"tattling" poems
Touch it: it won't shrink like an eyeball,
This egg-shaped bailiwick, clear as a tear.
Here's yesterday, last year ---
Palm-spear and lily distinct as flora in the vast
Windless threadwork of a tapestry.
Flick the glass with your fingernail:
It will ping like a Chinese chime in the slightest air stir
Though nobody in there looks up or bothers to answer.
The inhabitants are light as cork,
Every one of them permanently busy.
At their feet, the sea waves bow in single file.
Never trespassing in bad temper:
Stalling in midair,
Short-reined, pawing like paradeground horses.
Overhead, the clouds sit tasseled and fancy
As Victorian cushions. This family
Of valentine faces might please a collector:
They ring true, like good china.
Elsewhere the landscape is more frank.
The light falls without letup, blindingly.
A woman is dragging her shadow in a circle
About a bald hospital saucer.
It resembles the moon, or a sheet of blank paper
And appears to have suffered a sort of private blitzkrieg.
She lives quietly
With no attachments, like a foetus in a bottle,
The obsolete house, the sea, flattened to a picture
She has one too many dimensions to enter.
Grief and anger, exorcised,
Leave her alone now.
The future is a grey seagull
Tattling in its cat-voice of departure.
Age and terror, like nurses, attend her,
And a drowned man, complaining of the great cold,
Crawls up out of the sea.
41.9k
I don't want
To break with you.
Can't we still be babies
In a tub,
Tattling to our mums;
Watching our worlds end,
And still falling asleep as friends?
I want to still be
The angle-face good one,
To your fantastically beautiful spiky one,
But you see, with age,
Comes bitchiness and a sense of
Self respect.
I never had that before
Around you.
Oh, I was your good little dolly,
Darling of your heart
But you like to beat that muscle well,
Don't you?
Much harder than necessary.
So why then
Do you think that
This constriction and skipping of a beating
Was a surprise attack of the heart?
Aug 29, 2013
Aug 29, 2013 at 8:07 PM UTC
Toad sand and frog pebbles,
warted rocks kicked and toed.
Tease the ocean with chocolate dipped feet,
spiced and salted teas.
Taper off mid-sentence, paragraphs tepid
long arms and zebra stripes, a crosswalk tepir.
Tocsin alarm clocks poison innocent bystander’s sleep,
slipping things in their drinks, filling their ears with toxin.
Tie a scarf around the forehead
of the middle child. Teach them beginning syllables of Thai.
Throes and spasms of overachievers
motivate for longer strides, faster throws.
Tense shoulder muscles
hide in sleeping bags, badly pitched tents.
Told injuries snuck in when the door opened,
we heard the miniature silver bells as they tolled.
Ticks count every second second, punctuated by tocks.
With each, a twitch, conscious nervous tics.
Titan tool boxes hold spare screws,
on Coeus’ threaded axis, we spin and tighten.
Terne sardine cans filled with mercury,
pollute our science tests, killing tern.
Tied red string around our pinkies so we don’t forget
when to go to the beach looking for clams at low tide.
Tacks pin talented teens to cork boards,
alongside instructions on regretting the harmonised sales tax.
Tire prints border the country,
left by jeeps that never tire.
Tails directing orchestras,
swarms of swan swim, tattling and telling tales.
Jun 19, 2013
Jun 19, 2013 at 12:32 AM UTC
Oh my god is she beautiful
As serene and true as death
A wonder in the eyes of many
Wishing to be fresh as her breath
I want to walk with her,
Hold her hands entangled with mine
And whisper silently in her ear
"I love you, I am thine"
Could you ever believe that,
It would come this?
A beautiful soul,
Would give you eternal bliss;
I am buried in her eyes.
Enchanted in her charm.
Bewitched by that smile,
That strikes my heart and causes such harm,
That the most wholesome flowers could not heal.
A slit that would give me pain so sweet,
That even my senses could no believe,
And take me on a ride and sweep me of my feet.
She turns towards me and smiles,
Ever more tattling, ever more playing with her hair,
That rest above a face so sweet,
Like a grapevine of golden mare.
And in my mind does one thing exist,
To hold her and make her mine.
Such elixir of mirth and jolly,
Mixed with such beauty divine.
