"belltower" poems
Singing of children
in the night silence:
Light of the stream, and
calm of the fountain!
THE CHILDREN
What does you heard hold,
divine in its gladness?
MYSELF
A peal from the belltower,
lost in the dimness.
THE CHILDREN
You leave us singing
in the small plaza.
Light of the steram,
and calm of the fountain!
What do you hold in
your hands of sprintime?
MYSELF
A rose of blood, and
a lily of whiteness.
THE CHILDREN
Dip them in water
of the song of the ages.
Light of the stream,
and calm of the fountain!
What does your tongue feel,
scarlet and thirsting?
MYSELF
A taste of the bones
of my giant forehead.
THE CHILDREN
Drink the still water
of the song of the ages.
Light of the stream,
and calm of the fountain!
Why do you roam far
from the small plaza?
MYSELF
I go to find Mages
and find princesses.
THE CHILDREN
Who showed you the road there,
the road of the poets?
MYSELF
The fount and the stream of
the song of the ages.
THE CHILDREN
Do you go far from
the aerth and the ocean?
MYSELF
It's filled with light, is
my heart of silk, and
with bells that are lost,
with bees and with liles,
and I will go far off,
behind those hills there,
close to the starlight,
to ask of the Christ there
Lord, to return me
my child's oul, ancient,
ripened with legends,
with a cap of feathers,
and a sword of wood.
THE CHILDREN
You leave us singing
in the small plaza.
Light of the stream, and
calm of the fountain!
Enormous pupils
of the parched palm fronds
hurt by the wind, they
weep their dead leaves.
4.1k
Tick Tock goes the clock of wanting to hit the pipe again
Tick Tock goes the clock of wanting to be numb again
Tick Tock goes the clock of the flame burning against the glass
Tick Tock goes the clock of the drug melting away
Tick Tock goes the clock of inhaling danger into my lungs
Tick Tock goes the clock of exhaling the smoke
Tick Tock goes the clock of the high warming my body
Tick Tock goes the clock of desperately wanting more
Tick Tock goes the clock of crushing more danger
Tick Tock goes the clock of rolling the dollar bill
Tick Tock goes the clock of snorting away my problems
Tick Tock goes the clock of a rush of euphoria
Tick Tock goes the clock of redoing everything again
Tick Tock goes the clock of coming down again
Tick Tock goes the clock of endless sleepless nights
Tick Tock goes the clock of hearing my mother and father cry
Tick Tock goes the clock of the haunting silence in my room
Tick Tock goes the clock of my heart beating inside my chest
Tick Tock goes the clock of picking up the pen
Tick Tock goes the clock of the tear hitting the paper
Tick Tock goes the clock of wanting to be numb again
Tick Tock goes the clock of the trembling hands
Tick Tock goes the clock of folding the paper
Tick Tock goes the clock of whispering one last goodbye
Tick Tock goes the clock of me hanging in the belltower
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 10:05 PM UTC
This is a call to Arms
The time for action is now.
Our government is preparing for War
They're building walls and cutting ties
to conquer us they must divide
us from ourselves and from our world
This is a call to Arms
The time for Action is now
The board is set, and we, the Pawns, are all in our place, facing an enemy we are told to defeat,
though they appear to be identical to you and me.
This is a Call to Arms
The time for action is now
We must revolt
Lest we be sacrificed to Kings
To Queens, to Bishops
To the knights of the realm and the castles they call home.
This is a call to Arms
The time for action is now
We must band together to be heard
We will not be cannon fodder
For the frontlines of a culture War
This is a Call to Arms
The time for action is now.
Defeat looms ever closer
The Reckoning draws nigh
Will you stand and deliver
Or will you bow down and submit?
Will you face the coming adversity,
or brave the consequences
should you turn your back to it?
This is a call to arms
They've taken land and sea and air,
Poisoned them to **** us,
and then billed us for the repair.
The enemy surrounds us,
Threatening life and limb and freedom.
Demanding fealty and obedience.
Demanding tribute for the war chest,
And soldiers for the ranks,
Demanding that we pay the cost while they set price.
They want us broken, not just beaten
Only unconditional surrender will suffice
This is a call to Arms
The time for action is now
To chant the castles down
To fortify the streets
Against the tyranny and the hate,
Against powers of subjugation,
Against the evils of the world
now
Jan 27, 2017
Jan 27, 2017 at 7:45 PM UTC
I was born in a story you wouldn't believe.
I was born in the back of a minivan
sitting on the rails of a one track mind.
I was born out of a need for gluttony.
My father couldn't handle my beauty
and committed himself to 50 years of tilting
shining self destruction. I was born atop a mountain
that was once a molehill. No one could see
the rising sun for all the jutting inconsistencies
of the heaving throne beneath me.
I was born in and out of a wave violently
caressing the coast of a chiming belltower,
tulip and rose blooms ripped from their stems.
Mar 7, 2013
Mar 7, 2013 at 7:08 PM UTC
I belong in the
dark rain
I reign in the deep fire
I belong in the joy and the pain
the love with no name
my weakness refrain
I lie
I conquer my desire
I reign in the echoes of my shame
I sleep in tomorrow's loving arms
I search for the beast to be tamed
but of all I seek
passion has branded me true
The toil of the earth paid my price
but I'm alive in the emptiness of cost
I'm in love
with devotion
a mistress whose price is unending
and gladly paid
I die to be her passenger
I die because death is my coin
but I'm disposed in the youth
of my innocence
where it yet knew the devil
It dances now,
steps wrought with despair
but every step leads me closer
to the peace beyond
I
never
belonged
in the ocean of the ordinary,
my wings can fly galaxies with a beat
evade calamity with a whisper
champion defeat with a bow
and embrace the inevitable with grace
and we awake...
In the hour of reckoning
light will shed upon the abyss
and we will learn
I never belonged with your enemies
because mine clothed me with armor
before the storm
I remained unbattered
unfazed by power's ultimate purchase
I lingered dead,
yet undying
my victory transposed into immortality
Thus, with enemies such
who needs a friend like you
not for whom I belong
not for a morsel of truth.
Mar 5, 2022
Mar 5, 2022 at 8:36 PM UTC
You used to be there on the other side
And on this one, not trying to hide from light
Were both trying to move away from the past
But I can still call you anytime
If i want to hear your answering machine
And the sound of you ceasing to care
Anymore vacant than the air filled with spirits
Your head is scared by dizzying heights.
As i dangle my feet from the belltower
Craning my head around side to side
To see who is speaking bellow
You leave me to my fascinations
And bid me a silent farewell
Now we both haunt each other
We make beautiful music turn stale
I spend my life weighing my heart
Against my **** and my brain
On divinity, morality, and Anubis's scale
Laughing he says you are my toll to pass
Onto the land of whatever i truly want
Since i will never know what i need
And you will never know what you want
And we give and take quite equally
You take the life out of me, i leave you guilty
We are such a perfect couple, of suckers
Blood dripping from two puncture wounds
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 12:10 PM UTC
here's to the dragging feet of 8 AM classes
here's to sunny afternoons and snowy evenings
the belltower marks time,
cutting through the haze of drunken nights
here's to the quiet murmur of a somber crowd
here's to candles commemorating lives lost
here's to generations of footsteps gracing the bricks of the Oval
here's to many more
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 8:01 PM UTC
I, too, can write passion poems:
(and if you were a rose I'd pick you and stick you
in water till you withered and died and
everyone would comment
on your color
and refined shape.)
so let's collide with night through our noses:
wake to your banging fist on my swinging door
and binge on bad ideas and beatless songs
till distended with poetry we grow ill and collectively
**** sunsets onto those 365 well-ruled pages
that we pray to in pews in this church of hedonists--
every book a bible, all manuals for ************
so at dawn we
criticize the sunrise, hang ourselves
from the belltower, for kicks.
or lash limbs together under covers,
those well-rehearsed kisses
a myriad of plots:
and with our bony fingers,
tie the sumblimest of knots.
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 6:05 PM UTC
you're so brittle
sometimes I feel stronger than that
but you make me seem like some
stained glass window in the belltower
of a church, you don't want to touch me
for the sake of a metaphor you heard once--
but I won't collect dust on your mantle
to satisfy your mirror tropes and sweet,
sweet, nothings.
that's exactly what they are, right? more than
once i've peeled back the ***** of a wound just
to make a point, to emphasize a passion, only to be met
with is that any way to live? As if you were accosting me
in the street for the birds in the trees or dirt in the cracks
as if you were saying is that any way to be you?
I don't know, is it? Bare your heart! you tell me,
and I do, I bear it.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 10:43 PM UTC
i. calypso
in my soul I seek the
calypso
who hides me
from myself
to keep me for herself
against all odds
I seek her
daily
and thus am
lost
to myself
ii. stupa
but this odyssey
now
has other rules
to lose
that self of unremitting
joylessness
who professes no love
for me
who compensates
with fantasies
of love unrequited
who keeps me yearning
for a ghost in a glass pain
who keeps me blinded and cold-pressed
by her charms
iii. belltower
in the rugged terrain
of the soul stands
a belltower
a beacon of measured
tones
sounding for Love
with Love
in Love
of Love
a hermes bell
commanding me back to myself
c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater
Dec 2, 2017
Dec 2, 2017 at 11:37 AM UTC
Ash buried graveyards what sick thoughts I have of you on these nights,
These nights where I dream of love and hope to die in my sleep
The sky falls vivid and streaked with incendiary demise and I keep steady the best I can under the weight of total collapse
But here the dead bare the weight of suns within their broken chests and I am still hung up on my same belltower clockwork systematic ********
Awake, remember, sleep, forget
Purgatory cycles in ash tray limbo wrapped in the tea leaves of misplaced fortunes
Irreverent shadows tripping lucid dream aneurysms down both ends of the block
And ******* fathers moving dope from greed to desperation to section 8 prisons
The headlines on the marquee monoliths read:
"There is nowhere to go but up"
And this is the junkies last thought before he trails off into the sweet kiss of sunset
This is the last thought I have before I put down the pen and lie to myself that I've done the best I could
What did you expect, honestly?
Aug 28, 2015
Aug 28, 2015 at 4:21 PM UTC
My poetry will circumnavigate the world,
And ride the waves beyond the continents.
Maybe someday I'll become translated into many languages.
Somewhere my words will grace many moments.
Even though I was born to disadvantages,
My poetry has resonated beyond the Ghetto.
Sonewen, the womb of abject poverty,
Who once prayed for the children of Soweto
Look at where you placed my poetic identity
See what your genes engraved in my DNA?
Just listen to the poet in me roar like a lion.
Old verses I wrote from the belltower of the College of West Africa,
Rhymes I perfected in the Chapel of AME Zion,
Has become spoken words I penned in Europe,
Disseminated daily on platforms on the internet.
Great words of motivation engineered for hope.
I was born to write, for this journey I am set.
IB-Poetry©
01/02/2019
#Bassapoet©
Jan 2, 2019
Jan 2, 2019 at 2:36 AM UTC
In context,
"You're a ghost to me now."
doesn't seem so bad.
it only continues my legacy
with imagination.
If I'm a ghost,
you're a priest.
Just don't be surprised
by the haunted belltower.
Oct 17, 2018
Oct 17, 2018 at 2:01 AM UTC
Confiteor Deo omnipotenti.
The old monk black robed
moved side to side down
the cloister a wrecked ship
in the high seas of his age
as the bell tolled for Lauds.
Et vobis fratres and come
she said bring me your soft
spoils bring me to my highest
heaven so I did. Without free
will there can be no sin or
virtue without free will you
are free of all responsibilities
Dom Thomas said to us. Quia
peccavi nimis the young monk
confessed. Belltower seen
above trees from the roadside
and heard further afield than that.
George and I pulling the bells
as we shown the day before.
Cogitatione verbo et opere
et omissione I said in my inner
darkness. Dom Charles twisted
the apple just so and said that
is how it is done.Mea culpa mea
culpa mea maxima culpa having
free will is to be culpable from the
beginning and having free will is
necessary factor for any sinning.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 8:40 AM UTC
My poetry will circumnavigate the world
And ride the waves beyond the continents.
Maybe become translated into many languages
Somewhere my words will grace many moments
Even though I was born to disadvantages
My poetry has resonated beyond the Ghetto.
Sonewen , the womb of abject poverty,
Who once prayed for the children of Soweto
Look at where you placed my poetic identity
See what your genes engraved in my DNA
Just listen to the poet in me roar like a lion.
Old verses I wrote from the belltower of CWA
Rhymes I perfected in the Chapel of AME Zion
Have become spoken words I penned in Europe
Disseminated daily on platforms on the internet
Words of motivation engineered for hope
I was born to write, for this journey I am set.
Jan 31, 2018
Jan 31, 2018 at 5:37 PM UTC