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A Child’s Story

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
“’Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;
And as for our Corporation—shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can’t or won’t determine
What’s best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you’re old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we’re lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!”
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
“For a guilder I’d my ermine gown sell;
I wish I were a mile hence!
It’s easy to bid one rack one’s brain—
I’m sure my poor head aches again
I’ve scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!”
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
“Bless us,” cried the Mayor, “what’s that?”
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
“Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!”

“Come in!”—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in—
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:
Quoth one: “It’s as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!”

He advanced to the council-table:
And, “Please your honours,” said he, “I’m able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.”
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;
And at the scarf’s end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
“Yet,” said he, “poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;
And, as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?”
“One? fifty thousand!”—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished!
- Save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, “At the first shrill notes of the pipe
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press’s gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out ‘Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!’
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce and inch before me,
Just as methought it said ‘Come, bore me!’
- I found the Weser rolling o’er me.”

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
“Go,” cried the Mayor, “and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!”—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, “First, if you please, my thousand guilders!”

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar’s biggest **** with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
“Beside,” quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
“Our business was done at the river’s brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what’s dead can’t come to life, I think.
So, friend, we’re not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But, as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!”

The Piper’s face fell, and he cried
“No trifling! I can’t wait, beside!
I’ve promised to visit by dinner-time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head Cook’s pottage, all he’s rich in,
For having left, in the Calip’s kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor—
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don’t think I’ll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion.”

“How?” cried the Mayor, “d’ye think I’ll brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!”

Once more he stepped into the street;
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician’s cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by—
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council’s bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West,
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
“He never can cross that mighty top!
He’s forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop!”
When, lo, as they reached the mountain’s side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say, all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,—
“It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can’t forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me:
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles’ wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the Hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!”

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher’s pate
A text which says, that Heaven’s Gate
Opes to the Rich at as easy rate
As the needle’s eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
“And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six”:
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children’s last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper’s Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great Church-Window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away;
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there’s a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don’t understand.

So, *****, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially pipers:
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise.

Hands  formed into a fist
her jaw, set..

****.
She's gonna slug me


     "You opened up a thirst in me, Paul.
      Are you going to see it through..

           or just stand there?"


Her war-torn, Mesopotamian spirit
Bringing fire to those beautiful, Baltic eyes;
A direct descendant of all things, Telmun
She is waiting on a Pearl
Waiting,  for the Pearl

     Archipelago of Virginity
       --Beautiful girl is the Pearl

After gazing at her stunning beauty
I turn back, and resume the task
of digging with a small trowel
into the  dark, loamy soil

She slaps me on the shoulder,
tears  streaming from those  dark
sky-filled eyes..
              "..I  thirst"


Ladles   are made for love;
In abundance, they bring drink
to those who sojourn,
  those,  who wait

   And it  is  I
who have  allowed  myself
to become distracted,
  as of late--

Holding out  for beauty
When all along,  Beauty

Has been holding out  for me


It is a dance we do in silence,
far below this morning sun
You in your life, me in mine,
we have begun

Here we stand, and without speaking
draw the water from the Well
And stare beyond the plains
to where the mountains lie so still

But it's a long way that I have come
Across the sand, to find this peace
among your people in the sun

Where the families work the land
as they have always done

   Oh, it's so far, the other way
   my country's gone


Across my home, has grown the shadow
of a cruel and senseless hand
Though in some strong hearts
the love and truth remain

And it has taken me this distance
and a woman's smile to learn
That my heart remains among them

and to them I must return

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3P4x0qhvprs&t=56s

There is a need
and a thirst..

a waiting-for
so very worth  waiting for
xoxo
Robert C Howard Nov 2015
Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
     oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
          meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
     driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
          and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
     bringer of that ominous pallor
          that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
     for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
         medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air – window to the cosmos
      and our fragile life–giving broth -
          unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
     the air we breathe is what we make it
          or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
     wanders through time and topography -
     cherished and cursed for
     what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
     sculpt rivers and streams
     through forests and plains
     bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides ebb and wane
     at the whim of the charismatic moon.
     Ice mountains advance and retreat;
     rock-strewns moraines left in their wake.

Turbulent currents
     soar over jagged cataracts,
     spraying pastel prisms
     across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
     secret sanguine rivers navigate
     our veins and arteries
     bathing organs, limbs and sensors
     with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
     fill our daily ladles
     and grant us the will and empathy
     to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Loki, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

*Revised and integrated version, December, 2015
These four poems are aligned with a set of piano preludes of the same title completed 12-21-2016. Here is a link to the music https://clyp.it/user/1qruizko
Michael W Noland Jul 2012
some say im cynical
satanical
that my minds mechanical
diabolical
spoken essence erotical
detestable
jaded imagery hypnotical
unstoppable
liable to solve the unsolvable
while prodigal poets drown in their nautical modules

im a criminal
a cannibal
storming the street like an animal
shooting cannonballs
through prison walls
splattering the generals
in bathroom stalls
hostil
leave you poppin pain pills in the hospital
uncontrollable
my temper is flammable
mumbles illegible
choking you with your pentacle
leaving onlookers speckled
the abominable
mental protocols unstoppable
the unfeasible constable
shooting up the card table
willing and able
to call your fables
and smash apart a label
i raise babies in unstable cradles
let you bleed out
like cracked ladles

engorged in unholy wars
exploring
the corruption of the core
deplored
uniformed for
the clash of the double edge swords
taking control of vocal chords
a meet of the hordes
of the horned
misinformed
adorned
in sunlight

trying to shine
just 1 line
at a time
until my life signs decline
almost time
light and shadow combined

Horus and set

by hindsight blessed
yet to contest
to the rest of this mess
by melancholy caressed
as i arise unrest
from the cess
of the un confessed
blessed
Megan Hundley Sep 2012
Her fingers were covered in corn.
the corn after chewing, broken
pierced, churned- it could spread as butter
thick on stale toast, if needed
"it's fine, don't you worry, we'll get you all cleaned up"
she stared indifferently

Strings dangled from her mouth, unswept
full of necessary greens ---"mhm there there, this will give
you so much energy" --- drags of breath,
half inhale half choke. nothing to look forward to,
not the next soaking glob, not the cursing woman
in the bathroom, not the spill of light to her eyes

Where are the ladles, Did you check on it? The key? Just moved, most the suitcases aren't there yet. Remember to bring the Did you check on it? pay attention. Have you seen my grand kids?
who are you?

