"unpick" poems
A cat stalks amongst stalks;
monkeys like old men, fingers unpick
your banana hands, curious and careful.
Too much expression.
Don’t worry, have a curry.
And from a coach window glimpses of a land
where a skeleton boy sleeps or lies dead under palm.
And the red earth chokes.
Follow the waterfall to mango pickle
down river to a jungle boogie rhythm
you ain’t ever heard before.
Cobra skins and coy carp,
the sound of cicadas amasses.
A stand still in traffic, its ‘crush’ hour
its okay to beep even if it will never get you anywhere.
A treasure trove of trinkets, a myriad of jewels.
All you see is money,
all I see is you wanting money.
Dusty rags from sandy bags, the face of
desperation is ugly.
Temples carved into caves
as markets coloured like an artist’s palette.
An elephant’s eyes say more than this poem could.
Jun 12, 2010
Jun 12, 2010 at 3:51 PM UTC
Go on, my Son, go out and box,
don't wave this chance good-bye,
Switch from Southpaw to Orthodox.
The Judges have it Fifty/Fifty, an equinox,
apply yourself. . . apply,
Go on my Son, go out and box.
Keep it crafty, like the fox,
acid to his alkali,
Switch from Southpaw to Orthodox.
Jab, Jab, Hook! Unpick the locks,
it's time to modify,
Go on my Son, go out and box.
Unloading pallets of concrete blocks
until the day you die ?
Switch from Southpaw to Orthodox.
Win this Round, escape the docks,
would I tell you a lie ?
Go on my Son, go out and box,
Switch from Southpaw to Orthodox.
Jan 4, 2016
Jan 4, 2016 at 3:45 PM UTC
Authors moan of Writer’s Block:
They can’t unpick their inner lock.
A black expanse is all they see
Their rhymes are but a tragedy.
“The Block” is writers’ constipation,
A failure of imagination.
What laxative is there for this?
You feel like you’ve been sent to Dis.
Oh where did those ideas go?
That blank page fills them full of woe.
Play with words is what I say,
Then soon a poem is on its way.
Don’t try so hard is my advice:
Perfection can be such a vice.
Watch telly, films, anything you like,
And let your mind just take a hike.
Listen to music by all means,
Like you used to in your teens.
Watch the news, or take a stroll,
Drag yourself out of that hole.
Take a nap whenever you like,
Sleep will get you ready to strike.
Toy with words again I say:
Best inspiration springs from play.
Paul Butters
Jan 22, 2015
Jan 22, 2015 at 3:29 PM UTC
The finger pointing at the moon,the steeple reaching to the skies;
Logic ,love and wisdom tries to pierce the gloom, to open eyes.
'Look up!' They say, 'Look over there!'
No! Look within now if you dare
To find the truth that's lying there.
The dons, the poets, the dance and the myths clear some of the way, but sadly miss
The heart of the thing
- just get the gist..........
First the moon, then the man full of awe, then the priest and the sage and the artist to draw
Out the meaning and help us to know what a small speck we are
In this infinite show.
Sing to the moon and dance through the night
Then look to yourself to see if you're right.
The myths are the map, the Dons hold the light, but the moon's ever there , perpetual and bright.
Unpick the poems, dissect the finger, deconstruct the song and analyse the singer,
Love the garden and crown the ***** praise the soil for the flowers he's made.
It's a great 'Whodunnit' a wonderful game, with the usual suspects guessing the name
Of the power behind it; the fame or the blame.
Sing to the moon and dance through the night.
Look to the heavens to see if you're right.
The myths are the maps, the dons hold the light
But the moon will be there
Perpetual and bright.
Aug 21, 2016
Aug 21, 2016 at 2:50 PM UTC
I feel cheated.
That I never had the chance to know,
Not only the taste of your lips;
But how it would feel to tie my soul to it’s wandering twin.
Stitching up the tear between them,
Painstakingly, gently, over expanses of time,
Only for you to unpick every carefully placed seam.
I can’t help but marvel at how casually you discard my offerings.
There’s a twisted beauty in your callousness.
As you turn and walk away once more, I stay and thread my needle again,
Patiently waiting to be another cutting on your work room floor.
