"wheedle" poems
"This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did ******
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant ****** drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending."
-Marge Piercy
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 10:08 AM UTC
The glory of failure.
It’s just **** with sugar on
Jam and cream without the scone.
Because when I’m begging out in the street
And my eyes happen to meet those eyes that look down
To me on the ground, and you put a coin in my cup,
Just remember you’re looking down I’m the one looking up.
And for those who pass by while shedding a tear
Don’t worry yourself none I’ve made enough for my gear
And more than enough for a couple of beers.
I know what you’ll say
You’ll say, I waste life away
Like I’ve wasted this day.
But I’ll say, I made enough to pay for my addiction.
The seduction which leads me to say
That’s the glory of failure.
I saw an advert for a job and this job was paying quite a few bob.
But I wouldn’t have got it…no sugar just ****
So I didn’t bother trying
I went back to lying on my bed
I went back to getting out of my head.
When all’s done and said I’m just a no hoper
A drug fiendish doper.
That’s the glory of failure.
If I could have a chance, a second chance, a last chance
To get my brain round to thinking
To think I’ll stop drinking.
I could get off the gear, I could get off my rear.
I could send my C.V to employers
Those employers who are known as the unemployment destroyers.
I could have a meaning instead of this leaning I have,
Towards self destruction.
I could get a job on a site become involved in construction.
So many things on the doorstep right here
But really
I much rather prefer getting ****** on the gear.
Oh yes that’s the glory of failure.
I should get myself well move out from this hell
But what the doctors have said is, in six months I’ll be dead
So I’m going to make tracks.
No,not those made by the needle
I’m going to wheedle
My way into a hospice which could be quite nice.
I think that’s the glory of failure
But what the hey I’m a guardian reader
But unlike other guardian readers those centre right bleeders
I’m totally anarchist, often totally tanked up and ******
But in reading the guardian I just cannot lose
It makes such wonderful padding for the holes in the soles of my shoes.
And I’ve had plenty of dates with several girlfriends of mates
But when they’re looking down there and they see nothing stir.
That may be the glory of failure.
Perhaps when I’m old and I’m ready to die
I might cast my mind back and I might wonder why,
Every time I have failed the boat seems to have just sailed.
But I was never a sailor.
I was just a participant in
The Glory Of Failure.
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 3:13 AM UTC
*This is a poem for Rachel Corrie. I am not religious, and a far cry from spiritual, but I refuse to imagine Rachel Corrie insentient and six feet under, slowly amalgamating with the soil encasing her. Before her death, Rachel Corrie said “I still really want to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers. But I also want this to stop.” In the words of contemporary Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad “God has a better imagination than all of us combined” in either God's words or my own, I will not imagine in/on the same ground in/on which I maybe soon will be and more words from Suheir “What do I tell young people about non-violence when they can see for themselves how even orange bright and megaphone loud and cameras and US citizenship will not stop your ****** what do I tell young people/anyone even myself about “non-violence” when every single thing I've seen presenting itself/perhaps even masquerading as “non-violence” has been in my face and /rude/harsh/unavoidable and most of all, violent? I do not believe in God and humanity is pushing it's luck, but I believe in Rachel Corrie. This is for Rachel;*
I should study a she-wolf's prose
she wanted to write about death
but life would frequently
weasel and wheedle it's way in
there’s an overhanging image
a smaller
yet
infinitely larger
organism
continuously broached
by each word
I only want to study
a caterpillar’s motion
backward/forward /onward
across arms/legs
of this deer/dear
[her] surname/
[my] given name/
separated by [semi/totally] circular VOWels
***** blond hair
dirtied by dust /
rubble /
rhyme /reason/
whatever/ in compliance
with a rep/RESENT/ative democracy
several shades lighter
literally
figuratively
whiter
than she
need no permission
pat benatar
would/should croon
to your moves
every
boy and girl friend
i will/may/have/had
