Best Unsewn Poems
Sewing machine long idle, gathered dust
inside the room my sister liked the best.
Old fabric pieces lay where they’d been left.
I let my hand upon soft velvet rest.
I lit a candle like she used to do
nights of our youth when she’d gone there to keep
her mind off her young groom who’d gone to war
and not returned. Sometimes I’d hear her weep.
The war years seemed like only yesterday
when mother , then my sister, passed away.
All those years she’d sewn for pay, heart-broken!
She’d chosen - with our mom - alone to stay.
My fingers lingered on the velvet meant
to have been worn by her so as to spark
romance with her lost love. Unsewn it lay.
The candle sputtered, spent, and all was dark.
April 28, 2018 for Viv Wigley's One nine and sixteen poetry contest
(total fiction except I have a sister who loved to sew!)
Lackluster lives filled with emptiness
Around us everywhere
But … seldom do we notice
They are even there
For we have lives of import –
Things of urgency
Making our time busy -
It’s our dependency.
We do not see the child who
Needs our time alone
To comfort, guide and teach them
So their thoughts remain: unsewn.
Then there are the aged
Abandoned in their cocoons
Of experience and history
But … ‘tis we who are marooned.
We ARE our brother’s keeper
But … if we are self-obsessed,
How then can we consider:
‘Tis we, the ones are blessed?
Stretched t-shirt, chains, a mournful tune,
wide smiling guy, a book unsewn,
light hands, light hand, a happy ending,
few hearty words, heaven's wide champaign,
black and white cat and vivid dreams
in which I'm scared and guy's obscene,
this spring and what's to spring of it,
vanilla shake, banana split
and all my love - somehow diffused:
you every now and then get used
to any kind of any lie...
In sober fact I would have died
for happy endings on and on.
And if you doubt, then - yes, that corn.
13.03. 2013
What sort of life
Is taken away
Without a word
Without a say
From a life unknown
Unsewn to her side
Just left to slide
Into an unknown tomb
Ripped from the womb
That lies empty
Surrounded by plenty
Of long, happy lives
So we strive
To burn our hurt, our rage
Turn over another page
And move on from the grief
Spilt out from that brief
Elapse of time
But I don’t feel fine,
Or know how to remember
How to dismember
This event from my mind
And I yearn to find
A memory to create
And abate
These feelings that I’ve left you alone
On your own
With no love surrounding you
No future to renew
No reality born
Just torn
From our empty lives
I’m so sorry (I will never forget you)
To all known shades, O virtuous Hinds,
With peerless hunger of a sordid kind:
Cover your ears. Cover
Your spirit.
Do not
Put the watered pot beneath the sun, that neutral sun
That struggles not to save you, but shall come undone,
Unraveling some haunting memory
You cannot help but don
Like your favorite sweater unsewn, not forgotten,
For it was you who was rotten.
Do Not Enter.
Like me, you chuckled. Yes, who are they
To force us away? Who are they, indeed.
I shall make a deal with you, friend:
In my hand is the answer why you mustn't descend.
Valhalla…Valhalla…I stood without weapon.
And then…no.
Our hands have not yet converged for shake,
So why do you recoil?
Is it truly, truly, and marv'lously apparent
that the Spleen lives in my soil?
The sea gallons
Through a funnel.
The funnel
in the Tunnel of Love
in the Tunnel of William
in the Tunnel of dark matter;
A face stuck in the mirror shall shatter.
Emerald City. Do Not Enter.
Do
You Understand?
For as the hands of an evil flower give a soundless scream
I reach for the shaving cream—
Nick my neck. I wish to own that neck.
Stand right here without a trace, come through my eyes,
and now, Dear Wise: Do You
Dance? Where art thou lance? And my stance:
I fear that I cannot perform advanced
A flying trapeze peripheral hand-stand.
Curiously down on a fresh wick,
Curiouser and Curiouser
Is the world's smile—but who shall be there
To see only the smile
And not the body
Smiling?
The Ice after the Fire
Syncopating?
I shall wonder and ache, pale and queasy...
I shall hear Reap wed to Infinity oblique for us
The sabers slake to sell my musk
The sun glides into the room
My room
Lacking light,
Backsliding sunlight from a desire-glot,
Though Desire has served me well.
About as well
As a tumble down three old flights of stairs,
whence I've chuckled into a box of airs,
asking, O, Where?
The swirling clouds in endless motion
are a sharp reminder, like an unsewn tear,
as to the reason, the wondering of
why you would not dare.
The memories flood me,
I cannot breathe;
I gasp for air; anything;
still; you are all I see.
Like a weeping willow
gently blowing in the wind,
I am still standing tall,
through tears streaming down my chin.
You are so close, yet so very far;
too scared to make a move;
you want so much to touch me;
yet you choose to remain aloof;
why would you not dare.
I have given you my heart, my trust
my innermost thoughts,
yet sadly, we continue to drift further apart;
why would you not dare.
To let go, would be to let go of us;
these words are what we solemly vowed;
with truth and with love, to always share;
why would you not dare.
How do we keep us blossoming
when we lead two seperate lives;
I will fight for us both;
please take your hand in mine.
Why would you not dare.
Flickering in— out.
Wounds stitched with fidgeting,
Fisted finality.
She is.
She was.
There was a dream for which I was awake,
A glorified foolishness and tragic mistake.
Love—O love!
Like a feverish thief, she reels,
From my arms to the bed—
From my head over heels.
O, you beautiful disaster,
You fictitious lure,
You ponderous nothingness,
Imprudent and impure.
Like petals, I shed,
Nude and undone.
Sheared and severe—
A moon without sun.
Swiftly I buckled at your unfettered charm,
As your fingertips caressingly weaved down my arm.
And surrendered myself like a teetering child,
Standing aghast at the gate to the wild.
Liar.
The word yanks at the stitches that burst unsewn,
Shrieks into the deafness of happiness once known.
Now I know.
Now I do.
How I had such grandiose feelings for you—
They were as slippery as god;
They were thick and reeked of rain.
And though jarred and disenchanted,
They somehow still remain.
Even so, you are just a thing,
With one mouth and two eyes.
And kissable lips that fleetingly dripped
The most gorgeous string of lies.
Wanted: Slinger of Mirrors,
Tessellating lungs of fulcrum
Wading into scorn’s yellow Spring pond
We are flying to the airway Of. I hunger for our old hunger.
We dealt our Hand and every Star
Only one pond my reflection’s gunning donned
To see bullets’ sound is bedlam
Every pothole in my ear. Another night—come away from there.
That mixture will do no harm, I
Jolting flies.
Happiness arcades.
But if midnight settles down about my knees, about chest-high,
you must be this high to ride
Molting lies.
Effortless charades.
I never thought you would want me to shoot you again. Close your eyes.
Open your mind. Open
something degrading. something small something ready. Opening your eyes, y’know what I call thought? Deadly. Transmuting the world: Deadly.
Do you believe it will change a thing? Can’t.
And you know. The worst essence of mankind opens; jumps out of the garden.
Make a garden wave goodbye,
and wonder if you will ever see that hand, handing over blood
driven mad, stop
at a gas station and whistle to the ancients. Play a song that fulfills
every heart. Play me yours,
Talentless bouquets.
Every try.
My voice is a mirror I am Satan in the morning in the mirror cannot free what I wish not to be
Poisonous parades.
Speak until wine.
Every bullet hole through Vegas in my migraine headache vice grip orchestral jacket unsewn
sewn. As though the knitting of cruelty into facets of time were designed
in hopes that you and I
would not be overflowing with...oh, it evades me, I looked in the mirror
I should have looked
The bullet tore; bled laughter; silver; more
we dealt with spires of Fear. We built here. Seeking to speak.
Left and Right became unwound beneath the planet's rotation.
At the airway Of, my old wound sings the blues of the gun shooting
Wanted: Slinger of Mirrors
its the end inside my head
i must say goodbye my dear
friend
im entering the unknown
im slowly starting to unravel
and become unsewn
you must not figure who i am
for i am no one
no one to be loved, no one
forgotten, no one to grieved
when the end is truly received
i will not be one loved, i will
not be one forgotten
for there there there is
nothing to forget
but this mere note of
uncertainty and confusion
Baby I keep dreaming of you
Walking down this lonely avenue
Well I saw a picture of you in a clothing store on the wall
You had your famous beauty with you and all
The tangles in my mind started to itch
And my old wounds began to unstitch
Baby I can’t take these blues anymore
Well I strolled through an old electronic store
Saw your face on the T.V. for a make-up company
You’re living with success now and you’re heart is free
I stilll remember the days that were all too short
We took a road trip all the way to New York
And we shared spaghetti with the same fork
We walked through Time Square while the music played
We danced all night long and your heart was displayed
That night made our love so much stronger
I wish we could have stayed there longer
Well those were days of tenderness and laughter
And we thought we’d live happily ever after
We said that our love would never fall apart
Well, it’s been 10 years and I’ve still got a blue heart
Now you live in fame and everyone knows your name
While I live with a self- blame and a heart full of shame
And baby I keep dreaming of you
I wonder if you dream of me too
Well I’m walking down this lonely avenue
Trying to find something for my mind to do
‘Cause baby I can’t stop thinking about you
I remember sittin’ on a window sill
Just you and I, the moon and the stars in the sky
The words you said are clear to me still
“I’m going away for a while, so this is goodbye”
All that you left me was a sad kiss and a tearful sigh
You stood up and you walked out my front door
And I knew I would never see you anymore
I knew I’d never see your heart again
And that’s how our love came to an end
Baby I’ve been dreaming of you again
Well I’m slowly walking on down these lonely avenue’s
Trying to forget these”My ex-girlfriend is famous" blues
And now the sun’s going down and everyone’s going on home
I keep walking across town, drunk and cold with a name unknown
Depression is a coat I wear constantly now
It used to hang in the closet now and then
I’d take it out to see if it fits and put it back
Its drab colors are enticing when I’m bare
I’d take it off misbelieving I still could
It was too costly to wear all the time
After what I’ve been through the size fits
Now, I can’t make the coat unzip
I see others in the spotlight strutting bare
With a coat on I swelter in joy’s lamp
I used to say just in case it pours inside
Then I'd run to the closet like a model
But, it's now knitted in skin in any weather
Now I know I'll wear it for my open casket
Its corduroy will no longer shroud my joys
Its diagnosis will be unsewn then
Even with no rain, I am bundled up
The soggy jacket knows me too well
It has stitched itself into my persona
It repels me from happiness at times
With no choice, I’ll act presentable
It never disappoints despite catcalls
That coat that never falls on the runway
So, I’ll make depression a fashion show
love is eternal
when it is true
life has a way of teaching you
showing you everything you can own
leaving you all alone
the whole world isn't always true
showing you everything you can own
it teases you into taking
then leads you to the point of breaking
leaving you all alone
love is eternal
showing you everything you can own
in this world of sewn-unsewn
leaving you all alone
love is eternal
when it is true
love is eternal
Sponsor Emile Pinet Jan 23, 2022
Contest Name Meditative Ballad
I flipped a cigarette into the well,
Then an explosion came from hell.
You think I jest, how could this be?
I must be distressed, in my own company.
In my own company?
You mean I am alone?
If so who are all those around me,
Who made my tombstone?
In each life there is also death,
But in death there is also life,
For nothing is ever wasted.
The unknown is unsewn,
But is all around my headstone.
Someday I will know,
All there is to know,
But on that day,
I will be no more.
I never sleep well when others are wrecked.
Half-awake in my dreams, my blessed life sealed,
Not a victim of history’s fate or neglect.
Divine will, a remnant, he lived to see the light.
Through perished skeletons, ashes of those who once stood proud,
he endured the torment to pen the “Night”.
Echoed words of wisdom from years of anguish
The souls he knew, seeds unsewn,
swallowed by the hollowed abyss where forever they languish.
Hallowed be their names, loved ones so cherished.
Vanished into vapors of grim darkness,
six million perished.
But the sun would shine again for those victims of history's fate.
Their seeds now trees of spirits unextinguished,
not forgotten by the earth from where they originate.
So, as I ruminate, blistering thoughts resonate.
I know that only time and place have sealed my blessed fate,
from the perils of indifference and hate
ever failing to abate.
The pair should be headed for fame
Behind, in the draw’r, out of aim.
He was the one left,
Not right; he’s bereft.
The sock was not chosen for game.
The sock was not chosen, and why?
Embarrassing gaff, he could die.
Uncool was his sole.
Unsewn, had a hole.
His match did not stop to say bye.
The right, he returned, with his win.
New left was alright with his skin.
Ignored was old sock.
Tossed out like a rock.
He’s bitter and holey as sin.