"cobbling" poems
My father's long fingers smooth
over the aged scratchy pleats.
The Kilt is magnificent. It has the
fleeting beauty that only a well
kept antique has, that warm
firelight glow of the past.
It has a few scuffs and holes,
but the somber reds and greens of
clan Mackintoish have settled into
the cloth and darkened pleasantly.
The kilt is always the most important detail,
it has passed from grandfather down,
and it looks as handsome now
as in the sepia photographs on our shelves.
The dirks black ornate hilt rests
heavily against his hip, and the
belt is cinched tightly to hold it up.
you can practically hear bagpipes
My grandfather's dark green cotton socks
sit near the top of my father's calf
and he leans over to adjust the frills.
And as his tan wrinkled brow furrows
in concentration, and his admittedly
attractive white whiskers scrape
across his collar, and the image
nears completion, the drum beats louder.
Reaching up from the ancient past
and grasping the future in tradition,
the ghosts of ancestors enter his poise,
and he suddenly appears less like
my father and takes on the swagger
of a cocky fisherman, of pirate.
He is swinging swords
and playing pipes, and cobbling, and
setting stones upright in ancient
forgotten ritual, and tossing cabers.
I know looking at him now,
what my own ghosts will be
when my time comes.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 8:16 PM UTC
Dizzy, the rush
of thoughts incapacitate
synapses firing, neurons
throttled, a crescendo
of dendrites branching
Experience roots
inwardly, tearing the humus
of pregnant dreams, scratching to see
the blood beneath the scab.
The greater the itch, the greater
the disturbance of sleep,
bound by a tangle of vines,
deafened by the cobbling-together
of thrushspeak, the cry of clouds
contorting into unthinkable
and suggestive shapes
Bleary-eyed, the lost wages
of sleep gambled away
on a ticking clock.
Dec 1, 2015
Dec 1, 2015 at 12:11 PM UTC
twinkling, sparkling...
the night sky is bustling
tints of silver mingling
fragments of memories dwindling
fingers tingling
walking and cobbling
a nostalgic feeling
as i stopped, idling.
Jan 31, 2025
Jan 31, 2025 at 10:22 PM UTC
None other than him
matters here at the noon.
The sun is an out and out autocrat
the sky, he singularly rules,without
any apology to anyone.
He has banished all the clouds;
not even the faint trace of
fluffy, milky white strands
seemingly unstoppable
till the far horizon.
This is when his hidden
intention to scorch all at sight
is at it's atrocious peak,
which would lead to his decline.
Under the low hanging sky
the earth parched dry,
is a cry for mercy.Sun now is
a roaring water fall of heat
waves lash one after the other.
The village of thatched mud huts
stand dazed, like it's women
in this ascending symphony of pain
not feeling any difference of tune,
this is what it always been.
It's a living miracle, it still exists
fighting the vagaries of winds and the sun
not willing to collapse as dunes of dust,
which would have been a better solution.
The little girls from a school
the only secret this village keeps,
in midday break pour out
like ants from hidden anthills,
scurrying to all directions, trying
to cheat the wind spitting fire.
A frail old woman, her skin
sun scorched,dark,
deeply furrowed and folded
a true face of resistance
life capable of in the face of
the attack of armies of obliteration,
sweating all over, sits under a tamarind tree
all twigs and only few patches of weak green,
cobbling for a living, as if it is her day last here.
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 10:40 AM UTC
Cobbling the letters like nails into shoes we could use,
we hobble confused
hammered
abused by the thought
caught in the flow and words as we know
are cruel and kind, like
silk lined sows ears sobbing like tears in the dust but we must
continue to hammer away
cutting into each day as we cut into our heart to impart what we think and the ink turns to blood
because we knew that it would.
It is our life.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 1:18 AM UTC
Hunched over in this Bastille dwelling
cobbling out words stitching to a page
day after ----------------------------------
day after ------------------------
day after--------------
day ------
The last bottle of Bordeaux Rouge shatters
and pools on the ***** floor, frantically I
bow down and touch lips to dirt and wine
**** until my sore cheeks flush with blood
stumble back to the makers bench
carefully carve initials marking
days gone by and by days gone by
at night I lay my head upon the guillotine
hoping to wake drenched in red in a basket
this self revolution will some day pass
Nov 7, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 at 10:48 PM UTC
it’s new year’s eve,
let’s set the house on fire,
a respite from the fireworks,
the cheer and sweet kisses,
a shield for desperation -hopelessness,
lifetimes of cobbling together spare change
from thankless jobs.
let’s listen to music,
predicting the apocalypse,
anarchist revolution coming back,
desert rebels and cheap masks,
plastic laser guns and old comics,
signs of washed out revolutions.
and we’ll talk and wonder
-about our lives,
wash ourselves down the drains with
the blood red wine,
toast with triumphant roses,
rising with the bubbles
dreams encased until they drown and
pop.
can we call ourselves rebels,
revelling in the moonlight,
dancers under stars,
wrapping ourselves around our bodies,
to the music,
the champagne,
the thankless year’s,
as they go on and on.
Dec 31, 2018
Dec 31, 2018 at 11:59 PM UTC
St Augustine insists, insists,
' whoever sings, prays twice '
so I am cobbling together letters
word after word line after line
a string of something, something
I do hope can be heard sung
in any old fashion will do, and ask
St Augustine, to 'sing along with our songs'.
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 9:40 AM UTC
There were a surfeit of items
Sufficient to raise eyebrows or cause comment
Among the few staid members of the Mulligan clan:
The appearance of siblings or cousins assumed (or at least hoped)
To have preceded Thomas to the choir invisible
Two or three women genuinely surprised
To discover the existence of one another,
One young man with an extremely disconcerting resemblance
To his “Uncle Tommy”,
But the entire affair carried on with something akin
To the requisite solemnity
Until such point that a couple bottles appeared
(The consensus being that the good Mulligan
Had somehow found a way to secret them in)
The end result being the proceedings
Subsequently devolved into an Irish cop wake-esque teleplay,
And in the midst of this fol-de-rol, Tippy Phelan,
Who had framed walls for generic bank buildings
And grunted and swore while cobbling together
Unnecessary cupolas and wholly superfluous cornices
On the McMansions of the small town well-enough-to-do
With Tommy (as well as, on Friday lunch-times
During the slow season, sharing a thermos
Containing a mixture which drew narrow-eyed stares
From lenient if still unhappy foremen)
Stood the final toast for the good Mulligan,
Intoning *There’s a land of the quick and the land of the lost,
The trick being to build a sturdy span between them
So it’s only proper that Tommy was a ****** fine carpenter*.
Nov 29, 2021
Nov 29, 2021 at 2:26 PM UTC