"tinkered" poems
Jeremy the green alien
Wore a bowler hat
His favourite sport was darts
And he had a pint with that
He drove a little mini
Made in 1985
It chugged and spurted down the road
The alien could drive!
He was popular with ladies
He stood out from the crowd
He always had one on his arm
Despite not being loud.
But Jeremy was lonely
And sometimes he felt down
His family from the planet plaxo
Never came to town.
Aliens are clever
And aliens are bright
He tinkered with his mini
So that it could take flight
So if you're sitting in the garden
And a mini flies overhead
Think of little Jeremy
With his bowler hat upon his head!
Jeremy visits Plaxo
And flies to earth for dinner
No more sadness anymore
Jeremy is a winner!
Jan 29, 2015
Jan 29, 2015 at 4:29 AM UTC
About a week or so ago,
I fell in love with a man
when I went to sleep
in a boy's bed.
His chest
read "weird"
in black-block ink
his self acceptance
made me smile.
His eyes,
puppy dawg brown,
breathed in every edge
of my body
knowing exactly
where they
were going,
but never fully
meeting mine.
Up my hips
on our dance floor.
Down my tummy
on his bed.
His distant
self assurance
consumingly
relaxing.
His
freckled face
and dimpled smile
only implied
deep sincerity
matching
his overgrown
words.
In adolescence
I'd forced myself
to give up the idea
of being with a boy
whose fingers read "bad."
But
When he came
to me
his hands
over
my body
his silence
over
my mind.
He
enjoyed me
The whole night
The way I did him
He took in
my stories
grabbed my shoulders
with shaking
enthusiasm
with reaction
to my action
with interest
in the questions
of my own life
I'd barely explored.
He took in
my toes
my ankles
my hips.
He acknowledged
the marks
on the skin
of my backside
i became
self conscious
and uncomfortable
But he noticed.
He tinkered
with the ring
of my belly button
grazed
the edges
of my breast.
He breathed
in my ears
He wanted
badly
for me
to feel good.
He didn't play games
in either his loving
or his company.
They were both
giving
gentle
and distantly
warm.
So much
sincerity
from a man
I accidentally
fell in love
with the briefness
of a boy.
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 7:27 PM UTC
The tangerine stained race track
spread across our **** carpet, a turn
by the wooden bed frame, a loop
near the five piece drum set.
My brother’s fingertips gripped a Hot Wheel
by its rear end, its rubber wheels
greeting the track, propelling it forward,
launching it into another plastic vehicle,
and Crash.
I nursed the toy cars through emergencies,
playing doctor to replace cracked windshields
and torn plastic bumpers, victims
of one too many collisions. It alarmed me
how easily the 1976 Mustang could lose its wheel,
sending it spinning like a dreidel while my brother grinned
with splintered teeth, feeling nothing.
The car survived the impact, but people
don’t always walk away from accidents. They can’t be raised
on jack stands and tinkered with. The operation table,
home to drivers with fluttering heartbeats,
can hum to the deafening beat of a flat-line monitor.
Feb 2, 2014
Feb 2, 2014 at 1:12 PM UTC
Revel in space, yet not darkled, still
the **** and span of things that breeds
airlessness; The trees are evenly cut,
and their overgrowth seems like a forethought.
Where I am from, we eat fish with
our bare hands and our furniture, from bodies
of sandalwood, crushed with the scent of
peregrines. The morning makes you conscious
of space, and altogether the height of trees
syncopates to a nauseating stillness. In the awning
hours, leaves punctuate the ground – the cicada
with its machinistic song prowls, spills like
water from a broken vase toppled by me
years younger, raw, agile, deftly windless,
wounded in love, lovingly wounded,
perhaps if there is a word for it, then let me
have my way, easily fraught with its meaning:
a casualty. Sometimes the timeworn folks
would light cigarettes underneath the canopy
of a mango tree to banish ants and send them back
to their queens – roosters in their wrinkled stations
croon in stasis, a song for the somnolent. I become
what the seasons evict. Constancy. Rearing weight
and gravity from nocturne. Tears are communal.
They make us aware of the weight of the Earth.
Somewhere, a funebre stilts through the silence,
and the jangle of little pieces spells out fortuity,
men in huddles mending pain by the sleight of hand,
a toss of a card, spinning in its imaginary axis: fate,
feigned and fine-tuned to belief that it is controllable,
a variable, or a tabulation marred by frailty. From where
I am from, people stride through the streets naked,
soldering baskets filled with fruits gossamer from the
harvest, children suckling their mothers, the music of sweeping
metastasizes throughout the afternoon, and the same clouds
contort themselves to afford wry proposition: it is a day tender
with wonder, its allure overwrought, its sheen unremarkable.
The funebre leaves with a necessary abundance of absence.
All the leaves depart from their mothering boughs,
collapsing on the dreary back of the loam like penitence.
Like how once when you were young, you tinkered with
the fresh scab of your wound and felt the pain confine
itself there, a part of you, that has now healed, but is still
available for the world to break once again.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 4:47 PM UTC
The fifth poem I put on HP; few* read it so I resubmit as Lost In Space III.
I tinkered with it slightly... O yeah, based on a true story....
Multi-tasking your body
Kissing your eyes,
Sense the tipsiness of your
Trembling lashes,
Drinking a poem from
My poetry birthing place.
Between kisses and rapido exhales,
Stutter and lisp
Uttered word-wisps,
Shockingly bad love poem stories.
Right hand strokes thy chest,
sensing/sending heartbeats upon my palm to the
Forever keep part of my
Treasury memory chest.
All the while my left finger
Catalogues, indexes.
It, mesmerized, it memorizes,
The curvatures of thy face
To be stored in the
Never-forget, always-place.
My tongue restless to participate
Goes wherever it feels like,
For the tongue is the only body part
With a mind of its own,
And enjoys getting into
What it calls, the best kind of trouble.
My eyes, my eyes, see only the
Totality of this moment.
When mastery of multi-tasking
Is the single best poem this man ever
Penned with his entirety,
Of which not word survived
For its unspoken silence was its glory....
May 19th
Laguna Niguel, Ca.
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 1:52 PM UTC
She’s the same old
Country girl
When she settles back in
With plentiful rice in mouth;
Dry and yet fulfilling with
Words echoing
In between chopsticks,
A sentence upon,
And within,
Every other mouthful.
She has a way with
Talking while drinking tea
Wherein her hands,
Once left to grains of Mao,
Speak nearly as much as the
Sound of
Slurping mountainsides,
Leaves telling stories
And roots shaking rock –
A little something so very
Ancient, so very practiced
And so much so,
That the burden of “old”
Overwhelms her “new”
And 25-year old back.
She rattles and he’s a way,
Away, a way away,
With tinkered thoughts of
Mirages buried silk screens,
The gentle sweep of
Fingernails upon back,
Shooting stars,
Dodging cars
And failure.
He’s the man on the run,
On the road, wherein –
He never ate,
He only watched her
And he never drank,
He only watched her;
He’d watch
Until the faint dreams of a
Sunrise’d give birth,
The new day’d be promised sleep,
And twilight’d be labeled,
“Escapade” or “escape.”
When came the closed eye,
He be the same ol’ boy,
The “other” she’d never known.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 9:22 AM UTC
I built a magic time machine
I tinkered through the night
I erected it with art and skill
I knew I had it right!
Off I went on this fun flight
In my bubble made of gloss
I saw the future and the past
Then found that I was lost!
I saw the moments where I'd failed
I'd hurt my loved ones dear!
I saw the future bleak and dark
And viewed it with great fear
I tried to change the things I'd done
And found that I could not!
I practiced on the future, too
Was frozen to the spot!
