I have been watering it for months—
the small black bulb in the cupboard
that I never let touch sunlight.
It swelled in the dark,
fed on steam from my cooking breath,
fat with the whispers I never spoke aloud.
I told myself it was only a seed,
a pebble in soil, nothing more.
I would open the door,
look at it once, and close it—
like checking the locks before bed.
It learned the shape of my glances.
But today, I reached in.
Today, I held it in my palm.
Its skin was slick as a fish
and when I pulled, the roots screamed up from the earth,
all tendon and white hair,
and the cupboard air smelled of rust.
You said it casually—
your mouth arranging the words
like setting a cup down on a table.
As if the syllables were a button
popped from a shirt, no one’s fault.
I felt my chest open—
not like a door,
but like a letter slit with a knife.
Paper-heart curling, bleeding ink.
You were already talking about something else,
your voice trailing petals across the floor.
I sat very still,
the bulb still in my hand,
its black head beating against my pulse.
I did not crush it.
I only held it tighter
until my fingers forgot they could let go.
She snaps like a brine tendon,
spilling embryo chords across the basalt shelf.
Tongues of nacre split her sides,
each vertebra strung with gravid silence.
Kelp-blind, she threads the continental rift,
her fingernails seeded with unfinished continents.
Magma foams in the pouch of her pelvis,
grinding up vowels like crushed coral.
How do you build out of context?
A river surges upward, defying gravity,
twisting like a tendon torn from bone.
The sensation is an addict’s final inhale,
a stake driven clean through the heart.
What is the formula?
Am I equipped to satisfy the hunger
as the waves batter my mind’s foundation?
Do I summon a committee of ghosts—
past and present, whispering in fractured unison?
It’s like watching a film unwind backward,
a life undressing itself to the bone.
How do I hold it?
Do I use a mirror to bend the light,
to reflect a version of me that won’t dissolve.
The landscape is serene—
a portrait of untouched stillness,
where war has no fingerprints,
where silence doesn’t taste like surrender.
I must pin it down before it shatters,
before it fractures like ice dropping from a great height.
Before I blink and it’s gone—
swallowed by the magnetic chaos
that calls me home like a hymn I can’t unlearn.
Do I have the discipline?
Or will my voices wrestle me back into the storm,
their hands shaping the snowdrift before I can step free?
Do they grant me permission to leave,
or am I only ever allowed to stay?
Your eyes a dark archipelago
Mysterious then exotic drifting across
my shore;
I perceive their warmth inviting
While those lips blow a tangy flavour-
Irresistible, poised to reach for a kiss
Brewed by the kiln of summer’s
ember…
Carefully, my logic examines the
prospects
Between reason and wantonness,
As the fluid air spins amorously
And the evening grows too blind,
naked--
The waves within my navel dilate,
fluid as current's unknown motion...
I forget what happens next except, I
was
Drunk with the body- rhythm of something
untenably spontaneous;
Coasting on a body outside a bend
ebbing flowing through a belly and
tendon
Of a conniving sea.
Feet patter through the leaves of the oak wood
Her breaths frantic blond hair bent back
Stops swivels and pivots seeing all she could
Body sways and she prays for air to catch
Then she see it lurch, lips grotesque, “Snack”
Another step, “Come back,” hairbreadth snatch
Her screams echo through the trees, crack
Snap, tearing of tendon and chop chop hack
Careful where thy wander for under the covers,
a monster hovers, in wait, to tear rip and peel
and ribbon flesh from bone, you and your lover
Boogeyman emerges burst reanimates ashes
Looking for little boys and girls souls to steal
Rictus cadaver of a mannequin after he bashes
Your brains in with his talons, meaty meal
to this manifestation that’s not fiction but real
That creak in the floor above the sound below,
in the basement or the scratches in the walls,
he’s there waiting to lick lather eel eyes aglow
take you some where dark and festering calls
He is your fear shhh dear he’s here feel that
Too late for you I’m afraid he sees you
And what he sees he ceases and disappears
inflamed tendon in tight confinement
compassionately curses
the teacup’s trigger burn
Your truth feels like a derailed train on my backbone and below me, a ravine who knows nothing apart from what has been thrown down her throat.
The gapped bridge hangs in the balance with centuries of pedestrians - loosening it’s hold between a narrative and those unlucky to have been swallowed.
You’ve walked to the edge to stand on my fingers whispering to me, “Precipice.” Whispering to me “Fall.” So when the cliff took sides, you could only hope that I’d suffer.
I finished here, wondering of a vultures preference for intestine or tendon. And I smiled while you pecked out my eyes to fill the void and tasted you pretend I’m not you’re only home.
Unwelcome Guests
(Arthritis, Bursitis, Tendonitis, Gout)
Miracle Man
10-11-2023
The “rItis” boys came to visit,
and their welcome overstayed.
My futile efforts to evict them,
they always downplayed.
Arth, Burs, and Tendon,
that very unpleasant three.
Were always reluctant to leave,
before the ravaging of me.
For pain I gave each points,
on occasion they brought a shout.
They all attacked my joints,
but none compared to Gout.
What good would it do,
Son of Peleus,
To pull that arrow from your heel?
As you lie there helpless,
Legs useless and folded beneath you.
Your hand clenched around its fletchings
Searching for the source
Of sensations unfamiliar to you.
Pain. Suffering. Mortality.
How strange…
You are only half god and half man,
And all men must die, even you, Aristos Achaion.
The god's gift to you was not invulnerability, but speed.
And with that tendon we now name after you severed,
You are just as human as the rest of us.
That expression of anguish as you look to the sky.
Helmet still dawned as if you could leap up
And slaughter hundreds more Trojans, but you cannot.
An enraged fall from Godhood
Forever immortalized in white stone.
Centuries later it still stands.
Worn and weathered
By the years and all the heavy eyes that fell upon your misery,
Like pouring rain from dark clouds above.
The paradigm of human fatality and flaws.
But you were a god, somewhat at least.
You thought that you would live forever -
We all think that sometimes.
Remember that you have to die.
Otherwise, how do we know that we spent our life living?
A frozen pulse a synergy and soon she was iced like cold hard glass.
Poor Clea in her purple orchid dress ensconced in a crevice of time,
from the icy tendrils of Ikthalon. Icy winds blow from the bowels of hell
she is rendered still as ice pellets pelt on her weakened body;
He wraps the sun and blindfolds the stars then plummets to earth with demonic intentions to search and destroy.
Along comes an omega mutant " Iceman" with a
hard packed intention to stop the villain from exploiting her.
Radiating intense cold from every tendon and nerve in his body,
he wraps a gossamer fabric round her to thaw her gently from
the frost bites and nips of her emissary, the evil Doctor Strange.
A multi-verse madness of evil it was but as the clock struck twelve
in Time Square, Clea defrosts and sashays forward in her pencil dress.
Using her tele-ported thoughts, she enters another dimension where
Icemen are heroes and Spiderman rules.
This is where the story ends folks. Tune in for a sequel,
same place same time, reporting to you from Time Square.
Aug 7 2022
I knew you were gone.
In the startled-now of a wide-eyed night---I knew,
though you were beside me all along,
I sensed.
A cloying doubt,
a premonition of you missing
fastened tender gums to my pulse.
I knew we would no longer
teach flesh to speak,
knew down and deep
even though that thought
struck me dumb.
A space opened, I saw it
from the bottom of a dark stairwell.
I saw you leaving in the closing evening
of a memory.
I remember when my mother died
I held the phone away from my ear
listening to the nurse run through
her rehearsed lines,
and I feeling a strained tendon
finally snapping. I knew then
that 'gone' meant gone away
to a place where hands are
blind owls.
Now laying here in the dark,
god knows how many years away
from our last touch
I know my `once upon a time'
has again stepped through a door
in my mind
that always leads to nowhere.
Serena is floating on the waters of life
unhurried
unworried
Her body in joyful repose
Every muscle and tendon open and relaxed
she flows as easily as the breeze twinkles the leaves
Others watch in amazement
as she glides effortlessly in and out of this world
her spirit deciding
Whether it is time to go or to stay
Death, just another water
where she will drink
when ready….
The “Itis” Brothers
(Arthritis, Bursitis, Tendonitis)
Written: by Miracle Man
10/30/2021
The “Itis” brothers, have a quite familiar name,
Arthr, Burs, and Tendon have garnered worldly fame.
All three have visited me, two had a short stay,
after medical encouragement they were driven away.
Sensing they weren’t welcome they chose to leave,
but hard headed Arthr was the one who’d cleave.
At 2:am this morning and in quiet I’m found,
Arthr was acting up and I couldn’t sleep sound.
He just hangs around all the familiar old joints,
just being a pain while soliciting style points.
He’s always present and just refuses to behave,
his daily shenanigans have made me his slave.
He’s very insistent, present, both night and day,
Tylenol, taken daily, helps to keep him at bay.
How many readers can relate to this?
Was I a bit too real for you
too raw, like meat bleeding on the butcher’s block
too honest like an angel
as I stripped the skin from my flesh
flesh from my bones
put every prickling nerve on display
every taut tendon
Did it frighten you to learn the truth
of what lies beneath the searing burns and scars
below the surface as if I’ve been lashed
by the thorny branches of a honey locust tree
Did you find yourself choking on your rank hypocrisy
Your pathetic platitudes about love
empty mewlings about empathy
as you stand there stolidly silent
setting yourself apart from all the nobodies
behind your walls, your fences to protect your privacy
when you know damn well their true purpose is to prevent
what you don’t want intruding
in your perfect fantasy of champagne soirees
your loafers polished to a high shine
black mirrors in which you can see yourself
instead of us, instead of me
From those festering wounds my words come
the poetry I pen, the rhymes I wrangle, the worlds I write
searching for a guiding light
someone to share this journey
I've hurt myself again.
I fell in my bedroom den.
The world went around ,
and I let out a sound,
That I'm certain could wake the dead.
I twisted my leg when I fell,
Strained a tendon from what I can tell.
I saw my physician,
He said here's the question,
How long can you give it to mend.
So I'm taking vacation for now,
And my boss is having a cow,
'Cause four others are gone,
And he sings a sad song,
He counted on me to attend.
I said, Sorry I can barely walk.
It hurts when I stand and I balk.
When I sit it gets tense,
And the pain is immense,
And my face turns the color of chalk.
I'm sorry I must ask for grace,
But my work is too hard in this place.
I've pulled a muscle,
And you bet your bustle,
Right now I ain't running no race.
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