"figureheads" poems
Winters can be tedious.
Sun dips into early dusk.
A dead fire refuses to ignite.
There's a quick repetition
of opening and closing blinds
over a barred window.
In need of reflection
I search a familiar face
in an unfamiliar landscape.
I have her in my grasp,
half illusion, half real,
a symbolic mask denies
her true face,
her glittering crown
divides us by its radiance.
Groping in darkness,
I stumble over objects
of wood and stone,
my unsteady tread tripping
over their contours.
I light a candle.
Bathed in amber light,
our shadows merge.
A new door opens,
stretching the perspective.
No formal borders here,
they wouldn't survive
the present climate.
In their place,
intricately carved
figureheads and totems-
a vision of the past.
My eye is a camera,
retinas branded with imagery
for the photographer's delight-
coloured pebbles, carved wooden animals,
tin cans, bones.....
....A Glass Sentinel
(though she isn't visible)
I can see right through her-
a vision of smokescreens
and subterfuge.
Past stumps of driftwood,
past the uncut grass,
a few flowers...
...to the fabricated backdrop
of a burning house, black smoke
rising
in
a
thin
stream.
At the open door -
The Guardian,
(I know her inside out)
unmoved,
(she didn't bat an eye)
defiant in a new skin,
a softer version-
The Mother protecting her children,
arms splayed, prepared
for fight or flight.
A russet flame
Licking her spine exhales
'Get out of my way!'
but she wasn't listening.
Smile fixed,
eyes of a phoenix,
a lion,
a raptor,
protector.
We all need feeding,
but not this way!
Throw me a cloth,
a napkin,
a man-size tissue
a lifeline!
She wanted this,
no, wished it-
this symbolism,
this burning of ironic portraits,
to clear the deck,
make way for new.
It shook the house,
its fate sealed behind closed doors.
I compose myself,
pull her back from the perilous edge,
gather her in my arms.
Fragments of shattered words
flutter in the ether.
What is real?
What is fiction?
A carbon copy of thousands?
A charred corner?
A forgotten candle?
WARNING:
'Eating fire' is a risky business
but can attract a large audience.
Jul 12, 2014
Jul 12, 2014 at 11:29 AM UTC
Peak temperature water levels fake diagnoses white psychopaths starving hunger jingoism violence [systems that deprive us] guns entitlement shots fired accidents grief/mourning choking hazard corporate mascots corporate favoritism corporate bailouts corporate people ideology without monitor nationalism patriotism conservatives patriarchy murder-rape-suicide victim silence lack of conviction religious ********** false history infant mortality job insecurity invisible hands trickle down economics union busters corporate police brutal police evil police secret police debt bankruptcy foreclosure homelessness lost confused prisoner criminal banker war preparations propaganda ballots commercials advertisements campaigns money power puppets figureheads armies genocides **** bomb gas fire no survival violence wealthy lawyers assassinations heart complications death sleep.
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 1:40 PM UTC
“let sleeping dogs lie,”
i said
as the ground turned sideways
topsy turvy
we made gravity our enemy
in our witless haste
drug driven day crusades
we became empty giants
standing on man’s shoulders
hoping to hold the sun
“dream your waking daylight,”
you said
as the sky shook itself
upside down
we made time our enemy
in your desperate rush
forgotten frail figureheads
i became fickle Midas
falling with the rising
daring to gild the moon
“our pretty eyes are lies”
we said
as the world fell apart
fault lines
we made entropy our enemy
Aug 22, 2012
Aug 22, 2012 at 11:33 PM UTC
Miss Lucy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell (ding ding)
Miss Lucy went to heaven and the steamboat went to-
"Hell, you're king of asphodel and I'm the
queens are only figureheads pretending to
'rule the chalky darkness and master your
light' fires in my soul with a lonely wet
match up the boys and the girls and ignore their
desire is a sickly sweet syrup, poisoning your
veins are so easy to reach when a blade is your
cure me cure me but only how I want to be
cured minds are a cracked figment of our
imagination is henceforth forbidden, it hinders
conformity of anger is an empty and broken
safety has always belonged to those who lie the
best hate others or they'll love to hate you
first come first serve, no matter where you came
from the sewage of the silt of society we will
'rise if you believe in miracles' no, but I think there's
hope is the thing they say we have but forgot to give
us quiet kids are always too busy being
NORMAL is not what you said it was, nice try
though we are free, you have forgotten to tell us
so it goes, so it goes, one day I had been
dreaming is something she hates so she's begun to
smile, it's a wonderful mask to wear when you're
collapsing is my specialty, I'm just like all the
others being in pain does not mean I should not
cry out all you want, science proved that God's not
listening to the sound of silence is long since out of
style is a name and a number and a broken
incarceration may cure me, but once I was just like
you have the power but we have the money to fake
it cannot drown softly if it never wanted to
begin at the beginning and we will all be
lost along the skeleton bridges, I began to
walk with me, walk with me. It's always a day that's-"
Darker than the ocean, darker than the sea!
