"smidgen" poems
lines cut heavy
on a button stretched brow
thick rubber shoes
and dragon canes
fill out the closet floor
gospel sounds
and narratives (drowned)
apparitions set sullenly
amid voices from the past
finger pins
and crosswords
find the favor list
point men and preachers
tip up their tuscany caps
twitching and sign gazing
with spectacles held firm
recurring evening news
and beadledom views
clappers and caregivers
raise a crooked foot
grips and rockers
settle in on the front porch
gertrude grimaces
at an untimely turn
as the gooseberry pie
(with a smidgen of cloves)
chills by the night watch
Feb 11, 2018
Feb 11, 2018 at 12:07 PM UTC
A bit off the heel and a bit off the toe,
It won't hurt very much, and they're pretty, you know.
I've got the perfect pair of shoes for you,
All you need is some fitting- an inch off or two.
A slice of skin here and a little blood there,
These are the most beautiful shoes you could wear.
Let you go? Heavens no!
I admire you so
With your perfect physique
And your delicate feet.
Oh it's only a smidgen, a droplet of blood!
Come now dear, no one's fond of a stick in the mud.
Come- rush to the ball and we'll all have such fun!
On second thought, maybe you, ah... shouldn't run...
It's worth it, though, isn't it? These beautiful shoes.
And darling, they look so exquisite on you.
There now, not so bad, and they fit perfectly,
All you needed was just a little surgery.
Now let's off to the ball and you'll dance all night long.
No silly, don't cry, you've got it all wrong!
I told you- you're beautiful just how you are,
Now come on and stop whining, you don't have to walk far.
But you see, there's no daughter, or stepmom, or shoes.
There's none of those things- there is me and there's you.
And you've got this idea of what I'm s'posed to be,
And as hard as I try, I'm not her, love, I'm me.
I'm afraid that no matter how much pain I bear,
I just don't fit in the shoes you are making me wear.
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 7:32 PM UTC
Okay, so there might be a possibility I have maybe slightly convinced myself that I may theoretically have developed the beginnings of the tiniest dollop of a smidgen of an enormous crush on you.
So please don't break me.
REPOST IF THIS IS YOU RIGHT NOW
please comment I love to read thoughts on my work!
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 12:01 AM UTC
Every day I reveal
I give a little more
something special, so real to life
a different side of life
those pieces of me no one can steal
every night I'm where it takes me
to where I find that part of me
that needs no excuses
nothing to change
nothing to add to
But what if it isn't the truth? What if I am a product of fear? When I look at my keyboard, I remember things I cannot say aloud. That is the darkness.
nothing to subtract
the fairy of all things sharp and dangerous.
a day in the sun a light
That casts no shadow,
Pushing through all darkness
To reveal the only truth
a smackeral here,
a smidgen there
i stitch into the weave
as my truth
as i can bare,
leaving me naked
and bereft
but as a milliner of words
so fine
I stitch together a tapestry
of twine
upon a silken bed of shadow
the words, they matter
on the morrow
Twisted threads of golden thought
weaves crimson tears
that taught
the one that orates
as they weave
leaves a pattern
that can't deceive
cleft, my palette
of words, sacred,
alone but not forsaken-
created, awakened and tasted
and i stop for a while
to taste the silence between words
the echoes of my steps
roaming inside a dream
Chinese boxes with corners that
domino like the seals
of envelopes, they
stick to sticky
seals of words,
telling of straw earth.
sinkhole, the word frightened me as a child
even now I tread lightly
allaying the inevitable
i tread lightly, lightly... allaying
the inevitable
babble of...
