"labouring" poems
With each
CLICK
Our breath is held
Will he,won't he
Will he, won't he
The suspense is killing me
And....SHIT
Door left open still
Pestered by the plebeian chill
In this gay little coffee shop
Surrounded by the unrecognised talent of Brighton:sketch artist staring at me, writer on his laptop, songwriter etching vigorously with his pencil.
All of which aren't closing the door.
The eyes roll.
Labouring my body up, hammering my legs across the floor, turning the factory handle.
All is ask is for some carrot cake,filtrate water,polo jumpers, avocado salads,tiger bread, slimmer trousers, slipper sock , a toyger.
Click
And then images of Kim Jong un pass through my head.
If I ruled you'd all be dead
Firing squad for an open door,
Loud music on the train'll be no more.
Stop the screaming misbehaving brats
The rabble of Spanish students
All this PC stuff on the news, train seats filled with cans of *****
Suddenly
The artist strolls up
Let's down his cup.
Closes the door swiftly
And slips back in his chair
Oh, so there is a god.
I guess Jesus didn't lie.
Oct 21, 2017
Oct 21, 2017 at 12:15 PM UTC
Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna's children died.
We and the labouring world are passing by:
Amid men's souls, that waver and give place
Like the pale waters in their wintry race,
Under the passing stars, foam of the sky,
Lives on this lonely face.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat,
Weary and kind one lingered by His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.
3.9k
the Hebrews call the Greek myth of Icarus
by name: Lucifer - i know man is prone to plagiarism,
esp. in the religious realm, the easier the plagiarism
the easier the governing of men -
for indeed the Hebrews claimed
Icarus prior to the Greeks, the former with Lucifer
and the latter with Icarus -
but how i loathe peasants claiming
medicinal endeavours
of knowing only the spotlight cursors
to curate and environmental care of origin
of such negated ease,
they have no knowledge and no power,
their interests in the subject matter
would never encourage them
to run a marathon for accumulating funds
for a cancer charity -
one word answer? ***** they're basically
***** should have engaged in a family
life before you blamed me m.d.!
take your regressive anger and shove it
up your little bee magnet **** to take
a **** like extracting honey - now i'm ******
but look where i'm writing it: on a colour
of defeat - militant heaven of the archangel Michael
sword in hand and Satan defeated waggling a
tongue - isn't that importune to speak of
the current times with the defence of a freedom
of speech subdued by a fear of insult
demanding? monotheism did as much good
as it shouldn't have - and did as much evil
as it should have - and did, crafting the strict
labouring of judaism's orthodoxy -
so for each niqab there came the madness of
a jewish girl's care for wig - translated into
christianity as the donning of wigs in the 18th century,
and the 17th - bypass the concerns of
monotheists and you came across cuisine
freedoms of mandarin, and the colour backlash
sprinkling to a billionth birth, a land
where the homeless have a mother kamadhenu -
and celebrate Holi for chance of extracted mundane
hue of man polarised with fluorescent ivy
and x-rayed orange... or that's how the thing was said.
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 9:25 PM UTC
There pass the careless people
That call their souls their own:
Here by the road I loiter,
How idle and alone.
Ah, past the plunge of plummet,
In seas I cannot sound,
My heart and soul and senses,
World without end, are drowned.
His folly has not fellow
Beneath the blue of day
That gives to man or woman
His heart and soul away.
There flowers no balm to sain him
From east of earth to west
That's lost for everlasting
The heart out of his breast.
Here by the labouring highway
With empty hands I stroll:
Sea-deep, till doomsday morning,
Lie lost my heart and soul.
2.6k
In Parsley, a Levantine munificence accreted together in Tabbouleh,
herbage that covers fractured bedrock in a poultice of healing.
Secreted within, lie igneous outpourings of bloodied tomatoes,
those solid affections that had welled through an ocean floor
as Neptune quelled Gaia's contractions, her waters seeking to burst
beneath the wrinkled surface of a salty sea. She, an underbelly of sky,
pregnant in the overwhelm of magma, sweating out her heart in fire,
muted like a moon of Neptune, in his retrograde soliloquies, yet mirroring
hers in icy resurfacings of skin. The God of the Sea, boils an amnion
to hazy mists, how deep will his trident plunge to dislodge those Trojan ships
of deceptions ? Yet, Triton blows a conch for Gaia, not for man's duelling
and his warring tribes. He soothes her feverish gnashing of thighs
labouring continents. Some fires burn in water, like desultory heartbeats
moving the pace of rocks through the ocean floor, spiriting away
to stranger places still, marking maps of memories in the beauty of
a stillborn magma. The limestone they say is no blood relation to such
alien fructification, those oceanic intruders, bleeding still, spilling
secrets in reds and purples. The acid tears spilled in lemons merely
neutralised in syllables, sedimented to a community of limestone,
that possess no archaic remnants reminiscing through dead bones,
an age of glory. Now beauty lies in herbage over once raucous magma
and traces of a salty sea, freshness of life trailing her veins, in fragrance of Parsley
Jun 24, 2021
Jun 24, 2021 at 7:15 AM UTC
DO not because this day I have grown saturnine
Imagine that lost love, inseparable from my thought
Because I have no other youth, can make me pine;
For how should I forget the wisdom that you brought,
The comfort that you made? Although my wits have gone
On a fantastic ride, my horse's flanks are spurred
By childish memories of an old cross Pollexfen,
And of a Middleton, whose name you never heard,
And of a red-haired Yeats whose looks, although he died
Before my time, seem like a vivid memory.
You heard that labouring man who had served my
people. He said
Upon the open road, near to the Sligo quay --
No, no, not said, but cried it out -- "You have come again,
And surely after twenty years it was time to come.'
I am thinking of a child's vow sworn in vain
Never to leave that valley his fathers called their home.
2.1k
WE sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.'
And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "To be born woman is to know --
Although they do not talk of it at school --
That we must labour to be beautiful.'
I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.'
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.
2k
O CLOUD-PALE eyelids, dream-dimmed eyes,
The poets labouring all their days
To build a perfect beauty in rhyme
Are overthrown by a woman's gaze
And by the unlabouring brood of the skies:
And therefore my heart will bow, when dew
Is dropping sleep, until God burn time,
Before the unlabouring stars and you.
1.9k
Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,
With ill-matched aims the Architect who planned—
Albeit labouring for a scanty band
Of white-robed Scholars only—this immense
And glorious Work of fine intelligence!
Give all thou canst; high Heaven rejects the lore
Of nicely-calculated less or more;
So deemed the man who fashioned for the sense
These lofty pillars, spread that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells,
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells
Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
1.8k
Who put the “sub” into “subversion” and “subculture”?
Was it the same people
Who built schools:
Those prisons
Where kids are tortured
And brainwashed
Into being “good” conforming citizens –
Factory fodder
Trained to sit in lines
Labouring at meaningless tasks,
Questioning nothing?
So still we are ruled
By Tory Grandees and Brussels Bureaucrats
Keeping us in our place:
Social Control
Over Job Centre slaves.
It’s the same the whole world over:
The rich wallowing in luxury
While the poor starve to death
Exposed to pitiless winds.
For once words fail me
About our Unfair World.
Children dying everywhere
While fatcats feed in a frenzy.
No wonder people talk of Revolution
And terrorist plots.
Our air is full of carbon
While trees are cut
Down
For seas of palm oil.
We need to reconsider
What we do
In all our ways.
Enough is enough.
It’s time to nurture nature
As denizens of Planet Earth.
Paul Butters
© PB 23\11\2018.
Nov 23, 2018
Nov 23, 2018 at 6:35 AM UTC
To some twas a majestic force,
Mysterious and beautiful,
Courageous and never full
From a vast, adventurous feast.
It roamed – a horn upon a horse,
A gallop one could never cull,
It thought itself invincible,
Yet to some it was a beast.
Its orchestra – a masterpiece
Assembled from around the Earth,
But labouring perfections birth
Was a harpist’s absent beat.
The pains of searching now could cease
As landing upon emerald berth,
The unicorn unearthed its serf
As sublimity filled that seat.
The harpist liked her homely scene,
Despite its audience so small.
She’d rather stay than leave it all
And face the unicorns stampede.
And so she suffered wrath obscene:
She was forced to attend the ball,
Waiting centuries for the call
To leave an orchestra based on greed.
In present day the harp is home,
Back to where it is meant to be,
Beauty played independently,
But the unicorn does not mourn,
For now both creatures often roam
To a ball outside of history
And play a peaceful melody:
“The Harpist and the Unicorn.”
Feb 16, 2011
Feb 16, 2011 at 10:34 AM UTC
As the sun reaches it zenith & the moon becomes full,
Soldiers are deployed at various point,
Allowing their thought to wander away into ephemeral violence,
Well armed,
Red pointers at human sight,
killing in the pretence of liberation,
Defenceless civilians murdered in sight,
I don't have the adequate vocabulary to constructively & emotionally create that atmosphere,
As a poet they don't mind if I make a sound
But it's a real problem
if I ever get too loud,
It enrages me,
I'm bitterly miffed,
Imagine the agony, stress, depression & tension they are
going through,
Let's be factual,
Their based desire & legitimate purpose is to associate ,affiliate & standardize us as terrorist,
They come in front of our tv & give us speech our forefathers have never heard of,
Humanity in it eternity have been blindfolded & deviated from the truth,
They have become the fixed & Luminous center around which innumerable lifestyle revolves,
Civilization will not lead mankind to insanity,
It feels good to be in power ,
But a day will come when they will ponder, reflect & introspect,
but their reflection will be to no avail,
Reflect over what I say,
In silence & tranquillity,
We may be on a Long arduous journey,
But victory is to the oppressed,
Categorically & selectively speaking ,
It will become a practical reality,
Innocent souls are been lost everyday,
In pakistan,Syria,Iraq,Iran
Yet the conference continues,
Killings intensifies,
Women are murdered,
Fathers are slaughtered,
Kids are held captive some rigorously excluded,
Without them labouring humanity searching for peace will perish,
It's a sad time we live in,
Educated leaders with no heart of human sympathy,
Acting upon their based desires & ego,
You may call this character assassination,
I call it supreme words of justice
Only time will tell who is the true terrorist
Aug 4, 2013
Aug 4, 2013 at 5:41 PM UTC
The western wind is blowing fair
Across the dark AEgean sea,
And at the secret marble stair
My Tyrian galley waits for thee.
Come down! the purple sail is spread,
The watchman sleeps within the town,
O leave thy lily-flowered bed,
O Lady mine come down, come down!
She will not come, I know her well,
Of lover’s vows she hath no care,
And little good a man can tell
Of one so cruel and so fair.
True love is but a woman’s toy,
They never know the lover’s pain,
And I who loved as loves a boy
Must love in vain, must love in vain.
O noble pilot, tell me true,
Is that the sheen of golden hair?
Or is it but the tangled dew
That binds the passion-flowers there?
Good sailor come and tell me now
Is that my Lady’s lily hand?
Or is it but the gleaming prow,
Or is it but the silver sand?
No! no! ’tis not the tangled dew,
’Tis not the silver-fretted sand,
It is my own dear Lady true
With golden hair and lily hand!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,
This is the Queen of life and joy
Whom we must bear from Grecian shore!
The waning sky grows faint and blue,
It wants an hour still of day,
Aboard! aboard! my gallant crew,
O Lady mine, away! away!
O noble pilot, steer for Troy,
Good sailor, ply the labouring oar,
O loved as only loves a boy!
O loved for ever evermore!
1.7k
yes, theology reduced to the anti-speculative reasoning
to choose he v. she, as if what pronoun mattered
to be hardly exact - national effigies exist
for ex-patriots - immigrants is a
***** word used by assimilating cultures,
the small intestines and the
the tape worms - she ******* Europe -
he labouring Europe - winged Hussars in Ukrainian mud -
while Versailles was built - Poles, the French of the East -
Moscow was trivialised twice - once by Mongol,
once by Pole - Nietzsche maddened called for
the Slavic-Frenchmen - i can already see the proximity
of French with Polonaise - the duchy of Warsaw -
Napoleon - Justepatron - just partition -
or thus the two bombardments equal -
thus two kept a holy alliance - that the Pole
be Frenchman when a croissant was questioned.
Jul 18, 2016
Jul 18, 2016 at 11:32 PM UTC
Her demise shook the world
And left an uprising in its wake.
She was human but the world
Obnoxiously called her a Dalit. Her
Skin was marred with scars of
The most gruesome kind but
Little do you know, they were
Her battle scars that she took
To the grave. Her body, a
Holy shrine was entered without
An invitation but you are not
Aware that her soul is purer
Than yours will ever be.
Her cache of memories will
Be drenched with flashes of
Hungry stares and lustful eyes
But also warm hugs and gentle
Smiles from her parents.
Something that the
Scrupulous media does not want
To reflect upon. She can’t be
A secret anymore; her caste
Cannot be a hindrance anymore.
She needs a powerful voice
And we must give her one.
As i recount this tale,
I am suddenly this girl. I
Consume her desires. I
Am her soul and spirit. And,
My fingers close in on against
Each other and I take labouring
Breaths. My throat feels like
Huge amounts of sandpaper were
Shoved into it. My eyes are watery
And blood shot and all you do is
Stare. My clothes are shredded
And little rags are my only trustful
Companions on my otherwise
Naked body. A string of wounds
Cover my arms and legs and you
Whisper about how sordid a
Scene this is. You mutter about
Me being a victim but the truth is
I am a warrior who survived an
Intrusion that was not supposed
To happen and yet, you back off
From a growing crowd and wonder
What you’ll have for dinner tonight,
Leaving me there on the ground,
Writhing in more than pain and suffering.
Sep 18, 2016
Sep 18, 2016 at 9:36 AM UTC
A human habit universal,
our measure of success by possessions to envy.
An infernal curse—commercial purveyors, trinkets
of gold and gem,
shining blinking, fabrics glistening;
the value of thing manipulated by
them insect kings.
By lion's fang and butterfly guise they rule,
a hubris deceiver upon their shoulder
obscuring their likeness to those
serfs upon whom they
cunningly demand servitude, otherwise
be starved, put out, forced to watch their
future falter—sons and daughters
failing in flight, their
wings clipped prior first spanning.
Locust clans spurred to fight over resources, who
sell and buy back nature's bounty once
formed anew into advertisement's subject.
Oceans emptied of fish, forests becoming myth,
uplands turned to wastelands,
abomination fog a spherical prison choking
earth's inhabitants—the marketer's dowry
paid for marriage to a precarious economy.
Royalty made rich at cost of labouring spine,
but worse—
our home and thereby our hope we consign.
By their futile attempt to survive,
the locust instinct to consume,
until all is gone we contrive,
the inevitable a meet with our doom—kings
with stained glass wings to follow soon.
So small are we amidst this vast existence;
the ambitions of men
barely bigger than an insect's significance.
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 6:55 PM UTC
NOW must I these three praise --
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days:
One because no thought,
Nor those unpassing cares,
No, not in these fifteen
Many-times-troubled years,
Could ever come between
Mind and delighted mind;
And one because her hand
Had strength that could unbind
What none can understand,
What none can have and thrive,
Youth's dreamy load, till she
So changed me that I live
Labouring in ecstasy.
And what of her that took
All till my youth was gone
With scarce a pitying look?
How could I praise that one?
When day begins to break
I count my good and bad,
Being wakeful for her sake,
Remembering what she had,
What eagle look still shows,
While up from my heart's root
So great a sweetness flows
I shake from head to foot.
1.5k
WHEN you and my true lover meet
And he plays tunes between your feet.
Speak no evil of the soul,
Nor think that body is the whole,
For I that am his daylight lady
Know worse evil of the body;
But in honour split his love
Till either neither have enough,
That I may hear if we should kiss
A contrapuntal serpent hiss,
You, should hand explore a thigh,
All the labouring heavens sigh.
1.5k
Contemplate all this work of Time,
The giant labouring in his youth;
Nor dream of human love and truth,
As dying Nature's earth and lime;
But trust that those we call the dead
Are breathers of an ampler day
For ever nobler ends. They say,
The solid earth whereon we tread
In tracts of fluent heat began,
And grew to seeming-random forms,
The seeming prey of cyclic storms,
Till at the last arose the man;
Who throve and branch'd from clime to clime,
The herald of a higher race,
And of himself in higher place,
If so he type this work of time
Within himself, from more to more;
Or, crown'd with attributes of woe
Like glories, move his course, and show
That life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And heated hot with burning fears,
And dipt in baths of hissing tears,
And batter'd with the shocks of doom
To shape and use. Arise and fly
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast;
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
1.5k
What of her glass without her? The blank grey
There where the pool is blind of the moon’s face.
Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
Her paths without her? Day’s appointed sway
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
Without her? Tears, ah me! for love’s good grace,
And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
Where the long cloud, the long wood’s counterpart,
Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
1.5k
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
1.3k
Dig, dig and dig the dirt,
Sweat stains occupy most of the t-shirt,
Energetic, powerful bursts,
Keep shovelling until it hurts,
Hard hat caste system,
Know who's in charge and who's the assistant,
Burger vans appear wouldn't want to miss them,
A line of ketchup to add some vitamins,
Cancer sticks help to break up the day,
For torrential rain certain builders pray,
Happily take no play; no pay.
Dec 15, 2018
Dec 15, 2018 at 1:37 PM UTC
To-night the winds begin to rise
And roar from yonder dropping day:
The last red leaf is whirl'd away,
The rooks are blown about the skies;
The forest crack'd, the waters curl'd,
The cattle huddled on the lea;
And wildly dash'd on tower and tree
The sunbeam strikes along the world:
And but for fancies, which aver
That all thy motions gently pass
Athwart a plane of molten glass,
I scarce could brook the strain and stir
That makes the barren branches loud;
And but for fear it is not so,
The wild unrest that lives in woe
Would dote and pore on yonder cloud
That rises upward always higher,
And onward drags a labouring breast,
And topples round the dreary west,
A looming bastion fringed with fire.
1.3k
She is not of this world, no, not of this world at all:
She comes here on difficult visits
To this realm of deception enamoured of gratification
Like the moon reflected on the crest of a high wave:
Never certain, and assuredly mortal is her reign
Breaking apart in a hundred sprays of violent agony
After every roaring chequered ascension;
I too mistook pain for her
Pain, her distant shadow
Sorrow, her cousin who triumphs here
Deep in the woods I heard the song of the willow
And thought it was her song
It was the wind playing in the hollow reed
Emptied of all essence in ****** of suffering
Regal moss covers broken walls worn of centuries of abrading life
The deep night deceives of peace only to die in
A thousand pools of blood, every morning
When the harsh light of truth proclaims:
Listen, distances, resound in the hum of blowing winds,
This toll of reality:
Proclaim to the forlorn lover suffering in the thrall of the early night
Proclaim to the hopeful lover labouring in the field of life
Love is not of this world,
Love does not exist in this world
A moments’ exultation follows a lifetime of agony here
The vain, the ****** profferer of gratification
Is the sole winner here:
Go break the crest of the moon on the rising tide
Go break every longing heart!
Go warn the wanderer in the woods
Of the impending doom that looms over his quest
Aug 17, 2012
Aug 17, 2012 at 11:54 PM UTC
a quick word for paula lee
and pamela rae
members of
the ditzy is as ditzy does club
may i join you ladies fair
my applicatory action
took place this morning
while labouring under distraction
i washed my husbands(a chippie) workwear
with cat's chicken flavoured kibble
it is now out drying on the line
with a row of cat's divine
staring at the brown streaked
grime in nose wrinkling adoration.
so ladies i think i made the cut
and can become a fully fledg-ed
member of this club refined
of absent mindedness defined....
(i plead pmt ...
intelligence in, sharp decline)
what say you..
Jul 23, 2014
Jul 23, 2014 at 12:24 AM UTC