"snaky" poems
On a plateau
by the seashore
sits a naked goddess,
a dryad or a naiad--
she laments a soft
song of mechanical
love. Bathing in the
quiet night, the
light, the
diamond-bright
stillness. She looks
at me with sad eyes.
On a conch-shell loveboat
together we sail
through snaky canals
of the heart.
Cool, lapping
water drips
from her long
seaweed hair as she
sings for me--
we go beneath
the sea &
look up at
intangible starfish
that mirror
the stars of the
surface.
Sep 25, 2014
Sep 25, 2014 at 12:17 AM UTC
for Ruth Fainlight
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root;
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.
Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?
Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it.
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.
All night I shall gallup thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.
Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, the big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin white, like arsenic.
I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand,a hand of wires.
Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.
The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.
I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.
I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it ***** out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? ----
Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That **** that **** that ****
4.2k
As the gods began one world, and man another,
So the snakecharmer begins a snaky sphere
With moon-eye, mouth-pipe, He pipes. Pipes green. Pipes water.
Pipes water green until green waters waver
With reedy lengths and necks and undulatings.
And as his notes twine green, the green river
Shapes its images around his sons.
He pipes a place to stand on, but no rocks,
No floor: a wave of flickering grass tongues
Supports his foot. He pipes a world of snakes,
Of sways and coilings, from the snake-rooted bottom
Of his mind. And now nothing but snakes
Is visible. The snake-scales have become
Leaf, become eyelid; snake-bodies, bough, breast
Of tree and human. And he within this snakedom
Rules the writhings which make manifest
His snakehood and his might with pliant tunes
From his thin pipe. Out of this green nest
As out of Eden's navel twist the lines
Of snaky generations: let there be snakes!
And snakes there were, are, will be--till yawns
Consume this pipe and he tires of music
And pipes the world back to the simple fabric
Of snake-warp, snake-weft. Pipes the cloth of snakes
To a melting of green waters, till no snake
Shows its head, and those green waters back to
Water, to green, to nothing like a snake.
Puts up his pipe, and lids his moony eye.
3.8k
It was not when temptation came,
Swiftly and blastingly as flame,
And seared me white with burning scars;
When I stood up for age-long wars
And held the very Fiend at grips;
When all my mutinous body rose
To range itself beside my foes,
And, like a greyhound in the slips,
The Beast that dwells within me roared,
Lunging and straining at his cord. . . .
For all the blusterings of Hell,
It was not then I slipped and fell;
For all the storm, for all the hate,
I kept my soul inviolate!
But when the fight was fought and won,
And there was Peace as still as Death
On everything beneath the sun.
Just as I started to draw breath,
And yawn, and stretch, and pat myself,
-- The grass began to whisper things --
And every tree became an elf,
That grinned and chuckled counsellings:
Birds, beasts, one thing alone they said,
Beating and dinning at my head.
I could not fly. I could not shun it.
Slimily twisting, slow and blind,
It crept and crept into my mind.
Whispered and shouted, sneered and laughed,
Screamed out until my brain was daft. . . .
One snaky word, "What if you'd done it?"
And I began to think . . .
Ah, well,
What matter how I slipped and fell?
Or you, you gutter-searcher say!
Tell where you found me yesterday!
2k
lithium
keeping me from iridescent mania
cutting of the air to my lungs
strangling me with snaky grey
v
i
n
e
s
oozing with itchy slime
that gets in every pore
depression and self loathing set in
why is this my prescription?
Jul 6, 2016
Jul 6, 2016 at 10:59 PM UTC
writing a poem (on my iPod: feels like cheating)
while greyhounding back homeward---
(weekend red stripes in guelph & waterloo)
it hasn't much t'do with anything,
save perhaps this mournful banjo
in my ear and grey toronto
and the plateglass houses of the
great rich masses set back on
manicured hills. . .
. . . it is overcast again
---tho t'always is on busfilled
travel sundays---
when you've nothing else to do but
leave all the weekend's joy in the dusts.
preachers screamin' in fastidious belled churches
while my head splits (from th'very thought)
and O the women i leave behind!
the tight snaky barworn dresses,
smudges (lipsticks)
on ***** cranberries ...
ah! (ah!)
all the numbers and names half-collected,
waiting for next trip down
---or maybe just black oblivion.
