"chapels" poems
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
12.2k
Cold stoles the coast in geisha voiles
of pawned Atlantic mourning, where
The plangent skirl of larids
carry through the vast exquisite
plains of February emptiness.
Aloft on coronal ruin, she flew
in free form falling, between the spheres
she grew in brightness, and by her stroke,
the moping shale, appeared , as if transformed.
She blessed the face of stained glass saints
hung loud on hallowed walls, From a
palisade of glinting brinks, she
hauled deserted chapels into
parishes of lambent wake
their majesties , reborn.
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 3:47 AM UTC
A seventies child
Born in Wales, one of the four
Countries of The UK.
I remember brown as the colour
of the day.
Fabric embossed wallpaper
all the neighbours names, who married who,
who was carrying on, the alcoholic, the beaten wives,
Even, get this the peadophiles (or kiddy fiddlers as was known)
Dai the milk, Mair the bread, the shop of infinite items.
Rugby practice for dad, baking for mam
(Cake and babies) gossip over the garden hedge
Fish on a Friday a Sunday roast, hot sweet tea.
Bubble and squeak, post delivered before you
left for school. Mist on the mountain, dew on the grass.
Welsh valley life, sounds idyllic
but scratch the surface and a darker colour
than brown emerges. Petty squablings leading to
familial feuds, the Williamses don't get on with
the Joneses, and as for the Pritchards, less said the better.
School, local, no not for me. I was sent to a Welsh
School, taught and learnt the language denied to my
Parents by English politics. Cat amongst the pigeons there.
Did I think I was special? Ideas above her station. That's what
the neighbours say.
Well, you all had the option.
Dr Forbes FRCS
Delivered babies buried men and women
Loved by all, especially his lollipop sweets.
I wasn't a child to get ***** or rip wrapping paper
off of gifts, I liked to go under the stairs (like Harry Potter)
and read. I left the dirt for my sister born 4 years later.
Then in 1982 came my brother, tidy my mother describes it.
'74,'78,'82 poor dad to have to wait I say!
More pubs than chapels, more walking than driving
more rain than sun, more music than ever was sung.
The '80's came, and we had strikes, no electric, candles
toast made with a toasting fork over the fire.
No mines, no steel, no jobs.
Picket lines, dole queues, women in work
latchkey kids, Thatcherism, ******* times.
Falklands war, IRA bombs, Royal weddings
Tory rule
But, the fire in the dragon never went out
and Tom Jones still sings his heart out.
Cymru cysglyd gwlad y gân, deffrwch
nawr, dyma'ch tro.
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
Falling in love is weird
Because at first you don't expect
Anything except for passion
And romance
And story book perfection
But when you fall head over heels for someone
Someday things are going to move
Beyond
Beyond kissing, and hot touches
Sometime things are going to move
To laughing openly
And fighting
Using hard words you never thought you would
Farting during the most
Intimate moments
Teasing
Playing
Falling in love is weird
Because when I was younger
I pictured
White weddings, and chapels
I pictured hand holding, and snuggling in bed
I pictured kissing, and romantic candle lit dinners
But when I fell in love
I didn't think of
***** laundry, or morning breath
I never pictured the messy wax residue left from candles
Or the dishes
But I guess there are things
You don't expect
When you fall in love
But when you find them
It's a little bit better
Because I'd rather wash your ***** underwear
Than anyone else's
And that's love
May 15, 2014
May 15, 2014 at 12:51 AM UTC
*My spirit is one that has been through much.
My eyes have witnessed too many tears.
My heart has ached, and felt like granite.
My soul is imprisoned by good and evil.
And, yet I feel a spiritual need to cling to hope.
Spirituality is there for those who have been to Hell and back,
(So they say)
I've glimpsed Hell in my family, through secrets and lies,
they multiply, until you lose count.
Now, I wasn't beaten, molested or deprived,
I just had to live in a village where everyone knew everything.
About you, your family, your soul. Imagine that.
No freedom to be unique. To be you.
You kick, you scream, you try to be free, to flee,
but, the village brings you back,
time and time again.
It feeds off your fear, your hate.
Village life is not quaint, picturesque,
or even idyllic, it's full of grudges,
jealousy, hate and even ******
(or two)
Families feuding over long forgotten grudges.
Families related, through marriage and hate.
Families haunted and taunted by their past.
Families dying with secrets on their lips, and in their hearts.
Along with this came religion,
as many chapels as pubs.
And as many ghosts as the living.