Feb 2, 2019
Feb 2, 2019 at 6:35 PM UTC
more than we can write. erase
and unpick the seams. words tarry,
waver and leave this place, this room,
scuttle back into corners. sweep the house clean,
cross the words and know that when the time is right,
they will come again, dripping from fingers,
folded , torn, photographed in plenty.
wondered about misspelling, maybe
missed the point?
sbm.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 1:54 AM UTC
So I’m in the room, surrounded by vivid individuals,
with all their vibrant lives, with all the things they have to say,
and I’m in the room, but half removed, a blue-bland thing,
a flat, one-dimensional thing with fuzzy unholding edges.
And I think to myself, I’m going to end up so alone
because I am such a no-person, such a flat, empty space
of a person, such a flimsy, hollowed out sort of thing.
And in this room, if one person was to simply disappear
and not disturb the balance, then surely it would be me,
the non-person who lacks all substance, who is simply not integral
enough to leave behind some long-lasting, uncloseable void.
So I go into the other room and try to make myself whole
by becoming useful but still I’m that bland, hollow thing,
still am I that name-checked no-person with nothing to say.
And so I go outside to escape myself and the long, sad, empty inevitable
and I look at the lightless sky and think to myself in the cold:
I could unpick the thread of myself from existence
and all that would be left are two small indents
to be smoothed away with the sweep of a hand.
It hurts, so I look up to the sky and dream of the island
until I’m full of tears and then I mangle my no-person face
into a smile and go back to the room, and really,
I’m living okay. I’m living okay, I’m reminded,
because there’s nothing to be sad about today,
nothing you could possibly be worried about today,
you sad, empty-headed little no-person.
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 6:05 AM UTC
i know nothing more than the
crippling weight of my self hate
the familiar bitter taste of pity
i spit out in doses as i laugh in mockery
but this time i could learn
how to sink into someone else this time
learn to unpick their seams
to crumble and unravel and fall apart for me
i am burning inside.
don't get too close, you'll feel the scorching heat,
the flames that flicker warning you of the ash to come
i beg you to run away yet strain my hand tighter around yours
(fingertips blackened; a mirror to the soul)
while certain a finger of two is breaking, and not stopping.
i am the embodiment of hurt.
i'm a mess of splattered nonsensical pain
i want you to hate me yet i do not want you
to hate me
or leave me.
i want to leave the fire started in my chest
spreading its destruction
but that would be the desire for something impossible
and that is laughable. like me.
like you ever loving me properly.
because no matter how many salty tears i cry
the pathetic attempt to calm the flames
i only create an ocean we both drown in
i am the anchor to your sinking bombed ship
pulling you down with me
i am the coat i never want you to take off
even though the heat is overwhelming.
and i want to keep you safe from me
but in my mind, the thought concludes to the action
of adding more layers.
and then the seams
burst.
i am sorry you love me.
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 11:52 AM UTC
I have to unhand her, unhold her,
spell a widdershins wander
to unpick the stitches of time
sewn together.
I have to unlive her, unlove her,
-muster a fiction, a line of defence,
a charm of protection, a cobbled pretence
to convince that I'm better without her,
- but to court a dementia
that summons a shade
to centre upon the mistakes
that we made-
is, itself, a deceit.
For there were such pleasures
embossed on the soul
to remain in forevers
that cannot be changed.
May 30, 2016
May 30, 2016 at 3:58 AM UTC
Slumping on upwards with
her kiss in my hair,
A circle of knees are her
musical chairs and
pearls fat as the moon
glint in the gloom
as we fall forehead-first
up a full flight of stairs.
*(Pink balloons at the mouth of a party, inflating,
For a kiss on the cheek you can watch me ******* him…)*
I tell you I love you,
All sullen and dainty,
and that even the death-wish I’ve flirted with
lately
paints trails on my faces and
colours me saintly,
But you want me most (and don’t
try to deny it)
when my bones and groans and eyes all
imply it…
when pushed against an emergency
door
and our shoes like petals are stuck to
the floor
and I realise as I unpick your flies
just what my ******* hands are for.
“There’s a boy over there – don’t
look so embarrassed!
he’s up by the bar and he’s utterly ******
and do you think
that he’s ever been kissed…
(said with a wink)
quite like this?”
