"tufts" poems
pigeons still
wait for meals
by that bench
where Sun once grew
in tufts of gold
girls skipping classes
to window shop
their scarves wild
and their nails chipped
tough boys go out and smoke
and cough and dance
and act brave
and cut their hair
in the dark
and words of a new language
tumble down our tongues
head over heels
tasting strange
but falling into place
after all
Jul 15, 2017
Jul 15, 2017 at 7:59 PM UTC
"And in a funny way, the shaving of my, uh, head has been a liberation from, uh, a lot of, uh, stupid vanities really. Uh, it has simplified everything for me, it has opened a lot of doors maybe." - Stephen Malkmus, Jo Jo's Jacket
the first layer of skin i shed
was the bra
rid of the foreign metal sculptor producing a deep rift between skin
my third eye, swallowing gazes
rid of my **** , my ***** , my rack
replaced with sacks of fat and nerve and milk ducts
hanging, existing, for no one else
not even myself
the second layer of skin was the painting of the face
the concealing and erasing of imperfections, the lines of laughter of sorrow of life
redirecting attention and importance to the bow and symmetry of the lip
no longer did i have to put myself on in the morning
i woke up as i was, as i needed to be,
bare and uninhibited
my skin now breathed, and for no one else
not even myself
and then i grew another layer of skin,
made of dank tangles to protect my age,
i stopped shaving the years i'd walked this earth, shedding my womanhood
the skin grew to my armpits, little tufts of sweaty, odorous mother nature dozing in a fleshy convex nest
and to my legs, were the tangles wrapped around my ankles
preventing the spreading of the legs for every life
for not every life wanted what was not tame
and what was not tame no longer wanted to be.
my body did not conform,
for it was not brought into this world to be consumed for the pleasure of others
it exists for no one else,
not even myself
and as i was engulfed in this hairy wonder of my own body
i shed the last layer,
the shaving of the head
my brain, my being breathed
porous and exposed
vulnerable to weather and whispers
but i was all at once naked and calm,
having finally peeled away the layers of ***** over-sexualization and constrained femininity that had molded this meat sack that serves me,
a bundle of circuitry and solution balancing and bobbing on the neck
for i exist for no one else,
only myself
Aug 17, 2018
Aug 17, 2018 at 10:48 AM UTC
Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole—
Clear yellow!
It is a piece of blue paper
in the grass or a threecluster of
green walnuts swaying, children
playing croquet or one boy
fishing, a man
swinging his pink fists
as he walks—
It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots
in the ditch, moss under
the ****** of the carrail, the
wavy lines in split rock, a
great oaktree—
It is a disinclination to be
five red petals or a rose, it is
a cluster of birdsbreast flowers
on a red stem six feet high,
four open yellow petals
above sepals curled
backward into reverse spikes—
Tufts of purple grass spot the
green meadow and clouds the sky.
7.2k
Daddy takes me to the greenhouse,
behind our rotted trailer, deep in sovereign backwoods.
Marsh voices, thick like tupelo honey.
The coo of a loon, hiss of a cottonmouth, shiver of a snapping turtle.
The silver of swamp lilies lip the land in wild haze,
a veil of ochre moss tickles my nose like gauzey ginger ale
and soil clings to my ankles like a lonesome hound.
Daddy’s greenhouse is a shed, a haven.
A milieu of magic and fleur-de-cannabis
where pixies pull my curls and gnomes dance
under mushroom parasols.
My hands dip into a hollow of muddy earthworms.
I feel akin to the yellow blood of a butterfly
or pale jade of perplexing geckos.
Daddy is a shaman.
He trims holy blooms that come from spirits
who sing in the wind like the whippoorwill at dusk.
Snipping sticky bushels, he pads tufts into his pipe,
carved in the shape of a sullen armadillo.
I watch him inhale.
His breath
stiff
as a braid of mangroves.
He exhales a ligneous cough.
I don’t mind,
much.
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 3:18 PM UTC
tufts of grass sit in the yard
hairy green patches of tenacity
in a field of neglect
half a screen guards
a **** stained door
where someone painted, 214
the pit sits behind it
waiting to be fed
or to be chained again
to the stake
where, like any beast
bound by gravity
and the grave, he
will make ceaseless circles,
smaller e a c h day,
unwitting sentry to those
two legged creatures
inside, who
with or without the pit,
lie prostrate,
in dreamless
bug rich beds
when they fall from sleep
they too make circles
bound by their own
stakes and chains
that can’t be seen
but their pull is felt
and
their eternal rattle heard
no matter how far from home
the prisoners of tulip roam
Dec 24, 2012
Dec 24, 2012 at 12:46 AM UTC
Shut amid the swell of boredom
Hole in the nose, sparkling adornment
Dye in the hair....a blonde invention
Image altered......still bored
Plenty to do, still bored
Not whilst doing it.....always
But the longing for a bolt hole
Registers, raising its voice to be heard
Yet boredom creeps in, mud spattered steps
Flicking dirt here and there
Clinging sometimes leaving telltale tufts
Staining....can’t wash it out or hide it away
A rash of what you want lands perfectly
Creates a broad grin in anticipation
And no sooner it’s arrived ...well boredom
Rears up grabbing the lead role
You might say ‘be careful what you wish for’
And you might be right...how come...??
