"tack" poems
To expel the outlines piled in my mind on paper,
With a light pencil in one hand,
And slice of rubber in the other,
I parent an impression of hope.
Therein lies the potential and the excitement;
A basic figure given the foundation of grandeur,
Amplifying in complexity before me,
With every scratch of graphite.
As it evolves, a heaviness sets in.
And I pause,
And I stop...
I've given something beautiful a half life, again,
As if it was birthed human,
With no flesh to cover its nerves,
And no breath to cry out its agony.
It remains still in my lap,
Eyes blank as ever staring, maybe, at me .
Out of humility, I tack it up on the wall,
A space shared by its many siblings.
I retreat shamefully with the promise to complete them,
Fumbling with the reality of what I do;
Playing God, I shape the husk of a soul,
And drop it when it's still brittle.
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 2:26 PM UTC
An unkind calmness that took away the solicitude
An unkind calmness that made everything a roun
An unkind calmness that mixed the altruistic with egoistic
An unkind calmness that took an evil tack
An unkind calmness that made solitude more ween
An unkind calmness that made white a black
An unkind calmness that after a fruitful bliss became a dark pandora
An unkind calmness that became worthy of unkindness !!
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 9:52 PM UTC
I could have gone to the cemetery,
or back to my high school lab,
find him lecturing from a podium,
bony finger raised,
demagogue of the dead.
I could break him down piece by piece,
cram him in a duffle,
a femur jutting the zipper.
Ignore the groan-
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.
Instead I found myself
in the carnival lot,
The dog was long dead,
the sign kept guard.
Rusty rides slouched like tumbleweeds.
Cotton candy in memory-
blue tack crunching my teeth.
Lewd.
Skeletons fixed on poles,
spiked up through pelvis and spine.
Use ****
Grip shoulders. twist. lift.
When one slid free,
he collapsed into my arms
all bone-light, lovely,
mine at last.
I just brought him home.
Sat at the kitchen table.
Named him Curly.
Zoom howled: WAG’s gone weird!
What’s his name? What’s his name?
His name is Curly,
I said, but I knew
his name was You.
We drink wine by the pool.
He never sips.
Sometimes I pour a second glass for the glint.
Sometimes he tells me Danny Elfman
wants to play his ribs like a xylophone.
Sometimes he sighs,
he hates Oingo Boingo.
I laugh. Obliging.
So do I.
When the wind kicks up
he smells of sugar and rust.
Sometimes he rattles the glassware.
Sometimes he won’t sit still.
Skeletons are
by nature
never satisfied.
Sep 25, 2025
Sep 25, 2025 at 12:11 PM UTC
The end of the affair is always death.
She's my workshop. Slippery eye,
out of the tribe of myself my breath
finds you gone. I horrify
those who stand by. I am fed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Finger to finger, now she's mine.
She's not too far. She's my encounter.
I beat her like a bell. I recline
in the bower where you used to mount her.
You borrowed me on the flowered spread.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Take for instance this night, my love,
that every single couple puts together
with a joint overturning, beneath, above,
the abundant two on sponge and feather,
kneeling and pushing, head to head.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
I break out of my body this way,
an annoying miracle. Could I
put the dream market on display?
I am spread out. I crucify.
My little plum is what you said.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Then my black-eyed rival came.
The lady of water, rising on the beach,
a piano at her fingertips, shame
on her lips and a flute's speech.
And I was the knock-kneed broom instead.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
She took you the way a women takes
a bargain dress off the rack
and I broke the way a stone breaks.
I give back your books and fishing tack.
Today's paper says that you are wed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed.
9.2k
I used to step on the solid ground
The grey asphalt with li'l pebbles in black in it
I used to walk with cemented pavement
Where no one hinders me to enjoy the tack I'm in.
You led me to the boat
And together, we left the crowd
My knees are shaking, as if I'm freezing
You guided me to enter that narrow boat
And I had nothing but myself to bring
For it may sink with tons of extra things.
