"wiry" poems
It's elementary, my dear
This bittersweet affection that I feel
From one boy to the next I grew
Ladder rungs of broken hearts
First grade
Blonde hair and disarming smile
Recess games and hallway passes
A note in a diary and minutes spent giggling
Never talking, always watching
Fourth grade
Glasses frame of brown hair and thin shoulders
Curious enigma to come and go
A bit more literate diary entrees
One year of crossed legs and shy smiles
Fifth grade
A growing tree of lean muscle and blue eyes
Short brown hair and a charming grin
Side by side on a rubber track
Gray skies and sweet goodbyes
A bright dance floor and a shattered heart
Miserable nights and heartbreak songs
Seventh grade
Long dark hair and chocolate eyes
This spring has brought a strange surprise
Wiry muscle and soft cheeks
Once admired, then adored
An ongoing thrum of sweet affection
Sidelong glances and gym class stares
New discoveries and quiet realization
Girl can love girl
Tenth grade
A firecracker packed with mysterious boys
And an enigmatic girl
A bomb in the summer sky
Spelling new names, new faces, new hearts
A whisper of 'I love you' at long last returned
Names carved on my ribs and pulling my lips
A tightened chest never felt so good
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 9:53 PM UTC
Im a calm, cool collected cucumber underneath this fandangled, wiry, wrinkled visage.
Ive escaped the clutches of the tangled snare of my image.
Where and when I belong and to whom is no matter.
I pass by groups and clans and grimace inquisitively at thier chatter.
To my ears its an alien clamour of clashing egos and look at me's.
They'd all be happier in a lonesome cross legged position enjoying the breeze beneath the trees.
With ease I float through my day passionately.
Expanding and contracting with the waves of existence.
I sway indefinitely.
Yield to and renounce the question arisen from the back of the mind "what does it mean to be me"
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 12:32 PM UTC
Saturday
Sounds like the pattering
Of bare feet
On a dusty concrete yard,
Smells of chimney smoke
And jagged coal heath,
Sheep-scent and
Wiry wool on a barbed fence,
Saturday
Is a jangly guitar
In a rickety truck
On a gravel road,
With a gravel voice
Rough as grit,
Deep as the caverns
Between the peaks,
Saturday
Is sunlight on an enamel ***
A tin kettle
And its blood metal tea,
It is blackberry-bitten legs
and iodine streams,
A canopy of heady bracken
Below penny-marked trees,
Then Sunday,
Slantwise
Against the setting sun
Away again.
Jan 12, 2018
Jan 12, 2018 at 6:09 PM UTC
I cannot recall you gentle
yet through your heavy love
I have become
an image of your once delicate flesh
split with deceitful longings.
When strangers come and compliment me
your aged spirit takes a bow
jingling with pride
but once you hid that secret
in the center of furies
hanging me
with deep ******* and wiry hair
with your own split flesh
and long suffering eyes
buried in myths of little worth.
But I have peeled away your anger
down to the core of love
and look mother
I Am
a dark temple where your true spirit rises
beautiful
and tough as chestnut
stanchion against your nightmare of weakness
and if eyes conceal
a squadron of conflicting rebellions
I learned from you
to define myself
through your denials
audre lorde
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 8:33 PM UTC
I am in levels. Past levels. This deep, intrinsic wonderful lost, the lawlessness of its fascinating expenditure of excite. Pushing through the wild and feral snow-dusted plains and timber ridges. Like red-spotted dots breathing through the cylinders called the spine. This descends into a narrow channel of scantly clad greenish scenery in a time-soaked visionary wilderness of snow,
Our crab legs dancing down wiry purple highways, our heads could not even look backwards if we had wanted.
Furious, love-latitudes, stalking breaths thwacking fork-ended tongues into a pinkish knot buried into the first layer of organic membrane on this railway of miniature canals, showing. And their pride snuck into the elbows, shooting down each vertebrae as it stepped with great precision every ledge that the currency emphasized. The raw accumulation of stolen heart-beats rattling between the interstices of new fuel careering these red engines. Crashing with exquisite pleasure into one another.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:41 AM UTC
THE BABY moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails in the Indian west.
A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around the Indian moon.
One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, keep a line of watchers.
O foxes, baby moon, runners, you are the panel of memory, fire-white writing to-night of the Red Man's dreams.
Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look against the moon-face, the star-faces, of the West?
Who are the Mississippi Valley ghosts, of copper foreheads, riding wiry ponies in the night?-no bridles, love-arms on the pony necks, riding in the night a long old trail?
Why do they always come back when the silver foxes sit around the early moon, a silver papoose, in the Indian west?
6.4k
blood curdles
sour milk in a pale blue carton
pushing out of wiry veins
rotten
.
the vena cava
was never meant to hold
ruined plasma
just like the world was never meant to hold
me.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 9:58 PM UTC
One day
Woke up feeling randy
No one else was handy
What's to do?
Get dressed
Satisfy the horn
With badly acted ****
On pay per view
Hopes sink
Cable's on the blink
But twitter lends a helping hand
Bang, bang, come and have a gang bang
Gain entrance on demand
Have a gang bang
Come and have a gang bang
It's a gang bang
Come and have a gang bang
Went out
Followed the directions
Battling erections
All the while
Red cheeks
Granny at the bus stop
Let her vision drop
Then cracked a smile
Half four
Knocking at the door
It opens and a voice proclaims
"Bang, bang, come and have a gang bang
We've far too many dames"
The host was a sight to see
Not far over seventy
And wrapped in a silk dressing gown
I thought I would walk away
But saw that the sky was grey
And it star-
-ted *******
It down
Stepped in
Blinded by a deep gloom
Ushered to a dark room
Curtains shut
Deep breath
Air is old and musty
Carpet feeling crusty
Underfoot
Sprawled there
Women lying bare
And fellas with their organs free
Bang, bang, cover up your **** ****
Regain your decency
Pretty gang bang
Pretty ****** gang bang
****** gang bang
Pretty ****** gang bang
Look round
Writhing on the ground
With squishy little sounds
But something's odd
Fat lass
Itching at her *** crack
Isn't that a ball sack?
Oh my god!
Jaw drops
Granny from the bus stop
Wearing nothing but a grin
Bang, bang, pretty ****** gang bang
What ******* let her in?
She's nothing but skin and bone
With ribs like a xylophone
At least several decades too old
To use the vernacular
It's like bumming Dracula
She's wiry
She's wizened
She's cold
Oh (pretty) no ******
Rasping on my ****
With fingers like a sock
Filled up with ice
No (scary) chance (hairy)
Giving her the slip
My todger's in a grip
Just like a vice
It (saggy) seems (baggy)
Like she's in a dream
While scraping with her ancient hand
Bang, bang, ****** ****** gang bang
My sore and swollen gland
Granny bang bang
Granny granny gang bang
Granny gang bang
Granny ***** gang bang
Knock, knock
Coppers at the door
Go crawling on the floor
And off at speed
What fun
Looking at the punters
Myriad of munters
As they flee'd
Cold, wet
Drowning in regret
With trousers round my knees I stand
Bang bang ****** ****** gang bang
Next time I'll use my hand
Bang bang ****** ****** gang bang
Next time I'll use my haaaaaaaaaaaaaaand!
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 3:00 AM UTC
o halogen light with CD
and cassette holder
how your ribs they envelop
a promise of symphony
as you stand tall and straight
like a guard at the gate
you relieve all my troubles
with your blinding light bubbles
you brighten my day
keep the shadows away
though your color is lightless
you make me so nightless
your a wiry lifeline
steals perception of time
how quick the hours fly by
i'll never know
top of your glow
to the tip of my toe
your electric insides
could frizzle the tides
and your mental effect...
well...
it gives me good rides
May 6, 2015
May 6, 2015 at 9:11 AM UTC
Oh cute little thing
I like your contour
you look pretty funny when you're cold
you get these lovely wrinkles
especially in the middle region
nearly dendritic
more like the cracks in the earth
and your satchel breathes on its own
like a brain if it had lungs for itself
but more like an amoebic celestial body squirming around in some primordial goop
I think that's pretty cool
you're a pink and brown mushroom emerging from a forest of black wiry moss
concentrated around you and
all growing in your direction
almost lifting you up and out
and then further away fading
the way the water gets clearer
above a sand bar
and then a great convergence
a crashing of two great waves
against each other
forming a wall of spindly tendrils
before the whirlpool
Oct 7, 2015
Oct 7, 2015 at 8:39 PM UTC
The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.
It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.
It has to face the men of the time and to meet
The women of the time. It has to think about war
And it has to find what will suffice. It has
To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage,
And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and
With meditation, speak words that in the ear,
In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,
Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound
Of which, an invisible audience listens,
Not to the play, but to itself, expressed
In an emotion as of two people, as of two
Emotions becoming one. The actor is
A metaphysician in the dark, twanging
An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives
Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly
Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,
Beyond which it has no will to rise.
It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.
3.3k
From where I'd watched the roses blown
Their bodies bent and brightly doused
Their forms aroused in wiry crowds
Petals pink upon a breeze
are thrown about the golden eve
Such a fabulous flock, how I envy their flight!
How I covet their course, sailing into the night
Jan 10, 2022
Jan 10, 2022 at 7:00 AM UTC
I kiss you as if to confirm you are here. With me. Not going anywhere.
To confirm your presence.
I kiss you as I kiss your hands, as I rub your hands, massaging them to make sure they are real. In disbelief, perhaps that it is your hand in mine and that I have the pleasure of holding it.
I run my fingers down your back, soft, your arms, sturdy. I clutch a wiry coil of hair, yours, in my fist.
I smooth your face. I kiss your face.
It is soft. It is safe. It is kind. It is right.
Nov 20, 2023
Nov 20, 2023 at 8:16 AM UTC
Twentysomething Emo
looks at teenage Emo
and laughs.
It was something purely aesthetic,
with brain chemicals churning
and wiry bodies yearning
under the guise of straightened bangs
and perched beanies,
skin tight black outfits
parading the dusty grounds of Warped Tour.
Twentysomething Emo is the real deal--
lamenting over high school salad days
because real life is so unsure,
college degrees and full-time jobs,
watching friends and lovers come and go in our lives.
After a long day of responsibility and groveling,
we drive home (or somewhere just as distant)
with our emo anthems blaring through the speakers.
We scream the songs back at them,
truly feeling the words for the first time.
I'm the same age as William Beckett, Adam Lazzara, and Pete Wentz
when they wrote these songs--
and though the bangs have receded
and the jeans have slackened,
I am perpetually Emo.
The unrequited love and the nearing distant future--
it's come too soon.
I hope thirtysomething Emo looks back
on my meandering twentysomething Emo
and laughs--
as he plays the melancholy tunes pouring out of the speakers
with some more of life fading away in his rearview mirror.
This town gets smaller every day.
Jun 12, 2016
Jun 12, 2016 at 12:45 AM UTC
I go dark
Blood pulsing
Foot falls fast
Furiously
Pounding the ground
Swimming before me
The night beckons
As it always does
I am not the wolf
But I howl
With centuries of fury
Angry
Lost
My tribe eons apart
My people
My truth
Bare skin broken
Like chords of history
Musical and painful
Thin and wiry
Spirit fiery
My ears thud
The wheat bends
Beneath my pace
I am the wind
Will not win
Nature’s race
But the chaff
Rises once more
Not separated
But part of the whole
I can fly
With no wings
I can soar
I am the drums
So I run
The poet
The child
The native
Burnt skin
To the edge of the world
Around then back again
Running
And running
Always running
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 4:27 PM UTC
Mr McParland;
our Primary 4 teacher lived in Newry,
Northern Ireland.
Not a City in those days,
but a dangerous border town.
He had wiry hair like a blonde Afro.
Pat Jennings;
world class goalkeeper for his country,
was also born in Newry.
Our man claimed to know him,
and went to school with the green giant.
We believed without reproach.
Yours truly;
age 6 & 7, in the years of the Hunger Strikes,
born in Belfast.
I was enthralled because Pat was of another
world to kids reared in our divided times.
A symbol of hope on an island of doubt.
