"valve" poems
He was the ocean; handsome, but yet, Impulsively damaged. He had a sandy heart to correspond his sandy eyes, the moon dismantled that omitted pride he carried at a dead weight; shoveling and reshaping it, so people would see a sandcastle statue assembled in strength. But his washed-up soul and unannounced insecurities were aware of its genuine purpose,
this beach alongside his pupils;
quicksand, he'll sink so slowly in. Waves in his hair like ripples on his cheeks, skipping stones land at his defeat, he left notes in bottles for you, sank multiple ships for you, because he hasn't the heart to say he's desiccating with the arrival of the stars.. Retracting scars are not too far from gasps for air, foaming words of crisis by writing in the sand, signaling a light as the last one in him died. You wouldn't understand, the calm before the storm, as valve after valve puncture him. So intoxicating as it drains him, and from within, he's drying out. Sunburns stain him, a smile restrains him,
in an inescapable drought--
Jul 30, 2018
Jul 30, 2018 at 4:32 PM UTC
The day I found out about you
You lit my face like constellations light up the night sky
Patiently waiting for nine months to go by
My mom received a called
And within a blink of an eye and four and a half hours later
You came into this world
And it was like suddenly you became the center of my whole world
And you know it's funny how someone so young
Can make an impact on someone so much older
But the moment doctors said "he has disinflated heart valve"
At that very moment it felt like my own heart was torn in two
And I asked God why did you take this fragile human being
With small hands who can not possibly bare to hold all this pain and misery
But from that point on, you became a little soldier
fighting your own battle between life and death
Not knowing what the outcome would be
Because you were only a day old
But the day you went under
You were all alone and you fought and fought and fought
Until you finally won the fight
Until you could finally sought the day where you will open your eyes once more
And feel the ray of sun touch your soft pale skin
and even though you won the battle you still have a war to go up against
But I just want you to know you won't have to fight alone anymore
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 12:20 AM UTC
**Anger
Frustration
Scared
Lonely
Afraid
Hatred
Loathing**
So with these thoughts fueling my actions,
I make the conscious decision to punish my body.
I feel as though I deserve this treatment.
I cut to scar my body.
I cut to release emotions I had no valve for.
I have no words or outlet for them yet.
I cut to make myself feel better; to alleviate those feelings of hatred.
Cutting is such an enigma for me.
I do it as a punishment, for being weak and "allowing" myself to be abused...
But at the same time, the feeling I get from doing it is strength.
I look at the cuts and think, "Wow. I was able to endure that. I am strong."
May 29, 2014
May 29, 2014 at 9:24 PM UTC
THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood-I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ... I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ... I circle and loop and double-cross.
There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun-I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go.
There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ... I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ... before the water went down ... before Noah ... before the first chapter of Genesis.
There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ... ready to snarl and **** ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting-I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so.
There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes-And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness.
O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart-and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where-For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and **** and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
7k
**** masterminds
steer clear of this man
He's relentless
a pitbull
Lumping up Pinkman
for no logical reason
He's a madman
Massacres Mexican
kingpins and button men
Knocks out Keith Jardine
in a barfight
initiated as a ptsd
relief valve
Maddog brothers
Axe murdering elite
eliminated with a bullet
a fender
and a little help from Gustavo Fring
The only man
to walk away unscathed
from the exploding head of Danny Trejo debacle
Houndog Hank
the sherman tank
is hot on Heisenbergs trail.
Its almost guaranteed
One of them will die
Heisenbergs Bad
But Schrader
is badass.
Jun 21, 2012
Jun 21, 2012 at 6:09 AM UTC
Chills run down your spine
Caress with a caress, tender
Breaking a physical valve, meander
Touch to touch, unkeeping of the line
Unplanned, a mystery thick as pine
Feeling, shaking like thunder
Nothing short of splendor
Heart breaking without time
Pulling away from rush
Far from appeasement
No longer engrossed, no longer heated lush
Cold like the words he meant
Stinging like fireside brush
Kisses from fervent
14 April
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 12:42 AM UTC
stress like the rest I’m trying to get something off my chest. its a weight so great my body begins to shatter all i want to do is yell but this weight is hell it pushes all the air from my lungs till they are bare. do you even care? are you even there? stress is the pain in my chest it feels like cardiac arrest i feel like i should be wearing a bullet proof vest because I’m wearing a red target on my chest. just something to aim at. stress is a mess with no clear way to clear a path without being cluttered by fear. it will bring tears, it will make you think of the ones you hold dear, stress is that weight on your chest making you feel oppressed. its something i deal with normally dont worry i dont repress. i paint it on this page with each move i make a digital valve releases letting you read this.
