"unintelligible" poems
The line didn't move, though there were not
many people in it. In a half-hearted light
the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly
with a large dazed family ranging
from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady
in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage
was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed,
the rumor went through the line. We shrugged,
in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation
had never seemed a very natural idea.
Bored children floated with faces drained of blood.
The girls in the tax-free shops stood frozen
amid promises of a beautiful life abroad.
Louis Armstrong sang in some upper corner,
a trickle of ignored joy.
Outside, in an unintelligible darkness
that stretched to include the rubies of strip malls,
winged behemoths prowled looking for the gates
where they could bury their koala-bear noses
and **** our dimming dynamos dry.
Boys in floppy sweatshirts and backward hats
slapped their feet ostentatiously
while security attendants giggled
and the voice of a misplaced angel melodiously
parroted FAA regulations. Women in saris
and kimonos dragged, as their penance, behind them
toddlers clutching Occidental teddy bears,
and chair legs screeched in the food court
while ill-paid wraiths mopped circles of night
into the motionless floor.
10.3k
Dimension beginning of vile ****** exposed,
And the Emperor has no clothes,
While helplessly strut a mighty walk without a shame.
Course of history repeating itself,
Like the flow of water meeting in the river of streams,
But recycle through the clouds and back to the ground it flows.
Are we so blinded by the glimmer of the mirage of oasis in the desert,
We toast with sands of dune to quench our thirst of our plight,
And all is but a fickling light ducktaped by words of unintelligible muddled murmur?
This is truly the flawed design of our time,
When we no longer promote arts and crafts of philosophies,
And religious cults of zealots condemned the science and Academia by berating it's achievement.
Likes of ancient times of Agora and the height of it's human enlightenment,
There are forces of deconstruction of society of choas ensued by hateful fear mongers,
And systematic inward of national fevor of berserkers leveling progress.
Maybe another dark age is inevitable,
But little seed of hope I feel tangible,
And sometimes event maybe a phoenix.
Feb 22, 2017
Feb 22, 2017 at 1:11 AM UTC
Perhaps I'm encased in a box
made out of two-way glass.
A biased one-way mirror...
Mutual vision doesn't meet nor pass.
When you look at me,
you only see,
yourself for all that you care...
Me? Just a faint suggestion that I'm even there.
Maybe that's why...
you ask about my life,
about my strife.
When I'm about to unload my
head,
I end up having to hear about yours
instead.
Perhaps at times I travel around
in a bubble of frosted glass.
Only a blurred version of me...
Clumsily ploughing through the mass.
Incoherent, misunderstood and unclear.
Unintelligible muffles of hopes and fear.
Maybe that's why...
My words are just perceived as
playful rhymes.
Never keeping up with the times.
Words regurgitated but no one
realises what's coming undone...
Perhaps what I need
is an armour of bulletproof glass.
One of unique quality...
One ahead of its class.
You can do and say what you want.
A shell that would bear most of the brunt.
*I'll be impervious.
I'll be protected.
I can be indifferent.
I can be jaded.*
Maybe that's all I need...
*A shocking stunt.
A fresh perspective.
A new plan.
Revised objectives.*
Maybe a different name to start all
over...
To tie the binds and thoughts that
scatter...
Hoping of holding everything
together...
Come morning, all will be
forgotten...
Maybe I'd still be beaten.
So for a chance that's,
fat as hell
or
thin just a sliver...
Truth is of the three, I have neither...
So...
what I've said doesn't really matter.
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 1:36 PM UTC
the amount of melanin in my skin often seems to conjure up some controversy so when I sit down to write and I see my hands, my light skinned not quite black but surely not white hands I think about the privileges thrusted upon me and when I begin to write I feel my hair against my back, my curly ***** but not quite ***** hair I wonder how what's on my head could make what's in it so frazzled
I often frustrate myself because I feel like my writing often centers around the fact that I am a woman and I am colored
and the fact that when I say I'm colored some look lost
in fact, in the film, for colored girls
Thandie Newton's character says "being alive and being a woman is all I got, but being colored is a metaphysical dilemma I haven't conquered yet."
