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The wet dawn inks are doing their blue dissolve.
On their blotter of fog the trees
Seem a botanical drawing --
Memories growing, ring on ring,
A series of weddings.

Knowing neither abortions nor bitchery,
Truer than women,
They seed so effortlessly!
Tasting the winds, that are footless,
Waist-deep in history --

Full of wings, otherworldliness.
In this, they are Ledas.
O mother of leaves and sweetness
Who are these pietàs?
The shadows of ringdoves chanting, but chasing nothing.
436

The Wind—tapped like a tired Man—
And like a Host—”Come in”
I boldly answered—entered then
My Residence within

A Rapid—footless Guest—
To offer whom a Chair
Were as impossible as hand
A Sofa to the Air—

No Bone had He to bind Him—
His Speech was like the Push
Of numerous Humming Birds at once
From a superior Bush—

His Countenance—a Billow—
His Fingers, as He passed
Let go a music—as of tunes
Blown tremulous in Glass—

He visited—still flitting—
Then like a timid Man
Again, He tapped—’twas flurriedly—
And I became alone—
Richard j Heby Mar 2012
January
the morning after New Year’s Eve
In icy weather, warming comfort yields
companionship, hot chocolate,
love. A promise to himself revealed
(again) how resolutions turn to ****.

He poorly planned for no more one-night-stands,
but woke up with a head too hard to think
He slowly dressed and thought it was his man's
duty to bring her something hot to drink.

This year she hoped she wouldn't sleep with *******.
She hid her head in ***-swapped sheets, and cried
inside. He left the bed; she knew he'd lied:
"I'll be right back with coffee and some rolls."

Surprised the lovers'd catch each other's stare
in February's blank and blissful air.



February
when we met again
In February's blank and blissful air,
my inhalations thin and quick and dry
were only halted by your frigid stare;
to me, they wondered where I'd gone and why.

That one-night-stand was fun for both of us,
though neither of us seemed too satisfied;
when your first words burst out within the hush
my face grew warm and, caught off guard, I sighed.

"It's Valentine's," you said; your smile said
much more. "I figured we could take a walk,
cause what we did before was fun. You're red?"
We both knew why, but still I couldn't talk.

I could not reason why she grabbed my hand.
The sort of love that's lust is most unplanned.



March
on Narcissus
The sort of love that's lust is most unplanned.
The self's the harshest lover there could be.
"There is no beauty more than thou I see!"
He calls back to me, "Thou I see!" His hand
outstretched is soft and reaching towards me,
and I reach mine to beauty young and free.
His muscled body causes mine to stand.

But when I touch this creature fair and strong,
that image scatters; beauty must be shy.
When he returns, my passion cramped too long –
I need those rosy lips before I die.

To lust and pride Narcissus was a slave –
but daffodils are growing at his grave
to show desire's poison for our sake.  



April
a beauty out of my league
To show desire's poison, for our sake
she'd wink and makes boys think we stood a chance.
But sweet as honey, April, seemed to make
every hopeful guy compelled to dance

for her. We were her loyal worker bees
and she the queen would reap the floral sweets.
I caught a sight within a balmy breeze
of April's flowing hair in tempting heat.

I stood away where blocked behind a fir
I picked a daisy from the soft green grass;
I never got the nerve to talk to her,
too stunned and shy I let the moment pass.

Her sight is so compelling, sweet and mean,
it taunts my curious eyes in blossomed green.



May
a fairy I cannot catch
It taunts my curious eyes in blossomed green;
that light elusive sprite which mocks my sight,
in gardens where that fae comes out at night
to dance among the flowers' subtle sheen.

This fairy is disguised by buzzing lamps;
by day she hides in flapping butterflies.
In every blade of dewy grass and damp
reflective flower's gloss she hides. She dies

whenever someone says they don't believe;
as children wish on dandelions, she lives.
And flower's dust is magic for her breed:
spring's silent sparkling fairies. She gives

me joy in every fleeting light I see;
I cannot help but love her mystery.



June
on lovers separated by war
I cannot help but love her mystery;
I wonder what it could have been with her.
Though now our time is just faint memory
I always reminisce of how things were.

