"tensile" poems
Cold, blue, wet, fragile, brittle, hard, steam solidified, water hardened, anger, fear, white, tensile,
steam solidified,
water hardened; you lie
in her wintered veins.
why?
"If she's awake, I'll **** you."
staccato words spoken
like a knife blade thrown...
...with malice and intent.
Her father's voice
from the bedroom next door
no sound of her mother.
The female child cowered
under her candy-striped sheets
their usual soft comfort
unnoticed
footsteps
door handle moving
light seeping into her sanctuary
her heart thudded
trying to escape her chest
as she held her breath.
"Please, please don't hear me."
a silent plea as
fear snatched her in its icy grip.
She could smell him
smell the cigarettes
smell his power.
She waited.
He backed out
returned to her mother
between her heartbeats
she heard the slap
"You are lucky this time,
***** She sleeps."
Heavy footsteps down the stairs
punctuated by her mother's tears.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The girl child had only ever blamed her mother
decades of anger and bitterness
the memory of this night buried deep.
Crazed hard ice beneath the tundra of her life.
In the third decade of the girl child's life
her mother died
alone
never forgiven for what she hadn't done
nor for what she had.
The ice remained in the girl child's veins
If anything, thicker...harder.
Then in her fifth decade this ice became water
as with the passage of life the tundra thawed
and rising with it to the surface
the truth.
Then what?
The girl child worked hard at staying warm
at keeping the ice at bay.
Not easy.
Nothing was ever said to her father.
In her sixth decade the girl child's father died
embraced in his daughter's arms
forgiven for what he had done
and for what he hadn't.
The woman had finally thawed
she was properly warm
her own love
finally able to flow
Feb 29, 2016
Feb 29, 2016 at 1:39 PM UTC
Someone collect all the hatred,
and all the vehemence too.
then don't recycle or reciprocate it.
turn it all into something else,
rich and green and full of kindness.
distill it, remove the impurities,
coagulate it away from it's cold
tungsten tensile titanium.
some of us only have to try,
it can be done. Einstein said so;
and Mother Teresa and Gandhi,
and Martin Luther King Jr.
and brother Nelson too.
Someone collect all the hatred,
and all the vehemence too.
then don't recycle or reciprocate it.
turn it all into something else,
rich and green and full of kindness.
distill it, remove the impurities,
coagulate it away from it's cold
tungsten tensile titanium.
encase it in concrete and steel,
bury it with the radioactive waste.
let it lie for it's half life,
in over 40,000 tears.
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 3:46 PM UTC
~dedicated to the old poets here~
the addictive pairing of certain words, a line,
a lyric, slap-snapping you to full attention,
unfailing decades of instant recognition,
an adrenaline + caffeine shot that powers
a chance, a tensile injection that causes
the lips to commence a new choreography,
the fingers to tap, a jumbled, hurried, embattled
disorderly mess that regenerates, reformulates,
concords into agreement, a harmonic consistency
a geometry of many differing angles that equate
a hard physical, a soft mentality in a singled work,
coexisting in a sacred state of singed confluence,
though imperfect, satisfies mathematical boundaries
of a random outpouring, crowning the stripe inspiring
the spark that finally satisfyingly silences an ignited
filament a-glowing for years, that holy happens
to cross your antennae, fulfilling the need to honor,
the sacred geometry of chance, the honor to need,
the joy of saying, at last, this unwritten debt, paid!
————————————————————————-
(1) a favorite of many years, a lyric from “The Shape of My Heart” by Sting
(2) Dec 3 2020 2:53pm NYC
Dec 3, 2020
Dec 3, 2020 at 2:59 PM UTC
The thing about dancing,
Is that it surely was invented post the 'mighty invention of music'
The might of music was such,
That the then tensile souls couldn't do much
And when some ******* back in the day
Thought he could probably get away
With being cheesy, without getting hit by a rock,
If he put down his words in a tune and wore a dancing frock
Whilst he was going at it on a cheese license, trying to compose a 'song',
This other bloke from down the road wondered where this
'sound' is coming from?
The music got to him, for he was the first to hear it apart from it's maker
He growled and stood up, to put his ale down in a magic shaker
And so he thought his colon would erupt
If he didn’t tap his feet to it with that ale he supped,
Completely unaware of the fact that shaking his head would be
soon to follow,
And so to speak, rest of his body, headed in a direction
that seemed perfectly hollow
And thus he made some gravity defying moves one after the other,
Hitting stacks of bread he just yelled, "Happiness rediscovered"
That piteous drunk soul was unaware that it would go on to
be know as ‘dancing’
If he were smarter or sober, he could have told it to the world himself with pride while prancing
What made him do it? Probably the music, probably he got laid twice the previous night,
Or his ex got divorced, yeah that would really end the fright
So he pounced on some meat and again shook his *****
Like he owed it to the world, like it was his duty
Whatever was the reason, in that magic season
The consequences of it gave us dancing & made mankind elevate
It was henceforth branded as a gesture to celebrate.
So let’s.
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 2:14 AM UTC
Tensile, shear, volume
I feel as if I'm compressed
****** Physics test
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 5:40 AM UTC
No jingle bells ring around here
Since you've gone away.
White snow blankets ev'rything in sight,
But I don't wanna play.
I don't feel the merriment, the mirth, nor cheer,
It's not like Christmas at all
When you're not here.
It's not like Christmas at all,
When you're not here.
I don't feel like celebrating
When you're not near.
When you were in my life
I never did know drear.
It's not like Christmas at all
When you're not here.
A wreath adorns the cold front door,
Your somewhere on the outside,
Frolicking in the wonderland,
Your world is unfurled and wide.
You will never have to know
A life spent all alone.
You will always find somebody
You can call your own.
It's not like Christmas at all,
When you're not here.
I don't feel like celebrating
Without you, Dear.
I keep hoping by some chance
That in my door you'll reappear,
It's not like Christmas at all
Without you here.
The ornaments, tensile, and lights,
Hang on the evergreen.
The Yule log burns, and warms the harth;
The carollers, outside, they sing.
I can't face the new year
By myself, all on my own.
Things haven't been the same
Sinse you've been gone.
It's not like Christmas at all
When you're not here.
I don't feel like celebrating,
When you're not near.
Come back for the holidays,
Then stay all year.
It's not like Christmas at all,
When you're not here.
(Nobody's under my mistletoe -
I won't cuddle when the night is cold.)
It's not like Christmas at all
When you're not here.
I don't feel like celebrating,
When you're not near.
Come back for the holidays,
Then stay all year.
It's not like Christmas at all,
When you're not here.
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 12:51 AM UTC
Hello sad clown
You must peel that irony off your lips, you thieved it from me.
Your grotesque eyes bore through don't they?
If so, why am I not all bones yet?
Hollow noises would ricochet would my flesh would turn weary of holding me.
Hello sad clown
With your frown- upside down-
Is your plastic as tensile as my heart seems to be?
I would slice a knife beneath your sloping eyebrows, so you wouldn't see what I have.
It was pretty as hope and it decided to **** me.
Hello sad clown
Do you miss your happy shadow?
Or does it leech around in sadistic mockery murmuring things about your past?
I would lend you all my heart-cheats -
But they would involve the blackness of your soul or inside your eyelids.
**Mirror mirror on the wall,
Am I the saddest clown of them all?**
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 5:09 AM UTC
T-Treading with a very measured gait
I-Inviting his balancing pole to equate
G-Grounding each foot at precise rate
H-Holding a toe grip by a sheerest fate
T-Tensile cable he doth easily intimidate
R-Reckons he'll get to the other end secure
O-Overcoming the snare of the floors lure
P-Plying skills which shall always endure
E-Elevated at a height where the air is pure
W-Wowing the audience seated in the tent
A-Applause he garners for his amazing event
L-Lightly he takes his final steps of torment
K-Kisses thrown at the walker who is spent
E-Elation he now feels and so very content
R- Risk and great pressure he underwent
Mar 10, 2013
Mar 10, 2013 at 8:46 AM UTC
Fine porcelain litters the cloth,
yet a quick pull leaves it still.
An exchange of tails both
holding, careful to not spill.
Our plates remain intact,
despite accidents of gravity.
Clearing the surface momentarily
within arrangements of integrity.
Utensils quickly turning
our tensile accent; I uttered
Vowels to what was heard
repeatedly signed our yearning.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 10:49 PM UTC
Along the faithful stretch of tensile black ribbon
Homesteads garnished in sporadic , hospitable shade
Sunshine releasing every brilliant pigment ,
summit eloquence in festive motion ..
Botton land fathers toil a plethora of viable hillside earth ,
Afternoon chimney fires season the air with -
-Hickory and Oak kindling from creek-stone hearth
Silver Guineas patrol the forest edges , cordillera
Mountain Deer free themselves from the ******* of the midday struggle , recede into wooded escapes , immune from discovery ..
Mar 31, 2016
Mar 31, 2016 at 3:52 PM UTC
So, speak of infinite love and
roll your umber eyes. It goes so
well with the way you roll your r's,
as you teach me your Castilian
intonations. Just don't fall
in that category of immersed lost
Latin loves, of mine, sunk in
wet memory.
Ah, the murk of them, an amalgam.
Each giving to a melting ***
and me, a liquid molten fraction
of strange tensile strength
and half gold-like luster. An alloy
of allies, do I see them as? Why,
yes, of course.
Now you come. Please stand out
from the mix. Show me your
purity.
Be solid gold.
I know you like my pronunciation.
I need to know now, yours.
Mi Amor
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 8:29 AM UTC
What he knows to be her lamp,
Exhaled bronze light.
Obsessively unflinching mid-range stare,
Front teeth pushed forward, from the placement of his tongue over the years.
A vague un-answer,
Obfuscating, leftward facing eyes complete with matching set of lips,
In an unusually high voice mentioning predictables
Dragging behind the boat.
Purple refracted nylon extra tensile-strength line.
Half mesh half polyester, with a carefully closed-door shave.
Couch ridden drone strike 3 floors due north.
Considering the symbolism of when I got my coat back from her room. Saved her the trouble of throwing it off her bed.
Forward through brick, laid algorithmically and FedExed in, he could have an answer but would have significantly less automobile.
Both first and last name lower case tonight and many others.
Silent E Novocained.
An on-again off again lightbulb. Colander as lamp-shade.
Nov 16, 2013
Nov 16, 2013 at 10:42 PM UTC
My inner tongue trips
over her yesterday
morning’s extemporaneous
homily and its retelling
rains down on me
temporal anomalies
through which I’ll slip the bleached
monotony chasing me.
Turn key,
return me
to the upturned
glee of a midnight macadam.
Unmanned, it’s where
the manholes open up to me
their traps of sunken yet
stacked wire-mesh baskets.
They’ve been left
to catch a refused few
turquoise-beaded strings
mixed with ash
feather-dusted by the lime,
tangerine and grape
wing beats of exotic birds
too meek to fly upward.
There the tensile tip of a sweet
and fecund smell grips me
and it squeezes out
visions of too-soon
dying in that bed
where a stripped truth lies
tenderly with the on-putting
of my put-off lies.
A low hiss heralds happy heat
and radiating pings rap me
down the shrinking-shadow hall
away from Hedone’s keep.
In the singular
pleasure of this rhythmic pluralism
my nouns and verbs find
their final agreement:
*All we’ve known
is what a wanting wind’s foretold,
but its chilly, willful voice
can no longer hold us.*
Nov 28, 2010
Nov 28, 2010 at 9:36 AM UTC
In a world of imperfection I have tried to be perfect but nothing seems to be worth it. I thought it would be easy but now I believe there is no easy way out, so i wanna ink out my soul, let out my tears to quench the thirst of the ocean.
I write this words with the blood flowing from my veins, the needle is stuck within and my jugular is past its breaking point.
My mind wanders off as I am slowly detached from reality, my tots are trapped in jars of desolation. I wish to find my way back but every stride I take opens up the doors to my insanity.
Such great agony I have come to know, one much worse than misery
I have got nails living in my spine, and I can hear them echo,
Every breathe I inhale is bitter and I pray that my last breathe blows away the wind
My ribs are tensile and cold as steel with knees set on sore concrete
I try to cry aloud but my tongue has been seared.
I ask to know no more of this, as the blade brings estacy to my wrist
I watch my pain slip beautifully to converge in a crimson pool, my eyes flutter into endless darkness and I try to feel, but I feel nothing, not this pain,not even the sound of trees.
But who would heed my call? or do i wait till never comes, because forever seems 2 far
I weave this agony meticulously to form a cold cloak that sits proudly on my shoulder. I know am strong so I would cut myself once again for I have come to realize that true grief comes with silence
I would just bleed silently till someone finds me, till I see the fire flies at the end of the tunnel.
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 8:20 AM UTC
Someone collect all the hatred,
and all the vehemence too.
then don't recycle or reciprocate it.
turn it all into something else,
rich and green and full of kindness.
distill it, remove the impurities,
coagulate it away from it's cold
tungsten tensile titanium.
some of us only have to try,
it can be done. Einstein said so;
and Mother Teresa and Gandhi,
and Martin Luther King Jr.
Someone collect all the hatred,
and all the vehemence too.
then don't recycle or reciprocate it.
turn it all into something else,
rich and green and full of kindness.
distill it, remove the impurities,
coagulate it away from it's cold
tungsten tensile titanium.
encase it in concrete and steel,
bury it with the radioactive waste.
let it lie for it's half life,
in over 40,000,000 tears.
Apr 14, 2017
Apr 14, 2017 at 1:55 PM UTC
the leaden
wetness of an
October snowfall
cloaks branch
and bough
of woefully
laden
trees
the pressing
mass
a weighty
strain
prostrates
mighty
hardwoods
to autumns
cold ground
as a
truculent
Nor'Easter
claws its way
through
the uneasy
Mid-Atlantic
night,
the crash of
creaking
maples and
popping oaks
persistently
echo through
the black
woods of
this
trembling
evening
power flickers
perplexed grids
go down
extinguishing
the warmth of
suburban
house lights
the growing
aggregation
of crushing
pressure
on tensile
taxed
branches
snaps
the firmest
wood
an
incessant
barrage
of
thumps
and
dings
splatter
against
the
house
while the
shuddering
uncertainties
of frightened
children
rise
as each
limb
clatters
to
earth
our
cowering
bivouac
draws
the
incessant
fire
of a
harassing
fusillade
from
legions
of
invisible
snipers
as
swooping
gusts
threaten to
relieve more
arboreal
tension
praying
limbs
fail
to pierce
the safety
of thinly
tiled
roofs
our
abiding
hope
remains to
escape
the
next
random
blow
of fate
the
night of
falling trees
stirs our
sleepy
hamlet
from an
uneasy
midnight
slumber
10/29/11
Oakland
jbm
Nov 8, 2011
Nov 8, 2011 at 9:38 PM UTC
A wound so deep that healing seems impossible, it would require lots of time and care if life can enable.
Nothing can't speed up this healing process, coagulation is so complex in this situation of nonsense.
Perhaps a paradox of this analogy, the sensitive mind that develops self reasoning without apology.
The need for new collagen forms increasing tensile, preventing the healing by living the pass that stays for awhile.
Deep'n with pain and inflammation, I can't stand the agony of this process I'm fill by intimidation.
Life is too short I'm living on the edge, a wound so deep, time to heal I come to acknowledge.
The intricate process of epidermis and dermis repairs a barrier against the external environment, a scar of memories remain has a reminder of the emotional pain, sorrow and torment.
The scar that's left behind will surely keep the pessimists at bay, subsequently time would pass and I must move toward peace and happiness that's the only way.
Apr 13, 2012
Apr 13, 2012 at 4:12 AM UTC
~
smile and weep,
love the shallow for its deep,
finding amazement in the complexity of life
*this prior script-thought
re-arrives but this time,
tonal differences,
a spoken aloud cascading cacophony,
no protective cocoon of silent email,
jus plainest pain masquerading beneath a tensile casual remark
and how you wish you could poetry, write, torrentially in simple lines,
to match the transverse and reverse
the only two gears,
so overcome with anger worry and pain no killer can
****
so deep and swift
its haphazard rambling rambunctious
cursing coursing
and all she said was this:*
this is going to be the end of us
and you, charged to interpret this sentence,
like your namesake Daniel
the invisible handwriting on the
Babylonian wall
that is under construction for which
you will both pay
equally
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 10:50 AM UTC
“**People say they don’t understand [my songs], but I never believe that.
It’s like understanding an embrace…**”Leonard Cohen
<>for cj<>
perhaps, there is someone in this world, who does not
understand an embrace; something physical no doubt.
perhaps, you thought that first kiss was the portal to
shedding the inhibitors, lobes stings, first arousal aroma.
but you’ve been practicing embracing from toddler age,
but someday, it traverses from hugs to all-encompassing,
the sensory adaptors, go wild from shock; and you think
to yourself, dear god, you’ve been holding back on me!
<>
two hands,
*smooth the shoulders, slide down, elbows grasp,
you’ve been taken unawares, while fully aware you’ve been,
taken, taken, and need to take, more and back, take again,
and you can’t decide between reciprocation or incantation
breaking separation, if only to start over from the last lingering...
touching vibration and every sense erupting, and you think
I’ve never been fully embraced, and now I understand the
music and muscle of your poetry, and will add my verses,
lay on my stanzas,
ocean crossings, seafaring voyages, exploring hands on hips,
then encapsulating another’s face, stroke, not squeezing
arms come to rest on a pacific neck, the hairs tensile teasing,
and you can’t believe this newly formed addiction and why
everyone simply doesn’t go about constant craving embracing,
racingoverloading uncomprehending, it’s fulsome fulfilling, quenching
a new thirst, a new taste, extending your ********* reach everywhere
you clear the catch, the cache, and your voice now begs, announces,
commands, whispers, screams, so many things that all emerge as
simply a guttural exclamation raw and needy, again, again, again,
you say it as if that was your vocabulary entire, a one word language
because it is, it is, the language of insatiable, the speech of
only love poetry
embracing.
Aug 22, 2020
Aug 22, 2020 at 1:27 PM UTC
I wake in the middle of the night
In another body.
A mirror image---
Dulled eyes,
Lopsided mouth,
Red-blotched skin;
All the same,
But not of me.
I am awake
In a dream.
Nothing moves.
Nothing makes a sound
(Except for the persistent drip
Of the broken faucet,
Skipping broken records,
And all the broken hearts
The king's men couldn't
Put back together).
I wake in the middle of the night
In a different room.
You're still snoring loudly
Beside me like a
Bear in winter, but
I don't feel your scratchy fur
Or the scrape of your claws.
Beige walls around the room:
Beige beige beige beige beige
"I hate beige,"
And suddenly they drop away.
I'm freezing in August,
Sweating in January.
The clocks on the wall
All watch me.
I wake in the middle of the night
In another lifetime.
Everything the same,
But my skin is tarnished silver,
My hands feel only cold.
Eleanor Scissorhands,
I ruin what I touch,
So you learn to stay away.
There's no comfort in
Tensile steel
And my life is made of it
When I wake in the middle of the night.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 3:44 PM UTC
Crouched in viewing the shivering cobweb
craftily spanning a waterfall's edge
I saw fine precision-knifed filaments
cunningly strung with infinite wisdom.
A weightless weapon of swinging steel,
death-celled bed spun on gossamer wheel.
That devilish duvet of glistening gauze
betokened real craft as the spider paused
then in obscurity tensed for success,
alert with magnetic insect suppression.
Hairily silent as tensile wires, cleverly glued
met miniscule life of wriggling food
that by moving caught death in but seconds
while spider gave fly lethal injections.
As water's curtain cascaded to ground
and whirling catch-trap spun victim around
fed spider wiped mouth, cleaned sticky legs,
repaired any holes and prepared for the next.
Mar 15, 2017
Mar 15, 2017 at 6:35 AM UTC
I'm not easily torn, but you've ripped me like tissue paper.
Sep 24, 2010
Sep 24, 2010 at 7:52 AM UTC
I am the moon and the tides.
I am the storm, the battered sea,
raging, raging, until the waters whirl,
deliquesce to droplets, dried in torrid heat…
I am creatures reposed to salty bones,
and I am the undulating desert gorging on them.
I am the Aeolian winds grinding mountains to sand,
blowing away my own dust to bare rock.
I am the tremors, unrelenting shockwaves, collapsing cliffs.
I am the molten lava flows, undermining tectonics.
Beyond the caldera, the release withheld…
The intensity is high, I bleed diamonds…
Shear and tensile cracks throughout,
upwards and downwards;
unpeeling the mantle, liquid substrata, shaken core.
This world is crumbling... I am crumbling.
I am the imploding planet, spinning off axis,
out of orbit planetary collisions, the space flak.
I am the unfathomable supernova, cluster detonation
white nuclear, radioactive fusion.
I am the fading neutron stars, the star dust...
...the black hole.
v o i d
Mar 31, 2014
Mar 31, 2014 at 2:05 AM UTC
Forged through amalgamations of bravery, deepest indifferance and hunger, fluster formed a solid ingot of unimaginable tensile strength. Bought and chewed what she was fed, "Oh to be wed." She would have it melted in her mind, as if drilled through skull, and smoldered into a pithy membrane. This vow, this marriage, this perfunctory cause and reaction would be solid fortune of her life. As if what her mother, father, church and giddy peers always spoke was lost wax fulminating from her ears. Topped with encrustation, a sparkly rock, salt of some miner's sweat, this platinum bond formed and molded was then clamped on her finger. As we of confused instincts know ourselves, she came from a far worse place. This all the reasoning there need be, for institution. Most of her life, she would not miss that lost pithy wax, that mind of her own. For this was the method called "sacrament" and this was her sacrifice.
Jun 9, 2016
Jun 9, 2016 at 7:07 PM UTC
I'm not easily torn, but you've ripped me like tissue paper.
Nov 1, 2010
Nov 1, 2010 at 8:35 PM UTC