"widening" poems
Trapped in a cage with golden bars of light
Of ancient habit and direful duties;
Below the water crashed into the bight,
The whispering waves baiting with beauties.
But her shadow lurked around the coast,
Dashing her to the beach like drifting wood.
Preventing her from what she wanted the most
To reach new shores from where she stood.
She wanted to travel and sail the open sea
Beyond the shingle, seaweed and shells
Closer to the horizon where the birds flew free
Or to the arenaceous ground in diving bells.
And coming back to where she started
She found her seaside changed since she has parted.
Or did the widening horizon change her perceiving?
For returning was not the same as never leaving.
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 10:37 AM UTC
~a question of a thousand dreams~^
“Where are you going now my love? Where will you be tomorrow? Will you bring me happiness? Will you bring me sorrow? All the questions of a thousand dreams, what you do and what you see”
this one composes itself
for all dreams go unremembered
the first, the thousandth, the every in between,
erased by the push button of opening eyes
but dreams come, marching in, saints mining the raw materiel
the quartermaster has stored, awaiting requisition by an
unarmed unnamed corp, witnessed but never seen
these dreams wisped soft willow budded, tempting taunting,
leaving nothing but unanswered questions that colored come
in black and white
elementary clues,
a pillow indentation,
single hair that stretches
across the sea between two pillows that is blonde or red
but
certainly unmine,
dregs of soured sentiment linger like the
aftertaste of too many coffees and stainless steel beers
heated summers breezes give no succor or relief,
and the rain following gives no pleasure,
for now you are hot and soaked,
but somewhere in there a dream is part replayed,
and eyes widening in major league surprise,
the question acknowledged, the dreams quest hinted
she has gone, neither happiness or sorrow will she
provide on the morrow, no toweling of your wet hair fair,
and you awake sweat besotted, it is not rain, just pain,
and it is only one dream a thousand times repeated
and what you do and what you see
is the abraded night ahead, and
you bitter laugh, for there is no more other than to think,
the question answered, and you beg relief by
uttering
“perchance to dream”
3:49 pm
see the notes!!
someone accuses me of Plagiarism
because I did not acknowledge that the quote in marks and Italics was from a famous song written 39 years ago
so here is my response to
“just saying”
congratulations on ******* me off
and yes I agree, you do not know the rules
“#1: Quotation Marks Are for Quoting People—Verbatim
Perhaps it should go without saying, but quotation marks are for quoting people. Quoting doesn’t mean summarizing or paraphrasing; it means repeating exactly what someone said. If you put double quotes around a phrase, your reader will often assume that someone, somewhere, said that exact phrase or sentence.“
http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2013/09/11/10-things-you-really-need-to-know-about-quotation-marks/
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 3:59 PM UTC
We tighten the noose
Around Nature
Making space for us
Enjoying the feeling
Of widening horizons
Lest we forget
We may be casualties
Of this demeanor
With no air to breathe
Leaving us gasping
The invisible noose
Tightening its hold
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 11:16 AM UTC
The midnight sun is heading north
These bags are packed with dreams
and the memories of who I’ve been;
To scatter forth like gathered seeds
on fallow hope,
strewn at the mercy of the winds
The genesis of spring unravels
the knotted darkness
Another winter’s aftermath
hidden back on the back shelf
The distance between back then
and now, is widening
each Dawn to Dusk
A gust of sunlight
plashes ripples
across the still waters
of depthless peace
and,
my hands are no longer tied
behind my back
by winter's grasp
Seasons oft do change
perennial as the tides
But I don’t want to see
another ocean runaway;
I don’t want to know how
another fleeting moment
ends
Jesse Stillwater
Apr 7, 2018
Apr 7, 2018 at 5:56 PM UTC
Every place I turn
I can't unsee the horrors I've known
I can't say I have had it the worst
Not by a long shot
But it hasn't been butterflies
No three year old wants to see
Random men in their house with
Their mama when their daddy's not home
And no six year old should have to see
Parents so enraged
And divorcing
Nor should their best friend's parents
Feel a need to adopt them
Even temporarily
No seven year old should
Feel they need to be twenty-seven
And like they aren't allowed to cry
No ten year old should be forced
To choose which parent they like best
Under any circumstances
No twelve year old should feel
Any desire to harm themselves
And watch blood swell on their arms
No fourteen year old should think they're
Wrong because they believed in love
Nor should they feel jaded
No fifteen year old should contemplate suicide
At all
Especially not so thought out
With a grand scheme and everything
Just two months before their sweet sixteen
No sixteen year old should feel betrayed
And forgotten
Or unworthy of any kind of love
Every step I take I am reminded
That life is a widening gyre
Mr. Yeats, you were right
But I can't accept that to be
The only plausible possibility
Which leads me to believe
That with every step I take
Though my heart is torn to bits
By this minefield called life
I get a little bit
Stronger
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 1:48 AM UTC
We’re looking into each other’s eyes;
it’s 4am.
