"labours" poems
JANUARY
Delightful display
Snowdrops bowing pure white heads
To the sun’s glory.
FEBRUARY
Fresh green buds appear
Indicating spring will soon
Energise us all.
MARCH
Lambs gambol in fields
Frisky with the joys of life
Bleating happily.
APRIL
Bluebells stand so proud
Beneath trees now sparsely dressed
Fresh green leaves unfold.
MAY
Much awaited sound
Echoes heard amid dense trees
Cuckoo has arrived.
JUNE
Parks and gardens burst
With sounds and vibrant colours
Perfect harmony.
JULY
Beaches become full
Of families having fun
In sand and big waves.
AUGUST
Ripe golden harvest
Burning sun in azure skies
Labours rewarded.
SEPTEMBER
Swallows congregate
On telephone wires ready
To migrate down south.
OCTOBER
Red and gold leaves fall,
Crunchy as cornflakes beneath
Feet on a crisp morn.
NOVEMBER
Frosty webs sparkle
In the early morning sun
Brightly bejewelled.
DECEMBER
First few flakes of snow
Dust gardens like icing on
A chocolate cake.
Jan 18, 2012
Jan 18, 2012 at 12:44 PM UTC
Blessed are they whose baby-souls are bright,
Whose brows are sealèd with the cross of light,
Whom God Himself has deign'd to robe in white—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who follow through the wild
His sacred footprints, as a little child;
Who strive to keep their garments undefiled—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who commune with the Christ,
Midst holy angels, at the Eucharist—
Who aye seek sunlight through the rain and mist—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they—the strong in faith and grace—
Who humbly fill their own appointed place;
They who with steadfast patience run the race—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they who suffer and endure—
They who through thorns and briars walk safe and sure;
Gold in the fire made beautiful and pure!—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they on whom the angels wait,
To keep them facing the celestial gate,
To help them keep their vows inviolate—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they to whom, at dead of night,—
In work, in prayer—though veiled from mortal sight,
The great King's messengers bring love and light—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they whose labours only cease
When God decrees the quiet, sweet release;
Who lie down calmly in the sleep of peace—
Blessed are they!
Whose dust is angel-guarded, where the flowers
And soft moss cover it, in this earth of ours;
Whose souls are roaming in celestial bowers—
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they—our precious ones—who trod
A pathway for us o'er the rock-strewn sod.
How are they number'd with the saints of God!
Blessed are they!
Blessed are they, elected to sit down
With Christ, in that day of supreme renown,
When His own Bride shall wear her bridal crown—
Blessed are they!
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But why did I **** him? Why? Why?
In the small, gilded room, near the stair?
My ears rack and throb with his cry,
And his eyes goggle under his hair,
As my fingers sink into the fair
White skin of his throat. It was I!
I killed him! My God! Don't you hear?
I shook him until his red tongue
Hung flapping out through the black, queer,
Swollen lines of his lips. And I clung
With my nails drawing blood, while I flung
The loose, heavy body in fear.
Fear lest he should still not be dead.
I was drunk with the lust of his life.
The blood-drops oozed slow from his head
And dabbled a chair. And our strife
Lasted one reeling second, his knife
Lay and winked in the lights overhead.
And the waltz from the ballroom I heard,
When I called him a low, sneaking cur.
And the wail of the violins stirred
My brute anger with visions of her.
As I throttled his windpipe, the purr
Of his breath with the waltz became blurred.
I have ridden ten miles through the dark,
With that music, an infernal din,
Pounding rhythmic inside me. Just Hark!
One! Two! Three! And my fingers sink in
To his flesh when the violins, thin
And straining with passion, grow stark.
One! Two! Three! Oh, the horror of sound!
While she danced I was crushing his throat.
He had tasted the joy of her, wound
Round her body, and I heard him gloat
On the favour. That instant I smote.
One! Two! Three! How the dancers swirl round!
He is here in the room, in my arm,
His limp body hangs on the spin
Of the waltz we are dancing, a swarm
Of blood-drops is hemming us in!
Round and round! One! Two! Three! And his sin
Is red like his tongue lolling warm.
One! Two! Three! And the drums are his knell.
He is heavy, his feet beat the floor
As I drag him about in the swell
Of the waltz. With a menacing roar,
The trumpets crash in through the door.
One! Two! Three! clangs his funeral bell.
One! Two! Three! In the chaos of space
Rolls the earth to the hideous glee
Of death! And so cramped is this place,
I stifle and pant. One! Two! Three!
Round and round! God! 'Tis he throttles me!
He has covered my mouth with his face!
And his blood has dripped into my heart!
And my heart beats and labours. One! Two!
Three! His dead limbs have coiled every part
Of my body in tentacles. Through
My ears the waltz jangles. Like glue
His dead body holds me athwart.
One! Two! Three! Give me air! Oh! My God!
One! Two! Three! I am drowning in slime!
One! Two! Three! And his corpse, like a clod,
Beats me into a jelly! The chime,
One! Two! Three! And his dead legs keep time.
Air! Give me air! Air! My God!
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Eyes on Ancient times in going back and intriguing the mind
Hercules pillar being his strength
Challenging all odds
A man being his own mode
Hercules strength in conquering evil
Deceit of destruction confined to the Devil
The Greek Gods that sit above
They have spiritual divined powers thereof
The Gladiators have come to attack
But the Greek Gods have Hercules back
The pillars of evil Kingdoms have steadily come down
The rattle of the chains and the demons that remain
Hercules the conquer with the strength of solid bound
A man of force with the lean sound
Hercules stands on a throne with lightening bolts on both sides
The sun casts a shadow with the man of victory
It’s Hercules labours of sustaining history
The mystery of challenges of an unknown tomorrow
The enemy being defeated in sorrow
Hercules legacy with having moral of morrow and eyes keen like a sparrow.
Sep 13, 2014
Sep 13, 2014 at 5:02 PM UTC
When some proud son of man returns to earth,
Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,
The sculptor’s art exhausts the pomp of woe
And storied urns record who rest below:
When all is done, upon the tomb is seen,
Not what he was, but what he should have been:
But the poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend,
Whose honest heart is still his master’s own,
Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone,
Unhonour’d falls, unnoticed all his worth—
Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth:
While Man, vain insect! hopes to be forgiven,
And claims himself a sole exclusive Heaven.
Oh Man! thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power,
Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust,
Degraded mass of animated dust!
Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat,
Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit!
By nature vile, ennobled but by name,
Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame.
Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn,
Pass on—it honours none you wish to mourn:
To mark a Friend’s remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one,—and here he lies.
4.4k
*How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flow'r!
How skillfully she builds her cell!
How neat she spreads the wax!
And labours hard to store it well
With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labour or of skill,
I would be busy, too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
In books, or work, or healthy play,
Let my first years be passed,
That I might give for ev'ry day,
Some good account at last.*
~Isaac Watts 1674-1748~
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 12:34 PM UTC
To write of Love, of Heaven, and of God,
Hills of joy, o'er which Angel pursued
Of that Boy, a sublime hippie shepherd,
Who in Heart the wisdom of Heaven had,
My pen, it labours, I give sweat and blood,
To paint world in cerise, a sweet red flood:
Or Prussian blue, depending on the scene,
Let Poets tell true folk from chess piece Kings,
Feign benevolence, when they are mean,
Who strut and rule above, superior things,
Who on the carcass of the suffering wean,
Drunk on power, Almighty sovereigns.
To write of Love, Heaven, apart from days,
Spent in drudgery at whim of Lords,
Who sit engorged by gold, wealth as they graze,
Upon the fruits yield by the mass, that horde,
As mass toil deep 'neath sun's sweltering rays,
To give and barter time they can't afford.
But they will be the ones in Heaven crowned,
As all time vindicates the plight of souls,
Who in port, or wine, have never drowned,
Rich gluttony the faithful mind abhors,
Upon which Saints and angels incensed frown,
So to tyrant's whims take pious war.
Jul 20, 2018
Jul 20, 2018 at 6:39 AM UTC
Hush!
Listen do you hear the silence above the roar of life?
Hush!
Do you hear your heart beating to your life's song?
Hush!
Do you see the sky above blanketing and comforting?
Hush!
Do you feel the world spinning around? With you standing still upon it?
Hush! Sshhhh! Quiet.
Listen to the flow of earth's blood in her rivers and streams,
feel her warmth from the sun like an adoring parental gaze.
Touch her thrumming life in her growing forests, see her wonders created for us her children.
Hear her lullaby before she is muted, choked, buried alive by us, with
our waste, our destruction, deforestation, over fishing, hunting.
****** the fruitful earth 'til she our mother is barren and useless.
Mother Earth is weeping and above the roar of our selfish modern sound, we do not hear her crying, or see her tears silently falling.
Falling onto selfish mankind.
Gaia that great mother to all, giver of birth to earth and it's universe
is a woman reclining upon the earth surrounded by a host of jealous warring infant adults the fruits of her labours.
Oaths sworn in the name of Gaia, in ancient Greece, were considered the most binding of all.
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 12:09 PM UTC
I took her for some fish and chips,
We had a reight good time.
The two of us kept locking lips,
It really int a crime.
But then she saw this pilot bloke:
It really wasn’t fair.
Though I’m a super Trekkie clerk,
She saw me as a square.
What she saw in him I’ll never know,
There really was no reason.
But off she went with him, oh no!
It felt just like a treason.
Those fish and chips are getting cold,
With no-one there to eat ‘em.
Them mushy peas have gone to waste, be told,
But she prefers to cheat ‘em.
There are more fish in the sea they say,
And now I’m talking females.
Every dog will have his day,
I’d better watch my emails.
Paul Butters
Aug 9, 2015
Aug 9, 2015 at 4:30 PM UTC
i have my share of labours,
that i wished become
collective signs of fruitition...
alas...
and only thus:
the last sacred word -
the simplest of regrets,
the last remnant "regret":
alas...
lucky you,
now you get to write your address,
your street, your house number,
your authentic name,
your zip code,
your RM1,
4TH...
your virginia...
your whatever, that comes with
an overcoming of a tommorrow;
good-luck;
bless me with a chance,
to forgive you, and forget you,
by kissing the forehead of
your mother, goodnight;
may she find sleep, as comforting
as death, with,
or without anticipating it.
Aug 16, 2017
Aug 16, 2017 at 9:47 PM UTC
**And the Lord spoke in dreams serene
to he, a righteous man within his years,
of mankind's folly, of wickedness,
the Earth to flood with Heaven's tears.
'From the face of the Earth I will cleanse
fowl of the air with feathered wing,
only two from each kind will I spare
neither man nor beast or creeping thing'.
'An Ark to build is My intent
of Gopher wood, three decks high,
many years will thou toil and sweat
but labours fruits will keep thee dry'.
'For thou art blessed, a blameless man
and secure shall be with thy kin
and with sustenance, I will provide for all
upon this Ark, you will abide within'.
Then at God's command, throughout the land
to each and every creature,
two of each, male n' female both to save
... to propagate their future.
So from every forest, from every field
from every byre, to every beach
bird and bat upon the wing, all that crawl
or walk, procure, just two, two of each.
Then on marched they, tooth by hide
ever forward, onward bound
fur and feather side by side
to board the Ark, upon the ground.
Of the days when Noah walked with God
thirty score were his measure in years
and through forty days and forty nights
the deluge prevailed, for those pioneers.
For the fountains of the deep were opened
and the windows of Heaven gaped wide
upon the face of the Earth, the rains fell
and the oceans they blossomed, world wide.
Upon the face of the waters, the Ark rose
until the highest peak with waters advanced
for the days in number, one hundred and fifty
drifting upon that mighty expanse.
Then the 'Lord God' remembered Noah
and caused the great winds to blow
wiping the tears of Heaven away
and closed tight, the deep fountains below.
Then the Ark upon Ararat stumbled
as the mighty waters, slowly withdrew
with the rains restraint, the waters abate
and the crests of the mountains, they grew.
And Noah sends forth both raven and dove
the ravens complaint was to fly 'to and fro'
but, with olive leaf, the dove returns
then flies again thrice, by dawns early glow.
Thirty score plus one, his years then tally
when the waters were dried from upon the Earth,
then Noah walks forth with beasts disembarking
for this was the dawn of the worlds rebirth.
Then God blessed, and bestows man with dominion
over every beast of the ground
over every creature that flounders
over all the birds that abound.
And His covenant with humanity, established
the rainbow, His contract to see
never to cause, such a deluge for man
for that was our Lord's guarantee.**
... ... ...
451
Jul 9, 2011
Jul 9, 2011 at 11:14 PM UTC
LOUE LABOURS WONNE
( for Kyle and Laura )
we have
as Shakespeare says
"...neglected time..."
like all lovers we
lost in the kiss
eclipsed the hours
that strive to contain
us leaving Time
to sulk
tapping a toe
waiting upon us so
the world can continue
but ha - do we care
we care - not
for the ticking of the clock
and all earthly what nots
our souls
gone AWOL
our laughter
staining the air
like music we
but away "...away
the scene begins
to cloud..."
and leave these lovers
to do without much ado
what they
will
Jul 17, 2018
Jul 17, 2018 at 3:23 PM UTC
(From a Persian Carpet)
Ash and strewments, the first moth-wings, pale
Ardour of brief evenings, on the fecund wind;
Or all a wing, less than wind,
Breath of low herbs upfloats, petal or wing,
Haunting the musk precincts of burial.
For the season of newer riches moves triumphing,
Of the evanescence of deaths. These potpourris
Earth-tinctured, jet insect-bead, cinder of bloom—
How weigh while a great summer knows increase,
Ceaselessly risen, what there entombs?—
Of candour fallen from the slight stems of Mays,
Corrupt of the rim a blue shades, pensively:
So a fatigue of wishes will young eyes.
And brightened, unpurged eyes of revery, now
Not to glance to fabulous groves again!
For now deep presence is, and binds its close,
And closes down the wreathed alleys escape of sighs.
And now rich time is weaving, hidden tree,
The fable of orient threads from bough to bough.
Old rinded wood, whose lissomeness within
Has reached from nothing to its covering
These many corymbs’ flourish!—And the green
Shells which wait amber, breathing, wrought
Towards the still trance of summer’s centering,
Motives by ravished humble fingers set,
Each in a noon of its own infinite.
And here is leant the branch and its repose
of the deep leaf to the pilgrim plume. Repose,
Inflections brilliant and mute of the voyager, light!
And here the nests, and freshet throats resume
Notes over and over found, names
For the silvery ascensions of joy. Nothing is here
But moss and its bells now of the root’s night;
But the beetle’s bower, and arc from grass to grass
For the flight in gauze. Now its fresh lair,
Grass-deep, nestles the cool eft to stir
Vague newborn limbs, and the bud’s dark winding has
Access of day. Now on the subtle noon
Time’s image, at pause with being, labours free
Of all its charge, for each in coverts laid,
Of clement kind; and everlastingly,
In some elision of bright moments is known,
Changed wide as Eden, the branch whose silence sways
Dazzle of the murmurous leaves to continual tone;
Its separations, sighing to own again
Being of the ignorant wish; and sways to sight,
Waked from it nighted, the marvelous foundlings of light;
Risen and weaving from the ceaseless root
A divine ease whispers toward fruitfulness,
While all a summer’s conscience tempts the fruit.
2.6k
The distance between me and she
When easily traversed by arm extended,
And finger tips, always is;
Nearby means a wholeness,
And in it the reasons to stitch together
This moment and the next;
Savouring the experience of place
It makes more the whole
when we both partake of the view;
The flavours, of the labours,
Of the growing, of the plants, of the garden
Are ignited by them being for her;
The skeleton frame of our days,
Is fleshed with a texture soft and supple,
By the day-to-day of us;
The being apart is the punctuation
In the subsequent being together
Of a sentence we serve as one;
It's that glowing strand of highway
That may go short or long over the hill,
That we discover together.
In the silence of the night,
It's the weight of all the breaths
We will exhale and inhale together.
Aug 20, 2013
Aug 20, 2013 at 1:43 PM UTC
Attend my lays, ye ever honour’d nine,
Assist my labours, and my strains refine;
In smoothest numbers pour the notes along,
For bright Aurora now demands my song.
Aurora hail, and all the thousand dies,
Which deck thy progress through the vaulted skies:
The morn awakes, and wide extends her rays,
On ev’ry leaf the gentle zephyr plays;
Harmonious lays the feather’d race resume,
Dart the bright eye, and shake the painted plume.
Ye shady groves, your verdant gloom display
To shield your poet from the burning day:
Calliope awake the sacred lyre,
While thy fair sisters fan the pleasing fire:
The bow’rs, the gales, the variegated skies
In all their pleasures in my ***** rise.
See in the east th’ illustrious king of day!
His rising radiance drives the shades away—
But Oh! I feel his fervid beams too strong,
And scarce begun, concludes th’ abortive song.
2.3k
blood
blood patter and splash
leads us concrete toward
tracing back til the scene
i’ve flashing thoughts of the brutality
the violence that must of cussed
between persons
in fear fray and inebriation
down the steps
my four year old child and I go
the greasing bleed in bronze putters
growing and leadening
on stone labours
glowing citrus the refrigeration
of the underpass
‘flips the bird' at the summer blaze
grey dead coral bricks of urination
seasoned in deep beading now cold
the broke up weapon
candy slates of brittle teeth
glass / bottle / beer /brown
the neck its' hilt
and the main mud of the bleeding
the flies are the thing
that bothers my ‘little nipper’
usually a flapper of queries on repetition
no other queries are raised
just eager for the vibration
of train carriages gatling over our heads
i stopper any words i may have on the matter
he holds my hand with his hot hand
we progress under a port arms
procession of caged floodlights
and walled in by fresh graffiti
fingers dripping retching for the guttering
Dec 22, 2023
Dec 22, 2023 at 3:05 PM UTC
Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
And uttermost labours, having once o’ersaid
All grievous memories on his long life shed,
This worst regret to one true heart could speak:—
That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
He stooped o’er sweet Colonna’s dying bed,
His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,
Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.
O Buonarruoti,—good at Art’s fire-wheels
To urge her chariot!—even thus the Soul,
Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals
Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
What holds for her Death’s garner? And for thee?
1.9k
perfect poise
between diction
imagery and tone
measured rhythms
and true fine feelings
that fall like soft rain
to mirror humans
in tender moments
and coarse grim cameos
of things best forgotten
things nuanced and bitter
this vast field of experience
is the business of poetry
the art of aptness
the art of compactness
and incredible depths
leading to damp squibs
we search nevertheless
for unique form and content
that exercise in futility
till at last we rest from our labours
and we understand at last
poetry like life is a bitter-sweet illusion
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 1:37 PM UTC
Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main
The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain;
Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing,
Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.
Soft purl the streams, the birds renew their notes,
And through the air their mingled music floats.
Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread!
But the west glories in the deepest red:
So may our ******* with ev’ry virtue glow,
The living temples of our God below!
Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d;
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.
Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes,
Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.
1.8k
A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs.—
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk’s-head brush (in a drum-major’s way
When the bandsmen march and play).
A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown pony’s nose:
He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
He stops when the man stops, without being told,
And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly he’s old,
Indeed, not strength enough shows
To steer the disjointed waggon straight,
Which wriggles left and right in a rambling line,
Deflected thus by its own warp and weight,
And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
The woman walks on the pavement verge,
Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like Turk’s-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things,
The rain clams her apron till it clings.—
So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys.
1.7k
you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
saving up your love for a rainy year,
scrounging and saving every fleeting smile and shallow kiss and
miserly, hunched over with the weight of your own suffering and despair,
each scrapped-together pile of crumpled-from-your-pockets shreds of I.O.U.s and featherlight touches.
too afraid to leap and risk, you'll never grow or invest your affections into the stocks of Lisa and George LLC, or Francis and Kelly Inc.
so your love is bound to crumble into fragile dust, the fruits of your labours withering into mouldy piles of seed, stem, and flesh.
the could-have-been and might-have-grown dying, before even living to flourish and erupt into glorious blooms of the strikingly ethereal and otherworldy.
but not for you, not ever for you.
you're the boxspring billionaire of feel-good
and you'll burn before planting your love.
Jul 3, 2015
Jul 3, 2015 at 12:34 PM UTC
What shall be said of this embattled day
And armed occupation of this night
By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
As every sense to which she dealt delight
Now labours lonely o’er the stark noon-height
To reach the sunset’s desolate disarray?
Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory’s art
Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.
1.6k
The only legacy of maturity is insensitivity
I will die old will think nothing of it.
The young tend sodium springs
All the while watched by the barren.
Muted observers to life labours conceiving gasp
Unwilling to interpret.
Bald cries to heaven go souls dug with grapples stuck.
Silence takes precedence in the right seat
Unlawful is the wrong
Red is the left
Old knows all is dark.
We run water to rid false colour
Run it until we are dry
Run it until we are black.
Apr 25, 2012
Apr 25, 2012 at 9:00 AM UTC