"livered" poems
Oh, Icarus
Primary example of the human folly.
The wings and feathers destroyed by the heat of a sun you thought you could bear.
Oh, Icarus
You are a foolish one.
Excessive ambition never makes it to see the light of day.
You had too much hope in yourself.
Your pride took you away.
Oh, Icarus
The words of Daedalus fell upon death ears.
Failure to heed to a warning was your demise.
Oh, Icarus
Wings so mighty and beautiful.
What I would do to fly so high.
To soar above the clouds and meet the beautiful rays.
Oh, Icarus
Fly back to the sun.
Melt your wax and ruin your feathers, once more.
Oh, Icarus
We need someone brave enough to fly close to the sun.
Plummet into the ocean again after , if you must.
Every human here is lily-livered.
Mar 15, 2016
Mar 15, 2016 at 12:40 AM UTC
A shaft from the golden sun,
reclined peacefully in my lap.
The amber gleam reflected back,
and gently baked the solemn land.
An ardent whisper furnished the woods
with a viridescent scent that woke up the woods.
Silver songs of sleek streams,
chased the lullabies away;
gently.
Ancient tress cuddled the wind,
their leaves clapped in sheer bliss
The broken winged white eyed bulbul,
warbled hymns to lift the curse.
Scarlet tainted vintage letters resting in the rustic mailbox,
await your tender touch; while they chant for a past long gone.
But lily livered clouds,
they have turned your courage into a yellow illusion.
So now defy the toxic words and the errors you made,
A different person inside your skin, long ago, burned our hearts on the hateful flames.
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 6:44 PM UTC
I cower in your shadow,
shivering despite any acuity of my own.
(your words are like loaded icicles,
beretta rounds fired through my false logic
and fake religion;
it scares me.)
The truth is I'm not fearless,
I'm pale and lily-livered and only so heathen as the other stars.
(maybe it's good you're in college,
it's closer than you were growing up.
when we were young,
you were short yet rough.
I was the younger,
and, my shepherd, you were faithful;
I only got lost 8 times.)
I don't think I ever really knew you
in any possible perception.
(I know I knew the talk of you,
the hustle and bustle at home and abroad
of your mighty intellect,
your crushing wit,
your driving polities
a war machine and
your gleaming smile
its patron god.)
How could I ever compare, though,
to the goddess of mind and body, brains and war?
(the truth is I am but a defiant priest,
crooked nose and
ashy eyes.
I think the reason,
even today,
for all my insecurities was due to you.)
Appeasement was a method used by the vain and weak
to protect against the humble yet brilliant.
(I feel your ********** take me over,
I feel it acid-wash into my skin,
de-porous my bones
and my imagination structure.
I feel it sink me up to the top,
drowning me in your air,
in your sky and your perfect chemistry.
your burning gold catches me,
smothers me in hands too big
for such a small person.)
How is it you are so tall
when you come up to my chin?
Why is it that I shiver and shake at your light foot falls?
Answer to the shadows
and my cowering will not respond.
Feb 27, 2010
Feb 27, 2010 at 11:07 PM UTC
You're risking naught, an annihilation of worth
Wasting and encouraging moments to rot. Decay.
Values friendship
Twisted morals dipped in deceit.
Not satisfied with boundaries
Chasing infected affection
swirling in the smooth crevasses of backwash around emptied wine bottles
Impressionable, emitting the most tenacious
of the F word
Fake
Fake and Selfish
It isn't narcissism when you drown yourself
in the pits
No permission, no inhibition
As lazy as the Greeks
who never made a move to climb the mountaintop
and defy their Gods face to face
Dependent and ******* support from Clans
because you're terrified of this world
At least I"m honest with my decanter of
harming thoughts.
obsessed and overbearing, flesh crawling
use my being as subject matter and
mold it into paperdoll play toys
like gold eye-liner
its a party trick
seek solice when grimacing down a bottle of brew
bumpers in the bowling alley
a Life Alert sort of living
You claim to haven no fear
but I see your throat clench
start living
admit the defeat
a proud coward
lilly livered, yellow belly
shift
shift between a fable and nerve
Aug 19, 2013
Aug 19, 2013 at 1:38 AM UTC
*Bus poems are shorties written on the way home,
riding the M31 thru Manhattan. Often silly, often not...*
There is a contest that does not involve my P.S.F.