We’re sat in a hospital room, I’m reciting your favourite verse.
You’re ragged and stitched together;
I just wish it was from being loved.
I just wish my love could make you Real.
I knew from day one, no one and no thing,
not even love, could take you away and finally
set your soul free.
So
I gave you all of me.
It wasn’t hard to give away.
Within moments of witnessing your smile; the one
held in your eyes widening your stare,
you crushed through my ribs with warmth and love,
held my heart in your hand, promising no matter
the distance and land between us, my heart would remain
safe – beneath your bruised chest.
Tonight, I’m alone.
It’s been 17 days since I last saw you.
I’m in the park where we always walked,
where our love was made tangible by etchings in wood.
The bark now crumbles
and the decay mirrors the gradual corrosion
of what was once, and will
never be, again.
© Sia Jane
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 2:36 PM UTC
multimedia macramé
sloshing propaganda sewage
on the unsuspecting public
***** lice infest ****** hill folk
west Virginia outbreak threatening the world
as we know it
flesh altering nonsense explicitly graphed
charting movement of microbes
on air, land, and/ or sea
global currents the new deliverer of death –
infected immigrants sit smiling
internment camps providing nutrition
never before experienced
as non-natives negotiate freedom
by submitting to vaccinations baths
and the standard delousing powder –
paranoid hand-sanitizer users
glued to the **** tube
spray their shoes with disinfectant
praying to an absent GOD for health
while shoveling GMO corn chips into ever widening
mouth holes
pharmaceutical companies lick lifeless lips
as Congress recognizes their humanity
while rejecting the concerns of the poor
…..no money in it –
outlandish claims of outbreaking Ebola
flood the mainstream outlets
fear: version – infinity
one more plague plan to stimulate new legislation
more law
no touching
even looking at the infirm can be cause for isolation
radiation treatments
courtesy of Fukushima, reactors 1-4 –
new found focus on fracturing the shale
releasing new oil reserves
and old bacteria
dinosaur killers
free-radicals
radically changing the genetic code
humanity altered
once again –
Oct 14, 2014
Oct 14, 2014 at 12:16 PM UTC
Hello Old Friend,
I just wanted you to hear me.
I think you heard every word, but I see you now fear me.
I used to get nostalgic remembering our talks under starlight
When we idly spoke of dreams, and other things, and the world felt peaceful at night.
But today I spoke of blood and smoke, and of human violence,
and watched the widening whites of your eyes within this smothering silence.
I apologize for pretending we could carry on as before.
You say you don't condemn me; they shouldn't send me off to war.
I wanted a friend's reconnection, not hollow pity.
I now recognize you can't sympathize with the dying of a moral identity.
In grief, not guilt, I sought my friend. This was not a confession.
No vain imagining of a simple moral or life lesson.
Don't wanna' hear soulless, canned regurgitations
Of your textbooks' and professors' second-hand explanations!
You avoid my eyes, staring intensely at the floor.
We both can list my sins, but why is it only I can list yours?
Solipsism and narcissism.
You live a predatory lifestyle, ***** you're bored and wanting more.
That's it, then. Goodbye, Old Friend.
I feel worse having spoken, and I won't speak to you of this again.
Aug 30, 2013
Aug 30, 2013 at 11:08 PM UTC
Angelic minds, they say, by simple intelligence
Behold the Forms of nature. They discern
Unerringly the Archtypes, all the verities
Which mortals lack or indirectly learn.
Transparent in primordial truth, unvarying,
Pure Earthness and right Stonehood from their clear,
High eminence are seen; unveiled, the seminal
Huge Principles appear.
The Tree-ness of the tree they know-the meaning of
Arboreal life, how from earth's salty lap
The solar beam uplifts it; all the holiness
Enacted by leaves' fall and rising sap;
But never an angel knows the knife-edged severance
Of sun from shadow where the trees begin,
The blessed cool at every pore caressing us
-An angel has no skin.
They see the Form of Air; but mortals breathing it
Drink the whole summer down into the breast.
The lavish pinks, the field new-mown, the ravishing
Sea-smells, the wood-fire smoke that whispers Rest.
The tremor on the rippled pool of memory
That from each smell in widening circles goes,
The pleasure and the pang --can angels measure it?
An angel has no nose.
The nourishing of life, and how it flourishes
On death, and why, they utterly know; but not
The hill-born, earthy spring, the dark cold bilberries.
The ripe peach from the southern wall still hot
Full-bellied tankards foamy-topped, the delicate
Half-lyric lamb, a new loaf's billowy curves,
Nor porridge, nor the tingling taste of oranges.
—An angel has no nerves.
Far richer they! I know the senses' witchery
Guards us like air, from heavens too big to see;
Imminent death to man that barb'd sublimity
And dazzling edge of beauty unsheathed would be.
Yet here, within this tiny, charmed interior,
This parlour of the brain, their Maker shares
With living men some secrets in a privacy
Forever ours, not theirs.
6.3k
What the hell is the term “sparkling eyes” even referring to? The widening of one’s eyelids? The dilation of the pupils? Or maybe it’s meant to be ambiguous to fully credit the effect of the magical phrase. But when she looked at me her eyes didn't sparkle. They darkened. And the way she looked at me, with her eyes filled with danger sent my soul in spirals, for I could feel an unbearable amount of unrest within my blood. And at that very moment I found myself walking towards her. I walked, blinded by her dark eyes, towards the oblivion until I asked her name, “Sara,” she hollered. Of course she hollered. It was very unusual, just like her entire persona.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 7:07 PM UTC
"Tell me gorgeous,"
He said with his finger under her soft chin
"What are you looking at?"
She looked at his face.
He could tell she wasn't seeing his face.
She knew she wasn't.
"Well,"
She started to say to stall him.
She knew what she was seeing.
She wasn't sure if she should tell him.
"Well,"
She said again.
"Yes gorgeous?"
He said patiently.
She thought about what she wanted to say.
*i don't see you. I don't see you. I don't see your black hair. But his light brown ***** blonde hair. I don't see you. I don't see your brown eyes I once drooled over. I see his eyes. The maybe blue eyes that stole my heart. I don't see your tan complexion but his reddened one. i see him. I don't see you and I never will again.*
"Well,"
She said again.
He moved his hand to the back of her neck.
He stepped closer.
He stared into her eyes.
"Gorgeous tell me. Tell me please."
She closed her eyes.
And suddenly she felt his lips against hers.
She opened her eyes surprised.
She remembered the way his lips felt.
But she didn't want to remember.
She pulled away.
He looked hurt.
And suddenly
Real fast
Everything
Poured
Out
Of
Her
Normally
Silent
Mouth
"I don't see you when I look at you anymore. You know I don't. You can tell. You know you've hurt me a thousand times. You know you've pushed me down. You know you've left a scar so deep It will Never fade.
So why are you here? Calling me gorgeous? When you know you have no right to."
He looked even more hurt.
And suddenly very angry.
She knew he felt guilty.
She knew she was right.
He let go of her neck and raised a hand behind his head.
She looked at him her eyes widening and before she got the chance to run, his hand slapped hard against her cheek.
Slashing it open.
She lay on the warm grass.
Holding her face.
She looked up at him.
And now his emotion was scared.
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Tears fell softly onto the grass.
Soon she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She jumped ready to run.
"Shh it's just me,"
She saw the boy with the light brown ***** blonde hair. And the maybe blue eyes. And the reddish complexion.
She relaxed as he pulled her into his arms.
She smelt his sweet scent.
And let him dab the blood away.
"I'll always love you. You never have to worry. I'll always be here. You don't have to doubt it. I'll always protect you. You should always remember that"
She smiled and closed her eyes.
She heard the boy with the black hair stomp across the grass.
She heard a car door slam.
She heard an engine roar.
And then she heard wheels squeal.
And like that,
He was gone.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
And forever,
The boy with the maybe blue eyes,
Was here.
Here.
Here.
Here.
Aug 24, 2013
Aug 24, 2013 at 3:47 PM UTC
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.
Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:
Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come
Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business
Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.
4.6k
Oh, may I join the choir invisible
Of those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence; live
In pulses stirred to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge men's search
To vaster issues. So to live is heaven:
To make undying music in the world,
Breathing a beauteous order that controls
With growing sway the growing life of man.
So we inherit that sweet purity
For which we struggled, failed, and agonized
With widening retrospect that bred despair.
Rebellious flesh that would not be subdued,
A vicious parent shaming still its child,
Poor anxious penitence, is quick dissolved;
Its discords, quenched by meeting harmonies,
Die in the large and charitable air,
And all our rarer, better, truer self
That sobbed religiously in yearning song,
That watched to ease the burden of the world,
Laboriously tracing what must be,
And what may yet be better, -- saw within
A worthier image for the sanctuary,
And shaped it forth before the multitude,
Divinely human, raising worship so
To higher reverence more mixed with love, --
That better self shall live till human Time
Shall fold its eyelids, and the human sky
Be gathered like a scroll within the tomb
Unread forever. This is life to come, --
Which martyred men have made more glorious
For us who strive to follow. May I reach
That purest heaven, -- be to other souls
The cup of strength in some great agony,
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love,
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty,
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense!
So shall I join the choir invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world.
4.6k
Pretty is a six-letter word that can’t encompass your entire being in its arms. You were born to a mother who wore pain like trees wear their rings, as marks of fierce bravery and battle cries. You almost split her insides open coming out, wailing so hard the plaster cracked, but she grinned and bore it like a champion, even though the walls of her womb felt like one giant cigarette burn that no one cared enough to put out.
You are Icarus incarnate, with a body stitched from wings, flying toward the sun every day no matter how low the storm clouds hover. Pretty is not a synonym for learning how to put together a body that fights itself every day with pocket knives, like assembling letters to form words that flame in the mouth. That’s called survival. Pretty is an ugly word. It leaves behind a bitter residue that apologies cannot erase. Pretty is just an excuse for playing darts with a woman’s confidence.
When told you are not pretty, always remember how your body expanded to fit its widening cage, its blooming hips, how the growing pains were less like pain and more like cracking fault lines. How your body turned itself inside out and spilled over and over again. Getting emptied is not pretty. It is dark and wounding and it requires strength enough to move mountains.
On your worst days do not look in the mirror and call yourself pretty. Call yourself trying, call yourself surviving, call yourself learning how to get through a day, a week, a month or year. Call yourself still learning. Pretty is just six letters for lipstick, false eyelashes, combs for hair that never gets tangled, not for women who earn a victory every day just managing to exist.
When told you are not pretty, do not **** in your stomach. Pretty is a discriminatory word, but having a body that knows what it wants and gets what it wants is not a hate crime. It’s a healing hymn.
Don’t forget how trees shake their last leaves in winter like they’re shedding skin from the old year. Shed pretty. Shed it now. Teach yourself to replace it with heart-wrenching, brilliant, clever, artistic, unique, understanding, fighting. Always living.
When told you are not pretty, don’t fall in love with the ground. Get back up. This is not an apocalypse; this is not the end of the world. A six-letter word doesn’t have the power to burn down every building in site or freeze the entire world in epic proportions. Your body is not wreckage or refuse left over from a world on fire. Your body is just fine.
Look in the mirror. Tell yourself, Pretty is not me. Pretty is an ugly concept. I am more.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 6:59 AM UTC
Birds only fly
Because their bones are hollow.
Empty yourself,
Wings widening,
Weakly at first,
Soon little one,
You too can soar.
Lose the ground,
Gain the skies.
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 10:12 PM UTC
The quiet August noon has come,
A slumberous silence fills the sky,
The fields are still, the woods are dumb,
In glassy sleep the waters lie.
And mark yon soft white clouds that rest
Above our vale, a moveless throng;
The cattle on the mountain's breast
Enjoy the grateful shadow long.
Oh, how unlike those merry hours
In early June when Earth laughs out,
When the fresh winds make love to flowers,
And woodlands sing and waters shout.
When in the grass sweet voices talk,
And strains of tiny music swell
From every moss-cup of the rock,
From every nameless blossom's bell.
But now a joy too deep for sound,
A peace no other season knows,
Hushes the heavens and wraps the ground,
The blessing of supreme repose.
Away! I will not be, to-day,
The only slave of toil and care.
Away from desk and dust! away!
I'll be as idle as the air.
Beneath the open sky abroad,
Among the plants and breathing things,
The sinless, peaceful works of God,
I'll share the calm the season brings.
Come, thou, in whose soft eyes I see
The gentle meanings of thy heart,
One day amid the woods with me,
From men and all their cares apart.
And where, upon the meadow's breast,
The shadow of the thicket lies,
The blue wild flowers thou gatherest
Shall glow yet deeper near thine eyes.
Come, and when mid the calm profound,
I turn, those gentle eyes to seek,
They, like the lovely landscape round,
Of innocence and peace shall speak.
Rest here, beneath the unmoving shade,
And on the silent valleys gaze,
Winding and widening, till they fade
In yon soft ring of summer haze.
The village trees their summits rear
Still as its spire, and yonder flock
At rest in those calm fields appear
As chiselled from the lifeless rock.
One tranquil mount the scene o'erlooks--
There the hushed winds their sabbath keep
While a near hum from bees and brooks
Comes faintly like the breath of sleep.
Well may the gazer deem that when,
Worn with the struggle and the strife,
And heart-sick at the wrongs of men,
The good forsakes the scene of life;
Like this deep quiet that, awhile,
Lingers the lovely landscape o'er,
Shall be the peace whose holy smile
Welcomes him to a happier shore.
4.1k
Ah! how the memory of
those pretty green eyes
enlighten my senses
making them parallel to
round ***** of safety.
Ah! how those eyes
regurgitate and bounce
pupils widening whenever
my eyes meet their gaze
wavering and moving from
person to person in an intimate crowded group setting.
Ah! how those eyes
which resemble soft moss
or the slick flesh of kiwis
stare at mine catching like how
flypaper catches mosquitoes
accidentally but intentionally
awkwardly but inventively
and ultimately intentionally.
Ah! how the memory of
those pretty green eyes
throw me off balance
when they lock into mine
and for a good ten seconds
merging a little too long
unnoticed by the crowd.
Ah! how those eyes
are like ghosts in my
memories so valid and
plausible they seem to
drift yet knowing they
will be seen tonight
creates a fidgety hope
splintered and shaking
within this hubris heart.
Ah! how those eyes
are framed by the
curliest of lashes
so cute they bloom
ripe smiles within this
here empty chest cavity
which seems to be defeated
at the moment but somehow
waiting to witness
orbs of stegosaurus skin
shelled and shellacked and unbuckled am i
at just a smack.
Ah! how those eyes
are like a slap
to my psyche.
Every part a swirling mass
of unabridged uncertainty.
And no matter how it seems
those irises of gold and green
will always be downright dainty.
Jan 20, 2017
Jan 20, 2017 at 2:16 PM UTC
I can’t decide which part is worse.
4 am, lying restlessly awake, feeling like I’m in some sort of heart free-fall, every fiber of me reaching for you and the mirage of what I want us to be.
Or
Sitting across from you in a room with friends, my stomach in knots, trying to keep my smile as smooth and cool as yours seems, working so hard to pry my mind off of memories of you and I.
Or
When we’re finally alone and the strained conversation is swallowing me like a black hole inside my chest, ******* from the inside out, the gulf of sentiments we won’t venture painfully widening the creeping chasm between us.
Or
Those songs on the radio that remind me of you, telling of what we have been, what we could be, their rhythms stirring up the strangest ripples of longing and regret and panic and isolation.
Or
The quiet moment when I catch your eye and try to read between the lines of your words and gestures, searching your receding depths for hidden traces of this same torture, wondering with mixed hope and fear if that longing still burns deep in you.
I can’t decide which is worse.
To endure it and hope it gets better.
Or to leave and know it never will.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 11:39 AM UTC
Something here is not quite right.
The days have become shorter
And we are no longer certain
Of our respective fates in the world.
The times have changed and now
We are all alone.
There is no longer any light
Guiding us and we are floating
In a dark space from which there is no escape
Or reprieve.
Blank looks become our faces
And we find ourselves wandering the streets
Again, aimless and without reproach
For our crimes.
The things that once motivated
And inspired us
Have long lost their appeal
And all of our prejudices and hates
Have come back to haunt us,
Again and again.
We no longer hope for a better world
For ourselves or for anyone,
But instead
Wish our pain upon everyone we see
In these cold and bitter streets.
The night is coming soon
And with it will bring an end
To all of this.
There is nothing left except pain
And suffering.
The distance between us is widening.
We no longer communicate.
All of our technology
Has enslaved us.
We will all die alone
And with a mountain of regret
That we will never share with anyone.
A noxious gas has descended
Upon humanity and is filling
Our very souls with its vapid waste
And toxic demeanour
And now we are forced to endure
The coming dark age
With no one
And nothing to protect us
Or save us.
We wait patiently for our fate.
There is no optimism.
The time has come
To lay down our defences
And submit
To the coming reign of terror.
It is no use to fight anything.
Our time has come
And passed us by.
We have failed.
We have failed ourselves.
We have failed our world.
And we have failed each other.
Goodbye.
Good luck.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
3.1k
Should
never have to
face the
thickened
sticky
white and
creamy
cheesy
cliched
wrath and
terror
of her
mother's smile.
Should
never have to
flinch
inside
behind walls
made of
bricks
behind
barricades
of
stone
wrapped
in
bubble-wrap
at her
mother's
glance.
Eyes
should
never
hold
so
much
power
within
the
flash
of
discontent.
She should not
live
on a boat
always
biding time
waiting for
storms to pass
for
waves to
curl
and crack down
upon her
head
down into
the sand
that
holds her
down into
the dark
that
kisses her
goodnight
down into
the brutal
flick
the tap on the
glass
clench
of
the fingers
twitch of
the jaw
should never
have to
wait
for the
mother's roar
to
echo
through the
chamber
of her heart
until
silence
envelopes
her soul
and she
can sleep
without
fear.
Should
never
fear
her
mother's
evening breath
the
gentle and
stilling
exhale
a sigh
a brittle
and
glassed sound
that shatters
against her
tightly
pursed
lips
locked
mouth.
