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dj Jan 2013
she's not here anymore
so why don't I just
go away

her car is here, her home
is here. Even her cat is here
And her gardens are, too

sailed on and on
It's over, it's been over,
her shadow's parked on those hallways

she's not here anymore
so why don't I just
go away
CK Baker Mar 2019
~ Ode to Spring ~

Cherry blossoms filled with bloom
rhododendron’s sweet perfume
warming winds feign summer’s breeze
songbirds singing from the trees

Open windows, déjà vu
sunsets filled with graceful hues
families gather on their strolls
Mother Nature for the soul

Baseball season at the park
evenings lifted from the dark
daylight savings' finally here
patios for wine and beer

Cleaning house and planting seeds
rebirth fills the days and deeds
picnic baskets, hummingbirds
poets find their way in words

Kaleidoscope of bedding plants
shorts in favour over pants
farmers markets, garage sales
power-wash the decks and rails

Hiking, tennis, gardening
inhale the freshness of the spring!
painters, sculptors shape their art
gather here with grateful hearts
Mateuš Conrad Feb 2019
the desired sadness,
worth a heiving...
a claustrophobic heart...
a sense of
nearness...
something...
beside the ordinary,
and esp.
beside being
ordained
worthy outside
the existence
              of a novel...
a...
   piano minuet...
like...
i only want to play
the piano,
but i don't
want to play
either Liszt or Chopin...
i want...
to feel as if i have
a heart...
i want to play...
the piano like
i might experience
the heart...
Debussy...
Satie...
                 Priya...
i want to live a life
of having
to experience
a love teased,
kept in the "dark",
"as if": waiting...
but then...
i don't even
want "that"...
do i?
             i forget
to levitate,
and gravity...
whenever i am bound
to having to express...
taking a ****...
anchor: first mate:
down!
all the way down...
among the *****!
gentle tunes...
tickling
rather than playing
a piano...
you are a being
i feed off
to feed a worthwhile
forget for
all that is and protrudes
itself to be "worth"
remembering!
   a beauty in the blink
of an eye...
a secret...
       a taboo...
          and something...
that would require a god
to make reality of...
and even then...
not worth the effort...
something...
as fragile as spring
and as vague as
whatever colours appear
in winter...
something truly
transcendental...
in passing...
never to be made unison,
to be joined...
passing, or fleeting,
by matrimony...
yet...
persistent... "there"...
gravity -esque...
       a verbiage burden...
my, little... piano escapade...
to attempt battling
diacritical marks with
nuance...
          my little something,
my altogether, nowhere;
my time, my patience...

                  my...
                              i cannot
even mourn...
being kept apart...
     i...
                 i cannot even begin
to sip at the fountain
of ambition
to make the ideas,
to people, unite....
    
      it's as if...
with first sight...
your first sight is to turn
you blind...
        i concede...
      mockery...
derision...
             so little acting
i have left in me...

     but a snap of
the fingers...
                   while the mountains
crumble...
               thieving love
through the artifact
of a butterfly's existence
of, par: 2 weeks...
           flinch of hue...
and burgundy...
to arrest
           the cheecks to tame
the sudden plush
they are to imbue...

     yeah...
i know... redundant...
       rhododendron reality...
i can't escape it...
like i wish there was a
plug-in realism anti-god
app.,
            muse... nabokov-esque
                      pristine...
if anything is worth being
lost...
it's that "you"...
              just like...
if what i remember...
is to be made concise
within the framework
of me?
                  there is no... "me"...

rhododendron reality...

                 or...
playing the piano...
very gently...
like a Debussy...
which you cited...
when your father drove
me home one night...

         Satie...
i was never into bashing
the fingers...
akin to the virtuoso
of either Liszt or Chopin...

     like some templar choir
boy for the monks...
       i touch this china-girl?
i am water,
she is salt,
she immediately melts!    

       all but the tender kissing
of a worth's concern,
to translate
what i did to a body
of a *******,
and what i could have
done with yours...
intact, with a seal
of a ring of obligation;

but this is not
the life i am to be allowed
such...
peacocking...
i abide here,
with you...
your humble...
                         pauper;
music appreciator:
               grandiose.
Pennsylvania, 1948-1949

The garden of Nature opens.
The grass at the threshold is green.
And an almond tree begins to bloom.

Sunt mihi Dei Acherontis propitii!
Valeat numen triplex Jehovae!
Ignis, aeris, aquae, terrae spiritus,
Salvete!—says the entering guest.

Ariel lives in the palace of an apple tree,
But will not appear, vibrating like a wasp’s wing,
And Mephistopheles, disguised as an abbot
Of the Dominicans or the Franciscans,
Will not descend from a mulberry bush
Onto a pentagram drawn in the black loam of the path.


But a rhododendron walks among the rocks
Shod in leathery leaves and ringing a pink bell.
A hummingbird, a child’s top in the air,
Hovers in one spot, the beating heart of motion.
Impaled on the nail of a black thorn, a grasshopper
Leaks brown fluid from its twitching snout.
And what can he do, the phantom-in-chief,
As he’s been called, more than a magician,
The Socrates of snails, as he’s been called,
Musician of pears, arbiter of orioles, man?
In sculptures and canvases our individuality
Manages to survive. In Nature it perishes.
Let him accompany the coffin of the woodsman
Pushed from a cliff by a mountain demon,
The he-goat with its jutting curl of horn.
Let him visit the graveyard of the whalers
Who drove spears into the flesh of leviathan
And looked for the secret in guts and blubber.
The thrashing subsided, quieted to waves.
Let him unroll the textbooks of alchemists
Who almost found the cipher, thus the scepter.
Then passed away without hands, eyes, or elixir.


Here there is sun. And whoever, as a child,
Believed he could break the repeatable pattern
Of things, if only he understood the pattern,
Is cast down, rots in the skin of others,
Looks with wonder at the colors of the butterfly,
Inexpressible wonder, formless, hostile to art.


To keep the oars from squeaking in their locks,
He binds them with a handkerchief. The dark
Had rushed east from the Rocky Mountains
And settled in the forests of the continent:
Sky full of embers reflected in a cloud,
Flight of herons, trees above a marsh,
The dry stalks in water, livid, black. My boat
Divides the aerial utopias of the mosquitoes
Which rebuild their glowing castles instantly.
A water lily sinks, fizzing, under the boat’s bow.


Now it is night only. The water is ash-gray.
Play, music, but inaudibly! I wait an hour
In the silence, senses tuned to a ******’s lodge.
Then suddenly, a crease in the water, a beast’s
black moon, rounded, ploughing up quickly
from the pond-dark, from the bubbling methanes.
I am not immaterial and never will be.
My scent in the air, my animal smell,
Spreads, rainbow-like, scares the ******:
A sudden splat.
I remained where I was
In the high, soft coffer of the night’s velvet,
Mastering what had come to my senses:
How the four-toed paws worked, how the hair
Shook off water in the muddy tunnel.
It does not know time, hasn’t heard of death,
Is submitted to me because I know I’ll die.


I remember everything. That wedding in Basel,
A touch to the strings of a viola and fruit
In silver bowls. As was the custom in Savoy,
An overturned cup for three pairs of lips,
And the wine spilled. The flames of the candles
Wavery and frail in a breeze from the Rhine.
Her fingers, bones shining through the skin,
Felt out the hooks and clasps of the silk
And the dress opened like a nutshell,
Fell from the turned graininess of the belly.
A chain for the neck rustled without epoch,
In pits where the arms of various creeds
Mingle with bird cries and the red hair of caesars.


Perhaps this is only my own love speaking
Beyond the seventh river. Grit of subjectivity,
Obsession, bar the way to it.
Until a window shutter, dogs in the cold garden,
The whistle of a train, an owl in the firs
Are spared the distortions of memory.
And the grass says: how it was I don’t know.


Splash of a ****** in the American night.
The memory grows larger than my life.
A tin plate, dropped on the irregular red bricks
Of a floor, rattles tinnily forever.
Belinda of the big foot, Julia, Thaïs,
The tufts of their *** shadowed by ribbon.


Peace to the princesses under the tamarisks.
Desert winds beat against their painted eyelids.
Before the body was wrapped in bandelettes,
Before wheat fell asleep in the tomb,
Before stone fell silent, and there was only pity.


Yesterday a snake crossed the road at dusk.
Crushed by a tire, it writhed on the asphalt.
We are both the snake and the wheel.
There are two dimensions. Here is the unattainable
Truth of being, here, at the edge of lasting
and not lasting. Where the parallel lines intersect,
Time lifted above time by time.


Before the butterfly and its color, he, numb,
Formless, feels his fear, he, unattainable.
For what is a butterfly without Julia and Thaïs?
And what is Julia without a butterfly’s down
In her eyes, her hair, the smooth grain of her belly?
The kingdom, you say. We do not belong to it,
And still, in the same instant, we belong.
For how long will a nonsensical Poland
Where poets write of their emotions as if
They had a contract of limited liability
Suffice? I want not poetry, but a new diction,
Because only it might allow us to express
A new tenderness and save us from a law
That is not our law, from necessity
Which is not ours, even if we take its name.


From broken armor, from eyes stricken
By the command of time and taken back
Into the jurisdiction of mold and fermentation,
We draw our hope. Yes, to gather in an image
The furriness of the ******, the smell of rushes,
And the wrinkles of a hand holding a pitcher
From which wine trickles. Why cry out
That a sense of history destroys our substance
If it, precisely, is offered to our powers,
A muse of our gray-haired father, Herodotus,
As our arm and our instrument, though
It is not easy to use it, to strengthen it
So that, like a plumb with a pure gold center,
It will serve again to rescue human beings.


With such reflections I pushed a rowboat,
In the middle of the continent, through tangled stalks,
In my mind an image of the waves of two oceans
And the slow rocking of a guard-ship’s lantern.
Aware that at this moment I—and not only I—
Keep, as in a seed, the unnamed future.
And then a rhythmic appeal composed itself,
Alien to the moth with its whirring of silk:


O City, O Society, O Capital,
We have seen your steaming entrails.
You will no longer be what you have been.
Your songs no longer gratify our hearts.


Steel, cement, lime, law, ordinance,
We have worshipped you too long,
You were for us a goal and a defense,
Ours was your glory and your shame.


And where was the covenant broken?
Was it in the fires of war, the incandescent sky?
Or at twilight, as the towers fly past, when one looked
From the train across a desert of tracks

To a window out past the maneuvering locomotives
Where a girl examines her narrow, moody face
In a mirror and ties a ribbon to her hair
Pierced by the sparks of curling papers?


Those walls of yours are shadows of walls,
And your light disappeared forever.
Not the world's monument anymore, an oeuvre of your own
Stands beneath the sun in an altered space.


From stucco and mirrors, glass and paintings,
Tearing aside curtains of silver and cotton,
Comes man, naked and mortal,
Ready for truth, for speech, for wings.


Lament, Republic! Fall to your knees!
The loudspeaker’s spell is discontinued.
Listen! You can hear the clocks ticking.
Your death approaches by his hand.


An oar over my shoulder, I walked from the woods.
A porcupine scolded from the fork of a tree,
A horned owl, not changed by the century,
Not changed by place or time, looked down.
Bubo maximus, from the work of Linnaeus.


America for me has the pelt of a raccoon,
Its eyes are a raccoon’s black binoculars.
A chipmunk flickers in a litter of dry bark
Where ivy and vines tangle in the red soil
At the roots of an arcade of tulip trees.
America’s wings are the color of a cardinal,
Its beak is half-open and a mockingbird trills
From a leafy bush in the sweat-bath of the air.
Its line is the wavy body of a water moccasin
Crossing a river with a grass-like motion,
A rattlesnake, a rubble of dots and speckles,
Coiling under the bloom of a yucca plant.


America is for me the illustrated version
Of childhood tales about the heart of tanglewood,
Told in the evening to the spinning wheel’s hum.
And a violin, shivvying up a square dance,
Plays the fiddles of Lithuania or Flanders.
My dancing partner’s name is Birute Swenson.
She married a Swede, but was born in Kaunas.
Then from the night window a moth flies in
As big as the joined palms of the hands,
With a hue like the transparency of emeralds.


Why not establish a home in the neon heat
Of Nature? Is it not enough, the labor of autumn,
Of winter and spring and withering summer?
You will hear not one word spoken of the court
of Sigismund Augustus on the banks of the Delaware River.
The Dismissal of the Greek Envoys is not needed.
Herodotus will repose on his shelf, uncut.
And the rose only, a ****** symbol,
Symbol of love and superterrestrial beauty,
Will open a chasm deeper than your knowledge.
About it we find a song in a dream:


Inside the rose
Are houses of gold,
black isobars, streams of cold.
Dawn touches her finger to the edge of the Alps
And evening streams down to the bays of the sea.


If anyone dies inside the rose,
They carry him down the purple-red road
In a procession of clocks all wrapped in folds.
They light up the petals of grottoes with torches.
They bury him there where color begins,
At the source of the sighing,
Inside the rose.


Let names of months mean only what they mean.
Let the Aurora’s cannons be heard in none
Of them, or the tread of young rebels marching.
We might, at best, keep some kind of souvenir,
Preserved like a fan in a garret. Why not
Sit down at a rough country table and compose
An ode in the old manner, as in the old times
Chasing a beetle with the nib of our pen?
Skeptic Tank Jan 2012
I wonder how a rhododendron smells.
Such a lovely word should have a scent
To match, but words keep secrets the object tells;
What fragrance could this flower represent?

I've smelled my share of flowers, sweet and sour:
Roses for rapture, Chrysanthemums for trust,
Daisies for friendship with magic healing power,
Rue for unrequited, and lilies for lust.

I'd like to make a newer scent by breeding
Flowers with all the traits I love the best.
My unconditional tulip has been pleading
For a sweeter scent than all the rest.

Your love has such a scent my love can blend on
Sweet enough to smell like Rhododendrons.
Boaz Priestly Oct 2016
My Bio Poem
in third person:
Priestly
Author
Who wants to start T, legally change his name, and top surgery
Who needs therapy, medication, and to stop living in fear of being killed for being queer
Who feels like a freak, fear, and righteous anger
Who fears being killed for being queer, never getting “better,” and having his PTSD define him
Who would like to see that his trans brothers and sisters stop being killed, racist cops be held accountable to their actions, and the world becomes a safe space, ******
Lover of men and women (though not bisexual), caffeine, and the smell of new and old books
Resident of Rhododendron, Welches, Portland, and the LGBTQ+ community
Stout

My Bio Poem
in first person:
Priestly
Author
Who wants to start T, legally change my name, and top surgery
Who needs therapy, medication, and to stop living in fear or being killed for being queer
Who feels like a freak, fear, and righteous anger
Who fears being killed for being queer, never getting “better,” and having my PTSD define me
Who would like to see that my trans brothers and sisters stop being killed, racist cops be held accountable for their actions, and the world becomes a safe space, ******
Lover of men and women (though not bisexual), caffeine, and the smell of new and old books
Resident of Rhododendron, Welches, Portland, and the LGBTQ+ community
Stout
This was another class assignment, in Psych, that I really liked and decided to post online.
It's called a bio poem, and this is the format:
First name
Word(s) describing you
Three things you want
Three things you need
Three things you feel
Three things you fear
Three things you would like
Three things you love
Where you live
Last Name

I did two versions of the poem, one in third person, and the other in first person. I will post/label them both.
Sharon Talbot Aug 2018
The frost is still there,
Throttling the rhododendron leaf,
And ice stalls the dissolve
Of the stone-like snow,
Yet I am happy.

The sun-rays are almost Etruscan,
Filtered low through lace and blind,
Like that ***** of sunset on Irene’s hair
Sad “couleur de feuille-morte”.
Yet it is sultry.

I can open a window
And breathe the warming air
Finches flock close, careless,
Now desperate for food
And pluck menescent fruit
Off an ice-bound branch.
In the distance, a cardinal sings.

Thick drapes are drawn aside
And geraniums strain toward the light.
In a nook outside the door,
An old cat basks on a corner of sun.
He yawns, seeing me, and strolls across the snow.

All nature seems to wait, but poised,
For the final unfettered token.
Will it be a sudden, favonian breeze?
Or the robin’s unrelenting noise?
Telling us, “Winter is broken”?
This is pretty obvious: it was one of those days in winter which seem so close to spring.
r Jul 2014
Blue the mountains
holding close in view
sacred smoke of yesterdays
blue fog shrouded trails
beneath the rhododendron

falls of sweet blue water
replenishing the rivers
sapphire lakes reflecting
splendor of the bluest hills
above the peaceful valley

hear the sacred music
of the blue ridge mountains
magic in the songs of old
forever blue my appalachia
blue the hills I used to roam.

r ~ 7/4/14
\¥/\
 |      ^^^^^
/ \
380

There is a flower that Bees prefer—
And Butterflies—desire—
To gain the Purple Democrat
The Humming Bird—aspire—

And Whatsoever Insect pass—
A Honey bear away
Proportioned to his several dearth
And her—capacity—

Her face be rounder than the Moon
And ruddier than the Gown
Or Orchis in the Pasture—
Or Rhododendron—worn—

She doth not wait for June—
Before the World be Green—
Her sturdy little Countenance
Against the Wind—be seen—

Contending with the Grass—
Near Kinsman to Herself—
For Privilege of Sod and Sun—
Sweet Litigants for Life—

And when the Hills be full—
And newer fashions blow—
Doth not retract a single spice
For pang of jealousy—

Her Public—be the Noon—
Her Providence—the Sun—
Her Progress—by the Bee—proclaimed—
In sovereign—Swerveless Tune—

The Bravest—of the Host—
Surrendering—the last—
Nor even of Defeat—aware—
What cancelled by the Frost—
Janette Jan 2013
So fine,
the slender votive silence
of palms, open
to the torn banners of rain,
so tender,
such surrender
in the gesture of hands...

You pour so much
of your red earth,
to soothe and loosen
the tongue from its leather tomb
and adorn me
with a lighter burden,
too much mine, at one
with the dark, lavish earth
in all its sorrow, spun
of the sleek commotion of silk
and vanilla linens... I leaned
into the ******* of my wings,
honed from those muscular
fairy-tale dreams...

My mouth,
learned solely on a valentine's
shiny white kiss of hemlock,
humming into the cells
of the spellbound body, quelled
by vigilance, your lips
teach me now, how to go softly
over the red earth of dahlias,
in all their everlastings, your hands
deep in the soil, reap...

The resonating grail of memory,
kept in its rich loam
and coals spread over
my mouth of red, red clay,
so swells its golden hue
of rose and rhododendron,
too much mine, rising
its fevers in the fawn brown
of eyes, closed ...

Over this long,
shuddering quiet,
you come
in all your calico
to calm
the votive silence
of palms, cupped
in the earth of your hands,
so much mine....
Blooming all year,
don't you grow weary?
don't you wish the sun would let you sleep?

This is not natural
this constant state of greenery and growth
all things
must rest for a time.
All things must be allowed to conserve energy and recover.

Always smiling...
don't you grow weary?
Don't you wish
you were allowed to
to show weakness
for a just a moment
every once in a while?
There will be rose and rhododendron
  When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
  Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;

Still will the tamaracks be raining
  After the rain has ceased, and still
Will there be robins in the stubble,
  Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.

Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
  Nothing will know that you are gone,
Saving alone some sullen plough-land
  None but yourself sets foot upon;

Saving the may-**** and the pig-****
  Nothing will know that you are dead,—
These, and perhaps a useless wagon
  Standing beside some tumbled shed.

Oh, there will pass with your great passing
  Little of beauty not your own,—
Only the light from common water,
  Only the grace from simple stone!
Perig3e Mar 2012
Laurel, rhododendron,
waxy leather leaves survived
again beyond odds.
we spill
out
into the dark
Sanguine moon
watching
your
guiding hands
and mine lead
so softly
to the lily-vellum of your thighs
then
a fuse-spark
a cataclysm of ruffled
skirt
hands on your apocalyptic hips
your lips are rhododendron honey
your lips are codeine
mellifluous and urgent
as the pressing heat of a black summer night.
This Poem is based (loosely) on my university years, written in Canterbury on a visit to old friends 02/08/15
Paul R Mott Mar 2012
Take me back to the cool summer mornings
Where the leaves fluttered with the breeze
Best friends, there was never a truer pair
Of better days there were none

Take me back to the sun’s triumphant return
When it’s first rays kiss the tranquil water
And spread the heat of passion to the rising world
Inviting us all to take part in their romance

When the side of the road was a gateway to our fantasies
We were free to dream and free to live
Among the playful rhododendron and the staid oak
Days melted away with the heat of life

If the wind on my face could bear my spirit
I could return once more to this time
And be content with the robins and blue jays of above
And the rabbit and chipmunk contemplating from below

But, it is not to be, wishful thinking is all
For today has its own magic, but no one knows the spell
Only yesterday can be uncovered, tomorrow hides anew
Under a new sun, who has yet to court the tranquil water.
a yellow rose winds to the skies,
blossoming, letting soft petals fall to
the cidery earth, blushing in
the caverns of the sweet-flowering day,

inspired like the greek
sun-god helios but
drawn out of rhododendron
and apple, drawn out of love.

a thousand years of summer,
the wolf, the thin mouth of sky,
a diamond bumble bee, the
gifts of a stolen sun,

shaken out like a rattle snake,
the broken angles of death,
the lost side of each word,
with all its intentions and promises -

fallen to the floor, like an apple,
or a blind mole loving
the soil, the dry earth,
the faded parchment sun,

or a rock of ice, in a tangy glass,
where the summer sun
grows roots and shoots,
shadow domes and leafy golden skies.
Lana Aug 2013
Bathed in the shade of
a rubbery rhododendron,
I sway imperceptibly,
Lulled by nature's rhythms,
A silent, sleepy visitor
splayed on a ropey nest,
Serenaded by an aerial orchestra,
Chirps and trills
and throaty warbles
spiral downward,
Atomized in the languid breeze
like a Roman candle,
A staccato riff,
Jack-hammered into a dying birch,
Urges me back from the edge,
Where dream and dreamer part,
A gauzy memory of a melody lost,
Performed for the oblivious,
and a dozing, grateful
audience of one.
Kelsey Wolff Jan 2013
The hours go by slowly
My eyes are heavy with drugs
No one's around to see this
This hurt, this lying to myself
Please, can someone listen?
I'm finding myself underwater
In a cave where I can barely breathe
A quiet lucidity descends
And I rise
A pine tree lays fallen in a forest
The sky above is black
The air around is littered with a thousand lights
And a buzzing, pulsing
Alien electricity flows through my veins
The rhododendron leaves curve upward
The waterfall is throbbing
And I rise
A life force is hardly essential
In the ghostly barn on the second level
The tresses of her hair fall gently
No more ferns exist
The local bamboo stems from plastic bottles
Red mesh tape resides
And I rise
Pink combat boots melt in the fire
Rocks ring the mats
Wood and rice boil into each other
The old man's beard eats a mouse
Nails scratch a whiteboard
And I rise
Heya laddy, whatcha say?
We can't hear your songs
The red breasted robin weaves a nest
A broom loses its needles
And I rise
The train evades the tracks
White mesh bags float on the ocean
The flames are climbing higher
And I rise
Blue cherries are picked
Purple snails squirm
And I rise
I run up the driveway
And I rise

And I rise
the Sandman Jul 2014
The sky’s a light carnelian’s shade
and, as the brightness starts to fade,
from carnelian to carmine he turns, too-
soft to vivid tones of the hue.
Looks into the ‘windows to my soul,’
     (‘windows to one’s soul’ he called them)
The intensity nearly swallows me whole-
his windows a pair of solitary gems.
Eyes the colour that fire should be,
a fury to turn flames green with envy.

So as carnelian turns to carmine
and the heavens light up with his glow,
a firefly’s brightness is overshadowed,
but the yellow is whitened down in snow

A lone, saphhired rhododendron in full bloom
unaware of its death in a pluck so soon

The furious ball of rage sets
and us (three!) need to return
-a lingering gaze for a moment too long,
cheeks of crimson and burn!
For too long have we tarried,
our hours have wasted the day
Find no longer a reason
nor any excuse to stay

Peer over the edge a last time
     (indecision, in control)
At the vast expanse of cerulean, sublime
     (pause to contemplate my goal)

Tucks the blooming rhod’ between a lock and an ear,
breathes, “it looks prettier still here,”
for another second holds ( ) near
and in parting’s ‘sweet sorrow’ starts to disappear

A gunshot echoing, a resounding sound,
as he turns away from the mead’.
His body slowly hits the ground,
and I know I’ve killed him dead.
For the first time, a lamenting tear’s grace
rolls down one side of my face
and all I see is red.


A gunshot, a second time, lying in bed,
*brow, hair, pillow- all soaked in red.
Cortney Dec 2014
She is
the book falling open to November,
sweet hidden wickedness of rhododendron,
her mouth a tuberose, pale.
*******.

She swells upon the eaves.
They touch at her thighs
to feel the texture of acrylics,
something frail, transitory,
beautiful.

She walks the beach in August,
sudden music out of nowhere,
houseflies and hypodermics,
the shadows that rustle
behind shower curtains.

Her need to be compelling is painful,
something purple and waxen,
a delicate blush.
Still, she writes the way
her body should look,

provocative, breathless,
stirring agony in its wake.
Was it a surprise?
You have not the length of a tree,
Nor the beauty of a rhododendron.
Your friends are not of plenty like that of a forest
And none inhabit your “vast” wealth of knowledge.

So, how did it surprise?
Was it your shallow logic in which lethargic is defined?
Or the rangy alps of hope from which this preposterous “self-worth” first began?

No matter.
Here we are.
And lonely, despondent glances do no one good.

Time is of the essence, my friend.
K Mae Dec 2012
sharp slant leaves
of rhododendron
gauge my freeze within

winter days
yet find the sun's warmth
burning true to heart

tight then open
ever changing
here an endless start
Marshal Gebbie Jul 2014
The sanguine shades of India
Flow in mantras through my mind
In hashish tones sienna brown
To ochre greens, I find.
The soaring slopes of massif peak
And roaring waterfall
Lead to tranquil rhododendron glades
Capped in scarlet, I recall.

The clamour of the market place
The grimy squalor found
In the gutters on the roadway
With a constant wall of sound,
In the bartering for spices, red
In wicker baskets wide
With the stench of open sewer
Causing queasiness inside.

Dustiness of sandaled feet
Robes of saffron gold
And the gleaming glow of polished bronze
To purchase, should  you hold.
Patterned carpets lay displayed
In jute and woollen blend
Whilst ancient hands on simple loom
Weave more for you to spend.

Ullulation in the air
As turbaned dancers spin
To shrilling ethnic instrument
With drumbeat adding din.
Wild eyed watchers flashing teeth
As rhythms beat the air
Encircled by a chanting crowd
With temperament at flair.

Thronging people fill the lanes
Churning on their way
Interspersed with sacred cow
Meandering to hay.
Children flock with outstretched palm
Surging as they do
Insistently to foreign purse
In urgency that grew.

The sea of dark skinned faces
Mid flashing whites of eyes
An intensity of gaze that takes
You jarringly by surprise
And everywhere the pungency
Of the continent in the air
With the spicey taste of curry
And a chutneyed rice as fare.

But in speaking to the people
I found their manner warm
And their love for caste and custom
And their cricket team was worn
Like a flag around the shoulders,
Like a talisman, so proud,
And their love for home and family
Reiterated, long and loud.

Overhead, the baking heat
Occasionally relieved
By a downpour of monsoonal rain
Must be seen to be believed.
And the total inundation
Of believers on the stair
Of the teeming seeking holiness
In the river Ganges there.

And then as quickly as I came here
It became the time to leave
And the wonders of diversity
Were beyond what I believed.
What was once a frank abhorrence
Grew surreptitiously on me
The splendours of this mystic place
Well deserve their sanctity.

Now far across the oceans
In my safe and sterile land
I am drawn to stare to seaward
To recall my thoughts at hand,
Out across the sprawling delta
Gazing far to sunset sea,
That special taste of India
Flows irrevocably, back to me.

Marshalg
13 July 2014
Lara Lewis Dec 2013
I’m more afraid of losing you than I am of losing myself

To force one to create;
To turn the gears of the mind by force of will
Ironic;
That the source of creativity has become so artificial,
Like plastic flowers in an outdoors garden,
Not wrong,
Not dangerous,
Unsettling;
One of these things is not like the other.
Something is wrong;
This is too familiar,
I have been here before.
Sometimes I feel like I’ve known you my whole life,
Silence is a spirit which haunts me,
Hold my tongue,
Punching my gut,
Every time brave words bloom in my throat,
This banshee screams reality in my wind-beaten face.
She is subdued by a fraternal bond, a weightless chain,
Silence is tamed by the right company,
The demon exorcised from my body,
I am sanctified in brief lucidity,
Clarity, however fleeting still exists,
Despite the holes in your brain,
The ultimate in body modification.
Every ugly duckling is told they’re a swan,
So they seek their kind,
Unable to set roots,
Assured that there is a kindred spirit,
You just have to find them.
You don’t know what you have until it’s gone,
They ugly duckling becomes more shark-like every day,
Unable to stop, a flower constantly about to wither,
With age comes beauty,
The Rhododendron expels an army of stamens,
Male in essence, coloured neon pink,
******* objects of desire for the hungry bee,
Honey and perfume,
Comfort and poison,
The children of flowers,
Opposing in nature,
Twins in function,
Sweetening, attracting, saturating,
Numbing the tongue,
Burning the nose,
So sweet I could *****.
I want more time and you want more attention,
Kind gestures, kind reward,
So sweet that I’m sick.
John Mahoney Feb 2012
i have wandered these forests,
     ancient redwoods enshrouding the foothills
          rolling back from the great Pacific to the Sierras

this ancient range of the coast redwood
     tallest trees on Earth. i walk a path well trodden
         above Mill Creek water flowing to the estuary

turning around to head back to the trail-head marker
     ferns and rocks protrude from the walls
          sediment of time, written in the canyon walls
          
i ramble into a growth of California rhododendron
     in full bloom, their flowers bursts of red and yellow
          against the dark green leaves

here, i pause, enchanted by the consuming
     majesty of this ancient place abounding in life
          entirely indifferent to my passing, enduring

and, once again, i am able to return to nothingness,
     suffering comes from the desire to exist, and, i remember
          that there is a path that leads to the end of suffering
Kamini Jun 2010
This is the place where faeries sleep, down,
by the river burbling over mossy boulders, beside
the pink Rhododendron caressed by the sun.
Where I wait, feeling my wanting,
my longing as I meet the Beloved.

The light is everywhere, shimmering
on the wings of a bumblebee as it swings by
lazily unaware of my desire rising from the root
effervescent like the bubbles chasing
each other on the surface of the water.

So alive,
so exciting,
so exquisite,
so magical,
so perfect,
so NOW.
This meeting
this touching
this connecting
this tasting
this falling...

This falling
truly, madly, deeply in
love with this moment,
this tender, fragile, faltering
moment that is me.

This exquisite Eden that I have
uncovered at my core,
this awakening of the unforbidden
so luscious, so delicious in it’s invitation
to taste it’s sweet aliveness that
my heart has abandoned all shame,
and is lost in the lust,
blown open in wonder
at the awesome,
the indescribable
thrill of this dance,
this movement
toward death.

Each moment so precious,
each moment  a jewel,
each moment in which
I am alive, AWAKE and wanting.

This is the place where faeries sleep.
Down, by the river.
Gidleigh, 30 May 2009
sweet day,
birds kissing
the air in
rapid flight.

we wait, stones
of the morning
sun

for the white
sky to
settle its clouds

ghosts of the
faint breeze
tremble the leaves.

it is still cold,

april peels its
skin like a snake.

forsythia lounges
with beech and
rhododendron
(shiny with waxy
leaves)
painting its
impressions on
the fainting world.

the trees stutter
weird and heavy
glowing in the
light.
CA Guilfoyle Dec 2014
You lingered far too long
with rain clouds, your morning fog
I waited in mists of rain, the days
for sun to warm, to wrap it's arms once more
to watch the steam of scented cedars
I sat silent under great trees
of a rhododendron forest
kept looking for buds
a hint of flowers
to come
They bark at cars, and howl at church bells
Mist rolls down like tears,
While smoke rises in hope.

On a thickly wooded hillside
Within a sandstone scar,
The deer with tiny horns feasts on Rhododendron.

They say there are wolves
Far away in the north
Where midwinter passes fall silent
Beneath a wedding gown of stars.

Send your daughters to the city, my merchant friend!
They will find their manners there.
A W Bullen Sep 2017
I hurried...

a hooded scrape
of epaulette through
rhododendron corridors
an exit to the brace.

All tradition is mine
so I threw her a peace sign
that caught in the ivy

both long-tooth
and way-tied

I walked....

a slow Nantucket sleigh ride
to the field where she waited,
tall,
sheep- skinned in her cuneiform

We talked..

Met, smoking by the ringers net
sequestered in the biscuit verge.

Too long into the bison grass
of Pompeii afternoons, is how

We slept
Torin Mar 2017
Tooth of a dog
Sign of the ram
Forced to walk as I am
Broken
History

Cobblestone

No longer bleeding into gardens
Overflowing Rhododendron
I wish I were
Where the flowers bloom

Eye of the goat
Horn of the bull
Made to walk as I've become
Damaged
Future

Concrete

Finding parking lots and empty streets
Where I can bleed
I wish I were
Where the flowers bloom
Sharon Talbot Sep 2017
The rain is falling, coalescing now
Off the roof onto new blooms.
Dusk slips in with its indigo shroud
And I watch it kiss the purple,
Of the Rhododendron’s earliest flower,
Plucking away Azalea’s last veil,
Hiding her into a bower,

Where summer never ends
And the rain falls when it will;
I would have this all year instead of an end
Where these soft mists know nothing of a chill
But heat and rain,
Sun and shower.

I can still hear raindrops drumming
On a Chinese rebel’s tin roof,
Outside Jakarta and the red guard coming,
We could lapse into hypnosis,
Rapt senses gently humming.

Despite our temperate flowers and leaves
That droop under the deluge.
Their color seems to strengthen as they grieve,
And they cluster, seeking refuge,
Yet from our New England loggia,
A stream turns them darker, a humid green.

And in the slowly deepening dusk,
The trees’ heads toss, agitated,
Like elegant women whose gowns have cost
A tidy sum and now are saturated.
Their full, green plumage lost.

I love the mockingbirds’ changing cries,
Announcing from to squeal to carillon.
Cardinals’ song change from pleasure to pain
Flashing coats of taupe to vermilion.
As the evening slowly dies.

It ends and begins with summer, summer,
Soundless footsteps in the rain.
A prismatic wakening from slumber,
A season with no name.
I simply didn't want summer to end!

— The End —