When school was out and roses were in bloom
and spring was turning summer every day,
I carved our names in branches as a plume
of ornament of love as if to say:

"we share this heart that with this tree will grow."
But unexpected news came suddenly:
my number picked, a soldier now I go
away from you – to war – I'm off to sea.

You say you'll wait and as you wave goodbye
The fireworks are bursting in the sky.



July
a letter to my lost youth
The fireworks are bursting in the sky;
they're popping like the pebbles 'cross the bay:
the rocks you're throwing fast. And free July
is when we watch our worries blast away.

We foolish, footless bandits in the night
were playing spin the bottle under trees.
Like fireflies and glow-sticks, we were bright,
but, grown, you've lost yourself and lost your keys.

And now your son is here; he wants to play,
but you're not playing catch, instead all day
you live your like Sisyphus, unfree –
just throw that giant rock into the bay.

Unlock that chain – conformity – and lay
simply in the sun-warmed grass all day.



August
summer love
Simply in the sun-warmed grass all day
we'd sit, and talk about some useless ****.
And in my jeep I drove you to the bay
to watch the sunset while we shared a bit

of wine. We laid down in that cooling night;
I watched your gentle lips move when you talked.
I told you that I never felt as right,
as when we kissed. My fingers interlocked

with yours; I brushed your beachy hair away
and shared a kiss that may have been our last.
I held you in my arms until the day
peeked through. We knew the sunrise soon would pass

like this. And though we think it isn't fair
departing is the summer's balmy air.



September
my first carriage ride
Departing is the summer's balmy air
to welcome cracking cold and falling leaves.
Before we left my mother'd taken care
to fasten on my mittens to my sleeves.

The foliage was bright, the air was brisk
I walked between my parents faint-clenched hands
and watched the business people rush and whisk
to work. But we were there with different plans.

My poppa propped me up into the car.
The horses both were brown and standing stiff,
but like the whirling leaves of fall thus far
my nerves were flying crazy. Then a whiff

of something as the carriage moved along
I could not hold my breath for quite that long.  



October
a waiting affair
I could not hold my breath for quite that long
awaiting your arrival at my door.
My wife is out and though I know it's wrong;
the wrongness only makes me want you more.

I cannot help but wonder what you're wearing,
and if you think about me like I do.
I wonder if our spouses are as daring;
or if they maybe know of me and you.

I rake the leaves and hope you'll soon arrive.
I put away the pictures of my wife
and stare intently at the empty drive;
then that roaring engine brings me to life.

Your car drives by; I cannot help but grin
the bright red leaves are whirling in the wind.



November
every death brings new life
The bright red leaves are whirling in the wind,
their passing reminiscent of her days,
when auburn hair would break from fragile skin
like cracking umber leaves in fall's malaise.

Her daughter saw the doctor twice a week;
the pregnancy was moving well along.
The two recalled chrysanthemum's conceit:
in life is death; and death is life's old song.

The funeral was on Thanksgiving day;
her daughter in the hospital was ripe
and could not mourn, as one soul blew away –
and one without a Nana burst in hype

to life. The birth would turn out perfectly,
exactly as expected it would be.



December*
when she crossed the line*
Exactly as expected it would be
a snowy Christmas, white and colored bright;
(by strict request) I hung her favorite lights
about the house, so that the neighbors see
together we're a happy family.
She'd picked her gift, but what a sour sight
when, Christmas day, I didn't get it right.
And all was fine until she asked of me –

the last she'd ever ask of me. She tells
me "I don't like your underwear." She reels
off, "we compromise our comfort" (that bold
*****). "I'll be your man, but know my manhood holds.
I'll never change my boxer briefs” which feel,
in icy weather, warming." Comfort yields.
A sonnet garland. 12 poems. One for each month. I probably wouldn't read it.
Nigel Morgan Aug 2013
It’s nearly two in the morning and the place is finally quiet. I can’t do early mornings like I reckon he does. Even a half-past nine start is difficult for me. So it has be this way round. I called Mum tonight and she was her wonderful, always supportive self, but I hear through the ‘you’ve done so well to get on this course’ stuff and imagine her at her desk working late with a pile of papers waiting to be considered for Chemistry Now, the journal she edits. I love her study and one day I shall have one myself, but with a piano and scores and recordings on floor to ceiling shelves . . . and poetry and art books. I have to have these he said when, as my tutorial came to a close, he apologised for not being able to lend me a book of poems he’d thought of. He had so many books and scores piled on the floor, his bed and on his table. He must have filled his car with them. And we talked about the necessity of reading and how words can form music. Pilar, she’s from Tel Haviv, was with me and I could tell she questioned this poetry business – he won’t meet with any of us on our own, all this fall out from the Michel Brewer business I suppose.

This idea that music is a poetic art seems exactly right to me. Nobody had ever pointed this out before. He said, ask yourself what books and scores would be on the shelves of a composer you love. Go on, choose a composer and imagine. Another fruitless exercise, whispered Pilar, who has been my shadow all week. I thought of Messiaen whose music has finally got to me – it was hearing that piece La Columbe. He asked Joanna MacGregor to play it for us. I was knocked sideways by this music, and what’s more it’s been there in my head ever since. I just wanted to get my hands on it. Those final two chords . . . So, thinking of Messiaen’s library I thought of the titles of his music that I’d come across. Field Guides to birds of course, lots of theology, Shakespeare (his father translated the Bard), the poetry and plays of the symbolists (I learnt this week that he’d been given the score of Debussy’s Pelleas and Melisande for his twelfth birthday) . . . Yes, that library thing was a good exercise, a mind-expanding exercise. When I think of my books and the scores I own I’m ashamed . . . the last book I read? I tried to read something edifying on my Kindle on the train down, but gave up and read Will Self instead. I don’t know when I last read a score other than my own.

I discovered he was a poet. There’s an eBook collection mentioned on his website. Words for Music. Rather sweet to have a relative (wife / sister?)  as a collaborator. I downloaded it from Amazon and thought her poems were very straight and to the point. No mystery or abstraction, just plain words that sounded well together. His poetry mind you was a little different. Softer, gentler like he is.  In class he doesn’t say much, but if you question him on his own you inevitably get more than the answer you expect.  

There was this poem he’d set for chamber choir. It reads like captions for a series of photographs. It’s about a landscape, a walk in a winter landscape, a kind of secular stations of the cross, and it seems so very intimate, specially the last stanza.

Having climbed over
The plantation wall
Your freckled face
Pale with the touch
Of cold fingers
In the damp silence
Listening to each other breathe
The mist returns


He’s living in one of the estate houses, the last one in a row of six. It’s empty but for one bedroom which he’s turned into a study. I suppose he uses the kitchen and there’s probably a bedroom where he keeps his cases and clothes. In his study there is just a bed, a large table with a portable drawing board, a chair, a radio/CD, his guitar and there’s a notice board. He got out a couple of folding chairs for Pilar and I and pulled them up to the table.

Pilar said later his table and notice board were like a map of himself. It contained all these things that speak about who he is, this composer who is not in the textbooks and you can’t buy on CD. He didn’t give us the 4-page CV we got from our previous tutor. There was his blue, spiral-bound notebook, with its daily chord, a bunch of letters, books of course, pens and pencils, sheets of graph and manuscript paper filled with writing and drawings and music in different inks. There was a CD of the Hindemith Viola Sonatas and a box set of George Benjamin’s latest opera and some miniature scores – mostly Bach. A small vase of flowers was perilously placed at a corner . . . and pinned to his notice board, a blue origami bird.

But it was the photographs that fascinated me, some in small frames, others on his notice board, the board resting on the table and against the wall. There were black and white photos of small children, a mix of boys and girls, colour shots of seascapes and landscapes, a curious group of what appeared to be marks in the sand. There was a tiny white-washed cottage, and several of the same young woman. She is quite compelling to look at. She wears glasses, has very curly hair and a nice figure. She looks quiet and gentle too. In one photo she’s standing on a pebbly beach in a dress and black footless tights – I have a feeling it’s Aldeburgh. There’s a portrait too, a very close-up. She’s wearing a blue scarf round her hair. She has freckles, so then I knew she was probably the person in the poem . . .

I’ve thought of Joel a little this week, usually when I finally get to bed.  I shut my eyes and think of him kissing me after we’d been out to lunch before he left for Canada. We’d experimented a little, being intimate that is, but for me I’m not ready for all that just now; nice to be close to someone though, someone who struggles with being in a group as I do. I prefer the company of one, and for here Pilar will do, although she’s keen on the Norwegian, Jesper.

Today it was all about Pitch. To our surprise the session started with a really tough analysis of a duo by Elliott Carter, who taught here in the 1960s. He had brought all these sketches, from the Paul Sacher Archive, pages of them, all these rows and abstracts and workings out, then different attempts to write to the same section. You know, I’d never seen a composer’s workings out before. My teacher at uni had no time for what she called the value of process (what he calls poiesis). It was the finished piece that mattered, how you got there was irrelevant and entirely your business and no one else’s. So I had plenty of criticism but no help with process. It seems like this pre-composition, the preparing to compose is just so necessary, so important. Music is not, he said, radio in the head. You can’t just turn it on at will. You have to go out and find it, detect it, piece it together. It’s there, and you’ll know it when you find it.

So it’s really difficult now sitting here with the beginnings of a composition in front of me not to think about what was revealed today, and want to try it myself. And here was a composer who was willing to share what he did, what he knew others did, and was able to show us how it mattered. Those sheets on his desk – I realise now they were his pre-composition, part of the process, this building up of knowledge about the music you were going to write, only you had to find it first.

The analysis he put together of Carter’s Fantasy Duo was like nothing I’d experienced before because it was not sitting back and taking it, it was doing it. It became ours, and if you weren’t on your toes you’d look such a fool. Everything was done at breakneck speed. We had to sing all the material as it appeared on the board. He got us to pre-empt Carter’s own workings, speculate on how a passage might be formed. I realised that a piece could just go so many different ways, and Carter would, almost by a process of elimination choose one, stick to it, and then, as the process moved on, reject it! Then, the guys from the Composers Ensemble played it, and because we’d been so involved for nearly an hour in all this pre-composition, the experience of listening was like eating newly-baked bread.  There was a taste to it.

After the break we had to make our own duos for flute and clarinet with a four note series derived from the divisions of a tritone. It wasn’t so much a theme but a series of pitch objects and we relentlessly brainstormed its possibilities. We did all the usual things, but it was when we started to look beyond inversion and transposition. There is all this stuff from mathematical and symbolic formulas that I could see at last how compelling such working out, such investigation could be . . . and we’re only dealing with pitch! I loved the story he told about Alexander Goehr and his landlady’s piano, all this insistence on the internalizing of things, on the power of patterns (and unpatterns), and the benefit and value of musical memory, which he reckoned so many of us had already denied by only using computer systems to compose.

Keep the pen moving on the page, he said; don’t let your thoughts come to a standstill. If there isn’t a note there may be a word or even an object, a sketch, but do something. The time for dreaming or contemplation is when you are walking, washing up, cleaning the house, gardening. Walk the garden, go look at the river, and let the mind play. But at your desk you should work, and work means writing even though what you do may end in the bin. You will have something to show for all that thought and invention, that intense listening and imagining.
(Composed at Clevedon, Somersetshire)

My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o’ergrown
With white-flower’d Jasmin, and the broad-leav’d Myrtle,
(Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!)
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light,
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be)
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
******’d from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed!
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea
Tells us of silence.
                             And that simplest Lute,
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark!
How by the desultory breeze caress’d,
Like some coy maid  half yielding to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dripping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untam’d wing!
O! the one Life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every where—
Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so fill’d;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

   And thus, my Love! as on the midway *****
Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-clos’d eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main.
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
Full many a thought uncall’d and undetain’d,
And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject Lute!
   And what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversely fram’d,
That tremble into thought, as o’er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

   But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
Darts, O belovéd Woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallow’d dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek Daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily disprais’d
These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy’s aye-babbling spring.
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
Who with his saving mercies healéd me,
A sinful and most miserable man,
Wilder’d and dark, and gave me to possess
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honour’d Maid!
Jamie King Mar 2015
My life is foretold in every crevice of this universe,
in serene seas, and swaying sands,
in scorching degrees and holding hands,
with a lover in my longing arms,
fires raging, and yet i am sheltered from harm.
and throughout my journeys,
it is my deepest desire,
to ignite and set my ambitions on fire,
in the midst of euphoric dreaming,
with my lover on this late summer's evening.
and i shall be at one with the stars,
and my doors in life shall forever remain ajar.

Walk into this space it is endless
sublime congruence with the heavens
open is the third eye looking directly at abyss
i feel a divine hint on my skin
as if it were a celestial kiss
there is no need to travel in doubt
it is written across the evening canvas
open the gates of exotic awareness


It is writhing, it is gifting, entrusting me, and quaking,
yet I, within mine, remain still.
Fore be it told, and beneath footless form, it's subversive,
yet, I dance a sure tango, uphill.
I must be sure, so sure not to mind lone notches and disparity,
as crevices, you see, they arch to transverse.
Fearing but forging the depths of what is migration, we say,
from this hallowed tangle be my rise, my verse.

I’m floundering, I grant, when I think I hold discovery,
so, I tug at the rein of imprint and plan.
It is here my beloved reliance, my precious doubtless tread
is afforded the fair crossing of Pan.
So, although it contests and chides and outreaches,
I am in love and as love, an apprentice.
A conquest won, no never, but here, a concession, a regard-
I am, with no poet’s journey, amiss.**

Lilting ebulliently in ineffable fields of ecstasy.
Mellifluous waves, in life's voyage,
inure us to pulchritude paths, refined by old age.
Multifarious, nascent jubilant days, swaying in paint,
array the way as we sail away.
Comments are welcomed and please respost thank you for reading:)
stanza
1 Aesha Nisar
2 Dawn King
3,4 Gwyn
5 Jamie King
A W Bullen Dec 2016
A Husk of Thule brew..

A Fjord born tang of Fenrir cold
To yawn the must of comet tails
In rings, around the naked oak.

That broke the spineless whims
Of reed, that set the Heron folk to flight
From scrivened rims of frosted pools.

To run in footless constellations
About the broads of bitter miles
And, there to spill the coffered frays
of Autumn’s final standing.
A W Bullen Aug 2021
Overcome
by strange remorse

the sun-dyed pomp
of plaintive hursts
immerse
my soul in colour

Saint Lawrence
sheds his vehement tears
the axis
of the year is shifted,

watched our Swifts
on their way out

the charging weeks
are done.
First stanza a forethought
Although the departure saddens, it heralds change-Autumn and leaf-turn. the second inbound avian wave- waders, wildfowl, thrushes- the raptors descend from the highlands to the marshes.

The Tears of St Lawrence- colloquialism for Perseids- meteors associated with Swift-Tuttle debris mid August

Swifts seem to mass over the bay at this time  "last-in -first-out migrants" could the Perseids be the celestial trigger for their gathering, a seasonal clock-tick to move them on?
Their numbers fly quietly, this time, a contrast to the scything charges that screamed about the old town chimneys as the young birds knew their wings

"Hurst"- Wooded hill/Woodland

"Swift"- "Apus Apus"- "Footless"
tread Nov 2010
Grad me footless,
World class; fruitless,
Jumping backwards,
Three steps; bootless.

Call me stupid,
Call me smart.
Call me funny,
Fire for the dead head-start.

Breaking windows,
Crashing cars;
Wasting nights,
In dead-end bars.

Losing grip,
Of jaded souls;
Ditching all our,
Larger goals.

Flying solo,
Through the void;
Running low,
On blood-steroid.

Washing freshmen,
Clean of youth;
It hurts, I know,
Like sugared- tooth.

Growing up,
Is tough, it seems;
But through the thick,
A bright light gleams.
Marshal Gebbie Jan 2015
Emergent through emotion
In a sychophantic way,
Thrilling through my system
In recall of teaching’s fray.
Those years of inspiration
As an aspirant of they…
That concrete mass of youthfulness
Wherein I spent my day.

Each hour of nervous questing,
Each confrontation stored,
Each shred of indignation
When the master plan proved flawed.
Through gyroscopic reason,
Through footless halls of pain,
An exultation’s bright explosion
When that child said... “Please explain?’

And the myriad of starburst
When the sky came crashing down
When, as if, by touch of magic….
Realisation there…profound!
From within that mass of granite-ness
Poured enlightenment as gold
And hot jewels of satisfaction
Flowed within this soul… untold.

M.
The years spent teaching hard country kids in a rural backwater high school were the most satisfying, rewarding working time of my life.
M.
Richard j Heby Feb 2012
The fireworks are bursting in the sky,
(like breadcrumbs kids are throwing in the bay,
to fly in fun and freedom of July)
like fish we rush to see surprises blast away.

We foolish, footless bandits in the night
were playing spin the bottle under trees.
Like fireflies and glow-sticks, we were bright,
But now we've lost ourselves and lost our keys.

You, gone with summers past and freedom's will
have lost the will to seek and seek a thrill.
And strapped into conformity, you're dying.
You're lying. With each dollar earned you ****
that child that your son is. Sighing,
you wanted to play hard ball, but no one's buying.
mld Sep 2015
The coroner called to ask how I am but i told him I’m not

You had two pillows in the house that you used, one
in the bedroom and one in the living room and while
I washed the other one three times to get your smell
out, the other i have yet to touch because
you’re coming home soon.

The coroner called to ask how I am but I told him I was.

The flowers didn’t bloom this year until midway through
May and I remembered because you begged me
to buy them and now they stretch their arms out on the
window box outside my bedroom, respect for
punctuality lost in a similar way that mine was.
I cut them down before they could reach their full
height and I gathered the clippings in a bag, burning
them the way they burned you.

The coroner called to ask how I am but I told him I’m trying to be.

Your sister came over the other day and asked for your
collection of playing cards because she said it was yours
and hers, that she had found most of them for you on road
trips and holidays. I remembered the way
she looked at me the first time you introduced us
and I shuffled a deck last night and could hear your voice
counting as you dealt.
I gave them to her anyway and thought I was signing a deal with the Devil.

The coroner called to ask how I am and I told him I’m barely.

Your shoes sit footless and your pants sit legless and I sit
you-less and cross-legged in your closet all that day, trying to
remember how to breathe.

The coroner called to ask how I am and I told him I’m almost.

The magnet on the fridge is crooked because the strip on the
back fell apart when you ran into that towering
block of tundra while chasing your niece and it fell to the
floor with a sharp crack.
I repaired it last Saturday and set it straight.
First line from “Widow” by Dallas Carroll of Susquehanna University’s Rivercraft
there is a photograph of a blind ******
that stares at me when I’m not there
and a footless boy that wears my boots
who eats my toast with teeth so false
they make no impression upon its worth
there are leather wrinkles in his smile
that make me blush and wait a while
to watch and stare at his wolf red eyes
at his forced composure that does exercise
upon his boast the eating of all my toast
though I do not mind
for he is kind
and has lips of cheery red
that I wish instead
of eating toast
if all were said were kissing me instead
then I look at the picture of the blind ******
and find to my surprise
there’s no one there
Chloë Fuller Feb 2015
one black stripe and one white stripe sit so solemnly on a small sliver on my skin

somehow it stayed on through friction and dishes

mirror light all around my footless legs

and flannel sheets beneath the dregs  

knees shake and the earth quakes, the aroma of maple syrup wafts through my open mind, oxytocin erupting and cradling it back to Point A

the patterns in the wooden floor shift every season and there never will be a reason

like breathing or blinking or loving or feeling

it just is
Sharde' Fultz Oct 2014
Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever stop crying

If I'll ever get over the years of training
the sweat
the bruises
the strains and sprains
the cool of a sprung floor against my cheek
out of breath in the wings awaiting my queue

I wonder if it's actually possible to regain the flexibility that can only come from hundreds of hours of plies and port de bras
I wonder if I'll ever be able to feel as alive as I do in a leotard and footless tights in any other article of clothing?
Because sometimes I feel like one of my favorite parts of me is a
memory

fading more and more every year

like a spirit trapped inside a body that can't handle all its grace and beauty and freedom
that can't hold its pirouettes

I fear that I'll never walk into a studio and feel like I own it again,
like the sky is the limit
like my strength knows no bounds

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever be able to just accept whatever is in store.
Was my last audition my last audition?
I wish I savored it more

I know I'll be fine
but that is the only me I've ever known
and
the largest dream I ever felt I could absolutely realize
How do you let go of something you've wanted your entire life?
...a drive that flows through your blood...
How do you accept the possibility of never attaining it?

There are times when I'm okay
or more or less distracted
and feel like I'm at peace with God's omnipotent will
If he want's me to dance, then I'll dance one day
He knows the desires of my heart
Still
I can't help seeing reminders of where I want to be
where I ought to be
this fundamental piece that's missing
that has helped shaped all that I am today

Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever stop crying
in mourning
for the dancer in me.
Joseph Sinclair Oct 2014
by John Gillespie McGee Jr.

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling
mirth of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred
things you have not dreamed of - wheeled
and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.
Hovr'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along,
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

                      John Gillespie Magee, Jr., September 3, 1941
This is intended to be included in the collection entitled Cultured Pearls which is to be devoted to poetry by poets other than myself that has had some special meaning for me.
The blank, the dark waves
surrounding, bleeding

I am losing

The war, the will
it burns,
ashes and wind

flowers grow
for dead tyrants and the blessed alike,
the truth, the difference
is in the shadow of belief.

History,
a kings coloring book,
an idiots guide.

Beguiled and crooked
we stumble when we should fly.
We, the footless peasant

We all pray that kings
colored inside the lines.
Some of us chuckle....

Knowing

The only crayons he ever had
were green and red
It is possible that this is rather two poems but it was written all at once so I left it this way
Jarret May 2014
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sun wards I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds – and done a thousand things

You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,

I've chased the shouting wind along and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air,

Up, up the long delirious burning blue

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,

Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;

And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod

The high un-trespassed sanctity of space,

Put out my hand, and touched the face of god.
John Magee
Nigdaw Oct 2019
She dies again each day when he awakes;
Slipping from dreams chaotic release, momentarily
All is as has always been; slowly the emptiness
Invades, as daylight through the curtains
Penetrates corners of the room, his mind
Drawn to clothes on the chair scented
By her perfume, slippers waiting footless by the door
Ready to shuffle across the landing to the bathroom
A journey taken for fifty years, but no more;
Downstairs the kettle waits to be filled
Just enough for one cup, a bowl for cereal
A spoon to consume, one of everything
One, singular, alone, lonely, no ‘good morning,
Love how are you’, just a table set for him.

Gotta’ keep going, always on the move
Avoiding time to think, life a blank canvas
That has to be filled with an indiscriminate
Sketch of moments, connecting into days
Creating a new picture of his life, unplanned
Unexpected, unwanted, unfinished portrait
Of a single man drowning in grief, to hang
Among the pictures she so carefully painted
Framed on the walls of the hall he walks alone
Heading for the kitchen where there waits
A table for one.
Sean Hunt Jul 2020
Footless and unfree
We all found ourselves
singing out of tune
in a vacuum

Both blasphemed and blessed
but delighted by the quietness
we reached the end of plentiness
a place of neither fullness nor emptiness

drizzles down to the ground
sprinkles all around
manic energetic eagles and doves
sweating droplets from above

The seasons were green
thankfully
if it were wintry
we’d have climbed trees

Rats running from the race
carving out personal space
to be alone on their own
in ‘no go’ zones

Sean Hunt
Onoma Jun 2019
there's a clearing in

every killing-time,

i know where it lie.

it's mystery unfolds,

as a footless safe passage.

a noble hunter kissing

every footprint of her

lotus feet.

grounding the sky.
Max Barsness Jul 2018
& if wake to find myself
facsimile
stumbling between dark painted roots
hustled against the ground
a green
beleaguered fall
dancing amongst the webs of everlasting done
would my mother be proud
& if I wake taciturn
humbling
at mass & ark
unmovable
a glossy footless boot
rustled away from the boy seen
eager to be washed in it all
slipping amongst the rapids
truncated from the run
would my mother be allowed
f Feb 2018
i want to love you without giving you a piece of me.
my hands are tired, stained with blood,
and i’m running footless trying to catch up with you.
but i keep carving; parts of my heart, smiles into my face.

you scare me of love. you scare me of what you can do,
what the perfect poison
can do in the perfect hands of the perfect girl.
but baby girl, i would chug poison for you.

your hands are so *******

soft

gentle

small

and you’re holding mine, guiding me

guiding a perfectly carved blade into my heart

because love,
you are a double-edged sword and i want you to
abuse my love until i am
your bloodied masterpiece.
jiminy-littly May 2020
twenty hours ago
I was a different man

a person who could not
or would not
Know.

It is said that
science is the man

And happy
is he who
Cares not,
Feels not,
Or prays not

for he
will
forever
be

headless,
footless,
and
friendless

dead to the world
You might say

Tell his remains:

we now know
loneliness
can be cured

— The End —