"dandled" poems
Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expired,
And past return are all my dandled days;
My love misled, and fancy quite retired—
Of all which passed the sorrow only stays.
My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways;
My mind to woe, my life in fortune’s hand—
Of all which passed the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange, without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death’s delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done—
Of all which passed the sorrow only stays.
Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune’s fold.
4.1k
Now,
We are mellow.
Having spent the evening exploring the threads of friendship.
That had come adrift of warp, weft and weave.
Time and distance had
silks, snag-tagged-torn,
on the bustling-busy,
hectic-hustling of work
and family.
Teasing-taunt,
needle-gnawing,
small, gap-rip-rents
in the snug comforter
that is... the wonder of us.
Us, so many secrets woven. So many, nights of tissues and sobbing tears.
Darning in daring exploits. Cutting away knotted,
fear-angry-scream-fighting feuds.
Cutting work, for days of delight and nights of desperate yearning.
We used anything at hand, rough wools, pieces of string and twines.
To weave a blanket,
to hide us from life's storms.
We were,
so young, so strong, recklessly-brash,
stupidly-joyous
and braveheart-fools.
And now, time and age,
has softened our work. Felted and fuse-melded,
the fibres into a beautiful entity.
That we store-save in the heart's cupboard,
of special and precious things.
It is an heirloom of sorts.
We bring it out,with occasional, humble-grace,
to be dandled and stroked with reverence.
Caressed and cossetted are our memories held within the abstract weave.
We are the dwindling
of a youthful exuberance
flung-thrown-heaved
to the wild winds.
So now, we are grateful to be curator-custodians of the retrospective nature
as we augment-append
and reiterate-repair.
A new thread here,
now,
embellish-embroider,embed
and tatt-stitch.
My son and your twin girls, squeezed, splashing
into your tiny bathtub
big-grin-giggling in the gurgling water.
Our future, here and now,
is the brightest of silks,
Our past, mellow and yielding in,
the luminent opulence,
angelically-asleep in,
the other room.
May 31, 2014
May 31, 2014 at 6:30 AM UTC
My mother dandled me and sang,
'How young it is, how young!'
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.
'He went away,' my mother sang,
'When I was brought to bed,'
And all the while her needle pulled
The gold and silver thread.
She pulled the thread and bit the thread
And made a golden gown,
And wept because she had dreamt that I
Was born to wear a crown.
'When she was got,' my mother sang,
I heard a sea-mew cry,
And saw a flake of the yellow foam
That dropped upon my thigh.'
How therefore could she help but braid
The gold into my hair,
And dream that I should carry
The golden top of care?
2.2k
Like truthless dreams, so are my joys expir’d,
And past return are all my dandled days;
My love misled, and fancy quite retir’d—
Of all which pass’d the sorrow only stays.
My lost delights, now clean from sight of land,
Have left me all alone in unknown ways;
My mind to woe, my life in fortune’s hand—
Of all which pass’d the sorrow only stays.
As in a country strange, without companion,
I only wail the wrong of death’s delays,
Whose sweet spring spent, whose summer well-nigh done—
Of all which pass’d only the sorrow stays.
Whom care forewarns, ere age and winter cold,
To haste me hence to find my fortune’s fold.
2.1k
She frolicked through trouble, and dandled with mischief. Alison Wonderland; everything I wished I was and so much more. Ever emanating her doe-eyed façade; proclaiming our jests mere “mischief.”
Yet, an unspoken verdict (Foretaste? Conception? Notion?) had cloaked the truth: wickedness rippled beneath our parade.
I nuzzled her contours; my peripheral eye – nailed to her profile, her blueprints, her chassis. I stalked her mirage – dancing with vapor.
She glissaded about, no fool to my truth, varnishing my mantle.
I belonged to Alison: perpetually at her side. Our couplet became a “we.” So, We regretted nothing. We veered for the pyre: caroming(skimming?) those embers alit with vice.
She narrated my mental seminar. Discarding my dogmas to uphold her own; and thus, my mind was hers.
My mind was her mind.
Alison made heads turn, and mouths water, as we sidled – hand in hand – down the street. She was my Christmas morning: each colloquium – giftwrapped with finesse. She personified paradise, she illustrated utopia. Hatching our Carnival; netting us, enamored, sidling the Carousal. We’d skim, we’d sail, her halo – my fossil. Her lips, her eyes, her hands… they echoed the innocence of a child. Niave, innocent, and giftwrapped in wonder.
Little Miss Wonderland: my very own fairytale. She was mine alone; she was mine to keep.
Did I want her, or did I want to be her?
Alison Wonderland.
Her aura – so celestial – paralleled my prose. When she banished my husk – Maple Thatcher – I cackled good riddance… And I grew a new personality to accommodate her own.
For, without Ali – devoid of our we – I doubted the very existence of me.
On my composition, she bestowed rhythm. She gave tune to my silence; her chimes, her cadence. My ink was her song – fusing a symphony. A symphony of Alison: the melody to solidify our tryst.
My mind was her mind.
And yet… somehow, I missed a carriage – or two – aboard her train of thought. For, the same felon spiting my existence, was the angel I loved to life. Gladly, I huffed, and I puffed, and I blew Maple down.
Fused against Alison, I needed none of Maple.
Carnival infatuations…
Alison Wonderland.
Jan 23, 2016
Jan 23, 2016 at 8:04 AM UTC
DEAR Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.
When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things,
So bitterly, you'd dream they longed to look
All their lives through into some drift of wings.
You've dandled them and fed them from the book
And know them to the bone; impart to us --
We'll keep the secret -- a new trick to please.
Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his draughty seas?
Or is there none, most popular of men,
But when they mock us, that we mock again?
1.2k
*To embrace her
Is to be dandled
At her lap.*
© 2015 J.S.P.
Feb 22, 2015
Feb 22, 2015 at 6:11 AM UTC
There was a Young Lady who tweezed
The hair from her nose as she sneezed;
She then plucked her eyebrows from lowbrows to highbrows,
That plucky Young Lady who tweezed.
There was an Old Person of Cairo,
Whose conquests were carved into hiero-
glyphics on stones where a pharaoh's wrapped bones
Are preserved in a chamber in Cairo.
There was an Old Man of Kampala,
Who prayed in the morning to Allah,
And in the bright light of the day, and at night,
That observant Old Man of Kampala.
There was an Old Man of Burundi,
Who prayed to the Salvator Mundi
Who met him upstairs and who answered his prayers
And who sainted that Man of Burundi.
There was a Young Person of Turkey,
Whose motives were muddy and murky;
He lived in the dark in the shade of a park,
That shadowy Person of Turkey.
There was an Old Man of Manilla,
Whose favoritest bean was vanilla;
He added the bean to all his cuisine,
That gastric Old Man of Manilla.
There was an Old Man of Beijing,
Who'd study all day the I Ching;
He balanced his qi with white rice and green tea,
That mystical Man of Beijing.
There was an Old Lady of Donegal,
A sister named Mary McGonegal;
She ruled with a ruler every pre-to-high-schooler,
That punishing Lady of Donegal.
There was a New Baby, whose nose
Was loving the smell of a rose
When it noticed the riper brown smell of a diaper,
Which offended that New Baby's nose.
There was an Old Man of Hong Kong,
Whose nose had a luminous ****
It lighted his way by night and by day,
That lucky Old Man of Hong Kong.
Mar 9, 2025
Mar 9, 2025 at 10:39 PM UTC