Walk through my mind, walk through my village.
Come, meet the dead*
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 20, 2014 at 7:10 PM UTC
Chronic, demonic, eccentric, magic, poetic, tragic! Dreams it seems of comical or unusual! Visual sights of many sites! Plenty fights, heights, nights, plights and lights! Dreams it seems of chimes, crime, gleams and grime. Moonbeams, rhymes, screams and times. Dreams it seems as they attempt to tempt with contempt! Some become exempt
and unkempt! Dreams it seems of afros, arrows, buffalos, rainbows
and sparrows! Ample, purple-apples hung from chapels! Dreams it seems of hurdles and simple people as pimples jumping from steeples! Dreams it seems of the begotten, forgotten and rotten. Dreams and themes of cotton candy clouds! Crowds in shrouds! Dreams it seems
of the dandy and handy! Glories and gory stories of the holy or unholy. Dreams it seems of crud and mud! The loud and proud! The
vowed and wowed! Dreams it seems of blood and floods! Dreams it seems of amazing, crazing and gazing! I’m phrasing; “Is this a dream a scheme or hell?” Well I couldn’t tell! As I began to scream and
yell! Those streams of dreams that I dream… Dreams that I may, these dreams that I say. Dreams it seems in dreamy dismay.
Mar 29, 2012
Mar 29, 2012 at 10:19 PM UTC
Is not only ordinary in the most vile sense
It also lacks the creative imbalance
That which pulses through the blood of cryptic elders
Although being encaged in a box
has the comfort of rigidity
It destroys the fetus of all that pretends to be beautiful
Contemptuous moments ruined
Because we are weak enough to ask, why?
To pander For a something as feebly human as a definition
Why must everything be placed
on the hand of the glockenspiel
When the world has clearly indicated
The presence of a divine anomaly
The trees are freezing
into crocked chapels
The blackened oasis
tearing slightly along the buttons
Through this all the celestial ambiance awaits
Its complexities weave
each stroke unparalleled
r
The urge is to destroy
That which makes our eyes sting
And our brains blast through the unseen hallows
Riding the coattails of a blastiod
This gusto is blanketed over in our simple minds
Forged into a hammer and sickle
Of absolute and definite terror
Destroy it all
All of which can chemically mix and produce
A new mystical pattern of deficiencies
Naked spayed on the cutting room floor
We must destroy it
By forcefully coding its gnome
Correcting what appears to be a hint of insurrection
When we already no the what already know the why
but the current answers will make us their slave
They will bind us in hopeless ecstasy
So we form new words that don’t do it justice
Outlandish plans for this invention
Destroying its capability to be
simple
beautiful and
without purpose
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 9:01 AM UTC
Her fingertips loosed the glass
bottle, which had
of late
gathered rain like the
hands of paupers.
Glitter in a heartbeat.
to be collected by old battered shoes
or car tyres
and streetwise magpies.
it joins a city evensong
this oceanic roar of nothing
fusing chords of cars and smoke
and lonely dogs
with hacks
and throngs
of perambulating suits
and suitors
trampling athwart broads of concrete
As swifts in summer.
We swim in it
through open atriums
and barren rooms of
magnolia and magnolia and magnolia.
All the while if you look harder
you see through chinks a sepulchre
in each greying tower
ranging higher and higher still.
Machines and machinations
stacking life upon life to
build pyramids
to gaudy kings
in pinstripe or herringbone.
Flumes of fumes ***** like floods
Into and out of train stops
and bus stands.
Circling lungs like hungry crows.
Crows which haunt
Bombed out chapels made new
resuscitated with waxen ivy
and ivory lilies.
And the leaves of saintly oak trees
chatter in shrinking crevices of green
story telling
Of how people and things grow old.
And you can walk these streets
And dive too like cormorants into
The platitudes of city living.
Soaked to the skin in sound
to tell your story
like the shards
of a broken bottle.
