"buzzards" poems
Here, where the lonely hooting owl
Sends forth his midnight moans,
Fierce wolves shall o’er my carcase growl,
Or buzzards pick my bones.
No fellow-man shall learn my fate,
Or where my ashes lie;
Unless by beasts drawn round their bait,
Or by the ravens’ cry.
Yes! I’ve resolved the deed to do,
And this the place to do it:
This heart I’ll rush a dagger through,
Though I in hell should rue it!
Hell! What is hell to one like me
Who pleasures never know;
By friends consigned to misery,
By hope deserted too?
To ease me of this power to think,
That through my ***** raves,
I’ll headlong leap from hell’s high brink,
And wallow in its waves.
Though devils yell, and burning chains
May waken long regret;
Their frightful screams, and piercing pains,
Will help me to forget.
Yes! I’m prepared, through endless night,
To take that fiery berth!
Think not with tales of hell to fright
Me, who am damn’d on earth!
Sweet steel! come forth from our your sheath,
And glist’ning, speak your powers;
Rip up the organs of my breath,
And draw my blood in showers!
I strike! It quivers in that heart
Which drives me to this end;
I draw and kiss the ****** dart,
My last—my only friend!
9k
I had as lief be embraced by the portier of the hotel
As to get no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand.
Be the voice of the night and Florida in my ear.
Use dasky words and dusky images.
Darken your speech.
Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking,
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts,
Conceiving words,
As the night conceives the sea-sound in silence,
And out of the droning sibilants makes
A serenade.
Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole
and sleep with one eye watching the stars fall
Beyond Key West.
Say that the palms are clear in the total blue.
Are clear and are obscure; that it is night;
That the moon shines.
7.8k
the buzzards have found my gut.
hello again, and welcome back.
let's stretch this day out, me & you, together.
I'll ignore that ****** up sensation,
that all my feelings are being eaten away,
if we can grab some coffee,
if I don't run out of cigarettes.
the buzzards have found my gut,
hello again, and welcome back.
we know I spent this weekend hiding,
living on a borrowed pack that's running low,
packing bowls I knew would soon be empty for awhile.
but they couldn't find me, not in that bed.
yet they pace the staircase outside my door, and guard me.
the buzzards have found my gut,
hello again, and welcome back.
so we have lunch, and I smile across my last meal,
pretty sure that I would've preferred the cash,
to spend on something that could spoil my lungs.
but it's the thought that counts, it isn't the end quite yet.
and they wait for the scraps I toss beneath the table.
I wonder how no one ever notices me feeding my demons.
I wonder what each emotion tastes like,
I wonder which ones I'm giving away, 'cause I can't look.
I wonder what's left in my body.
the buzzards have found me hiding.
the buzzards have begun to swarm.
they are coming to give me back my emotion.
they are coming to let me know I'm wrong.
hello again, and welcome back.
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 12:39 PM UTC
I sleep with my glasses,
so, I can see in my dreams
the moment you left me,
it's all part of the scene.
So, the jockeys, they need me.
I know they will bleed me.
And it's 2 dollars on the
6 horse to show.
The buzzards and seagulls,
they know what you've done.
You said, come on boy,
let's go have some fun.
But that look in your eyes
was full of goodbyes
and now, I'm all but done.
I'm full of regrets
but, it's just one more bet.
And it's 2 dollars on the
6 horse to show.
The clowns and the hookers
got nothing for me.
They took all my money,
oh boy can't you see?
There's just one more bet,
and I'm full of regrets.
and it's 2 dollars on the
6 horse to show.
Bukowski and Hopper
look down on me smiling.
They've been out to sea.
They've been past the islands.
I'm tired of running
and I'm tired of standing still.
Another pill won't do it
and it's time for me to go.
And it's 2 dollars on the
6 horse to show.
You took all my money
on a day that was sunny
and you know them old clowns,
they really aren't funny.
So, I head to the track
to win it all back,
and it's 2 dollars on the
6 horse to show.
Aug 23, 2023
Aug 23, 2023 at 7:32 PM UTC
i keep seeing hawks
or maybe it’s really you
swooping down to tell me what’s new
maybe they’re buzzards
and they can tell how i feel
lost without you,
a useless spinning wheel
maybe they’re birds but
maybe they’re planes
and i’m looking for meaning in nothing
in this digital age
(r.e.)
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 8:15 PM UTC
I was raised in the wild
With all the defiled
So my mood was mild
While bodies were piled
I was a lonely coyote
The other creatures didn't know me
Because I slinked in the shade
To avoid their detection
Loneliness is what I had to trade
To pass their inspection
Other animals couldn't brave the weather
Or their fragile arteries were severed
They laid there dead
I wondered if they ever lived
It went to my head
What this world can give
I saw the buzzards
Ring their buzzers
Then the maggots fed on their brain
While not understanding their pain
These images did me no good
While I was stuck in the woods
And I couldn't see the forest through the trees
I was lost
If I didn't find a home by winter I would freeze
In the frost
I tried to find a home in hollowed trees
But I was chased out by a bunch of bees
And the darkened caves
Seemed like shallow graves
When that's where bats play
But peaceful open meadows
Left me susceptible to attack
Everything seemed mellow
So I had to watch my back
Winter was approaching
And I saw no solutions
The cold air encroaching
Like frigid pollution
But my shady luck shifted
Once I was graciously gifted
A powerful and majestic horse
That put me on a better course
I ride the steed with a leather saddle
Made of skin stripped off simple cattle
It took the strength of an ox
To hold down this fox
Yet my domestication
Calls for celebration
Because now I live in a house
Without having to hide like a mouse
I can strut like a peacock
With a bird of my flock
It's a form of animal husbandry
Because you're in love with me
I'm the insistent critter
From a different litter
That saw life wither
From damage inner
I was a raccoon digging through the trash
Now I'm a phoenix rising from the ash
You're an agricultural guy
So vultures circle the sky
Looking to harvest your bountiful crop
They must smell death underneath it
Their presence makes my heart drop
And all I want to do is defeat it
But even as they get near
You remain here
We stand together as scarecrows
In a defensively unified paired row
This is the delightful day
You end all my wild ways
And eliminate my suffering
With your animal husbandry
Mar 5, 2018
Mar 5, 2018 at 3:48 PM UTC
The chao phraya river song
by: David Wayne Clare
Down by the River (echo-ee, a Capella) Down by the River (echo-ee, a Capella)
Down By the River, don't dive in, them sharks are real-damn-mean but, that's where you'll find me... along with buzzards, ******** and kumoi dope fiends...
Chorus
we love that ***** water ... oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're my home !
now...
oriental Asian Ladies, Thailand's **** Siam queens
I dig them slant-eyed ******
them sticky cat-faced chicks on Soi 13!
(Miami Hotel)
cause they love that ***** water ...
oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're my home !
(Harmonica Solo)
You'll find me trashed one morning (smashed!)
Iced-down in China Town; all crying alone...
One day I'll never leave here (Lord!) Unless an Esan Girl might claim me for her own...
'cause I love that ***** water ... oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're my home !
Refrain
Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River... Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River...
Buddha!
Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River... Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River...
Oh, Bangkok, Thailand... you're my home!
(Sharp jumps from river with snied smile... big splash sound...)
(c) in perpetuity, David John Clare Clairvoyant Music BMI
Thailand...
Nov 30, 2014
Nov 30, 2014 at 1:25 PM UTC
A few things for themselves,
Convolvulus and coral,
Buzzards and live-moss,
Tiestas from the keys,
A few things for themselves,
Florida, venereal soil,
Disclose to the lover.
The dreadful sundry of this world,
The Cuban, Polodowsky,
The Mexican women,
The ***** undertaker
Killing the time between corpses
Fishing for crayfish...
****** of boorish births,
Swiftly in the nights,
In the porches of Key West,
Behind the bougainvilleas,
After the guitar is asleep,
Lasciviously as the wind,
You come tormenting,
Insatiable,
When you might sit,
A scholar of darkness,
Sequestered over the sea,
Wearing a clear tiara
Of red and blue and red,
Sparkling, solitary, still,
In the high sea-shadow.
Donna, donna, dark,
Stooping in indigo gown
And cloudy constellations,
Conceal yourself or disclose
Fewest things to the lover--
A hand that bears a thick-leaved fruit,
A pungent bloom against your shade.
4.5k
your forest’s architecture
verdant in spots, and then a stump
did the dead leaves ever have a heart beat
what made the ballad stop, was it sun?
little larva squirming towards a moon
and their mama maggots weep –
to lose a child, to lose a child
when death-creatures want to be
an astronaut, the green canopies are bars
prosper in the centipede teeth munch
fertilizer for a final seed
without vertebrae they climb over stars
& leave your forest’s architecture
crumbling for buzzards.
Oct 27, 2012
Oct 27, 2012 at 9:16 PM UTC
Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
the sidewalk
our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too
you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
we got anything we could want.
I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
mouth and circling buzzards around.
But how does a girl say
she would rather have someone than a cigarette
stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
and feign middle school maturity?
We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
not powdered sugar from beignets
or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.
I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
to be your personal belonging
the treasure you immediately thought of –
but that is not what Summer was.
Apr 2, 2013
Apr 2, 2013 at 5:18 PM UTC
At the end, will it be brandy-wine or mescaline to sugar coat
enlightenment, the purpose,
the omnipotent influence?
