"stiffening" poems
She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.
Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.
146.4k
He felt
great pleasure
watching her
his desires bloom
staring at her two lips
the rarest of all flowers
pedals spread
breathing life into his desires
stiffening a hard stamen
as their bodies take root
folding together like a hem
pumping seed into her cavity
baring the juices of a fruit
into a fountain
that will never end
Apr 29, 2017
Apr 29, 2017 at 8:15 PM UTC
Burnt toast and
a spot of blood.
Father dresses for work
and leaves with a wave,
his gabardine suit
the exact same shade
as the storm cloud blooming
on the back of his left hand.
After breakfast, mother pins
his undershirts to the wash line,
clothespins clenched
between broken teeth.
From my upstairs window,
I watch his shirts stiffening
in the flinty December air,
a chorus of white flags,
obsequious and clean.
Mother recovers in the laundry room,
where the floor is dusted with feeble
grains of spilled detergent.
I spend the afternoon
preparing for the sound
of tires crunching on gravel,
for the sweep of headlights
across the lawn.
There are plans
and maneuvers
to arrange.
Counterattacks.
Even now, the snow
on the side of the road
has turned to the color
of my childhood.
Nov 20, 2017
Nov 20, 2017 at 4:18 PM UTC
as graphic as yours
a slowly lifted skirt
a hand on her thigh
gliding up to her bare heaven
bare ******* with tense ***** *******
gasping sounds cries of yes yes yes
her hands on my man pride
stiffening in the limelight
a little more risque a spank on a bare
cute well formed ***
a ******* in the backseat
a tongue teasing a small cute slit
two girls and a ******
or two midgets and one twelve inch ****
the words loud raw pelvic **** me
yes yes yes
or is it more ***** to show the latest massacre
in a school 26 dead, or
a misguided american "Smart" bomb wiping out six doctors without
borders and 50 Syrians
or the lies of our politicians promising us the world so
we may vote for them , or a young girl who is naturally
getting experimental getting pregnant and giving up her baby for adoption because she did not get education or protection. And then she gets HPV and dies at fourteen from cervical cancer
or is it just me that thinks the nightly
news and the stumping of a bunch of lying hypocrites is more ******
than a bare ******
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 2:09 AM UTC
On an Ohio vacation, we got the call.
Dressed in a navy t-shirt, and stiff boating shorts
(plucked fresh off a J. Crew shelf just earlier that morning –
I wanted a darker grey)
My mother and I parked by the open grave.
The visitation was packed with strangers.
Stuffy, suffocating almost – I tugged at the new shorts,
coarse, rough-feeling, no time to break in yet –
fibers still unset –
My back hugs peeling wallpaper.
My mother's tears stain my shirt, the salt stiffening fresh fabric –
Baptism. Each tear carves fresh wrinkles, crossing her face like rivers,
slicing into her like canyons. Her hands are childlike upon my shirt,
grasping blindly for anything, her vision blurred, her breath short,
her heart broken.
I peer at the uncovered casket and look at the woman's face.
Thin halo of white hair, skin pale like alabaster –
She is stiff. Eyes fixed, blood cold. Her hands clasp tightly.
Her black cardigan holds her like a piece of glass,
stiff, hard, yet so fragile, threatening each second to crack,
and the sounds of its breaking my mother's muffled cries,
and my hand's rhythmless consoling pats upon her back.
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 9:00 PM UTC
In moments of raging to the hospital, the jolts from the road, the squeal of the tires, and the tripping of your feet only multiply your anxiety. Delicacy is suspended amply in the air, hanging daintily on the thread of life and death.
Delicacy is the soft and inconsistent beeping from the cardiac monitor. It controls your thoughts; yet is only a shadow on your radar. It shares the rhythm of the pounding in your head, and the thumping in your chest. You strain to shut everything out, leaving only the shy quiver of breathe slithering out from their lax lips. Their lips tremor under the reign of some foreign enemy, and their eyes flutter from an unseen truth. It is the suffering you wish to unburden them from, the pain you would inflict upon yourself in return for both their lives intact.
