"cellars" poems
I have left, pig-mudding drunk,
having sipped from stock to stock on fraying cheer, stages.
I have stood in foreign basements; sweaty cellars of youth;
begot by attitude breeding spaces of the hip;
drawn circles searching for love in recreating nonsense:
a silly pupil, moon-eyed, out of breathe.
I have heard them quack, reveal their cords;
heard them whisper a thousand and one secrets,
heard them deconstruct their circumstances as pilgrims, penniless and sick.
I have their memories now, an image of a depressed,
ass-imprinted pillow soaked in liquor and a feeling of nausea
where ribs sleep on this couch tonight, every night.
I have heard one refute the weight of living, ******
on the banks of his best friends hospitality, and thought
How much is it worth?
And I have envied every **** greasy pored hipster,
the ones fixing on makingitnew now kind of clan; stared blankly at fashion,
a culture back door where pink fish scales sparkle high from runway halters
to the tops of grown men, bearded and chesty.
And your mothers pearls sit, not your mother’s pearls but your mother’s, mother’s pearls,
that old world clout ornamented around those hairy *******
Oh yes, I have seen men become peacocks, charmed animals of **********
seen them teeth at discourse in the noise they create, wide-mouthed and pointed;
I have seen them masked like frantic felines: wooly bully cats trying-to-roll their own meter,
their tobacco stained black charcoal over soft bricked lips quiver to their beats:
those painted lemmingings, without a parachute: kamikaze felons.
I have desired absolute sterility: white china,
in the egg of a toilet bowl I spewed out, shut-up my exuberance for the night;
sorry-pleaded my resolutions to gag out the naughty nouns in my life.
I have quit; turned in my lust for performing the lioness, paw-licking,
snarly creature: the predator of my youth, and now,
I am pretty-headed, tamed in bath oils and schedules;
a spotted fox, in plain view, one medium-sized mammal getting by.
Feb 3, 2013
Feb 3, 2013 at 5:05 PM UTC
So the church Christ was hit and buried
Under its ******* and its rubble.
In cellars, packed-up saints long serried,
Well out of hearing of our trouble.
One ****** still immaculate
Smiles on for war to flatter her.
She's halo'd with an old tin hat,
But a piece of hell will batter her.
3.5k
Notice how he has numbered the blue veins
in my breast. Moreover there are ten freckles.
Now he goes left. Now he goes right.
He is buiding a city, a city of flesh.
He's an industrialist. He has starved in cellars
and, ladies and gentlemen, he's been broken by iron,
by the blood, by the metal, by the triumphant
iron of his mother's death. But he begins again.
Now he constructs me. He is consumed by the city.
>From the glory of words he has built me up.
>From the wonder of concrete he has molded me.
He has given me six hundred street signs.
The time I was dancing he built a museum.
He built ten blocks when I moved on the bed.
He constructed an overpass when I left.
I gave him flowers and he built an airport.
For traffic lights he handed at red and green
lollipops. Yet in my heart I am go children slow.
3.3k
From plane to plane, and none by none
The circle trails towards all but one,
For seeing Deaths could not prevail
The night's cool mist and Dewey Hail.
To the Gods that soar with thunder,
Straight edge wing, we'll bring asunder-
Fragments: aluminum and iron-
With mossy cellars rusting pyres.
Daybreak screams, alike my notebook,
With the hopes: Eternal Outlook,
And smoke-emitting plants and cars,
And night-birthgiving lights and bars,
All set dim, fluorescence unseen.
But in broad day? Our shame will scream.
Further! Muster, lavished Brother
In Greed, who forces towards plunder
Mine and mine companion's others
Times, sepulchers, decent gestures.
To learn to hate the natural shrub
Is same to love the rust we rub
From decay of Louis' Arc,
Death, humanity soon embarks.
Oct 28, 2012
Oct 28, 2012 at 10:54 AM UTC
Men of England, wherefore plough
For the lords who lay ye low?
Wherefore weave with toil and care
The rich robes your tyrants wear?
Wherefore feed and clothe and save,
From the cradle to the grave,
Those ungrateful drones who would
Drain your sweat—nay, drink your blood?
Wherefore, Bees of England, forge
Many a weapon, chain, and scourge,
That these stingless drones may spoil
The forced produce of your toil?
Have ye leisure, comfort, calm,
Shelter, food, love’s gentle balm?
Or what is it ye buy so dear
With your pain and with your fear?
The seed ye sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.
Sow seed,—but let no tyrant reap;
Find wealth,—let no imposter heap;
Weave robes,—let not the idle wear;
Forge arms, in your defence to bear.
Shrink to your cellars, holes, and cells;
In halls ye deck another dwells.
Why shake the chains ye wrought? Ye see
The steel ye tempered glance on ye.
With plough and ***** and *** and loom,
Trace your grave, and build your tomb,
And weave your winding-sheet, till fair
England be your sepulchre!
2.6k
1225
Its Hour with itself
The Spirit never shows.
What Terror would enthrall the Street
Could Countenance disclose
The Subterranean Freight
The Cellars of the Soul—
Thank God the loudest Place he made
Is license to be still.
2.5k
Wine cellars, under a blanket reading the best sellers.
A room big enough for you and your wealth.
A car as expensive as a house.
Classy lifestyle, expensive taste.
Her breath mints, taste like money.
Rich girl.
Million dollar smile with one more million every year.
I mean, Rich Girl, smile and show me your million dollar smile.
Average kid, chasing a dream.
Never known money, so he chases it blindly.
A heart full of dreams, a mind full "get rich" schemes.
Average kid, don't know wealth so he... He looks up to the wealthy hoping he'll get the chance to have a million dollar smile, with a background of only a dollar.
Average kid, born into a struggle.
Passed down from parents to heirs, every meal a blessing as the rich girl throws a stare at her salad.
Rich girl meals are fancy foods, with fancy prices.
Average kid who checks the prices for the next slice of bread.
Average kid ain't known nothing but the struggle.
Relying on the grind with a million dollar work ethic, and a $10 minimum wage.
Reached the age of independence, scraping the bottom of the barrel, for a few extra cents.
Average kid asks the rich girl for a dollar, and she say she don't have.
Meanwhile, she doesn't know what it means, not to have a dollar.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 1:28 PM UTC
White snowflakes fall.
Brown boots break the ground.
Porcelain perceptions
are lost and now
crimson puddles
seed the grounds.
This is what is found
when nationalistic
rhetoric
slowly crosses
from let’s make
this country great
to this is who
is to blame
and who to hate.
Till, that ill suited
nuclear rage
resets the atomic age
and glass jars
of peach preserves,
rhubarb,
and non-perishables
in dusty cellars
are the only things
left of us human beings.
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 3:05 PM UTC
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barometric tendrils
psuedo-random and hybrid sets
growing like ivy in the clutches of time
such a
chocking
but actualising
grasp
..huh? what?
oh yes! sorry, sorry
come in, come in,
..you know,
I too, once, like how you are now,
was here too
so
very
very
present.
Aha! Oh yes!
Permit me a mock stifled cry of ostentatious self derision,
'hee hee hee'
aaaaaahhh..
I really was pitiful back then.
seeing you there now, I feel oh so whimsical and overcome
with
ahem
sorry.
..dank and musty cellars,
hashish and a can of beans.
(baked, not fried, -we were really naive enough to believe that?- )
had it all back then though, didn't we?
By which I mean we had nothing,
but the conviction
that obligation was something that actually meant something
rather than a Cryptocurrency in a Ponzi scheme,
(with a slice of lemon)
confidence intervals stockpiled in the stocks of confidence men.
Derivative markets
oh, so very much so
so very
derivative
idiomatic
and *******
asinine.
..Still, it does harken to its era, doesn't it?
'detached and disposable.'
toothpicks
limbs
ideals
all that
goodness!
I was supposed to be offering advice, wasn't I?
Interpolate up some mediated conjecture.
But the kids can look after themselves just fine, can't they?
So our fiscal policy seems to think;
'I wager we shear up the youth
to buy shares in implementing youth wages.'
sorry, I guess it's an antiquated complaint,
“think of the children!” , they say?
Can't they see,
the whole **** market's aimed at the proto-teens??
we do it all for them the little snots.
laissez faire welfare
hedge or double down?
A shrubbery?
Or a bacon butty with bread as ****** chicken and cheese?
(I just vomited in my mouth a little,
(how pastiche))
See, and people ask why I’m trapped in the past;
the future's got me car sick.
and honestly
we're just brimming with history
(the scourge of post-modernity)
like a black moss spewed on the walls
Poisoning visions and Rheumatic fever
tearing up our lovely
lovely
pacified
pay and display
psuedo
proto
posterity
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Nov 14, 2014
Nov 14, 2014 at 3:33 AM UTC
imagine velvet walls, pianist and violins, moonlight dancing with the chandelier
above; a grand affair.
everyone suited, of course. just alike, shaking hands,
“sir,”
“as you were.”
injection-forced smiles while shadows eclipse their heads, dimming the hanging
diamond lights as they speak in tongues.
laughter echos from cathedral ceilings, spirals down into deaf cellars and
oh, there will be cocktails that night and concoctions that night,
easy, put me to sleep and then wake me back up!
you’ll thank the waitress, politely, generously offering ten per cent gratuity, five
per cent pity ‘cause she isn’t all that pretty…
mirrors noticeably around every corner, catching glances each passing time.
adjust:
bow-tie (check)
cuff links (check)
slight quaff, unwrinkle, tuck-in your shirt. now,
back to businesss!
and dance akin to swaying scare-crow, in some flawless type of wind where steps
match up mechanically, symmetrically; photographer, and pose.
now your face is on the news
and it’s nothing new to you,
the sun could be your spotlight...
so it’s really too bad that the sun can't reach;
that those clouds suspended above you,
well you’re not sure how to rid them or even, really, how to want the warmth.
Nov 21, 2011
Nov 21, 2011 at 2:10 AM UTC
~
Corrosive elevation
Metabolic creation
At the mouth of cough drop falls
Trails of caustic, nomadic influence:
Coffee lips
Decaffeinated tongue
Resealable groove
Reusable embryo
White hunter
Melt snow
Hang fire
Black crow
Mechanical peak
Summit on a stick
Chiseled grey
The smoke ascending
They call "day"
Lovely shade of sadness, this
Wandering endocarp
Hidden in caves, hollows, crags, cellars, and cisterns
It came naked
From out of the acrid woods
And said
"The locust are upon us..."
~
Apr 3, 2022
Apr 3, 2022 at 1:50 PM UTC
‘What a piece of work is a man!’
……… ………
And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust’
From Shakespeare, through Hamlet
It rings down to generations
And falls heavily on my ears too
In vain, I attempt to probe into the mystery
Nay, the enigma called man
Both in the silence of my solitude
And in the learned circle of pundits
(Fool…..
Unable to find who you are
Can you venture to say who the other man is?)
Man is a jumble of contradictions,
I know….A hard nut to crack!
So unfathomable, so mysterious
At once a Satan and an angel
To the outer world I am someone
But in the well guarded cellars of my privacy
Aren’t I different?
Hiding my innards to light
As every other man
At times, I feel so proud
Excessively in love with my own image
Like Narcissus, the poor hunter boy
Fated by gods to languish
On the bank of a pond,
Over his own floating image!
However with all my strength within
Do I not feel as helpless as Prometheus bound?
Waiting for a Hercules to come
And save me from my plight
If Prometheus’ ******* was God willed
Mine is self willed…! Is the difference so very crucial?
Sometimes I feel I am Janus
Looking backward and forward
Into my past and my future
Never living in the present
Or am I more a Sisyphus
Eternally rolling a rock over to the hill
From where it keeps falling down
Sometimes I wonder
Amid the splendor, do I not starve?
Like Tantalus of Greece in the pool
Beneath the tree, with the low lying branches of fruits
Constantly eluding his grasp
And the water, ever receding before
He could take a drink!
As a poet how I wish I could
Equate myself with Calliope
Carving my mind on the wax tablet
With stylus, my pen and coloring it with my fancy
Or Orpheus, so skilled in music
That with my sad musings
I can make even Hades weep
And the rocks fall in line
I shudder to be a Medusa
Turning everyone to a stone
With my sinister glance!
Instead, I want to be one of the Graces
And never one among the Gorgons
Pitched in this gallery
Of queer mythological entities
I wonder how I appear to others
And whom I resemble more!
Oct 20, 2016
Oct 20, 2016 at 7:27 AM UTC
Pop bottles. Boxes of them.
The old man brought them home.
He collected them on the construction site, between lifts.
Sometimes it would be days between lifts,
So he filled time collecting bottles.
*Hires, Fanta, Tab, Fresca, 7 Up, Mountain Dew,
Canada Dry*...
Emptied by men, like him, from all over.
What conversations did he have with them
When he picked up the empties.
Did he indulge? He'd have liked Vernors.
Pop bottles were as good as gold.
Large bottles, a nickel: Small, two cents.
He kept us busy, weeding, straightening nails, digging, mixing cement, building fences, painting them, and the house;
Root cellars, garages, additions;
In fair, wet, or hot conditions.
Winter had it's own cuffs.
We'd cash in the bottles at Walker Bros.
Every Sunday he'd leave for weeks,
Up North, to places like Kapuskasing and Hearst.
He must've been thinking about us up there,
Collecting our bottles,
In fair, wet, or hot conditions.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 10:03 PM UTC
always in the fog, the klaxon sounded,
announcing another round of shelling
Tuck was terrified, for he
thought this was a hound
from hell, and it was
telling London to head
to the underworld--dank cellars
or shelters built for survival,
or mass burial
depending on where Gerry's
bombs decided to land
the lasses knew well the drill:
grab their favorite doll and say a
prayer,
going
down
the
stairs
Mum would grab Tuck--his shivering body
not soothed by her warm embrace
for when the hounds stopped their menacing moan
deeper doomed demons would begin their call;
the beast sensed this, and he had no god
to beg for salvation
he could only feel the rumbling of the ground
and not close his ears to the sound, which riveted
stakes through his bones
May 3, 2017
May 3, 2017 at 4:23 PM UTC
From distant space in between
spaces,
we watch plotting out the course.
The Human Race blind to its fate,
asleep controlled beyond the stars.
Through eons old and light years cold,
we came with sinister intent.
We've guided history for centuries
toward the doom of men.
We watch from the quiet spaces between
where no mere mortal has ever gone.
We watch as we always have; still unseen
and we've been here all along.
We watch for a moment soon to come. They
have no clue as they drift through their days.
The Moon is full, the stars are right. We rise
from the places where
we watch...
In darkened cellars of old
buildings
and in remote mountain woods
exist faint traces of our race;
fragments of knowledge no one should
pursue at all. When darkness falls,
some half-remember our dark names.
Cover of night hides ancient rites.
Our moment's drawing near again.
Our names leak from whisp'ring lips all quiv'ring
spoken low beneath audible tones.
Foul symbols in air shaking hands tracing,
memorized from profane tomes.
We wait as the ritual's unfolding
poised to take our rightful place on top.
The stars are right, the chanting's high. We rise
from the places where
we watch...
World turns through the ages and
we watch.
Ancient ones, our time is nigh.
We watch.
Don't resist. We're coming through.
WE WATCH.
Aug 17, 2015
Aug 17, 2015 at 11:39 AM UTC
When it’s dark, it reminds us that there is light nearby
Patiently waiting to dispel the darkness
We just have to search and realize the source
From where light can penetrate the darkness
And fill each and entire cosmic realm
We have not become blind yet, but disillusioned
By the constant onslaught of the wrath of darkness
Blinded, yet our vision is veiled by darkness
Waiting for light to be the savior or the misery
A single ray of light is like an army, to salvage
And defeat darkness, indoctrination the sinister minds
To dispel away the darkness, in stark daylight
Our souls were holed up in dark cellars
Ruled by the darkness regime
But now, the time has come to break away the shackles
Of the darkness, we got so used to
This will be a new beginning, where there will be light in our heart
Be it day or night, we will carry the light within us
And to help others to come out of the drudgery of darkness
© Amitav (Radiance)
May 3, 2014
May 3, 2014 at 1:09 PM UTC
arise vehement sea
and hammer
with your suffering fists
all the crags
and lonely stones
upon the shores of
the naked coast
where crouches
at edge of bluff
the foundations raw
cantilevered walls
and the arcing buttresses
that shelter dreams
held secret
hurl your agonized and
eager waters
at stone and mortar
shake the bedrock
on which rest
the touchstones
in the deepest cellars
let your echoing tremors
buffet and rebound
within the resonant chambers
hidden below
your ululating winds
calling to memories
in their veiled towers
peering from windows
narrow and high
their fluttering lamps
clinging to the light
they search the tumult
with eyes fearful and uncertain
cloaking forsaken desires
that thirst without end
May 10, 2022
May 10, 2022 at 5:14 PM UTC
Don’t cry tears
cry seeds for roses
who found no place in Eden
Don’t grow guns
Fight for the flowers
that bloom in shadows hour
waiting for the sun
Like crawling moss
inside cellars
where wine is stored
from twisted vine
Guard your heart
and mind
Or ivy in attics
where memories are hoard
away from eyes and light
Guard your sight
Tears fall like pellets
scattered shells of bullets
buried in dirt, like seeds
that shoot up into hurt
But if you’re wounded
by life
plant a garden
in every light of your love
Keep your head up high
wait for the sky
to shower you from above
Jan 18, 2022
Jan 18, 2022 at 8:09 PM UTC
Awaken, pyre
From my soul
Cease your sleep
Set my spirit ablaze
Poetess inside
You’ve reaped my emotions
Stolen my Muse
Return! Return my heart!
I will not endure once more
Your years of poetic midnight!
Lost in the darkness you left for me
Encircled my false shame
While you slept
Did you have a nice nap,
O, Princess Inspiration?
How could you dare
Leave my spirit
In such dank cellars of misery
Living on phony clones of yours?
Shame, shame
For deserting all that was once ours
Together
Awaken, pyre!
Accept that I have
Woken from your poetic sleep
Only to see with eyes filled with fury
You had left me with
Only horrid simulations of yourself!
Awaken, pyre!
Dormancy of your spark,
No longer!
I was fooled-
Betrayed by your tricks
Of utter betrayal
I must hold you as my own
Once again I will embrace whatever
Design I find within you
Oh
Evil
Inspiration
Awaken!
Jun 26, 2011
Jun 26, 2011 at 11:55 AM UTC
In her cartoon world in shades of pastel browns and reds,
Little orphaned Ann Marie skips through twisted nightmare scenes
On corroded tape on VHS or a flimsy plastic five buck DVD.
Come home, come home to my heart
Kneeling on pale, cartoon knees and singing sweetly of secret dreams,
A haunted melody forgotten by all but a few jaded '90s college kids,
Ann Marie wishes on stars in dingy cellars on days she cannot go outside.
When you come home, we'll never be apart
Trapped in her B-quality version of immortality, Ann Marie repeats her lines
While the girl behind the microphone drops dead in a puddle of blood.
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 8:28 PM UTC
the heart is a place of exile and stone
opened: the unwanted are set to roam.
hurt species and minds crushed down to a dust
wilted flowers, dead trees; rain is a must.
thoughts circle like rainfall; heartbeat not so
clouds upon clouds upon friend upon foe.
seas of disappointment flood without fear
some people are happy; that is not here.
cellars of evil and rivers of pain
rope tied around smiles with nothing to gain.
thrones of goodwill beaten down to the floor
exhausted and dying; fighting no more.
some people are happy; that is not this
crying and dying with no touch of bliss.
Oct 15, 2013
Oct 15, 2013 at 8:11 PM UTC
To quarry a foe is
not unlike a boa constrictor's badge of honour,
even better on guilty birthdays!
Gulp like a Landlord,
his galoshes wears thin carrying
the weight of occasional flooding in cellars!
Bev looks good in her Onesie,
only because she likes her time less marked ,
but she sleep 24/7 in it anyway!
Dec 19, 2012
Dec 19, 2012 at 5:13 PM UTC
For Steve Yocum
~~~
an old marine called me the other night
a poet from the left coast,
a correspondent and a first responder
to my messy essays
we both, vintners of men,
compared notes on our progeny's
full bodied temperament,
and our own full body's aches and miscreants
bemoaning our losses,
of earnest poets,
of friends, even foes,
and favored football teams,
and ne'er forgetting to tally up
our occasional victories
he authors books,
he authors life,
with grainy portraits,
that try to be peepholes
to clarity
me, a periodic poetist,
more confessional blogger shootist,
than artful-words-to-please dodger,
in a vainglorious futile insanely repeating attempts
to better separate
life's wheat from the chafe of its chaff
perhaps,
we shall someday meet,
a twosome of codgers,
walk the saddened-today, blood-reddened Oregon soil,
armed with each other's comforting wisdom,
tasting grapes,
acknowledging
but for the grace of god,
we go
*together, to gather,
each other closer,
walk the vineyards and the cellars
to clarify
the wine from the sediment,
getting uproariously drunk
on friendship*
Oct 6, 2015
Oct 6, 2015 at 9:34 PM UTC
You don't like Clerks like I do.
You don't appreciate AFI like I do.
You don't like Adventure Time as much as I do.
You don't agree with me when I rave about awesome uses of the uncanny.
Speaking of uncanny, you don't like David Lynch movies the way I do.
You definitely didn't love Blue Velvet the way I love it.
You hated that movie.
You don't like crowded public places like I do.
Crowded places give you panic attacks.
A lot of things give you panic attacks.
You're anxious just as much as I am,
but about entirely different things,
and so it's very frustrating.
You like Super Smash Bros.
You like Super Smash Bros. more than you like Street Fighter.
I don't even know if you like Street Fighter at all.
You don't like fitness like I do.
You don't like martial arts like I do.
You don't want to do active things very often.
You don't like the same food I like.
You don't like to cook like I do.
You don't like to do what I like to do in bed.
When you do the things that you do, you do them genuinely and with an impassioned scowl I don't think you'd appreciate if you could see it from the outside.
When you do what you do, you define yourself, and your definition caught me at first -- then waned and does wane -- and catches me now, usually when I'm absolutely certain there's no more left to share.
When you do the things you do, I spectate, never letting on, that I'm entertained so much I want a bowl of popcorn and the lights dimmed.
Agreement means little when you do the things you do.
The similarity we do share is the orb in the heart of our human cellars.
We both know how badly our moms messed up.
I couldn't ask for anything more.
I love you.
Nov 1, 2013
Nov 1, 2013 at 8:03 PM UTC