"epochs" poems
I am not born as yet,
five minutes before my birth.
I can still go back
into my unbirth.
Now it’s ten minutes before,
now, it’s one hour before birth.
I go back,
I run
into my minus life.
I walk through my unbirth as in a tunnel
with bizarre perspectives.
Ten years before,
a hundred and fifty years before,
I walk, my steps thump,
a fantastic journey through epochs
in which there was no me.
How long is my minus life,
nonexistence so much resembles immortality.
Here is Romanticism, where I could have been a spinster,
Here is the Renaissance, where I would have been
an ugly and unloved wife of an evil husband,
The Middle Ages, where I would have carried water in a tavern.
I walk still further,
what an echo,
my steps thump
through my minus life,
through the reverse of life.
I reach Adam and Eve,
nothing is seen anymore, it’s dark.
Now my nonexistence dies already
with the trite death of mathematical fiction.
As trite as the death of my existence would have been
had I been really born.
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when i gaze into your eyes
i get transported forward into a new dimension
where i'm just an observer of countless entities and stars
I count my stars that i've been blessed with
by such a vision.
and every twinkle in your eye
could be another starburst creating new life
and epochs of infinite emotions.
so when i stare at you in awe
and i'm at a loss for words,
what you are staring back at
is a traveler looking at the cosmos
that is your beauty
Apr 16, 2017
Apr 16, 2017 at 5:23 AM UTC
Carved in stone, lost in time,
freezing my parted smile,
Peering down into the unknown,
I sit next to you, toting my arms:
Where is the world
that breathed you to life?
On this lonely peak, tires
upon tires of hopes and dreams
retreat into the the terraced
spirals of mists; Every mystical
dawn dissolves into the lakes.
Gnomes bear the burden of
mysterious gates to the beyond,
as whispers tiptoe to strains
of the Quijongo.
Here epochs and worlds end.
And counts begin all over again.
Oct 28, 2014
Oct 28, 2014 at 1:40 PM UTC
Clearly, darling, you do not understand why
I love you.
All of you.
Stare at these two cups of coffee or look into my eyes.
Shuffle your feet, tangle your fingertips in your hair.
I don't care,
just listen and
let my words
meld into that beautiful mind.
Okay?
For a person to be here, it took years.
The little wisps of hair that always gets into your eyes.
The laugh-line underneath your cheek.
It all took an immeasurable number of tick-tocks.
In those infinite string of days was hours.
In those hours, there were minutes.
And yes, in those minutes are seconds.
Now, don't roll your eyes just yet.
Dotting in between the mellow epochs are experiences, dreams, unspoken wishes behind closed eyelids, tears, laughter crinkling your lips.
The creasing of the edges of your heart.
The sound of your very breaths in a lonely room.
If you think in such numbing detail, eventually I found myself happily and hopelessly tangled in those strings of little infinities.
And then, I fell in love with you.
It's simple really.
Feb 11, 2014
Feb 11, 2014 at 6:19 AM UTC
only a few
epochs old!
you've got
our whole
lives ahead
of you.
Mar 27, 2013
Mar 27, 2013 at 10:23 AM UTC
though said to be golden like that of Eris,
the mores which you so savor are hollow with worms.
your stony statutes, finally crumbling, now
remind me of rose-colored saran wrap:
stretched too thin across the epochs
to bind each lawless Julia at present.
able now to be whole—free from your unadulterated peace,
spun, measured, and cut are your class lines at last.
and so with a sigh of relief so great that it could echo across
all of the Caucasus,
your Ovid, cast away, has returned.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 7:55 PM UTC
take some time to count, to verb
some syllables for some wrecked
page. a Lostman's book in ****
tered thought; nature, and death,
and sole body. then, when she talked
about her better years as those of
drug-induced past-life. younger than
yesterday kinda years. that which finds
metronome slowing, the Universe energy
vibrating weaker while growth found in
apathy, and solid death of purposeful
movement.
then a shot,
that moment to break from wretched self-
criticism -- that post-idyllic criticism --
that which hinders forward movement.
the shot,
which finds contentedness thru some
repetitious mentality . .
[lost it]
. . repetitious fallacy?
