"yellowing" poems
Cup your palms around
that candle dear lazy
Spells to cast to the wombs
keep our ghosts outside
peering into tent *****
yellowing irises and
stamens strangely swaying
but nonsense
Butte no
out there
they stalk you dear lazy
Aug 3, 2015
Aug 3, 2015 at 12:01 PM UTC
*Dust flits gently on its arm; slowly & lazily.
As if not to cut, tear the patiently sewed seams.
Cotton against yellowing white thread.*
**The sanctuary for reminiscing about mesmerising scenes
The throne for Kings and Queens without crowns to be seen
I'm overwhelm by ecstasy as I bask in this endless elation of delectation.**
Jan 21, 2015
Jan 21, 2015 at 7:54 AM UTC
A proud man,
Upright and unshakable
In belief and morals,
Once only I did I see him
Without a tie.
A child of Edwardian England,
The links Of his watch chain
Glinted
As they hung
With formality and elegance
From his waistcoat pocket,
Yes, even as he worked.
And work he did.
Patiently,
Brilliantly and tirelessly
With ingenuity and imagination.
A craftsman from a bygone age.
A master of his tools.
Grandfathers are soft,
Playful, bear-like in their
Gruff-whiskered familiarity.
Not Poppy.
Unwittingly aloof from his grandchildren,
We avoided the need for directly addressing him,
Unsure of where we stood.
He’d probably have secretly
Loved the informality
Of our secret nickname.
I hope he knew.
The chapel piano did for him.
Too much weight for his work-weary ticker.
Grandma gave me his pocket watch to keep,
And for a time I treasured it,
Measuring its weight
Like a smooth round pebble
In my palm.
A workman’s watch;
Practical.
A yellowing face
Behind a scratched
And hazy glass.
But accurate,
And precise.
Reliable as the man.
Detached in life,
I liked to hope that
Gazing down,
Watching,
He just might have
Laughed
In loving acknowledgement of his
Grandson’s curiosity
And foolishness
Sitting cross-legged on the carpet,
With heart-thumping nausea
Adrift in a sea of springs.
Mar 21, 2011
Mar 21, 2011 at 3:15 AM UTC
The sunlight winks from behind the umbrella of leaves and mangoes overhead. It tickles your cheekbones like the first, second, thirtieth good morning kiss. Your sandals are worn. A woven basket rests heavy on your hip, in your hands.
Your fingers, slender and worn by the earth, trace the contours of my face the way they search for meaning in a dictionary. Gravity. We inch closer. Have you always had a widow’s peak? Your hand finds it rightful place over my heart. I kiss you for the thirty-first time today. You taste of plantains and milk. You smell of sweat and the sun. My hand relishes in the traces of heat on your cheek.
One mango drops from your possession. Unripe, but soon to be opened up and worshipped as it is meant to be. Your fingers grasp the yellowing heart and press it against my lips. I rest against the trunk and sink my teeth into it. Liquid sunrise trickles down your wrist onto my blouse. The leaves create shadow puppets on the ground, the story of two young fools swaying in the shade of a tree.
Aug 12, 2021
Aug 12, 2021 at 6:32 AM UTC
Still running, never ceasing, she screams silently.
the breath escapes as a wisp.
Remembering the past command:
Take the demon carefully,
his sting is heavily laden with sweet
addiction.
*** soaks through the front of her gown
and the bloodied fabrics drain rusty shades
into the tepid moon water
she spilled before.
Break her chains
she will not thank you
she will despise her freedom and lay waste to paradise
with her filthy torn wings.
Let her know of her once-natural beauty
she will hiss in derision
that she is not still stunning as the rose.
BLEED, child.
You of all creatures were fantastic in visage
You have put to waste the precious fragility of your frame
Your yellowing teeth speak volumes
your mouth should stay sealed.
We have no use for ingrate angels
that roll in the muck
cheaply selling ******* and chemical highs.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 1:58 PM UTC
In Grandma’s kitchen,
There’s the old raggety rocker,
The one that always tips back too far
And my heart skips a beat as I
Secretly enjoy the thrill.
In Grandma’s kitchen,
There’s the mounds of old recipes on
The counter, yellowing with age, being
Ripped from ancient editions of
House and Home magazines.
In Grandma’s kitchen,
There’s the constant pleasant aroma of
Cookies, chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin
And snickerdoodle, the presence of cookie
Jars that are quickly ransacked by us.
In Grandma’s kitchen,
There is the collection of teapots on
The shelf, the daily weather forecast that
Grandpa writes out every day on the table,
The forest of palms and tiger lilies in the center.
In Grandma’s kitchen,
Time seems to stand still, and everything
Is perfect, familiar, right.
Even when the room itself doesn’t belong to
Her anymore, it will always be to me
Grandma’s kitchen.
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 11:54 AM UTC
writing songs sans artifice,
that grow better different,
different better,
the lyrics of a man growing older,
insides out, featuring his slips, all showing,
eyes squinting from hard lifestyle experience,
taking on wearied shades of beige yellowing,
a tanned blackness, time edits them, so now,
they sound the same but holier,
from the hazing of hazards
one builds for and by himself,
drilling & extracting the spit-shine of
all that all is fine,
but liquor & cat's paw black shoe polish
just can't quite cover 'em up (2),
the stabbing itch each of the every time
one quests and questions
his ego,
always another test…
why would I ever want that?
his fingers create tinkling at rapido pace,
tinkling an arrhythmia of rhymes
previously perviously (1) unseen,
self exploration, that we all realize
is an unforgiving, never ending,
source of melodic crying out loud;
and when the sensual, arrayed pleasures,
begin to bore
holes of no important consequence,
the querys~to~self get even harder
to explicate what they intimate,
who they implicate,
which parts of you,
failed to answer satisfactorily…
why would I want want that
forever?
Aug 2, 2025
Aug 2, 2025 at 2:11 PM UTC
The Red Queen Believes!
~~~
The Red Queen,
in her youth,
believed in as many as
six impossible things
before breakfast
~~~
The Old Poet,
in his embered tinder, yellowing days,
believed in as many as
six possible poems
before breakfast
~~~
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 7:37 PM UTC
When I was a child, the hallways stretched for miles
Mahogany and ceramic floors, polished bookcases
A mansion for fictional paperbacks
All neatly tucked under fluorescent lighting
The librarian would wait behind her desk
She reigned silent
besides the tapping of her fingertip to her glasses
I can’t remember her ever looking happy
Until the day I noticed the chirping
Sang somewhere between the realistic & historical fiction,
a bird cage sat next to the woman’s desk
It was an unexpected visit
I should have brought a better dressed book to check out
Mine was bound by yellowing pages
But I met the canary and heard her song
As I watched the librarian smile
Nov 8, 2017
Nov 8, 2017 at 8:32 PM UTC
It was her grandmother’s,
on her step-mother’s side,
not really a relative at all.
A hideous thing, it was,
crudely constructed yards
of yellowing ivory, with
giant creampuff shoulders
and a scratchy hemline.
The bodice was decorated,
sprinkled with dull gems,
crusty pearls.
The veil was, by far,
the worst offender.
A gauze with blotchy
brown stains, misshapen
holes, gnawed by rats.
She bit her lip as her step-
mother wrinkled her brow,
poking at the skirt, the train,
hoping it would burst like an
odd bubble or
mushroom at
any moment.
Oct 20, 2010
Oct 20, 2010 at 6:03 PM UTC
a gift for Aladdin Aures H
from his 3rd follower...
<>><<>
the inescapable need,
unformed firmament
inquiring; am I capable?
the impulse palpable,
the urge to urgent,
to gorge and disgorge?
instead of morning prayers,
precomposed and ordered,
morning poem plucked from
morning fog, gusted breezes,
early-on, newborn sun rays,
progeny of disheveled skies
words fused, in irregular sizes,
senses censured by drowsy eyes,
but the chest beating arrhythmia
means bursts of free verses
superimposed on reluctant eyelids,
jigsaw puzzlement be re-conformed
and the first poem of the day,
emerges from the intersection
of mind, pale dreams, and the
first is special till the neu morrow,
when fresh bursts explode inward
to windward, and the first is just
yesterday's mesh of hash,
once formidable, now last,
pinned, yellowing, purely a
**descendant of the recent,
but always, ancient past*^
Jun 19, 2025
Jun 19, 2025 at 3:13 PM UTC
1. Sunlight
There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed
in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall
of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove
sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.
Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails
and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.
And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.
2. The Seed Cutters
They seem hundreds of years away. Brueghel,
You'll know them if I can get them true.
They kneel under the hedge in a half-circle
Behind a windbreak wind is breaking through.
They are the seed cutters. The tuck and frill
Of leaf-sprout is on the seed potates
Buried under that straw. With time to ****
They are taking their time. Each sharp knife goes
Lazily halving each root that falls apart
In the palm of the hand: a milky gleam,
And, at the centre, a dark watermark.
Oh, calendar customs! Under the broom
Yellowing over them, compose the frieze
With all of us there, our anonymities.
4.9k
Like snowdrops they droop their heads,
contemplating brighter days
away from the glare of the acronites'
yellowing purge by the graves around St Margarets.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 1:45 PM UTC
It ought to be lovely to be old
to be full of the peace that comes of experience
and wrinkled ripe fulfilment.
The wrinkled smile of completeness that follows a life
lived undaunted and unsoured with accepted lies
they would ripen like apples, and be scented like pippins
in their old age.
Soothing, old people should be, like apples
when one is tired of love.
Fragrant like yellowing leaves, and dim with the soft
stillness and satisfaction of autumn.
And a girl should say:
It must be wonderful to live and grow old.
Look at my mother, how rich and still she is! -
And a young man should think: By Jove
my father has faced all weathers, but it's been a life!
4.4k
at first an unrelenting green covers everything:
the trees, the lawn, the hillsides, the marshes, the windbreaks,
everything is completely and totally green, the deepest, truest green,
so green you might even forget that it wasn't always green,
so green you might not stop to think that it won't always be green.
school children look out windows during their exams,
longing to be free amid all that greenness,
lovers sit in parks near the water, under perfectly green leaves,
listening to the wind, watching the stars come out
and making their wishes, forever joined with that unrelenting green.
artists dip their impressionistic brushes in the green and dab on canvas
pictures of people gathered at picnics in dappled, green shade,
joined with the greenness, enveloped and absorbed by it,
becoming green themselves. they paint pictures of leafy trees reaching beyond the canvas with patches of sky showing through, a perspective of endless summer that you have to look at a long time
to see and feel, but once you find it beyond the greenness, in the
blue beyond the hill, you will be part of it always: through the fading mid-summer and pale, yellowing late summer, even into the multi-
colored fall and the stark, grey-white winter, and you will know life, and hope and love, and nothing will ever seem the same again
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 7:05 AM UTC
through the spaces
between
curling flowers
and a lattice framed
yellowing
fence
i could see them
i could watch them
every
day
the barbeques
slamming of doors
pool parties
birthdays
late nights
x rated
the loudness of it all
left me panting
for more
&
living vicariously
through their lives
Dec 24, 2014
Dec 24, 2014 at 7:34 PM UTC
In the witching hour all is quiet except for the beating sound of two hearts entwined with passion and agony beating more angry by the minute.
Blinded eyes try to pierce through the dark abyss to find sanity in a place of cold nothingness and desolation, as the tortured mind cloudy with regret slowly fades away..
nails claw at blinded eyes longing to see the clouds part and behold, his goddess is there basking in the pale yellowing aura of the moon, as he looks longingly upon her..
skin and curves of perfection soaking up the yellowing, becoming golden upon his slightest gaze.
Knees become burning furnaces of pain and torment as he falls to kneel before her, begging with soundless words of an open mouth for release.
Paralyzed, hungrily devouring as her sightless eyes fall upon her brooding brow trailing down to the blinding stars that become her eyes under the harvest moon.
The wind blows fierce surrounding her in a halo of color plucked dead limbs, trailing off into oblivion.
She gazed upon his visage, her fierceness burning his soul in eternal torment she smirks and glides toward effortlessly slowly,
tantalizingly slow,
causing him great anguish and letting her sadistic humor known to all..
he lashed out and traps her in his iron eyes transfixed on lips so full and soft as crimson color them tricking down her body hungrily eating her perfect curves he kisses her
hard throwing themselves down a bottom less pit entangled in passion he forces her legs apart he slams into her as she drips wet in anticipation..
She moans breathlessly in extract, her ***** like velvet greedily devours his hardened **** of stone repeatedly ****** her innocence, tired bodies continuously fall exhausted.
She tried to flee, but his fires flamed inside hotly he takes her again.
His embrace hard, intense
his iron will dominating her.
Breaking her wild spirit, she gasps as he unleashes a relentless force inside her driving her to the edge of sanity and back again.
Her eyes close for the last time giving into his dominance
she embraced him.
Her wild flaming spirit shattered knowing that as he worships her it is she who is forever a slave of their passionate love,
melding bodies together,
as they fall endlessly in the abyss.
Apr 13, 2022
Apr 13, 2022 at 9:04 PM UTC
The clouds that gathered turned to rain
The candles on your sill burned out
The weather on your face
Turned to match the mood outside
Reading through poems that you saved
That make the gloomy hours make sense
Or do they lose their power
With the yellowing of age
I saw you suffering
Through a foggy window in the rain
When you thought no one was watching, yeah
Going through your memories
Like so many prisons to escape
And become someone else
With another face
And another name
No more suffering
You sold the best of yourself out
On a chain of gray and white lies
One syllable at a time
You should have made them pay
A higher price
I saw you suffering
Through the cracked and ***** window pane
I was ashamed that I was watching, yeah
Going through your imagination
Looking for a life you could create
And become somebody else, yeah
With another face
With another name
No more suffering
I wish that I could find a seed
And plant a tree that grows so high
So that I could climb
And harvest the ripe stars
For you and I to drink
And spit the ashes from our mouths
And put the gray back in the clouds
And send them packing with our bags
Of old regrets and sorrows
'Cause they don't do a thing but drag us down
So far down
The past is like a braided rope
Each moment tightly coiled inside
I saw you suffering
Through the yellow window of a train
With everybody watching, yeah
Too tired for imagining
That you could ever love somebody else
From somewhere far away
From another time
And another place
With another life
And another face
And another name
And another name
No more suffering
May 23, 2017
May 23, 2017 at 3:20 AM UTC
People tell me with hushed lips and pained irises,
(pain really only flickers and quietly sinks deep within the absolute oblivions of you.)
that it will get better.
"You grieve, I have done it. Every person has."
Not for this one.
Not for him or her that is.
She had the sort of wittiness that would cut right though that
buttery feeling of warmth
wisped from
one hell of
a
smile.
Guess whose?
He had one of the loveliest voices, one that lulls your tired eyelids to much needed sleep.
A voice that will inexplicably grasp your fingertips when you feel utterly lost and breathless with pain.
And, I could go
*on,
on
&
on.*
Just that my very voice will be cracked
by
the
sweet, bitter
goodbye
whispered by
the yellowing memories
of
them.
Apr 12, 2014
Apr 12, 2014 at 8:50 AM UTC
Crossing the field
One foot after the other,
Grass under my feet,
Clay staining my skin red
With each heavy step.
I drag along,
Instead of flying past like I once did.
My each step is slow and hesitant,
Instant of a leap and a lunge
Towards whatever the future may hold.
And grasshoppers
And little moths and fireflies
Float and hop around me,
As the sun settles behind the Earth,
And the moon rises into the sky.
The grass is green, but yellowing,
And leaves decay at my feet.
Spirals of red and orange leaves
Spin around me a thousand times,
And the falling stars caress
My moonlit skin.
I am the night time,
And I don't want to be.
I am when the wolves and coyotes sing mournful songs,
I am when the foxes and cats come out to hunt.
I am the night time,
And I creep across golden fields
As slowly as the gold fades to gray,
Where the sky touches the earth.
And I want to be warmed by the sunlight,
But I am shivering and cold,
Within my shadow realm.
I sit within the tall grasses,
Amongst the trees that sway in
The harsh winter winds.
I feed off moon flowers and snapdragons,
Yearning to find a daffodil for myself.
And the warmth of the sun calls me home,
But I want to be bask in the light,
Instead I blow away,
And I disappear.
And as I prance and spin in the evening,
Casting rays of blue twilight across the landscape,
My brown eyes catch your blue,
And while I believe you can't see me,
I hope to the moon and back that you do.
I am the spirit of the night time,
But your eyes are like the day's sky,
And I could stare into your sunlight lined iris's
For eternity upon eternity.
And with fluttering wings,
I painted you stars in the royal violet and navy sky,
I prayed that you'd make me yours,
But I was impatient
And you fell along with me
Into the realm where
Landscape meets starscape,
And the blues of the night
Met the greens of the day,
And I'll love you forever
Where the sky touches the earth.
Oct 23, 2016
Oct 23, 2016 at 7:53 PM UTC
sunscreen , wet cement. i taste sweat
at the collarbone crevice below yr neck. all of us
hot spring eyes , pussing blisters bleeding down
naked heels. it's ******* hot here in the shade
of heaven. i want off the ride
popping pimples at the bathroom sink
yellowing from the blood , from the dirt we
pick up by touching each other
but i run the tongue , baby, the whole
apartment smells like a bath bomb. i need
to burst open beneath your mouth, slice the grape fruit in
thin pieces. imagine the day when my hair grows back:
then we'll know suffering has learned to love the space
under the bed
where our bodies used to be
so in this night terror
i play the fishnet stockings of a long
legged woman. struggling against
them, you drown between my thighs
like this. we squirm in the humidity of the night
like this.
then in the next,
i go missing at a family party and you look for me,
i'm waiting to surprise you in a childhood closet, i'm in
the kitchen washing dishes so you get to put yr hands
around me. the world knows i'm in love with you so no one
will complain.
and every terror begins as gentle as this, when
you round the corner to the bathroom and i'm in
the tub. what are you doing
i'm smiling
what are you doing
what does it look like i'm doing
that funny little animal , how badly you want it
to be out loud. then we can't paint the goat blood on our
door, we can't let god pass us over. yr knees are locked
and my veins are loaded. here, you hold the gun. the lamb
is ready for slaughter.
a bunch of empty guts, some tylenol buried
in clammy hands you come in an hour
back to knock on the door: i told
them you got sick
thank you
don't come home tonight
thank you
i powder my nose and the holiday
lights are strung before thanksgiving. you
will keep climbing mountains with the blonde
arm hairs of the glad hearts. you are too good to
go looking in lower places;
you are too good to **** a hound of hell.
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 6, 2014 at 6:25 PM UTC