"vertigo" poems
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
"yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts."
"are you drinking?" he will ask.
"are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?"
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
"taking off?" asks the motel
clerk.
"yes, it's boring,"
I tell him.
"If you think it's boring
out there," he tells me, "you oughta be
back here."
so here I am
propped up against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it's just
my cat
this
time.
38.5k
The ladder,
The one I’m forced to climb.
A lack of friction, I seem to find,
As I take the rung into my fingers.
And the vertigo sensation lingers.
I know my lesson,
Why should I persist?
Brace my feet, step up, and
Slip.
The question:
Should I give up
And fall regardless?
Or continue
And say I tried this?
With this knowledge, then,
What good is
The latter?
Jan 30, 2011
Jan 30, 2011 at 1:49 PM UTC
Stepping out
On stepping stones
Cracked and ready to crumble
The slightest pressure or lightest weight
Bring the depths instantly closer
Plummeting to the unknown
Facing the unwanted
The sunny sky turns tunnel
Turns pinhead, turns black
Vertigo, no sign to guide
Nothing to lean on
No way to track the bubbles
As the drowning ensues
Searing pain, like lightening
Blinds or enlightens
A flash of what's to come
For an instant there is tomorrow
In that instant hope renews
A hint of up or down
A choice of direction
A path to glory
A way of life
And the sun will never be lost again
May 23, 2010
May 23, 2010 at 7:25 PM UTC
With a potent kiss,
Delve into the depths of my jaded heart and lose yourself in me,
Burrow and latch yourself inside.
Synchronize with the remains of my mortal being.
Surge through a mess of broken veins and arteries,
Interfere with the synapses in my brain and dizzy my fragmented mind.
Send me dancing through a euphoria of vertigo.
Become a part of me, with a potent kiss.
Jan 30, 2011
Jan 30, 2011 at 1:47 PM UTC
there is a darkness
that the silver song
of soft illusion lights
in symbolic equivalents
of images real
it is a light
brutally interrogative
magnifying with dazzling rays
the breakage
at the jagged edges of the world
and lays hostage to impersonation
that resembles fragments
of smashed oval shaped mirrors
reflecting pieces of broken
brown terracotta soldiers
and causes the eyes to hurt
with a watched inner holocaust
of disturbing coloured detonations,
implosively autonomous
given to a deceived departure
a departure from reality
given by the advocacy
of ideological rationalism
that sees three kings
with blood on their crowns
in amplified convulsions
call mustre for
disturbance, disorder, destruction
and death
as blood stains the Balkan streets
and all emotional impulse
is volatilized
and a sinister, stuporous, stagnancy
stalks the land
where sustaining minds
are subject to a brutal insensitivity
that dazzles on the edge of a spiral vertigo
it is a light
brutally interrogative
magnifying with dazzling rays
a vocabulary of incoherence
like the rancid stains of *****
that inhabit the jagged edges of the world
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
There is a motionless tree
there is another that moves forward
a river of trees
pounds at my chest
The green swell
of good fortune
You are dressed in red
you are
the seal of the burning year
carnal firebrand
star of fruit
I eat the sun in you
The hour rests
on a chasm of clarities
The birds are a handful of shadows
their beaks build the night
their wings sustain the day
Rooted at the light's peak
between stability and vertigo
you are
the diaphanous balance.
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Sometimes I catch myself thinkin’ about you with my fingers crossed.
And my eyes closed, like I’m wishing for something.
This is funny to me, because I learned recently
that my brain does this weird thing where it’s incapable of feeling superstitious.
I have always wanted a black cat.
You have always been a wishing well begging for the famished to come and dip their hands.
You wear a sign that says
“Take something, or leave something, doesn’t matter, just leave feeling won”
Leave feeling like you won.
This is how you will leave me.
When my fingers are crossed. Because then the promises don’t matter.
When my eyes are closed. Because it will hurt more to watch you leave
than to wonder if you crawled or if you ran.
