"honed" poems
Collab, collab! Oh thoughtful collabs!
Amalgamation of two unique minds,
Merging of dual thinking labs!
Cerebral workshop of life's diverse grinds!
Collab, collab! Reinforced true!
Melding of minds and honed crafts,
Mounted up with bolt and *****
Assembled solid in monochromed poetic drafts.
Collab, collab! A trend that's trending!
A fad that now seems ever growing...
Each other's style we will be wearing.
Matching ensembles, yours for the liking.
Collab, collab! More of it please!
Ocean of creativity, pearls ripe for picking,
Journey for two across artistic seas.
Wonder who with next I'll be swimming...
Oct 7, 2014
Oct 7, 2014 at 2:03 PM UTC
The gentle reaches of the late afternoon sun
I'd bathe in this light abundant reverie
Swaying breeze... Caressing the web we've spun
In the warmth of this amber coloured spree...
Shades of gold, stretch beyond observable measure
My vision could only take me so far
Shining through between the green and azure
As if the window of heaven left slightly ajar.
Swathed in the glow... Laying on a bed of green
Eyes closed... Under the blue that spanned forever
Feast for my senses thus honed keen
Relishing the lingering touches of her radiating amber.
She's finally dipping, taking all of her light...
She'll sink behind the horizon, descending gracefully
I'd still remember all through my night
That amber...
Amber is the colour of her energy.
Nov 17, 2014
Nov 17, 2014 at 5:36 AM UTC
what is a poet
but a stymied wind
stamping the same soil
seen through polished lens
firing the bugle sound
to reach across some
distant mountain pass
not echo the same
ignite fire
stand strong
find north
refresh
for old paths yield
grey packages
more stale
subterfuge
but honed
solidity is found
in structures
built sound
a new song of old notes
rearranged to yield
perspective
deep
Apr 28, 2018
Apr 28, 2018 at 4:48 PM UTC
From youth, not unlike the love
I received from my family, I surmised,
that extended love might be everywhere.
With artless, open arms and heart,
I embraced this simple notion.
In time, sadly this childish wish
was honed to a hard truth by maturation.
Friends and loves come
and go, fleeting in heart,
and committed soul.
Unreliably, flowing in and ebbing out,
like deep undulations of an ocean,
all too often with sneaker waves
that pull us under. Breakers pushing
our ship onto the rocks, in a sea
of shallow unfulfilled expectations.
Encounters becoming disappointment,
with too many frogs kissed.
My educated suspicion is,
beyond our family of blood kin,
Faithful canine love is the only
other "truly committed devotion"
we are likely to get.
In the end, that may well be enough.
Perspective wisdom can be a bitter lesson.
May 14, 2016
May 14, 2016 at 5:11 PM UTC
WHOOSH she goes
On the low seas, carried by the high winds.
Where
Ankles anchor, Knees tack, Back yaws, Wrists lock, and Thumb sagg.
Holding on to a harpoon in
my dingy, flopping against
Glinting, Honed, Double-Edged waves.
"**Light, **
It's the Eye of the Storm.**
Fatigue steers me into its heart
My anchor prodding me,
To continue or to
rest.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 12:50 AM UTC
I love a good debate,
[science mixed with illusion]
and this year was no exception:
the debate on the best shapes for a kite
from design implementation, inception and execution
some sturdy string and industrial-strength glue
the machinations of whether to use plywood or bamboo
and of course built by your own fair hand
such was the intensity of discussion it continued
with an after-lunch stroll on the beach, where the uncles
drew their prize-winning geometry
with a primitive stick
in the sand
a question on the mathematics of aerodynamics aside
its currently a battle of the cyclic quadrilaterals
and documented film of it successfully tested and tried;
years of perfection honed by the skills of Fatherhood
to know instinctively the difference
between the brilliance of genius
and the borderline
just plain good
If nothing else has come from this
I now
know
[so as not to lose]
K = p/q over 2
or
K = ab – sin Ø
[are the formulas to use]
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 3:56 PM UTC
She comes to me every night...
When all is asleep with stars lit yonder.
Comes to me with subtle might
Peeking fiendishly from darkness's cover
Await such time she'd choose to show
Await the chance to finally take.
Ready to pounce like a well tensioned bow
Arrow-like talons, ever honed to stake.
Awake or asleep, she would come without fail.
Creep is her gait; this shadow clad figure.
Always a ***** in my impervious mail.
Claiming her wants with ferocious fervour.
Deemed to be strong, easier to succumb.
Don't fight...don't struggle... Don't call for aid...
Just wait and will yourself numb
She'd come regardless of prayers that's said.
She was here with me last night
In bed, I stared at a being that's faceless...
And my heart wrenched tight.
Gripping and feeding me senseless...
Soon as she came, she left but not before
Siphoning the good and replacing with dread...
Stole was what she did; left me wanting more...
Once deed is done, into the dark she fled.
I know her all too well,
Nocturnal guest that I unknowingly invite
Her intentions to incite, not quell
Send me spiralling through emotional blight.
Day will recede, making room for dark
She'll come; swift and without sound.
She'll arrive majestic; inflicting her mark
I'll wait for her, ready and unbound.
Looking forward to her return
This silent foe whom I find familiar.
With every touch I cringe and burn
Oh secret friend whom I'm beginning to savour...
She is synonymous with various names
Each would bear the likeness of semblance
Let fly her cloak of not dissimilar aims
Endearingly I call her...,
Despondence...
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 12:23 AM UTC
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
Inaction in action
A most frightening thing
Eyes flash from green to brown
Was that a smile or one of your cute frowns?
I can’t tell up from down
In this vacant hole
I feel like I am supposed to remember
Impact has dried up
Like a drought that makes farmers
Wonder if their crop ever did flourish
Or if the dust simply snuck into their heads
With paintbrushes and vivid imaginations
Of what fresh picked berries once tasted like
I want to run
Faster than ever to where I once was
To where my emotions began
To when a kiss was still intoxicating
And you smiled at clasped hands
Mirrors in my mind turn
Reflections of you blur
Engraved lessons I’ve learned
Were you ever my home?
I trace the walls of your character
Each knot and groove familiar
Reflexive fingertips
Gliding over walls as they turn inside out
I forgot what all this was about
Do I long for a light that once shown
Or just another culpable excuse
To regain the throne
My wishful thinking kingdom
Though my senses are honed
To both authenticity and mirage
I fear I am equally prone
Even so.
If…
If you were ever
Or still are
And we cross paths again
Or maybe for the first time
Kiss me with your brown eyes
Or were they green?
And I will try my best to recognize
A love I fear I’ve never seen
But I can’t muster pursuit when consciousness is stolen by a dream
Inaction in action
Is a most frightening thing
Aug 29, 2015
Aug 29, 2015 at 11:25 PM UTC
Spring comes little, a little. All April it rains.
The new leaves stick in their fists; new ferns still fiddleheads.
But one day the swifts are back. Face to the sun like a child
You shout, 'The swifts are back!'
Sure enough, bolt nocks bow to carry one sky-scyther
Two hundred miles an hour across fullblown windfields.
Swereee swereee. Another. And another.
It's the cut air falling in shrieks on our chimneys and roofs.
The next day, a fleet of high crosses cruises in ether.
These are the air pilgrims, pilots of air rivers.
But a shift of wing, and they're earth-skimmers, daggers
Skilful in guiding the throw of themselves away from themselves.
Quick flutter, a scimitar upsweep, out of danger of touch, for
Earth is forbidden to them, water's forbidden to them,
All air and fire, little owlish ascetics, they outfly storms,
They rush to the pillars of altitude, the thermal fountains.
Here is a legend of swifts, a parable —
When the Great Raven bent over earth to create the birds,
The swifts were ungrateful. They were small muddy things
Like shoes, with long legs and short wings,
So they took themselves off to the mountains to sulk.
And they stayed there. 'Well,' said the Raven, after years of this,
'I will give you the sky. You can have the whole sky
On condition that you give up rest.'
'Yes, yes,' screamed the swifts, 'We abhor rest.
We detest the filth of growth, the sweat of sleep,
Soft nests in the wet fields, slimehold of worms.
Let us be free, be air!'
So the Raven took their legs and bound them into their bodies.
He bent their wings like boomerangs, honed them like knives.
He streamlined their feathers and stripped them of velvet.
Then he released them, Never to Return
Inscribed on their feet and wings. And so
We have swifts, though in reality, not parables but
Bolts in the world's need: swift
Swifts, not in punishment, not in ecstasy, simply
Sleepers over oceans in the mill of the world's breathing.
The grace to say they live in another firmament.
A way to say the miracle will not occur,
And watch the miracle.
Apr 22, 2014
Apr 22, 2014 at 1:59 PM UTC
~the heart of (the) matter~
~~~~~~
an essential phrase,
that concentrates the
instincts not to sway
away,
be focused
on, by the always present
algorithm of the
essences
but my version preferred
is that
"the heart of matter"
with skill and effort,
one can learn, to shoot
arrows honed to be near
an-almost-bullseye every time
but to understand that
the heart
is matter,
the mother
of our body parts,
the little engine that could,
can and does,
and asks only
refresh it with
fresh blue blood,
every second
(not to much to ask for)
what are/is the sinews of the heart?
what are its secreted corpuscular (1)
composed of?
why words, you silly!
each beat, a letter,
the heart doth register
its creativity incessant,
never ceasing to rest
for composition is its goal,
to sing to write, to weep
from pleasured thoughts
and deepest fright,
and you say you need inspiration?
then listen to your writing vibrations that from thy center
emanate, you who toil laboriously
when all that matters is the matter,
the wonderful matter of
who when where and why
that chatterbox in your body
never ever pauses
***and that is why in the matter of god,
have no doubts
only a god could have conceived
of a world of billions of composers
where each one of us
matters***…
5:19am Wed Sep 10
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 5:59 AM UTC
#*Tears flow
Tricky tears they know
They know, they have it their way
They know how to trickle down
They flow
They flow ceaselessly,
Unsightly, unexplained,
at the slightest of pain
Discomfort their name
They lie hidden in the depths
In times of despair
To your rescue, unperturbed
They surface Unrushed
They can be trained
To Master the art of deceit
Shrouded in lies
A weapon, honed with might
Held in disguise
In their master’s eyes
They stand as warriors
For emotions left unsaid
A paradoxical deluge
No ocean can hold
An unstoppable wave
Tears of joy
Tricky tears they know
They know, they have it their way
They know how to trickle down
They flow*#
Aug 28, 2025
Aug 28, 2025 at 11:25 PM UTC
As a ginger, I'm inclined to say fox. I've always had an affinity for those cunning, red canines.
But if it's just for a day then perhaps something a bit more adventurous. I suppose I would choose to be a cheetah.
Fastest land animal in the world, agile, and speckled.
Nobody messes with a cheetah. Not because they’re so hulking or intimidating— just more fascinating than terrifying.
We travelled to South Africa once, my family and I. As a tribe we chased wild creatures down with cameras in jeeps in a raucous yet hushed thrill.
The cheetah was one of the few animals that eluded us. Perhaps having never seen one up close is partially what draws me to them.
Mysterious, as well as evasive, with an "I don't give a **** attitude.
They only eat every so often because catching food is such a feat. When they do hunt however, it's one of the most spectacular things in the natural world.
It's why places that sell tv's show footage of cheetahs running in slow motion over and over on a dizzying loop; demonstrating how clear the pixels are in the plasmas. It's mesmerizing.
Their feet move too fast and fly over the dirt, honed in on whatever poor gazelle or kudu they're after. If you're a cheetah that is your body, your thin bones, your rapid heart and beating paws that make you move in such a blur.
To be a cheetah for a day is feeling and knowing the difference between machine and muscle. Humans have found ways to fly, and people regularly move faster than a top speed of 75mph.
But how sublime it would be!
To be solely and purely responsible for that unparalleled speed just for one day.
Feb 16, 2016
Feb 16, 2016 at 6:18 PM UTC
And then I woke up.
I woke up one day
and everything was different,
Finally there was colour again.
-
I could see silver in the clouds,
Emerald in the grass,
Topaz painted across the mountains on the horizon.
Sapphire in the sky and obsidian amongst the stars.
I was alive again.
-
This time I'll be better,
My armour thicker,
My wits sharper,
My fists unscathed,
My tongue poisonous,
like the biblical snake upon the ear of eve.
I am born again,
I'll run each day,
Train each day.
I'll eat only the finer foods,
For nutrition and not taste.
All the while my mind will be honed, sharpened like a ****** blade.
Chemistry, biology, physics, mathematics.
I'll lay the stepping stones towards Valhalla,
My path towards the übermensch.
N.H.
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 9:55 PM UTC
Control
Like love
Is indifferent
To race, color or age
I see upright monkeys
With honed, lunatic, pestilent
Expressions
Around endless corners
living out-
and hosing down somberly-
Frequency dreams
Battery life sputter drains
that whip with sardonic torment-
Beat with blood-bathed smiles
Laughing to slow vertiginous rhythm
in captivating faces
Take, take, take-
To receive such
an empty promise
And I've lost interest
in this silent war
We've constructed
so dizzily
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 4:22 PM UTC
dancing calling flight of the Seagulls
cuts through the blowing of the wind
as fast as fighter jets dipping dives
and reeling upwards into the distance
freedom wild as freedom was always
from the dawning of the feathered
sailing now on wings strong honed
masters of air currents and updraft
Jul 14, 2014
Jul 14, 2014 at 9:06 AM UTC
Honed fangs behind
sweet lips.
Lips made to caress my
skin as they travel along
my throat.
So gentle he is,
For a monster
His tongue against my
jugular;
Heartbeats quicken.
Shallow breathing
as his dark eyes
bore into mine.
"Take me," I plea, "make me into you."
You are mine...
His voice is thick,
laced with seduction
but also some sort of
tenderness.
His movements
careful
slow
calculated.
He plants a
kiss on my neck,
fangs barely brushing.
And I do not destroy that which is mine.
Oct 9, 2014
Oct 9, 2014 at 6:50 PM UTC
Morning smells of Lilacs rapture me,
Taking me back to Kinderhooks Chatham Street….June 21st 1961……not a cloud in the sky.
Lying in bed I open my eyes to the hum of a window fan.
And in the distance I hear a Hudson River barge blast its horn.
This moment in time, well it brings tears to my eyes.
Eleven years old, brown hair, hazel eyes, a toothy smile,
Grins in the mirror, hoping to find a whisker or two…
My cat Oscar sits there on the sink purring out his contentment.
“Oscar” I say, “today I leave for the Freedom Farm”
The Freedom Farm is the one place where I’m free to be me
Without the fear of a negative comment or a boot in my ***
I climb aboard the Greyhound bus with suitcase in hand, And looking down at Mom and Dad....I wave…. So Long Suckers!!
Walton NY, June 22nd, Dunk Hill Road, the smell of cow ****
The land of Milk and Honey, Fields of four leaf clovers and 10’ corn stalks.
It was here that all my friends lived, Shorty the horse, Mrs Blue the Holstein,
And there was Uncle Ike, Aunt Minnie and 9 Cousins. I loved them all!
On this little dairy farm……my potential was unlimited,
Uncle Ike taught me to drive the Tractor, water the heifers,
Milk the cows, shovel **** spread manure and have some **** fun!
Hell Uncle Ike even let me try a piece of his plug tobacco... (Note to self…Just say No Thanks next time)
A summer filled with character building experiences and an eight year olds understanding of work ethic.
But we still had plenty of time for fun and cousin bonding.
My Cousin Tom taught me to ride the cows and honed my spitting skills.
And in my downtime I'd perfect the finer points of armpit farting,
Four weeks of heaven on earth where nothing was impossible.
*Once you work on a farm you get dirt in your shoes. And when you get dirt in your shoes, you can never get it out!"
Aug 8, 2016
Aug 8, 2016 at 4:50 PM UTC
So fine,
the slender votive silence
of palms, open
to the torn banners of rain,
so tender,
such surrender
in the gesture of hands...
You pour so much
of your red earth,
to soothe and loosen
the tongue from its leather tomb
and adorn me
with a lighter burden,
too much mine, at one
with the dark, lavish earth
in all its sorrow, spun
of the sleek commotion of silk
and vanilla linens... I leaned
into the ******* of my wings,
honed from those muscular
fairy-tale dreams...
My mouth,
learned solely on a valentine's
shiny white kiss of hemlock,
humming into the cells
of the spellbound body, quelled
by vigilance, your lips
teach me now, how to go softly
over the red earth of dahlias,
in all their everlastings, your hands
deep in the soil, reap...
The resonating grail of memory,
kept in its rich loam
and coals spread over
my mouth of red, red clay,
so swells its golden hue
of rose and rhododendron,
too much mine, rising
its fevers in the fawn brown
of eyes, closed ...
Over this long,
shuddering quiet,
you come
in all your calico
to calm
the votive silence
of palms, cupped
in the earth of your hands,
so much mine....
Jan 15, 2013
Jan 15, 2013 at 12:47 PM UTC
It's telling looking through
the window’s eyes ;
a room with a paling grey glass view
befogs the clouds reign inside the storm
Often feeling misbegotten regret
for the unfiltered passing glimpses,
whetstone honed and splayed ;
raw hues of a latent life exposed
There's an uncertain hidden shame
in the unheard truth
starving out in the cold;
dwelling in a petrifying silence
of a common hunger
the lonely do ache
Merciless hunger pangs
manifest and shake
with an unrelenting bitter taste ;
loneliness grapples and grips
like a silent earth quake
rattling a rib caged heart — writhing
as Autumn bares the trees
A jagged ambiguous fault line
ripples through the hollow echo ;
a bolt of lightning caught in a bottle
strikes — silently contained
swallowing the unspoken words
in a greater good
This broken merry-go-round
keeps turning round and round;
the great mandala spinning on
like a worn out hamster-wheel
without a conscious trace
of going anywhere out there
The place you come from
is gone when you leave it —
even if you really never
feel you were from anywhere
but a thousand unmarked mileposts
from out here somewhere adrift;
a pilgrimage towards understanding
why sometimes I don’t know
if I know who I am — or could have been —
waiting on a threadbare prayer
One-day the winds of change
will shapeshift — bye and bye ...
"When the light that's lost within us
reaches the sky"
Jesse Stillwater
November 2018
Nov 1, 2018
Nov 1, 2018 at 2:16 PM UTC
Yuletide essays read poorly of spiritual love
Save of winter concerns of cold hands and feet
But to me my warmth is from within and without
From sensitive elements and looks of expectancy
All through the year I am loved and brought home by generous arms
Holding my tender heart with simple fingers of gentleness
At Yule my fears are ones of inability to conform
Yet I know that my love will be kept holding small edifices
Of temperate thoughts and radiant hopes
Lest our love is exposed to the winter blast
It has no maintenance worries as we stay locked
Deeply embracing through the chill of the night
In the mornings there may be white blankets of snow
Which drive others to feel isolation and loneliness
But here at Yule as ever our hearts are as one
Despite the dragging pressures of the seasonal presence
New Year is a triumph of milestone epic
Fantasising our minds with future conquerings
Especially as most are timid in their push for reality
Ours has been honed to supernatural levels
Although we look deeply into bringing these to bear
We know from our hearts these are just around the corner
Upon the very road we travel
Jan 3, 2011
Jan 3, 2011 at 7:50 AM UTC
How distasteful you are,
With your sundry splotches
and jarring imperfections.
Oh, you taunt me so!
Whether your anathemas
are reflected through the mirror or my own eyes.
Oh horrible, hateful, heinous thing!
I cannot bear to stare any longer.
How sickly your color is--
A pallid yellow, like one giant bruise
That has budded and blossomed
In some unnaturally grotesque fashion.
My blood boils, my pulse races
And I raise my weapons to fight--
Two talons--claws honed to perfection.
Be gone, you wretched scab!
And so I tear, scratching furiously,
Until no more of you is left.
The blood is stuck beneath my fingertips,
Or what is left of them.
My sinews tremble, ****** and bare,
As the last of my wallpaper
Is ripped from my bones.
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 7:04 PM UTC