"smudgy" poems
poetry is photography:
the photography of your soul
it begins as an observation captured in stuttering syntax:
the lens of your soul pointing towards a subject, a metaphor, a line
within you, within the world, within the two.
if vague and smudgy this image at first,
the lines rearrange themselves, the grammar settles,
and the image comes into focus - sharp and still.
as you would a camera, approach things at angles,
you flood your poetry with perspective, with self, with distance,
stamp yourself onto it, and you know it belongs as yours.
and you know you have captured that pearl in an oyster,
those millions of dying stars exploding within you,
an image of yourself.
yet, sometimes, you're out of film and however you click the shutter,
your words fall off the lines, burst into dissonance, or finds itself unwritten.
like photography, you do not expect a stable yield of inspiration.
then, with the years, you lay your poetry on a wall -
chronologically, alphabetically, thematically, or anything -
and you will step back to see a montage of your life in eloquent snapshots.
if poetry should ever be photography - then -
it would be the photography of one's soul.
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 10:05 PM UTC
I think about the face of a woman
and her smooth skin
soft lips
the curvature of the Earth is kin to her hips
I feel humanity suffering needlessly
beneath her cells
as I wander her valleys and sand-dune hills
she is the beach
the ocean
the calling of many gulls screaming for food and
I love her white *******
But she is sneaky
and cares for me
caressing is painful
I see it in my own eyes the next day
when the smudgy bruises flit across my reflection
But men understand
without either of us speaking a **** word
we drive
we shout
we catcall
we game
the music takes us and we run for days
doing nothing
anything
and i guess sometimes we ****
Succinct and supernatural
Brawn or brown skin or bright ideas gone awry
always a good day with the gang or the bros
I feel safer in the hoods
I want her to notice me, and to shyly skip over like she did last week
i want to kiss her neck and pull back
soon enough to catch her half-lidded gaze into the abyss behind me
I want to wear boxers and treat her to fancy dinners
But
I want to be her
I want taste a mustache
I want to be lifted overhead like a little sister
and brought back to the earth with sweet
exploration
Impossibility
I want women and men to be the same thing
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 1:44 AM UTC
Lying on the bed
I think of what to write...
....words don't flow out
of my pen
my mind is clogged
vaccum surrounds me
I've ****** all the noise
into my self.
It's waiting to explode.
I realise I am too conscious
of myself,
I realise I am trying to pretend.
My pen leaks out
a random flow of ink
shaped in words
I strike them out
they don't manifest my feelings.
I don't want farce to appeal
to the eye,
I want honesty to touch
the heart.
I am waiting
for my words
to strike a chord
with the strings of my heart.
I am longing
for clarity
that will give my writing
a sense of purpose
and shorn it
of its randomness.
Lying on the bed
I think of what to write....
....my mind is a clean slate
I want to colour it
with thoughts
and feelings,
I want for it to
lose its barrenness
and be fertile
with imagination.
I want for it to
be bereft of fear
for it is,
the place
where revolutions were conceived
and philosophies were born;
the sole reason
for Man's greatness.
It boasts of coveted freedom,
which,
feared tyrants failed to ******
it is a guiding light
to the often faltering humanity.
It has been
subject to manipulations,
deceiving history
into changing its course;
scripting moments
of momentous change,
all, of course,
owing their occurrences
to the enchanting influence
it wields over the body.
Lying on the bed
I think of what to write....
....my mind is deluged
with a rush of thoughts
flowing in and out,
a haze of colours
mesmerises me,
letters, words
dance before my eyes,
songs play out in a loop,
a multitude of
smudgy-outlined faces
gazes at me....
....And I realise
with an epiphany,
It is this very train of thoughts
I shall elaborate on!
Lying on the bed
I think I know what to write on.
