"undoes" poems
Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.
Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant *****
Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.
Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.
Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
******* on your own child-bed.
Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes),
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.
Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.
Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.
Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.
11.7k
V.B. Wigglesworth wakes at noon,
Washes, shaves and very soon
Is at the lab; he reads his mail,
Swings a tadpole by the tail,
Undoes his coat, removes his hat,
Dips a spider in a vat
Of alkaline, phones the press,
Tells them he is F.R.S.,
Subdivides six protocells,
Kills a rat by ringing bells,
Writes a treatise, edits two
Symposia on "Will man do?,"
Gives a lecture, audits three,
Has the ***** club in for tea,
Pensions off an ageing spore,
Cracks a test tube, takes some pure
Science and applies it, finds,
His hat, adjusts it, pulls the blinds,
Instructs the jellyfish to spawn,
And, by one o'clock, is gone.
8.5k
1
He'd love her
and then the coldness
of marriage took love
away from him
and the coldness turned into suspicion
and then into an obsession:
and she was an inconvenience
he murdered her a Friday
night
suffocated her with her pillows
it was easy;
like Othello did
but she was no Desdemona;
and he heard her whisper with her last breath:
"I'll have your eyes"
he cut her up in manageable parts,
and buried her below the floorboards
in the study
2
It is a year later
and he is at the computer
and far below lies parts of his wife
but now his wife is smiling
she's on screen
smiling like a Greek Goddess
and he sits transfixed
and she says:
*"You are Oedipus, darling -
I will have your eyes"*
She is smiling
He is willing
Beside the printer are paperclips
He undoes two
She beckons; she smiles
and she whispers
that same deathbed whisper:
"I'll have your eyes"
And he is Oedipus
Just paperclips will do
He gouges one eye out
And he gouges the other too
It is easy
She lies deep below
below the floorboards;
She need whisper no longer
And he is become Oedipus,
eyes gouged,
blind like the Greek Homer
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 7:34 PM UTC
When I force frozen
meat apart before
it’s had time to thaw
it injures and tears
where the ice clings
too tightly.
The meat no longer
whole, scatters into
broken bones and
bleeding fragments.
Your absence undoes
me like this not all at
once, but with a quiet
rip, where we once
held each other too
close to separate
without breaking.
Jul 23, 2025
Jul 23, 2025 at 12:04 AM UTC
I wish sometimes I was a man of music.
I see the right side of a tune sometimes and my body seems to feel rythm. My hands and fingers slide over imaginary guitar strings and invisible ivory keys.
My ears vacuum up the sounds of beautiful music, from instruments to midnight breezes.
From simple words to metaphors and phrases.
It seems sometimes my inspiration comes from places that ears perceive as open spaces.
My heart beats to stake it's claim, to find its rythm in a vast world of sounds. A world intricately detailed and expressive. That not only whispers but shouts, that bursts out of the spheres and penetrates the cosmos with sound.
A world as grand and explosive as this, that overflows and spills onto us. Into us, even.
A world like this and my heart beats. To find a heart beating like it's own.
They seem to sound the same, but ears that know the difference can always hear it. whether loud or subtle.
I wish sometimes I was a man of music. Because poems can't seem to write the way my heart beats...
but it does help one to realize the difference, between "beats for" and "beats with."
My heart used to believe it was beating to find some tempo smooth as itself.
But it was beating in tune with someone else's tempo. it was beating with someone who hadn't been heard yet.
I wished I was a man of music, but to be honest, I feel poetry is the only way to properly say that sounds can become trapped. Like an image can be captured, sound is trapped in the wind, and whispered on to the world.
If my heart beats, it is flown on the wind.
If your heart beats, it is flown to the moon and back.
I heard your heart beating some long time ago. When we could hear those things. So my heart started beating in tune.
To find your heart, and let it fly me to the moon.
If I was a man of music, I'd have made a poem to sing to the wind. And it would have drawn you towards me.
But I'm a man of poetry, and all I recall of finding you and trying, was imagining a sound I heard in a dream.
Singing in a spotlight to a single beating heart in an empty auditorium. She stood there strumming upon rays of light, and humming vibrations to the tempo of her heart beat. Mine couldn't help but keep the momentum, but feel the rythm and accept her composure.
Now I hear the same, every time your hands touch me, and your lips whistle melodies into my mind. Things you say get stuck on replay like songs or broken records.
