"loping" poems
wraith of white
you wander wild
the hinterland
Valkyrie's child
your breath pants mist
in icy caves
you have made
10, 000 graves
your image is
in winter skies
its crystal glitters
in your eyes
loping through
the cold chill wood
its secrets you
have understood
born to lead
long of fang
through the glaciers
your voice rang
lonely in your Lycan heart
you made the ****
your kindest art
wolf of legend
wolf of lore
you'll reign untamed
forevermore
soulsurvivor
(C) 2/16/2014
Rewritten 6/12/2015
Jun 12, 2015
Jun 12, 2015 at 6:11 PM UTC
*A coarse, yellow coat with dark spot aplenty
Lean as a greyhound with limb long and lengthy,
Faster than hare from a cold standing start
Impossibly glimpsed in tall grasses that part.
Crystaline jewels in two huge hazel eyes
With the svelt of a feline’s cold killing surprise,
Explosively quick with an elegant gait
And a murderous jaw full of canines that wait
For a fleeing gazelle or a springbok at speed
Then a launch that would emulate bullet, when freed.
Incredibly smooth with a fast loping stride
That would tax any racehorse an envious ride,
Snapping manouvers to left and to right
That mirror a quarry’s evasions of flight.
A blur in a frantic explosion of dust
Then the life blood erupts, splashing red as the rust.
Heaving great flanks after thrill of the chase
Wide open muzzle and gore on the face,
Guarding the game till the kittens locate
Then the spoils of the chase will make portions dictate.*
Marshalg
Serengetti Plain
Central Africa
30 November 2012
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 5:46 PM UTC
We stood on the wood bridge
over old Shoal Creek when
you reached up and shook
a handful of snowflakes
out of the white winter stars.
Just a handful,
just a few cold crystals
that tumbled down into the lazy
loping water of old Shoal Creek.
As we watched them come down,
I grabbed your magic hand
and held it until those falling
flakes were swallowed up
and swept downstream,
thinking you were as rare
as an Alabama snowfall
and I needed to hold your hand
to keep you from disappearing
just as quick.
Jan 24, 2012
Jan 24, 2012 at 8:25 PM UTC
My eyes search
the navy air
but are unable to
depict the
soft features of the rabbits
loping tentatively
through patchy glebe.
I wish it was spring with
bright white fruits.
Just ripe.
Not summer, because
in the summer we cloy
under the fat cream trees.
I want to see you,
and the wild hares,
but the twilight's
hiding
its secrets from us.
Apr 20, 2014
Apr 20, 2014 at 12:31 PM UTC
Loping down at Winter
the raven
ravishes the light,
broad black beating wings spread
feeding on
tiny hidden corpses-its beak
hades' daggers pummelling the frost.
Apr 8, 2016
Apr 8, 2016 at 5:59 PM UTC
Oh Bard, wielding a tool mighty and spiky
Mightier than either the sword or rod,
You reign as monarch in fancy’s domain
Sketching life in all variety and mode
Which with pain and strife fraught
Or bright with gaiety and grace
In finer yarn than the gossamer thread
On a fabric of words in befitting verse
You steal away from the noisy crowd
Into the stillness of the cloistered cell
To dwell with Fancy’s mystic charms
Weaving downy dreams at will
You recount forgotten tales of yore
Of ****** battles won and lost,
Of lovers united, amour defiled,
Conjuring memories from abysmal past
You hearken to the moans of lovelorn souls
And sing of beauty in ditties fine
Triggering sparks into flames grow
In umpteen hearts that pine and whine
Babbling with the brook rushing swift,
Racing with the deer loping past,
You wander into mysterious woods
Where flowers, their richest odors cast
Your ears intent on the song of birds
That comes floating from the far off groves
And the whir of cicadas on the bark of trees
Breaking the calm of twilight eves
Alone you saunter the stretching strands,
Watching virulent breakers in fury heave
Often your heart dancing with the tide
And swinging with the rhythm of rising wave
You feast on the gleam of the auburn sun
And the speckled blue of the infinite skies
Watching the day dying in flame
And the night in a diadem of stars vies
All that’s lovesome meets your eyes
And commune to you in profuse delight
Which you turn into rhyme and rhythm
For the whole of mankind to devour and digest
From your harp flow symphonies sweet
Songs of longing, love and lust
Of idyllic happiness, peace and bliss,
Fuelling hearts with vigorous zest
Though outlawed by the great sage of Greece,
Branding the poet, aberrant and a fool
Oft beneath the façade of his wayward thoughts,
Lie heaps of wisdom for the discerning soul.