Sep 23, 2012
Sep 23, 2012 at 4:55 PM UTC
a stripe of asphalt on the blanket of green
I stare wordlessly out into other people's lives
peeking past the violet-tinted windows of the freeway
as your chat-chatter spills from your coffee cup
filled to the brim with handshakes and impatience
You clutch your earpiece tighter, scowling
as I trace the horizon across the glass
smudgy fingertips that sigh boredom
and the Mexican workers in orange vests
peer back at me curious and wave
turn to their left and shout something in Spanish
tongues dancing, slick with dust
I smile as they crumple their lunch sacks and
pitch them down into the rubble then hoist
brick by brick, stone by stone
no natural-made boundary
into the chalky air and perch for a while
to mop the sweat from their brown
creased faces and sing rowdily to their neighbors
and the immobile in the SUVs
You lock the doors fast
and pat your hair into place
I've got no time for this construction
you say, can't they build this highway somewhere else?
as you drum your fingers along to the siren song
of CEOs and business connections
You're just the same as the rest of them.
Man forever building bridges
that will only topple down.
Jun 23, 2010
Jun 23, 2010 at 7:26 AM UTC
When the gore began, it was just a flowing river of reddy blood.
Out of an aquamarine fireball of yellow out of the Sahasra,
I was nowhere but inside my head.
IT was pale green and bright indigo all around.
Crowded.
Enchantress Revealing.
Twists and turns did not stop the telepathy.
With a pastel smile on a pale beige brawn, everything blended in flesh and blood of my dreams.
Were it mine?
Or was it that of the girl from the screen?
For more than a hour, I loved everything that I despised and the other way too.
In fact, I was even one with the smudgy blades of the cooler fan in front.
When it ended, I knew perhaps the rainbows and rainclaps on every planet across the cosmos.
A day after, everything is monochrome with a dash of anger.
Apr 26, 2017
Apr 26, 2017 at 6:30 AM UTC
#1 - Coming Home
You can see the smile of his tiny face already
Before the door has been pushed to;
Feel its cooling warmth.
His ears are up, silken with chocolate velvet
Dependable amber lamps beam at you
Lit delicately
Eitherside a perfect, blackened nose.
#2 - Back From a Walk
Garbed in the dirt of the arduous chore
Head to paw
Contemptuous smudgy cartouches;
A sickening brown on the cold floor
The chore continues, it unravels
He remains a flaky, filthy burden.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 7:24 PM UTC
My lips are thin
like the cheap sheets
we slept under last night.
Noses cold and pressed together,
transforming the AC into waves
and ourselves into nobodies.
Nobody sees me punish my lips
for being so small and disappointing .
Tiny pale flakes lie lifeless
on the barely pink slits;
a testimony of my brutality
and the precision of my teeth.
............................................................
Teeth clenched and eyes wide,
I hold the goods in my palm.
Firecracker, Ravish Me Red, Red Door Red.
Ravish Me Red sounds like a good time,
so Ravish Me Red it is.
but I wish I had a fourth.
Four minutes until I see you.
You're always exact.
The clock pleads for me,
but I'm busy glaring at
the familiar rouge strangers on my face
that I can't deny are mine.
My teeth try and fail to resist
The taste of my scarlet-smeared skin
they gnaw and gnaw at their treat,
dressing themselves in Ravish Me Red.
They refuse to be satisfied
until they taste blood.
Blood doesn't match my ruby lipstick
It's smudgy and ugly and I am ashamed.
My face is wet when I open the door.
You ask what's wrong, but you already know.
Through your smile I hear,
"Red isn't really your color."
Color now on your wrists and nose and knees
The red marks you as mine.
It fades from me to you
and leaves my lips naked
but you kiss the tiny pale flakes
that I used to hate.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 10:07 PM UTC
Last night is blurry in my sleep fogged mind,
through my smudgy black eyes.
But I can feel the ghost
of the awkward,
stumbling,
kisses we shared,
the faint tickle of your hot breath
that whispered down my neck.
Did it really happen?
Oct 30, 2013
Oct 30, 2013 at 8:59 AM UTC
It is getting colder: deeply, deeply.
November carries a fog as thick as guilt
to set heavily on my brow like a crown.
I piece recollections in a daylight mosaic,
bits of broken glass with ragged edges,
but the colors are dark, the faces unfinished.
A row of bruises on my leg has cropped up
overnight like small brown mushrooms,
I feel the tissue deaden beneath my skin.
