"thermometer" poems
Invariably,
You prefer to come
To me in the dark.
"You're more my temperature then,"
You once said.
I'm not much of a thermometer,
But I am the eurythmy
To each syllable you give
In such settled shadow.
A play of murmurs and fingertips,
You once named this.
Always I see a wreath in your hair,
In colors of Persia,
Textures of night,
And the soft blended lines
Of you I know
Infallibly.
Nov 30, 2019
Nov 30, 2019 at 11:26 PM UTC
only an idiot like me, the rain poured down, my socks were wetted, and i looked at the pavement for glory, instead i found a £10 note and imagined my right shoe on my left leg, and my left shoe on my right leg... just to prove the luck.
it came from listening to rotting christ's kata
ton daimona...
i wrote the poem on two tesco receipts
numbering them no. 1 - .4,
it made sense to just give it a narrative...
the naturally apparent lisp of greek is due to...
lies between theta (θ) and phi (φ)...
check feta cheese... it might be less morbidly fermented...
that's why the greeks have a natural lisp...
it's theta and it's phi...
in english it's like chinese.... w & r...
something's rolling something's waving,
something's trigonometric...
harrison fowd was almost jonathan woss if i care...
the chinese in english debate with chin-chin-wanker
scissors piece of paper stone good luck on the handshake:
lost the price of interest being gained for excavation
purposes of dinosaur bones and inflation via the
ptertodactyl of the extended mohawk shave...
english dicionary makes me confused...
it places theta alongside the, than... but then
it's therapy... thermometer...
too many unique examples i'd have said...
that's the lisp there... sidelined phew and engaged in phew
in byzantine...
english linguistics is filled with too many "unique" examples
of expression... coupled with the celebrity culture...
i farted and a person took hold of a *** squeeze...
how's that?! english language in summary?
pleasing on the eye... but the spelling? a burden on the tongue.
i know that slavic linguistics would make enlgish that's written
ugly...
it wouldn't be pharmacology but farmacology...
then it made sense, i stopped asking the english dicta
written down, the greek θ wasn't a couple of th & etc...
a few athenains in death metal said it like i said it... the 2nd f...
it was απηθανoν - because it was simply athens - fern fence...
and not d... defence, or anything easily acquired as a prescription
of zee wee point of german scottish.
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 7:04 PM UTC
-
crack another thermometer open
on the broken bathroom sink,
pour yourself into me like mercury
and pan the bed of my stomach
for multitudes of gold flecks
like however many myriads
of sickly pill bottles in your
dresser drawer of socks.
-
see all
the shredded speckled petals
i ripped up before i'd let
the deer get to them;
i'm colorblind,
and i can't tell
the sun's reflection from plastic,
or tulips from the broken
pottery outside my front door.
-
and far least from another beer,
and another fifth of whatever
could be fit under your shirt
-
and never a chair pulled up to speak,
from standing like a soapbox
more suited to cleaning
than to preaching.
-
pour yourself into me like mercury,
because it's so much easier
when my veins weigh me down
to distraction, than being able
to think of hydrangeas again.
-
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 1:55 PM UTC
Caught -- the bubble
in the spirit level,
a creature divided;
and the compass needle
wobbling and wavering,
undecided.
Freed -- the broken
thermometer's mercury
running away;
and the rainbow-bird
from the narrow bevel
of the empty mirror,
flying wherever
it feels like, gay!
6.7k
I am not feeling well does not just mean the temperature you see on that thermometer,
it also means my body and it's burning desire to no longer be alive
I am not feeling well does not just mean my head feels heavy and I want to sleep,
it also means my heart is sinking to my feet and i physically feel it in my veins
I am not feeling well does not just mean I need a painkiller to take away the pain,
it also means i am dying to reach for the blade and tear my skin apart to feel something
I am not feeling well does not just mean the food I ate is making me feel like throwing up,
it also means my entire existence makes me sick to the point of death
I am not feeling well does not just mean I will feel better after I take this nap,
it also means i will take nap after nap after nap after nap hoping to feel alive again
I am not feeling well does not just mean my joints hurt and I need to slow down
it also means my body is tired of fighting a losing battle and i give up
because some days,
i wear my depression and
some days,
my depression wears me
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 5:06 AM UTC
My brother finds comfort in calculators.
He assigns every number a name.
He believes that they add up to certainty and he is upset with fractions that remain.
So I examine these maps with my eyes, and at best I can trace with my finger
all the way to that town where she went in an attempt to forget the cracks and the lines of my face.
So Jetsabel cleaned out the closets for me and she piled up the boxes in the hall.
Tomorrow when she wakes she'll come take them away and they'll never haunt me again;
but it is still hard to sleep with the moon's heavy beams.
I run barefoot to the backyard, just to freeze in my place by the rod iron gate;
too afraid and ashamed to advance.
Today I walked through the snow and found a field of headstones.
They were in rows like the weeks in calendars where each box is a day you can never escape
without pills or the poison of sleep.
These memories leak from these faucets that weep.
Hot tears splash against the shower floor and I stand in the steam as if inside a dream--
I can see her again by the sink.
From behind the bathroom mirror she pulls a thermometer and places it under my tongue.
She said, "You're as pale as a sheet. You look awful, my sweet. Lay down and wait for the sun."
So I stayed in that bed. She brought me water and read each night from a volume out loud.
She whispered soft poetry. Her favorite was Anabel Lee.
And those words, like these drugs, comforted me.
But the clocks kept waving their hands
and she couldn't understand why temperature would never drop.
And though she promised with tears that she would always be here,
I heard truth like the sounding sea.
I said, "My Arienette, how soon you forget this house will never be your home,
and you will leave in the fall when the trees become graves and their colors lie dead in the grass."
Gold and green torture me like the lies I believe too easily.
Oh my Jetsabel, look at this hell that I have made.
If you want, maybe drop by sometime-- put some flowers on my grave
so that I will look beautiful in my silent sepulchre.
Yeah, that's fine. Throw some dresses away. I don't want anything of hers.
For the moon never shines and the stars never rise without bringing me dreams,
haunted by the ghosts of those bright eyes.
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 5:03 PM UTC
A blank space occupies my existence.
Sleeping alone again.
My hearts thermometer shattered.
I've caught a cold the day you left and I haven't gotten better.
Loneliness is a detriment to the cardiac.
A coffin without its corpse.
The hollowness of an empty hearse.
Both of us know that funerals don't work this way.
We belonged together
you said we'd never be alone again
you said we would never end
you said
you promised
Nov 7, 2015
Nov 7, 2015 at 5:20 AM UTC
I often find myself deep in the world of unknowns
of wind,
of fire,
of water
She exhales
sending static electricity waltzing through the air
as if the particles find some deeper attraction in her presence
Her fragrance
zests the cracks of empty space
Within a single whispered word,
my breath escapes me
in hopes that it may embrace
just the sound of her voice
Her heat fills up my spine
like a thermometer
and illuminates the heart
Fiery eyes burn hieroglyphics onto my lungs
Her touch gives me the fireflies
and in a frenzy they collide
igniting on impact
Their spilled embers
cast sillouetes on my eyelids
of our candle-lit dinners
Silk hair
pools against the bed sheets
Her lips would be the moon
to my tidal kiss
Frost nips at her imperfections
But she never freezes
for she changes feverishly
like bubbling water
If only transparent
Her forms cannot define her
But,
She is mystic like the air
Spontaneous like a spinning flame
A kinesthetic ocean
and I’m good at drowning
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 10:34 PM UTC
Love:
Affection, Admiration, Lust, Adoration...
There are at least 65 different definitions of the word.
Feelings that inspire books of poetry or expressions of love unheard.
How is it measured?
Perhaps with a caliper
to measure its depth and breadth.
Or with a sound meter
To measure the volume and decibel or the whispering of a breath.
Could you measure it in pints or cups or ounces in a measuring cup?
"My cup runneth over"
Can it be measured with a thermometer?
"I'm burning up."
How heavy is true love - can it be weighed on the scales?
Can you measure love with a compass - to what degree does love prevail?
Can a speedometer track the speed by which one falls in love?
Or an odometer measure the distance at which love can still be felt?
Can you use a syringe to limit your doses of love before it's lethal?
Can you attach a heart monitor and check how a lover's heart beats faster
or the health of their love - strong or weak?
Can the rhythm & harmony be counted out on a metronome
Can a polygraph test prove it is true?
Can the magnitude of love be measured using a microscope, binoculars or a telescope - maybe Hubble. How does one know how to bring it into "focus"?
How mysterious that love is so indistinguishable, so immeasurable, so evasive & yet SO BIG!
Yet no one - except for God - knows the true measure of Love & its ability to heal, to hurt.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 8:05 PM UTC
In the land of Temperature
I met Thermostat - Thermometer
What does thermometer do anyway?
A thermometer tells you the temperature whether it’s cold or hot
But it does nothing about the situation it identifies
It only measures and whether we like it or not
What about thermostat?
