"bristling" poems
A black crow's darting eyes
spans the wheat field
and an orange pumpkin patch.
She sees
tall grasses of brown
seedlings,
bristling in the wind,
soon to be bushels of grain
and a pumpkin pie that she never savored.
She sits, atop her tree perch,
at times warm and storybook,
hidden by tree branches,
and at times out of harm's way
and infamy.
Her friends, the sun, and clouds in concert,
dancing along.
Her other friends bring alms and smiles.
Life is so good at times.
Down the road sits a mill
next to a waterfall
and a cabin,
with reindeer horns
hanging above the doorway.
She is in her element, happy,
carrying for her nestlings.
Back and forth her parental eyes dart
the hilly fields, a smoked filled chimney, and her babies,
all crawling with sustenance and awe.
Storybook.
A mother feeding a worm to her baby.
Storybook.
Off to her side is not a blind eye
watching her,
scary stick figures of
straw tucked under red shirts and hats,
with a tied tinfoil strips dotting
her eyes and tease.
Scarecrows, cease.
At times life is good nature, hand in hand,
knock on wood.
If only life could be circumspect.
Than darkness filling the light
and a stutter of life.
For a sad page is turned,
pause
... tears.
Then, feathers fall.
Hers.
The sound of a thud.
Silence and tears of her friend's swelling.
A baby's cry, missing her mother.
More orphaned tears.
Who would be this despicable?
On that rogue day.
A kick of a donkey,
an ***
one bad rock on her path,
breaks the air,
as three little elementary kids were walking along
to school.
One, me, with a rock in his hand,
taking aim at her perch
and the death of the black crow's pages.
I confess.
... Bless me, Father, for I have sinned
it has been fifty years since
my last confession ...
a Tom Sawyer-like childhood gone worse.
I repent.
Some fifty years later I think of those first cairns,
including stealing the reindeer horns and milling
my brother and sister's storybook.
Waterfalls
stream tears, and a sorry boat
rowed downstream
sadly
thereafter.
Logan Robertson
7/25/2018
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 6:02 PM UTC
running
deliquescing into nature
i am engulfed in stillness
i encounter a deer as i round a corner
its chestnut eyes intensely sense
something wild within me
transfixed
we meld palpably
whispering our essence
myopic views warp into acute focus
golden flowers stretch and arch
and yawning into the sun
swell with bursts of luster
whilst violets polka dot the path
with lilac luminescence
dead tree trunks
mutating into masterpieces
yearn for new life
drawing in the squirrels
yellow-bellied birds
hover
sensing my motions
whilst woodland winds undulate
pine scented waves of sea salt oceans
my ears enchantingly enhanced
by bristling leaves caressing trees
as scintillating amber butterflies
dance in synch
with the clock tower’s
ancient chiming
a gust of wind
catches a patch of sand
and sends it quivering
fusing high in summer air
then falling soft as feathers
hidden fairies prance about
answering unheard questions
problems dissolve in emerald meadows
without a hint of striving
essays write themselves
upon my mind
poetry flows through me
wings of meadowlarks
trace my face with nuances
interlaced with connotations
rushing home
i write it down
then bowing i take credit
for what was etched upon my soul
by a sunbeam in the forest
©2016janetaylor
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 10:09 PM UTC
Introduction
There they stood; keeping silent company.
Yet of His face, wept searing electricity.
To the lovers of life
Here they stand, keeping silent company.
No utterance dealt; yet clear in both their minds
A single, brilliant truth:
He longs for her with a savage delight.
And it cries from every fibre, exalting!
It is in the bearing of his eye;
Rifling through her tender flesh
In search of what he knows, from voices ages old, is there:
That her heart will beat for no other as it beats for him right now;
That in this moment, their Souls are bared
To each other’s glares- naked, and blemished, and cowering-
Yet his eyes remain fixed and sure:
And for this, she loves him.
For they have seen each other for the First of Times,
Truly! And as with many the Ancient Laws unfurled,
They stand aware, in lack of ever being taught,
Aware with every atom, every straining tendon tight
That their time's so very short.
