"whitewash" poems
Here in the desert
it's been raining
on and off
for days
making the succulents and cacti
glisten with wetness
their thick skin sparkles
and catches nature's ironic eye
flowers and plants shine
so much better in the half-grey
Here in the prehistoric depths
Of rocky whitewash and silt
flash floods rush through
flushing out all guilt
And inside
a raging storm commences
and I feel so blessed
to be a part of this celebration
my lungs expanding in my chest
I breathe in deep
that fresh purity of air
let it cleanse right through me
from my toes up to my hair
It rushes in my body
taking no prisoners in its force
flows through every vein
cleansing poisons in its course
its power flows into me
washing out this stubborn pain
Turning the confusion
into clarity again
From inside subconscious thoughts
realization thunders
rinsing from my mind
the emotional strain
and replacing it with euphoric wonders
Come, my raging desert tempest
Bathe me
penetrate me with wet
restore and purify
my being
take over and disinfect
let me feel my own strength
until it pours out from my cells
into the space inside my heart
where love and lust still dwell
My tears mingle with the sweet drops
as I fling arms open to the sky
releasing strikes of lightening
for every word I cry
as I summon, pray for lightness
mixed with the sturdiness of earth
Let joy rise up and bubble
within my being
as rebirth
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 11:02 AM UTC
I’m Biracial.
Which did you notice first?
The me that looks like you or the me that looks like other?
There is no denying what I am—
from my last name to the shape of eyes,
you’ll know I’m not white.
But you’ll also immediately notice
I’m not quite not white.
I’m not quite not white enough.
White-passing.
“extremely” white passing until:
someone sees my last name
takes longer than five seconds to look at me
notices something “other” about me.
Other...
not one box to check on your
“optional” choose one diversity survey
Can’t check White. Can’t check Asian.
other...“Decline to Answer”
I’m Biracial. White-passing—
but not enough to stop ignorance
ignorance in the form of
questions and comments
meant to be “harmless” or “curious”
but ones that strip me of defining my own identity
“So are you a math Asian or a **** Asian?”
“You don’t look Asian enough for your last name.”
“Why are you trying to whitewash yourself for them?”
“Diversity quota”
And in comparison, those aren’t the worst things to hear.
By age ten I knew which words were meant to hurt
and which were meant out of ignorance.
Which racial slur applied to me.
I’m Biracial.
The same system that builds up half of me tears down the other half.
But— The model minority myth means something to you.
So you’ll build my other half up at the expense of someone else.
You’ll make me feel uncomfortable in my own identity
to fit what you need in the circumstances
Statistics to fit your workplace diversity quota
But still white passing so you can use micro aggressions as a joke
because I’m “white enough” that they should be funny.
I’m Biracial. Not other.
Not part you and part not you.
Not “missing” something.
I am wholly biracial.
Feb 4, 2019
Feb 4, 2019 at 4:50 AM UTC
A quaint little bazaar
In the heart of the town
Tells a story
Of a thousand moments
Dal Bazaar as they call it
Or "Curry Market" for others who don't know.
I have fragments of memorable memories
Deep within my mind
The smell
The intoxicating smell of spices
Blended with the quiescent yet cacophonous lives
Of Merchants and Beggars
Of Buyers and Sellers
Of Bullions and a single calloused rupia
In the hands of the old *****
The sunlight baking
Bags of turmeric.
Suspending the scent
In the minds of men.
Capering clouds of black and grey
And the sudden squall
Stirring the monotony
Of the customary.
The pirouette of rain
The one that excites the plainest of the plain
Painting the whitewash with shades of grey
The chalky walls
Dust
Moist corriander
And the relief of earth
Conciliating
So rewarding
For the ruins of the bare sun.
This flashback into my soul
Where all my senses seem to be so awake.
The feel of the wooden veranda
Scent so inexpressible
My eyes devouring the sunset
Tasting the heavens
Hearing it all.
Feeling it all.
Oh the plight of poets
The ritual to end a poem.
Painful.
