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311

It sifts from Leaden Sieves—
It powders all the Wood.
It fills with Alabaster Wool
The Wrinkles of the Road—

It makes an Even Face
Of Mountain, and of Plain—
Unbroken Forehead from the East
Unto the East again—

It reaches to the Fence—
It wraps it Rail by Rail
Till it is lost in Fleeces—
It deals Celestial Vail

To Stump, and Stack—and Stem—
A Summer’s empty Room—
Acres of Joints, where Harvests were,
Recordless, but for them—

It Ruffles Wrists of Posts
As Ankles of a Queen—
Then stills its Artisans—like Ghosts—
Denying they have been—
SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist ... in the slow twist ... of the wind.
  
If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the east.
  By this sign
  all smokes
  know each other.
Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn,
Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue,
By the oath of work they swear: "I know you."
  
Hunted and hissed from the center
Deep down long ago when God made us over,
Deep down are the cinders we came from-
You and I and our heads of smoke.
  
Some of the smokes God dropped on the job
Cross on the sky and count our years
And sing in the secrets of our numbers;
Sing their dawns and sing their evenings,
Sing an old log-fire song:
  
You may put the damper up,
You may put the damper down,
The smoke goes up the chimney just the same.
  
Smoke of a city sunset skyline,
Smoke of a country dusk horizon-
  They cross on the sky and count our years.
  
Smoke of a brick-red dust
  Winds on a spiral
  Out of the stacks
For a hidden and glimpsing moon.
This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill,
This is the slang of coal and steel.
The day-gang hands it to the night-gang,
The night-gang hands it back.
  
Stammer at the slang of this-
Let us understand half of it.
  In the rolling mills and sheet mills,
  In the harr and boom of the blast fires,
  The smoke changes its shadow
  And men change their shadow;
  A ******, a ***, a bohunk changes.
  
  A bar of steel-it is only
Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man.
A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else,
And left-smoke and the blood of a man
And the finished steel, chilled and blue.
  
So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again,
And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel,
A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky;
And always dark in the heart and through it,
  Smoke and the blood of a man.
Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary-they make their steel with men.
  
In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
The smoke nights write their oaths:
Smoke into steel and blood into steel;
Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.
  
  The birdmen drone
  in the blue; it is steel
  a motor sings and zooms.
  
Steel barb-wire around The Works.
Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works.
Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel.
Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.
  
Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up-
Finders in the dark, Steve: I hook my arm in cinder sleeves; we go down the street together; it is all the same to us; you Steve and the rest of us end on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell together, in hell or heaven.
  
Smoke nights now, Steve.
Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday;
Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today.
Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always.
  Smoke nights now.
  To-morrow something else.
  
Luck moons come and go:
Five men swim in a *** of red steel.
Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel:
Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils
And the ******* plungers of sea-fighting turbines.
Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station.
So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors.
Peepers, skulkers-they shadow-dance in laughing tombs.
They are always there and they never answer.
  
One of them said: "I like my job, the company is good to me, America is a wonderful country."
One: "Jesus, my bones ache; the company is a liar; this is a free country, like hell."
One: "I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves."
And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home.
Look for them back of a steel vault door.
  
They laugh at the cost.
They lift the birdmen into the blue.
It is steel a motor sings and zooms.
  
In the subway plugs and drums,
In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel,
Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders,
They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost.
  
The ovens light a red dome.
Spools of fire wind and wind.
Quadrangles of crimson sputter.
The lashes of dying maroon let down.
Fire and wind wash out the ****.
Forever the **** gets washed in fire and wind.
The anthem learned by the steel is:
  Do this or go hungry.
Look for our rust on a plow.
Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz.
Look at our job in the running wagon wheat.
  
Fire and wind wash at the ****.
Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers, scissors-
Oh, the sleeping **** from the mountains, the ****-heavy pig-iron will go down many roads.
Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across North America, Europe, Asia, round the world.
  
Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits
Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and blunts the drills chewing a hole in it.
The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God, in one-millionth of an inch.
  
Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing,
Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks-flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down;
Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens;
Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for themselves;
Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire, gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling vermillion balloons;
I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then smoke, smoke;
And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair,
Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, waiting and half-murmuring:
  "Since you know all
  and I know nothing,
  tell me what I dreamed last night."
  
Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.
  
A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.
  
A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.
  
The wind never bothers ... a bar of steel.
The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools of moonshine.
berry Jan 2014
i kept my hatches battened but that
didn't stop your love from barreling toward me
like a runaway freight train with faulty breaks.
and god almighty, did we crash.
you came to a screeching halt at my doorstep
and i didn't know what else to do but let you in.
you looked so cold. we did not start with a spark but a full-on fire.
i told myself i wouldn't fall, instead i jumped.
our sinking frames somehow morphed into life preservers,
and we managed to keep each other's heads above the waves.
we had seemingly saved one another.
you tossed your pills, i flushed my razors, and for a while that was enough.
but we learned the hard way that even the deepest love
can only keep the storm clouds in your mind at bay for so long.
eventually our cracks began to show.
missed calls and silent hours built houses of cards
that were blown down by too many miles.
we hardly ever smiled anymore.
my hands were sieves and yours were sand.
i want to break the hands of the clock
that cursed us with this bad timing.
i have mourned all the hours i won't ever have with you.
i have felt the thunder that rumbles in my lungs
when i reminisce about the memories we'll never make.
the moment i realized i would never wake up beside you
an atom bomb went off in the center of my chest.
but the radiation is what's killing me.
the life is being drained from me here in the wake,
in the ache of your absence. but i won't beg.
i will live out the remainder of my days
tormented by wondering if maybe in another world
our love is perfect and neither of us bleed.

