"contrails" poems
Planes streak across the wide October sky–
The sun is setting–
Contrails stream behind them,
glowing scars of the evening.
The highest ones, they exhale the day’s gold,
pure and sharp
like fields of August wheat,
dusty and late-summer charred.
Redder and lower ones hug the skyline,
No cloud to catch them,
Fall like meteorites,
the slow burn of a dwarf star
Memories never print so vividly,
slow burn sees fast death,
Reds, golds and what's between,
A brain is all catch-and-release
So afterwards what should be left of this?
Not but an umbra,
Impressionist beauty,
A mere relief of its source?
Beauty’s slow fade is not the tragedy,
–rather the reverse–
That we fade to beauty,
To never hold it in full.
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 5:09 PM UTC
I gaze into my crystal ball, discern amidst the haze
A world so far removed from that of now, it would amaze,
Where catapulting incidents collide like billiard *****
And sense defies belief as renaissance makes the calls.
Blueprints fresh from Internet supply the suitcase blast
Where the terrorist’s, simultaneously, ignite in cities cast
From Moscow to New York, Beijing to Berlin
Gay Paree to London town then way out east again,
Budapest, Jerusalem Calcutta burning all
And Tokyo is levelled in a ghastly nuclear pall.
Kneejerk reaction triggers contrails in the blue
Crisscrossing all the continents obliterating through
An overkill so vicious that in seconds it is past
And the living cling in horror, bearing witness… aghast.
Restraints are erased as the opportunists dash
Flotillas from the Spratleys sprint to occupy and cash
In on the minerals, oil and potential food supplies
Of uncontaminated nations found beneath Pacific skies.
Hindi, Jew and Muslim settle scores bereft with years
Of resentment accrued in a flood of blood and tears.
A sudden realisation of immensity of loss
Curtails the destruction in retrenchment across
The habitable outposts, the dearth of supply
And the daunting prospects of a nuclear winter sky.
Global collapse of all electronic gear
No power, no phones, and no cars now…for years.
Electromagnetic impulse put paid to all that
And the day is as dark as the cold night is black.
And here all we sit, in the here and the now
On the verge of catastrophes’ teetering tower,
With a fools pudgy finger just inches above
The nuclear button…and all that we love.
……You fear the insanity, sense the insane
Knowing that people like this are holding the reign?
Knowing that volatility strikes
Like the shot of a gun and the ****** of a knife.
I don’t have the answers to hand
But someone out there, knows how…and can.
The sands of time are running thin
URGENTLY needed a LEADER...to WIN!
M.
Planet Earth
6 March 2019
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 12:46 AM UTC
Freezing a glance
Wind cuffs down-white heliums
Sweeps contrails
Separates cirrus across the moon
Cresting wave tormented
wind against steel
movement in movement
sprays of hair
Blizzard of petals from the apple
Furious snow
drifts off— garage roof
Fog that haunts the river on the coldest nights
_____________
The walk across the alley
took—
so long—
A lifetime from the doorway
of someone else’s impatience
Prints of motion
record the loss
a single set in snow
But there!
on the icy, shoveled surface of night
lies the snowflake of a bird
impossibly molted
Song of a feather
caught—
Flailing! Helpless!
More than lovely for its lying there!
Lying there!
Mar 12, 2017
Mar 12, 2017 at 6:38 PM UTC
Fascination:
rosy contrails,
trembling cream.
This body
vault of heaven,
it opens;
Oh, clever artist.
Turn your nails up
score the sky;
violet swims
beneath the surface;
there are pearls,
ripe as grapes,
behind the door.
Oh, such colors.
Such color.
Nov 5, 2011
Nov 5, 2011 at 10:33 AM UTC
I feel the wind crash against my skin,
enter my nose and into my lungs. I am
alive today. My eyes are fixated at the thought of
those Narra Trees, standing proudly
in the backyard; how the wind rustles
with their branches; how the noise becomes
music, whispering through my ears. I feel
safety. Safety, like the way I lay
at my hammock—the way I trust
the ropes with an arm-strength
of a man; how they held me so high
that I could touch the sky, like freedom
soars across horizons in form of contrails.
Today, I feel love
and I soar to the
Universe.
