Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
Left Foot Poet Apr 2018
(seep yourself to leak away)

all reveals are feints;
I take you right
but I am moving left,
always left,
then left again

when I turn the faucet of me on,
brown, rusty pipe water comes out,
never turning clear,
even if the flow
went on for a millennium

someone traveller passerby
reads my excellent explicit illicit words,
with kind sweetness
observes a valid conclusion:
Poems take.a lot out of you

correct+wrong

not take, give
they are the slow seepage
of my overburdening
which is
yes, yes, I know, all relative,
but perspective is a
sometime summer thing,
and all the springtime streets
filled with filthy frozen slush

having  come from some rusty water leakage,
never turning clear
no matter how long the street runs away
from you

so you take yourself to give away,
seeping and leaking

ah words;

so useful and so inadequate
crushed petals from the Tree of Life

you ask me If I have read my brother,
the prophet-poet Jeremiah?

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?


When your words came, I ate them;
they were my joy and my heart's delight


Then the Lord reached out his hand unto my mouth and said,
"I have put my words in your mouth."


these are those words
written months ago
Nat Lipstadt Aug 2013
Everyone a Sailor

Sept. 2010

Everyone a sailor,
everyone a waiter,
everyone a planner,
everyone an executive chef,
charting courses for grownuphood,
planning meals, banquets.

foolishness, selecting the ingredients for
an award winning recipe of life ,
marking stars,
sextant in hand,
make meetings,
scheduling a conference call,
practice risk taking,
serving, while multitasking

serendipity is mine to
make and behold

marry this one,
add a little cumin,
travel seven seas and
have seven sons,
the eighth I'll discover and
name it after me,
Son of Mine Own Stolen Days

Lighting or storm,
illness and thunder,
ne'er will be disturbances,
on my voyages

But we forget,
we err,
the danger of being becalmed is the one we ignore,
the slowest leakage,
drowned by seepage,
the small risk that transforms us from
sailors to one who
waits,
alone on a lost isle,
with nothing of substance on which to survive,
we slow starve to death on a
diet of our own
mixed metaphors

There was a time,
when I did not value time,
discarded days like seeds
random scattered in garden,
more curious than hopeful
what might appear, and uncaring if
they were all winded away

Who spent days like cash,
thinking I had plenty and
more to make,
gave away in haste
what had no redeemable value,
thinking time was refuse and waste

Becalmed,
what need for chances,
daily escapades,
gave twenty years of mine
away to the undeserving, punished by God, cancer stricken
*****, who made me so miserable for so long,
in one grand gesture,
signed it away,
and asked the devil
for nothing in return

Did not drink,
Did not take pills,
Did not smoke,
But life disdained,
I try to **** myself
By eating TV dinners
six times daily

Do not laugh,
it nearly worked
and my obit
would have been the lead
side splitting ar-tickle in the
New York Times
Science Section!

But here I am
a survivor,
and I have formed
an association of one;
The Society of Explorers, Planners and Plotters
And Those Who Serve By Waiting

We meet once every day
for the rest of my life,
call the meeting to order,
Consult Robert's Rules,
Quorum of one present?
No new business?
Meeting adjourned!

Meeting Summary:
You may plan with good
intent
You may buy or you may
rent
You may be bereft or
content
You may plan or just
wait
**but if you let a day pass
without recording one
poetical truth
in your own manner,
of your own choosing,
then you have failed
yourself,
do not wait,
set sail!
This is one of them...
FYI. I stumbled
On a bunch of poems 2~3 years old.   Very different style.   Hohoho Merry Chanukah to me,   Most very long, will fire at will;  long so not suitable for the 10W crowd....sigh. Oh yeah, one more thing, I wrote them on my cell phone, usually in the bathtub, yes, I went thru a lot of  corporate phones...
Francie Lynch Sep 2014
Strange question indeed,
So I asked one and all;
Explain to me:
“What's a plumber's ball?”

Family and friends
Heeded my call,
But none could confine,
Refine or define it,
Yet Paul was sure
He could design it.

Still, none could satisfy
My caterwaul:
“What the hell is a plumber's ball?”

Does it sweat the pipe
Or wiggle the snake:
Can it clamp the ******
For Heaven's sake?
Could it snap on the ****-hole cover?
All these queries
Made me wonder.

Has it something to do
With hardness leakage,
Or ******* the ball-****
To stop a seepage?
Has it anything to do
With a saddle valve dripping,
Electric eels,
Or two pipes mating?
And, I heard of male and female fittings,
And should I worry
If I'm standing or sitting?

If you're discharging the head
Or elongating the pipe,
Does the plumber's ball
Help it snug tight?
Is it in my tank,
Or in my bowl,
Beneath the floor
Near the drainage hole?
Is the plumber's ball
In the back of the truck
(Jeff laughed and said
One could rub it for luck).

I asked Michel
If he could tell,
He sensed it was something
He could smell.
I sought out Ray,
Perhaps he'd know,
But he was on call
To restrain a back-flow.
I couldn't ask Gary
For his wisdom and sense,
He was wigglin' the snake
To unclog a wet vent.
Henry, Rick, Scotty and Brian,
Gave shameless answers
I couldn't rely on.

It's not a crapper, tail piece
Or Johnnie-bolt,
Or catch basin, reamer,
O-ring or pipe dope.
So I searched the Net
With a fool's wonder,
And read of ball-checks,
Gas ***** and plungers.
I know it's too late
To ask Rolly or Ross,
For both of them knew,
And that's our loss.
And Ernie's gone golfing
So I can't ask the Boss.

With final resolve
I fell to my knees,
To pray St. Ferrer
With grace intercede.
His silence left me
In a state of depression;
Had Ferrer washed his hands
Of the plumbing profession?

So nothing could settle
My wherewithal,
I still didn't know,
What's a plumber's ball?

Suddenly, it hit me,
He's never wrong,
The Dalai Lama of dip-tubes,
I'll ask John.
Where others did falter,
John's a rock:
He knows the difference
Between a gas and ball ****.

With a knowing smile
He embraced our Hall:
Here, good friend, is your Plumbers' Ball.
Penned for the occasion of  Saucier Plumbing and Heating 79th anniversay Ball.
Rolly and Ross were the original owners.
St. Ferrer is the patron saint of plumbing.
If you have such an event to attend, feel free to modify the above.
Seamus Heaney  Oct 2010
Bogland
We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening--
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops' eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They've taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They'll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.
The wet centre is bottomless.
Aubrey Rose  Mar 2012
Vengeance
Aubrey Rose Mar 2012
The mask of vengeance is not to be confused
with the seepage of hurt and confusion.
Something to blame, to get in the way
of a blazing fire providing.
Kindle it with substance and truth,
but instead with damp lies and gritty sand.
An effort of competence in place
of the evading truth that sometimes
the idea of affinity diminishes
in the hole of bewitching fruits.
A spell to take hold of the clean,
turning ***** in morality. Excuses
to remain pure at heart, blame to never
feel the pain of rejection.
Darkness.
Pain.
Loneliness.
Desperation.
Anointing the headless children without
a thought of the purpose. Watering a rootless
tree, attempting to make it grow.
Michael Cassio  Jul 2015
Put Oil.
Michael Cassio Jul 2015
Unbeknowst to all,
The tree of life has three stages.
Trunk. Branch. Oil.
Terrence Malick knew this.
Dinosaurs our oil.

Ten sephira. One oil.
It is my burden of dreams, I shall prevail through the pongo del muerto.
Foucault's pendulum spilling sand. Spilling oil.

Scaoil. Release. Urchar.
Sraith pictiúr a ceathar.
Airborne toxic event.
Seepage Daniel. Seepage.
Put Oil.
Optional
PJ Poesy Nov 2015
My minotaur has mad cow's disease.
The FDA is rounding up each one
in a forty mile radius for slaughter.
They're incinerating the bodies
at the trash-to-steam factory. I hear
gunfire and wailing children. Sharon
next door is in shock. She's been
on her knees down on the lawn
mumbling, "please, please, please,"
for the last two hours. Crimson clouds
bleed into sunrise. How will we
escape the seepage?  

I'll stop at the Getty for a car wash
before I pick you up. Have some
sandwiches packed.

O for the love of God,
the moos, the moos.
Gene manipulation makes anything seem possible for our future.
T R S  Dec 2018
Seepage
T R S Dec 2018
I feel like I'm at the age in my life
where I don't know if I'm
Cheap,
Poor,
Or extremely resourceful.
K Cash-Staley  Oct 2013
Band-aids
K Cash-Staley Oct 2013
Band-aids to prevent the social infections that could eventually
spread to the frontal lobe,
Diseases started on Fox News, spread to the living room,
circulate around the family dinner table
putting victims of ignorance on the coroner’s slab
Alleviate the pain.
Should we let the gapping wounds of intolerance fester, decay and grow maggots?
***** bigotry, vile illiteracy, primitive ideas coat the skins of society like a black goo.

Band-aids: self adhesive bandages
We aren’t teachers. We are medics.
covering the gapping wounds of life
lathering the lesions with Neosporin.
Healing the scars from parenting gone wrong
- scars from wounded self-esteems
-lacerations to the proverbial heart

Scars lasting longer than the body itself.  
No one knows where its impact will end.

Band-aids
temporary fix
heal the wound fast, heal the hurt faster
A Johnson and Johnson remedy for damaged organisms
Well-meaning ones hurling scriptures scald hands with tainted words
Healing is a matter of time.

Arm teachers to protect children from the crazies who loom?
What will protect them from their own inherited ignorance?
The damage is already done when they get here.
Equip us with Band-Aids, boxes and boxes.

Hello Kitty over their ears to block the infection from coming in
Spiderman for their mouths. Stop the seepage of any contamination from spreading to others.

The remaining scars will fade, but not disappear.
even with a band-aid.
Logan Robertson Sep 2018
He turns the page
Of old age
For what was once the rage
Now sits in his cage
It's been a war to wage
This, life's final stage
The pressure gauge
Ticking on so outrage
Ticking by in ménage
For his book's cleavage
Untouched and derange
Year's wasted and disengaged
If only there was no leakage
Or ever such seepage
Life on his barren range
With no panacea to assuage
No wife ever, no cat, no life to engage
Nothing but red read rage
Now in his final chapter, this cage
This cage, death does he part this rampage
A life perched without marriage
For he married to himself backstage
Where his curtain veiled fruitage
In lieu of looking at the skies for dosage
He fell hostage to his hermitage
Yet this, his bottled pilgrimage
Sinking now in raging montage
He does sit beseeched in his passage
And hopes someday to bid bon voyage
With direr hopes of  turning a better page

Logan Robertson

9/27/2018
It's been Hell for him. Life was never easy. A solo crossing,
that yearned for a duet but that was not meant to be.
Note-Wow. Read this poem over and over, like looking into a mirror, truly sad.
a cucumber sandwich
shouldn't be made ahead of time
as the liquid in the cucumber
will seep through the bread like lime

you'll have a wet hand
as you lift the sandwich off the plate
your palm and your fingers
will be in a saturated fate

always make cucumber sandwiches
immediately before afternoon tea
at this juncture of time the bread
will not become so soggy

your afternoon tea guests wont abide
the seepage all over their hands
it will make them feel like
jeering spectators in a grandstand

the most tempting cucumber sandwiches
are never served wringing wet
they have a dry bread covering
akin to an indoor carpet

to stop this sort
of sandwich irrigation
you must follow
these preparatory recommendations
A quirky one...

— The End —