- m.f.
Bryan Amerila Jul 2016
Every morning when I wake up
Two sieves catch my eyes
With their blinking tiny eyes.

The metal one bears
Seven stars on its bottom
Where seven dreams are sitting.

The other one is made of fine-meshed plastic  
Bearing a lone hexagonal star
Where I lump my questions

Of whys:
why we dream
and why we aspire.
Five thousand trees between his knuckles
Crushing the bark, choking the oaks
Straining through leaves with makeshift sieves
Angling to find an ankle or two
Praying that even a toenail would do
But all to be found was her mountain laurel crown
Still tangled with strands of burnt-birch down
Michael Humbert Oct 2014
These poems are an extension of me,
A pressure valve to keep my mind from exploding,
These poems are sieves catching grotesqueries
To be turned into something palatable

Poetry somehow doesn't pop without pain,
Somehow inadequate without lurking demons
Fueling passion and longing and fury

These cataclysms are documented and catalogued,
These emotions and stories memorialized,
Their existence in the world a fossil record
Of memories too precious to lose
Ken Pepiton Jan 2023
-------------
Time's were hard, we see,
as we look back and wonder, asking
actually,
wondering
is asking who knew, or knows,
at the ha,
a breath acclaiming exhaled, huff.
I know. It acts as if, I am the prey, in quest…

Of course, in slow, out burst… ah wit' ha a aitch
witches silence, 'ear ye, 'ear ye,
order in the court,
the open court before the temple,

gather, all ye hinderers and holder-backs, rally
round the banner over us,
which is love of duty to God and Country,

¿Eh, little man, dis tinctual intel, confi, semper set,
semper fi, do or die, or do and die, why
is not a factor,
or luck is not a factor, time and chance, dance…

dance with this wondering mind, wishing to be
of some significance, when plopped
on the scale,
for what it is worth,
for the cost
to fit the three strand thread
from Delphi riddles writ
in Greek et Ebersprachen Proverbs
from the very early days,
collected fragments
of ever ago, cetera

as far as ships had sailed, we know, now
we have sailed farther,
we have flown, as far as our perception may
hold the experience,
as power we may use, if we choose, buy a ticket,
wait in line…

read one hundred and forty seven maxims,
think three missing, for I was told to find
one hundred and fifty pre-positioning
glyphs, single sign, single signal, taken

as given, one will to wonder, one to wonder why.

I am at the moment Qwerty Guy, qwertying code,
in clear text,
through sieves witches were known, to use,
by King James, the first, of England,
who wrote the book on sorting
witches from his loyal servants,

all sworn to alliegiance,
to the king of two kingdoms, all stand,

Come to order, let the judgement begin…
in this worlds interpretation,
of ἐγγύα πάρα δ'ἄτα
- Swear not at all… Certainty makes madness
after we recall, there needs be order, must be
in the court,
where each man, wombed or un, and possibly,
old or young, or, better said,
old from young, must judge the angels
we each trust to always see things our way
- draw the right vectors, from my POV
- Graphic communication demo
Cartesian, belling thing, seen on two dimensions,
to and from, but here
the point
the readers perceptivity
to the precept set in ifery was,
so quite long ago we lost our grip,

holding, holding, holding that thought,
we thought, a chapter or so ago, you know
we thought,
ever
was a thinkable thing, and we thought it.

------------- Proud of it, too.
Dis, take it
Easy, you are privileged, legated privacy
for knowing what may be known,
in the realm of all you may ever know.

Gnostic mystic alien ties
religamental truth coded moral worth,
stores of stories studied in hope,
choking on the dust, those missing,
layers,
the bringers of peace,
the releasers of the knowing to the chosen,
those selected by childish preferences,
to become the model image
of good done right,
as natural as
sneezing whole armys into being,
after sowing dragon's teeth for years.
All we agree, we may imagine, making up

Messengers from former days,
telling us to mend our ways,
no, telling us, to get a grip.
Oracles or angels, or mass hysteria,
none portrayed as boogermen and witches,
wrinkled hags and fatphag priests in shades.
At you, we see the dust blown.
Celebrate.
A series of sneezes axon-triggering,
deep anti-histamine relief reaction, coming on,

must be something in the wind,
must be my body, reacting, doing what must
be done,
or I shall die, or I shall die, each sneeze,
from within me cries,
no, from inside,
we whisper, prepare, to not spray snot,
in civilized mindspacetime patterning arrays.
Ah, this feels fine, okeh, let life work wonders in the dark.
Shashi Sep 2010
The touch that lingers
Like phantoms in my mind
The feelings
Sieves out of passionate warmth
Hold me closer
Than your body scent
That lives within my thoughts

The more passionate - thoughts
Coils my mind all around
The more pain,
Breaks out in my heart
Like the grip of your slender legs
Squeezes out pleasure
Till
My last drops

How can I hold you more firmly?
In my thoughts
When your passions
Flutter with winds
A storm that comes along,
Leaving behind
Just some shattered dreams
@Shashi 2006
O'Reily Aug 2014
Money can buy you the best proof taken amid all this rest!
Next taken is to experience et!
Dream about it,
Think about it,
Living it,
That's the problem spotting et...

