"fugitives" poems
.
I’m just a lonely traveler
on this earth
Sometimes it feels as if I'm
waiting for the sky to fall
with each passing breathe
of wind
Standing alone,
a windswept tree
leans downwind;
conspicuously wrought,
naked and bowed
by the grinding
silent forces
at nature's whim
Rootless tumbleweeds
roll by randomly:
broken off,
spinning clockwise,
never looking back,
timeworn and tired
of resisting the prevailing
high desert wind
and its unheld temper
Rattling the tinder
dry sagebrush
like songless wind-chimes;
voiceless fugitives
wreathing a bellowing silence
Jesse Stillwater
Aug 26, 2018
Aug 26, 2018 at 7:04 PM UTC
(Pompeii/Florence, 1997)
Vulcan was real, alive as you were,
you and your language, long dead now.
Your town was prosperous, with its paved streets,
bars, bath-houses, brothels,
mosaics, painted walls, graffiti.
Your domestic gods too were real to you;
they had saved you before,
and when the superhuman hammer blows shook
your houses, you repaired them,
decorated in greater splendour,
erected a temple to your protectors.
But Vulcan was not appeased - years are not long
to the lord of earth and fire.
This time he struck swiftly, sending you death
from his mountain, overwhelming you
as you ran. Your garden
gave you no protection,
hot fumes choked you,
hot ash surrounded you,
sealed in your tomb as you died.
The ones who excavated your town
marvelled at its completeness,
and in the ash that filled your garden
they found hollows.
Filling the hollows with plaster,
they found . . . not you,
but echoes of yourselves,
like statues in a museum.
We came to see you, and after that
to the Academy, standing in awe
at David's perfect marble humanity.
But we were troubled by the others,
the uncompleted ones, the Prisoners,
their twisted limbs, hidden faces,
frozen in the act of emerging
from the stone, recalling too painfully
in their unfinished creation
your own agonised poses
as you died.
*"I had seen birth and death,
but had thought they were different."*
.
Aug 26, 2016
Aug 26, 2016 at 3:02 PM UTC
My fingerprints tell a story
on occasion I'll glance down at them
Careful yet unobtrusive rings of life
Much like the tree that grew in the yard
of my childhood home.
Tonight these circles within circles
trace the outline of your body.
Your spine.
Your hip bones.
Your ribs.
Every muscle tense and then relaxes
under the strength of my extremities
I'm horrible at saying goodbye
I'd much rather lie here and
outline your body for you.
My fingers the chalk outline at a crime scene
Fugitives are always careful about fingerprints.
They're easily picked up by white dust
and foreign gloved hands
But this time, I'll leave my ringed prints behind
I want them to know I knew you.
Feb 16, 2012
Feb 16, 2012 at 8:34 PM UTC
~
*Holding court at the Zanzibar,
they looked on good nights
like Egyptian Queens, like Ancient Babylonians.
On not so good nights,
they resembled Brassaï's Moma Bijou -
"fugitives from Baudelaire's bad dreams",
and even then they looked magnificent.
Identity wasn't something you nailed
yourself into in late adolescence.
It was a trick of the light,
and if you were to avoid
burning yourself out,
then you simply let the flames
lick over you
and turned the ashes into kohl.*
~
Dec 30, 2021
Dec 30, 2021 at 11:47 AM UTC
At the old hotel
the one by the wharf
with the peeling paint
(those clapboard memories
that linger as summer does)
we traveled to exotic lands
foreign for these travelers.
Our fingers were the compass that led the way
for two fugitives sailing silken waves.
Your hair was morphine
in the sweetest way,
Your lips were like ice
on a hot summer day.
We never questioned the reasons why
the afternoon crumbled us into dust.
Yet I recall the handful you took from me,
and you recall the teaspoon I took from you.
On the pier I was cast to the wind,
and on the shore I let my passion burn you
into a diamond.
Goodbye.
Dec 18, 2012
Dec 18, 2012 at 2:54 AM UTC
*in the bleakest twilight, stars, a rural sea
hues possessing confusions, mayhem;
like susurrous in the rivers the fugitives seek.
devouring words betwixt papers of prayers
the quiet evensong plays, the salted saliva swallowed
into Rome gardens of sea green and stars
a morose spirit bellow.
into the midst of the labyrinthine coral sea
they'll sail through the soughing seawind
conflating into ocean salts, erupt in mesmeric pulse
soon the April gales will shrink to a bated breath,
credence will turn into a sempiternal menace.
fiery suspires blown to my knees,
auburn tress covered a crescent beam
serenade a zero, I tilt to the drones in the haze
a scintilla of lukewarm left to trace;
to the sea her body lured,
losing panaceas and remedies.
into maelstroms she goes,
inhaling salt water, a spirit wet with ruth;
her grey bones into ash,
into watery cemeteries she goes.*
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 11:15 PM UTC
I shall foot it
Down the roadway in the dusk,
Where shapes of hunger wander
And the fugitives of pain go by.
I shall foot it
In the silence of the morning,
See the night slur into dawn,
Hear the slow great winds arise
Where tall trees flank the way
And shoulder toward the sky.
The broken boulders by the road
Shall not commemorate my ruin.
Regret shall be the gravel under foot.
I shall watch for
Slim birds swift of wing
That go where wind and ranks of thunder
Drive the wild processionals of rain.
The dust of the traveled road
Shall touch my hands and face.
1.5k
When a sight of dying babies
Becomes peace, a haven of tranquility,
When you only listen to the priest
No longer for the truth, but for lies
When a mother’s duty becomes to ****
No longer to give life,
When children no longer grow old
But the old grow to children
When life is not seen as learning
Rather His punishment for the unrighteous,
When graves are harvested as birth
And being born becomes the new death
When killers are praised as heroes
For sending men to rest, to peace,
When those who save lives
Become the greatest fugitives and enemies
When your unconscious becomes reality
And reality becomes that which is hidden;
Then you’ve arrived at the land of the gods
For the opposite of this Earth exists.
For every one thing is
In respects to its Antithesis.
Jul 7, 2010
Jul 7, 2010 at 1:42 PM UTC
I got my ears plugged
Eyes tight
And
Lips shut
Reluctantly refusing
Self alluring truth
Profusely inviting
Petty captivating lies
Reinventing exits
To build refuges
Soothing fugitives
Before the hurricane rise
Are we daydreaming
When the sun's ray shines
Or are we relieving
Among the moon night sky
Promises burying hatchet
Imparting forgotten hatred
Cycling seems to be reversed
Rewinding lost tapes reserve
All this delusions inverse
Contrary motions now swerves
Hallucinating angles preserved
For I shall ink no further
The truth of this lies tethered
As this true blue love leaves
Incepting my stray mind free
©2014 Maman Screams
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 6:33 AM UTC
Babble, babble, disloyal and troubled
Get out! Get out!
Who’s there? Why are you here?
How did you get in? My safe haven!
No, no, no! I’m hearing but not listening.
Invaders…on the inside forcing their way out.
People can’t know the fugitives I hide.
They made me do it! Not my fault!
Not my fault!
Whisperings, not of a lover.
Betrayal. **** you, traitor!
You promised me safety. You said I was supposed to feel better!
Where’s my prize?
I’m rocking, rocking, rocking…
Where are you?
All’s quiet on the eastern shore,
I’ll wait for you to come back, my Brutus.
This corner is not the same without you.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 3:07 AM UTC
**The World's Waters Stagnant; Blackend With Hate,
The Clouds Grey, Shedding Salt Filled Tears,
The Wind Whistles The Songs That Captives Sing,
As The River Cools The Fugitives Burning Feet,
Though Polluted It Glitters Beneath The Sun,
Which Sits In The Polluted Sky,
The Still Sane Sun Reflects Off The Traumaed Eye,
Turning It's Tears Into Liquid Gold,
Though To The Money Hungry Ruler,
They Are Not Worth A Thing**
May 29, 2013
May 29, 2013 at 8:41 AM UTC
It's crawling under my skin.
Growing larger in my rib cage.
It's this feeling I hate.
When I know it's coming.
Like watching a **** begin to crack.
I filled the floor with broken glass and ***** clothes. I dropped a pitcher of something on the carpet. The shower is on and my clothes are soaking wet.
I'm suffocating on the secrets of June 15 1999.
My grey walls turned dusty brown.
My pumpkin candle turned to stale cigarettes and moldy food.
Heavier and heavier.
Again.
In the morning I'll ask you to replay the
night and try to piece this all together.
I obsess over the tiniest details that I have dragged out of my subconscious.
Descriptions and words spilling from my lips, fleeing like escaped prisoners.
Although the fugitives legs will never grow weak from running to the sun, his cell walls will stand tall behind him, waiting for his return.
The moon is calling and I don't have enough duck tape to patch this **** together or the key to break these shackles from my ankles.
I brace myself for the weight.
Growing larger in my rib cage.
Heavier and heavier.
Take notes this time, for when the morning comes, I'll ask you to replay the night and try to piece this all together. Clue by clue, I'll find a secret.
Nov 16, 2015
Nov 16, 2015 at 12:52 AM UTC
The lot is vacant,
My lot surrounds
The pavement.
We are not craven.
We'll smash and bash,
A thrill for me,
A thrill for us all.
The authorities are called.
Objects aren't built to last,
Why does it matter at all?
We're on the run,
Fugitives of a chase,
Before imprisonment comes,
We'll mutilate the place.
Originally written 11/12/09
Revised 11/22/14
(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 10:43 AM UTC
The eighth deadly sin is co-existence.
That is what the bible forgot to tell us.
There are scriptures of love, connotations
Of how the heart works and how it beats and what forces
It to start and stop but,
none of them explain what it goes through, when
It beats for another human being.
The arteries from the heart in a hand do not only carry blood,
But also, thoughts as fugitives of elegance which
need to be released.
The structure within them carries itself within each existent-form
On earth, and veins and arteries were made to be intoxicated
By the supplies of it in the form of what their minds choose not to remember.
It was made that way by the antagonist of memory, and
the screen on which it is displayed onto becomes eternally shattered by its strength of other loved analgesics.
Within the shards of the shattered screen is a motivation of malice,
That expresses ******* within the blood as it is circulated around of the body.
When the empathetic assemblance of the sharpness in
Both the blood plasma and the glass shards become
Heightened by the knowledge of an instigating love for illness,
It is too late for the body to blame it on anything but the contents
Of its own mind.
Eventually the walls of each blood supply will transform into thin layers of restriction,
That allow everything in,
but nothing out.
Poison is planning, and self-infection is the key to only replicating happiness.
So because of this,
whenever a man holds a human heart in the creases of his palm,
He has no choice but to bleed on it as well.
This is not for anyone else but himself...
I have learnt that today.
Oct 21, 2014
Oct 21, 2014 at 9:29 AM UTC
Philadelphia warlords slip sideways in a cantankerous bed of grout.
The mind denies what the body acknowledges
in its treacherous games of hope and wait.
Quickened footsteps beat mercilessly on the pavement in a forward-backward pattern
that helps no one and speaks to shadows,
yet sacred bloodlust and cramping desire
provide an outlet for the city lying at his feet.
Only a fool speaks softly in a time of war.
Rebellious minds harbor fugitives in the explosive hour of the darkening sun
Allowing wandering eyes and covered whispers
towards holy crosses, ***** on a distant lawn.
Dark faces and shortened noses appear at twilight to provide refuge
from the "war goin' on outside"
taking our own
and beating them senseless with shoe-polished silverware
and books on secret societies.
Yet aside from the divine and acknowledged kinship between us
lie two drunken, disorderly dreamers
with false hope of vows and six-digit salaries
buried beneath violent shouting over fragile egos.
Aug 17, 2013
Aug 17, 2013 at 11:40 PM UTC
Pixels weigh upon my opaque mind set
The normal third tier of distance
is not asserting its wicked face
Never before has this scent wrung it self
From a fugitives discarded clothing
Dared to cross these topographic horrors
Deep in the hands of some bewildered mongrel
The evidence engulfs the ghastly thin walls
To lose the branding Hannibal
and his nomadic pursuit
Would mean retreat to an empty cavern
But With not even some flimsy novella?
The currents and the basket weaving
widows would not appease
The Ernest clock of monstrous honesty
Calls for us to depart
This holding cell is still filled
Deep with ticking heart valves
How many times has this repeated?
Were losing our grasp
It’s been hours
And without any thought devoid of mossy textures
Chalk smears and ambitious plastic
Dual neglected lives in this purgatory
The ones that have been haunted
They are boxed into some neurotic tri-valve machine
It spits back the violent and the tardy
Pleasing the populace is just not accessible today
It is without any grass
But this overly sensitive blanket that I touch
I must venture to this foreign world of pleasantries
Where cry shed over a dingy t-shirt
And the slow desertion of the wilder beast will not be tolerated
Nov 30, 2010
Nov 30, 2010 at 9:20 AM UTC
Did you ever realize that you could just get up right now and start walking somewhere far far away and never come home again?
Yes
are you ready? go.
Come with me
ok
What will we bring?
nothing
lets go to California
okay
__________________________________________
we will sleep on the beach and the nights will be warm
and we can walk Venice beach and see all the silly people
and pretend we have money to buy things
we can become master pickpockets
and we will be fugitives
and it will be quite an adventure
someday we will comeback
we will comeback when the soles of our feet are all run down and our backs our heavy with memories of the great adventure we've had. When we arrive, we'll put them in a box, somewhere far in the back of a dusty closet to be saved for a rainy day. Stories to tell our children and our children's children. And when our hands and smiles are wrinkled with age, and the time has come for us to embark on another great adventure, we'll set the old one free and hope that one day, it means as much to someone else as it did to us.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 4:20 AM UTC
The weather's getting warmer
there's still static in your snowy eyes
and moonlight waxing pale shines
a searchlight
through this night's
humming summer city haunts
frames your face and splashes mine
with the truth that lies behind
a well-intentioned whitewash lie
that we care where we're going,
that we know what we're doing
and daily life don't scare us blind.
The Warden's got his dogs out,
our feet barely touch the ground.
And we're not looking back until
we hear no chasing sounds
so sound the fox horn
and catch us napping if you can.
'Cuz we're just killing days,
running all night and foiling plans.
The silver night was spilling
quiet rainstorms on your dark red hair
and my resolve was waning there
against those
smiles we wrote
in that crumbling concrete hour.
'Cuz we'd never been that close
to divorcing deceased ghosts
and coming clean from mud-caked boasts
that our chains never rattled,
that we never felt saddled
beneath our heavy, self-sewn cloaks.
The Warden's got his dogs out,
our feet barely touch the ground.
We're never looking back again,
and we won't make a sound
so sound the fox horn
and catch us napping if you can.
'Cuz we're just killing days,
running all night and foiling plans.
Tunneled under the walls now
it's high time we put some ground
between us and our yesterdays
that howl like baying hounds.
We'll pound the pavement
and catch a few winks where we can.
And we'll be living days
and sleeping nights and making plans.
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 12:11 AM UTC
A special place in hell.
Child ***** they sell.
Pedofiles have no style.
They destroy, hurt, & defile.
They deserve no glory.
We need to all end their story.
They should be castrated & executed.
Blinded, deafened, & muted.
Probation should'nt even be disputed.
Paralyzed until they've realized.
True suffering.
Revenge with no wondering.
A hell on earth for them.
Their life should have never been birthed.
Their evil essence was unearthed.
A soul-less existence with no worth.
An entity that's cursed.
They walk among us.
Blending in so diverse.
Havoc & chaos they resurrect is worse.
They belong in a coffin in a hearst.
Heartless & the unpureist.
I wish them all dead.
To stay out of children's beds.
My words you saw & read.
From justice they fled.
Fugitives of crime.
Sentenced to death in time. Bounty hunters hear their thunder. Watch your back. They will attack.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 12:08 PM UTC
Our road not marked on maps.
Fugitives of the centuries,
our origin is the breathing
and our destination is exhalation,
A thousand suns are flowing in our blood,
and the vision of infinity is always chasing us.
The form cannot tame us,
Our days are a fire and our nights a sea.
May 17, 2021
May 17, 2021 at 3:53 AM UTC
Nightmares must be gentle to do any harm.
They stagger through my unconscious mind
the way the dead tips of palm leaves flicker in the wind.
In the absence of sleep, I converse with them
from my second story window,
through the air above the boulevard.
They break out in golden sweat
and their leaves clash and rustle
when I ask where all the clouds have gone.
In the face of such hostility,
I crave the trees of home,
happy to accept their fate
even as they begin to wreak
of the death of summer themselves.
They shed leaves like flesh
that bleed smoke the flavor of rotting earth
as they burn through late October.
Light dissolves
and shadows move like vertigo,
the way Lizzy Volkamer moved through the Midwest
the summer before last.
The palms won’t speak to me
And Lizzy watches dead leaves gather.
Until they’re burnt, she won’t speak to me either,
though she misses Lo dearly.
Because Lo only lives in the summer months
and is miles away by now.
Ashes began to fill a sky already in decay,
so she swam through August to escape.
She followed the heat to where it settles in other seasons,
where vicious sleep peruses such fugitives.
Se faltan las nubes
whisper the palm trees in her dreams
even as the wind picks up
and offers to help them say so much more
Oct 21, 2012
Oct 21, 2012 at 5:00 PM UTC
Now anytime, Time will arrive
With its rusty chains
It will be impossible to enlarge these circles
---
All those intellectual thoughts will be abandoned
No trees nearby
Or I would have picked and reattached all the leaves,
Just to utilize those thoughts
---
It works in a cycle
In every forth time age
I be as I
In every forth time age, time arrives
This time, I'll run away for sure
---
Some are without name
Some are like fragrance
Some are like dew drops
Some are just there
They all have tongue
But no one's speaking
They're just licking wall
---
सह वीर्यं करवावहे (Saha Viryam Karava vahe)
These chants are taught wrong
Scenes are snatched away
After giving eyes
That's why can't find'em
Whoever is there, is deaf
---
It will leak blood
From eyes
From nose
From ears
From tongue
Circle can not be enlarged
All are deaf
I must run away.
May 8, 2012
May 8, 2012 at 3:59 AM UTC
driving blindly down the turnpike
four guys packed in the back three seats
the two lovely ladies up front
driving,
through the complete blackness
the warm ocean that is the Virginian summer night sky
they were high
and drunk
not the driver
but she still drove like a maniac
taking bends in the road
feeling the pull of their momentum
it would have been a pretty way to die
three days earlier
six young men
sit on the shore
of a picturesque canal
which ran parallel to the James
drinking cheap beer out of a cooler
and taking rips from endless shattered bongs
they swam across to the other side
running and jumping among the rocks and trees
just like they were kids again
when the sun set
and the city put on her make up
they were drunk
and they drove home after some time
speeding through the neon lights
of the wrong part of time
twenty years in the future
a man sits in a leather arm chair
nursing a neat bourbon,
he is tired,
he burns with an ice cold longing
for the days
when kids could be kids
driving blindly down turnpikes
drunk and high at the river
bending through the city like fugitives
before the bitterness
before he was so ****** tired
Jun 1, 2013
Jun 1, 2013 at 2:18 AM UTC
We were fugitives tonight.
Fugitives
of light;
The blink of a window
drawing naught but dusk.
We grind against fate,
crossed our fingers and flew
from what we are, were-- might be.
Closed the peak whole
lest it should dawn
and glid doomed,
to some place nice.
Nov 1, 2015
Nov 1, 2015 at 3:33 PM UTC
Five forlorn fugitives stood tall
Five warnings to all who approach
Heavy bows move with foreboding in the wind
Chained to the wall of the ever-dark wood.
Needles brush needles,
Their tips like razor claws
Needles against bark,
Coarse and the colour of old blood.
They gaze across a soft blonde prairie
And the elders tell the tale.
"Avert your eyes, do not look upon the fugitives."
"Past those five, none return."
"Better to stay on the plains and live."
Five tired, twisted sentinels mark the boundary
A dark forest wraps around the low black mountain.
In our fathers' fathers' days, they say,
Pursued by horsemen they made it to the forest-edge
Five murderers, fugitives from the people.
Five went in, and none came out.
Their backs were seen immersing into a green wall
Their tracks ended at thick beds of needles
The horses would go no further.
The screams and howls were heard through the night.
Five fugitives went into the forest.
The next day, five tall, ageless trees
That were not there before.
They stand, and watch, and remind the people
You can run,
You can hide in the grasses.
But the forest wields a dark justice.
Dec 3, 2013
Dec 3, 2013 at 10:05 AM UTC