"gulliver" poems
I sit and try and be a lotus
after killing the third fly of the evening
with a pocket book of recipes and a
thirty centimetre ruler stolen
from bathroom **** measuring contests to our knees.
Young professionals tread these boards
and I watch, trying to paint them lotus.
I listen and learn like I was told to do
then clock watch, mop, cycle home to you;
I am still trying to be a lotus
even in wet shoes and no socks.
With less than five-hundred pounds to my various names,
an office-chair-cum-clothes-horse, eight USB charging ports
and a future that stretches to Sunday’s last reluctant second,
I am sitting, trying to be lotus figuring out the professional path
David Attenborough heard in his gentleman’s class: that son of a-
- I walked into an army recruitment vault with dreams of being Gulliver,
though was asked to leave out the cat flap cathedral door back into war
as they’d got their laugh and didn’t applaud.
Perhaps I should’ve been better at maths
where apparently a career can be predicted on a scatter graph,
and the pigeons of today were the pigeons of next year and the months that’ll follow the century after that.
I am still trying to figure out the hoo-ha of ************
and ring fingers and collar sizes and the inner circles
of hyenas when the winter solstice splits the seasons.
There is no reason for this lotus procrastination
when what’s there to live for but a crooked world
and one bandage left.
Oct 17, 2016
Oct 17, 2016 at 2:18 PM UTC
I want to understand the steep thing
that climbs ladders in your throat.
I can't make sense of you.
Everywhere I look you're there--
a vast landmark, a volcano
poking its head through the clouds,
Gulliver sprawled across Lilliput.
I climb into your eyes, looking.
The pupils are black painted stage flats.
They can be pulled down like window shades.
I switch on a light in your iris.
Your brain ticks like a bomb.
In your offhand, mocking way
you've invited me into your chest.
Inside: the blur that poses as your heart.
I'm supposed to go in with a torch
or maybe hot water bottles
& defrost it by hand
as one defrosts an old refrigerator.
It will shudder & sigh
(the icebox to the insomniac).
Oh there's nothing like love between us.
You're the mountain, I am climbing you.
If I fall, you won't be all to blame,
but you'll wait years maybe
for the next doomed expedition.
2.8k
I'll go along with the thought, 'work makes you strong' just as long as I can
but,
sometimes, I feel pooped and can't jump through the hoops and that's when the dreaming kicks in for this man.
I spin in the frame of life's arcade type game and I'm lost in the wheels,
it feels
like,
riding a bike and not watching the street but meeting the idols I'd most like to meet,
like,
Gulliver,Gilbert and Sullivan,Jimmy Durante,Popeye the sailor and the Tailor of Gloucester,
lost in the throng and unaware of time carrying on,I get older,no wiser,no miser am I,
I give my dreams freely to those I love dearly.
This arcade game plays on though the moment is lost, and reality arrives if only to remind me, that life goes along and in it you'll find me,playing the machines,winning more dreams,sailing through the streams of unconsciousness.
Jan 1, 2014
Jan 1, 2014 at 5:00 AM UTC
to wound me with an arrow
take a lurid one
you're high on the barrow
watching how scare I run
burst out of usual shadows
like one-eyed albino ghoul
only to see changing weather
by unintelligible rules
sick of Gulliver's syndrome
from living in a wooden box
where's my abandoned kingdom
I'm fed up with these rocks
so try to aim, warden
I'm not that beast of burden
Dec 21, 2015
Dec 21, 2015 at 11:04 PM UTC
Deserted streets at dusk,
Grey skies and lowering cloud,
Trees and hedges shrunk like a model train landscape
And pylons that could snap their wires, tuck them under their arms
And walk away.
Lego houses with lids to lift
Releasing smells of Sunday lunch chicken
And tea time bath salts.
I could pluck the towers from the power station and roll
Them down the dual carriageway.
An Alice or a Gulliver.
A non- participant;
A reluctant participant;
A can't participant.
Roads and trees and factories and pubs
Retreat
And shrink.
God- like in stature only-
Clumsily stepping,
Not wanting
To crack the road
Or gouge out windows
With a misplaced elbow.
Aug 22, 2016
Aug 22, 2016 at 3:22 PM UTC
I found you sleeping with price tags
like tea bags
little men inside the barcodes
Dragging you to the forest
I plant you by your shoes
Digging your heel into the Earth
to feel its heartbeat
I told you this story once before
The little men are trying to build a cage around you
But I won't let you be
no Gulliver's Travels
I send them scurrying like ants
to Noah's Ark
They set sail for Wall Street
Only one sprout comes from
your veins
And waterfalls have hope for you yet
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 1:30 PM UTC
Sometimes as I lay still, eyes closed,
Bathed in memories,
Of riveting detail,
I'm not unlike Gulliver, on an island , pinned down by the Liliputs.
Awake, but, I do not know where ,shackled as I am,in time and space,
by these snippets of reverie,staking claim
to my mind
And I am for now, a felled giant.
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 11:10 AM UTC
On an island in the west country,..
In the Queen's land, where Black-beard,..
Once played on, as a young child..
And called his home, among the contours...
Chained men and tobaccos..
Once brought fortune lust..
Bridges were built, and train tracks laid..
By the man Brunel, who wore as long a hat..
Ships and cathedrals, sugar factories..
Bansky's graffiti, treasured marks on walls..
And stone-henge laid a stone throw away..
Roman baths, in near by Bath..
And underground passage, of tunnels..
Laid for walks and rivers paths..
Horse mountain and Welsh borders..
Sat not far away on looks, across the channel..
But for the one thing, that makes Brizz so special..
Is the sanctuary, it provides for lost souls..
This here laid land, a place like home..
Gulliver did be so proud, to call his home..
Away from home, as I do, away from home..
Aug 20, 2010
Aug 20, 2010 at 5:53 PM UTC
A misplaced youth
My first original rhyme –
take a “truck” drop the head and add an eff –
was hand-me-down crude,
not clever,
but how clever can you be
at four years old?
The chilly blush of it still brings
out a ringing
sound of one hand clapping
against my cheek;
then comes the deflating bawl
from pouchy flesh instantly un-stuffed
of its squirrely giggles and glee.
It put me off cheap sing-song thrills
for decades.
Same age, different flaws:
Can you be too young to develop
a finely tuned sense of entitlement
and the firmest conviction
for redistributing misbegotten wealth?
If anyone deserved a raggedy toy –
don’t call it a doll –
mouse-eared and with cherry-red shorts
cheerily poking out
of a tinsel-topped Christmas stocking,
it was me, not her.
Maybe Santa was suffering
from dementia,
or forgot his reading glasses.
I wasn’t smart enough yet
to cover my tracks,
and I didn't know any fences;
it’s hard to deny a crime
when you’re hugging the goods.
Skip ahead a few years,
and after the regular Sunday
indoctrinations of an uncharitably
faith-based brand of hero-worship,
there are all the tell-tale signs
of a sleep-sick heart
with an over-simplified world view
married to a messiah complex.
Is it normal to dream
of oneself, small but magnificently armored,
supplanting Michael
as the head of that goodly Host
driving out the evil legions?
At least I knew how to side with a winner
back then.
I also dreamed Gulliver-like,
I had been roped down to my bed
by a clutch of creepy-crawly bugs,
and in a tiny voice I could barely make out,
their spokes-beetle cried up to me:
“There will come a time
when the time finally comes,
and when it does
you’ll smack its self-satisfied face
for keeping you
waiting so long.”
My hand's always poised above the clock.
Nov 13, 2010
Nov 13, 2010 at 6:34 AM UTC
To balance inside this world and yours isn't the easiest feat, while I cling to the insides of the jungle gym where we used to play hide and seek. Should I say, "You don't call, you don't write. It's been 3 years since I've had my muse?" All the anger strewn across my elbows makes me feel like gulliver unable to do all my traveling. I've dared. I've crossed. I've taken where signs said, "Stay Away!" But all for the chance for just a minute with you, alone in Half Moon Bay.
Jun 24, 2015
Jun 24, 2015 at 6:02 AM UTC
These four walls
will be the death of me.
Squeezing, constricting
til theres no more breath in me.
Overthinking, thoughts rebounding from the corners
like that screensaver.
Im so capable,
yet unable
to leave.
Frozen as the air outside.
Limbs pinned,
tied like Gulliver.
Guilt and sadness and regret
leak
from eyes
fixed open
unblinking in the dark.
Dec 24, 2020
Dec 24, 2020 at 7:12 PM UTC
Oh yes, oh yes, salams, hello, hi
Aha, oh yeah, oh my, oh my
My favorite dream places happen to be
coincidentally
ones that rhyme with the words
aye, aye, aye and bye, bye, bye
for I wish to fly
to divine Dubai
to showy Shanghai
to beautiful Brunei
and heavenly Hawaii
and last but not least
the land of the Thai
The only odd ones out in this rhyme scheme
of exotic favourite places of my dream
are touristy Turkey and Singapore
ah, I wrote this kinda' extempore.
So if I do go gallivanting
somewhat like Gulliver on his travels
these are the places I'd like to explore.
Ah, it's always great to travel
and geo atlas mysteries unravel
upon God's wide world to marvel
Going places to collect and bring back memories
A collection of curios and cherished souvenirs
As indeed whenever you bring back some exotica
you enhance your knowledge with those ephemera.
So guys I'd love to fly
to travel to Turkey and Thailand
Sojourn in Shanghai
depart for Dubai
holiday in hawaii
Board a flight to Brunei.
One has to try
to get into jetsetting style
act somewhat like the jet set
for frequent flyer mile.
This has been a poetic travelogue
for voyages are ever in vogue.
But whenever I can and if I have luck now
I know I could never tire of journeying
to Aligarh and Lucknow
For motherland India calls me like no other,
a place to hug my origins, beloved dad and mother.
Ah, only if there were no travel formalities
I could be sightseeing many more cities.
Without need of passports, ticket and visa
anyone could've travelled
to watch the Leaning tower of Pisa
or even the egyptian pyramids of Giza.
But for spiritual enlightenment and nourishment the mecca of thronging visitors flocking ,
I wish to frequently visit Mecca as a pilgrim,
It's the favourite sanctuary for every Muslim
So O' Tinkerbell, sprinkle me too with yer fairy pixie dust
so I too can fly, and satisfy, my spasmodic wanderlust
Dec 22, 2022
Dec 22, 2022 at 1:02 PM UTC
As a child I crawled invisibly
away in the lower house
under the veranda
to see the rats
potter among woodlice
I felt big and strong
I pressed my lips together
against the little weak creepy cushions
and let their hard tails
whip my Gulliver body
I liked being their Atlas
under the adult world
upon my shoulders
which I separated from the earth
to keep it as it is
Mar 23, 2023
Mar 23, 2023 at 4:39 AM UTC
O mighty, tiny heart,
One thousand blessed beats a minute,
beating time, beating gravity, beating death
O mortal metronome
ticking seconds into that certain future
Little wonder Aztec gods bow,
and Nazca lines testify to your
glorious, thirsting, bursting
hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm of life
now still
An opening closed you could not see.
Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmm
O purple thud
O feathery fall from grace
cradling leaf and Gulliver’s hand,
hourglass of heartbeats run out,
lived and gone as never was
Are we responsible for the things that die
because of things they cannot see
things we cannot see
things we cannot
(The Nazca Lines are a series of large ancient geoglyphs stretching for miles in the Nazca Desert, in southern Peru. One portrays a hummingbird.)
Jun 9, 2018
Jun 9, 2018 at 6:30 PM UTC