"lodger" poems
The hot boiled rice
With brown gram curry
The nutty smell of sesame
Oil shrills in hurry
Deployed on a thrice
larger rounder plate
For a boy's belly deplete.
"Can't eat this much rice!"
He shouts with a surprise.
“You can do my son sure.",
Her firm voice enssures
The boys look measures.
"The remainder you keep aside"
Her remand saves his pride.
A monthly forty rupees
Should not be pretty reason
For a lodger's liberty to please
Among two of her teen sons
Than a welling spring of kindness
A heart huge in roundness
Larger than a stainless steel plate
With a profuse heap of hot rice
The smooth boiled brown pies
Oiled with fragrance fleet.
For how he fully did feat it?
How she purely predict it?
The stomach of a young one could hold
The heap of love on a stainless steel mold.
Dec 19, 2018
Dec 19, 2018 at 9:43 AM UTC
The waves rush to the shore
back and forth for more and more
refreshing pebbles foaming stones
bits of old wood and fish bone
vacant shells rushing out to sea
to claim their lodger back for free
a pier covered in seaweed bright green
wood supporting the test of time as seen
rushing, the tide rushing forever more
back and forth to cleanse the shore
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 2:22 PM UTC
bitter winds bite
a desperate heart
as early darkness
unsheathes winter's
slivering moon
the perfect
celestial sickle
threatens to thresh
exposed digits
wayward trundlers
heaving bulky
sacks of woe
scutter down
the city's
darkest
side streets
making haste
to the only
lighted room
that still
welcomes them
cots boast
lumpy clots
of errant springs
and jagged hooks
grappling the lodger
atop a mattress
in bumpy knots of
institutional green
coughs and snores
cusses and laughter
sighs and tears
all ceaseless
prayers
some mumbled
some shouted
some thought
some roared
some farted
some cried
some sung
speaking mutely of
the weighty day
resenting new
hard memories
hoping for a
dreamless sleep
Friends Shelter
NYC
12/31/08
jbm
Music Selection: Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Moanin
Dec 1, 2011
Dec 1, 2011 at 9:51 PM UTC
The winds of hope blow through
the boarding house's corridors
sober, listening to John Kay's "Easy Evil"
having finally rinsed my glass of Tennessee whisky,
that once flowed sojourn down stream.
With the best of intentions,
hell's as current as the midnight lodger,
presiding in room 207,
her absinthe addiction
driven me to distraction
some are marooned on the rich mud silt of life,
but I need to edge towards resolution.
a packed suitcase
whose once dreams hazed,
finally vies beyond the rivers edge.
Oct 25, 2013
Oct 25, 2013 at 7:40 PM UTC
are some dreams real?
dogs in the alleyways
stopped at the robot by a slavic cop lady
but she lets others pass
dragged to a restaurant
interrogated by a mafia owner demanding money I don't owe
they say I've eaten there with a pregnant lady last week
dunno what they mean
Alan smiles but conspiratorially with them
how can he be a friend?
I sob that I don't get their drift
too late..
I need to a safe room to tell a story
whisper your name in the night
dream you lodge nearby
I jump up to do midnight chores
i pack out glassware from closets and you're there
ostensibly to help
the helpful lodger gesticulated that he's leaving
while I make the right noises of working
so, after upturning the table to work on its insides
you leave it on the floor
upside down
it will stand that way till you return
you get so irked at my queries
I'm half afraid to talk
I get a quick kiss pressed onto me face
I didn't brush my teeth
my tongue feels thick and gritty
you rush off into the night
I'm in an alley with a tape-recorder
hearing a deal go down
I call to the fat son of the owner
they're all slobs
with underwear down their knees
and *** on their shoes
I drive down the highway with half attention
and think how we could have met
yet that thought drifts far away now
as my story waits in line
on a conveyer belt the public never sees
stepping out this time line
to lance ahead single entity
for when the other catches up
there just ain't enough temporal cloth
to be clad in unity cloaks
some dreams are maybe then just dreams
Oct 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013 at 11:02 AM UTC
Have you seen, with gifted sight
The bottom line of pits
Made stand and smiled
On platforms stage
Have you danced a tango with a cactus
And bowed down in appreciation
While still unplugging,
What was left behind
In piercing thorns on skins
Do not speak bad of the dragon
I have come to appreciate it's breath
In dens he owned, I sat in; a lodger
Trick or treat, is from what side
Side of the coin the toss, gravitates
So the lucky coin still has a side
Unseen until show of hands
Like everything else, in matter
Do not speak bad,
Of the dragon's breath
It is rude to do so.
Aug 27, 2010
Aug 27, 2010 at 6:25 AM UTC
I missed you today and the smell of emulsion.
Taking the **** like it's a full on compulsion.
Safety pin, pen knife, beard long and grey.
Swearing at the hammers. "I'm just a lodger here" you'd say.
When the weather's damp your big toe gives you trouble.
When the weather's dry, you're on stage singing bubbles.
Overalls, dust sheets, sudoku and crosswords.
If the traffic is bad, you'll hear a few cross words.
That's just today, but as sure as I exist
Every day I wake up is a day you are missed.
Apr 30, 2015
Apr 30, 2015 at 5:30 AM UTC
He will take his coffee black
And alone, though you will observe one day
That he will sometimes, surreptitiously sweeten it
When he thinks that you aren’t looking
The bad weather of his cigarettes he always putting out
Will insinuate their way through his curls
And flavour your kitchen
In strange tastes and lingering long gone stains
He will dread his hair when he’s anxious
Fearful or caught in a bedsit lie
Fingertips finding cures for traps in
The knots and tangles of escapism
And he will smile. Absently and presently
Nodding in all the sign here dotted lines
Murmuring the correct kicked-out-of-home
Superlatives to all your wonderful, desperate ideas
Do not trust his put upon grin
Do not lose yourself in back alley, bottle-cove
Teeth flash and spark, fight or flight smiles
He will have put up this defence before
I know he refrains from cruel words and pauses
Considers his actions and dismisses his first thoughts as cruel
He will look like he’s been caught with one foot
Caught in the cookie jar open door
Just because he doesn’t say ***** doesn’t mean
He doesn’t want to.
His tongue has sculpted this word well before
And the aftermath left him as he called her and apology
This will show control, not concern
And this is measured in proven glances
Designed to test theories
And the limits of his patience
He will wait till he is tucked right into you
To let the lodger act fall
And he will say this house is his
Even if you built it
He will wear an excuse a hundred miles
Or until he is next alone, whichever get’s there last
He will not last
He will not shut the door behind him as he goes
But instead leave a cruel breeze
In the shape of abandonment
His tenancy touch will not
Ask for a deposit back
Nor will he leave you a forwarding address
For all your last warning words
Undelivered on your tongue
Jul 3, 2017
Jul 3, 2017 at 5:10 PM UTC
All alone
In the middle of the floor
Lies a leather brogue -
Nothing less, nothing more.
It's toes are battered,
Ripped and weary -
In fact the whole scene
Is a little dreary.
The deceased shoe's lodger
Along with his feet,
In sprawled horror,
Lies broken and beat.
A once great mind
Here lays at rest.
There's no doubt about it,
It was one of the best.
And just one thing
From his hand, I pry -
An empty bottle,
****** bone dry.
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 2:03 PM UTC
I feel like a stranger in my own home.
An outsider.
The lodger that has outstayed their welcome.
When are these feelings going to fade?
As though the cycle of my youth has started again.
Pressure.
Pressure to get a proper job.
Pressure to find someone to settle down with.
Pressure to be someone I don’t want to be.
Pressure to live up to the same standards as everyone else.
Pressure to be independent. Not just independent in the sense as we know it but in the financial sense.
Pressure to be thin.
Pressure to be as thin as my mum.
How do I break away from those projections of frustration, of disappointment, of self-loathing?
Sep 18, 2019
Sep 18, 2019 at 6:27 PM UTC
appointed anointed entitled insane
assaulted revolted compiled remains
jaunty raunchy defiled deranged
daunting exhausting exiled and caged
experiment serious fistful explain
mysterious furious pistol disdain
lodger copter laughter softer
walking wanting wading wearily watching
thumping trading
vapor water left unbothered
shot and pulled and dropped to fodder
pushing pouting prodding per i lously pinching poking
paper thought or kept to rot and sought to put the trough
but
type. speak. letters. words.
components honing rodents fuller shoulder bone boulder
broken beaten bottled breathing baker bleating basted by
faker fleeting fated fearing facing feeble fine
CHOKE
keeper of the cold and crafted cattle
come to coddle all the wretched blood
it would it was and has been done
the blooming of a bud
Dec 9, 2022
Dec 9, 2022 at 3:57 PM UTC
Noel never comes hot,
this old codger knows his shot,
he covers everything in white
even the hairs of the slight.
He comes with a whoosh,
spreading his glittery mush
this mushy mass melts too quickly,
like a candle that melts faithfully.
Noel knows everything,
he knows what they think;
He follows them on tip - toes,
eavesdropping like the evil moles.
He lives throughout the last month,
saves his mischiefs for the first month.
That mischievousness in all innocence,
this hag he never lagged in patience.
A cold cold codger,
he accepts every lodger,
with hands too cold
and eyes that behold.
He swirls across the curling Earth,
and tints it like his own hearth.
He circles around round in rounds,
like a flake he bounds.
Wreaths and garlands round his neck,
he approaches me for a peck on the neck.
He stalks the stockings
to gasp each longing.
He pecks the pecked things away,
and,sits all night thinking of a way,
to please me with his gifts
and, feliz me with his bits.
I'll miss you Noel,
you are my bubbly bauble and bell,
I'll wait for you,
have a holly holiday, Noel.
Dec 17, 2016
Dec 17, 2016 at 4:23 AM UTC
THE BACKWARD LOOK
( for D.B. )
the blackbird
leaves me a note
pinned to the sky
that blue
beyond
blue
the tide
of the moment
turning turning
Time
like apple blossom
falling through my mind
the little boy
unable to believe
that this day is not
made of forever
and only
now
I walk back
through my self
to unpin the note
the blackbird wrote
with his voice
still pinned
to that
self same
sky
the blue so still
beyond
even its self
I, at last, able to read
the birds words
its language a secret
no longer to me
"I sing..." it says "...I sing
because all this must die!"
"I sing the moment's tide
its turning
always turning!"
It's throat
full of song
glorying in being
alive for this
one eternal
moment
***
I was reading Frank O'Connor's series of lectures on early Irish poetry ( THE BACKWARD LOOK )and listening to both Bowie's newest and an old favourite of mine LODGER. I was at the start of FANTASTIC VOYAGE when the seemingly impossible news of his death trickled through and I went to BBC to confirm that...it was not so. It was so.
A moment ago he had been singing( as he had been singing for me all these years ):
"In the event
that this fantastic voyage
Should turn to erosion
and we never get old
Remember it's true, dignity is valuable
But our lives are valuable too"
I was also reading this 4 line fragment from the 9th century :
"There is one
I would wish to see again,
And give the golden world to win -
All, all, though all were vain."
"Fil duine
Frismbad buide lemm díuterc
Ara tabrainn in mbith mbuide
Uile, uile, cid díupert."
And so I wrote him this little poem....THE BACKWARD LOOK.
Aug 19, 2022
Aug 19, 2022 at 3:38 PM UTC
When you splintered
shards of your glass lodged in me
I can still feel their contours
The heart is a muscle
Every beat has accommodated these sharp edges
At first it hurt so much
I thought I would die
Perhaps I did
Perhaps there is no one at home
but my lodger
Aug 18, 2021
Aug 18, 2021 at 2:46 AM UTC