"thumbnail" poems
Nobody was born today
But you picked up a cake anyway
for five dollars fifty plus tax
Now you're watching
Criminal Minds on a couch made for three
and eating it with your hands
It vaguely occurs to you that
you should be sharing it with someone
or at least put on some **** candles
You're not even hungry
you don't even need to fill a void
you did good today
You hardly even miss her anymore.
You haven't thought about it in weeks.
If you just slept you'd be fine in the morning.
You consider it all
examining the red velvet
stuck under your thumbnail
Maybe you're looking for
a file or a prison shank
sunk beneath the frosting
Or maybe you just need
to make this a Night
The Night of the Cake
It'll blend in
with the others
in a matter of time
But for a few weeks
you'll look back
and remember
you are a member
of those romanticized ranks
those plastic or terracotta statues
Tomorrow you will feed the dog.
And after work you will pick up groceries.
And after groceries you will pay your bills.
But tonight is the Night of Cake.
Tonight
you become a stereotype
An unforgiving consumer
with chocolate-stained hands.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
dead soldiers from the night before
stared up from their hiding spot still
in their brown uniforms
the snap of the sheath was lost in the
snap crackle and pop of the dying embers
the blade of the axe tested on a thumbnail
cut a satisfying line to proof the sharpness
you turned with precision and gravel crunched
beneath your feet, eyes searching for the
driest piece to feel the point of the heavy head
your whistling echoed from your lips as
trees dance to your tune in the not so gentle breeze
fleshy hands and oak handle embracing
log victim placed on the sacrificial stump
lined up your trial mark 'practice makes perfect'
the swift swinging arm motion followed by
sound from a sudden swing forced a new echo
through the trees landing with a solid thump
and silence
with more whistling eerily into the silence between
the splitting of each one after another, the red painted
axe head was gleaming with each chop while ready
to work again and again and...
May 31, 2013
May 31, 2013 at 11:47 PM UTC
A thousand tumbles takes a bottle in the sea-
a thousand dashes and whirls and swoops.
A million grains of sand takes that bottle in the sea,
to break apart, to come to me
in fragments like a snowflake fractal.
How many mermaid miles till she hands that glass to me?
For I've taken out my very-ness, for you.
- And my crossness.
My judgement and wrath.
I've taken out slight hot breathe
(for you to melt the ice on your whiskers.)
I've taken out my toes when they are reaching for yours in the cavernous blanket world through the forest of our lazy limbs.
I've taken out my righteousness
and my second guessing.
I've taken out for you (a surprise, I was going to surprise you!)
all the times you were going to be wrong to me-
and to wrong me...
taken them out to sea, you see?
In that bottle, pretty bottle. Broken now like too many vows.
I've taken out my knowing best and finding better.
I've taken out the half moon of your thumbnail as well
...I will miss that in my night sky-
(perhaps I'll keep that after all.)
I'll take out the complacency of holding your hand getting out of a chair.
and the mindless strokes
as you explain
my commonplace crazy
to
simpler minds-
I'll take out the very-ness of me, and the we-ness of us.
and fill a bottle with a the brine of a thousand tears from hundred slights not slighted quite yet.
I fill the bottle and gift the sea
with the softness of you and the brashness of me.
A thousand turnabouts it takes to reach you on the beach,
a sea glass diamond ring, engage me you engaging man-
and the tides tickles my feet in anticipation, marry me. marry me.
just a sea glass promise
for a mermaid bride
waiting for the sailor man to sing her sweetly with salt on his lips
Just a sea glass lullaby from the man who loves me so.
Marry me, marry me
And we drink sparkling water from a sea glass flute
and we drink all the us and we drink all the we
for sea glass could never hold a second in,
sea glass is far too vain not to shine in the sun fanning
your invite out in a spectrum of color that
a small child's hand creates when he holds it up to the rays.
