"unsurprised" poems
though deep he sleeps sometimes,
combining this exhaustive restorative
of old age, that alternates with a restlessness
rest of old age ~ the brain's nightly self-cleansing,
both necessities absolute
so he be unsurprised, by a parallel process,
occurring beside him, as woman rumbles, mumbles,
all the while reenacting the things we dare not acknowledge
in the waking hours, much too painful, much to fearfully real unreal,
but, best unrealized
she bolts upright, looks around, attempting to cross back,
looking, investigating, ascertaining time and place, localizing
her orientation, while assessing external+imagined dreamt threats,
till satisfied sufficient that whatever dreamt, realized or dreamisized,
before, going prone once-more
the watch man observes, the critical threat level, doesn't
approach the red line, not requiring hands-on interventions,
and relieved, that she has expunged and expelled the mind's many
molecules of memories, true or false, real or revisionary, making clean
white tissued neuron+cell for the morrow
and thus he reminds himself, that he be watch man, observing, uninterfering, is too, is also, a definitive infinite
only love poetry
Jul 29, 2025
Jul 29, 2025 at 6:59 PM UTC
From depth to height, from height to loftier height,
The climber sets his foot and sets his face,
Tracks lingering sunbeams to their halting-place,
And counts the last pulsations of the light.
Strenuous thro' day and unsurprised by night
He runs a race with Time, and wins the race,
Emptied and stripped of all save only Grace,
Will, Love,--a threefold panoply of might.
Darkness descends for light he toiled to seek;
He stumbles on the darkened mountain-head,
Left breathless in the unbreathable thin air,
Made freeman of the living and the dead,--
He wots not he has topped the topmost peak,
But the returning sun will find him there.
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Shakespeare’s Dog
in the theater tonight, the notion of a poem-potion
courtesy of Shakespeare's dog came unbidden
So when home arrived, was unsurprised that this
very peculiar pug was farting before my own front door.
get lost, I announced got what I need from your boss,
but before I could kick him across the floor,
the pug spake thusly:
*this dog knows the boot too well,
it is parcel of this dog's life of no quality,
but if you give me shelter tonite, I will provide,
share some of Speare's un-Published Works
and you can claim it as your own!*
kicked that dog across the room,
(having pity earlier I let him in and enter)
told Jim, (that’s what I called him)
he can stay the night, or long as the sun rises up
and goes down unbidden, but, if I ever
caught him plagiarizing, selling sonnets on the side,
I would report him to the ASPCA and the Poet’s Union.
The American Society for the Poets of Conscience Alive -
might have his low hanging ***** cut off in retribution.
he laughed out loud, rhyming funny, pontificating:
*well mate,
thanks for the soliloquy,
me ***** long time gone,
but what I know and what I’ve seen
if tale-told you, and you were to listen,
you would keep me around as fodder
for your artistic soul.
in return chappie,
you need only provide me a rug, a fire,
A/C for the languid summer eves,
fodder for me body, and your boots,
far removed from my hindquarters.*
We spoke much thereafter,
turns out he served his poet-masters
in many ways, more than a mere footstool.
his snoring keeps me awake some twenty years later.
his love for country music makes me put him on nice days,
outdoors, his headphones securely strapped round his double chins.
ugh that pug. became my best becoming love, old friend,
one of us will pass someday and an elegy composition,
the other devotee will furnish sadness utterly becoming.
so if a farting pug before your door you’ve found,
take him in, give him water, an amply supply please
of Carrie, Trisha and Chaplin-Carpenter for his immortal soul,
but beware, he might try to sell you
some of my words, as your own.
Mar 26, 2018
Mar 26, 2018 at 1:31 PM UTC
does your skin ever melt into the mirror
do your palms ever reach the other side
will these reflections ever make sense
ever feel familiar
ever seem right
whole
on purpose
do you find yourself, one day
staring back, unsurprised
thinking, i know her well
able to plaster her on billboards and
not shiver with questioned identity
because i am terrified
i’ll never look like the person
i hope to see when i squeeze my eyes shut
will they ever open
Jun 2, 2018
Jun 2, 2018 at 3:43 PM UTC
Forbidden night, with your sheltered hours.