When my teeth hurt, from all the chatter, from all the shake, from all the wisdom they extracted.
You know I’ve been leaving bite marks in the crust of the earth,
trying to find a wormhole that will take me to the moment you thought,
“hey, this girl’s gonna write poems about me every Friday” and
“hey, she won’t win me, but maybe she’ll win something”.
I'm the award winning heartache, I'm the pain they thought would last forever.
I'm my grandmother's years of Elvis & Jack Daniel's coming to the surface
and passing themselves off as vertigo.
You're the sum of the times you and the earth were in disagreement over your leaving.
You're the only thing that will shine when the sun dies.
We are Samson and Delilah. You are so sunshine.
I am grateful to the doctors that gave me second chances, I am grateful for the opportunity
that someday is engraved with.
This is how you will leave me.
I pray with my fingers crossed.
and my eyes closed, like I'm wishing for something.
I don't say Amen. I say thank you.
Thank you.
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 10:33 PM UTC
I see great ***** every day
in the subway
and, suddenly, my favorite Hitchcock movie changes from
Rear Window to Vertigo.
The movement of the train calms me down and I fall asleep quickly,
dreaming that I'm in Kerouac's car, quietly hitting the road
like ******* hit his canvas.
I see great ******* every day
on the bus that takes me home,
but not one single *****
for me to lay my ear on.
The dream comes to a crossroad where me and Jack have to part ways.
He'll go down in history like a great writer
and I'll quietly go down on memory lane in oblivion.
Memory disappointed me
and left a bad taste
in my mouth - literary *********** ain't what it used to be.
Jun 9, 2017
Jun 9, 2017 at 1:56 PM UTC
Sa aking pagiisa alaala mo'y aking kaulayaw
Ang dilim na bumabalot ay ang bisig mo
Ang dampi ng hangin ay ang marubdob **** halik
Hinahanap-hanap ko ang amoy mo
Ang marinig muli ang iyong halakhak
Maramdaman ang marahan **** paghinga
At ang init nitong kumikiliti sa aking leeg
Ang pakinggan ang musikang likha ng iyong dibdib
Sa marahan at maharot nitong pagkabog
Nilalangoy sa bawat tingin
Manaka-nakang mapapapikit
At ikaw nama'y patuloy sa pananaliksik
Lulunurin kita sa aking panunukso
Ikaw nama'y patuloy sa pagsuyo sa aking mga labi
Nilalaro ang guhit sa iyong palad
Inuukit ang ngalan at ang gabing iyon
Nakasanayan na ang paghagod sa iyong buhok
Linya ng pagngiti ay kabisado na
Hinaharana ako sa gitna ng dilim
Kay higpit ng iyong yakap
At ako'y napapasinghap
Bawat bahagi mo ay naging parte ko
At bawat parte ko ay naging bahagi mo
Tayo ay naging sanlaksa
Nanganak ng mga “ako”
Bumuo sa “tayo” ng uniberso
…
Maayos na ang kobrekama
Malamig ang titig nito
Punyal na tumatarak sa dibdib
Dugo ang bawat paghinga
Bakas ay nilamon na..
Tanging sa isip na lamang kita
makakasama sa tuwina
Nagngingitngit ang aking mga kamay
Mata ay pilit sinasara
Ang katotohana'y ikaw ay malayo na
Pinalaya.
Ikaw sana'y lumago
Ang dilim ang magkukubli sa pagluha
Ang hangin ang bibingi sa sakit
Humayon ka ng mag-isa.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 6:49 AM UTC
Hello Manila rooftop
Manila quiet and Manila cold.
I am at the quiet part of the city
While cats roam by
and I hear nothing.
Cars rare
Jeepneys none.
Even if I’m looking from above.
The vertigo tempts me.
Oct 26, 2011
Oct 26, 2011 at 1:04 AM UTC
I never asked you for the things you gave me
I never asked
But you didn't even care
If I had asked,
would you have shut me out?
Or would you have given more?
Of your overflowing wine
of life or love or energy
( or whatever it was
that you folded into my hands
like the most secret-sacred treasure map )
You would sometimes catch me
In a gaze like a doe
Ask me things
That took time to sink in
Because I was being distracted
By my urge to count your eyelashes
We could never go outside in the cold
Because you were terrified
That your breath would crystallize and twist inside your lungs
But you loved to see how long you could hold your breath for
Underwater
There would be pauses
As time stilled to take a look at us
To check that we really were still there
And everything around us swirled
Like autumn leaves or glitter stars
Our glances would solidify
And memory struck out to capture snapshots
Everly, I never asked
Not even once, but you still gave
Everly, I can't quite grasp
I see you sometimes
When the sunshine's wounding bright
Yellow, cheerful, heavenly
And I look into the shadows
To find rest for my eyes
I can never keep straight the present and the past
So when I look in the shade
I see ghosts of you sprawled out, laughing, head tilted back, hands splayed
Your sighs were soft
But you only ever sighed them
When your face shone
With a lovely glow of indulgence
We watched Hitchcock religiously
We wouldn't give them up
You said that you liked Vertigo the best
But you never told me why
I'll hold your friendship
In the cup of my hands
While wonder fills up slowly
Where my thoughts should be
I'll peer over my thumbs
To steal a peek at the clear blue crystalline
Effervescent memories
I will remember you foreverly
My word
Apr 5, 2011
Apr 5, 2011 at 11:37 AM UTC
round and round we go
through the relentless flow
life's so fast it gives me vertigo.
and if I'm just a tiny particle
why can I feel my soul
being devoured by a black hole.
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 9:54 PM UTC
a rubix cube upon my desk
with half the colors matching
near a wayward garden gnome
what plots might he be hatching
contemplations fill my head
of life and all its meanings
a conservative at heart
despite my leftist leanings
someday I’ll find the leprechaun
hiding at the rainbow’s end
I’ll take that ******** lucky charms
before he runs again
memories haunt my waking mind
not sure if they're even real
vertigo and déjà vu are all that I can feel
I think I’ll take another hit
that should finally stop the spinning
as my pet rock races Charlie Brown
the rubix cube is winning
Apr 8, 2010
Apr 8, 2010 at 7:06 PM UTC
Tonight, I cannot sleep because
I am too hot.
My face shines like wax
With sweat and oil
And the heat is like wet jellyfish in my clothes
And I must *** so I get
Up and when I see the dark me-creature in the mirror
I think of myself not as human
But blood and bones and fat and meat.
Just a biological fleshpile.
Chalk and butter and copper juice and pink slime hamburger.
I won’t turn on the light because I
Like to pretend to be blind when it’s dark.
I pretend that blackness is just water to swim through
And I feel my way to the can.
I leak yellow
And think of hospital catheters
And how I’m just a bag of warring fluids
Propped up on sticks.
I get up and vertigo swirls my brains
With an egg beater on low
Until my inner ear is quite confused
And I go whump on the sharp tiles like a dropped onion.
Before I flip the light switch,
All I can get through my greasy three-pound brain is
"Maybe it'll need an X-ray."
I slaughter
And mangle myself in this manner
Every five minutes.
All night.
I don’t want to be a thing that dies.
Aug 27, 2012
Aug 27, 2012 at 4:22 AM UTC
Spanish
Yo hacía una divina labor, sobre la roca
Creciente del Orgullo. De la vida lejana,
Algún pétalo vívido me voló en la mañana,
Algún beso en la noche. Tenaz como una loca,
Sequía mi divina labor sobre la roca.
Cuando tu voz que funde como sacra campana
En la nota celeste la vibración humana,
Tendió su lazo do oro al borde de tu boca;
—Maravilloso nido del vértigo, tu boca!
Dos pétalos de rosa abrochando un abismo…—
Labor, labor de gloria, dolorosa y liviana;
¡Tela donde mi espíritu su fue tramando él mismo!
Tú quedas en la testa soberbia de la roca,
Y yo caigo, sin fin, en el sangriento abismo!
English
I was at my divine labor, upon the rock
Swelling with Pride. From a distance,
At dawn, some bright petal came to me,
Some kiss in the night. Upon the rock,
Tenacious a madwoman, I clung to my work.
When your voice, like a sacred bell,
A celestial note with a human tremor,
Stretched its golden lasso from the edge of your mouth;
—Marvelous nest of vertigo, your mouth!
Two rose petals fastened to an abyss…—
Labor, labor of glory, painful and frivolous;
Fabric where my spirit went weaving herself!
You come to the arrogant head of the rock,
And I fall, without end, into the ****** abyss!
2.9k
Ethereal and Base a harmony so diametric a solid.
Wisdom's forgiveness lands to the unyielding new,
white spray on black lava, merging
elemental minerals in salt water.
Life the mediator, yearns for compromise
algea harvests sunlight at the hard shore, grows into plants
fish munch coral creating sand washing up, a tree's foothold creating soil...
can rock become Earth any other way?
Mother's beauty, an unknowable generous smile
and confident grace from the sun.
Ages
sitting wrinkled and depleted to her waist,
beauty transforms
into unknowable generous laughter alighting graciously from wise eyes,
like a flock of Heaven's doves so close to home
stirred by her running children: daughter and son.
All the while all the yearning is unrequited.
For her children, Beauty is vertigo,
painful reality rooted to the shore.
Eyes long for the horizon, Vision Country
between sky holding its breath and water measuring out patience,
The heart spills out futile on the crystalline sea,
but Sadness, belonging to clear water,
lightly buoys lonely Ecstasy,
Completes the voyage.
The Vision pairs selfless love with unmet desire,
opposites' harmony the firmament,
but the sound breaks from tension and the echoes fade,
and the senses footing gives way;
vertigo with dove's wings tied shut.
Descending minuscule between dissipation
falling through molecules of bliss,
and diffusing atoms of despair,
to the last remaining positive and negative
and the tension's silver thin wire between.
It cuts tied wings free,
slingshots the dove's soul back up,
at the last second, the tension's iridescent thread tangles loosely on her foot.
She hurtles back up through the scales of size:
Microns, amoeba, minnows, birds, primates, people,
over trees, looking down at cities, mountains, yet higher
borderless nations, green and sand continents,
and again all the crystalline blue seas.
The silver filament draws taut, holds the dove's ascent,
wings slowing in awe as she views Mother Gaea
her intensely brilliant sphere accompanied by vivid tiny stars.
in a cold cold soundless night...
Grandmother teaching her children to fly;
Beauty's yearning realized complete.
Jan 22, 2013
Jan 22, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
We were drinking coffee when
depression showed up at the door of the home we built, pounding.
Eviction notice in hand,
your soul parceled out into donation bins.
Foreclosure sign,
caution tape around the chest that I slept on for a year.
I sit out in the sun
to bleach the tan line from my ring finger.
I hold cold cups and shake strangers’ hands
to erase the mould of your grasp from mine.
I want to sear off my palms.
I miss even those nights when you looked at my fire and laughed.
So I make you coffee (but I know I make it wrong);
your ghost in this house still criticizes.
I made you coffee every day because it was all I could do;
my only way of getting into you, a vector.
As the hot brew flowed past your heart, I watched,
like a child at Christmas, hoping you’d feel my love.
Hoping the glaze would clear up from your eyes.
I only wish this were a bond that stayed,
that stayed when your mind put plugs in your ears:
when I screamed and screamed that I loved you,
that I’d rock every little thing you regret to sleep.
I went to the doctor about this dizziness.
He checked my ears, he asked why my eyes were red.
This vertigo--a hurricane made by the page turning in my life.
I am a bag in your wind.
The day you left I wrote you a recipe for how you like your coffee,
because you don’t know, but I have it memorized.
My handwriting changes halfway down the page, as I change,
as you drive farther and farther away.
Our love is a child I’ve carried,
now I’m bent over, sick.
Loss took your place in our home,
but it’s unsteady on its feet;
I have to walk it from room to room.
My name has been yours, possessive.
And although these days I correct myself and say ‘I’ during speech,
My thoughts are still ‘we.’
I still think about your lungs when I cough.
So I still make us coffee every day (but I know I make it wrong).
Oct 16, 2017
Oct 16, 2017 at 7:26 AM UTC
—Flash Forward—
A day of reckoning.
A small boat crosses
the Hudson River,
no warning horn.
Destination New Jersey,
of all places.
A. Burr isn’t warned
that Hamilton will not
fire his pistol.
Destiny predetermined.
“Death doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints,
It takes and it takes and it takes.
History obliterates.”
—Flashback—
General.
Colonel.
Aide-de-camp.
Immigrant.
“Don’t engage, strike by night.
Remain relentless ‘til their troops take flight.”
“We escort their men out of Yorktown.
They stagger home single file.
Tens of thousands of people flood the streets.”
“Took up a collection just to send him to the
mainland.
‘Get your education. Don’t forget from whence
you came.’”
—Stepfather of the Union—
Treasury secretary, author of the Federalist Papers,
lawyer, speechwriter, confidante, opponent of slavery,
member of the Constitutional Convention.
“History has its eyes on you.”
“I’ve seen injustice in the world and I’ve
corrected it.”
“The Federalist: Addressed to the People
of the State of New York.”
“Goes and proposes his own form
of government.”
—Family and Marriage—
The Schuyler Sisters – Eliza.
Maria and James Reynolds – adultery and bribery.
Philip Hamilton – successor son and victim.
Philip Schuyler – father-in-law.
“And if this child
Shares a fraction of your smile
Or a fragment of your mind, look out, world!”
“I know you’re a man of honor,
I’m so sorry to bother you at home.”
“I’m only nineteen but my mind is older,
Gonna be my own man, like my father
but bolder.”
“Grampa just lost his seat in the Senate.”
—Why, How, How long?—
Why not?, biography,
genius, rapid-fire rap,
hip-hop, historical vertigo,
Lin-Manuel Miranda at the White House,
a cast talented beyond measure,
the Great White Way,
2017-18 and forever….
“…13 percent of the population is foreign
born, which is near an all-time high;
that one day soon there will no longer
be majority and minority races, only a
vibrant mix of colors.”
‒Jeremy McCarter, from Chapter I of
Hamilton: The Revolution
*© Lewis Bosworth, 12/2016
With credit to the book:*
Hamilton: The Revolution
Dec 7, 2016
Dec 7, 2016 at 11:35 AM UTC
TABLE D'HôTE
Appetizer
Wrong Tons With Me Soup
cooked worry
seared in a teary onion broth
Hors D'oeuvres
Slow Roasted Fear
fresh over-analyzing
crushed with loneliness
Main Course
Stress Salad
tossed with insomnia
marinated in a vertigo dressing
General Trouble Chicken
battered uncertainty
gloomed to perfection
sitting on steamed danger
stir fried in an overwhelm sour sauce
Dessert
Choked Volcanic Eruption
mountain of OCD
topped with whipped depression
glazed with self-loathing
Expresso
prepared with frothy guilt
(C) Jl 2016
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 9:24 AM UTC
Under the muted bark of hazelnut trees,
Spurious, sprite juncos scurry in vertigo,
Pecking, replete bouncing downy knees,
Grounded, tuft, constellation of Scorpio.
Mar 4, 2013
Mar 4, 2013 at 12:32 AM UTC
Same as yesterday,
A ruthless beg at the morrow,
For trees and colors of light,
That stream through murdered pasts,
Twlight breathe,
Of longer passions,
Vertigo isolation,
She's running the mill,
She's always so cold,
A scheme against the day's blight,
A force of lonliness,
Abide,
Maybe treason and reason,
collide like intentions
prevent the confiding belief,
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 5:34 PM UTC