Things we do become sewn into vinyl, as the needle undoes our threads and leaves us naked.
Leaves us whisping through the air, and when the record turns off. You're stuck to me, stuck in my head like strands of smoke from a candle, tangled and gliding into each other.
In other words,
I was never looking for just anybody.
In other words,
I was looking for someone to fly me away, to a place where we already existed together.
In other words,
Not a day goes by that you haven't flown me to the moon.
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 8:25 PM UTC
In the lazy
late afternoon light
when everything seems dreamlike
she comes to me.
Smiling coyly she undoes a clasp,
her robe slips off the shoulder.
I watch the fabric water like
flow over her body.
Hanging on her *******
heavy with the ripeness of youth,
it pauses
then slips over her ***** brown *******
One bouncing, then the other.
Following her curves,
past the hollow of her navel...
exposing her crowning glory,
her woman's furry triangle
so warm and moist and welcoming.
Like an admiring hand,
the falling cloth
traces the wonderful curve of her ***
and down her long, smooth legs
to pool languidly at her feet.
She undoes her dark hair
shakes her head and lets it fall.
In all her glory she stands before me
eyeing me hungrily...
No seducer but prey am I.
Feb 6, 2018
Feb 6, 2018 at 9:22 AM UTC
Face like the button on my shirt he undoes with his teeth.
Autumn shortly, middle of the week
Your voice a charming, warm day at the beach.
His eyes chocolate, melting treat-
yet cool to the core
I bet your sugar tastes so sweet.
Sep 12, 2014
Sep 12, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
Tonight would not bridge
Two ordinary days.
Her idea would ignite
His imagination and mould
From the raw clay a vision
Through the churning heavens.
The ballet crafting their bodies
Scene through scene,
She whispers,
He listens,
They lay, as spoons often do.
A last glance over
The flowers and the candle,
Out the window through
The rain, wind, and thunder
Lighting their creation’s sight.
Chasing her through the forest,
She lets him, almost catch her.
Dancing themselves into vines
In a canopy hidden from the wind’s
Muffled thunder.
There, in their haven lush,
Ensnaring so deeply, too soon.
And away he turns himself to stone.
Twisting too tight around
The indifferent mountainous statue,
She snaps herself
And by the time he’s felt it,
Soft enough to turn and see-
See another statue’s backside,
Cold clay remolding into stone.
He stretches himself thin to reach,
Her sepulchral touch lays him out.
She sits, straddles, stares him down,
The lightning cracks behind her eyes,
Splitting her stone heart
Clean through flame,
Incinerating their quiet canopy,
Rising into the storm.
Chasing her through the fire,
She lets him, fan the flames.
Two dancers' violent rhythm
Raging with every touch, until
A tear, or two,
Undo the flames,
Dropping with the rain all in everything,
They fall, fall, fall
Flooding down the mountain
Rushing through the cracks
Left behind in the stone,
Flowing together a river
Through the trees, out to sea.
As two make one body their own,
The currents churning through.
A spiral sparks the children’s learning,
The whirlpool to the maelstrom
Surging their liquid body up
The column that would
This time reach the storm.
The lightning cracks behind their smiles-
Their love undoes gravity’s condensation.
Drifting,
Through the clouds,
Stars,
In each other’s arms,
The ballet crafting their bodies,
They lay, as spoons often do.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 2:09 AM UTC
The water
in the bath
is quite hot
and soapy
Elaine's mum
has run it
put in her
own bath stuff
Elaine lays
all stretched out
her feet at
the tap end
the water
soapy hot
caresses
her small *******
she hates them
and loves them
they tell her
she's growing
into a
young woman
her childhood
almost gone
they look like
small piglets
drowning there
she muses
she hates it
when at school
in P.E.
when the girls
point at her
look at those
small *******
they tell her
the boy John
whom she likes
at the school
doesn't look
or seem to
but maybe
he does gaze
secretly
she muses
and that thought
undoes her
he looking
mentally
he touching
each of them
how to get
such a thought
out of mind?
she sits up
in the bath
she'll ask him
if he does
when at school
the next day
but she won't
she knows it
but she'll watch
as he talks
of bird's eggs
or new seen
butterflies
where he looks
with his eyes
what beneath
her white blouse
and small bra
bunched up lies.
