"swarming" poems
One more day is fading away
as we ride this bus to the city
The storm is coming nearer now
And your bliss will turn to tears
We've almost reached our destination
Countless parachutes in the sky
These mosquitoes are swarming
before your eyes,
Just a moment's time til someone dies
The skies are getting darker now
Not a shard of light in this room
You'd better make good choices now
Or meet your impending doom
I hear your steps from the other room
And I'm already locked and loaded
You'd better get on running now
Or I'll destroy what's left of you
I walk upstairs to higher ground
and hear your cowardly whines,
I look in the eyes of my colleague
And said don't move, this **** is mine
I've made my way to my snipers' nest
and my eyes are set to ****
I've got my sights on your head right now
To pull the trigger, you know I will
Jul 5, 2018
Jul 5, 2018 at 7:47 PM UTC
The mushroom
The unfolding
instant of creation (fertilisation)
not an instant separate from breakfast
It all flows down & out, flowing
but that instant:
not fire & fusion (fission) but a moment
of jellied ice, crystal, vegetative mating
merging in cool slime splendour
a crushing of steel & glass & ice
(instant in a bar; glasses clash, clink, collide)
far-out splendour
heat & fire are outwards signs of a
Small dry mating
~~~
event in a room
event in space
a circle
Magic rite
To call up the godhead
spirits, demons
The shaman calls:
“When radio dark night…”
We are eating each other.
~~~
The Voice of the Serpent
dry hiss of age & steam
& leaves of gold
old books in ruined
Temples
The pages break like ash
I will not disturb
I will not go
Come, he says softly
an old man appears &
moves in tired dance
amid the scattered dead
gently they stir
~~~
I received an Aztec wall
of vision
& dissolved my room in
sweet derision
Closed my eyes, prepared to go
A gentle wind inform’d me so
And bathed my skin in ether glow
~~~
Drugs are a bet w/ your mind
~~~
The cigarette burn’d
my fingertips
& dropp’d like a log
to the rug below
My eyes took a trip
to dig the chick
Crouch’d like a cat
at the next window
My ears assembled music
out of swarming streets
but my mind rebelled
at the idiot’s laughter
The rising frightful idiot laughter
Cheering an army of
vacuum cleaners
~~~
Mouth fills w/taste of copper.
Chinese paper. Foreign money. Old posters.
Gyro on a string, a table.
A coin spins. The faces.
There is an audience to our drama.
Magic shade mask.
Like the hero of a dream, he works for us,
in our behalf.
How close is this to a final cut?
I fall. Sweet blackness.
Strange world that waits & watches.
Ancient dread of non-existence.
If it’s no problem, why mention it.
Everything spoken means that,
it’s opposite, & everything else.
I’m alive. I’m dying.
~~~
1st wild thrush of fear
-A phone rings
There is a knock on the door.
It’s time to go.
No.
17.7k
Dawn in New York has
four columns of mire
and a hurricane of black pigeons
splashing in the putrid waters.
Dawn in New York groans
on enormous fire escapes
searching between the angles
for spikenards of drafted anguish.
Dawn arrives and no one receives it in his mouth
because morning and hope are impossible there:
sometimes the furious swarming coins
penetrate like drills and devour abandoned children.
Those who go out early know in their bones
there will be no paradise or loves that bloom and die:
they know they will be mired in numbers and laws,
in mindless games, in fruitless labors.
The light is buried under chains and noises
in the impudent challenge of rootless science.
And crowds stagger sleeplessly through the boroughs
as if they had just escaped a shipwreck of blood.
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My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one word is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said...
but did not.
Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing. I work with my best, for instances,
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
and ridiculous and crowded with all
the believing money.
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Darkness, it falls like a massive leaden shroud
Over this quiet valley as the dusk infects the sky
Pleasant faces fade into the shadows of the night
As the demons of the dead and dreaming come on out to play
Howling at the moon
Swarming through the streets
Lurking in the shadows
On this night of Halloween
Carve the faces, light the candles
Offerings must be made
In the cold October moonlight
To the Phantoms of Samhain
If you fail
If these ghouls are not appeased
You will be...
Taken
by the spirits of the dead!!!
The Tempter's Chosen
And kin to the Grim Reaper
Children of the Darkest Night
Steal mortal souls to feast on
Ghastly transformations
Amidst accursed corpses
We are possessed by the evil of tonight's demonic forces!
Carve the faces, light the candles
Offerings must be made
In the cold October moonlight
To the Phantoms of Samhain
If you fail
If these ghouls are not appeased
You will be...
Taken by the spirits of the dead!!!
By the light of the orange moon
In the dark of the purple night
We linger in these shadows
And wait there, until the time is right...
On this night of Halloween
We roam your city streets
And among the masks of plastic
We can finally be free
So carve those faces, light your candles
Offerings still must be made
In the cold October moonlight
To us Phantoms of Samhain
And if you do not heed these words
And refuse these simple deeds
Well then, my friend
You will be,
Taken by the spirits of the dead!
And if you do not heed these words
And refuse these simple deeds
Well then,
My friend,
you will be
Taken ...
Taken to the grave!
Taken...
Taken far away!
Taken...
Taken by we, the Phantoms of Samhain!!!
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 1:33 PM UTC
Metal wasps do sting,
Swarming over the many,
Allergic death,
Jul 9, 2014
Jul 9, 2014 at 1:48 PM UTC
When she told me she loved me
I didn't believe her.
So i killed myself instead.
A fairy came to me & whispered enticing secrets in my ear.
He outlined a closet upstairs
where I live alone inside my head.
Tidal waves of white roses grow in & out my of spine.
Suffocating the fishes prancing in a field of raving vines.
Lunar Lullaby plays hopscotch in a cloud of flies.
She licks cherry red ice pops & sings bird hymns to oak trees withering in the wuthering skies.
Swarming dragon-lies fly in lakes upon Monet's canvas.
There he paints a beauty of Thumbelina whose grave resides in the darkest corner of my empty heart.
A red cape looms above & flutters without wings.
My cave is growing vaster
And so I sail amongst its seas.
This Psychosis is no more wearing thin than Rigor Mortis can begin.
I'll live sedentarily as a maid serving rotten apples to men chained as apes.
A lotus will float on by down this bloodstream & into the night.
As a crater on the moon your corpse died suddenly as when fruit bloom.
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 1:42 PM UTC
I find myself diving inside of you where the weird dream shamans draw sketches of naked humans.
And you’re a human, and we're both naked. You’re purple, you’re just the perfect shade. I place my flag inside, to abscond us away inside of a womb where our world will open to portals to all of our favorite places. A floating haven, of cashmere. Gestating where the climate is warm and damp, and coloring me dark with wine—sweet wine of lovers, penal forgotten, and fermented anew in maternal rite, because…
This swarming melodic nectar that swims through my nostrils and rolls in my eyes cannot be drank casually. It’s the elixir of love. I love you,
And in you, I find that I love myself.
What’s more, the shamanists exclaim, “She wants to give you all of herself.” Yes, they’re right. Even what I do not love so much, I want you to have, if you’ll take it, because I have to live with it, and if you live with me, you’ll have to live with it too. And then, when you crack open your sternum to let the things in, the scribes of my life’s doing, of ancient passion proclaim! They burn their papyrus scrolls soaked in the blood that I drew from my veins to pass unto yours— and you swallow them whole like divine burritos. And then we are ready for the world to fall suddenly, if it felt so inclined. Now that our chests are pressed together, and our tongues are fused tight. We are the daughters of the prima mother. We are the goddesses of our dreams.
Apr 6, 2014
Apr 6, 2014 at 2:39 PM UTC
Eyes embrace
the food they can't taste.
Oh, a table without
dat brown gazelle, to waste.
A waste of grazing and falling.
There are no legs to
stop falling.
Crawling.
No legs to keep crawling.
Soft lips start falling.
Brown skin keeps swarming.
Fresh flesh starts warming.
Hands melting and
Carving.
Carving out white wood, and
Carved dogwood
starts bleeding.
Stop falling.
Stop Falling!
Hey dere, be calling.
'till morning on
calling.
Stop falling,
Stop falling.
'till morning on
calling.
Feb 19, 2011
Feb 19, 2011 at 10:07 PM UTC
They are flocking from the East
And the West,
They are flocking from the North
And the South,
Every moment setting forth
From realm of snake or lion,
Swamp or sand,
Ice or burning;
Greatest and least,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth,
They are flocking up the path
To their rest,
Up the path that hath
No returning.
Up the steeps of Zion
They are mounting,
Coming, coming,
Throngs beyond man's counting;
With a sound
Like innumerable bees
Swarming, humming
Where flowering trees
Many-tinted,
Many-scented,
All alike abound
With honey,--
With a swell
Like a blast upswaying unrestrainable
From a shadowed dell
To the hill-tops sunny,--
With a thunder
Like the ocean when in strength
Breadth and length
It sets to shore;
More and more
Waves on waves redoubled pour
Leaping flashing to the shore
(Unlike the under
Drain of ebb that loseth ground
For all its roar.)
They are thronging
From the East and West,
From the North and South,
Saints are thronging, loving, longing,
To their land
Of rest,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth.
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∙∙∙◦◦•◎•◦◦∙∙∙
A pour of liquid upon the sky
hollows around the city
flickering unknowing lights
as she stands on the corner
A fantasy strews in my mind
with walls painted to emblaze
floors swarming with haze
Red on her lips
A tense that lures my eyes
reaching the inside-out
tangled in a state of enmity
as I wade in serendipity
nobody asked me how I feel
the fact she was never even real
We tag around the maze
I baffle between truth and fake
boundless as we kissed
Breathtaking, filled with bliss
A perfection I'll never miss
But twas a treacherous crime
And thankfully I woke up in time
Sep 26, 2017
Sep 26, 2017 at 8:59 PM UTC
in a dark of frenzy it boils up inside
until summarily and inexplicably
see the colour between brown and blue
more than see it, immerse myself in it
swimming slowly in its clouds
see the colour between brown and blue
everywhere votive candles light
the colour between brown and blue
with slender tapers that touch a life
any life, your life
casting strange shadows, loose shadows
between the colour of brown and blue
children swarm, children with bright white
starvation hair, children with hands
like small worn mittens
who raise red swarms in hot worn out
death laden dust
dust that cauterizes the nostrils
with the stench of penurious insanity
the colour between brown and blue
that inveigles a purchase of flies
bottle blue, black blue, green blue,
swarming blue, swirling whirling blue
a black and blue confetti of flies
then the sudden zero of the
colour between brown and blue
hair raising, command faith
willed, willing, mumbling, murmuring
the excitement of writing between
the colour of brown and blue
trees shake and tremble
words regurgitate themselves like hot
food, the bark, write
now fully electrically charged
seized by the colour between brown and blue
forget everything else, write, write more, more, write
trembling with sudden shudders of merciless
vowels, madness penurious pencil
moves across, demanding paper
pushing worn words, worthy words whittled by use
words not yet written, words of wonder
oh what words
beautiful, baffling,baleful, words
with beastly beatitudes, words that conjure the mind
words between brown and blue
that leave you skinny like a stray dog
words so demanding leave you shut up in an
airless abattoir of high energy and low residue
the colour between brown and blue
where everywhere is everywhere else
touched by the flames of the colour between brown and blue
Oct 3, 2013
Oct 3, 2013 at 11:01 PM UTC
Day's end, sun's caisson doth wend
Residual rays a respite to append
Twilight's shroud dreary dividend
Swirls of gray into firmament blend
Vestments of light shed sacral veil
Luna's naked, pale orb flashes its spell
Twinkling sprites across dark tides sail
Constellation's mystical portents braille
Nyx, Erebos eclipse Hemera's blithe melody with bass duet
Earth's warmed bed yields its thermal blanket
Ocean tides move in rhythmic tandem to cadence of lunar clarinet
Swarming shadows stalk each footstep paring each dark secret
Greek gods
Nyx: goddess of Night
Erebos: goddess of Darkness
Hemera: goddess of Day
Sep 15, 2011
Sep 15, 2011 at 6:35 AM UTC
There is a period of time
Immediately proceeding a conversation you had
Where you shared, what you are sure in retrospect,
Was too much
And when they go its nearly silent
Aside from the car engine
Your ears are on fire
On one hand you’re glad you said it
On the other hand
You wish to rewind
And unsay the things you did.
Reverse and greedily fill your arms with all the
Pieces of yourself you’d given away freely.
They’re yours and they don’t own them.
But like a dusty collection of spoons,
From all fifty states,
You know that you have no use
Harboring those thoughts.
Maybe they will somehow affect that person
And help them when they’re feeling down
But you doubt it.
They won’t fully understand,
Because you’re a bad story teller
Who can’t describe the feeling of the sun
On the tops of your legs and interpolated
Between your toes.
And you're selfish and don’t care
You feel incomplete now and hope
That maybe, just maybe
They weren’t even listening to you ramble
Or couldn’t understand you
Or cast the little wads of memories away
Like pencil shavings
Which are fun for a little under an hour.
And you’ve almost convinced yourself
Until you see them, and they see you
And open their mouth to say something-
And like some horror movie
The secrets come swarming.
Oct 6, 2012
Oct 6, 2012 at 11:04 PM UTC
He finds the clues
come to him like fireflies
swarming around him
in the air
murderers all have
long shadows
& some were born
with silver spoons
in their mouths
& others not
He assembles collages
of cases from newspapers
to see which ones
remind him of which
& drinks too much
as the night holds him close.
He's got a Dame in town
he knows she's bad news
He knows his whole life is
a case of Win or Lose
A card trick
played by a blind man
he has too many regrets
& yet none at all
Aug 5, 2015
Aug 5, 2015 at 9:48 AM UTC
Elevate the sound
Slowly and surely
you have to listen
smell, taste and touch
the music
Alcohol? Yes.
Drugs? Yes.
What kinds? All kinds.
60 people in a room w/ worn out walls
an unwanted male is followed by hecklers
the matriarchs have had enough
and bull him to the door
He doesn't want to leave
the party is just beginning
The clowns follow him
like wild hyenas
He fights like a lion
targets the clan of the matriarch
the young and weak
is it correct to aim the violence on the weak
because the strong is of the opposite gender?
Is it right to abuse the rule
Woman: the untouchable
People being to watch
w/ their dying spectators eyes
in another section a large male confronts the house owner
They begin their violent dance of limbs
Swarming bodies collide
violent outburst
chaotic music to accompany
I scream a devils scream
fighting everywhere
Another matriarch
she jumps on the crowd
using a whiskey bottle for a club
dancing on top of the twirling bodies of energy
A pit-bull barks aggressively
people start to jump out windows
everybody is way too high
The fighting stops
with the arrival of cops
nobody listens
their vision of authority thwarted
nobody is arrested
narcotics present
amphetamine fuel
We burned a cross in a large fire half an hour earlier
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 10:48 AM UTC
Away, ye muses, all away!
Away with songs of finch and fay.
Away the jaundiced sight
That magnifies the firefly’s light
To bonfire bright;
That sets ablaze at once
My musing’s dimly burning lamps;
That ornaments with rhymes
The penury-stricken looks betimes;
That over-clothes the logic – lord
With fancy –swollen words.
Away, the partial love
That ‘boldens Nature to sit above
Her Maker!
This day I fasten eyelid doors,
With absence wax my ears,
With languorous peace congeal
My tongue, my touch, my tears *
That I within may pore
Upon the things behind, ahead,
In the darkness round me spread.
I lock Dame Nature out
With all her fickle rout.
Somewhere here,
In the darkness drear,
I myself with cheer
My course will steer
In the path
E’er sought by all:
Its magnet call
I hear.
Not hear, not here,
Apollo would his burning chariot steer;
Nor Diana dare to peep
Into the sacred silence deep.
Not here, not here,
Not far or near
Can mounts or rebel waves
E’er make me full of fear;
Nor evermore
Their dreadful grandeur to adore.
Not here, not here
The soft capricious wiles of flowers;
Nor swarming storm clouds’ sweeping terror,
Dishevelling the trees
And light-haired skies;
Nor doomsday’s thunderous roar,
Dismantling earth and stars-
The cosmic beauties all to mar –
Not Nature’s murderous mutiny,
Nor man’s exploding destiny
Can touch me here.
Not here, not here:
Through mind’s strong iron bars,
Not gods or goblins, men or nature,
Without my pass dare enter.
I look behind, ahead –
On naught but darkness tread.
In wrath I strike, and set the dark ablaze
With the immortal spark of thought,
By friction-process brought
Of concentration
And distraction.
The darkness burns
With a million tongues;
And now I spy
All past, all distant things, as nigh.
I smile serene
As I expose to gaze.
In wisdom’s brilliant blaze,
All charms of the Hidden Home Unseen:
The Home of Nature’s birth,
The planets’ moulding hearth,
The factory whence all forms or fairies start,
The bards, colossal minds, and hearts,
The gods and all,
And all, and all!
Away, away
With all the lightsome lays!
Oh, now will I portray
In humble way,
And try to lisp, if only in half truths,
Of wordless charms of Thee Unseen,
To whom Dame Nature owes her nature
and her sheen.
3.1k
My personal déjà-vu-time memory-prompts that frame
The blurring patterns of today’s hubcap-wheels, spinning
Kaleidoscope flashbacks of bathtub playtime.
A gaggle of giggling girls babbling about
What used to matter : umbrella-popping chewing gum
With gallivanting jargon laced in crushes-hushed : boy-talk.
Pillows : Comforters morphing, swarming like
Womb-entranced, half-cupped palms calmed
Palpitating mouths motoring off self-pitying rumble-grumbles.
How the clopping ball of opted-birr was a bent-mouth birdcall
Over-relished, over-zealous imploration : a round robin
Jumblemix of a jejune bombast for slap-sticked power.
By-and-by polysyllabic buds bloomed, baked, and wrinkled
Past-Gas’s long-gone jokes : those balmy snug-hugs guarding
Doltish vulgarity among the begrimed-glitch and old-grown-boring Jive.
Apr 7, 2011
Apr 7, 2011 at 11:49 PM UTC
1.
seeds of crimson, slightly sweet
alien pods of ruby meat
like exoskeletal teeth.
scores of crimson, holding in
like breath, its babes of sin.
little beetles; ****** tears.
one swarming conglomerate.
as if in fear, they huddle close
to await their fate in quiet fits.
2.
the
unfurling!scarlet!starfish!mothership!
sprawls out
fleshyfingers, fatwithfruit.
seedling children populate her innards
like a red-skinned race of juicy mutes.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 11:54 PM UTC
Tonight we’re aligned with the stars
I’m wearing Orion’s belt
You’re drinking in thirsty gulps from the big dipper
The little one’s in freckles on your chest
And now I can hear the wind chimes
On the porch
I can hear the leaves
Of the Bradford Pear
I can hear the cats and dogs and coyotes and deer and owls
Making nighttime noises
I can hear mom snoring in the house
For one of the last times
I can hear the trampoline springs creaking with age
And feel it bouncing and swaying under us
Like it did in its heyday
I can hear you sniffling, sister,
I can hear you crying
Your warm wet tears
Are drowning my ears
Like all those summers we did swim team
When I take your hand
It’s smaller than I remember
It’s Abby circa ‘99
Though you didn’t let me hold it then
And I never tried
Now our hair is curling in swirling halos
Around the same face
Mom’s face
We never did look like Dad
Now we’re gazing at the same stars
Under the same March sky
Thinking, saying, “God is good”
Saying, believing, “How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
Believing, knowing, that it’s true
Even while our hearts are rocks,
Our hands are clay,
Our minds are swarming
Teeming
Buzzing
Hives
But “God is good”
“How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
When our mother is a fish
How can He not be?
We know:
“God is good.”
While we’re reading the Braille of the sky
Two foxes slink by
Now we dismount the trampoline and go inside
Where we hear Mom snoring
For one of the last times
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 3:40 PM UTC
I have been
stuck
on this rubberband for days
I keep pulling
extending
and stretching it
back
I quickly release it
until I hear it
snap
It hit me quite hard
up against my wrist
The minutes and seconds
are raking again
The strands of my hair
on the ground
I feel
lonely
Or even worse
Trivial
Like a shallow river
in the street
After several days of rainfall
I'm an overbanking creek
I flood the town
As if I were the ocean but
there was never
any depth
There was never
any substance
to this interest
Because I
Never felt important
And so I lie flat
on my bed
Until I let
loneliness
Do open heart surgery
It makes a mess of me
And then it stitches me up
Necessity has the teeth of a dog
But I let it burn through
And in my own dissonance
I mother significance
Swarming out of my chest
Until the rubberband breaks
Aug 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017 at 12:34 PM UTC
Bees were swarming around the eastern
shallow end, a warning that the cherries
are deepened and smattering
the pond's bank with nature's jam,
the small tree a joy to the family, but
nobody around much now to keep them
picked and eaten.
The snapping turtles have had their fill
of the cherries and basked lazily in the
center of the deep end, at least two of them
and as I'm a frequent friend, they stationed
amiably as I walked, picked up and threw
grasshoppers to the fish in the water.
The spiders will appear in proportion soon
to the apples growing on three trees
at the edge of the woods, about 40 feet
south of the pond, with a jut of the creek
in between them.
Every year I get my sweet fill of those apples,
planted 50 years ago or so by my great-grandfather,
don't know what they are, maybe Braeburn,
judging by their mottled colors of red and yellow.
Aug 2, 2015
Aug 2, 2015 at 10:05 AM UTC
Hark! The sea-faring wild-fowl loud proclaim
My coming, and the swarming of the bees.
These are my heralds, and behold! my name
Is written in blossoms on the hawthorn-trees.
I tell the mariner when to sail the seas;
I waft o’er all the land from far away
The breath and bloom of the Hesperides,
My birthplace. I am Maia. I am May.
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All the sailor's know the warning
of a red-tinged sunrise morning
Storm clouds are on the bay
Just as Sally knew the forming
as his rage began its swarming
Storm clouds again today
Others see something pleasing
and rebuff the ocean's teasing
Storm clouds are on the way
And they said she was mistaken
no beast was there to awaken
Storm clouds they do embrace
But sailor's know their business
as time has oft made them witness
Storm clouds that run their race
To her the truth couldn't be clearer
as she looked into the mirror -
Storm clouds upon her face
The sailor knows to dodge the squall
that morning foretells with its call
Storm clouds then pass them by
Sally was left to take the fall
when truth was denied by us all
Storm clouds then let her die
Troubles in life they take all forms
so listen well when told of storms
Storm clouds never lie
Sep 19, 2010
Sep 19, 2010 at 1:33 AM UTC
when I dream I dream in the colors
of the being yet unformed
wide eyes shut
a pseudo-dormant parasite
feeding off of my mother, still.
I dream of oily ashes,
still staining the arms- ulna, radius
reaching towards the empty sky.
For what did they burn?
black on white.
shades of gray.
the man in the turban
stepping from my closet—
the bees swarming from his mouth.
Before my body was ten years old
I knew sadness—
it seeped into my soul
and I could not speak.
For what did I ache?
Jun 24, 2010
Jun 24, 2010 at 4:21 PM UTC