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
She keeps asking what he does,
though his answers are recycled:
French bulldogs, paintball,
a seventh-grade broken nose.
The basket of fries between them
feels like an interview.
She teases about sweat-stuck bangs,
neon-laced Docs,
his faux leather squeaking when he moves.
Her smile forgives empty stories,
softens each silence.
Condensation slips down her glass,
her knee brushes his,
a spark he does not catch,
his throat working like a valve.
The door opens, closes,
a draft carries smoke and cedar.
distant wildfires.
Outside, a truck unloads shrimp.
A box bursts on the pavement,
pink shells and thawing ice
sliding into gutter water.
Curses flare into the alley.
Engines idle.
Hydraulics hiss.
The stoplight clicks red to green,
green to red,
its metronome louder than either of them.
Somewhere past Brockway Summit
a ridgeline blooms orange.
Sep 10, 2025
Sep 10, 2025 at 4:52 PM UTC
It's so hard to forget the pain
that is sourced inside my heart
when you also bring me
peace and joy.
Pain is addicting.
It's so hard to be honest
after all I've known is to pull up
the strings on both ends of my mouth
and smile so that whenever the doctor came he could say,
"Son, you're perfectly fine." (#AccordingToPlan)
I wanted to keep you smiling, no matter what.
It's so hard ******
to keep looking at you, knowing
life will or will not change
for better or worse.
No one can say for no one has the answer
to the future.
I cannot stay bitter or frustrated for more than a day.
It's so hard to release the pressure off my chest
like a gas tank relief valve
after all the emotions that have amassed
with no other option for alleviation until now.
Thank God for HP.
It's so hard, I feel left out
It's so hard to know what to do
It's so hard to let go,
I think I'm in love with you.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 9:58 PM UTC
In his glass world
he seems to float
embryonic smooth and white,
not pure white but rather yellowish
watched by thousands of eyes
far from his ilk,
alligators in green, out there,
innocent, harmless
it seems as if they, in the evening
after the last visitors have left,
pull the valve out of his back
and let the air and life leave him
May 12, 2014
May 12, 2014 at 10:47 AM UTC
Strange question indeed,
So I asked one and all;
Explain to me:
“What's a plumber's ball?”
Family and friends
Heeded my call,
But none could confine,
Refine or define it,
Yet Paul was sure
He could design it.
Still, none could satisfy
My caterwaul:
“What the hell is a plumber's ball?”
Does it sweat the pipe
Or wiggle the snake:
Can it clamp the ******
For Heaven's sake?
Could it snap on the cock-hole cover?
All these queries
Made me wonder.
Has it something to do
With hardness leakage,
Or ******** the ball-cock
To stop a seepage?
Has it anything to do
With a saddle valve dripping,
Electric eels,
Or two pipes mating?
And, I heard of male and female fittings,
And should I worry
If I'm standing or sitting?
If you're discharging the head
Or elongating the pipe,
Does the plumber's ball
Help it snug tight?
Is it in my tank,
Or in my bowl,
Beneath the floor
Near the drainage hole?
Is the plumber's ball
In the back of the truck
(Jeff laughed and said
One could rub it for luck).
I asked Michel
If he could tell,
He sensed it was something
He could smell.
I sought out Ray,
Perhaps he'd know,
But he was on call
To restrain a back-flow.
I couldn't ask Gary
For his wisdom and sense,
He was wigglin' the snake
To unclog a wet vent.
Henry, Rick, Scotty and Brian,
Gave shameless answers
I couldn't rely on.
It's not a crapper, tail piece
Or Johnnie-bolt,
Or catch basin, reamer,
O-ring or pipe dope.
So I searched the Net
With a fool's wonder,
And read of ball-checks,
Gas ***** and plungers.
I know it's too late
To ask Rolly or Ross,
For both of them knew,
And that's our loss.
And Ernie's gone golfing
So I can't ask the Boss.
With final resolve
I fell to my knees,
To pray St. Ferrer
With grace intercede.
His silence left me
In a state of depression;
Had Ferrer washed his hands
Of the plumbing profession?
So nothing could settle
My wherewithal,
I still didn't know,
What's a plumber's ball?
Suddenly, it hit me,
He's never wrong,
The Dalai Lama of dip-tubes,
I'll ask John.
Where others did falter,
John's a rock:
He knows the difference
Between a gas and ball ****
With a knowing smile
He embraced our Hall:
Here, good friend, is your Plumbers' Ball.
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 9:10 AM UTC
The taste of happiness
still remains
in the streetcorner
the colored days
turning into a good song
time and distance
can never break
the gate valve
of friendship.
