"coterie" poems
Tiger, Tiger they all called him.
Faces marked with smiles grim.
Office buzzed with word tiger, tiger.
He was one but many they were.
Full day continued insincere flattery.
End of month 'twas, day for salary.
Then story took melodramatic turn.
Like tiger he moved, demeanor stern.
Outright he announced party that night.
Everyone attended in clothes bright.
They gossiped, danced and dined.
Happily they all boozed and wined.
He sat like a tiger circled by coterie;
And the total bill was half the salary.
I looked through magnifying glass;
And saw pack of wolves and an ***
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 6:32 AM UTC
Growing up, my grandmother always tried to hold me back from the girl I thought was my best friend.
Her name was Society.
My grandmother made it very clear that I was not to associate with Society and so that is what I did
for a while.
By the age of 7 I had an impressively large entourage of friends, whose parents also steered clear from Society.
We watched movies, made hot chocolate and talked about our hopes and dreams.
However just because the light burns bright, doesn't mean it's going to burn forever.
By the time I was 11 our coterie had fallen through.
The more we grew, the less we would hear our parents.
11 years young, and completely detached.
All my friends were now strangers.
Society was the only one I had left.
I always desired to be equals with her.
I tried so hard until there wasn't any ME anymore.
I was caught in between fitting in with the world and becoming estranged from myself
Society dug up every last seed that all sane adults plant into their children.
Mum raised me to believe that every inch, every atom and every molecule inside of me was worthy of love.
Society had taught me to pinch and pull at my body, accusing every bump, every scar and every imperfection for being some of the many reasons I was alone.
Society led me to rip every mirror off of the walls of my life.
"You don't wanna see that" She would whisper.
She was wrong until she was right.
For every 1 thing I found to love in the reflection,
Society would find 3 things to hate.
Society had taken the sparkle from my eyes because the other girls couldn't see past the glare.
Society silenced the protest in my gut because there weren't enough people on my side
but as I moved on to better people
I realized she was all a sham
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 5:44 PM UTC
I have missed your company.
Enveloped in strange faces,
The only coterie I keep of late
Is that of your overwrought descant.
Oh, James Douglas.
What happened to your dream?
DO NOT DESPAIR,
FRIEND
The words you once transcribed
Your intoxicating,
Or was it intoxicated
Ragtime
Linger in the subconscious of a generation,
an unnoticeable haversack
Traveling
Seeing
Traveling
Watching every ounce
Of the determinate world
Seeing
Acting as
The portmantoligism of my conscience
And what is left of my intellect
Until I realize that my
Crippling loneliness,
Is the only palatable fruit of disillusionment.
See, Christine?
Anybody can use big words to write about the 20th Century.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
when life is charmed with radiance
all kicking ponies
and summer sticky sweet with instinct
like a head sloped between thighs
moralities privation comes
stirs its ***
a broth of orthodoxy
evoking a cinematic painting
of Christ's crimson howls
for the ache of life
his blood sacrifice construed
as desire from the embrace of lust
sins cursed maniacal
save the genitals of priests
for little children's ****
while
God
the father
stands aloof
as if nothing but helpless black space
the churches history
a coterie of priests
a prancing parade
in black dresses
with rosy *****
Jesus's own little rays of sunshine
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 1:31 PM UTC
138
Pigmy seraphs—gone astray—
Velvet people from Vevay—
Balles from some lost summer day—
Bees exclusive Coterie—
Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with Emerald—
Venice could not show a check
Of a tint so lustrous meek—
Never such an Ambuscade
As of briar and leaf displayed
For my little damask maid—
I had rather wear her grace
Than an Earl’s distinguished face—
I had rather dwell like her
Than be “Duke of Exeter”—
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the Bumblebee.
2.2k
Imagine a world without terror outer
and inner, sans famine of food and water,
where every soul is well-sated; a world
sans sickness and disease, not by the cord
of morbidity and death held; a place
where huts are mansions, every shack is
a castle, and each flat a grand manor;
where the roads are built with pure gold
and the bridges with resplendent diamond;
where the day does not change in colour,
except when full moon in its full array
once in a month has its own display.
I mean a planet steeping in love
unfeigned, bristling with true hospitality
of the soul; a world bereft of danger,
and of every mind-and-heart breaker;
a world with the similitude of the garden of
Eden, hung on the shoulders of harmony--
where man at another cove's lovely dove
will not leer, where there are
no split and divorce. The genre, stuff
of life where one's pigmentation is
not the cardinal, but the inner essence.
A sort of society where ****** Hussein
and Laden-like fellows and all their
coterie of killers do not have a lair
of habitation, i refer; where besetting sin
has no confederacy with the rotary heart
and mind of man; where the leagues
of villians are non-existence. An earth
where conglomeration of wicked cliques
is non-operational: where everyone be
holy--no child soilder, nor forced labour;
where women are not ravaged in cruelty
of acts, and is void of conflict and war.
Such a place "the world" is not called
but "heaven: governed by the Almighty Lord.
Jul 13, 2013
Jul 13, 2013 at 3:20 AM UTC
Tyres and fires burning
circles of rubber
Rolled down black tongued roads
Heading to city centre
Where others meet
To greet the mighty ruler
With sword and soldiers dressed
In fibreglass shields, green helmets
truncheons with spikes backed water cannons
snipers on rooftops searching for vipers
to drill bullet holes
The tyres rolled in and rounded in a circle
Cutting off escape routes and
Dividing believers and non-believers
Piled high, pulled tight with pitchfork patience
The leaders orders more tyres.
Anything from cars, buses and bicycles
that could hold up the chains of freedom.
Last desperate attempt - not to escape but die
In the ring of fire -soon lit
Underneath the tyres
Which created bursting black flames and bluegrey smoke
Rising above the rants of leaders and shooters
and crackling. Sparks that dulled the day
And lit the night with sparklers of power.
The paratroopers soon retreated into barracks
and the rioters took hold of the city keys,
And over broken glass and burnt buildings
settled in for the long haul to freedom.
The pawns moved on the chess board
knights moved in the night,
The queen was cornered
and checkmate came when the hollow president
flew the palace with his coterie of
ear chewers and shoe polishers!
The tyres burned slowly
the fires burned down slowly.
Freedom came at dawn on the 21 st day
when the rubber factory churned out again
many new models of tyres with tougher treads.
The circle begins again today.
Author Notes
The Revolution continues. All common day gadgets that could burn and blister the new agenda is rolled down the road into the city centre where the
protesters gather to set fire to ambitious policies, unpopular with the people.
The fires from tyres will rage all night and day.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 1:21 AM UTC
when i met you
you were at the hands of ghouls
a gimping coterie of Satan's
who pleasured at the torments they inflicted upon your innocents
who bound your feet
bones in a vice
making you
their Chinese fantasy
a delicate *** trinket
a manacled smooth petite beauty
in agony
bending you into twisted branches
those heartless devils,
drinking red ice cocktails
you put your heel on their throats
by craving death
that will teach them!
gloating at your fear
filling their emptiness
with your trembling
your dreams faded
into the body of a wounded kitten
has God
given us the cold shoulder?
hacked angels wings to stumps
and left the doors to hell wide
leaving your soul a torn crag flaming?
little girl on fire
screaming in the cave of self
would he weep at your alter
and kiss your scarred tissue
begging your forgiveness
lamenting his snide toys of fate
sweet cursed apples
and sly snakes
twisting raptured seductions
your life, cross and curse
a burnt offering
a blood light blinking
with no fire escape
oh
Eve
blamed by the idiots of religion
for everything
only a child
who sank her pink mouth into a serrated moon
now always weighing death
bathtub ****** red ribbon glamour
dreaming paraphilias tide
eyes a ghastly vacancy
floating like a feather
mud,
tabernacles grave
a buoyant shell
sinking
in crimson clouds
a smiling dread
what does it take
for God to redeem himself?
must we storm paradise
before he fills you
with perfumes bliss
and effulgent lights embrace pours through your soul
like lanterns rose sky?
Jun 11, 2018
Jun 11, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC
THE HOUSE OF DUST
A Symphony
BY
CONRAD AIKEN
To Jessie
NOTE
. . . Parts of this poem have been printed in "The North American
Review, Others, Poetry, Youth, Coterie, The Yale Review". . . . I am
indebted to Lafcadio Hearn for the episode called "The Screen Maiden"
in Part II.
This text comes from the source available at
Project Gutenberg, originally prepared by Judy Boss
of Omaha, NE.
1.3k
The second amendment might
As well be the sixty-ninth, for all
The life-long days it saves by
The transparent and glossy shields
Adorning blue-skied uniforms.
The strike zone is limited to the
Mobility-enhanced limbs, out of
Reach of the cardiac plateau, in
A line guarded by “I heart NYC”
Leftover campaign buttons.
Crowds question the timeless yet
Disintegrating rhetoric, and they
Sing along with misspelled threats
To sanguine attempts at love and
War, while grade schoolers watch.
