"jangled" poems
I cannot write anything, the way my heart tells it
soft in murmurs or echoing loudly as it does
cannot drift the way I'd like, floating free
as dandelion seeds wild in these fields.
I hear words like arrows piercing in.
I feel shocks and waves
the sea that comes to swallow.
I face jangled places
of these fears again
amid storms of grays and clouds
and after the washing rains
the birds come singing, flying.
Mar 29, 2017
Mar 29, 2017 at 2:29 PM UTC
You make me feel at times
like a putrid scent that lingers
or the fistful of unwanted dimes
jangled in between your linty fingers
But I guess you keep me in your pocket anyway
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 10:04 PM UTC
I guess we were bored,
Or looking for something new.
And there was a party coming up.
Someone's hosting debut.
So we thought we'd ask around,
See what else was to do.
And our **** dealer told us
He sold other things too.
He nicknamed it dizz,
And it sounded quite fun.
So we talked all about it,
Decided to get some.
We all pitched in,
Asked for five or ten pounds.
And went and collected it;
Tin foil bound.
Accompanying us
Was a sober mate.
He said it would be fun
To watch and spectate.
So we unwrapped it,
Crushed it,
Poured it,
And drank it.
The taste was disgusting,
Of abstract chemicals.
But we swallowed it down,
A moment; seminal.
They said twenty minutes,
So we sat and waited.
Our hearts were pumping
Way before eight.
And we went downstairs,
Sat on a sofa,
Biding our time,
Sipping on cola...
And there.
What was that.
A feeling.
It entered the chat.
Some warmth,
No stress.
And then a
Very deep breath
Of fresh air
And emotion.
Like emerging from the bottom
Of a very deep ocean
You had been down for years.
Reggae was playing
At very high volume.
And none wanted staying
Where we were.
So we got up keen,
And started dancing.
One even went on the wet trampoline
And bounced
Up, down,
Up, down,
Could've gone till sundown.
And the sky was gorgeous;
Metallic, steel blue
Mixed with orange and yellow.
It was quite the view.
But time was
Moving on,
So we packed up,
And were almost gone
Before keys jangled,
And the door swung open.
A parent walked in,
And caused a commotion
Of boys rushing out,
Mumbling words and plans.
We left quite abruptly,
And sprinted and ran.
Once round the corner,
We couldn't care less.
Nonchalant as usual,
We enjoyed the success.
And we walked and talked
About pure, utter, *****
The iPhone X, some girls,
And the absolute banger that would be tonight.
So we strolled around,
The sun on our faces,
Feeling elated.
Going some places.
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 7:01 PM UTC
Some poems never end,
Nor were meant too.
Alliterative phrases, invitations,
Add a verse, a word, even a sound,
An exclamation of delight,
A stanza in its own right.
Unfinished work, forever additive, collaborative.
Modify mine, pass it on,
Free to steal it,
For ownership passes to you,
with your first reading,
And lost when you close it,
Stamp it and release it into the atmosphere.
But some poems do. End.
Unique and distinct,
Pockmarked-faced at birth.
Owned by my initials,
Never to see the shelves of a
Lending Library.
Like this one:
*Cannot remember a single day
When suicidal thoughts
Were not heard clearly above the fray
Of jingle-jangled, responsibilities
Demanding my immediate attention.*
The end.
NML
Jun 5, 2013
Jun 5, 2013 at 10:56 PM UTC
Little feet
on mounds of earth
Lots of stamping
childrens' mirth
Jumping mole hills
wellies high
How fast these precious times go by
Little voice from mum (disguised)
wonderment shines in widening eyes
believing the poor jangled mole had said
"Stop Stamping On My Head!"
Apr 14, 2013
Apr 14, 2013 at 8:52 AM UTC
Dance is the devil's delight
as you well know.
Tis' often attended
by amorous smiles
unchaste kisses
wanton compliments
and lust-provoking attire.
This from the preacher William Prynne
a pure man and good.
Then comes one
Michael Praetorious
to celebrate this miasma
of corruption
this thing called dance
in the year of our Lord 1612
And to present a well-turned leg
as he lifts his partner's
slender hand
and gives us these joyous songs.
He brings us the recorder
Viola de gamba
tambourine and drum
to celebrate the pure
and frankly ******
pleasures of the dance.
As it happens
I am master of recorder
tambourine and drum.
Sadly born
in the wrong century
with my ears sewed on sideways.
It is strange to hear this world
through ears from the 17th century
to hold the thread of eternity
in one hand
while tapping four-four time
on a jangled skin drum
with the other.
Sometimes I wake in the night
and don't know where I am
in time.
Sometimes I put my lips
to a flute
and ancient airs whisper forth.
I dream of castellated cities
unknown to me
but eerily familiar.
Music is more ancient
than we are
it was here before us
and will be here
when humanity
has exhaled its last.
Of this much I'm certain.
So the music calls!
Dance to this joyous tune
heel and toe
heel and toe
step lightly on the boards!
Jun 14, 2016
Jun 14, 2016 at 9:32 PM UTC
A beggar lays chained to concrete,
to skyscraper that stretches past clouds,
breathing aside, neither dead nor alive,
we've given up on his release.
For what purpose does he survive?
When his stomach knots empty,
he curls fetal, hands clench chest,
and sobs escape in pants and whines
and saliva and not an eyelash is batted
toward his cup that silently watches:
It hasn't jangled in days.
Lashes litter the sidewalks
from eyeliner applied while
rushing to an extravagant event
in midtown Manhattan,
lights lips reflections,
where all will will be watching
her every move, her every step.
If he wills himself survive,
we can clean him up
in loving arms of sleep deprived nurses
before we kick him back to the curb,
abandoned again with rip-rotting liver,
while we vultures eye another *****
But that girl?
She better not trip over Prometheus
or we might just chain her next.
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 12:24 AM UTC
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.
We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire, receding to hoarse despair.
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.
One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing,
Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him;
One drifts slowly down from a waking dream.
One, foreseeing, lingers forever unmoving . . .
Upward and downward, past him there, we stream.
One has death in his eyes: and walks more slowly.
Death, among jonquils, told him a freezing secret.
A cloud blows over his eyes, he ponders earth.
He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils:
A slow black poison huddles beneath that mirth.
Death, from street to alley, from door to window,
Cries out his news,--of unplumbed worlds approaching,
Of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower.
But why comes death,--he asks,--in a world so perfect?
Or why the minute's grey in the golden hour?
Music, a sudden glissando, sinister, troubled,
A drift of wind-torn petals, before him passes
Down jangled streets, and dies.
The bodies of old and young, of maimed and lovely,
Are slowly borne to earth, with a dirge of cries.
Down cobbled streets they come; down huddled stairways;
Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways;
From freezing rooms as bare as rock.
The curtains are closed across deserted windows.
Earth streams out of the shovel; the pebbles knock.
Mary, whose hands rejoiced to move in sunlight;
Silent Elaine; grave Anne, who sang so clearly;
Fugitive Helen, who loved and walked alone;
Miriam too soon dead, darkly remembered;
Childless Ruth, who sorrowed, but could not atone;
Jean, whose laughter flashed over depths of terror,
And Eloise, who desired to love but dared not;
Doris, who turned alone to the dark and cried,--
They are blown away like windflung chords of music,
They drift away; the sudden music has died.
And one, with death in his eyes, comes walking slowly
And sees the shadow of death in many faces,
And thinks the world is strange.
He desires immortal music and spring forever,
And beauty that knows no change.
1.6k
They all had tambourines for faces
which jangled when they laughed
fingers made from untwined
basket cases
and dusty jeans filled with the wind that caught them
they all sat down for dinner
It was spaghetti again,
"Spaghetti! Spaghetti! Spaghetti!"
They all shouted in chorus
and then they all laughed
and a butler made half of
giraffe bought wines
to the table out stretching his limbs to fill each space,
a few bottles of champagne
a cork whizzes through the air and hits a face
a drum and melodic rattle snake sound
and then the guest had fallen down
and fell apart
and the rest of the guests
realized they had no chests
and fell apart too.
It was time for the butler to tidy everything away again.
Mar 30, 2013
Mar 30, 2013 at 8:09 PM UTC
He is said to have been the last Red man
In Acton. And the Miller is said to have laughed—
If you like to call such a sound a laugh.
But he gave no one else a laugher’s license.
For he turned suddenly grave as if to say,
“Whose business,—if I take it on myself,
Whose business—but why talk round the barn?—
When it’s just that I hold with getting a thing done with.”
You can’t get back and see it as he saw it.
It’s too long a story to go into now.
You’d have to have been there and lived it.
They you wouldn’t have looked on it as just a matter
Of who began it between the two races.
Some guttural exclamation of surprise
The Red man gave in poking about the mill
Over the great big thumping shuffling millstone
Disgusted the Miller physically as coming
From one who had no right to be heard from.
“Come, John,” he said, “you want to see the wheel-pint?”
He took him down below a cramping rafter,
And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,
The water in desperate straits like frantic fish,
Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.
The he shut down the trap door with a ring in it
That jangled even above the general noise,
And came upstairs alone—and gave that laugh,
And said something to a man with a meal-sack
That the man with the meal-sack didn’t catch—then.
Oh, yes, he showed John the wheel-pit all right.
1.5k
The field has laid barren,for much too long now.
So empty,the air smells of fear and that dreadful disquiet.
How can one ever gather all the pieces? Those broken and unwanted fragments of who you are,were and meant to be.
An overwhelming task in a mind it stays. You haven’t the energy to ask or pray. To build,to persevere,to carry on.
The need to create & sustain courage, to cross 1,000 miles,when afraid to take just one step.
The fear has jangled you to your core.
Powerless,you can say no more.
Seems only one way to turn.
And that’s away.
For,it is not that one desires the fall.
But,rather it is the fear of the flames.
Oct 14, 2018
Oct 14, 2018 at 2:15 PM UTC
that crescent moon
of a smile
needless to say
it reached up your eyes
and down your throat
along your pounding breast
jangled currents bolts shocks waves
across the marrow of your heart
and then it crept sleekly
inside your gut
gravity defying stunts
and it lifted with an urgency so delightful
your restlful restless brain stem
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 6:15 PM UTC
A White girl figure with a blank face and
a dress cropped over her knees lays
smeared flatly onto a restroom door;
a black star encrusted shoe kicks open the
Door.
In comes a knocking the delusions
of grandeur that stay suspended in the
Fragrance of workaholic soccermoms.
In one of the bathroom stalls
swims a ****** rosemary, teenage midlife-crisis
Averted. Theses tests were ironically
positive for the genesis of an unborn
Icon. I might have just used the wrong definition of irony.
Moving on. A hand flushes
the remanents of immortality down a sparkling, smiling toilet.
Rolled poems become unscrolled
when writeen on the pampered virgins paper.
In the next stall,
there lives substance for the homeless man
in the deep, brown soil
Of the marsh. A trash can is hunched over the sink,
attempting to dispense it’s
Apathy for a commercial world.
He turns the corner and sees writeen on the wall in
legible, abstract graffetti; “Ugliness is shrouded
under layers of positive
contradictions.” The words are engraved
deep into the cracked out, white tile wall.
Socialist Olympic torches blaze before ash
crumbles into communists tendencies.
The water is clear but the benches
are polluted with foreigner sea ****
and
beneath the jangled sands
lie the zombies stuffed deep in the black body bags.
Dec 4, 2016
Dec 4, 2016 at 5:16 PM UTC
The hawk nosed general in the grey suit sniffed
out his enemies, labrador like, nose to the noise,
chest beating, bleating, blaring in the thunderous
applause, that made his ego bloom amongst the corpses
of the shrunken heads and hands reaching out for bread,
in the shut down quarter of the empire
where the eagles flew in/ out dropping mustard,
caught between a deadly sandwich of
closed escape routes.
"Burn them all" he said, and turning to his sidekick,
he smiled a thin smile, devoid of the god he worshiped
in the minarets on the mosques that stabbed the blue sky
with their sharp bulbous needles of attention.
At twelve the muezzin called the faithful to prayer and
moaned for mercy on the unbelievers.The call echoed
and reverberated down the streets.
The mustard closed the eyes of the city where the
gas cannisters jangled on thin nerves and let the
people sleep forever.
The grey suit, now eau de cologne scented handker-
chief
hawk nose sniffed
wiped his forehead and walked
spritely to his armoured vehicle, to call his wife
and enquire if the kids were enjoying their summer swim.
"Yes, darling!" she tingled with excitement.
"How's that part of the city
where these rats live?"
"Good love! Just need to smoke 'em
out some more!
By tonight I'll be home for dinner. Bye for now!"
The line went dead
with twenty others, fried in the concrete
pan of a bunk buster bomb dropped from a drone
with butterfly wings and a sharp upside down minaret
nozzle of spray now stabbing the earth.
Earth to sky, sky to earth?
The barbed wired brains circled the city.
Children soon crunched cockroaches,
mice and rats and grass salads, autumn leaves on wild spinach
thousands died eating succulent poisonous roots.
Even the carrion claws refused to descend into the darkness
of carcasses that lay down in the streets to pray forever.
The water turned green with envy as lichen,
clogged with blood and ***** and bones rotting
under bridges, ****** up the blue river
and sent the beavers into burrows of omerta
The world watched and waited.
?
Around the dinner table the grey suited general
tucked his napkin under his red,wellfed face and smiled
at his lovely wife in a designer outfit.
" Pass me the mustard please, darling!"
Feb 24, 2014
Feb 24, 2014 at 11:35 PM UTC
The landscape blurs often
as poets go about their business
crafting metaphors of unexpected delight
in forests of jangled words and visuals
unable to contain their excitement
at having conquered that crystallised
moment of love, hate and everything else
in a frozen sliver of time
inescapable from their minds excursion
into unknown unshaped lands.
Not all succeed in this endeavour
most try, few unable
to melt the metal in a crucible of colour
sound, taste or touch, to smell
emphasis and cocktail curiosity
bringing the best to the fore.
The newcomers tremble at the awe
of maestros watching their work
and dissolve in disasters.
There is the odd one that unknowingly
write splendid poetry
and when noticed and heaped with praise
often springboard into showcasing talent.
Reading the works of the masters
is always good. If they think it
is good then it must be good.
So many footsteps to follow and learn.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.
Apr 1, 2014
Apr 1, 2014 at 12:39 AM UTC
mangled jangled in the space of race
he looked purple shadowed with wide eyes
and wonder
unafraid of escape he
still stayed locked in a love affair
need and greed
lust and bust
time ticked painlessly
wrinkles grew rich
obscurity haven
until at last
a resurrection.
Now he creates art
and happiness
riding into the sunset of verses
where sense and nonsense
merge in a mystical aura.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved, 5 days ago
Nov 10, 2014
Nov 10, 2014 at 1:58 PM UTC
A thousand dancing cats
mewed in wild cacophony
with whiskers tangled
and bells that jangled
amidst and among
their tails and their paws
The wide-eyed dogs
could only leap
and bark at the chaos
in their noses and their ears
their empty jaws held dripping tongues
While flocks of birds
fell laughing from the sky
Feb 27, 2013
Feb 27, 2013 at 8:34 AM UTC
I walked to the ocean
And swam in her waves
Until I saw a storm coming my way
The birds began flying
To find a dry place
As the first drops of rain
Fall on my face
The shells that I collected
To make you a necklace
Jingled and jangled
Down in my pocket
Now I'm covered in rain
Now I'm covered in sea
Just to see you happy
It's worth it to me
Jan 23, 2012
Jan 23, 2012 at 12:54 PM UTC
Dead people crawling up the stairs.
Embracing their together arms in
a symphony of panic.
I hear their wailing throats
emitting deathly groans.
I cover my ears.
I ignore them.
Let the dead return to their graves.
They have no place here.
Still, I sense they are here.
Encircling me.
Reaching out for me.
Welcoming me to their
cavernous holes in the ground.
I scream in silent vowels.
Gasping for air.
Holding my arms tightly
at
my sides.
Don't touch me rotted things!
Don't speak to me.
I do not want to listen
to your unearthly sighs.
My
thoughts
are
jangled
in
terror.
Why are they here?
Death rattles.
Smells of decayed flesh.
These surround me.
These
are
symbols
of
motivated
malice.
Useless resistance.
Surrender to them.
Join them.
Dead people crawling up the stairs.
I am with them now.
Apr 13, 2016
Apr 13, 2016 at 5:31 PM UTC
I store at an isolated mark that stood lonesome among the words that were written around the board.
To divert myself from the alien eyes that tore the flesh from my
body.
They dug at my vulnerability.
An odour of discomfort defended it.
My eyes stayed stiff on the meager mark.
To hold my pride strong.
I locked my weakness in the darkness of my mind.
It was no prison.
My mind was a mental asylum.
Crazy thoughts raced around helplessly.
They slashed every enemy besides it’s trusted companion of anxiety.
My head dove into my hands.
They vibrated sending shivers down my body.
Their hierarchy of judgement nipped at my ear.
Or did it?
I was defeated.
The bell jangled and I jumped.
I raised my head in a daze a final time.
I studied the classroom and saw my classmates with their blank faces.
No heads turned.
No whispers heard.
Just people who omitted all around them.
The light shifted when I recognized I was the judge. I caused the war. It’s a battle I lost to myself. The hardest battle of all.
Jun 2, 2016
Jun 2, 2016 at 2:34 PM UTC
I don't need to taste the salt
to know it is bitter. Restless
rings on emaciated fingers,
jungle foliage in
increasing shapes of
doing.
What am I doing?
Thousands of words
are written on every
single day. Millions
of sentences spoken
in a million different
ways. Still nothing
sticks like glue to
the fabrication of
supposing.
I am one dot on a
blank piece of paper,
one mark in a
jangled box of
wasted sand.
Underneath my feet
lies the grovelling ground.
Above my head the
lives the growling sky.
Between the two, that
is where I surround
myself with the gauze
of mischief and malignancy.
I do stand, but only roughly.
Swaying branches open like
falling stars and so I
keep the green light
blinking. One day, maybe
even tomorrow, I can taste
the salt and comment
on how sweet it has become.
Apr 21, 2016
Apr 21, 2016 at 5:18 AM UTC
On a cool spring morning, by a clear mountain stream, an enchantress sat skywriting.
Her arms danced at awkward, inhuman angles and as they did, her bracelets jangled a melody which the birds took up in chorus.
The soundtrack was magic. Insects buzzed in beat, animals froze mid-forage, and the wind died, lest moving clouds corrupt her work.
The mask-wearing knight, a killer for the king, was dressed in black. Even the buck knife, loosely gripped in his right hand, was painted black. His boots were cloth wrapped and his movements were as smooth as smoke. He was noiseless death itself.
As he drew closer, the birds suddenly stopped chirping. "Go home boy, " the enchantress whispered. The knight blinked in disbelief and froze but the enchantress did not look around.
She pulled a half-penny from a pouch, kissed it, and lobbed it into the stream.
The knight’s mind went from deadly certain to vague. Why was he here? He sheathed his knife, lowered his mask and wiped his lips. What had he been doing?
Still not looking his way, the minx motioned to the clear, babbling stream, "Come, drink," she said. He drew beside her and with a quick glance, as he sipped water from cupped hands, he saw that she was young and beautiful.
She’d never looked at him, but she knew him in a rarefied, magical way - as if he were her brother, and she felt the sting of his long sorrow, that his wife was barren.
"Your love will bear you two sons if you're home and can bed her before dark," she said softly.
The knight stood, wiped his hands on his trousers, nodded at her, and ran for his horse.
The enchantress smiled to herself and resumed her unearthly work. The sound of horse and rider quickly faded as the birds resumed their spell-song.
Two strapping young men they would be.
May 26, 2023
May 26, 2023 at 4:07 PM UTC
Pockets in a pinafore
as mother said,
can hold much more than little hands,
but our eyes
being bigger than our bellies knew
that mum had hidden jelly tots and with
the keys that jingled jangled lay
two packets of
original spangles.
Eventually
the washing having been pegged out on the line
the day being windy
the weather fine
mum sat and gave us treats,two sweets
each.
Peachy days and pinafores
what more can a boy desire?
'cepting maybe
marshmallows toasting by the fire
but that was dad's domain and so
we waited for dad to arrive
from work at twenty five to five.
Kids today
don't even know that they're alive
but we did.
Jul 20, 2014
Jul 20, 2014 at 1:14 AM UTC
I’ve been solitude’s
Groupie,
Clamoring behind
The long caravan of days,
Looking for
Vast,
Shore-like time
To stretch
Before my pen,
Like a nightingale’s muse
Utopian cravings
Of naked lyrics,
Fresh born and
Salient as the sea,
Washing,
Over tumbled fragments
Of being,
Pulled congruent
From the itching grains,
Of memories
Still inside their shell
I’ve ached to find that
Pearly stone,
In a frozen tundra
Lost to all sounds
But breath.
But, Time,
Gives flotsam and jetsam, Bumper car reality,
As I sit, in the crook of his elbow
Fumbling pens, and pages.
Incongruent thoughts like cluster galaxies I long to name,
But haven’t the moments to take a true likeness
Into the mirror’s chamber, before I’m ****** upon some other vista.
Race cars, and sirens, and something lost in the noise.
While I shift my balance
In order
To name,
These moments.
These Orions and Pleiades,
Frothy in the soup of beginnings,
And ends,
For they are my constellations
In the wide wonder
Of noisy breaths,
So half-kept
And unclean,
They face the page
In the jam-stained smile,
Of an impish motion becoming
Something.
And this verse,
Supposing at first
To stroll down one path,
Has chosen instead-
To laugh,
To be jangled away,
By the in-play
That fraction-moment’s make,
When side by side
They stay
Glorious
In change embraced,
Chaos unashamed.
So that poetry
So naively sought
has not the name
but all the heart.
May 26, 2015
May 26, 2015 at 11:22 AM UTC