"staving" poems
.
*Curious minds,
splashing under
moonlight
With
outstretched kisses
pulsating yellow,
Over the awestruck
magical
rainbow,
Feverishly tracking each
supernova
on sight.*
***Resting the moment
on a
cresting knoll,
With
an audience of several
time-worn
rocks.
Whilst the
whistling sirens
in the winds do call...
Wasting away
the ticks of
worldly
clocks.***
*Evading with class,
all
heart's turbulence,
Craters of sadness
congeal
in thin air,
Glamorous amnesia
falls
with cadence,
Eyes wide shut,
susurrating
a
lost prayer.*
***Lifeless gazes
yield
only
abrasive tears.
As erratum
catches up
with its
gaping maw.
Hurling
its anguish
in
rips and shears,
Bleeding out
of
singing wounds
so raw.
But...
time carries confident,
its stock of
soothing balm.
Latent doses
hidden
within
invisible vials.
Welcoming vision
with its
sunlit palms,
Staving the longing
for the
fear of trials.***
*Now hushed
remain the remorseful
battle trenches,
Deprived of their own
victims
save gaping wounds,
Only
faint faith
commanding
corroded limp
forces,
Stirring
light away
from
all
agony
and
doom.*
Moonskittles
ryn
Jan 23, 2015
Jan 23, 2015 at 6:40 AM UTC
i have sunk into a slow numbness,
perhaps because something broke over me
the second i saw you again.
i realized,
it's better to be in full-blown sorrow
than in a fragile happiness,
forever staving off the blackness.
but instead, i have sunk into a slow numbness.
perhaps because you look away from me now
the exact same way that i look away from you.
your aversion gives me numbness.
don't you see it?
that's all this ever was. a fear of the numbness. a fear of the pain.
your indifference gives me numbness
because who wants to feel it
when the ripping apart begins.
i have smoked to numbness.
i have cried to numbness.
i have raged to numbness.
i have laughed to numbness.
i have embraced the numbness.
i have dug myself into numbness
but you gave me the shovel.
you gave me the numbness.
and i feel absolutely fine. i feel nothing at all.
Apr 9, 2013
Apr 9, 2013 at 6:08 PM UTC
I am so very broke, I can’t afford to pay it thought.
Fettered in a cage by poverty, left only to pray and rot.
The feathers of my soul have been tarred and stained by life.
So much so, I'm not sure if they'll ever again shine bright.
This Bird in my heart used to sing for my hopes and dreams;
Mourning every tragedy with requiems that gleamed.
A little Canary to be all mine until the very end of time,
Staving off this cold world and reminding me I'm fine.
This poverty starved her slow and deep, down to the very core.
Melodies that once remedied despair gone forevermore.
Nowadays, all I can ever do is reminisce about that yellow bird;
How she'd bring warmth to my life's cold hell of a blur.
The way our voices would harmonize on little notes;
Prophecies of a better future foretold from our nook.
That's why I still cling to the distant sound of their words,
Because they ramble on in me until nothing seems absurd.
I like to think she still sings sometimes, though no sound is heard.
That music of hope rings in my mind still, all thanks to Bird.
Jun 12, 2019
Jun 12, 2019 at 4:31 PM UTC
Go on your way adventure tales,
Until we meet again,
I'd say wish me luck,
But I have my own,
Way of meeting whales,
No longer will I longing read,
Of bands, and knights, and fellowships,
Who fought the pains of hunger,
While staving off the wrecks,
Comparing life with fantasy,
Eating it up with bated breath.
Ha ha! I say, Ha ha again,
Life is adventure mine!
And I'll regal YOU adventure tales,
When we meet again
Oct 11, 2014
Oct 11, 2014 at 4:32 PM UTC
they say god is perfect.
that holds true for me, too.
no concept contains me in totality.
Stirner wrestled with the undefinable:
an indefatigable Unique,
anarchic,
lacking category.
Camus perhaps said it best,
"i rebel, therefore i exist."
i strive to personify resistance.
i find the answers
in harmony with Counterparts,
defining *The Difference
Between Hell
and Home*:
"i am what i am
and i am an outcast."
an outlaw,
a nobody
akin to Nietzsche,
returning infinitely—
stretched like so many grains of sand
on time's flat surface, orbiting
eternally around the creative Nothing
at half-past 3:00 in the morning.
a singularity,
deconstructing
Derrida's Différance.
a nomad on the margins,
wandering aimlessly,
roaming perpetually
with Deleuze and Foucault,
an astronaut arranged
along the endless frontiers
of an ever-expanding cosmos.
Vonnegut recognized
the periphery affords
a radical view
to the few who choose
to embrace that which cannot be Known.
a zero-sum game
between Death and me,
staving off manic-depressive ennui
if only momentarily.
Dec 19, 2016
Dec 19, 2016 at 2:55 AM UTC
*Spring has come, the time of change, of rebirth,,
For flowers to bloom, and for I to grow again.
Spring has come, a chance to start, begin anew,
As the earth heals, from Winter's icy grasping hold.
Grassy tendrils, seeds that offer me hope,
Weeds as well, if I don't take the opportunity.
Both coexist, however, to an extent, in all of us,
And that is what this Spring has taught me.
This spring has shown me, that I have my weeds,
This spring has shown me that you have yours too,
But we must look beyond that, when we see one another,
We must see that the taint and purity cannot exist in isolation.
The spring is passing, as it always does, but shall come again,
And cloak the darkness that is the winter, the flower of the seasons,
Fighting the cold, staving the dark, killing the weeds, but not all,
For without the weeds, the flowers would wilt, and die, never to return.*
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 7:52 PM UTC
Fluorescent flickers illuminate the stained cement floors of the hallway. Your slippered feet music an uneven pad and scuff. This ***** city is home, whatever that means. This ***** city holds you like you're someone else's child. A burst of joy and music reaches for you through the window; someone bangs a door and you turn on the tap. As water sputters onto your toothbrush you catch a whiff of Dakota Jim's racist southern drawl, a puff of his ketamine breath.
You walk to the window, toothbrush dangling.
[Oh London, I know you love no one, but nights like this I feel your heartbeat in your embrace.]
History swells beneath your feet. Your eyes land on a seated figure, his grand headdress of feathers overpowering the tableau, his gaze calmer than the other mad happy swirls that make up the crowd. It makes you wonder what he sees. Probably nothing. You will learn that when he seems profound it is usually an accident. You are penned in by jagged skyline hieroglyphics. History swells. Your heavy hearted story is a speck consumed in all this history. All the history you were taught in school was death, you remember your mother bemoaning this war generals and battle dates history. You wonder at how much death this place has seen, how many lives the city has birthed and eaten, hungry mother staving off starvation.
We all write our stories on other people's bones. Of course the greatest cities would leave the greatest scars. And what did you come here looking for anyway?
[Hello Momento Mori city. I see you. I see your rooftops straining to **** stars. Do you mourn for your dead? Are they heavy in your belly? Are you going to eat me, too?]
But now, if you drag your little mind back from the immensities, everything around you is alive. Everyone is dancing, happy to be caught in her belly. Or her womb. Not one of you knows which, but there you are. In the courtyard, the small, steady figure of Freddie Stitz brings a lit cigarette to his lips and smiles up at you in the window.
Wipe that toothpaste off your face, you look ridiculous. Go back to bed.
May 28, 2013
May 28, 2013 at 4:57 PM UTC
To eat or not to eat, that is the question.
A doughnut, ****** airy I’ll consume--
adjust my diet later to make room--
or falsely reject pastries’ sweet delight
while bingeing pasta deep into the night?
Doughnut, thou art satisfying, sweetly
filling morsel, savored now discreetly—
perhaps a little midday’s sugar craving
is better solaced, hunger I’ll be staving
off, resisting better night time craves.
‘Tis better, easier to have the faves;
by portions small on calories I’ll save,
and skip on other dishes that don’t taste
as sweet and crispy, but go straight to waist.
Aug 28, 2016
Aug 28, 2016 at 7:16 AM UTC
Be my muse,
I'll translate you into binary
and back again.
Lying on the ground,
blue carpet between your ears,
synthesized sounds convey through spaghetti,
hearing aides grow old with us.
Child sized vowels fall off their bicycles,
from between your lips.
Keep me busy; when I'm comfortable, I get lazy.
Your shirts are overlaid grids,
the holes, coordinates.
17.43
Always a poet, only occasionally writing,
I hedge my bets and roll die
with insults open to interpretation.
I don't like your words,
I don't need your hyena smiles
I don't want your degrading remarks.
But I know your skeleton,
your tendons, cartilage and marrow filler.
I understand how you move,
the coconut oiling your joints.
Be a textbook reference,
help me cut apart the paperchain people I’ve made,
I want to portray them realistically.
Shade their features with scrawled adjectives,
resolving to care about typography.
