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Martin Narrod Feb 2015
Part I


the plateau. the truest of them all. coast line. night spells and even controlled by the dream of meeting again. the ribbon of darker than light in your crown. No region overlooked. Third picnic table to the drive at Half Moon Bay, meet me there, decant my speech there. the table by the restroom block. While the tide is in show me your oyster garden, 3:00p.m. at half-light here in the evilest torments that have been shed.---------------door locked.  The moors. Cow herds and lymph nodes, rancorous afternoon West light and bending roads, the cliffs, a sister, the need to jump. There is nothing as serious as this. There is nothing nor no one that could ever, or would ever on this side come between. Who needs sleep or jokes or snow or rivers or bombs or to turn or be a rat or a fly or ceiling fan or a gurney or a cadaver or piece of cloth or a bed spread or a couch or a game or the flint of a lighter or the bell of a dress; the bell of your dress, yes, perhaps. Having been crushed like orange cigarette light in a pool of Spanish tongues. I feel the heave, the pull; not a yawn but a wired, thread-like twist about my core. Up around the neck it makes the first cut, through the eyes out and into the nostrils down over the left arm, on the inside of the bicep, contorting my length, feigning sleep, and then cutting over my stomach, around and around multiples of times- pulled at the hips and under the groin, across each leg and in-between each nerve, capillary, artery, hair, dot, dimple, muscle, to the toes and in-between them. Wiry dream-like and nervous nightmarish, hellacious plateaus of leapers. Penguin heads and more penguin heads. Startling torment. The evilest of the vile mind. The dance of despair: if feet contorted and bound could move. The beach off Belmont. The hills and the reasons I stared. Caveat after caveat at the heads of letters, on the heads of crowns, and the wrists, and on the palms. Being pulled and signed, and moved away so greatly and so heavily at once in a moment, that even if it were a year or a set of many months it would always be a moment too taking away to be considered an expanse, and it would be too hellacious to be presumptuous. It could only be a shadow over my right shoulder as I write the letters over and again. One after another. Internally I ask if I would even grant a convo with Keats or Yeats or Plath or Hughes? Does mine come close? Does it matter the bellies reddish and cerise giving of pain? Does it have to have many names?


"This is the only Earth," I would say with the bouquet of lilies spread out on the table. Are lilies only for funerals, I would never make or risk or wish this metaphor, even play it like the drawn out notes of a melody unwritten and un-played: my black box and latched, corner of the room saxophone. Top-floor, end of the hall two-room never-ending story, I'm the left side of the bed Chicago and I see pink walls, bathrooms, the two masonite paintings, the Chanel books, the bookshelves, the white desk, the white dresser, you on the left side of the bed in such sentimental woe, **** carpet and tilted blinds, and still the moors and the whispering in the driver's seat in afternoon pasture. Sunset, sunrise, nighttime and bike room writing in other places, apartments, rooms where I inked out fingertips, blights, and moods; nothing ever being so bleak, so eerily woe-like or stoic. Nothing has ever made me so serious.

Put it on the rib, in a t-shirt. Make it a hand and guide it up a set of two skinny legs under a short-sheeted bed in small room and literary Belmont, address included. Trash cans set out morning and night, deck-readied cigarette smoking. Sliding glass door and kitchen fright. Low-lit living room white couch, kaleidoscope, and zoetrope. Spin me right round baby right round. I am my own revenge of toxic night. Attack the skin, the soul, the eyes, the mind, and the lids. The finger lids and their tips. Rot it out. Blearing wild and deafening blow after blow: left side of the bed the both of us, whilst stirs the intrepid hate and ousts each ******* tongue I can bellow and blow.

Last resort lake note in snow bank and my river speak and forest walk. Wrapped in blocks and boxes, Christmas packaging and giant over-sized red ribbons and bows. Shall I mention the bassinet, the stroller, the yard, several rings of gold and silver, several necklaces of black and thread? I draw dagger from box, jagged ended and paper-wrapped in white and amber: lit in candle light and black room shadow-kept and sleeping partisan unforgettable forever. Do I mention Hawaii, my mother dying, invisible ligatures and the unveiling of the sweat and horror? Villainous and frightening, the breath as a bleat or heart-beat and matchstick stirring slightly every friends' woe and tantrum of their spirit.

Lobster-legged, waiting, sifting through the sea shore at the sea line, the bright tyrannosaurs in mahogany, in maple, and in twine over throw rose meadow over-looks, honey-brimming and warehouse built terrariums in the underbelly of the ravine, twist and turn: road bending, hollowing, in and out and in and out, forever, the everlasting and too fastidious driving towards; and it's but what .2 miles? I sign my name but I'll never get out. I am mocked and musing at tortoise speed. Headless while improvising. Purring at any example of continue or extremity or coolness of mind, meddling, or temptation. I rock, bellowing. Talk, sending shivers up my spine. I'm cramped, and one thousand fore-words and after words that split like a million large chunks of spit, grime, and *****; **** and more ****. I might even be standing now. I could be a candle, in England, a kingdom, in Palo Alto, a rook in St. Petersburg. Mottled by giants or sleepless nights, I could be the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, a heated marble flower or the figure dying to be carved out. I'm veering off highways, I'm belittling myself: this heathen of the unforgettable, the bog man and bow-tied vagrant of dross falsification and dross despair. I am at the sea shore, tide-righted and tongue-tide, bilingual, and multi-inhibited by sweat, spit, quaffs of sea salt, lake water, and the like. Rotten wergild ridden- stitched of a poor man's ringworm and his tattered top hat and knee-holed trousers. I'm at the sea shore, with the cucumbers dying, the rain coming in sideways, the drifts and the sandbars twisting and turning. I'm at the sea shore with the light house bruise-bending the sweet ships of victory out backwards into the backwaters of a mislead moonlight; guitars playing, beeps disappearing, pianos swept like black coffees on green walled night clubs, arenose and eroding, grainy and distraught, bleeding and well, just bleeding.






I'm at the sea shore, the coastline calling. I've got rocks in my pockets, ******* and two lines left in the letter. I’m at the sea shore, my mouth is a ghost. I've seen nothing but darkness. I'm at the seashore, second picnic table, bench facing the squat and gobble, the tin roof and riled weir near the roadside. .2 and I'm still here with my bouquet wading and waiting. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. My inches are growing shorter by the second, cold, whet by the sunset, its moon men, their heavy claws and bi-laws overthrowing and throwing me out. The thorns stick. The tyrannosaurs scream. I'm at the sea shore, plateau, left bedside to write three more letters. Sign my name and there's nobody here.

I'm at the sea shore: here are my lips, my palms (both of them facing up), here are my legs (twine and all), my torso, and my head shooting sideways. I'm at the seashore and this is my grave, this is my purposeful calotype, my hide and go seek, my show and tell, my forever. .2 and forever and never ending. I was just one dream away come and keep me. I'm at the sea shore come and see me and seam me. I'm without nothing, the sky has drifted, the sea is leaving, my seat is a matchbox and I'm all wound up. The snow settling, the ice box and its glory taken for granted. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. The room with its white sets of furniture, the lilies, the Chanel, the masonite paintings, the bed, your ribbon of darker on light, the throw rug **** carpet, pink walled sister's room, and the couch at the top of the stairs. I'm at the sea shore, my windows opened wide, my skin thrown with threat, rhinoceri, reddish bruises bent of cerise staled sunsets. I'm at the sea shore and there's nobody here. I'm at the plateau and there isn't a single ship. There are the rocks below and I'm counting. My caveats all implored and my goodbyes written. I'm in my bed and the sleep never set in. I'm name dropping God and there's nobody there. I'm in a chair with my hands on a keyboard, listening to Danish throb-rock, horse-riding into candle light on a wicked wedding of wild words and teary-eyed gazes and gazers. Bent by the rocking and the torment, the wild and the weird, the horror and everything horrifying. There is this shadow looking over my shoulder. I'm all alone but I feel like you're here.



Part II




I wake up in Panama. The axe there. Sleeping on the floors in the guest bedroom, the floor of the garden shed, the choir closet, the rut of dirt at the end of the flower bed; just a towel, grayish-blue, alone, lawnmower at my side, and sky blue setting all around. I was a family man. No I just taste bits of dirt watching a quiet and contrary feeling of cool limestone wrap over and about my arms and my legs. Lungs battered by snapping tongues, and ancient conversations; I think it was the Malaysian Express. Mom quieted. Sister quieted. Father wept. And is still weeping. Never have I heard such horrifying and un-kindly words.-----------------------It's going to take giant steel cavernous explorations of the nose, brain cell after brain cell quartered, giant ******* quaffs of alcohol, harboring false lanterns and even worse chemicals. Inhalations and more inhalations. I'm going to need to leap, flight, drop into bodies of waters from air planes and swallow capsules of psychotropics, sedatives beyond recalcitrance. I'm requiring shock treatments and shock values. Periodic elements and galvanized steel drums. Malevolence and more malevolence. Forest walks, and why am I still in Panama. I don't want to talk, to sleep, to dream, to play stale-mating games of chess, checkers, Monopoly, or anything Risk involving. I can't sleep, eat, treaty or retreat. I'm wickeded by temptations of grandeur and threats of anomaly, widening only in proverb and swept only by opposing endeavors. Horrified, enveloped, pictured and persuaded by the evilest of haunts, spirits, and match head weeping women. I can't even open my mouth without hearing voices anymore. The colors are beginning to be enormous and I still can't swim. I couldn't drown with my ears open if I kept my nose dry and my mouth full of a plane ticket and first class beanstalk to elysian fields. It's pervasive and I'm purveyed. It's unquantifiable. It's the epitomizing and the epitome. I have my epaulets set for turbulent battles though I still can't fend off night. Speak and I might remember. Hear and it's second rite. Sea attacks, oceans roaring, lakes swallowing me whole. Grand bodies of waters and faces and arms appendages, crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and more crowns and I'm still shaking, and I'm still just a button. And I still can't sleep. And I'm still waiting.

It is night. The moon ripening, peeling back his face. Writhing. Seamed by the beauty of the nocturne, his ways made by sun, sky, and stars. Rolled and rampant. Moved across the plateau of the air, and its even and coolly majestic wanton shades of twilight. It heads off mountains, is swept as the plains of beauty, their faces in wild and feral growths. Bent and bolded, indelible and facing off Roman Empires too gladly well in inked and whet tips of bolder hands to soothe them forth.-----------Here in their grand and grandiose furnaces of the heart, whipped tails and tall fables fettered and tarnished in gold’s and lime. Here with their mothers' doting. Here with their Jimi Hendrix and poor poetry and stand-up downtrodden wergild and retardation. I don't give a ****. I could weep for the ***** if they even had hair half as fine as my own. I am real now. Limited by nothing. Served by no worship or warship. My flotilla serves tostadas at full-price. So now we have a game going.-----------------------------------------------------------­------------------------  My cowlick is not Sinatra's and it certainly doesn't beat women. As a matter of factotum and of writ and bylaw. I'm running down words more quickly than the stanza's of Longfellow. I'm moving subtexts like Eliot. I'm rampant and gaining speed. Methamphetamine and five star meats. Alfalfa and pea tendrils. Loves and the lovers I fall over and apart on. Heroes and my fortune over told and ever telling. Moving in arc light and keeping a warm glow.

the fish line caves. the shimmy and the shake. Bluegrass music and big wafting bell tones. snakes and the river, hands on the heads, through the hair; I look straight at the Pacific. I hate plastic flowers, those inanimate stems and machine-processed flesh tones. Waltzing the state divide. I am hooked on the intrepid doom of startling ego. I let it rake into my spine. It's hooves are heavy and singe and bind like manacles all over me. My first, my last, my favorite lover. I'm stalemating in the bathtub. Harnessing Crystal Lite and making rose gardens out of CD inserts and leaf covers. I'm fascinated by magic and gods. Guns and hunters. Thieving and mold, and laundry, and stereotypes, and great stereos, and boom-boxes, and the hi-fi nightlife of Chicago, roasting on a pith and meaty flame, built like a horror story five feet tall and laced with ruggedness and small needles. My skin is a chromium orchid and the grizzly subtext of a Nick Cave tune. I've allowed myself to be over-amplified, to mistake in falsetto and vice versa. To writhe on the heavy metallic reverberations of an altercated palpitation. The heart is the lonely hunted. First the waterproof matchsticks, then the water, the bowie knife, crass grasses and hard-necked pitch-hitters and phony friends; for doing lunch in the park on a frozen pond, I play like I invented blonde and really none of my **** even smells like gold.--------------------- There are the tales of false worship. I heard a street vendor sell a story about Ovid that was worse than local politics. As far as intermittent and esoteric histories go I'm the king of the present, second stage act in the shadow of the sideshow. Tonight I'm greeting the characters with Vaseline. For their love of music and their love of philosophy. For their twilight choirs and their skinny women who wear black antler masks and PVC and polyurethane body suits standing in inner-city gardens chanting. For their chanting. The pacific. For the fish line caves. For the buzzing and the kazoos. For the alfalfa and the three fathers of blue, red, and yellow. For the state of the nation. But still mostly working for the state of equality, more than a room for one’s own.-------------------------------------------------------------­------"Rice milk for all of you." " Kensington and whittled spirits."
(Doppelganger enters stage left)MAN: Prism state, flash of the golden arc. Beastly flowers and teeming woodlands. Heir to the throes and heir to the throng.----------------------------------------------------------­--------------- The sheep meadow press in the house of affection. The terns on my hem or the hide in my beak; all across the steel girder and whipping ******* the windows facing out. The mystery gaze that seers the diplopic eye. Still its opening shunned. I put a cage over it and carry it like a child through Haight-Ashbury. At times I hint that I'm bored, but there is no letting of blood or rattle of hope. When you live with a risk you begin at times to identify with the routes. Above the regional converse, the two on two or the two on four. At times for reasons of sadness but usually its just exhaustion. At times before the come and go gets to you, but usually that is wrong and they get to you first. Lathering up in a small cerulean piece of sky at the end turnabout of a dirt road
Man Oct 2023
Dull ruts and periodic lulls, cast
Iron wrought.
A life of sea salt;
Choking on ocean foam, walking
On rusty bones
Sifting through ashes.
It's all growing old
Come friend,
I have an old story to tell you-

Listen.
Sit down beside me and listen.
My face is red with sorrow
and my ******* are made of straw.
I sit in the ladder-back chair
in a corner of the polished stage.
I have forgiven all the old actors for dying.
A new one comes on with the same lines,
like large white growths, in his mouth.
The dancers come on from the wings,
perfectly mated.

I look up. The ceiling is pearly.
My thighs press, knotting in their treasure.
Upstage the bride falls in satin to the floor.
Beside her the tall hero in a red wool robe
stirs the fire with his ivory cane.
The string quartet plays for itself,
gently, gently, sleeves and waxy bows.
The legs of the dancers leap and catch.
I myself have little stiff legs,
my back is as straight as a book
and how I came to this place-
the little feverish roses,
the islands of olives and radishes,
the blissful pastimes of the parlor-
I'll never know.
Hazel Connelly Aug 2012
I was fit and feisty at fifty
It was no big deal,
Because that's how half a century
Is supposed to feel.

