"worming" poems
Doom train hurtling along
Through the fog in my mind
Towing freight, rectangular and oblong
Dim headlights, you're travelling blind
Five carriages long, excluding engine and caboose
Metal against metal, spitting sparks on steel
Undetermined path, rails will choose
Chugging along on dirt covered wheels
In the cabin, I see the light
Emanating from your furnace
Swallowing up coals in your gaping bite
Tongues of flames licking the surface
Fire breathing, spewing thick black smoke
Almost unseen, against the dark of night
A long plumy arm as if extending to choke
And plug the remaining sources of light
Meandering precariously on tracks that weave
Over uncharted, unfathomable terrain
Your store, so reliably you heave
Worming your way through my brain
What's in that cargo of yours?
What lies within those boxcars?
What drives you to diligently run your course?
What fuels you to travel near and far?
Loads of self pity, self loathing and self reproach
Snaking your way to an unknown destination
Screeching brakes as if a stop you approach
Herald the train of dubious intentions
Light is upon you, dark will dissipate
Your plumes starting to lessen from your stack
The dawn breaking horizon you didn't anticipate
To see another charging towards you on this very same track...
Sep 27, 2014
Sep 27, 2014 at 4:16 AM UTC
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!
Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
7.8k
Darkness suffocates me.
Ever-present blackness fights to enter my bloodstream
Worming its way through my pores
While tendrils of grey fog claw at my eyes
Obscuring my vision
Suddenly a light appears.
The tendrils retreat,
Skittering into the surrounding shadows
White fire circled by a hazy purple brilliance,
Floating in my direction
A positive thought.
Possibility
“I am a good listener.”
Corny, yes
But I like that
For a moment, I like me
Connection
Brilliant fire envelops
Light radiates from within me
A supernova, I shine overwhelmingly
Before collapsing in on myself
With the light gone
I lie in darkness,
but not despair.
Glowing dimly,
A flickering ember sits in the corner
Hope
Nov 14, 2012
Nov 14, 2012 at 1:01 PM UTC
Use a little compassion
Show some humanity
Basted in boredom
In touch with insanity
How many flies will have to die
before her thirst is sated?
How many eyes will have to pry
to show what you've wasted?
Worming through the night
scheming, hell bent
forestalling my demise
with evil intent.
She'll tend the garden
Like a perfect person
But her heart is hardened
as she mixes the poison.
Beware the water
Beware the daughters
Beware the good Samaritan.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:19 PM UTC
Time’s ominous perpetual precipice looms,
Darkly beckoning with gilded motives.
The student’s curse worming insidiously throughout the best intentions
The enemy’s ticking fingers foreshadow their fate,
But like blinded deer, we frolic obliviously,
Blissfully remiss in our duty as the forgiven.
Twilight nears, but we are still frozen in the sun.
Jun 6, 2013
Jun 6, 2013 at 7:27 PM UTC
Who could be content
with this wretched world
religions bribe
death; bovine silence
tears at my beating red heart
without passions arc
there would only be rational thought
and grizzled earth
arctic cold
poetry beats the gravity
of this rock
deepens the mouth of inspiration
worming through
the machinery of desperation
like Jesus floats
eloquence it's revenge
a helpless idol
Dec 6, 2018
Dec 6, 2018 at 2:38 PM UTC
A bad, worming feeling in your belly
because
you've had nothing to eat today,
and
you hopped in your car,
giddy as a bird,
and rolled over there.
There being the magic store;
the store with it's keychains of glory,
bottles of distilled religion,
and a whole lot of prayer
that your debit card sings.
Tomorrow means work
and the evil dollar that drags Jamaican children across
intersections
as they scream at the Americans in taxis.
It seems we all need a break.
We all need a chance to forget
and say we're not culpable
for anything.
This is the magic that'll save you from your whiny conscience.
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 11:55 PM UTC
Your aspect ratio’s wrong.
Stretching the truth
this long sows fertile ground
for artifacts, glitches,
quirks & bugs, worming
& squirming beneath pixel
shrugs. The worst kind
plump the frame to god-
awful proportions, bloating
bigger & bigger & bigger ‘til
vision’s engulfed.