Wager the odds on r and r ...v...
Over exposure in the commitment arena
You’d think it would win out
So what’s going on here?
“Boredom”
Aug 10, 2012
Aug 10, 2012 at 8:19 AM UTC
your clean lips and serene eyes
are instruments
they, with fearless precision
play
those neatly folded tufts of skin on either side
are speakers
they, with unnatural ease
amplify
the epidermal pyramid sloping symmetrically
amid your instruments
is a songstress
she, with innate necessity
sings the song of life
your head is a concert
music to my troubled eyes
©Jason Cole
Mar 23, 2015
Mar 23, 2015 at 10:22 PM UTC
tufts of grass stand in the yard
hairy green patches of tenacity
in a field of neglect
half a screen guards
a **** stained door where
someone painted, 214
the pit bull sits behind it
waiting to be fed, and to be
chained again to the stake
where, like any beast bound
by gravity and the grave, he will
make ceaseless circles
smaller e a c h day,
unwitting sentry to those
two legged creatures
inside
who, with or without
the pit, lie prostrate, in dreamless
bug rich beds
when they fall
from sleep, they too make circles
bound by stakes and chains…
invisible
though their pull is felt
and their infernal rattle heard
no matter how far from home
the prisoners of Tulip roam
Oct 19, 2015
Oct 19, 2015 at 2:42 PM UTC
Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow!
It is not a color.
It is summer!
It is the wind on a willow,
the lap of waves, the shadow
under a bush, a bird, a bluebird,
three herons, a dead hawk
rotting on a pole—
Clear yellow!
It is a piece of blue paper
in the grass or a threecluster of
green walnuts swaying, children
playing croquet or one boy
fishing, a man
swinging his pink fists
as he walks—
It is ladysthumb, forget-me-nots
in the ditch, moss under
the ****** of the carrail, the
wavy lines in split rock, a
great oaktree—
It is a disinclination to be
five red petals or a rose, it is
a cluster of birdsbreast flowers
on a red stem six feet high,
four open yellow petals
above sepals curled
backward into reverse spikes—
Tufts of purple grass spot the
green meadow and clouds the sky.
4.5k
Spring reminds me
Of being thirteen,
And sprouting.
The verdant tufts,
And budding girls.
Apr 27, 2016
Apr 27, 2016 at 12:34 PM UTC
My soul's hot pink,
like them bubble gum squares,
cool, strawberry fizzy drinks,
and a thick candy ice cream.
Those warm, glazed over doughnuts,
cupcakes with light sprinkles,
jelly beans, tufts of cotton candy,
and a tub of small macaroons.
My soul's hot pink,
like them candy hearts, sweet or ****
chocolate coated easter eggs,
lolipops, and sugar rocks.
Those creamy cakes, fruity tastes,
of gum drops, frozen pops,
of sno-cones drizzled, cookie wafers,
and sweet marshmallows; smoothies.
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 4:30 PM UTC
Some day, some people you don’t know might get spittin’ mad at each other.
you won’t have a ****** thing to do with it.
But one morning while you discuss equality at a café on Wilshire
you might hear a terrible
BOOM
In the middle of the city
And you could spill your fair-trade iced coffee
All over your Egyptian cotton clothes.
you might be able to make it home to see
If your purebred cats are not dead
But most likely you won’t get so far.
your ice might melt,
Don’t you know?
And your faucet might leak.
your apartment could be an ocean
And nobody would care.
You might try to get away
But everyone else will do the same
And you might puff up like the Chilean Blob,
And maybe your hair will come out in tufts
And you’ll possibly die with your legs stuck out at obscene angles
On a gum-dappled sidewalk,
Ashes and fallout whiffling down around your snow-angel death scene.
Mushroom cloud don’t care how civilized you is.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 1:33 AM UTC
I am a garden just waiting to let spring in
I stand frozen now with wind blown tufts in the air
Nothing but a blankness, as suits the harsher months
I wait for the signal to unclasp my sprigs
To make known my blooming blush
To let down my head of greenery
And fill the empty space where I have slumbered
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 2:34 PM UTC
If you were to ask me what boredom was, I’d tell you were boring and to stop asking stupid questions, but if you really persisted, I would tell you boredom is the tick tock on the white clock on the white wall of our English classroom.
it’s the thrill of seeing how many dried crackers you can cram into your mouth before your mouth becomes a cracked and dried desert. Boredom is
making up haikus,
Alone but not quite knowing,
How many syllables go on each line
Boredom is haikus.
Boredom is
the decapitation of innocent
grass blades as you listen to an unenthused sports teacher
the blood of your unwitting enemies splattered on your fingers.
Boredom is this boring poem
Now you were never one for boredom;
you enjoyed sitting on the grass, getting a soggy ***
you enjoyed the crunch of crackers snapping on your tongue,
you really enjoyed
and I still do not know why
making up haikus
you enjoyed the long languorous spaces between lines...
and I guess that really was just you.
But recently the silence has been getting short its rudely interrupted
by forced laughs and nervous glances from eyes that recently went shopping
You jump at every crunch or crack, scared of well…
I don’t know .
And your poetry,
Well, you barely write anymore because you just can’t seem to muster up the energy and you’re just tired and its nothing to worry about and it doesn’t matter anyway because you have an English essay due tomorrow yeah-
And the grass misses your ***
And I miss you
And there’s someone in your place, a lethargic parody, too frightened to pick up the phone, frightened by nothing at all
There’s a black hole in the shape of a friend
hidden behind the comets of comedy and asteroids of avoidance there’s a small hole
I reach in… grasping for a hand,
I catch glimpses. tufts of hair. old coffee smiles
but… nothing
so, I try again
I reach in, grasping for a hand, or even a bone
I catch glimpses of skin, hair, teeth, bone. Nothing
and each time I throw myself into the silent abyss,
batter past the comets and asteroids and reach into that dark expanse I find less and less,
I miss you
I am right outside,
whenever you’re ready to,
we can talk a bit
I’m trying my best ,
and I really care for you ,
but haikus are dumb
accept it, it’s true.
The spot of grass is waiting right where you left off,
the crackers in the tin are there just waiting to be scoffed.
if ever in that silence
you feel yourself alone
just know that in my house,
you’ve found yourself a home.
Feb 25, 2021
Feb 25, 2021 at 3:53 PM UTC
Waltzing under red moonlights
as thorns tear tongues. We laugh
with black roses reposed in the mouth.
Severed Bonds serve savour songs, as Love leaves longing letters in ponds
of heavy healing hearts.
We waltz still, not as statues but temperative trumpeters tailing tundras with tabinet tufts.
Aug 3, 2017
Aug 3, 2017 at 11:07 AM UTC
Breakup Letter to Route 34
Everyday you and me me and you we'd punch out for an hour, maybe two
Only separated by obsidian rubber our toes kissed as the clock ticked
Just a pair of bodies and the aqua sky
the clouds will be our blanket as we sleep through the ride
We didn’t even need the stars to be our guide, just the yellow line.
The string connecting the seams of my double life
Every year I watched your colors change I watched the buildings rearrange I watched people I loved become estranged
But you, good old road, you stayed the same.
Like an invisible diary I scratched my thoughts into your black skin, wrinkling with erosion
And I shed my tears into your core, watering the tufts of grass protruding through your cracks
And I whispered my secrets to you, to the barren bark lining your lanes.
I have always been holy to you! but it seems like soon we won’t be seeing each other every day at four and noon.
O, But don’t let your dam release too many drops from your lagoon
I have blazed your path for too long, I need sometime new
And just remember, good old road, its me- not you
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
Naked is how I love you
like an autonomous grain of sand
skin against skin
and your furtive passions
composed nerve-cells
lavish with mellifluous vibrations
that wash away all signs of negative energy
Naked is how I crave you
that simple lithe figure
faded muscles and tufts of hair
a dimple with a non-existent twin
palliate a thriving surge
Naked, just as you lie
underneath the satin sheets,
and aquiline just as the same
succumbed to unremitting sparks
you are the motif of my every piece
*and you are that act of symbiosis
between the canvas
and the paint*
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 8:02 PM UTC
She tips the toppling tide,
lavish underbelly of an albatross,
and how she rides.
Each wave washing
its imposing self to shore,
more, glorious more,
this gasping February seashore.
Tufts of feathers flutter
and dune grasses dance muster,
must hold ons,
this rallying of the determined.
Grace notes, song of nature swim in.
Melody of gull, harmonious tension
broken.
Her flight brings tears. She is gone.
Will she weather? For now perhaps,
but not long.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 12:58 PM UTC
I'm no real
thing
some flash of
magical realism
-the force but not
the subject-
existence in the
vibrations and singing
of mushi, but not exactly
becoming those
tufts of light fully
Jan 26, 2015
Jan 26, 2015 at 1:05 PM UTC
promenades the sleepless night through my, like rain, palm;
tears, counting, marble-toward drops
i am to nothing degenerated,
pirating surrealism.
with my contusions, awareness-lacked, tramples
brought to the temple, rotoscoped, liquidates
from the core, curdled blood.
clouds, sickness with apathy, the air
made balcony on, flesh-spoken, impassioned.
i, the night, erotize
begin their flock, sursum corda!
tremble, i, and scrape the tower before me
pulverization may lead to immunization, where i
melt as sulfur in
Midas’s clasp.
i walked his tread, years on end, scoped out
miserable, fragmented, at startwith:
he touched my arm
and to precious
metals, pitchfork incubated, i arose
fashioned his pedestal, glamored in steps, appraised biased
no represent sources, ideal inertia, this primal adoration
slips of drillpressed kisses
caught off guard.
in the tufts, my mortal : remember, i, of parquet deeply hidden;
i am of a world, peace, cast : however,
deeply
lachrymogenic
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 1:14 AM UTC
Who shall declare the joy of the running!
Who shall tell of the pleasures of flight!
Springing and spurning the tufts of wild heather,
Sweeping, wide-winged, through the blue dome of light.
Everything mortal has moments immortal,
Swift and God-gifted, immeasurably bright.
So with the stretch of the white road before me,
Shining snowcrystals rainbowed by the sun,
Fields that are white, stained with long, cool, blue shadows,
Strong with the strength of my horse as we run.
Joy in the touch of the wind and the sunlight!
Joy! With the vigorous earth I am one.
2.5k
there is a spider crawling up my back
sending bite-sized shivers as he climbs up ascending vertebra
i think of you and he makes his way to my thighs
spilling rose hips perfume
medecine of angels
the drowning ache
the tingling between my toes
delirious drool language not meant for you to hear but meant for me to answer
Trembling
beneath this tiny mess of appendages and swoony eyes
i can see your mass traveling through each season
your soft tufts donning golden shimmers then glimmering at the dusk of white
but i knew you when the bees knew warmth
spitfire busy buzzing sweet melodies to the open flower fields
but i knew you when your bones kissed your skin too tight
before falling renewal and peachy light
spiders making their homes in unfamiliar hiding places
crawling hyperbolic
a silly old mess
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 10:46 AM UTC
I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.
To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
2.5k
While tufts of gloom engulfing the sky,
With no space and time between
Us, you and I,
soak ourselves in the stationary delight.
Like a hypersensitive scheme,
Yet an irreconcilable vibe,
You smoke, and I sigh.
While others argue to be or not to be,
You and I, standing in front of Robert Frost’s fork
—to smoke or sigh
Without hesitation,
You choose to hold a cigar in hand,
I choose to release an unknown in mind,
And sigh.
We then, ask each other why
You say, if you ever woke up in evisceration,
You would quit smoking
I say, if I ever woke up in nonentity,
I would stop sighing
Basking in the glow of flickers,
Inhaling the essence of meteoric laughters,
We look into each other’s assuring eyes
—I respect your choice,
as much as you respect mine.
Palpably, we’ve educed a compromise
It’s neither you smoke, nor I sigh.
Apr 10, 2015
Apr 10, 2015 at 5:11 AM UTC
Spring in Kansas.
It doesn’t come in softly.
It roars in with the wind and rain beating against a steel roof, washing into the old soddies and stone,
Clearing out winter in one giant breath.
The change comes within a week,
From dry dead, brown, to startling green, an emerald landscape of winter wheat.
The emerald isle has nothing on Kansas in the Spring.
Then the color starts, red buds against glorious green fields
and thunderous skies, a painters dream uncaptured.
And forsythia, the first blooms, beautiful and stark.
Crocus, daffodil and dandelion crowning the ground with gold.
The trees, bare of leaves, burst forth with flowers in shades of white and pink and the magnolias burst forth, ready to fly off the tree.
Our mighty cotton wood, drooping with frills that will become light catching tufts in the early summer sun as the leaves murmur their constant song, piling like snow in the heated streets.
Thunder rolls as lightning strike turning day into night with hail filled clouds and twisters striking like Greek gods, angry and awesome.
Creeks flood and clear the way for tadpoles and crawdads in streams and pools.
Spring comes, the earth warms, we all wake and stretch and wait for the sunflowers to do the same, yearning to the summer sun.
May 13, 2010
May 13, 2010 at 11:26 AM UTC