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g clair Nov 2013
For any time the urge to wring
an autumn gourd, this one's the thing
Smashing pumpkins, not so nice
but Butternut Squash, an honest vice

Long and beige, hard and smooth
you'd never guess it's power to sooth
that underneath the toughest skin
is meat like pumpkin, seeds within

A steamy bisque for autumn's chill,
peel and chop them as you will
Dump them into four cups broth*
add apple, pear, or applesauce

a cup or two will do just fine
and while you stand there, have some wine!
sautee onions, a cup and a half
dump them in and cry or laugh

and now to add your seasoning stuff
cumin, curry, nutmeg, Fluff
hold the Fluff, that ain't the truth
best to pull that old sweet tooth

Bisque is savory, better than sweet
warms the cockles, heart to feet
save your sweets for pumpkin pie
the after-apple of your eye

Back to seasonings, see above
a quarter teaspoon, more with love
I add pepper and take a gander
some folks call for coriander

heat the whole thing to a boil
for me, my crock ***'s always loyal
crock at high, about four hours
or low for six, and bring some flowers!

And now I'll play a little game
change my words to mean the same
if cook is butter and ****** is squash
then butter dat ****** and ****** dat gnosh

when you're hungry, under the wudder
ain't nuttin' better 'en butternut chudder
add some cream and squash your mash
mash your squash and whip your pash

I used a blender to make it creamy
cooked it down, so thick and steamy
add some butter, parsley's fine
butternut bisque with bread and wine!

Ahhhh!!!!!

*chicken broth
I love discovering that I can cook something as good as that which I can order in a restaurant, and this recipe is as easy as it is delicious! I made this bisque on the 31st of Oct and while it cooked, bragged up a carrot cake ( with crushed pineapple, raisins and walnuts. Well didn't I feel like Martha Stewart!" YES!  This is the best recipe. Just as good as any I have had out. Enjoy!
g clair Nov 2015
For any time the urge to wring
an autumn gourd, this one's the thing
Smashing pumpkins, not so nice
but Butternut Squash, an honest vice

Long and beige, hard and smooth
you'd never guess it's power to sooth
that underneath the toughest skin
is meat like pumpkin, seeds within

A steamy bisque for autumn's chill,
peel and chop them as you will
Dump them into four cups broth*
add apple, pear, or applesauce

a cup or two will do just fine
and while you stand there, have some wine!
sautee onions, a cup and a half
dump them in and cry or laugh

and now to add your seasoning stuff
cumin, curry, nutmeg, Fluff
hold the Fluff, that ain't the truth
best to pull that old sweet tooth

Bisque is savory, better than sweet
warms the cockles, heart to feet
save your sweets for pumpkin pie
the after-apple of your eye

Back to seasonings, see above
a quarter teaspoon, more with love
I add pepper and take a gander
some folks call for coriander

heat the whole thing to a boil
for me, my crock ***'s always loyal
crock at high, about four hours
or low for six, and bring some flowers!

And now I'll play a little game
change my words to mean the same
if cook is butter and ****** is squash
then butter dat ****** and ****** dat gnosh

when you're hungry, under the wudder
ain't nuttin' better 'en butternut chudder
add some cream and squash your mash
mash your squash and whip your pash

I used a blender to make it creamy
cooked it down, so thick and steamy
add some butter, parsley's fine
butternut bisque with bread and wine!

Ahhhh!!!!!

*chicken broth
Robin Carretti Aug 2018
Earth
Worth
Darth
*  777* Goth
Whats worse both
Even Steven Universe
Will I ever find

  *Peace
/ Curse

Coming to terms with
Cancer doesn't care
Did Heaven
become
A disease ending up
Absolutely nowhere

Lotto like death
Poison mushroom
Exit button mushroom
Alarm
Claustrophobic
Thanks for space

Comic.com race
Demonic
Shrooming
Baby mushroom
cooing
Fantasy Island of
Alice in Wonderland
mushrooms to chew
Rabbit hole stew
What a mush
washy of lush
Being taken
Stroke of a brush
All our money-losing
Clouds white and brown
chairs
One mans poison Pubs is
cute baby cubs pleasure
Moving Buffy slayer City
Jungle  Jane single
Poison *** in the city

Pollution give me

My London Fog
Poisoning mushroom
The Prince the princess
being kissed by a frog
What! the magic mushroom?
for migraines
Herbal cure
medicinal
remedy taking planes

LSD healing drive
Mushroom for the brain
The Godly tribe


Trees are being
chopped down
Everything from
generation
Handed down
Laughing stock of
Computer clowns
I am not feeling the vibe

Shitake what does it take
Like a fungus

Tasting someone's poison
Mushroom soup he is
wearing his graduate cap
What a mushroom head

Ladies of Venus group
Coastal storm in my
wedding bed

Riders of the storm
Stan the evil door or
Jimmy Morrison
Nicole with her Kidman
Are you kidding me
I am assuming
The good earth
Is being devoured
Every hour I feel
like writing
Who is buying mushrooms
Slivered like a snake
Making room for Go Daddy
Poisonous suits of Grooms

Healing hand is
Godly skywriting
The silence of
the Lamb
Moms Lambchops
Steamed fresh mushrooms
Stranded with most
expensive lipstick
Money withdrawal
My Drugs like a
good book fictional

Only in my dreams
Did I ever see poison
mushrooms
Something is being
planted in my showroom

Artwork Arsenic and lace
Whole place faces of mushrooms
Homemade Butternut squash
Nose of a button mushroom
  Near the vegetable
Stand his hand
lands he started
Eating my mushroom's
Marsala mushroom
sauce
Grilled Chicken and
bacon salad overload
of mushrooms
I never promised you
a rose garden
In our College Dorm
Pool games no drugs
of mushroom

Trees and Snow White
poison apple she is cute
as a button
Throwing apples compared
To oranges who would
be glad they got stuck
with poison
mushroom
Good earth what is possible

Poison brain watching
Cable whats accountable
Midterms all nasty germs
The world is poisoning
our mind brainwashed
I left one nasty mushroom
behind I won't bite
Poison is everywhere if you let it come your way it is in our plants it is the way a person galavants how the time flew. I don't even have money to buy the most expensive shoe. I see a lot of mushroom gravy  Mom make homemade gravy every Sunday Its an Italian thing. We rarely have mushrooms  He always dresses like little boy blue this is not a fairytale we feel poisoned by so many things even watch out poison mushrooms better not be in your meal
the money is like a drug but got poisoned
Oh won't you butter my squash?

Clean my seeds
Like the sins of my past

The baked passion inside
The oven racks
Racks
Racks

Stack the inner radiance
And peal me

The smooth orange paste
Will feel really zesty

Stay here on my cutting board
Send knives of kisses

Be merciless inside the sink
Blinking boiling stink

And watch as I eat your intestines
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2016
i hate it when a ~haiku is forced upon me, but such
is the case, and it's not a case of dittoing out
a mechanical aspect of that body that's
known as vocabulary:
thus, suddenly, as if a ****, or
a reflex the tongue commanded
the entire body -
left-wing obstructions gave way to
right-wing rebelliousness -
    the left said the tongue was no dagger,
the right said: merely a dagger -
the gyroid: or the muscles we never thought
existed! lanky tendons, etc.
    never the microscopic proof reductionism
and never the telescopic proof           ",
always somewhere in the middle:
and that's about right.
               i wrote a poem, it sounded about right
and then i get the wanked-over shoulder
calling it life-support dandruff
because of the many sprouts possible -
as ever: some come and give a voice unto
the people, and some come and give an ought
unto the people.
               a choice that's mutually inclusive
of thought and choice as a battleground
for the mechanisation of language into
sulphur gas and bayonets
and a thousand wildcards charging and screaming
lost toward the bewilderment of
   forgotten sexting.
      what a mighty affair:
the only country delving the prospect of
an atom bomb being dropped again doesn't believe
in munition economics and doesn't see
that the paranoia can be stopped when the capitalist
sober-heads enter and say: but where's the profit?
there's not profit in an atom bomb:
it ends too soon,
     you never got a Hollywood chapter yoyo
      concerning Hiroshima or Nagasaki...
you got one about Pearl Harbor...
a competent act of war... but not like our
civilians really matter: we civilians got the treatment
of being active members of the army,
while the army personnel were given civilian
Pilate status, the army was given civilian status
and the Japanese civilians were given army status...
oh forget the noodle swindler -
that handwritten hoola-hoop spinster of
carbohydrates is long gone...
          or the greatest paranoia against all other
nations comes from a nation that actually used the weapon!
       i could write a haiku version of what i lost,
but i'll still have to write something about you-tube
vloggers and how they are the newest version
of the objective propaganda machine that's in
the Islamic camp of merchants...
       prophet-merchant? give me a break:
if his word doesn't sell, then who's does?
my endorsement? less of a cosmetic light-touch surgeon
attitude, my endorsement is that of
Morphy Richards' Soup Maker...
cooking pumpkin soup...
  pumpkin... well: it's hardly an easy peel when it
comes to cooking butternut squash...
it's a disaster! a hell to endure! no wonder it's the veg
that frighten offs the ghouls and the ghost
you can't peel it, you have to Apache skin it
like getting a colonial wig: scalping your way into
the high court, albeit minus the greyish curls -
******* is a king of culinary demises
that were sought out expeditions -
you have to knife your way beneath the snail-like
shell and then there's that cobweb of mush
with intrinsic fake seeds / flies lodged in
the orange cobweb - for all that effort
i appreciate it more as a lampshade than a food
source... but then the advertised starving Africans
as anti-colonial compensation for "our"
grandfather's recollection of monochromatic cultures,
before globalisation took off.. hmm.
the soup? pumpkin, potato, onion, garlic,
nutmeg, paprika, chicken stock,
salt and pepper to taste...
tomorrow? a pumpkin risotto...
hey! seasonal abundance, Spanish strawberries
in late winter are too watery anyway...
   people forgot that certain things taste better
in season, that's namely fruits and vegetables...
   go outside your fancy, outside your whim,
you'll finally have to say: my eyes eat
at the very credibility of such things being
there without the season... but my tongue does not
taste the thing that requires a pentagonal sense
honing in toward an agreed to democracy:
it ain't there... as ever autumnal fruits make their
way toward the culinary redcarpet -
                   apples, pears....
     but the real ice brokers remain tangled in
the gnostics of dairy *****: you only see the *****
when the milk turns sour...
              and the two segregate
their cauliflower bergs and that pristine seethrough
        matrix -
then it's like watching the 1054 schism:
          aquasal herring
                               and aquadulci tench -
as painful as listening to my father speak english:
it's just ****** painful,
i write english and speak it like an Anglo
   and he speaks it like an Arab:
with me it's: left right left right left right
and his is an ancient form of actual Latin
              right left right left right left -
of the tongues that appropriated the Latin lingua
optics that weren't conquered it's the same as it was
for Seneca of Virgil, e.g. red beast / proof of all
scientific generic category principle: **** sapiens
                  upright man / bestia rufus -
and that's still orange beast - then aliq for yellow:
then liquid and runny khaki - a monetary equivalent
of money.
          but of the tongues
                      which is why i kept my mother tongue,
i can't imagine what would have been the case
had i not kept it intact... i'd be whitey boy bleached
into an anaemic Arian with those rubbery red
             lost for words rabbit crazy irises that
albinos sport when on the sociopathic treadmill:
that's a daily commute for most people.
i should have anticipated something better coming
out of a forced bad gateway message when
i tried to published and didn't save the outcry...
but it was never a reality when defined by a few
people... it always necessarily the many,
the market square, the hustle and bustle,
     then again few took to ****** to say love...
understandable: if something is called private
it's not called reality, because so many people
have so much **** to say in public that they
treat private life as a tabernacle -
reverse that and suddenly you find people
who possess a "voice for the multitude",
but not (not oddly enough) a thought -
ah the caring scream when not bound to
the horror genre of politics: it's too late!
               end here: a prior to rather than, a
desirably said to appease and conform:
by now we're all cited as having only said
an onomatopoeia of what words should sound like -
we're found hacking a door to shreds with
an axe, rather than merely curling our hands
so the knuckles can be used to knock on the door.
still, i made pumpkin soup today,
tomorrow i'll make a pumpkin risotto -
and the pumpkin is, rightfully, the halloween king
of all vegetables: i am not surprised it's the perfect
lampshade people leave outdoors -
hell of a thing to peel, a butternut squash
would have been simpler to make...
but for the first time in my life:
  i actually appreciate the colour orange...
as said: cooker orange is beyond that fluorescent
acidity of a citrus fruit:
  cooked orange is actually grand...
raw citrus orange?                and a handful
of creepy crawlies.
    funny how the spectrum necessarily made me
endorse a soup maker, rather than the next
big thing in the realm of toothpaste and mascara.
Fountain, that springest on this grassy *****,
Thy quick cool murmur mingles pleasantly,
With the cool sound of breezes in the beach,
Above me in the noontide. Thou dost wear
No stain of thy dark birthplace; gushing up
From the red mould and slimy roots of earth,
Thou flashest in the sun. The mountain air,
In winter, is not clearer, nor the dew
That shines on mountain blossom. Thus doth God
Bring, from the dark and foul, the pure and bright.

  This tangled thicket on the bank above
Thy basin, how thy waters keep it green!
For thou dost feed the roots of the wild vine
That trails all over it, and to the twigs
Ties fast her clusters. There the spice-bush lifts
Her leafy lances; the viburnum there,
Paler of foliage, to the sun holds up
Her circlet of green berries. In and out
The chipping sparrow, in her coat of brown,
Steals silently, lest I should mark her nest.

  Not such thou wert of yore, ere yet the axe
Had smitten the old woods. Then hoary trunks
Of oak, and plane, and hickory, o'er thee held
A mighty canopy. When April winds
Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
Of scarlet flowers. The tulip-tree, high up,
Opened, in airs of June, her multitude
Of golden chalices to humming-birds
And silken-winged insects of the sky.

  Frail wood-plants clustered round thy edge in Spring.
The liverleaf put forth her sister blooms
Of faintest blue. Here the quick-footed wolf,
Passing to lap thy waters, crushed the flower
Of sanguinaria, from whose brittle stem
The red drops fell like blood. The deer, too, left
Her delicate foot-print in the soft moist mould,
And on the fallen leaves. The slow-paced bear,
In such a sultry summer noon as this,
Stopped at thy stream, and drank, and leaped across.

  But thou hast histories that stir the heart
With deeper feeling; while I look on thee
They rise before me. I behold the scene
Hoary again with forests; I behold
The Indian warrior, whom a hand unseen
Has smitten with his death-wound in the woods,
Creep slowly to thy well-known rivulet,
And slake his death-thirst. Hark, that quick fierce cry
That rends the utter silence; 'tis the whoop
Of battle, and a throng of savage men
With naked arms and faces stained like blood,
Fill the green wilderness; the long bare arms
Are heaved aloft, bows twang and arrows stream;
Each makes a tree his shield, and every tree
Sends forth its arrow. Fierce the fight and short,
As is the whirlwind. Soon the conquerors
And conquered vanish, and the dead remain
Mangled by tomahawks. The mighty woods
Are still again, the frighted bird comes back
And plumes her wings; but thy sweet waters run
Crimson with blood. Then, as the sun goes down,
Amid the deepening twilight I descry
Figures of men that crouch and creep unheard,
And bear away the dead. The next day's shower
Shall wash the tokens of the fight away.

  I look again--a hunter's lodge is built,
With poles and boughs, beside thy crystal well,
While the meek autumn stains the woods with gold,
And sheds his golden sunshine. To the door
The red man slowly drags the enormous bear
Slain in the chestnut thicket, or flings down
The deer from his strong shoulders. Shaggy fells
Of wolf and cougar hang upon the walls,
And loud the black-eyed Indian maidens laugh,
That gather, from the rustling heaps of leaves,
The hickory's white nuts, and the dark fruit
That falls from the gray butternut's long boughs.

  So centuries passed by, and still the woods
Blossomed in spring, and reddened when the year
Grew chill, and glistened in the frozen rains
Of winter, till the white man swung the axe
Beside thee--signal of a mighty change.
Then all around was heard the crash of trees,
Trembling awhile and rushing to the ground,
The low of ox, and shouts of men who fired
The brushwood, or who tore the earth with ploughs.
The grain sprang thick and tall, and hid in green
The blackened hill-side; ranks of spiky maize
Rose like a host embattled; the buckwheat
Whitened broad acres, sweetening with its flowers
The August wind. White cottages were seen
With rose-trees at the windows; barns from which
Came loud and shrill the crowing of the ****;
Pastures where rolled and neighed the lordly horse,
And white flocks browsed and bleated. A rich turf
Of grasses brought from far o'ercrept thy bank,
Spotted with the white clover. Blue-eyed girls
Brought pails, and dipped them in thy crystal pool;
And children, ruddy-cheeked and flaxen-haired,
Gathered the glistening cowslip from thy edge.

  Since then, what steps have trod thy border! Here
On thy green bank, the woodmann of the swamp
Has laid his axe, the reaper of the hill
His sickle, as they stooped to taste thy stream.
The sportsman, tired with wandering in the still
September noon, has bathed his heated brow
In thy cool current. Shouting boys, let loose
For a wild holiday, have quaintly shaped
Into a cup the folded linden leaf,
And dipped thy sliding crystal. From the wars
Returning, the plumed soldier by thy side
Has sat, and mused how pleasant 'twere to dwell
In such a spot, and be as free as thou,
And move for no man's bidding more. At eve,
When thou wert crimson with the crimson sky,
Lovers have gazed upon thee, and have thought
Their mingled lives should flow as peacefully
And brightly as thy waters. Here the sage,
Gazing into thy self-replenished depth,
Has seen eternal order circumscribe
And bind the motions of eternal change,
And from the gushing of thy simple fount
Has reasoned to the mighty universe.

