"spiny" poems
Spiny jellyfish
Tucked in her curves
Twinkles her tentacles
At the sun
Rising with the waves
That make her go every which way
To the east or to the west
She just goes with the flow
Letting the current pull her through
The oceans pressure and blow holes
Spineless jellyfish
Drifts through the waters,
To the left and to the right
And floats with the waves
In an endless sea of time
Aug 1, 2015
Aug 1, 2015 at 5:16 AM UTC
The urgent care is the nursery
Where I choose my seeds with thought.
The doctor is the gardener
Who knows how to fix what I’ve wrought.
She sows the seeds inside my skin,
Yet not with a trowel or ***
She uses a needle and surgical thread,
With budding knots lined up in a row.
Then she leaves me with my tidy ground
And some knowledge on how I should care
For the lined up plot she’s left to me,
Whose potential I’m required to bear.
The deep rivet I slashed into my skin
Is where the seedlings take root.
The blood from my veins keeps them moist
As the new blossoms stand resolute.
But when the weather grows dark and dreary,
My sprouts need cover from the cold.
So I bundle them up with jeans and sweats
To protect them and let them take hold.
But despite the layers I pile atop,
The small spiny blooms poke through.
I run my fingers back and forth,
And marvel at how fast they grew.
Then after they’ve grown for fourteen days,
I return to the nursery at last.
The gardener plucks and prunes and picks
‘Til the wounds and the blooms come to pass.
So now the perennials have passed us by,
And the sprouts have been taken to bin.
The wound that watered my seedlings’ through,
Has left but a scar on my skin.
Jan 23, 2022
Jan 23, 2022 at 11:20 AM UTC
I miss you,
West Texas,
You more than most.
I miss people
And things
But I’ve never missed more,
Than I’ve missed you.
One day, I’ll return to you,
And we’ll be together until I die,
My dear West Texas.
Some say your deserts are unbearably hot,
And I say,
It’s easier to make shade
Than a fire.
Picturesque cacti,
Blooming in the spring,
Sunsets that put oil paintings to shame,
And wild mustangs escaping man’s unyielding possession,
Just like me.
I can see them running along the dusty banks
Of a wide river in canyon carved by the Great Artist Himself,
West Texas,
I want to drive a rusty old truck through hot afternoons till frigid nights,
Miles and miles of sweet loneliness,
Until it’s just you and I,
And I can watch your brilliant display of stars move
Across the endless horizon.
Desert owls,
A serpent’s rattling warning,
Creatures that crave solitude,
As I do,
Emerge in the night,
Like the neon lights of lonely bars in the middle of nowhere,
Sweet prickly pear in perfect harmony with Jose Cuervo in my glass,
A tribute to my lonely West Texas,
Singing me a tune of cicada chirps and desert winds,
And the jingle of spurs on concrete floors,
As the men,
As old and covered in sand as the bar itself,
Make their way in from isolated jobs miles away,
To listen to Tejano,
And sip on that cactus nectar,
Distilled by the Great Bartender
For a night like this,
In my West Texas,
Perfectly lonely,
Perfectly perfect.
I just want it to be me and you
And your hot red sand,
I want to see those yellow blossoms bursting from the deceptively spiny hands of desert life,
I want to hang a dusty, wide brimmed hat above dusty leather boots when I come home,
I want the sky to explode with color,
As a reward for enduring a long day of the heat,
And when the rare jewels from heaven fall, and nourish your cracked ground,
And peace is sworn between all animals,
Predators and prey,
For that moment,
So that all may celebrate the loving dew sent by our Great Caretaker,
I want to dance on your planes,
Twirl in the rain,
And let the drops fall between my lips like the crevices of your canyons,
Brought to life when you are,
Slumber when you do,
Live each day as you live,
My sweet West Texas.
Oct 30, 2017
Oct 30, 2017 at 10:32 PM UTC
Where shall a hungry mermaid dine
When she hankers, for something fine?
Spiny oysters make a nice cocktail;
And octopus tentacles; and grey narwhal.
And where should she sit, and what shall she use
To stab her undersea feast, infuse
Her goblet, filled up with sparkling sea water,
Awaiting her course, of fresh sea-otter.
And should she tip, at the end of the meal
The dolphin who served her so much krill,
In his scrutable suit, of skin-tight rubber-
(The respectable mermaid never eats blubber).
Jul 26, 2010
Jul 26, 2010 at 7:35 PM UTC
In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?
Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,
Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 7:16 PM UTC
The sand hides the sun.
Through a fog of particulate silica.
Distorted.
For the first time in my life,
I may look upon that glowing
bearing, for minutes straight.
Innards swallow,
That rock it flings,
Paints on the light.
Now the water vapor hangs,
Amongst its spiny rays,
Creating a mist of cloudy haze.
My eyes must seek to,
Penetrate.
Alas they lose this skirmish fray.
The sun cannot hide its specter.
The doppelganger image always,
Dapper and prim.
Amongst the thoughts in rift entrails of brain,
I think i am my brain. I don't think that when, head cut from body,
Shall my soul reside where my heart was;
Instead I may see, conscious, from where the two parted.
Creating a scar from which to view this hazed sun.
Ever notice,
How the eyes,
Are the only,
Place,
You can,
See from...
I can be an Ammonite with many chambers calcified.
Ghost fossil human head.
A ghost in a shell.
My eyes will carve shapes from the clouds.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 8:48 PM UTC
.
Her fine hands gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.
Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.
Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.
Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.
Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.
Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.
Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.
.
Apr 26, 2019
Apr 26, 2019 at 8:22 PM UTC
Oh, phalo skeptic,
part your wave for skirted ***** surfers,
tho, trout, tripe, and titmice thrill thrice..
Will duct tape save us?
Urge the Zamboni machine,
to microwave ice.
Quince down that pouting sphincter,
Oh, the tides do swell
on the morrow of passing fish.
Wheelbarrow pious.
Swift, awesome biblionauts,
Fire! Fire! Pail, Pail thy watered pitch.
Know this, every potato is somewhere vane ...
I'm busy now, rude duuude,
have you sweated a recumbent lout?
Indent chill mots,
Pete, I'm big in Europe, pal,
Have seen me dance the Macarena?
Fool, fool on that high hill,!
Take care when licking spiny urchins
Oy! I scare myself.
Jan 19, 2011
Jan 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM UTC
The cockroaches surrounded but one
Fair
Maiden;
Seeking Singapore and suns absent the, “other.”
I kicked one, her infernal and insect aside, oh
Fair
Maiden;
Fleeing his promise and same mistake I’d made prior.
So to, the unspoken alliance ensues, both sought and awry, our –
Recounted
Freedoms
Born the dogs that are kicked and the dogs bite back.
Veil and anew, below and bellied-up bugs;
Fair
Maiden
Conquered, “yes,” but, agreed, our ulterior master born body.
We no longer fear and be gone the spiny legs,
Fair
Maiden;
For carrion’s a distance and the fruit’s now atop nose;
We’ve learned to love again.
Note - Smog-soaked sunsets at, "Rebel Rebel," in Guangzhou used to make for the greatest shards of diary I've ever encountered. In this case, she was running away from him and I was running away from her - we'd the same story, the same drink, and soon the same table. I should visit again, someday.
Jul 5, 2015
Jul 5, 2015 at 10:37 AM UTC
Perhaps I am a cactus.
Perhaps,
there are needles
protruding
from my skin
to prove how soft
i really am.
A saguaro,
only hollow
by the birds
who make nests
in my chest.
Perhaps,
I will flower
once the rainy season is over.
I will drink deep of this muddy sorrow
and my skin will swell
warm
and green
and well nourished
by the sky.
Perhaps,
it will be
the most beautiful
blossom anyone has
ever seen
and people will travel
miles
just to
admire.
Perhaps,
they will wonder
how my flower
came from such a
spiny
thing
And Perhaps
I will tell them.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 11:27 PM UTC
Green garden, my lovely little garden
over run with weeds
Cracked dirt, no water to be found
broke the spigot
Neat rows, gouged between spiny thorns
sweating, back bent
Such a waste, to throw down this seed
poached by ants
Some day I'll till it all, lovely garden
never work again
Jul 14, 2012
Jul 14, 2012 at 9:44 PM UTC
This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
No rocs may clap their wings,
Nor gryphons wave their stings.
Here, poised in quietude,
Calm elementals brood
On the set shape of things:
They fend away alarms
From this green wood.
Here nothing is that harms -
No bulls with lungs of brass,
No toothed or spiny grass,
No tree whose clutching arms
Drink blood when travellers pass,
No mount of glass;
No bardic tongues unfold
Satires or charms.
Only, the lawns are soft,
The tree-stems, grave and old;
Slow branches sway aloft,
The evening air comes cold,
The sunset scatters gold.
