"spidery" poems
Frost
creeping along the window
pane
that trails along with spidery crystal
hands
and blooms on the glass the
same
way she captured my fascination
until
I realized that I was the glass and
she
aimed to smother, to obscure, all other
views.
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 4:02 PM UTC
Roselva says the only thing that doesn't change
is train tracks. She's sure of it.
The train changes, or the weeds that grow up spidery
by the side, but not the tracks.
I've watched one for three years, she says,
and it doesn't curve, doesn't break, doesn't grow.
Peter isn't sure. He saw an abandoned track
near Sabinas, Mexico, and says a track without a train
is a changed track. The metal wasn't shiny anymore.
The wood was split and some of the ties were gone.
Every Tuesday on Morales Street
butchers crack the necks of a hundred hens.
The widow in the tilted house
spices her soup with cinnamon.
Ask her what doesn't change.
Stars explode.
The rose curls up as if there is fire in the petals.
The cat who knew me is buried under the bush.
The train whistle still wails its ancient sound
but when it goes away, shrinking back
from the walls of the brain,
it takes something different with it every time.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC
Spasming in life’s web,
Clustering under eight legged dreads,
Watching some rise from its smother,
But only for short pathetic seconds.
I watch many downfalls,
Idle in wait for my own,
Seizuring with a horrible burden,
Fortune telling with no end fortune.
All mere blinded mirrors laying in wait,
Distorting the spidery figure differently,
Mine reflects its harsh fangs and nature,
Others reflects admiration towards the creator.
The web a complex beauty,
But I can’t claim cruelty home,
The ripples of intertwined death,
Some by father...foe...or friend.
The inhumane humanity,
Puppets and the almighty player,
Cloud me from things called prayer,
For that hope must be alive and well.
I’m just waiting for my bones to decay,
Peace in nothingness or so you claim flames,
Free from the *******
And all that it stands for.
I’m an unholy ghost.
Aug 13, 2018
Aug 13, 2018 at 6:36 PM UTC
Fourteen long stormy years ago,
Was a dark and gloomy night,
A spidery women as far as we know,
Was looking threw every house's window,
She walked ever so delicately over the snow,
Keeping herself out of sight,
Not a part of her seemed to glow,
All except her eyes that were anything but white.
Not so far away,
A newborn child lay,
Sleeping ever so peacefully,
Smiling ever so sweetly,
How could this creature resist?
The longing she had for that child,
Was a feeling she could not dismiss.
Forget the child's parents!
He must be her new prince,
Her next movements were completely errant,
As the creature just lost control,
She snatched the child up,
Holding him like a pup,
She fled to safety,
Before the child awoke,
The mysterious spider lady,
Took him to her home,
To raise him as her very own.
Now present day,
The child now given himself his own new name,
A prince? That is not want he wants to be,
He wishes to have his own word free,
Tired of staring at blank walls,
The child for the first time travels threw new halls,
Leaving the place his once called home,
Not knowing the new places he will roam,
Not knowing the adventures he will have,
Or the people he will share them with.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 9:40 PM UTC
blunt tips of bent cigarettes
were incisive as razors -
sliced wrists weeping
bright red sentences,
spattered unborn to blank paper
and turned into statues
so the dead would always remember
what they did,
never safe in the graves
in which they'd took refuge
but blue on blue
was ever her color;
blue on blues
seeping from old sins,
deep, hidden within spidery veins
that traced pale, soft *******
finally filling mute lips as she slept,
subsumed in oceans of color,
blues that gave stories, as waves to shore
subsided, reclaiming their pain,
and cleansed sand once more
What end to life!
a collection of furies like stone turtles
arranged on the mantle -
just a few dozen last words
tucked among ads for
Old Spice and Polident tabs
unread, used to line
litter boxes in Cambridge
or wrap fresh fish at Hay Market;
then, someone pausing to wave at the sky
missed saving the drowning woman
by years, if he'd tried,
finding questions in every answer;
child curled in hard lap of his mother,
her cold affections of words
blew from dead lips like old wishes
without tender touch or wet kisses;
but that life continued,
if lived only blue on blue
Jun 27, 2010
Jun 27, 2010 at 6:02 PM UTC
My body has not once been a temple.
I remember years ago,
sitting poolside with my grandmother,
her spidery, veined hands touching my knee:
"Your body is a grand temple,
only those who are holy are worth admittance."
And her stern sincerity made me laugh.
My body is a wet, lush jungle.
My body has been trampled through and lived in.
Destroyed, burned,
yet always continues to rebirth itself from the rubble and debris.
Am I any less for this?
My body is a mystery,
a slow wafer on the tip of a school boy's tongue.
A dark, cool place to rest your weary head.
A place to let your feet press into the rich soil
and feel like maybe you can call this home.
I think one time,
a man with dark hair and light eyes thought he could
reduce me to mere trees and rain,
not knowing the jungle is not a safe place.
Unlike those with temples for bodies,
my heart lives deep in a hidden cave guarded with
sharp memories that feel like claws.
My memories have teeth,
and my heart has a brain.
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 10:41 PM UTC
But what is eternity, if not
a whisper of frost,
landing softly
on the red lily’s lips —
the deadly flower on the other
side of the shore
spidery fangs, stretching claws
a breath away from
a beckoning memory
of our last parting
Oct 18, 2020
Oct 18, 2020 at 1:45 PM UTC
No use whistling for Lyonnesse!
Sea-cold, sea-cold it certainly is.
Take a look at the white, high berg on his forehead-
There's where it sunk.
The blue, green,
Gray, indeterminate gilt
Sea of his eyes washing over it
And a round bubble
Popping upward from the mouths of bells
People and cows.
The Lyonians had always thought
Heaven would be something else,
But with the same faces,
The same places...
It was not a shock-
The clear, green, quite breathable atmosphere,
Cold grits underfoot,
And the spidery water-dazzle on field and street.
It never occurred that they had been forgot,
That the big God
Had lazily closed one eye and let them slip
Over the English cliff and under so much history!
They did not see him smile,
Turn, like an animal,
In his cage of ether, his cage of stars.
He'd had so many wars!
The white gape of his mind was the real Tabula Rasa.
2.8k
pale circle
sunken eyes
hallow cheeks
cracked hands
bulging flesh
spidery veins
hated image
broken shard
self reflection
Mar 10, 2019
Mar 10, 2019 at 7:32 PM UTC
I woke in the tired bitter morning,
Lying in dew laden grass,
Muscles aching,
Throat dry,
And lips cracked,
We're beautiful but unseen,
Beating out our own sanity,
The walls we built are sculpted in ice,
Ice castles, buried. Blurry.
Clutching at anything our pale, spidery hands can grasp,
Flushed free of hope,
Chalky eyelashes,
Fluttering,
Sending shifts of snowflakes to the ground,
Like raining infinity,
*******
Because it makes you feel lost of horror,
It's a mess, because we're curled up in confusion,
Skin like rain,
A disaster in hibernation,
I swear we are not lost,
Please, we are not lost.
Just wondering
Wondering and wandering
Aug 23, 2013
Aug 23, 2013 at 11:19 AM UTC
Compiled of all the parts
No one wishes to have
Fiery ropes that refuse to rest
Spidery fingers that worry too much
Freckles etching countless constellations undiscovered
Eyelashes that a cactus wouldn't be proud of
Emerald eyes, woeful, or so I've been told,
that reflect all the unsung symphonies of the past
and of the yet to come
Long, awkward torso that curves in all the wrong places
Skin paler and mire transparent than the surface of a pond
Dancer's thighs with an octogenarian's knees
The smile of a Chinese ten-year-old
paired with the beak of a toucan.
That, at least, is good for something:
Sniffing out your lies and following them
through the thick blue veins that map
straight to my heart.
Apr 27, 2010
Apr 27, 2010 at 1:53 PM UTC
Out of all the words in the human languages, almost is the cruelest.
I almost loved you.
I almost won.
I was almost there.
I was almost *****
When he snuck into the room like a wolf stalking its prey, my stomach didn’t almost tie in knots.
It became a sailor’s masterpiece.
When he laid beside me as quiet as a stone, I wasn’t almost shaking.
I was a leaf on the San Andreas Fault.
When his long, spidery fingers began trailing down my back, it didn’t almost feel like razors.
He cut so deep the skin began to peel back and expose every
insecurity that I’ve hidden away between my vertebrae.
His fingers didn’t almost dig into my arm,
they became shovels that dug a hole big enough for a casket.
Bruises didn’t almost blossom across my skin,
I was a primrose bush in full bloom and he was the gardener.
When he coerced himself between my thighs, I didn’t almost scream.
Years of ancestral abuse surged through my lungs and out my lips
into a battle cry.
When he tried to force his hand inside of me I didn’t almost feel spoiled.
I was a fruit rotting from the inside out, something that no one
would ever want.
And when my screams finally drove him off of me, I wasn’t almost okay.
I was paralyzed with fear and disgust and shame.
Everything I’ve ever believed in slapped me in the face as I told myself:
This is what I get for liking ***
I shouldn’t be so easy.
I was asking for it.
It was my fault.
I felt like a butterfly, beautiful but ruined by a man’s touch.
Never to fly again.
But the truth is, a butterfly sheds scales throughout its lifetime,
regenerating its wings.
So when a man reaches for your wings in attempts to rip them off
remember that you are not what he thinks you are.
Remember that it is never your fault.
Not even almost.
Feb 26, 2015
Feb 26, 2015 at 4:08 PM UTC
she plays soccer
it’s
ok?
her coach is flamboyant
and loud
and nice
and she feels
so so very small
even though she is goalie
and has big feet
and spidery hands
she faces a lot of doubt
in goal
at home
on the court where she practices
is she valued?
is she liked?
do people think she’s ok?
does it matter?
Jan 18, 2021
Jan 18, 2021 at 10:07 PM UTC
How does the moon wax and wane?
Who wrote this recipe, what is their name?
A legendary greek god or goddess,
Shaping the constellations around this lunar bodess?
Creating the mysterious opaque hue,
Is the sun's light, golden and fierce to lovely and blue,
The unique and silent craters and hills,
Brought into existence by lazy asteroids who take a spill,
The moon's fine white pixie dust,
Contributed by comets drawn near with lust,
Its spidery web of fear and adventure that draws us near,
Is woven of used up dreams leaked out of the creatives' ears,
Here are some great wise rocks,
Dumped from a bottomless black hole's treasure box,
Its stately mountains are sweetly refined,
By the artistic alien's touch from another time,
And the reverberating echoes of the valleys, regal as Egyptian tombs,
A secret ingredient: vibrations of the transcendal omnipresent omniscient aum,
The cold still and airless atmosphere,
Was perfectly designed by departed souls with a wish to persevere,
For the moon's body, they borrowed a part of earth,
Promising a silent and knowing angel to guard it after its birth,
And the simple motion itself, the motion that makes the creature wax and wane,
is made of the tireless energy known as Yin and Yang.
Aug 22, 2010
Aug 22, 2010 at 10:13 PM UTC
Spiders sprinkling down a crooked spine
Can you hear the whine of a brain stem dying
One hundred and eighty days of pain
have metamorphosed this corpse into something deranged
mangled and tangled in webs of perception
razor-sharp enough to cut straight through the gut's deception
and when the vile heart succeeds in silencing the eyeballs
emptying the sockets of life-long pitfalls
maybe the spine-spiders will finally commence to release
the good soul that remains trapped inside this tree.
Grow tree, grow, for you are all I have ever known,
If it weren't for your protective shade, who knows where I'd have been blown.