May 25, 2015
May 25, 2015 at 6:13 PM UTC
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though they never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you, that now 'tis your bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th' hill's shadow steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow;
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love's hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven's angels used to be
Received by men; thou angel bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
License my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America, my new found land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blessed am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's ***** cast in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books' gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
Whom their imputed grace will dignify
Must see revealed. Then since I may know,
As liberally, as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
Here is no penance, much less innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first, why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.
2.2k
I've been told
that I'm built like a fencepost
Kind of wiry
A few knobs here and there
A knot or two for character
I make a pretty good fence
Good at keeping things inside
Not letting things out
But now my shadow seems leaner
Not quite as tall in the morning sun
The soil around my feet eroding
Drying out isn't all it's cracked up to be
Staying straight ain't easy
The herd is getting restless
And the barbed wire on my back
is tearing me up inside.
r ~ 7/25/14
Jul 25, 2014
Jul 25, 2014 at 11:12 PM UTC
It starts like a beige tuft of fibre
Protruding from a large burlap sack.
As we pull it from the hidden source
It gradually reveals itself.
Simple and unassuming,
A uniform, coloured strand
Which we gather up into a tidy ball.
Sometimes another strand is tied
Onto the one we pull.
A different colour?
A change of texture?
And so we pull that one anew,
We build another coil,
While the original strand awaits.
The interesting new thread,
Reveals itself from the hidden reservoir.
The fibre slides through our fingers.
Slowly, when there is resistance.
Quicker, when it comes loosely.
Now coarse and wiry
Now soft and slippery,
Now thick and tufted.
Tough Scottish highlands perhaps?
Or rural Ontario?
Sometimes the hidden source seems like it may be
A hand-knit sweater that we are pulling apart.
The strands are still kinked and twisted in places,
Echoing a memory of a shape it has held for years.
We recognize bits here and there too.
Colours and textures from our own story.
"I had a pair of socks like that."
"Remember our scarves from those cold childhood winters?"
The collection of small skeins increases.
From a sheep's fleece, yes, but now too
From Alpaca, camel and rabbit.
Cashmere from Pashmina goats in Nepal?
But at last the final strand comes free.
You feel the weight of the coiled wool,
And see the diversity of the colours.
And for each coil
We remember again how it appeared
How it felt.
How the strands
Came together
And apart.
Aug 12, 2013
Aug 12, 2013 at 10:13 AM UTC
How does the panda become so blue?
Electric like the wiry hairs at the base of my spine,
you know, my tail.
And that man, her father, just wouldn’t leave her alone.
What a great job he had done,
to usher such a wonderful child into the age of darkness.
The red-eye rush fully in effect,
buns in the oven,
hearts open, and dreams wide awake.
Your tail was moving with focus,
as your delicate hands shaped a pie,
of lovely proportions, which hit all the right spots.
When will you be off?
Just in time to miss mourning traffic,
on your way home (to my mind).
Those rings under your eyes are beautiful under these fluorescent lights,
and i can’t keep my eyes off your slender panda-tude,
wishing i would awake underneath your electric covers.
You and i aren’t so different,
but tonight, and the next
we won’t ever know that.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 10:59 AM UTC
It's easy to write about warm people. It's simple to just let their love and compassion flow effortlessly out into the world. They stumble upon the perfect one, THE one, and fall in love even if they don't know it. And for a while they don't, because that's the beauty of it. They don't know, and then suddenly they do and they realize that they're complete and whole now, that they've found someone who fills the cracks in their soul.
It would not be so easy to write about someone who flat out refuses to admit that they are not already complete. Then he appeared. I couldn't see him, but I knew he was there. Oh, this is a game then, I thought. I'll see what I can figure out about you.
I'm Isaac.
I heard it so loud and clear. Shivering, I whispered, nice to meet you, Isaac. I let images flash through my mind as though I was trying to settle on the one that fit the personality walking at my heels. He's blonde. Which is odd. My characters aren't usually blonde. But he's blonde in a way that he can hide. At first I thought he'd walk slowly, shuffling his feet as though he was so focused on what was inside his mind that outside of it his coordination was all off. But then I realized he was keeping up with me, and I am quite a brisk walker. Isaac is one of those people who builds walls. He doesn't know it, but he does it. Everyone else notices. They notice, but they don't care. The only time people run into his walls are when they try to complement him on his playing.
Oh, did I mention he's a musician? That's why he's built the walls. As of now, I'm pretty sure he's a violinist.
But anyway, when people compliment him, try to tell him how the ways he plays that violin opened a well of feelings within them that they didn't know existed, he stares blankly. They blink, thank him again, and hurry off, wondering if the reason his blue eyes were so confused was that they'd lost their ocean of feeling to the music.
I wanted him to be chubby, perched somewhere on the border of adorable baby fat and visibly out of shape. But his shadow behind me is tall and bony. Not athletic, not chiseled or lean, just wiry. All sinew and nerves. Like when he plays, he might rip.
Then I'm home. Mom calls down stairs and asks how my day was. It was fine. Boring.
I know I left Isaac outside, but he doesn't want to come in. So it's okay.
Jun 20, 2013
Jun 20, 2013 at 12:25 AM UTC
How oft, when thou, my music, music play’st,
Upon that blessèd wood whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers when thou gently sway’st
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap,
At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand!
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips
O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,
Making dead wood more blest than living lips.
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.
1.9k
Risen sensibility when it came to living life
Wiry tendencies to fall before a savior appears in the split second of your head coinciding with the concrete to catch you
You live too fast, you cannot die
A case of immortality floating through the blue and black veins pumping blood to your weary heart
Turbulent tremors beat the pallor right out of your personality
Trying to turn back time and see who's fault lies within the deficiencies of your relationship
Could it have been the haughty reactions to every novel he wept at?
Though inside he was deeply troubled by death and it's casualties in his life?
Could it have been the musk that owned his scent, one you used to crave but now repulsed?
Pine needles spiked within your perfume drove him off the cliff
And mood-congruent memory proves it's theories
You are gravely broken inside your chest
All you feel is anger for the boy that clipped the wings off of the butterflies that carried you
And replaced them with ****** tears sewn together with cheating and dishonesty
Irritable noises clamor inside your ears
Reverberating throughout your whole body
Shaking, like an earthquake, involuntary
Clangorous echoing of negativity is constant
Unshakable, ineffable, suffocating
Your disheartened recollections resonating with your adverse quality of letting go
Could it be, a silly girl like you fell for a manic depressive like him?
Or did the silly boy fall for the manic depressive girl?
Mood-congruent memory, flowing back in streams of discontent and remorse
Ambiguous reasonings and faulty evidence collide with your incoming tears
He was not, the problem
(You were)
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 12:24 AM UTC
Bohemian goddesses stalking the coffeehouse
All wiry hair and flowing skirts
Points of view and opinions and self worth
How her soul craved to join them
Don headbands and sandals and learn to be like them
To play the bongos and be part of natures and kove what’s real
She wanted to feel her soul in the mass joining of the human spirit
She envisioned it, and it was beautiful.
May 19, 2010
May 19, 2010 at 7:11 PM UTC
Solar flares, deep space chambermaid stabbing her
molten mop in contempt.
There are so many squares that field her space,
sifted afire.
Tearing out rays of her hair to be, and be
beautiful...to see her strands descending lit, the
stress level of an unforgettable goddess.
She yearns head-over-heels, burns out her core
with blinding reason.
Not once was she afforded a mirror to know her
space.
Wiry stick figures subsist under her--fatalistically
emotive.
Summed up, as water broken, transparent as the
life seen through.
What pagan rite has shimmied out her soul, what
serpent slid her warmth sane?
Do not site dawn or dusk, mistake her outer life
for an inner one!
Do not presume the burden of her focal point, her
light hangs overhead swaying interrogation.
Caught perfectly for Platonic cave or other...
in utero, her light a stillborn beauty--as alive as
ever once away from her.
She's up, burning...console her, her blood is boiling--
she wants to be accounted for, to outgrow that coo.
Only to surprise once and for all a stone's underbelly.
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 10:57 AM UTC