"sprawls" poems
Taste of blood
lingering, flesh still
against the tongue.
Bound tight, the willing
neck in the noose
swallows.
All continuity
sprawls forth.
This Truth
we keep Secret
is the burden
of the throat.
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 2:56 PM UTC
Puissant piquant and predatory
And observant from afar
He looks down on your slumber
Like a door that's left ajar
Plying with his manly vice
A reckless male visage
A rogue of masculine device
Seeks entrance to your mind
He saunters with a swagger
A macho savvy moxie
To personify virility's incarnate
His dream zone's metier
He sifts your ****** entourage
In search of sprawls recumbence
To tantalize climactic fervor
With lambent photic scenes
Grasping at your revelries
He spies the wanton lust
With swanky strut appealing
Your primal urge to sate
He leaves undone resistance
With innate resilience seized
The lavish wayward implications
Of unrequited livid deeds
Like passion's lurid lecheries
An insatiable torrid sooth
You wrestle with his adamance
Your carnal ecstasies revealed
You pounce on his exsertion
You splay your agile form
wriggling like a supple nymph
You accept his blatant storm
You writhe in your abandon
In a euphoric supplication
His machismo ****** enveloping
Your wildest latent needs
With no regrets or reticence
you awaken from this dream
To find yourself alone again
Like it had never been
May 19, 2018
May 19, 2018 at 9:51 PM UTC
August, the Red Line,
connected tanks
of bolted plastic vertebrae.
Every seat gone except
five rows up, where a sea lion
sprawls across two,
stuffed backpack, yellow jacket
spread out like caution tape.
His grunt a wet bark
at the glow of his screen.
Middle-school deer slip into the aisle,
chatter clipped when the sheriff drifts past,
their ears flicking, smiles bitten shut.
Not a predator- just a gelded ox,
chest puffed, badge sagging, glass-eyed,
chest rig clattering with blanks.
Two lemur-children cling to their tortoise elder,
her shell steady against the sway of the car.
She shepherds them from the surge of riders:
loud Dodger blue parrots in cholo socks,
moth-women with plumed lashes beating the stale air,
a stray dog, gutter musk dragging at its haunches.
And one gray bear
muttering alone,
arguing with her reflection.
Between Koreatown and MacArthur Park,
somewhere the sea begins to breathe again,
then, feathers forcing through my skin-
an alley gull knifing into this clamour,
scavenging inside its exhaust.
The car rattles, its ribs plated with blistered posters:
museum wings open to no one,
‘register to vote’ fading into graffiti script,
flu shots promised by smiling ghosts.
A bruised hatchling staring out beside the words
See something, say something.
The warning lights glow
like eyes hunting in the dark.
From its flanks the train
unfurls iron claws.
They rake
the tunnel walls,
the city’s bones,
the dark itself.
Sep 29, 2025
Sep 29, 2025 at 10:00 PM UTC
Empty skies embrace
Sparse cloud formations
The blues fade and overlapped hues
Sparkles crested in fickle delight
Lazy outstretched yawns of natural light
Sun’s glare glazed under Moon’s appearance
Embossed against the translucence of blue space
Everything up there is calm today
No rush or race or interference
Gentle indifference drifts to the West.
Staying dry for us
The beautiful simplicity of being Sky.
Stop and look around.
Cyclists trickle on painted pathways
Student groups pontificate about life
and the lecture they should all be at,
Lunchtime sprawls and **********
never ending spurts of schoolchildren
delirious for sausage rolls and E numbers.
Everyone in a rush to be someone
Going somewhere with purpose,
and yet,
Be indifferent
to each other.
The bland complexity of being modern People.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 12:53 PM UTC
Manila is beautiful at night,
Seen from overhead, high above rainclouds in the night sky
with a tantalizing view of car exhaust and the debris of broken dreams
Manila is beautiful at night.
It comes and goes like a shadow in flickering light.
At first, it hides behind wispy rain clouds, playful as a child hiding in his mother's skirt.
If you look closely, it's lights glisten-- golden and teasing
It's incessant winking, an almost promise of what's to come
From your aerial vantage point, you wonder:
"This is what it must be like to be an Angel when they fly"
Below the city, with all it's secrets, sprawls like a handful:
A rich lady's heirloom diamonds, thrown carelessly on a ***** floor.
It will somehow remind you of a creature: perhaps human, or Leviathan in it's wake
Cities, after all, are their own specie of living things
At first it is looks like a Brain, with neurons and synapses electric and active
Certain spots of the city: mall compelexes and large parking lots, like the nuclei of a brain cell
the roads that lead to and fro, the cars zipping up and down in red and yellow lines
remind you of dendrites and axons, stretching far
They communicate with each other in their own language; a code
Your imagination runs wild with untamed fantasy
On next glance, it looks like a heart.
The whole city pulses magnificently in unison it seems.
Thud, thud. Thud, thud. You feel it?
Your heart follows it's tantalizing rhythmic pattern, it's muscle beats
Though and through the city pumps it's lifeblood into each nook and cranny
Oh how it entices your passion so.
At last you seem to hear it breathing.
Listen closely and hear Manila inhale and exhale in steady tunes
Inhale, and exhale-- a silence comes over you,
And it's strangely reminiscent of amazement, excitement and bitter fear
Your ears dull and you listen to the rush of air in your lungs,
the deep drum bass of the pounding of your heart
the dizzying feeling that exists in your brain
Manila really is beautiful at night.
In the shroud of darkness, it rises from slumber;
Vivacious and lovely, it's seductive and free
Manila is lovely. Manila is a woman, as it should be.
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 1:57 PM UTC
I am here, risen up
from dust
and I sit in the sand
beneath the mangroves
as fruits fall around me
thudding softly in the
strewn leaves.
We sit here,
where I am,
these fruits
and these insects
and small reptiles,
watching the clouds roll in from the east,
where the ocean sprawls,
lavishing the beach with delicate hands
under the phosphorescent moon.
We all sit here,
the fruits,
insects,
reptiles,
the ocean,
and I-
We watch dense clouds roll in
as distant flashes of light
and gongs of thunder
grow more frequent-
we sit-
we watch-
and we wait-
for the rain.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 10:07 PM UTC
1.
seeds of crimson, slightly sweet
alien pods of ruby meat
like exoskeletal teeth.
scores of crimson, holding in
like breath, its babes of sin.
little beetles; ****** tears.
one swarming conglomerate.
as if in fear, they huddle close
to await their fate in quiet fits.
2.
the
unfurling!scarlet!starfish!mothership!
sprawls out
fleshyfingers, fatwithfruit.
seedling children populate her innards
like a red-skinned race of juicy mutes.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 11:54 PM UTC
Apeneck Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the hornèd gate.
Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney’s knees
Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganised upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;
The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;
The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;
The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the ****** wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid siftings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud.
3k
I find you in the margins of old school books,
in the cupboard where I keep my old notepads,
in the stories I’ve forgotten I’ve written.
It’s all scraps of myself in rounded letters,
uncanny because it looks like me,
sounds like me,
but it’s you and it is you
but it’s like me too.
I’m opening you (and me) back up and I hate you.
I hate you, but here we are,
in the mirror maze,
all these mes and yous
in the endless tunnel of mirrors,
back to back, side to side,
caught in ourselves at every angle.
We’re all the same: We’re all so different.
None of us are good.
I hate you.
I hate you at every age,
*Then reality splays, sprawls flat out in front of me, exams, money, work, decisions, tight nooses that bind me to life. Get your head out of the clouds, girl *(2012)
at every stage,
Big smiles, A stars, clever girl, the anomaly, dry compliments, sand paper against my skin. Locked in, not a word, just a mind gone grey, a growing mass of dust that swallows the light and only allows for glasses poured half empty (2014)
at every moment,
I don’t fit in, never have done, never will. I’m always one step ahead or one step behind. I’m never quite there. But no one understands. They say they do but they don’t. I’m different and I don’t like it but I don’t want to change because this is who I am and whatever happens, I have to put up with it (2012)
all your hatred, you happiness, your ignorance and your sadness
The scab peels and leaks. Too soon to heal, too late to undo the fall. Tomorrow, you’ll trip again and your skin will bleed but this time you’ll know where to find the first aid kit. (2013)
You make me sick.
The world was blue today, a metaphorical wish wash of tears and a meagre ocean. Ice cream dripped in depression, picnic blankets snagged on pebbles and the kite committed suicide on the telephone lines. (2013)
I hate the scraps you’ve left behind
I put bits of you in the bin. I put you out for recycling.
I donate you to charity shops and so you live on and I can’t get rid of you.
There’s no way out of this mirror maze,
no way to avoid the mirrors at angles,
no way for me to escape you or for you to escape me.
There are so many of you and I literally want to beat you all to death.
Oh, I hate you. I hate you.
I don’t think I’ve ever hated anything more than I hate you.
I hate the tone of your words,
I hate your stupid sadness.
I hate your happiness.
