Timothy Mooney: Poems

668 · Apr 2011

Shriek

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

Shriek

He ran
Screaming
Munch-like
only three-dimensional
demeaned
and
demented
and
fearful
of such a love

Like a painting
He would hang
when
she
caught him
forever
on her wall

664 · Feb 2011

catscat

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

catscat

Off the stove!
(that ****** cat.)
No! No! No! No!
(Not in my hat...!)
Your litter box
Is over there.
(But he just smiles.
  He doesn't care.
  My cat scats
  Cat ****
  Anywhere.)

664 · Sep 2013

Dirty Words

Timothy Mooney Sep 2013

***** Words

Here's a poem for all concerned about the ***** words I write/
Every night I wrestle with them, all the filth which I have learned/
All the strife I water down to soften up the reader's eye/
Trying not to bug or bother anyone with pristine ears/
I have years of cursing loudly/
I have scars to prove that's true/
Snotty women so offended, Bar-room tables up-side ended/
Walking home without a ride/
Deep in angry mumble walk/
Spouting each and every letter/
Feeling better as I vent/
Where I went or what I'd done/
All my sins were fun, it's true/
Hence I've put them down prosaic/
***** words from me, to you

661 · Jun 2011

Meter and Flow

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Meter and Flow

There are numbers everywhere
(Meter and flow, words in tow)
Getting us from there to here
(Meter and flow, all add up)
Sometimes rhyming, sometimes not
(Meter and flow, all one voice)
Hence the final circled step
(Meter and flow, meter and flow)

All our words come down to this
(Flow and meter, beat and time)
Secular within our spirit
(Flow and meter, add/subtract)
We divinely spill our words
(Flow and meter, after all)
Pleasures lost and songs unsung
(Tear-blood in the meter and flow)

There are numbers everywhere
(Meter and flow, sweetly real)
Hard division in our hearts
(Meter and flow, years and focus)
Speak them gently, let them fly
(Watch them go, watch them grow)
Build the Ages yet to be
(Meter and flow, meter and flow).

For Ms. Poncetrayne (yeah, I know I misspelled it... But you have to admit, it looks SOOO much more literary and romantic....)

659 · Jun 2011

To Jackson

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

To Jackson

You were such an angry dog
Nipping at my heels
Until we were alone
And you calmed down
And let me rub your belly.

As long as no one watched.

I don't know if your Mother Human
Named you after
A dead president
Or some Hole where Bikers gather
Roaring and biting
Like you...

I'd like to think
To believe
That she named you
After the misunderstood painter

Who, like you,
Expressed beauty
One had to
Really
Really
Look hard to see.

For my friend, Annie, and Jackson, her pain-in-the-*** Aussie.....

659 · Jan 2011

Wisdom

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Wisdom

Smart-*** sixteen and lost in Syracuse
I scrounged a quarter
To call home
For an eighty-five mile ride
And Dad answered and said
"God gave you two thumbs, boy.
One to get there, and one to get back."

658 · Feb 2011

Ode to a Floundering Shade

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

Ode to a Floundering Shade

The ghost who sometimes haunts my attic
Is not up there
tonight.
She's lost
at sea
again.
For rather than terrify the household
she'd sooner bathe...
But she could never swim.
Hence her prior demise,
and why I cannot sleep...
We are tied, her and I,
by some promise where
I would rescue her
from the briny deep
in exchange
for rattling chains
and midnight howls.

657 · Jan 2011

Tears Not Wasted on a Creekside Stele

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Tears Not Wasted on a Creekside Stele

Who was it carved these lines
In ancient hand
Faded now
By sand and wind
And patient Time?

Whose voice on chiseled stone
calls on to us
Covered now
With mossy virtues
Lost, unknown?

Should I now in my crewel
of saddened heart
And remorse
Add a stitch
Of love eschewed?

Should I wield stick and stone
And worry down
into this rock
My ****** tale
Of love unknown?

And ages hence, some thousand years
when this creekbed
sits up high
Will some fellow
read my tears?

No. I will let my fingers roam
these runic forms
Singing loud
The loss we shared
Beside this stone.

656 · Apr 2011

Calipsis

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

Calipsis

Fragile and ****
Cold
Dark
Speed in between

Crystallized blue flame
Hard
Sharp
Mirror-shard dance

Beyond my eye-hand
Deep
Reach
Summer night dalliance.

650 · Feb 2011

I Wore Those Things

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

I Wore Those Things

I wore those things when I was young and hungry
Smiles stolen from young girls eyes
Dances stolen as the band was winding down
Kisses, and even more secret treasure, in the dark parking lots

I wore them proud and loud on my tattered sleeve
Like embroidered badges
Commemorating their broken hearts
Stitched and pinned right there next to mine

I wore those things when I was young and hungry
Moments taken as Time aged by
Promises broken as the clock was winding down...
(promises spoken in the sweated moments of those parking lots of my hungry youth)

I wore those things
And they fit me well

2011

632 · Feb 2011

TN. Zen

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

TN. Zen

Tennessee zen!
Nas-kar-ma.
We spin our tires
Only to find
That what goes
Around
Comes around.

628 · Jun 2011

The Baptist

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

The Baptist

He struggled with his ****** wrap
To take that swim, enlightened and pure
And stood there in his nakedness
Hoping for absolution in the cold Holy Water
Those sin-stained linens at his feet
A crowd behind him
Waiting to see
If HIS God would attend
And if True Salvation
Was only a
Waller away.
As the water closed over his body
And his nakedness, new and certain
His bones ached chilled
His soiled fists clenched
His moment of Birth
Was re-defined
And he drowned that morning
Only to be raised up
By Orchestral Divinity.
Soon the Crowd followed
Into the wash, re-birthing in this
New Nakedness
Unashamed of
Body
Or Soul
Beneath an Angel's
Hand
This poor man
Knew that there
Would be pain to follow
From his shallow immersion
From this simple
Jumping in
As did his
Brethren
He lost his soul that day
Within those waters, cold and swift
But netted a new one
Raw and pure and as naked
As the soft silty clay
Beneath his feet.

For my Christian Friends and Family... John was the Archetypical Hippie...

625 · Jun 2011

Judy II, Also...

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Judy II, Also...

I've known a couple Judy's in my days
I dated two or several three or so
And each and every one was quite Herself...
(For every Judy's different, don't ya' know...)

There's several, maybe dosens, that I've known
All Judys in the highest of regard.
All prim and proper, stately or rotund,
(And quite a few I've kissed in my backyard.)

I hold a special place inside my heart
For all those Judys that I've yet to meet.
I've cleared a space out there in my backyard...

For Judy....

622 · Jan 2011

Poem Stuff

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Poem Stuff

I don't rhyme stuff just to rhyme it
Though I do it all the time.  It
Seems to follow some odd pattern
Though it doesn't seem to matter.
Words just fall into their spot.
It tends to happen quite a lot.
Take this here, for one example-
Use it as a simple sample-
I can't help it; It's my nature...
Syntax, meter, nomenclature.

(And if I've offended thee
with my skewed-phonology,
     I bow and beg and plead.
For it is only silly rhyme I
Tend to write from time to time
     To make your eyeballs bleed.
To make your eyeballs bleed I do with verse obscure and all askew
     And dire opinion spake)

So if I have offended thee
Just take a nap and you will see
My meaning when you wake.

621 · Apr 2011

Poem Noir

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

Poem Noir

She was a pale direction
I had foolishly taken
One mistaken hollow night
on a backward road
(one of many)
One mistaken turn
A downhill flight
with both eyes squeezed
narrowly open

She was a wan point
I had drifted towards
offering me dumb luck
and succor
(a sucker's lean)
All tall and mean
and dangling
Lost promise
In a slit-to-the-wish-bone dress

She was a pit-bull in *******
straining at her chain
and I was the last
worried and weak link
(she was fast)
She grabbed me by
my heart-pant leg
and yanked me
down sweetly down

I hated her
as hard as
she loved seeing me fall
(I could hear)
thin brushes on snares
and a deep rumble
(her laughter)
or a stand-up bass?

She was a pale direction
and I had
nowhere else
to go.

620 · Jun 2011

Trees (A Child's Garden of Worse)

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Trees (A Child's Garden of Worse)

I like trees, so lush and green
( Ghosts of  Winter, Dark, and Mean)
Tall and stately, steadfast, true
( Phantom bones all  cold, and blue)
Reaching up to Touch the Sky
(stealing children walking by)
Apple blossom, Maple branch
(Midnight's when they walk and dance)
Oh! Their whisper-windy song!
(Snag you as you walk along)
Tender saplings stretching wide
(Swallow you down Deep inside)
Climb them, build a home-up-high
(Children missing, my-oh-my)
Touching God with tender leaves
(Hell-deep roots down low beneath)
Guardians of Earth and Time
(Come on up.  Enjoy the climb...)
Ash and Elm and Pine and Oak
(Quiet sneaky Forest Folk)
Mom, and Dad, I'm off to play
To climb a Tree I met today.
It's so big and tall and round
(Mom and Dad won;t hear a sound)

For my Daughter, who fell from a Willow once, but never stopped believing...

620 · Jun 2011

Summer

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Summer

There's no sweet hai-ku
Equal to you or your scent.
No garden holds you.

Words alone can not
Define the undefined You.
Flowers are your eyes.

From the skies clouds fall
To be gentled by your touch.
Whispering fogs weep.

There is no perfume
No stolen, wan aroma
Equal to your breath.

Armies march blindly,
And nations worry to dust,
While you rise and bloom.

There is no hai-ku
None that I can find, mind you,
No words to your Sweet.

You are forever.
A myth in the High Garden
Of Time's Secret Song.

Our hours were short.
Yet each moment was a World.
You bloom in my dark.

Golden petals weep.
You are more than counted lines.
Hai-ku's welter in your shade.

Love has winded by.
Breezed cool past my open heart.
It was you, Summer.

615 · Feb 2011

Gael Cowboy

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

Gael Cowboy

Wind em and wrap em
come on me brithers
Knop on their withers
An lay the beast down.

Fetch em an catch em
Carf all their hoolin'
Mither needs meat on
The table by dawn.

615 · Jun 2011

Chirascuro

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Chirascuro

Rafael was deaf.
Those colors were only
Depth shadows
He heard
When his brushes
Sang quietly
Every morning.

Caravaggio was mute.
And thus he
Could not
Sing along
With Rafael's brushes
On those
Oily mornings.

Funny how their paintings sing to us.

610 · Apr 2011

Three Bones

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

Three Bones

Three Bones lives in the olde dark wood.
Three Bones up to nothing good.
Shiney tooth and long dark hair
Olde Man Three Bones everywhere.

Humming songs without a tune
Swell'd up like a fat New Moon
Dark and shadowed, in his hood
Three Bones up to nothing good.

copyright 2011 T.P.Mooney

605 · Jun 2011

Route?

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Route?

Did I miss a turn?
Are those
Your lights shining
Past the
Next curve?
Over the next hill?
I can't see this map
On the back
Of the letter you sent.
With the
Sharpie kisses
Dotting
All your
I's...
A left at what tree?
Let me turn down
The Radio
Radar Love
Has confused me
Again.

602 · Feb 2011

Words Used

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

Words Used

Just time...
Like little fingers
Heart things in the Love dark
Small bright eyes
Playing attention
Paying Night and Day
Their due...
Just time...

Just time...
Odes and sonnets
And other words
Used as tools
Or feints of Love
In the swell and sway
So cruel...
Just time.

Just time...
Hardly a wink
In the blink of the wonder
Of Oxford, or Webster's
Or Roget...
Let's play...
With time.

599 · Apr 2011

A Poem on Poetry (for my Poet Friends)

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

A Poem on Poetry (for my Poet Friends)

We shall pass away
Die
Before you
Or I
make a dusted nickle
from our sticky prevarications
Our summations
The declarations
Of self we purport
To be of some interest
To others other than us

We shall fade like whispers
In a noisy room
With OUR echoes
Muffled
Tucked away
Until we
Are dirt-bound

Oh, we will be remembered
Recalled
Even misquoted
After
After

And when we are dead
We
Will guide
The stars
In
New Poets' skies
And dust off those nickles
So that they shine

594 · Feb 2011

Closing Time (with warm Dylans)

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

Closing Time (with warm Dylans)

Come gather round people, wherever you are
And hear this last song I play on my guitar
I've made one too many trips to the bar
And my voice is rapidly fading.
And the whiskey has gone straight to my head...
And these strings, they need a changing.
(goodnight)

592 · Apr 2011

There was no...

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

There was no...

There was no showdown
no paper-tied-to-rock-through-the-window
ultimatum
nor
last minutes
to prepare

There was no warning
no alarms-sirens-bells-flashing lights
no manual
nor
instructions
to save him

There was no face-off
no walk-ten-paces-then-turn
no preparation
nor
split-seconds
to stop and aim

There was only the kiss
He was doomed

588 · Apr 2012

Cresendo

Timothy Mooney Apr 2012

Cresendo

Funny that.
As the end nears
The music gets big.
When I should be paying attention
To the *****
And not
The noise...

587 · Jan 2011

Sonnet 10/30/10-2 (I Lose My Way)

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Sonnet 10/30/10-2 (I Lose My Way)

I lose my way whilst searching for my Love.
So many, vagrant sins distract and pull
That moment and the subject, and I fall
Into the Pit below, and Sky above.

She beckons still; she calls me, lures me on.
And so I travel blindly, growing weak.
Some crazy god denies that which I seek,
And wicked women hold me past the dawn.

My heart is true, but I am just a man.
A simple man, an honest Father's son,
A grandson of a man who tilled this earth.

And this I just keep tilling, whilst I seek
To find that Love so hidden from my heart.
I hope she'll wait. This hellish road is long.

584 · Apr 2011

Cobs

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

Cobs

Icky things
with legs and wings
and oh! too many eyes!
Things what hide in shadow
spinning webs
and eating flies.
Little flying cobbies
(They are not there in the book
of insect or arachnid
though I often look and look...)
They were just too sneaky
to get written down
I s'poze...
Still I know they're
down there creeping
up onto my toes!

580 · Jan 2011

The Eternal War

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

The Eternal War

"There is danger in that night
Where shadows swell and steal the light
And strangers stroll the emptied street
With   hooded eye and shushing feet,
Where thieves and brigands skulk about...
Please, my children, don't go out!"

          "Mother! Father!  How you fuss!
             Can't you hear it call to us?
             Can't you hear its music play
             Strange refrains from Far Away?
             Young blood burns to run and leap
             Where shadows crawl and myst'ries creep!"

"Wards of Evil roam the road
Wanderers from Hells abode,
Refugees from Satans gaol'
Wicked banshies shriek and wail!
Here inside it's safe and bright...
Please don't go out in that night!"

             *"But how we yearn to wander there,
                Out into the star-spun air,
                Out where sacred secrets dwell.
                Drink, we must, from moon-kissed well!
                So let us go, let us take flight...
                For we are children of the night."

577 · Jan 2011

Sonnet 10/30/10-1 (With Cloud Above)

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Sonnet 10/30/10-1 (With Cloud Above)

With cloud above and planet neath my feet
With shadow sweet within my hollow breast
I traipse this scalded ground from east to west
In search of my one lost love, She! My sweet!

I dare not tarry on this lonesome quest.
Odd winds afoot I struggle down this path
And even in my emptiness I laugh
At some dark gods infernal, ugly jest.

I do believe I'll find her, one fine day'
And we shall dance together happily.
She'll kiss me, and I'll know our Love is true.

I do believe that we were meant to be.
Until then i will walk these clouded roads'
With sky above and Time beneath my shoe.

573 · Feb 2011

Upon A

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

Upon ***

She lost her shoe
tripping away from the
midnight ball.
No prince would call
to save her from her plight
of dire domesticity.
For in her mean reality
there abided fairies, true,
But mute,
and they had no
tales to tell.

573 · Jun 2011

Stop It

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Stop It

A wild bull
Wakes me from
My sweet dream
Of you
**** coffee
Or sagacious wind
Or pets-needing-out
Just Stop It!
Let me fall back
Into that dark domain
Of You
For a while
For a few more
Pillow-case drools
Where Morning
Is years away.

573 · Jan 2011

A Happy Poem

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

A Happy Poem

I woke up today.
Yay!

571 · Apr 2011

yeah, right.

Timothy Mooney Apr 2011

yeah, right.

I promised that I'd go to bed
before the midnight hour.
Yet doggy has to take a walk,
and kitty's milk is sour,
and laundry in the wash-n-dry
needs sort and hang and fold...
(my Mom was right, I need a wife,
before I get too old!)

I'd like to have a comfort wife,
Here in my waning days...
A happy, buxom, needy gal
who puts up with my ways
Who'd let me write and paint and strum.
then bed me down with flowers...
(Then walk the dog and fill the
Kitty's bowl
when his milk sours.)

564 · Jul 2011

Staccatto

Timothy Mooney Jul 2011

Staccatto

It's always simple
Eventually
The reasons
Add up to one

The door leads
To the
Road
And to your
Tomorrow maybe

Your pained trail
Will fade
With a borrowed ride
Windows down

There is happy
In dog face wind
Leaving buried bones buried

That wind buffets
Slaps you
And you wake up
Towards your Not Yet

563 · Jun 2011

A 59 Dixon... Part II

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

A 59 Dixon... Part II

I've got everything I need
Satisfaction on my knee
Ain't no place that I can't go
With these six strings and a hole

I can strum some clouds on high
I can strum an Angel's cry
Pick my way through any day
I could pluck your Blues away

Just an old brown beat-up box
Seen its worst of dings and knocks
But it still sings true to me
I'll never let it go.

563 · Jun 2011

A 59 Dixon

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

A 59 Dixon

I have been tethered
Weathered and withered
Blistered and bled
By these strings round my heart.

Six little strings
Keyed up and tightened
Heart-to-the-head
Til my fingers attend.

563 · Jan 2011

Judy

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

Judy

How sweet that an unwritten face
kisses me on this last hour
of Now before the
Not Now of tomorrow.

Across the wind of Einstein's count
And upon hopeful pigeon's wing
I kiss you back
And wish you happy sun.

561 · Jun 2011

Faith

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Faith

I have no Faith.
She left me for Tom
The big guy
In gym class.
But I'll always have Summer...
Tom's little sister
taped up
in my cellar.

552 · Jan 2011

On Rhyming in General. Not a Poem.

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

On Rhyming in General. Not a Poem.

It's not about the rhyme
but the time spent
bending the words
to fit
you
You fit
To the words, bending
Spent time.
To rhyme?

551 · May 2011

The Critical Theologist

Timothy Mooney May 2011

The Critical Theologist

He contemplates the Bible
As he adds up every page
Religion's an equation
As he totals every age
Of Man and Beast and Angel
(He's a thick and dowdy sage)

He tries to sum redemption
Through his numbers in a book
He thinks he sees sin everywhere
He's too afraid to look
And so he squints with whetted pen
(to carve his Heaven's nook)

He sits and waits for Rapture
As he whittles souls away
He does it all by numbers
In a slick efficient way
And when it doesn't add up...
("Forgive them... Let us pray.")

551 · Jun 2011

The Lost Baptist Poem

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

The Lost Baptist Poem

This **** place just lost my words.
Forty lines or so.
I inquired about the mishap.
Several times.
Several times.
Several times ago.
No one felt to write me back
No one felt to check or track
Where did my words go?
It was quite a lengthy write
Took me **** near half the night.
But they lost it!
That ain't right.
That ain't right..
Not right, no sirree!
Though I'll never get them back
And I know they're gone for good
Maybe someone somewhere could
Look to see
Look to see

I wrote and posted "The Baptist"' last night, wrote it on the fly, off the cuff, and OOPS! Hello Poetry lost it. My fault I didn't hand-copy it down first I guess...

550 · Jul 2011

Upon Contemplation of a Moment of Us

Timothy Mooney Jul 2011

Upon Contemplation of a Moment of Us

There is no speed
There is only fast
Here in this Empty
Nothing passing by
To delineate movement
No stars
No dust
Bent-time left behind
Only dwindling Self
Only Not Yet
In a hurry

There is no time
There is only when
Here on this Maybe
Passing by Nothing
A calcified moment
One star
One wish
True Self swept aside
With the mingle
Not quite there
In a hurry

There is no point
There is only why
There on that hollow
No one reaching out
To slow this progression
No hand
No You
Just Past catching up
Laughing with Fast
No speed at all
In a hurry

For all who loved

547 · Jun 2011

The Baptist

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

The Baptist

He struggled with his ****** wrap
To take that swim, enlightened and pure
And stood there in his nakedness
Hoping for absolution in the cold Holy Water
Those sin-stained linens at his feet
A crowd behind him
Waiting to see
If HIS God would attend
And if True Salvation
Was only a
Waller away.
As the water closed over his body
And his nakedness, new and certain
His bones ached chilled
His soiled fists clenched
His moment of Birth
Was re-defined
And he drowned that morning
Only to be raised up
By Orchestral Divinity.
Soon the Crowd followed
Into the wash, re-birthing in this
New Nakedness
Unashamed of
Body
Or Soul
Beneath an Angel's
Hand
This poor man
Knew that there
Would be pain to follow
From his shallow immersion
From this simple
Jumping in
As did his
Brethren
He lost his soul that day
Within those waters, cold and swift
But netted a new one
Raw and pure and as naked
As the soft silty clay
Beneath his feet.

For my Christian Friends and Family... John was the Archetypical Hippie...

544 · Jun 2011

Another One For Dad

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Another One For Dad

I thought I heard you
Last Night
In the wind
Outside
An engine
In the Distance
Slicks-on-wet blacktop
No radio on
Just the engine
Just the Rubber
On the road
In the wind
Racing
Against the Night
Or with It
Speed-Love-Crazy
One hand
Wheel-tight
And one
Waving
As
You
Flew.

534 · Feb 2011

dark

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

dark

dark is not just
the absence of light
but the
lack of
the shadow
right
behind you
sneaking...

533 · Jan 2011

A Small Moment of Air

Timothy Mooney Jan 2011

A Small Moment of Air

You breathed.
The Sun wiggled a little.
You moved.
There was a wobble
In the path of the Moon.
You smiled.
My gravity shifted.
You looked at me.
Einstein held his breath...
The Spheres paused, waiting...
Eternity went to lunch...
Waiting...
Until you breathed and smiled at me again.
I took in a small moment of air.
Life.

529 · Jun 2011

Scratch

Timothy Mooney Jun 2011

Scratch

My favorite song
On vinyl
Side B
Third track in
It was spinning
About to play
For me
Its sweet
Melody
And
OH! NO!!
The Cat!
The Cat!

528 · Feb 2011

Damn English

Timothy Mooney Feb 2011

**** English

I never worry about nothing!

Oops...
double negative.
Oh, hell....