"bookend" poems
Speaking of the kids in my hometown
we used to walk the traintracks obsessively
like they’d lead us somewhere
like they’d show us something
like the end of the summer was just a bookend parallel line with the river by the library card that promised if i only read enough books i could get out of there and over the moon.
just parallel lines, but they made as much sense as any other way out.
And the gazebo where the high school band played
and I swung on my first date
Jul 10, 2014
Jul 10, 2014 at 11:00 PM UTC
after a bout of giggling,
we quietly discarded
whatever we wore
and at the other
bookend of the act
the tent unzipping
a luxury of clouds
drifting to a *****
moon full ripe heavy
May 10, 2016
May 10, 2016 at 6:55 AM UTC
Reading her novel
On trains, morning and night -
Fictional parentheses
Bookend-ing the story of my day
Apr 29, 2012
Apr 29, 2012 at 5:49 AM UTC
one on the left and one on the right
us little ones in the middle
one on the left
one on the right
like bookends, bookends for me.
one on the left and one on the right
with four little ones in the middle
and i look to my left
and i look to my right
my sisters and i smile and see.
one on the left and one on the right
precious little ones in the middle
one on the left
and one on the right
strong, beautiful bookends for us.
and i hope one day,
when i'm finally a man,
i can be a bookend, too.
i'll be on the left
she'll be on the right
strong, beautiful bookends we'll be.
Feb 22, 2011
Feb 22, 2011 at 10:27 AM UTC
It was a woodcut in our high school history text, Unit 4
Beginnings of the Modern World, that so disturbed,
from the Nuremburg Chronicles depicting the burning of the
Jews, flat perspective,
faces of the victims among flames, in no particular agony, not
especially Jewish,
during the Black Death 1/3 of Europe died 1347-1351 alone.
Although
you die together you die alone.
Earlier that week, I had attended our 6th grade's performance of Fiddler on the Roof, thinking
Coltrane should have recorded Matchmaker as a bookend to
My Favorite Things
but as the play darkened
with the town's absorption into the diaspora, democracy
yet unthought of and rule of law a fig leaf for authority
Jasper, who played Zero Mostel, delivered his line well to
the effect
you're just doing your jobs while wrecking our lives.
Anyway, nothing like that is happening here, is it?
The gardener planting tomatoes, the gravedigger finding skulls,
there is so much life a little death won't matter.
Jasper
was a beautiful ham,
big as Zero.
A friend posed
this question: must all states be melting pots like the United States?
I said yes
not because they should but since
it's inevitable. Let labor flow like capital!
America was the last word of the play and brought a tear of pride
to my eye.
Immigration, exasperating argument re the Other.
How many's more than enough? 9 billion, a rational,
real number that exceeds or we're convinced
is within the carrying capacity of the planet.
Climate change is the new Black Death.
I like the Amerindian body type and face mixed in with the
European, African.
The irrepressible economy rolls out reams of logs, ores of
elements, bags of ice, fields of rice.
Embargo. The moon stares, bare, full of interstellar space.
Better a cold shoulder than a visit from our military.
The crazy Nazis must have felt themselves extraordinarily
compassionate toward the mother, earth, the goddess,
history, or some such abstraction and, thus, acted on a
fraction of all they did not know.
Selfless soldiers just doing their jobs guarding the border or,
on the other hand, collecting ****** for the burning of the Jews.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 6:58 AM UTC
I grew up between bookends
with the holy word held between
one fell off the shelf with no amends
now the shelf is filled with words unseen
So I read of other options
now I question the thread
of these fairy tale adoptions
which have been so deeply embedded
Christian school, weekly church, prayers before bed
my childhood filled with these epic tales
of a guy who died and then rose from the dead
and if you don't believe, well, see you in hell
They are good stories, some even great
but that's all they really are
to live by them is to live a life castrate
burning bush and a man inside a whale, a little bizarre
I am not mad I grew up this way,
but now I live a life of questioning
of what's beyond the pearly gates
without all of the one sided lecturing
Sep 17, 2018
Sep 17, 2018 at 9:59 AM UTC
the static quo must go
nothing beneath, or behind the sounds
deaf tones bones strewn all around
long words, all cheap
dumb lines, all neat
coughed-up cadence and routine cream
cartoon choruses and tricked-out seams
hooky fakes and bookend breaks
easy gaits
minimum stakes
no sharp edge, no hidden fold
no golden age spirit, no new age soul
no color streaks, or manic peaks
no blind side streets, or bipolar beats
disconnect my wires, or else cut it off
put out my fire, or else cut it off
nothing sticks
nothing clicks
**** me quick
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 8:33 AM UTC
I'm the filler between the drunk
& the high.
You're the in-between of the hello
& goodbye.
But what do all the bookend times mean?
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 8:34 PM UTC
last night I took a stroll within a dream,
a slow procession through the dirt path aisles,
within her cemetery's mindful stream,
in search of my name carved in stone or tiles,
i'd almost missed the marker to my grave,
cold winds half-covered with forgetfulness,
no epigram was carved to hold and save
my memory, entombed in nothingness,
two bookend dates to mark my history--
when we were born and when we died in love--
my name, two words containing all of me,
a marker quite unseen from up above,
now from this stroll i've surely learned a lot,
to not inquire of what her mind's forgot
(C)2013, Christos Rigakos
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 10:54 PM UTC
There's a deep-seated pain that wont go away
Desire is the bookend that keeps it at bay
But in this hour I'm losing this fight
All of the longing keeps me up through the night
Longing for solace, longing for passion
Longing for a muse to give me direction
Just a lonely soul, starved for human connection
Each day creeps along as I search for a reason
To go on
Jan 31, 2013
Jan 31, 2013 at 2:29 AM UTC
We sailed counter-clockwise
Through black water and pumpkin sprees,
Dangling footnotes of bookend conversations
The closest thing to clarity in speech--
But we understood the solar flares and the sunspots
And when our bodies sank into dank swampy muck,
There we were in cold moonlight
Naked and shivering and sweet, the whole balance
Of cosmic radiation flung skyward, like
It was all right then, it was all right now, everything is
Like in that movie we watched apart but
Somehow also didn’t, like how the time I tripped
On that drug you were on, my friends and I burnt our fingers
Making stupid fortune cookies
All so contrived, but the morning before the pumpkin sprees
I found a fortune on the ground that didn’t even come from my cookie
So, like it asked me to, I took a chance
And discovered that it wasn’t just my chance to take, cuz
There we were scrubbing our legs in bathroom sinks and showers
Trying to clear the muck away from skin and hair but the dirt
Was so persistent, and the persistence
Was so telling… Regardless
Of how many green globules of antibacterial soap
We squirted onto our legs, the world just wasn’t going to get clean, I mean
The world just lends itself to filth, and sometimes
You have to set the soap down and cry, or walk outside
To see the sunrise
Over the distant hazy hills,
The sunspots and solar flares
All suddenly laughable
Despite their previous profundity.
And even if it wasn’t just my chance to take,
Still,
I’m glad I picked that fortune up off the street and
Read it quietly to myself, standing there with countless
People passing by.
Nov 9, 2014
Nov 9, 2014 at 8:46 PM UTC
Only you and the sun can turn the sky on
There are few things in this world
That a man can rely on
When this world grows cold, the sun's very fire gone
On the day that you must go
That's the day I will die on
Only you and the sun can fight the moonlight
Beat back the sadness
The madness of midnight
Sanctify the gladness, steadfastness of daylight
Bookend the badness
Upend the dark night
Only you and the sun can sing destiny's song
The darkest of your hours
Are brightest before dawn
If fate were unfaithful, or otherwise forlorn
Life itself would still be grateful
For the day that you were born
Only you and the sun are deserving of twilight
A state of solemn grace
And harbinger of starlight
Now face to face with you by the firelight
I pray that I wake
Beside you at first light
©Jason Cole
Nov 24, 2017
Nov 24, 2017 at 9:05 PM UTC
I have a higher shelf a pinacle that
seems empty , barren,
one made of mahogany over the ones
holding copies of Shelley, now unbound,
stocked with mementos and keepsakes
made of pine but servicable
upholding my precious things
carefully sturdy ,
to the left , a tad dusty, leaning on the
copy of Michelangelo's David bookend,
is "In Search of Lost Time" gathering,
well, dust , now,
next to, with my fingerprints
outlining the title ,
on a timeworn cover, leans,
"Tom Sawyer" ; I can see a cane pole
figuratively jutting out from
the shelf. Above on the second shelf from the top
sits a rock, just a plain river worn smooth
everyday rock, that to anyone else would be
nothing, but, to me it is more precious than gold of the same size.
I collect special things.
And the top mahogany shelf
is empty
reserved for only vivid
memories
of
Grandma
of that girl long ago
of when my children arrived on this earth
of a smile
from all the women I have known
also, although, invisible
only worthy for that shiny shelf are the hearts and souls
of the best people ever.
And when you visit, think again, about an
ordinary smooth rock,
and an empty mahogany
shelf.
A rock or an empty shelf
can be more
than it seems.
Jan 4, 2017
Jan 4, 2017 at 6:54 PM UTC
As much as you love to get lost in a good book,
I was the only novel you didn't finish.
Your bookmark is still between my pages...
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 10:21 PM UTC
I am simply a record no one cares to play in some dark corner collecting dust.
The years haven't been kind so I will simply end it as it began.
No words will bind me so why the hell shall I reply .
Time is a empty feeling and a cold bed fellow indeed.
The fires there's it simply smolders on a night unseen to all.
Maybe it was far overdue maybe it was never what they believed it to be.
I understand it a fade to a sunrise of promise.
A bittersweet after thought as I do find little solace in anything less than shocking .
Flaws we have become addictions are cage rusted remains the lock.
I once viewed it with promise now I see no point in the tides passing.
My words are left buried.
Maybe it just wasn't meant to be
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 3:19 AM UTC
a tall masted sailboat plods its way
across the picture window, under power, moving slow, 5 minute mile,
seagulls trail behind, periodically dive bombing the roiled wake, thinking, surely, men’s finding machinery may better than their own,
we,
taking anything to make the new days poems & troubles easier
so it goes, the interplay between man and a natural world,
so it goes, finding fish, our sustenances, a dance perpetual,
so it goes, divining spirits sensing a vision, bring me music,
a spiritual so apropos that who can doubt God’s existence?
**”With the water
Sweet water, wash me down
Come on, water
Sweet water, wash me down**
**Tried my hand at the Bible
Tried my hand at prayer
But now, nothing but the water
Is gonna bring my soul to bear”^**
so the birth-day begins, sunrise poems & troubles sure to follow,
in serenity commences, perhaps a sunset bookend to match,
but in between, surely poems & troubles, all of life’s stuffing,
signs and guides, surely, at least, the day’s poem is completed...
—————————————-
^ Nothing But the Water (II)
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020 at 8:05 AM UTC
i summon and conquer your dreammind
with ghosts of aborted foetuses
and we rampage through the corridors
of your indoctrinations.
knock on the doors and you answer
with your deadmind ex nihilo,
manifestations of deeper fetishes,
like the one where you
want to fuckkids and have that power
because you have nothing.
your life is nothing but a bookend
waiting to fall off the shelf.
n u drag ur naked body thru the blood n the glory of a fight that still has some losing left in it. u lick away ur bruzes n sleep in catatonia coz ur mind fuckedya. had enough but it was pillory n stocks n u swim on the back of a nightterror. still u drag that useless body thru gravel n rocks n icecold water, washing off the dust n the silt n the beggared belief of the siren call of a dream u had when u was young but now its gone n ur left grasping at the pebble of a memory that was once a mighty boulder but time has weathered m worn its face n peeled away all the best parts until now it is smooth n useless n small, an insignificant little morselpiece of what it once was, and u turn it round in ur hand n bury it in the silt.
Jul 21, 2017
Jul 21, 2017 at 5:47 PM UTC
My heart is a bookend.
My heart is a paperweight.
My heart is a pencil sharpener, a cd player, and superglue
My heart is an atlas
My heart is an aviator
My heart is an Appalachian
My heart is a rodeo clown, the town jester, and a fabulous cook.
My heart is a survivor.
My heart is a tornado
My heart is a lone wolf
My heart is many things, and it is always, always yours.
Apr 25, 2016
Apr 25, 2016 at 12:17 AM UTC
Bookend
Last stop delight
Rock solid hold knowledge
Hold reality and sanguine
Start Souls
Sep 29, 2013
Sep 29, 2013 at 11:01 PM UTC
the mere bookend soon became the fury of beautiful beginning!
death so small when you
have the world in your lightsome hands.
the way your face crinkles
at the glare of a word's
furious light
and the way your eyes
widen anew like tapestries
and the bird of syllables
stills itself in
the woven shrub. unwrapping with utmost care is your mind's calloused hands, revealing a spar of darkness and light.
unsealing you is your yearning's
fingers, like autumn to snow's enveloped remnant.
oh how the world
sinks in its solitary axis.
oh how the comets intermingle
in orbit, greeting each other
with flamboyant punctuations back to loose fluidity
for us to drink and revel in.
what joy is the sight
of you, reading.
what bliss is the sight of
reading you, as bold as the word
is in sensuous print,
yet shy as a daffodil shivering
in the wind,
unheard of as a hurl of a voice
in the zenith,
trembling in your hands,
the word of the world.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 1:49 AM UTC
With old eyes open, are we set free,
Is all a glimpse, of simple prophecy,
Or tall, landed fable to fly children,
And bookend of time we borrow,
But lent pergatory of sole dream?
How the birds righty commend
The fine, happy sorrows of day,
How deepest ocean swoons
By alighted traces of moon,
How crisp unbridled beauty
Beams into youths of a girl,
How the salt blood streams
As golden sun swells ocean,
How the simple, cut mercies
In a flower are showcased,
How the stars, arc the sky,
Of stellar eyes embrace,
This then is miracle,
A flame to earth.
Mar 29, 2015
Mar 29, 2015 at 4:24 AM UTC
What was needed now had to be more important. These things tucked away behind the creases of the forehead. Wandering through the beer garden as it became night collecting glassware streaked with saliva and alcohol, soaking under the nail bed it was sticky. At times knuckle bones contort out of place, dragged by the weight of the things. Yet, slow considered steps proceed. Bedtime has come around, the house cat places his body upon your stomach cavity. There is a knowingness in the expelled oxygen which grazes the face. Something poised. This something never arrives.
At night dreams of mistaken food and drink orders trickle into the chiaroscuro room. They **** and disturb, not allowed to unhinge. Unable to delve deep enough, never touching the soft ground or the dream space. Always aware that the alarm clock would bookend this type of semi-rest.
The morning unravels itself. As if mornings were a ball of powder-blue threads teasing the screens of eyelids. Daring them to follow the traces, the bread crumb led spectacle.
Placing eyeliner upon the lashline at the wall mirror, there in the flecks of light stirred a flicker. Appearing less frosted for specks of breath. Spoke outloud, the first utterance of the day. What exactly has happened. Amongst the bones that set out the arena of her body, it seemed that there was no one there to be asked.
Nov 27, 2015
Nov 27, 2015 at 6:08 PM UTC
.
With old eyes open, are we set free,
Is all a glimpse, of simple prophecy,
Or tall, landed fable to fly children,
And bookend of time we borrow,
But lent pergatory of sole dream?
How the birds righty commend
The fine, happy sorrows of day,
How deepest ocean swoons
By alighted traces of moon,
How crisp unbridled beauty
Beams into youths of a girl,
How the salt blood streams
As golden sun swells ocean,
How the simple, cut mercies
In a flower are showcased,
How the stars, arc the sky,
Of stellar eyes embrace,
This then is miracle,
A flame to earth.*
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 5:31 PM UTC
Thoughts race like lyrical melodies.
Repeating themselves like a chorus.
He can’t take the incessant chattering.
The yes, no, please make it stop of it all.
It’s too much to handle.
Handle, like he’s riding a bike with the handles disconnected.
A wall in front of him, no way to steer.
No way to brake.
Can’t get it to stop.
Here comes the verse again,
“You will hurt those you love.
You will hurt those you love
You will hurt those you love
You have hurt those you had loved.”
The verse came in,
“Attention-deficit with hyperactivity, anxious, obsessive-compulsive,
Insomniac, bipolar, with substance dependency.
A basket case with narcissistic traits, but the self-esteem that makes him drown while everyone else floats."
Stated in the order of chronological diagnosis.
Each a bookend to a chapter of his life.
Collecting disorders like pokemon cards.
Being the worst there ever was.
Mar 11, 2020
Mar 11, 2020 at 6:51 PM UTC
It's only the time
To be alive with the sunrise and pied piper
Tryst with miles to go and trials with her
To attend to migrant dreams in stylish clinics
Attending to a cure for the surprised
Heading towards a placid flirtatious expression
I mistook these looks for affection
Only time will tell
If the love was alive
Placid flirtatious surmise
Silken, celadon hangs on the balcony
Trying to escape the sunlight entering
The lantern near the beside
Open the bookend, marked the page
After sultry kisses washed away on peach skin
Rosy cheeks, and nimble feet
Just touch and your body quivers
Your toes move a little quicker
As the clock ticks
Only time will tell if I'm alive
Body stop, free prose next to my bedside
Lately, the time has fallen in the silence
As delightful, this sounds and summed up
In time, I'm alive as we make the connection
Inflection of our tongues intertwine at the eyes
That hold gazes over the kisses
Sojourn the day, sleep at night
Are you in spirited my child like my poems
Let's fly together on thoughts that know no measure
Let it be love that takes us to that pleasure
Sittin' next to my bedside
Now you're cured and my poems have found structure
In your alive lively motherly arms, where I can cry for eternity
But, I must confess I don't in this virile panorama
Free and strapless, I can see your heart which I dream of vividly
I sit and conserve this memory on physical adaptations in my poetry
Your body is poetic silence, that's where my metaphors lie
All this love in my head, I guess fly first 'cause I'm shy one here
Subservient to your will, lovely surrender isn't it?
Aug 21, 2019
Aug 21, 2019 at 9:16 PM UTC