"haversack" poems
I have missed your company.
Enveloped in strange faces,
The only coterie I keep of late
Is that of your overwrought descant.
Oh, James Douglas.
What happened to your dream?
DO NOT DESPAIR,
FRIEND
The words you once transcribed
Your intoxicating,
Or was it intoxicated
Ragtime
Linger in the subconscious of a generation,
an unnoticeable haversack
Traveling
Seeing
Traveling
Watching every ounce
Of the determinate world
Seeing
Acting as
The portmantoligism of my conscience
And what is left of my intellect
Until I realize that my
Crippling loneliness,
Is the only palatable fruit of disillusionment.
See, Christine?
Anybody can use big words to write about the 20th Century.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 11:38 PM UTC
Is it weird that I am craving for love?
Not any other love, but yours?
How could our love, the only burning flame in the dark, die just like that?
The ghouls inside of me descend with one touch of yours
I remember the light that shone on his face
On the Tuesday morning – carrying a blue haversack walking out of the subway.
He had a haircut, the style akin to one of which a school boy
He smirked when I reminded him of how beautiful he looked
Walking along the busy street hand in hand, he stared
His stare, was enough to rip that beasts inside of me
I thought to myself,
How I adored that hairstyle
How I adored the smirks he gives when I remind him how beguiling he is
He is beautiful
The way he smiles when he looks at me
The way his elbow always hit my shoulders when we walk
The way he runs his hand through his hair
The way his shoes always complements his shirt
I’m trying
I’m holding on to the last moment we had
I remember, on the Tuesday morning, he walked out of the subway
How perfectly our fingers were intertwined when we walked
He stared,
And said “I love you till the end” – how ironic
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 3:25 AM UTC
they fly in
and sit on my shoulder
even when
i don't want them to
old Bob's ex-wife
had his sofa covered
in some horribly ugly
historic print
(i thought it was
kinda pretty)
i saw a haversack
made out of that
self-same fabric
in my possession
today, Bob handed me
a leather bag
he had sewed with
that fabric as the lining
i hope i smiled
because the other vision
was of his family
clearing his possessions
out of his cabin
after he passed
i'm afraid it isn't
long now
Jul 30, 2016
Jul 30, 2016 at 6:23 PM UTC
Spring has come once again.
The dawn breaks, caressing the Earth.
The aged wonderer marks his course,
Setting out for another journey.
Walking for many days and scores of miles,
The wonderer finds a shady tree calling his name.
Sliding his haversack off his shoulder
He rests his tired back against the tree.
As his eyes begin to close,
His mind begins to roam a world of dreams
Concealed to him before now.
Many days of peaceful slumber pass.
The wonderer at last awakens
Ameliorated for the first time,
Since he was merely a young lad.
Despite his urge to stay,
He knows he must depart,
For the uncharted road awaits him.
Just before leaving,
The wanderer bows to the tree
Thanking it for everything it has given him,
Hoping, maybe someday his journeys
Will lead him back to the Celestial tree.
Apr 29, 2013
Apr 29, 2013 at 4:51 PM UTC
Would you look for me if I were lost?
Travel the storm-waves, so tempest tossed?
Would you look for me if I wandered away?
Trek through the wasted lands night and day?
Would you leave your home for me to find?
Break into the prison to my tethers unbind?
Would you look in every sewer-swamped ghetto?
Arid fields where no **** crows, God only knows?
Would you look for me if you noticed me gone?
Pack a haversack to search from dawn to dawn?
Would you look for me if I strayed from the fold?
Not the ninety-nine, but the one you long to hold?
Nov 6, 2014
Nov 6, 2014 at 7:47 PM UTC
You jumped in front of the train;
Took a bullet in the brain.
You broke your back,
And left your love in a haversack
You laid your body on the pyre;
Consumed by raging fire.
You took the blame,
And saved me from the flame.
You sheltered me from the storm;
Kept me dry and warm.
You said farewell,
As you hammered in the final nail.
In your eyes the dancing light,
In your breathe the soul takes flight.
In your tears the song sung sweet,
In your heart the heavens beat.
You laid your body on the pyre;
Consumed by raging fire.
You said farewell,
As you hammered in the final nail.
… … … the dancing light and light
… … … and this soul takes flight
… … … songs and songs so sweet
In your heart the very heavens beat.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 12:14 AM UTC
Old habits,
peculiar and
harder to break.
Anyway I take a moment
to organise these thoughts
thinking that nobody cares
I carry a haversack
black
strapped across my shoulders
to fit neatly into
the small of my back.
I could
lighten my load
but
why would I ?
They don't make millstones like they used to
and mine has been ground down to dust.
I carry it anyway
through each day like
a trophy
as if to say,
'Look at me'
they don't see the dust
only the haversack
Apr 18, 2017
Apr 18, 2017 at 10:53 AM UTC
The poster read:
“Gone Missing”
The come-back-kid
has failed to show.
The Old Man saw him,
******* by the Rainbow Factory
wall, against the wind,
like a prayer no longer given
to the prism-surfing life.
He said,
“The come-back-kid, might
Not come back”..
He wrung his
swindled heathen, left
with haversack and Macintosh,
hummed ballad in a Sea-King crown,
the colloquy of shepherd lore.
head far too full to sing,
Caught riding
in a burnt out car of
rude December archetypes,
an engine feathered Westerling,
to think.
He went
to where they bury boats,
Where mud larks perk
for potsherd farthings,
red-shanked in the gallon slob
oblivious...
Far off the Ness
He’ll watch them go..
... on meteoric dawn patrols,
a contrast to his built-in
obsolescence.
In provinces
of platitude
He’ll form no evanescent tie,
invoke his tattooed waxwing
back against their lactic
saccharine, to beg
the notion die...
But leavened light may carry,
A bold ceramic dialect
that skitters off
the short-sun marsh
dissipates in linnet banter
winnowed from the winter barley
crossing out the county lines..
The come-back-kid
will not return,
a blue-eyed, fell, Promethean.
Disfigured by the absolute
He’ll beat his way
unrecognised.
Jun 24, 2019
Jun 24, 2019 at 12:30 PM UTC
A single bullet was all it took
And I needn’t have wasted that,
He sat alone in that dismal cave
In an old Field Marshall’s hat,
His eyes were sunk in that pallid face
A demented cast to his jaw,
He didn’t move as I knelt and aimed
And put an end to the war.
It was getting late, it was ‘68
When I ventured into the cave,
My friends said going spelunking was
A bit like digging your grave.
‘Expect big rats, and giant bats,’
They said, before I’d begun,
So I added that to my haversack,
Just to be sure, a gun.
It wasn’t a normal cave I sought
But one by the autobahn,
Where I’d seen a crevice opening up
That nobody else had done,
It seemed to lead deep down in the earth
Could easily close, if found,
So I took a pick, a dynamite stick
And burrowed into the ground.
I had a lamp on my helmet, like
A miner’s, casting a beam,
And climbed on plenty of rubble
That had collapsed in a steady seam,
It led to a concrete tunnel
Plenty of rock strewn passageways,
A giant work of construction that
Lay hidden in former days.
I seemed to go on forever
Then ran into a barbed wire cone,
Blocking one of the passageways
And a sign, ‘Halt! No Go Zone!’
The wire was rusty and fell apart
As I pushed it away to the side,
But then the sound of scuffling rats
Brought the gun out by my side.
Then finally it had opened up
Into what would appear a cave,
With flags and banners arranged about,
The glory of former days,
A corpse sat propped in an easy chair
In a uniform from then,
And there, attached to the shirt front was
A nameplate, ‘Bormann, M.’
Beyond, and under the banners was
A barely human form,
Who stared at me in the darkness there
As if I’d not been born,
The greatest conqueror of our time
And there’s no disputing that,
Lost in pain in his vast domain
For there der Führer sat.
David Lewis Paget
Apr 1, 2015
Apr 1, 2015 at 11:12 AM UTC
I roll a marble down Market Street
from the hillside
looking over the dusty city
while the sun sets.
It finds a central channel in the cobbled street
and rolls beyond my seeing
past the Kurdish boy on the curb
plucking a tick from his stiff
homespun trousers.
The boy chews a sliver of wild onion grass
he has picked from the feral garden
behind the abandoned mosque
my marble passes now. Across the street Kastorides
stamps the tin lids on liter cans of olive oil
bearing his name.
From the corner of his eye, he sees the flash of my marble
like a wet pea, wonders when they will pave over Market Street
in macadam. He shouts for Andrei,
out of earshot,
marking cards in the alley behind the coffee shop
downstairs from the flat of the student
who glances from the yellowed wall clock
to the Swatch watch on his wrist, then tenderly
lifts the flap of his haversack to peer inside.
He has smoked his last cigarette,
is poking through the butts in the ashtray for a long one
when the phone rings — only once.
The student pulls a sweatshirt
over his bare torso, grabs the haversack
and dashes out. In the street he sees my marble,
almost slips on it in fact, and stops to watch it
running down its course toward the fountain in the square.
The driver of the truck, distracted by fears of his wife
and blinded in one eye
by a speck of dust which was once a dog’s skin,
takes the corner too hard,
the left front tire giving imperceptibly
over the rolling marble.
Sep 15, 2016
Sep 15, 2016 at 8:05 AM UTC
A guitar case with no music in, owned by
the old woman who can't sing.
He sweeps the comb through her straggly hair,
What no money and nobody cares.
He wipes the burning tears from her pretty eyes.
Listens to her worried sighs.
She's concerned about a lack of dosh.
Christmas is coming, oh golly gosh.
He, is the fellow with the overgrown belly and the beard of white,
Waiting for Christmas eve.
Bring on that night.
His name by now you must be aware is really Santa Claus,
This year he's really scared.
With no toys for his haversack.
Due to lack of funds.
A sleigh in need of service.
Reindeer nibbling rotten carrots.
**** Horrible.
And the sprouts are full of wind.
His workshop staff redundant,
More silent, than a winter's night upon a turkey farm.
Outside,the local families gather beneath last year's yule .
This year, everybody's skint
Lit the bonfire with stones of flint.
Perfect purpose,
Free fuel.
Carols echo noisily outside the house next door.
"Disappear" she said in a very loud voice.
Wait a few weeks before you rejoice.
It's way too early,
"Go", she said.
"Please, please, I beg of you no more.
As yet, at least.
It's much too soon.
Wait until December, to have a cheery feast.
I guess it's your choice."
(c)LIVVI
Nov 24, 2016
Nov 24, 2016 at 4:36 PM UTC
On a Morning in June – a Doctor Seuss-Free Graduation Poem
The earth is all before me: with a heart
Joyous, nor scar’d at its own liberty,
I look about, and should the guide I chuse
Be nothing better than a wandering cloud,
I cannot miss my way.
- Wordsworth, Prelude, I.15-19
Soon you’ll depart for your own pilgrimage,
Seafaring through the life God has given you,
To the golden Canterbury of your heart,
Along the sunlit road you’ve chosen to walk,
A pilgrimage, perhaps, to Orwell’s dusty room,
Or deep into the mind of Thomas More
Or far-off Saint James of the Field of Stars,
Or sea-passages swift to Denmark’s shores,
Or fields of sonnets singing in the dawn -
All these you’ll find along your pilgrim road.
Take then, your haversack, and neatly pack
Your book, your song, your dream, a change of clothes
(Your dreams are happier when you wear dry socks)
A prayer that your parsoun will write for you
A cup, a bowl, a pocketknife, a pen;
And do take care to pack those useful words
Learned, shaped, and sharpened, polished from your youth:
The baby-sounds for supper, sandwich, cat,
The childhood sounds for play and your best friend,
Then words from Mom and words from books - and words from you.
Words flown by you in dreams like sunlit sails
Then shaped again in pencil or in ink
And flung in hope upon a waiting leaf
Words made by you for honest purposes
And never employed in wicked deceit,
For thieves might steal your book, your song, your hopes,
And time decay your purposes and strength
But your own words, oh, yes, your good, strong words,
Like an old pair of boots will see you through
To your heart’s desire at your journey’s end.
Jun 1, 2018
Jun 1, 2018 at 12:21 PM UTC
A poem is a pilgrim’s haversack
All neatly, tightly packed for walkabout:
Toothbrush and rhymes rolled together betimes
Spare socks and meter tucked in with great care
And pocket knife and similes as if
Skivvies and metaphors were something else
Alliteration lined in lovingly
Syntax and shaving kit accessible
Because
When organized in compact unity
Poems and haversacks engage a life that’s free
Apr 12, 2018
Apr 12, 2018 at 3:52 PM UTC