"grist" poems
Writing,
for you
--is a river
a revelation
a sleepless constant gift-- so out-to-see
in a flimsy boat
you built by mathematic rote and laced with ivy
to hold together ******* boards of crazy
with the ease of breathing
Your giant storehouse
wealth-of-words
Your granary of data
the grist of
Music
You imagine wine
from mind
almost without limits
You command it all!
Dancing
in the grapes of moonlight
with tides of words
Their endless-- almost blind
come-ons and gone
in waves!
(my sullen heart)....
still stays
I am digging here
in a low spot
seeking water
with robins and a sparrow
in the puddles
Awaiting rain
Flipping-off the muddy shallows with our wings
I suppose their songs
will count for something
Tasting happenstance
of bugs in flight
maybe catch a firefly or two
at the edge of day
Tearing half a worm
from weeds...the brown of drying grass
near the small lagoon
collecting
'neath my car
Hiding
in an afternoon
too warm for flight
resorting to a place of shade
to smell the fresh-mown
sweet grass
Riding with my training-wheels
in the parade
Like a fool between those bikers' “Hogs”
Turning down my street
by mistake
laughing at the dead-end
of it all
Pulling poetry out my ***
___
Jul 22, 2018
Jul 22, 2018 at 2:33 PM UTC
There was a man on the bus
today
with hostile eyes...
steely blue and suspicious.
The thirty something woman
across from me;
with black eye and split lip,
her's were wet with tears and fear.
A young couple
only had eyes for each other.
Glistening
with love and desire.
The bigot’s eyes
were all a glower;
hostile and condemning...
The couple was interracial.
The old woman’s eyes
tired with many years,
looked back with memories
and forward to release.
The little child’s eyes
wide with wonder
took everything in,
grist for the mill.
As I wander from
face to face,
I wonder what stories
my eyes offer?
Jan 3, 2013
Jan 3, 2013 at 7:43 AM UTC
into this pink grist
run mercury brooks
from the tower of liana
and ruptured mist
pools an ovarian sky
barefoot through milky way city
above strawberry ice cream lane
stratus clouds scale the ruins
and
the maraschino cherries ********** rain
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 12:49 AM UTC
There overtook me and drew me in
To his down-hill, early-morning stride,
And set me five miles on my road
Better than if he had had me ride,
A man with a swinging bag for load
And half the bag wound round his hand.
We talked like barking above the din
Of water we walked along beside.
And for my telling him where I’d been
And where I lived in mountain land
To be coming home the way I was,
He told me a little about himself.
He came from higher up in the pass
Where the grist of the new-beginning brooks
Is blocks split off the mountain mass—
And hop. eless grist enough it looks
Ever to grind to soil for grass.
(The way it is will do for moss.)
There he had built his stolen shack.
It had to be a stolen shack
Because of the fears of fire and logs
That trouble the sleep of lumber folk:
Visions of half the world burned black
And the sun shrunken yellow in smoke.
We know who when they come to town
Bring berries under the wagon seat,
Or a basket of eggs between their feet;
What this man brought in a cotton sack
Was gum, the gum of the mountain spruce.
He showed me lumps of the scented stuff
Like uncut jewels, dull and rough
It comes to market golden brown;
But turns to pink between the teeth.
I told him this is a pleasant life
To set your breast to the bark of trees
That all your days are dim beneath,
And reaching up with a little knife,
To loose the resin and take it down
And bring it to market when you please
3.1k
'The puir auld folk at home, ye mind,
Are frail and failing sair;
And weel I ken they'd miss me, lad,
Gin I come hame nae mair.
The grist is out, the times are hard,
The kine are only three;
I canna leave the auld folk now.
We'd better bide a wee.
'I fear me sair they're failing baith;
For when I sit apart,
They talk o' Heaven so earnestly,
It well nigh breaks my heart.
So, laddie, dinna urge me now,
It surely winna be;
I canna leave the auld folk yet.
We'd better bide a wee.'
2.5k
she'll walk off
and you'll walk behind,
you feel like a man
and see everything in soft focus exposure
and her walking ahead, timid and feeling triumphant.
this was your first kiss
and not your last kiss
but your most important kiss;
the foundation kiss,
the scaffold kiss,
cathedral columns holding up the whispering gallery of this kiss.
or did you walk off
and she walked behind,
did she feel like a woman,
soft, warm, and kind seeing everything is a hard focus exposure?
that was her second kiss,
not her last kiss
and not her most important kiss;
it was a mill stone kiss,
a grist lipped ground-down-again kiss,
a motel-hotel-roadside chapel of cheap kisses kiss.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 9:37 AM UTC
italic
the old grist mill leans
nestled in the rocky bank
red fall leaves surreal
The swift red-stained creek that energized the mill's wheel still runs over ancient rock
on its course to the mighty sea.
Its course unchanged for eons and the use of its steady resources remain.
The red leaves upon the trees surrounding the creek will soon be spent
their usefulness for their lifetime gone.
the red sweet gum leaves
fall twirling land 'pon hard rocks...
crayfish hide 'neath red
Oct 22, 2013
Oct 22, 2013 at 3:01 PM UTC
Contrails have etched powder blue skies , the April countryside enhanced with silver tones .. The collapse of reason coupled with an early morning frost , tender seedlings beg the mercy of the rising Sun , bound for its midday zenith .. Such is the fragility of love just as the daffodils of Spring , a luster of Silver Maples dancing in the wind , clockwork precision of the Grist mill on Cotton Indian Creek . A brisk walk along the cool , riparian shore , bound for warmth , recalculation and the many miracles of familiar woodlands , across quiet bottom land . Alone .
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 2:14 PM UTC
The New York style trumpets galore
inside this tiny, slimy world.
"Eagle hearts for ten or more!"
When he shakes his leather fist...
It cannot begin to take you back;
the style doesn't handle that
without a meal of chicken fat,
a pile of aging grist.
The style box talks and it knows all
of screams and ashes in the fall.
Must we run before we crawl
through this fine and rose-red mist?
Stylin' men and stylish girls,
with blonde and purchased stylish curls,
kick and reach for wanton pearls;
deny the fatal twist:
That each and all who know style best,
must go west, west, west,
and so begins the style ******
in a hazy, ****** mist.
May 4, 2011
May 4, 2011 at 5:17 PM UTC
She's risen coarse on rusted tracks,
through sandy loam, a summer sheen.
Rainbows are but colour barracks,
fair violet, through verdant green.
Through sandy loam, a summer sheen
sparked exile of Fall's fleeting mist.
Fair violet, through verdant green,
adds tint to sun in pigment grist.
Exile sparked in Fall's fleeting mist,
cleared light, silky ivory.
Adds tint to sun in pigment grist,
silhouette of this noble tree.
Cleared light, silky ivory
are petals cast in modest mould.
Silhouette of this noble tree,
tattered leaves, raging wind unfold.
Petals cast in a modest mould
are magi of summer solstice.
Tattered leaves, raging wind unfold
simply envy of breezy fleece.
Magi of the summer solstice,
Purple blush on sun dipped petals.
Raging envy of breezy fleece,
Scalding wind that scarcely settles.
Purple blush on sun dipped petals
Rainbows are but colour barracks.
Scalding wind that scarcely settles,
she rises coarse on rusted tracks.
Jun 6, 2021
Jun 6, 2021 at 3:47 PM UTC
Our Dog Howling at Sunset
At sunset, the dog howls at sirens in town.
If he were snowbound in Talkeetna,
A hundred miles from nowhere,
What would he howl at instead?
I saw my husband trudging through the frost,
His blue jacket half-tinted orange and red,
“I don’t like the way you sound,” he said
As he left, deserting one who was already lost.
If I were a thousand miles from him now,
Listening to the wolves’ mournful cries,
And my beloved shunning me as he does now,
Would I pretend to believe my lover’s lies?
Or, instead, would it be enough to exist
Where the short summer dies on winter’s grist,
And true love’s a dream born on a dreamer’s mist,
And the one to stay with is the one you’ve just kissed?
If I lived in a land so cruel and hard,
Would I be bargaining with my soul?
If love’s short date were but a moon’s silver shard,
Would he be a passing thought, and my son the whole
Of any future we had scattered out on the snow,
Or caught in the rime-bound trees?
Would I see then what I already know—
That his future lies with himself and not me?
As our wolf howls a timeless wail to the air
I can listen and guess at its season.
I can comfort myself it will always be there,
Beyond human hopes, beyond reason.
Far wiser, the black-furred hound, than I,
To sing out his ancient song.
Waiting, watching, as we struggle and die,
Only to pass his wisdom along.
Waiting, hoping as he does for a touch,
He is made to think that he asks too much--
Waiting for a kind word or loving hand--
Wild and alone, in humanity’s bleak land.
A southern writer once lamented the lack
Of courage in humankind,
And suggested we borrow the strength we see
In the branches of an olive tree.
Yet there’s more courage in the dog-wolf’s cry,
Penned out on our city-cropped lawn,
As if he knows the grief of my son and I
When the man we both love is gone.
“Could we not as well” take a lesson from him,
Our wild and loyal friend?
To howl out our sorrow and loneliness,
Though the pain might never end?
Now, in the twilight I hear my lover return,
With no greeting to me, and I burn
For the summer’s newborn passion I recall.
The twilight wolf’s mourning tells it all:
That we never will have what we had before
That love can die just as well as it’s born,
That a child is the only one who restores
What is lost to the lonesome, the wolves, the forlorn.
July 6, 2001
Aug 19, 2018
Aug 19, 2018 at 11:45 PM UTC
The Plane from Bangkok touched down,
Bouncing hard, jarring nerves
And bones alike.
We emerged into the
Hot damp breeze,
Smoky Sun light glare,
Our eyes squinting,
Fumbling then for dark glasses.
Descending the gangway steps,
As if into a different world.
A new fragrance of foreign things
Of a mystical persuasion,
Hung heavy in the air.
I quickly breathed it all in,
My mind racing in anticipation.
For years I had dreamed of this land.
A country of fabled mystery,
Legend and contradictions.
Reading enough to admire the richness
And sheer wonder of place and people,
All to know and see better for myself.
A land so different from my own,
Being there seemed almost surreal.
Taxi and PedalCab rides into the City.
In every direction, where ever I looked,
New sites, sounds and perceptions observed.
More people in one place,
Than I had ever seen, 10 million in number,
All in that single city.
Most it appeared to be on foot.
All moving with individual purpose,
Seeming to flow all in different directions.
What at first looked like chaos to me,
Apparently worked for them.
Calcutta by Western standards,
Could be judged an urban mess.
Old British style colonial buildings,
Crumbling to bits and ruins,
Yet still very much in use,
Relics of a bye gone age,
Lingering still,
A visual reminder of what was,
Of a another culture,
And people gone home,
No doubt to where they belonged,
With all the riches they could carry.
Leaving more than a trace,
Behind in their wake.
A Kaleidoscope of movement and colors,
Best describes what I was seeing,
Cows and monkeys in the city streets,
Along with multitudes of moving people
All in traditional dress.
The very images and grist of the works of
Western writers and photographer’s attempts,
To capture and relay for over two hundred years.
Fascination best describes my impressions.
Captivating wonderment cascading,
An unstoppable vast Human River,
Churning and ever rapidly flowing,
Ethereal and emotionally stimulating.
Attractive people, dark eyes staring,
At the specter of our Western selves,
We as unfamiliar to them,
As they appeared to us.
Two distinct worlds meeting head on,
Learning, growing from the encounter.
India, timeless and magnificent.
Never felt more excited or alive,
Loved everything about it.
Feb 12, 2014
Feb 12, 2014 at 10:59 PM UTC
**It was like a
nuclear explosion
the day vision
caught fire,
atoms were fusing
and reverberating
titillated skies were
in accordance,
the force of power
by which poetry
is reckoned,
eyes full of mist
heart ground to grist
at least 1000 lonely
teardrops kissed
mind overflowing
with notions impossible
then it occurred to me,
words are unstoppable -
irrepressible as
hot steam locomotives
and star combustion,
waging a crusade 'pon
fire breathing dragons
'tween undulating cloudbursts
of empyrean's ' stardust
amidst the conformation
of an unrestrained utopia**
Jun 19, 2015
Jun 19, 2015 at 6:15 PM UTC
i listen to Dubstep music and sip tea
i am the Post-Mark
Pondering Gender politics and finishing my tea
i am non violent, a pacifist
But don't put it past me that i won't clench a fist
With righteous grist
If you make me feel alone in my considerations temporarily
i'm not a weak soul am hardy folk
Hardly lost faith when i realised God was a joke
Like a big fat egg yolk splattered all over paper
Christmas hogging 3 months of calendar
A Consumerist campaign, but tell me i'm the miser
Police tend to pass me in the streets, i think smart
Skin colour ain't the first part
One of the mainly white audience at the Public Enemy show
The system as it stands fears me though
If you stop and searched my heart you'd **** me though
i Listen to Deep House and sip Lucozade
Lost deep in this house
i've never worked hard at a job
So **** lucky at birth to have wealth
But that's my parents money (and I'm not in any way responsible for slavery)
Kanye West with his Confederate Flag ****
"I'ts mine now, what you gonna do?"
Little did we know that we were the 'New Slaves'
Contemporary thinker, i read the game cover to cover
After all they taught me from birth how to study
i'm too uninterested in ticking boxes to earn money
To satisy the transferable skills that you want from me
I'll Enjoy a nights alcoholism instead of getting high and writing an essay
Am I getting too wordy?
i'm trying to spit now, can i? can I?
The gender politics on my mind at inappropriate times
i told the guy at the door i wasn't thinking about race
Most people are thinking about 'the race'
White Middle Class kid picked up a mic and tried to rap again...
I listen to Hip Hop and drink water
Hardly faded I'm perfectly sober
I'm energised naturally, words seem to strengthen me
I am the grassroots, I have been wrongly righted
My Parent's deserve this so want me to sit tight
But I'm jumping right into the middle of hip hop (and feminism)
And theres nothing you can do about it.
[For All My ****** and All My *******
Nov 6, 2013
Nov 6, 2013 at 7:48 PM UTC
Appalachian Alchemists
Weaving Gold from farmer's grist
Whiskey Stills
and Copper Pills
Magick Wyrm cools vapor mists
Shine down from a Whiskey Moon
Silver Gift and Nature's Boon
Corn Cob Wands
and Thumper Pots
Mountain Spells from Summers' June
Lightning flash in jar of White
Burning Soul, distilled delight
Mountain Streams
yield Moonshine Beams
Corn-fed Wizards, dark of night
Wisdom cast in Silver hues
Blessing born of Mountain Dews
Love's Desire
from Smoke and Fire
Ancient kin-folk's hidden brews
Inspiration Distillate
Poet's Draught, inebriate
Charcoal Casks
and Secret Flasks
Of this Spirit, Celebrate
Jan 31, 2013
Jan 31, 2013 at 5:06 PM UTC
in Ohio, Mother
hung our laundry humming,
clothespins in her mouth
in Texas, she made my father
buy a dryer after angry wet sheets whopped her face
more than one blustery afternoon
scarcely a score before
Panhandle winds were often roiling clouds,
black as charcoal, laying waste to everything
that grew and breathed
old men at the feed store talked
about the dusters from back then
and about every drop of rain,
every white flake that fell
I missed going barefoot
and fast learned to hate goat heads,
and all thorny things that thrived
in that flat land
Mother despised the hot winds almost as much
as the cool stares she got from the church women
whenever she opened her mouth, revealing
she wasn't one of them
Mother ended words
with “ing,” the extra consonant considered
superfluous at best, blasphemous
to some
men and women both
sounded to me like they had grist
from the silos in their mouths
my father had lived there
as a boy, swore he would never return
the dreaded dust still clinging to his clothes
when he left for the war
oil money brought him back
but only long enough for his skull
to be cracked dead by hard pipe
his insurance settlement
bought us a place in the Buckeye State
as quick as the lid flapped shut
on our mailbox
Mother wept little
until our first night back
in Ohio, when a blizzard knocked out
the lights, and our two candles burned flat
in the cold
my uncle brought bread, butter
and warm soup, which we ate in the gloom
while Mother told my father's favorite brother
how much we loved the Texas sun
Dec 19, 2015
Dec 19, 2015 at 1:37 PM UTC
An Inca Dove flies to and fro
Landing graceful in my yard
Grist for any poet, bard
Her cooing soft and low.
Warm gray body, flash of wing
Whatever does she do?
I see her as her task ensues
She does a constant thing.
Back and forth the small bird flies
Of this I can attest
She pulls grass for her small nest
Right before my eyes!
I've been sitting here for hours
Thinking on my dreams
Lazily, or so it seems
For that bird builds her tower!
She goes by instinct, like the ant
Who burrows in the soil
Ever constant with her toil
'Til she would sit and pant!
While I do nothing in my seat
She flies away, and then
She comes for grasses yet again
Until her nest's complete!
Would that all the warring nations
Sit down to agree
To make the people warring-free
With such dedication!
Emulate the gentle dove
She slaves to rear her young
She works away and softly sung
Her song of purest LOVE.
SøułSurvivør
(C) 4/18/2017
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 11:38 AM UTC
The mystic missed the mist
For he was focused on the most
The waterfall, the all, the awe
No longer just the grist, the gist
He was the mill, the real, the wheel
No longer knowing, he could fully feel
Past the taste, the snack, and to the meal
So freely given he could not hope to steal
Apr 8, 2021
Apr 8, 2021 at 5:28 PM UTC
Love's letters clattered in currents
Winds curled to stillness,
in a talus of potpourri,
Season totem, a cluster of hope,
waiting
For one match pulled and struck,
To scare the ghosts from the pyre.
In a choke of smoke
from sweet attar,
Loves heat fans
the embers within
the hearts own fire.
So many words
wrenched from mouth
and wrought from hand
Contortions,
twisted spoken grip,
we strip the evergreen needles
from the bough
and let them fall from the fist,
Sprinkling fir
To the earth as grist.
Had not a sentence stretched from
pulsing ink well
by plume to parchment, or
from warm breath of lip’s beseech
What then of our night would say,
And of our day to listen.
If we do not dare with deeds to fly
Then the falling never ends,
And poem, eternal, ne'er to begin
Loves expression, not its desire,
Is the cachet
to which both life and death aspire.
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 10:48 PM UTC
#
"Dig your claw-hands into me" said she..
'It is all so unbearable, you know"
Her chest, ripped open..
such an ancient wound, are those..
*"Are those, so slow to heal--
These ones you've done to me..
And I.. I swear.. Dark.. looks like light
And Light, so very dark
Strangely, near you
I feel the Spark
..From you, the Monster..
You know.. the one,
under my bed,
Just waiting..
waiting..
waiting.
For me to slip.. to fall..
So you can what?
Crush my skull?
Grind me into grist;
Tho Unleavened..
I will rise with you
I now, know--
.. The dreaded end
Is the beginning
..of all Beginnings."*
#
Jun 12, 2023
Jun 12, 2023 at 8:19 PM UTC
a glowing tribute
was penned for the infamous plagiarist
apparently the scriber did little research
into the copier's grist
this master replicator
has visited many a poetry site
to steal what others
did with heart and soul write
brazen is this fellow
in his misappropriating conduct
passing off material
which isn't his original product
again he has reappeared
at the Hello Poetry forum
showing his usual
disingenuous decorum
May 4, 2016
May 4, 2016 at 9:27 PM UTC
Tell me about the grain that fell from the boards above;
And dusted my strewn desk with gritty powder.
Let me hear the voices of friends 'in this together';
Of their grist and grind on keyboard, mouse, mind.
I want to catch the spent emotion of decisions hard fought;
To see the happy simple days of summer labour short,
Please, and feel the lost cheery smile of Ruth and Mike;
Preserved only by the resonance of giant timber beams.
I never thought about the end of useful uses lost;
But now your eyes and mouth are boarded, silent, shut;
Your industry suspended,
we mostly carried on.
Apr 1, 2010
Apr 1, 2010 at 1:37 AM UTC
Flubber inside
filling out the cracks
you and that
insipid hat.
Wolly sweater
boatload of pins
find out when
our love life begins.
It's quite awkward
when I get so nervous
like hot liquid
boiling in a pan.
It's really kind of funny 'cause
I can't figure you out,
man.
Grist and marrow
you're a stringy
kind of fellow.
And every time I see
your stupid smily face
I get this rubber
in my tummy
a fit I cannot place.
Jan 20, 2017
Jan 20, 2017 at 1:44 PM UTC
Sun and moon
Flower and bloom
This is a cartoon
But also in tune
With reality
The stream flowing freely
Merrily, dreamily
The me flowing me-ly
Mealy
Milly
We are Grist for the Mill
That’s the gist, I’m just a shill
In the mist, I don’t shoot to ****
I aim my arrow with love
To heal, I wield this skill
And I point my pistol high into the sky
I will throw away my shot
Again and again
So that others know where to aim
I am but a photon blasting into and out of the sun
I am all and I am one
Just begun, yet fully spun
Not just having fun, I am become
Mar 28, 2021
Mar 28, 2021 at 6:10 PM UTC
Always In Preparation #2
(a rather long simplification)
Always in preparation for an interview:
What will I answer? Never know.
- What do I like? do things I do, the way I do?
- Write poetry, play jazz, do yoga?
Body/mind my mental window in my mental interview:
And I must justify it all.
Some germ, some theme begins the whole:
The technical; word hurdles
When I write or sing;
All challenging,
Performing, writing or just doing.
T’ween two covers it’s official;
Everything grist-for-the-mill,
I’ll likely publish ‘til I’m still.
No special motive winks or flirts,
No motive hides behind my skirts -
My ears hear musically,
It all comes naturally, substance counting most;
Not tricks, not formulae, cliché -
If there’s a Corwin idiom
It’s in the DNA.
I work out tunes, -out poetry, -out ******
The mind works out spontaneously,
I (wherever I is to be found) give in, give form,
Substance from-and-in the frame.
In short, I paint myself into a box
And creep around
Until some [final] satisfaction binds.
A futile paradox:
To clarify and satisfy
The interview,
But there am I,
Always in preparation.
Always In Preparation 7.6.2014
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,Meditative II; revised 11.21.2017
Arlene Corwin
Nov 21, 2017
Nov 21, 2017 at 5:55 AM UTC