"unceremonious" poems
Trembling,
you said to me
“Put the potato down”.
I examined the raw tuber,
clenched tightly in my hand,
like the first man
on a distant continent
to discover
this strange and ugly meteor,
with earthen smell
and cold rough skin;
it’s dead eyes staring back at me.
“Please, put down the potato”
I glanced at you,
wordlessly,
unfurling my fingers
the potato fell to the ground
in an unceremonious
thud.
Aug 19, 2014
Aug 19, 2014 at 4:17 PM UTC
Mary, plain name. Mary, mother of God
Mary, Queen of the Strip Mall
Mary, daughter of a King and a *****
Divinity in her blood, conqueror of lands,
Monarch of her body, kingdom of junkies.
Nails inlaid with pearls, mink lashes and onyx eyes
Indigo polyester wraps her 36, 30, 41,
saltwater taffy legs, **** and ***
Mary wasn’t a tall boy, Mary is a funnel cloud queen
Obsidian brazilian in velcro, soda can curls.
Mary has no titles, Mary is a ******* Mary is an exile.
Queen of cream stucco and neon and parking lots.
Mary has disciples, all named Judas.
She has Roy Cohn, the judge’s son, and Louis XIV on their knees in prayer.
She has **** Cheney, Little Richard, and Freud their knees in the bathroom behind the Tesco.
Mary doesn’t confess, doesn’t beg, doesn’t buy.
Mary the conqueror, Alexander reincarnate, she survives.
Body bathed in ultraviolet, cocoa butter, vaseline, and newport menthols.
Mary talks to God in the mirrors at the salvation army.
Mary is scared of dying, she knows she is no ones martyr.
Mary never kneels, left the Bible in the motel nightstand.
A graceful end, a unceremonious departure.
Trade rose petals for needles and styrofoam slurpee cups.
Mary’s mistresses, lovers, and wives, gave her a few lead rounds,
Left her in the strip mall mausoleum.
Mary, queen of the carnal, saint of suburban perversions.
Mary never asked God for forgiveness or a fix.
Jan 28, 2019
Jan 28, 2019 at 3:47 PM UTC
N Y’s serrated skyline,
a pale blue sleeps on teal.
But cut out
the distant end of it
and something of that shade
might wake
from under there, I feel.
The cross which I tend
to see is nearer than
N Y. It is rusting
an old green garden on it
and there is much strangely
colored gray living in
the winding motions above it.
The last of the sun, it dying
again pours libations of
pink upon the summit.
The view is far to me
yet brings me close
to a sky’s permeation.
(Been dragging me forward
a while now to its edge,
this now ever wasting.)
This is much like the way
the Torre fell through
my eyes, pending inward
upon some mind, which
I tried to catch in my gray
gray matter (sitting next
to her) like that was
the last essential task.
I said keep it keep it.
Did not keep it. It passed.
The blue is changing now—
lighter, paler, ghost-like.
If you were here
you would know the color.
(It is the sheet spread over
when things are lifted
as if born.) Lights, smaller
than skin water specs
begin to glimmer.
A breath is a crumpled
thing, used and used but
never wasted. When I
breathe to breathe I
remember to keep
breathing. And when the
world enters my lungs,
I can choose when to
exhale time—if I breathe
to breathe.
More speckling of sky skin.
The shades are fading, darker.
Suffused under, the clouds
congregate in covers.
The Brooklyn museum
is some pantheon upon
my roman hill from here.
The street lamps flame
orange as if it all was a
constant procession
towards the unceremonious
entrance, through the changing
gates, to the unknowing
home of being.
(The blue has fallen
from the sky and dropped
onto the roofs.)
The impossibly colored
clouds smoke up in
one heap from the end,
still the same distance—
far away. (But there still
is blue behind me.
A blue has kept away
from the end.
The cross has blackened.)
I wish not to leave this
Brooklyn roof. But I have
chosen to sleep on a bed.
One day
I will sleep on a roof.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 8:21 PM UTC
You were like the flowers
dying on my kitchen table.
Wilting away, and even so,
gifting me with flashes of color
and the unceremonious bloom
of a forgotten bud.
You were like Billy Holiday
at 3am on my busted record player;
just the slightest hiccup
in your melancholy.
You were an insufferable
embodiment of self-doubt,
nearly tangible in the
sun-starved days of winter.
You were an enigma,
plain and simple,
as nondescript as the fog
before a sunrise in September.
