"hideaways" poems
All but still
Wheat wavering in the distance, shivering in anticipation
Animals hide away, tucked in the safety of hideaways, holes, and orifices
Humans crouch underground, waiting
Hours pass
A lone alarm shouts across the land
"This is an emergency. I repeat, an emergency warning"
So loud that those below, closer to hell than ever before, clutch their ears
For they are ringing from the vibrant sound waves stretching across the fields
A slight change in wind directions
A little bit of motion
Begins the devastation
A lone inverted triangle appears
Seemingly hovering, inches above the ground
Circling its prey, before it gorges itself
Endless cyclic motions, vacuuming everything in its path
Houses, barns, plants fly
Tugged from the attraction to the ground to the sky
Engulfed by the tornado
That winds down a path of destruction
On a whirlwind high
Drunk off of its power
Invoking pain for no reason, except that it can
Land ripped to shreds
Houses taken and tossed miles and miles away
Barns slingshotted across the American countryside
And the deaths
Oh the deaths
Those who thought they could wait it out
Survive again once more
Those who tried to chase the twister
Mesmerized by its hypnotic dance
Those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time
Oblivious to their preventable fate
When the humans emerged
From their underground bunker
They found a land left ruined
Wiped blank of human development
With that they shed tears
Watering the fertile lands
As the tornado wrecked havoc
It brought a rebirth
A chance to start again fresh
Nov 20, 2018
Nov 20, 2018 at 8:29 PM UTC
When are we going to wake up to start believing that we should stopped competing and start complimenting to feel like were completing.
We need to be a team player instead of the team leader, replacing that with the idea of being on the same team and building something that's takes on the dream.
How are we going to teach ourselves of what's needed to be taught? If we are communicating to each other's to misperceived when sought to read and believe of what’s being well-received.
Why are we all on this justification to be misrepresentation as to juxtapose when we are responsible for the I could and the I suppose.
To add what is the so what to the now what? But it's the actual what needs to be address in which perhaps misaddressing to the audience of nowadays. As if we are surrogate of the hideaways of the be real today.
It's we and us and all of us to address the matter of comradeship of how compassion of it to be who you are. To create this level of friendship of the desire to follow the footsteps of who you are and as it's start with you and it begins with and ending of you.
Jul 2, 2018
Jul 2, 2018 at 1:26 PM UTC
Gather round
Perk up your ears
And I will tell you a story
I will kidnap your soul
Enslave your senses
My voice shall keep you rooted to your seat
And yet take you far away
To the highest tower of the darkest castle
Five stars right of neverland
Where dragons wait in golden caves
And knights with magic swords come to slay them
Gather round, gather round and hear the tale
Let my voice fill the sails
Of the ship that sets sail
For fantasia, far fantasia
Where prismacolor skies hang
Above the island hideaways of pirates
And the air will fill your lungs with fire
Fly away with me on the leather wings of a mighty wyvern
To the halls of Morpheus
Where dreams to shift and change and form
Where light and air and all things do bow to the king of stories
Come with me on a journey beyond the veil of time
To the place where they catch stars in silvery nets
And keep them in little jars to light the way
Gather round every one, as we begin our journey with a single step
A step called
Once upon a time…
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 11:50 PM UTC
I type in that old address
expecting google not to show a house
to show the empty lot
that from what i heard
was the result of putting a dishwasher
into the kitchen
and causing complete septic failure
that flooded that entire uptown PA acre.
But, it flies me there
and I cry a little
because it's an old picture-
the house is still there,
just as i remember it;
an empty lot to the side,
the dilapidated apartment in the back yard,
the shed at the end of the driveway
(which was just a couple of cement tracks
slightly thinner than the pathfinder tires)
the apple and pie cherry trees we used to climb.
the alley in the back
where we used to skip rocks
and run from the neighborhood dogs (and cats)
looks the same as well,
every car the same,
every empty house still empty,
every tipped trashcan still being tipped each week.
I go down every street I used to walk,
they're all the same,
the bus stop is still where it was
the trails are just as long and dark as they ever were
and each yellow yard looks just as it always did in midsummer.
the ponds in the park are still the same color
with the same algae growing in them
and the same overgrowth hideaways around them.
A mile down the road;
the mini-mart where I bought gum when i had money
hasn't changed a bit,
even the pink umbrellas are still in front of the smoothie bar
but, across the street
the used book store that i would get lost in is gone
and from there i notice subtle changes:
the blackberry bushes by the middle school,
that mom made multiple cobblers from, are gone,
the maternity store moved,
the shed that my stepdad first told us would be our new house,
(before showing us this place)
has been torn down, or fell over
(as i assume it did),
and it doesn't end there,
I practiced my eye in the small details of this small ****** of the world
even though i never talked to anyone
in all the hours i spent walking.
But i guess I remember so well,
because, four-and-a-half years later
I still consider that house home.
that house where my brother was born,
where i first went without my glasses, and liked it
where I was first given the freedom of a bus pass
and permission to leave the house,
where i had my first (and only) overnighter
where i first became addicted to cleaning
where i've packed so many memories
that i can understand why the sewage line broke
sometime after that picture was taken
©Brandon Webb
2012
Jan 3, 2013
Jan 3, 2013 at 5:14 AM UTC
An issue it has been for many a year,
A secret behind doors of which you often do not hear,
Within families and friends, workplaces the lot
To seek of this would not be a long shot.
It gets to us all through one channel or another,
Whether it your neighbour,friend,sister or brother,
Observe and you will see just how easy it can be,
A source, a connection you could get to in 3.
Little fear when it is felt it is required,
Over and over never seem to get tired,
A deeper need creates desperate measures,
Often leading to the sale of many treasures,
A family breakdown, withdrawal and depression,
It was only meant to be for the night of that one session,
It gets out of hand, you slip through the cracks and man oh man you wish for normal life back,
At the start, it was good, a trip like no other,
Now so deep you steal from your own mother,
Looks have changed, personality altered, an unknown individual who would have thought it?
Bruises and cuts, owed money and hideaways now a thing,
A strain to everyone's lives drugs do bring,
Your own person no longer, you thought of yourself as stronger,
Your life stolen, taken away if only that one time you had not strayed...
Feb 5, 2017
Feb 5, 2017 at 3:51 PM UTC
(panic in the woods)
i will name things
i will name myself
i am not afraid
i will speak
my name
i will show
my face
i am not afraid
i cannot
in good conscience
remain anonymous
with this
one life
**i cannot
stifle the
one thing
i have
that is
my own**
in the woods i named
a stick and
in a rage i held it
wanting to break
stones with wood
i looked frantically
about at
the trees
with their many
notches and
dark hideaways
and was astonished
to find they
had not made
a place for me
to live and hide
i wanted to
scream fire
i am here!
why isn't there
a place for me?
then i felt as if
i were a tree
a bare tree
with thieves already
bargaining for
next spring's leaves
not yet sprung
so i marched
down the trail
in a desperate
fury and suddenly stopped
because there
on the grey, dusty ground
was the most beautiful,
vibrant red berry
i had ever seen
and i silently
shouted and named,
red berry!
i am a red berry!
i know i am a red berry!
why, then
do i feel like
the trampled
grey dust?
tears streamed down
my face
and i panicked
my breath came
too fast
i looked around
wildly
and i named everything i saw
and in my rapid
breathing
i desperately wanted
nothing more than
a warhorse
i wanted my stick back,
that i had flung aside
i wanted to roar
"break!"
and watch the stone crumble
i wanted my horse
to be strong and lithe,
beautiful
a thundering
terror
i wanted to
wreak vengeance on...
what? who?
i couldn't name
my enemy
but i am the namer
i will name
the bane of my heart
the cursed
corrupt nightmares
of government and
moral authority
but my deepest self
is lashing out
for something more
to name
something to break
myself against
but this thing
escapes me
remains nameless
slippery
and out of
my control
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 7:37 PM UTC
We all have our secret hideaways, we all have our cures, and our bandage solutions, and we all have addictions.
You will eat to fill the hollow kindly provided by someone who's left you lying in bed at night, wondering why you weren't good enough, or maybe even just enough, to make them stay.
We all carry earbuds...more like soulbuds. Hello music, goodbye world, goodbye sorrow. We all break down, no matter how hard we hide it, no matter how well we can disguise it...eyes can't lie, but they sure can act.
And we all try to bandage our wounds, though we're the worst doctors. I puke smiles, you puke smiles, we ALL puke smiles...
but no one's meant them for a while.
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 8:57 AM UTC
Let's discuss the important things,
Like how the sun loves the moon so much,
he shines behind her for all eternity.
How the leaves caress the wind,
not the other way around.
Snails leave behind their path so we follow them to their secret hideaways where they plot and scheme with beetles as to what habitat to overtake next.
Mother ducks remind their young that together they are invincible; sometimes we veer away, we find our way back with the help of the One who leads us.
Nature, if observed from a romanticized point of view can demonstrate incredible wonders. Wonders like those found in our impossibly imperfect human world; abandonment, birth, death, happiness, anger, jealousy, possessiveness, and even aggressiveness.
But just like in our world, these are all connected by the same overpowering emotion that has the power to build and tear down nations.
love.
-mc
Apr 7, 2015
Apr 7, 2015 at 1:45 PM UTC
close your eyes
and just breathe in the lovely summer air
july nights
remind me of our quests to catch a cloud
soft and warm
smiling stars with brilliant sparkling teeth
want to say
"you're not alone, you're off
somewhere, somewhere.
where crimson skies and lanterns light our paths
where the cold
never reaches us beneath the moon
waterfalls
cascading down the shimm'ring sleeted cliffs
you could tell
all your secrets to the palm trees
and everyone
could try to look but never find your
hideaways
'cuz you're not there with them you're off somewhere."
Apr 4, 2013
Apr 4, 2013 at 11:36 AM UTC
*Tension at a turn
Tension at the graded curve
At the waters surface , inside
a minuscule world , at the first hello
and the final goodbye , at the flowers
sunlit birth , at the glorious final flight from earth
Crying for more , crying with good reason
Crying for recognition , crying for peace and evolution
Secret society and secret handshakes , secret recipes
for secret cakes , secret love and secret hideaways
Secret gardens , secret mistakes* ..
Oct 4, 2016
Oct 4, 2016 at 5:34 PM UTC
We rocked you to sleep under
cushions of burnt frankincense,
your rosemary plum lips glowing
beneath the glass shutter,
as our warm, fluttering fingers
smoothed the polished edges of your velvet mahogany.
Odes of voices,
soft as the powdery scent of dried roses,
were wordlessly strung into
half-convinced rhapsodies of "but it was painless",
and as if from the fragmented lens of an abstract camera,
the pews streamed in, black and white, woven hushes,
broken ***** sighs,
as we poured through glazed photos of your enraptured memory lanes,
how you burst through black winter days like a firecracker,
your young blood
blossoming as a scarlet primrose
upon alabaster.
Our preacher (who once prayed for my cat which
then died and
said it was God's plan)
professes of your rapturous gaiety in the angels' hideaways,
but my aunt stopped preparing family meals without a husband,
and your wet sapphire eyes,
like the violet blankets of daffodil pods,
only glisten at us from shrouded, opalescent moons,
stray and far,
transfiguring into vacant mirrors,
shaded from reach.
Sep 26, 2014
Sep 26, 2014 at 12:00 AM UTC
Somewhere behind me
There may still be monsters accidentally existing
I have no time for their ghosts or membrane mutiny
Somewhere a childish criminal collects clarity blissfully sidetracked
Simple secrets now subjected to an expiration date
A jar cluttered with light may illuminate its conclusion
Hums fall with clicks inside glass contaminates
Class refrained curiosity made these spaces empty
Peripheral pimps take my scenes for nonsensical renditions
Ticks in the skull while empathy ponders panic
A familiar echo for the susceptible
A time bomb mistaken for clockwork
Helium hideaways complicate an otherwise profound articulation
They fall separately
While defunct damsels capture blue bliss on virtual timelines
It's not real
Light speed fleeting
Grasp the grips for your short sighted ******
Do these chalklines suggest hesitation?
What flaw shall we consider fixation?
Brickwork bygones crumble into memory and highway streams
Falling on fiends lost inside a smokescreen sanctuary
Eyes indefinitely indulging
Porcelain prisms with mindful monsters
Timeline logic lays low for the sake of saner discovery
Downward dazes find hands like phases
No correct callous in sight
Mar 19, 2017
Mar 19, 2017 at 5:17 PM UTC
Lake flies lighting reflective glass
Olive eyes focused on the blue earth
Training the purple wild flower fields -
of western Chattahoochee river country
Whirling , advancing , rock patterned shoals ,
river dancer hideaways , painted turtle middles
Mud cats , rock bass and sundry panfish skim -
the shallows harnessed in Georgia granite , indigenous
red , white clay banks , clear running waters and every
colored flower imaginable
Dandelion seedlings and dragonflies hurry downstream , lit
by the afternoon Lamp of the Almighty
Pipers of every pitch occupy every inch of the surrounding
heavens with emotional song
Ever watchful Crows burst into joyful laughter with each
Smallmouth topwater explosion
Herons work the rock island summits , Blue Jays station the crags
as the pace quickens to the Gulf , curious livestock command the bluffs
South as cascading waters grow ...
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 4:16 PM UTC
Need to get ready
For the coming war
Can't get the things I need
Because I'm poor
I'd ask mom for money
And she'd ask what for?
I'd tell her
It's because
Of human beings mom
They've done it before
Need a shovel
To dig real deep
Hide inside
Won't hear a peep
Look at the scream
And look at them run
DARPA drones are deadly
And not much fun
I know America has done
Many wicked things
In the past
But my Syrian neighbors
Are good people
Have to make the canned food last
We'll have to
Pull together
You and me
These good and decent people
Lovers of Liberty
The global masters
Aren't like
You and me
No shred of human decency
They'll tell you to March
To the beat of their drums
And that 1+1=3
Some type of spiritual battle
On this earth
Many people agree with me
For what it's worth
No food at the supermarket
No food in town
Don't look now
Everything is shut down
They will ration gas too
You never thought
You would see it
In the land
Of the red white and blue
Baltic Dry Index
As low as it's ever been
Seems like the global economy
Is on a downward spin
Chinese ships empty
Going broke
Not enough cargo to ship
It's no joke
Dow Jones is way down too
Without water
We are *******
The rich have other locations
Secret hideaways
My family just has our faith
In what may be
The end of days
We're a kind and decent people
Don't you know
Welcome to earth
Welcome to the show
It matters what you do here
I sure hope
I can persevere
He said he would be with us
Until end of days
King of Kings
Be not afraid
Hidden deeds in darkness
Will be brought to the light
Sometimes life's so hard!
But you'll be alright
Everything is A-Okay
We all have our part to play
They plan a global government
Apartments stacked high
Citizens monitored every minute
Don't ask why
There is He
Faithful and True
On a white horse
Riding through the sky
Jan 19, 2016
Jan 19, 2016 at 8:46 PM UTC
*Trusted , clear-coated , cured cane pole
Can o' corn 'neath a Maple umbrella
Brown Trout skimmers popping the top of a runaway
river
Red , gold leaf boats sail the eddies
Painted hardbacks , soft shelled sinkers
Lolly-gagging Mudcats , sunlight in her
turbulent mirror
Cold water shivers , warm flannel shirts with
wet rolled up Levi's , Peanut butter -apple jelly
sandwiches with a peach Nehi
Cattle trails homeward
Honeysuckle boundaries , Red plum , Mimosa ,
Honey Locust companions
Brown sugar tended earth , June corn , young hideaways
Purple wire-grass terraces , wild Dove lining
barbed wire fencing with late hour songbirds escorts* ..
Sep 8, 2016
Sep 8, 2016 at 6:37 PM UTC
*Concoctions of morning Blackstrap Molasses , Apple blossom honey
Afternoon Sugar Cane treat Sundays
Catfish feeder pond thrills
Stirring Bobwhite Quail wood line hideaways
Plentiful , native green grass runways
Kerosene lanterns , john boats o'er -
Black Crappie midnight waters
A thousand new songs rippled the moonlight -
causeways
Lakes melting into night
The warm , thick air of first light
Mockingbird chirrup , Killdeer call
August morning star convocations of -
Crape Myrtle with butterfly epiphanies*
Aug 29, 2016
Aug 29, 2016 at 11:37 PM UTC
Dawn breaks on the quiet countryside.
The nightlife ghosts shuffle away to their daytime hideaways.
The strand of oak, bough of pine,
crevice of cypress.
The final inhalation of night.
The early bird janitorial crew wakes and makes sounds
to each other as the sun spreads across
the quivering Bahia yard. It drinks up the dewdrops
and straightens the fenceposts with kindness as it finds error.
The sun finds me, too, naked again, on the porch
and seeks to stretch my skin taught against my frame.
I scrape a toe callous across the brick of the porch step.
It is Wednesday the nineteenth.
It is 6:27am and I am grateful to be here.
As the morning mist unravels in the exhalation
and the crows set to work aerating the soil,
my attention drifts to the breeze and how I can nearly taste October on it. A red-tailed hawk observes this scene as well,
unbothered by the fettering mockingbird,
patiently waiting for the over zealous rabbit
or the confused field mouse to make itself apparent.
The girl in my bed routinely suggests coitus
on mornings such as these, with crispy autumn leaves drifting down outside the window. Which begs to be painted, white chips peeling in the dry fall air, but she says leave it --
she likes to pick them out of the flowerbed
after we ram the bedframe against the interior.
She likes to keep them.
Instead, this morning she’ll settle for bacon and eggs without much complaint. Although she will leer at me murderously
from behind her mustachioed cup of creamed coffee. She won’t tolerate my advances afterward, either --
insisting on her lateness, or mine,
or the cat pawprints
on the hood of her car.
She’ll hum through my comments
about the sunlight, the dew, my personification of the hawk.
She looks over the top of her phone when I mention ghosts, but happily returns to scrolling when she realizes I’m full of it.
And so, then, off we go.
Each with a bushel, and a peck, and a hug around the neck.
The quiet morning has been ruined. Although I tried, I failed to grasp it in its totality, failed to convey to you its extreme beauty.
It lies at our feet in shreds.
I know I will never have
a morning like this again,
not exactly like this,
and I’ve let it slip away.
Oct 19, 2022
Oct 19, 2022 at 7:33 PM UTC
There's a dull drumming
a music to all things
and sometimes it seems like I'm the only one who
can hear the rhythm.
Like how the lights radiate vibrato violins
and the lawnmower outside
sings opera.
Or how the crickets at night,
with their apparent music
chirp a lullaby for the Wild Things.
The Wild Things
aren't strictly monsters
made of hoof and horn,
but sometimes they are children
with the soul of a wild horse
or a mountain lion.
Sometimes they are women
who dreams have never been
stuck in twilight.
Sometimes they are men
who wish for something more.
Sometimes they are creatures
with no body. Just a soul incarnated as a central being.
Sometimes the Wild Things aren't really things at all,
but songs and stories told to babes
who wander too far from their mothers
sometimes they are just animals
ones we can't see nor hear nor smell.
Ones we can only imagine in our wildest,
most fruitful dreams.
The Wild Things,
they don't have one place where they all go,
like the stories foretold.
Instead, they have many safe places
lairs and hideaways and crypts and haunts
all around us. Sometimes,
those places
are within us.
The music of the Wild Things.
Not everyone can hear.
Only other Wild Things can listen to it.
And as such,
I have forgotten my duties as a young woman
on an earth full of human pests
and resumed my life as a Wild Thing
with my hideaway as
underneath the clothes in my closet.
I could build a tunnel down through the ground
and connect my crypt
with those of the other Wild Things
so that we may dance and sing our songs together
in a cave beneath the world.
Aug 23, 2019
Aug 23, 2019 at 9:24 AM UTC
Flick the brush,
From here to there,
Pointing species,
Dull and rare,
To hideaways and rivers' gush,
Gentle, true,
But what a rush!
Power trips the finger's pace,
Across the ever-looming face,
Of cosmic panoramas new,
Or oceans deep and verdant blue,
"To think I've found my niche",
I call amongst the stars, so very few
Strike the hammer to the world,
Imagination comes unfurled,
In pulsing rhythms, they now hurl,
At me the bulk of Heaven's churl,
"You've wasted seven days",
They chant,
"Though now it's time to paint a swirl!"
With blue, green and white, I ******
Towards a dream with little lust,
But quickly my mistake is found,
And lost throughout the artful sound,
Of clashing blades and bitter crowns
I fake a breath to earn the death,
I've sealed within this crass display,
Pressing precious feet to flames and leading men to disarray,
I fooled my hands to guide the way,
But now I simply kneel and pray,
To sculpt this world for one more day...
Dec 17, 2017
Dec 17, 2017 at 11:52 PM UTC
*White stars light the way home
Along familiar trails through spring scented
dark pine forest
Beside yellow moonlit fields ,
Entertained by nighttime
musicians in spirited twilight appeal
Along golden stair
step hideaways , barbed wire fence lines ,
into whippoorwill harmonies and curt cattle calls ,
to the sound of the nine o'clock town bell , through misty dales into
the cool creek valley* ...
Mar 18, 2017
Mar 18, 2017 at 8:45 PM UTC
All My Days
Suddenly,
another morning,
Swishes the curtains
without warning.
Portentous,
with its ifs and buts,
It slashes my dreams
like a million cuts.
Scarring
my already scarred skin
Yet barely containing
my nakedness within.
Apparently,
I am disorientated,
Wandering, fumbling
and discombobulated.
Trance-like,
I carve out a window
To look out at a life
lost in limbo.
Flitting
from one person to another,
Wanting to be loved
by somebody elses mother.
Same old, same old,
a hand in face,
The lonely spectator
of a strangers embrace.
Sunshine
that I just can't see,
Perhaps the days
were not meant for me.
Peevishly,
I seek the shade,
It is a darkness
that I, myself, have made.
Comforting,
like all my hideaways,
Yet I cannot hide
from all my days.
Reluctantly,
I put on my disguise
And smile at the sun
that dared to rise.
Incognito,
I pretend I'm the light
Waiting, without a reflection,
for the night.
© RJVHorton2015
Oct 10, 2015
Oct 10, 2015 at 11:30 PM UTC
Swallow plague, out for the holidays,
Holler ways, I'm short on hearing and my ears are bleeding,
Numb, I'm screaming
Quick fix,
Wake up in a subway with stigma on my greedy tongue.
I'm a ***** when the weather comes, a hermit in the winter and your baby's new Mr.
Cheap shot but the blisters on my feet you will meet.
Like an **** at the Bed and Breakfast, I'm gone before dinner.
Nighttime sinner when dusk comes, all love when she comes.
Come come morning split conscious ways to hideaways miles away.
Can't cut what you've never loved, can't split when the heat comes;
No ****** glove, just accountability in dollar amounts from settled hugs.
So she follows me tomorrow, while I'm still escaping today.
I can't wait to say, I hate to say, I told me so.
I'm a naughty disinfect with a numb body from the infection.
A walking lesson, contradiction, legion of lesions,
I'm quietly lying with my sin, unsure where I stand within.
Watch my degradation, how my morals decay and I waste away.
If I knew what I wanted I wouldn't be haunted, just lonely.
But I'm lonely anyway, stuck in this Victorian cage;
The maiden is metallic and I'm stuck within.
I am the definition of grasping, in a Buddhist sense
A rotten mouth thirsty for another sip,
I imagine a future we're living in
Why do I always expect you will follow?
Swallow my pride, swallow my seed, swallow my misery then swallow me.
I'm swollen inside, can't you see?
The pieces that depart from me.
I would give my everything,
For your nothing.
Inside, I already have.
Now take everything,
And move along.
This is just another sorry, sad song.
Jun 26, 2020
Jun 26, 2020 at 1:14 PM UTC
You will often find her
hiding somewhere soft,
like in the shadows
or lilac fields of dusk.
Jul 11, 2016
Jul 11, 2016 at 1:19 PM UTC
Through my curled toppled mess,
my heart has been blessed.
My clarity is restored,
and my life in order.
In the city, the life can get busy,
but in the hideaways of the mountains,
the air is clear
much like my eyes on this sunny day.
Dec 20, 2015
Dec 20, 2015 at 7:16 PM UTC