"tines" poems
is like no other early morning, man reborn, in the delivery
room of sky blue, the offsetting water deeper bluish hue,
the trim-all-around of the mixed salad greens of the staff's
scrubs as they usher in unity, with no imp-unity, the risks,
while the supervisory sky, disperses cumulus clouds in
peppercorn patterns of white chains, or big wide solitary
brushstrokes on a a ****** canvas, gettin' the feel in the
palm of the heft of brush, the viscosity of the paint, the day's
palette reflecting available colors in order to create a uni~cued
original of what has been painted an uncountable times before,
and before…
tho short weighted, was the sleep of the prior night's restful,
he awakes to the early morning light, the sounds of early
island rouse him, even, arouse him, for the August chill
foretells of the early onset of memory loss of the peculiarities
of this summered simmering, human warming and baking
and natural braking of the slowing of the heart rate, to better
accommodate, nature's hints and hidden reminiscences
of the true purpose of the summer's intervention upon our
collective and unique bottling, our individualized containers,
un~lidded, uncovered, eager for the fuel of sunrays replenish-
ing the length of our lives by the elixir of the summer
it is a chill 63 Fahrenheit at this time of day as we crossover
to the nigh day, from the cooling air conditions of dark,
the occasional helicopter intrudes upon the morning's calm,
the water placid, the geese honking regarding my watchful
rewarding presence, a slew, a bevy, of female vocalists, to
ease this transitory performance unfolding, and though one
feels the existential of his solitary singularity, as he thinks,
nay believes, he is the only one in attendance at this ritualized
emergence, he takes in the cool of, the heat of, the admixture
of both, the clashing integers of each, and he, fully invigorated,
goes silent, for once more, he has uncovered new combinations of
old words to accept and describe a new day's creation, miracle of miraculous, defying the odds of this ventures's success, his own continuance on this sheltered but open all around island implanted tween two tines of land, as if all the surroundings were created just to protect this, wholly holy place…
7:00am
Silver Beach
Shelter Island
Aug 19 2025
Aug 19, 2025
Aug 19, 2025 at 8:00 AM UTC
Not only are we going to **** you
(Subsequently leaving your wife and children destitute)
and glue your head to the wall
(It's called taxidermy, alright? It's a profession. Professional.)
but we will also perch this Santa hat
On the smallest tines
Of your impressive
Set of antlers
(The kind any other buck would
bow and scrape
to behold).
Because it's that time of year again.
Here's wishing a very
Merry Christmas
To you, your wife, and children.
Dec 29, 2012
Dec 29, 2012 at 12:21 AM UTC
My deformities decorate me
As if I were Persephone
Married to all that could incinerate me
I dance with daemons, but they do not consume me
Instead we rub up against each other, like
The good kind of scratch
Like the skins of fruits
And I delight
In the weight
Of cool scales that press my dress to my skin
And rest monster heads in the curve beneath my skin.
Great claws finding the fork tines of my fox spine, and I sing
O, Daemon Mine
O, Daemon Mine.
And they let go, and they sometimes even
Cry.
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 5:36 PM UTC
Who knows what stops the heart of a song
I take note
of tiny thud—
robin in the wheel well of my car
the limp head
of a cat’s prey
sigh of wings
defrocked by power lines
baby starling’s fledgling flight
falling short of a pond’s edge
The slate morsel unearthed
by the tines of my rake
…and the world is vacant for a moment
Grief ***** a womb of air
but how it lives— I cannot say
Upended creature of us
Stops the throbs that herald life
Apr 5, 2017
Apr 5, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC
Behind the barn in late afternoon
Uncle Ray lifts my brother
to the seat of a harrower
abandoned now
and rusted to this field of family
tilted and monumental
plunging its tines into memory
of broken earth
behind this life of the workhorses they were
My father and my Uncle Ray—talking
Scattered conversation
in hushed tones
...as skyscraping thunderheads
slashed through their heights
by arrows of fire
light the pumpkins
between hay bundles
of time golden
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 1:24 AM UTC
you celebrate something you believe you couldn't possibly have in high school.
cupid's arrows, sweet sentiments and chocolate kisses (not hershey's)
all to say three words you don't believe in - yet
I remember a massacre on this day another year
and i don't mean when al eliminated the competition for biggest badass
i mean a year ago. 2011.
you said i love you to me but you couldn't believe it
said you mean it but how could you, see it's
a contradiction and my affliction is trying to reconcile your actions to your actions
trying to make sense of what happened
still can't. but still can't stop
i guess i'm a man addicted to what he doesn't have and hasn't got.
Feb 14, 2012
Feb 14, 2012 at 2:31 PM UTC
maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through
glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,
that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating
the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,
cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab
hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,
his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,
3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,
liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks
in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-Whiz, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-
and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-Whiz crust in his stubble,
and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying
she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 4:25 PM 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
Grandma’s old straw hat
rides low on her brow.
When hilling potatoes,
sweat rings the brim.
Twine provides a strap.
Sometimes, when a gust
tumbles past tomatoes
and green onions,
a calloused hand
pushes the hat back
to feel deliverance
from summer rays.
The brim shades a spot
two-feet wide over
thick-skinned Half Runners,
caresses long weepy
leaves of corn when she
brushes past, edges tattered
by forty years of okra stalk
shaving flesh and straw.
Ice water renews
her will under hat and sun;
as winds feign,
wrinkled fingers hold
fast to its lip, beating
hot air cool around a weary face.
When crickets serenade,
the hat becomes a bucket
for the day’s last peppers.
Today, a ‘For Sale’ sign greets;
the gate swings wide.
In the shed a plow sits idle
while the straw companion
hangs from a nail.
A swig of gas in the tiller,
brim shading my brow,
sweet soil tumbles over tines,
my sweat mixes with hers
under the garden hat.
© 2010 C.T. Bailey
Apr 9, 2011
Apr 9, 2011 at 7:24 PM UTC
my island is refuge
your island is refuge
for they bear the same name
ours
some call it sheltering
for surrounded by spits of land,
resting tween tines of two forks,
but storms come. do damage.
the island recovers, inevitably as
humans and nature do a joint tented revival meeting
a project, new slip covers, fresh paint job,
we joke to ourselves
but on the heel of the isle
where our sturdy bungalow faces the
moody waters, the white capped breezes,
your chair neath the tree with the swing awaits, asking,
“when will the woodsman come,his tides flow away, away, to
why not here?
so many stories have I, poems to dictate,”
that silent observer says “his presence is required on this isle called
ours”
the currents announced as well,
an American blessing
“ready willing and Abel
to carry, to gift renew,
to the isle of refuge”
6/39/18. 8:08am
Jun 29, 2018
Jun 29, 2018 at 8:23 AM UTC
Brewing your bitter sap
From the sour, dank sod
In which your feet
Are so comfortably shod
Silk purse made from the bile
Of good-for-nothing land
Your are on the river
In the bog early green
A smile on Spring's young face
Russet tines raking winter's putty
Bearded bonsai of icy summits
Run-maker on summer greens
Webster-woven into creels
For peats, and baskets
For logs of firewood types
Promise me a sprig of ***** Willow
Almost a tree
A match for any tree
Feb 20, 2011
Feb 20, 2011 at 6:11 AM UTC
shocked when i realize it's not fictitious i'm vicious, vindictive
not that i have a choice in this
woke up on the anniversary of a massacre
broken up but still can't stay mad at her
can't spit venom from my lips at the girl with those lips i once kissed
but i can seethe at the thought of who she replaced me with
woke up this morning it was raining on the 'tines
mind filled with bitter twisted lines
"i'll **** him if they kiss in the rain"
threw the thought away so it wouldn't show om my face
put a face on the same way i was replaced
Feb 14, 2012
Feb 14, 2012 at 2:26 PM UTC
Livid, then the jogging man pushing his child with cerebral palsy glided beside me, and I felt sick with petty spite.
I ran to the building for the nearest bathroom and vomited back every saccharine word I ever breathed into your mouth.
Excuse the blood, the ulcers you left are raw today.
I haven’t eaten joy or devoured love since while putting your blouse back on, I came up behind you and kissed the back of your neck and whispered that next to your eyes, that was my favorite part of your body.
I washed the spite and ***** out of my mouth with tap water and shame, they both tasted metallic against my tongue, like biting too hard and the jolt of tines on teeth.
I bit the fork and tasted regret and chipped enamel.
Is that what his tongue tastes like for you?
When you kiss his neck, does part of you still taste my skin?
The smell of the ocean that you only ever visited once, but every day for more than a year.
Do your fingers ever expect to tangle themselves in the seaweed of my curly hair?
I've been trying to remember your scent. You smelled of running through apple orchards, the sweat and the blossoms on the air whipping between trees and seaweed curls, the ocean.
I can only remember the taste of sea salt and chipped teeth.
But when you taste his lips, do you ever taste the salt of me?
Do you ever smell the ocean in the air, the ocean on my lips?
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 2:12 AM UTC
you are so ****** in the head.
they say "crazy can't see crazy"
but, baby, i looked you dead in the eyes,
and man, someone stirred your brain with a fork.
cerebellum penetrated by tines.
amygdala spooned into their mouths like lukewarm soup.
sliced a knife straight through your hypothalamus.
left the rest to swirl around in that thick skull of yours.
you're used goods, they told me.
you passed your expiration date.
a little too ripe around the edges.
i could see that.
you asked people to palpate your skin,
like checking cantaloupe.
you spit out your seeds in between
inhaling smoke and ******* down liquor.
she warned me that you were a wild one.
rebellion and fierce independence.
all lions and tigers and bears,
sutured together with wolfish teeth
and hyena laughter.
forever breaking out of cages
and biting the hands that fed you.
now if only you could see it too.
or if only i'd saw it earlier.
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 8:35 PM UTC
** "The one adjustment that makes a tragic thing bearable is a smile - however forced." **
You don't know.
All griefs are small griefs,
you would like to tell me,
with happiness' wind behind you.
You don't know,
I danced with those sati ladies
with my shirt off.
All griefs are insurmountable,
dangling at the end of infinite tines.
Your teeth reach out as your soul reaches.
And somewhere in the night,
somebody is using a dead man's voice
and wrapping himself in Christmas lights.
Grief for the father,
tears for the son.
The news is a lonely cube of ice
in my fevered mouth.
I swallow cold water.
Mar 19, 2013
Mar 19, 2013 at 2:07 AM UTC
I fear too much of life
Has been spent living in our
Mismatched silverware drawer.
While knives are always fine,
Never noticing much
What they might cut
Because they haven't sharp eyes;
So accustomed to close quarters,
They just lay there, as
Blind soldiers in wait of orders.
But I'm wary when they
Come out to speak,
Seeking blood, too often it seems.
Nicer when it's just
Butter must be spread
To warm toast instead.
Forks carry their own dangers.
In time, tines disentangled
From secret stainless dustups
That go on in the tray
While attention's drawn away
Can be wielded like daggers,
Impaling olives - or fingers -
That happen to fall in the way.
So painful, though rarely fatal
For those with shots up to date.
It's the others need worrying over;
Sad spoons that never nestle
As they did when they were new.
Uncomfortable now with one another,
Like wishes kissing cold lips,
Smooth hips never swaying to music
As they must have done once before,
Arranged in deranged patterns
In plastic compartments.
I'd rather take them all out,
Line them along the kitchen floor
For lessons in ballet or the samba.
I might learn to dance, again, too.
Sometimes, I wish we could eat with
The still-perfect gold set
We save for those who don't live here;
Drink fine wine every day from those
Dusty gilded glasses
Stocked in the corner cabinet.
It might feel more real then,
If they eventually get here...
We'd be prince and princess
Everyday, then, wouldn't we?
May 1, 2010
May 1, 2010 at 5:21 PM UTC
Peg, roundly topped and
bottom squared, hops out seeking
holes to reconcile.
"Soon, very soon," she posits
then passes dear Fork
forlorn on pebbled road. His
tines are liquid droops.
His heart stabs for cheating Spoon.
Opposite, Puppet
sits to tend her knotted strings.
This path is puzzling.
Mar 10, 2010
Mar 10, 2010 at 8:52 AM UTC
twisted tines of silken thread
turn truistic vines of dread
into total truisms that fed
on tectonic overtures
turnstiles of treacle thin
ties, that tickle skin
and whisper tactile lies
turn tiny faces to taciturn skies
Tiptoe across a threadbare rug
tiny traces kiss treads remembrance
Touching histories of true memories
Tugging threads tight in a trance
Nov 12, 2013
Nov 12, 2013 at 2:52 AM UTC
fresh tilled soil revealed phalanges of innocents
disarranged,
like chewed chicken bones, pointing or reaching
mixed with lost tree leaves that steel tines stirred in;
twigs snapped from limbs by some storm long forgotten,
skeletons left behind after picking the cotton
the Farmer sows afresh earth’s next crop rotation
seeds of winter wheat for bread we’ll be eating;
or grasses and sorghum for new cattle pasture
laid in shallow furrows with prayers for cover
a swaying anthem of living,
our losses forgiven by a harvest of summer
Mar 16, 2012
Mar 16, 2012 at 10:12 PM UTC
We’re tying our shoes-- as we think about the day's gifts
Holding strings-- curling ribbons with latent sweat
"I’'ve heard they’ll pull us through-- we tie around each box
eyelets, through tunnels and catacombs."-- a shimmering luster abetting
beyond the sky.
Today we mourn those drained sausage-limbs at noon-time
--(Sallow-cheeked mistresses and fortunes abounding
for those who have time for such things.)
With tears
--hiding the feelings of those who have none
slapping the ground.
We see
every unfurling light
combine with blots of pity
to fortify prairie grass.
And I remember an old gravel highway that separates my family and church from geologic
build-up which the wind is slowly chewing.
I can't be with them-- like the western, sandy steppes of Nebraska,
I can't hold water, and their loving nourishment sinks through me.
My arms won't be like ribbons, in an embrace of the
dead’s remitting tendrils.
As I lay outstretched on the Sand Hills, shielding my belly from the desert sun;
boring water trapped in caverns under neatly wound sweat-bows and boxes
I, one day, too, cry emaciated tears.
Surely, we are tethered firmly to the spool, dangling with
tensity on the tines of breath, shimmering, aloft-- but also, don’t forget:
We are fastened by a knot above our leather casing
holding the body in-piece and being manipulated at once.
We decorate the boxes, in which we are to lie
with wet, green ribbon, pulled through rocky soil by course, chapped hands.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 2:16 AM UTC
The distance never seemed so great
Cataclysm perfectionists
Yet, I am not your humpy dumpy,
Or your fine china ware
Bare knuckles drip sweat with anxiety
I know she wants a reaction
A pulse burst neuron pattern
She wants emotion...my fear...my jealousy
A hulk-like idiocy irrationally irrationalness
Anger does not suit dragons...it is messy
When wisdom is much more vicious
Sound becomes tines of liquid silver endings
Forcing once passionate melodic tones
Into baritone thunder claps of aggression
But strangely...the animals do not run
As patients is a commandeering trait
But the distance g r o w s greater..
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 11:32 AM UTC
i'm so tired
of wanting to become something --
grand designs
doing pirouettes in my little head --
i just
need
more time
to think things through
plastic tines
stab at forks
in the road
silly you!
trying to stop the decision-making process
like a child
with a rhyme
speaking of the devil,
for a limited time only,
**** the walking dread
that paces at the foot of your being
like a thing in need --
how? thought you'd never ask ---
i'll get to that, in due time
-- i will say this though: it's not with an ax
or bow
or some moralized TV show
nope
nothing like that
the need to be
to be --
that
is the imperative --
timeless
tasks tasked with go-forth --
we feed on it --
always pressing forward
always-already doing things,
going places, lurching concern,
consuming steps steps steps
listen
progress is
a stone alone inside my pocket
-- watch it
bloom tumultuous
into a decision to be undone ----
I am
The backward startle
Flesh made text
Know this:
All will be retraced till
All that remains is
a waiting cursor --
Blinking blinking
Blank page staring
Into your you --
The mess undressed, ****** --
Don't unfuck it --
Allow it --
Let it **** you for a time
Then go hardly softly into the night
With steps alighting
Bold events of past doings lit
Given another chance
The was made present
A specter sent
To turn the insides of your bones
Into channels --
Canals of then-time (makes sense)
Get to know the script
Then flip it
Budge its molecular structure
See its words squirm
Make its serifs recoil
And strike at your command
Crazy? Yes
Impossible? Perhaps
But your verse must be heard
The play goes on and on and on
Until you decide
To interrupt it
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 1:11 AM UTC
Behind the barn in late afternoon
Uncle Ray lifts my brother
to the seat of a harrower
abandoned now
and rusted to this field of family
tilted and monumental
plunging its tines into memory
of broken earth
behind this life of the workhorses they were
My father and my Uncle Ray—talking
Scattered conversation
in hushed tones
...as skyscraping thunderheads
slashed through their heights
by arrows of fire
light the pumpkins
between hay bundles
of time golden
Oct 25, 2017
Oct 25, 2017 at 2:04 PM UTC
Speared on the trident tines
Of a new world order,
Wiggling, dripping,
Unable to close eyes
Staring out both sides of faces
With an astonished, unbelieving pall.
Some will be fried with rice,
Some eaten raw with *****
Some battered with fries at Disneyland.
Out of water, gasping,
Coaxed from the shallows
With blinding light,
Baited from the depths.
May 18, 2017
May 18, 2017 at 8:30 AM UTC