should be yours
entomo/insecto/[social] phobias
I never would’ve said so
I never
would’ve/
could’ve
told the caterpillar
to go
Nov 28, 2011
Nov 28, 2011 at 8:41 PM UTC
He’d been able, after some gentle persistence,
To wheedle his way into the place
(He’d been vaguely recognized by the caretaker,
A certain affable familiarity his stock in trade, after all)
And he had been decidedly deliberate in his search for the shoes,
Though he’d been quite certain where he’d left them,
Simply hoping to drink this all in just one more time
But though the rooms were ostensibly unchanged
(He'd noted the odd knick-knack and piece of bric-a-brac
Had been secreted out, to be preserved or pawned)
They held no fascination for him now,
Simply concoctions of hardwood flooring,
Decorative wall coverings, staid pieces of furniture
(Indeed, the paterfamilias of this whole mélange
Increasingly beyond his recall-- he could hearken back
To a certain hail-fellow-well-met in his demeanor,
And he'd had an affecting smile,
But he was unable to conjure any further details
From the recesses of his memory)
And with nothing else to moor him to these silent rooms,
He'd slipped on the ostensible reasons he'd come in the first place
(Their uppers maintaining their whiteness
Through any number of bleachings,
The soles worn to a near smoothness)
And, nodding perfunctorily to the mansion's steward,
He slipped away, heading to some other party
Carrying on in more or less perpetuity,
The battered bottoms of his shoes
Leaving just the faintest marks as he crossed the dunes,
Soon to be buffed away altogether by the breeze.
Oct 29, 2018
Oct 29, 2018 at 11:29 AM UTC
I never feared the monster hiding
Sliding out from under my bed
To grab me by the head and drag me
Into some dark, dIngy vicinity.
I had the real thing to fear. We all did
And it only hid when other adults saw.
The fear would gnaw at me forever
And I felt it would never let up.
A couple of times I felt I would die
Because I tried to stop it; to cry
To beg, to wheedle, to quake.
But I could not shake her hold.
I wasn’t all that old, but I began
To plan. I did her household chores
But she wanted more; laundry,
Preparing the meals she completed.
Defeated, I knew it was no good.
I had done everything I could.
I remember it. Oh, yes. Clearly.
Nearly every scene resonates
Grates and whips me relentlessly
Just as hard, and painfully as she
Whipped us; me and my brothers
Not acting like a mother, but mad.
Not so much angry as insane.
She was the bane of our existence
With no diluting of that phrase.
And it was not a phase, it was there
When we were home, alone
With her when she indulged her rage.
To that stage when she could not stop;
Not turn back and be the caregiver.
I still shiver. I feel the belts or sticks
Stripe across my back or my legs
When, begging, I tried to stop her;
Threaten to call the cops or something
But nothing worked since Dad was a cop.
The cops or the county would come by
When a nearby neighbor called on her
But when they heard our name, they stopped
And since Dad was a cop, they dropped it
And would sit and ask us in front of her
Whether she was beating us or whatever.
Never would we rat her out because
The claws would come out when they left
And she’d heft whatever she used on us.
And fussing and crying only made it worse.
Once a nurse turned her in to the school
And some fool from the county dropped by
To write down Mom’s lies and ask us again
In front of the woman from the welfare
And we were too scared to tell the truth.
We were in the beginnings of our youth.
How could we defeat a monster that knew
Where and when we slept. What could we do?
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 2:11 AM UTC
The girlchild was born as usual,
But detested dolls that did *** ***
Made music with her miniature GE stoves and irons,
And crushed her wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy,
Then, in the rabble of puberty, a classmate said,
"You have a great big nose, and fat legs."
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
Possessed strong arms and back,
abundant ****** drive and manual dexterity,
She ran to and fro, not caring,
Who saw a fat nose on thick legs,
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle,
But her strength refused to wear out,
Did not run out on her,
Like some men did,
Who only saw a fat nose on thick legs,
She refused satin in her casket,
She would have no undertaker paint her silly,
With her strong nose and thick legs,
Dressed ever as plainly,
'She was beautiful,' those who knew her said,
Those who did not, could not understand,
That she was no Barbie Doll,
But a woman with a happy end.