How I long to paint you in broad strokes, adding water to the brush,
That you may spread and extend your precious mercies beyond the borders of your designation,
up and out into the wicked day.
May the sun forgive me for bankrupting its grand offering in favor of the always-waning dark, when it’s easier to walk between worlds without touching.
Daylight brings out the conquerers and also the conquered,
creating a vacuum that devours the air between gaps in the dimensions,
the grind and squeeze of many lungs contracting at once.
And although every period of light and compression is followed by a period of darkness and grasping strangeness, I am never unsurprised by the strength of my enduring love nor less enchanted by the singularity of our shadowy and permissive embrace. I have traveled great lengths to con my own rhythms into abandoning their posts.
Oh night, I hold on to you like a new bride at a military wedding,
resolute in the knowledge that you will only return once you’ve already gone.
No sooner do you pull from my arms do I finally rest, too early and too late for a gentle landing onto the unforgiving surface of the sunrise.
the hourglass breaks and so appears Morpheus, great and ancient, to call down black night upon the wretched world.
For it was agreed that once per cycle, the world must lose itself in necessary madness, and thus rests the cosmic balance upon which fares the day
Dec 13, 2021
Dec 13, 2021 at 3:08 AM UTC
lead only,
read only,
craft yourself a better poet,
after you have crafted yourself
a better being
leaders are dragged to the fore
selected and elected,
pushed and pulled
be wary of those who shout
and boast
Follow Me,
for they think not of you,
they think only of the me in us,
their glory in your gore
do not follow me,
I shall not follow you.
let us each lead by example
and upon the shoulders
of our fellows will we be lifted
spontaneously combined, but not combusted
then, especially then,
go quietly inside yourself amidst the haste
for fellowship endures,
but fame fleeting,
and the adorers will soon flee
to the next prince of promises,
and when to the ground you slide,
slipped from their tilting shoulders,
be unsurprised
Jun 9, 2014
Jun 9, 2014 at 5:15 AM UTC
We sit in a café
Ceramic mugs of
Seasonally appropriate beverages
Wrapped in our grips
Surrounded by folks who also have
Ceramic mugs of
Seasonally appropriate beverages
Wrapped in their grips
But we are not here
To chat on about the weather
Our significant others
Or careers; no
We certainly are not
You glance at me
In a nearly
Conversational manner
“So you had your heartbroken”
You say, a combination of an
Unsurprised sneer and a nostalgic frown
Upon your face
“So I had my heartbroken”
I repeat, my lips cracked and my mouth
Blistering slowly from the heat
Of my seasonally appropriate beverage
“Are you, like the good little kid you are,
Doing the things
That they tell good little kids
To do in order to recover from such an ordeal?”
“I am, like the good little kid I am,
Doing the things
That they tell good little kids
To do in order to recover from such an ordeal”
“I haven’t even given into that
Deep, gut wrenching temptation
To do something terribly
Terribly destructive”
I state this in a mockingly proud way
Before pinching my chapped lip between my teeth
And gnawing on it until a swell of blood
Dripped into my seasonally appropriate beverage
“But what I have found”
I say, slowly, licking my coppery lips
“Is that despite all these
‘Coping Mechanisms’”
Your expression is inquisitive
Brow raised, eyes lit up
Like storm clouds with lightning
Stirring somewhere behind them
“I suppose you’re wondering why…”
I state slowly, before sighing an a
Somewhat irritated manner
"I’ve thought this thought too many times before..."
“Because no matter what
My mind refuses to even ponder
The thought that I am meant
For anyone but her”
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 8:02 PM UTC
Like as a flamelet blanketed in smoke,
So through the anaesthetic shows my life;
So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife
With the strong stupor that I heave and choke
And sicken at, it is so foully sweet.
Faces look strange from space--and disappear.
Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear--
And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet:
All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain
That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly
Time and the place glimpse on to me again;
And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty,
I wake--relapsing--somewhat faint and fain,
To an immense, complacent dreamery.