Sunday's are for the active ones
The games down the hall are  too far. Why worry with legs, if she could just adjust to the left
the world could sag into an ongoing dream- No demands, no games, no movement.

The nurses hair net had more presence than the splotch of gray against her peeling itchy scalp. Drool leaked from leather lips, dampening the collar of her two month sticky blouse.  Arms curled and locked,displaying under the wax skin cranberry patches-
she never wiped them off. Always the soft murmer of
a snore, always the smell of unbrushed teeth and hampers.

"Did you touch those where don't touch me scott scott scott leave my things alone thevenin I need a stop lying I want to go scott, scott? scott.     I            can't              remember                       any"

I said my name four times before she heard me, knew me
I fixed her pillow and my sister marked off the day on the calendar.
We told her about school, the marching band, each word
filled with forced enthusiasm. She bobbed  her head in circles, lazily
rolling her eyes, the curtain shading the empty space. We spent 30 minutes precisely.

She was more than I realized.
I never knew she had horseback riding, violin playing days. She traveled and  hiked. We could have been close. Unraveling with the mystery, I felt the lateness of my curiosity.
It was 30 minutes precisely, always.

We acted as strangers, reciting routine and wishing each other a happy day and a quiet love you
Waverly Nov 2011
It's a cool place to meet.
25 cent wings.
Nice, tiny booths
Lit by tiny electric lamps
In the guise of candles,
That give everything a nice, golden glow.
It's a Corona light,
And Corona-colored light always makes me feel
at ease.

She pulls up in a silver acura.

Gets out of the car and I can
see her ***
from the front of her
as she syrups over.

She’s got on a Black tanktop;
black bra straps showing
against white-pink
puerto rican skin
all while holding up those veritable C's.

Her hips burst against
a
long, beige
d
r
e
s
s,                                                                                
and I'm wanting to slide my hands all the way up her shirt to that black bra, and snap it off.

We have conversations about feeling older than
eighteen
and twenty-one
respectively.

Our lips are saucy
and oily. Tiny chicken scraps
can be felt in our teeth.

"I just started reading Starship Troopers."

"Yea, I love that movie."

I've never seen the movie,
but it endears her to me

that she loves it.

"Do you have any plans?"

"Plans?"

"After college?"

I plan on finishing my wings
before you, then I'm hoping
you'll let me hold your ****.

"Not yet."

"You know I've read some of your poetry."

"What do you think?"

"I like it," She smirks,
uncomfortably.

She ladles a wing in a slick of sauce.

"Truthfully, it was too much for me,
you really shouldn't talk about things like that."

She brings the wing
to her lips
and smacks it down
with a loud ******* noise
of a working, pink tongue.

I’ve wanted to hold her **** ever since I met her.
Now I’m lost.
Because she’s got black eyes
and I’m not even thinking about her **** or her bra.


I start thinking about how white her teeth are,
and how much two people can never know about each other.
Benjamin Adams Sep 2012
Like when they found the chariot
wheels at the bottom of the
Red Sea so was I surprised
at the faint reaching of the
fig tree, clinging to life amidst
so much dust, as it reached
ever upward in an infinite dance,
unaware of its eventual wanweird fate.
But I tracked on, crunching through
the ancient dirt, scrolls strapped
upon my back, coarse leather digging
through my camel's hair robes, sandy
grit forced in the gaps of
my toes. I cracked the locusts
and devoured them, dampening their bitterness
with the sweet warming explosion of
wild honey. So with bound Pleiades
above me, I gave witness to
Jerusalem, saying "After me will come
one more powerful than I, the
thongs of whose sandals I am
not worthy to stoop down and
untie." And I took them into
the Jordan and made them new
men. As the chill waters numbed
their muscles, their hairs pricked up
like gooseflesh, the night echoing with
splashing water and murmured voices. But
slowly the people trickled away, back
to the twang of lutes, their
ladles of soups, and I was
left alone, sitting, contemplating, always waiting.
So I sent forth the ravens,
carrying my message, to meet at
the Brookhollow no matter the obstruction,
to come by wagon or camel,
no matter of rain or flood.
But they were stubborn and prideful,
and would be moved from their
couches probably by no less than
one of Archimedes' great battleship levers,
and even then with massive groaning
like the coarse wooden hulls of
those monolithic ships. Because the sweet
taste of pastries is lodged upon
their tongues, keeping them occupied with
this world instead of the next.
So here I'll stay, always waiting.
I did this for creative writing class. 6 words per line, with these mandatory things:

    5 different sounds
    3 different tastes
    4 different tactile sensations (i.e. the feel of something against the skin)
    A city outside the U.S.
    a simple machine
    a dessert
    a fabric
    a celestial body
    a communication device
    a kitchen utensil
    a specific kind of tree
    a famous body of water
    a kind of shoe
    a brief literary quotation from before 1900
    a rare or unusual garment (e.g. a cuirass)
    a specific kind of bird
    a famous scientist (besides Einstein or Stephen Hawking)
    an interesting street name from your home town
    a piece of furniture
    a form of transportation
    a rare or unusual word (find one in the dictionary)of fewer than three syllables
    an animal
    some kind of meteorological phenomenon, i.e. weather
    a landmark
    a musical instrument
Anthony Williams Jul 2014
In shortening she made me jam roly poly
a Jezebel in a grand fully furnished way aglow
with bold basement statements broad brushed full on
to glaze the way to a plum job whole storey mission
proclaiming sofas as soft as any humble pin cushion
stuffed with unfinished symphonies in a mansion
booming out to empire builders' biggest guns
tended by harems of belly dancing bumble bees
burbling alongside a myriad of louder hues
flowing into bouffant hairstyle shrubs brushed
and blow dried into blooming privacy bushes


but outside she transformed
yet served by outsize platters
prolific with blazing seasonings
glazed with enough sweets
to satisfy a pudding feast
laid before a sumptuous appetite
comforting peahens with broad beans
ripened beside horizons of warm salads
dressed by blooming strawberries
pores plumped up from ladles
dunked deep as finger buns
into sloppy icing barrels
awash with hoarded nuts
of sweet toothed squirrels
engorged to dozing on branch barges
full to the gunnels and slow wallowing
in troughs laden with fatted chugs
rambling across rolling oceans awash
with tranquil rafts of whales nibbling
each morning on shoals expanding
beyond shallows into deep new ports
to offload uncontainable cargo
swung low on sweeping vista nets
dragging tree trunks packed like Jumbo
to land with a thump in wide sided carts


