"squelching" poems
Love, the world
Suddenly turns, turns color. The streetlight
Splits through the rat's tail
Pods of the laburnum at nine in the morning.
It is the Arctic,
This little black
Circle, with its tawn silk grasses - babies hair.
There is a green in the air,
Soft, delectable.
It cushions me lovingly.
I am flushed and warm.
I think I may be enormous,
I am so stupidly happy,
My Wellingtons
Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.
This is my property.
Two times a day
I pace it, sniffing
The barbarous holly with its viridian
Scallops, pure iron,
And the wall of the odd corpses.
I love them.
I love them like history.
The apples are golden,
Imagine it ----
My seventy trees
Holding their gold-ruddy *****
In a thick gray death-soup,
Their million
Gold leaves metal and breathless.
O love, O celibate.
Nobody but me
Walks the waist high wet.
The irreplaceable
Golds bleed and deepen, the mouths of Thermopylae.
22.9k
I commit myself to the homicide
of my thought-flowers.
I indulge in the **** -
Killing my darlings
for the sake of art and sanity.
What a paradox.
I have bloodied my hands
with it even so.
No more love-lite poetry!
No more adolescent chinks of the
pseudo-heart!
No more infantile fork-stabs
at the plate of kid-intellectualism!
No more Wikipedia pages
on thoughts
that can swallow computers
whole!
I'm killing my darlings
for the sake of art,
for the sake of sanity -
what a paradox.
Blood is flowing.
I'm a murderer of ideas tonight -
today I will write
about many of life's very few truths.
Like trees.
Like soil.
These are the only constants in mathematics.
These are the identities.
In my garden, I reach out
to crush an
almost-crimson hibiscus.
Petals squelching with skin and nectar -
no perfume.
The hibiscus roils, unliving.
Red pulpy mess;
heart out of chest.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 5:09 PM UTC
A dying man does nothing easy,“Lock and load. Let's do it”,said G.W. Green
Right before Jack Pursley sent 3-5 grams of sodium thiopental coursing through his veins
in Texas. Sticking with the states motto it was probably 5. As lethal drugs flowed into his arms, he used an obscenity to describe life, gasped once and made no further movement.
Imagine his brief confidence in the face of this adversity, before the heart’s blood
Settled in the ventricles.
Some have called such confidence a monstrosity titled, “Hubris”--
Alexander of Macedonia thought it necessary, to cross the turbulent river against fear
-ful odds. For destiny demanded imitation of his exemplar Achilles
Quickly eroded was this by the pleas of Parmenio, who reasons it would be,“failure at the outset.”
Imagine Alexander reciting the words of G.W. Green, instead of heeding to this squelching caution
How quickly we’d throw this decisions bones in the pile, with ******
In Stalingrad & Nixon in Vietnam
All to be shoved in to, a mass grave of faulted zealots.
Covered with soil, bitter compost not to be forgotten
Rosemary sprouts next to a burning
bush in Iraq.
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 5:36 AM UTC
Banked up against a terraced mountainside
photogenic pristine rows
of blasting green
rows of manicured waterways
with two buffaloes treading ballet-like
between squelching mud and green shoots
the paddy fields stayed buoyant
all season through.
Come harvesting time
and thrashing the sunburied ripe
tendrils of husk and seed
along threshing traffic wheels
the husk sought divorce from
the long tongued long grained
wives -and parted ways.
Soon the pudding spent its silky smooth sexiness
on a plate of punchy aromatic costumes
that invaded the senses and palate
in sensual smoothness. Oh my!
Ricebowl pudding
of the worlds staple.
Author Notes
Gluttony beckons just now!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 2, 2014 at 6:45 PM UTC
flesh smirks cautiously
silent beehives squelching elk
leaps glumly, mules snarl
bluebird builds, rigid
foundlings disappear lamely
incarnations peck
raw conjurers acts
devious shady agile
rosemary boasts, stare
starflower hovers
depression gives birth snidely
harps romping mustang
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 5:22 PM UTC
He knows what lies below.
This is where it all began: here
Beneath the bubbling sludge and ******* mud.
This is the home brew, the cocooning grounds.
His sturdy boots trudge through,
Hefting questions and glasses askew.
Somewhere to the side a fat swamp prince
Composes bog rhymes in ribbit meter.
Each squelching step sets a buzzing bunch
Of crystal dragons zipping away to
Slick peridot pontoons. A loon swoons
The expeditioner with a sobbing cry. He
Has said goodbye to reservations, to the
Long-dead preservation rights. He slogs through
The buzzing night. Yellow daggers clench
Between scaly steeltrap snappers and stones
With eyes blink in languid surprise, unnoticed.
He is lost, dying, unsure of his quest. He needs a
Cure. He knows it lies here, in the beginning place.
Their faces haunt his deathly guts and crush
His straining heart with need - need for the solution.
Need to survive, to prolong his life - alone!
So alone: the last. If only he could rest.
His nostrils quiver with the homesick stench
Of tails becoming legs and nipping lips sprouting
Sticky tongues. The answer, he is here for the
Only answer. Something below, below, down
In the dredges of history - in the slime of
Centuries, rotless and preserved. He will find it:
Some link, some closer thing he can revive
And test and rest as bedrock for his life.
A foot sticks in the overfriendly tar. No,
He will not pause. He has come too far.
In the birthing grime, some hungry memory wakes.
It knows what lies above, it thirsts to cease it.
It reaches, roils, pulls, rips with smelly squish-fingers -
Thirsting and thirsting to slake. It longs to reveal
To show, to make known to the traveler.
(All he has searched for is found here, it knows,
Organized and close. Held and safe below)
It reaches, grabs - thirsty - presses him into
A false step. A slip. A skritching clipboard
Of statistics curses in rustling indignance
As it flutters to the mud above a splattered head.
Science-frozen lungs fill with dread -
With life-giving peat. (It will show him) He ***** in
And burbles out a scream. (what he wants, show him)
This is where it begins, (this is his dream!) where it ends.
Now he knows what lies below. He lies - curled -
Quenched from growth. The eyes of unnoticed
Stones blink in surprise. Soaring swamp lyrics
Rise, a loon swoons with a sobbing cry.
He curls in peace and drifts alone
Now he knows what lies below.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 7:10 PM UTC
rumble
grumble
crack
lightning
jagged
sears the eye
plat
platt
plitt
splat
clouds
burst
forth in
drilling
drumming
rhythm
flinging
water
pellets
at grime
collected
soil
neglected
mosoon season
breaks
the sky
making
backyards
into
squelching
squishy
mudpies
rumble
grumble
crack
raintrack
on
repeat
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 8:47 AM UTC
perhaps we do not wish to admit,
that the majority of the words we speak,
the conversations overheard, even without intent,
leave us not awash, not suffocating, but
mesmerized in an awful way
squelching tirades of banality,
humdrum housework life's tirades of
meeting basic needs, functionaries of life,
bureaucrats of our domestic affairs,
accountants calculating marginal cures,
overridden by the occasional impulse,
which delights until it too
is humdrum-ed out of existence
a passing blazing ambulance
begs to contradict,
reminders that there are
crevasses on the city streets,
that in minuscule moments,
life becomes twisted making our lethargy,
a course 101 introduction to tragedy
but this is not the norm,
this imbalanced equation,
1X = 99 whys,
to survive,
to justify,
to mediate
between these un-counterbalanced weights,
I write poetry
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 6:57 PM UTC
The floodgates
have opened
and the tide is high
the dam has burst
in explosion
of tear-bombed third eye
saltwater rushes
culling dark demons
from the deep
the most buried
of creatures
awoken from sleep
viperfish and tube worms
vampire squid
twirling their tentacles
to summon the id
squelching up
impulse
from sinkholes of mud
primal instincts excavated
from tombs
of slick crud
Deep-seated fears
have been beckoned to play
to disregard tears
take resistance away
and while blown over
by this twisted abyss
she remembers a flicker
of the shadow of bliss
and like a mermaid rising
up towards surface
blue heights
she grasps at the cirrus
leaking tendrils of light
pulling up hand by hand,
in sea-tangled vine
a vague sense of sweetness
flushes out brine
and when she breaks through
the surface,
her heart like a sieve
she finally owns it-
the power
to
breathe
Jul 4, 2017
Jul 4, 2017 at 7:22 PM UTC
My breath like smoke in the air,
squelching my feet in icy puddles,
they are broken pieces of sky reflected.
Stomp, the image is dashed:
Nothing remains but empty water.
Oct 5, 2010
Oct 5, 2010 at 2:02 PM UTC
GOODBYE TO THE CIRCUS
( 'Oh! Nellie the elephant packed her trunks
and said goodbye to the circus...
off she went with a clumpity clump
...clump....clump... clump!
The head of the herd was calling...
far far away.' )
Auntie Nellie
died of:
drink, loneliness: & whatever...
(not necessarily in that order) .
And the farm that was
our young days summer holidays
cast her youth like so much pig slop
to the squelching grunt of
cow dung days
moo cow lowing years
until the dust collected and
settled in the corners
no one could reach....
Time left her like a Holy Picture
high above the mantle piece.
See the children
take the coloured cards in their hands
go play 'Fish in the Pool! '
Scream: 'Snap! '
Laugh at who is left to be:
'Old Maid! '
'Not me! '
'Not me! '
Time never took her
hand like a lover's...touch...
... Time...
...only...
...waited...
. . . for her.
In her loneliness
she read and re-read and lived on:
Aldous Huxley's - ISLAND.
She said...this said: 'Everything! '
Years, later...when she reads
like a fictional character in someone's story
when time no more ...mattered.
I travelled to her
ISLAND
and touched her LONELINESS.
felt her LONGING.
Auntie Nellie died of:
drink, loneliness: and whatever
(not necessarily in that order) .
...said goodbye to the circus......calling far far away...
May 24, 2019
May 24, 2019 at 4:46 PM UTC
To the ferryman I pay another favor.
Shake his hand and walk from his mooring.
Walking the familiar path through the mire,
Keep your head high and ignore the sinking.
Every step back from the water,
An eternity of wretched squelching.
How many times have I walked this path.
Memories of youth and owning softer bones.
The aging shows now not just inside,
But clawing at the skin and hollowing of the eyes.
A distant heartbeat now darker punctuates each squelch from my feet.
Vultures and monsters lock eyes with my shadow.
Not quite dead but far from living,
I ponder the payment I keep on making.
How is it I can turn from the boat.
The answers are fleeting almost a whisper.
My eyes are drawn down by softest suggestion,
And through the darkness I see the bones and flesh breaking.
My chest burns and bleeds bleeding crimson upon the reeds .
In horror I wail soundlessly into the mud.
Hands dive to every break Clawing over every wound,
Feeling the scar of every knife,
Faces born to every memory.
The hurt the only feeling that remains.
I turn to look back at the creature I left,
A tear rolling down a fleshless face.
Caressing his own heart,
He raises his head and at last our eyes meet.
“You show me love with every heartbreak,
You come to me lost and with torture aplenty,
So broken by your own mind,
I make that which tortures you mine.”
The Ferryman opens his palm and shows me his treasure,
My own heart beating and bleeding with poison.
“Walk free from misery and grow anew,
I will wait again to trade away the pain the world will gift you.
But know this my love I cannot save you,
For in your chest beats my own broken heart,
Torn by every time I free you.”
Sep 22, 2015
Sep 22, 2015 at 8:08 AM UTC
slogging through squelching mud or
trudging over frozen, terse, tundra or
wandering aimless featureless freeway
where are you now, what do you see?
how's the view?
*how should i know? how could i know?
should i know? why don't i know? what am i doing here?*
is it beautiful, this sky, or strikingly malevolent?
do these colors mean roiling heavens
brimming with destruction
or is that just the sunset?
do you tread lightly and enjoy the stroll,
sprintunstoppabledown the ravine
grapple with impossible terrain?
do i climb at all, move at all, progress at all?
No. Too Lazy.
Too Weary.
am i not? what if i'm not? what if i'm just
s t a g n a n t
?
Dead Weight. *am i dead weight?
am i dead?*
The Trees were once beautiful here-
until I feared fungus
rotting on the inside
eating out the inside
retching from the inside
The Trees were once beautiful here.
*"Am I at a Crossroads?" how could i know?
i follow where my fear will let me go
my fear will let me know
if it's safe to go*
only safe to stay, don't go.
Fears, Worries trip down the path,
strip away the path
heigh-ho, heigh-ho, it's off to work we go
*was the way always so barren?
what happened to my shoes?
what happened to my walking stick?
what else have i to lose?*
Though mountain I would climb
glorious stream I would hear
see swooning vine clutch lover tree;
though valiant travels I would make
--crossing marsh, scaling peak, battling desert, traversing valley,
fording river, drinking lake--
bind my eyes, blind my eyes
no pathway i may take.
the way is broken when Fear and Apprehension rule the road.
Dec 24, 2013
Dec 24, 2013 at 12:16 PM UTC
I'm
a slippery
little otter
under your
melting hands
flipping 'round
my wet dark tail
as you make of me demands
your requests
get me hot
make me swirl and twirl
and purr
as if I am of cat family,
not salt-licked sea baby
all wrapped in
squelching fur
Now I am running
through forest
achingly free
and brazen-bold
my mind in present moment
a lightness in my soul
doing what it takes
to survive
in this world of coldness harsh
indelibly finding my way
back to my hidden
backwater marsh
for my hearth is lilting sea
my kin made of
flipper and bone
my inner wild
sings primal melody
as I leap into
what I call home
for after the rough and tumble
and inhalation of ocean's scent
after the kelp is all digested
I will place my head
upon your chest
and breathe deep in rhythmic
ebbs and tides
as my sleekness
enters your soul's portal,
your quiet fire of spark
this is where I can nestle,
contour-deep
in the glow of
your flickering
heart
Jan 20, 2017
Jan 20, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC
I loved the schoolbus.
I had friends in the front,
and friends in the back.
But sometimes when I climbed those steps,
I didn't want to have friends.
I didn't want to smile,
I didn't want to laugh.
I just wanted it quiet so
I sat in the middle sometimes,
right in between everything.
And that's where I met Vanessa,
right there in the middle of the bus.
She sat alone every day,
with her eyes always
cast upon the window
and what lay beyond it.
I noticed her right away
even though she was older
and a few grades ahead of me.
See she was seventeen, and much more
experienced than the fourteen-year-old me.
But I approached her anyway,
working my way into the seat
adjacent to her.
Eventually working up the *****
to actually say something.
We talked for a few weeks,
and she humored me.
Even when I went to sit in the back
and was loud and obnoxious, I would
catch her glancing.
She would look and sneer at me.
So when the day finally came
that she said my name
and told me to sit in her seat,
I dropped everything
and joined her.
Want to see something?
she asked, without so
much as a blink.
Sure, I mean, of course.
I replied, trying my best
not to sound too eager
She kept her eyes on me as
her hands lifted up her skirt,
one inch at a time showing me
more and more of her.
My eyes were locked on
her crotch, I could almost hear
the shutter clicking as I documented
the whole thing mentally.
But she stopped when she revealed
a crescent-shaped scab on her upper thigh.
It was shot through with red lines,
swollen and inflamed and
I swear that it moved and pulsed
right before my eyes.
I couldn't look away
as she picked the scab off
in one big piece, and I saw
a white caterpillar unfold from
her wound in a squelching
symphony of sickening sound
and roll it's way down
her leg, covered with blood and
leaving ***** streaks.
Then it hit the seat and I gasped
when she grabbed it before it could
crawl away and shoved the
macabre thing into her mouth,
still crawling,
killing it with her teeth.
I never sat with Vanessa again.
Apr 17, 2015
Apr 17, 2015 at 10:03 PM UTC
2/20/2015
"*Lust too is a jewel
a sweet flower and what
pure happiness to know
all our high-toned questions
breed in a lively animal.*"
Adrienne Rich
So these days i find myself
scouring the somewhat stolid sure shores of
of seeming lust, which Adrienne Rich says is a jewel.
I don't see it
this lenten weekend.
I didn't give anything up,
maybe i'd switched from walking out of dorms into
walking out of cars, right? I laugh as I say this, not really ready
to say I am empty since I was taught to never lie and I do not feel this
after all,
More like a solid breathing discomfort at the squelching snow
on my solid leather workman's boots
lighting a cigarillo with a spark lighter and wondering what
you're up to.
My love's not so easily gained, i'd written once in a diary entry
and I suppose maybe it isn't,
but maybe it is the weather because
things didn't go as fast as I had liked this past
baptismal season but they still seemed fine.
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 9:20 AM UTC
When I'm left to myself
My wrists tingle
And I vividly see what it would like like
To scratch and scratch,
until blood flowed like a river
To pry my nails from my body,
with a squelching sound
To pull my teeth with pliers,
feeling the roots' empty place
To stab pencils into my thighs,
and leave them in the contracting muscles
To pour acid down my back,
and feel it burning and bubbling and the tissues peeling off
To scoop out my eyes,
and finally be blind to the world,
with crimson tears running down my face
Dec 1, 2021
Dec 1, 2021 at 2:25 PM UTC
Straddled, lovingly, fibers needle into bone
Your anxiety of anticipation,
How I wish it were potable,
So I may drink the terror I have bred in you
I perch above you, heinous desires for your flora to overrun my entrails
Of all the silt eyes in the world, yours are the darkest
Pining for your validation,
For your attention,
As withered roots desperately crawl towards the damp soil
But your heart is barren of solicitude
And so I will soak the soil with your blood.
This charming man,
So cunning, and so wise
If it is not I who fulfills your ****** appetite,
No one will.
Undergrowth impels into irrigated bushes
Hedonism, even as your eyes paint such terror inimitable to capture in brush strokes
Voraciously, desperately,
It builds, the adrenaline, the bliss,
And into me you are, fulminating, everything your pedigree can give
I raise the steel, and I am unafraid
For my calloused hands have been soiled for generations
Plunging,
Squelching,
Broken yawps.
Your lineage,
Cradled by forever empty organs,
Is just as barren as your soul.
As your gore suffocates your lungs,
And my tongue caresses my blade,
I watch those silt eyes turn even darker
You will expire in me,
And no one will have you again.
Feb 24, 2025
Feb 24, 2025 at 1:57 AM UTC
The amethyst of her eyes writhed with maggots, laden in bile,
Spilling from the crystal in macerating clumps, thick and vile.
Squelching across her pupils, clouding her sclarea, they thrashed vehemently,
Glazing her cherubic face in the pulsing sludge of larvae beneath a peach tree.
The creatures tore apart her pores, crawling out, parasites moulding her skin,
Leaving a mottled rot gilding her features in divine black sin.
Dec 18, 2024
Dec 18, 2024 at 7:03 AM UTC
Strange is the land on which he treads
seeking blood for vengeance within
he stops and sniffs, yes there is hatred here
someone will fall for the false hope again
some eyes will always be moist
some hearts will beat with deception
someone will be every ones fool
he enters a cave marked red
a thousand eyes stare back unconvinced
they have seen the ascent
they have witnessed the retreat
the darkness engulfs him now
and yet he keeps walking along
something is squelching under his feet
some faded whimpers, some squealed threats
he can't see what he treads on
unseen unnoticed unforgiven,
they die under his feet
just as sudden is the advent of light
his feet are red, blood red, red
his hand still holds the sword of malice
and he wears the shield of ignorance
forever protected in his own heaven
oblivious of any agony but his own
he yearns for satisfaction
he yearns for instant gratification
May 31, 2010
May 31, 2010 at 3:52 AM UTC
I lost myself today.
standing in the rain
my umbrella dropped, forgotten
half submerged in the puddle
my boots squelching in the mud.
dancing to the rhythmic patter
each drop washing away
the molecules of pretence
mascara streaming down my cheeks.
inhibitions, fears, anxiety
gradually dissolved
by the universal solvent
leaving me naked.
leaving me, me.
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 2:59 AM UTC
*********** is like a drug to you're average male...
Women just don't get it... but to no avail..
It stares back at you everywhere you look
In shops, online. And in glossy books it's women that" squirt???"
And men with big *****
Quick pass the sick bucket....
I'm gonna be sick!
Milfs and babes...
And men on men
Come on girls now lets not pretend....?
We've all sneaked a look
When no ones around..
Not much storyline
Just a lot of sound!
******* and *******
Squelching and grunts
Women shouting... oh ****
I think I'm gonna c..m!
*** in the garden
*** by the pool
*** in the kitchen...
Perched on a stool
Secretaries,nurses
School girls, nuns
Actresses, gym babes
Even prisoners on the run?!
It just gets sillier
As the camera runs...
The women staring blankly
Shouting " ooh" and ""ahh"
Filming every orifice
Now that's gone too far!
The world is a mans oyster
He can pick and choose
But if you're a woman...
You know you're going to lose.....
Aug 24, 2017
Aug 24, 2017 at 3:36 PM UTC
Sometimes I wonder what combination of materials created me.
What starburst and dust cloud and water and chemical reaction, what act of Gods put me here.
I wonder if maybe my dust cloud was a hair too dusty, and that’s what caused the never ending blackness of my soul during a panic attack.
I wonder if the water was a bit on the polluted side, and there came my depression, murky like a swamp, sticky and squelching as I argue myself out of it, again.
I wonder if the chemical reaction was just a little off, if some mineral didn’t quite align with some reactant and it created the starburst of ADHD, the consistent and never ending swirl in my brain that I have limited control over.
I wonder if the Bang from which I was created was more like a sputter, a car back firing as opposed to a rocket launching, good enough but not quite right.
Jun 15, 2021
Jun 15, 2021 at 7:06 AM UTC
*My heart beats intermittently in this mad, mad world,
The pain of it makes it shutter so.
And as it quivers I would have you know
That many well minded people proclaim to defend
The madness hidden here within
Their deafening fog and their blinding snow.
Here where Tully stands
Amidst Horace and Homer’s hands,
And Plato watches as they go
So many years far below.
I was once with them an unlettered lad
Buried somehow now inside their fog and snow.
Is it possible to jinx this madness?
Attack the demons and spill their decadence?
Newspapers daily attacks on the sane
With words like hammers again and again.
Making a false museum out of this insanity’s row.
Falling all around within the cold fog of snow.
Are the insane the real artists?
The vandals the restorers?
The bombs - the ballast?
The lies – the words the authors’
Use to make this world less to know.
Sprinkling mysery about in the fog and snow.
Your own thoughts float down to the place where you are
Watching as another lie falls so far.
You watch it fly out the door into the misty night,
Sailing away to the dark tenements of right.
Wishing it to stay where the art is black and without a glow,
Burying yourself in the fog and snow.
Let sanity swing open in the cages of your heart
Like an eagle soaring with wings held wide apart.
Looking down with an illuminated eye.
Floating high above this mad quasi
Thinkers of thought, squelching out a reply.
No question lost in this worldly fresco -
Lost no more in the fog and snow.*
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 5:01 PM UTC