"waterless" poems
A scorpion stings my foot and injects its pain inducing venom into me. The pain spreads throughout my body and as I suffer the scorpion laughs at me whilst I stand underneath the blazing, desert sun with nowhere to go. This vast, empty, waterless desert with nothing to see but sand. Sand as far as the human eye can see, so much empty space yet I still feel trapped in the scorpion’s presence. A dry skeleton confronts me and puts a hole into my arm and ***** all of the meat out of my body until I am only skin and bones. My skin twists and knots around my meatless bones.
I scream.
I scream.
I scream, but when I do it sounds like laughter, so the scorpion and the skeleton laugh with me.
Aug 23, 2018
Aug 23, 2018 at 8:57 AM UTC
This is my renaissance,
My rebirth inna way,
I wanna forgive,
I wanna forgive you for everything,
Everything you’ve done,
Everything you’ve forgotten,
Everything that we don’t wanna remember,
I wanna move on.
This is my renaissance,
My rebirth inna way,
I’ve cut all the skin,
Burned all the pain,
I’ve cried my eyes waterless,
Now I can move on.
This is my renaissance,
My rebirth inna way,
From this point on,
I will remember,
Remember all the good you’ve done,
But I will remember the bad too,
It will make me stronger.
This is my renaissance,
My rebirth inna way,
From this point on,
I will be free,
I will be free to be happy,
Free to be sad,
I will be free to let people closer,
But still keeping them at arms length,
Now, I am stronger.
This is my renaissance,
My rebirth in a way,
I’m moving on,
I’m moving on strong,
Reborn and Happy.
May 5, 2013
May 5, 2013 at 5:22 PM UTC
This fragile heart
sometimes bursts into
the tiniest shards
of infinity
clear as crystal light
yet empty
as an ocean, waterless
longing
to be filled and filled
over and over
as I would fill you
to the brim
overflowing with
enough life
and love to heal
a thousand
aching moons
Nov 3, 2018
Nov 3, 2018 at 9:22 AM UTC
Only the stars endome the lonely camp,
Only the desert leagues encompass it;
Waterless wastes, a wilderness of wit,
Embattled Cold, Imagination's Cramp.
Now were the Desolation fain to stamp
The congealed Spirit of man into the pit,
Save that, unquenchable because unlit,
The Love of God burns steady, like a Lamp.
It burns ! beyond the sands, beyond the stars.
It burns ! beyond the bands, beyond the bars.
And so the Expanse of Mystery, veil by veil,
Burns inward, plume on plume still folding over
The dissolved heart of the amazéd lover-
The angel wings upon the Holy Grail!
2.7k
I've got the rip down just right
The soft tear, grated misnomer
Perforated here in my middle
Like I was meant to come apart
Out of view
Hot with friction
Hot with longing
Kinetic energy
Shredding
Dividing
The low sound of cutting construction paper
Thick with each blade passing
A sharp kiss
Maybe
Gripping like this
The right tool for suicide in the wrong hands
I have hands like those
******* I'm dissolving in a tear drop
It never left the eye
The sting feels like drowning
Waterless
and
in pieces
May 23, 2017
May 23, 2017 at 9:10 AM UTC
a night time of ghosts
are but the absence of light
on sun lit squirrels
waterless spring rains
of showering maple seeds
and blossom petals
your breath and the breeze
cloth over my back against
the curves of the wood
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 8:18 PM UTC
Burn, freeze, sanitize
my hands
So they'll forget how yours feel
Cleanse my skin again and again
And maybe I won't remember
How soft you were in my arms
Lobotomize my brain, please
So I can forget who you are to me
Then maybe a smile
will appear on my cracked lips
And I will
lose you
to that beautiful new world
Aug 11, 2012
Aug 11, 2012 at 6:26 PM UTC
(from 2012)
A chance reveals itself before me,
Happenstance too good to pass-
I take this to the street, I’m changing how I see.
My heart races, my heartbeat fast begins to flee
My world becomes vast
In a waterless sea
I see the movement in every tree
As I float on a greener grass
Compelled by my knees to take me where I see
I follow the calling, only a body
A nail guided by magnets moving as mass
I’m no longer confined by reality
A world crafted by an artisan in geometry,
To think every star that meets my eye greets me from the past
And we are living trapped and pointlessly.
The sun peers over the horizon at me,
Light warms my world fast
But warmer are my thoughts, the chance that found me
Moved my world and set it free.
Jan 25, 2016
Jan 25, 2016 at 9:58 PM UTC
simply trying to remember a certain coat that took me like a mouth.
a coat my soul left me for.
I have been to the tub I would sit waterless in-
typewriter like a girl on my lap; the vaporous acorns of bliss winter squirrels, ash,
in the desperate curls of pubis. I have been
to the gym, its court of passed and passed back fire, its auditorium unfilled
as a church in spain. I have been to my knees.
to the egg of bird, the grief of cow, and to the lengthy absence
of train’s tunnel. I have been
with boy, with baseball, with book- smoking late on this fence
with these my trinities
soon to strike
for the house of my anna
cheerless and bare, not russian, not there.
Jul 6, 2012
Jul 6, 2012 at 1:45 PM UTC
Hope there’s someone
Standing like a statue
Cold and silver eyed angel
Waiting
I will kiss his feet
And rest my head on his shoulders
The nights he is kind enough to hold me
The floor of the middle ground
Is the softest earth I know
And I sink slowly as I walk
Not even faith will keep my feet above it
It is a vast expanse of lonely
Damp air but otherwise waterless
This is the place my prayers go
I can hear them like landmarks
Echoing my fears back to life
Home is the distance of a sunset
That never changes
Always in my sight
And always sets so far away
I savor it
And I hope there’s someone
Who will hold me
The nights I get so tired
I risk the earth’s hungry swallow
And give up
There’s a man on the horizon
Statue silver eyed angel
And there’s you on every horizon
I miss you
I am afraid of this place
Wasteland of mistakes
And picturesque landmarks of nightmares
You on every horizon
I don’t want to go
Wherever he is leading me
it is not home
You are home
You are sea sick waterbed **********
Fire sizzle sweat steam
Damp rag soaking up my deathbed
Perfect balance to my off kilter dance steps
You are home on the days I give up
And sink into whatever broken bed I have made this time
You are love in the long hours of insomnia
Head in crook of neck
Even though I know my collar bones aren't comfortable
You are sweet smelling
Rough around the edges
But still so much softer than me
And I hope there’s someone
To hold me
When I am tired
When I die
Because I am scared of that place
I don’t want to go
Dec 11, 2011
Dec 11, 2011 at 7:15 PM UTC
The sun is hot and
The sand is waterless
No water moisture
And the plants, thirsty
And its flower dried
Mar 13, 2022
Mar 13, 2022 at 12:19 AM UTC
The sun, slanting westwards
chases me with competitive spirit;
speeding through, interstate highway
from Hyderabad to Bangalore,
long stretches I see, are waterless seabeds
reminds the oceanic origin of all
sense of time vanishes, I am an unknown
creature of the sea, an explorer of underwater geology.
Like life, it's a winding long drive
lonely too, like one often finds, oneself in spite of many loves,
just incessant voices that soon lose meaning.
Speaking to myself, quietly, alone
I realize this, calmly, in life-
one is alone in many ways .
How curious,
the sun, my co-traveller,
caught sight of me,
and graciously gives me
a smile of recognition,
still continues the chase playfully,
from my right,
I like his verve
he too finds fun in our run.
He becomes red all over,
decides to set in the west
he signals,
above Nandi Hills
his spectacular farewell show
makes me slow down and watch.
At the height of the display, he vanishes
like a magician, taking every drop of light with him,
leaving me to find my way
through darkness, that I have to dispel myself.
Oct 4, 2013
Oct 4, 2013 at 1:50 PM UTC
Luna is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are dust and waterless;
Rainfall? Zero, absolutely!
In this place where birds don’t sing
and nothing green can grow.
We built the Armstrong Geodome,
in secret, years ago.
Here, on the “dark” side of the moon,
in a Mare without a name.,
a climate controlled paradise
was built, and workers came.
Some were miners, strong and buff
who search for this world’s gold.
Some are research scientists
one hundred fifty men, all told.
In Twenty Forty Seven
all hell broke loose on Earth
There were nuclear exchanges
and what followed next was worse.
A winter like none other;
we listened, helpless, as they died.
Starvation is the cruelest fate
for any mother’s child.
One by one they all fell silent,
the great cities of that Orb.
Deaths occurred in magnitudes
the human mind can not absorb.
We struggled, yes, but we survived
without the ships from home.
One Hundred fifty adult males,
like the mariners of old.
We mourned the Loves we’d left behind,
We shuddered at their fate.
Our Refuge was our prison;
We lived deprived of child or mate.
The streets of Armstrong are always clean
as cleaning bots are on patrol.
but here no children laugh or play,
it’s a town without a soul.
Two decades we spent in that place
then came the words for which we yearned:
Atmospheric radioactivity
to safe levels had returned.
I was on the first ship home
to San Francisco Bay.
The landmarks all were flattened
The Golden Gate in ruins lay.
We mortals wept, I will not lie
Our cradle had become our grave;
The streets of home were silent,
there was no one left to save.
Terra is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are toxic, lifeless now;
Children? Zero, absolutely!
Mar 4, 2012
Mar 4, 2012 at 10:44 AM UTC
Light creases the pavement
like ruddied cheeks on a pillowcase,
warms the scrappy reeds,
the goldenrod bunching
on hillsides,
the tired, waterless crop
and their juvenilia tenacious
and cambering over field -
(and with present as marked past)
all realigns
and is overwhelmingly
simple
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 9:43 PM UTC
Beautiful
Is a colorless flower
If I am to use it
Describing you
The wordsmiths
Must work well
Into the night
Smithing away
Until morning light
To find a word
Suiting your definition
Unearthing
Is a waterless brook
If used to convey the look
Radiating from your enchanting eyes
The same that left my heart wounded today
When you used them to drill to the core of me
No doubt making a profound discovery
Love
Is overused and clichéd to ruin
Much too pedestrian to capture what you found
When drilling deep into my underground
Without a sound it happened
That word we can’t use
Due to its short and burnt up fuse
Turned on its light this afternoon
And in a magic moment we both knew
That beautiful, unearthing, love
Built a bridge between us
Founded in truth
Always open and fireproof
Today around 2 o’clock
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013 at 10:44 PM UTC
**I exist to resist all your heavy-headed hits. Your words in stone, more absolute than death.
The way you glance below your jagged bridge, a grin dried in arrogance.
Your footsteps frighten the earth, but cease to shake my defiance.
Gravels cave, underfires exposed.
But even then I'll swim, in your ocean of shallowness, tigers on my tail,
Paradise Mirages mocking my waterless skin, even then, I said, I will swim to the Revolution's Shore.
Nevermind your ignorance, seeing blue skies and arguing them RED.
Deluded certainty, swearing on a man's soul to prove your point and feed your obsession.
I say "yes", you say "of course",
but no doubt I'm in the wrong.
I say "maybe" you say "perhaps,
and so you've proved your wisdom blind.
Mastered conspiracies, you've convinced your lies true.
In your mind you walk on water, as you strike your soles on mere tar.
Governor's Confetti lay dead on Governor's Ground;
fool's bravery in act, leading souldiers from behind.
This world,
The Principal's Playroom: clay towers and cars, play moneys and guards.
In the sun, your tin castles smile and glimmer in the shine.
But inside, hollowness reigns and you fail to see.
Eyes and Eyes fall to your sleep,
calamity by the masses as you care not to care.
Seconds linger as misted windshields shield the drunk driver,
and not even the death he brings can break the glass.
Deaf man with hearing ears,
the blind one who can see.**
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 9:04 AM UTC
PANIC ATTACKS ARE FUN!
Ayad Gharbawi
A waterless feast for the thirsty
Torturers
Struggling to restrain their base Infamy
Hungry ravenous ******* eyes
Smiling grotesquely
At their Prey
Wingless birds
The nightmare is still swirling in its
Intensity
Variations of horror
And perpetual stalking fear
Shaking eyeballs
Blurring visions
Colours far too strong
Piercing
Sweating inside
Palpitating heart
Driest mouth
Piercing
Beyond any reason
Pointlessly running
From the excessively, maniacal seething Fear
Never ending
The deformed visions deepen
Yet disconnecting themselves
From my shaking Self
Withering my ‘I’
I see a threatening ugliness staring at me
I know
I am victimized
How can I get out of this?
Filthy stench of a greasy pit!
Where are the maps?
The guidelines?
Where are the physicians?
