"harbouring" poems
Are you listening to the whispers? are you feeling scandalised?
Harbouring ***** little feelings that you wanna sanitise?
Walk through the swinging doors of a catholic franchise
Ask em for that sailors knot a black-n-white man-ties
To the pairs of prying eyes his practical rebuke
Is a marital disguise and a tactical puke
Throw the garter ‘mongst the pigeons, the voluntary victims...
Whose single minds are filled with matrimonial conviction
Paired up poets pool their miseries; the price of art
Each miserable synergy - the sum of its parts
Did he swear that he’d hold you ever dear to his heart?
To love and to cherish til your knees did part?
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
There she stands on ceremony all silk and sinew
While the vow evicted from his Adam’s apple continues
To stutter as the panic builds like stifled farts
Til it splutters its devotions on her lady parts
Her eyes sentence you to sit though your neck-hairs stand
She’s the ****** ****** written in the lines on your palm
Old scores squeeze sideways through her gritted teeth
And he takes on the debt of every promise she believed
Hide the love-bites in a polo-neck, your love life in a Rolodex
When the ***** hand of happen-stance runs its evil down your keks
Cos like the indelible digits on your bathroom mirror
Love is for life until you dress it with liquor
If she wants you like her father and you want her like your mother
What the hell are you gonna do when you’re bored of one another?
We are but experiments, seven billion shades of wrong
The clever ones stay celibate, the others pass it on
That’s an easy line to settle-on in present company
Single-riders in the peloton to pick up the debris
Mar 7, 2018
Mar 7, 2018 at 5:44 PM UTC
Listening ears don't come easy
Most come with mouths harbouring wagging tongues
Pouncing on the chance to retell your story
Exploiting your need to empty acrid lungs
Listening ears, they're indeed very rare
Unidentifiable no matter how well you know
Lurking behind a mask of concern and care
Sweet words employed so your cards you'd show
Listening ears could be just a myth
An idiom to quench the thirst to confide
Listening ears sometimes come with fangs for teeth
Hungering and lusting for your trust and pride
Listening ear, oh why you come with a mouth so foul
Why the cunning trickery and unscrupulous deceit
Kindness as bait, when in fact you prowl
Many none the wiser until they are bit
Listening ear, in you I gave my trust
I bared my innermost and gave my all
Hoped that you'd soothe my ailing crust
Instead you lifted me high only to watch me fall
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 7:51 AM UTC
You know taking a bath when you're cold is bad for you yet you still do it.
The cold will catch up to you once you're out.
Unless you boil yourself to the point where you can't stand the bath water and the cold is all you crave.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
You know this anger harbouring will get you sick and at some point something will have to break.
Yet you deny it and cry in surprise once you realise how ****** up your mind can get.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
You know that you not functioning without your headphones on the street is a mental deficit and you're scared of being alone.
Yet whenever you say you'll go out without your headphones you can't help but connect them again to your phone.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
You know the silencing glare and the subtly swallowed hate wont be enough to fix them or you yet you take no action and only speak when the times are worst causing everything to crack up again in your dysfunctional household.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
No amount of self diagnosis with narcissism, psychosis, psychopathy or plain depression will ever soothe your need of validation. So why bother.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
Your body's stiff, you know the causes.
Yet you try to dance, sing move as much as you can. Idiotic sensual slow killing.
You know you're only making it worse so why keep on hurting?
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
Your blood vessels bursting under your jeans, your veins dying to pop.
Yet you still walk. There's something not quite right with you.
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar
Your ribs cracking under the spring sun, your toes bleeding from that last run when will you understand you're marked for death when will you be done?
Liar liat liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
You promised you'll shave your arms, start up another life yet you're still here.
******* around.
You're nothing but a
Liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar liar.
Mar 2, 2021
Mar 2, 2021 at 3:57 PM UTC
I’ve been treating myself like there is something very wrong with me, particularly my emotions. Every emotion I get (most often, my “negative” ones), I’ve been monitoring and trying to control, when all I simply needed to do was to allow for their expression and not do anything. For a long, long time I’ve considered myself to be someone ill and in need of healing; what a difference a label makes. To be “ill”, in essence requires that someone “do” something to fix themselves as a “problem”. The very nature of thinking yourself “ill” promotes action and effort. I’m glad I don’t go to a dr, can you imagine how many other disorders and syndromes I would have to “fight” and contend with.
A lot of the time when someone gets traumatised, or undergoes some sort of negative event, they always look to the happy part of themselves as the “real” them, or at least the part of them deemed to be acceptable enough to be “real”. They lament losing the “real” them. But who are people really? Are they only who they are when they’re happy? Does the extent of one’s being only pertain to their happiness? What if a part of me is in despair, what if a part of me is in intense fear and anxiety — aren’t these parts of me also real and equally valid as happiness? Particularly if they’re perfectly natural reactions to intense suffering and pain. These parts of me scream for catharsis after having been invalidated for a long time and instead of allowing them, I've condemned myself as being ill for feeling them. This is why society is in part sick; repression is healthy and expression is deemed ill. We drug away “negative” emotions for fear we are somehow damaged for harbouring them.
From now on, I am no longer “ill” — what a difference such a perception makes in how you treat yourself. Whatever you do is acceptable, whatever you do is allowed and expression is an inevitability. My intense sadness is not a problem, my intense pain is not a problem, my intense fear is not a problem — do you know how freeing such an attitude towards self is?
Nov 6, 2016
Nov 6, 2016 at 8:37 AM UTC
The weighted press of measured steps on stair
accompanied by an echoed call to the familiar.
The first syllable of her name severed midway,
yet it tolled long after the utterance rang out.
The comfort of routine;
tethers of association
snapped under the strain of realisation.
A mocking gift from forgetfulness...
...she left him..
Mechanical body shifts
fighting urges to hesitate and listen to her vanished sleeping breath.
Vacant the cold bedroom,
the chamber harbouring her scent on fabrics, pillow and scantly furnished dresser top.
Each sniff raw as salt on opened wounds.
She left
and left him
only remorseful residues
from the harvest
of three years and five months.
Oct 3, 2015
Oct 3, 2015 at 4:12 PM UTC
Not so long ago
In a land closer than it seems
There lived a silly little girl
With a pocketful of dreams
She was as hated as was loved
It didn't matter what she'd done
But the one thing that she knew
Was that she hurt everyone
Too fat and too ugly
Too judgmental and a fool
She could never just be perfect
And society was cruel
It carried on for years
And nobody could decide
Whether this silly little girl
Should get to live or die
So the leader told his people
That something must be done
And the poor thing should be dealt with
So it couldn't hurt anyone
At first there was denial
But the number quickly bloated
Soon even the voice of mother
Left the situation quite outvoted
But when asked ''who would do it?''
As the people shouted blame
Not a single one would volunteer
And hung their heads in shame
A tiny voice right from the back
Suppressed by a nation's shouts
Announced that she could do it
No longer harbouring any doubts
Every single citizen watched
As a blade was drawn with care
The girl aligned it to the heart
To breathe she didn't dare
Instantly her dull eyes closed
A single push was done
Hushed whispers silenced throughout the land
Watching her smiling tear drops run
When mother found her in the morn
Dried tears still on her face
She knew with greatest certainty
She was not in a better place
How hopeless she was lying there
With blood on the bedroom floor
The only thing to take comfort in
They couldn't hurt her anymore
Mother watched the coffin
Now the girl was quite stone dead
Such a pity, society sighed
That the land was within her head.
Take heed of this done story
For the many who ruin themselves
Though words might seem so innocent
Our worst critics are ourselves
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 1:35 PM UTC
*In a few years to come
A calendar is soon to end
The light of day will be suffocated by darkness
Haltering all brand new life
Bringing the Mother Ship to falter at the knees
A destined turmoil caused by catastrophic times
The hands of twisted fate are drawing near
World destruction nearing our footsteps
Along shadowy pathways of smoldering smoke
Billowing inward on plains of existence
Trampling atmospherical empires
Closing out realms of perseverance
Kharma may be ravishing in her ***** like ways
Childs Play in comparison to the putrid behavior of Mother Nature
Her promises of vengeful wrath
Unbearable to withstand her deceitful ways
Typhoons aiming to destroy harbouring lands
Earthquakes swallowing Kingdoms
Her ill fated disease blanketing valleys of bowling greens
The nightmare will embark upon us all
In the year 2012*
May 24, 2010
May 24, 2010 at 6:13 AM UTC
"You tempt in me…so much…
a sparrow...a lamb… a tenderness… and the captive heart… that beats against my palm…
the bonds…. of trust.. surrendered"
to the silver nepenthe of your voice,
stricken upon the thick red heart
I've pinned to a map,
See, it emits grace
beneath the molten glass,
strung through harp strings and stretched
as sutures ,the solemn musculature of ecstasy
bound in golden ropes and belladonna dreams,
Let the white darts fall
where they may
This silence belies the song
in my throat, hovering
like a silver bauble, your face
is dark, back-lit, harbouring
the terror of words that burn...
