Lost in a blizzard's cold snowdrifts,
please know, I appreciate your gifts -
a plethora of desolation,
loneliness and isolation,
a pincushion of every harm,
empty hands and empty arms,
a surplus and a plenitude
of everlasting solitude,
a kaleidoscope of emotional pain
torrents of rainbowless rain,
a carousel of cosmic confusion,
a cornucopia of disillusion.
I'll raise a glass, and just say, "Cheers!"
and return a reservoir of tears.
Bruising my vein
Can’t stay in my lane
Don’t even feel any pain
Acting like my arms are a pincushion
A dirty needle about to push in
Need that rush
Want the voices to hush
Never coming down
Life in the background
Up up and away
My body begging my mind to stay
But like always it runs away
Hoping one day
Lost it will stay
In the darkness I found
Deeper than six feet under the ground
With life just spinning around
My heart not making a sound
Dying is an endless escape
Realizing now I was never awake
Lost in confusion
Sweating with profusion
Never finding a solution
The loneliest place
I’ve had to face
Is when life had run it’s race
Not even to the end
Only hurt my one friend
The last breath escapes
I need to erase
That my fate is done
And nobody won
But the devil himself
Life got stuck on a shelf
Not even god will help
No need to yelp
Just sit in silence
No need for violence
My day is done
Thanks for the fun
My battered razor cut tormented heart
So tender so heavy and full of tears
My heart sunk into the consuming unforgiving fathoms
Of the darkest deepest coldest sea
The waves never washed the tears away
The crimson blood bled and dispersed diluted
Eventually vanishing into obscurity
The pincushion remains of my tender heart
Just festered and decayed
Under layers and layers of silt
Never missed unloved, out of sight
And out of reach.
Poked just once and you left a hole
stole what was in my arsenal;
Wounded with a laceration
now closer to no emotion;
Pincushion heart takes every prick,
the act can be so sadistic;
A needle’s eye a gaping wound,
bitterly mauled and then consumed;
So much space to make a mess of
thinking you fit me like a glove;
Softer than you want to admit
the marks remain after the hit;
Each stab paints a different color
bruises that look just like amour.
cockeyed pincushion
stabbed prickly but no blood
i admire you
so puffed up and proud
always ready for grandma
i poke you silly
*Image of Pincushion Needle by Google.com
pincushion
hypodermic needles
ever searching for pain~~
finds me
2022 January 11
*1st Place*
A STRAND (1050)
~~Brian Strand: Judged 2022 January 13
Shivering with cold the patient reposed on the lightly padded table
Trying not to move for acupuncture needles were all over now-
in her arms, her feet, and her tummy
Ouch! She said as they were pushed in.
OUCH! OUCH! OUCH!
It was shocking as acupuncture was not supposed to hurt.
Actually, it was excruciating and it made her mad.
Was it worth it to use pain to defuse pain?
Not really! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Maybe I should have used smaller needles the acupuncturist said.
Two more treatments and it may work miracles, she informed the patient.
Two more treatments. She is kidding right? The irritated patient thought.
If I put one needle in your forehead it might relax you, she told the patient.
The human pincushion gave her A LOOK that stopped her in her tracks.
Or not, she said, fleeing the room.
Under The Same Moon and stars.
Sometimes
I look up to the opalescent milky moon
Set among a vast fascinating
Star filled pincushion soft velvet night
Deep in wonder awe
And delight
And I ponder
Is there a girl
Out there in the world
The one and only right girl
Looking at the same stars shining bright
And opalescent moon
This enchanted savoured night
Dreaming of someone like me
She could just be around the corner
Or far across an ocean or mighty sea
Will destiny and fate show it’s hand
One special magical day
That two kindred souls finally meet
Her my woman
And I her man
The stars no longer just sparkling in that velvet sky
But from deep her heart
that dance in her eyes
Just for me
To see.
Peter Dome©2019.
Toothpaste
soap
candles
Matches
three dimes
small yellow rubber ducky
Dog treats
diet pills
red, white and blue buttons,
assortment of threads
rickrack
scotch tape
needles
missing bracelet
pincushion
measuring tape
Nails
stickers
temporary tattoos
Sewing box gone wild
I Call My Ten-Year Old
I call my ten-year old
Hidden and secluded
Alive in death’s grasp
Unseen yet hovering
Unconscious, subterranean
Felt but not heard
Needles prick chin’s pincushion
Screams echo through
Heart’s tormented chambers
Images flash
Blood red, avatar blue
Not on film’s cellophane
But in cones and rods
Fear in technicolor
My ten-year old answers
Amygdala-like screams erupt
Bubbling through blood and bone
Are lava-like projectiles
Tooth-some daggers that
Pierce night’s skin
Fear’s heavy drapes part
Secrets, once knots, in cavern’s pits
No longer fed by silence and fear
No longer guarded by anger’s blade
Arise transmuted, transformed
Hush, my child
What was no longer is
Shed the snake’s skin
Feel the warm underbelly
Of love and acceptance
Neath its cold cloak
Is the peace you seek
For decades you’ve used our bodies as your pincushion
Poking, prodding, cutting, and killing.
Forcing us to be your experimental subjects
Scraping, shocking, drugging, and drilling.
Locking us up in meager dwellings
Filthy, restrictive, desolate, and cramped.
Filling me with toxins, chemicals, and poisons
Upon my skin a brand is painfully stamped.
My skin burns as you cover me with makeup and creams.
My muscles ache with each electrical shock.
My brain no longer functions as it should
You’ve carelessly destroyed my biological clock.
You alter the very DNA that nature gave me
I was not created for misery and imminent death.
Are the answers to your scientific questions
Really worth taking my very last breath?
Stop using me as your puppet, pincushion, and servant
Treat me with kindness, compassion, and respect
With all the advances to technology these days
Surely you could find an alternative subject.
Not remembering you in joy
how had this come to be?
No memories of you content,
no happiness to see.
No happiness for your whole life
though plenty filled your plate.
Bards filled your mind at early age
with beauty on the page.
The home you had was pin cushion small
pincushion small, it pricked
with a violent soul rent from the Guf
raw poverty , rent and licked.
While violets held the windowsills
and mother’s soul was sweet
denial visited much too oft
father’s drunken anger did compete
Longfellow laced your nascent mind
The Children’s Hour your treat.
You escaped to Edgar’s house
The Raven at your feet.
You read to me from Golden Books
of Joseph’s many colored coat.
Mother goose set the dreamscape
as Nod rowed by in boats.
I know this must have happened oft
yet no memory do I retain.
Just the lilt of longing reciting
of others happiness on the page.
May the Guf be kind to you
and return you full of joy.
May the sparrow find for you
a kinder living story.
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.