"fatigues" poems
A fueling, flashing fulgent, furnace, fulgurous, frothy, fumes and feathery flakes,
I do not speak of waves of snow, hoary frost, or ice, a cold gelare or even frozen lakes!
Formidable, furrows, fructifying, functioning fruition to foremost fondly found a flaming,
I revel not in such destruction but choices for my naming!
For flowers flow fields forever, forswearing funneling fjords finitely, fire fray’s forests furthermost,
Instructing in the arts of language, for I am your gracious host!
Fakir formulates factious forms fading flummoxed into fury, a fugacious fusible and furtive fleeting feigning furiosity,
A deep ditch dug, tight as pug, wrapped blanket snub though not a flub, all perspicacity!
Finds frosty frore a frozen freezing faction for fusty flaming feasance,
Fomorian fantasy of formidable faggoting, facient up to fancying, fancying, furnaced flesh fluidity finds itself factitivity, facets for fabulists from the faint familiarity,
Relating cold to heat as such, requires but a human touch, apologize I do you see for all my clueless severity!
Fans of all the falconry, who fallow fields of family, falter for a fallacy, falling into infamy as forgone flame frontogenesis, fatigues a Faustian felony, for which fate finds is fastigiated foolery, febrile features featly and yet furiously, favonian fear of fellowship fiendishly, figures foal to fatherly, finally fiddle flinchingly, although not so too furtively;
I finagle in my filigree!
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 1:13 PM UTC
Take the knapsacks
and the utensils and washtubs
and the books of the Koran
and the army fatigues
and the tall tales and the torn soul
and whatever's left, bread or meat,
and kids running around like chickens in the village.
How many children do you have?
How many children did you have?
It's hard to keep tabs on kids in a situation like this.
Not like in the old country
in the shade of the mosque and the fig tree,
when the children the children would be shooed outside by day
and put to bed at night.
Put whatever isn't fragile into sacks,
clothes and blankets and bedding and diapers
and something for a souvenir
like a shiny artillery shell perhaps,
or some kind of useful tool,
and the babies with rheumy eyes
and the R.P.G. kids.
We want to see you in the water, sailing aimlessly
with no harbor and no shore.
You won't be accepted anywhere
You are banished human beings.
You are people who don't count
You are people who aren't needed
You are a pinch of lice
stinging and itching
to madness.
Translated from the original Hebrew by Karen Alkalay-Gut.
6.8k
because we fell in love with the law
and fell out of love with ourselves.
because the ***** of great minds
wear pineapple fatigues in their fathers’ *******
from Judas swallowing 9 bullets
to one day being a kid at heart
a symptom of some abnormality.
Ever get the feeling that you’ll die on a Tuesday?
Or one day wake up on their government bed
Screaming,
“you can blame the French Revolution
On silent reading!”
watching
as three teacups of *** plan war on the asphalt.
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 5:59 PM UTC
She sat across me
in Starbucks
for 10 minutes.
I smiled shyly.
She said nothing.
Held a black plastic bag close.
No coffee.
I wanted to say:
Hey, how you doin?
But I thought such electricity
might shock the plugged round us.
I wanted to say:
Hey you ok?
Cause she wasnt
Looking at a phone
Sittin alone.
She didnt drink anything.
Where was she before?
Looking up at an
Angle like her bun
Weary like
Military fatigues.
I wanted to ask
Where she come from.
I pretended to read.
And everytime I
Looked up she was
Lookin at me.
Black eyes waiting
Expectantly
To hear a salute
To humanity.
My lips parted
But my thumbs
Texted: Hey how
You doing? to an
Acquaintence in England
With the same brown skin.
In front of me she sat
Time to waste and
I feared wasting her time.
So after 10 minutes
With no glance back she rose and left
Three bags she shouldered.
Must have been a traveler.
I wished I had heard her story.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 9:20 PM UTC
Exotic trollwood harlotry and mule kit blues
Tyrannical tyrannosaur traction padness
Cohort cavorts clastic and witch’s *** hues
Ontological ontogeny somatalogy fadness
Inductive endemic veracities and talus weather clues
Epistemological equilibrium’s homogeny badness
Timeless rhetorical ruminations and ephemeral exigency dues
Transcendent ascensional equivocal madness
Tactile acuity prescience capacity intrepid intrigues
Mystical symbiosis dharma sensorium sentiment proselyte
Torturous tractive prosthesis umbrage ultraism colleagues
Newfangled nocturnal nonchalant nether nestle neophyte
Top notch topography tortoise trauma fatigues
Faustian faux pas foist felicitous fealties socialite
Agnate nous ontological ontogeny euphenics in league
Mentalities evocative introjecting sycophant eulogizing apposite
Mystical terrestrial equestrian tellurian tableau
Panoramic imagery empiricist
Evocative exserted apomixies’ ethereal should show
Ontological somatalogy lyricist
Reflective refraction remissions opulence could know
Theosophy theophany epiphany equilibrist
Magniloquent inductive extrapolation quantum back ***
Transcendent nimbus nimiety exorcist
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 5:20 PM UTC
My shy hand shades a hermitage apart, -
O large enough for thee, and thy brief hours.
Life there is sweeter held than in God's heart,
Stiller than in the heavens of hollow flowers.
The wine is gladder there than in gold bowls.
And Time shall not drain thence, nor trouble spill.
Sources between my fingers feed all souls,
Where thou mayest cool thy lips, and draw thy fill.
Five cushions hath my hand, for reveries;
And one deep pillow for thy brow's fatigues;
Languor of June all winterlong, and ease
For ever from the vain untravelled leagues.
Thither your years may gather in from storm,
And Love, that sleepeth there, will keep thee warm.
1.7k
Selfless service.
Ego-less existence. Robes
Unwearable to mortal
Men, yet their colours are
Worth adopting onto
One's own everyday
Fatigues. I sit with one eye
Closed wherever I am, wondering
Whether this snake uncoiling
Within me is Kundalini awakening
To tell me that Dio's Stand Up
And Shout is not a mantra,
Or just some sense of knowing
That I have not a single reason to
Smile. Until I
Smile.
Jun 30, 2014
Jun 30, 2014 at 12:19 AM UTC
Today I saw a man
He was sitting by the road
I couldn't see his face
But, his feelings...well, they showed
All of his belongings
Were beside him in a cart
I wanted to approach
But, my feet just wouldn't start
Today I saw a man
Picking butts up from the street
I crossed the road to pass him
And our paths, they didn't meet
He was searching in the gutter
For tobacco for a smoke
I didn't venture near him
Just in case he spoke
Today I saw a man
Sleeping in the park
It was early in the morning
It wasn't even dark
He was covered with a jacket
With a paper by his head
He slept just like a child
He looked like he was dead
Today I saw a man
In fatigues and baseball cap
Saluting at the cenotaph
I felt my heart fall to my lap
He saluted ramrod perfect
As just a soldier can
today, I learned a lesson
Today...I saw a Man
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 5:24 PM UTC
There lies a picture on the mantle
of my grandfather, my step-father's
father, clad in U.S. Navy fatigues
and grinning slightly, almost a
smirk. The year is 1960-something
as he enlists for Vietnam and is
shipped overseas on the USS
Corral Sea to load sidewinders
into fighter planes that ignite and
**** It happens so fast.
It happened so fast. Two months
of time reduced to blinks and
minute-long visits. This house could
be cold as Mt. Meru's peak and I
would hardly notice. The brain has
ways of placing things on autopilot.
His life has come to pass and I am
left to wonder. I am not sure I ever
truly knew the man. I heard stories,
his helicopter shot down in Vietnam,
his E&E; north of the ** Chi Minh and
how he owned a gun shop on Main
St. in the town I came to call home
before it was my home. I cannot hear
his whispering, small wind of existence
sidewinding away from me and my
youthfulness. In small time I've come
to find life is meaningful if you take time
to make it so.
The day of his funeral is beautiful,
sunny and mild and full of breeze.
The gas tank of my mother's car is
close to empty and I am worried of
worldly things, will we make it and
when can we fill up again. 21 guns
gives my heart a needed beating.
May 3, 2016
May 3, 2016 at 3:55 PM UTC
by Kim Addonizio
I have been one acquainted with the spatula,
the slotted, scuffed, Teflon-coated spatula
that lifts a solitary hamburger from pan to plate,
acquainted with the ******** known as the Pocket Rocket
and the ***** that goes by Tex,
and I have gone out, a drunken *****
in order to ruin
what love I was given,
and also I have measured out
my life in little pills—Zoloft,
Restoril, Celexa,
Xanax.
I have. For I am a poet. And it is my job, my duty
to know wherein lies the beauty
of this degraded body,
or maybe
it's the degradation in the beautiful body,
the ugly me
groping back to my desk to ****
on perfection, to lay my kiss
of mortal confusion
upon the mouth of infinite wisdom.
My kiss says razors and pain, my kiss says
America is charged with the madness
of God. Sundays, too,
the soldiers get up early, and put on their fatigues in the blue-
black day. Black milk. Black gold. Texas tea.
Into the valley of Halliburton rides the infantry—
Why does one month have to be the cruelest,
can't they all be equally cruel? I have seen the best
gamers of your generation, joysticking their M1 tanks through
the sewage-filled streets. Whose
world this is I think I know.
Sep 2, 2015
Sep 2, 2015 at 2:58 PM UTC
Heroes, processed in baths of blood,emerge spotless,
Oaths lanced on battered helmets and dirt dusted fatigues, the Hand of God upon the lawless,
Never let the barrel lay its head to an enemy, the shell casings remain fixed and fearless,
One solitary act propels man to sacrifice, it is still, timeless,
Remember the mark is invisible, carried on fitted sheet flags, to us, faceless.
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 7:19 PM UTC
The juxtaposition betwixt
Hope & agony is often sharp,
Short but sudden.
Yet, is pain not longer suffered
All the times worse?
And of the flames snuffed?
Is this not the worst?
Of our fatigues,
They are addressed only in comfort,
Dressed by the garbs of one who understands
Our needs for medicine.
For the soul downtrodden
And the body corrupted,
As healers or like doctors,
Those whom we love enough to be as companions.
For the best remedy of any wound is care,
Borne out of love & not necessity
But because they wish to be there.
Nov 18, 2024
Nov 18, 2024 at 12:07 PM UTC
I retired as a colonel and am aged 64 years now.
My son was enrolled in the army two years ago.
He turned 32 years & got married only last year.
Today I looked at the lawn and it needed a mow.
So I picked up the lawnmower and started to go.
A man in military fatigues was coming near now.
Not my son but another soldier from his row.
I was looking at his face that had said a big no.
The soldier came near & stopped to inform in a low but calm voice, 'Sir, I've brought his luggage,'
The words seared through my chest like a bullet.
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 5:49 AM UTC
"Good evening lad", jeered the bear,
"What brought you to my chair?",
"To unwind from my fatigues", Kronos replied,
"Care to sacrifice some of your time?"
"You may call me Kronos, wandering spare",
"Names Bowen, Bowen the bear",
"Stories of my travels would you hear?",
"Sure, whatever, I'm all ears."
Kronos and Bowen chattered through the night,
Tales of Kronos' flights and Bowen's fights,
Both shook, brass and paw,
Agreed to meet on the next dawn.
Nov 15, 2016
Nov 15, 2016 at 5:03 AM UTC
Bubble smiled, --for what had Bubble to fear? Bubble bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, Bubble said, was my own in a dream. The old man, Bubble mentioned, was absent in the country. Bubble took my visitors all over the house. Bubble bade them search --search well. Bubble led them, at length, to his chamber. Bubble showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, Bubble brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while Bubble myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
-The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Oct 23, 2013
Oct 23, 2013 at 8:52 PM UTC
KABUL, Afghanistan
scorching sun
phantoms of heat
drifting above the roadway
Col. Geoff Parker, 42
"rising star"
perched in the command vehicle
proudly on guard
Taliban
wild rush -- crump
waves of heat and fire
spinning debris
"This barbaric act of aggression"
anger and outrage
desert wind flutters
tattered and scorched fatigues
"It's always unfortunate"
reek of charred flesh
guttering flames
unfortunate
Aug 24, 2010
Aug 24, 2010 at 9:09 AM UTC
A dove in a cage
Suspended in a cage
Soaked in the
Despairing chimes
Of the time-teller
The years have kept her
Disheveled and starved
Entrapment wears the heaviest
Unable to stir her wings
Hopelessness fatigues her
Boring holes in her beating heart
Powerless and weightless
She's naked in the hole
White feathers long gone.
Jan 11, 2011
Jan 11, 2011 at 2:00 PM UTC
*Mimesis:
the deliberate imitation of the behavior of one group of people by another as a factor in social change.*
Somewhere, someone
knows these colors to be home.
Not only the sandy complexion of the boots,
but the laces slipping and sliding
into loops and over
soft tongues and slowly pulling,
constricting, suffocating.
Even its shape—
the shallow curve of a man’s ankle,
the slow descent to the tips of his toes—
these are the sandy silhouettes and generous hills
recalled from their youth.
Someone, somewhere
admires jagged peaks of pale crested mountains.
The same jagged peaks
they have seen rising and breaking
in the wrinkles of loose fitting fatigues,
and complimented by vests,
spotted with the gentle green pastures
once ruled by their jidd’s sheep.
There are chains of mountains
as wide as chests under Mandarin collars
and just as full of pockets and pouches
as military issued BDU’s—
but this is cheap imitation.
It is a failed mimesis.
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 5:52 PM UTC
A swivel of satisfaction
Staring through the windowpane of eternity
Envious eloquence
Cheap wine
Cold nights
Another minute, another hour
Another you, another me
Latitudes of love
Longitudes of hate
Past passions
Futuristic fatigues
That
is what makes up
You and me
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 1:32 AM UTC
Breathe from the gentle south, O Lord,
And cheer me from the north;
Blow on the treasures of thy word,
And call the spices forth!
I wish, Thou knowest, to be resign'd,
And wait with patient hope;
But hope delay'd fatigues the mind,
And drinks the spirits up.
Help me to reach the distant goal;
Confirm my feeble knee;
Pity the sickness of a soul
That faints for love of Thee!
Cold as I feel this heart of mine,
Yet, since I feel it so,
It yields some hope of life divine
Within, however low.
I seem forsaken and alone,
I hear the lion roar;
And every door is shut but one,
And that is Mercy's door.
There, till the dear Deliverer come,
I'll wait with humble prayer;
And when He calls His exile home,
The Lord shall find him there.
894
If memory serves this was a special branch of the
Militaty U.K.
Those boys came to town to play.
Weekend rabble loose on leave.
Ready set by the truckloads.
Bully mother ******* in jungle boots.
Ready to blow a few months pay
And whip anyone's *** for looking the wrong way.
Rowdy and loud.
Imperialist ******
Long on swagger short on ****
Eh mate got any sisters about?
Asked one blatherin putz as he stimbled about.
Every now and then one strayed from the pack
Drunk and disorderly. Four sheets to the wind.
Well... he kept close after that.
I was about 8 when I became aware that
The big loud men in kilts and fatigues were men
On a mission an ill wind.
but victims of power same as we.
God save our gracious king
God save our glorious king. God save the king
Send him victorious.
Happy and glorious.
Long to reign over us.
God save the king.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 10:09 PM UTC
that week in Indiana
a 16 hour drive
Indiana bound
the road before
me wound here
and there as I
drove the day
the night filled
with anticipation
and lust for the
farmer and his
chickens cows
and an old brown
dog I was as free
as the wind
following the map
to the small town
that led me to him
that early dawn
and he was there
by the side of his
ramshackle
house in his army
fatigues and his
long brown hair
with a red bandana
oh god was he as
true to his photo
even better
and I did what
farmers daughters
do with handsome
men
in the hay loft
where mice ran
scattering
and the chickens
clucking and the
cows mooing and
the dog was barking
as we lay moaning
under an orange
moon-it was 18
years ago and I
dream of him still
we loved and lost
but the memories
stay and linger
still
there is a lot to
be said for Indiana
country boys with
red bandanas.
ana christy
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 5:19 PM UTC
Exotic trollwood harlotry and mule kit blues
Tyrannical tyrannosaur traction padness
Cohort cavorts clastic and witch’s *** hues
Ontological ontogeny somatalogy fadness
Inductive endemic veracities and talus weather clues
Epistemological equilibrium’s homogeny badness
Timeless rhetorical ruminations and ephemeral exigency dues
Transcendent ascensional equivocal madness
Tactile acuity prescience capacity intrepid intrigues
Mystical symbiosis dharma sensorium sentiment proselyte
Torturous tractive prosthesis umbrage ultraism colleagues
Newfangled nocturnal nonchalant nether nestle neophyte
Top notch topography tortoise trauma fatigues
Faustian faux pas foist felicitous fealties socialite
Agnate nous ontological ontogeny euphenics in league
Mentalities evocative introjecting sycophant eulogizing apposite
Mystical terrestrial equestrian tellurian tableau
Panoramic imagery empiricist
Evocative exserted apomixies’ ethereal should show
Ontological somatology lyricist
Reflective refraction remissions opulence could know
Theosophy theophany epiphany equilibrist
Magniloquent inductive extrapolation quantum back ***
Transcendent nimbus nimiety exorcist
Jul 12, 2019
Jul 12, 2019 at 1:05 AM UTC
There is a war waging in my head- not of ammunition, but accusation.
Shouts and cries and threats. Screaming not bullets, but voices.
A war of words.
There is no peace in my head- no calm, no place of respite- only raging fords.
Mind like Niagra, falling, falling, empty and broken.
Not even sleep is really sleep any more, just another battleground.
Dead bodies scattered, A war of words.
A war of words.
There is a Cold War going on in my head, cold like the weather, cold like the rain.
The rain tastes sweet like my sanity;
but sanity is just another state of mind. Just like the river, it never quiets down.
The enemy is the successor and Niagra is falling down.
Bridges in London are falling down, only my fair lady is dressed in army fatigues.
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 3:34 PM UTC