"crusoe" poems
Once I looked to the Bard for words profound;
ageless, his wisdom ran unabated.
Yet Hamlet is now ideologically unsound,
“the slings and arrows” historically Iocated.
I wept for the creature of Frankenstein,
spurned by his master, forced to roam the Earth.
But I’d been subjectively positioned in a paradigm
by Mary’s anxiety about childbirth.
I read Balzac, Hardy and Henry James
describing “worlds” which seemed quite sensible.
Now Eagleton’s exposed their bourgeois games
I find them morally reprehensible.
I dreamt of being Robinson Crusoe
or proud, fierce Hawkeye in his buckskins dressed,
but Fenimore and Defoe have to go,
they’re culturally encoded and empirically obsessed.
Inspired by Guinness, did James Joyce sit down
to see what magic flowed when he was ******
The stream of Ulysses floats Bloom-about-town
dreamthinkingnever : “I’mamodernist”.
I’d gladly give Woolf a Room of Her Own
and be one of the boys with Hemingway,
but sensitive guys leave their bulls alone
say de Beauvoir and Luce Irigaray.
No more fun with Wordsworth being daffodilly,
no simple pleasure reading Mickey Mouse;
Steamboat Willie can’t help but look silly
dissected by Foucault and Levi-Strauss.
The Bible shows intertextuality
says the two Jacques, Lacan and Derrida.
Judas, a construct of bisexuality?
The **** fixations of Herod are?
It’s got so bad I deconstruct a holiday brochure.
I can’t even **** without Roland Barthes and Ferdinand de Saussure.
Feb 25, 2015
Feb 25, 2015 at 12:06 AM UTC
I only have one photo of Grandad
from his years of service in the Great War,
and in it he’s wearing a leopard-skin leotard.
My paternal grandfather, Grandad,
was brought up in Brockley, South-East London
In his teens he was conscripted
and became a gunner sergeant in the Royal Field Artillery.
I still have his stirrups and his French/English phrase book
which includes useful words, like dysentery,
(think of the movie, ‘War Horse’, and you’re almost there).
He fought in the mud in France and put a lot of horses out of their misery.
Apparently, he enjoyed the stage – a song and a dance,
and almost went professional after a string
of successful nights at the local Roxy,
all of which makes me want to have known him better,
but he died in my teens.
He laughed a lot, loved his vegetable garden
and had a collection of handy-sized, hard-back books
giving details of how various circuits and wiring worked.
I recall his bear of an armchair
and how it was in easy reach
of a slim stack of shallow drawers
from which he would take slender tools or small curios
and sit and explain their significance to my bemused child self.
I have the brown photo somewhere -
it’s not one I’d like to frame as it raises too many questions for me.
Like – is that bloke next to grandad meant to be Robinson Crusoe?
Like – what prompted grandad to ‘black up’ from head to toe – is he Man Friday?
And now, I stare at the photo handed to me by my friend of his grandfather, complete with rifle and medals,
and again I silently ask my grandad – why?
Jun 19, 2022
Jun 19, 2022 at 3:11 PM UTC
Tarzan, I really liked the African animals,
and sure the freedom of the jungle
I guess looking around,
I chose the desert island
Robinson Crusoe
always took me somewhere else
the sedate living of it all
yes, without the strenuous swinging
Aug 16, 2014
Aug 16, 2014 at 3:10 PM UTC
There is a song that skins remember.
A line that resounds in silences.
A form the heart revisits
in fervid recollections.
That you must not speak,
that you must not speak.
Silences can ****
No need to ask Crusoe.
Stars that explode in suicide:
From aeons of tortuous silences,
from distant companions,
silently cold.
Yes, our silences talk. Sorry, this
was not how it was supposed to be.
Strains of there we go again.
Gulfs of empty spaces between
silent vales, that birth the
mourning winds.
Murmurs leap out like dolphins
out of our silences.