Nov 23, 2016
Nov 23, 2016 at 6:01 AM UTC
Not all my days were white and not all the nights were black. Groggily whiteness I splashed sometimes with smiling brush in an abstract marble, and nights illuminated with a fire in the wolfish eyes. When the walls became too blunt, and the air too dry, I took mindless walks. My long legs loping tirelessly along black paths, and a friend was making me a company. While talking him, my voice still trembles and my throat scratches sharp dust of compassion. My friend was the one-armed elf. He lived in a large, abandoned, dilapidated shack near the circus tent , fed by the grace of great circus Masters of Ceremonies. When they were in good will he performed for them trinkets, collecting their garbage, all for small coins. Circus visitors avoided him or pretended not to see his pointy ears and tortured eyes. We rarely talked, this friend and me. Sometimes I went to the magicians to get some of the green, sometimes purple potion for him to sleep better. Once I bought at bartender a pack of cigarettes. We had a pact, him and me. I wasn't a fairy brother, neither circus water-bearer, nor merciful sorcerer. We had a pact, he doesn't ask, I don't ask. We wandered the city in the small hours, under the adrenaline of flaming street lights, in silence. Someday a steel dragon stumbled and with his tail swept the hut, I saw him no more, neither his pointy ears nor his tortured shoulders . Only sometimes during a quiet walk, down the path lined with quivering birch i remember the long shadows under his eyes .
Jan 14, 2014
Jan 14, 2014 at 6:58 AM UTC
A ***** dull and grey
bored into cheap floorboards
the plastic around the bath
shattered
limescaled shower
trying to excrete
discreetly
hungover hot ears and cheeks
heart loping away
among laboured breaths
God Jesus ****
Robbed happiness
cheers in the pub;
Here's looking at you, kid.
Feb 24, 2015
Feb 24, 2015 at 12:32 PM UTC
Light-years north of the purple, zephyr dome.
The saccharine amulet is like euphoria
Buried below the wet soil of Utopian plains,
An aura born of visual brilliance like the aurora borealis
Is this the homely orphanage for poetic spirits and souls?
The intuitive life- forms worthy of sempiternal light?
Tyrant Ignoramus's army is multiplying,
And assembling more power,
Lascivious like an extreme **********
Certainty of survival? No, there is not,
Nervous like claustrophobic Nibbana.
Life-forces forced to test
The stability of the precipice.
Can balance be maintained?
Only for so long....
Loping for miles,
Exhausting it must be,
Their hooves must go on and on,
Heedless of stopping.
Past Ignoramus's Fortress,
Past the Alchemist's Bridge over yonder,
Light-years north of the purple, zephyr dome.
The saccharine amulet is like euphoria
Buried below the wet soil of the Utopian plains,
An aura born of visual brilliance like the aurora borealis.
This is the homely orphanage for poetic spirits and souls,
The intuitive life-forms worthy of sempiternal light.
Originally written 7/30/11
Revised 10/17/14
(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith
Oct 17, 2014
Oct 17, 2014 at 2:44 PM UTC
In the beginning
there is a class
of creatures we call Gods
that much later
we realize are just mono-
instances of god.
From the tower
I babble tongues,
coded messages and ciphers
that you implement
in your daily rituals
and obsessive behaviors.
In R, it's something like,
christ <- god(moral compass)
In Ruby it could be
buddha = God.new
And perhaps a nihilist or we
would find happiness in
10000.times do
pushRock = buhdda.take(me)
end
It's all pidgin for me,
unstructured glimpses at a world
that's moving and changing
faster than my non-existent
grandson can comprehend.
It's all a network
of +1 and like'd
firing mix media,
reinforcing a nascent
thought stream,
back-propagating our legends
and fairy tales, Grimm
reminders of epic Odyssey |
5 Armies in film |
Warring States |
loping dog with a severed hand
in Akira black & white mouth
repossessing Spaghetti Westerns
back into our feudal *****
Fire, firing
into the Monsoon rain.
Always in the Hemingway
rain of symbols and Matrix
green code.
And in my cupped hand,
I catch glimmering fireflies,
instances of Gaiman's
American gods, Tricksters,
Coyotes, and my faithful
Dog smiling at me.
Jan 4, 2015
Jan 4, 2015 at 2:12 PM UTC
Evening hours of playing
peekaboo with the sun
And i lay down lavender words
loping and longing in my
journey to you
Crossing infinities of time
Chiding my days
And chastising my ways
For you to return
When you retreated like a soft
murmur
Like gentle untuned ripples
Like the melancholic wind that
blows and draws in through
my window
Addressing my pages and
leaving without reciting my
rhymes
Like the fumble fuming puff
hailing then slowly fading and
failing
Foamy and fluffy with the
froathy cream yet not
savouring the flavour
Calling yet not caressing
Rhyming yet not flowing
Leaving me like a vagabond
With a foramen self
Grappling ,gripping and then
giving the grave,
the soul you gave
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 1:43 AM UTC
hunched back, towering shadow
12 feet tall and loping through snow
is this beast, wild, in my imagination?
or is it reality
as true as the frostbite
that threatens to
take my nose?
I never believed, I come from skeptics
but then as a fat man, I never had faith
that I'd lose enough weight
to carry myself through the Himalayas
THAT is more amazing to me
than a creature of legend
dragging its mid-day meal
back to its cozy cave
in frost-covered mountains
it stops, stands, regards me
one brute arm holding to its ****
white steam blowing, locomotive
from its nose
mouth opens as if to roar
and I...
wave
it tilts its head, closes its mouth
and with a shrug
leaps off through the snow
stiffening mountain sheep
flailing along behind
like a pull-toy
I say, more to myself than anyone:
Yeti, your secret is safe with me
No one back home
would ever believe.
2/17/15
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 8:54 AM UTC
I have watched her now for forty five long minutes
As she stares out the window
Waiting on a war with worthwhile spoils
I have given up on politness
She follows me to the yard
The pit bull loping at her heels
Outside in the cool night we stand
Gazing at the midnight air traffic
She aligns her body with the north star
And shivers unknowingly in the porch light
She asks my favorite constellation
And I point it out with a lit cigarette
She drinks heavily from Aquarius
The grass is dead and I am only pretending
She is beautiful there is no doubt
As she sits beneath a purple neon bar light
My belly is full of wine and she says my name
Tossing it around drunkenly
like a cheap token she wants to trade
I have to leave this place
People all packed together blowing smoke in each others faces
Laughing loudly at anything but the biggest joke of all
She follows me out the door onto the sidewalk
I hate her eyes for in them lies truth
The cloak and dagger of her kiss
Goodbye
She wraps her coat around herself
Walking away without a word
I should stop her
She should stop
But
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 5:01 AM UTC
I watch the loping invalids in the courtyard
nil by nil by nil feet
How to describe a sensation such as heat
to them? The interminable sun and so on
I wonder if they understand that
Light itself is not heat
whereupon the bell sounds
their minds divide and fog in the somnolent air
I look at a Dupuytren in the room
Cord around the chair
His clothes hanging off him
Trying to move his remarkable shock of hair
From his eyes
My room looks out beyond the yard
It is high up - precarious
Through that picturewindow, the world without
is framed, beyond the walls the oldtown
spires and roofing
I see my own sadness, my impotence
In every inch of the heights
the girls come back, propping black bikes against
the gate;
my legs are wrapped in a blanket
and I feel nothing below my waist
Through a system of cables and consent
my companion molls in Bergonic poise
each day the room behind his eyes receded, the heart
lessening
the birds gathered around the bathroom doors to be fed
He read about Escher in bed
waiting to be plugged
unbeknownst rigours of treatment, and
unbeknownst methods
until he forgot those days in Margate
the sound of his nieces
and everything he read about Escher –
the light makes dull
the precision of the thorn
Aug 6, 2013
Aug 6, 2013 at 12:46 PM UTC
Let me walk with no agenda
to where the failed days are still rewarding.
No judgment,
no burden, no façade.
Let me take off all that is me
and become what is meant to be,
Who is meant to be.
Let me drop what is now and
run to the woods,
my solace, my love.
Let me rise with the sun and let it warm my heart
like you never could.
Let me sing with the barred owl at dawn,
and let me scream my lament with the crows.
Let the dew upon my feet be the tears
that wouldn’t fall.
I wipe them off so easily.
I am the moon, I am the sun,
the displaying turkey, the loping deer.
I am the morel living with the dead.
Let me be the maple,
the bramble, the peat.
Oh just let me be.
Let me be me.
In my home.
In the woods.
With the answer.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 11:52 PM UTC
Tell me please
does the grey granite faced
northern heather scarp
or the smooth enchanting
Carrara marble cherub
move you to awe?
Does nature only
wintered weathered
sheer and simple
eclipse the man made
man handled
alabaster angel?
Bleak beauty
Tell me my friend
does your head turn
as the high cheek-boned
short haired
practical passes
a flash of scarlet
lipped?
Or do you arrest
as a foundation creation
glosses across your horizon
loping on heels and too knowing?
Bleak Beauty
I must ask you
my brother
When you cause to sleep
does your angel
appear
and does
the gentle
perfection of her
supra-sternal notch
ever stay with you
til morning?
Jan 29, 2013
Jan 29, 2013 at 1:07 PM UTC
Each thing I do I rush through so I can do
something else. In such a way do the days pass—
a blend of stock car racing and the never
ending building of a gothic cathedral.
Through the windows of my speeding car, I see
all that I love falling away: books unread,
jokes untold, landscapes unvisited. And why?
What treasure do I expect in my future?
Rather it is the confusion of childhood
loping behind me, the chaos in the mind,
the failure chipping away at each success.
Glancing over my shoulder I see its shape
and so move forward, as someone in the woods
at night might hear the sound of approaching feet
and stop to listen; then, instead of silence
he hears some creature trying to be silent.
What else can he do but run? Rushing blindly
down the path, stumbling, struck in the face by sticks;
the other ever closer, yet not really
hurrying or out of breath, teasing its ****
-Stephen Dobyns
Apr 15, 2016
Apr 15, 2016 at 11:54 AM UTC
Illuminated by incandescent brilliance
she is feeling celestial,
Radiated by the sparkler
held in the only gloved hand.
The curvature of blonde hair
folds around her face,
as you smile graciously.
Cast in shadows but never forgotten,
a penny in a wishing well.
You stand tall, a benign being.
He told her you are golden.
Looking down upon her,
in promise of prospect
as she wavers and wanders
loping around
like a small pixie,
spreading dust through
the swelling Garden.
This night, full of wonder,
enchantment, entrancement.
Mystical.
An alchemist appears to her.
She does not blink.
You gazed at bursts of light,
those thunders of giants
imprinting the smoke infested sky,
as you imprint her mind
with the stories you tell
and your accounts of life.
They cannot be retold.
Descending
Drawing in.
Now, vacuum packed
you are shrink wrapped,
enclosed with no air.
Mounds of cement run down your mouth.
That night you were strong
and you watched her with glee.
But now she’s bigger and bolder
and you’re weaker, older.
When her sparkler fades
The supernova stage,
A final moment of absolute glory
But will not linger,
Or last.
Now your eyes are melancholy,
Distant,
Enigmatic.
Wandering phantom orbs.
Her sparkler grows dim.
Feb 15, 2013
Feb 15, 2013 at 4:28 PM UTC
Shoot at us and we'll be gone Minnesota 2921
We'll never be your friend Idaho 705
But now the rage has gone away Wisconsin 690
We're coming back again Montana 566
Wyoming 343
Just a lonesome wanderer loping through the night N.Carolina 120
Or an alpha leader followed by his pack Arizona 29
We're claiming back what's ours by right California 1
The wolves are coming back! Alaska 10000
Canada 52000 (2011 numbers)
May 20, 2012
May 20, 2012 at 4:04 PM UTC
I love him
I have loved him since the first time I saw him
And somehow knew him despite myself
His awkward silence and surprising satirical comments
His loping long legged gait
And the sadness so rooted in his bones
That I think I would like to just hold him
Forever
To sap it all away
Leaving only his gangly thin ***** limbs
That I could find a home in
His dark eyes too
With the intelligence within so evident
That sit under even darker eyebrows
To compliment his raven locks
Which I want to run a hand through
As he sighs into me
Comfort flowing through my finger tips
And through his skull
To seek out the sorrow that lurks
I want to pull him out of the life he is making too short
And into a word so full of color
Of sound
And of beauty
That he could never imagine life as it was before
Being called life again
I want to wash away his haunted gaze
That leaves my skin feeling so oppressive
I can’t even imagine being stuck in his mind
Tormented, by past and present
In a warring cocktail of bad memories
And self-imposed solitude
He is the lonely dark shadow to my side
That I long so desperately to pull into the light
Knowing too well I don’t have the brightness within to fill him
I am darker that he
I will be gone all too soon
In a flush of crimson
Not even getting to ask him
Please don’t blame yourself
And forgive me
Sep 23, 2013
Sep 23, 2013 at 2:25 AM UTC
Is love what we make it out to be
when we cling to it out of desperation
fall all over it in forgetfulness
drink too deeply and grow drunk on its richness
brass is the heart that is mistaken for gold
functional but misleading
Is love what we want it to be
when we ache in
fond recollection
Oct 1, 2011
Oct 1, 2011 at 9:17 PM UTC
I snatched at her soul,
grabbed it and held it to my chest,
a beatific grin upon my untruthful face
glorying in her spasmodic transmutation-
her monotone vision
beset with confusion
her gender breaking in my grip.
Loping footsteps over taut, troubled seas
spawned secretions ejected
like flame-
her sighs, a storm
her cries subsumed in sanctified fire
without worship.
Sep 19, 2016
Sep 19, 2016 at 2:06 PM UTC
Offended
To the highest
Of my lumpy loping
Anatomy
See,
I came from you
Why are you disgusted by me?
Offended by my body
And my stretch marks
And my thighs
My waist is too thick
And my ******* are
Popping out of my
DDD bra
And you're in disbelief
And I suppose I'm in awe
Of how you treat me
And my body
Like it's not really me
Like this vessel is a
Machine to be worked
Harvested and cleaned
But hey,
It also contains a soul
And a mind
And a voice.
It contains a lot of things you'll never know.
And I'm fine with that.
But please, don't act offended by my body.
Jun 3, 2013
Jun 3, 2013 at 9:33 PM UTC