. . .
but enough of cloudy thoughts!
i have Spring and all (WCW)
waiting in the pack &
afterall
... poetry
is the only thing of any importance.
the gardens of bedroom bliss
the freckled map of womankind
the rippling cascade of golden hair
must wait...
Oct 23, 2011
Oct 23, 2011 at 6:37 PM UTC
Conner is a lovely man.
He laces his wants through me with fine, pale features.
I cannot say what I would like of him--
nor what he would like of me.
Conner is a strange man,
with an accent that is achieved through a deep rumble in the back of the throat --
He is prideful of his home country,
which causes some sort of influence over me.
Conner is a man full of wit.
His expressions are comical,
words are snaky --
and have the tendency to make me blush.
Conner surely is not a stranger to admirers.
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 2:24 PM UTC
When I was younger than I am now
I was part of a Cold War.
His heart was so cold
That it froze all of my Cuban heat.
He was only trying to help I guess
Only trying to show me his heart.
But I ran away scared into the arms
Of his enemy, my friend.
At least I thought that we were friends.
In the end it all came down to seconds,
He asked the question, I rang the hotline to the friend,
I pushed the button, in the end.
Everyone was contained, that's for sure.
So composed and dignified in the face
Of the cold shoulder.
Alas, the ally is no better than the enemy
We all have our secret snaky sides.
Even the man with the D.C dreams of foreign policy.
The man who only wanted me, the man who didn't mean to
Start this war.
And the worst part is, I don't know who was right.
War is never black and white.
Feb 10, 2016
Feb 10, 2016 at 6:43 AM UTC
*we inscribed poems on each others souls
in ink at first
but ink did not touch the magnitude of our love
so we wrote in the wettest kisses
and snaky tongues
undulating pink spells
but still we needed more
we wrote with the unguents from our *****
and while it was as lush as paradise
still, we craved
so we wrote in pain and blood
we suffered for each other
and at each other's hands
we drank each other's tears
consumed each other's emptiness
till arteries darkened
and our life force
ran through each other's veins
like vermilion claret
until we died each other's deaths
and felt the shadow of each other's ancestors
and then we fell in love again
transformed
true initiates of adoration
and everything each other
a rapturous yoga
fused like thrice folded metal
living silent incantations
ethric urns
burning
gold frankincense and myrrh
enshrined in the heavens
rapturous mouths
in a tangle of kisses arcadian.
May 16, 2017
May 16, 2017 at 7:21 PM UTC
Una kissed
each one breast
at a time,
so softly,
her lover,
thought of them
as melting,
unlike when
her husband,
dear Brian,
licked at them
like some hound
lapping up
rain water.
Una put
kisses on
each rib place,
gently there,
lips brushing,
moving on,
then she kissed
***** hair
to get there,
her lover's
honey ***
her queendom
of Eden,
arched over
her lover,
she kissed deep,
lips melting,
snaky tongue
entering,
offering
no apple,
forbidden fruit,
but soft love,
bringing on
to the boil
of deep sighs
and throat sounds.
Her lover,
in her turn,
entered slow,
her middle
firm digit,
but gently
into that
Dublin ****
which Brian,
her husband,
never could
bring himself
to finger enter
such a place
(such as hers
not Una's).
As Una
kissed softly,
her lover,
swooning hot,
then forgot
her Brian's
*** failing,
but enjoyed
so deeply
the kisses
and tonguing
of her hot
honey ***
Dec 7, 2013
Dec 7, 2013 at 3:44 AM UTC
Sinking and sinking
I question my dreaming
The constellations swallow me
Suddenly I am nothing, everything
Everyone relies on me
My fingers pinch the sun
Drag it to the one
I bring the dawn
Yet thrive in the night
Falling and falling
I ponder my longing
To fall from the sky
From so mighty high
Wonder when I hit the ground
If it will make a sound?
All I feel is emptiness
All I feel is desolate
Arms out to catch myself
Lingering on your last breath
All I feel is worthless
All I feel is emptiness
Crashing and crashing
I embrace the fall
I kiss the ground with my body
and wait for my soul
Will it evacuate the emptiness?