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 11:47 AM UTC
little kitty pull on the string
take the bait and watch it swing
its not much to you
but to me its everything
the time of day the world gets hazy
the lights go out we all go crazy
its real hard work
and no ones lazy
sitting on your pins and needles
****** and punks begin to wheedle
its the lighting the way they talk
the way they crunch those little beetles
echos in a crowded head
slimy snails and the undead
come out of hiding and start to dance
seething lies and love and cheap romance
i forget everything but the unimportant
Dec 20, 2011
Dec 20, 2011 at 5:53 AM UTC
In the blink of an eye of a hurricane,
In the nick of time after time,
In the heat of the night of the living dead,
It is I for whom the bells chime.
In the midnight hour of decision,
In the moonlit sky filled with stars,
I am cut with a scalpel’s precision,
My blood flows, but soon will be scars.
My only friends will betray me,
My own words have a venomous taste,
I can spit at those who would slay me,
For I’ve outrun all the demons I chased.
In the blink of an eye of a needle,
In the nick of time running out,
Perhaps one more time I can wheedle,
The voices within me to shout.
Phil Lindsey 1/8/17
Jan 8, 2017
Jan 8, 2017 at 12:52 PM UTC
Lumpy, bumpy, feeling rather jumpy.
Nodule? Cyst? What have I missed?
Kindness pouring from soothing eyes - ladies in purple who have seen it all, beckoning sirens though to the hall.
Consultant - God, Guru, Man, Father, Lover, Philanderer, Tooth Fairy, Assassin
He checks like a 15 year old boy, passionless, conscientious, circling
Is this ok?
Lump - Yes. Bump - Yes. Am I going to jump? - Yes
Off to see the coolest man in the hospital - the Ultrasound guy
But first back to sit in cornrows with the ladies who coyly all dressed like me.
Russian roulette - someone will be upset.
Mamm-o-gram - scans your ***** like ham.
Kindness of the operator who's careers advisor could never have predicted this.
And then up and off to be seen by James Dean
James Dean with a wand and gel and a screen
And a squint then a glint - it might just be ok....?
90% its benign - oh mine the benign, fine, tine-y lump
But we had better double check.... with this massive needle
Please Mrs D please don't wheedle
Eyes shut tight anaesthetic mirroring a mastectomy....is it still there?
Then back to see my crew
Of ladies old and not so, a sea of tight smiles and frightened eyes
90% it's benign
90% it's benign
90% it's benign
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 10:19 AM UTC
The white couple coiled like a bundle
The black couple day to day in swindle
The orange couple in a painful trundle
The red couple in a forceful swaddle
Coupled colours in wheedle
Coupled colours in griddle
Coupled colours in dwindle
Coupled colours in twiddle
The vows vented rekindled
The vows verified straddled
The vows verily canoodled
The vows vanquished! Befuddled
Coupled colours in caboodle
Coupled colours in en-kindle
Coupled colours in en-girdle
Coupled colours in unsaddle
Red, green, yellow, white, blue and black
All couples are coloured by a colour mark
It’s either you pray or park
It’s either you are lit or dark
All marriages are represented by colour
You either chose an orange one, so healthy, or a yellow one so pallor
You can go for the dark one, were all is head by the jailer
Or the red one were all is patched and knitted by the tailor
It’s your choice
To flip flop the dice
It’s your choice
To nut the dice
Feb 25, 2019
Feb 25, 2019 at 1:44 AM UTC
You think you're such a charmer.
Winning over every girl who is silly enough to look you in the eyes.
Not me, good sir.
Your alluring kindness may be utterly dreamy for most,
I can see why.
You are too easily loved and too quickly gone.
Good sir, you are accepting and manage to wheedle your way past every wall,
You are a credit to the male species,
But, good sir, I am not falling for your charm,
Not this time.