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 12:54 AM UTC
Wry is one of many things you do well....
~~~~~~
dedicated to, inspired by Paul Anthony Hutchinson, who wrote those words to me but two hours ago
*Wry
- produced by a distortion or lopsidedness of the ****** features: a wry grin.
- abnormally bent or turned to one side; twisted; crooked: a wry mouth.
- devious in course or purpose; misdirected.
- contrary; perverse.
- distorted or perverted, as in meaning.
- bitterly or disdainfully ironic or amusing: a wry remark.*
It is bitter,
It is amusing,
the distorting that gives a shape and thereby
meaning
to a misdirected life,
the ****** muscles perused,
all reversed, all per-versed
t'is not just the smile that is loopy,
or simplistically turned upside down,
twisted but not dubious, nor devious,
twisted but straight, I say,
wry is not a seething something I do well,
wry is in every nuclei I ever split,
every line etch-a-sketched in every poem
worn down,
physically inscribed on my face.
so much to reveal,
but not here not now not,
ever on and ever in, explicit
but blurred, burred, and buried
within them is the ironic of a man
that laughed through the better part of his life,
for in that period, there was no
better,
just worse
I was born wry.
the last of three, I was nameless till I was twenty one,
they called me just
brother, or the brother.
at twenty five, I married the wrong woman,
though we both wanted not too,
thirty five years of wry, the lawyers rejoiced,
the judges celebrated, the poets went mad,
swear it true,
the family counselors said
beyond hopeless,
and with wry smiles at the spectacle of years wasted,
spent like there was no tomorrow,
for there was none
in the titanic disaster of more, new lives corrupted
I lived life wry.
now, in the final fourth quaternary,
see how he,
the master of the unceremonious,
in on bent knee, hands clasped, on bed, rested,
when he seeks comfort and guidance for the upcoming
finality following a two minute warning,
warning that even now,
the future wry, turned to one side, when all he wanted,
was to live quiet in the straight and narrow
and not write poems asking himself with trepidation,
from where will come the courage to make this
last passage....
oh yes, I do wry so well,
and all things that wryhme with hell,
you will be spared,
for wryly he exclaims
"Enough, enough"
wry why!
for in all the days of his disheveled life,
there have been but a few,
when it has been simply,
enough
Feb 4, 2014
Feb 4, 2014 at 11:05 PM UTC
****** city lamps
dreams deferred, dissolved
bloodied and blurred—a mess
of twinkle, small from on high hill.
Brooklyn, heathens still wrapped
in the sacred vestments, bought
from the surplus stores of faith.
Blowing unceremonious smoke
from their windows, they refract
so many distant, hope-stained glints.
Ten thousand single-serve trinities
in every squint run molten. Together,
then apart. Blink one, blink many.
The lamps of the city ***** my eyes.
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 6:08 PM UTC
.
*to Emilia,
you are the method to my madness*
I will cry my heart out now
for every hypothetical tragedy.
I’ll break my heart now
so I don’t have to— in another life,
or a life yet to come,
drown myself in some apocalyptic loss.
Unceremonious
departures. Haunt me for life.
Mourn you for all the ways you’d die.
Prepare myself for inconsolable grief
in a simulation of a graveyard.
Tombstone upon tombstone:
Dug, prodded, buried, sunk.
My dear,
to my dismay, you are but a mortal,
implicated in the immortality of love.
In the book of all conclusions,
written in an indecipherable tongue,
your name engraved in feeble marble,
an expiration date in bright, blinding red.
How can we cheat Oblivion?
How do we defy Death?
You shrug with a confident nonchalance.
What is Death to Love Imperishable?
What is Eternity of a moment to Oblivion?
We are in the dress rehearsal
for the season’s première and the grand finale.
The Universe has been on our side all along,
it’s poured every blood, toil and tear into
years of conspiration and orchestration,
for our one delicate point convergence.
One chance against all odds.
One intersection against all parallels.
So come what may—
Take my hand and break a leg.
Jan 21, 2019
Jan 21, 2019 at 12:09 AM UTC
Sometimes
Give the poems in your head
Some rest.
Don't write them on,
Write them off.
Internally arrange a funeral
Bid them farewell
Give them an unceremonious burial.
The rising poem won't complain
They know well your anguish and pain.
The labour you go through birthing them
Shape their body, give a name
They would understand.
Failed poems are not as arrogant
As the birthed ones.
They too are weary pounding your head
Making holes in your soul
They would rather rest than be born.
Sometimes
They deserve rest.
Let them float away to a place
Where they find peace
And will not be missed.
Aug 4, 2024
Aug 4, 2024 at 11:59 AM UTC
A ring of futility
The patience game is not for the faint heart
Watching them tear your confidence apart,
Pulling the flesh from your backbone
Creaks give way to breaking
Shattering of nerves
Plucking away the feathers of hope
Bare naked and goosepimpled
The carvery lays waiting
An unceremonious carving
Beligerant twisted barbs of lies
They think they have power
They think the can destroy me
I almost thought they could too,
But as they say reputation is king
And mine speaks flesh to my bones
I pick the scales off one by one
Their pious deception no match
for my holy inception
A twisted fork tongue lays deep in its own rotted flesh
How the snakehole swallows it's own creator
Writhing in contorted panic as it's own truth flashes in its eyes
I may well be torn down every shred of pride
Only to rise a new and free from their serpentry
While they taste the bitter poison in their own sad tales
They never had real faith
And mine was never afraid of being tested
They forgot the sage old saying
Death trampling on death
Arise Tabitha and sin is no more
And nor is the serpent whom devours its self.
Jun 4, 2019
Jun 4, 2019 at 5:58 AM UTC
Do you know what it’s like
To be required no more,
To be put out to grass,
To be kicked out the door,
To know your work’s ended,
No more will be done,
To be slung on the tip,
Pushed aside by the young,
To be pensioned off
In an unceremonious way,
To know you’ve had your’s -
Every dog has its day,
To have an appetite for work,
But be left to hunger,
To be replaced by someone
More able and younger,
To be told you’re too old,
When you feel in your prime,
To be sent on your bike,
Before it’s your time,
To be all washed up
And flushed down the drain,
To have no physical wounds,
But still be in pain,
To feel your age,
Find you’re no Peter Pan,
To see your life going
No longer to plan,
To recall when you felt rich,
But now you feel poor,
To hear your heart slowly pumping,
Alas’ it races no more,
To experience an emptiness
That nothing will fill,
To have no medical symptoms,
But still feel ill,
To be out of control
Of your own destiny,
To be constantly asking
Why me ... why me?
Mar 24, 2018
Mar 24, 2018 at 4:20 PM UTC
A crown of thorns placed upon the brow of the one for whom they had disdain. A unceremonious adornment for one they mocked as king. With little but mournful cries did he bear the insult and indignity. Little did the oppressors and purveyors of the persecution know that they were simply adding thorns to the Rose of Sharon. For what beautiful Rose does not have thorns.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 10:53 PM UTC
i do struggle to not make your tongue sour with this periodic harassment & dissonant conceit but i am compelled at last by the scarcity of savages who can see me in this desert. less feral & more clergy, the fabled selves of the world would be sanctuaried from my psychiatric violence. well attired passions always smell of fear & derision, further, & no less vile, arrogance & stupidity are known to capacitate spasmodic unceremonious coquetry. yes my mouth is a scavenger’s, but privation & dissatisfaction by design turn coat on the very messianic puppetry which their compulsory public refusal
had initially engendered. welcoming calamity i prey & arrow from afar & go on proving my self wrong in one last alexandrian charge to certify my renowned demise. no tricks or perversions barring what’s customary amongst outlaw noblesse. oh & do regard this new color on my face, & if you would, please, stop turning yours away from mine.
Jul 6, 2017
Jul 6, 2017 at 8:35 PM UTC
No bandage could cover the wounds.
No comforting sounds could loosen the knots.
The world has not technically stopped turning,
But it has, down deep inside of me.
A flame extinguished,
My voice, incapable.
Each muscle.. Lapsed into a numbness so ******
My heart, it beats.
Thump thump
Against the walls that encase it,
Holding it there, steadily, in case it tries to break free.
The throbbing in my veins
and the beats of my heart
Are so powerful they invade my thoughts,
Hijacking the only thing I have control over.
The only thing left.
But they're unceremonious murderers,
Who, entrapped, could defeat.
Jun 4, 2015
Jun 4, 2015 at 1:39 PM UTC
No bandage could cover the wounds.
No love could cure this heart.
The world has not technically stopped.
But it has, down deep, inside of me.
A flame has been extinguished,
My voice, left incapable.
Each muscle, each breathe.
Lapsed into a numbness so ******
My heart beats, against the walls encasing it.
