"effigy" poems
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God
Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility
Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place.
Separated from my house by a row of headstones.
I simply cannot see where there is to get to.
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.
Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky ----
Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection
At the end, they soberly **** out their names.
The yew tree points up, it has a Gothic shape.
The eyes lift after it and find the moon.
The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.
How I would like to believe in tenderness ----
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.
I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars
Inside the church, the saints will all be blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence
36.3k
Back in the day,
When I was a little whipper snapper in Leeds,
We would go “chumping”, as we called it, for firewood,
For weeks and weeks.
Everyone built towering infernos,
Ready for November Fifth:
Bonfire Night.
Some made effigies of the “evil” Guy Fawkes,
Leader of the “Gunpowder Plot”
And stood in the street saying
“Penny for the Guy”.
What a night!
Roaring fire on a chill Winter night,
Those flames burning your face.
A World War Three
Of Fireworks:
Rockets, Catherine Wheels and bangers.
Bangers to scare the girls.
Kids painting pictures in the air
With sparklers.
And best of all,
That yummy gingery Parkin cake:
A taste I cannot put
Into words.
Oh and deep dark
Treacle Toffee,
Jacket potatoes,
Roast chestnuts
And Crunchie-like cinder toffee.
It’s many a year since I went to a bonfire.
Politically correct firework displays
Are more the modern thing.
Seems strange to burn the effigy
Of a man who had the sense
To try to blow parliament up –
Especially a Yorkshire Man.
Ha ha.
But then I read that good
Religious reasons are behind
This bonfire Celebration:
Those flames are orange
After all.
Not wishing to create divisions
Anywhere in the world,
It’s still good to see traditions
Being maintained.
Let those fires and fireworks keep rising,
Constantly emerging from the shadows
Of Halloween.
Paul Butters
© PB 27\10\2018.
Written at the request of Stephen Chapman. “Treacle toffee” added later, with “jacket potatoes” and “cinder toffee” added on 31\10\18. "Roast chestnuts" added 18\11.
Oct 27, 2018
Oct 27, 2018 at 6:35 AM UTC
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor's sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would no guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the grass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-littered ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigures them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
8.8k
Lou,
You're an orphan now.
The deciding vote
In your favor,
The good kisses,
The latent reconciliation
Linger in this thick room.
You won't need to clean chimneys,
Work in a blacking factory,
Get your ears pinched, and your **** kicked.
You've laid out a fine plaster effigy
In this cherry box;
Yet Enzo's nature is hidden:
His personal tears
And public laughter
Aren't in this demeanor
With rosary weaved into the basket of his hands.
We've polished our shoes,
So we stand and discuss
The crucifix wedged
To hold up the lid,
And how we follow our fathers' footsteps.
We knew it to end this way
With our fathers' generation.
*But you must know your father lost a father,
That father lost, lost his...*
I too am orphaned, Lou,
And we'll continue on
As orphans do.
Jun 23, 2015
Jun 23, 2015 at 10:04 AM UTC
I was the Crown Prince,
Prince Khurram was my name,
Of Emperor Jahangir I was the son,
Shāhjahān was the royal title I took,
Shihāb al-Din Muḥammad Khurram
Was my formal name.
It was I who got the Taj Mahal built.
You criticize it as wastage,
As an old man's obsession,
An egotistical marble effigy,
A mark of wasted resources,
And a psycho's rare ambition,
You may detest it's purpose...
But I built it out of sheer love...
Love for power,
Love for wealth,
Love for health,
Love for ruling,
Love for display,
Love for strategy,
Love for history.
I want to be remembered.
Just as I want my poetry in marble,
Pure white poetry to withstand,
In the tests of time to prove me true.
Forever, you'll remember me.
And my crazy love for my Mumtaz.