Apr 18, 2013
Apr 18, 2013 at 12:57 PM UTC
Crept in sinister and foreboding
Announcing their warnings in silent contrails of clotted red
Though the signs were not heeded
The impending extinction civilization was to face
From this reality humans turned their eyes away
The war was soon in coming
The blood parasites set their war machines humming
Singing songs of death and gold coins
Rubbing their hands with mad glee
As death profiteers cackled and rejoiced
Veiled widows sobbed quietly resigned and forlorn
Black strangling stench of rotting bodies and lies
The look of defeat in helpless glazed eyes
Tears running down accepting streaked faces
The sounds of fading souls and lost dreams
The screams of the dying lessened and eventually ceased
When Crimson skies in the morning
Crept in sinister and foreboding
All Rights Reserved@ Tammy M. Darby Nov. 28, 2016
Nov 28, 2016
Nov 28, 2016 at 8:39 PM UTC
Dreams are made of chocolate huts
With burgundy windows, cherry **** doors
Sweet icing on cream layered roofs
Almond -walnut -caramel floors
Dreams are made of iris and jasmine
Jacarandas lined in purple rows
Tree blossoms in clustered cobs
Petals that dance like a ballerina's toes
Dreams are made of fern green forests
Oakwood trees that cast a spell
A gossamer web of magic and charm
The music of clinking coins in a wishing well
Dreams are made of cerulean skies
Contrails of clouds in ivory snow
Violet mystic misty mountains
A tangerine orb riding a rainbow
Dreams are made of romance laced nights
A golden peach vanilla moon
Venus lighting, igniting,love's fire
The silhouette of love in rain soaked June
Dreams are made of turquoise seas
Calm waters stroked by gentle waves
Or enticed by the charm of a midsummer night
Waters that heavenly Cynthia craves
Dreams are made of silk and satin
Dappled with reds, greens and blues
But the dreams that I love to dream the most
Are all the dreams made of you
Jul 26, 2016
Jul 26, 2016 at 10:00 AM UTC
As the air thins you are called to memory
I am as yet
Unsure of what relationship exists
Between the flitting nimbus and velocity
And me
Perhaps the times I fell away from the earth
Skirting through layers of atmosphere
Between the curvature of horizons
And a past sunset far behind me
I left traces of longing In contrails
I left vapour trails of emotion in the sky
Understandably you are filtered from my gravity restricted musings
With feet on Terra Firma; no contrail exists
Only here with vermillion slashing the clouds
Carving a wake through air so fast sounds can’t catch me
Do I remember how I howled
Oct 1, 2018
Oct 1, 2018 at 1:10 PM UTC
a day
with contrasts faded
hazy smoke from
distant forest burnings
skylight diffused..
traffic at rushhour
a monotonous din..
such muffled appearances
invited a more
exacting look..
white paint splotches
accidental decorations
to a darkened parkbench
suggests here a distant
supernova explosion..
a motorcycle pistons'
high pitch report
self identification
in the traffic din..
an airliner's orange
contrails laced the
gray cloudless sky..
then a sudden appearance
a haloed quartermoon
light enhancement
with circular glow..
yes contrasts seemed to
speak on this day
bursting the haze...
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 11:09 PM UTC
Clouds, Clouds, Clouds, Clouds
Calculated Clouds
Interesting Idioms
Physical Phenomena
Spiritual Symbolisms
Cloud seven
Completely happy, perfectly satisfied, wholly euphoric
Cloud eight
Befuddled by drinking too much liquor
Cloud nine
Jumping for joy; walking on air
Have one’s head in the clouds
To be out of touch with reality
Every cloud has a silver lining
Difficult times always lead to better days
He must be under a cloud
People have an unfavourable opinion of him
There’s a cloud on the horizon
An omen threatening to happen in time
To live in cloud-cuckoo land
Believing those truly impossible things will happen
High-Level Clouds
Cirrus and Cirrostratus
Mid-Level Clouds
Altocumulus and Altostratus
Low-Level Clouds
Nimbostratus and Stratocumulus
Vertical Development Clouds
Cumulus and Cumulonimbus
Other Cloud Types
Contrails and Billows
Mammatus and Orographic
And Pileus
An arc in the clouds represents God’s promises
A pillar of cloud symbolised the Lord’s guidance
Do you understand the balancing of the clouds?
He that considers the clouds shall not reap
In OT times, the cloud filled the temple
Jesus Christ will return on clouds of victory
And a personal one
Black clouds one afternoon covered the Salève
Hiding a most beautiful rainbow
And despite the clouds’ efforts to confuse
His promises are forever true
Which cloud are you under?
Sep 28, 2020
Sep 28, 2020 at 2:36 PM UTC
i breathe out & the world is calm. we are standing waves in the sea. i am a long distance, a collection of lip movements, and all associated aches. you were a fleck of snow i barely even saw, and the ensuing onslaught of winter. plans turn around, often; we stick no closer to 'em than our moralities- i knew what i believed, just some other day: i believed i could roll out of the feeling of wakelessness that i'd thought you endowed upon my eyelids. you were prying them open, though, and i was the one at force. "sleep, my fears and doubts", i would call to myself -round midnight- "sleep and you may escape, or somehow come closer to what you're not sure if you seek".
but my plans, moralities and i, all ambiguous at best, changed. i can't pinpoint why. you said "maybe you can smell my dying, from all that way" i said i hoped not, that i could sense you but you just couldn't tell you were flourishing.
in the heat, i would make out daydreams like dialogue, spread sense like contrails: seemingly cohesive monuments to my bearing, left out to dissipate. snowfields on sunlit afternoons. but you, you you you you you, you stay heavy-stuck to the ground through cycling seasons. variation, only nondecreasing patterns in my everyday thought. inconsistence, only meaningful or meaningless. no pain, just ache all the same.
finally, in month's transitions, i found meaning (or its absence) and realised each was a facet of the other. that all facets were tiny jewels, set into the world, puzzle-piece mirrors set just. right., to reflect the gleaming bright pearl inset upon the other side of our tiny universe, each light another stroke of your portraiture, and i found longing: to find the unknown, through all things ordinary.
and you were, at once, more than a question-mark and the statement of my circles through days. you were the taste of waking, without sharp slice of reality. you were a mirror, hung in front of i, also reflecting; and i saw eternity unfold in us each. you were, and are still, peace on the shoreline. and i was, and am still, drowning, but i can make out sand on the horizonline.
so, i'll just keep afloat, if you can do the same.
so, i just won't go changin',
shine brighter with each passing day.
smile.
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 6:05 AM UTC
Contrails have etched powder blue skies , the April countryside enhanced with silver tones .. The collapse of reason coupled with an early morning frost , tender seedlings beg the mercy of the rising Sun , bound for its midday zenith .. Such is the fragility of love just as the daffodils of Spring , a luster of Silver Maples dancing in the wind , clockwork precision of the Grist mill on Cotton Indian Creek . A brisk walk along the cool , riparian shore , bound for warmth , recalculation and the many miracles of familiar woodlands , across quiet bottom land . Alone .
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 2:14 PM UTC
A pick-up case sits in the dirt, a face like muddy children, hence,
All it needs is a pick-me-up; I’m sure you’ve been around and out
Have a cup of coffee and tell me of the times, mutter out and dispense
Of those all miseries; there’s another watching clouds break about
And solitude unmake itself. But I leave it with twigs, quiet and devout
Because this old-soul dispels of clarity without youth or commonsense.
Even if I could, neither of us could say what rises Easter morning
Or to what sun gods, of praise, are most deserving. But, just this one time
Dewy sunlight parched the bold-faced shadows came without much warning,
On warm breezes at our necks was something akin a wish of mine.
We know not where we are and we do not wish to leave behind
This time to count our blessings in the contrails in the sky
For the shoring up of bleak tomorrows can’t demystify a trance
We glimpse and fall to wobbly knees might stay on the off chance.
Apr 5, 2015
Apr 5, 2015 at 12:12 PM UTC
I stopped as I went
past RDU International.
I killed the engine
next to a sky plastered
to a lake.
With a thousand wilting
banana trees
in the back,
and a needle jumping
in the red,
I came to a stop.
Planes scoured the sky with their screeching,
soured the lake
with their contrails,
the geese watching from the middle of the lake
in flotillas
idling in the heat
because it was too hot to move.
If I didn't get these bananas back to the nursery,
they'd die.
Taking out a gallon jug,
I walked to the shoreline
and reached in between reeds,
and cattails and contrails
and cirrus in globs of clay
to lift the water to the radiator.
As I poured the water
into the radiator,
I knew that humanity
is neither the geese, the truck,
or the airplane,
humanity is the needle.
Mar 7, 2012
Mar 7, 2012 at 10:37 AM UTC
My father a medic in Vietnam
for many years refused to wear
his wedding ring because he said
of countless times he had to handle
the aftermath of soldiers jumping
out of helicopters at the exact
moment their wedding rings caught
on protruding bolts or couplings,
leaving their fingers and rings
aboard Hueys while they fell
caterwauling in air below crimson
contrails dissolving in rotor wash
only to land, godforsaken,
in flooded rice paddies,
shocked and shaken, disjointed
but alive, forever joined in holy
matrimony to far-flung wives.
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 9:48 AM UTC
A sudden spark in the darkness;
the Old Man raises his head.
