"tapering" poems
I see you, monster...
In your sockets bore dead, dark eyes
They hold the blackest of stares
Nebulous swirling pits of demise
Thin lips would spout the most sibilant of hisses
Every so often would curl into a snarl
Dry and chapped, almost unworthy of kisses
Large, rough snout, jutting out like a crag
You sniff around tirelessly for easy targets
Preying on the unsuspecting minds of those under your flag
Tapering chin, sprouting strands of coarse hair
Unkempt and gritty from your last meal
Decaying teeth, crooked due to little to no care
Your face is cratered; tales of trying adolescent years
Wearing a face only a mother could love
Expressionless but it screams out your fears
Ugly jointed limbs that grew out of sync
Disproportionate, misshapen, grotesque
Little noggin with sparse hair, packed within, a brain that thinks
I hear you, monster...
As you stalk your sleepless nights
Nocturnal ambience be your playground
Lurking in the dark; places with no light
Bulky, heavy feet but deft and silent
Can barely notice when you're up and about
As if cloaked yourself stealthy, with steps ever transient
Respire you do, exhaling breaths so gnarly
Ingesting good air, converting into fervid, loathsome notions
With which you paint a portrait so ghastly
I feel you monster...
Deep within the recesses of my heart
Destroying and distorting all that was pure
Testing my will till I should fall apart
You're but the twisted manifestation of conscience
Feeding on my trials and nurturing them into vile abominations
I despise that of you but I seem to have developed dependence
I see you, monster...
You're horrid and beastly, an embodiment of absolute horror
I await the day that you would finally dissolve
For I am weary of seeing you staring back in the mirror
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 9:23 PM UTC
I
Opusculum paedagogum.
The pears are not viols,
Nudes or bottles.
They resemble nothing else.
II
They are yellow forms
Composed of curves
Bulging toward the base.
They are touched red.
III
Having curved outlines.
They are round
Tapering toward the top.
IV
In the way they are modelled
There are bits of blue.
A hard dry leaf hangs
From the stem.
V
The yellow glistens.
It glistens with various yellows,
Citrons, oranges and greens
Flowering over the skin.
The shadows of the pears
Are blobs on the green cloth.
The pears are not seen
As the observer wills.
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The oyster. Her oyster,
I've been dying to see the pearl,
the moment I and she,
went to swim together,
our eyes, with intense emotions, half closed.
I'll softly touch her with my long, trembling fingers,
swiftly, when I touch,
it would open like a jewel box,
I'll peer inside at all the treasures,
exotic it would be, never forget,
through obsessive nights,
I thought and kept awake, bleary eyed,
I wanted to tell her this,
but then, froze on my tracks.
The oyster, it glows in mind,
she, too pulsates with excitement,
we'll be together, in this submarine adventure.
In that night, our hearts didn't even wink,
sauntering through the still moon lit terrace,
when, one by one stars
fell in place and adorned the sky's coiffure,
the waves of the sea, softened
moved in languid salaciousness,
then, at that precise moment,
we came face to face.
The rough grains of sand, under our undulating bodies,
sighed sweet, sang a ***** night gull's song,
searing feel of salty wind mingled with blood
oozing from love bruise, bites that hurt,
enhanced the pleasure of frothing blood ,
thirsty mating tongues, twirled and twisted.
*Oyster, her oyster, I remember every moment,
tapering in to gentle whispers,
dissolve and be the light, playing with the humming waves.*
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 1:53 AM UTC
Why do poets and photographers love fleeting things?
Angled shafts of sunlight piercing a mass
of clouds. A rainbow flashing from dragonfly wings.
Water drops beading like shards of glass.
The fluttering shape of a sycamore’s shade.
The sun sinking into its reflection
In a purple bay. Smoke’s shadow. The rayed
Curve of a finger reaching for perfection.
