"veering" poems
You slowly walk down the avenue of normality
Ignoring the side streets and oddly placed alleys
Change, you feel, is strange and unnerving
You stay straight and narrow, no veering or swerving
You look at us weirdos and our strange machinations
you speed up your pace with much trepidation
You're so busy keeping to the road that's more traveled
that you are completely unaware that it's turning to gravel
You're walking alone, and the road has all but decayed
the streets that you passed up, now bustling highways
Your fear of the odd and peculiar, the offbeat uncommon
has led you to become alone, forlorn, and unwanted
Everyone's different
Everyone's weird
Everyone has secrets that no one will hear
You wanted to be normal, and normal you are
now you're a minority, among the bizarre
May 27, 2013
May 27, 2013 at 12:23 AM UTC
Thinking with short breath, gripping my chest, sinking with stress?
Just to attest, Imagine putting stress to the test
Over pushing boundaries set with intent
Chasing leads, gaining lost time pursuing a lust with broken trust
Only to rise to the question
Can the duality of morals and ethics which define us..
Be overwritten?
Misconstrued needs for skeptics lost in line
Slowly assimilating breathless methods
Hijacked
Black rose petals spiraling to conclusion, Decomposing as if to forget this
Why don't I neglect this elusive euphoria defined in terms of confusion?
Split paths once veering in opposite directions begin running parallel
I know I'm here, but who's that there?
Ominous reflections veer back with eyes unfamiliar
A face with no definition grabs my wrist lurching me forward
Weightlessly ***** following a diverging direction with questioned intention.
Where are you taking me? (Silence)
Operating in two places at once, questioning who is the driver
Hijacked
There but ever increasingly distant, attempting to reach you
The sunrise rekindling the spark of yesterdays intuitions
Preserving eloquence like a flower in full bloom
Suddenly fades eerie in an instant, dwindling on gloomy restless expressions
Cloudy perception refracted by crystalline illusions
The evanescent cypress terpene, king of bliss
Flowing in the direction towards what has been calling it most
An icy chill enters my chest, a constant race to chase an endless quest
A ploy of acceptance with a cotton ball
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 11:50 AM UTC
No phone call
No message
No good night
No good day
No surprise
No time trial
No sum ails
No bearings
No veering
No phone call
No message
No good day
Jun 27, 2016
Jun 27, 2016 at 6:28 AM UTC
And like a bird
She flies away.
She sings her song in ultimate joy.
Her heart flutters.
Singing what comes to mind.
Soon as she is approached.
She flies away.
The wind beneath her arms.
She goes higher and higher.
Stopping in mid air,
Her arms tired & sore.
The life she deserves isn't far.
Gliding towards the horizon.
Soon as she finds peace.
It is easily disturbed.
Looking around to find the best place.
Seeking shelter she flies further.
Appearances aren't at all what they seem.
For this she is labeled and taken for granted.
Curiously placing one foot in front of the other.
Veering the opposite direction.
Her heart falling faster and faster.
They don't know her worth.
She flies higher and higher
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 2:07 PM UTC
superb partaking of private delicacies
yet always keeping track of the skyline
keeping senses alert, never fully falling
I allow myself to get hurt each time that skyline changes
not because I enjoy the pain
but there's just something about you I'm not willing to lose, not that easily
so, I swallow ******* and suppress the ego and take the whipping words readily
whatever it takes
there may come a relinquishing moment when I can just give and let it all flow
free fall, like a kite almost
but for now, when shadows may come and place arms round the heavens
****** sun rays from abode and kiss the air into a messy cloudburst
and leave the sky taut with approaching footfalls of fiery thunder claps
I take it all and want it no other way
I accept the paradox fully
the pattern has been set
it is consistent
this mega beautiful skyline over me hovers so discreet in plain sight yet blind to all
I see the veins on the back of your hand, and blood veering sideways towards impossible thoughts
yes
a line upon the horizon tells me never fear
a stringent fire walk simply tests the mettle coil
discoveries in life confirm nobody is alone
as deep and low as it gets sometimes
the highs, oh! the highs outfly the roof
take what you need from life now and from me
yet take your sweet time
until the day I see your eyes reflected in that skyline
and your lamp beckoning on, into this frame
your skyline tastes so good
Dec 1, 2013
Dec 1, 2013 at 5:12 AM UTC
Passing through huddled and ugly walls
By doorways where women
Looked from their hunger-deep eyes,
Haunted with shadows of hunger-hands,
Out from the huddled and ugly walls,
I came sudden, at the city's edge,
On a blue burst of lake,
Long lake waves breaking under the sun
On a spray-flung curve of shore;
And a fluttering storm of gulls,
Masses of great gray wings
And flying white bellies
Veering and wheeling free in the open
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Near a town of history untold
Where everyone knows each name
Wooden behemoths - obliviously old
Each unique but each the same
It was meant to be a perfect day
Of tranquility through the trees
Instead, the sky is brood with grey
And the leafs flow as they please
Alone, in nature's splendor spilled
In a rainy wilderness, seldom seen
The birds and insects grow suddenly still
In a spread silence of the green
Like eyes embedded in your back
You sense the stare of something sour
The mood hurries to horrid black
As you quiver into a cower
In bending branches blended
Creeping in creases - camouflaged
Nature's imbalance to be amended
In the forest's full mirage
Witness a terror appearing
Frantically floating from afar
Emerged in echoes and vaguely veering
Black, bleak and bizarre
A malevolent, monstrous maw
Snarls of hunger, habit, and hate
A malodor of meat, reeking raw
A violently increasing heart rate
From frozen still to fearfully shaking
You are manically mesmerised
Your pupils promptly dilating
As you and the beast lock eyes
Your meaningless attempt to run
From a stride to a collapse
The beams above crown the sun
As the twigs around you snap
A soar of pain as you hit the ground
Chest cavity cracked open
As you faint, you hear the sound
Of a language never spoken.
Gutted and gargling gore
Eaten by nature's nightmare
Convulsing on a forest floor
Indifference chokes the air
It's just another perfect day
Of tranquility in the trees
The rain has stopped, the leafs still sway
With the cooling, comfortable breeze
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 3:46 PM UTC
*see me fly close to the sun
watch my feathers trail and hopes plummet
all round the air
falling through the sky*
evening pond..
cranes' beaks probe
last of daylight melts in rosemary-blue
lunar-moult occurs once
fins have fill of lacrymal-oceans
pedestal left behind when raiment-sown
into the slow-weave tapestry of awakening
sweeping over this landscape with seminal-flow
changing forever its inside-face
hear the unsignalled-whispers of the moon-child
it all lies in that feathered-hope
squiggle.. squiggle.. this message portent
on the palm of your sentry-pod
rustic purple on wheat-coloured earth
green-eyes smite the clouds its freedom
moving.. ever-moving.. then dissipate
into brilliant air
temporarily changing the sky's face
as the sun's eyelashes slowly meet
crawling onward
on the surface
of never
edging slowly to the sides now..veering
wait to fall..
can't ignore the ever-giving spores
lithe stems in a trance-like dance
yes, there is beauty in this non-stop dispersing
of that which asks
nothing in return
*somewhere
there must still be
a massive glitch
in the time-score*
st - 9 oct
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 7:52 PM UTC
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you—think not but I would!—
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.
2.8k
When the Costa Concordia met with a reef,
it was certain some lives would be lost.
As she listed to starboard at eighty degrees,
Her Captain was first to get off.
Captain Schettino was schmoozing some blonde
when his ship began veering to shore.
He was unwilling to go down on his ship,-
The blonde? yes, but hold the encore.
It seems his chief waiter hails from the Isle,
the Isle with the ship eating reef.
They drew close to shore so he’d wave to his wife
an excursion that beggars belief.
The Coast guard responders where shocked and amazed;
They just couldn’t believe what they saw:
The Cruise liner Captain, paddling furiously,
beating women and children to shore.
Unlike Captain Smith, who stood at his post,
hearing “ Nearer my God to thee.”
The tune that Schettino will sing his bambinos
is “Nearer to Shore take me!”
He’ll spend time in jail, but the punishment pales
when compared to the scope of his sin
This sailor has fallen from grace with the sea
in his dreams let their screams never end.
Jan 21, 2012
Jan 21, 2012 at 9:05 PM UTC
Love is a word
Love is an emotion
Love is a noun
Love is a feeling
Love is an adjective
Love is visible
Love is a verb
Love is a word
Look to the hills-
Ocean waves float by
Veering to the right
Ever so slightly.
Listen! There it is!
Oh, how the waves turn,
Visiting one another
Evacuating below the tide.
Love is a word.
Jul 5, 2021
Jul 5, 2021 at 12:50 PM UTC
In the long journey out of the self,
There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places
Where the shale slides dangerously
And the back wheels hang almost over the edge
At the sudden veering, the moment of turning.
Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones.
The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons,
Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley.
Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain,
Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.
-- Or the path narrowing,
Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones,
The upland of alder and birchtrees,
Through the swamp alive with quicksand,
The way blocked at last by a fallen fir-tree,
The thickets darkening,
The ravines ugly.
2.6k
I love my hour of wind and light,
I love men’s faces and their eyes,
I love my spirit’s veering flight
Like swallows under evening skies.
2.5k
This is your reality, the brave new world;
i just hang out here:
birthed in the Cradle of Elam,
a mourning son of Baal,
smeared and anointed
with the oil from the
***** fingerprints of
countless scores of
sweaty neophytes;
carried, dropped, dented;
brought forth from eons passed,
updated for the 21st century,
gilded Krylon-gold.
This nebulous gift,
made tangible and
whole by blood,
a form fitting sacrifice,
transmogrified kudzu,
rootless, digging
talons' clutch into
our minds' construct,
seeks strength of
conviction, action.
Our ship is now
veering off course.
i must respond in kind.
i will not be led astray.
i will not have my good
intentions commandeered.
i will hijack your purpose,
screaming mutiny,
holding Occam's Razor-knife
to the throat of your jihads.
i issue a fatwa of peace,
as you once did,
before.
i renounce a kingdom of hate,
as you once did,
before.
i seek charity in effort,
as we once did,
before.
Let us rebuild.
Let us move forward.
***** a new Babel,
forsaking the sword.
Let our forks be on roads,
and not on our tongues;
a forging of union,
as we'd once begun:
My sisters, my brothers,
my family,
as one.
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 7:39 PM UTC
It is night time, and cold, and snow is falling,
And no wind grieves the walls.
In the small world of light around the arc-lamp
A swarm of snowflakes falls and falls.
The street grows silent. The last stranger passes.
The sound of his feet, in the snow, is indistinct.
What forgotten sadness is it, on a night like this,
Takes possession of my heart?
Why do I think of a camellia tree in a southern garden,
With pink blossoms among dark leaves,
Standing, surprised, in the snow?
Why do I think of spring?
The snowflakes, helplessly veering,,
Fall silently past my window;
They come from darkness and enter darkness.
What is it in my heart is surprised and bewildered
Like that camellia tree,
Beautiful still in its glittering anguish?
And spring so far away!
2.4k
i couldn't stand the heat,
spent most of the time in the shade,
everyone made fun
of the guy standing by the pool
reading a book, pretending to
be a sundial;
i was called the whiskey-man;
one night i slept outside
and by the time i woke up my glass
of brandy disappeared;
mingled with the "auctioneers"
of a good time; boy one of those
kenyan girls was hot... oomph,
she looked like oiled coal, slimy bits
and raw ***
i know i was a tourist...
played a stupid drinking game with
two english girls, snogged one
at the end of the game, wasn't invited
back to the room for a *********
spent hours at night looking at the tide
splashing the shore, cried at the painting
so alive all the museums and galleries
became graveyards of appreciation;
it was a holiday resort, i admit,
although one bartender asked me to do
a local tour of the place, go clubbing,
supposedly a colonial ******* i was
upon first reading;
but the heat though! god almighty, couldn't
stand the temperature,
i was literally an ice-cream cone most
of the time, took to the shades,
wrote a short story for my grandfather
about an elephant dunking his trunk into
a bottle of brandy...
one day got chatting to a scottish pair
and a russian couple,
told the scottish guy about travis' 12 memories
album,
i was originally asking for a cigarette,
so we drank and chatted about mickey mouse
politics of america...
the scottish guy eventually ran off and jumped
into the kids' shallow pool veering
on blind-drunk-happy...
another time i too jumped into a pool
with my clothes on...
******* this heat...
ha, hmm, those kenyan macaques were funny
esp. on prompt of being fed on the balcony...
but boy that baboon was a menace,
a real anarchist, charged in like a donkey
with meningitis and stole food...
although one baboon had massive haemorrhoids...
and given his fat pinky *** it was even funnier to watch.
oh yeah, and this guy muhammad wanted
to take me to a crocodile sanctuary of his...
i sort of refused the invitation,
and no, i didn't go on the zoological escapade
of a safari to see the Masai tribesmen...
just gave c. g. jung's modern man in search of soul
to one of the caretakers of the resort.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 7:43 AM UTC
To the Williamson Brothers
High noon. White sun flashes on the Michigan Avenue
asphalt. Drum of hoofs and whirr of motors.
Women trapsing along in flimsy clothes catching
play of sun-fire to their skin and eyes.
Inside the playhouse are movies from under the sea.
From the heat of pavements and the dust of sidewalks,
passers-by go in a breath to be witnesses of
large cool sponges, large cool fishes, large cool valleys
and ridges of coral spread silent in the soak of
the ocean floor thousands of years.
A naked swimmer dives. A knife in his right hand
shoots a streak at the throat of a shark. The tail
of the shark lashes. One swing would **** the swimmer...
Soon the knife goes into the soft under-
neck of the veering fish... Its mouthful of teeth,
each tooth a dagger itself, set row on row, glistens
when the shuddering, yawning cadaver is hauled up
by the brothers of the swimmer.
Outside in the street is the murmur and singing of life
in the sun--horses, motors, women trapsing along
in flimsy clothes, play of sun-fire in their blood.
1.9k
Clattering clashes of confused cacophony
Secretly sweep myself from sanity
No one knows of this nonsense
That's viciously veering away my vanity.
But bursting bottles bubble over
Then transform from thick to translucent
Succumb to swallowing my insecurities
Like little lies luring your loneliness
Making moments your own meaningless movie
These hallucinations hear hoarse laughter
That tricks time into ticking towards timebombs.
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 7:07 PM UTC
When I was a child, Pan was my friend,
With others I refused to play,
Except for those reminding me,
Of that long, lost, youthful boy.
Playing along and following the pond-
To the stream that led out to the bay,
Just a ahead in the woods was where I called home,
A land of adventure and joy.
As time went along,
I was forced to grow strong,
Veering from my childish ways,
My life steered off course, by that Pirate, of course,
Swabbing decks, cleaning bilges,
Slaving through days.
Nine years hence,
Spending many a *****
Its back in the woods I reside.
Be it a curse, that might sound right in verse,
My heart yearns to be back, living life by the tides.
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 10:38 PM UTC
We felt as if we’d been born in the desert
Passing shoelace factory prostitutes
Veering memories of Crab Nebula up-skirts
& Slowly obtained convoluted attitudes
“(In our sleep) We let the lizards lick our teeth”:
The grackle chatter from Four Hand Weaver
Met the ears of Guest, who’d arrived in Portsmeth
Riding on deep banjo drones from within the ether
What else can words be but propellants?
They are TLC to mad minds of the 90’s
Coaxing the Guest out of hell with mad chants
& we, the kids, following blindly
“He tried to get me to turn off the electricity
Chanting Southeast Asian Countries with Four Hands
Somehow part of an insane Sun/Moon allegory”
Cries Morgie Saturday morning &
We saw a vision: the Guest up in a crescent
Cast down from the sky and into the sea
Cascading over into a flooding depressant
& cut open the fat man who whispered of banshees
As his steaming intestines float down by the riverside
The boys were passing jolly jokes & joints
“They’ll never figure out how to catch a bride
When they’ve forgotten how to find the celestial point!”
Screeched the Guest with his candle strap
Attached to his banjofrigerator filled with Game Fuel
“It’s in my veins, it’s in my blood like a death cap!”
No longer just a Kentucky Gentleman covered in drool
All in all, a teacher, a preacher, a joke
A gravel eater, unlike the lizards underground
“I don’t eat dirt! That’s a lie I’d never invoke
Lizards eat dirt & I ain’t like that crowd!”
Men are lizards & lizards are men
“& I ain’t a lizard no way, no how!
That’s the truest fact there ever has been
Aside from something being seriously wrong with me"
Mar 18, 2013
Mar 18, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
The street is illuminated in that shade of orange
that makes everything liminal
and we move in an opposite direction as the runners.
It seemed funny back then—
like fish veering away from its school
and maybe that’s what we are.
As we sink our feet in the slightly muddy field
and we sit without care of our light-colored jeans,
the fireflies light the dimmest corners.
We ooh and ahh like children
and maybe that’s what we are.
Boy and girl with no faces, no names.
I know you by a monosyllable
still I come, still,
like strangers made bolder by the circumstance
and maybe that’s all we are.
Jun 12, 2022
Jun 12, 2022 at 9:18 AM UTC
vowels veering
tongues twisting
mouths moulding
words wavering
sounds sliding
and everything changes.
Nov 13, 2015
Nov 13, 2015 at 5:16 AM UTC
Question: What do you do if your car crashes?
Answer: Don't crash your car.
I drove myself home from the hospital the morning after I drove myself insane.
A note in my hand listing ways the doctors could direct to get me home safe from my own self.
Come to a full stop at sharp edges,
Steer away from liquids you can drown in,
Put in your caution lights so people just drive around you,
Take your medicine,
Don't drive alone,
No not that medicine
Here's a phone number in case you have something worth saying,
Bus to class,
Unless that's too hard.
