my fingernails are black
below not above
do I coal mine in my sleep
it’s early morning
what is this stuff?
under every single nail
as if I’d dug myself out of a coffin
my nails could not look much worse
I try to remember my dreams
alas no clues at all
a younger me might have tasted this crud
I have finally learned
Come see my nails the excited young woman said
I went though I had a wet towel on my head
We were in the beauty shop, with faces red
Baby fish were in her nails. How could they be fed?
I was so horrified, I wanted to leave right away
But I had waited thirty minutes, so I decided to stay
Others ran over to look and said things merry and gay
I could not wait to leave; I finally ran out straight away
We look at the clean, perfect face,
feel that smoothness
against the backs of our fingers,
long to stroke it with our fingertips,
place our lips against it, sniff, rub gently.
That was yesterday.
Today, fingernails dig
into a scab on that skin.
Try to pull it off that face, let out blood?
Do you still love it,
that flesh, that skin?
That being? Today?
(11 Dec 2023)
There was an old man from Missouri.
Biting his nails, he tended to worry.
Taping his fingers to stop the bad habit,
he switched to candy wherever he could grab it,
and once he was full, he always got purry.
I see the fingernails of a nine-year-old boy
at the end of my hands
They make me laugh.
How did he get them away from me?
And how did he reattach them?
When your fingernails are excruciatingly dirty
filthy even
rather disgusting
it means one of these things:
you are a gardener
You understand and enjoy dirt therapy
Or you are one of those people
Who is dunked into a bathtub
once or twice a week wailing and screaming
Luckily I am both
Look at my nails! She said. Are they fabulous or what?
Or what, I thought, but I lied and said “fabulous.”
I could do your nails, she offered.
I wondered if she could dig all the dirt out of them first.
Or if she would put so many layers of that stuff on them
No one would see how truly dirty they were.
Also, how strong are those long points?
Will they dig in the dirt without a spade?
Can she type in them?
Can she hold a baby without puncturing it?
No thanks, I said. “I’m good.”
Fingernails begin to grow
When babies are in utero
And keep on growing ‘til we die
Though some appear to death-defy.
A person’s nails can help reveal
Why someone’s lacking in appeal;
For those not clean or way too long
Will advertise there’s something wrong.
To know what makes a person tick
Take note of nails bit to the quick,
But lengthy painted nails can tell
A lot about a gal, as well.
To polish, buff or leave them plain?
Our fingernails are our domain
And likely they are quite well matched
To those to whom they are attached.
That ether of life from which human beings and dreams are made of,
covers my fingertips as if scratching the universe and making some stars fall from their obscure space,
it drips as rigglets forming poodles at my feet,
as every dream that fell at mid flight,
as everydream shining like a star and is in rigglets just laying there,
extinguishing in anguish.
Anna
[02:14]
Big Sur Jade Cabochon
Broken from off underwater cliffs
Slowly pushed by tides and currents
Found by me during a low tide
While searching along Jade Cove
In Los Padres National Forest
Cut into quarter to half-inch slabs
The cut again into an octagon
The octagon grinds down to an oval
A flat surface down to concave
Grounded first with coarse wheels
Then again with finer wheels
Buffed and polished to a high sheen
With powdered sapphires
A new Big Sur Jade Cabochon
FINGERNAILS-Monsieur L'Vampyre
That tap-tap-tapping--how I loath it still,
though surely she's been laid among the dead--
and put there by my own design and will
to end the tapping she put in my head.
Those curs-ed nails--they brought my lunacy,
and slowly through the years, drove me insane,
and though I pleaded for my sanity,
she relished in the thought--and loved my pain!
So bludgeoned I--her life--to yesterday,
severing every nail that drove me mad
and though I thought I cut it all away
her tapping's with me yet, and twice as bad!
Here in this cell, I wait, for death is near,
and still her tapping's all that I can hear!
© ron wilson aka vee bdosa
Her fingernails were ripe with season
Upon her hands she displayed a colour of cherry bomb
Long lusterous shiny laquered cherry bob fingernails
Squared off in fashion
The owner had bold yet delicate sensual hands
Long slender fingers
Donning olive skin
Her hands were the bomb
A hand model for the Ones of "The Good Life"
Boasting her laquered nails in fashion magazines
Cherry bomb the colour of January
With lipstick to match
And a love to kiss her fingertips
As the sweetness of her cherry lips blew him a kiss
By Susan Mills
Bloody fingernails
By my own distress
Carve at your brand-new door
Since you’ve removed yourself from ours
You forgot something
Here, dry yourself off
You look wet from the sadness
I’m actually listening
But I just don’t care
You’re a liar, a thief
And I’m glad you don’t live here