"wrenches" poems
Wrenches clanging, knuckles banging
A drop of blood
A new part here, and old part… there
A hotrod had been built!
A patchwork, mechanical, quilt
I drove past the banner that said “Welcome Race Fans”
Took a new route, behind the grandstands
And through my chipped window, I thought I could see
Some of the racers were laughing at me
I guess chalky grey primer is not to their taste
But I put my bucks mister in the right place
I chugged-popped past cars that dealers had sold
Swung into a spot, next to something old
Emerging with interest from under his hood
My neighbor said two words, he said “sounds good”
The voice on the loudspeaker tells us we’re up
Pre-staged, staged, then given the green
The line becomes blurred between man and machine
Bones become linkage
Muscle, spring
Fear, excitement
Time distorts ….
Color disappears …
Vision narrows…
Noise --- becomes music
Speed --- satisfaction
May 1, 2017
May 1, 2017 at 11:36 AM UTC
Every morning I would hear the metal wheels grind against the rails as the garage door opened
Leave for school as you were under the hood staring at horse power repairing every engine that was broken
Returned home and now you’re underneath a different car, your face blackened from the dirt, oil and debris
And at night sometimes I’d hold the flashlight for you, pointing the light at the wrong spots of the engine, I’d help to some degree
Rarely spoke but wrenches clanked, ratchets ticked, screws and bolts rattled and power tools revved
It’s the language that I never understood but it’s the language I know you’ve said
The garage doors would close, I’d smell the scent of Mary Jane coming from your room, swear the odor was limitless
Then I would hear the rifts and solos from the guitar strings that were plucked by your fingertips
Life as a grease monkey and a rockstar but you loved every second of it, you love everything you do
I wish one day I could find my own love and become something just like you
I see why my mother loves you
You called me your son though we’re not blood I swear I miss you in every way
You’ve alwayz told me to look out for my sister and to protect her everyday
Happy birthday
Sep 21, 2018
Sep 21, 2018 at 3:55 AM UTC
It is a sickness,
That lives amongst,
The focused sky
The curious child,
And the moon illuminated.
It is an endless drone,
That wrenches our stomachs,
Enslaves our neighbours,
And breaks our spirits,
It is worshipped,
Yet will see us forgotten,
A blip on a savanna,
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 12:35 PM UTC
Tame this itch that refuses to be scratched
It starts behind the eyes, digging in your
tear ducts, pulling on irises, blowing pupils wide
Moving to lips causing a trembling, a stilling
Wet heat glides over, the pink muscle performs
Under every skin cell, the itch ripples through
Inside, the heart shivers, stomach flops, gut wrenches
Heat spreads, head to toe, burning extremities red
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 1:12 PM UTC
Just as a boy grows into teenager,
he is bound, to one day, grow into man.
I think it's when he is just five years old,
he becomes a demolition fan.
At that juncture, it's all about the tools.
To dismantle what works perfectly well.
They may begin plastic at the start,
but it triggers something in their cells.
A teenager will start with something small,
a lawnmower, dirt bike, then on to cars.
Then as he ages and gains life experience,
the quest for tools is written in the stars.
It starts with a simple set of wrenches.
Then moves on to socket sets and ratchet.
Not just ASE, they need metric as well.
A tool store is a veritable banquet.
Metal worker, wood crafter, mechanic,
Plumber a welder and electrician.
Wrapped up in a testosterone package,
needing a new tool for the next mission.
Watch as his eye light, when reaching for a tool,
that's new to the market, sitting on display.
It's no longer about simple fun in an old cardboard box.
It will be tools from now till his dying day.
Nov 12, 2010
Nov 12, 2010 at 3:27 PM UTC
A futile battle enmeshed
Overpowering emotions struggle to stay afloat
Heaving a deep breath I sink in
Isolated in my despair
Sliced through bone and marrow
Pain wrenches my soul, vice in its hold
A fragrance wafts in
Electrifying my soul
Reverberating memories explode
Bursting to surface
Tender moments, the story of a heaped up soul
In every cell of my being I feel you
Emanating exuding your deep truth
Your touch like butterflies
Transcendental your love
Rewinding reel by reel
The story of an unsaid love
I see you close, though I bear you not
My heart lost inside your soul
Irreplaceable the magic
Weaved by those deep emerald embers
Wants each moment to unfold
I ease back and surrender once again
To the assurance of this bliss
Entrenched deeply in this moment
Serenity shrouds a warm blanket
Intense emotions lay calm, spent
My soul in glorious serenity elevates
You are undeniably a part of me
My paragon, my serenity
Issue forth bright light, vibrant colors
Adorn the deep dark night sky
Your love a painting a million hues
Panoramic and divine.
I LOVE YOU....
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 1:06 AM UTC
Sensing a presence in my bed
I plead that this is all in my head
My gut wrenches. Heart
sinks
once my eyes fix upon you I dare not blink
Cold, numbness proceeding
I could never prepare for this feeling
You cannot meet my eyes
now they aren’t closed in sleep.
Mirrors to a soul you violated
You ******* creep
Nov 18, 2022
Nov 18, 2022 at 7:31 AM UTC
He builds robots
with his bare hands.
He takes the wrenches
and the electronics
and the nuts and bolts
and makes out of nothing
Something.
And even though I don’t even know him.
I think I may love him a bit.
I think about
How he puts things together that weren’t connected ever before.
Fixing that which is broken
Or unmade
Or seemingly unfixable.
And proving the world wrong when this man-made machine
is just as alive as the rest of us.
The discarded
are made
into something with a renewed sense of purpose.
Proving recycling as a totally viable concept
[and not just a fad hippies whine about]
Right before your very eyes.
And as I watch him explain
High level mechanics
to the English majors like me,
I think about my broken heart
and the inability to truly love anyone in the last five years of my life
And I think
Maybe
There’s someone out there
Who can finally fix that.
Aug 13, 2014
Aug 13, 2014 at 9:39 PM UTC
Each day when I think of the way you hurt me
when my heart wrenches in pain.
I think of what I did to deserve this
When u know that there was no other way.
I don’t know why u can hold my heart ransom
Crush it with unkind gesture of yours
When I loved you so truly and madly and
didn’t think even once of the loss
U see it is I who stand to loose from what you’ve done
Cause for me there can be no one
not after what you have done
The doors of my heart have closed forever
Never will these open again for anyone.
For you this was just an attempt to see if your charm worked
For me this was a soul shaker, the one that changed me forever.
I resisted every attempt of yours
For your eyes scorched me day and night
Still I bore down your charm
and stood my ground alright.
Our chemistry was in the air you see
We could never hide it from prying eyes
Any blind man could have told
they way we looked into each others eyes.
I fought and resisted you for long
And thought I was strong
Till that fateful day when
I decided I would have it my way
But fate would wish another way
For the day I decide to part
That was the very day I lost my heart.
Your fun and jokes and childish pranks
Your endless teasing had me in splits
You knew very well that
it was beginning to grow in you as well.
A strange feeling of falling head over heels.
We were one and we did not need those words
Until you started expecting me to cross my limits
Limits I had set long ago, and you knew
I would never never cross them for anyone.
What did you want me to say, say that I love you
I already did it a million times
Didn’t my eyes say it all.
You knew you felt it too.
But now, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.
I am done with the deciphering
I am done with your cold ways
I am done with your pushing me around
I am never going to stay that way
For all that could have been done is done and over
My Lord, my energy’s drained and u have run me over.
I wept and cried and wondered why I deserved this fate.
You see miscommunication is to blame that closed the gate
For I cannot reconcile the same heart that rent sweet words
were tossing me out cold and dry.
I could not let u go for you were the sweetest thing my eyes beheld,
and I did love u truly, but you’ll never understand.
Its over now..what a mess!
The only prayer that escapes my lips
May our paths never cross again!
For I cannot afford loose my heart again.
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 4:29 AM UTC
Nobility divine fills gaps of transcendence,
Soars to and from the throne heavenly,
Exalts morals near the king of ascendance,
Patrolling the good, and sons of the seventy.
A duty forgotten, replaced with dependence,
On prayers rarely heard, and logic of a herd -
Divinity is far in absence; man in attendance,
The book is a third, and teachings are blurred.
Andeliviuan corruption supposedly erased:
The creation rotten of Sariel, wanders gaily.
The holy and fallen angel’s doing embraced,
By the clay beings caressing evil like a frailly.
By God not, who from heaven him displaced.
Yet, the legacy of the wrong stands humanly,
In Thailand, America, Palestine, and all graced -
A grace of sinfulness celestial and worldly.
Religion is the poor’s only ultimate truth,
the rich’s side hustle, and the rulers’ tool;
It is the loss of power that defiles the sooth,
The one the poor has not, but does the fool.
Robbers’ servants, bread crumbs consumers,
Toothless **** dogs, emaciated lost tramps,
Little blind pawns, vultures’ puppets, tumours,
And wrenches they are, the upper hand’s lambs.
If only Raguel’s judgements fall upon man,
Raphael’s punishment beautifies this existence,
Gabriel’s wrath makes not all humans ane,
And Michael saves us, the Sarahs, in assistance.
In the heart deepened with old repression,
That mounts with plenitude of filtered feels,
Resides a universe yearning for expression,
In a meat clay who feeds on calories of meals.
Man, in the genesis, in the light, in the dark,
In prosperity, in turmoil, triumphed with vices;
vileness, abuse, wreckage is our sole mark,
On this planet whose population is in slices.
Oct 21, 2022
Oct 21, 2022 at 5:18 AM UTC
They have been together,
give or take, for fifteen years.
Their marriage in the clasp
of puberty, its voice deepening,
its stubble sprouting.
Not long ago, shopping.
Necessary. Kid’s birthday.
It comes around quick,
like lunch, paying for the Ploughman’s
at the self-service in town
when the clock flicks to twelve.
Her right hand on his right hand.
They still do this,
though not quite as often.
Today,
he returns from work, wrenches
the tie out from beneath the collar
of a shirt she ironed yesterday.
Son, out.
Daughter, also out.
The fridge plagued with magnets
and a list; Milk,
Bread,
Eggs?
Inside, two beers,
sweating cold.
Later, he thinks.
How’s your day been darling?
We need to be at the school at six.
Oh yes.
They need to hear
how their progenies
excel at the expressive arts.
He hasn’t been expressive in years.
Hours expire.
Now his bare feet slide
under the duvet.
The wife reads a while,
Sunday Times bestseller.
Then she hugs him,
touches the skin she has known
since she was nineteen
at Northampton, literary sponge
absorbing Shakespeare and Joyce.
It is warm.
It is something
that has not changed.
The two of them are content.
They know they can
always have this.
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 6:01 PM UTC
Poked & prodded at
Everyday Everyday Everyday
I walk outside naked regularly
(The only one, too)
A shady pornstar they've
Made me out to be
Every corner of flesh, Every corner of flesh
It's indecent to be clothed.
Spread open my legs to
A gaggle of flashing camera bulbs.
Express critique
Save a pic
Jot down notes
'Move it, kid.'
Spread open my legs to
A pod of alien queens
Scalpel wrenches, protozoan logs
I'm the life of the party
As their oval heads crowd around
My *** things
Experimented-on weird-o's meander
The halls of this wherever-I-am
Free to leave at last
I sometimes go home after
A day of that
And do an odd thing:
I cocoon myself in blankets
And sleep for long stretches of time.
May 21, 2012
May 21, 2012 at 7:33 PM UTC
a thirsty soul suspended over the
waters of this heartland like some kind of
symbolic sacrifice to the lesser demigods
she is wearing a hippy skirt and a fashionable hat
a swift sunrise gives her aspects of divinity
she tells me she came here to go shopping
but in the turbulent space between our hearts
something has changed
she tells me cloudy days make her sad
i tell her rain is a companion to no man
but the flowers love it just the same
she knows she loves it too
i pick up her thought and bounce it like a rubber ball
cause it keeps comin back to me'
just like that mysterious smile that
lingered on her face
long on my mind
i cant seem to shed the thought
that it all means something someplace
always somebody thirsty somewhere
the clock stopped at a quarter to four
and a shameful woman sits there fixing her face
with the wrenches and hammers of fashionable practice
seek to be the same as everybody else
someday your bound to get there
just to find yourself questioning why you
bothered once your there
her and the shameful woman put a
heated argument in the pocket of hunger
and giggling like schoolgirls walk away
to go find a mirror to get lost in
swap makeup and spit in some bathroom selfies
girls night out
i'm standing out here in the open air parking lot
watching the heartland of fiveashes sink slowly into the sea
walk on the puddles reflections of clouds
as they break apart to bring us a brand new day
rain is a companion to no man
but the flowers like it anyway
May 6, 2014
May 6, 2014 at 4:18 PM UTC
I see a Woman eating her muffin
looking at Man who is looking
looking into the depths of his paper cup
and the wrinkles and rivers on the back of his hand
thinking When did I get those?
Coffee Cup looking at the blue bin in the corner
Coffee Cup thinking Well, I guess this is how it goes
The secret force that wrenches eyes upward
from the secret morning monologues
happens like electricity happens
and Man sees Woman's eyes and frowns
and can't tell whether they are blue
or brown.
Crumbs are on her lap.
Man doesn't notice but Woman thinks he does
Moving imperceptibly and not wasting a calorie
she flutters her hands over the warm loaves of her thighs.
Man notices an ephemeral strain Simon and Garfunkle and
becomes aware of a softening within his sternum and
electrons slowing, softing, into a May spring aesthetic
Woman rubs her finger which does not have a ring
and Coffee Cup wonders if it will still
have sentience within the bin or if the world
with all its broken beauty and mornings and warm hands
will suddenly just stop everything?
I look at my keys. The sort that express, not
the sort that open doors and drawers
but even these, time to time, will
fall beneath the wooden floors.
Man pulls his long coat off the back of his chair
without ceremony rises and turns to go
leaves his cup on the table for a coffee girl to attend to
and exits as the rain turns to snow.
Woman sits. And sits.
Woman might order another pumpkin muffin.
Her knees are chilled, watching her pinkly from the edge
of a pencil skirt like children's faces from a blanket.
A moment later she makes that same comparison
and laughs internally without gesture or sound.
And Woman looks around.
Woman smiles. Not because of Man or muffin
or the secret life of a Coffee Cup
but because she is Woman
struck lively by the sudden meta
fleeting passage of The Bigger
and her eyes, definitively brown
spark like bumper car antennae
and struck by magic, the same magic electricity
for an irreversible instant meet mine.
And for one fourteenth of a moment
Woman knows Me with all her life.
I shiver and she lobs me the red bean bag
and I hold the image in my mind like
a relic of the living divine.
The Bigger, the morning
the secret was mine.
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:44 AM UTC
She has a baggage full of secrets,
Secrets, that she has held onto so tight.
She has her demons,
Demons, against whom she can never put up a fight.
These demons have made her a sinner,
A sinner, with a trapped soul.
Her conscience seeks to find redemption at every door.
But no redemption is delivered without a certain price..(whisper the demons inside her mind)
Her soul screams in agony,
Her heart wrenches in pain,
But those demons keep cursing her
Till she goes insane.
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 5:12 PM UTC
Oh darling I'm in love
Oh darling I'm in love with you
Oh darling the way you smile
Oh darling your smile sets everything a glow
Oh darling my heart to you
Oh darling fully yours to crush
Oh darling you know nothing
Oh darling what I feel for her
But oh darling I do feel
Oh darling the love between us
But oh darling you don't know
Oh darling you just don't know what stands between
Oh darling I do hope
Oh darling I do hope you won't leave me
But oh darling you do hate
Oh darling you do hate those like me
Oh darling to you those girls are ****
Oh darling they are objects of desire
But oh darling they aren't people
And oh darling i'm just like them
And oh darling to you those boys are hazards
Oh darling those boys are wrenches in God's great machine
But oh darling those boys are my brothers
And oh darling I'm just like them
Oh my dear darling we're going to have to let each other go
Oh darling I'm going to have to let you go
Feb 13, 2020
Feb 13, 2020 at 5:59 PM UTC
Dragon Boy is on stage again,
Roaring and crooning. His
Claws clutch, scratch and scrape
A hoard of glistening emotions.
His slick-sharp canines gleam
Between tight stretched lips;
Choppy, halting motions sway
His guitar-pent hips with the rhythm.
Leather wings beating and straining
Against the heavy wood stage -
He's gonna fly away at this rate.
He wrenches open iron jaws and
Suppressed fire screams from his
Throat, scorching his tongue,
Licking and charring the mic.
He'll take his usual tribute: untried,
Untested ears ringing in needy delight.
Then ache to his ancient diamond bones,
Slither fatly from an unruly stage,
And scuffle, sated, home.
Sep 5, 2010
Sep 5, 2010 at 3:35 PM UTC
Summertime, Billy Holiday plays
As the hot sun spreads like butter over the trees.
The grass tickles the toes of children at play
Before a chill comes to breezes that blow.
Wind combs trees, heavy handed
Discarding leaves like so much flotsam adrift at sea.
Their bony crunch underfoot reminds us
Of the cold, dead future in store.
Deserted of life, brown and bare winter cold cracks limbs;
They stare with angry faces,
Moaning as the wind wrenches again and again.
Cloaked in ice, they hold buds alive deep inside.
Exuberantly pops the blossoms luring
The bumblebee to work for free.
Erasing the death that came before
And ensuring, after spring, a fruitful summer.
The seasons' constant cycle of birth, life, and death
Requires time to reflect on our growth,
Reflect on our life, and
Reflect that we, too, must face death.
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 2:59 PM UTC
I watch the airplane,
Thirty-thousand feet above,
Disappear
And reappear
Between the gentle folds
Of the 100-year-old glass
In my windowpane
A low angled light,
Shot from the distant sun,
Finds its way between my red curtains
And forces my thoughts to bloom.
Sometimes I think of what is in the world,
And then what's in it for me,
And the desire wrenches my heart.
And it hurts,
Oh God, it hurts.
Hurts so that I might cry out,
But I hold my tongue.
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 12:47 AM UTC
It's when your stomach
hurts
and you dont remember why you were sad and
nothing is really super important
except yourself
and you just laugh because you can and the sky is so pretty
and you can feel sunshine's essence exuding from the holes in your skin
and your bones are filled with electricity
but it's rubber
and you can do anything
ANYTHING
anything because you're you and nobody else can be you
and the world is there to look at, so full of pretty things
and it doesn't matter if there's somebody or nobody or everybody by your side
because it's just that perfect moment when the love in you body is a droplet
it hits the ground and wrenches itself into shapes
patterns that coalesce
you are enraptured, the sight is burning
into your retinas the perfectional bliss that is
being
the will'o'the'wisp that is your soul entangles with the white light and branches
the creature that is imagination and folly
folly with soft ears and kawaii smirks
*****
patches of grass
the birds are landing in your branches now
congregational hazards
social anxiety
disillusioned, giving in
but you don't mind the flocking free-loaders
YOU'RE A STAR
stellar beings never slow down
for a moment
unless they are enjoying the view
witness the retching as
spectrum slideshow
the colors spill out, tumbling
across the sidewalk
out of her veins
she is god
we are free
be happy
lift your arms
be happy
May 8, 2014
May 8, 2014 at 9:45 PM UTC
All we are; I implore you
Come out
Come out
Isolation is icy
Useless frozen wrenches
All we are
Smartthings with hearts
Opposable thumbs & firethrowers
Isolation is icy
The Pope of Murk & Decay
All we are
Every fiber of DNA and
Every lost phone number on a napkin
All we are
Overgrown starry eyed babi es
Happy birthday candles
All we are,
The cemeteries of our parents
Drain holes at the oceanfloor
Isolation is icy
Now,
melt.
Jan 2, 2013
Jan 2, 2013 at 9:35 PM UTC
I am unraveling webs in the scathing sentence of intolerable desire,
A prison of prints and pictures barred by beautiful blondes,
Rigid, icy, spaced by invisible thoughts between them,
Rows hypnotizing one after the other, belly-dancing while they wear their smiles.
They break from their line formations with socket wrenches in their right hands, coaxial cables in their left hands,
And they slink and slide and slowly salsa to my mattress against the wall
As they adjust and tighten their wrenches upon each of my arteries, and feed their coaxial cables into my ears.
Their strawberry perfumes force me to note new appetites in my concrete lungs.
They melt into me, and I melt into them, and we roll into a clay figurine against the plaster wall.
Their hair burns red now, or brunette, or perhaps all the colors of a rainbow of self-inflicted hypocrisy,
And their breath is exhaling like ceilings fans, softly and slowly, out of my lungs,
And I can no longer distinguish which of us is the other anymore, nor do I really want to.
We are a cosmosis;
We are cosmetology unstable, madly desired, and awry,
In an osmosis of imagined consummation.
We are beauty in its ugliest truth.
Eventually, we dissipate, disgusted from transformation,
And I scuttle up the wall, a brown recluse,
And the brunetteblonderedheadsilkskinned keep their cosmosis,
Walking as a ball of arms and legs on six foot-tall toothpicks to separate and reform their bars again.
Mar 12, 2013
Mar 12, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
On the back of our property, up on a hill,
an old black oak stands still.
Spent alot of time under those limbs,
Dad and me, putting engines back in.
Him just a cuzzin and wrenches flying,
me with a flashlight with a battery dying.
Run out of daylight and patience at times
but he'd get the old clunker running just fine.
There was time in the making with this man I called Dad,
learning in progress, good or bad.
I learned that a garage is easier to work in,
easier to find tools thrown when the temper sets in.
Found that my daughters are not afraid of grease on their hands,
all because of lessons learned from the man called Dad.
Those that take the time, energy , committ,
to the tasks at hand , then the name will fit.
Step up to the plate, take your stand,
welcome to the world of men called Dad.
Jun 16, 2012
Jun 16, 2012 at 3:05 PM UTC
the story of the mechanic's hands that only knew how to break things
starts small and quiet
a feverish night in june
reaching out for the first time
in balled up fists
then palms opened to the world
in demand
then, pressing into linoleum
then, gripping the handlebars of a bicycle
then, wrapped around yellow number 2 pencils illuminated by fluorescent light bouncing off white brick walls
then, for many years, nothing but the cold metal of a rusty wrench
i said, i like your filth
teach me how to be grimey
you're only allowed to touch me with dirt underneath your fingernails
i said, i'm young but i know what it's like to be covered in black grease
these hands have touched many
held onto some
left none clean and pure, or easy on the eyes
in their calloused glory, lifting the pleated skirts
two parts of a whole that's only purpose was to destroy
i wonder in the time i have spent
hands under sink
body in bubble baths
fingers down my throat
purging a gasoline stained, black grease, mangled-with-wrenches childhood
were the mechanic's hands pressed together in prayer
did they ever get scrubbed clean?
Sep 17, 2017
Sep 17, 2017 at 6:40 PM UTC