Promoting this vicious
Civilization
That I do swear
Is even sicker than I am
For you have left us all
Stranded
Surrounded
In a surreally insane No Man’s Land
Feb 6, 2010
Feb 6, 2010 at 8:02 AM UTC
This is a subcultural song
Free energy efficient enthusiasts
Replaced the iroquois punk style
Alternatives, noisy hard core; ear
Damaging drum bass boxes in da
Clubs. Ravishing rave parties in
Mini skirts, glam glossy brass on
Ecstatic strobe-light synthesis - a
Synthetic mainstream paradise
Submerged to hypnotic sucklings
On the colourful plastic pacifiers
A gummy retreat before waterless
Collaps. A dehidrated dream that
Tried to shut the world off by the
Tendrils of regression resemblance.
Adult babies aboard going back to
The false long forgotten innocence.
There is no subculture in being above
The depth. Superficiality seems a posh
Pose and a good hiding reason for socially
Awkward childish rebels without material
Issues. The sore tissue of contemporary art
Is people don't believe in subjective objective
Selves anymore. What authorities put on the
Shelves there - it has to be good-when on the
Real deal discount. You think im not of such
Kind. Sheepishly blindfolded herd lives some-
where else. I pity them. Mock the socially meek,
Unajust, fat, poor or a greek profile. It has to be
A button hot child candy nose to **** her or to
Call a beauty per se. Per american dream team.
***** are hot untill they have pneumatics, man
Are man if they whirl the banknotes under bank
Accounts. ******* act like man in disguise greedy
For more. I inhabitated all this inherently ugly
Preachy words instead of puking into a labdab
Lavatory and cleanse myself from repulsively
****** cultural intermittent artifacts. And how
Can i not subdue to its overwhelming pressure.
I'm just an indigo child of flower children. Don't
Throw me the bones fueled with the black golden
Marrow. I'm a new alternative peasant, growing
Carrots and celery at bio degradable villages. . .
Its not a contra cultural venture if your socks
Are made out of industrial cannabis, and yet
There's no need to. Think. Love. Play music.
Listen. Breathe. Live life as if yours favourite
subcultural song is repetedly on...going along
Feb 13, 2016
Feb 13, 2016 at 6:13 AM UTC
Anyone that's ever said cash doesn't equate to fun has never had none
They've never had to wonder where their next meals gonna come from
Never been one wrong move away from watching your life become an undesirable one
Never seen a bright future as an attainable one
I'm sure we've all shared a park bench at some point with someone
But has it ever been overnight, shivering, posted up with a veteran ***
Never been an unsung hero, never feasted on a moldy bun
Never had to decide whether to pay some of this bill or a little bit of that one
Never had a car run on hope and fumes, never relied solely on your heat to come from the sun
Can't see the glass half full or half empty, a waterless situation
Never looked at a gun and thought it the best possible outcome
No option but to literally try to out run your problem
But you can't cause you wanted to stay "grounded" so you cut every tendon
So much tension, it's got ya looking at the knife again thinkin' it could relieve some
Never laied at your lowest point to weak to get up and been looked down on
It's a sad truth how unbelievably common it is to stumble upon...
This, but ignorance is bliss so no action to fix the problem is taken
You might have been one of these people had you walked in a different shoe when it all begun
©2018
Apr 5, 2018
Apr 5, 2018 at 12:49 AM UTC
Kerplop!
Tasty morsel sinks beneath the depths.
Lures with its sparkling promise of tender fruits,
No hint of its hidden ensnarement.
Large eyes ogle the morsel,
Owner biding his time to ensure the promised catch.
Tasty sport to be found here today!
CHOMP!
Got You!
No quick escape for you my tasty morsel!
The thoughts are echoed from above
As the eyes bulge in surprise.
Pain tears through the scaly flesh,
Forgotten in a split second
When unrelenting pressure jerks upwards,
Pulling towards heavens waterless ocean of air.
Oh what snares have trapped me
In my endeavors for a free meal and entertainment?
What costly price paid for careless satisfaction?
With every powerful swish of my tail I resist,
But soon I am face to face with my captor.
His hungry eyes and fat tummy belie his need to feed.
Take heed the captor who would become captive
Take heed lest you become someone else’ sport.
Oct 21, 2009
Oct 21, 2009 at 1:13 AM UTC
The road was broken in segments of dream huts
clinging to 10 sqm of waterless, worthless plains
beside a million flies teeming for life sustaining energy
from rancid smells and miracles of justice that never come.
Living in the light of palaces, the poor understand pain
and poverty like life's great gifts of wonder
to philosophise and burn in the tabernacle of
rotund politicians. How easy for them to girth
the national wealth under a huge lie.
Out in the open the crows capture the days sound
with raucous caws of indiscretion. Unrestrained
by manners or moments of ecstasy, each crow
sounds off the days entertainment.
At nightfall the city slimmer's to sleep
and the slums awake to underground life
living and moving relentlessly, from one
moment to another, unheralded, unsung
fully awake with hunger, even as the darkness
closes in and absorbs the days movements
with its blanket of silence.
Tomorrow is another day for the cycle
to turn one more cog in the direction
of no return. Sad. Sad. Sad.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 4:21 PM UTC
city heat in hard
black attire, superconductive
glow of a serpent chasing
its tail.
asphalted lay of holy land--
whose bedraggled pulse snorts
in ****** laughter.
roadside augurs fester while
tying the laces of traffic, through
passed out archways.
bird's beaks are broken open,
in mad waterless monologues.
as the nucleus of this wizened apple,
casts oblique shadows... for curly cue-ing worms
flirtatious doom.
sped billboards imminently flattening the world,
under a Columbus-blue sky.
going, going...gone!
ice cream trucks mangle dueling theme
songs, sloughed off by sensational tides of kids.
distraction's lustful lick, an informationless
tombstone busy with curves.
here, whole-body shaves of renouncement...
and steady showers of salt, will make
worthy the truest Himalayan meditation.
Jun 17, 2018
Jun 17, 2018 at 12:34 PM UTC
Fossilized remains animated
to maintain the facade,
the matinee.
Babbling brooks are now
waterless dry.
Ignorance flows
stupidity thrives.
This is the brook where
life comes to die.
Carved through a forest
that was laden with pride.
There is only dark,
a lack of sunshine.
The flowers have wilted.
The birds all took flight.
This is the brook where
life comes to die.
There is nothing but moss left.
No crickets. No mice.
There once was a brook here
that created all life.
The rocks are all dry here,
they are covered in strife.
This is the brook
where things come to
die.
Sep 24, 2015
Sep 24, 2015 at 8:52 PM UTC
Clear and crystal
So anciently old,
So brilliantly fluid
And tastelessly cold.
To coalesce in vapour
Of limitless cloud,
To fall in fat globules
Of rainfall in shroud.
To cascade through air
As a mist in the fall
Or plummet as downpour
Through Calcutta’s pall.
Gathered in puddles
To flow down a drain,
Amass as a flood
To pour across plain.
To playfully tumble
From mountains of shard,
To flow to the sea
Where the surf crashes hard.
A field of marigolds
Bobbing in sun,
Nurtured by moisture’s
Life giving fun.
Green grasses grow
With barley and wheat,
Through the magic administered
By wetness’s feat.
Imagine disaster’s
Protracted drought
Where dryness obliterates
Green life throughout.
Sparkling clear waterfalls,
Hard pounding surf,
Trickles of crystalline
Cascades of mirth.
Rock pools so clear
That trout can be seen
And the bone china cup of tea
Served to the Queen.
Standing in rain
As it pours from the sky
With a grin on my face
Smearing mud from my eye
With arms outstretched
And a song in my heart
For the great joy of living
This water imparts....
Water my Angel,
My priceless gem.
A waterless world
Would bring death and mayhem.
An oceanless planet
As seen from the moon,
Would lack life giving blueness
And be hued in gloom.
Sweet water is life
In a miraculous way,
Thus we hail the Gods
Each rain swept day.
Marshalg
Sitting by the beautiful Manukau Harbour
11 March 2011
Mar 10, 2011
Mar 10, 2011 at 1:54 PM UTC
creativity
slips away from me
the more time passes
and the longer i'm connected to
the technological world
pseudo linked to people - just people
disengaging myself
unsure if the trade-off is worth it
am i pulling the plug to my tangible reality
to give more power to an intangible one?
when the crop isn't cultivated properly
the seeds don't correctly grow
but there are a few of those seeds
in the field of my creative minds eye that have adapted
to this waterless ground -
a sparse few that bloom every now and then
and then quickly die the moment they bloom
as if trying to show me how beautiful it is
its up to me to grow them again.
but why should i?
Nov 9, 2010
Nov 9, 2010 at 4:25 PM UTC