"trinkets" poems
In my own little world fireflies stay in open jars
Flowers paint on their colors for the next day,
And the moon laughs while it walks away.
The trees speak of ancient scars,
The creek brings up lost trinkets from afar,
And the animals cry for freedom,
But freedom is not free.
Apr 7, 2019
Apr 7, 2019 at 9:26 PM UTC
With the red lights in my eyes
And the gray haze in the sky
With the fire red reflecting back
The neon skin distracts me from where I am
And where I should be
In the winter clear, I sit
And I'm sick of it
As the snow falls on cars
On pedestrians and bars
Wrapped in pea-coats and ***
Under the foggy winter sun I slowly stroll
With a woman in my soul
Like a gypsy king and queen
In a lucid fever dream
Up in the offices and desks
With stress in their chests
These people think of home
While their lovers are alone and stuck with screens
Like windows into scenes
They thought money could buy
As they drift and die
Pouring out from the walls
Of worship chapel halls
With hands in their pockets
Stealing trinkets and lockets to give to the men
Who promise the end
But all will be right
If you pay the right price
From the streets of gods
That will one day rot
Under our wandering feet
When we longer speak but are just memories
Passed on like a disease
On death, I've made my peace
Until then, let me be free
Dec 10, 2015
Dec 10, 2015 at 7:04 PM UTC
It was early nineteen thirty four
The world was set to change
Europe was on fire
It was time to rearrange
Poland was the first stop
The German Army on the move
So we left for America
I hope you did approve
You came with me to Jersey
On a trip across the sea
You've guarded all my secrets
Known by only you and me
You used to spin quite gaily
Now you just stand there en pointe
You're my clipped wing little angel
That's the name I shall anoint
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet
I sit here and remember
All the treasures you once hid
You've still some trinkets in there
Some from when I was a kid
Your tu tu is all tattered
The silk lining frayed and torn
But, you've held together nicely
But, I guess we're both quite worn
Your lipstick isn't red now
I hear your music in my head
It hasn't played for 50 years
I just remember it instead
The music gave up playing
You were slightly over wound
But, you still twirled and kept dancing
Even though there was no sound
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet
I've told you more than anyone
Than I have ever known
We've been together now forever
You're the most precious thing I own
You've been with me for two husbands
And you've seen my kids pass on
There's just me and you, my dancing girl
All the rest of them are gone
Your paint is chipped and cracked
Your pony tail is broken too
If I still can recollect now
In the fall of fifty two
Your spring is rusted tightly
You need a hand to stand up right
But, then again, I do as well
And most days it's quite the fight
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet
Charms and little trinkets
Plastic jewellery, real as well
Secrets of a child
Secrets you would never tell
I am now moving to December
Of my calendar of years
Soon my life will end and
There's no one left to shed me tears
I sit here and I wonder
What shall become of you
My Thumbelina Ballerina
In your dancing dress of blue
You started as a music box
You are not used as that no more
But, Thumbelina Ballerina
Will you dance for me once more?
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Dance your dance for me
We've been together eighty years
You are who I want to be
Thumbelina, Ballerina
Just one more pirouette
We've been together all this time
Our dancing's not done yet
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 11:47 PM UTC
When you come to me, unbidden,
Beckoning me
To long-ago rooms,
Where memories lie.
Offering me, as to a child, an attic,
Gatherings of days too few.
Baubles of stolen kisses.
Trinkets of borrowed loves.
Trunks of secret words,
I cry.
9.3k
She was told to get to a nunnery;
Warned not to get involved,
To step aside.
His love was inconstant as the moon,
Defined by worthless trinkets
And very poor poetry.
Instead,
She went lily picking,
Broke her mirror on the bank
(is that a belly bump sinking),
Shattered him to despondency.
It's time for poison and rapiers:
The royal family's dead;
The stench is lifting.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 10:42 AM UTC
A cigarette is pathetic tinder
For lighting a revolution
In a house were curtains are drawn
Against all outside movement
And trinkets of an affair
Are cast away with casualty
Or slipped between the pages
Of books no one will read-
Dense things
With a sense of malice
Scratched into their surfaces,
Un-dyed by the sun
Apr 8, 2013
Apr 8, 2013 at 4:26 PM UTC
I am a monster of my own creation, yet
Unnamed.
I'm the doctor and the beast he wrought.
My face is wan, and eyes sunken; Strong and capable, but fated
for destruction.
