"boyhood" poems
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
The laugh from my love you thieved;
You took the gay child of my passion
And gave me your clod-conceived.
You clogged the feet of my boyhood
And I believed that my stumble
Had the poise and stride of Apollo
And his voice my thick tongued mumble.
You told me the plough was immortal!
O green-life conquering plough!
The mandril stained, your coulter blunted
In the smooth lea-field of my brow.
You sang on steaming dunghills
A song of cowards' brood,
You perfumed my clothes with weasel itch,
You fed me on swinish food
You flung a ditch on my vision
Of beauty, love and truth.
O stony grey soil of Monaghan
You burgled my bank of youth!
Lost the long hours of pleasure
All the women that love young men.
O can I stilll stroke the monster's back
Or write with unpoisoned pen.
His name in these lonely verses
Or mention the dark fields where
The first gay flight of my lyric
Got caught in a peasant's prayer.
Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.
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I saw my world again through your eyes
As I would see it again through your children's eyes.
Through your eyes it was foreign.
Plain hedge hawthorns were peculiar aliens,
A mystery of peculiar lore and doings.
Anything wild, on legs, in your eyes
Emerged at a point of exclamation
As if it had appeared to dinner guests
In the middle of the table. Common mallards
Were artefacts of some unearthliness,
Their wooings were a hypnagogic film
Unreeled by the river. Impossible
To comprehend the comfort of their feet
In the freezing water. You were a camera
Recording reflections you could not fathom.
I made my world perform its utmost for you.
You took it all in with an incredulous joy
Like a mother handed her new baby
By the midwife. Your frenzy made me giddy.
It woke up my dumb, ecstatic boyhood
Of fifteen years before. My masterpiece
Came that black night on the Grantchester road.
I ****** the throaty thin woe of a rabbit
Out of my wetted knuckle, by a copse
Where a tawny owl was enquiring.
Suddenly it swooped up, splaying its pinions
Into my face, taking me for a post.
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A jack of all trades and a master of none
That is what people called him
Always tinkering with a smile on his face
Helping others seemed to be his place
So when the last chance came to say goodbye
Many people wondered why
Had such a man as this
Who touched all walks of life
Have to die
As busy as he was he always had the time
To stop and talk with the town drunk
On the corner where he stood
Often about a wonderful boyhood
Then in his pocket he would reach
Without a judging eye
Give the man some money
Shake his hand and say until next time
So when the last chance came to say goodbye
Many people wondered why
Had such a man as this
Who touched all walks of life
Have to die
Always willing to share his skill
If you had the ear to learn
Teaching how to do a thing or two
He would give that value
With anyone who would listen
He would make it his business
To share his knowledge as if he was a chieftain
So when the last chance came to say goodbye
Many people wondered why
Had such a man as this
Who touched all walks of life
Have to die
A husband and a father
His wife and children miss him the most
He was a hero to them
Through his children his story will never end
Nov 5, 2012
Nov 5, 2012 at 2:03 AM UTC
“where time is the fly and age the fisher of men”
<>
*”until I fell forward
into fall where time is
the fly and age the fisher
of men, then when winter
begins all will be forgotten,
where time is the fly and
age the fisher of men”*
excerpt from “The Fall” by Rick Richardson
<>
that words from a different ionic state, jump as embodied ions from screen to the throat, evicting a guttural current of exclamation, you believe even with the half-heartedly palpitations from remainder of my damaged pumping heart, that these words were always intended, just for me…
boy and old man coexist, the pottage of memories stirred,
and the time is fly, and I drown in the miracle of greenest grass of
Yankee Stadium at age eight,
oasis, heaven, a child reborn in a sea of Bronx concrete,
and the swallowing up of my boyhood is forever marked henceforth, the hook has caught me, and I am of the age
once and forever
not a fisherman, but a fisher of men’s souls,
mine own is my best bait,
hooked line and sinker, and
wisdom and words
elude and delude always,
like summer is perpetual and aging a construct,
time does not fly, but slowly laps and waves
eroding our myths and ourselves upon a continuum with
no ends
~postscript~
<>
*yet I believe,
in miracles of
fish and loaves,
and that our individual continuums
will exist beyond the artifice of constraints
of
mortal time and that poems are
the forever chemicals within
our
bloodstreams,
even when our blood no longer spills*
yet I believe!
