"unmetered" poems
The gentle ins and outs of sleeping breath
Spin off course, out of reach of embracing sheets
As morning breaks open on tangled limbs,
A twisted un-choreographed mess.
Weaving a crooked trail down the too-straight hall,
Ten toes take a tripping routine,
Attached to unmetered beats
Soft padding drum hits
Feebly tumbling across the shined wood.
The still sleeping glow of light
Pressing through the window glass
A spotlight for the kitchen’s stage,
A lone performer improvises unsteady forms.
But the subtle crunch of scooping grounds,
Like the shivered shake of the tambourine,
Catches the wavering rhythm up
To the steady plopping drip,
To the upward bending tone of the cascading pour
Drum-rolling up and up and up to
The ecstatically sighing high note of that first sip.
And the scent, like deep purple, wafts
Filling the room with thick unseen swirls
All at once heavy and weightless, landing on skin
Like a light breeze without force and only depth.
Pressing against the lungs from within them,
Persistently full, yet buoyant.
And as the warmth spreads behind the lungs
A small twitch of the hip courses to the flick of a toe
And from every fingertip pumps into ignition
Fluid joyful movements.
Hot energy flows through veins,
Fearlessly leading through tough turns and twists.
And morning has only just begun.
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 3:20 PM UTC
God is a poet,
his blessings in rhyme
Salvation unmetered,
inspiration divine
His voice calls us inward,
temptation now gone
Where the wings of an Angel,
carry words into song
(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)
Feb 10, 2017
Feb 10, 2017 at 11:53 AM UTC
one, two, three.
hours of sweater lines written on your cheek and
your undereye circles tender to touch and
water in both places and
your shallow breath, violent
saying you’re sorry, sounding like nothing.
sweater lines in the mirror and no way to make him know, and
what that does to you.
one, two, three—
what that does to you
one, two three.
remembering how you don’t like flowers, and
how you are supposed to, and
white knuckles
he asks you to explain.
if only
one, two, three.
four.
unplanned, the monster in the closet
that hasn’t brushed your open palm in years, and
you forgot.
he said don’t worry, once, it wasn’t real
it won’t ruin you
he said that
four.
backs against cold walls, this time, and
long long quiet.
one, two, three.
his undereyes, too, this time, and
your involuntary muscles, violent
unmetered, sorry,
always.
one, two, three, and
four
Jan 29, 2013
Jan 29, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
In my poem, I'll grasp the handlebar with sweat-drenched palms
& unfocused eyeballs as they blur through the evening spectacle.
I'll clench death at the knot of my fingers,
& the grease oozing out from me like life itself.
The door creaks covertly, as I focus on the evening grey,
my face sliding into the shadows, unmetered and unseen.
No solace can be found at this moment,
neither can Papa's gentle smile cradle me in hope.
I'll climb onto the bridge rail, watching as people
are sliced into silence, emptied onto the deserted bridge road.
The water's blackness beckons me,
and I'll answer with my legs, climbing,
assisted by some unseen force.
I'll dissolve this fleeting hope and sink into that blackness,
where consciousness dissolves into nothingness.
~Mikelson
Dec 29, 2024
Dec 29, 2024 at 7:03 AM UTC
God is a poet,
his blessings in rhyme
Salvation unmetered,
inspiration divine
His voice calls us inward,
temptation now gone
Where the wings of an Angel,
carry words into song
(Villanova Pennsylvania: July, 2016)
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 4:40 PM UTC
Scorn not the printed word, O thoughtful soul,
As Wordsworth 1 did not say, and do not set
An electric machine to grind through files
In search of gobbets all thinky and stuff
For Shakespeare set in iambs clean and neat
All the transcendent ideas of the good,
The beautiful, and the eternal true
Sustained in meters of steel and words of gold
Shakespeare never
wobbled
all over the paper in unmetered *******
lines
of disconnected babble about stars and selves 2 without any citations for verification
stirred around in a sort of it-sounds-like-Shakespeare-kinda-sorta-they-won’t-care-anyway soup to be copied and pasted onto sheets of 8 1/2” by 11” fake parchment woodpulp because, like, y’know, that’s what you do for graduation ceremonies
1 Wordsworth, “Scorn not the Sonnet”
2 Possibly a misremembering of Cassius' words to Brutus in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars / But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” If so, the quotation has been, like Caesar, assassinated.
Jun 5, 2018
Jun 5, 2018 at 12:10 PM UTC