Does it even exist?
Soaring and soaring
My mind is
And it lingers
On every moment I hated you
Can't nobody hate you like I do
I hope you feel guilty
As my world is closing in
Yet the commotion around me isn't sinking in
I can hear the whispers
Calling in the night
Tempting me to do
What I think I might
Breathe and breathe
I attempt to, but do not strive to
Death is not my fear
That would be you being near
Don't touch me
Someone does, checks for pulse
But I am already flying
I shoot into the sky, back up, arms out
Im crying out
Reaching, grasping, failing
To touch the body I once inhabited
I know I was not meant to be
So why do I feel sadly?
The hearts content
I say that dont please her
Happiness is on her face
As the man greets her
His voice is just dance, just colors
On an empty canvas
A bit of something inside
A little of me, a little of her
I am the demon
The soul whisperer
The one who tells her to do it
Dancing and dancing
My demon whispers to him but I still move
Who is in control?
Who holds the ropes?
I dont think I can save myself
I'm drowning here please
Somebody help?
Digging and digging
My demon knows it all
Her silky, snaky voice surrounds everything
I am suffocating
Although I am already dead
I shall live forever with her in my head
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 12:03 PM UTC
Eternity weeps with firey teeth.
Will chains darken biting agony?
death aches snaky sorrow.
Hark!
echos ponders the knowledge of wormy horns.
Help!
worms curses of black pain,
As Curse quivers in the snaky haired monsters of painful sulfer.
Feb 20, 2013
Feb 20, 2013 at 7:32 PM UTC
A story from my past about a doll who had bones...
For her snaky body crackled with calcium
The weight of flesh ***** and ragged in pauses
Llithe light heavy her arms skinny and stout
Ready to enmesh anyone that came her way
Once it was Blue Beard and then some Santa Clauses
Of rustling coats sitting well on alien atoms
Polestars of the dark moulded to suit her thunder
Until it was turn for human ******* that her fears danced
In mad forms not unlike hers no doubt
She saw them heard them wished them out
She sought eyes for beads to end the trance
For there was comfort in plastic and forever it could last
Jul 1, 2014
Jul 1, 2014 at 3:20 AM UTC
Within the grip of unfamiliarity, pestilence
Sits in grainy aloneness gritting the grind of teeth
Breath does not penetrate much, it holds itself
Still with unconscious perfect effort. Tired eyes
Sift through video tracks clutching crossed
Out sections edited randomly, leaving fingertips
Polished perfectly familiar, yet not so, as mouths
Spit flaky sentences bowled over in turmoil
If crossing the road would the eye of difference
Change perspective, grant peace...permission to digress
Into roominess without challenge, would calling out invent
Comforting echoes to rally. Yet.....would they shake their
Snaky grizzle....grinning vapidly, unexpected tongues sizzling
Forking their way across tight lips......slither
Their purpose across fugitive bodies and minds....crushing
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 10:19 AM UTC
My parents when they slept they slept with snakes.
My parents when they slept they died, every night, in cycles, like monthly blood:
the first time I got my period I was 12 years old and wearing jeans
newly stained and thought that I’d killed a man.
There are still times when I think that I’m killing men, or boys, by accident,
because of all the milk swirling around inside of my collarbones
(there are still times when I think that I’ve killed you)
When you sleep you whisper to your parents. Did you already know that?
Have you already told somebody else about the way
your body looks when you sleep, all stretched out like the legs of a newborn?
You’re a boy with hair as red as emergencies,
a boy who belongs best on subways, with your body lanky,
with your hands like skies gripping onto the metal pole.
Later after dinner I am that metal pole, only with a larger stomach. My stomach
is always largest after eating dinner. Your hands are always the most over a girl’s body – your hands the most like skies – after dinner: this is the worst horror movie:
my stomach popping like a mountain or an ear high in the sky (or, worse,
my stomach never pops, it is always there).
In November we are in a parking lot
(it is late
it is full of rain) and you don’t know my voice, a voice sounding
like ****** up broken jewelry.
