"surfaces" poems
I am hungry
and it is reflected
in the contours
of every inch
of skin
every cell a-flutter
tiny wings and heartbeats
activated within
right down to
the ribosomes and
kidney-shaped
mitochondria
right up through epidermis
woven as threads
of softness penetrating
your inner hard, dark parts
causing them
to melt into
my light
I am craving
to feel your
absolute heart's
raging core
my aching flesh burning,
my heart, wrapped in
a love
so pure
My need to be
devoured surfaces
in smoothness,
at a glance
You feel it acutely,
no room for doubt
or subtle chance
I am ravenous
for muscle-worked arms
(arms that could easily
try to break)
to be supremely
gentle as you part
my thighs like the ocean
and sacredly partake
the slickness of your tongue
in my feminine grace
the stains of my love
drenching
your noble face
your eyes on mine
as I sharply breathe
need to hold your
head stroke your
hair know that for me
the king takes off that
garland of gold
breaking free of
all symbols of status
the only real treasure
the queen who
gives to him,
and who he now pleasures
and I let myself be consumed
with the reverence
of a psalm
my love pouring into you
healing your hurts,
like a balm
in this private landscape
we are the most
ferocious of tender
estuaries
in an eternal vista
in this hour of somewhere,
the sea hauls us in
like ancient creatures,
bringing the fossils
back to life
in lustrous foam
as they
inch their way
into the spirals
that we
feel we could
call
home
May 21, 2016
May 21, 2016 at 12:57 PM UTC
If you give a girl a with a big heart your broken pieces,
she will gently pick them up and carry them in her soft hands,
and pay no mind to your sharp edges.
She will try to glue you back together
and she’ll do it in a way that made you forget you were ever broken.
With scratched finger tips and ****** palms,
she’ll lift you up to the sun,
letting it's blinding rays shine through you
to show you that even the worst things have things to love in them
and that even the shattered can again be whole.
If you give a girl with a big heart your body,
she will study you like an archaic God.
She will learn your curves and surfaces like braille,
she will adjust her hearing to the pitch of your laughter
so that no matter how far apart you become,
her ears will perk up like a dog's when you giggle,
and she will smile, knowing that you smile.
If you give a girl with a big heart your time,
she will make each second feel like infinity,
and each sunset like the end of the world.
You'll forget that the universe is as vast and wondrous as it is,
because you will be so captivated by the light that she emits
right where she sits,
by your side.
And if you take from a girl with a big heart,
please,
for the love of God,
do not take it all.
If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember that her love is not a renewable resource.
The wind and the sun and the water will forever be there to serve you but
she will run dry, and become another fact of history that will one day be forgotten.
If you take from a girl with a big heart,
please remember how sharp your edges were before her,
how lifeless your body was before she touched it,
and how meaningless time was before she made it into something magical.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 4:20 PM UTC
Fold me like you always have,
Run your nails to set the creases,
Shape me to the form you crave,
Bend me into the art of your wishes,
My form forever yours to toy with,
I conform to your will and desire,
Expose my surfaces, above or beneath,
I will always be there for you to admire,
I can be flexible or I can be stiff,
That depends on what you want,
I am here to help fill your rift,
The one who says you can when you can’t,
Craft that which you seek of me,
I am but your art, your origami.
Oct 25, 2019
Oct 25, 2019 at 1:23 PM UTC
And so here we are
Page after page
Hearts on fire
Exposing parts unseen
Beneath harden surfaces
Wounds unclean
Broken still we dream
On and on we pen
And so we breathe again
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 9:23 AM UTC
Diacridic
He lays
While the leaves sit underneath
the brilliance of sincerities tree,
and thinking to you
were all the things done by.
As it were
Discriptless
Pages left turned and inkless
What's left behind inside
the minds of an intertwining summer
a conclusion predesignated.
I saw to you,
just as I waved hello to goodnight’s moon.
As they touched along the surfaces
fleeting into the skin
A welcomed wound.
And didn’t you know,
That the pictures I stole
Of every point of you
Were etching onto sheets of heaven
into the reflections of the mirrors
that sit before your bedside.
While it rests
with mixed spirits,
the roses that I bore
Passing through glowing bodies
are the images you started to dream with me
while the silences burrow
A judgement left only partially bridged.
Melded with the manifestation of adoptions quest
And as the calls ring in secluce,
I still feel that this alley is ghostless
Lest this vase breathe the life
of unwilted flowers
where the flip sides meet
on the evenings tides
joined by charmed indifferences
in company with the character
of an old flame,
only tangible with
lights which lay ahead.
medleyed in to what's to be.
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 3:34 PM UTC
A cigarette is pathetic tinder
For lighting a revolution
In a house were curtains are drawn
Against all outside movement
And trinkets of an affair
Are cast away with casualty
Or slipped between the pages
Of books no one will read-
Dense things
With a sense of malice
Scratched into their surfaces,
Un-dyed by the sun
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 4:26 PM UTC
She's the type of girl who spends her days waiting to watch the sunset every night, only to write about how compelling of a view it was. How she runs barefoot across such harsh surfaces just to catch a glimpse of its radiance and not even flenching when her feet are bruised.
I am the type of girl who used to not be able to imagine something more breathtaking than the suns bow as it leaves the stage for the stars to take over. The kind who simultaneously finds herself and gets lost in a matter of a few minutes while staring up at something of such beauty.
When those two things mix, when the two people share in the same unfathomable sunset, she becomes fixated on the sky while I become completely captivated in the way that the sun dances on her hair and how the light of the sun could never dream of comparing to the one in her eyes. How her embrace makes me feel a type of warmth that the heat could not possibly create. Trying not to stare, but also not wanting to look away. Fumbling on my words because the only thing that wants to come out are the words "I love you."
Jul 18, 2015
Jul 18, 2015 at 9:51 PM UTC
While the flames of passion freeze in your mind,
I’ll be wrapped behind you, cloaked in the sins of the flesh.
Jaded whispers of lustful promises filled with deceitful gazes,
I offer you not sanity, but madness.
Always beside you but never there,
my presence is the churning chaos of scars long lost forgotten.
I play upon your innocence, crushing it in my grasp,
I feed your existence the fermented embryo of society.
Your screams are in vain; I am you: a cocoon manifested from your decayed tears.
A memory surfaces to a mirrored abyss, reaching but never grasping.
Allow the jagged ice to crawl across your skin, inching, creeping, crystalizing a self you once believed in.
I claw at your chest, burning, burning, burning, the existence of your past is frail.
I feed upon your weakness.
Feeding you ****** Sins off Diverged Tongues*
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 5:23 AM UTC
We're all mirrors in our fragile states
Enough pressure against us, our surfaces
Cause cracks across our faces
Some have shattered beneath
Shards of us fall to the ground
Mirror, mirror on the wall
Who's the most broken among us all?
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 9:31 AM UTC
I'm an olympic housewife.
My mantlepiece of medals
is perfectly folded washing
arranged in mahogany drawers
with calm elegance
like swans on a lake.
I’m an elite athlete of the mundane.
My scrapbook of 1st place ribbons
are surfaces that sparkle
a masterpiece of purity
zen arrangement lust
like Ikebana in an empty room.
I’m an extreme sport star of domesticity.
My list of world class honours
gluten free bake-offs
blogging my parenting tips
a domestic online celebrity
like an effortless Demeter.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 11:19 PM UTC
With a warm load of folded laundry under my chin
I head toward Daniel’s sock drawer
Pulling on the carefully crafted handle I see
My grandfather cutting and planning the cherry tree
Dropped by Hurricane Carol in 1954
Wood shavings fall about his work boots as he
Shapes each panel, never using a ruler, all by eye
Boxing the frame, sizing the drawers, sanding surfaces
By hand, hence 60 years of grandkids and great grandkids socks
The drawer closes effortlessly with a sound
Of living heirlooms and heritage
Of legacy and family
A sound that everything is safe inside
That memorials are made to last
Apr 22, 2015
Apr 22, 2015 at 8:55 AM UTC
a fish surfaces
in the creek
scattering
the moon's reflection
silver echoes
embrace the shore
and then
disappear
I fall silent
laughter settles
friends ask
what I saw
Tom Spencer © 2018
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 9:00 AM UTC
is to raise a wall
back to its preexistence
to halt a
read-between-the-lines
brand of resonance;
a wall to protect
those constructed surfaces
from even being scratched.
Now, you feel
an
empty sting
when your access to a
digital counterpart,
a modern-day version
of a person's cognition,
is denied.
It's as if their posts are
the only way left
where you could
actually
hear the things
that couldn't be spoken of;
where you could
feel the
immeasurable heartbeats
that could never be
projected;
and all of these
illusions
make you wish
you talked more
in real life.
Nov 9, 2018
Nov 9, 2018 at 1:37 AM UTC
The Miner, Absolom
(a haibun)
green hill where sheep graze
white bones and coal, buried, held
seasons all the same
My grandfather worked in the mines from age thirteen to seventy. His life was closed in by mountains, the green one at the back, the dark looming one at the front and the pit head along the valley., winding the men in and out of the shaft, day after day, dawn until dusk when they came home singing
boots ring on the road
deep valley voices echo
backyard starlit smoke
.
They worked on their bellies or crouched, often in water for days, water that undermines rock. Shaft collapses where frequent. Life was cheap. He came home covered in coal dust to his wife and two sons, sons he was determined to keep out of the mines. Yet he loved that coal - coal that he always polished with care before lighting a fire, brushing dust off black diamond surfaces.
water breaks through rock
with wood and straining shoulders
man becomes the beam
He saved twenty lives that day, men he had known from boyhood. When his lungs were affected they laid him off, no pay, no pension, no life. He bought an insurance book with the money he had and every day he trudged over the mountains and valleys gathering pennies that would help to secure some livelihood to the widows who lost their men in the mines. He never told his wife that when a family couldn't pay he put the pennies in for them rather than leave them unprotected.
winter, summer, fall
the mountain hangs over all
tired to the backbone
When the mines were nationalised my grandfather went straight back to the coal face despite his age. He wasn't going to miss those days of glory. Safety was suddenly the watchword and changes were made very fast. Hot showers were installed at the pit head and the miners came home clean at last.
men stripped to the skin
hot water, steam, baptised
brothers singing hymns
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 9:25 PM UTC
"I'm just tired..."
Excuse one for the silence that ensues.
She listens as he tells her he refuses to hurt her
...even though she aches as the words leave his lips.
Triple chocolate chocolate chip frosting is all she wants.
"I didn't sleep well..."
Excuse two for the agitated responses.
Her best friend has distanced herself
...but expects her to just sit by and wait to be wanted again.
Triple chocolate chocolate chip frosting gags her.
"It was a rough night..."
Excuse three for the silent tears that stream down her face.
Her father tells her she's a spoiled, stupid *****
...but acts like he's a genius that's greater than God.
Food loses its appeal entirely.
"I don't need a mirror to see myself..."
Excuse four for her avoidance of reflective surfaces.
Her mirror has become her worst enemy
...reflecting her flaws and screaming her issues.
She no longer has an appetite.
"I'm fine"
Excuse five... and six for all the things she does in a day.
She's breaking, crying, and dying
...but its been repeated so many times her friends have begun to believe it.
Food now makes her want to throw up.
"Excuses, Excuses"
seven, eight, nine, ten for all the things she needs to deny
her mask of a smile makes everyone believe them all
...no one realizing how unhappy she is
she eats...but only because she doesn't want them to worry.
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 3:08 PM UTC
Taking control of life
that is meant to be mine
a life full of happiness and joy
but caught in the middle of a raging war.
Years of fighting has taken its toll
as I sit and watch my life
fight with every tool and nail,
a glimmer of hope surfaces
a little bundle of joy
kicking and screaming
ready to take its place.
For too many years,
I watched as life tossed me
here and there,
up and down.
It is all a game,
I told myself
one minute I would seem to be a winner,
and the next finish as the runner-up.
But a life without a reason
now has a meaning
a battle without a plan
now has a purpose,
to live and fight another day.
Sep 4, 2014
Sep 4, 2014 at 2:24 AM UTC
Preventing contamination,
A constant challenge in cell culture.
Contamination not only affects,
The culture in question and,
Costs time and money,
But also endangers the reproducibility of results.
No cell culture problem,
Is as universal as that of culture loss
Due to contamination.
Generally, contamination may be separated,
Into categories of microbial,
And eukaryotic contamination.
Examples of microbial contamination include:
Bacteria (including Mycoplasma),
Fungi and yeast;
Eukaryotic contamination includes:
Cross-contamination with other cell lines.
Bacteria, yeast and fungi,
The three more common types of contamination,
But luckily these forms are often detectable,
Under the microscope and,
By visual cues,
Like colour or turbidity changes in the medium.
Mycoplasma is a small genus of bacteria,
That lack a cell wall and for this reason,
They remain unaffected by common antibiotics.
They are also difficult to detect,
With standard microscopes,
Due to their size, about 0.1 μm in diameter,
And the fact that they often attach to host cells.
To prevent contamination,
Use 70% ethanol for disinfecting,
Equipment & surfaces,
Related to cell culture.
Sterile filter the media first,
Before bringing to the lab.
Fetal Bovine Serum,
A potential source of contamination,
Contains mycoplasma.
Filter it at 0.1 μm, or,
Gamma irradiate it.
Aseptic technique,
Necessary.
The laboratory workers be the last,
But not the least source of contamination.
Teach them the ideal laboratory practices,
To ensure asepticity in a laboratory.
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 9:02 PM UTC
The world revolves and I can't hold it’s pace
neither roll around the unending cycles
may be it is the grey hues polluting my growth
or this age that is fiercely catching up with me
The sun rises and there I lay watching it rays
numbed, unwanted, determined and yet focused
such days I just wish for a lover's touch
I long for that unending lullaby uncorrupt
Sometimes the silence in the pain cascades
It trickles in droplets settling on the morning dew
and I wish to follow its pace, lay in the calm want
be carefree and unrestrained from emotions
I wish I could feel the rhythm of another heart
declare the green sheen of the unfolding leaves
as we lay counting the stars and making starts
laughing aimlessly as the joy surfaces unearthed
But all I see is the hurt of what love bears
the ones who held my soul close are strangers
unable to feel my innate palpable rhythms
fading on and on to a distanced and unmerged shore
Aug 4, 2018
Aug 4, 2018 at 12:32 PM UTC
Society moves like a bullet
And there's no way to cool it
We're not big fans of reflection
So we become slaves to deflection
Bouncing off of hard surfaces
Like limiting gun purchases
Constriction isn't part of or vocabulary
Proliferation is all we know
Watching weapon supplies grow
I live in a country
Riddled by bullets
Bullets that blast through our ****** body
Though the holes in our mind are bigger
When we can **** those we think are naughty
We become judges when we pull the trigger
But the media makes mountains out of molehills
And it is for those exaggerated reasons we ****
We are stuck in a bullet storm
When TV advertises bullet ****
This helps make bullets the norm
So we treat mass shootings with a familiarity
Because we can't acknowledge the only similarity
Is obviously the gun
We're blinded by the sun
Of defense contractors
They're negative reactors
When we purpose a change
The conversation they rearrange
By firing in every possible direction
This is the aforementioned deflection
And it works
You can tell because people are dying
Or standing in the street crying
Or watching the news sighing
Bullet time has wooed us
Bullet crimes have moved us
There are people who gain wealth
From our diminishing health
They hold society on their rope
And the only way we can cope
Is to ****** that rope from their greedy grasp and pull it
But that's hard to do while being punctured by bullets
Nov 7, 2017
Nov 7, 2017 at 3:21 AM UTC
i don't want a rarity
a full moon that only floats
in your midnight sky
once a month
nighttime feels so open,
you shout things
you'd never whisper
in the daylight
and let go of the fear
that surfaces with the sun
i think i'll break all your clocks
at twelve in the morning
to immortalize
our candid midnights,
so that your worries
will never rise
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 1:11 PM UTC
train myself to write anywhere and at any time...
