"gruel" poems
The rat smells the air, squeaks in alarm and runs off.
Black boots come into view. With the sharp tip of a sword.
I crouch in the dark, behind the bins of *******
The boots walk on by. The sword, poking into corners.
All the while, eyes of glowing red, within deep sockets
of a musty old skull, scan for signs.
I look at my hands. The festered and rotting flesh.
My bones showing through. The stench unbearable.
Glad my nose fell off last night.
The timing was off. It was just a little sneeze.
PLOP! Right in my gruel.
Every one at school laughed.
Skeleton Puberty *****
And now, Dad is mad. Just cause I waxed the hearse
and didn't use "Ear Wax". You could hear him rattle
all day. What's wrong with the "Toe Jam Wax"?
Wait till I catch sis. She went and showed mom my
mags. "Raw! Boo To The Bones". I'll bet dad had
mags like these when he was a teenager.
They have good stories. The pics are just a bone-us.
I think it's safe now. I'll just sneak into the house.
Just sit and look innocent.
How did you find me?
A whole trail of pieces? Sheesh!
I know. I'm grounded. Not for the wax job?
The Mags!?.
Skeleton puberty *****
My Halloween offering for Oct. 12th
Oct 11, 2010
Oct 11, 2010 at 9:26 PM UTC
This treasure was discovered in a bamboo thicket --
I washed the bowl in a spring and then mended it.
After morning meditation, I take my gruel in it;
At night, it serves me soup or rice.
Cracked, worn, weather-beaten, and misshapen
But still of noble stock!
5.5k
Listening to the song ‘daddy, super daddy’,
Worried and sad thinking about the father long gone,
While reading the news of a father who killed his girl child by hitting her against the wall
To some fathers and children
A father and son didn't feel anything more than that.
Remember uploading in Facebook, the news of the soaring price of tapioca in five star hotels
The tsunami of saliva which the tender yellow tapioca Crowned by curry leaves and red chilly created, is in the throat.
Today noon,
After lots of news
I am cooking tapioca raw
A green bottle is nearby
When the smell of cooking tapioca with salt hit the olfactory senses
Father came
You don’t have to be the Son of God to resurrect the dead
Told Jesus that just the smell of cooking tapioca is enough
Compound divided into patches, ashes, manure,
Properly cut tapioca plants
Mother rushing to get the rice gruel
Between play and squabbles
A lad is walking around with torn trousers, shirtless
Tapioca, tapioca, tapioca
Tapioca, tapioca, tapioca
For sleeping, eating, hunger
Faith,
Tapioca, tapioca
phoo
For rice gruel, mid noon
At twilight when hunger develops faith
For last supper,
Dried tapioca
Lucky that one who was born after an enema
Was not named ‘black sheep’
With a green chilly, raw
In the shade of the green bottle
When I touch the tapioca,
Daddy is dancing
Daddy
Super daddy.
Feb 7, 2014
Feb 7, 2014 at 8:21 AM UTC
I
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
In the flat country near by
Where they dug him out,
His last gruel of winter seeds
Caked in his stomach,
Naked except for
The cap, noose and girdle,
I will stand a long time.
Bridegroom to the goddess,
She tightened her torc on him
And opened her fen,
Those dark juices working
Him to a saint's kept body,
Trove of the turfcutters'
Honeycombed workings.
Now his stained face
Reposes at Aarhus.
II
I could risk blasphemy,
Consecrate the cauldron bog
Our holy ground and pray
Him to make germinate
The scattered, ambushed
Flesh of labourers,
Stockinged corpses
Laid out in the farmyards,
Tell-tale skin and teeth
Flecking the sleepers
Of four young brothers, trailed
For miles along the lines.
III
Something of his sad freedom
As he rode the tumbril
Should come to me, driving,
Saying the names
Tollund, Grauballe, Nebelgard,
Watching the pointing hands
Of country people,
Not knowing their tongue.
Out here in Jutland
In the old man-killing parishes
I will feel lost,
Unhappy and at home.