My heart
holds the cinder of secrets,
and little poison idols of hematite
and gooseflesh...
Our dream box collects its damp light
from the dark corners of our prison,
as you coax a banyan tree
from its arousal...
A totem filled with marzipan,
and trembling, but to split
its lip upon glass cages,
wrought with jade...
Hold the sparrow face-up,
let the furrow of its wings, tempt
the fates, as it sings to the same scythe
that chimes against the dead angles of the soul's crucified geography....
Jan 20, 2013
Jan 20, 2013 at 12:28 PM UTC
you think you understand me
because of the size of my home
that comes from my fathers money
you think i grew up privileged
harbouring a “normal” childhood
without any shortcomings.
what you don’t understand is the
abuse, emotional neglect and fear
experienced
at the hands of my angry father
that caused me to become this way.
you think i’m happy, normal even,
because i don’t talk about what goes on in my brain
the racing thoughts that consume me,
the trauma memory that replays in my head,
the suicidal thoughts, voices that repeat just do it over and over
and how i cry every time im alone in the bathroom.
i'm afraid to open up like i had in the past
because every single time ended in abandonment,
followed by slit wrists and regret.
but,
maybe one day i'll tell you all about it
and hope you stay.
Feb 1, 2022
Feb 1, 2022 at 1:26 PM UTC
This thing we call the universe reaches out
Beyond the beyond.
The sweeping sky seduces our senses
With shimmering stars.
A mere glimpse
At endless heavens.
Swirling galaxy clusters,
Travelling beyond the speed of light.
Like grains of sand on a surf-kissed beach,
These star-packed galaxies fly forth.
Meanwhile, at sub-atomic level,
Exotic particles wink in and out of existence.
Most stars are red dwarves.
Many harbouring exoplanets
In their Goldilocks Zones.
One-eyed worlds with the same side
Always facing the sun.
On such a world there’s no such thing
As a day.
It’s always the same time
If you stay the same place.
Hot day one side,
Frozen night on the other.
A bright side with black plants
Under a rose tinged white sky.
But there are plenty of golden stars
Just like our sun.
Stars surrounded by rocky earths like ours.
Is our Earth unique?
Does it take a planetary collision
To form an Earth and Moon
Supporting life?
Time may tell.
And if we’re lucky,
We might just live to see it.
Did God create this Universe of ours
Or is it all by chance?
Who knows?
Who cares?
Just enjoy.
Paul Butters
May 8, 2017
May 8, 2017 at 5:28 AM UTC
THE woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head:
But O, sick children of the world,
Of all the many changing things
In dreary dancing past us whirled,
To the cracked tune that Chronos sings,
Words alone are certain good.
Where are now the warring kings,
Word be-mockers? -- By the Rood,
Where are now the watring kings?
An idle word is now their glory,
By the stammering schoolboy said,
Reading some entangled story:
The kings of the old time are dead;
The wandering earth herself may be
Only a sudden flaming word,
In clanging space a moment heard,
Troubling the endless reverie.
Then nowise worship dusty deeds,
Nor seek, for this is also sooth,
To hunger fiercely after truth,
Lest all thy toiling only breeds
New dreams, new dreams; there is no truth
Saving in thine own heart. Seek, then,
No learning from the starry men,
Who follow with the optic glass
The whirling ways of stars that pass --
Seek, then, for this is also sooth,
No word of theirs -- the cold star-bane
Has cloven and rent their hearts in twain,
And dead is all their human truth.
Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell.
And to its lips thy story tell,
And they thy comforters will be.
Rewording in melodious guile
Thy fretful words a little while,
Till they shall singing fade in ruth
And die a pearly brotherhood;
For words alone are certain good:
Sing, then, for this is also sooth.
I must be gone: there is a grave
Where daffodil and lily wave,
And I would please the hapless faun,
Buried under the sleepy ground,
With mirthful songs before the dawn.
His shouting days with mirth were crowned;
And still I dream he treads the lawn,
Walking ghostly in the dew,
Pierced by my glad singing through,
My songs of old earth's dreamy youth:
But ah! she dreams not now; dream thou!
For fair are poppies on the brow:
Dream, dream, for this is also sooth.
2.1k
They share hollow thoughts, they're just clones,
Harbouring a plague of bloodthirsty tones.
Violation begins,
Spreading their deadly sins.
Motivated by the cries and moans.
Nov 29, 2018
Nov 29, 2018 at 6:04 PM UTC
Classing class as I class colour
One is one and one is the other
Finding freedom in fervour
Can one lonely soul discover?
Touching seeing hearing things
Sensation's where it all begins
To start the start of anything
Is to start the start of everything
Counselling countless souls
Neighbouring wanted rogues
Harbouring heavy loads
To shed’s to sheer to shake things clear
Maybe sometimes I’m not me
Maybe sometimes I can’t see
Maybe sometimes I’m not me
Maybe maybe she can see
Now I know when not to squander
Feel through feet the wildest thunder
Open up let me discover
Your wildest wishes up and under.
Sep 10, 2013
Sep 10, 2013 at 12:59 PM UTC
Tired of the hate
Tired of the love
Tired of the heat
I'm tired of this.
All these reasons
But I breath still.
When others left
I stayed still.
Wish I moved
Or lived a life,
Loved a little
Despite the strife.
Loved solidly,
Like my back
Harbouring a knife,
My love harbouring violence.
He dwelled and it grew
In the silence,
In the dark
It grew to be
More than a mark.
He shrunk to be less that Him,
I pray to Light,
That he won't dim.
But too late, it's gone,
Hate won over
Love had lost,
He became what he was made.
Society abscent of the cost.
Nov 15, 2017
Nov 15, 2017 at 3:31 AM UTC
Not much observation is required
To recognise that the only thing epic about her is her sadness
Which she wears well
Like a snug cardigan
Severe disregard for life varied with an intense desire to thrive not just survive
A tragic paradox
Her repetitive nature is aggravating
All who have listened have, absorbedly
Offered advice which she blatantly declined to take
The saga is getting old and tiresome
They tell her to see the light, curse the dark, and the shadows that hover over her
They expect their words to make all the difference
And she would skip away with a smile and new found appreciation for life and all it has to offer
Riddled with guilt
She feels accountable for the pain inflicted on others by her actions
Harbouring the guilt that eats and never dies
Forever harbouring the guilt
A desperate "poet"
Finding tranquility from linking words
To form sentences, a poem
To express and create some form of art
Seeking ecstasy
Through purging of emotions
A confused little girl
Who is not so little anymore
The years are violently adding up
Though young
The sand through the hour glass is running out
Growth of the self stunted by sickness of the mind
Ricocheting from the remainder of classic teen-angst to the inevitable adult crash
All of the achievements
Do not mean anything if she cannot feel it
Looking at pictures that hang above the fire place
Her teeth indicate she is smiling
Her eyes do not
Vacant
She is not really here
She could be anywhere
Dec 16, 2013
Dec 16, 2013 at 12:13 PM UTC
As she lays down in a state of bliss,
It's only after the reality hits.
She's harbouring life inside where her demons resides,
She can't afford but she won't abort; she will save a life.
What is life if happiness isn't part of the equation?
How do we validate and justify our questions and frustrations.
Is allowing life saving life? Because in happiness life resides,
She can't afford but she won't abort; she will save a life.
She's now a Mother of some standard,
Equivocally she tries and **** those demons inside her.
Her daughter finds no joy in the mother who's smile lays no happiness,
Her laugh croaked with the remanence of a pied piper.
With no food or knowledge to consume she will surely be laid to doom,
Because her Mother died as the demon who consumed her wore her skin like a prize.
Giving life isn't saving life,
Because happiness is where life resides.
Jun 5, 2019
Jun 5, 2019 at 8:07 AM UTC
There is but a small, blushing flower
blossomed under the shelter
of the evergreens
The joy, harbouring small life
amidst the shadows
of this nuclear winter
Dec 14, 2013
Dec 14, 2013 at 11:46 AM UTC
Gaze away at the iridescent Cemetery sunrise
While harbouring anger
From previous lifetimes
The seeds of petty discontent bloomed into a field of sorrow
In it lies a path
That meanders through
Tracing the origins of tragedy
And leading back to the womb
Memories of October
When you were highly favoured
Are etched on your skin
Like old scars
Brought back from war
You dissolve in the shadows
Of the light shines upon them all
Always the forgotten
Struck with two little arrows
Is your heart in your hands
Always in your trembling hands
Your resolve wore thin
Safe as houses no more
No longer will you bury yourself
beneath these sins
The flood of aftereffect
Is corroding what remains
When the time comes
I will stand on the gallows
Beside you.
Apr 8, 2014
Apr 8, 2014 at 6:28 PM UTC
harbouring virtuousity, curious to express
exhibiting, she firmly held the pen
to jot down the mystic emotion,
the exquisite dream
oblivious of the mounting stress
pouring
the dissipating words recklessly fading
confused up wit
unable to sought down, the oblivion of sleep
knew not what to indite
unable to contemplate the very dream
but thoughtfully only was such the fuddled sapidness
the psychic images ; a subtle dream
dreary eyes
thirstily awaited
till the very amnesia faded
for the sole muzzy feeling, this the only manifest
suffice the unenviable question
whence crept the feeling?
whence the love aviate?
where rested the answer?
sudden diaphanous streak
stroke sorely to the pounding wit
paralyzing her for the moment being
the sudden egest
whatever the persistent burden
gone
for now
them thoughts voyaged operosely
beyond the abyssal pupil now dwelt
the glamorous face, snowy heavenly dress..
the very words ; euphoric conversation
lasting gentle tepid touch
that had dourly crept and haunted
throughout the delusive night...
penned down
finally incurred
peace
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013 at 1:32 PM UTC
The most superficial of all my troubles-
My backache does prosist.
Throughout all my other ****
That dull pain still exists.
Tucked in every lonley smile
And every insatiable crave
Is that pain, sciatic style
Despite how I behave;
Yet dealing with much more then a backache am I,
Addictions, Predictions, prescriptions, I lye:
Here in my bed in my room in my shame,
harbouring my bodys everworseing pain.
Feb 18, 2018
Feb 18, 2018 at 8:04 AM UTC
the city's moon
fixated in its peoples tics and behaviour
crass and mentally fractured
traction acts
the loony satellite makes sway for rude construction
padding our ego psychology
nothing simple allowed
we are all a manic reference of each other
the city weather is steered
by currents of gossip
withhold your info
culture clutches
misguiding alliances
treasure your details
it is your only insurance
this city
it's a view to thrill
but it odors me til ill
****** privacy and get undressed
too much time here harbouring thirst
quibbling hurt feelings
signals ; Life Emitting Distress
so
lock up the night city stars
mar-glaring bulbs of pity-me
staring about for vagrancy
i flip up my hood
lucent pandery eyes span the communal routes
search us out merchandise and mood
i turn down an alleyway
and am confronted
a vain and voyeuristic fan tail
varieties cocktail of sales and entertainment
ad lights send out sonar 'pings'
wing-ed ; fencing judgement
i wear pricy contacts to veil my retinas
and my hood is lined with aluminium
i cough and concentrate on breath
commemorate each step undertaken
weaponize my walk
eyes low
my being is voided into guise
heading further from the city centre
i can straighten from my defensive pose
in amongst the dwellings
the urban effect dwindles
kindled instead by the dosey soup wash of streetlights
delights; the holy crop of them
webbing outward retching past our boundaries
shored back upon natures breath
(so i imagine)
Nov 8, 2022
Nov 8, 2022 at 9:03 PM UTC
Blossoming and blooming;
Blushing for the light.
Bright in a valley only filled with night.
A still ocean, undisturbed,
Harbouring beauty and warmth.
A single drop hitting the ground,
Opening the sky of fear and doubt;
Before the uncontrollable storm sets in on the rocks
and shakes, shakes, shakes.
The flower is faded now;
Chewed up and spit out.
Ripped, snatched;
Shaken. Shaped by brutal surroundings.
A charcoal mess; as the dying remain of endless wasted potential.
Cold; as a sharp slice of ice.
Damaged and damaging alike.
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 2:08 PM UTC
My sweet, sweet love;
Those late night thoughts that managed to find their way into your head in broad daylight,
let them go.
My sweet, sweet love;
Those hatred you've been harbouring towards those who've wronged you,
let them go.
My sweet, sweet love;
Those people whom you've been chasing for love and attention but aren't giving you any,
let them go.
Let them all go,
my sweet, sweet love.
Aug 31, 2016
Aug 31, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC