"taxidermied" poems
This strange egg you've incubated
has sprouted skinny chicken legs.
It follows you around clucking at
every throaty word you nasty-utter.
Pointing and pecking at your guilt
borne by some years ago sin which
all others hatch from and you keep feeding,
Remorseful grains of misdeed shell grit
to harden its anxious green shell.
With no law outside itself the taint faint
heartbeat of your reproof I hear beating
like fear's unglued false eyelashes
You soft swaddle it with empty gestures.
It gestates in every grimace of piety.
I watch it govern your vocation of drab
and undramatic mastery of feathered illusion.
I want to tear shreds in your black satin cape,
To avalanche your fears into frosty exile.
Burn them screaming in the blinding white of
anemic unconscious,
the blacking out.
Hang a trophy **** of your winged demon
taxidermied with glass eyes above my bed.
My compass needle has lost your polarity
there's just a crude representation of pain
I will plant this seed you gave me, in Lethe;
The River of Forgetfulness on its grey shore.
A watery landscape without vanishing point.
Where a white heron will weep tears of sorrow,
like a human to feed hope's tender shoots.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 4:31 AM UTC
Lying on my back in the sand
Dead fish flop desperately underneath my spine
Cold
Whispering
Corners of my vision
Taxidermied owl
Taxidermied swallow
Pinned Cicada
Etched with defeat.
Roar of the ocean
Flopping fish
You wave its fins in my face and
Run away when I wave back.
Aug 19, 2024
Aug 19, 2024 at 11:00 PM UTC
Sometimes depression can make you
feel like a
taxidermied animal,
all numbly stuffed full of cotton,
forever glassy wide-eyed and expressionless,
sidelined hanging on a wall,
unable to engage and be a part of,
dumbly stared at,
strangely mute.
Dec 13, 2013
Dec 13, 2013 at 1:51 AM UTC
Black bed sheets, Big blush brush, back and forth.
Pouting, popping, posing. "Can't believe he's single!"
Oh my god. I know right.
I say with the expression of a taxidermied doe. Texting
until I want to pull my fingers off, First Class Ticket in a
bottle of Sky. I'm a ****** who can't drive and it's ironic
because I feel like I'm in high school again and I want to die.
Please ask me one more time if I think you look good,
as I reach to lift up the window, It's April and I'm cold,
I stare at the asphalt ground down from 6 floors up.
Contemplating how I managed to make it when I fell from heaven all those years ago.
Apr 13, 2015
Apr 13, 2015 at 11:07 PM UTC
there is a childrens song
in my taxidermied heart.
it plays every time
someone opens the door
to purchase me.
they count their money
and consider their options
as they browse the room
and i convince them
the product is defective
or unsafe for small children
or obsolete or spilling fluids
and containing harsh chemicals
and they thank me while looking confused as they leave,
opening the door,
while my heart plays
a dying carousel tune
for one of the last times.
waiting
for my usefulness
to wear out
as i become
a relic
sought after by
the possessive
the obsessive
the deranged
the lonely.
a collectible
with no value
serving my purpose
to a collector
who understands
value.
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 3:21 AM UTC
And then it was your necessary contradiction:
note your taxidermied narrative pale everything against,
not from – from the hip of your stature,
drawn to. You will happen – the quick hands
and the quicker gestures the frailest meaning
exposed to warmth that was your becoming, now effloresce
and gain an optimum: your day you say it was
in front of a sweating bottle, fondling your clothes
| clawing it inside, complaining of your salt.
Here too are spaces for things you rule over
the precision of a film shot from the horizon
by which I mean you persist |
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 1:13 AM UTC
You've got brown eyes
Oh,
You've got grey eyes
Oh,
You've got blue eyes
and I'll watch you go
I don't make eye contact or say hello with the cute, talented boy in my class.
He's weird, but I know I could take it. But.
It's because I'm tired of being cut on the way up to the way down.
I hope that I can see him again when someone with more courage stands in these shoes,
that knows what to say and how not to use--
--to use and use these spots of mine
that shed with touch and the setting sun.
Spaces where the taxidermied remnants of partners lie bare
from the times I lacked the effort, or time, or was too scared
to ask them not to go, or ask them their name, or, "I'm sorry, forgive me?"
I let a hand go
I pull away from a kiss.