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 6:10 PM UTC
Snow cone twists
Far ivory countryside
Season’s change exists
A stern mother nature’s pride
Foothills that resemble cream pies
Coating pointy flakes a mile high
Birds take cover
To find a feathery mother
Try to resist nature’s feverish fight
And hide from the silvery night
Moon beams its pearly opals
Thru rainbow colored window chapels
In the nest
Little birds try their best
Huddled up
Till daybreak
They might delight
In the white sparkle sunlight
Snowy course
A bitter adventure for the strong farmhorse
Powder puff
It kicks it up like dust
Spring a strong sense
With snow that is no longer dense
Temperatures waver
An ice storm disfavor
Crystal drops
From frozen tree tops
The chirps begin
With a little more earthly spin
Melting snow
Begins to flow
Moving water a strong force
Becomes quite the
Snowy watercourse
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 8:20 PM UTC
there are only 5 seats and on each end
are metal chapels. time slows down like a slug
climbing a vertical wall, or say, a drunken man
making his way towards the oblique recess.
the ignominy of an exhausted carburetor
is the orchestra for the night.
lots of women go in and out, out and in,
whichever is first, but the last is always
just as bland as any other truth:
we go, each foot splayed to cover measure,
and in the flash of a scene, gone.
I watch their skirts make gossamer tune,
like some flotsam or a poised note being led
straight to a trajectory disappearance:
the idea of the image is to glide
over them, over flesh,
over this fetal smoke that I will soon toss
right into the womb of nothing
and fall flat as a key from a tone-deaf cathode,
a spanked melodrama of television with dull cursive,
or as lithe as justly, the right camber of blues
ripping straight through my day-old denims,
peering through the tease of a thigh’s penumbral shadow,
the sound of the world being dragged into double-doors
echoing a metonymy: *silence the interlocutor, her mouth
full of birds. Dark birds.*
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 7:59 AM UTC
Sunny day's may be sunny
Yet inside always so dark.
Cars all parked
Like rows to chapels lonesome way's!!!
Deleterious,
Nothing hilarious,
For thy eyes turn unfazed!!!
A deluge of no accomplishments
All walls stand to fail,
All ceiling's to crumble
No more derogatory jails!!!!!
Despondency roaming the brick street of the old
No desposters
No more voters to trade papers
For young and who they mold....
Thine denizen of thy own class
Doth thou passeth the bill of health?
Art thou truly alive?
Canst thou SAVETH thyself?
Think not that thou art free,
Thou eateth
Thineself meets thine own selfish needs!!!!
Thyself shoots bullets of steel
And steal cheapened goods
Whilst small holes in thee hit and bleedeth!!!!
Thy idols no longer stand
Clothes bought by daddy
From his first of the month paycheck
Colored in crayon!!!!
Thou followeth not even thy own commands.....
Is thy love didadic?
Of archaic to history's lesson's?
Art thou to short on preaching?
Thy words begin to lessen.... .
Jun 29, 2015
Jun 29, 2015 at 10:50 AM UTC
It began outside a stable
Town of Bethlehem 2000 years ago
Shepherds left their fileds in awe
To find Jesus in wooden manger
Two lines to choose back then
One compulsory, one was not
Caesar's census; revenue and crowd control
Other line was quiet; sanctified, seeking Christ Child
Wise men far away, figured, joined the queue
Followed the star, joined the queue
On sand and snow or bitumen black
Trekking fields, forests thick or cities tall
Across the earth, people know
Where to find the queue
Not online; Get up and go
Christmas Eve or Christmas Day
Local churches, chapels small
Country barns, church cafes
Line up outside the doors
Worship Jesus
Dec 19, 2011
Dec 19, 2011 at 7:10 AM UTC
He is dead, and
He used to come and knock at my door
With his shoes undone
His face lit up with a van Gogh grin.
Young artist in the world
Contracting his vision from the noisy space
Of busy, night-lit, city streets,
But he is dead, and
These streets I walk are of a meaner face
Now he is gone.
Gone beneath the brown and barrowed earth
Heaped over him,
Gone beneath the life I've piled
On top of passing life to stop
His sometimes violent memory,
The vivid recollection of moments that
Won't come again,
That haunt the chapels of an aging mind
Which can't escape or span,
Which cannot bridge the water's deep
Disturbing flow.
Yes, you are gone my friend
The choreography of life is lost
Though life rolls on,
No eyes with which to see the world
No voice to fill the world with song,
The sunbeam burst through the sudden shower
Which lights along this city street,
Moves nothing now, moves inland,
Far away from this
Unconscious world.
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 4:35 PM UTC
idiosyncratic motions define circular thoughts and notions
grasped ideals let go in the oceans of confusion
scrambled morse code messages spelled out in brail
depict battlefields and hospital wards
sanctuaries for chaos, chapels for the wicked.
devils hidden beneath PR departments and counsels.
Put into place to distort and misplace,
the bane of clarity, cancer to the soul.
More should and could be made of this
Alas aesthetics argue and compel us to believe
lost in external endeavors, spiraling into catatonic outbursts.
Has this become the norm? We've been conditioned to accept.
The body of a man, running on the fumes of better days.
Left with nothing but ideals looking forth to better ways.
We've succumb to society and its rule.
The leader points his fingers, declares them wrong
and we play the fool, drinking from the puddles of congressional drool.
Wrapped around their fingers, yarn to their spool, we've let them mold
and take rule. Sold our souls, made way to power tools and flashy jewels.
It's the gift of "freedom", buy and consume. Don't worry about this,
they'll handle the rest.
Feb 15, 2010
Feb 15, 2010 at 11:55 AM UTC
We look past meaning, still blinded and dreaming of riches,
Which leads us toward track homes and condos, cruel chapels
While the hapless live in the world’s mansion: the most open convent
And what we don’t see is sometimes the crux of our content
The streets offer a morose array of the discarded
They, the wise and most wretched, who humbly suffer
Are perhaps the truest, comely Christian-hearted men and women
They bless the day as they pray to the ground
Where cracks become twisted crucifixes upon which
The most selfless are displayed for public derision.
Ironic is the formula written with precision on the tome of our existence
Iconic moments of pain bloom into the banks that loan out inspiration
Each electron is one thousand eight hundred thirty-sixth of its proton
And this proportion, though grandly and numbingly unimpressive
Is the basis upon which we live and whir and spin as matter does
Coincidence is a lie in the face of the certainties within what we cannot see
For, though one decade separated the births of Crockett and Bowie
And, though their names might conjure knives larger than pockets
And hats, stolen from conquered bandit-faced creatures’ tail ends
It was on the same 1836 day that they evolved from flesh into legend.
Joy is a strange element that seems to come and go without a plot
Yet some know how to wield their emotions with little thought
As if joy and love were as a hammer worn neatly at the belt
So, I yearn for one day to grasp a handle in a hand that has never felt
The shape of certainties, once discerned as chance and circumstance
And when the hammer falls, I hope it breaks a twisted crack into my heart
I hope to, from my reflections, thus bereft,
Find some perfection hidden deep in death
As one might decipher, through foreign language,
A light that warms within a sonnet
In a way, I think my life depends upon it.
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 4:35 PM UTC
a deep yellow is arching across
the cosmos
gods outside of time
exist in individual infinities
creating countryclub chapels
chosen people, entranced by purportedly
impermeable destinies, are freely choosing
everywhere to catch and spread feverdreams
the world community has compassion; it
wants everyone else to catch what it has
wants to keep what is rightfully its own
organs are fighting underneath taut yellow skin
sacrosanctity is stretched across the cosmos
and a faint pulse can be felt everywhere
it may sometimes happen that
jaundice shows
long before a liver fails
long before a sickness takes hold
long before anyone exists
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 5:00 PM UTC
Slap, slap of sandals on wet fountain steps
capture glances from eyes set for chapels and castles.
Children splash at each other
as floppy tees and frilly dresses
wave at passersby
who wish they retained the courage to play
atop the fountain and relive the dreams
trampled by lectures and sermons
that chaperoned them to maturity.
Oct 21, 2013
Oct 21, 2013 at 6:41 PM UTC
I know her by name.
I know her by face.
Only, I don't even
know her at all.
I think I've seen her
once,
and for once
I wasn't disappointed.
We are so much alike
only she has brighter eyes.
We are so much alike;
So, I figured
from black and white
I could be pastel--
faded bright.
We are so much alike
only she drinks psalms
like the preacher's wine.
Before I abandoned religion
I used to kneel
and break bread every Sunday, too.
So, I figured
I could still be as holy
if I clapped my hands together
and whispered litanies
on candles burning outside chapels—
faded light.
We are so much alike
in the way we love
books and music,
anything aesthetic.
But, I am wrapped in tin foil
and she dons silk and laces.
Same filling,
different faces.
And kid, I wouldn't blame you
for craving
the same flavor
in different packaging.
We are so much alike
only, compared to her
porcelain China doll skin,
I am a witch's voodoo,
covered in pins and needles
piercing rough skin,
a cheap imitation—
a fake.
We are so much alike
only I'm lying
when I say we are
because she is pastel
paint in coffee shops
and I am crayola
vandals on the sidewalk.
And let's admit pretty
isn't anything I would
ever be.
It makes me sick.
Because I'm not like her.
I'm never going to be just
pretty;
Pity, that's all they ever want us to be.
Sep 19, 2017
Sep 19, 2017 at 11:13 AM UTC
O sing in me muses
a tale of some beauty.
Beauty, meaning longing and sorrow
and love that leads to a ****** bitter demise.
Let me feel the cold sweats,
those breathy, exhaustive evenings
filled with the scent of sweet ripend fruits
and slowly drying paints.
I want to be an inspiration for a piece to hang forever
in limbo
in galleries
in Midwestern living rooms.
I want to hang from branches in olive groves,
purely Greek
but with Nair and Netflix,
making sweet love to the ideals of ancient existence
while surviving the blackest of plagues
(modern immune systems are a Godsend).
Sing deeply into my rib cage, O muses,
so that my bone marrow may vibrate to the point of explosion
causes fragments of calcium to pierce skin
and make beautiful stained glass on the hill side chapels.
May 9, 2012
May 9, 2012 at 8:59 PM UTC
You took a chance on me
The dying apple on the ground withering without the grace of the tree
I'll never know why you thought I was a thing worth saving
We watched the rain fall with the confidence of a hurricane from the safety of each other’s embrace
As the world begrudgingly continued to spin towards a new day
You convinced me to stay
See, I took a break from wasting away to come dance with you
Following your lead, we stepped in sync and I swear I almost felt a smile spread across my cheek
We refused to return any of our borrowed time
And laughed when they asked why weren’t scared like them because everything ends, right?
We filled our margins with each other and became the exception
Scrawled doodles became elegant Sistine Chapels and Starry Nights
As we danced our way through the unremarkable
You made just taking another breath feel alright
I wanted to thank you for being patient with me as I offered you what was left of my beer-stained soul
Given half the chance, I’d give back what I carved out of this hole
And dust off my heavy heart to make you full
If I find a way to trade places I’ll let you know
But for now I swear to you that I won’t shuffle off without letting my apple grow
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
I listen to hardheaded echoes
Most are disturbed by the haunting cackles
What we have been bred to believe is quite unfathomable
Yet proceed to feed as the elitest of chapels
Begin to unwind my theory of string
Followers may be all I need
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 9:30 AM UTC
the flay.
With smiles and lies
and fists full of scalpels,
she opened my chest
like priests open chapels.
Grasping my heart in her fist
until it gave its last beat.
Looked in my eyes,
and dropped it at my feet.
why.
"I came here to love you, to hold you above..."
"Oh didn't you know?
That's how we say goodbye to the ones that we love."
grey.
Shuffling the pieces, applying the patches
and the verse falls to the soul,
like soot to the ashes.
cartography.
stitched the walls back together.
stitched the bandages;
stitched the cream;
I stitched and I stitched,
forever it seems.
madness.
I rock on my knees
staring at the young, in-love, and naive.
I rock till the bones in my hips fall apart,
and out falls my heart, now just a spare part.
The stitches, I suppose, were not as sound as I thought.
Jul 21, 2013
Jul 21, 2013 at 3:55 AM UTC
Blank spaces & empty rooms
_
filled with nothing but salty air
it hangs heavy with palpable despair
_
Darkened halls & lonely tombs
_
where no moonlight shines on the stones
that cover forgotten bones
_
Old souls & new spirits
_
whispering like the wind through the trees
laughing like the clinking of old keys
_
Faithless chapels & flowerless graves
_
leaving the dead to the earth
and our sorrows buried in exchange for mirth
_
Mar 18, 2019
Mar 18, 2019 at 2:33 PM UTC
A universe that breathes its natural joy,
through geysers, and the summer sprinkling
of sugar atop burning crimson oranges.
Which finds necessitude,
in orbits of tender frequency.
Which finds contempt:
in vacuous headlands
and marshes filled with spider's legs.
Which seeks unity:
by golden dusty saturation
and celestial chapels
strewn with haunted bursts
from depressed musical chimneys.
Where I am,
futilely seeking to dethrone myself.
["Your mothers and your fathers,"
said he, at the AA meeting beneath
the musty and deserted Anglican church.
"Where the rooms and the furniture breathes
a sigh of relief as you enter.
Where your bodies succumb
to violent pangs of movement,
movement that is nothing other
than the tides of the ocean
and the tautness of a kite string by the shore.
Where three hundred white silken dancers
trot in flowing garments
Dutch windmills to catch the wind
and flow closer to omnipotence."
Before him, a child sadly sings.]
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 1:26 AM UTC