What’s missing from this libretto
Is a slogan like “if they go low, we
Go high” and the money to borrow
It, or the right to use the copyright,
As long as it doesn’t get ******
“Now hear this,” bellows the man in
The crow’s nest, stepping in front
Of his stepson who brandishes a
BB gun proudly in his arms, “the
Curfew starts at midnight!”
Dona nobis pacem, a canon of
Faith, is hummed by the last ranks
Of veterans in camouflage, hoping
To initiate a temporary calm among
The bleak and ****** crew.
A clown-faced poet attempts to draw
A smile, as she calls for an absentee
Ballot, a circuitous frontage road
Away from destiny, some think,
And a short breath of recess.
“Take away their weapons,” hollers
A very pregnant woman, who goes
Into labor, blaming the guns for her
Untimely reward, and for a moment,
Just minutes, the midwifery begins.
All this while a small coterie of men
Gathers, silently taking in the show,
Unnoticed in their pretense, but
Sporting the heritage caps of the
NRA, stars and stripes in their lapels.
The disingenuous players in this sad
Drama are about to fold their tents,
To chicken out, to return to tacos
And beer, when stillness breaks,
So much so that crickets rule.
A small boy crosses the street, his
Smile contagious, his gait strong
As he approaches the men and
Says “I am you before now, be
Of peace and good cheer.
“My commandments have no
Amendments, no magic exceptions,
No golden calves, no wicked step-
Mothers, only a heart and soul,
I am the moral of your story.”
© Lewis Bosworth, 2016
Sep 23, 2016
Sep 23, 2016 at 12:40 AM UTC
how does one obtain a ticket
into the select coterie
it seems one must fill the pocket
with copious amounts of ***
but some have not
a ******* preference
nor are they must interested
in displaying
a fawning deference
the pocket *******
is a daily event
so often one picks up
a whiff of its scent
one was given a heads up
about the pocket ******* crew
one well heeded
the words of Sean Drew
he said be mindful
of those sycophants
they'll be ******* around
one another like flattering ants
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 10:56 PM UTC
Disjoining this coterie
dissolves it's fragments
in Unison
Dispersal to all borders
with hasty charge
Contracted to bide
Consenting inside a concord
Of Visceral culpability
to Re-Integrate
Incontrovertibly
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 1:50 AM UTC
Exposed to types of poetry
a coterie
of poet friends
great poems pen
I wish that I could read them all
from that I fall
the mountain climb
there is no time
How satisfying to belong
we're growing strong
our dear peer group
Poetry Soup
Oct 29, 2019
Oct 29, 2019 at 11:49 PM UTC
As soon as this Templing Fortitude built
Then rid your Ghost from this Heartened Journey
Cast my Ring to Die; From Magma has Smelt
Once hopeful Anvil hammered on Blarney
The News indeed True. If Rumours conceive
One from your heart led much Secrets adhere
Have our Tongues paid for Lies and Coterie
To issue Swelled Bonds of Pain so severe
PIE and PI - yes - add these Fortiments add
Then power your Fumes for Others to choose
But un-tie Tradition; As Jack's Weaning sad
Framed him the Blamer for Peppers you rue.
So would it make sense your Person I pry
And Cast your Kingdom for your Mental's Fly?
Jun 9, 2013
Jun 9, 2013 at 4:54 AM UTC
The second amendment might
As well be the sixty-ninth, for all
The life-long days it saves by
The transparent and glossy shields
Adorning blue-skied uniforms.
The strike zone is limited to the
Mobility-enhanced limbs, out of
Reach of the cardiac plateau, in
A line guarded by “I heart NYC”
Leftover campaign buttons.
Crowds question the timeless yet
Disintegrating rhetoric, and they
Sing along with misspelled threats
To sanguine attempts at love and
War, while grade schoolers watch.
What’s missing from this libretto
Is a slogan like “if they go low, we
Go high” and the money to borrow
It, or the right to use the copyright,
As long as it doesn’t get ******
“Now hear this,” bellows the man in
The crow’s nest, stepping in front
Of his stepson who brandishes a
BB gun proudly in his arms, “the
Curfew starts at midnight!”
Dona nobis pacem, a canon of
Faith, is hummed by the last ranks
Of veterans in camouflage, hoping
To initiate a temporary calm among
The bleak and ****** crew.
A clown-faced poet attempts to draw
A smile, as she calls for an absentee
Ballot, a circuitous frontage road
Away from destiny, some think,
And a short breath of recess.
“Take away their weapons,” hollers
A very pregnant woman, who goes
Into labor, blaming the guns for her
Untimely reward, and for a moment,
Just minutes, the midwifery begins.
