"thumbing" poems
My dream girl found a lover
She speaks of him in rhyming lines
the joy she feels dancing between every heart shaped syllable,
thumbing it's nose at my breaking heart.
My dream girl found a lover
the deal was sealed with a rain soaked kiss
and hands that fit just-so.
A love tightly bound,
according to her rose tinted ink.
My dream girl found a lover
I hope he hears the fragility in her sighs
over the beauty that radiates when her smile crinkles her nose,
for that alone can distract a man from the sound of breaking.
My dream girl found a lover
to mend her broken heart,
a coveted position filled.
Leaving me forever dreaming
of almosts and half smiles.
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 4:12 PM UTC
if you’re laying in bed
wrapped up in sheets
of miserable thought,
go to sleep
if thumbing through old messages
only causes your heart to ache
and long for something unattainable
erase them
if it hurts to keep
everything you’re feeling
bottled up inside
let it out
if you’re clinging onto someone
that doesn’t treat you like
you’re worth the world
let them go
because sometimes
we choose to believe
that things are only
indistinguishable shades of gray
when in reality,
life is more black and white
than it seems
if you’re unhappy
with the way
you are living your life
change it
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 11:28 AM UTC
The clock gets me.
It comes to me in the middle of the night
Pulls back the sheets and says, "Hey fucko."
Then it lifts open my sobby wet sand-encrusted lids,
It knows when I'm trying at sleep, pumping quarters
Like I was swallowing yawns, sometimes I try to squint
Harder and take a dream to the next level, whatever
The next level is. It's like Friday night when I wanted to go
Out to do something, whatever something is.
Because I know that if I don't I'll miss that thing that's so
Important that if I were to miss it the clock wouldn't come for me
Again.
And on Tuesday's when I'm knotting a dream around 2 o' clock
In the morning, my web-footed adventure, say, killing your
Boyfriend, say
Fighting the Nazis, say,
Rediscovering that you sent nudie pics to
That rando guy we met in that club that lives
in Prague-
I throw the clock at the ******* wall.
Because who knows, I make the bed wrong
Or maybe I don't cook right, or look right, or
Smile the right way at the right
Time. And you start thinking that I have to die.
The bane of my existence is an imagined feat in your
Walnut-sized brain, slowly numbing us while we're
Supposed to be, say
Listening to the rich, Oxford voice of
David Attenborough.
Instead you're thumbing through that index
of CVS cashiers, just trying to find a scruffy face
To flip your digits to, your homemade justification. It becomes
A feat, an unjust cause of mine to
Get it right, that imaginative and artificial bit you've
Been sewing up Monday twilight.
That's when I go out and jaw your sister, somewhere between
A smirk on your face and a bit of anger at the end of your sentences.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:19 PM UTC
Petite arctic terns
navigate the sky
on epic migration
wings clocking
45,000 miles each year
it seems they know
how to go
with the flow
by thumbing a lift
on atmospheric airways
that crisscross the planet
adding thousands of
seemingly needless miles
to an already
arduous journey
flocks congregate
in open ocean
to rest and fuel up
on fish and krill
for the last push home
these tenacious birds
understand
the cliché
it's all about
the journey
they synchronize
with invisible currents
because to beat
into the wind
is a futile expenditure
they pause
in community
to re-energize and feed
on unfathomable
bounty
four ounces
of feather
and hollow bone
instinctively holds
these truths
there is much
to be learned
from an
arctic
tern.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 1:57 PM UTC
Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch,
told Emperor Wu that merit
meant nothing;
but great emptiness
revealed by sitting facing a wall
had great merit.
Wu was perplexed.
Patriarch number two, Hui-k’o,
faced a granite wall in a forest for seven years;
it became his beloved.
Seng-Tsan, the third Zen patriarch wrote poems
and his legendary Hsinhsinming verse
transcended all the unnecessary duality
in the mind’s mire.
Tao-Hsin, patriarch number four,
said don’t’ stare at a wall,
just do the laundry
and watch the clear water
turn brown
then pour it onto the vegetables in the garden
when you’re done.
Patriarch five, Hung-Jen
meditated from age six staring at the horizon
and said if you find the line between sky and land and sea
you slip into infinity
with no sky, land and sea
just one place for the mind to finally rest.
Hui-Neng came next;
no wall
no laundry water
no heavenly horizon
just fascinating monkey mind
sometimes full, sometimes empty
running whichever way, whenever,
and that was all good.