I hate your hope.
I hate the memories of your laughter.
I hate the memories of your fun.
I hate you for all the things you’ve done and
never had time to feel bad for.
I hate you in the photographs,
in the words, in the schoolbooks,
in the poems that I’ve shared,
I hate, I hate, I hate.
I wish I could smash up this maze of mirrors and you,
but then I’d only be left with myself
and I hate her too.
Jun 14, 2017
Jun 14, 2017 at 5:14 PM UTC
'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'
'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
2.3k
billboard's calligraph --
past the haze of Manila infested
by car sprawls and belching machines.
magnanimous treatise of tarpaulins,
people chin-up asking God
with askance
something like this
"o god make this bearable
like a mound of fresh fruits
from ****** labour."
maniacal sensurround:
earth-shattering frequency
of footsteps trampling the mouth
of monolith shadows - the peak
of this quake is our complete silence.
rain's catharsis in effect
sousing us in the blood of unreal light.
this diastolic shrinkage
jamming the beat of constricting vessels.
the adrenaline surges
within the dermis of this pretension.
a collective of tired beings heeding
the recherché of voice metamorphosing
into form, a dagger-butterfly
paring us skin to bone, cranial
to visceral, soul to nothing -
catapult of a trajectory spit
plummeting in eased-up pace
from Taft Avenue flyover
to a subjugated wagon of scraps
and empty wine bottles.
today's paper reads:
"Palace hits hiring
of **** dancers"
fancying to fall right in the
spanked curved of this
insatiate melodrama - something
prayer could not save from
this land's mutinous ignominy.
we resume to fulfill our madness,
hundreds of tack-headed people
rolling down the streets of Makati,
drenched with rain's trilling aftermath.
squinting to look at
no sun, only the grieving of skyscrape,
thumbing down unidentified objects
in the depth of loose pockets,
desperate for home.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
It’s a cold and moonless country night
He wanders alone, under dim starlight.
Squinting, he stalls, he trips and he falls,
Through fields of clovers, his fingertips crawl.
An extra leaf he seeks for her delight,
Long he’s walked, endless days and nights.
She watches him stumble from the stars above,
Twinkling, dazzling, burning, to help him along.
She sighs, she calls, over the horizon she sprawls,
Her silk-knit net to break his falls.
Yet he moves on, and on, singing unknown songs,
He read once in her fresh-press books, where he belongs.
Droopy-eyed he reaches a precipitous drop
Far below him, still waters shine, sprinkled with stars
Perilously poised, of this deceit he knows not
Caught in her silken weaves, he trips, dives,
Drips as a drop.
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 2:08 AM UTC
Trapped in this story.
Repeated history,
that's more misery than mystery.
Perhaps I'll leave this crap one day
Refuse to stay and go away,
but it wouldn't be long
before I'd collapse and relapses back into it all.
Enthralled in the fresh mesh,
across my rotten flesh.
Unable to even crawl,
as it sprawls around me
and develops me into something grotesque.
Against my best protest,
ignoring my distress,
until I become something I detest.
And all though this picturesque depiction of my depression
may seem extreme, like a bad dream
In reality it stems from a belief
that nothing ever gleams in darkness.
Regardless of what they say, darkness is artless.
Nothing more than a rotting carcass.
Harmless and heartless but not homeless,
because it's the same carcass in every God **** story in this never ending circle.
The only real consistency in the ever changing story.
Me,
internally rotting away for an eternity.
Trapped in this story.
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 10:21 PM UTC
In the flawless dark
high overhead
Torea shrieks
ripping holes
in the silent korowai
of night
again
Torea calls
and further off
faint
again
now silent
the cloak ripples
settles
repairs the tears
stillness sprawls
warm
as aroha
Tricia Lambert
Torea-the Maori name of the Pied Oyster Catcher
Korowai-a ceremonial cloak
Aroha- love, unconditional love, similar to the Greek, agape
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 5:14 PM UTC
The third power of the Sphinx
is Courage.
"Herein lies the great mystery of the empty throne." ∆
Giddy in the throes of realization,
the Arbiter, imbued with needful action,
takes a great, daring leap across the chasm
into the implications of knowledge:
This is It - the Puzzle that Fascinates Itself.
"You awoke in the Kingdom with eyes closed. In the beginning was the Trapezoid called Control." ∆
Borne by an umbilical Breath
to a lens too small to see Itself,
Buoyed by the lapping waves,
Reason wrought a waking sleep
of hallucinations, a sea of dreams
and possibilities to become;
Memories too large
to conceive by aught
but the perennial story
that swallows the narrator:
*"I see their entire lives in an instant,
being devoured and loving and living
in a world that does not realize
it is already over."* ‡
Courage is the Bearer of Truth.
Headlong into the open maw
heaves the gleeful Fool
and his glad Word.
*"The excess of Meaning must be wrought on the Page,
on worlds of our own imagining." ∞*
To Dare is to risk:
consequence the reward
fraught with baited hooks
to tether the Arbiter to Time.
The web of attachment
sprawls, an expansive net.
*"The web is infinite -
those caught in it are beyond Number."* †
Yet the spider is never
ensnared by its Art:
a master of the net,
a climber of the Tree.
At the summit of its dizzying heights,
the depth of the Fall overwhelms.
Responsibility follows.
"Thou art That which resolves the frustum." ∆
Escaper of the Labyrinth,
Master of the Maze,
no longer merely Thou:
Dilation devours the Iris.
*"What speaks through You has Ordained it
from the Beginning of Time,
and only in harnessing it
will you learn to devour your self
totally."* †
*"Then will you know me
as the eye that never shuts,
the eye that blinds."* Ω
The way
(out)
is through.
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 7:02 PM UTC
Terrible divides, steep creatures fishing from the fissures.
Devil ties, honor cries telling of fable able love lies.
Red rug **** from… Ah stomp down pound twice round.
Let me in dearth harp melody killing me true internally. Over me, you do du thee or in one to learn to unseen these say said twas. What then spoke big loud a proud voice e bound red to set the turns in a state of decay. Spread death red pestilence.
Broken brains with bad temperaments. To know this clever myth, in definitely one word siphon spell check commiserate in-consumption
Only fitting to continue after that, twas broken in two-tone spits of *****
Oh how one can be so indiscriminate, yet be so in to it
Suckling finger to finger, the artist and his soul slip through one another
And **** there it is… why I am drunk, why so earthbound?
No, No, that la-la-di-dah sing song, nickname, sick game
Ah… already this is where I end, lying before the gate, spread in sprawls of my final death thrall, the spastic convictions, emotional token, so wholly holy that I am certain of this and this alone; they, folk of blend and contrast so steady will carrier this body through the gates, this world or that, bounce and then back, splendor in form, surrender to utter the weight of universal, expressions in the shade of totality
Goodnight too.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 8:08 PM UTC
We grow in a ragged garden
whose caretaker no longer cares
for himself except to prune back
only the most strangling branches
of his mind's miseries.
Effectively, we are left to
our own wild ways.
In all directions,
time's vine sprawls unnoticeably
slow in its natural haste
to overtake every creature.
We are the berries
strewn along this vine.
Our thin skins stretched and aching
around poisonous pools of bitter juices,
desperate for a touch,
a cause to burst,
a moment in which our existence is fulfilled.
To die in defense of the vine
is why we are here.
Most of us will never do but rot;
stuck to a stem that roots us in
idle uselessness.
It is my brightest & deepest, berry blue hope
not to rot here with the lot of you.
So, with great want I watch the passing birds
fly in the sky and seethe in need for the
little hoppers who come so near
just to tilt their tiny heads
and maddeningly flutter off.
There must be one who makes the mistake
of choosing me.
One who plucks me right off with its beak
and bolts to dine in some high, safe place.
It will die for its hunger,
and so too will I for satisfying it.
But, for a moment between boredom's end
and attaining purpose,
I'll see the garden from a different view;
a bird's eye.
I'll see the entire vine for what it is,
and hopefully; finally, know why
it's worth protecting at all.
BURST
Jun 30, 2013
Jun 30, 2013 at 1:46 AM UTC
I don't know where we stand
But still you hold my hand
What are we, really?
Why can't you say it freely?
I'm stuck up in my head with my thoughts
Words forming knots
For there's nothing like us
I don't want to make a fuss
But I've never felt this way
My heart is starting to betray
These rules I've cast upon my walls
With just a look from you it sprawls
Should I stop?
Should I bear these teardrops?
Or would you let me stay?
Even if your friend's looks could slay
Tell me what you feel
I'll let you heal
I'll be your fortress
Don't let me go on wordless
I don't want to lose you
Or gray would be the only hue
On this upside down world
Where people's smiles are crookedly curled
I'm scared and so are you
But I'll be selfish cause I don't want to lose the view
Of that **** beauty
So I'll make you smile daily like its my duty
I want answers
But I should mind my manners
I respect what you say
But why leave it that way?
