the fluorescent haze of midnight in the city
observent, patient, longing

hands cradling nectar
caffeinated teeth pulling at the flesh of your lips

intergalactic mind
smattered with careless constellations
I think my gravity has been stolen

my symbiotic smile
stems from the curl of your lips
I think my autonomy is buried with my rationality

The husk of Persephone’s fruit
Stale on my tongue
I bathe in the honeyed promises that ooze
until liquid fills my lungs
and I am consumed

A Victorian Girl, with eyes forlorn
Wild and elusive since the day she was born
Her features smattered with a blanket of tears
From barbaric acts exposed through the years
Through **** and pillage she never would yield
Some hailed her as foolish as her fate was sealed

She trekked for miles with liberal endeavour
Innocence and intrigue in equal measure
Till she encountered a fellow who furnished the chance
And brandished a languishing olive-like branch
He beckoned her forth with ravishing guile
Bearing pomp and splendor and a fraudulent smile

In mounting the stallion, the deal was done
As the lecherous libertine embodied the pun
He savagely severed her ivory threads
And fiercely penetrated the pallid *******
With a barrage of torment unduly unleashed
A Victorian girl, morosely deceased.

*(September 2010)

Stagecoach trundled, rutting, wheels
Soily grasp, grabbing at the earthy recipe
Cart....horsing around the outdoorsiness
Ferris wheel spun, gathering passengers
To overlook the show ground, smattered
Four legged races, saddled with encumbents
Bobbing in display formation.  Far above
I caught sight of circular ribbons emblazoned
Lapels holding onto prize winners, suffering
The pin ***** jabbing at willing winners
Left foot first, hopscotch to the flap of tarpaulin
Billowing their precious overgrown greatness
Of perfect vegetalia, proud, excessive....of the
Dinner plate variety.  Don't touch their polished
Surface, they deliberately await photographic
Validation; future growers, challenging champion
Chompers, terrorising super-veggie heros
I wonder what becomes of former ground growers
Do they take a back stage bow? Uprooted with
Those of a lesser kind, jostling for saucepan space

He and I are different you see

He has a spare tire around his belly
And mine is soft and riddled with freckles

He’s got a part him ravaged by cancer
And I’m tainted with signs of depression

His forehead is bigger and smattered with speckles
Mine is pale and hidden with frazzles of blonde hair

He thinks economically and can be a bit assuming
I think way too much and yet am ridiculously oblivious

But he and I are the same you see

Despite the factors in between us
We’re forever linked by kin
And I am forever grateful

a delicious treat
for such a sweet little girl
she was soooo hungry
look in her eyes said it all
voracious, insatiable

finger licking good
greazy slimy decadence
nice presentation
gray matter smattered with blood
escargot consistency

sated and happy
she rested in the corner
basement was quiet
not thinking or caring much
just pleased to eat daddy's brains



Del Maximo
© September 26, 2009

I leave behind
a signature constellation of half scraped
blu tack smattered across the walls

a scrawl in braille to the shell's
next inhabitant: life is out there

I was here, living
I drew a picture of an elephant
for no real reason

I didn't follow the news enough
and skimmed books like stones

I persuaded three friends to beam
from a glossy page at a birthday party,
I cut a cottage from a magazine and
tacked it with a daydream

I hid from the clocks
and watched pounds stick then fall
stick then fall

I lived in this room,
now it's your turn

Women i love you for your boisterousness 
and softness too, harshest lighting
notwithstanding 

You are poems of poems of poems
in moonlight beneath crimson moons
encouraging mystery

Women your sanguinary allure holds
me never but your pernicious sorrows
are as captivating as ever

You are goddesses and ****** and archetypes
all the same from salon to Wal-Mart
to the Barnes up the Parkway to the Zoo

Wymyn you are ***** on bykes leather
lesbian jackets and caresses of chains
silent cervixes smattered and schmeared 

Ladies your parts are none of my business
and my love's too Western for that nonsense
but I wish them all good health and plumbing 

Listen sisters, allow me some gravy
for respecting the curvature without
ever needing to ride like Sally into orbit

Your ******* are thousands of temptations
to many men but I'm only enamoured
by your foreign policy experience

Women you know how to know what's what
and make yourselves muses and heroines 
perfecting heterosexual enchantment forever

Hey ladies let's be friends and not so secretly
plot for you to really start conquering the world,
ok?

the strangeness that is realized when the words,
scattered and smattered, hardly useful enough to
com-paste/post a poem together, scrabbled letters
on a dining room table, ripe with possibilities,
ripe with the stink of inutility, for the
industrial-military complex of
mind-eye-tongue refuse to work together,
the letters, yes, scattered and smattered,
come on a regularly irregularly schedule,
not put together...

why should I write of this?
write of this of now?

my man-ifesto of inspirations loved and lost,
poems that arrive while I drive unable to record them,
for days now, a poem lay inert in my brain but just on the tip of
my rounded, tongue, the title knew me, knew it was mine to write,
but the man/poem coming together in mystical simultaneousness,
was nope, not conceivable,  
thus be advised somewhere in my body decaying
lies a decaying poem.

the title is
The *****, Dimples and Dents Upon My Body.

Perhaps this is that poem; but I suspect not.

This one was written in five minutes in one sitting, a run-on,
run-though
out of control.


so easy to write when out of control!

did you know that a dynamic first cluttered light spilt about and smattered the various golden brimming lip of earth gilt in ******* bolts of mountain fat and even their ridiculous shoulders couldn't stop the dawn from treading succinctly marvelous sporadic flare

1 feckless 2 dabbled breathless charming
rose smattered garden. 3 came a forward
prancing chill prose tongue hewn cool 6ing.
scattering all the correct petals precisely.
a   d   an:
   n                   abderian 4 chuckled loose
                 woven laughing leafs. yon 7 corpulent
                locks keyless secret green. dig deep soiled
          fingers. find the beating source pulse bearing
       seed. if so ever you loved the summer golden complexion
of sun folly songs trembling kiss. here now be 9 musky calf.

                                                                                                  you
                                                              will
                            burst
blooming
                                            

                                                     8;

Your were like light yesterday
On paper I may that;
That...that golden bow had curved and on your hair it lays.

Polka-dotted Peppermint
Smattered across our faces.
Shattered even-temperament;
Icy; hot, our hearts, it races.

As I grazed my palms against the bricks,
the red-orange crumbled into a soft, dense powder
that reminded me of a manicured bark
from tall, ghastly trees that spread up into the sky
and coated the blue in a darkness, so finite,
as the limbs of surrounding trees connected
and bent and folded into each other in a symmetry
reminiscent of the fingers of a girl and her father
joined together on a late train ride,
the day's activities taking their toll
upon the girl's smattered unrest
and her father's shirt collar in the same proportions
while he stays awake to appreciate the one moment
of quiet with the last living being he cares for.
The cars spoke loudly enough to shake my kneecaps
and stir my mind from its stupor
as I stared back into my palm
and realized the trail of red
I left along the sidewalk.

