"sponges" poems
Sparkling petals slice through feet of wanderers
Dashing hopes and slitting tendons
Each day she visits
Sprinkling books and soda-filled sponges among the wire vines.
The sizzles excited her
And she smiles in spite of her sizzling feet
Pleased in her harmless sabotage.
The suffocated earth shutters beneath
Layers of circuit boards, damp and rotting
Steam rises from the core
And crinkles the pages of
Jane Austen
Dr. Seuss
Kurt Vonnegut. Her mother’s journal from pregnancy.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins.
The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream,
and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner
the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars.
Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is asleep.
In the graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of a dry countryside on his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams to not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulers.
On day
the horses will live in the saloons
and the enraged ants
will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows.
Another day
we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead
and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats
we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue.
Careful! Be careful! Be careful!
The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm,
and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge,
or that dead man who possess now only his head and a shoe,
we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting,
where the bear's teeth are waiting,
where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting,
and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder.
Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody.
Nobody is sleeping.
If someone does close his eyes,
a whip, boys, a whip!
Let there be a landscape of open eyes
and bitter wounds on fire.
No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one.
I have said it before.
No one is sleeping.
But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night,
open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight
the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theatres.
9.3k
we want to say that we built this house with our hands
with our blood
we built this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and burned it down
we rebuilt this house and stayed
i want to tell you that my father builds houses for a living but i have never lived in one
i want to tell you that my mother still asks how you're doing
i want to say that we built this house and it's never abandoned and we are never waiting by the windows
that we always have wood for the fireplace
we never drink alone
i never fall asleep in the shower
in this house our love keeps the lights on
you can feel it through the floorboards like vibrations through a phonograph through the hardwood through your back
we sleep monday through thursday and get paid on weekends to drink whiskey and slow dance in the kitchen
we roll around in bed trying to catch the light
our bodies become curtains or sponges
you soak me up like sunshine and nobody asks where i went
we always finish what we start
i become welcome mat, welcome back, come back,
come home
i turned the basement into a music room
when it rains for you it never floods
we built this house with our hands, with our love, with our blood
there is wood for the fireplace
the flames never spread
Oct 12, 2015
Oct 12, 2015 at 5:49 PM UTC
The Kraken
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.
3.8k
When the wordly things get all the glory
You tend to live a life that's unholy.
Facing the life's painful reality.
Fight againt wicked principalities
Losing your sense of morality.
As you are procrastinating about Learning your biblical A...B...C's
You are counting up your salary
When you should be counting all of God's promises like 1...2...3..
Thats when it begins to Spread like an deadly ****** transmitted Disease
First its sniffle and a sneeze
Next is a cough and a wheeze
Then you'll Barely be able to breathe
Knocking you to your knees
Begging God, "Please Heal Me"
Praying desperately For His Mercy
Then the STD forcefully will begin to tightly squeeze.
Till it becomes an Infection that attacks your every function flowing like a virus.
This sickness removes the color from life and leave you like eyes with damaged to the nerves, pupil and Iris.
This happens when you Subtract Christ from your life like a math equation involving minus.
Being sticken with this ailment will deprives us, If we dont let Christ take the wheel to Drive and guide us.
This Infirmity is very cancerous
It will impact your 6 senses Just like the Symbol for The Eye Of Horous.
Because we are individuals who are like sponges, filled with holes, absorbant and yet very porous.
Beneath the fleshly being lies a spirit
Crying out for help can you hear it?
This deficiency will leave you Shivering from the Chill of it's swift wind's cold breeze
The very thought of this illness makes the soul freeze
Once it realizes it has a contracted a Spiritually Transmitted Disease.
Nov 11, 2016
Nov 11, 2016 at 3:49 PM UTC
We are cowards.
I am a coward for not saying this to your face,
and you are a coward for trying to drown your problems.
But the problem with your problems,
like most people's problems,
is that your problems are sponges.
They expand and grow
as you pour more on them,
until they adapt and learn to breathe underwater—
growing more and more saturated
until they begin to drip,
leaving a stinking, sticky, ***** mess behind you.
