"cranes" poems
A harbor town, just like this one, swept up in fog
the seagulls, ghosts emerging from the skies
the river glistens soft & wide,
the Cranes for now are sleeping giants
he kisses her, the anxious gun pressed tight
against his hand in his pocket
he is a dock worker
she is a seamstress
they're a black & white film
because technicolor here is impossible
he is you & she is me
we speak only in French
the kids on the block
will get you the next day.
Sep 6, 2015
Sep 6, 2015 at 3:47 PM UTC
*what forests are those we pass,
blazing along the railway tracks,
a tree bloom of still cranes,
stream black of ******* bane,
stench of dead city rubble,
factories of rusted cast metal,
distant cotton twilight skies,
sun slide across a bunch of wires,
passing tunnels echo
lonely platforms, frantic gecko,
looming hillside,
crackle dry wood fire,
a god barred in lock&key,
blink glimpse of the sea
one rush of vision,
pebble fling at frisson,
metal-crunch rhythm,
grind music sublime,
spark, grunt, grate,
we arrive, we dissipate...*
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 11:42 AM UTC
you told me to take up new hobbies
to distract myself from the pain
you were causing me
you told me to learn origami
so i did
and now my room is crowded
by paper cranes folded each time
your name came to mind
and you told me
to learn how to juggle
so i did
but not in the way
you were talking about
Jul 2, 2013
Jul 2, 2013 at 8:42 PM UTC
Origami cranes
Twelve steps, forty eight pure folds
Peaceful paper cranes.
Nov 24, 2014
Nov 24, 2014 at 5:16 PM UTC
you told me
to write down my feelings
and share them with you
when you wake up,
but drawing out these emotions
isn’t easy because
they’re pale and indefinite
i cannot distinguish
a path to take,
whether it’s winding
or cobblestoned,
or so overgrown with trees
that i cannot see the sky
so maybe in the meantime
i’ll sit in my room
and fold paper cranes
on rainy days
till a map that illustrates
how to carry on
makes its way
into my muddled hands
Jun 27, 2013
Jun 27, 2013 at 12:45 PM UTC
I made 1000 pinwheels
instead of cranes
They were beacons And
wishes.
You lined your front yard with them.
A dizzying kaleidoscope
lighting up your porch
So I would know when
I arrived back to you,
home
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 11:44 PM UTC
Rusty nail by rusty nail the floors come down. Floor by floor
the old men of the old town slip away, and leave old shells
like the stone bread of Pompey. We board these windows
and bolt these doors and slate them in the young sun
for the hungry cranes, but I return in the twilight
of going home traffic when five o'clock lets loose blue collars
to fumble through the ruined rooms of time gone by,
I kick through our broken bricks. Their red dust stains
my shoes and wears on my cuffs. A hopeless hearth,
discarded news, a crippled doll with matted hair
and I all share the crumbling of the day, but only I
shall not remain come compline. Neither can I
pack these walls with me. So this is adieu
to former strongholds. To our old fidelity, adieu.
It is not fit to go forth less than brave, for
they built seven cities over Troy, seven worlds
not knowing where they stood so long the first
could not be said to be. The docks of Caesarea sleep
in the sea, and tourists sit for lunch
on the prone pillars
of Jaffa.
Nov 10, 2012
Nov 10, 2012 at 9:09 PM UTC
Cranes accuse the sky
As people swarm like ***** in
A ******* jungle
Jul 26, 2015
Jul 26, 2015 at 4:09 PM UTC
The first in over sixty years
The whooping cranes are living wild
Now one young pair has laid an egg
And, too, with luck, will raise their child
They near Kissimmee were released
Beating the odds, survived to breed
A ray of hope they might increase
And ***** the armor of human greed
But cranes need water as do we
As still we pump the wetlands dry
Our chains of lakes sprout fat resorts
The river of grass condemned to die
Yet dare we dream we might reverse
This harsh inflicted damage done
Still apathy is our nation's curse
Which battles none has ever won
Today I cheer the whooping cranes
Who still have hope that they might see
Upon some far and distant day
Their offspring's offspring flying free
Oct 23, 2015
Oct 23, 2015 at 6:00 AM UTC
i am
monday nights filled with
candlelit journal entries
and sipping hot tea while
watching rain bounce off
the roof and open windows
in autumn and messy hand-
written letters and white
tees and cuffed jeans and
pb&j; with the crust cut
off and folded origami
cranes and watching the
sun rise while everyone
else is tucked away in
their beds and midnight
car rides and candid smiles
and lists written in blue
ink and wildflowers and
mountains and birds singing
and books and movies that
make you cry and nicknames
and flannels in the winter
and soft music and loud
music and moments recorded
only by memory and pumpkin
pie and forever stamps
i am all the little things
and if you don’t make an
effort to understand why i
love all the things i love
you will never understand
me
Apr 24, 2014
Apr 24, 2014 at 10:16 PM UTC
A wish unfulfilled
She'll never be reached
But we'll keep on flying
Higher and higher
Above the clouds
Beyond the horizon
Till the air turns thin
Where like blade cuts the wind
We'll keep on rising
Higher and higher
Till our hearts turn blue
Till the blue turns black
And then white: nothing
And then perhaps
We could touch her heart
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 12:53 PM UTC
Dust on fans, cluttered rooms
you're still beside me
I know that's true
red nights, take it how you like
you're still beside me
I have to thank you
Darker thoughts, and mistrust
you've reassured me, no matter what
I trust you, I do
Past has bruised me,
but eventually they disappear
yours have not, I see that daily
Ill tread with caution,
you seem to save me
Daisies, and messy clothes
my muddy water remains,
We share a lake, you and I
with turtles, fish, and cranes
dragonflies coasting above our rippled waters
our lake is never dry,
you seem to save me,
you and I.
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 8:38 PM UTC
Where did you come from, bright star?
What heaven did you leap from, dear love?
How can I spell your name
Without the sound of autumn
Underneath my tongue,
Without acknowledging the lovers who bent me in half
Bless them for bringing me to you
How can I say your name
Without also breathing the words
My god, I found you.
How can I ever speak again with this mouth
When it has found where it belongs
When you touch me, I am a bed of calla lilies
I will build a house and fill it with evergreens
I will paint sunsets on every wall
So you can only see beautiful things
How can I say love
Without wanting to fold myself into you
Like a thousand paper cranes?
Dear one,
I was halved the moment I was born
Either piece of me is inside of your mouth
And I was found whole the moment you spoke.
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 10:35 PM UTC
I'll follow you through
sunflower cranes, stood
straight up on one leg,
tiptoe-heads above. Thick,
trunk stems support eyes
as though a field of giraffes
came to Loiré on holiday,
a tower of swinging faces
basking in a summer breeze.
Sepia yellows peg out
like eyelashes, shine
against that blue wave
of ocean sky, barely
frothing a cloud. Atop
your shoulders, I'll try
pinching a bud to keep
for home, looking back
a thousand suns echo
a staining rust, autumn
reds sinking as they set.
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 5:11 PM UTC
Origami cranes
Fly towards the crescent moon
Amongst paper clouds
Mar 14, 2017
Mar 14, 2017 at 8:58 AM UTC
I was the paper crane that you made. What once kept your interest. You thought that I was beautiful, a work of art.
But now you've disposed me like all the other crap that's useless to you now.
*******
Jun 15, 2015
Jun 15, 2015 at 9:09 AM UTC
I
This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.
II
Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.
III
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
IV
Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
4.7k
The cranes flew and the city grew and what did I do?
put my head in the sand,
so I could no longer see the change that was happening all around me.
A land fit for heroes,city tycoons and wannabe Nero's and now't left in the stew *** for me or for you lot,
and how do you feel about that?
More money than sense and scant recompense for the builders who toil,who make the monsters that rise and eat up the soil, despoiling the land,more heads in the sand but holding out hands for that scant recompense.
Reconciling the bile in their throats with those city gent suits in their trilby's and coats and soldiering on until the earth is all gone.
A legacy indeed for them who would scramble in scrub land and grow things to feed the dysfunction of family,
what seeds we have sown,how defectively grown we've become and all for the buildings that greedily search out the sun,
somewhere up in the heights.
Oct 13, 2013
Oct 13, 2013 at 5:06 AM UTC
I live beyond morality, cloudy
Skies issue complaints, however
I hardly have the time.
I often catch myself
Staring at creatures.
Wondering where they
Wander, and why.
I want to fight dragons today.
I want to find a voice
That suits me. Grey skies
And frozen cranes, bother me.
The stone wet, and
Broken. Lifeless creatures
Can be neither evil nor
Wealthy.
Broken Binaries. Broken
Machines. What glues
Our heads to our
Bodies?
Is there a separation?
Voices
Walk down the hall and
Interrupt my view
Through the window.
Focusing again I see
Opaque. Unable to
Look past the glass.
Only up to it.
Apr 30, 2012
Apr 30, 2012 at 1:17 PM UTC
Accidents and misfortunes crowding my life
choking out pleasures reserved for a lucky few.
Not realizing that they were there for me too, just to look for
passed by as I chose to look back, blinded to what could have been.
Running in circles skirting the truth
looking for lost moments, ticking into eternity.
My hope is in this new life that I’ve found
awakening the child I’d lost, now born again in you.
You’ve taught me to live, to look now for the simple and pure;
a glass of ***** Cana or a flock of cranes grazing on a hill.
Moving together in the rhythm of jazz
in the early morning sounds and light reflecting on you.
Your beautiful face, angelic in the morning light.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 9:47 PM UTC
You lied about my sweet weight,
And you lied about my arches,
You lied about your love for the depressions in my skin,
You faked that sincerity
Of course you lied, because how else
Could you make love to my demise?
You lied about your moon and my tides,
But you tread upon on my land,
Cheer as my salt beats my rocks into sand, I never flinched at your hand,
I never quaked at your voice,
But I should’ve,
I would’ve if I had known that you would run my rivers dry,
That you would lick your lips and sigh
You’re sick in that the only thing I hold dear,
You craved to hunt.
You rip into the throat of my wild and reckless stag,
Watch it bleed as it cranes to see by whose hand it falls,
As it breathes its last breath it catches sight of your thumb,
It knows, but consciously it forgets, because
It is with this abandon that I die for you daily,
And you **** me anyway.
I should’ve quaked at your voice,
Hearkened to the screaming that ripped away my choice,
You never loved my mountains, fountains of lies I threw back and back,
You lied about my ocean that you don’t care to explore,
It was critical and fatal,
You lied about my sweet weight and that I cannot forgive.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 10:27 PM UTC
I hang paper cranes
Above my head
So I can fly in my dreams
The map of the world
That hangs on my wall
Is a canvas for me to paint
The Shakespeare quote
Reminds me of where I'm going
Baby pictures remind me
Of where I've been
My blankets are my cocoon
I'm a butterfly
I lie in the dark
Spinning poetry like a web
Popcorn feeds my stomach
Paperback novels feed my mind
My dressing gown hangs on the door
My walls are trimmed with fairy lights
A tv sits atop a dresser
Like a skeleton, it lay unwatched
I'd prefer to dream of lilac baths
Than force my brain to rot.
Under my bed there's dust bunnies
And monsters
And in the dark they creak
But I'm sleeping with my paper cranes
And flying in my dreams.
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 8:35 PM UTC
The elegant cranes.
Wandering in the warm sun.
With the gentle breeze.
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 1:31 PM UTC