"cloudscape" poems
Turn your dapple gray diffuse light daydream
Towards the flashlight painted cloudscape I have made for you
And before the drafted owl coos I have collected in bottles and hung from this tree
For you
I have walked through fine winged butterflies and soft twilit moss
Over sun scorched sand and in the relief of white noise water
Which
Like the circle of your arms
Tucks my dark away in the bottom of some drawer
That we may find and laugh over through our old eyes wrinkled with years of delight
Our home is walking through a stream
Steps slowed in the thickness of water
Nov 8, 2012
Nov 8, 2012 at 11:24 PM UTC
There's a tiger in the tree top,
playing checkers with the sun king,
cutting light across the cloudscape,
as black takes red for another king me,
God carves the stubble along the jaw line,
clean cut remedy
we all sing for the twenty-third century break me down,
break the matchbox,
light us up,
burn the red wood down,
tiger's gonna swallow the world,
tiger's gonna bleed a rectified rainbow realist chorus,
all the pawns are at root,
all players underfoot,
God's got checkers playing with the son killing world feaster,
tiger tiger, what do you fear?
oh tiger tiger, what hell do you bear?
oh tiger, how death plays you so
so foolish,
tiger tiger,
you fall
Aug 22, 2012
Aug 22, 2012 at 3:04 AM UTC
We all perhaps know how Wendy waved at the night sky,
bid a goodbye as good as a farewell,
at the illusion of a pixie dust-flickered cloudscape
of a voyage setting sail
to dreams and fantasies stretching beyond time and infinitum.
And she was showered with so much
faith, trust and pixie dust,
quaint tiny love-stained lips
promises a kiss and sealed acorn, tight around her neck.
And the sparkle in the glances of her
lovely pair of blue crystal teals
manifest in the whereabouts of a star second to the right.
But the Big Ben struck half past childhood
and play pretend and silky nightgowns are long time over.
Innocence is robbed by a shadow
lurking in the premises of what could have been
for once the clicking of the keys
to the lock and latch of the gates of the yesteryears,
it could not be undone.
The hook of a deceiving treachery
robbed all the glow of a child’s pearl laced smile
and the mere belief of the existence of fairies and the magical mystical boy
who never grew up.
She once laced her hands with his,
past ephemeral and London night,
and straight on till morning.
The desires of her heart got lost in the sea of nowhere,
as it raced against the foolish time;
we all perhaps know how Wendy is never never return
to never Neverland.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
I
Tired
the long road ends
by a sea wall
The engine dies
to cries of estuary birds
to halyards’ **** and tinge
A lake of light set in night’s cloudscape
brims over the western marshland
to seaward a dense darkness
On the ferry’s step
ear close to the brown water
a part-song sings the ebb tide’s flow
II
Threading into the marshland
a braid of cloud-reflected water
of oval sedge and common reed
In amongst the brown canes perspective vanishes
only by mind’s foreshortening or body’s levitation
is there sight beyond the creeping rootstock
By the river path a leaf
pearled with glazed dew glistening
dew grabbing the photographic eye
Standing backs to the horizon
a sculpted triad of bronzed ancestors
watch over the summer rites of music
III
This ****** field
moves clamorously under the feet
waiting waiting for the sea’s kiss
Proud-coloured the boats here
resting poised on railway sleepers
beside their tractored guardians
How to know which way to turn
which view to hold for memory’s stamp
this patient sky this slow exhaling sea
This foreground flow of white-grey-brown pebbles
each sensibly-sized for the hand in the pocket
yet substantially-singular on the window’s sill
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 4:12 AM UTC
VIII
Glassy smooth
a mirror-sea
reflects a turbulent
cloudscape blending
white into grey
today far distant
the sea joins the sky
the sky absorbs the sea
into the one
the other disappears
and little movement
at the water’s edge . . .
the tide-uncovered land
lies exposed to harden
in the still air
IX
Despite the profusion
the messiness of it all
and with disorder everywhere
there is a precise vocabulary
for the nature and experience
of the coastal strip
the area caught between
land and sea.
Rocks littered
Sand pitted and patterned
Sea sounding breaking pulling-back
Sky an overarching complement to it all
and the necessary story of coming
and the ‘just being here’
and this path to the sea shore
strewn so with anticipation
with forward-facing dreams almost
urgent imaginings as we let go
of the constraints of the squared space
the vertical architecture of daily life
X
See how those we love are transformed
when the sea is their only boundary
a figure stands before a sand bar
in a crescent of water left by the tide
an affecting geometry of solitude
another gathers her body in a crouch
to come close to a speckled play of tiny shells
fragments thrown together by the morning’s tide
The beach is such unconfining space
where movement demands no direction
XI
this attentive looking
at what lies at the feet
or not
choosing to pass by
the curiously-formed
or not
but there is a measuredness
of step an accompanying intent
with that always-confidence
there may be something
so single out what can be held
in the fingers what can lie
entire in the neutral space
of your collection’s row
then later
with the pencil’s mark
the brush’s touch
in line and shade
and the tricks of chiaroscuro
an image will be secured
in mind and muscles’ memory
you will have drawn this form
into knowledge
Aug 5, 2013
Aug 5, 2013 at 3:59 AM UTC
I know what it was before
it became what it is
I’m at a disadvantage perhaps
and must forget its ****** state
its absolute condition of whiteness
the purity of snow untrodden
unmarked except for the lines
woven in warp and weft
I don’t know how to look at this piece
if I had it in my hands I’d turn it about
this way that way upside down
even to lie on its diagonals perhaps
otherwise it appears like newsprint
smudged but I think for me its best
on its side so there are columns
not stories floors horizontal separators
There - now it has something of that
Annie Albers City Skyline
a tapestry seen together
on a January day you
blue-skirted with winter boots
grey-cloaked with stripy tights
a sketching bag on the shoulder
a camera in hand and I entranced
by every move you made
As though seeking an image
in a cloudscape I view a quintet
of panels on a painted screen
a Chinese landscape Han dynasty
stark trees slow fields low hills
rising to a darkening horizon then
a river flows a valley forms and I am
smitten by the accident of invention
as always my love as always
gathering myself into the pleasure
of it all dear artist of weave and print
Jan 9, 2015
Jan 9, 2015 at 3:36 AM UTC
IV
Pizzicato pianissimo
its sound gestured into resonance
a slight plosive of winds sustained
Arco – a lament in falling thirds
whispering towards an upward leap and a hold
crescendo decrescendo
Imagine his imagining in nature’s realm
(that patient catalyst for the solitary maker’s mind)
now guarding here its assembly in a sounding out
Adagio – in a three-fold telling
A measured preliminary to the music’s soon-to-dance theme
before rising scales and emphatic chords – Allegro Vivace
V
Words on the rise
bricks on the going
then in the hall on the wall
A poem you simply have to read so
crouch close to the Suffolk brick
don’t mind those descending shoes
The verse is laced with words of sound
breaker march cry rumble clap
cueing memory into remembrance
And why why here
where formal musicking lives and rules
are we noised down steps by a boiling kettle?
VI
As the water holds its breath
so a dense cloudscape
forms and floats
Inverted
mirrored
wholly still
it replaces the water
with horizonless sky
and extended reflections of grass
But as water exhales
clouds coalesce
a right perspective restores
Dec 31, 2012
Dec 31, 2012 at 6:45 AM UTC
Another teary Christmas Eve just passes,
as she watches the world,
some soon hold dear Christmas masses,
through her cars side window,
as the cold air just stirs,
& the engine just purrs,
on down roads she's been down too many times,
as church bells again chime,
In darkest slate blue and grey streaked skies,
against a stark white cloudscape
across her glassy mirrored eyes,
Her eyes fill as she remembers,
the argument before dinner,
& then after,
and there is never really a "winner",
She's not ever comprehending,
the why???
Back home,
& living a lie,
sitting at her stool,
her head in her hand,
& she feels such a fool,
her feet and mind exhausted,
she's emotionally drained,
Things are more than just strained,
her heart more than just pained,
Then he hears her voice CRACK
though doesn't acknowledge her pain
he gently stokes the fire,
she cries alone,
in vain,
but he is not stoking theirs,
He let that die out a while ago,
as if he couldn't care,
& she knows she should go,
still she doesn't dare,
& she doesn't seem to know,
How???
As another tear
D
R
O
P
F
a
l
l
s
plays on the radio,
She sits in silent sadness,
this is her teary Christmas,
when others surrounded by gladness,
How many melancholic Christmases,
that she just drowns in,
must she endure???
The elusive happiness she once knew,
Left right along there with you.
Cherie Nolan © 2016
Dec 24, 2016
Dec 24, 2016 at 10:25 PM UTC
star flecks scratch cloudscape,
amber moon, scalded milk sky:
a night after snow
/
i fear darkness, dust,
air itself; space means farewell, means
i am alive and thus alone
/
the flowers are gray
as hearts forging fallow moons
we die: seasons change
/
So find the time— the
thing you do, the why you’re here—
that is life giving
/
run straight into the deep
where moonlight cuts colors
on the sea
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 6:37 PM UTC
I spent some time in the Clouds today: turns out
we're not that different.
I realized
my mind is
inhabited by Cirrus and Cumulonimbus.
As a result,
this week's forecast is brought to you by
The Hypothalamus.
I rain in tears,
spring showers and
summer storms in
Unintelligible mutterings
sputterings, spit and
Outbursts of stutterings.
It's pea soup when I'm P-d off.
Ominously overcast until I'm over it.
Thoughts condense inside;
my skull sweats
until my thoughts are no longer as dense
until it all makes sense.
My head's in the Clouds or
the clouds are in my head.
Thoughts drift off like imagination vapors
on a Sunday afternoon.
I'm captured by these Attention span capers
like the sun captivates the moon.
I'm waiting on clear skies;
my brain's barometoer breaks
under AtmosFearic pressure.
But the greatest beauty is glimpsed
as the sun's set reflects upon cumuliform
- Breathless -
Each gleam an unreplicable clash
of time, light, and wonder
That a cloudy disposition
would only discover.
Jun 29, 2017
Jun 29, 2017 at 10:02 PM UTC
I told them all I just wanted a small hovel and a shovel with which to dig a hole to bury all the things I never cared to see again.
I said sometimes the things that make you who you are are best left forgotten and covered with soil,
regardless, (or rather, in spite of,) what they will one day grow into.
Nobody knew what cloudscape this particular beanstalk would lead to, but they climbed it anyway.
They reminded me about that one time when I mentioned that someday I'd grow wings and fly off into the imploding sun.
I told them all that I don't like being quoted.
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 1:26 AM UTC
The damp world, slowly yet ardently wiping itself off
from the previous evening’s unannounced showers,
Blew a feathery breeze, kissing my skin with ghostly lips.
As the air’s playfully gentle push spirals about the atmospheric arena,
A lightening overcast desperately strains it’s diminishing predominance,
Fraudulently struggling to keep a hold over what it never owned.
But as all things come to a close, the clouds were no exception,
For the articulate wind maiden seduced the cloudscape,
And spread a delicate gap among the once steadfast scenery.
The further I wander,
The further I shall ponder.
I had always dived so deep
Into my abyssal mind,
That I never once noticed
A material bliss, such as this,
Could have ever existed.
Dec 15, 2019
Dec 15, 2019 at 3:43 PM UTC