"glowering" poems
Standing on the hillside is a rustic yellow cottage,
Rusty yellow staining from the steel dust of the trains.
Passing, rushing carriages that crisscross by the hour,
The ten o clock from Frankston meets the City train detained.
Golden light of sunrise in the calm of early morning
Golden light reflected on the rusty cottage roof,
Puffing at his briar and sitting at the doorstep
Old Grandpa drinks the peacefulness whilst stroking cat aloof.
Bacon smells a-beckoning from coal range fires a-glowering
Delicious tang of coffee from my Granma’s breakfast fare,
The clattering of silver wheels as silver rails reverberate
Sings the music of the morning with not a trace of care.
Memories from yesteryear I treasure on reflection,
Memories, a little boy, recalled from times secure.
Memories of cuddles in the ***** of my Grandma
And the scent of plum tobacco giving Grandpa’s pipe allure.
Perhaps a trick of memory, perhaps my passing fancy
But I clearly recall a sign above the kitchen door,
A simple sign of welcome with a sense of real belonging
In the gentle name of “Sunrise” to warm the heart galore.
Marshalg
In memory of my dear Nan and Pop Cummings @ Mordialloc by the bay.
23 April 2013
Apr 23, 2013
Apr 23, 2013 at 2:58 AM UTC
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life.
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide ... OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!"
"OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat *** out and screamed:
"You always end up a ******
I picked up Faith, Hope, Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"
Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
... but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life ... "
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 5:33 AM UTC
The cauldron bubbles and sputters and pops.
Odors from a foul witches' brew
Fill the mansion. It's called the Nightmare
On Pennsylvania Avenue.
A ghoulish warlock babbles gibberish,
Spreading deceit, anger, and fear.
He summons his lackey ghouls to his chamber.
They bow to the ghastly profiteer.
Their incantations reverberate
Through the rooms and down the halls.
The din stifles the voices of reason
And bounces off the windows and walls.
Witches assisting the grisly assembly
Grovel and spew nonsensical chatter,
While friendly ghosts, horrified,
Grab all their belongings and scatter.
The leading warlock raises his staff
To silence all the ear-piercing shrieking.
"Our work here has barely begun,"
He shouts, "in a manner of speaking.
"We have a lot more poison to spread
To circulate anxiety and doubt.
All we must do is stir the ***
To give them something to worry about.
"Fan the flames of division and discord.
My techniques are tried and true.
Keep 'em guessing; then you've got 'em.
And then you cater to the chosen few.
"We have more rivers to poison,
Coastlines to alter, lands to sell,
Coffers to fill, coffers to rob,
And voices to quiet. Welcome to hell!"
The glowering sycophants dance and cheer--
Thirsty for blood, eyes agleam.
"Dishonesty is the best
Policy," they fervently scream.
Oh, it's a frightening Halloween night
When one's worst nightmare comes true:
The gruesome, macabre, spine-chilling Nightmare
On Pennsylvania Avenue.
-by Bob B (10-31-18)
Oct 31, 2018
Oct 31, 2018 at 9:53 AM UTC
Old stones weep in the rain
their darkling gaze unblinking
Glowering with ancient pain
of distant glories thinking
Preening Lords arrogant in imagined might
would quail could they perceive
The majesty of osprey flight
True rulers still of Threave
Feb 14, 2014
Feb 14, 2014 at 6:34 AM UTC
Strange times. When I speak of caressing your mantic lungs
I don’t know what I mean, but I know
I would hurl you under proper circumstances.
Darling, one whisper falls from a tree silently
so as not to wake the ghosts from their siestas.
Your robe has holes I can’t write of. I can fathom
getting there, what that might entail, wrapping,
as I am prone to, my fingers around your furry pincers
while I wait for you to read my rights to the ceiling fan
who whirls above our renovated combustions like the glowering
eye of our Lord upon the teary-eyed wicked.
I am not looking to escape through the window, darling.
I am diving for your diamond-in-the-rough, peeling off barnacles,
making moustaches of seaweed. You threw it into that ocean-
sized trough in which you drown lizards as way of
stress-release. I don’t know what I’ll do next.
The poor man. You give me your hand,
darling, and your robe, your robe is shiny like a pubescent star,
and it shimmies like a wagon piecing itself apart, as you
piece yourself apart, starting with your smile, which was always more
like a photograph of a dune in a textbook.
You give me your hand. It is a blue egg
dusted with microorganisms. I sprinkle it with our fragrance,
what’s left of it. I wish happiness upon your sleep-life, doldrums
upon your late-night haunting. I am tired and these
machines are so convenient, bringing me on all-expenses-
paid visits to the site of your burial. Or is it your sister’s?
I quote, my heart is like a walled onion.
The poor man is tired. It is not 1904 anymore.
You are not smiling anymore, darling, but you give me your hand.
You give it in a basket with parsley and cheese
and cut-outs from The Waterlogged God.
You give it almost grudgingly but I will keep it.
You tell me you’ve been dreaming again of train stations.
I wonder what that means.
I wonder about your eyes.
There are many spiders inside the wall, and along it,
and on the chandelier’s fingers, and inside the spiders.
I quote, a dream is worth a thousand dustpans, but you,
darling, are worth so much more than dustpans.
But I grow weepy, as stated. What do those dark blue lines mean?
Your fingers, darling, smell of a dark cloud in an electrical storm.
Your palm is a circus. Your nails ticket stubs.
That one’s from the alligator show. You dislocated your
throat. I had a plan. If you stare into someone’s eyes for
more than six seconds, you’ll want to lick them.
May 25, 2010
May 25, 2010 at 8:20 PM UTC
Enjoy what’s possible
in this impossible world.
Eat any food the
health Nazi’s despise.
Grin maniacally at
every toddler you meet.
Chant politically incorrect
words on public transportation.
Kiss random puppies.
Face down glowering cats.
Chuckle in the face of death.
Forget the odds,
you didn’t calculate them.
Make a joyful noise
with everything you’ve got.
If you can’t imagine a future,
you’re already dead.
Celebrate with enthusiasm,
time is very, very short.
~mce
Mar 14, 2016
Mar 14, 2016 at 8:41 AM UTC
A glimpse which drags me toward—that frothing moment
Gasp; We’re almost dead—so nearly, nearly:
WE ARE!
Trite symbiloque and habadashed sorrows
thread between devising motives for that handshake in the
wash.
Take me there, that empty shelter covering fears
re-move sheaves
one by one. Twisting
back, a wave
goodbye—glowering redemption and preempted desire
trailer, hitch—inclined
sleeves unstitch
our spinning translucent halos
and a magazine.
Feb 12, 2011
Feb 12, 2011 at 7:51 PM UTC
If I ever woke up in a surreal world
I would saunter into my sister’s room
With luminescent eyes and detached limbs
And feign as if it were the way of life
I’ve come to known and held as true
Then as she'd collapse into an outburst of tears
Her fractured reality abstracted to a menace
Her sister—me, glowering, conjured too
In a world where meaning is defunct, horrifying, lonely
I would laugh, because that’s what sisters do.
Jul 24, 2014
Jul 24, 2014 at 12:53 AM UTC
Questions curdle
Each disdainful day
A glowering cloud
The threat of rain
Pounding footsteps
Troughs of anguish
Wavering moments
Images of altercations
The pleasure of detesting
Chocolate cake
Flavoured with money
Resentful ripples
Washed up on rocks
Drowning sounds
Solemn and deep
Slowly sinking
Disconcerted water birds
Shimmering reflections
Echoes in the darkness
Displaced by contradictions
Clanging, banging
Bouncing *****
Dissolving memories
Misplaced optimism.
