"desertion" poems
when I look back now
at the abuse I took from
her
I feel shame that I was so
innocent,
but I must say
she did match me drink for
drink,
and I realized that her life
her feelings for things
had been ruined
along the way
and that I was no mare than a
temporary
companion;
she was ten years older
and mortally hurt by the past
and the present;
she treated me badly:
desertion, other
men;
she brought me immense
pain,
continually;
she lied, stole;
there was desertion,
other men,
yet we had our moments; and
our little soap opera ended
with her in a coma
in the hospital,
and I sat at her bed
for hours
talking to her,
and then she opened her eyes
and saw me:
"I knew it would be you,"
she said.
then hse closed her
eyes.
the next day she was
dead.
I drank alone
for two years
after that.
10.3k
Floating in the Sky
Without a care tonight
Unaware the storm
All consuming, the end is nigh
Lost
My friend disappeared in the smoke
Fast
We are going to have to move
Fast
I left you behind
Oblivion
You fell
Far
Down to the ever shrinking world
Fast
Your body broke
Lost
I lost all of the pieces
I am alone
Facing the storm
Goodbye
World
I watched its antics
Down
The rain pelted
Hard
The lightning struck
As I fell
Low
Down to the ground
Lost
I appear broken
Oblivion
I scream
Pain
For the rest of my days
Till I am gone
I will die a useless death
One in a million
Ways
That no one cares
OBLIVION!
DESECRATION!
DESERTION!
SALVATION!
DENIAL!
BURNING!
OBLIVION!
Mar 25, 2014
Mar 25, 2014 at 8:43 PM UTC
Mama told me to keep her close.
Certainty provides clarity.
So I give her my hand,
And in barter, I quest a true friend.
I have a doubt, I turn to Certainty,
But am met with the silent treatment.
I press further,
Only to be reduced to resentment.
I wonder. How can this be?
Desertion in times of desperation?
Certainty, existing and non existing, remains an illusion.
A body, that will never affirm any supposition.
Jul 18, 2018
Jul 18, 2018 at 11:38 PM UTC
the art of poetry
like any art
produces better work
when writers are not only
erudite but also smart
the lovers' painful state
upon loss or desertion
is voiced much more impressively
with less dramatic flourish
and more of the grate
that finishes the sword
at the old blacksmith's fire
where the hot flame of our desire
thrown into water
with a defiant hiss
turns into deadly steel
ready to **** and ******
friend or foe or lover
in our desperate search
for exits from the mire
or take the unexpected loss
of victory that seemed so close
on a wild battlefield
when suddenly the hero's gallant steed
falls victim to a hostile archers shot
and its proud rider is reduced to shout
"A kingdom for a horse!"
rather than holding a long monologue
about the treachery of fate
in short
less is oft' more
and lets the readers fill the empty spaces
with their own images and graces
Jan 14, 2016
Jan 14, 2016 at 5:23 PM UTC
I know you are part of my destiny
So I haven't cried as much over our separation
True, I did cry an ocean of tears
But not so many to drown the grounds I stand upon
I said words of frustration
And whispered cries of surrender and desertion
But I am open to emotions and those words allowed release
-But- what I suggested in heated state of mind was just that
Suggestions, not proclamations nor plans
You know I tend to submerge myself in evil waters
In order to rise from them with strength even greater
Those shouts you may or may not have heard were the waters I was wading
And now, I am back to the heavens with a heart more unbreakable
Refreshed and replenished with the purity of home air
I remain sure of the decision I made that day
Don't worry, I am still certain of my true love for you
No- More certain of everything
I guess it took all those months to realise it
I needed to break down in strengthening
To lead the way to the point of exhaustion
Because now, it's your turn to stand ahead
As I deep down predicted, my words did not gain action
Although reactions were clearly achieved
Though words were controlled and questions avoided
Your eyes that trick you, are as always unable to deceive me
I guess what I am trying to express
Is my undying true love for you
My heart is unbroken, despite what I said
Still holding you within, still cradling our infants to come
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 2:07 PM UTC
Perplexed by the lack of emotion
This service once the fight of the nation
Little thought now that war was won
Little thought to who receives the funds
One nation is what was told
All services were once ours to hold
Now the deeds of greedy done
The profits to them shall become
The needy the poor will rot in the gutter
Whilst a city is built like no other
Care not for the want or needs
The delinquency has sown its seeds
No blankets in a harsh winter
No shelter for the wars that splinter
Gone the door where free could roam
Pay your dues again or face the laws at your home
Do not whinge nor whine
Your lapse behavior sees you fine
When its you that seeks their wares
You will find a cost too much to bare
When your cut or wound lays rotting
Reflect your moment of desertion
Remember this the choice was yours
You chose to watch as they dismantled
The Nations Health service and Closed the doors.
Feb 20, 2016
Feb 20, 2016 at 5:34 AM UTC
Rationalization
Participation
Concentration
Manipulation
Devastation
Frustration
Delegation
Completion
Direction
Addiction
Motovation
Contraction
Perfection
Election
Connection
Commotion
Lotion
Jubilation
Revaluation
Fibulation
Continuation
Population
Sensation
Complication
Allegation
Temptation
************
Proustitution
Execution
Desertion
Dec 31, 2014
Dec 31, 2014 at 12:40 PM UTC
Of ***** roasting pans and racks and island fog!
*if you love me, then you know poems wright themselves when standing, driving, bus riding, ********** and especially when
doing manly battle, ******* ***** dishwashing midst island fog
a passing remark goes noticed and summoned to a
Friday night feast, roasted fowl, wild rice with golden raisins and mushrooms, English spring peas, was it a Montrachet?
for dessert the washing up is obligation mine, a traditional desertion,
separation of church and state, her cooking a church in which I worship, she states eloquently:
“Unto Caesaria , Render Her the cleanup”
this is hand to hand combat, no dishwasher mechanical
can scrub like the human hand, and with body english,
water hot, but no gloves employed for this is ***** man’s work,
not for sissies, cleaning roasting pans and roasting racks
that are at least twenty years burnt and crusted with a blackened
finish, residue of other lovers and dinners P.N. (pre-nat)
array three kinds of sponges and some human & metallic *****
no one asking which came first,
the scrubbing away of life feasting residues,
or the poem writing that comes with pre & postscript sleepiness
when I say the dark stains and the grease buildup are
flavor enhancers, am beknighted with starry stares of
“how stupid do you think I am?” and sadly return to the
Battle of Agincourt, the one the American lost….*
but they do source poems that flavor life
2020
Jul 17, 2021
Jul 17, 2021 at 11:54 AM UTC
~
*If I am treason,
it’s you I kiss.
If I am desertion,
it’s you I blame.
If I am persuasion,
it’s you I rob.
And when we kiss dutifully,
smile in simile,
just whose road of promise
will it be?
If I am steep,
it’s your future I will not climb.
If I am winter sky,
it’s your way out beclouding.
If I am compromise,
it’s your eyes that hold no conviction.
And when we drift apart in apathy,
evade with euphemisms,
just whose road of decline
will it be?
If I am consternation,
it’s your dream driven away.
If I am turbulent sea,
it’s your ship high upon waves of doubt.
If I am fruition,
it’s your tomorrow that is sunk.
And when we drink to this tragedy,
get drunk on alliterations,
just whose road of surrender
will it be?*
~
May 6, 2021
May 6, 2021 at 12:58 PM UTC
Fear of absolution, relishing of hindrance.
A wall of black, darkness that rests within
To fall under blistering defeat to reiterate the blood red scrolls of sin.
Decimate remains of a hallowed grave,
Torment and desire to those who strayed.
Falter under knowledge of an atrocious cause,
Beg for the black widow to hear you call.
Succumb to the temptation of a lustrous quintessence,
Grasp at the hot wind of a deserts blast.
Underestimate the repudiation of the reserved contrast,
To be forever forgotten, but to always last.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 7:50 PM UTC
I call you Giulietta, amore dolorosa,
I plead guilty of wringing and clawing my own heart
and I love you, I love you, I love you, dulcet!
with my red paint like some Muscovy ivory ****** of an expatriate
but you, you're the *****
I plead guilty to gross desertion
in the face of your tears in the hollow of the night
--oh, I love you, I love you, I love you, I can't not--
toss my hair, fix my earrings, gold against sable,
but it looks too much like the gold of your hair
and I crumble like the sandswept stone
of Ozymandias, of the relics of some ancient love
some ancient had for the contours of the Sphinx
and I just think up more sweet nothings for you,
because every word is a nothing compared to you,
and how I love and love and love you,
but you, you're a *****
Dec 3, 2012
Dec 3, 2012 at 12:35 AM UTC
All she loved, she loved alone
With broken words upon her tongue.
