"chiselling" poems
Damaged people are dangerous because they know how to survive,
And if you've never been damaged you don't know how it feels to be alive,
See struggle is the sauce that gives success its flavour,
when life kicked you down it was doing you a favour.
Cos it's in your darkest hour, not in prosperity
that you will realise your true ability.
Life dunks you in deep waters not to drown you but to cleanse you.
And that's just the beginning of what it will put you through.
But it's chiselling you down, you won't deflate.
It's not wearing you thin, it's getting you to your fighting weight.
Prosperity makes monsters, adversity makes men.
I believe when you reach the top life will yank you back down again.
You didn't break down, you just had a flat tyre
so get back up and relight that fire.
keep it burning and churning at the pit of your heart
and keep on learning and yearning and never fall apart.
Stare life in the eyes
and say "no matter how many times
my spirit won't break if my drive never dies"
So throw me a burden I won't lose my composure,
It's for this very reason that life gave me shoulders.
Get better not bitter
This weather will wither
I'll turn wounds into wisdom
sadness into spirit
tears to tenacity
I will never quit it
Take a deep breath and concentrate your stare
because a road with no obstacles never took you anywhere.
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 6:40 AM UTC
I turn each off looking behind
For with each light extinguished
The darkness spreads forth
Obscured
Blackness
Dimness
Between the realms, one retreating
The other Greedily filling in,
I walk up the stairs, feeling its
Presence,
Imprint,
Impression
I feel it upon my back
For the light in front Darkness climbing,
Feeling its essence ascending
As it grasps my shoulders, to take me back,
But with a each chiselling upon me
There is just a feeling of presence
Faster I walk,
Cushioned
In
Light,
But as I turn the last essence of white,
Darkness encircles me as I lay quietly
Serenity,
Stillness,
Tranquillity,
I lay motionless, my heartbeat is the
Only presence of sound, my eyes perceiving
All around, and the final darkness I see
Is when my eyes close, and I fully embrace
The darkness, and all was consumed by the night.
Nov 1, 2014
Nov 1, 2014 at 7:06 AM UTC
He carves words he has spoken
Of promises unbroken
whispering into the dark
Chiselling delicately into her bones
With tobacco juice to bring out the tones
Quietly engraving symbols and psalms
Living for the night
Working through to the light
Communing only through dreams
In daylight she's secure
Inside a white Alder tree
Protected and respected
Her spirit flies free
Jul 16, 2019
Jul 16, 2019 at 3:36 PM UTC
The poet's toolbox is
an onerous store for skills
with life and death
and words that ****
Pandora's box with broken locks.
Hammering words,
chiselling words,
leaving the reader
nailed, ******* glued.
Pulsing phantoms through the brain,
playing tricks, memory ******
But the writing keeps me sane.
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 1:44 PM UTC
If you've a writer's block,
Keep chiselling.
You'll get relief
When you release the piece.
Nov 9, 2015
Nov 9, 2015 at 2:42 PM UTC
Shenanigans
Ridiculously unusual
This familiar face,
Peering out of a photograph
Into an empty space,
With the eyes of a child
Where my life began,
Yet with the aging skin
Of a dying man.
Grotesquely beautiful,
This gaping wound,
Oozing its mischief,
Honed and fine tuned,
Perfectly imperfect,
Crafted yet shoddy,
Just a few broken fragments
Where there should be a body.
Extraordinarily ordinary,
I am an unknown name,
Written on a stone
Where all stones look the same,
Where the dreams of strangers
Are too vivid to save,
Archived in a memory,
Concealed in a grave.
Unutterable shenanigans
Of lovers and old friends
Pretentious well-wishers
As my life-force ends,
And kneeling at a headstone
Between photographs aflame
Is me, as a child,
Chiselling my name.
© RJVHorton2015
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 8:28 AM UTC
*Clinton in Harlem, Obama in Dubai... shop at Watergate Mall till you drool on the lives of others! in sequence the N.S.A. archives, meaning you'd be safer off ************ in Siberia than in New York; oi! i'm shooting a documentary with David Attenborough! get your own Jurassic Park of artificial mosquito insemination!*
and with a Nobel prize winner
you'd think the racial tensions
would be left a dying count of
surprises by giving five donkey tails
to five blindfolded children
pinning it on the ***** dozen
of the new testament, starting off
with st. matthew in Ethiopia
and the king's daughter trying ****
in the shadow of the crucifix for
the first time to feel both pleasure and guilt;
hence the lacerations in the Philippines
and would-be philistines when interest rates
came about from chiselling-in faces of people
into raw materials:
write poetry within a canvas of permanent
employment,
otherwise jukebox that ****
come on, let's write mediocre and let's write
without a hint of desperation,
let's fear death... let's fear writing on the fringe,
non-oratory, just there, poetry like
a penny on the pave, a Frank Sinatra sing-along,
raining coppers and dimes...
let's just keep poetry on the knee readied
for the smack for disobedience juggling two
professions, one prog the other pop,
poetry like a penny on the pavement,
rather than an ingredient list for a curry
memorised for a lass a'coming home
for sheer and sweat.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 9:26 PM UTC
No-one wants your bruised heart. They
don't want your sinking eyes,
still sinking.
Don't go to them
with your hot-flaccid arms and legs, at the ready to melt - they
are not concerned with the currency of high-sloped waves.
Or the heavy part of the ocean that speaks
only to itself and the sky.
Realise that implosions, for them,
are silent
and boring - now, you are implosions:
your voice, your thoughts, your blockings, constantly
*******
But sweep it all under some dusty rug, for you
to trip on later, because they
don't want anything of you that is not happy.
Drain your being of all its depths.
Then continue every day as a sculptor: chiselling
at yourself until you form a smile;
filling your sockets with sand.
Deception is the art they prefer.
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 2:56 PM UTC
well, it was hardly or ever would be a respectable
musicology with mere rhyme; so we overburdened it
with ideas, those pit-stops of thinking,
those pivots of the former fluidity
that gave us Achilles... long gone
the respectability of not thinking,
so waiting awaiting the respectability of thinking
to un-think the existence of thought
rather than the existence of god...
i say forget atheism, and reading philosophical
books kept till old age of respectability,
those books are nothing but dust by then...
but i'm in agreement with the attack,
for who would want to sing a rhyme with mere echo,
the ulterior ego... to sing for a tennis match
of resounding a# a#, b b, c c, encoding our children
to merely encode rhyming patterns?
for fear of the loss of mimic or replica?
if i were a kid i'd love to rob her majesty's vessel
and encounter adventure than bookworms sneezing
dust for kindred death with Spinoza chiselling
optometric devices on a lesser scale in comparison
with telescopes - Amsterdam seen from a far far away
galaxy; if only you stood there, and experienced
the freedom that prostitutes govern in this city;
if only less legislative powers in your politics!
May 17, 2016
May 17, 2016 at 7:50 PM UTC
I’ve been needing your lies
I’ve been craving your poison
I’ve been missing your demons
I’ve been loving your hater
While I was playing with death
While it was ******* me upside down
While I was freezing face to hell
I’ve been moaning your name
When my hands were trembling
When my soul was jumping
When my veins were twisting
I howled your April’s farewell
Once Azrael was invited
And the sky was open
Then my mind got naked
Your shadow was my only Savior
My voice was resonating
But from your ears was forbidden
My snow capped depth was on the summit of its alp
Pleading you to be its shield
That’s when you threw it into a dark swamp
Claiming that you were lost in a blinded place
Everything was mute and your bones were broke
But I saw you secretly radiating in a crystal ball
You thought I’m nowhere nearer
Was it amusing to fool a downcast lifer?
You were pushing my destiny to its sharp ending chapter
Below the belts freedom was dedicated to a shrewd sinner
Meanwhile I’ve been taken to where nothing left to catch
Failures over the time of my rotten life have built my forgotten grave
Gloomy butterflies surrounded my sick grove
No flowers to bloom no hope to ****
No words to draw no feelings to touch
No time to rush no remorse to scratch
The door of paradise was barely visible
But the clouds drove me to a fiery jungle
I begged life to be my sucker
One last elegiac parting with winter
But death was an invincible fighter
Loneliness was feeding my blur future
Chiselling out my anxiety within four blank walls
Then stirred up a wild storm of toxic fears
Moving on was the synonym of stuck in a rut
A sterile heart gave up on its darned patience
Charcoaled love erased its existence
Dry tears chained to these anorexic cheeks
You shutdown the light you once heated up
Now I’m sober yet drunk on my coma
Trying to perforate your karma
While cleaning up my ugly Fantasia.
Where I was your moon and you were my star
Apr 10, 2019
Apr 10, 2019 at 4:47 PM UTC
he was an idiot for half
a second,
afterwards pride took over,
and he was told to be
the half second all his life...
but it mattered not
to be quicker or quivering,
because all the adventures
of life died a quickened
urban stability of 9 to 5;
strawberries came early from
spain, watered down "juicy";
i wanted acorns in autumn
i got bitchslaps in august;
bishops were in furore...
the idiot danced the clandestine surf
and it just left the koala hugging
a secret of aurora sunrise of the
ayers rock that acted like antarctica chiselling
of the kangaroo yo-yo hunting:
made boo, made orange... made worms
from morning, and early bird fed quote.
Feb 22, 2016
Feb 22, 2016 at 10:32 AM UTC
Lost in gutter talk,
The history books
Suggest it was his two brothers
Who took him to the fair
At Longford Park
Boasting of dead fireflies
Instead of fish in little bags,
And follicles of lights
In the ghost house
Almost invisible from
The roller coasters
Descending from the sky
Like space rockets
Replacing sledges.
Crossing the meadows
Blanked in snow
With echoing laughter
The reports stated
Then missing *****
At coconuts stall
Then footballs
Before proclaiming
It was fixed
And gave up wandering
Over to the roller coaster
Leaving Billy stood there
Protesting it wasn’t
******* cheap gobsuckers
Hiding his tears
Turning a perfect illustration
Into a pastoral scene
Of fireworks
Kissing the moon
Tying themselves up
In his mouth
As a attendant said
‘Six shots for two quid, son’
Accompanying over each shot
‘Lower, lower, lower’
Crossing shots over the tins
Like pennies in keyholes
Wrestling with uneven prayers
Chiselling his nerves
Over sweatshop erected fingertips
‘Lower, lower, lower’
Knifing through
His childhood
One shot after
The other
With each target
He shot through.
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 1:53 PM UTC
Too old for a visa, too young for the farm
Too straight for the army, too gay for the guards
If you’ve got no calling, no fella, no wife
Have a bunk in the hall at Cape Christ
Walk a dowry down the aisle on a leash and a promise
Hand on holster handing over the hostage
On a dotted line date with a beard-slash-bride
And need a Roman ransom? Think Christ
If you’re sick of the same ***** giving you grief
Don’t lower yourself, turn the other cheek
And if he breaks your jaw, then my advice?
Don’t come running to me, blame Christ
Give the devil on your shoulder a little nibble
Every now and again to keep things civil
And before the tread’s worn off your conscience, right...
Draw a cross in the air and call Christ
What do you sell the man who’s seen it all?
Ketamine, bath salts, Adam and Paul
If sir needle and pipes says he needs a new vice
Pull the spiritual card and play Christ
When you’ve just reconciled yourself with death
And they want a labrat for the time you’ve left
When the doctors too fond of his own **** voice
**** the medicine man, choose Christ
Have you been leading death on a wild goose chase?
Trying to buy some time to clean your slate?
Call a priest around, he’ll set things right
When you’re ready to croak it, plead Christ
The Word rattles in the chests of the last clergymen
Who drop dead like the devil overheard-ye-and
The women look willing while the men look bored
But they couldn’t trust women with the Word of the Lord
Unless the Eucharist feels like chiselling a nick
Off the philosophers stone and swigging it quick-ly
Down with a bottle of B
Then I guess it’s not for me
Feb 8, 2018
Feb 8, 2018 at 5:38 PM UTC
Chiselling away
through a mountain of clay
the mole of a man
lays his hand to creation
I'm watching the,
'if I can build it so can you'
show
on channel two of a faraway
Internet pay as you go station
it's something to do
until
my ship comes in
and come in it will
but until then
I'll be one of those men
who chisel away
and pray for the end
to be quick.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 9:41 AM UTC
Etched in my heart, patterned chiselling emotion
Under foot the mossy down through forgotten paths
jolted by breath, your air reminds me of that time
now you have gone away into the sun and shade
playing and wandering in another clime and place
among countless souls all tucked neatly away
behind numerous stone markers, row upon row
like counting bits of sand too numerous to hold
whose gravelly grains have scattered in my mind
reflecting serenely what once was yours and mine
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 9:28 PM UTC