"cudgel" poems
We marched to the words of "We Shall Overcome"
courting justice to walk at our side,
seared into memory with the heat of sun
brothers and sisters, arms linked one to one
beneath that day star's unblinking eye,
we marched to the words, "We Shall Overcome."
We swore an oath to forego the gun,
to carry only freedom's cry
beneath the impassive afternoon sun,
through bludgeon and cudgel one by one,
each truncheon summoning others to rise,
to join in the words "We Shall Overcome."
As we embraced, the marching done,
a crosshairs trained a sniper’s eye
to wrench malice from the indifferent sun
to hew a path in blood and bone,
to rend flesh
and a rasping
fatal sigh . . .
in the fading caress of the afternoon sun.
Beneath the eternal arc of the sun,
again we will muster side by side,
a sanctified chorus, whose song will be sung,
let our marching echo...
"We Shall Overcome.”
Copyright © 2018 Gary Brocks
Conceived after visiting the LORRAINE HOTEL (Memphis, Tennessee), the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thursday, 4 April 1968.
In 1991 the NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM at the LORRAINE HOTEL was opened to the public.
"We Shall Overcome”, an anthem, title and refrain, of the American Civil Rights Movement of the mid 20th century.
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 4:18 AM UTC
Other worlds have hopes,
for plants, for trees and
dogs walking by, panting
soaking in humidity like carp
above water.
Not ours.
Dead ends, parked cars supplanting
serenity with passion, desire
crammed into
row upon row of heartless
dwellings expunging sunglass-wearing
**** suckers
blocking their emptiness from the world
with reverse blindfolds.
I know their eyes still glare at me, scoffing at
them. Walking, I
walk past
their barricaded kennels, under-
construction housing
impersonating natural climes
with sushi and slushy shops.
People like them have admiss-
able drives, hankering after
freedom; they're indoctrinated
to believe admission is
monthly cable bills
wired in beneath concrete slabs
maintained compliance
through lines painted on grass
where overlords can tell livestock
what to do.
Bus chutes form
hillsides, beside lines of
trees which perfume these
feedlots
we call
cities.
**** oozes below streets
walked on, they stared at me
like cows, watching a ranch-hand
suspicion toward anything
beyond bistro fences.
"What the **** are you looking at,
you filthy animal?
Have you no idea which species your greed
feeds?
Do you know where this ends
for you?
Who's tazing your ***
who's making you sit there?"
Moo, mooo.
Mooooooooooooooooooo.
Receipts, a cudgel on each table,
more cudgels ring
from pockets
telling them what time it is,
where they're to be.
Sunday's almost over,
back to blocks of houses!
Graze on painted grass,
then die,
but not before you stare at me
with empty eyes,
you pathetic, miserable
creatures.
Jun 3, 2012
Jun 3, 2012 at 10:11 PM UTC
tizzy looped his past: he had looped it and then looped it howevah, whoop to diz
gangstapoetry boosted its duties newly
we simply gs, whose duties include
slowmoflow like snoop, or p, ain't no thang
i create slang in the hate center, last trip i flew thru loops, break dancers and readers
want answers, so we give straight answers
lyrics of fame bangers, one rhyme for eight
don't take chances, tizz stylobate, sunrise
poems born from crime, give it some time
gotta come right, sell it all at one price
my blood cries in rough nights, plagued by
enough of tough stuff, but me ain't a fluff
i bluff and take what's rightfully mine
tizz is frightfully nice, he neva comes twice
coco loco, monica matadora tending
first song jeezy's "poppin" pimpin pimpz
red-blodded hamza comin ova to test me
subtly intimidating, i just call him "habibi"
ice breaker, you feel me, we good, truly
check out jammed jay, pushin designer
hamza on the toilet, yayo, his girl, bunny
snugglin wit jammed jay for real by now
close to my dj area, rubbin *** gainst ****
tina staring camly into her secret intention
i expect something vaguely, forget it, tho
as hamza al-mighty gets back, explodes
he beats up jay, promptly breakin' his nose
jay looks at the blood; pulls out a cudgel
bashin hamza's skull, flesh splinters
hamza strikes back wit em bludgeons
wondaland's red light, serving proudly 24/7
hamza's pack, yousif, said, wassim and mo
ready to battle the enemy of the enemy
lego goon, antwone, bobby butchah, juan
Jun 14, 2021
Jun 14, 2021 at 1:10 AM UTC
To wonder at the sound of another's heartbeat
and marvel at the rising and falling
The colors of the rainbow first filling wide open eyes
how they take the breath away
Claiming shapes and sounds and smells
the entire universe a pile of jigsaw puzzle pieces
One day fit together
to reveal the most beautiful reflection
To hear every sound for the first time
and know silence as ending and beginning
From within
the spirit remembers
Struggling against and with another spirit
the soul is molded
Almost a fog, hovering around the body
it glows
Mine had grown dim
had become heavy as stone
A mocking albatross
with no patience for sluggish maturity
I'd begun to question it's very existence
convinced by a hateful science
Beaten so badly with the cudgel of years
I longed to be rid of it
Until you came along with your angel song
the very sound of our beating heart
Like the winging of birds
in free fall, ecstatic
You dragged me out of hell with the ringing of your voice
the singing of a song that pulled me into heaven
The sound of newborns crying in amazement
at the very rhythm of life itself
How bittersweet it is to surrender you
to the quiet from where you were born
I would hold on forever
but you fade even as my heart is filled
Not gone...