Darker than the underwear my mommy put on YOU NOT ME!
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 1:02 PM UTC
Beneath the Amber sun,
above the reflection of the waters,
his armies did assemble,
ready to smash, bash, and gnash,
the hope of the Fea'inor
dwindled.
Numbered so few, that any host of evil
could easily leave them ruined,
Rua'grain, absorbed the fears,
and disolved the confidence,
until, Mædhras, delivered words inspiring
to all.
'Be brave my fellow warriors,
that this day Evil may take not one
step more, and We the free,
may tell the tales of this day.
Fight not for the chance that you
may live, but that your children,
your wives, you families may have
just one beloved day more!
Waste not that which is sacred,
be not careless with your lives,
but fight for that one extra day.
It is worth it.'
Resounding horns, echoing on the waters,
the flash of steel, magnified by the reflection,
the hearts of Men, united with Old Allies,
once more bore a flame, akin to none
beheld before.
The force of Good with swiftness moved,
the host of Rua'grain,
creatures from every shadow,
crevasse, and lair,
assembled to have at the free and fair.
10,000 creatures, all with sullied eyes
stampeded in a wild craze.
With courage, the Fea'inor defended,
pushing back against the rage,
fighting to the last,
and making this en-darkened host pay.
Mædhras, stands, resolute upon the eastern shore,
his foes strewn all about him,
smote upon the bloodied shore.
His courage unyielding,
strength unending,
the host of evil festering around him.
To his call his men did rally,
showing all valor and courage,
defending, and assaulting,
inflicting devastation upon they
who sought to destroy fea'inor' homes.
In one final push,
one last show of strength,
Mædhras lead his men
along the endless shore,
and forced his sword,
gleaming and rubied,
into Rua'grains soulless chest,
The Host of Evil, corruption
and all villainy departed,
fleeing for the hills,
and making a victorious sound,
Fea'inor went in humbled pursuit.
Yet, along the endless shore,
after all Good and Evil had left
these two figureheads engaged
in the greatest combat,
Locked for all eternity,
to create the birth of Day,
and death of Night.
Sep 19, 2012
Sep 19, 2012 at 1:57 AM UTC
Overman—
Follow you the music of a generation
Premonitions of the culture
Constantly unseating one another
At the throne beneath your soapbox?
Quarrel you with Parrish Priests and
Local Lords and
Moneyed Many and
Other Overmen?
Overman—
Speak you in uncommon tongue
Through veils of bourgeois idols
Through clouded visions blinding you to pleas from those beneath
Through impenetrable barriers about your plywood castle?
Overman—
Reject you any god lain at your feet,
Any miracle as trivia,
Any sincerity as foolishness,
Any ethnic pride as blasphemy,
Papal Pagan figureheads as absurdity?
Overman—
Have you children born unnaturally,
Brothers cross the moonlit gulf,
Sisters of incestuous intimacy,
Fathers of musical prowess,
Mothers of a warm genetic lab?
Overman—
Your day is coming
One hundred million of you
In synchronistic harmony
Of uniform variety
Of classless social rigidity;
Becoming one with the orbital network,
A single entity to govern life among the planets,
An immortal computer god
Expanding past the reaches of
The spent and worn-out orb
That keeps revolving, spiraling downward,
Closer, closer to the sun—
Overman, will you outlive them all?
Overman, you were there first,
Will you be the first beyond?
Jan 22, 2011
Jan 22, 2011 at 7:50 PM UTC
trolling the doldrums for crumbs of gold
selling old caldrons to witless witches
wearing goblin teeth and dragons blood
earrings from Hot Topic
I languish in the Emo village that is the United States –
Self-serving ******** preserving their precious habitats
while habitually encumbering the global ecology
drinking biodegradable Starbucks in Buick Escalades
escapade-ing ***** raiders afraid of Mercury in retrograde
staying clear of the mayhem
and playing fear propagating madman
I stoke wildfires with gasoline
prodding the populace into premature *********** –
poorly formed ideas the norm
the scorn for the figureheads shows on the shoreline
boorish oarsmen, moored, pour their kerosene blood
onto the floor…. Sure,
pure Fuerer fodder, but newer shoes
were never shod
and the godhead faces west into the sunset –
druidic fluids escape wiccan slits
as the children of the Azure seas never get to be born
Pleaedian starships collide inside Antarctic subterranean dwellings
indiscriminate shelling of uninhabited caverns
as ravenous reptilians eat the jaw muscles
and left eye sockets
of organically fed Dairy cows…
espoused louse houses in Fall fashion blouses
trounce the infirm in clown shaped bounce houses
again, the sin goes unnoticed
as the blood of the innocents grants the elitists
another thousand years of power –
The tower on the hill still shines in the moonlight
on the 5th night of delighting the religious right…
mighty flightless birds self-assured and fed
on bramble burrs
purr at the sight.
bodies strewn all askew;
the moaning few with skin turning blue
true to the stories of old
as lack of oxygen blends with the biblical beast mark
and staving for air the impaired dare not to ask for Jesus aid…
instead they lay, waiting to be saved –
Aug 10, 2015
Aug 10, 2015 at 6:03 PM UTC
Springboarding
captured children,
locked in
vending machines,
like princes in the tower.
Swiping the barcode
imprinted upon their foreheads,
placing them in playpens
--free range, of course--
and listening to the stories
that caused them
to,
in this precise order,
fill,
spill,
chill...
To empty their lungs,
to rage against the machine
that first boiled blood
into the deflated veins
of their youthful tendencies.
Birthing a furlough,
for when
the wild
and profane
wish for scream time:
babes in the wood,
before figureheads to die for.
Jun 7, 2020
Jun 7, 2020 at 10:17 PM UTC
Frigid curly
Black and long
Tentacles from the scalp
Frantic, we dance
And our unbraided ropes
Drench in salted sweat
For now
I shake and yet
The tremble in me is fake
Finally silent
I crouch away since
When was having fun such a task
Sep 26, 2018
Sep 26, 2018 at 1:00 PM UTC
Caught in between my God/Satan duality I felt a nightmare
What if someone went back in time and cut me from the womb
Would I just dissolve and fall from time?
Can we try this vision soon?
Terminators can go back in time
And so can a Delorean
But only in the movies
But imagine what's in God's emporium
A worn-out fast computer finally cracks the time code
Centuries after every man is extinct
So this new robot-kind finds what they can
By scanning everyone on the net
The robots discover me and my unique viewpoint
Do they read my poem and laugh with me
Or set out to destroy
We'll see
No one wants to run around making sure their parents copulate
Or be hurled into the future where everyone's extinct
But if you go far enough forward you could come back around
Or die in the machine in a transdimension without a sound
They'd probably ***** out history's figureheads first
And like stomping a butterfly could make time reverse
Or everything just shifts and changes
rearranging the wheel in an infinite curse
Feb 21, 2018
Feb 21, 2018 at 3:43 PM UTC
we were out on the porch
on an abnormally warm december night
with little glow florence off to the west
and he hadn't said much of what was there
because when he says nothing he is, with
his words laid out beneath pearl snaps
scrawled down his stomach--I would know,
i've seen his the tyrades plow, resentment
run thick, angry words rampant in his veins--
so he says nothing, and I know.
often times he is an open door and
i am the wind, in billows or gasps, rattling
hinges, finding holes, peeling paint or gathering dust
a spool of thread wrapped around stonehenge to remember
curls of foilage, svelte figureheads on galleons, I tell him
that I want to be with him and he says nothing. won't even look at me,
he's somewhere far away, drawn into penrose like a soul sunk in the
dirt, I say it again, and he tells me we should go inside
so i want to ask if that is all i am,
if that is what this is, if i am only good
for one night or two hours, in bits and pieces
limbs and moisture, if as a whole i am too much
but still lacking, if the warmth of my hips is
all that's needed but the grand luminance of a soul is out of the question?
But I say none of that, just follow him inside.
A hundred questions trickling down my spine, gathering in my femur, my calves, gusting into my lungs, I don't know how to be more than this and less, I'm opening up the cavity of my chest and pleading this
this is all there is.
I am all that I can be
Dec 25, 2016
Dec 25, 2016 at 6:04 PM UTC
I'm tired of traffic
I'm tired of sleepless nights ... literally
I'm tired of alarm clocks
I'm tired of people littering
I'm tired of homeless people asking me for money
I'm tired of feeling like I owe them compassion
I'm tired of greedy, scumbag, politicians spewing their rhetoric
I'm tired of mouthpiece figureheads inhabiting every news outlet
I'm tired of news in general. It always seems to be ****** anyway
I'm tired of people who believe the earth is flat
I'm tired of the earth not being flat, so I can't push said people from the edge of it
I'm tired of people spreading their religions like cancer
I'm tired of every coffee shop conversation ending in a failed pyramid-scheme recruitment
I'm tired of murderers, rapists, and other delusional ***** sharing my precious oxygen
I'm tired of the fact we can't just feed them to endangered sharks
I'm tired of being expected to care
I'm tired of my failure to begin smoking cigarettes. God how I idolize them
I'm tired...
So I guess I'll get some rest
Sep 2, 2017
Sep 2, 2017 at 2:15 AM UTC
The sculptured mermaid hung at the prow,
And breasted the highest waves,
Her hair flew back from the salt and spray
Was carved from some wooden staves,
She never smiled in a cruel sea
But watched for the distant shore,
In hopes that one day, try as they may
They’d leave her behind once more.
She’d had enough of the fuming foam
Of the white capped waves by the shore,
The heaving swell made her feel unwell
And each storm brought a taste of Thor.
She’d once been used to a merchant’s lot
Had sailed to the East and West,
Her arm was shattered by cannon shot
When the French attacked at Brest.
But now she was tied to a Man-of-War
She couldn’t escape her fate,
She knew she’d end on the ocean floor
If support was a little late,
Her skirt was ragged, was chipped and torn
And her paint beginning to fade,
She lived in dread of the Dutchmen’s horn
Or the sound of a fusillade.
The only time she was known to smile
Was back in the port once more,
She’d meet and greet with all of her friends
The carved figureheads of war,
She’d will the ship run into the pier
To tear her away for good,
And hope the break would be clean and sheer
To pamper her aching wood.
The salt and damp got into her pores,
The rot set into her bones,
Then one fine day when a world away
She dropped to a bed of stones.
She sits below where the sailors go
When their ships cast them to the deep,
And as they pass she will smile at last
As they enter their endless sleep.
David Lewis Paget
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 9:53 AM UTC
Often we will hear of the inconceivable happening thousands of miles away
And we think to ourselves "how terrible"
Grieving for a day or two, maybe more if it's closer to our hearts
But the daily drill is still of income and payments and staying afloat
We're all numb
And there is a war out there that isn't civil
There is no boarders just a small slum Or a big city transit
All with ghosts now in their ruins
We live in fear or in blind ignorance
Because it comes up so much in the main media that there is no more room for us to care
We want to care
We sympathize
We forget in a month
Moving on to the next bullet to travel through a minority's chest
And we mock a groups once valiant efforts turned sour by the anger in their minds
One by one another greedy one takes advantage of the pain to use for their campaign
A generation that grew up believing they could be the very best now only believing that they are worth nothing
A time period that will forever be a joke in a few years time
But our struggle is not mein kampf but it is OUR TIME TO BE ALIVE
we are just living
We are
Just living in another time
Time
That will be remembered through figureheads and not the experiences felt
So here is for the tears
Not the water falling from our cheeks but the divide in the culture
Aug 10, 2016
Aug 10, 2016 at 2:59 AM UTC
Apollo 11 lunar module named “Eagle”
prediction defied naysayers ain't no boon
dog gull announced successful landing
while voice of Ole Blue eyes did croon
in Sea of Tranquility on moon
sometime about high noon
halting advancing armies
from one after another platoon
set down pontoon
bridges across the river Kwai (dune
axe why, the spatial event
July 20, 1969 witnessed great withered
figureheads regaled American dignitaries
even many an centenarian old prune,
plus lovely bones as skeletal rune
none other than remains formerly
Robert Hutchings Goddard exhumed
subsequently astronaut Neil Armstrong
uttered "That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind,"
though skeptics good n plenti
claimed hue moon phase
would never become crater!
Three astronauts gravitated,
celebrated accomplished fete
instrumental proffering accolades
glock o' spiel trumpeted didgeridoo
courtesy King of rock and Queen
arduous encapsulated endeavor
spurred ravenous appetite
they got the moon cheese
lunar than later nibbled moonpie
washed down with spot of tea.
Heroes welcome greeted
podcast linkedin crew
upon their successful
accomplished impossible mission
returned to umble Earth
bootlegged moonshine stowed
within light saddle
sore ring hearts skipped beat
felt over the moon,
nonetheless by George underwent
thoroughly good medical examination
afflicted with minor malady,
not deemed more serious
than cardiovascular lunar tick.
Fast forward Fifty Earth orbitz chock
full of journeys light years distant pock
marked little uninhabited rock
quite quaint outer limits mostly schlock
of twilight zone by Spock,
he of Starship Enterprise.
No hint what prospects doth lie ahead
for future generations, centuries after
present madding crowd long since dead
yes, the space travel science fiction
authors flesh out today
will arrive within blink, whereby
fantasy with reality will wed.
Jul 22, 2019
Jul 22, 2019 at 8:52 PM UTC