We started sailing
The curtained sky was the scene
With lil stars painted on it
And the depth of the ocean was present
It bounces the crescent up there.
I felt the wind brushed my hair
He sounds so mad with the clouds supporting him
My feet trembles with fear as my faith does.
You are with me, oh Jesus
And I asked you if you care
For I may fall from where we are
And you may not see it and forget I was there at all.
Words come from your mouth
And the wind listened with your sweet voice
You brought peace and calmed my raging seas.
I trust no one but You
Even if I don't know how far but I'm ready though
Oh held my hands indeed,
Let my grip be frozen upon your hands.
I'll sit and take a look at the vistas
And move the boat as we sail
You'll teach me how to act
And wherever we'll go, You are with me.
(6/4/2014 @xirlleelang)
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 10:50 PM UTC
WHOOSH she goes
On the low seas, carried by the high winds.
Where
Ankles anchor, Knees tack, Back yaws, Wrists lock, and Thumb sagg.
Holding on to a harpoon in
my dingy, flopping against
Glinting, Honed, Double-Edged waves.
"**Light, **
It's the Eye of the Storm.**
Fatigue steers me into its heart
My anchor prodding me,
To continue or to
rest.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 12:50 AM UTC
Independent is the word they all use,
They tack it on me,
Let it hang a crooked ribbon.
Seeing all the things I already knew
Transcripted on the blanks of stacks of white and black,
Reverberating off chapped pink lips,
Takes me aback, shoves me into the corners of myself,
Tastes new like bird meat ****** off the bone tastes new.
I want to cut it up into little squares and abandon it in tupperware.
At least for a few days.
Nov 29, 2011
Nov 29, 2011 at 12:58 AM UTC
Lost to backdrops scrolling past,
She sits knitting
in the carriage of a train.
The vague needles
They scintillate and glimpse
With the cadence of the wheels –
Upbeating ceaselessly.
Strips of tiny loops
And eyelets like dewdrops
Of condensation
Grouped on the superior rim.
Once in a while,
She gives a heave
To loosen more yarn from the skein
Of Filipino-made wool,
brushed worsted weave.
Spun and carded
from the richest fleece,
Deeper in the wicker basket by her feet.
The needles flash,
With ancient rhythms and attack
Of duellists in their chainmail coats.
With little hesitation she can tack
From plain to purl to blackberry.
Count back by rote or slip a stitch
While the fish-eyed gimlets gleam.
All gather profusely in her lap,
As windfall trove, rich-patterned
And warm with peach-fuzz nap,
All crafted from a single line of yarn.
Marvels fall continuously from wise
Spell-binding hands and all is well for now.
(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC
The Washing machine that fits comfortably in a backpack
It means being prepared and not in lack
Your clothes will be clean like a tack
The mission is too carefully pack
Take the portable miniature washing machine wherever you go
Your ***** clothes you won’t have to show
The true clean puts you in the know
Turn hiking dirt into a kirk
The refreshing clean with the assistance of detergent Mr. Clean
***** cleans will become lean
Tough on stains and dirt with after being clean
Hike up any trail and mountain being confidence
Refreshed clothes as your testimony in instance
Pack that portable washing machine and let it turn your hiking experience into endurance
Convenience in the wilderness
Outdoor clean in the happiness
The stains that will come out
Add another detergent of Shout
Now that’s what I am talking about.
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 5:11 AM UTC
In the dour ages
Of drafty cells and draftier castles,
Of dragons breathing without the frame of fables,
Saint and king unfisted obstruction's knuckles
By no miracle or majestic means,
But by such abuses
As smack of spite and the overscrupulous
Twisting of thumbscrews: one soul tied in sinews,
One white horse drowned, and all the unconquered pinnacles
Of God's city and Babylon's
Must wait, while here Suso's
Hand hones his tack and needles,
Scouraging to sores his own red sluices
For the relish of heaven, relentless, dousing with prickles
Of horsehair and lice his ***** *****
While there irate Cyrus
Squanders a summer and the brawn of his heroes
To rebuke the horse-swallowing River Gyndes:
He split it into three hundred and sixty trickles
A girl could wade without wetting her shins.
