"jarring" poems
Driving up mountain miles
of washboard switchbacks;
jarring the dusty rearview mirror
in my mind:
"but don't look back in anger"
... I heard you say
stuck in the cloud of dust
befogging my daydream
back somewhere thereabouts
the washed out bridge
that tore us apart
like a flash flood
It was so long ago
since you were running
and I was hiding in plain sight,
from what the storm
in my eyes did tell
Mindful — you were only watching
the growing distance gather;
finding what you didn't lose
looking back to see
what you can't forget —
like a hesitant child
reluctantly wondering
if anyone was still looking back
at you ― still running away
from each passing storm
Jesse Stillwater
June 2018
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 1:13 PM UTC
on a sea strand,
have you watched empty shells
mercilessly tossed from sea to shore
and from shore to sea?
often I shrink and reduce to such a shell,
with jagged and broken edges
colorless and empty
among many a debris cast on the shore,
i lie half buried under the sand
waiting for some mighty wave
to wash me away
all the way to the sea
how tedious is my voyage
shuttling from him to her
and from her to him
unable to openly confess
who weighs more
on the balance of preference
through how many alleys and by ways
I have wandered, questioning my identity!
am I a puffer fish, being toxic
the fisher men have discarded?
a jarring note in a discordant symphony?
I wonder....! I often ask myself!
destined to grow
in mercurial climes,
planted in arid shallow soil
with the tap root trimmed,
branches pruned,
growth denied,
I, a stunted bonsai!
still I dream to be a towering tree,
that in profusion gives fruits and shade!
a ****** aspiring to be a Goliath
a hollow reed,
longing at once to be the singer and the song!
Jul 27, 2018
Jul 27, 2018 at 9:41 AM UTC
The tide collects it all by morning;
The drama and the ***** napalmed across the path.
The scenes at second warning for most had been swept away
Before they wiped the sand from their shoes.
Empty cans of Dutch and Tuborg slouched on the dunes
Are tight-lipped about the Velvet Strand's secret ecosystem;
An underground microcosm;
A peripheral cluster of seething emotions drowned.
Memories of those years - although some expired,
The vestiges take pride of place - hold a cosmic clump of smells,
Tastes, firsts, goosebumps, hangovers, and ends.
I never before understood what I was holding on to.
Winters down in the shelters nearly killed us but we
Huddled through the cold, lit cheap firelogs and
Found our oblivion. It didn't take much for me to develop
A stagger - tolerance for a lot of things was learned later.
I narrowly recall my first taste of poor judgement and
Hazy-headed stargazing. Six cans of Stonehouse
Dry cider - most of which ended up on the hillside -
Was a ridiculous endeavour that will always be sublime.
At the heart of it, I did it to impress a girl;
The one every boy has or has had that sticks;
Who holds your firsts and your hands and makes
Things simple if only for her complexity;
The one that never fails to bring upon digression when
Pens are involved. Revisiting reminiscence on a jarring note,
I think of my Junior Cert exams and a cross-dressed man
Exposing himself to two uniformed boys behind the public toilets.
This one doesn't stir the joy of the others.
This one I wish would dissolve;
An ugly, awkward blotch on a childhood.
Luckily fondness trumps disgust when recalling that place
Because of sunrises and sunsets absorbed from the roof.
The Summers spent jumping the gap and drowning in the
Heat of the sun were everything.
The fugitive sand between our toes and under finger nails
Became an accepted nuisance, a part of the territory;
A lingering grain or two to drag you back.
I miss waking up with the smell of last night's faded fire.
May 3, 2015
May 3, 2015 at 8:22 PM UTC
We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
It was a spectral housekeeping
Where fell no jarring tone,
As strange, as still a housekeeping
As ever has been known.
As daily I went up the stair,
And down the stair,
I did not mind the Bygone there—
The Present once to me;
Its moving meek companionship
I wished might ever be,
There was in that companionship
Something of ecstasy.
It dwelt with me just as it was,
Just as it was
When first its prospects gave me pause
In wayward wanderings,
Before the years had torn old troths
As they tear all sweet things,
Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths
And dulled old rapturings.