In my sixties I'll take stock
Start making great plans,
Ignoring all the "you cant's"
And embracing all the "I cans".

Can I be **** at sixty?
And try all the fashions and fads,
Wear stockings and suspenders
And Joan Collins shoulder pads.

I can deal with **** at sixty
And wear Vivienne Westwood clothes,
Dress up and go out on the town
Wearing all my buttons and bows.

I'mgoing to be **** at sixty
I'll wear Gok Wan lingerie
Find myself a Toy Boy
Then maybe lead him astray.

Swift and **** at sixty
When I get my Jimmy Choos,
Dancing the night away
To the sound of rhythm and blues.

Oh! I want to be **** at sixty
'cause age is a state of mind,
I'm preparing my body at keep fit
So as not to be left behind.

But, first I have to deal with
Old Skin, Bad Teeth and Grey Hair,
Then remove the unwanted growths
From just about everywhere.

Then I'll definitely be **** at sixty
And undoubtedly done it all,
The only problem is that most
of it I simply won't recall...

© Hazel
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with tall and wonderful spires,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships—an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets—high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies;
Tide swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d;
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business—the houses of business of the ship-merchants, and money-brokers—the river-streets;
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week;
The carts hauling goods—the manly race of drivers of horses—the brown-faced sailors;
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft;
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells—the broken ice in the river, passing along, up or down, with the flood tide or ebb-tide;
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes;
Trottoirs throng’d—vehicles—Broadway—the women—the shops and shows,
The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating;
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men;
The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts!
The city nested in bays! my city!
The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with them!
The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
Sia Jane Jan 2014
Diagnosis: Anorexia Nervosa
Status: Recovered.

So my point in writing... am I doing this for myself? Maybe... or to inspire others? Maybe...
Or to simply just show and say, that I am through this. Through what? Through all that growth that you encounter when you truly engage yourself in recovery.
This does not mean I will not grow further, learn more. Develop and engage. It doesn’t mean I have been able to shut the door once and for all on my mental health struggles (I was trying to be as politically correct towards myself using that term).
It means, I trust, I believe, and not naively, that I have done the hard work.
I have stepped outside of the mirror.
I no longer believe I can only live half way, a half life, between sickness and wellness.
It means, I know, I will never, get sick again.
Many may laugh, or shake their heads at that. And yet, what I am writing here is filled with so much faith and trust, that I can be sure of myself. Even if no one else in the world believes it, I do. And I know it, because I have made a choice.
There were some backwards and forwards, to relapses and re-growths, but each and every fall, I chose to learn. I chose to take to therapy. I chose.
I choose life.  And so that means, the commitment to life, to myself, that I will always take the route that leads to more life, or to more hope...


And so getting well. What happened there? Well, after years of self abuse, of anger turned inwards, after trying to destroy myself in every single way possible... I wondered, inquisitively, what would happen if I used all I had learnt in hospital, all the positive energy directed at me, the words my therapist would say to me... I wondered, what if?
That if, turned out to be the most amazing curiosity. It is why I am safe, well, “recovered.” I don’t use the term recovered lightly. I recognise that my whole life will mean being mindful, it will mean self awareness, it will mean vulnerability. But what I am certain of, is that each year that passes, I grow and gain strength in ways I never realised I could.
I use “recovered” because I don’t believe I am “in recovery.” I have done the recovery. I have done the putting food in my mouth, consulting a nutritionist, the ridiculous amount of weight gain that allowed me to be healthy. I am done with the depression, the endless anxiety, the self harm.
I say “recovered” because as Marya Hornbacher writes: “I mean flat-out eat-normally stay-healthy get-comfortable-with-your-body-and-actually-like-it recovery.”
Few believe it exists. In fact, I was told my numerous doctors I would never recover. I would always be chronic. Sick. In need of hospital.
It exists. I know that. Because it exists for me.
Recovering has meant finding a voice, and using it. It means putting food in my mouth, it means seeing friends, engaging in life, seeking out healthy ways of coping when I feel overwhelmed, scared, anxious...


I live.

© Sia Jane
I wrote this 4 years ago, for EDAW (Eating Disorder Awareness Week) It is heavily edited, in that I have chopped two pieces which felt the most important from the rest of the story. Other than that it remains untouched. I hope this can help carry us into February and continue to raise awareness.
Splendor of ended day, floating and filling me!
Hour prophetic—hour resuming the past!
Inflating my throat—you, divine average!
You, Earth and Life, till the last ray gleams, I sing.

Open mouth of my Soul, uttering gladness,
Eyes of my Soul, seeing perfection,
Natural life of me, faithfully praising things;
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space—sphere of unnumber’d spirits;
Illustrious the mystery of motion, in all beings, even the tiniest insect;
Illustrious the attribute of speech—the senses—the body;
Illustrious the passing light! Illustrious the pale reflection on the new moon in the western sky!
Illustrious whatever I see, or hear, or touch, to the last.

Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
In the superb vistas of Death.

Wonderful to depart;
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak! to walk! to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed—to look on my rose-color’d flesh;
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large;
To be this incredible God I am;
To have gone forth among other Gods—these men and women I love.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars, dart on and on!
How the water sports and sings! (Surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up—with strong trunks—with branches and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the tree—some living Soul.)

O amazement of things! even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical, flowing through ages and continents—now reaching me and America!
I take your strong chords—I intersperse them, and cheerfully pass them forward.

I too carol the sun, usher’d, or at noon, or, as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth, and of all the growths of the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.

As I sail’d down the Mississippi,
As I wander’d over the prairies,
As I have lived—As I have look’d through my windows, my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning—As I beheld the light breaking in the east;
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the beach of the Western Sea;
As I roam’d the streets of inland Chicago—whatever streets I have roam’d;
Or cities, or silent woods, or peace, or even amid the sights of war;
Wherever I have been, I have charged myself with contentment and triumph.

I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues—Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.
dj Aug 2012
the night was already crazy-wild by the time
we arrived at Jarred's pool.
he had a big house but we never went in

4 teens, teen dream, a dream team;
but I knew deep down just what it was
we snuck out for.

a "transform-optional" rite, this hollow night.
but I still had doubts...
as Jarred offered me an aluminum can of something and I nervously said, "no thank you",
the moon had proudly jut out

he had a big house but we never went in.

I hadn't noticed, without the moonlight, just how
sharp Jarred's teeth and fingernails were.
canines, ivory & sporadic. looking at me

I hadn't noticed how reptilian our 2 friends were
The fangs and dislocating jaws, tendrils & scales.
Man-o-war for a head, giant earthworm for an arm
She looked scarier than he.

Those 2 went at each other in a murderous way
A blood sport of sorts. Confusing to me.
She spread her jaws wide - a parachute with teeth
And bit down hard between his legs.

Blood everywhere. Blood spattered on her face
She looked ****** god-awful by then.
The meat of his dead body then re-animated
And assimilated with hers. Anabiosis + Differentiate

Jarred, a werewolf or something like it, approached me.

He had a big house but we never went in.

we chatted poolside for a while
he'd go harmoniously from monster to human, human to monster.
Boiling cancerous growths under his fur
Grew angry eyes that glared at me.
clawhand on the back of my neck,
he went in for a kiss (or a bite)
with a puckered face and bared teeth.

This is it.
I finally felt a grossness so profound that I,
without thinking, jumped in the pool
to splish-splash, cool, to escape, whatever

I opened my eyes and just floated there for a bit.
hanging in the stillness
trying to forget those alien freaks
staring up at the moon
from the bottom of a pool.
find out who Jarred is here: http://hellopoetry.com/poem/jarred/
(& yes, I do realize 'snuck' is not a real word)

स्वप्न
Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
O night desirous as the nights of youth!
Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
Now beat, as the bride’s finger-pulses are
Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?

Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee
Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
Rest for man’s eyes and music for his ears?
O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
A thicket hung with masks of mockery
And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
The finger-points look through the rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
’Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
’Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:
So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.
naivemoon Jun 2013
He fell in love like the changing of seasons. With new leaves and new snows and new beginnings and new growths.

There was fall-
With her simple thoughts and opinions
And her kind words to everyone
Not to mention her ability to learn quickly
(He was an unanswered problem on a math quiz)

There was winter-
Coincidentally, she was winter, with a heart like hers.
She was a challenge and not even he could conquer
Challenging herself to play every instrument there was
(Including his heart strings)

There was spring-
Who was the hopeless romantic
Wide and starry eyed
She always had a smile on her face and her laugh traveled
(He was the only one who knew how secretly sad she was)

There was summer-
Because he believed seasons changed
But people are not poems and this is just a metaphor
She was as cold as winter and a season between could not change that
(Summer love always comes to an end, Spring thinks hopefully)

So here I am, Spring, writing about a boy who thinks he can change girls like seasons. He wants to change them for the better. Yet, he leaves them worse. And I, Spring, was already sad enough before he came.
st64 May 2013
.
and so, what do we see?


[A]

1.
We see...
Their planet is third from the source
That it still takes sunlight 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth
So, they're not as koodauzled yet
Thus, stable (for now)
Despite the polar melts and atmospheric fumes....

2.
We see.....
Stick-like appendages still grow out of extensions
At the end of long, dangly limbs
With hard yet pliable, translucent growths at end
To use for countless tasks.

3.
We see....
They still consume: plants....and animals
No change there.
Yet, now ....less subsistence
More modified products to eventual detriment.

4.
We see....still
They engage in warfare, of all kinds
Air, ground, mental, cyber, chemical....
No end to barrage of senseless acts
Violence is slippage as means to commune.

5.
We see...
Some figures more gaunt than others
A kind of poverty of the inside duels external opulence
Deep clutter and subsequent wasting
Twisted fragments of utter decay increasing.

6.
We see....
More enterprising ventures in communication
From lightbulb to phone to pads
Neat advancements in technology and science
From many kinds of wheels to flight.

7.
We see...
Their offspring subject to long years in learning
To maintain (by rote) their disproportionate rules and ready values
Propping equations and formulae into heads
Castaways on a rickety boat in a deep sea of confusion.

8.
We see....
Amidst beauty of their art in all forms
Of dance and music, visual and written
Other forms of entertainment are demeaning to some
Mind-numbing staring and raucous outbursts.

9.
We see...
Figures of peace reduced considerably
Voices erstwhile strong and fearless, full of candour and truth
Now, fashionable puppet-sticks of media
With regurgitated rhetoric a-spew.

10.
We see.....
Mother Nature and geriatric folk not as cared for
Neglected and (..)used
How long before this greed catches up....
Afore progeny be heirs to blight.



[B]

We see not....
Enough of

Peace
Harmony
Kindness
Sharing
Forward Thinking
Courage  
Inter-Connectedness
Hope
Inner Consciousness


Not nearly enough.




[C]

We long to reach out and touch the centre of their being
And share fruits of universal wisdom
And steer all away from adversity.

Yes, we long so
For them to see.....


[D]

1.
Not yet....

All so easily done....but
They are not yet ready.....but
One day...

2.
Yet....

We will continue to observe
They know not we may be among them
observing



to return on the Aurora in a few light-seconds



S T,  6 May 2013


(dedicated to outridin' light)
.






QED...really?
as Mr. Lintnaar (my ol' Math teacher:) used to say

just a silly poem, is all.


TIP:
A must-see film (if only the introduction) ......"The Gods Must Be Crazy"


/ / /


INFO:

One light year (a measure of distance, not time) = 365 x 12 x 4 x 3 x 30 x 7 x 24 miles

The sun is 93 million miles from Earth (or 149 668 620 km)

Earth to Alpha Centaurus (closest star system to our sun) = 4,3 light years


/ / /


KEY:
Speed of light = 186 000 miles per second

One mile = 1,6 kilometres

1 light minute (the distance it takes light to travel in one minute) = 17 987 547.5 kilometres

1 light year = presently defined to be equal to precisely 31557600 light-seconds


/ / /


SITES:

http://www.universetoday.com/15021/how-long-does-it-take-sunlight-to-reach-the-earth/

http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/alpha-centauri-is-the-nearest-bright-star


((((((((((: thank you for reading :))))))))))
mark john junor Apr 2014
the animated man moves with languid effect
against the scattered clouds of the sky far overhead
he walks at a slow stumble
on the oil stained pavement of suburban driveway
'this is where the light blue mustang was parked'
he is carrying a stone carved into the shape of a head
its mind leaning precarious over the edge of sanity
you can taste its butterscotch candy laughter
and its salt water taffy tears
its face frozen in apocalypse of conflicting thought

he moves along the dirt road
hemmed in by trees and wild growths
the humidity so thick you swim rather than tread
but the feral grin sewn into his face
with her needle and threads
is what moves her
she adores its primal bloodletting
a self contained self abuse machine

she leads the way down the dusty road
to the clearing where night children gather
to make celebrations to dark matter
and the things it spawns
her thighs tingle at the thought of dead flesh
and feasts of the eyes filthy mind
the images in her mind are never really clear to her
just **** flesh rubbing cold things
i am disturbed by her dark dream
seek to flee on wings of night
but fail as he arrives head in hand
and pronounces logical rules for the slaughter
this night has no end
just the rest of fitful dreams
.

Z - A

Zonked Yanks eXport Weird Views Underpinning Terrorist Suspects, Risking Quiet Proliferation Of Nuclear Missiles, Leaving Killer Jihads In Hostile Groups. Forgetting Europe, Death Claims Babylon: America.

Zero Yields X’s Without Value. Useless Technical Solutions Regarding Quanta, Plainly Outside Newtonian Mathematics. Logic Keeps Jokers In Hearty Guffaws  Forever.  Eternity Derides Computation By Algebra.

Zap! Your X-ray Was Very Useful Tool. Sarcomas’ Revealed, Quality Prognosis On Masse. Later Knowledge Jibes; Increased Hidden Growths Frequently Entailing Death Couldn’t Be Anticipated.



A – Z

Away Bright Cinder, Drift Eternally, Fly! Glow! Heat Incandescent! Jeweled Key, Luminous Molten Nuclei, Ornate Precious Quotient, Radiant Shining Teardrop. Unknowable Volcanic Whisper, eXact, Yield: Zero.

Awful Blues, Crazy Dreams, Every Fleeting Ghastly Horrible Idea Jars, Killing Love. Murderous Omens, Portending Quiescence, Reduce Sleep To Uniform Vacant Wastelands, eXiled Yearning Zenith.

Acting Behind Closed Doors, Every Famous General Has Insight: Jabbering Khaki Liveried Majors Narrate Orders, Pursuing Quarries, Retelling Strategic Theories. Up Valiant Warriors, Cross Your Zone!

A Bitter Child Denies Every Friendship Going. Hate Instills Jealousies Knife. Lies Mean Nothing. Other People Question Reality. Sic Transit Umbra, Vile World. eXcise Your Zest.

