"armistice" poems
i am seven and in your living room
with antiques & photographs
of family that are more like strangers
and handshakes at christmas
there is a jar of circus peanuts by the armchair
and i remember being told that these are here because they are never out of stock
and that *they are the only things
children will not want to take from me*
i still do not like the color orange.
i am eight and round the bannister
to an upstairs that reminds me
of heaven in that
place i can't go sort of way & i am
knuckle deep in your pumpkin pie
wiping it on my uncles suede jacket
our hands still shake but the jury is still out
on if he looks at me and napkins the same
i hope you do not sleep
with my apologies under your fingernails
i will not say them out loud
i know i should have mowed your lawn
i should have been a home
for second hand smoke
if i could go back i would be your ashtray
i remember the day you forgot who i was
i bound into the room and throw my arms
around you like an armistice
and you ask who i am
we are not in church
but everyone stops singing
i am passed from child to child
while we all laugh
but my lungs feel like
they've been mugged in an ally
who's son does he look like, mom?
my father says like gospel
you pull on your cigarette
sip from your watered down wine and shrug
and i am neck deep in forgetfulness
i imagine alzheimer's
as being born again every day
so, we will spend ages
looking at captions to photographs
telling your stories to strangers
as my father begins to forget
and when i imagine probate
an unfamiliar hand unfolding a will
to be read to wayward angels
i want to burn down the house
and sleep in the ashes
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 3:00 PM UTC
i.
the Hibiscus is the paradisiacal
armistice of quagmire and wind:
leave it there anchored to Earth.
ii
when it rains, it bows to no one;
when it genuflects to no bird,
it trills on the red of the moseying hour—
nobody sees the Hibiscus.
only the children of the vandal.
iii.
last summer we had makeshift
bubble machines and in the high-rise
of the twilight's cradle, we ran
viciously against the humdrum town
blowing bushels of laughter at
the dreary populace — the brooms
to a sweeping rustle, unsettled dust
mounting the ether.
we hurtled across the
infantile roads like they owed us something finitely attributed
to our locomotives.
iv.
the Semana Santa had gone by
and the season, no matter how promisingly redolent with emollient brush
of wind and laboring silence, held
no reprise — the Hibiscus,
it is not alone in the quiet verdigris.
v.
somewhere amid the hubbub of city,
there is a pendulum of line biting
the shore of waiting repeatedly.
only steel scaffolds erected and no
flagrant scent aroused. peregrinating
in the haloed hour, the nascent furl of
belch from vociferous iron-clad beasts
in all of EDSA
and when i look at people around me
they look like gumamelas, finally,
yet i am
not coming home.
Nov 4, 2015
Nov 4, 2015 at 3:15 AM UTC
shapeshifter, son drunk
& changing skins.
he digs up skeletons of a spanish battalion
buried
by tigers on the garden key.
suncresent
spray of blood & oranges.
new-fangled sailors once soaked
in madness.
now just starvation.
the viking speaks:
in limericks of new world poise.
his antler woven mask,
set nicely upon the shore.
seod, turtle lord
of space & time, appears only once
every lunar eclipse. bound by treatise
to the jellyfish triumvirate.
his acolyte,
bolivar t. shagnasty,
wanders the mainland in search of water
or meat of trees.
kindness
of men turns to dust & belly worms.
forgotten, the plants mutate
into root-rich empires
of fish & figurine.
million year armistice.
dr. samuel mudd,
shackled years to tide-slab &
fort jefferson. he
purifies the island of its yellow
shivering death.
hospital key.
fastforward hundred plus years
through mudd lifeline:
battle weary sneakers,
spokes sung by strum of card, the bmx
stridden boy & his
teenage mutant ninja turtle mask.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 4:55 PM UTC
all i see now are the silent ruin
of words teeming with wisdom
in every trail. you are gleaming
in the moony boondocks,
Ibabá remembers you as you were -
timeless and ruminative,
pursuing the source of rivers.
our sublime versifier,
the crucifixes now tremble without
the fullness of your flesh.
each page is turned without
the hover of your voice yet
stills its resonant message in my mind's premises like redolent graffiti.
striding river-pace,
once in moonlit Orfeo
graced by your sibilant being,
leaving only the strongest of impression
on the surly couch, a toppled glass
of Shiraz remembering your attendance
leaving the clamor of the audiences
real to touch, elusive in thought.
before the war was the ever-present word, and after the fray was
the armistice of the Sun where in
humdrum Sampiro, your fire's genealogy
is in the hands of the muse!
idly go the hours, wading everlong past
Calle Herrán - the bells of Paco Church
tell in this imperfect hour
the roads where you once traversed,
travailed and perhaps beer-maddened,
putting a face in the metaphysical!
in your banquet i partake
the wisdom of your wine
and the reason of your flesh -
the gods delight in you,
o, Manila of all Manila.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 2:05 AM UTC
the wind whispers to you in furious ways,
ominous notes, like a dusty violin
stenciling finality into the air.
the percussion
of foot-soldiers trembles the grass.
you have grown, my war-child,
from the days of ****** tea parties
to a diva guerrilla,
terrible and well-rehearsed,
your bulleted libretto close to your chest--
and as trumpets sound in the offing,
the curtain draws back.
AK-47, pizzicato--
gasoline breeds fire, incinerates woodwinds,
the wine of the coloratura soprano
melts into blood.
witch, ***** daughter of gunpowder,
bella contralto, your
deep and tremulous vibrato is a
grenade,
and as death crashes to a crescendo,
mortality in the tin frequency of cymbals--
the only armistice
is annihilation.
Dec 4, 2013
Dec 4, 2013 at 10:27 PM UTC
I am victim only to constant distractions,
restrictions, prescriptions, vicarious factors,
as various factions of elitism prescribe defeat
to the common man; the hard working talented
beaten upon by the self driven commerce land.
Businessmen, crooks, warlords and bankers;
victory purports itself the higher moral ground.
******* the world, lie on the crimson sand.
The brevity of riches in led laden ditches,
trenches v armistice; one man’s control over
cadets and lieutenants. Equality it seems
is general ignorance, propose roll reversal
and receive corporal punishment. Capital
interests will be met with bursaries, bail
out the banks and return to your knees,
put out your hands and beg for your feed.
If the top three percent own more wealth
than the lower half put together while
politicians claim to be fair-weather,
conclude that sincerities amiss, that
your representatives are on the pay roll
of profit driven lobbyists. Career crazed fat-cats
couldn’t care less if you're in tattered garments
or there’s a hole in your dress, their polished
boots carry them from vault to vault
while we fill another with oil-baron asphalt.
As social repression pushes populations
science progresses, enabling armed forces
to kettle us, cut us off and circle on horses.
Power-shifts across the globe become jaded
by investment with private militias and fascist
supremacists seizing resources from war
torn villages to fund their crude sourced
morality, migrants and refugee families
are vilified by ignorance forged in cynicism
caused by the inequality of education.
Here lie the symptoms of infinite regression,
hold mirror to gene-pool as it replicates
the same flawed equation, as populations
expire and conspire so does the problem.
Bombing a country without repercussions,
is as likely as a breaking the waters surface
without sending ripples to the adjacent atoms.
These are the dark ages of social stagnation.
Oct 22, 2014
Oct 22, 2014 at 11:00 AM UTC
one more for the great lakes that divide and unite her
all on that day:
1. will be a treaty writ tween me and
the cosmos,
they permit me worship them,
even to join them as another
meaningless gleaming,
if i cease to write -
having used
every word
in my kindness kitbag possess -
twice
2. my trials will be certified as ended,
for the grifting/gifting
ability of a man to
give and dream, to fool himself,
man's obligatory gift, gone
the will to believe in
anticipation
3. a full on peace,
no mere armistice pretense
till the no more next one is the norm
for to the sun, submission,
uttering
a confession
already writ
*A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
“See, this is new”?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.*
Ecclesiastes 1:4-11
May 7, 2017
May 7, 2017 at 9:53 AM UTC
Sunflowers gaze
In a phase she's grown in
With sin, while breaking
The bottle of gin
And she just wants peace.
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 7:13 PM UTC
Morning pallor on a grey day
not a five cent shine
to the sun.
Bitumen hissed all night
trees tossed and tangoed
shuddered and split.
Navy clouds, blue with rain
surfed in from the ocean
racing on the wild wind
learning to scream.
The stones listened
moon listed and tried to find
a space in the cloud-tide rush
to quiet-light the gloom.
Morning Armistice on a pale grey day
of debris and displacement
refugees and leaf litter
surrender and detachment
silent and still
only a five cent shine to the sun
© M.L.Emmett
Aug 1, 2014
Aug 1, 2014 at 1:33 PM UTC
"The pity of war, the pity war distills". - Wilfred Owen"
Just as a feral war begs for armistice,
a season of peace engenders
a violence vacuum that begs to be filled
as surely as a hollow begs for a pond.
It seems a cosmic battle rages
between the oversouls of people
who would chisel a sculpture to grace
and those who would hack off its arms.
History’s fools fire up their bully horns
shouting proud oratory to ignorance -
and lemmings goose-step to the precipice -
doomed to plunge into a sea of misery.
Then there is quiet - guilty and reflective.
How could we let this happen
with so much gain and loss in the balance?
and the sculptors of civilization
find fresh marble to once again
carve reason, beauty, purpose
from the acrid ashes of pride.
But the oversoul of hate will brood and re-fester
as long as it's thought noble to **** for a cause.
© 2016 by Robert Charles Howard
Apr 1, 2016
Apr 1, 2016 at 8:50 AM UTC
long hair long johns of sad happy
clear fog is the dog god doggone dog
kind of you to kind of listen
kindling burns like Hong Kong midnight brightlights
whose birthright, or birthwrong
down-under daggers for flags
flagged
flagulation
creative sensory compensated penitentiary
forward lad landing laughter for the last log on the fire
the last day for earth to say
please plead for plaid shirts to pay for themselves
otherwise there will be ****** for you to see
summer in the winter if I sprinkle a little bit more wood on my splinter
sink or swim, sink and swim, sink to swim
swim to sink
ah
um
oh
ehhem
undo your dress and undo your last mistake
please retake the photo so I can stay awake.
don't, I mean, yes
yes
hands could be cold
but
then
a
g
a
i
n
I just call it what I must
plustwo double yous in a zoo for the future flu's to cruise like truce
11/11/11 armistice
missed the list when you kissed my wrist
I extracted bliss from the Buddha's jist
just
cause?
just call for the muse music
don't mind me
I mean
yes,
yes
motorcade king of spades I got laid to the silence
of a forest in the poorest richness I've never ditched this
**** zip
zap
my zipper is a little critter crawling through the litter on the city's twitter account
doesn't amount to much but I sound like I'm salted in breath
dead like MacBeth, the challenge was the shaken speare
sprained everclear of the diamond tear or the shattered cheer of ancient seers
truth
is greater than fiction.
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 11:24 AM UTC
Am I the only one who finds it deeply ironic in an almost sickening way
that, here in the United States, Armistice Day became Veterans Day?
Not saying that homage is bad to pay,
but I simply wish to say
Armistice; that is to say
the diplomatic end of War,
should preclude future Veterans.
Maybe I'm too idealistic.
Maybe I'm not idealistic enough.
In either case;
the Military is a Tool.
I mean no disrespect;
I simply mean to reflect
upon what it is I see and feel.
Still, I wish humbly to convey
happy pseudo-Armistice day!
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 4:21 AM UTC
Upon the tides of sea
There agreed upon an armistice
And impossible reconciliation
Between mind and heart.
Thy Immortal Voyage travels on,
And another isle is found
One of purity, and clear skies,
Just is the last.
Only the way shimmers.
Now the alliance
Is torn from ahead,
And behind.
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 12:02 AM UTC
Is it ever going to go away
It starts on the inside
the one that no one asks to stay
the slide I fight but still contrive
Start at zero, rise then fall
the ground keeps rising so I'll stand tall
Compulsion built by the ego's indulgence
divulging wilt's the universe's repulsion
Subconscious whims to recognize
the prime elect to analyze
Creature's time spent on watching themselves
while truth like an old toy sits upon the shelf
Define dignity by humanity's degradation
the willingness of every nation
Nuclear unanimity, will never start from the surface or the boundaries beyond
It comes from the origin within a navel energetic pond
The mind collects, stores in the belly, transforms in the heart, then comes glandular manifestation
The armistice of enmity and the achievement of a fool's paradise through all generations
What kind of light will you freeze?
What temple will you create?
Or will it all be your temple
Will you bring the stagnation of light or keep our existence in flux?
Nov 18, 2015
Nov 18, 2015 at 1:35 PM UTC
Incendiary asperity:
The world's existentiality
Agony, the Merciless & Mercenary
Scourging me entirely.
The Angst of the Aeons
Are the pedigree, the genealogy, the history borne to emancipate Me as a Vessel of Sanctity
For the valiant souls
Are the souls of transcendence, who revere in remembrance
The Amour of the Yore
My Vestibule Heart
Expands, contracts, being consecrated demands just as
Starry-Wombed the Cosmos, we
Must grow, burgeon through our learning & yearning, deserving & pining for the Promise of Morrow
For we were not formed
To wallow in sorrow.
As I gaze to the heavens
O, ***** and Gomorrah I remember
The Wife of Lot looks back forever: emblazoned as a Petrified December,
Then Fire & Sulphur descended, mankind nearly ended;
What is the lesson?
Of faith we are descendants.
Why do you
Roil my ravaged and brutally savaged soul?
Must bitterness be the wage for days spent having prayed
On my knees, for armistice, by The Empyrean One’s decree?
Though I have fallen,
I shall rise up
For the Fate’s Auric Visage radiates light upon the leaven,
Dost ferment the flesh dominating mine spirit.
Hearkening to
The susurrus of the Sovereign of Songbird’s Sacrosanct Love.
Let the Ethereal Tides of Time
Bathe me in baptismal & divine tribulation, trial
For a writhing while,
Sacrality is a war,
The Primal Instinct’s Immemorial Diminuendo.
Where has fake paradise of the Sylvan Shine
Those forested, emerald Eyes
That glisten in mine dreams gone?
Your visage twas my divine.
Though I am forlorn,
The Cosmo-Plexus of Empyreal Love hath sworn
To the Days of Yore
That I shall soar once more.
To my Enfettered Soul,
Excelsior.
Jan 1, 2019
Jan 1, 2019 at 1:20 PM UTC
Where have the great games
of childhood gone?
Father and son
tossing the grenade
Little sister skipping
over ***** traps
Somehow, someway
we reached a cease fire
in the "eleventh hour
of the eleventh day
of the eleventh month"
Not sure which of us
was gaslighted
in the eerie orange
of shoreline blood
and the unsettled darkness
"You were right, I was wrong."
read the treatise
Somewhere, someway
an airplane missing
for nearly a century
descends from the clouds
and touches down
in an empty field
The fallen souls
of weaponry
unload on the tarmac
Let the games begin...
Jun 13, 2020
Jun 13, 2020 at 11:16 PM UTC
This hatred
soaks into my bones.
Bouquets of plastic flowers
The smell of cigarettes
and used rubbers
saturate my senses
A sweet kiss
a deluge of poison
armistice broken
for selfish desire
This drought
this doubt
this never ending fear
it grinds against my soul
Do you even know me?
Am I even here?
Crashing into bars
of a gilded cage
The bird with clipped wings
Grounded
A song of melancholy
lingers in the air
Apr 17, 2022
Apr 17, 2022 at 11:01 PM UTC
The mistakes I've made
become the ammunition you stockpile in this emotional arm's race
promises we break
dig at my heart's cave
that I hide in throughout our love's cold war
but it's ventricles
become tentacles
begging that I don't hand it over
grasping at my rib cage
pleading to stay
ripping my chest, waiting on a truce
an armistice in the separation of you...
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 10:11 PM UTC
my feet
are numb in my boots,
I have holes in my soles, the
brown water to my ankles
but it will not freeze
filled with gun oil,
blood and drek
I am
not sure
when I slept last,
if I ever did
the others are there,
their eyes closed
some sleeping
some trying to sleep
some trying to awake,
though they will not
we
have yet
to throw their bodies
on the heap
all eyes
are closed in the trench
save mine, and the sergeant
who stands like a statue
more still than the dead
only his eyes move
back and forth
when
I am not looking at the wire,
the rutted field, and the ridge
where the Germans also sleep,
breathing the same foul stench,
I close my eyes, though I do not sleep,
but think of home, of Irina
I see her eyes, not the sergeant’s
and wonder if they have been closed
like mama’s and papa’s
and those beside me
I ask
the sergeant if tomorrow will be
the white flag, when we and the Germans
can retrieve the dead, from the wires,
where they hang, starved naked apes…
and when the flares fire the night sky
I see the reflection in their wide open eyes
like the glint of light on broken glass
I cannot
close their eyes
all is still
except for the swimming rats
and the pyres that send curling smoke
into the gray sky--neither the rodents
nor the fires utter a sound
the sun
is surely there, somewhere silently
making its arc in our pallid sky
but the last time I saw it
was two mornings ago,
or three, or two
when it rose,
I felt it on my face
through the caked mud,
and blood from Ivan,
who was shot through the neck
and fell on me, and I lay still
with him on top of me,
like a thick blanket
his warm life elixir
painting my helmet
and face red, him gasping softly,
though only a few seconds
until more rounds pocked his body,
a carcass by then,
but my salvation
would I be
the sodden sack of flesh
that covers another?
would the one who hides
under me remember my name?
and recall that I was
his salvation,
though I only a breathless
monkey, with holes in my boots
and a **** soiled uniform
would he
walk bent over
with the blessed cane of age
and remember, all I had done
for him, by simply dying?
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 4:17 PM UTC
Zen. A quiet state which calms the mind.
Yawning, breathing, searching within.
Xerxes the King should have searched within,
which might have led to realizing he was
vain in his attempt to be a God.
Using Zen brings me a peace,
tomorrow I will benefit,
serving in a tranquil state of mind.
Reach for your toes, breathe.
Quietly pant, feeling the rhythm,
pulling the air in, pushing it out.
Overkill is not the object,
never feel tension,
make every movement relaxing.
Laugh with your body as a joy,
knuckle relaxing joy,surges.
Jasmine scented candles flickering
inside the window, like laughing spirits.
However long you wish to sit,
give yourself over for that time.
Forget about the work ahead,
eternal armistice can be anyone's.
Dauntless and disciplined are we,
countless one's who sit and feel.
Believe in the Zen, who calls her children,
Acquitting us with power, with understanding.
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 2:08 PM UTC
“She cannot live forever!”
We told each other more than once.
Still, she had all the Deutschmarks
and to her I was a dunce..
My wife and I were servant/slaves
to her every wish and whim.
It was just after the Armistice
that she ”allowed” us move in.
Germany was a hungry place
As Weimar came into being
What happened after Wilhelm fled,
few could claim to have foreseen.
No, she never spoiled us,
her grandson and his mate.
I cut wood, my wife drew water
For that shriveled old ingrate.
Other than a pittance
and an attic bed of straw
she gave neither thanks nor praise
to her only heirs at law.
Thank Gott, the morning finally dawned
we didn’t hear her ring her bell.
In sleep she had departed
to Heaven or , likely, Hell.
We hugged each other gleefully.
Our servitude was done.
We were rich with Deutschmarks!
The year was Nineteen twenty one.
Jun 16, 2013
Jun 16, 2013 at 11:33 AM UTC
distance makes us
***** calls and texts of shame
1:43 AM attempts at conversing
the simple hellos ignored
and the ‘I love you’s forever out
of sync.
you are
bully and ringmaster
and my master to your masochism,
strangling the dollface you’ve longed
too long
to want.
we,
armistice.
we, never.
he and me, ****** to each other
I listen and wither with every I miss you
slave,
servant,
animal.
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 11:45 AM UTC
Aristotle’s arrhythmic articulations
Appeared too apologetic for Aphrodite's amusements
Aroused by antisocial media’s alacritous abundance
Amidst arteriosclerosis and amphibiously obeisant Ophiuchus
Asclepius' ascendance was almost an abortion
Arrested by Apollo’s amorous attempts at aphrodisia
Ambidextrous Artemis’ androgynous appointments
Awakened ancient antipathies accentuating allopathic artifacts
Altercations arose among ambitious acolytes and Athena’s anorexic acidoses
Awkward Adonis actively agonized by alarming aneurysms
Allowed Antigone’s ambivalent armistice an aperture of acceptance
Appointing an ambiguously appealing additive to the Argonauts
An anaerobic Acropolis arose amidst ********** asphyxiations
As Amazonian armpit hair advocates approved artificial insemination
Aug 19, 2019
Aug 19, 2019 at 8:33 PM UTC
what is this explosive device
that derives all its forces from a fusion reaction
it was way on back in 1945
it ended a war and boosted our pride
a simple little mushroom tattoo scattered over the sky
it will not get you high
you will not fly away
you may not see the world
for you will go and die away
going blind into sight
that ended a reign
a reign of terror not seen since before
before adolf ****** tried to challenge the world
Mutually assured destruction was the policy enacted
for if one person dies
we all shall fall
its a battle of no victor
nor any armistice
it just results in complete annihilation
lets split a little atom
and **** what they say
who needs a treaty
when peace resides at the end of a gun
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 11:29 AM UTC