Or the kind that squeeze
spaghetti confetti onto
our plates, drenched in
the Sauce of the Week
that “can’t be beat!”.
Your skewed parallax
attacks the facts at hand.
Recycle your *******
fax machine this second before
it grows smarter than
you. Yes, you—with the rolly
polly eyes & feint surprise—
quit pretending you’re dumb,
'cause you ain’t that numb
to the stings & pangs of change.
Your sloppy hacks produce
quantity @ the cost of quality
to benefit the greedy & satisfy
the needy, becoming seedy
to the logic of reason.
Correct your inputs to render
outputs worth tender & please
remember, it’s what’s within
the frame that’s important,
so get it right.
Sep 23, 2010
Sep 23, 2010 at 7:29 PM UTC
Parched in a tree,
Watching the prey with glee.
Seeing them scurry and run without limitation,
Makes me pounce without hesitation.
I grasp the prey sqirumining,
Hearing the voice of them worming.
I clench my claws over there body,
I pierce it’s hide,
And my talons get ******
It starts shaking with false life, shaking and shaking,
Until it gives in and all the meat is for the taking,
All the death is for the taking.
I parch in a tree to enjoy my feast,
And watch see the sun rising in the east.
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 3:31 PM UTC
it climbs up their thin veins,
worming its way under their skin,
until it digs into their vulnerable minds,
controlling them from the inside out,
until they twist the life out of others.
the prey become the predators.
Apr 18, 2021
Apr 18, 2021 at 12:04 AM UTC
since i decided that the chain was too short
and the anchor i had attached myself to
was pulling me under
it's been Three Months since I've sharply inhaled and
let go of the rope
and stood slack-jawed
and in awe
at the calm with which you watched it suddenly go limp in your relaxed palms,
and then shrugged,
and retreated.
Three Months since I've turned my head toward the horizon
and rubbed the tension of staring at a backward-moving object
from my weary neck.
Three Months of my infatuation worming its way back into more isolated parts of my mind,
and festering in my body,
becoming quiet--
like the absence of a laugh track
while the film keeps playing.
And I feel like I am still holding my breath.
It's different now because I finally see the pattern.
Breathe easily,
breathe excitedly,
gasp,
hold your breath,
feel it abruptly leave your body as you deflate
find your breath again,
have it stolen from you once more
The question is: what will lure my lungs back into blissful submission again? And how much time am I left with to enjoy my returned sanity?
And if you came back,
I think it would feel like a falling dream.
I think I am in the falling dream.
I am grasping and flailing and fearing the crash,
everything becoming a quickening blur of
irrational analysis and false epiphanies,
an asymptote approaching demise...
until
i wake up
(and realize that I never really was falling).
Only to have the ground snatched from under my feet once again
but instead of down, I will go up.
(and then down again)
I wish I wasn't familiar with this pattern.
Oct 8, 2013
Oct 8, 2013 at 5:46 PM UTC
Some sit turning handles,
minds lit by candles.
But do their arc lamps flash
when freed from making cash.
While some are wriggling, book worming,
their minds inflamed, brightly burning.
The difference, some time to think,
nature's race or nurture's link.
Aug 23, 2015
Aug 23, 2015 at 6:06 AM UTC
~For Eleanor~
<•>
don't
believe in fate or luck,
never won no lottery,
even the next word of
every poem word, product of hard earned
stolen lust affairs
me desiring,
of acquiring
the infamy
of saying it & making you believe it,
all new (ha!)
while reusing worn-out words,
stolen from unknown predecessors,
lovers and prophets
but then, read you,
a-believing now that only princesses
may have the magic powers to do,
to sense, the incongruence,
of the most ordinary lives,
the ways we-hide-in-our-underbellies,
the faces of our elven selves,
that we are desperate to see anew,
without the blemishing scars of experience
writing it morning fresh from dream filled sleep
so my sinner summer sun dying requests
you to be reminded:
even a prince, only has just so many
golden opportunities,
so quit stalling,
shoot out your next from your
handgun mind
yup, no luck, good fate, for me
held in abeyance for
the next first date, maybe
as I write
Katy Perry
is ear-worming in my head,
ignite the light!
do you see us
awaiting in the shadows
for the definition of your words?
<•>
^divergent communication:
pattern in which the sender gives conflicting messages on verbal and nonverbal levels and the listener does not know which message to accept.
read https://hellopoetry.com/eleanor-prince/
Aug 27, 2017
Aug 27, 2017 at 11:53 AM UTC
When the fog dissipates
and the city skyline
winks into your clever retinas,
will you be satisfied
with what you see?
When those things you had forgotten
are worming their way back
into your bones and blood vessels,
will you still glance at the intractable sun,
awestruck and catatonic,
like a moth to the moon?
Will you still find beauty in
sidewalk weeds and broken glass?
When the fog dissipates,
and humanity presents itself,
brazen and unabashed,
in a flurry of chaos and stale dreams,
will you still fall into the mass
of faces and hands and ******* and eyes?
Or will you falter at the glaring sight
of a society that's run amuck?
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 11:03 PM UTC
The clam doth fritter my mind
So close that shell, tightly bind
Protect the flesh, soft body hidden
Predators, everyone forbidden
Rigid shell scalloped in unison
Form the bond to close within
The frilly layer undulating rhythm
Soft body concealed and hinged
So perfect beneath hardened chalk
Worming tongue
Gaping mouth
Wordless talk
Oh to rest inside your precious womb
Forever bask in your rosy gloom
Hold my body with your silken lip
Precision pulse throb through your grip
Mixing Love, Patience, Hope for the world
Depositing on your pink precious pearl
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 11:01 PM UTC
An old curiosity shop
a lost world depository
dark dusty as pharaoh's tomb
worming squirming carefully through
where 'Breakages Must Be Paid For'.
Stopped clocks claiming time is up
sofas trailing their entrails
peeved pictures offered for their frames
and bureaux bursting with bumf.
Rummaging through dank passages
searching inner chamber book stocks
classic novels at six old pence
thumbed pages bought for improvement.
Nelson Collins Clear Type Press
Dent and Everyman in distress
Dumas Dickens and Conan Doyle
countless cultural references.
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 6:28 AM UTC
I live alone, and am locked inside the confines of my own mind, where i reside in uncompromising thought.
Sometimes, i try, to tap into the solar weather, or something better than what I know, in bestow of what is lost.
I can feel a storm, and shout to warn in the lore of a great beast, but marble mouthed I mourn the forlorn obliquity of my distorted screams.
I can only be what i wish to be, in the instability of free will, capturing my kills, instilled, beyond my thorn and ivy shields, in the fields of yield-less building of my feelings, kneeling to the appealing satire of your sanity.
I randomly, embrace the humanity i disgraced, in my show of force to this spineless space of failure or inexperience, a mockery of my silliness of childish textbook deliverance to my serious concerns, as my success is earned in the blood of burned books, unlearned through the worming risks, of listless bliss with the dying kiss of incompetence.
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 3:15 PM UTC
In the schisms of light changes,
Between the honking horns of crying babies
And angry mothers,
The cars hunched in anticipation
Like the smoker’s tongue rolling
Against the teeth for that nicotine speed.
A starry-eyed woman blinked with no destination
In her husband’s Bentley.
The rumbling is the crunching grind of helmets
In a pigskin scrimmage.
I can barely stand the
Stop-Go
Inch-Worming
Of brake-lights.
Car’s trembling is the twitching squirrel
Panic-caught in a lightsocket.
Even if the slim traffic-conductor
That burns like plastic on the fire
Yields us through like a coaxing father,
Hollow eyes don’t yield the lethargic feet.
Remnants of the second millenium’s gas-scorn,
Our can-do attitudes goad our chariots to
Hack
And
Spit
Dust-Sludge in gridlocked gossip.
Sep 23, 2011
Sep 23, 2011 at 11:45 PM UTC
“extra condoms” (explicit!)
a title deposited in the poem-to-do file/notebook,
with no body yet to follow through on or upon
which she tumbles to, an irresistible unrepentant
crooked finger hook line and she is sinker stinker caught,
worming in her feigned anger
current curiosity comes
fast and furious further,
demeanor—demanding
ex-explain-nations,
how could this
ever be a
poem?
stare ferocious, I am the prettiest pretense
of a pride incarnation hu-mane incarnate
call me in another language
Vasco da Gama
a sea route to India will uncover
on your worldly tattooed body,
drawing maps as we go along
devour her neck with stingless bites,
explorer voyager a rambunctious tongue undenied,
every space in and between needs
surging surgical tastings, erupting into her indentations,
inserting her appendages into my places where they
have a business going-knowing
just in case that’s the one!
secret passageway canal holy crossing crossover
later she whacks me because the question goes unanswered
and no sheath employed when my tongued fingers are ten times
more demanding and supple and supply the exploratory course closing with spices and woven silks in Indian colors vibrations
*why then,
extra?
god she is so lovely locomotive annoying!
to peak you peeking
to see your astounding astonishment,
you are our provisions for a sea voyage
and put the risk in, the trigger in,
when wherever you see the world-word,*
extra
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 6:06 PM UTC
Take these drugs to ease the pain
Not of your mouth but of your brain
And into the downward spiral I fall
Because what's stopping me?
Nothing. Nothing at all
And I fall and fall
Into the despair that catches me
That fabricates its all
It's only blackness we see
But one more pill one more fill
And those hallucinations could be at a slight spill
Wake up! Wake up!
Can't you hear it calling your name?
Wake up! Wake Up!
Can't you feel it worming into your brain?
Images of gas-chamber mobs
Crawling inside the darkest parts of your sobs
Take these drugs to ease the pain
Not of your mouth but of your brain
"Feel better, feel better," they say
But you can't seem to get those rotten images to go away
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 5:03 AM UTC
Anaemic black mist creeps its way between toes,
crawling eyewards, worming stealthily up shins,
pausing only to cup bolted knees and find more
progress toward the stomach's pit where it will rest,
For now.
The soaking - from outside in - is a violation as a pore
stretched aside is all the space this ten tonne mass
needs - a callused finger pulling back a fleshy curtain
to claim squatter's rights - mashing its body into a crawl space,
It curls.
Right here, in the depths, it will feed from its host and
gradually weave a tendril through intestines and bile
like a periscope, seeking and feeling for a route to the stem:
The source of everlasting sustenance;
The end goal.
Once it latches, it will live forever suckling stance.
The insipid parasite, the binding leech; as it takes hold,
consumes with its voidwalker embrace
and paints every memory with your fault;
Perpetual guilt.
May 8, 2015
May 8, 2015 at 7:50 PM UTC
Everyone has the right to love
To be loved, and return that love
But, love can sleight and bite
It can destroy and toy
with affections.
Love can be seen as a parasite
squirming and worming
inside your heart.
Yet love has lied, and died
a thousand times before
no one closes the door on love.
Love excites ignites and
copyrights by candlelight
it's insidious need to feed.
It expedites appetites
It recites to you words wanted,
needed to be heard
Love leaves you flushed,contrite,
full of spite
Yet ready to ignite and incite
the next entwined pair of parasites.
Apr 23, 2014
Apr 23, 2014 at 7:40 PM UTC
You wanna talk balance, huh?
You got a lecture to give,
and I’m not allowed to pour a drink
to get me through? Well ****
if this ain’t ridiculous,
but I’ll listen. Nothing else to do
up here in the snow and the solitude and the shining.
You say things started alright,
and I nod, sip something unreal,
and say *yes, my dear,
yes, perhaps I broke his arm
but I’ve vented the pressure
out of the boiler now.*
And ain’t it a **** shame
that I don’t talk to Al any more?
‘Cept to sneer about the history
of a place that’s too far away to push
him back to drink.
So sure, tell me I’m unravelling,
and I’ll call you a *****
and you’ll lock yourself up in the room.
Give him the key, I’ll show him
that the **** in 217 is far worse
than a broken arm and a ruined career,
because this will take me away.
Who’s the other one inside me,
worming into a space
that I thought was mine?
Two in one body, a ****** perfect
discount deal on everything
that can destroy a family;
check one, a son with a broken
arm and a fractured mind,
check two, a ***** for a wife,
and check three, me
the head of it all,
proclamation, divination, damnation
of the foundation of this stutter
looking over, overlooking,
a broken record skipping to the part
where I **** the pressure,
**** the boiler.
I’ll see you in the next one.
