Best Bone Dry Poems
In November I write of winter
for I am weary of the old year and tired bones
I visualize all hardships blanketed with fresh snowfall
geese in a "V" as they flee on trade winds to the south
season's celebrations, toasting in the new year
senior couples delighting in a luminous sunset
knowing it might be their last together
In February I write of spring
for I am weary of the bone-chilling cold
I envision the circle of life resurrecting dormant earth and tired souls
zephyr winds teasing nascent flower petals and young hummingbirds
mayday flower crowns adorning laughing children
young lovers sharing kisses, dreaming dreams of
infinite possibilities
In May I write of summer
for I am weary of the bone-soaking rain
I forecast cloudless skies and longer days
Santa Ana winds dismissing every chill
a lark's lilting lullaby lulling loons on the lake
vacationing families basking in the warm outdoors
brides and grooms viewing limitless horizons
In August I write of autumn
for I am weary of the bone-dry heat
I anticipate bewitching fall winds tantalizing neon maple leaves
turkeys gobbling, ducks wobbling, thrushes warbling
harvest home throbbing with the aroma of fresh pie
middle age couples cuddling by the fireplace
giving thanks for all that lies behind and ahead
Lord, help me to view the past with grace,
the future with hope,
the present with contentment,
and to write of November
in November.
written 25 October 2021
I waded with a cross through sea beds
bone-dry now of torrential rains
from last night's summer storm
my arms carrying the boat to treeless banks
And heard whispers , an angelic song
amen-rowing from distant shores
drowned by thunder-shouts of repentance
from a rainstorm world that could end no sooner
than tomorrow, bleeding the shore...
Our town world did not end yet,
but it could be near as the fork
from a raging gale became a drowning plate
gushing into bones, scabs of children... dead.
What force came to the Sea of Noah
after the third , fourth day ended in pain?
Today, I ask,where shall i cast my nets
when the light of calm wipes out, shuts down?
SKAT's Deep And Dark Contest
Another Christmas day is finally here
The very thought fills me with such fear
I have to try and control my old Aunty Mable
Once she hits the gin she gets very unstable
Uncle Arthur rushes in and opens the sherry
then sups half the bottle and gets really merry
He begins to sing carols at the top of his voice
I put up with the din… I don’t have much choice!
The last to arrive are old Gladys and Bert
Bert always wears his distasteful Santa shirt
Gladys walks through the door and starts to moan
I wish Bert would leave the old cow at home!
She whines from the moment she removes her coat
And heads for the sofa and grabs the remote
Demanding she has her dinner on her knee -
There’s some crap on the TV that she wants to see
I politely tell Gladys the dinner table is set
And the film will be repeated of that you can bet
So she sits at the table and picks at her starter
then moans very loudly to poor Uncle Arthur
The table’s soon laden with wonderful food
But Gladys is seething, she’s so blinking rude
She says the turkey’s tasteless and it's bone dry
So I pass her the gravy and I try not to cry
Bert finishes the bowl of chestnuts and sprouts
He’ll be passing foul wind in copious amounts
After rich figgy pud he crams in six mince pies …
It’s no wonder he’s gross with huge wobbly thighs
They descend on me each and every year
And eat all my food my wine and my beer
Then we open the gifts that lie under the tree
As per usual they bring just one present for me
Gladys has knitted me a horrendous jumper
it's two sizes too large, I just want to thump her
I dutifully put in on and I feign my delight …
but it will be in the rubbish bin later tonight!
At three we watch The Queen on the telly
Bert’s farting begins; the room gets so smelly
Within minute’s they’re snoring away in their chair
I retreat to the kitchen and silently swear
By the time they wake up all the dishes are done
The doorbell rings; thank god their taxi has come!
This is the LAST time they'll take advantage of me …
Cos I've booked a yule cruise on the Caribbean sea!