And then its form began to fade,
Began to fade,
Its gentle echoes faintlier played
At eves upon my ear
Than when the autumn’s look embrowned
The lonely chambers here,
The autumn’s settling shades embrowned
Nooks that it haunted near.
And so with time my vision less,
Yea, less and less
Makes of that Past my housemistress,
It dwindles in my eye;
It looms a far-off skeleton
And not a comrade nigh,
A fitful far-off skeleton
Dimming as days draw by.
9.4k
I don't have an issue with self confidence
A repetitive lie I've begun to notice that I tell
It's like the pain in my chest when I see other people's success compared to mine
I ignore both
When I read other writing I start out feeling so much inspiration
Then I reflect back on my own and feel incompetent
Because I can't write what they write
I can feel what they feel through their words
Something I wish I could accomplish
It's jarring and frustrating
I keep judging myself
The very thing I've run from has become my life
I can't escape the judgmental ways of this world
not from my father
not from my mother
not from my brother, my sister, or anyone
not even from myself
Because like it or not, the judgment is me
It's soaked into my veins
Like an obsession, an addiction
I wish I could pray it away,
But I don't have any faith
There is no God to save my soul
To give me pity
To take my sins away
There is only scrutiny over my every move
Whether it comes from within or someone else
It's not something I can wash away with a prayer
Jul 28, 2018
Jul 28, 2018 at 2:09 AM UTC
She says she doesn’t have the strength within herself to write poetry.
Yes, her. The one who so often nourished me with song
til my soul began to learn how to hunt for itself,
whose word carried weight in leading me to pick my own instrument,
albeit one of a different tone,
as the key in keyboard became prominent for the first time
and the sound of purposeful fingers upon it could be considered,
only in the right light,
synonymous to the plucking of strings, just as rooted in emotion.
Yet she's the first to say that she herself can't do it.
Thing is, I suppose we’re politely at odds on the matter.
She favors poetry that’s sharper, with a cleaner cut,
that’s message is immediate and jarring
as a conduit running from soul through skin,
or a loose-lipped diary finally freed from lock and key.
And when she declared it, I started to consider what my poems seem to me:
Blackberry bushes (but kinder, I hope)
that snag and immerse just long enough
to make me feel I’ve had an effect.
I’ve used writing to expel my most gnarled feelings
to any passerby who’s maybe felt the same.
Like crying in a mirror:
alarming, but oddly refreshing,
and an indefinite reminder that our aches are never only our own.
Still, I'm not sure why it blows my mind
to hear that even the most glamorous hearts,
who wear confidence as a summer breeze that's always in their favor
and who inspire, from beau gestures to sleight of hand,
are included in those who find themselves pacing back, back and forth,
begging curbside at the dime store
for a scrap of the same feed that convinces a heart to pump ink.
But she says that any art that's enjoyed is worth it.
So while she seeks out words that bare the bones,
I’ll stay and make a meal of the marrow,
hollowing them so that the poetry may have a rightful place
to reverberate as hymns in a universal monastery.
But hell, like I’m any old soul.
I dress nicer than I otherwise would,
turn to the mother who told me I don’t meet her lowest standards,
and ask for a critique.
All for the moment when she greets me at the door with a legendary G#.
...Now please, could you spare a dime?
Jun 28, 2018
Jun 28, 2018 at 2:27 PM UTC
Honey-coloured skin
Covering
Over-used bones and
Abused muscles
That have seen the inside
Of blisters
And bruises, hidden beneath
Mismatched, jarring wool
And tight, black
Material that only just
Manages to contain her.
Jan 14, 2015
Jan 14, 2015 at 10:18 AM UTC
A million bitten off breaths
Hang quietly.
I’m close enough to hear
her thudding -
A jarring noise that parts
a cloud of frothy swans.
We’ve all seen photographs
in Wildlife Books –
I’m sure you can conjure up
the moment a water bird
lances a sunlit river
with the very tip of its beak
to gobble a fish.
It’s a difficult photo to take,
It’s all over so quickly -
The fish caught,
The river moving, moving,
Still.
But here she is in front of me,
That bird,
Suspended with one
Foot in this world,
And the other
In another.
Her toes grind up the
Spotlight,
Trampling into
the moon and balancing there,
(I'm surprised the stage
is not full of chalk.)
It's not beautiful,
Not ghostly,
But all visceral meat glistening,
Fitness, strength, survival,
Like nature…
No need to take a photo,
She is a picture that my mind has
Tricked me into taking.
So perhaps that’s talent, darling..?
Or
Perhaps it’s something else, with a name I never knew.
Sep 22, 2013
Sep 22, 2013 at 4:29 PM UTC
2/10/2022
You flipped on me like a coin
But to compare you to a currency
Would be to suggest that you actually
Could spend your time like it were money
Or that you would place value on our friendship
I held onto you like a rung on a ladder
But to compare you to such a useful tool
Would be to pose that I might have actually
Used you as if you were a piece of equipment
Or that I thought I could climb you to reach new heights
You left me like a turn signal
But to compare you to a direction
Would be to suggest that you actually
Had some purpose or mission or goal
Or that you had an inkling of the destination of your journey
Mar 12, 2022
Mar 12, 2022 at 11:06 AM UTC
Flavored hukkas are passed around,
Alcohol and paan bring the mehfil alive,
The Ustad ji sits down and flexes his fingers,
He knows he’ll be working all night.
Dha dhin dhin dha, dha dhin dhin dha
Na tin tin ta
Ta dhin dhin dha,
Move the Ustad ji’s fingers on the tabla.
While with a veil on her face,
And feet dipped in and henna-colored,
Lips in cheap red lipstick covered,
She unfalteringly, gracefully enters.
Her steps are matched by the chhan chhan
of the ghungroos tied around her ankles so slender.
Eyes set on her, feast on her youth,
Just right for the taste of all her customers.
Bejeweled hands placed on waist,
She stands at the centre of attention,
She lifts a foot, readies to dance,
And begins the nightly convention.
Skillfully, perfectly, sensuously move
Feet well-trained since childhood days,
Harmonizing with the timbre
That the Ustad ji creates.
Tin tin na dhin na dhin na
On the tabla, experienced fingers beat.
Chhan chhan chhan chhan,
She dances, repeating the rhythm with her feet.
Metal bells strike against one another
And chhan chhan chhan-a chhan she goes,
Making breaths prance and jump,
As she strikes on the ground her heels and toes.
Then suddenly she stops and gasps,
Over disgruntled, impatient groans she tries
to hear the sound that flows in, only to her ears.
Several rooms away, a baby cries.
Naach! A voice booms,
Arey naach! More join in.
A glass of wine is shattered by an irritated one.
But she stands still, clutching her chest, frozen.
One sways up to where she stands,
For the veil covering her face, his hands dive.
He uncovers her, but is blinded by the sight of her beauty
And her tears that fill her kajal-smeared eyes.
She’s shaken back to reality as she looks all around.
Her sparkling pall is off her face.
She sees all those drunk men who’ve paid to watch her dance.
She knows she has to make the sound of the cries fade away.
So she stomps her feet on the ground till it hurts.
Hair flying out of braid, bangles clanging,
Anguish replaces her innocent loveliness,
The music in the air is now shrill, jarring.
Her steps match with the tabla’s rhythm no more.
But she dances, planting her feet so hard they weep.
She silences every sound with the noise of her ghungroos,
Praying that the night will lull her wailing son to sleep.
Jun 22, 2012
Jun 22, 2012 at 1:11 PM UTC
Peace of mind is ephemeral,
drifting in harmony, then abruptly skewed.
The quintessence of humanity lost in the blink of an eye.
A gravitational pull overwhelms
Persistent
Tugs at the edges of reality
Patient
Disseminates thoughts, life
Painful
There is no escape as the jarring force draws inward,
voraciously swallowing everything in reach.
Distorting changes,
a myriad of sights, sounds,
besiege a troubled mind.
Blackness
Heavy and infinite
A suffocating contradiction to everything that was.
Ripping, tearing
Impossible void of compressed nothingness.
Twisting, rearranging
Pretentious "used to be"s into trembling trepidation,
too adrift to find the way back.
This is the point of no return.
Who is that person in the mirror now?
Jun 23, 2010
Jun 23, 2010 at 11:02 AM UTC
Hi! I’m a hamster on a Wheel!
Gamely running on my bony little legs
[I’m getting somewhere! I’m getting somewhere!]
Every once in a while, I look left or right
See my **** and my compressed pellet food sitting in the same positions
as an hour, a day, weeks ago – and I realize:
IT APPEARS THAT I’M ACTUALLY GOING NOWHERE!!!!!!!
Which surprises me each time it crosses my little hamster brain, until I’m distracted
By my pellet food, the call of the Wheel, and other sundry carnal desires
Roiling superficially in my hamster-angst
While working the Wheel, surrounded by the detritus of my saccharine prefabricated life
I fail to notice
Outside my cage
Hands, lifting, carrying
Thousands of miles traversed
Steaming deserts
Steaming jungles
Steaming cities
Brutality, kindness, sensuality, love, hatred, atrocities, age, youth, heat and cold
All flashing by my glass shell as hands carry me towards a final resting place
Until
A jarring, toppling blast shakes my world
Tearing me from my Important Work on the Wheel
I look up, pellet crumbs falling from my mouth
Just in time to see my cage tumble from hands
Over a rail
Down
Down
Flash of blue
Flash of brilliant light
Flash of blue
Down
Smacking into a vast expanse of water
Unimaginably immense
Outside of my realm of comprehension – I mean, I’d never seen it in my hamster cage before, so why should I even expect it to exist?
What is it’s purpose?
It makes no sense!
It has no place in the world!
And as I slowly drown in the secret withheld from every hamster since the beginning of time
I take one last longing look at the Wheel, the cage, the pellets
And curse them
Curse the Deception that told me they were all that mattered
Dec 15, 2013
Dec 15, 2013 at 9:15 PM UTC
Acerbic antagonist alliterates agonizing accusations,
blasting ******* backbiter butting beautiful bombastic brainy blond bomb.
Cumulative cranial casualties cease caveman's cognitive coherence.
Doom digger derides Daddy's dangling dire dreary ****
Eclectic esoteric eccentric egotistical estranger;
Forthcoming fathoms fetch faithless fleeting father.
God given goblins gather gossamer ganglions;
Hell's hairy harlot harpies hover heeding Hyperion.
Ignatius imbibes irrevocably insisting,
"Jesus juggles justice's joy jarring jams."
Kindness kindles Kilimanjaro;
Malicious mountains melt, Mmm, morning marjoram.
Nothing negates Neanderthal ninnying.
Overt obsessions obfuscate original object of
purest passions, paltry past pinings,
quickly quieted, quelled,
resisted, relinquished, readily, ruefully, roundly
saturated, suffocated; surreptitiously silenced,
terribly torturing the thrashed tamed tormentor:
Ugly, ungrateful, unapologetic,
Vanity,
woefully wallowing, wailing, "Where's
Xanadu's
zeitgeist!?"
Jan 15, 2012
Jan 15, 2012 at 12:09 AM UTC
Lately I’ve felt as though every little sound and feeling and smell and sight is grating at my nerves and chipping away at my sanity.
My clothes feel constricting and too loose and scratchy and smooth and not right
My ears are full of constant ticking and ringing and noise
My skin wraps my frame too tightly and I want to rip it apart and off of me but then I’d be cold and miserable
It’s all too much and everything is loud and jarring and I feel frenzied and too stuck and not stuck enough and all I want to do is jump in front of a van because then everything would
Just
Be
Quiet.
Blessed and sought-after and evasively, quiet.
Jun 26, 2022
Jun 26, 2022 at 4:42 PM UTC
it,s loose cotton electric ***
copper children
husky sighing t
he
trickle of daughters into the little wet cracks
on Railroad ave. a beggars hand gesticulating empty spans
a river of grins course toward amber
oblivion and jarring rhythms. she's a white idea. a lemon dress *****
her hips are a delicious war of curving apparitions
a dearth of pleasure loaded folds. or else a caustic laceration;
some hernia of capillaries blotting ivory thighs
a
n
d all the children giggle, teeth cleaning pearly cheeks
splay the efforts of their throats all over the cobbles. it,s a night
FRIDAY
yes
Aug 5, 2010
Aug 5, 2010 at 7:36 PM UTC
How distasteful you are,
With your sundry splotches
and jarring imperfections.
Oh, you taunt me so!
Whether your anathemas
are reflected through the mirror or my own eyes.
Oh horrible, hateful, heinous thing!
I cannot bear to stare any longer.
How sickly your color is--
A pallid yellow, like one giant bruise
That has budded and blossomed
In some unnaturally grotesque fashion.
My blood boils, my pulse races
And I raise my weapons to fight--
Two talons--claws honed to perfection.
Be gone, you wretched scab!
And so I tear, scratching furiously,
Until no more of you is left.
The blood is stuck beneath my fingertips,
Or what is left of them.
My sinews tremble, ****** and bare,
As the last of my wallpaper
Is ripped from my bones.
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 7:04 PM UTC
I can hear the Band of Gypsys
When I find her sitar eyes
But I can guess what she sees
With her moist mouth jarring wide
******* clouds from the sky
Hoodoo Voodoo Medicine Girl
In a thunderstorm of dirt stained pearls
Tranquillity is everything
As we all float down to hear her sing
And she knows full well
That she can pollinate anything
Simply without the need to sting
The half mast will be put in place
As your heart's pump gathers in pace
If you're anticipating to catch her near
Don't act surprised if you're left to persevere
When you finally catch a glimpse
Things won't quite be as they appear
She'll be floating in the stratosphere
Soaring high with no fear
Cos if you did not know
The Hoodoo Voodoo Medicine Girl
Burns on the fuel of your fresh tears.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 7:15 AM UTC
I fashioned myself a dress of black lace;
Dark and elegant, epitome of grace;
Soft on my skin, caress like a lover's,
My comfort, my design, a haven of covers.
They called it macabre - filled them with unease;
Dangerous, they said, termed it a disease.
And yes, I'm unwell, but darkness is my veil -
A reprieve from hell, solace without fail.
I am the tailor, the sculptor of shadows,
The reaper of melancholy my art sows.
And yes, it is odd, fragile, morose -
The marble thorns of an obsidian rose.
The judging whispers that follow in my wake,
Can't comprehend I do this for my sake:
The sharp edges they call jarring and cold -
They are my palace, impenetrable stronghold.
Where others see emptiness, I notice lace,
The gossamer threads of a misty embrace;
They are but blind to the kingdom of nothing,
Only see moats, and wall canons jutting.
My castle of ghosts, the court I control,
Those remain hidden, deep in my soul.
The siren song, my foggy lullaby,
The velvety clouds on which my thoughts lie.
It is morphium, made in my mind
Embroidered dullness only I can find.
The words bounce off my protective bubble,
Your bombs shatter into a gray rubble.
I blow it away, along with my fears,
I got good at this, during the years.
Give me some credit, I am no fool,
Where others would drown, I can rule;
I know not to freeze, when water's too cool,
The fire you'd burn in, I use as fuel.
Yes, it's a thin line, I know it best,
But I'm a trapeze-artist, can pass the test;
A veteran of trade, the air is my nest,
I've learned to live without getting rest.
And I know my limits, how far I can press,
Worry you not, I've survived on much less.
I'm not glass, disperse your concerns,
If need be, the lace to razor wire turns.
Sep 20, 2020
Sep 20, 2020 at 6:16 AM UTC
In the barren bowl
Of the local park
There is more brown
Than green
And naked trees
Rest like tired moths
Upon grass
That has been lacerated
By studded shoes
And knees and toes
And elbows
That have ploughed it
Bare.
The edges of the path
Look like eyebrows
Scant
Poorly plucked
And rats-tail
Mongrels
Scatter and shred
Across the carpet
Sodden
Sinewy.
Jarring teenage love
Letters
Sit upon February
The fourteenth
Like it is a mantelpiece of
Glass
Tip blue hair to grey sky
Beiged fingers
Intertwine
Black fingernails
Fumble
They watch their childhood haunts
Through the frosted panes
Of spectacle windows
And wonder why
Nostalgia dies so bitter
Today.
*Kiss my empty skin
Waiting.*
I find myself a love affair
In the sky
Clouds form a coastline
A single dribble of peach
Taints the ash
Like careless words
And I tilt my chin towards it
Already the spindle of my mind
Turns
And begins to weave
Gold from straw.
Feb 14, 2015
Feb 14, 2015 at 1:09 PM UTC
There was
none
to
listen
to her
Her words were like:
- A cry in the wilderness
that broke and shattered on woody trunks
- The howl of a lone wolf
that rose in the dead of the night
- The cry of an infant
that told the world, it was hungry
The cacophony of discordant orchestra
that left a jarring effect on the listeners
Her words sounded meaningless
To a world that spoke a different tongue
With no receptacle, her words like heated waters
Evanesced into vapor and billowed upward
Like coils of smoke to freeze into clouds
But one day it rained down,
Quite unexpected…….
With thunder and lightning!
-
Jan 18, 2017
Jan 18, 2017 at 6:17 AM UTC
One of his sick molars
was jarring, crying foul,
the root canal treatment
she did, the first, on him
made it quiet,it touched
exactly the love nerve.
Love sprouted,got rooted between
the curvy dentist and him
in exactly five sittings;
the soil was fertile.
The romantic dentist seized
his pining heart too quick,
the causes and effects of
that pain, she whispered, was similar
to what she felt , when he whimpered
leaning his head on her full *******
No reason he had, not to surmise
she didn't do everything she should,
to make his ailing tooth perfect.
Coochiecooing to her, he even
called her" the tooth fairy's baby girl"
overwhelmed she gifted him a smooch.
Each sitting fallowed
soliciting that rare,tender dental care,
on her cozy swiveling chair,
brought them closer to bouts of necking
and things more adventurous,
(may the medical ethics, pardon the pair!)
Vigorous narratives she breathlessly
reeled off, on the state of his each tooth
brought her more closer to the chair
than what professionally was expected,
her perfumed warm presence
brought aches, not necessarily dental.
A stinging pain on a root repaired
at a time his 'root canal sweet heart' was away
compels him to explore for a new chair.
The horror of horrors, it was revealed
here, a piece of broken iron implement
his sweet heart, has left within the root;
a cover up as she couldn't retrieve it
with her skills inept,
it did aggravate, caused the pain!
Isn't the betrayal of the kids,
in the name of tooth fairy,non existent
far less heinous, than a cheating like this!
could any one blame him for this,
to escape a bad tooth future, he did
the best one could; the comely tooth fairy
that found the fault and mended it
shows him his place in the
swivel chair of her heart these days!
Jan 28, 2016
Jan 28, 2016 at 9:02 AM UTC
I'm Having A Relapse
My muscles shaking my bones jarring
I'm stu- stu- stuttering,
I'm Having A Relapse
sleep walking while wide away,
dazed in a dream like state,
I need a fix I'm
itching- scratching
rubbing my hand and thighs
You, You you
oh why'd you do this to me
Screaming & tryna climb walls
I'm Having A Relapse
No no nooo don't stop
higher YESss Higher
bring me closer closure
I'm Having A Relapse
I went to the doctor to get help
He said He couldn't
Wouldn't help me is what He means
I run walk talk to myself
Help me Please!
Shaking, sweating,coughing with drive heaves
I feel so funny I can smell taste & feel it coming
I'm bursting with need Please
PLEASE release this desire
this fire which had consumed me,
Lived in my core my very being,
shut the blinds, turn off the lights,
I wont eat can't sleep,
Walking in a funk ,dazed and lonely
Don't hold me!!!!
Don't TOUCH !!!
Just give in Help me ,
Just um, Please
PLEASEEE,
Just Oh Lawd please
Just um Baby Just
HELP MEEEEEE...........
YESSSSS!!!!!!!
**** ME!!!!
Until I can't breath,
I need YOU.
you Oh You........
You know your the cause of me
Having A Relapse!
*** Addiction Can hinder you or for me lol make love making so painfully good!)
Always me Ayeshah
Mar 8, 2010
Mar 8, 2010 at 9:58 PM UTC
IN THE POOL OF THE LOST MAIDEN SONG
1
Down in the shrouded wood a wanderer walks
And dreams the dreamers story he has lived.
Sidled by the stream that sheds blue waters
By the beds, trailing the rail of loves unknown
Kiss and a voice that conjures truest bliss,
Down in the drink where sweet Ophelia sleeps;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the dreamer, he is dreaming . . .
Hair, that ropes the stoic man upon his mount.
Hair, making souls’ lost ending breath a shout,
And hair that weighs the wind, teaches it to sing;
Hair, wending whirlpools waving fools to dive in.
2
Lost at land’s end the sea lions, washed-up, wail
And buzzards coast where eagles flail, rip tides
Assail and chop the collected bones they drop;
It is a chalky bone-yard break, golden escarpments
Wake and a seamen’s salty sermons shake;
Where gathering ghosts glom and chide steeping,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the seeker, he is seeking . . .
Eyes that turn the sands and are mirrors,
Eyes that taught the books of Alexandria,
Eyes that shook the flesh and are seers,
Eyes that lit the pyres, burned true believers.
3
Deep in the dark wood the waters rush, hush,
Cramp, crew and creep, melodiously tread,
Trammel, and burn as furies in keeping true
The melting moon, the onerous owl, fluttering
Things, muttering wings, cones in darkness
Flings and filmy time flicks by the wayside;
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the lover, he is longing . . .
Love, lithe and lyric, he sees your sweeping shapes.
Peace, parsed and pained he hears the voicing gape.
Blind, bliss’d and shamed he wears the votive drapes.
Hungered, thirsted and gone; seeks your pearly gate.
4
Out in the forest maze the jarring sun seeps
And swirls, only to roust the traveler onward
Where soon he must meet the faces in the grotto
Down in destroyed lands by the seas’ unreasoning
Chime, deep in the dark whine of the shining mermaids,
Where the doomed cry, round the navel of the world,
In the pool of the lost maiden song.
And the doomed, they are crying . . .
****** beauty bade us, in a star crossed chrysalis,
Made us, choose a desert’s winter of loneliness.
Heed our fate and leave this valley torn of bliss;
The many millions of locust fall in ripest fields.”
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 1:26 PM UTC
the morning rolls in on women’s voices
and bright empty landscapes
they sing optimistically, don’t worry
something new will grow here again
yet I still can’t get out of bed
or smile
Feb 1, 2023
Feb 1, 2023 at 7:45 AM UTC
And this place our forefathers made for man!
This is the process of our love and wisdom,
To each poor brother who offends against us—
Most innocent, perhaps—and what if guilty?
Is this the only cure? Merciful God!
Each pore and natural outlet shrivelled up
By Ignorance and parching Poverty,
His energies roll back upon his heart,
And stagnate and corrupt; till changed to poison,
They break out on him, like a loathsome plague-spot;
Then we call in our pampered mountebanks—
And this is their best cure! uncomforted
And friendless solitude, groaning and tears,
And savage faces, at the clanking hour,
Seen through the steam and vapours of his dungeon,
By the lamp’s dismal twilgiht! So he lies
Circled with evil, till his very soul
Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed
By sights of ever more deformity!
With other ministrations thou, O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child:
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,
Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets,
Thy melodies of woods, and winds, and waters,
Till he relent, and can no more endure
To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amid this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of Love and Beauty.
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