Waiting to hear each other. Past
the dirge at the grave of my errors.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 10:27 AM UTC
I am a student in Paris, a med-school freshman, one of the crowd.
This week is all introductions, orientation functions and instructions.
“Settle in, get your books, parking passes and find your classes.”
I got my ID - I’m a Vip in the bourgeoisie - does that look like me?
Freshmen join a ‘buddy program’ so things seem less hostile
I met my buddy last week, she’s the consummate boss - effortlessly busy.
She’s got my folder (oh my), full of check-lists. I’ve yet to see her smile.
She’s a third year, from Chamonix, a town in the jagged Alps, near Italy.
If you want me, right after classes, I’ll be at Les Deux Parisiens,
a shaded coffee shop across from school that feels like a garden.
They have everything - from coffee to pizza and martinis - it’s awesome.
For 17€ : try the ‘La Campione,’ pizza with beef and chorizo (sausage)
I am a student in the misty rain, stepping carefully on cobblestones
- they pool water geometrically - I’m heading home (6 Av.) walking alone.
Nothing’s still, classes end at noon - it’s the city, sidewalk’s are full, Ubers uber, mopeds mope, bikers bike, people scatter, umbrellaless commuters.
I haven’t made any new friends yet - I’m not worried - I’m just beginning.
.
.
Songs for this:
Day Tripper by MonaLisa Twins
Café Europa by Quadro Nuevo
Count Contessa by Azealia Banks & Lone [E]
Robinson Crusoe by Art of Noise
Sep 13, 2025
Sep 13, 2025 at 7:39 PM UTC
So long have I been on this lonely planet
so long a castaway on distant shores
so far from home
I pine no more
I build my castles in the sand
make them fleeting just for man
for this Robinson Crusoe is shy
to reveal himself, he would rather die
This is my island I call home
without claim I have a zone
and this holy place
I with conviction call home
For I am a castaway
one of Gods voices
and I stay
another castaway
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
By NeonSolaris
© 2011 NeonSolaris (All rights reserved)
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 4:06 PM UTC
*actually, the only home i have are the muddy fields of belgium during world war i, or among the jews, but given the jews are settled, i guess i better daydream: i mean i never got the cultural imprint of the english idea of dating... put me in the Czech Republic and i'd be freely participating in ****** any day... this stiffening date-culture never appealed to me, it always felt like a divorce before a marriage: so no amorous fun with body but fun in making out in cordiality of being fully dressed and lapping palettes up with tongue rather than the ******** as if throwing a coconut at Robinson Crusoe? yes?! ah crap... point towards the Zulu clan, i just feel the need to strip naked.*
yeah, i believe in meow-meow land,
that's the country next to la-la-land...
where you're trying to sterilise
yourself in terms of organic
historicity and integrate yourself
in terms of inorganic sterilisation
via importing alien values to hush
the monogamy crescendo of failure.
with the irish telling you:
ain't no english...
and with scots you shout back:
there's no thing as to be treated impossible
whether in thought about or moved!
the irish want you to have a coarse
enough accent as them so you can be belittled...
i always favoured the scots, warm-hearted ********
and i too the first hairy-shinned trans-gender
kilt loving twirly girl of a music box
of cherry tree cheaply picked Muzak
for the thrills of shopping for cardigans and pineapples.
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 7:30 PM UTC
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
We had so many grounds
To not enjoy what we had
We used to be so mad
But now it’s all over
The year should had go slower
We miss what we had
We cry because we are so sad
It’s gone
All the joy and fun
Enjoy what you have
Maybe it will be halve
It will never come back
The life will give you a smack
But there is
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
We had so many grounds
Now I see what it was
But we couldn’t see it cause
We thought it would last forever
But now I am cleaver
I will love all I have now
I will balance on the life’s bough
I know how it fells to lose
I must be strong like Robinson Crusoe
Enjoy what you have
Maybe it will be halve
It will never come back
The life will give you a smack
But there is
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
Ups and downs
Jul 11, 2014
Jul 11, 2014 at 6:20 AM UTC
All ferries are cancelled making way for the storm
tied to their piers, rocking back and forth, back and forth
ropes pulled tight, taut, no mail today, no fresh supplies
this is Robinson Crusoe life lived alive in the 21st century
a time set aside, cut off, forgotten by the rest of the World.
