"stalactites" poems
My elbow pops
Like the way the word
Snap dragon sounds
My freckles aren't constellations
They're reminders that I am not
Dark and ancient
Like my ******* father
My hair
FRIZZY
Like a pumpkin on fire
Voice
So sweet it makes me sick
And now all my teeth have fallen out
My throat swollen
A cave with an avalanche stuck inside
Dead bats
And stalactites like toothpicks
I don't need
Nails
Like tree bark
Hollow in all the right places
Scars
Like a record
Of the way I hurt myself
Put it on Repeat
Till it scratches
Cheeks like high school
Like humiliation
With four eyes perching
Not lucky clovers
And eyes glued on
With one glued on wrong
And knees that I'm constantly falling down on
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 12:58 AM UTC
On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a laughing face.
The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind,
A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone.
High pointed windows pierced the southern wall
Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires
To stain the tessellated marble floor
With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue;
And in the shade beyond the further door,
Its sober squares of black and white were hid
Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob
Of lackeys and retainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.
The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and the power
Of making words obedient. This is much;
But overshadowing all is still the curse,
That never shall I be fulfilled by love!
Along the parching highroad of the world
No other soul shall bear mine company.
Always shall I be teased with semblances,
With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile
Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy
Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering
Strews all the ground about with coloured shards.
So I behold my visions on the ground
No longer radiant, an ignoble heap
Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit,
Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps
Force me forever through the passing days.
3.8k
I am a miner. The light burns blue.
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears
The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.
Black bat airs
Wrap me, raggy shawls,
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.
Old cave of calcium
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,
Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish----
Christ! They are panes of ice,
A vice of knives,
A piranha
Religion, drinking
Its first communion out of my live toes.
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,
Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?
O embryo
Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean
In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours.
Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses.
With soft rugs----
The last of Victoriana.
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,
Let the mercuric
Atoms that ******* drip
Into the terrible well,
You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.
You are the baby in the barn.
3.3k
Arms that rested on her wide hips
I miss her 'grape-ulent' lips
How onto me she tightly clung
While my harmonic mp3s sung
The walk by nature's green
Moments we dared to dream
She sung alongside Dido
Oh gosh, the "Darling" title
How occupied she kept us
Cut my wings,back down to earth
For all that's happened was worth
I miss placing my arms on her ***
And towing her close to my body
I miss her soft grip on my "daddy "
The look in her eyes when in control
I miss ******* her glorous beach umbrellas
How she ardently put off the lights
I miss the many long and busy nights
Freezing and so I miss her furry furnace
I miss the soft moans of pleasure
She was an undisputed treasure
I long to drink again from her chalice
I miss the tear filled hazels of lust
Thighs like tectonic plates in Earth's crust
I miss being trapped by those stalactites
Her harmless but arousing love bites
I miss having her thrilling ride
My body would yield and abide
Her little laugh when things got real hot
My rock hard cable in her USB port
I miss the warm cool of her wetness
The milking machine greatness
I miss how whispers talked
Till late after we'd ******
I miss diving alength
I miss losing strength
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 8:59 AM UTC
Your lips are a gateway to a realm unmatched by any heaven
A twisting cavern of stalactites through which your voice echoes
Like the thundering of a summer storm
Or the song of a morning jay
Your lips may seem small but really they are the curve of a how
Ready to fire flaming arrows of love and desire through my chest
The flames kindled by words that drip from your tongue like swirling magma
Your mouth is a cavern carved by nature into your bone
To which my tongue is an eager explorer
And though you think that one stalactite is out of place
Really it gleams like all the rest
Your mouth is a weapon of emotion
Your voice a churning reservoir of thoughts just waiting for the tide to rise
Tide pools on your tongue collect the ideas that stir inside you
Within your lips is a hidden oasis
It just might take a few hallucinations to discover
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 6:15 PM UTC
Not heartless, heartbroken
not manipulative, not terroristic
Not heartless, heartbroken
the fields of grass sway bright blue and green
under a red sky weeping
horseless, loveless, alone.
It’s not an unerring path
it’s a wounded warrior pierced by stalactites
huddled cold in the winter
a man searching, and hurting, and crying
Better to have loved
to have splintered
to have shattered
to have hurt
than to remain
the King
of Pluto.
