"wedging" poems
shut them out,
clog my ears,
I cannot listen.
the words,
they attack me,
choke me,
wedging themselves within my core.
I cry,
I scream,
I take those words as truth,
and drown as they push me,
past the deepest darkness.
but as I hold my breath,
I tell myself that
even though I may be a wounded gazelle,
I have the heart and will of a lion.
and somehow,
I poke my head out of
the web of pain.
though the words,
continue to float around my head,
taunting me,
prodding my nerves,
I remember that
I am a lion,
and I will perservere.
Jul 8, 2014
Jul 8, 2014 at 9:20 PM UTC
Summer's almost over,
It's threadbare
As your towel;
The summer sands
Are shifting,
The beach is headed south.
The initialed picnic tables
Are stored for other outings;
The concession windows
Flapped now,
The busker's shouting quelled.
Sails are dropped
Like maple leafs,
The moon's rising
Too soon;
The night lights blaze
Over pitch and field,
Where sunshine
Shone in June.
Geese are wedging daily
To escape the wintery gloom;
I'll reacquaint
With the hinter sounds
Of lake winds
And banshee loons.
Aug 28, 2014
Aug 28, 2014 at 3:58 PM UTC
We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town
The hill tops creep away like children playing games
our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games
after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill
later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.
Pennyanne Windsor, from Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales
Sep 15, 2015
Sep 15, 2015 at 4:27 AM UTC
...Here a man stands accused--the pellucid jury
of his peers come to themselves in their life's arms
through him.
He wails upright...a shadow continent wedging
The Flood.
Timekeeping horseflies besmirch his chest cavity
with due kisses...par for par movements consume
time till the singular advocacy of he withstood.
The imperturbable essence captured itself, as so
at the height of its powers there's interplay.
Ease culled from tribulation...countenance slackened
by degrees...overwhelmed by awareness.
Kingdom come Kingdom--shoring space of grace
that is freedom.
As if Everything centering of itself, fawning over itself...
polar opposites in conjugal bliss.
Here a man stands accused...of being--fit for steely
juxtaposition...the murderous implement of will, or
salvation.
Envision him post-Flood, waist-deep, the living Face
of the Deep...look upon him!
Timekeeping horseflies besmirching his chest cavity
with due kisses...par for par movements consuming
time till the Singular advocacy of thee...look upon
him!
An encounter of pitless ramification: fear or love...be
it the last man upon the earth.
Look upon him--O jury of his peers boasting billions...
pellucid unto one another...look...The Hour is radiant!
Won't thee come to thine life's arms through him?
For he is Everyman.
Feb 6, 2015
Feb 6, 2015 at 11:25 AM UTC
Everything you had to say
Every. little. thing.
You used them as weapons
As knives
Every thought that came into your head was a knife in your hand
Like throwing knives you had sharpened them and aimed
Every sentence that came out of your mouth
Every word that entered the open air
Every single word sliced through the air like a throwing knife
The moment a word left your mouth, a knife was thrown
I always saw it coming
Every. single. Time.
The windup right before it’s thrown
Right before its said
Time standing almost still
As it slowly pierces through me.
The impact of the knife wedging into my heart
The impact of the words burning into my brain
Blood and tears
Knives and words
While I was at my most vulnerable
You saw me as a perfect target.
Perfect for throwing knives.
Dec 14, 2017
Dec 14, 2017 at 5:02 AM UTC
I'm afraid too
I afraid that the only thing
Holding me together
Are all the broken pieces
I have spent so much time
Taping the smashed splinters
Into place
I have spent so many hours
Balancing all of the dust particles
On top of each other
Wedging them so carefully
So that each one supports another
I'm afraid that if I pull one out
And show you
They will all come
Tumbling down
Jun 7, 2014
Jun 7, 2014 at 1:29 AM UTC
There are many ways
to break the spine
of a book.
Line the jelly-bean backs
too close to the battered floor,
Hide wedging polygons
between pages and binding,
Or open them and stack the backs
in lateral,
frayed Vs.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 10:19 PM UTC
The wharf was busy; it was a Saturday and the sun was high in the sky. Strangely enough, it was hot. She wanted to get to the deYoung in time.