"lustful gushing
of wordlove
that cascades
from my brain
enervated, regenerated
obligated
to explain
the gears
and cogs
of this
clockwork world
write....again
and again
the never ending
refrain
oh listen to the silence
listen
between the words
from
the death of one breath;
to
the birth of the next
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
<•>
BusBusNYC (A Live Love Bus App)
•<>•
if you made it this far, so fare one,
be undressed with thyself and impressed as well,
for thou joints me in holy matrimony upon a living map
where our presences can meet
in virtual real time as if eye new what that meant
but that blue dot is where this body possessed can be located by the nearest satellite finger snaking down from the heavens to Cain mark my foreheads location,
just like on Game of Thrones
don't you desire me, or rather,
the knowledge of mine
whereabouts?
the who of me, that very useful information, can best be
seen moving crosstown on the M72,
which is a mythological bus for in twenty years eye never
seen it come, go, though all its stops clearly marked
see me moving in fits and spurts of bursts of movement,
leaping streets and avenues in a single
unbounded, unstoppable superbus leap
in a city of anonymity where all who walk it streets,
ride the tides of its buses,
all ask a single Job-like question,
regardless of age,
"I am desirable, do you want me?"
eye say the ayes have it,
no,
this is not a great poem
but!
this live bus map app is the dating site ever created by
geeky human cells
alll this virtual meeting possibly leading to coitus
with a stranger while Pandora serenades
with perfect synchronicity, playing and plying us with
Romance for a Violin and Orchestra in F Minor,
a combination musical **** work of
Dvorak-Mehta-Midori
this bus app is
the social media's most immediate,
so meet me on the bus
at Broadway and 86 Street
where our metro cards can be
merged and we will be recognized
as a legal couple(ing)
in the eyes of MTA,
a multi-state agency and be bound in bustrimony
(legally married when riding on a city bus, only)
jeez, a crazy poem, not just, not a good one
but a true tale from the one who rides the buses and only
alights and delights with regaling tales and tellings
of love sortie sorrow maybe tomorrow the busbusNYC
app wil apply itself a smidgen better and
let me love you even with
a good under the hood
bus poem
but!
someday we will,
this, thy poet,
who does desire youalone,
will hijack you and a NYC bus,
and visit the poets from India and
the Great Northwest
won't that be a fabulous poem!
Jul 17, 2017
Jul 17, 2017 at 6:16 PM UTC
Shoppin wiv Albert.
I met my uncle Albert,
down at Asda, in aisle three;
he got there in a Mazda,
jus' a smidgen after me,
said he'd traversed Sainsburys,
Tesco Liddle n the Spar,
but not one o' them flogged Caviar
Truffles or Foie gras.
He sidled past the pork pies
streaky bacon turkey thighs
a headin for the french fries
n forsaken knock down buys,
shimmied 'round the ankle biters;
expectant mums to be,
popin pills for bloated ills
in the haberdashery.
Jan 7, 2012
Jan 7, 2012 at 4:33 PM UTC
pretty girl with pretty flowers,
do not be afraid to trace the soft curves of your body
with your round, round eyes.
your monsters hide not there—
your guardian angels do.
when your night feels longer than the day,
breathe the smidgen of youth you have left in you
into the birds swimming fluidly with the stars—
their wings swiftly cutting smooth ripples into the sky,
disturbing the grumbling twilight.
you could be one of them,
able to go nowhere and everywhere.
like air.
don’t you want to go home?
sad girl with sad flowers,
keep your leaves tucked inside your old books,
in lacy sleeves, your peeling boots—
hope He finds them all there.
sing sweetly of the poets of all ages—siken, plath, wilde, whitman—
shamelessly climb inside His chest,
gently rip His ribs apart,
the you that's serenading, softly seducing Him
with songs unsung and dreams undreamt.
let your baby blue skirt ride up,
drip, drip, drip,
let His calloused fingers brush your thighs made of syrupy milk,
as you smile, and smile, and smile.
fiery girl with stormy flowers,
the best things in life cannot be confined to a physical shape, cannot be
seen, or touched, or heard, or said—
yet in your eyes set heavy by damp eyelashes,
there is the primal, unconfined, raw thirst,
desperately hoping and searching.
is it a lost love? an unfounded love?
what is it that you are looking for?
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 11:42 AM UTC
A voguish painting
An Irish mistress
Privileged
To clover innovation
A distributing brush
Exquisiteness insight
In her scenery of allurement
Creative brilliance shadowing beyond
Artistic ability with portrait sensitivity
A non-demeanor spectable
A fondness
To erase a scrawl or smidgen
This woman of latex
Sep 8, 2009
Sep 8, 2009 at 3:46 AM UTC
Spinning and spinning
Six little circles
Flushing a life down the drain
Naught but a smidgen of straining, my pidgeon,
A blurr to the vision, euphoric, no pain
My brain,
Will just shut down
I’ll get
Out of this town
The rain
Gonna pour down and wash me away
Whirling and twirling
My heart in the middle
Graphing the pathway to get the right spin
Crisp calculation, the subtle equation
Causing elation, at last cashing-in
Your brain,
Will just shut down
You'll get
Out of this town
The rain
Gonna pour down and wash you away
You must be THIS tall to ride this ride
It’s your human RIGHT to a nice
suicide
This celestial plane, ...and all of it’s
strife
We can help you jump past it,
It’s YOUR ******* life!
It’s all in your hands.
You know what to do.
Now is the time
To become the late YOU
Your brain
Will just shut down
You'll get
Out of this town
The rain
Gonna pour down and wash you away
My paradigm’s shifting
The veil is lifting
What was I thinking
My heart rate is sinking
And something is stinking
My consciousness shrinking
And what is that ringing
Do I hear choirs singing?
-
Julijonas
Fancy yourself the angel-reaper?
Julijonas Urbonas
Aren't you your brother’s keeper?
Is this just a "what-if", ...for fun?
O Julijonas
Julijonas Urbonas
…What have you done?
Jan 18, 2015
Jan 18, 2015 at 6:44 PM UTC
Love is a mirage,
You see what you feel,
Even when you don't believe,
That anything so pure and true,
Could ever be meant for you,
But love is an image made to change,
Your perception and his,
Of the world and everything else in between a kiss,
For love is a mirage that plays you for a fool,
Where you take fantasy for reality,
And sometimes you're left thinking "I must be crazy",
Still don't be ever so silly,
To deny yourself a smidgen of happy,
For even mirages are there to remind you that sometimes you'll see,
What's only there for you to see but not others,
Only then you'll know if he's the one,
If this love you feel is divine,
One-of-a-kind,
Meant to be until the end of time.
@byizn
Feb 5, 2017
Feb 5, 2017 at 9:05 PM UTC
this is the news: a strange to do with all strange. some other kiwi in the hissing bliss of a fine day.
the spoils of bounty are ludicrous in disarray. a jumble of lumpkin, festooned in prayer-wheels and Tibet.
a fountain of open hands.
on the brink... on the terrace of counterfeit pantomimes
a man of days
darning socks and ultraviolet, with quasars for aspic.
a drunk pirouette -
bereft.
love is the one jungle you know when you're lost, and the last thing that made sense. All day.
the spoils of bounty are numinous, always. a trundle of frump-kin, immune to what feels like a guess.
" i refuse to sell my daddy's ranch! "
if you blink... i might tell you where you lost your mind.
an ace of spades
a Goldilocks and ultra violence, with ****** for aspirin.
a defunct smidgen
of less.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 1:18 PM UTC
I am a deep green 'L' with traces of gold and red.
I sound like a babbling brook or, better, a book
Because books sound like smiles and tears,
Which taste like snowshowers and chocolate kisses.
Chocolate reminds me of the number eight,
Which feels warm and spicy and rather yellow,
Like the song "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".
Rainbows feel misty like the edge of the universe,
Which definitely is a hue of blue, much like you,
Because blue sounds cheerful and solemn
Like a bagpipe or the Mona Lisa,
But with a smidgen of whistling in the rain mixed in,
Just to make you smell even better.