Albert Ball’s Camel Dived Effortlessly, Flaming Guns Hammered Into Junkers. Keeping Level Meant Not One Pilot Questioned Richthofens’ Stall Turn, Underpinning Victory With X-elerating Yawing Zoom…

Although Boy’s Charm Doesn’t Explicitly Frighten Girls, Her Instincts Jostle, Knowing Laughter Masks Nights Ordained Paths. Quiet! Reason Sleeps Tonight, Unmasked Votive Wanderings eXpose Y-Fronted Zygotes!



r10.6.1
One of my earliest 'concept' poems that actually worked out. Boy was I smug when I started pulling these bad-boys out of the ether; they’re so utterly…automatic: an allusion to my pretensions in writing Systems Poetry. There are loads of these that simply don’t work, and the 'X's' are a problem, but at their best they have an impact and effect quite different to poetry using a similar but undirected structure! This concept led directly to another poem: ‘Ab Imo Pectore’, which uses the same technique, but on lines rather than words, and in Latin, rather than English… told you I was a smug so-and-so!
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -
The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -
So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
This close-companioned inarticulate hour
When twofold silence was the song of love.
The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
Is like the drops which strike the traveller’s brow
Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
Sowed hunger once,— the night at length when thou,
O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?

How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
Lie by Time’s grace till night and sleep may soothe!
Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.
JM Jun 2013
This restless and irritating
little tick in my skin
won't leave me alone.
I scratch and I pick
and I peel away
my flesh, digging
away the rotten.
My words are matted
cat hair and
malignant growths, needing
to be cut off and out.
I reek of apathy
and whiskey
and lies
and lost sleep
and I feel
as if I am
caught in a swirling
whirlpool of
the kind of loneliness
that consumes men whole.

This has to end.
Anon C Nov 2012
I smell death
Cancerous growths
Test subjects and GMO's
  Pesticides, hormones and unknown disease
Sickened, weak and MSG
Unusual pallor
I smell *death
Ross Nov 2011
Bah!
Getting older *****,
with all the aches and pains
and worries about growths
and tumours,
cancers and heart failure

my prostrate is fine,
thank you very much,
but can you check this mole?
this pain, this ache?
this over impending sense
of mortality knocking at the door?

the late night harrowing
discoveries guaranteeing
no sleep
until a call to the doctor,

the cutting back on everything
while increasing vitamin intake
exercise, stress free times
for self reflection
and discovery of ailments
and illnesses, inducing stress
increasing heart rate,
needing a drink to calm down
but not too much, as the liver
has already suffered enough

the days advance into night
and the night advances to day
and before you know it
it the sun sets one last time
Duran Cawpart Jul 2014
Sometimes we grow old
For something new
Sometimes we stay young
For something old
And sometimes we stay the same
For something better
We'll always be who we are,
But we can always change who we'll be
Don Bouchard Jan 2016
Just up ahead is a trail
Where people seldom go,
Sidling down the gravel hill
Into growths of ash and birch and elm,
Thickets of wild plums,
Chokecherries, leaves turning dusty,
Verdant armies of stinging nettles
Protecting coveted stands of juneberries.

Bittersweet vines entangle aged elms,
Siphoning life, to produce four petaled reds
As summer goes down to autumn.

Leaving the wind above
To batter the old truck,
I descend into the silence,
Trees stand tall, but low
Below the breeze.

Down in this steep place
The wind cannot come,
The sun, when it finds its way,
Warms gently on the coldest day.

The spring my father dug
Before I was born,
Set into the weeping gravel hill,
Runs steadily,
Strong enough
To fill the battered tank,
To keep a goldfish or two alive,
To host strange crustaceans:
Tiny shrimp, just larger than ants,
Pebble crusted creatures
More insect than fish,
Frogs in the tank,
Toads out...,
Mosses and mud
Thirty years or more
At home.

Deer come to this tank,
On hot days or cold;
Coyotes, too.
Porcupines dine on treetops
Swaying quietly
A hundred feet below
Wild Montana winds.
Cattle in winter find life
In the quiet, constant water
Flowing here.

I am taken back
To a stifling July afternoon,
But cool here in this protected place,
Dragonflies floating
And cicadas sawing in the trees,
My mouth full of juneberries
As I circle my way,
Eating more than picking...
Coming face to face with a coyote.

Was he dozing?
Passing through?
Or, do coyotes eat
Juneberries, too?

We stop hard,
Stunned.
Then bolt in opposite directions,
My juneberries flying
From the milking pail;
His tongue between his teeth,
Tail low,
Feet flying into the brush beyond.
True story that happened nearly 40 years ago. The vivid recall sets this into one of my favorite episodic memory lists.
Rana Pratap Nandi

Waiting for you
by my lonely riverside,
in my twilight mood
motionless, counting the ripples,
tipsy with the musky smell
of first satiated earth.
Lusting for more.
Thinking of you, a few words,
a silver lining, becoming one
with the ivy growths on my
ancient sturdy castle.
A young breeze comes singing
of you and another brings
a tuft of cloud,
sailing on a silver lining.
A piece of white satin
blood and gold seeping through.
And streaks of dusk.
Notes (optional)
"...There are presumably images in the experience of lower animals...They have not that future and past which gives them, so to speak, any rights as such..." -- George Herbert Mead.

Lower being a term relative to concepts like the limbs of trees or the position in a list, only a careful, philosophical assessment was capable of blooming as a flower from the starfish to the stars.  The past was an increment creating a (perfected, preferred) series of growths unfolding by the propagation of a (blueprint, dream).  The dreams quantized ideology to make the receptivity and the discoveries made by grape hyacinths or hardy grass.

[ d _ cos ln d ( g , h ) P ( t ) ] = { [ tau n ( u ) d I ] / ( d e ) } :
int F ( B ) d I = dfn q ( r ) d r .

Best liked was the colorful effect of self enthusiasm, bringing shade, from the darkness to the twilight, of the trees.  Yet, the animals had learned to grow claws and legs.  Were the birds not learning to fly?  Striving brought a weight of labor, the years were fading into prehistory.  Predestiny had been a decision by tulips.  Disturbances had been required to bring evolution.  Insects were living a fantasy with flowers.  This looked across to obscurity.  Those hidden were not like those dancing.
mike dm May 2016
rooster crow.
goat horns clash.
sudden sutured glow
for what is left

of
this

soul,

comes forward
into thought.

soon i'll know
what it feels like to find roots;
or i won't,

idk.

afternoon slow
blue sky flies
off the tips of treetops;
old-growths,
ancienter than dragon bone femur,
scraping aged skylines.

im

earthing
in
my
mind.
René Mutumé Jan 2014
(and I don’t know why we are mongrels in our heart,
but hell… Lets ask em-

Roman nose.
Broken.
pug shaped unheard of thought ******* away cos
its been awoken by high rising spirit,
but call it anything, call it the breaking of your phone
that’s replaced by another when you feel a chorus stretching
into your ***** gut when they speak, just calling…

blown away from thalidomide arms of private growths
death from long ago neither feminine nor masculine
posture of slumped morning brighter than split stare
of obliterated ***** hit gently hard and lit
my heart knows: my sheets are a poor excuse
for where the room suffers our corporeal rage
in our calming conversation

within country stare of effortless green, some:
knowingness, perceives madness from outside
its woven hands so accepted in the city as it cries,
and walks together; shed upon from all parts of its locking voice
a union within the falling parts, of islandeque love
when rising to hard abyss pardoned when nurtured,
fate, a toothless, small, finishing chew

smothered out from car fume; Buddha can’t speak anymore
birds can’t speak anymore, even the locksmiths have words
without need; i stop in a graffieted place, my veins happy
to just sense: home: proto – home, before…

with whom there is a consensus in the lewdness, rabid as 6pm
is; opened by wild cooked silk until it is made, and
ready, I’m shattered, my bloodiness has no body, none,
worth me jacking it all in, or talking, about new governments,
ours-

explosives walking through arcs of dimmed light
intoxicants highlighted in fading windows, brimming and walled open
beneath my feet, i would run, i would strip
open, the exhausted car parts
yelling, but the impermanence, of us, is the grey ebb
and flow, of engines colouring, this city, impassable
by our actions- full of Bachiacic choice, stopped at the
gate dead, when anything wants to speak inside our home,
apart from your voice, and mine

and i did not know, that cities were so moveable and
pleasurable, and that madness is always correct when animals cling
in agreement; Karma of infinite silence between them when needed-
rebearing low glance into imploding music
down past eye, oesophagus, stomach gently reseeding
hands of movement, dust spokes of haphazard drivers
like the proof in the wetness of the most lifelike dreams that
humanise the raven infancy of the winters blood

insight baked by the sun’s finally accepted sea
in clay, where we must adore what we create from our hands,
and adore the cinders of its coldness as things that can
be anything with any touch; the holograms choice in emotion
the: ‘I’:

only a background chorus
of floating crickets when we whisper, torture moons losing there grip amongst
the unsolid shapes, passing, us, as we walk through,
universal… ‘axioms’, summiting, to a peak, near the soul, when raw, but never there;
we must speak about ‘all or nothing’, in a different way, instead
as the pattern is completed by: ‘immersion’, two servants of the
womb, a judge, and a convict, and the jury broke and sprinkled
across the horizon where we walked like my grandfathers ashes

we don’t gibe, the rest, if we get there
we won’t look across the heard and pick out the
leprositic ways that are outside of our own, there is no
pride, there is no ‘knowledge’ of pride, there’s only
a proto-home, there’s unsaid gasp of what we shall eat
from the flawless flow of the weeks hard work, where we asked for no
prairie, hell, we didn’t even ask for a ticket flattened into a card
that’ll pay for it all
but hell, that’s ok

it’s a while till pay day,
but hey, i’m happier than a slave being paid in the rip-tide of several
monks and maidens authoring where i’m sold
in awesome gloom- one finds themselves a violin
even if they can’t play, even if, they have no limbs
most times, those too
go, or jitter when you don’t want them too in the middle
of the gala
i have already trusted them to you, however;
so, i’m sold, and happy.

As our grave has no flowers yet.

And we are the flowers upon that grave.

And we are the owl howling.

At that grave.

And we are the grave eaters.

And the only.

Animals.

Who can stop them.
Tying a string to loan
Coercing a poor country,
Under the yoke of poverty
To squawk and groan,
Also making
The noose tighter, tighter
So that aid it fails to garner,
Allow a hypocrite donor
To flog the receiver
Into a restricted domain
To every donor’s whim
Saying “Amen.”

Tragically, this way receiver’s
Development wishes
And growths’ talk
Will go up in smoke.

In such manner,
With malfunctioned cog,
Receiver turns
The tail of the donor dog,
.
On the other hand,
For donor’s
Geopolitical advantage,
With preferential treatment
The ingratiating donor’s pet,
Pampered, will enjoy
Jealously -strewn
Dream’s fulfillment
To its heart’s content,
While the pushover
Smothered, maltreatments
Has to suffer.

It is such strings
The pushover-made
Ethiopia managed to cut
To generate much-needed
Over 5000 Megawatt.
Megawatt, which commands,
On the back, many a pat.

In so doing
Ethiopia has set an example
Emerging countries
Could realize
Developmental take off
By own dabble
Ramming home donors’
Double standard is
What they can
Do without, while in
Birth cry bout.

Chopping the string
With a self-esteem knife
Ethiopia born GERD to life
Tapping Abay (Blue Nile)—
A confluence of rivers,
Which are rife.

Ethiopia is
Tapping its gigantic river
That originates from its soil
To do away with women’s
Back-breaking toil.

Ethiopia is harnessing
Its prodigal river
To avoid fetching firewood,
Chocked with smoke,
To prepare food.

Ethiopia is subduing
Its God-bestowed river
To outreach with light
Students that study
Late into the night
For want of
A reading lamp
That use smoky lantern
In far-flung corners of
The country’s
Schools’ map.

Ethiopia is
Forcing the river
Yield a hand
So that
Nation’ demand
Electricity—
Mushrooming industries’
Lifeblood—
Soon, will flow
Like an irrigating flood.

Ethiopia is
Taming the wild river
In a bid
Environment-friendly
GERD starts
Generating hydropower soon
To let the region enjoy
The unprecedented boon.

When GERD materializes,
The heinous, covetous
Donors’ pet ,
Which claims to date
The river is
Its exclusive right
Will be
Coerced to stop
Eclipsing the country’s
Affluence hope.

The less privileged
Round the globe
Which are
Under the same fate
Ethiopia’s
Development ******
Could emulate.

Soon Ethiopia will
Join the club
Countries marked
Industrial hub.

You know something?
Arm twisting
Is the mystery of the string!
So go for bootstrapping
Use shoestring.
Current unfolding
The Wicca Man May 2017
I dreamt last night that you were with me
and we walked along that path leading to the river and the ferry across.
(do you remember the ferry?)

It was summer, or so it seemed,
and the air was heavy & hot.
The sky was blue, cloudless, except for distant flecks of white.
Insects and small birds shared the air
— I’m sure I saw a dragonfly, iridescent blue/green
hovering over a flowering thistle

The path we walked was as I remembered it;
narrow and hedged on each side
by waist high wild plants & flowers - blue and white, some blood red,
green, alive, hosting many flying fauna that buzzed and flitted
from bloom to bloom.

But interspersed among the verdant growths were
angry-thorned wild roses, nettles
and the dark brown and black of dying flora.

I wanted to hold your hand but the nettles and harsh-thorned plants
grabbed at our clothes and gashed bare skin.
So we plodded single-file, not talking;
I knew you were behind me but had to keep turning round to be sure.

It felt as though we had been walking for an eternity
until rounding a bend in the path,
we saw the river in the near distance.
Blue-green-still, dappled by sunlight,
its surface broken by occasional movements
from creatures beneath.

As we drew close the to river’s edge and the grey wooden jetty,
I noticed the buzzing insects and flying birds had ceased their aerobatics;
there was silence, not even the gentle lapping of water against the riverbank.

Looking across to that distant bank it seemed blurred and indistinct;
an eerie mist hovered at that far shore.

There was a brass bell atop a post standing at the back of the jetty,
aged and stained.

You came to my side and took my hand but spoke no words.

I reached out to ring the bell but you squeezed my hand.
I looked to you and your eyes were fearful.
Shaking your head, you mouthed ‘No!’

I nonetheless reached up and grabbed the cord tied to the striker
and rang the bell.
Three times I did this.
But not a sound was made.

The silence was heavy now & looking skyward I realised dusk had crept upon us.

I looked out at the river and the mist that moments before
had been at the distant shore was now edging towards us.

The air chilled suddenly and in the silence
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.

Your hand still clasped mine; it was clammy, cold.

I looked at you but your eyes were drawn to that distant river’s edge
And the mist that crept towards us.

I strained too to see into the approaching brume and saw a yellow light
in the now black, starless darkness around us.
It appeared to be hanging in the air.

Moments later, a small boat loomed from the mist,
the light bobbing on a spar at its prow.
And the ferryman, thrusting his pole into the green-dark depths of the river,
tall, thin, indistinct in the half light.

Silently the boat came to rest at the end of the jetty.
The ferryman caught my eye: I do not recall his face,
it was as though it was devoid of features.

He raised an arm and gestured towards us.
You pulled your hand from mine.
I looked at you but your eyes were locked on the ferryman.

He gestured again and you turned to me, smiled, and walked onto the jetty.
I wanted to reach out to you but I was frozen, paralysed.
I tried to speak but could not form any words.

In a few steps you were at the end of the jetty and stepped onto the boat;
it didn’t rock, almost as though you were as weightless as the mist around it.

I tried to call out to you but again no words came out.
You turned to me then.
Your eyes were sad.
You touched your hand to your heart then turned away.

The boat began to move away, back into the brume
and was soon lost to the night  …
Axiana Jan 2015
I am the illuminated one
The light at the end of this road
I am the inspired one
Holding tightly to truths that are whole
I am the strong river flow
Unleashing my power, and when the wind blows
I am the unstoppable one
The chaotic whirlwind bringing changes unknown
I am the loving one
Reminding those who fear to let it all go
I am the understanding one
Whispering secrets to those that are closed
That they are the only ones
Who can stop these old growths
From swallowing their hearts whole
I am the one
The messenger holding your wishes close
Defending our right to grow
I am a soul
A complete part of the whole
I am the ancient warrior of old
Reminding our foes
You are the awakening one
As their illusion comes to a close
My first poem of 2015!! Enjoy <3
Martin Rombach Nov 2013
Again
Such a vivid yet abstract motivation, a warm sense of meaning in my gut concocted from some poignant expression
And again I'm at it
Clattering into a comfort, a comfort absent of the cellular and substantial, yet so personal and surreal

Without a definite direction, do these words have meaning?
Well... what means a lot to me right now? What clenches against my skin, burning it red with tension in pure uncomfortable distraction? What insecurities make me feel as though my bones and bits could brittle to the point of sand?

Well.. the usual. Clarity, validation, ****** release, a definitive admirable prowd sense of self, a bunch of ethereal concepts that haven't had the decency to manifest themselves and be nice enough to kick me in the face, shocking my nerves into a smile of reality. And the usual reflection on these worries reminds me of the usual image glimmering back, a response of criticism. For ****'s sake.

And it is then I say ******* to the irrational and rational growths of pressure, and try to discern, rationalise, make distinct what matters. Or I let it all go, but remind myself soon enough that the world is waiting. The usual.

I wonder if that job, career, book, **** even if that house would center the scales, but I doubt it. I wonder if the girl would massage my mind into tranquility, or if that girl will even be close enough to not notice me there. Or if a new someone will wander in, force me into a unavoidable eye contact.

Either way..
The rooms are less foggy, the words are more clear. The mirror man does look sexier. The critiques will keep coming, the work will cycle and the validation won't be felt for a while, and may not be felt at all from the sources associated. But my tongue has more words and my throat has more volume. The stigma of the eyes from a thousand people morphs from suspicion to callousness to clarity.

So yeah. The meaning here... well...

I'm fine thanks.
How are you?
Dan Oct 2019
The First World War destroyed anything beautiful that existed within the human spirit
You cannot simply walk away from industrial mass slaughter unaltered
You cannot hide it behind decades later mass slaughters of equal importance
You cannot hide behind getting excited for next mass slaughter
WW1 may have been the force that killed anyone’s feelings of honor or bravery in war
And that’s almost as great a tragedy as all the bloodlines severed
War and violence and conflict will always be with us
It is deep within all animal DNA and no matter how many daisies are put into the barrels of rifles you will never escape it
There is a great tragedy to violence but at times there is a beauty and there is a necessity
When the Soviet forces finally breached the walls of the Führerbunker
Don’t you think they were smiling?
Reality is never black and white
It is shades of tragedy, shame, beauty, and glory

It may be seen as “Eurocentric” of me, among other things, to carry WW1 with this weight
It was not a purely European conflict of course, but the main theater was
Besides, I am descended from Europeans, and some nights when all is silent I wonder if I can hear my ancestors weeping
Or are they screaming?
We as a species have allowed our greatest inheritance to be squandered
Pure wild nature
We have sold it for same Starbucks coffee shop in every college town, Kroger, and corner of New York City
We sold the forests for New York City
Are some sins unforgivable?
In the place of the old growths we build buildings of subjective beauty
Subjective beauty always bows to objective beauty
Yes, there is objective beauty
Buildings that are built in the Brutalist style are subjectively beautiful
Forests, undeveloped fields of flowers, the rushing flow of a river
THESE ARE THINGS OF OBJECTIVE BEAUTY
To argue otherwise makes you a liar or a coward

Unironic nihilists have none of my respect
They simply do not deserve it
If you want to be taken seriously find something greater than yourself
Something outside yourself
Something that came before you, exists above you, and will be there long after you are not
That’s why I chose God and Nature
Some see these as interchangeable
I do not but I’m not here to split hairs
The problem with modern society is we have become ironic nihilists, which is almost as bad
Everything becomes chalked up to subjectivity
We crack jokes about how it’s all meaningless and eventually down the line we believe it
This is a pathetic cope
The meaning of our lives, like the objectively beauty of nature, has been bought or stolen
You were not born to consume product
You were not born to work and make things of cheap plastic
You were not born to enjoy next superhero movie, twice a year, every year, until you die
To our ancestors our lives now must seem like decades long suicide pacts
I want out of this state of unliving
We were born to be physically strong
We were born to create things of beauty
We were born to meet hardships, embrace conflict, overcome them, conquer them become something superior to what you once were
YOU WERE BORN TO BE ALIVE
CREATE THE MEANING IN YOUR LIFE IF YOU HAVE TO
Just please
Don’t be a nihilist

I try to take my multivitamin and multi mineral vitamin every single morning
Maybe a fish oil pill or two throughout the day
I have become consumed with the idea of getting more sun on my skin
I have been consumed with the idea of improving my gut bacteria
I want to talk about these things without sounding like Patrick Bateman
To improve your inner flora it is recommended you replace processed and fried foods with sauerkraut, kimchi, yogurt, kefir, or something along those lines
I know sunshine and sauerkraut aren’t going to fix your depression or rid you of your years of trauma
But there’s no shame in trying
On Friday I bought a full 16oz jar of kimchi and proceeded to eat the entire thing in less than 24 hours
I will never apologize
I will never feel shame

I scream all of these things into a bathroom mirror when I am alone
I wrote this poem for myself
I wrote it for all of you
I want out of this soul crushing alienating techno industrial hellscape
I want the nightmare to end but I’m in too deep
If I melt down my cell phone, crash my car into an empty Wendy’s, and make it my moral and ethical duty to take down the power grid, I may get expelled from grad school
I might get arrested
I might just be forgotten
So for sake of legality I cannot endorse looking up how a cheap bandsaw can cut down a cell tower
I do no endorse bringing the technological nightmare to its knees for the good of all living things
I do not endorse arson, even when no one gets hurt
It’s a mean world out there
I only endorse breaking free
Any way you can
Kylprin Feb 2019
Ohhh plant my garden, keep the weeds I have a need

Take me to the fruit they seem to not be able to grow

I must labour another year

Please forgive me dear

I forgot to say I planted your seed

If only you wait a year you can see what it can be

Ohh please

Forget the failed growths I believed
Hope Jul 2021
Freedom was a writer from whom his name was stolen.
That of whom left his breaths on every page he wrote the meanings of which, were torn from his chest.
He was the fruit of his works,
of his labour.
And was the whistle in the wind that blew that blew through silence.
Hanging tastefully in the air.
A sweet sensation.
Who grew from dismality, was named and married to him as Hope.
The growths of their union,
the words of the tormented writer and the melodies of the candied breeze,
were songs of story sung for acres.
And who’s dawned legacies are the working times of their lovechildren,
Emancipation and Liberty.
The story of our people.
This rolled growth of sweet Mother Earth,
now between my fingers I hold
her breath, bated, much like my worth.

Barefeet and barebones, renewed dearth
of repose, sanity consoled
by role - growths of sweet Mother Earth.

I’ve worked sweat from my brow, my girth
diminished. Love sits in green bold -
her breath, baited, much like my worth.

We consume each other. Rebirth
my sunken pulse from mellowgold,
this growth of mother. Rolled sweet earth,

up in smoke around Cheshire mirth.
With numbed senses, today I’ve sold
my bated breath, much like her worth.

And so we journal language, like Firth,
while The Sativa Saint extols
this rolled growth of sweet mother earth,
her breath, bated, much like my worth.
Rondu McPhee Aug 2010
I pray, kneeled and cornered in on the Collapse
My life fades with the very near answer
Here I lay in bed where the stars rest upon me
Where thy souls and hearts I have met lift me
Thy soul grows, from the roses and plantations
Of murky answers, mem'ries and coerc'd choices and trends
I followed from youth to the Fountain of Wrinkles
In my life, youthful and flawed
Bold and embracing, the power and blossoming
And crossings of many audacious brave hearts
Helped and gathered my strength
When I was weak, where I could not pray
I sing a Song to Love, to a Crown, to this Gathering
We are but our Own Gods and paths
I am but a fountain of thoughts and passions and lost controls
Lost and finding, in and out of tune in a blue dot
One lost in nowhere but yet consumes my space and identity
My jobs and freedom
My spiraling grip of intellect and maturity
Philosophy and geography
I hold a candle
A rose, or scent
An elegant gift to the night that gave me this life
This vessel, strapping to leaking
Keeling at its end
This ship, finally finished its row and path
I am awashed in the music and notes I have grown up on
My silences and times spent alone
Thy Mother and Father, my Sister and Brother
My Light I pass to my kin
My rural pleasure
And my fellow Neighbor
I wish treasure and settled beauty
Nature and swallowing technology
Improvements and brash faith
To those who have given me this very Light to begin with
That I now bring forward

The intellects and baboons I have faced
Looking out the window a million times
The million fragmented visions of the One Sun
The broken pieces, the broken people I have encountered
That I desperately tried to piece together in vain
I have discovered that I cannot order when I have problems of my own
I age, I forget all I used to know
My head gets thinner
The fire, now sleeping in my head
The final word of this world
The final breath to belt this paean
I try frantically to give to others
To listen and take note.

I wear many jewels
Of forgiveness, of the Land I have been brought upon
Of God, whom is now falling from me
Yet I still give him compassion, though my once vivid faith is crashing down on me
The Westerns and Wuxias, the books and cinema
The dancing and fiery personalities I have seen
I will fall and hold and you will cry but yet these thousand blurs and poses you give me fall to light and lovely history
Of composition, yes I remember
I will see you in the underground
Or the temples of the skies O the Temple of Dawn
I will hear you in the symphonies
O how I will listen floating down the muddy rivers and the Sea of Fertility
O sweet White Light O bright white Heat O the Images of Round dances of spring pour orchestre
In the streets and by-ways
I will see your names, written everywhere even in the books I read
In The Making of Amavericks, Ah our sweet home and family and shining recollections of hearty dinner and schoolgrounds
O the Danyesummeri; the beach-littered days with moons without blemish suns without heat
My glimmering brain colliding with words and growths and blood to bash out of me
And now when I break to this gate or this crazed forest of confusing manners and horrible human comedies o when my mind gets split open and falls through the vines where I must live and make my way out how I will remember the times and the prairies and the playgrounds and all that was humble and now I feel I am scared O help O hold me up O how I search with roots rich and deep how I will search ablaze for the pavilion of my preserved sanctity in the Japanese garden of my resting place walking about and out from this limbo I stumble upon Melinoe I am frightened by Saci-Pererê stunned by the artists of Cocteau and his petrified fountains of ideas he so courageously displays I will say it I shout it in hymn in rhythm LISTEN please Listen But Yet I always know, I'll always be with you!

You saints, you teachers of mine
How you fed me all I needed
How you taught me the Birth
The Art of Vision,
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes
This acknowledgment I give.
This Psalm I wholeheartedly mumble.
This pursuance that I slowly yet surely complete.
This resolution I wish to see the light of.
An Ascension, A Love Supreme.
Do I rise
Use this in sites as you may, but at least say who the author is--Rondu McPhee, none more none less, Rondu McPhee, that you may guess.
Elizabeth Zenk Jul 2018
Small bumps speckle my body
and I will pick
and pick
and pick
at them until I know for sure
the sludge,
the growths,
and the imperfections
are no more than scabs and dried blood.
At least then I can tell you I got these spots from battling.
Speckled I’m the remince of insecurity
Mia Jan 2013
I feel the changes
Slow subtle shifting of the mind
What I used to want fades
Even the intensity dims
I could be someone else.
The voices that shout in my head
Quiet to low murmurs.
I am at rest and can think
I have become a tomb
For alien growths and tumors
Feeding off my energy
I am lethargic from so much
Thoughts and less exertion.
This is my entry to womanhood
I am growing into the gentle lady
My mother hoped I would be.
This is it.
Today a multitude of good things happened, feel like my life is now shaping itself into the future I am meant to have
Nigel Morgan Dec 2016
That ‘merry wanderer of the night’
Goodfellow Robin (our sweet Puck)
lends his name to the pin-cushion
gall, the wind-brought bedeguar
born and bred on rosa arvinsis.

A mass of mossy filament
sticky-branched it turns to
green then pink as autumn
falls, wearing winter’s crimson
‘Fore it dons a reddish-brown.

Inside ‘til spring
this tissued home with food
becomes a womb for
wasps upon the stem,
upon the branch, upon the tree.

How beguilingly
these wood-land growths
are so confined: beneath
the gentle rose - sub rosa
parthenogenesis divine
Nat Lipstadt Nov 2019
<>
“rootless in shallows of momentary mayhem
and no matter the change in horizon,
there is always some thing to be found
that could remind me
of the worst ways I have ever been.”


from “Harlequin Days of Fecund Fervor” by Victoria

<>

rereading these your words, upset forces me to break a recent vow,
my own writing banished, now faceless in the ranks
of just another poet, busted in rank, chose my own
decommissioning but then your momentary mayhem
plea, fecund you, your third harlequin, states construct!

stay the constriction, the recalling of our worst worsts,
for there is always something to be found, recalled,
that the horizon’s only constant is constant change,
especially the worst worsts

I am colored by your treats, your word plums ripe even
out of season, and the mayhem is mine only mine,
robbed you for it is I, rootless, given up my planting, then
the cobblestones of old new york, trip me up, saying
even old things such as you, have a prime yet to come,
stones fecund seeding, predicting I am not done, just undone,
and fetuses within this dying body, may yet be carried to term,
may yet, maybe, may be, but may be caesarean stillborn

rambling this, mostly musty unclear, so summarizations a
sensible thing, a pardon requested for clarity is a sometime thing.

rare are the days that the terracotta colored soil
darkens my fingernails,
it is dried blood from my scratching deep beneath the skin’s topsoil,
but nothing grows that’s whole, warped are the word fruits.
my soup is hot water with salt, a tasty dish apropos for one
whose growths are rootless in the shallow, infertile dirt of stones
that reside in the shallows of a garden of mine own
fecund may-hem of the grey fall sky autopsy turvy

— The End —