Whatever churns, bursts, rocks, flies,
Foams, flickers, roils, evades
In pigments of impermanent dyes
We try to fix before it fades
Once I mourned the endless dying
Of here and now, the present always past
Elegized each moment, sighing
Beauty is loss and can never last.
But now I think I had it wrong. In fact
(I learned this from an artist’s eye)
Fleeting beauty reappears faster than we react,
At the speed of a daydream flashing by.
All around, light coalesces into form,
Form explodes into light,
And we live lavishly inside this storm
If we can learn to see it right.
Beauty multiplies, tapering, swelling:
Reshaping, reforming, now familiar, now strange.
This gaudy blur in which we’re dwelling
Is the permanence of change.
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 8:32 AM UTC
Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hill and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delated, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hiddden thorn;
Fills up the famer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
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*White river running
Delicately
Ethereal glow of
Twilight hues
Suffusing the atmosphere
Stark purple
Grass covered in aftermath
Of night's freezing cold
Miniature icicles
Tapering on mossy rocks
Melting with the sun's
Scattered rays
Unruffled indulgence
Bone-chilling splendour
In the arms of the mountain mist*
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 2:08 PM UTC
.
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ooo me so willing•truss me
ooo up, bound... i am not
oo fighting•call this in-
oo sensibility... name
ooo this foolery•i am
... but a branch
dangling off
| a tree• |
| call thus |
| me an i am |
| idiot... la- the doll, |
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| have my i am the |
| strings... marione-
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.
Dec 12, 2015
Dec 12, 2015 at 12:08 PM UTC
One glossy raven perched, stately,
atop a snowy hill, Unearthly Long flowing wings, hanging down the slope, framing the hill
on the face of which,
were interposed two glacial ponds of blue.
Between these pools ran a simple strip of sloped marble,
But at the base of this was the most gentle depression in the snow.
In disbelief I observed two rows of strawberries, blossoming,
heavy laden with the richest red.
Each gentle bite of these more delicious than the last.
I continued my survey,
down to a long narrow hill of the freshest snow.
Here I came upon a wide expanse, a plain,
two long, slender berms extended at opposite sides.
But this was no true plain, and all the better for that,
For two equal mounds of snow enchanted the landscape.
The setting sun cast a pink light at the peak of each pale globe,
So beautiful I wept.
As I passed between their valley the snowy distance continued.
I observed an infinitesimal sloping on the Western and Eastern edges.
This expanse, perfect of any true blemish, was punctuated by the shallowest little empty pond at its narrowest width; which only served to enhance the beauty.
The length of this snowed plain was far greater than its width, the edges slowly creeping into the narrowest part before flaring out to a wide expanse.
And there in the lowlands was The Delta,
to the side of which extended two of the longest and most shapely tapering ridges I had ever observed;
each ending with graceful peaks.
But that Delta!
Though snowy, the darkest , shortest scrub had capped its mound.
At the apex of The Delta was a precipice,
on its face a cavern, pink walls glistening with wetness,
at the caverns base, a cave.
Its tunnel, with walls ribbed, was warm and humid despite the landscape of snow.
This is the landscape I cherish most.
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 9:50 PM UTC
Oh, Progress! We found you at the back of
The movie theater, spidered around a boy
And we watched. Progress, couldn’t you
Wait til the previews were over?
At least we could tell he was gentle.
Which reminds me of the story of the father
Who beat his son until the son
Could beat back, and after the son
Killed his father he went cross country
Beating everyone on the way
Beating the mailman, the bar back, the students
He kept on traveling until he knew he was
Unbeatable
And he traveled more and went on beating
When he met his dad in down in Santa Fe
They sat down to drinks and talked
About beatings and beatings
Then they kept traveling West.
Yes, Progress you were a ***** girl
Ignoring whatever went up on the screen.
18 seconds of mutilated armies and a Noble Charmer’s
Ascent to the throne.
17 seconds of painstaking laughter and a fat man.
19 seconds of a young man’s rise to success
His defeats, resilience, his ceaseless winking
And his moral fiscal triumph in the end.
16 seconds of naughty men in suits drinking highballs.
For a movie theater, the chandelier was immense.
Dangling, finely cut glass
Suspended over the audience, crystals tapering
Down to rows of translucent points.
Apr 26, 2011
Apr 26, 2011 at 1:54 AM UTC
Why try any more so hard to climb out
almost had it in my grasp slipping away now
if the sun shines for me tomorrow
its beauty may stay my hand
I will climb the stone finger and view my small world
or look high at the tapering stones
quail, turn, and fade to nothingness
Feb 11, 2011
Feb 11, 2011 at 1:06 PM UTC
I stress sometimes
For the dreams Ive missed or left behind,
The fine line of reality, and or individuality
Never have I ever severed the bridge that binds us together
But you have
My breath, heavily resting upon, her breast
Underlining her eyes, beyond the unseen sky
I wept only for your hands
Intertwined in the time we’ve wasted
Satiated with love and in all the wrong places
She will be loved more than ever
I wept only for her lips
I miss more than just the kisses, she would give
Tapering my heart to a shallow bliss
No longer will I hold you, In my arms I have none
Sep 8, 2014
Sep 8, 2014 at 11:03 AM UTC
They had just buried Henry Ferguson today. He was such a handsome and generous young man. Everybody in the town felt so sad when they heard that he had died.
Away he's gone.....
Away he's gone.....
Cold was his gravestone...
Young Sarah Breinnan cried all day long.
Young Sarah Breinnan grieved all night long.
Her beloved fiancé had died.
Life seemed like a threat.
Away he's gone...
Away he's gone...
Now she's on her own...
One cold night Sarah was ready for bed. When she heard someone knocking on the door. She opened it, to her surprise. There he was....
Her dead fiancé...
Standing in front of her...
Looking into her eyes deep...
With his gaping hollow eyes...
All rotten... All bone...
Worms crawling across his face...
In and out....
In and out...
''I can not die now'' he whispered...
Such an eerie voice...
''I love you too much.....''
More worms crawled out of his mouth as he spoke.
''Marry me, Sarah Breinnan......''
Oh the stench his body emitted was terrible...
He reached out to take her hand.
And she fainted...
So beautiful was she...
She had blossomed into a beautiful woman...
The dead man bent down to touch his lover's face...
With love his tapering fingers danced across her *******
He kissed her gently, picked her up off the floor.
And he walked away, dissapearing into the fogs....
Among the dark silhouettes of trees...
Never to be seen again...
*Sarah.... Sarah....
Could you hear me...???
I was calling you from my hollow grave...*
Dec 3, 2010
Dec 3, 2010 at 2:56 PM UTC
YOU came with your small tapering flame of passion
Thinly burning like a nun's desire,
Your eyes in slim and half-expectant fashion
Faintly painting what your veins require
With little pallid pyramids of fire.
So very small and unfulfilled you sat,
Building a little talk to keep you there,
Your face and body pointed like a cat,
Your legs not reaching down from any chair,
Your thoughts not really reaching anywhere;
So dumb and tiny--yet Love guessed your mood,
And pressed his phial in its fervent bed,
And poured his thrilling philtre in my blood,
And all his lustre on your body shed,
And hot enamel on the words you said;
Your littleness became a monstrous thing,
A rank retort, a hot and waiting vat,
Your eyes green-copper like a snake in spring,
And lusty-bold your laying off your hat,
And fell your purpose like a hungry cat;
The dark fell on us through our narrowed eyes,
The heat lashed up around us from the floor,
Encrimsoning the lips of our surprise
To sway like music, and like burning pour
Across the truth that parted us before.
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The only thing brighter than hope
is loss
it chews into the goldsmith
that makes the soul
and gnaws me into colors
each part of me flying down
into the wilderness I am fluttering
as the farmer ploughs me into earth
where my intensity can rest.
In full dress once
I left an economy of boughs,
the candle isn't lit, a wick without its crown
I leave the world schooled in lean and lithe, a yogi,
I am here to study my own neglect.
The rest of the world, lion bodied,
glances at my century of rough.
But I robed the ground with my convictions
I couldn’t keep them
seasons burst out of me
even if I wanted to hoard my greedy treasures for myself
I couldn't
thus robbed of my enfranchisement
I mutter in time to the wind
sorrow gave me this reason-flayed second purpose
Which is to feed others, my body now a spilled nut
I am birded by the sowing belly of earth
my bells are rained and pinched
by this tapering
I am being shrunk to get through the door to death
only snow will enter in the end
when I am covered white and immaculate
together we give up color for the season of bones.
Oct 9, 2017
Oct 9, 2017 at 1:34 AM UTC
Bruised.
Left and right, top and bottom,
Inside and out.
I survived that hellish tsunami of pain
that, flying like a 18-wheeler with cut brakes
on spiteful repeat
wrung my mind and emotions to alternating panic
and zombie-like numbness.
Funny how bruises blossom in different ways;
your betrayal, so deep, sends up saplings to sting me
at the most inopportune, unpredictable times.
I thought I was immune now,
Enough brushes against the anemone
sufficient tapering of the drugs of anger and regret
And I was sure,
sobbing alone,
in the bathtub,
done.
.
Jun 10, 2013
Jun 10, 2013 at 6:29 AM UTC
I didn’t want to leave the small room where our memories tinted the pallid wall
or my bed with the comforter that sent me dreams of you
tapering my legs, the visions pulled up and through
or your long veins that wrapped around me like a spiders silky coffin
holding me until the bad dreams were forgotten
the black and shy-green feathers watched us as we watched them
they spun and spun and blew in non-existent wind
I liked our late night paper plates and milk stained cups
I couldn’t ever get enough
I didn’t want the yellow shine to leak up my walls
but the sun came like clarity
and I realized a world outside my bedroom called
-MJS
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 10:18 PM UTC
*I'm nothing more
than a tapering string
going into nothingness*
May 21, 2016
May 21, 2016 at 8:32 PM UTC
I am a shadow shifting upon the broken wall
Vast visage dwindling in an urban sprawl
I am chaos, darkness left unchecked
A vicious tyrant, call me regret
I hunt happiness by the light of day
Spawning tragedy in night's great purvey
A manic schizophrenic enthralled with misanthropia
The tapering end of a surgically severed ganglia
An anarchisticly pessimistic vision of utopia
Regret the king, paradise turned dystopia
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 4:43 AM UTC
Your shining eyes excite:
Those pupils, fathomless black,
That grab, and drag me down
Into bottomless pits;
Like magnets drawing me into deep radiance.
Your swirling, tumbling hair that makes me dream
Of cascading feathers wisping all over my face,
As leaning over you draw closer,
To kiss me with your moist, shimmering lips.
Those lips that pout their promise,
To cushion mine in hot embrace,
And pull me down a never-ending tunnel:
So deep to Ecstasy’s black space.
Your body is a flowing land,
A symmetry of mounts and vales:
Seductive wiggling curves,
With endless
Tapering
Legs.
Yet beauty’s bettered by your warmth,
For looks are just skin-deep,
It is your heart that I adore,
Your Love I wish to keep.
We should be soul-mates, you and I,
Of this I’m very sure.
With Hope, and Luck,
And not a little pluck,
Our Love can long endure.
If This doesn’t Pull her nothing will!
PAUL BUTTERS
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 2:06 PM UTC
When you came to me
I was too tangled
in the moment
to unknot your strings
of lies. Too eager to collect
the words cascading
from your easy
grin. Perhaps you prefer
me fragile and a little
helpless, fingers hovering
along the fluted edge
of a dream. But in the morning
your eyes flickered
like candlelight, their warmth
tapering in a ribbon
of smoke.
