'jawbone' poems - Hello Poetry

r Feb 2016

Lucy kissed a jawbone
bye beneath a diamond sky

2.8 million years
and a gazillion tears ago

That's a lot of sorrow

for a man
kinda like me.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/04/jaw-bone-discovery-in-ethiopia-is-oldest-ever-human-lineage-remains

Thanks, Creek.

CK Baker Jan 2017

these pigs have no neurosis

CK Baker Jan 2017

these pigs have no neurosis

They brought them
from the hollar
to the barge
to the field ~
into the wallows
in prayer
skinny little pinkers
cropped by ivory gates
buzzed with hot wire
hooked on bug worm
whistling dixie
around scrummers
and **** pen

peckers squawk
down eden lane
(nipping at jean lint
and fraystring)
deep in the hollows
a mad crow
(with steady tap)
the snouts high
on grunters
and squealers
stomping past
the feather pack

folded fingers
on the gatekeeper
(an engineer by
trade they'd say)
pigtails and
slack line
down the dusty lane
a snap of the jawbone
and lawn chairs settle
(facing north)
the bold script
and chimes
uneasy

#country #farm #searanch

Austin Heath Jun 2014

"Jawbone; Prescription Assisted."

Austin Heath Jun 2014

"Jawbone; Prescription Assisted."

Peak temperature water levels fake diagnoses white psychopaths starving hunger jingoism violence [systems that deprive us] guns entitlement shots fired accidents grief/mourning choking hazard corporate mascots corporate favoritism corporate bailouts corporate people ideology without monitor nationalism patriotism conservatives patriarchy ******-****-suicide victim silence lack of conviction religious ******* false history infant mortality job insecurity invisible hands trickle down economics union busters corporate police brutal police evil police secret police debt bankruptcy foreclosure homelessness lost confused prisoner criminal banker war preparations propaganda ballots commercials advertisements campaigns money power puppets figureheads armies genocides **** bomb gas fire no survival violence wealthy lawyers assassinations heart complications death sleep.

#america

John Updike Jan 2010

Relatives

John Updike

Relatives

Just the thought of them makes your jawbone ache:
those turkey dinners, those holidays with
the air around the woodstove baked to a stupor,
and Aunt Lil's tablecloth stained by her girlhood's gravy.
A doggy wordless wisdom whimpers from
your uncles' collected eyes; their very jokes
creak with genetic sorrow, a strain
of common heritage that hurts the gut.

Sheer boredom and fascination! A spidering
of chromosomes webs even the infants in
and holds us fast around the spread
of rotting food, of too-sweet pie.
The cousins buzz, the nephews crawl;
to love one's self is to love them all.

Lily H Nov 2011

Our Love is Like a Jawbone

Lily H Nov 2011

Our Love is Like a Jawbone

Our love is like a jawbone
On a frail patient
With cancer of the bone
On the outside, it seems normal
But underneath, the brittle sponge
Deteriorates to dust, until the whole thing
Separates, exposing the lie
No therapy can fix it

They say exercising helps
So we run our mouths
At each other till
Your well-aimed words
Shatter everything

Alexander K Opicho Dec 2013

THINGS THAT PUZZLE TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG

Alexander K Opicho Dec 2013

THINGS THAT PUZZLE TABAN MAKITIYONG RENEKET LO LIYONG

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret, Kenya; [email protected])

I guess most of you will be born when
Taban Makitiyong Reneket lo Liyong is dead
When he will be already another ****** dead
Myself I am luck I have met relative of zinjathropus
I have shared a table and a roof
With Liyong the poetical witch of port Africa
Let me tell you how he is and what puzzles him;
He is black and short stumpy and weak
In his shadow of seventy years, a sagacious septuagenarian
He has **** eyes and his protruding nose is keen
On solving problems of an African girl child
He has read all the books in the world
Apart from the book of Amos in the evil Bible
He is ugly in the face and breathes cacophonously
In the left north with heavy sound
He is an aggressive eater with sharp appetites
Towards African herbs and turkana beef; goat meet
He is a sympathetic listener who gets
Inspiration by listening to the young
He loves all students with passion, but who knows
He loves poems and incantations
From the akuku culture in southern Sudan
Where he was born before becoming a temporary Ugandan
He is fond of taking knowledge upwards
The palm wine tree along the shores and coastlines
This is where he found the fellow son of zinjathropus
A palm wine Drinkard in the name of Amos Tutuola,

Taban wonders why Frantz Omar Fanon has
The un-even ribs on the sides
Taban wonders why there are no aged Chinese in the world
Why turkana women are the most beautiful in Africa
But they play like playing bush love where
But every time before you go off her top
The deadly desert scorpion bites you on the leg
Why The Babukusu of east Africa stopped their revolution
Why the books of Ali A Mazrui form a succinct tribe
Why the Masai chiefs eat as peasants beggingly look
Why there is oil in turkana area and no turkana man knows where oil is
Why Obama has not read his fixions and meditations, his youthful oeuvre
Why Wole Soyinka used to be jailed by foolish people in Nigeria
Why Achebe and Okigbo condemned Captain Elechi Amadi to detention
During the tribally secessionist Igbo war of Biafra
Why publishers in Kenya take bribes in kind
Especially whisky, pilsner, viceroy, smirnoff and freezing tusker
Why Pablo Neruda was not born in Congo
Why Jews are all over the world but none is seen
Why thirteen offenses against his enemies
Never shook the world like Das kapitel of Karl Marx
Why man cannot eat socialism but only bread and wine
Why Ramogi Acheing Oneko was not in Lodwar prison
Why Paul Ngei broke the leg of Jomo Kenyatta
When they were in detention at Lodwar
Why he missed by a whisker to betroth Grace Ogot
A Luo babie who leaves in the land without
Neither thunder nor promise of thunder
In the bossomy bossom of Bethwel Ogot
Whose foot prints on the sands of times
Hat to Sent Daniel arap Moi Home shout a lame poem;
Jogoo! Jogoo! Jogoo! Jogoo!
Why a short fat big headed man the poet in this poem
Asked him why he launched Christmas in Lodwar during December 2013
But not the intellectually logical So what and Show What
Why turkana men don’t put on *******
But still their ***** cannot make three percent in size
Of the size of the ***** of a Luhyia man Mr. Wanyama
Who hosted Taban during chrismas in Lodwar
Why his tribesmen will remove six front teeth
From his lower jawbone when he is dead.

Kristen Hain Sep 2015

The Rain Forest

Kristen Hain Sep 2015

The Rain Forest

Often times I’m staring
Awing in the curves of full blooming lips
Carved jawbone covered with deepening dark moss
The journey through the damp forest after warm rain
It is all awake alive and breathing clearly
Rising and falling like the rare drops from deciduous leaves
I cannot tell you how inhuman you feel to me
Your skin darkens around your eyes from nights up
Long evenings too many and whiskey that never even made it to a cup
Sometimes I cannot break a gaze from the casement around your pupil
The pools of honey drip further toward me
My feet find it impossible to remove themselves
So much like quicksand but sweet calming and warm
Smooth and simplistic in youth the way skin drapes
Hangs over structured bones in the most phenomenal way
Just as your eyes are lavished in graham brown
You stay glowing even in the cold weather from blessed ancestry
Down to tender arteries and muscle where I’ve placed lips a thousand times
Shoulders swoop outwards like broad boulders
Distinguishable markers play connect the dots toward inked surfaced skin
Permanence of scarred lines forming a hot air balloon and anchor pulling it down
It’s from your favorite band, I’m noticing synapses collide on the concept
Elongated extended vines lead to tools that hold and create masterpieces
Strong slender hands with fingertips that press and pluck strings
Coat themselves with paint on late evening or early mornings
Tread lightly on my skin and illuminate my face with a coaxing touch
You are the rain forest from sunrise
My heart thumps to the sense of danger behind a corner
But I know such things and if they were to **** me,
I would be treasured in becoming a tall Kapok
With roots buried miles deep

#love #rain #the #forest #rainforest

Paul Donnell Sep 2017

The King of Bones and The Sea

Paul Donnell Sep 2017

The King of Bones and The Sea

In his tower of fish bone and stench
the sea called and the sea wept
He looked upon the promise of chance

A ribcage still with breath
the bird inside whiskey wet
callin out to the sea
"ohhh why can't you love me"

The moon it rose the tide did too
he unhitched the drift wood canoe
and the current stole all uncertainty

he rowed on, lost sight of shore
surrounded by what he adored
water still; he feels complete
his birdie sang it's masterpiece.

He broke his ribs and let it fly,
"no need for that when i've got whats mine"
he watched his heart catch a westward breeze.

The king of bones, bleached by the sun
stepped out his boat immersed in love
his soul transfixed upon her depth
he looked down deep and held his breath

Ohhh he never saw it coming

The storm came and sent him down
her leviathans ate his crown
***** picked and scraped what laid at bottom

Swept away and drowning now
Grabbed for his bird and tried to howl
his fingers met the broken ribs
"how could I have fallen for this?"

Ohh a jawbone fit for a crown
The king of bones, the ocean drowns

her relentless undertow
dragged him to the shore he knows
smashed against the rocks, cracked and broken

ohh a jawbone fit for a crown
The king of bones, the ocean drowns.

So now he walks filled with pain
his birdie drowned in the hurricane
oh he was left wonderin, what coulda been.

ohh a jawbone fir for a crown
the king of bones the ocean drowns..

Audrey Sep 2014

Great-Grandfather, of Autumn

Audrey Sep 2014

Great-Grandfather, of Autumn

Even though your funeral was in the summer,
It felt like autumn the way the tears
Hung off Aunt Shelley's jawbone like cold raindrops
On the eaves of the old porch,
The way Grandpa's eyes were too red and wet and
A thousand years away,
The way Dad's sorrow poured out of folded arms and tight lips,
Soft like worn leather,
The way it rained too lightly to add any cliché dreariness.
I just couldn't think of that red granite box as you, even though I
Knew
It was the soft gray remains of your body.
Death is not like winter, cold and harsh
Death is autumn, life draining from bodies,
Life drip-dripping from stuttering lips and
Once-strong grips
Death is watching summers of laughter and hugs fade to
Hospital rooms and rain-grey skin and
Slow sad songs like wind in red-brown, dead-brown leaves
And feeling a slow, quiet loneliness invade your veins.
Your death was not cold, impersonal sterile white; it was the
Aching melancholy melody of removing
One shade of green
From a palette, not noticed in the painting at large
But felt keenly in the way the artist's hand no longer
Cues that brushstroke.
Watching you die was watching all the green leach out of the leaves
And turn them briefly, painfully on fire,
Standing in a field of emerald grass and feeling it
Crinkle and turn yellow-orchre under cold fingers
Collapsing into mud.
Watching Death from the outside is the single
Most painful part of your painless process.
When you took your last breath, your features were a
Picture-perfect memory of peace, even as my face was a
Mask of confusion, my chest heaving with stale hospital air
The way yours would never again.
I wanted to run outside and imagine all the trees turning red-gold
In your honor, mimicking your final
Blaze of glory in that last smile.
Autumn came early that year, though no trees
Turned
Til October.
Even in the middle of spring I can smell the
Rain-woods-wind-wine scent of your autumn soul
And it makes me smile.

#love #family #funeral #autumn #great-grandfather

Dylan Thomas Jun 2009

All All And All The Dry Worlds Lever

Dylan Thomas

All All And All The Dry Worlds Lever

I

All all and all the dry worlds lever,
Stage of the ice, the solid ocean,
All from the oil, the pound of lava.
City of spring, the governed flower,
Turns in the earth that turns the ashen
Towns around on a wheel of fire.

How now my flesh, my naked fellow,
Dug of the sea, the glanded morrow,
Worm in the scalp, the staked and fallow.
All all and all, the corpse's lover,
Skinny as sin, the foaming marrow,
All of the flesh, the dry worlds lever.

II

Fear not the waking world, my mortal,
Fear not the flat, synthetic blood,
Nor the heart in the ribbing metal.
Fear not the tread, the seeded milling,
The trigger and scythe, the bridal blade,
Nor the flint in the lover's mauling.

Man of my flesh, the jawbone riven,
Know now the flesh's lock and vice,
And the cage for the scythe-eyed raver.
Know, O my bone, the jointed lever,
Fear not the screws that turn the voice,
And the face to the driven lover.

III

All all and all the dry worlds couple,
Ghost with her ghost, contagious man
With the womb of his shapeless people.
All that shapes from the caul and suckle,
Stroke of mechanical flesh on mine,
Square in these worlds the mortal circle.

Flower, flower the people's fusion,
O light in zenith, the coupled bud,
And the flame in the flesh's vision.
Out of the sea, the drive of oil,
Socket and grave, the brassy blood,
Flower, flower, all all and all.

Andi Mar 2015

Johnny and Winona

Andi Mar 2015

Johnny and Winona

He looked at her like she was the most beautiful thing in the world,
not like a piece of meat that is waiting to be devoured
more like he needed her like plants need sunlight
it almost seemed like she is oxygen and he needed her to be there and fill his lungs every time he took a breath
with every glance you could see the love in his eyes and the smile that played at his lips like he wanted to love her until the end of his life
and to be without her would be the end of his life
The way he looked at her said "I will never leave you"
like every moment with her could have been his last, and every moment without her was utter torture

She looked at him like he was the blood in her veins and every time she met his eyes it was the first time
like her love was unfathomable and without it she would not go on
She looked at him like she saw every moment they ever had together in the curve of his jawbone, every kiss they ever shared in the color of his lips, like all of the love in the world was resting on his brow

The prelude of their kiss, where their foreheads rested against each other and their noses touched seemed to be endless and peaceful as though nothing else existed

The moment they kissed looked like it lasted forever in their eyes, but felt so fleeting
like it kept them grounded and without it they would be 10 ft off the ground

"When I met Johnny, I was pure ******. He changed that. He was my first everything. My first real kiss. My first real boyfriend. My first fiancé. My first guy I had *** with. So he'll always be in my heart. Forever. Kind of funny that word." Winona Ryder
She sounded so nostalgic and soft, he meant the world to her
As though the world would be off centered without him

"I'd die for her. I love her so much. I don't know what I would do without her. She is going through a lot right now. I wish I could just kiss away the pain, make it go away, stop it, **** it! If she, you know, I don't know what I would do. I'd **** myself. I love that girl. I love her. I love her almost more than I love myself." Johnny Depp
He seemed so passionate, like without him he both couldn't and wouldn't want to go on
Like the world wouldn't stop, it would just cease to exist
"Believe me, this Winona Forever tattoo is not something I took lightly... Her eyes **** me."
I believe they did **** him, that just the thought of her cut him like glass
that every moment he spent with her made him love her so much it hurts

I want a love like Johnny and Winona
a love so strong that it'll leave me thinking about every kiss, every accidental brush of their arm against mine, every second since their eyes met mine. I want a love like music, a love that makes me feel like with it the world will slow to one beat per measure.
A love that feels like the ocean, they are the shore, and I am the seashells that get swept up in it
A love that is completely undeniable on every account

A love like Johnny and Winona

****** poetry I wrote at 3:00 am

— The End —