Thermostats function in a way that when it senses a room is cold,
it quickly and quietly starts the machinery necessary to bring the cold room to an acceptable temperature
If a room is hot, a thermostat cues the system to cool the room
It restores the balance, it assess the situation and make a difference.
I named her Thermostat – Thermometer
‘Cause she can be a thermostat to others
When she senses there’s something wrong around her
She always does something to make it right like a thermostat does
Sadly, she can only be a thermometer to herself
She knows there’s something wrong with her
Yet she can’t do something
‘Cause she also needs a thermostat
A thermostat to make it right for her
It makes me wonder how many people out there
Acting like thermostat to others
But they can only act as thermometer to theirselves
Hoping that someday
A thermostat changes the situation where they are in
Jul 26, 2013
Jul 26, 2013 at 6:20 AM UTC
Smoky pores: so familiar
sticky necks and inner elbows
alone I am a flamingo
in soft pink cotton
free chested
bare legged
artificial air
from blades spun wild-
a source for white noise
and companionship
I miss the greasy weather
take away my wired bed
shove it under the frame
to spend this time together
most exposed
as I sleep
admire my black heads
and the semi-permanent
smell of fire and ammonia
despite the bursting thermometer
and idle thermostat
your breath on my arms is no nuisance
wake me up at six in the morning
and kiss my smoky skin
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 4:41 PM UTC
The first time
I heard them
I swear,
I was to listening
to the most beautiful choir
in four-part harmony,
swaying
or angles wings rubbing,
& perfectly, playing
a common file instrument
angled, such a unique sound
symphonic & splendorous
they are all around
this free concert
an offering of
Mother Nature
chiming at once
uncaged,
& calling on the ladies
in perfect unison
sounding like church
telling one another
of sunlit hours
say the flowers
fending off evil spirits
allowing me to travel
into the dark again
leaping over obstacles,
alerting me to danger,
still in their silence
I am protected
by this harbinger of luck
a most powerful portent,
of coming things
they sit silently in the quiet,
like a copper cricket weathervane,
as the poor man's thermometer
spinning tales effortlessly,
in the wind calmly
watching over us
a shivering in the night
save you, are mine
my Native American totem
or God's Cricket Chorus
foretelling of Sorrow
of coming rains tomorrow
ex-lovers and death
a shrill creaking
stridulating in song
Oh, I fear that day,
your music should go away
please dear uncaged cricket choir
I truly ....
hope you'll stay.
Cherie Nolan© 2016
Sep 27, 2016
Sep 27, 2016 at 1:32 PM UTC
Those sleepless summer nights
Sweat pouring from every crack
In thinly layered sunburnt skins
It was all panties-on-the-floor
Blood-on-the-sheets
And *******
Living out highschool fantasies
Like the cool kids
Life before 22 was all a dream
Of midsummer swelter and
Salt water
In the mind of the dog
Chained up in the universe's yard
Tethered to the ether world
Racing rabbits through space
While I was turned into an ***
Staring at the mirror
And my expressionless face
*This must be how cancer feels
Growing increasingly smaller
In a world where cabinets
And aspirations grow increasingly taller
She met the devil
For coffee on diagnosis day
But the deal they made didn't take
Her hair fell out
And her body atrophied anyway
She found herself
Floating far far away
Her blood coagulating like
A broken thermometer
Of mercury*
Salvador Dali painted this fall
The house of salvatore
Minds gone to roost under warm eaves
Staring fireplaces
Hungry couches and singing windows
It's all ******* drooping like clocks
And derailing thoughts
The local biddies
Cluck their tongues
At the absurdity of infinity
And the girl in Ace Hardware
Buying shoepolish to hide her tan lines
Yawns, as her boyfriend feels her up
*Meanwhile I collapse
Like a house of cards with a flick of the wrist
Thinking about life's mathematical beauty*
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 6:11 PM UTC
"I am dying."
"Its hardly a cold."
"Will you fetch me a thermometer?"
"I will send for one, you Shakespearean."
"I am glad you can make jokes to a dying friend."
"Learn to hold your wine."
"You mean drink? Or what I am doing now?"
"Both."
"Will you still be my friend in the morning?"
"If you are alive."
"Good. I am dying you know?"
"You died a week ago and the week before that."
"It's real this time. You will not be happy in the morning."
"Why is that?"
"You will wake to a foul smell and realize that your mourning will be spent digging a hole."
"Oh, so like most mornings with you."
"You are a real pal. Pass the wine?"