Dec 5, 2012
Dec 5, 2012 at 12:56 AM UTC
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s hot as fire.
Snooty Rudy
Leaves a lot to be desired.
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s better than us all
Silly Rudy
He’s heading for a big fall.
Rudy always thinks
He’s the star of every game
Rudy never gets
The joke hidden in his name.
He looks up on life
As someone else’s duty.
Someone must pay the piper
But it is never Rudy.
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s hot as fire.
Snooty Rudy
Leaves a lot to be desired.
Rudy never gets the check
When he goes out to eat.
When people rise to clean
He always keeps his seat.
Rudy doesn’t like to stir
From a relaxing chair.
Look around when work is done,
Rudy is never there.
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s better than us all
Silly Rudy
He’s heading for a big fall.
Rudy likes to join
Committees for charity causes
But when the work is done
Rudy only pauses.
He’s there for congratulations
But not for sweat and toil.
***** hands are beneath his station.
Never a smidgen of soil.
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s hot as fire.
Snooty Rudy
Leaves a lot to be desired.
Snooty Rudy
Thinks he’s better than us all
Silly Rudy
He’s heading for a big fall.
Apr 20, 2016
Apr 20, 2016 at 11:45 PM UTC
He’d been close to the big time,
If not a god of the fight game, perhaps a demigod;
He’d been possessed of considerable brute strength
And the ability to shut out concern for the well-being of others,
But there had been the odd ***** in his armor:
An overhand right which announced itself too early,
And arrived just a smidgen too late,
Plus an unhappy tendency to lose focus,
To stray from those plans his corner had set up chapter and verse,
Choosing the forbidden fruit of the quick knockout.
He had, after losing a bout to a top-ranked fighter
(He was eighth in the world, he would chuckle ruefully,
And I fought him like I was eight years old.)
Decided to chuck it all in,
Enrolling in a scruffy little bible college
Sitting just off an interstate on-ramp,
Cheek-to-jowl with a Wendy’s and 7-11,
In order to facilitate the transition from mayhem to ministry.
He’d soured on the process in fairly short order;
He understood instinctually that he, like all men,
Was a sinner, and likely unworthy of salvation,
And the faculty accentuated the notion daily, if not hourly,
Like so many jabs to the midsection.
He’d inquired, gently, as to the approach one should take
To addressing the worrisome paradox
That all men were imperfect beings
Marooned on an imperfect world,
Yet their fallibility was all they had to build on,
(A rickety ladder to scramble upwards, for sure,
But the only way to reach that golden fruit
Held out for him, though just beyond his grasp.)
The responses varied, from sputtering and vague parries
To the suggestion that such notions were heresy,
And so he’d returned to the club-and-casino circuit
Makin’ the best use of the gifts I have, he would sigh,
Before heading out once more,
Hoping there was one more short right at least one more time.
Jul 5, 2018
Jul 5, 2018 at 4:11 PM UTC
Fullsome she maketh me, mine fere, mine lair in the onuppan Zion. Betwixt the dust of the belt of Orion, Mine Astronomer gape's the light-year's we shalt trek; The luminosity sparkle's from Sirius, the flake's of shake, disambiguation. We seeith galaxie's, nebula's, a parallel universe standing on it's hind leg's. She spread's her snowy pearly glider's, inviting she is when her flight's on fire; like a comet, blazing the black hole edge's, her cloak smoke's with her Asian hair, that leaveth **** fairy-speck smidgen's. To the sun, O' to the sun, I am warmly wrapped by her embracing spaceship; she taketh me by teleportation, to the kingdom of God, where she doth reside.
©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane nagley dedication
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 10:03 PM UTC
A minute amount of madness
A smidgen of disregard
Every act a flagarant mirror
Of the surrounding Bizaar
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 6:21 PM UTC
With a smidgen of talent comes great responsibility.
With great grace comes greater responsibility.
Aug 18, 2017
Aug 18, 2017 at 3:06 PM UTC
Come Down
by Michael R. Burch
for Harold Bloom and the Ivory Towerists
Come down, O, come down
from your high mountain tower.
How coldly the wind blows,
how late this chill hour ...
and I cannot wait
for a meteor shower
to show you the time
must be now, or not ever.
Come down, O, come down
from the high mountain heather
blown to the lees
as fierce northern gales sever.
Come down, or your heart
will grow cold as the weather
when winter devours
and spring returns never.
NOTE: I dedicated this poem to Harold Bloom after reading his introduction to the Best American Poetry anthology he edited. Bloom seemed intent on claiming poetry as the province of the uber-reader (i.e., himself), but I remember reading poems by Blake, Burns, cummings, Dickinson, Frost, Housman, Eliot, Pound, Shakespeare, Whitman, Yeats, et al, and grokking them as a boy, without any “advanced” instruction from anyone. Keywords/Tags: Harold Bloom, literary, critic, criticism, elitist, elitism, ivory, tower, heights, mountain, winter, cold, frigid
Rant: The Elite
by Michael R. Burch
When I heard Harold Bloom unsurprisingly say:
Poetry is necessarily difficult. It is our elitist art ...
I felt a small suspicious thrill. After all, sweetheart,
isn’t this who we are? Aren’t we obviously better,
and certainly fairer and taller, than they are?
Though once I found Ezra Pound
perhaps a smidgen too profound,
perhaps a bit over-fond of Benito
and the advantages of fascism
to be taken ad finem, like high tea
with a pure white spot of intellectualism
and an artificial sweetener, calorie-free.
I know! I know! Politics has nothing to do with art
And it tempts us so to be elite, to stand apart ...
but somehow the word just doesn’t ring true,
echoing effetely away—the distance from me to you.
Of course, politics has nothing to do with art,
but sometimes art has everything to do with becoming elite,
with climbing the cultural ladder, with being able to meet
someone more Exalted than you, who can demonstrate how to ****
so that everyone below claims one’s odor is sweet.
You had to be there! We were falling apart
with gratitude! We saw him! We wept at his feet!
Though someone will always be far, far above you, clouding your air,
gazing down at you with a look of wondering despair.
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 12:44 AM UTC
I
I juggle with shades and figures and also skulls
Vicious and virtuous
Sinister and righteous
Vile and saintly
And that goes on and on and on
Countless shades that conceal the sun and quaintly
Also the mournful moon withdrawn
Multitudinous figures who speak and screech
And conjure from the vessel adrift of humanity
Myriad skulls with freedom of speech
Or wouldn't they be inhumanity
There is insanity in my sanity
I like to be in the drift
To go with the flow
To be unattached of enlist
For lost causes and “shows”
There is insanity in my sanity!
I like to sail more than a smidgen
To grasp and see the proper bliss:
From fear comes religion
From insanity comes questionings, comes this
Oh, yes! There is insanity in my sanity!
II
I keep juggling with my depth and core
Hopping from one to another
Cautiously not to let any of them drop for
The stream of existence or it will be smothered
And I’ll lose my sense of course
Leading me towards my martyr
Wave by wave sinking my vital force
Until the border of overwhelming disorder
That is imminent but in slow-motion
For I’ve yet an entire ocean
To sail across before I diagnose if I’m:
**The death of my hero
Or
The hero of my death
?**
III
Sound waves of a drifting symphony
Leads me to where the curious compass points
For I'm a sailor simply for another epiphany
And to inscribe the momentum with paints
Of memories of a posterior I
Ready to retry
Indeed I sail through an immaterial hour
For I'm a sailor until the idyllic harbor
That arises in the unending horizon
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 9:40 AM UTC
Times drove us into an endless road of possibilities.
Where I saw the light of hope amongst the stars.
A smidgen of electricity was sent through my entire body,
A smidgen of this endearing feeling runs between the heart and mind—
After our encounter under the starry night skies,
the shared dreams and drinks,
and the whispered of senseless mumbles.
Scattered leaves of Autumn companying beneath,
As the alluring voices from between your crooked teeth,
lull me to another happy ending dream.
As I thought about a figure and a smile as beautiful as yours.
Also the way your eyes glisten under the darkness,
and the tingling scent of yours,
Which brought back the tightening knots—
—Around my lung, heart, and throat.
And before the sun peeked from its horizon,
You asked me,
"Do you love me?"
I leaned to kiss you and whispered,
"Just a smidgen."
Feb 4, 2016
Feb 4, 2016 at 9:19 AM UTC
I met my uncle Albert
down at asda, in aisle three;
he got there in his mazda,
jus' a smidgen after me,
said he'd traversed sainsburys,
tesco liddle n the spar,
but not one o' them flogged caviar
truffles or foie Gras.
He sidled past the pork pies
streaky bacon turkey thighs
a headin for the french fries
n forsaken knock down buys,
He shimmied 'round the ankle biters;
expectant mums to be,
popin pills for bloated ills
in the haberdashery.
Apr 20, 2021
Apr 20, 2021 at 12:04 PM UTC
I thought I hummed a happy song,
but without a woman I was wrong.
A belief I was too blind to see.
Women are the best thing,
a man could ever have.
(she points this out to me).
She said that we,
collectively,
would open life's doors,
no less, no more, dance upon floors.
The joy we'll see.
(And while I'm out and about could I
run a few chores?).
She does wonderful things,
so I've been told.
At least I think so,
but this I know.
From the dawn of man,
through the times of sand.
Without a woman,
a man cannot stand!
(She wrote this on the back
Of my hand).
She lovingly wraps herself around
every aspect of my life,
my wife,
to the point I couldn't function
without her. Yes lovingly.
I wouldn't doubt her.
(She seems to have combined both our power).
She had the word TAKEN tattooed on
my arm,
I'm no longer living alone, so what's
the harm.
You can love them or **** them -
thy name is woman.
(when I'm wrong, I hide in the barn).
I try to squeeze her and please her,
kiss her and hold her,
and be mister charming.
She responds by whispering,
don't you have a ballgame to watch
Or something?
(She keeps me running).
I'm a mouse in my house,
who sometimes sleeps on the couch.
While wheeling and dealing with the
strife of married life.
She says it's for the best.
(I now pronounce you man and wife).
I wanted a strong woman that stands
on her own,
stimulates my growth.
Runs her life and runs our home.
A woman who's so much more.
(Be careful what you wish for).
She said you best be knowing,
that lawns need mowing,
kids need growing.
I countered,
can't I just be a snoring and boring,
simply enjoying dad?
She double-countered,
and said, "Women are the best thing a man could ever have".
(Who am I to argue).
I want a mate to share my plate,
one who has the grace,
to have smiles break-out all over
her face.
There's no way her smile could ever
flip upside down,
and become a frown.
(Could it?)
I reach for my back pocket wallet,
but her hand is already on it.
She says sharing is caring,
and it's a wonderful thing.
She states, "You want to be
wonderful too,
don't you"?
(So I guess sharing is the only way).
She says I'm teachable with a
smidgen of logic,
so I'm flexible, and her little project.
Change my stubbornness from bad to
good.
Says I'm hard headed.
(knock on wood).
So that's how it goes, I suppose.
To be a money provider,
a handyman, a chauffeur driver.
To be elated,
sort of appriciated,
to be a married man.
She keeps whispering in my ear,
for my brain again to hear,
and to make it perfectly clear.
"Dear", she says...
Women are the best thing
a man could ever have.
(So I've been told).
Oct 4, 2019
Oct 4, 2019 at 8:26 PM UTC