Eliza pulled impatiently on the hand and pulled her toward the circle of people, who were no doubt watching a street urchin or a performer.
“No, honey,” her mother said, “not today.” Eliza didn’t listen and ran up, wedging herself between the bodies of bystanders.
“Look, mommy! It’s a game.”
The man was a con, Marie knew this. She let Eliza gander.
“One dollar a play, ladies and gents,” the man said, “sorry sweetheart, kids aren’t allowed.” Eliza looked up at her mommy and pushed a dollar in to her hand. Not wanting a scene, Marie smiled and put it down.
“Just once, darling,” she said through whitened teeth and a botoxed smile. She didn’t know why she was doing this. It came to her in the moment and so she acted.
The man put a ball in the cup and told her to watch so she did. His hands were swift and mesmerizing. She knew that the ball was under the right one. She pointed. He lifted. It wasn’t there. Eliza wanted to know if she could play and if not why. Her mother told her that it was a big girl game and little girls couldn’t play. Eliza started crying so Marie put down another dollar and let her watch, just to get her to shut up. The man twisted to cups again and she failed. It happened again. And again, and again. The deYoung would close, she knew, but nothing could compare to the feeling of winning. In the end, the man got twenty of her dollars. The museum wasn’t so important.
When they were in the Saint Francis’s elevators, Marie bent down and smiled at Eliza.
“When poppa asks, dear, remember: we went to the museum and had a splendid time.”
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 11:36 PM UTC
I see you as a burst of ocean mist
******
Into a nestled and worn monument.
Breathing over a humming terra nova
slowly etching away the noveau stone
You are the water tipping
about the crystals
of lone rock husk
freezing and seizing at precise locus
Then expanding about the form
Edging it to molecular capacity
before it heaves heavily - wedging
A simple puzzle lain right beside its obvious match.
The edges might be roughened
but you can tell they belong
They lay there beside one another
echoing curve and angle
of that which they once clung crystallized
Now they lay beside one another
braving the same storms - and shifts of land
but having different drops of rain fall
about their own dynamic crystallization
and different animals walking over them
and different blades of grass clinging densely
in the padded earth beneath them
brushing
Sometimes bridged together
by an animal astride the two
they are together once more
Over time they burnish into fragments
and dance about the creek beds
and about the base of grass beds
and again - though maybe temporarily,
are together again
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:26 PM UTC
The past hurts like an ocean made up of opaque glass.
And you asked me to exist within the shatter-jagged fragments.
An amphibious creature,
Breathing the pain through shredded gills.
Numbed, bruised and bleeding.
Wounds are what they called them.
Battle torn from a thousand different edges.
Don't you feel them?
The watery shards wedging into your sides,
Piercing your lungs of the will to exhale.
I feel it, like rough hands upon my neck;
Tearing through my flesh.
Slipping down my throat.
Till I'm choking on red.
You asked, and I confessed.
My passions, the black and the blue.
Inhaling the wine-water,
I want to save you.
Even with an ocean of glass standing in my way.
I want to save you.
Swimming and swimming, until this agony bled away.
I wanted to save you.
Even though I knew I couldn't.
I wanted to be the one to save you.
Jul 28, 2014
Jul 28, 2014 at 8:15 PM UTC
what is this yearning?
to feel the constant twirl of our turning
to angle the head, resting chin to shoulder,
wedging itself into place like a candle to it's holder
motioning backwards, resisting all forward
where our form turns from flesh to steel
as we wrap our stories onto the rotating prayer wheel
mimicking VHS tapes
and twisting our frames to rewind the spell of time
to undo scripture laid in stone
becoming a one man
time machine freak show.
to dwell in the days of yore
and tell yourself …
"its all been done before"
where we become the whirling dervish
head angled aside like a curious sun dial clock
arms resting in the air on the great invisible rock
or maybe
holding afloat the force of the celestial spheres,
a battalion of Atlas' drenched in marbled white cloth
stirring in a *** of dance turned to trance
into some chaotic mystery broth.
where we become the lazy susan
who just found her running gear
wedged on the cluttered bookshelf
like added day to leap year.
and we wonder what we have become
what concoction have we drunk?