splashing and rocking slowly on their ways
until mopped up by richly saturated bales
of overgrown Danish butter grass pats
resplendent amidst dollops of luscious
double churned cream gateaux farm gates
open for cuddling golden syrup spoons of heat
spreading mellowness deep into the sponge
of unfolded meadows with encyclopedic knowledge
accumulated into increased volumes of decisive “belle”
resounding excitedly across the hills of plenty


chirrups bumping cheekiness into narrow valleys
to settle hawk eyes wide open to opportunities
accumulating it all in seam stretched sack boasts
of the good life storehoused bigger than most
but ready to collect and offload refreshment
like the slow but steady wobbling airships
stretched out resplendent across hay loft skies
fluffed up between a sweating Queen bed cumulus
keen to bounce into cloudless heady ensembles
swung high over thigh slapping oompah band hills


in a tug-of-war snapping heartstring restraint
and low frequency waves of contentment
she apportioned herself and me in generosity
celebrating a fully stocked love stacked larder
sweet with chock-a-block huffs and puffs
and then glad sighs of expansive success
in relief a schmooze diorama all she was after
Summer's glorious bamboozled ardour
by Anthony Williams
we're tip tip tipping
tap tap tapping out a rhythm for our breath
sweet ladles laden lady leaden candles
sticks candlesticks
lime sweet ricky baby
rolling rolling heavy cajoling
you want to know you want to know
greens orange peach and parkas
time with only embers
smelling sweet of sand glass green
lightning what a pretty king
Yenson Dec 2018
The lames and children of the Lesser minds
  are stirring, stirring, stirring

with paddles and ladles
with brooms and spoons
with knives and forks and slicers
with sticks and wooden mortars
with lean rods, brambles and twigs

Eagerly they stirred the cauldron
in demented exertions they huffed and puffed
Turn to the right turn to the left
one leg in and one leg out, we all turn around
we're stirring, we're stirring the *** they crowed

I looked into the ***
the *** was empty
I see nothing to stir
Nothing but hot air
nothing but hot air

What possesses lesser minds
into dances with the Gemini moons
The emperor's tailor
on yet another jape
Go on my puppets, stir that hotpot
I can sniff that delicious goulash  aroma from 'where'
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king
Hey, check out that timeless song by the Staple Singers -let's do it again.
It's a George-uos Classic
SG Holter May 2014
Two broken
Eggs on the floor.

Flour and milk on
The bench.

Sinks both full of
Dishes and knives,

Pots and stirrers and
Ladles. The bin

Has long since given
Up on containing.

Bacon in air.
Me on sofa.

What on Earth
Happened here?


She's home. *I got
Hungry.
cedar wood and fire
sweat and aromatic heat
ladles spilled on rocks
heated through unto the core
then getting up and leaving
and rolling naked in the snow
with a painful ecstasy
followed by relaxation
a deep sense of well being
and very pink skin
Choka
ChinHooi Ng Jul 2021
Days of pots and pans
ladles and bowls
sweet words have been
cut down
during the day
the habitual silence
can only be broken
with stainless steel forks and spoons
at night the bed routine
both tied back to back
snoring and buzzing of mosquitoes
intimate conversation happened
a long long time ago
this double bed
bigger than the endless night
the fatigue and exhaustion
they can only tell you the next morning
with a wry smile.
Recommendation: Misogamy
Sally A Bayan Nov 2016
........
........
Past eight in the ev'ning....rainy sky
Was out at the verandah...twas time
To pull the second bar of the gate
Street was a bit dark..........despite my dimming sight
I could see shapes...sensed some presence...heard soft noises'
Permeating the cool night atmosphere...three voices
Four guests, as in past nights...waiting outside...

A rushing, and tingling of plates, ladles and pots
The opening and closing of the glass door
After a while, our guests were served late dinner
Complaining.....in their own familiar way

Three impatient stray cats, kept meow-ing,
The neighbor's dog...as usual...patiently waited...
The brown-striped cat ran to the vacant lot
And started licking her share of fishhead
While the younger two, shared a single plate.
They all contentedly, ate in silence...

After a while...one by one,
Our regular guests disappeared
Lost, in the dark....among the tall banana plants
Sheltered themselves....somewhere safe,  
Their purrs, and hushed yelping,
Faded...in the black distance...
:::::::
:::::::::::::::::::
Twas time, to secure the bar of the gate,
.....................time, to close for the night...



Sally

Copyright October 24, 2016
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan
...nights are rich with their sounds...something could be wrong, if we didn't hear their pesistent voices...
Olivia Kent Aug 2013
Chilling in blanket, grey red edged, itching,
Bright clear night,
Leaves him colder,
Fingers smart,
Blue, cold attacked,
Feeling older,
Cloud cover dispersed,
Lack of cloud makes night feel worse!
Holds on to night's mantle , try to keep warm,
His tatty grey blanket protects him from harm,
May warm his heart, if only a little,
It's only the cold that keeps him alive,
My homeless friend, a fight to survive,
Fights on night after night,
Wrapped in winter's chill overnight,
Stern, severe, no desire to be here!
Circumstances beyond his control,
Left him stuck unearthly hole,
It's Friday night,
Greetings abound,
Soup served by poppets,
Angels wrapped in overcoats,
Ladles in hand,
Here again to meet Friday nights,
Supply with demand,
Not societal pariah,
A sad soul, lost in loneliness,
Living, but not alive!
Livvi Kent 29/04/2013
Aztec Warrior Oct 2015
Steel**

In the morning,
even before the sun got up,
you could smell it.
Thick fog
covered everything with dust.
The dust from
tall chimneys
spewing out
the mornings breakfast of ****.
It was like this
every minute,
every day,
every year
since the foundry was born.
It was fog-stench;
you breathed it,
you ate it,
you drank it;
it defined you
then spit you out
as lung cancer,
breast cancer,
the Big "C".
And then you were no more.
~~~
I lasted 10 years
til they kicked me out.
10 years,
and then they modernized
until the foundry disappeared
one day in its fog.
Today it covers another city,
in another country
carrying its dusty fog
to identify another people
with its cancer.
Another people who once
had beauty and lives.
~~~
10 years
carrying hand held  red lava,
pushing it into molds
fast - sparks flying -
burning skin;
and above this din, words -
"hurry boy,
don't let it freeze."
~~~
There are many of us now,
roaming dust covered streets,
spewed out
like last nights trash,
wondering who we are.

( written under this pen name ~~redzone 2/12/14)
Aztec Warrior
Note: I worked in a steel foundry
for 10 years carrying 100 pound ladles
of molten steel; pouring into sand molds.
It was heavy, hot ad ***** work.
I have many leg burn scars to prove it.

© 2014 redzone
another of my "work" poems
Hi tech at breakneck, but
we all sweat the small stuff.

I've met enough in my time to fill up a book and on each page a rhyme.

But at the last of us
we'll all be back to
the abacus.

Who needs computers that shoot us so full of **** and bits that can byte us and who's always right?
us?

Thing is,
the screen sits like Jesus,
on the table it reads us,
promoting agendas and that's
what the end is.

Formula one
Algorithmic and intense it
kicks all the sense from us
and ladles in tables and ****
sites and my nights are far
from dull.

I understand the pull of it
Google and broadband sit within
spitting distance of God and it's odd
don't you think that each time you blink a light goes off down the Amazon.

( that takes a bit of imagination, but Firefox being in on the creation makes it sound good)

Jerusalem.

Bring me my beads and frames made from wire
bring me connections for the pyre
'cause in the end. all it will be
is the abacus and me.
Courtney Feb 2014
she says "I'm hungry"
and we ladle out a bowl
of soup precisely two ladles
no more no less
lurching over the counter
to reach her hands and
after a quick scowl she
walks
                   away
and you scoff but we know
she's hungry for
more
than day old chicken broth and
wrinkled carrots and
empty promises

anyone can see
her eyes are
hungry
for change
Sofia Paderes Feb 2013
for the boat:
wood.
the more fragrant the better.
maple, perhaps
but
pine
would do fine.
a sail.
of African cloth
and some oars with handles
made from gold-and-silver ladles.
pixie dust.
ten bags, at least
borrow some from Tink.
that would be simpler,
i think.
we're read-- oh!
i almost forgot.
don't leave behind your knapsack
and copper cooking ***.
you'll also need
an extra dose of courage
a tablespoonful of faith
two cups of questions
and a bucketful of dreams.
now, you're ready.
who needs a map?
destination:
anywhere
and
everywhere.
you have your boat
you have your dreams
impossible is not
what
impossible seems.
betterdays Jul 2014
tidbits of joy,
scraps of silliness,
ladles of laughter,
a micron of mutiny,
a heap of a heart, golden and true
and a pinch of perpetuity.
blend together.

and  walla!

my  baby's smile
brooke Aug 2016
i was half asleep on a kitchen counter
curled up around the steak knives and
soup ladles, threaded through thick duvets

when you came and tucked yourself into me
with your burlap jacket, but I let you under the
covers--and I distinctly remember pressing my fingers
under your shirt only to feel how deathly cold you were
as if you had just come from the outside, or had risen up
from the snow drifts, opened your ribcage and let the cold
seawater fill the cab

but you were whispering something, a secret I couldn't make out
an undiscovered motive, slight of hand, slight of breath
you were lieing and I was letting you in, letting you in
beneath the weapons, beneath my skin, into my body
and you reached in for a handful of grain but I was a
barrel of cords and twine

meshed and tamped, you found the soft damp earth where
I grow and we somehow managed to make it seem ok
make it seem ok
you're out there ok
crimped and furious
a mean cuss on your lips



touching still means too
much to        me
(c) Brooke Otto 2016



just another dream I had.
Flynn Sep 2020
En point across eggshells
I tiptoe terrified around the point
Tireless trying to despatch any drama
I slip as I dance, Audible cracks

It’s been like this for a while now
Heart palpations, perpetually on edge
Panic attacks more frequent
Wait... they’re entirely new

Careful attempts to communicate
How I feel, frightened for firing the kiln
What will it be this time?
Interruption of calm converse circadian

Gaslighting? Guilt-Tripping?
Derailing? Tone-policing?
“I don’t deserve to be spoken to that way”
You say, as I crumble

Endless excuses and appalling accusations
You revolting repertoire maims me
Standing shattered, ******* fractured
fragmented as the eggshell environment I navigate

suspicious of my soul, I ponder the point
I take medication now, dose has doubled
The months you spent convincing me
a counsellor captioned me manipulative

Lies. Ladles of lies.
Thank god I know now
I had a plan in place
A time and space...

Delicately detailing
Now with unsullied sharpness
From alpha to omega
My swan song
PJ Poesy Mar 2016
Holographic stew
With notes of hippie ****
Served from coconut ladles
Into your banana leaf bowl
A gift from Guru Gabigoo
For feeling his essence
He wants you to know
We are a family of light
And he is the beacon
And his light reflects through us
And if your eyes feel like spirographs
And you feel like you're going to *****
Don't worry
It's just the mushroom curry taking effect
You will feel better in a few hours
Just relax
Go with the flow
We're your family now
We love you
That is
As long as you sign here
Relinquishing your life savings
And any material possessions
Such as jewelry, stocks or bonds
Cars, deeds, access to any trust funds
And/or checking accounts
Have you tasted the Kool-Ade?
It's really cool
You should try some

Brother PJ
Martin Bailes Feb 2017
'Trump pledges to unite 'divided country' after African-American history museum visit.'

Oh rich
so, so rich,
the kind of headline
shattering the morning
calm and leading you to
one more cup of tea because
once again this President just
about takes the biscuit.

You need reminding,
shall I remind you all,
"Why doesn't he show
his birth certificate?"
oh yes, there's a start,
"Now somebody told me
where it says Religion ...
it might have Muslim."
oh yes
there's that too.

"An 'extremely credible source' has
called my office and told me that
@BarackObama's birth certificate
is a fraud."
There! ... No more is needed to highlight
the deep, deep racism
this ignorant, lying,
self-serving, divisive man
peddled from dawn till dusk
from the year 2012 through 2016,
taking from the first Black President
of these here States
the very legitimacy
he then stood
upon.

This man!
This man visits the African-American
History Museum & ladles his out deeply
hypocritical nonsense about
unity & respect.

The African-American History Museum!
Food lacking taste ,
bland piles of paste
Steaming mounds of dead -
animals and plants served -
on a porcelain platter
Painstakingly hand stitched serviettes , glowing candelabras and chandeliers
A fork for this , a spoon for that
Silver ladles and oak tables
Sharp knives , brass covers ,
spatulas and carafes
A prayer before the vanquished are -
consumed followed by the highly
choreographed dance of the plates
The dinner ballet begins
Utensils clinging , bowls clanging -
Ice cubes striking glass
The music of the feast , the consumption
of the beast
Blood collecting in the corners of -
the mouth
King Protein controls the conflagration -
of gluttony like the conductor leads -
his orchestra
Voracious ramblings
Pining for more and more* ....
Copyright February 3 , 2018 by Randolph L Wilson * All Rights Reserved
Final Ellipsis Chapter XXXI
Horcondising  Castle Reign - Sudpichi
Transversal Valleys  The  Ferments - Parapsychological Regression

Vernarth says:
“In this regression, I was fascinated in the final capitulars mode, in the lands of the transversal valleys of Alhué, Pichi- Chile. Where I have the cradle of incipient mythology, among spirits sheltered in valleys of dusty roads and the fringed concessions of the Lord of Death, in the full lands of the Collateral Valleys, Land of Borker, Kaitelka, Leiak, Espantacuculi, Autraldisis, Hyperdisis, Universe Zig Zag, Wasos, Spermazoid Fable and Mountaineers etc; that will make up the mythological and fabulous beings glossary in this region of the Transparent imaginary castle; that it is my residence and my parents without limits or parallels in a large estate of divine blood and myself; Vernarth de Sudpichi, Wernarth-Werthian of compulsion and steely romanticism, of the majestic living spirit of the astral Commander of Alexander the Great of Macedon. Here I am also Macedonian, in the domains of my ancestors with more than seven hundred years, which will be held in this savage auction of all the Horcondising ranchers, in convalescence before my purgation. All will be deprived of their normality, and I not of the mine! But in this regression, I have to set off with all my ancestors to the high mighty Horcondising; Castle of our aristocratic lineage that will take me to my father Bernardolipo and my mother Luccica; making me her son again and Hetairoi Commander of the magnanimous Phalanges of Alexander the Great.

Vernarth, beyond a before, collects honey from the ******* of a pale blowfly. By opening his sclera, with a bad step, he tries to continue dreaming, to subtract minutes from the contained time and neutered micro space of his Period. What would Mr. Hefestos say, if the light of Jesus would be the basis of a tri-founder Chronophone, starting a spectral casting, Ideal to roll from the top, among so many organic masses and his round neck? On this clinging to the jars of altered bacteria that ran in terror through the native forest, their languages continued to ferment, devoid of terrifying languages, in which their piggy banks and clods of fear were drained, that new fabric roofs rise through the raids. failed. Sour loves and sour laborious flashes on his empty molars, sublingual substances bubbling intraorally and intraorganically. Through the other orifices and interstices, new intestinal sounds drawn, calm the rhythm not only of the distended ignorance of my sustenance from apples and bacteria trembling between my steps to redeem. Some celeripedes sharpen their stride, and others weakly digest the faded day of advancing without trick or fiction, to that anorexic politics, of not stopping walking, even if the cold makes me amnesiac, I will sit naked at dawn to paint on the exhausted mural, I will wait the downpour of colors to rearrange this sad and melancholic song. They will explode as with their marsupial bags on the grouped beings that were waiting to be surveyed to persuade the bad omen of being auctioned to another rank confessed aphonic ferment, in this vessel on a stove of so much frank sliding, without stopping without false support, ending the day from where I left, at the table next to my feline Goddess Pirucha, free from this press, which does not issue any limits, only seconds that run with gasping flares at myself running with my back to my identical, arriving where my anachronistic intervals speak, my new births. If it is that I break off the cliff and am born again in new strides, if I am or was I...?

Vernarth says:
“At five in the morning we sit down to watch the exhausting specters, royal masters come for you and me to give the diadem or mushroom halo over the Horcondising. Adelimpia my grandmother, takes between her hands, tireless lines by palmist possess, in her iris laser, makes her see more than read with blisters in her eyes from so much reading, poppies in her hands from so much watering the mountainous skies. They get up, Kaitelka takes all the Downian language, Aunt Trueno, fight the pyre of loyal false clowns and bio dreams, to reprimand the living eternally, what I collect from today will be wood for my candle, so in the Ganges of Pichi I will rasmillar the ashes of other handsome brave men trying to die. When I return, my right hand will fit each year of my obituary anniversary, I will try to understand the shadow of pus from Thanatos lecturing to know, to die, maybe a thousand years will take me, but the Ceibo tree of my duplicate coral house will always take me where my Christ, making me thunder of years of round and round, to take me from my brothers and to roam the pasture tenderly by the thin clouds covering me on my pyre. Bernardolipo my grandfather, is with strands of alfalfa and in the hands of others, horses lacking in vitamins, lacking green palaces, salmon paths to announce with horns before leaving, with an arrival from the west to the east, both to narrow in their sleeves wounded, already drying off from the serous mountain spittle, in a pornographic nap of young killers. They close the portal of my Uncle Hugo, full of olive edges and dowels, whims and conditions of stars between grounds, in the well-run teeth of some swallowed shadows of the badly created threshold. Eight in roundabout…, eight feet looking at the night ground, rags that take the paste from their shoes, in the luster of beautiful life, and that is where I stay walking. They take their rakes of grafted winter plum housed in the suppuration of the caterpillar, with their interminable divine garments, with divine grace to overshadow it, she does for me what I do for her, every pain of the soul suffered by jealousy pain who wants to moo in the secretion of the wound, every little thing, every little life, preceded by the donor Pichi- bio, or microscopic life that strides along the cobblestones of the dying Bohemian lamp. They have to make captivating sounds, lurking sounds, Corti pipe ***** sweetness, sonic plant - sonic biblo in order to use it in sounds without clothes, which were once made of very generous acetate, or pieces to pay attention, when a green cricket sobs , for the departure of her beloved red cricket mother. How incapable we are of collecting memories never remembered, like the minimum dividing phrase between my heart and that of the cricket in the small corner of its left thorax. It's half past five, very close to the monk's valley, the Scarecrow, on his knees was picking up one of his gold teeth, the slime from the tapestry of his floor shone, and his clavicle was *****, almost cybernetic, moving away from one of his incisors gold teeth. When my maternal grandmother was surprised by Queen Anne, he blushed and gulped down another drain. Adelimpia, Bernardolipo, Aunt Trueno, and Anne or Queen Anne appeared, dancing in broken measures of Brahms dances, to meet the Horcondising massif, to open routes to the end of a purgative phase. The scarecrow, fell apart and covered his face, but when he connoted that he felt emotions, he joined them, so that in the dark dawn more stars could be seen as in the oven roasted milk, in stormy shadows and stormy ladles, for the snack of the cloudy adventure to reach the dreaded corner of beyond the Sudpichi that was left behind. The man of the cornfields, scare crows, stood out in the day, sharpened the night, to arrive quickly at the tabernacle of Joshua de Piedra, to finish the ranks of the proscenium, of the souls of the new space to dwell. When walking, between paths blown by the trapped chest of the giant melancholic flat-footed ogre, who was trapped in rags, but smelling of chamomile with blooming mistletoe shoots, lighting a corner match in the Zig Zag Universe.

Here the Cyprian squirrel smokes, hiding from rays and sparks, not situated internal winds, in the name of the dragged crushed leaves of certain minks of the crusades in Jerusalem and in the cut off Merovingian lives, placebo, gyroscope, trident, where my worst go balloons and emetic parties riding them in the microscopic rising of my Sun, in a cascade of external cries, where I pronounced the symbols of terror, in which Lepanto's blood runs. Serene faint orchid black blood; fled widow amidst stoning or slicing pyres.  Turbine oar, which circulates my right and left hand. The sand lapse twists, twists and becomes wet, ruminant fear of simply not sleeping, eternal chews of the moth-eaten wood of Nazareno, unsnailed nails that swallow my petite ivy hands. The four petards, with their shadows on their backs in late nights of bats from Nostradamus's closet, in this black and sweaty commoner night, I will dress with them, the clothes that will be spun in prophecies, as if walking through the sand of heaven in peace and final , in the dihedral of his own soul, and his temple adding zeroes in the depths of indisposed Love, of sudden love, of love that rises in angular planks and they rise with their little sticks from the devil's triangle, which thus took me at once in the brandy near the shadow of the epitaph of the stream and the smelly sky, ramshackle Heaven ..., Eden of pale exile. The tangent wind, touched the untouchable wind, walking in circles in the arms of a Samurai that glassy ..., in white stupor danced through the green grassland, in the stupid and feverish field, leaning towards a gentle rabbit, among swirls of the gene of a rodent crossing the legs of my grandmother Adelimpia, who moved her cane between the sheets of the new calendar, the year of the rabbit. Go upstairs with the others, stupefied by the moody fumaroles burning, I see the roofs of the Horcondising, I see their sweaty beams of gut fat from ****** henbane, thick veined beams, catching rodent teeth and rearing new claws, to tremble by the Ceiling veins drunk amidst plague scandals dying on the first try. Leiak, omnipresent vague spirit of the gentle water dancer, lives on the water with his chin and slug, his jocular back is seen, breaking the lines of wells between flesh and silhouettes.  Before the First Station, the first of the three remaining nights before reaching the Joshua de Piedra volcano. "



Apostle Saint John continues in a parapsychological trance:

“Queen Anne and Aunt Thunder look at each other with rye crumbs in their hands, walking along the swaying floor; the Goddesses are silent when they breathe again. Vernarth's father; Bernardolipo laces a log and a piece of cheese. Hungry cats jump to the tabletop, Hugh Uncle from Vernarth, lights the log, keeps nosing with thick-gauge chocolate, shafts of white chocolate and southern marshmallow. His grandmother Adelimpia bathes his hands in beautiful water, takes his bow, rolls up his sleeves and jumps to the round dough and to the celestine stone, cooking beautiful tortilla water, baptized on the edges of each penetrating eye. Leiak spirit, runs and superimposes the screen, in dinner show, for four that bulge guts before the tasty bread, Hugh, lifts his envelope from the front end, Bernardolipo takes out his imperfect hat, they eat Christmas rolls, with soft aniseed and nutty aromas as in threads. They eat within the ten minutes that Leiak allows him to eat, otherwise his peer monks of silence will ****** the thick crumbs from his tortillas, which run to his house in an anodyne mouth, cradling funny hallucinations, full belly, full of sleep, without owners, in vocal horns that sound the night, to get up later. Tired and fermented, they sit down to eat, to look reclining, on the warm ground of Heaven, and the heel of the entire green north continues walking along the estuary. Adelimpia sews a sock every night, to put it on the very top, so she would have two more socks left to knit, until she arrived at her high school, to meet Joshua de Piedra, to start the glorified wind, to mediate and reach eternal heaven with a stone, to the empty believers of the beautiful death, of the beautiful deaths of the Horcondising. Here they sleep, they travel, they stretch their hands to heaven, Adelimpia as a seal, now the King of Heaven is wearing, in the first idiomatic reverie that appears, Hildegard von Bingen…, and she collected flowers on the backs of the rabbits with blessed multicolored t-shirts. She tells them komme susser tot - wie ist diese Blau Rabbit? They reply Schoen hilde Blau - the wallhalla will go with us with messages and flowers, to distribute its pollen throughout the world. In the distance, circular northern lights hiccupped as they fell, endless troops opened the plague on the ground, mocking the imprint of the sandals of venerated magicians, of inordinate quadruped *****; Jacinta and Centella, brought the pantry, on the left back and on the third rib the image of Francesco Forgione, who on it had a bundle of corn bread, and milk from a cute sheep that they brought from the garden to taste the days of meek food items, and others in the plates covered by required hands, bread with raisins of old people served on the plateau. Centella with a good ***, she walked with her mother Jacinta, with a disorder of tender and finesse, next to two small donkeys hired from other dreams of a manger, with the muscular leaves of the oak, making the eyelids of the whale heavy down Kaitelka who sang next to the scare crows in delicious hibernation times, on the terrace where there never was one. Acacian sepals and tales of resinous sailors fell, as in the cellars of an entire ancient history, on the archaic and twinkling stables of the Horcondising, the sylphic kites flee swirling over the frightened green sky, like all the hands up on the shoulders of some mountain people , defying bad sleep before they wake up and spill their fury of corrosive acid on the supposedly nobles who wish to pass and cross the bleachers of their island feats, under a humble shoulder of tender feats, of dry leaves on the skirts of the good Lord; owner of the water and of all the eroded gorges of the waterfalls and combinations of the god of the rain that is about to fall.
Adelimpia prepared cornbread and rye from good waters, Aunt Thunder washed the waistbands, the scarecrows cleaned the rattle of his eardrum towards an empire of sounds and a planet of celestial waves, with bread without crumbs, in the face of the pandemonium that was coming. Pocket of loose thread, that is lost in the night and that springs from the day, with ostentatious manners, and how close are they?  While they read all the multicolored letters on the ground about the ceremonial flood. Joshua saw them as a colored fumarole, spoiling their shrunken auras, under the boot of a role stealth, where the brush lunge for her boots begins, which later loom among the epistolary letters of good from Zefián; steward of the greater demon, who would be forced to make the main stained glass, standing on the poles in each hermit tree to recruit the lordship riders of the massive autumn, in an eternal wailing of birch trees in harmony. Uncle Hugh, is a current that builds and circulates against gravity, outlines the chair, mother nature of the new hints of floating islands trying to touch the godmothers of the golden valley and the mysterious shine of their Huasos eyes, still drunk among their jugs of gunman colt. It cuts through the wind like an eternal wind from the Australdisis galaxy, like a snowball in the belly of a marmot, like lost fingers wearing shoes, and without gloves, as if getting lost to find oneself again preferring pale-flow sleds, to cross mounted on the loud silence in the snow at the top and its song. Queen Anne embraces the imagery of her husband Joshua, life and song, it came from the good, wild to beat the yesteryear, I live among trees handcuffed in the mist of the well armed. I bring pellets for my Winchester tired of his locked case, here he spent a whole day in the Lonquen meadows when his plow got jammed, plowing hard rocky backs and soldiers, today my beautiful sower in Valle de Oro, is dredged by the sacred image of our rosary, good Mary, who never tires of putting pillows on our prayers, like sticks in the air in her diluvium eyes. Larks appear, eating nits on the greasy hair of the evil devil, on the copulation of her planted females, ebbing and with amended pleasures, delimited, and atrophied awards for trophies of the good moment for dividing the entire time. She became uncomfortable walking and breathing, our tongues would become thin, and our arms would get tangled in the sticky grass. Leeches rubbed their exposed areas, gargles and spit, cut every minute of being able to regret the atomized step in their entire body. Time was wasting, there were no beings that injured themselves without knowing why they flagellated themselves on earth, since one day a calf suckled them at night on the hillside, running in better circles because of the milk they drank…. blowflies polished their aged wings, butterfly princesses undo their corset, making the world of Vernarth towards a little more toast of bells and books in the right pocket of the Christian beetle, who tried to read it further from the exile and illiteracy of an anthropoid that obscures its oblong patchwork, continuing in the work of educating oneself, of high eternal reigns trained and of forests of currents under the clouds of the night of the abandoned city.


They ferment, and their fingers and toes fall, from thousands of losses in this neglected city, distilled into fermentation eclogue, with malformed sins ascending by the bridle of Vernarth's grandfather; by flanking the great nose of his dilated and degenerate black horse, with an equine shape that transported him from individual to individual and hyper static, subtracting the ferment of his failed and frustrated past mistakes. Its hooves measured twenty-one meters in diameter; its **** seemed to be made of pincers that would crack any tender drawing on the yellowish sky of ceibo trees, of the stormy fermentation in the Horcondising. Adelimpia and Ann, counted and counted on the beads of the sacred rosewood, Hugh sweated his hands, in prone fluctuations of interaction, the Scarecrow and Kaitelca jumped on giant oblong drums, talking about the hidden meadows, and the words crossed for squander them on the repentant. On the left side the round shadow of the prophetic Evil chanted in reverberations with the waves of the curls of the massif, he was almost about to ***** between his eyebrows, the vain opera of Horcondising that did not sound, but if loudly they were corrugated the slopes mourning towards the navel of the hundred feet, which suffered denoting the strips of the nearby town hall, like a transparent soul, carrying in its lacerated hands some pity of retreating and reviving, what the true architecture of life, more than the form ..., makes the light that penetrates solids. In this way the rocky massif pulverized rugged reliefs, like annelids wheezing through the tops of the Infradeep openings, with three groups of three hundred beings, which seemed to be three groups of thousands emerging from their caverns in anguish of the worst confinement of disbelief. Adelimpia, held the cord of the axis of the weary planet, Anne restored the acute crucifix meridians that moved her heart from the sinister side encompassed ..., like a cursed globe moving to another nebula, towards one of its 9600 years in expansion, after oscillating in one of its solar rays, which gathered on the back of the mule Jacinta, multiplying on her bank of meek ideas, to reside above all the assemblages in millions of benefits, since the world is an improper world”

The world has no end; God is a beautiful mute world, where we make mistakes every day believing that we are axiomatic. Rather, we are the junk of an almost noise that tried to leave us as a legacy of the first noise of a creation that felt itself wandering, perhaps without its breathing, in its lipped wise orifice of the most repressible protoforms that continue to devoutly prepare bilious liquids to lead us.   For each dinner, without having stars enjoying themselves in their multi-polygonal sandwiches. Memory is a raging waste, every time we try to get to lick her honey like herself; we are exhausted from a starving minute of non-coexisting life. Hugh and Aunt Thunder, held the mats, so that their own belongings would not be blown up, they, especially Hugh; He sliced a bottle of live jet Tinto in his hands to quell his revolted thirst. Perhaps they wanted to give back to the world a blood source, once and for all to give drink to those who deserve to be it as innocent angels, walking with their calloused plants on vehement fire, to just get to the tithe and not be upset with so much terror. Along the esoteric shore of the river of leaves of Talamí, this is where they will run through pasty meadows and trembling horses, through the easy or the difficult bond imprisoned and paired with the misty physiognomy in mere restlessness. “Alpha day, alpha night, Omega day Omega Night...”
Horcondising  Castle Reign - Sudpichi
Classy J Feb 2019
Soothing riddles like cats and cradles.
Swear in front of momma then imma get beat by ladles.
True stories or fables, said across the tables.
No lie detectors, so at any time a brother can become a defector.
With police chomping at the bit like they ******* Hannibal Lector.
Rat mazes in these projects man- there ain’t time for no breath here!
Doesn’t matter if your blood is red or blue,
because if you do the crime you best be prepared to take the sceptre!
But because the game is rigged a brother gotta do what he got to do!
So, sorry pastor I ain’t got no time for no lecture.
When poverty is all that I know and I’m just so desperate for the nectar.
And I can’t just sit by while my family piles up in debt here.
If only I was born in another sector.
Or in another lightyear!
But for now, I gotta do ***** jobs like Dexter.
While toxicity in this environment continues to cycle on and festers.
So, with all this going on I had to drop out this semester.
And all though being educated can get me out of here.
Once your born in the sinkhole, it feels like there is no point to try to get out of here.
For even if I tried to get a good 9-5, my past will become my interceptor.
For a crook can’t be a model civilian like a Ford Pinto can’t become a kia stinger.
I just pray my kids have a chance to get out of here and live out a life not ingrained in fear!
So, by shear will power I’ll do what I can for them to get out of here!
Maybe one day they’ll come to see me later in their years.
On the other side of the glass wall of the prison cell,
and I’ll start to tear up with pride and grin from ear to ear.
To see them work a clean and good 9-5,
and build up a family from the blood money that got them there.
Robert C Howard Aug 2021
Earth (Pangaea)

Pangaea heaved and shifted
beneath the fire-storm sky.
Colliding plates and spewing mountains
shook, roared and thundered
under the brutal chaos
of torrential cataclysms.

In time she yielded her ire
to millennia of pacific rains -
her severed crust
set adrift across the oceans
like gigantic earthen rafts.

Jungles sprang up and terrible lizards
came, grazed and left their bones.
Forests, grains and multifarious beasts
grew and perished in accord
with their past and future destinies.

So here we are - earthbound,
tossed from our mothers' wombs -
fated to live and breed
by the grace of miracles
far beyond our ken.

Beloved mother Gaia,
from whose dust we are raised,
nurture and sustain us
and sing us to our mortal sleep.

2. Air

Air - earth's miracle brew of
     oxygen, nitrogen and all the rest
          meted out in perfect harmony.

Air - silent and still on a moonlit night -
     driver of sheeted rain on window panes -
          and winds that shake the trembling aspens.

Air - author of land and ocean squalls -
     bringer of that ominous pallor
          that presages a tornado's furor

Air - invisible aerial highway
     for majestic eagles and turbo-jets -
         medium of rhetoric and symphonies.

Air – window to the cosmos
      and our fragile life–giving broth -
          unwitting conveyer of toxic alchemy.

Keep watch my sisters and brothers:
     the air we breathe is what we make it
          or rather what we let it be.

3. Water

Water like a capricious deity
     wanders through time and topography -
     cherished and cursed for
     what it gives and what it takes away.

Gentle rains and strident gales
     sculpt rivers and streams
     through forests and plains
     bound for union with the open sea.

Diurnal tides surge and wane
     at the whim of the charismatic moon.
     Ice mountains advance and retreat;
     rock-strewns moraines left in their wake.

Turbulent currents
     soar over jagged cataracts,
     spraying pastel prisms
     across the misted valleys.

Beneath our all too fragile skins,
     secret sanguine rivers navigate
     our veins and arteries
     bathing organs, limbs and sensors
     with curative balm and sustenance.

Wellspring of all elements,
     fill our daily ladles
     and grant us the will and empathy
     to bequeath the same to our progeny.

4. Fire

Two hundred million years ago
our Paleolithic cousins
seized branches from a burning forest
and stepped into a bold new world.

By the glow of fire-lit caves,
and the scent of searing venison,
they gathered wits and tools
to craft shelters and weaponry.

Their children's children would design
forges and furnaces, factories
and build engines that run on fire.

But their anxious siblings in despair
snatched lightning from the sky
and twisted by fits of anger pride
made also muskets, missiles, bombs
and nuclear Armageddons.

Vulcan, god of nobler flames
open our blood-stained eyes
and show us the means
to stay our arson lust and
abide by the light of reason.

*Revised and integrated version, December, 2015
I am reposting this poem cycle because the piano composition of the same title is now complete. Here is a link to that composition.

https://clyp.it/0xe00hyn
sofolo Jan 2024
Sweaty bodies spike volleyballs outside of the avocado. That’s when you strolled in with some sand in your toes. A few chance hellos & maybe a wave lost in the mist of a crowd. But that wasn’t it.

Nor the platinum locks & black triangle pointing down with no birthday drink,
Nor the lack of sushi in a rooftop bar where strange girls tell us how perfect we are,
Nor the climbing onto your lap when we make out in your car,
Nor the deep-throat choke that went too far.

It was fast & it was fun with ladles of pre-*** but not enough love. Maybe if your heart had the right gland, you’d drip something meaningful into my cup.

& when the pouring rain collapsed the windshield, I witnessed hometown glory trampled by equestrian gold. & your touch was cold. But your homes have such stylish throw pillows.

Now you get your pills for *******. & your smile is a jackknife. While I’m down the hall listening to a young man from Venezuela who ran through the jungles of Panama so he could sit in a rooftop bar or make out with a boy in a car & not fear for his life.
Yenson Feb 2021
And the labourers of superficialities scurry unabashed
ladles at ready to churn and oars angled for murky dips
for its the seasons of stirring livened in joyless cancellation
why cuddle recipes of venom and parade witless noisy chefs
why buy bottomless pots and pans to put fire to salad and ice cream
why bring the orchestra into the kitchen from the promenade
to tug the double bass and clash the cymbals in distaste
me see no fog in the  offing nor do sane sages digress
tis not Sulemani pointing I take you for a bride
its a world of measure me for measure you
for honest truth carry honest intentions
does equality sleep with olive branches
show me the strength that owns penance
for therein lives the realness of ***** times expunge
where the labourers of superficialities are far from Stalingrad
and adorned Grecian urn will hold the pure honey from Olympia
Bard Oct 2020
Bullet proof vests to go to school
Future is full of automatic tools
Streets got kids played like fools
And killers enforce the rules
While kings collect gold coins and jewels

War machines grind youth into years
Watch grown men get juiced for tears
Death in the mirror closer than she appears
Meanwhile and idle fool tries to keep his cheer
Its out of fear as his lover she draws near

Masks on in public no longer metaphoric
Ignore the pandemic you'll still catch it
Faceless claims made baseless face it  
Maskless heartless degenerates
They got an epidural so they cant feel ****

**** with negligence while pleading allegiance
Twenty twenty decade of the convergence
Some say year of the divergence
Glaciers lurk below the Dow index
the Titanic awash in market resurgence

Oh woe is me woe is me, woe is they
We won is what the slow in the head say
Cause we're all sitting in Pompeii
Don't matter if your candidate won yesterday
We all gonna be toe tagging today  

Whatchu you know about management, a delegate, a canidate
What your told what you heard its ****** sad isn't it
Don't know about Gadaffi, Benghazi, just emails from Hilary
Their propaganda prattle blaming the soup kitchen ladles
Act like cattle and they got you saddled and addled
Black Coffee, 2 packs of Cigarettes, Cold Sweat, Quantum Leap
Will today be a good day?
Is life worth living?

The answer bellows back at me
Soft and
Sharp and
Sordid; sinopia spilt and subsequently washed all over the page
Slithering out from beneath harrowed brush
Found in the hot breath fingerpaintings on frosted car windows
Dished out in massive, steaming hot vats
With ladles,
Too heavy to hold
NO!!!

— The End —