"winch" poems
Mos Def addict practicing my mathematics
multiplying gross deaths stacking high in my attic
banishing, your batting eyelashes in my hatchet
brandishing a reflection of death nothing can match it,
a packet of matches, three cans of gas am I mad *****
I’m a man mastering cracks of dark arts from a sad witch,
tears of evil, blasting apart marked hearts, sew they can’t stitch,
so I can cross your eyes and harvest every last inch
of your body I’ve got hauled high with my crass winch.
Dangling like abattoirs meat hanging upside down by your feet,
never is the time that I will retreat,
secreting discreetly in your petite physique,
desecrated secretly I never cease with the heat.
I’m a clever beast with the sweet smile of a pre-school teacher
I’m a leach, I’m an evil preacher,
I’m worse than a priest with someone not quite senior in reach.
I beseech you to keep my smile in mind when I breach
the regular limits of sin, an when the victim begins
spinning within the rhythm of my limb precision
positions a physician would think weren't natural
constructions. Causing concussions with my bone crack percussion
discussing the disgusting repercussions of being obstructive
with a kind as destructive as mine its reductive to imply
that I’m stuck with a mind superior to thine, let the subtleties shine,
you’re an inferior design, obsolete, so the premise is supremacist
there’s no preventing this, the evidence is left in every crevice of the premises.
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 6:14 AM UTC
winch sinched grimmace
hung at half mast
in an attempt to hold rebelious bicusbids in their place
but they still wiggle like a bobble-head jesus glued to the dash
every time that you laugh
so i guess that's why you're giving it up
your arms look like a road map
riddled with pin-prick pot-holes
and with routes to hell and back marked
by distressed vasculatory flares
so you ask to borrow my sweater
and another fourty bucks
with no explanation why
for once
you didn't lie to me
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 1:37 AM UTC
Shiver me timbers
What's going on
I was dressed as a pirate
When I woke up this morn
I looked in the mirror
And let out an Arrrr....
I came equipped an eye patch
And a swash buckling Scar
I felt the strong urge
For grog, meat, and cheese
Went into the kitchen
Told the winch who lives with me
It's my new pirate attitude
That I have to thank
For the look that I got
And why I'm now walking the plank
When I arrived at the office
It wasn't the ship I'd hoped for
And security at the front desk
Barred me from bringing my saber to work
With all these modern day regulations
How's a pirate to get a break
When the only body of water nearby
Is a drainage ditch and man made lake
And the only pirate *****
That I'd hoped to see
Is right now swabbing the kitchen deck
While talking mutiny
Still the days barnacle adventures
Had a lot going on
As my head hits the pillow
I wonder what I'll wake up as tomorrow morn
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 9:42 AM UTC
shoulder to shoulder.
you always sit close, camouflaged
bare skin emboldened
by white cotton
shirt sleeves. yes I feel your heat
right down to the elbow.
winch it all forward:
my eyes chin hips
knees feet, my hands
yet every edge tilts right
does anybody notice this
delicate heeling? to you. do you?
how much is in balance.
without moving, my lips
rehearse all the things
people say to each other
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 4:30 AM UTC
A Winter Ship
At this wharf there are no grand landings to speak of.
Red and orange barges list and blister
Shackled to the dock, outmoded, gaudy,
And apparently indestructible.
The sea pulses under a skin of oil.
A gull holds his pose on a shanty ridgepole,
Riding the tide of the wind, steady
As wood and formal, in a jacket of ashes,
The whole flat harbor anchored in
The round of his yellow eye-button.
A blimp swims up like a day-moon or tin
Cigar over his rink of fishes.
The prospect is dull as an old etching.
They are unloading three barrels of little *****
The pier pilings seem about to collapse
And with them that rickety edifice
Of warehouses, derricks, smokestacks and bridges
In the distance. All around us the water slips
And gossips in its loose vernacular,
Ferrying the smells of cod and tar.
Farther out, the waves will be mouthing icecakes —-
A poor month for park-sleepers and lovers.
Even our shadows are blue with cold.
We wanted to see the sun come up
And are met, instead, by this iceribbed ship,
Bearded and blown, an albatross of frost,
Relic of tough weather, every winch and stay
Encased in a glassy pellicle.
The sun will diminish it soon enough:
Each wave-tip glitters like a knife.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 10:52 PM UTC
Because the government announces only some money as a compensation.
Because the press makes much hue and cry for some days only as a story.
Because the civilians can only shed a few tears before finally moving over.
Because I don't want my mother to cry over my mutilated corpse one day.
Because I don't even want my father to stand numbed over my dead body.
Because I don't ever want an angel - my angel to cry over my lifeless body.
Because I don't want to come back mangled remains & cause them winch.
Because I don't want to come back ever with a conscience guilty of killing.
Because I don't want to come back hands filled of instrumental blood ever.
Not at all like that because I fear the bullets searing my soldier's body in life.
Not at all like that because I fear bombs blasting up my body organs away.
Not at all like that because I fear ******* enemies ambushing me from rear.
Not at all like that because I have a soft heart or that I can't shoot my target.
Not at all like that because I have a sympathetic stand towards the enemies.
Not at all like that because I have a low level of love for our national virtues.
Not at all like that because I don't want my friends to ever lament upon me.
Not at all like that because I don't want my future children to get to know it.
Not at all like that because I don't want my fresh hobbies stay unrecognized.
Not to mention how all of the civilians and the press make much hue & cry.
Not to mention how all the topics they choose are only useless T.R.P.-based.
Not to mention how all of the time the soldiers spend under such conditions.
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 6:53 AM UTC
Farm hands , securing free access through pine thicket, with chainsaw , shovel and swing blade , hand driving steel post into Georgia red clay tempered by unforgiving heat , rolling barbed wire , cowherds in precision running taut lines with come -a-long tool , tractor winch and post hammer , surveying favorable routes and relocation of Angus and Herefored , Brahma and Charolais ...Leather gloves ,cowboy hats , sunglasses , denim jeans and flannels shirts deflect a hellish Sun directly overhead as Summers project moves forward , not for pay , nay , but as a rite of passage , teenagers assuming the role of young men securing the bond of Father and Son , family tradition , and honor , respect and love for the land .....
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 6:21 PM UTC
Bitter cold winters kept me far and wrapped away but today the well beckons me.. the bucket and winch tied to my rope of hope. So one foot following the next with thawing frosty breath.
I zeke.. Ezekiel.
Approaches.
The well of depth and revelation. My witherd soul cries for transfusion.
Clarity from dark delusion..
The stinging cold as I place my hands on the frozen stone and lean forward to gaze deep to the murky bottom. Answers fermented but potent distilled.
Zeke..I am Ezekiel...the bucket drops swiftly to the limited...submerges.. seeking answers.
There it rises as I turn the handle slowly.
There it rises with hidden freedom.
There.Ezekiel's answe lies within the inner.
Begin again..zeke
Rewind...questions will always exceed answers..so begin
Again...another day has been granted.
Begin again... Renew the You within
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 2:24 PM UTC
The rough draft
Stillborn lies:
Five paragraphs
Fully formed,
Topic
Safely stated,
Three points,
Strung in line
Tense & form
Aligned monotony.
No life here,
Words penned,
Five paragraphs
Double spaced,
Properly indented,
Grammar neatly safe.
Enough, and without risk.
Nothing here to see.
No life here
Nothing here to see
I am twenty-one again,
Standing in a chill March barn,
Steam and blood scent,
Obstetric chains straining
On the winch I crank
To save a calf born breech,
Rear heel pads pointing up.
The strain and pull exhaust me,
Mother staggering in the stanchion,
I wrestle against time, about to break.
The calf’s hips stall against the cable strain
Then slip as something pops...
Whether baby or mother
I am uncertain.
Whooshing, the calf slides out and down,
Cable and chain,
Blood and fluid,
Umbilical stretching,
Last tethering connection.
The newborn lies un-shivering,
Inert upon wet straw.
I slip off the chains,
Grasp the slippery feet above
Jellied hooves,
Hoist the calf,
Hang it head down,
Slap it against the wall,
Chant, “Breathe!”
Breathe!
Breathe!
Breathe!
Desperate miracle!
The lungs gurgle,
Raspy coughing,
Gargling mucous,
Air brings life.
The mother,
Eyes rolling,
Murmurs.
Forty years later I stare:
Stillborn paper
Delivered late and lifeless,
Having form,
Technically correct,
Lying breathless on my desk.
Were I to slap it against a wall,
The lines would still be dead.
So, what to do about resuscitation?
I cannot slap the paper,
Nor the student.
My dry eyes tire
Following inanity.
DB Dec. 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021
Dec 8, 2021 at 4:40 PM UTC
~
his ropes are worn but hold the strain;
they’ve seen far worse in wind, in rain.
his deck is bare, his winch is full,
his back and arms ache. yet again;
though soon his catch the hold will fill,
with hissing jaws and snapping claws;
reward of toil with traps of steel.
’neath cloud and sun, to dusk from dawn,
with weathered hand he works and sweats;
to bring to port ’fore sun has set,
there’s hungry mouths to feed at home;
a wife whose face his hands to hold.
in years still young, but days too old,
these seas have aged his weathered soul;
and eyes that peer neath bill-ed hat,
have wept as waves stole all he has;
not once, but twice they claimed his lot,
sunk to its bed like fallen stone;
but skill and luck his love has bought,
her prayers from home have brought him back.
of fable and of myth he’s made,
cup of saltiness with pinch of sin;
with baited traps he lays in wait,
yet knows he is the baited one;
for he’ll ne’er throw in these lines,
or trade his trusted trawler in.
a farmer’s life may suit his love,
but this she sees would be his end;
and so she lives each day in wait,
for his trawler's horn to sound.
this too she knows far too well,
one day his horn will sound no more.
no coffin nor a stone he’ll need;
the sea will bear him to that shore,
his lasting gift to her is them,
each child's face, his own imprint.
the sea his final resting place.
his voice to hear amidst the wind;
~
*post script.
an imagined crabber and lobsterman; with mouths to feed and a love he needs back home, owing much to prayer and good fortune, though even this has it limits as the sea's rigors daily tempt fate. these lines mused from my own castings of traps and nets... of harvesting the sea’s bounty for a mere weekend, with my lover near at hand.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/05/magazine/a-speck-in-the-sea.html
pss. i am many months away and life has changed; these changes are still a work in progress. my goals too have been rearranged... death and hardship have that effect on us, though sometimes change that feels alarming actually takes us to a place of salvation; this being my constant hope! i make no promises that i am back, only that for now i am here, and have missed you and the sacredness of these walls.*
Sep 4, 2017
Sep 4, 2017 at 1:45 PM UTC
I wade the waters of my fear
And know why Jesus walked above
I am immobilized except for tears
As terror shoves to fit the glove
The silent dogs that run the fence
Whose presence is felt not heard
To snake fangs that make me winch
Slurs my speech faltering all my word
The angels sit upon the wall
Casting lots on when my time expires
So Adam this is how you fall
From Heaven's grace down to hellacious fires
So dance with me on the graves at sea
On the promises you will never keep
Come wade the waters of my fear
Watch out for stingrays beneath your feet
Jul 20, 2017
Jul 20, 2017 at 12:24 AM UTC
I am but a collection of parts
To be assembled or disassembled
Per my makers' activation.
An oily doll-like machine
Tightly wrapped with
Remaining layers of canvas
Stretched too far
Made too thin
Passively cornered and controlled
An animated object
Waiting for its next order.
Breath in......
...Breath out......
......Please forget.....
Valves open and close without purpose
Packed into an unorganized network of cogs and gears
Dusted with a putrid rust
Covered in slime and mucous.
A trail of blood and sewage left
In my wake.
The only mark of an existence
Slowly fading from relevance
Like a stone cast into the ocean's depths.
Time suffocates
With nice words and empty promises
Bidding me to winch my memories
Into nothing.
What does this mean?
...Can't remember.........
......Why can't i remember?
I lie now
In my mechanical grave
With Stitched eyes
With Stitched lips
And no sunlight.
My sensors will relent
Even while they beg
As my battery slowly dies.
Maybe then......
I can finally sleep without reliving
The legacy left
By my makers' hands.
Mar 14, 2019
Mar 14, 2019 at 10:29 PM UTC
Did you flinch?
Did you shed a tear?
You made my stomach winch,
my eyes filled with rivers full of tears.
Did you regret?
Or was I your toy?
Because all I could was fret.
I felt anything but joy.
You left me broken.
Used my heart as a token.
Do I ever cross your mind?
I doubt I do, you're too blind.
You're anything but kind.
Having my heart in your fist in a tight clinch.
Feb 3, 2019
Feb 3, 2019 at 10:23 PM UTC
I wince as I winch up my eyelids
and the day lumbers up from behind
to grab onto tin cannery row
where
the heads are hung low and
the rent's even lower than that.
The laughter's still here fuelled
by narcotics and beer,
Capone's
found his true home at last.
There are tears and you
know it too,
who among many have
never shed any?
Time flicks a snotball,
a sleep or a wake up call?
it's us who decide, but
some like the slide and
remain.
When the tide turns again
Avalon burns again waiting
for Arthur.
They're heroes and crooks
fake *** in real books where
real time is no time to
delay.
The ache lingers on
the last hope has gone
the lights are as low
as the rent
and
the ache
burns a hole in
the nighttime of
tin cannery row.
May 12, 2016
May 12, 2016 at 1:14 AM UTC
Hope and fear lie sizzling in the hand of a kind dry light sun drenched to the fire of silken sand, the naked voices of ones be heard on the bereaved winch of wind as the niche neglect pitch nuts and bolts to the ****** of grace, filled to the pinch and quench on a human oasis, the stiff of heat slaps the face of the souls cry to the deep sweep of dust and swine smell a sway on the principle of a turning tide, oer the eye of the opal queens velvet cress of sleep sipping her lips to the sweet serene atmospheric, tumbling toward xtasy on the tender rich faint silent hum arrested to the ***** of elemental bliss
Sep 2, 2020
Sep 2, 2020 at 10:25 AM UTC
five minute poem
it takes six to die
so this should be a cinch
already one has gone
so that is what we say
hold on
that is another
and **** happens
a third
i am my own winch
who else
who is else
yes, good question
when i am you
and the other
u my bro or sis
then,perhaps
light will
walk this blighted land
that may occur yet
anyway time presses which
is beyond words
which are rather a waste when you
think about it when
love stares us in the eye like some black
bird with it´s cheeky tail held high
anyway times up..
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 5:00 AM UTC
My love is a breeze
That turned to a stench
No longer a bride
But only a winch
Oct 23, 2014
Oct 23, 2014 at 7:42 PM UTC
Camellias, winter shrubs,
Their shallow roots grow beneath the spongy caribou moss,
Robins egg blue.
After writing a play with my gifted students program in 1991,
I stopped spending all my free time writing short stories,
But the caribou moss was still soft.
In the cold Arctic of that town,
The evergreen protected the camellias from the afternoon sun and storms.
They branded hardy camellias with a brass molded embossing iron;
I had paper and graphite for my pencils.
After my ninth grade honors English teacher asked us to write poems in 1994,
It began raining.
We lived on an overhang.
A vertical rise to the top of the rock.
The rainstorm caused a metamorphic change in the snowpack,
A wet snow avalanche drifted slowly down the moss covered rock,
The snow already destabilized by exposure to the sunlight.
The avalanche formed lakes,
rock basins washed away with rainwater and melted snow,
Streams dammed by the rocks.
My pencils washed away in the avalanche,
My clothes heavy and cold.
I wove one side of each warp fiber through the eye of the needle and one side through each slot.
Salves, ointments, serums and tinctures,
I was mining for graphite,
They were mining me,
The only winch, the sound through the water.
A steep staircase to the red Torii gates,
I broke the chains with bells for vespers
And chimes for schisms,
And wove the weft across at right angles to the warp.
On a rocky ledge at the end of winter,
The pink moon, bitters and body butter,
They tried to get me to want absinthe,
Wormwood for bitterness and regret.
Heat and pressure formed carbon for flakes of graphite.
Heat and pressure,
I made bitters,
Brandy, grapefruit, chocolate, mandarin rind, tamarind and sugar.
I grounded my feet in the pink moss,
paper dried in one hand,
and graphite for my pencils in the other.
May 19, 2021
May 19, 2021 at 12:57 AM UTC
You're a sick ****** I can't take my spam cans away when I winch that I a ******* dwarf that wobbles when I pluck my pringles from the cat's *** Fuu-huh-huck-too. I spat that kid that stole my ******* bib hurt my holler strings and caused me to chaufe. I use ecstacy are you horney. I'm so horney. will you rub my feet ***** yes or no? **** yes, you're youth reaks of fermeldahide, holla. I'd holla back straps because blow job Better still have her one tooth to crunch frozen corn off-the crop because I sold my microwave for crack ******* and hungry ***** coookurs, thier hookers bae. I love me. I love you, that's your krusty ********** Poochie ****
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 10, 2019 at 5:17 PM UTC
I tell myself one life
must yield to another:
fly to spider,
spider to bird,
bird to birdshot.
I tell myself one life
must, in the full course
of a day relinquish itself
to another savage dawn,
fall as each unbidden
yesterday fell, bleak
and ungrieved, twisted
on a rack of tomorrows
no more certain than a silk
spooled about a winch.
Aug 28, 2021
Aug 28, 2021 at 5:29 PM UTC
Happy Sad.
It’s not a great feat to conjure happy writing or happy experiences
Mostly everyone is completely able bodied to do so.
Writing dark just gathers attention and is so much easier to write due to relativity.
When something feels good. It blends in with mundanity. When something hurts. It stands out.
Attention seeking is ****** Vacuous is one who engages in such activities.
Therefore I will write a happy poem...
I’m about to eat a steak.
In a cabin that was built in the 20s.
It had the first flushing toilet in sublet county.
I climbed today, nothing difficult. But it was very enjoyable above Fremont lake.
Now, sitting here on this ancient deck. In utter silence besides the Birds. I don’t feel accomplished. I feel comfortable. I can’t and don’t have anything to prove.
It’s only been an adventure. Starting out with rolling my friends Jeep. And then not telling his father. But rolling it back over with a sketchy high lift jack setup as a winch.
I can’t really see any point in holding onto grudges. But honestly I know they’ll come back as soon as I get back to civilization. That disgusts me about myself. I enjoy the bliss of being without malice, however I do not avoid it beholding me again even after self reflection.
How pitiful.
Aug 24, 2019
Aug 24, 2019 at 2:13 PM UTC