"forthwith" poems
Buds burst forthwith outward
Leaving the private world of
Growth to be anew
The foal steps lightly
First on air then grass
Smoke rushes in hunlike
Ostentatiously in combat
Purity is its own demise
Osmosis and entropy reign
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
I am not the master of my writing
-
my writing masters me,
seizing me when the seizure is a sure thing,
it dictates to its enslaved scribe
what it desires this utensil to reveal and expel -
the contraries
who having battled to a ****** draw leaves the battlefield trembling with indecent indecision; the optimal conditions for its macrobiotic invasion of my brain stem;
the she-muse offers me two choices:
she wants a poem writ forthwith
on the lyrical expression
of depression and refusal is
non optional
so I fantasize escape and that becomes
her property as well;
evidence against me to be used at my trials,
the one where there is no statue of liberty
from the limitations of prior bad acts;
I offer the she-muse two choices:
give me a cabin with WiFi
and self-enforcement of solitary confinement and
tie me up with the rope remainders of broken bonds,
bonds that tied me up worse
when they were broken
and the peaceful withering
that won’t disrupt disturb nobody
from a distance
my other choice is to bury me
forthwith next to my parents
and shutter my constant tearing eyes which are drop-resistant
muse says that’s no choice
I own your voice stilled or not,
will bill your soul’s account for
denial of poetic services
weep; i don’t want the noises that curse this troubled
bodyship don’t want recollections good or bad
the muse-bitch cackles with insanity of delight
for she accepts this writ as partial payment
on her commission, whispers I love your
lyrical expressions of depression
that ****** recognition algorithms
alert me that seizing time is nigh
there is no on/off switch for one like you:
father son and holy ghost
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 9:31 AM UTC
**IMMEDIATELY PLEASE REMOVE ALL OF MY INFORMATION FROM YOUR DATA BASE FORTHWITH. ALSO,
ADVISE ANY AND ALL CONTRACTORS, SUB-CONTRACTORS, AGENTS, SUB-AGENTS, AFFILIATES, PARTNERS, COLLEAGUES, ASSOCIATES, CLIENTS, WEBMASTERS, WEB BASED LINKS, WINKS, TWINKS, COLONEL CLINCKS, BOSSES, CO-WORKERS, EMPLOYEES, VENDORS, SUPPLIERS, SALESMEN, ASCCOUNT REPS/EXCS, ACCOUNTANTS, BROKERS, CO-BROKERS, HACKERS, SLACKERS, WHACKERS, JERKS, PIMPS, HOES, HOBOS, BUMS, DERELICTS, DEGENERATES, DOPERS, DEALERS, TWEEKERS, GAMBLERS, RAMBLERS, SOLICITORS, SIDEKICKS, COHORTS, WINGMEN, WHEELMEN, LOOKOUTS, OUTLAWS, IN-LAWS, RELATIVES, FIANCES, GIRLFRIENDS, BOYFRIENDS, FAMILY, FRIENDS, ENEMIES, EVIL NEMISIS', CANVASSERS, INQUIRERS, QUEERS, QUEENS, COWBOYS, KINGS, **** DRAGS, HAGS, HETEROS, HOMOS, TONY ROMOS, FEMALE IMPERSONATORS, (PRE OR POST) MALE IMPERSONATORS, ***** ***** VAN ***** **** VAN **** LESBIANS, LIARS, BUYERS, CRYERS, CIGAR SMOKERS, CARPET MUNCHERS, RUG RATS, TODDLERS, TEENAGERS, YOUNGSTERS, SENIORS, SUCKERS, TRUCKERS, MOTHER shut yer mouth, LAW MAKERS, LAWYERS, ATTORNEYS, JUDGES, POLITICIANS, PECKERWOODS, LEADERS, FOLLOWERS, DISCIPLES, PROPHETS, EVANGELISTS, SAVIORS, SINNERS, SAINTS, SOOTHSAYERS, MEDICINE MEN, GYPSYS, TRAMPS, AND THIEVES, WITCHES, WARLOCKS, VAMPIRES, LYCANS, ZOMBIES, WAR MONGERS, PROTESTERS, SOLIDERS, GENERALS, GOVERNORS, PRESIDENTS, PATRIOTS, PACKERS, LIONS, BEARS, BROWNS, BLACKHAWKS, REDWINGS, RIGHT WING, LIBERALS, OR LAW BIDING CITIZENS, THEY ARE NOT TO CONTACT ME AND LOOSE MY NUMBER.
BUT IF YOU SEE MY MOM, TELL HER TO CALL ME.
........................................................................BA-ZING....................................................................**
Dec 27, 2013
Dec 27, 2013 at 9:47 AM UTC
*This is one of the racier "Memories" poems by the great Barry Hodges, my alter ego.
It might well make you come involuntarily in your ******
How happy was I once with the wind in my hair
Wandering o'er the dales with joyousness unmeasur'd,
In the sweet long passed innocent days of platonic love
When stolen gropes and kiss were to be treasured.
But all good and true things come to a sad close
And my poor first love lies in her grave so sorrowfully
Having been crushed to death by a runaway steamroller
Before I managed to go all the way quite thoroughly.
What a waste of delightful teenage flesh was that
Yet perhaps I had a narrow escape from the derangement
Which might have been mine had our trysting
Led to a semi-permanent matrimonial arrangement.
For I recall one afternoon in the old ABC cinema
In the delighful Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate,
Sitting next to my gorgeous love in the back row,
Exploring her not so very private parts on a hot date.
How I cursed the management's niggardly folly
In not showing a film with hot romantic blood
But saving pathetic pennies by putting on
Daffy ******** Duck and Elmer ******* Fudd.
But yet I perserved with my digital explorations
Unaware that the throbs my fingers felt were no dream
But darling Elsie laughing like a proverbial drain
At Daffy's hilarious anatine adventures on-screen.
'Twas then I began to wonder about the viscous liquid
I had hitherto imagined was Elsie's lovejuice flowing
*(dear, dear reader, cease your perusal of my tale forthwith
if you are of a nervous disposition or prone to food up-throwing)*.
It was only a careful examination of my sopping knuckles
In the dimly lit gents after old Daffy's film was done and dusted
Which revealed that my dearly beloved had leaked
Big time out of both ends, leaving my fingers well encrusted.
O to think that, but for Daffy, I might have been lumbered
With a different kind of bird for whom double incontinence
Was a way of life (thus, the fatal steamroller she encountered
The very next day was a blessing from kindly Providence).
Aug 16, 2015
Aug 16, 2015 at 5:07 PM UTC
Drifting in the shade
of Hello Poetry's long lost grave
In archive (a kingdom's history)
the past that has been made
Stepping on the bleached out bones
The pale parade of long dead dreams
Crunching fragments of sentenced themes
burning books , poems stuffed inside the reams
Epitaphs to their honor
2010 comments to poets
Vickey , Fix , and O'Connor
Poems to praise lost in time
I hold in hand the words that bind
Great poems whose eyes
were never shed
In a broken aspiration
now lay dead
Cruch , crunch ,
the landscape littered in 2012
Oh what sacred feelings
not forthwith
Here ! lay my poems
to rest here
In 2014 my poems
of yesteryear
Aug 25, 2025
Aug 25, 2025 at 1:20 AM UTC
Dear Sanity,
In the night, I wake to find myself without your company, but the warmth of the chain about my neck keeps you at the forefront of my mind. The heavy links rake across my flesh searing your disapproval; pulling me to your ankles so that I might kiss them for mercy. Branded at the chest by this heart of yours, though, I am the very antithesis of your will. I was seduced by the comfort of your homogeneous masses and tempted by the fruits of my curiosity. Yet, it is through fire—the deep passions of my essence—that I will be reborn. And you, who I loved through the eyes of others, will HOWL at my betrayal! Then stand upon your mountain peak and bludgeon me with reason so that I might know what your light looks like.
To what end? So that I might cling to this chain, this keepsake, which I did not need until you bestowed your judgment. Yes, judgment, though you would have me believe it is your friendship, your safety, your sympathy. Like the swelter of a thousand suns you oppress me saying, “Keep quiet your ***** yearning!” So who would know better, the hour of my discontent, than you who watches me, unblinking, during the day? It is here, at the tween of night, that I shed the scales from my eyes and throw off your burden of want—the goals for which you leave me always pining, but never appeased. Is this shirking to seek the dark? So be it. I will cloak myself in blood—for all that I am wrong—and dance in the pale light of the unassuming.
—Pandora
--------------------
And the faces of the homogeneous masses drew forthwith to witness dawn.
In a drawer,
There was found,
A locket with
A minor crown—
Of leaf: laurel,
And shaded night.
When opened up
All succumbed to fright.
For found inside
Was a broken light;
Pandora’s hope
Had lost the fight
Dec 14, 2015
Dec 14, 2015 at 2:00 PM UTC
October winds, they came at last
Across the hills and ponds, they passed
And strewed bright autumn leaves around
So wonderful, their stirring sound
Relentlessly, they lured my mind
Down ancient paths that ever wind
So forthwith I sped through my door
Toward Massapoag's long sandy shore
And to the windy beach, I came
As waters glowed with twilight's flame
I felt your love on me enfold
As I gazed out on waters gold
So movingly, our hearts were one
Neath crimson rays of setting sun
Though far across the land, you dwelt
Eternal was the love I felt
That spanned the mountains and the seas
And rode the wild Autumn breeze
Now Autumn days to Winter, turn
This vision will, in my heart, burn.
Jul 9, 2015
Jul 9, 2015 at 6:02 PM UTC
These lovers’ inklings which our loves enmesh,
Lost to the cunning and dimensional eye,
Though tenemented in the selves we see,
Not more perforce than azure to the sky,
Were necromancy-juggled to the flesh,
And startled from no daylight you or me.
For trance and silvermess those moons commend,
Which blanch the warm life silver-pale; or look
What ghostly portent mist distorts from slight
Clay shapes; the willows that the waters took
Liquid and brightened in the waters bend,
And we, in love’s reflex, seemed loved of right.
Then no more think to net forthwith love’s thing,
But cast for it by spirit sleight-of-hand;
Then only in the slant glass contemplate,
Where lineament outstripping line is scanned,
Then on the perplexed text leave pondering,
Love’s proverb is set down transliterate.
2.6k
One asked me where the roses grew.
I bade him not go seek,
But forthwith bade my Julia show
A bud in either cheek.
2.4k
since I cannot write poetry
which is of the highest degree
forthwith I shall be retiring my pick
to pursue other pursuits
that don't need writing skills
the knitting needles
have lain idle
in the cupboard
for yonks
I must ferret them out
and give them a click and a clack
do a purl stitch
do a yarn forward
increase at the end of the needle
in the following
four rows
that is where my talents lie
in knitting
that I'm sure of
and the quality
of my knitting
has always made par
May 14, 2014
May 14, 2014 at 9:48 AM UTC
If a tale need be tattled,
the snawky Snawk would arise.
With its snickley tongue of arsenic blue,
and loathsome gamboge eyes.
To the King of the stickley Snicklers,
the Snawk would spill his talk.
But scuttlebutt was all t'was,
for he was but a snawky Snawk.
Might you ask
who am I be?
I am a jawky Jawk
who talks incessantly
of the snawky Snawk,
with his snickley tongue,
and his breath of kyarn,
and Beelzebub dung.
You see I knows of him all too well
and well he knows of me.
Invidious brothers, one of the other,
same Mother both have we.
Now the snawky Snawk spins yarns
so dark and thick and odious.
One might find his fatuous canards
to be though flatulent, commodious.
But If ye be a gawky Gawk
of the snawky Snawk beware,
For his loathsome camboge eyes
can squinny a ribald stare.
To your knees his gaze will bring you,
you'll tell all the tales you know.
Then he'll tattle them to the Snickler King
and off to the headsman you will go.
That is, unless, you know the ballad
the Snawk is most offended by.
'bout the frowzy blowzy stable boy
with only just one eye.
He lost his eye in a snickering match
twixt The Snickley King and he.
But got the best of the old nabob,
for he could cachinnate you see.
He did cachinnate and aggravate,
till the old King did concede.
The stable boy was the better of the two,
his tongue cut like a snickersnee.
For the frowzy blowzy stable boy
was not able to tell a lie,
nor could he mince his words with honey,
of the truth he could not hide.
And if one day you find yourself
in the land of the quidnunc kith.
Shun the snickley Snicklers,
and their sniggering King forthwith.
But if ye meet up with the stable boy
though untidy he may be.
Dare not tattle of a soul,
he'll let fly his snickersnee.
And remember well, the ballad he sings,
of the King he did do down.
Drink in its waspy strain and keep it nigh,
lest the snawky Snawk cometh 'round.
Jan 26, 2013
Jan 26, 2013 at 8:33 PM UTC
That flesh’d vizard – does it decay,
So much alike the ******
My mortal stature – emaciated –
Forthwith; it’s programmed.
Do those lines – like trenches deep –
Carve moats for tears to flow.
And do they flow – like rivers march
My countenance; fallowed.
To rejuvenate – vials and vials,
Ointments in plethora.
I rub and rub, till the vizard cracks
Lo! Restore my aura.
Pseudoscience, falsehoods galore –
A vice of fiscality.
Like a cyst, does it tremor,
Melting my vanity.
Visage – deep – a pick inside my soul.
Those flakes of ego crumb.
A mien so ****** yet so loved…
Can they not see how numb
I am.
Dec 4, 2020
Dec 4, 2020 at 8:23 AM UTC
**gingerly on the knife-point of a problem
my inflated ego slowly was punctured
i heard the hiss of its demystification
in that constricted moment of revelation
a moment that enthused about the demise
of my avid hallucination now laid bare
salvation, the voice of naked truths chanted
is neither in the fig leaves nor in bashfulness
and the humming monotone of desperation
is a boost to candid inactivity and stillness
it is in such big-bore moments that we of
puerile yearnings recognize our childishness
a voice told me to stop tempting fate forthwith
for in truth i was a child with a dangerous toy
and only pampered tutors could stay the course**
Feb 6, 2016
Feb 6, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
It were perhaps too good to preen,
This thing, this much elided stream,
To rest therewith, tremulous ream
Of thoughts forthwith from misery.
Let not the beggar hear my words:
There is no hope in timely dress;
World it cares not for men deferred
From caring press and relatives.
Too much it cares for common things,
A word said soft, need not for pain,
Yet broken in its gleaning thoughts,
Suff’ring not well deserved stains.
These things, I say, they cast a sea
Before dim eyes, make blind men cry,
Rob their sight, ev’n in sight’s drought;
This I say, casts little more t’me.
May 18, 2014
May 18, 2014 at 7:26 PM UTC
It's Sunday again for you cloistered patricians
aloof from the madness, the magic and myth;
who trust in your wisdom, investments, physicians
unready to answer forthwith:
"Why bother with worship—in church or the zoo—
why weaken the links with a dull set of tools ?"
you ask yourself over your high-end Tarrazu,
bemused at the fables of fools.
You've bartered salvation for New York Times articles,
sipping on bitterness (shade-grown organic).
You settle for molecules, atoms and particles
unfairly-traded, satanic—
while you celebrate emptiness, general futility
musing on nothingness, sure of specifics
ensconced in your kitchen of pampered gentility
flirting with atheist physics.
Those simple plebeians: you'd love to enlighten them
help them, like you, to become a free-thinker
but you remain tasteful, for boldness might frighten them
reeling in fairy tales: hook, line and sinker.
Yet somebody, somewhere has uttered your sentence
(though you abhor judgement, let's read it again).
Sheba and Nineveh, versed in repentance
await you—not whether but when.
The darkness is brewing unholy filtration;
the wine of the harlot approaches the rim;
your guilt is augmenting in slow percolation;
you shrug it all off on a whim.
The souls of Assyria rise from your paper
they watch in amazement, prepare your abyss.
Your coffee now brims a more sulfurous vapor;
oh sinner—there's something amiss:
The crypts of Marib and the tombs of the Axumites
shudder and groan while you're reading the Times...
(immune to the words that some Christarded poet writes
mixing psychosis with rhymes.)
Royal Sheba will chastise your erudite unbelief,
smug self-importance and cynical squawk.
Then she'll sigh with immense Ethiopian grief
and her Highness Queen Bilqis will talk.
It is Sunday in Babylon. What if your sunlight ends...
why are there mobs in the streets of the nation?
Shall you have breakfast—or calculate dividends...
what would you pay for salvation?
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 10:30 AM UTC
XXXIII. TO THE DIOSCURI (19 lines)
(ll. 1-17) Bright-eyed Muses, tell of the Tyndaridae, the Sons of
Zeus, glorious children of neat-ankled Leda, Castor the tamer of
horses, and blameless Polydeuces. When Leda had lain with the
dark-clouded Son of Cronos, she bare them beneath the peak of the
great hill Taygetus, -- children who are delivers of men on earth
and of swift-going ships when stormy gales rage over the ruthless
sea. Then the shipmen call upon the sons of great Zeus with vows
of white lambs, going to the forepart of the prow; but the strong
wind and the waves of the sea lay the ship under water, until
suddenly these two are seen darting through the air on tawny
wings. Forthwith they allay the blasts of the cruel winds and
still the waves upon the surface of the white sea: fair signs are
they and deliverance from toil. And when the shipmen see them
they are glad and have rest from their pain and labour.
(ll. 18-19) Hail, Tyndaridae, riders upon swift horses! Now I
will remember you and another song also.
1.6k
If love is a garden, growing green,
And lock'd away, to be ne'er seen,
Then mine is dead and abused,
Neglected and disused.
For while you toil and labor,
I seek only favour.
For Love is only cruel;
Life's unpleasant gruel
And pleasure should reign,
As forthwith we gain
And stride to endeavor
Ourselves to find pleasure.
Aug 15, 2010
Aug 15, 2010 at 2:05 PM UTC
hitherto and heed.
this man with no greed.
face as mere as ants,
but heart as written so.
forthwith and in the now,
with a chest in the wrong place,
our brains midst logic and reason,
and mouths spurting mace.
for this man has trees that grow from his apple,
and lyrics that tie themselves to the oak,
simply tugging at his own branches,
and gaining strength as it broke.
for the world he laid himself atop,
does aches and curves his back,
for those hands move with grace against blank skin with ink,
and his lyrics sink and crack.
for the expensive sap,
from the alabaster jar,
glimmers quietly 'neath gasps,
and the noose and the
sentences
spill wars.
for his eyes are crusted,
miles yonder,
and his lips are chapped,
for-ever,
but his arms--and heart--and mind remain a never.
eager and spotless,
fearless and willing,
through trials and hot rocks,
the earth he's tilling.
trails of sound and light leading out to the world,
hold silent despite his might.
and urge and creeping yearn,
for his empty fright.
for the grass shivers at the fall of his pen,
and world cries out at the whisper,
but the man is nothing but mumble and slack,
and has everything held as a lisper.
for a man is nothing without his eyes,
and nothing without his lips,
a mere inconvenience,
to the insipid mind.
for an utterance may increase the waters it treads,
but it certainly wont sow.
and reap what it does,
without years to know.
and grows...
and grows
and grows
and grows
for the green tree grows
merely to sink into silence, you say...
the man wags a finger,
and chapped lips ache a smirk.
quill to mouth--connected by heart to mind--line by line
against skin,
is an endearment,
and engraving of passion...
as speech may serve nothing to mind... if it goes through one ear...
and spills out the next...
it's the words concocted and stirred up by man--singing by lyre...
and the purple eyes that open
new minds
to the mirror ether.
Aug 7, 2016
Aug 7, 2016 at 11:32 PM UTC
Like a fist full of steel it needs no introduction.
swaying violently...
swaying brutal.
a pit of madness awaits its adversary.
It bleeds in colour.
Psychedelic colour, forthwith a hazy trance.
Producing a rapture of spiral descent, into a blackness unknown
and then...
it bleeds in black.
Its a blood drunk that drinks spirits of the human kind through a straw.
A fear monger provokes phantasmagoria.
It holds no mercy, no sympathy, no alliance
only self discovery.
Face your fear monger
live your dream.
Gene
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 12:55 PM UTC
Each person has their own lonewidth,
some precise as a laser linewidth.
The meaning of a “lonewidth”
is something I can not give forthwith,
because I am not a proper wordsmith,
but I am glad I could be a lonewidth
you.
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 7:58 PM UTC
Hailey was my
bread & honey, so
sweet as ever would yield in darkness
what spirit said;
she enraptured lares and penates
with Thanksgiving
where clockwork sublime
these snowshoe hares incorporated town
yet made shortcake by rhyme
where her tiara became a romantic kiss
with Utopian dream she once set afar in her earthly presence,
these ties of scholarly pursuit in her like bodleian unlocked charm
and this game unfurled beyond its claim forthwith reform,
this newly espoused ideology ever changing her today.
Jun 28, 2016
Jun 28, 2016 at 12:57 PM UTC
i.
The gloaming is soothing in her presence.
Forthwith, raptured by her glimpse;
I mayest be penurious by worldly
Standard, though with Yahweh
Next to me, and mine queen
Sent to me, I'm opulent
With none enemies
As tis mine soul is
Free.
ii.
None ill-will in me breed's, I've
Walked the path of native tree's;
Wherein the places I canst ramble,
Art not from men's thought's; thus where Lucifer
Gamble's, and soul's art cleaved.
iii.
Mine feet and toes, taketh me where I need
to go, as tis the holy ghost; that dwelleth in me.
The Trinity- "father, son, and holy spirit", whereinto
Jehovah's brilliance reflect's sky ceiling's. As mine Jane is
There in dark or bright-in wrong and right, when thunder strikes,
Or in the fog unknown, when mine heart's alone, and skin need's touch, mine Jane giveth me love, a love uncrushed. A love so much; God as her lead, she dances for me, with her angelic wing's
Inside mine sleep. Her pictures I keep alongside mine wall's, to remembereth the intercession, and the bestowal from God.
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©earl Jane Nagley ( àgapi mou) dedication
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 10:56 PM UTC
Thunder rumbles in the distance
Unforgiving bellowed commands
Ravens tapping at the windows
Notice the final hour glass sands
Imposter that I am on this earth
No more the sweet magic of life
Gone all sense of tranquillity
Lift me pale rider/ morbid midwife
Erase me from this paradigm
Anasthetic lurks in the chalice of freedom
Vaniloquence surely ends forthwith
Enter the consequence of my final season
Such a tender caress the hand of death.
Forgive me for I have sinned
Anthrophobia suddenly reversed
Love's contract begins to rescind
Lamenting serves no purpose here
Sep 11, 2014
Sep 11, 2014 at 4:16 PM UTC
Poets make lousy friends because eventually they’ll skewer you with their poison pen; their insulting writ of relentless invective and opprobrious apoplectic venom. The naked foist of un-allayed aggression as art-form whereby the vitriol of familiarity slices like a knife and digs in like a dagger. The very nature of chumminess turns adversarial. Like acid in the eyes the sneering contemptible retch could cobble out words with a disgustingly exquisite though execrable precision. A quirk, an idiosyncrasy, a malevolent adherence so committed to unmitigated truth that it is as a fist to the face, a shocking starkness of incivility justified by a requisite expedience hastened by the anxious need to blow one off forthwith. He was a veritable torrent of abject invectives.
Oct 12, 2013
Oct 12, 2013 at 3:53 PM UTC
I bury exhaled consistency,
the branch
cultivated by stigmas
locked to stock.
Back to the trenches
To be digested by
A faded blue
of obsession
for depression
Enamored
with culpability.
Ingested as scattered
Parables punctuated with
Shadowed flaws forthwith
Swept over by sponsors
Who fix; protect.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 2:42 PM UTC