thats spun us dreideling from
under the rug of normalcy.
this potion of feet lifting and descending
-- a mad mans dance --
always going and never arriving
until we no longer know where "I" begins or ends
until time no longer knows which way to bend
and our feet become entangled below
in a rapid fire dance of devotion
between course ground and sweet motion
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 2:13 AM UTC
by now you should have figured:
it's easier to satirise an everyday British
civilian with a radio,
than it is satirising a British politician
with a sense of rhetoric and
no Poker skills; instead viably
all cleavage with piquant punctuation,
zesty with a protruding ah...
an opera in glutton minor -
(never the colon preceding italicised
re-)
*meine land, meine land,
die land alle meine land
die land von Strauß -
die land von fett walküre -
gott ist tot: diät ist boren*.
it is easier to it's easier to satirise an everyday
British civilian with a radio,
than it is satirising a British politician
with anything than politics - as assured
with deciphering the enigma
or the British relations musicology speaking
relating to the continent with that
one favoured spy / messiah: Hændel - i.e.
the one admirer of Liszt that turned to terror tactics
and broke the pianist fingers in hope of the pianist
never wedging a Cuban cigar between middle and index;
love is such an oddity, it can make jealous men
love by hating into a choking joke.
Aug 4, 2016
Aug 4, 2016 at 9:55 PM UTC
A choir sings behind me
Collapsed on the floor
My heart beat once more
My hand outstretched
For a prince that never came
For a hero that never saved the day
Crashing at a million miles per hour
Towards a bottomless pit
****** away, chewed up then spit,
Nothing more than a residue
Left over
A mere mark
Of what might've existed
A wasted prayer
Among the mass
One teacher
Of an uncaring class
Fog on glass
Wiped away
Night to the sun
A passed day
Nothing more
Everything less
Left as an empty shell
I'm alone again
Without your touch
I'm not much
My heart ....
There is no beat
My finger tips to the stars....
They do not meet
My time is up
I'll say goodbye
With tears in my eyes
And pain wedging my throat
I leave tonight ..... On the lowest note
Oct 20, 2012
Oct 20, 2012 at 9:57 PM UTC
I wish all my writing depicted gaggles
wedging south over mossy lakes.
They more often wander to legs,
tangerine tongues, the taste
of sweat and smell of cheap hairspray;
for thoughts like these, I feel no
shame.
Oct 28, 2016
Oct 28, 2016 at 6:34 AM UTC
A basin filling to the brim
Weathered by wind
A crack that has yet to rescind
Strong gusts, breaking its whim.
Last night, remembering monsoon season.
Shaking, pouring out a stream
Uncontrollably heaving heavy droplets
Looking for sunshine to redeem
Wedging icy gates between outlets.
Apr 13, 2014
Apr 13, 2014 at 11:02 AM UTC
There never was anything beautiful about
caribous or
lesbians.
That's what art is for,
and good thing he hates painting.
But he likes foul mouths and petite girls
and Chevy trucks.
So I cower in your presence and let your anger shoot inside of me.
Anger like lava or acid or the liquid of hell.
It seers through me.
It seeps into my veins and
sponges into my cartilage and
threads through every tendon in my muscles and flows over my heart and stomach
and boils me from the inside out.
You may be his sound board,
but you're nothing more than a ***** he uses to make me jealous.
You may have been in his mind for the night
but only because I was busy.
You may think you're wedging yourself in between him and me
like a tick
but you're only giving yourself
Lime's disease.
I hope you rot from the inside out,
starting with your black heart and ending with your
poisonous lips.
Let the buzzards eat your liver
and I'll devour your soul.
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 8:09 PM UTC
We were once one.
Shy at first, not knowing what to do.
But then the distance became less and less between us.
We were perfectly happy in each others arms,
slowing time as we starred into the other's eyes.
We could talk about anything for hours on end.
There was no distance between us.
Suddenly, three thousand miles barges in,
wedging us apart.
Slowly, like watching paint dry, we grew apart.
Fighting left and right.
Not only have we physically distanced from each other,
we are now emotionally effected.
Not as close as before.
How could we have let Distance destroy us?
Sep 22, 2012
Sep 22, 2012 at 11:29 PM UTC
Dreaming and drafting.
