"snarls" poems
Zeus had plastic surgery,
his fingertips shaved off
so he would not leave prints
when he committed
his archetypal crimes.
He changed his name to Saturn
then to Cronos
then to Albatross Von Mariner,
all this subterfuge
just to disquise the fact
that he goes borderline ballistic
when he doesn't get his way.
He pulled Icarus out of the sky,
wounded Prometheus’ side,
left Sisyphus on a steep lonely mountain,
dared Demeter to save her daughter,
yet these souls persist
in mnemonic literary defiance
of a single fact…
No god is greater than you,
the karma jury has come in
and Zeus is sentenced
to five years of community service
on Interstate Highway 5.
He will wear a yellow clown suit
with a red rubber nose
and floppy green shoes
with a fast food tray hanging from his neck
and he will walk in traffic snarls
stopping at every car
to clean the windows
to sell hotdogs
with purple relish and black mustard
wrapped in grey buns
as unappetizing and pathetic
as the lies
he has told us about ourselves
for so long.
Oct 24, 2012
Oct 24, 2012 at 7:35 AM UTC
Casting judgement with your chuckles and snarls,
Is first nature.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 1:50 AM UTC
At first I hear snarls, "Nice
jeans, ****** although I'm
sure they don't include any
punctuation when ragging
on my anorexic pants
as if my jeans have anything
to do with my sexuality as if
the color of skin had anything
to do with last week's mugging
as if Catholics didn't once
**** for religion.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 12:00 AM UTC
Stuck in a rut of who i want to be
A constant feeling of being stuck at sea
No where to turn
No lessons to learn
Complete isolation
Is this what i diserve
A raven with no wings
Leaves a bird who wont sing
Waves shake and rock me
But i continue on
My boat keeps me afload
Keeping steady and strong
Thrown on this raft at a very young age
Constant sun burn and dehidration have my eyes crazed
Two people inside my mind
Im in control but struggle all the time
Out of sight
Out of mind
Is the story of my life
Full of fright
Now im blind
Must continue this fight
When suddenly i meet an unsuspecting creature
A very tired wolf with a very high fever
I take this wolf onto my floating door
Lick her wounds and give her compassion
...
Something nether of them have had before
The stranded raven adores the wolf
Infatuated with its being
After licking her wound
Her leg has stopped bleeding
But soon the raven will lick to much
The wolf snarls at the raven and howls to say enough
The raven retreats to his side of the tire
The close quarters would make the raven and wolf very tired
The raven was never raised as a hatchling
Rite out the egg starving
No incubation
No warmth for the raven
He is horrible to the wolf
Without knowing why
Could be his need to die
Could be his constant crying
The raven loves the wolf
This is clear
But he has had evil tendencies for many years
He hurts the wolf
He gets bitten
He hurts the wolf
He gets bitten
He hurts the wolf
He gets bitten
He hurts the wolf
He gets bitten
Now the raven is bleeding
Missing many feathers
Looking at the wolf
Stunned
The raven is starting to see what he has done
And he sits on his corner of the raft for months
He walks over to the wolf
Licks her heart
And says i should have been your boat from the start
I should never have hurt you
Drouned you
And im sorry
I offer you my neck as payment
The raven loves the wolf
This is clear
And decides to be a new bird
For the rest of his years
A cardinal appears from the raven
The black carcass falls
And the cardinal is born
And the wolf heals up
Never to be torn
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 12:26 AM UTC
unsuccessful potatoes & you found a tree in the ocean
i spent the afternoon digging, digging
my fingernails into my own fear of commitment
the fear of my own reputation
now the cat's in heat & richard nixon (the dog)
is teasing her with his trump card
she takes it
& squeezes it
very gently
then rips it open madly & snarls
& it oozes and drips out of her mouth
we all pick up a thousand pieces of a minute
i cremated my sister this morning & new spirits
arrived at my doorstep before noon
they sang to me of instinct,
whinnying about the antique zenith
up in cheyenne
"gimmie some secrets" she said
so i carved them
into my arm
into a minotaur's chest
into a giant looking glass
into a wooden boat
& i set sail for the sundial,
"there is no truth"
my eyes are wax & the ocean
means nasty filth
but everything is useless now
frogs carry high powered harmonicas
& walk into the spells of Poe
& into the hexagrams of Hamlet
i do not want to carry a pitchfork across
some godforsaken desert
i do not want to feel my own evaporation
while the real artists brood in the meantime
i want to waste away on a slushy evening
i will live in my armpit
& hate you
& never wear deodorant
"your mind is small--it is limited--why must you understand?"