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 11:07 PM UTC
Labor Day still three weekends away,
Why play gravedigger so prematurely?
Do not the long legged teen girls yet parade,
In halter tops and shortest of jeans cutoff?
Bare shoulders, tans, caramel cream, short and
tight,
The dresses and the contents, and your chest too,
right?
True, but the thermometer barely brushes 75,
That evening coolness, not yet a chill, now ever-present.
Soon the acorns in August will appear, but for sure,
I know that summer's end knells loud and clear,
Because tonight, the ladies wore pantyhose.
Aug 15, 2013
Aug 15, 2013 at 11:43 PM UTC
Welcome to 5:15am
And I'm so calm
And so prepared
Having changed into pajamas
Out of pajamas
And into a sweater
That I wear too often
Made for men;
Or made for me.
And despite the summer
Despite the desert
Outside is a cold black
Misleading
Considering the thermometer
Reading a cozy 80
Because here, the night coddles you
Like a blanket
And wraps you in something
Anything it can find
And during this hot rainy season
Something sticks to your clothes
To the cuticles of your hair
And you smell like whatever the day
Brought to you.
Welcome to 5:21am
And you haven't been outside yet
But you've changed into pajamas
That don't terribly embarrass you.
And when you finally go outside,,
You'll be getting out of a car
And walking into a hospital
Maybe legs shaking
(I don't know,
You haven't been there yet.)
And you try to calmly wait
While people you don't know
Stick you with things
One of which will knock you out
And you wake up with
Cuts in your body
From taking out the sickness
That's real this time
And tangible
And actually comes from your gut
And actually makes you
Look yourself in the eye
And *****
It's 5:26am
And the pain is starting again
And the ambivalence of today
Hangs on my hair
And my clothes
Until they put me under
And I really have no option.
Aug 26, 2013
Aug 26, 2013 at 8:28 AM UTC
My thermometer showed water lilies,
While the I drank the sky in a perfect line
Now, choke me with that smile
And let me borrow small pieces of your time
Afterall it's a cashless transaction.
Dec 15, 2016
Dec 15, 2016 at 9:40 AM UTC
It's cranberry sauce
That’s it, I’ve done it
My brain is mush
Heartbeat through a megaphone
I’m pulling on my pant legs
Tightening my veins around my bones
& I think the thermometer in my brain needs reprogrammed
I. Now I’m a cozy embryo
With cotton in my marrow
Last of my breed so the bad men can’t see me
I’m sitting here in my own bullet train
Flying through metro lights at night
With coruscating sodium vapor
Vibrating in my peripheries
My appendages do not exist
II. We are the carbon monoxide leak
We are the cold coaxing hypothermia
Still trying to define the agony of existence
& Beauty of meaning through definition
III. “If you don’t get old, you die”
Shut up & pay your taxes old man
I can stay young for as long as I want
I am healthy
I am eternal
I’ve got all the cotton in the world
IV. I wonder if all sentient life deals
With the same paranoia as humans do
It’s the reason we never shut up
& hold love for vague idols
V. I like smiles
& I like sadness
VI. What does loneliness see when it chases its
Shadow?
You’ve got a mouse in your hand that cannot know that you are
Sentient.
You are a wooden giant from outer space that burned upon
Entry.
Where does apathy sleep when it has had too much to
Eat?
Why can’t you see your house from three million miles
Away?
If you need help breathing then you deserve to die in
Appalachia.
If I lie here long enough under enough blankets, then
I'm not real
Is it possible to save up enough money to avoid humans
Altogether?
Just like that, the spiral ceases
We were packed
Like sardines
Wrapped in butcher paper
Blind night vision
Then deer in headlights
Kissing the pavement
Mutually requited
Uninterest
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
There's a part of me,
that you have never seen,
it's large, burrowing, dysmorphic
and it tells
me that this is okay,
this is natural,
that the cold rush I feel
is the thermometer saying I'm cooling down
and that love that kept boomeranging
won't be able to reach me
because that part of me
is digging deep for the both of us.
And so,
stuck inside that soggy center
it burrows for fun and survival,
because it knows it can go as deep as it wants,
and no one will ever see it.
Nov 16, 2011
Nov 16, 2011 at 11:20 PM UTC
It’s 30…
it’s 28 degrees outside,
or so says the rust-cased thermometer
on the balcony.
The blizzard we’ve been expecting all week
is a churning grey mist in the distance—
it is easy to see from the balcony
if I look through pine boughs.
The woods expanding below our mountainside balcony
are also home to several swanky condos;
evergreens and birch all down the mountain,
and a dusty snow falling in the valley below.
We are all familiar with the reddened barn
staring at us, perfectly opposite our balcony,
commanding a small field
on the little mountain across the dip of the valley.
But the blizzard is swallowing the neighbor mountain
in its snowy march towards the balcony.
And the lazy, drifting flakes above the pines
are shook into a frenzied dance.
A group of skiers, lost and floundering in the white
near the buildings lodged in the woods below
understand that cold, chaotic feeling I know
as the valley blurs in whitewash.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:20 PM UTC
I ASKED the Mayor of Gary about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And the Mayor of Gary answered more workmen steal time on the job in Gary than any other place in the United States.
"Go into the plants and you will see men sitting around doing nothing-machinery does everything," said the Mayor of Gary when I asked him about the 12-hour day and the 7-day week.
And he wore cool cream pants, the Mayor of Gary, and white shoes, and a barber had fixed him up with a shampoo and a shave and he was easy and imperturbable though the government weather bureau thermometer said 96 and children were soaking their heads at bubbling fountains on the street corners.
And I said good-by to the Mayor of Gary and I went out from the city hall and turned the corner into Broadway.
And I saw workmen wearing leather shoes scruffed with fire and cinders, and pitted with little holes from running molten steel,
And some had bunches of specialized muscles around their shoulder blades hard as pig iron, muscles of their fore-arms were sheet steel and they looked to me like men who had been somewhere.Gary, Indiana, 1915.
1.8k
I am a peripheral *****
I brandish my notebook
Like a chef brandishes his dish-rag.
Where do wizards keep their wands?
I build worlds out of words
Universes out of silence;
Universes that can be destroyed
With a single eyebrow.
I am a calculator.
I am a thermometer.
I am a clashing painting on the wall.
I am a question.
I am as much as my pencil.
I am as much as my frame.
I am as much as my stains.
(I am as much as the buttons unbuttoned on my shirt collar.)
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 9:57 PM UTC
please don't ask
why my words
are so intent on
chaining your heart
to the nightmares I've
stuffed my pillows
full of
with promises rusting
into blackened iron
links and truths that
would shine better as
lies
I never meant
to cage you
in my dreams -
it's just that my
eyelids solder shut
and I cannot pry my silver
eyelashes apart without
cracking at the faultlines
I forget to mention
whenever I wake up
alone
it's just that my
soul needs more
than a little oiling
more than a little
you
to breathe away this
metal corroding its way into my
tear ducts, dripping rust
down my cheeks,
choking on 'blood oxide'
and mechanical residue
buried underneath my
fingernails
it's just that every
******* 'i love you'
is yet another link
around my finger,
wrenching the life out
of me,
blue shadows engraved
on my skin never shine
like silver in the sun
but if this is the
only clanging chain
of heartbeats echoing
in metal boxes
from me to
you;
what can I do?
it's just that there
was a lock somewhere
along this mess of coils
and chinks and mistakes
but oh god,
when did the rust
between you and I
melt into three thousand
miles of mercury trickling thermometer
poison into everything
we say?
I've lost my keys;
they had sunk first and
I will sink last
it's just that
the clinking thump thump of your heartbeat
is my lullaby;
it's just that
knowing you breathe warmth is enough
to cool the burning silver in my lungs;
it's just that
close to you is the closest I will ever
feel to 'alive'
it's just that
if I can't keep you -
nobody can
Dec 2, 2014
Dec 2, 2014 at 4:56 AM UTC
He is an unpopular character this old man
Who sits and draw cartoon character
in memories of the dearly departed.
He said that he felt like crying,
but he wasn’t going to cry
Because if he did,
he might not like the taste of his tears
Those loose cells in the tears
is mostly of his mother and father.
He resented them for not aborting him
He wishes that he was never was born.
Due to the facts that all his life he was scorned
He was in and out of intuition
Always in a state of confusion
Month too months he never saw the sun
He never felt the rain upon his face,
Only long session with the nurses and the
Physiatrist who thought of him as a disgrace
He recalled taking the train for the first time at age fifteen
And that didn’t turn out as expected,
He wets his pant, so he sat in his seat and slaps his head furiously
He was spanked by the nuns, ridiculed by Sister Margaret the head hunter,
Got a huge ****** thermometer roughly up his **** by a big black dude
Suffered daily due to his severe autism behaviors
He is an unpopular character this old man
Who sits and draw cartoon character
of all his childhood abusers:
Mar 26, 2017
Mar 26, 2017 at 8:52 AM UTC