"exeter" poems
I saw an old man in Exeter today;
saw him twice, in fact.
Each time he was eating ice cream
beneath his black felt hat.
His face was wizened, a cliche I know,
but I don’t know how else to say it.
He looked tired and worn behind his smile,
his shoulders sagged, his eyelids low.
At his feet a collection of bags,
small and medium, all black.
His wordly possessions I couldn’t but wonder,
carried around on his back.
What stories do you hold, old man,
wrapped in the parchment of your skin?
Will they be forever mysteries untold,
or do you have someone to invest them in?
Jun 1, 2011
Jun 1, 2011 at 6:35 AM UTC
373
I’m saying every day
“If I should be a Queen, tomorrow”—
I’d do this way—
And so I deck, a little,
If it be, I wake a Bourbon,
None on me, bend supercilious—
With “This was she—
Begged in the Market place—
Yesterday.”
Court is a stately place—
I’ve heard men say—
So I loop my apron, against the Majesty
With bright Pins of Buttercup—
That not too plain—
Rank—overtake me—
And perch my Tongue
On Twigs of singing—rather high—
But this, might be my brief Term
To qualify—
Put from my simple speech all plain word—
Take other accents, as such I heard
Though but for the Cricket—just,
And but for the Bee—
Not in all the Meadow—
One accost me—
Better to be ready—
Than did next morn
Meet me in Aragon—
My old Gown—on—
And the surprised Air
Rustics—wear—
Summoned—unexpectedly—
To Exeter—
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138
Pigmy seraphs—gone astray—
Velvet people from Vevay—
Balles from some lost summer day—
Bees exclusive Coterie—
Paris could not lay the fold
Belted down with Emerald—
Venice could not show a check
Of a tint so lustrous meek—
Never such an Ambuscade
As of briar and leaf displayed
For my little damask maid—
I had rather wear her grace
Than an Earl’s distinguished face—
I had rather dwell like her
Than be “Duke of Exeter”—
Royalty enough for me
To subdue the Bumblebee.
2.2k
12:45
The sun has gone black,
the world is asleep.
In the family room,
the television clicks on by itself.
It illuminates my father,
half-naked,
covered in processed cheese dust.
The channel changes to Cinemax,
******** ***********
My mother walks in
without her glasses,
and for a moment
her screams of disgust
are indistinguishable
from the throes of passion
broadcast on the cheap
Acer dad bought at Costco.
Elsewhere,
in South America,
a volcano has erupted.
It sprays debris
and detritus
over a small village
with a long name.
Postmodern Vesuvians **** ash,
frozen not with fear
but rigor mortis.
The CNN report plays for three hours.
The world moves on.
Later,
a man explodes in a convenience store.
Guts rocket outward,
onto wine coolers
and travel packages of Chex,
and the clerk just shrugs.
If you go there today,
all that’s left is the smell of ammonia
and a dark stain on the ceiling.
At the same moment,
a toddler steps off a cliff,
spiraling into the abyss,
but never stops falling.
He’s been going for days,
months,
years.
He has kept his audience updated
through a Bluetooth that we tossed down after him.
He’s had windburn since he fell,
but the ointment we sent
hasn’t reached him yet.
His parents are now expecting.
He just yawns.
In my family room,
the woman on Cinemax is climaxing,
screaming,
pulling her hair out
while a greased-up middle aged
pizza deliveryman autoerotically asphyxiates
himself with a hair tie.
As she wails for the last time,
the TV screen shatters,
glass ejected,
blazing through the air
like Flight 93
seconds before impact.
Sparks salivate from the exposed wires,
then cackle down
into a signed black.
And as this happens,
the children on Exeter St
stop crying.
The alcohol in a small town liquor store in Wyoming
un-ferments,
and the world, for a moment,
ceases to turn.
But only for a blink.
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 2:02 PM UTC
A little bit of ***
In a canvas bag
And a wallet full of notes
And a piece of rag
A tooth brush and comb
And a letter pack
And a bit of paper
With a number on the back
And a crisp old sheet
From a writing pad
Is a folded memory
And a poem so sad
Yet with joy in the lines
That live on still
While the love they were for
Will no longer thrill
For the cause is lost
Like the canvas bag
Left by the seat
With no name tag
How can I find
That fleeting two?
They won't be in Oxford
They were passing through
I met them in London
By the cold roadside
They wanted a lift
So I gave them a ride
They'll pass on
Down Exeter way
The cost of that lift
Was dear to pay
For now I am left
With a canvas bag
With a leather flap
For a naming tag
All covered with names
That student wrote
So when standing so cold
At a glance he'd note
The words of his subject
Written thereon
And his mind would warm
As he pondered on
The lecture from where
The thought first came
And the hour of the day
When he wrote the name
Nameless he was
And his lady too
Till the old bag
Was sifted through
Then a card
Came to light
With a name upon it
Plain to sight
And I remember
The college hall
Goldsmith's was
The name let fall
So to the English
Scholar then
I may return
The bag again
With a little bit of ***
And a sad love poem
I'll return them all
To their former home.
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 4:30 PM UTC
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say ‘Tomorrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names
Familiar in his mouth as household words:
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d,
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
May 30, 2022
May 30, 2022 at 9:36 AM UTC
The Judge came into the village with
A troop of the finest horse,
The sunshine gleamed on their breastplates
And their guns and their swords, of course,
He wasn’t there to be friendly, but
To make the rebels aware,
And carried the King’s own warrant to
Set up his courthouse there.
The troop took over the Mason’s Hall
The Judge took over the church,
And set up a bench down in the nave
As the troops set out to search,
They looked for the signs of weaponry
In the homes of the poorest men,
Tearing apart the hovels in
The search for the rebels, then.
To root out the roughshod army that
Had marched to defy the king,
Who tore up the standard prayer book
That the king was offering,
They forced the priests to reverse the mass
To the way it was done before,
Laying a siege to Exeter
In the way of a civil war.
Now the troops rode into the villages
And they held the men in chains,
Sworn to see that they paid in blood
For their temper, and their pains,
The women were wailing in the streets
As their men were taken in,
To answer to a black-hooded Judge
For their crimes against the King.
There wasn’t a gallows large enough
For the men that he meant to hang,
But plenty of trees around the leas
That the cattle grazed upon,
And plenty of boughs and branches that
Would groan with the weight of men,
Whose only fault was this one revolt
When their faith was changed again.
They hung like fruit from the saplings,
They choked their lives from a limb,
They swung on ropes from the mighty oaks
In an **** of suffering,
The farms lay waste in the country,
The crops lay waste in the fields,
There wasn’t an army of labourers
Just troops, with their swords and shields.
The Judge climbed into his black teak coach
Rode out of the village grounds,
While children wailed and the women paled
In cutting their husbands down.
The horror lay in the children’s genes
For generations, it’s said,
Till years along they would right the wrong
By taking a bad king’s head.
David Lewis Paget
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 4:16 AM UTC
She commandeers my attention with a modest sleight of hand
The boys in the band all write ballads just for her
I ignore their tune as she slips out of the room
A creature lithe and limber has no reason to linger with a man like me
She's carving sin on the back of a bedpost
She'll show you eternity
Her eyes advise against this ill-requited course of action
As the ghost of tomorrow falters in the doorway
Pensive thoughts of uncertainty: her duplicity is second only to catastrophe
Fairylights cause retention of the shape of her thighs, too lewd to mention
Though branded in my mind is the fluttering of her linen dress that night
In her wake, she left the air charged with esoteric energy
My fingers far too clumsy, fumbled to bottle it for my own
Foolish fantasies rose to life in my mind as her hand brushed mine, and she suggested we go anywhere but home
Of crackling records in Exeter, over-watered succulents, and fresh ink on vellum; I averted my sight
Opting to stare instead at the passing streetlights, trying to hide my blushing thoughts, though from her face it became obvious that she saw
And the secret in her smile, knew unlike I, that tonight would survive only a short while
Feb 24, 2018
Feb 24, 2018 at 5:00 PM UTC
The following is not a paid advertisement. It is the truth. It is arguably plausible for me to state that I received the best secondary and higher education in the world.
I graduated from Phillips Academy (more commonly referred to as Andover now), the oldest boarding school in America founded in 1778, two years after our nation was founded. Andover and its sequel, Exeter, it seems, now take turns being voted the best high school in the United States.
Though I received an essentially unequalled secondary education at Andover, I paid an exorbitant social and emotional cost to receive it. The years I spent at Andover were the worst of my life.
I chose to matriculate to Columbia College, the tradional undergraduate liberal arts school of Columbia University, over Yale
for principally two main reasons: the Core Curriculum and New York City. More years at Yale would be like returning to Andover, anathema to me.
The Core Curriculum, now over 100 years old, is a rigorous, two-year course of studies that include philosophy, literature. art, music, language, frontiers of science, and writing. All College students, regardless of her or his majors, must take all the Core courses, which, in turn, make them learned for life. Columbia College is the only Ivy school to have anything like the Core. Living in and exploring New York City, the veritable capital of the world, for four years makes one a Citizen of the World for life, even if one decides to reside elsewhere after graduating, as I did. I now live in Boulder, CO. Columbia College's 2019 admit rate was 5.1%. Columbia College admitted a few over 2,000 applicants out of slightly over 42,000 applicants worldwide, making Columbia College the second most selective school in the Ivy League. 5.1 % admit rate: that's about 1 out of 20.
But even Columbia has its "bad apples:" Roy Cohn comes to mind readily. So does William Barr. But it also has Barach Obama. 84 students who studied or professors who taught there won the Nobel Prize.
So what to do with this piece CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT?
It sees to me that the maxim DO UNTO OTHERS...is rapidly being supplanted by CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT? Our political leaders, who have never been paragons of virtue, have for 3 1/2 years have become, in a word, corrupt. The Washington Post has authenticated more than 15,000 lies emanating from the Oval Office, not to mention the cheating, the racism, and the ******
CAN WE PROFIT OFF IT? is the new adage these days.
I say "Make America A Democracy Again!" should be.
May 19, 2020
May 19, 2020 at 12:19 AM UTC
My Maybe.
@niamornimo
Maybe,
Anxiety tends to over power
My capability of self control which Results to me pouting my mind without considering your feelings.
I know my pieces mostly sound as
Though you are a shadow to me.
But to be honest since its my greatest Weakness to lie, i will say as it is with no demeanour.
I have fallen for you and i'm So scared of what my heart is feeling Right now because i know its love.
I won't lie that people discouraged me From the bold move i made saying yes to Our union, my mind racing with what-if Thoughts, but my heart constantly Reminded me that my heart is cold and Aloof to everyone but on your arrival to My world, the ice melted from coating my Heart hence subconsciously caught by Smiling with the slightest thought of you. I am more of a robot as my mind Internalises everything for my body to Execute but with you...everything seems flawless.
I rarely struggle to let you in.
As every woman who is truly in love yearns to know how/where their lovers mind and heart is,
So is my desire to know what's beneath the scales you posses?...who are you?...exeter exeter...nothing would make me happier than saying I do to you for i want to have a future with you...i know its scary not knowing what tomorrow brings.
But at-least when it comes you won't have a heart ache of loosing me.
Just so you find me missing, i'll be where i left my pen and paper
#Random thoughts#Wishfulthinking#Tomyneverbemaybe#Rebel#Strengthpursuesdetermination.
May 9, 2020
May 9, 2020 at 4:46 PM UTC
Water does it for me, there's nothing I like more than living by the sea.
You live in Exeter I here you cry, that's not by the sea and I agree but it has a river and canal and that's good enough for me.
Water relaxes me, I can watch it roll and tumble all day, watching it go on its merry way.
Water chills me, I solve issue by gazing at the water, suddenly ideas abound as the water makes its way round.
Water brings back happy memories of days spent by the sea.
Learning how to surf and eating ice lollies.
When your an island your inclined to think that we'll never run out of the drink.
However let's not take water for granted, let's not dare, I want my children and grandchildren to be able to stand and stare.
Sep 1, 2017
Sep 1, 2017 at 3:27 AM UTC