Planes,
he murmurs,
I flew planes once.
His vision drifts through me to
four Vietnamese pilots buried
in his memory and his sickness.
Planes,
he repeats.
His eyes go dark again,
twin contrails spread by the wind,
falling apart in the empty air
of dementia.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 4:42 PM UTC
Randy was a roach
Of the american cockroach variety
He was a deep brown and had a sickly shine
To his wings and antennae
And he studied both of us
From a perch in our suitcase
In my girlfriend's East Harlem apartment
In the early hours of a sunday morning
**** it! Get it out of the suitcase!"
My girlfriend yelled
Flailing her arms
As Randy reclined on our valuables
His antennae twitching
As in most crisis
I hesitated
And Randy burrowed into the suitcase
Past the underwear, collard shirts, and sunscreen
I dug in a frenzy
Rending my girlfriend's meticulous packing plan
And scattering clothes about
All in the name of meaningless destruction
But I couldn't find Randy
"He's probably in the collar of one of your shirts, or in a pair of my shoes"
My girlfriend speculated
And I started shaking the clothes wildly about the room
Wanting more than anything to extinguish Randy's life
To sterilize our newfound stowaways presence
But I never found him
And Randy boarded the plane with us to ***** Cana
While our plane painted dizzying contrails over the ocean
We speculated about Randy's
Most likely devious activities
"I bet he's eating the granola bars under my bikinis"
"I bet there is more than one in there"
"Maybe he's dead?"
"I bet he's laying eggs"
We both pondered over the fact that Randy could be Rhonda
And that we would open the suitcase to a scattering of near microscopic progeny
And we clutched each other in the cold, recycled air of the cabin
When we got to the room
Past all the tin shacks and open air bars
Where the locals sat in plastic lawn chairs
Staring at the tourist shuttles
That carted pale skin behind tinted windows
To decadently decorated rooms where the towels were folded into swans
We opened the bag to see if Randy
Had surfaced, died, or multiplied
But Randy was no where to be seen , a phantom
We unpacked everything under the utmost scrutiny
Not trusting any of the items we had packed so lovingly and repacked
Shaking cover ups and tee shirts like the wind shakes the leaves in autumn
But he never presented himself
And we saw none of his foul brood
We even unzipped the lining
But Randy had simply vanished
Evaporating into the humid, tropical air
I like to think that Randy is somewhere on the island still
That he has impregnated or has been impregnated
That he spends his days under the intense sun
And cottony wisps of clouds
Sipping Presidente
Sitting under an umbrella made of dried palm fronds
Happy to be away from the honking horns and crowded subways
Just like we were
Jun 19, 2016
Jun 19, 2016 at 3:25 PM UTC
Some days we'd lay about the milled plank deck
eyes to the sky
shoulders pinned
deliberating
on the hickory trees
and pillow clouds
and heavenly contrails
the warm caress
of a mid-summer wind
whispering through the hayfields
coondog at our side
sandhill crane still
feet in the shallows
of the Haldimand pond
a soft trickle coming
from the Pickerel stream
creaks from the woodshed whistle
as the Massey Ferguson
putters her way
up the county line
catharsis in place
(in this ethereal space)
just a garden variety day
...with fire ants
and fowler toads
and golden honey bees
Aug 20, 2021
Aug 20, 2021 at 2:40 PM UTC
January,
rare
cross hatched
jet
conrtrails
inseminate
this receptive Carolina sun,
Emblazing this mountain azure sky,
framming Appalachian
repeat
peaks ,
terrace stone floors,
and hardwood grandeur.
Jan 30, 2012
Jan 30, 2012 at 10:15 PM UTC
Pinned my stomach to the sky
Strung it up with tinsel and filament
Carved kisses into my sternum
With elastic lips.
I can feel you fading from me,
Morsels creep away,
Nothing holding them there
Any longer. I feel less sad.
It is somehow worse.
You had long since left.
Where did the memories
Of me go when they unstitched
From your head?
My heart beats
Like a stillborn child
Against its mother’s womb.
I am an uninflated punching bag
You have hair like chocolate fire
And a sun inside your face.
I stared as hard as I could,
Burned your chapped lips and brow
Into my retinas, you left
The ghosts of your arms
Around the back of my neck.
I, petrified,
Pretend you are a still-life
And paint you onto my eyelids,
With faded ink from
childhood picture books.
My stomach is a canopy
Of starless sky pouring half
Digested everything
Onto the robins in my chest.
I see you and smile,
But maybe you missed it?
I am going to a movie
With a girl who wants to kiss me.
