"twanged" poems
I watched you there, sitting in the small booth. You were sitting in your denim pants, with your arm draped over the top of the bench’s backing, as if someone had been sitting with you, less than moments ago. A thought flashed into your eyes, and your posture became awful, it bent like a string that was meant to resound and hum, but instead twanged and then broke. The way you sat brought the table closer to your chin, and your eyes became watery.
You were gazing into your brown drink. You hadn’t touched the rim yet, hadn’t moistened it with your lips, which hid under a forest of coarse growth.
Did you notice the consistency of the foam in your glass? I bet you the waiter had spat in it. He didn’t like your tone; even as glass with something thrown in the middle.
He couldn’t place it.
Maybe it was melancholy with an aftertaste of maybe. An aftertaste of hope. Or it was an incurable sadness that hadn’t permeated the deepest caves in your lungs. Your heart, I mean.
Did you feel it in your chest? This emotion? Let me tell it to you backhand-style, because I think I understand.
It’s the time when the little boy runs off the cliff - but the mother or father snaps their fingers around the child’s hand. When you open your eyes, the child isn’t what you thought he would be (gone). He isn’t a soul that, with the loss of him has ripped the living, beating heart from your bare chest. He hasn’t. No, no, but the claws have grazed your skin. Still, you live, the child lives. This is because he hasn’t stolen the air from your heart. Your lungs, I mean. When you see him alive, then your lungs swell, swell, swell, then they pop.
Then, and only then, you know you’ve reached your capacity. Ah, but listen now; when joy leaves, it empties a room. The room can get very empty, and cold, like December, and meaningless like July afternoons. The rupture from the pop heals, and where do you go? You know what you’re missing, and you can’t get it back.
There you were, back at the shrinking booth. The foam hadn’t nestled in your mustache - yet-. The waiter turned away. You couldn’t see inside his mind, but your eyes told me the loss in yours.
I sipped my orange juice, all the while wondering how you were, wondering why I like to watch.
Dec 20, 2012
Dec 20, 2012 at 10:31 AM UTC
I watched you there, sitting in the small booth. You were sitting in your denim pants, with your arm draped over the top of the bench’s backing, as if someone had been sitting with you, less than moments ago. A thought flashed into your eyes, and your posture became awful, it bent like a string that was meant to resound and hum, but instead twanged and then broke. The way you sat brought the table closer to your chin, and your eyes became watery.
You were gazing into your brown drink. You hadn’t touched the rim yet, hadn’t moistened it with your lips, which hid under a forest of coarse growth.
Did you notice the consistency of the foam in your glass? I bet you the waiter had spat in it. He didn’t like your tone; even as glass with something thrown in the middle.
He couldn’t place it.
Maybe it was melancholy with an aftertaste of maybe. An aftertaste of hope. Or it was an incurable sadness that hadn’t permeated the deepest caves in your lungs. Your heart, I mean.
Did you feel it in your chest? This emotion? Let me tell it to you backhand-style, because I think I understand.
It’s the time when the little boy runs off the cliff - but the mother or father snaps their fingers around the child’s hand. When you open your eyes, the child isn’t what you thought he would be (gone). He isn’t a soul that, with the loss of him has ripped the living, beating heart from your bare chest. He hasn’t. No, no, but the claws have grazed your skin. Still, you live, the child lives. This is because he hasn’t stolen the air from your heart. Your lungs, I mean. When you see him alive, then your lungs swell, swell, swell, then they pop.
Then, and only then, you know you’ve reached your capacity. Ah, but listen now; when joy leaves, it empties a room. The room can get very empty, and cold, like December, and meaningless like July afternoons. The rupture from the pop heals, and where do you go? You know what you’re missing, and you can’t get it back.
There you were, back at the shrinking booth. The foam hadn’t nestled in your mustache - yet-. The waiter turned away. You couldn’t see inside his mind, but your eyes told me the loss in yours.
I sipped my orange juice, all the while wondering how you were, wondering why I like to watch.
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 12:15 PM UTC
This chord twanged,
as that chord is plucked.
The bow strikes again.
And again ... and again, still.
The notes, ringing high,
then abruptly, ringing low.
Fervently producing sound;
this one woman orchestra.
Strike, after strike, after strike,
...my finger tips bleed.
Sweating out my soul-
playing this sonata.
First verse, Second verse,
and now the Chorus.
Third verse, Fourth verse,
and again, the Chorus.
Fifth verse, sixth verse,
and then ... the Chorus.
Always coming back,
to the same, old Chorus.
The conclusion draws near,
always the most awaited.
How will it happen?
What will I feel?
May 9, 2016
May 9, 2016 at 8:55 PM UTC
It started when she said Hello
Over forty years ago.
She was the only one to do so I suppose.
My heart was twanged
And I wanted her so bad.
Still it pains me so today,
I couldn’t find the words to say.
All I got was unrequited-love sick blues.
I couldn’t eat a thing
For weeks on end.
At a party she sat alone,
Seemingly aloof,
‘Til someone else stepped in...
Hindsight says she didn’t like me anyway:
She criticised my teenage spots
And the way I danced.
I wasted so much time on her,
Spurning others for my senseless crush.
Giving up only when her long distance boyfriend appeared.
Since then I’ve always guarded
Against getting emotionally involved
Before being socially involved.
It has been said that I’m aloof,
Staying on the fringe,
Avoiding commitment.
You have to take that risk
They say,
There is no other way.
I’ve seen the pain that “Love” can bring,
Romantic songs I will not sing.
I’d rather stay here on the shelf,
Peacefully living with myself.
Paul Butters
Jun 21, 2015
Jun 21, 2015 at 6:02 AM UTC
Summer solstice in the park
our icon twanged guitar
the smell of favoured fast food
hashish from near and far
there you were beside me
the lover I once knew
utopian as love's partner
each colour with its hue
the memory of you lingers
that warm and sultry day
beamed that face of sunshine
and body ****** sway
ah youth in love the wonder
so blind and yet so true
inexperienced emotions
feelings some may rue
love is quite quixotic
except for faithful few
over ere you know it
and we must start anew
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 9:28 AM UTC
Sometimes I think about you.
I know it's been a while,
But there are these times that
You just cross my mind,
A glimpse of what was,
What could've been.
I remember those
Cold afternoons in your
Dorm room,
Your arms wrapped around mine
On your sofa couch,
Watching some cool movie
I had never been hip to before,
The laughter bouncing off our chests,
Reverberating against the off-white cement walls,
****** and maybe a little drunk,
But mostly just high off of our chemistry.
You were someone so different to me,
So full of stories of mischief and misunderstandings;
I used to get lost in your words,
Hanging onto every slightly twanged syllable.
You told me your secrets.
I let you unzip me,
Physically and mentally,
Seduced me so with your blue eyes
That I didn't even mind that you
Smoked cigarettes.
Months that felt like eternities
As I stumbled into a kind of love
I still don't comprehend,
So fleeting yet the moments
I spent with you
Are so vivid,
Sometimes so that I
Can almost feel the
Softness of your full lips...
You might just be that cliche,
That one
Who somehow got away.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC
of the Americans
Five foot four and petite
Lynn was imported nitro glycerine.
She twanged, and with her kind they made me
uncomfortable, as they spoke words I did not know and giggled.
I tried to teach her western things, or Did I want to learn
Eastern ways. Never the one to digress, in the middle of getting to know her,
she said," pom rak kun"
I thought about that
more than a minute and returned,
"chan poot tai mai bpen"
my love.
Dec 21, 2014
Dec 21, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC
I fell in love with a dancer
all angled jawline and pure ***
He took my body and turned it into
a puppet for his dance in the spotlight
I fell in love with a musician
all slender fingers and carefree spirit
He took my heart and plucked at my
heartstrings so intense they twanged and snapped
I fell in love with an artist
all paint smears and wild imagination
He took my soul and painted pretty pictures
that stayed black and white because he forgot my colours
I fell in love with you
(you were all of those things
yet you were none of those)
and I had nothing left to give
but maybe that's how you like me
broken, scribbled-on, empty shell of me
Nov 26, 2014
Nov 26, 2014 at 3:59 AM UTC
In a half-round room, the air cooler thunders and drones.
Someone snores gently, someone else shifts restlessly, now and then.
The day was hot until a downpour came.
The roof is still standing.
This is a poem about an uncomfortable, unremarkable day.
A day of love, a small child.
Another day of married truce.
A day of distant familiarity, distant warmth, fading and waning,
trembling hands reaching
into the closet for the bandaids.
A day of impatience
mostly set aside,
leaving room for hope
to re-enter,
with its needles
stabbing slowly,
hour after hour,
maddeningly...
So then hope is set aside,
forcefully.
The needles continue anyway, though dulled.
One does not sleep, as usual.
The little child sighs, and shifts; sheets rustle.
The drone intones.
I remember the mirror and color that once kept me company; I can see it there outlined in the dark.
Through the window, a line of lights in nearby windows.
There are those awake in the light, and those like me, awake in the dark.
All is well, well enough, all will be well.
All is distressed, rough heart, looking up at the dark,
the great absence, which has
generously filled this leaky, dented cup
time and time again--from time to time.
I have a path, again, at last.
My youth leaks away.
I drink from the cup of love--it keeps me awake--
and it isn't long before my mouth
finds something missing.
So I write a rough poem.
There was a man, my patron saint--
I twanged the strings and we both cringed but then
I couldn't unstrike the sound--
so we kept cringing--well.
Fortunately that's far away now,
and the echoes have faded.
Who I am, who I pretend to be, who I think of myself as, how people seem to see me--these flash in and out,
like card tricks almost. My self-belief is probably
the least real of them all, though made up of truth.
The tide ebbs now (yet still pregnant with current) but
only one thing has changed: I no longer despair.
The earth's call to my body now is natural.
And now the time for thought has ended,
taken away by the little child.
Jul 23, 2019
Jul 23, 2019 at 2:55 AM UTC
I danced to the song of the Blackbird
and the Blackbird danced with me
we kicked up the dust as we twirled
The Moon shone bright as a button
we dipped our legs and jumped-
way up high- and ducked low
The Blackbird hitched up her skirts
and I twanged my suspenders
while the Band went wild.
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 8:40 PM UTC
The song of us is sung
on a minor scale a third degree
of a minor key
chromatic mediant
in this relationship
between two sections
to provide color
purvey
interest while
prolonging harmony
a string taut twanged
in a key between g and me
Jul 11, 2015
Jul 11, 2015 at 1:37 AM UTC