Still, latter-day sages,
Smiling at this behavior, subjugating their enemies
Neatly, nicely, by disbelief or bridges,
Never grip, as the grandsires did, that devil who chuckles
From grain of the marrow and the river-bed grains.
6.3k
A tug of war
It is the past experience and what was saw and felt
A word in keeping a person in line
A restriction of one’s thoughts and actions
A procedure in holding one back
******* being a form beyond one’s accord
Thank God there is a Lord
There is a chance to survive
More than a thought being a strive
I dream but all I see is a nightmare
I see effort, but when will there be preserver?
Its like a road block with detour
A method of turn back
I feel as if I am trapped in bonds
Maybe I am still sleep and need to wake up from my yond
Perhaps it’s nothing more than a dream
It’s my thinking I am in a movie stream
But its truly tough being rough
A different slavery oppression of the past with a theory of the present
A overseer continuing in present oppression
A silenced voice having no expression
The downward bound with no mountain reach
It’s time for a rebellion approach
Oppression is real and not a joke
It’s like an open wound with having a stinging poke
Oppression is alive and attempting to do well
Yet the world has a message in tell
‘OPPRESS AND OVERCOME, ITS ABOUT NO MOVEMENT AND BEING NUMB. IT TAKES MULTITUDES IN SUPPLYING THE STRENGTH, BUT ALL MUST GO THE MILES NO MATTER WHAT THE LENGTH”
Survival is how you chose to live
Its not a verb but is subjective
The voice must always be objective
Oppression cannot continue in terms in having its way
The sunrise has risen and it’s a tomorrow being a new day
These are the times to move forward and be strong
It’s a matter of all personalities of creeds in knowing how to get along
So shake whatever chains you feel you have on
Stand up and be counted where you belong
Don’t let any form of oppression hold you back
You have grasped the concept of understanding in the theory of thinking sharp being the detailed tack
Just give oppression one big smack
Listen America it’s the various cultures that stack
Oppression stand back as you have been defeated being a pack.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 5:18 PM UTC
The root
Of ambition
Is ambivalent
There's no “one cause”
No one causes
A man
To make life decisions
In a day
It takes
Much more
For
A man to be successful
And real
With his inner-self
Accepting
The cards dealt
With the stamina
To play through
Exercising his will
With the feel
Lingering in every pore
Unsure
Of obstacles ahead
Headstrong
Through barricades
Bearing the bruises
Trampling
Over your own
Feet
Defeat
Seen in battle
But the war’s on
And the war zone
Isn’t limited
To a few
Years
Like ages 19-22
Whose to do
Worse
Who has more
Money
CARS
Clothes
And hoes
And whose vision
Is so small
To tack them
with success
All in all
And attack those
Who lack the
Wills
To move forward
And ignorantly
Attach it
With a phenomena
Of
Your unknowing
Root of ambition
Can spread
Like weeds
And weeds
Can **** ambition
Or spread
Like seeds
How many men
Dive
Head first under the influence
Or rise above
High
From the same drug
Barack Obama
Michael Phelps
William Shakespeare
Bill Clinton
Lebron James
Pablo Picasso
The Beatles
Jay-Z
Bob Marley
Conan O’Brien
Dr Francis Crick. (Nobel Prize Winner)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Salvador Dali
Victor Hugo
Kareem Abdul-Jabar
Snoop Dogg
Dr. Dre
Stephen King
Just to name a few
Maybe
Just maybe
It has nothing to do
With success
Or you.
Sep 30, 2010
Sep 30, 2010 at 1:11 AM UTC
There was an old lady of France,
Who taught little ducklings to dance;
When she said, 'Tick-a-Tack!'--
They only said, 'Quack!'
Which grieved that old lady of France.
5.2k
Still alone
We are not
Maybe Titan
All we got
Mine our way
Barge ore back
Build a bridge
Plutonium tack
Ceramic sails
On solar wind
Terminal shock
Butterflies pinned
On orbital ellipses
‘Gainst starry drops
Spun light and dark
Like judgment tops
Spendthrift starfish
Regenerate limbs
From primal screams
That eat our sins
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 12:27 AM UTC
There's a keen and grim old huntsman
On a horse as white as snow;
Sometimes he is very swift
And sometimes he is slow.
But he never is at fault,
For he always hunts at view
And he rides without a halt
After you.
The huntsman's name is Death,
His horse's name is Time;
He is coming, he is coming
As I sit and write this rhyme;
He is coming, he is coming,
As you read the rhyme I write;
You can hear the hoof's low drumming
Day and night.
You can hear the distant drumming
As the clock goes tick-a-tack,
And the chiming of the hours
Is the music of his pack.
You may hardly note their growling
Underneath the noonday sun,
But at night you hear them howling
As they run.
And they never check or falter
For they never miss their ****
Seasons change and systems alter,
But the hunt is running still.
Hark! the evening chime is playing,
O'er the long grey town it peals;
Don't you hear the death-hound baying
At your heels?
Where is there an earth or burrow?
Where a cover left for you?
A year, a week, perhaps to-morrow
Brings the Huntsman's death halloo!
Day by day he gains upon us,
And the most that we can claim
Is that when the hounds are on us
We die game.
And somewhere dwells the Master,
By whom it was decreed;
He sent the savage huntsman,
He bred the snow-white steed.
These hounds which run for ever,
He set them on your track;
He hears you scream, but never
Calls them back.
He does not heed our suing,
We never see his face;
He hunts to our undoing,
We thank him for the chase.
We thank him and we flatter,
We hope -- because we must --
But have we cause? No matter!
Let us trust!
4.7k
It’s possible to speak too much to remember what your words mean.
And so is the two-fold danger faced by writers.
Danger is to pace a hole in the floor.
Danger is to stand until you can’t move anymore
like when shallow waves **** your feet into the sand.
So I try not to stand when I write.
I keep a narrow tack
without too many big words
which pedants use to dig great holes in the ground
–moats to keep others out–
or make you think they think big.
But anyone who reads knows about Icarus
and anyone with aims must beware:
to shoot directly upwards is to strike your own head
when like fate the arrow
returns to source.
You’re only as good as your mind,
your characters only as strong as you are.
—at least, this is true in so far as you know.
True in so far as they speak.
For to test them you must torque them
and twist at their cores,
and make opposing forces meet–
but only
as hard as you can.
This makes writing a hill slick with oil.
Insecure. Potential energy.
Potential failure
seated
in all of that grime
that cakes your toes like grease that coats
the teeth of great industrial gears.
So I try not to stand when I write.
But whether the better take comes when you plunge
and you slide and dissolve like so much ice,
I must say I don’t know,
the thought
seems nice.
But the same
It seems like those who let go
Are the ones
with the least to say.
I can't decide
either which way.
All I know about writing is
most sentences are punctuated wrongly.
The period is certain,
but writing is undecided.
It is the figuring-out, a quest-bound troop
that moves with all its own fanfare.
Question marks curl up—
invisible smoke on a summer coal fire:
heat twisting the air like irons in stoke
giving sign of the transformations there withheld.
For fire mediates matter,
so writing stands ever-between.
But I’ve spoken too much and I don’t know what these words mean.
And so I fold like there’s danger in writing,
while danger is imagined like borders on a continent.
Danger is thinking
I'm dangerous enough to keep silent.
Like shallow waves,
given way to sand.
So avoid letting voids form
where the mind dismisses confrontation to more capable smiths.
Writing is –at best– an attempt.
Even with shallow structures
in rhythmic din,
the silent breaks by force of pen,
and all because of the simple fact
that quiet refuses to bend.
All I can hope is my writing upholds these unknowns
while I try not to stand.
But you ask about writing?
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 4:28 PM UTC
Slap, slap, slap; she's always chatting,
Maybe to the gulls up above.
Winds being friendly to us both,
I toss the lines and give a shove.
Fix the sheets and adjust the tack,
She does the rest as I sit back.
Waves crashing off the bow,
I'm sailing now!
Dec 26, 2009
Dec 26, 2009 at 4:55 PM UTC
A birth that was meant too be
It was strength surrounding the solid key
Our story involves Zeus
He was a God who sat High
His eyes were on the Earth below being living creatures such as I
Yet very powerful, mysterious and magical
Hercules was Zeus Son
A man having strength that will conquer the odds of many
The mythical uncanny
But Hercules has many tasks to perform
Before anyone can be considered a champion, there are feats being the norm
The test of one’s strength and withstanding endless struggles
Well some of the citizens of Elis had doubts that Hercules even existed and felt it was on a legend story
But far more than lightening bolts being the glory
Hercules proved over and over, he was more than muscles and brawn, but had a heart of gold that would always last
Hercules once lifted a statue that a mire mortal could never do weighing a ton
He was his own man among
Hercules illustrated he didn’t have a heavy heart, but strength in aiding the weak in lifting the burdens
Yet Hercules would be faced with many challenges beyond measure
One task would be defeating the Hydra, a two headed Monster
How does one being so small and having strength, but the challenge against something so large?
It will take tack, skill and a precision plan in order to defeat the Hydra into victory
So Hercules picked up a club and anything else that was available to think of
At first, it looked like Hercules was wearing down the Hydra, but the Hydra kept getting its second wind
It wasn’t until then
Hercules then applied intense strength on the Hydra, and the Monster finally crumbled down to the ground
There wasn’t any longer of the Hydra’s sound
Later it became task after task
But Hercules continued to reign supreme
Hercules became a champion, and his own king with the deliverer of strength and the defender of the weak.
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 1:10 PM UTC
Inspired by The Mars Volta
Encased in, tubular, too much too fast, written again with music in the background!
Screams now or be they babies? Here it's more with talking, psychedelic naturally!
Complete the creativity contract stingy stars stealin' popcorn RIPS, and I can feel it coming to me. Groaning, rhyming with the rather outer despite the order AND GO! Build up, build up who wants a build up? Pause.
Groove to me my Ukraine tartar! Make no sense, make it so hard you can't understand where it or was she GOING, go, go, go! Membrane skin saturate thy kin with separating spin so I can't fuckin' breathe! Correct my sins or be you scared to talk to pins though they your friends. The tack is in to lift paper from she and she can't see. Are you a man or a mouse or anthropomorphic spouse of any of these fleeing an-i-mals?! I find in the mirror myself and beer to drown the pain or discomforting disdain I can't quite get it right anymore therefore goodbye all truly universally bleeding. I say goodbye to my past and won't come to grip with it! GRIP your children's ears but it is you who doesn't want to hear. You cover their eyes because of the size of daybreak rise! Rise to the occasional borderline street sign between
Inspired by Tool
I will explode into the stars, become all of them, but all in sparkle of another's eye
I can't rip this mind any further, or else it'll break and snap and slow-mo crack
May, may, may, may you starve, breathe, sink, rise, steep, leap, creep into my parallel like a feeling
Demented in this way due to you, the closest I'll ever get
Five years, apparently not enough to forget
Five years, without you
Five years, and you still break into my dreams
Five years
Nov 25, 2013
Nov 25, 2013 at 4:13 PM UTC
Covenant park central
parallel, east-side west
waiting on the print defender
(and Lichaten queen)
he appears randomly, and distorted
with a broken smile
shuffling down the Smithright trail
with his Mac Tack and cinnamon shades
(sun bags and thrift ware stacked neck high
on a rusted rat-trap)
An open end panel van crashes the curb
as the long-board dodges the tail
and kicks up some flare
the plumb tree and Sunbeam double wide
hold steady in the driver's fish eye
as the warehouse carny and "tire-less" 510
shine brilliantly...
