"grayed" poems
eyes of ocean blue
grayed by darken skies cry rain
drown in flooding waves
Apr 4, 2017
Apr 4, 2017 at 2:00 AM UTC
He is
walking the white line
his arm a repetitious arc
sounding a single tone
timed to the pace
of hiking-boot feet
treading the pavement.
Saffron robes have grayed
over long meditative miles
witnessed by curious commuters
riding the pendulum away
from his purposeful daily counterpoint
the freedom held
in rhythmic ritual
how the mind stills and gathers
in the swinging blur of hand and stick.
I roll the window down
seeking precious solace
as I hurtle past
knowing
he walks for me too
I want to stop the car
fall in behind
feel the timeless drum
the stillness of salvation.
Jan 12, 2016
Jan 12, 2016 at 12:30 PM UTC
Packed like sardines
inside a jeepney—
Too full,
with a jeepney strike going on.
Rushing,
mother and child ride along.
Greasy, ***** malnourished…
The woman holds a can—
a makeshift drum.
Little boy hands out envelopes,
he looks like he's 3 years old,
he's most likely 6.
Woman beats her drum,
nobody listens
chatter drowning out the rhythm…
Invisible ears to go with
invisible envelopes
His head touches my legs,
dissipating heat—
an indicator of how long
he's been under the sun and smog
The thought chills me…
He stares at my sister's shopping bags
with searing eyes…
Windows that I can’t bear to look into,
afraid to see my reflection of clouded guilt and frustration
I shake my head, no food to share
but my hands reach out to his,
to give him some money.
My sister remembers a bottle of iced tea,
and hands it to him.
He has a hard time opening it,
and asks for help from the school girls…
Invisible again.
I reach out and get the bottle from him
Temporary refreshment
for a body that is parched,
for a soul who is thirsty for so much more.
I cannot help but gulp in guilty air.
He sits on the aisle,
savoring the tea
as his mother thumps on the can.
The little boy retrieves envelopes, all empty—
as hollow as the sound of the beating drum.
What do you do,
what can you do?
The jeepney stops.
They alight from it...
The mother looks back
and says, "Salamat."
It goes straight to my heart.
Her eyes move me most—
one eye is cloudy, grayed out,
perhaps a manifestation
of the storms in her life?
That single word seared through me,
and I felt how much she meant it…
Her thank you
made me want to give so much more,
to call out to her and give whatever I had at the moment
but they are gone...
Lost in a crowd of faceless people,
and I myself want to get lost,
hide my face in shame…
What can you do?
Jan 25, 2012
Jan 25, 2012 at 1:06 AM UTC
I’d kissed neon once before;
It scolded when it shouldn’t
And took half of what I
Owned.
I’d kissed neon again;
Come a night with, “Dylan,”
And ***** when the beer
Went dry.
And I’d kiss neon forever;
Come a’grayed hair’s gossip,
Words ‘bout our first night,
And, “we,”
We’d cackle on our backs, jubilant.
Aug 7, 2015
Aug 7, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
The poem was inspired by a particular photo of the WT C, and after that by my first visit to the 9/11 Memorial. On the day of 9/11, I was working about a diagonal mile away, and from our windows, we could see people jumping to their death.
Open sky annulled
to bordered lines of
uptown edges,
worldview momentarily
forcibly redefined by
memories of buildings and sadder days,
recollections of pillars of biblical smoke rising
A photograph
makes me look up,
and sit down historically,
need to catch a breath,
to rest mentally,
upon a storied small bridge's steps,
that I well recall,
a disappeared street stoop.
all were rubble then and once
upon that day.
Wear, tear, and older eyes distill perspective,
but the hardy heart is hardly stilled
by the recognizable gray upon
bon vivant gray reflective surfaces of
memories of buildings and sadder days
So today, on a reborn street,
I rest upon reconstituted speckled curbstone,
the city's lowered down ledges,
the city's lowered down-town boundaries,
constantly redrawn, but
nonetheless, always rebuilt from their own
regenerated stony compost,
and the NY passersby doesn't even notice
a man, head in hands,
silently weeping, thinking that:
We throw away so much we should have kept.
