"disquieted" poems
On a thin ribbon of light
unfurled from unseen heaven
direct to her parted robe
and disquieted ear
comes an angel’s voice,
the dove’s winged companion,
with words foretold in the book
now slipping to the floor.
What hunger fires
our flickering imaginations,
that require Grace come
wrapped in velvet purses-
with proof of the child’s
purity dripping from tables
and prophet encrusted walls?
I think they had it all wrong-
Fra Angelico, Veronese, van Ecyk,
and even Martini with his
gilded apprehension.
I prefer a scene without
unblemished lilies-
no fine linens, puffing cherubs,
or embroidered pillows on display.
I picture her instead
at her daily labor- pulling
on a ***** rope at the village well.
With calloused hands, she
draws her trembling reflection
skyward, when, announced
by the slightest breeze,
a stranger appears.
Before their eyes meet,
a bird’s flight distracts her-
water splashes from the bucket
washing the dust from her feet
and soaking the tattered hem
of her robe. His silent glance
holds her only for a moment.
In the distance, a voice
calls out, “Daughter!”
She turns, sets off,
bowing to her burden.
A cloud’s shadow
melts in the heat of the road.
Tom Spencer © 2018
Mar 15, 2018
Mar 15, 2018 at 8:30 AM UTC
Plant a Woman
"When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself."
John Muir
See the photo, on a stone walkway in a park on an island, somewhere in New York State
*Years after first encountered,
Returned this day, purposely,
To trod this bricked-path
Where a solitary brick, these special words carved.
This brick, a patient lady-poem in waiting,
Required a search-and-locate mission,
To verify my memorized eyesight,
Freed to release these words,
Years in the forming, from whence first espied.*
**When a woman plants a tree, she plants herself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~**
Much less than obvious,
Import of said statement,
Complex, notes, scents, questions...
Perhaps this is the thus, the why,
Why this po-effort, somnolent, yet disquieted,
In recesses, drew lines on the wall, with one line
Slashed across, for every month,
It gestated, unborn, but not offering to die,
It did not come effortlessly.
I am seed of man,
Planted within woman.
I am a tree of iLife ,
My seed planted within
You, iReader.
I am as much woman as man,
Perhaps more so...
Wrote you, told you,
I Speak Woman^
Perhaps more so...
Even better than man.
No shame, I rise with the dawn,
To bake the bread,
Alongside her, her secrets, she has, need learning,
Her bread, raisins, cinnamon and secreted inside,
Wisdom of loving kindness.
She scatters seeds with recklessness,
Who can know where wheat will be needed,
Someday, her children exiled?
Forest investor, tree planter,
Futures she sees, where others see but wood,
I follow her lead, for I cannot but fail to
Prosper, when on paths tread,
Formed, excavated by her footfalls.
I give her rubies,
I give her gold,
When I ask where it be,
She laughs and says adorning the tongues
Of the hungry and in need.
So I give her more.
Indeed, I plant my seed inside her daily,
Let her plant trees as she desires,
Her forest, the refuge of my old age,
So she plants trees, as I
Plant a Woman.
Thanks be, that her trees,
Come from her *****
Now I understand Mr.Muir.
Sep 2, 2013
Sep 2, 2013 at 3:02 PM UTC
Good for visiting hospitals or charitable work. Take some time to attend to your health.
Surely I will be disquieted
by the hospital, that body zone--
bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies crucified up onto their crutches,
bodies wearing rubber bags between their legs,
bodies vomiting up their juice like detergent, Here in this house
there are other bodies.
Whenever I see a six-year-old
swimming in our aqua pool
a voice inside me says what can't be told...
Ha, someday you'll be old and withered
and tubes will be in your nose
drinking up your dinner.
Someday you'll go backward. You'll close
up like a shoebox and you'll be cursed
as you push into death feet first.
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.
No. I am a daisy girl
blowing in the wind like a piece of sun.
On ward 7 there are daisies, all butter and pearl
but beside a blind man who can only
eat up the petals and count to ten.
The nurses skip rope around him and shiver
as his eyes wiggle like mercury and then
they dance from patient to patient to patient
throwing up little paper medicine cups and playing
catch with vials of dope as they wait for new accidents.
Bodies made of synthetics. Bodies swaddled like dolls
whom I visit and cajole and all they do is hum
like computers doing up our taxes, dollar by dollar.
Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its ice-cream pack
and then stitched up again for the long voyage
back.
2.1k
Disquieted
( Not amused anymore )
••
We shed our Humanity
For
?????
?????
?????
And the Rain!
And Death., too
And
She wanders on in torn
Clothes
And she is ***** and enslaved and goes mad
And we go on
????
??????
?????
Long the evening it's stories are sickly and men are weak
•••••
We
????
????
We are men?????
NO!
NO.!
NO!!
•••••
We are dumber n **** and men are not dumber n ****
With dumber n **** daughters cutting themselves to get high
n sittin back waitin for the police state to make em dumber n **** slaves
••
••
(No they don't
Really)
••
No offence meant
••
But yer all ugly dumber n **** *****
••
Writin yer dumber n **** love/hate poems
Glorifying
Yer absolute indifference to those you claim as the ones you know n love
You can't even tell if yer a boy in a girl's body or a girl in a boy's body
Or a donkey in a pig's body or whatever YE just stick something somewhere wiggle around and then feel somethin n then get irate at whatever n whoever
Is there.
n cut yourself n get proud n tell the world who in their dumber n **** fashion tell YE how sensitive YE are for bein dumber n ****
And I so dumber n shitly read it n go mad
--
All on a quiet evening when we should all be out playin with the children in the park
But no!!
!!!
!!!!
!!!
We too dumber n ****
•••
Anyway
I DO
love you all
Maybe we all best settle down
n leave our simple
Bodies alone
For THEY. ain't dumber n ****
It's you livin in em is
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 10:11 PM UTC
*An oracle possessed by a spirit disquieted,
he contains a world unknown even to himself,
a poem gets written by itself, within himself,
organizing material eclectically on its own
from roots to crust, essence of experiences,
mingle with hopes, fears and yearnings,
creating alloys of emotions, welding words to mean different,
fixing formations and evocative images,
when he stops contended, unfinished yet, many parts in dark still,
then the readers get themselves invited in to the thickets,
disentangle the vines, make way through the foliage thick,
hanging branches and twigs, light falls in the darkened corners,
the poet and creator, the oracle himself, sits looking at the flowers and fruits
bathed in a new light, on what the subconscious spoke,
when he listens, the singing of the birds acquires new meaning,
sound of the running brook has a rhythm not familiar,
that take him to the sea, where all end in a swim, like in a dream*
Dec 19, 2013
Dec 19, 2013 at 3:16 PM UTC
I did errands today
and I was confused
Something was wrong, astray
I mused
I settled into the evening quiet
And my disquieted soul shouted
"The flags were not at half staff"
As the West Wing staff and Cabinet was trimmed by half
Yesterday, Congress was sieged by riff-raff
45 egged them on
Congress counted the Electoral votes
but our troubles are not all gone
Today, I needed to see that flag half-mast
My grief begged for a symbol against the bombast
And yet the flag waved, full staff, as if nothing and no one mattered
And no one has said a word
Jan 8, 2021
Jan 8, 2021 at 12:36 AM UTC
when the word ****
resonates from the lips of
any teacher, i cannot
help but perceive
how many students' heads
fall downward, staring at
their disquieted hands. i am
wondering how many people are closing
in on themselves, lips pressed together
in thin lines, burying themselves
six feet under into graves
constructed however long ago.
somewhere within the catastrophic enclosings
of their minds, they are the people
reminiscing violent robberies, not
of television sets or radios, but of
innocent souls. they are suffering
from the post-traumatic stress
of feeling naked skin and cracked
ribcages and heaving lungs
never burn in the turbulent
wildfires left
behind in their burnt
lives; a simple word
is enough to have them
reliving the mournful
affair forming their
empty chest. i glance around the
room for students whose
memory gnaws at their
scarred skin, and
the problem is
is that there are too many.
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 9:50 PM UTC
Potted plant sways
Unrelenting dew
In a disquieted dawn
A sigil
A herald -- embodied
Gazing over the balcony.
Forlorn
Comprehensive
Echoes
Jan 25, 2013
Jan 25, 2013 at 2:22 AM UTC
I wish to embrace,
my children's faces,
with these eyes,
burning into memory,
their joyous smiles,
before the fading light,
is finally extinguished,
the dancing stars,
which are their own eyes,
remembered,
held closely,
envisioned,
but for the betrayal,
of time,
giving way to darkness,
and shrouds,
shadows they become,
but for the light of imagination,
and memories,
unforgettable images,
be still,
this disquieted soul,
allow the beautiful to extend,
words are as worlds,
a new place from which soulful expression,
is easily rendered,
imparting magnificence,
to beckoning followers,
and newly found friends.