There's not a single taste that will ever compare
To the strawberries we picked down the bank near the birch tree grove.
Remember how small they were?
Squishy in our hands, staining them red.
Resembled the red bloodstains that adorn our palms now.
Everything's slowing fading to black, and all I can see is the sun refracting off the broken glass strewn around us.
That must be what the pinpricks of pain smattered across the back of my body is. 
Glass shards carving into me. 
Do you feel those too? 
Or are you occupied by the gaping hole in your chest? 
Look, I have one too. 
Now we're twins. 
Feel their fingers rifling through my pockets, searching for diamonds and gold but coming up with gum wrappers and lint. 
Was that you coughing up liquid? 
I can't quite see anymore. 
But I can still feel. 
I think. 
I don't know. 
I think it's cold. 
Can you feel it too? 
But it's not like the chill you feel when the shower suddenly goes cold. 
This cold creeps, undetected, from your toes up. 
Crawling through your veins to your heart. 
And your brain. 
Not quite sure which one it reaches first. 
I'll tell you when it happens. 
Or you tell me. 
Whoever has it happen first should warn the other, ok? 
Baby? 
Can you hear me? 
Do you feel cold? 
Hello? 
Answer me! 
Wait. 
I feel it now. 
It's your heart.
It's the heart it reaches first.
I feel like someone's ripped it out and replaced it with a clump of snow. 
Baby, please warm it like you warmed my hands that night we got lost out in the woods. 
Because this doesn't feel right. 
I don't think we were made to live like this. 
I don't think I can keep....

I caught a glimpse of you…when you didn’t know I was looking. Trying to re-discover what I’d forgotten about you. About us. Why I’d once loved you - in that other time.

You were standing naked in front of the mirror, your beautiful, auburn hair glistening on your wet, mortal body. You’d just stepped out of your morning shower-humming the customary tune you do so well.

I stood quietly in the hall, watching you shave your golden, red beard while you hummed, as you tapped the rhythm with your foot.

It was intoxicating- observing your routine without you knowing I was there. I’d watched your morning ritual many times. You…always aware when I was watching. In the past…in that other time.

Somehow...watching you with my heart, more than with my eyes made me melancholy missing those feelings I’d once felt for you…for us. Feelings that were once so deep within my heart. For awhile- back then - in the days of us.

Did we ever really love one another? Was it kismet - was it fate?
The question sits on unspoken lips. I sighed -missing us-missing you.

When our melody began, you sang the notes to my heart so well…so tender and real. We soared on the music, our mouths relishing the kiss. In our moments - in our past.

For a time we were us - you and me - me and you. We traced our love with thirsty lips - hungry bodies.

I stood there looking at you for quite some time, pausing at the door before I left... knowing I might never open that door again.
I turned back once more, before turning to go... making sure to remember just why I was leaving.

I believed and held on to everything that was once promised. Everything that could have been. Now there is a big empty space. A void of nothingness -devoid of you.
The yellow and white wedding dress hangs lonely and dusty in the bedroom closet...
just barely a relic, with the shoes I would have worn, shyly peeking out of the corner.
How long as it been now? A handful of years?
All smattered with lukewarm memories...
barely remembering the sound of your steady breath, your softly hummed tunes.

In between moments I try to forget the wisps of floating memories.
I think I'm doing well, but every once in awhile in between those painful moments of sadness and regret... and perhaps even a few tears.
I realize it was really for the best. I've healed. Maybe...just maybe?  Maybe...sometime soon?

I had to let go of that dream...because I realized, you and it ...
were just a fable. Once upon a time is now, a Forgotten Fairytale.
But now…every time I see a man shaving, I sadly find myself thinking of you.
Goodbye my love- a part of me will always love you.

I can’t help but smile when she enters a room
  Beautiful hazel eyes that hold memories that will never go stale,
soft curls that dance with the breeze,
a smile so warm that it melts me into nothing more than my tender heart,
high cheekbones smattered with constellations
  She is endless possibilities and the flame of adventure
  Brilliance, spoken with a voice that not even the gods could hope to have
  Her love is the lick of a flame over your skin that never burns
  It’s the laughter of Icarus as he fell,
relishing in the scalding wax dripping down his spine and tang of sea spray
It’s the taste of herbal tea with a dollop of lavender honey on an autumn evening
There’s nothing quite like it,
overwhelming in the best of ways,
a taste of what it means to live instead of survive
It is an understatement to simply say that I adore her,
it is so much more than that
I don’t think that the word to describe it’s depth has been invented yet
She’s taught me of a love that is incomprehensible to the unacquainted mind
She embodies life

Here, take a look through my eyes
Understand how the light bouncing off my retinas paints the world

People carry a shine from inside of their bodies
They are beautiful,
Not because of their whitened teeth, smattered freckles or bouncing ponytails
But because they all are stories waiting to be read
And because of how they react when you smile at them

When you walk down the street and the breeze whispers at your back,
you can't help but marvel at the fact that
you're on a planet, one planet of a whole universe
and so is the bird off to your right and that tree with its berries so high above

All you want is to be a good person
Make others happy

And then there's the dark stuff
the stuff you can't touch unless you're alone
the darkness you always see out of the corner of your eyes
ever so slightly tinting all that it is surrounded by

See through my eyes, and maybe you'll understand
This is my world
This is what I see, who I am and who I want to be
This is my world

Sherry , amber shoulder length locks of hair
Passing ****** on the rail line
Beside abandoned tracks north of Ola
Sharing youth with bamboo pipes
Period hovels belonging to 'the State' collect
until a sleepy town is manifest before red
eyes , against laughter and regret tinged
with melancholia , ten seconds of concern
entangled with indifference
The crunch of gravel beneath our feet
Winter breath , *** hole lakes , dying streets
Beautiful , personal , discreet sundowns smattered with drug induced catatonia , 'Walnut guardians' and cherry trees*...

Grey lead bullets and pure white snow,
One side a swan on the other a crow,
They say one is evil the other is not,
But when committing a sin they both shall rot.

When bullets fall to the ground
Snow’s smattered with blood
Infecting,
Dissecting,
The small bits of good,
Throwing away the morality then
You pack up,
You go back,
And start war again

I have felt the weight of so many feelings pile up inside me over the years
The top layer of myself is composed of a loss for words
I fell in love once and back then it was as if the words would never stop flowing out of me
Poem after poem pouring out of my soul about a girl who i ended up falling so completely out of love with
Ever since then i have looked at my notebooks, stray post it notes once equipped for a passionate flurry of words to be smattered onto and then neatly folded into an origami heart  
I’ve looked at them and felt only loss
Falling out of love overtook me as slowly as falling in
Shy moments persistently becoming noticed until i realized that
I wasnt who i used to be when this all began
And honestly?
I dont know who i am anymore
I really don’t
And perhaps that’s why i havent found the words yet
These past few months i have been urging myself to write, write, write,
You know you will want to remember what this is like so write
But i looked inside myself and all i saw was a confusing blob, a living person with questions for organs and i didn’t know what to do
What had become of who i was
And so i pushed writing away
Words that so easily poured from my fingertips, trapped behind a self made dam
I felt silly
I feel silly
How to i begin to describe that i no longer recognize myself
That the image of who i was
A scared angry depressed teenager has been smeared at, scratched away with rough greedy hands
And i am left looking at an empty husk of an adult
A living breathing ‘what could be’
And i am lost
And i dont know
I must really admit, i know nothing- at all.

can i not bore into my temple
and remove the bitterest parts
of myself when they scream?

am i forced to witness their decaying
motions as they spoil and rot
every good thing I feel?

i say no, because i am worth more
than unspoken disdain, disgust,
unpleasantry.

fingertips to burdened lips,
I unsilence them and free the raindrop
words that ache to revive the good
behind the hurt.

paintbrush smattered in an ugly
hue of purely human creation,
no divinity in its intent, portrays
an image of a me that doesn't like me.

but it washes off in realization
that water is love is truth.
and that truth, beyond me
and in me, is good.

When I put my pen to paper
and try to conjure an image
the lines go all over: sprawling,
rough edges, that blur together
otherwise beautiful features.

But if you asked me, darling, to
draw your body? My memory
would come alive! I could clearly
trace the bend of your hips and *******;
could marvel at your slight-full lips,
outlined to the tee, much like your
smattered freckles (which, by the way,
add up to thirty — I counted).

So here I am: apart, lonely,
wondering how I can make these
fingers of mine abandon you;
how I can make it so each time
I miss you, I struggle with lines.

Like a moth to flame,
they'll all come to me eventually.
They'll saunter over,
lackadaisical smile and all,
offer me a word or two,
light the spark in me,
and before they know it--
they have a flame.

But the closer they get,
no matter how beautiful,
no matter the glistening
dancing crimson that was smattered before them
they would never be able to get too close.
Nor could I.
I'd burn them
with a touch, with a smile, with anything more
than mere warmth.
I'd burn through it all.
Their hearts, their charm, their love.
And it seemed, I
burnt my joy while at it too.

This gun I load
now

Explosive bullets
Hollow tips

One at a time
Snick into place

Snick, snick
Chank chank

One is in
the chamber

Poised
Waiting the go signal

Go go go
hissing

through cooled air
a hard line

ending in a cough
A nasty carriage return

A denouement
searing inward

Blood smattered verbs
Moving

In recoil
I laugh

It's a giant ha
DNA pruning DNA

the captain wants
the wave to come

So many things
to be undone

So many things
to be caressed

And itches
galore

The next day
Is poised in the chamber

I am listening
for steps

I know you're
coming for me

Over my shoulder
Glimpses

Smart
the way u fit n

I read you
tho

and your unholy
words

I can smell
burned soul

pierced thru
Oh
this place


Copyright@2018 Dennis Willis

Poem-Without you

Heart shattered
Brain smattered
Insides drowned in fear
Can’t breathe
Won’t believe
Can not persevere

Insides raw
I’m too flawed
A waste of space in time
Devil waiting
Instigating
I will surely die

Nails exposed
Comatosed
Blinded by the light
Breath drowning
Soul frowning
Can not find the fight

Dreams dark
Torn out heart
Can not find my breath
Veins thick
Stomach sick
Dreaming of my death

Wind racked homemade kites -
seek the Light of God in the Rites of March
In the dancing shadow of bulging Live oak trees
Farm boys preening blue jeans smattered with -
cocklebur and hitchhiker , wild onion & skunk greens
Balsa wood gliders know not where they-
come to lie nor the first mayfly with the conclusion of its time to wither and die...
Just like old vanes that succumb to vernal breath no matter-
how hard they may try..
This's the cold , calculated , precision of morning -
searching for her last night ...
Old men garnished in wisp of gray , like spanish -
moss clinging to hardwoods
Plundered on the high seas ,
a badgered admiral's arms flail in sight-
of the lighthouse , his cry muted by the otherworldly-
breeze ..

Sometimes, I do not feel as though I belong.
When I write, my anger bursts out of me, explosions smattered across the blank page.
When others write, their pens leak tears, the sadness soaking the page.

Why am I different?
Why do I enjoy the rage that consumes me and, just as quickly as it came, leaves me with its damage?
Why can't I drown in the heaviness of sorrow that slowly suffocates everyone else?

Sometimes, I feel as though I am the angriest person in the world,
this world overfilled with sadness and melancholy,
while I am pumped full of rage.

Am I different?
Why is the rage so shallow yet it comes from an untouchable place within me?
Why does my sadness seem so deep, yet my despair fades as soon as I put words on a canvas?

I am the angriest person alive,
in a universe of sad, poetic souls
and yet, I can't find anything sad about that,
only anger.

Losing my humanity
As I drift further and further away from those I love.
Star smattered gazes lost
To the catatonic stares-
Hours and hours on end.
Am I alive?
Or am I just breathing?
Who am I?
Questions, filling my mind, drowning me in a sea of emotions I can't even begin to register,
A false god.
Built on a pedestal of lies.
A monument to the sins of mankind.
I am eternal-
But until the day I may be freed from this skin that binds me
I will walk among you
Growing distant
As my fate swallows me.