Spills out all of my intentions
Spoiled child, loved child,
Spills out all of my intentions carelessly on the sandy floor for the tides to swallow whole.
My sea glass prism chucked unceremoniously back to sea
and me the mermaid bride left at her own alter...
But a seashell to your ear and her my wailing sorrow calls,
'marry me, sailor. marry me.'
sahn 8/5/14
Aug 4, 2014
Aug 4, 2014 at 11:42 PM UTC
Half my head is shaved
The other half is bruised
You're a 2D
Paper cutout
Not yet origami
Looking for folding schemes
You don't know you're lost, it seems.
And I am no dotted-line-edition
It's all just simple addition:
Platitudes only get you thumbnail deep
Half my head is shaved
The other half, you can keep.
Aug 21, 2013
Aug 21, 2013 at 3:15 AM UTC
Right now
in your kitchen
on the bottom rack of the dishwasher
resides a secret;
a dark spot on your soul –
a malignant little horror
that threatens to destroy
your sense of self worth.
Maybe it’s a butter knife
with an in-congruent rust spot
on one side of the blade…
Maybe it’s a random salad fork,
the final piece remaining
from a long forgotten flatware set,
with a fossilized chunk of radicchio
lodged between the third and fourth tines.
Probably it’s the fork.
There it has sat
without being moved;
without being touched;
just existing as the metaphor that it is
for 8 straight wash cycles.
The result has never varied.
The dirt remains.
Soon will come a ninth wash cycle.
You hope that things will change.
You know that they will not.
Despite this unwavering conviction
that the fork will always be *****
the next time you run the cycle,
open the dishwasher door,
peer through the gauzy veil
of lemon scented fog
and see the small bit of filth
you will still feel disappointed.
You will grow a little bitterer.
You will be a little more contemptuous.
The world will be a deeper shade of gray.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
You can go
right now
into the kitchen
to the bottom rack of the dishwasher and
reach down
with a trembling hand
to grasp destiny.
You are bigger than this fork.
You are bigger than this fork.
You
are bigger
than this fork.
With a sense of control firmly clasped between your fingers
take that 15 uncomfortable seconds
to scrape away the debris with your thumbnail
and then be free.
BE FREE
Deep and resounding will be
the sigh of relief;
the utter completion;
the contentment absolute
that you experience
when you place that clean salad fork
back in the drawer.
It will never match
the new silver
that your In-Laws gave you last Christmas, but
at least it will be clean and
in its home
safely ensconced
in that wire organizer.
Right now
in your kitchen
on the bottom rack of the dishwasher
is a chance for redemption.
Feb 5, 2017
Feb 5, 2017 at 12:21 AM UTC
do you remember me? it's been four years. i look so different, but i think i might have seen a flicker of recognition in your eyes, maybe a smile. you look pretty different, too, with that half-baked teenage beard and that new school uniform. i remember how our old school uniform hung off your lily-white shoulders, not yet grown into. you've grown so much. I'm half-convinced i dreamed you, as you were years ago. i saw you and felt a tug in my gut, almost like stepping into a childhood home where someone else has set up a life. why am i am so stuck on seeing you, like it left a hook in my lungs, like a scratched-up CD? maybe because i knew you, but not anymore. maybe because we never really said goodbye. maybe because it was always, always complicated. maybe because we were friends. maybe because of the thumbnail car you left on my hand. maybe because i miss you. maybe because seeing you shot me right back to five summers ago when all that mattered was the melting heat of the oval grass and who we ate lunch with. i hope i see you again. maybe next time I'll say hi. maybe point out the scar and fit it to your thumbnail. maybe never tell you i picked at the scab over and over to have something to remember you by. maybe ask you about your favourite movie.
Sep 9, 2024
Sep 9, 2024 at 2:53 AM UTC
so you've got a heartache in your belly.
& as you casually told me
" it's about the size of a thumbnail
right now "
i looked down & realized
i needed to clip mine.
your eyes dimmed like theatre lights
when i closed the curtain
on your monologue
about motherhood
to tell you we couldn't keep it.
& i probably never loved you more
than those days where we would sit
in silence,
thinking about how empty we were about to become --
you literally,
& me….desperately.
& we went to that sterile building
with the bulletproof glass windows
& the chubby old woman,
using a blue blouse as a veil to cover the layers of
stress & years underneath.
she spoke to us through an echoing intercom
in a grave attempt to keep her distance
from our fingernail problem.
we got buzzed in & we waited &
we sat close but god you were so far away
& i reached out & grabbed your hand to pull you back in
& you looked over at me --
overpassed me --
& the ghost of a smile haunted your lips for a second….
they called your name, well
not your name…not the name i call you,
but the one your dad gave you,
& they told me i couldn't go back there with you
& i said i understood but i never will.
the waiting room filled with somber souls,
& we all pretended like it was just a normal doctor's office
but it was obvious who the better actors were
as some randomly burst into tears
like confetti poppers at a birthday party.
we all knew we were at a funeral but
they turned up the volume on the TV
like the quiche that Rachel Ray was baking
would make us forget the mistakes we were burying
& i remembered the picture you showed me
that looked like an x-ray of a jelly bean & said
" that's it.
that's what it looks like. "
& you stared at my face like you were trying to
memorize my expression in that exact moment
so you could dig it up whenever you needed to hate me again,
but then you came out of that door holding your belly
& i knew you wouldn't need to dig that up
because you would have no problem hating me
anymore.
Jun 27, 2012
Jun 27, 2012 at 3:04 PM UTC
A live oak, grey suit not moving,
“He’s dead,”
The strings inside him broke.
She loved mysteries so
That she became one.
-
Tonight, darling, to right
Wrongs and wrong rights
with zero dollars and zero cents
and bat mitzvah money.
-
Orlando was pretty well lit,
A LEGO set sunk, a paper town
That’s uglier close up – dementia,
Paper-thin, paper-frail fox-trot
All the way around to slow dance
And finally, “I. Will. Miss. Hanging. Out. With. You.”
-
Highlighting “Song of Myself” opens the door of your mind,
Not poetry, not metaphor, clues the size of my thumbnail
Couldn’t help but smile half straight edges and half ripped
Paper towns, you will come back.
-
If only I walked like I knew how to kiss
Guthrie sang to Whitman as Walt read of doors
And maps of mini-malls leading
To graffiti messages and skipping graduation to drive,
“Though life can **** it always beats the alternative.”
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 6:32 PM UTC
He came in from the dark of the monsoon of his soul
and pondered how he drifted so far from land
desecration and destruction…torment and anguish
waiting on the other side, hoping I’d find it but praying I don’t
fear, hopelessness and all that appears
statements of contracts entering the room
screaming, “not today, tormenter”
“not today”…
And so he becomes me in thought and despair
waiting for the turn, the moment of truth
until I and me combine with him and he
shuttering, tossing my food, crying inside
traffic jams in my mind due to congestion
wailing to my assailant, “not yet”,
I’m here to stay
“not quite yet”…
Finally, night becomes dawn in the recess of my heart
fluttering amongst the flowers, plants, and trees
those swaying trees of time and wonder
fate hanging on by a thumbnail and a prayer
receiving and sending love from heaven
in the form of a lightning bolt, a rainbow
believing at the end, “I’m free to be”
knowing “I’m free at last”…
Sep 7, 2012
Sep 7, 2012 at 4:44 PM UTC
Going to sleep
is the best thing
a person can do.
After a long day of work
just slip under the covers
clean, wrinkled, soft and daring
the night a comfortable pillow
in which to rest sleepy tired eyes
while finishing a dystopian sci-fi movie
taking place in the desert.
Furiosa takes the night
across her shoulders
black engine grease smeared
across her forehead as Mad Max
rides shotgun
before the heat consumes them.
Enjoying every sand crusted
machine cranked thrusted
water tank bomb shell.
She is the best kind of heroine
taking complete control
of the current situation.
But sometimes there’s a break
when the dusk becomes depth
merging into the white halo of moon
slivered like a cut thumbnail
just hanging there, lifeless.
And this is when
the truth becomes
completely apparent.
Resting one’s body
after a tough week
of physical and emotional sickness
becomes first priority
where relaxation nods its weary head
to slumber under a pile of blankets.
Jan 15, 2016
Jan 15, 2016 at 10:44 PM UTC
We endeavor to construct boxes and file folders
This life being ****** complex
And messy to boot, so we approximate sanity
By filling compartments and writing thumbnail biographies,
And even though she packed the costume admirably
(Already forty, mind you, but nowhere near gone to fat)
Julie Newmar had already filled both outfit and niche
(And never mind Halle Berry’s turn,
Different raiment for a different time, after all,
And one suspects the next iteration of said slinky supervillainess
Will wear nothing more than feline-shaped ****** rings),
Not to mention she’d already entered our collective consciousness
With a frothy Noel novelty (unsubstantial, inconsequential
In and of its ownself, perhaps, but then one considers
The version foisted off on the populace by that woman
Who appropriated the moniker of the Blessed ******
All phoned-in faux Betty Boop, and one reconsiders)
So this was who she was, the book closed and sealed
(English only, never mind the other three tongues she spoke
Plus three more she proficiently purred in.)
They say when she died, she did not go gently, as it were,
But screamed and yowled for all she was still worth,
And maybe it was the cancer, certainly enough to do the job itself,
But perhaps it was the notion
That her era of innuendo and intimation was all done,
That she was transitioning to the static, to becoming a legacy,
A permanence that was stalking her,
Murderous, insatiable, inexorable.
Sep 14, 2018
Sep 14, 2018 at 10:39 AM UTC
Thumbnail small
Delicate
Your petals curve out from your slim center
Pale arches spreading out and over.
Sweet smelling stalks support
Bells that sway in the night.
The moonlight shines through your vibrant white body
Filling you with unearthly light.
Gentle music accompanies you.
As this night surrounds us
I place you in the gentle rock pool
And the water shimmers cool, clear gossamer.
The smooth stones will protect you
Watching in the waterbed.
Will you sing back to the moonbeam, dear flower,
While I leave you here to rest?
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 2, 2014 at 12:31 PM UTC
I am here
I was there
when you died
a handful of yards
from where I stood
on the most perfect of days
I now stand
on a seaside boardwalk
reciting your names
reading thumbnail bios
you liked the sun,
sea, surf and shore
you deeply loved
your family and
carried this place
within you as a
sacred sanctuary
But for that awful day
I would not know you
The day that bowed
Trinity’s holy spires
the clattering commotion
the destructive noise
tumbling, collapsing, splintering
our civic civility
consuming you
dashing many
seashore dreams
Yet your love
was not consumed
in the flames of acrimony
Your names
forged in bronze
etched on boards
written in sand
nursed
in wounded hearts
of those you loved
and blithely spoken
by a lifting chorus
of ever present waves
Music:
Righteous Brothers,
Ebb Tide
(double click image to read the names)
Lavallette
Holy Saturday 2017
jbm
Apr 20, 2017
Apr 20, 2017 at 5:36 PM UTC
The old man with no luggage
wears a pilling houndstooth jacket
and suede fedora with a
leather strap and horse-bit buckle.
Stark seams line his trousers.
He has:
Wirey gray hair, calloused wrists,
a popped blood vessel neath his thumbnail,
and deep crevices in his palms.
He folds his boarding pass into a kite,
as he looks into the sun
through the tiny cube of a window.
He sees:
The geometric shadows
cast in early afternoon.
And skyscrapers.
