"hassock" poems
In the divet between mountains
Resides a wooden cabin – ostensibly an amalgamation of the scape
Adroitly - I - quondam female warrior flit
Down massive (ancient) hand-laid, hand-cut carved stone steps
Bounding from contingent step onto the dense pad of turned soil
Tacit compliance between gravity and soil holds footprints bound
A compressed deflating crescendo as pace ignites with bounds
Cadences of protuberant wildflowers and grasses erupt from swollen terra
A winsome chromatic menagerie, dispersed in ecstatic fistfuls
A venerably ancient ritual
My nascent clandestine vocation
Personally meted out - a beatification for my provisional sanctuary
Along glacier-fed stream
Lissome fingers shadow inert stalks –plucking dormant beginnings from their desiccated ligaments
I am austere and unadorned save for a festoon of pyrite flecks trailing my semblance
Residual gilding from my ante-meridian swim taken after requisite gathering of wild blackberries, goose berries, and rhubarb along oft-tamped path
The sun, nestling into its requisite apex endorsed my completion
I reclined into the hassock of soil, feeling the elements settle about with an embossment of my form
Imposing verdure arched subtly as compressed soil beckoned hyperbolic flux
As I lay within the basilica of opulent living columns replete with comestible bounty
Lingering dew honed inflections of sacrosanct petrichor in unison with piquant clover
Wild purple clover buds saccharinely tinted and inundated nestled nerves in mine cribriform plate
Birds pitched and galloped through the frond tips and beyond in the lapis expanse
Frequently snatching damselfly’s and assemblages of midges from their ephemeral drift
Auspicious rays transcended stippled diaphanous gravid clouds
Light inundated ether entered humbly into the cathedral oculus
Pyrite speckled terrain beneath, and my bare gilded form above
Cast a refracted aura about my sanctuary
Precipitously the elusive vaporous embankment distended further
Ashen atmospheric correspondence inaugurated liquescent sustenance to my mountain abode
And I -
Lingered beneath the descending gobbets, curls furled in a puddle
Fresh topsoil cupping my corporal topographic contours
Pressing blackberries into my mouth between smiles
Jan 26, 2014
Jan 26, 2014 at 9:13 PM UTC
You may look for me on Oxford Street
At dawn or dusk or night.
Or downtown where the down-and-outs meet
To drink and sleep and fight.
You may catch my shadow lurking on the curb
In the rainy middle-class suburbs.
(You’ll be chewing on the cud and on the curd,)
And they’ll all think you quite absurd,
And pass you by without a word
Without a care.
You won’t find me.
No, I’m not there.
You might get a glimpse at sundown
Of me and The Sundance Kid,
Riding onto Cape Town,
Or sliding through Madrid,
Or stealing through the byways of Turin –
Winking at the bottom of your glass of bitter gin,
Breathing through your window, on your skin,
Guessing what I think, just like a twin
But I swear,
You won’t find me,
No, I’m not there.
Chase my name to the horizon
Or the shores of Timbuktu;
Just be sure to keep your eyes on
Those two feet in-front of you.
I’ll be biting at your heels,
The stinging citrus scent of the fruit you peel,
The whirling hub of your bicycle wheel,
The hassock you fall upon when you come to kneel
In prayer.
But you won’t find me,
No, I’m not there.
Do not think that I will answer
When you ask or shout or call.
The figure of the folk dancer
Will not be me at all.
I’ll be the one that you’re not looking at,
Sitting in the place where you just sat,
Wiping from my face what you have spat,
Sleeping in every dark empty pocket of every new coat that
You wear.
Oh, you won’t find me,
I’m not there.
In every crowd and every gathering
You will turn around to see
That where I am not standing
Is not where you want to be.
Somewhere between you waking and your sleep
I swim the deepest secrets that you keep,
Silently catching the tears you weep,
In the kitchen cooking the food you eat
Minding what you sow you reap!
I am one step ahead of a sentient sweet
And fair.
But you will not find me.
I am not there.
Mar 5, 2013
Mar 5, 2013 at 2:29 PM UTC
Like cotton puffs of white the clouds float by on cyan skies,
the lamb fur hassock of the angels praying in the skies.
Their occupancy hidden but for subtle clues for eyes,
a shadow in the cloud reveals an angel in the skies.
Their bows are permanent, their heads fall once but do not rise,
the stillness of the clouds betray the angels in the skies.
Their motionless prostration is their very best disguise,
creating doubt upon the earth of angels in the skies.
What of the consciousness of those in tombs we all surmise
have fled to scenes beyond the eyes among the clouds of skies?
Where are the shadows of their seats? Despite our many tries,
we see none in their names we find cloud-written in the skies.
I call to those who've left too soon, their names among my cries.
Their answers whisper in the hiss of rain from cloudy skies.
(C)2013, Christos Rigakos
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 6:36 PM UTC
I blow the feathery brown corpse
of a moth gently off the window sill
misting gray rain outside adds to
the pallor of the moment
I think to myself - everything is
dying around me
and my life too ebbing with
each ancient breath
despite this revelation... I know
there is a forever part to us
I sense it in the still, deathlike
suspension of my meditation
my body an empty temple
one pointed cathedral steeples
pyramid to infinity
I kneel on the hassock within
reposing in the splendor of a Presence
undefinable, a hush of love
ushers over me
tears pour from
stained glass eyes
that unmistakable kiss
sustained caress
blessed assurance
Jan 10, 2014
Jan 10, 2014 at 6:08 PM UTC
Peter was my hero, and Wendy my first fanciful lust.
We fought villainous pirates and bloodthirsty injuns,
and when danger came near as a dark scary night
we'd grasp just one happy thought and fly away
to a brighter new day, dreamed just for us.
Such a wondrous thing, the gift of flight.
Free, unrestrained... racing the laughing crows.
It seemed so simple I just had to try,
strange how the impossible, is so attainable
within the mind of a child of five.
I turn the old phonograph way up loud,
climb upon the hassock, (added height for takeoff)
I closed my eyes intense on my one happy thought
and singing the refrain to inspire me...
"You can fly, You can fly, You can fly."
I leap...
And for barely an instant in time I really do feel the sky.
Then gravity's reality crashes me hard to the floor.
Just in time to hear them laughing,
my evil older brothers watching at the door.
They had a great time with their haughty jest
I still hear of it today, but that's OK.
We were just kids and they lacked understanding.
For I was in training; practice for a not too distant date.
Honing my inner mind to create the improbable,
even the impossible, making it all seem real.
Today the refrain is no longer needed,
nor the hassock upon which to stand.
With old age comes a far grander experience.
Leaving all trials and tribulations upon the ground
I sit back, close my eyes, silence the world around.
Reaching out with sure confidence for the sky
with that child of five's, unrestrained inner eye.
Thanks to Peter and Wendy and my early lust
those heckling crows are left far behind
in vapor trails of my receding dust.
*"I can fly, I can fly
I really can fly!"*
© S.Loeding
All Rights Reserved
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 2:43 PM UTC
Lively,long love-loving life,
Turns a dreaded dull daydream.
Strenght of the strong string of love life
Vanishes and vignette vile vipers.
The snippy stud snaps and snarks
After his smooching snare you slipped
Lurve life turns longeurs.
Bleak ,black and blinding strife
Leaps in and heaps havoc,
You hassock and hassle
But bed-burning coal you heaped.
And the time has come
For payment to be made.
A nugatory,now you are,
You will die the the death of the naughty.
Jul 3, 2020
Jul 3, 2020 at 4:40 PM UTC
I was the Goddess and you were a mortal
yet I was the one who followed you
like a supplicant
night after night
I left my bedchamber
& the demiGod in deep slumber on my bed
swathed in the shrouds of darkness
I kept coming to worship you
quotidianly
but it wasn't enough
for you were never satiated
even after reaping all that I possessed
and trying to make an immortal out of you
is now obliterating the light
within my heart's eyes
thence go back to your realm
you can't dwell in mine no longer
& my knees can't kiss the hassock anymore
Dec 18, 2017
Dec 18, 2017 at 4:33 PM UTC
Before Mark Twain knew he would
Always love Becky Thatcher the boy
Sam Clemens knew her as a just a
girl in the neighborhood Saw her as
A fellow child jumping rope giggling
To her friends Not his It was the same
With me when I was small- there was
A girl Pauline with pigtails and very
Shy. We never spoke but I just knew
She very nice and proper too much so
To notice a mutt like me Such like was
The girlhood of my wife All she gave
Me was a sketch of a girl I never met I
did not know I loved her back then but
I know it now. I know it now.
My Dad he not long before he died
Made her a bright tangerine colored kind
Of hassock that when you zipped it open
Four tangerine cushions were stuffed in it
It was carefully crafted something I
Could never make and She loved it
. It was leatherette and a a little gaudy
where has gone to I do not know
but I think .ll find it with her in
Heaven where Father took her When I
Was faraway I loved her then and I love her
Now She was the girl for me; now she.s gone
l loved when I saw her skipping rope
n my mind
So long ago
I loved her then
I love her still
For Barbara
Jan 5, 2020
Jan 5, 2020 at 6:09 PM UTC