Mar 20, 2011
Mar 20, 2011 at 2:49 PM UTC
how dare you --
endless months of unraveling,
countless hours stitching wounds,
sunless mornings beaming with a nothingness
only conceptualized through experience,
with nights spent curled on the tile
writhing from the ache of embedded scars,
still mending the voids i had abandoned
500 days later i reside differently,
the threshold of a new chapter long anticipated,
a chance to refine my routine, to hone my rhythm,
to emerge evolved with renewed eyes,
a mantra of self-actualization
traversing turbulent seas within,
raging across the crevices of my core,
tapering tempestuous gusts,
emerging anew with a novel reverence
for the agony borne from your touch
a solitary text, a wrecking ball to progress,
returns me to that forsaken juncture,
perched within four walls of trauma,
amidst undulating hills of the bluegrass,
with screams reverberating through the valleys,
our fury etched into these uttered phrases
how could you —
500 days on, you persist within,
while I dwell less in your realm --
your echo lingers, though not reciprocal,
your manipulation, constantly unyielding,
the deceit still unsettling in its grip,
for change is but a mirage, after all.
Aug 21, 2023
Aug 21, 2023 at 7:59 PM UTC
Fear me not.
I know my dark eyes have frightened you.
My tapering hands have scratched your fair skin.
My kisses have hurt your lips.
Fear me not.
I know i am cold as death.
I know i have no heartbeat.
My blood has frozen over.
Fear me not.
I will sing you the most beautiful song of night.
I will dance your soul away when the moon is dead.
Beneath the dark night sky i will linger for you.
Fear me not...
Cut your skin...
And let me in...
Dec 7, 2010
Dec 7, 2010 at 8:08 PM UTC
Fading mirage
Like the sun dying
Down over the highway
You took your light
And infused it whole into another
I buried you
Among the ruins
Of discarded daydreams
The ghost
Of what you made me feel
Hovers
Tapering on this broken
lifeline
The tiny speck of blue
Blooms into a field of sorrow
Fading mirage
Like the sun dying
Down over the highway
You took your light
And left a hand print
On my door.
Apr 18, 2015
Apr 18, 2015 at 6:33 PM UTC
I had a bad dream last night...
*Someone is chasing me...
And i can not run fast...
I look back and he is there...
Lurking in the dark...
With his hands reaching out to me...
I can not see his face...
But i can hear him saying my name...
I can see his eyes burning with red flames.
My feet feel a thousand times heavier...
But i keep running...
And he is getting closer...
Closer....
Closer...
His hands are reaching out...
I scream when he scratches the back of my neck.
His tapering fingers are cold and wet.
Rotten and juicy...
I stumble over and fall hard to the ground.
I turn around fast but he's gone.
Nothing around but thick cold fog.*
I woke up screaming...
In my room in the dark...
It was just a very terrible nightmare, i think to myself.
Just a nightmare...
A nightmare...
Then something caught my eye...
Two red flame burning floating in mid-air...
His burning red eyes...
I screamt again...
But it's just the mirror...
I was staring at the mirror in my room.
And staring at those two burning red flames...
Those two eyes...
My own eyes...
Nov 26, 2010
Nov 26, 2010 at 5:06 PM UTC
There's so much out there to marvel over
But yet i'm still here
As much as i try to persevere
Everything feels meager
They make me feel like a minor leaguer, when they're a major leaguer
Feeling inadequate for days and nights
I know this feeling i'm feeling isn't right
For me and my sanity
I'm not tapering into insanity
But i feel like i'm touching it briefly
Am i transcending into the dark side?
Not the one with sinister evil
But the one with everlasting depression
I can feel the compression
And i can barely take it
I just want to feel normal
Is that so hard?
I guess it is
I'm just bored to pieces
Deprived from the basics
But i guess i can keep coping
Until i fade away
Jul 1, 2016
Jul 1, 2016 at 1:44 AM UTC