“So how much did you miss it?
The dancing and dirt?”
You press crooked grins to the stripes
on my shirt,
folded over my shoulder
like a toy that needs
winding.
I balance out all of your gnawing
with grinding,
stamping my lust to the floor
like a soldier.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 9:59 AM UTC
Humans die, is that really fine
All we can do is be withered
As we grow old and lose our shine
I can feel the warmth of your body
And the vibrancy radiated,
But with each moment you’re always a breath short
Reminding me of an inevitable outcome
You can’t unpick a flower
But not picking it does not ensure it lives forever.
I thought I would, when I fell for you
Let you clip me by them stem
Lived and laughed while love played us fools
Still my heart flutters when I see you
Breaks into a million little pieces
When I think of you now and tomorrow
I wonder how the unpicked flower feels
To be admired by all and shunned by none
In the summer bliss of a trillion gazes
To belong to all and not just one
Yet one day before your time is come
To find yourself, conveniently replaced
With one who’s young like you once were.
Jun 6, 2016
Jun 6, 2016 at 4:59 PM UTC
She was a ten
but that was way back when
before decimal coins
and long before the seams and several joins started to unpick
and now she looks sick.
Sick of the days
ticked off with those nights when she sits alone
frightened
so frightened if the phone starts to ring
or the doorbell chimes.
Not like those other times when she stood out in a crowd
her beauty (albeit plastic) would shout it out loud
'look at me
can you see you how good I feel',and still I would kneel at her feet
to me she's the sweet little lady
who one night in a Javanese bar said 'maybe' to me.
I see her now like never before
like today was the door that we came through
and if I knew then
even when she was a ten
that I'd still love her
a score of years on
when she is ill
I would still have gone it all the way
would still be here in love with her today
and that's the reason I believe
she'll get better when we leave
to count to ten
again.
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 2:28 PM UTC
Every day
I unpick
my beard
knots
and tangles
from its
lengthy
flowing out
my face
cascade
down my
disappeared
chest
like a
girl
twiddling
her
pigtails
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 3:18 PM UTC
We were once well acquainted
with the wee small hours
adept at navigating neon jungles
and the deeps of kitchen philosophies
entwined with kebabs and illicit frissons,
in vino veritas conspiracies
that took weeks to unpick and apologise for
but passed
Now, if seen, those hours hold different snags,
surrounding plants are far less exotic
but familiar brambles cut deep,
immutable truths roar
when the ***** doesn’t do the talking
and morning burrs not so easily dislodged
by a full English and a million teas
Apr 8, 2021
Apr 8, 2021 at 2:47 AM UTC
A lover's garden is - a budding maze
that grows from sprouting seedlings 'neath the sleet
as mirth for spring outdone the frosty glaze,
and stems to touch unveil with flowered greet.
The blossom heads imbue the wealth within
to splay a redden zeal, or blue of truth
or white as pure, but darker shades can win
tho' hue can glow, it could then bring untruth.
For beds of flowers thorn and sharply *****
to walk the floral beat; some planter's bleed,
the dripping stains, and petal leaves unpick
But if the bristly spines grew true, proceed.
A lover's world can grow an Eden's yard
tho' if from brittle make, then prune on guard.
Oct 1, 2018
Oct 1, 2018 at 10:42 AM UTC
The decaying and the dead where the wafer thin tread carefully
fearful that they too will be
upon this rotting heap,
I'll be the sacrifice
lay me 'cross the altar stones
and chisel these bones away.
See
it's easy when you're ready
when you steady yourself and take what comes,
it's when the guns of both sides rest and bullets do what they do best,enough to test the patience of a lesser man,
that I prepare to go out there and take the fall
and **** you all.
When I die
there'll be no 'spirit in the sky' and Norman Greenbaum told us all a lie,we die,we rot,compost,we do not fly off to paradise,there is nothing nice in death,the fetid breath of that which walks and stalks us in our darkest hours,what powers it has to overcome the advent of the morning sun,
well
**** that too,it might take you it won't take me.I will go there willingly
and take that ride to eternity or infinity and what comes first? they're both so far away
but a question for another day,today
I'll parlay with the dead
unpick the slender threads of
life
and go on.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 12:53 PM UTC
Does he tick your box
unpick all the locks
stop the clocks?
tell me.
If he does all that
why are you reading this
when you kiss do you melt
have you ever felt this way and is he
the one that makes your day?
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 1:37 AM UTC
To say that you love me would make me an Ersatz being,
A substitute
An inferior entity woven like nylon;
Over
And
Over,
To be used as a shirt.
Nothing more than to cover another's body
To hide them in synthetic fibres,
A spurious masks.
I never get tired of the perpetual winding
Of untrue nature.
I am unsound like polyester,
No soft cotton.
Unpick my threads
Each stitch as rough as my skin.
Pull out my stuffing
And cut through my back.
Throw me to the side.
Then buy a new doll.
Jan 24, 2017
Jan 24, 2017 at 2:45 PM UTC
I carefully stitched your name
embroidered each memory,
each beautiful piece of art
into the delicate walls
of my beating heart.
I put aside the threat of pain,
the tearing apart,
the risk of scars that would remain,
in the hope that I would never
have to
unpick, unfasten,
you, again.
How I was wrong.
And the unstitching never gets easier
and the short sharp scratch
Each time, you work your way back
Hurts just as much as the last.
Jan 9, 2015
Jan 9, 2015 at 10:27 AM UTC
memories sewn into the lining
I unpick sometimes
a good book read
and some a living nightmare
sewn back up out of sight
cherished and put away
while the harder reads browsed
one day I will fully understand
this oldering mind growing
to the full stature of Mankind
Dec 17, 2014
Dec 17, 2014 at 7:55 AM UTC
The air is cotton-tangle thick and
thoughts are heavy.
I unpick a hem of memory -
The quiet pip-pip of a broken stitch
gives way to raw.
Jun 20, 2021
Jun 20, 2021 at 12:34 PM UTC
How long it seems
this night so full of dreaming,the night streams willow reaching underneath my pillow and rocking me,'til my eyes close upon the sights to see which these dreams seem to offer gladly up to me.
Nothing here is real,imaginings and fantasy deal with the mundane that I am,they say a man can dream of being god and ruling like a king over continents or that he may sing as sweet as any skylark,in the dark it doesn't matter who you are or where you've been or married to a king or queen,we look the same to others in the night,shadows to the left and right and nothing here is real.
I feel ashamed to say that in sleeping I long only for the day to wake me,I break out of the dreaming night as a prisoner might break out of jail,sneakily as if no one could be awake to see me,craftily,like a fox I unpick the lock and open wide the morningside of the night.
But how long it seems that dreams have trapped me in that cell,released now dreams know well to leave this man alone,I make more reality my home to live and give those sleeping willow pillows leave to dream elsewhere.
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 2:27 AM UTC
i can write you love poems
on parchment cream.
i can sway, and dance
through a moonless night
i can undress us both in
sweet slow torture
i can whisper loving words
in your ear
and write hot sultry nothings
on you skin,
with my burning, hungry
tongue
i can make you shiver, moan
and beg
i can stroke your manhood
til you can no longer stand
i can give you entry,
time and time again,
to my soul.
i can give you,
fast and *****
or, slow and trantric
love in so many ways,
i can take you,
to the brink, of madness
and back again.
i can keep you in my bed
for hours and days.
i can with love
unpick your seams
i can mix our essences
and make a new being
a godlet of love, hope
and daily joy.
i can and do and will do
all this....
again and again.
but sometimes all you want
is a bite of my toast a kiss and
a smile...
i can do that too...
love is...
sometimes,
complex
and
sometimes,
simple....
but mostly
it is somewhere,
in the middle.
Jun 21, 2014
Jun 21, 2014 at 4:54 PM UTC
I am cautious of
your frail heart
I dare not
touch it with my
indelicate fingers
that weave time
as if it were
a thread I
could simply
unpick
if I went wrong
these are the offerings
of lost things,
toy cars and thimbles
that no one knew
what to do with
but you heart,
like the flesh
of the moon,
sits in the sky like
an echo
calling me home
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 10, 2019 at 11:19 AM UTC