"stilts" poems
No, no, no, I know I was not important as I moved
Through the colourful country, I was but a single
Item in the picture, the name, not the beloved.
O tedious man with whom no gods commingle.
Beauty, who has described beauty? Once upon a time
I had a myth that was a lie but it served:
Trees walking across the crest of hills and my rhyme
Cavorting on mile-high stilts and the unnerved
Crowds looking up with terror in their rational faces.
O dance with Kitty Stobling I outrageously
Cried out-of-sense to them, while their timorous paces
Stumbled behind Jove's page boy paging me.
I had a very pleasant journey, thank you sincerely
For giving me my madness back, or nearly.
-Patrick Kavanagh
Copyright © Estate of Katherine Kavanagh
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Depression tends to have a manipulating and controlling manner that spits and hisses from behind her snarled teeth,
Depression swallows the light.
And in doing so, depression gulps down yellow, drowning the sun and all his mighty.
Depression chomps on green, bits off grass and shrubble stuck to the inner corner of her lip.
Depression chews pink, each candy floss cloud tickling her taste buds.
Depression chugs blue, the ferocious waves sloshing down her throat with ease.
Depression regurgitates darkness, there is no colour when depression grabs my hands, looming shadows engulf my vision,
Depression’s feet start to move and I realise we are dancing to the dull thud of my heartbeat,
I dance with depression all through the dark, but it isn’t just dark, it’s the kind of dark with no moon, no stars or streetlights, it’s the kind of dark that creeps up on you until you cannot even see your nose.
The darkness slithers under my fingernails and slices back my skin, slipping beneath my flesh, it wears my hand like a glove,
It wanders upwards and claims my face simply as a mask,
As it seeps down, down, down, my legs now become stilts.
I am no longer dancing with depression, depression is dancing me, I am her puppet.
Jul 10, 2018
Jul 10, 2018 at 1:45 AM UTC
Mickey Mouse
When Mickey Mouse comes home hungover
He throws up ice cold Coca-Cola
He lives in a spherical house in the sky
Which he enters and exits with telescopic stilts
Which grow or shrink with every step
He is a good vertical neighbor
I live just to the right of him down below
He always stops to say hello
Or to make me laugh with a joke or pose
(One time he even stole my nose)
Sometimes I get so mad at Mickey
That I take it out on my kid
And then spent, I wonder what Mickey did?
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 3:31 AM UTC
You swell some strain on me,
You, middle kingdom!
Eradicating small detachments,
Of both sailors and marines.
They were ranked on islets and reefs,
With an integer of nine –
There in the island next to me,
I’m sure, you know who Spratly is.
Always wanting such detachment
To be eradicated by your own;
Now stationed
On a World War II era landing ship.
Your toy-ships came near me,
With 9-kilometer of the LST.
“It’s there illegally,”
How adamant that be!
I’ve tipped you off already,
Surely will I stand firm!
Then, you’ve countered me on! –
Opting for the ******** of more skyscrapers;
Those that are on stilts;
Now nearby two Reefs & a Bank? –
Nearby my darling Palawan Island!
“There is no room at all,”
For the negotiation on some point,
You’ve declared.
Oh, here’s my friend, U.S.
Left us with course of action to try;
Everyone calm down,
Be less provocative.
For often, he flies over;
Probing some stuffs.
You are the biggest offender, my friend;
In this dispute, you show no sign of slowing;
Or backing, down.
But hey, I won’t give up!
(9/9/13)
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 10:03 PM UTC
For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for sweet peas.
And whose skin could be misplaced for dogwood.
Tongue as innocent as the boy that cried wolf,
And eyes as golden as yore.
You knew of that girl, count every school day,
Where she walked through the door, head bowed and heart prayed.
'neath those bangs, whose color is as dark as our breaths, and as shiny as false tree,
Whose eyes--exotic--bluer--bluer than a thumbtack and bluebells set out by sea.
Whose eyes are mismatched by plentiful lips--small as the silver spec on my shoe,
And shimmered 'neath sterile light, as if she kissed the face of Mt. Rushmore, too.
