"splutters" poems
Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised?
Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise?
Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise
Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties
To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke
Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke
Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims...
Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction
Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art
Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts
Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart?
To love and to cherish til your knees did part?
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew
While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues
To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts
Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts
Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand
She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm
Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth
And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed
Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex
When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks
Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror
Love is for life until you dress it with liquor
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong
The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on
That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company
Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 5:44 PM UTC
.
*Light hits my retina
through the prism of a tear,
distorted faces pass
with images fragmented
inside out
and the smell of tallow
as a candle splutters,
falters and winks out
for the wick collapses cruel
like a hamstrung dancer.
The tear exits stage left
and rolls down the wings
of a thoughtless cheek,
teeters on the brink of catastrophe
and falls upon a blank page,
reviewing its brief life
as a lazy metaphor,
so I look at the remaining solitary candle
and grieve for the lost tear,
as an understudy takes its place.*
© Pagan Paul (28/05/19)
May 28, 2019
May 28, 2019 at 7:34 AM UTC
a nacreous tossing around at
the sides, a dappled silver
sunlight if looked one way, an
apocalyptic gloam if another,
exhaled from a seeming
mouth, feeding on what has
already eviscerated an unfelt
***** a predator certainly its
own prey, a heat certainly
poison-breath on a cheek
falling when a meretricious
lover spouts that spurious
hypocorism, and also just a
wavering, iridescent puddle—
cornered, soft as a liquid steel
echo of a futile struggle
rolling around, bouncing off
a wine glass, and a porcelain
table edge, while a listening
head shakes, looks down
despondently, gloom glowing
out the hair, a voice jaded
since birth saying some
thing about differences, or a
helpless slender strap of hope
hanging itself on the way two
other eyes look at it across
checkered watered wings, two
swirling god whorls, two
effulgent galaxies the color of
melting pine bole circling
around in living umber striae,
pulling its gaze, raising it, as if
they, they were blazing truth
cased behind lithophane, and it,
only an aporetic puddle now
of tepid ocher, a mild earth
stone placed in a hand, asked
what is thought of it and the
response: yes, yes of course,
before foreign distance splutters
its face, and it retreats from
its meaning imparted to every
thing (with the vulnerable
precision of a swaying finger
tip) to the baby lanugo of a
delicate floating, through
human rills, of what is horizon
docked, dead, not merely
deciduous—forever jilted with
breath bulging as when beating
a flopping eyeless fish to
half-dead, head tilted up a
throat trying to pry itself
free, trying to live by
streaming snagless, airful,
without spirant sound of going
lost straight from the hands—
then a short chop of fullness
finally expunged and sputtering
like an escaped tuft of
shackled wonder soaring up
the sky in a puff and soul ring.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:43 PM UTC
MacBain splutters,
long winded speeches,
intoxicating stutters.
Whisky reeks volumes on volumes of volumes,
unfathomable mysteries on infallible fumes.
Helga looks hideously **** tonight,
the ghoul in the corner looks up for a fight.
The toilet's transforming into a white telephone,
just one last drink until the drinking is done.
Redshot eyes light another cigarette,
Shooter all round,
and a beer what the heck!
The dance floor is moving like a seasick ship,
We all feel like rock stars defining whats hip.
Jan 26, 2010
Jan 26, 2010 at 8:45 AM UTC
The rain splutters at me in foreign tongue
As my mind hurdles under a mushroom
Shelter from the pelting lashes
Of nostalgic memory
Such vulnerable home from woes
Like a rodent hole in flooding summer
They tell me I am a finicky rat
That will not survive outside Sakubva
Ratatat-tatatatat-tart!
Oh but how true!
Each day I walk out in the morning
Come evening I pick every footprint I left
Back home
Prompted by need to use my footprints
Once more
Take care!
The radio blares
Save save save save
The television frowns
Wise up
Recycle is the trick in these hard times
Discarded beliefs, discarded memories, discarded tastes
Can be recycled
Recycled dreams, recycled husband, recycled wife...