Should never
tell the heart
to
quiet down
and let
her run
like a
good
child
ignoring
the warning
bells
which
everyone else
seems to ignore
the words
that leave
her
stubborn
lips
in the
joke she
tells
the story
she
preaches
the hesitated
eye
widening
limerick
the expected
story
to tell
her
friends
her
mother's
wrath
tastes like
fire in
her belly
sulphur in
her throat
and
metallic
lingerings
of
biting
her tongue
to
suppress
the
screams
'what can you expect'
'my mother gets like that'
'she attacked me'
'but its okay'
'I was stubborn'
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 7:19 AM UTC
Trickling tingles bubble, goaded from the verdant body
As a butterfly’s flutterings coax the flow
Widening and filling
With a gentle lapping of inlets
Ripples tease the reeds into turgid tremors
Merging to waves
Wave upon wave
Curves slide over curves
And at the Delta’s swollen, gaping breadth
Crests slip over craving crevices
Slapping froth in desperate gasps
Milking cruel spasms from the urgent need to reach escape
Until with turmoil resolved
A gentle calm inundates the great ocean of sleep.
Jun 2, 2014
Jun 2, 2014 at 9:34 AM UTC
Dedicated to John and Bob
From first flesh we move down widening halls
That lead to lives of wondrous walls.
Our spidered fingers gripped walls of brick,
Cruets, cups and candle sticks.
Incense clouded open graves
When we too believed we too were saved.
Between Annex walls we learned our phonics,
On tin-roofed walls we lived our comics.
Garage walls scaled showed different views,
Kitchen walls steamed with soups and stews.
Our school yard walls tallied pitches
That marked our summers of youth and wishes.
Now lift memory's pane and go back
To the white-framed walls of a secret shack.
There, in confusion we would cling
To the unknown wonders girls would bring.
These young boys' walls we both outgrew;
Now new walls sprang, as we did too.
Coffee House walls offered something new.
Wet kisses lingered near shadowy walls,
We heard poetry read in a backroom stall.
Recreationals made our new skin crawl.
Cliff walls were breached by stairs of clay,
Carved by Incas on a turquoise day.
Tent walls echoed with impish fray,
Green walls beckoned at the end of day.
These walls gave rise to hot desires,
Like Vikings planning funeral pyres.
New music, cheers and weekend guests
Stood us ***** to pound our chests.
Those walls no longer ring our shores;
Time swept us forward with worldly lures.
We doffed our coats of suede and frills,
And donned new clothes and workday skills.
The walls of work are a rocky climb,
Stones laid by us, for yours and mine.
Such towers & turrets of heart & hearth
Guard all we know of any worth.
I see distant walls on cliffs, in fields;
Where do they lead? What will they yield?
Yet, there three friends climb one more hill,
Climb one more wall. Then all is still.
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 2:58 PM UTC
punk music playing in the basement
heavy bass vibrating the walls
bacardi in a coffee mug
******* on a tiny mirror
hands on my thighs, *******
the rush sets
hands in my hair
eyes rolling back
he ***** on my neck
i light a cigarette
"my room."
he pulls my strings like
a marionette.
i know this
exchange of goods
very well.
i take another
bump,
eyes widening,
i can finally bear to
see the world.
he eats my ***** and
i feel N O T H I N G.
i gag on his **** and cry.
he strangles me
punches my ****
my *** cheeks
my stomach
he's getting his money's worth
he starts ******* me
drunken noise outside the bedroom door
in perfect rhythm
with the bass
and the headboard
against the wall,
every stroke hurts
my whole body
a wound.
i think about
a distant city
skyscrapers towering
above me like
mountaintops,
somewhere under
lights and stars
where i am happy
to be alive,
anywhere
but here,
this place
where death lives
and waits to catch
it's prey.
he moans
thrusts
shivers
it's over
i wipe mascara tears
take another bump
take another swig
i light another cigarette
he leaves the room
without a word
i follow
two steps behind him
covered in bruises
hickies
marked used
marked invaluable
a group of men
shout names at me
i block it out,
i really don't care
anymore.
this body
was meant for this
this body
doesnt matter
this body
is for getting what
i want
this body
is tired
and sore.
Oct 30, 2018
Oct 30, 2018 at 3:55 PM UTC