Delicacy is a light fragrance, a mixture of disinfectant and sweat. Is it the scent of creating a life, or the imminent end of it? Beads of perspiration stream down your face and sting your eyes.
The sweet caress of silk treads faintly underneath your fingertips. You rub the back of her hand, clammy and fragile. Rubbing the skin, you forget who the comfort is more for while footsteps pierce the stillness in the air. A figure dawned in white appears before you. Their form blurs in and out of focus, their voice a toneless muddle seeping through your cloud of stupor.
Delicacy is a whisper flashing goosebumps across your skin, "We can only save one of them." It is the realization that too much pressure, and two months premature, is a cocktail dyed with poison. She looks to you with eyes of understanding and acceptance.
Delicacy is the collapsing of all you know. It is the berating of incoherent words tumbling from your lips for the pure sake of escaping. You're swiftly taken from the room, kicking and screaming to the hallway.
The unsettling tick of the clock mocks your every fiber. You **** the void of silence with the tapping of your foot, taming yourself from barging your way into the room. With the screaming from the bed, the instinct of protection, the stiffening of your back, the nurse quickly ushers you back in.
The soft and consistent rising of the baby's chest is surrounded with the light fragrance of life. The plush fibers of the yellow blanket tug on the skin of your fingertips. The fascination apparent in your eyes, look to her while wondering how this little body will have the biggest impact on your life. Delicacy is the soft whisper flashing goosebumps across your skin, "We made it."
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 1:19 PM UTC
it's a lost memory
chilling, nauseating, disgruntling
the plants, the sugars
it's all gone, and even in my absence
it still haunts me
creeping, disturbing, stiffening
keeping myself stable on his current caffeine
a perfect snow tinted green
asked if he did this everyday,
he said
"often"
Jan 3, 2015
Jan 3, 2015 at 1:11 AM UTC
Her lips scream
" KISS ME "
Then whisper
" kiss me now "
At once
a thousand nerve-ends wake
electricity
rampant beneath
tender
sweet
candyfloss skin
Anticipating contact
her inner rhythms quicken
from ‘ bump-n-grind ’
to ‘ swing-beat ’
Hearts play along
to the new tune now
She smiles with those eyes
the message of her mouth
Delight
I understand at once
Replying
without reaching for a word
No second thoughts invade
the privacy of spontaneity
I just move to accept
this luscious invite
In a flash
ecstatic urges awaken
erotica in our minds
as we close
our telltale eyes
a split second before
the precious
perfect impact
Seems magnetically
heads tilt
Moving closer
till our silently screaming
half-opened mouths
knowingly meet
in once vacant space
Intentions projected
instantly accepted
Mouths
express new feeling
Tongues
take on new meaning
Suggestions
of intensity requesting
passions
yet to be fulfilled
The warm silk
snake of temptation
reacts to vibration
Twisting
Rolling
Curling
*******
Chewing
Playfully biting
Unspoken promises
Exciting
She plays a sensual game
Active / Passive
Strong / Soft
Control / Yield
Secrets revealed
Releasing for a moment
our mesmeric communion
Poised in breathlessness
we stare
as we subtly swallow
the essence
of our watery endeavour
Eyes smile
that insatiable smile
Still thirsting
chemical reactions
conceived by our emotions
Speed of light sensations
send shivers down our spine
Time
sleeps for a moment
Lost
in a fragment of dreamscape
we too escape
“ Mmmmmmm ”
The gentle sigh
waves through the air
We lose contact
with our unwelcome surrounds
as once again we entwine
to re-enact
the passage of our bliss
A repeat
of erogenous stimulation
replays the symphony of desire
in a higher vibration
Mouths in motion
mirror dancing
Automatic reactions
assume control
Whilst my mind
Is with her mind
my Soul
is with her Soul
Her grip tightens
Wanting more
wanton more
Red-hot
lava in the veins
seeking to surface
in a fiery eruption
Our watery essence
Seems to feed the flames
Yearning
I hear her
Burning
I feel her
Softening
Stiffening
Pulsing
I'm in her.
