"herrings" poems
Red herrings tend to be trustworthy,
But lead us astray.
Orange orangutans are trustworthy:
If it looks menacing, it is;
If it grunts, it's meaningful;
If it moves, it's unpredictable.
In captivity they're studied
As evolutionary wonders,
But it's still an orange orangutan,
Pounding his chest.
Feb 1, 2017
Feb 1, 2017 at 7:20 PM UTC
As a maze is to the eye, I am to all. Winding and wearing, my walls impossibly tall. Here, turns are the
Words
and dead ends the Actions. Spirals are the days, and red herrings, my Attractions. With each
Who dare
Enter,
Two Paths
They All
Choose.
One abandons
All Hope
The Other,
Nothing
To Lose.
But none have made the journey,
none to the
core.
For all who enter,
leave and say
"no more! no more!"
Here I have planted this garden that others accuse a maze.
A beautiful creation covered by haze. But all that is seen is monstrous,
a trick of the daze.
Months and years at the center have been all of my stays.
Here I will watch and wait for the One who makes it, and is amazed.
By all I have built, all I have dreamed and every aspiration and desperation has seemed
to build this
wonderful,
wandering
place.
You who hear my case,
I invite you to take that space.
Be the One who makes it, leave all others to be commonplace.
Nov 15, 2012
Nov 15, 2012 at 12:37 PM UTC
COME round me, little childer;
There, don't fling stones at me
Because I mutter as I go;
But pity Moll Magee.
My man was a poor fisher
With shore lines in the say;
My work was saltin' herrings
The whole of the long day.
And sometimes from the Saltin' shed
I scarce could drag my feet,
Under the blessed moonlight,
Along thc pebbly street.
I'd always been but weakly,
And my baby was just born;
A neighbour minded her by day,
I minded her till morn.
I lay upon my baby;
Ye little childer dear,
I looked on my cold baby
When the morn grew frosty and clear.
A weary woman sleeps so hard!
My man grew red and pale,
And gave me money, and bade me go
To my own place, Kinsale.
He drove me out and shut the door.
And gave his curse to me;
I went away in silence,
No neighbour could I see.
The windows and the doors were shut,
One star shone faint and green,
The little straws were turnin round
Across the bare boreen.
I went away in silence:
Beyond old Martin's byre
I saw a kindly neighbour
Blowin' her mornin' fire.
She drew from me my story --
My money's all used up,
And still, with pityin', scornin' eye,
She gives me bite and sup.
She says my man will surely come
And fetch me home agin;
But always, as I'm movin' round,
Without doors or within,
Pilin' the wood or pilin' the turf,
Or goin' to the well,
I'm thinkin' of my baby
And keenin' to mysel'.
And Sometimes I am sure she knows
When, openin' wide His door,
God lights the stats, His candles,
And looks upon the poor.
So now, ye little childer,
Ye won't fling stones at me;
But gather with your shinin' looks
And pity Moll Magee.
2.3k
a polish pork head terrine?
my ******* god...
how can the jews and the muslims
take to culinary criticism of
their own, respective gods?
ever watch the t.v. show
billions? where they're having
breadcrumbs fried pork
ears?
last time i heard...
the best pork is encapsulated
within the pig cranium....
all that excess cartilage?
yummy finger licking good...
seems funny though...
it's not exactly discussing bone marrow...
it's pork head...
all that excess cartilage...
and mingled with sweet & sour
gherkins...
just my idea of Anastasia...
a porky's head...
chicken hearts / chicken livers....
raw Baltic herrings?
who the, **** needs to glorify
american hamburgers...
if not some jerking-off
megalomaniac?
you eat, what is given,
you don't ask for nuances,
you don't make excuses...
you eat what is on the plate..
you **** the omnivore "gimmick"...
pork head flesh,
meat mixed with cartilage?
tasty as ****
so why would islam
or the partial strand of judaism
be so critical concerning the most
economic carnivore animal being
farmed, herded, industrialised?
the monotheistic celebration of god...
within the confines of a criticism,
so trivial would make a god laugh...
it would appear the dogma was written as a joke...
earthquake and hurricane
are o.k., but pork?
the ******* bubonic plague!
i love how "god" is celebrated,
but at the same time,
kept under a critical acclaim
of having one of his creations,
namely pork...
given a punching bag status of criticism...
since, what is so ******* pristine,
and spectacular, about chicken, lamb
or beef meat?
according to islam... mad cow disease
never happened.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 9:19 PM UTC
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the ****
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the ***** and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his ***
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.
2.2k
you want war, you have world war two spitfire pilots to serve your post-colonial migration; and yes, i'll twitch my eyes; ha ha cuisine scots using ginger.
there's a quintessential
fascination with cabbage
among the mutli-cultural
asians of england being picky
concerning scandinavians
and the slavs...
politico i could say as much
about indian spices.. but they're
granulated i admit,
so there's less stink in the armpits;
or there isn't, given chanel cardamom:
assimilated asians into british
society don’t use raw herrings and cabbage
to joke about other european ethnicities
while waving the st. george
of that great fake curry of suffolk.
*i've been telling the turks about sauerkraut for years
to match up a purposive additive for the lamb kebab;
sours to cut through the lamb fat like the chillies
cutting through.*
Jan 9, 2016
Jan 9, 2016 at 8:10 PM UTC
The ancestral diet of Stars, being Other Stars
has left no scars, save open black and yawning vast.
No retrograde Oblivion... only galactic swirls
and elastic Space between worlds. that never last.
and Eternity.
my modernity nips and pleats my yellow teeth
after long whitening by paste and bristle. i chew the gristle
of the dead sow
and club the weaning pups of Cerberus
with an eyelash and a long blink.
i tread the narrows, flatly -
and conquer the quizzical conundrums
by simply asking.
My Rocket Science... laughing
at your grecian urn
to paint the herrings red.
i'm out of my depth.
but yes means 'yes' and we ' no' it.
if Nothing else.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 10:32 PM UTC
being insulted by someone
of a trans-
status quo
classification
will never be enough
to mind, had i the pairing
to a higher tier of socialite endeavour -
to be debased with a fragrance of
a misuse of language
on a level of comprehension will
always place me steadied with placards
of 'hello, my name is Samauel'
well hello Samuel..
boiled herrings pan-fried readied for
a star wars sequel akin to rocky 7,
boxing-catchup K.O. no.31 -
an here the champ gives way to a chimpanzees'
worth of gurgled laughter -
readied speed at a Bronson's uppercut -
and we're too the readied ones
annex to the molars that might be considered
the chewing apparatus should
we not have juiced with bites as if a load's
worth of hammering was taken place:
chewing as if hammering, imagine
the cranium gush extract - it would be
like porridge if reverse due to diarrhoea!
flaky shit-bits and anaconda's suntan to measure up to;
well, there was the leather chair to mind
in terms of approving leisure activity as coercing
a carefree fortitude of futuristic investment -
mind you the loss of the Celtic vocabulary,
I.R.A. and the instigation of Anglo-Saxon
vocabulary to suppress the populace
of renegade Catholics or the twin Belfast known
as Glasgow - indeed Edinburgh remained
as much conservative as St. Andrew's would allow,
an extension of England, even with parliament
it was a Basildon of northern Essex...
scots among the multitude of accents usurped from
pole-dancing with kilts! Tartan su doku!
Apr 26, 2016
Apr 26, 2016 at 8:46 PM UTC
*to be in want of writing philosophy without
atypical philosophical words,
analogous of logic, or logos,
like phenomenology, archaeology, ontology,
metaphysics.... and instead dig into
grammatical categorisation of words,
and use grammatical denoting words
rather than philosophically exclusive words
as exampled thus stated.*
breakfast for champions...
that's 20cl of whiskey with coke,
and after
raw herring in sour cream sauce
witch apples and cucumber pickles,
that piquant pinch of it all,
a little bun...
and tomato juice salted & peppered,
eaten while standing up.
honestly raw herrings and tomato
juice drank was the biggest innovation
i've yet to claim in the culinary realm.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 9:54 AM UTC
We're bored like monks
in the margins
of ancient scripture.
We want to leave behind lazy hieroglyphs
and accidental red herrings
feigning illumination
rendered by the deviousness of time
in its enclave,
running a brush of flaky gold paint
over delicate decadence
and sprinkling dust like a fairy--
we are to believe it is all
some ancient treasure.
We prance in the ether of the material world
in junkyards where we sift through the wreckage
coddling memories like drying uteruses,
realizing our generation will not leave behind artifacts
worthy of nostalgia's ensconcing embrace.
With that realization we weep and
We continue to dig.
Oct 25, 2016
Oct 25, 2016 at 10:21 AM UTC
Seeing a vessel.
A catcher of fishes.
Espies another catcher of fishes.
These little fellows are destined for dishes.
Crew watching the crying ones.
The gulls as they rise.
Screaming wildly, they're on fire with excitement.
Gulls watch the Herrings, as they're breaching the foam.
Flapping and flipping, they're struggling to breathe.
The trawler man in the South westerly squall.
Struggling to cling to the slippery deck.
Tries hard not to fall.
He's used to it.
Another dollar.
Another day.
Only way to scoop his pay.
He's landing his fish.
Amid the squawking and bombing.
Keen and mean.
Tatty old trawler, chugs into the safe haven of harbour.
Today's catch thrown onto the dockside.
A different gull swoops.
A sly diving skydiver,
He's diving for dinner.
Never a loser.
Always a winner.
(C) Livvi
Oct 8, 2014
Oct 8, 2014 at 9:47 AM UTC
Thought you found the holy one
They take a little, she takes none
It's just a frontage after all
Oh how easy do they fall
One by one, and over again
They shed a little of their skin
First you mingle,
Then you dance
Pull it to a safe distance
It pours outside
You need a ride
Wish you hadn't gone inside
Fumble for the side hand door
You don't want to stay no more
The handles broke,
The light is low
Break too late and off it goes
Falling forward from the edge
Try to remember the words you read
Don't want to know
You tried too hard, they said
But you never wanna go
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
And are your feet cold?
They spread your ashes all
And all across the snow
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
All the lights are shining through
Hit you when you try to move
Know the ending
Know the start
Know the place where it falls apart
The red herrings not fooling you
Tricked you last time before you knew
Barreling towards the bitter end
The ****** comes
You lose a friend
Growing up and dressing down
Learn the truth to shut your mouth
It's not what all you'd thought it be
Cuts your heart so gradually
Sew it up and snip the thread
Dry the tears they made you shed
Hold the chair,
Slip the noose
Never forget who cut you loose
Don't want to know
You tried too hard, they said
But you never wanna go
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
And are your feet cold?
They spread your ashes all
And all across the snow
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
Confidence dies
A little every day
You lose your way, I lose it too
I wish I was back
Safe inside instead
But I'm at a funeral for a friend.
Don't want to know
You tried too hard, they said,
But you never wanna go
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
And are your feet cold?
They sorta your ashes all
And all across the snow
Way oh way oh oh oh
Way oh oh oh
Way oh
Feb 5, 2014
Feb 5, 2014 at 1:00 PM UTC
it was a kiss with coyote’s embouchure, with the river’s casket, with gelified venom, with the apron’s appetite, with compact distortion around portable lip cuffs, with trite lies liquified, with mud clumps in mercury clasps, with spit woven theses, with unwound ovoid wellsprings, with sun-hidden shadows, with the frayed nighttime squish, with closeted hand dice tossed, with chance in the fistfuls, with detuned static and bellyaching bramble, with losing yourself, with entropic dissociation, with fleeting tokens, with sayonara stamps, with honey pumping nozzles, with inside out stratus veins, with the pain of history tucked in the trail fringe, in the pebbles kicked outward, with fried abandon, with seatless balconies, with the touch of an insect unexpected while straddling a brick wall with electric grout, with eyelashes trimed by the wind, with patterns passed, with breathless shapes and shaping dimensions, without the taste of lavender or the mosquito’s lonely thirst, with time passing, with time passing, with time passing, without passing time, with the sky dumping elected dead bodies, with spoonfuls of miracles, with starvation kicking, with moon swells forgetting the fomite sea, with weather inside, with dry mouth drawer memories, with omens and herrings with teeth and tongue.
Feb 26, 2021
Feb 26, 2021 at 12:03 PM UTC
I listened to promises from a drunk,
"Bourbon Talking," I should have thunk,
The day passed, the weeks concluded,
I tried to work out who was deluded,
Waiting for red herrings,
The months and years were ending,
Decades rolled by, one day,
I realised he should be at AA,
Not so comical,
The vocab. was lyrical,
Centuries passed, millennia concluded,
The world exploded, universe imploded,
Worked out who was deluded,
Now for tradies, through phone books, I go walking,
So, girls, never listen when it' s "bourbon talking!!!"
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 10:34 PM UTC
the wind blew the suns light across the water
and the pattern formed a vibration I do not get to see often
I wonder if the current is caused by the waving of my own fist
to signal myself that I am dreaming and this does not exist
I watch the water kiss at your bare toes
as you use your finger to touch the cute little minnows
something about them swimming off together touches us both
knowing that we are never really alone while entering the unknown
rain drops catch the falling leaves
sending them towards you and me
we use the song of the blue herrings
to dance in the grown up weeds
and in awe we seen them fly up into the trees continuing to sing
expanding the sound trajectory and the way their vibrations carry
then I realize
this doesn't seem so scary
my car putters along
your sandals on my dashboard
I drive a safe speed
with my arm out the window
you stare at me through the passenger mirror
and all fears hit the dusty road
my hearts scatters off
like a school of cute little minnows
Jul 6, 2016
Jul 6, 2016 at 12:05 AM UTC
the internet is getting quirkier than expected,
lucky to be in the age brackets of 20 - 30
and single... it's like a *************
freak-show out there!
hey, i dig midgets,
and the crass and the oompa loompas:
reservation for odd spelling and vocabulary
also welcome:
i'll wear a ****** on my head
and pretend to be wearing a balaclava
ready to outline a the end of a terrorist
plot if you tell me you're dyslexic backwards:
shrapnel and palette tourists of a broken
shell with the snail asking where ceramics came from?
i sent a postcard from there, i reserved the blank
space with words: i had three wishes, one of them
wasn't here (where's a jinni when you need one?
those scandinavians and gold herrings! /
slavs and gold ferns... well, play my trombone
will you?)
Mar 4, 2016
Mar 4, 2016 at 10:22 PM UTC
the unnatural
drunk of a random breeze
clings to the broken chimes in busted windows
and sings no yes among the grunge swollen -
dandelions, however the candor yodels
or the pools swoon bleakly
beneath our mutual
demise.
penalty has no flowers in the lips of the moon
like a matador. Only the bull grievance of a bout of ravens
and a blood red cape of herrings.
a juke and box and a square to circle...
and nothing so much as a peep
from a fog.
Jan 16, 2016
Jan 16, 2016 at 6:17 AM UTC
some might say raw herrings
on crumpets is a bit barbaric,
but i find it the ideal meal
while feeding a cat a goodnight;
raw... rrrrrrroar flesh gives
the digestive system a one-over
twice the difficulty to feed me sleep.
Jan 31, 2016
Jan 31, 2016 at 8:24 PM UTC
Sleeping with a full head
i get to wake-up down, and just drone.
The harmonies that gather my teeth
to the bit... are wild melodies that insist
you never loved me enough
to see Us through It.
Down where it counts
It amounts to nothing but a negative wish.
A sublime rendition of a fresh Hell
and a golden carp to haggle with.
The Herrings are red
but the sutures are no ordinary surgeon's hook.
we lace our wings to the bleak grief
of impending kisses
and have our way
with the phantoms
of gross
inertia.
Long Live The Thing !
We recoup our loss by estranging
the legacy of our near miss
from the intimate lull of our unbehaved
conspiracies.
we join the hunt but rest in fell trees
as our foxes run.... and gather what moss
may lay upon such cold
Suns,
We are the first among equals
that divest from a whole sum.
we are the last to be anointed happy
in the sad .
and enjoy none.
Apr 10, 2016
Apr 10, 2016 at 4:21 AM UTC
I want chalance,
**** it!
Give me your unadulterated
caring.
I crave the taste of a well formed
opinion.
Spit bitter the dregs of conditioned aloofness, my children,
Turn from your beds that long dawning yawn of complacency,
The sickly lacksadaze of comfort and all those uninvited demons
posing as house-pets and affordable phone plans.
find a flame and
fan it!
reject the televised red
herrings.
propaganda’s best honed
minion.
Careen from the brink of total self destruction, my children,
Bite deep into the fleshy face of death, its opaque nascency,
filet the present moment at your leisure, for whatever reasons,
Make your life a gun loaded with demands.
Nov 4, 2014
Nov 4, 2014 at 12:32 AM UTC
Fantasy:
Imagination,
Magic,
Illusion,
Fraud.
These are the parlor tricks that
our mighty government
has sunken too
instead of creative linguistics.
Or a tapestry of rhetorical philosophy
that is meant to persuade us
into their petition of ideology--
to understand their foundation for society
for how we live and prosper
as a nation united.
Instead we are beaten over the head
with misdirection and red-herrings
they willingly and happily use
slight of hand
so the people watching
can be mislead,
instead of asking tough questions.
They are sawing the news media in half
to delude you of their credibility
and showing you
compartments full of reflective mirrors
to hide the true emptiness
that lurks behind their lies.
Mar 6, 2017
Mar 6, 2017 at 5:29 AM UTC
Not one to fly in another's sky
Nor to fish the grounds of another herrings town
For I
I am a Rook
Meaning that often and alone I fly
Not high, but above
More pleasant fowl
For as keen eyes look
And occasionally see alone
With pinions dark as covered night
There is noone else at last to be found
Because we rooks, we mate for life
There is noone else for us alive
Sep 1, 2019
Sep 1, 2019 at 3:27 PM UTC
TLACAELEL
The weeks since last we met found Hungry Prince
Of late locked in his tower, casting scrolls
Which chart the star-crossed charms of the occult.
And in the predawn darkness of his arts,
He broke through to a voice from the beyond
Which whispered that the throne of Mexico
Must soon come to be ruled by foreigners.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
And thus the emperor submits to trial,
And these, their wagers, are red herrings, then.
TLACAELEL
To spare us the demoralizing news.
The spirits’ hands will steer them to reveal
If this prognostication failed or not.
PRIEST OF TLALOC
The ***** in motion. Let the gods decide.
TLACAELEL
Motecuhzoma falls! The ball is down! The ball is down!
PRIEST OF TLALOC
Dust rises, and our lord is lost to view!
TLACAELEL
Three in a row! Were we left hanging, then,
For torturers to **** by small and small?
MOTECUHZOMA and HUNGRY PRINCE reappear.
MOTECUHZOMA [aside]
I’ve lost then, but the full significance
Of that word “lost” I’ve yet begun to know.
Gods need not lie, and here we have their words.
Well, let it come. [to Tlacaelel] Unseal the wagers, lord,
And read before these noble witnesses
The stakes we trusted to you at the serve.
TLACAELEL
First, the abortive fee for Hungry Prince:
King of Texcoco, had this victory
Been won by his imperial majesty,
And you had failed, your forfeiture had been . . .
[Opens the first wager.]
The loss of all your lands, your courts, your throne,
And all, for your opponent’s acquisition,
Decoronation to a common man,
And forced prostration to this gentleman.
HUNGRY PRINCE
A staggering ransom! I must thank the gods,
Not for their championing me, but truth.
Oct 13, 2016
Oct 13, 2016 at 4:14 PM UTC
*and he said: 'may you falter at every turn when you ask to depict in masonry, as a literal fake, a joke'. what did he imply? you just keep looking at "beard" of ancient antiquity... the egyptian "beard" of the pharaoh... just a ******* form of, what could probably be misrtaken for a ***** and the babylonian? can you really get curly beards, like the hairs on your head? ****** hairs are brutish, sure, they can seem curly at a centimetre's height... but in a beard? you're not going to get curls on it... plus the depiction... the fact that there are three different layers. i''m sure he left the latins be, since they respected an accuracy to the true image represented in idol-form of a statue, and that they treated these idols, simply equivalent to lamp-posts... and yes, some have very large heads (like michelangelo's david) - disproportionate to the body... as to roman emperors in "idol" form.. a large upper body... but very short legs.*
just as latin has been dubbed, a dead language,
so too, has the history embedded with
the latin phoneticism (i.e. the alphabet),
thanks to darwinism, we can erase all the history
embedded in these letters,
and, perhaps return to the sanctity of
phonecian... or even better...
hieroglyphics...
to me, nothing memorable is
actually happening these days,
i know that something is happening,
but then darwinism comes along and goes
back thousands of years to a "beginning",
that seems contradictory to the joy of watching
the bali macaques of the uluwatu temple stealing
tourists' possessions (eye glasses, cameras, etc.)
and holding the tourists' possessions to ransom,
in exchange for food...
plus i can boil an egg for a runny yoke in 5minutes...
all i'm saying is... i need the now,
the immediacy of sensations!
i'm talking through a microscope of history,
a day-to-day...
these journalists in the papers are talking
through the perspective of a telescope of history...
and by journalists, i mean, the proud boys
of england... who are standing on one leg (darwin)
since newton was debunked by einstein;
please don't mention standing on two legs by citing
shakespeare... it's a different barrel of herrings.
May 30, 2017
May 30, 2017 at 9:26 AM UTC