"caldera" poems
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to slake its upward ******
A single heedless step is enough
to breech that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless soul
who fails to guard his steps.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in dark crevices of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in fiery pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounded souls
we plant fertile gardens of reconciliation
with beauty, trust and charity
and kneel to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s practiced eye
knows how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot,
and reason has no district.
Friends and siblings - my flesh and kin,
this world is ours to lose or save
so let us seal well our Sacred Calderas
from bitter foes that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 12:40 AM UTC
the bike wasn't
there it was
stolen last night
a caldera
then collapse
there was
no bike there
was no any
thing
Oct 19, 2014
Oct 19, 2014 at 2:11 PM UTC
Distant island shapes beguiling
Floating ghosts of far off land
Appear sentinel as we lay
Hot and sunbathed on the sand.
Scorching beach has tricked our minds
Ever beckoning cool seas flow
Finely placed as time stands still
Myths of people long ago
Heat above the deep caldera
Yet at water’s edge a breeze
Every wave a stroke of calmness
Drags the black sand out with ease
Pushing, combing lava rock
Once a liquid burning hot
Hearts massaged by the tender noise
Deep sighs as the day burns on
Windy gusts caress unclad torsos
Smiling we hold hands out to catch
Throwing our heads back with the pleasure
Letting our warm brown frames collapse
Lazy resting towels on bodies
Sunbed dreaming, time for lunch
Decisions on the midday menu
A carafe of red or white, too much!
Later when the sun’s behind us
Deserted beaches for the night
Couples then prepare for evening
Soon tavernas come alight
Poolside dwelling welcomes back
Two weary souls from day outside
Scorching sun takes all about us
Thanks for love where we abide
Since we came and soaked our souls
In this perfect atmosphere
Love has blossomed even further
All is wonderful never fear
Patio evenings lying out
Herb aroma fills the nose
Drifting in and out of sleepy
Eyes feel heavy in repose
Cool wet noses brush our legs
Warm fur strokes a silken pass
Feline friends have come to visit
Glad that we are home at last
Nervous ******* lying still
Mewing loudly all surpassed
Two so gentle but true survivors
Bright eyes hiding traumas past
How lovely to have given respite
As more and more attached we grew
Warm and tender stroking softly
Alongside us as if they knew
Feb 3, 2010
Feb 3, 2010 at 12:11 PM UTC
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to stay its upward ******
One errant step is all it takes
to breach that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless wanderer
who fails to guard his path.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in darkest hollows of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in molten pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounds
we sow gardens of reconciliation within
with beauty, trust and reason
and bow to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s studied eye
knows just how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot
and reason has no district.
Sisters and brothers of our flesh I pray
we find a holy and transforming alchemy
to convert our heat to light
and shield our sacred calderas
from enemies that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 12:30 PM UTC
I'm really sick.
Like ***** is going to come out of my mouth--
an eruption of **** from my ears is due.
I've laid too long dormant
and one by one the hot spots of my petty jealousy,
indignation, and
mistrust are at boiling points:
The Ring of Fire, they call it.
Yellowstone
I'm the ********* Yellowstone caldera.
The great rim,
****** up and blister scarred,
knock-kneed from falling out of bed in nightmares,
weird from the predisposition to volcanic shittiness
(not in a romantic way)
but none the less active,
or reactive.
This vexation is as old as grinding plates.
This repulsion is as old as the poisoning of Aristotle
My head is the Spartan scythe
because I'm a new sign in an old world.
I use old signs to poison this newly dug well between us
But not well can I keep this message
banner
******* billboard to myself.
So let me just wrap the code from ear to ear,
in plain text where you can see
the cypher: **** your red dress.
You see,
those blisters are the gravity between White Dwarves
pulling at skin, and earth, and ending thrown halfway across the universe.
I knew I'd seen you before,
there at the edge of the Oort Cloud
where we tell people we just met:
I stopped eating
I was hurt once
I was ugly too
and no one was really listening.
You and the rest of our red dresses meant too little.
But still then why do you whine over the hungry, and hurt, and ugly
and spit in my face for being there at the Edge,
and for loving the thrill in listlessness,
the passion in mundanity?
And that ******** about the shallowness of victims?
You didn’t learn a thing
traveling and trusting and falling out of beds.
Your drunken honesty is your sober lack of layers.
This isn’t a far reach of space,
your torn dress and cork heels won't work here.
Don’t bring that littleness here,
you're the only one not really listening now.
Jan 11, 2015
Jan 11, 2015 at 12:25 AM UTC
I bet your mouth tastes of stars.
I bet you have supernova sized explosions hidden behind your teeth
and I bet that comets trail through your hand
and leap off the edge of infinity,
careening into nothing.
I bet your skin looks of a galaxy.
I bet it is marred by shattered constellations
and I bet that in between the universes in your eyes
sits an empty thought,
awakening for no one.
I bet your hair is made of braided planetary orbits.
I bet you tie it back with black holes of misinformation
and I bet that it blasts open your mouth like a caldera
a galactic cluster of imaginary time,
shooting off bits of malice and meteorite.
You where born in the heavens,
so allow me to crack open your bones
and let satellites spill upon my palms.
Jan 12, 2014
Jan 12, 2014 at 12:13 AM UTC
Crater filled with endless dust
Full of nothing, full of rust,
Never ending, but it must,
Deeper down and down.
Leaving grass too far behind,
Somewhere no one else can find,
The ones who crave loneliness pine,
for the remoteness of this place.
Why is it always dark?
Not a sun to set or the quickest spark?
Only lonely--a treeless park,
A grave for distant sunlight.
Making happy seem not right.
Celebrate a starless night.
In cherished darkness, the cold can bite,
in the depths of this caldera.
Maybe something happened there,
A distant fight, an unknown lair,
incomplete and crumbled--the pair.
And waiting for some sun.
But for now let's ignore this awful place,
And forget we ever saw a trace.
An unsolved mystery, a closed case.
We'll erase the crater who lies.
Sep 24, 2014
Sep 24, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
The incandescent Sun
is eating itself alive
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The helium will compact
to a carbon red giant's core
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Earth's heat is depleted
by geothermal extraction
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The geysers are drying up
and the pressure sinks in subsidence
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The permafrost decomposes
and prehistoric methane effervesces
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Yellowstone caldera hisses
plumes of taunting toxic gases
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The sea-floor volcanoes
purge their way to the surface
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The aurora lights the sky
as solar wind ravages the magnetosphere
They said it's too small to matter
too small to matter
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
The moon is content
to believe without
understanding why
she was placed where she
flies, orbiting space
and looking at time.
But the earth wants to know.
It wants to accuse
whoever carved out
its calderas,
and at every aphelion
the moon finds it harder
to move, like she can’t drag
herself back through the blues
of skies one more time.
The tether that holds
them together tears
her apart.
The moon doesn’t get
dizzy, but earth thinks
it’s spinning too fast,
sketches up the sky,
an engineered map of whys,
of stars connected
by thin pencil lines,
she thinks in miracles while it
thinks in margins of error,
equations, exponents.
On nights when she glows
green, the moon envies those pairs
who favor the power of two
because she squints and sees
the blueshift in earth’s eyes
as it crashes closer,
time spills out behind her,
space suffocates
between them, closer,
perihelion come,
and she blinks and sees
earth’s caldera eyes
raised to nothing.
Sep 16, 2015
Sep 16, 2015 at 8:25 AM UTC
¿Qué te digo, que te escribo?
¿Cómo poner en verso este sentimiento que por ti siento?
¿Qué poeta invoco para que me ayude a componerte las más bellas letras?
Una poesía que contenga consonantes que te lleguen al alma!
¿Cómo se describe lo indescriptible?
¿Lo que no tiene historia, lo que nunca ha existido?
¿Cómo describo tus besos si nunca en ellos me he perdido?
¿Cómo describo que el toque de tus manos incinera las partes más frías de mí?
¿Cómo hablo de la libertad de tu amor si estoy presa en él?
¿Cómo dirijo la pluma, con que tinta la escribo?
¡Te he conjugado verbos con más letras que el alfabeto chino!
Como decirte que los dioses de la antigua Grecia
se han unido en Santorini, solo para demandarle al Mar Egeo,
que te detengas a escuchar las olas de mi mar que anhelan atarse a tu destino.
Que así como ese maremoto provoco la erupción de su caldera,
tú por ende, uses mis caderas para que fluya esta erupción ardiente en tu entrega.
¿Qué serenata te ofrezco si donde vivo no habitan ruiseñores?
Más tengo una inmensa necesidad de cantarte, de decirte con la melodía de mis besos;
que te quiero,
que me enterneces,
que me apeteces,
que este amor por ti cada vez más crece.
Que eres el agua que hidrata mi ser.
La pasión realizada en hombre.
El hombre que florece mi esperanza en el amor.
Que tu sonrisa es igual a la sensación del ciego que ve por primera vez-irreal.
Que el sonido de tu voz, es entender por qué Dios creo el mundo.
Que el brillo de tus ojos, traspaso las venas de mis miedos y por siempre las neutralizo.
¿Dime, que te digo?
¿Dime, como te lo escribo?
¿Dime, como te conquisto?
¿Dime, como te miro?
¿Cuál poeta invoco para que me ayude a escribirte la mejor poesía?
¡Si tú eres la mejor poesía!!!!!
LeydisProse
5/22/2017
https://m.facebook.com/LeydisProse/
Image may contain: one or more people
Jun 1, 2017
Jun 1, 2017 at 11:30 AM UTC
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
ineffable contours, that cannot be tamed with a wordy depiction.
Like water running through my fingers,
Ephemeral, and leaving me to linger.
Caldera, my steaming desire.
Instantiates a spy, that is ready to be set on fire.
Daughter of eve,
Carousel of dreams
You’ve drowned my angels
And left me to die in a reverie.
Nov 1, 2019
Nov 1, 2019 at 12:02 AM UTC
The improbability of you,
Shooting star,
Birthed in the caldera
Of a winged widget
Ejecting celestial dust,
Now your dance floor
Is the Universe.
And you dance and dance
to the delight of your seasons,
Inspiring your myriad friends.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 1:09 AM UTC
I am shattered lands
Tectonic plates bucking against the heated pressure
Of each word you utter
Vesuvius verses Pompeii
With gypsy tips I've got these tricks
Leaving you breathless
Panting after in great belching strides
The slightest wave of my hand
Your a step away from erupting
Steaming up my control panel
Moisture slicking the pathways between here...and here.
Blow your top honey
I've got a village for you to cover
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 11:26 AM UTC
FRENCH KISS
*Such buttery lips
Sweet cream-silks, wrapping our tongues,
Je patisserie.*
Le VALENTINE
*Red rose and sweet prose
Cyrano DeBergerac's
Moonlit balconies.*
DESIRE
*Burning in goose flesh
Yearnings with caldera-thirst
Your kiss is like rain.*
DEBONAIR
*Dean in gabled suits
Eloquent body, jazz-smooth
Sweeps her off her feet.*
METEOR SHOWER
*Friday night space lights
As we caress the hours
Streaks across the sky*
ORIGAMI
*The creases of us:
Tales of dragons and white ships
Neatly folded sheets.*
VEGAS WEDDING
*Romance thru sun roofs
"Hallelujah" honeymoons
Marriage number two.*
BON VOYAGE
*Like wide sails that cup
The high winds of this marriage
I'm at Love's mercy.*
NAPE
*Warm whispers my lips
Down smooth meadows of your neck,
Sweet familiar bed.*
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 5:40 PM UTC
A recently revived drowning victim
I'm judging picture books by their centerfold
All the wit in the world won't
save me now
and even though I've made it
This far
I'm still too afraid
to keep ********* through the pages.
You should see
All of my paper cut scars
This is a courtesy call
I hope to hear you
Say you're sorry
and just because
I saw you dancing along the wall
doesn't mean we're friends
In fact
quite the reverse.
You're a man
And I'm ******* insane
There's no way for you to know
how much I've hated
You
I guess it's been years since we talked
So that's my fault.
Retraced steps lead me
to the lip of the pool
Cholera never looked
like my scene
But I feel your genes spreading
Like Jesus and Peter
you'll pass me down this legacy
of hatred, strife and
Pestilence. My god.
I bind my books
into your back
and read you bedtime stories
each period forming a
caldera in your skin.
I touch it.
And this tastes so good
Almost like another life
if I can stay here forever
you may never find me again.
Don't you see how beautiful it is?
I'm not afraid of you anymore.
I think I realized
I just know you
Too ******* well
it's like looking in a mirror
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 3:10 AM UTC
As he fell into autumn
He marvelled
And smiled
Despite his fate
Her colours so stong
And her powers unreal
His hands
Still not cooled
After the fire he felt
When he reached out
To touch her hair
Under a perfect blue sky
He fell
And with the colours he faded
Into different shades
Of darkness
Volcano
As the pressure builds below
With rising levels of acidity
The waters around us show signs
Of impending doom
There are cracks at times
Sulphoric fumes too
But no one cares
as long as the plaster holds.
In time the magma builds
Like a boil the mantle explodes
In a Plinian eruption
Of petrifying pyroclastics
And lava flows
Raging and ravishing
Fertile lands
With misery and despair in its wake
As it calms down
And the lava cools
The reconstruction begins
Around the old mantle
The surface crusts again
Like a wound healing
But marked
Scarred
And the pressure builds once more
Another eruption is imminent
The mantle builds every time
Until it collapses
Into a magnificent caldera
The imploded chamber
Of an emptied magma chamber
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 10:35 AM UTC
The improbability of you,
Shooting star,
Birthed in the caldera
Of a winged widget
Ejecting celestial dust,
Now your dance floor
Is the Universe.
And you dance and dance
to the delight of your seasons,
Inspiring your myriad friends.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 1:14 AM UTC
The Crust of the Earth Ruptured in a caldera.
The Sun blotted out by the ash and ejecta.
Dark lay the land in that perilous time.
way back before history had written a line.
The carnage terrific, there were deaths beyond count
When Starvation set in we saw casualties mount.
We came so close then to the end of our race.
There were ten thousand humans left on Earth's face.
These ten thousand survivors, the sad Remanent left
were fruitful and multiplied, at least that's a good guess.
At last count we numbered seven Billions or more.
We have plundered the land and polluted the shore.
I wonder when Yellowstone will rumble again.
It will blot out the stars and will threaten World's end.
But if some should survive and start over again
for the sake of Our Father please this time stay friends.
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 11:02 AM UTC
a fiery lava pool is my heart
a lake of incandescence bubbling
over my body melting me to raw emotion
burying me in an orgasmic pyroclastic flow of feelings
Love has taken on meaning
has produced Life
messy viscous muddy hot
writhing
Life
has given new depth to my volcanic soul
and driven temperatures
to icy bottomless chasms
under which is my fire my heart’s hearth
a legion of ghosts crawls over my rim
an infantry of past experiences to
remind my heart
of a once-fought war on the field of my soul
on the Plains of Love
in the chapel of my body
my heart pours its lavic gift over
my rim
leaving nothing of them to recall
or bring forward
or sound retreat
for
they are not memories anymore
they are echoes of echoes of echoes disappeared
neither inchoate nor fully realized
gone
c. 2017 Roberta Compton Rainwater
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 7:19 PM UTC
The improbability of you,
Shooting star,
Birthed in the caldera
Of a winged widget
Ejecting celestial dust,
Now your dance floor
Is the Universe.
And you dance and dance
to the delight of your seasons,
Inspiring your myriad friends.
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 1:21 AM UTC
Anxiety fills in
When Nothing is happening
Like water filling a caldera
Years after the mountain disintegrated
in an explosion of fire and ash
and they told stories about it
beside the blue deep lake
It will happen again
they say in whispers,
Soon
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 7:47 PM UTC
I had a dream
in French
and black and
white
a dream where you
were in America
en fin
and I was high on
Crater Lake
I had a dream
where your skin
survived
it did survive
the coldest blow
the ash
the snow
in the Caldera's dance
where sheets
of violet
embers and
clothes
hanging on the line
blew in rhythm
to my French
two-step
and my ombre
shades of time
I had a dream that you
were here
and that you
never died.
Apr 24, 2015
Apr 24, 2015 at 7:53 PM UTC