With those high lips and V-line chin, which connected with her pencil neck to her petite body,
No ******* or bottom, with legs as thin as stilts and as blinding as our phones,
She holds the body of a cradle, and sings like a tongue-less canary.
Always kempt and proper--her hair tied back with a lovely noose.
And shoes worry not of dirt--for she never played outside.
Resting 'neath maple-wood trees like a bunny--face and knees tucked by arms, and that's where they reside.
Many boys had asked for her hand in play, but that bunny went deeper--deeper into the flesh hole she burrowed.
"Painfully shy, she was." They said.
And that pain was her devil.
For you knew not the cause of those florid, pink, cheeks.
Whose purpose means nothing but dead machines.
Whose eyes rung bright--struck the world alight,
Yet, they themselves could not see.
For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for vintage bust,
And whose skin could be misplaced for bile.
Whose eyes mistaken for lust,
And face mistaken for tile.
For you knew of the girl whose cheeks were so pink, they'd be mistaken for heat,
And whose skin could be misplaced for bleach.
For again and again and again, the belt beats.
And hello to endless ******
For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see,
Blue waters and purple veins clash--wash again and again 'gainst land--and befit the word: queer.
For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see,
Innocence knows no bounds and eyes no longer see flavor,
For if you drew closer and closer--and closer, you see,
Exotic eyes bled--rained--pink--and pink--and pink with grand fervor...!
For sometimes it may frighten you to know,
Not all persons are truly healthy,
even those who you hold truly dear.
Jun 16, 2016
Jun 16, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
You are entitled, they say
I asked for too much on christmas.
I asked for time, and wished for difference.
She stands on stilts and judges outsiders
This is all for you, she claims
From behind the shattered window pain.
I gave birth to you, she says.
You are an adult.
Scratch that.
You are a child.
Strikethrough.
You are a burden.
I am crippled without her
I am broken when she's near
She doesn't want to hear
She's too far gone.
Jan 18, 2012
Jan 18, 2012 at 11:42 PM UTC
Mammy never owned a dryer,
She would always use the fire
To dry clean clothes for her eight kids,
Who played in pants as if on stilts,
Wore Goodwill shirts like cardboard fibre.
We'd no money for laundromats,
Immigrants don't waste like that;
We made the move from Ireland,
Turned our backs, washed our hands;
Chose Sarnia to make our home.
Yes, Mammy washed our clothes with stones;
She'd string lines from wall to wall,
And draped our patchwork overalls.
In autumn, winter and early spring,
Our house was strung with clothes line string;
Socks dropped on chairs near heating vents,
Every room had ***** like tents.
One day Daddy stretched a line
From our back porch
To the farthest pine.
Looped the wire on a tubeless rim,
Secured the ends with linchpins.
Mammy was so pleased with him.
We four saw what he'd done,
He'd made a ride for his sons.
We were gliding like clothes drying,
Riding down the yard.
Flapping, laughing, having fun,
Like human clothes under the sun;
We , however, were burdensome,
The line gave up, and we fell hard.
On blustery days when sheets are snapping,
I recall the clothes line cracking,
Our fall from grace had nothing lacking.
Oh, I remember he chastised,
But I also remember
Daddy's eyes,
And how they smiled
When he told his friends
He hung his sons
Out to dry.
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 12:57 PM UTC
Let us not talk philosophy, drop it, Jeanne.
So many words, so much paper, who can stand it.
I told you the truth about my distancing myself.
I've stopped worrying about my misshapen life.
It was no better and no worse than the usual human tragedies.
For over thirty years we have been waging our dispute
As we do now, on the island under the skies of the tropics.
We flee a downpour, in an instant the bright sun again,
And I grow dumb, dazzled by the emerald essence of the leaves.
We submerge in foam at the line of the surf,
We swim far, to where the horizon is a tangle of banana bush,
With little windmills of palms.
And I am under accusation: That I am not up to my oeuvre,
That I do not demand enough from myself,
As I could have learned from Karl Jaspers,
That my scorn for the opinions of this age grows slack.
I roll on a wave and look at white clouds.
You are right, Jeanne, I don't know how to care about the salvation of my soul.
Some are called, others manage as well as they can.
I accept it, what has befallen me is just.
I don't pretend to the dignity of a wise old age.
Untranslatable into words, I chose my home in what is now,
In things of this world, which exist and, for that reason, delight us:
Nakedness of women on the beach, coppery cones of their *******
Hibiscus, alamanda, a red lily, devouring
With my eyes, lips, tongue, the guava juice, the juice of la prune de Cythère,
*** with ice and syrup, lianas-orchids
In a rain forest, where trees stand on the stilts of their roots.
Death, you say, mine and yours, closer and closer,
We suffered and this poor earth was not enough.
The purple-black earth of vegetable gardens
Will be here, either looked at or not.
The sea, as today, will breathe from its depths.
Growing small, I disappear in the immense, more and more free.
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Thinning orchid hair
Velvet bruised lips
moving, glassy eyed
an auctioned body.
Dancing on the wind
Today's terrible twilight
Idol eyes on the world...
lingering,looking.
Angel kissing tracks
falling is falling
spinning rooms
twirling on stilts
Feb 8, 2011
Feb 8, 2011 at 4:23 PM UTC
Mourning - you flew over indigo waters,
landing
Stealthy stalker you walked the shallows
billing silvery minnows
On rust red stilts, you're built
to move in watery fields
Eyes piercing depths of algae blooms
rippled, your swaying seaweed room
Silent hunter,
feathery plumed
Jul 24, 2012
Jul 24, 2012 at 11:19 AM UTC
After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played at the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a thousand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the lookout?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out,
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,
Please let me know beforehand,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-sa.
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Rumpel-Stilts-Kun*
Him and his thumb
Up in his ***
*** *** *** ***
Dec 7, 2015
Dec 7, 2015 at 4:56 AM UTC
if he is not made of them wholly, branches, he will be soon. they are everywhere, and he steps on them, and they are arms from hell. he wears a child’s football jersey, torn at his size and his sorrow. he reaches into it and pulls out his heart, a red balloon given the what for, inside of which he blows his nose. he returns the heart.
a yellow adherent hangs from both nostrils, as two ropes being cut at and then loosed from his brain. the first keeps an arm from heaven; the second he catches and loops twice to put on his neck. one is never out of the woods here, and he knows it, knows here is Baltimore, Ohio. he has watched the people, some of them, leave; their happiness would be better called remission.
he is giddy when he comes upon a man wearing only a barrel and he tips it with joy and makes better his headway home. the rolled over branches shriek and wake the man who nakedly bails. the branches up their shrieking.
his mother he has no dementia of his time in her womb. why for **** the despondent are given captions like ‘blank look’ he can’t say for in his mama naught but canvassing eyes. she’s what he calls ‘at grocery’, shaking a coffee can she’ll buy because a done melon can’t hold pennies. she often at the neck is saddled with two toddlers but in his projection now there is just one making miracle of not kicking the coffee can into another’s back.
any girl that occurs lets him take her with his tongue only as she seems to know he was circumcised and after that much paddled.
he starts thinking on dad and dad’s laughing when mother’d say boys be home before dog because that’s how it sounded from seizures and of course rock candy in the summer. the barrel splinters beneath him to be forgotten and his legs go to bleeding stilts.
his last things by his face are insufficient; rock candy, barrel, and twin. I talk on the barrel, I don’t need it, not anymore.
Jul 1, 2012
Jul 1, 2012 at 1:34 AM UTC
so it begins when it begins
blasé grass serrates
past herds of carabao dreaming anxiously
of the day's toil;
the countryman stilts through
mounted in gray mountain
with dippers, casserole, mirrors
with imprints of ******** clad women
and women who are (really ******** clad) ready for bathing work,
collections of red days and even
tenderly the ***** sing attenuated songs of rooming-houses —
the crunch of basil over the afternoon.
waft of a pasture's death my eyes well
up rivers and ponds of elation. dog days, feral nights limp behind rusted
kennels and makeshift asylums
there is nothing left of the world
(this small world
that only rises when bellows
of festivities harangue the many streets
bending in them, the curve)
men moving from neck to neck
of bottles — (in the north there
is only four corners of bottle: gin,
pristine brook; in the Visayas is
the redolent Vino Kulafu of the same
potency) plucked out of the vermilion
and on benched careening on half-painted gates crooning Sinatra
gets stabbed, bloodied on the floor,
named after elegies; native chicken held
upside down and beheaded as many blacker days stifled; what do you make
out of this?
carabaos, equines, hens line up
the slaughterhouse behind the
TODA; you know a fine day when
it happens — breaking eggs
against the lip of the kaldero. crumbled
archaic sensurround, barrage of
simmer round the clock cycling
before the child wakes and wails to suckle
our mothers, faster than repose
of milbrightlions of stars falling asleep
to silent radios, leaving windows
open revisited by the eve of cold.
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 10:24 PM UTC
A man poses at a dimly lit table,
a light hangs directly overhead
with a cobweb ribbon-wrapped around
the steel wire escaping the ceiling.
An inverted roulette table,
a man betting against the house:
It is always this way.
Light flickers, flipped on,
and off, and on,
without a switch
with which to assert control.
He is alone in the squeaking chair,
sipping tea and dipping his crumb-covered
hands into the napkin-covered basket
of water crackers and salted peanuts.
Sitting, he poses for practice, but for now,
he practices for no one.
The house is empty.
In the back of his mind, there is no worry
of what one will find upon entering
the kitchen: A scarecrow at a table,
full of straw and teeth dulled down
from night grinding,
sitting in, what could be mistaken
as, a pensive position.
The scavenger hand makes him look wanting.
It's partner is propped on chin,
accompanied by his half-sculpted smile
and the dark-light contrast of his hair and eyes
with yellow shining off of his two front teeth.
The color is not the fault of stumbling home
too late to care for the mouth, but of the old
incandescent staring him down
and the obsessively clean, marble surface
at which he puckers his face.
A tapping in the hall stirs his bones
and his body darts up.
A crow, it seems, with small grey beak
has wandered in from the overgrown fields,
the fields that haven't been tended to
since this boy began taking himself too seriously.
The both of them with stilts for legs
and no breeze of running feet
from scream to sway the pair of pairs.
Their eyes connect and neither moves.
Who should place the first bet,
black or red,
and who will set the ball in motion?
The light goes off.
Denoument is a bad time
for a bulb to die.
As calm as a hand
with razorblade against skin,
the scarecrow sits down once again
and poses.
The bird observes his motion,
calls, and waits,
but the man moves no more,
overjoyed with an invisible audience,
a full stomach.
Aug 16, 2012
Aug 16, 2012 at 3:05 AM UTC
there's no point writing out what poetry is... if you don't actually write it.
a whiskey prior noon,
too soon, too soon,
too soon?
i'll be cooking a turkey curry later,
a whiskey prior noon,
too soon, too soon,
too soon?!
rhyme or rhythmic, perhaps the latter
in Dante's trinity of rhymes -
poetry of the near-illiterate,
who never read as much as could
have been -
thinking it out as origin and originals -
a man without influence is
not worth reciting -
he'll still have to borrow
the life of a Henry VIII somehow,
whether he has or hasn't read a book
concerning the man -
while the Vatican emerges as the gossip
library of all the European royal families,
and indeed Henry VIII dubbed
Anne Boleyn's cow dangler *******
duckies - i think it's due to the fact
he quacked while he suckled the *******
like a pre-mature **** not producing ***** -
seriously, no milk;
and as honesty goes, ********** literature
does it for me, patron saint kenneth rexroth -
self-education moulds the self into a
pristine sequence of surprises -
there the pop of a balloon,
there the weeping clown...
there the giraffe on stilts!
indeed even at university entry point
where i deposited my self
i came back with debts!
idiotic treachery of teaching the politicised
version of language,
as language per se simply called grammatically
sound, in politics simply versed "correct";
two satans from Syria while Solomon
had his harem,
a third from Poland,
they say the holocaust,
6 million if not more citizens of the world
with polish passports - mind you
they took the Diogenes quote
into left and right parallel readied for a march -
Apollo listened then laughed at
the failures counting to 13 - laughing
while the words 'too the moon!' were eased
out from his helium filled lungs.