Jan 10, 2012
Jan 10, 2012 at 9:11 PM UTC
i am afraid we have begun to dissociate,
unable to dissolve, I dissipate
we lavish emotion, laugh laudably
and cry with our larynx ripped out of our throats
i just need a little attention
'cause it's midday
and the midwife has a migraine,
with spoiled milk and clogged drains,
laundry a mile-long with tenuous children
tense with grimace and gray
we believe uncertainty for the hopeless and expectations for the great
the subtle hum
followed by slithering smirks
followed by snarls and sneers and weird sober
social experiments,
followed by small town dramas
and big time hypocrites.
Nov 12, 2013
Nov 12, 2013 at 1:07 PM UTC
Near a town of history untold
Where everyone knows each name
Wooden behemoths - obliviously old
Each unique but each the same
It was meant to be a perfect day
Of tranquility through the trees
Instead, the sky is brood with grey
And the leafs flow as they please
Alone, in nature's splendor spilled
In a rainy wilderness, seldom seen
The birds and insects grow suddenly still
In a spread silence of the green
Like eyes embedded in your back
You sense the stare of something sour
The mood hurries to horrid black
As you quiver into a cower
In bending branches blended
Creeping in creases - camouflaged
Nature's imbalance to be amended
In the forest's full mirage
Witness a terror appearing
Frantically floating from afar
Emerged in echoes and vaguely veering
Black, bleak and bizarre
A malevolent, monstrous maw
Snarls of hunger, habit, and hate
A malodor of meat, reeking raw
A violently increasing heart rate
From frozen still to fearfully shaking
You are manically mesmerised
Your pupils promptly dilating
As you and the beast lock eyes
Your meaningless attempt to run
From a stride to a collapse
The beams above crown the sun
As the twigs around you snap
A soar of pain as you hit the ground
Chest cavity cracked open
As you faint, you hear the sound
Of a language never spoken.
Gutted and gargling gore
Eaten by nature's nightmare
Convulsing on a forest floor
Indifference chokes the air
It's just another perfect day
Of tranquility in the trees
The rain has stopped, the leafs still sway
With the cooling, comfortable breeze
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 3:46 PM UTC
She often thought that, in a morbid way, loving someone was like death.
The parts of yourself that you reveal and give, wrapped in silver tinsel and flowered paper, can be broken, stolen, or returned worse for wear.
Sometimes love waters the beautiful parts of people, allowing them to grow and twine their way into everyone’s smile. However, the same effect can be gained by the famine that rejection brings, drying the beautiful parts until they are no more than the
husk of the darkest humanities seeping into snarls.
What makes love dangerous, is the allure of how easily you could get hurt, rejected, tossed carelessly aside, or broken, but you’re taking a chance on another human being having the compassion not to abandon you in the gutter along with every other heart they have wrung dry.
The trees we carve with hearts and initials are almost like our tombstones, waiting for the date to be scribed underneath, of when he stopped loving her eyes or she stopping drying his tears.
Our memories are deposited regretfully at the sites we have marked with our love, the diner where he first saw her drinking coffee, the library where they shared their first kiss, the grassy patch where they lounged and discussed their children and wedding. The memories and emotions we leave in these places are the fragrant lilies and roses stained with our tears that we drop at the grave site; allowing ourselves to be overcome with the sting of losing someone forever.
After you lose the emotional connection with someone that can rarely be re-forged, you go through the grieving process that’s special and selective for every individual. The length and intensity of the grieving stages varying on amount of betrayal, nostalgia, affection, broken trust, and anger that came with the initial passing. Sometimes it’s the denial stage that clings, your mind intent that they will walk back into your life next Tuesday like a maelstrom hasn’t wreaked your lives.
So, in a morbid way, she often thought that loving someone was like attending a funeral to look at a mirror box, with your heart nestled inside someone else’s hands.
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 1:24 AM UTC
I feel her there sometimes
Sometimes silent, sometimes not
When she is silent the emptiness is
Oppressive
And makes my skull feel heavy and weak
And my thoughts clouded with
The groping fingers of all that ask,
"Are you okay?"
When she screams, I am filled
To the brim with panic and chaos
That spews from her maw in
Tangled, writhing masses
The sound is almost angelic.
Is she heavenly?
I have never seen her but I know what she looks like.
It is a knowing feeling, or an overexcited imagination?
Long, tangled black hair,
Something is caught in the snarls and curls.