and I found it frightening how relatable that was to me, being that I'm not quite almost a woman and not quite almost colored
but when I look at my poems they reflect that I indeed am
even though I'm lightskinned and I'm 16 and according to my white friends I'm, just like them because, as I've discovered our definitions of what a black girl sounds like and acts like and is like are extremely different
and I guess that reflects on who we've been introduced to
I have cousins and aunts and grandmothers and sisters
who represent what I believe emulate what a black woman is
and these white kids see what the media feeds about how black women walk and talk and act and lack
see when I picture a black woman I see beautiful smooth chocolate skin full lips round ******* wide hips and a smile as brilliant as her mind
when these kids picture a black woman they see ***** hair dark undesirable skin soup cooler lips and a mind filled with ignorance
and this is where my struggle begins
But in every ethnic group there is good and bad
and I am sick of black women only being associated with the bad
the fact that when most non blacks think of what a black woman is, they imagine an unintelligible mindless sassy loud mouth is over whelming to me
if you're skin isn't light enough or your behind isn't big enough you're only "pretty for a black girl"
I not only want to raise but destroy all expectations society gives black women
but I cannot do this alone
because we are smart and we are beautiful
we are troubled and we are strong
and we are one
once we stop tearing eachother down we can all be one
and I'm not sure why god blessed black women with so much beauty or why I'm so blessed to be one or why he put this determination in me but I think I will recognize it the day the world recognizes how beautiful are we.
Dec 31, 2013
Dec 31, 2013 at 4:20 AM UTC
Regurgitation of the spoon fed, unintelligible dribble supplied by the media is not intelligence.
May 22, 2012
May 22, 2012 at 3:06 PM UTC
I ordered this, clean wood box
Square as a chair and almost too heavy to lift.
I would say it was the coffin of a ******
Or a square baby
Were there not such a din in it.
The box is locked, it is dangerous.
I have to live with it overnight
And I can't keep away from it.
There are no windows, so I can't see what is in there.
There is only a little grid, no exit.
I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.
How can I let them out?
It is the noise that appalls me most of all,
The unintelligible syllables.
It is like a Roman mob,
Small, taken one by one, but my god, together!
I lay my ear to furious Latin.
I am not a Caesar.
I have simply ordered a box of maniacs.
They can be sent back.
They can die, I need feed them nothing, I am the owner.
I wonder how hungry they are.
I wonder if they would forget me
If I just undid the locks and stood back and turned into a tree.
There is the laburnum, its blond colonnades,
And the petticoats of the cherry.
They might ignore me immediately
In my moon suit and funeral veil.
I am no source of honey
So why should they turn on me?
Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free.
The box is only temporary.
3.8k
BECAUSE there is safety in derision
I talked about an apparition,
I took no trouble to convince,
Or seem plausible to a man of sense.
Distrustful of thar popular eye
Whether it be bold or sly.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
When a man grows old his joy
Grows more deep day after day,
His empty heart is full at length,
But he has need of all that strength
Because of the increasing Night
That opens her mystery and fright.
Fifteen apparitions have I seen;
The worst a coat upon a coat-hanger.
3.2k
1.
Look! two butterflies entangled
in the thick of love, try extricating,flapping wings
girl, forget you're a doctor,let love resolve it.
2.
A strawberry touches her lips,
astonished I stop eating my peach;
where does the fruit end, her lips begin?
3.
Your dad is conservative,
mother is moderately appreciative,
every move of amour, has to be politically sensitive.
4.
On this bikini your body prattles,
a language unintelligible through, I am all ears,
darling, make your body speak, the lingo it truly appreciates.
5.
Water nymph, your bodyhugging dress
simultaneously does myriad things,
talks erotica, tries seduction,makes me a fool fumbling for words.
Mar 22, 2015
Mar 22, 2015 at 9:15 AM UTC
He dealt in tissue paper reality
Layered upon layers of issues
Of Nothing at heart
As empty inside as the wind
That blew his papers apart
He wore his emptiness like a badge
Futility was his halo
A cold empty glow of nothingness
And as his tongue wagged
The sounds were unintelligible
And when he stopped his eyes
Beamed with approval .
While I wondered . . . pondered
Without disapproval
Simply dazed . . . amused
Wishing I wasn't there
Feb 28, 2015
Feb 28, 2015 at 11:23 PM UTC
.
The menace emerges from the shadows,
a barked order, but unintelligible.
