"unadorned" poems
I'd like to introduce myself to you
One letter, one syllable, one word at a time
I would like to take things slow with you
Play get to know with you
Like I've never been allowed to do before
I want to capture those butterflies
And release them into skies of us
Me and that one
My Mr. Right that has paid your attention in full
That can simmer in the quite between our glances
He would never waste our time on second chances
Because we are what time well spent is
I would like to introduce myself to you
Spell me out with big doe eyes
That only you can read into
That only you would take the years to understand
And looking back
You see me for who I am
Unadorned by outside exteriors
I never feel vulnerable with you
You cloak me in the reassurance that you are here
Here in each moment that I need you
I would like to introduce myself to you
Planting memories that we can sip on in our bad days
Locked in gazes that I don't care to escape
I can't wait to meet you, or reintroduce
I would like to introduce myself to you
Sep 21, 2010
Sep 21, 2010 at 6:07 PM UTC
In the same space where once laid rubies and pearls
now lies a tangled necklace of simple gold.
Knotted, tarnished and with one broken end,
it rests there for a long time, almost hidden,
amidst bracelets of diamonds
and waits to shine again.
May 16, 2015
May 16, 2015 at 2:54 PM UTC
In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds
Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual
My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary
Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments
I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path
The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux
As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate
Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift
Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary
Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode
And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
Natural inclinations ,
unrequited vindications,
unadorned specifications.
These all make for reservations
of forced vacations -
like a sad
and elongated
pythagorean theorem
that always equals =
a bad poem.
Oct 25, 2010
Oct 25, 2010 at 9:01 PM UTC
Stink up the beer house with unadorned putrid self-thoughts.
Poppy-eyed and hating others is easy for blue bottled buggers.
A sweet thing for you!
A growing circle of six-legged empty.
Filled to the brim with puffed up space. A white brim with a shiny red exoskeleton.
Oh, what a dreadful sight!
Hair strewn across a face and hooked into the teeth of the blushy lullabied insect screech.
Clear liquid not blood, but blood all the same on an empty stomach with full vein-shot bones.
Not milky bones with calcium-love..
A dead, deficient, cracked, neglected, insufficient skeletal frame, limp.
Yellowed with hate-smoke and old book notes.
Splintered, crazed and buzzed through the gridded bulging eye-window of every single one of those insect like Self-Loathers.
Chosen out of pure sympathy "We should talk more"
.......To the sun, the moon and the stars?
Every star mocks,
Every beam scoffs
and every moon likes to deride on the pain that hides beneath the lies of human bug eyes.
A simply formed pound of vertebrate flesh leaks soft plasma on the scaly moth floor.
Oh how we are dusty and unsure!
Forestry consisting of a Sitka Spruce and of a Japanese Larch was a claim I made from the start.
Over gardens of attention arachnid lurking selfish bugs and even those half winged "friend people".
The bell has rung the scariest of chimes and with every soul wrenching 'ding' a furry fang digs at the blotchy eyed, softly fleshed girl.
Oh such a sweet thing to be surrounded by selfish bugs who spin webs with tear stained tissues!
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 2:19 PM UTC
~
*Lift the veil from a grayscale morning. Vividly imagistic. An odalisque no more.
Her shape beneath the gown is a foreign land, a series of quiet revelations. Its pattern manifests as pinpricks of light perforating the shirred fabric of his heart.
The preponderance of dream in her eyes becomes a call and response evoking purely imaginary spaces. The contained chemistry is beautifully insular, monochromatic.
And there her lips. Into claustrophobic kiss. This lower register of love comes in unadorned, subtle colorings like the darkest part of night.
One thousand shades of gray.
One single light of white.
And everything merges in the night.*
~
Nov 24, 2023
Nov 24, 2023 at 11:47 AM UTC
Somehow, I managed to get to my thirties
without eating a cherry --- a fresh one, anyway,
raw, untamed, unshelved, and forgodssake,
unmarischinoed.
I had them in pies, gooey, sickening, too much
syrup, and in sundaes --- again, not real, a turn-off,
saw people tie the stems in knots,
I had the impression, I think, that if people
had to do all the things they do with cherries
to make them flavorful, they must be really
**** straight out of the bag.
I made my mind up that they were unpleasant
and I would have nothing to do with them.
Even, or especially, in chocolate-covered cherries,
which my mother loved, so I wanted to love,
I could at best eat the chocolate around that
thick viscous sugary embryonic fluid
wherein lay the embittered, unborn and unloved cherry
and not the coveted prize.
So imagine that day when, careless at a cocktail
party, or at someone's house, hungry, I nibbled
at a fresh one, deep red and whole, gingerly working
my way around the stem and coming awake
to ohmygod what have I been missing all these years?
They still seem brand new now, every time, a delicacy,
something wealthy people indulge in and so not really
belonging to my world. They beg for the company
of wine and the most delicate cheeses, they ask to be shared
and doted on. The keep revealing themselves,
on the plate, unadorned, and they keep reminding me
to try something else that I have never tasted,
like complete and utter honesty, or looking at myself
naked, without judgment, even at the innermost
feminine parts, upside down with a mirror until I see why
they say making love for the first time is giving away
your cherry.
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 1:03 PM UTC
The Mountain keeps all secrets. Crusted lichen on timeworn boulders. High altitude longing for alpine daisies. Carefree blossoms, long ago plucked, gone to seed, restless in the fertile ground. Wildflowers bloom shortly sweet, fleeting paintbrush to layered canvas. Fairy slippers lost on crumbling doorsteps. Glacier lilies pressed between avalanched pages. Forget-me-nots in forgotten blue hollows. The common harebell feels anything but common when seen through a lover's eyes. Forest tiger, your bulbs taste bitter. Purple lupines sage with fuzzy-leafed logic. Fireweed, ***** unadorned, eternally reaching. Lousewort, spreading phlox, leave this scarlet alone. Listen to Indian Henry, it's bad luck to trample what is sacred. The devil dreams behind steep and sheltered walls. Keep to the Wonderland, bypass this Trail of Shadows. Seek ancient hunting grounds, steadfast shelter in the wooded clearing. There is no pearly everlasting along these old trails. Paradise lost may never be regained.
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 8:25 PM UTC
493
The World—stands—solemner—to me—
Since I was wed—to Him—
A modesty befits the soul
That bears another’s—name—
A doubt—if it be fair—indeed—
To wear that perfect—pearl—
The Man—upon the Woman—binds—
To clasp her soul—for all—
A prayer, that it more angel—prove—
A whiter Gift—within—
To that munificence, that chose—
So unadorned—a Queen—
A Gratitude—that such be true—
It had esteemed the Dream—
Too beautiful—for Shape to prove—
Or posture—to redeem!
2.4k
The *** with match, lit the fire
scolding kettle with burnt goaless ambition.
claiming snobbish golden prowess
paid in wanton , savage, screaming tuition.
"It is I" said ***
"Who has sent aromas of worlds
preperations in lifes gluttonous lust
smiling rewards genorously hailed
with slothed culanary trust..."
"tis true" whispered kettle
"It is I, the ***
forged in iron clad
who in laborious toil
so generously cast my sweet savory scraps
amongst your soot and soil..."
"tis true" hissed kettle,
"For I, the ***
adapt in multiple arrangement
of compliment and comfort where you lack
with singular solitary function
wailing, seared and scarred in black..."
"Tis true" whistled kettle
"I, the ***
filled in glorious substance and magnificant sustenance
praised in lifes delicate, vital, victuals and viands
in with which I do enhance..."
"Tis true" howled kettle
"Yet it is I, Kettle,
in further fashion of design
than copious function in fare
do not heed your song and dance..."
"Blah" clammered ***
"For it is I, the lowly kettle,
sing to each melodious morning
to begin the days
unknown magical soaring..."
"Pishaw" growled ***
"It is I, kettle,
bestowed in somber, modest truth of fact
nakedly express that
you too, my dear ***
are simply black..."
"humbug" steamed ***
*** humbled... kettle mumbled...
"It is in each honorable day
we serve our distinguishable stay
in detectable unadorned identicle way.
"Tis true" said ***
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 3:27 AM UTC
I'll undress myself, undress all my coats,
undress all my fears, strip to my sheer.
I'll show you but will you want to see ?
what will your thoughts be to my naked, unadorned alive,
will you look around or will you hold your gaze,
as layer by layer i unfold myself,
strip myself down to my bare, undrunk skin,
will you still call me poetry as i take you on a tour of my anatomy,
will you explore all my fissures or stay gauging at the first shortfall,
will you understand the traces of my wounds,
the wounds not from battlefields but from gentle smudges of
unfinished love,
each covered with bandage, not healing just concealing,
trying to stop the pain from bleeding, covering my corpse in aches,
and so i keep my gaurd up, no strolling on passion boulevards,
for torment and agony were never printed on invitation cards,
but when the time comes and you compel me to,
i'll let my inner demons out for you,
and as i strip down to my sheer,
i wonder, will you peer or look away,
will your thoughts run astray,
will you love the bone and flesh just as much as,
you loved the carapace.
Aug 14, 2017
Aug 14, 2017 at 12:46 PM UTC
We expected the violin's finger on the upturned nerve;
Its importunate cry, too laxly curved:
And you drew us an oboe-outline, clean and acute;
Unadorned statement, accurately carved.
We expected the screen, the background for reverie
Which cloudforms usefully weave:
And you built the immaculate, adamant, blue-green steel
Arch of a balanced wave.
We expected a pool with flowers to diffuse and break
The child-round face of the mirrored moon:
And you blazed a rock-path, begun near the sun, to be finished
By the trained and intrepid feet of men.
2k
The cicada husk of the crescent moon sheds in cyclides light,
Molted whispers of life, spread like perfume behind the ear,
Or like silver earrings unadorned and scattered around the night-lit table.
Here too, the garden gown of Babylon lies heaped in soiled ruin,
Beaten down to sand at the foot of the bed of the Tigris and Euphrates.
Though the dunes are its aerial, root-bound springs,
Though the underground nymphs tend with cicala wings,
And underspurt of incessant summer song to lure
The resurrection rose of Jericho to bud once more,
In desert-faith for the hanging garden of a full moon.
Jun 19, 2019
Jun 19, 2019 at 1:08 PM UTC
There was a time when I was sane
when I used to walk among daffodils.
When they used to open up and sing
their unadorned song from hill to hill.
There was a time when I was sane
when the trees used to sway
and the leaves used to rustle
just to lay their flowers in my way.
When I was sane,the eagles
from their eyries,used to fly high
and block the sun with their wings.
Just so it wouldn't be in my eyes.
The clouds would come at my call.
And the rain would fall only for me.
The diamond drops would break
and bedeck the ground at my feet.
Looking at the night sky,
at the star studded lanes,
I would see the moon smile at me
and know that I was sane.
I used to create new worlds
with living words from my pen.
Full of marvels they used to be.
But that was all then...
Wrapt I was in fantasy
while the world moved on.
It has moved away from me
while,impassive,I looked on.
People said I was not sane,
told me that where I lived
there were no daffodils;
No promise in how I lived.
Now that I'm cured,I see
that I'd been but a fool
who believed Horton really lived
in the Jungle of Nool.
No magic rings in reality.
No wonderland or wicked witches.
No Elves nor dragons.
Not even Quidditch and snitches.
Now cured,I see reason.
The flowers never did sing.
Nor did any eagle fly for me.
Reason came but relief did not bring.
All those words I created,
All those worlds I cherished,
All too soon yea all too soon
All have but perished.
Now I see people toiling away
in richness,poverty and ignorance.
I see children bent with age;
In their eyes,everything but innocence.
Reluctantly now moves my pen
as I try to make new worlds.
Stringing letters together it desponds.
As lacking life,they are but words.
Everything used to be wonderful
when I knew I was sane.
Now that I've seen reality,
I know I must be insane.
Oct 18, 2013
Oct 18, 2013 at 10:52 AM UTC
The surrounding tunnel gnaws at my eyes
The sliver of light progressively smaller
Progressively dim
I lose my way in the labyrinth of a straight path
Blinded by an unadorned world,
There's no up down sideways or backwards there just is.
Pushed along by gentle metallic hands that scream lullabies at me
Deafening my thoughts
Murdering them with distractions,
Disguising nothingness with false purpose.
I've lost the ability to move my own feet, I don't belong to me
I'm just riding through the tunnel
I am no longer sure that there was ever an exit,
The light at the end has gone out.
They've turned it off.
May 11, 2014
May 11, 2014 at 1:16 AM UTC
My precious
You become a beauty
Only when you languorously
Hug the waists of damsels as cincture
Countless are the times,
earlobes or ankles
Unadorned by you
Inflamed me
A plain a yellow thread has ousted you nowadays
When you swing from an ear,
It is indeed fascinating to watch
You have even usurped my sleep
As a nose-ring, through its keen glitter
Costume jewellery has replaced you too, many times
Still, my precious,
It is when you are pawned
That you become real ‘gold ‘
Like the revolutionary
Who become more so
By getting hanged
Like a soldier
Who become more of a soldier
By getting shot at the border
My precious, my precious
My precious pledged gold.
Jan 22, 2014
Jan 22, 2014 at 8:06 AM UTC
Curling upward like the smoke from a cigarette with lipstick
Emblazoned on the filter like a ruby on a ring.
Spiraling like vapour on a freezing frosty morning
Where the air is still and foggy, where the early blackbirds sing.
A maddening moment spinning in my flower's ****** youth
When I kissed those lips of tangerine to feel that heat ingrained.
And from the depths of ocean green that Kingfish rose to greet me,
Her beauty smeared by spear impaled in a deed that leaves me shamed.
Tendrils of thought arise entwining in the cortex
And the pleasure of sensation is my measure of delight,
Like the rising mist of lakeside in the golden shades of evening,
Of anticipating starlight in the jewelled descending night.
The rendevouzed excitement of ascention with the heartbeat
As a beauty glides unadorned through a moment in my life,
But the spiraled exultation of a lifetime's realisation
was the coil of breathless wonder sharing childbirth with my wife.
And the years, they pass asunder in a steady haze of flickering
Passing in succession, in a honey scented way.
Contented are my days in the muted shades of harmony
In the shady lanes of country in a sunlit green array.
Marshalg
Pukehana Paradise
10 August 2013
Aug 9, 2013
Aug 9, 2013 at 6:07 PM UTC
Is there something I can find
Buried deep in my mind,
An allure which ensures
Me of hope?
So pure and unadorned,
So naked, as was born,
Just a light, just a spark,
That which pulls upon
The heart,
To awaken, and allow
Me to see?
Is there something, buried deep,
Among the feelings I keep,
Is there hope for the one
Who has none?
No more sadness,
No more pain,
No more for a stain,
For a shadow of
What I once had?
No more crying,
No more lying,
No more wishing
I was dying,
Is there hope for the one,
Who has none?
Apr 2, 2023
Apr 2, 2023 at 12:46 AM UTC
I've stored myself away in a proverbial zip lock
Stained with nicotine, filtering what little sunlight may shine through
Sequestering any resonating laughter my soul may have once contained
In Tupperware from the late eighties
Filling the cracks in my belief system with nail polish
Trying to heat the icy corridors of my being with a cigarette lighter
And a curling iron
Any beauty I may have once possessed I gave to the gargoyles
Who flew it far out of my current zip locked reach
Holding vibrations of strings from a thousand miles away in holy regard
Salting my unadorned misery for better preservation
So that I may taste it once again
On the tip of my sailors tongue when the thought of a smile crosses me
My greatest current pleasure resides in tiny, fake, resin beings With wings
That will never flap
And I am obsessed with what may, Or may not happen in the tiny fake place
In which they dwell
Mar 3, 2017
Mar 3, 2017 at 8:24 AM UTC
*Slithering shadows
Once born under those elm-trees,
A forgotten afternoon breeze -
Left the sight of the dreamer
Alas, time froze at dusk,
Capturing fog in its embrace
The long search for mysteries
And voices of the dead
Took its last flight
O’ wind chimes in the distance cliff,
You stole my summer away.
A body at this instant halted by
Some darkened days-
Caged behind the worldly tethers,
Wishing upon shackled feathers,
To let the wind unravel
These locks and chains.
For do you not see,
This dove doesn't want to stay?
Living with delicate truths
These simple unadorned quills,
Entangled by poisoned clouds -
Her soul wants to flee
Perhaps a petty twig she is
On a secret hill
But to be free is her only plea.*
Oct 24, 2014
Oct 24, 2014 at 10:43 AM UTC
Her hands are neither soft
nor attractive.
They are a white fish belly from too
little time in the sun.
Her nails are stubby and unadorned.
Her fingers are tentacles projecting
unnaturally from undersized palms,
tips rough and calloused.
I must stare
I cannot help myself
Then it begins.
The movement.
The tentacles scamper here and there.
They reach
They touch
They pound and poke
and stretch and crawl
and in their grotesque fury
teach me to love.
Mozart and Chopin
Prokofiev and Bach
The piano is a time machine
transforming the tiny practice room
into the mighty concert halls
of Vienna and Prague.
From the gallery I am
entranced by rhapsodies
seduced by nocturnes
and consumed by symphonies.
I murmur,
does the music stir your soul?
She glances up
briefly
and returns to work.
May 3, 2012
May 3, 2012 at 12:11 AM UTC
There is nothing so trepidating
as the emptiness
The blank canvas
the ghost-white page
the empty stage
There is nothing so trepidating
as the silence
Just looking
eye to eye, heart to heart,
for connection
There is nothing so liberating
as the void
the vast white desert of the canvas
the glaring blank of a page
the unadorned blackbox theater
There is nothing so liberating
as the silence
Just the rhythm
of beating hearts
breathing
There is
nothing
There is nothing
so trepidating
There is nothing
so liberating
Dec 28, 2020
Dec 28, 2020 at 5:42 AM UTC
All the color
Stained away
Drained AwayFrom around
My monochromatic core
Becoming an abstract memory
Spreading
In a screaming ,raging silence
All across.....
....This sad and pock marked floor
In shades of grey
I make my way ...past
The last ....ornamental
Bit of sanity
I find..... before
I slip into the mist
Of uninspired ,hard wired
Usurpers....
.....of all
That lay ahead
Where dreams die
As the ordained
Squeeze hard ..then discard
Any evidencerary consideration
Left
Beyond the veil
Of the awaiting mist
Obscurity wilting away
The ubiqitous absence
That latest wisp
Of wide appeal ...for those of us
Who allow ourselves
To be drained of all color
Amid the abstract disregard
Of who we were in our own way
Conceding to become
unhearlded
retreating ghosts
Of monochromatic grey
Unadorned bits of sanity
Saluting as we pass by
On our own ....on our way
Not even credited
With the abstract decor
Left behind us ....
On the now even sadder
Pock marked floor
As it hears the screaming ,raging silence
As it's echo fades away ,lost ,ghostly pale
Absorbed ....
By the grey mist....
..... beyond the awaiting veil !
Aug 6, 2017
Aug 6, 2017 at 5:29 AM UTC
i caught a glimpse of her once,
just as she was leaving.
the sunlight cut her face
like a scalpel, and she flinched.
in the doorway, the dogs
barking at her feet, the day's
bags suspended from her frame.
the one with her wallet, her phone.
her purse pinched in the crook of her elbow.
the one with her lunch, also there.
the backpack with her water bottle
and planner riding high on her
trapezius muscles. the ones holding
last night's tears still hovering above her
cheeks.
and she isn't wearing the necklace
i gave her last year on her birthday,
i can see the pale line on her collarbone
where it lived. but why would she?
the ring i bought fits perfectly
in the kitchen junk drawer,
she is unadorned.
i tried calling out to her, but the dogs,
and she didn't have the time. the earth shakes
and the world sharpens it's blade
again. she turns toward her car in the driveway
and melts back into routine.
a piece of blue-black hair falls across
her face, and i am in love with her again.
but things change, and look how naturally
she goes.
Jun 19, 2021
Jun 19, 2021 at 10:01 AM UTC