Flunk out
Call your mother.
Don't tell her everything.
And it becomes a challenge just to say I'm not okay.
Because after a disaster like mine,
No one wants to hear you haven't healed yet.
And I can't count the number of times I've been offered a vaccine instead of a remedy,
and scoffed at when the cast comes off and I'm still a little too broken.
As if I haven't healed fast enough.
Don't tell me I'm being overdramatic,
Don't tell me I chose the broken glass,
the bending steal.
That it was all avoidable had I just not blinked,
Had I just slowed down and stopped to think
Had I just snapped out of it.
I wouldn't have crashed.
Question: Have you ever gone driving in the rain?
In the snow?
Cause then you might know how it feels to lose just a little bit of control.
And the next moment find yourself in the bottom of a ditch,
waiting once again for someone to pull you from the wreckage
Because you can't save yourself.
I wanna save myself.
And I don't need to know how the engine works.
Just teach me to read the warning signs when I'm heading south and there's no way for me to turn around.
Let me know that when I start to let go, there are safety nets 'cause sometimes my mind is more of a balancing act, the bridge accident than a joy ride
So give me air bags,
give me seat belts,
Give me a crash test dummy.
If I cut the brake lines, show me how to coast to a stop.
Because people cannot live in a plastic bubble, rolling around at 5 mph for the rest of our lives,
repeating caution signs:
Don't blink,
Don't breath,
Don't move,
Don't freeze,
Don't drive,
Don't park,
Don't live.
Don't tell me don't tell me don't tell me
this is defensive living
Sometimes veering off the road, eyes shut tight on a straightaway covered in obstacles bigger than ourselves is the best we can do to survive.
Question: What do you do if your car crashes?
Answer: Just crash your car.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 10:34 PM UTC
I dream of lovers
*who fascinate me to no end,
veering the course of their affection
from something they understand exists,
to something they fear to understand
I dream of* hearts
*yearning for their better halves,
as they seep deeper into the chasms
that engulf their intimacy within
I dream of* sinners
*who wish to speak of sin;
rather the innocence of deviance
and its naiveté when it comes
to matters of the heart
I dream of* writers
*who bleed from their pens
as they wholeheartedly express their emotions
and aspire to quell the heartache
that they endure every day
I dream of* innovators
*who wish to present upon their peers
the next invention selected
to represent the advent of a better tomorrow
I dream of tears.
I dream of* tears....
*Why? What sorcery forces one
to shed so many
that they leak past
the prisms of known consciousness
and into the peaceful slumber
that comforts aching minds?*
I apologize.
*Now you know of the dread, sorrow,
and sheer wonder that comes
when I dream of earthly elements
begging for peace.
I dream because I am a coward.
I apologize for* dreaming.
Jan 22, 2018
Jan 22, 2018 at 6:50 PM UTC
Hello again, heartless friend.
So slyly in the backgrounds blend.
Your veering vanish, vaguely here.
Your gaze of increments - insincere.
Healer of the hearted scars.
Swallower of the heavened stars.
The paths in which we dream and delve.
Allow the doubling ones to twelves.
Slices of the eternal elude.
Movements of monstrous magnitude.
A hesitant dawdle. A lingered delay.
The mountainous sway is steered away.
Hoarded heaps of hourglass bliss.
Outnumbered by wasted nothingness.
With interludes of want, of miss.
To slowly morphed indifference.
The pendulums that abruptly swing.
The burdens they still hope to bring.
The envied earn of Earth's endeavor.
The better late. The better never.
The eerily empty echoed need.
The blossomed tree from planted seed.
The curse of a continuous grief.
The ever stealthy, silent thief.
The cogs, gears, hours and hands.
The burn of beauty, bleak and bland.
The coziest, surrounding choke.
The whelm from the transparent cloak.
The running out. The ever essence.
The grand keeper. The watchful presence.
The potential of the plainest plan.
The currency of the wisest man.
What horrors - hallowed by the tick.
Will sound for both healthy and sick?
Will compose secrets, never told?
Will fumble flame to frigid cold?
The end stays always promptly nigh.
For the intimate, infinite blink of eye.
I fear your wasting, more and more.
The constant count to twenty four.
Unresurrectable and second to none.
Airborne, regardless of having fun.
As retrospective wisdom blinds.
Our youthful hopes and manic minds.
On and on. From time to time.
Song to song and rhyme to rhyme.
Betrayer of all mice and men.
Less of if and more of when.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 6:39 AM UTC