Nov 29, 2014
Nov 29, 2014 at 1:31 AM UTC
I say:
I want you as a cloud is wanted
Wanting to see it drizzle,
Wanting to get wet, then, let go
I want you with a desire I never had before,
grey, as the swirls of snow
that melt in your belly.
I want you, with half of my willing
With my consciousness in the air
and my feet on a burning plain,
with my eye-lid attached to the lily,
and my soul, made into a wave of broken glass
That undoes,
and does, undoes
and does...
undoes...
I want you like the sea foam is wanted
Wanting to imprison it in my fist,
a fist where storms slip, but it catches the howling
a fist that destroys everything
but can't own anything
I want you as the hurricane wants
to stir the nest on the back of your neck
where your secrets huddle
but in this tremulous current
I'm leaving the flesh, I'm leaving the blood
Not the heart
For I see how it sets on fire what it pleases
It undoes, and does
undoes and does
undoes...
You are water
You are salt
You are river
You are sea
You are chalk
White pond on the skin
solemn oath of love
But who are we trying to fool?
Who's gonna carry the dead on the hands?
Who's gonna bear a winter all year?
Who's gonna blink during the summer?
Maybe tomorrow, it's gonna be me
So, for today,
I'm gonna have to say no.
You say:
"What about next wednesday?"
Maybe next wednesday.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 8:03 PM UTC
My father, he always has so much to say,
you know.
He loves weddings.
My daughter,
yes,
she’s always been so smart,
and we’re so proud of her.
He says it like he knows anything about me.
I nod and smile,
and shrink myself in front of the men.
What is there to do but pretend?
No one needs to know about
the ways that you made me unlovable,
the way I spread my legs,
the way I strike a match.
We don’t talk about it.
It’s cultural values,
or something like that.
Look at the happy couple,
interchangeably
pharmacists, physicists, or physicians.
The groom smiles,
the bride does too,
they’re both so
good.
I sit there
and dream
of it.
A mandap, a
great big white horse.
I would be forcing it,
I knew,
but I wanted them to see me in red.
I wanted to walk
down that aisle alone,
and smile, demurely, smugly –
look what I did.
I got him,
I
wore him down.
I dream like it makes it redeemable,
the things that I’ve done.
How bad is the punishment
if I deviated with best intentions?
We hold onto these tiny ambitions,
the boy
the buffet line
and the bragging rights,
like it undoes the damage.
Oct 28, 2017
Oct 28, 2017 at 10:35 PM UTC
The slipped knot of now into will be
is such a gentle strand,
the braid undoes itself from yesterday
as easily as a garment's clasp,
as easily as abseiling liana.
Can I hold soft
the line?
To not look back
but keep the mountain's imprint
emboldened in the eye
To unknow
the difference from ascent and descent.
O day, o cloud: what do you know
that hasn't been pressed through my palms?
Nov 27, 2012
Nov 27, 2012 at 9:37 PM UTC
Alice is alive and breathing in the resin gilded air. Inside the dream canopy. Fresh ears crafting **** melodies, ripe and crimsony.
Sound will not be my weapon. Mathematics will not be my disclaimer. Open me into the politics of your bathroom monologue, until the numbness of this methodical dialtone unravels the second heart and your tongue wraps the minutes on the bridge of your heaving vowels.
Class undoes no misery. Desperate limited eyes grabbing for other desperate imitating eyes. Sand undoes the fingertips, soldering one insanity to the next.
Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25, 2015 at 10:13 AM UTC
Lying flat in a river bed and covered in sheets of water:
this is where you will live.
Pure, ice-cold springwater flows
around and through, picking clean our bones like a vulture,
taking out the filth that collects like soot in chimneys.
From here only two roads:
To let go or hold on.
The instinct is to deny! hold tight, forever and ever, keep safe,
but you are here to learn the river’s lesson, to follow the flow, to be
carried away and let go.
Die happily, knowing.
Spread like sand
across the hills and gullies
peacefully dispersing
along centuries to form and reform,
learning that there are no endings.
And to know by cycles,
building familiarity, some core knowledge
which undoes the instinct that says “hold on”
and “not yet”
and “fight.”
Instead, become waterlogged.
Give up your boundaries.
This is the only way.
Sep 24, 2018
Sep 24, 2018 at 12:10 AM UTC
the mange of our fuzzy logic is squandered on the imbecile.
and genius is the gene splice of twelve comedies.
a rogue moon in a hooligan.
it jumps the fence and can't jump back. lacking the tool
that undoes the beauty of the obvious.
that quaintly dismisses the Oh ! My ! God !
we cringe in the ether of our ignorance, spooning the villain.
the Mind is the Common Sense Killer....
it dives and triumphs in the acetone conundrum
of our proximity to dissipation.
the bold features of our doldrums
are the perfect ugly perfection
of our flaws.
our love is the rigid agenda of a massacre.
we the people, are the juvenile, sprained wrist of a boggart !
a Fae dreary.
we have our business in the withers of dead horses.
we are well versed
in the tundra tongue of our flat humor.
we assume the rumors are true.
and the tyranny that freed you
is the misery you
love with
and your beautiful
doom
kissing
a
mirror...
a Thing.
Apr 5, 2013
Apr 5, 2013 at 11:45 PM UTC
*the man of light
knows darkness all to well
he possess sacred knowledge
of source
a living experience with in
radiant
and self effulgent
he knows all is permitted
in the acculturated labyrinths of mind
rooted in bias
and incalculable distortions
a hell house ride
constructed of warbled mirrors
Leprechauns gold
an abusement park
of crepuscular
subconscious ethers
and concertized form
on shape shifting sands
creativity gone mad
where time undoes all
its weary inhabitants worn
they are the color of sleep
attaining misguidance
oh the vacuous business
of guided meditations
through azure skies and verdant fields
while the certified uninitiated
whisper
their pale voices against sonorous winds
as if they could lever boulders with broken twigs
stone churches
gothic crosses
temples of man
monoliths to the imaginary
fantastical man god
re-pleat with beard and cock....how quaint
adulations and prostrations
to there man made deity
through myth that binds
group think
other directed
un-individuated individuals
like tribal ants
a world of shattered light
a white knuckle ride
on a spinning mud ball
yet who knows the secret
of the inner light
the illuminated door
the portal through which
Scottie will really beam you up
The man of the mystic light
in a darkened freakish world
is he not an inconvenience
like a mentor to the deaf dumb and blind
he is rarely recognized
almost never believed
the light is not a metaphor
the source that emanates all
although formless and self effulgent
it is not a religion yet all abide with in it
in the dark funnel of conceit
man turns everything into a noun
as if naming is claiming
when what he seeks is beyond
for it is a great dimension of another order
konx om pax
light in extension*
Jan 9, 2017
Jan 9, 2017 at 1:08 PM UTC
You're not civilized until you learn life is too precious to throw it away
Not until you recognize for every good deed done it undoes another .
Being civilized means serving others before you serve yourself
Dec 15, 2021
Dec 15, 2021 at 8:16 PM UTC
On my feet are black moccasins
threaded with runs of bright turquoise
alongside patches of clay orange and dust yellow.
The feet inside grip cool, suede bottoms
to tread on ground still firm,
but pregnant, heavy with rain,
so that the worms lay like fallen soldiers,
victims of a thunderstorm
and scattered on the sidewalk
the way they were that morning
at elementary school
when a boy was squishing them for fun,
and my heart filled with grief for the worms,
whose only crime was trying not to drown.
The rain is a reminder of how poorly
these shoes function when wet,
how they rub my toes
in just the wrong ways,
leaving circular patches of reddened skin
on the outsides of my feet.
The worst blisters I’d ever had,
happened the day my brother and I
were lost in the dense forests of the national park,
and when we finally found the road,
were two miles from home,
and at the very bottom of Everett hill.
Those woods had a cabin by the river,
we only ever found a handful of times.
Our father had warned us
of the homeless drug addicts
who frequented it, which in all reality
were just boozing, pot-smoking teenagers
with an affinity for smashing bottles
and starting fires,
but we were never brave enough
to find out for sure.
And on the banks of that crooked river,
the spring undoes the twisted knots
that winter had created, and washes away
its cold to uncover the relics of autumn’s leaves,
rotting in colors of soupy brown
with tiny pools of grimy rainwater
collected in their palms.
And as I break through the veil of humidity,
to breath air crisp with the scent of fresh, wet earth,
I’m careful to tread lightly,
as to keep clean these moccasins
from their bright turquoises to their dusty yellows.
Oct 27, 2013
Oct 27, 2013 at 9:59 PM UTC
Mathematics of love:
You divided me by zero love,
and it has become infinite......(love)
undo my memory
as the subtraction undoes addition....
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 10:13 AM UTC
**** son, it's late, it's too late.
But he sends her up for him anyways, first over the phone, then up the elevator, then down the hallway
And he welcomes her inside with the smell of hotel sheets.
Sorry for the draft, and he stuffs a towel into the crack below
the door.
She's like a duchess on a throne which is his bed,
and he sits across from her and puts the coffee on to drip as she undoes herself
jewels
dress
hair
which tumbles down her back and it wants to go further but she stops it
He pours them each a cup, it smells of vanilla and faraway places
And he wonders if shes ever been to any of them,
the faraway places,
But only for a short moment does he wonder this,
as she is here to make love to him,
and he scrubs the veneer from his face and
Lets her look at him
for a little while
Before he beckons her into him
And he whispers his secrets in her ear
as she Rocks Back and Forth
in his lap
like a cat or a merry-go-round,
And she makes him feel like a man in love,
Maybe even a married man,
A man with a deep, mad, certain love
that won't keep him awake at night.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 10:29 PM UTC
Our flying West into earlier
cheats the daying.
The earth turns its curve to before,
dipping the sun to below.
The process re-happens,
and undoes.
The risen gets set,
And it's so.....
we un-dawn as we go.
Dec 9, 2012
Dec 9, 2012 at 8:53 AM UTC
I lie not awake
Yet unasleep
In those moments
Caught between
I think I see
But you see not
The Life that could
Have been.
The moon eclipsed
The flag half mast
The wick not
Yet aglow
All the beauty
At but half full
Accepted as enough.
It must be true
That one accept
The half as near
The whole.
For it does not help
To seek the truth,
It undoes
The beauty known.
Thus die the dreams untold.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 8:25 AM UTC
To have all you've known tumble down
You're sole existence starts to drown,
You're watching as you hold your breath
Count to ten and try to forget
Forget your worries and your woes,
Life's unpleasantries, all you know
You know nothing, not any more
You watch the slowly closing door
It's closing right before your eyes
You've lost the keys, there's no sunrise
Closing in, surrounded by dark
Darkness consumes your breaking heart
It beats one less than once before,
You hold it tight and hope for more
Pain you feel is out of this world
Hope that someone undoes the spell
The spiders web that's spun for you,
You're fighting, trying to get to
The place once loved, you thought you knew
Too scared to trust, too scared to move
You're slowly crawling through the dusk
In hope that soon you're good enough,
Enough to walk back to your home
To open arms - the ones once known
© Karen L Hamilton, 2013
Dec 7, 2015
Dec 7, 2015 at 8:05 PM UTC
All Understanding uncovers
ugliness, usury.
Unifying utopians
uncorruptable,
unmoveable.
Dashing Prophets promoted
promiscuous personalities.
Promethus’s powers
persisted
purposelessness.
Do Postmodern proletariats
protest phantoms?
Puckering proudly,
pondering
paraphrases?
If Egyptians engineered
excessive egoists,
Englishmen evolved
ethical
endgames.
Tradition Rules reformed
rednecks, remobilizing,
romanticizing, recursions
rose
remarkably.
If Caesar costumed
cabals crafted carefully,
Christianity calibrated
circumferential
conflicts.
Vigilantism Unveils unlucky
usurper, undoes underachieving,
unemotional, unconsciousness
unlearning
unhumanness.
Every Tadpole’s talents
triumphs titan’s tricks
tip toeing
towards
truth.
Sep 15, 2017
Sep 15, 2017 at 2:58 AM UTC
The first thing he does.
He lets down my hair,
long neurons shiver, and the violin's
fascination couples to the bow,
silver pleading to my fingertips, a refrain,
the smaller portion of infinity…
The heavy book presses upon the table,
open to Abraham, where God dwells in unnumbered stars like glass houses, and a charlatan speaks accidentally as a prophet,
as accidentally as I touch his hand.
We stay up too late, and the blue spark
he seeks is hidden, eyes in the lamp-dark, my haphazard wick and oil left untended.
He does not return my gaze.
Instead, he weeps at the tomb as the stone rolls away
from the fading mitigations of the holy ghost’s bed.
The first thing he does…
In the pre-life world, a veil.
In the veil, a forgetting.
In the forgetting, a footprint…
He undoes the cascade, my barette,
for the same reason I read the book:
to remember from a distance what is here.
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC