"fringed" poems
Your colors diffuse in hushed streaks
across synapses,
as empty spaces also become orchids
and butterfly petals reach for a scent
their counterparts in rain.
A fringed April is actually an orchid.
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 3:26 PM UTC
beyond Montana’s yellow lines
there is a field
~a field of painted soles
and laces rubber tread
~a field of ****** curls
and fallen headlights
where kaleidoscope lenses
look onto twisted frames like origami halos
where teddy bears hug stop signs like pickets
fringed in anger
runaway childhoods sleep cautionary tales
beyond Montana’s blushing acne
there are red cup melodies
blasting from blacked out tints
weaving blues notes through Rock & Rap
distant cries are drowned by Bass
or maybe Bud (light)
a haze of teenage eyes
they might as well be ghost riders
whip game copped from GTA
these pubescents are a Vice to their City
blooming sidewalk sloths
like flowerbeds
beyond Montana
is a country of bar stools
where bar tenders play therapists
and therapists play coroners
precedents are shots of whiskey - taken to the head
and reflected in flooded eyes
beyond Montana
is a country of MADD mothers and SADD students
beyond Montana
is a country of unexpecting pedestrians
beyond Montana
is a field
~a field of wing-clipped snow angels
That field is Mariah's home now
and she challenges you to change
yourself
your friends
your country
she challenges you to
STOP DRUNK DRIVING
Jan 6, 2013
Jan 6, 2013 at 2:22 PM UTC
Forests of coral adorn the rocky ocean floor,
Sheltered here in this sky-blue lagoon.
See the golden sand, shining through the still waters,
Fringed by plumes of palm.
The warming sun is smiling,
Flanked by fluffy white clouds.
Gulls are calling
Over the whispering sea.
A tropical paradise
Punctuated only
By impromptu showers.
Those colourful corals
Swarmed with teeming fish
Of every hue.
This is the place
To be.
Paul Butters
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 5:49 AM UTC
On the East Coast of England there’s a small resort
Called Cleethorpes, where I happen to reside.
And out towards the Pleasure Park
A short way from the shore
There is The Boating Lake.
I love to go there on a still, sundowning evening
When the parking is free.
To walk those walkways around the lake,
Dreaming I’m on Starfleet Academy Campus.
Walkways flanked by lawned hillocks and shrubs.
The lake is fringed by red-flowered reeds
And punctuated by ducks and geese.
Families and couples roam about
As I sit in meditation
Watching and listening
To the central fountain play.
Such a tranquil scene,
Far from the madding crowd.
Go over the bridge and cross the mini-railway line:
Before you reach the saltmarsh and the sea
You’ll find a stretch of shrubbery and trees
A haven for the birds
And for me,
As I walk my favourite path.
The lake is thus a prelude
To some splendid growth
As nature does its thing.
Serene and tranquil everything
A spiritual feeling
As I meditate
Beneath multi-layered clouds
Under endless sky.
Paul Butters
Aug 27, 2016
Aug 27, 2016 at 6:21 AM UTC
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of SPACE—out of TIME.
Bottomless vales and boundless floods,
And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,
With forms that no man can discover
For the dews that drip all over;
Mountains toppling evermore
Into seas without a shore;
Seas that restlessly aspire,
Surging, unto skies of fire;
Lakes that endlessly outspread
Their lone waters—lone and dead,
Their still waters—still and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily.
By the lakes that thus outspread
Their lone waters, lone and dead,—
Their sad waters, sad and chilly
With the snows of the lolling lily,—
By the mountains—near the river
Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—
By the gray woods,—by the swamp
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—
By the dismal tarns and pools
Where dwell the Ghouls,—
By each spot the most unholy—
In each nook most melancholy,—
There the traveller meets aghast
Sheeted Memories of the past—
Shrouded forms that start and sigh
As they pass the wanderer by—
White-robed forms of friends long given,
In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven.
For the heart whose woes are legion
’Tis a peaceful, soothing region—
For the spirit that walks in shadow
’Tis—oh, ’tis an Eldorado!
But the traveller, travelling through it,
May not—dare not openly view it;
Never its mysteries are exposed
To the weak human eye unclosed;
So wills its King, who hath forbid
The uplifting of the fringed lid;
And thus the sad Soul that here passes
Beholds it but through darkened glasses.
By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only.
Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have wandered home but newly
From this ultimate dim Thule.
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At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An ****** vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies
(Her casement open to the skies)
Irene, with her Destinies!
Oh, lady bright! can it be right—
This window open to the night!
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice-drop—
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully—so fearfully—
Above the closed and fringed lid
’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid,
That, o’er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress!
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all-solemn silentness!
The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by!
My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
As it is lasting, so be deep;
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold—
Some vault that oft hath flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o’er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals—
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.
4.3k
The deep sighs of fall
send chills across the daisies.
My compass is sick
and there’s a sense of urgency in my eyelashes,
feeling around for the blisters on my skin
searching for a bed to sleep.
Facets of sleep
encourage the rain to fall,
cold weather raising capillaries under my skin.
I wrote the history of the Holocene era on daisies,
microscope lenses tickling my eyelashes;
dim lighting makes me home sick.
My mind is sick,
I dream of oceans in my sleep,
medicine labels printed on my eyelashes
pill bottles coloured like fall.
Tattoos of purple fringed daisies
cover my shoulders like skin.
Teeth full of apple skin;
asking God how not to be sick,
wondering if a sacrifice of daisies
will get my blood to sleep.
My hair is like the leaves during fall;
I hope I get to keep my eyelashes.
There’s snow in my eyelashes,
landscapes of frost form on skin
the cold air begins to fall,
I decide to call in sick
preferring to hide in a hot sleep
until my breaths sprout purple daisies.
How to grow Gerber daisies,
without losing my eyelashes?
My fingernails are full of sleep,
hot tea grasps at my paper skin.
The panacea for the sick
is a perfect concentration of wool sweaters and fall.
You eat daisies in the fever of fall.
Through my eyelashes I am morally sick,
but yesterday I finally let sleep settle into my skin.
Feb 16, 2014
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:45 PM UTC
Friday- the most promising day of all.
The beginning of the weekend, but the one day that will spark appall.
Down on Mainstreet all the girls
In their fringed dresses, pouting their foxy lips and their hair waving in short messes.
The hags frown as the winged ladies pass by- displaying their carriages a little sly.
Oh, but Jane's favourite speakeasy was 'The Back Room' down on Norfolk Street: the place where the lost creatures meet.
Tin ceilings, velvet wallpaper, plush thrones and back in that dark corner, there is the sound of low moans.
'A whiskey, neat, please' as a shadow in a tuxedo walked towards her and he whispered 'Hi,' in a sensual purr.
'Who are you?' he stirred,
'Oh, I'm Miss Doe' and he lept into the stool with a swift flow.
And the jazz trumpets married the spontaneous harmonies and the saxophone created sublime melodies.
So they sat as idle as ghouls in the dim spotlights, until Jane asked Mr Buck:
'D'you fight in the war?' And he whined 'Cambrai, Amiens and Lys' - his lips seemed a little sore.
'I'm sorry - do I know you?' His face looked as familiar as Jay to Nick. A brief pause in time at that smile.
That was the final chord to the "lick".
He drove her down to Roslyn- to his replica of Versailles and Jane looked intensely shy.
'Oh, do come in,' the desperado soughed. And she walked into the gilded palace which Cupid's presence bowed.
'I have a favour to ask of you, Miss Doe. Would you be as kind to wash away my woe?'
And as they congressed under diamond chandeliers, his comrades gathered around the bed in amorphous silhouettes; watching disgustedly.
As for Mr Buck he was an alien, skin-to-skin with a haunted beauty and Miss Doe- a labourer on duty.
Jun 24, 2017
Jun 24, 2017 at 6:32 AM UTC
Thrums the bee waggle-dance in a haunt of Indian horsepaths,
Or the shaking leaf one second past the strike of galloping rain
/ Parsimonious lightning, thrifty in its jagged stalks
Against this night of heavy-hearted oaks /
Then the hay-fringed bale of sleep, rolled into a valley of slowed breathing,
Through parting cloud-diabolique, poison-peers the wet toadback of Autumn,
Glowing moon-gristle in the bosky wolf’s beard with its wireframe of teeth.
Sep 30, 2021
Sep 30, 2021 at 8:19 PM UTC
I dreamed that dead, and meditating,
I lay upon a grave, or bed,
(at least, some cold and close-built bower).
In the cold heart, its final thought
stood frozen, drawn immense and clear,
stiff and idle as I was there;
and we remained unchanged together
for a year, a minute, an hour.
Suddenly there was a motion,
as startling, there, to every sense
as an explosion. Then it dropped
to insistent, cautious creeping
in the region of the heart,
prodding me from desperate sleep.
I raised my head. A slight young ****
had pushed up through the heart and its
green head was nodding on the breast.
(All this was in the dark.)
It grew an inch like a blade of grass;
next, one leaf shot out of its side
a twisting, waving flag, and then
two leaves moved like a semaphore.
The stem grew thick. The nervous roots
reached to each side; the graceful head
changed its position mysteriously,
since there was neither sun nor moon
to catch its young attention.
The rooted heart began to change
(not beat) and then it split apart
and from it broke a flood of water.
Two rivers glanced off from the sides,
one to the right, one to the left,
two rushing, half-clear streams,
(the ribs made of them two cascades)
which assuredly, smooth as glass,
went off through the fine black grains of earth.
The **** was almost swept away;
it struggled with its leaves,
lifting them fringed with heavy drops.
A few drops fell upon my face
and in my eyes, so I could see
(or, in that black place, thought I saw)
that each drop contained a light,
a small, illuminated scene;
the weed-deflected stream was made
itself of racing images.
(As if a river should carry all
the scenes that it had once reflected
shut in its waters, and not floating
on momentary surfaces.)
The **** stood in the severed heart.
"What are you doing there?" I asked.
It lifted its head all dripping wet
(with my own thoughts?)
and answered then: "I grow," it said,
"but to divide your heart again."
3.8k
On Lolham Brigs in wild and lonely mood
I’ve seen the winter floods their gambols play
Through each old arch that trembled while I stood
Bent o’er its wall to watch the dashing spray
As their old stations would be washed away
Crash came the ice against the jambs and then
A shudder jarred the arches—yet once more
It breasted raving waves and stood agen
To wait the shock as stubborn as before
—White foam brown crested with the russet soil
As washed from new plough lands would dart beneath
Then round and round a thousand eddies boil
On tother side—then pause as if for breath
One minute—and engulphed—like life in death
Whose wrecky stains dart on the floods away
More swift than shadows in a stormy day
Straws trail and turn and steady—all in vain
The engulfing arches shoot them quickly through
The feather dances flutters and again
Darts through the deepest dangers still afloat
Seeming as faireys whisked it from the view
And danced it o’er the waves as pleasures boat
Light hearted as a thought in May—
Trays—uptorn bushes—fence demolished rails
Loaded with weeds in sluggish motions stray
Like water monsters lost each winds and trails
Till near the arches—then as in affright
It plunges—reels—and shudders out of sight
Waves trough—rebound—and fury boil again
Like plunging monsters rising underneath
Who at the top curl up a shaggy main
A moment catching at a surer breath
Then plunging headlong down and down—and on
Each following boil the shadow of the last
And other monsters rise when those are gone
Crest their fringed waves—plunge onward and are past
—The chill air comes around me ocean blea
From bank to bank the waterstrife is spread
Strange birds like snow spots o’er the huzzing sea
Hang where the wild duck hurried past and fled
On roars the flood—all restless to be free
Like trouble wandering to eternity
3.7k
I
I learnt this week
that time and distance
can be friends to memory
their respective lengths
only wet and sharpen
the edge of love
but for us dear friend
we hold hard to hope
that we may
one day soon
share the present
and live each moment
in each other's heart.
II
Hearing you on Holkham beach
- whose soul is greater than the ocean
whose spirit stronger than the sea -
did I doubt for a moment
that you, though buffeted
by a cold east wind
would never age for me,
nor fade, nor die.
Nor you for me (she said)
Goodbye, my love,
a thousand times goodbye.
Write me well (she said)
and turned and ran.
III
The Reedham ferry was but a river's width
and yet I stood at the water's brink
and watched the reeds quiver in the wind,
watched the rain splatter on the puddled path.
All around to the human eye
this valley, a plain of grassland
broken only by reed-fringed pools,
was a gentle, unpeopled, easy place.
The absence of relief left
no fixed frame of reference.
Places apart from one another
would concertina and merge.
Tempted to cross I waved a no
to the ferryman in his quayside hut
then turned and walked quickly
back down the long, low road.
Jan 11, 2014
Jan 11, 2014 at 6:29 PM UTC
"To Lionel Engers-Kennedy: to the memory of Hargrave Jennings: and
to A. C. W. G. and H. E. H."
Beneath the vine tree and the fig
Where mortal cares may not intrude,
On melon and on ******* pig
Although their brains are bright and big
Banquet the Great White Brotherhood.
Among the fountains and the trees
That fringed his garden's glowing border,
At sunset walked, and, in the breeze
With his disciples, took his ease
An Adept of the Holy Order.
"My children," Said the holy man,
"Once more I'm willing to unmask me.
This is my birthday; and my plan
Is to bestow on you (I can)
Whatever favour you may ask me."
Nor curiosity nor greed
Brought these disciples to disaster;
For, being very wise indeed,
The adolescents all agreed
To ask His Secret of the Master.
With the "aplomb" and "savoir faire"
Peculiar to Eastern races,
He took the secret then and there
(What, is not lawful to declare),
And ****** it rudely in their faces.
"A filthy insult!" screamed the first;
The second smiled, "Ingenious blind!"
The youngest neither blessed nor cursed,
Contented to believe the worst -
That He had spoken all his mind!
The second earned the name of ****
The first the epithet of *****
The third, as merry as a grig,
On melon and on ******* pig
Feasts with the Great White Brotherhood.
2.9k
My body is a garden, but that does not mean I'm flourishing.
A tight cluster of pale white peonies
hold together something beautiful
but what a **** shame it’s so fragile
Because there’s a hell lot more.
Those peonies are only a layer
to the millions of roses underneath,
and above a field of scattered poppy seeds
a dash of meadow rue shows how I fell down
and maybe just maybe seeping through
a gorgeous burgundy zantedeschia
will sprout from my wrist if I happen to fall apart.
Purple velvet petunias are blooming
under my eyes and my lips are full and
cracked as a fringed tulip. My eyes,
a deep blue barlow as if it meant anything.
Of course know that I have described
myself as a pretty little bouquet
Don’t I feel beautiful now?
Or is it only masking the truth with
some pretty little words?
My body may be a garden, but that does not mean I'm flourishing.
Dec 11, 2014
Dec 11, 2014 at 7:48 PM UTC
Cerebral woman,,,,,,,,,,, 'I'm a judge jail Mee
she's a technicoloured melodrama
fringed in pink
a loony tune character
penned in indian ink,
she's positive and poignant
blessed with perfect poise
my snake wrangling lady-
she's one o' the boys.
she's a synaptical **** siren
and rather refined
a whoreatical kinda woman;
that ***** with my mind,
she's passionate and pendulous
immersed in deep thought
my minds mary's monster
my cerebral - consort,
alan nettleton.
Sep 11, 2010
Sep 11, 2010 at 10:28 PM UTC
I think I am always an afterthought,
one that people seem to disregard,
It seems that people call me when there is nothing left,
and I don't know how I feel about being being second best.
Dates are asked and promised,
and phone calls are never returned,
the tightly tied strings of friendship are fringed and burned.
The effort is never made,
as it is assumed I will always be there,
an afterthought, a maybe,
forgotten without a care.
You don't jump at the chance to be with me,
it's always a "maybe", or a "we will see."
I am not number one on any lists,
not "best looking", or "who I want to kiss."
But I'm an afterthought,
the one lingering in the back of your mind,
the "not too bad", the "she's okay",
"with her it's an alright time."
An afterthought,
I do not want to be,
But a first thought,
the one you want to see.
Jun 13, 2014
Jun 13, 2014 at 1:20 PM UTC
Thou blossom bright with autumn dew,
And colored with the heaven's own blue,
That openest when the quiet light
Succeeds the keen and frosty night.
Thou comest not when violets lean
O'er wandering brooks and springs unseen,
Or columbines, in purple dressed,
Nod o'er the ground-bird's hidden nest.
Thou waitest late and com'st alone,
When woods are bare and birds are flown,
And frosts and shortening days portend
The aged year is near his end.
Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye
Look through its fringes to the sky,
Blue--blue--as if that sky let fall
A flower from its cerulean wall.
I would that thus, when I shall see
The hour of death draw near to me,
Hope, blossoming within my heart,
May look to heaven as I depart.
2.5k
Bread from waxed paper packet
a childhood memory of mum making tea
snow white, thick sliced
fringed with a brown crust
comfortingly heavy, ****** smelling
the butter pleases me
covered under the tub lid
with a coated paper peeled back
to reveal a thick golden slab of
churned cream easily spread, cold
straight from the fridge onto waiting
fibrous surface, allowing it to sink in
cheese in a yellow block, related to
the butter in so many ways, dairy
a long lost brother, sliced thick with
a proper knife with the pointed curved
tip, designed to ***** and pick up
each slice, placing carefully on the bed
prepared for it to rest, ready for the final
ochre coloured element, mustard, from
a glass jar using a teaspoon, to dollop
before resting a second buttered slice
on top to make a creation, a taste sensation
Jul 20, 2019
Jul 20, 2019 at 2:39 PM UTC
Earth's children cleave to Earth--her frail
Decaying children dread decay.
Yon wreath of mist that leaves the vale,
And lessens in the morning ray:
Look, how, by mountain rivulet,
It lingers as it upward creeps,
And clings to fern and copsewood set
Along the green and dewy steeps:
Clings to the fragrant kalmia, clings
To precipices fringed with grass,
Dark maples where the wood-thrush sings,
And bowers of fragrant sassafras.
Yet all in vain--it passes still
From hold to hold, it cannot stay,
And in the very beams that fill
The world with glory, wastes away,
Till, parting from the mountain's brow,
It vanishes from human eye,
And that which sprung of earth is now
A portion of the glorious sky.
2.2k
hearing Shakespeare,
my-own-voice
crack'd, stilted,
stuttered-shut by the
mocking silence of still
waters on the brain
poverty exposed,
raggedy verbiage for a
raggedy man's
frayed fringed garments
ashamed of
every word I ever wrote,
not even ten survivors,
not enough to pray collectively
for muse~forgivement
****
hush me not,
no chairs turned,
the public has not texted,
new tattoo:
write on for audience of one
a necessity, a life sentence
a single topic, a subject,
a life, mine,
still unmastered,
decades of trying
poverty exposed, unmasked
for what it is worth,
or what it is not
Mar 5, 2014
Mar 5, 2014 at 4:05 PM UTC
This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
And I have loitered in the vale too long
And gaze now a belated worshipper.
Yet may I not forget that I was ‘ware,
So journeying, of his face at intervals
Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
And now that I have climbed and won this height,
I must tread downward through the sloping shade
And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
And see the gold air and the silver fade
And the last bird fly into the last light.
2k
1424
The Gentian has a parched Corolla—
Like azure dried
’Tis Nature’s buoyant juices
Beatified—
Without a vaunt or sheen
As casual as Rain
And as benign—
When most is part—it comes—
Nor isolate it seems
Its Bond its Friend—
To fill its Fringed career
And aid an aged Year
Abundant end—
Its lot—were it forgot—
This Truth endear—
Fidelity is gain
Creation is o’er—
2k
Looking out of the window;
a ribbon of duck-egg-blue sky,
fringed by the sun's late light,
is sandwiched by grey cumulus.
It frames Sycamore tree tops,
red tiled pyramids with their expectant aerials
pointing West, littering clean lines.
It is a mute view;
serried bins wait for the mornings collection,
cars sit dumb, curbed,
their daily commute completed.
Two starlings flit, silent,
and in the far distance a high contrail is picked out
in gold as a thread in blue silk.
For five years this view remains changeably the same;
unspoilt by the entropy of new perspectives.
This is the summer of un-broadcast malcontents,
pacified in Brazilian spectacle. Days simmer here and there.
Soap operas filter through,
made to massage the message
of consume and discard, of holidays and pistons.
And in the mornings, that never come,
we abandon the cars that cannot diverge
from work-honed routes,
taking to the air from Sycamores as Starlings.
June 2014
Jul 5, 2014
Jul 5, 2014 at 5:05 AM UTC
It was my first time
I was fifteen years old
And it was 8 inches.
Eight. Whole. Inches.
Laying motionless in my hands,
Long and lifeless as I stared excitedly, nervously
My first ...haircut
I spun around in the salon chair to see my exposed jaw, shoulders, neck
Holding in my hands a ponytail that would soon be sent to Locks of Love
My first legitimate haircut, not the simple snips my mom would attempt in the bathroom when split ends were too unbearable,
A real style
Back straight and shoulders proud,
Uncertainty left on the tiles beneath the feet of beaming confidence,
Leaving dead the sheet that covered scared eyes and shy smiles…ever since I've developed an addiction to change,
Can't leave it the same for more than two months
And the chime of the door behind me opened endless opportunities:
Brown, auburn, gold, red, blond, yellow
Black
Brown black, blue black, soft black, natural black, always back to black
Straight, curly, layered, cropped, feathered, fringed, shaved
Undercut, mohawk, faux hawk, that weird thing where I gel it to the side and kind of look like a boy...
And yeah, sometimes I get sick of the sexist comments
People telling me I've got a boy's haircut
That short hair is for men, but
So were the olympics and voting and public education and getting published,
And thriving in the workplace and wearing pants,
And god knows im not going to give up either my Levi's or my razor
I'm not going to keep worrying; man's words will stop me from doing what i love
And I've been called lesbian, boyish, butch, manly, androgynous, anti-effeminate,
But I know I don't stand alone.
So thank you, Natalie Portman, P!nk,
Rihanna, Katy Perry, Anne Hathaway,
Kaley, Megan, Erin, Kim, Skylar
I don't know all of you well,
But the risks you've taken with your hair
Are an inspiration to those who care
So short haired women,
Keep doing your thang.
May 12, 2013
May 12, 2013 at 1:51 PM UTC