The fog comes at dawn like a merciful nurse
to remove me from my own history. It presses
cottonballs against my eyes. The bruises remain.
The bar-lights remain, smudgy windows grinning
out from under their shrouds, dark streets, they
too remain, waiting like a trap under deadleaves.
But did I break myself on him like a bottle last last?
The fog says YOU DID YES YOU DID
and reflects to me the shame of my own face.
Nov 21, 2012
Nov 21, 2012 at 12:27 PM UTC
I'm just a story unread,
a dusty old book
left untouched on a shelf,
all yellowing,
with pages worn and frayed,
and frayed heartstrings to match.
You're just a boy,
who fervently flicks
through hundreds of stories,
without much thought
as to how the story ends
once you've tossed your copy aside.
If you wanted, I'd let you flip me open
at the chapter of your choice,
so you could pour over my pages,
devour the details,
and enter my story,
even just for a page or two.
I'm not asking you
to make the purchase, I know
this place is full
of stories better told,
with heroines more beautiful
and brave than I.
Just hold me momentarily,
reach out,
stroke my spine,
scan through my clumsy narrative,
let me hold your attention
for just a few minutes.
You can leave your smudgy fingerprints
on my blank, white spaces
and then you can shut my cover,
toss me aside,
back on the shelf and let the dust
gather on me once more.
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 4:05 PM UTC
"How was your night?"
Drinking,
as usual,
to numb the constant,
dull hum,
of emptiness,
crying by myself,
at the back of the club,
watching my beautiful friends,
with the perfect faces,
find somebody to hold
and love for the night.
Going home by myself,
staring out the smudgy window of the taxi,
wondering if I'll ever make the journey with somebody next to me,
a hand to hold.
Getting into bed as dawn breaks,
just as my heart does the same.
"Fine."
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 8:32 AM UTC
some sit silently.
soaking in the sounds of bells.
acknowledging it.
others, teary-eyed,
watching a bad year subside
into better years.
another, smiling
eyes ablaze with fireworks
of the bright past year.
ev'ryone with pens
and smudgy resolutions,
mapping their future.
buildings shed clothings.
sheets, curtains change like seasons.
posters, promotions.
and it seems:
flipping calendars
unfathomably transform
us happy creatures.
me? if ev'ry day
can be seen as a new year:
oh, happy planet!
Jan 1, 2012
Jan 1, 2012 at 5:32 AM UTC
Your scrawls slants rightward, with g's that look like s's.
The stamp is always square with the envelope's corner,
and you include the time of composition beneath the date.
Three months apart and I can hardly picture your hands anymore,
the way your left palm must drag behind the pen, leaving this trail
of smudgy footprints that tiptoe around your words.
I read of your dreams: to drive an old convertible down I-15,
listening to Tom Petty– the pinnacle of American existence, you say;
to have a daughter; to still go to concerts at age 40.
You tell me how you designate different books for bedtime
and for doing laundry. Sometimes you secretly listen to Colbie Callait.
And you've found yourself praying lately, most often for us.
You say you are thinking of taking up the banjo,
but will I ever get to watch your fingers wander its strings,
your tongue resting on your lower lip in concentration?
As my eyes scan the lines and I draft my reply, I find myself
wishing for more than a pen-pal-lover; that you would show up
at my door and I could hold the hand that crafts these words.
Your bedtime story version of us begins, "Once upon a time,
there were two extremely attractive, smart, funny, people..."
You wrote that you hope it has a happy ending.
I hope so too.
Jun 28, 2014
Jun 28, 2014 at 2:15 PM UTC
Walk not my little dear
on the land so muddy
lest your clothes smear
by the soil smudgy.
You are not born
for the lowly task, like me,
your life is adorn,
instead,
with mirth and glee.
I feel so ashamed
of my sully hands ***** of mud,
how can I wish to touch your cheek
and cuddle it if I could.
But my little princess royale,
my sweetheart, you should know,
that the sapling I sow today
if yours when you grow,
The most precious rose
for my most precious dear
and I care little if remembered
as a mere gardener.
Mar 13, 2014
Mar 13, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
Mimosa pudica retreat
Humid glasshouse, rainy day
Pane-separated from the world
Exhaling foggy vagueness
Colours run wet
World through window walls,
a distorted Monet reproduction
Morphing, mixing, mushy
Each canvas exists for a sliding second
Glass and breath
Collaborating through condensation
Our fuzzy-haze masterwork
Panoramic gossamer lens
Magically softens
spiky, scratchy, sharp, crispness
into a smudgy simulacrum
A kind deceit
Frowns, scowls, growls,
and bared-toothy rage,
all smeared
Gently redacted
Calm, dreamy, pillowscape broadcast
Impressionist buffer
In muted pastels
Reality in artful disguise
Remoulded for ease of consumption
Sugary spoonful of subterfuge
Sifting, sorting, selective
Incomplete and fragmentary
Blur-clouded brain-break
Intermittent extra distance
Breath-focused,
soupy-warm,
momentary masterpiece
Just for me
Until my leaves unfurl
Oct 4, 2024
Oct 4, 2024 at 8:32 AM UTC
Pencil love
before I saw Flairs
as a child
yellow sticks
smudgy hands
scratching cars and dinosaurs
on plain white paper
Mar 28, 2017
Mar 28, 2017 at 11:23 PM UTC
feeling quite tired and timid
hurt and injured
caught up in thought
I drank ginger ale
what else have I got
smudgy glasses
cold rain
pain
and rot
nothing else.
grizzly bear's playing
in my ears while the emotion-
less teardrops run alongside
my nose
head in my hands
thinking.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 7:00 PM UTC
Mattress shifts,
Body stirs,
Rousing aromas,
Sizzling bacon,
Roasting ham,
Toasting bread,
Chase scents,
Passed portraits,
Peculiar lady,
No eyebrows,
Oak table,
Four plates,
Polished utensils,
Before meal,
Daily stretching,
Muscle bulge,
Pumping blood,
Refreshing air,
Lake preserves,
Stilled water,
Bouncing beams,
Admiration disrupted,
Distant beeping,
Labored breathing,
Hazy glimpses,
Smudgy edges,
Finally spot,
Collapsing machine,
Tangling cords
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 9:14 PM UTC
No need for shallow chest breath
I am safe
I can breathe through my belly
Deep, becoming regular
Soothing, smoothing, slowing
No need for organised thought
I am shielded
I can relax into this place
Calm, becoming gentle
Softening, swaying, sliding
No need for clock watching
Dali time only
I can exist, chrono-sheltered
Now, becoming ageless
Melting, muting, morphing
Here…
A door with round window
Mellowing to Renoir-lens
Glossy, smudgy, charm
Hobbit-style architecture
Familiar, shire-y, amiable
Lit warm and soft
A brown carpet bag
Caressing the rich pile
Sturdy, salvaged, true
Tardis-like inner structure
Dependable holder, infinite
For weights and woe
Smooth, even, stone stairs
Descending in timeworn strength
Secure, bendless, cool
Delivering, guiding journey-way
To ease and mend
I tender-lift my bag
Zip open for a prize
On every step
Each stair a healing game
The bag a hungry friend
To hold my heavy goods
And bare them strong for me
As I descend
Step one is for fear
Two for screaming
Three for ache
with blurred-out meaning
Four for panic
Five dark-dread
that slither-twists through sleep in bed
If guilt is six
Then shame is seven
long blame-soaked school without a lesson
Eight for pleading
Nine for weeping
Ten for wounds, and burns, and bleeding
The bag now zipped, trapped weights and woe,
is set down gently, as I go
All grateful heart, and kindess-eyed
Door opens as
I walk outside
Oct 13, 2024
Oct 13, 2024 at 1:28 AM UTC
i definitely told you at the right time
cold new lips i kissed you at the right time
two years on and i kissed the same place so many times
i lost count of how happy it made me.
i swallowed your tears in so many different lights
a waltzer of a moment, i heard **** jagger
i heard the melody of mens voices, i heard every key and every shift
dazzled and dizzy in light and dark and in mud and rain and
smudgy warmth
i heard a buzz so loud it turned into vision
and everything was a spinning top
i heard everything i’d ever heard and seen everything i’d ever seen
and i held your hand like i was about to get pulled away any second
in the avalanche
i saw your beautiful important face so many times
shouting at the sea, in the palm of my hand, in grass
in pillow, on the back of everybody i ever meet
in love i licked all the salt away every time
i couldn’t tell whether it was the rain or the sea spray or tears
and i thought about this every time we kissed
and i thought about how it didn’t matter to me at all
we lived in an electric moment that fizzled ultraviolet for half a second
and i painted that second
so i could prove to everybody i met
that it happened
that this is kind of how it looked
to be on the tip of a hurricane looking down at the chaos
and being happy just for the excuse
to hold hands
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 2:06 PM UTC
carved or etched or pencilled
carved sounds more committed
deeper than the usual
to etch into metal sounds difficult
use of a pencil sounds soft and smudgy
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 7:42 AM UTC
Leafy Labor Day and Summer’s Last Dragon
In a happier world, children this day,
Barefoot children, running about in play
Would pause now at the end of summer time -
New school supplies from the old five-and-dime
Write those first smudgy lines with a new ink-pen
For tomorrow the new school year takes in
And count their cedar pencils, one, two, three
Then out again to the Robin Hood tree
A wooden sword, and a dragon to slay
In a happier world, children this day
*(Their Robin Hood wants to slay a dragon,
and so a wrathful dragon slain shall be;
Little children know best about these things)*
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 5:47 PM UTC
Lowestoft was that small town the window crisis hit
Smudgy smears always appeared mixed with grubby grit
Filthy stains on dingy pains and ***** birdie ****
Cob webs spread like Spider-Man an attic window pit
The anguish of the people, through all their daily strains
Townsfolk getting upset with not seeing through the pains
Because of ***** windows and because of all the stains
Glass windows needed washing to remove the gritty grains
Many a small window and so many sheets of glass
Simple and posh leaded, no matter what the class
Awkward windows out of sight, you'd really rather pass
Reaching them is such a stretch, a real pain in the ****
They will be all shiny just like newly polished brass
When we stick our ladders down on your drive or grass
If you want your windows cleaned then just give us a call
Every smeared, smudged surface, we're equip to clean them all
Two savvy ladies on the case, arriving with a run not crawl
So if your in a ***** crises then don't you ever stall
We'll investigate your sheets of glass inserted in your wall
Giving them a good rub down before your windows fall
Even in a stately home, manor or great hall
Nothing is to high or low neither short or tall
All residential areas houses in your neighbourhood
Bungalows to tower blocks, we polish pretty good
Conservatories and porches, plastic through to wood
Industrial estates and caravans, cleaned the way they should
Wherever they are situated and wherever they are stood
Shops and local businesses, we'll turn up in a flood
If your windows are not clean and you've reached your tether
We'll grab all of our equipment and get everything together
Buckets, blades and applicators we're always window clever
Getting there before your despair and in any kind of weather
As long as we can make you smile with our cleaning endeavour
Make sure you call the best the girls of " All Weather Leather"
Aug 20, 2017
Aug 20, 2017 at 1:56 AM UTC
torrid mouth...
serpent-tongue
terrarium.
sleeping in a ball.
inertial bliss.
glass face.
smudgy fingerprints
of veritable touch.
leaving
spotty spider-cracks
catching artificial
light.
as uncoiling dreams
warm their blood.
it's snowing pinky mice.
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 2:06 PM UTC
Singing down the valleys, meadows
Casting smudgy, dappled shadows
Go the children, skipping, swinging
Their gleesome joy through daylight ringing
In nature's ***** their rustic beauty shows
The children wake. They wake to love
And on that thought their sweet minds rove
The forest is their treasure trove
An enchanted and protected grove
For harmony the children strove
And take guidance from above
They will not be defeated, slain
So hear my ludic, joyful refrain
And leave so we can be left to love
Mar 5, 2017
Mar 5, 2017 at 5:14 PM UTC