Then the soft steel kiss
slicing through flesh into entrails.
A fist connects with a crunching face,
legs buckle with pain and blood-loss.
And the Darkness of Death takes me,
like a comfort blanket of soft wool.
My Temple violated and de-sanctified,
the blade withdraws with a whisper.
Darkness cuddles
and welcomes me with a smile.
The morphine haze
keeps me inert and motionless,
but makes my mind giggle.
It wanders aimless
through psychedelic chapters …
This place is sterile, white, drab.
My eyes move slowly left.
There is something in a doorway.
The door.
… my head flies to a Poets Banquet,
where I am the bones thrown to the dogs.
And the wood grain in the door moves,
a cascading chocolate fountain,
over and over again,
flowing, melting like molten lava.
They taught me to write,
then cut off my hands.
Obscurity is purity;
fame is pain.
So I penned a letter to the dead.
My eyeballs are all that move,
floating in mid-air,
but still connected and transmitting
drug induced images.
I remember the assassin, the blade,
the darkness, the sirens, but no pain.
Images but no feeling.
They move right to a cold bedside table,
and then I think I cried.
Somebody Knows me.
No chocolates, no flowers.
Somebody Knows me.
No fruit. No magazines.
Just …
a pen and a pad.
Somebody Knows me.
I did cry, someone remembers me.
And each teardrop contained a thousand images,
a thousand stories, a thousand poems.
Inspiration. Illusion. Insight.
And the Darkness of Sleep takes me
like a comfort blanket of soft wool.
The morphine haze retreats
further into my mind and I dream …
of ambulances and white walls
of green gowns and bright lights
of scalpels and scissors and surgery
of needles and nurses and nightmares
… I dream of Poetry
in colour.
I see worlds in the sky
and words painted on clouds.
A kaleidoscope of teardrops
dripping images into my mind.
A fountain of mist cascading,
seeping into a memory sponge.
And I feel; somebody who Knows me
gently wipe away the tears.
© Pagan Paul (04/06/17)
Jun 4, 2017
Jun 4, 2017 at 7:14 PM UTC
Shapes, colors, sounds
Unintelligible, thoughtless expression
Thrown carelessly into my perception
Cast aside all feeling, love
As you are shepherded into policy
Trapped in a cage of conformity
We become what we're molded to be
Body and mind, desensitized
Body and mind, dehumanized
The workplace has become a temple to the mind
A monument to substance; tear it down
Our existence is blind, meaningless at best
This planet is a wasteland; tear it down
Dehumanize yourself and face to bloodshed
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 9:56 PM UTC
At one time transfixed in front of the t.v. watching
Programs strewn trash the river mouth spewing
Shows and shows as waves on the sand breaking
Talk gibberish talks water under a bridge rushing
Unintelligible words rain on a roof pitter pattering
Now we're glued to a contraption called internet
Blasting air ways information ideas faster than jet
Good bad evil intertwining jungles without outlet
Connecting to connect to lives or lives haven't met
Inexhaustible possibilities daily sunrise to sunset
Better be a wanderer by nature gladly enveloping
Explore new world or a quiet place contemplating
What makes us what we are therefore we're doing
Cyber corrupts old fashioned family ties reflecting
May inflict affection attentively attending nothing
Mar 25, 2018
Mar 25, 2018 at 8:34 PM UTC
The following is based on a true story. This dude came into my work 3 years ago and literally did not possess the vocabulary to order his food. I don't know what his story is, but he inspired this piece.