Her hands beat firm against the walls,
Feeling insignificant but standing tall.
And all she loved, she loved in vain,
Dreaming of sunshine in the midst of rain,
Broken by his desertion, changed by his return
Paper and promises were both meant to burn.
Well, all she loved, she loved for him,
Picture of instability, gone on a whim.
Fires have started for less than this,
Mourning she cries for each sinful bliss.
Oh, all she loved, she never did,
Regretting the moment goodbye was bid.
Broken hearts are for the vulnerable and weak,
Tears for the childish, pessimism for the bleak.
All she’d loved, she’d loved alone,
Left so far away from home.
Don’t show weakness, always be strong.
It’s hard to love when you love alone.
All I’ve loved I’ve loved alone.
Apr 26, 2013
Apr 26, 2013 at 8:10 AM UTC
I found this poem doing algebra,
or sometime after the problems
that crept up on me
in word form
yearned to
join the page.
My face began to rot out the very words
I felt like saying but knew I shouldn't.
The pencil told me it was okay to make mistakes
and I think I went overboard, for the fear of drowning escaped me.
Every memory of the sinking ship I called home held promise.
Sweet salt singing
in and out of my mouth,
I told you I loved you.
bones bones bones
you're bathing in wood
and taste like molasses
thick in my throat
-a knot in the spine
that you tied because
you wanted to suspend yourself in my comfort.
I held you too close and came out with ****** ears.
aching for sound, and screaming
for any answer, some sweet melody that told me
yes
that told me
no.
let explanations take their time,
you deserve it.
desertion of desire
leave me to my streets,
where forgetfulness is salvation
and the path is better than the destination.
lean against me in the form of gravity,
your warmth is firing my senses.
I'm re-experiencing freedom for what feels like forever ago,
for what feels like never.
Feb 18, 2013
Feb 18, 2013 at 1:21 AM UTC
"Get out!"
He yells; orders
"Get out of the car!"
I sit.
"NOW!"
I look around
sorry faces gawk at me
they should be sorry
letting me fend for myself
walking into the desert battlefield with me
then stealing my bags and running away
with sorry snickers
sorry
**** well should be.
"I'M SERIOUS! GET OUT NOW! OR I'LL PULL YOU OUT!"
I gaze out the window
barren deserts,
mossy, sandy mountains,
endless stretches of hard, dead highway
The lock unlocks,
my belongings gather,
my shoes go on,
the handle moves,
the door opens,
my foot ventures to the sandy ground
the door closes
the engine starts
the car moves away
Sorry hands wave at me
my body is still
My face holds steady; a deathly glare of dementia
The car disappears
Realization slaps me dead in the face with its stone hard fingers.
Did that really just happen?
Am I truly all alone?
I look around.
NO people.
NO cars.
Just an endless stretch of highway
Epiphany strokes me with fire warm palms.
I'm alone!
I'm alone!
Sweet freedom!
Sweet, sticky, horrid freedom!
I hurl
I cough and spit wheeze
I wipe my mouth
the saccharine taste of bile still fresh.
I thirst.
I grab my camel back and take a small, deliberate swig.
I put on my backpack and stalk away from the speck of dust car.
I grimace.
I rummage through my never-ending pockets.
I count out five dollars and seventy five cents worth of change.
I grunt.
I hike up the dusty trail.
All ahead of me is sand and dust, sickness and deluging concepts of freedom.
I march on.
I feel the earth echo beneath me as each grain of sand separates.
With each trudging movement my feet slip backward.
With nowhere left to go and nothing left to do
I walk on
with my smile of freedom and my baggage of
Desertion
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 4:12 PM UTC
From the abyss of despair,disdain and desertion
My angel ,my harbinger my reason to blosssom and bloom
you hatched my abeynce and gloom...
Now tht i can see the verdant and braeth the ambience
i can barely be thankful enough to the cryptic zephyr
The rapunzel who led me down her long dark ravishing locks
to the respite of the embittered recluse ....