They cut through the sprawling
grid like an artery.
Feb 21, 2017
Feb 21, 2017 at 12:36 PM UTC
I have a
Legacy.
Old Christmas lights
Vinyl siding
Rusted bicycles sprawled
On thumbnail lawns.
Two a.m cigarettes
On wooden porches
Scaffolding to store
Gasoline cans under.
I have a
Legacy.
"You were raised in
A trailer park."
But wasn't I?
Wasn't it the truth?
I have a
Legacy
A life that I
Escaped.
Thumbnail lawns can't
Compare to the life I got.
But not all will have
That kind of chance.
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 8:43 PM UTC
even after all this time, your still, quiet form slumbering beside me never ceases to amaze me, those long eyelashes, longer than the length of my thumbnail, fluttering against my cheek still make my heart quiver, the essence of you lingering on my lips hasn’t failed to stay sacred to me. all this time & the simple happenstance of your perpetuate presence warms me to the core. i cannot, have not, will never take you for granted, not when your soothing silence is as captivating as when you speak, not when you are the most breathtaking discovery i continue to make day by day by day. you have taught me how to savor, drink my coffee in slow sips sluicing down my throat, the pauses between swallows made for languid eye contact with you. you have laid me down & loved me to breathy, shivering pieces, we have charted the topography of one another’s bodies with needing fingers, a little more “touch me” than i knew i could feel. my head always races in labyrinthine circles but you slow it to a halt with your lips & skin & brimming heat. i mean, maybe i’m a little broken, maybe even a lot, but with you, i don’t mind so much anymore.
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 7:46 PM UTC
i look for you
in the faces of strangers
they have your eyes,
eager and sad,
the eyes of instability,
the same brown as an old bruise.
i often wonder why i didn't
inherit your eyes.
perhaps it's a metaphor for all the differences between us?
there must be a reason
more significant than the obvious.
it's easier in the daytime,
when i don't have to think of you.
when there is enough light to keep me concentrated
on the endless distractions
that keep me smiling,
for there is always something to
smile about.
but nighttime is a different universe,
the moon, a lonely thumbnail.
it reminds me of how you used to chew your cuticles
and place them neatly in a little white pile
while we would watch an endless stream
of ****** infomercials.
sometimes you don't realize how much you were in love
with someone's naked habits
until they're gone.
when i was sick,
you would always make sure the washcloth on my forehead
stayed warm.
i miss that.
Feb 9, 2013
Feb 9, 2013 at 2:51 AM UTC
Alright, ***** here-- I wrote you a sonnet.
Your eyes can see & you can read, what do you mean, 'what's on it?'
Oh that ring there? (cough) That's just the place where I set my whiskey glass down to cool off.
Please let me explain, as I was drowning my pain, I sort of let go of some of my mucus.
Don't sit there upon your high chair and beg & plead 'how could you do this?'
Yes it does smell salty like the sea.
I'm glad you mentioned that, you see
I used my tears to wipe up the blood--yes, that blood there--no, its not my blood.
I swear it's not what you think, it was the pen,
He started spitting up ink.
It's wrinkled, I know, my fists were clenched while writing it.
Oh and this thing here? (cough)
That's just my left thumbnail, I was unconsciously biting it,
it must have fallen off.
Oct 4, 2011
Oct 4, 2011 at 7:23 AM UTC
I knew when your skin stopped smelling like oak trees that it was time for me to leave you. I knew when everything tasted like curry and *** that I needed to run, but I wasn’t ready for months.
So I spent months. I spent almost a full year convincing myself I was in love, wrapped in plaid blankets and handmade ugly red scarves and even uglier red scars and I was just running through the motions until I gained momentum.
At the time, I taught art, and I’d come home from work with big, rainbow spills on my skin. Green on my arms, blue on my knees, red on my chin, and you looked at me and said
"Don’t they have a sink where you work?"
I guess I knew then too.
We got drunk before my bus left and I knew then.
I kept giving you pieces of me to hold onto. I’d hand you my thumbnail’s song on a mandolin, I’d give you my long hair to braid, I’d give you my toes to **** on and you carried it all down with you. I’m sorry for that.
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:56 PM UTC
Curving down a winding road.
I finally soaked into a door.
My emotions were statues,
Like concrete thread pouring the sky, a new blueish green.
Fear was it's own culture.
Demanding belief & hovering over those who could break, in seconds.
I could smell the rain.
My lessons, showed me how.
Taking me through night & pointing at the smallest pieces of of we are.
Causal days of ache.
I tarnished the old wool, parchment paper.
Everything I thought was real,
Became fragments & out of the pile, I found some of my reflection.
The scarred kindness of generality.
A life led from simple roses,
And yet the most deadly, tangible thorns & scarcely beat dirt.
Times become all too familiar.
Launching coins, off a thumbnail,
Into the only well within miles.
My feelings were frozen.
Trapped in lights in this darkened room.
Arching up a windy slope.
I finally became the door.
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 4:47 PM UTC
She was big blue eyes & tangled hair & pulling me everywhere she went. I was happy though. I'm not complaining. Everything was an adventure with her. She liked flowers more than jewelry so birthdays were always easy. & her favorite thing to do was explore. We spent more time in abandoned buildings than we did on actual dates. The freckles that were sprinkled across her nose showed up best in the sunlight. I always thought she looked prettiest like that. Concentrating with that nose all crinkled up, her knotted hair blowing in the wind. She was always chewing on her right thumbnail. It was always the right hand. I don't really know why she chose that finger, but I think it says a lot about her. It's sad that this is only a memory, but then again it's not. Now whenever I'm asked what beautiful is, I won't have to struggle for an answer.
Nov 23, 2014
Nov 23, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC
Freight rumbles by
While sweat drips down
And the crackle of a speaker
Still sounds;
Echoing through the tunnel.
A body turns, fidgets, moves
And itches with the heat.
The feet they tap
And dance with boredom
Wishing *** had a seat.
A woman leaning upon a beam
Aggravated by beads from pores
Moves to take a walk, it seems,
But soon she leans some more.
Too hot to move, til a breeze is felt
Coming down the rails
A beam of light, first one than two
And not freight, but silver and blue.
The cool air flows like whiskey at a funeral
Sour, but necessary, to make it through the ride;
And you sleep through stops instead of wondering who the hell had died.
Thumbnail clippings float down the car from conversations had:
Comfy chairs, squatter’s nation, opiates, and ***** mags.
Subtle "sorry"s linger in stale air from bumps that people make
While ******* suits, stiff as cadavers, snoot and snivel of mindless drivel
And look around in shame.
Sep 25, 2013
Sep 25, 2013 at 12:57 PM UTC
All morning, as I sit thinking of you,
the Monarchs are passing.
Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop
of self-pity.
The twenty-winged cloud of yellow butterflies
floats into the field.
The irregular postage stamp of death;
a black moth the size of my left
thumbnail is all I’ve trapped in the damask.
Certainly, we all felt
this vastly hollowed-out distress.
Feb 24, 2016
Feb 24, 2016 at 3:55 PM UTC
As I look at you,
Pour your emotions into me,
I gnaw on my thumbnail.
Your eyes,
Scan over everything in the room,
Besides me.
Confessing your fears, desires, confusions,
I stare fixedly at your face.
Suddenly,
I wince in pain.
Blood runs down my finger,
Into my palm.
I did not mean,
To rip my nail off,
With my teeth.
Feb 19, 2019
Feb 19, 2019 at 1:53 AM UTC
How perfect the hand of luck
with its rubber bracelets &
smiley face thumbnail. And U -
how perfect are you, hanging
out under my houseplants???
Feb 27, 2016
Feb 27, 2016 at 9:53 PM UTC