"spindly" poems
Never should I love,
For never will you love me.
Never will your deep, blue eyes
Look in mine and read my mind,
Like a psychic running her fingers along the lines of my palms.
Palms that belong to hands you’ll never hold,
And handle with care like you would antique china
And at the same time grip with a firmness that tells me you’ll never let go.
You’ll never let go because you’ll never wrap your soft,
warm arms around me in the first place.
Your soul will never entangle with mine and fill that void
Left by a **** sliced deep within me.
A **** left by my father’s youth,
And my mother’s faith,
Whose knife cut out their acceptance for me
And gouged out my trust in them.
Can’t you see that you are the antidote to my lifelong suffering?
The Accutane to my welted face,
The braces to my crooked teeth,
The nitro to my aching heart
The rhino to my bulging nose
The morphine to my broken mind,
The running to my fading health
Running, running, running away
Far away from this broken house
Where your dreams never do come true and
Where you come out to yourself alone in the bathroom and
Where they can’t ever know the truth because my house is
Where God resides in the attic and
Where Jesus is the only one you should let in your room at night and
Where The Holy Spirit has possessed us all to live a lie because my house is
Where lifelong love is dead at the delivery room
And who is there to blame but me?
Who is there to blame but me?
But none of that matters to you.
It can’t matter to you,
Because all you do is love
And love
And love
And love
And love.
But you never love me.
Each year I have known you
I have reached out farther than the last,
Yearning for something I could never obtain.
Fifteen pushes past Fourteen,
Both of whom fall short of Sixteen’s growing arms,
Which are narrowly outpaced by Seventeen’s spindly, wirey fingertips.
Every Year’s efforts have met the same fate;
Failing to reach their target they instead grasp fruitlessly
Into a dark, brewing storm,
Full of tears,
And of crackling sparks of hope
That are met with the resounding booms of fate
Telling me that I am doomed to be alone.
Telling me that never should I love,
For never will you love me.
But I never listen.
Because I know you too well.
And I know that someday,
Someday soon,
You’ll make the happy accident
Of stepping too close to my many straining hands,
And I’ll pull you near to me
And you’ll realize that you never loved her at all.
And that you always,
always have loved me.
-The Boy Who Loves You Too
Sep 29, 2016
Sep 29, 2016 at 10:42 PM UTC
i asked her, does it look the same?
she gave me that funny look she gets
whenever i say or do something a little dim
it's a mirror image for a reason she said
in the mirror i see muscles, and strength
hips a little too wide and fleshy
but still muscular,
strength all the way down
but when i reflect on myself,
no mirror necessary
it is never the same
i don't feel as strong as i could
don't look as sharp and sturdy as i could
those fleshy sides, too soft
for a battle-hardened brain
and turbulent thoughts
i need angles, i need straight lines
but there's nothing straight about me
and that's half the problem
and the other half
is that i hate the softness that lingers
but everybody else loves it
and i don't want to be warm and
able to be cuddled
i want hard edges
and nimble, spindly fingers;
when i play my chords
i want my bones to tap the strings
and when sadness sheathes itself within me
i want eyes as dry
as my eczema-bitten hands
Jan 4, 2018
Jan 4, 2018 at 8:46 PM UTC
•
i've
witness-
ed the others
fall over several
sets•leaving you alone
shivering on a spindly twig
•the winds of autumn had whis-
pered their threats...•to sweep you
off your perch into the world so big
•the season had almost gone to make
way for another•answering the sum-
mons of winter's call•had anticipated
the coming of your departure•...i had
sworn to myself to catch you as you'd
fall•for a brief moment, i had turned
away•to tend to commitments that
came with dawn...•i returned to
stay and wait another day...•
but the wind had come
while i was
**g
o
n
e•**
.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 9:59 AM UTC
"there is a type of jellyfish that lives forever," you once told me.
and i found myself wishing that we could be those jellyfish,
so we can float on these waves
for the rest of our days
and these spindly legs of ours will always stay intertwined.
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 12:36 AM UTC
How doth thou wake with an aching need?
For femmes and games and **** loads of ****
To he who dost appreciate the weight of a lass
As spindly and petite with one hell of an ***
Dost thou think for a mo...
That the only love felt tis that of a ***
Thou wast the only one left in the bar
With an overdose of E and a fool hearty scar
Nay my dear boy as one could only believe
A fuckboi thou art, and a fuckboi thou'll be
May 17, 2015
May 17, 2015 at 7:13 PM UTC
It should be
illegal
because
I don’t
look good
in shorts --
white spindly
legs
like those on
an emu
and big
fat feet
slapping the
suffering
pavement.
Sep 28, 2012
Sep 28, 2012 at 1:37 PM UTC
It had never once occurred to me
that her protruding skeletal frame
could ever cease my petty insecurities
or abate my incessant torpidity
with nothing but a momentary embrace
but when her spindly arms
besieged my torso
so suddenly
out of the blue?
it did occur to me
oh god, did it occur to me.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 4:13 AM UTC
bespeckled, blotched & blokey
feminine in aspects
only little ****** hair patches
two chins,
or rather a sloped one
the front evenly declining to the middle of the throat
a gradual slope from the tip, for juices to run if his manner and situation allowed him to be as casual and sloppy as his laziness chose,
torso without form, so there was no curvature on the buttocks or the fly region.
a mass
a blob of bulges on spindly legs
he leans on the wall
stubby in hand he balks
(he means jovial but unintentionally he vocalises mockery)
at the suggestion that the Pies will do better
& that Eddie is a clever man due for thanks, who has done his club well (apparently a straight Aussie arrow tried and true!)
the man ***** his head back & cackles
(the trebly popping bubbles of a gala crackle outwards as the man cackles)
& decides his arms need a rest,
(a long day of up and down they have had indeed, they deserve respect, or rest (or a benching))
so he places his beer down
on a sloped surface,
& therefore it slips down….
he sees it plummeting, he stretches toward it's tragic trajectory,
…..but he is too slow
it smashes
on his foot (the shards) the beer bottle it transfigures,
and the shards they impart their misery on his toes.
The shards they intrude on his relaxed state of wellbeing, they intrude on the security sanctioned within the casual footwear of a man at a barbecue; taking it easy.
he swears and hops, reaching in indignation for his bleeding toes
he holds the wound cursing; resisting the impulse to begin convulsive throws
(an oscar worthy performance from a usually suburbaly urbane individual)
the moisture feels degrading
(as it would within a man's pants)
the pain from the cuts it is worsened
by the smirking gazes of others about
he hobbles, disregarding his thong in the wreckage of the scene
off to retrieve a band aid
to mend his ego
and his foot
simultaneously
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 10:18 AM UTC
Oh cute little thing
I like your contour
you look pretty funny when you're cold
you get these lovely wrinkles
especially in the middle region
nearly dendritic
more like the cracks in the earth
and your satchel breathes on its own
like a brain if it had lungs for itself
but more like an amoebic celestial body squirming around in some primordial goop
I think that's pretty cool
you're a pink and brown mushroom emerging from a forest of black wiry moss
concentrated around you and
all growing in your direction
almost lifting you up and out
and then further away fading
the way the water gets clearer
above a sand bar
and then a great convergence
a crashing of two great waves
against each other
forming a wall of spindly tendrils
before the whirlpool
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 8:39 PM UTC
Some trees are harder to climb, some have spindly branches that break with each step you take. Some trees are too high up that the fear of falling enables you to climb. Life is like a tree, sometimes life has spindly branches that break. Sometimes the fall is too great to take another step. But sometimes the climb is worth it, because the view is beautiful.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 2:44 AM UTC
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it's ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.
3.3k
Right now, my mind...
Is the proverbial popcorn machine.
Every little thing that bothers me is
likened to a kernel.
And to make popcorn, you need lots...
Bucketloads of kernels.
Dump them all in the machine.
Let them whirl.
They sit layered on top of each other
undisturbed,
on the hot bed until...
The spindly metal arms begin to rotate...
Whose sole purpose is to agitate.
Buttered with debilitating insecurities.
Sprinkled with irrational fears.
Heated with erratic temperament.
And here come the arms again.
Rotating,
churning,
inciting.
No one knows when the kernels
are going to cave and rupture.
Then...
"Pop!" would go one.
Then another...
And another...
Soon they would all start to explode.
When that happens,
I do too.
••••••••••••••••••••••
Addendum
••••••••••••••••••••••
I love popcorn.
And I don't like to share.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 11:22 AM UTC
The long spindly legs
Of our Lord Centipede
Are raw and weak from
The way they’ve been dragged
Through unforgiving ground
It imprints them with sensitivity
Till each limb is trained to dodge
The earth that makes them weak
The slick land of jealousy
Or the unsuspecting pebbles of insecurity
If a single appendage trips up
On such emotional hardships
Lord Centipede crashes
Oh so brutally down
Mar 6, 2012
Mar 6, 2012 at 6:39 PM UTC
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through
glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,
that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating
the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,
cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab
hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,
his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,
3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,
liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks
in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-Whiz, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-
and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-Whiz crust in his stubble,
and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying
she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 4:25 PM UTC
Leaves stripped bare,
The clump of a nest
Now so obvious, but since abandoned
Past residents won't care.
This morn, winter flavored branches
Sweet confections that beckoned.
Black in twilight, the silhouettes
Look again as barren,
Swaying spindly fingers
And counting stars
Which today seem so far.
Once I reached up and plucked
Those winking sparkles to sprinkle
A pillow I shared,
Though glowing duller amid dreams
That shined in young eyes.
Their beams became beacons,
Joining hearts across oceans
So that distance wouldn't matter.
It was in absence dread fate dared,
Soon setting ancient lights to falter,
Dimming, dying through time's haze.
Oh, how long ago did I last gaze
Upon exciting skies as this!
Certain of the hopes and promise
Avowed within those sparks held.
T'was briefest of life's moments,
Most rare and intense,
Never again finding its day
Save in ambush of memory
On a night like this
When wind blows bitter and swift.
Brilliance still dances, but ever so far away
Feb 14, 2010
Feb 14, 2010 at 4:36 PM UTC
When sweet morning dawns
giving dreamcatcher sight,
the bad dreams flee
unable to survive in light
Dream catchers are the magic trick to capturing your nightmares or so they say
Caught like flies in a spindly web, guiding you to the morning when you've lost your way
Hope it's gone for good
Not to return in the coming nights
Setting them free, never to return to that fight
They never say how to empty them or release the dreams, so I make a mosaic or poem out of it to set them free
Dream catchers attempt to make you feel better to sleep
Don’t hesitate to worry if you try and peek
No matter how long
No matter how short
Your beautiful nightmare
Will get trapped and restored
Waking up slightly confused
But yet wanting more
Let the cobwebs do its job
For when you fall asleep at night
Your dreams will be caught, and not lost
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 9:37 AM UTC
I remember when you took me
corkscrewing down kaleidoscope tunnels for the last time
mounting hummingbirds to fly through the crystallized sky
air splashing against our skin
like an intoxicating perfume, dizzying
old daydreams, new friends like
humans with spectrum eyes and hair that coiled around their shoulders like serpents, all donning galaxy cloaks
reptilian monsters that sprouted raven feathers while chasing each other through smoke trees
silhouettes with rusty-nail teeth who danced like leaves in a gale
inky, spindly limbs reaching
trying to catch the moon
fingers entangled like a dreamcatcher
We were more then the kings and queens, heroes, idols
We were gods,
ruling from the velvet mountains to the silken seas,
everything beneath the candlesmoke clouds and the caramel sun that drips like wax
everything shining beneath the stars
made out of that smoldering purple dust we know so well
always whispering to us in scritch-scratch voices
reciting elegies and hush-hush songs of longing
but then,
reality ignites and burns beneath us as we soar,
elysian fields crumbling,
flames consuming the wonderland we’ve built
that is nothing but a paper thin house of tarot cards
the future written with seeping poison ink
We are left keening in the ashes,
tears to late to douse the inferno
but maybe
they will help some seedling fester beneath the scorched earth
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
Just beneath the road insensate,
in the little creek that crawls through town,
the rains brought him.
Iron-blue, patient, slender, high sits his head –
a lance, now raised – now half-tilt as he sights his prey – raised again
as a drifting leaf disrupts his aim.
Upstream he prowls, that his prey sees
him not.
He stalks with long, slow strides, his legs thin and
graceful not to disturb the quiet current of the water and
give himself away to senseless quarry. Few call him spindly,
I imagine. Not I.
By the shore, fish-bones, whole
but for the flesh,
sink into the mud.
A thoughtless dart, a flash, a writhing
beast falls still on his speartip.
What am I, then, that
he flies when I draw close?
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 10:20 PM UTC
I tip-toe up your spine,
a ladder for gentle fingers.
I count each tickled vertebra.
(You flinch at only three.)
Your small body is like a feather in my lap,
yet your spindly legs reach past my knees.
When did you grow so tall?
Nine years I have over you,
and though your child warmth is still heat against my body,
I wonder at the gap
between your world and mine.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 11:03 AM UTC
The sirens blared that 4th of July
Officer Duncan gave Mammy a ride
An emergency dash to the hospital
He’s 2 months premature Mammy cried
Deaf, dumb and blind is what the doctors said
To our mother when Sammy was born
But none of us kids ever were told
Until Sammy was stable and grown
Pappy declared that they’d both be fine
Not believing dire news doctors gave
We happily named him Uncle Sam
Trusting in him to be strong and brave
His 1st 5 months in an incubator
Hooked up to every device
In Newton Wellesley Hospital, 1959
A miracle saved his life
Reaching gloved hands through holes in the side
Weighing just a bit over 2 pounds
Looking more like a spindly ET
I was amazed to be hearing breath sounds
Sam worked on doubling his weight by Christmas
Nothing seemed easy or fast
Still Mammy survived the eclampsia
And Sammy went home at last
Returning a few years later
Sammy’s doctor she would find
To show off to all the nurses
Her son NOT deaf, dumb and blind
I so love my brother Sammy
Always felt like a sister and mother
I’d give all I have for the time
Just a minute more with my dear brother
I’d speak to you of those 57 years
Of the great whirligig you carved with your hands
All the times you showed up for me
Through the good and the bad our love stands
You wasted no time hating anybody
Children and dogs always your friends
Quick for a laugh despite any lack
I draw comfort that all your pain ends
The sirens blared once again for you
The ambulance came, the paramedics tried
Racing you trying to save you
All in vain, in the OR you died
Like Tommy’s rock opera is over
Perhaps you paused to speak to a stray dog
While keeping your divine appointment
By reaching right into the hand of God
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 9:12 PM UTC
I arrived--
though I needn't a formal invite,
for you and I, we are two old friends.
Companions walking along
a similar trail.
The leaves distort and distress the
yellow and gleaming light of the
victorious Sun, who has once again
conquered Night and all
her iniquities.
Scents and colors fill the air,
pinks and reds and greens mix and match
and blend together, forming
a rich atmosphere of synesthetic remarkableness.
Each atom and molecule
of the wind
shivers and shakes atop their
invisible chariots,
perhaps the true location of Atlas
and those great, big hunks of
shoulders;
"Man, what a man."
Take it because you know you like it--
we are social creatures,
creatures of logic
of habit
creatures of horribly idiosyncratic and idle instinct,
rulers of fleshy bodies
which we hardly understand.
The Sun grimaces as it
retreats back to the negative air,
once again,
not to poke its radiant face out until
the next morning.
The Moon came shimmering out,
smiling furtively and compactly,
looking down like
my oldest confidante.
After all,
who else but our fair
Luna atop the stars
is the keeper of all our deepest
and most primal
secrets?
In the cover of her noxy cloak
we sin and hide,
pushing every secret under and between
the cracks in her space,
patching up time and
keeping dark and brooding Atlas
good company.
"You're one of the few great guys."
Oh, my fat and failing Atlas,
lover for the Night and
of my night,
you are a temporary stop on
my trail,
a brief twilight in my
life's journey.
The Sun creeps its
spindly, golden fingers under
the cloak of the Moon,
Night: the stitchings and
sewings of the sins of mortal men.
Playfully, the light stretches out,
first dancing along the stage of the horizon,
then inching closer,
desperate for living contact,
for the greatest warmth of
over 2 billion hearts
all beating at once--
perfectly,
in time.
Our world is a note on
this Cosmic sheet music;
you are barely a splotch on the sheet.
Our existence is the single beat
out of infinite others,
without a beginning but
possibly and end.
I know that
there will be twists in my path,
bending and curving to avoid the
stars' wrath and the Suns'
might,
but,
might it be
that our two trails
are simply
not meant to meet?
Jun 16, 2012
Jun 16, 2012 at 3:55 AM UTC
clicking teeth
rattling breath
veins too small and cramped lungs
spindly ribs and spiderweb lips
you wake up
sunshine on your face
lazy smile lazy voice eyes squinted
why can't I be happy like you?
you taste like ozone and i have traced the knots on your ankles
and the hole in your chest
for hours
revising calculations
compiling a chart
mapping your unknown spaces to find the real distance from you to me
not in the light years from your mouth to mine
but thoughts
memories
four thousand six hundred fourty four instances without me
that void is infinite
your mouth is full of flies
your brain is a quasar with no light on the horizon
there is nothing left of you but bones
and a nest of veins and arteries with your heart stuck in the center like an egg
your wings are melting
you've flown too close to the sun again
wax tattoos you poppy red in drip
drip
drips
how could i forget you?
your parabolas
your rosy cheeks
and the weight of you
how could i forget?
you have no solution
(i could help you find one)
Oct 7, 2013
Oct 7, 2013 at 9:55 PM UTC
here the grass look up brunette trunks, branched arms flex their
form is calm, spindly fingers bloom their open palms
there they reach for spreading clouds
encapsulated sounds of gentle leaves, green noise
orange hues through cherry waves of grape and lemon, sweetened
pecks of the sun set in amber—morsels of melody, snipped bits of
things in canon
contrapuntal
sprouting airgerms
fugal, fungal
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 5:54 AM UTC
They said you were slow and languorous
That live or die 'twas all the same for you
Untutored, they were the swine before the pearls
And were ignorant of the coals that fanned your passion
I was one of the daring few that knocked at your door
The lithe girl in you was always there for the seeing
You had a shape made in heaven and a smile to match
And your blithe ways said nothing mattered that much
We learned much about the body and the force of allure
We filled our gaps with information as you filled your cups
We became clumsier and more oafish as your grace peaked
But we always knew how to worship your form and beauty
The years went by and we all grew up and spread afield
Try as I did to search high and low, of you I found no trace
Yet with ease I found your pretty face in the clouds of time
And the rain wept your name and kept it showering
Now the relentless years have gone swiftly past somehow
And pretty little girls and bashful boys have grown old
Is this you with the fading sight and the tremulous voice?
'Tis no matter, I know how to bring back that lovely lass
So, no matter what, you'll always be that voluptuous beauty
I don't see your spindly legs nor mind your frequent lapses
They don't know what they missed, these modern types:
Love with the taste of spring water that bubbled out of you
Into the cupped palms of my doting heart that sang a duet
With the crescendo notes of your ***** and the quiver
Of the enchanted world sitting upon your dancing behind
These enduring images never fade or melt away
Thus, dearest God's masterpiece, you'll always be my girl
And I the boy electrified by your articulate eloquence
Ignore them when they call you a hag and a witch
They know not the feel of the bliss that never goes away
Sep 28, 2015
Sep 28, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
walking as the sun sets spiderwebs cross my path and shine like fibers of time a moth hovers in front of me suspended in the air I walk slowly around it watching its wings flutter in place a man skateboards down the hill smoke trailing behind him like a train I stare the world is amber as the sun sinks in the sky diving into the ocean I walk and the sound of electric symbols like gun shots bring me back to reality an appropriate song for my mood balancing on the curb I notice that the harvest men have come out en mas their bodies the color of the dead grass that grows all around as they wander on their long spindly legs I continue on my sides aching my mind wandering along with my feet I guess I just needed to be out for a bit to have nothing to do no purpose or reason just to wander timeless
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 4:35 PM UTC