A pale face whiter than bone,
Thin and fragile like china.
Hands clawed and twisted,
Feet swollen and scarred.
A white dress long in tatters slipping off the bony shoulder
*please take me back,
take me home*
I plead but there are no words
Comprehensible to my human
(However extraordinarily mutated)
Brain
That leave her cracked lips.
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 6:55 AM UTC
I am the human embodiment of
self-contempt and
malice,
a fleshy, smelly manifestation of
nostalgia and
desolation
devoid of any remnants of
love or
security,
containing a soul which
spits,
snarls,
screams
for something more than this-
this abyss
this blackness
and I am standing here
screaming
"No!"
to what I have been given
I do not want it, I give it back
because there has to be something more
somewhere
Oct 28, 2013
Oct 28, 2013 at 7:19 PM UTC
You wander down the hallway
Feeling something shiver inside of you
You wonder what this feeling might be
And suddenly an image of his face
Pierce your corneas
A second later
He is there
And when you pass in the hallway
He looks at you sideways
Widens his eyes.
You furrow your brow
Lift the corners of your lips
Tilt your head
You mention how you always see him in this hallway
He considers you. Then.
He says it is God’s will
You get the wind knocked out of you
You know that it shows on your face
He dismisses you
But not before you say that you agree
That it is God’s will
You take your casual leave
Calling him by his nickname
Stepping into the elevator
You remember he calls himself a liberal
You hug yourself
You wonder if he sees his God in you
You remember he was born on Palm Sunday
You chuckle to yourself
You walk past your roommates
You feel their eyes on your back
You sit down and eat your dinner
You stand at the window
You watch the buildings bleed onto the streets
Manhattan swirls underneath you
There are points of light on little moving objects
The cars and the people
The colors and the lights
The smoke and the sky
The city pulsates, the city snarls
Eager for you to take the streets
You gaze out your window
And so, you decide, it is
It is God’s will and just exactly who
Are you
To deny it?
Mar 20, 2013
Mar 20, 2013 at 1:34 AM UTC
Fat blats fill the humid, night air
Chromed up machines ride tonight
Leather clad bodies with slick lines
Long legged, lean ladies rev their smiles
Black lined lips glossed smooth with red
Blood red fingertips scratch their pleasure
Nails run races up the backs
Smirked smiles know where they long to flit
Lip curling snarls as shivers run out
Sloe eyed partners strut by the line
Flicking their tails like bashful does
Paired up pretties ride out in squeals
Tires spin flashing through the lamp light
Paired up pretties hang tight tonight
cc1210
Dec 28, 2010
Dec 28, 2010 at 4:04 PM UTC
She looks at me
Eyes narrowed
Head tipped sideways
Lip curled
And snarls at me in a way
that manages to sound so condescending
that If I was a fool
(a different one then I already am)
I could mistake it for concern
"I really don't like the person you're becoming"
I nod my head so fast it practically rolls off its base of my neck
so sarcastic
I smile so wide That my lips crack
and my teeth bulge from my mouth
so mean
and flip her off in the best way I know how
With words and a middle finger to match
she doesn't even care anymore
And the worst thing is I don't.
"I really don't like the person you're becoming"
"me either"
An empty room answers me.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 10:45 PM UTC
prey tracked
relentlessly pursued
mass of zebra
whacked
pulverized
to the ground
powerful jaws of lion
employed
in the gruesome ****
throat of prey
exposed
oozing scarlet ****
lion consumes
a bloating portion
for himself
deference shown to lion
an uninvited hyena
joins in
snarls and snappy retorts
go between the two
hyena knows
the borders
at nature's table
with
lion king
both delight
in the zebra's
ample flesh
and its sweet
warm entrails
they savor
every morsel
above in stark
glared filled skies
anticipating crows
circle
frenzy intense
hungering craw
needing
needing
squawking
to announce
arrival
descending in unison
blanketing the zebra's carcass
beaks tearing
the meager scraps
from the bones
welcome
sustenance
at natures
all too sparse table
each creature know its place
crow has a place reserved
scavenger on the rim
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 9:16 PM UTC
You look at us and see girls,
Different heights and weights and hair colors and skin colors
Different religions, different abilities, different passions
But girls. Just girls. And that’s where you’re wrong.
Because the girl on my left
Holds a forest fire inside her chest
And she can burn down this entire city with it.
She can end the world and just keep burning
And if you aren’t afraid, you should be.
The girl on my right
Is a hurricane that never ends
Carrying you and your world away
To make room for the future. You better
Learn how to swim.