I found the present compromised
Came back to my square bed
The empty place between my ears
The space inside my head
I learned a precious lesson
All that I can say
Is once you're off in time machines
**You're vacant from TODAY!**
SoulSurvivor
(C) 1/31/2016
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 12:32 PM UTC
Into a spiral of words, we go once more
Into the head of a madman;
On the contrary, he is self-proclaimed,
None proves he is a madman, after all.
He sets his machine ablaze,
Sculpting words upon his hundred epitaphs,
Exclaiming he'll end his hell today,
And rise again, tomorrow.
He is but a tinker of words,
He is but a feeble being;
Unable to voice the change he desires,
Unable to converge in the norms.
His machine seems rusted,
Rusted, but not broken;
Spewing out nonsense in disguise,
Molding empty grandeur.
It is not his machine that needs repairs,
It is the Tinker who seeks soothe.
He toils upon his machine,
Only to find that none is wrong;
It still basked in ivory and gold,
It still made what it does.
Yet, why does the Tinker feel such incompleteness?
All was vague, until it, came;
It had a smile that rivaled the sunrise,
It gave the Tinker the eyes to see the truth,
It showed him the light, and umbra of life.
It guided the Tinker to the stars;
It made the Tinker feel new again.
Together, they tinkered the machine once more,
And together, they saw the marvel before their very eyes;
They were truly, a cog and a catalyst.
Yet all is not forever.
It vanished without a trace.
It left the Tinker lost.
With its departure,
It left wake of the darkness in his heart.
His eyes grew dimmer,
He saw his masterpiece again, as a loss,
A failure.
The Tinker left death to feed upon his happiness,
The Tinker felt incompleteness once more;
He gambled for it to stay,
Yet all gambles fail in the end.
Yet the Tinker never knew,
It never left him.
The Tinker was made a fool over nothing;
Art lest, just offer nonsense, in love's yonder.
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 8:32 AM UTC
I heard your giggles filled with lust
you sprinkled me with fairy dust
said 'hold my hand, come to Neverland
lets leave our footprints in the sand'
You Hooked me in and Tinkered with my feelings
the clock was ticking but it was more than time that we were dealing
because you hadn’t cut your shadow loose
Now i’m just a lost boy tying knots for the noose
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 10:14 AM UTC
Left alone to wander
Down the black stone road
Gushing, splintered, homebound
Spinning from the fall
Tightened, tinkered, totaled
Forced to reconcile
Is a call to arms in order,
Or is this just a trial?
Patched by panes of forgiveness
Light seeps through the blinds
The hurt is not well hidden
It’s just a matter of time.
Swelling, steaming, simmer
It flows over the brim
Caught by common courtesies
Stifled by general decency
Animalistic glances
Looks of sheer desire
Civilization is not well organized
Let’s set the ******** on fire.
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 12:41 AM UTC
a conscious thought stated:
don't write another love poem
but his words are vanilla to my ears
the smoothest silk texture
spun from his consonants and vowels
running from his lips and melting over my flesh
you can see where i get distracted...
because infatuation and intimacy intertwine
spinning a tangled web
woven from the strongest thread
and your fingers are musicians magic
strumming on my heartstrings
playing chords on my heart
carrying a tune that would make Celine Dion quiver.
