"bourn" poems
Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.
In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.
I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.
I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.
Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:28 AM UTC
You choked on chariots raw. Red egg yolk suppers, churned of the milk oceans this morning you kept.
The lintel of stone turned toward dusk. Some great dynasty of submissive spirits catering your morning
Out on a cart of muse, forms of heaven cannot even hear you. You are a soporific knot in the tale of your Old womanhood. In this infinite Tuesday morning your small black eyes, like an oil tanker toppling over The intense azure sea- shipwrecked, and lost.
Departing from your childhood you slurp Coca-Cola from a silver straw. From the corner store and inside Winter yawns. There is no face, only strikingly beautiful black hair. The body under you is at home in all
My hand's fingers have to fill. All the clothes that you could carry for the two-way adventure. There are
Never enough bubbles between your lips and the glass bottle you have. Only the score of the whistleblower. And the poor symphony you had prayed for into the dial-tone phone, the deep Wilderness, that stiff forever-ago budding from your coffee cup. Neurogenesis lifted from your Fingerprints and emblazoned into this lump of human ingenuity. The hopeless octave that cut us all short.
Every short story that was left untold. There are the brief deaths recoiling in your spiritual architecture. The ****** of morphia has bourn me awake. Inside you are often unscathed, vanishing as some of Tonight's parts assemble you, on you blue is a beautiful color. The sweet retreat that gave you life or the bountiful deaths that counted you too cutely by your side. You are the sun in my black coat. Here is my sea, your sea, you'll see.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 5:34 AM UTC
Through darkness, laced in edges of light,
And rain, falling like angels plagued by blight,
Shattering their heavenly bones and wings,
Onto the eyeless dust of their return;
Through paths stranger to the hope of spring,
Where voices of ghosts hang with cries of “Burn!”
And moss mottled trees, like macabre jesters
Dance, limbless, leaves flailing grotesquely
To the secret japes of wind-bourn nesters;
Through corpse-ridden forests of insanity,
To where the rocks dress as the three witches
And chant midst their vainglorious riches
*“All hail, Eremita, bound to the adamah altar,
All hail, Eremita, your blood soma from the mortar,
All hail, Eremita, thou shalt be dead hereafter”...*
Jun 7, 2014
Jun 7, 2014 at 12:28 AM UTC
In my own shire, if I was sad,
Homely comforters I had:
The earth, because my heart was sore,
Sorrowed for the son she bore;
And standing hills, long to remain,
Shared their short-lived comrade's pain.
And bound for the same bourn as I,
On every road I wandered by,
Trod beside me, close and dear,
The beautiful and death-struck year:
Whether in the woodland brown
I heard the beechnut rustle down,
And saw the purple crocus pale
Flower about the autumn dale;
Or littering far the fields of May
Lady-smocks a-bleaching lay,
And like a skylit water stood
The bluebells in the azured wood.
Yonder, lightening other loads,
The seasons range the country roads,
But here in London streets I ken
No such helpmates, only men;
And these are not in plight to bear,
If they would, another's care.
They have enough as 'tis: I see
In many an eye that measures me
The mortal sickness of a mind
Too unhappy to be kind.
Undone with misery, all they can
Is to hate their fellow man;
And till they drop they needs must still
Look at you and wish you ill.
2.6k
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
2.4k
Translation From Catullus
Ye Cupids, droop each little head,
Nor let your wings with joy be spread,
My Lesbia’s favourite bird is dead,
Whom dearer than her eyes she lov’d:
For he was gentle, and so true,
Obedient to her call he flew,
No fear, no wild alarm he knew,
But lightly o’er her ***** mov’d:
And softly fluttering here and there,
He never sought to cleave the air,
He chirrup’d oft, and, free from care,
Tun’d to her ear his grateful strain.
Now having pass’d the gloomy bourn,
From whence he never can return,
His death, and Lesbia’s grief I mourn,
Who sighs, alas! but sighs in vain.
Oh! curst be thou, devouring grave!
Whose jaws eternal victims crave,
From whom no earthly power can save,
For thou hast ta’en the bird away:
From thee my Lesbia’s eyes o’erflow,
Her swollen cheeks with weeping glow;
Thou art the cause of all her woe,
Receptacle of life’s decay.
1.9k
I
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
II
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
III
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
1.9k
I’ve walked the fires of Dante’s hell,
yet escaped to feel the rain,
I’ve conquered self deception,
lest it lie to me again.
I’ve seen the logic of insanity,
the chaos in the plan,
I’ve been witness to calamity,
man’s inhumanity to man.
I’ve endured a thousand sleepless nights,
shed tears, and muffled screams,
and tossed and turned a thousand more,
whence dragons ruled my dreams.
I’ve seen seconds pass like seasons,
been imprisoned in my mind,
I’ve been numb that felt like torture,
and known torture that was kind.
No angels stead beside me,
I’ve bourn the brunt of Satan’s wrath,
I’ve spat at Gods who stood the way,
for no God shall bar my path.
I’ve stared down death at my own hand,
yet healed to bear the scars,
It’s only us who have the power
to destroy what would be ours.
I’ve gazed upon the emptiness
kept hidden in my soul,
Yet returned, a weary traveler,
the wiser of my role.
I’ve survived to tell my tale,
to warn of dangers left unnamed,
“Here be tygers!” Aye, ‘tis true;
but tygers can be tamed.
Dan Bryce
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 11:34 PM UTC
i.
Betimes mine delicate, betimes,
Mine apricity wherein beauty's
Simplicity doth show it's shine;
ii.
None bourn's shalt mock
us, nor obstruct ourn journey's.
We shalt egress this wordly mess;
With Yeshua as ourn attorney.
iii.
This place shalt be halted,
The fireballs to renew with burning;
The floods to rage, mid flight we shalt take
Sight's, liberated-tear's gone
In freedom as bird's of learning.
iv.
Up into the air we go, don't frighten my girl
We've known this truth, we shalt be loosed;
Heaven's gates- a banquet of rapio plates,
Yahweh's name sealed in ourn soul's
Fate.
v.
Ourn bodies to be renewed
Gathering with spirit's, out of
Their tomb's; O' how wondrous
It wilt be mine muse, we shalt be
In tune, in harmonized music
Thither the Angel's flutes.
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl jane Nagley ( agapi mou) dedicated
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 7:50 PM UTC
Mommy mommy
take me home
I've wandered these streets
alone
for far too long
what's a grown man to do
not knowing exactly
what he's supposed to do.
Bourn too many moments
of other's sorrows
at the expense of my own.
Mommy mommy
take me home
I saw you in my
dreams last night
a corpse in a car
you honked
as you drove on by
my thumb was out
trying to hitch a ride
to where I can not say
you put your finger to your lips
"Shush, baby"
was all you had to say.
The lights of the city burn
each one someone's home
each apartment
like souls
world's of their own
I've knocked on many doors
and some have let me in
though a place to rest
no home, no peace, no silence
for me.
I've been a restless poet
a wanderer too
forever traveling through
those internal landscapes
a paid guide
through all those painful memories
and those standing on the edge of suicide
some move along
some fall behind
I offer that pool of peace
reflections
is all I've had to give.
Mommy mommy
take me home
you are running far too late
I've been alone out here far too long.
Standing on this corner waiting
my eyes are tired
in burn outs fading light
the
streets shine neons invitations
but none welcome me.
Mommy mommy
what did you mean
when you put me out here
to be
and when will you pick me up
or
will I remain forever lost
out on this corner
thinking each car coming is you.
I'm still wandering these streets
paying the cost
looking for home
looking for you.
Mommy mommy
time to take me home
time to take me back to you.
Jul 6, 2014
Jul 6, 2014 at 10:56 AM UTC
i.
Seraphim, betimes we shalt crack this inter-web bourn, awaiteth I, tis with tear's from these eye's, though the waiting wilt purify, ourn ventricles to an unfamiliar door.
ii.
None reason for Affright, mine soul doth leadeth the way, O' amour' Jane, thine hari's here to stay. Afresh to the new day, ourn canorous spirit's pave the serenade; something lost to olden flutes.
iii.
Barefeet- None sandals, the luggage we carrieth wilt be of God, almighty; supernatural. Powerful crystalline stone- lucid, god-hand castles.
iv.
It's not against flesh and blood love, that we do wrestle, but against spiritual wickedness in high and low places, we conquer demonic armies, and nephilim faces. An ambassage we sendeth to the human races, that they mayest love another, and forgive, and to forget their past disgraces. As tis Queen Jane; alms wilt be seen on the wall's, encased with ourn names. As I wilt catcheth thee, when through the cloud's thou doth fall...
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley ( Filipino rose) dedicated
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 8:37 PM UTC
As the wet wind hums its way through our two tower six-cylinder apartment complex. Birds fall from their naked winter wept branches, braced by stiff bones, mapped out in Alexandria, carrying notes from El Salvador. The corner market is closed, never opened. A hair salon stands in its place, it wrings out the "R's" from a Philadelphia warshing.
And like every night, hot air cakes on an extra layer of indecipherable red dots up the arms and around the neck, minute pustules of hypochondria that steal my finger tips from the keyboard. I scratch and tip them, looking under their fiery scarlet caps for, I-don't-know-what disease. Paul says It's that magic school bus melanoma, typhoid drip, it comes at you from a computer screen and eats at your nervous system until you've got the wambles.
Tuesday's used to be the worst, until I OWNED THAT **** I make a pronoun out of aluminum foil and where it as a hat on a first date. OKCupid's not bad for conceptual art projects. I carry it within me like an anodyne complex, out into the guzzling wind, the air that comes into my mouth and looks for any breath within me that it can go out of me with, and I'm breathless.
I abandon my miniature house to enter the pyramidal pinetum to the North. Wild paradise shrubs gather with songless animal noises watching as I take naked photographs of my father to preserve his body from anything less than his great immortal end. He lives on black moss and water from a nearby bourn,
he's the mien of an Anthony Hopkins, living in a hologram I saw in my dream last night.
Feb 10, 2014
Feb 10, 2014 at 6:25 AM UTC
Who is to say,
we cannot break our bond with the earth,
that we are too strongly tethered?
Not I for one.
Nor stone age man who leaps to death in mimicry of the birds,
nor the prisoner who, in confinement,
looks to the sky,
framed with the walls wherein he lies,
and says to himself, or herself, nay, I cannot fly.
And could I fly, I would touch the earth again,
or else burn up in the stratosphere.
Nay, nor the wild fowl, who may traverse 100 miles at a stretch,
ere they return to the earth.
Nor ashes carried in the air and bourn away upon the trade winds.
Who would admit an eternal debt to the earth,
which by every step we repay?
Least of all them overcome with wonder,
at infinite depth, at scale, at cold beauty,
at the splendid simulacrum of the cosmos.
Who then would hold me back by a leg or an arm,
who would through envy deny a splendid assimilation with the vasty domains of the other,
for what word, what momentary vocalisation of the earthbound
can in all justice give it name?
But in good faith, commit my body to it,
and I shall move throughout the eternal regions,
and circle in infinite revelry.
Deny me not this wild vanity,
commit not my body to the earth,
and I shall not call you cur, who walks upon the earth,
and there for evermore is tethered.
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 2:13 PM UTC
Maybe you're the colosseum. The code to get through the glass doors is actually just '1954'. You could put up the painting of me at auction, or I could take a cruise from London to the Islands North of Siberia, a stop in a department store in Northern Greece. I stop and take a ride in the middle front-third seat of a older friend's younger brother's car, and force all of them to come outside and see the spider's eggs at Bob-o-Link. Massive cornucopias of cotton walls entwined with silk.
In the department store I ask to be introduced to someone who can take me by the hand and recognize me by my number, show me everything I'll need to shoot a full-length feature, even how I can get to Prague so I can do a little shopping. But the horror of seeing is so frightening, and the girl that I came with wants to do nothing.
I find a little shop selling Czech candies, music, and newspapers, so I try to buy everything but the horror is getting closer. I'm in a lazy Susan, how often does that happen? One more turn and I'll lose my stomach contents and then I won't need anything.
I take a climb up a street that says "Smrzlinu Ahead," but the houses on the street are all either empty or boarded up. I drift in the soccer field, watching my legs, looking over my shoulder. I fall for a pile of clothes that can hide me but are also very soft to lay in.
Another cruise- tropical, perhaps? Somewhere for coy adults, who shed their skin in Winter when their eyes start molting off. Someday I will place both hands into the ocean, I'll dream huge, and go swimming until I start to laugh. One day I'll sink to the floor of the bourn, maybe the same day I wake up and I'm not swimming alone.
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 6:46 PM UTC
today the loneliness of the world
blows a forlorn wind not sure
of itself or which way to go
so neither going this way or that
scrubs around waiting for dusk
to fall- night to reign and hide all
the cold blank staring faces bourn
on the wind that has nowhere to go
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 12:26 PM UTC
(7 pm - sad news)
A soul departed.
And I could not be but incredulous that how so natural a quietus was to be met, when one would most deny it.
(8 pm)
An inch closer to reality.
Or else this Death, would've been as devoid of taste and essence as a heart that but stalks the fleeting pleasures of an unworthy world.
(9 pm)
I pitied him. And myself (rather selfishly).
He lost a mother.
Oh he lost a mother, and I have one to lose!
I wonder, with what subtlety have my heart and mind deceived my sense of sympathy, because
I remember vaguely whether my tears were in realization of the misery of an ever-rejoicing friend,
Or in mere anticipation of what was written in heavens, for my mother.
I never really admired the man he (my friend) was.
And I never really appreciated his general lack of concern and the apparent absence of mindful demeanor.
But when I came to know the person he really was,
I cried that night.
And I cried that night talking of him with other friends.
He had found his breezy spring here, seven hours away from the silent autumn that was meant to strike his home.
And now I knew him,
Whose patient smile, kissing the perpetuity of bright harmonies,
Denied bowing down to the contours of a winter twilight.
Oh, now I knew him,
Whose eyes had shone like a thousand summer sun, even
When night's crawling terrors lay unhidden;
Despite the profundity of darkness that showed no mercy.
He lost a mother, oh he lost a mother.
And I have one to lose.
(12:30 am - 7:30 am - the travel)
A visit.
To the autumn, seven hours away.
In the middle of nowhere.
Where he had lost a mother,
While the white desert mourned
And the clouds hung low in melancholy.
There, ah, there in the ivory clouds I saw a cleft.
It must have been the door to heaven!
It must have been opened for his mother.
It must have been opened for her.
(8 am)
I met my friend.
He looked alive, not brilliantly though,
In submission to God's unquestionable will.
Had I looked deeper, I would have found vivacity stone-dead,
I would have found unfathomable grief,
And I would have found life,
Trying to hide from the terrors of its own self.
(2 pm - the funeral)
(Condolences)
(3:30 pm - Return)
The tough terrain that we traversed on our way here was smoother now,
And the mimosas had reappeared, and the desert seemed less dull.
I wonder why we forget too easily, the matters of "the bourn from where no traveler returns".
I wonder why we fall too easily for the winter even though we know what freezings it would bring.
But then it's only so human to forget.
So human to forget.
Mar 2, 2019
Mar 2, 2019 at 2:52 AM UTC
According to astrology,
The stars arrange themselves to bind
The destinies of humankind
Born under their hegemony.
What malice made those twinkling lights
****** my children, and yet spare
A father to forever bear
Grief that embitters, and ignites
A hatred for my very birth,
And the cursed womb that gave me life.
****** in this vale of loss and strife,
Pushed through that vile and ****** firth,
I live and suffer till I die.
Are the stars locked in crystal spheres
To trace their paths throughout the years,
Quite powerless to nullify,
The ruin and the doom they chart?
Or do they skip across the void,
Giddy, and cruel, and overjoyed
To wither a poor father’s heart?
If they’re condemned to blight
The fate of any mortal born
Under their aegis, they must mourn
The sentences their glint must write.
If merciful, those stars must share
The misery their shining brings,
And their own brittle glimmerings
Must lance their conscience with despair.
Extinguishing those stars that ****
Unwillingly is clemency.
Annihilation sets them free.
But if they’re vicious, it will thrill
My aching spirit to ***** out
Ill-omened and malignant stars,
Child-murderers, and the bêtes noires
Of fathers, even if devout.
Such wicked lights disgrace the night,
So, emptied, let that banner shut.
An expanse cleansed of glittery ****
Contracts so closely and so tight
No spirit banished from its rest
Can enter through that dismal gate,
Once happy, now disconsolate,
Dropped in a world they will detest.
Into that gap, the day before
And the day afterward will close.
So that cursed hour cannot expose
A naked child to famine, war,
Plague, and the agonies this world.
Inflicts upon the bad and good.
If in the womb, I’d understood
The pain awaiting, I’d have curled
Up tighter and would lock my knees.
Shutting the door, I would return
To a green glade and gurgling bourn,
A haven from atrocities.
Mar 13, 2022
Mar 13, 2022 at 3:12 PM UTC
Now that it’s finally safe,
Now that Breaking Bad
Has wrapped for good,
And Albuquerque is
Safely free of Mr. White’s crystal ****
That chemical perfection,
That awesome Blue Cook—
As it was known,
Known far & wide,
In the drug trade.
But I digress.
I return at last to New Mexico.
The so-called Land of Entrapment.
I slink back, decisively
To that island of Diversity,
Mutual Respect & Mañana.
I return to the scene of so many crimes.
Not to mention, misdemeanors.
“SMACK,” he’s back.
It’s that crazy **** himself:
The undeniably indomitable,
The late, great Soupy Sales.
Reminding us still,
Telling us, again, specifically,
Not to mention.
I am sitting in a brand new house
In Bernalillo, New Mexico,
Only 15 miles from downtown
ALBUQUERQUE.
Another Over 55,
Gated, golf-coursed
Lunatic asylums
(FOR ACTIVE ADULTS).
I am starting to repeat myself,
An early Alzheimer warning sign,
What do I expect to find here?
Life secluded,
Quiet days,
Getting quieter every day,
As strangers friends & neighbors
Pass on to what Hamlet called
“ . . . the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country,
From whose bourn
No traveller returns . . .”
To a mind-set,
Decidedly focused on the children
I will soon leave behind:
“$15 thousand bucks
To stick his crusty ***
Into a dusty,
Musky box of knotty pine?
(Muskie? The Senator from Maine
Who broke down & cried.)
No way, Giuseppi.
Cremate the crazy SOB!
Cook him.
Nuke him,
Titanium implants & all. Let
Infrared rays do their work,
Arc lighting a late February
Coronado golden New Mexico evening sky.”
Here I sit.
I am listening to
“Sentimental Sinatra.”
Vintage 40s stuff:
Bobbysoxers & WWII.
Once again, I strain for understanding.
Mom & Dad:
Perhaps their music, like ours,
Is a perceptual doorway?
Perhaps my children will someday
Take the time for careful scrutiny
Of why their father was the way he was.
My 65-year old, pensioned-off ***
Behind the gates,
Locked within the asylum.
Our parents;
Our children:
Be they ever inscrutable.
Jun 26, 2014
Jun 26, 2014 at 1:21 PM UTC
When rain had gone and dusk had fallen,
When birds had roosted and their chirping stilled,
When sky had cleared and the lone clouds trailed,
You held me close and whispered in my ear.
Your voice, like a tremulous rivulet gurgled,
With passion sweet, you did chant,
“In your eyes I see, the blue of the sky,
In your soul, you hold the depth of the seas,
Love swells, like tides on rise,
My life, I vow, by Jove, never to part,
On this dimpled cheek, a kiss I plant,
A gesture warm with abiding love.
Crisscross lain as warp and weft,
We together shall weave the garb of life”.
Words that served as balm to the soul!
Still they echo, gushing a flurry of thoughts,
But alas! To a far unknown land you fled,
‘From whose bourn, no traveller returns’,
To be wooed by a thousand glimmering dames,
Who peep down from Heaven’s insurmountable heights.
My life has mouldered and mildew grown,
Where my Love! Whither have you gone?
Who bid you slink into deaths secret hide?
Why left me to languish in Love’s solitary bower?
Seasons roll and years glide,
‘At my back I always hear,
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near’.
Youth has withered and memory fails,
But in my mind is etched deep,
That beautiful dusk, we rambled free,
When the rain had gone and dusk had fallen,
When the sky had cleared and lone clouds trailed.
Along the winding paths we roamed,
Two hearts musing a single lay.
Down the alleys, betwixt moss grown walls,
With hopes galore and dreams anew,
On we walked to the edge of the world,
A pair of dots merging in infinite space.
When rain is gone and sky gets clear,
When night turns deeper and silence creeps,
I transverse back to that dusky eve,
To retrieve those moments, I sadly cherish!
May 16, 2016
May 16, 2016 at 12:10 PM UTC
2B or not 2B -- that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to trust
The estranged memory of my parked car,
Or to take arms against the flight of stairs
And, by ascending, remember. 1A, one floor --
No steps -- and by 1A to say we end
The footache and the thousand natural shocks
That heel is heir to -- ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. 1A, one floor --
One floor, perchance no callis. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in these shoes of death what callis may come,
When we have shuffled off these mortal streets,
The lot must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of memories.
For who would bear the sores of party shoes,
Th’ endless rows of resting vehicles,
The low ceilings and countless steps,
The insolence of the inebriated, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes,
When he himself might end the fuddled search
With a local inn? Who would challenge the stairs,
To grunt and sweat under buzzed breath,
But that the dread of someone waiting at home,
The undiscovered disappointment from whose bourn
No party-er returns, shaming the conscience
And makes us rather storm the steps to 2B
Than face anger we wish we knew not of?
Thus a spouse’s fury does make heroes of us all,
And thus the reality of ten more steps
Is boiled in the evening’s song and merriment
With little regard whether the car is parked in 1A
Or perhaps upstairs in 2B. -- Harsh you now,
The ground that catches me. -- Cushion, concrete bed,
I think I shall rest here.
Apr 14, 2015
Apr 14, 2015 at 9:48 AM UTC
The bird struggled to its feet
The day had finally come
In fear the bird gave a small tweet
The first flight is frightening to some
Fly or fall, two options nothing more nothing less
To me this is comparable to my own stress
I asked her out, she said yes.
I thought my trial had ended
I flew from the tree and didn’t fall
But now is the greatest test of them all
Will I survive the world of prey?
Or will I fall victim and dark be my days?
No one knows til the end is come
Not even the bird itself until it has lived a full life and bourn it’s young.
Or one with the earth the bird has become
Nov 27, 2019
Nov 27, 2019 at 11:53 AM UTC
late night lights
so sublime,a friendship bourn
on sparkling stars
all in black and white
How we played our parts;
The Movies from America
all cowboys and Indians
and how we so much wanted
to be the Indians.
and society done its best
to tame us down into cowboys.
And still us poets sing
for all our friends lost
on the trail of Indian Freedom
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 8:29 PM UTC
Many things are needed to live
Hunger is satisfied by food
Water sates our thirst
Love keeps the soul alive
But those who create
They feel an additional need
Sanity is kept through creation
The release of thought into matter
Carpenters, Artists, Poets, creators all
What was not there but now exists
A deep love is held for creator to creation
An idea brewed, bourn, and born.
Life is not life to those who create
When creation is taken from them
Jan 23, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 8:48 PM UTC
Feeling like
a calculator
with a decimal
key
that sticks.
Always incorrect,
missing
the point,
a fraction
of the
actual,
misplacing the
factual.
The letter-opener
laughs
at me.
Sees
my inaccuracy,
my inadequacy.
The thumbtacks
gather,
whispering into
the corkboard,
memos written,
regarding my
misaligned
mathematics.
The desktop
dings
the arrival
of an
email.
The office-supply
order
has arrived.
The scissors,
held
in an X,
slice through
packing tape.
Right there,
on top
of the steno-pads,
rests
my replacement,
new,
plastic bubble
intact,
decimal key
moves free,
better than
me,
no need
to see
to believe,
calculations conceived,
bourn correct.
The decimals
rounded to
the nearest
hundredth,
I’ll find
rest,
my long division
meeting measure
of
its remainder
at the bottom
of an
office
wastebasket.
***
-JBClaywell
© P&Z Publications 2018
Oct 2, 2018
Oct 2, 2018 at 11:50 AM UTC
The winds of the west blow
from hallowed undying lands
to lands east,over the oceans flow
into mortal realms where darkness lies
They stem from His thoughts,who dwells on his lofted throne
and transcends the realms of every age
giving life to that gentle breeze,
that has the power to assuage,ills
begotten when the girdle was built
sundering one and one from the other
even so the west wind fills,the chasm so deep
that was bourn out of the wrath,that once was
but now gently sleeps,in the west
from where the wind blows.
They breathe life into shrivelling palms
hope into tired arms,and strength when all else fails
For the winds alone remain,in union with the sea,of those
who of yore roamed in fellowship where man was found
in the deeps of the elder days,before the ships were set to sail
by the same wind,that still returns,for it has neither forgotten
not forsaken those who it left,on shores hidden from light
that does not burn,yet smoulders still in the hearts
of those who looked upon it,when the world was young.
So the west winds blow,but also return to lands where
they were birthed,carrying tidings of all things
that come to be,dark or fair,to the lords
who set it to wandering go,beyond,where no duty calls
and so does it also bring,the weary fallen,
to return home and grandly dine, in the halls
where their fathers are,in the west
from where the winds blow.
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 12:53 PM UTC