You may be covered in cobwebs and leaves long decayed,
but I'll keep my promise to save you someday.
You may not grow to be the big oak of which you dream,
perhaps you will end up as kindling in the fiery gleam
of a thousand spiders cremating in my hearth
as I look on, a corpse consumed by an angry spark.
Lovingly your ashes will be placed
beside the oldest river, the one you once graced.
There will be no more spidery-spinal veins
to screech and rattle and bring about the worst pain.
Changelessness is not a virtue, a concept you most despised,
in the spidery spinal tree's search for life of a better kind.
Jul 5, 2010
Jul 5, 2010 at 8:14 AM UTC
I like my dark orange hair,
the way it hangs low beneath my shoulders
and drapes down my spine.
I like how it looks in braids.
I like how pretty my toes look when I wear scarlet polish.
I like how tiny my ankles are.
I like having a little waist
and how it tilts to one side.
I like how cute I feel with my face naturally
and I like my round nose.
I like the way my teeth look
after I have Oreos and coffee in the morning.
I like my spidery fingers and my baby wrists.
I like how dainty they look when I play piano.
I like how they look with chipped nail polish.
I like my body
I like the uneven scatter of bones and ridges,
like when the plates under the sea collide and rise.
Pretty words make the negatives desirable.
I like these things today.
Jun 5, 2012
Jun 5, 2012 at 6:16 PM UTC
Capri
roofless cubes, spidery with wire,
cakes of azure and enzian;
above at the Villa San Michele
Rilke smiles down at the broken beaches,
coves of defiant waves, compacted sea
Pompeii
a chessboard of honest stones
open to a sky of hushed shouts;
we huddle in a ***** frame
of another life, a stopped day
Napoli
warm and secret, olive-eyed
you make a new face
as we gaze from a bus:
an act of moment
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 7:36 AM UTC
Il dio è il miei testimone e guida, Sister Maria, the refectorian, had said, Sister Teresa remembered walking passed the refectory, touching the wall with her fingers. God is my witness and guide, she translated, feeling the rough brick beneath her fingers. She stood; turned to look at the cloister garth. Sunlight played on the grass. Flowers added colour to borders and eyes, she thought, letting go of Maria's words as if they were balloons. Ache in limbs; a slowness in her movements. Age, she muttered inaudibly. The war had taken her cousin's sons in death. Two of them. Peter and Paul. Burma and D-day. Three years or more since. She brought hands together beneath the black serge of her habit. Flesh on flesh. Sister Clare had touched. Not over much, not over much. Papa would lift her high in his arms as a child, she mused, her memory jogged by the sunlight on the flowers. Higher and higher. Poor Papa. The spidery writing unreadable in the end. She sniffed the air. Bell rang from church tower. Sext. She looked at the clock on the cloister-tower wall. Lowered her eyes to the grass. So many greens. Jude had lain with her once or was it more? She mused, turning away from cloister wall and the sight of grass and flowers. Thirty years since he died. Blown to pieces Papa had written. Black ink on white paper sheet. Flesh on flesh; kiss to lip and lip. She paused by church door; allowed younger nuns to pass; so young these days, she thought, bowing, nodding her head. Placing her stiff fingers in the stoup, she made cross from breast to breast. Smell of incense; scent of wood; bodies close; age and time. She walked to her place in the choir stall, bowed to Crucified tabernacled. Kneeled. Closed eyes. Murmured prayer. Heard the rustle of habits; clicking of rosaries; breathing close. Opened eyes. Sister Clare across the way. A nod and a smile, almost indiscernible to others, she thought, returning the same. Mother Abbess tapped wood on wood; chant began; fingers moved; sign of cross; mumbled words. Forty years of prayer and chant; same such of fingered rosaries; hard beds; dark night of soul and such. She sensed Papa lifting her high in thought at least; Mama's touch on cheek and head. Jude's kiss. Embrace of limbs and face. Il dio è il miei testimone e guida, she recalled: God my witness and guide. Closed eyes. Sighed. Sister Clare had cried; had whispered; witness and guide; witness this and guide, she murmured between chant, prayer, and the scent of incense on the air.
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 1:23 PM UTC
Passing Tweetsie on my way home from work.
In the Food Lion, low-calorie chicken soup
cans under tinny lights.
Sick-green avocados and riding-hood bacon
celebrated the day all your shoes moved in.
Can't we pair those together again?
The blank space on the floor
like a good friend's face seen
without glasses,
washed out.
Frustratingly,
the smell of my own laundry.
mi colada es su colada
Ha!
By the pond, the gazebo we never spent time in
but might have.
The dusk-dark evergreens with delicate lace tips
like spidery lingerie
leggings ripped wide open,
lingering,
recovered from the trash can.
Rainbow polka-dot gift wrap
on my light-blue chest,
flagship of her left-behinds;
A tawny feather earring, the lonely fore-mast
lacking a mate
and
Demure winter-cabin-smile, framed:
green scarf turned seaweed,
the face-down figurehead drowns.
Feb 22, 2014
Feb 22, 2014 at 12:57 PM UTC
graveyard boy, you are all skin and bones
i cut myself on your cheeks until i am red and raw
and your heart bursts out of your chest by the marble stones
bones boy, the night seeps from inside you as the sun goes down
i count your ribs up one by one and stretch myself over your skin
cover me from this haunting that rises from your gray eyes
blood boy, you are red and screaming under flesh
i can see your spidery veins inside of your wrists
warm and speeding when your hands touch my throat
ghost boy, tie me up with ropes and lower me to the ground
let me be hollow with you and fill the spaces with silence
the moon will be gone once we have made it far enough
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 4:28 PM UTC
with a soft touch and a blushing smile,
vibrant green creeps into the landscape.
the longsuffering trees,
whose limbs have long been heavy with snow,
finally stretch their arms into the warm air
as suggestive buds speckle their gnarled fingers.
the clouds swell with life, and the sun
glows stronger than ever before.
as their spidery roots drink voraciously
from the moist dirt, smirking daisies and
blooming tulips unfurl their alluring petals
and bask in the glorious yellow light.
the firm, unyielding ground is teeming
and bustling with a myriad of fauna,
unsteadily rubbing the remnants of slumber
from their bleary, squinting eyes.
the flat, chilly silence of winter
has been quelled by the lilting robin’s song.
and as the very earth herself wakens
from this melancholy hibernation,
i let go, and float down that euphoric wave called life.
Mar 21, 2012
Mar 21, 2012 at 3:12 AM UTC
Hellhounds! Who be this stranger?
Here she dreams upon my pillow,
I slide away out of range,
Spaces between us sheets weeping willows.
Staring down at shouted words escaping through barred teeth,
She, unknown malice, hissed sparks,
Upon my bed I see a sleeping leech,
Her skin so silvery filled with shady dark.
I reach over confused and touch her shoulder,
Know not I who this creature be?
Flashes explode, memories and desires colder,
****** lady! I fear I may know thee!
Peering closer still, I witness a face on her slender neck,
Biting softly the flesh of arguments,
Distances separate short spaces, we two are shackled
By more than mere blankets and entwined garments.
Fingers heavily encircled with golden evidence,
Pregnant spite spirals spoonfuls of fire,
Her reptilian eye flutters, I crawl back with revulsion,
Accusations, pointed fists, secrets buried, she’s a fiery liar.
I don’t recognize the bloated face,
She turns over, stares balefully and clenches with disgust,
God, she reads me, I’m a shadow without trace,
I’m alone, a child hunting for tattered trust.
Finally the nightmare reaches a foggy ******
I see the familiar blade furrows in her spidery hair,
Falling into the damp smell of the pillow I relax,
She’s my wife, a solitary maid my mind will never share.
©Rangzeb Hussain
Jan 15, 2010
Jan 15, 2010 at 6:04 PM UTC
A metallic seat.
Hard orange plastic.
Strip light sickness.
And I look at you.
Disinfectant scrubs my throat,
sterilising the language I want to use.
And I look at you.
Naked feet, white tinged with yellow.
Invisible socks.
Cotton top welts left in your ankles,
flattening the spidery hair.
So much hair.
And I wonder,
when did you get so tall?
And I look at you.
Sallow face, a dehydrated
caricature of youth, erased and lined.
Needles **** the marrow,
the muscle tone gone but
stubble erupting, handsome underneath.
And I wonder,
when was the last time I saw you?
And I look at you.
Frail arms, thick bandage cuffs
giving little comfort to the empty purple beneath.
And I wonder,
was it how you imagined?
Clean blade?
Neat slices?
Choreographed claret leaving a poignant splash
on your final soliloquy?
Head to camera, atmospheric lighting,
ready for your close up.
Someday you’ll be a star.
Or was it sordid?
Brutal?
A smashed bottle?
Hacking, mangling,
uncontrollable blood
aimlessly gushing, drenching the rambling note
so the words washed away?
No camera angles.
No haunting memoir.
And I look at you.
And I wonder.
When did you become so lonely?
And I turn away.
Dec 16, 2010
Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM UTC
piqued into a new glowing,
I strain at my bonds
shake the slick ribbon
of doubt
from around my mouth
sit on my hands
to keep from shaking
A storm is gathering within
my center
the hot pink light emanating
from between my thighs
fuchsia slicing through
moonlight
I look up
and drink in the milk
of the stars
I am ready.
to break through
time and space
mini-novas flying
'round my head
like spinning angels
iridescent dust,
rising in slow motion
dragonfly confetti
in my hair
eyes a-light from
aurora borealis
Vulnerable by choice,
I stand my ground
push through rope and burlap
without mercy, for
burns do not matter
anymore
explode up and out
my soul's entry parts
wide open
I welcome the universe
letting the growing
inside, taking force
having its way with me
spidery vines twirling through
my ribcage
around my spine
the seeds I have planted
now pushing flowerbursts
through my heart
a bloom
for each beat
reflecting magenta
I had been sitting there
way too long
bound to this chair
my arms pinned harshly
by the wire
now I run with
my private wolf
head back
howling like the
wind,
hair wild
like the untamed
journey
of my
soul
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 11:36 AM UTC
I’m not a botanist,
or an avid gardener.
The horto I culture consists of two pots,
sits on a narrow sill
and soaks in its one-hour slit of sunshine.
This makes me unfit
to label much less
fathom the encroaching
sublime, which sprouts,
shoots, creeps, clings and endures
from far reaches beyond me.
It has spines
supple and rigid,
skins coarse, spiked, and silky,
quivering tips that are spidery,
and bunched as small dollops,
jagged teardrops and jigsaw puzzle pieces.
I’m not a botanist,
but if I were
I should still be struck dumb
by these numbing instances
a protesting tongue
insists it won’t box up
such greenery with the genial trappings
of a scientific classification,
or even the oddly
folksy catch-all ****
I can’t always tell what’s a **** what not.
l know those greedy
intruders growing at the heart
of a meticulously turned earth
to spoil the well-ordered
plots of a barely adequate vocabulary.
It gets more complicated
with the thrilling misfits
and their sturdier notions
of choking life from inhospitable beds
poured and paved
to the detriment of meeker plantings.
Yesterday I met the peeks of ten
woody red stems poking through
a patch of chunky white gravel
spread thick between two
steel rails that fled to a horizon.
I watched the breeze
shake their candelabra arms
dressed in sparse leaves
and denser seed-packed sleeves,
and they welcomed it.
I'm not a botanist
and I can’t name these plants,
but I can admit, I admired them.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 6:20 AM UTC