it made me quiver
but there aren't six degrees of separation
from lust to love
there's one degree
but a thousand steps in between
the chemists couldn't explain
why our chemistry combined
in such an intricate way
and all the experiments were inconclusive
because only we are the mad scientists behind our insanity
and while the scientists tinkered
the mathematicians drew up an equation
insert me and you
into x and y
but x and y don't define hidden variables
that even we had to search to find
the eraser's been rubbed raw
against the paper with a hole in the center
they'll never solve their invented equation
because mathematics aren't involved
just a finely designed road map
tracing your veins and mine
from fingertip to fingertip
eye to eye
an artists divine sight
i'll be the paint to your brush
your lily pads to Monet
if your words are paint
my body's a blank canvas
i'm a writer
but even i'm struggling to find the words
that may as well be hidden in catacombs
but we don't need Edgar Allen Poe
to quoth the raven "nevermore"
nevermore shall i search for this unicorn of words
mythical in that they don't exist and yet somehow you do
we'll resurrect Charles Dickens
because he's the only man who would even make an attempt
but even his hands are trembling
with the pressure mounting of a lost word and a quivering pen
thunk
as we watched him dissolve into the pen and ink that created him
this conscious thought beckoned forward in my head
do not write another love poem just yet
for who will scribe the words to fit our facets
when the skins withered, wrinkled and dry
but our hands still twine like grape vines
maybe by then they'll have written another edition of the dictionary
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 1:12 PM UTC
A clandestine rendezvous of sorts…Bub brought his bottles and guitar, I brought my charm and natural hair and together we tinkered and wrote and drank and ate and walked and played and left each other even more bewildered than before.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:22 PM UTC
I lost my mind
Yet found a god.
Not yours
Nor Abraham's
Nor one I've met before.
It came between this world
And the one that lies beneath.
Reached forth with countless arms
That sought to caress relief.
It did not make the world
It merely rolled the dice.
We were a fluke of sorts.
An unexpected development
In the petri dish of life.
It is a scientist you see
That tinkered with what would be.
No omniscience
No omnipotence
Just a conscience none too clean.
For it despairs as much as we
At the horrors that have come to be.
I see now it has no power
To alter what has begun
No more than we can
Alter the colour of our sun.
Once I would rage at the sky
Calling yours a Sod.
Now I understand
For I have met Oh,
He/she/it is now my god.
Dec 11, 2012
Dec 11, 2012 at 9:39 AM UTC
What does it take to set the soul on fire
Fear is not having what that soul desires
There is a method that many have mastered
Through some kind of mental magic or simple trial
Some must toil and some most fold
In order to keep that soul in an effortless hold
Others choose avoidance or torturous means
And keep the soul afloat in a flaming dream
Tormented by the riddle some lay awake at night
As if waiting by the gate to take the next flight
But Canceled again. On the ground they stay
Cause unknown. Further delays.
Watch the jet go back to the empty hangar
To be tinkered with before risking disaster
Piece by piece It's taken apart
To find out why the engines won't start
Nov 26, 2013
Nov 26, 2013 at 10:49 AM UTC
Time after time
In the depths of my soul
Nothing makes me happy
Knowing my heart is mended
Every veins stappled and taped
Rigid crevices filled with cement
Each dominant strats I have endured
Dissing this blood with artificial flavoring
Have you ever seen such gruesome illusion?
Engineering my way to this makeshift completion
And by the time it's done, you won't tell the difference
Ready my tools for I have a confession
Tinkering hearts, that is my profession
Spectred recondition, deceitful reconstruction
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 10:35 PM UTC
at a glimpse i clock the sky
a curtain's been draped
and we are all shaded
all of nature shares one direction
narrowing on the horror :
a munking and blotted violation
the sun has filled with dark ink
an embolism out of the order of life
voiding over us
over the city
the world described beyond
all voided over
i fall
dropped
and shucked
the people around me go simple
dumb and bound with crimple gawps
we are mugged by the sight
i feel like a farmed over minefield
furrows being turned
trotted out
anointed fears climb my throat
it is a show sung ill
sol
darker sunk
than its surrounding leadened soak
yet ringed tightly with an annihilating halo
practical thought becomes clotted
and my primal processor is tinkered with
evil witterings squirrel about in my thinker
my being is topped up with depravity
i must surely **** someone ?
but who..
(that kid with drool ? /
that business suit with brand name trainers ?)
and for what reason ?
i madly stare about
look at them ; so human and null
potential victims all
raking in snapshots of this ecliptic venom
adding to the vat collective online
Prune The Brutes !
it is The Eighth Day and I know my role
Ha !
such livid thoughts scheme
i shall wait out this exposure looked down upon
take some pics with the others
perpetrate goodly behaviour
mimic the tossers
pass through the ordeal
with communal protection
and live another day
happy slapped
with fresh mad
thought
Apr 18, 2022
Apr 18, 2022 at 12:28 PM UTC
(really it is from several years past)
I swallowed a stone today.
