Short Cutout Poems

blues and greens, gently trickle out of the day
night's henchmen, shadows gather on corners
demise looms in leaking squalor, exsanguinate
remorseless swelling of silhouettes, cardboard
cutout scenery until freedom dawns... revival...

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White icing spread atop cut-out trees,
Shrubs melt,
expose green cutout cookie snowflakes,
Blue skies shove away clouds,
reveal warm glossy blanketed fields,
Sunshine toasts the breeze a golden crisp.
Gazing out the picture window,
I watch as God bakes another day of Ohio January....

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All I had to do was love her with all my heart and it would be OK.
I clung to her to save her life, as she wriggled.
Love, a propped up cardboard cutout,
Trust, her whipping boy
Hope, a bloodied and bruised up mess, with its eyes swollen shut. 
A flame once burned, my ray of hope; and she placed it beneath her spoon....

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Every night this body
becomes a dissecting knife

a crime scene of blood
and unstrung flesh,

the lamb spreads the wool
for a deadly charge of skull plate

with a gift of mathematics
a moon cutout in sky

before the shadow of myth in the depth
of tortured chemistry :

the endless nothing will kiss the darkness
my blindness becomes a diet.



SATISH VERMA...

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Every night this body
becomes a dissecting knife

a crime scene of blood
and unstrung flesh,

the lamb spreads the wool
for a deadly charge of skull plate

with a gift of mathematics
a moon cutout in sky

before the shadow of myth in the depth
of tortured chemistry :

the endless nothing will kiss the darkness
my blindness becomes a diet.



SATISH VERMA...

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flatsie dolls pretty
in the eye of the beholder,
not for its shapely flesh
cookie cutout figures, shoes
positioned unnaturally
to their sides.

so what draws in the girly-crowd?
hair so plush, sometimes in pink
and a Shirley Temple dress
just below each cheek.

flatsies went out of style,
never glamour dolls
but bring a smile
when pinterest chances
a childhood peek.

1/30/2020...

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Matisse’s “Christmas Eve”
in a procession of candles

Through the church window
in the 20th century of faces
impaled gingerly
in velvet glow
flickering shadows against
the walls
an organ streams

Through the church window
lost cutouts found
humanity gathering
into a moment of flame

Even Godless poets
recall lifelong enigmas
of golden glow
recording the same search
the same wonderment...

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Her hair bun higher in the air.
A Venus head askew.
A cameo for a head bust;
she holds a solemn view.

Her amber ears glowed softly.
Both pierced by pewter studs.
Defiled for your attention.
Your heart gone dry of floods.

Her teeth shone on as jutters.
Their light a warmer ice.
Her hesitance all relieving.
Forgiveness at a price.

This girl already a woman.
One's heart can't see to lie.
A beauty for the holding.
A cutout from the sky....

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The Poet With No Soul


"I will run, when you are in pain,
After all, I have so much to gain!
To me, you are but a cutout photo
at a baseball game."

"You see I have zero compassion.
I am at the Soup for my own gain!
I don't care if you drown in the rain."

"I only write to get trophies for me!
I could care less about thee."

Words,indeed,are so dastardly cheap.
As they ignore a fellow Poet that weeps!

  


August 4, 2020
10:15a.m. PST


...

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Listen to poem:

Shadows are unforgiving,
stark in relief,
dark in infill. 
These stiff hollow silhouettes
of gutted entrails
follow us around,
lacking the detachment
to avoid being brutally honest
about our outline shape and
where we've been and why.
We avoid looking back at
the shadowy dark-side behind us
that is plain as day
to those who watch our
tell-tale umbras
that trail behind
as tails
as wagging truth sayers,
dark, stark, stiff
unforgiving naked, 
rear-view selfee cut-outs....

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Glue together
  Flu barretta
   Sick sorry sad soul
     Alone in my bones
       Castaway island moon
         Crying at me dying whilst the suns sighing
           And birds flying
Broken chair broken pieces

  Glue me 
           Together
   Fix me then send me out on a 
    Boat to flee to sea away from 
    Self destruction
                  Into the storm to journey
                              For a better life on the otherside
                              Of the world...

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