Fiction write
12/14/17
1. INCIPIENT
the smell of burning body helps me sleep at night
i'd rather ignite this spark in my stomach than shove bread down my throat
singe this hollow home
choke these lungs with bone dry soil so nothing can grow
and maybe they brainwashed me
or i did it to myself
but all of my dreams lead to being skin and bones
the humming of crackling wood whispers
"starve"
i listen
the humming of crackling body whispers
"this is all your fault"
2. GROWTH
this skin is getting too hot to live in
i, the embodiment of a fire breathing dragon
i hunch over
choke on second hand smoke
and misconceptions
there are so many ways to feed into desperate
too many ways to swallow yourself whole
i let this esophagus sizzle and cry
i lie arms spread naked on the bathroom floor catching my breath
a slab of meat thrown onto a cackling grill
fatty and full of blood
sized up and bitten into
violated by my own opinions of beautiful
where bitter
where acidic
where a dysmorphic enemy does not linger
nibbling at my tonsils
3. FULLY DEVELOPED
i am engulfed in flames
these charred hands stain my body with words like
"bony"
like "thin"
like "sick"
this flesh can't escape the freezing creeping up on my being
the trembling of limbs
the chattering of teeth
is a physical trophy
"congratulations!" you are one flicker away from broken
winter almost melts me
christmas and thanksgiving
piles of food fresh like flesh mocking me
rotting in front of me
a mirror image of my organs and intestines
abandoned and squeezed
some sort of puzzle
pieces twisting and breaking
i sit quietly
they ask "aren't you hungry?"
i don't tell them that it is too late for this fire to be put out
or how often i dream of drowning
4. DECAY
a guilty arsonist
i toss my lights and my matches
sweep up the ashes
what is left of my home
and i start building
i blow out the candles
shove my hands into the wreckage and chew it up
i won't spit it out this time
i fill myself up
i introduce myself to my reflection
say,
"hello. i am healthy"
say,
"i've missed you"
a phoenix flies over a body she burned
a city she burned
a world that she burned
says
"go. go find out what happiness tastes like"
This very morning when I awoke, I thought someone had played a joke. I checked the pot, it was bone dry. I checked the pantry and started to cry - no coffee!
So, I got dressed for work...real slow. I had no drive, no pep, no go. I drove to work, barely awake - I wanted to stop but I was already late - no coffee!
I parked the car and walked inside, but when I heard the news I almost died. The vendor took the machine away, and it damned sure won't be back today - no coffee!
The boss said that we should not worry, he'd send for caffeine in a hurry. But when it arrived, in thermos bright, it seemed to lack the usual bite of coffee.
No Columbian or Kona blend, nor even French roast dwelt within. It was a mix, exotic flavors, that only yuppie scum could savor - not coffee!
A mocha-chino-berry stink that no one in that crowd would drink. That morning dragged incessantly, and no one acted pleasantly - no coffee!
When lunch time came we fled the scene of the luke-warm, slurpy, berry thing. We marched down to the restaurant and told the waitress, "All we want is coffee"!
By end of day no one was tired. The caffeine high had everyone wired. I've learned my lesson, oh so well, that without coffee life is hell. And I'm an addict, monster, fiend, and slave unto the coffee bean - yeah, coffee.
The black-as-widow’s-weeds night of endless stars
was so cold...
cruel as temperature
plunged its frigid fingers feeling through my being
fondling my heart and soul without mercy
molesting me - taunting my will to live
and just when I thought
the ice water in my shivering veins would kill me
there she was
she came shyly at first
demurely spreading
her pinkening skirts over the horizon
while her blushing complexion
deftly gelded the darkness
I prayed-I pleaded-I made deals
(with who? you don’t want to know..)
that her warming smile would be my saving grace…
It began to slowly dawn on me
as she flexed her sinewy heat waves
flaunting her solar power
that I was caught
between false hope and no deliverance
for the desert sunrise-to-sunset
now faced-off and challenged me
with barren bone-dry intensity
sucking dry the new dew
and any life
containing moisture
weathered granular remains
of ancient feldspar and quartz
with eons of sifting and shifting boredom
took on a hell-raising life of their own
as the fire-breathing celestial sorceress casted spells
of smoke and mirror mirages
and magically made ridges of rippling blond sands
glisten like scales of a million skimming sidewinders
writhing in joy at my agony—
it’s amazing
how cold I feel when I have been so burned
again I face a desolate night
— deserted —
without a blanket
Susan Ashley
April 29, 2018
Widow’s Weeds: For women of 19th century England, a custom of mourning that involved wearing heavy, concealing, black clothing and the use of heavy veils of black crepe. The entire ensemble was colloquially known as ‘widow’s weeds’.
Mourning - Wikipedia
Brain is crackling, crisp, ivory bone dry
Gremlin stuffing cotton behind my eyes
Head begins to swell with torpidity
Vivid mind fading to transparency
Internal membranes breaking down
Thoughts run a deep molasses brown
'Tween thought and motion, expanding rift
Act of sheer will, the body to lift
Limbs grow wooden, ready to fall
Seek out the blessed horizontal
Cover exhaustion with soft frayed quilt
Self-indulgent moment’s guilt
Serotonin sleep dump almost disappointing
Blessed moment of irresponsibility ending
Leaden lids descend on eyes
Fading into a sky blue paradise
3/25/16
When you are confused, anxious, in pain, your stomach in a granny knot.
Near the end, nowhere to go, no friends, no family that understands.
"Stand in a field and scream," it helps, they say. I can tell you; it does not.
You've given yourself away; soul, body turned into a parking lot.
It feels like you exist only in a twilight world, a no man's land,
when you are confused, anxious, in pain, your stomach in a granny knot.
When your heart has bled bone dry to leave a shriveled purple apricot,
lover gone, left for another, even worse, you heard it second-hand,
"stand in a field and scream;" it helps, they say. I can tell you; it does not.
You've tried and tried so desperately hard, giving everything you've got.
It's like the walking of the living dead with feet in deep dark quicksand
when you are confused, anxious, in pain, your stomach in a granny knot.
When you've lost all you desire, your love, your life, your home, your Camelot,
and it's become much more than you can weather, tolerate, or withstand.
"Stand in a field and scream," it helps, they say. I can tell you; it does not.
From all I've learned in love and life, and that's a lot, here's a parting shot;
by do-gooders and hosts of influencers, it's often said offhand:
"When you are confused, anxious, in pain, your stomach in a granny knot,
stand in a field and scream; it helps," they say. I can tell you; it does not.
When heaven is shut up, and there is no rain,
because they have sinned against thee; if they
pray toward this place, and confess thy name,
and turn from their sin ...
Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the
sin of thy servants ... and give rain upon the land
1 Kings 8:35 - 36
The land is parched,
there has been no rain in over a year
The river is bone dry,
forecast says the skies will remain clear
The cattle are dying,
as are all the crops
You’re bleeding credit,
and still no sign of any raindrops
It is for certain,
a famine is afoot
The sky’s an iron curtain,
all of your savings are took
The eyes of the wife and kids,
have an empty, fatalistic look
And you cry,
because you don’t understand why
You’ve done all you can,
you even sold your best gun
Listen to the barren land,
you’ve left something undone
That holy book on the top shelf
covered in cobwebs and dust
Better open it while you’re able,
even better, in it start to trust
Although you never once
stopped praying for rain
Is it the right prayer that you’re asking?
Everyday you pray for rain,
so you can go on living
But you never asked once
to have your sins forgiven
Pray for rain
Pray for understanding
Pray for rain
Pray for forgiveness too
Go back to your first love,
your God, whom you abandoned
like an ungodly fool
Then say your prayers,
asking God to have mercy on you
>
His eyes could be the basis for a novel.
He has seen so much.
So many lives shattered like dropped glass.
He has gained so much hope,
only for it to be crushed by the dark, black masses descending from the sky.
Life is a little piece of gold in his dusty green pocket.
It becomes more valuable with each waking day.
His walk is hard and stern like the piece of machinery on his shoulders.
It weighs as heavily on him as his thoughts.
His face is creased at the hands of struggle.
The voids filled with the pieces of brown Earth.
In the lonely, bone-dry abyss he trudges through,
they graze his rigid body with every step.
Faced with danger throughout his days.
It is hard for him to keep going.
Thoughts of his one and only love.
The only thing inspiring him to push on.
At any moment he is ready to fall,
in honor of all he cares for so much.
Through the pain.
Through the suffering.
Through the hard times.
She loves him also.
Whiskers of time brush up
'gainst gossamer silk web
Slow down, slow down, they said
'Til forces impure
back off their attack
Faced down, turned-around
bone-dry bled
O, bright twinkling star
shining speck in the sky
Your place in the cosmos
matters not to my eye
I don't know if you're arid
your surface bone-dry
Or covered with water
your seas swelling high
If your atmosphere's toxic
filled with methane
Or inundated perpetually
with punishing rains
So many questions have I
aflame with curiosity
Yet they all swiftly pale
midst your luminosity
Even now I sit, slump, shuddering,
Remembering...
Stale walls echoing lamenting calls,
their house...
A nightmare flickered in the red herring of betrayal.
Stumbling hormones, skinless evil.
it breathed...
Blood red lips snarling, capturing someone else essence, bone dry.
A nightmare...
Deliberately slithering up my calf, I grasped a cube of insanity as a last hope.
The shock...
Dead eyes feared a toy box, a fragmented sense
clung to my only protection, my untouched hell.
Blood soaked, dripping sweat, saturated fear I escaped...
I awoke...
Demons hell-bent on demise. Curiosity craved,
crushed my soul into submission,
But it's just a box...
Teeth exposed, chattered, blindly shoved fingers in to catch my tongue,
the taste of soured flesh.
Wait...
A vibrating voice crackled static pain, shivered in pleasure.
He escaped...
Bargaining, a blissful retreat, whilst exposing incompetence, irrational?
Go to hell.
Run...
Pounded at death's door, let me in...
Dad...
Warned the worm of the vulture, coming to devour its soul.
Something didn't fit, the sacrifice seeping into the floor smelt half human.
A twang...
Realisation, cold, the door creaked, locked,
grinning gruesomely, the veins pulsing along a sadistic mind,
Quaking, i flinched around to a lubricated nightmare,
clenching my muscles, the hiss of hell's rapture...
A prison shook, a prisoner shrieked,
Sanity split like perfect fission, slime coated his
perverted call...
Come, to daddy.
Innocent child,
wake up from your rainbow colored dreams,
listen to the red feathered rooster,
it crows the early dawn's burden,
hang on me,
dance along with the swaying golden weeds
among the fields of corn,
watch the trees of blue and gray,
follow me on the dikes of rice fields of amber green,
look at the scarecrow,
it looks like death,
open up your eyes to the sad realities,
the common farmer of tattered clothes,
his pockets filled with mud,
he is a prisoner of a violent semi-feudalism,
with hands wrapped in callous,
bleeding while tilling the bone-dry land,
he works like a slave for his landlord.
Little child,
even the plain smells with fog,
moistened leaves keep on falling over your head,
but never close your eyes,
do not be scared to see the toiling man's stomach,
it has been empty for ages,
he is nailed on the cross of ferocious poverty,
dying,
suffering,
yet our politicians live in luxury,
do nothing but to corrupt for eternal power,
they keep on pretending as common farmer's saviors,
but they are actually scarecrows,
the angels of death,
do not trust even you admire them with sugar-coated words,
sooner they will give you the worst blow.
sweet child,
open up your mind to the relentless cruelties of this world,
the common farmer's skin is burning,
still toiling under the hell of the sun,
sweating with blood,
and his eyes are flowing with tears of agony,
yet the government does nothing to give him a decent life,
he goes to church every sunday morning,
confessing everything about liberation,
asking for freedom from the madness of hunger,
but he realizes not,
people around him,
including laymen,
also are victims of brutal political corruption.
“... The closeness of the place and the heat of the climate,
added to the number in the ship which was so crowded
that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost
suffocated us."
Olaudah Equiano, freed slave, abolitionist, merchant (1745-1797)
We were taken in by roundup-
legends of freedom, sold
heirlooms to pay for the privilege of being
crammed into a tractor-trailer like green-
ware into a kiln. The youngest
faithfully lifted her chin, Quinceañera
memories still fresh enough to almost keep
her balanced within that shifty,
blistering dark until she felt
another sharp shaft of air, a searing blast
of a bone-dry wheeze from the next pilgrim to hit
hot metal like he’d been shot in the head.
The chant began again, Santa María,
Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros
pecadores. Sweat stung our opened eyes,
clarified visions of diaspora, of coldblooded
coyotes packing cargo holds with cornered chattel.
We, the many, shackled by migrant irons. We,
a crop of people, survive only to swelter later
in tobacco rows, on countless estates, behind thick shop doors,
but each Day of the Dead, we will recount:
Mexicans lost to a hardened
geography where even breath is branded,
an absence of just one half-mast flag, anywhere, their star-
crossed national anthem, our costly escape
into undocumented slavery, how long-
suffering dreams either suffocate or hide
scars, why wheeled sloops blaze down border
highways with short-lived payloads, scammed commodities
as expendable as a shipment of spring lambs ...