Apr 28, 2016
Apr 28, 2016 at 6:11 AM UTC
Pixied fairies
Druid pixies
Swinging on breathe and trees
Loosing themselves to each other
Solace place
No hate no greed
No distrusting
No talking of others
Best friends verily in love
Gangsters of mad Lovers
Sitting on stilts of no guilt but hugs!!
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 12:47 PM UTC
Asle,
Amazes me
Asle,
Phases me
Asle,
Gets me high
Asle,
Gets me ******
Asle,
A shack of amour'
Asle,
Gives me a home
Alsle,
Tucks me in bed in mine mind
Asle,
A lacy string of hourglass time
Asle,
One I can't release
Asle,
Every mans belief
Asle,
A contact to god
Asle,
A wandering pod
Asle,
A loot for the steal
Asle,
A dream to me, maby one day real
Asle,
Letters shall I write
Asle,
A suddening polite
Asle,
A capsule of ******* numbing
Asle,
For the birds alls humming
Asle,
A party to oneself
Asle,
Alone on stilts
Asle,
Canst thou not be afraid?
Asle,
I'm not others oh sugar cane
Asle,
Wrestled with thy demons
Asle,
Cut, broke, and bleeding?
Asle,
Down thy aisle I want to walk
Asle,
Let me post thou a forgetnot!
Asle,
Let me be martyr'd for thine transgressions
Asle,
I see thy train rolling in, shalt I come to thy station?
Asle,
Ive got a strong premonition
Asle,
Shalt I enter thy kitchen?
Asle,
Is thy bed warm or cold?
Asle,
Move over mine love and feel ourn kindling coals!!
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 2:31 PM UTC
quanta is better understood outside of physics,
on a grander scale -
quantum is a quality suggestion that
makes two (to, too) things auto-suggestive
as pertaining in the matter -
never mind - take the concept of quanta
out of physics and you get
a man readying himself for a controlled
coma having his wisdom teeth removed,
with the anaesθetician asking about
the readers' digest, the patient replying
quo vadis? / dokąd idziesz? then
the great sleep plateau - 'where are you going?'
puts any man off, whether boxer,
or paediatrician - ****** lays dead floored
for a minute, plays the dog game: play dead,
tongue hanging ready for a guillotine.
CHOP! and there goes the tail of a Doberman
(jamnik / dachshund on stilts)
and a ρoττł-
y
woo woo woo chim chimney
cha cha cha ooh
the rotting wail - rottweiler -
-ειλερ;
you never mention the u with the v due to
the chisel ease, then again, you don't
say double-o'h but say double u -
too shay frowning at a shave;
****** i'll make your language my playground
given all these post-colonial ***** aiming
for a signature and credentials,
this **** could pass the London brigade,
but take it to York, it would be a massacre
of a bureaucratic lapse of credentials...
a viking invasion more-or-less;
oh **** quantum physics, Charles Dickens
and the Victorian Era - Jack the Ripper the antonym,
both are the desired cages of energy requiring expression
to make testimony that such an age existed,
a particular congregate of expression, never universal,
boxes and pockets, however much inside one
is a question of your dietary requirement,
quantum physics is better explained with history
than hard science, and atoms, or the craze of subs,
people need a bigger picture, not everyone own
a ******* microscope or a telescope,
teach quantum physics using history:
Philippe Augustus of France mattered,
at the Battle of Bouvines - Otto IV? not so much.
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 7:45 PM UTC
I have always been the umbrella type:
Cloudy, with a chance of dying.
Water is petrifying—
When it rains, I listen to sad music and enjoy the view
Hoping I never have to venture out to you
Because I have no idea where you’ll flood into
And then I’ll have to peel away my dress you seeped right through
And nakedness is frightening and sitting in the shower
--shivering--
is not very inviting.
In fact, it’s very unpleasant when you’re by nature private
And have a hundred empty places to keep quiet
Covered and compliant.
Getting wet is terrible when you’ve spent forever piecing together
A paper-mache umbrella to cover
Your cracks.
Storms are not my style, I’m still trying to dry
From the tears I was born crying.
I was born cloudy with a chance of dying
Cloudy with a chance of never even trying
And when you’re born with a heavy heart
the last thing you need is to get
drenched.
Wringing yourself out is just a defense
It’s common sense--
--to never lose sight of the shore
SO, this is why I hide from the downpour
Under dusty cotton covers
And don’t ever even wonder
What it would be like
To be dragged in your wake
It’s not like I’m safe from you anyway.
I wasn’t built on stilts
I’m not a flood-proof gate,
I’m a rusty fire-escape that only reaches halfway
down
And I don’t want you waiting at the bottom and begging me to jump but of course you are,
You always are
But even though I know you’d catch me
You are scary and I’d rather jump to concrete because at least it looks like solid ground
And when I go down, I comfort myself with the 100 percent chance that at least
I won’t drown.
Apr 15, 2013
Apr 15, 2013 at 12:38 AM UTC
Those words created a translucent fog on my vision
Against which I would judge every misty morning from that moment on
It was warm, but the robins wouldn't play their song
If only I could have known then
Basking in your radiation, I felt simple
Contained within a bottle of lemon juice
Sewn together with white wash threads upon the presentation table
And I felt whole
A lack of lacking that filled my filling
Satisfying the rumination, you could never trip
Haven't lied before, so my thought were undeniable
Still I remained liable
When I was made of sand and toothpicks
Simply molded by circumstance
I was supposed to stand on my own feet
Not wobble upon your stilts
You told me that from the start
But all I wanted was your heart
And all you wanted was my words
For temporary fulfillment
If only I had known then
When did I realize
Unfortunately, I don't know
But the edges of my cloud were still trimmed at your feet
So that you might reflect upon your selfishness and realize I was still there
I try not to disappear
As much as I am able
Since once upon a time I shall have the potion of immortal unity
That only lasts as long as we might
But it would be enough
Not for you
But for me
Dec 29, 2011
Dec 29, 2011 at 4:56 PM UTC
PROCESSIONS that lack high stilts have nothing that
catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were
twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern Stalks
upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence
or a fire.
Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, ake
but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon This
timber toes,
Because women in the upper storeys demand a face at
the pane,
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to
chisel and plane.
Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild,
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child.
All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose
Far up in the stretches of night; night splits and the
dawn breaks loose;
I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.
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with such verve, the jester strides into the courtyard.
on stilts with a tambourine in hand,
a mask conceals his face
yet still boasts of his sun-smile!
he dances to dulcimers and drums,
he's charming and the people laugh
as they look up at him in wonder,
but when his performance is done, he leaves;
the townspeople return to their chatter,
but i watch him, the gypsy-wonder on stilts,
leaving to tread other lands all alone
to bring merriment through show,
and i feel the heaviness of my heart
knowing the he took it with him.
Nov 22, 2016
Nov 22, 2016 at 7:46 PM UTC
Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
available for the world to break once again.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC
My mother questions, “Why aren’t we equal?”
As she paints my walls with white
She wonders why my colorful friends don’t get as lucky as me
But she also wonders about the financial aid the government says we don’t need
I bang on her white walls and insist we’re well off
But she still asks why
And I can’t say “you! It’s because of people like you that my friends need a dollar or two”
Because of the way she plays hypocrite
Condemning welfare and the impoverished while asking why she doesn’t get any
Confirming the stereotype that most people aren’t innately racist
It’s just their own thoughtlessness that causes the disconnect
And it’s not just my mother, it’s all my people, me too
My friend once asked, “Why is Kierra so into social justice?”
Maybe because the history of our ancestors was carried on the backs of her people
Maybe because even today my people say we’re so good, so equal, so righteous
When we still look at a black man and assume the white is better
We don’t mean it but my assumptive mind insists that Kierra always needs a hand
When what is really needed is a strict hand to the side of my head
Jostle that rude assumption out of my head
She is her own person, not a broken house left on stilts
And assuming she is broken is worse than anything I can think of
So it’s a double edged sword because races need to work together to fix this atrocity
But we must also give each their freedom to grow and equalize equally
I will never understand the plight of one a different race
But I understand plight, from my gender and my mental state
My mother always told me treat everyone fairly
She always said to treat everyone right
But here she keeps on going
Painting my walls with white
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 9:54 AM UTC