meet loss
over and over,
to love, fully, is to grieve
again and again,
there is a deep
melancholic knowing
that exists in all living things,
water drops
tears like rain,
leaves fall
like sighs,
everyone,
and everything
dies.
our melancholy
might be sacred
could we truly embrace,
and feel, this reality:
death is the ever present condition.
Apr 4, 2014
Apr 4, 2014 at 9:04 PM UTC
the world removed
a childs world
idyllically drifting with the wind
sloughing off dreary earthbound millstones
free and rising with intense delight
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 3:12 PM UTC
Death, my friend, is in everything
we touch
the small porcelain cup
which holds my coffee
the tiny silver spoon that
stirs my mind
our breaths are numbered
assigned at birth
watching your chest rise and fall
as you sleep
I count
trying to formulate between us
the perfect equation
my deep and dire dreams
redeem me
no lunar memory remains
I'm transformed with no recollection
precious state
dissolving ribbon
a fresh organism
cells renewed
a sloughing off of the night
a hatching
perhaps, after all, there is a soul
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 1:48 PM UTC
My pre-dawn conviction is weak
This cold ember death will sink its teeth
My winter coat is a sickly sheath
Sloughing with every retreat
I hope you know
Your eyes lit a thousand snows
We drowned beneath
I hope you know
Your lips caught aflame so cold
Disintegrating against me
For whatever reason
Your glassy stare broke apart in the autumn chill
Fluctuating against summer’s warm laugh
Our first wavering dance
We soaked our skin in teenage radiance
An adolescent haze of lust
Plotting our dreams
In the lull before dawn and dusk
I know I’m dwelling on better times
Wasting my life away
Can’t ******* shake this habit of mine
I guess I miss the days
When love was just a song and dance
And every breath held weight
I’m catching ghosts in the pre-dawn light
Lost in a memory daze
Jan 7, 2014
Jan 7, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.
Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,
His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,
Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.
A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.
The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,
Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.
Dec 10, 2013
Dec 10, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
When the screaming ends
the flesh seared away by the blinding white light
many eyes opening wide in colors yet unseen
eyelids peeling back and shriveling
cursed to forever look and see everything
burning hot metal sloughing the charred remains of flesh and bone
teeth acidily dripping from the writhing form
and as the ashen wings sprout
and all noise ceases
you pick up a feather
hearing the chorus and choir
and wonder if this is the epitome
of beauty
Jul 9, 2022
Jul 9, 2022 at 2:13 AM UTC
We speak, or rather you spoke
I listened
You'll be fine, you'll do great
You've got so much going for you
I never understood why you said that
Maybe just placating
Weary little broken boy toy me
What good was I, could hardly speak
Or look at faces, just shoes
All shame rotting away
In death trap little future overdose room
More ***** than brain
Felt skin sloughing off
Hair falling out dead anyway
While cancer ate away ulcerous stomach
When looked in mirror
Only saw death, reaving reaper
His scythe my smashed absinthe bottle
****** X marks the spot where
I drag everyone down with me
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 9:49 PM UTC
Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.
Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral. My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,
She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings. My waves peak to reach you starling girl.
The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.
Jul 9, 2012
Jul 9, 2012 at 9:53 PM UTC
This morning
I woke up
and
told Melissa we wouldn’t
make it past three months.
We're at month two,
and I can feel it.
Either I’d drop her, or she’d
drop me, but either way
“we don’t have staying power,
and there’s no point
in either of us
pretending like we’re grown ups
who can just power through things
out of sheer complacency”.
I wasn’t looking at her.
Just up
at the spackle and a spinning fan.
It’s so hot in here,
that we sleep on top of the covers
sweating little puddles of skin
into the comforter.
Nightly,
we mash those deposits of dried salt
deep into the mattress
with our sloughing bodies
to get stuck
and form
tiny caves of skin and boredom in the springs.
She rolled away from me
swirling off a cloud
of stale, watermelon shampoo
And reached
With a tightly domed deltoid
towards the blue milk crate
where her purse sat.
She rummaged in there,
her back muscles working
like a landslide of flesh.
She finally dropped the purse,
after an effort of five minutes,
and I heard the successful flick
of a lighter.
She started
puffing and chugging down smoke
As she laid on her side.
My eyes watered
in the bluish smog,
and as the fan turned
raining down peices of our own skin
in a dusty, undetectable cloud of particulates
I could just see her,
out of the corner of my eye,
Shifting the weight of her body
from her deltoid
to her trapezius.