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 3:33 AM UTC
I ride a wave of feeling,
surfing it finding meaning,
where it will take me i am not sure,
it is a feeling after all,
it takes me places good and bad,
to times I wish I had,
sometimes I crash and burn,
others bring a positive turn,
the sharks wait for me to fall,
strongly I push beyond the call,
to the beach I go for the wave takes me,
the whitewash bubbles around me like emotions,
I step to shore where the wave brought me,
here i stand ashore looking whence I came,
how strong I am with no shame.
Jul 5, 2016
Jul 5, 2016 at 10:33 PM UTC
red tile roof ...
whitewash balcony in romanesque cemicircle ,
fridge full 'f
1 litro bottles Alhambra cerveza --
clawfoot tub, coldwater (couture)
$1000/week:
(i could live on that)
lucky strike spirals in spanish summer,
bare feet on the railing upturned to sun beaming on pearly albayzin of granada.
afternoon mojitos with a new woman ev'ry week. (reading magazines)
spend
75 drunk nights ( reading , smoking , swilling gin )
&
typewriter whirring out pages (underwood airbus laissez-faire)
flamenco on a record player back in the house
one of those spanish girls slipping off a white dress (which falls like a soft breath of cloud down to the ground and sits there
still as death)
as she gets into the jacuzzi.
&
spend
75 high days throwing change into fountains, hand
up skirt of my carmen-du-jour.
climb drydust hills with guinness tallcans in plastic borsa
drinking dark beauties as golden orb hung in clouds keeps on grinning heatwaves.
(feelin' like maybe perhaps possibly i be free)
Jul 15, 2012
Jul 15, 2012 at 3:44 PM UTC
I live only here, between your eyes and you,
But I live in your world. What do I do?
--Collect no interest--otherwise what I can;
Above all I am not that staring man.
3.1k
The woman I see
I look in the mirror at my reflection, and gaze at the woman looking back.
She has been through so much in her short life, and yet her soul is still intact.
She has known love vast as an ocean, and thought her heart would burst from the joy.
As well as the pain from losing that love, so deep she felt her life was destroyed.
She has seen beauty so vivid and golden that all she could do was stare back in awe.
Along with the ugliness she’d rather forget; it made her curl up in a ball and withdraw.
She’s laughed so hard that her stomach hurt, and it took hours to cease.
Then cried tears that left her heartbroken, and numb, from feeling the bottomless grief.
At times she’s been brave, and overcome doubt, to be stronger than she once was.
That very next breath been afraid to do something, and make an error she couldn’t whitewash.
She’s become quite a woman from living her life, and, she has gained so much intelligence.
Yet she’s also been a fool, and brutally reminded, she still has immense incompetence.
The woman I see looking back from the mirror is true deep down to her soul.
I applaude her and believe that, no matter what happens, she is still more precious than gold.
Randy McPeek
Jul 31, 2016
Jul 31, 2016 at 10:44 PM UTC
~
*Salvation comes with a price--
Pried open doors,
choir songs of fingerdust
resurrecting goldrush,
and a pretty little
cromulent called whitewash.
New century martyrs
have risen up to burn books,
and quotes,
and tongues,
and every contrariwise thought,
--is this intuition or inquisition?
What ascends is trapped within
tenebrific clouds,
returning to barren ground
when it rains unholy prayers.
They don't crusade for you or me.
They contest for dominion and mastery.
Those who believe are mooncalf.
This torchlight of intolerance
sends out skyrockets,
and away it goes!
trending on your homepage:
Past generations
burning at the stake,
at the hands of sinners clothed as saints,
in cathedral oblivion,
dismembering their future
in the blood of their own children.
Amen?*
~
Mar 25, 2021
Mar 25, 2021 at 10:18 AM UTC
Dominoes
tumble sunk
chests respiring
*Olas.
Olas.
Olas.*
Short boards
spiral; foam
chaoes closing
*Olas.
Olas.
Olas.*
howls
swell purple;
storm out slowly
*Olas.
Olas.
Olas.*
Wet suits
pepper
whitewash winter.
*Olas.
Olas.
Olas.*
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 6:30 PM UTC
My sweet Austin Texas ecstasy, my beloved Guadalupe you
gem of the desert. Your family’s a basket-a-bigots but
******* they drink for miles and how near they are to my
heart. This heat’s a drug I swear it. Let's swim in that hole
in the bedrock between two rivers. That'd be nice: me and
you and mobs of Westlake High sophomores with their
blue-raspberry bikinis, a hundred Teen Vogue magazine
covers lined up on the grass like a set of bad church pews.
Imagine that whitewash of a crowd, you and me so alone in
that big static it's better than private. Let’s punch brick, peel
back our knuckles and watch’em clot in the sun. **** gauze,
we’re goin’ to a punk show. I’m puttin’ on short sleeves,
goin’ on parade, gunna flaunt my cigarette burns like a Cadillac:
I want those dorks at the Mohawk to look and love me like
they love gore. I’m gettin’ my black-eye ribbon tonight.
We’re in the Chaos in Tejas show, darlin’, put on Crazy Spirit
and bring your 2x4: skinheads ain’t jumpin’ themselves.
Let's get medicated, hunny, let's get saved. I love watching
Austin bleed out into the sand every dusk. Love the musicians
sailing out grimy and frothing over what night brings:
what a big sky, Texas, you're almost better in the day all
parched ground and azure azure. I love the glass on the high
buildings here, they’re like mirrors. This is God’s powder room.
This is where God sees himself drugged up and beaming in a
beautiful powder room. This is where God goes to remember
youth. I love how youth hasn’t gotten you yet. That unassailable
capacity for charity, that surging belief in belief shouting out
through your temples, I can’t stand how you make me sick of
making myself sick. You slapped the ******** outta me so quick
I’ve never seen grace move that fast. I thought you'd knock the
grapefruit polish right off your nails you hit me so good.
What a sight you are, kid, so proper and fit, Christ, you could
be therapy: so brunette-in-the-Fall, so full-lipped,
unabashed and Aristotelian, frayed like anything but ****
well stitched, impeccable at the seams.
Dec 4, 2012
Dec 4, 2012 at 8:11 AM UTC
It’s 30…
it’s 28 degrees outside,
or so says the rust-cased thermometer
on the balcony.
The blizzard we’ve been expecting all week
is a churning grey mist in the distance—
it is easy to see from the balcony
if I look through pine boughs.
The woods expanding below our mountainside balcony
are also home to several swanky condos;
evergreens and birch all down the mountain,
and a dusty snow falling in the valley below.
We are all familiar with the reddened barn
staring at us, perfectly opposite our balcony,
commanding a small field
on the little mountain across the dip of the valley.
But the blizzard is swallowing the neighbor mountain
in its snowy march towards the balcony.
And the lazy, drifting flakes above the pines
are shook into a frenzied dance.
A group of skiers, lost and floundering in the white
near the buildings lodged in the woods below
understand that cold, chaotic feeling I know
as the valley blurs in whitewash.
Feb 1, 2010
Feb 1, 2010 at 9:20 PM UTC
Symmetry faceless or otherwise
colorful or
drab. Equality is sin
struggle is peace with people
Cynically and worldly impossible
No prejudice, no illness
Well prejudice is illness, and humans are death
The propaganda vaccinations donated by our governments daily, monthly, yearly
Not antiestablishment
anti-chikanery
not anti-symmetric
anti-whitewash
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 10:07 PM UTC
Among black butterflies
goes a dark-haired girl
next to a white serpent
of mist.
*Earth of light,
sky of earth.*
She is chained to the tremor
of a never arriving rhythm;
she has a heart of silver
and a dagger in her right hand.
Where are you going, siguiriya,
with such a headless rhythm?
What moon'll gather up your pain
of whitewash and oleander?
*Earth of light,
sky of earth.*
1.8k
You pace in circles.
I speak in smoke rings,
an occasional finger-snapped heart,
a masted boat if I could.
Away away to ocean
in long-legged strides.
Waves crash against the sides,
left, front, and right,
in ripe blueberries and whitewash.
Come to the cabin,
a tail of breadcrumbs,
keep your socks striped,
pinks and purples.
A David Austin rose, or three.
I'm not cohesive either.
Flaunt the ship's wheel,
solid oak, dark, mesmerizing,
nearly your eyes now.
Let gray skies form clouds,
don't pray for better weather.
The rain grumbles hunger,
veiled moonlight stretches its arms
down to slatted deck,
spraying it in gangtag graffiti.
Stay here, circles more on the floor.
Your hips, footprints up your toes
from a whiskered mouse with dusted nose.
He's escaped and curled up
the nook of your ankle.
Eighteen knots tangle your hair.
Call the winds to come in storms,
they'll surely lead the way.
Mar 17, 2013
Mar 17, 2013 at 12:47 PM UTC
As we hold our tongues in our heads, like nuclear threats, we are sure that those three words, that simple three word voice command, will be the end of us both, in a beautiful bloodbath, *** like war.
Two entities struggling for power and satisfaction, an atomic blast that is sounded with a sigh and an arch. The aftermath, sheer destruction, nothing anymore dominant than the next, everything melting into itself and one another. An overwhelming lump of calm and submission.
A skirmish for primitive power and oneself. The treaty of two bodies, silent, secretly sweet, and sullen. A whitewash of disdain where passion had just been.
*** like War
Anger is an Aphrodisiac
Hate is fuel for Passion
Love is and Instigator
We couldn't hate enough to love.
Jun 27, 2011
Jun 27, 2011 at 12:10 PM UTC
City limit space expands,
it's threaded through with veins--
grey-black dendritic strands
span
across this moldy brain
of a city.
Our rotting nights spray hits around
the places players play.
The impulses will whitewash all complaints
'til the glaring day.
I wanna spit-shine every storm drain,
stain the cracked sidewalks in white,
take this town to Sunday morning Mass,
though she was born for Friday nights.
We're gonna trickle past addresses
now,
Electroshock through habit streets
these crosswalks sneer with snide expression.
Mildewed thoughts we'll hardly think.
A conversation you're repressing
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow
Another weekend's blurred out
blank confession
melts off the tips of tongues,
I can taste it now.
Circulation space expands,
we're threaded through with veins--
this bio-asphalt plan
spans
all through this molded frame
of a body.
But rotten thoughts, like ships aground,
teach sailors how to pray
when impulses have buried all complaints
'neath the foaming spray.
I wanna shade out every bruise now,
paint the dumpsters all in gold.
Missoula, listen: You're a lady.
I don't give a **** what you've been told.
A moldy brain dreams slattern makeup
for a prizefight town each night
so let's take up every artist's brush,
paint shadows on these barroom eyes.
We're gonna flow right through these boule-
vards.
Electroshock through habit streets.
These dim lit yards and spoiled thoughts
are hyphens placed between each week.
A conversation you're repressing,
I'm smoothing out my wrinkled brow.
Our city's made-up face is running
off the tips of winter and I taste it now.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 1:19 PM UTC
After murderous fall of moon, after starving cat's croon,
my body remains.
After getaway car turns to rust, after skyscraper scatters as dust,
my body remains.
After milk carton goes missing, after women disposed in kissing,
my body remains.
After the cackling retreat, after the burying buzz of her words on repeat,
my body remains.
After greeting card ages yellow, after whiskey tastes mellow,
my body remains.
After white suburb tastes of **** after inner-city tastes black death,
my body remains.
After fifth or sixth televised war, after commercial break bore,
my body remains.
After drunken desperation, after belated bedroom exasperation,
my body remains.
After propaganda pill-popping, after church pew splinter sopping,
my body remains.
After farm fields on fire, after ***** clothes hung on wire,
my body remains.
After open casket sorrow, after sympathy borrow,
my body remains.
After winter of extreme tire, after binge and pyre,
my body remains.
After tearing nostalgic shoreline, after parking fine,
my body remains.
After dumbfound pride, after proving my hide,
my body remains--
awaiting a whitewash of hot rain,
awaiting a ***** cradle free of pain,
awaiting a salty crest daydream,
awaiting a snip from the seams and--
sweet release.
May 4, 2011
May 4, 2011 at 10:18 AM UTC
If you ask me if I am fluent in Spanish
I will tell you my Spanish is a mix of english
and spanish rubbing against each other
in my mouth like spitting fire
My spanish is my whole life from my youth
to my death
My Spanish is on my resume as a skill
And not something that can sit still
You see There is no telling my spanish
to be quiet
My spanish don’t know “quiet”
My spanish is spicy sounds that some people
Have a hard time to understand
My spanish sits in the corner of a classroom
Chews on a pencils, does not raise its hand
My spanish is chaotic, broken, and slightly misspoken
something that I have to choose
to remember correctly
My spanish is true story
My spanish is my grandparents
Giving me presents
that they brought back from Mexico
At least I hope they would have
My spanish is a broken clock radio that never
gets fixed but still works
And yes there are perks
My spanish is people asking me if my parents
are american if I am white
My spanish is having to prove that
I am mexican, because saying it was never enough
My spanish is my abuelita leaving a country
that she loves to give her family an entry to opportunities
And english sat in her mouth
remixed so strawberry became “ e streberry ”
And Kitchen, keychain and chicken all sound the same.
My spanish is my accent that
reminds me where i come from
And That we are still
bomba, plena, salsa, and guepa
Something that is too
stubborn for your whitewash
Not something that you can erase
Rather something that I embrace
My spanish is my dad working his whole life
so i can live in security
And not have to worry about disparity
My spanish is the first question that my
grandmother asked about me
“what color is she”
My spanish is my sister,
A blond blue eyed beauty
That always took priority
My spanish is people thinking that
My dad was my gardener
My spanish is people being petrified
when I spoke to my father
My spanish knowns that there are letters
that will always be silent
There are words that will always escape me
My spanish is my whole body
A sound that rumbles in my
chest and rolls off my tongue
My spanish is something that is shut off
when I am surrounded by white walls
But my spanish does not believe in
boundaries or borders
My spanish believes in building bridges
and not taking orders
From an orange man with tiny hands
that is an assaulter
My spanish, my spanish is a sword
that allows my words
To fly like the birds and be freed
My Spanish is my drive to succeed
Dec 29, 2018
Dec 29, 2018 at 2:12 PM UTC
Dreams of working with little objects,
but my fingers are grotesquely fat,
bloated with self worth.
Such frustration,
as the small metal ambiguity falls,
again
between my clutches to clang helplessly on the whitewash table below.
A growing discomfort that is oddly angled and
it’s hard to look away lest someone end up mangled.
Filled with the certainty of a dying man,
I race against the biological clock.
These clichés are sticking to me and
your black thoughts are wicking,
can't you see?
This task is meaningless,
teeming in seemingly endless trysts of error and visitation.
Your mask is bleeding from this,
streaming and adorned in nameless anger,
your own manifested creation.
So I stare with unyielding disquiet at your unhindered disdain,
and make elastic confessions of comparable pain.
May 13, 2010
May 13, 2010 at 12:03 AM UTC
Cain slew Abel –
Thus began the parade of
Characters whose dynasties
We remember, who decorate
Our memories.
Abraham –
He gave us all the stars
In the sky, a greater lineage
Than the grains of sand
Slapped by seas.
Moses –
The babe in the bulrushes,
The prince turned traitor
Whose whiplashed back
Parted the Red Sea.
Tempus fugit –
Geo Washington, Thos
Jefferson, Alex Hamilton –
Madison, Adams, Franklin –
Minds who created, who
Dreamed, who begat.
How many names we find
In those first tumultuous
Years – warfare and love,
Duels and decadence,
Politics and party.
Scant years later, across
The pond – revolution is
Catching on – les français
Waged a ****** scene,
Ousting the régime.
What would become a
Baby democracy – birthed
More than one new flag
And song – yet lived to
Fight again and bleed.
History is ours to hear –
We respect the honorable,
Honor the drama, revere
The prudent and refight
The battles.
The District of Columbia
Paints a new canvas – she
Sings off key, her promises
Begging for whitewash, her
Patrons vice and folly.
What offspring will such as
These sire? Are they fathers
To found a new nation – to
Garner worldwide pride, or
To slay the abled?
Let the wings of victory
Carry us back to the days
Of greatness – let us exceed
In probity and virtue – let
Freedom succeed again.
© Lewis Bosworth, 3-2017
Mar 23, 2017
Mar 23, 2017 at 11:36 PM UTC
I let you too
far in and like
a brisk wind you
threw my doors
open and whistled
through the kitchen
nestledbetweenthe
crackswithyourdirty
self and skittered beneath
the dishwasher, in the corners
under doors, but I'm sweeping
you out because I want none of
you beneath my fingernails
none of you locked in the
cuticles of my hair, I will
whitewash the walls of
my heart if I have
to.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 6:27 PM UTC
I tried to pray once,
twice, a hundred times.
I was always scared of the person who would answer,
until they started answering.
It was usually my Ciocia, or my Dzia Dzia,
saying, 'hush hush little one",
or "be good to each other".
Most times, when I was lying balled up under the covers,
or hiding in my shower,
trying my hardest not to sob the walls out of existence,
those were the answers to my prayers.
The best advice usually came from myself,
telling me to take my time and be ridiculous,
even if just for the moment.
I didn't think I needed God to tell me that,
when I could tell that to myself.
I tried to pray once,
twice, a thousand times.
I wasn't sure what to pray about.
I felt weird reliving my day in narrative form,
and I didn't want to ask for favors or forgiveness like Christmas gifts.
I'll find my own good community,
my own piece of mind.
I tried to pray once,
twice, a million times.
Each time, the answers wouldn't come, and I was left worshipping the ground I had walked on 10 minutes before;
the same amount of dried leaves and holey socks littering the crosswalk of my bedroom.
I tried to pray once,
to infinity. To a God without a name, without a face.
It always came back to my Ciocia, though.
Who lives in your white house, your whitewashed walls of glory and redemption?
Oct 5, 2010
Oct 5, 2010 at 6:46 PM UTC
Running in epileptic circles
my dreams that can't even escape
these malemetal mindtraps
securely locking up the bodies of the
evildoers happening to catch my soul
between the stainlesssteel and whitewash
and scratchy blankets on my cheek
my eyes sticking, body convulsing
and the Watchers! I can't take it
I feel my sanity quickly fleeing the beady
unblinking soulless inhumanity
black warts on the ceiling
I frantically count relying on obsessive compulsions
to sleep. I sleep out of the sour sweat of fear
but sleep only leads me to
running in epileptic circles
It was all taken
bare. that's how I was
naked labrat surrounded by
murderers
leaking sanity nastily
from artificial orifices
All the world part of perpetual seizures
running in epileptic circles
Jul 11, 2012
Jul 11, 2012 at 5:46 PM UTC
We looked at the world through rose-colored glasses,
sped through the night under blue moons,
parked in cars and gave boys the green light.
Explored gray areas, dreamed of golden boys,
painted the town red and got caught red-handed.
We saw adult freedoms and were green with envy,
we experienced blackouts (I’m talkin’ to you 151 ***
swam in black water alone and talked to strangers,
told little white lies, yet somehow, we didn’t die young.
I think of college students as dyed-in-the-wool adults.
The grass always looked greener on the adult side,
and we’re tickled pink not to be infantilized any more.
We’ll show the world our true colors
and pass college with flying colors.
Life won't be handed to us on silver platters,
we’ll get white collar jobs.
Of course, as adults, we’ll have to deal with red tape,
and we can’t be yellow-bellied or try to whitewash things.
We’ll stay out of the red or sing the blues.
We’ll stay off the yellow lines, seek golden opportunities,
attend black tie events, obey the golden rule, avoid pink slips,
support our men in blue and look for silver linings.
Adulthood sounds exhausting.
On the positive side, I’m told adults practice safe ***
Practice means what it’s always meant - right?
Is that why adults go to bed so early?
Besides, as adults, we won’t be kept in the dark anymore,
and we’ll get to chase rainbows!
Apr 7, 2023
Apr 7, 2023 at 9:13 PM UTC
You've been wondering that you've got
No tiny false extraction point
A deluded perception of reality
Blood flowing round the corner of the streets
There's a creeping centralisation of power
And a hoarse whisper in your ears
It's time for your magnanimous self
To let the ego drain away
A thousand battles and memoirs
Those anecdotes you never read
They're the fables of your life
Hinging upon a soft limerick
And now when you try to
Juxtapose those thoughts in your mind
The imbecile beings around
Whitewash your victory and demise.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 4:06 AM UTC