"sloughs" poems
I feel lonesome hands approaching mine
to walk me through the desert.
I tense my arms against the open night sky
which cannot be pushed away.
I want you to love my grey skies,
my pensivity that rolls across mountain ranges -
the same to me as sunshine igniting streams.
Just a different lens
through which my creature plays with light.
She is elemental
and sloughs skin off the earth like lava flowing
into the ocean to close its eyes.
I'll eat my own tail
to discover what I already know.
May 30, 2019
May 30, 2019 at 12:55 PM UTC
The clock was set back,
and now night rots
away the afternoon.
Gray light spills,
slouches, sloughs
into my hair,
my hands, across
all these strangers.
Ovals of alcohol
keep the rain away.
My life is moving
stave by stave.
I used to go to school,
have a social circle,
idle through hobbies,
new days, new days.
What the hell happened?
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 2:25 PM UTC
She sloughs off her skin,
stepping out with heavy
feet to let her
coffin fall around her
piece by silk pale piece.
Raw and bleeding,
the water encases her in
a liquid embrace, as
calm as a mother's arms
as quiet as death at midnight.
Naked and alone
the water turning red with
truth and thoughts held
close, she washes away the
weighted thoughts of a future unknown.
What life she must lead,
to hide behind closed doors, locked
against the eyes of those
she so sweetly calls
her dearest friends.
But soon she is clean of filth
and doubt and steps out
into the gleaming lights of reality,
facing again the impeccable
glass of imperfection and truth.
She denies the facts and
slowly recovers, recollects
the pieces of a lie
formed through years
of trying to belong to others.
And slowly, like a geisha,
she paints on a face strange
and familiar, her practiced
hands trembling slightly,
the first crack in a porcelain mask.
It is then she stops,
caught on a stray thought
that has crept from the depths
of reddened water, the realization
that the geisha died long ago.
Jul 18, 2012
Jul 18, 2012 at 3:54 PM UTC
*Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is
as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip
of my words. My language trembles with desire.
-Roland Barthes*
My language is a skin I have outgrown.
It sloughs off in flakes,
leaving letters or the occasional
ill-suited, illegible word
trailing behind me.
I pick at adverbs and articles
hanging from my fingertips;
This morning I pulled a whole phrase
off my arm like a sunburn.
My language, once alight,
now settles like cinders
on the ground,
around the shower drain,
upon my sheets;
My language no longer serves me.
Peel my vocabulary off my back,
tear my diction from my shoulders,
and my syntax from my chest;
Scratch the punctuation off my face—
my lips are chapped with parentheses.
Tomorrow I will have shed my language—
Unbound from an ill-fitting lexicon—
coughed the alphabet from my lungs
and exhaled the last serif
like cigarette smoke
to find the world new,
uncontained and undefined.
Apr 7, 2011
Apr 7, 2011 at 4:15 AM UTC
Who are these? Why sit they here in twilight?
Wherefore rock they, purgatorial shadows,
Drooping tongues from jaws that slob their relish,
Baring teeth that leer like skulls' teeth wicked?
Stroke on stroke of pain, - but what slow panic,
Gouged these chasms round their fretted sockets?
Ever from their hair and through their hands' palms
Misery swelters. Surely we have perished
Sleeping, and walk hell; but who these hellish?
- These are men whose minds the Dead have ravished.
Memory fingers in their hair of murders,
Multitudinous murders they once witnessed.
Wading sloughs of flesh these helpless wander,
Treading blood from lings that had loved laughter.
Always they must see these things and hear them,
Batter of guns and shatter of flying muscles,
Carnage incomparable, and human squander
Rucked too thick for these men's extrication.
Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented
Back into their brains, because on their sense
Sunlight seems a blood-smear; night comes blood-black;
Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.
- Thus their heads wear this hilarious, hideous,
Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses.
- Thus their hands are plucking at each other;
Picking at the rope-knouts of their scourging;
Snatching after us who smote them, brother,
Pawing us who dealt them war and madness.
2.2k
Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way in
Sleek sails of five and six
Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through the broken glass
Onyx separations carve
In six wings lost to starve
May the host slight the royalty
Blackbird, blackbird, whither 'way
Don't come down this way with
Sacrificial dust from seven circling
Hither here, two and three
Come forth and fly in
Through shattered self
Onyx separations carve
In six wings to starve
May the way be paved
Blackbird, blackbird, will I?
In the serene sloughs, call
Out from the dusk, ten sails high?
Blackbird, blackbird
Come around, see my gift
And sing your song
May 9, 2019
May 9, 2019 at 9:00 PM UTC
His ******* angel wings can no longer lift him high enough. His silhouette
stands against the Morning Glory sky. He has not worn cologne
until this day. Now, the perfume of kerosene coats him. His
matchstick countdown has just hit zero,
ignition.
In flames, he launches off the edge of that crisp concrete line. He falls
ten stories, what was once a man, now an effigy not of stone
or wood, but flame which, wind-washed,
splays out as Ringed Plover wings,
ash feathers blown back.
With a crash of bone and pavement, his Chinese Lantern skin the color
of burnt-sienna, the blaze snuffs out. Through yellow plastic paper,
the creamy skinned women rush to his side. Mother,
Sister, Wife, cradle him, the fingers catch skin
which sloughs off in
flakes of
carbon.
May 21, 2011
May 21, 2011 at 7:42 PM UTC
Speechless
Shocked
Breath gasps from a dry, raw throat
Please. I beg of you.
Staccato whisper. Ragged. Torn.
Have mercy on the withered
Dead skin sloughs off into a scaly pile
I can feel my heart flutter, sputter
I've been too long in the sun
Blisters litter my shoulder and neck
Joints grinding and empty
Thoughts of thunderstorms and monsoons taunt
Finally drops touch my lips
Tears to my eyes
I thought I had nothing left to give
Relief
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 9:35 PM UTC
Outside in the cold dark
The first snow begins to fall,
Another sign of Winter’s mark.
Starting slowly, gathering speed
As the crescent moon rises
The dark-white storm will not recede.
Silently
Falling
Single-file
Ensuring
The descent
Is worthwhile.
Wave after cold wave
The onslaught of these sub-zero flakes
Sends warmth to the grave.
Or, rather, it is the lack of love,
That warmth, which causes snow
To fall so great from up above.
Then the gusty winds rush in
Launching the powder with a howling whine,
Cutting through coats, right to the skin.
Hours later, as the falling stops
And the wind dies down
Snow sloughs off in audible plops.
Off rooftops, trees
And fences, too,
A radiant white hue.
Woe is the day
When that fallen snow melts
Turning January into May.
For despite all the signs
Of new beginnings, my soul
Remains dark while all else shines.
And I wish, with the snow,
The memories of her would melt away
Along with
The pain she caused
So long ago.
Such a shame
Something so beautiful
Plays such a dangerous game.
May 25, 2013
May 25, 2013 at 9:00 PM UTC
My own skin feels ill-fitting.
Like maybe it belonged to me
at some point in time,
But now it sloughs off my shoulders
Like a hand-me-down
given too early…
Feb 11, 2022
Feb 11, 2022 at 10:51 PM UTC
pain brought on by an apathetic existence
a desire to taste chaos in the flesh
i ***** my soul, dredged from the depths
as death rises, creaking - a gory deity
from my shattered, broken back
gnashes it's filthy, cracked teeth
this barbed, twisted creature rears it's ugly head
as guttural growls wrench free from a torn
throat - wracked with convulsions, sickeningly
sheds a blood and gristle carapace
reborn into rot, steaming flesh sloughs
from it's face to reveal an impossible amount
of needle-like teeth, stretched into a wicked grin
slowly, like creeping mold, the mouth opens
and regurgitated from it's putrid depths...
...a single beautiful butterfly - spun from the
finest gold, inlaid with the most vibrant precious gems
floating on the whisper of a breeze, it lands
on my empty eyes and begins to feast
Feb 28, 2012
Feb 28, 2012 at 4:39 PM UTC
Layer after crusty layer
sloughs away,
revealing the truth under a
painted semblance of
confidence-
Out there is
scary, and i am
Alone.
Alone on my
leaf of a home, when a
tornado, hurricane, cyclone
blows in, halts the
tranquil silence of
my world.
Or was it just a
man with a leaf blower?
This can't be Kansas,
Dorothy.
Jul 11, 2011
Jul 11, 2011 at 5:00 PM UTC
_We burrow where they lie, our fallen brothers. Old sweats and fledgling crow bags, both. In death as in life, they have our back…and so we plough on into the abyss by the light of a caged phosphorus flare, hot metal spraying the midnight hour like some vengeful fay’s buckshot.
A human scaffold supports us for the distance of four miles. That’s Piccadilly to Hampstead; Circus to Heath. The length of a lifetime…of hundreds of lifetimes. In the winter when the rains come and the trenches run like a quartermaster’s latrine, the soil sloughs away to reveal the ossuary within. It is then that I, in my now customary delirium, imagine that I can reach out to shake their hand again._
Nov 11, 2020
Nov 11, 2020 at 3:11 PM UTC
WRITING (Reflections from My Diary)
A writer becomes a writer not because he wants to write-
he becomes one because he WRITES and never stops writing.
It's only through the sloughs of disappointment and despair
that he finally sees the light which might take years, decades or a life-time.
Skills alone are not enough, nor grit or tenacity.
The other qualities, (indeed I regard these as being more important) he must acquire are patience and humility.
How could I ever call myself a writer? When I read the works of the masters and even those of my peers, I realise that I don't qualify to be among them. Best to regard myself as a student, an apprentice, a beginner and admirer (of all forms of art) and in this realisation I would have no choice but to write, write and write--day and night, if I wish to make any headway.
Yet, I always enjoy what I do--when I write, it's as though I live in another trajectory--I'm lost in time, beauty and wonder, and the external world, with all its drabness and tedium, seems to fade away and no longer vexes me. I become a new being, I have wings, I fly to a realm I've not known before, I am free and exultant, I sing, I dance, I marvel, I LIVE!
22nd July 2017, Melbourne copyright
Dec 2, 2018
Dec 2, 2018 at 6:34 PM UTC
Your long neck twists itself
into a graceful question mark.
Tall as a man your legs
carry you to waters where you feed.
Sloughs and ponds - even the
occasional drainage ditches.
You lend an elegance to the world.
You do not destroy or plunder,
but snack on fishy delights
taken up in your sword of a bill.
Blue heron, thrive.
Your estuaries and flood plains
are disappearing as civilization
populates the earth.
Pragmatists take the world as it is.
Lovers of animals sorrow
that one day you will be extinct.
What do you add to this world?
You are not a shopping mall
or housing development.
What you do is add grace
and beauty to our world,
making it a more beautiful
place to live.
Jul 21, 2015
Jul 21, 2015 at 2:47 PM UTC
in my nightmare,
i walk across plain,gibberous
of melted blue grey glass.
in my nightmare,
the voices of the
four winds whisper,
words fetid and foul,
of love lost
and left behind.
in my nightmare,
the sun scowls
and rips the water
right from my lips.
and i walk on feet,
of bones stripped bare.
and i search,
horizon to horizon
but see only,
blind hope mirages,
fading away.
and my voice echoes,
in my calamitous mind,
calling names of kin and kind.
and my skin sloughs from
my flesh, to sizzle on the ground.
and inside,
the cage,
of xylophone ribs.
a wizened walnut heart
no longer beating,
to ordered time.
and my skull,
now, a hollow drum
of rattling, mutton-headed thoughts,
constantly bleating.
in my nightmare,
i am laid bare
and found wanting, needing,
longing.
in my nightmare,
you are not there.
in my nightmare
there is...
no one else, anywhere.
in my nightmare
i am alone
all alone....
and that,
scares, the **** out of me!
Jul 30, 2014
Jul 30, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
These aches — I feel them through
the neck and shoulders, tension
up through cracks and crevices,
like the way you left an
impression. Fluid, let's move forward
swift and sound. Poignant like
oceanic waves — propelling! or,
neritic waters — upwelling! or even,
tidal sloughs or currents— continuous.
I will feel it all — in like water to the
body, out like tears from the eyes.
Admittedly, the horizon does feel far
and I am scared. However, maybe
I am not lost after all, maybe the
journey is now begging and truthfully,
this does alleviate some of the pain.
© A. Leigh
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 6:24 PM UTC
Let me slip into my
Queen.
Appetite,
Slumber,
Sloughs off of her
as easily as water.
She passes through, to
The other side of Fear
In her penetrability
She has no Peer
Shapeless threats of the night
Merely dampenings of light
Let me slip on my frigid
Queen.
Mortal fears free of her lease
Reign wild, at the very least
But before my Queen
They quiver, shrivel,
Into a sheen
Of ice, from sniffling drivel.
Her countenance a light deadpan,
Her governance, her birthright, tends
A sooty silence,
A dumb penance,
Mum.
Jul 18, 2024
Jul 18, 2024 at 9:01 AM UTC
The skin sloughs ever so slowly
As it parts from the blade and body
Slipping into the pail of past identity
On top I can see the newest addition
Eyes burning with golden bursts
Accentuated by cool emerald outlines
Staring back at their owner
Accusatory
The narrow pupil dilated in question
"Why go blind?"
I ignored the orbs
Instead turning back to the business
At hand
Where I was carefully removing
Fingernails and thumbprints
One by one joining the flesh
That had once been me
My eyes glared at me
I stared back
Empty sockets dripping
Drip
Drip
"Never have I seen more clearly
For without my skin I truly feel
Without my eyes I cannot cry
Nor nails nor prints to conceal
The real me is not outside
He's inside wanting only to heal"
Jul 11, 2017
Jul 11, 2017 at 1:24 PM UTC
frail i, in moonlight shall, march
up wisp of spring
into gabled spilt
juice
of curving dawn
orange
whose rind
like the human also
drys
withers
sloughs
May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012 at 1:14 AM UTC
1/16/2016
The days drag themselves
succinct, akimbo-
spitting out the day in spurts and
steadily vomiting the night.
I am never afraid of death in the winter.
And so when I sit in bed
and out of the corner of my eye I see
it- death has always been a sort of
white rabbit, I once felt I was one
crushed in a young girls' hands,
having to carry that burden for the rest of her life
I don't want to say that
I missed innocence, in fact,
I want the pleasure of losing it again (Fitzgerald)
I read so much Fitzgerald that year
perhaps because I felt my life was
on some sort of side of Paradise.
Was clumsily and unbearably in love,
Princeton summers,
Was quite unloved
New York autumns,
Was throughly confused
New York winters.
The men come at us,
fling themselves like a screeching
jungle animal of a kind
But we don't care,
we sit in the park fermenting
like we usually do
but still the men laugh
still they come at us
while our skin sloughs off our faces
and we tell them "I'm dying, don't come any closer"
I felt like my face being ripped off once
but I didn't try to do anything about it
of course.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 12:43 AM UTC
a blue whale's
eye sloughs ocean
water.
as the limitless rain
that skied it open.
Jan 20, 2019
Jan 20, 2019 at 1:24 AM UTC
Joy and similar discontents
break wheaten on the all-weather
radial steel-reinforced sidewall hum,
on the defog rasping for a service call;
Break on the near treeless plain
stitched loose to the sky with rivets
of silos and grain bins - clouds
dive porpoise behind the rise.
Joy and similar discontents
hang like flowers on a bleach
wood cross surviving another winter
to tread sobbing on the green ditch water.
Every X and Y coordinate of the plains
etched by gravel side-ways and field
entries too rutted and ragged
to suit the conglomerate need
or the tilt houses and stripped clapboard
banging against the thistle, milkweed
and swallowed dreams in the foxgrass,
with turkey buzzards circling thermal overhead.
But the crows plunge faster into red
fresh carrion sloughs of whitetail and ****
to breach at the presence of a larger scavenging -
and each bent marker tells its own tale.
Count the bullet holes and shotgun splatter
in the stops and yields when the road was empty,
when the night was dry, when the callous boys
had time on their hands instead of hog blood
and badger-eyed girls that left after graduation
for the starless haze, crowded parades,
sidewalk shops, umbrellas on the rain side
of things keeping each at arm's length.
But it was never about the city,
never about the glitz and pizzazz
of everything running baffled into gridlock;
less about the thick dumb flannel boys.
It was always about that low fog,
the night eyes in the beams, the manure, chaff
and split seams of the midwest furrows,
the haybales that bob like rafts over the horizon.
Jul 30, 2019
Jul 30, 2019 at 4:38 PM UTC
mornings grow longer;
another sun setting out for
a coming long dark. presence
of alacrity necessary. fatigued
by heat, no more macadame;
no more July. seeking spring
and the click-clack before arrival;
the walls are well-pinned and ready.
presence of focus sloughs away.
Sep 16, 2014
Sep 16, 2014 at 8:28 AM UTC
He spoke the language of birds
of pickle ****
and lichen
and ailerons
and shutter speeds
Where I saw a blackbird with a spot of red on a wing
He saw Agelaius Phoeniceus a passerine bird of the family Icteridae found in most of North America and much of Central America
His mind and mouth were full of facts and figures
about wind
and lift
and tides
and the right time to plant and to harvest tomatoes
Music and science were things to be dissected
and perfected
and each thing was measured
and calculated
and intentional
like the metronome I played with on the piano in the spare room
I did not always understand him
I did not always try to learn
a kid dabbling in punk rock and drawn to graffiti will
I found it hard to relate to someone so exacting
But while I do not remember his laugh
I do remember his joy
at explaining the circuitry in a handmade airplane
or the minutiae of the wondrous geometric cellular structure of a pine cone
A hike in the sloughs and I ran ahead
while he kneeled and saw a tiny marvel, a flower or a lizard hidden by my hurry, tucked behind a leaf and revealed by his slow and patient attention
He taught us to see
To look close
To take the time to do it well
And while we bristled at the pocket knife,
cutting candy into enragingly tiny mouthfuls
he taught us to savor
and make the moments last
He never rushed a photograph
He never hurried though a museum
He never pushed you out after dinner
He sat
and listened
and truly saw you
in focus.
While his eyes blurred with age
And his ears failed him
He never stopped taking in the moment and he never stopped his ever and perfect focusing
On the thing in front of him, perhaps small but made large by his attention
The last time I saw him
he clearly
and directly looked me in the eye
and in his way
gave a blessing
passing on his focus
“Send those kids my love. Take care of them.”
And in those words
I understood him.
Apr 13, 2019
Apr 13, 2019 at 11:20 PM UTC