"carver" poems
Someone carved a face in that pumpkin,
and now it's perched on a stoop, grinning
with the same sinister grin the carver must have had
when he carved it.
And everything I recognize as expressive
(the triangular eyes, that big toothy smile)
is marked by a lack of pumpkin.
A red face of dead space.
And now I'm seeing just the opposite.
I see two spots where the eyes should be,
an open wound where the mouth once sat,
and a fire within, baking the insides.
Oct 26, 2016
Oct 26, 2016 at 11:34 AM UTC
He was lonely, as was his heart, carver
Of wood, he searched upon forest &
Glade till before his eyes laid sight of a masterpiece,
Home he hurried
Carving,
Smoothing,
Varnishing
Not noticing or ignoring the black knot
But unbeknown, this was a deeper
Problem. Rotten, decayed black festered
Within not showing on the outside,
But things are missed in joy,
Things that will haunt, but he was finished
His boy of wood stood before
His so tearful eyes, your only wood
Only inanimate, sitting before my weeping eyes.
Heard where his whispers
Upon a night were they asked back,
"You are of sound heart"
"You are of compassion"
"You will have a son of wood with life in his heart"
As he looked upward,
A sight befell his reddened eyes
"FATHER"
Words fell forth unto his ears,
"Did you just speak??
"Father"
He hugged upon wood given life,
"Son"
"Son"
"A boy of my own given life"
"I love you son"
"I love you father"
His nose grew,
leaves sprouted forth,
"Aaghhhhh"
As Pinocchio snapped what grew forth,
And throw it upon the floor,
In pain he reeled,
"Son be calm"
For lies will be greeted by growth
Shall a lie be told, only good boys
And girls realise that honesty will be rewarded.
With that he cuddled his father, you know
Not love but I will show you unconditionally
Till you understand honesty also love,
Upon those words both bedded
For the night was late and father was old,
But he never slept, upon the floor
Part of him that broke off,
Now tainted black,
As it had succumb to its chosen fate,
As he fashioned upon tools
A living weapon,
"Blackest as night"
He felt connected
They were apart but one.
Into the bedroom he crept,
"Father"
"Father"
"Awaken"
Startled old eyes widen, I have a gift,
As he plunges it forth,
Son whhhhy I loveeee youuu
"I am but wooden given life"
"Blackness rots inside"
"It must feed"
For without it I will cease,
When I was just cold
It was my end no difference to any one.
And now given life
That is all that matters this night,
And with that he ****** into his
"Fathers heart"
He felt relief inside no more ties
But he cried splintered tears upon his
Blood they mixed upon the floor
He had extinguished his first life.
He needed to stem the flow as
He felt the veins rooting further
Life was his not easily given up,
The town fell silent that night,
As he fed well, he charred his
Finger tips black upon once so tanned,
So to feed with both knife and hand.
He would travel the world, death in his wake
All thought
"How unique"
"How harmless"
"How sweet"
But when the hunger craved,
Life was bled, life was ceased
All for the rot to not **** this wooden boy
"Rotten core in a boys shell"
Prey his nose does not grow just a little
Because your time in life will be up.
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 4:32 PM UTC
Some say, we don't need black history month.
When in truth we do.
Would the contribution of African American be taught truthfully.
If we had to depend on you know who?
Obviously, they very unaware of several successful black that contributed to America's greatness.
We, very well aware they edited down facts to be turn into fiction.
Like that president that chopped down that cherry tree.
Many doesn't know the plight of Washington, Dubois, Carver.
Let alone know their first name.
It's hardly taught, if it's about us.
George Franklin, Grant-dentist
Ernest Everett, Just.-Scientist
Josh Gibson, one of the greatest baseball player.
We know very well about George, Thomas and James and John Q.
Some say, we all Americans
And in truth, they completely right.
But for reasons very well known.
We are not all equal in sights of others.
When needed, they call upon us to join in.
Some still, say-why do Black history month exist?
But all cultures knows none was eliminated through times.
Than those captured to come here and renamed after their masters.
And facts be told, this cultures lives to embrace into their children's if nothing is ever mention by certain teachers about their cultures.
Than they will keep it before them.
Matthew Alexander, Henson-Explorer
Billie Holiday-singer
Duke Ellington and Count Basie and Cab Calloway.
Greatness, we can't let fade.
Vernon Jordan
Shirley Chilsom
And hosts of present days teachers that push the issues to educate.
Those that say, we don't need Black History months.
Be crying , if we try to eliminate theirs.
Cause that's all they ever known.
Howard University.
Tennessee State and Fisk and various others came to be because of discrimination.
And has turned out some brilliant African Americans.
So our history is needed.
Cause it's about us.
Like Latin History and various others is about other cultures.
Feb 7, 2016
Feb 7, 2016 at 10:12 AM UTC
As I let my mind wander into time, and release these binds that have me confined, I began to feel a great energy, like the sun had been compressed and put into me, and as time tic tocs and unwinds into its trail of infinity. I realize a trinity mind body soul, they burn as a whole, for the mightiest of goals. and as time unwinds it'll leave you behind. unless you get your spot in, a line of legacys never to be forgotten
Confucius, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr, George Washington, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Nelson Mendala, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Stephen Hawkins, Leonardo Da Vinci, Wolfgang Amedeus Mozart, nikola tesla, Wael Ghonim, Jimi Hendrix, Joseph Stiglitz, Reed Hastings, François Rabelais, Archimedes, Sigmund Frued, Charles Darwin, Aryabhata, Bob Marley, Garrett Morgan, George Washington Carver, Aristotle, John Locke, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Plato, Galileo Galilei...and many many more...
Stand for something. Think outside the box. Evolve and express yourself. Make a difference #STEM #LegacyToIfinity
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 5:31 PM UTC
The nuns did not have much
But they valued all
And truer, fuller days filled with chores
Passed the sun-moon-suns
Some nights the mountains
Were cold, so they gave her hot coals
Their bodies thin and fragile, impossibly resilient
Winter; cup of animal fat
Thirteen years, cooking for twenty peers
In lessons learned foreign tongue
From her alien education, taught too
She passed her blue-star-blues
Painting sweetened hues
The elevation and scene in dripping sweeps of brush
Nepal became even more
Beautiful on paper
And behind thoughtful eyes
A tourist hands a wood carver
Several years salary, is this
Enough?
Masterpiece etched given free petty possessions
Empty handed back to hungry mouths
Fulfilled and satisfied
At night the unpolluted bright
Reflected off the lake; God smile
Rocky range round in isolation
The wind, for once
Whispered truth
She inhaled the honesty, and reunited art
With canvas
The Earth shook, no one else felt it
But she knew
And happy filled a forgotten face
In wise silence
Aug 22, 2012
Aug 22, 2012 at 11:29 PM UTC
Here is a story, not different from others,
just to confuse you and make you wonder,
it is not much, so dont expect anything at all,
its a story about a joker and his downfall.
well lets begin from the beginning,
before the start,
lay a joker, thinking about his past,
He kept on laughing at his own jokes,
decided to become a comic for the good 'ol folks.
He kept on laughing and made others laugh,
he finally made a name but got caught in a raft,
the wind was agaisnt him and so was time,
the water rose high and destroyed his climb.
Now the smile turned upside down,
its just a demise of another clown,
it was the same, everyone kept of laughing,
except the joker, who wouldnt stop crying.
his identity became a horror,
a waste of society,
his existance was now
a story of gory heirarchy,
Irrational being in an imperfect world,
he is a reflection of some of the whirls
he is the one with no possible partner,
a looser in life but a skillful carver.
he is the joker, a killer,
a master, a cheater,
he is the joker near his end
he is the joker.......
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 11:49 AM UTC
I had another dream
Well, it's sounds less crazy than calling it a memory
I walked through the public park
on a chilly evening
Orange and red leaves were falling
My favorite season.
I sat on the park bench
which greeted me with a little warmth
Probably from the elder woman
who regularly sat on this park bench
to feed the birds
My favorite animal.
I scanned the park
Its horizontal lines matched the color of the leaves
A coated stranger walked by
His face blurred
but a friendly smile I remembered so clearly
I set a leaf on the bench beside me
It had fallen on my head
and kept me from feeling lonely
I never knew why I felt like that some times.
The wind took my fallen friend
which took my eyes to marked wood
I had to squint, I had to smile
"He said stay in my arms for eternity"
I expected two initials encased in a heart
but this was extra touching
I hoped the bench carver stayed
I hoped they were happy
Maybe I'd remember this
Maybe I've already lived it.
A second stranger walked by but stopped
And became familiar
He had the one smile
The one that I've always remembered
We walked arm in arm
out of the public park
I told him of the bench carver's message
He smiled,
"And She said I will"
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 9:19 PM UTC
He taught me so much
When no one really cared
He loved me as his daughter
When no one else was there.
He was my mentor
And later my caregiver
He was an amazing person
My half sister's father
(The only thing we had in common
Was our mother)
And he always told me
There was something wrong with her
He had known
That she was his daughter
The reason he fell from grace
But he still loved her
Though she betrayed the human race
His cold blue eyes
With warm rusty hair
Cool toned skin
My mentor
Mr. Carver
Apr 17, 2020
Apr 17, 2020 at 3:27 AM UTC
My hands are numb
And uncooperative as I struggle to write,
"University Bapstist Church"
On this little piece of paper in my hand.
I'm earning my "Beat Mitt" shirt.
November 6th, 2012.
You bet I did my part;
All 2 1/2 hours worth.
Standing outside of Carver Hall.
Nose running. Hands cold.
Wind blowing. No sunlight to keep us warm.
But I didn't do it for the shirt.
I did it to help make some kind of change.
I know I didn't do much,
But at least I did something.
And that's a hell-of-a-lot more than most can say.
Nov 6, 2012
Nov 6, 2012 at 3:30 PM UTC
See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,
So this one, taking up his heart,
Which time and change had made a stone,
Carved out of it with dolorous art,
Laboring yearlong and alone,
The thing there hidden-rose, toad, wing?
A frog's hand on a lily pad?
Bees in a cobweb?-no such thing!
A girl's head was the thing he had,
Small, shapely, richly crowned with hair,
Drowsy, with eyes half closed, as they
Looked through you and beyond you, clear
To something farther than Cathay:
Saw you, yet counted you not worth
The seeing, thinking all the while
How, flower-like, beauty comes to birth;
And thinking this, began to smile.
Medusa! For she could not see
The world she turned to stone and ash.
Only herself she saw, a tree
That flowered beneath a lightning-flash.
Thus dreamed her face-a lovely thing
To worship, weep for, or to break . . .
Better to carve a claw, a wing,
Or, if the heart provide, a snake.
2.1k
FRED CARVER
3 days after Fred Carver
Was shot dead
In a craps game
We all gathered
At Sparkman’s Funeral Home
For the visitation
I was standing
Behind Fred’s ex-wife Thelma
When she reached into her purse
And dropped something
In the casket
I leaned over her shoulder
And watched a black spider
Crawl up Fred’s face
And disappear in his hair
-Dennis Gulling
Jun 24, 2016
Jun 24, 2016 at 7:45 PM UTC
The fog crept in on giant monster claws,
Surely no itty-bitty feline foots, I pray:
“Feets don’t fail me now,”
A line that will live in infamy,
Way back in a vaudeville when,
A minstrel Chitlin Circuit then,
Was an actor known as the
"Laziest man in the world,"
A character designed to stick to a
Collective white consciousness,
Stick like Tar-Baby, that negative
Image of African-American men--
I speak of The Brothers--
Who for over a century, have been
Struggling to live down a pernicious,
Most persistently demeaning,
Hollywood trope.
Tribute is due to the black actor born:
Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry.
Oh, Mr. Perry, & yes, you were the
First black actor to receive
Screen credit in a film.
Well, I guess that puts you right up there,
With Jackie Robinson & Sidney Poitier,
Carver or Tubman, or any of those
Countless northern abolitionists--
With no personal stake in slavery,
Or emancipation, but fervent nonetheless--
Color-barrier breakers &
Household saints a-coming &
A-marching in, in that number . . .
You paid a big price, Mr. Perry:
The indignity & débauche,
By abject surrender to the Boss Man,
Tribute, recognition is due for
Feats of humility & self-abasement,
Entailing total superhuman surrender,
Capitulation to the dismal, prevailing
State of American race relations at the time.
Stepin Fetchit: a name & a persona,
Not just painfully racist, but
Downright subversive.
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 1:45 AM UTC
guiding
blank page muses
and muses riding ********
horses with iron honey legs
they combust in liquid
and finger themselves
in darkroom thighs
fluorescent ***
in the eaves of heaven
i wanna drip off your fingers
and
onto your belly
and
rollerskate into
your ****
and
tattoo your
lips shut
with sewn butterflies to the skyfields
the
skygrass
and
skykisses
and
name myself after your
blank spaces
and the forest fire days
of august new years
no one talks about you anymore
but i still
wonder the
way the salt
wonders about the tears
and the dark about
the midnight
if that really was
you
a valley out of the winding
sheets
and into the golden haired
hands of a long ago love
well practiced with incision
Nov 17, 2013
Nov 17, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
If things ever got so
bad that our money became
virtually worthless, it might be
possible to use poetry as a
medium of exchange.
The better the poem, the
greater the value.
A Pablo Neruda or David Ignatow
would be worth something like fifty dollars,
whereas a Rod McKuen might buy you a
candy bar. Maybe.
Richard Brautigans would buy plenty, as well,
but make you question why you were
buying it at all.
A Bukowski poem
would be worth
thousands, but
looked upon as
foreign currency.
Of course, with the current rate of
inflation, one would need more and more Nerudas
and Ignatows just to get by, and eventually a loaf
of bread might cost as much as a short story.
To buy a car, one would need to come up with
two or three novels...good novels...a couple of
Haruki Murakamis.
It would take a wallet full of
Raymond Carver stories just to buy a
motorcycle.
Jun 1, 2012
Jun 1, 2012 at 6:35 PM UTC
BODY of Jesus taken down from the cross
Carved in ivory by a lover of Christ,
It is a child's handful you are here,
The breadth of a man's finger,
And this ivory **** cloth
Speaks an interspersal in the day's work,
The carver's prayer and whim
And Christ-love.
1.4k
Farouche people cast lethal ephemeralities, they are skittish howitzers' foreseeing
Tamper and muck around with us
Proceed please, gain potency
Address prowess, then once you've coward in a corner, strain to flee
Michka was languid sáwol (OE)
The bullied ******* not teeming by any means
Always a vexed mind, full of pillage grim
Every day the same prediction
Once the bruises turned healing yellow, they'd regain their blue gray
He walked the plank and served the steak
He dilapidated himself in vile rain
Gained no aplomb confidence
Only verbal abuse that strayed persistent
Only mental and physical wounds surfaced
Strolling down the broken sidewalk of crumbled concrete
A noticement of condemned buildings
6235 Mirnerva LN
Visions he had entering, visions he had slaying
Of the civil and socialble
Torture to the dependable
He walked inside to leaks and floor holes
Ancient 1920 furniture and stoves
More than one stove that could hold coal
To burn bodies of evidence made him feel like gold
He had a place of his own
He mirrored himself as a transfixing carver
Despersing of the bully fools
No more drubbing routs' after school
Dec 9, 2010
Dec 9, 2010 at 6:38 AM UTC
San Francisco beat lit blues,
got Raymond Carver in my bag
on the train, flipping
through my pages, thinking
of you, my dear.
Soft knuckles, big hands
clumsy enough to take
hold of a pen and write
something beautiful;
paint me a picture with
words when I'm old and grey
stuck in a nursing home
wishing we'd met.
Eating fruit in a distant park,
hardened heart due to constant
responsibility; foolish actions,
little girl in a ford hits
a truck and cries for him.
Man with the soft knuckles, big hands,
beautiful unforgettable ocean-coloured
eyes.
Come into me, I invite you:
Swim in between these open layers
of flesh and take flight
within me.
Dispersed genetics on a dreary hour,
I've got you in my mind
Mapping out the design of your face,
and loving every second of it.
Apr 3, 2012
Apr 3, 2012 at 5:07 AM UTC
A pretty girl sits down at a patio table across from me.
She takes an acoustic guitar
out of her leather purse. I’m drinking coffee grounded from Carver Stories
With one hand, she tunes the guitar,
and with the other she strums the strings
with a beating heart.
I feel an emptiness,
deep from within my chest,
that is like a ceramic jar
missing its precious soil.
The lyrics to her songs
come from a radio station on the moon.
The one that plays
music made out of
empty friends and unplanned successes.
I hum along to the pauses
between her words and clap
to the punctuation marks, constraining her lovely voice.
She sounds like my future.
She sounds like a songbird.
She sounds like running your fingers
through a round, bald head.
The girl looks up from her guitar
and smiles at me, as if I am her second boyfriend.
The same one who she marries
out of necessity,
out of income,
out of security.
I offer her a piece of gum
Etched with masculinity.
She takes a bite.
Then spits it out at once.
I laugh.
She laughs.
And it’s not the kind of laugh that is forced,
or given out of sympathy.
It’s the kind of laugh that says:
“Hey I see you and I know,
I miss the stranger in your smile.
And the kick drum in your heart.
And all love
that I have never received, due to my stubbornness.”
I blinked.
And the girl transformed into
a mirror.
And I changed into the girl.
And then the mirror became the girl.
And the girl became me.
Then we looked into each other’s eyes,
and made love under the spell of a song,
the same one she played in the beginning,
with music notes that sounded like the anguished cries
that come from my heart, the same heart
that she uses to play her guitar.
May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016 at 7:47 PM UTC
In Klawock stands seven totems
and a madman, chanting under ebon skies
he is embedded in the cedar wood, he is connecting worlds
a master carver, of language without words
of the raven clan, he is tracing ancestry in the wood
seeking the old ways of eagle, wolf and bear
born of water, amid the realms of earth and air
his spirit runs with salmon.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 10:12 AM UTC
I’m Coming for you Bob...
To Hull & Back...
to Carver’s Just for the Mushy Peas!
As a little lad, I think on a Sat’day morning, we’d go
to a market somewhere, was it on the docks?
Asked our Brian, he’s smart, he said it were... I thought - he’d know.
...After all the mooching, the tugging, the shushing, the rows
and all me **** “where’s he gone nows?”
If I stuck it out long enough wi’out gerrin’ a clout,
we’d sit inside, or sometimes out,
of a blue striped tent - and I’d eat mushy peas.
There might have been chips,
there could have been fish;
Mam always had fish,
Brian, would have had a pattie... well, he was 12(ish)
Not sure I’d even have known about patties all them years back.
But anyway peas is what sticks in my mind…
and all down the front of me jumper...or sometimes on me mac.
They say - if you haven’t been to Carver’s
you haven’t been to Hull.
Well Bob... I’m coming back!… And’ll
bet,
when I was digging mushy peas
with my fork back in Fifty Three,
it were your Grandad, (also Bob) would have been serving me!
Cheers! And, I know it's cheeky - but - Can I have scraps wi'that?
Dec 30, 2020
Dec 30, 2020 at 10:27 AM UTC
In Klawock stands seven totems
and a madman, chanting under ebon skies,
embedded in cedar wood, he is connecting two worlds
a master carver, in a language without words.
Born of the raven clan,
he is tracing ancestry in the wood
seeks the ways of wolf and bear.
Born of water, amid the realms of earth and air
his spirit runs with salmon.
Apr 16, 2018
Apr 16, 2018 at 12:17 PM UTC
We should be finished by next fall. Last autumn was a good time and I hear history repeats itself. Sleeping under trees, smoking Lucky Strikes and tending to our hobbies. Lackadaisically bent over antediluvian scrapbooks, I hear this winter's to melt into a flood. The ark is under way, we should be finished by next fall.
It was something in the calm drift of the clouds or the tick-tick of the water meter. There was us and then there was them. We were flushed, the world was bluffing. There was us:
Deep breath.
We were the lost children roaming 'round Cair Paravel; the boxed kit youth unboxing on a caravel watching hypnotic YouTube videos and firing fire out of firewood; that was when I fell. Beside the flames under cover of conversation of God and Hell and all the proper nouns that we fear so much. But fires burn out, so let's be civil. We should be finished by next fall.
But how can I be civil when I hope that your spit flies back in your face; that when you flick your wrist, your muscles tear because I've torn too. It's torn past the heart into my legs, immobile, and my arms, useless. These hands are cramped and shredded; scraps and pieces and bits, drill bits carving their way in. You carved your way in. They say an animal in a tailor-made niche is an animal in a found home. So carve away, carver, we should be finished by next fall.
May 10, 2013
May 10, 2013 at 6:37 PM UTC
I read about Martin.
I read about Malcolm.
I read about Rosa.
I read about Muhammad Ali.
The people that started a revolution to solve a resolution.
I read about Harriet.
I read about Charles Drew.
I read about Nat Turner.
I read about George Washington, Carver.
Some many still re unaware of to this day.
I read about Sojourn Truth.
I know of Thurgood Marshall.
I read about the Count, the Duke, that's Ellington.
And Aretha and James Brown too.
All apart of the movement of African Americans fight.
All faced injustice for trying to do things right.
I read about Althea Gibson.
And the Civil Rights protesters fighting against fools.
Some, we see still operating like they still trying to rule.
I hope those reading this has learned something too.
Feb 8, 2015
Feb 8, 2015 at 8:24 AM UTC
#napowrimo2016
Challenge: write a poem using at least 10 dictionary terms
no wood carver
marks or remarks
here, no sinking
prose with nautical
terms, no rhymes
that use ropes to climb mountains higher,
these are all and only dreams to me
I will use as it
uses me, a
poetic dictionary.
Please starting read out loud, naked in front of a mirror, what follows after, now!
Oulipo, acronym,
there are no slim
chances at Norms,
Shall we play a game,
with words and no one
gets hurt.
And the peace of
Pastoral settings
Over shadowed
love, I mean Love,
by your chief complaint.
I am but a man, thick
and thin, who touches
only Sentence Sounds
with his tongue.
But you wait on your
Heroic Couplet,
And find me not the qualified culprit.
Pick your poets then, go back way back when,
some Poets are Fugitives, short lived in Nashville,
Harlem had a Renaissance,
inclusive, read South to North, and I read and I read sustained by the Sestina,
some red wine, oh did I spill, let me cleanup while you mouth the Prose and let me, tempt you, to Rhyme, as I **** your toes.
I am a Poet after all, and the Echo verse proves me perverse in the unseemly way I overtly finish seams, a long lines that follow curves of hips and softnes of inflection, still the distance between Poetry and bliss is obscene. Please let me Muse you...?
I wait.
Apr 17, 2016
Apr 17, 2016 at 6:52 PM UTC
I have something to say
Like the shell
That finds its destiny
As a conch
From the depths of the sea
The fisherman
Collects it
It reaches the coast
Lifeless but
Thankful to him
To put its mortal
Remains to
Sacred use
It is polished
Processed
Put through acid and
Hot oil
It gains some
Precious value
Now it reaches
The hands
Of the skillful
Carver
Who decorates
It with
Strands of valued
Sacred imagination
Such are its designs
Now
A dealer is his
Next destination
He sees it
And purchases
And puts it
In a place of pride
In his shop
On display!
Now if
Some desirous
Eyes fall
On it
Its sure to be
Taken to
A shrine
Temple or home
And find
The joyous blowing
In the air which
Rushing, passes
Vibrating
With the
Joyous energy
Of its devoted blower!
It is considered
To purify the
Surroundings!
Its so valuable!
So the conch
Feels thankful
To each one
Who helped it
To reach here
In its
Journey!
So do I
Say
A thank you
To all those
Whom I
Do forget to say!
Apr 4, 2018
Apr 4, 2018 at 3:49 AM UTC