When love takes its chance,
Football when football teams a family with
Kids and a dog,
Utopia raises its curtains,
God breaths a certain light on a table we had been risen,

Money can buy you the best,
Missile box sui generis,
Of its own kind,
Summa *** laude!
In all of its trenches,
Moolah lie deep and it stench es,
But dreams you may find et....

Cry me on silver,
Lime, dime and a sapphire glass river,
Streams a strengthen nugget gold,
Work hard, watch as it sieves, watch as it pours and watch as it gives,
Some where plays and draws you out a revealing point!

It Scratches a sale to a victory,
I like to see it,
Short cut luck no more staring into the abyss buck,
Seeing that face and still believing it,
Hard change knuckle of hours,
A super match set in sky mystery,
Finish off your money to be thy very best O'Reily mystery!

Messi Mason living life in some spiritual occasion,
Still breathing on average abundance of work smiles an ironed shirt and no creases as he plays,
Just don't stop till you've had enough!

Enough, Enough and Enough...

O'Reily@18082014
Dreams are shot but are never broken!
It is ok to be
not
what you are
still
becoming. She said
"you're not special." Grinding teeth and sodden rails. My car is exhausted--
downwind, held in the air like branches of birches and pines
humming with each blatant engine-stroke
which fall onto that bleakening
icedock and curl-- culled passengers tossed to sea;
unavoidably
sharp veer left, beyond surreptitious and frantic spectators
and through a once-pearl snowdrift straying into my mind.
M
C
M
L
V
Turtlenecks can't keep us warm and soup can't clear my throat.
I choke on
sliced rubber, seatbelts cut halfway-- from
Spring. pluck us like cattails
amongst my marshy solubles.
Exposes my larynx she-- ubiquitous sonnet spews forth.
What contrite aberration, wears Kalapodi temple dress
made of rose petals blown in beneath love's column
and presses with her thighs my vision?
There is nothing more to say-- meals served
raw on Winter holidays. Steaming
spoonfuls dried up on her palate--
Special in the way I left you there.
Special in being the same as I should have been.
And I, no-- I!
I can not talk any longer! The clouds I thought to taste
won't allow me to
rain
be-- once dangling from the ceiling, my dripping prevented
with a pale, cotton daub.
You see
the paramedics
even as they sheath my torso
and hold your head with thorped sieves:
The driver steered his vessel wrong
an action which robbed his passenger's breath.
MMXI

...Before
JP Goss Oct 2014
“Love: an emotion, one that, so low as to bar
From fair desire—self-righteous and self-serving
Excuse, a pretense, lyric, will not inspire.”
I detest to hear him speak—
Adulterer, why, pray tell, do you prey upon the weak?
“Simple in answer, as simple in method. No heart
Rich needs to beat for “that” emotion obsoletes.
Adults, mature, do not even think the distinction
That is kid’s table morality, what mommy
Only says after a few drinks, winking, your father
In his eyes—just where you have come, in fact—
You needn’t think mommy and daddy stayed together
After long spats, strife, and frustration for their waves
Struck the same height or the moon hits mom just right.
It is not the eternal enthrallment of Eros that keeps them in motion
Dear, friend—it is “that” emotion. In bed, hearts
Are inverted and split down the middle
The negative just drowns away in chemicals.
But how bad we’d feel, (no?) if that, the long and short?
Machinate the “thing” justify “that” feeling
Ennobling, beatifying, kindling for sonnets and odes
Fashioning morality and aesthetics onto sweating
Thrusting beasts, one on one in their dance of love.
A harlequin of truth, my friend! When it is found
In contraception, safeguarding our natural predilection.
Ha! Oh, fools! Why trouble with the rituals
When, really, ****** collocations concern capricious
Chronologies and covetous craving for **** and ****.
How ******! How crude! But, oh, but oh how true; think:
Admit the urge has primacy, the “L” emerges and
Lies emitted: of connection, intelligence, intersubjectivity.
Given its stage of farce and face, our sieves are at
Ageful capacity and then needs a bargain, more;
The office of “thing” goes unoccupied, its twin
Will gladly keep it clean and orderly, act
As it did: gentle and cordially.”
Blast it! Such ways in truth and walk, for
Repetition in faith of life
Pegs my myths with all their strife,
Strife and succor irony.
Travis Dixon Oct 2011
you're the coffee to my cup
the stitch to my seam
you bring the down to my up
the I to my beam
you're the orange to my carrot
the beef to my stew
you're the fox to my ferret
your cages, my zoo
you're the moat to my castle
the saddle to my steed
your jester's my vassal
your virtue, my deed
you're the fly to my web
the venom to my sting
you turn my flow into ebb
my winters into spring
you're the syn to my thesis
the sun to my leaves
your puzzle holds my pieces
your wire binds my sieves
you're the hedges to my maze
the signal to my noise
your game racks up my plays
like a child collecting toys
you're the sheen to my mirror
the pixels to my screen
you make further feel nearer
than my feelers can glean
you're the ink to my pen
the feathers to my wings
you turn how into when
and whethers into rings
you're the valves to my heart
the fluid to my spine
you're laughing at my ****
(was that yours or mine?)
you're the hints to my clue
the hunch to my claim
you turn my false into true
and my wild, you tame
your splinters are my plank
your twist, my *****
you're the toothbrush to my shank
the red to my blue
you're in love with my hatred
you honor my shame
your church bears my cross
your tombstone, my name
you're waging my war
your shells fill my tanks
your rich, my poor
your spit, my thanks
you're more to my less
the vowels to my needs
you put the sure in my guess
the plea in my pleads
you're the soles to my feet
and the depths to my sea
but in case we don't meet
here's from you to me
grace elle May 2015
I braved the mark of God and the Devil on each side of my ribcage,
an empty spot in my chest,
a heart that was never whole on the left
Unmarked by flesh but made by rose petals and battery acid,
brimstone, muck,
shadows that weren't just shadows, reflections of blue eyes and purple circles, veins that weren't normal colors,
doubt but certainty that this is me,
this is it,
this is all of me.
People talk.
There is a uniformed unity that swallows the red sea behind our eyes and the sea,
it leaks out through cracked pursed lips like a Russian lullaby,
the branches of love and hate permeate a scent so sweet that when it touches your nose you begin to beg God to take you home to the place you felt the afterglow of all of the people you know against the wall and in the picture frames and under the kitchen sink,
Ones vomiting lines of songs after drinking bottles of where they went wrong,
Coming down off of a high of lies from rails of love that weren't cut thin enough,
Seeking resilience after being hammered into the pavement by a hand that believes in ****** and grief and
Hiding your metaphors under the sheets you once slept
beneath,
Drifted,
Drowning your last bit of
bitter
in the river under the bridge
you
spray painted
"God doesn't exist"
on;
Running from everyone.
Around the house there are keepsakes of everything that reminds me of the way my skin is my bandage and everything underneath is an
open wound that has never healed
and every time the bandage is tampered with
the
wounds
get
bigger.
Asphyxiating the roots that link everyone and everything, asphyxiating my heart,
asphyxiation of me,
this is how it should be.
Silent and shivering
Ripe with nothing
Raw with all of our sieves leaking,

we must remember we're still breathing.
Jayne E May 2019
PRELUDE
________
[ I would engage but disengaged
enamoured masked fetid cage.
To sit spit splutter to cough it up
spit it all out
all over the pensive penners page
words turned ugly fugly loves pup ]
_________

Alla allua all al alala allis all is
Well that blends the well,
Wait! Wait!
(bit nipply in here)
nope that's not quite it, try,
All is ill that bends will..ok
One more go,
All is well that ends well
Right?   rite!  write? ok, ok,
this has been happenin for days,
pen sieves    
spent    
spinning lines
All over the place,

Whirling dervishes spinning fine
lines crossing, sparkling, in my kind
mind, finds the bind, blinds, then unbinds
Better yet     Get    in     behind
(Aussie shepherds call out)
Oh holy **** dressed up like a duck
Ok..I got this, really I do,
let's seem to find a seam take two,
better yet...mark it...scene set & action!

Bn California dreamin
stealin,
creamn,
little kittys pretty
Vannah & Clementine
their morning rituals feeding lines
a ***** pushing
faucet fed H20
odd observations
one kink 4 kitty cat
prefers to take her water right on tap
still my keys go  
tap   tap   tap
Queen Vannah aloof saunters to lap
to sit to think,
not counter fed drink,
she's way too cool for school,
what were we talking about?
it gets little hard to think
you standing naked
smiling
by the kitchen sink

Ahhhhh...love..the emotions spout,
refer crazy prior lines
fed by loves fire,
tossing feelings
up,
down,
in and out,
twist it,
turn it, up, down
shake it out

there is love of lovers,
there is love of mothers,
there is love of others,
sisters, cousins, friends, brothers
those kind of others
the cliché would say...
"It finds you when you stop seeking"
or,
"expect it when you least expect it"
usually historically my reply maybe,
yawn -
mass conditioning speaking

funny tho how things work out,
how someone says
"how you feeling"
transmutes transcends
to not ok...
then,
just flat out ascends
to big bursting clouds  
bountiful love reeling in,
from a kind word uttered
love
begins,
again

the hearts flower slowly opens
it's the hope
love carries upon it's soft
scented breeze,
it's the joy
love communicates
whilst on her knees,
and the tenderness
felt between them
she, he, the we,
in the squeeze

bunches of fist clutched sheets
bitten lips my heartbeat
thundering in my head
language of panted moans
native to our bed
fingers pressed
the the back of your head
your features lost
between my legs


ahhhh, yes, yes, yes!
loves steady heartbeat
the     thrum    thrum      thrum
wondrous beating
upon loves drum,
and how each new fresh
transformative experience
of love
transcends the past,
as again we relish,
the skipped beats
warm moistened seats,
the play the foray
a new wave way

as sweetly tendered lovely love,
delivers up finely sublime
all soaked delicious
steeped in rhyme,
that elusive now found,
brighter sunny day.
so, to end, what of love?
well,
Id say,
let it play,
oh all for lovely love,
let it play!

