"embankment" poems
i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 5:53 PM UTC
say goodbye to the bucolic summer
the rafts of winter are upon the banks of your desire
please placate the wild streets of abandonment
let the edges of your neediness
take you into independence
i am less dense than a fly
and more round than the sky
i am a shade too dry for some people's liking
are you wanting a more permanent vacation
the icing on the cake is the real equation
immediate desires all forsaken
our love is worth practicing non-anticipation for
if you kiss me now i’ll be forever liberated
if you show me how
i’ll take you to the 9th dimension
seventeen floors above the world
and we are standing on
an indefinite embankment
i am intimidated by your perspicacity
as the persimmon sun sets upon the horizon
Jul 23, 2018
Jul 23, 2018 at 3:01 PM UTC
Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk.
8k
In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds
Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual
My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary
Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments
I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path
The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux
As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate
Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift
Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary
Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode
And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
I saw a little elephant standing in my garden,
I said 'You don't belong in here', he said 'I beg you pardon?',
I said 'This place is England, what are you doing here?',
He said 'Ah, then I must be lost' and then 'Oh dear, oh dear'.
'I should be back in Africa, on Saranghetti's Plain',
'Pray, where is the nearest station where I can catch a train?'.
He caught the bus to Finchley and then to Mincing lane,
And over the Embankment, where he got lost, again.
The police they put him in a cell, but it was far too small,
So they tied him to a lampost and he slept against the wall.
But as the policemen lay sleeping by the twinkling light of dawn,
The lampost and the wall were there, but the elephant was gone!
So if you see an elephant, in a Jumbo Jet,
You can be sure that Africa's the place he's trying to get!
5.1k
My poor, stupid poodle,
peed on the pedestal
of Cleopatra's needle
on Victoria embankment,
near the Golden Jubilee bridge.
( Oh! I am miserable!
I couldn't stop the debacle)
The poodle's puny misdeed
embarrassed not just me,
but the whole city of Westminster,
as fire alarm rang out loud,
when an overzealous constable
gave a distress signal.
It brought the fire chief himself,
who came rushing to meet
the emergency situation,
thinking the poodle was trying
to put out a fire erupted
on the ancient monument,
once shipped to England,
overcoming great adversities,
from Africa, long back.
Dec 17, 2012
Dec 17, 2012 at 11:31 PM UTC
Where, oh where has this money been?
It's been up to London to buy me a woman.
When you'd had your pleasure, what else did you there?
Took in a live show, some sights to enjoy.
When you had seen, what did you then?
Went home to the wife, a yarn to spin.
Did you not waste such hard-earned cash?
I need the excitement, the seedy thrill.
Where, oh where has this money been?
Changed hands in a back street for needle and syringe.
What was then done to inject some feeling?
A little ****** just to keep me going.
But what about AIDS and ***
It's one of those things that won't happen to me.
How do you finance such expensive tastes?
Sell stuff to kids at the going rate.
Where, oh where has this money been?
It bought me a meal and a little something to drink.
How did you earn this financial gain?
Begged it off some geezer down the Embankment.
Why are you out here sleeping so rough?
It's a long tale of women, gambling and drink.
What of these others with whom you share this door?
Just poor bleeding kids with no ******* jobs.
Where, oh where has this money been?
It bought me a contract with a few back handers.
And who did you bribe for their deceit?
Oh, it wasn't bribery, just a little commercial grease.
What will you build to make your mark?
Another block of flats, fully air-conditioned.
On what in the past is your empire built?
Prostitution, gambling, and a few tons of drugs.
Jun 28, 2019
Jun 28, 2019 at 1:40 PM UTC
The Nail-biter saw her as his saving grace from a life of lonesome worry
She saw him as a meal ticket and a free ride
He over looked her granny ash
He disregarded her speech impediment
Always holding his tongue when she stumbled on certain words because he loved her and all her imperfections
She had a bullet proof black hole heart and his common sense was stuck in a sound proof cell as they had what seemed to him to be, passionate ***
He worked day and night, coming home with dishpan hands
Saving up to buy her a bouquet of hydrangeas, tulips and baby's breath
She took them and said, "Wow, thank you you're such a good friend"
The Nail-biter left and drove his car into the nearest embankment
She did not attended the funeral, she was too busy having dinner with The man with OCD who didn't have tics but tocks
She knew the routine and loved every second of it
Sep 14, 2014
Sep 14, 2014 at 12:39 PM UTC
He gives her a pink carnation
It's the first prom she'll ever attend
She's waited so long for this moment
So she can't wait for it to begin
Her daddy says, "Have her back by midnight"
He says, "Yes sir", as he opens her door
When she sits down, he pulls from the driveway
As the bottle rolls out in the floor
She says, "I didn't think we were drinking"
As he held the bottle to his lips
She says, "Stop it, what are you thinking?"
He says, "Come on just take a couple sips"
She promised her dad that she wouldn't
And she always tried keep her word
The sound of a car horn blowing
Was that last sound that she ever heard
The ran off the road, down the embankment
And Into the side of a tree
She didn't know that he'd already been drinking
And was as drunk as he could possibly be
He gives her a pink carnation
It's the first prom she'll ever attend
She's waited so long for this moment
So she can't wait for it to begin
Apr 15, 2010
Apr 15, 2010 at 3:41 PM UTC
you should’ve never unpacked your bags,
because it gave me this expectation that you were in this for the long run. i’m still running. i have swallowed so much blood that tastes like your regret from biting down my tongue to cage it behind my teeth from screaming about you to a world that wants my blood for ink.
i am more than a number, but 24 makes me feel better than 26, so i sit in jeans that leave red marks on my hips and make it hard to breathe, but see it’s two inches and
i am more than a number, but i know every test score i ever got and still remember fourth grade and question three and crying because suddenly my mistakes had weight and i couldn’t fix things by saying sorry and
i am more than a number, but i was always the middle child, always the not-quite one, not the best friend to anyone, just a girl with kind eyes and jeans that are a little bit too tight and
i am more than a number but to you i am seventeen, ten and three. and lets be clear; it’s the three that haunts me, because *** doesn’t matter and ‘girlfriend’ is just a label, but i wish i was the first girl you truly loved, and sometimes i still wish i was the last, but with you i fear i’ll forever be just another number.
i drove over 17 bridges the other day and next week i'll do it again and i think nobody gets what that means except maybe you.
i just tell them i love the scenery, that somebody must've made these trees blush just for me.
you know how i love to change the subject?
i bet they'd love the view. i bet you would too.
and all these metaphors for other things are beside the point.
this is a metaphor for why i don't wear my seatbelt, a metaphor for why whiskey knows me better than you could ever try to.
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars are doing that cliche thing where they talk quiet jet noise and some lumbering giant made everything shake.
not those hand metaphors, not another one of those & keep the sea to yourself,
i think it was a train, it's sound hugged the embankment for a moment and then trailed off into nowhere,
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue' close to my home and it's no coincidence that i've never been there.
i’m just flatlining now and hoping that you can look at the next girl the way i looked at you.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 9:54 PM UTC
i was walking around
in the Tate
on the Thames Embankment
London that day
it was hot hot hot
the heat haze
shimmered
above the river
like the sweat
that rose off my back
i saw you
all mixed up
with Picasso's
misplaced eyes
in Malaga blue
long necks,
curved limbs askew
morning balconies
the sculpture of a goat
made of a basket
***** ram
with a bicycle seat
we weren't allowed to ride
i kept thinking
of painted naked flesh
Velasquez, Degas, Matisse
and flying to Malaga,
Barcelona, Granada,
Paris, Venice, New York
all the cities we could **** in
over and over and over
if we ran off
together right then
any cheap hotel room
with a bed
and a shower
would do
we could give up
on looking at art
completely
screaming
meaningless
poems
words
endless
passionate
words
consumed
by life
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 9:31 AM UTC
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Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.
Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.
A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.
Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.
So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk.
Dec 9, 2009
Dec 9, 2009 at 7:29 AM UTC
When you decide to wash the car, make sure of your stability
Don't lose your footing, or any form of your own credibility
Some driveways are a dangerous place, they can be a liability
Knees get grazed through carelessness, but that's your responsibility
You've slipped down the embankment, you wasn't banking on a stumble
Coming into contact with the concrete, giving you good cause to grumble
Is it possible that your garden, has got loose parts that crumble
Or was it due to clumsiness, that made you fall and tumble
Water splashing on the car, but it wasn't that translucent
You ended up with ****** knees, from your unruly movement
Bucket dropping did not help, with your clean car improvement
I can't say that your actions, didn't cause us some amusement
We had a laugh at your expense, because your knees got scuffed
Spilling water on the path, is when your legs we're stuffed
You didn't look too happy, so I guess you wasn't chuffed
Because you fell, it'll be some time before the car gets buffed
One thing I will mention, we would not have seen you fall
If you didn't have that camera, that you wanted to install
But it has served it's purpose, cos we have seen it all
You was not completely focused, and you wasn't on the ball
Security has now been viewed, splashed water not in stealth
Is it worth the hassle, when you clean the car yourself
You don't want to trip and fall, and damage your leg health
Take it to the car wash, cos it doesn't cost much wealth
Your unfortunate leg scrapping, we hope it was not deep
But we nearly ****** ourselves, when you fell in a heap
We laughed at your misfortune, it almost made us weep
Cleaning cars come at a price, when it's done on the cheep
Some Ideas are valid, and most of them go far
Set backs are not wanted, make sure that your on par
Be aware of your surroundings, if your washing the car
Trips around the garden could result, in a blooded scar
Dec 11, 2018
Dec 11, 2018 at 8:41 AM UTC
You were talking
About a girl
She laughed
Clinking like anklets
At times
Grew dull
Like an overcast sky
Other times
I strained my ears
To stencil her in me
When a solitary pigeon coos
From the office wall
Am out in the sun
Listening to you
And through you
Her.
At times
You become her
And she, you
There is a you
Who laughs like glass bangles
There is a you
Who is silent
Like a broken bangle
Myriad yous.
We become alone
When we love
I have stood
The sun
Rains
Nights
Deserts
Abandonment s
Forests
Seas
Conduits.
Alone
Alone
I can see that girl
That tree shade
Her solitary sobs
That embankment
Her solo conversations
That desolate stone
Her lonely laughter
What is more agonizing
On this earth
Than to be in love.
Translation : Shyma P
May 5, 2016
May 5, 2016 at 1:38 AM UTC
watching lightening
rip through the tenebrous sky,
anger-filled thunder scorns
the midnight hour.
We only came here to watch...
to breathe in cool night air.
I couldn't distinguish the shock
of your touch
from the wave of currents striking
the window of this sundance
crossing the blackened sky.
A feather-touch:
my lips, your lips, ours;
soft, seductive shivers.
Touches so electric,
we were unaware
of the youth-filled
dodge gunning
towards the embankment...
teen kisses, too innocent.
(They see our mirror image.)
In excited jolts,
like those of lightening raging
through the mountains,
we seek refuge
to thrill-seek
the precarious union
we are.
Feb 9, 2010
Feb 9, 2010 at 7:27 AM UTC
Displacement
Heeds
Over
The rocky embankment
Adjacent
Pleas the cries of the waste less
Complacent
Buries the lies of the bank men
Taken
From the very mouths faith bred
© 2012 Christina Jackson
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 5:01 PM UTC
The hillside before me rolled out like a wave
awash in my thoughts 'til I noticed the grave
the headstone was tilted and covered in rot
a memory of someone forgotten, but not.
The scene triggered feelings which drew me way back
to a time when I dwelt in a one bedroom shack
the love of my life had grown cold, and despairing,
my heart shriveled up like an unpickled herring
I remembered thereafter, and oh, what a mess
I led me to places too dark to confess,
dying for flowers from somebody dear
I'd fill up my window box year after year.
and soon the depression grew into a hedge
though flowering plants kept me back from the ledge
"I'll never be happy! " I quite often thought
a forgotten old headstone all covered in rot.
I swore if I ever recovered again
I'd wait for the right one, the Boaz of men
but for all of the damage, the shape my heart's in
be blessed if he'd notice, so how could I win?
With all of these memories weighing me down
I slapped myself silly and turned up the sound
and opened the windows to let in some air
the sun on my face and then suddenly...glare!
I veered off the highway which cut through the land
a two lane construction of asphalt and sand
took the embankment at an ungodly pitch
and suddenly airborne, shot over a ditch.
Landing my vessel across the divide
I hoped for the best for it's brave underside
the dust settled soon, and how foolish I felt
Thank God I'd remembered to buckle my belt.
And there in the front seat, assessing my plight
dazed, but amazed at this beautiful sight
as 'Love is a Battlefield' blared in the grime
Wildflowers grew in the trenches of time!
You the forgotten who languish for years
ditched and bedraggled and drained of your tears
thinking you're nothing, a sunset that's fading
grieving love lost while your best years are waiting
Tend to your gardens wherever they are
keep yourselves fresh with the watering jar
Remember, like flowers, the wild ones too
your maker, your husband, will take care of you.
For your Maker is your husband--the LORD Almighty is his name--the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth.
Isaih 54:5
Nov 10, 2013
Nov 10, 2013 at 7:54 AM UTC
A screaming pierces the serenity of the river valley.
Overturned wreck of a car and splattered, shattered, scattered glass.
A fresh-cut gouge in the dirt embankment where he clipped it
and in retaliation it flipped him on his roof.
He staggers from the chaos
moaning not from pain, but from the Jaeger, Keystone, and regret
of totaling his mother's car.
He flees the scene with his homies, his fellow drunken cronies
and the witnesses are left behind, scratching heads and raising brows.
I among them contemplate the carnage
and I try remembering a different time, ten years ago or so...
This place used to be so beautiful
before the partiers and potheads and Varrio Locos took it over.
Shallow waters filled with algae drifts and interspersed with boulder bridges.
Sandy beaches, nature trails, wild grapes, and fishing holes.
The last free-flowing, undammed, undamned river in the state...
Now it's bloated with beer and blood and bad decisions.
Not a bare rock face remains, each one caked up in graffiti makeup.
And the air, once frequented by the heady scent of sycamore
is far too thick with marijuana anymore.
Santa Margarita, choking on smoke and dope and disrespect,
once my heart and home and refuge, now and forever a cheapened wasteland.
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 1:11 AM UTC
Twilight star of the season
Brightly shining, newly risen
Tell us where to plant our feet
We wish to fly so very far
Away from glowing heady daze
Of spent up and spoiled days
From the muddy embankment
Our hands have formed and shaped
From the silhouetted shapes
Running down the slope
And fleeting like our hope
We pray to you morning star; you are not very far
Aug 9, 2014
Aug 9, 2014 at 2:14 AM UTC
The mighty Chicago Tribune got hit last night.
Well, its newspaper box did,
the only one picked from a spot-assuming
row of four corner mainstays
to suffer that indignity of toppling.
I found it this morning, blue-
and-white face down fifty feet further on, and
eating pushed-down daisies from
the commuter rail's prairie-grass embankment.
It couldn't tell me those dead-men
tales of daily mischief's end, but graffito-
tagged its side did sigh, "Someone
feels my news ain't got the values it used to."
May 24, 2010
May 24, 2010 at 2:33 PM UTC
And I spun and I spun and I spun
So out of control
No rhythm
Short. Choppy.
It lasted so long, so quickly.
I don’t know what happened,
But I saw it.
Even though I didn’t.
My car did pirouettes
Down the embankment
Until it found a spot to rest
In between two hedgeposts
And barbed wire.
They say your life flashes before your eyes
In moments like this,
But for me,
It was moments I wouldn’t ever have.
The things I wanted to accomplish,
The people that I loved.
It was heartbreaking.
When I crawled out,
No different than when I got in,
I laughed with tears in my throat.
Today, the world is the same,
But I will never be.
Dec 13, 2018
Dec 13, 2018 at 10:40 AM UTC
Beaches get jealous
But I'm not repentant
She brought her bikini
And changed where she
Thought no one could see
Heaven knows at sixteen
I was full curious
I saw the goods
Lost my equilibrium
And fell down the embankment
To this day
I may have selective memory
About events
I do, however
Remember the reach
And the bend
And how I swear
Her belly button winked
Apr 27, 2020
Apr 27, 2020 at 7:58 AM UTC
Drink from it, that pearly blackness,
Instructed the trees; towering
Dark spires bleeding upward.
Not ominous, but cynical, like
They’ve seen this all before.
Take it as it is, they insisted.
No, don’t think of her, not now,
nor him, nor him, nor her.
Stop passing the buck
From your field; let it graze.
Don’t be embarrassed to be
That wounded deer. They
Offered some gesturing limbs
Towards your lunar embankment,
But refused further comment.
I sat there awhile, the low shrubs
Rubbing shoulders, greasy-palmed
Handshaking as if placing bets on
How long I’d last, How long it’d be
Before I drank from that pearly blackness.
May 30, 2014
May 30, 2014 at 10:35 PM UTC
London welcomes visitors.
Vagrancy.
You can't see me but I see you
uncaring
staring at the faces
hiding in the hiding places
the alley ways and short stay cubby holes poor souls in poor condition
welcome to the new perdition.
Down at Millbank
the embankment
a euphoria
we live in Victoria under the droppings of the day where we lay
and you can't see us
but we see the bus
we were bussed in
put our trust in
and now we are here in the heart of the City
with no job or no home
and if you feel alone
think of how we feel.
Can't integrate or get help from the state
and we're stateless and helpless
and guess what,
some of us drink
some of us think it's the answer we seek
until today becomes next week and next year
and on the streets paved with gold we've got old.
We should have stayed at home.
I'll put the NVQ's on a barbecue
that's what I'll do
because it's cold
the only options I'm told are to sink or to swim
I think I'll give in
pack up my stuff
enough is enough
and I'm fed up.
May 15, 2013
May 15, 2013 at 2:05 AM UTC