4.5k
I enjoy watching my baby boy’s drama
In his room, on his bed among his toys
What a superb imagination
Translated in a form of play...
A battle between the amazing legacy of heroes
Put George Lucas in the house of shame
With his famous Luke Sky walker,
In Star Wars saga
Have Sam Raimi’s done his research well?
In creating Spiderman 3?
With this “genius in the making” young child
Left alone to build his creativity
I am convinced with obvious prediction...
Hollywood superheoes would be doomed..
Here is a 2 year old boy
In Spideman suit, Acting Spiderman,
hitting the Angry bird jet
The jet punches Spiderman back.
Then, Mama is forced to sleep with Spiderman
Forced Mama again, this time to love the Man of Steel
After the gruel some battle,
Jet & Spiderman decided to sleep together
in the pink hammock with Tigger.
The proud child is happy ,
His mission is accomplished!
A bottle of luke warm milk...
Well done! He earns his trophy
Tonight he helps to save the world.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 5:32 AM UTC
the nature of this night
spreads its thin harvest upon my table
a gruel and water porridge feast
with the fanfares of her jaundiced hand
many more lined up with eager grin
for the warmth of paupers kinship
thin blanket wrapped round our shoulders
snow gathers at feet
she captures the moment on paper
the image of all of us gathered like when we were young
the grandiose illustration
with its brilliant colour fanfare with
jugglers and wine swilling laughing men blinded by drink
chorus line of female dancers who wear costumes of the hundred years war
lead the assault on the last bastions of the ignorance of bliss
all descrying that we can ill afford to be sleeping
while empires are built in our namesake
the so daintily shod soldiers whos feminine wiles misunderstood
have taken over the dancehall beneath us
and have taken up song
the grandiose illustration
caught by her pen on sketch pad
has leanings to the Marxist revolutions
and philosophys of the rhetorical
but in the end we join them and
drink the port sing the song
a thousand years of tales to be told
in the eyes of a single girls sweet thoughts
epic landscapes filled with noble men and storybook girls
the grandiose illustration
shows the two of us on the beach
with the sun racing down to touch the high towers of miami
and fill the laughing joys of thouse who toss and
tumble in the breaking waves
the nature of this night
in one small corner of the illustration
a simple window with the shade drawn
that says goodnight
Feb 6, 2014
Feb 6, 2014 at 1:03 PM UTC
In a dilapidated three-room hut
I’ve grown old and tired;
This winter cold is the
Worst I’ve ever suffered through.
I sip thin gruel, waiting for the
Freezing night to pass.
Can I last until spring finally arrives?
Unable to beg for rice,
How will I survive the chill?
Even meditation helps no longer;
Nothing left to do but compose poems
In memory of deceased friends.
3.8k
Since I have no other way
And am in utmost need,
Painter girl,
I filch one of the eight lambs
You have made plump with
Green jackfruit leaves and
Thin gruel with paddy bran.
I will take it to the goat market
And sell it in a jiffy.
I assure you
I will not sell it
To any butcher-
The lamb you made chubby
With sweet sweet words
And much much petting
And nice lilting croons,
Mixing and mixing
Greens with browns.
Don’t be sad, painter girl.
I hear you come running
Searching for your lamb and
Cry out “O my dearest one
Who went grazing in the green fields,”
As the sun in your canvas
Sets in the sea and
The saffron blends with the dusk.
And, see your tears mingle
With the black that you wanted
To adorn the brow of
The naughtiest of them.
Painter girl,
It’s all because I have no other go
And it’s of utmost need.
I could have broken into the
Two-storeyedhouse you sketched
And stolen the ornaments in
Secret lockers that even
You are unaware of.
Or, I could have
Palmed the golden girdle
Of the beautiful ***** princess
Whose portrait you made,
The one with a nose stud.
Or, drugged her with my kisses
And plundered the harem.
Or else, I could have
Entered the snake shrine
Guarded by the dark serpents
That you often drew
And fled the country with
The precious jewel.
Or, I could have shot down
The birds that you drew
And sold them grilled.
I could have axed down the
Mahagony trees you nurtured
And sold them as timber.
I could have blinded your Kanhaiah
And made him a beggar
To become rich from the alms he earned.
I could have enslavened his Gopis
And handed them over
To the red light streets.
Painter girl,
It’s not for anything of this sort.
I take just one of your eight lambs.
Sell it for a good price
And fulfill my need.
Now, perchance,
If a new tenant comes to rent
My brain where nothing resides
And if they pay me a fat advance,
Painter girl,
Surely will I buy back your lamb.
And tether it in your painting.
Don’t you dare say then
Don’t you say then
That you have forgotten it.
Don’t you say then
You have exhausted your stock of
Green jackfruit leaves.
(Trans from Malayalam by Ra Sh)
Nov 3, 2013
Nov 3, 2013 at 10:04 AM UTC
Suspected of attack
On fascist Graziani
He was in house arrest
As the case was with
Suspects the rest.
A prisoner of war
Then via Somalia
He was sent to Rome
Found a black lion
If left at home.
Together with
A prison inmate
From Yugoslavia
Called Julio
He made a rope
Out of a blanket
The reason
To descend down
And escape
From a tower prison.
In a show of contempt
Defying officials' attempt
To smoke out a fugitive
On the hide
The two at eventide
Returned to open fire
And attack guards
To set free prisoners
Indeed, victory was
On their side.
Leading partisans
Abdissa made it his duty
To gruel fascists
With insurgent activity.
What was the outcome?
Parallel to the allied forces
When he entered Rome
With Ethiopia's tricolor
Around his wrist
He was accorded
A warm welcome.
Then he turned his face
To allied-forces'-
'For Berlin' race
In rooting out **** troops
He spurred the pace!
Asked to stay in Europe
He said shalom
"Home sweet home!
As written on the bible
Can an Ethiopian change
His skin
or a leopard its spots?
Doing so
Will it not be a sin?"
The unsung hero
Returned to Addis
Turning Fascist and Nazis'
Wild dreams to zero!
Sep 11, 2020
Sep 11, 2020 at 11:53 PM UTC
Listen soldier to the tale of tendor nightingale
Tis a charm that soon will ease your wounds so cruel,
Singing medicine for your pain in a sympathetic strain
with a jug, jug, jug of lemonade or gruel.
Singing bandages and lint; salve and stearate without stint
Singing plenty both of liniment and lotion.
And your mixtures pushes about
And the pills for you served out
With alacrity and promptitute of motion
Singing light and gentle hands, and a nurse who understands
How to manage every sort of application.
From a poultice to leach, whom you haven't got to teach,
The way to make a poppy fomentation.
Singing pillow for you smoothed; smart and anguish smoothed,
By the rediness of feminine invention.
Singing fever thirst allayed, and the bed you've tumbled made
With a cheerful and considerate attention.
Singing succour to the brave and a rescue from the grave,
Hear the nightingale that's come to the crimea.
Tis a nightingale as strong in her heart as in her song,
To carry out so gallant an idea.
Nov 23, 2010
Nov 23, 2010 at 12:06 AM UTC
If all a top physicist knows
About the Truth be true,
Then, for all the so-and-so's,
Futility and grime,
Our common world contains,
We have a better time
Than the Greater Nebulae do,
Or the atoms in our brains.
Marriage is rarely bliss
But, surely it would be worse
As particles to pelt
At thousands of miles per sec
About a universe
Wherein a lover's kiss
Would either not be felt
Or break the loved one's neck.
Though the face at which I stare
While shaving it be cruel
For, year after year, it repels
An ageing suitor, it has,
Thank God, sufficient mass
To be altogether there,
Not an indeterminate gruel
Which is partly somewhere else.
Our eyes prefer to suppose
That a habitable place
Has a geocentric view,
That architects enclose
A quiet Euclidian space:
Exploded myths - but who
Could feel at home astraddle
An ever expanding saddle?
This passion of our kind
For the process of finding out
Is a fact one can hardly doubt,
But I would rejoice in it more
If I knew more clearly what
We wanted the knowledge for,
Felt certain still that the mind
Is free to know or not.
It has chosen once, it seems,
And whether our concern
For magnitude's extremes
Really become a creature
Who comes in a median size,
Or politicizing Nature
Be altogether wise,
Is something we shall learn.
2.3k
I’m sorry I shut you out and blamed you for my own undoing,
You see I have this cloud that hangs above my head and I had begun
To call it home.
My thoughts and feelings got lost somewhere in the condensation phase,
And I trapped them there, only allowing occasional acknowledgment of the pain
I was in, doing as much as I could so as not to show if or how I had been affected by it,
For I am my own prisoner of sorts.
I let you in my cell to feed me water and gruel, but when you asked to spend the night
I immediately pushed you out and handcuffed myself to
The illusion of accomplishment, for lo and behold, I was there supposedly
Protecting myself, abandoning you before you could abandon me.
Over time, my pride turned to boredom which turned to anger which turned
To loneliness, and I had to place the blame upon someone’s shoulders.
There were no mirrors in my cell, so I chose to blame you
For I had forgotten that I even existed.
Your kindness cut into the unripe parts of me, the parts that were not ready
To be handled so gently, where breathing is slow,
Where each time you blink is like having a windshield wiper wash away the rain
From a car so clarity can enter your veins and visceral rearview mirrors.
I unraveled while you were away, I cried over my million losses while I counted
Your continual successes, I was envious of you,
Gradually falling silent to the truth of everything that had once surrounded me.
I was afraid you no longer loved me, for I no longer wished to be loved
Nor did I feel deserving of it.
That wish was strong and I fell down a long and narrow well
Where you were not waiting for me when I finally reached the bottom.
I stayed there awhile, beneath my cloud, locked in my cell,
With the murky water and unforgiving gruel.
You called down to me from the top, your voice
Your voice
Your voice
Oh but how could I possibly forget?
That voice.
It never left,
It never lied.
I can’t promise you I won’t fall down here again,
For my heart is stubborn and I still haven’t learned
The art of removing that which has been engraved
On this selfish mind.
But for now,
I wish to stay.
Nov 19, 2012
Nov 19, 2012 at 1:20 AM UTC
Your Eminence:
Speaking of apostolic poverty
From the queen bed in your apostolic beach house
To those working two jobs to make life happen
Is pretty thin gruel –
serve it to someone else
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 3:55 PM UTC
"Tragedy of the grim fool"
Skinny little girl knows no rules
Reset her brain for grim little fool
Ate moldy food and rotten gruel.
For the growing heart she uses jagged tools
Chipped building blocks and rusted nails
Hammered souls breed a face with vales
Wearing mask her task she fails
All for food while fool set sail
Skinny little girl would scrape her knees
Hungry for fool in position to plead
Panhandle emotions dignity set free
Scorn and thorn by his laugh was she
Adored by her fans, but blind to their praise
Withered away with puffed cheeks that her tears graze
Fool applauded her corruption, endorsed her dismay
Her fans just stared as she fell of stage
With a thud she slumped to the cold paved floor
A circle gathered around once more
Scarlet fairies escaped her pores
Goodbye skinny little girl, fool has closed the door.
-Alexis J. Meighan-
Oct 22, 2012
Oct 22, 2012 at 11:44 PM UTC
What guile is this, that the Inventor of Change is cruel,
He invests not his ears on the sweat of the poor and helpless;
Like a tyrant, he feeds sweet tears to ants for a gruel,
Is he not guilty of false hope of Change to the hopeless?
How is it that he's different from his own self
In that he considers not the interest of the termites,
And being voted in by ants, is now a Mighty elf;
Is he not deceptive in his honest dealings with termites?
We must change the CHANGE, for cunning is his agenda,
Henceforth, must we not be enslaved in his guileful net
In that he entrapped the poor ants to enrich his blender,
Out of his duplicity, must we by all means be fret.
Folly it was, that he promised us as Change
To covet beacons of wealth, from the hopeless ants,
Is he not guilty of prophesying false prophesies of Change?
We must Change the CHANGE for the safety of the helpless ants.
He pledged Change, but chained the CHANGE, and left us hopeless,
Is he not guilty of duplicity, and sabotage of the nation's economy?
None of his agenda was in the interest of the poor and helpless;
We must Change the CHANGE, for CHANGE threatens the economy.
Sep 26, 2016
Sep 26, 2016 at 7:47 PM UTC
Did your English toughness lead you to reject
the ancient discontents of history,
to rather seek modern realms of ethical choice, Wystan?
There were no streets named after you,
nor monuments sculpted in the parks,
nothing that would say more than your words.
Words read and pondered in ritual
to better grasp the gruel and poverty of my own.
You talk in my sleep, Professor,
staring back at all that I am not,
teaching that art is born of humiliation.
Did the shaving mirror stare as cruelly?
The task is in the present moment,
Auden's poetry civilly requests a comment.
Feb 29, 2012
Feb 29, 2012 at 11:10 PM UTC
The temporal beauty which fades and falls,
vigor of body that to vale gives way—
dissolutions of bloom—have much to say,
as life’s costly sermon achingly calls:
“Put not your heart’s hope in gifts eyes now see
nor set store by charms easily broken.
Vibrant buds o’er which praises are spoken,
erstwhile by Fall, forgotten shall be.
But in Christ waits sure glory eternal
and by loss here that beauty there’s gaining
its resplendent weight, e’en now attaining
through Jesus intimate gem troves internal.”
God’s wisdom turns decay and frailty’s gruel
into a Homeward driving kind of fuel.
May 24, 2022
May 24, 2022 at 5:39 PM UTC
Shattered and broken
Hated and messed up
The thoughts are rotten
And everything's twisted
Like my own mind
Let us free there entwined roots
Let the society not be blind.
Blind as we were always,
We tend make promises,
When we hold thy little fingers
In our own grown ones
We tend to break promises
When thy grow as majestic as us
Because we later realise
The society existed and it would be a fuss
If we are rebellious.
Rebels rise from the graves
But they are shut out
From the whole place
Into their underground
Holes, they used to stay in, back to the caves.
They take rebels and make them dig
Dig deeper and deeper trenches
Where they at last put them in
To quench their burning rage.
The society is a messed up place
Full of lies and cheats
Rebels try to shape
But then thy push them into shade
'Cause then for them
Something goes out of shape
For them, shaping is a blasphemy ,
A pure profanity
For their fake divinity.
Society is orderly disordered
A complete pack of sane insanity
Where lunatics rule and sane lives on gruel,
Where united division is taught
Where the strongest of brains forgot
What living is.
May 11, 2015
May 11, 2015 at 11:32 AM UTC
Streams— relay the slumber
Tributes to— the Waterfall's Sprite.
'Twas when— the compass— Dismantled
As the bedrocks gruel— Distort the ledge,
Confronted by— tidal waves;—
Imbued the Crush— of a Carapace
That let the Visions— Sprout;—
Abandoned— With the Barriers..
So long,— I do not know..
Sights— Times— are enclosing
Onto the lost,— And the Seafloor sinks
Slowly— Diminishing— The Sirens' Call..
Jun 24, 2020
Jun 24, 2020 at 10:53 AM UTC
If love is a garden, growing green,
And lock'd away, to be ne'er seen,
Then mine is dead and abused,
Neglected and disused.
For while you toil and labor,
I seek only favour.
For Love is only cruel;
Life's unpleasant gruel
And pleasure should reign,
As forthwith we gain
And stride to endeavor
Ourselves to find pleasure.
Aug 15, 2010
Aug 15, 2010 at 2:05 PM UTC
Since I have no other way
And am in utmost need,
Painter girl,
I filch one of the eight lambs
You have made plump with
Green jack fruit leaves and
Thin gruel with paddy bran.
I will take it to the goat market
And sell it in a jiffy.
I assure you
I will not sell it
To any butcher-
The lamb you made chubby
With sweet sweet words
And much much petting
And nice lilting croons,
Mixing and mixing
Greens with browns.
Don’t be sad, painter girl.
I hear you come running
Searching for your lamb and
Cry out “O my dearest one
Who went grazing in the green fields,”
As the sun in your canvas
Sets in the sea and
The saffron blends with the dusk.
And, see your tears mingle
With the black that you wanted
To adorn the brow of
The naughtiest of them.
Painter girl,
It’s all because I have no other go
And it’s of utmost need.
I could have broken into the
Two-storeyed house you sketched
And stolen the ornaments in
Secret lockers that even
You are unaware of.
Or, I could have
Palmed the golden girdle
Of the beautiful ***** princess
Whose portrait you made,
The one with a nose stud.
Or, drugged her with my kisses
And plundered the harem.
Or else, I could have
Entered the snake shrine
Guarded by the dark serpents
That you often drew
And fled the country with
The precious jewel.
Or, I could have shot down
The birds that you drew
And sold them grilled.
I could have axed down the
Mahagony trees you nurtured
And sold them as timber.
I could have blinded your Kanhaiah
And made him a beggar
To become rich from the alms he earned.
I could have enslaved his Gopis
And handed them over
To the red light streets.
Painter girl,
It’s not for anything of this sort.
I take just one of your eight lambs.
Sell it for a good price
And fulfil my need.
Now, perchance,
If a new tenant comes to rent
My brain where nothing resides
And if they pay me a fat advance,
Painter girl,
Surely will I buy back your lamb.
And tether it in your painting.
Don’t you dare say then
Don’t you say then
That you have forgotten it.
Don’t you say then
You have exhausted your stock of
Green jack fruit leaves.
Mar 21, 2016
Mar 21, 2016 at 11:57 AM UTC
the farmgirl with the green flecks in her anime eyes
is snoozing in her van. it's afternoon and she's lost her ruby slippers. she knows not where.
she charms the water fleas with her clean teeth.
she gropes through the ampules of her ample ***** where her heart is like a fox and hound.
in a glass forest. the otherwise, warm porridge is the cruel gruel of her next poem.
she gnaws on the nape of her next unborn. the naked rube of her snipe hunt
on a night with no moon.
she doesn't mind either.
her kites fly, un-flummoxed in the effulgent. unchained in the Quixote of our windmills. distilled
by charcoal fences. a net of screens, nimbly deployed across the hinterlands
of our possibilities.
now " who could that be ? "
agnes is calling and i know she just wants her computer fixed.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 11:57 PM UTC
i dream of a coven of witches quaaluding through the night to kidnap me and fly me away as an object of their seasonal *** magick ritual, to conjure a 5th dimensional being, who will possess me when the ***** & planets are aligned just right.
the cult of drunk chicks laughs on butterscotch and blood, born in the early 90s, they are mtv-obsessed, twitter/tumblr toned, disney-raised and disney-praised and trained in the ways of camping and conjuring and makeup and volleyball, or soccer, or both. they have killer legs.
& i fall asleep for 1000 years to penumbra.
the demon has my body, and he worships their legs. and they worship his wars. and his money. and his twinkly brass knuckle conference calls. they worship his ability to peel the spines from culture and countries and cook-off the clinging meat-bits left on the bone in a broth or stew or gruel of hopeful has-beens and dreamers of love.
awaken.
to the apocalypse so long and wrought and beautiful as the novels and films and serials proposed.
the bomb was loved, and the love mushroomed, and the mushrooms were plucked and ****** upon by gleeful young savages for nutritional values.
and those values grow.
and the growth is seen as succulent fruit hanging from trees in gardens in groves and the groves are in troves where they blanket and blush.
the world is made right again,
by seedlings and the green.
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 3:06 AM UTC
Cost of food
price of fuel
Very soon it will be Oliver Twist
and living on gruel
The cost of living
is a bit sky high
the result is fits of giggles
if I didn't, I'm afraid I'd cry!
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 12:49 PM UTC