And so they drink… wordless
To each other, to their youth, and to their bodies
Shining like never before in the noonday air
Garbed in cloth that snaps and furls around their waists.
They imbibe with electric eyes,
Eyes that are new born to this world of light
And come out screaming, living, and sensitive
For lack of ever being touched.
They revel in their new-found joy;
Pouring from Her figure,
Of Her sleek, supple waist and the arch of her back,
Bristling with delight,
Of His strong hands and easy smile,
That spoke of laughter scattered
Across countless campfires of summers past.
Their light does burn intense as any fire,
And when their brimming anticipation
Overspills its crimson chalice
The silence shall SHATTER.
To find peace again in each other's arms.
Fumbling in sweet darkness-
Of heavy lids, of earthy flesh,
With lips embraced...
In ravenous finality.
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 5:14 PM UTC
WHEN cold December
Froze to grisamber
The jangling bells on the sweet rose-trees--
Then fading slow
And furred is the snow
As the almond's sweet husk--
And smelling like musk.
The snow amygdaline
Under the eglantine
Where the bristling stars shine
Like a gilt porcupine--
The snow confesses
The little Princesses
On their small chioppines
Dance under the orpines.
See the casuistries
Of their slant fluttering eyes--
Gilt as the zodiac
(Dancing Herodiac).
Only the snow slides
Like gilded myrrh--
From the rose-branches--hides
Rose-roots that stir.
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Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."
That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."
He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."
Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."
When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"
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In a story so old, is a story of love told
as the little folks go nodding their heads.
A tale of a sin, it is has centuries been
the mystery that has, so many, misled.
Amidst the bristling leaves, to which they paid no heed
the lovers, they parried their foes.
In the wisdom of lust; for which one must crave so much,
the lovers, they deafened the shores.
The mighty they came, the mighty they slayed
and time whistled past them to flee.
It was a bruised sky that woke her,
and the weeping earth that cloaked her,
when she fell to knees and roared.
In a story so old, is a story of love told;
when purple mist dawns on us again,
about lovers who met, for those who forget,
that time doesn’t need to know tomorrow.
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 11:20 AM UTC
The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes. The rate of ooze changes?. Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with ***** practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility. The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you. Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and ***** sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications. I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin. I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks? Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx. Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost ***** all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business. While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.
May 8, 2013
May 8, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
I last rode this road in Summer
When the light was as now;
Long, flat and mellow
But by the hour not the season
The trees back then still wore clothes
Green, perhaps liver-spotted with yellow
Now I watch them tangle their naked arms
And the world turns its face away in shame,
Longing for its chastised summer
The wheat field is grey scrub
An old bristling beard
And my bike tyres trace its edge
Like fingers on the jaw of our grandfather
And the watercolour wind
Rinses my knuckle bones
And then bites them open
They don’t bother to bleed
They’ve been chewed too many times
As the clouds wash in,
Black with frostbite,
I bite my winter scarf
And sing to it of bluebirds
Dec 25, 2014
Dec 25, 2014 at 3:35 AM UTC
*Claw beneath your ribs
Hold down wild you
Just for a little while
Feel the anguished flutter
Begging these gruff hands . . .*
1.
Fear takes commotive hold
Makes wooden legs
Delayed dance…..so delayed
Causing silent attendance of synchrony
No use stepping out for flight just yet, if alone
Will meantime practise wing-span
iron out brittle energy
attempt to fortify links
..
2.
Careless snubs to fragile sapling
Did absolutely nothing
To the course set out
Only hypocrites squander even half-truths
and wallow in obsequious words
rendering paralysis and decay
I will continue to claw beneath your ribs
Covert trove awaits us
In the tormented form of
Crashing waves on a broken coast
Hacked to near-distraction by potent searching
3.
Loss is not wasted
unseen by its absence:
evocative presence felt …with penniless eyes
I challenge you to visualise our melting:
perched on fate’s right shoulder
re-sent to this basic arena as buoyant token
summoned by that primordial, blue light
..
*the sun may well baulk and melt
at the ruddy sight of
such intense clawing beneath your ribs
(like your customary digging into my bristling blades)
To find my foetal place
within the calling drumbeats
of imperative you . . .*
S T, sunsday . . . 21 July 2013
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 4:50 AM UTC
[On my birthday]
At low tide like this how sheer the water is.
White, crumbling ribs of marl protrude and glare
and the boats are dry, the pilings dry as matches.
Absorbing, rather than being absorbed,
the water in the bight doesn't wet anything,
the color of the gas flame turned as low as possible.
One can smell it turning to gas; if one were Baudelaire
one could probably hear it turning to marimba music.
The little ocher dredge at work off the end of the dock
already plays the dry perfectly off-beat claves.
The birds are outsize. Pelicans crash
into this peculiar gas unnecessarily hard,
it seems to me, like pickaxes,
rarely coming up with anything to show for it,
and going off with humorous elbowings.
Black-and-white man-of-war birds soar
on impalpable drafts
and open their tails like scissors on the curves
or tense them like wishbones, till they tremble.
The frowsy sponge boats keep coming in
with the obliging air of retrievers,
bristling with jackstraw gaffs and hooks
and decorated with bobbles of sponges.
There is a fence of chicken wire along the dock
where, glinting like little plowshares,
the blue-gray shark tails are hung up to dry
for the Chinese-restaurant trade.
Some of the little white boats are still piled up
against each other, or lie on their sides, stove in,
and not yet salvaged, if they ever will be, from the last bad storm,
like torn-open, unanswered letters.
The bight is littered with old correspondences.
Click. Click. Goes the dredge,
and brings up a dripping jawful of marl.
All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful.
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The thousandth
****** beneath
Lake Baikal of
The Trident
The gods' mouthful
bristling iron
is spat ashore
Leviathan's bones
glint and crackle
Man is one celled
Apocalypse
yet to divide
His name in Manganese
splinters under the paths
of the mastodon
Dec 9, 2011
Dec 9, 2011 at 5:58 AM UTC
Two strangers in a rickshaw in Varanasi:
Two strangers who never felt like strangers.
Two people lost and alive in the moment,
The same moment
With every sense standing, antennae bristling..
Two in a bubble
Together, held apart.
Caught up in a parade and surrounded by shy , smiling faces
Waving modestly at the fair haired strangers,
Laughing
At their surprise and joy.
Knowing that moment's awe
Delighted to share the festival.
Rickety trucks gaudily decorated blare out the tinny music and
High pitched voices distorted by the tannoy add an urgency
To the motion.
Shimmering saris glisten,
So in tune with the music that trembles with joy.
That joy spills out from the
Scents, the colours, the gleaming grins and the shy waving that marks our welcome,
Till every sense tingles
With life.
And then the sand storm
Swirling and circling the speeding rickshaw
Arrived mysteriously, magically,
Like dry ice in a theatre.
The air now tangible;
Surrounding us like the skin of a bubble
Lifting us out
Of ourselves as the scene comes and goes.
The sand screen clears to reveal
An elephant
A beautiful, smiling elephant
Dressed in splendour
Accompanying us on our magic carpet ride.
Close enough for us to touch his hide.
Bejewelled and glorious
Smiling too
And all is one in that moment
And each looks at the other and feels enchanted and wants the parade to go on forever
Just like this;
With motion
And music
And colour
And smiles
And laughter
And
An elephant.
Sep 14, 2016
Sep 14, 2016 at 4:04 PM UTC
Earliest morning, switching all the tracks
that cross the sky from cinder star to star,
coupling the ends of streets
to trains of light.
now draw us into daylight in our beds;
and clear away what presses on the brain:
put out the neon shapes
that float and swell and glare
down the gray avenue between the eyes
in pinks and yellows, letters and twitching signs.
Hang-over moons, wane, wane!
From the window I see
an immense city, carefully revealed,
made delicate by over-workmanship,
detail upon detail,
cornice upon facade,
reaching up so languidly up into
a weak white sky, it seems to waver there.
(Where it has slowly grown
in skies of water-glass
from fused beads of iron and copper crystals,
the little chemical "garden" in a jar
trembles and stands again,
pale blue, blue-green, and brick.)
The sparrows hurriedly begin their play.
Then, in the West, "Boom!" and a cloud of smoke.
"Boom!" and the exploding ball
of blossom blooms again.
(And all the employees who work in a plants
where such a sound says "Danger," or once said "Death,"
turn in their sleep and feel
the short hairs bristling
on backs of necks.) The cloud of smoke moves off.
A shirt is taken of a threadlike clothes-line.
Along the street below
the water-wagon comes
throwing its hissing, snowy fan across
peelings and newspapers. The water dries
light-dry, dark-wet, the pattern
of the cool watermelon.
I hear the day-springs of the morning strike
from stony walls and halls and iron beds,
scattered or grouped cascades,
alarms for the expected:
queer cupids of all persons getting up,
whose evening meal they will prepare all day,
you will dine well
on his heart, on his, and his,
so send them about your business affectionately,
dragging in the streets their unique loves.
Scourge them with roses only,
be light as helium,
for always to one, or several, morning comes
whose head has fallen over the edge of his bed,
whose face is turned
so that the image of
the city grows down into his open eyes
inverted and distorted. No. I mean
distorted and revealed,
if he sees it at all.
2.6k
The city is loud with chimneys,
bristling with dimpled sky dishes,
afloat in a dammed lake of sunset fenestration,
beneath unwitnessed, unappreciated clouds,
its streets a grid of flowless canals,
to the music of "Hey, mister, got any change?"
Oh,
but,
when the lights go down,
and the pretty people come out!
and the beef bouncers sort snort the buzzing sequin queen queues
for the sparkle dance houses,
the city,
the city,
can one ever get enough?
Jan 10, 2011
Jan 10, 2011 at 7:29 PM UTC
platinum your blonde is hair bristling 'neath
fingers you're perched
bob is
head, baby
your mouth full is and throat
steeply
climbs into
tight
release
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 6:01 PM UTC
Winters nascent white falls
on the boughs of orchard branches
and carpets the earth outside my window;
The coating has a strength in it's gentle glow
softening and subduing the landscape
in a pale light, diffused by cloud,
Lifting with the purity of a doves wings
And drifting with a melancholy like ashes,
Settling, like the baseness of bones,
Something bare and beautiful
is reflected outside
in the raw winds of transition,
Out of the dark belly of solstice,
In all the suddenness and subtlety of being
snow flakes are inchoate and bristling.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 8:46 PM UTC
I AM an ancient reluctant conscript.
On the soup wagons of Xerxes I was a cleaner of pans.
On the march of Miltiades' phalanx I had a haft and head;
I had a bristling gleaming spear-handle.
Red-headed Caesar picked me for a teamster.
He said, "Go to work, you Tuscan *******
Rome calls for a man who can drive horses."
The units of conquest led by Charles the Twelfth,
The whirling whimsical Napoleonic columns:
They saw me one of the horseshoers.
I trimmed the feet of a white horse Bonaparte swept the night stars with.
Lincoln said, "Get into the game; your nation takes you."
And I drove a wagon and team and I had my arm shot off
At Spottsylvania Court House.
I am an ancient reluctant conscript.
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We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living
Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world,
And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
W.B. YEATS
* * * * * *
My soul looked down from a vague height, with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues.
Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
Round myriad warts that might be little hills.
From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.
(And smell came up from those foul openings
As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)
On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
Brown strings, towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.
Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.
I saw their bitten backs curve, loop and straighten.
I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.
Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.
And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, bur crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head
2.1k
Mystical smoke of blue and red,
Twists and curls,
Dark the night, and silent the air,
As I saw him, teeth bared.
He was but an illusion,
Of smoke and of changing shades of colour,
And of mysterious existence,
For exist he must have, that vision.
But what is an illusion, a vision?
It must have hints of truth, of reality, must it not?
Hence how would you describe what you saw?
Unless it was but a meaningless hallucination.
Sometimes the answers seems so clear,
If only one just relaxes and look longer,
Like how the stars seem to multiply,
The longer you look into the clear night sky.
Dancing flames, crackling wood,
The smoke turns thick, the illusion becoming solid,
And I sat mystified, making the vision my reality,
For it was good.
I stretched out my hand,
The smoke engulfing my hand and slowly up my arm,
Either I become one with the illusion or,
The illusion becomes a reality.
He takes shape, I see paws,
His teeth still bared, his fur bristling
The abstractness of him, the reality of him...;
I dive into the smoke, being one with dreams.
I open my eyes, and there he stands,
The complete form of a canine;
Did the illusion have truth?
Or did reality succumb to a dream?
May 5, 2015
May 5, 2015 at 12:35 PM UTC
Ramble shamble gamble preamble .
Wild child dialed beguiled .
Crawl small ; fall tall ; wall all ; mall brawl doll you all .
Black sack fact track Jack smack wack maniac pack . Back hack , knack
flack , lack kayak rack tack .
Phone roan tone zone bone hone ; drone known . Own moan loan .
Talk rock ; gawk hawk ; shock lock ; **** dock ; balk , stalk walk .
Bristling gristle glimmer glisten .
Quaint paint saint feint aint .
Expressed suppressed repressed biased .
Ecstatic emphatic fanatic .
Lecherous treacherous .
Obtuse abstruse .
Whirl curl ; hurl furl .
Test west quest ; jest guessed ; blessed best crest behest . Conquest ,
invest zest ; rest nest .
Cohort cavort . Gulch mulch .
Raven haven saven braven .
Jan 22, 2013
Jan 22, 2013 at 5:46 AM UTC
Peculiar Spring
Seeps through my skin
Invades my soul
And garrotes me within
Unhurried strangulation
My spirit weakens
A rush of horror
At the sight of the Warden
He's cloaked in death
Speaks with decaying breath
"It's all foredoomed
I'm threading this path"
Limbs frozen stiff
Hasten, flee … if
Death travels swiftly
Radiating a putrid whiff
A nipping hoarfrost
Spring slays those embossed
Come Summer, come
Before I completely exhaust
This peculiar Spring
Its nature - bristling
Beneath a flaccid quiescence
I'm being garroted within
Oct 20, 2011
Oct 20, 2011 at 4:55 PM UTC
There were eight or ten of them little boys, it was difficult to count them, for they kept swinging madly on their roller skates on the court hardly the size of a basketball court, sweeping along in a bunch after the ball with their sticks poised and stretching out tense for the strike, dispersing and twisting in wild patterns and then going after the ball yet again, straining forward for speed, navigating smoothly, dangerously, sticks clacking, shoulders pushing, shooting off the course and with maneuvers of the feet and the knees and the hips and the flailing hands recovering balance, laughing, and now from all corners converging on the far goal post to attack and defend, the goalkeeper strung bristling as a cat confronting an attacking pack, and as the whole court touched a beat to the imploding moment, there was this lady shouting from the sidelines, shoot, Rahul, shoot, shoot!
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 8:17 PM UTC
Rinsing over porcelain skin
Skin still too pale for the end of summer
Washing, cleansing, every curve, every bend
Water droplets gather in pools around my unpainted toes
Parachuting raindrops released from freshly-trimmed ends
Of hair that will soon disappear
Naked green eyes clear of disoperation
Gaze at the foreignness of this summer waterfall.
I part my lips to taste the mountain air
Condensed into a life source
Icy in July, fresher than filtered
A German Shepard gazes at my silhouette
Caramel and black, fur bristling with excitement
With kind brown eyes
Sparked with curiosity,
Lapping the water with his pink tongue.
Feb 3, 2012
Feb 3, 2012 at 12:03 PM UTC
bristle cone pine, a wine-stained, burgundy -
conniption of green fires, yellow tinged. sunset.
a fresh net of spun gold, roasting fecundity -
a bristling of midnight at day's end, thundering.
a harangue of unyielding pattern
her hair down; now as always... conquering -
all of me.
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 1:00 PM UTC