Apr 13, 2012
Apr 13, 2012 at 9:12 AM UTC
When I talked to you and
you agreed right away
I was not prepared. I had been ready
to explain why I was right
to demonstrate and persuade
and flatter and wheedle until you
relented. But you decided
in your much greater wisdom
not to play
my game. I did not let it go, I kept
trying to prove my point.
Did you see what I couldn't? Did you
hear the desperation in my tone? And
did you know long before
I would realize? Maybe
you did. Because now I sit
watching reruns of my day and
the realization comes
It was never you
I was trying to convince.
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 6:42 PM UTC
I'm fighting my demons as they rip at my soul
exorcising their presence with hot burning coals
Constant reminders of all that I am
no room for mercy, they don't give a ****
Lashes and whips, barbed wire and chain
repeating their litany defining insane
They'll not desist in my tortured sick mind
they wheedle and poke, every sin that they find
For eternity and more, eyes glazed in the pain
burned on hell's pillars, again, and again
Apr 18, 2018
Apr 18, 2018 at 10:21 AM UTC
I can no longer convince you to be captivated
by late nights filled with nothing
I can not ****** you with my smooth talk
filled with songs of strange sweet something
I can no longer wheedle you with words
that entice you to want to stay
I can not tantalize you with temptation
so I must find somewhere else to play.
Jan 8, 2020
Jan 8, 2020 at 12:58 AM UTC
She is there at the water’s edge
Most any day she can wheedle and whine her mother to the water,
From the intermittent teasing warmth of late March
And all through the languid North Country summer
Until such time she is there,
Mitten-clad and scarf-wrapped like some miniature Tut,
Bracing against January’s razor-blade winds in those last few days
Until the few gurgling rills and streamlets are nothing but ice
All the way up to the big river in Ogdensburg.
She scrambles down to the bridge abutment
Hard by the Riverside Cemetery
Dropping a Popsicle-stick craft
(Its sails snips of cloth or bits of green-bar paper,
Its cargo a message stapled into a sandwich bag)
Into the river, sent on its way
With a brief and whispered benediction.
Most times, the craft founders almost immediately,
Taken under by a sudden gust of wind or large stick
Perhaps a carelessly tossed forty-ounce Hamm’s empty,
But on occasion the boat will stay upright and precariously totter along
Until it slips out of sight past the bend near the hospital,
And she claps her hands, convinced that yet another one
Is on its way to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the great blue ocean.
An onlooker might cluck and shake his head,
And tell her that such a toy
Would never make it outside the village limits,
Certainly never past the big bridge on Route 58 at Elmdale
Or the one further on up past Pope Mills,
Let alone to the Seaway,
But he might check himself, perhaps sensing
That there had been disenchantment
For one life already,
So he might instead make gentle inquiries
As to what messages are carried in the plastic baggies.
She would (her voice all mock-sterness though the eyes betray her)
Answer simply That is between me and the angelfish.
Jan 6, 2017
Jan 6, 2017 at 1:22 PM UTC
Where now the promises of five years ago
We’d all feel much better, but do we, O no!
Some having now to use a food bank
Children are learning in schools that are dank.
The roads have become a sea of potholes
Zero-hour jobs not much better than dole
Fewer police officers walking the beat
Feeling secure is becoming a treat.
The man at the top expounds thoughts anew
Deputy man has a different view
University fees we won’t let them change
In government though such things rearrange.
Rich businessmen avoid paying tax
Down below credit cards teeter at max
Inflation comes down as they try to impress
But energy bills never get any less.
The silent majority keep a stiff upper lip
As their security starts losing its grip
But it gets barely noticed in the Westminster bubble
For those less than rich will always spell trouble.
Naturally, of course, there’s a different view
From politicians cast in a different hue
All trying to wheedle their way to get votes
Filling our heads with more promissory notes.
Imagine if you will it’s December next year
Do you feel right now that you have less to fear?
Or is it the case that nothing has changed?
Just the furniture in Downing Street got re-arranged.
Maybe in fact it stayed exactly the same
And we voted back in this bad lot to the game
We can blame ourselves later, when we see what we’ve done
Ensuring that actually, we’ve really not won.