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 3:49 PM UTC
I inherit the tome of your life nearly complete.
The first pages well-worn and traveled by your daughters,
Now yellowing and stiffening before the onslaught of grandchildren.
The middle is clean and organized,
The pages laid out in the brick of a self-built home,
The words of 'wife' and 'child' recorded with care and detail.
As the chapters progress, your handwriting turns.
Tidy inscriptions widen and loop, and mastery becomes primitive.
In the mire of your later stories I am lost, as - it seems - you are.
It is hard to discern the fact from the fiction,
The present moments from the conjured memories.
In the final pages, there is a remarkable renaissance.
You shed the child's scrawl and the dimwit's jargon,
And the master stands before us once more.
You write of pain, of struggle, of fear,
And the pages crack and fall out.
Closing the book and adding it to the shelf,
Your story is not yet ended.
All around are novels of lives,
And they take from yours their inspiration.
There are four novels of daughters, and four of their husbands
Twelve of grandchildren, six of their spouses
Thirteen of great grandchildren, and three to be delivered.
There are books of neighbors, books of friends,
Pamphlets of patrons, and journals of soldiers.
Each a part of your story, each a part of the library
Each magnificent, and each unique.
And in the center, care-worn and complete,
Is you, grandfather.
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 8:53 AM UTC
I planted a cherry tree
Four seasons back
In a morose rain
Pelting sharp upon nimble naked boughs
And rows, of wild berries
Running amuck in an unruly strain.
The tree is a full bloom now
Of white satin flowers
Swirling against a beaming blue
Tonight, as night keeps a vigil over my eyes
I get under my squally Cherry Tree
And suddenly I see it ailing
Sick old moon peeps through its branches
And I hear them crackle, not clear though
Moaning unobtrusive, through a wicked grin.
The moon lingers on long
Shining painfully in the womb of night.
I feel the stiffening wood coagulate in my veins
As blackness suffuses unbridled
In the cold wilderness of mind.
April never was summer in Kashmir
Look unto these dark skies
Those pierce the ether yet once more
Pelting mercilessly upon
The ailing, armourless beings
Whereby the cruel moon grins
And my heart wilts with each withering flower
Knocked down in the mud by
The unsparing shower.
Tears trickle down the smeared petals
And I collect them into my eyes
Till the plethora can no longer be contained
I let them fall
Into the capacious ***** of earth
And in this cruel April rain
My Cherry Tree shivers.
Moans. Weeps. Over me.
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 9:46 AM UTC
hunched back, towering shadow
12 feet tall and loping through snow
is this beast, wild, in my imagination?
or is it reality
as true as the frostbite
that threatens to
take my nose?
I never believed, I come from skeptics
but then as a fat man, I never had faith
that I'd lose enough weight
to carry myself through the Himalayas
THAT is more amazing to me
than a creature of legend
dragging its mid-day meal
back to its cozy cave
in frost-covered mountains
it stops, stands, regards me
one brute arm holding to its ****
white steam blowing, locomotive
from its nose
mouth opens as if to roar
and I...
wave
it tilts its head, closes its mouth
and with a shrug
leaps off through the snow
stiffening mountain sheep
flailing along behind
like a pull-toy
I say, more to myself than anyone:
Yeti, your secret is safe with me
No one back home
would ever believe.
2/17/15
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 8:54 AM UTC
The terrifying teeth chatter into the crimson lips of a wound up smile, chattering along the very risen table top that draws all small toys to their finite dooms. While breaths sour hour upon hour, each idling ear suffocates the last gasping breaths of its epicurean syllabic tongue, drizzling down the stomach like melt water from a cubic glacier in an ornamental silver tub, and sternly quibbles the stem-like dactyls drawing rose champagne into a fissure of the brain's tumescent humming.
Each finger tips' nail rouge and red, each dry crevice sewn into the knuckles, and a leaflet on sadism near the scratchy illegible lines whittled on the topside of the wrists and the slalom runs of the ankle. The ankle sinister. The ghost-like hallow sockets of where eyes could have once be seen. Plaster and albicant-like dying death white skins forbade from the Flushing streets where the jazz dance once began. And with each nellypotted hop, three useless nuisances could not carry the bridle towards each nearly favorite sound that curiosity enslaved man to lean towards.
The women weirded out by corners, plastic-wrapped furniture in outdoor corridors, where sinners veil their retreats into state run triage centers. Fake plastic countertops built from fake plastic trees. With an M14's muzzle stiffening and shuttering, she who vents off her cured romances will always find herself flaccid on rubber knees. The disease of the plea, is once more an affectation of not falling for royalty but instead the royal we. There is this weapon of fraud that perplexes geneticists, that enslaves heterosexuals, where albeit nor the time or place, she venerates the libations that her mind creates, she lubricates her cells, dressing, her skin ripening, heaven trickling across her humble nape, where gentleness is only a fool's disease and need.
She. We. Heathens of eternity bowing our breaths in grand hyperbole see. I see she, and she sees me.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 3:28 AM UTC
fear is more than something in the air, but in the end, you'll find out that that's all it is
paranoia is good but only if you take calcium pills every morning because
paranoia is a stiffening agent and will shatter bad bones, every single bad one you have in you
why the **** did they have to laugh?
it was from far off but i heard it
what did he have to get from his car? why is he looking at me like that? why is his television always on the same ******* channel every day at this time?
his dog better not come anywhere near me
why can't he turn off that spotlight?
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 11:19 PM UTC
faux leather cracking, mauve in between
soft swoosh and wheels creaking
14 minutes and 38 seconds
your back stiffening, careful not to lean
too far back, in case the couch swallows you
why would you put such a small picture
in such a large frame? a sigh
you can’t run away from your anxiety attacks
you know
I know.
this is nothing like the movies
the bathroom is out of order
and there are barely any notes
on her clipboard
45 minutes and 22 seconds
let me know if the sadness gets worse, alright?
alright.
a child is gagging in the waiting room
you rush out without the copay
but you’ll be back again, soon.
Dec 20, 2016
Dec 20, 2016 at 1:25 AM UTC
I used to like to run
run like the wind,
just to see how fast I could go
and now I run
but to escape , to get away
you see,
I have trouble looking my demons in the eye
I am cowardice, weak, afriad
afraid that the fire burning in their eyes
will consume me, ruin me, burn me
leaving charred ashes of this person I hate
who's too afraid tell you the truth
too afraid to take her rose coloured glasses off and see the world for what it really is
too afraid to admit to herself that the reason she doesn't stand up
and shrug your shackles off her shoulders
why she doesn't tell you everything she should
why she stands at the mirror, poking and prodding
wishing her waist was thinner, her ******* were bigger
her legs were longer, her feet were smaller
her eyes less empty
she is afraid, afraid of one small little word
no
No I won't listen, No I don't care, No I won't love you
No, you can't have your way, you can't stay
and so she locks up her words, in the safe
in the pit of her stomach, in the far reaching backwoods of her mind
like drying cement it weighs her down
solidifying her veins, till her heart can't beat
stiffening limbs stopping her feet
from moving forward down the street
she is stone, a hollow, statuette of herself
till her screams shatter her way out, and break free
and then she runs
Jan 29, 2011
Jan 29, 2011 at 4:15 PM UTC
Cloud of smoke rising above
Revelation of joyous tranquility
A stir within the belly stiffening
A grafitti smiled, you lived within
A mouth stitched, heart un-sutured
Constrained by the apathy you bear
Consolidated in tethered pastures
A stare of silence vigorously imbues
A pleasure to meet your selfish leisures
Hear the voices rattling in throned castles
Run encircling the failed soul games
Good luck from one, another, a mother
I was bred as a hybrid alien, a predictor
Take these words and run, jog on
Your palms saturated with energy
Leave the magic and gallop with horses
Mar 28, 2016
Mar 28, 2016 at 8:48 AM UTC
~~~
Testimony & Majesty: Oh God, Why Do You Inflict Me?
~~~
Morning dawning...
Thickened whitened whipped cumulus
come crossing,
no frenzied froth,
moving slow royal, stately,
as if they are the pride of a
celestial navy,
peaceful ships,
crossing from my portal to your port,
traversing from my shade
of the blues,
over to you, poet,
to your personal screen-adapted
CinemaScope version sights
This wind buffets,
re-directing my
morning~borning hallelujahs
this wind, nameless,
call it chipper, fulsome and volatile,
a proud pusher selling a waking up
near-chill pill,
to accompany the real+imagined
armada of nature
it, near and nearer
to you,
to the sky we inhabit+share,
its ***** stiffening energy,
makes some
hide inside,
not me,
I'm outed by the
harsh welcome~touch of this
realized reminder -
who is the master,
who is but
an obedient servant,
choicelessly writing his
psalmist morning devotions...
another poem of sky, cloud and wind?
*Oh God why do you inflict me?
with this time after time obeisance
when I am
metaphor drained and disabled,
abject of adjectives,
simile frowning upside downing,
have we poets not done our dutiful
illuminating your bountiful works?*
yet here I am,
a soul surviving,
incapable of resistance,
your frosted creatures persistent,
wrest my visions into prose,
to add to your overly full Facebook page,
with more fawning praise...
*Angered have I, you, for now nowhere,
tropical rain squall tells all,
humans are toys,
born to serve,
silence your complaining~explaining,
and from nowhere with
rapido intensity rising,
down pours drops of scornful
water whippings,
demarcating our
incoming existence inequality...*
and yet with your
yang and yang,
a reproach for me,
for as it waterspout pours,
it also pours sunshine,
a mystifying warning
to the put-upon poet,
that in the admixture
of nature and life,
all is conflicted,
all is tremulous beautiful,
and now is the
due time...
*due, you,
to complete this treatise as
testimony to majesty...*
~~~
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 2:02 PM UTC
****** me with your madness
Pull me in with your spiraling illusions
Paint swirls beneath my eyelids
trickle words into my pores
Make my breath a choke without your power
Make the screams come out my ears
Hot words swell on my tongue
Send me from this stiffening reality
in, to the elastic world of light
or is it darkness
the image is not mine
You pasted it to my eyes
You remove it
Or forever I will pace my castle in the air.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 9:55 PM UTC
Weak and broken, lost inside myself,
Scared and alone, basically dead inside,
All these things running through my head,
Who am I? Why am I here? Why am I alive?
Am I even important? To anyone? To anything?
I struggled to find the answer,
Slowly along the way, drowning my demons,
Fighting my fears, meeting myself,
Simply knowing,
Helping the ones who have been hurt like me,
Forgetting the ones who never wanted me,
Cutting myself free from the grasps of the darkness inside,
But I have a stiffening fear I will be back someday,
As I finally stand in the sun again,
But I'm different now,
And the fear melts away,
As I finally walk free of the chains that once scarred my wrists,
My hollow body, heart, mind, soul, fills once more with joy,
And I stop to think, why now? Why here?
But I realize now, the reason for it,
I am content with myself and who I am...
After everything I've been through,
I'm stronger, stronger as a person,
Along this journey I made a friend,
Myself,
And I am good enough for me, and that's all I ever really needed.
Mar 1, 2015
Mar 1, 2015 at 10:08 PM UTC
real councillors
explaining
over used
explanations
to people who
understand more
than people
believe
dark corners
with mysterious
invisible eyes
visible to those
unlucky enough
to see them
with eyelids
shut
light traces
musings
and patterns
lacing bodies
with streaks
of red
and stains
of pain
toilet bowls
lent over
by overbearing
undernourished
starved and
underweighted
figures
of bones
shaking hands
firmly planted
against brick
walls
cracked bruises
harshly noticeable
and starkly
stiffening
dried tears
only means
they were
wet once
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 8:02 AM UTC
I have no energy left but for revolt — the revolt of the one who abandons the climb, turns his back, and goes back down the hill toward the water.
