"assayed" poems
What of empty words
like love without feelings
a currency without a bank
to back it up,
words expressed but not felt
spent in amounts
exceeding their value.
What of love
felt but not expressed
deep like a vault
where the most precious possessions are kept,
or deep like a mine
where the yawning veins
provide only hints of their great worth
a little bit at a time.
We are growing an economy
and between us we can pass
Assignats or Continentals
to our hearts desire,
and yet when our hearts yearn for more
it will only be the shining coin of the realm
the pearl of desire
that is assayed between us
and only then will our economy stand or
fall by what is backing
our promise to pay the bearer on demand
and redeem ourselves in return.
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 9:58 PM UTC
Now in this season
It smells like sweet honey nectar,
Thick, warm pollen that heavies the air, that
Overarching succulent sweetness I can
Never find. I'm nearly
Dreaming in the midst of day,
Lack of sleep sharpens this
Feeling of loss that doesn't coincide with
The growth around me - My mind
Is falling back a quarter year, another,
Chilled over somehow in direct sunlight -
My hunger could be assayed with
Those honeyed towers somewhere blooming, but
I've not been told where to find them -
Stumbling along with aching limbs and
Exhausted heart, forced anxious smile,
Can't seem to find these supposed fruits
That hang down at reach, give way to new days -
Just quiet, vacant preludes
Along all these miles of solitude.
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 3:58 PM UTC
the acorns tumble, the dried leaves slip slowly sideways,
each a slow motion death, almost balletic, or acrobatic,
the decedents, like bodies on the Field of Hastings, their
skeletons to be consumed by a history ******* earthy soil
this more than any thing, as much as covid deaths of known
older brothers more than the messages on the answering
machine from robotic nurses and truly concerned doctors,
impatiently waiting to discuss test results with still alive patients
four lines in each stanza was unplanned like sets of decades,
that the man’s life can be retrospectively be divisibly assayed,
each titled, consistent of games and sets, until the last match
not on center court, is finale tie-broken, the faults too numerous
he writes this unshaken, but stirred, for the hours spent observing,
of each trajectory of every fallen leaf is distinctly connected to losses,
oh! how the losses multiplied; loves, children, unspoken words of
affection and forgiveness, mounted, moats, barriers to fulfillment,
a lawn of dead shriveled things, mounting, dear mother of god, all
préludes that hasten(ed) the shedding of lives every August!
Aug 25, 2020
Aug 25, 2020 at 3:52 PM UTC
two letter word and the goodness it held;
crossover the forbidden pleasure of sense
no sudden burst of supernova
shall ruin my assayed constellations
if million years do exist, why seconds don't?
but if I have to wait a light-year for my universe,
I will spell out a more magical three letter word
when the time has come and everything's in place
where would I be? in my universe?
I wish I'm with my universe, but first...
let me be drowned in my own bittersweet dreams
I'm not yet done in killing myself so I could finally live
if matter has space and has mass and so do I,
then why I keep asking "do I matter?"
the absolute value is not my care, to whom is
because for those who really care is the essence of worth
many claimed pledges were already burned
by the raging wrath of my trust-doubting sun
in a world full of lies, where should I start
to breathe the purity of painful truths?
so by then...
four letter word will rest in my soul again
Jan 12, 2019
Jan 12, 2019 at 9:34 AM UTC
The trouble started on the day
After the day before.
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.
It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.
A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?
Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.
But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.
Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.
A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.
Striving wins because it tries.
Forlorn despairing errs.
Jul 9, 2021
Jul 9, 2021 at 1:00 AM UTC
"WE therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into
corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body..."
I am hundred years dead
And the water is dread wide —
Hunch I my head against the wind
Straight from the shoulder, H/E angst,
But goes my algorithm awry —
Memory nipped my insanity yesternight...
... ... Mortified right I was;
Ain't cotton to lovers for years...no...
Could slip they my pious sleep away
By a little sleight of hand...
Love is a briny deep, but sets at the shore,
Vaporizing the Vistavision — and
How all the dreams that sound subdued,
Not to be assayed and to be limited not,
Follow the spells of fatuity's skill sorcerous —
From the cradle to the pyre
Chased I the broken velvet sky; let
The sacred shudder to ask what toxins they contain;
Eventide breaks from pain to fountain pen,
Count I thy decrepit blessings —
Brain crying dearth,
heart...peopled by void,
soul acting out an enigma,
shadow wounds up to sleep —
Thou water not wet...
Their carousal is on a carousel ride —
Awaiting my high the next low tide...
Come thick with me and be my thin,
We shall die down, but hang in;
The sun liar mounts and rains my croon,
Spy not quicksand, we pink moon —
My, my, a thousand-spring-dead - I!
The balloon did spring not a leak; still
I'm suspiring time —
Mar 21, 2021
Mar 21, 2021 at 5:37 AM UTC
No its not a play - upon a play
No words will I have assayed
To be beyond the mental test
Forth then would I be the rube
A clip then found upon Utube
Putin binaries upon the Hilliaries
Castrating the will of the majorities
Big Mac's and chicken in bed
The Fox dictates his next move
While he's contemplating his
next groove
Well America better wake up soon
They're bowing down to a baboon
But I get the feeling it's now to late
Better learn to bend over now
He's coming for the sacred cow
Mar 28, 2018
Mar 28, 2018 at 10:05 AM UTC