Long Manikins Poems
Long Manikins Poems. Below are the most popular long Manikins by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Manikins poems by poem length and keyword.
In the jumbled backyard of mind
they arrive in dark cowls,
gather behind an inverse eye,
wait there for the eyes themselves
to flip those images over into
a word chewing anger.
Manikins move in those shadows,
tussle in a muted violent parody
of action and reaction.
There is blood, it is dark,
it is cloudy.
War begins at the eyebrows,
mittens fumble
with small caliber ammo,
deadly enough but not explosive,
claws must grapple
beyond the roar of the pulse.
Suddenly you see her
not in her fury but yours;
storms subside into summer showers,
a mock performance of Othello
exits stage left, a shamefaced cast
comically admitting the farce.
"I am a fool
and I don’t deserve you."
Breast heaving, she turns away
to repaint her emotions
for a moment hating that she
loves you,
yet knowing she has won again
another blindfolded battle.
He was sitting alone in the corner
In a little cafe at the painting of Monet
And was talking to imaginary friend
About thinness opaqueness fear
Sensation of heat cold anger despair
Cruelty he claimed is the language of reality
Not the barren lame poetry with vulgar
Metaphors hiding behind empty words
Cruelty was the only honest way
To open the hidden heavy doors
Into suffering human soul and heart
And talk about things that matter
Through shamanic art of reaching
Deep into the guts of true teaching
And bringing light to the dark corners
That have never been lit before
Actors dancing in overpowering way
Manikins with terrifying theatrical faces
With empty eyes staring at the audience
And drilling through their souls
Objects of strange proportions
Surfacing in a dreamy scenery
Of unrecognizable ghostly world
Of the modern stage transformed
By the means of the theater of cruelty
It is the only way to be honest
To himself Artaud claimed
And believed
He was right
He sacrificed his life
To this idea
And died lonely forgotten
On the bare floor
Next to metal bed
That stood at the door
He tried to open so hard
In a madhouse
Where magic of theater
Truly belongs
My mind is tribal, I hunt in the mud and slurry,
I track the stars in a wooden chariot
made from the ribs of a blood-clan crib.
My thoughts are armored, yet as articulated
as any youthful flesh, they cannot be washed,
or manipulated, I have an ax for every hand
against them, a caress for those
who choose to fight on the battlefield
of inspiring ideas,
a painted arrow and shield to defend
the commandments of ever-mutating gods.
A green tree within a high mountain
is my mind, a solar flare of endless creation
are my barbaric prayers,
the same orisons that now civilize the corrupt
and morally spent.
I am the heart of existence, my tribal markings
cannot be scrubbed away, by smooth-skulled
manikins or the slick prattle
of any grandiose legion.
(Nevada Test Site 1951)
The house is ply-struts
not even particleboard.
Mom is cardboard,
dad and my little sister are manikins,
Older brother is a painted figure
of a younger brother’s imagination.
Just regular folks.
The dog is a real dog
chained to a bolted stake.
Mother is at the sink washing cherries, naturally,
Father is at the kitchen table
smoking his pipe, naturally.
Little sister is playing with dolls on the floor
melting in the heat.
Big brother is starting to singe at the corners.
The dog is listlessly sleeping.
A clock on the mantle is clacking loudly,
not telling the time but counting down.
Goggles on now please.
This is not a drill.
A blinding light – deaths afterglow
I miss the obliterated already.
A success,
but
did they really sacrifice a live dog
to see if an A-bomb could kill it?
Do I wake or dream?
Another one –
Life is a bowl of cherries.
One more –
Not with a whimper,
but with a bloody big bomb.
The house is ply-struts and particle composite.
Mum is cardboard,
but dad and my little sister are manikins,
and my older brother is a painted figure
of a younger brother’s imagination.
My dog is a real dog
chained to a bolted stake.
I wonder why my cardboard and plastic family
have a real dog?
Nevada is hot, not like my prairie house,
just a little house, like this one,
yet here I am adopted, and in the desert.
Mother is at the sink washing cherries, naturally,
Father is at the kitchen table
smoking his pipe, naturally.
Little sister is playing with dolls on the floor
melting in the heat.
Big brother is starting to singe at the corners.
The dog is listlessly sleeping.
A clock on the mantle is clacking loudly,
not telling the time but counting downwards.
Another one –
Goggles on now please.
Another one -
This is not a drill.
There’s a blinding light on the horizon.
Will I awake in time?
I miss my obliterated folks already.
Did they really sacrifice a dog
to see if an A-bomb could kill it?
After we met
I thought we really had something,
Really hit it off.
It wasn’t the words we spoke,
The easy fluorescent trail they made.
Maybe it was the Japanese lantern
Glowing over your bare shoulder
Or the smile you threw
To the side-
To someone.
Or maybe it was the cool damp air,
Slight seduction of rain
But no rain.
Perfect, cool molecules,
Layer on layer,
Air sitting on air.
But after, I couldn’t find you.
I couldn’t find you
In the heavy-sitting valleys,
Behind the cool barriered hedges
With stone guard dogs,
In the palm shadowed boulevards
Or the canyon mazes.
I couldn’t find you
In the final exhalations of space,
On sun baked, cracked cement plaza drives.
I couldn’t find you
In the starkly lined avenues
Amongst the serious-expressioned manikins.
It really is a desert here, huh?
Had said the pale cheeked waiter from Wisconsin
While we waited for you to come back.
Yes, I thought, touching the sweating water glass.
A stage set in a desert
Filled with mirages and promises
And doors that no one answers
And roads that curve toward the sun.
We both knew you weren’t coming back.
I won’t find you again
But I will keep looking
And looking
And looking.
There is always that chance.
Yes, to find someone like you.
That chance.
I leave alone,
Tip under plate.
A dog barks at my steps,
Waits, barks again.
We are both close,
Yet impossibly,
Far from home.
Swans row the sky
just feet above the copper water.
Gulls twist their necks to watch
a lone sailor on the prow
of a sludge-decked dredger.
On the slate thatched gambrels
of a lesser known roofs
spotters search for night bombers,
the figures have turned to stone
as do all oft repeated passages
from dog-eared scripts.
London growls under the axels
of diesel driven dreams.
A stork has visited
an attic full of discarded toys
bells ring out for new born sales.
Barges reek still, just as when
sweat was as common as dirt.
A window in Baker street
opens to let pipe smoke out,
it uncoils in the air
like a left handed genie.
Tower bridge drops upward,
to quarantine all gawkers.
Meat mongers return to their
blood-soaked cradles
before the dawns leery light.
The city is a fable,
It is aflame with tall buses
that never were the same,
yet there is sea oil seeping
from the tunnels and runnels,
where entrenched gutter snipers
lie low.
Here in the denizen dinge
the sure footed dead
avoid being seen
by the googly eyes of alien robots,
tin manikins that crab-walk
along Regents Street
barking Chinese commands
at oppressed corgis
and other less compliant drones.
On what was once Speakers Corner
hunched pavement artists
dribble into the chalky cracks
between showcased hoopla’s.
Slyly the loitering snollygosters,
lollygaggers and stumblebums,
crane their ductile necks to see
shell games in full view
even as they vanish.
Valued clients, we have listened,
and have taken on-board
your concerns and suggestions.
From now on, the display manikins will
be of a deep puce green color
so as not to marginalize
any ethnic variants.
In our book section
the last a copy of the Constitution
was taken out of the shelves and buried
(thanks gardening department).
We are now a gun-free zone,
and will be defenseless
from attacks from gun-toting maniacs.
Please bring the kids.
We hope these changes
will improve customer service
and assure you of our pledge
to keep pandering toward a ubiquitous
uniformity of puerile solutions for all.