Small grasses toss and bend,
Small pathways idly tend
Towards no fearful end.
2.2k
From the backbroken fliers over oceans
From between the spiny frills along palm fronds
From Mr. Happy, the chain smoking chaperone of good times
From Mr. Happy’s half-burnt **** coiled in the ashtray
From the disciples of Theravada and the skinny Buddha’s pupilless eyes scanning jocose scansions of jungle
From the tanned holy heads of students lounging in graveled football fields
From my bowl of rice at breakfast in the shade while considering western cities, you are not here
‘You are not here,’ I’ve written in my letters
‘You are not here,’ I’ve typed into e-mails immense
You are not here, my coke head pals locked in the veins of seedy nightmares
You are not here, my penniless friends who mix music in ascetic dark rooms out in Bushwick
You are not here in no eastern Central Park running naked in the night from horseback cops after hours of merciless balling in the bushes
You are not here you fair-skinned beauties in crowded alpine funiculars bearing your aquiline noses holding your hats over the mountains
You are not here my lonely mother waiting by the phone for a call at midnight
You are not here, you are not in my poems, you are not in the distorted notes harpsichorded across my crass imagination
You are not here, you will not be here, will you read my letters home?
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 6:58 AM UTC
these foothills
rolling in pine and
grassland meadows,
where silvery lupine
follow the melting snow,
hint of the mountains to come
in spiny crags that
catch a cumulus pocked sky
cottonwood tufts rain
this day after solstice
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 2:23 PM UTC
Eat till you're sick
Just as a big **** YOU** to this *****
This ***** inside my head
Who won't stop until I'm dead
She puts tape over my mouth
And a scale under my feet
Then the worst part is, she'll make you believe without a doubt
That she's doing you a good deed
Like she's doing this for you
But what she really does in fact
Is take your whole life and refuse to give it back
And just when you think you have a reprieve
Like you've actually escaped her spiny clutches
She yell at you that she'll never leave
And about how you've lost your muchness
Then you'll eat a little something
Just to show her who's boss
But then something turns to nothing
And you're obsessed by how much you've lost
This ***** will whisper snide comments at you all throughout the day
Pounding away at your self confidence so all that's left is self-hate
A high residual between who you are and who you ought to be and how the only thing standing in your way is all these ******* calories
She'll make you turn on things you once loved
Till food becomes the enemy and she turns you into something that only she loves
She'll tell you lots of things to get you seeing bones
But what she won't tell you is that her methods are never condoned
What she won't tell you is how she paints on your mirror at night
That way you see what she wants and not what's right
What she won't tell you is that she's just a scared little *****
Who's not even real
No, that ***** won't tell you that it's okay to have a meal
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 9:32 PM UTC
In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?
Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,
Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.
Mar 14, 2015
Mar 14, 2015 at 9:46 PM UTC
From my new book, Poems of Ancient Rome and Greece, available in paperback on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as eBook on Kindle, Nook, and Apple Books: https://www.amazon.com/Poems-Ancient-Greece-Christopher-Saitta/dp/B0DS6933HB?ref_=ast_author_dp
My mother the sea,
She woke my sandy eyes,
Just to tell me she had to leave,
Draw past the markets where the fish are sun-dried,
Snarled by the coral-rough hands of divers deep.
My mother the sea,
She left her running tab
Of the grocer’s choicest greens,
Thumbed the velamentous rinds and spiny scarola,
Her xylem and phloem are the slow moving cruciferousness of a breeze.
My mother the sea,
Charwoman of tides,
Who dips and delves upon her knees,
Who scrubs her brothel-coves with chamber lye,
Cyprian mistress of the salt-stained sheets.
I have looked for you, mother,
A scugnizzo amid the striped awnings of the marketplace
~ like sails to the sky ~
Where the fishmongers hawk their pride
Of conch, cavallo, and black sea bream.
I have looked for you, mother,
Walked sun-forged along the boardwalk,
Amid the neon-mascara of signs,
Hand-in-hand with only the ladyfingers of salt and vinegar fries,
Toward the crisp syllabub of pebbles and sand.
A beach is window-warmth spread free, cosmopolitan,
The longeur of eyes crushed in the glass-dust of cities.
And in the sputtering of the frosted spume of tides,
Held broken seashells in my hands like broken needles,
Heard the pump-click of the ventilator through your mask of sand.
My mother the sea,
A naked convalescent,
Whose ever-turnings have taken
A turn for the worse.
Who will know her by her death, who but me?
Jan 21, 2025
Jan 21, 2025 at 8:29 AM UTC
In gravest, gravels of untouched soil,
Spearhead of purple, beyond the pale,
One statue of siege upon a windy foil,
What mires meek airs in all you survey?
Like a frost of summers, you are lord,
To hold that seed in your spiny face,
Depressions of land your promontory,
All up with arms, iron clad as a mace,
Beneath you, the grown motley fields
Are desolate, all flowers bled, blender,
Spiders and birds know you unyielding
The lost aleatory scent of no surrender.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 2:57 PM UTC
Adobe skinned mimicry of light,
Piece of pebbly lunar surface fallen
To misty ******* reverse panoply,
Spiny spar of stellar tapestry
Nimbly navigating mortared limbs
In sultry sea-cellar ballet,
Rocky roofed conspirator of clams,
Swarthy pirate, silent smithy of shells.
Aug 13, 2010
Aug 13, 2010 at 10:12 AM UTC
(Creation to the end of an Ice Age)
© 2008 (Jim Sularz)
Sun’s first rise over life-less skies, the earth cools, and the waters pool -
the sun burns East to West.
And the planet’s broken plates quake and move.
Lightning strikes, the waters stir, and the bonds of life begin to churn -
the sun burns East to West.
And the waters swirl in a living urn.
Strange aquatic things, they all evolve, some spiny finned, start to crawl -
the sun burns East to West.
And they slowly stretch ***** and tall.
Eons past where the cunning reign, a savage place, with small sized brains -
the sun burns East to West.
And the dead surrender their twisted remains.
An asteroid streaks from the sky, blocks out the sun, cause most to die -
the sun burns East to West.
And all in the blink of time’s eye.
Footprints in stone, some on mountainsides, make it clear that rocks don’t lie -
the sun burns East to West.
And the fossils always tell the time.
Eons past and eons more, the fittest evolves, and man is born -
the sun burns East to West.
And the early brain, once fast asleep, begins to dream and mourn.
The first million years, man lives in fear, learns to hunt, invents the spear -
the sun burns East to West.
And migrates to claim the vast frontiers.
Tools from stone and controlled fire, creates language, that shake man’s empire -
the sun burns East to West.
And splash cave paintings with human inspire.
Life-times of hunter-gathering, and story-telling in the dark -
the sun burns East to West.
And a world spins with a million hearts.
The earth starts to warm, the oceans rise, and the waters shape the lands -
the sun burns East to West.
And when an Ice Age ends, then comes, the Age of Man.
Jun 10, 2012
Jun 10, 2012 at 5:03 PM UTC
Her fine hands are gentle
With lithe and spiny fingers
Of bone and fin.
Her eyes are opal,
Essence of emerald and topaz,
A hoard of treasure.
Her hair is sea gathering
And dances in the blue currents
Deadly as the sea snake.
Her skin is coral,
Made of mineral and sorcery,
A fatal beacon.
Her lips are urchin,
Set in a whirlpool of face,
A spiral of doom.
Her voice is dream,
Rocking the lost wrecked ships,
Ground into sand.
Her long tail is fable
Of paradise, beyond faraway seas,
Cyclones and waves.
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 11:42 AM UTC
My hand keeps moving
and out pours Dahlias
white laced
scratchy shadowed
full of drooping buds
about to burst with life
in inky eternity
out pours spiny stems
arching over sunken
leaves
veins swelling and
branching out
to sunlight
out pours secrets
my secrets and my
tragedies
my wishes and my pain
my father who never looked my way
and a bouquet of dahlias sent
in replace of a childhood
out pours dahlias and the pain
of now knowing
why you left me.
May 25, 2014
May 25, 2014 at 4:03 AM UTC
architectural mollusks
are falloping through
my brain
squeezing past the
instincts that
have kept me down
My instincts,
once brittle sea stars
that splintered
into cracked
peppercorns,
are now mixed with
the breathy liquid
of squid,
lubrication for
the spiny paths ahead
They blow their ink
between my
inverted vertebrae
injecting Jello into bone
busting through
fiber and tissue like
fresh-skimmed
lavacream
and all my muck
rises to the top
in a neon rawness
that I find beautiful
Soon
my burning crevices
will be cooled
fossils will turn to flesh
and, as sure as knowledge
springs into action
I will make
for the shoreline
like a cephalopod rocket
silky smooth
my fins spun into wings
touching magic
as they glide
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 5:29 PM UTC