Sep 6, 2023
Sep 6, 2023 at 7:57 AM UTC
Eating mushrooms, to her is yet another art
she loves to perfect, in my ear she whispers
with such visible pleasure,"I want to be a connoisseur in this"
Her studio smelled herbs and wild flowers of inner forest,
brought me back to the cardamom and cinnamon garden
I played in my days of boyhood; spices build a bridge for us.
More of a herbalist than a paint smelling artist, she seems,
mounted on the wall on irregular fashion were the mushrooms
she painted with a passion rare, and a precision mirroring life;
the paintings brought her past in to the studio, only trained eyes
would discern the cryptic symbolism, a consummate artist she certainly is!
The woman who smoked cigars in succession and untiringly danced,
she said was her favorite, along the lake front we took a long walk
comparing notes; there were parallels that met, we found soon enough.
"You too knew her so well, I am aware", she said. A room filled with smoke
where we dance, make love, grow tired, fall down and sleep, wasn't it our life?
No one can miss the signature smell of her dense cigar smoke on my dress!"
I loved the smell of cloves she exhaled while eating mushrooms.
though detachment she pretended, eating mushrooms never was that!
I kept looking down at her eyes, a sailor about to sight the land,
any panting moment that rushes with a monsoon song for me and her.
Sep 1, 2014
Sep 1, 2014 at 2:48 PM UTC
What happened to the boy I was?
Why did he run away?
And leave me old and thinking, like
There'd been no yesterday?
What happened then?
Was I that boy?
Who laughed and swam in the bund*
I there no going back?
No recompense?
Is there nothing?
No refund?
5.3k
It takes me back
It pulls me close
To itself, I cannot leave
ln my dreams
While I dose
The summer scent of mango tree
I remember well
When we were young
My friend and I hung on its arms,
Cuddling the leaves.
Now remain
Just memories, echoes of a simpler past
The flowers promised
June was close
Summer's sins would be redeemed
By the childhood paradise
Salted raw mango slice
Overarching newborn smiles
Yellow sun on green leaves
Greenish-yellow chrysoberyl
Oasis of the summertime
I remember picking them up
From the rooftop of boyhood-life
Our winged friends came, bees, monkeys too
Attempting another bite
Fond, fond memories
Mother used to cut and bring us mangoes
While I tasted the golden slice
My granny told me stories of
The tree, it stood there when they built this house
When she was eight or nine
This fruit, this taste
Connects this land
Magnifera indica
The secular deity of the mango nation
You cannot begin to understand
The gift of Indian summer
My childhood wrapped in emerald leaves
The whiff, the scent, I transcend
Time;go to an age when all was well
Or at the least, to me it seemed
As I'm taking a bite of this season's last mango
As the golden drops stick to my pubescent stache
I remember a conversation I had
The mango tree
It talked to me
No, I'm not crazy
It was the mango tree
Little things in life
Leave something
Oh!so many memories
Mar 28, 2021
Mar 28, 2021 at 5:35 PM UTC
The Miner, Absolom
(a haibun)
green hill where sheep graze
white bones and coal, buried, held
seasons all the same
My grandfather worked in the mines from age thirteen to seventy. His life was closed in by mountains, the green one at the back, the dark looming one at the front and the pit head along the valley., winding the men in and out of the shaft, day after day, dawn until dusk when they came home singing
boots ring on the road
deep valley voices echo
backyard starlit smoke
.
They worked on their bellies or crouched, often in water for days, water that undermines rock. Shaft collapses where frequent. Life was cheap. He came home covered in coal dust to his wife and two sons, sons he was determined to keep out of the mines. Yet he loved that coal - coal that he always polished with care before lighting a fire, brushing dust off black diamond surfaces.
water breaks through rock
with wood and straining shoulders
man becomes the beam
He saved twenty lives that day, men he had known from boyhood. When his lungs were affected they laid him off, no pay, no pension, no life. He bought an insurance book with the money he had and every day he trudged over the mountains and valleys gathering pennies that would help to secure some livelihood to the widows who lost their men in the mines. He never told his wife that when a family couldn't pay he put the pennies in for them rather than leave them unprotected.
winter, summer, fall
the mountain hangs over all
tired to the backbone
When the mines were nationalised my grandfather went straight back to the coal face despite his age. He wasn't going to miss those days of glory. Safety was suddenly the watchword and changes were made very fast. Hot showers were installed at the pit head and the miners came home clean at last.
men stripped to the skin
hot water, steam, baptised
brothers singing hymns
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 9:25 PM UTC
His ***********
Purloined my desire
Stole, requested expectations
My boyhood kidnapped and
Fed secrets for other
Purposes
Blue eyes, pieces of
An unsolved jig-saw
Slotted into my need
Such theft, such theft
Such theft, such theft
So generously given.
Mar 1, 2012
Mar 1, 2012 at 3:12 PM UTC
Removing the little lace dress with its white hem I place it back on its chair.
The white hem radiates slightly enticing my naked boyhood once more
With its lusciousness, a savannah of continuous beautiful evocation
I sit naked and watch the little lace dress with its white hem
See it become languorous and dreamlike
I smell the exotic flora of its continued subtle seduction
It ripples softly in a slight waft of air
Like a breath blowing on a still pond
I cannot resist it, I am the trance of its hypnosis
Nothing intervenes, nor tries to prevent me
As my fingers fall for its flirtations
Once more I acquiesce to the most wanted desire
Of the little lace dress with the white hem
To caress the body of a fifteen year old boy
To become a second skin
I allow it to slide over me seducing my senses
Realizing the counters of my thin syrup coloured form
The words whisper again about my girls’ complexion
About my long black hair, about the body I inhabit, the likeness of a girl
I look once more in the mirror, they could be correct
Aug 13, 2012
Aug 13, 2012 at 3:09 PM UTC
My boyhood pocketknife
Sits in the bottom of my bedside table
My skin is healing
But I still feel a little cut
I thank God every time I leave
Say goodbye to flat land
the long stretches of road
I forget the peonies
but they still bloom in me
My old backyard is littered
with noise and ***** snow
Cold trickles into the lungs
Slowly, like it's afraid to let go
Each exhale is proof we're alive
A cloud of condensation
curling away from mouths
Small, sleeping dragons
in an even smaller city
where all the jewels are gone
Jan 29, 2017
Jan 29, 2017 at 10:21 AM UTC
The bush that has most briers and bitter fruit,
Wait till the frost has turned its green leaves red,
Its sweetened berries will thy palate suit,
And thou may'st find e'en there a homely bread.
Upon the hills of Salem scattered wide,
Their yellow blossoms gain the eye in Spring;
And straggling e'en upon the turnpike's side,
Their ripened branches to your hand they bring,
I 've plucked them oft in boyhood's early hour,
That then I gave such name, and thought it true;
But now I know that other fruit as sour
Grows on what now thou callest Me and You;
Yet, wilt thou wait the autumn that I see,
Will sweeter taste than these red berries be.
3.3k
Oh! that my young life were a lasting dream!
My spirit not awakening, till the beam
Of an Eternity should bring the morrow.
Yes! though that long dream were of hopeless sorrow,
’Twere better than the cold reality
Of waking life, to him whose heart must be,
And hath been still, upon the lovely earth,
A chaos of deep passion, from his birth.
But should it be—that dream eternally
Continuing—as dreams have been to me
In my young boyhood—should it thus be given,
’Twere folly still to hope for higher Heaven.
For I have revelled when the sun was bright
I’ the summer sky, in dreams of living light
And loveliness,—have left my very heart
Inclines of my imaginary apart
From mine own home, with beings that have been
Of mine own thought—what more could I have seen?
’Twas once—and only once—and the wild hour
From my remembrance shall not pass—some power
Or spell had bound me—’twas the chilly wind
Came o’er me in the night, and left behind
Its image on my spirit—or the moon
Shone on my slumbers in her lofty noon
Too coldly—or the stars—howe’er it was
That dream was that that night-wind—let it pass.
I have been happy, though in a dream.
I have been happy—and I love the theme:
Dreams! in their vivid coloring of life
As in that fleeting, shadowy, misty strife
Of semblance with reality which brings
To the delirious eye, more lovely things
Of Paradise and Love—and all my own!—
Than young Hope in his sunniest hour hath known.
3.1k
He raised me the old-fashioned way
Never spared the rod
Worked daylight to dark
Except for Sundays
Never heard him say
His life was hard
Taught me to drive a stick
To hunt, to fish, to throw a lick
And how to take one
Good times fly by
Years fade away
Yesterday dies
Time cries
Daddy was a good ol' boy
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
Well they're about as good as it gets
He gave up all the boyhood dreams
And plans he'd laid
So that I'd have some
Sometimes he'd speak and gaze
A glimpse of better days
Back on the farm
I can just see him now singin'
"Not Fade Away" and "True Love Ways"
There in the sun
Good times fly by
Years fade away
Yesterday dies
Time cries
Daddy was a good ol' boy
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
Well they're about as good as it gets
I carry his picture in my wallet
Together with his boyhood dreams
The picture is of him at 12 years old
My wallet's bustin' out at the seams
Time cries out for them good ol' boys
I'm talkin' about them good ol' boys
They're the heart of the South
Them good ol' boys
My Daddy was as good as it gets
Time cries out
For the heart of the South
Time cries out
For the heart of the South
Time cries out...
Time cries out...
Time cries out...
© Jason Cole
Jun 13, 2015
Jun 13, 2015 at 8:06 AM UTC
I wish to get this out in the open,
I wish to clarify something
I must confess something to those who care about my writing:
My sense of humour is... well...
If you know me in person, you know my sense of humour
or what could be errantly said
to be a sense of humour.
I draw heavily upon:
facetiousness, mythic interpretation, sarcasm, satire, excessive formality, irony, wordplay,
a somewhat predisposed tendency towards not taking most things entirely seriously
even and almost especially when I am 'supposed to',
resorting to profanity on rare occasions,
and quite simply and succinctly a ****** up world perspective*
amassed over many years of living in this society
and from living with my late, similarly minded, brutally honest alcoholic Father,
in this society, nonetheless,
who in fact was at least *quite ******* directly* responsible for my aforementioned errant sense of humour.
If you knew him, you might say that I'm a "chip off the ol' block" in some ways,
but I know I'm quite ******* deviant from it in others.
So, to those of you who simply know of my existence via this digital outlet/public-sketchpad for my new-found passion of writing down every ******* thing I think it worthwhile to ponder again later, or perhaps even share with similarly minded, or at least accepting people; I wish to convey my deepest and most sincere pity, not in that it is anything that was your doing, just in that you can't possibly know my sense of humour and tasteless applications of irony and satire, and as such; I've probably offended some people.
However, for some anomalous reason,
some of you seem to like this stuff
So I'm going to keep it up.
If you read this: thank you,
but if you did not, then **** you;
however, if you didn't initially read this but were later directed to it by me or by some other personage,
fictional or real,
or for some other reason happened across it,
I rescind the aforementioned **** you" in light of conveying my deepest and most sincere
"Thank you for putting up with my weird-ass ********
I appreciate anyone who finds any value in my works.
I also appreciate the improbable nature of anyone liking my brain-vomit.
I love creating and I love sharing my creations,
so when that all works out,
I'm ******* fit as a fiddle;
Giddy as a schoolgirl on Prozac;
Happier than a young necrophiliac who achieves his boyhood ambition of becoming coroner.
Apr 20, 2013
Apr 20, 2013 at 7:02 PM UTC
no
of course not
a disease is a disorder
with symptoms and signs
an internal dysfunction
a...
disturbance
in the design
No
I am not infectious -
I touch this boy so,
and see!
He is still a normality
A ******* fiend
An hourglasss devotee -
I am not foodborne, no,
Unless you count
the macaroons
pistachio green
and lemon too,
what a taste
of boyhood,
schoolboy blue
I am not acute,
a one-time sneeze.
I am not
a short-lived
Green coughed
wheeze,
I am not
the plunger in your vaccines -
I am the pistol red and glitter
in your
genes
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 9:21 PM UTC
I spent my boyhood avoiding
the disgrace of my differences.
Creating alternate empires that
I ruled with stoic passion.
I gave out negative vibrations, as a boy,
to control the level of association.
Built walls and lived within them,
perfectly encased in sarcastic wisdom.
Does not take too long to understand
that being yourself is not suggested.
Eager advocates educate the boy that his
differences must be suppressed.
Be the same. Be the same. Be the same.
Moulded and conformed, unaware
of the boyhood desiring to think for self.
I spent my boyhood reading books
that opened libraries of imagination.
Absorbing the solitary creations
of so many magnificent lives. They presented
me with echoes of alternatives.
I never have understood the slicked back
membrane of uncentred filters.
Solitary self-confinement made so
much more tickled sense to me.
I passed out scented cigars of me
to ear-drums inclined to not listen.
They agreed to, and supported,
the numbness of not thinking.
Letting the self-declared prophets
dictate how we must believe.
I spent my boyhood being the boy
that did not fit the paper model.
Set it on fire. Set it on fire. Let the
message always be that a man
must indicate his own set of standards.
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 9:25 PM UTC
Change came steadily but the boy was stronger and now a young man.
He flowed with each obstacle and kept his eyes firmly on his plan.
Never again would he be as weak as he was once before,
The young man was stronger now even down to his core.
He was moving with the hits that life threw at him now,
Until at last one hit him so hard he went down as hard as a plow.
Though he had friends that helped him get back up,
His problems started to overflow from his once empty cup.
Every hit he took broke off pieces of his very own being,
It felt like he was losing all the beauty he was just finally seeing.
The anger that the young man thought was gone reared it's head,
Bringing with it all the old pain within him back from the dead.
All the training and wisdom he fought so hard to learn,
Was tossed into a pit that was just waiting for him to burn.
The only thing remaining among the ashes was the familiar fear,
Emptiness filled every hole within him leaving a trace of one single tear.
The young man was starting to break once more,
He began hiding behind his once solid and stable inner core.
He spoke meaningless words to distract the prying but caring eyes,
Praying that no one would ever hear his agonizing cries.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 1:36 AM UTC
His finger fidgeted with the small hole in his jeans
Right above the left knee
It caressed the rust of a healing scab
He knew boyhood was sitting at the tense end of a slingshot
While balancing on a thin branch
Creeping in through the window
Of his tree house
His shins were permanently bruised
From hitting the edge of the bed
After jumping and missing
In order to avoid whatever may be living underneath it
Ten years from now he will regret
Not being in enough family photos
And for placing too many boxes full of old clothes
Underneath his bed
For anything to truly live there
He will know manhood sitting at a red light
Begging the breaks to go out
So his only option will be
To go
When he is old
And so much a baby again
He will beg time to be patient
Long enough to understand
Why when he was a boy
The slingshot band never broke from the tension
Before releasing rocks to break windows
He had to spend the summers working off
But as a man
Trapped at a red light
Why not once
The breaks ever went out
So that he might have an excuse
To go
Oct 26, 2011
Oct 26, 2011 at 6:44 AM UTC
~
the smell of timbers,
aging in the sun and daily misting;
neath the shuffling sound,
footsteps of a man,
bucket filled with daily catchings,
the reeling in of memory’s castings,
of creosote's faint lifting,
drifting on the breezes;
of old tackle boxes,
of shrimp and lures;
the gatherings of hands,
ragged and weathered,
the collecting of years;
of hand-me-down hooks,
bobbers and sinkers,
the odd bits of dust,
gathered in corners,
pliers worn by use and rust,
save from drownings
grateful rainbows
one by one,
their too-short lives
extended with each
catch and release.
tired ropes wrapped
’round bent iron ties,
summer-time-baked...
cracked and dried,
by day's too old to count,
the numbers, the flutters,
since this heart began its bleeding,
it's journey beating,
floats of faded red and blue,
recall of a yesteryear
of a grandfather renewed;
the one-time, one-day
he and i walked
hand-in-hand
down a dusty road
to an old, wood fishing dock
on a grassy river bank;
dock and day long gone,
but love-scribed now,
deeply in this memory.
a day with rod and reel
when on a river long ago
a boy and a man,
an afternoon of fishing
to his heart listening.
a wistful day
of boyhood’s dreams
now in wishful haze;
forgotten midst
the growing years,
tumbling out in verse,
those smells, the sounds,
now reel out words
between the tears,
now catch-releasing,
a heart's docking...
and memory’s rebirth.
~
*post script.
funny, this memory thing... how we can be so not conscious of what lies ’neath its surface, but then is reclaimed in vivid, YouTube vision by the smallest sight, sound, or smell. with a childhood spent 8,000 miles and an ocean away from my home country, i have scarce few memories of my grandfather. today i am grateful to reclaim this one, a tearfully joyous recall of a six-year old's wonder-filled afternoon,
caught and released so long ago.*
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
*Fishing off Puffin Island as a boy
By Jude Kyrie
I remember back to my boyhood
it was a different place in time.
The little aluminum fishing boat.
Its ancient Johnson outboard motor.
leaving a wake splitting the calm Irish sea
off the coast of Anglesey in North Wales.
My grandfather lived his retirement
years out in the small fishing village.
We reach Puffin Island
a deserted rock of land full of nesting puffins
The anchor tossed over into the deep waters
of the Irish sea.
We dropped our lines in the water and waited.
The heavy lines tripple baited in anticipation
of a healthy dinner catch.
The schools of Mackerel
attacked our bait
We were tired of pulling them into the boat.
My grandfather slitting the bellies
and cleaning them throwing the guts
back into the sea that bred them.
Hungry fish clamored for the feed.
nothing left for waste.
I held a spluttering Storm light
to pierce the blackness of the night.
My fear of a giant shark
attack filled my young heart.
we packed our catch and the propeller
creating a phosphorous wake behind us.
I marveled at the multitudes of species
below my feet.
And at the untamed violence and beauty of life
that we all shared on this wonderful planet.
And then back into darkness.
The total black darkness.*
May 13, 2016
May 13, 2016 at 12:25 PM UTC
i climbed the tree in my backyard today
first time iv climbed a tree since i was a boy
i was alot better at it back then
almost fell out and busted my old ****
but it was still fun
forgot how its a different world up there
how its magical to look down on your own
corner of the universe with that mysterious kid vision
that makes adventures out of the mundane
and todays adventure was
sunshine and leaves
was the boyhood pride of balance and skill
i may have been better at it
fifty years ago
but its never been more fun
Mar 22, 2014
Mar 22, 2014 at 3:52 PM UTC
As the boy grew he knew he was no longer a child,
The atmosphere at home went from morbid to mild.
The boys family quickly began to heal and reunite,
And he began to lose his desire to disappear into the night.
His families happiness was contagious and started to take over.
The boy was losing his reasons to keep his emotions under cover,
Some say he outgrew the anger and fear that he clung to,
But the truth is he was over always feeling down and blue.
The boy began to search for ways to be cleansed and born anew.
But what he found was a miracle that he knew to be true.
He poured himself into growing and learning,
his every action now reflecting this desperate sense of yearning.
The boy learned of new people and far away places.
He sought out his old fears and erased their disturbing faces.
Self-care and love seemed began to start rushing right back.
And as the boy grew he felt his life was finally getting on track.
He was finally happy and content once more,
Blissfully unaware of the changes that life had in store.
Unaware that his growth and strength was soon to be tested,
The peace he knew was now over and he was well rested.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 1:29 AM UTC
The rite of passage
From my boyhood to manhood
Killed my innocence.
© Raphael Uzor
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:22 PM UTC
I cannot restore the lakes that teemed with fish,
nor the maples cultivated by the Mohawk,
the Adirondacks now more remote than boyhood,
a lost dark conversation with jejune oblivion.
Events became the storyline of my life,
and events were always stronger than resolve.
My journey took me inward without time schedule,
dredged up expediencies as layovers.
Still, I felt drawn to the people,
who bejeweled my dreams in neuron flashes,
became therapy, billboards along the escape route.
Turned out that vital knowledge would suffice.
Jun 1, 2012
Jun 1, 2012 at 10:02 AM UTC