"halted" poems
The riled route master and the hacked off hackney carriage weren't bothered by the boris bike, they simply barreled along the bus lane oblivious to the wobble, blind to the blindsided and bent on beating the amber to red, til they were halted by the growth factor of a chelsea tractor straddling lanes and field testing the choice of right or left and failing the screen test set by the sat nav, thereby giving opportunity to the swarm of office staffers snatching their chance and chancing their luck, dancing past with their fat chance of swiping in before nine and avoiding the chagrin of the boss who's been the bane of their short sojourn through the city of lost dreams, chance encounters, thin fortune and rushed hours. This is London.
Oct 12, 2018
Oct 12, 2018 at 2:03 PM UTC
It's simplicity was complex
the world you lived in ceased
the tide halted and the sun dulled
cars abandoned and homes barren
the complexity suddenly became simple
Jul 4, 2014
Jul 4, 2014 at 12:25 AM UTC
He halted in the wind, and—what was that
Far in the maples, pale, but not a ghost?
He stood there bringing March against his thought,
And yet too ready to believe the most.
“Oh, that’s the Paradise-in-bloom,” I said;
And truly it was fair enough for flowers
had we but in us to assume in march
Such white luxuriance of May for ours.
We stood a moment so in a strange world,
Myself as one his own pretense deceives;
And then I said the truth (and we moved on).
A young beech clinging to its last year’s leaves.
7.5k
Let me love you in Silence,
I want to watch you,
observe all your pores
and spots where fine wrinkles have settled.
I want to see you
dance daintily like a flower
or grunt and hoof your way through space
like a grubby animal.
Either exalted or halted,
I want to hold you,
to cup your soft surrendered hands just like a clam shell,
and to cocoon
your weary beating body.
Let me love you in silence,
from afar
like a deer
hiding in the forest,
peeking out at the mysteries of the world.
I want to love you deeply
like the ocean loves the land
as she kisses its gentle shores
and runs away all too soon,
called by the moon.
I lay on the dusted hardwood of our home,
your washing the dishes and the fragrant smell of soap fills the air,
I lay underneath the door frame
tracing my eyes up and down your sweet body, your strong back hunched over. Hard working arms cleaning,
oh the little love secrets I keep to myself.
I want to run through meadows picking the most vibrant wildflowers
so I may lay them at your feet,
gently
quietly.
This yearning in my soul
words do not know this love,
these intangible feelings exuding.
I want to bathe you
in a claw foot tub
and in the silence
watch your eyes grow wide,
I want to see the wonderment
of a whole galaxy of stars glimmering inside you
before noise ushers such things away
before noise pulls me from this fantasy.
This dream that we are living,
it exists,
I know it does.
You can live it too, please please,
just close your eyes
and let love linger for a moment
feel loves sweet breathe
as she breathes in silence,
as she breathes
inside of you
and inside of me.
Apr 24, 2016
Apr 24, 2016 at 7:17 PM UTC
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains. - Jorge Guillén
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Your shy solitude in the hotels
and your pure mask of another sign.
It is the sea's childhood and your silence
where the wise windows were breaking.
It is your stiff ignorance where
my torso was limited by fire.
I gave you the norm of love, man of Apollo,
the lament of a crazed nightingale,
but, pasture of ruin, you sharpened yourself
for brief, indecisive dreams.
Thought head on, light of yesterday,
indices and signs of what may be.
Your waist of restless sand
follows only trails that never rise.
But without you your warm soul
fails to understand. I must search
the corners of a halted Apollo
that I've used to break the mask you wear.
There, lion, fury of heaven,
I will let you graze on my cheeks;
there, blue horse of my madness,
pulse of nebula and minute hand,
I must search for scorpion stones
and your mother's childhood clothes,
midnight lament and torn cloth
that wiped the moon from the dead man's temple.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
Strange soul of the space in my veins,
I must search for you, small and rootless.
Love of always, love of never!
Oh, yes! I want. Love. Let me be.
Don't cover my mouth, you
who search for Saturn's seed in the snow
or castrate animals in the sky,
clinic and jungle of anatomy.
Love, love. Childhood of the sea.
Without you your warm soul fails to understand you.
Love, a doe's flight
through the endless breast of whiteness.
And your childhood, love, and childhood.
The train and the woman filling the sky.
Not you, not I, not air, not leaves.
Yes, your childhood now a fable of fountains.
7.2k
The leaves were long, the grass was green,
The hemlock-umbels tall and fair,
And in the glade a light was seen
Of stars in shadow shimmering.
Tinuviel was dancing there
To music of a pipe unseen,
And light of stars was in her hair,
And in her raiment glimmering.
There Beren came from mountains cold,
And lost he wandered under leaves,
And where the Elven-river rolled
He walked alone and sorrowing.
He peered between the hemlock-leaves
And saw in wonder flowers of gold
Upon her mantle and her sleeves,
And her hair like shadow following.
Enchantment healed his weary feet
That over hills were doomed to roam;
And forth he hastened, strong and fleet,
And grasped at moonbeams glistening.
Through woven woods in Elvenhome
She lightly fled on dancing feet,
And left him lonely still to roam
In the silent forest listening.
He heard there oft the flying sound
Of feet as light as linden-leaves,
Or music welling underground,
In hidden hollows quavering.
Now withered lay the hemlock-sheaves,
And one by one with sighing sound
Whispering fell the beechen leaves
In the wintry woodland wavering.
He sought her ever, wandering far
Where leaves of years were thickly strewn,
By light of moon and ray of star
In frosty heavens shivering.
Her mantle glinted in the moon,
As on a hill-top high and far
She danced, and at her feet was strewn
A mist of silver quivering.
When winter passed, she came again,
And her song released the sudden spring,
Like rising lark, and falling rain,
And melting water-bubbling.
He saw the elven-flowers spring
About her feet, and healed again
He longed by her to dance and sing
Upon the grass untroubling.
Again she fled, but swift he came,
Tinuviel! Tinuviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell,
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinuviel
That in his arms lay glistening.
As Beren looked into her eyes
Within the shadows of her hair,
The trembling starlight of the skies
He saw there mirrored shimmering.
Tinuviel the elven-fair
Immortal maiden elven-wise,
About him cast her shadowy hair
And arms like silver glimmering.
Long was the way that fate them bore
O'er stony mountains cold and grey
Through halls of iron and darkling door
And woods of nightshade morrowless.
The Sundering Seas between them lay,
And yet at last they met once more,
And log ago they passed away
In the forest singing sorrowless.
7.1k
Born in nineteen thirty five
To reside at "Tick Tock park"
A whole life marred by damaged lungs
Yet, gracious was his heart
Known to his friends as Ginger
This man of arduous health
He possessed an ever-cheery smile
Wit and intellect his wealth
Passionate was he for art
Racehorses, jazz, the Goons
And chrysanthemum had more value
Than mankind racing for the moon
With his water colour paintings
He tried to leave his mark
But alas his dreams were halted
For no mercy has the dark
Of the protagonist of this ode
I shall say only this
My father was a brilliant man
Who I shall always miss
Jul 31, 2012
Jul 31, 2012 at 6:07 PM UTC
Watching the beauty of Mother Earth was I
when it vanished in front of my eyes
No more pure are the river and seas
It is like an eternal autumn for the trees
The Beauty of Mother Earth has long gone
Sky is dark and the winds now groan
Morning soil has lost is moist dew
Everyday has become monotonus,no day is new
Ignored by her sons,Mother Earth is dying
disingenous sons are ignoring their mother's crying
The lugubrious situation is the conlusion of the Greed
Pollination of the plants halted and birds awaiting to be freed
Jan 31, 2011
Jan 31, 2011 at 12:07 AM UTC
A leer leapt across his face,
it was not a surf smirk
that rolls up from coral cheeks,
but a snide smile that
surprised everyone there.
Coffee shop stopped and halted,
for this man fell to his knees
and asked to wed,
a girlfriend of small brunette proportions,
whom sat next to him
basking in good fortune.
Golden orbit
of metal bound
and knit,
graced her finger, slipped
down the knuckle,
fused to the skin
as every buckle ever worn.
For these two would make it,
sworn to mourn when the other fell.
Feb 4, 2013
Feb 4, 2013 at 9:44 AM UTC
outgoing?
I'd say outspoken
never been arbitrary
or overbearing-
just vocal
my passion runs deep
and pours out
excited
overflowing
when it finds
another soul to share it with
the energy
others direct towards me
I absorb
and like a mirror
reflect it back towards them
the energy
that rests inside me
is like water
waiting
for an outside force
to heat me up
excite
my molecules
or
to cool me down
mellow
the chaos inside me
making me stable
making me solid
if being an extrovert
makes me
popular and
domineering,
a fun-loving,
party animal
who lacks introspection,
tell me why
I always choose
to isolate myself
why
my few friends I do have
I keep at a distance
except when I force myself
to enjoy their company
once or twice
in a year
why
I am easily talked over
my words drowned out
ignored
like background noise
my input
apbrubtly halted
as others drive over it
making it no more
than the dust
their tires kick up
why I let them
talk over me
rather than raise my voice
why I would rather
read in solitude
than go to a party
or play a video game
rather than socialize
why
would I choose
to ponder existence
over
existing with others
extroverted
means I get my energy
from external events
rather than the internal
I am not a synonym
for gregariousness
Jun 4, 2016
Jun 4, 2016 at 1:20 AM UTC
Anthropos apteros for days
Walked whistling round and round the Maze,
Relying happily upon
His temperment for getting on.
The hundredth time he sighted, though,
A bush he left an hour ago,
He halted where four alleys crossed,
And recognized that he was lost.
"Where am I?" Metaphysics says
No question can be asked unless
It has an answer, so I can
Assume this maze has got a plan.
If theologians are correct,
A Plan implies an Architect:
A God-built maze would be, I'm sure,
The Universe in minature.
Are data from the world of Sense,
In that case, valid evidence?
What in the universe I know
Can give directions how to go?
All Mathematics would suggest
A steady straight line as the best,
But left and right alternately
Is consonant with History.
Aesthetics, though, believes all Art
Intends to gratify the heart:
Rejecting disciplines like these,
Must I, then, go which way I please?
Such reasoning is only true
If we accept the classic view,
Which we have no right to assert,
According to the Introvert.
His absolute pre-supposition
Is - Man creates his own condition:
This maze was not divinely built,
But is secreted by my guilt.
The centre that I cannot find
Is known to my unconscious Mind;
I have no reason to despair
Because I am already there.
My problem is how not to will;
They move most quickly who stand still;
I'm only lost until I see
I'm lost because I want to be.
If this should fail, perhaps I should,
As certain educators would,
Content myself with the conclusion;
In theory there is no solution.
All statements about what I feel,
Like I-am-lost, are quite unreal:
My knowledge ends where it began;
A hedge is taller than a man."
Anthropos apteros, perplexed
To know which turning to take next,
Looked up and wished he were a bird
To whom such doubts must seem absurd.
3.5k
The resonating light left over was your last stance against the darkness..
You shine forth even after you are gone..
You halted the advance of such darkness..
A stalemate of shadow and light..
I am here because of your beacon..
As it calls out to me to finally push back this darkness..
This is you're echo of light::
Dec 26, 2014
Dec 26, 2014 at 2:18 PM UTC
I imagine sitting on a porch somewhere humid and calm,
a tall tree, full of hand fruits, providing shade to foot traffic.
In this imagining, the lemonade is almost too sweet but doesn't stick to the table when it dries, and the mesh lining of the patio denies mosquitos all entry.
Their buzzing is drowned by the sound of ice being crushed three or four times with margarita mix and my favorite sin. Here, life has halted so dearly in a way I've always wanted, and in this, there is peace.
My parents would have kept a container of peanuts nearby to have with their Pepsis for days like this--
days where sound and warmth and humidity mingle, and fanning yourself with an old church pamphlet was better than being
bored, comfortable, and air-conditioned.
Apr 15, 2023
Apr 15, 2023 at 12:04 AM UTC
My family eats dinner underwater.
We bounce between the seats of our chairs
and the bottom of the table,
we pass the stuffing
as it floats off the plate,
and no one seems to blink.
My parents just talk about how safe
it is, here,
below the surface.
No gay fiances
or athiests
or postmodernists
or liberal Christians.
I am the only one with an oxygen tank.
“I have never owned a tent that kept the rain out.”
My family camps with gear from the 80s.
We cook in bare aluminum
and eat with volatile plastics,
a crusty dining cloth pinned
to the warped picnic bench.
My feet and head push
through the tent wall
and into the rain fly.
I always wake up wet.
“I have never owned a bed that was long enough.”
In house 1 and 2,
my feet hang off the end
of the bed, circulation halted
at the ankles
by the wooden frame.
In dorm 1 and 2,
I lie diagonally on the bed,
my shoulder hitting the wall.
In dorm 3,
My feet are pressed
flat against the wardrobe.
I fall asleep not knowing
who I wake up for.
“I have never loved anyone I didn't have to.”
Jan 15, 2014
Jan 15, 2014 at 3:05 AM UTC
The dark winter sky was draped with stars whose dainty shimmer
mimicked the sprinkle of snow
caught up in the crisp winter breeze.
The white flakes winked as they came to rest upon a silent sheet of ice,
accumulating on the sleek surface until abruptly–
a clatter of loud and excited voices interrupted.
Skates slashed and
sticks crashed onto the cold, hard ice.
A black puck cascaded haphazardly across the rink, bombarding the once settled snow.
Chunks of ice catapulted recklessly,
the smell of sweat rose relentlessly into the wind.
Furious and frozen wisps of breathe were choked,
as bitter cold filled eager lungs.
The ruthless weather, however, could scarcely graze the laughing dimples on rosy cheeks.
But just as hastily the clatter was silenced,
the commotion halted.
Footprints crunched softly away, their noise secretly swept away
by the sprinkle of snow
caught up in the crisp winter breeze.
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 11:17 AM UTC
Sometimes I just stop,
I dream of those frostbite eyes,
And sigh a deep sigh.
It went by in blinks,
You were there, here, and then gone,
Just like that I lost.
I dreamt of your face,
Your raven hair, your snow skin,
Dreamcatcher broken.
Drowned my ears with words,
My paper with fragile strokes,
And my eyes with loss.
Your laugh was rapture,
A world away from this earth,
Comfort in the clouds.
Your arm is bloodless,
Your smile is showing and bright,
For this, I’m content.
‘I miss you’ is weak,
I feel much more than just that,
I starve for your warmth.
Love’s progressive chords,
A curve in the beat, ******
All advance halted.
Your name is beauty,
‘Katriana’ my tongue sings,
Your face to match name.
-March 2013
Jul 29, 2013
Jul 29, 2013 at 3:34 AM UTC
Its lost in transient ideals
The vivid colours in changing scopes
- and the doors are all open
Its broken but fixable
Your system I mean
- Its corrosive
(Two men on a brick wall, blowing halted tunes through old whistles)
And the country is talking aloud
You can't complain that nobody listens
Wailing sirens in the dusk sky, saddened, non satiata
Will you trust these sounds at such volumes
It's deafening, the city when it cries
When she cries, when the city dies
When the government lies
When the government lies
- because they do lie
All of them
Jun 13, 2013
Jun 13, 2013 at 5:17 PM UTC
Overdevelopment in Bali
The Farmers lose valuable water
For use in the hotels
The mushrooming developments have clogged irrigation channels
To rice fields inland,
Often driving them up and driving up the cost of tending the land
The shrinking amount of land available
Has threatened Bali's self-sufficiency in rice
Tourism benefits the economy
But the environment should also be respected
A String of letters
The Height of a man stand in the middle of a lush padi field
They spell, "Not for sale,"
Gede Agus says the words
Are meant to scare off investors
This is his land
He inherited from his ancestors
Development must be halted
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 8:12 PM UTC
As a maddened beast it charges
Emanating with expanse
Brute techtonic plate reaction
From the epicentre’s stance.
Huge concentric rings diverge
Expanding at horrific rate
Black, titanic, towering waters
Ploughing to a deadly fate.
*Kneeling in her bed of roses
Pollinating bees abound,
Morning sunbeams kiss her shoulders
Peaceful garden bliss surrounds.*
Surging to the coastal shelf
The black gigantis rears on high
Claws toward the placid beach
Seabirds scatter to the sky.
Tide receds to bare the reef
Stranded mackerel whitely leap,
Enormously the massive wave
Attacks the land and they who sleep.
Death comes fast to they who loiter
Violence in the tangled purge,
Massive pressures, crushing debris
Broken buildings in the surge.
Ships and cars are tossed asunder
Inexorably it slams
Far inland to slay those fleeing
Locked in highway traffic jams.
*Strange roar at the garden wall
Terrified, she finds her feet,
Roses, bees, sweet girl engulfed
As black entombedment swamps the street.*
Far inland the chaos flows
Wreaking death's destructive bands,
Halted now by highland hills
Where souls in horror, wring their hands.
Slow retraction leaving ruin
Desolation far and wide,
The smell of new death in the air,
Heartbreak in the countryside.
Marshalg
For Nippon
18 March 2011
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 4:44 PM UTC
the rain was just a drizzle
like my feelings any more
as we stood in awkward chat
and you can't find me any more.
not in here, at least,
in a quasi-happy fete,
with celebrations halted
because they make you fret.
I can't see my heart to give it
for it's always given back
and we'll stand in smoke and raindrops
with me turning myself black.
the black;
it can't reflect the light
so you'll perhaps not see
that my eyes have turned away
and my heart it didn't stay
and the part you have
is just the surface-me.
I won't let go, or let you in,
not again.
you'll only get the drizzle
not the swim.
Mar 19, 2015
Mar 19, 2015 at 12:04 PM UTC
The urge to do nothing is overwhelming,
compelling.
I am motionless
I find myself halted.
Based upon a worry
a waiting
dominated by uncertainty.
I cannot go on
I stretch the mind
wander
wonder of antidotes
remedies delicious
in the knowledge
of their reduced life
span.
But not a cure.
Openings brighten despite me,
the ephemera of the street untouched,
lilting on its arbor
in its impetuous parade.
(I think)
I should not allow myself this dysania
in the spaces between moments,
lapses into stillness unforeseen.
In the warm response of wire
I ask for forgiveness.
Trapped in my own gaze,
it’s all I have.
(the purity of sorrow)
The floor pushes me skyward,
I run my finger’s tip around the edge of the afternoon,
Hope to god it rings out in response.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 3:32 PM UTC
On the heap,
Thou dangle and screech
And bedeck, for I seemingly espouse.
The anecdotes and myths:
Engaged in a mutual pose.
There comes the hymn,
And the sway and the hum;
The abnormality and the deform
Halted on a single stance.
To dozen of the tokens
Whom I prejudged;
The prevalence of the chaos
That sleeps merely on my tongue.
To all the estrangements
From which I refrain,
Within the bawl of the tantrum, upon the hook of the day.
Farewell to all, farewell the haze
Farewell the cluster,
To the resolution found within a fane;
Where rituals confuse,
Where the practice becomes a fame.
There thou taketh solely,
A hymn and an interminable haze.
Whats the sense of the ovation
When no screen displays
A mourning motion
For which no motion craves?
I sigh, and mumble
To which mere consciences giveth
To me only, mine solely.
His to hear and his, keenly.
Sep 3, 2018
Sep 3, 2018 at 8:50 AM UTC
Torrents of vapor ridden wind, snatched at her hair.
Below, rattled the rapid, riotous and vast, rippling sea.
Churning, like a chewing, charming serpent's lair.
Once long ago I knew her; with time she left me be.
On the edge she was, with will to leap t'wards the horizons.
The brittle cliff would not give way, for even it was curious.
Dare say all of nature reacted for the most prurient reasons.
Even the sky descended to watch, with a lightning so furious.
She beheld no fear and the sky wept with thunderous applause.
Her bare marble-like features glistened in the gleaning of the gloom.
Why she stood there, triumphantly, tempting, terror, for what cause?
It will never be known, for she never was, in a time before this doom.
The earth shook like the hands of a beleaguered, berated old man.
It erected monoliths. Volcanoes, pluming molten magma skyward.
The red glow brought heat; earth thought to please her, or so was its plan.
The elements wrestled for the better view of that beauty stalwart.
Never had a sight been so majestically violent, so mightily tame.
Where she stood, should and would forever more be a sacred place.
The tempest of the elements raged on, though none would win the game.
A silence, softly, settled the rambunctiousness, and halted their race.
The skies parted with a sad and lowly somberness.
Every elated, embittered, element safely put to rest.
As the sun swept aside all their postulated, pettiness.
Rays of the sun showered her with bright white zest.
The lady, she moved with unfathomable grace.
She tilted her perfect head up to the skies.
With the slightest of a smile shook her face.
Like all before, she left them there surprised... and forever, there she stood.
Mar 22, 2016
Mar 22, 2016 at 3:21 PM UTC