"ungloved" poems
I sit and watch in shock
As your normally kind hands
Tear weeds from your garden,
Ungloved.
Question;
Whether eyes or hands
Know better which are weeds.
Oct 10, 2014
Oct 10, 2014 at 3:55 PM UTC
the grit courage of trust
still too young and now, too old, to comprehend,
love~trust and all its secondary derivatives,
not extant on a plane of new bed sheets of
silk~linen tablecloth rectangularity
go into the park's garden;
black soil fingernail coating
awaiting, impatiently for you,
dig in direct hands ungloved
is it not,
sensual and yet gritty,
two coextensive sensations?
slip inside (you/me, me/you),
there is a razor's edge duality duty,
trust, serve and protect,
take and
handle with rough-care, for this our state of beauty
au naturel, the rush and the fall,
the climb and the conquering,
only to start again, each step, each rung,
coated with the
the grit courage of trust -
do you begin to comprehend?
trust is a bumpy landing on a glide path that is strewn
with potholes that can grow into sinkholes without
the grit of trust
the soles of my feet are a message,
gritty from walking
all-life, not just the edges,
is a two act play of roughening,
upon the limbs the things,
that carries us *****
but bares the wearing of
unkind touches of reality
working us over
why the soothing,
but not the smoothing
daily twice is the cream that
emerges from the grit courage of trust
even the vinery's progeny of great love,
grapes that must
embrace the wind and rain,
the wearing down tools of
the exterior that brings an acknowledgement -
do you begin to comprehend?
this is not an algebraic formulaic solution solvable problem,
this derived from dirt, access to accidental, the tongue and the nail,
the cracks upon the skin, that grow wonderful deeper, unfillable,
where the love gets in,
were the words are written and stored,
rough to the touch,
under the grit courage of trust -
do you begin to comprehend?
this grit is unbelievable beautiful
only a love po-em.
5:22am
Sep 22, 2017
Sep 22, 2017 at 10:09 AM UTC
woven and webbed in but words,
our profits are handsome,
kindness, tenderness,
the gold coins minted internal,
that
overflow up above from
deeply hidden,
earthen-vaulted,
unchambered hearts
sovereign wealth sharing,
one country of two,
income equality,
now worded beyond just two mortals,
t'is my duty charged
and discharged,
to both hide~disguise and
expose,
how the treasure grows
alpha-bet oxygen-increased,
ever larger,
for now,
the cellular-total
the divided parts,
far exceed the original whole
these profits,
are but the
gotten gains
of mere dreamers,
that the night sweeper
shall remove, replace
scheduled near midnight,
easy taken, like daily dust
once fallen, and now used,
no longer available,
for writing poems
on the floor
but the atmosphere be
nugget laden, bejeweled motes,
freshly fallen dew to drink,
snow to inscribe with ungloved fingertips,
fresh foolscap,
upon to decorate
with letters of many tongues
new letters rearranged,
the dreamt profits
of which
are only realized
when shared
Mar 16, 2014
Mar 16, 2014 at 8:49 PM UTC
I can’t sleep.
My brain, it won’t shut off.
Circles and lines
Thread together to create
Color, light -
Light, streaming like dust through my open window
In the purple air.
How foolish I am
To think dreams live with the stars.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
Most people think that sadness grows
Like a patch of dandelions floating away
Or a shadow with the setting sun.
They’re wrong,
Of course,
Because they do not understand.
It is not their fault
But that does not make them any less
Ignorant.
Sadness just is.
Settling quietly, and, when you finally notice
It’s all encompassing.
It is the sky, the sea.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
I am an asymptote.
Stretching out a hand to humanity
Almost, I can feel their acceptance
Brush by my eager fingertips
But the fallacy of hope is dangerous
And I am left untouched.
A magnet that can’t help
But repel itself.
And my fingers are ungloved
And turn blue in this cold place
As I am left to stand alone
Waiting.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
I look into a mirror made of sand
My face crumbling away with my breath –
The bits of grain become a desert,
A sea of beige
I am left to be lost in.
I do not know what I look like
Past my skin.
This not knowing, it should scare me, but
Somewhere, in a place I do not like,
I relish the confusion.
How sad you must think me
For enjoying
Not knowing
Who I am.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
Fear is something I pretend
I have never felt
With my line smiles and hollow talk –
Black, caustic acid dripping from my teeth
As I judge.
Who sits in my court?
I don’t know –
Everyone perhaps,
Or the people that remind me of myself.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
I feel the ground beneath my feet
As I walk to my future,
A dark tunnel,
Lighting my way with matches –
I don’t know if I’ll reach the end or run out first.
The ground, it is cold, and shifts
Until I am falling without the pinpricks of fire
To highlight my blind spots,
The matches scattered in the midnight air.
I check the clock
Five minutes have been lost.
I breathe in loneliness
Until my lungs ache
With stolen air.
Until my arms,
Laced with blue rivers,
Are touched by Moses.
Until my iron heart beats,
Rusting away.
Loneliness is like skin,
Layering my bones, my muscles –
A coat for thin membranes that knit together
A stomach, a womb, a liver.
Everyone needs skin
So that they do not fall apart
Their soft parts leaking onto the granulated floor
Until they become nothing more than water.
I have mine.
I shut my eyes
I do not dream.
Nov 4, 2013
Nov 4, 2013 at 10:36 PM UTC
***he rises early, well before the premature, minutest hints of early dawn,
cradling tenderized words, from a silent marinating mind withdrawn,
some spices harvested from the soil's mortality of daily strife, others,
manna gifts of wild floral tenderness, plucked from Eve's tree of life
neither gardener nor chef, the fruits of his labor, are product of
a mothers mind's silent back labor, emerging with no notice or invitation, spilt from lips unmoving, eyes shuttered, fingers ungloved
ministering a Temple sacrifice of plain psalms authored but un-titled
some spark ignition causes a key reversal, from motionless to motion,
moving with no in-between, words simmering, from seeds unknown,
the dishe's integrity questioned, but it births itself, uncaring, eagerly, willing copied from cavern decorations of rude, wall drawings
almost fully formed, though untasted and undigested, a savant smell
provokes a leap from placid prone, to upright and seated upon the
throne of his writing desk, can one*** divine ***a recipe from odor alone,
thus claiming authorship of an untitled dish, one that can't be recreated?***
sets it down before you uncovered, with a lustrous screen of silk damask,
plated on Royal Worcester fine bone china, yet, without any utensils,
asking you to ken this work,
**eat this poem, with bare hands,
love it as if it was your own first born,
consumed/consuming
a strange but familiar spirit**
Jan 4, 2018
Jan 4, 2018 at 4:06 PM UTC
You have to understand
where I'm coming from, all right?
You see, I am this
tiny,
little bright blue flower.
I am small but I am green and I am growing
up to the sun, yes, growing, though I am tiny.
And you uprooted me
carefully as all the others
when it had come time for uprooting,
but, then, you stood to a great height
and
dropped me.
I felt the impact. I know you thought
I wouldn't, but I did
and my roots were splayed out on the cement
mingled with dirt and tears.
I can cry, you see, did you know that?
And then, get this,
you stepped all over me.
Over and over and over you stepped on me;
you crushed me beneath your sole
until I withered.
And, you picked me up.
You gathered the pieces of me
into your hands,
your ungloved, ungreen hands,
carefully as all the rest when it came to dying,
and you put me back together.
I still want to ask you why,
because as soon as I had been
put back into the earth
you shut off the sun.
The god ****** sun, you shut it off.
So I withered again.
You never watered me.
I waited. I waited and I waited patiently
and I thirsted.
My roots are thin as are
my cell walls, my leaves, my membranes
and my petals have slowly,
one by one fallen to the soil.
I'm trying to refertilize myself, but
I don't think it's working.
Petals and dried leaves aren't worth much.
Eventually my tears dried up.
Eventually,
my voice became hoarse and thin and weak
like the rest of me.
I used to sing to the stars at night.
I am a nightflower; my leaves drink the sun
but my petals bathe in starlight.
I am a nightflower
but I am in a closet now.
It smells of old sweat and dead things.
It smells like everything you
want to forget about,
all the secrets you don't like to remember,
all the people you prefer not to know,
and me.
I'm still waiting, you know.
Still patiently waiting.
Sep 24, 2012
Sep 24, 2012 at 12:29 AM UTC
The last night we were officially in love, the evening the carousel
was out of order
I watched it spin again and again
without any lights or sound, pleading with god to
make me one of the great pegasus forms illuminated by moon
and fake snow.
It would not have mattered,
my feet would have still been bolted to the December floor
a hundred miles, then another, then another
from you. I realize now that it would not have mattered if I had a
pair of wings, I still would have
never made it to you
(but I believed it then). Ungloved to dabble in hot cocoa,
my ten fingers dialed you:
I pretended to have seen real snow, you pretended to love me.
Yesterday, I felt like you
for the first time since I wanted anything to do with you,
remembering the final time you said you loved me. I was there
in the same body that phoned you in winter
watching a broken carousel circle again and again, I was
approximately two inches from
where I stood when you told me goodnight
(and you meant it, where I said goodbye, and I meant it more)
but I had forgotten the moment. Yesterday
I learned I can forget you as easily as you
had me. Remembering us mattered so little that I climbed on the
carousel, tasted the bubblegum lights
hummed to an ice cream truck song, and
declared it the last day I would ever officially think of you,
the morning the merry-go-round did not need the sun anymore.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 8:13 PM UTC
She stands—
every few minutes turning abruptly to no object.
Hips pushing forward, shoulders sliding back,
red soled sneakers and plaid flannel slacks
beneath a dramatic black trench coat,
in the grey shadow of a gothic church.
She smokes the grey and blows white,
and scrolls through the neon screen
with her one ungloved hand,
a bun perched stiffly on her scalp, unheeded,
an afterthought, if there was one before.
Her backdrop—the heavy iron fence of a graveyard,
and centuries old glorious stones watch
as she spends her minutes
engrossed
in the luminous green of infinity.
it would feel normal if it was a bus stop,
a grocery line,
a hospital waiting room,
even a lonely bench.
But she stands,
and periodically pivots,
meanders two steps and stands,
and jolts three steps back,
glitching through slow time,
anxious and unresolved—
yet so engrossed.
Finally now she is following the fence out of view, slowly,
and I hope she finds rest.
I feel grateful as the sidewalk carries her now
away from my puzzled gaze
The great stones and I exchange long glances,
and perhaps they are more compassionate than I,
for they seem not phased.
Oh stones, teach me patience, teach me rest.
For you are glorious in endless rest,
and I am still anxious and unresolved.
Dec 10, 2018
Dec 10, 2018 at 9:47 AM UTC
I waited for the satellite
to hurtle itself above me
before I could make the call.
Winds swept
across the lip of the glacier
driving ice chips & rock grains
into my exposed frozen-face.
With ungloved fingers,
I dialed direct
to another continent,
heard the rings,
then the pick-up.
The reception was clear,
giving me
45 seconds of converstion
before the icon
disappeared
along with your voice.
I barely had enough time
to say I was okay
before you
were gone again.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 10:41 PM UTC
Fire burns hottest
that burns below
Centuries rage
heartache’s grow
The coldest cold
blows just above
A gripping blizzard
—wrath ungloved
(Dreamsleep: August, 2021)
Aug 21, 2021
Aug 21, 2021 at 7:32 PM UTC
A winter storm had dumped a foot
of wet and heavy slushy snow.
As the sidewalk does not clean itself
I dressed to face my winter foe.
I worked too hard, I worked too fast
as I shoveled out our walks and paths.
My heart was racing; I' was feeling done,
then a golden retriever came on the run.
"hey there good boy." I greeted the pup.
"A Saint Bernard would have been nice too!"
He sniffed then licked my ungloved hand.
"Somebody must be looking for you."
Just then I heard from down the block
a voice called "Rascal" and the dog's head turned.
It clearly was his master's voice
"He's over here" I replied in turn.
His owner was a kindly older man
glad to retrieve his pet unharmed.
He'd gotten out to play in the snow
someone had left the gate not closed.
Rascal offered me his paw
and looked at me with deep brown eyes
We shook, then he accepted his leash
Rascal and his master then headed home.
I never saw Rascal again
or meet his master on the street.
We met just that once on a snowy eve.
The memory is all that I got to keep.
I'd often heard my mother say
that we oft meet angels in disguise
I can't say for certain this was such a case.
I have no proof for the worldly wise.
Jul 26, 2018
Jul 26, 2018 at 8:52 AM UTC
3/2/2016
It's March again
and I'm lost again
wondering about the Delaware
Feeling like a child
who got more than she could
bargained for
colds bitter
good, it was a short winter
I'll never be that wholehearted
girl again,
but it was a short winter
My writing is disgusting,
Only good when I'm suffering
and the thing is I'm suffering now
and I don't know why nothing is
coming out
The year is grey, egg washed and egg white,
Painted and glazed over with
typhoid
I don't walk anymore to the reserve
don't see a point in it
There's no motivation to
see the world
try to find beauty in things
I'm trying to find where
I went
and trying to find where
I put my sanity,
Left it in a biohazard box
picked it back up ungloved
I put my hiking boots up
feel bad for the unloved agronomias
and I think it always gets better
but since my poetry's getting worse
I can't say with certainty
my world won't either.
Mar 2, 2016
Mar 2, 2016 at 6:03 PM UTC
Jean Baptise Clamence said ‘…in all things we are merely” in a way” ‘.
I possess nothing, but what’s in my heart.
But what am I to love? – the cherub morning, my sovereign hands-the sea?
How to love, how to love anything?
Turn to my silence voice of a voice.
Here whisper of you, I have been waiting.
In me you have inspired countries. Strange
devastating realms of cold lands, wet fogs
and steaming lakes.
I am full of canals and you are no where.
You do not even know, that I speak of you..
I am swarming with your absence and you
do not how do you not know my name
or that it asks of you.
Here and elsewhere, littered. Partments.
Untouch my hand that you ungloved so impetuously.
I cannot place it.
You have inspired the only light in me for miles.
And here I am, talking to myself again-
My eyes become jeweled, the colour of dead leaves.
Yet still you will not choose me.
Fog of smokey neon.
At any rate, you run a great risk.
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 2:36 AM UTC
the morning
chores,
a chorus,
a litany,
a recital,
of old, worn
words
familiar
well worn
ungloved
fists of firsts
a deep drink
of 11.5 ounces
of a cold spring
water shocking
in~vigor~ates
rebalancing a
sleep induced
deficit
a gloried yawn,
an exhalation
of the overnight
staleness, an
expulsion of
stale residue
residuals,
leftovers
of a prior
life, dismissed,
yet clinging
to your body
in vain
desirous
to be
remained
part of
the landscape
of your
plain
as part of
your
grandfatherly
accumulations
but there’s
only so much
room
in your
container,
and all
your liquidities
must be replaced
that takes space
for the
fresh withholdings
so.
drink deep,
replace the
fluids unique
that operate
your systems
and all the
rest
will flow,
stream easy
Mar 19, 2025
Mar 19, 2025 at 8:19 AM UTC
Dead or alive.
How can I know the difference,
either way, I've been "useful" all my life.
No love from life
nor life from love
until it was taken away,
by a man who's manipulation drove . . .
Tears I took for my savior
and joy from a dripping arm.
Crimson for my delicacy,
he claimed he didn't mean any harm.
His carnal needs only shoved
visions, a painful lance.
I will gladly fall from love
with a first and last glance.
Please save me from the ungloved,
forceful hands creeping down my intimates . . .
Dec 2, 2016
Dec 2, 2016 at 10:24 PM UTC
The world is my mentor,
eternity my judge
Each choice confirmation,
the ‘future’ ungloved
Time no longer master,
to deceive or profane
All life in this moment,
—its meaning contained
(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2017)
Mar 17, 2017
Mar 17, 2017 at 11:09 AM UTC