Holding it there, steadily,
in case it tries to break free.
Like the caged animal it is.
The throbbing in my veins.
The pounding beats of my heart.
So powerful they invade my thoughts.
Hijacking the only thing I have control over.
The only thing I have left.
But they're unceremonious murderers,
Entrapped, could defeat.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 11:45 PM UTC
What is this train doing
To me?
Going to all the wrong places
And has the driver no control?
Other passengers are screaming as if homeless
To persuade the driver to take this trembling namby-pamby sick ****
To their own favourite towns.
When I sit quietly in an infrequently haunted compartment,
the wasted smell from the toilet
And these riotous noises
Of the driver failing, the train stopping at lonely stations
and others howling unnecessary caps locks and exclamation marks
Infiltrate my senses and at the end of this journey,
You can see through the flimsy permeability
The holes are so prominent
Yet light doesn't enter. The train's timings are weird - all in the night.
The train gets derailed at one point due to the ruckus,
on fire and the searchlight came very late,
didn't notice my quivering queer hand rise amidst a burnt heap of luggages of people who led to this ravaging
managed to creep out of the train at the right moment,
And desolated for the moses to grow inside this melted metal mess and through the rest of me.
This is too big a coffin for me- unceremonious, caliginous and under the open sky
There's not much of me left to give back to.
Dec 21, 2017
Dec 21, 2017 at 2:51 AM UTC
Such an unceremonious goodbye,
Such longing in my sigh..
Yet, I know it's best if I never see you again.
But I miss your eyes
And your enchanting lies
But, most of all, I think I'll miss being able to call you a friend.
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 3:28 AM UTC
When the crushing today turns burdensome, I recline-
When the uncertainty of my tomorrow haunts, I reminisce
back into those days of unceremonious past- yeah!
that's where I go, for my short afternoon siesta.
Miles away from the town; friends, chit chats forgone;
Fragments of home, picked up; Remnants of self, left behind.
When cherished memories perish, the past-me withers away.
Singing the songs of the dying soul is the living me!
away from home, the longer I kept -the irony of our times!
away from self, the longer I moved; the irony of our lives!
As time moves on, relationships slip away; and
before strange gets familiar, the familiar turns strange!
Thinking of home; that everydayness of my childhood;
Ordinary, yet profound; Silly, yet unforgetful!
into that tenderness of the amateur soul, I ride back
to fetch the phantoms of that juvenile heart.
Forgotten old times and forgone loved ones;
Week end phone calls and weakened ties;
Amidst exhaustive past and the extravagant future,
Deep within, I wonder, what is left of me?
A Product of the Middle-class aspiration;
caught in the illusion of career progression is I
homeless in the foreign land called modern times,
orphaned by circumstances, I feel, I'm my own refugee!
Archived memories don't make home; love and affection do!
Internet and Instagram don't make home; intimacy does.
Bank balances don't make home, brothers and sisters do!
Money and wealth don't make home, warmth of a mother does!
Come, let's go back home! our folks are waiting;
for, to return home is to reintegrate our broken self.
awkwardness of anonymity, all over; let's flee the gadget sanctuary!
for, to come back home is to give a break to our senile spirits.
Saravanan
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 4:35 PM UTC
Chalkstone paved
The unceremonious call
Of a yellow machine
Dry craters where forests once grew....
If the moon is out,
And my hunger is sated,
They may grow anew.
Feb 2, 2018
Feb 2, 2018 at 8:22 PM UTC
You did not tell me―
what did you want?
Departure was sad,
unceremonious, escaping
an epitaph.
My legs become heavy.
Unthinkingly, you
write on the wall with foggy hands.
The silhouettes tremble.
Who will break this
infernal cycle of reincarnation?
That means, we should redefine
the death.
Nonetheless
a creed is born.
You walk on the burning coals
to pick up the poppies,
a gift of torn love.
Nov 17, 2016
Nov 17, 2016 at 10:44 PM UTC
Little rapid tears
Letting myself fall
Noisy streams and it's mockery
A body prostate right between tall
Bored aloud ignore the right to be
My times a riddle that'll never be solved
Where the river ends the sun is coming down
Being free, being wild, being bulletproof
Ignorant in reality and tangled mound
Get inside and grow this crushing sound
I'm holding tightly to the water
Swimming in this flood
I can't sleep and I can't eat and I can't refuse
Wish I could change the way things are
Who knows where I'll end up, not a bit ashamed
What do I hend so I will find my way to my vessel?
Its completely casual to swim in a river of liquor
Awoken wet grass that was held up with a little speck
Vagabond of fulfillment, viewed as an pesky insect
Its completely unceremonious to be labeled parasite
Discolored or harmonious, I see myself as a skimming bolide
The tide is high
Heedless of all the warning signs
Bend me back
With the strength of imprisoned pride
On the brink of the day
Subtle frustration arrayed
Is this hope or air I crave?
Jun 21, 2016
Jun 21, 2016 at 6:18 PM UTC
I thought we buried this alive but my fingers are raw and ***** from digging just to find an empty casket; it died long before we could ever bury it, and no amount of dirt or digging or wood and nails could ever bring it to life again
it died a unceremonious death, no one aware enough to mourn it because they didn’t know it was dead
we sat with the corpse because that was how it lived; silent and still but with a unfamiliar stench that everyone around can smell, but never know
if no one is mourning it, did it ever die?
Feb 23, 2025
Feb 23, 2025 at 3:13 PM UTC
Steps and laughter downstairs
A fraternity in its usual chaos
You crawled in through the window
To indulge in his hidden desires
A friendly greeting before the sin is committed
A mattress on the floor, blankets in swirls
Sit on the edge as he beckons you over
The black night, the sole witness
He’s cold despite the warmth of his touch
His dark eyes shine with a sense of discontent
He holds you softly, but it’s never enough
For you to feel loved, nor for him to love himself
Not a word was spoken, an unceremonious ******
No reciprocation, no lingering emotion
The loathing wafts through the air like steam
As he fixates on the disheveled ground
Retrieve your sweater from below
Go reconnect with your old friend, the night
Out the window from whence you came
He won’t even watch you leave
Apr 24, 2020
Apr 24, 2020 at 6:31 PM UTC
After deep observation, it was the old mind that spoke first to the young thinker,
“Why is it that you periodically pardon yourself from this reality in which we harbor?”
The young thinker, entertained with this interposing notice, introduced his perception of this particular act of reservation and detachment. As such an act of consideration, left restrained is a sense of why.
As he does, the young thinker spoke,
“It is upon my fair and conscious decipherment that this reality surely prevails despite my absence. Though my unceremonious naïveté may have coaxed my mind into the notion that the genuine functionality of this existence bids no satisfaction or blossoming in conjunction with my vacancy; I know better than to revel such a thought. From myself, have I withheld the truth of the matter, but no longer shall that be. This pivotal revelation preeminent to reassessing my proper call to reason. Why am I here? May I enduringly unify my will to my why.”
The old mind, bolstered in comprehension and for a moment, rested, understood this why.
be well,
bcb
Mar 30, 2020
Mar 30, 2020 at 5:21 PM UTC
One day, my poems will not have to tug at soft sheets
in the middle of the night.
there will be no unceremonious start at sundown,
she will descend slowly but surely onto paper,
without being afraid of the dark.
One day, my poetry will not knock her small toe
against a pile of books in a corner,
simultaneously stumbling
over too many tasks that aren't really there.
One day, my poetry will know better than to wake
at the clarion call of the moon,
the rascal himself slowly waking up
from under covers of clouds,
bewitching time
to make it feel like the night is more enticing.
One day, my poetry will awaken and rub her eyes
only to find that the day is waking up too,
that the sun has just realised that there's art
awaiting him.
One day, my poetry will find her home
before she has to go knocking on the door of Midnight,
asking the latter for "five minutes more"
before she can hurriedly make her bed on my pages.
One day, I will write before it almost midnight.
That day was not today.
Apr 11, 2018
Apr 11, 2018 at 2:04 PM UTC
The only companion of loneliness is silence.
Theirs is an unceremonious marriage like -
Couples in the middle of their middle age,
That mutually run out of things to explore.
One tries to find meaning in keeping a book,
That tells the same story a million times over-
Hoping to find white pages in the yellowed mess.
But that hope too, soon becomes a relic.
But lately I've come to love a poem,
That unites loneliness with silence-
It's the twisted compromise made-
By water when it settles in a container.
It is written on the faces of mothers-
Whose husbands are away at work.
A verse in the wind that all men hear,
To an effect that it stitches broken hearts.
It is a call for worship in an unbuilt temple
And the belief that enshrines love in trust.
Mar 29, 2019
Mar 29, 2019 at 1:37 AM UTC