Knuckled Poems

A Small Crowd

Fallen leaves knuckled
below eddies float again
swiftly shimmering.

Rain withers with gray
asphalt rising. Curbs cement
puddles running still.

Sunlit raindrops stop
hissing at guttural moans
tickling us for laughs.

Knuckles

Raw,
a nubby grey knuckle-boned day,
when the wind blows through my skin
pulling at the cord
which holds my insides in,
oh infernal internal wall
keeping without without
and within within,
off key Wednesday
crashing chords that I have swallowed
not a passing thought for the blue tunes of tomorrow,
or the music I have made thus far in life
and the ones that I have begged or borrowed
as always I’ll wait for it to pass
fill the gallow glass
to fetch me a drink while I think
but no-one is near
my fault, not because I fear them
I hear them in the hall
scratching
but I don’t let them in
it would give them a chance to win
I need them on my page 
to take away the blank
fill it with ink
because being empty stinks
I don’t want the void
empty yarn from a ragged yawning hole
so I’ll sleep,
hope to feel when I wake
no idea how much more time it is going to take
will it break me or make me
perhaps I will try the fake me
the one with the smile
the one I revile
but there it is 
sat on my face
smug and satisfied,
all while I’m melting away
a Dali soft watch
on this raw knuckled day

Megalith

(center)Visions grow
out of our imaginations like vines.
We want to excavate a bare-knuckled past
with the jaw bones of concussed elks.

A cold moonlight carves them still.
They are the blunt teeth of a low wailing sky,
the works of a hand-crushed faith
far beyond the ken,
of we curious and depthless delvers.

We who stand now non-plussed,
our minds turned around
these mute megaliths
as if we were stone thoughts
upon a grinding lathe
searching
for any distant sense
of - why
while myopically questioning
the source of our
softly rooted selves.(center)

Confessional Booth Number 9

Streetlight dander. Jawbone asphalt.
Blink razors carve her iris script.
Rib stars ovulate in feral grates,
mechanical tongue juts a bloodline breath.
Keystroke ruin writes in collapse,
a waveform lodged in sternum glass.
Lipsticked rodeo—a gash in faded denim
Banana-knuckled hands torch filterless ghosts.

Tree-call through copper root systems.
Wire-pluck storm,
vapor chews the stock market 
Cancer caught in molar hush,
brined in citrine static.

She opens her throat like a coin purse.
Spine bows in semaphore.
We dismount the edge—
An incisor cusp,
the confession still blistering
beneath the flesh of no language.

Her skin, a velvet sin, a scripture I recite with the tip of my tongue

Her skin, a velvet sin, a scripture I recite with the tip of my tongue,
melts like dark chocolate, bitter and sweet on my hungry lips,
pouring confessions in breathless whispers, a dance of endless desire.
I pull her closer, white-knuckled on silk sheets,
intoxicated by the ecstasy between her thighs, a paradise lost and found,
a pleasure so intense it hurts, an echo of unshared desires.
Let me worship, adore this altar of the senses,
let me destroy and be destroyed, lose myself in your depths,
for in this ruin I find rebirth, in this chaos, the sought-after peace.

The Story of My Life

     She longs to do well        she wants to do     what's right
To rock all those that    hurt     in her insignificant lap
     Holding to Hope      in white knuckled fists          so tight
Yet   learning   to bend with the wind      and not snap
Maybe all she needs is for someone   anyone to clap

Winter Tidings

Midwinter - means
transparent ice walls
pressed against shrinking skin.

Dead-eyed horses are revived
only by the steam of their nostrils.

No one predicts a beginning or an end,
'mid' is a frozen idea
in an ice-locked fountain pen,
it will not write even in warm hands.

Killer clowns' shelter behind
their fixed, blood flaked grimaces,
the whites of their eyes
reflect pinpoints
of a dawning apprehension.

Roads decelerate,
creaking through knuckled hands.
Chilled mounds toboggan off rooftops,
dump malformed snowmen
through unmeasured backyard graves.

At the hazy horizon of each grinding day.
midwinter blurs perspective.
This is the middling 'Mid'
a middle where the mind stops flowing
up or down.

Ivy League

Fingertips etched and wrapped,
white knuckled, yet steadfast -
the journey never finished because
  ...there is no destination 
except the next brick or perhaps
              EGO?
What then, when there are no more 
            "electives"?

"Alexander wept, because there were
no more worlds to conquer".

So thus, the tendrils, naked and burdened,
        circle back,
their vines and blossoms celebrated,
while the sacrificed - those who cling and die
           go unnoticed...

Freedom Bares Its Teeth

Freedom isn’t a delicate flower;
It’s the fist that goes through the ground,
the teeth that grind at the chains,
the howl of a wind
that won’t ask for permission.

I refuse to bow to the crumbs of tomorrow,
I won’t let my bones sink into decay,
a shell waiting to grow scraps.
I’ll carve out freedom
from this stubborn rock—
bloody-knuckled and relentless.

Do not tell me that patience is a virtue.
Patience is the poison they peddle
to keep you under control.
Freedom roars. Freedom bares its teeth.
Silence will never hold my name.

Ayahuasca Ride

He went on an ayahuasca retreat
searching for that magical seed
to lead him up the stalk to his soul's treasury.
This white-collar fellow with money to burn
sitting before an old shaman, 
who'd so much to teach and 
he with so much to learn-

They quietly sipped the potion - 
the trip soon arrived
on a psychedelic current
virgin constellations branding the eye.

After this ayahuasca Odessey 
he told of wonderful things he'd gazed- 
secret places he'd breeched...
the mind expanding to the fringes of time
where he'd kissed a gilded silhouette of Jesus Christ. 

He asked If I'd like to board the next mind expansion ride.
thinking about it for a second, I politely declined.
I was concerned about ingesting a bad batch, 
clashing with a brass knuckled devil
mind erosion then total mental contraction.

I'm somewhat content strolling in sundial moments
reaching for the tail of miracles void of all earthly potions.

death note

slowly,
her knuckled cracked eons
into buckets
of whitewashed lies
and her sigh elongated 
into dainty icicles
that hung around
her neck
like a noose
which slowly sliced open
Pandora's box
of poetry and she, cried,
sonnets in the winter

Back Off Dude

.

i'll punch you with uh phuk'n
               boom
           to your jaw
              BAAHM
          to your lungz
          punch punch
            uh phuk'n
         bare knuckled 
          (((PUNCH)))

          not like sum
           MMA thugz
               nope
          like 'my thud' 
               MAN
          all up in your
            now
                   Mangled 
        'Month'

Looking Back

The destiny of my parents
was to be ignored by a vaguely dismantled child.
The youth grew, his mind so dispersed,
that he hardly saw them anymore.

How can you tell,
when your filial emotions
are all stuck in a knuckled first?

Years passed, parents passed,
time passed and the child,
became an old man.

Only then did he see again,
a mother doing her best,
a father doing what he could,
and a child that never cared,
until now.

Diary

With your sudden guise
giving Shirley poppies seeds away
To Welford for the snowdrops
in mid February
a hushed garden
with done, knuckled buddleia
rose hips nipped
no surplus food for the birds
Spring like weather
down the South
no snow to contend

Patchwork Mary

A lock of sweat-matted hair over one eye,
she shakes a red knuckled fist at a naked child,
wailing upon a cold floor.

Mary drying feet with her hair.
Mary at the temple calling.
A street corner Mary full of sperm,
full of a grace,
She is invisible to rabid dogs and drunks.

Old or young,
fat Mary on roller skates,
sweet Mary sucking candy,

badly handled, nameless Mary's.

Sweet Mother,
the sweet lure of jail baiters winking.
The bold-faced laughter
of the -you, free-thinking.

Today the sky is a Robin egg blue,
robed in virginal light.

In a Chick-fil-a, a family is praying
over their sandwiches.

I make the sign of the cross.
I mean, why not?

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