"bannister" 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
Under her dark veil she wrung her hands.
"Why are you so pale today?"
"Because I made him drink of stinging grief
Until he got drunk on it.
How can I forget? He staggered out,
His mouth twisted in agony.
I ran down not touching the bannister
And caught up with him at the gate.
I cried: 'A joke!
That's all it was. If you leave, I'll die.'
He smiled calmly and grimly
And told me: 'Don't stand here in the wind.' "
9k
Love is a word
like a sword
that has worn
out its scabbard,
a lonely *******
or a red rose
that opens alone,
a dream that lingers
for too many seasons
and passes in the shadows,
furrows in the dust
on a bannister,
a rock in the garden
of lust,
an empty place
at a table,
a ring on a cobweb
in the rain,
a long hair on your bed,
a nail in a blank wall.
Jan 10, 2017
Jan 10, 2017 at 9:00 PM UTC
Will anyone remember how I placed the empty mug
On our bannister
At the top of the stairs.
Like everything now,
It was waiting
Like all of us,
To be cleansed
To be filled
To be emptied
And start again.
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 10:34 AM UTC
I am standing on a staircase, on the seventeenth step,
but the eighteenth onwards has no bannister,
up until now, I've had a safety net,
something to lean on when
the steps aren't lit properly.
'Now', I tell myself,
'I've seen people who have fallen
and manage to grip to the edge
and pull up...towards the next'.
'But I've seen people fall
and never get up'.
I say;
'Am I another statistic?
Am I another failure?
Am I another mangled corpse for the cleaners?
Or...
Am I going to lift my leg and take that step?
Am I to ignore the thoughts?
Am I stronger than I let myself think?'
I lift my leg.
Upwards and onwards, I guess.
Apr 10, 2018
Apr 10, 2018 at 7:25 PM UTC
Dear Me..... First let me say that i love you. That's real talk. I have nothing to gain....after all we share the same names. I've been with you throughout the years.
I vividly remember all those tears.
The abuse and yelling and screaming and running away. I have bad memories.... like your father dropping you over the bannister causing you to visit the hospital that day. He was cracking jokes....while we had a hole in our head.....I recall... not so fondly the words he said "don't tell your mother....don't say a word." He had a nerve to repeat it as if I hadn't heard.
Yes...he said it was your fault...but i new better. I wanted to give you some closure....so I'm writing you this letter. I hear you tell the stories every now and then.....you tell it with a smile although there is pain that still resides within.
How many times did we wander the street? ...searching and begging for change .....just to get something to eat. The one that was supposed to love you.....really didn't know how ......his father died when he was fourteen.
How could he care for you and he was only nineteen? Then he started to hustle and bought a store......got high off his own supply .....firebombed his house.....because when the kids were younger ......he would make them cry.
I remember him saying that you wouldn't amount to much and smacking you in front of his friends for GP.......it wasn't just you.... he did it to me.
But enough of that.....Look in the mirror and see the man I see. Can you see those eyes? Hey ....that's me. You have have come a long way.......abuse,cheating spouse who had a child by another.....where's Rihanna? I could use an umbrella, ellla,ellla,aye.
The divorce took a toll on us.....I'm glad you went to church. In God we trust. Thank you for writing and saving us....you held so much in I'm surprised you didn't bust.
You have been through a lot in this life and I just want to tell you.....You are more than a conqueror and you will win. I'm going to be by your side until the end.
I love you like I love my Son......now I want to shine like one. I'm proud of you. I want your faith to increase....greater is he that is in me..than that is in the world.
Sincerely yours......Jesus and me
Oct 9, 2012
Oct 9, 2012 at 11:23 AM UTC
Words meander alabaster wanderers no rhythm for the panderer
Poetic evangelists sliding on the bannister, siding with a barrister
Space flown canister or crushing apples after Alistair
Prose left with the carrier, roses left in the carriages
Verse burst from the hearse serenade the ears and it'll carry ya
The skies are full of lies from the savages and the miracles
of marriages
But this disparages the ties between the higher dyes of oranges
These tobacco stained nostalgia skies are going away someday
to read the words of de Vries, mystique of poetic compromise
The only poems worth reading are the ones behind her eyes
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 10:02 AM UTC
Anarchy
Grows in my heart organically
I'm sky high
Don't apply to no gravity
Mid'flight dog fightin' with insanity
Crash to the floor
My eyes burning with clarity
Mind state retaliate eradicate depravity
Assassinate a character
Animate a passenger
Blind hate.
The scavenger
The ravager
Ravish all the challengers
And massacre the amateurs
Banish all the stragglers
Smack with em a cannister
**** sliding down the bannister
Pay my debts like my second name was Lannister
Vanish like a phantom of the avatar
The damager
The battler
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
Imagine hot
water music
traipsing down my throat
when you had your sharp tongue
shoved down my throat
with contestations simmering in my sinews,
a few of them scandalous
some true like the sudden fleeting of your crepuscular brow
to two moons paler than the love –
or the long traverse to the treacherous
roads of your skin mapped out in excess
your lecherous debris sprawling everywhere like words
to a book or silence to an early morning commute,
your undulant bursts outmatch the weight of my
steady anchors, imagine this cold wind sinking deep
into the bone at 4 o’clock in the afternoon
drunk in front of faceless crowds
hunting for purpose, discombobulated erudition
in sodden corners and cheap thrills,
imagine the scrumptious twinge of
the Sun that mangles its arms to paint a new
moon for us both and think of this as a consignment to
oblivion when the twists and turns of the road
remember only measures of steps that have no names
and not the passengers, where one wrong forceful
shot at fate could mean the end of all things down
below an ocean of muck or just stale blackness and ravines
of voices bellowing to call out departed ones
where you are just as trivial as
driving in Kennon Rd. at night without maps
and beacons, only far-fetched city buoys,
the frigid wind, the collapsing bannister of the night
cloying the turns sharper than how it was to first see you leave
in the morning, bringing in the fog for the first
light of reality to burn.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 4:26 AM UTC
I regret
That I have yet
To barrel down a bannister
Take charge of the floorboard
And command a room,
Silent and full or
Symphonic and fractured
My perceptions
The hungry trees
Of a hungry forest
I do not regret
Having entered,
So I cannot regret
Not having done so.
Some places I imagine
Feel like
Orpheus Looking Back
Feel like
The preference
Of Pleasant Death.
You ask me why
I will not go,
I say
Because,
I Will Not.
You ask me why
I am afraid,
I say
I am a flame
Entombed
Who still feels the wind.
You ask me
What is it most
You fear?
I answer,
The flowers
In my head
Not sick,
But dead.
Nov 25, 2015
Nov 25, 2015 at 3:02 PM UTC
Lost thing
i was once scared by the wind in a tree,
ashamed to say but
but
no i am not really
but
fear was breathing.
But let me recommend you.
Sit on the stairs
when you want some space to be alone,
People passing you there come and just go.
Or when you feel like that feeling you dont know
Sit on the stairs,
on some step
Because
All they ever want is to be here or to be there,
The inbetween
no no no no
Look theres the blue
forget the tree
or remember if it helps
So if you would just sit on the stairs,
If you want to be alone,
Sit on the stairs.
on the stairs
On this day
There's a cheek
feel a cream carpet edge
And a face like burning
And a wooden smell
(one who never flew)
Closer to perfection than over half of most the some things.
Poke a bare leg through a white bannister.
Fishing for thoughts
Corners and angles.
And
Bear with me, but
If the sky is the sky
And the sea is the sea,
Why is the wind all together
And the wave all alone?
Rain and the grass and the dirt on my face.
They like my vest and collarbones
And bare grass legs
But Or Sometimes
Peel the tights from the legs
And see the camping
The caravan moment
Quick and passing.
Hidden away.
But i guess there can be GUSTS of wind can't there though?
Gusts
Disgust?
Who's sure about gusts?
Not sure i need gusts
It might be like love,
Remember
Not sure that i need that now.
Away away
We want to fly there
But who else have we told to go there?
We look there in guilt
But then so too do they
Away away away
Let us go away.
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 5:00 PM UTC
I wish I wish
that you and I
Could loosely link our hands -
And fly
To a little house in Somerset,
Where it’s always sunny
And always wet.
It’s green and gold with dragonflies
That whip themselves from sky to sky
With water pearling on their tails.
My sister’s house stands small and frail,
With roses big and peach and pale
Quivering like nervous girls
Encircling her door like curls.
The walls are dreams of drowsy pastel,
From the bannister
Hangs a satchel,
And the kitchen has a wooden table
That thrums with memories of drunken fables
Told in whispers late at night,
(A boy crying, jangling beads,
Overrun with strangling weeds,
His sister’s fingers,
Evergreen,
Plants flowers where the weeds have been.)
And she’s an artist, don’t you know,
She knows which way the colours go,
And long ago
She took some wire
And shaped it with a pair of pliars,
And added beads of deepest red,
Like globs of blood that’s been well bled
'Til it became a piece of art,
A huge
Muscular
Anatomical
Heart,
And she placed it on the mantleplace.
It throbs there at a steady pace,
A beating heart
Like a coronet
Placed on the head
Of Somerset.
Sep 7, 2013
Sep 7, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
I walked past her again.
Annihilation glance-
one thousand exposed memories
of teenage years
and exaggerated fears;
how stupid they appear
now we've learned misery well-
how to keep silent in its tenure.
How to fall at its knees
in gratitude of its brief release.
Hopeless captor,
impatient platitude;
we catch eyes on purpose,
to relinquish the delusion-
I still want her,
and she is still unsure of me.
I have not changed my costume
since those dress-rehearsal years,
still pacing streets in black coats,
still conversing with my fears.
The core of walnut in the bannister,
the stair-lift in its cage;
I walked past her again
with ****** hair and awkward gait;
an old bag full of tricks
and a folk-song made of hate.
How she falls to her knees
in cigarettes and ashes,
hopeless captor
of old bad habits;
we catch eyes on purpose
to speak beyond tongue-
I'm still singing on the hill-side,
she's still tired of my song.
Mar 12, 2015
Mar 12, 2015 at 6:16 PM UTC
I’d swear a monster lived in the hall
Of the house when I was young,
Just like the tiger under the bed
I could see when they were gone,
For I could hear him climbing the stair
When the house was fast asleep,
I knew he roamed around and about
When the stairs began to creak.
And then he’d enter my bedroom and
He’d re-arrange my toys,
That’s how I knew he disliked me, he
Kept all his tricks for boys.
He never bothered my sister, or
Disturbed her dolls and things,
Her bedroom was like a sanctuary
For her necklaces and rings.
He’d hide in all of the daylight hours
So he’d not be seen by them,
The others, who would make fun of me
When I warned them all again:
‘You wait, he’s going to take you out
He will catch you unawares,
You won’t be able to scream or shout
When he comes, and climbs the stairs.’
The winter months were both damp and cold
And the woodwork creaked and groaned,
It shrunk and stretched, it was getting old
And it hid the monster’s moans.
So I hid down by the bannister
And I tied a string across,
To trip him when he would climb the stairs,
I would teach the monster loss!
A storm was raging outside that night
And the wind howled through the trees,
The back door opened and flapped a lot
And let in a winter breeze,
I heard my father run down the stairs
And an awful cry and crash,
Then silence settled and fed my fears
Where the bannister was smashed.
I thought the monster was gone for good
With the service come and gone,
I thought he couldn’t survive that crash
And the crematorium,
But barely a week had passed us by
And the stairs began to creak,
So I placed a candle under the stair
And the place burned for a week.
David Lewis Paget
Dec 2, 2015
Dec 2, 2015 at 8:40 PM UTC
Iridescent green liquid
Dripping from a factory sealed cannister
Not for pregnant women or the faint of heart
Not for the ones who grip the stair bannister
Only for the fit and the strong
To help achieve maximum efficiency
Only for those whose legs are long
Enough to reach the stars from the ground they can only see
Caution
Warning
Attention
The flies are swarming
Your flesh is rotting
But your body keeps running
Touch it to your lips
And it'll grant you your best
Implanted from the laboratory
Take it all down and put yourself to the test
Nothing can stop you now
You're not running on empty anymore
Your stomach turns sour
But you're no longer a bore
Now you've got the means
Now you've got the scene
Now you've got the capacity
Now you can succeed
But only because of test tubes
And only because of beakers
Only because of brakers
Only because of white coats
Only because of med school
Only because of playing the part of the fool
Jun 27, 2012
Jun 27, 2012 at 2:14 PM UTC
She appeared at the top of the staircase,
Light tangled in her auburn curls,
She gazed upon the glitter dance,
Where dresses spun in hazy whirls.
The delicate hand on the bannister,
As she descends from above,
Those lazy green eyes scanning,
The ballroom floor for her love.
He does not appear, she waits for hours,
Until the slow waltz does sound,
She tears his diamonds from her neck,
Those cut-glass dreams on the ground.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 4:36 PM UTC
The grief-beast wakes different today.
This is not the cold, creaky ache of bannister limbs in winter
No, this time it's the warmth of my parents' rocking chair, walnut and familiarity and an exoskeleton of memory and fairytale intertwined with the weight of a loss that sits heavy on my lap, immobilising but I'm in no mood to leave the sadness of my seat.
And though it hurts and it burns and it erodes at my insides
I accept it, resigned for the moment and resolve to leave this safe coccoon another day when the world seems less formidable and my coarse exterior more malleable
to new life and fresh growth
Dec 7, 2020
Dec 7, 2020 at 5:17 PM UTC
I saw my bruises on my knees sitting naked in the bathtub with the shower on
You showed me yours-we matched
I was purple where you pushed me and my knees hit the bannister
I missed the stairs by that much.
You were red and scabbed where your knees hit the carpet when you collapsed
when it hit you that you hit me
We still hated each other
Spitting acid from our tongues
We threw words for years-intent to hit
But that was the first time
Any one of us threw fists in the forms of palms
We always talked about it
4AM November morning? evening? night?
The hours blur together
through slinging slurs of fire I can still feel them on my skin
chemical burns-you had a way with words
“useless **** is carved into my forearms
and across my chest
it will scab over and you will pick it off
Eventually
With sentences strung together out of decency
The honesty I wanted to believe
We were throwing punches with our mouths
the way the words just rolled out
“You’re ******* crazy” just sort of felt
like the right thing to say
To cut a little deeper than I had to
This battle was purely literally
Well recorded over facebook chat bubbles-incoming text messages
too late-too early phone calls that say:
“You’re a ******* liar-
I can’t believe this-
I love you-
come back.”
But it hit you that you hit me
and my knees were purple for a week
May 5, 2014
May 5, 2014 at 9:51 PM UTC
Homemade Bluebird house's of varying color and shape
Lovely butterflies hand painted by 'Angels' dot the landscape
Red Wasp warm themselves on proud , Sun drenched shrubbery
Daffodils and Sweetgum Trees , the banter of Cardinal and Blue Jay ,
Wood Ducks flying over a world of discovery ..
Carpenter bees do challenge , a green lizard seizing a few winks on a wrought iron bannister .. A pink flowering Plum tree with a performing Carolina Wren , a brown Praying Mantis on a window screen ..
Lady Bugs riding warm breezes , Natures abundant annuities , every step a golden opportunity ..
Mar 23, 2016
Mar 23, 2016 at 12:29 PM UTC
the castle seemed
abandoned
crumbling turrets
under years
of weather
drawbridge splintering
punctured soles
in the courtyard
faded benches
a three legged table
propped by rocks
door ajar
inside a maze
of mirrors & halls
clutching the bannister
master bedroom with
french windows
grimy glass filters sun
casting
abstract shadows on
a thin man's
gasp
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 4:06 AM UTC
or-ange, mango,
banana too,
hell-bent on regretting you.
campfire-chair-sitting on hardwood floors
in a stranger's home, i think.
turn off the lights, it's raining.
i had some to drink (not enough)
but you had to drive
but so did i.
turn off the lights, it's raining
on the bannister,
your piano-key-fingers cascading over my
carpals, metacarpals, phalanges too.
topple me into a room
but today it's not for laundry,
‘cause the only thing that's getting washed away
is my record of not saying
i love you (in my head, because
strangers
don't say that to each other).
you lassoed me in and we fell
into the empty hangers that i pushed away from you;
shadows on a skeleton’s scapula.
tabloids never told me that three months’ salary couldn't
buy the rights to the song
of your heart beating darkly in your chest.
turn off the lights, it's raining
and you can't see the way i
feel you.
May 2, 2017
May 2, 2017 at 11:00 PM UTC
‘I’ve never believed in ghosts,’ she said,
So I said, ‘I’ll prove there are.
I’ve seen them at night beside our bed,
I caught one sat in our car.
They wander along the street outside
I’ve seen them down at the beach,
You have to believe to see them, though,
They tend to be out of reach.’
‘You’ll have to produce one here for me
Before I’m going to believe,
It’s easy to say that they exist
If you just want to deceive.’
She effectively threw the gauntlet down
So I just had to respond,
And work on a way to bring one here
From out the back of beyond.
But where do you go to find a ghost?
It’s easier said than done,
I’ve seen so many of them, but most
Won’t answer to anyone.
I thought I’d try to Google one up
When turning my PC on,
Then took a sip from my coffee cup
While typing in ‘Ghost - just one.’
It threw up a series of single ghosts,
The one that walked in the rain,
And one that came with its head cut off,
A ghost in a railway train.
It even mentioned the woman in white
Who came halfway down the stair,
And stood by the bannister and groaned
With blood still thick in her hair.
I liked the thought of a railway train
With its own original ghost,
She didn’t seem to be in much pain
So she appealed to me most.
I sent a message for meeting me where
She could come and meet the wife,
And bring the train, to give her a scare
That would last the rest of her life.
That night we lay in our poster bed
And I heard the shriek of wheels,
The wife rolled over as in it sped
The room was filled with her squeals.
The train pulled up by the bedroom door
And the ghost approached our bed,
She wore a nightdress, down to the floor
With bullet holes in her head.
‘I’ve never believed in ghosts,’ she’d said,
She’d have to believe them now,
The ghost approached with a look of dread,
And it caused a terrible row.
‘Don’t ever bring ghosts in here again
Or you’ll be alone in the bed,’
As the train took off with a clicketty-clack
And the ghost just stood and bled.
I’m never allowed to Google up,
She said to stick to my verse,
They sit in the kitchen, while we sup
And even pass in the hearse,
She says that she never sees them now,
She doesn’t want to believe,
I know it would only cause a row
If I said they tug at her sleeve.
David Lewis Paget
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 2:46 AM UTC
#D Vanlandingham
*My hands..
gently around her throat
as she momentarily
slips away, from the pain--
her beautiful doe-eyes, a full
submittal of trust..
(and I am worthy of it all..
so very very worthy, my beautiful)
and deep within her release
she takes love in
she takes it in
There is a rope in the garage
that has her name on it
the bannister at the top of the stairs
(so very, very unworthy)
to provide support
for her beautiful body
that now, only wants
to no longer have to carry the pain
The rope does not carry within it
the warm-blooded pulsings
of my own, heart's love--
(it does not feel your trust,
at the moment of release..)
but like me,
it has no concept of how to let go..
my hands-- they release
at the moment of your own..
the tears in your eyes, say it all to me--
that you don't want me to ever
learn how to let go.
The rope, being pain's release
in to the final
Mine, a never-letting-go
into the forever
my hands they ease their grip
but my heart--
no..
no not, ever.*
#
Jan 12, 2021
Jan 12, 2021 at 8:35 PM UTC
Kickin' in there,
she's
sticking pins in the board
ties
a cord to the bannister
the last that you'll see of her,
from an art form
to an alliance
with hints of acceptance
convenience
is not just a store.
Aug 15, 2018
Aug 15, 2018 at 1:59 PM UTC