Some live to make a whirling dervish swoon.
Some pray to Love, composing sonnets for the moon.
Some find themselves floating, bloated lungs with lazy currents,
mourning free-will.
With questions perched atop your windowsill,
do decomposing wings pull with yearning to wake
in dawn's warning? Your beak,
a rattling, pneumonic drill.
It's a dead end,
fear and adrenaline.
Invite me in
to ostracizing nuisances.
Therefore,
I may imprison myself in cylindrical cells,
pop out wisdom like bubble-wrap,
fight the mighty ocean swells,
or shimmy up the lobster trap,
With inevitable siege by buzzards eying wildly,
shedding sea-salt feathers that won't be washed for weeks.
Still, the mad-hatter trades me one more spill for spill.
And I taste the honesty we sip for swollen memories
whose frantic bodies let fists fly on flushed faces
that we never truly see.
In profound confusion we stumble, blind.
Then, we all forget so blissfully,
once we reach the rainbow's end.
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 9:46 PM UTC
The chao phraya river song
by david john clare
Down by the River (echo-ee, a Capella) Down by the River (echo-ee, a Capella)
1 Down By the River, don't dive in, them sharks are real-damn-mean but, that's where you'll find me...
along with buzzards, ******** and kumoi dope fiends...
chorus 'cause we love that ***** water ... oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're our home !
2 now...Oriental Asian Ladies, Thailand's **** Siam queens
I dig them slant-eyed ****** Them
Sticky cat-faced chicks on Soi 13! 'cause they love that ***** water ...
oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're my home !
(Harmonica Solo)
3 You'll find me trashed one morning (smashed!)
Iced-down in China Town; all crying alone...
One day I'll never leave here (Lord!) Unless an Esan Girl might claim me for her own...
'cause I love that ***** water ... oh oh oh Bangkok, Thailand; you're our home !
Refrain
Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River... Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River...
Buddha!
Chao Phraya River, Chao Phraya River... Chao Phrya River, Chao Phraya River...
Oh, Bangkok you're my home!
(Big smiling shark jumps from river with switchblade knife in between teeth...)
fin
(c) in perpetuity, David John Clare Clairvoyant Music BMI
Thailand...
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 6:27 PM UTC
Coastline, rocky, rugged, proud,
Crumbling cliffs in ozone shroud,
Sun-kissed drifts of desert sand,
Golden frame of a sea cradled land.
Fishing village, atmospheric hub,
Brass band playing, outside quaint old pub,
Boats, all sizes, rest near harbour wall,
Wading birds sift through tide-filled pool.
Foliage explosion of a Cornish hedge,
Country lanes snake, and young birds fledge,
Ruminants, punctuating, quilted hill,
Buzzards soar and wise hares are still.
Tin mine engine house, towering stack,
Roof caved in, gorse and bracken’s back,
White clay peak, geometrical and sleek,
Earth’s riches gouged, canyon deep.
Moor-land, open, untamed, granite strewn,
Wild ponies dance to a skylark’s tune,
Tor and beacon, barrow and mound,
You’re in God’s own country, when you walk this ground.
Jun 10, 2017
Jun 10, 2017 at 5:05 AM UTC
I was detached
so I could wander
hand in hand with the wind.
Who am I now?
I feel so frail
and my flowers are long gone.
“Look what I've become”
I say to no one
as the buzzards cry.
Their shadows circle me
like dark moons in a galaxy
starving for life —
am I not alive?
I've never seen flesh
that was still carrying a soul,
but the wind tells me stories
of slinking through their hair
when the world was young —
I can smell their skin on its breath,
its breath that’s carried me
to the edge of the earth a thousand times
to find only stars
that those ancient, mysterious people worshiped
before I was even a seed.
Am I qualified to pray
to those stars that have lead us
to a thousand sunrises?
Will they even hear me
with this voice that is only a rustle
across rocks and dirt,
this voice that is literally nothing but a ...
my soul who shapes the clouds
who possess my dry body, and countless others all at once
interrupts me
and whispers yes.
I smell the gods in its voice now.
Jan 13, 2015
Jan 13, 2015 at 2:51 PM UTC
I had as lief be embraced by the portier of the hotel
As to get no more from the moonlight
Than your moist hand.
Be the voice of the night and Florida in my ear.
Use dasky words and dusky images.
Darken your speech.
Speak, even, as if I did not hear you speaking,
But spoke for you perfectly in my thoughts,
Conceiving words,
As the night conceives the sea-sound in silence,
And out of the droning sibilants makes
A serenade.
Say, puerile, that the buzzards crouch on the ridge-pole
and sleep with one eye watching the stars fall
Beyond Key West.
Say that the palms are clear in the total blue.
Are clear and are obscure; that it is night;
That the moon shines.
3.1k
I’ve left footprints
in deserts
where no man’s been
in millennia; a thirst
not yet quenched
these dry cracked lips
can still spit out a poem
on old buzzards’
bones, trekking alone
whistling Dixie, my brother
I’ve a few miles yet to go.
Jun 29, 2019
Jun 29, 2019 at 6:19 PM UTC
The irrefutable motto
Spiraling overhead
Like buzzards
Is your wife's voice
Reminding you instead
That the directions you failed
To ask for at the last filling station
Several hours ago
Have once again
Ruined a family vacation
Dec 16, 2019
Dec 16, 2019 at 5:18 PM UTC
IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
you came to the rodeo
with your latest portfolio
of sidekick apparatchi(c)ks
colorful lily - a realpolitik mariposa
and gloriosa - tall like a ponderosa
while i rode the appaloosa-
cool like - little joe
do they make you hum
a sweet song like i do?
sitting on your spanish saddle
booted to skeedaddle
when i beat the buzzer
while buzzards circled-
beneath a purple sun
you came that time
when i rode
-on the blue mesa.
r ~ 9/24/14
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
Eventually Rising
Like all the Rest
I'm tired
Alone with everyone else
Although this misery
is like water on my Soul umbrella
I can hear the sound of victory
careening beyond oppression like Ella
There is something more
there is a force
ebbing and waxing the hour
of the instant and within it
a porous
Avenue for Advancement for
All, and One!
The buzzards may circle
pecking order, and peace
Only the rancor resource the feast
Why does conservation fail,
nature of the beast
or shale we sell
Gears without the grease
Landlopers versus Land Merchants
and
Machines versus human beings
and
Change versus Stay the Same
and
Monopoly
and
Monotony
and
Unipolarity
and
Is ... IS
it
All worth bile?
Did you learn Private Pyle!?
Yes Sir, General Science!
Sure!
Can't breathe a heartbeat
can't take a stand from a seat
and when the end is near
I promise you has no fear
Glass Rock and Stone!
Sure!
may hold money but not a home
Mother and Father Earth is our biome
billionaires and paupers rot together
yet alone!
Break
Who beholds the opulent eye?
Tell me who makes it out alive?
Believers in death will die
Those who weary tarry on
All the rest
eventually rise
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 7:51 PM UTC
Radioactive sunlight cascading over tendons pulling under scar tissue. Carved out, flesh eaten by buzzards. If she was a real girl, she may have cried. Vultures, all of them.
Hacking at marrow of the innocent. Lilies bloom in her eyes.
Harps in the distance, church bells interrupt to strike eleven times. Glittering like a magic something in the nervous heat.
The illegal existence.
She has bird bones in her box of Him. His prints deeply embedded, even now. He smiles in her memory, flashing teeth. Going extinct.
No longer an easy replication,
but she keeps her shrine.
In her kitchen, petals start to fall in soft disgrace. Time stops.
It has been said, late at night, you can still catch glimpse of her gleam.
May even catch the kaleidoscope in her eyes. They do not understand this. With briar and rose, she turns herself into prose.
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 3:18 PM UTC
How am I aware?
When did I become aware?
What is aware?
Does a lion know they are a lion?
What do they call themselves?
Does the Zebra know it is only a Zebra?
Does it know it's cause of death is a Lion round the neck?
As it bleeds does it remember it's family?
Does the Lion remember its first ****
Do the buzzards have an opinion on the situation?
As they argue over dinner do they also debate?
Yes.
The birds squak " if humans are aware, why aren't they aware of us?"
The giraffes chime in " why do they pretend our home is a wasteland?"
The monkeys holler "humans build concrete caves to hide from awareness"
The hyenas laugh " what stupid animals!"
The leopard whispers "aren't we all?"
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 9:27 AM UTC
Young, strong, And eager. The stallion drinks of the blue green waters. Ripples of tranquility lapping over him. He drinks in this new place, so fond of feelings that coarse through him. So fond of the peace that encircles this land.
Young, beautiful, And pure. The rider slides from atop her stallion. She lands softly, her feet sticking, catching her as they have countless times before. She ties her stallion to the old post and kneels drinking of the mesmerizing waters herself. She stands and fades off, exploring the beauty of the place.
Old, tired, And lonesome. A dusty scene materializes. A dried up waterhole left battered by the prying hands of time. Buzzards sit picking apart the final remains of a frail skeleton, still shackled to the old post he once knew well. The last drop of murky grey water sits beside a pair of one way tracks, laid down years ago.
Beauty comes and beauty grows but in time the dust will always blow.
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 6:14 PM UTC