"swimmingly" poems
I resist the temptation to concede that I am all at sea…since the end of you and me.
No, not me…
**** it up and be strong I cry. And cry.
You cannot know how I once trusted us to go swimmingly, not to sink beneath your wave goodbye...
After all the effort and energy of loving you – before so disappointing you.
Once I was alone and petrified rings in my head. Can I? I’m the man here. Am I?
I can’t believe you’re leavin' me – different tune now – stay with me baby. Please.
But hey, it’s already happened….now I must lie awake in your wake.
And even if the tide were to one day bring you back to my shore….
I know we could never be sure again….
Oct 4, 2013
Oct 4, 2013 at 1:06 AM UTC
How provocative can I get?
People always tell me
My brain and my mouth don't connect.
I have a good head on my shoulders
Or so they think
And an unlucky case of
"Foot-in-mouth" syndrome.
The awkward first impressions are the best.
I'm pretty good with adults
As long as they can hold a conversation with me
Long enough to break the ten foot-thick ice.
But oh, I'm smart
That's what they call it now?
******** my life up
Throwing everything that has been given to me away
For a boy, a dream, a utopia?
That's smart?
I think not.
Sexcapades never go so swimmingly
With men ranging in age
A mouth like a cannon on me
Spewing curse words around authoritative figures
Never leaving anything to imagination
Being too blunt
Speaking first, thinking later?
They call me provocative
As if it is a problem.
Well, if I'm a problem
Then count me in.
Mar 1, 2014
Mar 1, 2014 at 12:05 AM UTC
Daylight fades too quickly
and leaves you struggling like a dead fish
against a time limit you have no intention
of keeping or realizing, in even a small fashion.
The money runs out.
The money always runs out and
everyone is looking for a handout
no one wants to give.
Especially those who can afford it-
it's like a void;
a golden density not even light can escape.
Makes me wonder; "Is the money really power,
or is power just power,
and the hierarchy and patriarchy and system
just keep whatever stains in place, despite their incompetence?"
History seems to provide ample answers to the right questions;
Why does the day feel so short?
Why does retail labor feel like a pyramid scheme?
Why does work feel like prison?
Why are employers so scared of unions?
Whatever, right? Those ******* would give you an answer
after three separate commercial breaks and a survey.
Everyone views the person under their foot as less than human.
It's how we're able to procreate and sleep at night
[a night that comes quicker every day now].
A curtain over a birdcage; we're all just dozing off.
******* around.
Studying everyone else's face,
looking for a nervous twitch to decipher
whose bluffing,
believing we're doing swimmingly in our own ********
The next generation built on our corpses, secrets and lies.
Corpses, secrets, and lies.
Let the world burn if we can make it past daylight.
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 6:21 PM UTC
my skin
is thin and
swimmingly scrim.
the moonface
pushpulls me.
i am
moved
too much.
i am
not enough
mover.
i am *****
given,
all too often.
i am
not
me -
i am you
in your supine
palm.
i matter
little.
my
molecules
are
fast
becoming
transparent,
vibrating with the sound
of your voice, which
seems real
-so real-
real
like
when
the kitchen
sink
disposal
runs.
May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016 at 8:47 PM UTC
sitting patiently in a forest of heart and desire,
a rhythm swirls in my eyes
fluxing
with pop, we will rule the world
smiles will flood the streets
swimmingly
swollen cheeks and battered lips
kissing through calm days
c’était la vie et ce sera toujours
i’ll always kiss into the evening with a wide, wily grin
forever burning through hours of dull, stale surroundings
i will live forever in the motions in the night
i will live blissfully
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 5:36 PM UTC
He was beautiful and kind
he seemed like a gentleman so refined.
he made the first move, and asked to date me
I was so happy I said yes, and wrote it all down in my diary
The date was set, I should have know then it was going to end in tears
for the day was a day made up of fears
was this a sign I think so yes
the date was Friday the 13th
I should have laid this one to rest
The date went swimmingly he seemed so charming
but then something happened that was so alarming
whilst making love to me he uttered these words
Don't go falling in love with me
my belly that once was filled with butterflies and birds now filled with bats.
my heart sank, my body froze, I can't believe he just said that.
Don't go falling in love with me he said, as he was on top of me in his bed.
my eyes looking up to the ceiling
feeling so sad they filled with tears
he was unaware of how I was feeling.
Don't go falling in love with me
Those words echoed in my mind
how can he be so cruel when he seemed so kind
Don't go falling in love with me
I've never felt so used, I've never felt so *****
A cheap sleep around I have never been accused I'm not Even flirty.
Don't go falling in love with me
too late I already fell.
I loved everything, your eyes, your laugh, your smell.
Don't go falling in love with me
Those words will haunt me for all time
I gave you everything but then in a instant I realised you was never to be mine.
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 5:38 PM UTC
I am the oldest kid so
Stop playing with that baby.
I want you to myself.
It’s all about me.
The other kids at school
A behaving so horribly
They don’t understand
It’s all about me.
I am so sorry you have
Fallen so hard for me.
But I have to be moving on.
It’s all about me.
I’m going to quit my job
Because it’s boring me.
So many creeps there.
It’s all about me.
I’m running for office
And it’s going swimmingly
After all, in this job
It’s all about me.
I don’t have to specify
Or make promises readily.
I just smile and tell lies.
It’s all about me.
My kids are obnoxious
They need attention constantly.
Don’t they understand?
It’s all about me.
My life would be better
If people behaved sensibly.
After all, the reality is
It’s all about me.
It’s all about me.
It’s all about me.
Mar 11, 2016
Mar 11, 2016 at 4:45 AM UTC
Stories on the tips of their tongues,
drool off like dobermans
slobbering over fresh meat.
Eyes like vultures for all the obvious reasons.
I tore my liver out and threw it on the table,
just to test the waters. Went swimmingly.
Better hang in there kid.
Better luck next time.
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 10:57 PM UTC
i pick up the instrument
cold but not aloof
angle and roll my wrist
watching one thin voltage of line
zip up and down
from tapered metallic crown
to broad black foot
glint of bald brilliance
swimmingly alone
one singular streak so very true to itself
reacting to this act
uncut
struck
am i
by the lean careen
i am unstuck
agreeing to its scheme
exact
cupped
i fashion myself
written down
code scrolling upon my being
informing conduct
with form of fury
it glows with obligation
it knows no theory
i do not try
i let it scry
history's sloughed golden bones
hover above vision's groan
i slip it in the inbetween
wings shook violent
no longer lame
ferocity of aha gained
two saturated pools
consent and
circle the hurt drain
only hue of heal of remains
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 4:13 PM UTC
A medley
in dictum
as foreseen
anglicization collect
beat swimmingly
with intrigue
in literature
and euphemistically
tell realization
that further
eyewitness in
plurality with
fealty in
foreign affairs
here that
schlepp peace
with ferrety.
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 5:37 PM UTC
Happy Birthday, Baby
The countdown now is done
Though last year was quite a surprise!
You now are 61…
That’s cause for celebration
Despite what you have said
So sing a Happy Birthday
Raise a glass-break some bread!
I know how hard you work while
Those copy machines keep breaking
Those customers keep on *******
Is it worth the price you’re making?
So punctual! Dependable.
Clever at fixing things, too
While I’m at home in our garden
Harvesting whatever grew
Watching tomatoes ripen
While you’re crawling on the floor
Looking for that wayward *****
On your 6th call-and 2 more!
I might be on the back porch
With Danielle upon my lap
Wishing YOUR day goes swimmingly
Maybe time to take a nap?
I stop to pick up flowers
And your birthday cake I’m mixing
While machines keep on breaking
And you keep right on fixing
Just consider this, Dear Bill
And believe it can come true
By next year you COULD decide
To retire at 62!
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 2:04 PM UTC
Fish jumps from water
onto dock; thrashing, flailing,
inches from relief.
May 6, 2011
May 6, 2011 at 8:47 PM UTC
So, it was a dark and stormy night and
Father Larry O’Flannigan
Was feeling excited as he
Maneuvered the rainy streets with
Five extra-large cheese pizzas
Elated and happy because
Teenage catechism class
Had gone so swimmingly well
He wanted to reward them
Hence the crusty comestibles
Crossing 10th and Vine
Rain pelting cars and pedestrians
He slipped and tripped
Pandemonium of pizza boxes
Pell-mell into puddles
The chagrined good father
In an unsettled state
Hurt, wet, disheveled,
Exclaims:
“Jesus Christ! God Almighty!"
A pious passerby exclaims
(An older lady dressed for rain)
“Father! Please! Language!”
The sheepish priest sputters:
“Em, cheese and crust got all muddy…?”
Mar 1, 2019
Mar 1, 2019 at 11:48 PM UTC
Ad infinitum
embroiled in another
waking moment with
a bated breath nothing like
this day inclined only to obfuscate
its meaningless joy of seeing yourself
in a pond swimmingly doubling the inertia
of the koi the day constricting within the verdigris
ready to seal shut in hermetic this vermillion eye
to wake up into a long-held confrontation
of what this system closes in a document
why bother this validation when valedictory
Ad nauseam
why bother this confrontation
when disappearance this space much like a long-held performance
if concert is hermetic in front of a nonchalant audience
laudable with no sound, an untranslatable music
unhinged from the inherent risk of felling
an inert day struggling like koi trapped
in a pond seeking what it is to transcend
or the multiplied joy of seeing yourself meaningless
ready for an eye to be caught in a monotonously
claustrophobic loins of a tremulous middleground
with no possible agreement other than:
this potentially demands an end
when beginning you are lionized
to a fault, repeated, trite: what for?
Jun 3, 2016
Jun 3, 2016 at 1:06 AM UTC
I, whose sleep gloats
searching for answers, steering for a dream
I take my place amongst men
in parks, in alleys, in trains,
and the Sun unmasks itself
like timeworn skies of linoleum.
trees their bulwarks realize such oneness
and birds start to rain
where time wounds all feelings
and lovers innumerably lay flat on their bellies.
mountains ***** as tall as truths,
and the sleuth more than my body’s engine
turns less than a seraphim – dizzy with the
night’s utmost haranguing.
I, whose soul returns not with garlands
but with chains as my phantoms go with them
swimmingly across the blue Earth
and a man brindled, tussled against
space that so distant the star becomes so near
and all sleep lose names of dreams.
Dec 18, 2015
Dec 18, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
these winding, blind itineraries
and their purposeful turns;
bends on the wry pavements,
their naming of things
awaiting the return of memory
with an auspice, or a head with bounty,
i am but a bamboo in
the wind — slender gymnast
supple ground's tenement,
or daresay honestly, a creeping into
the world with roots close to
heartland, this poem
now, without feet and my eyes
with surgery-precision ruptures
the softness of all things held close
and divine like a secret,
swimmingly
light coming in
unabashed rooms
here now is a poem,
a homecoming.
Oct 30, 2015
Oct 30, 2015 at 10:57 AM UTC
I'm tap dancing as fast as I can, Mom.
The sparks jumping off the sidewalk like
demon flares half mad in the dark!
all seems to be going swimmingly,
but you turn to stone and deliver me
to the monster at 3 o'clock sharp!
Read my crimes and grant no leniency;
the sentence is beating with Dad's belt.
Jan 26, 2023
Jan 26, 2023 at 9:49 PM UTC
As things are going swimmingly, there's always something that must go wrong.
Something that halts me, stops me, catapults me into the mindset that maybe what I had going wasn't so great; it wasn't great enough to avoid tribulations and issues that cause me to second guess and hesitate to move forward.
As things hit rough waters, there's always something that keeps me afloat.
And how can the one thing keeping me afloat within my life be so terrific and profound yet scary and daunting and silencing?
You are like a buoy tied to an anchor, you keep me afloat but you still bob below the surface and this roller coaster is all over the place and it's taking me everywhere I didn't even think I could handle going.
I need you, I don't want you, I have you, I miss you, I seek you, I crave you, I lie to you, I lie next to you, I hold you, I push you away. Our relationship is a paradox.
And I only have myself to blame for that I suppose.
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 1:17 AM UTC
anything that is,
must bear light —
transitory, translucent: perhaps, winged
and conscious of space, mindful of turn,
sizing down height. vertigo of all that,
shining no ambivalence.
this is the way my world will end:
the room still reeks of sour mash —
Pablo the dog, oblivious, marble-eyed,
yet some pitch-black hound's awakening
from steely sleep. the pages will
fall flat on the doorstep unannounced—
it is difficult to imagine angels.
it is difficult to deal God's infinities.
they are each to their own
faults.
heaven is meant to scar. still drunk
in fearfully fretting butterflies
tilted in slaughterhouses screaming
****** against the crowd.
there will be no falsetto claim to
sovereign — a drop D, e minor chord
on the guitar, strumming, swimmingly
discolored and only resounding.
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 10:42 PM UTC
— bard of night,
keeper of metal.
furious light flaunts no avatar.
shadows chant a sequence
of deathly ire. loam, dearth and girdled to
silver mane of canal.
Dos has died.
father took him into an unfamiliar curve
wandered off into a reverberating
disquiet.
i have buried him
together with all loyalties — concealed
him in thin space, decreed him
all dogdom with unction,
swimmingly now, still you go, leaving
us. it has been six years and all eternity's motors gnash
afloat is the bird
and in the nearby ken is another dog
panting in death-daring heat,
Dos has died.
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 12:48 AM UTC
The people come and ask me
Why the fingers run so wildly
Because they do it quietly
Though they were born quite recently
They've been doing it for awhile you see
Since they run disturbingly
The people act out viciously
But it's exactly this that we
The Dark Blue fingers and I collectively
Get along so swimmingly
We hate the sight of all you pleebs
So let us scratch you in private please
Apr 19, 2013
Apr 19, 2013 at 1:03 PM UTC
1
held against the mouth
sentenced cleaved to silence, what is around me
is all this is: wire. quartet of birds. aqueduct
as arrest and close range tap of rain on face
rippling in the eye foreclosed and reasoned is
this image's return -- what is it like to live
far away from home and not hear me say
regret as study of attitude? News carried
bombardment of inner cities. We were hesitant
to leave place and borrowed skin instead,
if not borrowed then grasped for, what is the answer? if coordinates lie, what are
we trying to discover.
2
held against the temple
not a barrel of a gun, but similarly, a chamber if not
a mouth breathing in sulfur. the day has spun
out of, and in between clipped reminders of
the calendar:
today's broken notes on the tablatures are
the daily. Do groceries. Pick the freshest fruit,
take the sour out of the scale. Gut the fish
and not word it so over the kitchen counter, I will
watch behind a clutter of earthenware and furniture. Might topple the glass
once and catch your attention. I do not deny your
effect on my soul.
3
today's forecast of rain is body staying in.
the children are seized by terror as scattered displays of lightning paint their faces
petrified with a lack of hue -- listen to the
intermittent, coarse static of the television
when it happens, your face ripe for arrest.
there is nothing to do in a home
holding its breath when you walk,
do not leave just yet. the water is rising.
it tells you to stay in. triple your presence
across the dining, rain as if out of the shower
barely drying yourself, leave water
i will not drink, only test swimmingly
a dream out of sleep and so real
a twitch of fish out of ocean.
4
outside you are no longer than the transit
of birds seeking canopies. Wind disrupts
the steady arm of cables. Slosh of water
from an oncoming vehicle as if beside the
sea crashing into me are waves,
What need is there when your mouth houses
water, your ******* warmth? Contrast as
habit of alternatives. In verbatim, this is how it
sounded from you, "We are very young.
Remember me this way."
Now i wish voices could be bodies. The next irreconcilable face as hearth.
Fingers as assuage, distance as dearth,
grasp if not borrow, translatable to
signal, my body heeding, fraught by taciturnity through the caught wind
through the furniture, once your body being groped for like any
other sundrenched day.
May 21, 2016
May 21, 2016 at 6:31 AM UTC
If I write him a poem,
does that mean anything to you?
Do you see? There are pieces of me,
I gave to someone other than you.
I think I've moved on swimmingly
I think I am someone brand new.
But if you're seeing me on my worst day,
I have some work still to do.
I can be my own worst enemy.
I can self implode with great aptitude.
But I can be full of grace, and beauty
and forgiveness.
I hope you will be too.
Nov 27, 2016
Nov 27, 2016 at 12:30 AM UTC
Digging deep
Pulling me out of myself
Chipping away the layers
I've been lost and found
Round and round I went
Until in the light of the sinking sun
I saw you glow and felt alive
I'm awake now
I've missed you all along
You are the answer to many wishes upon candles and stars
Patiently I've mastered the fear of saying yes
After wandering and wasting in this world solo
There I suddenly was
At home in your gaze
The victory dance kind of kiss
Swimmingly I floated in the door
Slept soundly with thoughts of you
Lips vibrating
Soul joyous
Jun 20, 2017
Jun 20, 2017 at 10:29 PM UTC
It's not a mystery.
You will always remember the nights where we lulled each other's troubled minds into repose. Swimmingly and openly, we frisk into each others souls. Vividly, I remember everything just as much as you do.
You think I've forgotten? Look around you: my thought of you flows through every blade of grass upon the earth, in every bead of water in The Ring of Fire. We branded ourselves in each others minds,
how do we hope to forget?
You think I've forgotten about the universe we escaped to, away from all this chaos, and swirled ourselves into each others solace? You think I've forgotten those moments where we made serendipitous discoveries about each other?
You think I've forgotten about our consciousness colliding, giving birth to planets only known to us? I remember the time when we fashioned an empyreal of our own, and amorously arranged the skies below us.
I will never consign that to oblivion.
You made my nightmares with you, lovely; good dreams without you, dreary. Every time sweat pools beneath me, I see your reflection.
I sweat layers more, praying that it gets buried before I get lost in confliction.
I was always behind the crepuscular rays that bathed you, waiting for your irises to adjust. You think I wanted to stop pouring myself out to you? Every time the rain whispers your name, I really wanted to bust the dam to get to you.
But I had to stop the flow before we cross too many lines; set off too many mines. I had to turn away, before we get desperately addicted to each other. I need to, else we'd be the destruction of everyone around us.
I stopped, because I started loving you.
Nov 23, 2015
Nov 23, 2015 at 9:27 AM UTC