Larry Kotch: Poems

Ash

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

Ash

I carved your name into trunks,
And sent you down the river in a hurry,
You were silent then, no anxious digs or hearty laughs,
We poured our hearts and you just disappeared.
Just behind the leaves and then I lost you
Though I know we had said our goodbyes,
I expected more time than smoke and rays.

And so I came back home with less family,
Though you, a child, were adopted by the kindest mother;
The paintings you had made of her,
I see them through your eyes,
I rub them as your colours fly,
When the woodland ended and meadows welcomed me back;
I saw your visions come to life.

This Poem is about nature welcoming back a loved one when you spread their ashes in a special place. In my case this was my Grandmother who was a very keen painter of the countryside. The Woodland where her ashes were spread represent the feminine and chaos from death. The carving and meadows are the link from this sad place back to the orderly world from where she painted and where I knew her.

#death #nature #cremation #painting #grandmother #family

Crowns

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

Crowns

Our minds, our dreams they built a noise;
The men that played with little toys;
The houses, castles of muddy boys;
Towering now they could empower all;

We scream and **** and hunt through malls;
We stamp the weeds through cracks, in awe;
Driving fast to make the trains;
It's those before that take us home;

Past the blocks of all the mighty;
Past the seas and trees that bow;
We end up back to wood and stone;
When they kick us off our thrones;

We let go of a force that needs us;
A swelling pride that really sits beneath;
We sheath our swords our pens our teachings;
Their silence cuts our crowns to pieces;

A meditation on the propensity of the contemporary human being, specifically men to march progressive values over tradition. The principle metaphor being nature, representing the timeless and much more ancient source of value and responsibilities humans should intuitively feel but seem reluctant to confront.

Thus the swelling pride actually comes from the immense pride we subconsciously have for the human project thus far, 130 000 years of basi9c human existing with its traditional family units. and its humble but established origin, not the fast paced castles and toys and malls that we think we derive values and empwerement from.

Men march through life stamping in the weeds of that ethic that goes just noticed underfoot, one human lifetime is not enough to fully appreciate the swords and books and values our ancestors developed over thousands of years so much so that we evade thinking about them completely. That silence, when we truly recognise it, when it looks us in the face when naked cuts our ambitions and glory down to peices.

Or something like that

#nature #arrogance #tradition #values #glory #modernity #pride #awareness #philosophy

Diamond Hours

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

Diamond Hours

Carbon is pummled for endless hours,
Chambers filled with all our might,
Cracks that erode while others soured,
Hope to press a diamond,
When the world will give us ours,
To merge and stretch and stay a while
Those sparkling, timeless hours

This Poem is about long distance love. The pressure and stress of not being near the person you love is so immensely and powerful natural force that when you do meet your lover each hour becomes that more timeless. Each of us is a mountain of forces hoping to merge for as long as possible and press those diamonds.

e.g.

Our two mountain ranges are Intertwined and trace the oldest story on the earth. Like all, we were born of magma, wind and surf, we look and feel together but seldom touch and old bodies of mortal things petrify underneath our brave and glossy faces.

#love #longdistance #time #girlfriend

Fantasy Bed

Larry Kotch Feb 2019

Fantasy Bed

The dark night shrouds your mind in hair,
A chest of of chestnut eyes suggests I dare,
And timid skins on moon bellies keep,
An unsure heart that flickers in the heat,
It's locked in our embrace this ordinary night,
And yet I tell my own to stay its flight,
Up the rising column diving on a perfect star,
...
...
...
...
This bed, and nothing yet but that is ours!

Short poem about a sensation I've experienced a few times now. When I'm lying on a bed with a woman I've slept with the first time and I start fantasizing about them. The reality however is that it's just that...a fantasy in my head I'm cooking up in the euphoria of the moment, in the still of the night when the action of the evening and rencontre is over I realise I'm letting my romantic aspirations project all over the room and the evening and the future, diving on a perfect star star in what really is most lkely an ordinary night for the other party.

I imagine this to be something that both sexes go through. it's something that happens maybe only a handful of times in a lifetime and is almost never reciprocated since if it were the parties may just be in a relationship. In reality these flickering flames and burts of romantic energy fly out of control or succumb to the timid realities of our own imperfect personalities.

Under sober assessment it would appear that the only bedrock underlining such encounters is quite frankly the lump of bed onm which both are laying.

#romance #fantasy #*** #disappointment

In you I see the fusion

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

In you I see the fusion

I look outside my window and it becomes within.
natures are converging on my behalf,
they’ve been here, the nest, the walls!
They come to end old twos with enchanted grasses,
so that now brass and birds are equal to know,
they sing, in harmony, from far to near,
they constitute the new world that brought you here: My symbiotic woman and creature clear.
I’l stop shouting ‘****** place!’ and ‘fleshless trees...,’ thinking of exotic canopies,
such sublime notions have betrayed this locality, downplayed our bonds,
could have never set me free.

Today, many worlds have travelled from afar, looked up at me,
finally! Joined to make me see.

So I open the window and shout at you: The world is multinatural!
Uneven textures fill my spirit,
dualisms have stopped debating,
silenced by the mind’s web creating.

And in the middle of these new topographies, your face,
coming to a door, made of trees, horses, thoughts and economies.
All histories, cultures and natures here: She is a node of forces,
ambassador of the new continuum and this ecstatic feeling,
an affective vision of a singular healing.

#nature #naturalism #places #meaning #love #epiphany #affect

Mother in the Garden

Larry Kotch Jul 2019

Mother in the Garden

Your careful hands levelled out the budding bloom, and set the staging pots aside the heat of noon, thoughtful timing shifted them from watery sheltered vase to rough garden ensembles, like that you shaped the ravenous growths again and again.

With careful fingers you massaged around the banks, no garden book to guide such terrifying specimens, you could not bring the scythes to taper off the exploding flanks, so you watched from further every night.

And so with time you peer with awe at the new garden features, puzzled by a wilting stem, delighted by a fanning brush, sometimes tracing natures path, other times your gaze will be lost. Your garden bright and overgrowing.

Open the door dear gardener for life has been unleashed, when the toil of daily demands has reached its peaks, remember your creation. Know that all the blooms that cheer the neighbours, would, with your hand - the Nation.

This poem is an ode to my mother, creator of the garden that is my life. This poem thanks her for her perfect gardeners touch, helping to help me bloom, knowing when to shelter me from the scorching sun and when I'd overgrown the staging pots. But like all children, I grew in wierd and unpredictable ways, as if the garden was itself now out of control and the gardener had to watch from further every night. But though my developing personality and interests sometimes delighted her I know parts of my thinking and philosophies frighten her. To her I imagine it to look like a bright (in that her creation will always be rose tinted) but overgrowing (out of her control + out of control in general). The last stanza is an invitation to her to not shy from lending a hand back in the overgrowth. Despite what I hope to be myself now manifesting in some small way (i.e delighting some of the neighbours) I rely very much still on her to consolidate this mass of energy for a higher purpose still.

#mother #potential #gardening #flowers #manifestation #love #guidance #children #son

Native Flora

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

Native Flora

No cloud dares pollute this sky,
Then suddenly those winds at home climb so high,
Sea so fresh and desert so dry,
They meet and feed the cacti here, but ignore the needles on my eyes
They shouldn't make me cry.

Sparkling waters, sands so bright
With a million ******* clouds in Skies
Sit, be still and let the timeless force
Crush this sea of thorns and all but native flora die

#cancer #emergency #death #coping

Statue of the Divine

Larry Kotch Sep 2020

Statue of the Divine

When we first met I sensed the divine,
Like incense on a Sunday mass,
I've always sought the other worlds,
Those where we venture in our early days,
But rays of which today reflect on shields of jade in city cages,
I'd do anything to see the hands of the ****** again spring out from yours and clasp them like you did those many nights;
And stir within those perfect curves a justification for our passioned fights.

I never looked beyond the form in fear that I should see an imitation,
A statue of St Catherine so far from limitation,
But;
Reflected in those rosary eyes, the shops the cars the all too human passers by,
And alas I see my holy venture would this very day refrain,
Communion over, head down on your chest,
I'm immediately afraid;
From earth this heart of yours was made,
and to earth it shall remain.

This poem is about a recent breakup, having taken the surface reading of her I fooled myself into believing I was truly in love as I'd been before when much younger. I liken it to thinking you are rediscovering your faith only to find out it's only statues with 'all to human' reflections and materials. For once I looked deeper and closer at the statue of st Catherine of Genoa/the ****** (representing that initial pure love I've been lucky enough to experience once) I found it was just that. A statue, an imitation of the divine with an earthly heart which ends my holy venture (into heaven etc).

#breakup #relationship #love #religion #betrayal #disappointment

We Reach

Larry Kotch Jun 2018

We Reach

We reach we fall, we reach we fall,
When all is said then all will all,
But all will never be said at all-
Not even close from spring to fall;

Fall from here, this place I raced to,
And looked back and wished for nature,
Simpler times and simpler natures -
I race through now and so unmake them;

Because I need to make the greatest!
Tallest, boldest, noblest, all-est
So I can boast and toast or roast it
Consume it now. And now. And now!

We reach we fall,
We reach
We
Fall

#vanity #tradition #nature #consumption

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