**** Cheney ate my flesh and shat upon my skeletal remnants. Obama came after him, unzipped his fly and emptied the pale dilution of his bladder-wine onto me (it was warm and sparkling at first, but soon became cold and fetid).
I do not want to be treated by your white-robed functionaries who take me to the precipice’s edge, deliver a pill to my mouth, a hand in my pocket, and a push on my back. I do not want to be educated by your masters of delusion, your demons of standardized measurement. I do not want to be fed by your factory corpses who sit like workers in cubicles, unmoving and covered to their hips in excrement and despair. I do not want to be employed by your treadmill machines that turn time into regret and obedience into tears. I do not want to be informed by your chyron streams that feed the wells of desolation and ignorance. I do not want to be a part of your economy that fills the fountains of palaces with the blood of innocence, where investment is a tout sheet that dissolves into electrons as the getaway limousine races toward the mansion.
The sheer and final exhaustion of the rebel is his last and only triumph: he drops the knife of his cause, gently lowers the stiffening body of his holy purpose into the receptive dust, clears aside a few stony pieces of the rubble, and kneels in submission to the earth and all the teeming beauty that lies beneath it.
For then he knows: it is I, too, like these others, who have walked among the dead.
Mar 29, 2010
Mar 29, 2010 at 9:12 PM UTC
He barely remembers Verdun and then when that was done
it was Passchendale
but now old and frail on a walking frame
with a gammy leg full of cold shrapnel
from the hell
of the bravery
in the war to end all slavery.
He moves slowly along the top of the cliff
leg quite stiff in the stiffening breeze.
And the falling stars
those medals with bars upon his lapel
another reminder
from the long ago hell.
He hears the pipers
fears the snipers but they've all gone
somewhere on the Somme.
Lulled into some false sense of serenity
I took my eyes off him and didn't see
him go over the top
Pulled away
and then he rose and went marching off across the morning bay
to meet his friends
(from a friends battalion,somewhere up Wigan way)
I watched them as they knelt to pray
and then go off into yesterday
to fight a war
and win their
peace.
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 3:40 AM UTC
You’d think she really was
Mud sticking and stiffening to the Loud Lady’s toes,
And her sigh sticks in mine.
Don’t let them do this to me and I didn’t
But I did. God’s great pillar carried us west.
They dragged her like a fog.
The men who cried **** spit and grinned
and the smoke grew sorrowed with girth.
How I long to breathe in Black Hill breath
to drown in the Belle Fourche
and swallow the palest Crook ashes that float,
Chewing the body that I left and let-
But there is no redemption in the tops of towers.
No spiral of justice. No figment
of grace in these sooty species.
No Bear Lodge witches that the Loud Lady cried
So surely that
You’d think she really was
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 1:57 PM UTC
*actually, the only home i have are the muddy fields of belgium during world war i, or among the jews, but given the jews are settled, i guess i better daydream: i mean i never got the cultural imprint of the english idea of dating... put me in the Czech Republic and i'd be freely participating in ****** any day... this stiffening date-culture never appealed to me, it always felt like a divorce before a marriage: so no amorous fun with body but fun in making out in cordiality of being fully dressed and lapping palettes up with tongue rather than the ******** as if throwing a coconut at Robinson Crusoe? yes?! ah crap... point towards the Zulu clan, i just feel the need to strip naked.*
yeah, i believe in meow-meow land,
that's the country next to la-la-land...
where you're trying to sterilise
yourself in terms of organic
historicity and integrate yourself
in terms of inorganic sterilisation
via importing alien values to hush
the monogamy crescendo of failure.
with the irish telling you:
ain't no english...
and with scots you shout back:
there's no thing as to be treated impossible
whether in thought about or moved!
the irish want you to have a coarse
enough accent as them so you can be belittled...
i always favoured the scots, warm-hearted ********
and i too the first hairy-shinned trans-gender
kilt loving twirly girl of a music box
of cherry tree cheaply picked Muzak
for the thrills of shopping for cardigans and pineapples.
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 7:30 PM UTC