I scrap my bottom in amazement
After all there is always a grain of virtue left
In what we discard -
O how I love the scent
God has made it that way
That each time you ****
Before you go
You save a nostalgic glance at your ****
Suppressing a sense of loss
For a part of you left behind
Like kites tied to strings we are
We regale in our false splendour
At time's mercy
The fruits of mental ************
Deflowered by new ****** worlds
Of lewd dreams in striking G-Strings
Gyrating ***** of fantastic insanity
That lure us
Into the heavy -bosomed clouds
Pregnant with cultural retribution
For the anarchy coursing our veins
Like the burning pain on my back
Each evening when I bend double
To pick up and bag my footprints
I left in the morning
This is not madness
When I tell you to let your beak
Of tolerance peck and peck
On your ****
What difference is there
Between **** in your belly and
**** steaming betwixt your legs?
What difference is home
When you are young and when old?
Riding on the back of butterfly dreams
When I am a newborn macho
In the bullring of entrepreneurship
Or O such cosmopolitan hunk
In the realm of fashion and modelling...
Sounds like sheltering under a mushroom
That springs and dazzles but a day
Hope I will hurtle back
Hope sweet home, home sweet home
I am a finical rat
That won't live away from home.
-dougwa-
Feb 23, 2012
Feb 23, 2012 at 11:21 AM UTC
Who are you, that you can palpitate my malcontent heart?
When you pass me in the street I avoid your eyes
For they are too much for my troubled mind
The way your doe eyes and mascara coalesce
and my spirit wanes with wondering thoughts of You and I
Oh blue-eyed seraph, queen of my callow folly
Is your name the password spoken to Saint Peter
When a man is to transcend this eternal struggle
Or are you the devil dressed in down robes
Come to drown me in wanton waves
You seem to have come here on gradient beams from the cosmos
With your platinum locks, alien in texture, encompassing and fine
Do your misdeeds and free my tortured mind
For these enumerations may drain these tortured veins
and leave this poor proletariat passionless once more
Pouting and winsome, your elegance is eternal
When the plants have all turned as blue as your eyes
and the cement golgothas all crumble
When every elephant of the Sahara, withers and dies
and the Cheetahs fall to the ground and mumble
When the skies turn black and curse our love
with the oceans boiling over
When the stars all fall from high above
and the cliffs are brown at Dover
When the Earth splutters and coughs, gasping for fresh water
When God yells obscenities and Jesus has no choice but loiter
When the racing rats stand still and ponder
When the hills all fall, way out yonder
When the noises of the cities are but ghosts on dead air
I shall remember your smile and know I have nothing to fear
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 6:17 PM UTC
The smell of dettol permeates way down the street
even as I approach the clinic in terror
death stalks every step and my pulse races
with the knowledge of impending doom.
Try as I might, to stay calm and in control, bugs don't think-
they eat their fill first
and talk with high temperatures and tantrums
coughs and splutters
chills and tingles and tantrums, probably knowing
that murderous pills on their way.
dettol has a distinct sensation, it matches sterile
spongy clean sop and maternity wards
yet I know if you smelt dettol in the deep woods
you would question every dark spot on a leaf
the bark the tree! the wind and the root.
That's how it got associated with death.
I could never overcome that smell
at times it felt safe, at other times it felt like
alarm bells were ringing of an approaching enemy
facing a firing squad. How could they fire us
to the next world with a smell?
But that's what it always felt like. But today
I need to get my flu sorted out.
Dettol wont do the killing fields any good.
Its hard to have a love/hate relationship with a smell.
Dettol and Women! They are alike! That's it. Yeah.
Author Notes
Optional
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 2 months ago
- See more at: http://allpoetry.com/poem/11613999-dettol-by-Marshall-Gass-noguest#sthash.J5CFBwXf.dpuf
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 6:56 PM UTC
our clothes are perfumed
in the after effects
of the cigarettes
you and he share
as we drive down
unpaved paths in Iowa
bits of ash
slip past your seatbelt
to build new nests
tangled gray birds
in my beard's brambles
the wind splutters its dying breaths
as a Jeep Cherokee kicks up
specters of dust
and i sit in the backseat
forgotten
while second-hand smoke
leaks out half-cracked windows
fleeing your presence
i envy the particles
liberated from the confines
of your cancerous lungs
slipping free and disappearing
into the mourning light
rising with a ruddy sun
behind anguished hillocks
Apr 14, 2016
Apr 14, 2016 at 10:03 AM UTC
I had a dream the other night
that I held my heart in your hands.
I stared down at in grotesque fascination
watching its pumps and shudders.
The pleasure I felt was never so great
in savagely squeezing
and feeling the blood
trickle down my hands
hearing the far-off scream in the distance,
a sweet sound of agony
as I imagined your gasps and splutters,
as I wrung out your heart for
everything you had ever done
and threw it into the dirt,
watched it shrivel into itself,
before spitting in the general direction
and walking away to find
your body, cold and lifeless, pale,
your chest still ****** from
where I shoved my hand through.
I watched the life dwindle out of your eyes
as I began to laugh,
laugh
as God help me I laughed,
with excitement and cry with anticipation, waking,
knowing someday I’ll hold your heart in my hand,
and stare at it, and squeeze.
Feb 11, 2013
Feb 11, 2013 at 1:32 PM UTC
I can tell when someone needs a hug
When the pain is too much
And the mask is gone
When the world's on your shoulders
Instead of in your hands
I won't ask you what's wrong
Or what I can do
I'll just hug you.
I won't complain when your long hair gets in my eyes
Or when your briny tears stain my shirt
Or when you squeeze until I can no longer breathe
And when your voice
spurts,
splutters,
then pours out
Into haphazard words translated from your heart
I will stay there
And
just
hug you.
When your story wrenches my heart
Fills my own eyes with tears
I will not let them spill.
Whether we stay there until late at night
When all is silent and smooth
And I see you finally withdraw
Your eyes still pinkish red
I'll still get you a glass of water-
My duty as your best friend.
Then if there's time before I need to leave
I'll give you a small smile and one last hug
But.
When I'm back home
Far away in physicality
I will still be hugging you.
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 4:17 PM UTC
water flows & flows & splutters
through a weir & a pipe on the sand
with rampant ibis & seagulls with
chips from the hands of children
an iconic beach disappoints in the flesh
the south end where nobody covers
that much skin as there's not lots
to hide while they flaunt & smoke & blister
under sun & ice-cream melts
as the waves roll & roll
Apr 26, 2015
Apr 26, 2015 at 5:31 AM UTC
Dust specks-settle,
cosying up to the ribbon bound notebooks
bearing your initials.
Burying this artefact,
flawed, fractured there will be no map
to guide you back to this mirth, no breadcrumbs to drop on the earth.
It will be no more than a prologue, a seam unwoven to grab momentary attention
until I sweep all away with steel grip on an exuding artery.
Is Hubris not a deadly sin?
As it lays in tatters at my feet.,
Foolish, foolhardy to have believed that all was a world of Thornfield or Pemberley
more apt is naeive.
The disparate views,that were sent by you undermined by certainty,unhinged the very bolts and nuts that held my infastructure.
Transfixed. Transfigured. Transformed into this 'new'.
Alas the day, arrives anyway the lark sings a merry tune and it thunderstorms, drops leaves life leaves the dew.
To be candid, I pocess within me one last spark it splutters and at times can ignite, for teaching me an invaluble truth.
Unrequited love, This partisan
bear with caution- leaves a scar- a victim.
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 6:31 PM UTC
Do you know where the wild things go
They go along to take your honey
Break down, now sleep, build up, breakfast
Now let’s eat, my love, my love love love
She bruises, coughs, she splutters
Pistol shots hold her down with soggy clothes and
breezeblocks
She’s morphine, queen of my vaccine, my love, my love love
love
Muscle to muscle and toe to toe
The fear has gripped me, but here I go
My heart sinks as I jump up
Your hand grips hand as my eyes shut
She may contain the urge to runaway
But hold her down with soggy clothes and breezeblocks
Germoline disinfect the scene, my love, my love love love
But please don’t go, I love you so
My lovely
Please don’t go,
I love you so,
Please don’t go,
I love you so,
Please break my heart
Jun 7, 2013
Jun 7, 2013 at 5:28 PM UTC
Father died that year. So did
Bob Kennedy, although that
Was a different death, planned
Right down to the last dark detail.
But your father’s was more personal,
More hurtful, getting right into your
Bones and heart. You were sitting
In the doctor’s surgery with your
Father where he’d come about pains
In the chest and back, when some guy
Came in and said, Bob Kennedy’s dead,
Some bugger’s shot him (excuse my French,
He added, there women being present).
There was muttering amongst the throng,
Whispers, coughs, splutters, then a silence
Deeper than awaiting death by your father’s
Elbow, seemingly deeper than Nietzsche’s
Haunting eyes. Your father said nothing
That you recall, but no doubt he felt the
Same sadness that most felt that day,
The waste of a life, a fine brain blown out
Like some candle in a dark room, another
Organized ***** out by some rogue element
Of government backrooms. Father died
That year unbeknown by the world at large
(As if it cared), but death was just as certain
And thorough when it came, sweeping him
Silently from the hospital ward, his link to
Life cut like a bloodied umbilical cord.
Feb 13, 2012
Feb 13, 2012 at 4:45 AM UTC
You are the silence
in an overflowing room,
overlooking the brim of
the glasses full of art that
are about to s p i l l forth
from you able hands. i am
the low murmur of voices,
ebbing through an empty
room - no shortage of
"excuse me"s or of
cleared throats.
You are love, when love
disguised itself as ink and
ran freely through pages
in lines that looked a lot
like poetry, only if
one looked. i am the short
staccato splutters of syllables
splattering and spoiling
fresh canvases of pure
imagination - rendering them
u n c l e a n,
u n u s a b l e,
u n d e s i r a b l e
you and i, we swirl through
pages and mics and minds
and crowds and rooms and blinds
like no shackles forged from doubt
could ever bind us.
Apr 23, 2017
Apr 23, 2017 at 7:47 AM UTC
You pick me up in your car
I'm already waiting outside
Shopping and lunch, you suggest
I think it's the perfect plan.
As you drive, we catch up
(I hate that we've been apart)
You tell me stories
About people I don't know
Jokes I don't understand
But try to laugh at
All the same.
Somewhere, on the way
Your car splutters
And fails to start on the hill
You're annoyed, say we'll be stuck here
I am secretly thrilled
But then worry
That you don't want to be with me
For that long.
It clearly shows on my face
As you reassure me
Put your hand on my leg
(I wish you would keep it there)
And tell me help is on its way.
Your Mum arrives
As you're calling a repairman
She calls me your girlfriend
I don't correct her
And stand close to you
When your phone call ends.
I try not to read into it
When you don't move away
(After all, we're used to being close)
But still savour the warm smile
Your Mum gives me
Before she drives away.
We window shop for hours
Slip back into our old rhythm
I reach for your hand
Instinctively
But you move yours away
Before mine has reached it
And I'm left grabbing
At the air
Trailing behind you.
We try on stupid hats
And laugh and laugh
(Is it weird that we're friends now?)
You're in a great mood
And I'm proud to be with you
As you put on a show
That passers by
Stop and smile at.
(It's awful being just your friend now)
We have lunch at a bistro
Our table is small and intimate
And our knees touch
Under the table
It makes me blush but
I love it.
You say you have something
You want to tell me
My heart leaps
And flutters.
I take a sip of milkshake
To avoid saying something
Stupid.
You look me in the eye
And tell me
That you've met someone
And she's perfect
You couldn't be happier
You have a smile
fixed on your face.
The milkshake
Curdles with my stomach acid
My mouth is dry
I think I'm going to be sick
And excuse myself.
You don't notice
That I'm quiet for the rest
Of our lunch.
You speak enough for
The both of us
Telling me stories
That I don't want to hear.
My ears ring
Like mourning bells
And I feel dizzy.
My face is pale
Under the artificial lights
I wish I was anywhere
But here.
You drive me home
Thank me for the
Nice afternoon we had.
I go in and know
That I can never see you
Again.
As I am not your friend
And never can be
As I am not quite over you
And I'm hurting
More than I'd admit.
Mar 11, 2019
Mar 11, 2019 at 5:56 PM UTC
I've been thinking probably way too much
as is the rhythm of my mind
about rocks, pebbles, sand and such
and where my loyalties lie
what boon work this world of faceless cogs
demands of my willow tree
is warping what sense of beauty there was
and fulfilment in creating these
colours that flutter like the turbulent mixture
of life blood my pen's so obsessed with
and maybe it's due to the beat that those hues
drum through my every fibre and limb
because when you make me force me to create
these armfuls and mouthfuls of sand
the vibrant inferno it splutters and chokes
and cries to me, how can you stand?
How do you sit like the sandman in his suit
whose mind is long barren of rocks
or those women you hate while their gravel gossip grates
with sheer nothingness, their words will be lost
how do you breathe when the mark you should leave
on this earth lies somewhere buried beneath
that avalanche of assignments, oh fool don't deny them
they smothered your love of the free
somehow you bear the pain, no buzz in your veins
do you remember them glowing so bright?
like the twisted surge and flow of headlights on dark roads
you could've bled a skyline,
you know it is not lost that time...
when water is empty, it watches in glass pillars
you only thirst for those hues
and your only hunger is to feel no longer
the weight of ideas decaying unused
when every cell and molecule rippling within you
is finally full from the fruits
of heaving a sigh when that creature comes to life
only a hint of the vision inside you
until then, dear inferno, I sigh, you do not know
the agony of building these damns
of papers and alarm clocks and quotidian gutter droplets
the ebb of the life of the Man
but this searing pain is not all to no gain
for these empty books will rot away
and the platform they chose for me, bricks laid in rows for me
I will step off as light as the day
when the sun rises orange, so deep I can taste it
melting over the sand
that I sleep on and stand on and build archways of light upon
no longer fills the hollows of my hands
then inferno dear inferno, how luminous we will glow
we will be everything we are
we are not sand and pebbles, gravel and stones
we are rocks like the jagged earth's scar
but for now I must tolerate those grains as they bite and grate
and nibble what makes me who I am
and hope that these hands and their rainforest of plans
will not be eroded by this sea of sand
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 1:51 PM UTC
[Enter Marco, a young Milanese courtier.]
_It is he, is it not, whose honeyed barbs drip with sweet condescension, and whose kisses taint fair Bianca’s lips with similar speech? Behold, how he frames her vision to reflect his own and directs her preferences accordingly.
Fie, I have been April’s fool in believing Antonio my ally. His encouragement was as sweetmeats to a greedy child; but I have chipped a tooth on that candy-coated morsel and found its centre to be flavoured with deceit.
My cousin Bianca, whose name speaks directly to her nature, whose light once made shadows dance for joy; how extinguished she appears now. For as Antonio sparkles and splutters at her side, her brilliance flickers and fades.
Lo, how he has seeded his untruths within her honest heart. His lies smuggled like contraband, his blandishments the articles of his trade. God’s wounds! Such a purveyor of frippery and falsehood I have never met the equal of.
It is high time to confront this sneak thief in his lurking-hole and to uncloak his creeping connivance. I shall bottle my rival’s words and choose carefully the occasion for their uncorking; then pour for the crowd a rich liquor of ripe requital._
Apr 22, 2019
Apr 22, 2019 at 3:03 AM UTC
i'd cut my own heart open and bleed without a sound as you lay next to me to show you that tiny vessels string together within me to spell your name and i would bleed it all out to prove that to you i would cut my lungs out of my body to prove to you i breathe because of you i inhale and exhale for you and i want to cut my tongue out of my mouth to stop myself from talking because it splutters out of me like clouds of baby powder and it's so foggy i can't see light anymore
Jan 26, 2017
Jan 26, 2017 at 11:47 PM UTC
Shriveled.
I
am
wasting
away.
Drained
and
twisted,
I
He
never
stops
Drinking,
sucking,
slurping.
His
I
cannot
break
From
his
chains.
I
choke.
I
cough.
My
last
breath
Splutters
free.
Jan 30, 2013
Jan 30, 2013 at 10:54 AM UTC
soggy bottomed shoes
encase wrinkly tender feet
it's been raining solidly
for more than a week
the towels all smell
of mould and mildew
the carpets more mud than wool
the vegetable garden
is accsessed by canoe
and the fire just splutters
cause of the water in the flue
we have gathered a menagerie
of frogs and spiders on the
front porch, there is a sugar glider
and still it rains....and the rivers flow high
gosh what I would give to see some blue sky
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 11:17 PM UTC
Touches of pink
on skin and sky.
Silhouettes of swifts
pivot a perfect slither
of crescent moon.
Garden sprinkler
spits and splutters -
fearing winter
on the edge of summer.
Sep 24, 2020
Sep 24, 2020 at 1:56 PM UTC
You
behind the doors where the monsters reside,
watching the citadel fall and Jerusalem calls for an encore,
but they lied to you
as they always do.
We
hope for immortality on this roller coaster ride and down we go again behind the doors where the monsters reside.
I work or I die and when the day is due you will too and whatever or which way the cards fall
Jerusalem will still fall and
they'll still lie,
work or die?
Use your voice,
touch type your voice on the white stick that you carry,
or we could marry,
she coughs and splutters in the kitchen
butters toast and removes from my face
the *** of jam.
I move on beyond where the image burns
beyond where the sane men turn and stand in awe,
seen it
done it and no fun in it for the untied who wait outside the doors where the monsters reside.
Licking jam off my lips she slides me a kiss and I slip on saliva that drips from my tongue,
that is fun, never done that before,
I move away from the door
for a while.
Mar 3, 2016
Mar 3, 2016 at 3:04 PM UTC