"intractable" poems
Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?
It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!
Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off
In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.
It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.
The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.
The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,
Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!
The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.
How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.
The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'
Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!
7.8k
Nobody in the lane, and nothing, nothing but blackberries,
Blackberries on either side, though on the right mainly,
A blackberry alley, going down in hooks, and a sea
Somewhere at the end of it, heaving. Blackberries
Big as the ball of my thumb, and dumb as eyes
Ebon in the hedges, fat
With blue-red juices. These they squander on my fingers.
I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood; they must love me.
They accommodate themselves to my milkbottle, flattening their sides.
Overhead go the choughs in black, cacophonous flocks --
Bits of burnt paper wheeling in a blown sky.
Theirs is the only voice, protesting, protesting.
I do not think the sea will appear at all.
The high, green meadows are glowing, as if lit from within.
I come to one bush of berries so ripe it is a bush of flies,
Hanging their bluegreen bellies and their wing panes in a Chinese screen.
The honey-feast of the berries has stunned them; they believe in heaven.
One more hook, and the berries and bushes end.
The only thing to come now is the sea.
From between two hills a sudden wind funnels at me,
Slapping its phantom laundry in my face.
These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt.
I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me
To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock
That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space
Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths
Beating and beating at an intractable metal.
5.4k
meadows that stays so green at spring
and so bared in autumn
magically white in winter
scorching and gold in the air of summers
perennial.
how do they do that?
to stay the same on the foundation
yet ever-changing on the surface.
what difference does it make really?
what kinds?
of the surcoats of hazel and acorns
or the blankets of snow on the slender branches
of trees?
don't they, even once
feel weary of all the undercurrents,
of shifting shapes of shadows?
and stand their ground
and shouted their demands
and push at intractable walls?
and flop down
and sift like flour
and grate like mozzarella?
to toss the gauntlet
say
'enough!'
doesn't anyone ever muses then
of whether the slideshows of nature
being flagrantly displayed and paraded
before their soon indifferent eyes
would feel of their performance.
but oh,
those poor meadows,
those poor meadows,
those pitiable meadows.
continue with your acts and scenes
that shall never pauses nor halt
oh no, no.
for you are impressive actors
on the forested stage
and the eyes, belligerent
yes, they are
will be watching the other way
never straight to your eyes
your artic, chilled
encasing a turbulent, melting, whirling
hot caramel core
yeap, right there on your irises and pupils.
so go on
go on
my delectable
my neglected
my pushover
my poor meadows.
Mar 5, 2010
Mar 5, 2010 at 10:53 AM UTC
Stitching
From a grand church in France to a rustic barn in Sweden the focal point and fascination is the door that
Has a key protruding in the lock but it has with time lost the screws that held it snug against the door
And the door frame there is no flat lumbered board now it is just a very deep splintered lines the color
Of auburn brown with a low gleaming in the setting sun I put my hands out and touch this rustic place in
Time an explosion of thoughts blast the mind a life lived well with purpose that endures with use the
Seasoned is expressed a stitching that is the fabric of life forms over muscle and sinew this outer
Garment does not belie the inner soul but in experience and in action it promotes and assures value
It passes through the vestiges of time the gray mist speaks with whispered mystery bur anchored at
Your center is the intractable character that sets the tone of your life a solid structure presents a forcible
Argument yes the elements have taken their toll but by doing so they have removed the green untried
Wood now the occasional creaking occurs but not of breaking but the stalwart rises in common skies
Privilege gleams the stranger or intimate friend is in the presence of the assured there is no pretense
This truth as sound as time and wisdom crowns walls and bedrock foundation you have come upon
The investment that God has provided and runs deep without constraints you can stand and muse
Here and as an invisible oracle your questions will be answered they will float on silent wind and mark
You as different you will be refreshed a redeeming will surge through you timeless affirmation will
Speak you will know it is sound it is steps that are sure when so much is cheap and just for show you
Will grow strong and tall your shadow will be the challenge to those who waste themselves on base
And worthless misgivings of life you will possess the power to be a place of refuge a fortress where
The powerless and helpless are provided comfort and instruction no longer will evil and its devices
Enslave the helpless there will be that irrefutable place of giving that will conquer a world bent on
Destruction.
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 12:41 AM UTC
Remember to breathe.
It’s simple – it is.
It should not be so hard but my lungs would have me suffocate
If my willpower were not so sturdy,
Intractable,
Or merely selfish.
I can’t quite decide how I feel as of yet,
But everything’s changing and my willpower's spent.
I hate being wrong, and despise saying please.
I think begging is weak, but I’m here on my knees.
“I am stubborn, conceited, I don’t need to have friends.”
I tell myself daily that these are my assets.
See, if I’m a freak, well at least I’m the best,
And no advantage can come from a pain in my chest.
Yet it might just be worth it, though it doesn't make sense,
If instead day to day I can look at your face.
I've never admitted defeat before,
I won’t say it aloud, but this is new and I’m lost,
I’m vulnerable, scared – I’m doubtful, unsure.
Emotions are foreign, not of my attributes –
I don’t want them to be. I don’t want to fall into
The same traps that those who are ordinary do,
But I suppose that there are exceptions to rules.
This in no way should work - it’s dysfunctional, wrong.
I’m unstable as ever, but almost feel I belong.
We are both faulted in our own different ways
And we feed off each other, more madness and chaos, more driving of rage.
Yet dichotomy dictates that there's something in this,
something so perfect which can contradict
all of the pettiness, all the insane,
for I've never felt more alive in my pain.
It’s as if you’re the puzzle piece I didn't know I was missing,
The part that completes me and fills me right up,
With a feeling I knew not could ever end up
Affecting or noticing someone like me,
At the midst of it all I just hope that you’d be
In the same situation if I told you my thoughts:
As confused as I am – but could still take the lead – in short:
Stay here, don’t go, I don’t want you to leave.
Now I stand, close my eyes, remember to breathe.
Apr 25, 2013
Apr 25, 2013 at 3:49 PM UTC
A white abstract silence falls heavily like phosphorous snow… odd and oblique with nervous intensity of random limitations… sensitive and fragile in its unremitting generosity…A fluency of motion of imaginary realisation in silent turbulence descends in tenebrous shadows of illusion detonating the unconscious… the symmetry and exactitude of silence beyond all compass…. an intricate camouflage… meticulous and consistent.
Disinherited it tries to sanctify the air….. a silence in where stars evaporate vibrational loud and inquisitive…. freezing time by the velocity of its inner momentum of silent adrenalin.
Concealing its true identity isolating me in unknown realisation of what is to occur.. It resonates with constant tension waiting for unpredictability’s of indispensible voices that don’t speak….. This is a realisation of the imagination…. a vibrant insensibility…. density of unravelled thoughts that vaporise within me causing a vibration that fractures the equation of time and space in the burning crucible of my mind.
Intractable proportions of silent thought…. hovering… a constant mirage of irrational calculations….. This silence forces all the tears of consequence to fall upon my face with no avail…..Then in this thunderous silence see graffiti on white walls…abstract and meaningless….Like primitive lives…those with meaning yet possess no meaning… an ungovernable democracy of fruitless endeavour… of non factual fastidiousness… a glimpse of life and its fallacy.
Yet the words were spoken and written… by whom… And for why.. Now the silence punctuates and instructs…. phosphorous extinguishes itself and hides behind another truth…..The noise of the world cascades in torrents deafening… attempting to defeat… subordinate the senses in atavistic cruelty… Prowling searching for the silence… but it has gone…. disappeared in the imagination of my inner self…. an abstraction I call me….. But I know where the silence has gone….
Mar 22, 2012
Mar 22, 2012 at 7:07 PM UTC
Towering over the rocky shore,
mentoring the intractable,discordant waves.
Rigid and stubborn,over which the eagles soar
"They" come here for absolution,the murderers,the soothsayers,the knaves.
Tweleve kilometers away from the tower,she watched,
living in sweet sardonic solace,in an ancestral cottage.
how "they" climbed the crumbling earth,body and soul parched,
desperate to be purged,freed from guilt-driven *******
Ruminating over the storm swept silence,
she loathed man's dependence on belief.
Comatised, mentally enervated in its absence,
The belief commands discipline, our obedience.
Scrambling over the jagged rocks,
she climbed to the base of the dominating column,
A vulture sitting high above,looks down to mock.
the blinding circulating light,an eerie feeling she could not fathom.
Ascending the two hundred and forty eight iron spiral stairs,
as surreal force encompassed her, she instantly felt possessed, her mind awakened by last night's nightmare.
As she stood high above,adjacent to the vultures,
She acknowledged her mind grow vacous,empty , free.
There was something calming or demanding about this structure,
exterminating her inner thoughts and memories,reaching an ******** apogee.
Oct 31, 2011
Oct 31, 2011 at 12:52 PM UTC
she was a neophyte to her own life,
syncopated heart beats to a still night.
occluded love behind steel bars.
ubraided her brain With mind scars.
staying reticent to the people her own home,
her transitory smile was well known.
for her smile was a beautiful sight.
it was left with the vestige of a loveless light.
only repudiation to what people preached,
feeling that her soul was a disparate beast.
her idiosyncrasies were inhuman in nature.
said to be intractable in her own behaviour.
never did she speak to humankind.
but inside her head was a loquacious mind.
only wanting a stasis within her sadness.
only to be taken by insanity and madness.
Sep 27, 2015
Sep 27, 2015 at 12:18 AM UTC
When the fog dissipates
and the city skyline
winks into your clever retinas,
will you be satisfied
with what you see?
When those things you had forgotten
are worming their way back
into your bones and blood vessels,
will you still glance at the intractable sun,
awestruck and catatonic,
like a moth to the moon?
Will you still find beauty in
sidewalk weeds and broken glass?
When the fog dissipates,
and humanity presents itself,
brazen and unabashed,
in a flurry of chaos and stale dreams,
will you still fall into the mass
of faces and hands and ******* and eyes?
Or will you falter at the glaring sight
of a society that's run amuck?
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 11:03 PM UTC
The Last Doughboy
went marching home
mustered up to heaven
to rest in perfect peace
never went over the top
when he was over there
drove an ambulance to save
the last dying bits of humanity
excavated from the craters
reeking with mud and blood
the turgid stench
of blessed death
wafts through the
muddled labyrinth
a ghastly kingdom
of rats and men
intractable mazes
of hate, hope and waste
led by inept generals
vainglorious politicians
promising triumphant victory
while begging disastrous defeat
bold shouts of advance
lead to routed retreats
global trench warfare
the sweet earthen coffins
empathy's last gasp
compassion's last stand
gurgling lungs
gagging on gas
imploding on
clotting blood
liquid ammonia
sears sensitive retinas
wafting flash of fire
burns eyes forever shut
concussive bursts
bludgeon eardrums
ripped bodies of friends
splayed onto comrades
the macabre rouge
a terrible war paint
liberally applied
with stunning result
by the industrial rattle
of cantankerous Gatlings
better minds thought it
the war to end all wars
the horrific scenes of waste
the pleading lips of starved children
the last Doughboy saw it all
a lucky Johnny who marched home
he thought the horror of WWI
would be enough to end all wars
yet all is not quiet
on the western front
Johnny's still got lots
of gruesome guns
distressed humanity
remains very busy
carting away human rubble
from our apocalyptic trenches
go to your reward
valiant Doughboy
*"leave us citizens
of death's gray land,
drawing no dividend
from time's tomorrows."
Siegfried Sassoon*
Dedicated to
Frank Buckles
(February 1, 1901 – February 27, 2011)
Godspeed Beloved
Oakland
3/1/11
jbm
Nov 11, 2011
Nov 11, 2011 at 9:11 AM UTC
this marauding dark.
a bleak behemoth ---
the head of the chimera.
integer by
blind integer,
life's
absolute emptiness.
a sidereal zero.
caught in the web
of a relentless
tarantula.
this
dead end
or this ***** in
the armor.
life's what you make it.
i make it like this:
intractable like a fiend,
these words unsheathe like
rusting swords in old scabbards.
i astonish death with smallness.
Sep 14, 2015
Sep 14, 2015 at 10:54 AM UTC
weightless when heavy:
i feel a constant dread
i am shifting through time
when pinned to the walls
of claustrophobic chambers
i part away the vital parts
of thoughts and battered fragments
i disintegrate into intractable purpose
i disappear, i am finished:
i am past tense
(n.j.)
Jun 13, 2016
Jun 13, 2016 at 9:39 AM UTC
let us perceive the world anew
and call to account that which
produces intolerable wrongs
of devious motivations
and let us give vindication
to a universal imperative
more powerful than
the pious injunctions of any belief system
whose lies cause such struggle of speech
to produce weird tormented admonitions
in hallucination
that pollutes with a tenacious
intractable meaningless vitality
Nov 18, 2012
Nov 18, 2012 at 6:19 PM UTC
negotiating modernity
at the MoMA
one's pushed along
mass conveyances
inertial rush an
intractable force
surer then the weight
of Newton's gravity
routes precarious
contemplative moments
nails scratching
Pollack's #9
in desperate attempt
to hold ground
Mall of America's
crushing crowds
vagrants pacing
the large garages
barely glimpsing
composite walls
the open spaces
bagging fast food art
not a bit of intimacy
in the **** place
Music Selection
Ornette Coleman
with Eric Dolphy
Free Jazz
2/24/11
NYC
jbm
Nov 15, 2011
Nov 15, 2011 at 8:41 AM UTC
it's not so hard to
ask anymore, these questions
intractable questions about
what we have lost and
where it has gone
and it worries me
maybe we have become
accustomed to its absence
I don't miss the suffering
and I don't miss
the uncertainty I don't
miss the clouds, whatever they portended
or any of the times that we pretended
that our love had limits.
but I do miss well-defended
winters, snowed in, knowing
inconsolable sadness, complicated
sadness, and the ease
with which you disentangled it
Look at this, you whispered;
It's like a cat's cradle.
You moved your fingers
and it was gone.
So we are left asking questions without
a voice to offer solutions
so we are asking questions and
they seem solutionless.
I don't miss
clandestine afternoons, and hiding
from confrontation, but mostly
from each other
and I don't miss
long explanations, and looking at wild
mountains, wondering how
they could be climbed,
and duplicity, and things that we resigned
never to mention, and turned from, blind.
but I do miss
sleeping, two to a narrow bed
confined, knowing infinite windows to
your own wonders, and the canyons
so dark, concealing cat's cradles
a kiss and
a question away:
repeating hopes that we could not abandon
but there were some too hard
for you, too hard for me
You moved your fingers, but
this one never disappeared
and while I pray for someone
who can solve it
I'll hide it away again:
An artifact, a tangled souvenir -
to remind me of the things you couldn't fix
to wonder why you didn't persevere -
a question about what I have lost and
where it has gone.
Feb 23, 2010
Feb 23, 2010 at 10:44 AM UTC
Friday
as reminder
of how cruel the time.
(Invariability)
Of how intractable the wind and weather.
(Inevitability)
I cry the cry of the reformed mean spirited;
the once-unholy-then-unholy-again;
the backslid.
It's been so long since I've sinned,
come short of the glory,
come at all (costs)
It would feel good to make a fist again.
Please render me in subtle shades
when you paint me into your masterpiece;
barely discernable from the canvas.
A ghost in achromatic acrylics.
May 12, 2018
May 12, 2018 at 12:06 AM UTC
engulf me in a haze of black
veins turn hard, vision blurs
world so distant and forgotten
childhood i yearn to go back
no more than seconds time
mind alters with desolation
alone with no relation
dead, buried and back alive
reality swarms in a gasp
eyes soaking in light
fighting the evil within
sanity back in clasp
Feb 27, 2014
Feb 27, 2014 at 2:03 PM UTC
In charge of the country
Not in charge of the planet
Hitting the jackpot
At everyone's disapproval
You take the quilt away
As we accept without complaining
You win all the rewards
That much is apparent
Deadlines will be met
Or suffer for your negligence
I am intractable
Jan 28, 2013
Jan 28, 2013 at 7:31 AM UTC
we are prompted
in these hours
to find awareness..
awaken in the
dreams we live..
to recognize a
matrix disguise..
the matrix masks
hides our Reality
misleads our senses..
one simple form
of sacred geometry
gifts a key for
sought transform..
a torus in motion
may unclog
life's flowing stream..
the torus connects
light and shadow..
its motion cleanses
exposing new light..
the torus introduces
new energy sources
with-in and with-out
reaching intractable
hunger and pain..
torus is ancient
lost now remembered..
much yet to know
but a Torus may be
creeping into
our morning
meditations...
Mar 15, 2013
Mar 15, 2013 at 1:06 PM UTC
I didn't know, I told my friends
I only saw the odds and ends
Littered over his garden.
I didn't know, I couldn't see
The person that he used to be
Before his confusion.
We used to call the council too
They'd charge him for the work, it's true
...though he hated them.
The blow fly problem abated for a little while.
The rats had nowhere to hide until he provided more accommodation.
I couldn't see, I told my friends
A garden full of odds and ends
Obliterated the man.
I couldn't know, I didn't see
He once was just like you and me
Before his confusion.
The council took his stuff away
It took them more than half a day
To move it.
We asked what he could possible want with second-hand garlic presses
and a pair of boy's shorts.
I didn't care, I told my friends
How many men the council sends
It will not solve it.
They'd need to know, they'd need to see
The solution's clear enough to me
He needs to go into an institution.
The council tried to talk him round
They never gained an inch of ground
He was intractable.
The junk helped him live his life
Old air conditioners and wood for healing was an unusual approach....
I didn't see, I told my friends
I hated all the odds and ends
Gathered with love.
I wouldn't know, I wouldn't see
He needed care from you and me
To cure his confusion.
The council only saw the crap
Only television saw the chap
Under the junk.
Even then, the hurts in his life were only diagnosable
Using the encrustation outside.
May 15, 2012
May 15, 2012 at 7:07 AM UTC
cannot live by living
sublimate
intractable life the way
a poet of mangled hands burns away
incessant blankness
to a hot glowing moment wherein
his excision, sought after,
lives.
Whatever way is taken
a fire therein will burn
to majestically disfigure
the unfigurable in your life
the way a drinking straw made of
plastic transforms
in lips of flame
to curlicued ribbons and
blazing involutions, coiled springs and
brightly curled
imaginings of crimson.
Choose to run
and so too will the fibers in your hamstrings
curl, glow crimson
as under fire.
Sit quiet on the marble steps
of a dried fountain in Union Square
watching the looming arch through
the crisp distance of night
and so too will your eyes become
incendiary orbs
heating the air around
to transient veritable sharpness
as if suddenly, every piece of
stone or root of tree
has been released from
a hold
and could at any moment
flinch for you. For
just your witness
and nothing more.
Attempt to find the dream of death
hidden within the taste of
your one beauty’s lips
and so upon the kiss will she
burn, explode!
in quick high flame
to a pile of
shrunk dust and scintillating
strands of hair.
Whichever way, all can burn
to release its true form—hardly sweet
seeming unbearable
before curling
just barely sweet, just bearably, always just
necessarily so.
And slowly, you are already
curling in the flames.
Mar 27, 2012
Mar 27, 2012 at 12:10 AM UTC
Do you think when a leaf falls from a tree is is screaming because it's terrified of falling?
Or do you look at a dead rose and think of sadness or of a love that was once beautiful, but is now dead?
See, the thing about poems is you could say anything and no one would fully understand or grasp what you meant or how you were feeling in that moment.
When I fall, it's a terrible thing. I scream and try to stop myself, but I can't.
In some cases I have, so when I fall...it's rare.
A girl that used to wear her heart on her sleeve, and fall for every boy who smiled at her
To the girl who is intractable, hard to understand, guarded.
Why?
Not really scared of falling anymore, but terrified of someone falling for her.
It's hard to believe you will never fall in love, or have anyone fall in love with you.
{Especially when you are a sucker for any love story you can get your hands on}
This isn't really a poem, but a mess of thoughts...what I'm trying to say...{I think} is that I'm falling and I'm content, yet oh so terrified.
Sep 18, 2014
Sep 18, 2014 at 10:46 PM UTC
I can't escape your eyes,
your cerulean gaze will follow me forever.
In every intractable stare,
I'm left paralyzed by the innocent.
I hope I know not of enmity.
I cannot bear the impending guilt.
They are innocent.
They must be born innocent.
Every melody that invades my ears,
I hear it in your voice.
I can veritably feel my heart break.
Once again, entirely over again.
If they echo you, could I bear it?
I have no other choice.
For they are a part of myself.
The most important part of myself.
God **** you're beautiful.
To me, you're everything.
Jul 4, 2013
Jul 4, 2013 at 3:55 PM UTC
What plays most on his mind
is her mulish way and
how her stubborn words roll
off her scarlet tongue --
She's intractable.
When forehead crevasses interrupt her
softness like a fog cast over
the morning meadow,
only love can
subdue her argument.
She's intractable.
There is a mountain of
dissent to scale for him
to touch her tenderly.
Her noisy defiance
remains endearing to those
untouched by her resilience.
To others, she's intractable.
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 8:03 PM UTC
Without a word, emptiness. The room is filled with her absence and I seek any forgiving breeze to carry from me the crunchy apple, dewy spring smell of her. Random strands of hair on my pillow protest, demanding something I cannot comprehend. I knew this could happen, it has before. Fear and Love are intractable foes and only the true, clear heart wins this silent struggle. Mine has not.
I am prepared. I have courage and faith and will, yet Hope is the dark matter I lack that drains my resolve. Weakness creeps over me. I told her that Love is the only currency the soul understands.
Doubt.
Looking west, across the water, I seek only patience and calm. I feel small as I let a modest stillness ebb over me. Determined and resigned, I vow to not regret, not succumb, but Love is the truest gift and without that I dread the sullen days and tortuous nights ahead.
Perhaps I was wrong seeking happiness with so little to give. I had only Love to give and that was not enough.
Nov 21, 2013
Nov 21, 2013 at 11:07 AM UTC