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I wonder what everyone else was feeling
when you were rushed to the hospital.
Again.
Eyes rolled,
mouths scoffed,
unsurprised.
Like the only place it made sense for you to be was
locked up
or six feet under.
I managed to stitch together the fragmented sentences
I had heard
and fill the spaces in between
with what I could infer.
Two sole letters
reverberated off the cave walls of my mind:
OD,
OD,
OD.
An anthem I fell asleep to where I dreamed of a bedroom
for remission to make love to your addictions.
Those two letters became five before I could grasp the finality.
D
E
A
T
H.
I was shattered.
The pieces of myself,
I’ve retrieved off the floor
and put them together in the puzzle of my life
where I have no place for drugs to fit.
I think about you more often than anyone is willing to believe.
When you took your first sip of alcohol,
a mixed drink of
one part peer pressure
and another part curiosity,
did you know you’d end up drinking your life away?
Driving and drinking don’t go together-
but maybe no one ever told you that.
But soon, it wasn’t enough.
You felt the need to get high to get through the day,
but did you hear your life start to break and our hearts along with it?
You always had a ‘go big or go home’ mentality,
I just wish you hadn’t applied it to drugs.
“Drugs don’t **** has become the war cry.
I know.
They do so much more than that.
They rip families apart
steal honor from fathers,
children from mothers,
and life from anyone.
You huff and you puff and soon you become
the big bad wolf who brings
the house d
o
w
n
I still hold you in the highest respect
and I can’t make that point clear enough.
You never stopped fighting.
That monkey on your back didn’t live an easy life.
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 1:52 PM UTC
I am afraid.
I know the odds are against me.
I have doubts. I have so many doubts.
But I offer you my bare wrists.
I offer you my whole heart.
I offer you my body
And my mind.
I believe that to receive what you wish for more than anything in the world
You have to be willing to risk everything you have.
So here, I risk it.
I lay on the table the darkest days of my life
And the possibility that they will happen all over again.
I surrender my pride, and my logic, and my suspicion.
I hold nothing. I present it all.
I strip myself of the armor I use to fend off feeling.
Because the bottom line is that faith
Is the biggest risk you can take.
I am full of thoughts whirring like gears in a motor,
Full of doubt like ice water,
But faith is not about being sure.
Faith is about knowing that everything could crash down
And deciding that there is something you need to love
More than you need to be ready for that fall.
This is my decision. This is my show of faith.
I offer my bare wrists to this world
And if it demands a blood sacrifice,
I will be unsurprised.
But if there is even the smallest chance
That someday I will hold you in my arms
It is worth the risk.
It is worth every risk.
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 1:16 PM UTC
she became a new york city
street corner fixture
acted like its the only place to be
acted like its the place for the persecutor to begin
after all all men are guilty
none are forgiven
so she painted false hearted judges
to prop up her proposition
to subvert the natural truth
she lied when it came down to the last hours
but i was unsurprised i had seen her coming
the deception was the rationalization
means to the end
just because you can lie means you should
integrity means so much more when
there is no shame in the game
so once again i ask
just because you can lie means you should
isn't it about change
or was that just part of the lie
i walked away
on a north bronx street corner never to return
no regrets
she had sold herself at every chance
for two bits silver
for a lies chance to shine
but i will not be there to suffer the consequences
just because you can lie means you should
isn't it about change
or was that just part of the lie
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 10:44 AM UTC
Late last night I had a date with Death
And she wore a corsage of my last breath
Around her wrist and
I dressed to impress
Half-heartedly desperate to look my best...
I wore a sweater-vest
With a spoon, I slit my throat
And pulled my tongue through the narrow hole
I figured I was getting dressed to die
So I wore a cuban neck tie
I picked her up at eight
On the street parallel to the eastern gate
Of a golf course adjacent to cemetery trees
... Seemed about right to me.
We strolled through the evergreens
And a thorny briar of trees
Silently chewing on epitaffy
I was unsurprised that there was a plot
I had not surmised
And when we found ourselves raising hell
I checked my watch for the time
I walked her home along the shores
Of a river called Styx
With a gondolier called Charon.
And despite his non-speaking tone,
It was nice.
We walked to a house made of brimstone and bricks
I found myself standing at Death's door
and peered inside expecting fire
But instead the fireplace was roasting goat hide
I smiled
And I leaned in for a kiss
Instead of a kiss, all she gave me is...
A pat on the shoulder
And said we could still be friends
After all, we'd be together in
The End
Sep 30, 2013
Sep 30, 2013 at 6:57 PM UTC
His oaths were all crimson passion,
(Oh, fleeting, evanescent boy!)
But were simply passing fashion,
Discarded like some broken toy
Put on or off as he saw fit
(Not employed for some higher good:
The fondling of some harlot’s ***
The plucking of some maidenhood.)
Prolifigate in the bedroom
In constancy, he remained chaste
Cast in the role of a bridegroom
The play’s ending he brought in haste
(I say this without levity;
Forever is but brevity.)
Mar 1, 2017
Mar 1, 2017 at 10:49 AM UTC
It's only 11:30 when I plug it in and go bed,
Screaming at myself, tears in my eyes
It had only been five days
and I didn't love her Monday,
I grew into it
and I thought she had too,
until those three words came from her tongue-
"I have someone"
my world shouldn't have shattered
I shouldn't have stayed up all night
screaming at myself and writhing in pain,
clutching my aching stomach.
I should have rolled over and gone to sleep
unsurprised.
I should be used to it
Used to spending nights like this
Used to being dissapointed
To having to turn the thermostat up to 75°
so I'm not cold at night.
To having to get on facebook and talk
so I don't fall asleep completely lonely.
To having to write so I can say
"I love you"
at the end of a poem
just to get those words out of my system.
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 4:38 PM UTC
you strode in
a plaid hurricane
a bottled up typhoon
unannounced
uninvited
but completely
welcome.
and i was
surprisingly
unsurprised.
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 9:56 PM UTC
I am the overworked ceiling fan,
Wishing to drop
I am a hallowed out skull in the factory of know-it-alls,
I am a deciphered code from nearly 67 years ago
I am a pale face in summer, I am of death like the barefoot dancers
I am a foe, and I am better off
I am low in a canyon
I am an unsurprised disaster, and I've already happened
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 9:09 PM UTC
Stagnant throughout the years,
Leaving nothing to chance.
Trudging through life unsurprised,
Life keep's us a hostage.
A prisoner of the saddest sort,
Unknowing even of the chains that bind.
Until one day something changes,
A biological switch clicks.
Scales fall from previously blinded eyes,
Truth finally freeing the ignorant prisoner.
An unforseen blooming that colours the world,
Opening the mind to possibilities that could be.
The Joshua tree in particular,
Dreary, regular and uninteresting.
Stuck in an unfaltering life,
Doomed to a lonely death.
But one day something happens,
Mundane, it will never be called again.
Flowers, bright red and plentiful,
Standing out against a backdrop of barrenness.
A routine of numbing indifference,
Suddenly disturbed by a blessing.
Life no longer doomed to an empty existence,
God's larger plan finally within sight and grasp.
Trudging on with unfeeling lack of will,
Barely registering the sudden gifts.
Till they mature and give way to beauty,
Uncontested and pure.
Life can never be the same,
Once circumstance whispers, 'Run with me.'
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 8:34 AM UTC
We were never an inch
closer; to what could have been.
A repetitive game of trying to reach
Is it my fault I spread myself too thin?
A close second to be yours
Thinking all the spaces were filled
You got me for two years,
all locked up and unfulfilled.
Done crossing the finished line
Came in last and unsurprised
You were never mine.
I went home with no prize.
May 25, 2017
May 25, 2017 at 2:18 PM UTC
In this unconscionable soul rests a being
Void of knowledge, yet engaging in life
He has become stranded in his path
Nevertheless, he knows where to go, but reluctantly does not follow
The inability to stick with his logic has become a downfall
Blinded by the subtleness of repetition
He continues, unsurprised
Caught up in his unrequited lust for more
Sometimes, however, he finds truth in the greatest parts of his life
But instantly the figure appears, blinding
The figure haunts his memory
As dark as it is, he refuses to release it
Some unknown burden holds him closely
Entangled from years of darkness
Is it possible to even discover light?
