I found a bone
By the gas works wall
Dreamed a dream
By the old canal
I gnawed that bone
By the factory wall
Dirty old bone
Dirty old bone.
“TOPTOMIST”
* Word Created by P. Romios *
T- they walk with a smile, in a negative world,
O-Oracles of Free Speech for everyone!
P-Persevering their truth~despite overt ,persecution?
T- They know so well, when one door closes, another opens!.
O-Omens of those, who respect your great individuality.
M-Mentors, they, your soul’s leaders, listen to their wisdom.
I- Independence, freedom, yes. poets Toptomists, fight for thee?
S-Silencing any poetic voice, is like a heart gnawed to pieces by ticks,
T-Terror is only a dictator’s trick, dressed in righteousness,with no glow!
8/23/2025
When the seed of fear is planted in minds,
It germinates in brains as a tormentor—
Sometimes sown by a whisper,
a shadow,
a lie repeated twice.
When illusion becomes reality,
And starts by making the heart
skip a beat,
then more of its beats,
then all of its beat.
It creates monsters in our eyes in the dark,
Born from our own imaginations.
And it can make them fly,
swirl,
drawl,
crawl,
and do anything—
Make our hairs stand on end,
Our feet walk on eggshells,
on a slippery slope.
It can crimp us into a shrimp.
When it creeps into our grip,
It brings a nice gift of heebie-jeebies—
That send us on a purposeless,
directionless meander,
Like a chicken with head just severed
and left unrestrained.
Fear teaches our hands to fight,
And reaches our legs to take flight,
But it’s never patient to judge us right,
Even when fear is out of sight.
When the seed of fear is well tendered,
Fear can even make us no longer
fear fear.
When its taproot has eaten deep
into the hypothalamus,
Then the mind is already gnawed by monsters
That, time and again, we created
out of nothing.
I left the kettle hissing,
A blue serpent coiling in the kitchen.
The window’s breath was winter—
It kissed me cold, a mother I never had.
I was a bone in the mouth of the world,
Gnawed down to a pale thought.
The mirror grew teeth—
It ate my face
The room was quiet as paper,
Holding its breath for the pen.
Ink pooled in the corners
Like milk left too long.
The hours no longer spoke—
They only stared,
Thin and pale as candles
Waiting for a match.
My hands folded themselves
As if in prayer,
But the prayer was a stone,
And it would not float.
Some doors open inward,
Others open nowhere.
I found the one
That would not close again.
My knees wear the dirt like a second skin,
bruised to the bone, bright as bitten apples.
You press your thumb to my wrist,
her laughter, once light, now flickers in the air—
a kiln and the clay, forever bound.
But the kiln runs cold, the clay cracks wide,
her voice, once honey-thick, now thins to thread.
She curls inward, brittle as paper skin,
her hands, once rooted, now waver like reeds.
Black branches, draped in quiet decay,
whisper the slow unbinding of a once-nurturing bloom.
Blurry and bright, like the mornings she zipped my coat, but the puddles still hold my face—
the colours bled before they dried,
blue on your hands, red on mine.
Mylie gnawed the table, and time settled like ash
in the gaps of her fingers.
on a bet, Chateau decided to walk to London town
We told him it was futile but he was honor-bound
There is an ocean, we reminded him, as we told him bye.
He gnawed off part of the mountain, and began to fly.
Chateau flew through the air in a confident way.
We looked at each other in pure amazement that day.
He has ideas that seem far-fetched said my sister Jill.
I rolled my eyes as he disappeared over the hill.
I have no qualms that Chateau made it to London town.
His positivity is so upbeat, he is almost never down.
I watched the news, hoping to see him for it was my dare.
Sure enough, on London’s Channel thirteen, he was featured in the air.
1.
Raucous winds sweep pristine waves
against gods' sepulchral canvas as
stagnant, sharp wings' frames rose from malnourished hearts;
ends of elongated crosses marked beginnings
of rotten, venomous roots plugged into dead matter.
2.
Hollowed caverns invaded by calloused fingers
coaxed bitter nectar and pellucid beads:
thus, gashed, aqueous sacs polluted by darkening crimson
rolled down the silken passage.
With each bite, a story is devoured as
monotonous beats of the gnawed linger in the air,
a saccharine image of carnage and raven barbs.
3.
Rough trunks and polished branches - that reached for the fleating dark
blended into mirrored snowy and sickening magenta -
tell stories of woven arrows of bleakness and despair,
a myriad of similar, blurring threads plunging:
upon the lost and benevolent,
upon the putrid and vice,
nonchalantly.
4.
Yearning, bony grip interrupted hasty steps;
despite their current state,
these wane pits easily found mine
(like never before)
their intimate, lost vigor fueling my disdain as
superficial longing clashed with a guarded soul
finally certain of similarities and your self-induced downfall.
Shame is a feeling I do avoid.
Too often, something like it has me, destroyed,
and yet, to be a better man,
I must look at myself as best I can,
and that may entail shame.
I look at myself, not to blame,
but to grow, to not be the same,
and yet to know I'm ever flawed,
eschewing pangs which on me gnawed,
my best self to reclaim.
At first, you watched in awe
Observing the impact of WORD
Mountains moved
The Earth groaned
The Ocean Roared
...in silence
It got old, quickly
As your feet moved
Darting from ear to ear
Stirring up your brew
Bringing boiling water
...to whistle
Put your money
Where your mouth is
And so silver
Dropped upon the table
Of thirsty men
...to purchase
A god without a name
No notoriety to blame
Deliverance and healing
Of nobody from nowhere
...to sing
Dead and gone
Followers pinned down
No one will rise
When ink and pen resound
...twisted truth
You gnawed the tongue
With deeds of terror
Making children bow
To sowing your seed
...in gall
The one place
You couldn't touch
In the process of Word's
Natural death
...gives LIFE eternal
Written by Trudy Schrader on 06-19-2024
Note: Six means: Marriage (spiritual)/Family (natural), Five means Ministry (spiritual)/Work (natural), and Four means Direction (Spiritual)/ Order (natural)
Few oldsters or broken-sters travel in their wheelchairs in style.
Mrs. Graffitin is an exception, her uniqueness makes all of us smile.
Her foot was gnawed off sixty years ago by a blubbering crocodile.
She is a wheelchair designer, and her wheelchair is always in style.
When Darla got a paper cut she went ballistic.
Reacted the way others acted if their arm was gnawed off.
If someone bumped her she complained for years and years.
Every scrape, scratch, and poke was a huge deal.
When she came home with her nose pierced we were incredulous.
It’s a cat, said grandma. I am not surprised.
A fallow season a time of trivial hungers
that gnawed like a hypocrites prayer.
It was a Wednesday, or one of those days,
with sorrow sewn into it like a prison blanket.
He had been unlocked like a gull's beak,
his cry screeched from decades of dust.
“My ghost is in your body Beloved,
no one sees our earth,
the sunset and the ocean
fall into each other this way.
Death me in your moment my love.”
An imago had surfaced,
an image joined to something,
he once passed through or touched,
or noticed not with his eyes.
Under his skin, he pours stars,
black stars, bright stars
the living and the dead are him.
“Death me, as I stand, sit, or sleep,
plant your prayers deep into my emptiness,
drug my senses with yours,
dance me with your insatiable desires,
drag me up, drag me into
this dazzling death by light.”
In the jungle so dark and deep,
Where many men refuse to sleep.
While overhead flies giant bats,
There proudly lives the king of cats.
With sharpened claws and lion's mane,
He seeks and hunts in his domain.
Hungry on his daily mission,
Where he finds no competition.
But on two legs with heart of stone,
His only foe that stands alone.
A hunter bred with deadly skill,
Steps in the jungle just to kill.
Morning light with rifle ready,
Eyes were bright and nerves were steady.
The lion spied him near his den,
And on his back his claws dug in.
Since both were young and both were strong,
They battled hard and battled long.
And though he was a pro at this,
Man's heart could not compare to his.
So as he scratched and as he clawed,
And as he gnashed and as he gnawed.
The hunter then turned to jelly,
And ended up in his belly.
It was a harsh, hard going season.
“It’s a dying winter, lad,”
he said, crunching words around,
a gnawed pipe stem.
Briefly embers sought a place to disappear.
Cinder gray eyes, set deep
into the crumpled grit of age.
A wry off-set smile.
Then one day he went back up
the clinker graveled path
to his small, low-roofed cottage,
with its squat, darkly puffing chimney,
oily cans, coal dusted kettles,
the fumy, over-stuffed parlor,
with its feet-warming, black,
fire-baked grate,
and one sooty cat.
Never to be seen again.
Disgruntled, they come to me as bit-parts
ripped from black and white movies.
Mad aunt Anastasia, who should have been a nun,
one of her hands would refrain from touching her,
the other has been long carried off
by wolfish priests.
The Holy Ghost has pickled her in a jar,
she now floats between worlds.
Uncle Sean, the iniquitous Maître D'
looming above a meaty cleavage,
he who flambéed Steak Diane
with a slyly sapid leer,
poured cognac,
then after the salacious hunt,
triumphantly decanted his thirsty+ lusts
into any grateful woman
whomever.
Cousin Tommy died early,
but not before he had burnt through
the Old Testament.
A brimstone disorder gnawed his innards,
left him lacking normal human kapok,
kept him bubbling until a self-inflicted wound,
blew out his brains.
There are cousins removed and living,
who disassemble themselves, with zealotry,
or ennui. None took the middle way,
none quietly settled-in
to live a life of unremarkable normality,
trysting the nights away
with damp-stained regrets.
Like larks’ tongues, they sing in the invisible.
They reside in the far reaches,
until dark angels flame out
in their berserker eyes.
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