It was no larger than a penny,
no lighter than a brick;
It went down smooth as honey
Usually when one swallows stones
It is the careful chosen sort;
Much attention paid to the details of it-
Any bumps, smoothed and sanded...
Gold and Ivory, Jaded streaks smoldered in...
A polished treasure sat snug in
A Deep Blue Velvet box.
I did not chose my stone,
Nor had I chance to smooth out its cracks, crevices.
I was the chosen rather, all too carefully.
'Twas not a stone to be tinkered with...
just did not seem correct.
Blundering my voice box,
tangling singing strings with Heart string,
making a mess of it all.
Speechless and always with a slight throbbing pang
When I tried to shout that stone jumped,
Clattering and clogging up the pipes.
Smoothed by riverbeds, kisses from fishes
With translucent flesh to put
Peridot veins on display,
I always knew the worth.
My stone only settle in the back of my throat
Away from the acids of below,
Poison rising above.
No larger than a penny, and heavy as a brick,
But it went down smooth as honey.
Nov 30, 2013
Nov 30, 2013 at 5:06 PM UTC
I tinkered and cobbled a box together
to place my love feelings
safe from the wheelings and dealings
of loves thrillings and chillings.
Yet still and because
the thing that love does
I handed said box
without any locks
with trust
into the hands of a young lass.
The spine turns cold
when woe to behold
I sighted my love- feelings box
tossed among the rocks
bobbing in the sea
among the flotsam and jetsam
and trash.
Apr 24, 2025
Apr 24, 2025 at 7:21 PM UTC
Church bells tolling like risen gongs from ancient catacombs
The bells latched onto the conscious like anchors in shifty sand
Pulled me in between a stage of a ghost-like pantomime
Funny, funny fellows, followers of fools
It rhymed like pretentious poetry over my head
I'd wonder: those tails that wag the rope to beat
Do they move with the words of one or the smell of a thousand?
Are the hands that wiped the pews flawless
Bound to the secrets of the stained glass,
The shadows of the curled tongues in white gowns?
Like velveteen doves in rigid frocks?
Temples, do not confuse me
For a gatekeeper who keeps watch and never enters
I have locks to hear and ears to think
Those bells strike in the same places,
Invade everyone's Waterloo like a Napoleon possessed
Chartered vessels to dock in the legs of heaven
(Though horses on crusades know more than we do)
Knees scraped from worship all day long
But the marble stage tinkered on
Can only say so much for the hungry
Who raised their hands and never thought why
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 1:34 PM UTC
I tinkered around
and had all the pipe lines
before i climbed three
stories on a 32 foot ladder
made of glass
to the top of the spinning
glowing neon lights
where marriage was based on
the feeling in hearts instead
of anatomic positioning
when the primer didn't set right
and water destroyed my counter tops
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 5:42 PM UTC
Mental mechanics adjusting my brain,
speed up my motor, tighten my chain.
They say I am timed right
(they can tell just by listening);
but, don’t understand why
still I am missing.
A memory perhaps, a trauma, a wreck
jarred loose some something,
they said they would check.
They tinkered, they tested,
they wired me up, gauged my
compression, then fired me up.
I trembled, I sputtered, I coughed
and I cried, I started,
then stuttered,
then died.
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 3:03 AM UTC
You might think you know this story,
But yours is much more flowery,
Dabs and dots of illusion,
With decades of confusion,
A forgetful father, a muddle-head daughter,
Tinkered to provoke laughter,
Perhaps for romance , a clever twist,
Or maybe, even a fearful fist!!
Up from times blurry trails,
Came the fanciful fairytales,
Full of gaudy glamour,
And foreseeable amour,
But who am I, a struggling writer?
To help you remember,
Oh no! My dears, I am a time spinner,
For it is in my broth, you
shimmer!
Sep 27, 2017
Sep 27, 2017 at 7:48 AM UTC
PROLOGUE –
Silliness becomes a later suffering, if only tinkered by potion –
PART I –
A contractual moment whilst halos best remain hung on the hat rack since devils taste so much better. Bitter but belated, ritual yet related, so to in avoidance, fleeing anything that’d mimic life, “ideal;” perfect being a, “nine-five,” during which, “monkeyed with,” comes to a peak and a valley’s once more, a lack of control. A tailspin wherein one truth can become just a shy more intangible mere seconds later – We can see it, we can smell it and we can almost touch it – so allows the specter, the hand holding drink, and later, permitted, for our nakedness to play once more.
PART II –
Four more down and a few gin-fueled gestures later, we stumble upon but one edible truth, an apple and, “sin,” repeated thousand-fold – so succumbs you and a parallel I atop our empty and, “precious,” wants carnal. We masticate and learn to destroy the TV – naked, begrudged and bent over the boxes we worship. We annihilate the machines. We profane the dependencies; placation and participation wrought this artificial coercion, once a friend and now an object – a disdain, a thievery, a prison, vicarious and to be avoided by all costs.
PART III –
Human interaction and fluidic free choice soon become the new, “in,” the primal addiction amongst the bottles of tequila, ***** and plain-old beer. Our grinning, in the flesh and not in pixel, must and will rise like the places we’ve so very poisoned. Here and now, we care. We have to care, because if we don’t, it’s all for nothing. So we top the night twisted, simply breathing, where the smog isn’t seen, but it’s there. We top the night tethered, where the rain doesn’t burn, it believes. And we top the night innocent, and among stars, both in the sky and entangled the heart beating my right,
EPILOGUE –
For the time being, just being, where all seemed right, a little twisted, but wiser nonetheless.
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 12:14 AM UTC
Let you know a story of the sweepers
They were no fools, they did not take the weeper
Every dime they made
They built their own brigade
She tinkered on, she did, the sulky sailor
He dreamt another job, the timid tailor
Surely, they’ll cross paths
Where the money’s at
A fantastic sail
Carried by a gale
Gallop down the windpipe
Of the sea-coloured stripes
The beggar found his riches off the starboard
We reach for that which we can never afford
A sandy rune in time
Our happy, crooning crimes
When pruning eyes quickly peruse the wheel
The boy quickly rises to show his seal
Beyond comprehension
Beyond condescension
Do away with looking glass
Steel your ship with trumpet brass
The world will only sway for you
If you take heed and start to move
A fantastic sail
Carried by a gale
Gallop down the windpipe
Of the sea-coloured stripes
When they reached the land they became meek
The weary scrambled to seek out the creek
To drown their riches in
And start alone again
Is it such a crime they are now strangers?
Fast and loose, when you befriend for flavour
They hold the memoir
They know that they’ve come far
The fantastic sail
Carried by the gale
They galloped down the windpipe
Of the sea-coloured stripes
Oct 1, 2017
Oct 1, 2017 at 12:52 PM UTC
Tinkered lullaby
Pastel my waking life
Love notes, in melodies
Score my nights
Loop endlessly
Delicate feathers
Primal heartbeats
Serenade me into insanity
You set the tempo
I lay the drums
You do that bittersweet color
My voice will ache, though
Catch it, mood-layer
Send it
Repeat, player
Green room, your living room
Headphones, lie on the floor
Give me your most beautiful dystopia
Inspire me, please show me more
I can’t see you, so join me in the liminal place
Melancholy, ache
Love me through the waves
Plush vibration, touch my face
Float me through your dream
Whichever path it paves
When it crests over
Your eyes are the conductor
Make my skin reach, my body rise
with the orchestra swells
We haunt and torture
Layer upon layer
I’ll never truly sleep
Drift
I'll look for you
You'll look for me
Then I hope we land.
Jul 1, 2020
Jul 1, 2020 at 2:45 AM UTC