"heft" poems
Sometimes you have no reason to stay,
and realize that's a perfect argument to go.
And that taking an entirely new way,
is the sore but single method to grow.
If you're washed-on abeyance's bight,
and you feel decision's heavy heft:
To choose the left where nothing's right,
or go to the right where nothing's left.
Remember it matters not where you proceed,
or which mountain you want to ascend.
It does not matter whether you succeed,
it is the journey that matters in the end.
Apr 9, 2018
Apr 9, 2018 at 11:08 AM UTC
is like no other early morning, man reborn, in the delivery
room of sky blue, the offsetting water deeper bluish hue,
the trim-all-around of the mixed salad greens of the staff's
scrubs as they usher in unity, with no imp-unity, the risks,
while the supervisory sky, disperses cumulus clouds in
peppercorn patterns of white chains, or big wide solitary
brushstrokes on a a ****** canvas, gettin' the feel in the
palm of the heft of brush, the viscosity of the paint, the day's
palette reflecting available colors in order to create a uni~cued
original of what has been painted an uncountable times before,
and before…
tho short weighted, was the sleep of the prior night's restful,
he awakes to the early morning light, the sounds of early
island rouse him, even, arouse him, for the August chill
foretells of the early onset of memory loss of the peculiarities
of this summered simmering, human warming and baking
and natural braking of the slowing of the heart rate, to better
accommodate, nature's hints and hidden reminiscences
of the true purpose of the summer's intervention upon our
collective and unique bottling, our individualized containers,
un~lidded, uncovered, eager for the fuel of sunrays replenish-
ing the length of our lives by the elixir of the summer
it is a chill 63 Fahrenheit at this time of day as we crossover
to the nigh day, from the cooling air conditions of dark,
the occasional helicopter intrudes upon the morning's calm,
the water placid, the geese honking regarding my watchful
rewarding presence, a slew, a bevy, of female vocalists, to
ease this transitory performance unfolding, and though one
feels the existential of his solitary singularity, as he thinks,
nay believes, he is the only one in attendance at this ritualized
emergence, he takes in the cool of, the heat of, the admixture
of both, the clashing integers of each, and he, fully invigorated,
goes silent, for once more, he has uncovered new combinations of
old words to accept and describe a new day's creation, miracle of miraculous, defying the odds of this ventures's success, his own continuance on this sheltered but open all around island implanted tween two tines of land, as if all the surroundings were created just to protect this, wholly holy place…
7:00am
Silver Beach
Shelter Island
Aug 19 2025
Aug 19, 2025
Aug 19, 2025 at 8:00 AM UTC
Indeed
It was a breakup,
‘Cuz I was only for “necking her up”,
‘Cuz I was “dead from neck up”,
Loving her was my greatest blunder,
‘Cuz she played a ***** heart plunder,
Now when I see her
Soft heartbeats become loud thunder,
Hey peeps,
She left me
For other cove,
She theft me
In name of love,
Then
I kept her
In my mind’s blocklist,
Why heft her
Meaningless memories,
Easy say
Hard in action
But I needed a “whole soul checkup”,
Indeed
It was a breakup…..
Mar 23, 2021
Mar 23, 2021 at 7:10 AM UTC
Ski Jumping
Leaning forward, body parallel to the skis
arms neatly by the side
hands pressed in tight; flat
down the slope he goes into the unknown
flying free
for a few moments
landing as far as he can
then arms aloft in triumph.
How do you begin such a journey?
Armchair bound we are
never to speed down the icy slope
eyes and goggles peering down and down
ready to fly, see the sky.
Yet in a moment we can be there
down the slope in our minds
unburdened from reality
no years of practice or skis to heft
no chance of failure.
We can fly on the ski slope of the mind
an adventure of the imagination
synapses firing neurons glowing
and so let it be with death and life
down the slope jumping, arms aloft
into tomorrow, into the unknown
alone, down the slope, jumping.
Malcolm F. Davidson October 11th 2013
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 8:09 AM UTC
258
There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are—
None may teach it—Any—
’Tis the Seal Despair—
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air—
When it comes, the Landscape listens—
Shadows—hold their breath—
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death—
2.9k
a million ears listening
no one hears a thing
basest news a big surprise
ignominy is crowned king
a squander of treasure
best minds laid to waste
price of fear forever accrues
funds the purpose of the place
eyes of a diligent nation
brains filled with briny mush
ears clogged and waxen
expertise in smelling ****
central intel brainiacs
the heft of heavy dudes
a sordid nest of vipers
collecting despots dues
Music selection:
Radiohead,
Artificial Intelligence
Oakland
2/14/11
jbm
Apr 12, 2013
Apr 12, 2013 at 7:34 PM UTC
I find that chromium-vanadium steel,
while holding glimmer and shine
through much abuse,
is harder to hone
to that razor-like edge
that truly makes chopping a breeze
(watch the fingers, please),
merely mangling fine fruits
and tomatoes, instead.
(just tilt your head, thus)
It's a tool best left
for whacking at meat,
as its heft and its strength
make short work of bone;
more cleaver than scalpel,
if truth will be said.
I've always preferred
the high-carbon alloys,
though now out of fashion
in today's haute cuisine.
While rusting and blackening with age -
not the type you'd put on display -
the blades stay as keen
as the day they were minted,
and wipe down nicely on sleeves.
Oct 23, 2010
Oct 23, 2010 at 6:48 PM UTC
.
and your mug shot's shining through
it's a vision true (but the subject's taboo)
all ugly here
morning sunshine breakfast table autumn cool
you're poised to speak a fly lands on your lolling spoon
then i stand up merry
i make my vital move the table backs away distressed
your eyes raise
i flop open my faminous mouth and let the fumes draw in
Surprise !
(no time for you to hold surplus breath -
- form an expression - make any objection)
mechanism disjoints like the raw riches
i whip the plumb weight of my head and strike
mouth-chomp-grip over your scalp
and i am working you in
with swift jaw shifts and hingery
i **** on you with a smile and gullet
(past photos of you shuffle glaucous before my inner eye)
yap sock muscle i operate gumming on your head
(ours was the world ; we got so lazy)
budging in your hair dampened by my saliva
(our timid first meeting at a bar)
and airway and my teeth softly folding back
(us in bed-us in bed-us-in-bed)
and whole hog jaw agog
(the tourist we made as a couple)
i dilate and distend crouch low to take your weight
(the rise and falter of your sleeping chest)
upend your hands panic typing in the air
(the eyes of your investment in me)
your feet flinging the heft back and forth
your shoulders break in and forward folding
my chest cracks and wells
(gifts we gave that touched heart and others that fell short)
a complete engulfing meal of you
(your childhood antidotes and teenage feelings we discussed)
down my soft disposal
(all my memories of us in a fizz
and all the inaccuracies)
...and then i head off to hibernation
ferrying an idea that ' i have you now '
that perhaps you were my enemy
all this time
and i am digesting the beast
(what a feast !)
Sep 16, 2024
Sep 16, 2024 at 9:39 PM UTC
From this tree, they lynched John T,
for the crime of speaking
against slavery. Dead now, this spar
stands among Holsteins
in the pasture of a man
who figures we’re cousins somehow.
He, a midwestern farmer,
me, a California craftsman,
political poles apart
but blood is thicker than geography.
Ancient black walnut
hollowed by rot is tough to salvage.
Working together with chain saw
and wrecking bar we find a section
of solid core, and on the surface
a scar like a grinning face
where the branch broke off,
long gone one hundred fifty years,
the branch that held the rope
that swung John T’s three hundred and fifty
pounds of muscle and fat and bluster
until it snapped.
John T, who was the grandfather
of my grandfather, ran into the forest
where his best friend rescued him,
a man named, ironically, Lynch,
grandfather of the grandfather
of the man with whom I speak.
Thus, cousins — in the country way.
I’ll make salad bowls, I say,
wooden forks and tongs,
walnut plates, maybe even a tea set
for your daughter
who seems so outspoken,
so feisty and strong.
Tea set? he says, she needs a lectern!
So here it is.
The grinning knot on the surface.
Those holes in the side, from bullets.
Lead slugs. I dug them out.
Here, this cloth sack.
May she heft them in her fist.
May her words
fire like cannons
for freedom.
May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016 at 1:06 PM UTC
The sea stretches tight on a slight, white horizon
unflurried by waves, by the clean, boneache moon.
The water rests awhile, passing slowly through the ribs of continents,
its deep, deep chest booming with the cries of extinct fish.
I am not dead, though the salt has lifted me out
and away, its sting green-silver like a safety razor edge.
It rubs away chromosomes, the earliest layers of skin
and remakes me pale and raw as a baby’s spleen.
The land abandons me. The last little fishing vessel
returns to its village, bearing upon its sun-slick floor
the heft of my cells, my tiny stillborn children.
I know I’ll never be a mother;
the salinity of my blood has risen steadily
these past million years;
it itches against my arteries
and calcifies in the deeper pockets of my lungs.
I tower over grassroots, vivid as a corpuscle,
drinking from the local well and dreaming of lysis.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 12:22 AM UTC
At night, against the pulsing embryonic black which could
Squeeze any number of untold horrors from it’s voided heft,
There sits a door; bright searchlights unmoving, having forever
Ago found and revealed the menacing target of their feverish hunt.
The lights, beacons of vision and revelation stay still,
Afraid to ever lift their gaze from the door.
The door; a crimson sentinel of conformity’s’ demands. A gate
To a finite space of infinite secluded terrors. It’s mocking facade,
Not the true foundation of the haunting visage, but it’s chosen
Illumination against the choking nothingness around it.
There is nothing else but it, and if the lights lose
Their oppressive gleaming, there will be nothing.
Would it not be better for the deep to win the ever waging war
Against our struggles to find hints of sight and recognition?
If the door were to vanish from the othering out there,
then it would be impossible to not turn inward. A forced reflection,
a mirror that’s presence is known, existence felt, but is unseen,
only available when the absence is absolute.
Nonplussed, the bastion remains, a gravity well pulsing
In and out the night, as if the darkness centered around
Maintaining the illusion of safety from knowing ourselves.
Do not be afraid, you will not be forsaken or alone with anything
Other than the beating of your quickened pulse, the edges
Of your vision shrinking until all that you are
Is mirrored in that crimson sentinel.
Apr 7, 2021
Apr 7, 2021 at 9:28 PM UTC
With the tightfisted budget now handed down
There is a lot of ****** off people in our nation's towns
Mr Hockey has hit the taxpayers with a double decker bus
High and low income earners put well into a binding truss
Revolt in the Senate Chamber is showing on the cards
The government will be in receipt of a few shrapnel shards
Legislation won't get passed in a timely manner
There will be the flying of a double dissolution banner
Then the Abbott mob will be well and truly stumped
Voters are itching to have the extra tax imposts bumped
Canberra shall shortly be in for an enormous rattling
Heft taxing has the nation's populous struggling and battling
Had the GST been set at fourteen percent and on everything
Our tax burden to-day wouldn't be so troubling
Government must learn to live within its boundaries
As the tax paying public are sickening of all the levees
Tax policy is in need of urgent attention too right
For parliamentarians don't seem to see our plight
Mr Shorten has stated that his mob can fix our woes
But his side of politics has not the scent of a rose
We are stuck with a budget which has us ******* down
And it offers us nothing of the lights in mirthful town
The treasury calculator has a very mean spirited spike
Twill there ever be a tax regime which we'll all like
May 16, 2014
May 16, 2014 at 7:54 AM UTC
632
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—
1.8k
I am the shadow of the moon at night,
Creeping along out of sight.
I am the eyes starring at the back of your head,
The sweat on your back and the breeze in your hair.
I am the rustle of the leaves on the left,
Smelling the weight of the fear you heft.
I am the ominous feeling in the air,
Watching you walk right into my lair.
I am here when I'm gone,
For my presence lingers long.
During the day I disappear,
Come back at night if you dare.
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 10:38 AM UTC
A cold pair of scissors right next to me
A cold pair of scissors against my skin
A pair of scissors, how cold could they be?
A cold pair of scissors against my chin
A cold pair of scissors brush down my neck
A cold pair of scissors as sharp as swords
Two cold, hard, and sharp lines that intersect
And scrape and grind to make dissonant chords
A cold pair of scissors could end my life
A cold pair of scissors could end my stress
I have no children and I have no wife
Ending my life might just be for the best
I have nothing to live for since she left
I will die; from scissors or a noose I heft
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 11:21 AM UTC
With my thimble full of pride
A stone as my heart
I'm afraid the time has come
That we must now part
A thimble the only measure
Of the pride I have left
As for the stone that's my heart
It was put there with heft
Each unkind word a pebble
Now all stacked and compressed
Transformed into the stone
I now carry in my chest
But I will bear you no grudge
Nor hold you in account
For karma takes care of those
Who pull others down
Oct 24, 2013
Oct 24, 2013 at 8:36 PM UTC
I never feared the monster hiding
Sliding out from under my bed
To grab me by the head and drag me
Into some dark, dIngy vicinity.
I had the real thing to fear. We all did
And it only hid when other adults saw.
The fear would gnaw at me forever
And I felt it would never let up.
A couple of times I felt I would die
Because I tried to stop it; to cry
To beg, to wheedle, to quake.
But I could not shake her hold.
I wasn’t all that old, but I began
To plan. I did her household chores
But she wanted more; laundry,
Preparing the meals she completed.
Defeated, I knew it was no good.
I had done everything I could.
I remember it. Oh, yes. Clearly.
Nearly every scene resonates
Grates and whips me relentlessly
Just as hard, and painfully as she
Whipped us; me and my brothers
Not acting like a mother, but mad.
Not so much angry as insane.
She was the bane of our existence
With no diluting of that phrase.
And it was not a phase, it was there
When we were home, alone
With her when she indulged her rage.
To that stage when she could not stop;
Not turn back and be the caregiver.
I still shiver. I feel the belts or sticks
Stripe across my back or my legs
When, begging, I tried to stop her;
Threaten to call the cops or something
But nothing worked since Dad was a cop.
The cops or the county would come by
When a nearby neighbor called on her
But when they heard our name, they stopped
And since Dad was a cop, they dropped it
And would sit and ask us in front of her
Whether she was beating us or whatever.
Never would we rat her out because
The claws would come out when they left
And she’d heft whatever she used on us.
And fussing and crying only made it worse.
Once a nurse turned her in to the school
And some fool from the county dropped by
To write down Mom’s lies and ask us again
In front of the woman from the welfare
And we were too scared to tell the truth.
We were in the beginnings of our youth.
How could we defeat a monster that knew
Where and when we slept. What could we do?
Apr 25, 2015
Apr 25, 2015 at 2:11 AM UTC
This world's a story
filled with stones: those five
smooth ones; some temple
tumbling to; a mountain's
stubborn bones. Take this one,
pocked, rounded, smoothed,
rocked by currents sure
they'd find the way. Blue
(or vaguely gray), flecked gold
no miners mine, or can,
diminished thing from David's
bolder day, it chooses you.
Palmed in your closing hand,
it's good, the heft of it, live weight
to tell a tale that's true.
Nov 2, 2011
Nov 2, 2011 at 3:31 PM UTC
264
A Weight with Needles on the pounds—
To push, and pierce, besides—
That if the Flesh resist the Heft—
The puncture—coolly tries—
That not a pore be overlooked
Of all this Compound Frame—
As manifold for Anguish—
As Species—be—for name—
1.4k
Perched on the plank seat
of the old wagon
the dusty man gently jiggles the reins
of his reliable old steeds,
they as resolved as he
to reach Archer City
to get booked up.
Larry was there with his white hair
whittling his latest creation,
an overweight manuscript
sure to cause a sensation
no matter its heft.
They sat together talking
til the fireflies flew,
shared stories of books
loves, and good bass hooks,
reaching down to fetch a fresh brew
when they got parched
which was frequent
as they spoke at length
of men like Woodrow and Gus,
how they cussed,
poked, and stretched yarn after yarn.
Larry’s gone to the barn
but the guy who pulled up
in that old wagon
still is reading
and yet yearns
to revisit Texas lakes
to fish bass,
visit the local café,
and eat a passel of pancakes
or a big, tasty chicken fried steak.
Jun 18, 2022
Jun 18, 2022 at 1:31 AM UTC
on my basement cellar shelves i keep
a buncha cans:
soups, water chestnuts.. tomato paste
some firewood & old glass.
i go there in the evenings with a drink,
heft the big axe/chop wood, kindlings.
a friend even slept down there one time
my house was full up of sleepers (drunks)
he said the sand was cold/but comforting.
i told him:
*"that's why i go down barefoot.
that dusty sand on my feet/takes me someplace else."*
Sep 22, 2011
Sep 22, 2011 at 8:29 PM UTC
His right is right
And so's His left.
His burden's light
Despite its heft.
Easy's His yoke,
And, I attest,
A spirit broke
Is also blest.
Aug 11, 2022
Aug 11, 2022 at 5:37 PM UTC