Sketching and scribbling.
Wedging and working with clay.
Throwing and thinning.
Molding and making.
Drying and drizzling for play.
Firing and filming.
Showing and sharing.
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 7:26 AM UTC
i can't shake the feeling
of being watched, even
in the dark lonely space
of my kitchen.
i've taken to wedging a
knife between my
mattress and box-spring.
May 23, 2016
May 23, 2016 at 3:10 AM UTC
She remembers
vividly
walking in.
The smells
the feel of the coarse hard wood
against her feet
the yellowed and peeling flakiness
of floral wallpaper.
She recalls the meat simmering on the stove.
The stove which was old
bulbous and black-cast iron perhaps.
It filled the small one room lighthouse
collecting between the crevices wedging and
flattening itself between plaster and cement.
Each step made a sound
reminding the surroundings of her presence.
The solitary light bulb flickered as she pulled its string.
Brushing her cheek she felt his toes
swinging 180 degrees then back again
-maybe less of a dramatic angle.
Oct 6, 2010
Oct 6, 2010 at 6:55 PM UTC
Torn was the fabric of our
painful pasts.
torn by shots fired from heart
to heart, ricocheting between
bruises and disappointments,
then wedging themselves between
ribs, to rest and incapsulate.
I run my asking fingers across
your entry wound.
we did this to ourselves.
torn to pieces, the drapes between
us and The Holiest of Heavens.
let us never cease fire.
empty your every clip;
beautiful, beautiful
bullets.
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 1:47 AM UTC
It cut like a sword wedging itself within my soul
It caused me to flee to the darkness of my own mind
It took me for granted, used, and scared me for life
It causes the pictures to reply over and over in my mind
The scars it embedded upon my heart shall forever take their place
It is the one who is responsible for me being so untrusting, unworthy, unseeing
It is the reason I cannot come out of hiding
I fear that someone will see the scars
I fear that someone will see the pain I've locked away
I fear that someone will see me for who I am and the past that haunts me
When can I stop running from this unforeseen terror that continues towering over my flesh?
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 11:44 AM UTC
why is it that headlights are so much more blinding when there's warm streams puddling at my chin because i'm physically furthering myself away from you? why is it that the farther i am from you, the more i feel like there's something heavy holding my heart tighter and tighter, pulling at me with everything it has to turn around and come back to you? i know i'll return to your side in just a few days, but i feel pages and pages torn from my memories wedging their way between my ribs making it difficult to breathe normally. as i blink away the tears that still are falling, i see that beautiful smiling face of yours looking down at me in your arms, telling me that you'll see me soon, even though we both know that "soon" isn't soon enough. i can see you desperately trying to fight back emotion after emotion as you release me from your warm embrace and i know that you'll always invite me back with open arms but that doesn't make it any easier to leave you here and now. every ounce of me longs to be with you each moment we have. i've seen too many times when two people are forever separated- and one of them is forced to attend a funeral that they didn't think was going to occur until their hair turned silver and their eyes grew dim. continuing to live a life absent of you would be the night sky without a moon, waves without noise, flowers without color, music without sound, kisses without feeling. i wish you understood how void my life would be without you-almost all would be vanity. now that i know how complete i am when you're here, i can't imagine what it'd be like to no longer have you near. i slam on the brakes as bright red lights seen almost too late and i tell myself to be more careful, stay focused, think straight.
that's one of the main reasons i keep pushing forward when i feel i have no energy left to spare-
it's the thought of coming back home to you.
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 1:04 PM UTC
She remembers
vividly
walking in.
The smells
the feel of the coarse hard wood
against her feet
the yellowed and peeling flakiness
of floral wallpaper.
She recalls the meat simmering on the stove.
The stove which was old
bulbous and black-cast iron perhaps.
It filled the small one room lighthouse
collecting between the crevices wedging and
flattening itself between plaster and cement.
Each step made a sound
reminding the surroundings of her presence.
The solitary light bulb flickered as she pulled its string.
Brushing her cheek she felt his toes
swinging 180 degrees then back again
-maybe less of a dramatic angle.
Jun 12, 2013
Jun 12, 2013 at 4:18 PM UTC