Mar 12, 2015
Mar 12, 2015 at 3:00 PM UTC
words;
so simple and yet so. hard
for so many,
yes those other things,
assist:
how you adore my shoulders
holding up thinnest spaghetti straps,
with your tiny kisses tattling,
into a tactile ecstasy~me,
but this is tertiary,
a different, yet not
the prime of primary
first,
foremost,
when you make me smile,
or burst out loud
with laughter, gasping pleasure,
when you write me poetry,
show the girl, the women,
the world through
your eyes, in special word-ly ways,
you superglue our souls, epoxy my cracks,
clear my forward~only tracks,
make visible an imaginable future,
make me love you in ways no other has,
and most importantly,
in no other ways that can compare
so many others think money, power, physicality,
are keys, but they are not, I am my own woman,
I have money
I have power,
I have physicality,
and this matters less and less as time gaps on and on…
what I will never have enough:
of the words that ease, release, remake me,
awaken me,
and a million new ones,
refilling + restoring,
so our one treasure chest
only grows,
compounds
with simple interest,
this simply is,
the only key,
and it,
cannot be duplicated
and that will never change the
the equality of us…
bc
Oct 17, 2025
Oct 17, 2025 at 2:51 PM UTC
I’m giving birth to a kaleidoscope of baby blue hopes
she’s green gelatin under me
breathing cerulean clean like a newborn baby and
she’s free
to feed from fire and ice
her fingers find distant dips deeper than webbed ligaments
dripping pearlescent beads to be placed over her beating brain
too many aged grapes
the violet light tying her tongue from spilling
secrets held together by straw ribbon
Stuffed cheeks of fluffy pink confetti cake
the shuffling of young hips
lift the veil of cream to brand my face with
your bubbling lips
O, belittling eye
Beat me blind until I shy divine
let’s live within the interior of the tattling tulips
who shush each other sweetly
Poor petals
silk with their speckled sickness it’s
sickening to beckon forgiveness
Bronze with wooden eyes and apple cheekbones set high
she slips into the figments of my imagination’s creations of her and I
I and her humming low
damp breath decorating the faces with indigo
Her opal fingertip prints mock fossils on the window
whose fingertips once tossed rusted coins as a child
pennies from nineteen forty eight stained with wishes that
may or may not have been cast at all
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 3:53 PM UTC
Gritting my teeth to the chalk of a smile,
I taste my tongue-tied tipping
points of platitude and innocuous
glances. I’d like to take
a dip into the powerade
of an eye—poison
my electrolytes and throw
up the unconscious effort to keep it all
down. Bellow
the belly of this
bending in binary is the mending
of mind
body
and soul—the syrup to my cynicism.
I’ve been bundled
together tight enough to taste the tingle
of anticipation just before the
fall
into cool, quiet cotton
candy. I could scream if I cared
to. My madness mumbled and muttered
mulled through and muted—
passed from eye to mind—
mind to measure—
measure to mechanism.
The hum of
impetus. The creak
of rising action. The screech into
final release.I’d like to
plunge my plasticity in a pool of electricity—
singeing all but just the edges.
Rattling rails of self imposed righteousness.
Tattling tales of presupposed hypocrisy.
Only I can mold my moment
at the peaking of this pinnacle
to whatever my mind would
make it out to mean:
a death
a daredevil
a daydream.
Mar 17, 2017
Mar 17, 2017 at 11:24 AM UTC
The hour is long and the darkness soul deep,
Utterly isolate in an ocean of souls,
Our tryst has become, by you, anulled,
Without you, bereft of my Heart's gold,
No more indulgence of my bliss,
No more imagining your luck's kiss,
But imagining still your lilting songs,
Which stir the air amidst tattling throngs,
Cleft in twain now, I bid thee farewell,
And pray you soar, not fathom hell.
Apr 20, 2017
Apr 20, 2017 at 7:55 AM UTC
my arms and legs, motionless, extended, floating, ahhh, with friends, in a canoe, rowing rowing rowing, the noises coming from everywhere, eventually upstream, moonbeams, the silences filled with the occasional boom boom, the jealousies, jealousies eating up my insides, but still my head extends out like branches, folding in with one another, thick and matted with bark, with birth, tattling over the spokes with claws, breathing and dipping into a pool that is freezing, let me start with something new, with a machete, cut the twigs that are dying, I collapse a vessel, stuck out of time, reaching for the next high, churning in my gut, home made ice cream, too thick to ingest, too light to cut
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 6:08 PM UTC
can you tell my teeth are clattering?
taking your hand by the wrist, placing it
on the soft underside of my stomach
where only soft tissue lies between vital organs
and the negligible possibility of your cruelty,
i am letting you know: this is enough
to make the old animal of my body shake in fear.
keep your hands right there until they’re warm.
you can have this. you can have me.
will you stay after the curtains are down?
after taking their bows, i swear,
even the greats still look like people.
the well-dressed stranger in front of you at the checkout.
your cousin’s old piano teacher. and there’s a reason
why celebrity gossip sells more than the local newspaper.
here's the thing. you want to bare the darkness, the cancer;
to be loved, desperately, despite the horror of it.
but no one's ever willing to be the emperor --
you want to be the child, clothed.
tattling fingers forever raised.
it's always just been fog machines and fitting costumes.
your eyes, sharp and weary, search for a way
past the infinite charades, beyond the gaze of the winged,
half-lion abomination.
and i think i finally understand.
because your hands are shaking, too, as you tell me:
neither of us are destined for godhood.
next time, i’ll call you when i’m sick.
next time, i’ll take you grocery shopping.
tomorrow, i’ll kiss you in the morning and it won’t taste like mint.
Sep 28, 2021
Sep 28, 2021 at 1:47 PM UTC
I’m a rat-tat-tattling gun
You hear the stream of my gun
You know my words are no fun
You’ll find it’s no use to run
You see I blot out your son
I’m a rat-tat-tattling gun
I work in administration
I **** your reputation
I send your resignation
I ‘tack with no causation
I’m a rat-tat-tattling gun
You see no rules of war
You won’t stop me from putting, you to the floor
You see the ink splotch on the paper, the only gore
You can’t ignore the screaming shots.
Dec 19, 2019
Dec 19, 2019 at 10:49 PM UTC