©Joe Wilson – Where now the promises…2015
Feb 20, 2015
Feb 20, 2015 at 12:31 PM UTC
Base feelings are monsters that live in my cage
I always draw second
I unveil
Virginity is a useless sacrifice
So, nobody feels uneasy anymore
Oh they know what self-adoration is
Yet, you are all about the crippling spine that needs to jettison out my back. Crack!
Fear is what fuels your 1962's Colt with stolen gasoline
When I ride it I am on the minute
It drops me off on the line of fire
Flames light up in my lungs
You shout "Here are my reasons, understand, see"
That creeping sensation of the ugliest kid in class watching me behind my ear
Makes me horrified
A basket case of emotion
I cannot stress enough
It's the things I do not want to happen
Like resurrecting insects and then killing them again
Nightmare to my time so I stop moving, like, paralyzed
Fearful is the edge of the knife
Peeling back my ***** as I feel its blade cuts thin
Every slice a feeling creeping in
It abuses my skin
Replaced by a shroud of music that I sing to wheedle out
So you can continue to say I "Live in sin, live in sin"
You needed me afraid, so I became brave
You needed me small, so I became big
Oct 5, 2017
Oct 5, 2017 at 1:38 PM UTC
You gave me my bones.
Sealed me inside my skeleton skin,
Encased my heart in cartilage,
So no one could get in.
But now you can’t get in.
So you scratch and claw and needle and gnaw,
Wheedle and worry til your teeth are red raw,
You do your worst, as you did before –
Only this time, you won’t win.
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 9:55 AM UTC
You hum softly in the haze of dusk
The song of a passing ice cream truck,
A penny for a spool of thread
Toes digging in the loose dusty soil,
Tapping the long forked fire **** to either
Side as though blind, blind from smoke and
Tears and the darkness of
The canyons of silence Between us
A penny for a needle
The branch balances precariously on the
End of the fork, a tightrope walker
Plucked from the ground by a metal unfeeling god
That's the way the money goes
Until you dump it into the fire
Pop goes the weasel
And the obvious irony, the irony so
Commonly placed in horrors
I've got no time to plead and pine
Is what makes me laugh until
The tears bead up on the end of my nose
I've got no time to wheedle
Or so it feels like, because inevitably,
Always, somehow
Kiss me quick before I'm gone
You always light me up
Pop goes the weasel
Jun 16, 2015
Jun 16, 2015 at 2:10 AM UTC
You sway in the past
Linger like a beam
Of a somnolent sunshine
In its moments that swelled you up.
Try to wheedle and root yourself
Like a feathery cypress
On its ochre coloured paths.
Spread yourself like a flowering vine
All over the places and events
Captured with a fervent heart.
Cause even a single toe
Dangling unknowingly into
The external spaces
Of present
Seems to situate you fully
Beneath a cast of whitening skies
With the shape of silence
As your only companion.
Where a thousand different times
You've always struggled
To solemnly exist
In fact.
Nov 22, 2019
Nov 22, 2019 at 10:08 AM UTC
She burns in my heart
and soothes a sad soul
love she imparts
her kisses slow and controlled
taking me places
delivering bliss
both our O faces
ecstasy this
Her sliding superb
culminate need
whatever she wants
devouring my seed
I'll beg and I'll wheedle
every touch and the taste
her eyes spurring me on
down at her waist
Yes, I've been captured
she owns me outright
playing our bodies
and doin it
right
May 23, 2018
May 23, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Gearing Up for School Which is Just Around the Corner
School is forever gearing up or winding down
And if school is not around the corner
Then summer takes that very same turn instead
With back-to-school sales beginning in June
Children wheedle their moms for the coolest sneaks
And shopping carts are heavy with pens in packs
Yellow pencils, notebooks, scissors, and glue
Construction paper, adhesive tape, tissues
Lunchboxes, paper sacks, term calendars -
While in a lonely room
A pathetic little man fondles his Glock
Aug 2, 2023
Aug 2, 2023 at 11:09 PM UTC