"buffets" poems
The English vice,
Some Etonian curse –
Set down in grass
And purple verse,
Lavatory bred
With ransacked blood,
Skin slapping and
With a falling thud –
Takes boys at childhood,
Wishes them away,
With promises of popper fuelled buffets,
And poisons them with
Vice and virus red,
And sees them unmarried
Giving head.
I don’t regret a single thing I am,
I’ve tried it out
And can’t abide the sham –
I’ll **** men
And make them beg for more,
I’ll scrabble for their love upon the floor,
I’ll love men
And love will love me too,
I’ll love for love’s own sake
And when I’m through
I’ll die and I’ll be thankful that your hate
Never made me beg that I was straight.
Jul 31, 2014
Jul 31, 2014 at 6:01 PM UTC
You put garbage in you get garbage out
Health food fanatics know what I am talking about
McDonalds, Arby’s and all those Buffets
Sluggish citizens working Twelve to ten
And to cover up their poor nutrition
We soup up the brackish black brew
Killing ourselves with more caffeine till
We collapse
You put garbage in you get garbage out
Good teachers with years of experience
Know what I am talking about
The tweet, the face book
Are superficial connections
Binge watching brain-dead reality show people
Speed reading unverified Articles
Peer reviewed paper by academic writers
Don’t get the press the talking heads
With party lines and hateful sentiments get
You put garbage in you get garbage out
Any poet philosopher knows what I am talking about
Flashing screens switching scenes while twitching teens
Sit texting banal and ephemeral things
No grand dreams but to be normal
No expansion of the human potential
Just block and block of picket fence prisons
Dreams are limited to advertised fantasies
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 1:59 PM UTC
Big ships, small ships, yachts and dingeys
Floating across the mighty sea
Carving their way, displacing their weight
To keep afloat the Captain and First mate.
Old ships, new ships, schooners and cruise liners
Have crossed paths throughout the ages old
Once to explore, make claim, pirate and fight
Now to wine and dine on a luxurious bite
Salted beef, rock hard bread and weevil-friendly biscuits
A 3 course meal fit for Old Salts alike
Weevils & worms and bugs of all kind
Along with sparse portions of meat, you might find
French wine, filet mignon, sushi and pastries
Buffets and fine dining, variety is key
All you can eat, whenever you'd like
No chores, no work, just eating all night'
What a contrast exists between these two worlds
Only 2 to 300 hundred years apart
Once grimy, risky, arduous and fraught
Now fancy, lazy, and much to be bought
What if the Old Salts could teleport to today
And live aboard our floating hotels?
With no masts to climb or sheets to tend
Would they break or would they bend?
I suppose that switch would be easy enough
But send us back to Pirate-ridden waters
You'd be sure never to hear from us again
Swabbing the deck would **** us alone
Not to mention the food and disease of back when.
- BPW
Dec. 11, 2013
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 4:29 PM UTC
On a New Year's Day in Reykjavik
I stood at the very top of that old city,
intending to visit the Cathedral there.
All at once, there it was. And it was in charge.
A gust of wind so strong that it grabbed and
slid me, speeding across several metres of ice,
only to slam, face first, into the broad chest
of a resident British Embassy staffer.
Genially, he smiled down and introduced
himself with gentlemanly aplomb.
No wonder they had an empire. At least for a while.
Oh, that wind! Ever seen snow moving horizontally?
Or felt a hole being drilled, in one ear, almost out the other?
Deep in the ancient countryside, on the way to the sea,
is a lonely valley, held captive by the power of a brutal
Gigantic troll. There, this wind has its greatest rival.
Even if you can't see them, just tell me you don't feel them...
In Reykholt now, that bullying wind buffets a cozy house,
but to no avail, for angels watch over a newborn baby girl.
Her mother, just a girl when we first met,
now sings tenderly to her own new daughter.
Both are princesses of this beautiful island country.
Finding kindness, that tough old wind has sent
Halldora's lullaby across the open ocean,
over wide blue skies, and onto this snowy prairie
where I hear it and cradle it softly, and so gently, to my heart.
Jan 10, 2016
Jan 10, 2016 at 7:10 PM UTC
Whispering to each handhold, "I'll be back,"
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind --
I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward...
I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark--
"Made it again!" Oh how I love this climb!
-- the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
"Made it again! Made it again!"
4.4k
Outside two squirrels foraging
Inside one hundred and one keys tapping
Three buttons clicking and one wheel spinning
Eight hours a day sitting badly
In an ergonomic desk chair
Soft fingers tap on plastic and glass
Weak muscle memory of calluses and splinters
And sunburn blisters from another life
Outside the old prairie wind howls like a phantom
Lost in urban canyons buffets the panes
Drives the torrents of freezing rain
Hard droplets tap on metal and glass
While inside our high-rise terrariums we sit
Generating transient value that flits
Up into the clouds till whenever
You tap plastic to trade your invisible worth
For a hot meal in a disposable bowl
Ponder and sip in another life you could be
Spending all day in the freezing rain
Hunting squirrels for soup
Feb 24, 2019
Feb 24, 2019 at 4:57 PM UTC
In your absence...
My thoughts
Your nakedness besets
My fantasies
Your lechery buffets...
This' reality...
Enrapture me with your presence.
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 10:30 AM UTC
I would like this life of endless
Greyhound time schedules to cease.
What self-inflicted alien abduction
tore me from the valley of my birth,
leaving me to wander empty streets,
each the branch of a coppiced maze?
I grow weary of quotidian fastfood buffets
downed with the aid of espresso baristas.
My legs have lost the muscle-memory
that strode the river cliffs with no regard.
Time to end the sleepwalk of forty years;
rejoin the forward guard of Iroquois.
Oct 18, 2012
Oct 18, 2012 at 10:47 AM UTC
Like wind that buffets lofty trees
And breaks what’s loose and dry
The trials that bring us to our knees
Will cleanse us by and by
And like the winter snows that fall
To grant the earth a rest
The colder times that come for all
Will help renew our best
Like dusky eve and dawn so bright
Give cycles to our sphere
So let your dark give way to light
Let hope oppose your fear
Let rhythms flow and guide your way
In yielding - you will find
Both strength and joy in every day
Both wealth and peace of mind
Oct 9, 2021
Oct 9, 2021 at 9:31 AM UTC
Gentle ladies, take a while
And choose your mate with lesser style.
Beware the charismatic charm
Of the misogynistic arm.
He’ll ply with love charms, charmingly,
Until he has you all at sea
With this imagined love you’ve found.
He’s swept your feet right off the ground
And carried you away with stars
That twinkle in your laughing eyes.
Yes he can play this game for years
If need be. But slowly he tears
You right away from those you love,
For you to him your love must prove
In every tiny detail now.
And if you can’t then face this row
He’ll find your weakness, badger you
Until your broken health ensue.
His buffets then you can’t oppose
Yet constantly inflicted those
Abuses in the verbal might
Turn physical, and then the fright
Brings on its shame. You will not tell.
Results of that you know full well
Amount to just some more abuse
And then some, coming so obtuse
From left and right. It’s your own fault.
Well so he tells it. You’re the dolt
Who so upset him, made him fire
Assaults at you. Not his desire.
And you believe him. P’rhaps if you
Had not done this or did eschew
That other thing.
You cannot win.
You finally will see this thing
For what it is, and pack and leave.
That’s if there’s some-one who’ll receive
Your brokenness, and take you in
To give you time to heal again.
‘But he’s so nice’, they say in town.
“We can’t imagine him knocking you down.”
He tells them how you selfishly
Took off with children. You must be
The meanest woman round this place.
He’ll find someone to take your place.
He must have someone on his arm
Whose looks are sweet and full of charm,
Who’ll do the work he needs her to.
What else is there for him to do?
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 7:41 AM UTC
When graphite meets the silky threads of paper
Or when ink drips upon the golden sheet
A beautiful artist is born.
There are many kinds of artists in this world
Although today I shall speak of only one..
A neglected kind that does not wish to
Gain fame or to capture the spotlight
But rather to share to listening ears.
There be people
Who see the world through the eyes of a painter
But are capable of stealing the elegance
Of a dancer, a fighter, royal blood, and much more
And condensing what they feel and see
Into a narcotic thread of words.
There be people
With broken and shining hearts alike
That run on wheels of ideas and epiphanies
And feed on overstuffed buffets of salty tears and sugary kindness.
Idealists and realists,
The poor and the rich,
The hungry and the fed,
The broken and the salvaged,
The logical and the emotional,
This beautiful art is not limited to anyone.
It is the echoing voice of the heart
It is the pleading cries of the soul
And the smile of our childhood innocence.
This art we call "poetry"
It is the life itself whispering ideas into ears.
And if that isn't beautiful.. I don't know what is.
Jul 7, 2017
Jul 7, 2017 at 8:45 AM UTC
I recently came across my first journal of poetry,
written in my early forties. A tumultous time in my life, I kept a hand-written journal and the poems flowed. It began on a (recovery) escape~vacation to Mykonos and many other Greek islands. Unable to sail, (stuck on Mykonos by fierce winds that grounded even super tankers), I wrote to pass the time. Even then, I dated my poems, noting when & where the poem was composed. Themes were employed, that twenty years later, reappear (to my surprise) frequently, in my poems of today (by example, "The Wind of Correction"). Even then, I wrote long, way too long poems, some good and some awful ones. Judge this, one not too harshly, judge it as a first endeavor, simplistic, crude and heartfelt.
What seems to have triggered poetry to be the outlet for my emotional upset, as a father of young children, in the midst of a bitter divorce, was a Greek poet, Cavafy, that I must have stumbled on during my visit
and a particular poem he wrote in 1908. I include it the notes in shock and awe, for it unconsciously informed my "style" and seemingly, or unseemingly, still does.
The Geometery of Greece
(His Very First Poem)
~~~
the geometry of Greece
is the perfect intersection
of clear blue sky,
right-angled to azure waters,
with puffs of white clouds
to mark off distances
only
the wind is non-linear,
like feelings,
the wind,
it washes and caresses you,
envelopes and wraps you in
its totality
what it all means is this:
all that I know,
all that I love,
have, got and given,
is leaking and pouring and leaking
from the rectangular shape
what I
now know as,
now call,
my previous life
so now,
the winds of my true self
direct me on a course
that can be plotted
but one day,
one island ahead
no long range planning
on the sailing waters of Greek isles,
the wind does not permit it
the perfect line of the horizon
is not anymore a limiting
boundary
rather,
the sourcing place from which
the wind comes,
that buffets,
to and fro
throws,
carries me forward,
and ever backwards too
this horizon line
that I sail towards,
neither marks nor closes in,
it is always there,
to be sailed to,
ever anew,
to renew
~~~
August 6, 1993
Noon
the Isle of Mykonos
Jan 21, 2016
Jan 21, 2016 at 4:48 PM UTC
~~~
Testimony & Majesty: Oh God, Why Do You Inflict Me?
~~~
Morning dawning...
Thickened whitened whipped cumulus
come crossing,
no frenzied froth,
moving slow royal, stately,
as if they are the pride of a
celestial navy,
peaceful ships,
crossing from my portal to your port,
traversing from my shade
of the blues,
over to you, poet,
to your personal screen-adapted
CinemaScope version sights
This wind buffets,
re-directing my
morning~borning hallelujahs
this wind, nameless,
call it chipper, fulsome and volatile,
a proud pusher selling a waking up
near-chill pill,
to accompany the real+imagined
armada of nature
it, near and nearer
to you,
to the sky we inhabit+share,
its ***** stiffening energy,
makes some
hide inside,
not me,
I'm outed by the
harsh welcome~touch of this
realized reminder -
who is the master,
who is but
an obedient servant,
choicelessly writing his
psalmist morning devotions...
another poem of sky, cloud and wind?
*Oh God why do you inflict me?
with this time after time obeisance
when I am
metaphor drained and disabled,
abject of adjectives,
simile frowning upside downing,
have we poets not done our dutiful
illuminating your bountiful works?*
yet here I am,
a soul surviving,
incapable of resistance,
your frosted creatures persistent,
wrest my visions into prose,
to add to your overly full Facebook page,
with more fawning praise...
*Angered have I, you, for now nowhere,
tropical rain squall tells all,
humans are toys,
born to serve,
silence your complaining~explaining,
and from nowhere with
rapido intensity rising,
down pours drops of scornful
water whippings,
demarcating our
incoming existence inequality...*
and yet with your
yang and yang,
a reproach for me,
for as it waterspout pours,
it also pours sunshine,
a mystifying warning
to the put-upon poet,
that in the admixture
of nature and life,
all is conflicted,
all is tremulous beautiful,
and now is the
due time...
*due, you,
to complete this treatise as
testimony to majesty...*
~~~
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 2:02 PM UTC
Some Asian folk revere the Tao
the way of Yang and Ying.
Others worship ancestors
and of Confucius sing.
Buddhists seek a one way trip
with no wish to return.
Hindus think we're born again
just not in Christian terms.
Some follow in the steps of Christ,
this life, their cross to bear.
Others say Carpe Diem
and just don't give a D*mm.
Islamiscists eschew alcohol
and never lunch on ham.
This place has many faiths and creeds
to suit our every mood.
The voodoo that you do so well
is with suspicion viewed.
The foodists are the latest cult-
a blight upon the land
like Joey chestnut at buffets
consuming all they can.
To them no cow is sacred
and wine just slakes their thirst
They walk among us and they breed
and I don''t know which is worse!
Jul 24, 2013
Jul 24, 2013 at 8:42 PM UTC
Is it just I who awakes
To the pounding buffets on the tambour?
Bellowing howls of the morrow
Faint spasms in the mind?
Does our nervous tension beckon
At the crepuscular beams
Of a pristine new day?
My chest will skip to tremor,
My legs will fail and stumble
I can’t sustain the efforts necessary in this society.
I wouldn't blame a parent,
Teacher or friend are not at fault
None but I, in my strength’s demise
Am to blame for these miseries of failure.
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 2:52 PM UTC
The howling storm caused the man to lay on the wind
Holding down his hat lest it twirl away . His duster stuck to him like skin.
A starless ink slack dark sky. No stars shone. The headstone glistened
Like sun bleached bones. Electric clash . shimmering wet. An image fading from sight.
Zig zag lighted limbs crackle in the distance. The hills they roll and clap thunder.
rain slick, black stallion slowly crests the hill yonder.
Slowly he rides a jangling gallop. Head bent for leather against the lashing weather.
He looms larger by the second.
The howling wind curses him,buffets him about.
He looms larger still in the pelting rain.
comes a horseman slowly jingle jangling again.
He reigns in slowly.Rises up in the stirrups.
White lightening glows and wickers.A booming wave knocks me to ground.
Standing above me the instant is mystic as no living thing could ever move this quick.
"Point me to the headstone of the Unknown soldier" comes through the air.
I look for his face under rain sodden stetson.No eyes no mouth there is nothing there.
Weakly I lift and point to a stone that leans to perdition.The soldier Unknown.
His duster floats softly as he glides along. No stride nor motion a spirit in flight.
He settles not three feet in front of the stone. I knew with a certainty.
The soldier was home. Thunder pushed the night aside.
Lightening blinded my eyes.
Play Dixie. Blow taps.
Blow Revalie. Blow the recall.
Johnny Reb had come home.
From where he did fall.
