"geysers" poems
Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.
I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence.
O Love, now we can forget the star that has such thorns!
That is why when I heard your voice repeat
Come with me, it was as if you had let loose
the grief, the love, the fury of a cork-trapped wine
the geysers flooding from deep in its vault:
in my mouth I felt the taste of fire again,
of blood and carnations, of rock and scald.
26.1k
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to slake its upward ******
A single heedless step is enough
to breech that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless soul
who fails to guard his steps.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in dark crevices of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in fiery pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounded souls
we plant fertile gardens of reconciliation
with beauty, trust and charity
and kneel to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s practiced eye
knows how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot,
and reason has no district.
Friends and siblings - my flesh and kin,
this world is ours to lose or save
so let us seal well our Sacred Calderas
from bitter foes that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 12:40 AM UTC
The Yorkshire Rose, elegantly perched on the bridge
This was not London, or the palace
nor Manchester, where Mancurians are free
nor Blackpool, where the beach swallows
Glasses, towels, mussels clinging to rocks
The Yorkshire rose, drawn upon the bridge
Bullet trains, leading distances
Almost unfathomable in this very spot
Harrogate, bath water
Spilling onto the street in natural sulphuric geysers
Burning
The Yorkshire Rose, fleeting in memory
In ghosts of the abbey nearby
Nov 12, 2014
Nov 12, 2014 at 12:26 PM UTC
Above the caldera at Yellowstone,
a brittle soil-rock crust
caps a lake of liquid fire
with only fumaroles and roiling geysers
to stay its upward ******
One errant step is all it takes
to breach that mantle's fragile seal -
spelling death by fire
to any hapless wanderer
who fails to guard his path.
Fragile calderas also roil
buried in darkest hollows of our psyches -
brewed of failures, slights and fears
dissolved in molten pools
of self-consuming misery.
To dress and salve our wounds
we sow gardens of reconciliation within
with beauty, trust and reason
and bow to gods of grace and solace.
But a despot’s studied eye
knows just how to tap our fragile crusts,
releasing acrid lava flows
from pools where fear and rage reign hot
and reason has no district.
Sisters and brothers of our flesh I pray
we find a holy and transforming alchemy
to convert our heat to light
and shield our sacred calderas
from enemies that stalk us from within.
July, 2006, revised December, 2014, 2015 and 2018
Robert Charles Howard
Oct 4, 2018
Oct 4, 2018 at 12:30 PM UTC
There’s a place, where licorice vines have climbed,
Deep in the night, that only children can find;
Where leaves of waxed paper on trees are hung,
And what grows on the branches is sweet to the tongue.
Garlands of butterscotch, chocolate, and mint,
In their bright wrappers, sparkle, and glint;
Bubbling springs of sarsaparilla, through the valley are poured,
Washing sugar beaches with reeds of sour chord.
Swedish fish swim in soda geysers with bliss,
While fizzing pop-rocks spurt, spittle, and hiss.
Sunset clouds of cotton candy sweep past in the sky;
Trees sway in the delicious breeze that smells like apple pie.
Skies will rain down skittles, when there is a storm,
Pelting molasses window panes in a giant swarm;
Sour gummi worms are dug up, free to take,
In the grainy, nutmeg layers of the coffee cake.
Carmel creams, Mary Janes, Black Jacks, and Almond Joys,
Coconutties, Jawbreakers, Carmel Rolos and Long Boys--
All these grow, in lines straight as peppermint sticks,
Planted in brown sugar, on fields of cinnamon toothpicks;
But when the sun lets out its first ray,
The entire land just melts away
And children don’t remember where they’ve been,
That whole night asleep, but they wake with a grin;
And through the whole day, their dreams will entice,
Until they visit again, the Land of Sugar and Spice.
8/9/11
Jul 10, 2012
Jul 10, 2012 at 4:32 PM UTC
Mother Nature rules the World,
And probably
The whole Universe.
Our Earth, a planet blue,
Just teems with Life.
Even deep beneath the ocean,
Amongst those geysers,
Oh so Hot,
You will find Life.
Lakes filled with acid,
Bone –dry deserts (look underground),
Solid sheets of ice:
They all are home-sweet-home
To bacteria
Or Viruses,
At the very least.
We bomb those cities to piles of rubble,
And poison the Earth with God knows what,
Yet always, given time,
Life will re-assert itself:
That sprig of couch-grass,
Those flowers.
Mother Nature never does give in.
Life springs eternal.
From amoeba to a dancing dolphin.
So utterly determined
To survive.
Clinging to existence
Like a limpet on a rock.
Invincible in Her tenacity.
Paul Butters
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 6:43 AM UTC
I have seen pictures of beautiful places,
They are just a taste.
Reminding me of how little I've done.
Is my life a waste?
I want to see the geysers,
In Yellowstone National Park.
And walk along the Eastern Shore,
With you after it gets dark.
And I know there is a snowboard,
That somewhere bears my name,
And I have always wanted to go,
To an NFL football game.
I hear that Ireland is beautiful,
What a sight to see.
And I know there is a rustic place.
Where I can write poetry.
I would like to go see Mardi Gras,
And maybe earn a bead or two.
Listen to a great acoustic band,
And sing a line or two.
Hop aboard an airplane
Grab the window seat.
Just drive to a distant city,
To see just who I'd meet.
Swim naked in the ocean,
Surf my way back in.
Make love really crazily,
And then do it again.
Fall in love with the right one,
Find a true soul-mate,
I wish I could do it all right now,
I don't want to wait.
Jul 20, 2010
Jul 20, 2010 at 9:29 PM UTC
God made me into a marionette
He pulled me from the dust
He scooped me out of coals.
He breathed life into my belly
and now they call me animated earth.
He carved my bones from alabaster stones
long buried under piles of pine needles and leaves
He sang songs of Light and Life
and put them in my ears
and taught me all the words
and cut me silver keys.
now i stand up tall
like the Lighthouse of Alexandria
or the Colossus of Rhodes
i take showers under jungle waterfalls
full of orchid petals
and with angel fish climbing up the rock walls.
my head and all my limbs are hanging by
golden silken strings and threads
and where I walk the moss and lichens grow.
He fashioned my eyes from glass
blown over the hot geysers
and sulfur springs
of thermopylae
and the salt basin dunes.
He plucked my pupils from the pregnant blackness
of the Void.
He struck them over steel and flint
and the sparks made it bright enough to see.
my heart is a time-piece
keeping minutes with its beats
like a great shadow cast behind a sphere.
the elements once kept me apart from me my identity,
I was a hungry ghost
walking around town like a hypodermic voodoo doll.
everytime I turned around
I tripped over another basket full of rattlesnakes
hissing from both ends.
I gave up and crossed my heart
and gave it over to the chemical egregore
hoping I would die while somehow staying alive
and learning how to fly away home-
so i could leave all the piles of ashes and teeth alone
and maybe plant a rose garden.
but God made of me a marionette
strung me up from strings of silken gold.
He breathes for me,
and dances me to the music of the spheres
and now the whole planet is a
Hanging Garden of the Fallen Babylon
and now I keep snakes
as exotic pets
and as company
when i’m lonely
and for afternoon tea.
May 21, 2022
May 21, 2022 at 5:16 PM UTC
if i were to bread my tongue
with rocoto and cornmeal
and twist to reach the andean soil
my tastebuds long for so many nights
out of the year
olfaction and your left-sinus blockage
would stay cradled
in broken-baguette bread-crust baskets,
a trebuchet's missile,
naïve to the horn of the world,
and brittled to a carcinogenic crisp
caped in my earthenblood geysers
en el humo, en la tierra del fuego
in(fierno)
i recount by the tally marks of black felt
resorted to in the puddling of spilt tea,
(like broken china, you never missed
a beat to correct potential error
and my memory),
i count them to remember
the epiphanies standing over a red faucet
a gallon water jug, whistling snail-trickle,
wishing away the cracks in the grout
or the grout itself,
wishing away the cracks in the pottery
or porcelain facade of which
you're so fond and grace with singing cuticles
the fingers of a pianist
lacking the wherewithal
and solid brick gall
to answer the ivory's summons
i am not a piece of clay,
i respond poorly to your sculpture of my surface,
covered in oxides and baked in
hell's oven, your mountain fire
scathes me as it does cedar resin
and i am similarly embittered,
pooling sap & draining smoke
in the embers and dead charcoal
of your embrace
avant le corps, sans l'âme
sans le corps, avant l'âme
Jan 28, 2014
Jan 28, 2014 at 9:30 PM UTC
You have no pear to share with him, standing so far away, eyes never meeting, in the harsh light of a barren field, not one of the many hills has a view, near, near the beginning.
A chaste experience you were for him, shut off by your mouth that blinks like a dying fish I wouldn't take your pear ever, again, it isn't his turn immediately as she isn't fast enough to give me her pear, ever again, never to feel the gaseous caress, the distant beastly past has been erased.
Amber wheat is still devoid of desire of the dull and cold earth, quickly, distance is a joy, the best sobriety Sell yes sell civilizations splendour, you are no longer part of my bloodstream.
He will shy away, knowing your crowded mass of discontent, quickly donning his pants secondly, two by two, the work, running away from you while dressing, ugliness personified.
You are logically, logical earth, laying in the fire: him, you used to bury his flames, cooling his geysers
He has no desire for your pear, you long to taste his; with its lies and sweetness, you shall not indulge, his gifts are no longer yours. Now you kiss dogs. Your lies.
Jul 27, 2012
Jul 27, 2012 at 4:16 PM UTC
I try to be distant.
Detatched.
Drink a 50 cent Mountain Dew.
Dressed all in black
on a blistering day.
My back is a waterfall.
Pop two more quarters in the machine.
The mass gathering makes this funeral home
feel more like a sweat lodge.
"It's cooler in the chapel"
but that's where the body is.
I enter the mock church house,
close my eyes in passing the casket,
and sit in the back,
where everyone obstructs my view
of...
it?
him?
Eulogy delivered.
Songs sung.
Get up and take your last look.
My pores become geysers.
He's too still.
Too quiet.
Too peaceful.
Three observations
in a third of a second.
I remember his voice,
the way his palm felt on mine,
shaking hands.
Shake the preachers hand.
Remember.
Pull away.
Pop two more quarters into the machine.
Wash my hands.
Twice.
Go out to the car
to try my best to calm down.
Jul 20, 2010
Jul 20, 2010 at 10:11 AM UTC
I'm standing at the seashore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets and two lines left in the letter. I'm standing at the seashore, bench facing the Squat & Gobble, the tin weir and we're near the roadside. The sky opened wide, this skin drawn with threat, Rhinoceroses, bruise bending the sweet ships of victory backwards into the backwaters of mislead moonlight. Guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos sweeping, the hum of percolated coffee on smoke stained night club walls. I'm standing at the seashore, my mouth is a ghost, I've seen nothing but death, I'm name-dropping God and there's nobody there.
I'm sitting in my room with my hands on my keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock. Riding horseback into candlelight on a wicked wedding of teary-eyed geysers and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder, I'm all alone but it feels like you're here.
Nov 17, 2015
Nov 17, 2015 at 3:42 AM UTC
The wild life is majestic,
The wilderness is breath taking,
Bison, Elk, Ground squirell, are grand to see.
Hot springs look beautiful yet deadly,
Geysers they are awe inspiring to see shoot 120 feet into the sky.
Sulfur pits are cool to look at but they smell like rotten eggs.
Jan 15, 2011
Jan 15, 2011 at 3:02 PM UTC
I woke up from a bad dream trembling under the strength of deformed uncertainty. On this quiet, sweet night I dreamed that my mask is melting. Nakedness beneath terribly surprised me, I felt bare while disgustingly beautiful pink skin stuck out from beneath magnificently repulsive layer of white chalk which ran down my face in the beans. In single moment thousands fluorescent drops of days passed before my blue eyes and thousands of miles of pictures mixed as psychedelic assemblage. I was hoping that I would for ever float on silk of big circus tent, the place between sleep and wake and that I will never be touched by reality pedestrians or nightmare riders. Returned from a long journey dedicated to the cult of friendship riding on a brass beast sentenced to a breakdown. Return is a successful escape from the curious conductors who wear chains and key, maneuvering between spacecrafts driven by hesitative captains, sliding in between hot geysers of alcoholic delirium on the crystal surface of Arctic ice. Sweet and bitter is the view over always the same icy peaks that cast always different shadows, while the foamy rugged hillsides are blurred with the haze of responsibility, sunny with the light of honesty, depending on the morning. I rub my eyes while my mask, of which I am very grateful, still persistently covers the lines of my face and I wonder whether kilometers traveled last night were part of a dream or reality?
Mar 23, 2013
Mar 23, 2013 at 12:04 PM UTC
The sea is a disaster of churning
LCU's buck like horses
From behind is heard the guns of destroyers
run aground in the shallow channel
Sixteen men shiver though the air is humid
Fifteen men know
they die today
Guns erupt from the cliffside
geysers of flame and water erupt all around
Craft is tossed
moving at snail speed
As death slowly approaches
Tongues of flame flash from pillboxs
the first man falls
Useless helmet fatally flawed
The boy begins to giggle
he tries to light a cigarette
his thumb refuses to flip the wheel
The ringing ping of ricochets off the hull
a rhythm of massacre
tears of a soldier singing his deathknell
Bow meets beach
gate goes down
Into the surf the soldiers leap
Clothing and gear turns to wet suits of armor
that do not protect from anything
Everything is screaming
****** bits blasted back into the sea
from ruptured flamethrower
Waves crash crimson and ******
pink foam forms
sickly **** of slaughter
Men cut down like wheat
the horror not complete
until Kraiss and Goth
order retreat
By then
three thousand men
lie dead in the waters
To the victor the spoils
blood and death like no other
The end begins
on the red shore of Omaha.
Jun 16, 2012
Jun 16, 2012 at 8:03 AM UTC
you reeled me in from
the aegean's slow murmur,
my gills covered in algae, my jaw
chomping rhythmically under
the hollow tree of my mouth.
didn't anyone ever teach you that
fishing for nymphs is more painful
than comb jellies, slower than marlins and
as safe as the glowing earring of
an anglerfish mother?
on the deck of your vessel
you cradled my skeleton gently,
fed me crispy hard coral and
begged me not to eat you in
the night, when mars made his way
toward the fiery backdrop of our
natal charts. how intrigued i was to
find that under your beard hid a
chain mail of scales, the map of
your palms was drafted in plasma,
and your iris is not pigment, but
a distant reflection of geysers
snapping like scorpions out of
the ocean floor.
you spent the nights dancing to the
howl of sirens like no man i'd
ever seen, and somewhere between
our fingers, where you passed me
the whiskey, i threw my arms up
and remembered how to move.
you spent the days following the
wind's hips, you didn't care if she
changed her mind, you said.
you are like the belly of a sea
star. slowly in the twilight
i uncoiled my fear of wandering, i
threw the pit into the open ocean and
the rope followed, slithering down.
now all we have is constellations.
all we have is moon fragments and
bird islands and my hair flying
like a compass, like a shining battle flag.
i can't smell land for miles
and i am not afraid.
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 9:58 PM UTC
The incandescent Sun
is eating itself alive
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The helium will compact
to a carbon red giant's core
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Earth's heat is depleted
by geothermal extraction
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The geysers are drying up
and the pressure sinks in subsidence
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The permafrost decomposes
and prehistoric methane effervesces
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The Yellowstone caldera hisses
plumes of taunting toxic gases
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The sea-floor volcanoes
purge their way to the surface
They said it's too slow to matter
too slow to matter
The aurora lights the sky
as solar wind ravages the magnetosphere
They said it's too small to matter
too small to matter
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 9:43 PM UTC
Agitation, despair and its winged variations, you name it
all repressed but still rise to test me
What is my recourse?
I tread lightly on this Escheresque concourse
It’s repeated often, I know
but the pen and keys are my most cathartic release
they’re magma to emerging flames
they’re sedatives for demons and angels alike
that reside on corners of this clavicle
How many steps could you take through my lens, my concave mirror?
Have you felt what I felt?
The brimming, cerebral cauldron bursting, putting volcanic geysers to shame
the questions outnumbering seconds spent since Earth’s nativity
the emotions ripping a rift through which rationality deep dives
it becomes Phelps in unknown depths
your body becomes both a Vatican and a Colosseum,
place of worship and place of war
and you walk the tightropes your vocal chords have morphed into
careful to seem like another replica, don’t wanna upset the blades they all balance on
don’t wanna scare the rest hollow, no,
best to follow and best to follow the regimen:
coffee beans and spice of delusion in the hazelnut syrup,
sip slow
follow the same cycle because change is a cocoon and cocoons ache like the past
keep on pretending to love the workplace
love the norms held over you
puppet strings bring warmth after all
in this solitary world cold as winter missile silos
and just as destructive
So I ask again, have you felt what I felt?
Do the few days in utopia offset the majority on rodent wheels?
Have you risen so high, to satellite peaks, to the best you’ve ever been
only to have the worst waiting on the coin’s parallel?
We flip like saltwater fins and backstroke till a back is left broke
I’m learning to discard hope but breathe in the alternative
I believe in better days, I will carve them from local stone
and build a home upon their surfaces
I now know paradise is a set of blueprints
happiness is no state of mind, it’s a direction to me
you may not notice when you arrive
but you keep going
and that’s the beauty of it
you let it be the wind
It’ll find you on your journey
Tell me again,
have you felt what I felt?
Dec 7, 2021
Dec 7, 2021 at 12:05 PM UTC
rain pelted and fell from the sky,
glancing often as no one went by,
four wheels rolled by often,
the rain did little to soften,
the rumble, the thrum, sounded like thunder
but it was the noise of the "Jake" brake under
the hood.
so many big wheels lifting up spray,
mudflaps did not get in the way,
of the geysers, of oily mud, and water
too slick to stop in such short order,
tons of weight, need to wait after the halt
their turn so, you hear the thunder waltz
into the air as "Jake" doesn't stand still
until he has sung his bass notes.
By rote.
Still no pedestrians, too wet even for a
well structured umbrella but the
skid of brakes is seldom heard,
not a word except by "Jake"
Thanks for the brake, "Jake"
©DWE102013
Oct 2, 2013
Oct 2, 2013 at 9:26 PM UTC
Looking beneath behind through as if searching for a small speck of dust
Some kind of answer or hint, please
All the while hiding cases and cases of confidential files
Neurotoxic venom building up underground about to explode in geysers of
What the **** is going on?
What are these letters I type in contrast to the static blizzard
Freezing brain cells avalanching down
Drowning in its overwhelming white intensity
Covering all traces of understanding
Seeking every last hidden-in-plain-sight human and universe motivation
Contemplating every glimmer in hopes it was just a reflection.
Jun 12, 2010
Jun 12, 2010 at 1:50 AM UTC
From the depths of the ocean in your body, I always tend to find the geysers of satisfaction.
Breaking your body down in ways that make the profession of love minor to us both.
When we speak, the words flow like waterfalls that chip away the ice around your frozen soul and bring the heat of a thousand ages under frost now freed of the gymnophoria, the mental ********** that society does to it.
You are opened.
My cocoa skinned Cinderella, chocolate to the taste and caramel to the senses.
You are my forbidden treat that I indulge in with inconsistency, and when I leave, you always melt into the hands of evil habit.
Tears in the eyes of which I had only known happiness, story upon story uncovered on your emotion and the only thing I could do is ****** comfort you with the sailing a sad ocean.
I never did tell you I loved you, and now I regret it.
Maybe if I would’ve said that word, that rope wouldn’t have ended around your neck.
Maybe the wry smile of mischief wouldn’t have been replaced with the scowl of a year in love’s drought.
And with the tears you cried for me, I made my armor, an armor of strength I got from pushing you away, covering my shoulders in snake skin and play the role of deceiver, for as you know, all us snakes love the rain.
You would clasp my picture and cry as if I had died, thinking too much of me and directing me message after message after message until my inbox and voicemail were full, and I ignored you.
I pushed you to it with my promiscuity.
“No love for the loveless”, they said. “All hearts are equal in the eyes of god.”
I tried to return your call last year, but I only got the voice of your mother, maddened in disgust and rage in me and crying when she saw the caller ID with a heart on it.
She told me what happened, and I dropped the phone and cried.
This is the love rain: the rain that only emotion can inspire, for I thought I felt nothing for your innocent soul, but as it turns out, you were my everything.
And losing you to suicide was my worst mistake.
Sep 9, 2016
Sep 9, 2016 at 9:42 AM UTC
The pieces of glass stucked in the eyes
One like a poisoned dart hurt the heart
With the brains on ice the boy is smart
Feels need to leave his green ground yard
So when the cold blonde calls he goes with her
Sure, there´s a girl who understands the spell
They´re almost lovers, or at least she cares
to save his pale face from the palace
Well, maybe all what she is jealous
cause Snow Queen is quite a chick
(but no trick would blush her cheeks)
The river told her he´s not dead
Has no oars, but floats the stream istead
All is getting worse,then she scents that
the rose grows upon the corpse
of crow where all are wearing crowns
She knows, she must follow its odour
Untill robers became sober
on the road that´s leading nowhere
fell five feet of pure white snow
Without fear she´s riding reindeer
through the field of polar geysers
through the woods of frozen firs
Then her tears so warm and bitter
like rain that brought the end of winter
are what should unfreeze her cold dear
Hot touches without the mittens
The part that has been never written
cause the children shall not hear
that love with no *** ain´t no real
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013 at 9:35 AM UTC
(I was bored I
couldn't feel things I
started to cut myself last night)
Red razor blade streaks criss-cross
on the terrain of my wrist;
like the grooves in my skin,
magnified and coloured.
Drops of blood formed
in the paper-thin slits
not like geysers, or rivers,
but mountains of bright crimson.
(The sight is interesting the
pain is exhilarating the
fear is mind-numbing)
This morning,
the bleeding lips
sealed themselves.
(And tonight, I will do it again.)
Jul 13, 2014
Jul 13, 2014 at 8:17 PM UTC
up from luminous dream,
in the soft hours
of deep night's thrall
suddenly discovering
I am in
our small corridor,
no longer
a narrow hall
for now, to my wonder
it is stretched into
milky-way cathedral
walls robed in
flashes of
lit-up nostalgia
on black
I float, eyes wide
mind open, a-light
naked skin splashed in
the cool nocturnal breath
and before me,
a vast gallery
of memories:
faces in frames,
some long gone
some now turned from
round baby cheeks into
vibrant adolescent beauty
delicate curls on toddlers
now muscular,
fire-talking angels
ancestors who I never knew
but who I am named for
stare in sepia elegance
their eyes
piercing my soul
I am a warrioress
clothed in memories'
sub-conscious fabric
my weapons,
the love
that backs me up
so full it oozes out
from the ether
spews from geysers
soaks up through
the earth
stains beaten feet
my fingers feel it
in strokes of
wind-whipped canticles
generations standing
behind me,
before me
ready to rise
holding staffs
live epitaphs
ready to split the rock
My center is lit up in
past and present voices
echoing prayers
I feel them in my
heart-tunnels,
reverberating
they turn
future ponderings
into endless possibilities
I let them all in,
absorbing strength
into deep tissue
and the hell in my spine
opens its scars
like
flowers of
the
night
Aug 29, 2017
Aug 29, 2017 at 7:21 PM UTC