For my birthday you gave me a bracelet you found in your mother’s bedroom
and it broke two days later, beneath a softly lit streetlamp.
Somewhere in the middle of a sidewalk somewhere near the east river I am holding the bracelet and crying water from littered water bottles but nobody sees me (or:
it’s all a dream, and it happens over and over again, cyclical, the way my parents used to sleep, used to die).
The two times that you’ve rejected me:
once: my parents with banged up bruised bodies in the hospital // when I saw them lying in between sheets cotton like your t-shirts I fainted
twice: the funeral is back home. I fly there and my ears won’t stop popping,
like a mountain, like a too full stomach. At the funeral I forget hands
like skies at the funeral I fall in love with everybody I see at the funeral I forget that
I am no longer in the city (I can trust people)
I see you now as a ghost: when two ghosts **** we are horizon over a snaky river when two ghosts **** we are flying back to the state of my birth
when two ghosts **** (in ghost parents’ bed) we sound like car crashes
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 12:30 AM UTC
A certain ray of light pierced day
As if to burst the bubble into colored beams.
In the dazzle of the day a bloke felt moody;
Trapped in the maze of his voiceless mind
As he walked oblivious of passion to his prison
Yet prepared he was not for the finery he was yet to see.
A chill crept through his Snaky spine:
When his fell eyes fell to the gravity of the being descending-
The Murky dusty Creamy Stairs
A goddess! regaling in a fiercely flowery gown
Embracing her Sculptured Succulent frame.
She met his eyes with the force of a stray beam of light.
A thud was heard as his heart exploded down his bowel.
Her presence decorated the air stylishly with a musk of femininity.
All at ones he became alert of nature's essence.
An instant Hum perfumed the epicenter of his sordid heart.
He reached out to touch her slender arms
As he breathed almost mechanically "You are beautiful"
Jul 12, 2017
Jul 12, 2017 at 12:28 PM UTC
*the haloed sun above winked like a sage
and its searing smile stirred coy memories
that sailed the blue sky like feathery petals
cascading like a shower of floating fancies
and in a shallow pond above the rapids
where the waters gurgled and roared
their call for blessings at the mystic waterfall
the kingfisher was soon to be with the grateful dead
the couple engrossed in the snares of scented life
gazed up at the sky in search of the evening star
that twinkling would witness a girl taken to wife
in the misty coolness of a spray of charmed wishes
the timid bride with latent fire in her heart and limbs
had a wet kimono wrapped around her treasures mild
she prayed that if she be preyed upon it had to be wild
and abandoned; consuming even as the sun danced its exit
a snaky trickle of golden warmth poured down like honey
coursed through the articulate body to coagulate inside her cup
and she became paralyzed with the joy and wonder of creation
enacted once again in this moment of pleasurable stillness
and the first of her petals was well on its way to necessary ejection
and a soft landing in the hearts of those who wait for signs*
Feb 1, 2016
Feb 1, 2016 at 4:24 PM UTC
over,the ground crawling,
in the air higher, cascaded in tears
down a torrent, went over an edge of this
earth, have given up. Reveled in birth, cried at
losing one, spoiled soiled crapped on
myself. Spent, my last scents,
came up from there soiled stinking rotting.Smelled death.
Saw it in my hands, the last breath, a snaky smiling,
haunt. Saw the last ends the beginnings, felt all of history,
thought what is this?
Vomited with the reek of alcohol, self administering
medications, lost days, in there, lost feel.
Tried to understand , the mountains, wolves trees , alpha
omega.
Saw it smiling back at me.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 1:01 AM UTC
New, as a thing under the sun, may not be, if
you know
beyond any shadow of doubt
[
WAIT}{ Wraith, tell no lie, I adjure thee
Human… made of fertile dirt, humus, clay, right
or did this thing i thing you may
bean be, may be an AI virus
human concept formed from,
star-stuff,
highest dust of the desert
by fortuitous concurrence of events,
after ever begins or began
like a big bang and all kinds of unbelive- oh, that e, escape believe me,
once
just once, you come this far,
you never ring that ****** alarm again and shame,
shame's
a thing of the past, and we don't fish that hole.
Push on, pursuit of happiness is a right, not a privilege,
I inherent have, as a given, an intu ifity? An information messenger
from all who survived before now, this now, the right now?
I am, I think
A meme that makes me know,
from dust I came,
to dust I go, or is it some idea everybody knows
this me, the thinking me, I dust, become dust, damthatkansasong,
in the wind we then inherit
as
a means of propagation. Idea viruses evolve from invented
necessities formed into memes,
like on Facebook yes, yes and in Animal Farm where the egalitary
evolved an elite corps of the finest minds
and they formed a cadre of guards, to guard the riches caused by
the blessing of god.
A necessity for coping with --
op [option: change the course of history, portunity, or
position…
step by step as an upright walking being humanoid, but not dirt.
Nobel,
aragon level refusal to mix with lesser, looser fields of
gaseous matter dust,
atoms,
the un breakable thing at the point, until the Alamogordo,
fat cottonwood song was danced
in silence, and we saw
we make peace, where there is no peace,
do we lie,
can you wrestle with a message formed in media no scribe
could realize,
nor resist imagining if touched with the sting of this
what if, what if
god did adopt useless dirt beings and enoblize them above
all aaaa acc use
me. What if you got it? The itch, the kurio bite, the feel of a snaky lick?
--
Jul 1, 2020
Jul 1, 2020 at 7:05 PM UTC
He makes my heart shiver,
Gently quiver,
Makes it want to be a giver.
Sharing showers,
Raining arrows
That pull his heart hither;
Close to love that slithers,
In between the indefinite.
Like the way his snaky tongue carefully splits my lips.
-SLuR
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 7:03 PM UTC
Yes, bullying toughens you up, anyway,
Smile, rictus grins are okay,
I'll see this in writing at a G.P.,
You don't need to be so mean,
Cheap and snaky, inspiration!
Let's not hear it for manipulation,
So, bullying's toughened me up this way,
Smiles! Rictus grins are okay!
Apr 10, 2017
Apr 10, 2017 at 11:22 PM UTC
Hi there, I say
to the dusty weary stranger
At the ramshackle shanty
Perched upon a precipice.
As he sips tea
Steam rises silently from the cup
He looks up
And he says Hi
Letting out some steam
Where from, I ask
Guessing he was from down south
He slurps lazily
And replies in one miserly word.
And I see I was way off the mark
My eyebrows knit in knotty defeat
My instincts have blunted
I grunt at myself
Where to, I ask
He gropes around in his shirt pocket
A cigarette appears, slightly crumpled
He lights up, squinting his eyes
The smoke is acrid
I smell it's long-forgotten male scent
He drags, the tip glows bright
He opens his mouth in a stylized 'O'
Blows rings in a fibonacci sequence
I suddenly crave tobacco
But I wait
He hasn't replied...
On the far hill I see
A tiny car
Careening off the road
Tumbling in slow motion
Ricocheting here and there
Disappearing
In a golden flash
And a plume of smoke
He drags on the *** again
Lets out a plume of smoke
And points at the far hill
And its winding road
And the plume of smoke
Rising wispily skyward
I crave a smoke all the more
I say to no one:
Play it again, Sam
Play it once, for old time's sake.
He starts whistling
A long-forgotten song
He gets up to go,
Starts trudging down the road
I pick up my satchel
And start climbing.
Ahead of me on the snaky road
There's nobody.
Jun 8, 2023
Jun 8, 2023 at 11:36 PM UTC
Smoky curls that linger, pausing,
causing,
mystery,
weary thoughts hang limp in the
dank air,
the fire that once was, burns no more,
the body has given up and lays on the floor,
there is a stench,
there is a stink,
hmm, motor running too long too fast in the wrong gear,
was the life squeezed out or was it death by fear?
Fingers
with eyes,
brush the swirling,
snaky smoke trail,
as if to chase away,
what plays hide,
what play seek,
he bends down to look,
closer, silently absorbing,
yet is heart yells SPEAK,
at the scene of the crime,
he observes all that others
have missed, the sublime!
There was a ****** here, this time
he is the first to know! Now to
solve the crime, if he does he will be
in the big time
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 1:06 AM UTC