Jan 19, 2016
Jan 19, 2016 at 6:59 AM UTC
vexed by the solidity of the granular surface
of this rough and tumble dream
i awaken to a forest of sunlight's in a dark world
to my sleep numbed mind
it resembles
the artwork of french revolt era
royal court damsel in distress figurines
dancing with dark-ages statues of plagues death
the starving meet the fed
and they struggle for who leads this dancehall of the marcarbe
burning the ashes of the old worlds dead flames
i look away to find her face
near mine
cut into shadowy sections
i hear within her spoken thoughts
the contortions her life has suffered
at the hands of grey faced strangers known intimately by her
i wish with heart and soul to reach out
and comfort
to remove the burden
the shadows of her face
are reflections of the world as she sees it
she is mesmerized by its ugliness
and she cannot close the door to her past
it lay like her childhoods bedroom
filled with broken teddy bears
and soiled sheets
if i could heal you
if i could even ease your moment
i would trade my living soul to have your smile
you are loved
you are so loved
a lame beggar in the rags of a monk
limps slowly from the effigy of a old world
as it burns with unspoken rages
white smoke from the roof
another chapter of history closed
with too many secrets
too many
but the beggar takes consolation
that she was given a second chance
a dove birthed from flames
here in the dust of the old world
you are loved
you are so loved
Jan 3, 2014
Jan 3, 2014 at 3:30 PM UTC
the things we do - indirectly.
i’m drawn to this sort of thing,
torture. but,
i pull myself clear of it.
when she
shakes my hand, her body is elsewhere,
unbothered.
her vessel formed in ceramics and reinforced
tightly
every wish granted, “hey!” i’d say.
it isn’t fair! is it?
i understand these sorts of things
the way i tortured my thoughts into patterns
and my body is elsewhere,
unharmed, because
i pulled myself clear of it. such am i
“above it”: so
it turns out i’m envious
in effigy, “don’t worry,” i’d say.
it’s not real, because
i’m not real
Sep 15, 2010
Sep 15, 2010 at 5:37 PM UTC
It is a violent love affair
I have with things
I cannot share
A ****** bout of grim despair,
A scar, a wound
That's always there
They cannot see the beauty
In the effigy ashes
I use to paint my world
It is an absecence of understanding
That they possess
A whispered scream,
a gentle stress
A breath is a dream
a gurgling
Blood quenched scheme
A quest,
It would seem
To uncover the meaning
In a thousand crumbling suns
Firing warped waves
Of possibility
Until you faint
From lack of ecstasy
You'll never know the truth
In my plea
Unless you take the time
To drown in my sea.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 9:59 PM UTC
The Lost Bird In The Sky
The Lost Bird In The Sky
Somewhere there sits a lone man
at a bar filled with lowlifes
lost in his thoughts
mad at the world
and at her
it's eight in the morning
and dawn is long past
and its eve's seat he'll now nurse
across the bar room
through the blinds, some sun peeks in
over the seedy rug
the sun drying the last cleansing
of a patron's puke
the musky smell the last of his worries
his eyes take in the bar
he intimates a hand gesture to other patrons
and a meaningless nod
indifferent to being friendly
matching the terrain
of the other lowlifes at the bar
all on crutches, it seems
on the wall
hangs pictures of storm clouds
black and ominous as his life
the first of his worries
him and his head always drooping
or were those pictures in his imagination
the music box plays a sad song
smoke gets in your eye
followed by lies
another sad song
stories of his life
accentuated
grabbing at him
his worries
her effect
how poetic, he smiles
him in effigy
through the smoke in his eyes
and more beer
he can clearly see her
with a voodoo doll in hand
sticking needles in him
maybe deservingly
if only he could tell her a story
he thinks better of his thoughts
and a pending epilogue
thirsting for sunshine instead
his eyes glance up at the women bartender
plain, plump, playful, pierced
sunshine for the moment
his lips, and tongue curl
his feet touch earth, seeing if it's still there
as she lumbers back and forth serving drinks
her backside sticking up like a beehive
and for a moment he wants to be a bee
he plays with his beer bottle
running his hands past it's neck
caressing, taking a sip
thinking of his past love
the softness of her neck
*****
her essence
of how pleasing it would be to touch her
her nest
if only he could be a bird for a moment
fly and be in flight with her
together in the sky
making baby birds
their innocence and first tweets
that would have been nice
now ... landed at a hole in a wall
his eyes and thoughts keep soring
he grabs more beer
more beer
pausing to grab some honey with his eyes
he keeps playing with his loose change
spinning a quarter
like watching her pirouette
again and again
she had that effect on him
Logan Robertson
11/15/17
Nov 16, 2017
Nov 16, 2017 at 12:33 AM UTC
Ephemeral lips blooming fully crimson, loosening
Harmonious conjugation of rosewater and saltine sweat
Underneath my effigy of innocence
3 brittle thorns stick detached and of no use; pressed precisely, pinned to place
Making of me a bumblebee, lifeless in strong uninvited arms
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 9:57 PM UTC
A drugstore pallid in waning light, always illuminated in halogen halos.
I am earless with music.
Black metal loud in clanging sets and blows-
foreshadowing the smell of cleaning solution,
air freshener and the outside
sweet at my back
all steeped deep in the rip roaring undertone torrent of cigarette smoke
blended with cheap perfume until I cannot tell the difference.
There is a limp familiarity to the underlying odor
born partially of personal encounter and-
nestled in the hive mind of social experience.
A distillation of regret and remorse,
of lonely,
of irrelevance;
this black hole swallows my voice the way of my ears,
eaten by rust.
Four cans of beans,
kidneys,
in cans squeezed without any power against sagging swells
melting into other curves
and I swerve close and around guiltily,
noting you only as the source of this pungent spring.
You are smiling apologies
ignorant of my apparent inhumanity-
blind to my selfish hands..
Pinioning belly flesh,
flattening,
reaching
and gaining attendance from a better man
retrieving every dropped can.
I’m retreating,
shaken,
tense to alternatively slacken.
My sweat slippery palms with whitened red sharp fingers feel foreign
and I am surrounded by razors then shaving cream,
moving from shampoo to conditioner,
the whole store is infected with smell.
Staring at nail clippers/snipers clipping touch smooth sooth my tense mind-
don’t look
**don’t
look**
I can sense little else but dread
drawing closer
you are now crouched so close I’m gagging,
taken forcefully-swept away in an olfactory flood
roiling in rot,
currents of solitude exude from your smiling sullen appearance when I turn to you
fumbling
with my electric ears,
surfacing
in a breath of Amish silence
broken with simple request
and I want to scream at you that I am not a man to ask opinions of
that it does not matter what fake nails she glues to her body
that she is excluded and I don’t know why.
I choose swirls of cream suspended within watery milk,
over childish lady bugs framed by yellow
or dots of red alternating to black,
an epitaph to a lifelike effigy.
Dec 10, 2010
Dec 10, 2010 at 1:42 AM UTC
Back again to the black skin over heavy sands
Back in action at the totem effigy
Poised for fight or love
The brother/sister
I've become
Standing tall
Under weight of worlds long felled
Sleeping sheets wake, hold the bones again
From old days
Fly the knife hooks, ship and sail
Speeding, open, for the circle's end
Sep 17, 2017
Sep 17, 2017 at 6:00 PM UTC
High on Cateye and Ghost Sight,
I stumbled through the streets
of Salida del Sol beneath
the watchful eye of Father Elijah.
The roulette spinner cobblestones
clicked as my feet dragged
past the courtyard.
Like an effigy, the homemade martini
between my fingers burned
my gin-soaked lungs.
Sweat and vermouth settled
in the circuits of my collar
as I gasped for relief.
Hologram gamblers tossed golden
casino chips in dried fountains
as they strolled past me and through
the Sierra Madre's gates.
Jun 15, 2014
Jun 15, 2014 at 10:03 PM UTC
Friday,
you smiled at me,
as I made my way out of the wreckage
Your smile was all I noticed,
set in your soft face,
teeth brighter than energy-savers
Now I know why you still smoke
And now it seems,
every man clad in black or grey,
a trench coat that buttons up to the neck,
is you..
You are an effigy,
of every man who masqueraded under the guise,
of potential lover
Who fumbled for their phones,
requesting mobile numbers,
Whose sallow hands have caressed me,
unwanted
But their teeth were unseen
Yours are a badge,
you proudly show off,
in all those smiles,
you give like gifts to me
But I can not keep them,
because they belong to the girl,
whose swollen lips you kissed,
not long ago
There is always another,
who expects your smile,
and knows by heart,
The number of teeth you keep
Dec 4, 2014
Dec 4, 2014 at 4:10 PM UTC
I would of handed you a rose
With beauty catching all eyes,
Energy that gives the term energy new meaning
Yet you have given the effigy
Of the former bright glow of your heart
First preference
And my rose would be better purpose
For someone else
A poem to myself
Jun 1, 2022
Jun 1, 2022 at 3:05 PM UTC
What is that reality that appears to me in dreams,
chock-full of misgivings and doubt. I counteract my fear of life
with my fears of slumber,
dust in my eyes and stiff as lumber.
In truth - I'm not stiffened
by fear,
by nausea,
post-pubescent sacrilege,
or all of the above.
I'm not up-kept,
grizzly with ennui;
I'm dizzy, confiding my loss.
I feel the lips that kiss
but can't be drawn: from mind,
stencil
paper
pen,
on sheets of thick
pale and
cellulose,
for the heart to mend.
My unsteady hand
is my fearful friend
A soft embrace
from a warm mind
Somber
and so full of Life
clung to by the scent of Death
Endowed
with an eternal promise and regret
from veins of plants
or the glow of stars.
Cold, mechanical debt.
(my heart, so full of...)
(my mind, so hot with...)
(my body, trembling in...)
I am gulf-like
a stream full of trees and glass
echoing a promise of shattering wind.
Will I be published
after my death,
asleep predating, a life conceived.
Will I live to see myself alone,
and to discover
that which I'm not?
Or will I stutter
and wallow a curse,
Up towards the sky,
Until the final verse.
On a boast
or chasing the Rail,
pale as dirt, and shallow still.
Will my true love abandon, break, strain,
Burn away the wax,
or hurry to blame?
Omit my evils from the star-charts,
then just to vacate the void.
From the half-broken corridors of rocks,
nooks, crannies.
Carry laughter through the night
burn the effigy bowed-down,
before dawn's courageous,
ever-splaying light
Angels,
of Carlo and Marx,
plenty by noon
festoon,
again by day
thus replay,
Endeavor to infinity, fair child.
Remold the light by Day
and remold the Day
by Night.
Feb 23, 2013
Feb 23, 2013 at 12:53 AM UTC
* *A tear is shed
For those who are blind to the beauty of this world
Who can only feast on sarcasm, writhing in irony
* *It soon evaporates.
Pictures of a future dressed in ribbons and lace, cast off and burned
Pictures of the future carrying disdainful dystopia, infamous for invalids
Hung to admire in sublime distaste by those that seek knowledge
And see the repetitious antiquities of time that come to pass
But others care not for plans and the imminent
Those that keep to the light of the gas
And carry the past to the present
Hoping for trends to try again, reliving what they had never lived
Laconic and loquacious in emotions and words
Against the gossip, but paradoxically
Pushing for the creation of their “ritualistic social Golgotha”.
Those who abuse the glory of their munificent, malicious mentality
Pathetically unable to procure authentic happiness
A tear is shed.
Inside the recesses of the soul where emotions dare not dwell.
It too evaporates.
Trapped in fear and the “cliched harlequin speech of suicide”
Begging for the masses to cast them out and find each other
A tear is shed.
Never seen but felt as it evaporates.
Felt by those who envelop themselves inside themselves
Those who plagiarize their sick self-conscious souls
Those who bring about the very misfortune they strive to devour
Those who are effortlessly envied as they exploit their habitual recreations
By those who wouldn’t dream of falsified euphoria
Those who bastardise and deface the name of creative individualism
As waters of the soul are purged and discarded
They are felt by those
And are quickly washed away in doubt and regret
Keeping to the light of the gas, dangerous and warm
Feb 25, 2013
Feb 25, 2013 at 10:48 PM UTC
~
*find your torch
light me up
brittle and cracked
I like feeling this incomplete
I hope the nightmares don't start
without me
but if they do
let them stir
as the crow flies away
on dangerous days
with a host of stars
fiery god-smacked
in the vast well of night
where I could play king
for an hour
to a wounded land
and a pair of queens
kept in high dudgeon
lest they sing
their burning song
in rich hues
and deep tones
painted on the warm
analog tableau
on my skin
distant
distillation
happiest when sad
with time and space, some
of the intricacies
can be airbrushed out
but I don’t think
imperfect love
can take too many fires
like that, because then
a renaissance heart
would certainly go black*
~
May 24, 2022
May 24, 2022 at 11:51 PM UTC
Inside my throat expands under water mountain ranges for miles
Sea salt love affairs dance across shell pink lips
Telling all of Poseidon's secrets through drift wood bonfires
I love you
Parts are missing so I gather bits and pieces close
Always in need of more cosmic adheisive to keep you here
Stalwart and worthy your effigy stands carved of whale bone steel
Starry night sky corsets cinching our tied tongues together
We once had a name, a place
Desires and wishes flooded the air between us
Now it's just me constantly rowing against the current
While you glide smoothly ahead riding the trough
I have storm clouds hidden in my sunshine smiles
****** pearled laughter stifled and worn
Too tired to see the nautilus of my thoughts dragging me under
Apr 14, 2012
Apr 14, 2012 at 9:43 PM UTC
The Atlantic Ocean and I sigh
in unison against the shoreline
of Amagansett Beach
and as she inhales;
she drags the land above below,
one grain of sand at a time.
In a few generations
she will have devoured this entire beach,
eventually the whole Island
and with it the multi-million dollar estates
which decorate its topology
like an effigy to human vanity.
I would say never before in history
has there been so few with so much
who have done so little
but that would denote
some kind of significance
and they are hardly worth noting.
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 4:51 PM UTC
You say I'm golden
I say, "that's a lie."
I'm sun-dappled at most
Yet you still smile
In the shadows of my light.
My bad moods loom, solstice
Too often, I ache for heat.
Still, you speak of my radiance
When I feel like a garish Vegas effigy.
In the end, though
I'll let your illusions be.
But, love
Even if you think I'm light's zenith
Being your star
Is enough for me.
Oct 16, 2018
Oct 16, 2018 at 1:13 PM UTC
*Increasingly distorted memories
slowly succumbing to darkness
Some fallen, some forced into
the oubliette of my subconscious
Figures of the past linger tentatively
before receding into shadow
Familiar strangers they do seem
as if merely remnants of dreams
The looking glass of childhood friends
mirrors an unrecognizable effigy
An idealized reflection of a former self
unflinching in its accusatory glare
Whispers persist from imprisoned depths
for I am silently being recalled to life
Somehow I've forgotten how to be
the only person I've ever wanted to be
Somehow I've forgotten how to be me*
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
He touched our hands
But unconcernedly this famous man
And would not look us in the eye
For fear of contact or what might be worse, connection
And we could hardly blame him, for after all
He had each day been singled out for close inspection
By ones like us, in awe of his celebrity
Circled in the shade of his perfection
Hoping for the star-dust sprinkle of acuity
Or sparkling eyes, admission to his inner cult and clan
He wore blue jeans
And scuffed sneakers as a badge of proof
Of his coolness and unconcern
While we his audience with concealed attention
Enviously eyed his hairy confidence, unconsciously
Imitating in each phrase that low convention
Made small adjustments to our store-bought suits and ties
And nodded several times in bright pretension
Made small amendments to our smiles and lies
Flicked photo-phones in pursuit of custom and routine
He gave a speech
A flippant interview, this famous creature
A well tossed phrase, a rounded cliche
Poured forth like brandy in a glass, convivial
Or apple cider-ed vinegar in pewter mugs
A sardonically French-accented phrase habitual
Well humored, heavy lidded with testosterone
At interlocutor women with the pens and pads
Delivered in a low and purring monotone
For all the world as lovers, each to each
He stretched a smile
A modulated shift of teeth and beard
"Genius? Not I" with deprecation
"My shallow intellect, so poor and so ephemeral"
Delivered in a tone that mocked inclusion
While we assumed an elegance, unintentional
A nonchalance that shields the wide charades
Unmoving in our breathless, but conventional
Genuflection to the the notion that pervades
Our addictive appetite now sated. For a while.
He kissed their cheeks
And stroked their arms, with sensuous ambivalence
But absently, as if he cared so little
In his farewell. 'A bientot' he said and 'Au revoir'
And slipped away amongst the moving Milan crowds
Creative and creator, irredeemably a star
With, in his wake the smiling scriveners staring
At his retreating back in Stark excitement
In the middle of the circling and squaring, at
The alpha-wolfic effigy. The Shepherd and his sheep.
May 6, 2013
May 6, 2013 at 6:46 AM UTC