White school glue takes too long to dry
to have hopes of staving off entropy.
Scribble highways into dusty prairies,
be the cartographer that misplaces my world.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 12:52 PM UTC
there was something i wanted write
some thing i wanted to make right
but in the end, i lost sight
and moved on
there were many things i wished to do
many a thing that would've borne fruit
but nearer the finish, my light grew dimmish
so i moved on
you told me there was never
an answer to the question "forever"
but death knows different
because we move on
and there is no trying now
no sense in staving off the dying, anyhow
a distance merchant comes to pick up his purchase
of a bid you can't out
Jan 23, 2021
Jan 23, 2021 at 10:45 AM UTC
Unrealistically going ballistic on premature political whistle blowing of missing ballistic missiles.
Rumors round the fickle frowns trickling down around town,
WMD's never found.
Media drowns out our original intent with swayed day-to-day comments about potential evidence or contents of secret documents or undisturbed "security clearancegate".
Still secret and still unclear year-to-date....
our eroded freedoms now appurtenances as consequence.
The missing missiles long ago hidden or moved like agendas with chess-master finesse.
Citizens chide "You lied!! Confess!"
Behooving you proves nothing in bringing relief to your beliefs,
thieving your freedoms and Commander in Chief.
Lectures on conjecture don't secure a future.
It's almost "Au Revior" american cars and mortgages, hype puts the scarred afar Stars and Stripes Bail Bonds Czars in business.
Meanwhile billions are spent to rebuild the countries invaded without consent.
The Banks are saved but don't repent.
Far enough away to keep my iniquity a bay for today.
I clearly see what is before me, but respond not to my thoughts as I was taught.
Septed in guilt,
wept in filth
kept in tilt
loss is coming,
should have flossed.
The long term costs tossed aside.
Just another day I drive away from the driveway rarely driven to lie longer or lie down somber,
striving for stronger days lost,
feels wrong though.
I still go.
Pay the tolls.
Stop and go.
Fill the daily paying role outside my dreams and goals.
Play generic background music while my soul's on hold waiting for the next available operator.
Just another day, a way to stay alive and not lie down in hunger,
paying for my blunders,
staving off my heart's quiet thunder,
my dreams and wonders.
I still get up. I still go. Bills to pay. Traffic's slow. I mute the radio.
-R. Craig David-Copyright 2007
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 5:14 AM UTC
it's late August
the roads are still quiet
while a workforce
bronze in European sun
and children
sleep till noon on seemingly
endless summer holidays
staving off the winter blues
just around the corner
with Christmas decorations
already in the shops
the big push to do it all again
bigger and better than last year
is on
but today I am content
in this moment
almost
just almost
happy to drive to work
Sep 10, 2023
Sep 10, 2023 at 5:37 AM UTC
how much time do you spend in your skin
wondering why you're alive
if you could count every day as a ring
when do you think you would die
boundless and endless seem to explain
all of the thoughts in my head
whether that's true or just staving off pain
plagues me at night in my bed
why is it there, in the darkened abyss
that I must contemplate light
moving within my own shadowy bliss
dressed in the gown of my sight
wearing this flesh has given me strength
to plant my feet on new ground
as veins decompose my body at length
I take on a nature profound
Sep 1, 2012
Sep 1, 2012 at 11:38 AM UTC
I survived y2k, the rapture and the Mayan apocalypse.
9/11, solar maximum, and the media blitz of my opinions.
An x citizen to the world with my finger in the swirls of the abyss.
Turn it on
Turn it off
It makes no indifference to my smidgens of resistance.
**** me
kiss me
**** me
Love me for my limits.
I'm gonna get it until i spin it to my grave.
Unraveling the collective gavels of my praise.
Raised by my love in a staving haze, to make a play for my place at empty tables with empty plates, with broken symbols over where their faces once were.
I have and shall endure.
With or without
Dec 22, 2012
Dec 22, 2012 at 9:45 PM UTC
I want to, need to constitute
Like a maestro of an orchestra
Only with my own thoughts turning the tunes
Siloing notes and notes; bars and measure too
I'm staving for the speeches of melody; of harmony
A gathering of voilent lunk's like me
I'm not mundane enough to dower just yet
Too airy
Haven't been grounded for the right set of time
A notion I crave has to be harsh
Almost as if kicking myself thoroughly will help me succeed
It's this procrastinating nature that has to leave
I'll buy you a train ticket; just flee
Get the **** away from me,
so I can achieve
Nov 20, 2010
Nov 20, 2010 at 7:25 AM UTC
I have sat too long with stars in my eyes
With hopes of staving off the darkness
And yet I found myself one day
Surrounded
Pressed on all sides by a void
That was heavy with emptiness
I wondered how nothing could have such weight
How silence could pound on my eardrums with frantic insistence
Like a two-year-old in a temper tantrum
Out of control and impossible to ignore
As I sat blinking the spots from my vision
I had wanted calm
And instead I found more anxieties
Monsters lurking in my peripherals and the quiet of the night
Worries that stood waiting to ****** me the moment I was alone
I am easy prey
And I was soon caught and bound
Tethered to my bedpost when all I wanted was to run
I never bothered resisting my capture
I never bothered trying to escape
I sat staring out my window
Wondering what normal people do and how they seem to smile
How they find the stamina to survive rainy days
While I droop like a neglected daisy
Unable to stand up and face the morning
When my brightness has been forgotten and allowed to fade
I have been bending
And bending
And bending
And my spine has begun to protest
My vertebrae have grown to resent this inflexible pushing
Starry-eyed, I prayed for compromise
And thought I heard it whisper in the darkness
Only to be let down when I realized it was my own voice
Whispering
Supplying the sounds I wanted
Trying to fill the emptiness with something lighter weight
Apr 21, 2012
Apr 21, 2012 at 4:24 AM UTC
Its been a few months so its time to take stock
of where I am currently in my life-story's plot.
I'm at a place now where I'm staring to care
about politics, my appearance, and a lack of relationships.
Which is all new to me,
moving forward from a place of complete complacency.
A former strange acceptance of being alone.
No desire for interactions outside of my home.
Once committed to the idea that being single is ideal.
The foundations of which have started to crack and reveal
my own insecurities.
A lack of belief in myself.
Such poor self-esteem really affected my health.
But now its important to me to make new friends.
Even though its a new anxiety to cloud up my head.
I've been fighting addiction left right and center
and staving off urges to pop one and feel better.
If I could get my hands on it, it'd all be over.
Because anything is better than sitting here sober
dealing with an existential crisis, day after day.
Your own mental prison is difficult to escape.
I need an accomplice to help me break free.
But when you're a recluse that isn't a possibility.
And what is this inkling of vanity I feel?
I don't have to look at me so what's the big deal?
I've never been the type to try and impress
those that are shallow and judge how I dress
or my ****** hair choices.
I just want a beard.
But now I'm self conscious about how I appear.
Trim the beard to look less homeless.
Put on jeans so I don't look grotesque.
A whole new level of **** to fret about.
Acting my age really stresses me out.
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 8:09 PM UTC
He began by taking samples
Little things at first
A photograph of summer freckles
A strand of hair
Fingernail clippings
And my favorite polish
Turquoise and caicos
Footprints
On the bathroom floor
Nothing I would notice
Nothing I would miss
And then he went bigger
My lips concealed
In his underwear drawer
My fingers and toes
Still painted
Stuck in the yogurt
The peanut butter
Full of ears, a nose
He grew bold
With surgical precision
Moved my ribs to the fridge
Chilling
Staving off listeria
My hips he displayed prominently
Framed by the headboard of his bed
My head serving as centerpiece
For his infrequent dinner guests
Shapely legs holding up the table
And believe me
THEY ARE THE SHAPLIEST
Arms supporting arms
New tattoos on his favorite chair
My alarm clock heart
Beating wake up
Wake up
Get out of bed
From his desk
And meaning
Nothing more than that
"I wanted you for my collection,"
He said
"You're the most extraordinary
Specimen I've ever met."
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 11:08 AM UTC
whispering breeze touching the calm
of the slumbering brine
patches of green fronds on their stems
stark against cloud white sublime
warmth from the blessed heaven above
staving off chill to the bone
stillness and peace yet undisturbed
ocean not showing a foam
island by mist gently is kissed
breaking horizon of blue
such a fine line bordering that
seen as an edge to a few
but to the eye searching and bold
adventure the call luring strong
beckoning offering that yet unknown
a wistful and sweet lilting song
sweet odor of lush green cut grass
mingling in the salt air
west of the reef gentle the tide
nurtures the sand with a care
where else a calm daily as here
far north of Queensland's east coast
between Townsville and Cairns
winter escape proving this no idle boast
Jul 17, 2014
Jul 17, 2014 at 11:01 PM UTC
I hold onto the wedge the divides
My expert hands move swift
Trim the shadows
Keep what's lit
The brightness never subsides
Shadowy figures reach on the edges, sublime
Yet my expert hands move swift
Trimming the shadows
Keeping what's lit
Staving the darkness with each divide
The hours grow longer as time moves by
Heavy expert hands pushing so swift
Trim the shadows
Ignoring what's lit
Deafening minutes let their silence fly
Time hugs the shadows, by-the-by
The hands of time move swift
Ushering the shadows
Trimming what's lit
Flickering the light in Mind's eye
Shadows manifest despite my efforted try
Exhaustion moves swift
Depression forms the shadows
Flickering the lit
Mild panic rises as each emotion does die
Simple sleep be the answer; and yet, as I lie
My thoughts move swift
While I trim the shadows
And keep what's lit
Mournfully watching hours flicker on by
Nov 1, 2021
Nov 1, 2021 at 2:12 AM UTC
trolling the doldrums for crumbs of gold
selling old caldrons to witless witches
wearing goblin teeth and dragons blood
earrings from Hot Topic
I languish in the Emo village that is the United States –
Self-serving ******** preserving their precious habitats
while habitually encumbering the global ecology
drinking biodegradable Starbucks in Buick Escalades
escapade-ing ***** raiders afraid of Mercury in retrograde
staying clear of the mayhem
and playing fear propagating madman
I stoke wildfires with gasoline
prodding the populace into premature *********** –
poorly formed ideas the norm
the scorn for the figureheads shows on the shoreline
boorish oarsmen, moored, pour their kerosene blood
onto the floor…. Sure,
pure Fuerer fodder, but newer shoes
were never shod
and the godhead faces west into the sunset –
druidic fluids escape wiccan slits
as the children of the Azure seas never get to be born
Pleaedian starships collide inside Antarctic subterranean dwellings
indiscriminate shelling of uninhabited caverns
as ravenous reptilians eat the jaw muscles
and left eye sockets
of organically fed Dairy cows…
espoused louse houses in Fall fashion blouses
trounce the infirm in clown shaped bounce houses
again, the sin goes unnoticed
as the blood of the innocents grants the elitists
another thousand years of power –
The tower on the hill still shines in the moonlight
on the 5th night of delighting the religious right…
mighty flightless birds self-assured and fed
on bramble burrs
purr at the sight.
bodies strewn all askew;
the moaning few with skin turning blue
true to the stories of old
as lack of oxygen blends with the biblical beast mark
and staving for air the impaired dare not to ask for Jesus aid…
instead they lay, waiting to be saved –
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
A million ways to change
But I’m set in my old ways
I never learned how to navigate
Trough the maze of my mistakes
Tell me stories of past days
Of Shakespeare and his plays
Of Greek gods in mythology
Without turning the page
A million ways to change
But I’m set in my old ways
I never learned how to navigate
Trough the maze of my mistakes
Whisper it in my ear
Make the monsters disappear
Wake me if I fall asleep
Or if I faint from fear
A million ways to change
But I’m set in my old ways
I never learned how to navigate
Trough the maze of my mistakes
Staving off the demons
From the depths of the unknown
From the hell that rests below us
To the heavens I call home
With a sense of accomplishment
And the skills, I have per se
It’s a daily self reminder
That all will be ok.
Jan 20, 2019
Jan 20, 2019 at 3:17 AM UTC
.
Groping out of bed,
Keep the sun at bay,
Mirror eyes look red,
Soft in morning glaze,
Shower waters said:
Thank the sun, amaze,
Splinters in my head,
Silent verse word play,
Morning ends, I'm fed
Sweet caffeine au lait,
Later beers— instead,
Wine, my guitar flays,
Splinters in me head
And all ends up paid
As time revolves dead,
Poems making grade,
Song and music bled,
That is my bed made,
Staving off the dread.
.
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 12:10 AM UTC
To eat or not to eat; that is the question.
A doughnut--yeasty, airy--I’ll consume,
adjust my diet later to make room,
or falsely reject pastries’ sweet delight
while bingeing pasta deep into the night?
Doughnut, thou art satisfying; sweetly
filling morsel, savored now discreetly—
perhaps a little midday’s sugar craving
is better solaced, hunger I’ll be staving
off, resisting better night time craves.
‘Tis better, easier to have the faves;
by portions small on calories I’ll save
and skip on other dishes that don’t taste
as sweet and crispy, but go straight to waist.
Apr 2, 2024
Apr 2, 2024 at 11:12 PM UTC