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 10:32 PM UTC
how on earth
could steaming squash and Brussel sprouts
be as good as Doritos and a soft serve swirl…
sure, I desire to be a healthy old man
but my taste buds wish me dead at 45
they long for sweet wheat and extra large
portions of meat
indiscrete feedings at fried food buffets
all the while maintaining the look of a fella
only slightly over-weight
…..still, I feel poorly
headaches and joint pain
racing brain and an inability to refrain
from the foods that are doing this to me
I never thought after conquering
8 years of ****** addiction
and 15 years a tobacco ******
that candy bars would be my greatest foe
forget candy bars
let’s talk bread….
loaves of sourdough golden roasted
rye to die for
and cinnamon…rolls,
banana or zucchini
sprinkled on toast with a touch of sugar …
it is no wonder I am larger than need be
the BMI calculator says I am 84 pounds
from defeating obesity
so much for my professional lineman physique –
Oct 26, 2015
Oct 26, 2015 at 5:36 PM UTC
Trigger Warning,
2am cartoons,
all you can eat buffets,
toboggans rides that last all day,
bald spots,
black eyes,
lighter fluid and burning plastic smells sworm the air.
Warning,
I don’t let people know,
i was taught to lie like it was a breath coming out of my mouth.
Warning,
Letting people in as my sisters dad stares at my mother,
He doesn’t look anything like my father,
Maybe if he looked alittle more like my father,
Maybe this would all be okay.
Warning,
Judges don’t trust mothers whos boyfreinds looks like a crack head,
Judges don’t trust mothers who look like a crack head,
how is it abuse when you allow it to happen.
Trigger warning,
Red and blue lights,
the sound of a taser,
handcuffs,
and the gentle words
"its all okay we are here now".
Warning,
i used to sleep with the thought I might wake up alone.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 7:57 PM UTC
With every passing day my body begs,
Consider that all drink, all food consumed
Will shorten breath, and weigh on swollen legs.
But thirst and palate are no less attuned
Though appetite has slaked as time goes by.
Instead of gluttony, I must select;
Notice what I eat and drink and why
To savor flavor to its best affect.
A poet learns their mindfulness of words
The same. With small or no restraint at all,
They gorge themselves on overstuffed buffets,
Well-salted with their tears. Yet, to be heard,
A simpler line cuts through the caterwaul
And quenches thirst and hunger on its way.
Mar 25, 2017
Mar 25, 2017 at 3:25 AM UTC
Bien **** quand il se sent l'estomac écoeuré,
Le frère Milotus, un oeil à la lucarne
D'où le soleil, clair comme un chaudron récuré,
Lui darde une migraine et fait son regard darne,
Déplace dans les draps son ventre de curé.
Il se démène sous sa couverture grise
Et descend, ses genoux à son ventre tremblant,
Effaré comme un vieux qui mangerait sa prise,
Car il lui faut, le poing à l'anse d'un *** blanc,
À ses reins largement retrousser sa chemise !
Or il s'est accroupi, frileux, les doigts de pied
Repliés, grelottant au clair soleil qui plaque
Des jaunes de brioche aux vitres de papier ;
Et le nez du bonhomme où s'allume la laque
Renifle aux rayons, tel qu'un charnel polypier
Le bonhomme mijote au feu, bras tordus, lippe
Au ventre : il sent glisser ses cuisses dans le feu,
Et ses chausses roussir, et s'éteindre sa pipe ;
Quelque chose comme un oiseau remue un peu
À son ventre serein comme un monceau de tripe !
Autour dort un fouillis de meubles abrutis
Dans des haillons de crasse et sur de sales ventres ;
Des escabeaux, crapauds étranges, sont blottis
Aux coins noirs : des buffets ont des gueules de chantres
Qu'entrouvre un sommeil plein d'horribles appétits.
L'écoeurante chaleur gorge la chambre étroite ;
Le cerveau du bonhomme est bourré de chiffons.
Il écoute les poils pousser dans sa peau moite,
Et parfois, en hoquets fort gravement bouffons
S'échappe, secouant son escabeau qui boite...
Et le soir aux rayons de lune, qui lui font
Aux contours du cul des bavures de lumière,
Une ombre avec détails s'accroupit, sur un fond
De neige rose ainsi qu'une rose trémière...
Fantasque, un nez poursuit Vénus au ciel profond.
986
Those leaves were once green
When once I looked out that tall window
Those branches will be bare soon
Frost may cover those nine window panes
Snow may be piled precariously,
Holding its breath to stay atop top branch.
Time passes slowly here, words pelting
A tired mind. But wind stirs again
Wind buffets fall’s leaves, forced suicide.
I do believe I may not recall the proper
Amount of time, neither in time before
Or in time after. But wind stirs again.
Leaves stand still now, only stragglers
No awareness of leaves above or below
Torn and ravaged, missing their once
Cheerful red friends. Wind buffeting
Their small limbs and fragile veins.
No hope for them. But wind stirs again.
Those three days of warmth seem imagined
Was I dreaming when one night’s dusk
Brought us forty and below while the
Next day’s dawn ushered in the seventies?
With ups and downs winter and spring life
Cycle's nonsensical meaning. Mind stirs again.
Jul 25, 2011
Jul 25, 2011 at 3:50 PM UTC
Summer nights are pushed in
with cold breezes and robins wings.
At night the sun never truly fades,
a yellow phosphorescence lingers
kin to the sticky heat and light bugs.
It hangs in the air, light caught on nothing
like dew caught in a web.
The mosquitoes wings twist the air
into a dour chorus
like a poorly tuned violin quartet.
And sweat sticks to the brow.
And to the sheets.
And to the thin shirt that twists around beneath tight covers.
The eyes that no longer reflect blue
only the slow blink of the fireflies.
Crickets sing the ears to sleep,
and if the ear is trained,
or looking for something to hear,
it might catch the very light buffets
of the frenzied flutter of bats.
The moon hazed from the days heat
hangs low making the sky like the inside
of an immense pin hole camera.
Promising an interesting and bright world on the other side.
Nov 30, 2012
Nov 30, 2012 at 4:42 PM UTC
The wind buffets against me and I feel free
drying the sweat from the blazing sun.
Across the desert I run, the rumble of the road
radiates up through my soul and lifts me,
somewhere above myself.
Looking down at the lone rider, the sole survivor
at least it feels that way to me.
I roll the power on, faster and faster I run
barren landscapes all around.
But you can't outrun the desert son,
It seems god speaks to me so I smile
and slow down.
Nov 15, 2024
Nov 15, 2024 at 2:19 PM UTC
my palate favors
particular concoctions
over too many pots
and helpings spurned
I don’t need
to taste everything
imported from China
suped-up HFCS and MSG
the first bites are yum
across hungry tongue
but the rest are all meh
instigating regretful churns
and nutrient deficiencies
I just want that
raw, organic, GMO-free
concentrated, satiating
perfected recipe
crafted expertly
on my tongue
daily
x3
Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017 at 6:50 PM UTC
i love winter for the sole fact
i can invent living
in alaska or honningsvåg,
and never see the sun for four
months - it helps that in england
the skies are blissfully gray
at sunrise in this ideal season;
i'm adding to the cult of the moon,
a subplot of islam you might
call what i'm doing - no cult
of the sun, copper skin and
the cliché holiday in the bahamas,
no dream of all-you-can-eat buffets
at a holiday resort - tatar steak
for me and a chance conversation
over hákarl (kefir meat) watching
a volcano errupt in the night.
p.p.s. (pedantic post-scriptum):
the diacritic a in hákarl
is a sign of elevating the k, or at
least prolonging / exfoliating it,
stressing the two syllables -
well at least in my optic theory
of interpretation; or interpreted
to ensure the first syllable acts
like a definite article (the) in hebrew,
e.g. ha shem (the name) - not that
it does act like a definite article,
i'm sure in icelandic the definite article
is not spelled like the hebrew articulation,
but it's about the distinction in
the presented syllable compound
with the diacritic mark over a - also
inverted using a different notation
akin to compounded words,
id est ha-karl.
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC