"liftoff" poems
Red streaks of thin hair, finely cured,
Sugar-coded skin, sweet yet sticky inside…and then you sniff,
Freshly sliced with soft cries for help, the grass grows,
Dried in the most delightful setting; a miniature shadow of the sun,
The initials share a basketball in one palm-
-The pop from the stereo reflects the ripple of a king-
-----------------------0----------------------------0-------------------------
A complete package within, once the engine has revved- the liftoff-
Find yourself inside of her powers; the majestic magic maneuvers the mind,
Mend many memories and flick the switch on the motionless projector,
Guilty pleasures please the people and protect peaceful guidance,
Keep close the cultivation of a captivating lover-
-She will rise in your soul like helium in the lungs-
--------------------0--------------------0--------------------
She, who I breathe for, calls my name; forever entering the cave,
I broke off a chunk of everything she has grown to be,
Crumbled, chalk-like pollen, piles into mounds of distraction,
I set flame to the lone match and touch the wick- a silent sway-
She burns, her hair still a fiery-ruby blend, but like all living expectation-
-The ash separates and with the wind…she performs flips-
Nov 20, 2014
Nov 20, 2014 at 3:44 PM UTC
I let go too soon, of these three fingers
pinning a white dress to my knees,
such a strut they possess, and psychic
for the waggle I do on my tulip-days:
mama said that the lace came from an
elves’ head, I could not wear it.
I put it in a dresser drawer, as I lost
my appetite for marriage and friends.
She said that father wanted to see it,
I should parade my red, pulsing veins.
A torpedo, it became, cowering until
liftoff and glory hallelujah first kisses.
Was it not funny when I, poor chap,
kept garbage in my teeth and laughed
when you slithered your tongue inside,
like Friday penetrating the weekend?
You are a Leo; I am far from such, but
I understand why you may be insulted,
as mama garbs turquoise as the sky
and all our daffodils burn like rubber.
Each says it is because they love me,
railing cat-scratches with a stitch –
but I do not want that, see earthquakes
that hammer on our tulip-days, dear.
Nov 1, 2012
Nov 1, 2012 at 5:22 PM UTC
i.
Queen O' queen, this is thy king
Queen O' queen, this is thy king;
Put thine amulet, around thy neck-
For me.
ii.
Queen O' queen, this is thy king(10,9,8,7,6)
Upon saturns ring's, a beloved dream; (5,4,3)
Taketh mine hand, glideth the moon's with me. ( 2,1,liftoff)
iii.
This is thine king mine dearest queen
Thou hath taken me far away,
To the places only known
By saint's and those whom pray.
This is thy king mine dearest Queen
Erelong love, tis thine hope I cling;
And I'm higher in the most
Ravishing way. Erelong dove,
We'll maketh love in a holy way.
iv.
For here, am I dancing on the cosmos,
Beyond angelic tunes,
Thine eye's of cocoa tides,
Blend's inside me
As I rise.
v.
Though we've passed the universal edge
I'm peaceful in thine presence
Alive or dead; I feeleth the dark matter-
Bubble around in mine head, as Nirvana's
In ourn sight's, Zion's breath.
Queen O' queen, looketh ahead
The stream's; their flowing as
Milk and honey tree's
Touch ourn feet,
A tranquil homestead.
vi.
For here, am I dancing on the cosmos,
Beyond angelic tunes,
Thine eye's of cocoa tides,
Blend's inside me
As I rise.......
©Brandon Nagley
©Lonesome poets poetry
©Earl Jane Nagley(Filipino rose) dedicated
Jan 13, 2016
Jan 13, 2016 at 7:58 PM UTC
i was born all naturally
formed in a lax factory
im actually
a hack with ******* in my nose, practically,
every day, haphazardly
stumbling home, half asleep
i cant tell whats happening
vision begins blackening
im whack like kriss kross
crack like rick ross
major brown boy to houston
be like, "yes, we have liftoff"
dont like me when i'm ****** off
cause ***** i'm bruce banner
or maybe i'm bruce wayne
either way, i got mad manners
tearing down walls like berlin
preaching like its a sermon
potential begins to burgeon
i'll cut you up like a surgeon
killing in place of coercion
so you better lower the curtain
my head and my body are hurtin
so tell me how quick does the world spin?
i'm taddling on ya, you can call me a toddler
but the snitchin n' **** is somethin im never fond of
and i never grow up, cause i'm the neverland smuggler
peter pan turns into one of my best customers
i never grew into my head, im not cocky
never had the eye of the tiger, im not rocky
growing up i never got in fights or caused a lotta ****
but presently im screaming **** the world", i've got a bone to pick
i've gotta problem and i think its the probable cause
you hold me captive, keep me trapped in your facets of laws
looks of repulsion are what cause me to brandish my claws
constant compulsions reminiscent of prodigal flaws
i've gotta problem and i think its the probable cause
see im a goblin shark i'll sink in my nautical jaws
im not a joker im a jester with lesser facades
wrought with insomnia cause drugs are american gods
Mar 10, 2017
Mar 10, 2017 at 1:39 AM UTC
I can feel my lungs collapsing with every shallow breath
And I can't decide if it's the holes left behind from
cigarette smoke burns
Or the pieces of me that followed behind you
It's 10:05 and as much as I keep trying to warp the truth
the minutes tick on leaving me stranded in seconds of long lost times
Wishing from fruitless bones
Remembering could have beens that weren't
And chasing endings that never quite were within reach
And I know cigarette fills don't last
But I can taste my time running out
And my bones refuse to give away hints to weather it's a
countdown or liftoff
The essence never quite strong enough to disguise
the bitter after-taste your words left behind with me
It's 4:00 am and as smoke fills my lungs
I vaguely remember being told
the only souls awake at this time are
the lonely and the loved
Now it's been months since I was introduced to this hour but still
all I feel is nothing.
You told me pretty girls don't light their own cigarettes
but that never stopped my lungs from burning
every time you breathed my way
Leaving scars of razor sharp words never spoken
Pushed down to the hollow of my scorching throat
Thirsting for the oasis of the syllables
they were never quite within reach of quenching.
They say cigarettes curve your hunger.
And I guess they're almost right because
so far all this nasty habit has curved is
My appetite for you
Now it Hurts to realize that the attention
I mean cigarettes
You willingly offered were just cleverly disguised poison
Burning away my insecurities only to reintroduce them in misunderstood exhales of passion
All I have left to feel are my lungs gasping for every last breath
Lungs pulsing for every last breath
Lungs shrinking to accommodate every last breath
You took away from me
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 4:03 PM UTC
I want to be an astronaut,
feel the pulsations of liftoff,
experience the orbiting of crystal seas
taste the rising sun
& the rush of reentry
for eternity.
Aug 22, 2014
Aug 22, 2014 at 5:59 AM UTC
Five four three two one,
Fire spews,
Flames violently shoot out of the golden boosters,
Cold ice breaking off the shell,
The white noise fills the air,
The ground shakes with panic,
And liftoff,
The manmade seraph lifts into the sky,
The Golden Flame forcing it further up,
We watch not with excited eyes,
But with sad hearts and long faces,
We know,
We know today is the last day this bird will fly,
We have slain an angel,
We have slain American Patriotism,
We have slain ourselves,
The Space Shuttle may just have been a chemical reaction lifting mass into the sky,
But it let us explore,
It let us discover space,
The bitter, beautiful darkness that surrounds and blankets the planet,
And now we have told her she must die,
Regressive politics turning into a malignancy against mankind,
Killing the Human spirit,
Spreading,
Cancerous tumors mark landforms on the map,
Goodbye,
My Dear Space Shuttle,
My technological love,
You always inspired me,
It's my turn now.
Nov 21, 2011
Nov 21, 2011 at 9:19 AM UTC
she hides behind lies
crying eyes try to smile
lost in a world of ghosts
and love, conditional
from across the room
I feel an energy shift
as the imagined pressure
hits critical
once again we have liftoff
followed by irritation and excuses
bad feelings and emotional strain
and for what…..
a few lines of silliness
pasted to a social media network
deflating friendships
with guile and pizazz
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 4:38 PM UTC
Time.
Is it a measure between two moments?
A distance between souls?
Liftoff until impact?
The time of our lives they say.
But how long is a life?
"They say we die twice.
Once when our heart stops beating.
And again when someone says our name for the last time."
Sep 30, 2012
Sep 30, 2012 at 5:29 PM UTC
Ready for liftoff?
Where are your keys?
Where is your mind?
Why don't you remember?
Feb 12, 2012
Feb 12, 2012 at 7:24 PM UTC
Losing a lot in leaving here.
Letting go each time at liftoff,
Learning loving you is the longest lane I let myself allow.
Loneliness looms large again,
Little will be done to lock it,
Loosen, let go, live on.
Let the turbulence dull.
-M. Hale
10.11.11
May 18, 2012
May 18, 2012 at 12:03 AM UTC
What do I do?
What can I do?
Will it work?
Does it fit?
I'd love to see it...
How 'bout liftoff?
Maybe
Only time can tell
Who's got the wheel?
Who has control?
Who has this beast by the throat?
We'll see.
It's a crazy feeling;
Intense wonder.
Signs of Change.
Fear.
Pain.
Loathing.
Hunger.
Wonder.
Am I selfish?
Have I learned anything yet?
I should've by now...
But my mind just races.
Too many places.
Too many faces.
Too much wasted.
Where'd I place it?
Too much time.
Too much wonder.
I'll figure it out.
The time will come soon.
I won't be blind forever.
Nov 16, 2010
Nov 16, 2010 at 9:18 AM UTC
Sometimes I dream of flight,
Of racing up into the gaping jaws of the night sky,
Consumed by the famished heavenly heights,
Addicted to the notion of liftoff into the atmosphere,
Drinking the aroma of the wind,
And gazing in wonder at the luminescence of the stars.
Sometimes I dream of flight,
Enveloped by the vibrations and sensation of roaring jets,
As the warm drafts of air flow like a stream,
Sanguine emotions rush through a euphoric mind,
An eye peers out to partake in blinding sunlight
And the illusions and delusions fade into confusion.
Sometimes I dream of flight,
But quickly the realization strikes like a sledgehammer,
What moments ago was a genuine consciousness,
Is leeched away into veracious truth,
The real world looms and awaits my waking,
Although never will I give up that dream of flight.
Apr 19, 2011
Apr 19, 2011 at 3:45 PM UTC
Free Fall to Liftoff
by Michael R. Burch
for my father, Paul Ray Burch, Jr.
I see the longing for departure gleam
in his still-keen eye,
and I understand his desire
to test this last wind, like late November leaves
with nothing left to cling to ...
The following poems about free-falling were written with Tom Petty's song "Free-Fallin'" in mind...
Free Fall (I)
by Michael R. Burch
for Beth
These cloudless nights, the sky becomes a wheel
where suns revolve around an axle star ...
Look there, and choose. Decide which moon is yours.
Sink Lethe-ward, held only by a heel.
Advantage. Disadvantage. Who can tell?
To see is not to know, but you can feel
the tug sometimes—the gravity, the shell
as lustrous as damp pearl. You sink, you reel
toward some draining revelation. Air—
too thin to grasp, to breathe. Such pressure. Gasp.
The stars invert, electric, everywhere.
And so we fall in spirals through night’s fissure—
two beings—pale, intent to fall forever
around each other—fumbling at love’s tether ...
now separate, now distant, now together.
Free Fall (II)
by Michael R. Burch
after Tom Petty
I have no earthly remembrance of you, as if
we were never of earth, but merely white clouds adrift,
swirling together through Himalayan altitudes—
no more man and woman than exhaled breath—unable to fall
back to solid existence, despite the air’s sparseness: all
our being borne up, because of our lightness,
toward the sun’s unendurable brightness . . .
But since I touched you, fire consumes each wing!
We who are unable to fly, stall
contemplating disaster. Despair like an anchor, like an iron ball,
heavier than ballast, sinks on its thick-looped chain
toward the earth, and soon thereafter will be sufficient pain
to recall existence, to make the coming darkness everlasting.
Keywords/Tags: autumn, leaves, cling, clinging, wind, death, flight, fly, flying, transport, free fall, liftoff, departure, bare, barren, leafless, skeletal
Apr 10, 2020
Apr 10, 2020 at 11:33 PM UTC
Its too much, nah I'm just going deep.
Its a better use of my time;
Flying a black spaceship with a clutch.
But let's be clear,
that doesn't really require much.
The flux and punch of a red carpet.
Leaves me in need of a dark car-pit.
Into space somewhere far away with just one touch.
Ringing, then a purple-green, then hush.
You're all gone. Except for the ones I brought along.
Let us talk to you
we can help.
And if you try,
you can help yourself.
Liftoff.
Apr 16, 2015
Apr 16, 2015 at 1:33 AM UTC
35% off all print books on LULU today with coupon code of LULU35
mine books can be found, there.
~
some recent poems:
[loneliness]
the only
animal
recognized
by the magician’s
one-trick
pony
/ touch
giving itself
a childhood
/ an alien’s
crucifix
~
[liftoff]
the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.
-
my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.
~
[the cross]
the haunted clock
in tornado’s
house
the weightlifter’s flower
the rabbit’s
bliss
~
[scare]
I know it is nothing
or a relative
of nothing
what mice
make
of a mouse
possessed
/ my distance from the unborn widens
~
[homage]
like some verbally abused parrot
the crow
the phone’s
god
~
[depictions of reentry (iv)]
/ the tadpole torching my stomach in the museum of the heartless alligator
/ the spider the star in suicide’s eye
/ the crow in the devil’s purse
~
[depictions of reentry (v)]
/ you can work here for nine months
/ it’s not like riding a bike
it’s more
like kneeling
in the center
of a stickman’s
nightmare
/ never you mind
the bloated
baby’s
yellow
tooth
/ at least the sick
they confuse
death
~
[depictions of reentry (vi)]
night terror, the handwriting
of imago’s
child…
/ resurrection, a memoir
~
[depictions of reentry (vii)]
/ the hands and the crushed mind they crawl from
/ god of the briefly ugly
/ the homeless child of nostalgia’s native
/ graveyard
our game
of telephone
~
[depictions of reentry (viii)]
we laugh about them now
scarecrows
the stepchildren
of apocalypse…
pregnancy as suicide prevention.
be wowed
by stuff
on earth.
~
[depictions of reentry (ix)]
before I got sick
there was a sound
my mother
could make
and a bird
perched
on the arm
of a snowman…
angels, yeah
some
grab their ears
when trapped
~
[depictions of reentry (x)]
the unlit candle
desertion’s birthday
-
the voice
is not god’s
that experiments
on children
but ask
away
-
the dog we buried
is sometimes
on fire
watched
we think
by our sister’s
cooking
Jun 27, 2016
Jun 27, 2016 at 2:33 PM UTC
Riding
The color
Wheel
From
Liftoff
To splashdown
Onyx
Eyelids
Heavy with rheum
Waking to
Laminated
Stick-ons
A vinyl ocean
Of unco adhesion
And snap vacuum
Jettisoned
Trinkets
Of youth
Soaring
Prophetically
Overhead
Acquiescing
As scenes
Of upended worlds
The simple playgrounds
Both remembered
And loved
Sep 3, 2020
Sep 3, 2020 at 10:56 AM UTC
He slept in that bed
long before I came into
the picture
navy blue sheets
golden brown bedposts.
I could always run my fingers
along the wall that connected us at night
his steady breath a steady
reminder
that all was well,
all was normal.
He came home from school
my parents around the dining table
shifting weight, waiting.
A letter with letters, words
of navy blue and shining gold.
Congratulations we are pr…
Smiling, embracing
mind racing
We still had precious months…
Until liftoff.
Gazing at the bed
tired eyes
foggy with 3 am,
now foggier with tears.
His steady breath
a comforting metronome
lulled me to rest on the cool
hardwood floor
The room was warm,
full, occupied
with steady breaths,
cardboard boxes and love.
The car flew away before I could put my shoes on.
through the dust
“I couldn’t see the permanence.”
I waved
I waved until my arm burned hot
enough to evaporate the falling water from my eyes.
“If I closed my eyes
I wouldn’t see him go.”
Gazing at the bed.
tired eyes.
foggy with 4 pm
now foggier with emptiness.
He left a dent in the mattress
a comforting mold
I tried to fit
Tried to fill the space left behind.
The room was gusty,
empty, vacant,
with distant breaths,
dust and new negative space.
He slept in that bed
long before I came into
the picture
navy blue sheets
golden brown bedposts.
I could always run my fingers
along the wall that connected us at night.
The wall has swelled, hallowed.
I still trace it
listening,
waiting
for the void to narrow.
Apr 18, 2014
Apr 18, 2014 at 9:10 AM UTC
My words start as vapor
eventually coalescing and manifesting themselves on paper
but they are never really finished, they just diminish
until slow enough for me to catch
and dispatch them for my own use
but the truth is that I am just taking snapshots of a train of thought
that stretches to infinity
that is complexity and humanity
that is me, and so much more
I go floating through the door
I am ten feet off the floor
Drifting toward the atmosphere
Not there, nor here
I am near and I am far
I rise up to the stars
So high that I can see the earth
So small and insignificant
Yet utterly magnificent
It’s a matter of perspective
Consciousness is collective
So my view is not new
It is you, and all of them too
One is a universe, two is a crowd
Seven billion heads inside the cloud
Causing blizzards and acid rain
Never pausing our lizard brains
Paws and claws and vicious maws
Tearing at our sanity
Glaring enemies of clarity
We strive for perfect parity
But we are but a mess
evolution made us malcontents
We are revolutionary dissidents
Overburdened by stress
Too afraid to confess
So we swim in sorrow and silence
A waking nightmare, a quiet violence
When the path out becomes clear
You will hear a resounding cheer
As the human race takes its rightful place among the stars
No longer our own adversaries
We will traverse the universe
Going supernova with rhyme and verse
No more fear for the reaper or the hearse
No tears, we will find freedom from the curse
And each person will feel peace
Perching on Saturn’s rings
But only if we stop clinging to the ground
To the weights that hold us down
Weightless we can face this
We can stare into the sun
See that the journey has just begun
Shine bright like enlightened beings
Light enough to float through the ceiling
Might be tough when your mind is reeling
But it is just a feeling that will pass
once you fly into the firmament
And finally find enlightenment
Aug 25, 2018
Aug 25, 2018 at 9:32 AM UTC
A slash of a smile, kimono stripped shoulders
Koi scale tattoos, Okinawa rainy day blues
Drown yourself in ***** fight 'till you lose
Pale skinned pathological lover
Soulstone hustler, rustler & bustler
Revolving revolvers under samurai dusters
Wild west Tokyo rose blessed
Handwritten love letters on a desk, kiss sealed
A bowl of cornmeal, these things we steal
A lovelock of hearthsouls, sous chef gazpacho
Tasty cannibal nachos, eating hearts in a palm grove
Children gathered round a stone
The feeling of truly being alone
Making tools from your enemies bones
More brutal than any historical score
We sleep, we snore, 2+2=4, once, no more
Coconuts falling on the shore for eternity
Every blade of grass is holy to me
It's the bullet we see that gets us
We can all love each other is we let us
Balloon powered spaceships, liftoff
Raise your sails on the submarine
Big, square, wheels on your SUV
Life is like a tree, just growing
Forget all your worries, let's just get going
Sep 13, 2017
Sep 13, 2017 at 9:09 PM UTC
the scarecrow loving puppet put a pop gun to the head of the soundman’s lamb.
-
my last meal
was my mother’s
voice.
Jun 20, 2016
Jun 20, 2016 at 10:32 PM UTC