The 300-year Tang dynasty
had three wild man patriarchs-
Ma-Tzu shouted constantly;
Pai-Ching did laundry,
and Huang-Po told everyone
they were already enlightened
and should not bother with Zen at all.
Lin-Chi was the Jesus of Zen
who loved everybody everyday.
He taught the heart’s clear natural action,
compassion, not walls and laundry and trying not to think.
His love was wiser than his mind.
The patriarchs of zen
taught more than a thousand years
before I grew up an American idiot
in a materialistic world
populated by narcissistic borderline freaks
thumbing smartphones in leather car seats
never doing laundry
afraid to face the walls
built of brick made
mortared tight together
with the fear
of their own compassionlessness.
Jun 26, 2012
Jun 26, 2012 at 1:46 AM UTC
meggie
was thumbing
through her
fair trade
“style with a
conscience”
holiday catalog
eyeing
baby organics
indulgent Alpaca’s
green gear for guys
dining as nature intended, and
the best reusable shopping bags, period!
“What do you want for
Christmas Dad?”
“just be a good girl, meggie.”
I answered.
“I’m gonna get you a pair of socks
for Christmas Dad.”
“I don’t need an expensive
pair of socks. megs...
After a couple of washes
one always gets lost
inside the bottomless
tumbler.
Leaving only one to lay
inside a chest of drawers,
in the company of
happy matched pairs,
waiting to warm my
Lamisil wanting toes
One sock
alone and unhappy
its a really sad story.
Radio Arcade: Socks Song
Suffern
11/8/13
jbm
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 11:16 AM UTC
"hello kate ," Jack delleto says and sits down.
"my name isn't kate. it's Kathleen.'" hello Dell. "sue thinks Dell is such a **** name. " what should I call you?"
"how about darling?'
she looks up from the whiskey glass "hello, Jack, DARLIN." her soft deep voice whispers.
Kathleen crosses her legs and the black dress rides up to the middle of her thigh.
Jack glances at the milky white flesh. she is drunk and Dell does not care. he leans forward, ''do you wanna dance ?
"but no one else is dancing."
"Well, we could go to the beach and take a walk on the sand.
"It's twenty degrees outside." she swallows the last of the whiskey. "we'll freeze."
"i' ll keep you warm."
"all right let's dance."
"jack stands up and takes her by the hand. she rises and jack holds her close to him. jack feels her heart thumbing.
she rests her head on his shoulder. "what matters most to you?"
"not giving up."
"what's important to you?" he asks.
Kate lifts her head off his shoulder and looks into his eyes. "I don't want to be on welfare, and I want to be able to send my son to college." she rests her cheek against his. "I lived in foster care homes all my life and I always knew one day I'd have to leave. do you know the difference between a house and a home?"
Her voice is a roaring whisper in his ear. "love."
the song comes to an end. kate takes a cigarette from the pack.
jack strikes a match and the light flickers in her eyes. "maybe someday you'll have a home."
"do you want me to?" she leans forward and puts the cigarette to the flame.
"Yes."
Kate blows out the match.
May 13, 2017
May 13, 2017 at 2:25 PM UTC
Return trip from the borderlands
and Maria, she's driving though
she's had a little too much based
on the tremors and the listless
drift of the party bus from left lane
to right.
I'm in my Chuck Taylor's,
the Warhols, the $795 collector's,
thumbing through my girlfriend's
Facebook timeline. She just bought
a Picasso, a self-portrait. I want
to stab her with the long end
of my ****** shoes. They're
on the carpeted floor. Jenny's
on the carpeted floor too. I roll
her on her side so she doesn't
choke on her own ***** Hero.
The path lights overhead start
blinking and somebody, Kate
or Kristen, I get them mixed up,
starts screaming, "Strobe." We're
in the left lane going ninety, ninety-five.
The right lane looks weak.
Jenny mumbles something as I step over her.
"What's that?" I ask.
"Read the quiet book. Love the quiet book.
the whole human experience captured
in twenty-six scattered symbols."
Someone's in the ****** laughing.
We go into a tunnel and everything
goes quiet and thoughtful and black.
Breathe in through the nose and out
the same way. Click the heels together
and wait.
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 10:28 PM UTC
Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness
stitched into the tag in the neck of their coat.
They carry it like a wallet weathered from use
and old gift cards in the pocket poke at the seams.
They keep it tucked away like a pressed flower
in between the pages of their favorite novel
and find it while they're thumbing through
for that line about love that they have forgotten.
They leave it in the bottom of their shoe
and let it poke at their soles when they walk,
and, becoming accustomed to it,
no longer feel it at all.
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 8:10 PM UTC
Water is reeked with nicotine
The souls are reeked with Ginsberg
but the heads and the thoughts have both pungent smell like
hot rooster comb flowers
I slept last time the day before yesterday
I saw the ****** Mary so beautiful
in that glow of blue & gold
neons of Bethlehem
thumbing a lift near a cadillac with CD plate
& the jazz was caroling in wet sand
there were twelve bars in the honour of that boy
who has to come here one day finally, ****
he has to come just for jamming in this world
as it's said he could /!/ get all that mess of ours
off ourselves gentlemanly playing the part.
Nov 2, 2015
Nov 2, 2015 at 5:31 AM UTC
billboard's calligraph --
past the haze of Manila infested
by car sprawls and belching machines.
magnanimous treatise of tarpaulins,
people chin-up asking God
with askance
something like this
"o god make this bearable
like a mound of fresh fruits
from ****** labour."
maniacal sensurround:
earth-shattering frequency
of footsteps trampling the mouth
of monolith shadows - the peak
of this quake is our complete silence.
rain's catharsis in effect
sousing us in the blood of unreal light.
this diastolic shrinkage
jamming the beat of constricting vessels.
the adrenaline surges
within the dermis of this pretension.
a collective of tired beings heeding
the recherché of voice metamorphosing
into form, a dagger-butterfly
paring us skin to bone, cranial
to visceral, soul to nothing -
catapult of a trajectory spit
plummeting in eased-up pace
from Taft Avenue flyover
to a subjugated wagon of scraps
and empty wine bottles.
today's paper reads:
"Palace hits hiring
of **** dancers"
fancying to fall right in the
spanked curved of this
insatiate melodrama - something
prayer could not save from
this land's mutinous ignominy.
we resume to fulfill our madness,
hundreds of tack-headed people
rolling down the streets of Makati,
drenched with rain's trilling aftermath.
squinting to look at
no sun, only the grieving of skyscrape,
thumbing down unidentified objects
in the depth of loose pockets,
desperate for home.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
Her thoughts
grow like weeds
through swaying reeds.
In her head
exists a garden
as bright and as varied
as the tulips of Amsterdam.
Each canal lined with bikes,
the water flowing from one to the next.
If not careful, though,
that mind will overflow,
overgrow with the seeds
of past ill deeds.
She sits still now,
thumbing through her prayer beads,
pleading for the protection
of some modern-day Diomedes.
May 1, 2018
May 1, 2018 at 9:48 PM UTC
Simple string slips through, complicated fingertips.
Wishes, desires tied into the shape of, a single red balloon.
Thumbing a ride on a Sunday breeze,
Surfing its way over tops of rooted trees.
Winged aerialists delicately balanced on mirrored water,
The leavers dance, front row for a final show.
Doing what I can never find the courage to do,
Slip away, uncharted destination.
Through ragged linen flowing in the sky,
Past the saffron fireball,
Cautiously placed beyond the horizon.
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 6:50 PM UTC
a guy sits here
hair a twist
no ordinary man
but a case
whatever prefix fits
he knows no limitations
seeks no thrill but fear
holds no memory dear
brains grasp simply too frail
such a broken outside
and gargoyles pier
however
he tranquilizes them
anytime someone comes near
yet the people abstain still
no shame, no cheer
they simply cannot see what purity
he has in his crypt
intimidated
severe
so let us move forward and glaze over the thick
move towards the misery which anguishes him
nonsense is sensical, whimsy at best
rational is of logic and dreary
detest
********* and thumbing
he frantically does his best
pulls his hair out
pulls his hair out
closed fist
punches chest
"where is she
where is her
name i cannot confess
for it escapes me...
not because
but rather-"
due to his distress
he stopped and sighed
violence
cried
broke down
then bled
red from his eyes
i want her
the sad one
shy
hurt inside
abused, accursed
diseased but undisguised
she'll love me
she will
there's nothing there to hide
she'll make me forget myself
sing or dance or
romanticize
"i want her...
a baby's friend
the neighbor's newborn daughter
the baby friend that came over
as an infant, i saw her
i kept the same heart
but its been through a lot
and now its done with slaughter
i kept the same heart
its growing apart
i need the neighbor's daughter"
it seems as though convinced
he truly had the heart of a newborn
ambivalent
knowing no complexity
purely hurt or comfort
either way's a shoulder
diamond or dirt
seemed to be bipolar
so he seeks the same
not the opposite
that would be a shame
because no one else can relate
to someone who feels the world
has turned its back on fate
he seeks out this girl
overlooking
all the beasts in his way
with evil colors they mask their face
appear to appeal, they may
but he knows better
their defenses fragile
they attract a plethora
to which they expose
like a sinister rose
the black rock in frame
the black rock so hard
shapely carved
to which its "blacksmith"
inscribes no name
a black heart
he sighs
which holds no light
might as well not exist
Dec 30, 2011
Dec 30, 2011 at 3:39 AM UTC
The Record Store died and the windows, some broken; held the light of day in transparent
tangles, sharp cracks in spiky slabs of glass. Red splints... fissures of bluish tint, silver yellows
glint in shifts, misfit prisms.
An old poster roasting an English Invasion,
facing the setting sun's horizontal furnace. Here and there,
the odd box, coats of dust, strips of beige tape; these
huddle in long shadows of analog. Looking in -
hands on either side
of your father's face,
you can almost see hipsters thumbing empty bins, like
bowling pins in an empty lane.
Bowling pins wearing scarves.
I shuffle my pod and rock on.
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 5:35 PM UTC
And now there's a gap where the last eight hours should hang
sitting in a hospital bed looking at my boss across the way
arms crossed, thumbing his mustache like cleaning a brush
He says, "Forgive us, but we had your mouth reconstructed"
"As well as your wounds healed. We didn't think you'd mind."
I say, "I don't mind. I don't like liquid diets, anyway."
Why does it
hurt
so
much?
No work for
me
for
now.
He tells me I'm dying and that I'm strung out too far!
Tells me I'm putting too much in to what turns to scar.
Take some time off he says and give myself a chance.
Forgotten for so long to grin and ask myself to dance.
So I say, so say
you, and I'll try
but I'm fine.
And now there's a plan unfolding without my direct discretion
I can feel strings somewhere above as they're pulled softly
I sleep on the train after dressing up doll-like at home
Makeup and suicide tools wrapped around my curves in laughing walls
A women in red locks is taunting me from inside her ward, so familiar
"I should never have let you go," I say as I'm approaching
"I could have found you out," I say but she laughs once more
And sets herself on fire
Nothing but ash before me just out of reach
The dust swirling
Motes of adolescence tickling my fingertips
Why does it
hurt
so
much?
Waking I can't
place
her
face.
Arrive at The Roxy. Beneath her neon sign I absorb
cold rain in a way that makes my spine quake.
And inside the lobby, through my boots, I feel the floor
erupting from the music just through the doors.
Why do I come here?
Knowing there's nothing.
I'm nothing.
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 10:48 PM UTC
By Me, the Great Duncan
Fickle and ever indecisive,
Destiny such a mistress
Taunting at my soul,
Yet,
When it shines in your favor,
Such a shine, shimmering with your jubilation for everyone to see
Hopeing was now a tired act,
Always the same night, same time,
Deep in sleep wanting nothing more,
Than to wake to someone,
Anyone to just ease this,
This tragic ironic loneliness I had put myself in
"Why?!" I screamed to the heavens of my dark ceiling,
Calling a question that mockingly,
Never was answered,
Yet
No more,
Live,
I whisper to the glass and grass,
Flowing and burning,
Mimicking the nights,
Speeding by,
Blurs on a deserted and dark, desolated highway, thumbing my way down,
Trying, searching,
For the tell tale signs of destiny,
Shimmering on the horizon,
Till,
Finally, in a bar,
"Let the night begin!" We yell as we begin our hunt,
Laughing, yet always on the scout,
Never seeing her,
Passing oh so close,
Almost!
The clock ticked down,
Closer and closer as Destiny,
That fickle mistress of my nightmares,
As deemed fit,
I met her tonight,
For all my cries in the night,
For all my past failures,
For all the ones lost,
I would find the one,
I've been asking for,
But only just,
As the clock,
Ticks,
Down,
Ever,
Closer,
Till...
She smiles sweetly,
I see her, only her,
The rest is blurred,
Distorted in the wake,
Of the beauty,
Radiating,
Only for me
Another smile,
From on high,
Destiny laughs,
We embrace,
A sigh,
Happily,
My question answered,
"Why?!" I had screamed,
Her,
Destiny answered
May 20, 2013
May 20, 2013 at 4:05 PM UTC
Shoulder to shoulder
These young men,
Boys,
Stood for the rights of all,
Thumbing their noses
At the iron fist that crushed
Their people's heart,
Giving voice
To those rendered mute
And heart
To those without hope.