Nov 20, 2012
Nov 20, 2012 at 11:55 PM UTC
PROSE FOR ALL PEOPLE
CONSIDERING SUICIDE.
The last month has been torture.
I've tossed and turned at night.
I've been begging God just to take
me Home... then MAD at Him for not
answering my plea.
My body is wracked in pain.
My life is a dead-end.
My dreams are shattered.
But now I know why He did not...
This morning my 90 year old
father was choking. He hardly made a
sound as the breath left his body. I don't
know how (God?) but I KNEW something
was terribly wrong. I went over to see
what had me so disquieted in his regard.
He was gesturing to me frantically...
This had happened before. We both knew
the drill. As I put my arms around him
from behind and began the upward jerks
of the Heimlich maneuver, his arm got
caught in the mechanism of his power-
chair. We began to do a sort of a gruesome
dance... his body struggling not to die...
mine to bring it life...
I screamed at my mom, who was in
her room, "Call 911!!! Dad's choking again!"
I applied pressure to his solar plexus,
just under his ribcage by lifting him firmly.
With each motion saying a calm prayer... "Not today, God. Not today. He's going to LIVE. Today... in Jesus' Name. AMEN."
Then my father spit up the eggs which
had been lodged in his windpipe. His
breathing was ragged. But became regular.
No ambulance would be needed today.
As I looked at the wizened little old man
in the power-chair I realized something.
I had not saved HIS life as much as
HE had saved
MINE.
I may not be much or have much.
But I have him
and my family to help out.
I may never realize my dreams. But God
will always give me another day to try
to live them... a precious Gift...
LIFE.
SO WHO AM I TO THROW THAT GIFT
BACK IN HIS FACE?
So think about it. Perhaps later today
you may see a child run out in front
of a car... and pull him back. Maybe
you'll find a frozen starving kitten...
you'll smile and put a dollar in the hand
of a homeless person who was ready
to give up til your act of kindness made
him reconsider...
Who knows?
The life you save....
SoulSurvivor
(C) 12/17/2015
Dec 17, 2015
Dec 17, 2015 at 12:11 PM UTC
It pierced through her.
An invisible sword
Straight into her chest,
Through her heart,
And out between her shoulder blades.
A yearning.
An anxious awakening.
And all she heard from her thoughts were
"To live! To live!
I want to live!"
Aug 3, 2018
Aug 3, 2018 at 4:11 PM UTC
Which is it: you can't get started unless
you're riding some current bigger than your reporting voice
or the best time to write is when you don't have much to say
and without plenty to say about everything you'll get better right
away.
Form is very often a betrayal of reality.
Although we are initially drawn to poems by their passion and
urgency,
we are convinced by the formal means invented
for their impelling motives. Every accidental crack or dent.
Not just mildly disquieted but actively repelled,
running for the River Styx, the doors of Hell pell mell,
there must be a crack, deep and unmendable, in the poet
that the poet must forever try to mend. Or not.
While mortal poets imitate, immortal poets steal.
That's plagiarism. Fortunately the public feels
less strongly about poetry than television,
communism and aging gracefully through meditation.
Now I'm being silly. My silly indefatigable lusting,
silly sadness, silly arguing and silly trusting.
All I do not know about our nation's history, wars
and what showering the people you love with love does.
Ransacking apothegms, algorithms
and selling the loot as memes,
dissemblings. Bearing fardels
with the warrior's skull.
Apr 11, 2016
Apr 11, 2016 at 6:35 AM UTC
Logic to the dissonant, confetti into flames
watch it turn to ash.
The disquieted don’t want comfort,
they want to protect their definition of purity
and simply, for the complexities of the universe
to serve them solely.
Dissatisfaction becomes identity,
a vice to sate,
just one more redemptive hit
and they’ll sleep
dreaming of their idyllic reconstruction of reality.
Everyone’s a visionary
blind to the piteous state
of their mass-conformist unity fantasy,
forgetting that autonomy isn’t only in the mind of the beholder.
Aug 11, 2020
Aug 11, 2020 at 12:21 PM UTC
*
* Living under
the heady cast of the Juniper tree ;
an existence founded over sweeter decay
* It thatches a callous scabbing for us to build upon
but releases gases from beneath
that humour our sleep-waking state
* Everything is yield to its medicated sterility
yet,
as time passes,
things become more vulnerable to rotting conditions :
loose pore attachment
splits in nails
soft grey flakings
withdrawn circulation
moisture
fluctuating body tempature
unattached thought
disorientation
thoughtless and extreme mood
forgotten bursts of severe aggression ...
* Fertile tiny flies
travel through
the sponge of everything :
they balance this environment
* Disquieted woozy days
and slum summer
and guests who feel foreign
when our displays spill over...
it’s all mallatuned
* Small tumbles, injury and self care shelved
* Entertainment is imperative
jar in mit
distraction is key
merry made and merry go round
and kilter unkeen
and one patient taking care of the other patient
crying jokes at each a smother
unkept nesters
bruises and guestures
emotionally infested infantasy
investment ingested
under the guidance of the Juniper tree....
the botchful why of the juniper
Apr 29, 2019
Apr 29, 2019 at 11:38 PM UTC
I am a French horn, a bottle neckless hourglass and butterscotch tape
You're a red harp with veins painted on the side
When I come home, you see me as an acrylic heap with chips of lead and belly aching homing words
Scotch sticks and smoke smells and the stitches are uncomfortable on my neck where you often warm your hands
I am a masquerade of shellfish clamoring on about the epitome of burlesque humor
You’re alien to anything other than sourdough and design
I have structured my thesis around burlesque and you fail to see the humor
When I fear the apologists
You fear the escapists
I am the tigers of the world, borrowing viciousness
You’re a long pause, loved and disquieted, painting my stripes as veins
I’m freaked out now because the apologists are escaping and the escapists are apologizing
At this clear impasse, you pity and press on until my fingers at the French horn drain to my sides
I am an island in a puddle of sand
Jul 16, 2020
Jul 16, 2020 at 1:14 PM UTC
Why are you cast down,O' my inner self?
And why should you moan over me
and be disquieted within me?
Hope in God & wait expectantly
for Him
for I shall yet praise Him,
Who is the Help of my countenance
and my
God.
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 9:54 PM UTC
I made the same mistake I always make,
Promises to myself that I never want to break…
But I do.
As if my swan song is on replay.
Imbibe, Undress, Feel Alone, Regret.
Regret.
Regret.
Women are supposed to wait, not give so much away. There is this whole game that I never had even begun to play while others were already in the advanced stage. I know there is something different about me. I can feel it in the way people talk as if there is something they are seeing that I am not feeling. The disconnect feels like a gap that is widening and crumbling away underneath my feet.
I made the same mistake I always make which ends in me being comfortless
Strangers ask me how I could be single in comparison with the characteristics that make up me, as if beauty was mutually exclusive with companionship.
I want to tell them it’s because I’m crazy.
Because I choose to pursue men who I cannot obtain and usually only after I’ve given anything they could possibly want away.
I’m exhausted and distressed
Afraid that my mistake will consume the only male friendship I had yet to taint
Disquieted knowing I could easily desire more when you do not feel the same.
Assuming every ignored text is more then a simple coincidence
Lost and afraid my comfortable place, my friend I turned to when I wished everything else to fade away, is no longer available free of any constraints.
Jul 25, 2013
Jul 25, 2013 at 6:37 PM UTC
If you could see past my eyes
Into my disquieted brain
You'd think I was obsessed
Or at least a little insane
You would shake your finger at my thoughts
As I chase ribcages while caging myself
Into a world of bones and rot
I can calculate calories into a formula for happiness
Like I measure my merit with a measuring tape
And I know that "looks aren't everything"
But it looks to me like they are
Because society suggests that you "be yourself"
While screaming the importance of beauty and wealth
And we all know that ugly doesn't make it
Into the movies
Just like fat doesn't make it into the magazines
If I could look into the mirror without seeing
Distortions
Then maybe I could convince myself to eat bigger
Portions
But as the story goes, as the song is sung
Another girl loses to the battle of one
I'm at war with myself, and it's making me sick
Sick in the head; sick in the heart
I sicken myself as I'm falling apart
I hate this hollow pursuit for a hollow life
And yet I secretly starve myself
In an attempt to get it right
You might be somewhat confused
As to why I undergo this kind of beating
Yes, hunger is painful
But so is eating
May 31, 2015
May 31, 2015 at 10:12 PM UTC
Nightfall. Half-closed eyes
Shattering stars. Daylight cracks
In melancholy cups, in ambient air
Coffee slithers, lungs smolder
Hurricanes sing to raindrops
Rabid bottles, prancing shadows
Footsteps glide, sideways sways
Sobered by non-existent memories
The pale goddess smiles. Dreams
Behind scheming walls. We dance
In a place of vertical confusion
Future's past quickly slips away
Whispers. Bays of broken chords
Forgotten winds. Ruminations.