in the dull, dripping scene
Nov 21, 2018
Nov 21, 2018 at 2:11 PM UTC
stand(ing) here alone in the dark
like a head of tack pirouetting away
to no music - only acrid scruple
of this being with and not being with,
one is always alone.
space occupies the potteries in
the garden as a steady arm of light
stills in its mouth, a flowering dark.
it is only 3 o'clock in the morning
and the heat clambers the wall of
the vacuously atrabilious moment
of just plainly existing. the slender
harlequin of moon, like an old lover
having its own way with me, a child's
yelp coming home — the hermetic
air crushing the light, slivering it
revealing all the ensconced phantasms
too commonplace like a fork in the road
that i know, or the wayward metropolitan
that teems with a concatenation of roads
and gutters bilious with the squall of day.
a figure moves entering a warm miasma,
receiving the star of aloneness,
vacillating between
place and placelessness
telling this originary of repossessing
the moon with a hand in my hand,
pressing a question of where
have you been all the raging while.
Oct 8, 2015
Oct 8, 2015 at 3:52 PM UTC
God struck me down
He did it to me because I was playing with him
That teaches me a lesson not to do it again
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
John Dillinger got killed in 1930
He was assassinated for trying to rob a bank
He was carrying a gun
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
John Pole got mad at me, and hit me with a tire iron
He was so ****** off at me
He pulled out his tack, and gave me the shock of my life
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Electric eel
Mitsubishi, the word is getting around
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 10:29 PM UTC
abused aromas
fuse the dwelling
throats slacken and tighten
good cooking can make a home
a rooted clut of tallow
home
sweaty home
ignite another cigarette
scrape a fingernail on the sofa
a white grippy trail
scrunch your toes in the deep greasy carpet
and salivate on the wender of smoke
from the cooking of the roast
Dec 27, 2021
Dec 27, 2021 at 11:38 AM UTC
Party like a rock star
Pretend to be elegant and wear sundresses
Remember to smile and wave at the desperate housewives, I choose to offend
I'm inconsiderate
My charismatic side makes up for everything
So blow me a kiss and flirtatious wink
I will ignore the fact you have a plastic grin
I hate to say it, love you're not my friend
Hey, don't worry I will do this again
Contaminated, I hope to infect the ticky-tack world
Please don't vanquish my plot of sin
Don't forget to bring a bikini (optional) and gallon of whiskey
May 11, 2016
May 11, 2016 at 6:59 PM UTC
"Tout aux tavernes et aux filles."
Suppose you screeve? or go cheap-jack?
Or fake the broads? or fig a nag?
Or thimble-rig? or knap a yack?
Or pitch a snide? or smash a rag?
Suppose you duff? or nose and lag?
Or get the straight, and land your ***
How do you melt the multy swag?
***** and the blowens cop the lot.
Fiddle, or fence, or mace, or mack;
Or moskeneer, or flash the drag;
Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack;
Pad with a slang, or chuck a ***
Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag;
Rattle the tats, or mark the spot;
You can not bank a single stag;
***** and the blowens cop the lot.
Suppose you try a different tack,
And on the square you flash your flag?
At penny-a-lining make your whack,
Or with the mummers mug and gag?
For nix, for nix the dibbs you bag!
At any graft, no matter what,
Your merry goblins soon stravag:
***** and the blowens cop the lot.
THE MORAL
It's up the spout and Charley Wag
With wipes and tickers and what not.
Until the squeezer nips your scrag,
***** and the blowens cop the lot.
2.6k