[got it]
let's leave some break for transmigration
in thought to prelude of forward movement.
understanding now is not enough; but
agreement in hast. but dissolution to that self-
efface hit rapid. brought back, her thought
of the younger than yesterday years; now,
now is the greatest point of any a count-
less past-life. from them, no matter a sweating
season, the Long Dark, or the cycle-seasons,
all is now. and never
did she or i talk of the past again.
our foci, [one second]
drawn to point of second and next second upon
following and on for another. now, shivery
wine-drunk, reminiscent of tiny furnace and
woolen blanket apartment. that now,
that was true striving of second successful ***** Den.
a great thought downfall; she's been long gone.
[next second now]
she complained of the wind. her eyes were freezing,
she said; her life has begun to bore her, she said.
we moved to playground and climbed in the
slide; a nice dampening. cold plastic barely felt for
her. this Long Dark, and in it, an always fleeting
warmth. [break
to **** for concision in thought]
now then, a diner, of course this face is known. they also
know a companion vacant. asked of, pleasant enough;
responded, well enough.
[disheartened, well enough]
and then, wholly intrinsic with a blasphemous self-
Oralee while passing time trying to think. unable,
if only for sole point of trying. and epochs worth,
thought and gone; now compulsive, now unres-
ponsive, now chewing lips because they're part gum.
Feb 18, 2016
Feb 18, 2016 at 5:58 AM UTC
In anticipation of the too-few precious hours in tandem, we divulged our carnal cravings at each others’ hands, but omitted fragments, saving them for some other day, finding them too truthful.
When you hold your body to mine, as you have told me you will, I want a flurry of colored breath, peach and magentas and crimsons slipping translucently from every part of me and wafting in and out and between us like a graceful fog, and not just the force of fingers that have waited too long to touch, but the electrostatic brushes of life’s restlessness falling slowly into their own gravity as we learn to trust the moment.
Our lips are full of nerves and that is why a kiss is so much more than symbolic. I placed my lips to the skin of an orange and I was met with the sensuality of the whole terrain of this world. Intimacy then, is the slow press that reassures humanity – the invitation into a world with no walls – the rush of blood that comes from being completely receptive – that is the kiss I want with your soul.
After all the epochs of lovers, these are all the same words, but they are lanterns bouncing across the plains and sparking anew in the way that the naive are always entranced by the lighter in their hand when they first learn how to light a cigarette, elated and dizzy from the ***** Twinkling.
Sometimes all it takes is a breath and I am light and wind and red paper confetti and the moon and a golden orb that turns all it touches into a shining constancy of what’s called love – and I visit your heart knowing that you can’t tell it’s me, and then I must leave– and I know that I was not in my body, but that it must have kept existing while I was gone because I always wake up in tears, and someone had to cry them.
Conventionality dies between us and there are no titles or promises to speak of. I once found security in labels, only to find that they leave no room for the inevitable growth and weathering of time. So I ask little of you – only that you are always true with me, and that you occasionally put your hand in mine.
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 12:22 AM UTC
Pink Muhly blushing in the April winds , White Dogwoods tell
of their direction as cloud cover divides the storm tempted distance .. Native grass sash shays across the motherland dale , seedlings ride the afternoon whispers , boldly appear from her earthly protectorate , epochs born of magenta horizons and Peregrine ballads ...
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 11:45 PM UTC
Yellow spheres are terror to the daydreamers
whirling past faces disgraces grazing ears
Recollections of multipurpose room taunts
And Mr. Neptune's rolled eyes as he gives up
Just send me to my fortress of books n poetry
Let me slip away unnoticed and forgotten
between the blue carpet and shelves inside
Let me bang my head on the laminated particle board
I disappear in here where it's just me and three thousand years
floating historically through black & white epochs
Alone, the world is heavy but not so much as my feet
planted and feigning mobility as roots become weeds
I think how dumb it is to talk of my Soul or to sing in the shower
or my car or alone in my apartment with stereo blasting
It's strange how the red is everywhere and I can't imagine
any longer when I'll finally need to draw a line
For you are not with me as I am with me and I'm green
But I can't say if it's in my stomach or in my eyes
And despite the heaviness I feel like I could be swept away
I could flutter up like one of those winglike seeds in Spring
Heaven is no place outside either, and I suddenly remember
That this all started with a love for the color orange
And I realize the silliness of red and yellow by themselves,
still wondering if I am bathed or baked in the warmth.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 10:54 PM UTC
_They spoke to me of evenfall and dayspring, the solstice and the equinox. They sang of eras, epochs, and eons. On indigo nights, they whispered in the owl light of alchemy and enchantment, wreathing my cot with an iridescence which illuminated my dreams and begentled my slumber.
At Hallowtide, they scribed lyrical pathways in the air and sculpted rainbow arcs. They celebrated the vernal majesty of April and October's autumnal reprise with moonglade pageantry and sunset flourishes. They conjured blackberry winters and gypsy summers, and laughed at my amazement, as if to say: ‘Told you so!’
As the years departed my second decade and encroached alarmingly upon my third, I began to question why they had chosen me; why we walked together apart and apart together. I wondered where the magic ended and I began, and I realised with the bone-breaking chill of the unwelcome inevitable, just how lost I would be without it._
Sep 17, 2019
Sep 17, 2019 at 4:12 PM UTC
From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.
A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.
Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 4:43 AM UTC
the wrong atmospherics of transmission
move in uninvestigated chaotic archives
red and pink turbulent storms swarm across
deep space frequencies in imaginative
currents of pulsars
that are translated into phases
each represented in diverse
conflicting modes of expression
in obsessive grooves of consciousness
cut up components of recycled narratives
audibly fixating on vibrations
that sound across the universe
in diffused spirals of manic fluctuations
converting archaic symbols into equivalents
of dust surfaces that oxidise in intermittent epochs
and deposit a rediscovered earth
an expansive transferable construction
of accidental providence
that allows for expression in artificially generated realities
hallucinated images that float
across the consciousness of the cosmos
producing visions that punctuate rational thought
become preoccupied with the conception
of interplanetary transpeciation
counting the chronological diversity
of those that occupy the black, blank
vacuum of space
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 7:54 PM UTC
The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The **** of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The -isms and the -anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
The Fates are subtle girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend's still the same:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
She has a glorious aim,
He lives for the inanities.
What come of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
Life is a smoke that curls--
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls,
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state's supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best's the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:--
"O Vanity of Vanities!"
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The big teetotum twirls,
And epochs wax and wane
As chance subsides or swirls;
But of the loss and gain
The sum is always plain.
Read on the mighty pall,
The **** of funeral
That covers praise and blame,
The--isms and the--anities,
Magnificence and shame:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
The Fates are subtile girls!
They give us chaff for grain.
And Time, the Thunderer, hurls,
Like bolted death, disdain
At all that heart and brain
Conceive, or great or small,
Upon this earthly ball.
Would you be knight and dame?
Or woo the sweet humanities?
Or illustrate a name?
O Vanity of Vanities!
We sound the sea for pearls,
Or drown them in a drain;
We flute it with the merles,
Or tug and sweat and strain;
We grovel, or we reign;
We saunter, or we brawl;
We answer, or we call;
We search the stars for Fame,
Or sink her subterranities;
The legend's still the same:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Here at the wine one birls,
There some one clanks a chain.
The flag that this man furls
That man to float is fain.
Pleasure gives place to pain:
These in the kennel crawl,
While others take the wall.
She has a glorious aim,
He lives for the inanities.
What comes of every claim?
O Vanity of Vanities!
Alike are clods and earls.
For sot, and seer, and swain,
For emperors and for churls,
For antidote and bane,
There is but one refrain:
But one for king and thrall,
For David and for Saul,
For fleet of foot and lame,
For pieties and profanities,
The picture and the frame:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Life is a smoke that curls--
Curls in a flickering skein,
That winds and whisks and whirls
A figment thin and vain,
Into the vast Inane.
One end for hut and hall!
One end for cell and stall!
Burned in one common flame
Are wisdoms and insanities.
For this alone we came:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
Envoy
Prince, pride must have a fall.
What is the worth of all
Your state's supreme urbanities?
Bad at the best's the game.
Well might the Sage exclaim:--
'O Vanity of Vanities!'
1.6k
For my own part
I have never had a thought
Which I could not set down in words
with even more distinctness
Than that with which I conceived it
There is however, a class of fancies
Of exquisite delicacy
Which are not thoughts
And to which as yet I have found it
Absolutely impossible to adapt to language
These fancies arise in the soul
Alas how rarely
Only at epochs of most intense tranquility
When the ****** and mental health are in perfection
And at those mere points of time
Where the confines of the waking world
Blend with the world of dreams
And so I captured this fancy
Where all that we see or seem is but
A Dream Within A Dream
Sep 24, 2013
Sep 24, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
i have been introduced to a fragmented universe
blue and silver
amid temporal ruins
oxidized epochs extract from me
thought processes and aural distillations
of a catatonic rage, that discards all trivia
in its scrutiny of minds
in a chronological diversity of words and images
it is a kinetic fluency of gestures
in an ****** calligraphy of expansive
transferable threads of thought
it is the real and the imagined
one that precludes inquiry
which leaves me infused
with a compulsion of composed complications
in episodic inspired delirium
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 12:46 AM UTC
Beyond this time and place
Reviewing epochs past
We will recall this phase
As just a stumbling step
Toward fuller consciousness
As we evaluate
The values taught
The goals we sought
The strange pursuits
We tried to mesh
When men bypassed
The quest for truth
For greeds
Of finite flesh
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 5:55 AM UTC
deep and carefree among the stars
vast dark carpet of endless universes
amidst our sprinkles of humanity
we drift along in certitude in our destiny
our inner being even more vast
than that what we gaze upon in wonderment
fear and longing
is there more for us or more of us
motionless we feel still yet
we rocket through this spinning nothingness
filled with all the monuments and
epochs of histories and calamities,
spartan and over flooded with grandeur
limitless adoration for being and seeing
what we have wrought and brought
nations and people and prairies
and all of nature's fine doodles
makings in ever flowing ever growing
profundity and fantasy
so we can ask "how is your day going"
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 10:52 AM UTC
When I was little I would watch
Clint Eastwood on the tube,
Rowdy Yates from Rawhide
In black and white and crude.
He played a young man showing
All the attributes of youth,
With an exciting way about him
That burned with living truth.
Spontaneously cowboy
And fastidiously right,
He filled the part with action
And the character was tight.
He represented all the things
A small boy wants to be,
Young, bright and coiled to go
A special hero… Just for me.
Through the years I’ve tagged along
Watched him play the arts,
The action roles, the love story
And the recent wrinkly parts.
I’ve loved ‘em all and celebrate
The fifty years of fun
Of trailing after Eastwood
And his epochs in the sun.
Play Misty, Iwo Jima
***** Harry too,
Gran Torino, Million Dollar
Spaghetti westerns through
The Bridges and Rowdy Yates
The common touch in all,
For every day people
In an every way call.
Hero’s come and hero’s go
Some fade away to die
Thank God professionals like Clint Eastwood
Just keep reaching for the sky.
My thanks Old Son.....for a Great Journey!
Marshalg@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
New Zealand
4th February 2009
Jan 22, 2010
Jan 22, 2010 at 3:57 PM UTC
Spring morning,
quiet. One coyote,
three deer
running in snow.
What else have I seen?
A sparrow hawk in mid-air ******
a robin, a sharp-shinned hawk catch
a rabbit in its talons.
A deaf mute in a pear tree.
Not one wolverine
in Utah or Italy.
Nor a famous samurai.
A young black bear
traverses the lawn in August.
Also quarks. Also oaks.
Do not disturb their progress!
A red fox
alert, no limp
flows silently
across the meadow.
First light, green tea.
A person thinking
epochs and eons.
A platoon of chickadees.
Jun 18, 2024
Jun 18, 2024 at 6:31 AM UTC
From shelves and racks, or lying in stacks, Books,
Of all ages and epochs—adolescents and youths,
Aged and venerable, and e’en those in decrepitude,
Much eloquent, but in all silence, share with us
Experiences wide ranging, emotions well pent up,
Passions, love and hate, and joys and sufferings,
Triumphs, failings, histories, biographies and maxims.
A pat or stroke, or appeal in awe, or in supplication,
They’d unleash to you, in varied moods and temper,
Their stories, in letters, words, phrases, sentences;
In prose or verse on folios, or in acts and scenes,
Of Helens, Quixotes, Falstaffs, Holmes and Othellos,
In the highs and lows of their pleasures and pathos,
Of Lears, Tristans and Isoldes, and procrastinators.
Of the plucks and spirits of Arjunas and Achilleses,
Of the failings of the ill-fated Kareninas and Bovaries,
Of the unwavering faith of Jobs, Noahs and Abrahams,
Of the lovelorn Sakunthalas, and Sitas under Simsupa,
Of God’s Garden, and of the wisdom of the Himalaya,
They speak in silence, of the real and the imagined,
As mighty godlike genies waiting for our summons!
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 8:51 AM UTC
It's only a paper-mache
moon, they say, too cool,
too full of interstellar space
to sympathize or stress about
lovers, kings and fools.
Or is it? According to Deutsch
the so-called final ignition
into outer space
is a product of man's meditations
moving, as if via gravitation
the magician to the other end
of the expanding universe. Sure,
in yr computer. Meanwhile, nursed
in a nursing home, mewling and peeing
as accurately predicted by Shakespeare
my old Marine, an ex-sailor, bitter
at life's ending, waited
too long to dispatch with dignity.
All alone, as in Corbiere's poem,
old soldiers are fated
to fight unnecessary wars
as we all are. Except for the fact that
every helium and hydrogen atom
ever born or made (whatever you believe)
has taken positions, passionate
and predetermined as republicans and dobermans
over eons and epochs. Thus
I don't think it behooves us much to care
if we're getting too little clean air or
bacteria are better adapted than us. This
obsession with identity, survival
a name and a leg of lamb is lame
even uninspired. The entire universe
including the professional baseball season
is canceled when yr dead. No blame.
Aug 11, 2015
Aug 11, 2015 at 5:24 PM UTC
“but you are too old for apprehension.” her
voice had sounded so, and of this one’s voice,
‘you are never too old for wariness of
an unknown.’ responded astute, drunk
on logic. returned was breathless thought
to the void, filling emptiness with irony.
(oxymoron) and weened the way thru,
concision turned derision with repetitious
definitions that found no actual meaning.
all thought without justification and no
thought with classification. words,
actions, wailing:
empty, empty, empty
then existed less and less from want
of purpose. less and less from interest of
the known; this once forged fear of life. and
with impressive derangement, grabbing at the
only sober keychain. they, with twitching vesper eyes,
their hands jit’ for a false-meeting fix. to nix
the nihilism. and:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
words of this one’s voice. of her’s, “thank
god you’re alive.” from those days, when rains
ranted down, and the trains tripped us out.
those days of our wood’s reclaimed trailer. and
each syllable was never thought to be anything
until aged eyes ached for review those epochs
of breath. but:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
voiced in response to a romanticized thought. and
all epochs lingered upon are no more than a
journal of the winds that blew while we were present.
some diary of listless lust left undated. of the woods, of
a reiterate span in once anonymized transience. and falling
back, thumbing pages for proof of experiences passed into
skewered memory. left are three lines, ill-verbed, to represent
an entirety of past lives. of time once present in yellow-lit
motel room, of apocalyphic musings, and veering prophets
of doom. they, turned sincere apocalyphites. their prayers
writ boldfaced, platitudinous, in concern of endless words
restating – in constant rephrasing:
‘People can go **** themselves.’
but they just kept goin’ on without concern for the dawn.
Feb 1, 2014
Feb 1, 2014 at 5:26 AM UTC
The intersection of air and aroma,
together brings sustenance and nostalgia.
That air, which once helped you breathe, now clogs your throat,
like a seafarer wading without a boat.
Epochs passing, as a lost love’s scent batters
the mind’s shore, once more sentient life scatters.
Here and now is lost, forgotten touches felt,
as waves of her sweet laugh dull any din dealt.
Like déjà vu she’s there then gone, now forlorn--
roused from the dream, which floats away before long.
Apr 2, 2012
Apr 2, 2012 at 1:57 AM UTC