"uncoiled" poems
PROLOGUE
The Flame, aflicker, licks and flays,
illuming evening’s negligees
With braided curls she swirls and sways,
and flits and floats in light ballets
APOLOGUE
A Flame, to conquer creeping fog,
flew dancing towards a random log
Her flight perplexed a leery frog
beside a silent somber bog
The Flame, a ripple, all alone
alit on leaves where birds had flown
The aching twigs began to moan
A rising breeze began to groan
The Flame arrayed an ancient oak
with torrid tongues and veils of smoke
A ****** bailed, the dam had broke
The leery frog soon ceased to croak
The Flame uncoiled and lashed midair,
consuming crowns with utmost care
A crazed coyote fled her lair,
left in the lurch bewildered bear
The Flame, unfurled, went wild and grew,
enkindled cats and caribou
Remaining... not a residue,
as reeking vapors bade adieu
The Flame revealed her strength unshackled
Flora, fauna crisped and crackled
Fire Witches clucked and cackled
One more forest stripped, then hackled
EPILOGUE
The arsonists were well aware
the Flame would travel everywhere
The weirs are gone, the land is bare,
and soon you’ll find a city there
Nov 27, 2013
Nov 27, 2013 at 5:15 AM UTC
mom betrays us.
headlights into the night
& up the breakneck boulevard bluff overlooking town and terminus.
she brings his heart in a ziploc bag,
an offering
to that old burnt-out oak.
[husband\father\corpse]
front porch blood trails forever. she
claims self-defense and the camera-eyes caramelize her
fame & fortune & stepdaddies & book deals & ziploc pb&js & dead dog omens.
when did the heartache begin?
heir\son\brother\body
racing car ****** and fluxed up the boulevard in a ritual reach for daddy and the oak.
the girls are waiting. one two three, seeds.
brakes sabotaged. he
bursts into death, a molten ball of mazda.
father and son laugh there on the brim of here and hereafter.
apparitions uncoiled.
[home movies]
where mercury avenue ends
the woods begin.
& those woods are evil, an eldritch place, she laughs.
even the indians wouldn’t bury their dead there.
america.
caught between the whir of spokes and windshields reflecting
sky and skin, the blue hue
of television flickering on the hands of a family.
grandsons conjure grandmaster demons
on the ply of their treefort high.
the heart of grandma in a ziploc bag.
jupiter and saturn are in conjunction,
twelve past midnight on a tuesday in september.
a school night.
[the babysitter brings over an unlabeled video tape, says its scary]
the children watch.
slumber party screams and pb&js.
ghouls blunted by pungent neighborhood inertia.
son, a ghost returned in rhythm and electronics,
hungry for pizza and pure vengeance.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 12:32 AM UTC
Pray let me become relieved of this the mortal coil.
Year in and year out my brain and body toil.
Stretched and taut.
My body caught within a life exhausted in which no man can ever win.
Twists of stress as the double helix is unbound.
Secrets of inheritance morbidly uncoiled.
Pain of heart and aching bones.
The wailing aged woman moaned.
The pain is but psychological in nature.
The aching of the joints and bones flow in unison with becoming mature.
Nature states it runs that way.
My eyes are fading.
Get no passes from ones, who once were Lotharios.
Nowadays, there are none who are brave enough to take their chances.
My eyes are somewhat misted.
I can't see through my glasses.
I am not going on the pull, for I want not to make a spectacle of myself.
As from grace and fun of youth I tumble.
My palace is made from crystal lips and crumbled teeth.
The angel who was guarding me.
Fell **** up on the deck.
What on earth is left for me?
A thought to hold tight in my mind.
At least that still works.
At least it does.
I think I find!
(C) LIVVI
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 10:49 AM UTC
We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living
Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world,
And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
W.B. YEATS
* * * * * *
My soul looked down from a vague height, with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues.
Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
Round myriad warts that might be little hills.
From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.
(And smell came up from those foul openings
As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)
On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
Brown strings, towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.
Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.
I saw their bitten backs curve, loop and straighten.
I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.
Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.
And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, bur crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head
2.1k
I was a touch-me-not before you broke my heart
living in a child’s playhouse
now I say, “touch me please”
it is the demons that make angels exist
some girls say that sadness makes you feel dead
you made me become alive
you cried when my hair covered my eyes
so my sadness carried it away, it
uncoiled
a heartbeat per ounce I love your ****
but still we have conversations about where you
want to be buried
when you die.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 12:53 AM UTC
softly
and deep
and
infinitely
and on and on and on
the night yawns strenuous nude limbs
uncoiled precisely fingers splayed groping the
hillocks. and loves the land with gentle laps
of the moons tongue. refreshed wholly with pleasure.
pale towers undescent pillaring dully.
and the flaccid dawn scallops the piles of mountains.
or about the lips, whom the (day sprays dew), glistening
on the cheeks. and i go quivering between its ivory legs. kissing
her flexing belly. exactly arched. lip biting.
emoc
rehtih; hither coming
giddy mystery.
pumping string. gasping on my stomach.
naked sliver grin for me.
Jul 12, 2010
Jul 12, 2010 at 3:07 PM UTC
THE Powers whose name and shape no living creature knows
Have pulled the Immortal Rose;
And though the Seven Lights bowed in their dance and wept,
The Polar Dragon slept,
His heavy rings uncoiled from glimmering deep to deep:
When will he wake from sleep?
Great Powers of falling wave and wind and windy fire,
With your harmonious choir
Encircle her I love and sing her into peace,
That my old care may cease;
Unfold your flaming wings and cover out of sight
The nets of day and night.
Dim powers of drowsy thought, let her no longer be
Like the pale cup of the sea,
When winds have gathered and sun and moon burned dim
Above its cloudy rim;
But let a gentle silence wrought with music flow
Whither her footsteps go.
1.7k
A plume should be a thing lovely and light
dancing violet as it's fanned
at the flanks of the blue
bird-of-paradise
who hangs limberly
to solicit a mate
It should curl
blinding white at the back
of the puffy Samoyed
prancing fancy to please a master
who also preens on the oval
of a sawdust track
It should flop
red at the top of gold-painted tin
helmet awry on the head
of an aspiring actor
who plays centurion for tips
outside a mobbed Colosseum
It should spray
as clear and cooling drops out
the copper mouth of a grass-snake
green hose uncoiled by
the sneaky dad who tickles
giggles from sweaty kids
It should flutter
gray at the tail end of a quill
bouncing to the frenzied
jottings of an anachronistic
frump who takes the pain to outfit
himself far too seriously
A plume should not be a thing of plague
riding currents kissed by taint-
sweet crude blasted from a wound
gouged in the crust
of a frigid deep to feed
our shallow lust for eases
It shouldn't choke
It shouldn't muck
It shouldn't tar
It can't help
poisoning that last pretense
we cared about anything,
be it plumed or not, but
the finality of
a bottom line
May 31, 2010
May 31, 2010 at 6:54 AM UTC
Weathered flesh tightens tenderly in ever-expanding fibers
like an anatomical snuffbox.
The perspiring philtrum of a flew
is carved quickly but more desperate than a slice of kerf.
Uncoiled youth cissing uneven pigmentation
has been slaughtered like fall duff.
Yet she rejoices, snood and all,
To the tap, tap, tap
Of little dingbats.
Sep 25, 2010
Sep 25, 2010 at 12:10 PM UTC
The race of the Spring is giving way
To the pace of the Summer,
More and more
Bees hover among the flowers, and
Young Chickadees are bigger now
Ripening like fruit on the vine,
Passing the test of hours
And in the lawn grass the Adder lies--
Still, stillness it must keep,
Wrapp'd by a hundred butterflies
Reds, oranges, blues, saffron, whites
All inextricably unique
Save when they rise,
Rising as they do like smoke when the serpent bites
The fang'd body uncoiled, vicious, sheer--
Nothing left in which to hide
Nothing more to make disguise
The Adder is bare before our eyes
The Adder is yielded to scrutinize!
See it before it flies! Spare yourself the surprise!
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 12:04 AM UTC
you reeled me in from
the aegean's slow murmur,
my gills covered in algae, my jaw
chomping rhythmically under
the hollow tree of my mouth.
didn't anyone ever teach you that
fishing for nymphs is more painful
than comb jellies, slower than marlins and
as safe as the glowing earring of
an anglerfish mother?
on the deck of your vessel
you cradled my skeleton gently,
fed me crispy hard coral and
begged me not to eat you in
the night, when mars made his way
toward the fiery backdrop of our
natal charts. how intrigued i was to
find that under your beard hid a
chain mail of scales, the map of
your palms was drafted in plasma,
and your iris is not pigment, but
a distant reflection of geysers
snapping like scorpions out of
the ocean floor.
you spent the nights dancing to the
howl of sirens like no man i'd
ever seen, and somewhere between
our fingers, where you passed me
the whiskey, i threw my arms up
and remembered how to move.
you spent the days following the
wind's hips, you didn't care if she
changed her mind, you said.
you are like the belly of a sea
star. slowly in the twilight
i uncoiled my fear of wandering, i
threw the pit into the open ocean and
the rope followed, slithering down.
now all we have is constellations.
all we have is moon fragments and
bird islands and my hair flying
like a compass, like a shining battle flag.
i can't smell land for miles
and i am not afraid.
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC
The description of my affliction grasps the friction of a worthy depiction to my addiction in a position feeling the infliction of my minds worst prediction..
Unleashed skeletons distinguished in the flight of pelicans severing the embellishing of savored intelligence longing for sweet repentance revealing relief that goes the distance..
Searching for clarity that never ending morality my mind takes on high hilarity in the crushed arms of polarity assembling the modularity of my brain screws in chastity releasing all of the bottled-in charity of my restless audacity...
As all that's buried beneath takes turn within my rocky caverns that burn I release my tactiturn of the aches and pains the spurn I've been able to learn bounty of my earn comes to term as I yearn for freedom of silent concern if I can disinfect this germ like cleansing the embodiment of the smoked sherm I will be clear of the uncoiled fern slithering about as a pristine worm..
Deeply inside my head I've swum like the graceful swan in the pond that I come to grow fond classified the demimond upon no formed bond twisting my thoughts my top has spun uncontrollably making me dumb my darkest secrets tucked in the gun behind the chamber of obligated fun partaking of the glazeless bun that's so scrumptious to my tum tum I can never find riddance playing the war drum but if I fail now my utterance is done now if all coincide with my tone I may finally speak out and be gone...
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 3:21 PM UTC
Sleep diffuses me.
I am unwrapped, unbodied, uncoiled.
Behind shut lids there are endless sights to see.
Time extends her fingers.
Infinity becomes one.
The taste of water lingers.
Kilometer poles unravel.
My pulse stretches with harmony into silence.
I forget the distance of my travel.
I let the shadows drown me without defiance.
Night's blanket shelters me tenderly.
I sink deeper.
There is scarcely a bliss comparable
to the bliss of (a sleep)er.
Apr 13, 2013
Apr 13, 2013 at 5:04 AM UTC
effortless branch) cinnamon skinned lovers
crisp the night leaves(
winding path stricken moon spit
caving shadow light lady of white haloed perfections
we walk stepping on
cool drunk earth
i,ve uncoiled muscle wreathed limbs
to pluck your hollow cords; make a melody unmeasured
(in a death littered valley
i made a song of you)
May 26, 2010
May 26, 2010 at 12:55 PM UTC
*how a glutton hearty turns a hermit lean
a bully back thumping to a sage hand folded
unresting motor mouth to an understanding silent
busy brain frenzied to a deep contemplation calm
mentality moronic sick to a pool placid of balm
springy intent violent to a relaxed peace uncoiled
hates grey many undefined to one love united
mind monkeys warring to peaceful doves flying
a black heart fissured now encompassing all open
O divinity fill me till I'm nothing of here anymore!*
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
I could and would want,
if what is behind me is truly nothing,
if these words stop lying and untangle me,
to fall backward, away from
this circle of attempt.
But then (God) how deep I would fall!
without meaning, inside coiling time.
So again I find myself having to try,
writing helplessly
another repetition.
Just the act is enough (for a while, uncoiled).
But it’s not enough. What can I do?
My written bursts are always
muted in some kind of murk
or otherwise obscuring clarity,
and they press their beautifully soiled hands
against concrete windows,
knowing they will (and must) stay
for another while, at least,
tearfully inside.
The beginning of it is a slow
burdensome churn to widen cracks.
The rest is a ritual for the politely deranged:
******* what little air seeps out of the real,
chafing what little skin I have
(all of which is a little fearful)
with what few rays of medicine light
are handed to me across the cracks
from the real.
It is a ritual (in essence)
to unstifle the strayed confusion I impart
to the in-between two childs,
who blurry, alone, and accepting, fly together
in the midst of this ever-widening green field.
“We should go back to our home
on top of an overturned dust bin,
where I can toss sand in the air and laugh
because I don’t care to know beyond,”
I hear her say to the other.
I imagine my love as this child,
make the hidden screen in front of her past
young eyes coalesce gently
into this hidden now-and-everything.
I see you collect rocks safely
into your pink-striped shirt
as dirt stains your purple pants.
The color of your young hair is the same
it was when I saw it reflected in the
Tyrrhenian, before we reached our ripped end
and you made me fall backward,
somersaulting with eyes closed in sickness
toward the sun we saw that day,
in the garden we agreed was perfect.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:07 PM UTC
Waiting for you,
Yes you!
To toss me a stanza,
Feed me your lines,
Give a starter, an appetizer,
An antipasti,
A few morso's please,
To complete a meal.
So we make this connection
Permanent and when we break
Such being the course of all
Uncoiled, unoiled machines,
We will look back and say,
It was the best poetry of my life,
For two made three
The most fantastic words...
Unto one, into one, one.
So send me your pregnant,
half born, song with no lyrical end,
That won't complete themselves.
Titles in search of body,
Touch me in places,
That only you can provide
A path, a travelogue,
So I visit, and show you places,
You missed!
Send me those lost bereft ones,
Yearning not for freedom,
But creation itself!
Let us collaborate,
And make a marker's mark,
That cannot be auto corrected,
Since the morrow's daylight will
Bring its inception,
A new name, a new poem,
That will be added to the global
Dictionary.
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 8:14 AM UTC
you are a ray of light
in a world bathed in shadow
the double rainbow
of luminescent colour
as the moments of memory
fade into distant shallows.
you are the uncoiled mind
the evaporation of tears
the shades of opulent grey
and the world I leave behind.
still.
bent.
but not broken
the torments of youth
of love lost
and the quickening
of years
left to ponder
the unspoken.
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 11:49 PM UTC
Bestowed whispers abound
wisping against softness;
an alluvium flows in abated
breaths, crashing into dreams
awaiting uttered sighs;
aching to taste prurience rage
as tongue besieges pout
of want, awakening soul;
melding into silky fragility
gliding across masculinities
plain, caressing in tender
fingertip forages as I'm
consumed within his essence...uncoiled
Jun 14, 2012
Jun 14, 2012 at 2:22 AM UTC
His hand lightly floats above her back,
Seeming still to the rest of his moving body,
Tips of fingers gently touch, stroke,
her bare skin.
She dances closer,
They move to her hips fit perfectly along her warm flanks,
hip bones protruding under her thin dress.
Shadows tremble across the ceiling,
together they move bathed in green light,
Red on closed eyes and open mouths from which the sounds crash into music before them,
Yellow illuminated empty bags strung on the wall,
and baby christmas lights flash above their heads.
The shirtless drummer slams the beat, pulsing through the wires out the speakers into waiting ears,
gushing,
like a hose whose knot is suddenly uncoiled,
as his super-sized slushy melts.
Big boots bang the floor,
arms pump,
she wails into the microphone.
Through throngs of laughter, body heat and cigarette smoke outside the door, hidden in the darkness the saturates the parking lot,
hunkers a ***** truck.
Mud splatters like exploded glow sticks.
What are you sitting on?
Bass Nectar throbs into the seats,
is absorbed into the tires,
one window is open a crack.
Inhale. Inhale. Again. Again. Exhale.
Still, through the smoke, and the ***** windshield,
the stars still glow.
Dance with me?
No.
Let me play with your hair.
No.
It's mine.
Aug 31, 2010
Aug 31, 2010 at 9:33 PM UTC
you uncoiled my winces
with your aching summer breath
desire coursed vivid thru my veins
like the diamond sparkle of dawn-light
we intertwined & you attached yourself to my soul
& when you watched me, i felt seen
--a flower blooming in the basket
on your windowsill in the teeming light
my passion dissolved the disquietude
more simply, you set me free
you rearranged me
you dismantled me
& when i revealed myself to myself
in a swirling mirrored vertigo
i was drenched & purged on the altar
& now the emptiness is the consolation
i carry like a dream in my hands
the silence between us the only refuge
then the rains came in june
& bludgeoned the sky
it groans in despair
my chest doesn't burn anymore
it feels more like a bruise
& i linger among the futility
& wind-ripped flower petals
outside your shuttered window
like a frigid dancer on the brink
of nihilistic oblivion grasping
only for the bottom
my guilt does all of the thinking
in the wasting light
& the last note of your goodbye
barely greets me long-forgotten
from the dim shore--
one last regret--
another secret kept from me.
Jun 28, 2021
Jun 28, 2021 at 10:15 PM UTC
You know...
I had sat in bed the other night.
And weighed both pro and con to mortal plight.
Truth be told, there's no pro in sight.
No more patience for mortal tripe,
Unsure of pleasure in afternoon delight.
Nor subtle sailing of morning kite.
I just deemed true to see the world,
Give one last chance to love unfurled.
In dawns light, beautiful curls, surprised.
Brisk, beach and bale unspoiled,
The love of a woman, yet uncoiled.
-
Truth is,
I want,
To die.
N.H.
Jul 18, 2013
Jul 18, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
Swirling serpentine
Hypnotizing hood uncoiled
A deadly striker
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 10:12 AM UTC
.Times fly--Leaving calculating clocks behind.Tell me sir,What did you think you'd find?Hour by hourThe old man's losing his mind.After breaking every bone in the butterfly,No persuasion remained in his muddy blue eye.The ruddy questions grew from who, how, or why.He gave no solace after removing its' wing,Claims he just wanted to hear the bird sing.Then he removed each leg one by one--And he watched it flopping in the morning sun.Then he kissed his wifeThat's been dead for five years.He wiped away all of her falling tears.He asked politely if he could have this one dance,And he held out his hand, then he peed his pants--The demons made their way, screeching through his brain.The butterfly laid there, could use a little a pill for pain.Still, the old man stared as his life went down the drain.Then he seen two human-sized butterflies--Uncoiled their' fuzzy tongues and they poked out both his eyes.They broke the mans' legs and then they snapped his back.The old man died of a massive heart attack...I never believed the old man that day,Until he up and flew away--(singing...)"We don't need no education. We don't need no...""Are you feeling O.K.?...Time to go. (beep, beep) Time to go...Are you..."Is there anybody out there?"
Feb 20, 2010
Feb 20, 2010 at 10:54 PM UTC
There are no lights after sunsets
no small talks, no masquerades,
no wavy lights pretending,
no hazy smokes, no darkness.
everything circling reality.
with echoing laughter at night
once slaughtered sights of sleep
undressed the veil, unveiling horns
I was walking in the dark to deep
-there I lost my wings, and fell
for once, we are one in the dark
in memories too soon forgotten
no vivid sights, but echoes
to the heart or to the soul
inside our small earth, enveloping
the night, once innocent
with the dawning of every soul
once a place of redemption
now with fire burning beatings
of hearts unwinged uncoiled.
and our laughters kept going
like a duet of curses in the air,
a song of the world, of reality
of the unweaving of the soul
once masked, now true.
Jun 30, 2016
Jun 30, 2016 at 3:45 AM UTC