Fin.
.
Apr 15, 2021
Apr 15, 2021 at 7:26 PM UTC
WISH I HAD ALL SEEING CATHODE RAY GOD VISION, DISCERN DYING LOVE IN YOUR SMILING EYES,
INDIFFERENCES GERMING, PITIES FORMING, WORMING UNCARES, WARMTHS IN HEARTS COOLING,
ELSE A SIGN, A ***** WITHER, EYES WRINKLE, AN OUT WARD SIGN YOU CHANGED, HATE SEEDED!
THE SOUL DYING, SHOWED IN YOUR PRETTY FACE. ANY SYMPTOM, HORNS GROWING, SKIN CORNING,
MUCH AS I TRY, OUT OF BOUND ARE INNARDS REAL, THE MIND FATHOM ALL, IS A TASK HERCULEAN!
SO I TRY THE HEART, AND MISERABLY DO FAIL, IT DOES KNOW ONLY A THING, MY LOVE STRONG BUT INCAPABLE!
LOVE HAS TAKEN FLIGHT, SO I DO TRY WORDS POETIC, ESSAYING SERMONS, SELF CUT ****** BARE.
BUT THOU ART A SHELL, HARD TO BREAK, SOFTNESS INSIDE, UNKNOWN TO YOU, THUS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ME!
FLOWER, IF YOU CAN, SO I CAN DRINK.ENABLE AND ENNOBLE US, COME IN TO EACH, FUSE AND BLOSSOM!
ELSE MY ANGELS, MAKE THE OUTWARD CHANGE, BASED ON THE INSIDE, A SIGN TO UNDERSTAND AND FATHOM!
OBSOLETE IS MIND, SEEMS HEART MORE SO.MAY SIGNS SPEAK AND SHOW ALL, THE IN ON THE OUT, PLAIN TRUTH!
WORSE STILL, I MAY SEEM THE SAME TO YOU, THE WORLD, THIS I AM NOT, NOR ARE YOU. LETS BREAK IN!
Sep 1, 2012
Sep 1, 2012 at 8:03 AM UTC
I’m avoiding a void, Freud warned me of
by worming my way in to the apple of my eye
I know it sounds paranoid as above so below
ground zero dark thirty where I heard the well runs dry.
Hell, I wonder why I try to quench my thirst for knowledge
from any ***** puddle when I’m at a cow college
‘cuz nowadays I rather cuddle up with a good book
than be-fuddled by how to transgress, ring a bell hooks?
Well looks deceive and I can guess
by the wings you have yet to receive
we have come to the some of nothing
from something I thought we were far beyond
but maybe I was wrong at the end of it all.
You said it wasn’t my fault but then again,
Freire taught me how to lock
away my thoughts in a vault.
I’m hemmed in with Hemingway in the corner of the café.
We spend half the day laughing at our neighbors savoring
their lattes but condemning how they stray away from nature
‘cuz labor’s not their taste.
He says, “What a waste of time.
Do you see a better paradigm?”
I agree because I was scared at the time
to embarrass myself in front of an idol of mine.
I know it’s futile to rival a dead mind
but when they’re better than the headlines
I don’t mind if I never shine brighter than a dying light
‘cuz it only really matters in the end if I’m trying right?
but what am I trying for when I lost a friend to love and war?
Cut the ties, I’m alive.
Who was I dying for?
Who was I fighting for?
Who was I writing for?
Shelby tells me where the sidewalk ends
and well, he’s been a better friend than you’ve ever been;
ever since you left me and met he who shall not be named
nor blamed for this game you played against us.
Again trust was just a part of it all.
I was miserable like Margaret Hall.
Withdrawals always reinforce walls of remorse
and of course, I’m the source of all your problems
but who took the time to resolve them?
You weren’t forced to endorse any course of action
except follow the laws of attraction.
Perhaps gravity magnifies abreaction
or the severity of abstraction.
Yet Apollo would swallow
all his pride and passion
hollow out his home
and throw a match in.
© Matthew Harlovic
Jul 23, 2017
Jul 23, 2017 at 2:30 PM UTC