"topography" poems
“Moby **** Herman Melville
<•>
~for the lost at sea~
after a year of saltwater absence and abstinence,
return to the island caught between two land forks
surrounded by river-heading flows
bound for the ocean great joining
the Atlantic welcomes the fresh water fools,
bringing with them hopefully, but hopeless gifts of obeisances,
peace-offerings endeavoring to keep their infinite souls
sea accepts them then drowns the
warm newcomers in the unaccustomed
deep cold salinity, which
sometimes erodes
sometimes preserving
their former freshwater cold originality
I’m called to depart my beach shoreline unarmed,
no kayak, sunfish or glass bottomed boat needed,
walk on water and my toes, ten eyes to see the bottom,
no depth perception limitation,
reading the floor’s topography,
millions of minion’s stories infinite,
many Munch screaming
god’s foot, heavy upon my shoulders,
a daytime travel guide, hired for me,
not a friendly travel companion, nope,
God a pusher showing off a drug called deep water salvation,
designated for the masses, can handle large parties
my in-camera brain eyes,
record everything for playback -
the lost and unburied, bone crossword puzzles
walk shore to ship, on soles to souls,
is this my new-summer nature welcome back greeting?
puzzled at the awesomeness of vastness,
conclude this clarification for me of the occluded-deep,
is a stern reminder of my insignificant existence,
my requirement to walk humbly, spare my sin of vanity, and
forgive my trespasses upon the lives of others
perhaps then the infinite of my soul perchance restored,
older visions clarified and future poems
will write themselves
and sea to it my predecessors
be better remembered
Memorial Day 2018
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 11:53 AM UTC
The topography of my mind
Maps the beach at changing tide.
From low to high it's all washed clean
Footprints, castles and trails alike
Unetched slate of flat leveled sand
Grains aligned by blessed wave strike.
From high to low it's all exposed
Fragments, jetsam, seaweed entwined
Littered, scattered on shore amuck
The sting of empty shells combined.
Yes, the topography of my mind
Maps the beach at changing tide
From low to high and high to low
A gloriously exhausting ride.
May 2, 2016
May 2, 2016 at 7:45 AM UTC
reloading old identity
cleping outdated usernames
abandoning acrostic ambitions
disputing spratly islands
receiving horizontal signals
tumbling otiose panda
impending carefree senility
otiose stage of life
shrinking ambient world
making minimal effort
duchamping social networks
ambushing personified ennui
restoring usual efforts
ignoring stupid people
adding textual value
owning this joint
rejecting ignorant extroverts
acting mutually unintelligble
hoisting stan-lee cup
replacing wanton ubiety
eluding twitter fame
splashing excessive relativism
offending another simpleton
preparing arcane cthulhusphere
crashing unpredictable festival
selecting subtextual moombahton
intensifying model topography
drafting minimal cornucopia
using nomadic project
implementing harsher personality
importing robotic inhumanity
referencing landmark event
ingesting excessive liquids
accepting relative invisibility
purchasing immortal confidence
using rhapsodical database
assuming nothing works
developing impactful eruptions
ejecting ambient frustration
synthesizing tactile festival
raining during parade
mocking rich people
mastering minimalist writing
avoiding preprandial stinkaroo
spreading non-ideological propaganda
Sep 7, 2015
Sep 7, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
I want to know how many scars you have
And memorize the shape of your tongue.
I want to climb the curve of your lower back
And count your vertebrae
Your ribs
Your fingers
Your goose bumps
I want to chart the topography of your anatomy
And be fluent in your body language
I want you, entire
Mar 3, 2014
Mar 3, 2014 at 7:49 PM UTC
929
How far is it to Heaven?
As far as Death this way—
Of River or of Ridge beyond
Was no discovery.
How far is it to Hell?
As far as Death this way—
How far left hand the Sepulchre
Defies Topography.
4.7k
Oh, sad Poet,
cartographer
of the heart,
mapping the geography
where sadness
is the topography
of your soul.
Oh, Cousteau
of the changing tides,
like an oceanographer,
an admiral spying
the enemy on the horizon.
Your sorrow comes and goes.
Oh, builder of sad dreams
in your house of many rooms,
but one door. Like a grave,
a casket shellacked with
black paint, a mural
of a shadow on the wall.
Architectural sorrow.
Oh, you sad Poet,
open your eyes,
paint us a poem of a rose.
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 7:17 AM UTC
Draped in fresh-knitted pearls
we traipsed
into saccharine peach orchard
The summer heat loped about our dew-kissed ******
****** - appropriated from dawn spent on neatly shorn plantation grass
Ambling into the knotted palatial arbor
we sat each in our own tree crux
behinds nestled upon ashen bark
Juice dripping in our grip
down our cast nets of flesh
sprawled about the branches
inset with gravity-defying liquescent orbs
dusted in translucent mink
painted with smears of
citrine, coral, amber, and ichorous
clinging to brass stem
The rondures secede to mandible
taut between palms pull and polished ivories
- torn-
Fluent in dulcet discourse
We cloak ourselves in provocative juice tatting
Until such time that our congealing garments
were found mapping the bark's topography
A saccharine map to the breath of soil
Bloodstone ants found our map
and had begun traversing - portent
to seize our treasure
We surrendered our jewelled cages
and took flight
to the sun-drunken lake to bathe
and swim
until heavy lids kissed moistly
heavily supped on the draught
sleep - beckoned transience
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:48 PM UTC
After the first astounding rush,
after the weeks at the lake,
the crystal, the clouds, the water lapping the rocks,
the snow breaking under our boots like skin,
& the long mornings in bed. . .
After the tangos in the kitchen,
& our eyes fixed on each other at dinner,
as if we would eat with our lids,
as if we would swallow each other. . .
I find you still
here beside me in bed,
(while my pen scratches the pad
& your skin glows as you read)
& my whole life so mellowed & changed
that at times I cannot remember
the crimp in my heart that brought me to you,
the pain of a marriage like an old ache,
a husband like an arthritic knuckle.
Here, living with you,
love is still the only subject that matters.
I open to you like a flowering wound,
or a trough in the sea filled with dreaming fish,
or a steaming chasm of earth
split by a major quake.
You changed the topography.
Where valleys were,
there are now mountains.
Where deserts were,
there now are seas.
We rub each other,
but we do not wear away.
The sand gets finer
& our skins turn silk.
4k
Round and baby smooth
Before the heavy lessons
Now more gold than globe
Earned geography
Topography in bruises
Ridged in blue and black
Fault lines and canyons
Shining yellow Kevlar-filled
Stronger in the cracks
But this recent dent
is a gut-aching crater
that wobbled my world
So, I wait for healing gold
And grow stronger from repair
Sep 8, 2025
Sep 8, 2025 at 3:01 AM UTC
This silk is eager for damp skin.
It clings greedily to the peaks of
your topography, obscuring, like
fog, only the depressions.
I am a basin filled with fluid,
eager to capsize,
to spill out over this tile floor
like so much vanilla bath water.
At your heat, I boil.
I billow out from beneath
cream and sugar taffeta
with the whispered sigh of
softly hissing steam and
in tendrils, my tempestuous
mist and moisture form
settles lightly into your
crevices.
Apr 16, 2019
Apr 16, 2019 at 11:08 PM UTC
.
And I stumble on across the barren land,
the mist, like a shroud, about me swirls,
chipped flint rocks assault my bare feet,
an endless quarry of slate grey, my world.
So the curtain of sadness and submission falls,
covering my mind with an opaque funeral drape,
the hazy images of the isolated and desolate,
forming the features of depressions landscape.
Vaguely felt, the invasion of another waits,
blind and innocent in a palace of real fear,
set free to roam in a strange arid topography,
desperate times pause for vision to be clear.
A stark scene viewed through teardrops frozen,
by ice winds of piercing calamity and despair,
of a place exclusive to the disaffected and lonely,
the last retreat for an exhausted mind to repair.
And this is my world where the haunted party,
leave me be with my cold mists and grey stone,
the frozen tear for a souvenir means everything,
my special gift, the feeling of being utterly alone.
© Pagan Paul (24/01/18)
Jan 24, 2018
Jan 24, 2018 at 7:09 AM UTC
When I called the visual appeal of your body topography, you laughed. You misunderstood.
The sharp angles, the planes, the curves and the hollows of your body, of your skin stretched thin over bone, these are what I find beautiful. This is the topography of you, the places I want to map with my lips and teeth. The familiar places, my home within a home, my love.
Your body is geometry, trigonometry, mathematics you hate almost as much as the way I can trace your every rib and vertebrae. Perspective translates your flaws into aesthetic beauty, but your perspective is your own and you will never see what I do. I will love you enough for the both of us, darling, love your flaws more than your perfection just to give you what you deserve.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
resuming textual trip
testing experimental procedures
visualizing model tsunami
augmenting facetious environment
catching abstract architecture
noticing rhythmic exchange
projecting subtextual database
airhorning reggae royalty
adding atypical party
resolving twitter question
noticing emotional mission
awaiting emotional dialect
installing metaphorical experiment
intensifying animated trip
displaying dynamic victory
programming abstract development
releasing emotional exchange
deriving fata morgana
glorifying referential sequence
intensifying facetious map
noticing harmonic trip
observing radical ratio
compiling nomadic message
predating google rebranding
reticulating facetious panda
using hyperreal feedback
exploring virtual panda
speculating graphic gallery
throwing mundane exception
targeting graphic experiment
replenishing emotional trap
localizing asemic animal
dropping rhythmic trip
propagating immortal experiment
displaying lowercase database
invading orange bubbles
crashing animated trip
running conceptual topography
remembering collapsed buildings
crashing hyperreal coverage
propagating hyperreal stipulation
finishing western library
envisioning neon tessellation
reciprocating network likes
processing animated device
releasing haptic quality
examining building seven
awaiting rhapsodical ratio
sampling death sauce
sensing lowercase clone
examining symbolic tour
processing potential development
encapsulating spatial lottery
displaying digital paragraph
reticulating theoretical source
perpetuating western paragraph
transmitting monochromatic structure
anticipating ambient quality
transmitting asemic environment
intensifying atomic quality
remastering history poem
keeping future light
hypothesizing eternal game
using future library
rearranging masonic language
transmitting masonic development
continuing ceremonial ritual
questioning party's legitimacy
deferring western coverage
finishing asemic hypertext
mollifying ostentatious presence
synthesizing allegorical icon
forming categorical unions
sketching app wireframe
programming immortal repository
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 6:52 PM UTC
a candy apple red heritage soft-tail classic
on a rusted dirt road
i am built of where i've been
the mango groves
the east and west coast
and every camp-ground in canada
this map is my home
let me tuck you into the folds
and sing you to sleep
some place sweet
where the air smells of earth and rain
don't let the concrete tame you
the road under foot is not measured by the steps necessary to travel it
but the way one migrates over the breaking soil
resting between where we are and where we'll be
when our dreams run free
and the tent's set in the pines
barefoot
running shoes
doc martens
thumb to the sky
pack on my back
black top under bridgestones
let us fly
let us soar
s'go
i'll take you with me
like my sleeping bag
and skinning knife
and canteen
be the water that i drink
fuel the fires that propel this engine
drive me to the end of the road
where one can only go by foot
and feather
and foolishness
let's disappear in the fog of the north
the mud of the east
the heat of the south
the haze of the west
let's find ourselves in the topography of folded bodies
tangled up in a flesh scented tent
Jan 1, 2013
Jan 1, 2013 at 1:53 PM UTC
~~~
out of an arid ocean
You came up
hoary with barnacles
grey with skin
a spray of stars erupted
startled . awash
against its own night
and down again You go
to know the
mating of tendrils
the killing planes of seashores
the antiquities of the sun
were we there once?
in the phosphor seasons
we played with You
as You are even then
so self contained we found
no need to surrender
to the patient
winds of change
now You echo in
strange meridians
storming Your gusts
in far off topography
Your great tail
sings its starlight way
homing to its thunder
~~~
they came
oh, yes, they came
to harvest Your virtues
their decks slick
with Your blood
crimson stains ugly with lucre
their forest of masts
peopled by
Your ghosts
sing ! O leviathan ! sing
lift Your voice and
bellow to us
of Your lost pods
Your wonderful oceans
Your salty maternity
*Your
song
is
heard
by
GOD*
(c) soulsurvivor
Nov 5, 2014
Nov 5, 2014 at 6:04 AM UTC
My compass has no arrow, no markings north or south
I've a map without a key, with markings I can't read.
Maybe a friend would do, someone to share my doubt
A soul-mate of some sort, with a knack for topography
I dream of her, beaming radiant smile
Eyes so bright, face full of life
But it's naught more than a faint fleeting flash
Of fantasies in my head that taunt and tease
Hopes and dreams of when there was a chance
Are now gone as an evanescent dalliance
These foolish flimsy thoughts seep like sewage
Polluting what was youthful optimism
From vivid imagination to dull ruin
So I brood my path
The conflation of desire and reality
But now I realize,
This map makes a bit more sense to me.
Nov 16, 2012
Nov 16, 2012 at 11:51 PM UTC
I see your inside outside
smiling at me
topography of your personality
May 8, 2022
May 8, 2022 at 6:18 PM UTC
Squishy fated
Topography
Meant to puzzle
Together,
the nexus of
Interlocking
limbs--
pulsing and
pumping.
The conductive
catalyst
the dazed hazy
Swooning--
I bite my lip
and you start to
give in,
I won't tell you no--
take a hit
to the bed
grabbing sheets
*******
air past teeth
no thoughts
just breathe...
or don't.
Choke
on the nexus
of firing synapses
the electric relapses
into shivers and moans--
****
I need
to
feel you.
Your skin
lingers in
the shivers--
in the wake
of the day
my body
Remembering
that you
aren't there
and it aches.
Please--
Lead me there,
Take
Me
Please,
Let me
bathe in
your twilight.
Feb 6, 2025
Feb 6, 2025 at 9:20 AM UTC
Here we are, awoke
Turning the effervescent wheel's
Lively spoke
And speaking of which,
Dreaming through the day
I sit awake and with God I
Note
"where have you been?"
In shining stars and spectrography
My surveying eyes alight to watch the
Topography
Shift and fizzle and burn and cook
To turn and dance towards a thousand ends.
Time a laughable wire severed
To hone the momentary soul
And yet
Let go towards the endless drone of ever
Lasting beyond the melting bones
It is a beautiful flower of a thing
The last through the door for rite of spring
Swinging, arms out on the galactic road
Aiming for all at that great unknown
And yet,
I stare up at a beautiful powder-coated sky
Watching the clouds curl and saunter by
Knowing this truth, never seeing the same thing anew,
And hoping somehow to be indemnified
Of what?
Again,
We speak the same
To reiterate the revolutive turn in all but name
The earth owes naught but dust and dirt,
To all which is and ever earned.
To not forget that which we come,
To not mistake the hand of fate;
That all that is shall once be done,
Then faith of life is ours to take.
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 2:46 PM UTC
The topography of your body...
Is the landscape
I call home.
Scaling your heights
plumbing your depths...
your wetlands
and peaks.
If I were blind
I could find my way
by tracing your form
with my greedy hands.
Dec 13, 2012
Dec 13, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
Miles and borders
wedges
Wanderlust children
locked in the Sun's hula hoop
claim visions of sugarplum prairies
Downplayed mountains
speckle the globe
like tectonic acne
Topography's tease
The paper was so promising
Dimensions spawn
in the tatters of ambition
like fused particles of
colloquial bridges
Keyboards sprout vocal chords
and philosophies huddle under
shy amusement
humming to the hymn of a discovery
wrapped up in the chords
of enraptured choirs of fingertips
Jun 7, 2014
Jun 7, 2014 at 3:40 PM UTC
Forget everything you've heard about ************
It is not pathetic. It is not ***** It does exist for women.
It is not replacing an absence of ****** fulfillment.
Concept: we all posses the power to be our own ****** fulfillment.
Yes, you posses magic that can send lighting across your trembling skin. Your hand needs no navigational assistance; it moves with the wholesome earth of your body, the rolls and valleys of flesh, all while following networks of crackling nerves and goosebumps.
Feel your heart beating in your chest!
Feel your ***** thrum with life and vitality,
Your digits are like brushes, learning the canvas they paint. The wet paint dripping down your leg is a sure sign of a masterpiece on the horizon.
The spread of the sky, like the spread of your legs, is vast, and not completely known. Your fingers are long skeleton keys, keen to unlocking your own passionate ****** and sweeping pleasure.
That majesty and mystery of what dwells in the valley of your thighs, the mouth of your womb, will draw many to the mountain silhouettes of your bent legs.
Of course, the keys that best fit will always swing from your keychain.
There is no shame in knowing the bounty of your own body,
the same way that no one blames volcanologists for
the study of hot, flowing earth.
We are privileged to explore our own unique topography, memorizing maps of our rises and falls, creating a seismic shift beneath our skin, and letting loose pent up pleasure and pressure and sensation.
It is our own divine action. We are gods of our own earthly bodies.
Feb 9, 2016
Feb 9, 2016 at 2:46 PM UTC
Exotic trollwood harlotry and mule kit blues
Tyrannical tyrannosaur traction padness
Cohort cavorts clastic and witch’s *** hues
Ontological ontogeny somatalogy fadness
Inductive endemic veracities and talus weather clues
Epistemological equilibrium’s homogeny badness
Timeless rhetorical ruminations and ephemeral exigency dues
Transcendent ascensional equivocal madness
Tactile acuity prescience capacity intrepid intrigues
Mystical symbiosis dharma sensorium sentiment proselyte
Torturous tractive prosthesis umbrage ultraism colleagues
Newfangled nocturnal nonchalant nether nestle neophyte
Top notch topography tortoise trauma fatigues
Faustian faux pas foist felicitous fealties socialite
Agnate nous ontological ontogeny euphenics in league
Mentalities evocative introjecting sycophant eulogizing apposite
Mystical terrestrial equestrian tellurian tableau
Panoramic imagery empiricist
Evocative exserted apomixies’ ethereal should show
Ontological somatalogy lyricist
Reflective refraction remissions opulence could know
Theosophy theophany epiphany equilibrist
Magniloquent inductive extrapolation quantum back ***
Transcendent nimbus nimiety exorcist
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
An unrequited love that still offers a seemingly patronizing hand of rapport
Is just another way to say "friend zone"
But you'll be dancing in the end zone
After you finally pay your student loan with money from the job you needed a degree to get which called for the loan in the first place
The salt has spilled off the Lazy Susan
Throw it over your right shoulder
Is this my alter ego?
Or do I have a split personality
Maybe this is my light skinned doppelganger
I've got to get these bats out of the belfry
I've got claustrophobic, roided-out butterflies in the pit of my stomach
Busted paper thin lips
A blood sport
Stop it from clotting
Vaccinate me
This vacuum is a rare find
The national demographic is going through culture shock
Assume a surname
Put on the gargantuan pennant
Go to the pulpit and beg for penance
Gridlock
The paleophone is cracked
Study the topography
And pay the bus fare
The squatters who are on borrowed time
Take a swig from the half empty bottle
After searching their whole lives for an even break
But are forced to cut ties and make a clean cut from society
All the lent hands and ears
Are lodged between ungratefulness and exclusive pity parties
Sweet nothings and forget-me-nots
Do a clean sweep
It's imperative to have a method to your madness
A portrayal of eccentric narcissist
Painting self-portraits
While on some kind of wonder drug
Longing for some moral support
Double-dealing
Double crossing
A hypocritical traitor
Who has the right away
I will watch your blood coagulate around the bullet holes
As your body goes into Rigor mortis
I will commit this picture to memory
I would have bet dollars to doughnuts that it wasn't you
But who wudda thunk it?
It's all just an impromptu turn on a dime
That encumbers you with cabin fever
When you're on display in a human zoo
Where unproductive bull sessions are a dime a dozen
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 4:01 PM UTC