"barley" poems
What is pink? a rose is pink
By the fountain's brink.
What is red? a poppy's red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro'.
What is white? a swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? why, an orange,
Just an orange!
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In the chair he played,
His muscles burned with his pain.
It was always constant,
The needless burning of his nerves.
Fingers curled he played,
There was enjoyment in the music.
It erased the pain and the sadness ,
The that the many scars of his nerves gave him.
Then he was gone
17 and gone in the last beat of the hearts
we cried happy birthday
But he wasn't the only one
What of the one teacher?
You helped him play through the pain,
While you yourself suffered,
How soon were you torn from us too?
Its all to soon.
You know their will be a final symphony,
they wont let you go without the notes.
draped on your shoulders like wings,
Angels of the band.
You both were pillars of strength,
And we all remember and sing and play.
For the good don't just die young,
They are set free of their suffering.
And we love you,
Let the symphony play.
I will cry for the man i barley knew,
For he helped the one I loved.
Feb 9, 2012
Feb 9, 2012 at 11:20 PM UTC
Day 1: I want to tear my skin off. My heart is beating so fast i can barley breathe. I feel so filthy.
Day 2: I can't believe this. I don't want to be here. Why did this happen? Why did I let this happen?
Day 5: I guess I drank too much and my friends were to drunk to stop me.
Day 10: I can't face my friends, I can't live my life.
Week 3: No one knows. He hasn't said a word.
Week 6: It happened again, I was sleeping and he did it again. Why did I stay the night? Why didn't I go straight home?
Week 7: He left and kissed me goodbye. I don't know how to feel.
Week 10: My life's out of control, I can't believe whats happening.
Month 5: My boyfriend knows. But not all details. Just thinking about it, makes me want to take a shower.
Month 8: I finally came clean to my friends. They're appalled. They hate him now. I still feel filthy. I can't get his smell off my body still.
Month 11: The anniversary is soon. What am I going to do?
Year 1: I haven't spoken to him in months. I haven't thought about it in days. I still feel as if hes on top of me, why can't I wash him away?
Its an uphill battle with myself and others. Some days I can't get out of bed or even feel like breathing.
But I try not to let him get to me. Because if he sees my weakness from what hes done,
He's won.
Nov 22, 2015
Nov 22, 2015 at 11:26 PM UTC
I was such a beautiful child,
With my shoulder lengths of
Sun bleached barley.
Smiled little pearl soldiers in
Line. Old glassesless ladies
Took me for
Girlchild.
But I grew twisted like an
Appletree around a
Graveyard path
Lightpost.
Teeth came out crooked.
Hair fell out at thirteen.
I was big for my age;
Grew other hair in places
I never knew I would.
My voice broke as if in
Sorrow over the child
Inside that had
Died. After that I spoke as if
Into a bucket.
Sometimes I catch my father
Gazing at me through a slight veil
Of grievance for that same
Child.
I would never dream
To blame him.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 11:35 AM UTC
I’m rendered powerless. Just about breathless. I watch as each layer of clothing gravitates toward the floor. Strip off the clothes that enveloped his beauty. My knees begin to fail me. Through his stare it feels as though he’s already probing every crevice of my being. Eye-fingers ravish me. He’s bare. My eyes haven’t left him. He smirks, refusing to leave me a spectator. Clammy hands penetrate the chill of the tile lined room. He strips me. I'm sure he senses me shaking.. goosebumps begin to rise. We step into shower. The tap is high, the temperature hot. The passion as well. He’s capturing me. Rapturing my frame, Grasping me. Gasping for me. He pulls me into him.. into the air. My legs incoherently wrap around him. The hot vapors aren't from the water, but our lust we heed. It’s wet. "Think ya can make it to the bedroom?" My throat closes. Barley touching, the pleasure, pressure, of his words render me unable to respond clearly. I nearly whimper out an answer. The smirk returns. This act meant for cleansing morphs into such a ***** one. I’m miserable within myself, the sheer amount of desire burns. Pushing me to the wall his body presses against me. He pushes into me. His hips. His lips. I feel him sliding in and out, violating, his tongue twisting around my own. His body as well. We’re intertwined...
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 5:20 PM UTC
Blessed are we all to live in a time
when the love of Craft beer exceeds that for wine.
Hops, malt and barley all now rule the day
When brewed up together in a nice I.P.A.
Who cares if some hipsters choose to babble away
about hints of oak in some obscure Chardonnay.
We are no longer limited to our father’s Budweiser.
The vast choice of beers would astound those old timers!
Cherry Wheat, pumpkin, and Oktoberfest
You’ll fall down on your face ere you’ve tried all the rest.
As Ben Franklin stated wittily and succinctly”
“Beer is the proof God meant man to be happy.”
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 7:56 PM UTC
she’s skinny
**
her waist is the size of the outside of her mirror
her stomach is empty
when she breaths in
she sorta stays there
**
but she’s skinny
she’s skinny
she cuts
more than she eats
but she’s skinny
she’s skinny
**she pretends her birthday makeup will change
anything
**
but she’s skinny
she’s skinny
**
she can barley breathe**
but she’s skinny
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 7:51 AM UTC
I Used To Be an **Optimistic
Child**
Believing everything was black and white.
~~~~
It was the first summer in our new
home.
I was six or seven
My Father needed help in the lawn so feeling
in a helping mood, I went out.
His hands were in the dirt and his forehead
was bronzed.
He waved his arm at a small,
Delicate flower.
Go pull weeds.
Not one to question him while, he was busy,
I went over to inspect the flower- i mean ****
How could something so tiny, even more do than my hands,
be considered a ****
My tiny mind thought weeds were
dark green and barley clinging
to life, with thorns that sliced at
other helpless plants and animals.
Almost like bad people.
I imagine it was then that
My small mind had begun
to grasp
at the idea that plants and people alike
could deceive you.
Apr 20, 2015
Apr 20, 2015 at 5:32 PM UTC
What is pink? a rose is pink
By a fountain's brink.
What is red? a poppy's red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro'.
What is white? a swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange!
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I'm lost
I don't know the time
I see her but she ain't mine
The evilness is changing my mind
Endless ways of getting out this life
You can't save me
You've already broke me
You can't change me
I'm sitting here in the dark
Going through my life
I'm just trying to survive
There's writings on the wall
I'm barley able to crawl
I want to say goodbye to my life
But I'm not strong enough to grab that knife
This is a sign, so there I lie
I guess I'm not ready to die
Feb 27, 2018
Feb 27, 2018 at 12:41 PM UTC
The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley...
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp...
We moved quick and sudden in our own country.
The priest lay behind ditches with the *****
A people hardly marching... on the hike...
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
Until... on Vinegar Hill... the final conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August... the barley grew up out of our grave.
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AUTUMN is over the long leaves that love us,
And over the mice in the barley sheaves;
Yellow the leaves of the rowan above us,
And yellow the wet wild-strawberry leaves.
The hour of the waning of love has beset us,
And weary and worn are our sad souls now;
Let us patt, ere the season of passion forget us,
With a kiss and a tear on thy drooping brow.
5.5k
I may of had shown you,
*my body,
on my camera,
on my Skype,*
But Know that I had trusted you,
*with my body,
when you said you weren't recording,
when you really were,*
Know you,
*can never be forgive for the blackmail you pulled on me,
the hurtful words you mindlessly sent like typing away at,
the someone who's nothing is a funny little innocent game,*
and you,
*hurt me the most when you could type away all day long,
like the fact that I was a human being with a soul meant nothing,
like how your words of trust should of been left for nothing,*
But you,
*play it off as if it was a joke because I did something wrong,
When I asked you as I cried because I though my life was over,
When ever I hurt you what ever I said I'm sorry*
**I said I'm ******* sorry to you,**
*When you should of said it to me,
you should of stopped ******* with me,
you just wouldn't stop,*
I told you,
*That I barley am going anywhere,
and you don't get to take the little hope I have left,
and throw it the **** away like everyone else,*
I told you,
*that Yes I made a mistake in trusting you,
but I have been ******* over by too many people,
but I never once thought it be you,*
I told you,
*That I never asked to get *****
I have no value in the body my soul walks in each and every day,
I told you everything you already knew about me,*
and you,
*still didn't ******* stop trying to hurt me,
you told me to **** myself,
you said I'm nothing more then a fat **** for guys who can't get anyone,*
you,
******* you made me cry even harder,
telling me your going to post it on my Facebook,
telling me your going to send it to my school,*
You,
*Made me black out,
because I couldn't calm down,
Because I couldn't deal with you and everyone in this **** town,*
You.
*were not going to be the reason I cant leave this hell hole,
but you were the reason I broke a almost four month clean stride,
but I don't remember **** from that night,*
**I wrote **** you,**
Justin *on my skin as if that ink could get all the pain you caused out,
and it clearly couldn't
and I told you,*
you win,
*because I didn't wanna play with the devil,
when you had no sympathy for others,
when you held my entire life in your* hand,
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 9:41 AM UTC
As the warm days of summer give way to chill, and shadows grow longer as days shed their hours.
High winds and rain storms scrub the tired landscape down.
Colours are changing from rich green to gold, from yellow to red and orange to brown.
The grain has been gathered, wheat, barley and oats, cut and collected, sifted and sorted and put into store.
Grown by God, and by man with machine and by effort of hand.
Poppies and stalks now mark the spot, of the return for their labour. The wealth of the land.
Birds follow the tractor, rising and falling, swirling and soaring they move like a cloud.
The farmer is out and turning the stubble into the ground.
Rooks and crows, gulls and wood pigeons, starlings and magpies follow him round.
Hay long since mown is now bailed and in barns, or rolled up and bagged, ferments now in high silage towers.
The countryside has yielded reward for all Adam’s toil.
Work done in rhythm with the seasons, sowing, growing, reaping, ploughing and tilling the soil.
Gathering goodness, from garden, and greenhouse, carrots and courgettes, tomatoes in bunches.
Fresher than any you can get in the shops.
Picking the bounty gleaned from the hedgerow. Rosehips and cobnuts, damsons and hops.
Elder and sorrel, mushrooms and puffballs, sour green crab apples, and brambles in tangles.
Sloes that were missed by the late winter frost.
Not all are pleasant and some really can hurt you, pick only those that you know and trust.
Take full advantage of God’s generosity, share it with gladness, with thanks, there is plenty for all.
Sticky syrups and cider, wines, cordial and beer.
Pies, puddings, sorbets and ice creams, jam, jelly, and chutney and enough pickles to last into next year.
As the warm days of summer give way to chill, and shadows grow longer as days shed their hours.
High winds and rain storms scrub the tired landscape down.
Colours are changing from rich green to gold, from yellow to red and orange to brown.
Oct 23, 2011
Oct 23, 2011 at 3:16 PM UTC
Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight
made his pallet on the threshing floor
where all day he had worked, and now he slept
among the bushels of threshed wheat.
The old man owned wheatfields and barley,
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded.
No filth soured the sweetness of his well.
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.
His beard was silver as a brook in April.
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said,
Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them.
The man's mind, clear of untoward feeling,
clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes.
His heaped granaries spilled over always
toward the poor, no less than public fountains.
Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen.
He was generous, and moderate. Women held him
worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome,
but to him in his old age came greatness.
An old man, nearing his first source, may find
the timelessness beyond times of trouble.
And though fire burned in young men's eyes,
to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light.
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Our eco-friendly toothbrushes sit together in the cup on the counter but today I didn’t brush my teeth. The snow is great. Want to know why, because the snow doesn’t give a **** how anybody else feels and it doesn’t ***** its feelings all over twitter. The snow knows that nobody cares.
The snow never says “anyways” or “whatever” or “oh god” and the snow doesn’t undermine what I have to say. The snow is cold and it ***** but at least it doesn’t question me. It doesn’t ask me if I need space. Nope. It just keeps snowing.
The snow and I are on good terms. It isn’t polite and it doesn’t try to be anything that it is not. It doesn’t cook barley with kale and it definitely doesn’t pretend to like it.
May 1, 2013
May 1, 2013 at 2:31 PM UTC
The world is like a bubble.
Floating,
barley on the edge,
ready to pop,
at any moment.
Apr 8, 2015
Apr 8, 2015 at 2:52 PM UTC
Many speak of love in spring of their lives but I felt the winter deep set in my bones when I was young. A stone cold dessert of bone and ash the pieces of my life irrevocably torn from me before you had found me in my hollowed out hell. You were the first light I could see through the fog. Behind the curtain of our ***** faith we hid our bodies in each other. And all that was ash was suddenly silk and satin.
It was a a failed baptism to be born into this world stuck beneath the surface drowning in a guilt not my own and a shame in my heart. Never before had I felt air like you breathed into me in that book store corner our faces flushed and barley touched.
I am sure I was to be pulled into the drink if not for your love. Your kindness and rawness shown back at me in that fire you carried in your hair and your eyes. At just 16 and now at 28 you have been gone longer then I ever knew you and yet the memories feel longer still. I still see movement behind that veil but you are not behind it and I am haunted by that shadow. I still feel the heat of your fire, but it is the shadow of a forever fading warmth to never truly leave and let me chill and yet to never find the breadth to allow me true comfort. I fear I am to become a wraith in your absence although I walk forever in the sun you showed. Over the hunch of the earth I have traveled now, seeking my comfort. Seeking your fire again and if I am to become a wraith, of ash with only the memory of fire to torment me until my end I will be grateful it was your fire. And when I fade even as a wraith into the cusp of the world and the void takes my memory of you I will find you again in that place. Never have I been so sure that I lost the love of my life. I have returned to winter knowing warmth and am more and less for it.
And I wouldn’t trade it for gold.
I love you. And I always will.
Oct 7, 2022
Oct 7, 2022 at 9:03 PM UTC
Already the month
of August 2018,
May never become
a je June'm
(Forget-me-not)
time of year,
especially for nouveau
homeless and,
penniless residents,
(now more like worrier),
who reside in the
(burnt to a crisp)
Golden State where,
towering uncontrollable
wild fire infernos veer
really did tax mental,
physical, and spiritual
oye vey iz mare (to
the bajillion power
of Google Plex) their
heirlooms, mementos,
and trappings of
das kapital lifestyle
went up in smoke,
which tragedy didst seer
the eyes (yes, iz traumatic,
but also the air)
looms with toxic
particulate matter,
though concerned former
propertied owners
(now ashen faced)
as utter grief doth rear
a scorched (bumping) ugly head,
yet the onset of Autumn,
(and the main
purport of this poem)
(oh my dog, that twill be
in approximately three weeks,
when Eastern Orthodox Church
denotes beginning of ecclesiastical
annum mull house
for straight or queer
(these times opening
doors to LGBT, or GLBT
(an initialism that
stands for lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender),
nonetheless history
replete with app pear
chock full of factoids such as:
September (Latin septem,
"seven") with near
exhaustive steeped in
pagan glory of antiquity.
Ancient Roman observances
for September include:
Ludi Romani, originally celebrated
September 12 - September 14,
later extended to
September 5 to September 19.
In 1st century BC, an extra day added
in honor of deified
Julius Caesar on 4 September.
Epulum Jovis held: September 13.
Ludi Triumphales held: September 18–22.
Septimontium celebrated September, and
December 11 on later calendars
September called "harvest month"
in Charlemagne's calendar.
September corresponds partly to
Fructidor and partly to Vendémiaire
of first French republic.
On Usenet, September 1993
(Eternal September) never ended.
September called Herbstmonat,
harvest month, in Switzerland.
The Anglo-Saxons called
month Gerstmonath,
barley month, that crop
then usually harvested.
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 5:00 PM UTC
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the ****** starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
In the sun that is young once only,
Time let me play and be
Golden in the mercy of his means,
And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
And the sabbath rang slowly
In the pebbles of the holy streams.
All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
And playing, lovely and watery
And fire green as grass.
And nightly under the simple stars
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
Flying with the ricks, and the horses
Flashing into the dark.
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
With the dew, come back, the **** on his shoulder: it was all
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
The sky gathered again
And the sun grew round that very day.
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
Out of the whinnying green stable
On to the fields of praise.
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
In the sun born over and over,
I ran my heedless ways,
My wishes raced through the house high hay
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
Before the children green and golden
Follow him out of grace.
Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would
take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
In the moon that is always rising,
Nor that riding to sleep
I should hear him fly with the high fields
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.
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Liquid Impulses seep through my bones
and become an unavoidable poison
with the power to shatter my glass organs right through my bleeding skin
I am getting you ***** but you handle secrets well
anything to make you feel more special than standing at the airport making small talk with every pair of lungs so it doesn't look like you're facing all this mass alone
I asked you politely to stop forcing continents and veiny constellations on me
but nightly pleasure is your forte
and I'm not going to pretend I want you to stay
you have handguns that you pray you'll never use, during your long visits to ceremony
you call yourself lonely, but can barley say it because like always you're loosing your voice
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 1:09 PM UTC
Whisky, “The Water of Life”,
******** burning all down my chest.
Opening up my mind to endless imaginations
So I can put the world to rights
Like Superman in his pomp.
Feel that glow,
Spreading like a forest fire.
Feelgood Factor
Fathomless in its depth.
Who cares what peat, in what glens
Or valleys it came from.
Or what precipitation
Bathed those golden barley ears
On Celtic hillsides.
I’ll drink any Whisky,
Single or blend
White oak cask or not.
So long as it gives me that buzz
And blows my mind.
Inspiring the best
Or worst
In me.
Paul Butters
Jun 30, 2017
Jun 30, 2017 at 10:32 AM UTC
Like barley bending
In low fields by the sea,
Singing in hard wind
Ceaselessly;
Like barley bending
And rising again,
So would I, unbroken,
Rise from pain;
So would I softly,
Day long, night long,
Change my sorrow
Into song.
3k
you kidding me, right?
nachos? tacos? tortilla wraps?
guacamole molé molé?
sombrero(s)...
the revised eastern european
moustache?
tequila!
that's it?
well... not if you consider
the second tier of soy boys -
the ones that drink that...
budscheiss that's
"der könig aus bier"...
one word... no... actually two:
CER-VE(H)-ZA(H) -
probably the spanish word,
that sounds better than all
the other spanish words...
what did mexíxíxíxíco give
us?
the orthodox script
of a german beer:
yeast, hops, barley, malt,
water... fizz: boom!
a fine summer's day...
mexíxíxíxíco beer?
MALTED, BARLEY...
don't ask me how the genius
figured out a smoothness
so subtle,
that you actually had to shove
a lime wedge into the neck
of the bottle...
or, as i did - buying an almost litre
sized bottle,
and a lime -
looking at this ***** goliath
at the checkout thinking:
david?
am i david?
did we really enslave such people?
david, meet goliath...
goliath wanders off like some
happy ****** giggling and brings
another strawberry milkshake
to the checkout...
so the west, enslaved these
nearing 7ft Baobabs?
king david's audacity,
nothing more...
so i buy the CO(H)-RHO-NA(H),
and a lime (30 pence a piece)...
**** no knife...
guess teeth will have to do...
shove a whole lime in bits and bites
and walk on...
seriously?
guacamole molé molé?
that's the best you can do?
drinking a beer with lime...
compared to the h'american
budscheiss?
who... apart from the japanese...
extracts alcohol...
from: ******* rice!
malted, barley...
whoever that sergio
sanchez was...
hats off to him...
sometimes it's just nice...
to take a break from the heavy cavalry,
orthodoxy brew of german
beers...
americans?
know jackshit about brewing
a decent beer...
mexicans?
they put a lime in it!
**** you have to drink it!
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 6:44 PM UTC