Transient scribbles, dusty tables;
On misty panes. Forgotten. Decay.
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 10:01 PM UTC
The naive traveler,
Staying fast upon the well-known trail,
Assumingly forged by others,
Heard, as he tried not to listen,
Rustling among the brush,
Disquieted, he scurried,
Never peering into the deep shadows,
Afraid of what he might find or might find him,
With eyes opened wide and centered upon the track,
He moved with all caution and haste,
Avoiding all the trips and snares that could allow him to stumble,
Dark was this jungle,
And moving about him,
the shadows and calls of the coming night,
He quickened his pace,
Fearing behind him,
Something gaining upon and moving ahead,
An ambush,
He knew if he would run,
The formidable gauntlet,
Would have little time to prepare for him,
Howling and leaping,
He'd overcome,
But the gauntlet was never set,
The sounds off the trail was his own creation,
His own fear,
He continued to run,
And he still does.
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 9:42 AM UTC
For breakfast, I brought my self-loathing undisguised by bruised, hollow eyes and disquieted moaning,
all crunched up into the contours of your hard edges,
like thin-veined broken and browned, misused leaves orphaned from its parent.
My desperate limbs always reaching, wretched, to shoddy fill into the gaps that your self-confidence casual posture had formed on the floor;
empty-air spaces and pervasive shadow caverns I have claimed without verbal invite, promise or asylum.
No self-confidence to speak from, anguish and primal, seeking shelter;
pain entwined with pain making easy comfort in forgetting.
A soul disquieted;
there are pieces stripped straight down, pinned together in different places, unspun and uneven smears of paste that don't ease closed the obvious imperfections.
A harmful machination unexplained, fitted negligently back together,
the design with no catalyst to begin, untended and purposefully without purpose.
No comprehensible enrichment, selfish perversity plodding culmination,
almost complete.
Build, re-build; conspiracy laced with nonchalance; twisted person alchemy.
Any or Each of Many becoming
the godhead of a shallow, malcontented deception,
rudiment contortions to mangle, punish, ruin
an altruistic heart; a beaten wooden phoenix shaped from past wrongdoings and misery.
More burning away, combustion of reclaiming, bones and sinew steeped in the truth of the universe.
Unjustified and never the differentiation my heart once blamed, not good nor bad.
We, two souls alike in circumstance, circumference, cylindrical,
watching the world make more of us, clutching bird-like shoulders merged through a pale waning.
Existent time-limited victims of disappointed alliances,
made in the land entrenched in the business of making monsters who make monsters.
Jul 8, 2015
Jul 8, 2015 at 12:17 AM UTC
We all do our best to get something,
Called money
To survive in this cruel place,
Called world
We have been controlled by those thing,
Compete to be its slave
And too busy to even realize,
That no number will fill the satisfaction in our heart
We were born with nothing
Just breath of life
Yet we live with greed as we grow up
That greed eternally craving for more and more
Not realizing that,
Our heart won’t pumping someday
Our breath will just stop
Our blood won’t flow anymore
Little do you know
That day could come
Anytime they want
So why still disquieted about those inhuman greed?
Sep 15, 2018
Sep 15, 2018 at 7:31 AM UTC
What poetry do we say sounds like the truth or life?
How many paint a proper picture of things before us on an internal canvas?
But how many things bring out the poetry all on their own?
In this way, a proper tomato sandwich contains much more than juice, seeds, skin, and pulp-
It contains the thanks of a season's worth of work, wrapped up in a translucent layer, tough enough to veer a dull knife into finger, but thin enough to steer a sharp blade into herbaceous flesh,
Deep enough to pile high on a plateau of simple starch, waiting for the juice of a life grown outside rather than mixed in a sterile kitchen.
This fruit emerges from a jealous ground who would stockpile these gems away from the mineral salt and the crushed spice that brings meaning from the ground
Is this why the tomato harvested from another's nearby garden tastes all the sweeter than that plucked by an anonymous picker miles away from the pleasure it provides?
The summer provides the climate to agitate one so deeply that they burrow into the soil to find the refreshment that would quiet the tongue of hunger and bring resolution to a disquieted mind, so far removed from comfort.
Jul 21, 2023
Jul 21, 2023 at 10:03 PM UTC