Paralyzed in waiting

Paralyzed in waiting
his fixed stare of broken thoughts
watches numbers creep

Her hurried promise

Her hurried promise
fingers seeking upturned palm
a novice's vow

He's disposed to shed

He's disposed to shed
odd old personalities
each changing season

His disgrace lay not

His disgrace lay not
in straying, but in staying
put when he got there

This is not an elephant

"This is not an elephant,"
he confides to the child
as they oval round
captive creatures foreign
and featured in glassy habitats.

"See those four stout stumps
with their loose-pebble bottoms,
rooting him to the dust-bound earth
where his great girth grows?"
"Do you mean its legs?"

"Then pay attention to the gray
veined fans that swat and sway
to push away midges nibbling
heat into his giant's skull."
"Aren't those just ears?"

"There are twin ivory tines
he uses to stab and dine on
tightly packaged meals
the forest's cunning seals for him."
"I thought they were tusks?"

"Last, note his accordion's
appendage that dangles down
to fleet wrestle and greet
with a snicker or a shout."
"Grandpa, the sign says,

'Elephant'! What do you call it?"
"That's a little tidbit
he's never shared with me,
but I do know him to be
much more than his name."

Ink abiding light

Ink abiding light
a looping quill his religion writes
outward drifting verses
sung by the myriad stars
blended in one choral voice

Spare dollars he spends

Spare dollars he spends
like wishes, promising notes
better homes elsewhere

Never rash, he'll choose

Never rash, he'll choose
to lay down an abandon
fully hatched with reck

Close-knitting snug yarns

Close-knitting snug yarns
to be wrapped in soft comforts
she falls away from the world
its caring seasons
that roll and spin past

A gray lingering

A gray lingering
till sated with earthy sighs
he rains affection

Fitted with this mask

Fitted with this mask
hard chiseled at harsh angles,
he hides the impulse
to be costumed in a veil
of subtly rounded feeling

Our too-brief goodbye

Our too-brief goodbye
echoes, expanding to flood
broad-bottomed canyon

Snoopy

Float away, I would
if I could
be Snoopy,
chewing through
those Broadway bounds

Breathy wisp billows

Breathy wisp billows
then fades, ghostly life spoken
into crisp, cold air

His vital organs

His vital organs
still moist, vittles for vultures
swooping down peckish

Small souls wither

Small
souls
wither.
Docile husks
under-nourished by
his unsubstantiated blood

He runs fingers

He
runs
fingers
through jaundiced
pages, but can't find
a listing for lifting curses

Thought Experiment

I may or may not be:
a posited feline absurdity
curled up on comma paws
inside Herr Schrödinger's booby-trapped box.

Its flask of uncertain
whether smashed to poison my mighty mews
and spew a gray-mouthed cloud
that inky clots neither's sharpening pen.

Entangled buts become
stranded as knots of fuzzy pink yarn send
either-or careening
arm and arm down imperfect pictured paths,

where Epimetheus
stands, ready to wed Pandora anew,
and doom-birth our many
worlds with the lifting of my thousand lids.

— Francis Scudellari

Ten toes tipping

Ten
toes
tipping
the threshold,
unbalanced he leans
back waiting for a strong gust's push

Lids loosed

Lids
loosed
after
stubborn twists,
release captive breath
to mingle with freshening air

I could let go

I
could
let go
people, things
to end these plagues, but
God is in it for the torture

Light had its chance

Light
had
its chance
to woo me.
Darkness seduces
with a kiss of liquid shadow.

Seeing such smooth skin

Seeing such smooth skin,
two eyes and just four limbs, makes
the spider's hide crawl

Am meal at

With a worded trap I'm asked
to verify my human
being by typing
A-M-M-E-A-L-A-T.

I misinterpret that
as, "Am meal at."
Putting down the plastic fork
to key it in,

I wonder out loud,
"Who's about to be
eaten, and where?"
It tells me I passed.

— Francis Scudellari

Done. Been. Held by

Done.
Been.
Held by
the fickle
world, this incessant
turning, I'll flee its gravity

With fork and knife

With
fork
and knife
he devours
the day, relishing
both its sweet and savory hours

The world makes us

This
world
makes us
all killers
inspiring with memes
of the cruelest survival

They take small bites

They
take
small bites
siphoning
bigger drops each night
growing addicted to his soul

Pickled

Pickled on quixotic tonics
he strives for a polyglot's poise,
balancing plaster peas
at the end of his tippler's tongue.

But the rough-surfaced pearls prickle
his too-ticklish bed of pink,
and gulped down, he administers
only a lessoned indigestion.

Flipping the flop, he prevaricates
himself into the tight-fit corners
of a parallelogram traced
by unsolemn processionals

bedecked in platitudinous finery.
Their porous smirks drip sticky
reminders of a plethora
of previously pernicious exercises

and dampen his fluffy ambition,
prodding procrastinations until
his drunken promise dries out
to become a posthumous wish.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #101: p-p-p-poetry at Read Write Poem. There are a total of 13 p-word prompts, and I used all of them (plus a few extras of my own for seasoning).

He waits

He
waits
at death's
door, transfixed
by ornate knocker

He buys his hats

He buys his hats
too wide and his books
too heavy hoping
the volume
will expand his mind

Charting the distance

Charting the distance
of waved travels, he cycles
back upon himself

Straying's Wish

Disenchanted, this slanted floor
whispers to me
through its tightly clenched slats.
Cranky tales of failed

first steps, I tip-toe past,

unflappable. End tables mock
my walk-by dare,
mouthing weak-coffee moans
from wood-grained circlets. Stains

surface, I sidle on,

as their knots fade. A lean-to shade,
the lamp tilts up
shadows with blunted beaks.
Clipped wings flapping deep-toned

airs, my unsettling makes

falsetto. Vents hiss librettos
to dissuade me
with their combed-over notes.
Forced-upon causes, pause

to caress fleeing ought,

envied. Wood shutters crack mutters
to trick a gaze
from pictured window's bliss.
Vagrant clouds cross crowds

of stars, my straying's wish.

— Francis Scudellari

He may have fallen

He may have fallen
by foolish pride
but it's the bitter
memory of what he once was
that keeps him from ever
getting back up

Thick-leaf canopy

Thick-leaf canopy
humble and temporary
my loaned umbrella

His life's span measured

His life's span measured
half the distance between real
and imagined shores

Compromise becomes

Compromise becomes
easier after your soul
has finally fled

Tracing mirrored routes

Tracing mirrored routes
he calculates scaled-down miles
crafty age has mapped

Her mismatched legs dance

Her mismatched legs dance
to lonely rhythms, sweeping
elliptical paths
I follow, my eyes searching
the hard wood floors laid above

Wispy headed snake

Wispy headed snake
twists and glides through dusted blue
browning its belly

She cocoons herself

She cocoons herself
nightly, woolen wrapped
and awaiting daylight's again
to search her back
for nubs of wings, sprouting

Dreamscapes cluttered

Dreamscapes cluttered
with baubles and toys
his mechanical eyes can't clutch
lifting up filled
but only by waking

A spare marble tossed

A spare marble tossed
across this blue velvet sea
arcs to the morning

False-flattering clouds

False-flattering clouds
gauzy stroke the moon's pocked cheeks
snick'ring at its grin

Door swings open

Door swings open, dis-
covers loving fraught with im-
possibility

I'll robot

As my illogic breaks, I'll robot make
to be this soul's chamber,
robbing a piecemeal joy from misfit toys
tossed out for fine tuning

by toddlers cheery mad to gorge on fads.
I'll take their T-Rex head,
with droopy lids that wink as if to drink
the world's wide-shallow stares,

plug its plastic prongs in torso of tin
while twin squeeze-box arms splay
to tie magnetic bows round pads below
gold, plush lion cub's legs.

This moppet of mixed breeds I'll learned feed
with animate cunning
to be ruled by charmed laws that give it pause
when whole-sum circumstance

tangles fuzzy circuits. Then a circus-
wire's unbalancing act
I'll paste from templed flesh to doll enmeshed
by transfuse rigging,

and as coil comes to slough, just as I'm off,
I'll flip that gilded switch,
implanting my spirit into a bit
of copper-hued country.

His weekly transform

His weekly transform
sluggish to mercurial
by quicksilver shots

After the buggy debacle

After the buggy debacle,
crawling cabinet cascade
jeopardizing his larder,
he ditched swatter stopgaps
to pursue insecticide's purer forms

His broad grin

His broad grin shows off
the new missing tooth he paints
as sporty black stripe

The go-round

The go-round never
made merry for him.
Its lacquered yellow horses
and their creeping,
glazed-eye grins.

He glares desert heat

He glares desert heat
life belly slides, crawls behind
thin shadows, cool nooks

Her pulled-up corners

Her pulled-up corners
a public moment's whimsy
drooping back at home

Crow's harsh caw mocking

Crow's harsh caw mocking
my right-angled walk, it cuts
winged hypotenuse

My scratchy tissue

My scratchy tissue
can't catch the gook graying
lucy's chetstnut eye
so Albert paws in
his nimble tongue obliging

Brazen-minded breeze

Brazen-minded breeze
tugs at the sun's cotton robe
eying his nude blush

A wounded beauty

A wounded beauty
early pierced, too often drawn
by ill-caring hands,
wary of his gentler touch
turns away, stabbing two hearts

Birthed in tumult's core

Birthed in tumult's core
journey becomes choice, which path
to radiate through

More bird on a wire

More bird on a wire
than yo-yo on a string
he clings to the warming
vibrato of her
whispers texted nightly

Stormy ushers shove

Stormy ushers shove
tip-toe stumbles through curtains
half-parted amber
falling against red cushions
arrayed in a fragrant chill

His immense problems

His immense problems
best captured through a peep hole
bottle tilted back

Fall's red-cheeked bluster

Fall's red-cheeked bluster
extending loud courtesy
slams the door behind

Egg-Chicken

Egg-chicken, chicken-egg
however I lay it
my logic always cracks

Romance thirsting eyes

Romance thirsting ears
imbibe her treacly voice, its cloy
a disheartened quench

Jogging autumn gusts

Jogging autumn gusts
fit and trim, push their way through
leaves crowding branches

Her polished lapis eyes

Her polished lapis eyes
set beneath spun gold,
a stare too precious
for me to fix

Mock-rock globe

Mock-rock globe spinning
he pokes at the tan-green blurs
a one-wish ticket

Slender digits lured

Slender digits lured
technology's needling bite
fluid self transfused

His waking coiffure

His waking coiffure
shaped by pillows and static
a cockatoo's crest

Glutton eyes binge on

Glutton eyes binge on
imaginary fillips,
avid to jostle
a brain grown weary trying
to stem their unthinking bloat

Carnival's Valor

Two amorously leaning props,
they duel to woo her,
a far-glowing mistress,
with their neon spins
and flash-bulb reels
that burn untempered torches
against the black-lit night.

The first flings his golden lines,
tracing over-stated claims
to crowned velocities.
The next, more simply,
rolls a sapphire eye
in an unblinking hope
of whirled persuasion.

All the while above,
their cratered princess,
attracted to much more
subtly fired revolutions,
looks down in yellowed yawns,
unimpressed at their boasting
a carnival's valor.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #98: Whee! at Read Write Poem. The challenge was to use a photo prompt (click the link to see the image), which I interpreted in my usual strange way.

My sign of the times

My sign of the times
teetered slowly down the sidewalk
a discounted pizza box
balanced precariously
on her head

I changed my part

I changed my part
from right to left
not to better my look,
but to skip over
this rut

Homunculus

Plump-fully fleshed, it sits
to me not unlike
a cloth of sacked potatoes,

though it's so pinkly dripped
and more misshaped
in its stranger bulgings.

This would-be man's clubby arms
and double-stubbly legs
tacked onto a drooping goop

that he eyelessly affords to
flap and flop around,
as a foundling seeking

its comfort's sorting out.
His sweet-meat rolls,
and summery salted stumbles

lead him to the final fall;
a downward folly
lacking its expected thud.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is another one inspired by a dream. It was, needless to say, a strange and disturbing one, and I've softened it up quite a bit here.

We often bemoan

We often bemoan
fleshed fates we've been dressed without
trying another

My choices fall

My choices fall
in do's small
drops,

each splashed no-doubt
kicking out
dust

to carve a did.
Then crooked
rills

of when converge,
timely surge
back

to push my why.
Blue-tossed I
lifts

up on white-capped
and oft-happed
am;

was carried down,
struggling drowns.
My

now, cleansed by here,
is no mere
chance.

Staked in blood-red ire

Staked in blood-red ire
she paints her face ghoulish white
a moody re-vamp

Pulling its blade from stilled flesh

Pulling its blade from stilled flesh
he touches the weeping
tool that bends his once
too-simple faith

His daily drip of words

His daily drip of words
become a gushing leak,
he shaves the faulty pate,
heads off to nearby shop
fetching, a tarry patch

Coiled care's deadened weight

Coiled care's deadened weight
sliced by tempered hand, soul lifts
cerulean bliss

Choppy blade strokes churn

Choppy blade strokes churn
downward flows from source to mouth
clarity muddied

Back to Belly

I'm finally returning to my short story Belly, which I abandoned early this year after posting the first four chapters. I'm going to start anew with a revised prologue below, and I hope to post at least one chapter a week... but don't hold me to that.

Prologue: A Circular Journey

It starts and ends here: The heavy head of a man, who is perhaps too cleverly named, jumps skyward as if it were tugged by a puppeteer’s unmeaning and graceless twitch.

The man is called Jonas. That’s a variant of Jonah, and this is, after all, a tale of bellies.

The invisible hand behind the tugging is the jostling force of Jonas’s week-linked commuter train. The tethered box in which he’s nestled is the first belly of this narrative, and it carries him halfway along its circular journey. It’s a trek often punctuated by fits, false starts, and sudden stops, and one such regularly irregular interruption pulls Jonas from a dreamless sleep, punching up his ragdoll’s chin to bring him gasping back into its interior.

First to wake are his limpid blue irises, which struggle to emerge between black-lashed lids, straining against the flood of pallid light. His nicely rounded ears, more prominent for the lack of hair surrounding them, rouse next rudely reconnected to crashing waves of cartoonish sounds as the mechanical beast regains its stride. Last to stir are the nostrils of a rather plain nose, which flare to gulp some fueling air then spit back the pungent smell of perspiration, mixed with wet wool.

“What time is it?”

These whispered words, voiced as an aside, cue Jonas’s left arm to lift up, but, so long wedged against the steel wall, it misses its mark. A livelier right hand, eager to assist its fellow player, leaps their lapped divide and massages the deadened flesh. It’s a lovely and successful gesture, and the blood gradually returns, bringing with it pricks of tiny needles.

This first dramatic stumble gotten past, the action proceeds as scripted. The left arm rises dutifully and its opposing hand slides back a pale blue cotton cuff to reveal two silver strips spread like an open scissors attacking the white disk.

“Seven o’clock still, but that can’t be.”

If his eyes and memory don’t betray him, and after the arm-lifting mishap he can’t rule out their collusion, time’s usually steady gait had limped to a halt and then reversed path back to the moment icy winds ushered him onto this round-about. Or, it could be the watch. Jonas taps the glass crystal, but it offers no signs of life.

The rounded square of a window, backed by an early winter morning’s confounding darkness, gives him no clues either to his place in this oft-repeated story’s book.

“It doesn't matter.”

Suspended inanimate within these vibrating walls, Jonas lets the wash of artificial light and heat coax him back to unconsciousness. The troubling city sprawled out below him fades further into the black. His once-sharp calling recedes with it to the indistinct mumble of words spoken long ago, far away, and in a forgotten tongue.

Overcome by sleep’s welcome eraser, Jonas’s shoulders slump and his head nods, their controlling strings severed anew.

Burgundy seed pods

Burgundy seed pods
in honey locust dangle
bumpy lobes curling
anxious for fall's first strong tug
and the peace of raked earth beds

Playful finger smears

Playful finger smears
chalky smiles across gray slates
lifting somber face

Distance

In the heat-tricked mirror, he sees
crafty miles creep up with vital intent,
toeing waved lines.

A pair of vultures glide in lean routes,
marking bold exes across the grain
of age-stained charts.

Their sudden runs on scented organs
made with strong swoops to fleshy thresholds
of life's tipping.

He discovers in this scaled calculus
that distance, moist but listing, travels
in taut cycles.

It can't defeat the curse of lifting
unbalanced loads with back pushed against
jaundiced fingers.

Ten peckish tips, waiting for victuals
they smell buried in gusty legends
of cornered maps.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #97 at Read Write Poem. The challenge was to use the "cut-up technique" of picking words at random. I used words from five recent haiku and short poems, so its a cut-up plus a mash-up. The result is pretty abstract.

The world may refuse

The world may refuse
words I toss out, more refuse
atop littered piles
but this trash, offered humbly
is my only true treasure

Turntable: Regret

This is part two (you can read Part I: Love is here).

Turntable
By Francis Scudellari

II. Regret

slips through, skipping over hairline scratches
etched by fitful nudges. The crooned once-so

simple and soulful, become fragile when
poised on wound-up platter. Needling him back,

that night their conversation broke to-be,
and was followed with a pause, he stretches

on each wobbly replaying. Then picked up,
he'll tuck it back in a wax-paper sleeve

corner-chopped to stash among discounted
bins of ballads rhyming her without him.

Your opinion

I truly value
your opinion, it's just that
I like mine better

Crickets

I hear now my
youth's crickets call
in the chirped hitch
of an overhead fan
or the high-pitch spin
of an idling engine.
The everyday reminds
I may have strayed
nearing too far.

No mere pin-prick

No mere pin-prick
on indigo veil, she hovers.

A wink each night in southern sky
burning through this big city haze
to re-assure me, I'm not
utterly alone.

Nostalgia's fluffed sponge

Nostalgia's fluffed sponge
dabs a cracked past's weepy spills
staining as it sops

Back-door alley's soundtrack

Back-door alley's soundtrack:
the one-note songs
of trucks shifting
into reverse
above, an arrhythmic beat
as pigeons take to wing

After School

Backed against an unclean slate,
this teacher, much more preacher,
vowelizes her vague threats
with a dry-throated croak: "I'll learn
you both to behave, or else!"

A one-eyed stare sawed in two
shows that she means vehemence,
tying down small-town thrashers
in the straight-jacketed comport
of a well-raised progeny.

Their permafrosted pause firms
the footing for lessoned spells
that had giggled on the brink
of insolent "Chelations"
and its indecent relations.

But this light-bubbling silence
irresistibly explodes
in a "Cosmoramic" spray
of sophomoric rhymes – soapy
language tickling her upturned no's.

"One more outburst ..." and she'll make
twin reprobates rinse away
too-capricious grunts and groans,
exulting in the power
of a well-placed investment:

her overtime, their effort.

— Francis Scudellari

---

This poem is written in response to Read Write Prompt #96: spam, spam, spam at Read Write Poem. The fifteen "Wordle" prompts, taken from spam e-mails, are italicized. I used the motif of a spelling lesson to avoid having to write lines that made sense of the words Chelations and Cosmoramic (whose definitions bred more confusion than clarity).

A frustrated sun

A frustrated sun
wishes for hands, to rend clouds
stealing his kisses

Inspirational Bloggers

My friend Jena has just published a new book called "Inspirational Thoughts and Stories of Bloggers from All Over the World" that features one of my pieces. It's a compilation of works by 27 different bloggers and authors hailing, as the title indicates, from around the globe. To read more about this anthology, and to order yourself a copy, visit her GewGaw Writings site. With the quality of its contributors, it's well worth the money.

A dark, bloated cloud

A dark, bloated cloud
caught in lake's bounded mirror
pushes drifting thoughts
to float sinister tiding
shaped as his own swelling corpse

Wooden mask

Wooden mask slipped off
face carved wicked revealing
god's crueler knife

Turntable: Love Is

This is the first piece of what I plan to be a four-part poem. Unfortunately the next three are still just vaguely shaped at this point. I'll post the remaining pieces here as I finish them, and then the fully assembled work at my main site (FrancisScudellar.Com).

Turntable
By Francis Scudellari

I. Love is

a two-headed hook, that bobs as she toes
this cunning line. It cuts through the muddy

reverb of a wax-spun groove, swirling round
tar-black to reach the Day-Glo hypnosis

at its center. A trembling voice tucks in
among the hiss and crackling pops. Echoes

found as her left arm floats, extending
a turntable's journey to spiral back

on that jumble of a first rainy day
they met, dripping in the coffee shop's queue.

Halfway up the hill

Halfway up the hill
after many trips, he asks
"why the fuss, Sissy?"

With tender kisses

With tender kisses
her lips blot away, his doubts
spilling from cracked brow

Waking on clear white sands

Waking on clear white sands
teeming with black dots a-scurry
to surround his giant's frame,
it dawns on him Swiftly,
he's read this tale before...