Your problems have left a smudge across our floor,
smeared from where I slipped on them,
from where she walked into them,
from where we tried to step over them,
but missed.
The problem with your problems
is that they are not yours anymore.
Now they are mine.
They are hers.
They are ours.
But only you can clean up
the mess on our kitchen floor.
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 12:00 AM UTC
Inner Peace
Evil is everywhere, monsters don't hide in closets,
they roam the streets, sponges of malvolent twisted minds,
The devil is not a fallen Angel, but born from a unfortunate mother,
Where's the bogeyman ? we need only turn on the **** tube, or look out the window or across the kitchen table,
Where Do I find my Inner Peace? No mediative state of mind, not a prayer to nothing.....I have a pistol and six bullets.
Firewalker
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 8:52 PM UTC
Get out your sponges, stippling brushes and pens,
It’s time for makeover-Monday-night to begin.
Think Winky Lux, L’Oréal, Urban Decay,
Maybelline, Armani and Fabergé
It’s a black magic realm where brushes are wands,
where a carnival of colors are carefully crayoned.
We have palettes aplenty, in kaleidoscope hues,
to create fashion looks, both bold and subdued.
In the realm of makeup fashion, where trends never end,
we remodel each other - for fun - when we can.
Tonight, our new friend Jammie has come to watch us play,
and he even brought two bottles of chardonnay.
Lisa has a ‘Miss Rose’ case, like she saw in Bernadette Peters’
dressing room, on a backstage tour of the Shubert Theatre.
Konjac, Kabuki, Doe foots, Spoolie, Lisa’s got legit tools to use.
“When it comes to makeup,” she says, “always avoid dupes.”
That night I was the chosen face, the excited living canvas.
Lisa’s a practiced artist, her process is brisk and never tedious.
She painted my lips a crimson cherry, alluring and brightly sensuous,
my brows were moonlit art, my cheeks a midnight adumbrated edifice.
Lisa created a special look, where rebellious edge met elegance.
We took some snaps, then I washed it off - but Jammie was impressed!
Jun 6, 2023
Jun 6, 2023 at 10:51 PM UTC
Of ***** roasting pans and racks and island fog!
*if you love me, then you know poems wright themselves when standing, driving, bus riding, ********** and especially when
doing manly battle, ******* ***** dishwashing midst island fog
a passing remark goes noticed and summoned to a
Friday night feast, roasted fowl, wild rice with golden raisins and mushrooms, English spring peas, was it a Montrachet?
for dessert the washing up is obligation mine, a traditional desertion,
separation of church and state, her cooking a church in which I worship, she states eloquently:
“Unto Caesaria , Render Her the cleanup”
this is hand to hand combat, no dishwasher mechanical
can scrub like the human hand, and with body english,
water hot, but no gloves employed for this is ***** man’s work,
not for sissies, cleaning roasting pans and roasting racks
that are at least twenty years burnt and crusted with a blackened
finish, residue of other lovers and dinners P.N. (pre-nat)
array three kinds of sponges and some human & metallic *****
no one asking which came first,
the scrubbing away of life feasting residues,
or the poem writing that comes with pre & postscript sleepiness
when I say the dark stains and the grease buildup are
flavor enhancers, am beknighted with starry stares of
“how stupid do you think I am?” and sadly return to the
Battle of Agincourt, the one the American lost….*
but they do source poems that flavor life
2020
Jul 17, 2021
Jul 17, 2021 at 11:54 AM UTC
[On my birthday]
At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
2.8k
Going Off To War (a/k/a Washing The Dishes)
When its time to wash the dishes,
I make proper preparations for this serious business,
I strip down to my skivvies (shorts, in a prior generation)
Cause there will plenty blood and gore afore too long
Soap and water flying about, the ceilings and the walls,
Not to mention big, big puddles on the floor.
Multi-colored sponges of sizes varied,
Some Brillo-sided, like extra armor on a tank,
By Dawn's early light, turn the clear water
Into a heaving, breathing soapy concoction.
Woebegone and woe betide, dried and sticky maple syrup,
You are no match for super-strength orange dishwashing solution,
Of the Greeks did praise, a single dollop packs a mighty wallop!
Ain't afraid of any stain, decomposing, half chewed, culinary rejection.
Don't even bother with rubber gloves, cause that's for sissies.
The dirtier the better, cause I love the sounds of
All out war, the rushing water, the futile screams of
Grease departing this world, down the rabbit hole,
My gleaming, victorious sinking of the enemy shipping
You think I am the first to celebrate in verse
This storied fight of right over dirt?
Recall please this famed couplet, for now be known its true inspiration!
"Oh, say can you see by the Dawn's early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?"
Though Men Like to Load the Dishwasher (You Didn't Know?)
Is another poem of a similar ilk, when technology is unavailable,
It is fact verifiable and unassailable,
That if you give a man some room and some privacy,
Ignore the shouts and war cries from the kitchen emanating,
Male aggression can best be expiated,
When playing war games in the kitchen, a live action movie,
A video game that never grows tiresome,
And violence is necessary, for the enemy's complete annihilation.
Thank you my dear, no medal need be awarded,
Scored this poem as my just reward.
May 26, 2013
May 26, 2013 at 12:23 PM UTC
people build
their homes
out of the age of
their tea kettle and
which plants they keep
on the windowsill
by whether or not
the cups and plates match
if the cupboards are
minimalist or overstuffed
from the color of the walls
and state of the floor
right down to what they
hang on the fridge
the scent they choose
for their dish soap
and the way the words
come out of their mouths
*i am tired of tending
to other people’s homes
using their sponges
watering their dead plants
sweeping their floors
and smelling their dish soap
tired of listening to
my words crumbling
as fast as i can
get them out*
and i want a home
with fresh flowers on
the counter at all times
something delicious
simmering on the stove
with hot tea every night
and cream line cappuccinos
every morning for breakfast
the plates don’t need to match
although i’d like them to
i know i’m not that type of person
and the mugs and washcloths don’t
need to be handmade but i’m sure
most of them will be anyway
with a goldfish
and succulents
both of which will live
long healthy lives
yellow walls and maybe a
sunny breakfast nook
with a crochet lace valence
over top the window
*your hand
to hold
your chest to rest
my head on at night*
and when the dishes rattle
it won’t be in frustration or
anger but in peels
of citrus and laughter
*i’m ready to build
a home of my own
and i want to build it
with you by my side*
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 7:09 PM UTC
When I walk down the street and a man calls me 'Sweet tits'
With his wedding ring clad hand resting on the rolled down window of his SUV
I am supposed to like it
Fat girls should be grateful someone wants them, after all
Women should be grateful for the attention of strangers
Women are taught to be sponges
Domestic and silent and absorbing the words of men around them
If a woman talks 30 percent of the time
A man will feel like she is dominating the coversation
A man calling a woman 'baby' on a street corner is a compliment
But a teenage girl saying a celebrity has nice eyes is fetishizing
Men are taught that they are the default mode
While women are taught to make room
Men sit with their legs spread and elbows out on subway trains
Women tuck their ankles together and rest their hands in their laps
The great crime of patriarchy though
Isn't the way it affects how men feel about women
But how women feel about women
Like every great dystopian novel on the planet
We are taught to hate ourselves and hate each other
Because that will keep us distracted from the real problem
The richest woman in the world makes one sixth what the richest man makes
Girls are still afraid to speak up in classrooms from first grade to PHDs
No one listens when we start talking
So we start screaming
And everyone just tells up to shut up
And stop being so **** sensitive
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 5:55 PM UTC
I tried not to look at it,
But I couldn't help myself,
The blue sky burying me completely,
The sun shedding visibility
On the edible chanterelles--
Little fungi, little mold spores
Treated as food, soft and porous
Sponges, fragile like egg shells.
We hunt for the orange gleam
Showing through the duff
As if we are savages,
Lost in our search,
Forgetting our state.
I'd forgotten what a sight they were:
Unfunny clowns always having
Arguments over who gets what space--
Quality family time.
Every home is a miniature dictatorship.
Now, savages rule our thoughts
And actions; they fight
For control; they
Pump Estrogen into our
System so that we
Will not fight back.
The dream is not a dream.
The Police are a privilege
For those who can buy it.
All this was a week after
The dust settled. There was no music.
Even the chants of Buddhists
Were silenced, the replacing hum
One of screams
And gunshots.
The sound of
Your enemies being sautéed
Is what loss truly is:
Accounts holding our Humanity
Have been depleted.
The only unclosed door
Leads to Egypt.
When I think of it now,
What I remember is
Debt. Once, I saw
A college student
Buying cheap ramen
With a grin.
And, in a dream once,
There was no sound,
No color. Everything
Was the same—taste,
Touch, smell. Red lipstick marks
On a shirt would not
Remain. And hippies,
With their tie-dye clothes
Were just working stiffs,
Looking out a window
To see
Brick and mortar.
They say,
“This is your police state.
This is your Haunted House,
Your personal Winchester House
With no exits. This is
Your nightmare,
Your stench.
These are your maggots in your eyes.
This is what you want.”
We listen.
I do not want to be
The kind of person
Who makes it okay
To want to die.
Dec 27, 2011
Dec 27, 2011 at 6:48 PM UTC
To the Williamson Brothers
High noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors.
Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching
play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes.
Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea.
From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks,
passers-by go in a breath to be witnesses of
large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool valleys
and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak of
the ocean floor thousands of years.
A naked swimmer dives. A knife in his right hand
shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. The tail
of the shark lashes. One swing would **** the swimmer...
Soon the knife goes into the soft under-
neck of the veering fish... Its mouthful of teeth,
each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistens
when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled up
by the brothers of the swimmer.
Outside in the street is the murmur and singing of life
in the sun--horses, motors, women trapsing along
in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood.
1.9k
Talent.
So so Far I've seen the talent-less and the talented
**** heads until their skulls cracked and we peered in
and saw a garden growing green leafy creativity
Gallantly trotting across the right brain like the breezy morning wind
And as we looked away and declared the winner had won
but cracked his skull on the stubborn brick wall
the talent-less had spun
out of hard jealousy and mortar crafted from their own lack of self discipline
The sun even sighed
died for a second
then came back alive only to find the talentless
still forrunning their forte
up every frigid full soul he found on his way
So the days saddened into rainy Saturdays
19 in a row
with the downpour too vicious to even kiss on the cheek as a pity way of putting across that
"you should really go"
the rain rained down boulder sized bouts of concentrated creative energies
only able to be ****** up by sponges with cracked skulls
and thus made into uncracked skulls
mended skulls
Talented unabridged uncensored skulls
that may drown out the talentless
just like the rain and storms tried to muster a try at
And by that we only see the talented come out walking with rain pouring Into their brains
getting ****** up by extracorpus veins
Not because they were born with contraptions
but because they avoided distractions
and gained traction in this multiverse where everything happens with struggle
and pain.
Oct 1, 2012
Oct 1, 2012 at 12:54 AM UTC
His nose was Cairo’s Bent Pyramid or a pair of ergonomic pliers
And his loyalty was a slumped tower of Jenga pieces
And his skin was a film of thick oatmeal or cream of mushroom soup, coating the bottom of an untouched ***
His teeth, little tombstones sinking into the earth.
His logic was a pair of safety scissors chewing through corrugated fiberboard
And his insults were sharp staccatos
And his humor was a steeped tea bag or curdled milk
And his laughter was a Singer sewing machine choking on tangled thread.
His eyebrows were gargoyle wings
And his hair, a bushel of dry bear grass
He sang, and it was cough syrup
And his beard was a soiled litter box.
His fingers, dried seaweed
And the palms of his hands were month old dish sponges.
His spine was a curved dipper gourd rotting in the sun
His grin was a snagged zipper
And his temperament pad-less brakes or a wasp in September
And his kisses were apple cider vinegar and radishes
And his eyes were two bottomless stone wells, foaming with moss.
His gait was a vulture scrutinizing its prey.
His chest was the backside of a dung beetle.
His insight was a cataract ridden car headlight lost in a curtain of fog
And his knees were skulls
And his touch was a snug pressure cuff
And his compassion was a guillotine
And the last time we spoke, it was crucifixion.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC
632
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
1.8k
I'm a friend,
a family member,
a healer,
a net,
a sponge
I'm here to be dragged across the world
Through the dirt, the water, the skies
Wash it through me
Try to cleanse out the filth
So I can be used again
There's more work to do
After all the water is washed
After all the sponges are used
We can all be thrown away, no more after, we did our job, we got through
And if we fail, we'll overflow the bin.
And we can all drown.
Sep 1, 2023
Sep 1, 2023 at 9:38 AM UTC
I feel like a waste of time
My stomach boils with pink pills
Eyelids droop- I pry them open
To drink words I thirst for
Taste worlds I yearn for
Sludge pools in from the bitter thoughts
Soaking soaks- soaking sponges
Run and drain out the membrane
Everything is all too much
I seem to never be good enough
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 2:27 AM UTC
Revise the shortcuts to closer ends
Grains of wood brushed upon earth.
Sponges **** away H20 to a bitter explosion.
The remarks are unbearable as if I did the erosion.
Coils twirl away after being delivered.
The Sunset would never downfall appointing us glitter.
The wonders of “it” erased invisible
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 7:45 AM UTC
Mr. Nobody--
A wrangly thing
some could call him a snob
or a high chinned minister
who was ordained
with a polished Apple-Phone
and his signature
swirlesque embroidered
wrist cuffs and tie clip.
He is the founder
to any computer based company
that processes tiny micro-chips at a price of
99 cents, and charging 100 dollars
for each "upgrade".
In his spare time
he's sponges around
lofty paintings,
filtering through new and old antiques,
but always coming back
to lackadaisly lounge
around his things.
Where a house is
up-kept by maids,
and in his closet
hangs the silhouettes
of personalities,
that he likes to try
around his family.
This is what I imagine
of Francisco, the boy buying coffee
at this Local Caffè
and as he leaves
that Apple-Watch lights up
reminding
about a job interview today.
Oct 27, 2015
Oct 27, 2015 at 2:40 AM UTC
Standing beside a tree, near the warm and calm sea.
I pondered at the wonders of the life beneath, was it a heath or sheath?
Dazzling on a rock, grappling me along,
greeting with pleasure, leading me to the treasure
- a mermaid
The squid and the jellyfish came with a glow
paved the way with light, like the winters moonlight.
Deep underneath, like cold and dark night.
Shivering all the way, with the mermaid I go.
Anemones covered me like a blanket of snow,
and then let me slow.
Wading through the sponges,
On a strong coral, by the brittle sea star,
without a quarrel I sat.
The feather dusters moved with ease
making me freeze.
Came a shark,
very near and I trembled with fear.
Soon with a lift, away it shift.
The octopus and the butterfly fish,
what a splendid sight!
With pleasure I write.
Cared and shared my little wonderland,
In the lovely hands
away from the thunder lands.
Mar 19, 2021
Mar 19, 2021 at 4:38 AM UTC
That day I sat
naked and
alone
water collapsing upon my spine
acidic or compelling?
cradling what I thought was my hands
within themselves
and waiting for daylight to break me.
I was already broken
decrepit in fact.
caressing substance as supplement
the figurines of moving reality
plaguing consciousness
As drips
drops
fell
struck
My initiative was no longer to cleanse
or ease
but to forget,
God oblidge me
please
ghosts of armies amidst armistices
raging with questioning calamity
every minute
every second
It was easy
to hear and see it
placid to act
as if gum on a shoe
was used and trashed
but stuck somewhere new
disgusting
Meanwhile
this water
troublesome with cleanliness
corrodes my cadaver
(Cadaver, because it seems that way)
Blood runs with it
and overtakes the pigment
like color from the sponges
I’d used for the color the needle left
instead of creating
life in color
death in color
feeling in color
There were none
unnamed and buried
internal pieces of me
Extracted
with simplicity
by mouth
and flushed
to not exist
ever
to anyone
but deep in the realm, of conscience
hidden
and drowning
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC