"grained" poems
Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-
Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long
Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives
The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains
Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:
Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury
And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors
Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,
For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains
On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools
To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind
One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,
Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;
You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.
Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.
15.1k
The flag, a white crescent and single star
on a field of crimson — kırmızı, not just 'red' —
tells of Islam. The men drinking beer and rakı
at pavement tables, even in Ramadan,
and the short-skirted, bare-armed girls,
parading with bare-faced confidence,
tell of other influences;
but at the appointed hour we hear the call to prayer
from the marble minaret, a slim finger
pointing to the sky beside shining domes
reflecting the vault of heaven.
At five a.m. we hear it faintly through hotel double-glazing,
or at sunset, as a peaceful accompaniment to the spectacle,
and we remember where we are.
But especially at the midday hour,
when the voice of the muezzin echoes
over noisy street or market,
and from another minaret and another
the duet becomes a trio, a quartet
of different melodies, out of tune
with each other but never discordant
(in these tones the word has no meaning),
the faithful are reminded, however busy they may be,
that their God requires something of them.
Then, entering the cool calm of the mosque,
entering the quiet forest of pillars,
feeling through the soles of our bare feet
marble polished by the tread
of generations of worshippers,
fine-grained wood,
the rich softness of crimson carpet,
we luxuriate in the textures as they combine
with the formal floral patterns of the tiles,
the ornate calligraphy of the inscriptions,
the rich colours of the glass,
and we realise that the builders of these mosques
knew what they were doing, so many years ago,
how peace can enter the soul
through the senses.
Aug 6, 2016
Aug 6, 2016 at 11:43 AM UTC
For Leonard Baskin
To his house the bodiless
Come to barter endlessly
Vision, wisdom, for bodies
Palpable as his, and weighty.
Hands moving move priestlier
Than priest's hands, invoke no vain
Images of light and air
But sure stations in bronze, wood, stone.
Obdurate, in dense-grained wood,
A bald angel blocks and shapes
The flimsy light; arms folded
Watches his cumbrous world eclipse
Inane worlds of wind and cloud.
Bronze dead dominate the floor,
Resistive, ruddy-bodied,
Dwarfing us. Our bodies flicker
Toward extinction in those eyes
Which, without him, were beggared
Of place, time, and their bodies.
Emulous spirits make discord,
Try entry, enter nightmares
Until his chisel bequeaths
Them life livelier than ours,
A solider repose than death's.
3.9k
~~
Sometimes Loudly
Sometimes Silently
Yellow leaves have fallen,
Becoming dry
Pale
Passing through as the grained Sound on the Street
Slowly dark flees across the evenings
What an Illusion!
What Shadows!
Has Shuffled
The Past
Present
Future
Your form that creates metaphors
And what a wonderful feel
Through out its gravity
Night dancing,
When aroma of Night-Queen
Moving in the air,
Plays with the moonlit
As if Reminds
The First love Poem
Has burned within the form
Standing to fascinate
Away, a dense bunch
Of vine Forest
Bored Air moving
Listening the murmur
Of dried leaves
In the passing wind of banner
As if Someone Calling with
My old name
Empty
Restless Heart
Today is the tune that somewhere else
Like a flow
Of a distant river melody,
Surging waves of the attack
In the Strange night of Spring
Continuous grey leaves falling
Falling on the Floor
Whispering the words on the street goes through
What an Illusion!
What Shadows!
~~
@ Musfiq us shaleheen
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 1:47 PM UTC
All summer we moved in a villa brimful of echos,
Cool as the pearled interior of a conch.
Bells, hooves, of the high-stipping black goats woke us.
Around our bed the baronial furniture
Foundered through levels of light seagreen and strange.
Not one leaf wrinkled in the clearing air.
We dreamed how we were perfect, and we were.
Against bare, whitewashed walls, the furniture
Anchored itself, griffin-legged and darkly grained.
Two of us in a place meant for ten more-
Our footsteps multiplied in the shadowy chambers,
Our voices fathomed a profounder sound:
The walnut banquet table, the twelve chairs
Mirrored the intricate gestures of two others.
Heavy as a statuary, shapes not ours
Performed a dumbshow in the polished wood,
That cabinet without windows or doors:
He lifts an arm to bring her close, but she
Shies from his touch: his is an iron mood.
Seeing her freeze, he turns his face away.
They poise and grieve as in some old tragedy.
Moon-blanched and implacable, he and she
Would not be eased, released. Our each example
Of temderness dove through their purgatory
Like a planet, a stone, swallowed in a great darkness,
Leaving no sparky track, setting up no ripple.
Nightly we left them in their desert place.
Lights out, they dogged us, sleepless and envious:
We dreamed their arguments, their stricken voices.
We might embrace, but those two never did,
Come, so unlike us, to a stiff impasse,
Burdened in such a way we seemed the lighter-
Ourselves the haunters, and they, flesh and blood;
As if, above love's ruinage, we were
The heaven those two dreamed of, in despair.
3.2k
it was sandcastle cities with you:
careful residing in the threat
of it all crumbling away
with steadfast eyes,
I watched as you made
a fine-grained mess
watching and waiting
for the inevitable blow of
your city-collapsing wave of truth
it was sandcastle cities –
dedicated to you.
I dedicated myself to you,
and it was easy to do.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
I recently had the great privilege of editing Mike Essig's latest poetry collection, THE BIOLOGY OF STRANGENESS, and I'm honoured to have been entrusted with such fantastic material. Putting together a book like this is every poetry geek's dream.
It's a beautifully textured assortment of poems, earthy yet lyrical, narrated by a voice that's uniquely grained with experience. There are pieces that will make you smile, think, wince; there are pieces that hit you in the gut out of nowhere; there are pieces that welcome you into them like old, worn-in shoes; there are pieces you will remember late some night when you're by yourself, and remembering them will make you feel less alone.
This collection of poetry makes you look at the banal and the everyday afresh; it finds magic and mystery in the mundane, and even Hawaiian shirts are poem-worthy when Mike Essig's writing about them.
The Kindle version is already available through Amazon.
A paperback edition is due out next month, and I can't wait to have a copy of this book on my shelf as well as on my e-reader.
Mike's previous poetry books, Never Forgotten and Huck Finn Is Dead are also available through Amazon and are excellent.
From his author profile on B Star Kitty Press:
"Mike Essig is a veteran of Vietnam and a retired English teacher. He’s also been recruited by the muse as a poet, like he hadn’t already been through enough."
Sample poems, links to sales pages and more info can be found at the B Star Kitty Press website. www(dot)bstarkittypress(dot)com.
Please do support this very talented indie author.
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 10:46 AM UTC
When words fail and the song dies in your soul
The soft cushion weighs heavy, threadbare, when
Dust invites the attic attack to the last memory stroll
A fretful protest march accompanying the wood grained heart
You noticed the space in short supply, with tight breath, the
Expert bargaining skills have begun, bypassing
The weak hearts, those that are still journeying
Their healing held up in tight palms of moistoned skin
And the slide into another day begins, dreadfully
With arched pain barriers drumming their morning
Beat. Occupational hazard was on the rampage
Cracking skull caps from their skinned residence
I shone a light into the acute grey tone of those
Hearts, those whose shapes lost conviction as the light
Shot arrowed tongues from the deaf interiors of wise men
Out on the town of feeble failings, they held nothing as their companion
Mar 2, 2013
Mar 2, 2013 at 7:15 AM UTC
for Barry and Tina
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But I look to my father’s hands and see
all twelve-thousand morning mists
he has seen.
A gristmill heart, grained hands
and workshop walking feet are
all hidden from view.
He writes in capitals, written
with precision, and crosses the T’s
as he goes along,
So not to prolong the sentence writing chore,
making more time, conjuring up the minutes
to potter around and mend unbroken objects.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But I look at my mother’s hands
and see remedies read about in those magazines,
all to look younger in the staff canteen.
A watermill heart, smooth iron fingers
and contoured, sculpted chiselled
corridor feet are all hidden from view.
She scrawls her sentences; they become the tide
hiding letters and numbers in the swell
of punctuation and dotted I’s,
The T’s cross themselves and she moves on,
another phone call to attend too or
a new BBC this-time-more-accurate historical drama to view.
-
Life experience is something I haven’t witnessed,
the fitness of waking up and going back to bed
50 years on the trot.
But if you keep on going, stay out of strong sunlight
so not to rot, those years will pass
as a striking blur leading to coastal Big Sur
roads, where the next 50 miles
bring just as many smiles as the last 50.
Nov 2, 2013
Nov 2, 2013 at 12:41 PM UTC
I wonder how many eyes met across this
coffee-stained, wooden-grained table
with half dimples of shyness
plus,
1 teaspoon of sugar
kind
of
sweetness.
May 24, 2014
May 24, 2014 at 8:39 AM UTC
Banked up against a terraced mountainside
photogenic pristine rows
of blasting green
rows of manicured waterways
with two buffaloes treading ballet-like
between squelching mud and green shoots
the paddy fields stayed buoyant
all season through.
Come harvesting time
and thrashing the sunburied ripe
tendrils of husk and seed
along threshing traffic wheels
the husk sought divorce from
the long tongued long grained
wives -and parted ways.
Soon the pudding spent its silky smooth sexiness
on a plate of punchy aromatic costumes
that invaded the senses and palate
in sensual smoothness. Oh my!
Ricebowl pudding
of the worlds staple.
Author Notes
Gluttony beckons just now!
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 2, 2014
Apr 2, 2014 at 6:45 PM UTC
The flowers fall like sweeties
in the packet of my mind.
The answer flows completely
from the hand that stops the time.
The questions that were seeking
could potentially leave us blind
to the poetry that's creeping
to the rhythm of the times.
The finders fees of finding gold
are deeply grained in laws.
The crawling finger grasping
for the love of ***** ******
The sailor tongues are swaggering
with anticipating throws,
of innocent and eloquent
shows of pretty hoes.
Jan 21, 2010
Jan 21, 2010 at 1:34 PM UTC
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then ,as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall, -
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand pains that vision's face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
'Strange friend,' I said, 'here is no cause to mourn.'
'None,' said that other, 'save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled,
Or, discontent, boil ****** and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now...'
2.7k
Wasted margin space in a datebook, frames weekend's entry slots left free to relax. I hatch them down with marginalized thoughts best served on a table reinforced with wood grained plastic, naturally. The morning bird chirps, filling a brimming cup of foreboding work. It takes much to do a right job. Eek! Hunting, fishing, browsing for scraps of sustenance and sharing them with you, my nomadic tribe. Time to go! Living on the fringe outside predators and above ruminating herbivores isn't easy.
Mar 8, 2013
Mar 8, 2013 at 9:50 PM UTC
In dried-out marsh where footsteps lie,
Tracing steps and feet before,
Broken fence and ragged wire,
Brook and grass and harmony.
A field across the orange blaze,
Faithful cracks, surrendered branch,
Dimly grained and bowed in green,
Earth and hooves, informal dance.
A gallop halts in open air,
Squared, and chest apparent,
Perfect as my counted steps,
Alone he stands in distant stare.
A moment still I hold my breath,
Fixed and strong, he’s caught my track,
Hazel backed and scars to bare,
Solemn in a fragile glow.
Content in wayward solitude,
He does not trust my path,
Dark brown eyes and pointed pride,
Yearning for the evergreen.
In greying tips he stands his ground,
Loyal to the days gone by,
Speckled spots of brown and black,
A primal thud of cloven foot.
Stooped and still I hold his gaze,
Eagle-eyed he grants me time,
He listens fair with velvet edge,
And sees my flaws through dusty light.
A broken twig- he’s on his way-
Prancing through the deadened leaves,
Muscled buck and arrow flow,
Fluent as the river ebb.
My lens will capture sight and time,
But feeling, sounds and moments shared,
Something I would rather keep,
In mind and memory before I sleep.
Feb 14, 2012
Feb 14, 2012 at 1:22 AM UTC
Nightfall
Beckoning, unhindered
Lucency
Bending, unbroken
Where the darkness starts
Here is the unseen
Grained out, eyelids closed
In conversations with traffic signs
The spine is quiet in the center
You can't be told it, you must behold it
Jun 12, 2023
Jun 12, 2023 at 3:34 PM UTC
Jackals cackle
beating paws sound like drums
against an earth cracked from famine.
They pant dry
clouds of dust are heaved
the grained dirt grind between ravenous teeth.
Infants crying
dying.
Mothers hearts are breaking
hurting, aching.
Their lips-like earth-are cracked
thier yearning
wanting water cool for the taking.
Mothers foster bitterness
A father's pride is broken
laying, falling
between those dry cracks
falling
falling
down to magma burning.
Vapors rise, the heat is burning
earth and evermore the jackals
are cackling.
Jan 12, 2011
Jan 12, 2011 at 10:50 AM UTC
Mom would say, “Your dad has friends,
Black friends on the police force, of course
We don’t set down to eat with them.
It wasn’t safe to say to her, “Ahem.
Did you hear what you just said?”
She’d swing one upside my head
And it would be like a garden gate
But with the weight of her stout arm
And the harm she could do with that
Sat me back down on my bony ****
I wrote “black friends” but that is because
That was not the word she used, applause,
Applause. Clean it up for the publishment,
Don’t cause a resentment for the wrong reason.
It is never the season because I am white
And it’s never right for me to say the N word,
Haven’t you heard? They can, and I can’t
Even in a rant that describes the horror
Of living in a half right, all white world.
My fingers permanently curled into fists
So hard to resist saying to my parents
“You daren’t speak like that to the preacher
Or half of my teachers because they’d see
Just how deeply grained racism can be."
And both sides would take it out on me,
Just a kid, so I agree to hide what you did.
I agree to pretend you aren’t part of the problem;
Another prejudiced person, training me
Explaining to me how life really is right now.
You saying to me “Don’t put your lips there
On that fountain. Some N person might have, too!
And that made sense to you. Perfect sense.
You were that dense, that unquestioning, too.
Ready to do what your white society dictates
And making me into a swinging garden gate
If I don’t toe the line, and hold my confusion
While I pray for no contusion from the slap.
I hold hands in my lap and act submissive.
And I act like I accept all this as right
Because I am white. But, even though I won’t
Say a word at ten years of age, I don’t.
Jul 9, 2018
Jul 9, 2018 at 10:32 AM UTC
A fool sits alone.
Not dumb but naïve
drinking ideals that were both sweet
and biting on the uvula of his thoughts-
thoughts that once resonated
from truth no longer ring true.
This terminus of sentiments that started veritable journeys
in the muck of questionable sources
housed his hopes
while he dared to dream of a day these hopes may be fulfilled.
But over hills and plains filled with grating winds
of inquiring eyes looking for lies so intently
while false truth slips through their gates,
these hopes gained grit.
Grit built in truth,
and to hazier eyes,
grit grained with wisdom.
So our fool finds himself at a
beginning wrought from this inverted journey,
He’s discovered his truths to be soggy
with the living mire of human deception.
No longer does he sit
with starry eyes
hoping for truth,
he has found it by traveling backwards
through experience until he stands upright
amongst the crawling with lies filling his head.
It is in this moment when all he sees is deceit,
that he knows he has found the truth.
No longer does he believe in it,
he understands how ill-fitting that word has come to be.
In the grand cacophony of the human experience,
the sterling ring of truth deafens.
It takes a qualified lie to reach our hearts.
Feb 7, 2013
Feb 7, 2013 at 5:38 PM UTC
All estuaries flow eastbound, and the subterranean rail tracks keep forcing against the estuaries’ grain and dust foundations perpendicularly to them.
How can a sane proposition -- a quantification of syntax execution (those squirming cuticles through bonds of regression)— an excessive reflection, reflexive inspection,
Prove its sanity through continued suggestion?
Deductive insurrections stirred in memory,
A rumble, causing sediments to crumble,
Wineglasses balanced atop countertops tumble.
Spilling contents upon the grained wooden, elitists' floors.
"Anesthetic, onsetting tuberculosis in breath patterns,
Gavels ringing on rigged tolling tongs in caverns,
Dark tolerances to Copernican astronomy in shadows,
And the handle grinds as boxcar wheels' flints and steels catch and spark in addled locks," I mumbled from a half-nap.
It was surgery, the smooth procedures on the moving trains,
The gains and plectrums scraped against the brains' spider veins,
To reorganize the sane, to bridge the broken definitions changed,
To prevent arguments' bone structure from fractures and sprains.
"Use gavels against the scalpels, sculpt with their judgment," a corona dream's habitant corrugated.
He pounded the gavel's end against the knife to chisel at the pituitary gland pulsing in his subject,
And her arms flailed like a horse's legs in heat-induced convulsion.
I thought it was done.
The Canson Merue train screamed in the night under earth to Yellowknife to meet Canadian soil as the Heavy Breather pounded his gavel.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
Glass eyes of marble
with a steady hand of insufficient motion
silenced throats from grained assassins.
Decaying affection rests like corpses
buried in the sand of their tomb.
Hollowed shells with placed authenticity
contorted into spider's legs.
A single rose blooms from an open
whisper of "I killed you"
Oct 13, 2012
Oct 13, 2012 at 4:29 PM UTC
None of this is preconceived.
Lesson One came in the knowing
That no animal, angel, or adult
Has any knowing at all.
Life never attains ideals.
There’s a sand-grained image of you:
“How did you manage sunburn in Great Yarmouth?”
The pain now forgotten as anecdote.
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 9:15 AM UTC
fine grained grit embedded in pale grey cement
wind over my skin, the grass is moving a bit
voices are just out of reach- whispering things
i just wish i could hear
suddenly the wind dies and slivers of words meet my ears
but only slivers
slivers of whispers
imbed themselves in my skin
thin pieces of word that i wish werent there
"i hate everything, don't talk to me"
It ******* kills me to hear
Mar 8, 2012
Mar 8, 2012 at 7:11 PM UTC
He manages to free his thoughts
as he gazes the television
for news from a distance,
while continuing to sample
his supper of rice,
and sauteed vegetables
on a aluminum serving plate.
The restaurant he owns
dimly lit this mid-afternoon
with ghostly lanterns,
and artistic impressions
of times past on the wall,
while customers
walk and gingerly pass
ordering from an eclectic
menu of indo-latin-euro-oriental cuisine.
A neapolitan of condiments
dancing among garlic chili sauce,
and mayonnaise.
Mahogany grained panel walls,
and formica woven
seats, uniformly
scattered among
porcelain white
plates; traditional.
Engraved Jade pieces
hung with colors of luck
on each entrance.
I approach the counter.
A sepia toned
picture of his family
hanging by his register
no first dollar bill
or recognitions.
Just family held,
through time,
as he hands me a check.
Jan 23, 2010
Jan 23, 2010 at 10:29 AM UTC
I saunter parallel to these pews,
dragging my fraying fingers along the tops.
Reaching for a wooden comfort, but
instead I’m pricked.
I shake the splinter and splutter the blood off.
Wearing my head high, I finish my descent
up the holy steps.
My mother stands,
stuck
looking past me and out the stained window,
letting it strike her into a silhouette.
The priest exclaims
New Beginnings!
My mother
matches his declaration two seconds too late.
My dad nods his head,
the final vote of the jury locked in.
With guilt and god on my side,
I take the holy plunge.
My head falls in,
harshly.
I’m aching for a numinous experience,
only to suffocate from the darkness
that comes with this reality
I will breathe into.
My head may be under the aquatic illusion of renewal
but my feet stay planted on the
fractured ground.
I am forced to look past the daze of illusion.
Because in the light
I can clearly see the greys left in our destruction.
I look back and my finger has bled
all over the back of this dress.
New Beginnings!
I exclaim,
with a red stain grained into my backside,
but an empty canvas in the front.
With my hair slicked back I hear a
mumble.
You look just like your mother,
And maybe I do
hold her eyes
but I can see
what she can not.
The graying dreams that my parents are dis alluded to.
Their skeletons in the attic or the
boxes of dresses in the basement,
even though today I wear one.
I will look at the destruction created behind us
and not walk with them.
Because in this holy light
her eyes bask and only look
chocolate at its best.
And in this dim shadow
mine shine like amber honey.
Mar 15, 2021
Mar 15, 2021 at 11:13 PM UTC