Or is he eternally traveling with bloodless hands, outstretched in potential?
I find myself only able to whisper softly among the screams echoing in his head
Is it worth your life?
Without this burden you can truly find yourself
Can’t you see what it has made you?
Nothing more than a spec of dust in the ground
Worthless, beaten down by others
He placed himself in this state
Continuing to wander, as he desires
Hoping that in his brokenness he can bring life to something
The only influence he has is the darkness that consumes his soul
At one moment was change possible
Yet once again he has turned away
To find his worth in the loneliness of states
Unable to find redemption in his hollow face
Jun 6, 2011
Jun 6, 2011 at 9:10 PM UTC
She sat slumped against the wall
Red knuckles begging to be soaked in salt water
Fingernails seeping red like faded nail varnish
Skin a mesmerising galaxy
Shades of blue
Purple marks
Half moons shadowed beneath her hauntingly piercing eyes
She watched me like she's been here before
Her poker face unsurprised of my presence
Like she was discovered and left to be found again
By someone else
She didn't ask nor beg
Pride or shame
I couldn't tell
The cogs in my mind whirred
It's too late
I could give her a new world
A new start
But I could see in her eyes her world was gone
Her heart was buried deep within the bloodied soil beneath her hands
Her soul was tied to the past
The good and the bad
I could give her food
And clothes
And shelter
But I can't free her mind
From the prison she's been in
I can't chase away the nightmares
It's too late
Dec 30, 2016
Dec 30, 2016 at 2:57 PM UTC
big blue eyes of innocence
naïve in her five years of existence
calls out for daddy, for daddy to come
around 9 o'clock at night.
he enters the room, unsurprised,
this has become ritual.
check the closet, under the bed
for the creatures of the night.
kiss her head and tuck her in
then turn off the lights.
how beautiful this scenery was,
the innocence of it all.
a father's assurance was enough
to comfort her troubled mind.
the pure and unfailing trust
that everything will be alright.
but as the years passed
her faith began to weaken.
taking off the rosy shades
blindsided by reality.
through the pain and sorrow
she came to learn
the monsters do not live
underneath the beds
but in herself.
and with each saw of the blade
daddy's little girl fought those monsters.
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC
you think about someone too long listening to a song
and they start to creep their way into the chords,
climb their way up on the staff, find their place in the rests
until there's no where you can't see them. hear them. miss them.
there are a lot of songs I can't listen to anymore
I will never be unsurprised by the injustice that just one person can do
to another by simply trying their best to exist.
I throw out favorite movies and favorite artists and favorite books,
I throw out pieces of me everyday because I can't carry them alone.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't keep us like we wanted.
I'm sorry that we weren't the strong adults we thought,
just small children who tried to make a home in each other's arms.
And maybe you don't feel that way - but when I hear the crooning
of a boy singing about how we were spoons,
I can't help but notice all the scars we left, two knives
pretending that we could never really hurt each other,
getting closer and closer
until there was nothing left to cut.
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 11:34 AM UTC
11:38pm Friday night
Lost again
To your memory
The nights we spent
Blissful
Unaware of what
we could lose
Dashed upon the rocks
Bitter
Disappointed
Unsurprised.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 6:53 PM UTC
big blue eyes of innocence
naïve in her five years of existence
calls out for daddy, for daddy to come
around 9 o'clock at night.
he enters the room, unsurprised,
this has become ritual.
check the closet, under the bed
for the creatures of the night.
kiss her head and tuck her in
then turn off the lights.
how beautiful this scenery was,
the innocence of it all.
a father's assurance was enough
to comfort her troubled mind.
the pure and unfailing trust
that everything will be alright.
but as the years passed
her faith began to weaken.
taking off the rosy shades
blindsided by reality.
through the pain and sorrow
she came to learn
the monsters do not live
underneath the beds
but in herself.
and with each saw of the blade
daddy's little girl fought those monsters.
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC