"fugitive" poems
The tide collects it all by morning;
The drama and the ***** napalmed across the path.
The scenes at second warning for most had been swept away
Before they wiped the sand from their shoes.
Empty cans of Dutch and Tuborg slouched on the dunes
Are tight-lipped about the Velvet Strand's secret ecosystem;
An underground microcosm;
A peripheral cluster of seething emotions drowned.
Memories of those years - although some expired,
The vestiges take pride of place - hold a cosmic clump of smells,
Tastes, firsts, goosebumps, hangovers, and ends.
I never before understood what I was holding on to.
Winters down in the shelters nearly killed us but we
Huddled through the cold, lit cheap firelogs and
Found our oblivion. It didn't take much for me to develop
A stagger - tolerance for a lot of things was learned later.
I narrowly recall my first taste of poor judgement and
Hazy-headed stargazing. Six cans of Stonehouse
Dry cider - most of which ended up on the hillside -
Was a ridiculous endeavour that will always be sublime.
At the heart of it, I did it to impress a girl;
The one every boy has or has had that sticks;
Who holds your firsts and your hands and makes
Things simple if only for her complexity;
The one that never fails to bring upon digression when
Pens are involved. Revisiting reminiscence on a jarring note,
I think of my Junior Cert exams and a cross-dressed man
Exposing himself to two uniformed boys behind the public toilets.
This one doesn't stir the joy of the others.
This one I wish would dissolve;
An ugly, awkward blotch on a childhood.
Luckily fondness trumps disgust when recalling that place
Because of sunrises and sunsets absorbed from the roof.
The Summers spent jumping the gap and drowning in the
Heat of the sun were everything.
The fugitive sand between our toes and under finger nails
Became an accepted nuisance, a part of the territory;
A lingering grain or two to drag you back.
I miss waking up with the smell of last night's faded fire.
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 8:22 PM UTC
A flight of three crows
added to
a dense grey day
Next add four
iconic conifers
as high as the sky
eternally ******* down
These things are
always in my sight
through my window
on this wet world
Multiply all of this
by a sweet daughter
who makes me proud
and raise the whole
to the power of a strong woman
who carries us all
on her back
The equation produces
a result that I am 95 percent certain
equals happiness
though the confidence interval
is wide
And this result
sweet as it is
and as uncertain as it is
will outlive me
leave a faint echo in time
an echo that will bounce off a star
and finally be found
gripped in my shriveled paw
long after the epiphany
nowhere near paradise
somewhere short of
the end of the line
This is a moment of happiness
stolen from time
hijacked by a fugitive
from civil society
I'll hold it close
until death pries it
without mercy
from my hand
Leaves it as a blessing
and a curse
for all who come after
Take the blessing.
Leave the curse.
That's the advice I give
with my dying breath.
And I leave this to you
from the generosity
of my heart.
With a nod to
the scant traces
of God's grace
that I find on these pathways
of travail.
Never lost.
Never found.
Always present
and generous
to all.
Be that.
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 6:01 PM UTC
.
The waves spilled the rising tide
back into the scattered footprints in the sand
deeply entrenched in life’s mystery,
receding into every breaking wave
A stiff sea breeze put back every grain of sand,
elements of a larger object gathers,
gravity firmed, into the silent shoreline chasms—
a beheld essence washed out to sea
by the fugitive tides and retreating sea-foam
Soon all trodden traces visibly vanish;
unmarked mileposts on a metaphysical pathway
slip away back to a windswept shoreline
and elapsing summer tide
Seabirds glide in slow-motion,
held sway into the shapeless gusts —
as if feathered puppets hovering,
hanging from the rafters
of the burgeoning orange sky
There's an uncommon peace in the renaissance;
effervescent crisp ocean air filling
the indefinable emptiness
marooned within each heartbeat’s echo
Each new breath inhaled, disappearing within
the unhealed hollow of every thing once believed;
fully aware this life is unholdable as time,
yet feeling many things deeply retained
in each passing moment—
slipping away like a handful of sand
sifting through all these hands once held
Presence becoming wreathed in a miasma of stillness,
space that levitates like an unpredictable fog
that seeps into the gnawing voids
of an unsated hunger
harlon rivers ... August 1st, 2018
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 8:34 PM UTC
"Are you from around here?"
You would have rolled your eyes at the city sky
Muttered something about Westernization
No stars in the sky
But baby, here they have the lights.
A man asked about you today
He said "and your lover?"
I told him you were long gone,
Feared the exposure of city lights
New York doesn't love me like you do
I said "my lover is a runaway fugitive"
Anything but the truth.
Oct 16, 2014
Oct 16, 2014 at 8:30 AM UTC
Like a clockwork's rhyme
they grow on him,
the soft moan of her heels.
Here she comes, they tell him
as they gently pry loose
of her tender feet.
A quiver is set into motion
like strings of a cello
consumed by touch
every time her voice breaks free
like a fugitive
from its own abode.
The visiting breeze crosses by
the slow hum
of her breathing,
and carries the gasps
in hurried echoes
to remind him she's checked in.
A mischief rolled into smile
escapes her lips
to touch a heart so shy,
only to leave it
and **** with pain
while making it a willing alibi.
Aug 22, 2018
Aug 22, 2018 at 9:39 AM UTC
My work day woke to Monk,
the click of typing keys,
clock watched, Spotify playing,
random thoughts rose like bees
to freeze in these jagged lines,
then swarm in threatening flight.
Hours of data entry later,
on a stool, in a bar, a clock's
hands tock, I flick a wrist,
and slur my words concluding
an anguished monologue,
“They call it work, you know.”
Awash at home, in the strobe of
pixelated panel light,
visions surge and dissipate
with the pulse of the night. Osip,
were you tempered to embrace
attention’s fugitive caress?
You etched memory’s texture
with candle soot for ink,
and the gulag’s blackened gaze -
I type lines by hunt and peck
humming Monk’s WELL YOU NEEDN’T,
hoping for an adequate phrase.
Copyright © 2004 Gary Brocks
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 10:38 PM UTC
1483
The Robin is a Gabriel
In humble circumstances—
His Dress denotes him socially,
Of Transport’s Working Classes—
He has the punctuality
Of the New England Farmer—
The same oblique integrity,
A Vista vastly warmer—
A small but sturdy Residence
A self denying Household,
The Guests of Perspicacity
Are all that cross his Threshold—
As covert as a Fugitive,
Cajoling Consternation
By Ditties to the Enemy
And Sylvan Punctuation—
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For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is today in which we live.
So many try to say Not Now,
So many have forgotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.
Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.
Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.
No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie,
Another time has other lives to live.
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I'd like to catch a songbird when I visit.
One that only lives near your house,
One I've never heard.
I'd like to catch a songbird,
And have it sing for me
The songs you hear each morning.
I'd like to watch the moon when it rises.
Lifting itself over the earth, reflecting
As it passes my window.
I'd like to watch the moon,
The same white moon
That you might be watching tonight.
I'd like to hold the wind in a mason jar.
The warm little south wind
That chuckles and breezes northward.
I'd like to hold it down,
Whisper my hellos into its gales,
And let it go darting off northwards -
Whistling and running like a fugitive
To you.
Jun 16, 2011
Jun 16, 2011 at 3:11 AM UTC
1504
Of whom so dear
The name to hear
Illumines with a Glow
As intimate—as fugitive
As Sunset on the snow—
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So
from your hand,
I learned to drink the light...
A residue of dahlias
in their late summer blood,
rimmed white with the fluid evening,
the soul, some wild falcon
folded in golden lullabies
of nightingale acoustics...
Eclipsed by the gentle pathos
of the body, shining
as I leave it behind,
crying in its dark thorns,
some forlorn fragment shudders
in the silver embrace you lace with calm...
As it laps
into that crumpled karma
and dreams it was once
a jaguar of dark passages,
held in the long hands of sorrow,
see, these clavicles emerge through orchids...
And a liquid resurrection
envelope the earth you bathe
from the fugitive gesture of wings,
so, it was in these black,
grim prairies of the soul...
Where I
at last learned
to drink the light from your hand....
Sep 5, 2012
Sep 5, 2012 at 1:32 PM UTC
By Arcassin Burnham
For the sick and starving,
I'll be happily departed,
Stupid **** you do don't phase me,
Only my partners would only know that your corrupted,
Might have been fugitive of the law
Or whatever I don't give a ****
Wouldn't care if you died today,
Comment say "huh" again,
Have you humming to all your homosexual friends,
Gary!....
Sep 19, 2015
Sep 19, 2015 at 7:13 PM UTC
The hollow wind funneled the voice
of the distant night-train crossings,
awakening a familiar silence
hanging from the vast wilderness sky
A restless heart hearkening the echoes,
imagining a runaway Pullman
flew away off the rails, airborne
on the winged wind headed north
Winter pausing for a moment
in the shadows of familiarity,
as if parsing the unspoken breathings
in an echoless surrendered sigh;
uncertain if tacit words set free
could ever allow a heart broken
to feel whole again
There is no absolving voice
that whispers in a solemner tone :
Death has no mercy ―
love remains marooned in the wake ,..
and it feels like the world’s gone mad
letting time be the arbiter of perpetuity
The fading dream of a motherless child;
a wish to be held maternally
fell to the ground with a thud,
breaking the silence,
dissipating formless as the shape of water
Muted cold lips so full of questions
morphing into fugitive sighs
come the unsettled night;
when shadows disappear like frail memories
that passed too soon to grasp,
thickly palpable as the warm breath
a winter bird alone on frosty branch
There’s no fear in braving the darkness
in the winter wilderness of life borne alone
There’s no way of knowing what you’ll find
down that long empty road back home
Life just flashes by silently before your eyes
through the windshield
of countless miles and miles
And there’s nothing you can do about it ―
It’s like hearing the moment of truth in a lie
when all I was looking for
was how I got here in this now,.. yesterday
only finding a hopeless poet
scribbling slightly stained pages,
spilling a bitter sweet dream ...
harlon rivers ... February 2018
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Feb 14, 2018
Feb 14, 2018 at 10:31 AM UTC
Suspected of attack
On fascist Graziani
He was in house arrest
As the case was with
Suspects the rest.
A prisoner of war
Then via Somalia
He was sent to Rome
Found a black lion
If left at home.
Together with
A prison inmate
From Yugoslavia
Called Julio
He made a rope
Out of a blanket
The reason
To descend down
And escape
From a tower prison.
In a show of contempt
Defying officials' attempt
To smoke out a fugitive
On the hide
The two at eventide
Returned to open fire
And attack guards
To set free prisoners
Indeed, victory was
On their side.
Leading partisans
Abdissa made it his duty
To gruel fascists
With insurgent activity.
What was the outcome?
Parallel to the allied forces
When he entered Rome
With Ethiopia's tricolor
Around his wrist
He was accorded
A warm welcome.
Then he turned his face
To allied-forces'-
'For Berlin' race
In rooting out **** troops
He spurred the pace!
Asked to stay in Europe
He said shalom
"Home sweet home!
As written on the bible
Can an Ethiopian change
His skin
or a leopard its spots?
Doing so
Will it not be a sin?"
The unsung hero
Returned to Addis
Turning Fascist and Nazis'
Wild dreams to zero!
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020 at 11:53 PM UTC
SHIVA
(Bijoylakshmi Das)
The silence of night scares you
With its eerie thoughts
Ever azar with doors wide open
To give vent to unrestrained dreams,
Never letting you to rise above
The mundane laws of existence.
Do you ever think of SHIVA
The eternal principle of the Sublime?
Sitting alone on the peaks of the Himalayan silence,
Speaking to you in His divine muse-
Of ineffable ecstasy.
The body is not all.
That obeys the physical laws,
The mind is not all.
That listens to odd yearnings.
And the spirit too is not your limit.
You have to go beyond
Far beyond life's petty limitations
To reach Truth, Consciousness and Bliss.
SHIVA, the enlightened.
Which translates human dialects
Into an indefinable divine hieroglyphic.
SHIVA, the Supreme
Creates the Universe,
Rules it too,
Annihilates when Harmony loses its identity.
The universal principle of Love
Gets bewildered in empirical rules of earthly existence,
And Spirit fails to rise above,
SHIVA opens His Third Eye,
In its piercing gaze
All lights fade and
The fugitive human mind finds no sojourn
He warns you.
Arise, awake
To reach your goal
Beyond the earthly ken.
(Bijoylakshmi Das Haridwar)
Jan 13, 2020
Jan 13, 2020 at 7:31 PM UTC
The Land of Nod (Hebrew: ארץ נוד, eretz-Nod)
is a place mentioned in the Book of Genesis
of the Hebrew Bible, located "on the east of Eden"
(qidmat-‘Eden), where Cain was exiled
by God after Cain had murdered his brother Abel;
According to Genesis 4:16:
_And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD,
and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden._
(וַיֵּ֥צֵא קַ֖יִן מִלִּפְנֵ֣י יְהוָ֑ה וַיֵּ֥שֶׁב בְּאֶֽרֶץ־נֹ֖וד קִדְמַת־עֵֽדֶן)
"Nod" (נוד) is the Hebrew root of the verb
"to wander" (לנדוד). Therefore, to dwell
in the land of Nod is usually taken to mean
that one takes up a wandering life. Genesis 4:17
relates that after arriving in the Land of Nod,
Cain's wife bore him a son, _Enoch_,
in whose name he built the first city;
"Nod" (נוד) is the Hebrew root of the verb
"to wander" (לנדוד). Therefore, to dwell
in the land of Nod can mean to live
a wandering life; Gesenius defines (נוּד) as follows:
_TO BE MOVED, TO BE AGITATED_
(Arab. ناد Med. Waw id.), used of a reed
shaken by the wind, 1Ki.14:15; hence to wander,
to be a fugitive, Jer. 4:1; Gen. 4:12, 14; Ps.56:9;
to flee, Ps. 11:1; Jer. 49:30. Figuratively, Isa. 17:11,
נֵד קָצִיר "the harvest has fled" ["but see נֵד ,"
which some take in this place as the subst.]
Much as Cain's name is connected
to the verb meaning "to get" in Genesis 4:1,
the name "Nod" closely resembles the word
"nad" (נָ֖ד), usually translated as "vagabond",
in Genesis 4:12. (In the Septuagint's rendering
of the same verse, God curses Cain
to τρέμων, "trembling")
A Greek version of Nod written as Ναίν
appearing in the _Onomastica Vaticana_
possibly derives from the plural נחים,
which relates to resting and sleeping;
This derivation, coincidentally or not,
connects with the English pun on "nod";
Josephus wrote in Antiquities of the Jews
(c. AD 93) that Cain continued his wickedness
in Nod: resorting to violence and robbery;
establishing weights and measures;
transforming human culture from innocence
into craftiness and deceit; establishing
property lines; and building a fortified city;
Nod is said to be outside of the presence
or face of God: Origen defined Nod
as the land of trembling and wrote
that it symbolized the condition of all
who forsake God; Early commentators
treated it as the opposite of Eden
(worse still than the land of exile
for the rest of humanity); In the English tradition
Nod was sometimes described as a desert
inhabited only by ferocious beasts or monsters;
Others interpreted Nod as dark or even
underground—away from the face of God—
Augustine described unconverted Jews as
dwellers in the land of Nod, which he defined
as commotion and "carnal disquietude"
Jul 21, 2018
Jul 21, 2018 at 12:16 PM UTC
This is to all those misfits
To the Romeo car-washing in Inglewood inlets
To the Hippy selling crystals on the Venice boardwalk
The Magician swallowing 8-balls at the Huntington Beach peer
The Rapper selling CDs in the Ranch Market parking lot
The **** tatting in a makeshift garage
The Poet slinging chapbooks at cafes and rec centers…
Not androids pontificating from lecterns
But grimy roots burrowing deep
Seismic rumblings toppling down
Insured ivory towers
Smashing pilled-paradigms beneath Docs
Hustling and slinging
In the forbidden outshacks of civilization
In tents, over barbed-wire, beside shards
Desperate and burning
For neither Truth or Beauty
But for LIFE
They do not tap wrists
No, they thump chests
To feel it beat
To feel it rage
For fugitive fugues
For new eternities
They embrace
********** romance
Graveyard necromance
The holy hunger for change
Defying commercials and charts
Shivering and howling on streets
Waging guerrilla war
Liberating cubicled-hearts
Dec 23, 2016
Dec 23, 2016 at 8:20 PM UTC
O quam te memorem virgo…
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.
So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and a shake of the hand.
She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight, and the noon’s repose.
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‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
Hence the only prime
And real love-rhyme
That I know by heart,
And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.’
‘And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?’
‘Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though precisely where none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalized,
Is a grinking glass:
For, down that pass
My lover and I
Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I ****** my arm below
Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass we used, and the cascade’s rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
‘By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.’
2.7k
There, out in the darkness
A fugitive running
Fallen from God
Fallen from grace
God be my witness
I never shall yield
Till we come face to face
Till we come face to face
He knows his way in the dark
Mine is the way of the Lord
And those who follow the path of the righteous
Shall have their reward
And if they fall
As Lucifer fell
The flame
The sword!
Stars
In your multitudes
Scarce to be counted
Filling the darkness
With order and light
You are the sentinels
Silent and sure
Keeping watch in the night
Keeping watch in the night
You know your place in the sky
You hold your course and your aim
And each in your season
Returns and returns
And is always the same
And if you fall as Lucifer fell
You fall in flame!
And so it has been and so it is written
On the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall
Must pay the price!
Lord let me find him
That I may see him
Safe behind bars
I will never rest
Till then
This I swear
This I swear by the stars!
Apr 17, 2014
Apr 17, 2014 at 11:07 AM UTC
On the brink of war, within our own borders,
Among our neighbors and brothers.
Interesting how we think of them as brothers, neighbors,
And how we are willing to go to war.
A compromise to end it? Willing.
Naive.
California may have become a free state,
Migrations to the gold mines and the economic
Boom improved the economy and diversity.
But war still came.
New Mexico and Utah were able to decide for themselves,
People rushed to sway the decision, it was even.
Fair.
But still, war came.
Texas got their money, and we drew new borders with more land.
A line was drawn, metaphorically and nationally.
But still, war came.
The south got back their fugitive slaves from the north,
The work force resumed, and a reward for the slave was paid to the holders.
Everyone seemed to win,
But still, war came.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 8:00 PM UTC
Sitting in a pool of ****
other peoples ****
**** all over me,
I am nothing,
just an object,
a still life subject
art school joke,
I'm a mess,
a **** stain,
a fugitive on the run,
running away from life.
Dec 14, 2014
Dec 14, 2014 at 12:43 PM UTC
FAKE FRIENDS
You call me a friend, as you pull out a knife
You stab me in the back, not once but twice
Friends for life, but that’s a straight up lie
You aint gotta clue, about Ride or Die
I’m surrounded by wolves that are dressed like sheep
Telling straight lies, dry snitching on me
Claiming it wasn’t you, behind the line up glass
You straight pointed out me, to save your own ***
I’d rather sweat buckets, to search out peace
Than spilling gallons of blood, fighting demons in me
The battle continues, frighten the anger within
It’s a full time job, dealing with FAKE *** FRIENDS
Ever time I think I know, what you’ll do next
You end up selling me out, for a yard or less
You made you a dollar, so I’m screaming again
You’re a straight up punk, a FAKE *** FRIEND
I can sit and formulate a plan in my head
Take a ****** shot; make your FAKE *** DEAD
Now I’m on the run, a fugitive at large
Aint a FAKE *** FRIEND around, worth taking a charge
Their a dime a dozen, you can find them anywhere
Just don’t be fooled, because its buyer beware
It’s a known street rule, don’t say it wasn’t said
Because FAKE *** FRIENDS, usually wined up dead
But ill take what GOD gave me common sense, and walk away
It’s a soft *** move, but Ill write another day
Not locked up covered up, dealing with my sins
Nothing wrong with cutting off, a FAKE *** FRIEND
Aint a chick or dude around, can’t relate to what I’m saying
We all had friends, which were straight perpetrating
Saying they got our back, all the way to the end
Same ole same ole, just a FAKE *** FRIEND
So now I ride solo, I know it’s a risk
If push comes to shove, Ill add my girl to the list
Now I’m RICH and FAMOUS, and you wanna make amends
But as I told you before, **** FAKE *** FRIENDS!
Nov 15, 2018
Nov 15, 2018 at 8:48 PM UTC