"embered" poems
She grew tired of her thoughts
and the weaknesses they had found,
So she flicked her embered cigarette;
and burnt them to the ground.
Apr 9, 2015
Apr 9, 2015 at 10:59 AM UTC
The Red Queen Believes!
~~~
The Red Queen,
in her youth,
believed in as many as
six impossible things
before breakfast
~~~
The Old Poet,
in his embered tinder, yellowing days,
believed in as many as
six possible poems
before breakfast
~~~
Nov 5, 2015
Nov 5, 2015 at 7:37 PM UTC
That time of drought the embered air
burned to the roots of timber and grass.
The crackling lime-scrub would not bear
and Mooni Creek was sand that year.
The dingo's cry was strange to hear.
I heard the dingoes cry
in the scrub on the Thirty-mile Dry.
I saw the wedgetail take his fill
perching on the seething skull.
I saw the eel wither where he curled
in the last blood-drop of a spent world.
I heard the bone whisper in the hide
of the big red horse that lay where he died.
Prop that horse up, make him stand,
hoofs turned down in the bitter sand
make him stand at the gate of the Thirty-mile Dry.
Turn this way and you will die-
and strange and loud was the dingoes' cry.
4.4k
Hypotonic collusions
Rising in osmotic lesions
An eruptive soul reversion
Emissions of embered logs
Each lightening with a glow
A youthful straw of clemency
Pollinated sandals, handled
Gripping the flesh in vessels
Houses of lost and unreal dreams
Vicarage gardens of suppression
Masticated in delegated abstractions
A surmise of death and redistributions
Each a beat rise, slide on frosty ice
Un-enveloped in seasons of erosion
Delusional commotions sprawled
In the dance of the ecstatic programming
The body waved and led in hypnosis
********** with the intangible essence
To make sense a revised tense,I fence
Straying in lenient lunacy to fields afar
A merry to ferry the phoenix dance
Rattles shaking in transit translations
Drums pause settling in finesse pond
A coitus of dimensional valour and vice
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 9:37 AM UTC
Gold shed upon suckling gold,
The time of the bole blackens,
Of the dark mounted through dapple,
While in the sealed apple
The seed cradled toward cold.
A gold on gold spent,
Put by from an elm in its years
Now its gilded of days,
Over turf’s dishevelment;
Where all which is green sickens,
All the fresh shall be sere.
All which is green sickens,
And it is but for a time
Those embered veinings blaze
A year’s delirium;
Or neared of other space,
Unportioned azure shall close
One of more, and which is,
One which goes.
Let the little pupils that will,
Of vision, gaze for salt
To whet their gazing, wit
In one weather is high
From burrow and lair, by
Nether providences’ default
An all’s accrued.
And apposite, beyond
Such primer beholdings, has
Its long accounting known
The beetle’s morsel thus
Was rich, and the slug’s bed on
The oak’s generations, deep
Over the lark’s bones.
In slough of Edens fast
Wit in one weather shall stand,
While millennia nibble at
The sensual apple
Toppled it net,
Plenty in the palm of the hand,
And the fallen not fallen, not lost
From out its certitude—
For our unbeggaring
Has been gross. Few and late
To cherish an immoderate
Wish, hope’s calculus,
Love’s hope; few to miss,
From natural tally ******
In the lime-girdled space
Of choice, where alone
Man can abandon what
Is only his own;
And in cold and tarrying
Their rearisers sleep:
While to the granite cheek
Light’s purples bring
Infinite their ministering,
And past our finial
And ragged crests, to keep
Time’s ambient stood,
Propose horizons from
Their shadowy quarries; while,
In an unwandered wood,
Or under the indifferent foot,
Is let fall, let fall a fruit,
Through eternal leisures down,
For but time’s unravelling.
2.9k
"Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood"
T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
~~~
perhaps.
can I communicate
what I cannot fully comprehend?
my voice poetic keener, age-softened,
grows less popular
for it
no longer reaches for
christmas ornament words and creamy cake-in-the-rain imagery
leave that to the better ones.
cherish simplest:
coming home to fresh sheets,
plumped pillows,
music,
tousled hair on pillowed histories,
river walks,
the lightest hand touch that rouses
the fireplace of contentment to glow briefly,
from logs that are more embered ash moments
than substance
capable of more flaming
the rumpled strivings of the young poets,
creativity of the masters of
voice and dancings bodies,
shopping lists of life~items that
reshape, restore my old~ness,
the revelations of the historians,
inducements to believe
in yet, more.
these exteriors are comprehendable.
don't forget the orange juice,
the first chilled swig from the plastic,
confirms I am breath-yet-capable,
one more poem-mission ready,
the mission objectives still not published.
Sun east welcomes me,
woman puttering kitchen coffee noises
it is neither spring yet or winter gone,
in-between like me,
in-between naissance and history remnant
question thy fiat,
Mr. Eliot,
cannot frame myself,
my who-I-am
six decades of myself.
can it then ere be said,
his poetry communicated
or ere contained ever a single
genuine word?
can I communicate
what I cannot fully comprehend?
Mar 15, 2014
Mar 15, 2014 at 8:38 AM UTC
You walk backwards from the setting sun,
barefoot in the fading gold,
watching light dissolve to dusk,
no secrets left untold.
The evening wind plays with your hair,
soft as whispers never said.
I watch you moving through the light,
with every step I too tread.
The golden glow clings to your skin,
paints you in its embered hue,
a fleeting masterpiece of fire,
Your beauty bathed in red-shifting blue.
I love you in this quiet hour,
when day and night stand hand in hand.
As you walk backwards from the light,
And I watch you from where I stand.
Feb 14, 2025
Feb 14, 2025 at 4:36 AM UTC
There is no fantastical world in which civility between us can exist. Civility, of course, being perceived in the sense that we can coexist pleasantly, without a romance topped with jaded raspberries and peppermint liqueur.
After a generous amount of sneezing and crawling and crying in the moonlight with half embered cigarettes hanging from our dripping mouths, I saw this. A grievous vision of Hank Stamper clawing at my back end, a still-life embedded someplace dark and dank, a cradle so forgotten and filthy that only a mother woven from dirt-covered cloth could love it. We built some ridiculous, disgusting house and made love in it. Day in, day out.
In the end our urinary tract infections infected our kidneys and became fatal when paired with the dysentery. I will always remember your name paired with dysentery, my love.
I promised myself endlessly that I was laying in such a softer settlement without you. Your reckless lifestyle was grimier than mine and our paths collided and collapsed with validity, I was sure of that. I am sure of that. However, it seems my insistence that I recover from you, brings with it some kind of ****** up honor to be dealt your way. Should I write a song about you? No, I'd soon hear it in your trapeze act. Should I make a film about you? No, the lead would be sinfully attractive and further engorge your rather large head. Should I write a book about you? Should I? Have I? Can I? I doubt you would see the honor here. In fact, if you were to look for anything other than consistent misuses of punctuation in my writing, I feel sure you would find solace and comfort and silence would soon follow.
Mar 2, 2014
Mar 2, 2014 at 7:23 PM UTC
the pyre of my soul
incinerates my interior
as I watch our flames burn
relentlessly from my lips
like the words that removed
love from around my heart
who would have believed
your whispers would burn
like the sun; singeing my
entirety with venomous
blisters flung with displeasure
bafflement sears...
there's no more emotions,
forgiveness is shamefaced
a misdirection of affections
your misunderstanding
leaves me naked in this
moment, heated in affront
this second fore, nothing
matters anymore
inner abashed turmoil...
roils like a cauldron upon
a campfire, its embered particles
I breathe and ingest for naught
in whimpering gasps
wanting to desecrate that
smirk rising upon your
handsome features; a look
I once found to be endearing
once in awhile
that you took away, too...
your total disdain; dousing
our flame of eternal love of
all that beheld us in God's
light; which, now leaves me
awash in bile, dazed, open-mouth
stares from dimming eyes
is all that looks upon my beauty
with such pain; makes me want
to scream, take me
want me, love me as once
before
re-ignite our flame...
those thoughtful embers are
undirected words drenched upon
an uncaring mind, directing
my soul and heart towards
the moon and the burn of stars
that light up the sky of my
heart and mind as if I could
have altered the course
of your bitterness, until
I can no longer sigh in want
of your love
thoughts of me gone asunder...
filling my lungs with silent
animosity towards all that you
stand for, my only want now
is for you to stay away from me,
allowing me to live in solitude
inside the hunger that pours
like stinging tears from my eyes,
let me be without changing
the sound of love still singing
within my heart
Jun 12, 2012
Jun 12, 2012 at 3:22 AM UTC
*from now on,
all poems will,
that yet reside inside,
shall be here inscribed
why?
the line between music, song, lustrous life and love is indifferent
do not misunderstand - indifferent is not meant as uncaring but more as undifferentiated and interwoven into a singularly
so oft lives de-track, de-tract as threads become frayed and
the dye color fades, but once loved, cold is an excised word
from life’s Merriam Webster rulebook
in all my pain and sadness the embrued, embered kernel
yet faint glows
off and on, even a glance somehow brings it back, for of all
life’s lessons learned in everything, loss and grief,
the single thread snakes back, and there is love in everything
and in every unborn scream and script
so a journey ends and commences
in the same locus and locale,
the quest;
search and seek that love seed*
for there is only love poetry
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018 at 12:55 PM UTC
Crippled creature broken in ballistic bone fracture about the blind tile,
freckled in blade licked flesh,
back strap shoulder blades quiver gaunt as skeleton wings
sprinkled in splashed satin fruitless reds and auburn oils,
the child’s insides splattered across the stomach of the floor,
limp muscle binding that of bundled circuitry,
the boy only resembling needle and sticks
a mass of anatomy straightened out in lifeless splendor,
bone splinters clotted in saw dust muscle grindings
the face showered in locks and tangles,
galaxies and embered suns,
tassels golden simmered,
the creature’s hair a mane torn over his black socket eyes,
fierce in ferocity growling,
a monstrous roaring of prideful bangs,
Fallow face and cheek stomped to the floor as a rag
his form splashed about ground and surface.
Skin nearly bleached in cancer cell white,
a body folded as parchment, joints and ligament playing the part
lightless strewn as an idea lost in lifeless.
A white room hollow, muteness staling,
the busting of a boy broken in scaffold limbs torn
intwined amongst netted nerves wound about spindled bone
branched out in checkered blood stain
Shattered arms resembling puzzle pieced wings,
boy bathed in synthetic sunlight kisses,
But a watch crushed in brittle bronze shards about God’s feet
Aug 30, 2011
Aug 30, 2011 at 12:44 AM UTC
When I went to bed I was 17 –
plumes of raven hair and cigarette smoke
wreathed my head and I coughed,
tamping the embered end before kissing
him goodnight -
soldier’s cap a tilt to one side
muscled chin blemished by lipstick
as the screen door flags between us, and
summer makes its last sweet
serenade to the dancing aspens
while momma chided my lackadaisical
entrance and
fairy flight to bed.
At ten o clock I wake now
the aspens stand still, bare, black.
I look down to see
withered fingers writhing in tubes,
ugly blue veins, a strange
woman sponging my lady parts,
calling me “sweetie” like I was a child.
I scream for momma,
I look for him -
my love, my soldier -
starved for familiar faces, as
panic ropes its tendoned grip
through my ribcage, around my trapped
spasming-butterfly heart.
What have you done to me?
Strangers, monsters, ********
I groan...no words come out, but
squeals and shrieks like a strangling
rabbit, my neck caught in a wire.
What’s wrong with me?
Where are you, my soldier?
Where are you, momma?
Why are they keeping me from you?
You see…when I went to bed I was 17.
When I woke,
I was on my deathbed.
It’s not fair, momma.
If I could do it over, I...
I never would have left him
on the porch, I
never would have passed you
in the kitchen, I
never would have slept
not one hour
not one **** minute
would I have willingly succumbed to
slumber with the faint hush of
summer’s overtures
fading
to the blank slate of
a white,
white
winter.
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 8:19 PM UTC
Jealousy is seeping through my skin
Like kerosene
My head is spinning from the fumes
You may have showed me where the matches were
But it was I who struck it aflame
Standing here
Never feeling so empty
A heart so ****** and twisted
She's been cornered
Pushed to lash out
Scared of being a lone wolf
Fire dances on her fur
Coal-black eyes
And embered teeth
*All I could do was
Burn
And
Stare.*
Ashes fill her mouth
They've never tasted so dry
Love-parched
I don't want to be alone.
But you've already left me.
Aug 13, 2015
Aug 13, 2015 at 12:28 AM UTC
He had no idea if he would...
If he could actually do it...
When the time came,
When his sergeant gave the nod,
Let slip the dogs of war,
Unleash the copper bees,
Send missiles hurtling up or down
At targets moving now...
On men who may be wondering
If they could fire the same,
When the time came....
"Steady, men!"
"On my command."
He lay there,
On a roof,
In a ditch,
On an open field,
Crouched inside a turret,
Bellied down in a plexiglass ball,
Hurtled above a world mostly covered in cloud,
Standing far below the earth in silo'd steel,
Seeing still, through satellite eyes....
Peered into the mil dot scope,
Ignored the cross
To see through the center,
Found the circled aperture,
Punched coordinates into a seeing machine,
Saw green circles on the screen...
Aligned the circles....
Tried to breathe.
So that was how it was
For farm boys, Mowers of hay,
Grocers' sons, smashers of ants,
Carpenters, hammerers of nails,
And bakers' boys, cutters of bread,
Just in from shooting marbles and BB guns,
Transported into war,
Fed soldiers' ration:
meat and bread and beans,
Five cigarettes apiece in boxed MREs,
Sent off to **** and to be killed
With mothers' tears still fresh upon their cheeks,
With lovers' ache still glowing embered heat.
Training fresh,
Waiting command
To fire only when the order came...
To remain firing til the order came...
To hold the breath and squeeze...
To hold the sight just so...
To squeeze...
And to reload
Keeping head low,
Eyes on target...
To ignore all but the sergeant's yell,
To think of squeezing on new targets,
To wait awhile to process coming hell....
And when the time came,
He squeezed,
Felt the sudden life,
Heard little but the sound of
Clean ejection ...
Saw his bullet,
Saw his missile,
Saw his target meet,
And in the meeting,
Red,
And in the meeting ,
Fire and smoke,
And in the meeting
Knew that he could do
What soldiers do.
This boy
Now cutting hay,
Now stomping ants,
Hammering nails,
Cutting loaves of cooling bread...
Caught in the maelstrom of war
With no moment left but now,
No possible tomorrow...
Only targets,
Only targeted
In ferocious winds
Of battle.
Sep 21, 2014
Sep 21, 2014 at 6:52 AM UTC
Two hours wasn't enough to write "Twigs".
I'm not even close enough to the fire to feel it's dying heat.
When the party moves away I'll dance around and through and behind the flames so I can really feel it.
Unfortunately it would appear, dancing through a twig fire isn't nearly enough for one's life to disappear.
The twigs burn for only minutes and I'll dance as long as I can for it's the only time that I have.
While I'm still alone just enjoy silence and that the cold stares of stars are being hidden by my fiery pollutants.
Judge people and opinions and facts, decide what is right then call it wrong because everything is neither.
When the party returns I'll slink off to find the kindling and ponder upon the fires inklings.
Gathering the twigs for poems and flames is better than watching my fire die surely?
Shame it's such a monotonous ******* trek, but monotony is the core of life, don't treat it too harshly.
And it's not like these twigs are ever entirely useless if one has but the curiosity to think about it.
Flames glimmer on beer bottles and the embered ends can light cigarettes.
If these pathetic flames won't burn me alive at least they'll help **** me slowly.
Would you believe this is where I came to write about love, lust and loneliness?
The greater themes of the past won't light my fire now unless one believes time is simultaneous.
Though that belief seems to offer no help whatsoever in the fight against freezing.
All good things must die as the wise men would tell me when I asked them for further closure.
But words don't burn unless you've written them on your forearm far too close to the light of open flames.
I began to write "Twigs" that night.
Two crates of beer, One pen found in the side of my car, Forty-three smokes, One pile of logs, Two significantly larger piles of twigs, Seven people, One left arm, Five stubborn bumps below the wheels of my barrow, A hat on a mannequin, Three bottles of wine, A sometimes blazing sometimes failing inferno and Fourteen long ******* hours...
Was not enough to write "Twigs"
Why did I think 2 hours would do it now?
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 8:29 PM UTC
I want to love you slowly
and to have you love me too
slowly despacito
an as I dance
you get the clue
you watch me as I dance
an like a spell
I will vex you
hoping you feel me too
as I'm wanting to now *** you
as our temperatures arise
with a look of purest want
as you reach up eager thighs
it's my skin babe now you taunt,
as my hips are slowly swaying
an the music slowly playing,
as we move to the beat
of our hearts in a tandem
we can't take this rising heat
ahh
so we take a quick retreat
but slowly slowly
as you kiss me
you want me more an more
as you try to ever bliss me
an haunt me
now forever to explore,
as you love me
then jaunt me
this could never seem a chore
ohhhh..down,
yes girl move yourself around,
you whisper slowly into my ear
tell me baby how you feel
so when you're not right here
I can imagine you so real
this is passion like I need
a lover just like this
we are hungry in our deed,
burning flames of true love bliss
as you breath in my sweet fire
and we caress our sweet sweet souls
as we ignite in pure desire
and are returned
to embered coals
I am so very grateful to burn
with you each an every night
an until we can return
an our sparks again ignite,
as our bodies daily yearn
then off we'll take our flight,
back
into the shining
of the brilliant
and gorgeous morning sun.
Ma Cherie © 2017
Jul 29, 2017
Jul 29, 2017 at 7:00 PM UTC
Oak chips popped and embered
In the fireplace where I declared my love for you
"I want to be the one. I want be the one to warm your frigid heart"
And in that instant
Wisdom became overpowered by enthusiasm
Common-sense became overwhelmed by temptation
The forecast called for snow, ice, hail
Arctic conditions only good for suffering
I had a mask to mask, I took it off
I had a coat to cover, I peeled it off
My intentions became contradictions
When you left my heart colder than your own
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 12:23 PM UTC
And spit it out.
Like a wa d of wet paper
Fired straight from a straw
I want to inhale it. Taste it. Swallow it.
Make it take shape in my chest; Douse the fires raging in the bowels of my being as they threaten to burn through, scalding my soft belly like embered iron.
Let me protect you.
I will eat up every last bit of sorrow you hold and endlessly fight for your worth.
Jan 22, 2025
Jan 22, 2025 at 6:10 PM UTC
A frigid night outside the friary
Where only hears the sound of hearse
Insensible heart but with sadness
Liniment by loneliness and sadness.
Forever drown in this solitude fane
Clad with great shame
Mincing to wait yet groaning under pain
Her laconic eyes seems in chain.
A nightmare echoed as knell
An old cascade now pouring down tears
Can't find a way to be elated.
Destituted and chilled by many faces.
How lonesome you are!
You're dismal and with devious pride
You elude but always caught
A mariontte that always drift.
They repress you to fly
And a peevish child in you makes you cry.
Someone's flayed you but you denied
You only have one hop but they owed you a thousand strides.
They inflict you to 'kiss the rod'
Now you're a 'damsel in distress'
Your flimsy wings turns into embers
Reason why they taunt you and makes your dreams shutter.
But I know this knell will turn into a serenade
Though I have an embered wings, someday
I will reincarnate
I will bring back my glittering cascade.
I will leave this frigid friary and devastate their masquerade.
Nov 13, 2016
Nov 13, 2016 at 11:33 PM UTC
My heart beats wild and without rhythm
as your tender fingerpads brush
my embered cheeks.
Yet I want to claw the skin you touch
til my face is set ablaze with blood.
I yearn for the blood burn of your lips
at the base of my neck,
breath warm and sweet as tea.
Though I grip my neck in despair,
choking that you cannot love me.
Every time I catch your gaze,
tensions rise from the pit of my being
like freed birds.
Still my eyes run as late spring rivers
as your tongue cuts me like fresh poultry.
My mind flurries with crisp thoughts of you,
each gentle and pure as fresh snowfall.
Nonetheless, I can only endure
the blue-limbed blizzard of self-loathing and blame
that should not be mine.
Toes curl in ecstasy
like vines in bright sunlight as we become one,
how I always dreamed.
Now my dreams turn to nightmares
as my blistered toes carry me mindless through
the desert of complete isolation.
My own warm fingers brush your face,
down the slow slope of your nose
to the petals that are your lips.
However, they hover,
hesitant,
unsure that the frame they grace
contains the paradox I love.
Apr 17, 2017
Apr 17, 2017 at 10:43 PM UTC
You're swirling in embered light
Gravity breathing out of your pores
I am a comet, burning ice in my wake
And you are the sol I come too close to
If I could breathe anything, it would be lilies
If you could hate anything, it would be air
You are so bright that when I close my eyes
I can see nothing but feathered fire
At the center of the universe, there's a tree of souls
Eris and Phobias collect its molt
They rain it down through the smog 'till it shatters on concrete
I watch as you catch it on your tongue
I found you on the drenched roof
Pale and glowing and still
Stars clinked in the sky with a diamond jangle
One had fallen, burrowing under your skin
And you told me you were sick with trying
And you told me that it hurt to burn
And you were cold and apathetic
You were you, but not the one that knew me
You flamed and flamed and flamed and flamed
You crashed and told no one at all
I miss you and I love you
Though you shine so differently now
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 12:54 PM UTC
tear me apart, like roughened stained glass, ‘cause I’m not of paper,
instead, I’m of sand from the shores of your heart,
embered from the fluid of your ******* blood.
Jul 2, 2019
Jul 2, 2019 at 7:48 AM UTC
With embered wings, I pierce the blackest night,
A solar mass morphing into a black hole.
Each atom in my blood prepares to ignite,
Reflecting the true divine shape of my soul.
In the corridors of my own thought, the senses drown.
The mind painting prisms bleeding photonic rain.
No boundary here to hold me. In moments, I'm crowned.
In this kingdom of chaos, sculpting solace from pain.
I stand before the mirror of my own trembling soul.
A sovereign spark lives, who dares to hope it can heal.
A voice screams, that " One who has shattered his mold,
Transcends the one; fragments of being, each their own whole."
Pulses turn to diamonds, forming as the words on my tongue.
Minutes stretch — now endless lifetimes yet to be discovered.
I taste each shard of feeling that my heart has overcome.
My sorrow and my joy open, remaining uncovered.
My dreams, my faulted mind, like ones we called under-wrought.
Their eyes, constellations, like the ones we used to trust.
Chemicals react, dispersing waves, like songs we forgot.
Solitude and isolation bleed with each melodic gust.
And in the hush of afterglow, I wield my clean knife,
Open up my wounds till they reveal my true hidden name.
And from this crucible of pain, is born a new life.
My infinite flame burns as both the wild and the tame.
Following voices of shadows, divine potential’s own choir.
Their hymns — the portal to my soul yet to be embraced.
Chains bind me to perceptions, but for now, I'm more like fire.
Forging quantum bound waves, binding purpose to my fate.
May 6, 2025
May 6, 2025 at 3:44 PM UTC
nowadays they have to pinch the ends
of their cigarettes before they cross the threshold no longer allowed to herd the crumbling swarms of ash across the gingham veldt
outside the window, on the pavement, lies a bible and the radio declares their readiness is high
seems like a good night to let the smokers in and warm around a last embered light
on the table I browse the “priest“ they called him
in the centrefold, deep in the heart, a flyer,
man’s journey into christ,
I guess we’ll find out soon enough the veracity of the divine
but until the young-un and the white horse riders have decided who can piss the highest
leave us to the daily diary and its tales of
days of ******* each other’s husbands and wives
I bought a Dylan Thomas book one the way home, from the junk shop,
when I got it back I saw blood on the back cover
I licked my finger to wipe it off but she said “no!
you fool“
sure it carried the plague of some cursed lover
I plagiarise myself
a drink is most definitely in order
the tawny coolness tock tick toxic keen as the sharpest dissection
and then you can find me not just like everybody else but just like
everybody else, lying, hemi-hydrate, below the bridled tension
of life’s meniscus
Mar 11, 2015
Mar 11, 2015 at 3:43 PM UTC