I am gathered up inside
All of her arms.
She cries to her friend
In the backstage bathroom.
I do not know how
To make the words happen.
She finds me beside her
And her mouth is on fire.
I wish my hands were holding
The soft of her cheeks.
She says:
I thought we were going to be together.
I know I have a heart,
Because it is trying to leave me.
Apr 10, 2013
Apr 10, 2013 at 1:57 AM UTC
(I. Summer ‘ 13)
Freckles clung
like manic-pixie stardust,
spackled whispers
an unfolding fractal
of brimming dresser drawers
old pictures and mix cds,
we could only ever do
what teenagers were supposed to.
Smushed crabapple handholds,
moxy and sadism hard-won,
no crash course in platonicness,
our stained glass eroded
into a beach
frozen in unsummer,
opiates dull senses,
a synesthetic void
exchanging echoes of echoes,
a cacophony of empty
distilling as it leaves
in whisks of 2 a.m.s,
honey-laced whiskey—
if the sky murmurs one
last love poem, it isn't
to us but our
moment of infinity,
of blind faith
irredeemably lost,
that forever of apex
where the line between
falling and flying
blurs.
(II. Fall ’13)
Spines and ribs
don’t do it justice
you raptured me
both ways to Sunday,
built me up to shatter jaws,
car windows—me
bar stool battered,
you my perfect carpenter,
smile with wooden teeth
(you made them yourself)
so stain me the color of
cherry trees
and unbliss my empty spine.
(III. Winter ’13)
Mildew clutched tight,
hollow-boned, manic thrusting,
marionette-faced, barrow-lunged,
nails to the bone-gristle,
lips raw with spit-polish,
redacted eyes, redacted eyes--
we are palpable creatures,
transient drifters of soulspeck,
one unraveling the other constructing,
sallow truth would dissolve skin.
founder a self, rusty copper
with adamantine eyes,
steel core unbroken by absence,
drown in opposite directions,
oceanwater salve, yes
calloused tongues jostle,
ribbed in salt and rust.
Unlaced corset,
striped sweater,
grunged trainline veins
run on endlessly,
a clock,
abandoned in the middle,
I think once
it very much mattered.
Mar 14, 2014
Mar 14, 2014 at 2:10 PM UTC
September morning and the blush pink of a child's eyelid
layers
With soft Wedgewood blue
And a silvery white.
Feathery treetops shiver in the light breeze
And there is a delicious chill in the air.
Contrails break apart in slow motion
Resting on the daybreak's skyline.
A blackbird hops across the dewy grass
To take his morning slice of stale bread.
Rose petals crimped and heavy wait
Patiently to be dried in the pastel sun.
There is no sadness as the summer slips by;
Just memories of freshly mown grass
On parish fields, of light, of warmth,
Of sea and country walks
Sweetening, like apples
In a sand box.
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 8:04 AM UTC
There it looms, a life like mountain/ sheathed in fynbos, all shades of green/ while the cape drags in reluctant seaweed/ and the wind makes contrails of my hair/
I ascend too with the heather, the rooibos and the hottentot/ We climb/ now a collective of exaggerated beauty/ defiant in wind, spray and fire/
There are leaves as prone as a flat lined heart/ reeds as resilient as a returning pulse/and we all watch the hope of yolk/ of a Sunday sun dipping into the ocean/promising to rise again/
We creep up the leeward and the windward/ ensconced in the spiral of a soul entropy/ determined to survive every rock and crevice/ to hoist ourselves up the flagpole of the cosmic plan/
Mar 8, 2021
Mar 8, 2021 at 2:45 PM UTC
This day has a cumulous attitude
Cirrus mixed in with the brood
Actually all kinds of clouds are mixed within
Is this a message from Our Father
Even the Cumulonimbus are on the spin
Teasing to bring forth rain
Stratocumulus are everywhere
Lumped together in rounded masses,
In line and in waves,
Perhaps to fight against such strain which surpasses
We may have to pray
Nimbostratus to bring forth rain
Until then contrails, God has given us, will ease pain
Sep 3, 2015
Sep 3, 2015 at 8:21 PM UTC
no silence
by the water,
flies buzz, mockingbirds
try for a Grammy
airplanes roar
land, leave
touch tarmac like
sparrows gather
crumbs beneath
the feet of tourist
who dine on patios
no silence,
by the water
no holes in the water
only holes in the sky as
contrails churn up
nature's cycle
no silence
buzz, sing, roar
no end
Feb 9, 2015
Feb 9, 2015 at 4:51 PM UTC