Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
none of you understand what i’m saying is i’m not like any of you never married never parented children never owned real estate don’t believe in government the law hate rich people not afraid to lose everything risk life for the chance at a better life yes i graduated from Philadelphia dental school practiced medicine several years dashing handsome cordial Georgia physician yet knowing i was dying then of tuberculosis i wanted to feel alive know danger taste possibilities ******* greedy ranch and railroad barons all you cotton gin grist mill moguls loud mouthed Yankee carpetbaggers bounty hunters self-righteous snake oil preachers with your fearful farmstead flocks what the hell do you think Big Nose Kate and me were doing in Tucson why i risked my life at Tombstone’s OK Corral i’ll tell you why because we were desperate beyond your comprehension long-drawn-out careworn hours twisted in desperation insufferably plodding nights so desperate Kate relieved me daily yet in back of each our minds we understood we were both slaves to ancient unfair corrupt economic system that provided enough whiskey to cope desperate for money allegiance shelter frantic enough to face loaded guns aimed firing at me it was hell on earth glaring sun beating down desert dust blowing burning eyes bullets cutting everywhere 1880’s revolvers lacking accuracy even with expert gunsmith modifications young men riddled with bleeding gunshot wounds in 6 years i was dead age 36 hey Kate was no cakewalk she was a ***** who knew how to play me flirting charming admiring exaggerating her strange Hungarian lust encouraging provoking prostituting on her knees back tummy fingers mouth managing somehow to become acquainted with Arizona Governor George Hunt then surviving to age 90 you modern day sleepers who read this rambling cower at airport security passively submit to insidious militarizing culture invasively inspecting camera scanning for cuticle scissors nail file weapons all ludicrous absurdist theatre while real bad guys can easily tape 3 McDonald’s plastic knives together or ball point pen pierce pilots passengers throat arteries skyjack planes hijack bus trains you are no safer than you ever were before Homeland Security Czars foreign wars where we don’t belong riding has grown so weary courage ruthless longing vexing generating entire industry of airport security corporate mall tariff duty free shops inflated restaurant menu prices liter bottle of water $4.99 welcome to America **** me now or **** me later who cares what i look like what i wear if i’m dry shaven smell like goat if i cough up chunks of lung spit tuberculosis germs on polished floors just so long as i pay the toll fee and don’t go shooting off my mouth
st64 Jan 2014
baby in the crib, turns closed eyes into dream-light
young boy at the window, eyes on the calf
woman with the cow, flies milling around the eyes


1.
every morning, with a penchant for rising before his hour
           he stands, sees the calf at the wooden-fence
           watches with the fawn-coloured beauty of sea-shell heartbeat..
                              the rising-eye
while his sister, nearly a young-woman, washes dishes with eyeballs
                              out the tiny-window
           heifer passes by and he looks straight into eyes – gentle eyes –
                              soothes calamity

2.
in the cold morning on the farmstead, the baby curls in its warm-folds
     she chases off the flies from the horns
     and cleans gummed-openings
yet deity’s crown falls from splendour this day
      as moments devoured by need eventually bear witness
to warm dripping in the sand
the bowl is filled

                                           *(high-scale horror)


and the boy has seen it, too
he holds his arms round him to stop the wholesale-shaking.. bites down hard
     as his face contorts baleful.. in impotent-anger
     his silence bought decades ago.. in another life
no price on his shock
and the bird on the branch flies off.. glint-eyes on another branch

it’s that time once again: she takes the old-cow to town
they await her before nightfall
she never does return


3.
I’m begging you
        leave it be, this is how it is
go pick up the baby, please
(the baby won’t stop crying)




your fences, I’ll rip up your fences with your very own whip
while them wolves howl on and on
I got oppressive-time to suffer your unmatched-law in the crush-of-daylight
now, kindly.. get outta my face!








S T – 22 Jan 2014
A day.. is a day is a day.



sub-entry: one day

it ain’t so far away.. one day is just the day
after this

see it.
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,”
“Ich woll,” “Er sholl,” and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon gird
At England’s very *****, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: “Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,
Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.”
Don Bouchard Feb 2012
The day he died
The sun rose just the way
It always did on cold December mornings:
Frost crystals on his back,
Breath steaming in the winter air,
A few sparrows chattering,
Molly at the barn mooing news:
Milking time!
Frozen water tank!
Hunger pains!
And where was Farmer now?

So he yawned and stretched himself,
Looked at the house whose walls
Allowed his master's voice to filter through thin, cold air:
Heard an oven door squeak wide,
The telephone ring,
Morning voices and the creak of floors,
And then the door cracked open.

Full scents emerged:
Fresh baking from the oven,
The farmer's coat and boots,
Laundry soap in fresh washed jeans,
And a bowl of food with milk
Steaming for him.

The diesel tractor coughed and roared,
Semi-warm from its head-bolt heater sleep,
and sent thick cloud plumes to winter sky
Before the engine warmed enough to move
The wheels' crunching pressure, packing snow.

Breakfast down, and morning chores to follow,
The St. Bernard stretched himself,
Pushed through the old iron gate
And followed in the tractor's track
To see the morning feeding in the snow.

No one could tell him he was getting old,
And maybe was a little stiff and slow
To follow tractors as they plowed their way
Through newly fallen snow.

An hour later, the man, the tractor and the dog
Had made their way below the farmstead hill
To feed a sheltered herd just out of wind's cold way.
What happened next is painful still to say.

The tires sank through crusted snow and spun
But forward movement failed it in its rounds;
Reversed, a chain came loose and outward flung
to pull the faithful follower down.

So what is there to say about a friend whose harm
And death came accidentally at my hand?
I knelt there in the snow and held him in my arms,
Sobbing sorrows... begging him to try to stand.

But he only looked up at me with brown, sad eyes,
Hard broken from the crushing of the wheel,
And moved his tail a little bit to show he was content
To lie there in my arms, and shuddered once and then was still.

The cows looked on impatiently,
Steam rising from their hides,
And saw me bawling on my knees
and begging mercy from my silent God.
Something like this happens on every farm, I am sure. We lost our St. Bernard, "Baby," 30 years ago. RIP, Baby.
Don Bouchard Feb 2012
A plain woman in a checkered dress
Trapped on a windy hill
With a man whose every thought
Was crops and cows and bad weather coming,

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly at 12:00
When the hands aligned.

You drove "flagger,"
moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls
To be God-fearing citizens,
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

There on that swept-neat farmstead,
Under the green roofs,
Beside the red barn,
In your white walls,
The rational order,
The unnatural neatness
Belied you.

Lydia...
You of the Romantic Heart,
You of the secret desire and passion.
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of romance novels
In easy reach,
An escape from harsh reality.

What guilty ecstasies you managed to steal
Came five miles from the post office,
Ninety-five cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
Tucked in a galvanized milk pail.

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passions and handsome strangers
Ready to take you from dry and wind-blown land.
S D S Jun 2013
When I was a boy
My life was erratic
Volcanoes in Antarctica
Jungles in LA
Shouts and anger; quiet farmstead

As I got older
My heart was erratic
Kisses in the hallway
Bruises on the cheek
Soft words and embraces; angry thoughts

Even older still
My mind was erratic
Screaming at the wall
More clever than ever
Lucid, powerful arguments; raving paranoid delusions

And here I am
I am erratic incarnate
A bundle of sluggish energy
A sonnet written for one girl and an excuse for another
A coil of madness tight around the bright spark of genius
A purely mechanical soul-filled destiny driven fate-less wonder
Do I laugh for the irony or madness?
K Balachandran Feb 2012
Growing up in a farm
is rolling in sticky, soft, sensuous, mud
and imbibing
wisdom of nature
beyond words,
a preternatural ritual;
a farm has full of voices
heard and unheard
but mind has ears that record
and replay to one's soul,
i am still at a loss to explain
how it works,
it's another unuttered secret of life.

change in the  tune of rain,
cloud formation, wind speed
and flow of water;
each has distinct meaning
translated to changes in one's life.
more than counted as  rich or poor
plenty of things that make every moment,
enjoyable were the crux of happiness in the farm life.

plants grew whispering secrets
bore fruits and after a period,  died out,
in between one observes
waves that rise and fall
cycles of nature.
that's how, i suppose
i had a ripened sense
of complexities of life, fairly early,
it brought one pain too.

Growing up in a farmstead
is like playing an orchestra of many pieces, all alone
sitting in the lap of mother nature.

i never viewed my father as a  farmer
i saw him sitting on a chair reading Homer
or discussing Tolstoy or Shakespeare
as much as he cared for his crops,
he  really was a student of mother nature
farming was his way of life.
a magician who transformed,
complexities he observed in nature
in to practical possibilities.
"a true farmer is a versatile genius."
i remember those words,
he told us  in a voice of what seemed,
coming from the  elements of nature:
"we are all basically farmers, never forget
and above that human beings"

we grew up with cattle, chicken and farm animals
i was just a child, then, i thought i didn't fully get
what he meant, but later my dad's truth
slowly revealed itself to us,
unfolding through days and nights of our lives.

crop of rice fully ripened was a lovely sight
and the banana plantation, cornucopia
that made heart a peacock that sees dark clouds.
when pepper vines laden with red berries
turned black gold,
walking along the vegetable patches,
i felt what it was to be a farmer.
in  the attic, full of dry ginger bags , air was an intoxicant,
milking cows and grazing farm animals
taught a rare kinship with all life.

when poverty looked with deep set eyes
from fields and pathways to  farms
i understood the spirit of my father's words;
why one should be a human  first.
men and woman and malnourished children
working half naked in splashing, scorching sun,
reaped rice to the accompaniment of songs.
i too used to sing those songs,
and remembered those words
my father wanted us to remember;
i am a farmer,
a child of nature
but a human first
who feels the pain
of those who toil for a living.

O
Don Bouchard Apr 2015
A plain woman in a checkered dress
Trapped on a windy hill with a man whose every thought
Was crops and cows and bad weather coming,

You cooked every meal on time,
Served lunches exactly
When the hands aligned.
At the stroke of noon.

You drove "flagger,"
Moving trucks and tractors
From field to field,
Raised two boys and two girls...
Buried one in shock and disbelief;
And then moved on.

I know your secret.

On that swept-neat farmstead
Under the green roofs
Beside the red barn
In your white walls,
The rational order,
The unnatural neatness
Belied you.

Lydia,
Woman of the Romantic Heart,
You of the secret desire and passion...
Beside your chair in that sparse house
Stood a stack of novels,
Romance in easy reach,
An escape from harsh reality.

Ahhh.
The stolen moments!
The bliss of passion!
Handsome strangers ready
To rescue you from wind-blown land.

What guilty ecstasies you stole
Came five miles from the post office,
Ninety-five cents a copy,
Wrapped in brown paper,
Tucked in a galvanized milk pail.
Memories....
GOAL

Goal is like cultivating a farmstead, more it's nurtured more chances
of

Achievement
warranted.
#c9_fm
THE MIND

The mind is a book & it's encrypted with whatever  always activated on it. However, whenever you speaks its more like reading out what had already been written, stored on the tablet of the mind. The more you study it more you understands it, the more easy it becomes to work for you.

The mind also could be compared to a void farmstead without cultivation. It's got to be cultivated by planting seeds of good thoughts, ideas, and creativity potentials, with enormous talents.

Lest weeds is allowed to grow and germinate on a precious ****** farm-field of the mind.
Plus: The mind is a world on which everythang happens and done before on the physical world.


Reason that! It's the more freedom on the mind more as the freedom around. The mind is the first place to survive if anyone wants to survive whatever they may be going through, refine and reset the mind. Because life begins from within the mind.
#c9_fm
Alan S Jeeves Jul 2021
Far away over meadows, fields and hills
Or through oak woodland which is ever sweet;
Seeking out Wordsworth's golden daffodils.

Early morning, amid the dewy chills
Where a dawn kissed grassland moistens the feet
Far away over meadows, fields and hills.

A perfumed carpet your raw sense it fills
With a yellow trumpeted aspect replete
Seeking out Wordsworth's golden daffodils.

And by the noon, as mid-day sunlight spills,
I wander onward down a floral street
Far away over meadows, fields and hills.

By farmstead ruins and old water mills
Where sheep now dwell and brightly bleat and eat,
Seeking out Wordsworth's golden daffodils.

So, the land where the poet whet his skills
I walk at springtime in nature's elite.
Far away over meadows, fields and hills
Seeking out Wordsworth's golden daffodils.
sponkenwordc Feb 2017
The walls are an off white and green with doors every couple feet, lights so bright that you could mistake them as heaven. Moving fast down the hallway on a rolling bed I noticed the blood coming out of my chest the nurse kept asking me something but I couldn’t hear over the consent ring in my ear and then suddenly everything went dark.

My thoughts consume me when it's just me my thoughts and the darkness the odds will forever be against me. It’s like walking across a tightrope one wrong step and you plunge to your death, one wrong thought and there goes to stability, there goes your sanity, there goes your strength, and soon you’re drowning in your own tears.

They say before you die you get a glimpse of what your life could have been, I didn’t get that glimpse, I got a glimpse of him and every moment I spent with him. It all started at one forty am October 4th that’s when we made our relationship official, our first kiss gave off a feel of relief like the morphine running through my veins stopping the chest pains. Then came the first date we spent at Deanna Rose Farmstead, even though it was a place for little kids we managed to make it fun.

I watched as we walked through the butterfly garden holding hands and sharing funny stories. The feeling of your hand intertwined with mine sent  a rush through my body like the IV rushing through my bloodstream. Then came the first time you told me you loved me and for the first time I had everything, in this moment they removed the bullet and closed the wound.

Then the break up came, I watched as you humiliated me infront of my friends, I watched as you belittled the girl you claimed to love the feeling of humiliation caused the internal bleeding in my body. Months went by and  I watch as you loved another girl, I watched as you danced with her at homecoming, but just last year that was me. Watching you happy with another girl felt like my chest was being cut open. I told myself that I would never give you a second chance until I reached out and gave you a second chance.

Maybe it was because I missed you or maybe because we weren’t to be, but something was telling me that your love would be the death of me, but I still let you in. while the doctors were trying to save me I was watching a movie of our story realizing I loved you but you loved what I could give you. You loved what you could benefit from but I loved you.

I love the way you look when you sleep and the way you say babe, I love you smile and your eyes, I love you dimples, I love the feeling of you hand intertwined with mine, I love the feeling of your arms around me, I love the way you kissed me. I love your heart. I love the way you loved me, didn’t know everything I loved was a memory because this whole time I thought our love was reality. I guess it’s like that when I’m the only one showing any kind of intimacy.

I could hear the doctors say we’re losing her. When you’re in love you ignore the red flags not because you’re naive but because you’re too blind to see the bad thing increasing while the good decrease. Less hellos more goodbyes, less I’m sorry and more blaming, Less I love you and more fights. The heart is blind but the mind never misses a thing but you can’t love with your mind. If only my mind and heart could think alike maybe I wouldn’t be crying myself to sleep at night.

The doctor screams we’re losing her we’re losing her. Maybe I would have realized the one word text beep, the read and no reply beep, the no effort to see me beep, the girl you were talking to other than me beep. Said you weren’t ready for a relationship or just didn’t want me beep. I was honest with you beep, never held back my feelings for you beep, never thought of myself always thought of you beep.

Why did you tell me you loved me when you didn’t beep, why did you break my heart beep, why don’t my tears affect you beep, why did I put you before my own mental health beep, why did you take a shotgun to my heart beep.

I told you life was too short too waste beep so when the doctors walk in the hospital waiting room they’ll let you know that I am done waiting for you beep. Time of death 01:40.
Cary Grant did not shift the gruesome, pink-titted Rosalind Russell beyond the confines of their rotting-black-corpse mausoleum tussle Beyond their putrefying-cadaver Brentwood mausoleum tussle, gay
Cary Grant didn't twist the loathsome, big teats of Bertrand Russell beyond the strength of his turning-black-corpse mausoleum muscle Zombies have no rights under Western canon to complain & sue as resurrection-man-will crushes not what pale phagocytes & pus'll do
on the homestead & farmstead, in our Everglades or Sanford's zoo,
the Great Salt Lake's Saltair Resort & upon Earth's level ocean blue
& underwater in homosexual union whereat 3 is company & so is 2 whilst the eye on the prize is paederastic marriage set in queer view
of climbing the *** north of *** Buttville, wafting up through a flue
to know well Germanic lust as the queer-bait love Mahatmaji knew mixed with pathogenic dreck & dross that makes India a toxic stew especially for Sikh Indians who can't afford more than 1 rental shoe which makes bowling tricky for men of size 19 on the bowlin' crew
while big ***** in ****** are a menace when their numbers are few Bleached women in spandex are more stubborn than mules on coke plodding down the Grand Canyon without the guiding **** & poke from Walt Disney's gas furnace man behind Flora Call's final choke
in death-rattlin' denunciation of a black & gray cartoon frog's croak
in death-rattling exclamation of a black to gray cartoon frog's croak
as 1 death-rattling exclamation of a ball-&-stick-figured toad croak
to Lucy Mercer's admission of how a Russian poisoned F.D.R. joke
Anthony Paul Apr 2018
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
Creating movement between the dead.
The battle is over.

These roses know nothing of the fighting disease
that plagues the kings with crowns on their heads.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.

Roses are crushed by surviving knights’ failing knees.
As they beg to never again be a part of the bloodshed.
The battle is over.

One rose struggles to move with the breeze.
Its petals dance beneath a blood glazed axe head.
The rose still flutters in the breeze.

The serfs will be led to believe
the roses were destroyed to save their farmstead.
The battle is over.

The bloating bodies in the field of roses please
the crowned ones, for they have not suffered with the dead.
The roses still flutter in the breeze.
The battle is over.
#villanelle
Antiques play hide and seek
I searched high and low
not realising that they're sandstone buttes
oh yeah
Monument Valley's a hoot.

Old is the new word on the block
and most will never arrive
kids out there with their heads in the sand,
will be lucky if they survive.

No one goes fishin' in the dust-bowl
can't harvest a crop that's not there
I never saw that one coming
at times I really despair.

But now I'm at rest in the farmstead
the missus churns milk in the yard
She'll give me what for when She comes in
even at rest life is hard.
More than a bajillion painful eons
after pledging troth
with thee missus,
whom I definitely blindly wed
comprised great ta ra ra boom
de ay ye blood red

boomerang/ domino pizza pie
effect pronouncing lead
din saucy impact inducing
mushrooming reverberations,
she continuously smacks me with dread
naught (Hawaiian punch style)

upside the head
jarring delicate anatomical
soft as freshly baked bread
gray matter, qua delicate
psyche got skull fully outspread
knocking down intelligent quotient

less than porcine Nellie, one smart
pig in poke farmstead,
where unseen hemorrhaging bled
scarring, seething, and suffering
practically indelible contusions
finds me whirling back from Sheepshead

Bay to stone age of Fred
Flintstone, where shmoo zing schwilly
found yours comfortably numb,
and yet kept on truckin as if grateful dead,
asper decades worth oven
po' whetted unleavened bread.

This insufferable afflicted
brow beaten doughless bro
tantamount, viz time
and again forced to eat crow
yes (ma pet) even as prank no
joking even derided by (thanks to Yo

yo ma spouse) innocent looking Elmo
nsync with mouths of scared
bullies vitriol, which did flow
exploding like embers
kindled within me plenti glow

wing with blood lust vengeance
antithesis trademarked ** ** **
wing of Santa Claus, intending
to crush indomitable of this Joe,
whose spit fired spirit, also

suffered strafed bruised flesh
indistinguishable from indigo
girls or goo goo dolls know
wing no better than dodo
bird than besiege this hobo!
Antony Glaser Oct 2021
Southern boys speak loftily
in the winter they keep you warm
in their log cabins
In Spring they don't mind the climes
They are reborn,
showing photographs of the farmstead

A wooing softness becomes them
Southern boys
have plenty of feelings
their aim is good                  
Recouping the truth
Butter melts in their mouth
Antony Glaser Oct 2021
Southern Men speak husky,
in the winter they keep you warm,
in their log cabins.
In Spring they don't mind the climes
They are reborn,
showing photographs of the farmstead

A wooing softness becomes them
Southern Men
have plenty of feelings
their aim is good
Butter wouldnt melt in their mouths
Recouping the erstwhile truth
from noble kisses.

— The End —