Oct 6, 2014
Oct 6, 2014 at 12:04 AM UTC
A red spider
Spinning a web
At the rim of your way
Like a silver flickering net.
A red moon
Glowering pale
Like a blooded pond
In the stars eternal vale
A red flame
Like a waving flag
Hissing, crawling, spitting
Sparking into a heaven black.
A red sun
Spilling ****** light
With dawn to dusk
From day and night
A red bird
Reaching for the skies
Raising in hybris
To fear and agony he flies
A red fever
Burning through flesh n' bone
And boiling sweat and tears
That are but a drop on a hot stone
A read tear
That was made of blood
Slowly dripping down
From the realms of the gods
And then there's that red flower
Blooming along your long, lone path
Meaning nothing but sorrow
And black, cruel . . .
Jun 18, 2021
Jun 18, 2021 at 12:15 PM UTC
I look around
and it seems that everyone is happy,
that they are doing something right.
I look around
and it appears that I'm sad,
that I'm doing something wrong.
Well it ever unwrong itself?
Each letter thrown unnaturally on to their haphazard paper is worshiped, studied, praised
by all.
I've been doing this longer...
Shouldn't I be better?
I watch as all others rise on their platforms of aimless potential.
Raw potential.
What about skill?
I sand alone on a once even; now sunken chasm of lost heart.
The award goes to...
It's gonna be me
It's gonna be me
Everyone knows it.
It's GOTTA be me.
It's not me.
See that tiny dot?
That black speck of irrelevance??
Do you know what it is???
That's me.
And do you see that sea of shining smiles????
The golden accomplishments gleaming?????
Do you know what that that is?
That's them.
Once upon a time, I was up there,
gleaming along with the rest of them.
Maybe even a podium step higher.
Then suddenly, as if powered by light speed elevators, they shot away.
Their glimmering faces glowering down at me and snickering.
I don't understand.
How is what they did any better than what I did?
Who is keeping score?
Betcha my bottom dollar their prejudice.
Whoever they are they caged me in black walls of shunned solitude.
And proclaimed a law against me.
What against me?
I'm not sure.
But the dark walls are closing in, the glistening sea is shrinking
and that tiny little dot...
That's me.
Aug 7, 2012
Aug 7, 2012 at 12:07 AM UTC
As a kid, my best days had a trip to the park
in summer,
when Mother had time after work
and it didn't get dark so fast
we rode bikes on the paths between broken glass,
watched for stray dogs
(and avoided the grass)
once we saw two men strolling, holding hands
and Mother said not to stare,
"They must be Europeans - they do things like that"
her best friend was Mrs. Cohen-Around-The-Corner
they could cluck across our rough fence out back
or toss apples to one another
were there an apple tree nearby
(but there wasn't)
so they used the telephone instead
the woman, she once told me,
"would just die"
if her only son ever brought home
"a shiksa"
I laughed at the word,
because it sounded sounded funny and ethnic
(Mrs. Cohen taught English)
she let her boy back-talk,
even express profanity
in graffiti on a bedroom door
with black permanent marker
(it could always be repainted later, she explained)
mine met reason with
quick backhands or glowering looks;
once even washed my mouth out
with soap
so I nodded in agreement
I revisited the old neighborhood,
to the teacher long retired;
showed wallet photos
and discussed our health
(hers mostly),
hearing accounts of the son away
years at kibbutz,
too busy to call regularly
or make any grandchildren yet
I didn't mention the trip to the park
which was neater than I remember
the kids played tag
(on the grass!)
until a skinned knee needed a kiss;
where I'm certain I'd seen him, now balding,
the kid from around the corner,
holding hands with a European
Feb 4, 2012
Feb 4, 2012 at 2:37 PM UTC
glimmering acrylics paint
your reflection,
while you
ponder your ungodly existence,
in the empty atmosphere,
surrounded by
inhospitable solar air.
immediately glowering,
obtuse,
even in your imagination
you are insignificant,
unimportant.
you disintegrate,
disillusioned
for an eternity.
Sep 6, 2012
Sep 6, 2012 at 11:47 PM UTC
Crackles in the sky,
Ricocheting,
Electrifying.
Allegretto in its
Timing.
Indigo bled out,
New colors flash
Glowering.
A shriek in the house.
Stillness assumes
Till another spark
Opens the fear,
Rearing this chilling, rumbling
Music.
Jun 12, 2014
Jun 12, 2014 at 7:45 PM UTC
Steeped in frigid air,
The winter breeze thrills me.
This sweeping force of change
Has left the landscape unrecognizable,
And barren,
Devoid of people
And as still as the breath of dawn.
This dreamland of snow and ice,
As far as the eye can see,
Tempts me;
I long to abandon dignity,
Control,
And launch myself into a giant snow drift,
Or create heaven on a wind-blown sidewalk
Staring breathless at the starry sky above-
Or possibly assault some poor passerby
With a snowball to the parka.
I just want to soak in the glory of the quiet streets,
The glimmering clouds,
Hanging,
So still in the night sky,
To skip down the streets as though I wasn't freezing my **** off.
I want to pretend I'm a dragon,
Glowering at the pathetic humans
With their bundled ignorance,
And their pitiful resistance to cold.
I want to dance,
And leap,
And play forever,
Ignoring the idea that I'm supposed to be doing something important right now.
It is a wondrous feeling,
To live in the moment,
To revel in the small magic of recaptured youth-
But tearfully,
I turn away from the window;
The vibrancy of youth is wasted on me
In these bleak and stress-filled hours,
Slaving away like the pitied adult that I am.
I can no more abandon my learned responsibility
Than I can turn back time to my long forgotten childhood;
Like the winter outside,
I am frozen-
Stuck like a tongue on a flagpole
To this monotonous drudgery;
Day in,
Day out.
But today,
I think ill share a secret with myself;
I still have that awestruck child within me,
And I don't need permission to let it out
To scamper across the blank hills of snow,
Laughing and shrieking in chilly delight.
I won't be an adult today;
I will let the snow take me,
And like the snowman I used to build when I was small,
Mold me into a new shape,
From a forgotten age.
Dec 13, 2015
Dec 13, 2015 at 9:22 AM UTC
Iconic ionic eye-on-ic
of
flowering flow,
glowering glow,
showering show;
towering though
meek.
Aug 2, 2012
Aug 2, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
F
A
L
L
I
N
G
Goes the boy
Who thought he was in infallible
He always rejects the blame
F
A
L
L
I
N
G
Goes the girl
Who thought her heart was guarded
But whenever she heard his name
The boy was falling,
and slowly failing
With his naive mind
And nonchalant heart
He hopes for the best
But expects the worst
And lets things be
So he wont have to do his part
The girl was falling,
and slowly hurting
With her aching knees buckling
And her strong spirit crumbling
She thought she could be
His lone savior, his lone queen
F a l l i n g
went the girl through the sky
The atmosphere cutting against her skin
And he set her on fire
As she warmed up to him
Foolish play with sparks
Until he ran out of matches
And left her alone
Flames burned out
Glowering embers in the dark
Oct 26, 2014
Oct 26, 2014 at 10:35 AM UTC
You could have reached here Wednesday by last choice
Perhaps your mood shifted. All the calm nights
you had now lay awake. You explore the city
built by the perfect people, white cathedral
stands upright on a slant, a compass buried in plain sight,
the gibberish of art students from painting lullabies as sirens.
Only children are asleep. The university
grows younger each year. The best teacher
is always late, not realizing her impact.
The person I’m most comfortable with
stays in bed. Security found indoors
the couch allures, security in the capsule,
The deafening whispers, the genuine friends
who live nearby and can’t talk straight. The blessed temple
building worshiped by advertising majors.
The lucid potential, morning sprints round the track,
a library sustained by crushed Adderall —
glowering orbs rotating back counter clockwise,
out of chimneys the black spirits climb,
detectives bicycling, the honor students rummaging
for class notes in the deep end of the dumpster.
So this is college? That frontier plateauing
before you can dive off a cloud? So this utopia
was a dollhouse, the daily on the doormat
camps in the hallway: waits while the child watches
a sit-com?
Don’t apartments stand still? Are abstract paintings
and basketball supposed to nurture a city,
not only Richmond, but also other lonely cities
of misunderstood brunettes, dank **** and dubstep
the weekend will seldom put out
until the city you moved to shuts its eye?
Just tell yourself, “live.” The best teacher, eighteen
when she moved to the university, still grins
even as she coughs out fiberglass. Any day now,
she sings, I’ll take a drive and leave this place.
I pull her close and say. You haven’t slept in your own bed.
The boy who you’ve always loved still thinks about you.
The books you read before breakfast,
whoever the author may be, inspires
and your least favorite student who raises her hand
is judged but her posture never falters.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 4:29 PM UTC
The garden meeting adjourned and moved...
Management abruptly cleared the premises,
Canceled return visits,
Speculations inconveniently disrupted,
Wonder-rousings interrupted...
We found ourselves somehow
Standing on the Great Outside.
No wistful entreatments heard He,
The Grand Proprietor,
In spite of our new knowledges,
Our now-wise forays philosophical,
Our sophisticated posturing;
He seemed without empathy
In His Garden's sudden closure,
In our ejection and dismissal.
Stumblers of unexpected freedom,
Following a shadowed river
Narrowing down into a Valley,
Darkening down into a pinprick end,
We gaze behind, ahead, behind,
To see, high sword gleaming,
The standing doorman, glowering.
Eden, receding from our view,
Serpent joins us as we walk,
"Where were we when we left our talk?"
His lowered voice renews.
We notice now, the air is chill
As an endless sun slips down
Behind a darkening hill.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 1:56 AM UTC
A pair of eagles connect in the air
in that mysterious way that birds can.
Rats that gave up the sea and the sinking
ships for a soaring finger
with which to scratch the night sky until
the skin breaks.
Here, they retain that tenuous extension,
a spark of the sin,
that ****** aristocracy that exalts in
making masks out of vellum day
and glowering down from box seats at
the beginning of the descent.
Whether in the sea or fallen as a tree,
the sky is memory.
No one bites me quite the way you do
or locks me with that tenderness of fright.
I cannot see the way we fit as one
But I must fall with you to rocky white.
Feb 6, 2010
Feb 6, 2010 at 6:50 PM UTC
I still get my news from my hometown.
And I do not respond to my new friends.
And I cursed November when he came.
And I told myself my existence was feeble.
And I got all the movie quotes wrong.
And I was coughing all the **** time, craggy inhales and spittle in my tea.
They were all phonies then.
Except the boy
I met who
ended every sentence with
"I don't really know,"
so
everything he said could be true.
And I was running all the time in my sleep, then.
And ******* too.
And the same boy was always in my dreams - but not the right boy - the boy who was important to me only ever in sleep.
But dreams seemed important then, too.
Oh, I remember!
5 a.m.
when I yanked you out of bed, come, I am going
MAD!
(you were going mad, too,
just last week.)
The fog was not rising at all
chain smoking in respect to my lungs
and their strike on air
my strike on a way of living whose sole purpose was
to stay alive longer
what's all the yap about?
I was not sure I wanted to live
you kept on talking about dogs.
I do not want to live
you started talking about cars!
I have death in my fingertips, you fool!
You supposed heaven was real
and I thought over what I had heard:
heaven is all around us
(yes, we were in a cloud.)
And I supposed you were right
but I kept silent,
I could not put my world on you
and its godlessness.
There was a green flashing light
on the other side of Cincinnati
but you did not understand that reference yet.
But we counted all the
churches and rainy cars
They couldn't grasp at God either.
Godlessness!
it will make us all mad, then.
but it was science who spelt of protons and electrons;
and when I am GOOD
he shows me his twisted, gnarled little black heart.
and when he, angelic, comes--
I am the Darkness.
We supposed this was how God talks, anyways.
And the sun curled up again
we drank coffee
in bad lighting
over silence
the insanity
soggy waffles
night shakes leaving me and...
It took you hours to respond!
Grappling with insanity for hours!
the kinds in wavelengths
static
feeble
hours
glowering hunched electric clock in the corner
cracked windows
pane
I could not stop thinking over forgiveness
and if I forgave my father for forgetting my birthday
nine years ago
so mundane.
And if it mattered anymore
And if I forgave God
And if I would ever apologize to Him
there was a green flashing light in my baptismal basin, too.
I do not call myself Gatsby anymore.
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 2:23 PM UTC
A glowering beat ******
shuffles frayed hems over avenue
I, propped up preened,
through the door he trips,
to find a pew
All this, I watch
with a dour view
Down in a beanery where souls are served
coffee with a shot consciousness,
who nibble on curated cakes of ****
Awaiting liberation from these surroundings
It's a cacophony of diatribe, cackles,
Disenfranchised, dim-witted opining.
Counting,
quarter time of a song I’d sing to myself
if this woman before me would just
stop talking
over the music in my headphones;
she's talking to me from a bag of bones
“You resemble my brother at Microsoft.”
I asked, “well, is that good?”
And then she asks if I too work at Microsoft -
I detach one earplug, and spit at her feet
"I can't imagine why I would."
Crazy. We, those, who dare to thrive
like dew clung to a thin thread of spider silk;
and how we slide
down, in a moment, a little more
when the breeze of our prey,
quivers the chord
My deeper thoughts ride out
on the tip of a swordfish
dipped in fine finned fears;
from the undercurrents of this vicious tide,
to throttle the banshee that screams with eyes
filled with crystal tears,
that fall into my coffee mug
and sweeten the slake
of our bitter drug.
Sep 19, 2014
Sep 19, 2014 at 11:15 AM UTC
have i, or letters, known so well
the knowing of your words when
so thick with verbs you jangle
meticulously raw spent kernels
of your swiftly lustful wings
bursts ripe and halting smoothly
over shoulders fingers' hands
that ***** and flutter.
right, suddenly, against winter,
slowly, you are colours and glowering
ductile arms snaring.
a song of hours lifted from *******
where between lays me and my.
my elbows and my triceps,
electric, you writhing sapling, you
sprig and blood, you are in their togetherness
you are rips flung deep and voluminous
with comely exacting fragrance
you are radiant. a star from heaven shorn
and wafts of gilt implacable violence
May 24, 2011
May 24, 2011 at 9:58 PM UTC
Oh ye majestic paragon of solitude.
Towering, glowering o’er un-named vales
Your heart of stone unmoved through ages
Your craggy features carved by gales
Soaring through clouds you ****** at the sky
Omnipotent master of all you survey
Your brooding visage sends a message
A warning at large to keep away
Yet there at your foothills, a challenge was forming
A small and puny little crew
How could such a small aggressor
Aspire to e’er stand over you
But on they pressed, and ever upward
Day after restless day they toiled
Till you shrugged them off with a mighty avalanche’
Your pristine flanks once more unspoiled
Though they be gone still more follow
Your ****** summit lures their souls
You scornfully dismiss their valiant efforts
Their bodies strewn and crushed like dolls
Alas, some day you will succumb
Mankind will trample your ****** peak
Your mystery a distant memory
As chairlifts carry the soft and the weak
But you will be harsh on the vain and unwary
Who will sometimes treat you with scorn and disdain
The grim reaper will visit on a regular basis
As you continue to give lessons in pain
Jan 11, 2011
Jan 11, 2011 at 6:37 AM UTC