"unctuous" poems
Betwixt the shrub and hubabubb
'neath bracken's shadowed scowl
came a Wren pop-hopping when
arrested by a yowl
He spied another grovely bird
chattering with the gloom
realising it had been observed
it screeked with spittled spume
*Stay back, stay back
alack, alack
I've nothing left to give
and should you shake the life from me
unhappy you shall live*
Like him the grovely had a one leg
and too the veshy eye
and when he flexed his deeker wings
he knew this bird must die.
The unctuous Wren popped back and forth
as did the groveley bird
and there they stood 'twix shrub and earth
exchanging not a word.
Just this once I'll let you go
announced the cautious Wren
he turned his fractious beak to blow
and was never seen again.
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
**A lecherous
demeanor burnt
the tongue,
like cheesy solicitations in
antagonistic ruminations of
ventured conjecture, churning
sputtered calculations,
a tactile exercise
in the biting tang of
eviscerating maceration
regurgitating bitter sediment,
unctuous residue
slid down the throat,
the aftertaste remained
long after it was digested**
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 8:08 PM UTC
There is this idea, this feeling you say:
A revelation of profound compassion
Riddled with crippling paramount tribulation
Dribbling with drops of pontification.
Thoughtfully and yet aimlessly kicking
Unctuously vacuous presumptions. Promising,
Eventually, to unveil brick by brick
This facade someday and assure me
The imprisoning edifice, with which you keep
Under lock and key, will be effaced
And naked, soon, someday in front of me.
Yet, here another day passes.
From curbside to manhole, up sidewalks and across gravel grit.
Then a squib toward onlookers window shopping
Glaring down at me as both they and you listen
To my dissonant and hollow caterwaul.
CLING, CLANG, BANG! Look at me I'm just a can!
Crumpled and malleable, a thin sheet of five cent aluminum;
Recyclable, reusable, just a means to a mans end.
Ah! But I am not what you think I am:
Within, a bountiful boisterous bloom, unravels
The arid breath of lies and procrastination you exhume.
Your insipid words fall vapidly in my mind like corroded rust
Gently drifting onto a lapping lake.
They are an erroneous ear infection boring my wits
And dulling my thoughts, a waste of time.
All of it bottled, canned, and manufactured
From within your ******** emporium.
Keep your bricks and mortar, think they retain your unctuous pride
While this time, for once, I kick the can curbside.
Jan 26, 2013
Jan 26, 2013 at 9:27 AM UTC
a commune back home not hippie
buy 300, no 500 acres great land
in Codroy or misty high hilled Avalon
built great big house wraparound porch
beset by rocking chair by the sea yet
in the woods at end of road all brown dirt
growing gardens, herb and vegetable
pulling weeds but keeping good green ****
brewing beer by own hand
group work but not always group think
friends lovers writers growers givers
all come to stay
making great pots of stew and strange brews
awakening brought far from Peruvian Torch homeland
telling stories all somehow great fables and anecdotes for life and living and love and everything that's good in the long run
at night over bottles on beaches by fires
we worry these are funeral pyres
for our great little social experiment
fear of leaving loving womb
of isolated salt fish by sea commune
real world so crass&brash; an unctuous affair
where here instead guitars, ukes
silly screaming little buddhas recite poems
by gleaming eye fireside
Aug 20, 2014
Aug 20, 2014 at 9:16 AM UTC
Succulent, meaty, ribs falling off the bone and drenched in a velvety, thick, sauce.
“Check please.”
Tender chunks of lobster tail bathed in sweet, drawn, butter.
“Thank you. That will be all.
Heavy, cream-coated, strands of fettuccine accompanied by fresh peas, Speck, and shaved Parmesan.
“I wish I could stay but I can’t.”
Filet. Rare. A veil of Roquefort and sautéed wild mushrooms in a Sauternes reduction.
“It's just not the right time.”
Perfectly seasoned carne asada with a creamy roasted poblano sauce, queso fresco and the cool, half-mooned, sultry innards of a Hass avocado.
“I'll call you tomorrow”
A decadent Kobe burger blanketed in cheeses, caramelized onions, crisp bacon, and a cap of unctuous foie grois.
“But thank you for everything.”
Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.
And you would have me forever.
Jul 17, 2011
Jul 17, 2011 at 4:42 PM UTC
Seeing such said-to-be veracity
made spurious by truer voracity
left me in a downward maudlin spiral
caught in the gravity of pejorative thoughts.
(They were right about you)
Shown to be mendacious and meretricious
with such audacious and ignominious cupidity
that is, apparently, insatiable
by external stimulation.
These words are for thee.
(They were right about you)
A
Mistress of Verisimilitude
Sorceress of Perdition
Goddess of Rapacity
Nugatory Luddite
Fatuous Epigone
Specious and unctuous Girl
of gratuitous turpitude
These puerile and rather flavorful words
fueled by seemingly insuperable motifs
arranged in a terse, inimical verse
for a rather insipid person
who will likely never even know of them,
and yet;
such sweet felicity.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 2:04 PM UTC
I can see those dandelions
and how they were dancing,
to the serene bliss of wind
whispering,
unctuous promises.
though the dandelions
were confused,
as to why
the wind did that.
I can hear the wind sighed
and blow a gentle soothe
to those dandelions.
I asked,
why would they fall
for the ingratiating wind?
oh, dear.
how ghost-quiet it tasted?
as I put the question mark
back at the wind,
and hold those flowers
to keep their hearts save.
the wind
stopped blowing at last,
leaving every petal on their own
without lies,
without anymore promises.
all I can hear now is
the beautiful chorus of content
filling up as the wind,
replacing it.
I let these dandelions
plant theirselves
and grow,
without relying
on the whispering wind.
Dec 10, 2016
Dec 10, 2016 at 11:36 AM UTC
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like ****** weregeld on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold, scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick
If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Won the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club
If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he bangs the lectern for a war,
That glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and smoke
Dec 7, 2018
Dec 7, 2018 at 1:17 PM UTC
this dead city is alive with stray cats and missing person fliers, but the locals are dancing
on hardwood floors and [ ferocious yellow drums ] are striking the black-most
and the back-most star, sinks
it's cleat into
banished sunrise
with No End
in Sight !
the pride of most eyes,
too blind
to witness the free
oblivious,
As corn-fed black holes
swallowing the wisdom of crowds... as the unctuous clouds
of our dismay
are ever, ever at play; where the thin pool thickens.
where our blown bubbles French with thick tongues... our open lips
rebuffed to an invisible sheen.
the running of the Bulls is always an Alcatraz in a Free Will.
we dip into shallow cathedrals
where our Mercies slip through
nausea and dank
and Islands
of Less Ocean... where
The weakest Archipelago
In a Severed Chain
Of Dreamt
Events
are you
Jun 14, 2013
Jun 14, 2013 at 11:44 AM UTC
Unburied
tomorrow
from Christian metanarratives
the mid-winter solstice.
December 21;
the shortest day
over the longest night.
Two lovers
are by the Channel
divided
to different beds
to tongue tastes
to timed beats
to unfamiliar scents
as Yuletide days
burn twelfths to gray ash;
their bodies
are sea
cleaved.
Come!
cross the water
and release
with lively touch
tresses thick
and winter's dew,
unctuous upon the crag,
the timely solar orb
to stir the frozen ground
on our rocky shelves
and chopped bowels.
On 25th,
Christ's star is risen:
the king's light dispersed
in lengthening days
in opened flesh
in loosening chords untied
in sinews gnawed through
in desire's wanting hotly flayed!
60 seconds were daily added,
to when
in the 100 Year Gallery,
love to know,
would in solstice
ultimately lay.
For now as then,
our emboldened play
in days delayed
has been
love's lacerating torment!
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 12:05 AM UTC
If I had not met the red-haired boy whose father
had broken a leg parachuting into Provence
to join the resistance in the final stage of the war
and so had been killed there as the Germans were moving north
out of Italy and if the friend who was with him
as he was dying had not had an elder brother
who also died young quite differently in peacetime
leaving two children one of them with bad health
who had been kept out of school for a whole year by an illness
and if I had written anything else at the top
of the examination form where it said college
of your choice or if the questions that day had been
put differently and if a young woman in Kittanning
had not taught my father to drive at the age of twenty
so that he got the job with the pastor of the big church
in Pittsburgh where my mother was working and if
my mother had not lost both parents when she was a child
so that she had to go to her grandmother's in Pittsburgh
I would not have found myself on an iron cot
with my head by the fireplace of a stone farmhouse
that had stood empty since some time before I was born
I would not have traveled so far to lie shivering
with fever though I was wrapped in everything in the house
nor have watched the unctuous doctor hold up his needle
at the window in the rain light of October
I would not have seen through the cracked pane the darkening
valley and the river sliding past the amber mountains
nor have wakened hearing plums fall in the small hour
thinking I knew where I was as I heard them fall
1.8k
Verily the exordium told anent a beauty engirdled in her fedora
soliciting those whoever descried her into her mere servile admirer
eight trenchant tinctures upon her body invigorate like a cadenza
I dare not to contradict the verity that I am beguiled afore her
whilst the snain distilled faintly enwreathed her in unctuous silk
concordantly she devote herself earnestly to the impeccable rain
that emanate her fragile poetry with prestidigitation in a whisk
forsooth she is but the vernacular sobriquet to the soul of the rain
recall me otherwhile during the rainstorm champagne did coerce
and the sunset's glass of wine exude her ingratiating persona
like a myriad of aphrodisiac summarized in a single verse
when harmony and lyrics danced in the crepuscular crescendo
all of that needed to be enunciated is it is you
do not harshly let me be thy unrequited dilettante
Jul 15, 2013
Jul 15, 2013 at 4:27 AM UTC
Muriel, when our eyes first met and your name rolled off my tongue with a fine ring,
felt, I was charged with your sun-filled-sea-radiance from inside out
just the cadence of a name has an unctuous something! I've never known that before,
just saying it evocatively few times, I felt touching your heart; a golden thread did bind us then.
Jul 12, 2013
Jul 12, 2013 at 10:39 AM UTC
Pupils contract, in protection, from the onslaught of light
which peels off colours out of the abyss,
shedding sight, on blackness,
the contours of the dream
are beautiful
and falling.
I, a curious position in space, attempt to relate here,
whilst all is being swallowed, and swirled,
in the belly of the Goddess,
whom engineers
faultlessly,
as we
fall.
Monkeys driven by meaning, are strangling reality,
effulgent as she is, near, unctuous and yielding,
a shame, that vision is not seeing,
and seeing is believing,
and god is dead,
and science
is a net
holding
frailty.
Behind the mist of morning, at the waters edge,
in the brimming beams of sunlight,
the percolating mountains,
the stretch of land,
the capsule of
atmosphere,
here:
Is the unknown, and unknowable, the black truth,
we tremble before, afraid of the death
it pours over our living ******
Yet what is enlightenment, but the ability
to see in the dark, and what is the dark
but the absolute liberating force,
the annihilating edge,
obliterative.
And what is nothing,
but everything.
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 9:56 PM UTC
Easy dreams are counterfeit,
evidence of lost traces,
steps embossed in faith
like footprints in red snow.
Diluted memories,
viscously mixed with regrets.
Unctuous juice of unwound thoughts,
torturing my lonely brain.
Now transforming
unpleasant sights.
Becoming marvellous
dreams and hopes,
turning ache into utopia.
I'm alone in this emerald land,
locked in a plastic paradise,
singing my love's oneiric tune,
but I need to understand;
heaven is real,
only when shared...
Aug 1, 2013
Aug 1, 2013 at 1:27 AM UTC
Ever snorted *******
I watched some partiers snort ******* last night,
in a dark, Manhattan nightclub corner celebration.
But I’ve never crossed that line. The white line.
When offered some, with unctuous camaraderie,
I shrugged and said, “No, sorry, I’m allergic.”
What are you supposed to say, “Crack is whack,”
or “I prefer my coke with *** and ice?”
The white line. I don’t cross the line.
It’s not the first time, of course, I saw more drugs
in high school than I have at Yale. I’ve mostly seen
“study drugs,” there, like provigil, adderall and alza (concerta).
Do they give students an advantage? I don’t know, maybe.
Call me a boxcut or a squarepants, but my parents are doctors,
and I just don’t cross those lines - those little white lines.
May 10, 2023
May 10, 2023 at 7:51 PM UTC
Das Fuehrer gefüllt mit Flöte.
Listening 2 yawns,
meditating on medication,
lisping a cry to Das Führer,
I proffer a pray,
im morgen Früh, im morgen Führer,
im morgen nah; hören Sie mich.
Not 4 pleasure yearning 4 unright
Unctuous crimes. Not with U.
Not with boast (yet not with hate 2).
Hating the bath water with the babe
as it bashes Reaper's polemic
hellfire falling out of window;
Still me, in that kindness enters
my home, bowing cuz the doorway is 2 large.
Guiding in black ink,
writing a way
out of loyalties mouth,
out of sclerotic liver,
and contumacious throat.
I tongue an act, a play,
staying guilty in U,
saying guilty in Us.
Lemmings encouraged to revolt,
Offending in U,
Rejoicing only in Us.
Witness our joy, that Xanex protects
against dull moments, forgetting Us,
bland blessings rightly
Surrounded by Yawn's shield.
Feb 15, 2013
Feb 15, 2013 at 9:06 PM UTC
Your love is black ice
Unctuous, greedy, slippery, treacherous
Seductive, alluring
The duplicitous song of the siren.
You are as the ancient oak
Whose once vital branches have withered
Into gnarled, beckoning husks
Ever reaching, never grasping.
And still I hunger.
To my shame I yearn.
I eat your dirt with the impetuousness of the dying.
And with trembling hands wipe away the maggots.
More the fool am I
For allowing the shadows to lengthen
Awaiting the day your siren song
Delivers its unspoken promise.
Ever listening for the soughing wind
To blow through your wizened leaves
To shimmy up your sturdy trunk
And carry you back to me.
But your branches are black with decay. Desiccated from neglect.
And my ears have forgotten how to hear your voice.
Accompanied only by the echoes of a dream
That has long since faded.
Feb 9, 2012
Feb 9, 2012 at 3:33 AM UTC
Of course we’re born sad little creatures!
To be born, we had to have the picture
broken & bursted—for, being born, we’re
fragments of it. (But not just us born—all
of it that’s born…all of it’s fragments.)
Us, though, we found out about the pieces
(and that we’re them) so shock-hearted and
weary-eyed we joggle ourselves around,
and waggle and babble (because we can move
and talk to the other pieces, like you) in the
sedulous task of trying to see what picture we all
formed before we were born and to see
if we can’t form it again while born and living.
And, also, inexorably, to see like fateless
naked goggling chicken-children what part
we have—is it a sun’s ray, a cloud’s feather, a
grass blade, or is it just the indistinguishable
shade of unctuous bole that’s laid there
almost smeared in between? I’m not quite sure,
our tabs seem flexible enough, and to add
we’re whimsy little interlockers, so no wonder
we’ve been going on billions of years now.
At this point it’s probably give-up or never-end,
and both options, frankly, seem quite abominable.
I wonder if that’s what it says on the box,
right above “meant for children” and “small
parts dangerous choking hazard.” But the
question is what to do when you’ve realized a
piece has been missing, always been missing,
and probably more. (Oh, and for after, you can
ask if it was never put there in the first place,
and why)—do you just imagine, then? I mean,
just that—just imagine the whole thing, after all
the fuss been going on to hold hands and make it out?
I’m telling you, I bet the sucker is something else
entirely, like something I don’t even know what,
but different—crazy different, I bet. And it’s
probably why they didn’t want to include it,
those ponzies—we wouldn’t choke on that one.
Not that piece. Still, though, I hope it says on the box.
I hope it at least tells you something on the box.
Wait, where’s the box? What box?
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 7:32 PM UTC
More of a man at 20 than at 22
All of the passages about One, there were no others
Regressing into sin, no art without misery
That old cliche, right? Right.
I read somewhere that he wanted to be a writer
He wanted to be a great writer, Remembered
Taking, making great sacrifices for art
Alcohol, Benzedrine, Isolation
Checkmate, One and Two and Three
The night (this night) will be my Desolation Peak
For now,
Looking back through the pages
Who exists in this manuscript?
Who is Marg?
Who is Sil?
Won’t you please tell me?
Won’t you come fill my Head. I’m not asking
Won’t you come fill my bed?
So I need not pretend
Were it that I could let you in
Save for those rare times when everyone appears not unctuous
To my uneasy usurious eyes
In an act of desperate atavism I return to the roots,
To the past, to the Grass,
(Looking)
To the glass
Only momentarily half empty
Before it is refilled
Where will we find our answers honey?
When will we cease to believe this positive psychology ********
You don’t need to be happy
You don’t need to be comfortable
You need to Mean
to have
Meaning
to create a legacy
Not shrouded in shame
and neglect
and fear
It doesn’t have to be the same
New city, new hope, new name
Erase the stain with pen and paper
Evoke change
See the world through baby blue eyes
The bucolic beauty brilliantly beats and beads down, blooming
Bright flowers in early mildew sunlight
Or Big Sur - view from the mountains
Or the moon
Soon my love, soon
Swoon, sweetly suggest
The sight of a lover’s supple *******
And her name like poetry on your soft still whispering lips
Tantalizing and tickling tongues
Tickling and tucking shyly
Soft skin swimming in hushed tones, brushed bones and quiet sighs
Wide eyed, clenching belies
The beginning and the end of far more
Jul 29, 2014
Jul 29, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
pumice
peat
mulch
humus
leaf mold
clod
loam: a rich, friable soil containing a relatively equal mixture of sand and silt and a somewhat smaller proportion of clay.
marl: Geology. a friable earthy deposit consisting of clay and calcium carbonate, used especially as a fertilizer for soils deficient in lime.
argil: clay, especially potter's clay.
bole:
noun
1.
any of a variety of soft, unctuous clays of various colors, used as pigments.
