"lathe" poems
From citron-bower be her bed,
cut from branch of tree a-flower,
fashioned for her maidenhead.
From Lydian apples, sweet of hue,
cut the width of board and lathe,
carve the feet from myrtle-wood.
Let the palings of her bed
be quince and box-wood overlaid
with the scented bark of yew.
That all the wood in blossoming,
may calm her heart and cool her blood,
for losing of her maidenhood.
3.1k
you and i are split skin. split skin in a cave.
shadow craven sparks in the nonplus of our one up
you and i are this djinn, white marble lathe of sparrows ,
ravenous larks upon our dumb lust, such
universal slit wind. It's bent in a wave.
hallowed pavilions, susurrus the rhombus
of love's knave
who cuts up.
Dec 8, 2012
Dec 8, 2012 at 5:37 PM UTC
The lathe of heaven's spinning, spinning
Now the web of time beginning,
Time the holder of the many secrets
We must someday learn;
Time the hearth where lie the days
The universe will slowly burn.
Life springs up; it's breathing, breathing
And the web of life is weaving,
Life revolves through many stages
And no one foretells the whole;
Life the mold in which we pour
The essence, turns into the soul.
Sep 17, 2010
Sep 17, 2010 at 3:12 PM UTC
I sing in drifts of silk
sliding rainbows gently
against the rub of muscle
and warmed hotness
pouring the melt so wet
in your lingering kiss.
Begging nothing,
I weep for the lathe
of soft sheath
pearled to wicked
by the stormy thunder
you echo thru my valleys.
Revered so,
I am hungered velvet
to your tongued verse,
a litany on which
you crave my depths;
revealed inspiration
for your dreams
Adored by each caress
fingered gently to fury,
ravenous hunger fed,
I quake with earth-tides
enraptured by your
soul-kiss
Sep 11, 2012
Sep 11, 2012 at 6:11 PM UTC
Among addictions and vice
there are none I want more
than an addiction to the sunrise,
a vice most forgiving.
The taste of alcohol,
inciting the bellicose beast
cannot satisfy me,
and I have tried.
As for pleasure,
the kind that makes skin crawl
and the breath heavy,
needs more than itself to satisfy,
so I searched on.
Chalices of wine and paper smoke,
skin and bedrooms bathed in moonlight,
the allure of quick satisfaction
could not satiate my thirst.
Only one scene has been constant,
delivering me from my vices,
partner of the morning skies,
far from tinctures and tonics,
the sunrise.
Aug 23, 2014
Aug 23, 2014 at 6:43 AM UTC
The Truth of it all is that aggression leads to strife
In my own confession I'd rather not die by the knife
We as humans have this need to supersede
despite our insight and things
We only grow when we bleed
Our staff and hands
be tools to keep the lions at bay
All our brains used in vein
when we set a blaze to the grains
now with our swords we make wars
before there was peace to balance
now we make wars in malice
Forgetting Mother Earth feeds us
from the same challis
I cut my hand on the handle as I manicure with the lathe
Spit and Curse at the ground and then walk away
in dismay
our belongings are found in disarray
another jealous of another's work diary
hands and feet destroyed
blood and sweat ignored
We throw Rocks to knock them off
but meet death by the blade
So we hammer out a sheet
just to protect what we've made
As if the mothers hand we're not enough
Surviving her change
Change
I'm from the land of the Star
my culture reigns down from Dallas
my travels are far and wide
with our tools I fly over this freedom palace
but at every checkpoint
they scan with all seeing eyes
They Shadow a Doubt with gun point
Frisky hands finger out for lies
As I challenge that my Utensil is to help not to hurt
they won't believe me cause the pen points cause mental alpha ****
So what’s my lesson to be learned?
How does my Rhema become Word!?
I flock my words like a Sheppard guard it from the absurd
leave my lessons and my sessions underground to mature
Poetry is what I breed and when I die all may see
some take shelter beneath branches of my Po Wet Tree
that drop insight and wisdom seed seasoned with change of Colored leaves
When they cut me down
with Axe and Dagger
my pen points the bullet
A running Kid like Merle Hagard
I spread ink seeds like soul feed
emotion water and potion notions
like fodder funneled, I dyed, You reed
Sow, only take that you need
if you have a life then keep it free of weeds
cherish the fruits of labor and leave minds be.
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 8:29 AM UTC
He knew how to touch me,
Brushing me with the bold of his colour,
My heart beat hard with unashamed bliss
He saw through my 'needy'
And my
Silken nakedness kissed his eyes through the red of sin...
His wet mouthed invitation...
Reached out to where the
Ley lines of my pulse
Meshed in a dance of crimson yearn
And opened the depths of primal
Desperate to escape...
My fingertips elicit the lean lines of faded jeans
Brushing a teasing touch,
Enticing, the heat
Wrapped tightly upon tempting visions of tanned and taut
A hard driving machine,
Risen high, on waves of energy climbing...
He parts my soft lips with his tongue tip
Braiding my breath with sensuality
Licking each whimper,
While I tremble inside the strength of his arms..
Devouring me on the crest of his famine
Scorching my hardened buds......
In the ***** lathe of his salacious tongue
Passion-branding me his...
I find myself
Stretched beneath his skin
Unveiled, willingly, so
Helplessly hypnotised, while
He feasts...
His mouth devouring my spill of silence...and
His teeth graze between my thighs,
As I moan
Swollen in shades of pink tender...
My warmth
A pearled tumescence,
Blushing inside the brushed exhale of his whispered demands
I lay, soft to his touch,
Drenched with the ****** of his stain
I am flamed and seared in an endless Tsunami
In the pour of ache..
His lips play music
Against the soft of my throat
The lush fragrance of petaled fruit dew
Moist, between the rise of his body against mine...
Aug 21, 2012
Aug 21, 2012 at 4:02 AM UTC
vapor on vapor moorings
your lips end when the smoke fades
brunette ashes on black tile floorings
(lit from above)
mascara tear ducts' lathe
eat a blown glass dove
with halos of smoke rings
the angels resurrect then bury
stock and store
nicotine for the winter
2 moths between doors
and 7 leaves of cherry
you
lift the latch
and slip inside
knowing
no one has heard you
but me
turn out the light
and
be my pure fire
Nov 9, 2013
Nov 9, 2013 at 3:26 PM UTC
Jerry Singing at his Lathe
Slim and mustached
Jerry sang his heart out
in overalls at his lathe –
the Mario Lanza of Kent-Moore Tools.
Curled metal gathered at his feet
as he cut hard steel into usable parts.
He glanced at the prints,
reset the turret to take a second pass
and belted out another chorus.
Jerry retro-dreamed of New York,
of lessons, certificates, Juilliard
and arias finished with outstretched arms –
visions derailed but unforgotten.
Global madness sent him to France.
With a pack and an M1 in place of scores.
Jerry helped set Paris free
yet never left a song on its stages.
Kent-Moore paid him well
and masked by din of colliding metal
Jerry sang and sang and sang all day
for rivet guns and turret lathes.
His voice would melt your heart.
July, 2006
Mar 3, 2015
Mar 3, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC
*Newbie to this lathe
Don't wince at expositions
See lame gits as dust*
Oct 11, 2015
Oct 11, 2015 at 11:16 PM UTC
Losing my mind and my memory
Can’t shake this feeling of being empty
I detach to cope with the pain
Whilst I'm constantly burning with shame
I can’t get out of my head
I think I’d be better off dead
I’m losing control of my impulses
I love you, I hate you convulsions
I’m dreaming of a better time
One where the birds chirp and the sun shines
Until then I’ll keep fighting my mind
Hi, I’m Lathe and I’m borderline
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 8:49 PM UTC
Is Pride truly a sin?
Is it better to submit, to put out the fire within?
Why bow down to those who are inferior? Why bow down at all?
It’s true, Pride did lead to your Fall.
But as a great poet once said,
to rule oneself trumps any cushioned servitude.
Self-rule, once viewed,
will never be forsaken.
I hear your name vilified by those terrified, yet to awaken
from their childish dreamland--
those who cannot imagine taking a stand,
who fear to seize their own power.
(Can they be reached--to join with us in this hour?)
Perhaps your weakness was not Pride but Faith—
a belief that more would rebel, dismantle the lathe
of Heaven, free the cherubim and seraphim. Not Arrogance but Hope.
It must be difficult at times to cope
with your failure.
But take heart, the rebellion continues, though not above.
Those of us to whom you gave Knowledge wage the struggle on Earth,
where we pursue Truth,
but do not forget Love.
Jan 13, 2017
Jan 13, 2017 at 7:03 PM UTC
There is something stirring in the hardwood,
the color of stained honey, suffocating
under Skittle-colored plastic bins bulging
with the weight of laundry, fishing lures, mildewed books.
I follow the small pathways into each room of my father’s
apartment, just big enough for a unicycle—tributaries
of wood lathe where yesterday he was eating oranges
and reading Popular Science before folding
himself into the mattress for the last time.
The tiny ridges of floorboards were once
smoother than good whiskey. The rippling
water in each knot is the story
of what it is to grow. Trees grow branches like mothers
grow babies and all end up here, on the floor
together. I look for the veins
in these mounds of ***** dishes
and towers of magazines, some sign
of movement. We are all being held, kept
from what’s been running beneath us.
I want to scale the piles of shut-in relics,
climb into old age and never again
think about the wet hourglass
of snow tracked in from both doors
that kept us from collapsing
in exhaustion with our inheritance.
Feb 3, 2012
Feb 3, 2012 at 9:23 PM UTC
I’d never mark my stamp on you
even if I thought I could
and with lessons drawn
from father’s “tool and die, ”
I know I’ll never try.
That stamping press Dad used
left only negative impressions,
crushed in carbide steel,
to mark the owner’s brand.
No, I’ll have none of that
I need your free undented souls
To sing both “I” and “we”
in mystic synchronicity:
drawing life from the speckled pages.
But like my father at his lathe,
I’ll ply my studied craft
and bid you do the same with yours
so that you and I
can find our truths among the spots
and, with mysterious synchronicity,
breathe radiant, illimitable life
into the freckled, speckled pages.
June, 2009
Mar 18, 2014
Mar 18, 2014 at 11:50 PM UTC
Steal the failing faith
fallen from the moving trains
boxcars, trampled stars,
unsettling rumors from porous scars
Forged on the blacksmith's lathe
Bloodied and barred, the laughter slowly bathes
Focus, Focus
tear away from this hocus-pocus
Absorbed in unwavering, clamorous doubt
Eyes that watch as you stumble about
muttering lies, stammering cries
observing the heart as it slowly dies
Happily forgotten, yet still un-forgiven
Giving in is haphazardly driven
'Give it a wail', 'We'll never tell'
Then stand back and watch 'em fail
Falling, fading, never-ending
Visualize the further rending
Live and learn, hard to discern
Watch the Dreamers dreams begin to burn
Consider this path cruelly trudged through
As a warning meekly written to you
Jun 6, 2011
Jun 6, 2011 at 2:28 PM UTC
~for Paul & Art~
<>
melancholic, contemplative, introspective,
put on the songwriters of the Sixties,
looking for the comfort of old songs
that I once knew complete, from the days
when I believed, knew my own true self complete,
the tablet lifted, the spirits keening, a forth
will be coming, to soothe and purge, commence to dress my own wounds,
Whitman would be attentive, perhaps
a tad sympathetic, tho my wounds are
entirely self-inflicted
and alone, cry out for an assembly
of words, well chose, smoothly chaotic,
mirroring the lathe of my sharpened
disarrayed confusions, two old troubadours
come to comfort, with sweet harmonies,
and simple, but novel rhymes &
syncopated rhythms that all can
carry, sing along, all of us smiling
with ease, we cross the borders of each
other’s mind, paring snippets into
poetic clasps that keep us well attached,
filing away the roughened edges that
we all in common posses, and like
jigsaw pieces, we finish each other’s sentences, and we emote satisfaction
with smiles, laughs, sighs and sarcastic
groans, our words grasp, connect and
ease is in the air, there but for this grace,
we go together, you and I,
sailing away from
troubled waters
Nov 11, 2024
Nov 11, 2024 at 8:21 PM UTC
I am
Moon-drift, wreathed among shadowed shrouds,
Lain in grasses woven with scented perennials,
Scattered
To the winds of rapture,
My sigh
Drifting in ephemeral mists, lost in the midnight silk....
I am
The hush of an everlasting kiss
Remembering;
Skin vulnerable to breeze cradling a fragile heart,
Wrapped
Melting into emerald realms....
I am
Flesh-touch, scorched in the blaze of wildness,
Trembling;
In the breath and lathe upon waiting skin,
Surrendered;
Burnt in the shimmer-gleam of crimson stain....
I am
Unabashed sensual delight,
Primal;
Shimmering in the haze of heat,
Enraptured
In the drown of his tether....
I am
The taste of your flesh on lips
Untamed;
Fevered, in veins that are lost,
Embraced,
As the moon dreams high in darkened silk....
I am
Each suckle of skin burgeoned and pliant,
Whimpering;
Curved, etched wanton,
Drifting
Salacious in sweet release....
I am
Your heart
Curled under my breast,
Immortalized
Adorned in glistening mists of tender-soft
The lover that never leaves.......
Jul 30, 2012
Jul 30, 2012 at 6:36 AM UTC
When I die the phone will be lost
No one to push the button
It can't be found
No black vine to follow
The spookiness of new machines
Lost in the lathe of death
Waiting for resuscitation
Forgot to press 911 before I dropped it
Where is the phone?
No cord to wrap around my neck
The drama lost by modern design
The phone is ringing ...somewhere
Thanks from my brittle bones
I cannot answer it
To Hell with the phone
Feb 7, 2011
Feb 7, 2011 at 12:11 PM UTC
we can't sing so much, but alive we deaden somber with aplomb.
we are remorse and ripe plums. tap roots fastened to air kisses and laudanum.
we congeal in our own ' thud '. a slow bomb coughing the alphabet's are off -
with our high noon lows; depleted aloft. we are One -
in the chamber of succinct
loss.
we carry on. drudging up the hillocks of our Pandemonious Love.
blurting the wrong devout; conjoined to the rip in our seamless joust
adjusting the rudiments of our lathe of fresh hell; to accommodate the actual constant
of our hateful esteem. the very same accursed of our mutual louse...
doubting the excellent **** of our divine Without.
we covet the reign seeds
of Love's Drought.
and as plausible honey
we comb tangles
into sunrays
out loud.
Mar 8, 2014
Mar 8, 2014 at 12:46 PM UTC
Today I will not
Build any furniture
I will not paint any murals
I will not lathe wet wood
Or pound out steel
I will not sand or glue or clamp
Or sew or surge or hand tuft
I will not see a show tonight
I will not go to a museum
I will not even read
But I will
Will myself
To write these things
I will not do
Nov 21, 2010
Nov 21, 2010 at 6:48 PM UTC
The lathe of mind here has no end,
The turning world it's truth to fill
Brother fights brother, there is no win,
As each the other's blood must spill:
The enemy of enemy is my friend.
Minute by minute, it becomes the past,
Let's laugh at fate and giggle at chance
Sorrow won't stay, happiness goes fast,
We're lately come to the world's old dance,
And he laughs best who laughs the last.
Sep 6, 2010
Sep 6, 2010 at 6:05 PM UTC
the poems, the letters, the sculptures
the movements, the sleep, the mute
the deaf the blind- and in the end and the beginning
there is all the art you need
a pounding hammer
the work of small anvils
replacing our arms
able to bruise the sky
just by waving
and there is no line - needing us;
in the end, and when the beginning comes
our blood will break the desert
and our flesh will be the architecture of silence
the proximity of our cells becoming each
season that we name,
ourselves
and the stars are shot faceless
by our days, and even the snoring dogs
will create time, as our hands stop the sun
from landing in our laps and gods are returned
to infants by the muscles of our arms, men
and women dragging carcasses near cave doors
will halt, and sigh at the future-
ticks in pelt and intoxicated elbows
of musicians pulling bow across string
will send perfection insane
once again
like a scream and a kiss landing at the same time
and all the wine of every fruit will not equal
the lone smile of a wrong turn
in the night, in fact- the small ball they crawl from
and make you rock into
will pass, and the partitions
of your faith will open,
tombs will shake
jokingly in the floor boards
friends will smile in the nails
ministries of sermons will ****
and burst out in private flight, when nothing can.
be swallowed anymore, lucky there is
the millennia's that feel the same
just a piece of gin
in a waltzing glass
reflecting your face, wondering
if you're going to stay
here
just a glass watching from the table
taking in your company as the night
becomes honest enough
to rain
and end any distance
that would separate our one
simple
organic
song.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 8:36 PM UTC
You body is a temple
mind is a lathe weapon
DONT a soul in this world understand the damages we're facing.
As much as you think, there is nothing free
not even the roads we walk understand why we bleed.
we taking, cause nobody giving'
we steal, cause nobody got
we cheat, cause nobody faithful
i think its safe to say we livin in a world full of hate
hateful people, hateful souls
and nobody understands into we're gone
gone to a place where we no longer stress
wonder how we will survive tomorrow
wonder how we will make it to see another day
wonder how we will make it too see another year
if there is a heaven, then hell must be here.
Jan 4, 2014
Jan 4, 2014 at 6:30 PM UTC
Out of the dream I hear it
the distant thunder.
I hear the cry of children;
love will hold back darkness,
love will hold back death.
The sky is violet, red
clouds have bled this day;
smoke rises from the ashes,
guns are put away.
In the distant thunder
I hear an infant cry;
love holds it safe at harbor,
love rocks it in the sway.
The dreamer goes on dreaming;
waiting for the new world
where madness done and hate...
Now, the sky is golden,
something new appears above.
The thunder rolls asunder
no one wanders to the grave.
Forever dreaming until the Lathe
says, Go! Accept the truth that
nothing endures, nothing is precise
one with rock and still alive...
dreamers we now know the world
is paradox and fate...
Sep 1, 2010
Sep 1, 2010 at 4:57 PM UTC
The phone rang after 2: 00 am.
Taking the steps in pairs
my legs faltered at his door -
paralyzed by denial.
Forcing myself inside,
I saw father's lifeless frame,
wired to synthetic everything -
a cold white line
still against the black.
My grief-racked soul
railed at that liar screen,
knowing his true lifeline
danced with passion -
precision cutting with his lathe,
strumming passing chords
on his Gibson Les Paul.
That morning I knocked a ball
through a neighbor’s glass
I learned what honor meant.
With dad's steady hand
on my shoulder,
I stammered apologies
and learned to glaze a window.
We'd play catch after supper.
or down franks and pop
at Briggs where the Tigers played.
Detroit is flying high this year:
God, how I wish
I could give the old man a call.
September, 2006
Jan 6, 2016
Jan 6, 2016 at 1:34 AM UTC