In front of me stands a girl
Of Kevlar, more bulletproof than any military invention
And she is a defender, a fighter, taking bullets
Meant for us and spitting them out with a smile.
No assault rifle is going to get
Through her.
Behind me is a girl who is also
A ticking bomb, waiting for just the perfect moment to go
BOOM.
She’s unpredictable and uncontrollable and undeniable
And when she decides it’s over,
It’s over.
I see a girl who is a
Whole star, casting light across our solar system
And warming our hearts. She
Holds enough power to end life as we know it
But she holds us in a tight embrace of love and pride.
Go ahead and try to **** a star; I bet you don’t know how to fight a nebula.
There is another girl, a
Wolf with her teeth bared.
She snarls and growls and holds the line back
And, fair warning, she’s tasted blood and she is
Never going back.
And me? I’m something old and ancient
That can’t be seen, only felt, sometimes heard.
A whisper in the dark of the woods,
An unexpectedly cool breeze on a warm day.
“Just girls,” they call us. But when they come for us,
They realize just how wrong they were.
Mar 9, 2019
Mar 9, 2019 at 1:47 AM UTC
I
Everything is cast asunder
Chopped like waves
A scintillating shattered mirror
II
Memory is an ache in the mist
Settling into a backward moving river
That snarls into an ethereal past
III
Quivering in the skin, an embodied seer;
Flesh with entropic and generative visions
Alive with terror and imaginative beauty
IV
A burning longing is cooled in the waters of grief
Where space is apart and falling; When time cuts eternity
And all that was, and will be, is here, broken
V
Pulling colours out of a boundless light
Severing into the spectrum
Tearing hot white nothing into variegated hue
VI
A depth of shade holds together layers of truth
Concealing the unknown in echoes of shadows
Contours and grooves, carving out reality
VII
Loosener of holding; shaking catharsis
Bittersweet, uncontrollable chaos
Bare and raw and momentary and changing
VII
Like the fall of a giant old growth tree
that lays to waste and nourish
an abundance on the forest floor
IX
Like the blossom of a wild flower
tired of tight closure, breaking open, petal by petal
to expose it's heart to the sun
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 5:22 PM UTC
words in a blender
too slushy
pain behind the eyes
frozen thoughts
lime green
exorcised projectiles
turning heads
with demon smiles
and whispered snarls
in a dead language.
r ~ 8/1/14
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 10:17 AM UTC
I’m the dog
Sharp of tooth and tongue
That bits every hand
And snarls at all
That walk by it
I’m the dog
With deep and long lungs
That howls at night
For a pull in their chest
That they can’t name
I’m the dog
That doesn’t know
How to play nicely
And is always sitting
In the corner, alone
I’m the dog
The vicious dog
The loud dog
The lonely dog
The scared dog
The weeping dog
The dog
That dog
Sitting in your corner
Always staring at you
Always waiting
For you to give in
So it can eat you whole
Apr 9, 2020
Apr 9, 2020 at 6:18 PM UTC
Snarls and growls
Not to far behind
Hunting for sins and easy prey
The lingering odor from something that smells so putrid and fowl
It has been wired to **** and hunt to tear flesh, for that is how it is designed
Designed not to be loyal but betray
Skin as dark and the depths of hell
As slick and think as suffocating oil
No one can ever tell
For they boil
It’s such an unknown material
Similar to that of a gargoyle
Deep red eyes
That much similar to an open wound gushing gory blood
Created and build from those in a past life that told lies
Takes revenge and makes your slow feet trek through thick murky mud
Claws as sharp as razors
Reach for your soul for the taking
They are dominant beasts and brutal slayers
Creating a sickening making
Hunting and slaying into the dark everlasting night
No one is safe from the hounds to haul
Itching and ready to take a sdevils front door
Inspiring an uncertain fright
Praying to the devils maker to be safe from the maul
Wanting to be how life was before
They had to say goodbye
Sep 12, 2018
Sep 12, 2018 at 6:07 PM UTC
I was given, at my first birthday party,
a gift sublime, a lovely, lush garden
I played among its fonts and flowers,
traded baseball cards with Atlas and Athena,
rolled in high grass with iridescent dragons
Then one fine day through leaflets high,
I spied a fat juicy fig, haloed by Summer sun
The tree was poison, I knew, its sweet fruit
most likely bad as well, but in my arrogance
I climbed the trunk, got tangled in its branches
I lost control, lost something never truly held,
and fell, through viney snarls and vicious thorns
Fell farther than I ever rose, to putrid death,
moldered slime beneath the canopy
of verdant paradise on gentle hillside above
I crawled about in mud and earthen warrens
Slowly, year by year, learned to walk again
But arrogant I remained—had not my
lesson learned, and so I doubled-down,
made mockery of this chance for redemption
All the sweet virgins did I **** and teach
our children sin, in crystalline waters
I did shat on mulched fields, amber and green,
with cigarette butts and baggies blowing
listless on Autumn winds
When Winter finally came, as winters must,
to **** off weakened souls, and make
the garden ready for new attendants,
I did not learn, I did not take the blame...