You r my guiding redolent mermaid who
help me conquer the vast cerulean deep oceans of grief...
Without your love my life is just like a tree without leaves
my heart without beats,ohh my dear i don't knw whr it is,
in my auricle or ventricle but i know it is within my heart and will be forevr for u
which rythyms my soul by giving energy to confront this curious world
I can get the vistage of love from your comely eyes but how simply
you just deny by phoxy lines from your red luscious lips.......
please,please don't play with my emotions it just kills me day and night in motion
My eyes are wet,lips are dried heart is broken, dreams are scattered but still
there is a hope that you will give me another scope.........
and i promise i will not let my love for you go in vain untill the last drop of blood flows in my vein.........
May 14, 2012
May 14, 2012 at 4:25 AM UTC
I have seen it, O world,
I have seen it as one sees the clouds
or as one feels water naked in the cool lake
at the break of dawn
I have felt it as one feels the grapes
seized with savage hands and crushed against one’s teeth
O I have seen the rise and fall of pain
and greed and name and fame
and I have lived the grand ways of the world
of favor and office and recognition
and reward and loss and desertion and days of merry company
and years of desolation and years of patronage and commission
and I have cupped young soft flesh in both my hands;
and I have seen loss, death and growth and promise
and stealth and destruction and infamy
and I have seen genius and I have witnessed mediocrity
and you know, I have amazed and I have disappointed -
as you, O world, as you have disappointed and amazed
I have seen the pageant of emotions
of the rise and fall and the transition and journeys
of all thought and ambition and desire and want
O world, I have seen you and you have much of me
and we have struggled and we have cursed and approved
and we have raised our heads and we have looked the other way
and you have heaped praise and dispraise
and I have created and I have destroyed
and I have cut my own canvas into parts –
but still, O world, still,
if you look at me, if you look –
you know, you know
*I, Rembrandt,
I am always the Monarch*
Mar 1, 2011
Mar 1, 2011 at 7:19 PM UTC
She was trying, so desperately,
To outrun the quiet loneliness of the world.
She held vendettas against the sinister silences that haunt goodbyes,
Against the fading shades of love,
Against the quietness in a voice that speaks to a desertion of love; a death.
(The monsters of her heart).
However, there is a certain bravery in her desperation for life.
To escape the oceans of regret,
To escape a certain brokenness.
For bravery lies in her conviction to live,
To find an irrevocable truth in another,
To deceive the shadows of longing.
In the face of undeniable malice and grandure.
In the fear of feeling nothing at all.
For in the end,
When the silence is deafening,
With a weariness that electrocutes,
And a tiredness of the heart.
She wanted it all to have mattered.
-
*"Do you think I'm pretty?"
I think you're pretty."*
Aug 21, 2014
Aug 21, 2014 at 9:37 AM UTC
I SOUGHT a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the ***** of his faery bride?
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
The Countess Cathleen was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving ****
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
1.6k
She's manifested today like a ghost
appearing from a haunted house.
Desertion is that inhabited manor
from which the voices in her head
urge her into exile, urge her phantom existence.
Sitting upon the berm overlooking
the beach and lighthouse of Coos Bay,
she wishes she could ride the setting
Pacific sun to New Guinea or beyond.
Below five athletic young women
contest the physics of a soccer ball,
imagining the red-white lighthouse a goal.
In other times she'd ask to join them,
but she must lose her personal history now,
remain hidden in plain sight.
The loneliness of this subsistence
a charnel house blackening her heart.
She's Amelia Earhart about to crash
the Yukon's heartbroken cry.
Feb 22, 2012
Feb 22, 2012 at 2:01 PM UTC
I am the prodigal daughter that
will not be returning. I have squandered
your forgiveness, if ever
it was, on small sins
that I probably
could have avoided. Tiny ways
Of asserting my individuality, my
independence, my unwillingness to follow
anyone blindly. The food
I eat, the friends
I have, the actions
I take, the people
I love, they
are not as to your
specifications. I am the prodigal
daughter, the one
that stopped believing in your
(supposedly) everlasting love, your
(apparent) watching eye and protection. I
am the prodigal daughter, I
have given up on trying
for your acceptance, trying
to hurt myself to earn
the warmth and love I never
saw. For so long you
made me feel unworthy
of you, ineligible
for your embrace, and now
I finally know that I
truly do not deserve
the iron bars
of your acceptance, disguised
as a structure to hold
me up. I now know
I deserve more.
Jan 6, 2014
Jan 6, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
I
I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it daily for six weeks or so.
Maybe at last, being but a broken man,
I must be satisfied with my heart, although
Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.
II
What can I but enumerate old themes?
First that sea-rider Oisin led by the nose
Through three enchanted islands, allegorical dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
That might adorn old songs or courtly shows;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, starved for the ***** of his faery bride?
And then a counter-truth filled out its play,
'The Countess Cathleen' was the name I gave it;
She, pity-crazed, had given her soul away,
But masterful Heaven had intetvened to save it.
I thought my dear must her own soul destroy,
So did fanaticism and hate enslave it,
And this brought forth a dream and soon enough
This dream itself had all my thought and love.
And when the Fool and Blind Man stole the bread
Cuchulain fought the ungovernable sea;
Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.
III
Those masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving ****
Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
1.5k
Nestled gently in
hushed lullaby desertion
Beneath tangled barbed spines
of the briar
The dreamer stirs restlessly
as deluge reigns
from the agonizing existence above
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 2:35 PM UTC
Yes I am the second choice
Not the first selection
Always here to cure your blues
Left out of the laughter
Cruelty becomes you dear
Hypocrite that you are
You crawl to me with all your fears
Cry louder so they can hear you
Again they melt my heart
She leaves you
So I never will
Once again you are together
When you fight I take your part
Laugh unnaturally
Loud and obnoxious
Misery becomes me
Desertion a fact of life
Glance at me with eyes of pity
If I see it I'll rip out your heart
Blood pounds through my face
Leaving a shameful stain
Battles not of my choosing
For you I will always war
Time nearly expired
Violent to my core
Forgive my many treasons
I forgave you many more
Feb 8, 2012
Feb 8, 2012 at 1:23 PM UTC
Tennessee Williams, once said, “The world is violent and mercurial—it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love—love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love.”
<>
how succinct, successful a summary
do we require, nary a word excess,
only love comes at ya slap-dash-
across-the-face, to make the point
its presence in everything and every
human touch point juncture, is a
conjunction,,
be a writer, even when muses en masse
desertion seems overwhelming, query
with love this conundrum and fill the
open yet tiny interstitial space with a
soup of creamy hope, inspiration is ever,
never late, for it runs on its own schedule,
which is forever unpublished and happily
irritating us when we least expect its timely
birthing…
wet the eyes, remove the shadowy slumber
residue, with vigorous water splashes, flying
drops everywhere- is that not a poetic command?
rinse the mouth of the failed taste of insufficient
sleep, or the countervailing dry excess of too much,
when we hide from the challenge of game on,
and the liquid sloppy of the premier
day~light~enunciation…
give birth to conjunctions, attach the independent,
linking the minuscule to the primary, and write of
it as if you were the first, indeed, you are this moments
first…
to exit the permanently burning building…you must
run to it, enter willingly and save it and by dousing
yourself with *love, save more than just
thyself*…
Mar 8, 2024
Mar 8, 2024 at 9:15 AM UTC
A screen.
An act of bore
where routine dialogues are said for mere regret over discourse.
A set of characters dressed in their unusual appearances
and mock full costumes.
It's the same all over again.
It repeats,
repeats,
repeats until she repents.
I could only sit here and trace fingers over the glazed screen.
I've tapped,
slapped and
omitted all of joy i've got to get through it yet all in vain.
Her sound of laughter,
mixed with joy and excitement
she's feeling lingers still.
a hope for me to grieve.
The boy who she loved,
looked the same as he was 11 years ago.
For him,
memories came over rushing as the ocean rushes to gallop on shore but for her it was desertion of self.
She no longer remembers me,
the memory of her first love.
I wandered through her trenches,
found her secret yet
still i could not figure how she forgot the boy she called “mine”.
Particle by particle.
I began fading out.
He is reaching for her.
He is holding her hand.
I gasp if i could filled with life
but i turn to rust
and resign from life
as she slaps and shouts at him for the first time.
Sep 17, 2025
Sep 17, 2025 at 1:13 AM UTC