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Callum Hutchings Jul 2015
My room,
Both a death camp and a safe zone,
Rather wither away,
Than face execution.

Open door,
Deep breath,
Failure.

Hand over my feelings,
back to bed,
laying there,
friends were a conspiracy.

Leaving this house a teenage floor of lava,
To the armory,
Wield headphones and an over grown coat.

Open door,
Deep breath,
Stand.

The sun hurt as if i just left a space ship,
Fear of both know and unknown,
On this planet I was the alien.

Open gate,
Deep breath,
Walk.

Pavements conveyor belts,
Pushing out ghouls of society,
Cubicle bound,
Grey walls.

Yet still asked why so scared,
Of what I wish was just in my head,
This earth,
The land of dead.
The punctuation is a lot different in this than previous poems I have wrote as this was a spoken word poem I used.
Lucky Queue Oct 2012
Some people like fall, but not me.
It's full of death and decay, the gorgeous pieces of fire drift
from their skeletal homes and burn out into
sodden mushy brown paper.
Hard smooth and brown pebbles, spiky holey bombs, and twirly helicopter blades fall from the same skeletons and hide
beneath the paper, waiting for an innocent victim,
lying in the perfect position to slip someone up so that
they lose their bags and packages as they themselves go
slip slide crashing into the ground.
The victims are sure to rise up again, but with some bruises and bits of soggy brown, stuck all over their clothes
In fall, all the blooms of color decease, all fruit and vegetable and good green things die and leaves the world sodden mushy and brown.

Some people say they like winter, but not me.
It's a cold cruel and heartless season, robbing any last trace of life
from all helpless and left-behind creatures.
The vegetation becomes glazed over with melting glass and is the
one spot of beauty, as the only green left resides on prickly evergreens, housebound plants, and the occasional tacky
coat.
In winter, there is no way to leave your personal fortress without mountains of clothes, and so every person becomes a
chapped lipped, red cheeked, stiff fingered puffball.
Every time you jump into a mound of the white fluff that accompanies the dread season, some is bound to creep into your shirt and boots, freezing whatever it touches, and then ever so so slowly flowing along your skin, one of Gaia's little tortures.
Only half finished, so I'll write more later, perhaps in a different poem, perhaps not.
Ambika Jois Mar 2020
What does lockdown mean for me?
I'm housebound anyway.
People think I'm always free,
I'm now that 'at home' mom everyday.

This is also what they thought,
When I told them I'm a singer.
'If you don't own charttoppers,
You're just a failure.' is what lingered.

I found it shameful and difficult,
Broke down several times,
I couldn't find my own identity,
Searching for myself felt like a crime.

41 weeks and 2 days I carried her,
My little angel, the apple of my eye,
I'm now learning a basic fact -
- A lifetime flies faster than light.

So fast, I don't know what day it is,
I'm living each day by the hour.
Before I know it, it's bedtime again..
What exactly is within my power?

When the birds stretch their wings,
At the crack of a quiet dawn.
The time I was raised to wake and listen,
To the Tanpura, the sound of Om.

This is my one true power,
Whether they believe it or not.
A lockdown may not define it,
I'm a musician, a mom, not a robot.

These clear blue skies at spring,
Came again after a barren season.
I'm housebound and learning again,
Another chance to live it right is my reason.
A little piece of my reality during the darned COVID season.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2016
only today i felt this strange fear from boredom, i don't expect housewives to feel it, although i'm certain they do, brain-draining watching some Jurassic adaptation where man's imagination really did a runner - not into the fantastical but into the absurd - like in science fiction, did a runner, completely off the mark given chemists making shampoos and toothpastes and fertilisers... ethically-free science fiction - but this housebound fear from boredom, greater than a fear of death it seized me and rattled me, i had to go out to buy a few beers; just like it happens to really rich people, they make their homes into micro-units of what's out there, in society, a swimming pool when there's a communal one elsewhere, a massive library of unread books, when there are plenty of those elsewhere, home cinema, snooker table... it's the entire spectrum of social pastimes condensed into a single household... anyway, i got hot and bothered, i'm starting to think it was not a fear of boredom, but what to do with the piri-piri chicken i was marinating: tomato puree, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, half a large lemon squeezed, 1sp sugar, 1tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cajun pepper, 14g of parsley, mint, oil, 2 chillies, 2 tsp of garlic puree, salt to taste - whisked in a food processor; ~1kg of chicken - because i thought whether i should shove the chicken marinate in an oven bag and cook it for a while, or whether to take the chicken out from the marinate and place it on a baking tray... ****!

poems and book reviews these days, nothing more,
get someone else to do the legwork -
a thoroughly modern malaise -
social anthropology - titled *tribe
-
the pros and cons of modern life and our
search for tribal mythology -
the 8x more chance of depression and
other mental deviations in wealthier
societies than poorer ones -
once it was called adventure, now
it's called tourism - after a while you sort
of get bored of the naked ego
and the clothing range your thought
provides you - unless you keep thinking
out the same thing, over and over again,
dressed like Armani, all black, nothing else -
odd, isn't it? they're playing the cat game,
cat wakes up, same ****, different cover,
well, the same cover - same fur - can't
change - the paradox or parody of
the fashion industry, i.e. that the designers
wear the same thing over and over again
and insist people require a spring collection,
the latest autumn trend.... parody.
so back to this piri-piri chicken      n'ah, not really,
i was thinking about what we already did,
this anti-tribalism, to have given ourselves
the opportunity to experience the least
amount of pain, the anaesthetic, sleep inducing
on the butcher's table more or less -
but we also created another anaesthetic,
this anaesthetic is not so subtle - it concerns beauty -
ever see it? ever walk into Tate Modern and
think about Raphael or Michelangelo?
you could tell me i'm overly nostalgic -
but what i see in plain sight is an anaesthetic in place,
against beauty, esp. in architecture -
who'd think of building a new Coliseum or
a St. Paul's - the Tate Modern (as you might
or might not know) is inside a power station,
big massive chimney - would have worked
better in the Battersea (Pink Floyd's Animals
album sleeve), but then St. Paul's is right opposite
and what a staggering dichotomy it is -
i'm sure that's what you call an anaesthetic in art,
the sort of art you have to get or not get
because, frankly, admiring a tin-can of tomato soup
even by Warhol's standards isn't exactly appetising -
i know, conveyor belt necessity and all, once
artists painted on commission for some duke or
duchess, or king to be adorning lavish palaces,
but as according to Walter Benjamin - the work
of art in the age of mechanical reproduction
-
some could once claim the original to be worth
a stupendous amount of dosh, but with the above
mentioned essay, the original is worth diddly-squat,
because there is no actual original these days,
because artists don't necessarily have to invest
in raw materials - and the copying process is 100%
perfect, what with photocopying and all...
but **** me over once more, how am i going
to cook this piri-piri chicken?
the few beers took the problem off my hands,
i ended up marinating the chicken in a bag
but then shoved it into a baking tray
an covered with aluminium foil, forty odd
minutes and the chicken was tender - ~5 minutes
without the aluminium foil covering while
the oven was switched off and the temperature
was descending - the carbs? couscous -
alt. North African semolina - and extra cucumber
in tzatziki - a few hours later and i'm a little
buddha not thinking an ounce or a continent's worth
of suggestion... one of those rare albums
salmonella dub's  inside the dub plates,
i'm a real provincial with this album,
tumble **** here, tumble **** there,
never settling for a ****-garden -
i told you i'm just borrowing the language, in fact,
given my alcoholic and status as vermin among
the bulldog rigid British (Londoners can have
their little gay pride parade, whatever, they
better give me up for surgery to a veterinarian than
a human doctor, after all, i'm all ******* gerbil from
now on in, it doesn't take enough pacifists to turn
my attitude into a Neo-**** and bulldozer the Union
Jack into a shallow grave, i don't expect the Caribbeans
and the Pakistanis to usher words of: it's how it is,
a rite of passage, **** your cumin and your ****,
battle of Britain, who among the R.A.F. flew and spat fire?
us) i'm more Apache in a bigger zoo than the one in
Reagents Park, i'm in a conservation zoone -
i'm Aboriginal - shaman of the fire water -
i'll be as ******* ridiculous as i want - go chant
you little kirtan get together mantras going,
i'm sure you'll *****-fight-those-pigeons dead without
a single coo being ushered in - and your little yoga stints
asking questions about the flexibility of the skeleton
not pulverised by scientific eyes for a schematic and
a schooling rubric to domino up the cranium with mandible,
ulna and radius etc. -
but at least i know what sort of country i live in,
and what country is wandering into political apology that's
too late, in ratio 27:1, soon to be Turkey + the Yugoslavian
gape, Albanian and Macedonia by 2020 -
>30:1 - great Welsh ratio that is, oh ****, wait, Scotland too?
i never thought about it coming - there's my 2 cents
on the topic, and that England is becoming more American
by the day? that's good? really?! i thought the
aim of England was to inspire America rather than
vice versa... what a ****-storm these few days ended
up being; ol' McDonald didn't have a farm, but
had the slogan - *i'm lovin' it!
woodlandpixie Jan 2021
She finds that even backyard leaves contain
a blazing history inside their veins.
She reads the legends etched in crinkled skin,
her ardent, housebound blood boiling within.

At dusk, she likes to listen to the creek–
its reverent, animated tales of meek
young girls who grew into grand bronze statues–
and long for metal legs that’d let her choose

to dare, and burn, instead of fear, and waste.
But still, at night, her body likes to chase
the hours stargazing at ceilings. And
the myth-less, coarse white stucco slowly sands

away each spot of sprouting luster on
her atrophying frame. With nerve all gone
and adult blood inert as viscous tar,
she cannot even dream of ceiling stars.
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
imagination: the crucible of inanimate things getting the modern physics makeover of dynamism in quanta of crosswords and dalmatian; imagination: **** static without the fizz of carbon edging to oxygen in the nightclub; imagination, when you assume unmovable things can be moved not disgruntled by not seeing the image of such feats formalised for applause and a nobel on the clean sheen buttering the scalp; oh yeah, what else? ah! me shampoo steve on the maiden to scrap lanky, me talk aboriginal, continent to continent, me talk each cult dialect of tribe without chief, me smoke tobacco with glee, but back home, i'm like the aboriginal: i say socrates is pop, they say kerry katona is popper, i might as well be among the **** naked cannibal lepers eating themselves to the salt shake of maracas - mmm, extra flaky; chisel those fried pouts into ducky of chalky lipstick: originating without mirror but a stick; but to be honest? the celebrity culture was a way to cut off the famous from 2000+ years ago; well, that was the original idea.*

i wanted to correlate the fascination from astrology
into phonetics, i chose the oak tree split to be the y,
i chose the sun to be o
and the moon to be c,
but i lost the constellatory plot from there;
so a beer and cigarette on a sunny day:
england owns september if you want me to compare
it to a zodiac; england owns september.
then i dipped into a canto dry lipped,
ushering people in:
man will be more heartbroken losing
his dog to a stranger than a woman,
with animals there's no free will involved you see,
pat on the head to the count of two
and i was leeched to 5am walkies,
but then i dropped the finished can, stumped the cigarette but
and opened the book, hiroshima sunrise
of bleach white pages in the sunlight,
shadow those twenty-six digits in for the eyes to see.
i want literature, i don't want oration,
not the kind of politics of arson with pre-pepper sneezes
of applause on the cue, life, the automation of queues,
i want spontaneity and the outer reaches to shake
a banana into a pistol in a magic trick,
with the bunny turning into a rabbit-hare mongrel,
or a ******* left *** wiggle for the photoshop, you choose.
so i said: but i want literature, i want to read
books so complex that i can't incorporate them into
my cognitive narrative, and i can't even speak about them,
i want books like that, books that will
not allow me to speak about them, or join a book club,
or become a critic for a newspaper when the **** is hot,
i want... literature... pure and simple...
i don't want tea break talk folding a ******* into jam and cheese
benevolently housebound to smear cat **** on walls and simply
call it diluted beige.
Thinking back to our beginning

Of things we used to do

Lord, I know my mind's still willing

I wish my body still was too

The years have passed by quickly

I blinked and they were gone

In time we both got sickly

But, our memories linger on.

We used to go out walking

To the park and in the woods

Just spending time together

And we talked and times were good

Now it's just a memory

Now it hurts to climb the stairs

We may no longer go out walking

But the memory lingers there

It's not that we were active

But our world was larger then

Now, we're confined to samll spaces

Our world was larger to us then

Once the snow comes we are housebound

We're together, not alone

We talk of when times were better

And we talk how we have grown

Disabled doesn't live here

We won't say words of that kind

Even though our body's dying

We both still have our minds

Distractions don't come easy

There's nothing for us to see

We still revel in each other

For we have no family

We'll be partners forever

We won't be so long apart

For when one dies the other follows

Soon, from such a broken heart

In sixty years that we've been married

We've had friends, but most are gone

They never knew that our small secret

Was we let our memories lead us on

They say the past is gone forever

The future is the place to be

But for us our futures leaving

And the past is where I'll be

I've more years now behind me

That I have got left to live

But as long as we're together

My love to you I'll always give

Remember when we'd go out walking

Just us two, those times were fine

I'd wish that in our future

We could do it one more time.
..
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
i feel the young have been cheated in terms of history, there's no personality in it, there's no humanity behind it, there's no grandfather behind it, they have all been told they're essential, essentially human, they write it like they were in eden, there's no past, they're passive deniers but active censors... at least i can claim my great grandfather owned a wehrmacht dagger.*

as long as he’s housebound he’s safe,
as long as he's censored
he's an export;
the paternal great grandfather was
in the wehrmacht and
the maternal grandfather
was a communist party member;
i guess the weekend starts with
a friday in a club, and ends in
b & q on a sunday combo of blinds
and toilet paper... but i guess
the highlights are gone by then...
don't worry... i'll comfort myself.
Bobby Copeland Sep 2018
Last year, despite his long gone testicles,
& 91 dog yrs of innocence,
Old Jack got dragged around the whole back yard
By his bone, by a coybitch he lives with.
He's a lucky dog, but he's 98
Now and down in his hips. He cries at night,
Housebound by his infirmities and I
Talk to him, touch his head and give him pills.

I remember my grandmother's voice--
You old dog you; I love you like jackfrost;
Mothers are like that, yes they are. She lived
To 95, forgetting for the last
Four who she was and where she was and why.
Should you or I be 1/2 so fortunate.

An old dog doesn't know he's dying, just knows
It's harder to live. I blow smoke in his ear
And we watch ****** stories, real and imagined.
Forensic files, Hitchcock. He struggles to stand.
I'm slow at doing what I have to do.
This morning, like most, weather permitting,
We're 2 blocks down the street from
Where we live. He struggles to ****--
Cancer blocks his peristalsis, makes it difficult
To squat. And I  stand ready with my Kleenex,
In case he gets it out on neighbor's or
The sheriff's lawn. Go ahead old friend, let it
Go. I'm right behind you.
Another night has breezed me by
Too much sleep has gone in haste
Somnolence is what makes me drink coffee sometimes
Oh oh oh,
Instead, take me where the monsters once lurked
In between the crevices of my old crypt that remains inert
I want to take a peek of the catacombs
Where I sometimes visit in my sleep

Oh ** **,
Where's that sense of humor I once had?
Couldn't speak now
With the tongue I once had
I'm enshrouded in nostalgia
With silly monsters caught in between
Stuck in my daydreams
I can't help but imagine the past

Oh oh oh,
That was my wonderful life
Little kids on the pave
Laughing and falling on their knees
And flippant little fingers making a scene
If I could only spring back
To the time when my essence was clean
Back to the home where I pestered the words
"Please, please, please"
To the point of my content, when I could no longer protest
When I finally drowned asleep in the summer breeze

Cheers to my childhood days
And to the housebound trance of old school lullabies
Where my loving family of special hearts
Defended the tears I cried
Oh, oh, oh
Provoked by silly monsters I waved goodbye
Never did I think
I would miss so very much
Those glorious days of when my silly monsters
Brought mischief and thrived
The monsters in our closets, monsters underneath our beds... I'm sure many of us can relate. :)

John Archievald Gotera © 2012 - 2015
Elizabeth Kelly Jan 2022
She wrote poems about sunflowers
and about the colors of each of the different flavors in her afternoon tea.

She wrote about the foot-worn path in the concrete floor of the history museum;
About a stranger’s dog who licked her hand at the park.

And to her future child,
And to the boundlessness of love she knew but could not fathom that existed in a forever-expanding space inside her,
And about that brave and resilient seed shared by all of science and art,
the interconnectedness of all things.

In radical joyful tones,
she documented the goodnesses of her Ordinary on scraps of paper and deposited them into a small chest,
her Memory Bank.

The people pointed at the lonely beergazer
The outraged wunderkind
The housebound widower
Each lost in the past or in the future.
Ah, misery.
The father of poetry.
They would shake their heads,
A shame, they would say.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town or maybe the world,
the mother of poetry, undeterred,
sat in her garden
singing to the souls of the vegetables.
Mateuš Conrad Oct 2015
that bankroll of notes changing
train pistons into traffic cones
and brief loves into marriages
with the motherly continues, but
ended up, just being, a roll of toilet paper
that could buy you **** for ink
or ink for a bestseller that ended up a door stump for a housed breeze.
but she loved it, she took the story of pristine eden
and her the satan like a camcorder with selfies
readied into recycling a pretty face
that everyone wanted to fudge into snorkel in a sea of gag white;
so i took to the monk ape for inspiration for levitation
and i rooted into a child being the: bullied anorexic lexicon,
the all rounded a*
tenner for a teenager housebound into being schooled
for a grey of officiated scrubbing of papers into
business.
i loved it, i had my midlife crisis without a harley
and i faked myself as a dodo fearing man’s fear of death
more than the unexpected extinction of my fellow species,
which i took to be fearless.
so once i experienced caesar’s love of spontaneity and death,
the last two things i feared were homelessness
and a prolonged state of dying utilising morphine
from april till june,
that’s why i never changed surgery,
never wanted to check the cholesterol or blood pressure
acting like a virus i asked to attack my heart
with marginalised debriefings - if i prayed
for the herz blitzkrieg right i also got a heartbeat prior.
Francie Lynch Feb 2017
My original spring was wound,
Tight as a Swiss watch.
The fore-finger and thumb
Of the nun turned the crown *****,
As only the Sisters could do.
Any subject could be converted
Into a lesson of the life of Jesus.
A plus sign becomes a cross.

     Even Jesus knew the angles
     To be a carpenter and Savior,


Grace and Faith kept time.

The Sacrements were frequent topics.
How many would we receive
Between Baptism and Extreme Unction?
After Confessions, I once asked,
Is it possible to sin between Penance and the curb?

     All things are possible with God.

You didn't want to die with a blemished soul;
Being responsible for more thorns and nails
Pounded into the emaciated, pitiful flesh
Of the one to emulate,
With Grace and Faith.

I was fervent in prayer.
I wanted to carry the Holy Eucharist
To the housebound or hospitalized;
Through the throng of thugs
Ready to defile the wafer.
I was ready to die a martyr,
With a benevolent, sober Jesus,
Guarding from the clouds,
Right hand raised like a Judo chop,
Blessing me, preparing me,
Protecting me with a corporeal force field.
Grace and Faith kept time.

I pined to wear the Altar Boy's Cassock,
Soutane-like, long and black,
Topped with the surplice;
To ring the bell, light the incense,
Hold the Communion Plate
Under Mammy's chin
As she knelt in supplication,
Before the Madonna,
My blessed Mother.

Did she envision me as a Jesuit,
Tending to the lame lepers
In the jungles of Peru and Africa.
Me, who issued forth from her.
Faith kept time.

The dark hour was closing in.
The spring was loosening,
Unwinding as I relaxed.
Marian sat beside me,
Thinking of our orders
At the drive through.
The Nehru-collared clerk
Slid the glass window,
Listening to our wants.
I offered her a napkin
To keep the crumbs
Of her little black dress.
A Catholic schooling in the sixties was something to experience and reflect on.
Whistling,
whirling,
swirling.

As the first snow falls to the ground,

it leaves us housebound.

The whistling silence that lives outside,

from this I must hide.

As the fires breath gives us heat,

this is where we meet,

brought together through simple circumstance,

I look out as the snowflakes dance.

Whistling,
whirling,
swirling.

Clang!

goes the unhinged doors,

the storms hunger begs for more.

Crash!

goes the broken branches,

for a second our blood flow stanches.

Whistling,
whirling,
swirling.

The eyes of the fire jump out,

for more firewood it shouts,

this beast we must keep at bay,

it's the only way to make the warmth stay.

The hunger that is outside, and that that is in,

one so cold, the other burns the skin.

From these to poisons we must choose,

oh this winter we are paying our dues.

I think of spring and all it promises,

but all I can hear is,

whistling,
whirling,
swirling,
whistling,
whirling,
swirling­,
whistling,
whirling,
swirling.
My first real attempt at a rhyme scheme.
betterdays Nov 2014
this is a poem...pre thanksgiving....
and is written for a number
of people on site who will
be either alone....or find the
holiday difficult....for various reasons....
please be kind....and share the love....some are going through....hard times.

i know this lady
a friend of mine
who will sit alone on thanksgiving

to her, in many  ways
this year has been unkind
with death, sickness and
memories that bind....

she still has much to be thankful for and this she
knows....
but the table is lonesome
and the world has lost it's
glow....

at present housebound
or i know...she would go
ease the suffering of others
passing turkey and stuffing
around,
with a kind word and a smile...
for she is known to go the extra mile...

when one thinks....
there are many like this....
many who spend the holidays
adrift....
or lost in a place...hard to find
we are thankful for this day
but don't let the celebrations
get in the way....
reach out in kindness,
and let it be known....
these people marginalized
are not alone....
as an australian...this holiday is but a novelty to me....but for some...it is a great celebration of love and family...and for some...it is a sad weekend of loneliness and losss....this poem is about no single person...but rather a conglomerate of
comments that have come to
my inbox from several people
...
Mateuš Conrad Nov 2015
again, this thing about the cartesian res cogitans
(thinking thing), substance and extension...
i’m pretty sure the darwinistic expression
of early model does not suit this model,
my own version i wrote once, res vanus (empty thing)
fits the gig better - we who can now snuggle in duvets,
who housebound the wild boar,
who milk cows with technological octopi tentacles,
who switch hot dogs with popcorn in the dark,
who ice-skate at somerset house at christmas,
who take diamond bling and christmas tree bulb bling
to equal the same credit on plastic,
who with polystyrene foam beat nature
by showing nature it couldn’t digest it on whatever
level of insect and parasite,
well have all the luxuries now, and we found them
not so much from thinking but from emptiness,
there is more chance of the eureka in res vanus than
there is in res cogitans - it’s the spontaneity you see,
and less need to narrate: love, lost love, aching love , ex lovers.
what else is there? it’s the easier assumption to have
with the niche topic in relation to kant’s noumenon (thing in itself),
i don’t know why i want to mention this orientation
to further the explanation -
early man was defined by res vanus - the sensual overload,
the prime, being empty and forced into the heat and the cold
and the mystic tiger hunger -
and still as defined by res cogitans, we pause and feel empty,
not so much in terms of emotion, but in terms of thought,
however we no longer gather at the campfire,
few people crowd by a lightbulb to talk fables with a
memory of achilles ajax and hector...
we need neon rainbows to huddle -
whether that be by eros shooting the neons of piccadilly circus blind,
or by televisions or computers,
rarity a fire that crept into the ribcage and gave way to
a macaw song of cross-dimensional sophistication off mayan jungles.
betterdays Apr 2014
the disquiet...
of the morning,
awakens me....
the magpie's squabble...
the wood pigeons.... cloying...
.. cooing love song..
the raucous, cacophony... of
the kookaburras ....as they sort out .....todays..... territorial hierachy...
........... all proclaim
morning has ......broken
.......in a sleep shattering... way
but... still ...today.. i try to eke
out ......a few more winks
....a few more.... .....moments....
of.... semi-conscious bliss
oh! .......... to .....close ....my eyes
and ....dream some more...
....but no!!!..... the cat
........is having
....................none of that.....
the birds are up...
and he........ housebound....
is hungry..... hungry...***..
cheryl love Apr 2014
As I sit
alone, worrying
as usual.
My thoughts are
put on hold.
A lot of singing
a lot of chirping
is going on
outside of my
window.
Singing from their
hearts.
From little yellow beaks.
A noise which means
nothing but it means
something to me.
It is bliss,
it is freedom.
This I do not have.
Stuck in my four walls
of my house.
I am housebound.
The birds are free
free to fly whereever they
want to.
I wish I could fly
I wish I could walk somewhere.
Sit on a rooftop and just
whistle when I want
how I want
when I want.
I wish I could try.
Wk kortas Jan 2021
He’d found himself restlessly housebound
(All men being the creators of their own comfort,
As well as the progenitors of their confinement)
And as the snow was on the lighter side,
Though tending toward the wet as well,
The type which renders the sidewalks in the town below
A bit, as the local parlance would have it, on the slippy side,
But his boots had sturdy uppers and decent tread,
And a walk this time of year less threatening than most,
What with the bobcats napping at midday
And the timber rattlers under the frost line for the winter,
The only threat to his well-being the potential discovery
Of some heretofore unseen red-ribboned stakes
Announcing the intention of some new **** fool
Who, in service of some desire to get closer to Mother Nature,
Was seeking to build in some spot
Where she offered him little more
Than a future of cracked foundations
And wind-sheared roofing misadventures.
Fortunately, his stroll was uninterrupted
By such man-made foolishness, his reverie undisturbed
Until such time as he happened upon a whitetail doe
Seemingly caught between flip and fly,
Her ilk all somewhat more comfortable
With their human counterparts
As they lived more cheek-to-jowl,
(But black-powder season had just ended a couple of days back,
So a certain skittish wariness was to be expected.)
He’d raised his hands in a gesture of what he supposed
Was non-threatening, knowing such a thing to be utter foolishness
Even as he raised his arms skyward,
But the beast backed away slowly, haltingly,
Before turning and cantering off,
And he figured that made it as good a time as any
To head back down toward the house,
Not to mention the snow had picked up in intensity,
A grainy, sleety issue which had filled in his footprints,
Leaving them barely perceptible in the waning daylight.
Domestic Landscape


There used to be many small farms or homesteads around
Here where I live, they are abandoned now,
Except for some wretched relics unable to move, acres so
Small earth could easily be ploughed by a mule.

Nostalgia is the name of poetry.

Carob and olive trees grow unseemly branches
Looking like a film set in a horror movie.

The neglected has mystery by itself.

Nature is moving back in, animals the kept a respectful
Distance from man, like shy deer
, and wild boars have been seen crossing the road at night.
Housebound flowers too has felt the freedom
Leaving ceramically confined, to the delight of goats.
The hares that people thought had been eradicated,
are competing with the blue rabbit in some clearing.
Beauty beholds, there is the talk of a golf course so players can be close to nature.
William Clifton Dec 2019
"I Yyi Yyi fake move tubular my housebound,
to halve and to scold from dismay forward;
for butter, for wurst, for pitchers from pourers,
insecureness and unwealth,
to loaf, sherry, and obit, till breath us do smart,
accordian two cod's holy slaw."
Nontraditional Marriage Vows
Jackie Mead Mar 2018
It's been snowing here for over an hour, its not even laid a trace
Its wet outside and this time our country will not be disgraced, as everything halts for a drop of the white, for us in The UK it is not an annual sight
So much excitement usually exists when a little dusting of the white stuff makes our pavements glist
But for today we will not panic, nor make our way home early from work
Instead we will watch the snow falling around and be thankful that its not settling on the ground
That people will not be stranded in their cars far from home
That accidents will not happen on streets that are frozen with ice
That buses and trains will make their journey's to the end, reuniting families and best friends
Last time it snowed people were cut off, drifts of ten feet deep, this brought out the best in people who offered services to the elderly and housebound utilising their jeeps.
Today we may decide to stay in all day, keep safe and out of harms way, safely watching the snow fall to the ground making us breathless with its beauty but not bringing us to our knees
Taunting us with the promise of foot deep snow but knowing its just a tease
I like to sit and watch it fall but hope that it ends soon after all tonight is Games Night with my Grandson and Daughter as they take over the living room
We've got Pizza to make and Blue Rays to watch, Paddington 2 is in the queue, so just for today Snow please don't lay, just blow through.
It's unusual, i do love snow but we don't see it often, this year we've had it twice in a couple of weeks but it was already wet outside and the snow isn't laying, as my son and his wife are due to go out tonight and we are having the kids overnight and their auntie is meant to be coming around too for pizza it would be a shame if it got cancelled, especially as my grandson help me make the pizza dough this morning... but we will see what will be will be, as long as no one is hurt.
Dal90 Jan 2021
I always want what I can’t have even if it results in me falling apart
So it’s hardly surprising to hear
That I knew it was a problem falling into your arms
And when I call you rarely answer
You read my messages but “forget” to reply
Yet somehow you have the ability to mollify when you finally get back around to me
Just to say, if you’re interested in my mental state
I’d rather say it’s “all good” than die a slow death in your impervious pity
I suppose it’s true, I should really admit
That maybe I should relax sometimes
Take a note straight from my sphincter
Rather than sit on this unstable fence
When I should be exploiting my naive impulse to wanderlust
I’m satisfied collecting splinters like a housebound spinster
Who fears their best days are behind them
And like them
I’m just waiting, waiting, waiting
For you to let me down easy
Because evidently all my dreams are supposed to rust
Grind down insufferably at laggard speed on its journey to dust
If I’m lucky that is
Otherwise I’m happy enough drifting along in this platonic state
Thinking of unbelievable excuses to why I’ve lost so much weight
As long as I might one day end up with you
And to your credit
You string me along impressively like a regimental echelon
Winding on for miles just like my satiating desire
Too much of you and it leaves me sick
Not enough and I fall to bits
And worse of all, don’t you just know it?
It’s written all across your face
Right at the point you call me irresponsible ‘cause I scuff up my jeans
Like it’s somehow a direct metaphor for my life
Meaning of course
I’m doomed to break your heart in clear sight and watch it tear at the seams
When the reality is you’re more likely to break whatever spirit there’s left in me
How ironic
You’ve now had a great epiphany of an outcome that has long been predestined
Like a knock-off psychic you’re coming off dangerously indecisive
And just like them
You still haven’t figured out a way to lie to me
I’ve always had a knack of siphoning unnecessary excess
Ever since my temporal lobe long sussed out your frontal lobe
It’s obvious you don’t agree with a single word that drips out of your mouth
Although it must be hard
Trying to keep me at arm’s length when you’re in bed with your spouse
The one you proclaimed over and over to be so desperate to leave
And like a fool I was easily persuaded to believe
Whilst I was falling head first into your trap called “Love”
How ridiculously predictable that was
Yes there is fear.
Yes there is isolation.
Yes there is panic buying.
Yes there is sickness.
Yes there is even death.
But,
They say that in Wuhan after so many years of noise
You can hear the birds again.
They say that after just a few weeks of quiet
The sky is no longer thick with fumes
But blue and grey and clear.
They say that in the streets of Assisi
People are singing to each other
across the empty squares,
keeping their windows open
so that those who are alone
may hear the sounds of family around them.
They say that a hotel in the West of Ireland
Is offering free meals and delivery to the housebound.
Today a young woman I know
is busy spreading fliers with her number
through the neighbourhood
So that the elders may have someone to call on.
Today Churches, Synagogues, Mosques and Temples
are preparing to welcome
and shelter the homeless, the sick, the weary
All over the world people are slowing down and reflecting
All over the world people are looking at their neighbours in a new way
All over the world people are waking up to a new reality
To how big we really are.
To how little control we really have.
To what really matters.
To Love.
So we pray and we remember that
Yes there is fear.
But there does not have to be hate.
Yes there is isolation.
But there does not have to be loneliness.
Yes there is panic buying.
But there does not have to be meanness.
Yes there is sickness.
But there does not have to be disease of the soul
Yes there is even death.
But there can always be a rebirth of love.
Wake to the choices you make as to how to live now.
Today, breathe.
Listen, behind the factory noises of your panic
The birds are singing again
The sky is clearing,
Spring is coming,
And we are always encompassed by Love.
Open the windows of your soul
And though you may not be able
to touch across the empty square,
Sing.
Just received these lines from a friend in the USA ... a calm call for solidarity and love in chaotic times
Pervaded mounded jeweled ground
gunmetal sky incessantly
pelted and did pound
asper staccato round

arhythmic, emphatic, melodic sound
to this clown,
who felt housebound
as precipitation reigned down.

steady rain quintessentially
patterned oodles of necklaced
mini mellow marsh lands
wee hour early this morn

after drenching rain abated,
I set foot upon the sponge
bobbing soaked boggy badlands
highland manor saturated

feet immediately sank deep
quickly submerged whole body
subterranean suction suffocated
without objection relinquished

superfluous lifesource (mine)
feeble writer (me)
oblivious pathetic simian
high jinxed human

resigned purposelessness necessitated
liberating meaningless NON GMO
gluten/ monosodium glutamate
free corporeal essence
hungrily gulped into Gaia's maw

vanished without a trace
transubstantiated (uber vacuumed)
wrought into indiscriminate
requisitioned, repurposed, reincarnated,

recycled carbon based materials,
where sedimentary processes metamorphosed
formerly insignificant (lava lee
liquidated louche) passively

recalcitrant know-nothing
dynamic forces glommed,
within whirling wide
webbed sized cauldron
crucible distilled basic

constituent building blocks
combining deciduous non
bull leaf ving Earthling
(poet wannabe) unrecognizable
disseminating Harris jackknifed ludicrous

johnny come lately
legend (nixed son)
across avast subterranean
shiftless tectonic world
property, asper oblate spheroid

incorporated within manifold biosphere
improbable far fetched fluke
identical likeness of self,
(nor any deceased life replicated)
will ever trod this planet again!
Click and collect,
what a way to connect
with the death of the high street.

Amazon's amazing
everyone's got their spades in
digging a hole.

In the end
there'll be no need for interaction
we'll all be housebound
getting around
on shopping carts.

Imagine not speaking
week in and week out,
no one to say
how are you keeping?
how are you sleeping?

there will only be you
scrolling
in a variation of: rewiring the brain: perhaps ingesting a certain graphic: but not allowing oneself to ******: gives me more vigor for the day ahead: regardless: since i still revert to climaxing looking at her, ***** photographs or not... just seeing her face and re-imagining it contort into an O: aghast, aplenty... such the delicacy of the exclusiveness of ***... which beggars the belief as to how boring or rather: how not-in-depth people have managed to couple themselves to: an abstract of body and a negated subject matter of: to touch is to find the quite: transcendental (of) feeling...

i'm growing desperate by the minute:
i'm not even going to count hours
the days have merged
and months are sometimes recognizable:
i did promise myself that:
i'd wait until Charlie's effigy would start
circulating on the banknotes:
i withdrew close to two thousand pounds
and lo and behold: ol' Charlie has started
to circulate and the "spending" power
has doubled since little miss perfect is
no longer the crux-and-currency...
i still have Washington and Lincoln
and... hmm... Lord Ilay in my wallet...
but there's one thing one can learn
from the migrant "crisis"...
i didn't choose to come to England
i didn't choose to be deported to be illegal
one year
and legal the next:
**** me! i can too play gambit and if
gambling is such an issue over games
i can gamble with mortality
and this is: my: life:
owing nothing to the gods and i implore
the plural
to suspect an undercurrent of hope
and i have hope...
there was just so much symmetry
in: how one evening it was a date night
and Reyla said so:
and i locked her up in the tower
like a dragon
i locked her up in a tower like a dragon:
the child's not even mine
but how gleeful and teary-eyed she was
that i locked her up...
of her own free-denoted: will?
**** knows by this stage:
i just want to get the passion out of the way
so i can experience some mundane
day to day banter of frivolity and fiscal
matters with Edie
but at least there will be a damsel locked
up in a tower and i will be the one
locking her up for
the sake other men's courage and ambition...
apparently the Chinese discovered
dinosaur bones long before
dinosaur bones were even discovered
by conjuring up drawings of dragons...
funny how not so funny how
intuitively we sleep walked into:
crowd control is a facade and
working with ex-military guys they simply
don't know anything about
the construction industry and ooh my blood
is boiling:
first date night
we went to see the Phantom of the Opera
at the King's Theater...
     pristine...
second night... Mozart's magic flute at the
national opera house...
walked out in fury by the end of the 1st act:
paper pigeons and a bunch of
overpopulation strategists of the stage:
extra: ******* flimsy dead-weight
fluttering about all postmodern and crutches
with pages imitating birds in flight:
but a DEUTSCHE OPERA in ENGLISH?!
a DEUTSCHE OPERA in Ęgliś?!
Hölle und Wut!
                        forderungen nicht erfüllt:
demands not met:
the phantom stormed out of the opera full of
critique and love...
so if these migrants can just hop on a banana
afloat and see fit: freedom is a mortal:
not grievance...
what's to stop me joining the tacos caravan
and bypassing the American mainland
and setting anchor in Hawaii:
not like living among the Polynesians might be:
probably will be:
than living among the Hindus etc
so... bulls-eye back...
                        i never chose to come to England
i like spending a sterling but
i heave no allegiance to this land
this conflated and confused all welcome
this Irish monstrosity of now blistered with:
should have just waited and
it would still be northern of an Ireland
and that's a matter of class
and earnings and not: exactly intellect...
but there's that longing to compliment me
and i'm also longing to fill a space...
whether i be housebound: domesticated:
but to meet a woman that can confiscate
a man's demand for philosophy:
as Socrates said:
marry, fine... but know this:
find a good woman and you will be happy...
find a difficult woman and you will
become a philosophers...
i did the whole digestion process backwards
(it would seem)
i ate and spoke with my ***
while started ******* through my mouth...
since i'll do the Rimbaud...
scribble in youth, waste it on words...
then play one last crescendo and: "disappear"...
but at least i won't be an old man
with literary ambitions... **** that no way...
to be an old man
and then crave philosophy: a life wasted...
do it my own way: backwards...
herr drachen: i salute you:
how you managed to steal a damsel, lock her
up in your castle
while going on a date night with her mother...
herr drachen: i salute you!
i, sire: my i: you; best addressing cogito ergo sum
in a variation of the objectivity pronoun
dynamic:
these days, yes: "i" mostly think in third
person of: you...    ha ha ha! gender neutral pronouns!
ha ha: how about subjectivity neutral pronouns?!
obliterate the lived experience of
being subjected to x!

— The End —