We keep so much we should have thrown away.
Lose keepsakes, but keep our mysterious sadnesses
locked away in compartments that open only to
benedictions uttered in ancient tongues.
Make your own list,
be your own curator,
catalogue visions of sophomoric triumphs,
museum mile pile
those early poetic drafts,
be unafraid of memories
raw and ungentrified,
overlaid, buried underneath
postmortem of dust-piles of senior critiques
Finally went downtown to see
where the blessed water falls
into catacomb pits that once
were the foundations
of buildings that ruled the cityscape,
downtown anchors
for a modern city that exists
only because it was built on
million year old granite bedrock
Stone monuments are stolid, discrete.
Memories are of grayed, frayed edge consistency.
Negatives resurrected that survive digitally,
all blend synthetically, layer upon layer,
essence distilled in a single,
black and white photograph
that serves to
disturb complacency,
awaken stilled pain,
reflections suppressed,
are restored
Sep 11, 2013
Sep 11, 2013 at 6:36 PM UTC
darling
let us fill our lungs
with corruptive smoke
and descend into delirium
so we may appreciate the moments
when our breaths consist
of purely air
let us drown our stomachs with poison
so we may savor the potent mix
of acid and alcohol
searing our throats
and numbing our skin
let us sink our teeth
into the ripe flesh
of the forbidden fruit
and swallow the pit
while we´re at it
let us drink to forget
and kiss like careless strangers
as we bury ourselves under bodies
so we may feel something other
than the weight of the world
let us dance beneath a storm
not of rain
but of blood spilling out
of open wrists
with mouths gaping
and hearts shattered
let us relish these blurred eyes
and hazy memories
as our hands touch
but do not meet
let us hold each other too tight
skin bleeding into skin
nail marks freckling your back
i can no longer hear the music
so let us sing our beautiful lies
take my hand
and let us run through grayed streets
with reckless abandon
and as we go
we can pick the roses
allowing their thorns
to imprint new scars
between our fingertips
let us tear the feathers
from a white dove
so we may weave ourselves
wings to fly
to touch the sun
and steal icarus´ name
let us ignore our ambitions
and explore extremes together
let us shatter our expectations
and as two beings collide
let us breathe each other in
and indulge as if it were
our last moment on earth
darling
let us taste death together
x.
Jul 24, 2018
Jul 24, 2018 at 2:53 AM UTC
tattoo ourselves in electric ink memorializing calendars,
diaries of observantional digits, black on white, no gray,
birthdays, anniversaries, dates of passing, starting lines,
occasional achievements, departure dates, even glaring failures,
sundial mundane records of diurnal habitude…even
defining self by, bye, byte marks upon flesh, upon our calendar
*not my first trip-tracking, he ruefully rues, wry smiling,
many voyages of indeterminate measuring length,
leaving litter of arrays of hopeful estimations & destinations,
each unequal, any or all possibilities, each day notated,
without critique or commentary, the numbers are the
gaols (jails) of goals, target, indeterminate determination,
terrific, horrific, introspections, inverse images resolve, resolute*
a year ago, +/- a few days,, new travelogue commenced,
notated but not annotated, just numerical truths,
(sans comments for the divine nature of numbers don’t lie)
and today my calculator app informs, that I am now
19.4 % lesser, but that clarifies less than expected
naturally this provokes a natty,
spirited, self-inquiry, lessened,
lessor, for better or for worse?
have the physical alterations
accompanying this reduction
mean exactly what,
if, it should be, a greater lesser?
here is the hard part.
your have always been a mirror~poet,
laughing, bemoaning the unvarnished, unshaven
AM sightings of a human perpetual dissatisfied,
the external never denying the interior “less~than,”
a J Peterman catalogue of weathered ****** expressions,
counter-parted by multiple Venn diagram intersections,
of experiential labeled bits & pieces of emotional empirical
less than good, not even close to perfect, so now that I am
*gaunt, spare, lean, grayed, narrower, again ruefully rue,
the even more visible truth reflection eye~hidden:*
I,
am the sum of the weight of my history, my deeds,
my disbeliefs, murderous deeds, weak choices
and that hasn’t changed nary an ounce, no matter
many times examined, indeed I am forever a lesser man,
there, internal infernal
too…
Apr 9, 2023
Apr 9, 2023 at 2:12 PM UTC
Wicked nether-land. Nether world, white, askance. Capitulating mangroves, verdant trees spliced with hyperbole, onomatopoeia, and manilla envelopes; her world is stuffed with secrets, she listens to gorillas cracking mussels a kilometer away, near a rill. Never she thought. Nothing that could provide....providence. Mangled heliographs sprayed all over the everywhereworld.
"Don't be S.A.F.E.," she whispered. A bouquet of gorse, cistus, and pimpernels squished in her small fingers. She climbed her way through the pedimented stairway, then collapsing on the porch. Legs spent, and spread out upon the desiccate grayed four by four planks of the portico.
And as time elapses, the shuttering shake of the hemlock, which writhes through her skinny nimble dactyls, upwards straining the heart as its toxic bends appendages- crisp cerise lumens bend on the Titanium White walls, where only shadows bend time. The hour, still nine. Every adornment, furnished with red and its hues. Not purple, periwinkle, or any masked enhancement.
These are the symbols that reticulate splines, that curve temperatures, perverse hemispheres and debunk worlds. Upped antes, verbs that terns flirt worth, birth words. Ooh. Aah. Camera. The forest wraps her in its verdant pasture, where at last the moribund tamarisks disperse.
While at the plateau she is quiet and longing. Arms astride, dangling. Vaunt with highs and bliss- a kiss of withstanding pleasure serves her the cure for a lifetime of whining. This, yesterday where her body rattled through crooked vines. Square ships toasting her vocal melancholy in the sweet-waters of Time. So that all of her ripened limbs could grow, no more sheepishly than the magic she knew as a child. Stress free. First among the Earth-words, verbed-up and made jealous by pronouns that encompassed her joy-brimming hide. Closing down her voice and hugging her from behind.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:44 AM UTC
#*“You cannot hold it, but it will cradle you.
You cannot see or touch it, but when contact comes,
You will see me, hold me, as in the days of your youth,
When you loved me best,
And I, you.”*
**From: Seven New Poems for Seven Days #2: Hover
... by Nat Lipstadt**
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
in memoriam to memories:
for Miriam and Nat
reading each thought numerous ticks of days,
imbibe the silent of the silence
hanging from the rafters this wilderness roof;
grayed heartwood walls that separate
fractals of inseparable distances ― celebrations
the roads taken ― memories of those left behind
at the side of the mile untrodden
Congregated love and sorrow’s spoken words
scribed on paper bark touchstones ―
etched watermarks of perpetual tides
patina the afterglow of life's ebb and flow,
traces of everything and naught can ever fill
Experiencing intimate moments immemorial;
the whispers of living pulse still murmurs
in the gentle breeze between the gathered words of heart
breathing deeply ― a rush of systemic truth
born in the wholly sacred blood bequeathed
A soul outside the lines ponders ―
the sum whole of a life well lived;
coming to understand, although
all might not see the same light shine:
there’s a place one day we’ll return
we found along the way
because one day will come by here …
harlon rivers ... Memorial Day weekend ... May, 2018
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 24, 2018
May 24, 2018 at 2:29 PM UTC
Frayed and grayed
Oversized and overused
Why you still hold onto it,
has everyone bemused.
Freckled and speckled
Like a cinnamon stick
warm winter stories
Keeping it thick
Pale fingernails, peak through the sleeves,
Tears and holes decorate the wrists.
From between cupped hands
Rise cinnamon flavored mists
Warm memories ride down your throat
Thawed hearts melt with every sip
Cinnamon specked bubbling froth
Settles above your lip
Cinnamon flavored laughs
Punctuate the conversations
Spicy aroma tickles the nose
Sniffing for winter’s indications
Warm memories on cold nights
Fill up the empty holes in your sleeves
Packed with stories soaked in cinnamon
And the sweater becomes fuller with the memories it weaves
Dec 23, 2012
Dec 23, 2012 at 2:23 PM UTC
The heavy downpour
took longer,
easily, it spread all over,
the weight of water,
drenched the ground,
the plants.....it doused
the body and
silenced the mind.
I stared
at the gloomy, grayed
horizon...while rain
poured without end.
the water level
rose...and swelled,
all active and dormant fears
lost their tethers
and darkened the floodwaters.
It seemed, the sky
really needed to cry.
and here we are, humans,
twisted...tangled up in the chaos
of a grieving universe.
With just thin raincoats
and light scarves as shields,
how do we escape the aftermath
of life's heavy downpours?
For lots of reasons, the sky
disencumbers...and cries.
sally b
© Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
August 31, 2022
Aug 30, 2022
Aug 30, 2022 at 9:45 PM UTC
Pillow-fluff pads of sweet-rolling grayed,
Teddy Bears fly and diamonds parade,
Money for the wicked all pompous and pump...
And Buffet's and Gates and Romney's and Trump,
Soon there was nothing, left for a life,
Of morals, hard-work, honor; families in strife.
Great Purple Harlot on fire from distance,
And laughter and singing at Devil's insistence.
When it was done, the Elite made a pact,
* “All Hail to Lucifer! Upon his will shall we act!” *
Jun 6, 2016
Jun 6, 2016 at 11:49 PM UTC
هر دو بی فرزند هستیم (متفاوت)/we are both childless, differently
——————————————————————————
*let us not ask each other or god
the why, just how life worked out
and maybe by a choice unconfessed*
~
yet we both lie.
~
you possess thousands of offspring,
tend to their every need, breast feed
them water, special nutrients, stroking
their leaves, worry about their viruses,
you, dying just, a little, when, one rooted
looks up and says, “I am dying mother,
thank you for your love.”
~
my ***** produced two men,
each now, differentially,
lost, lost to me, and daily
privately, in word and wet,
weep my losses, for what
is a man who had children,
but goes down into his grave
gray haired, with none in
attendance to refill the soil
that his grave grayed body
requires to
hide his wasted,
childless
life.
Jul 25, 2020
Jul 25, 2020 at 8:52 AM UTC
Alorè, she-winged orb,
Aidenn's story,
As of ev'ry of all stars absorb
Moorish wars and glory.
Dulcet wings she tether,---
Mighty kinsmen grayed
By unlocking clean of her
Beauty's Bridesmaid.
In each pearling Note
As syrup entwining
Silently thro' her sacred throat---
Who here pins a-singing?
Voyeurs there take pleasure
Leering forward
*At the Seraph's ******** treasure,*
All mastered by one measure
Of Alorè's harsh sharp-sword.
Alorè's wings do they a-part
Off of the Empyrean
Out the dead the sun of Lords depart
The Dawn of Aurorean.
Ancient welfare
Upon Achaean's Night,
Where all the sea-seraphs a-delight,
No mortal can't escape the light
*Of the She-Winged ******** affair.*
Apr 21, 2011
Apr 21, 2011 at 5:38 PM UTC
Is the lawn, which scrapes the horizon
And the hose waters where it may
Fissuring long the earth where morning glory rises
To strangle the gutters and ravage the fences
Alone there is a woman in the doorway
With blue eyes long since grayed
Her fairness speckled with brutish black and blue
For her husband is drunk
And when he is he does what he pleases
She screams, “You have no right”
He replies, “That my dear is why I strike with my left”
Aug 13, 2011
Aug 13, 2011 at 2:17 AM UTC
An excerpt from An excerpt from
a poem by T.S. Eliot. a poem by the False Poets
Between the idea no permanence in juxtaposition
And the reality where Falls the Shadow, the shadow
Between the motion. a divisive notion caught between
And the act composition & action, the response is
Falls the Shadow Falls the Shadow
Between the conception grayed outline indistinct, the cognitive sap
And the creation leaks, contradictions irritating birth sac,
Between the emotion whereupon Falls the Shadow emerges
And the response the response conclusive, occlusive, collusive
Falls the Shadow Falls the Shadow
Between the desire juxtaposition insertion, need to achieve
And the spasm *the blurted ****** of spurted letters born*
Between the potency. in the potent white seeds of black words
And the existence coming into existence as a riptorn issue,
Between the essence essences of scents blood+logic foretelling
And the descent birth & death, descent & the ascent, both,
Falls the Shadow Falls the Shadow
Between the desire the desire desired, completed,
And the spasm the latency uncovered,
Between the potency the potent toxins of spit and tears
And the existence the birth fluid of of existence
Between the essence the formulation of the human essence
And the descent from blood dust to blood dust is where
Falls the Shadow. Falls All the Shadows
Oct 27, 2017
Oct 27, 2017 at 6:08 PM UTC
Stare at your bedroom wall
and bard me a story about
the creeks of white between
the sun-patches of blue paint,
the faded yellow of the door
where the damp towel was hung
day after day after day.
Tell me about the mark
of a swept paintbrush
that accidentally destroyed
distinction between wall
and radiator.
They're no longer clean,
either of them.
How are the door handle dent marks
from that hurried moment when
you rushed into your room
away from our argument?
What of those stories?
Will you need a new place
to erase the memories from your mind?
The flies and the walls cannot speak
to anyone but you now.
It's all rotten anyway.
The sweet stink of evenings
spent in an intimate supine,
with a cleaver caught upright
in the cutting board bedpost.
We were atop one another
with our faces to the ceiling,
reading passages of poems aloud
after drenching the bed sheets
in varied indentations.
Cut words and minced gazes,
we grayed as shadows
against those weathered walls.
I remember those walls,
moonlight had reflected off the frames
of littered photographs, those stories,
and created a dance floor pattern of crescents
and plank-meeting-plank askew.
Those walls will tell me stories
even if you decide not to anymore.
I'd buy them all up, I would,
as I do the meat hook-hanging
in the butcher shop.
Sep 9, 2012
Sep 9, 2012 at 1:01 AM UTC
Grace Before Meals
Sunday afternoon, a year ago.
Early but late afternoon, end of July sun still high enough
to provide a loving and kind warmth through fractus clouds,
But doing double duty and
Supplying continuous eye candy via
riots of razzle-dazzles glistenings upon the prima facie of
my friend, my boon companion,
my bay.
Sitting on a weathered Adirondack chair,
grayed like me, a solitary outpost,
our third Musketeer,
it so belongs where I find it, in the corner of the yard,
hard by a white picket fence and footed by
an out cropping,
a patch of wild grass uncarpeted, we are aligned,
the chair and I, in so many ways,
we accompany each other
beach-facing, one unit,
designed by man but
nature-made of, and signed by her in a cursive, gentle script as follows:
**Quiet, please, for this is
a place of our mutual
quiet contemplation.**
These regal chairs are tinged with green moss stains,
as I am tinged with silver streaks
so we laugh at each other
and we laugh together,
delighted to share
the grandeur of the pleasure of
the exactness of this precise moment.
The bay claps its waves
in honor of the symmetry
of the trinity of man, wood and water,
a more perfect union
My woman calls to me,
supper is ready and
I smell the onions and the raisins
and the love that singes our shared salted air
With deep regrets and promises solemn,
Adieu, Adieu my friends, bay and chair, sunlight extraordinaire,
wait for me!
This poem but my R.S.V.P.
an oath of return sworn,
for I am man, placed here only
to sing the praises of my earthly delights,
my truest friends,
I sing of thy grace,
Grace Before A Meal
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 4:06 AM UTC
Do not look for your youth in me
All you will find is a grayed wizened tree
In the middle of the forest, hollow and empty
Surrounded by lush, younger, greener saplings
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 11:35 PM UTC
DEAR PENPAL PEOPLE, when you wish upon a star
your dreams come true-Cliff Edwards---do they? :>
remember when you called us quits too soon
one year later in a **** same room
all the blacks and whites grayed out a little on me
but never returned the woods in thousand dreams
remember when you took that hug in a theft
burned the station down and couldn't hear a left
but things a carry a chocolate cake would never cut
all so small to you but me just a single much
remember when the ice we clanged and freed
even the cold I've missed the day you chose a fleeing cheat
all the hours and runs we held the hands and lilac
but I know again a no more a wont come back
remember the dark ages we bled and rhymed
cared and favored out on every other than not crime
all the shadows and hunts tracing the midnight sky
but the stars would never forget a lover's align
but my heart and soul would never know to draw a line
but my nights and getaways would never dim a dime
but my soul can't erase veins on violin classic chimes
but------------------------------------------------------------------
------ravenfeels
Jun 16, 2021
Jun 16, 2021 at 2:10 PM UTC
He was chomping on a dog
a chili dog to be exact
when he heard a crunch
and felt a pain that seemed
unusual to his lunch
So with all the grace
that he could muster
he spit out all the dog
and the chili and the mustard
then smiled a toothless grin
when in the chili he could see
a bicuspid mixed therein
He had been waiting for this day
to the point where almost all
his nerves had frayed and
more than all his hair had grayed
But now he knew for certain
there would be no final curtain
for at least another act
because his bicuspid
had given way
to his third set of teeth
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 5:06 AM UTC
I wish I were six again
if only to beg and plead
my mother to read me a story before bed.
I could read on my own when I was six,
but I just wanted to hear another voice say
goodnight
to everything in the little bunny’s room.
I found it funny when my mother said
goodnight to the moon,
and the mush,
and the red balloon.
It was soothing, relaxing after a long day,
however exhausting a day
in the life of a
six-year-old can be.
I would be on the bottom,
my brother on the bunk above me.
Mom would stand by the ladder,
using it as a book rest.
Or we would sit on the floor with her between us,
looking at the pictures as she read.
The green and orange of the room,
blue and white of the bunny and his pajamas,
the red of the balloon,
colors etched into our minds.
When I was thirteen
and finally moved into my own room,
I considered painting it green
out of respect and admiration
for the book
and now, when I walk at night,
I stare at the moon.
On a Monday I saw a very full moon.
It looked larger than normal,
brighter too
and I noticed something in the moonlight.
A painting, attached to some metal box
on the side of the road by liquid nails.
I don’t know why the painting meant anything to me.
It was simple,
a man drinking a cup of tea.
He was old and haggard, grayed a bit.
But there was a corner, a solid background.
A wall behind the tea-drinking man,
bright red,
standing out from the rest of the image.
I took the painting,
pried it off with the force of memory.
it hangs in my home,
that bright bit of red wall adding
a needed splash of color to
mundane rental property mauve.
Though I wish that splash were green.
May 9, 2013
May 9, 2013 at 11:16 PM UTC
(for Daisy, a true companion to poet rr)
in the city,
we fight daily the toughest of hombres,
brown, grayed, mottled city pigeons,
who fear no human predator,
in the fight
for the crumbs and crusts of
inspiration
however, they may come our way
get a message, a post,
with the words
“a good create”
the words form a chord,
in my throat, taut, visible, tense
even knowing it’s likely a typo,
probably meant “creature,.”
but the phrase strikes me
as one too little spoke
in our diurnal drudgery
numbing~dumbing struggle,
but, I take them as (a) writ,
for the crumb of challenge
proffered
if we cannot justify our existence,
daily with a new create,
then incumbent upon us
to cherish, double and thrice,
the good and wonderful
creates,
the surround us
been decades since my body
was warmed by the shape of an animal’s
curves fitted into mine,
our sleep rhythm intertwined,
nay,
one
<>
so once again,
I mourn a living poem
who crossed my path
in photo, in words,
but never,
not in,
living color
but the sighs of loss,
real
*so as is my wont,
inquire within,
where shelter?
in the love
we create
tween us and our*
creatures.
Jan 3, 2024
Jan 3, 2024 at 10:56 AM UTC