May 18, 2015
May 18, 2015 at 12:58 PM UTC
\
Your beautiful heart has a tiny little hole
Goin’ b’bap-bim-boom boom-bap...b’bap
The mitral-valve-prolapsed leaky little hole
It goes ba-bum-bap, bitty-bap, rat-ta tat tat
Instead of the traditional ba-dum, ba-dum
And aside from the fact that I like the beat
There’s another reason, baby, I like you, (yum)
Why I lay myself down at your ivory feet
It’s not because your heart sound like a drum
Or the fact your soul shines bright and true
It’s not just the *** tuh-tum tum tum*
...It’s because I have a hole in my heart too
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 7:34 AM UTC
Some time Life is like a dark room,
Indiscernible indulge to intuit incurring infusion
Infusion of irrelevant and irregular,
Leads to a moment of disappointment and despondent!
******
But when light penetrate
Everything becoming vivid - vivacious
and set up Valve to visions!
*******
Allow light to break in and spread all over.......
Make everyone spirited and shunt for
Peace and progress!!!
Jun 28, 2015
Jun 28, 2015 at 3:59 AM UTC
If my blood could illustrate,
A picture to the world,
It will tell you the exact state,
How my heart pumps its hurt.
Each ventricle pumps emotions,
Pain, anger, hope,
Up to my brain,
And down to my toes.
Slithering through each artery and vein,
Blood carves my hearts pain,
In my head,
In my head.
Working through each capillary,
It forges anger and rage,
In my bones,
My aching bones.
After its done its work,
It fights back through each valve,
And pours back into the atriums,
Devoid of fury and pain.
It was used up,
Just like my tears,
My wasted energy for nothing,
It brought me no good.
Just more hurt.
And just slowly,
As the pain and anger dissipates from my system,
And fresh blood is packaged and sent,
From my bone marrows,
It brings along a slimmer of hope,
That this new cycle of blood would carry no more pain.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 4:36 AM UTC
Checkered choices rise some nights,
play chess with all my frightful failings.
Queen's Pawn to Rook 5.
Nail my footsteps
to the concrete season.
I'm losing pieces it seems.
I'm a sardonic grinner
and under these eyebrows, it's nuclear winter.
Wending my way through the last
three years, I find no release valve.
The pressure will build and place
its long arm along my shoulder,
pull me far from my friends.
One.
Two.
One.
Two.
Step
by step
by hammer blow step
a story is crafted, installed with a lock
in a circular book.
Queen's Pawn to Ryman Street
1:45 a.m.
simmering skin over ice armored innards,
the freezing rain sends up my curses
like steam
clouding off of my shoulders
and into the skyline.
I've castled my way out of checkmate questions.
Not my move to make,
so I won't life a finger.
Queen's Pawn to front doorstep,
then straight on to bed.
Mar 2, 2015
Mar 2, 2015 at 11:22 PM UTC
Before I breathed
A young man held my mother
coaxed her with unpracticed grace
from Irish Catholic garments between
rough sheets that smelled
like carpentry and dirt.
In photographs from back then
we have the same wrinkled eyebrows,
the same reddish beards,
but different creases
kissing the corners of our eyes.
There are canyons in my knuckles
carved out by cold.
Not New Mexico cracks
in too-hot soil,
but staff-lines of the song
New England skin sings—
I cannot deny I was born here.
My father wears gloves now when he works outside
Says he never used to, but
the pain maybe got too much
Too many winters laying palms flat
against elm, ash, sycamore,
feeling for a pulse
counting on his wrist,
waiting for a murmur, subtle hush
in the rhythm;
telling symptom
of a faulty valve.
I work weekends at a veterinary clinic
and the doctor there does this, too,
though sometimes, being held,
cats purr too loud to listen
and I must reach across the room
and turn the handle on the faucet;
Most cats fear water.
Well Father, I cannot drink from the soil
and I do not always land on my feet
But father, listen to my heartbeat
Put your hand on my chest
and don’t fear as my body
creaks in the wind—
Hear it?
Father
My boughs, my winter-catchers
are thin, but
it is not root-rot, moth, parasite;
I am not felled
like the beard you hacked from your chin
the day you decided to love, to suffer
the rest of your life
with that Irish Catholic girl—
This is merely my first season.
Brush the snow from my shoulders.
Please
comfort me
quietly,
like skin,
cracking:
*“My son
my sapling
you’ll grow.”*
Walker Staples 15 March 2013
May 4, 2013
May 4, 2013 at 4:10 PM UTC
I'm ruptured whole and am considered
inadequate
as my
amygdala slides through the trachea drops to my ventricles falls through the aorta plunges to my diaphragm hits the esophagus crashes to my phalanges. There is no hope.
May I hold something over your cranium?
May I remind you of your neuron imbalance? And yet
you sit and
watch as
my septum separates from the left atrium from the right ventricle from the bicuspid from the tricuspid from the pulmonary semi-lunar valve.
I love you. (Stupid cerebral cortex.)
I love you. (Imprudent Broca's area.)
I love you. (Hopeless frontal lobe.)
I love your nonfunctional mind and functional soul and
Well
this is all a metaphor for unrequited love.
Jun 1, 2014
Jun 1, 2014 at 9:41 AM UTC
time changes
and I realize the world needs my LOVE.
so I want to write more love poems
and infect heartstreams,
bursting valve seams, repairing flows.
carrying capacities need expanding,
deep breath felt.
simplicities stacking, and all else is.
decension, the reflection of ascension,
is being dug.
the perspective has always been from above.
time to root down, bury down, dig deep
in the ground and bring the LOVE down.
in the darker side, where light struggles sometimes,
here, this minor level, that many feel is
real,
this place needs the panting of love
to be rained down.
souls duped to believe
evil is abound.
cycles are always dark and light
and layers are thin.
pay closer attention to the place
where to the two meet again,
that point, moment, peace.
listen to its speech, the flow of a new
sprout on a tree,
the fungus sprawl through its wood.
stretching its love from underground,
above, to feed and seed and heed
the lessons here.
biodiversity, nourishment, interdependence,
just being loving. nurturing,
to your self, the total inclusiveness...
our carry capacity for LOVE is infinity.
eights will flow infinitely, so we just let it be,
walk easily, stop and discover those on our path.
discover the magic of home.
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 4:34 PM UTC
Casting shadows of doubt,
tripping over myself.
Molten to the core,
put on the shelf.
Screws in my head,
pressure builds up,
Forty five degrees,
way to much.
Gauges turn red,
point of no return,
open the valve,
release or get burned.
Blinded by the steam
of terminal fates.
Staring alone
into the gates.
Oct 4, 2014
Oct 4, 2014 at 2:20 PM UTC
Take my heart
Cardium carpal
Impossible to hold in both hands
In every glorious piece
Valve, ventricle, artery
Pulsing, pulsing — but no blood
Not pink, not red but grey,
Grey matter, but no matter
Take care not to lack a hole by
Ebon ivory of your skeletal hands,
Pulsing, pulsing — but no blood
Only bone grasping endocrine glands
Blood eagled atrium across your palms
Venae cavae hollowed hands.
Sep 29, 2021
Sep 29, 2021 at 6:10 PM UTC
You cant have it, you live it.
You cant find it, you grow it.
You cant take it, its endless.
You cant give it, its given.
No valve, no damper to slow the flow,
Open with the strength of a fire hose with no nozzle to aim,
It floods everything.
Drown in the expansiveness of love,
The most sweet surrender.
Dec 8, 2019
Dec 8, 2019 at 11:13 PM UTC
*The leaking tap dripped all night
Tip tip tip
Sleep took a flight
Dream couldn’t reap!
First thing next morn
A plumber I must call
How I scorn
The ********* tap its nightlong fall!
Poor tap has a mind of its own
******* at men’s free will
Left in dripping groan
Its pain who can feel!
Yet it doesn’t bend
Will fill the bucket
When the plumber will mend
Valve and socket!*
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 7:29 AM UTC
Make haste upon the wind of your questions
Purge that glimmer of trust
Flattery, will get you nowhere fast
Once I confirm, you are not
One of us
Take a safari on the icing of your own cake
Then cut me a slice or two
You can get overly sentimental, if you like
While I have your cake
And eat it too
Shut off the valve to your bleeding heart
No pity is needed here
I ride ******** on all my trials
Been roughing it
For years
Go ahead and apply your salve to all those wounds
You have been rubbing all that salt in
I wear a shield of aiming intention
That I call my tough
Thick skin
Oct 29, 2010
Oct 29, 2010 at 6:31 PM UTC
Rattle my yolk control, baby.
Give me a turbulent flow.
Squeeze my needle valves, baby.
Insert your directional valve.
Come on upstream through the orifice.
Give me that viscous friction.
The discharge coefficients are ready.
Blow out your resin agent.
What's the matter, baby?
What happened to the elongated pump?
Do you need a pressure compensator?
It looks like a reducing valve.
How about a little friction
to reexhibit some rigidity.
Let's renegotiate positions
and dissipate some frigidity.
May 19, 2010
May 19, 2010 at 4:23 AM UTC