"suntans" poems - Hello Poetry

but you are smooth in full regalia reptilian in your lounge suit your westchester upbringing shows in your brooks brothers snake skin boots so she knows your from old school money and plants a perfumed eye on your rear end it sticks there like sweaty glue every inch of her polished skin fermented at great expense and you thought suntans were hard to pay off try having the ***** pickled in whiskey but the divorce would leave you a destitute sideshow on rodeo drive with nothing but your mansion and your jag standing between you and the unwashed masses so you make her slap on another layer of makeup you drop another crotch rocket happy hardness pill and slip a few more bucks over the border to Switzerland and drop a quick prayer to the twin god of Morgan and Stanley that the market holds for one more day lounge lizard pushing seventy with a twenty two year old ****** on one arm and the keys to the rolls clutched in your liver spotted hand your ready for anything you may be king of the florida keys but gotta respect the cash flow if what your pointless poison bites off your **** more than goes into your mouth then ya gotta wonder kiddo if moving back to the homestead in Spuyten Duyvil might be better than lettin lifestyle carjack your life that twenty two year old ***** you got poured all over your lap has more spider in her than girlish charm shes a train wreck waiting to happen ill get ya to the border safe and sound don't 'cha worry bout that have you headed north fore they even know your gone may be the king of the florida keys but it high time we get ya back to brooklyn fore they bury you down here

0

Sep 27, 2013

Sep 27, 2013 at 5:47 PM UTC

mark-john-junor-1

lounge lizard

but you are smooth in full regalia reptilian in your lounge suit your westchester upbringing shows in your brooks brothers snake skin boots so she knows your from old school money and plants a perfumed eye on your rear end it sticks there like sweaty glue every inch of her polished skin fermented at great expense and you thought suntans were hard to pay off try having the ***** pickled in whiskey but the divorce would leave you a destitute sideshow on rodeo drive with nothing but your mansion and your jag standing between you and the unwashed masses so you make her slap on another layer of makeup you drop another crotch rocket happy hardness pill and slip a few more bucks over the border to Switzerland and drop a quick prayer to the twin god of Morgan and Stanley that the market holds for one more day lounge lizard pushing seventy with a twenty two year old ****** on one arm and the keys to the rolls clutched in your liver spotted hand your ready for anything you may be king of the florida keys but gotta respect the cash flow if what your pointless poison bites off your **** more than goes into your mouth then ya gotta wonder kiddo if moving back to the homestead in Spuyten Duyvil might be better than lettin lifestyle carjack your life that twenty two year old ***** you got poured all over your lap has more spider in her than girlish charm shes a train wreck waiting to happen ill get ya to the border safe and sound don't 'cha worry bout that have you headed north fore they even know your gone may be the king of the florida keys but it high time we get ya back to brooklyn fore they bury you down here

45

Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where paintings were, and something reminding us this is like all other moving days; finding the ***** ends of someone else's life, hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, and burned-out matches in the corner; things not preserved, yet never swept away like fragments of disturbing dreams we stumble on all day. . . in ordering our lives, we will discard them, scrub clean the floorboards of this our home lest refuse from the lives we did not lead become, in some strange, frightening way, our own. And we have plans that will not tolerate our fears-- a year laid out like rooms in a new house--the dusty wine glasses rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves sagging with heavy winter books. Seeing the room always as it will be, we are content to dust and wait. We will return here from the dark and silent streets, arms full of books and food, anxious as we always are in winter, and looking for the Good Life we have made. I see myself then: tense, solemn, in high-heeled shoes that pinch, not basking in the light of goals fulfilled, but looking back to now and seeing a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl in a bare room, full of promise and feeling envious. Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward into the future--as if, when the room contains us and all our treasured junk we will have filled whatever gap it is that makes us wander, discontented from ourselves. The room will not change: a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint won't make much difference; our eyes are fickle but we remain the same beneath our suntans, pale, frightened, dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time, dreaming our dreaming selves. I look forward and see myself looking back.

0

3.8k

Erica Jong

Autumn Perspective

Now, moving in, cartons on the floor, the radio playing to bare walls, picture hooks left stranded in the unsoiled squares where paintings were, and something reminding us this is like all other moving days; finding the ***** ends of someone else's life, hair fallen in the sink, a peach pit, and burned-out matches in the corner; things not preserved, yet never swept away like fragments of disturbing dreams we stumble on all day. . . in ordering our lives, we will discard them, scrub clean the floorboards of this our home lest refuse from the lives we did not lead become, in some strange, frightening way, our own. And we have plans that will not tolerate our fears-- a year laid out like rooms in a new house--the dusty wine glasses rinsed off, the vases filled, and bookshelves sagging with heavy winter books. Seeing the room always as it will be, we are content to dust and wait. We will return here from the dark and silent streets, arms full of books and food, anxious as we always are in winter, and looking for the Good Life we have made. I see myself then: tense, solemn, in high-heeled shoes that pinch, not basking in the light of goals fulfilled, but looking back to now and seeing a lazy, sunburned, sandaled girl in a bare room, full of promise and feeling envious. Now we plan, postponing, pushing our lives forward into the future--as if, when the room contains us and all our treasured junk we will have filled whatever gap it is that makes us wander, discontented from ourselves. The room will not change: a rug, or armchair, or new coat of paint won't make much difference; our eyes are fickle but we remain the same beneath our suntans, pale, frightened, dreaming ourselves backward and forward in time, dreaming our dreaming selves. I look forward and see myself looking back.

49

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, again, and I'm wearing green shoes, green shirt-- overeager as usual. I've never really enjoyed St. Patrick's Day, or any other holiday, for that matter, and I find it ironic that the more significance we give to a person or event the more their meaning is deluded. But it's good to have something to look forward to. Today, in America, St. Patrick may as well be a naked, red-headed lepperchaun. People don't care about him as much as me; they don't get out of bed each day that week wearing green and scoffing at the timid early-spring sun gazing at the short-sleeved men and brown-thighed women. Maybe it matters to them that suntans at the beginning are only de-tubed relics of an ancient, burning photosynthesis relinquished to the ground. It matters to me more that these women think-- even more, know!-- that it is too late in the early spring to cover their legs and allow the pale, unready skin lie in hibernation. They want to show the men their defined calves and undefined dreams. They fain naivety with bright hues, such as Kelly. And I frown, because I know they have to do this, or I wouldn't notice them. Waking up and putting green shirts on the whole week leading up to St. Patrick's day. Anticipating the Spring, which is already here, they raise their glistening arms in the air and lean back, smiling, to sing a toast to the short, Irish martyr. Who wouldn't rub their flesh with dripping tongues for fingers?

0

Mar 16, 2012

Mar 16, 2012 at 8:59 PM UTC

sansara-justinovich

St. Patrick's Day Eve

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, again, and I'm wearing green shoes, green shirt-- overeager as usual. I've never really enjoyed St. Patrick's Day, or any other holiday, for that matter, and I find it ironic that the more significance we give to a person or event the more their meaning is deluded. But it's good to have something to look forward to. Today, in America, St. Patrick may as well be a naked, red-headed lepperchaun. People don't care about him as much as me; they don't get out of bed each day that week wearing green and scoffing at the timid early-spring sun gazing at the short-sleeved men and brown-thighed women. Maybe it matters to them that suntans at the beginning are only de-tubed relics of an ancient, burning photosynthesis relinquished to the ground. It matters to me more that these women think-- even more, know!-- that it is too late in the early spring to cover their legs and allow the pale, unready skin lie in hibernation. They want to show the men their defined calves and undefined dreams. They fain naivety with bright hues, such as Kelly. And I frown, because I know they have to do this, or I wouldn't notice them. Waking up and putting green shirts on the whole week leading up to St. Patrick's day. Anticipating the Spring, which is already here, they raise their glistening arms in the air and lean back, smiling, to sing a toast to the short, Irish martyr. Who wouldn't rub their flesh with dripping tongues for fingers?

25

babe sweet makes a hasty get away in her 57 Chevy after robbing the bank of its pen and pencil sets someday she's gonna be a writer and she don't want to run outa ink not while the words can run like fine wine from her stumbling fingertips her drunkard style staggers through the clean vision with a brush stroke that wanders between the lines and sometimes wanders out of em and straight to the borders of insanity she pauses and thinks to her left behind lover that the last ship of my life may indeed have sailed but your not among my regrets and that's enough for her so she commits her pilfering of the salesclerk's pocket and flees with relief pasted falsely on her face babe sweet drives fast fast to the southern town and picks up a smile she saw standing by the side of the dirt road but little did she realize that some dirt don't wash off and her new comfy smile had baggage of his own in the form of a colt revolver with a few spent shells spilling outa his pocket so they run into the night trying to escape their separate desperate pasts she looked at him with a lonely yearning but he openly saw only that he wanted to get straight with god and his mamma if he could only work up the courage to abandon this trail of tears they both collapsed into a small hotel down in floridas treasure coast and spent days waiting and watching the evening news for sings that the world had even noticed them they are there still babe sweet and her regretful smile look to everybody like mona lisa recovering from a ****** someday he will get the courage to get right someday she will go home to her bed and breakfast but for now they gather suntans and scrape a living out of cast off bottle caps happy enough together and sometimes that's enough

0

Nov 16, 2013

Nov 16, 2013 at 9:02 PM UTC

mark-john-junor-1

babe sweet and her regretful smile

babe sweet makes a hasty get away in her 57 Chevy after robbing the bank of its pen and pencil sets someday she's gonna be a writer and she don't want to run outa ink not while the words can run like fine wine from her stumbling fingertips her drunkard style staggers through the clean vision with a brush stroke that wanders between the lines and sometimes wanders out of em and straight to the borders of insanity she pauses and thinks to her left behind lover that the last ship of my life may indeed have sailed but your not among my regrets and that's enough for her so she commits her pilfering of the salesclerk's pocket and flees with relief pasted falsely on her face babe sweet drives fast fast to the southern town and picks up a smile she saw standing by the side of the dirt road but little did she realize that some dirt don't wash off and her new comfy smile had baggage of his own in the form of a colt revolver with a few spent shells spilling outa his pocket so they run into the night trying to escape their separate desperate pasts she looked at him with a lonely yearning but he openly saw only that he wanted to get straight with god and his mamma if he could only work up the courage to abandon this trail of tears they both collapsed into a small hotel down in floridas treasure coast and spent days waiting and watching the evening news for sings that the world had even noticed them they are there still babe sweet and her regretful smile look to everybody like mona lisa recovering from a ****** someday he will get the courage to get right someday she will go home to her bed and breakfast but for now they gather suntans and scrape a living out of cast off bottle caps happy enough together and sometimes that's enough

46

but she'll crack a joke and it'll fry in the pan yoke running suntans like we're not burnt plan like we weren't drowning in tick marks learnt that those sparks don't set us alight snarks sizzle and kite our cheap cameras up fight or flight, cock-ups stroll us over to both makeup's made of oaths and expired lippies and growth was just memories we'd left behind cities were left unsigned and roosters hum spellbinds bit off crumbs of our holidays sums done sideways with scrambled minds haze of upturned blinds flip us sunny-side rinds of orange chide us but our hats are gone stride down, we egg on, sandals beg mercy but crayons colour sprees in glasses-off views degrees weren't those corkscrew rollercoasters drive-thru karaoke, poster bed fairy lights dim toasters retorted, skim reading as shoes kick dust limbs stiff, favour a cuss but don't do big talk buses see less than walks, distance is a job toolbox couldn't fix this throb. so maybe if we hadn't lit the fuse twice it might not have fireworked so quick but i'm glad we rolled that dice getting summered was a cement to those heat-blown bricks.

0

Sep 10, 2025

Sep 10, 2025 at 10:48 AM UTC

eternal_solace

Summered

but she'll crack a joke and it'll fry in the pan yoke running suntans like we're not burnt plan like we weren't drowning in tick marks learnt that those sparks don't set us alight snarks sizzle and kite our cheap cameras up fight or flight, cock-ups stroll us over to both makeup's made of oaths and expired lippies and growth was just memories we'd left behind cities were left unsigned and roosters hum spellbinds bit off crumbs of our holidays sums done sideways with scrambled minds haze of upturned blinds flip us sunny-side rinds of orange chide us but our hats are gone stride down, we egg on, sandals beg mercy but crayons colour sprees in glasses-off views degrees weren't those corkscrew rollercoasters drive-thru karaoke, poster bed fairy lights dim toasters retorted, skim reading as shoes kick dust limbs stiff, favour a cuss but don't do big talk buses see less than walks, distance is a job toolbox couldn't fix this throb. so maybe if we hadn't lit the fuse twice it might not have fireworked so quick but i'm glad we rolled that dice getting summered was a cement to those heat-blown bricks.

29

Tobacco, the first intoxicant wrapping me in a gauze of sultry skip days, Wine, beer, swimming pools with bikinis, suntans, tropicana oil, Kansas heat on concrete. Lawrence, Ks, KU, art and black, red ochre conti crayons, Life drawings of nudes on platforms, fat, poor, glamorous models, how i wanted to be one of them stripping myself in front of you all, my young beautiful naked body you'll never see that again. Fresh grass and lemonade, Volvos driving across our country 55mph...80 was faster. One night stands led to terror. Hurting men forever. Barns and Nobels stealing book coffee was new young at 25. Walking the street in Kansas City, Warwick street with it's three story walk up trimmed colonial white 1995. Tea, herbs, kale with sesame, Health food shops on corners young women of 23 starting their biz. We could do it our own way back then. Abortion, adoption, college graduation, law school, med school, drop out, write.

0

Sep 28, 2015

Sep 28, 2015 at 1:47 AM UTC

LisaJeanineWinett

Words that meant something to me...

Tobacco, the first intoxicant wrapping me in a gauze of sultry skip days, Wine, beer, swimming pools with bikinis, suntans, tropicana oil, Kansas heat on concrete. Lawrence, Ks, KU, art and black, red ochre conti crayons, Life drawings of nudes on platforms, fat, poor, glamorous models, how i wanted to be one of them stripping myself in front of you all, my young beautiful naked body you'll never see that again. Fresh grass and lemonade, Volvos driving across our country 55mph...80 was faster. One night stands led to terror. Hurting men forever. Barns and Nobels stealing book coffee was new young at 25. Walking the street in Kansas City, Warwick street with it's three story walk up trimmed colonial white 1995. Tea, herbs, kale with sesame, Health food shops on corners young women of 23 starting their biz. We could do it our own way back then. Abortion, adoption, college graduation, law school, med school, drop out, write.

28

Traffic noise and the scent of an approaching thunderstorm drifts in through the door, naively left open, igniting reflections of simpler days spent smoking cigars behind rusted machinery and fallen trees in Grandma's field, and how we would take picnic lunches and bottles of ***** to the riverbank, laughing before the fire smearing silt onto our faces and bodies, keeping the sun away as we walk across the waterfall, wading in the stagnant flows of August, when the water was so hot it felt like the whole world was on holiday, all bonfires and suntans laying us in respite from the heartache of the winter prairie. Whiskey and pickup-truck beds yielding sanctuary from chores or the chaos of family. The same song I'm listening to now lilting from the truck's cab so new and full to the brim with meaning, while the dashboard lights illuminated sweetheart dreams of the city, averted eyes revealing the dark of lies hidden in the soil, and how we would leave this place, surrendering the anonymity of shooting tin cans off log fence posts, grass stains and muddy flip-flops to brick tower exhaust fumes and a cheap pack of cigarettes smoked in a dingey bar over a whiskey sour and a notebook covered in country flowers, painted fingerprints writing homesick sonnets to lovers abandoned amongst the cornstalks and glass bottles, 40-proof promises concocted in homemade stills and disassembled beneath the city skyline that obscures those stars On which we pleaded and wished for our emancipation.

0

Dec 11, 2014

Dec 11, 2014 at 11:37 PM UTC

chelsea-burk

40-proof promises

Traffic noise and the scent of an approaching thunderstorm drifts in through the door, naively left open, igniting reflections of simpler days spent smoking cigars behind rusted machinery and fallen trees in Grandma's field, and how we would take picnic lunches and bottles of ***** to the riverbank, laughing before the fire smearing silt onto our faces and bodies, keeping the sun away as we walk across the waterfall, wading in the stagnant flows of August, when the water was so hot it felt like the whole world was on holiday, all bonfires and suntans laying us in respite from the heartache of the winter prairie. Whiskey and pickup-truck beds yielding sanctuary from chores or the chaos of family. The same song I'm listening to now lilting from the truck's cab so new and full to the brim with meaning, while the dashboard lights illuminated sweetheart dreams of the city, averted eyes revealing the dark of lies hidden in the soil, and how we would leave this place, surrendering the anonymity of shooting tin cans off log fence posts, grass stains and muddy flip-flops to brick tower exhaust fumes and a cheap pack of cigarettes smoked in a dingey bar over a whiskey sour and a notebook covered in country flowers, painted fingerprints writing homesick sonnets to lovers abandoned amongst the cornstalks and glass bottles, 40-proof promises concocted in homemade stills and disassembled beneath the city skyline that obscures those stars On which we pleaded and wished for our emancipation.

56

apparently that's also me: outside the internet segment of my life... http://tinyurl.com/ybu5nujl although i'm glad that it's not everyday... birthday parties of 18 year old girls are............ exhausting... no, really... when i left the party i left a girl standing in the door attempting to woo me in for the night... left lamenting asking people: do you know the direction to hell?! **** people boast on the internet all the time... suntans, or some exotica from a holiday in Thailand... never a little piece of Piracy in terms of skin color from Hackney, east London... i'm starting to contemplate one thing, and one thing alone... what would the demigod Narcissus make of a photograph, if a mirror was smashed? perhaps like any mortal... i abhorred and subsequently abhor watching video footage of myself... i simply gather... Narcissus has no memory faculty... a photograph is a memory atom, a mirror is an object... and the visage reflected in it is also a memory, albeit passing... ergo fluid... Narcissus can be Narcissus before a mirror, looking down on the still water of a lake... but sure as **** he doesn't have the ***** looking at a photograph... apparently Narcissus becomes Dorian... the imagination... stemming from **** *********** and blocking reproduction... Narcissus could never peer and bind himself to a Gemini visage within the confines of the sea, or a river... hence? out of curiosity... what would Narcissus do... with a photograph?

0

Sep 20, 2018

Sep 20, 2018 at 6:43 PM UTC

removed.polaroid-scrabble

apparently that's also me

apparently that's also me: outside the internet segment of my life... http://tinyurl.com/ybu5nujl although i'm glad that it's not everyday... birthday parties of 18 year old girls are............ exhausting... no, really... when i left the party i left a girl standing in the door attempting to woo me in for the night... left lamenting asking people: do you know the direction to hell?! **** people boast on the internet all the time... suntans, or some exotica from a holiday in Thailand... never a little piece of Piracy in terms of skin color from Hackney, east London... i'm starting to contemplate one thing, and one thing alone... what would the demigod Narcissus make of a photograph, if a mirror was smashed? perhaps like any mortal... i abhorred and subsequently abhor watching video footage of myself... i simply gather... Narcissus has no memory faculty... a photograph is a memory atom, a mirror is an object... and the visage reflected in it is also a memory, albeit passing... ergo fluid... Narcissus can be Narcissus before a mirror, looking down on the still water of a lake... but sure as **** he doesn't have the ***** looking at a photograph... apparently Narcissus becomes Dorian... the imagination... stemming from **** *********** and blocking reproduction... Narcissus could never peer and bind himself to a Gemini visage within the confines of the sea, or a river... hence? out of curiosity... what would Narcissus do... with a photograph?

70

It's all sunshine and beaches laughter Suntans and peeled skin wrinkled faces sunsets drenched in ***** open car windows drizzling sweat drops late nights stretched till dawn flings and winks but all this misses "u"

0

Jun 19, 2025

Jun 19, 2025 at 2:22 AM UTC

maria-etre

S(AH)MMER

It's all sunshine and beaches laughter Suntans and peeled skin wrinkled faces sunsets drenched in ***** open car windows drizzling sweat drops late nights stretched till dawn flings and winks but all this misses "u"

14

O'fer stimulated master debated hotly whisteled bottles o' beer on the jukebox burning suntans watching n' naturally wondering what occurred.

0

Aug 11, 2014

Aug 11, 2014 at 11:16 PM UTC

wordvango

O'fer

O'fer stimulated master debated hotly whisteled bottles o' beer on the jukebox burning suntans watching n' naturally wondering what occurred.

10