as commissioned by ms. melan
~'~'~'~'~
so I, being a being,
a poet who carries his mind scheming
with him:
drags along his body and soul,
just in case:
that his hands might feel the touch of
beauty, skin and beyond,
the exteriors of his interiors,
to feel, to feel, to feel
every one of his surfaces,
the reality of his peculiar real
his eyes so one can envision the unimaginable,
and thus, never be satisfied,
for all is
always new,
beyond original
that his ugly, ungainly ears,
may never miss the sound of his tripping & falling
head!over!heels with the realization,
he just might be foolishly
in love
the tastes of life's living that
make his pulse race,
crease his smiling face,
causing his blood pressure so high
he pleads to surrender,
just begging to let his tongue
survive
and smells that arouse,
producing & promising
words proud & profound,
that have yet to succeed
in capturing
the fullness
of the
special musk odor
that masks
allure of attraction
no, not a lot to ask for…
5:26am
SunSep13
two zero two five
Sep 14, 2025
Sep 14, 2025 at 5:35 AM UTC
The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial. On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.
Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising
A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.
Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days
So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:
We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.
Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.
Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques
Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock
Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 6:36 PM UTC
Are we truly pure?
Innocent mortals that are attached
to the surfaces of Earth as if they
were are own....?
Are our souls truly filled with the
toxic sins that were passed down
to us from our ancestor so long ago?
The sins that have detached us
from the living or non living God.
The sins that have caused the flesh on
our bodies to decay once our time has come.
The sins that caused humanity to question
the true meaning of love and hate while secretly
we choose to go against the meaning thats
more important.
I guess not.....
we can't detached from something that
flows in our blood, and hides beneath our souls
no matter how toxic
poisonous
or infuriating it might be
its part of who we are
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 8, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC
Someone once told me that love was blind.
Youth is wasted on the young,
We are all going to die.
After un-clutching scraps of what I'll never find,
This is all that I've brought.
I am all that is mine.
Don't ever, ever, little girl,
Listen to the old.
The world of those who
Raised them were as dark as
Devils compared to the
Funlit days we live.
To them, infatuation came
In work's way.
To them, romance was
Mind's comfort; the
Substance of fantasy.
In our world, your heart's
Every beat for another
Rings as true
To Love's ears as
Her own
To herself.
Yet the cloak hangs so heavily
Around all of these scenes.
Each notion a portrait,
Undistinguished and vague yet
Littered with details strewn in
Alarming
Array.
I take with rock salt
All that they've had to say.
For how does dim
Memory
To a feeling
Compare?
Let us forget to look back
And listen for
Wisdom.
Let us forget to ask
For opinions; vantage points.
All fingerprints blur
In time and fade forgotten
Into their surfaces; the
Grip they once formed
Long, long released.
Love, if only for a second.
Love, even if you know
That it's wrong.
No love ever was.
Love.
You'll have bigger
Regrets in time.
Only we know
What it means to be
Exactly this
Young
Today.
Only I
See through these keyholes
Carved upon my Face.
I am free from pre-conceived restraints.
I am a beacon
Of naïve wisdom,
A sponge for all feelings
Un-hardened by fate.
Suggestions
Directions
Instructions abound.
I am free from these shackles,
Boundless heartwaves
Resound
I see not your keyholes for the
Key in my eye. You are
Divine Feminine expressing Herself
Through yourself; as yourself.
Quill dipped in own wisdom.
Heart's blood and history.
Afloat in eternities of
Utter female
Warmth.
Someone once told you that love was blind.
That youth was wasted on the young.
I don't want to hear you
Sounding that old
Ever again. Notions.
Heartwaves. Manifestations.
Art saved. Inspirations.
Emotions.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 8:25 AM UTC
The steam on the windows
Conceals us from the world
As we sit beside each other
Laughing in our underwear
Discovering secrets
In whispers and caresses
Stolen kisses
And trailing fingers
Lingering glances
And quiet giggles
Exploring each other
Uncharted surfaces
Become familiar
As we learn the parts of us
That fit together
Like puzzle pieces
Feb 18, 2014
Feb 18, 2014 at 1:35 AM UTC