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Best Poems Written by Akira Gollihue

Below are the all-time best Akira Gollihue poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Osiris

To the end, the Home will uproot itself in nomadic urge -
The Flesh will ache to lift as paper from its delicate strands 
 with their reddy pulse, to float off as the slip of a dove
and bask with the world in a kitey splendor
 and unbound from bitter ink, 
and proudly Naked to the next beginning.

The Skin wishes to dirty itself,
 soles in urban sewage and belly in a ritual mud.
The Skin wants to be tattooed, marked, and symphonically
 Undefined. The Skin wants to be held.

 And what of the Brain? Oh, You clumsy, grey thing, 
How You whine to create, how You noisily rustle with blurred Eurekas
 in Your shaking box, how stubborn! And too clean!
You must train each day to soften Your concrete, 
  and finger the soil in. You throb to be spoken to,

And Tongue: You throb to speak.
 You want an exercise that dumbly bends You in 
unfamiliar manner, You want Your spine to heavily crack, 
 to be understood and answered in turn 
by another fluid, pink leech.
 
 Lungs, You must breathe!
Expand proudly, thin sails! 
 Exhale rusted screams and gossamer whispers
to tell them who You are. 
 To proclaim Your bit of earth,
to which You are purposed a return, 
 a carbon christening.

The two jelly-eggs of the Eyes beg the colors,
 They stubbornly will the whitened pokes in a black-blanketed sky.
And They must recognize the special ones They dilate for,
 memorize each canyon and all their pebbles
for the day they are curtained.

 And ears, You flat, blushing roses, You micey rounds;
You know Your purpose well. Let the instruments seduce You,  
 And the words of another prick Your delicate hairs.
Receive the good news - 
 that You are loved.

Now, scatter, scatter!
 Seek every crevice, 
and fit yourself to each corner untouched.
 Cradle the empty, fill the cups.
It is not until You know all the world and hold every bone
 That You will join to birth the infant Soul.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Rubies In a Bird

A campaign for a bloody jewel!
The gold is in mine insides. Dig through if the greed
So eats you, so seduces you.

Do not fear me for risk of dirty hands; 
If you are afraid of the conspicuous coal-scuffs that would be,
here are gloves.
I pieced them over months of lambs I loved.
The ultimate communion in honor of all-others.

It so bothers the wolves, to be silent - 
They prefer a singing prey which will narrate its own death
As a loving manuscript, a classic opera!
And the fall of a wailing Athena, to please the 
Witch-burning crowds, chewing their cinnamon

But, I never have screamed. My chords a botched surgery
To fix the brain which resides in a concrete block, to chisel out
A fossil that has ever only frustrated.

I flee to some yolk-soaked desert that coats me like crumbs
As I tumble, run, purposed to be devoured by bronze brazen waves
With faces, they.
I am some sought treasure, 
A wedding ring plucked from a pheasant's wing
And set aside in a pearled bowl while the bird is consumed
As Sunday's supper. 
A life a-chase, a slack-handed clock's base.
It is to be a pigeon stuffed to brim 
With aging jade.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Bread and Lemonade

One
What good is it, to complicate flesh and bone you've yet to know?
 To paint portrait a brain only seeing the mask-y Face, 
It is a canvas that is sure to lie.
 What use is it, to flee a golden palace for a teeming forest?
When you keep a garden, pregnant with bosoms
 And blooming fruits, wet juice down your chin,
Why be curious for soil that may only beget soil?
 Siddhartha and I find ourselves akin. Such possibility!
We starve. Him on Bread, I on words.

Two
I find myself encase in gasping silver, floating on some Orinoco,
 Holes poked to host the dry elbows, the crooked knees.
It is a peculiar box, and three sizes too small.
 It is a sponge sighed shut to a scallop.
Do you know how it feels to breathe Ocean?
 No. You've only once choked on your bathwater,
And birthed a conniption.
 I breathe it every day. The lungs were only made for air.
But it is not my place to curse God's hands; it is to swallow you whole.
 Would you be satisfied, Jonah, o Geppetto?  
You would feel just how tight the casket is,
 Rather than the sip of your sugared Lemonade.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Museum

This is a monument.

It was born from us a town illegitimate; we never married.
 A great hall of artifacts, plucked still-gunked from our livers,
Others clean-picked from our birdy bones.
 Over there you had loved me, there I spooled my sobs.
Here, the streetcar - windows fogged with our laughs.
 We would visit this dead museum, 
with crumpled dollars to smash through the box-office slats.
 We would laugh at the silly, dead fossils.

Now I am alone, inhabiting it like restless taxidermy.
 I call you through each dusty chamber,
Every dull ceramic and jaded mask.
 I regress to a baby one hundred miles a moment,
My nightgown heavy and helplessly slumping down my shoulders
 And not even your body: dried, tattooed, is on display.
Your insides are not carefully dissected, labelled in a looming case.
 Your wings and your pulsing pink eyes lay on no proud board,
Your legs are not zip-tied, toes not tagged and inkily named.
  You are not Americana Exotica - 
You are more elusive.

 You're exploring one thousand Arabias 
While I breathe sarcophagus air,
 Befriend the flogged and leathered skins.
There is only my lonely feet.

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Whims

A hot tongue, voodooed soul.
Determined, a small and nameless bird.
My teeth, my teeth too shy for bones,
My words too old for stones.
My spine lights for batten eye,
a half-shoulder caramelling othercold.

Spit thick.
Mouths on your hands, 
they go to party icing, they chew their meat,
Carry thin sticks. 
Fishy minds swished in dishwaters
Spooned from each sea.

O, brainy Atlases.
How you hold your lumpy lints,
your tumbleweeds wet wares
of women sipping the night,
hair chewed as treegums.

I'm the night train.
Chuff-chuffing you away, my tender bump!
We leave a trail a sigh.
We feed the baby birdie beaks open wide
as we sail by.
We toss gold like rice and diamond,
puddled skipping pebbles.

But you,
you've made me a ring of brick.
You've made me a house 
of the best styrofoam.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Amygdali

This brain has ripened its bruises, and bursted
in a desperate spasm of words, words, words.
 My lips slip, pucker, and fold, twin gods
Enlivened, electrified as they mold the steady "Om" of my throat,
 to thoughts, to thoughts.
They are tenderly birthed to you for a cold world
 Bloody, waxen, and new
Squirming and eager to meet the skin of your ears, 
 man's bold anvils and hammers, to untamed, unconquered vines, 
your Mind!  And how I throb without will for its sparks!
 I will slowly swim against the rush of you axons,
mate your soma as if I never loved.
 I would gladly absorb into all of it, would fuel the hurricane
That sends its rubies down to the soft earth,
 if Only I'd be a small observer
kindly tucked in the pinky folds of your thought-wad.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Slum

My manuscripts are hers.
I find no solace in puddles, 
 no security in single, silver spoons.
She is there, always.
 
 My breath is not safe.
Her ghosts floats out in puffs,
that so go to the very ozone.
Like a dirty cigarette from my nose,
(I am like a Frenchman in these moments)
  She occupies the coldest days.

And I veil my face with this shameful mantilla, knowing
that nobody knows her in God's walls. 
 She never breathed on God's walls.

I gasp tiny sighs with silk and milk against my cheeks,
and steadfast arms hold, hugging my own, 
forcefully making my home 
that houses two curtains.

(I never loved that Sun)
It was sang to me each day, a voyage through her lips
until she died to leave a poor man's replacement behind;
a machine that knew how to boil broths and rice,
to switch on the lights.

I am a bowl for her spit, an ashtray
for her choking paper stubs.
A basin for the sickness.
That is I, 
I, I, I never knew you.

My wrists are wrapped in twine, soon to be sold
for a dime, for a dime.
Night by nightly I see she, 
known by her smell and the way she
forces me into the truck, 
The Judentruck.

Her froggy eyes marvel the world like a lazy fly.
I know her, because she appears as I, 
if I surrendered an earthly life
for the height of the Everest, Appalachians, 
for the sight of atmospheric curvature
full as her fat, happy belly, full jug
full stop.

Clam-hands smother my mouth and again,
the smell of China. 
Each night I am under again.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

Birthday

The summer labored against an agonized yawn,
and through its sweated lips
withdrew a round fruit.
It is too big to ask how it had ever fit.
She collapses and withers, her waters
vaporing skyward, no afterbirth brought forth.
I take the fruit.
It is fresh and red and promising,
and a great parallel to the shriveled season
that lays quieted in her phoenix-ashes. 
It is warm.
You lay in it, in all your babied splendor,
you curl in its yolky folds.
I am the new mother, with a feverish pride,
the blood-beaded brow.
I bite, bite the crisp stone, and drink you in.
I feel your bones, my bones
and all your veins take hold.
Your eyes unfurl as ship sails, over mine.

Details | Akira Gollihue Poem

A Night Letter

I knew you'd take pleasure in knowing
That I heavily drew myself from the bed,
Feeling for parchment and the familiar cylinder of my pen.
Giving up the rest in favor of curling, inky words,
to unravel the scribbly blends in the stubborn cranium.
Like a geranium aching to bloom,
(A throbbing edge)
So I will say that you are a smug stepstool
To save my toes from a cold mud,
With one, shaking leg that will hold long enough
For me to barely reach a safe pasture.
I always wanted to save you. 
I still do.
You scare them all, and your smiles are weighted by a hostile eye.
They are eyes that remind me too well
Of the fish in the drying lakes who swim in doomed circles, circles,
Finningly pacing and withheld the grace of one more pebble to gaze,
The water films and the mudseams split and crack.
I follow my own endeavors with this eagerness,
I trace the string excitedly, and I forget you are behind me.
The house you've begrudgingly withdrawn yourself in 
Begins to be but a hermited shadow with a candled center,
A modest flame shying to a nub and finding it quite hard to breathe.
You hoard your waxy lump, your nurse the flame with small gasps.
I pity you.
The fire that once toasted your milky bones struggles
To warms your silvered magnet fingertips, I pity you.
And I go on, off, and away.
My face heavies as I draw the lax phrases to you, 
The ones which have swam through hundreds 
Of dry mouths and beggarlips.
It is best to decide that I won't give you the satisfaction
Of two pages, a loving couple of salted nothings.
If I did, you would stumble over the edge in a fit of rapture.
I decided to sleep again, with the weight gifted 
To your martyry back.

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Writer's Block

The pen has betrayed me! 
The ink has swallowed me as spit on a fly.
I burn pages with fiery lightning bug breaths
That spill from pokey jar-holes.
If I touched flame I'd very well melt to the floor.
I would bleach your Turkish rugs.
I would ruin the drapes.
And I, a sighing house abandoned.
An echo of Hillary on his mountain.
A babe buried by Antoinette.
What I would write, I would write
if I could!
I may have a blind mouth.
I may be a beaten moth against railroad lamps.
I still hear that old pen laughing, oh enemy
That I could never leave.
I curse you only to nurse from you,
for the nourishment a mother forgot to give.
I always tended to settle, any ways.
I always intended to stay.
Some days silence is a newspaper-holding man,
that glances to me for a moment, 
Just to call me a mutt.
But others days I am sick, and it is
Warm blankets and a wet washcloth on my head.
Pen knows this too well.
A trade to swear soul to an ink.