"bindweed" poems
Pull the weeds, plant the seeds
this is what the garden said
choose what stays
choose what goes
be mindful when you do
the silver oaks darken the sun in the mind
trim the trunks, so light may you find
the bindweed traps the heart
clip the vine, free the art
the poison oak stings your delicate hand
let the goats eat these weeds right off the land
the pompous grass clouds the soul in your eyes
pluck these weeds before they set and rise
the deadweed piles darken your spirit
compost the weeds, lighten your merit
plant the seeds of love, hope and color
water with nourishment, fertilize with wonder
and you will warm the heart of another
and then,
begin again,
pull the weeds
plant the seeds
May 26, 2019
May 26, 2019 at 9:03 PM UTC
Some say you can't read someone's thoughts.
Some claim to read them like a book.
It's phantom pages may engage
but I move on from thought to thought.
Those readings choke like a bindweed cloak,
coiling, twining, transmuting brutes.
Stereotypes shape many folk,
stifling, stunting valuable fruit.
Sep 18, 2015
Sep 18, 2015 at 11:02 AM UTC
*March 2002
(inspired by William Shakespeare; and an eerie
floating drowned woman in the movie Titanic)*
Adrift amid the bindweed, through the reeds,
Watching the sky with deep unblinking eyes,
She passes where the turquoise mayfly feeds,
Oblivious of all that swims or flies.
Red flowered chiffon billows to her hands
Open like water lilies in the sun,
Her skin's the colour of tropical sands,
Her russet hair shines bright as copper spun.
Fabulous jewels languish on her breast,
Rich spoils of love rendered useless in death,
Her parted lips make unspoken behest;
The rosy portal of her final breath.
Now all is cold where roiling passion flamed,
As jealous earth mourns what the river claimed.
Feb 28, 2013
Feb 28, 2013 at 4:42 PM UTC
Green is the sky and all the lights of heaven
Are peeking eyes, up to us in given blossoms
Of the flowering clover and bright are new daisies,
Wee sparks of fire who squad, roams of butterflies
And bees on bouncing airstruck mission waysides,
The shot stems of wildlings breech, lancing into sky.
I am the gardener with suns aborning in my eyes,
To pull the weeds wildly and declare all is garland,
I hear trumpet of bindweed, see hearts in the leafs
Of coltsfoot, crowns in the thistle, tapestries, vines
For dress of hair and eye and walls on cottage dry,
Are lovemakes true and keepsakes of joyous times.
Aug 12, 2015
Aug 12, 2015 at 11:24 AM UTC
To be born, is to emerge as a soul within a verse
existing through eyes, ears, nose, and feelers.
Persistent as the bindweed thriving in a blind spot
and the rat-fleas riding around in the cellar.
All life contains this soul, it’s in; the drumming and the drift,
the way one shifts to their feet when battling the throes,
and the persistence of plague, which
encodes each cell with a rhythm and a role.
To drown in a river is to **** that portion of the river’s soul,
as there is no way; no lungs, no mouth
to resuscitate waters that can no longer flow.
The soul needs a body to show; the body needs a soul to breathe out
to be re-born, is to re-exist in recurse of a soul already given,
that is, unless, the soul has already been driven out.
S.L. Weisend- 2014
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 2:36 AM UTC
They say,
the Scarecrow stares straight
and never blinks
he thinks, but never speaks,
just listens to the writhing vines of bindweed:
Turn the earth, sweet arteries.
They say,
the Scarecrow was once a man.
He had hands that knew
perfect flavor of skin
And had red, winding veins of his own.
But that was a long time ago.
They say,
the Scarecrow blistered his tongue
on blunderbuss barrels;
Spat bullets.
Waged war against himself,
and lost his speech when the time came
to beg for forgiveness.
They say,
That by August, the Scarecrow's
Blood forgot to boil,
or simply didn't care anymore.
That when he found love fleeting
it was indifference, not hate,
that desiccated his chest
like prairie drought.
Dear Hollow Martyr who fears not
the white heat of sparks
or dry-weather wildfires.
Stand devout in your inertia,
bleeding apathy like canyons bleed echoes.
After all, it's all you've got to offer
except dead stillness, they say,
so callous it keeps the crows away.
Nov 17, 2012
Nov 17, 2012 at 9:17 PM UTC
'Listen, now, verse should be as natural
As the small tuber that feeds on muck
And grows slowly from obtuse soil
To the white flower of immortal beauty.'
'Natural, hell! What was it Chaucer
Said once about the long toil
That goes like blood to the poem's making?
Leave it to nature and the verse sprawls,
Limp as bindweed, if it break at all
Life's iron crust. Man, you must sweat
And rhyme your guts taut, if you'd build
Your verse a ladder.'
'You speak as though
No sunlight ever surprised the mind
Groping on its cloudy path.'
'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window
Before it enter a dark room.
Windows don't happen.'
So two old poets,
Hunched at their beer in the low haze
Of an inn parlour, while the talk ran
Noisily by them, glib with prose.
2.3k
Clearing ivy,
pulling up handfuls of
choking bindweed,
uncovering delicate
wildflowers in
neglected garden corners,
and there’s this
tiny bird
lying in the dirt.
Feathers sparkle
pretty and golden,
as fairytale light
falls through
parted vines.
Surely dead,
but then
- like Snow White
surfacing from
magic apple-induced
dormancy -
the bird moves,
woken by the kiss
of sunlight and
being witnessed,
and seems to breathe.
A gloved finger’s
exploratory, leathery ****
a moment to realise,
then disgust,
sharp recoil.
A wing lifts;
gleaming feathers
parting reveal the
crawling mechanics inside,
the writhing, parasitic mess
behind the sick illusion,
the briefly faked miracle
of something
like life.
Away over a fence,
Union bunting
***** erratic and jarring
in a neighbour’s garden.
In a stuffy town hall,
the town band is practising
God Save The Queen, but
still can’t keep time.
Our betters wave to us from
high palace balconies
and golden coaches, and we
cheer them for it.
There’s such hunger, such
pain and desperation out there,
you can feel it, if you
forget to stop yourself.
There’s so much tragedy and injustice,
you have to go numb or go crazy.
There’s no future we can see,
and the past has been rewritten
to reflect the views
of focus groups,
fascists and fantasists.
And there’s a bird
lying in the dirt,
garlanded by fragrant petals,
feathers flashing like jewels,
so dead
it looks like
it’s breathing.
Jun 3, 2022
Jun 3, 2022 at 7:31 AM UTC
Vermilion skies pass me by
and into the night the chasm opines
an imagined Ferris wheel at a carnival
turns contra against smothering bindweed,
is this a metaphor for confusion ?
a turnaround of sorts
and with a habitual doff of my hat I bid
to draw this recurring dream to an end,
the naked view now seems surreal.
Should I then hear the adjacent marching feet of others
surrendering their names in juxtaposition.
Mar 6, 2014
Mar 6, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
I saw the bindweed curl about your tomb
Whereon I set a rose, now short of breath,
And marked the similarity of death
Between your chance to live, its time to bloom.
For though your maker overflowed your hours
Yet still upon your blossom climbed the ****
You noticed but did nothing; thus its seed
Cast round the earth, and choked your budding flowers.
But brazen trumpets round its conquering green
This bindweed blossom, in the rose's stead;
Just so, before you took this rosy bed
You sometimes woke and showed what might have been.
But now your chance is gone as chances go.
I've learned your lesson. Let me find the ***
May 24, 2010
May 24, 2010 at 11:06 AM UTC
The bluebells whisper in the dead of the night
Sweet nothings are all the bindweed hears.
On and on they go till it gets quite light
till the moon disappears and the mist clears
The daffodils stir and join in mid stream
without knowledge of the subject or occasion
A glow casts a shadow from a new sunbeam
allowing the rest of the forest to awaken.
Story tellers, nothing but story tellers
but then there is not much else to do.
Which is fine for most of the forest dwellers
If only the story tellers - the bluebells knew.
Mar 24, 2016
Mar 24, 2016 at 1:25 PM UTC
Don't speak to me of those droughted days
when you reigned over me for twenty years.
Your dark clouds planted themselves
above my garden like seeds wanting
to rebirth a strangled youth.
I sickled down row after row:
your bindweed, your choke pear.
Purple flowers strung about my neck;
those bitter fruits, I swallowed whole:
a peck of yoke, two bushels of anguish.
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 4:18 PM UTC
You grew onto me
You rooted yourself deeply
Within the gardens of my soul
But you weren't pigweed
Nor bindweed
Oh ..No Dear..
You were a crimson red Begonia
Glistening so beautifully
In the rays of the morning sun..
Feb 11, 2019
Feb 11, 2019 at 2:34 PM UTC
filled with daffodils and sunflowers,
carnations and roses
but overgrown with bindweed, deep-rooted thistles and
quickly-spreading dandelions
the gardener just stood by and watched it grow
it got worse and worse right before their eyes
sure. they did the basic maintenance
so the neighbours wouldn't notice too much
but the weeds kept winning.
lately it's been getting better. they used to be
ashamed of their mess
and they didn't let anyone into the garden
but now they realize that such an overgrown garden
is too big a burden for one person to handle
they have friends who want to help get rid of the weeds
and bit by bit, they're starting to clean it up
Jan 23, 2023
Jan 23, 2023 at 4:59 AM UTC
I am the lover of the stars, flowers, and the wind,
I desperately love the highest mountain,
Just like the way I love the core of the earth.
I love all things with their energy, concerns, and occupations,
After the fashion of my love of raging rivers.
I love the dawn & the dusk equally,
As I love the tortoise and the hare,
The unknown and the known similarly.
After all, the bindweed is found as beautiful when compared to the rose,
And all things deserve my love, which they certainly get,
Solely for existing.
Feb 12, 2018
Feb 12, 2018 at 12:31 PM UTC
I see
The green of ivy and bindweed
Drenched by the
Flooding water
I hear
The cries of honest children playing
And dishonest men shouting
I feel the tired people
Travelling on the rat race commuter train
Whilst grey skies
Threaten
Overhead
And amongst
The chaos
Bestowed
By the wild fantasies
Of the emboldened egomaniacs
I decide to hope
I decide to believe
To campaign
Fully
To use my life
For the sake of the future
To make a vow
For our children
To fight for the right
To battle for peace
To persist for our planet
Sep 26, 2019
Sep 26, 2019 at 5:01 PM UTC