Come, wave your flaming rods and I'll run for the hills.
Find me a cave where I can sit in a viscous
black tar silence.
Ears to knees pulsing from
what adorns me
These fears
like trinkets, leaden filigree spell them out.
But fear is an anxious heat and a flirt.
I'm drawn into a seductive
reunion with the chilled ground.
If you're lonely you may visit and behold this undoing.
"More weight!"
I'll scream,
until my bones are white ash and my organs are muddy
puddles
and I can, at last, declare I've accomplished something.
Aug 3, 2016
Aug 3, 2016 at 9:53 PM UTC
Human Observations (the woman pees)
if you walk the world with pen and paper
or eclectic electronic devices,
sure as the sunrise espied,
the pen will quick leak
when wearing white
and so will too the
righteous words
righteously,
thereafter
when you can't sleep and you must
slam your sweaty fist into pillow
know that the pillow is
silent thinking, dude,
you really ain't
got a hope, a
prayer
fallen asleep in the soaking tub
a thousand and one times,
ain't never drowned like
the warning ones say I
will do but only when
restless in my rustling
no-safety night sleep
in my lumpy bed,
where I’ve already
dream-drowned
a million
times
the woman pees, safe and secure,
comforted by the knowledge
that we have bathrooms
separate, her toilet,
man *** free, tho
we just finished
making sweaty,
fluid swapping
***
she does not, won't put on makeup
in her pj's to take out the garbage,
that is why she keeps loverman,
so handy, nearby, shamelessly
firm, unwavering, good god,
great for one "disposable"
use per night
when you tell your child that you love them,
and they do not reply at all, it isn't that they
don't love ya back, 'tis only that they haven't
learned to love themselves
something well that just
cannot be
taught.
the more trinkets I buy her,
more she screams stop,
but never not once
has she said, here,
take it
back
if you don't believe in Faeries and Elusives,
try, for then you have a middling chance
of getting the missing, disappearing
whole sock hiding
in her ******
back, intact
If must look up the time where your
love is currently hiding/residing,
then the probability is more than
1.000, that you no longer love
her enough, or
she, you,
not at
all
you know it is time to shut down,
hang up the pen and close the
iPad cover, surrender,
give up the poetry gig
4 real when you start
to prefer an
autocorrect
suggestion
~
More to follow.
someday.
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 7:19 PM UTC
her wrist bears a set of golden bracelets
with bells and woven beads
light blue with a tangle of red
it goes with her dreadlocks
and the trinkets woven into her hair
beads and baubles
there is amongst other treasures
on the edge of one of her dreads
a tiny box
within a small face
made of pewter
old as lord nelsons prize at the nile
old as the length of a pewter mans dream
i am the pewter man and
the absence of her perfume on the air
is the absence of my soul
and my heart labors
how will i push the pen forward
can i even breath without her near
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 5:56 AM UTC
They were the knotted extensions of her soul.
They showed how she twisted the truth
right out the lies she had been told.
Since birth people tried to typecast her role.
Marry a man
Have some babies
Grow old
Her family would say someone mucked up the recipe;
sugar, spice and everything nice. She was
dissimilar to the 3. Her sugar was solitude.
Her spice? Tattoos. Everything nice in her
had been stripped and ******* So the only
thing left of that were the bits of metal in her lips,
nose and ears. "Brush your hair 100 times a day, dear",
Her mother had said for years. And she did
until the day she told her parents she was
a different kind of queer. Then,the tears.
Somewhere between her mother's damnations,
her father's belligerence and her usual
rebuttal of indifference, she began to take interest
in her hair. Those long, straight strands were
nothing like her. The red reflected
her parents rejection. In that moment.
There was clarity in the contorted
version of love she had to incur.
She decided the only expectations
to accept were hers. And just like that
the barrier between her and the world cracked.
She decided to dread her hair and dye it black.
As the years went by, her parents learned
to accept their daughter. And in return
each year she would send them a photo
showing how her hair had gotten longer.
She also added trinkets to the locks and let
the strawberry color grow back.
Yet she kept the tips black to remind herself
no matter what the world wants her to be
the most important thing in life was her self-esteem.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 4:21 AM UTC
Western Sources
Mist, rain and snowmelt gather
And soak the Montana crests.
A trio of rivulets carves the slopes,
Grow to rivers that braid into a single course
And the Missouri is born at Three Forks.
Shoshone and Hidatsu rest from the hunt,
Kneel and cup their hands
To raise life giving liquid to their lips
While horses bow beside them
Bellies filled with the refreshing waters.
The river flows north dividing the tall grasslands,
Plunges over the cataracts at Great Falls,
Churns on the rocks below
And drives inexorably toward the sea.
Mandan and Sioux
Soft flute sounds drift from the Mandan village
Intertwining with the riffling music of the river.
By its banks a coarse French trapper roasts a rabbit
To share with his Shoshone child-bride.
Sacagawea sings softly beside him -
Charboneau's son stirring in her womb.
Sioux warriors on horseback
Stand guard by the shores.
How many travelers have passed?
How many are yet to come?
Beyond the rolling hills
A buffalo stumbles and falls
Pierced by Lakota arrows and spears.
Boats in the Water
At River du Bois where the Missouri
Collides with the Mississippi,
Forty men slip into boats and take to the oars
To interpret Jefferson’s continental dream -
Their keelboat laden with sustenance,
Herbs, weapons and powder.
They carry trinkets to dazzle the natives
And cast bronze medals to give them
Bearing images of their "Father in Washington"
That none had asked to have.
May, 2004
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 5:42 AM UTC
i am worn books and french vocabulary, ice cold chai and steaming earl grey. i am stone stares and eyes watering, uncertainty in silence and sharp decisive conversation. i am shaking hands and reciting poetry during anxiety attacks and i am indie rock showers and top-of-your-lungs pop radio in the car. i am empathy without sympathy, crying in the bathroom stall and i am childhood cartoons and your favorite stuffed animal and the beach in the summer. i am desperate to be alone and desperate to scream and desperate to find someone who knows what i mean and still likes me. i am comfort zone constellations, Orion's belt on every nighttime stroll, i am the hollow tree in the backyard of the house we don't own and i am my handwriting and the words in my poems. i am everything you have made me out to be and i hate that; hate that you see all my flaws so clearly but that isn't all of me and i know that now.
i am the trinkets my grandmother left me and her eyes when she looked at me and the way she cried when she read my poetry. i am a thousand ways i have loved those dear to me and the children who fall asleep on me and the way my cat runs to me and i don't need your or anyone's approval but God's and my own. thanks anyway.
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 5:10 PM UTC
How can I see you yet never go Blind
As Tradition and Heart seek to acclaim?
I carry no Surveys; But keep in mind
A Friend such as you has naught to explain
Sweet and Sour Words not; Joy discovers Joy
And Celebration does reward the Humble
Your Grin is shy by your arms; As a Toy
Compare a Fattened Bee to a Bumble
Trust is falling in love with Pockets. True,
Digging deep you reach Wisdom by the Card
I suggest you shuffle; Then Five Trinkets
Spell out the Sum of who you really are:
Simple. Gay. Serene. Trustsworthy. Beauty.
All locked in your Chest to open when ready.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 10:42 PM UTC
Fought
One, Twenty-two skidoo.
Cantankerous mad filamous
She,
That of her,
Me.
Piñata, stretched balloon
Over my big fleshy
******
Tea and cakes,
Painted my nails
Painted my lips
Like candy.
Gold trinkets,
Pour like mercury out of my ear.
Ouch! I cried
My feet in hot sandy
Dreams.
Flying peacocks tickle
My *****
Oranges roll on chalk board tables
Over stale rye bread.
***** dribbles out like mucus
And a runny nose.
Toilet paper and rusty water.
********** on you.
Stocking lover.
Fetish cover.
Woman pusher.
Mellifluous ****
Look at my skin.
Pink, beige, peach, red
Porous, greasy, bacteria ridden hide.
**** me like seppuku,
Smother, suffocate me with
Red jelly jam.
Lubricate your finger with black
Cancerous ash.
Stick it in my naval,
Unravel my umbilical cord
Like so many filaments of my heart.
Tear your flesh
You auto *********
Rip your liver
And force feed it
Corn and maize
Hay and grass
Emory my nails against
Red barn walls
Until bare skin fundamentals
Kisses with salty lips
Inflame my ravishing
Pig stomach.
Kick my shin you
Everything,
Wake up you stupid
*****
Void can be blue skies,
Oceans call for suicide.
Kiss me with delight,
Raspberries tattooed
In my *****
Strawberry cream
Vanilla, milk,
Ponderous infinity,
Cotton, dough
Honey and sage.
Caustic gastric
You and not me.
Feel my legs,
Touch my thighs,
Lick my lips,
Give me anything
Not direct.
Tie me up in complexities.
**** my head up.
Put me in a dream,
Make me happy.
Blair Butterfield 2004
Jan 11, 2010
Jan 11, 2010 at 7:09 AM UTC
On this humid summer night,
heartbreak is even more painful:
here you lie scattered
in trinkets and baubles.
Half your name on an airplane tag;
Old diary with
hurriedly noted recipes;
A bangle whose
other in pair is now lost;
The cherished handbag,
hidden away behind clothes;
That first scarf I bought for you.
You lie scattered like this
here, in every shadow and dream:
why, Spirits, this fate for us?
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 10:19 PM UTC
"A patient man bides his time,"
Theodore tells the man in the mirror
Tomorrow, all the levees will break
And all the fables will be told
Of distant Decembers and forgotten fathers
Livelihoods will be threatened
And remorse will fall by the wayside
He watches as icicles on the awning
Melt away into puddles on the ground
"Warmer every day," he thinks to himself
He hangs up his scarf and overcoat
The way a simple man, with complex demons, is wont to do
And as his wants devolve into needs
And as all his anchors deteriorate to rust
Her smile unnerves a once-settled man
To think of the quality of glove necessary
To hold onto the wagon in this day and age
So Theodore pulls the door to,
Leaving Chopin's "Horseman" to gallop in peace
And in pieces
He watches her from across the courtyard
"Such sweet bliss in her footsteps," he sighs
And it seems to him as if the snow dissipates
Just from the warmth in her steady gait
Just from the radiation behind her brown eyes
He slides open the dresser drawer
A haven for scattered trinkets, odds, and ends
A place of respite for the weary souvenir
There, amidst all the corroded memories
Lies a corroded pistol, unspoken and unburnished
"And a lonely man drinks his wine,"
Theodore says, as intrepidly as he is capable
For there is a time when fathers stop teaching
A time when mothers stop singing
And a place where the sins stop searching
A last breath is deeply inhaled
But never again will find its escape
With a thud that echoes to Seymour Street
Theodore crumples to the cold wooden floor,
A simple man, finally free of complex demons
Jan 25, 2023
Jan 25, 2023 at 1:19 PM UTC
41
I robbed the Woods—
The trusting Woods.
The unsuspecting Trees
Brought out their Burs and mosses
My fantasy to please.
I scanned their trinkets curious—I grasped—I bore away—
What will the solemn Hemlock—
What will the Oak tree say?
4.1k
Living in this yellow box filled with aging trinkets
A lonely guy trying to get by just hasn't sealed the link yet
Bout a cup of milk left in the fridge and God forbid I drink it
A shaggy dog; that ***** hog, why can't they smell the stink yet?
The junk comes barreling through the door so fast that you can blink it
There's no more room for gloom and doom, but let's fit one more inkjet
They just got rid of dinnerware, a silver and a pink set
So now to hoard an ancient sword, a blender and a mink set
Five garbage bags of someone's clothes, the sixth one's in the sink, wet
With lots of cans and pots and pans, we'll reach the jagged brink yet
They're trying to let go, said there ain't no space to think yet
They're workin hard to raise the bar, ain't worked out all the kinks yet
Pressed for time and low on space
****** I need to get out of this place...
Oct 4, 2015
Oct 4, 2015 at 12:10 PM UTC
Enough with the stains.
You're offensive, period.
Born with half a brain.
Logic trumps feelings?
Men are better. Then, women.
Drowning in being.
Can't control themselves,
shopping for trinkets and toys,
crap to fill the shelves.
Desperate for love.
Insecure, pathetic things.
Who do I speak of?
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 6:07 PM UTC
To talk to the menace of man
To hear fast words belched out
Like a drunkard holding His gun
Time trickles tears
Of the one's
Left behind
How beauty moves
Is a mystery
To minds unprepared for chance
I hear year long struggles from bugles
Laced
In
Gold
And am very very bored
There are times when I speak
And I cannot recognize the voice
Somewhere far off from me
A woman pulls up her flowered shorts
Was I there to pull them down?
Or was I here?
**** wednesday forgot its own name
Distracted by the glare of the bad masses B's
Expensive and ludicrous jewelry
To take a moment is to take a slice of life
Forgetting that you were once nothing
And soon will be
Nothing
To fret the death of the ego the work the paint splattered soul dirt
Chipped teeth line curb side markets
With trinkets and hairy arm pits
I destroyed a letter I wrote to myself today
Because the nakedness of mine own soul
Was to boring and dreary to read
For now we are the waking still lives
Of the art we all wished we could create
So close so far so long so short
Is our time here to giggle at the way a dog must walk
When it is constipated
Don't laugh at that because dog constipation
Is a
Very
Serious
Thing
Regression in the Freudian sense croquet neck tie polar bears
My mother named me after that
But not before
She shot the winning shot
In her hometown
Volleyball game
Letters of three make me sneeze
Jun 5, 2011
Jun 5, 2011 at 10:43 PM UTC
Cold today
but at least
the sun's
in play
Out in it
Wind talking
through mouthfuls of white pine
sweeping, swishing whispers
just enough to let the chimes
sing as bells
without bashing-- themselves
to dissonant trinkets
Music-muttering, free
Leafless shadows of the early spring
cold creeping 'cross
the yards toward noon
where they disappear
into a wood-chipper
What the hell is with my neighbors?
Why do people hate their trees?
Maybe 'cause they are not theirs?
Grown beyond them and their confines?
My tiny yard so feral
They probably hate mine too
But I belong to them
and mine belong to me
They curve around, protective
my home of wind and bird and sky
swirling
cream 'n coffee
one into another
like
Music sometimes
falling through itself into...
Sure--
know how to **** a morning
I let them live
trees and neighbors
...as my mind smears into afternoon
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 2:42 PM UTC
737
The Moon was but a Chin of Gold
A Night or two ago—
And now she turns Her perfect Face
Upon the World below—
Her Forehead is of Amplest Blonde—
Her Cheek—a Beryl hewn—
Her Eye unto the Summer Dew
The likest I have known—
Her Lips of Amber never part—
But what must be the smile
Upon Her Friend she could confer
Were such Her Silver Will—
And what a privilege to be
But the remotest Star—
For Certainty She take Her Way
Beside Your Palace Door—
Her Bonnet is the Firmament—
The Universe—Her Shoe—
The Stars—the Trinkets at Her Belt—
Her Dimities—of Blue—
3.7k
Take me back to the night we met
When the day was hot
And the air was humid
The sky was crisp
And the clouds were nonexistent
Our skin spotted with sweat
My life was sprawled out in front of us both
My emotions were high
But you didn't care
You listened to it all
Stories
Memories
About my family
About my friends
About my random little trinkets
Things that meant nothing to you
And everything to me
You listened to it all
Take me back to that night
When we cleaned sticky **** off the wall
With Magic Erasers and Goo Gone
When we did nine loads of laundry
And you saw all the underwear I own
But you still didn't care
The air was silent
But we filled it with our voices
With laughter
With nervous excitement
Coming from the first date
Take me back to that night
When I first fell in love
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 3:39 PM UTC
Or, at least what you might think.
Judgement hurts in too many ways to count.
I stand in the local thrift market
looking for trinkets and such with my father.
He came here to look for vintage picture frames,
to put up on our pastel coloured walls.
He brought me to be a translator,
of his broken english.
I see the looks some give him,
but I am proud of my father.
And mad at how our society works.
Looking at my father you think,
he probably only knows his own mother tongue,
no education,
bad manners,
had lived in poverty before.
But you are wrong.
An Italian man sits by this booth,
selling picture frames.
I point and tell my father, and he walks over.
"How much for frames?"
I taught him how to say that well enough.
The Italian man says fluently,
"$40 a piece,"
but behind it you can hear a faint Italian accent.
My father hears this and his face lights up,
and he replies in Italian,
"Great, but can you lower it to $30. For me, man?"
The man seemed shocked to see a dark-skinned man,
speaks such fluent Italian.
The man got up with a smile on his face,
and told my father,
"Man, I was born in Italy, but you speak it better than me,"
My dad laughed.
Next time you see,
a strange man,
struggling with his english,
stop to think,
he might be able to speak to you in,
German. Italian. French. And in a tiny bit of Spanish.
And of course, his mother tongue.
He might have learned the culinary arts,
in a world-renounced school.
He might be able to do anything.
And he might even be a little more impressive,
than you will ever be.
Judgement hurts.
But all it takes is you to stop it.
Apr 30, 2014
Apr 30, 2014 at 6:25 PM UTC