All this while a small coterie of men
Gathers, silently taking in the show,
Unnoticed in their pretense, but
Sporting the heritage caps of the
NRA, stars and stripes in their lapels.
The disingenuous players in this sad
Drama are about to fold their tents,
To chicken out, to return to tacos
And beer, when stillness breaks,
So much so that crickets rule.
A small boy crosses the street, his
Smile contagious, his gait strong
As he approaches the men and
Says “I am you before now, be
Of peace and good cheer.
“My commandments have no
Amendments, no magic exceptions,
No golden calves, no wicked step-
Mothers, only a heart and soul,
I am the moral of your story.”
© Lewis Bosworth, 2016
Sep 24, 2016
Sep 24, 2016 at 6:54 PM UTC
she wanders the halls
searching unsatisfactory
amongst the coterie
no where to be found
surrounded by the drunk
and the profound
hesitation with sadness
realization with brokenness
left with nothing
but empty promises
she should have know
promises are always broken
Nov 27, 2014
Nov 27, 2014 at 11:26 PM UTC
Boo!
One and one make two.
Coterie of magic made.
One on one create.
The rudiment of life.
Shown in embryonic form.
Implant.
Once protected against unwanted risk.
Removed.
Another wanted implant
Now implanted in the wall of life.
Once was mere ball of jell.
Definite form created.
Gesticulation unborn wave.
Still in uterine home.
Impregnable in warm and cosy world.
Glancing via ultrasonic image waving back.
Forty weeks or thereabouts.
Grand entrance made.
Visage of cutie.
Baby beauty.
Born at last.
Welcome to the world of life!
By ladylivvi1
© 2013 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 12:52 PM UTC
They are happy
You are sad;
They smile
You frown;
They laugh
You cry;
They feel lucky
But you, feel burden;
Im no saying for being inconsiderate nor being hypocrite b'cause me and myself have been through to that, believe me, much worst than that.
But world is logically coterie, no edges, just go around.
Go with the flow.
Nov 25, 2018
Nov 25, 2018 at 8:24 PM UTC
When it’s my turn to be reaped
- as I know it someday will be
- let my final, earthly verse be poetry.
Let the vast heavens weep,
may my wake not be cheap,
and peace be upon my coterie.
May 20, 2024
May 20, 2024 at 5:34 PM UTC
Non descript hedge rows sculpted into
ornamental animal via botanical artist
wielding pruning shears and chain saw
carved, limned and sculpted with wrist
wrought voila uber prestidigitatiously
head turning botanical picturesque Sun
kist animals at an exhibition transformed
miraculously via Te Deum divine fist ***
ping, whence realistic fauna burst alive
with an explosion of colorful twist and
shout of foliage, where scalloped super
flu us detritus manna for naturalist de
cid Jew us detritus capacious carpet boar
animation punk chew waiting groundswell
Liszt ghost would arise from the grave to pro
deuce magnum opus without a beat missed
such shrubbery mimicking the likeness, sans
glistening fleshy sin yew, and gist about ready
to become bone a fide (green behind the ears)
thriving vox populist, per species and genus
wrought thrashing into birth as delicate crafts
man promised to imbue life, liberty and pursuit
of happiness whittling away leavings, thus did
exist the nascent then omnipresent visible entity
emerging from cocoon an herbalist meta morph
hosed from imagination of skilled, practiced and
mentalist conniver viz extracting the initially
obscure blessed beast, where with august magic
wielding tools of this specialty vis a vis bringing
breathing manifest destiny ala Pinocchio (trans
formed from wood to flesh), whereby finest
dexterous chiseling blistering hands baffle on
lookers as coterie of topiary harvest breaths mind
bogglingly astoundingly authentic rooted ready
to frolic in the grass menagerie a gamesome group
of linkedin live progeny, the MichelAngelo of
dirtiest canvass, an earthen tabula rasa of sorts
where application threshing re: electric cool laid
ahs hid test brings out chlorophyll doppelganger
green hued key luster.
May 18, 2018
May 18, 2018 at 8:03 PM UTC
There was another brother whom history forgets
And though born a fisherman, he preferred other nets.
The coterie of rink rats who lived on the Left Coast
Thought he was sine qua non, and they would often boast
*He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.*
His slapper had heat to make a goalie wet himself;
His wrister was money either five-hole or top-shelf.
After the goaltender felt another puck **** by,
He’d curse and bang the crossbar as fans took up the cry
*He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.*
He dominated rinks out West like no other man
From Calgary to Saskatoon, Fresno to Spokane.
He’d hat tricks in Winnipeg, six-point games in Moose Jaw
Moving scribes to hackneyed verse written in fits of awe.