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 2:19 PM UTC
I dreamed
there was a evil man
searching for wealth
beyond all riches
hidden in the hardened
sculpture of a woman
there was a hero too
I could not see his face
he journeyed to a sacred cave
to guard the precious treasure
he climbed inside
the statue's hollow center
and held the treasure to his chest
where it radiated
with such intensity
he had to close his eyes
it gently pulsed in his hands
calming the anxiousness
leaching sour
in his throat
the villain
shrouded black
entered the cave
a belligerent pirate
yelling obscenities
*where are you *****
when I find you, you'll be sorry
you think you can hide from me?
no one will ever love you
the way that I do*
his craven hunger upon seeing
the lost prize glowing heavenly
beneath sapphire stalactites
left this dreamer cold
he began to tear
at the sculpture's *******
with hands encased in forged steel
spiked fingernails slicing
until shimmering gold bloomed
in the statue's chest
zealously the villain tore deeper
molten yellow dripped
from his over-eager fingers
when suddenly from the center
came a flash of scorching fire
the villain dissolved to ash
without a single sound
the hero too transformed
into a luminous bird
not unlike a phoenix
he shook fresh wings
flexed honed talons
raised his crested head
and from hooked beak
there came a sound
like a choir of voices singing
the hero flapped three times
and soared out of the cavern
into the bluest sky
I'd ever seen
Mar 9, 2016
Mar 9, 2016 at 11:50 AM UTC
Thirsting
For subterranean
Blue morphology
Azure dreams
Flitting about
On butterfly wings
Mining stalagmites and
Stalactites
Sipping nectar
Numinous ruminations
Illuminating
Analogous mimetics
Allegories of the Cave
An altar for
Pluming rhetoric
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 4:55 AM UTC
Have you ever heard those flat harmonies of death, where operatic assertions resound throughout damp and ancient crypts of macabre folklore?
Time is slowly running out, and the flame of life is flickering in the winds of captivating finality.
Although haunting screams are like echoes which transcend fatty spreads of digestive mediocrity, the stalagmites and stalactites of gothic caverns display their ***** features which defy rational explanation.
Feel the depths of soulless forests as they chant messages of reconciliation amidst tangled weeds and branches of self-stimulation.
Amitriptyline can facilitate sleep at the end of an indulgent evening.
S
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 11:56 PM UTC
Stop worrying.
And you'll lose a vital resource.
Diamonds don't sparkle underground
But the Earth always shines under the sun
Certain as darkness burns into dawn.
Pearls lack glamour on the sea bed
But the moon will pull the sandy shore
Certain as day liquefies to night.
Opal shimmers not in earth's cracks
But light diffracts across our vision
Certain as sunsets warm twilight eyes.
Worries have always grown in the cave of our soul
Stalactites formed after years of instinct's delicate drop.
But like expensive diamonds,
worries can scratch and leave scars.
See them as a problem and you'll likely dissolve
See them as a resource and your problems will be solved.
So wipe the dust from the corners of your eyes
Consider worries as instinct in disguise.
Harnessing energy, a gift from Mother Nurture
More valuable than any jewel formed by her organic sister.
Don't envy those who's glass is half full
Half empty is always reusable.
Feb 19, 2017
Feb 19, 2017 at 7:12 AM UTC
A deep mystery lies within
Equivalent that to meeting a new friend
Are you cold, dark and eerie?
Or do you hold a sense of joy?
Stalactites hold tightly onto the ceiling
Hiding from those below
Stalagmites rise mightily from the ground
Boldly holding their ground to those who pass
There are many different types of caves
There are many different types of people
Apr 4, 2014
Apr 4, 2014 at 12:57 PM UTC
Seven times I told you,
Seventy pins in seventy dolls on seventy dusty shelves in New Orleans backrooms.
Seven times I warned you
Seven hundred aches, seven hundred acres
I run across.
I outrun the burn and I outrun the grief
The witch in me, I race with her too.
Seven miles to run, seven miles behind.
And I pass that playful laugh of yours, grab at it
and stick it in my pocket, shove it deep, deep in my pocket.
And I pass that twinkle in your eyes
and I grab that too,
send it on a paper rocket flying the speed of light into seven universes far away.
I grab that last promise
the one that was slippery and hard to hold onto.
I grab it and hold it tight
And I run.
I told you I would
(you looked so surprised).
I run and my bones hit the ground with the rhythm and pulse of a tribal drummer
He drums out in my head
Run, Run, henny Run.
He drinks my optimism from a cup, then beats his drum. Run, chickadee, run run.
He vomits my clarity at my feet all the while his brown weathered hands drum a ceaseless beat. Run, baby. He loves you not, run.
On the seventh day I run from you and
I find that I am made now from the down of your hair
so I run until I am bald.
I find that I am made now from stalactites dripping from your tongue.
Celtic knot of assurances and reassurances.
I am made up of moments that I didn't make.
I am made up of your indecision. They bounce gleefully "I don't know, I don't know..."
they insist as they hit walls and corners.
They are lazy, I outrun them with ease.
Seven times I told you,
Itchy souls need to find a branch for stratching.
Seven miles between me and you
Seven hundred to go.
Sahn
6/12/14
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 1:01 PM UTC
Teaching me the correct way to make
a paper airplane. He took me to his bindery.
The machine beats bustled and roared and shook
the unruffled metal walls that made me feel
like I was sleeping in the middle of a dragon’s
den, its snoring breaths protecting me
from fathers who didn't know how to be fathers.
I just finished losing all my teeth,
the new ones growing in at different speeds,
my front two like frozen stalactites from different
ice ages. My hair was banana yellow blonde and I liked
to compare myself to a younger Britney Spears.
A potential avalanche of paper next to the metal walls,
vexed by one deep exhale and the pieces
would go up and around like dandelion parts.
My father, forever bound to binding the parts together.
He brought me a single sheet and began twisting and folding.
I always hated him for his genes, for having a Russian
heritage that made me annoyed at the klutzy appendages we shared.
Is it funny that I lie and say I'm Welsh?
It's not funny that I can remember every detail of his over-sized,
meaty hands, how he kept that silly ring on his finger,
the graying knuckle hairs peeking out:
free me!
Not to say I think about him every time I make a paper airplane,
but not to say I don't.
Nov 7, 2012
Nov 7, 2012 at 5:09 PM UTC
Wondrous Love
Our love is as solid as the ancient rocks Stonehenge
Strong and as long as the Golden Gate Bridge Extends
Romantic as the sparkling Aurora Borealis lights
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, held tight like stalactites
Our love can move Everest, make the Pisa tower lean
Spiritual and earnest, as Jerusalem's serene
Occasionally a fight in Rome's Colosseum
Woeful regrets laid bare in Tutankhamen's museum
Our love is impenetrable like the Great Wall of China
Shiny like the Pyramids, there is nothing finer
Deserving of a shrine at the foot of Temple Artemus
Polar Ice caps could never melt our ambient musk
Our love is higher than the Empire State can tower
A jewel within the crown of the Taj Mahal's power
Colourful as the Barrier Reef, the love we feel inside
Grander than the Canyon and deeper than it is wide
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 8:02 AM UTC
It looked all right through the windows of
Our cosy sitting room,
The day was light and the sun was bright
But the house was like a tomb,
The other rooms were as cold as hell
With their stalactites of ice,
That dripped from the bedroom ceiling down
To meet the stalagmites.
I’d settled Eve on the couch and spread
A blanket round her arms,
I didn’t think I should tell her, just
In case she became alarmed,
She’d spent a week in the sitting room
For she wasn’t feeling well,
How do you say, ‘We’ve fallen into
The Seventh Circle of Hell!’
They taught us the laws of physics were
Impossible to change,
Gravity, mass, and basic math
Had a certain, definite range,
But men of science had interfered
With the particle known as ‘God’,
They’d built the Hadron Collider and
The results, they said, were odd.
I could have told them how odd they were
When I went outside to see,
My car was covered in mushrooms
And a train sat up in the tree.
A whale was floating beneath the Moon
And a porpoise lay in the park,
The light was bright in the sitting room
But outside, it was dark.
Nothing remained the way it was
For all the colours had changed,
The lawn, the colour of strawberry jam
And the sky was rearranged,
The stars were falling like sequins in
A cluster of drops like rain,
And ice was forming up on the eaves
That tasted like champagne.
I went inside and I slammed the door,
I turned on the News at 6,
They said there’d been an apology
But it wouldn’t be hard to fix,
They’d run the Collider backwards to
The way that they’d done before,
And hopefully, the ‘particle God’
Would be as he’d been once more.
I sat with Eve as the sun went down
And I tried to keep her still,
Away from the hallway mirror so
She wouldn’t scream or squeal,
The lines were deepening on her face
As our lease on life had lapsed,
I hoped she wouldn’t go out today
With the world outside, collapsed.
The sun rose up in the morning as
It had for a million years,
And everything was familiar,
They’d run the thing in reverse.
The News went back to the good old things
We were used to, from before,
Stabbings, murders, infanticide
And that good old standby, war!
David Lewis Paget
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
I'm built of water splashing over edges
As I fall and break upon rocks
With mud in my bones and creaky joints
and sand makes my eyes lashes
I'm built of dust, blowing away
Carried by the wind wherever it goes
I don't care anymore for it doesn't matter
I'm just built of words with no meaning
And of empty light burning in darkness
And hollow waves crashing against storms
I fall beneath and beneath
And hit the darkness rusting underneath
Where no one shows when I scream
Where no light dares to touch my eyes
And my bones all shatter,
until they're just powdered calcium
And blood freeze in my bones,
forming stalactites, piercing through my veins
And my skin cracks and breaths escape
And the shadows sink inside my shell
And fissures seep through my irises
And oceans dissolve my dust eyelashes
And memories burn my eyes
and flow past the brims
It's only raw, absolute, sheer pain
As I tear slowly without screaming
Only tears, howls and lost love
And your betrayal and false friends
I've lived for so long but haven't found peace
Now I'm just begging your memories to leave me be
For there's nothing now I could lose
Nothing left of me or my dreams anymore
Nothing of wounded hope
And my canvas of love
I've seen the streets for a thousand years
always wandering never finding my own home
I'm afraid if I let my eyes closet they'll dream again
For I'm torn, vein by vein and cell by cell
I'm nothing but a shadow of who I was
Nothing but reflection of my past
Just an echo of a scream I used to be
Just an illusion of the life I've lived
Nothing more is left, love
For I've given you all of me
How can you tear me, love?
I'm already lying in red ribbons
I'm strips of flesh and blood
And of Silver pain and Black hope
Love, I'm smiling the last time
Please tell me to stay
And hold me for eternity
Because just forever isn't enough for me.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 6:20 PM UTC
A DINOSAUR EATING THE NIGHT
Death had frozen
his mind
and all his musings become icicles
stalactites and stalagmites of thought.
He snapped a thought off
an even number of stalactites and stalagmites .
Then he placed them one by
one in his jaws
like row upon row of
dinosaur teeth.
"Roar!' he roared
roaring himself out of this
"whatever it is!"
"Roar!" he roared again
eating the night
and all it brought
with his new stalactitestalagmite
dinosaur teeth.
When the night was all
eaten he
lay back and
fell asleep
inside the dream's
dream.
"Brother!" he said
and his dead brother
comforted him as if
he was not dead.
"Brother!" he cried
but the world had
reappeared
ready for the new day
that was spread before it.
Aug 18, 2016
Aug 18, 2016 at 6:58 AM UTC
Transcendent
Like a phoenix
Up from fire
Heat
Blistering skin
Of all who are
Underneath
In caves
They will hide
And scratch out
Meager living
Dripping
Forming up
Water runs
Through earth
Stalagmites
Stalactites
Pillars
Fallen down
Asleep evermore
Jul 2, 2016
Jul 2, 2016 at 8:44 PM UTC
it's the caffeine making dark crescents undereye
not some divine enlightenment
(there might be a dash of soul-searching though)
low, glazed limbs are frozen still
a frosted flurry of flakes falls
relieving my concentration
returning me to the road
to the pale glow of white snow
silhouetting the bare oak grove
hefty adumbrations emerging
charcoal on unblemished canvas
"Harden your heart, grow up"
"Harden your heart, grow up"
I repeat over and over
click
I get a different result
Real insanity would be conversing to myself, not chanting: pshaw!
My insides now cold as ice
open windows, abrasive breeze
I don't have a seat warmer
don't need one when everything's the same temp
I've hardened my heart, my groovy slouch recedes
jaw set and stiffened
Sufjan and Novo Amor siphoning my hope
tears become stalactites
"I have loved you for the last time"
pulling me back into colorless pensiveness
matching the steadfast sentinels blurring by
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 11:00 PM UTC
How vividly the memory of your lips
Struck me in that cave of ice
As if one of those stalactites,
Frozen in perpetual motion,
Had thawed just enough to crack and fall
Directly down.
It didn't need to fall though, it's fall was implicit
And as you held me there, pressing my back
To where the ice met the stone I realized
That's where we were, too-
Trapped in the ambiguity of permanence meeting
Utmost transience.
The waterfall melted around us
And each second we spent
In the starkly unstable cave hidden behind it
Was a risk then uncalculated.
With the eruption
Cascading in the quietest places of memory
We willed the thaw, really,
Begging 'let it drown us;
Let all the ice melt and let it
Pull us under and from to river
To our corpse floating through the ocean,
Let it pull
All away
From the stone.'
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 6:17 PM UTC
My tongue sharpened today
Angles fell off it like classroom fancies
Rationalised to a point, its first act
Was to knock out my fangs from behind.
I stumbled about the house
Slopped through the bathroom door
And foamed at the toilet seat, a
Wave broken over a rim of briny coral.
My salt winked about the walls, around the tap, between the wiped tiles
In the shower head of porous sponge
The seaweed in the pipes crawled up
And drowned me in the sickly sweet.
Downstairs smelt the same, logically the sea dumped down
Underwater fish glided past my window, all with the same
Grim face against the mirrors, aping the ocean
With me trapped inside.
I turned on the same song, fifteen times,
The sound tried to reach me with such ambition
But it floated to the top, belly up in its bubbles
Ridiculous, I scratched the date on the seafloor and entered the kitchen.
Drips everywhere, grease stalactites, from the tiles, the yawning oven, the spatulas
A Cretaceous museum where savagery is kept
In little plastic boxes, with clear peelable lids
A fresh, messy ****
In the hall the grey light descends through slit windows
Colour settling at the bottom like grit, all the greys so tall
Give the narrow rectangle an aftertaste of dust
Just one keeper before me
It devours my key, hacking as it gobbles
But it does not anticipate my twist
I gut it from inside, it spits its meal back at me
And I swing its limp, dead frame 90 degrees.
Stepping out feels like a moonwalk, with Houston's neutral formulas
Unheeded in my ear, finally I can greet the clouds, that probably escaped,
Like me, fumes from the chimney
Pale and fading away from lack of auspicious sun.
Nov 10, 2020
Nov 10, 2020 at 1:15 PM UTC
the slow trickle
of water torture,
beads of
glacial sweat
carving canyons,
torrents of rain
sweeping
leaves
dirt
and trash
through a
miraculous dance
passed the curb and
down the drain.
to the living
minutes and moments
are just drops of water
on an icicle.
such an elegent procession,
such elaborate progression,
and, too, ulimately fragile,
the reality of mortality.
furthermore,
on time:
we view the world
as a stop motion animation.
perception of time
is invented,
utterly subjective
and therefore fallible.
time is,
quite literally,
an optical illusion,
a homegrown hoax.
all moments can be one moment
to that which blinks but once.
the sum of all instants
is one single instant.
and so
stalactites
reach for
stalagmites,
bond and be one,
and find comfort
in their caves.
attraction has
its origins
in the atoms.
maybe earlier.
that was jim morrison's
"atomic love".
electrons were the first roses.
Apr 12, 2010
Apr 12, 2010 at 5:48 AM UTC
in the cavern
stalactites & fireflys
illuminate
now
a library of theories
chasm cacophony
their massed odour
freshly damp
hanging in wait
for the moon's cue
headlamp highlights
campers' scraps
under earth & rock
a steady descent
strange treasures
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 9:52 PM UTC