"ill literacy"
He spoke in code
like birds perched
on branches
singing
unintelligible tunes
only they understand
I watched him
in silence
my voice boxed in
my voicebox in
shock
at the witnessing
of a mis-education
illiteracy
personified
another
foster child
of the SUSD system
just another
“unreachable” student
deemed
“just another”
<17%
of stocktonians
have college degrees
17%
such
a juvenile #
18%
leastwise
is more
adult-sounding
in front
of every high school
is a flag
red
white
blue
ring
----------
middle
----------
index
only
the “just anothers”
can read
between the lines
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 5:44 AM UTC
"Sit down boy, you're tired and you must sleep"
The voice said to me as I walked the city street
Fuzzy steps taken to a bench I saw over yonder
Sleepily wandering, the streetlights I ponder
Passive disorientation, I'm lost it would seem
Consciousness becomes a trickle, as opposed to a stream
Dragging myself over shards of glass, paralysed and sleeping
A shadow 'neath the moonlight seems to be steadily creeping
Isolated in this park in the darkness on a sigma plateau
Dextromethorphan hallucinations are a spectacular show
I'm indifferent to the stranger, drowsy as he appears
Isolated in the nighttime winds, apathetic to his tears
Uncoordinated my head falling he takes a seat softly
Dissociative disorder makes me seem awfully frosty
Speaking of lands where the populace truly is free
Speaking unintelligible words, indirectly to me
The intrinsic disconnect of this generation scorned
As the sun rises in the sky, glittered clouds adorned
My head lulls lackadaisically, I'm feeling unwell
But my stomach is eased when I think of sweet Maybelle
[Hers is a Nabokovian tale of passion in proto-dystopian wastelands
The first time we kissed, I held her soft head tenderly in my hands
The serenade of rain pitter-patter on the ground, like her feet when she's near
and hearing her name is as cathartic as those old jazz records I hold so dear
But, oh my pretty Belle, your age is a concern to me (and the eyes of the law)
So to forget your sweet face, I pop pills neglectfully, passing out on the floor]
Lifting head slowly from the rough ground dampened
Four years passed and I'm wondering what happened
Fuzzy headed blues, clear my mind with OJ and ******
Walking fast to her house, cannot wait to see her
A rap-tap on the door with thoughts of romantic enumerations
What she said and what I saw defied every one of my expectations
My innocent Belle, with her cheeks rosy red,
looks me in the eyes, and wishes I was dead
Oct 16, 2013
Oct 16, 2013 at 7:08 AM UTC
to wound me with an arrow
take a lurid one
you're high on the barrow
watching how scare I run
burst out of usual shadows
like one-eyed albino ghoul
only to see changing weather
by unintelligible rules
sick of Gulliver's syndrome
from living in a wooden box
where's my abandoned kingdom
I'm fed up with these rocks
so try to aim, warden
I'm not that beast of burden
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 11:04 PM UTC
Burning crosses in spotless sheets
Concerned with the matter at hand.
Only in the still of night can they meet
This secret society that has been banned.
Yet there stand in these once silent woods
With their pointed hats and rebel flags.
Their intentions supposedly "good"
They hide the blood-stained rags.
Decisions made with southern drawls
Not very much humanity involved
They stand by the cross reciting Jim Crow laws
In their hatred they are resolved.
They pick our victims by sight alone
Muttering unintelligible chants and marching 'round.
They say its more than just skin tone
I've looked, but it's the only reason I've found.
Mar 2, 2010
Mar 2, 2010 at 11:07 AM UTC
the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go with a curse
I myself am grown into my fifties
and the people I’ve known
who called me Little Boy
have been called to dust and urn and to river over the decades;
and the kids I would kneel before to speak with them
now they say: Do I see you with hunched shoulders?
the earthly hours pass
and generations come and go
with little knowing though of their own flow
the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go
with a last bite of a fried chicken
places have changed
and villages and forests lain bare
and once where I stood admiring angsanas
and mango trees and peacocks
now I admire lilly-pillies
and hold the koala and the kangaroo as mascots;
people I have called mother, father
and uncle and aunty and grandmother
they now have gone, some without even a good-bye
some smiling and some with unintelligible mutterings
and ah, some in unendurable suffering
while I walk now as time unfurls like a flag in the square;
and the witnesses
of uncountable generations
of immeasurable life
those stars and the sun and the moon
keep me quiet company
and the sunlight uses the leaves in the garden
to whisper to me the secrets of things;
and in my leisure
these words I speak to you
and when I’m gone
through these you may speak with me;
and the ones I have told stories to
now re-tell the stories to their young
and time, interrupting its slumber,
lifts its head like a garden in the snake
awhile
sees all is right, all flowing as it would expect,
and looks around and gives me a look too
and goes back to sleep;
ah, the drama unfolds
and the young grow old
while the old go with a wink
Oct 8, 2010
Oct 8, 2010 at 8:17 PM UTC
I am deaf, blind, and mute
Though that's untrue, physically speaking
I still feel it deep within me
Blinding my eyes from truth
From reality
Deafening my ears from hearing others' encouraging words
And their feelings of warmth and love
Muting my replies and true thoughts
From ever springing up
To prevent me from prying my fingers off the cusp of this palpable insanity
Ah, this addiction is overwhelming
I need a moment
Just one second
Of truth to burst in and scream into my ears
Crying and begging me to come to my senses
Reminding me of the past failures
And how I said this time would be different
Just one moment of honest truth
But, you see, I'm deaf
I can't hear anything
Edging on this addiction
Knowing I'll fall
And have to start all over
I just need a moment...
A brief time of clarity
To open my eyes
So I can see clearly
That all the excuses I'm spewing out are lies
A memory I can view
Something that jogs my memory
And reminds me of why I wanted to stop in the first place
But you see...
I'm blind
I can't see even this truth that lies right in front me
The addiction is winning
Knocked me out so hard
My head is spinning
I need to convince myself to escape this battle
Its power is so terrifying
And I can't even speak
I choke out pleas
But they are unintelligible
The addiction hears nothing
And nor do I
But I need just a moment...
Of someone's words to recite
To clear my mind
And be who I was before I commited this sin
Please, I beg of you, Me
Speak, speak, speak!
But I am mute
I can't say a single thing...
...
Oh, what a tragedy
To be deaf, blind, and mute
Aug 11, 2017
Aug 11, 2017 at 12:02 PM UTC
Let us speak only in tongues
For all that wasn't made obvious
May present its true meaning in the unintelligible
Let us converse in stanzas
For what wasn't clearly heard
May perhaps show itself between these lines
Let us exaggerate and romanticise
For all that was spouted bland
May be heightened to receive some light
Let us exchange and trade through poetry
For all that's lacking in common words
May secure a foothold in the readers' hearts
Jul 22, 2016
Jul 22, 2016 at 10:02 AM UTC
She is the typesetter’s “e”
The once-rounded uncial script,
Unbroken like the solemn vow of a monk,
His whisper, a shepherd of words under the cowl,
Murmurations of the Holy Mother to the lambswool shroud of candlelight.
His candle-flock of dreams to some hill of penitent towers, war-cowed
And broken open like faith-unfended helmets, littering the ground,
With their unspeaking tassels in babbling pagan sound of wind,
That hill too, once-rounded bare under the glittering apostles of twilight.
In the abbeywork of air, calligraphy was a cipher of souls,
He unwrested demons from an inkwell of sunsets, smothered them in blotting paper,
Freed the incarnate whole to the book of hours, nib-pointed in quills and illuminated in gold,
Line by line, in Carolingian winding sheets, he returned the misshapen to the fold,
To the carpet page of home and the warm ligatures of their waiting women.
So the shutters of the heavenly house could blow light in slanted rays to a wilderness in storm.
But he never tamed the aero-elongated, descender of Troy in a “t,”
He never knew the unholiness of the underscore or fonts as ******
Or the world unwilling to know itself in serif robes of ancient lore.
His life was a simple rounded-out syllable of one man,
Left in the muddied, unintelligible text of faith and war.
She is the typesetter’s “e” and now belongs to any hand.
Jul 6, 2019
Jul 6, 2019 at 9:21 PM UTC
Should it be disconcerting that
Your words
Drip and droop
Oozing unintelligible lumps
Starchy and dry
Running through
My fingers
I rearrange to make sense of it
Distracted
Your nose over here
Your **** up here
Your intellect on the
board
bored
******* bored
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 7:41 PM UTC
We both lean in, both eager, and me hesitant;
not for what is to come but the thought that once it happens,
There is no more chance for the First.
Leaning in, I inhale sharply, breathing ragged breaths,
Eyelids half shut
Faces so close I can hear his steady breathing, even though this is The First for him as well,
Bodies so close I imagine I can feel his heartbeat, chest expanding with each breath
Whisper unintelligible sweetness into my ear, words tickling my skin,
And the smell of sweet boyish deliciousness.
His nose presses against my cheek
Soft lips touching mine
Pressing
Breathing
Never wanting this moment to end.
We kiss and it feels like time stops only for us and we are barely touching but it's more than enough
And then my little sister runs up, and I have to take her home.
We stand and shyly gaze at each other, your bike, my sister and a few feet of air between us as we say goodbye and you mention looking up something insignificant at home
I walk the seventy-five feet to my house and you race off on your bike, both bashful of what has passed between us and still thirsty for more of each other.
The next day at school we meet in the hallway and walk to first period together, murmuring shyly
about It, air between our arms electric, and I'm desperate.
Desperate to touch you,
To fall into your embrace
And touch my lips to your neck,
Face,
Lips,
And never leave you for an instant,
No need to say a single word
Just be with you and comb my fingers through your hair,
And breathe.
Oct 4, 2012
Oct 4, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC
Took a trip on the Belafonte,
Bound with Cuba to forgotten Sanz.
Dinning on tin canned Del Monte,
A glass of Suntory always in hands.
Lloyd Faversham gifted salacious devices by John Cleese.
Used as props in Mike’s next gin stained showpiece.
The drum-line seemed irksome to J. Jonah.
He’d heard Zach Hill before.
Given limited time, despite the persona.
Interstellar fault found in a **** metaphor.
A swift change to an even more marketable sound.
Sparks didn’t fly when trying to appear profound.
Tiny teen dreams tending to tiny skirts.
Fidgeting with the hem-line.
Their just unintelligible flirts.
Stripping to avoid the breadline.
Dystopian fiction led to dissolution of fact
Can’t seem to see their world isn’t intact.
Atwood to Collins, Collins to a stupid ******* maze.
Alternate choice being a criminal thrill.
Simplistic fantasy whose only benefit is praise.
Popular opinion seems to be well over the hill.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 5:52 PM UTC
Sneezing transitions in mass transit routes
Tram rocks underneath the black and blue sky
Ahead of me is infinity
Behind me the past, sticky & stagnant - inescapable
Smells of cat food unintelligible *****
Passed on hopes & forgotten dreams
Cackling whistles of worn out break pads
A man coughs as another rolls up his socks
Next to me a man slumbers dreaming of home
His wife in bed alone, his son's and daughter's
Hide under thin white sheets, waiting for Him to phone
The door creaks open, he'll wait for morning to speak
Hazy recollections across glossy wet cobble stones
Solidarity is the only way to work sometimes
The sting of smoky nicotine flows up my nose
Pushing past the marker of ill-received news
Nights out drinking, talk and talk and talk
More of the same as I frame the outcome summarily
Atop the page is where the life is
A rainfall of experience to purge this ****** emotion
Labeling oneself does not mean defining oneself
That is what the whiskey is for
I hide behind a wall dripping with insecurity
I fear, I love, I live, and one day, I will die
Shuttle to a stop, bewaring of adjectives
I have the urge to stay, but am the last to leave
My eyes adjust to the soft orange glow of the streetlights
And into the night living rather than dead
So in place of the hours I believe I need
Staying awake looking at these pen marks
I need nothing for something only brings more worries
Anxiety being a killer - I try to rid myself of the poison
Humming up the stairs I attentive & aware
There in the elevator savory sweet hickory perfume
Another year away from an old place I called home
Time passes slowly, as I slip in between the folds
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 3:02 PM UTC
i would like to play the trumpet for you
i feel i could breathe
the wailing of my soul into it.
i could play myself through this instrument
into consciousness
from this sleeping dream
into smoke from this flame
i could wisp and dissipate
like clouds in your eyes
can you see the clouds in mine?
or the dew, in the morning left?
i cant remember the rain
though i am drenched, i am dripping
every bit falling, drop by drop,
into a lake never quenched
before words, before television
you have always preceded
the breath standing at the crest of my lips
but turned, scared, naked
retreating, from the beach
back to the sea
where you close curtains
to my whale song
pounding at the door
unintelligible frequencies
on top of waves and across the sandy floor
i sink so low, shaking
chains shackled to the earth
i'd barter for the key
but the guards
they ask the trumpet from me
summoning vultures to my stomach
my burning coal punishment
for swimming so reckless
for weeping on the shoreline
because you and the rainwater receded
back into the depth of chambered winds
slipping like the valves from my fingertips
before the hushed tones of my non harmonics
my soul blossoming out of it
my song on every radio, every wax and needle
in the air wisping out
when you are not the sun
and not listening.
clouds in the back of eyes,
and sleepless nights.
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 6:15 PM UTC