It's Him, I cried, I have not power to do this!
But then my youngest daughter sobbed
She watched, sadly, out clouded, grimy windows
and, looking up at my limpid, sullen eyes
crawled into my arms one last, lonely time
to face what I could not...
Behold, the Silent Spring
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 11:16 AM UTC
I will gladly welcome you into my territory.
We can laugh and I'll share a good story.
I will greet you warmly as you walk in,
And exchance with you a massive grin.
I will allow you to hunt my prey,
So you won't go away.
I can be the most friendly beast,
But there is more than a feast.
The kind greetings of my grace,
Turn to snarls and growls taking their place.
I will not hesitate to hurt you,
Or cause some trouble to brew.
Taking advatage of me,
Is never smart so let me be.
You have crossed the boundaries,
You have ruined the foundaries.
It doesn't matter if it's you,
I won't let you make it through!
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 6:46 PM UTC
I again got stuck in the bridge today
In the Upper Plateau bridge-
The bridge across the lagoon.
Stuck, with no breathing space to manoeuvre
All three lanes facing forward, chock a block
Cars of all sizes and costs strewn around
It's always like that, faced ahead on the wheel
Neither space to turn left to see anything right;
Nor to the right, for anything left...
When on the steering wheel
You are responsible, not just for your actions;
But the whole world around.
For the car in the front, back and the
Sides, who cannot move until you move.
Slowly you realise, 'it was never a
Bridge across for ever"
There has been this urge,
Many a time, to break out and run, though
You are stuck in the bridge, no room to
manoeuvre
Often it's like a circle eating itself;
Beginning losing the end and vice versa!
But then comes the thoughts of the school fees, the maintenance, the rent and the upkeep
You are stuck on the bridge, mate
Stay put, until the snarls open its own
--------////
All rights reserved (c) A K Kalesh Kumar 2016
Dec 29, 2016
Dec 29, 2016 at 7:41 PM UTC
I have a lot of thoughts:
I think too much, I think
too little, I think.
I think in circles,
in mazes,
in labyrinths.
I think in tangles and
snarls and
spikes and
blood
May 25, 2012
May 25, 2012 at 1:29 AM UTC
Cumulonimbus
Growls above menacingly
Snarls at the terrene
Impaled by lightning
Howls in anguish, pierced and split
Bleeds thick drops of rain
May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 6:23 AM UTC
A post apocalyptic tongue
Weighing heavy and dormant in your mouth
As you hitchhike south,
Stopping only to say hello to the
Forget-me-nots
On the side of the road.
Your lips are chapped, dry.
One bite away from blood.
Your blonde hair snarls and snaps
Around your finger.
A Venus fly trap.
You are Venus.
A beautiful weapon of mass destruction.
You can start wars
With a face like that.
You spread your legs for
Boys who smell of wine.
You spread your legs for
Men with wallets fatter than their bellies.
You spread your legs for
Yourself because it feels good.
They brand you a sinner.
Construct a neon sign and
Point it at you.
You forget
Girls don’t do that.
And girls don’t drink
And girls don’t smoke
And girls don’t curse or kick or fight
Or hitchhike south
Or embrace their beauty
Or say hello to the forget-me-nots
On the side of the road
Or stumble home,
Wherever home is,
Drunk and reeking of
Cigarettes and ***** with
Last night’s lover still in their hair.
But you are not a girl.
You are Venus
And you are dangerous.
A bouquet of cries for help.
You sit in diners
With strangers and speak loudly of
Of rashes and scars.
You sit in ivory towers,
Knitting dresses and scratching
At the stone.
You stand on the sidelines
And snap your gum.
They tell you you can’t.
Your voice stings their eardrums.
Your voice is a thunderstorm.
You are a thunderstorm.
You are hitchhiking south with a
Hand full of forget-me-nots and
Blood rolling down your chin.
You are not a girl.
You are Venus.
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 3:35 PM UTC