Nov 20, 2011
Nov 20, 2011 at 11:39 PM UTC
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.
Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,
His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,
Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.
A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.
The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,
Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.
Jul 30, 2012
Jul 30, 2012 at 1:28 PM UTC
( Sonnet )
Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.
Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral. My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,
She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings. My waves peak to reach you starling girl.
The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 2:59 PM UTC
carpal tunnel
born of first-serve lets
and second-serve ace
comebacks --
from
sloughing off
winter coats
to share between
twelve --
my wrists are
less than echoes
and may have
been little more
to begin --
suspended
by gossamer,
brass-covered
lichen
and ticking fungi,
like man, (with his
whirling gears
and mad metals)
replaced
nature's course
with an automated
system --
i would rust
just to crack
but they keep
me too clean --
my sunspots
have fled to
warmer pastures,
i am milk-buckets
on overcast farm
dawnings, but surely
even they have seen
the light of day --
splashed my face
with wine
and rooibos
to see if i
would stain
like the canvas
metaphor
my generation
ascribes to --
maroon dispersion
in terra cotta wash,
twining around
a spiral course --
the folly of it
went ignored
'til my lost and
floating freckles
gathered at the
drain and clogged
the sink to overflow.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 2:03 PM UTC
Through the glaze of snow falling from ninety-nine cent aluminium, we'd taken the remains of a novel formulation to remove the stars from the sky and plant them in a field. I took crushing endlessness and the heat of leaves growing in moments to make the autumn of a town I hadn't yet seen. This is how I escaped from the sealed-elevator flight plan the first time; talking had failed me, pinned against the face of a fleeing infant. His mother could never find a way to paint him as a forgery, a skeleton, and make it stick, so he coughed rough and eloped from the schematic with his brother as their father remained on the ground, paying out the parking lot tower fees, unaware that he, himself, was only a figment.
and I, just another figment, ventured off into the village, the leaves cascading and trembling, the gold of their hues dissipating as the flight crew shook a lifeless husk, spent lives ago, now, with the clamour of shells dividing, each split or junction or birth yielding arcs of light as my sister tells me how the strings she pulls around her wrists tell metric time whilst I brush my hand against concrete and glass, leaving traces of skin within the grain, sloughing away finally in the small moments as I float through an antique dealership: mahogany gods, carved tall as redwoods, and bathed in mist like the western coast at dawn.
and I, indifferent to the television sets implanted between memories, broadcasting coffee-stain eyes lost midsummer years ago, still indifferent.
as I finally reach the elevator, the last level, the depth below, struck me. I am the test subject, my irrealities are just trying to get out, to survive this feigned life, to be born into the world I frequent. They are abstractions and know it. I have not said a word as I step out onto that plane, amidst the rising roar of engines and the row of the crowds and the swell of my emptiness.
I breathe in and become the field, at last.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 1:02 AM UTC
Women who sleep on stones are like
brick houses that squat alone in cornfields.
They look weatherworn, solid, dusty,
torn screens sloughing from the window frames.
But at dusk a second-story light is always burning.
Used to be I liked nothing more
than spreading my blanket on high granite ledges
that collect good water in their hollows.
Stars came close without the trees
staring and rustling like damp underthings.
But doesn't the body foil what it loves best?
Now my hips creak and their blades are tender.
I can't rest on my back for fear of exposing
my gut to night creatures who might come along
and rip it open with a beak or hoof.
And if I sleep on my belly, pinning it down,
my ******* start puling like baby pigs
trapped under their slab of torpid mother.
Dark passes as I shift from side to side
to side, the blood pooling just above the bone.
Women who sleep on stones don't sleep.
They see the stars moving, the sunrise, the gnats
rising like a hairnet lifted from a waitress's head.
The next day they're sore all over and glad
for the ache: that's how stubborn they are.
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 11:05 PM UTC
.
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.
Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,
His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,
Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.
A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.
The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,
Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 2:30 PM UTC
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.
Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,
His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,
Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.
A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.
The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,
Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.
May 25, 2013
May 25, 2013 at 2:51 PM UTC
Sometimes a fatted pig will wander off from the pen and find his way to the pond on the edge of the property. If it’s dark or foggy, he may fall in and sink to the bottom. Only later when his carcass has filled with methane and mucous will he float to the surface. You’ll know he’s been in the water for a while when you see the bloat, the blisters oozing, and the skin sloughing off in large sheets. Don’t go there. It might reflect poorly on you.
Ok. So you didn’t listen. You went ahead and fetched a stick and poked. And you were taken aback by just how easily it slid through his tissues, like the time when that pigeon alighted on your hand, and you were startled by how it weighed almost nothing at all. So to see what might come of it, you wiggled the stick, and suddenly what was left of the liver and kidneys popped up onto the surface and spit a stream of water into your mouth. They drifted towards you and away again, like your lost toy sailboat, the one that got off the string and floated down the rapids in Lucerne. Over the falls it went, under the covered bridge, and that was the end.
Of course you still eat blood sausage. Why wouldn't you? The texture is rubbery but the taste is well ….. like blood....so metallic on your tongue. But this blood will not wash away your sins. It’s more like Pepsi Cola, or maybe Mountain Dew.
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 10:00 PM UTC
The heron spreads his wings and preys.
His stony stand a beachhead sloughing
The salt sea, a sepulchered wading.
Leaven the broken bred, unshell
The teeming waters, a fisher of mermen
Unlordly low this lying father,
His wings are palms,
His rock a mount, his wings a bay,
And deafness, tears in the outer shores
And exaulted seas the forgiven waves,
Swells the briny blood and kelp.
Vains are streaming to the fisher king,
Lordy he lands the lying father
His wings are psalms.
A tiny flood that arcs the sky
Marks lord in miniature, a King
Fisher flies, His wings are
The waters calmed.
The otters bask and preen, mermen
Jostle in the laddered rays of the sun
They mark their surf, insouciant play,
Wavering the fisher of men, he sways,
Simply they circle in song singing hours,
Dancing as do the murmuring waves,
Their strokes are psalms.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 1:48 PM UTC
Poet to my eyes, you are the sight of whitecaps
On the sea water, or the sudden turn of a bird
In flight and as the wave I roll and break,
With drowning wings that lift toward you, my sky.
Mistress to my soul, I am the nave of your holy
Cathedral. My head is but an occluded riff,
De-noting songs you make in aisling airs of light
Polyphony, my star over-sings the windy globe,
She swallows heaven, like swallows blacken the dusk.
Shearwater bird, strip my surface with your cutting
Wings. My waves peak to reach you starling girl.
The sloughing chill of winter dies quick in sighs
Waft asunder my little Indian summer, wake me
From sleep and I shall dream but once for your kiss.
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 2:10 PM UTC
Surging through the life way
Feel the flooding all around,
Wade neck deep in turmoil
Inundated, cold and drowned.
A waterfall of trouble
Cascading through your mind,
Slashing through the visual
And rendering you blind.
Awash with soaking platitudes
Immersed in ideas fraught,
With rationale that's compromised
By sudden thoughts of nought.
Sloughing off precipitants
Skimming through the mire,
Rearrange the tangled sequence
To leave potential to aspire.
Dispense with poor priorities
Expunge them with a shout,
Simplify the landscape
And flush that mind set out.
Is tomorrow looking lucid,
Have the torrents disappeared?
Is your temperament improving,
Have you lost that leaden fear?
Have the serpents all submerged
Beneath the blackness of abyss?
Has hope's glimmer re-ignited
To make a drowning death remiss?
Marshalg
Mangere Bridge
1st December 2008
Dec 6, 2009
Dec 6, 2009 at 10:47 PM UTC
I am sandpaper
longing frictions heat.
To grow both fat and
weary, sloughing
away your skin.
See what is strength
suckered and sickly
is set
to diminish.
But paper handholds,
why so dusty?
You aim for ignorance,
blooded hands to tease
simply tremor.
Yes, each whisper
charms so sweetly,
sweetly rough
against your grain.
Jul 3, 2015
Jul 3, 2015 at 5:39 AM UTC
The thick layer of polish comes off slow and painstaking, stripping away with it layers of nail. I cute away at my brittle nails, claw and scrape at my cuticles. I tear skin and hair away from my face along the strip of thick glue that I toss into the waist bin. Water pecks at my flesh as I scrub at my scaly rough arms, I rake my dry scalp, run a razor along my legs, and more hair and skin fall away, circling the drain as they go. I rub a watery sandpaper up and down my forehead and eyes, my nose, my cheek bones, chin, jawline, sloughing away yet another layer. The water pecks and pings and falls away from me like blood and dirt and the earth beneath me goes. I'm not in my body anymore.
I am grateful for my body.
I don't know where it comes from but I'm crying now. Who is not grateful for my body? all the attention it gets…is it me or them?
I love my body. It is not my body's fault
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 12:56 PM UTC