(Preferred Sport Franchise) this weekend,
truly don't give a good ****** who wins,
but that is no excuse to deny me my sir sore-losing,
victim status,
so richly deserved.
A triumvirate of doctor, g.f. and medical tests,
have on the field ruled,
once a year, a conjugal visit permitted,
tween my arteries and chicken wings.
there will pigs in blankets demanding attention,
potato knishes, and cole slaw juices, and a
foreign dignitary, Sayyid Cous-Cous,
lining up along side the quarterback who will be
'winging' honey and spicy passes to his favorite receiver,
this couch coach and impartial observer.
This is my Sunday fare.
If insufficiently highbrow,
for all you poetic aesthetes,
have no fear,
this athlete gastronomic,,
victim of his victuals,
will prepare mentally
by hanging with King Lear once more,
sharing a verbal tasting menu,
the day prior,
who once called me,
at a Giant super bowl party,
*“A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a
base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited,
hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a
lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson,
glass-gazing, super-serviceable finical rogue;
one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a
bawd, in way of good service, and art nothing but
the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar,
and the son and heir of a mongrel ***** one whom I
will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest
the least syllable of thy addition.”*
― William Shakespeare, King Lear
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 4:50 PM UTC
It takes one to know one swift fell swoop
like a bat out of hell and certainly the belfry.
If you've something to prove to the birds and the bees,
I won't bat an eye at your rhinoplasty.
I'll take two hoots, 'cause I sure won't give them.
Find somebody else to get up and go;
I cry like I fly like a carrion crow
and I've two left feet and no time to tango.
It takes three strikes 'til it's not just company
any more — it's a crowd and my agoraphobia
is making this worse, so I might disperse.
If you don't quite care, let's put two and two together;
playing pretend we're birds of a feather.
I could commend, but that's such a no-no;
you're more like a doornail to me, less like a dodo.
And if you don't much mind, I might just take five.
I'm chicken-livered, but at least alive
though I feel like a dead duck, dusted and done.
I won't be there, I'll stay fair and square,
right back at square one.
Now can you see how this is cyclic?
Makes me feel one sandwich short of a picnic,
up the wall, and driving me sick.
Apologies, I don't mean to nitpick,
and I know I've a number of bees in my bonnet,
but I've zero interest in your haiku and sonnets.
So here's one for the road,
turn by the way the devil drives you home,
and one good turn deserves
another.
May 20, 2016
May 20, 2016 at 3:58 AM UTC
An emergent_sea
Real_eyes
See this_ease
Come_ply beneath
The softest_sign
We carri_on
Un-fin(e)d all_you’re
In_sight
Care_fully de_livered
Aug 2, 2019
Aug 2, 2019 at 9:50 AM UTC
He started it at seventeen
That most fantastic time machine,
Whose power to manipulate
The basic fabrics of our fate
Eradicates the Clock's control,
Who executes the midnight toll,
Whose hands have strangled man's ambition,
Whose sands designed decomposition,
Both talkative and taciturn
Now caged; the ravenous cuckoo bird,
And man, once puppet, now pilgrim, soars
O’er crystal skies and dusty shores
And Dimension's seas with waxen wings,
His fourth realm wrinkling like a string,
Testing theories in time traversed
Of history, life, the universe.
He finished it at forty-two
In subterranean solitude,
A pallid, daily de-livered mess
With faceless pictures on the desk,
So he sighed with earnest evanescence
And scuttled back to adolescence,
To own the life he would have seen
Without that hollow time machine.
Jun 15, 2012
Jun 15, 2012 at 12:44 AM UTC
A dust storm blows through Kansas
Stinging, lashing shrieks
The sand blows holes through a Canvas
Who collects the words, and sleeks
The gunfire of their sound, for weeks
His brows steeled and heavy
The whirlwind quits its wails
And leaves, lily-livered in its belly
A tsunami bellows over Mastushima bay
Body slamming into townsfolk
A long-time build up lead astray
One sun-browned girl is left to choke
But then spits out the damage, in half broke
And the colossal wave recedes
Quietened, calm and apologetic
Anger fleeing as it bleeds
Snow drifts and crawls its way past Moscow
Gentle, almost alluring in its ways
Children present their tongues, and the sow
Charges, squealing, into guts and begins frays
Which twist their ears burnt, lasting for a thousand days
And eventually a conscience melts the qualm
And the damage rectified on-surface
But frostbite clings to fingers; done already is the harm
Weather will hound and scorch and spit
And eventually untether
And though people bite and kick and hit
No emotion lasts forever
Nov 3, 2015
Nov 3, 2015 at 8:44 AM UTC
I see the sun climb the white cushions and blue oceans
I hear the mesmerizing melody of the doves stringing and keying.
I smell the aroma of roses and tangerines racing through the air and crashing into my nostrils…ecstasy.
I feel the delicate, delicious, delightful caressing massage of silky roses.
I taste the sweet sugar of life.
It is you.
Do you not see?
No. I was
Mistaken.
You leave me with…
Reality.
Innocence exiled, as a child is stabbed until Breath is livered out of him.
The pulsating bombs of Life against Hope-the genocide of the Eardrums.
The ****** sweat stench of truth lingers over the vulnerable flowers like a gaseous cloud.
The piercing needle of truth injects into every pore. Reality in. Dreams out.
Faith disintegrates in the acid, cavity stricken world with masticated Hope regurgitated at will.
It is my fault. Did i not see?
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 12:31 AM UTC
Stringent to lilly livered
Toxic if afraid,
galling to goers
Who thrive on being brave,
Enthralling to observers
Who see finer tones,
And fatal to loiterers
With shrapnel in bones.
Loose lips in the war zone
An anathema to we
Who strive for control
In adversity.
Loose lips in the war zone
A systems relapse,
Which preceeds establishment's
Rapid collapse.
Marshalg
@the bach
11 May 2011
May 10, 2011
May 10, 2011 at 6:38 PM UTC
Lucifer was my first lover,
Now I have a twisted fantasy seeping darkness into my head.
I can no longer grow brain cells but I can now grow horns.
Splitting out ot my skull like thorns from a branch.
There's dried blood dripping down the crown of forehead again.
Dancing with the devil is child's play.
He's wrapped a chain around my neck.
Belts upon my arms, ties around my legs.
I'm fully undressed and unholy.
Light the circular fire while I become my purest form.
Lay me on dirt while the embers silhouette around me.
I'm burning like amber, illuminating the nights sky.
This is a ritual, I can take it. I'm not human, I'm reborn.
Mephistopheles' forked tongue spits gasoline over pale skin.
Imp's are beating on drums as the ceremony begins.
Sacrifice me, I am the chosen one.
Beat me until I believe.
Face down in damp soil I'm a mural against the green.
The mausoleum next to me will guide my spirit where it needs to be.
Lily-livered eyes cremate excervasion into my flesh.
Taloned hands drag my body to the crypt.
Bathe me in others as unfortunate as me,
Then dress me in Ivy so those in the underworld can see:
I'm the "Purest Form Of Innocence."
The one who was once "Me" has finally become "We."
The Archfiend tells me to kneel and I obey his every command.
Falexn eyes control me to undress myself once again.
" Filia Diaboli" He calls me as he places his hands on my head.
I feel my body ascend through the dirt I used to lay.
And when I open my fawn eyes, I'm in the real world once again.
Mar 2, 2018
Mar 2, 2018 at 7:47 PM UTC
Dibble bubble bubble
Written on shitely mearce
A stake to plunder crunch
Of politician Pierce
Colligan
To hollagans
Collagen appeal
Maketh dartboards out of heart boards
Wherein innocence tis real
Foughty daughty submarines
Climbs to ****** coarse
Follitine
Dreamers
Plot success Morse
Coffee beans
To livered spleens
Pains to shock the trike
Childress of a virtue
Seaps of anothers life
Trigulues
And bedulues
Smiling at the air
Drommatice
And romisis
Promises don't care
Foughty immense Brice
Pickled to shickled biles
***** of settle keaster ways
A blighty for the smile
Libertinth
And minants tint
Flight to bagbird heads
Crucifixed pixies
Twilight up ahead!!!
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 8:12 AM UTC
Golden brown or yellow livered
a field of blows await
Spring to be delivered
as waters turn from
snow to dew
Your yellow crown peeks and pushes through
over summer's flowers bloomed too soon
underneath Your shadow wilt and swoon
as long as roots can drink their fill
remain reflecting in Your windowsill
Echoing I'm your Daffodil
Oct 26, 2017
Oct 26, 2017 at 9:40 AM UTC
it wasn't until
the other night
that i started
thinking about
you, and how
much i wanted
to be around
you, and how
badly i wanted
to kiss your lips.
it wasn't until
i saw you with
him, that i began
feeling this feeling
called loneliness
come creeping
back into me once
again, and it's
t e r r i f y i n g .
just the other day
you were just a
little girl, playing
with barbies and
playing make-
believe, but just the
other day i saw
you sticking your
tongue down his
throat, and i never
thought i would
ever see this day.
you called it love,
but i call it lonely.
he calls love some-
thing else entirely.
love to a boy like
him is psychical,
and when he is
done, he will leave,
like the others did.
and i am so sorry
that you have to
go through that.
Nov 8, 2013
Nov 8, 2013 at 10:56 PM UTC
In the wildlife and brambles
of swallowing reality
I am animated with my friends,
Silent in the face of my enemy.
This is the nature of me,
my jaundiced and lily-livered,
Blossoming weeds.
In the torrid heat of the garden
Plastic petals cushioned by a non-existent breeze
The expensive and perfect roses speak
In a high and thin voice:
“She doesn’t belong here!”
I maintain distance, observing quietly,
Drinking in supple thoughts
My type of nourishment.
How strange! While we all exist,
I realise I am mostly the only one
Alone in this thistle-thorn entangle--
Spikes on spikes--
And these roses are cruel,
They bite my stems,
They scythe through my stalks.
They make it sound
with their chorus of coy voices,
That I am strangling them,
with my unkempt leaves.
Nonetheless odd and daring
In the best sense of the word
I was a bore to the masses
Amidst the roses’ mellifluous clamour
which was static white noise
and superfluous torrential chastisement
But I’m safe in knowing
that their words will crumble to dirt one day
And that being “social”, was just an experiment.
I left the town
in search of a happier place.
I am twisting skywards
for brighter light each day.
Do not misunderstand that I am completely alone,
I am better outside the garden now
As a light globular lump on the open road
Thriving on even the forgotten and sighing wind.
Occasionally I come across another fellow being
I wouldn’t want to choke with my untamed growth,
And we find sweet comfort in unspoken words
Between two lost, closet souls.
I would invite them graciously
To my snug abodes of desert peace,
To tumble about carefree
With the gentle caress of warm currents
Finding solace in vastness and anonymity
When we ride freedom breezes through scorched skies.
As the sun dips and glows behind the last clouds on the horizon,
We’ll be roaming further still from the plastic perfect roses
We’ll be together in the knotted wild,
Tumbleweed friends, you and I.
Jul 14, 2017
Jul 14, 2017 at 11:02 AM UTC
Tripped from a fantasy into a dream.
Now a sheer nightmare, or so it does seem.
Streets they were not paved with gold.
The love she shared became so cold.
Stranded on Atlantic beach.
Ripped up by the tide.
She tore to his door.
She sure wanted more.
Needed words to clarify.
Drifting position.
The driving force behind her fear.
Crashed in to the bus of tears.
She knocked his heart.
Entered it.
Back to front,
As inside out,
She turned it.
Knocked on his door and he hid.
That lily-livered man he did.
Was petrified like sodden wood.
Despite the fact his chick was good.
Blind he was he didn't see.
The angel of dreamers.
Standing there.
Licking her lips and teasing his hair.
Well she was me.
He was too scared.
By ladylivvi1
© 2014 ladylivvi1 (All rights reserved)
Jan 2, 2014
Jan 2, 2014 at 10:32 AM UTC
I think of you, but not you of me,
For I am shackled, and you are free.
Now the words are clear, but I’ll never tell
For I am pigeon-livered and lack gall.
The recursive words stay in my head–
They leave me not and make me mad–
I am now the jester in time’s flow,
Put on a show so you won’t know
How the words are free,
And good to go,
Yet woe is me,
My mind’s not free.
Oct 20, 2019
Oct 20, 2019 at 11:39 AM UTC
I got you something for your
birthday, nothing much or
nothing fancy. Though I did
not dare to give it, because mid-
transporting something occurred
that, despite my former motivation,
formed some kind of hesitation
which strangely, harshly stirred
my view and vision on my goals.
I never notice what actually controls
a change of mind so out of the blue.
What could be this recurring cue?
It got through, I understand, I can
not hand because you want a man.
Nov 18, 2014
Nov 18, 2014 at 5:07 PM UTC
I often misjudge the distance
between me and the world,
this morning the distance
was more like looking
through a keyhole
and seeing the
arrows wreckage,
a woman was walking
in front of me at the
university union
where oversized portraits
of past torchbearers and
victors hang grandiosely
on neat corn rows
like kings and queens
with branded jewels
we watched her fire storm
together - just me and the group,
she came through the peaceful
passageway that normally
reminds me of a quiet library
but not this time,
her pace quickened as she
disputed her case brashly
to her lover on her cell,
something about being seen
somewhere with someone
so furious and unbending
and persuasive, out there
in a swirl, and I thought,
**** why?” such chaos
and anger over an
appearance, over an
inquiry - over a nothing,
there was no autopsy
but she rambled onward
stomping her black spiny
pumps loudly on the marble
creating a demanding rap
it couldn’t wait
tossing her hair back violently
as if it were on fire
she stunk up the joint
with her, “no time for that,”
front,
the distance between me
and the world grew smaller
this morning,
I stopped to look at it
at her retching, it wasn’t
a fire and I did not
misread this,
what I felt there peering
through the key hole
tenderly reminded me
of my own adultery
with absent mindedness
and irrational fear
and messes that protest,
else they lay down under
lily-livered puppet strings
and bed springs.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 4:51 PM UTC
People are utterly filthy.
Rags besmirched black and undertone red in blood, and ****
and tears, and thrown up alcohol bought cheaper than a
***** on Seventh.
Oh, tell me about it.
I saw a dead person once.
Grime under fingernails and teeth carved in gingivitis--
filth of a body really; but still I cry for this begotten soul
until my own hands grow
disheveled in the hue of
sobbing women.
Women are always sobbing.
My good friend with fishnet tights cries and
cries when the bottle breaks and
glass becomes embedded in those brown
fingertips of hers.
What is worse?
The stench of rotting flesh mixed with Persian White
dripping from a needle three years defective,
or the scent of sobbing women soaked
lily-livered in sweat.
With an honest tongue, politely I exclaim:
I’d rather sit with the flesh of the dead man whose filth is rotting
away with the mist of dawn,
then the crying pupils of thou who breathe in
white wind from the heavens
and exhale clouds coated thick
in a thousand vile songs.
Apr 18, 2019
Apr 18, 2019 at 3:18 PM UTC
Thou art a gnashgab mewling wretch,
Thy face doth like a codfish stretch!
Thou art a boil-brained muck-sprout,
A maggot-pie with addled snout!
Thou fustilugs, lily-livered mumblecrust,
Thy wit hath gathered quite some dust.
Thou art a motley-minded lout,
A hedge-born knave without clout!
Thou art warped and wayward sock-knocker,
A cumberworld, a scobberlotcher.
A flibbertigibbet, saddle-goose fool,
Who'd lose a battle with a stool!
Thou art a shrivel-headed apple-john,
A dalcop, pribbling bobolyne!
Away, thou canker-blossomed pest,
With thou weather-worn poorly-mannered jest!
©️Lizzie Bevis
Dec 20, 2024
Dec 20, 2024 at 9:43 PM UTC
I avoided you
With a thought of seeing you again
Not knowing
It would be the last crackle of your laughter of beauty which makes me smile.
As you journey across the earth
I won't shed a tears or wall in agony
Cause I know you have embarked
On a journey to the world beyond.
Just like morning dew
You slowly drifted into oblivion when the sun was high.
Sorry I wasn't by your grave side
When you were being lowered to the mother earth
It's because I found out I was
Too chicken livered to see you being lay
Down to the grave
Never the less
You are still in my heart of hearts
And soul of souls
Rest in peace.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 8:41 PM UTC
its all a sham
lesser people with lesser worth
the little child who hides behind mother's skirt
and sticks out a tongue
in awe and afraid of talent and status
they could never have or reach never attainable
they hide behind skirts poking out tongues
and spewing snorts from ***** noses
and when I rile them good or hit a very raw nerve
the lily-livered drips try to produce responses
that laughably fall off the mark and show even more dullness
the duds and dullards, the pathetic unfulfilled poltroons
the lessers who can't sustain anything real, bright and worthy
The sham talent-less spine-less under-achievers
full of weaknesses and inadequacies
the women all know you are useless
Sep 11, 2019
Sep 11, 2019 at 4:40 AM UTC
After about fifty years as married wife
the last three fraught with strife
obvious telltale signs of terminal illness rife
hysterectomy irrevocably didst jackknife
at the least severely incapacitated
think pitted, riddled,
and rounced her tortured life.
Ovarian cancer affliction
on par with megadeath
bald pate (color of bleached skull),
and crossbones characterized mortal death
oxygen tank to sustain each measured breath.
Nonetheless her angry spirited accursed
ferocity, ejaculatory, denunciatory burst
expletive and epithet
peppered preponderant rant,
(no kidney you) laced
and dull livered worst
fulmination, exasperation,
(albeit feebly faint)
damnation well versed
lips mouthing implacable thirst
to defy grim reaper uber
lyft driver analogous hearst
jubilation immune to
interrogation and/or humiliation
diatribes interpreted glorification,
remained scythe lent bore
scathing rebukes hurled regarding
her sole son (courtesy
miraculous biological reproduction)
dogged with financial perdition
eased series of unfortunate events narration
blessed nonagenarian widower husband
generous father gave male progeny
eased (his/mine) absolution
availed immense monetary boost,
she (envision banshee)
voiced abhorrent objection
regarding liberal outpouring
triggered her vitriolic remenstration.
Similar with pointed gesticulation,
excoriation, cannibalization, abomination...
against reducing his albatross
yoking penurious defeat
her livid hostility displayed, decried,
****** how Matthew Scott,
(I shoal mussel metaphor
without clamming up, how
said offspring coasts) along easy street,
while she sorely protested (thankfully in vain)
even after succumbing to painful demise,
she vehemently, obstreperously and helplessly
loathes handsome handout
to yours truly forsakes Pete.
Jan 16, 2020
Jan 16, 2020 at 5:55 PM UTC