J.C. "honey owl" 28/04/2019.
Not my 'usual' style this one hmm...has double roots, it's of endings, and new beginnings brought in upon lovely new loves wings and how love can hit you like a freight train when you least expect it..or when you are not looking for it...and how it can to a degree addled your brain lol
Carly Salzberg Sep 2010
come choked up bled up fed up folks
and drink my robust brew my sweet Catawba
no, my sauterene or rock and rye
brush that musty blue off your cog stained collar
and stay a while
pay a while
two beers later when your tongue seethes dry
try my salt savored fish, my baked bean surprise
tilt your nostrils and inhale my dried herring
my free lunched ties really please the eyes
I’ll saturate your wet drawn gobs
like sand slips through sieves  
teasing you by my strategic arrayed feast
until dollars are quenched out
by watering tongues that then dry the eyes
so come stand social where men may be men
enter through my wood swinging shut
-tered realm
and slug down your ticking inhibitions
gobble up this wonderful enterprise
and leave with that coat savored
by the mixed smell of sawdust, alcohol and cigars
hell, there’s no manners here
and class only exists in tolerance
for it feeds a fine exchange for a parcel of wage
to forget that day you bonded your body to your lady’s gaze
to forget the rascals of tots that teeth at you feet
to forgot the boss that tills your knees
so lets play mirror medley choose your poison
and chose it quick
this may be the Poor Man’s Retreat
but pocket less men make me tick
This historical poem was meant to capture the "Salon Keepers" before the prohibition, where mostly blue collared workers sought a public sanctuary from their demanding lives. It was a known fact that the Salon Keeper would present these men with salty food, free of charge in order to get them to stay longer and drink longer.
Tom McCone Mar 2014
Upon a web strung across vast fields of
pure and distant velvet nothing,
perfect back-traces of the flickering past
revolve in place, in silence,
signs puddled for an instant from abandoned
corners of clusters. Polaris sieves a movement,
severs Octantis in a slated blink of being as quiet
reaches from further clutches, as a light quivers against
the dark, enshrined in its own solace, drinking from
a garden of heaviness; a sigh slips, echoes and lingers.

A tidy emptiness wavers in the tide of
time-shifting constellations, pulses lost in the single
night that never stems. A fine dust propagates
under the breath-patterns of its own constituency.
No symbol spoken, the still moment reaches and
encompasses all, heaving in glass moments compressing
beneath layers, bathed ablaze and curling through its
own precessing maw. Gathering, spiralling pieces of
uncoalesced millenia hurtle against an again hurtling
arm of a freckle gathered on a point of dust drifting
between caverns diving through the weight of walls holding
all that support their standing. A drop of light quivers
from each mouth, hides in crevices where smaller droplets
stand firmer at each junction, stand shining quietly with
no motive, dials slipping. The dripping lays down sheets,
climbs no corridor, designs a movement of no consequence;
dries out, knowing full well all the while. A ghost remains,
or a breath, both ultimately of finite import:
an exhalation or mote of dust.

Rain won't fall, the creek remains and, in tumult etched of
rigid symmetries, forges splits in azure. A broken fullness,
a glimmering product to permute and dissipate repetitions,
the slow formation of a complete emptiness.
In fine tapestry woven through the murk bellowed, the pattern
twists, coiling fingers through itself, the coalescing rotations
play out silence in no coda. The creek was never there.
Rain makes its way.                                                                  
                                       Capsular soil gives, capitulates petrichor,
defies dust aridity to cling in soft bundles about the child,
clothed in broken wings, tail clambering, all fine splits decided
upon countless repetitions passed. Light hovers and lights stand,
spin, in turn, as intervals chew tails through no static
motif, each gesture a mockery of predecessing broken ground
as fingers sliver ever toward known constancy,
blankets of warmth, an unclosing eyelid. Thus shuffles
awake the clamberer, to stretch and arc against potentials,
to fluoresce and bathe in radiance. A greater scheme
mingles at the tips of outstretched arms carrying wings
to break and flesh to guide a canopied architecture into
clearings laid out below twinkling webs to fold through
and let breath be taken as pawprints slowly form the
fingertips of a new architect. The children of the
child watch silent as motion trickles from centuries'
fortune. An emblem hangs in soft light on a ripple over
all-but-still water, cohort as glittering fragments strewn
beside. A bird's cry is lost in the marsh.                        
                                                      Again,
moments of absolute movement lay out beds of stillness, of reprieve.

At sea level, the curling faultlines feed open plain from
glass tears and monuments fleck the landscape of horizon.
To a pivoting sequence carves tiny bound structures in
self-image, a boiled-down replication to forge immemorial
traverse, a hairline fracture led blind through lakes of ice.
Still, to carry forward in a display of conviction, fine
splitting lineage diverges and cross-pollinates. First a
step, then a meadow, a panorama, three scores of
underbrush, seven mountains cradling a single pass,
two endless expanses of peat, one river for the life
of a child, three nights of no sleep, a resolve,
six iterations, one modification, seventeen snowfalls,
one feat built slow to grandeur, three months at sea,
three years at sea, three thousand years, seven oceans,
four hundred billion innovations, a blink of an eye. From
closed wings rise ordered patterns to clamber, always
asleep, to punctuate that immutable grove of light now
organized in transient gleams of projection and
nomenclative claim. Hollowed bellies of these
unstirring colossi, in turn, self-assemble and
writhe against an upturned gradient: disorder
bares teeth, crafts homogeneity and stumbles
on as Polaris dutifully continues in slow march
and reclaim of a ghost still cycling and hiding.

Finally, the moment takes grasp of all else
and itself, and parts tides of now-distant lights
through the ceiling and collapses where, between
word-laden walls, a tiny and terrified piece of
it attempts to reveal to all else that the moment
is already
gone.
written for a reading; never read anyway.
11-12/03/14
Oh to be a rich man in the storehouse of society or in the the cellars where sobriety is but a ***** word,
and the words are drinking Bollinger that trickles through the silver sieves and no one gives a second thought
to those, whose labour bought the feast.

But they don't care,not in the least
the nature of the beast runs in their veins and frames the have not's,pigeon holes them,
what men these riches make that would serve to overtake the moral due to me and you,who slave away for men like this most every day, excepting Sunday when we go to pray so we may lay more fat underneath their belt.

They,
who've never felt the touch of ice that spikes the hair and freezes breath,
for whom death is but the interlude,
between the courses chewed
and we,
who have never seen such food that ends up in the pigswill bin
will watch in awe and later in the cold of lamp lit living rooms will tell the story of what we saw,
and not be
believed.
BB Tyler Mar 2013
See before you a silver light.
Liquid motions shape its space,
its time is kept by the beat of hearts,
the pulse that starts beneath your feet:
the Earth, its smell the sound of ocean stones,
holds the throne on which
your ancestors sit, those that let your life.
Their eyes the silver light;
their blood, their hair
this night.
With your breath, with your sight,
the light is drawn into your roots
than shoots to the leaves
and weaves,
shaking
and breaking,
making doorways of sieves,
and though it fades
it never leaves.

It is we.
There are Times

When I am
Groping at the vapours                        
Of nothingness
Hoping to churn out
Life and hope from it,
(With a desperation
That makes me feel
As though I were
strangling emptiness itself.)

There are Times

When I wish with all my might
(Believing for just that dead moment
that my thoughts are powerful indeed.)
That the concrete reality
Would crumble and melt
into nothingness.

There are Times

When I remember
That it's darkness
Staring at me in the eyes
[Threatening me or encouraging me,
                                          I know not.]
And I shut my eyes
To crawl within
The cold comfort of familiarity
That I first meant to escape.

There are Times

When I seek to
Merge into a shadow
As the gust of Light,
Having shot out
From unseen corners and walls of impasse
Now straining its eyes at me
Sears and sieves through
The dust of opaque fear
Settled since long before I was born.

There are Times

When I realise, a truth
Shall not be uttered by me
Not the right time,
How do you set a time for truth?

There are Times

When I must not let
The truth run amok
Lest it wreaks havoc.
P.S. / Epilogue

Don't tell me that you
Have already forgotten
That there were times,
You did not know
Or even want to know
What you wanted to do, or
What you ought to have done.

There are times when we seek hope, in the form of an opportunity, a person who could guide us, without realising that the only person at that juncture to help us, would be our own self. But there's a constant wait for (Godot?) something to change things, as if trying to make the universe say that we were in an unfair place that could not be helped, and only a definite pattern or turn of situations would give meaning to one's life. The manifestation cannot be, prior to the determination.

There are times when the opportunity doesn't merely knock at your door but stays put like a silent comrade waiting for you to pack your bags, so it can bring you to a new dimension of you yourself. Many a time, our fear stifles us, overriding the striving that seemed hope enough till now, only to bring things back to status quo.

There are times when one feels that one needs to take a stand, make his/her voice heard, to try and bring a halt to something that shouldn't happen, and is happening, yet. But circumstances spell out a different path altogether, and then we are faced with situations where we'd rather not let something be known to everyone, because it would do more harm than good. What is the truth, then?
OC Dec 2018
We toil
And slave
And sweat
On  mundane tasks of day-to-day
In a trodden path
We pace in circles
Through a routine
Thicker than molasses

Our arm extended to both sides
And fingers spread as fans
We make the struggle even worse
In an effort to ensnare
Not matter,
But what matters
The idle chats when days draw to a close
A gentle, loving stroke
A smile, a laugh
A joyful tear
A warm embrace before the dawn
And sometimes
(if we're lucky)
Even a plump adventure

All of which we catch
In the sieves that are our palms
Bringing them
Closer to our core
Kneading
Forming
Sculpting
Into prisms of pure light
Shining like the sunrise
Placing those
One on top the other
While keeping on the go
Brick by brick
We build ourselves
A home
I love life with you, for all its comprising parts
life
and with you
Heather Butler Jan 2011
You’ve gone to find what you had lost when you
Were young and we were young and love was still
Inside of us.  You took my words and to
Your end you left them there like cups to fill.
And now they sit upon the window sill
Collecting dust and bugs and rain like sieves;
They’re dripping, draining--- and we’ve time to ****
Before fall down our tears like autumn leaves.
But what you lost was love; it gathers cobwebs in the eaves.

Now by my side you sit silent, alone---
You say you’re shouting inside, but to you
I’m blind. Have not I well enough you shown
My love, my care, and feelings towards you, too.
Quite like a bird you think from you it flew.
It’s lost on you, and here now you despair;
And there to gray skies turn your skies of blue.
All lost, all lost, and whither shall you fare?
Once you are dead and gone, no, I shall not meet you there.
Heather Butler; 2010
BB Tyler Sep 2010
I sway outside a wrecked poet's window
daily I see his mind raked
by fingers of clawing creation
I know his smiles are faked

My fractal arms forever aloft
my waiting blossoms and leaves
see his progress on falling apart
a soul strained through so many sieves

Changing seasons, personal treason
troubled the poet till May
when the spring brought his desired muse
as I am sorry to say

This story's been sung time and again
through mine own branches told
if you hark unto the sweet spring air
you'll see it yourself unfold
Copyright: Bennett Tyler
Seher Seven Oct 2015
things are getting interesting.
the sky has elaborate paintings,
I'm back dating
and my smile feels settled.
it no longer teeters, on the fence
to appear... worried to offend
someone. a smile.

its just me.
since I can truly claim it
I can just smile.

Im happy in happenstance,
the shift of the feet, quickly aligning
to please only me.
I can smile because I see,
the beauty of the beast.
the beauty of you.
like I had sat there with you
for centuries.
like your smell was what I
knew it would be.
like hey here's me…     please
try not to categorize me.
I fall through sieves
and flow with the sea,
with the bits of We then permeate
the pools and the aquifers.
no box deep enough for her.
expansion always necessary.

now its just getting interesting.
your smell got me,
yes,
though I could forget it
easily.
not subconsciously,

there we are One.

Earthly,
here I could forget you
easily. and be free to explore
the outside of entrapment,
of attachment. just be me.
and still love you.

expansion. trust what I see.
patience. just be the real me.
less options now.
BB Tyler Sep 2010
running through the trees
dodging roots and leaves
As I live and breathe
stories that I weave
are the only sieves
Worthy to edit me
weakened knees
under the sheets
you take your leave
i fall asleep

I don’t like the space
My body inhabits
Dreams disappear
Like white rabbits
and the fear
of thrown fits
and spits dripping slick
of some sick
grows near
to the thicket
where my dear
and i would kick it
share words
and share spit with
loose tongues
that won't quit
i love her
and she knows it
Copyright: Bennett Tyler
CP Walker Apr 2014
At the beach or at the park,
So serious...
Lips tremble,
Back in an arch;
You try your best,
So concentrated
To stifle your moans
As whispers break through;
Breathing hard,
Shaky gasps
And thoughtless words:
You say my name,
And I say yours.
Knuckles white
Leave yours and search...
Caress the earth, search,
Something to grab,
To connect with;
They trace,
Up, your sides,
And up,
Around your halo,
Fingers crawl,
And up yet,
Something to grab,
They dig...
They need the weight,
So down, into the earth:
Whether sand
Or grass
Or locks of something else...
They find and hold
And squeeze and tremble yet.
From feet, to thighs,
To ****, to back,
To shoulder, to neck,
To eyes,
You're a taut cord.
We climb higher,
Faster, and higher...
You peak
(We peak);
You scream...
Let tingle, shaky tingle
Turn to numb ecstasy.
And love fades in
And logic sieves out.
Emotions spasm
As spine relaxes...
And now,
I'm just a friend again...used again.
My payment:
Your moans,
Your ecstasy,
Your moment(s) of triumph,
Your high...your happiness.
Used again...
But who's counting, not me.
My sadness [your happiness] is
My happiness.
Little did you know,
Though not perceived,
We were one,
Connected, joined,
Through the earth [earth's ground],
And you and I were us.
Young Fathers by Typhoon...good song.
Jayne E Jul 2019
PRELUDE
_
[ I would engage but disengaged
enamoured masked fetid cage.
To sit spit splutter to cough it up
spit it all out
all over the pensive penners page
words turned ugly fugly loves pup ]
__

Alla allua all al alala allis all is
Well that blends the well,
Wait! Wait!
(bit nipply in here)
nope that's not quite it, try,
All is ill that bends will..ok
One more go,
All is well that ends well
Right?   rite!  write? ok, ok,
this has been happenin for days,
pen sieves    
spent    
spinning lines
All over the place

Whirling dervishes spinning
fine
lines crossing,
sparkling,
in my kind mind,
finds the bind,
blinds, then unbinds
Better yet     Get    in     behind
(Aussie shepherds call out)
Oh holy ****
dressed up like a duck
Ok..I got this, really I do,
let's seem to find a seam take two,
better yet...
mark it...scene set & action!

Bn California dreamin
stealin,
creamn,
little kittys pretty
Vannah & Clementine
their morning rituals feeding lines
a ***** pushing
faucet fed H20
odd observations
one kink 4 kitty cat
prefers to take her water right on tap
still my keys go  
tap   tap   tap
Queen Vannah aloof saunters to lap
to sit to think,
not counter fed drink,
she's way too cool for school,
what were we talking about?
it gets little hard to think
you standing naked
smiling
by the kitchen sink

Ahhhhh...love..the emotions spout,
refer crazy prior lines
fed by loves fire,
tossing feelings
up,
down,
in and out,
twist it,
turn it, up, down
shake it out

there is love of lovers,
there is love of mothers,
there is love of others,
sisters, cousins, friends, brothers
those kind of others
the cliché would say...
"It finds you when you stop seeking"
or,
"expect it when you least expect it"
usually historically my reply maybe,
yawn -
mass conditioning speaking

funny tho how things work out,
how someone says
"how you feeling"
transmutes transcends
to not ok...
then,
just flat out ascends
to big bursting clouds  
bountiful love reeling in,
from a kind word uttered
love
begins,
again

the hearts flower slowly opens
it's the hope
love carries upon it's soft
scented breeze,
it's the joy
love communicates
whilst on her knees,
and the tenderness
felt between them
she, he, the we,
in the squeeze

bunches of fist clutched sheets
bitten lips my heartbeat
thundering in my head
language of panted moans
native to our bed
fingers pressed
the the back of your head
your features lost
between my legs


ahhhh, yes, yes, yes!
loves steady heartbeat
the     thrum    thrum      thrum
wondrous beating
upon loves drum,
and how each new fresh
transformative experience
of love
transcends the past,
as again we relish,
the skipped beats
warm moistened seats,
the play the foray
a new wave way

as sweetly tendered lovely love,
delivers up finely sublime
all soaked delicious
steeped in rhyme,
that elusive now found,
brighter sunny day.
so, to end, what of love?
well,
Id say,
let it play,
oh all for lovely love,
let it play!

J.C. honey-tiger 02/07/2019
Ok this is an edited added to, respaced rewrite...of an earlier piece.  It still may make no sense to anyone but me lol.
Dominique Aug 2019
The rich herbal infusion of your blood
It blots on paper, makes funny shapes,
You giggle-
Teabag skin stripped by a paperclip,
Torn so easily, it smells like rain
Like the first time your bare feet touched soil

You long to lick it,  
It's the liquified form of tension,
Some inner tangle propelled outwards,
Tempting, tempting,
Like stuffing a yarn doll with its own string;
The re-consumption is only natural,
But allow it still to flow-

It is water let loose from a dam or a hose
That's been blocked with moulding leaves
And now sprays fitfully just because it can,
A thousand explosives set loose
From their trembling captors.

By no means is it neat,
But the sieves of your veins have kept it
Fresh and scarlet with health,
So it isn't unpleasant to look at.

Drain it, let it pour like honey across the table
Where your family sits, silent and traumatised,
Watching the deluge do what it does best.

Pour them a cup of it to have with their slices
Of cake and biscuit crumbs on their plates;
Haemoglobin is good for the brain,
Gentle terror for the soul.
yum
Here is my knife, my scalpel to be exact.
There is your body, your torso in the act.
To slice in the midst, and the sieves on your wrist.

Some want you whole, but I feed on the soul.
Your temple is numb, the reason why I succumb,
To the play of lies, and its mysterious ties.

Yet I keep my self sane, and trying without vain,
I just wish that the windows wouldn't pain.
But I see the tears rushing down like rain.

It cracks me up, in a bad bat of a pup.

Why you place your mask, and leave the trash in my cask.
It keeps me asking why, without a mind to give,
Advantage over the shy, which the latter is how I live.

Your game of tag I am no less than glad.
That it is done, in the hopes of a gun.
To the sky it will turn red.
A shot like a bird it will run, aimed highly at the sun.
Until we both are bled, to the ground each will be wed.
I'm still watching. How it's going to turn out I do not know.
Satsih Verma Oct 2023
Wisdom of an ant
reminds of Socrates and his
sieves. Are you taking a call of god?

You will opt for silence
in a mausoleum to hear the lost
human voices, stuck on the wall.

It was an epic poem of
a hand in a hand to read the
music of eternal love.
Tally Mar 2014
i kept my hatches battened but that
didn't stop your love from barreling toward me
like a runaway freight train with faulty breaks.
and god almighty, did we crash.
you came to a screeching halt at my doorstep
and i didn't know what else to do but let you in.
you looked so cold. we did not start with a spark but a full-on fire.
i told myself i wouldn't fall, instead i jumped.
our sinking frames somehow morphed into life preservers,
and we managed to keep each other's heads above the waves.
we had seemingly saved one another.
you tossed your pills, i flushed my razors, and for a while that was enough.
but we learned the hard way that even the deepest love
can only keep the storm clouds in your mind at bay for so long.
eventually our cracks began to show.
missed calls and silent hours built houses of cards
that were blown down by too many miles.
we hardly ever smiled anymore.
my hands were sieves and yours were sand.
i want to break the hands of the clock
that cursed us with this bad timing.
i have mourned all the hours i won't ever have with you.
i have felt the thunder that rumbles in my lungs
when i reminisce about the memories we'll never make.
the moment i realized i would never wake up beside you
an atom bomb went off in the center of my chest.
but the radiation is what's killing me.
the life is being drained from me here in the wake,
in the ache of your absence. but i won't beg.
i will live out the remainder of my days
tormented by wondering if maybe in another world
our love is perfect and neither of us bleed.

t.m
LeV3e Jan 2018
Another routine
Some more nicotine
Sipping on caffeine, with
Buried emotions.

Despite agony
Forget your daydreams
Ignoring your needs, while
Remaining stoic.

Pop two more Aleve
Take pills to relieve
No time left to treat, your
Chronic conditions.

Life comes then it leaves
Death waits patiently
Dust falling through sieves, and
I'm feeling home sick...
Mohd Arshad Oct 2015
GK
Writing is not pain;
It is delight that sieves frrom pain!
Notes (optional)

— The End —