merged, quiet, waiting
You leave me knowing
you will never leave me
For you have become my soul
a partner in sound and silence
See the miracle of music
it glows
Sep 4, 2013
Sep 4, 2013 at 10:24 PM UTC
You haberdashery hauberk harangue of a hornswoggling hiatus . Your arrogantly delusory blasphemous dementia of odiously ominous diabolically grotesque gives me a decadent distraughtness of desultory debauchery and ghastly gnarly abysmal abjections . It causes hysterical deliriums of maniacally macabre . My swashbuckling surreptitious spatiotemporal telemetry tactician is tacitly inured in a phantasmagoria fantastication of fabulist façade fantasias . I could positively kithe a futurity cudgel phantasm and bonkers bluster boggle with your phrenetically frenzied phrenic and forget my phyletic you preterit rendition autonomy equilibrist .
Jul 21, 2016
Jul 21, 2016 at 9:22 PM UTC
I was sat in a Tavern in Pompey Town,
Sipping a tipple of ***
When I watched a Jack make an axe attack,
Chop off his finger and thumb!
I couldn’t believe the blood that flowed
From the cut of that rusty blade,
But the barmaid Flo, said ‘You’ve done it, Joe,
Now look at the mess you’ve made!’
She cleaned it up with a swill of ale,
Walked off with the finger and thumb,
‘I’ll nail these up on the balustrade
With the rest that have been as dumb.’
But Joe sang out when he’d had a drink
‘It’s better than being a tar!
I spent three years, under the lash
On His Majesty’s Man o’ War.’
‘They ‘pressed me when I was still a kid
And treated me like a dog,
I suffered scurvy and couldn’t work,
The answer to that, was flog.’
‘They flogged me around the Southern Cape,
They flogged me a-ship and ashore,
Whenever I thought that I might escape
They dragged me onboard for more.’
‘And Cap’n Foggett’s abroad tonight
With his cut-throat parcel of rogues,
Impressing the able-bodied men,
They’re lining them up in droves.’
‘For Nelson’s lying abaft the lee
With barely a half a crew,
He needs more men for the ‘Victory’,
And that means me and you!’
‘In every tavern they’re moving in,
In every alley and quay,
At first they offer the King’s shilling,
To war with the enemy.’
‘But the Frenchies rake with the carronade
That will rip the flesh from your bones,
And the decks run red from the men who bled
Impressed from their wives and homes.’
‘They say he sails on the tide tonight
So they’re doing a quick Hot Press,
Even a gen’lman walking late
Won’t meet with their gentleness.’
‘A cudgel whack on a squire’s head
Then dragged to the bilges, free,
They’ll never know ‘til they all wake up
That they’re headed on out to sea.’
‘That Nelson’s got but a single arm,
He’s got but a single eye,
If that’s not enough to be alarmed
By God, then I wonder why!’
The Press Gang came to the Tavern door
But couldn’t come on inside,
They tried to sell me a Man o’ War
But Joe had made me decide.
I took a gulp of Jamaica ***
And I steeled myself to the task,
‘The Press are waiting outside,’ I cried,
‘Just hand me that rusty axe!’
David Lewis Paget
Dec 15, 2014
Dec 15, 2014 at 10:27 AM UTC
With my words I do not paint; instead
I beat them into what I wish to see.
A cudgel has not the elegance to make,
And I am executioner of my heart.
It's on the t-t-t-tip of my tongue
Crude instrument of communication
But slaver to which my life comes from.
You owe me this to end my frustration;
You owe me this to let me paint my scene,
To glorify the beauty and the heart
Without the violence at my core of being.
But not today - I do not make my art.
My love, I tried to write a poem for you-
Incomprehensible, my words fell through.
