"knitting" poems
Nan,
I wrote this poem for you to keep
As you lie peacefully asleep
To share the stories you once told
Sat in your chair growing peacefully old
I will always remember those days
When I sat up to the table studying the maze
Of thousands of puzzle pieces in my gaze
However I was never fazed
Because you were always there to guide the way.
I will always remember your trips out and about
Although never adventurous I felt,
McDonald's and M&s; without doubt,
Were you favourite places to walkabout
I will always remember your creative flare,
Your knitting needles and you cross-stitch squares,
how you could sit and chat, yet knit with care
Always seemed so unfair
But most of all, I wrote this poem to say thankyou
Not just from me but from all the family too
For the wisdom and knowledge you once shared
For showing you loved us and that you cared
I wrote this poem to say goodbye
As you watch us from up high
I remember all the fun times we had
As my friend and as my Nan
And I miss you more than words can say
I hope we can meet again someday
Dec 1, 2014
Dec 1, 2014 at 5:37 PM UTC
This is the easy time, there is nothing doing.
I have whirled the midwife's extractor,
I have my honey,
Six jars of it,
Six cat's eyes in the wine cellar,
Wintering in a dark without window
At the heart of the house
Next to the last tenant's rancid jam
and the bottles of empty glitters ----
Sir So-and-so's gin.
This is the room I have never been in
This is the room I could never breathe in.
The black bunched in there like a bat,
No light
But the torch and its faint
Chinese yellow on appalling objects ----
Black asininity. Decay.
Possession.
It is they who own me.
Neither cruel nor indifferent,
Only ignorant.
This is the time of hanging on for the bees--the bees
So slow I hardly know them,
Filing like soldiers
To the syrup tin
To make up for the honey I've taken.
Tate and Lyle keeps them going,
The refined snow.
It is Tate and Lyle they live on, instead of flowers.
They take it. The cold sets in.
Now they ball in a mass,
Black
Mind against all that white.
The smile of the snow is white.
It spreads itself out, a mile-long body of Meissen,
Into which, on warm days,
They can only carry their dead.
The bees are all women,
Maids and the long royal lady.
They have got rid of the men,
The blunt, clumsy stumblers, the boors.
Winter is for women ----
The woman, still at her knitting,
At the cradle of Spanis walnut,
Her body a bulb in the cold and too dumb to think.
Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas
Succeed in banking their fires
To enter another year?
What will they taste of, the Christmas roses?
The bees are flying. They taste the spring.
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You come in late, wiping your lips.
What did I leave untouched on the doorstep---
White Nike,
Streaming between my walls?
Smilingly, blue lightning
Assumes, like a meathook, the burden of his parts.
The police love you, you confess everything.
Bright hair, shoe-black, old plastic,
Is my life so intriguing?
Is it for this you widen your eye-rings?
Is it for this the air motes depart?
They rae not air motes, they are corpuscles.
Open your handbag. What is that bad smell?
It is your knitting, busily
Hooking itself to itself,
It is your sticky candies.
I have your head on my wall.
Navel cords, blue-red and lucent,
Shriek from my belly like arrows, and these I ride.
O moon-glow, o sick one,
The stolen horses, the fornications
Circle a womb of marble.
Where are you going
That you **** breath like mileage?
Sulfurous adulteries grieve in a dream.
Cold glass, how you insert yourself
Between myself and myself.
I scratch like a cat.
The blood that runs is dark fruit---
An effect, a cosmetic.
You smile.
No, it is not fatal.
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Autumn—overlooked my Knitting—
Dyes—said He—have I—
Could disparage a Flamingo—
Show Me them—said I—
Cochineal—I chose—for deeming
It resemble Thee—
And the little Border—Dusker—
For resembling Me—
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And so the girl child sat
knitting melodies beside
the great river of words.
Soon her songs were heard,
beyond the Lake of Lyrics
and the vast Sea of Verse.
The evening tide carried them
across oceans to foreign shores.
Field workers sang her songs
to children in their hovels.
They escaped the lips of scholars
in the great halls of learning.
The child became a woman,
and still she weaved the magic,
from the words of the river,
for the hearts of all who read them.
As she weaved she told the secret
to a child who knitted beside her.
Emerging from the womb of time
I heard her whisper to my heart.
I felt the great river in my being,
and I began to knit a melody.
I heard my soul sing with joy,
I am the child of an ancient poet.
© 30/12/2009
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 9:51 PM UTC
You.
You who taught me love and kindness and hope
and knitting and optimism and forgiveness and baking.
Yet you were also my first loss.
You taught me grief and how nothing stays the same.
Even a mind can deteriorate so much I wonder it makes me wonder if
you ever were so good.
Maybe I just exaggerate. Because you aren't here to prove me wrong or disappoint me.
But how could anyone have been so good?
But even if I was looking at you through the rose tinted glasses of youth
I refuse to tarnish my opinion of you
I will keep these glasses forever
I insist.You taught me all this and more.
Because of you I visit grandad more
to remind me of what
I lost
and a reminder to appreciate what I still have.
That house will always remind me of you
I hope that is ok.
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 5:55 PM UTC
i don't fear the god above
i'm frightened of his hands on earth
thousand of fingers
knitting chains
imprisoning
these blooming peonies
in the garden of hell
*
i'll chop your fingers off
by watering
Mar 19, 2014
Mar 19, 2014 at 9:36 AM UTC
En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues…
Pipit sate upright in her chair
Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
Lay on the table, with the knitting.
Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
An Invitation to the Dance.
. . . . .
I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.
I shall not want Capital in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.
I shall not want Society in Heaven,
Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
Than Pipit’s experience could provide.
I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.
. . . . .
But where is the penny world I bought
To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;
Where are the eagles and the trumpets?
Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s
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knitting with scissors you run with.
will get you there. but you can't buy a house. i'm sorry.
you might, miiiiight get the Edwardian Tudor for a mansion in false claim
but you keep your gaze, your weary gaze ....and slumber not so sweet, my sweet.
knitting with false gods will get you everything
but Not the Other Thing
that gnaws at the substance of your gut
where the heart resides like a lion
addicted to Aesop Fables -
and dry humors that decimate with bounty
flooding the bleak with our windmills !
you and i are regardless.
knitting with shopping carts and dead batteries. washing ashore.
lick your lips at the foam
of our hysterical event. pitch a ******* tent.
and eat more stars than you came in with.
sew the hole
with a hole and
answer the phone sometimes,
****
i ain't got all day but you might take your time
like an aspirin.
Apr 16, 2013
Apr 16, 2013 at 5:00 AM UTC
the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls
are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds
(also,with the church’s protestant blessings
daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)
they believe in Christ and Longfellow,both dead,
are invariably interested in so many things—
at the present writing one still finds
delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?
perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy
scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D
….the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless,the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy
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there was little sheep he was feeling dull
the farmer he decided to shave of all his wool
he was very sad and feeling rather cold
knowing that his coat had gone waiting to be sold
he headed in to town to the local store
he knew where it was he had been there before
he bought himself some wool and began to knit
made himself a jumper the was a perfect fit
now the sheep was happy at last he had some heat
and with his jumper on he looked so very sweet
Dec 22, 2013
Dec 22, 2013 at 11:53 AM UTC
Pained like windows,
Widows hang on walls.
Eight-legged nightmares,
Trying not to fall.
Knitting webs,
Made of lies,
Trying to be clever,
Trying to hide.
A tangled mess
Of silken strings
Homes filled with knickknacks
And mismatched things
Always rebuilding
What was new yesterday
Relentless pest,
Find a new place to stay.
Feb 26, 2014
Feb 26, 2014 at 11:31 PM UTC
Danny drops his broad bottom
back on the seat
beside his wife
at the food court
with 3 donuts for himself
each soaked in oil and fat
and each thick with white sugar coat
*“Danny, why do you eat this stuff…?
That’s all fat, three donuts of fat,”*
moans his wife
“Not really,” says Danny to his wife
who eats lettuce and carrot
and who looks like a knitting needle
*“Fastfood donuts are healthy;
look at the air in the middle -
but no doubt
one has to get through rest of the donut
for sure
but the air in the middle
is pure life-giving health
when one gets there”*
Jan 13, 2014
Jan 13, 2014 at 5:53 AM UTC
Lost to backdrops scrolling past,
She sits knitting
in the carriage of a train.
The vague needles
They scintillate and glimpse
With the cadence of the wheels –
Upbeating ceaselessly.
Strips of tiny loops
And eyelets like dewdrops
Of condensation
Grouped on the superior rim.
Once in a while,
She gives a heave
To loosen more yarn from the skein
Of Filipino-made wool,
brushed worsted weave.
Spun and carded
from the richest fleece,
Deeper in the wicker basket by her feet.
The needles flash,
With ancient rhythms and attack
Of duellists in their chainmail coats.
With little hesitation she can tack
From plain to purl to blackberry.
Count back by rote or slip a stitch
While the fish-eyed gimlets gleam.
All gather profusely in her lap,
As windfall trove, rich-patterned
And warm with peach-fuzz nap,
All crafted from a single line of yarn.
Marvels fall continuously from wise
Spell-binding hands and all is well for now.
(9/11/13 @xirlleelang)
May 27, 2014
May 27, 2014 at 10:10 PM UTC
I’m knitting something new,
it feels good.
The new ball of yarn unraveling like time
but I’ve still got plenty left.
There’s potential in this dark teal wool
and satisfaction when I decide
the way I want to weave it.
I make mistakes, I change them
to become part of the pattern.
The stitches are like a song in my head,
I sing them, I tap them out with my foot
and whistle along to the tune I’ve made up.
I thought it might be a hat when I saw the skein
but now I know it will be an
infinity scarf.
My six inches of beaded rib is a metaphor for my worries.
Working my hands intricately help me forget them.
I have time.
Nov 4, 2011
Nov 4, 2011 at 9:35 PM UTC
My fingers tangle and trip
over sloppy knitting
like a deer
learning to walk on crooked
pencil legs.
Like a song I don't quite
know the words to.
I move unsteadily,
uncertain, with short shaky breaths.
Remember when I taught my lungs
to breathe again in August?
After so many mistakes that
I didn't know how to
reconcile.
I wanted to die out back
of a hotel in Montana, dramatic
in the weeds and grasshoppers.
Needles fighting, I
spread a mess of mustard yarn
across my fingers like
I need a napkin.
Has anything changed?
Dropped stitches, weary knots leaving
gaping holes.
I think of how I ran away
from it all.
There are days I still look back.
But I look straight into the sky
as if demanding an explanation from
God himself.
I have to shade my eyes
sometimes,
seeing blinding brilliance
in the sun now.
I can't live any longer only
by the light it sheds
everywhere else.
No, in births of light and bursts
of truth and slow, overdue breaths
is a song I'm finally learning
the words to.
You will not defeat me.
I rip out my knots
and begin again.
Oct 27, 2011
Oct 27, 2011 at 12:07 PM UTC
Like a meme of activism
This women's coalition
Mothers
Sister
Friends
Pioneers and heroines
There's courage in their convictions
A guild of collectivism
They hold luncheons in their kitchens
Talk of abolition
Mysticism
Feminism
Of heroes and magnetism
Seduction
Love
Eroticism
They scream like banshees at a crucifixion
About injustice
Dereliction
Terrorism
A tradition underwritten
With symbolism
Drums
Violins
Musicians
They may be sitting
They may be knitting
Baking muffins
Folding linen
Running errands
Stuffing chickens
A juxtaposition to their ambition
Of inspiring the unwilling
Turning derision to optimism
Their fire and brimstone
Will have history rewritten
Freedom of reproduction
Liberalism
Animism
They have wisdom
Intuition
Rhythm
They are fearsome
This women's coalition
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 4:07 PM UTC
we tied yarn together
praying it would hold like rope
and maybe, just maybe
it could have
if only you had not let go
-carly jaye
Feb 9, 2014
Feb 9, 2014 at 8:41 PM UTC
The old man sat on a boulder,
overlooking the river of words.
The great stream that flows
into the lake of lyrics and
on to the ocean of verse.
Looking out beyond the river
he could see his beloved garden.
The garden that had given him
inspiration to create the pictures
he painted with the river's words.
As he looked out he saw
the bees among the flowers.
He watched the birds eat fruit
that grew abundantly on the trees
and gave shade to all the animals.
His gaze came back to the river.
He saw a girl child knitting melodies
from the words of the river.
Though many see the river of words
it is she to whom he gave the secret
of the source of the river.
For it is she who has the power
to weave the words into magic.
It is she who will pass the secret
to her children through the ages.
The old man smiles down upon her,
she is the child of the Ancient Poet.
© 19/12/2009
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 9:55 PM UTC
Knitting yarn, she used to say
Son, your karma will always pay
Sooner or later, it doesn’t matter
False pride always fade away
Knitting yarn, she used to pray
May my child be healthy!
And will always be
Alongside me
Knitting yarn, she used to take nap
For filling rest in the gap
She closed her eyes for the time being
And I admired the most beautiful human being
|AB|
Sep 10, 2015
Sep 10, 2015 at 4:40 AM UTC
The ball of wool
got smaller and smaller
as it ran across the rug,
reflected upon the untrained eye
it looked just like a bug
The cat was intrigued,
decided to pounce!
but the ball just carried on dancing
and lost another ounce
Getting quite frantic now
it's dancing got faster and faster,
the needles did their work
the scarf got taller
but the ball just got smaller
Spotlighted by sunlight
due to clement weather,
disappearing!
it had reached the end
of it's tether.
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 3:10 PM UTC
You breathed gin.
This is blood for you.
Your hands held your hair and your eyes shut.
The alcohol lulled your brain to black.
It escaped your veins,
Diluted by 37.5% truth serum.
Gasping at the
Divine realisation
Where slurred lips
Contradicted
Your once straight-faced,
Certainly-certain speakings
Of your very crooked lie.
So crooked, it wound his heart around yours.
But that ball of yarn unravelled in an instant.
And the jumper you knit together,
Came apart
Stitch by stitch.
In my fogged memory,
I had choked myself that night
With a bottle and a ball of yarn.
Jul 22, 2013
Jul 22, 2013 at 12:16 AM UTC
Why do they say knitting needles go 'click'?
It's more of a 'squeak', 'shuffle', 'tap', 'shuffle'.
Is it the same way that rain doesn't 'splash'?
It goes 'drop', 'plop', 'thud'.
These are the thoughts that rise to the top as I sit
And knit.
Thoughts aren't threads to be woven
They are patches to be stitched together- each one a new colour.
Grey is when my brain won't stop- the colour of school uniform.
White is when I'm scared and alone- an ethereal mist.
These are the thoughts that rise to the top as I sit
And knit.
Recently there's been a lot of green- warm and swirling like a gemstone.
It is like marble in its pattern, layers of shades overlapping.
That's what your patches are. And here I'm
Trying to not think of you but you rise to the top as I sit
And knit.
I notice a burnt orange- like lava bubbling over a cool skin.
That is quiet anger. Not at you.
Not at me for thinking of you.
At the one who thought I could stop.
It is impossible, especially when I don't want to stop as I sit
And knit.
Even as I tried to write a poem withought you.
I couldn't.
You're here again- and these are just the ones I wrote down.
All these thoughts of you rise to the top as i sit
And knit.
May 26, 2014
May 26, 2014 at 5:44 PM UTC
Babysitting
for grandchildren yapping
and yipping and grandpappy silently
slipping away.
To bed at nine and out comes the bottle of wine,which
is ever so slightly
a bit out of line and
grandpappy's silently slipping away.
Then it's up at six
for hot milk and two weetabix,then some film show
on Sky or Netflix and
grandpappy's silently slipping,with red wine surreptitiously sipping
away.
May 9, 2014
May 9, 2014 at 12:38 AM UTC
I don't pull the strings of fate
but I could cut them
there is a bottle of pills upstairs
as sharp as scissors
and ready to bite away at destiny
I shan't! I wouldn't!
But my innards ache
for a world I cannot and can never have!
So why wouldn't I take control of fate?
I don't weave the tapestries
but I can unwind them
Nov 2, 2013
Nov 2, 2013 at 8:42 PM UTC