You got broken
Now accept my token
It's my love and I'm sorry
For I cannot carry
This name undefined
But I know our hearts are combined
Even without words said
The thing is I don't know if its all in my head
Aug 2, 2014
Aug 2, 2014 at 4:18 AM UTC
When I go out,
my cat sprawls
on the carpet and
dismisses me with
a half-opened eye.
When I return, I
find him in the
same disdainful
posture.
But I imagine that
when I am gone
he calls his cat
buddies, they come
over, drink beer
and whiskey,
smoke cigars, play
poker and watch
kitty ****
Small wonder the
poor beast needs
so much sleep.
~mce
Oct 28, 2015
Oct 28, 2015 at 7:53 AM UTC
Time sits slouched,
Whisky supped from a shoe.
Space takes his place,
Beard smothered in brew.
Hope sprawls eternal,
Smiles, on the face of the few.
The night is masked,
Casked honey dew.
Amber obscures,
Procures,
Distorts the view.
Glazed by a hazy
Feint green plume.
Time takes a sip from
Weathered worn out shoe.
As space wipes his face
Hope yawns on que.
The night is released,
At least for now, until
The fall of the morning dew.
Oct 12, 2016
Oct 12, 2016 at 7:44 PM UTC
I've noticed just how much of our talking waits
until bedtime - as if until then
we have lacked permission to pause
until we've undressed and bundled ourselves
into our duvet time-capsules.
Alas, it’s then
when the competing urgency of sleep rises
and meets our log-jammed thoughts
it’s then when our fight fades,
when our wide meander sprawls,
exhausted of its pungency
And its then
when our ability to cement thoughts
cracks in the face of creeping sleep
rerunning its classic dreams
and rebuilding forgotten worlds
that we’re fated to later abandon in the shudder of dawn,
and the demands of a new day.
And so, we delay any conscious introspection
and leave our contemplations to our advancing Sandman
as we slumber and sleepwalk in his wake.
Aug 19, 2022
Aug 19, 2022 at 6:03 PM UTC
by: T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
PENECK Sweeney spreads his knees
Letting his arms hang down to laugh,
The zebra stripes along his jaw
Swelling to maculate giraffe.
The circles of the stormy moon
Slide westward toward the River Plate,
Death and the Raven drift above
And Sweeney guards the horned gate.
Gloomy Orion and the Dog
Are veiled; and hushed the shrunken seas;
The person in the Spanish cape
Tries to sit on Sweeney's knees
Slips and pulls the table cloth
Overturns a coffee-cup,
Reorganized upon the floor
She yawns and draws a stocking up;
The silent man in mocha brown
Sprawls at the window-sill and gapes;
The waiter brings in oranges
Bananas figs and hothouse grapes;
The silent vertebrate in brown
Contracts and concentrates, withdraws;
Rachel née Rabinovitch
Tears at the grapes with murderous paws;
She and the lady in the cape
Are suspect, thought to be in league;
Therefore the man with heavy eyes
Declines the gambit, shows fatigue,
Leaves the room and reappears
Outside the window, leaning in,
Branches of wistaria
Circumscribe a golden grin;
The host with someone indistinct
Converses at the door apart,
The nightingales are singing near
The Convent of the Sacred Heart,
And sang within the ****** wood
When Agamemnon cried aloud,
And let their liquid droppings fall
To stain the stiff dishonoured shroud
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC
The Willow's Long Locks Whisper A Soft Song,
As The Cloud Children Play On A Sky So Blue,
The Morning Glories Giggle All Day Long,
As The Linnets Wings Whistled While It Flew
A Stream Sprawls Underneath The Willow,
Swans And Other Waterfowl Swim Silent,
As Catfish Prowl Underneath The Billows,
To Keep The Guppies From Being Violent
The Golden Rays Tickle The Leaves So Green,
As The Breeze Dances With Lush Blades Of Lawn,
The Mayflies Wings Glittered Above The Stream,
As A Mother Deer Weaned Her Newborn Fawn
Each And Every Sparrow Sang All Day Long,
As The Willow's Long Locks Whispered A Song
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
Hail unrequitted love,
ancient poetic rite of passage.
The bullet-burn of countless ant bites
knawing, devouring at young and tender flesh
empties soup-bowl eyes of suppose'd might,
a ringing scream sprawls out of each biological mesh.
You have never felt anything this full-of-feeling.
Never have you been so overcome
with nausea that you have no out
but to *****
You have no choice but to cry:
Yet your sacred spillings prompt
your pen to fly.
May 6, 2010
May 6, 2010 at 8:53 PM UTC