  Is there no other change for thee, that lurks
Among the future ages? Will not man
Seek out strange arts to wither and deform
The pleasant landscape which thou makest green?
Or shall the veins that feed thy constant stream
Be choked in middle earth, and flow no more
For ever, that the water-plants along
Thy channel perish, and the bird in vain
Alight to drink? Haply shall these green hills
Sink, with the lapse of years, into the gulf
Of ocean waters, and thy source be lost
Amidst the bitter brine? Or shall they rise,
Upheaved in broken cliffs and airy peaks,
Haunts of the eagle and the snake, and thou
Gush midway from the bare and barren steep?
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2016
yes, i know he said he was a vegetarian, delicate counter-priesthood prince - a manner of vegetarianism that expressed an abhorrence of the practice of Eucharist, i too think the Eucharist as a metaphor is a bit porridge: i.e. yucky.  but as Wagner said to him: up north, either you eat meat or you lose the plot (loose - ß - again, not scharfes S - but die scharfes'zart - sharp-tender - already prerequisite of what sharpening omega meant for the w); mind you: salt & pepper to taste according to your own palette - if you're not a sugar ****** you won't over-salt the sauce... and you certainly will not overcook the pasta, halfway between dreadlocks and poodle hair: desirably experience bound al dente, and here comes Socrates with his knowledge of al dente: me no muffin! true that... like all these excess sugar breakfast cereals - ******* the outside, soft inside... or like the idea of ants having an exoskeleton... that's pure culinary theory - al dente exoskeleton; did i already mention salt and pepper to taste? yeah, the beef stock cube is salty, but not salty enough, given the already unsalted meat and vegetables: i cook, i take care of a toddler - Nietzsche keeps bragging: cooked by a cyclops.

who would have thought that a personal
revision of mama Italia's classic
could end up being so tasty;
Nietzsche is the foremost diner in my humble
abode: i just like the way he says:
who let woman into the kitchen?!
that's right, i deviated from the standard recipe
of mama Italia's cooking for papa don
Giovanni - honestly? in lonely times at
university when everyone was into ******
ad drunk debaucheries, and ****** fancy dress
parties? Aria Giovanni saved the day...
just look at the classic beauty, plump as a plumb
in between two cream bergs - such
exfoliation... where's that daddy long-legs
on the catwalk... come on! shove a malteser up
her *** like a suppository escutcheon - i'm sure
the salad leaves will keep her starving even more,
or walk her in Gucci with a drip-pole -
intravenous therapy while on the job -
but can you believe what only a quarter of a teaspoon
does to the Bolognese sauce recipe?
wonders... you don't add the carrot, or the celery,
among the vegetables you add button mushrooms,
and the three colours of peppers -
onions and garlic (a lot of it) as standard -
oregano, rosemary and thyme too,
some Italian five-spice - but the fennel seeds!
the fennel seeds! after i learned to cook i see
ready meals are diabetics in disguise,
and restaurant foods as defunct -
what? we're all expressing our capacity to
make choice, apologies if you made the sort of
choices you now hate... hardly a reason to
complain about my exercise in freedom,
i don't blame you, i'd have chosen differently
if i were you too... but there we go...
i'm cooking Bolognese from scratch because i like
to tickle my sense of smell and the buds of
the palette garden, i look at the sauce and
write fiction: the plot thickens...
                                                     and that's the great
3 minute microwave sequence on the other
side of the spectrum... because we're all so *busy
-
busy bees and that's merely the generation Y
dads getting hormonal treatment from tending to
babies - choices choices choices -
                                                          oddly­ enough
the mediocre work that goes on in those glass
shards - by comparison, the default argument is
pretty obvious: i too would have not invested
in caring for art, or as i once said:
you can't get good art and raise a family -
you can create good art that will support the family,
you'd end up being a great technician,
an artistic engineer - the standard model of bridges /
already in your head - is refining yourself
via plagiarism - you end up plagiarising yourself -
but come one! a quarter of a teaspoon of fennel seeds?
well, i'm not talking cumin seeds...
or maybe it was the turmeric powder that
coloured the onions yellow while frying?
2 tablespoons of garlic - for sure, enough garlic
and we're already talking Dracula -
~5 strips of bacon too -
                                          no, not necessarily involving
carrots and celery - why be boring?
this is me in my furore days in an organic
chemistry class at university - back to the esters
and perfumes, but this is raw, it's analytical
chemistry, it's nothing synthetic -
birds and the bees and some hippy buckles over
a giant butternut squash - which is why i find
people who ably memorise and recite poetry
are the same people who probably write polemics,
and do the peacock verbal dance for a woman
in a restaurant - rather than give her raw grub
of your own calibre - 1 cube of beef stock
dissolved in water - simmering for about 40 minutes,
tomatoes chopped - obviously tomato puree -
500 grams of mince beef -
                                                ever think that poetry
could reinvent journalism and also the way of
writing recipes? FENNEL SEEDS! that's what goes
in first, you roast them in chilli infused olive oil -
let them sizzle for a bit - and yes,
you pour some oil into salted water where
you'll be boiling the spaghetti - the oil means the
spaghetti won't stick together, plus pouring
oil into a saucepan of boiling water is the other
famous pastime of chemists... the former?
watch paint dry. i'm pretty ****** sure i missed something,
like mama Italia missed something to keep
the recipe a secret - well... there's Parmesan cheese
to garnish and fresh basil -
                                                and if i were raising a family,
i wouldn't be listening to the dead skeleton's album
dead magick... oh sure, the reward would be:
i'd have a little crowd at my funeral, some gibberish
about how many people knew me so well... but really
didn't... the whole street profession...
                i never got the idea of solitude and how it
might be sad from the Beatles' Eleanor Rigby song -
don't know never became an impressionable counter -
oh yeah, Darwinism helped! it helped a lot
in creating a world view, a world view that said:
don't touch this ****... leave them to it:
these people are more influenced by opinion columns
of newspapers than philosophy books -
in England, where, i dare say, the daily telegraph
is actually respectable, as is the guardian -
and the central of the two opposites? tickling
tabloid, i call the times posh tabloid, because it is
a posh tabloid: i like the way fame
desired for sales becomes toilet paper
the next day... or the newspaper on the street
that gets the footprint on the plastic surgery escapades...
love it! mm, yes darling! lovin' it!
Ron Hurlbut Nov 2012
I do not shriek at bedtime, when the bad
cacciatore twitches in my belly,
and the mushrooms knock
a fearful tattoo at my throat.

Instead, I glide through the vestibule
of shadows that lies between
the bedroom door and the mattress
past the closet's maw - a crypt
from which I have exhumed many
a princess whose sweet caresses last
only long enough to cuff my trust
into terror; their butternut breath on my smooth
cheek scratching valleys down which my tears
may flow into my open mouth where
the salt tingles on my tongue as I cloak
my doom with the incantation of the innocent:
"If I should die before I wake...."
Linaji Nov 2011
11-11-11- past 11a.m.

I missed it.

I wanted for me what happened to my friend
in Australia
She was walking down the street and at
11-11-11- 11a.m.
almost everyone around her
took a bow to such powerful numbers
11-11-11-11a.m.

(Perhaps we shall be saved she said)

Today, my 11-11-11, I was shopping for my lovers feast;
Hummus and crispy organic veggies
Fresh beets and pure ****** olive oil
Local goat cheese to die for

My phone alarm rang letting me know it was 11:10
(I did not hear it) as I was talking to Max my grocer

About:

Just picked Arugula and sweet Irish butter
(To mound a top San Francisco sour dough)
He hinted to me not to miss out

On:

Butternut squash and meaty pomegranates
"A lucky omen" he said, "on a day like today."

“What do you mean A day like today?” I said
“Well it’s 11-11-11” he smiled
“Oh my goodness” I faintly cried (almost too loud),
“I missed it!” (I saw the time on the wall where I was shopping)
“Missed what?” he said
"Missed out on experiencing 11-11-11-11.a.m."

“Oh my dear you missed nothing”, he said as he reached toward me with
A huge ripe pomegranate.  I felt flush from wanting something
that now seemed so gone.

“No”, Max pointed out,  “you have more than feeling a set of numbers
In the movement of the day”,

“You were here planning a feast for a loved one
(yes I told him it was a lovers dinner)
What could be more in acknowledging the power of life

Than love?”


I said nothing as I beamed and took that pomegranate and

Ohhhh

I felt so good.



Linaji 2011

(an almost true story)
Among our hills and valleys, I have known
Wise and grave men, who, while their diligent hands
Tended or gathered in the fruits of earth,
Were reverent learners in the solemn school
Of nature. Not in vain to them were sent
Seed-time and harvest, or the vernal shower
That darkened the brown tilth, or snow that beat
On the white winter hills. Each brought, in turn,
Some truth, some lesson on the life of man,
Or recognition of the Eternal mind
Who veils his glory with the elements.

  One such I knew long since, a white-haired man,
Pithy of speech, and merry when he would;
A genial optimist, who daily drew
From what he saw his quaint moralities.
Kindly he held communion, though so old,
With me a dreaming boy, and taught me much
That books tell not, and I shall ne'er forget.

  The sun of May was bright in middle heaven,
And steeped the sprouting forests, the green hills
And emerald wheat-fields, in his yellow light.
Upon the apple-tree, where rosy buds
Stood clustered, ready to burst forth in bloom,
The robin warbled forth his full clear note
For hours, and wearied not. Within the woods,
Whose young and half transparent leaves scarce cast
A shade, gay circles of anemones
Danced on their stalks; the shadbush, white with flowers,
Brightened the glens; the new-leaved butternut
And quivering poplar to the roving breeze
Gave a balsamic fragrance. In the fields
I saw the pulses of the gentle wind
On the young grass. My heart was touched with joy
At so much beauty, flushing every hour
Into a fuller beauty; but my friend,
The thoughtful ancient, standing at my side,
Gazed on it mildly sad. I asked him why.

  "Well mayst thou join in gladness," he replied,
"With the glad earth, her springing plants and flowers,
And this soft wind, the herald of the green
Luxuriant summer. Thou art young like them,
And well mayst thou rejoice. But while the flight
Of seasons fills and knits thy spreading frame,
It withers mine, and thins my hair, and dims
These eyes, whose fading light shall soon be quenched
In utter darkness. Hearest thou that bird?"

  I listened, and from midst the depth of woods
Heard the love-signal of the grouse, that wears
A sable ruff around his mottled neck;
Partridge they call him by our northern streams,
And pheasant by the Delaware. He beat
'Gainst his barred sides his speckled wings, and made
A sound like distant thunder; slow the strokes
At first, then fast and faster, till at length
They passed into a murmur and were still.

  "There hast thou," said my friend, "a fitting type
Of human life. 'Tis an old truth, I know,
But images like these revive the power
Of long familiar truths. Slow pass our days
In childhood, and the hours of light are long
Betwixt the morn and eve; with swifter lapse
They glide in manhood, and in age they fly;
Till days and seasons flit before the mind
As flit the snow-flakes in a winter storm,
Seen rather than distinguished. Ah! I seem
As if I sat within a helpless bark
By swiftly running waters hurried on
To shoot some mighty cliff. Along the banks
Grove after grove, rock after frowning rock,
Bare sands and pleasant homes, and flowery nooks,
And isles and whirlpools in the stream, appear
Each after each, but the devoted skiff
Darts by so swiftly that their images
Dwell not upon the mind, or only dwell
In dim confusion; faster yet I sweep
By other banks, and the great gulf is near.

  "Wisely, my son, while yet thy days are long,
And this fair change of seasons passes slow,
Gather and treasure up the good they yield--
All that they teach of virtue, of pure thoughts
And kind affections, reverence for thy God
And for thy brethren; so when thou shalt come
Into these barren years, thou mayst not bring
A mind unfurnished and a withered heart."

  Long since that white-haired ancient slept--but still,
When the red flower-buds crowd the orchard bough,
And the ruffed grouse is drumming far within
The woods, his venerable form again
Is at my side, his voice is in my ear.
Ben Jones Nov 2013
In a tiny allotment right next to the zoo
A miniature jungle was planted and grew
The flora was dense and the air became hot
But confined to a tidy rectangular plot
An unthinkable  duo of creatures converged
And it's said that a spanking new species emerged
For a curious beast was reportedly seen
Roaming and munching on anything green

Make haste! Away! It's the Buffagorilla!
A shredder of lettuce and cereal killer
With hooves at the front and hands at the rear
The Buffagorilla is near!

It shambles about at the darkest of hours
On hedges it crunches and bunches of flowers
On daffolil bulbs and petunia petals
With hearty aplomb on a cluster of nettles
Covertly perusing with maximum hush
It can wander through gardens disguised as a bush
No carrot or parsnip is safe in its bed
And the marrows are quaking in vegetable dread

Depart! Retreat! It's the Buffagorilla!
The broccoli butcher and vegetable killer
With ape like features and horns of a steer
The Buffagorilla is near!

So if you hear a mention of butternut theft
Or notice a garden, all bare and bereft
Insure your potatoes for damage and loss
Give the salad a purely precautionary toss
For a creature is roaming the byway and track
With its legs at the front and its arms at the back
And it might be your gooseberries or chervil he spies
So I beg you take heed as I once more advise

Be gone! Take flight! It's the Buffagorilla!
The strawberry napper and cucumber killer
Just hide in your cellar and steer well clear
The Buffagorilla is near!
Mamolefe Oct 2022
I often find myself chasing gold these days.

Whether it is burning my fingers raw as I dig under sand
or by starring zealously at the sun.

Yellow and Orange have turned into my favourite colours of joy and pain. It’s tones hiding secrets I wish to understand behind my own skin.

They are forcing me to fast through bananas and naartjies; discipline myself with lemons and butternut.
Brian Oarr Feb 2012
Epiphany from the Berry Fields

You would not come with me
through constellations of Jack-in-the-Pulpit,
your reasons shrouded in obscurity.
I went there once to pray ---
Did I tell you? ---
I spied a grey squirrel
gnawing a cherished butternut
in a fury of drunken hunger;
forgot at once my prayers.

You went instead, alone,
to the Kingdom of the Mushroom.
I sealed my mouth
afraid to enter there.
You saw violent phosphorous rivers and
vivid galloping colors,
that were of mystical internal origin.

We might have eaten
vine-ripe strawberries and
drunk cold mountain water,
that gushed from the mouth of
the cave under the cliff.

Perhaps, like me you were afraid,
terrified by florid fields and familiar female.
How sad ---
Sometimes I am so dense ---
I should have told you,
I went there in the distance
as a girl.



       *Coincidental Drift


Through the airport window pane,
isolated, I watched the jet
traverse the field in silent shimmering motion.
My vagrant gaze remained
fixed upon the infinite horizon
long after the shadowy
plane had passed from view.
This seemed to me to parallel
my motionless furtive feelings,
as after one I've loved
has migrated in another season.

It was not long after this
that she re-entered the room,
bathed in the murmur of
alluring fragrance which
quickly drew my mind from
the solitude of thought to
a sensual appreciation of her perfume.
How easily she drew my mind astray
from pleasant thought of you and yesterday.
I recalled how earlier this morning,
as she lay neither asleep, nor awake,
but somewhere in between,
I had tried to touch her outstretched hand,
yet, uncannily she had withdrawn it.
The smoke that wafted above our bed then
was the only pervading reality and
not the Mona Lisa smile on her face,
nor the emptiness of my longing hand.

She's said, *She's ready ---
--- that her bags are packed ---
and shouldn't we be going?

Yes, Yes I suppose it's time.
And a wind howling in my brain recalled,
I'd either been here once before or
seen it etched upon an empty sky.
As seen from both perspectives
Fah Apr 2014
we need only rocks and butternut squash
daylight mellowtime
cold wind change snap brisk
  fog mouth.

   The cities ******* cling to the shoreline
lake of ontario.
      share tea , share kiss
peace yum day break activity
meditation on stillness
stones stacked seamless .
    
   Before a powerful night , of music sung with joy in note,
friend snuggles -
      smoke lips -       crying - mercy
vision ascension.
                Body pulsating in your hand.

   Pancake quinoa breakfast , maple syrup hotchocolate .

Later to lentil soup with french bread and brie cheese , grapes  
Reading park time medicine cards
      Shaman training , initiating 46 yr old lady to her first joint under the swell of almost full moon gleam.
i dance the whirling dervish round the baseball pitch , extend my legs in ballet-tai-chi whirl. Find my footing in
the lightning flash sky
   nestle and snuggle more with friends.

To midnight snack of orange , ginger zest cookies with sunshine and peace printed on , peppermint tea and
a slight fondling shower.

     New music runabout
talkin bout american deeds ,our own self , our progression and human dissociation from animal instinct
    
Be love.

POWER in HEARTBEATS.
have you chosen love today?
mark john junor May 2014
the daydream electric
she glows in daylight
like neon ice cream
**** on the tongue
like wry smiles
but creamy smooth on the fingertips
like a peanut butter chocolate chip pie
lick her eyelids to try and see
whats on her pretty little mind
shes a butternut job
and fingerlicking fun
Josh Imber Feb 2014
My greengrocer choked on a peanut
So I had to go to the farm
I asked for some rice
A packet of spice
And half a butternut squash.
He said sorry son,
I haven’t got none
The greengrocer sells them for me
John F McCullagh Feb 2013
My cohort is shattered, the regiment reels,
from the lead of the merciless foe.
I'm wearing the blue, Fredericksburg,62'.
I''m a conscript from County Tyrone.
Saint Mary's Heights is a most fearful sight:
****** acres of men who won't fight again,
Our wounded are dying alone.
The devout say a prayer, others blaspheme and swear.
I just wish I was back in Tyrone.
Up on that hill wearing Butternut grey
are Irish like me from back home.
Sure they gave out a cheer when Meagher first appeared,
with our banner of green, on his Roan.
What mortal flesh can, we did in the end
Some died just in sight of the wall.
In the cold dark of night we survivors take flight;
Rappahannock, protect us I pray.
I'll never forget the screams of that night
or the butcher's bill we had to pay.
The union suffered 10,000 casualties in a ****** day of fighting at Fredericksburg,Va in1862   A series of frontal assaults were ordered against a hill defended by a well entrenched foe supported by artillery.  the likely results were obvious to all except Union General Burnside.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2020
no other - a windowsill and an open window -
sitting on a folded leg and slouched
like a crow - i would be begging for it to rain -
no other music can capture rain -
safety net of all that sporadic improv. -
                      other other music - except jazz...
whether it be rain nibbling on the countryside
or the full-on cosmopolitan havoc of grey,
dust, grease, cement and rats and glass...
                 never mind: because i never thought
i'd say this...
                of the moderns... closely ruling out
wojciech kilar - for no particular reason other than
he's probably more known -
christopher young - since his hellraiser stint...
what's new - the revamped pet cemetary?
well... if christopher young was primo...
      soon to follow him... graham... plowman...
work on h. p. lovecraft adaptations...
                     horror as a genre...
                                the music wins me over...
however spectacular the visuals are...
                               if the music isn't bone grinding -
unsettling the nerves -
well... that's like pop music when it's raining...
i guess: oh i guess jazz can capture more feelz
when it comes: when it's raining...
when it's lazily sun-dazzling with the impression
of an "underneath" sizzling sensation -
or melting butter - or for that matter melting chocolate...
or adding splashes of cornflour made in water
to a sauce and watching it thicken...
this recipe i will remember by heart...
i will have to at someone point...
but this dhal was quite sublime...

   scrap book recipe...
          a man in a kitchen...
               and in hell... the devil's mastery...
almost like a chemistry experiment...

       half and half: masoor and mung dal... lentils...
kabuli chana (chickpeas)...
    a bay leaf...
              3 cloves...
  a tsp of cumin coriander turmeric
                     chilly powder and another of kashmiri
   chilly powder
                chopped tomatoes
  coconut milk...
            onion ginger garlic
                spinach
      gochugaru flakes coriander for garnish...
veg and chicken stock...
                          ghee...
butternut squash...
                    cayenne pepper (1 tsp)...
    i was looking for a pinch of asafoetida...
i knew it was in the kitchen...
    alas... also know as a substitute for those
vegan cults that don't include eating onions
and garlic... or perhaps just onions...
    cinnamon stick? no...
but three decent pinches of a homemade
garam masala...
  and yes...

   https://ministryofcurry.com/moms-garam-masala/
is the only spice blend...
   the russians can have their nukes...
the americans can have their nukes...
i have an arsenal of the following spices and...
i'm feeling... like i just had a manicure done...
the only garam masala:
asafetida, bay leaves, black peppercorns,
black cardamom, cardamom, cumin seeds,
(sorry, no black cumin seeds),
      cinnamon, cloves, cordiander seeds,
dried chillies, fennel seeds, fenugreek seeds,
(mace? no mace)...
         nutmeg, poppy seeds, star anise...
turmeric...
          again: no stone flower...
well... that's almost covered it...
                it's not the recipe asks for black
mustard seeds... those i do have...

                   cult recipe and it says: who needs...
meat?! even i'm convinced...
god i do love a good steak tartar...
    anything ****** and oozing wriggly bits
of life - as tender and gelatin grizzly as a...
even the names: bleu... ooh... saignant...
  haha... medium: demi-anglais... what else?

the butchers rolling in their graves
when someone orders a steak: fini-bien...
                          or some other frankenstein of the kitchen...

coleman hawkins - the high and mighty hawk...
some guys were putting up a fence
for me and my neighbour - it only took 15 years
but who's counting - they were told to
cut out all the bushes and foliage in my garden...
so that they could get a straight line
and so the fence would be put up...
unlucky for my rosemary bush...

r.i.p. my rosemary bush...
        today i started to salvage the poor thing...
the newer shoots i placed in water for
a drink and hopefully 2 weeks from today
i might think about planting them back in
the ground... for the rest of the bush?
i had to freeze the rosemary...
all afternoon my fingers were scented with rosemary...
which is fine... when you're working
with a raw piece of lamb...
but i'm no walking and breathing and aching
lamb of god about to be hanging
on the cross...
                even through the soap...
an afternoon of my hands being heavily scented
with rosemary...

vivaldi can have spring and the other three
faces of "god"...
holst can have his mars and the other circle of hell...
but thank the high-flying-****
that jazz can capture a rainy day better
than that song: i'm only happy when it rains
by garbage...
            
  guess i'm not letting go...
         an active rebellion against classical music...
one jazz record after another and i can gravitate
to...ward... the entire e.p. being played...
none of that new wave harakiri diat l.p. scene -
much appreciated... but i always need to move
beyond the half-an-hour mark...

         then again: i can't see how jazz could
compensate for snow - snow on the exit format -
jazz doesn't - then again...
no, categorically...
                           if there's only a sly insert of drum...
no horns - the piano and some guitar -
  
   otherwise you can't go wrong with
joshua redman - back east...
         a modern classic - notably with zarafah...

speed-conversations - none clinging
to a cameo of a date...
                 fickle minded - always changing
the course of events that... nonetheless remain
intact on binding themselves to a blind will -
        
music and all these interpretations are my own -
too bad to see and have to work with
a cipher - what's behind this image -
what's behind that image -
at least music stands stark and shivering naked...
less chances to abide by some propaganda...

unless of course mathematics is to be given
the crown - i hardly think: one shouldn't really
think about music -
                one can never really fathom
the constraints and the escapees from these
constraints... these constant revisionary scribbling
over and skimming the orthodox:
brick-on-brick intricacies of: immoveable objects
being: nonetheless moved...

- i too am waiting for my libido to die off -
anytime soon... like right now...
no harem therefore "jazz hands" and the algebra
of "magic fingers"...
idle man and all that *** that could have been...
until that magnetism is steered off a cliff
of: not another tomorrow -
                    at least no ***** or *** doll upon
the horizon -
            no point getting intimate or personal...
only a few days back i found a weakness in
this exoskeleton -
standing in a shower... pouring running water
onto the back of my head...
i almost knelt and said my prayers from
the exhaustion of succumbing to this multiple-******
of nuance...
       right on the spot where
a higher evolution of a more, protruding occipital
bone: as i've heard it once before: being noted...
i'm waiting for my libido to **** itself off...
in the meantime no harem...
imagine my luck when it comes to
the wisdom served up by men like king solomon...
even by then:
this most exhausted man had
to settle for a swan's dignity in monogamy
with the queen of Sheba...

                 but it's hard to translate wisdom
when you have all the basic forebodings
already at your disposal... the harem will discover
***-toys and you will be...
the limp **** in the whole affair...

                 such hard-on feats of fear when it comes
to... two cakes too many
when all you've been asking for is, merely a slice...
jazz... i can't find
a clint eastwood in alcatraz...
or steve mcqueen in sagan...
               or witold pilecki in auschwitz...      
but i can find myself in jazz...
hummingbird or some, other, champagne flute
and that bothersome fly...
nothing against flies: everything against
mosquitos... i would **** those buggers with
the same joy of donning wool having
just sheered a sheep or two...

jazz and: the wriggling fish...
jazz and all the fish out of water...
i'd call them constipated ***** and lobsters
but... jazz and the wriggling fish...
jazz and smoking a cigarette to appreciate
the deaf centre point of night's culminations...
living close by to central london...
"walking in" and not feeling like
anybody important: or a tourist...

       if i wasn't a billy joel: i would most certainly
not want to be a bob dylan -
hard to be living the obscure with a cross
made up of iconography...

the applauded and the: billy joels' piano man meets
neil young's old man...
they shake hands and subsequently depart
where the crossroads begin, and end...

believe me when: i'm the last to be believed...
usher in a dozen penguins attired
to be... fizzy kosher dosh...
in all their napkins and bowtie-neck strangle 'em
into a hush of a bamboozle...

such the life the music the mathematics
of living in shackles - wriggly ol' ****** with
those improv. would-be-turns and...

how many words will it take for it to be clear...
i have nothing but rejoice at clinging
to my obscurity... primo amigo:
alea iacta est: too bad for me...
or too bad for my shadow...
                       faking being a gemini
in the horoscopes of fate and superstition...
shadow: mime out of the confines...

      these is my second chance at retaining
the crown of obscurity? is it?! is it?!

   to have to burden oneself with love...
akin to... well... if i were about to spoon her...
but no... i wanted to catch the 8 hour kipper....
but every time i would fall
to sleep... i'd fall asleep with a tarantula bite...
numb all over to one side...
because i was oh too willing to fall asleep
when clinging to her...
like a bracket fungus to trunk and core...
one side of me complete in numb...
which had a rubric of recitations
should all else not be true...

but *****! that slap in the face...
                             come to think of it...
i'd like something to eat...
less **** with... that could pinch me...
i'm starting to think that
being ganged up by a group of hyennas
is not such a bad way to go...
perhaps being mistaken for a tuna
when a shark attack is being
noted...
            hard to imagine
sharks or bears or lions as having
sadistic undercurrents to their day-in-day-out
beats...
  even sharks nibble but never gorge
and feast on... this cranium solid first and only
hope when it comes to god
not making mistakes when gambling...
the ******* roulette or a black jacks' "choice"
of cards...

i can't exactly "think" this out to appease
a gravitating en masse...
                       pour me another shot and
debackle! all in the faith and hope
of un-thinking thinking...
trying out this suction tenticle of the void...
replacing descartes' res cogitans with
res vanus... what is due: is due...

no more wisdom from me aged 34
as me aged 73... there's only rain and jazz...
i'm buying time...
concerning whether it would be even
remotely likely to appreciate jazz
when it's snowing... unlikely...
very much hell-bent unlikely...

      - who would have thought that peering
into an aquarium would have to,
become more entertaining that zombie-clad
watching a t.v....
what ever happened to the watching
a klepsydra... or the tick-toe-tightening
of seconds into minutes into hours...
dying from the skeleton diet of time
whenever catching-up: unaware with
the clock in the confines of:
old people not really...
no, not really, listening to coleman hawkins'
much of anything...

                     because this doesn't tease
the affections of the young...
like a trainspotting revamp might....
because there's, clearly no new dracula...
and there's no new: new....
                     i wait patiently like a salamander....
no easy picking no low hanging fruit...
no fatty boy'oh to matter...
         no leeching off the three-quarters
of                               the better part of the engineering
cohort that were behind
the manhattan bridge... or Malbork Castle...
and hands on hands: do touch...
the event horizon of a dead star...
                    in that: pulling fabric...
basic genesis... talking fire "misanthrope": "god"...
bushes outgrowing fungus when
it came to 1970s ***** flicks:
notably in fwench and italian...
                   prune the perm hair...
                             keep that afro on a leash!

these days ***** is half of the cure's nostalgia
and more...
onomatopoeia and...
    refining the contorts with painting...
and keeping the act on a hush...
               the lazy hands speaking
dozen **** cracks being discovered but
none being experienced...
bone the hand...
it's called a ****** just because
of oysters... it's called a ******
because of the clams and of the irises...
and because the tongue:
god... ever time i wanted it to exfoliate...
it's forever that timid tulip!

         what came of a ****** became a hand
and the cusp... and what would never
become a San Francisco needle hinge epidemic...

was anyone praying that
one direction would become the next rolling stones...
cougar: meow...
that **** jagger was going to be
the "reincarnated" harry styles?

           knock-knock... who's there?
a premonition... i.e. touch-wood...
base: i will require the wood to be touched
by bone - notably a crunch of the knuckle in how
the fist is formed / fathomed...

        otherwise known as the lap-lapping-dance-off
with a tongue wriggling in imitation
closure of a worm...
or a fighter for a boxing champ. contender...
belt-up... knot and noose down....
the new news is no: good skit...
i **** myself to fickle my shadow
whenever i see a hoopla or a trance inducing
recoil of the swinging dancing spare
of a: rope that's not leftover for
the dangling first come first served...

daydreaming zeppelins...
the day the elevated english man will fall...
and bring down the bowler hat with him...
touch the philosopher's stone and turn
that attache of good taste into an umbrella...
the same day i stop daydreaming
about zepplins...
will see me think of the anglo-saxon
as whittle brother... the younger Swabian...
and all part of the infuriated minor
Germany that found inkling to behave
like the nomad Yids...
and move... and move... and...
never the sort of people to conceive of a ship...
without also being receptive of carrying
an anchor!

then again...
                   monkey man albino and...
forever the one to follow the white rabbit back home.
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous trees and shrubs
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)  
distinguish it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not better
than thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
John F McCullagh Mar 2013
Through Summers ' heat
and icy rain
The stone faced guardians
remain.

They stand fast
when the snow lies deep.
They stand their guard
where the heroes
sleep.

Long Summers past
there was a war
and boys in butternut
charged gloriously.

Then broke upon
the blue clad wall
as cliffs repel
the storm tossed sea.

Now of that host
not one remains
to sound the charge
or scale a wall.

The stone faced guardians
remain
long past the bugles'
dying call.
My inspiration was the image of a statute of a Union infantryman half buried in snow at Gettysburgh. This July marks the 150th anniversary of this pivotal battle
Apostrophe's Feb 2018
I'm in tuned with
the moonlit
dew drip
when June splits
the year in half
I left the window cracked
so the wind would have
a clearer path
Can you feel the draft?
Can you feel the laughter
being built up
glasses being filled up
after
years of practicing
the mastery of his craft
the battery's not everlasting
it's a balance act in fact
to take the good with bad
and have a meaningful impact
Leading sheep to water
Counting horses
sleep at last
Take a sip and pass
And saddle in
Cuz it's a blast
See it's these demons I've been battlin'
And up til now I've handled it
But it seems as though I've had enough
So it's batter up
Lather up
These buttercups
And roast em with some butternut
Squash these so-called wonder struck
Losers.... their all runners up
Kathleen Rose Sep 2014
The brisk air of dawn carries the chill of Autumn
Burnt oranges, deep greens and earthy browns
Linger in nature's peripheries

Twilight casts away the warm remains of high noon
As downtown city streets lay dormant
The glow of incandescent light pouring from old windows

The odd dog-walker out on an evening stroll
The world abundant in olfactory pleasures
Owner clad in scarf and light jacket

That funny mid-way between hot and cold
Never knowing whether to open your window
Or savour the warmth radiating from the stove

Autumn is soon returning
Butternut squash, allspice and pumpkin
Mittens, thick socks and morning breath in the air

All those precious water-soaked leaves
Lining the streets
Calling you forward into the season of change
mark john junor Jan 2016
the open field before us
was a tall grass of a butternut yellow
it swayed in the breeze liquid almost alive
she lead me forward
calling back to me over her shoulder
with a broad smile
the sun caught in her hair
but her smile overwhelms the sunlight
and she remained to me within sight
as the rest of the world fell to the amusements of the stars
the air full of a false summer
she laughed at such an idea
and told me it was but yet mid-winter
and soon the snow will fly
gentle on its own goodnight path
of histories fallen and left obscured
in a single torn photograph
she leads me on
casting glances and bittersweet smiles back at me
this is your last road she calls out
and she is the gentle soul come to bring me to rapture
she is the love i never knew
the one that fell by the wayside one terrible night
so long ago its very fragments are nearly forgotten to me
but those fragments cherished
in a single time battered photograph
her blue grey eyes haunting
this is my last road
she is heaven
i am home
robyn
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
In the holy spot
with a sitting rock,
an oak. In back
yards, shagbark
hickory and maple.

Ants climb the rock.
August, birds
celebrate flowering
weeds, the seeds
of autumn to come.

I am here to name it
and know it and help it
to grow. These mountains
are my grave. A good grave
to go to.

The crows have been
in conference, again.
A jay, blue, pokes
a hole through reality.
I find sumacs fruiting

and the male *** organs
of the Queen Anne’s lace.
Dark-eyed juncos glean the lawn,
an occasional nuthatch
in the butternut.

I hear a pileated
woodpecker jackhammering
and my neighbor’s skill saw
chirring. Ants crawl
on connecting interlacing instructions.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Mel Holmes Dec 2013
The drive home--too soon--from the evening’s celebrations:
scattered street lights, golden hues moving in epileptic waves
the unconscious coast on the interstate
for you, the half-drunken dance with raw chicken giblets
which fell to a ***** floor, with a flying, broken peeler,
skins of butternut squash, my
confidence.
Four hours pass, I stay on the couch with my wine,
the cat, & fresh salt streams ‘til sleep arrives.
You left me to be
with a dead chicken.
Lonesome Saturday eve.
Brian Oarr Sep 2014
You would not come with me
through constellations of Jack-in-the-Pulpit,
your reasons shrouded in obscurity.
I went there once to pray ---
Did I tell you? ---
I spied a grey squirrel
gnawing a cherished butternut
in a fury of drunken hunger;
forgot at once my prayers.

You went instead, alone
to the Kingdom of the Mushroom.
I sealed my mouth
afraid to enter there.
You saw violent phosphorous rivers and
vivid galloping colors,
that were of mystical internal origin.

We might have eaten
vine-ripe strawberries and
drunk cold mountain water,
that gushed from the mouth of
the cave under the cliff.

Perhaps, like me you were afraid,
terrified by florid fields and familiar female.
How sad ---
Sometimes I am so dense ---
I should have told you,
*I went there in the distance
as a girl.
John F McCullagh Feb 2015
A steady gentle rain had fallen throughout the night before.
Morning dawned , grey and dreary, like the butternut they wore.
A.P. Hill was on the march, speeding towards the sound,
the distant sounds of battle, as they marched through Frederick town.

The rebel brain trust harbored hopes that Maryland might secede.
That a hero’s welcome waited for Lee riding in the lead.
But no, the streets were silent, most folks hid inside their homes.
They cheered instead, the boys in blue and cheered for them alone.

The rebels marched down Patrick Street as they sped through Frederick Town.
Then General Hill spied the Stars and Stripes and ordered them struck down.
It was Mary Quantrell who showed the flag, in defiance of the troops.
(Whittier misidentified his heroine in hoops.)

It was Mary, all defiant, who displayed our nation’s flag;
a brave matron of thirty years, no ninety year old hag.
“You may **** me if you must; my life is hardly charmed,
But I will die before I see this banner come to harm.”

Her warning gave the general pause, perhaps in part because.
He had himself once sworn to protect that banner and that cause.
He countermanded, then and there, the order that he gave.
He pressed on to Antietam where the hard pressed Lee was saved.

Mary has no monument, these days, in Frederick town;
No mention on her grave stone how she faced a General down.
There’s no honor in her hometown for this heroine with pluck.
That Barbara Fritchie legend?- Just some poet run amuck.
“Both women were real-life residents of Frederick, but when it comes to Whittier’s poem, Mary Quantrell was the real-life heroine,” Barbara Fritchie the aged heroine of John Greenleaf Whittier's ballad was hiding in her home while her neighbor defended the flag
Mateuš Conrad Jul 2016
but of no tongue as assured as tongue not spoken,
for even among those that once spoke
a tongue, none can claim the confederacy of mute -
remnants of the Cantos - kept as aperitif (a sign
of good digestion, like mustard eaten after
an autumnal meal of hot sprout and butternut squash) -
recitation from the snippets:
a. and for who demand belief rather than justice.
(synchronisation of the hearts to construct
  a church rather than a pyramid - labourer
  and priest alike) - And the host of Egypt
at Nag Hammadi resuscitated 2000 years on -
the pyramid builder, waiting to be born;
heart in tabernacle entombed also waiting his
expression of grievance - Helium chambers in
Auschwitz - they laughed so much they died
from last breaths - akin to rites - something
definite was noticed, far from atom and further still
from the tsar star - there too the mummified corpse
was resurrected to instil fear until Gorbachev reasoning
took to the plateau and the bloodied Soviet
feuds were miscarried by the Danish paranoia
concerning Chernobyl. i among the mutants still foetal
marked by a pseudo-cancer continued a supposedly
necessary breath - i too might add an 'O Artemis',
Ovid in Orpheus too would like a flute for the rats
than a harp to make a lover say: i will turn the other cheek.
you want really trust her while she wear nylons -
nor the feminist gobs that don't get any...
been to a ******* - you can beat me at crosswords,
you can't beat me at what you might think
my vocabulary should be like with your datum octopus'
suckers for a punch... how words are never seen
or heard but are somehow always doubly felt -
not seeing datum or hearing it makes feeling it doubly
personal... i'm sure that south american *****
in Amsterdam cared more for her moans heard outside her
window than some western discussion about a *******
thesaurus Rex, book of dinosaurs politicising big jaws
and tiny moving parts of the upper body.
across the maiden voyage Darwin stashed a few Ivory Coast
examples readied for a cotton picnic -
i wasn't there, i might speak the language, but as i'm assured
you might have guessed, i'm not a stoner Czech of Bohemia
lazying in history... und Anschluss -
i'm kind of bothered - i've been under Prussian rule,
Russian rule, Austrian rule... but the doctors around here
think i have a post-colonial ego-disorder, it doesn't help
that i don't live in an urban environment, theory don't work,
money claps... theory works... monkey wanks...
i can say ***** ***** ***** all i want...
i don't need active censors who haven't ****** a *******
into an ******... blah blah blah blah blah...
but the disparity is in reference to the notion of datum...
maybe people become too sensitive to certain words
because certain words (adding to fluidity) were
censored... hmm? i mean, if you censor a word like ****
into f&@k... you're bound to create a datum disparity in
the other senses... not seeing the proper spelling will make
you more imbecile when reacting to hearing an offensive word...
and upon hearing it you'll feel worse off... a datum x5 is
x10 if someone ***** around with the original message
architecture... censoring oath words in terms of optics
will polarise the same words when said and subsequently felt...
so... please... enlighten me! if you're ******* around
with a datum on the optic level, you will polarise the remaining
four vectors that the datum encompasses worth of allocation -
sense datum is a standard philosophical unit,
kinda like a centimetre in mathematics, or a noun in grammar -
you tell me π should be noted as 3.14xxx265 or anything
otherwise, you'll obviously become overly sensitive to a word
being said... when you optically turned it into A ******* NUN!
Pappo Jul 2015
Butternut squash roasting,
the fresh garden scent
after the rain,
Cold wind on my face,
I drift for a moment...
Wonder where you are...
what you're doing...
what's your world like...
If you think of me too...
but I can only wonder
and that's how I make
memories of you.
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2021
the older i become the more it hinders my output:
volume, quality, whatever you want to call...
perhaps it's censorship (in a way) -
a ****** lenovo keyboard: not wide enough
to properly place my hands to not look down
but ahead at the genius of QWERTY...
since... believe me: the classical order of the alphabet
conjured up by the French (perhaps i'm
remembering incorrectly) is not really important:
what matters is the entire body of the scripted
language... words don't unravel from a prerequisite
of abcdefghijklmnopq...rs...t...u...v...w...x...y...z
is that all the letters?
i actually don't know fingers dart backwards &
forwards... or, not really... when playing this
"piano" anyway: as long as all the required
letters are invoked in the required words:
hey presto! meaning!
                      there ought to be 26... funny...
there are 32 letters in the ****** (western Slavic)
alphabet... the same number as the teeth
in my gob...
but sometimes i "lose" a poem... whether it's censorship
when i make a post: ****! gone...
or whether i'm callous with the ctrl + c / + p / + a
scenario when i drank a little bit too much...
i don't know... perhaps i'm writing for
some elite that doesn't want the public to read
my work... i like to think of it that way...
but losing a poo'em can become so disheartening
that i i sometimes want to forget that i speak:
let alone write... now longer periods when
i can rekindle a makeshift monologue:
but then i have to find something technical in language
to reorient my purpose...
it's becoming less & less easy...
esp. since i'm not writing fiction...
  just... grass is green... butternut squash soup is
more than hearty: but it will never match up
to my better take on the Heinz canned classic... period...
not enough chilly in the Heinz... canned classic...
& never eaten with a slice of bread...
it requires vermicelli... like most soups do...
like a decent ****** chicken broth...
which also requires... well: poaching the carcass
but  base set of vegetable...
a leek... a celeriac root slice...
parsley root... a carrot... garlic... celery stalks...
parsley - the green leaves...
salt, pepper... & vermicelli...
oh... & plenty of time...
i'm disheartened when i lose a piece of script:
it's not Shakespeare (obviously) but so much emotion
can flow into the cascade that:
tabloid newspapers are given bragging rights...
are, ahem... "important"... so... my writing...
whether by censorship or not...
or my clumsy fingers when putting across
a body of text from one canvas to another... goes wrong...
hours become days when i find a new:
desire to write... since... writing is much easier
to thinking...
writing is much easier to thinking...
as thinking is much easier to speaking...
- but all of a sudden my life has changed a little...
writing is so much easier when you're
not "doing" anything...
mein gott... poems flow & flow... snippets
of narrative arrive at your forehead & fingertips like
postcards from your ex-girlfriends missing
you dearly from exotic locations: as if being married
& having children is still not enough because:
they didn't have your children & aren't married to you...
the poo'em i lost was about... two days ago...
travelling to Wembley Park for... an induction...
the role? being a steward...
i figured: enough of youth can be wasted on dreams...
literary dreams...
let's inject some... proper... grass-root ambition
with... RE-AH-LI-TY (****... phonetically that's
REE-AH-LEE-TEA/EE/AE)...
this writing "business" isn't going at the pace
i want... sure... i can brag about...
wow... almost 40 thousand views of one poem...
there are over 6K poems of mine, just here...
Wembley Stadium can host 90,000 spectators...
one poem of mine can muster up... almost half
of the capacity?
not bad... but... not good enough...
lucky for me i can relate for this sort of thirst when
drinking... sometimes i'm content with
a bottle of wine... at other times i need a liter of whiskey...
go figure... but not when so many idiotic pundits...
when there's this media masquerade happening...
i'm in the shadows: i'm listening to what people
are listening to... i never leave traces in the comment
sections: a waste of time...
makes thinking about certain things easier:
when you don't air your opinions...
after all: that's pseudo-rhetorical...
the true art of debate is... withdrawing from:
debating... the dialectical position is:
first mind diacritical marks (sorry... none in English,
& yes... it's still more ugly
when phonetically charged with graffiti "mishaps"...
misnomer: "shortcuts")...
- where was i? oh right... perhaps i "missed" something
in my original lost sample of a narrative:
although (last time i checked)
this website provides automated save as drafts
when you stop typing - after a prolonged period
of typing: my bad...
writing is so much easier when life is uneventful...
i could tease that word: uneventful into
a katakana syllabary: i almost want i almost have
to i therefore (not almost, but) must:
un-eh-vent-ful...
oh look at that: sitting pretty like a toddler
with a drumstick of a chicken (leg)...
**** it: my writing is going nowhere...
i have more ambition to simply let it... sizzle in its own
juices: or whatever better expression is handy...
none come to mind...
i need to look at people: i need to study people...
the internet is an echo-chamber to begin with:
it used to...
a jukebox narrative... such freedoms were
once available... mein gott... what music
i discovered when foraging on youtube...
in two years... gone... the algorithm got ******...
period: bad grammar is an exemplification
of this load of: hot-steaming... mix of **** & *******...
i need a real job... wasting my youth on writing
is not enough: perhaps my writing will catch up:
or my readership will... either way:
i'm not aiming for anything under
the title-weight of a Bukowski:
lucky ******... but i'm also not aiming for
the almost near obscurity of... the Black Mountain poets...
who was their leader... Larry?
Lee-rrr...       eh... it's not like a tarantula didn't
crawl into an English mouth & "somehow"
numbed the tongue for the end result of:
nein zu tremolo! ****'s sake... if i only asked:
why the French Fwench... but they hark so:
never mind...   yes, yes... Larry Eignar...
**** me... that took a while...
but there's another... a "renegade" on the...
ha ha... steppes of "Cambodia"...

          Russell is a likely connotation...
but incorrect... let's see....
     wait... Charles Olson... ol' Ollie...
he? he was a black mountain poet?
you ******* kidding me...
no chance in hell that will pass by me
given.... concerning his Maximus poems...
like: **** no...
i'm a critic i'm a nobody i'm a porveurour...
now i remember the ******'s name:
Robert ******* Kreely...
him! Kreely: Creely... Creeley...
**** it... fling in the vowels...
lets see what sort of a trebuchet **** master
you... ought... might... make.
oh.... wait.... important "news"...
an... apostrophe "missing": plain Jane typo....
where?LET(')S i.e. implying the shortening of:
the inclusivity of the collective... "US"..
      wunderbar!
                 schön!
that's the umlaut O... ergo... shoo... shoon...
great!
                           kaninchen und...
                        rosa ball-ons!  
i know a ******* balloon from a *******
ball-on... it's like telling me...
what's the difference between an omicron
and an omega...
i.e. do you really need to tell me
the difference?
sure... if it was an upsilon: you *******
clueless Greek!
what audacity:
you ******* clueless... Greek...
what... better some Iranian...
arriving from... Belarus?!
oh sure... i really want to live in Kenya...
among the ivory beauties with skins
that hide their bodies...
******* milk on toast... some chocolate:
sprinkled... i see teeth & sclera...
& some mahogany...
  ****? i'd **** anything that moves...
even south Korean girls geared up for a game of....
ping-pong....
my bad... what?
or is that: WAT like... WATT...
the energy unit or the Samuel Beckett novel
that over-competes James Joyce's Ulysses?!

your is the roulette... yours... hmm... your's...
for a while... the latter was underlined...

life used to be so much simpler when...
language could speak for... "itself"...
no one could use it: somehow, "somehow"...

i applied for the role of a Wembley Stadium
steward on a whim...
i thought: **** it... writing is not going toward
a projected: Ginsberg stastus...
i'm not going to compete with the leftoid jargon
of the 1960s... lucky me...

i'm just a terrible "millenial"...
i use an apostrophe like i migh5t secure understand
of the Pythagorean hypotenuse...
some C "squared"...
Wembley Stadium steward...
this... cacophony of hierarchy "suddenly" hits me...

i can understand authority...
tier one, tier two... vampire... zombie...
sure, sorted...

of the supposed 12 rules for life...
one of them reeds... i suppose that's reed: read:
reeds... sorry.. n'est ce pas...
pet a cast on the sreet?
you know, how hard it is... to pet a cat..
on the street?!
if you lived in England...
wolves... what wolves?!
foxes... oh yeah... plenty of those...
but... petting cats?
a bit like explaining...
a jpeg. take up less volume... ha ha: "volume"
than a pdf. file...

why i was mo4e than ready: i'll never known...
perhaps i'm a closeted fan of Ed Sheeran,
perhaps i like children in the role of:
a fathering figure...
perhaps children like to
poke my beard & lips...
perhaps this... perhaps that...
perhaps i'm ******* Santa Claus...
or what's Satan's Claus(e)....
all these freebies... cough up!

or... i just like making people "feel" included:
"feel" is one "thing", REALISED... another...
it might sound like newsspeak...
but... i don't want to ingest another...
Manchester Bomb Arena spectacle...

SAA... a week in Brixton... 7 days...
but they require a cohort of at least 12 applicants...
it elevastes your status as steward to:
someone who can: "juggle"...
be legally obliged to utilised force:
if necessary...
i like... i like... i like...

first ZOOM call in my life... ******* Ludite...
luddite... ugh... that double D kills me...
surd: you don't hear(d) to: begin with...
so... what... spelling "mistake"?

oh sure... the ****** transit & traffic...
train from Romford through to Liverpoool St...
then the Metropolitan Line to Wembley Park...
great... the arch...
a black coffee from McDonald's & two croissants from
Lidl... morning... done...
no more... morning sickness....
come late afternoon Somali girls eyeing me up in a black
tie... o.k. sure... fair game: "gamble"...
hunting what?
i like this understudy of what's man...

i arrived an hour early...
waited the tad bit... of a little... we exchanged formalities... but then i watched as...
two groups formed...
the ****-shock-show of the multi-cultural urban... ahem... "class"... with one rep. & the other... mostly... asian men... with their... asian rep...

12 rules for life... seriously?! do you know how hard it is... to pet a cat? sorry... can i make you reiterate... petting a cat... lucky me... for petting two cats today... "strays"... but... do you know how nearly impossible it is... to pet cats, is?! you don't pet a cat because you can... you pet a cat out of the whims of: the cat willing you to pet it!  just like i like... sitting on my windowsill listening to foxes bemoan their lack of ****** adventures... it's England... foxes... ergo no wolves! d'uh! cull the foxes... you cull the erotica of the nights!

between... sigourney weaver... &...
mmm... winona ryder...
raven 'air...
two winners... how harems work...

Tuba Büyüküstün...

apologies for the phrasing...
if all the supposed gems not donning niqabs
that are western women
are so... *******: NIGGERCOCK mad...
Tuba Büyüküstün... oh... look at me...
you think i want some anemic blonde:
stereotype?!
raven... hair!
sure... the black male specimens are
handsome, attractive: if i were a woman:
i would... ha... "problem"...
why don't i want to...
the ****** antonym... because a white girl
really wants to... do a black guy...
do i... "have" to have the same
compulsions with regards to a black girl?!
Turkic! **** yes!
Mongolian... probably!
Tuba Büyüküstün...
or... swans probably don't have necks...
no... swans probably don't have necks
when you see this:

(although sophie skelton looks
better in the initial photograph...
papa best preached)...
swans don't have necks...
not with her...
around... to... curate... a balett of
nodding  approvals...

Caitríona Mary Balfe... i'm so loved up...
in that i once remarked in private:
bemoaned: that the Scots have forgotten
their native tongue...
swans have no necks...
swans don't need necks...

the neck of Caitríona Mary Balfe
eyes... too...
or the short-styled hair... & eyes
of Tuba Büyüküstün...
don't get me started on the hands...
those petite Antoinetes of joy...
the most ****** aspect of a woman is bound
to her hands... i'm missing a knuckle! or at least
*******!

woo-man!                         woe-is-me!
woe-is-man!             woo-man!
i'll bark i'll gargle... not for the sold-cold "soul & eternity"
of the d.n.a.:
but rather for that Muhammad never achieved when
competing with King Solomon!
then again... King David had the better tale...
the love of music, the writing of the psalms
&... defeating Goliath...
king Solomon was... compensating with
the excessing in the exploitation of women...
eh... Solomon &... proverbs can be tested...
true... or untrue...
but psalms... unconditionally...
sung... or... lost...
no antonym-synonym dynamic...
you either remember or you forget...
you don't merely remember & pseudo-remember
via changing the narrative a little: or a lot...

what a neck... on this Irish beauty...

two frotiers formed.... one side...
the cosmopolitan, readied to talk to women
in possible women in authority, etc.
whatever are the preferenfes....
i really adore the ROYAL: third person:
ONE might...
or the plural WE....
"genger plural pronouns":
not since the existence of the "crown":
i am subject to ol' Lizzies stipends!

i am her mouthpiece wherever she's:
not m'ah ******* grandma!
on zoom calll i was sked....   (scared, for sked)
what were British values....
i was asked....
i replied... universal?!
i passed some mythological...
Kennsington Test...
ooh p'ah! ******* hurah
join the Union Jack brigade!
who's kidding who?

              the red coats are coming!
last time i 'eard?
not enough of 'em are "coming"...
come to "think" of it: beside staring at goats...
"going": where?
do "we" need to "go" to Afghanistan
when... Afghanistan is coming to us?!

sorry... what?

two groups of people at Wembley...
mostly Asian men... an Asian rep...
& a group led by a Jewish girl...
talk of tortoises...
Sikh... Tamil... Sanskrit... men...
& women... ******...
Stalowa Wola: Iron Will... which is
an actual town...
Harry... the guy with tattoed hands...
Ewelina: Evaline...
**** me... another single mother...
how many more single mothers will i have to pass?!
i don't mind it:
ancient Rome replies with:
the surrogate father...
chances are...
i could be a bad genetic partner...
i wouldn't mind... raising children that weren't my own...
i swear to the only god available on such
matters...
he'd just nod approving me as
surrogate father...
to hell with it...
CORALINE - DREAMING...
ancient Rome sends you a postcard...
you'll reply?
        no? fair enough...
i could i wish i could...
a little: BAMBINO of my own...
bit then again...
investing in so much of my own...
what if... they are killed...
hell! ****** is one "thing"...
but what if by some stupid circumstance of
a traffic incident?!
ergo?
i very much like the idea of raising children that
biologically "belong"... ahem...
"elsewhere"...
not their souls, their minds.. though...
n'est ce pas?! VOU... that's not how
ALTHOUGH is assembled?
AUL: ALL.... VOU? it's not VOW...
ate the G... no, kiddy?

i love children... esp. those that are not my own...
i could love them & love them like
an Abraham... nein... i could love them like...
a god... i could love children in a way that...
mirrors.. the moment they arrive at...
exploring the game of:
hide & seek...
there was never any playground invoked
to summon: the game of bulldog...

i'm glad i have no children of my own...
more of my seeing and less of the eyes of my "choosing"...
petty tender heart-felts: demands...
i'd rather father the children of "unavaliable" fathers
than father my own...
ancient Rome is messaging you...
dearest...
   look how much easier it all becomes!
you raise someone else's child... but...
should said child die... become murdered...
erm... what of it?
a statistic... i feel no inclination to give a ****...
i invested in the mind... the soul...
the body can ***** itself to death...
as it does... but it's not my own...
i can be as much detached from its fate as is most purposively
ridden: to riddle me...
i'm glad to not raise my own!
it dies... it's murdered... do i care?
no... life replaces life... here we go: the grand
carousel... it's not like i have name like:
McKenzie or... McDougal...
so... no... no lineage... i'm a baron of the most
atomised of times... the individualistic
sanctity: real or supposed...

ancient Rome replies:
the negativity of single mother households....
compensated with... the freedoms of...
paternal surrogacy... give me a break!
ha! it's Eden! i come with not leverage of....
ownership! i owe nothing due to
the Darwinistic impetus!
i'd be freed from whatever is expected of me...
there are no investments...
in pronouns... might we:
the royal one?

ha!

it's no much easier to have children
that turn out to be girl...
ha!

i'd rather be a surrogate father to a "daughter"...
come to think of it...
i'd only want...
to be a father... to a son... biologically....
a daughter can...
Mayflower herself... or ***** herself all she wants...
from a father: unto a son...
like that "******": Matthew & Son (cat stevens)
or... "dreaming": Coraline...

the inquisitive cat... the teenage girl...
the "felix"... the Urdu... somewhat...
the inquisitive cat... kommen die nacht....
alles ist nacht...

if there's no democracy in poetry:
then there's no democracy at all!
maxim: non-la-rochefoucauld
John F McCullagh May 2019
Memorial Day Parade

The fog that day at Arlington, the thickest I ever saw.
The only thing that could compare would be the fog of war.
From the marshes and the gardens of old Marse Robert’s estate
The dead rose from their hallowed graves in numbers small and great.
There were scarecrows dressed in butternut, and ghouls in tattered blue.
Some had battled for old Virginia; the others Union true.
They all formed up in lines of four; right smartly they arrayed.
Side by side they began to march in columns on parade.
These men, who had been foes in life, now seemed to understand
That they were brothers, joined in death, and bound by Love’s command.
One hundred and fifty years had passed since last they saw the sky.
I watched fascinated as this ghost army shuffled by.
No word of command was spoken; these men knew what to do.
Proudly they marched together; these veterans, Gray and Blue.
Then they melted back into the fog; I watched in shock and awe.
These men had seen the last of Earth and had had enough of war.
A strange sight in the early morning fog at Arlington National Cemetary. this is a revision of the original poem with changes to lines 12,15 and 16
Sarah Elaine Sep 2018
it's a punch in the gut
a slap on the face
a knife in the eye

******* at the circumstances
******* up all the time
see me through your jaded eyes

i'm nothing if not scattered
spilling life and heartache over myself
eating garbage when no one is looking

look up to the sky and wish for a cloud
maybe if it rains we can all go home
but the sun is hot when you live where it's dry

leave me up to myself
and cut the heart out with a machete
but i could do no harm

flies and worms and butternut squash
**** me or i'll keep drowning
shoot me in the head like a dying bird

— The End —