Oct 22, 2015
Oct 22, 2015 at 4:40 AM UTC
Darkness envelopes me like a thin grey blanket
Listen to sleeping body snores warm beside me
Imaginary ghosts emerge out of the shadows
Tomorrow’s plans become tonight’s mental list.
Twist and turn, heart beats fast, should sleep
Can’t sleep, get up, drink tea, read email, yawn
Email replies at three clears the decks, wide awake
Online yesterday’s Irish Times becomes today’s.
Skype “Hi” to friends on PST and office in Asia
In bed, read Robinson Crusoe, always meant to
Watch watch, almost five, two hours to breakfast
Sleep heavy eyes, day bright, 7am news, yawn.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 1:32 PM UTC
Somebody out there save me
I sent a message in a bottle
Poured all my emotions into it
And I think it sank to the depths
I just want somebody to help me
I can't stay on this deserted island
I'm no Robison Crusoe
I have no intention of being the depressed version of Gilligan
I'm tired of being an outcast
Shadowed by everyone
I want my own spotlight to stand in
I want to fight with the stars
So I can bath in the blessed moonlight
I can't fight the universe
But a poem a day
Keeps the pain away
Right?
S.O.S
I need some help
I can't find it
The water supply is running out
The timber on this land
Doesn't exist
I'm sinking into a ****** pool
That covers three quaters of the Earth
I need solid ground
Not cave-ins at the slightest touch
Please anybody out there
Help me
Save me
From me
May 17, 2013
May 17, 2013 at 9:36 AM UTC
I sit upon my throne of a bench and drink my coffee,
All day long I play games or play the piano,
The smell of dark roasted black, strangely so sweet,
And just wait or watch the flowers and grass grow.
Just a moment, give me a second to explain my life,
Popcorn popped at the stove sits, I look like lurch,
It's just like that, things that we pay for Movie Time,
I wasn't the least bit interested in going to church.
So I ask myself where are we going from here?
Anyone else notice these rules seem quite austere?
I wonder if I'm the only one who wonders far or near
If I could get a job that matters in even 10 years?
But what does it matter, I guess this way of life's my fault,
I will just get fatter, such a noble way to excuse my waste line,
As each day grows longer, I'm just likely to somehow evolve
Into another one of those guys who is just a waste of time.
Why if I had my way-don't get me wrong-this wouldn't be,
I'd live like a wild man would, a Robinson Crusoe, oh dear me.
Why I have to feel so down all the time? Well it's all so free,
I live in the land of the free, free to become a casualty
Of corporate competition, whether I meant to be,
Wouldn't really matter, like that means anything.
And the answers always been that I'm alone with my dream,
We already "knew" you had a way out of everything,
You just happen to lack the needed ambition to leave son,
So get with it your life is none of our concern or anything.
Dear wounded, lost and powerless one, alone having "fun,"
Even in your darkest, most horrible despair, consolations.
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 6:13 PM UTC
there's no point liking your own
poetry, esp. if you html is infested
with modifications after you publish
something: writing isn't exactly
drink-driving... and when that happens
you start to hate what you write,
and oddly enough, it makes you "motivated"
to write some more, because you're never
satisfied... and being satisfied with your
work will never give you permission to
create more, notice the narcissists in the craft:
five poems later... nothing to add, self-love
takes over the necessary self-loathing,
self-love from over-editing prior
something being read by someone else,
self-loathing and the embarrassment
of having to edit while you, yourself, notice
the mistakes (in this case some weird
futurism of an a.i. in the html encoding,
got to get me a screen shot of the before and after),
added to that... i write of a personal life,
and as it turns out... my life has become more
personal than i would have thought,
i guess writing from the gut of experience
adding a few fictive colours to make creases
in books will make your life a life of a robinson crusoe:
adding to the fact that you never idealise,
whether experienced or not experienced -
idealising is peppered with only thinking about it.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 7:01 PM UTC
Pongo un dedo, el meñique, en la linea por la que voy. Voy bajando el dedo a medida que progresa la lectura y acomodo el librito edición de bolsillo de Robinsón Crusoe que medio arreglé con cinta porque había perdido el lomo.
Cae la segunda gota en la página, en la palabra Martes, que no es un día sino un muchacho, mientras trato de evitar la tercera con un pañito que ya huele demasiado mal.
Oigo sin escuchar las voces del fondo, oigo sin escuchar la mala música a intolerable volumen, oigo sin escuchar a la señora que intercambia las erres por las eles, quejándose por el peso de las compras, y de que nadie le cede el puesto.
Lo único que oí y también escuché ese día fue la pregunta de un señor dirigida a la señora:
¿No sabes lo que significa "hacerse el loco"?
Desde ese día decidí dejar de oír sin escuchar
Dec 24, 2017
Dec 24, 2017 at 6:00 PM UTC
Everybody wants a slice of the cake
for gods sake
make a bigger cake
let's all have a bit of the pie.
We are being bought,being sold by the
men with the folders,
the bankers and committees
behind doors,
secret cities.
Everyone wants a slice of the cake.
The peasants and farmers
the suicidal
self harmers
the dopeheads and deadheads,
the student
the impudent
the clever
the daft
Crusoe built a raft and he's coming back for tea
the cake has to be bigger or we
will get
crumbs.
Oct 27, 2014
Oct 27, 2014 at 5:20 AM UTC
I was thrown from a boat like a prophet,
washed ashore on an Island of Baalbek-sized structures.
In the Atlantic, under the ‘i’ and ‘c’,
thirty-three north, thirty-three west, degrees.
Ancient mariners must have missed it,
concentric waterways and land bridges, cut by a channel to the sea.
Occasional women gathering and cutting cane,
dirges being sung by a certain, Sarah.
Farther up around the outer ring,
a Bay horse, trapped in a tidal pit.
Just enough seaweed at high tide,
eyes white from living in the dark.
A strange place,
I find myself the only man,
another Adams or Crusoe.
I will free the Bay tomorrow, and head inland.
Nov 10, 2017
Nov 10, 2017 at 12:47 AM UTC
Ladies, do you wanna know more about your man? I'm sure you know by now he isn't ashes or sand. Or the area in which water meets land. A man is just a man, and this is a list of what your man can't stand.
1.Sex isn't everything, any man could agree with such, sometimes being nice is equally a rush
2.Please don't expect to win an argument of it involves my family especially my mum, I swear that **** just leads to me perusing ***
3.if I go out of my way to please you then I expect the same respect and effort or I will leave you
4.it's simple, no lurking on a social media page that belongs to ME
5.expect to get uncle philled out the door if I pick a restaurant and you get mad about it, that I abhor,
6 If we get dull in bed and you make a choice to not address it please expect me to watch a dubious movie , in fact expect it
7.Don't tell a story without a punchline or point unless I'm drunk and reckless with a high dollar joint
8.Know what the problem is before you try to fix it, or trouble will find you because you picked it
9.Don't ask a question to which you don't the answer
Because if you do so across the floor you ego will splatter
10.I don't care for your friends, I care for you, if they have something to ask me, they shouldn't ask you
11.Don't be upset when I laugh, while you fumble or folly, it's a humorous affliction, light spirited and jolly
12.If I cut someone off I expect the same from you, if you don't expect me to stay with you
13.the past is the past, nothing we can do about it now,
so please stop bringing it up, it's childish and pointless now.
14.pets are great. I love animals, one and all
but I don't wanna hear about it holding hands in the mall
15.Don't ask me if I'm alright every five minutes, if I say I'm good. I'm good. I don't need you constantly asking it.
16.Don't be an overzealous zealot and by that I mean don't be overly jealous.
17.If you go shopping that's fine, just don't take me with you, it's not that I don't want to I'd just rather have 20 nails shoved into my skull
18. Don't expect everything I create or write to be about you, I'm not saying I won't but that won't be the only thing I do
19. If you know I have a crush and I'm putting forth the effort, at least acknowledge me, you know respect it.
20. If you know the right guy for you is in your friend zone then why aren't you with him? are you trying to be like Robinson Crusoe. all alone?
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 12:45 AM UTC
Mare Clausum
by Michael R. Burch
These are the narrows of my soul—
dark waters pierced by eerie, haunting screams.
And these uncharted islands bleakly home
wild nightmares and deep, strange, forbidding dreams.
Please don’t think to find pearls’ pale, unearthly glow
within its shoals, nor corals in its reefs.
For, though you seek to salvage Love, I know
that vessel lists, and night brings no relief.
Pause here, and look, and know that all is lost;
then turn, and go; let salt consume, and rust.
This sea is not for sailors, but the ******
who lingered long past morning, till they learned
why it is named:
Mare Clausum.
Originally published by Penny Dreadful. Keywords/Tags: mare, clausum, closed, sea, narrows, shoals, reefs, uncharted, islands, wreckage, shipwreck, damage, dark, tides, waters, surf, stranded, Robinson Crusoe
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 1:01 AM UTC
Somewhere far below me in the valley of the madmen where the shadows follow shadows and they cast away the darkness
and the moonlight fights a battle with the candle flames in Harlem,where the movie makers haggle over starlets in the making,
I am home.
Southeast in the castles where the abbey men are sleeping and the shining of the bells will make for clearer sounds of morning and the dogs eat Chinese noodles as if they're waiting for a wedding but the moon still fights its battle with the candle flames in Harlem,
I am home.
If this home is where the heart is and we start at some beginning,does the ending come before that,have we been here,is it more than,just a sheepdip in the evening, where the flames lay dying,bleeding and the dogs have finished feeding,is it abbey men on battlements dispersing holy sacraments,
is it life or is it cheesecake,,is this why I ache to taste it, is it why I want to waste or feed alone.
Jun 16, 2014
Jun 16, 2014 at 6:44 AM UTC
If you were to walk,
To where the bay curves,
There is a cove with fishes,
And slippery clay,
Grey and squelched,
Between toes;
Here is where we played,
Under the seagulls call,
Between the fishing boats;
Watching "Red Funnel"
Make straight lines
For France.
In my rocking horse sundress,
Red plastic sandals,
I collected shells and
Coloured pebbles,
Splashed in the warmed
Sea water and thought of
Robinson Crusoe.
My brother climbed
The cliff face above,
I watched him, still young,
My heart beating time.
And so we suddenly left,
Grew away from childhood,
From each other,
Drifted as the seaweed,
In and out with the tide.
Floated looking at the sky,
Calling out sometimes
To the echo of the bay,
For all those days of sunshine,
Of innocence and oneness,
Never to return as we were then,
Children on a beach at play.
Love to my brother ,Richard from Mary **
Jan 30, 2018
Jan 30, 2018 at 11:41 AM UTC
Stories of shipwreck
and desert islands
can point to loneliness
experienced in society,
De Foe being one.
It is so appealing to me
the child I was and man
I have become
to live some kind of secluded Island life
so appealing that I made it become real
and have no regrets
unlike Robinson
so Robinson Crusoe
can go hang.
Sep 29, 2015
Sep 29, 2015 at 6:17 AM UTC
Dear Edward,
[When]
In Search of Lost Time[,]
[Try} Looking Through the Glass Of Mice and Men
Anne of Green Gables
'Knew Why the Caged Bird Sings
[While] The Great Gatsby
[had]
Great Expectations
[in]
A Tale of Two Cities
[T'was]
Steel-heart[ed]
[but]
Insufferable
Ida B.
[friended]
Jane Eyre,
Emma,
Rebecca,
Matilda,
Heidi,
Robinson Crusoe,
Frankenstein,
Dracula,
Ulysses,
Pippi Longstocking,
Othello,
Hamlet, [and]
Sherlock Holmes-
[and?]
The Catcher in the Rye
Something Wicked This Way Comes[-]
I've Been Told There'd be Cake
[but alas, too late-]
Things Fall Apart
As I Lay Dying
...
Far From the Madding Crowd
Tender is the Night
The Grapes of Wrath
[is found when]
Looking for Alaska
[with]
The Fault in Our Stars[...]
[a.k.a.]
Romeo and Juliet
To **** A Mockingbird
[thy needs a temperature of]
Fahrenheit 451
[One more thing-]
Pride and Prejudice
[is]
Deathless
[Okay, fine, more than one:]
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
[was at]
The Last Book Party
[so were the]
Invisible Monsters
[and]
The Lord of The Flies[.]
[In the]
Dying of the Light[,]
Divergent
[and]
Breathless[,]
[emerged]
The Lightning Thief
...
[Ultimately, in the end]
[strikethrough "And Then"] There Was None
Love,
Stargirl
Apr 28, 2020
Apr 28, 2020 at 4:35 PM UTC
On an island dressing
for a thousand more,
on a beach at low tide
walking the shore,
feeling like Crusoe
or the pen of Defoe
the thoughts come and go
like the days,
and they're speaking German
which
I don't understand
I want my Mother not the
Fatherland.
What love,
A pearl from some Eastern eye
Delhi or maybe Mumbai
like a painting by
Modigliani
she haunts me.
The islands slip into the bays
the days follow on behind.
She's still there on the canvas
with those eyes that shadow
and I become a shadow
too.
Jun 23, 2017
Jun 23, 2017 at 3:32 PM UTC
Time is fleeting,
We spend half our lives sleeping,
Then only a quarter at most if we're lucky,
Living truly, and freely.
The best friends help us keep authenticity.
I was struck last night,
by a ghost from my travels.
Rushed, not myself,
with my mind occupied by the feelings of others.
As guilty as I felt, I saw more changed in him.
It wasn't just me or our continent.
The Golden Messiah, with bright childlike eyes,
and strongly spontaneous smiles;
Cut his sunshine locks,
Dimmed his infectious grin.
Limped the way he would run towards me.
Rushing to save him from boredom,
I had left him last on a beach;
With nothing but a loud kitten for company,
Alone to make palm leaf huts like Crusoe.
We had eaten and drunk and slept on that beach,
And did everything by the warmth of the biggest fire I'd ever seen.
Last night he needed saving but didn't ask.
he mentioned the fire with a smile I'd never seen him have.
In a buttoned up checkered skirt,
He materialised into the Portuguese
American Gothic.
The full weight of this transformation revealed itself
After the euphoria of this reunion wore off.
I bounce about and beamed at him
And said "Que louco!"
The way he had done,
The phrase had stuck with everyone he'd met.
He looked now like he'd achieved what he
Used to tell me in order to not worry
"Nada louco linda, tudo tranquilo"
Last night I was no longer staring up at him
And smiling in admiration.
The levels had changed to the point where
We just hugged tighter and tighter
To bring back the warmth of that huge fire,
and the feeling of having boredom as our only concern.
May 14, 2018
May 14, 2018 at 12:26 PM UTC
ferries being cancelled
could say marooned
except I never leave our small isle these days
and unlike Robinson Crusoe I do not look out for a ships sail on the horizon to come rescue me ( Defoe in fact felt marooned in society and never went anywhere near a remote island, it was his 'alone in a crowd' syndrome that was at the heart of the inspired writing of Robinson Crusoe)
I am a seconded hardly ever seen anomaly
happy to be forgotten by the World.
Dec 22, 2016
Dec 22, 2016 at 2:42 AM UTC