"freighted" poems
In the Midnight heaven's burning
Through the ethereal deeps afar
Once I watch'd with restless yearning
An alluring aureate star;
Ev'ry eve aloft returning
Gleaming nigh the Arctic Car.
Mystic waves of beauty blended
With the gorgeous golden rays
Phantasies of bliss descended
In a myrrh'd Elysian haze.
In the lyre-born chords extended
Harmonies of Lydian lays.
And (thought I) lies scenes of pleasure,
Where the free and blessed dwell,
And each moment bears a treasure,
Freighted with the lotos-spell,
And there floats a liquid measure
From the lute of Israfel.
There (I told myself) were shining
Worlds of happiness unknown,
Peace and Innocence entwining
By the Crowned Virtue's throne;
Men of light, their thoughts refining
Purer, fairer, than my own.
Thus I mus'd when o'er the vision
Crept a red delirious change;
Hope dissolving to derision,
Beauty to distortion strange;
Hymnic chords in weird collision,
Spectral sights in endless range….
Crimson burn'd the star of madness
As behind the beams I peer'd;
All was woe that seem'd but gladness
Ere my gaze with Truth was sear'd;
Cacodaemons, mir'd with madness,
Through the fever'd flick'ring leer'd….
Now I know the fiendish fable
The the golden glitter bore;
Now I shun the spangled sable
That I watch'd and lov'd before;
But the horror, set and stable,
Haunts my soul forevermore!
13.2k
The dwindling days fly past and I remain,
Though freighted by regrets and photographs.
The errors and the losses a refrain
Repeating, repeating; then someone laughs,
Returns me to the moment with a smile.
This child, with vast bright future all before,
Oblivious to older cares will while
Away the hours (seeming infinite); more
I cannot ask: the truth I cannot say.
A child knows both much more and less than I.
The moment past, the truth I cannot stay;
Regrets in hand, I wander home and sigh.
Death is a secret. No one speaks his name.
But one day we will have to say he came.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:32 AM UTC
Hearing fogged drops of rain
Precipitate violence in the Amazon,
Against the placid Leaves;
Left disheveled the unfiltered forest.
Dampness divorced from its thin vapor blur
Plummeting memoirs retold, the cradled
Past returns its own, splintered light
Edging the threshold of infinitude,
Axiomatic slippage each fell cold.
Fallen moisture recovered,
Once nourished the ancients;
Correspondingly, we align.
Lineal descendants,
Tides of March,
Sibilant waters flow through us.
Hoary myths, now hallowed imminent.
Ponderous, our torn skies cleft, clouds suffused in grey─
The emergent pour, casts a montage of
Freighted silence, implicit tapestries
Sewn seamless; our kindred froth ashore.
Pedigreed continuum bound in common plight,
Unseen flood of halcyon
Dust and flesh coalesce beneath the torrent;
Genetic lines merge ─ intersection of
Time and eternity.
From the same water we drink.
Lineal descendants,
Tides of March,
Sibilant waters flow through us.
©2012 W.S. Warner
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 1:54 AM UTC
Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly
And heard sweet notes of sylvan music blown
From antique reeds to common folk unknown:
And often launched our bark upon that sea
Which the nine Muses hold in empery,
And ploughed free furrows through the wave and foam,
Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home
Till we had freighted well our argosy.
Of which despoiled treasures these remain,
Sordello’s passion, and the honeyed line
Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine
Driving his pampered jades, and more than these,
The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,
And grave-browed Milton’s solemn harmonies.
2.4k
The tour group meandered
through silent monuments
of marble, limestone, and granite,
both grandiloquent and pedestrian,
both a signal of worldly prominence
and all those left behind could
scrape together on short notice.
They stopped by the grave of
a once-famed ragtime composer,
the still resting place of a musician
who had been all
banging syncopation and boisterous clamor.
The lyrics of his most famous song
were etched onto the memorial
lovingly in reverent tribute
with the presumption of indelible finality.
But the words were so blurred,
so bled with the rot and rust of weather and neglect
you could no longer make them out.
Perhaps it was a simple failure to scrub
the accursed headstone clean.
Perhaps it was the inexorable stain of time
that could never truly be lifted.
In the end, it was all the same,
all the same,
the same freighted symbolism
all the same.
Oct 20, 2018
Oct 20, 2018 at 3:18 AM UTC
I dwell alone,--I dwell alone, alone,
Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,
Gilded with flashing boats
That bring no friend to me:
O love-songs, gurgling from a hundred throats,
O love-pangs, let me be.
Fair fall the freighted boats which gold and stone
And spices bear to sea:
Slim, gleaming maidens swell their mellow notes,
Love-promising, entreating,--
Ah! sweet, but fleeting,--
Beneath the shivering, snow-white sails.
Hush! the wind flags and fails,--
Hush! they will lie becalmed in sight of strand,--
Sight of my strand, where I do dwell alone;
Their songs wake singing echoes in my land,--
They cannot hear me moan.
One latest, solitary swallow flies
Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest tost,
Poor bird, shall it be lost?
Dropped down into this uncongenial sea,
With no kind eyes
To watch it while it dies,
Unguessed, uncared for, free:
Set free at last,
The short pang past,
In sleep, in death, in dreamless sleep locked fast.
Mine avenue is all a growth of oaks,
Some rent by thunder-strokes,
Some rustling leaves and acorns in the breeze:
Fair fall my fertile trees,
That rear their goodly heads, and live at ease.
A spider's web blocks all mine avenue;
He catches down and foolish painted flies,
That spider wary and wise.
Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew
Betwixt boughs green with sap,
So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap:
I will not mar the web,
Though sad I am to see the small lives ebb.
It shakes,--my trees shake; for a wind is roused
In cavern where it housed:
Each white and quivering sail,
Of boats among the water leaves
Hollows and strains in the full-throated gale:
Each maiden sings again,--
Each languid maiden, whom the calm
Had lulled to sleep with rest and spice and balm,
Miles down my river to the sea
They float and wane,
Long miles away from me.
Perhaps they say: "She grieves,
Uplifted, like a beacon, on her tower."
Perhaps they say: "One hour
More, and we dance among the golden sheaves."
Perhaps they say: "One hour
More, and we stand,
Face to face, hand in hand;
Make haste, O slack gale, to the looked-for land!"
My trees are not in flower,
I have no bower,
And gusty creaks my tower,
And lonesome, very lonesome, is my strand.
1.7k
In Ocean’s wide domains,
Half buried in the sands,
Lie skeletons in chains,
With shackled feet and hands.
Beyond the fall of dews,
Deeper than plummet lies,
Float ships, with all their crews,
No more to sink nor rise.
There the black Slave-ship swims,
Freighted with human forms,
Whose fettered, fleshless limbs
Are not the sport of storms.
These are the bones of Slaves;
They gleam from the abyss;
They cry, from yawning waves,
“We are the Witnesses!”
Within Earth’s wide domains
Are markets for men’s lives;
Their necks are galled with chains,
Their wrists are cramped with gyves.
Dead bodies, that the kite
In deserts makes its prey;
Murders, that with affright
Scare school-boys from their play!
All evil thoughts and deeds;
Anger, and lust, and pride;
The foulest, rankest weeds,
That choke Life’s groaning tide!
These are the woes of Slaves;
They glare from the abyss;
They cry, from unknown graves,
“We are the Witnesses!”
1.5k
no, No, NO the maestro said,
like the eulogy we sang for the Northmen
It is a bit of a sad day,
especially today.
He finds it soothing to hear a sad song,
his son is dead, you know.
Make it melancholy!
This is a man who has been
freighted by loss,
let us do his suffering justice.
Sing it again and make sure it is
laden with loss.
Such a sad song
and so comforting.
Comfort him!
Play him the
Troubles of this World
and make sure all of the notes are
burdened with loss,
Heavily.
no, No, NO.
it goes like this:
trouble, hardship, difficulty.
These are the chords of sorrow,
you would do well to learn them.
But three years is no time at all.
It takes much longer than that
to fully lose one's child.
Come creatures,
An orchestra cannot conquer
the sound of his sadness.
He won't hear us yet.
Can't you see that he is not listening?
He thumbs through memories and pictures,
La vita breve he whispers.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 3:24 AM UTC
I may have already saddened
-
a sameness in the parrots we care for
-
our suicides
fight
for position
-
we twin the parable
this one: she pushed the baby carriage and in her going made quite
the parabola / the baby bounced but was dead the baby
bobbed
-
habitually I displace:
the ether / a god’s trenchancy
-
the academic scholar of woe whose grave I would visit
uninterrupted
whose stone now is a lonely letter f
who would’ve partnered with me to abandon
my freighted usage
of lonely,
-
of heart, of amateur eulogist
Dec 12, 2012
Dec 12, 2012 at 11:52 AM UTC
(Intending to ink this early Sunday evening, twas useful I didn't....
(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCLXI)
Think: "they said twas a war-time measure..." pale
Skies washed of clouds as golden light from hence
Bathes these lost wastes with April's freighted sense
Of violets just in tow; as blue heavns hail
The dinner table set with plates t'avail
Our refried beans, cheese, yoghurt, chips fr'intents,
Where all have better things to do, pretense
Trimmed to half curtsy whiles I search for bail.
So I dined when the clock said "now." in tour,
And yearn to linger, watching those deep blue
Heavns which cull shadows to cavort as twere
In Sunday evning's calm. Yet that won't do.
I wash the dishes; study all, then fer
Whatever, scamper off til gloaming'd woo.
11Mar19a
Mar 12, 2019
Mar 12, 2019 at 1:21 AM UTC
body...
it hurts
and I can't do it anymore.
But its okay... just sometimes,
No. I can't.
"Can't what!!?"_ you shriek
Everything:
Its painful to get dressed,
coming out from the curled, soft, blankets
it hurts
my head, eyes, and body
I can't explain why or how.
I can't explain my self
not anymore.
I can't be fake
anymore
talking **** all the time.
I can't hide these feelings.
I'm scared.
not knowing where I am
blinded of where I'm going,
doing my best to cover all this chaotic mess
with a smile,
the smile everyone exclaims they love so dearly.
A smile just to get me out the door and through the day.
And Why
And How
!!!
How do these **** Lovely Beings see all this good,
all this beauty, hope and fragile kindness..
all this peace and passion.
How..!
can they see all this, behind that smile..
Telling me these sweet gentle words,
words I truly try to believe in!
words I forget to believe in
words that I find so hard to see,
all these wonders
people talk of.
I get so lost in myself,
trying to find these wonderful sweet words
of calm seas, and humble peace
those words,
people exclaim to me.
But its Hard
and most days..
I just can't.
So I'm sorry if I get down and all shades of blue,
of lost
and scared.
But these horrible words:
'I can't'
Have Haunted me since forever.
those terrible two
words..
spinning around in my miserable, lost, mind.
Causing my body to hurt so
with all these sleepless nights.
But its Okay!
No worries
its Just...
at times it hurts so
that I look in the mirror and see
lost, tired, scared, sad, eyes
staring so freighted back at me.
Asking why, I could possibly hurt so..
But for now.
Sorry, my lovelies
that I hurt so
Maybe someday,
I will truly believe in calm seas and shining peace
with radiant skin
shinning with blinding passion.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 11:36 PM UTC
I feel like a kitchen appliance
Being used until the newest model comes in from Amazon,
So someone else can steal the Amazon prime light away from your matchstick way
Lighting up the darkest of nights
Melting my worries away
I used to be that way,
I look shiny
And irreplaceable
I never thought you could replace something irreplaceable until I don't know now?
And maybe sure,
My cable is freighted
My blue eyes have more luggage than what it first came here with
It feels like there's more instructions,
More problems
Probably
So now I see this familiar box
Amazon prime logo ready at hand
Knowing that this night is will be my last
This one has brown eyes
And it's cables aren't freighted
Like how you left me jaded
That one won't be outdated, right?
So as you pry me from my throne
I hold as hard as I can
Freighted cable holding onto the wall
With all of my might
Knowing that the only thing that is irreplaceable
Is you.
Oct 11, 2017
Oct 11, 2017 at 8:18 PM UTC
Not love as previously wont.
(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMXLVI)
Lo, how the woods are silent! whiles from hence
The leaves all hang in soft chartreuse, th'exhale
Fast slumbring in its den, this calm to scale
Half breathless while all waits with half a sense
Of utter expectation I 'non finger thence,
No voice to break this patient null's detail.
And la, the clock just ticks, each second frail
As all the rest. A Blue Jay'd scold, and whence?
Work nags at me but canna tug in poor
'Scuse at my sleeve as erst wont, cuz I'm to
Effect...cut off. The rift is huge in tour,
Likeas a canyon whose steep walls loom through
That freighted, creeping mist I can't bestir
To find a glimpse of light for how to do.
11May19b
May 11, 2019
May 11, 2019 at 6:06 PM UTC
Feigning since I'd freshly painted nails and was going out after dinner to poetry class that I didn't care that he hasn't talked to me...
(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCLIII)
The fragile ghost of mists likeas a veil
'Non gathers in the waning light fr'intents,
As puddles shiver to rain's dimples hence,
And how the clock declares work's done, to scale.
Whileas the timer counts last minutes' tale,
I do a sassy dance, and sparrows thence
Go silent as I play out sans defense
Was it a naughty thought lo, sans erm, bail?
O how the firs now whisper hoarsely through
This freighted calm as I serve dinner fer
Us three, and carry that big soup *** (poor
For just us few?) 'non to the table, to
Dish out his bowl and mine, rolls too in tour
With butter, marmalade as fog yet'd woo.
04Apr19f
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 10:28 PM UTC
Ye never need the finer details so here are a few for mystique.
(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMXIX)
Dad's vacuum coffee *** stands in the frail
And ghastly eye of Sunday's wee hours, dense
Calm not at all asleep, but poised from hence
Likeas a tiger waiting in betrayl
To spring upon the first noise breaching pale
Erm, silence' freighted null. We don't breathe thence,
Nor shift within our beds...til dawn's bright sense
Of "it's a new day!" draws the curtains, hale.
I slept through his alarm and maunt bestir
Til late, cuz slumber was a thing chased through
Sae many hours, I mourned sleep would not cure
My soul of aught. And Dad's now grinding, true
To form, espresso beans, tae pull shots per
Our Sunday wont. What of the dream I knew?
28Apr19a
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 10:46 PM UTC
...cuz I miss YOU--but I'm certainly NOT gonna say so.
(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMXX)
Blue heavns wink from thin puddles snaking thence
Across the naked blacktop, til a veil
Of clouds spread oer such seas, and warmth too frail,
How snow lies whitely on green lawns, a sense
Of what, exactly? in that note, fr'intents?
For e'en a **** grown through the cracks looks pale,
The hope of pink-tinged satin petals' tale
Upon erm, the Magnolia tree asks whence?
May will be here in April's wake, ere we're
Adjusted to the thought that Winter's through.
Why did I ever think twas not so, poor
As feeling des'late now? Are your eyes blue?
Will I e'er know? Or was it* all as twere
Some freighted dream I tried to realize 'new?
28Apr19b
May 2, 2019
May 2, 2019 at 10:54 PM UTC
emerging from the freighted dark no thought
but that the sky be clear and hands be filled
with all the needful that your warm hearts willed
when in good daylight the first words were caught
by eager listeners who had been taught
that not all prizes went to those best drilled
in the arcana of the freshly-killed
rather to ones who would account for naught
there is a victory that no one regrets
up in the hills when all the gifts are due
then hunters call and do not comprehend
the plainer meanings and the open sets
though when we have been silenced and review
our final forces we find there’s no end
Mar 12, 2014
Mar 12, 2014 at 8:24 PM UTC
Just leer at me and put your finger on my lips as I slip into the mists.
(sonnet #MMMMMMDCCCXLIX)
Tis New Year's Eve and one hour left t'avail,
The blueish shadows, tire tracks winding thence
From here to out of sight, and white snow dense
Upon the landscape are all buried, pale
Within night's blacker shroud, as no detail
Save distant, muffled shots is't? own a sense
Of what we thought to know, yea, that pretense
Mair hollow as the Scriptures tip the scale.
Ya, Revelation and the end in tour
Of Babylon sets all our fete as due
Now on its ear, the festive note we stir
Less than its vaunted echo, listed to
Effect as burned up in a moment, poor
As freighted joys. And what is left to do?
31Dec17a
Jan 15, 2018
Jan 15, 2018 at 11:32 PM UTC
"...Merrily, Merrily, Merrily, Merrily/Life is but a dream!" (Row, Row, Row Your Boat)
(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCL)
Wash dinner dishes after dark for sense,
To rise and wash the dishes 'gain, t'avail,
In such wee hours tis night still in betrayl,
The hellish nightmare I was jolted thence
From for this lukewarm taste of what fr'intents
I like to think is sweetest minutes' pale
Chance, hark to rain cuz traffic'd shush in frail
Notes by, to trundle off to work, ah whence?
It's like our sleep was but a nap in tour.
And I half cherish that vague sense we knew
Ere dawn, as blueish twilight warms, astir,
Not lost in slumber, freighted chances to--
What, eh? I do not know. Espressos fer
Time to just savour coffee are good too.
04Apr19c
Apr 5, 2019
Apr 5, 2019 at 10:23 PM UTC
Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com
He Never Met a Phor He Didn’t Like
He never met a phor he didn’t like
Where the dead are always spinning in their graves
A discarded cup looks like a war zone
And poems are unpacked instead of read
Or hyperbole ‘WAY OVER THE TOP!!!!!!!!!!!!
*** *** *** OH!!!!!!!!
MY LIFE HAS BEEN CHANGED FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!
NO ONE HAS EVER SUFFERED AS MUCH AS I!!!!!!!!
And freighted his lines with adverbs in rank
Until they really actually literally sank
Dec 6, 2021
Dec 6, 2021 at 9:18 AM UTC
Fisherman's intro, from "The Floral War."
FISHERMAN
Well well, what have we here? Some field of view:
The turquoise circle of the dazzling sea
Blazes her setting of bright-banded sands,
Where on this first, chill morning of the year,
Our sun arises to peruse his course,
And I, to tease my living from the deeps.
Come, gilded fishes, hither to my net,
You shimmering schools of perch, soft octopi,
White-shingled shad, and jade-scaled terrapins,
Plump, krill-fed dwellers of the pickling brine,
Come now to me. To pray you have no fear
Would shuffle with the truth, as I intend
To angle for your lives, yet spoil me,
For I who come to act unneighbourly
Am poor, and strapped, and only bother you
Compelled by leaky-seamed necessity.
I have my wife’s own hatchery at home,
And you, my friends, must make their maintenance.
So, rush my meshes and forgive my faults.
Whoa there! What vision’s this? Green goddess, say,
What monstrous marvels wander on your face?
This cannot be! I am awake, and sane,
Yet seem to see a wading range of hills,
A chain of dizzy-peaked and scraggy steeps
Whose groundworks bob like buoys in the surf.
Yet now this restless reef flows closer still,
Resolving as spray-freighted citadels,
Wave-buttressed towers romping on the breakers,
Their canvas banners snapping at the breeze,
Whose men wing down from ropes to pace the decks,
And screen their eyes as if to locate me.
I’ll hustle to my chieftains with this news,
And let their cry of ominous novelty
Alert each ear from here to Mexico.
My life thus far was bright and fancy-free.
Oh, why must change then come to quiet me? Exit.
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:43 PM UTC
I didn't, really. I just walked straight up to where he was working, and tada.
(sonnet #MMMMMMCCCCLVI)
Does gloaming softly thieve what was, a sense
Of yonder haunts the fragile light gone pale,
And I see-saw on whether to avail
Me of the number Joe wrote down from hence
Or write him off as quite the fruitcake, whence
Our tete-a-tete is laughable. Yes, they'll
Aquit him of aught, cuz I have ne bail:
Despised is, um, passe for all intents.
I am a woman. "Lewd" is common fer
All that. And lo, the skies don navy-blue
As nary bough stirs, traffic naught and poor.
Come, now they rock, leaves whisper lightly, to
Lapse into freighted silence. Go assure
Yourselves. I'll laugh tomorrow ist? at you.
27Jun17b
Jul 12, 2017
Jul 12, 2017 at 7:49 PM UTC
Well, I must thank Mark S. for his piece this AM...
(sonnet #MMMMMMMCMXV)
Where dawn just tinges blackness with the frail
Note of first blushes on the East for sense,
I wake within the clutches of what thence?
O wherefore does my throat half whisper bail
Is gone as't burns?! A cold?! Again?! Detail
Pink's softest murmurs on this grey suspense,
And promise me it's all a joke from hence,
Or grant my soul such mercies as avail.
So sparrows gaily cry when I deter
The tug which begs I write what'd roll 'non through
Those freighted minutes as I cleaned in tour
Twa bathrooms--while aught slept. Now hungry to
Effect, what of the cruel suggestion? Poor?
Is hope a thing with anchors? Is it true?
27Apr19a
Apr 27, 2019
Apr 27, 2019 at 5:34 PM UTC
...um, silence?
(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCXXXIII)
Where blue skies like we used to know detail
This last, erm, calndar day for all intents
Of March, a Sunday whose sheer calm is thence
As sweet as milk's foam on th'espresso's hale
Breath of strong coffee, frore winds' soft exhale
That playful touch dead leaves 'non skitter hence
Unto, the silence we more feel and sense
Than know while sparrows chatter, lo'd prevail.
The rusty can's orange label glares as twere
From hiding in the bush' thin shadows through
These long months since October thought it poor
To scarf the leaves July was proud tae brew.
And tulip capes look scrawny is't? in tour,
While freighted what? nags at us to jist do.
31Mar19a
Mar 31, 2019
Mar 31, 2019 at 5:15 PM UTC
...just sitting out there on the back stoop.
(sonnet #MMMMMMMDCCCIV)
What gives? While twilight haunts the fragile sense
The minutes linger, and soft blue heavns pale
Lo, e'er so subtly, traffic on its way t'avail
This start of ya, the weekend, whither hence?
Hark! as the robins (distant) scold fr'intents,
And sparrows' eager cries half calm to scale,
Where now suspense half rises in a frail
Excuse upon its elbow, ask me whence.
Erst wont to sit at gathring twilight fer
These little calls and noises trickling through
The madder haste to be elsewhere in tour,
To listen once again is sweet. I knew
All this when Mum was back indoors, when her
Face welcomed my return. What's changed? What's new?
22Mar19d
Mar 23, 2019
Mar 23, 2019 at 9:54 PM UTC