I don't know what's wrong with me
or who I do or do not miss.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 8:46 PM UTC
I forgot and now
I am stretched and exposed, a taxidermied specimen against the wall.
Pins punched through my achilles heels and wrists and
everything hurts so much, constantly.
What's the worst is the fog that's implored my drunken brain to circle
like a cat near a hearth, and s u b d u e itself.
It only stirs to blink m u g g y and gooey eyes at me before
it yawns and eats away at my body.
I am embalmed, alive, with no protest.
I forgot to get more pills. I forgot, I am so sorry.
I called them and they sent them and it's been three days
It should have been here by now.
I should've been able to move, to breathe, to think without being frustrated
by every insufferable task.
It will never get better, it will never be better.
I just want my p i l l s to be here by now I can't e ve n t h i n k
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 5:01 PM UTC
Medicine is all relative.
The trick is to find something that makes you feel okay by the end of the day.
I think I've found one that works well,
(with a slight side-effect of sometimes making the next one a living hell.)
But I've found an antidote for this problem:
Bacon, eggs, toast and coffee.
Though I can't have more than three or else I'll get all jittery,
and start saying really weird things,
which may drive me to self-medicate a little more the following night.
You know, just to feel alright about all of the weird things I may have said and end up regretting later on.
Luckily, there are medicines that can erase regretful memories,
but you probably shouldn't have more than six of these,
or else some really weird things may start happening.
Like remembering where you parked the opossum car in that one dream you had when you turned thirteen,
while forgetting that today is your nephew's fourth birthday.
Here, I got you this.
"Hey, I don't think that's really an appropriate gift."
"What do you mean? I would've been thrilled to've my own taxidermied bobcat's head when I was six."
"There're so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to begin."
Medicine is all relative.
Subjective, if you will.
If what works for you doesn't work for them,
well then, who gives a ****
We've all got our own illnesses to deal with.
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 11:56 PM UTC
this will be a year of discovery.
a time of floundering
through seas of uncertainty
until surfacing
somewhere in starry-eyed serenity,
stuttering foreign tongues til they
roll from your lips
like old friends.
this will be a year of courage.
of quivering feet chasing mountaintops
to root themselves in truth
and yell from naked sound booths
what your soul has found you.
of grabbing fear by the *****
and lassoing stars
so you can swing clear
out of this galaxy and
orbit a solar system of dreams.
of climbing the tallest redwood tree
to glimpse all that you can see,
and taste forbidden fruit -
juicy satisfaction, wild and free.
this will be a year of unfettered hope.
though it began in the shroud
of Hades' darkest days,
this year will unfurl golden lotus light
dripping honeysuckle sweetness
onto dried tongues
so they can speak of fearless love.
this will be a year in which
the cruel reality of returning to the dirt
will sprout freedom,
a time of realizing the worth laden
in this impermanent existence.
of plucking the sweetness
from flowering present moment bliss,
fleeting fractals of forever
wrapped in eternally flying seconds.
tick, tock, tick, tripping through times tendrils
and tackling the tendency of tip-toeing
around taboos and tucking tribes into tailcoats.
trapeze through taxidermied truths
until you find a tangoing tune.
breathe in peace,
breathe out light.
this will be a year of moon gazing nights.
of lazy laughter, and daisy dancing.
of miraculous mistakes, and tiger prancing.
so throw doubt out the door,
baby, this year is all yours.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 11:32 PM UTC
Striding down a Chicago sidewalk,
under the El,
I came across a croaked rat,
splayed out on its back
with a surprised expression,
amid rocky chunks of construction debris
apparently dropped from the skyscraped heavens.
Had it been scurrying about,
the vermin would have startled, menaced,
repulsed on a visceral level.
But in the stillness and repose of death,
the taxidermied-looking rat
came across as sympathetic,
an unwitting victim of a random fate.
It could have been any of us.
Its eyes bulged, its limbs seized.
I almost stopped and snapped a picture,
tweeted the tragedy out,
before thinking better of it.
People instinctually reject rats, like clowns.
I thought about scooping the piteous corpse up
with an alt weekly, tossing it into a dumpster,
giving it a little dignity. But I was in a hurry
and it was just a rat, after all.
Pounding the pavement with purpose,
I did a sign of the cross,
and prayed a little valediction.
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018 at 3:20 AM UTC