*He’s better than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.*
Though the man was a fine skater, strong, agile and fleet
The slightest flaw in the ice caused anguish to his feet
And he would scold arena crews—*What’d you call this mush?
‘Tis nothing but chips and ruts; I’d rather skate on slush!*
(More prickly than his brother Joe,
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gio.)
After one match in Oakland on ice unduly rough
He stormed into the locker room, shouting ‘Nuff’s enough!
He didn’t change his sweater as he stormed out the door,
Hopping on a trolley car, to be seen never more
(He’s a bit loony, don’t you know.
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.)
He was sighted in the Yukon, once or perhaps twice
Engaged in some mad mission to find the perfect ice.
Neither man nor beast can say what became of this fool,
Though bits of skate lace appear in petrified bear stool
(Tastes better than his brother Joe?
Es-ki-mo Di-mag-gi-o.)
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 10:10 AM UTC
Summer days
Inconsistent in England
An old train from Piccadilly
To New Mills
Sweating up a steep hill
To a blistering barbecue
Bearing brownies
To share with older brothers
Spaced and complaisant
Sedated in the sunshine
Overlooking the opposing hills
With an ex copper in our coterie
So pleasantly surprised
By the sun and situation
But it's not summer anymore
Aug 1, 2017
Aug 1, 2017 at 9:16 AM UTC
it seems sometimes like this slow-motion cascade of twitches and deformities forms ecosystems on my bedroom floor. i can shift between them, not physically, but tangentially, as if by a switch sitting quietly at the back of my skull. quick cold feel around and i'm in a woodland, leaning against bark that holds enough ridges and depressions to tell an odyssey. ants weave through the bark like they're tunnels. i weave through the trees like they'll never end.
then, from dead leaf to a sand so vast it leaks into the horizon, i am desert, deserted. when you stare long enough at the same sad thing it melts into another plane and you have to learn to affix your gaze to something else. but here, where whats left again sinks into scarcity, you may as well stare into the sun.
someone saw me sitting at the edge of the swamp. i spend most of my time there i think. i name the clusters of moss rubbing up against my ankles, most of them after people i know. or knew - long since has it been decided that if i name a moss-person after you, you are an erstwhile figure, a shadow dragging its imagined weight around the corners of someone else's life.
but no one sees me back sitting at the edge of the bed with my fine coterie of nothings, limbs dangling, body shaped like an accident: where i go to die, over and over and over and...
...people have said before that i have a way with words,
but it's times like these i'd rather do away with them.
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 30, 2019 at 7:25 AM UTC
Try as he might, she plays him still...
The truth, evident. Denied with a will.
The good men are few, yet he is one.
And he worshiped her as some do the sun.
Dead as a stone, she toys his heart.
He refuses to see her tear him apart.
His passion loud as roaring thunder.
For him I hope they get torn asunder.
A coterie of men, for her, behave.
God forbid she make him a slave.
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 1:17 AM UTC
Non descript hedge rows sculpted into ornamental animal
via botanical artist wielding pruning shears and chain saw
carved, limned and sculpted with wrist wrought voila uber
prestidigitatiously head turning botanical picturesque Sun
kist animals at an exhibition transformed miraculously via
Te Deum divine fist bumping, whence realistic fauna burst
alive with an explosion of colorful twist and shout of foliage,
where scalloped superfluous detritus manna for naturalist
deciduous detritus capacious carpet boar animation punk
chew waiting groundswell Liszt ghost would arise from the
grave to produce magnum opus without a beat missed such
shrubbery mimicking likeness sans glistening fleshy sin
yew, and gist about ready to become bone a fide (green be
hind ears) thriving vox populist, per species and genus
wrought thrashing into birth as delicate craftsman promised
to imbue life, liberty and pursuit of happiness whittling away
leavings, thus did exist the nascent then omnipresent visible
entity emerging from cocoon an herbalist metamorphosed
from the imagination of a skilled, practiced and mentalist
conniver viz extracting the initially obscure blessed beast,
where with august magic wielding tools of this specialty vis
a vis bringing breathing manifest destiny ala Pinocchio (trans
formed from wood to flesh), whereby finest dexterous
chiseling blistering hands baffle onlookers as coterie of
topiary harvest breaths mind bogglingly astoundingly
authentic rooted ready to frolic in grass menagerie,
a gamesome group of linkedin live progeny, the Michel
Angelo of dirtiest canvass, an earthen tabula rasa of sorts
where application threshing re: electric cool laid ahs hid
test brings out chlorophyll doppelganger green hued key luster.
Nov 28, 2017
Nov 28, 2017 at 1:41 AM UTC