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Glades and Creeks.

One day in a journey far far away,  the forest was speaking to a lone wanderer.
"I am quite the clean forest, am I not?." The forest whispered soothingly.
"Mmhm." Spoke the wanderer, passive by such an interjection.
"Of course. Thousands of forests have wilted and died under the hand of man. I remain lush and brimming to the birch with life."
"Where is my way out of here?" The wanderer asked, becoming quite needy at the thought of having to spend the night in that dung-infested greenhouse.

The forests name was Evergreen. Allot of forests were named Evergreen. This forest had just been sold cheaply to a large logging firm who would come and tear the ugly trees down. The proprietors of that sale was a tribe of Indians. The specific agent who devised and contracted the sale was named Nahiko. An Indian tribesmen who, like his ancestors could speak to the forest.

Indians were what Europeans called people from India and natives of America. Allot of Indians in America were killed for being Indian. When an Indian boy came of age, they would be thrown into a jungle and starve until they saw an animal spirit. This was probably prelude to eating said spirit animal while thanking it for helping him live on.

"I, Evergreen implore you to stay within my womb of plant and fauna."
"Hm." replied the wanderer. Not wanting to argue.
The wanderer took a seat beside a flowing creek on a rock. The creek lead up to waterfall, which in turn lead through a river that spanned for miles. The river did not speak as it was an extension of the forest, Evergreen. Down the creek was the old homes of the Indian tribe.
"Have you ever saved someone else?" The wanderer asked.
"My yes, of course. Everyone who is to enter without water or food is rescued by my charming animals! And luxurious streams. I am quite hospitable you see. There was a tribe who lived within me, they were by name called the Perchil tribe. But they had to leave for more. Hmph. As if anything up in that ****** town is worth more then me."

Further up the river, away from the forest was a town named "Milan". It was named after a kingdom of the same name in Italy. People in Milan spoke German. This was odd given Milan lay in south America, but not unusual given its history of being a port to German slave traders who came from a German colony called "Tanganyika" in Africa. The town was named Milan because the Germans wanted to appear more Italian. This desire was apparent in their most famous dishes "schnitzel Pizza" and "Pasta Salsiccia". Pasta Salsiccia was pasta in a sausage casing often served with tomato sauce and mashed potatoes.

Perchil was also a member of that Indian tribe. He was Nahiko's brother and had a family of his own. Perchil was born in Evergreen and educated in Milan. He had been fighting with Nahiko over the terms of sale of the forest. Nahiko had wanted to preserve the land of old tribe. Perchil was already drawing up plans to sell it to an oil foundry. Their land happened to be on top of a great oil reserve. That means allot of animals lived and died on that land millions or thousands of years ago. There body would dissolve into a black gooey liquid used to fuel heavy machinery. This machinery is used by logging firms to cut down not exclusively, forests named Evergreen.

The wanderer, feeling awkward asked. "So, you'd rather not want to be destroyed?"
"Oh, I am a forest and I do maintain a will of my own and wants. But I cannot rather things should be anything other than what they are. The world is a destructive place. It is disrespectful of its former home and ancestry. I know this. I have tried however, to ward off the workmen by scaring them with my animals. In the end I shall become a town or a shopping mall."
In 3 years time, the deed to "Evergreen plains, Milan" would be sold and used to build a shopping mall named aptly "Evergreen Mall". And the forests voice would be spoke out of loudspeakers, but in the form of either a pre-recorded message or announcement about a lost child. Nahiko and Perchil would be married in Evergreen Mall. Nahiko three times.

"Oh woe is me, I lament my lost brothers and sister forests who are no longer beaming and prideful of their enormous trees and crested riverbanks."
"Maybe they should have defended themselves better." The wanderer spoke, trying unsuccessfully to show concern.
"Well, I for one will never give up fighting the man!"
"Good for you." The wanderer then ate his lunch.

Three days from now, the forest would stop speaking to anyone who arrived within its borders and see the lone wanderer again. But this time, he would be protected by four glass windows inside a piece of machinery powered by black gooey liquid called a "harvester" which lifted up wood and cut it into easily transportable pieces.

"Do you, believe in god wanderer?" The forest asked, to strike up some conversation.
"I do believe in god. He's the reason I get up in the morning and assists me in supporting my family."
"I don't. I don't think I believe in god, wanderer. If he exists, how could he let something so beautiful as I and my brother and sister forests be turned into shopping malls and townships like Milan."
The evergreen forest had seen the name "Milan" as a city nearby on a poster which flew into the twig of its tree. The poster was now lying on smooth ground weighted down by a root, as so the forest can read it over and over again. The poster advertised Pasta Salsiccia at a local restaurant in Milan. It had appetizing pictures of Pizza with crumbed steak on it and Pasta filled Sausages.
"God once flooded the earth, destroying all forests and people for their misgivings. Maybe you misgave and people are your divine punishment."
The forest grew silent and whispered soft hymns of wind against the leaves and overgrown shrubbery.

The edge of the creek, where the wanderer sat on a rock had a hard sand that stretched out a few meters disappeared into the dirt. It was unusual to see a small bed of sand without any other visible placements of sand. The wanderer had been dumping it there, with permission from the forest so he could form a base to store his harvester. The forest did not know of the sands purpose, she thought it looked pretty.
"If I were god, the world would be nothing but forests!" Evergreen stated. The gentle words turning a harsher coarse crackling of branches.
"The world seems to be nothing but people right now. Maybe gods a man."
"Unlikely! If god was a man, he would certainly love forests enough to never cut them down."
"Hm." The wanderer was dissatisfied with this explanation, but didn't want to argue.

"Would you **** anyone who came into your forest, just to prove a point?" The wanderer asked, waiting pensively.
"Oh no, as I said. I cannot change what already is and certainly would not bloom the effort to try. Besides. I also know about those people and their weapons. When it comes to human beings, no matter how hard I fight they will always win. How they ever came to develop boom guns and ratatatat chainsaws I have no idea. If they came from my forest, people would certainly have never developed tools so cruel and menacing. But, I suppose Eden had her way for you. Even if it was, at the cost of all our kind."
"Yeah. No matter forest or person, people always win. I'll always be below some rich powerful man too." The wanderer felt melancholy for feeling unimportant. The forest felt the same melancholy for her life and the world.

Suddenly and finally, a noise came from the wanderers pants. He then picked out his phone, clicked it and took it to his ear. After two hours, the wanderer walked east and out of Evergreen forest. He visited her three days later in his noisy harvester. made to cut wood. He parked on his sand bed. The wanderer left his harvester and locked the door without a word. Evergreen forest was properly harvested of its trees in 3 years time. Never uttering a word or complaint. The painted marking on the harvester she saw everyday however, was her last thought as she disappeared. The word painted onto the door of the harvester, its operator. "Perchil."
I wrote this a while ago, it's my first short story. Tell me if you like it. And maybe, beseech me. Whatever. I dunno. BE GENTLE!!!
Rai Oct 2015
She wears fine cloth made from star dust
Sheer and fine
Jewels hang like tears from the edges of her gown
The moon is high and beckoning for her recognition
For this is a time of harvest and the wolves are howling their knowing
Hold tight child in womb all will soon be shown to you
Life returns to dust
As lovers can not agree to let love just be
The light of source is touching the spirit
Making us feel strong
Binding all that is together in its natural rhythm
Drums sound and smoke rises
Lady of this magical night stands forth and offers herself
To the great creator
Creator of distruction as much as creator of spirit
As both are of the same
Bathe in moon lit rivers and spend time with soul
Tomorrow we will hunt and break bread with fools
TheBookKeeper Apr 2015
An Adventure
An Archer
A harvester of fire
and
Ruler of Jupiter
Positive, straight-forward
Intellectual and Adventurous.
But do not be fooled we are
Careless, Superficial
Over Confident and Tactless
Michael R Burch Mar 2023
****** Errata
by Michael R. Burch
I didn’t mean to love you; if I did,
it came unbid-
en, and should’ve remained hid-
den!



Less Heroic Couplets: Marketing 101
by Michael R. Burch

Building her brand, she disrobes,
naked, except for her earlobes.



Negligibles
by Michael R. Burch

Show me your most intimate items of apparel;
begin with the hem of your quicksilver slip ...



Warming Her Pearls
by Michael R. Burch

for Beth

Warming her pearls,
her ******* gleam like constellations.
Her belly is a bit rotund ...
she might have stepped out of a Rubens.



Cover Girl
by Michael R. Burch

Cunning
at sunning
and dunning,
the stunning
young woman’s in the running
to be found **** on the cover
of some patronizing lover.

In this case the cover is a bed cover, where the enterprising young mistress is about to be covered herself.



First Base Freeze
by Michael R. Burch

I find your love unappealing
(no, make that appalling)
because you prefer kissing
then stalling.



Nun Fun Undone
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Thomas Moore

Abbesses’
recesses
are not for excesses!



Less Heroic Couplets: *** Hex
by Michael R. Burch

for and after Richard Thomas Moore

Love’s full of cute paradoxes
(and highly acute poxes).

Published by ****** of Parnassus, Lighten Up Online
and Poem Today



Retro
by Michael R. Burch

Now, once again,
love’s a redundant pleasure,
as we laugh
at my childish fumblings
through the acres of your dress,
past your wily-wired brassiere,
through your *******’ pink billows
of thrill-piqued frills ...
Till I lay once again—panting redfaced
at your gayest lack of resistance,
and, later, at your milktongued
mewlings in the dark ...
When you were virginal,
sweet as eucalyptus,
we did not understand
the miracle of repentance,
and I took for granted
your obsessive distance ...
But now I am happily unbuttoning
that chaste dress,
unhitching that firm-latched bra,
tugging at those parachute-like *******—
the ones you would have gladly forgotten
had I not bought them in this year’s size.

Originally published by Erosha



Poppy
by Michael R. Burch

“It is lonely to be born.” – Dannie Abse, “The Second Coming”

It is lonely to be born
between the intimate ears of corn . . .
the sunlit, flooded, shellshocked rows.

The scarecrow flutters, listens, knows . . .
Pale butterflies in staggering flight
ascend the gauntlet winds and light
before the scything harvester.

The winsome buds of cornflowers
prepare themselves to be airborne,
and it is lonely to be shorn,
decapitate, of eager life
so early in love’s blinding maze
of silks and tassels, goldened days
when life’s renewed, gone underground.

Sad confidante of worm and mound,
how little stands to be regained
of what is left.
A tiny cleft
now marks your birth, your reddening
among the amber waves. O, sing!

Another waits to be reborn
among bent thistle, down and thorn.
A hoofprint’s cleft, a ram’s curved horn
curled inward, turned against the heart,
a spoor like infamy. Depart.

You came too late, the signs are clear:
whose world this is, now watches, near.
There is no ****** for the heart.

Originally published by Borderless Journal



Virginal
by Michael R. Burch

For an hour
every wildflower
beseeches her,
"To thy breast,
Elizabeth."

But she is mine;
her lips divine
and her ******* and hair
are mine alone.

Let the wildflowers moan.



If Love Were Infinite
by Michael R. Burch

If love were infinite, how I would pity
our lives, which through long years’ exactitude
might seem a pleasant blur—one interlude
without prequel or sequel—wanly pretty,
the gentlest flame the heart might bring to bear
to tepid hearts too sure of love to flare.

If love were infinite, why would I linger
caressing your fine hair, lost in the thought
each auburn strand must shrivel with this finger,
and so in thrall to time be gently brought
to final realization: love, amazing,
must leave us ash for all our fiery blazing.

If flesh’s heat once led me straight to you,
love’s arrow’s burning mark must pierce me through.



Plastic Art or Night Stand
by Michael R. Burch

Disclaimer: This is a poem about artificial poetry, not love dolls! The victim is the Muse.

We never questioned why “love” seemed less real
the more we touched her, and forgot her face.
Absorbed in molestation’s sticky feel,
we failed to see her staring into space,
her doll-like features frozen in a smile.
She held us in her marionette’s embrace,
her plastic flesh grown wet and slick and vile.
We groaned to feel our urgent fingers trace
her undemanding body. All the while,
she lay and gaily bore her brief disgrace.
We loved her echoed passion’s squeaky air,
her tongueless kisses’ artificial taste,
the way she matched, then raised our reckless pace,
the heart that seemed to pound, but was not there.



She Was Very Pretty
by Michael R. Burch

She was very pretty, in the usual way
for perhaps a day;
and when the boys came out to play,
she winked and smiled, then ran away
till one unexpectedly caught her.

At sixteen, she had a daughter.
She was fairly pretty another day
in her squalid house, in her pallid way,
but the skies ahead loomed drably grey,
and the moonlight gleamed jaundiced on her cheeks.

She was almost pretty perhaps two weeks.
Then she was hardly pretty; her jaw was set.
With streaks of silver scattered in jet,
her hair became a solemn iron grey.
Her daughter winked, then ran away.

She was hardly pretty another day.
Then she was scarcely pretty; her skin was marred
by liver spots; her heart was scarred;
her child was grown; her life was done;
she faded away with the setting sun.
She was scarcely pretty, and not much fun.

Then she was sparsely pretty; her hair so thin;
but a light would sometimes steal within
to remind old, stoic gentlemen
of the rules, and how girls lose to win.



Cold Snap Coin Flip
by Michael R. Burch

Rise and shine,
The world is mine!
Let’s get ahead!

Or ...

Back to bed,
Old sleepyhead,
Dull and supine.



Song Cycle
by Michael R. Burch

Sing us a song of seasons—
of April’s and May’s gay greetings;
let Winter release her sting.
Sing us a song of Spring!

Nay, the future is looking glummer.
Sing us a song of Summer!

Too late, there’s a pall over all;
sing us a song of Fall!

Desist, since the icicles splinter;
sing us a song of Winter!

Sing us a song of seasons—
of April’s and May’s gay greetings;
let Winter release her sting.
Sing us a song of Spring!



The Unregal Beagle vs. The Voracious Eagle
by Michael R. Burch

I’d rather see an eagle
than a beagle
because they’re so **** regal.

But when it’s time to wiggle
and to giggle,
I’d rather embrace an angel
than an evil.

And when it’s time to share the same small space,
I’d much rather have a beagle lick my face!

*

Over(t) Simplification
by Michael R. Burch

“Keep it simple, stupid.”

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful,
or comforting, or horrifying. Move
the reader, and the world will not reprove
the idiosyncrasies of too few lines,
too many syllables, or offbeat beats.

It only matters that *she
taps her feet
or that he frowns, or smiles, or grimaces,
or sits bemused—a child—as images
of worlds he’d lost come flooding back, and then ...
they’ll cheer the poet’s insubordinate pen.

A sonnet is not simple, but the rule
is simply this: let poems be beautiful.
THE SINS of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
  
The sins of Kalamazoo are a convict gray, a dishwater drab.
  
And the people who sin the sins of Kalamazoo are neither scarlet nor crimson.
  
They run to drabs and grays-and some of them sing they shall be washed whiter than snow-and some: We should worry.
  
Yes, Kalamazoo is a spot on the map
And the passenger trains stop there
And the factory smokestacks smoke
And the grocery stores are open Saturday nights
And the streets are free for citizens who vote
And inhabitants counted in the census.
Saturday night is the big night.
  Listen with your ears on a Saturday night in Kalamazoo
  And say to yourself: I hear America, I hear, what do I hear?
  
Main street there runs through the middle of the twon
And there is a ***** postoffice
And a ***** city hall
And a ***** railroad station
And the United States flag cries, cries the Stars and Stripes to the four winds on Lincoln's birthday and the Fourth of July.
  
Kalamazoo kisses a hand to something far off.
  
Kalamazoo calls to a long horizon, to a shivering silver angel, to a creeping mystic what-is-it.
  
"We're here because we're here," is the song of Kalamazoo.
  
"We don't know where we're going but we're on our way," are the words.
  
There are hound dogs of bronze on the public square, hound dogs looking far beyond the public square.
  
Sweethearts there in Kalamazoo
Go to the general delivery window of the postoffice
And speak their names and ask for letters
And ask again, "Are you sure there is nothing for me?
I wish you'd look again-there must be a letter for me."
  
And sweethearts go to the city hall
And tell their names and say,"We want a license."
And they go to an installment house and buy a bed on time and a clock
And the children grow up asking each other, "What can we do to **** time?"
They grow up and go to the railroad station and buy tickets for Texas, Pennsylvania, Alaska.
"Kalamazoo is all right," they say. "But I want to see the world."
And when they have looked the world over they come back saying it is all like Kalamazoo.
  
The trains come in from the east and hoot for the crossings,
And buzz away to the peach country and Chicago to the west
Or they come from the west and shoot on to the Battle Creek breakfast bazaars
And the speedbug heavens of Detroit.
  
"I hear America, I hear, what do I hear?"
Said a loafer lagging along on the sidewalks of Kalamazoo,
Lagging along and asking questions, reading signs.
  
Oh yes, there is a town named Kalamazoo,
A spot on the map where the trains hesitate.
I saw the sign of a five and ten cent store there
And the Standard Oil Company and the International Harvester
And a graveyard and a ball grounds
And a short order counter where a man can get a stack of wheats
And a pool hall where a rounder leered confidential like and said:
"Lookin' for a quiet game?"
  
The loafer lagged along and asked,
"Do you make guitars here?
Do you make boxes the singing wood winds ask to sleep in?
Do you rig up strings the singing wood winds sift over and sing low?"
The answer: "We manufacture musical instruments here."
  
Here I saw churches with steeples like hatpins,
Undertaking rooms with sample coffins in the show window
And signs everywhere satisfaction is guaranteed,
Shooting galleries where men **** imitation pigeons,
And there were doctors for the sick,
And lawyers for people waiting in jail,
And a dog catcher and a superintendent of streets,
And telephones, water-works, trolley cars,
And newspapers with a splatter of telegrams from sister cities of Kalamazoo the round world over.
  
And the loafer lagging along said:
Kalamazoo, you ain't in a class by yourself;
I seen you before in a lot of places.
If you are nuts America is nuts.
  And lagging along he said bitterly:
  Before I came to Kalamazoo I was silent.
  Now I am gabby, God help me, I am gabby.
  
Kalamazoo, both of us will do a fadeaway.
I will be carried out feet first
And time and the rain will chew you to dust
And the winds blow you away.
And an old, old mother will lay a green moss cover on my bones
And a green moss cover on the stones of your postoffice and city hall.
  
  Best of all
I have loved your kiddies playing run-sheep-run
And cutting their initials on the ball ground fence.
They knew every time I fooled them who was fooled and how.
  
  Best of all
I have loved the red gold smoke of your sunsets;
I have loved a moon with a ring around it
Floating over your public square;
I have loved the white dawn frost of early winter silver
And purple over your railroad tracks and lumber yards.
  
  The wishing heart of you I loved, Kalamazoo.
  I sang bye-lo, bye-lo to your dreams.
I sang bye-lo to your hopes and songs.
I wished to God there were hound dogs of bronze on your public square,
Hound dogs with bronze paws looking to a long horizon with a shivering silver angel, a creeping mystic what-is-it.
As I watch’d the ploughman ploughing,
Or the sower sowing in the fields—or the harvester harvesting,
I saw there too, O life and death, your analogies:
(Life, life is the tillage, and Death is the harvest according.)
Raymond Walker Apr 2012
From the alleys and streets, from the door steps and heaths, from the meadows and farmlands,
A mist rises, and forms, from the rivers and rills, valleys and hills, from the fields and fissures
It swirls and turns in the night air, forming and fragmenting, failing and fermenting, till it yields.
A figure, blessed and bare, in the late night air, steps into the moonlight, baleful and brazen in its
Nakedness and knowledge, the pall of the shining moon, drips, Grey and silver from his eyes
Youth drips from his thighs, vigour from his lips and fingertips, crimson is his mouth  and *****.
Lions race across his skin as clouds scud across the moon, feral and wild this child of the moon.
Wild and *****, his face shadowed with growth, excited with his youth and desire. On fire.
Panicked by distaste, his own waste and needs, brewed in a mighty beer of disgust, a sire
Of demons, with packaged might, swooping and rearing, devilish and dervish, spiralled, a pyre.
For the noonday sun, wishing hope on everyone yet giving them night and darkness and doom.
Holds my hand and holds it tightly, grapples with me daily and nightly, even in my own room
Where hope takes hold as quick as fear or death or charity, spilling, humors, ethers, exhume
Nothing but a buried evil that has come to see the light. A paltry being, exhumed, of the night











Whilst over all the night comes creeping
Then I go out a’ stealing,
O’er tombstones and moss, where the dead lie sleeping,
Passing the fungi , sarcophagi, and the smell of weeping
Be it from crypt or hall or farmhouse steading.
collecting the shades of the bodies they’re shedding

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.

Whilst the morn sunlight, over hills comes creeping,
There in the shadows, I’ll be steeling,
Darkening daffodils, turning bluebells black and foxglove steeping
Poison filled and passing the narcissi, and the tears of the leaving.
It may be birth or anniversary or wedding.
I’ll be collecting the souls they are shedding.

Through all the breaths that you will still be breathing
And all those breaths that have passed
And all those breaths still to come you are dreaming
One day you shall take your last.
And that’s where I’ll be stealing








Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilight’s last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.













A ****** of crows blackens the noonday sky,
Called from their nests and eyries
And so many ships have gone by, black masted and steering
Into the wind, Sails tattered and the keel close to shearing
I stand on the nest and watch you weeping
Till the bodies fall into the deepening sea and there lie sleeping
And that’s where I’ll be stealing.

I smiled and laughed
Till the black mast
Fell below the sea
I whimpered and moaned
With those overthrown
Till they lay with me

And I took my place once more at the forefront of man’s destiny.








I crept and waddled and watched and bustled my way to the front of the crew.
I stood behind some and fell behind few; I had come here to see.
I pushed and shoved and elbowed my way to the front, shuffled over and tried to find my pew
I sat with my heart in my mouth, beating doubly in my chest and wondered were the culprit I?

It seemed I had sat in the stalls or in the balcony, way out in front
But it seems I had not sat at all just fell into the orchestras’ well.
But I remembered that I had sat, adjusted my clothes, my underwear, my hat.
As a man should do, are we not gentlemen and so I took tea and sat.








Paying court; To the girl with the blue eyes and the thin lipped smile, the girl that knew.
As most girls do, the thoughts of men, or think that they do. And I so I tried to find her,  
But it seems I had known a Girl with no thought of love, no turtle dove, cuddled
Close, no heavenly host, called to her, but she loved as love must befuddled
Drew her breath deeply but not freely, Took air, perspiring, muddled
Thoughts spinning in her head, amazed, this pale eyed temptress, The girl that knew.
As most girls do, emotions that drift, or think they do. And so found herself alone,
And weeping, a girl that did not know that they could love found that they could.
She murmured words of love and shook sand from her pelt, howled to the moon.
She stood tall on her haunches, praying , baying, to the moon goddess, one of hers.
Baleful eyes pale and moonstruck, seemed star struck with love  a mother with her curs.






Not the focus of her attention, her pale imitation, a pale shape creeps from the crepuscular woods
He slinks into the shadows of the night paying court to this matron, with his smell warmth and lust
She stalls and smells the night air
Little of care, for all stalks the night air
She sidles and smells the night air
Nothing there, In the dark and silent dream that is the night air.
She bridles and hush’s as the night drips onto her
She has cares; for children that whisper in their sleep on the night air.
Bovine, equine, feline and canine and warm fur
A sleep comes upon them all, a pale imitation of life, and a pale shadow creeps into the light.
And smothers the light of day languishing in his power and majesty sending chills unto the living
He waits in the darkness and shadows.














A child mutters unknown words and the time has come to die
Utters words of fortune and Questions your reasons why.

My dear, my love, child, why do you cry?

I shook myself awake
From my bed of dreams
And warmth
I pulled the duvet over
Took to my feet and felt
The chill

And so I stood, took my bow,  and then knew everything, everything about what I was witnessing,
She looked at him and he looked at she, both knew nothing of how its going to be.
I walked downwards, right down the stairs And I saw everything even the killing thing
He slapped her face and she bloodied drew the knife for all of us to see.
A joyous muse, my heart sang,  witnessing the killing, witnessing the killing and I knew everything.
He looked up at her, she down at him, she was so lucky that she had set him free.
I watched with glee for all I could see, to jail the police said as I sat, as I sat listening.

I heard your excuse I hear your plea, please madam judge don’t let that happen to me
She stood in the dock and sat on the chair,  and told everything, the things I’d been witnessing,
Told how she had murdered he, in a fit of rage it was not her fault she should be set free.
Not the judge, not the jury, but I knew everything and shed knowledge of my fury.

I remember the blade, I remember the fury. I now have to thank the jury.
A just verdict, a wrong righted,  a sacred trust bighted.  And just penury.


















These children are mine sayeth the lady
Though the money I earn is a little shady
I look after them through the day
And at night none can say.
Little darlings,
Wont come to no harm, I keep them apart,
Little darlings, are always in my heart.
Sleeping and dreaming and held apart,
They’re just kids and held in my heart.  

Through sunlight’s bright blast
Or twilights last gleaming
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping
Through the strongest gale
Or mornings glittering hail
They will be a sowing
And I’ll be a reaping.



I have heard your thoughts ideas and whims
I have heard your excuses , you hacked off a limb,
Because he was bad, she was a devil, and I have never heard so much drivel.
She was a monster, he was a slave, you never thought of the love that they gave.
I saw you had it hard and it must have been so bad
It was trouble, never ever had you been so sad
She was a *****, with an eternal itch, a witch that was not worth forgiving.
She was a dragon, he was a monster,  it was no longer a life worth living
She pulled me down, he dragged me down into a cesspit of hope.
And off they loped into the night.















'
Publicly he seemed alright, not the ***** that he really was. She was so cool en vogue, en vie,
She pulled the love from this heart like a harvester, reaping all that he could sow, all that she was due.
She meditates on her  betrayal and justifies it to herself and thinks so few, so very soulless few
Would not, and she is more, so very much more and then lifts the knife and delivers his due.
In the early hue of evenings last breath, he drew his and she smiled, just his due.






Sorry tales; I know
Tales no one should know
Tales that diffidently show
The differences, the shocks
All the stops and blocks
That love mocks
In its immortal way
Tarnished and bloodied
It soldiers on, unhurried.









I looked for the heartbroken, the tarnished, the burned; and found them all
For there were so many. Loves that went good and bad; those that hurt  and those that fall
I looked for the unforgiving and hopeless and found them all, some happy in their own way,
The traitors of love I looked also for and found hopeless and alone, shriven but hearty in their own way.
I looked to the martyrs of love, those that have loved deeply and have lost,  for many do







And I was one that did. I knew love as pure as a mountain stream,
Unsullied, clean and precious, but no love is as true as the perfect love
No thing is just as wondrous and perfect as it may  perfectly seem,
Chaste, virginal, and all just yours, lest it be a gift from angels above.

And I loped off into the night
Full of sweat and blood,
Flushed with heaven above
And hell below
Both knew my hollow soul











And through sunlight’s bright blast trampling daemons I came, shamed and hollow
Risen from this earth, cursed to death, in twilights last gleaming, brazen but sullied
The seeds of doom are sown  by such as I  and they were sown deep and fertilised with blood
And reaped by those that know,  reaped by hands that touch, lips that kiss and know,
hunger and want, lust and lie, eyes that darken and hooded, draw lust from liars,
Build from truth funeral pyres,  and fires for the ****** and yet I remain and sullied
Smirk with each passing glance or circumstance at the great and good, the unwashed
The hooded and deep, the shallow and callow, the wanton and unwanted, the sane
And simple, the masterful and master less, musical and malleable, the strange and straight.

These I trampled under heel with little feeling or thought
The form I took was human, the place I came from; dread
I looked and watched and took note, I spoke and listened
Pay’ed heed,  Culpable and crazed, yet my form remained,
this spectre.
Dying now.
Paid heed.
A rather long poem and the first I have added being a new member. I hope you like it.
The Harvester

On a patch of land not far from here
There are lit candles at night millions of them
A man I don't know his name
Walks around and snuffs out light, sometimes
He hesitate changes his mind the light he was going to
Extinguish flicks brighter
With his thumb and index finger is corned by this arduous
Work and he sits on a stone to rest as new light springs up
Behind him; his task is endless.
He walks to the part of the field were candle light have burnt
Out, if one still burns but has no wick he helps it out
Then it is morning and the field has golden grains
When. Summer.s. evenings. fall. ,
And leaves. Of. Green turn to gold ,
and fires. In haths are stoked ,
and the sun gets lazy , .
Darkness steals its. Light .
Then  The churches are full ,
and each voice sings herolds. Winter and gusts. Of hale . ,
In hymns of thankfulness to God for a harvest .
Tins piled high for those in need are never to be forgotten .
A sermon on stones and seeds and chaff blown by the wind ,
Only then
The harvester will call .
Ring the bell
When in your beds ,
Or walking home
On rocky soil  don't. stay ,
For in  the spring we dance and forget we sow out seeds for  another day
For on stones like chaff ,
Lay seeds on rocks ,
and gravel get blown away .
by hale and gale ,
Wind and rain
Like time will pass.
And what was lost ,
Can never be gathered
When the harvester draws near.
Tyler Zempel Dec 2018
The Harvester

A long, overly dragged out, deep knock rattles the front door of Ambers new domain.
She knows in her gut who it is and instead of answering the door, would rather be forced to run naked through the street in pouring rain.
She goes and checks on her three-month-old son to make sure he is still asleep.
He is, however every time she looks at him, it causes her to want to weep.
He has his eyes, his nose, that ******* creep!
She struggles to sleep at night no matter how many she counts, the endless sheep.
Being away from that house hasn’t brought with it a sense of relief.
She has yet to find a proper hobby to use as a release,
to extradite from herself all the negative thoughts and energy built up from her previous reality.
She feels worn down and defeated, her self-esteem.
She feels ugly and fat, gone is her once perfect physique.
Her heart feels empty, her soul incomplete.
A healed psyche, deep inner peace are the goals she hopes to achieve,
but she’s felt that way since she was thirteen,
and back then the worst thing she had to live with was her nightmarish daydreams.

Another long, overly dragged out deep knock rattles the front door causing Amber to scream at the person causing the noise.
The person behind the door speaks, but the words are inaudible.
Amber walks up to the door and swings it open.
Standing in front of her is Erin, she thinks her eyes must be joking.
Erin is a few months pregnant herself, Amber can’t escape the feeling of hopeless.
She’s already changed addresses, but Erin has found her again through sheer devotion.

Amber goes to slam the door on Erin’s face but Erin places her hand on the door to stop it in its tracks.
Amber doesn’t want another confrontation, it will surly reach a horrible ******.
Erin is crazy and she wants nothing to do with her.
They will never be on friendly terms, that’s a fact she can assure.

“Amber, please talk to me.
All I want to do is spill my soul and set my conscious free.
I want to make things right between us and end this bad blood.
I don’t want you to feel like I got off easy while you were tortured by being beaten and dragged through the mud.
We don’t ever have to be best friends,
I just want to apologize and for you to listen so we can finally make amends.”

“I have a restraining order against you for a reason Erin.
I don’t want to talk to you or see you, I would rather fill out a hundred boring questionnaires and mail each one individually in.
I know your jealous of me for having Chris’s baby,
but trust me I wasn’t ready to become a proper lady.
I was a teenage girl when he abducted me and ***** me over and over again getting me pregnant.
I begged him to get me an abortion but he wouldn’t listen to that plea even for a second.
The child I’m now forced to raise reminds me of him every single day and I hate him for it!
I hate you as well because inside that unstable mind of yours, you are unfit
to become a mother!
You’re too young, just like me, it’s not too late for you to give up on it and eventually have another
after you meet someone in fall in love.
Who would you rather have a child with, a raven or a dove?”

“I’m sorry Chris put you in this position but that wasn’t my fault.
I was also abducted and a victim of his ****** assaults.”

“You enjoyed spending time with him!
You enjoyed his big **** inside of you!
Sure, he kept you ******* and used you as his personal ***** for a few days,
but you soon won his praise.
He allowed you to walk freely around his house, even when he wasn’t there!
I was ******* and drugged constantly, our situations don’t even compare.
Every day you could have walked out of the house and went to get help.
You did not, instead you cooked, cleaned and read his books.
You acted like his ******* wife!
You ****** him daily, slept next to him in his bed and he provided you with a decent life.
I have nothing more to say to you.
You are despicable and just thinking of you makes me want to chug brew after brew.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t leave to get us help and take down Chris, that is on me, I own that.
The truth is, I was terrified, terrified of what he would do if I tried to leave; I admit I’m no righteous diplomat.
I remained on my best behavior to stay on his good side so he would allow me the freedom to roam around his house.
It sure as hell beat being ******* in a tiny room that stunk worse than an outhouse.
I bartered with him every day to allow you some freedoms as well, but you had blown his trust so badly he always instantly refused to listen to me about it.
Believe me, we came out of the same boat, I’m not a ******* hypocrite.”

“You’re so full of ****!
I don’t believe a word you say, that’s something I just won’t permit.
I saw the way you looked at me.
Your eyes glared at me with contempt you ******* banshee!
You hated, hated, that I was carrying Chris’s baby and wanted me and my unborn child dead.
You wanted to be the only one he bred.
You loved him and wanted him all to yourself.
It’s time for us to now say our final farewell.”

“Ok, I admit that I did think I was in love with him.
I thought we would run off together and live our lives together as husband and wife under a false pseudonym.
However, I didn’t hate your nor did I want to harm you.
I really did advocate for you with Chris but he refused to believe anything I was telling him and couldn’t accept my words as being true.
I’m sorry for my actions and lack of actions in that house, I truly was scared and confused.
We are both his victims and both of us to him were nothing more than a hole to use.”

“Don’t lie to me, you still love him and you are angry that he fled the country without you.
You thought you were going to be by his side forever, attached to him like glue,
but he caught wind that the cops were coming to rescue us and ran before they did,
leaving you behind sleeping in his bed all alone.
He left you behind to raise that child all on your own.
I’m sorry I had to throw that stone
but it’s the truth and you need to hear it.
It’s best to abort that child right now and move on with your life.
Unlike me, you have the option of truly moving on from this ordeal.
Don’t worry, you will find another guy one day that makes you squeal
like his **** made you squeal every night.
With the right choices made, your future can become bright.”

“Chris would never leave me behind you *****!
He will return one day when it’s safe to do so and will reunite with me so we can live a life together that is rich,
satisfying and everlasting!
I won’t listen for another second to your negative forecasting.”

“I knew you weren’t over him Erin, so why are you really here?
Please answer quick because I’m ready for you to disappear.”

Erin, now frowning and filled with rage pushes Amber down hard to the floor.
She’s here for one reason, a reason involving gore.
She jumps on top of Amber and takes out a knife she has hidden in her boot.
This was her plan all along, take out her rival and her fruit.
She wants Chris’s baby and Chris’s love all to herself.
Some call it selfishness; she calls it determination.
Erin, now with knife in hand, stabs it into Amber’s stomach.
She smiles and begins humming
a song of victory over her rival as she cries out in pain.
She pulls the knife out as Amber yells out she’s ******* insane.
Erin gets off of Amber and begins walking deeper into the house.
“No, not my baby,” Amber cries out fearing the worst.

A few moments later, Erin returns to Amber with her son in her arms and her knife placed against his throat.
Erin begins laughing and starts to gloat.
She is moments away from eliminating the two people with ties to Chris.
Then it will be safe for him to return and plant on her a kiss,
before the run off together and live out their lives in bliss.

Erin asks Amber if there are any last words she would like to say to her son.
Amber, moaning in pain on the floor tells Erin this doesn’t need to be done.
Erin says it must be done as a knock on the front door interrupts proceedings.
Erin has no time for this, the child must begin bleeding.
Who dares interrupt her and Amber’s dealings?
Erin has a very bad feeling.

“Police open up!”
“That’s right *****, I called the police the second you knocked on my door.
It’s best to stop this charade and accept the punishment you have in store.
HELP!  I’VE BEEN STABBED AND THE INTRUDER IS TREATENING TO **** MY BABY!
SHE’S COMPLETELY ******* CRAZY!”

The front door breaks down as the police storm the house with guns drawn.
Erin stands in front of them holding the baby with the knife still pressed against his throat now showing off a massive frown.

“Put the knife down, set the child on the floor and put your hands above your head!”

Erin refuses to listen to the cops demands and begins to cut the babies throat.
If she can’t have Chris neither can Amber and the knife is the antidote.
A gun shot is heard as everything begins to move in slow motion.
Erin feels overwhelmed with emotion.

A bullet slowly exits a gun and begins moving through the air directly towards Erin.
Her knife slowly begins tearing into the flesh of the baby’s neck.
The baby lets out a loud scream as the pain created by the knife races through his body.
The bullet continues to move steadily through the air quickly approaching Erin,
who is frozen in place and unable to move.
With the knife now half way across the baby’s neck,
The bullet from the gun enters into Erin’s right eye,
tearing a hole into and through her brain,
and exits out the back of her head.
Erin drops the baby as her head is forced backwards.
She falls lifeless, backwards onto the hard floor dead.
Police rush to the aid of the baby who is still alive but badly injured.
Amber thanks the cops for the efforts as she looks up towards the heavens,
taking in her final breath as the loss of blood has become too much.
“Chris must pay for this,” is her final thought,
as the living world around her turns to black.
MisfitOfSociety Apr 2019
On the first day when I lost my mind to the cosmos.
I found myself in the body of a pig. With other happy fat hairy pigs around me.
Being naked felt natural. I did not feel the need to clothe myself.
I layed in the mud all day long, letting it harden on my skin; god did it feel good, like a spa treatment except I didn't need to pay a penny. I would come out of my mud hole during meal time, when food was dumped into the feeder. I did not care what it was, hell, it didn't smell that good, but I ate it all up anyway. It could have been **** for all I know. I was content with this simple life, until the farmer threw a rope around my neck, pulling me into a freaky looking house with sharp objects hanging from the ceiling.
He tied me to a pole, making me feel nice a comfortable, treating me like a family member, only then to shoot me by surprise. To him I was just a big fat sack of meat.

I awoke from my life as a pig and found myself sitting on a couch. I was drenched in sweat, mouth gaping like an open ******* from what I saw.
My friend tried to talk to me, but I did not understand nor know how to speak the language of humans anymore. All I could do was squeal and oink.
I stripped naked, got down on all fours and started rolling around in the garden's soil just outside my house.
I ate the flowers that stemmed out of the soil, as well as the weeds growing around them.
The neighbors reported me for public ******, so I was sent to a mental institute, where I was taught how to speak like a human again and act like one too.

I gained a new perspective that day.
I vowed to all the animals that I would never eat them again,
and begun my journey into only eating plant based foods.

Vegan food makes my poo hard!
It is so good for me!
This is the benefit of living a plant based life.
If only you wanted your poo to be hard too.

On the second day when I lost my mind to the cosmos.
I was a carrot, and I had a family of carrots.
We were all buried underground, we never saw eachother, but we felt eachother, they were all around me.
I didn't need to breathe, I didn't need to move, I just needed to sit there, absorbing the solar rays that shone upon my green leaves protruding from the earth's crust. All I saw was darkness, but all I felt was warmth. I spent a thousand happy years as a carrot, but that changed when the havesters came.
They plucked us from our homes, tore us from our families and siezed the children!
They then proceeded to chop us up into bite sized pieces and boiled us in sizziling hot water, causing our skins to peal. We would then be served to the hungry mouths of the harvester’s wife and children, crying out for mercy, but our pleas were not heard, for they only heard with their ears, not with their feelings, like us carrots.

I awoke and found myself sitting on the couch again. Suddenly I was choking. I put my hands around my neck. I had forgotten how to breathe. Spending a thousand years as a carrot would do that to you, because you don't need to breathe as a carrot. My friend rushed into the room, and showed me how to breathe again, showing me how to **** in and blow out, which I did.
I had also forgotten how to talk, and needed to go to school once again to learn, because apparently talking with feelings is not a language.

I gained a new perspective that day,
I pledged to all my carrot brethern that I would never eat another vegetable again.
From now on I would stave myself so I could return to the earth,
feeding all the plants and animals.
My body is their salvation.

By cutting that carrot you are cutting yourself.
By eating that pig you are eating yourself.
You may not look the same,
but what you all feel is the same.

---

To you this is ******, but to me this is salvation.
In order to survive, I must feed.
The life that is strongest feeds on the weakest to survive, it is how we stay alive.
Nobody says a snake is a murderer when it swallows up a mouse.
Nobody says a venus fly trap is a murderer when it devourers a fly.
So why am I labelled a murderer when I eat meat and plant life?
Life needs to eat life,
It is how we stay alive.
Life needs to eat life,
It is how we survive.

---

I passed through the knot in the infinite line of things. I passed through the biological mapping of the knot, escaping my limitations, becoming limitless.
It was here where I saw myself in the carrot and in the pig. I saw myself in everything, and I saw everything in myself.
What The Actual ****.
Ryan Johnson Feb 2011
Highlight tomorrow, rewrite the stars that trail across our eyes.

I blink at you, smile, and remove my disguise.

You’ve got so much light inside, illuminating me with your touch.

You brush your cheek across my chest, and the bright golden flood is almost too much.

I beg night to stay, I've enough sunrise hidden here in you.

You blink at me, smile, and say “I feel it too.”
Jack-o-Lanterns and Tennessee breezes
Sweet potato cobbler , Apple cider , frosted
scenery
Sweet memories 'neath the Pumpkin Moon
Whittling sugarcane to the sounds of pure Autumn
The Coyote yodel and the Barn Owl holler* ..
Copyright October 22 , 2016 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Patrick Clinton Mar 2012
Above the earth and below the sun,
Exhaled from volcanoes long ago.

Stately as the ships of the Spanish Armada,
Sailing the horizon graceful and slow.

Bearer of ambrosia that innervates the earth,
Harvester of water and what the winds blow.

Ageless and formless, taking every shape
Suggestive to reason of what we do not know.
Harry J Baxter Jan 2014
I know I didn't treat a lot you right
I'm a closed book with a big bad padlock on it
maybe you could say trust issues
but **** it I love you guys
no ****
(maybe a little)
because no matter where or how I have been
I have had some great people there for me
to keep me walking along that tight rope
without the fear of a body full of broken bones
We climbed hay bales in Drax
and ran away from the farmer in his combine harvester
we let everybody's tires down
and we went to the club and stayed until closing time
until after there were no taxis left
walking four miles home at four in the morning
we had a laugh mate
And to my Yankee friends
The rest of the world may hate you
but I don't
(much)
video games all night
ding **** ditch
homecoming and prom
and smoking cigarettes behind best buy
whole days spent on a couch laughing harder than we were high
the bowl we bought together
aptly named Willem Defoe
Marathon movie nights
post virginity loss high fives
telling me you were proud of me
for how I handled my parents' almost divorce
And I'm a cynical, ******* introvert
and at times I never want to see a human being ever again
but when that feeling fades
you guys are the first people I text
Kara Rose Trojan May 2012
With Body pretzled up, skins converged to form
            branches of rivers, mouth slack and frozen to
            a permanent scowl of delirium and manners-gone,
            as many swears dripped from those dry, cracked lips.

One of my mothers – gumshoed from the alley’s way of family.
“Get gumption, girlie, because everybody is full of ****!”

I remember that lullaby, “A tiny turned-up nose, two lips just like a rose. She sits upon my knee, she means to the world to me.”

I spy the scar on my pinky finger from her cigarette.

Could the King be witness in the Room?
Were those buttons of hollow wood over her eyelids?

Wrung of cries – we didn’t see that coming,
though we heard the flies.
And Age’s stumbling rattle through the hallway.

Do you know who I am?
Do you remember me?
Should the window washer come another day?
This stubborn sovereignty over what is reality – the root beneath the porch, the fog on the windshield.

Loosen the grip on this natural plane,
            Please --

Woman of my Childhood, harvester of my manners.
            Stand until the grown-ups sit.
            Look away and bow your neck.
                        This was called the boxing match between Industry verses Inferiority.

Not child through birth – no –
            but life spawned by those
            strung-high fists.

There’s finality in this phone-call.
I heard it happened an hour ago.
            Treading grievances and grimaces, picking through a flowerbed only to stroke the weeds.
            Lifting boxes of Lead from reality to the Bridge of Dreams.
                        Frankly, I stole the gumption from your knotted mouth and
                        still cannot cry.

In a splinter of reason – I cast out the fundamental jibes of sacred hope.
            That promise held between dog and owner during business hours.
            Except there can be no homecoming.

The sickest liquor on the alleyway fence.
She kisses me with lips of apple cider as
she lets me lay beside her,
her cheeks are blossoms of the summer months where we have wandered through the orchards, laughing at the fallen fruit and she has built my memories in barns of hay and drifting streams,she lets me lay again
and all the pain there ever was ,is in the moments when we part,like lines that cross upon our palms,we wander once again in barns and she kisses me with apple cider lips,that
slowly **** me and this life slips softly turning into dreams.
Bill M Oct 2019
I walked back via the perimeter road
to clear my head. It's a tough day
when a coworker has died.
I didn't know him well, but he always greeted me by name
and had a smile on his face, even when he was mad.

His friends told me today that was because he knew
someone was about to hear from him;
we all chuckled about that as we processed our loss.
Eight weeks ago, he was healthy but for a stomach ache.

"Cancer, stage 4," and he knew then it would soon be over.
He declined treatment; took care of business for his wife,
and with his Maker. Conversed with his friends,
settled matters for his adult children, and prepared for the end.

A stroke immobilized him Sunday, and Death claimed him Wednesday. We found out later his expectant grandson was born before J died. Small blessings in times such as this.
We all agreed today that in the mercy of Providence,
neither J nor his dear wife had to bear a lengthy illness.

But his friends will miss him--those he mentored, most of all.
"There'll be some long walks in the woods," one said,
as they come to grips with their grief, "as we remember this good man, and say farewell to Joel."

He will be missed, by colleague and inmate alike.
A man of good character like Joel is hard to find.
This man taught wood harvesting at the correctional facility where I work, and there are men there whose lives have been forever improved for by his guidance and direction. I wrote this just to get these thoughts off my mind, not to be poetic, necessarily.
The storm– she will come,
Oh- by the roar of the drum,
The boom of the beat–
Now cometh defeat,
Four seals are now shattered,
The ground will be battered,
Come forth thy lost line,
Thou shall face His divine…
The sky opened to set them free–
The creature like thunder: “Come and See!”
Foremost in the lead–
Upon the White steed–
Arrow of the Bow,
All obstruction fall low,
Striking the weaker down–
The fire glistens about his crown,
Above all the rest,
Behold all victory; CONQUEST…
The bizarre of the steeds–
The color that bleeds–
A Fiery red that burns in the eyes,
As each soldier dies–
The civil war spark,
As if for a lark!
In the fight of the four,
The second is WAR…
Come and See! Come and See!
Now the count is to three,
The black horse doth ride,
The third horseman as guide,
The hand bears balance not gore–
The sole vocal of four;
“…And see thou hurt not the oil and the wine”
The third–oh the third–John! The third is FAMINE…
Oh the horror– the horror– the fire filled eyes!
All that follows in path now simply just dies,
The pale green beast is a savage- a monster- no heart,
The ending- the rebirth- the salvation doth start,
The fourth rider tears– ravaging all the land,
The unholy Reaper with scythe in it’s hand!
The harvester hath expelled mankind’s final breath–
With Hell at the rear– the fourth and final is DEATH…
The war now to heaven and Hell now to Earth,
The charcoals are black and red hot in the hearth,
Cast forth by the Lion of Judah- the Lamb of the Lord!
With all of existence- the Divine became bored,
The Harbingers of the Last Judgment- the servants divine,
The living creatures cometh to steal all hope from thine,
Cometh One then come Two from the mythical Seal,
Cometh Three then come Four from the seven rumored to be real…
CONQUEST– the archer- the first rider of pure WHITE,
Crown capped with unholy deception of light…
WAR– the swordsman- the second rider of fiery RED,
Blood and betrayal as thou mark thy brother dead…
FAMINE– the balance- the third rider of pitch BLACK,
Food and resources all man will soon lack…
DEATH– the reaper- the fourth rider of pale GREEN,
Hell guiding scythe ridding Earth of all souls unclean…
The horsemen they triumph in biblical tale–
Consider an alternate story and detail,
Think not of no hope in the book Revelation,
Rather- imagine the truth of a war of no rotation,
The power unbalanced to alter dimension,
A different battle scene with a similar intention…
– Written By:  Jacob Coffey –
***********
Just my take on a Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Hope you enjoyed it!
– Jacob Coffey
I marked where lovely Venus and her court
  With song and dance and merry laugh went by;
  Weightless, their wingless feet seemed made to fly,
Bound from the ground and in mid air to sport.
Left far behind I heard the dolphins snort,
  Tracking their goddess with a wistful eye,
  Around whose head white doves rose, wheeling high
Or low, and cooed after their tender sort.
All this I saw in spring. Through summer heat
  I saw the lovely Queen of Love no more.
  But when flushed autumn through the woodlands went
I spied sweet Venus walk amid the wheat:
  Whom seeing, every harvester gave o'er
  His toil, and laughed and hoped and was content.
Tom Miskin Apr 2015
Think now: what is Darkness?
Is it when the sun falls?
No.yet, there is no light.
It is neither an object,or a being.
It's a mental thought,
The harvester of hope.

Darkness is a fly.
Joining you,but never leaving you alone.
You can let it in,
But never out,
You ignore it. Yet it's always on your mind.
Until you've had enough.
You are now a wasp.
The harvester of hope,
The consumer of lives.
It can hand you a knecklace of rope.
Or allows a drought,
In your veins. As if the liquid has left your body.
The dictator of lives.

Think now:
What do you feel?
As if an ocean has swallowed you whole?
Are you paralysed? In an ocean,
Of Darkness...
Harry J Baxter Jul 2014
We used to play guns with sticks
and we all knew how to die convincingly
with playing cards in our spokes
we summit hills atop motorcycles
ratatatatatattt
we walked through woods
explorers and pioneers
waiting for dinner or supper or bedtime
when summer was another world entirely
and the stains on our clothes
told stories
and not worries
We would carve sticks into spears
with knives our mothers did not know we had
today we hunt pheasant
we never did catch one
but we made dens deep in the woods
and climbed trees until we didn’t know how to get down
the hay bales stacked four stories high
in the farmer’s field
was a jungle gym
and when the farmer chased us away
in his combine harvester
we were playing Jurassic Park
back when girls were silly, annoying little things
that none of us were quite sure why we liked
and fights were forgotten within the hour
we had better things to laugh at
a marble composition book filled with ****** raps
and graffiti designs
we would take stones and make them into entire planets
but before long
our shadows caught up with us
a stick was just a stick
a bike just a way to beat the heat
and we were all too aware
of the special effects
Cave Painting
Prof. Jeanine Kowalski, PhD, Anthropology:
“I write until very late in my parents’ farmhouse, in my old bedroom.
I am visiting at Thanksgiving, writing my research.  
I love my parents, to be here, my work.

“When I was seventeen, here, in my childhood bedroom,
Threatened with boredom, which my parents implied was the Prince of Darkness,
And to be fair I believed it myself, independently,
I did not honour the life and love commitment I made to a seventeen year old boy.
I gave up, temporarily, the love-courage of girls.

“The combine harvester working by floodlight in the field outside this room, is harvesting soybeans while I write.
The man who was that boy is driving the combine harvester at night, harvesting his parents’ crop, helping his parents.
He is driving back and forth by tractor floodlight and headlights and the headlights of the trucks aimed up the rows.

“I do not have to live without love or happiness or beloved children.
I am pretty, too. I got most of the gifts.
He has a wife and children and a life of his own.
If I was treacherous, I am, I am sure, forgiven, but still,
After even the fullest and truest justification, you must look at the thing itself,
Just the thing itself ….

“And to do that I would need the kind of love poetry which is hardest to find, the love poetry which is all we have left
Of the great art of cave painting, poetry not drawing its power from melancholy, but shining with wanting, with excitement and awe.
He had, of all the gifts, character.”

Paul Anthony Hutchinson
www.paulanthonyhutchinson.com
copyright Paul Anthony Hutchinson
A love poem, a compressed novel not melancholy. The Greeks wrote hymns to victory .....
Reverist Aug 2014
The reaper's eyes were on her,
Yet she never bowed.
The reaper's ax chose her,
Yet she never soughed.

Death was finally in love,
With the girl he could never cow,
For she was something he could never have,
A girl with a skin too firm to swallow.

Why couldn't he touch the girl,.
The girl whose tears never fell,
The girl whose eyes are pearl,
The girl whose voice is a shim of bell?

Her secret wasn't a mystery,
She was too pure to be touched by maleficence.
The reaper desired her for her rarity,
But his hands burned at the touch of virtuousness.

Death chased her everyday,
In the hopes of taking her soul,
But  her soul was too far away,
Far away for him to hold.

The young maiden didn't even notice
The harvester at her tail.
She was too involved in lightness
For her to witness his veil.

The reaper's ax was rotting,
It was yearning blood,
Though who he was lusting,
Was nothing but an illusion set by god.

The girl was a mirage,
God's own penalty,
Towards the slayer,
That gave birth to misery.
jeremy wyatt Jan 2011
He was parked up a hundred yards from her house
imagining Louisa
not too picky, judging from the run-down old houses
several were boarded up.
He was becoming quite absorbed with one of those.
A bad place. Soon to be notorious, a good house for a woman to be afraid in......
He had dug through all the Metal tapes in the vw.
Found Pride and Glory. Played Harvester of Pain over.
Till he was ready.
I'll show her hearts and love, god he was mad.
Hope Daisy gets to watch, wow that excited him.
The light came on early.
He waited until dusk, then walked around the back of her house.
Then in.
****.
****, she had a cat.
Old as well, would it starve?
Then he saw her in the chair.
Jesus! Older than the cat.
And smiling at him.
He drove away an hour later.
Felt like hell inside. Forgetful old ***** thought he was her home help.
So he made her a coffee, fed the cat.
Sanctimonious cow gave him money.
Her husbands photograph was on the wall faded brown like she was.
Died in the war, drowned practising for D-Day.
So he spared her, for that and for the sake of the cat.
He stole an old bottle of whisky on his way out.
No sobriety test on the road to hell.
Six hours later he kicked a teenage ******* to death.
Dressed like that, you can't have a mother or a mirror.
Left the old ladies money on her corpse,this one's for Her.
Hugh Lovzewe Oct 2010
rising wind
the harvester leaves
a quiet cornfield
Kevin Seiler Sep 2014
Walking amongst the fog
I see nothing but my fears
Lungs choking on the smog
I have been lost in here for years

Seeing only shimmers of light
I'm struggling to find the way
I become colder and darker every night
Searching for the words to say

Unsure if I can make it all alone
Harvester of my own life and the seeds of death I have sown
Mateuš Conrad Jan 2019
.note to self: to make the perfect hungarian goulash, for ever capsicum pepper used, use a romano (sweet) pepper... bay leaf, allspice... pristine pork... no need for chicken stock... decently sizzled lard trimmings (from the pork)... a generous amount of garlic to balance the onions... chilli... and... a 2 : 1 ratio of paprika to smoked paprika powder: cooked generously for an hour+ having poured water into the mixture and some tomato purée... a decent cut of carrot and root parsley... and then... only then: the chopped tomatoes... salt to taste... fresh parlsey on top; yes, served on a massive hash brown (raw potatoes, grated, egg, flour, salt), with a sidedish of coleslaw... come to think of it: no... why would you add nutmeg to the sauce?

                                              nicht ist mehr?
              nicht ist noch -

                       a cough of Ernst Bloch:
    and there i was thinking:
where does Franz Marc (blues horses)
                        and Kandinsky ever begin?
precursor to:
      postcard poetry -
        i'll watch me a painting and invent,
rather, succumb to: phenomenalism -
               what with the senses already dimmed,
blunted to b & w and bad deutzsche grammar?


walking through the mess of yesterday's town,
i couldn't but succumb to the allure
of a thought:

   a thought that resurfaced just about
when i finished my going-to-bed-routine:
smoked a cigarette,
did the no. 1 & the no. 2 &
    ****** off on the toilet,
             smoked another cigarette,
drank a glass of water with
     the prescription,
                     dressed myself in pajamas,
     closed the blinds,
   closed the window,
    put on the headphones -
      put on a horror movie soundtrack,
switched off the light,
       lay myself in bed:
   toiled in it for an hour...
hyper-excited by the prospect of
heading to central London
        to pick out a cabbage vinyl..
     ate a piece of chocolate in the dark,
followed by a decent gulp of water...
fell asleep...

  but prior: in between - the allure of
the thought:

       self-worth attached to certains
jobs...
         and... how else to expand on this?
i reckon i'll write as much a decent
verse in the morning with
a coffee: than i will ever
           (constipated) get out of a nightly
session with a bottle of amber-glug...

if only i was so desperate as to have
written some of this prior to
closing my eyes:
                                 exposing my eyes
to the insomnia glue
       of a brightly lit screen of
                            a brain-harvester...

comparison:
    no one would really care to think
of a street cleaner as important...
     well... for me:
                            if i could be a street
cleaner: i could have all the legs
   and recycling heavens' wheels of
fortune to: blah-blah this sort of
wordings...
                       walking yesterday
through town i noticed two of them...

clean streets...
    what could be more important than
clean streets?
           ***** streets for rats...
            
         but i could never...
never count a barista to be a barrister:
yet both could cite you
some sort of philosophy:
  one would cite you something from
jurisprudence,
   the other something from
       what pedants discuss in an opera
prior to the curtain fall...

yet with a barista?
   a strange hyper-inflated membrane
of self-worth:
  noticed in a supermarket cashier,
noticed in a ekspedientka (saleswoman)
  ekspedient (salesman)...
the more trivial the job becomes:
the more self-worth buds under
the surface: with no ulterior outlet beyond
the role...
   like this shawl of glass full of
water: having more water poured into it...

(god, this looked better in my head):

            how much self-worth permeates
from the face of a street-cleaner?
                zilch...
                    ah..­. but how much of "something"
permeates from you walking
down a clean street:
    indifferently -
                you'll hardly think yourself
as garbage: staring at the blank canvas
of pavement...
             yet the barista?
              it's as if he knows:
i've just put on a kettle, boiled some water,
squeezed some coffee...
   ergo? i have to "look" important!
the street cleaner?
    do i really have to "look" important?
i know this is important:
what? whatever the hell i'm doing.

or at least that's how the narrative goes...
in my little head on my little planet
of cycling upside-down apes...

the more trivial a job:
   the more self-worth needs to permeate
from the person given
a function, which, otherwise:
would conscript disdain...
        the camouflaged workforce...
self-evident:
   walking past a bank...
wait... weren't there 6 cubicles
here with cashiers?
                em... self-service?
imagine that!
           sooner or later
                there will be talk of
                             the                   self-:
not being a philosophical curiosity,
rather a study of the past,
or the reaching out attachment prosthetic
of revealing a dead someone
  a dead former profession...

                   crux hyphen:
                       i'm already part employed
as a supermarket cashier,
  i'm already a bank cashier...
               nothing new: auto-cue:
propagandist line, skewed news...
    
but there's still the blatant glare of
the staring match (and the missing E
starring - and the missing macron
on top of A in the latter) -

                  a láte(!) lātte -
rhythm (caffèlat) - cough-la-la-'t:
   hey, scribble here, scribble there,
you hear it in English all the time,
the ever pertinent question:
how do you say that?
  measure metres in inches
in: metric syllables no good...
   'ave to *** beck tou d' imperial...
yes: and because Dickens...
really really, wrote just any better
   schlang than anglo-saxon Idaho...

self-worth: volumptous in certain
instances in public:
   the same self-worth attached to...
would you really want
to have your shoes-polished
with your feet in the shoes?
i wouldn't...
                      trivial *******,
i know... but such is the beast of
self-worth disguising the trivial
nature of certain professions...
   where would be the Wall St. broker
without a shoe-shiner?
boy oh boy: on the same dirt road:
        shoeshine is that thick splodge
of canvas worth a twinkle 'ere,
           a twinkle o'      'er...

airy-fairy: bottom's up and
flaky in the visage of the pompous
boston alto horn of
              a Parisian kelner...
bulging mass: bloated larynx:
puff ****: the three piglets and
the asthmatic bad wolf...

quick... untangle me from this language!
i have a no-nonsense person
to speak to later:
and i can't be bound to
  this metaphor Dali allure;
literally a square is a square,
red is red,
     and escapism only in
              a prosaic paragraph;

this hardly compensates
even the bare scraps of what is
a work of ethic of...
                                                an ant.
Silver Star Jan 2013
It is the emotion that takes all of your skills and traits to maintain.

It is the way of life that sprouts beautiful flowers with roots locked in harmony

It is the positive open embrace or the nagative self destruction

It is why I fight for your hand. Why I long for your anticipated advent

It is the reason why I scratch the surface of insanity when you are in pain

It is holder of broken hearts...harvester of nostalgic dreams

It is keeper of infatuation...the essence of peace and chaos...

It is Love
Robert C Howard Sep 2015
It was summer's last days
along the trail
where the serpentine creek
murmurs and winds
beneath the limestone bridges.

Just beyond the bend
a weary stand of feed corn
awaits the harvester's blades.
An unexpected gust sets
the oaks and sycamores swaying
and a few desiccated leaves
skitter across the path -
harbingers of the impending fall.

In the brush along the trail,
newly morphed Monarchs
flit from purple thistles
to yellow star flowers like
a streak of airborne tigresses.
while honey bees,
cloaked in veils of pollen dust,
quench their thirst with
draughts of goldenrod nectar.

The autumnal equinox
looms just days ahead.
Shadows lengthen as summer sings
its final hymn to the setting sun.
Alex Benac Sep 2011
I -

I am Death
and I am sorry.
Sorry that I robbed you
of your youth
your vigor and your
vitality.
I am sorry that I gave you days
and months and years of black
days and months and years
better spent under the sun
dancing in the rain
prancing in the snow.
I am sorry that I robbed you
of your very first love
your child, your sister
your mother or father
your one care in the world.
I am sorry that I took away
those things that were the
light of your life
the salt of your earth
whether those be tangible
or intangible.
I am sorry for all this and more.

- II -

But this is what I do.
This is the burden that Fate and
Destiny have placed upon my
shoulders.
This is the task that has been
assigned to me by the cosmos.
The universe needs a Reaper
a Soul-Harvester
a Life-Taker
and that’s me.
Death.
It is my unfortunate task to remind
you – man, woman and child
that you are not invincible.
I am an omnipresent reminder of
your own mortality
an ever-present red ribbon
tied around your finger.
Believe me when I tell you that
I enjoy it very little
and detest it very much.
That I should be the one who
coaxes your tears from your eyes
burns my soul – MY soul.
Yes,
I have one, too
however hardened it may be after
all these years.
That I should have to swoop in to
your homes, your hospital wards,
your cars, barge in on your meals,
your vacations, your special time
with loved ones
is, to me, awful, a sin.
Me stealing from you those years,
people and other things from you
is vagrancy, indecency, criminal.
Nothing less.

- III -

I, Death, am a vagabond.
A cold hearted *******. A demon borne
in the fiery pits of Hell.
I am cruel, calculating and ruthless
with impeccable timing, I know it.
I know it, and yet I have not the heart
to give up what I do.
It is the only thing I know.
But every day that I do it is a day
where my heart aches.
My heart aches
and it has for some time now.
It is a pain of which I shall never be
rid. I am sure of it.

Would you believe me if I told you
that I listen to your pleas?
Your moaning, your agonized begging,
your take-me-not-hers, your why-him-not-me’s
fall on ears.
Attentive ones
listening ones.
I promise you, I hear you, and I hold your
hearts in my hands.
But I just cannot give you what they seek.
It would be unfair.
Me letting your brother live and not
his would be unbalanced, unnatural
unseemly, unprofessional.
Mercy defeats the purpose of death.
Mercy defeats the purpose of me
and I hate it
but it is so
and that is that.

- IV -

I am Death.
I am black
I am dark
I am night.
I know your secrets, your darkest
ones.
I know what you desire to know.
When you shall die.
I know it.
You all shall die.
I know it.
You know it.
And that scares you.
You are all afraid of me.
Do not lie. I know it. It’s true.
You all think you are doomed.
You think you are doomed?
You are doomed to succumb
to death?
I am doomed to be death.
I am sorry
but I am Death.
Gerardo SanDiego Feb 2010
Even when the fast windtoppled the old and looming tree outside,the one I used as shelter from the days of different sunlights,I noticed the strong double doors of the barn,where I kept the machinery,standing firmly closed--they were held with bolted hinges and metal strapsthat kept the splinters from happening.I was standing on the inside,staring out through the ***** windows,trying to figure out the difference between hurricane and breeze.And although the rafters above me were creaking, and I knewthey would soon collapse down and **** me, for now, they were betterthan the weather outside.And as long as the tractor has enough oil in its workings, its gas tank filledup and its tired inflated, as long as the harvester's blades are at their sharpestand the batteries are charged every weekend, I know that when I go outside,that when I do, the work's going be done...Yes, when I go outside, when I do, the work's going to be done...
On a minor level, it's about procrastination. On a major level, it's about the crippling effects of self-doubt.
Wk kortas Nov 2017
She is the living embodiment of the cliché,
The song where the male sub-lead
Returns from some second shift, some third drink
To find she has gone, leaving some scrap-paper note,
Hastily scribbled and wholly incomplete,
Some variation upon Don’t try and find me,
And so she is suitably unfound herself,
As she has given great thought to her froms,
But rather short shrift to her tos,
Finding herself north of the Thruway,
Looking for somewhere to spend the night
(The twin motors of adrenaline and anxiety running on fumes)
Happening upon, as if almost by some beneficent magic,
A Travelodge bordered by an expanse of cornfield
(Long since gone to seed, the stalks bowed and spent,
Waiting for the patently overdue cob harvester)
And after she is checked in and somewhat unpacked
(The bored, bemused woman who slumps about the front desk
Mercifully sparing with the small talk)
The skies, which had been late-October slate blur-gray,
Slightly malevolent but only implicit in their threats,
Open up in a cold and unwelcome drizzle,
And, whys and wherefores being things for a later date,
She runs outside and begins dancing in the parking lot,
Unseen and unremarked upon,
And even though the rain is cold, soaking, grim in portent
(The forecast dourly noting the possibility of wet snow,
Nattering that accumulation is possible at higher elevations.)
She is seemingly unaware and unconcerned
As to the upshot of this drenching,
Any whispers of the two or three other occupants of the motel,
Any judgments passed upon her mad danse pour un,
As she has passed beyond any notion of admonition.
Julia Dec 2013
Is it you--
are you the rain
that my children
dance in?
Are you the
harvester of long
grains and seeds
that the lone bird
feeds on?

To know you
is to know for an
eternity.
It is you,
the hand of death,
the whisperer of
rustling motions,
who knows of both
the grandest scope
and of who I am
in my smallest ways.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
look at me, i was about to write something about my absentee patriotism, how i feel no affiliation to anything sold on the market stall of the flag and st. george’s mascot, i was given the shortest anthem to sing to ease the pressure, but i didn’t sing it, because i felt myself inclining via aesthetics towards the japanese one: ** chi ha chihuahua.*

that’s what happens to former nations that aspire to empire building,
the lingua franca dubius is english for good reason,
we’re looking at uniting europe, rebuilding it,
giving it stability for the japan v. south africa odds of 1000 - 1,
thousand years that is. we need a non-vehicular language,
we need a language of stoppages, clogged up toilets
with polish foot soldiers aiming their bayonet plungers at ****...
we need frequent stoppages for the accessible 24h news reel
telling us something new... like: sun just chuckled in clucks.
now the randomisation... it’s going to be horrid...
i walk the streets for a whiskey after a rugby match that ended
in violins and piano dirges,
by a chain shop i spot a group of children no older than 15,
girls in underwear and boys in hoods - started pimping early
for the muslim boys... or... a football fan thought rugby
was worth the telly and beer to get angry while loosing his national pride,
started making chandelier sparkles with his wife’s face
so his sons and daughters ran out, within the motto:
boys to the alleys girls to the perverts’ bedroom! go!
that was my first impression... secondly i like to forward the following
assumption - interaction of the northern men with the biblical
nations will not end well when the interaction happens
with one of the northern nations being crusaded on by the teutons...
but islamists terrorists i.s.i.l..... for god’s sake call bin laden by
his first name... well that interaction, it will never fair well...
as i tell you i tell you: three tiers of a brain haemorrhage...
the inherited type, the chemically forced type... of ****.... that’s two...
*** and ****** too...
the chemically induced one doesn't affect
one as much as a chemically forced one (it's not the entire d.n.a.
of anticipation when the amazonian one comes disguised
as a hallucinatory hope)  -
continue the plough, continue the harvester!
well the other side is said like this:
what’s the difference between a just man and a self-righteous man?
the self-righteous man takes the money after the damage was done,
the self-righteous man takes the money and limps,
no matter what money could have been given me i liked my brain just fine...
so now the just man, and justice serves a hollowed bell with the just man’s
arm as the bell’s uvula, ding ****!
coming from a man who’s culprit invited him to the mosque in regent’s park
and he gladly accepted aladdin’s challenge on the magic carpet of learning,
the same hurt party that played daddy-long-legs happy birthday
on the guitar with “gravel” at a house party for the unloved,
taking his mother like a lisp in whisper to the likeable respect -
yes, the just man will never become self-righteous...
and guess who gave him money? or the duracell battery for the brain
for compensation? god.
the man took it and now his actions look abiding with fake nostalgia
or like the drunkard with memory gaps, him with gaps of imagination
and fake nostalgia.
but more about nation rebuilding after empire building -
make sure the police force takes the oath of diogenes like
in maxim - ‘find me an honest man who knows his address and phonenumber
and we’ll have no trouble!’ that’s not really hipocrates, but it helps.
secondly or thirdly utmost? i forgot but with the next few words will
remember, ah yes, the p.s.:
socrates asked too many question and with that was the mechanic behind
ambiguity of meaning, words lost their original meaning
because they became so corrupted with application,
so he came in and was like - huh?
the remnants of the socratic method became archeologically resurrected to the fore
with the existentialists tetravoxancon notation, e.g. “virtue,” “ego,” “hope.”
socrates became too difficult, and for written philosophy without conversation
the narrative had to acquire a quasi-fluidity, or, like
on the german motorway, ausfahrt. hitchhiker inclusion moving forward some would say, freelance forward your own ambiguous narrative with the words provide as “ambiguous.”
The Dedpoet Nov 2016
Harvester of words gathered in the
Trenches of life between
The dawns early fire
And the dusk of our gathering,
A reminiscent corridor that takes
A reader and places them in
The belly of your understanding,
Digestive reading.

And we become all things
All at once
To find a meaning to the wonderful
Chaos,
The stubbornness
Of the human condition
Gazing at broken things and finding
Light in the void of humanity.

You poet
Armed with a language unique
To the written word of your being,
The benevolent ruins of time
Assaulting the moments
Gazing into melancholic skies
Bringing them to read our hearts.
Bringer of wisdom from our own
Stupidity,
Spinning the compass to one another,
Bringing closer the faceless
Soul breathing in words,
Syllables like embers raining
On the angels watching us suffer,
We compact the understanding
Into a small requiem of experiences,
Ripping the face off of the world
And giving it our own touch:

I, you, We,
Poetry the birth of ruins
And dissolves into forever,
Poets, bringers of languages
Never spoken like dictation of spirits,
Time before time,
After and before collide
Birthing the momentous inkling.

Take it,
Its yours,
Poets living in the dream
Suffering the expense
Of the reality,
Constellation of our suffering....

Poets, living martyrs.
SG Holter Sep 2015
Holy water into wine. Beer from barley.
Walking on the roof of a brewery,
Contemplating how Jimmy Fallon's
Finger never really seems to heal.

Combine harvester headlights dance
On the living room walls
As I lean back on my white IKEA
Sofa, tracing long hairs and

Fingerprints of lovers gone,
Wondering why I chose such a
Revealing colour.
Suppose the transparency matches

That of my soul's lining.
Holy water into wine.
Fields of gold now liquid painkillers
Slurring the voices in my head that

Pick fights with my heart over
Insignificant issues.
I lip synch to the music of my
Neglected talents and the memories

Of inspiration attached.
Bullets like knuckles rapping, rapping
At my empty chamber
Door.

Every finger I ever broke
Was from typing or
Punching
Walls.

Sometimes I put on the mask of
Poet, and pretend to be writing  
For as long as it takes to fool
The empty pages.
Rip Lazybones Feb 2012
Force that can never be stopped
Foe that will defeat you in every battle
Unlike humanity, it never dies
Healer to the masses
Harvester of souls
Never slowing down
Never speeding up
Perception let's you feel it at your own pace
But don't try to control it
Because it's the only thing you can truly waste
Seething anger has burned down the barn
Where iniquity wove its amber curtains
On vintage looms of deceit and falsehood
Skylarks can’t nest there anymore
And the creek is poorer for it

The harvester is grounded and
The scythe lies in the ashes and the brambles.

The Almanac forecasted heavy rain
But the wind instead blew from the East
And was impossible to batten down
Now things once wet are very dry and cracking

There’s naught to load and take to market
Where tears won’t buy the milk and butter
And there’s no one left to bake the bread

Hurry up those stumbling feet
Wishing won’t create a cow
And you don’t own a pasture
Or a salt lick anyway

The only thing that you have left
Is an igneous tomorrow and incendiary dreams
                      ..  ljm ..
This started in one direction and went another.  I am not the driver of my own poetic car.

— The End —