2.
a medium red-brown color made from such clay.
clutch
kaolin
loess: a loamy deposit formed by wind, usually yellowish and calcareous, common in the Mississippi Valley and in Europe and Asia.
slip
till: a stiff clay, a glacial drift of clay, sand, gravel, and boulders
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 1:01 PM UTC
(with apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning)
Arrogant
Book Soldier
Conceited
Con Artist
Covetous
Cunning
Deceitful
Disingenuous
Egoist
Egregious
Envious
Entitled
Evil
Haughty
Hypocritical
Ignominious
Immoral
Jealous
Jumped Up
Machiavellian
Martinet
Mendacious
Nit Picky
Obsessed
Peck Sniff
Perfidious
Persnickety
Pompous
Popinjay
Predatory
****
Rapacious
Regimental
Sanctimonious
Self Important
Shylock
Smarmy
Sophist
Supercilious
Unctuous
Unethical
Vile
Vicious
Zealot
ljm
Mar 31, 2017
Mar 31, 2017 at 1:52 PM UTC
*love
is on a heart shaped pedestal
sometimes the first casualty of desire
at the mercy of a thousand transgressions
from ticks and triggers
of dark labyrinths primal
and subtle torments of the soul
body language comes sprightly
from chaotic corridors
a reckless black sea
all crossed arms
eye roles of refusal
strategies of power
proclamations of will
and pretty please poisons
while
front stabbers anguish over back stabbers anguished
and
the strong cherish the weak
impelled to rescue
as if delicate mewing kittens
from desolations cold blade
and
abandonments slow violence
then to reconcile
hearts sooty overcast moon
love is a two way street
and i move on to hold precious you
in pain stricken arms
she
my shelter
in a cruel world
of fire and ice
oh to feel her kisses
after blood and thunder
to adore heart breaks mend
to dispel tenderly, dark clouds
as sun sets a new
and no matter the pain
to forgive everything
yet limping still
gall
a slow melting snow
that we may caress each other
the only
kindness and soft place to fall
we may ever know
seeking deliverance
in each other's
dark musty warmth
to make up
in a tangle of tears,
wet kisses
unctuous heated breath
and
tender mercies
because
love is
on a heart shaped pedestal*
Oct 7, 2017
Oct 7, 2017 at 12:14 PM UTC
If Wars were Subject
to Copyright
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then candidates would have to pay a fee
Each time they appeal to the glorious past
When standing for the election, the proceeds
To fall like ****** manna on the dead
Who can never cash the checks anyway
If wars were subject to a copyright -
Then Hollywood movies should pay their dues
Whenever a bold-scripted commando,
Body-waxed muscles glistening with makeup,
Advances up Hamburger-Helper Hill
With a patriotic song on his lipstick
If wars were subject to a copyright –
The generals’ memoirs, the admirals’, too,
Would pay to lighten the blighted young lives
Of soul-fragmented lads whose pain and blood
Gave the air-conditioned another star
And unctuous applause at the officers’ club
If wars were subject to a copyright -
The President would have to pay his bill
Each time he banged the lectern for a war,
The glorious dux bellorum dux-ing
From the rear, while a squadron of pigs fly
Above, powered by pixie-dust and dreams
Nov 10, 2017
Nov 10, 2017 at 5:10 PM UTC
The world is a rogue wave in an otherwise tranquil cacophony.
Like porridge in a squeaky door hinge too sleepy to be orange.
The jawbone of an *** at rest on a window sill. next to a Pi.
The world, a smoldering flume of genius, unbridled, by and by.
a continuous ravine of asymmetrical adoration.
as we inhabit the foreign,
native to Fate.
We sing the body eclectic in a percolating rue of an infinite gumbo.
Like Venice, with Florence in its teeth. our pompadours-
shameless for sport.
The heart of a battle trout in a river of Trojan lures are We!
dangling from a current as swift as any eventuality.
An upstream vagabond of illustrious toil in the wee hours. Common
as weevils in a Gin. sweetening the palate of an unctuous ablution.
sleeping through the good parts
our eyes on spikes
in the dark.
Sep 10, 2019
Sep 10, 2019 at 11:00 PM UTC