Jul 7, 2014
Jul 7, 2014 at 3:12 PM UTC
noosenice night come
come kindly
and ****** me
of normal
whim and wit night
purple easy
night crusted
in casual
Spring
the delicate
stiletto of thee
paled tween rib
and sinew
The
quick sliver
of the moon
which by affable
stupid violence
is a smiling cudgel
That
stumbles brilliantly into
my skin
where the prime magic
of fairies have also
been and split their
thighs
admitting
LIFE
Apr 26, 2012
Apr 26, 2012 at 4:21 PM UTC
You haberdashery hauberk harangue of a hornswoggling hiatus. Your arrogantly delusory blasphemous dementia of odiously ominous diabolically grotesque gives me a decadent distraughtness of desultory debauchery and ghastly gnarly abysmal abjections . It causes hysterical deliriums of maniacally macabre . My swashbuckling surreptitious spatiotemporal telemetry tactician is tacitly inured in a phantasmagoria fantastication of fabulist façade fantasias . I could positively kithe a futurity cudgel phantasm and bonkers bluster boggle with your phrenetically frenzied phrenic and forget my phyletic you preterit rendition autonomy equilibrist .
Jul 27, 2021
Jul 27, 2021 at 11:06 PM UTC
There may be something that depends on thee-
you hi-sprung holly which is dainty in the forest,
resting in your lawless ways a cudgel of berries.
Tease then, deny me, mammal inappropriate for your stock,
your bounty is more for the nimble of hock,
who have a stomach stranger to mine,
who needs't not pay me any mind.
Force here will do no good, no,
which confuses me by force of reason,
misleads me through whorls of rhyme.
I fell in love once,
it was confusing.
Perhaps to un-know!
Oh, how my names elude me.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 7:53 AM UTC
Long stemmed Lily
dressed in white,
spreads the scent of pheromone
across the sweat stained night.
High heels and strapless dress
fishnets and rings,
drawing out the wanton ones
with the siren song she sings.
Painted lips and promises
eyes that say it all,
with just a touch of hinting
into her web they fall.
She's a ***** she's a spider
she's a wolf without a pack,
she's a bullet she's a cudgel
she's the sharp knife in your back.
She's no player you can't play her
she wrote the book of rules,
she changes them to suit her
as her suitors are all fools.
Shes a woman first and formost
she's fragile like a flower,
but here between the bed sheets
she's the one with all the power.
So don't say I never warned you
when you wake up all alone,
just be thankful that you tasted
of the fruit so few have known.
May 28, 2012
May 28, 2012 at 8:57 PM UTC
bludgeon our minds
addled by apathy.
cudgel us into comatose.
the sixth extinction
we couldn't be bothered
to prevent.
blind submission
to the tradition
of the truncheon.
throw our bodies
in the trenches,
the mass grave
we dug
with our own hands.
dirt still clinging
beneath the nails
of fingers raking
our psyches.
buried beneath ennui.
cover our corpses,
naked and exposed,
with ten tons of soot
and ash. strike
from the pages
of history
the utter depravity
of the world's
cruelest creature:
humanity.
Dec 20, 2016
Dec 20, 2016 at 11:42 PM UTC
*god, if only the english could un-numb their R, and return to the rattle-snake trill... what wonders could be born... every time i hear an english person pronounce the R... i think they're about to swollow their tongue, as if rolling it backwards to numb the R... yes... swollow... swo-swo... only cockneys of east london say swa-swa swansey... ***** deep in essex you: ooh... ah, eric cantona... swollow, akin to saying the word: slow... rather than slough (berkshire, burp-shy-err)... **** me english is fun, it's like owning a g.i. jone action finger, and still playing with it aged 34... compared to all other languages (notably the european ones), english is like play-dough... you can **** with it so much that you can almost forget being bilingual; and no, whatever the upper-crass tell you... trilling an R is not a posh thing... it's talk of the 2nd serprent in the garden... the rattlesnake who warns you, rather than tempts you to try and eat from the tree he's wrapped around.*
two words that spring to mind,
out of the blue;
words that sound better in a native tongue
than in an acquired tongue
of saxon descent
mingled with norman -
the words?
military instruments -
(a) originally maczuga
but with my diacritical stressors:
máczūga...
i give it a rest there making
the foreign word sound better,
after all, we have alternatives:
cudgel, truncheon, cosh, nightstick
& bludgeon...
still... the m'ah-choo-g'ah (ga-ga)...
i don't know... but i know what sounds
better in
(b) topór (acute o? t'oh-poor),
meaning? axe... now tell me the foreign
word sound more grave
than the native word?
the (a) argument
has worthy counterparts, but (b)?
tell me you wouldn't feel a shiver
hearing topór,
when otherwise hearing axe?
p.s.
the same with the word
for hammer -
i.e. młot (mmm-what?) -
of **** me, the tool has a baby,
the belittled henryk młotek miodowicz
(henry - little hammer - honkeysuckling).
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 7:47 PM UTC
I wanna **** you
Slit your stupid throat
I would laugh at the dying sounds it makes
I detest you
Put my fist right through your skull
Feel the bones crushing in my hand,
As I shove my fingers into your brain
Because I hate you
More than I even hate myself
I detest you like a maggot in the grave
I wanna crush you,
Dissolve you in a vat of my shame
You left your taint behind you,
When you up and ran away,
Put your dagger in my back,
Left me in a shallow grave.
I can still taste you,
A flavour once so sweet
Has turned putrid in my mouth,
And I can't spit it out
So I'll rip your brain out through your eyes
Take a cudgel to your spine
Destroy and pulverize
Till there's nothing left but a stain,
On my memory.
Apr 2, 2019
Apr 2, 2019 at 6:28 AM UTC
Everything reminds me of that short
summer. The clouds form in ancient swirls of fine candy. Stick candy.
The Wisconsin breath on my
neglected face still summons the
memory.
Proust has already penned his memoir.
I have as yet been unmined.
You remain like an effigy
on the razor edge of sanity.
I feel the hot hand of our past
rub along the night we
loved and smoked and
loved some more.
The days we were loosed on
the city we held the yellow
breath of anticipation.
We walked
into night when the dark
fallen Angel laid her hand
on times cruel cudgel
and struck us apart.
The music I hear is the
remaining notes of a still dark
lift of dance.
The touch of you is a reply
in only every breeze.
Caroline Shank
Sep 29, 2021
Sep 29, 2021 at 8:53 PM UTC
Hexagonal basalt
volcanic calm
footprints to Ireland
A beached whale
estranged love
And running giants
cudgel
May 10, 2016
May 10, 2016 at 5:31 AM UTC
A sword stuck in its sheath
is used as a cudgel to strike the innocent
until a hardened circle has formed
and an iron grip developed.
A shell stuck in its chamber
fires unexpectedly
avoiding suitable targets
and striking unintended victims.
A missile launches from its silo
without a target
going straight into space
never looking at the striking planet left behind.
Oct 3, 2021
Oct 3, 2021 at 11:28 PM UTC
Rainy Spring Morning
Rainy spring morning is older now
slower, less inclined to bound
up the down staircase or greet
dawn with a drop jaw slap
to the forehead, night
somehow no longer young, drinking
whole days in breathless gulps from a pail
knobby throat exposed, bobbing
lewd and naked, heedless
of a sopping shirt, unaware
exactly when he took to sipping primly
from the lip of the minute cup
a careful hand cupped to a careless chin
catching the gesture
in the window
above the sink
beneath the sleeve
of light that smears charcoal features
and quotes from windows past
the glow that drew him
on his way to school
tucked back in the shadow of huddled
trees, new leaves sluicing rain in whispers
onto the backs of sidewalk worms.
Rainy spring morning twists the band
on his cudgel finger
mate to the one you wear
dialing in this hypnotic spell of molten gold
a boy for a moment
lingering in front of a house
upturned palm catching creamy light
that runs through his fingers
and pools around his half buckled boots.
Nov 7, 2016
Nov 7, 2016 at 8:28 PM UTC
Every pattern is a cudgel to pain
Every equation rings out your reign
Its on the whispers and tirades of the wind
Its in the ripple of water and crashing waves of the sea
Each sinew tugged at and tortured
Frayed nerves screeching and screaming at me
Begging for the holy oil,
the balm of relief
The anointing of peace
Yet even that hope lies shattered
in the broken pieces of usefulness
Dis-ease
distorted harmonics resonating agony
where once was perfect and sound cohesion
Each moment now a taught tension
a pugnacious trap for excrutiation
Every device is a loaded trigger for wretched pangs all I want to to do is merely write
Of beauty and hope to soothe
What sabotage for a poet
Whose pain enscription was a grateful muse
I find nothing of comfort
Because, every idea breathes nothing but signals heralding yet more and more pain
Just like the photo of us dancing in the rain
I feel like it might never happen again
Memory is a Pain upon a pain
Mnemonics are the seat of my suffering again
And your mighty reign of anguish
An insanity that devours me
But I will not succumb
I will remain
I will come through this somewhat sane
And you'll be that forgotten memory
I refuse to let inside my brain
The rent will be sky high
And I WILL BE ME AGAIN!
Mar 29, 2023
Mar 29, 2023 at 6:19 AM UTC
Face of an angel,
Then he hits me with a cudgel,
Every night is a duel,
Nothing I do, I do well.
Mar 16, 2013
Mar 16, 2013 at 5:53 AM UTC
When Intuition goes to battle with Reason,
these are usually quick skirmishes—
but this one has broken into war.
The campaign unfolds on the soil of abstraction,
reality, spirituality, and poetry.
Intuition begins with overwhelming superiority—
three of the four fields are hers.
But Reason is insatiable:
guarding the kingdom,
minimizing the losses,
holding the troops’ morale.
Its advisor is Faith—
the Eternal Outsider.
Usually Faith stands by Intuition,
but now he has slipped quietly
to the opposite box,
losing his own faith… one could say.
Intuition without Faith is dangerous.
Her box is always draped in dark lace curtains;
only her voice comes through—
no one has ever seen her face,
except Faith,
who would never stoop so low as to speak of it.
Some claim she is not even human,
others say faceless,
and in the inner circles it is whispered
she wears Janus’ face—
(probably only for Faith,
a mocking trick against hypocrisy).
Yet for the audience outside,
listening from afar,
plain common sense whispers only one thing:
she is a shapeshifter.
Heresy.
Maybe that’s why they are so quiet.
Why is Intuition so dangerous
without her two-faced advisor?
One might suppose the real danger
is the opposite:
that religious fervor seeps into her field
and sprouts the weeds of fanaticism.
For Faith hides not only
fat volumes of sermon under his cassock,
but the stone tablets of morality.
He has, they say,
even used them in close combat.
Effective: the laws of physics themselves
lend the swing its momentum;
at the moment of impact
it already speaks the language of Force.
A cudgel in Faith’s hand,
a drumhead tribunal—
the kind that applies laws literally.
When he sits beside Intuition,
his chair glows in full illumination,
stage-lights blazing,
the glare descending like a halo.
From that light,
behind Intuition’s baroque curtains,
she too takes on form—
not just a whisper,
but an active member of the council.
Without him,
Intuition grows overconfident.
If no one sees her,
perhaps she isn’t even there.
Her influence falters.
In her own words:
she has free rein.
In such moments,
Intuition dons the mask of the prophet—
a mask that grants
a dangerous confidence.
“The prophet does not err—
he is only insufficiently zealous.”
And at the final word, help arrives.
It is Obsession.
She lays her hand lightly
on Intuition’s shoulder
and says nothing but:
“You are right.”
Aug 19, 2025
Aug 19, 2025 at 4:09 PM UTC
You haberdashery hauberk harangue of a hornswoggling hiatus . Your arrogantly delusory blasphemous dementia of odiously ominous diabolically grotesque gives me a decadent distraughtness of desultory debauchery and ghastly gnarly abysmal abjections . It causes hysterical deliriums of maniacally macabre . My swashbuckling surreptitious spatiotemporal telemetry tactician is tacitly inured in a phantasmagoria fantastication of fabulist façade fantasias . I could positively kithe a futurity cudgel phantasm and bonkers bluster boggle with your phrenetically frenzied phrenic and forget my phyletic you preterit rendition autonomy equilibrist .
May 7, 2023
May 7, 2023 at 10:58 PM UTC
I clutched a rose tightly;
It's aroma delighting:
Heaven was mine that sweet day.
But the perfume soon faded,
And my joy was traded
For pain... my flower Had thorns.
And The rose's red paled
To that of my own
Which had spill'd out upon the stain'd floor.
Nepenthean fragrance: gone in an instant;
my stigmata, a permanent sore.
Now flowers are serpents,
That I dare not to grasp:
"And they bloom 'at my heel'"
"'And I cudgel' the asp."
For I squeezed far too tightly,
When sweet Aphrodite
Gave my first flower,
Which would be my last.
May 28, 2018
May 28, 2018 at 9:54 PM UTC
My body know bullies:
Flames to my limbic brain!
I tense, clench, clutch;
Time and stomach prolapse…
(I'm being bullied;
This makes no sense—
Stay? Run? Respond?
How? Snarky? Politely?)
Retreat seems best.
Breathe, think, relax.
Talk it through with my wife.
Let the F-or-F response flush.
Rhetoric can be a fine-pointed toothpick for
Lifting lint from disagreement
Or a coarse cudgel
Driving points home.
My body knows bullies,
My intellect knows notions.
Trust your body.
Trust your brain.
I do.
May 17, 2017
May 17, 2017 at 10:27 PM UTC