Shoulder to shoulder
These young men,
Boys,
Stood while bullets ripped
And cannons bellowed
Until they could stand no more,
The word surrender
Unheard and unspoken.
Shoulder to shoulder
These young men,
Boys,
Lay at peace.
They lit a spark
That ignited a revolution
And the dreams of giants
Were realized
With the sacrifice of
These young men,
Boys,
Legends.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 3:21 PM UTC
Standing by the road side
Thumbing a ride
Sleeping Bag, Backpack
And...Guitar on my back
Heat rolls off the Highway
Like Hallucinogenic Waves
Found a Roach in my pocket
Got me through the Day
Nothing but 70s Buick's...
And Cadillac's Roll By
On the on ramp to I-80
Rolling on to West Skies
A wish for a fast ride's best
Been up for 36 Hours
Popping Little White Crosses
Nothing Passing by but...
Military bosses.........
A VW Micro-bus pulls up
With a Band of Tie Died, Dead
Heads, cranking Jerry Garcia
The smoke the bowl, Kept on Toking
Greatful Dead played "Keep on Truckin' "
I Rolled off some Riffs, along with the Band
Flyin' 300 miles in that beat up old Van
My head got mellow, with these fine Fellows
They Dropped me off in the cool of the Night
And all I saw of them was their Red Tail Lights...1/27/15
Jan 27, 2015
Jan 27, 2015 at 8:09 AM UTC
Enter through the double doors and it will hit you
A one of a kind, nothing like you ever smelled before
You will know where you are even if you’re blind.
Plug in air fresheners filling all the outlets through out
With a fragrance of fresh cut nectar filled flowers.
Masking now the true scent of the repulsive chemicals
That fill your body and flush you till you run clear.
Stronger the smell, stronger my fear
The closer I come to the lower room
The deeper I inhale.
Expanding my lungs to capacity and hold as long as I can
Setting up my writing room next to the dead is my plan.
Nickel silver oil lamps eight feet tall
And a matching tear soaked blue velvet prayer alter
Worn out from carrying all the weight from the mourners
Will be my only light and seat as I sit and write.
Thumbing now through a hard cover book
That sat in there for many years
Eyes closed and close to my nose
I fan the pages as fast as I can go.
Polo, Taylor, and Calvin Klein,
They used to be a favorite
Pores now sweat a strange new lovely kind.
(CARSr.6-19-12)
Jun 19, 2012
Jun 19, 2012 at 1:00 PM UTC
She sent a package
tied in this biege tweed cord.
It turned out to
be a picture of you two
at the lake,
that day it was cold
and she wore that beanie with the flames,
her hair all curly and escaping,
your lips all red and chapped.
A folded note tucked on the inside
of the frame reads:
"I have Connie,
**** you
Love always,
smiley-face,
smiley-face
smiley-face,
smiley-face,
me."
Connie: your/her rat terrier.
You put the picture
in its black frame
on the tv table.
The tweed
you nail
to two spaced planks
on the wall above the tv.
It's like abstract
modernist-expressionist-
constructionist-art.
It's just one string.
A taut cord
of brown tweed.
The black night comes,
over and over,
over and over,
she doesn't return,
but the tweed remains
as taut as a fingernail
or an exposed artery.
Somehow
it's so human and obstinate
that the woven vertebrae
seems to curve minutely
and femininely.
As time passes,
the tweed moves
from beige
to golden
and gravitational.
A call to a friend goes something like this:
"Come over here, I've got this amazing thing on my wall."
The friend, Eric,
calls more friends.
The friends come over,
all piling around this golden tweed
after they've taken stock of the kitchen
and Wild Turkey.
They take turns
plucking it,
thumbing it,
putting their ears to it,
and studying it,
all
at your insistence.
Somebody,
******* Eric,
coughs in the room.
More people begin to cough.
Eric walks up
to the the string,
that is nailed at top
and bottom
on two spaced planks.
Eric gives it a final hard tug,
snapping it like a belt.
the tweed hums and shivers off a few flakes
of dust and amber material.
"I've just wasted five minutes
with this thing,"
Eric says
to the string,
and you.
Eric speaks for the group.
He turns and leaves,
taking the whole group of
twenty
with him.
They trail behind Eric
like a great, long tail
flicking
and knocking things over
in your apartment
out of sheer agitation
on the way out.
The golden gravity subsumes you.
You do not close the door behind them,
you can't even hear their tiny, black voices
as they all clamor into the elevator
and ding.
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 11:30 PM UTC