"loutish" poems
these faces on the wall that have no eyes,
the young children with blood escaping from their hands
as they pick up a mound of the Earth and throw at genuflected roses.
these battered men in parks searching for light
and my woman is no longer with me.
it’s all vaudeville: this obnoxious working of continuance,
these redundant flutings, these unprecedented fluctuations.
opening the yellow gates to death
as the automobile churns the last of its exhausted snarl.
we are children peering through glass cases
as death laughs at his hopeless clientele,
sad, desolate progenies in working-classes,
in parks, in factories, somewhere along Mendiola,
or just treading the waist-high hellish froths of Dapitan,
there’s always death in the nooks of the quiet
and from where birds stir in sidereal circles, death
with his hands resting on the cage, chases us back to our homes.
death the changing of the gatekeeper.
death the telling machine.
death the dentist.
death my next door neighbor.
death, this boorish broken-winged Maya twitching in front
of my dog’s shadow shot out of the Sun’s shameful recoil.
death, my loud and loutish muse,
death the truant,
death, the copious fog somewhere in Kennon Rd.
death, in my hands through darkness and light,
death through troves of enigma,
death through undisputed clearings,
death the long line of red beads in EDSA,
death the gates of Plaridel,
it’s the moon following you, trailing your measure,
i hold my woman’s used shirt, pick up her photographs
and there’s no tender movement left but the still-seeking lion
prowling the jungles of my heart, seared by lovelorn undoing.
through the bottom of the sky and the unchanging roof-beam,
the weathervane ceases to a sojourn and the wind is trapped
in a place where we cannot utter any word between the gnashing
of our teeth – through the wasted years, through the sleeping in and out
of homes filled with beatings, to cathedrals swollen with tribulations,
and to the vineyards wrung out of wine, my lover, walking through fire,
sound silence.
Jan 2, 2016
Jan 2, 2016 at 9:20 PM UTC
Every evening
she beams into my living room
bringing me the news of the world
Juanita ***
looking at me with her large eyes, gently tossing her coiffured blond hair
demurely enunciating ugly words through her beautifully shaped mouth
another insane event has occurred in some far off country
and Juanita *** has nice red lip gloss on tonight
a boat load of desperate people has reached our shores
only Juanita *** can make the word "asylum" sound ******
more bikie gang trouble in the city
if I had tats and a Harley Juanita, would you ride off with me?
a ********** released on bail
you shouldn't have to read such filth Juanita
the Government’s economic policies are working
who did you share your stimulus package with Juanita?
another loutish sportsman has disgraced himself in public
Juanita, let the sports reporter read that stuff in future
Parliamentarians hurl foul language at each other in Canberra
I love it when you talk ***** Juanita
debate continues about the best way to tackle climate change
if there was an ETS Juanita, would you trade emissions with me?
she is telling me that tomorrow it will be warm and moist
and Jesus Christ, Juanita *** has two buttons undone on her blouse
There will be another news update in an hour
but not from Juanita ***
and without Juanita ***
no news is good news
Nov 22, 2011
Nov 22, 2011 at 4:39 AM UTC
It started at the beginning of adulthood
where the wandering into the new house
became a chore. The doorway greeted me
by snagging my woollen jumper.
The motorway was screaming, the battered gate happily hanging from its hinges.
His image first flashed into my sight,
And when I stared through the fogged up windows
I could still figure out his figure.
Loutish, he sauntered past
On a hillside, desolate.
He didn’t move for three hours.
He was most probably entwining the thorns from the bush
into his complex mind. Maybe
the boy with the thorn in his side
Had been brought to life by this mystery animal
With a mass of unkempt mane.
Unruly, unnecessary, untouched.
The notebook on my kitchen table lay untidily
waiting to be roughened up. I picked it up
and cast light over the paper.
I imagined him doing the same
But his art was thunderstorms
And mine merely a drizzle of rain.
I made progress
and the flowers were growing from my fountain pen.
Confidence developing, I invited him inside
And there were still no words from his unfathomable jaw.
A month later, we became one
and I still didn’t know where his intentions were lying.
I’m a girl afraid, does he even have any?
Ink *** after ink ***
I ran even further in this marathon of confusion.
I slowly slid from his dismissive grasp, his matted paws light
I had drawn graffiti over his portrait.
a permanent marker changed beauty into art.
I crept before his wake, into his sleep
And his lyricism lay imbibed in the walls, the desk, the door.
I felt the gale force energy cry inside
Which erupted like a volcano, turning remnants into ashes.
Face down, mane rough, scars bright, fur singed
Interior managed.
In the morning, I lifted his heavy paw away from me
And placed it peacefully beside him.
Dec 12, 2013
Dec 12, 2013 at 3:40 PM UTC
And your lips fall on vowels with such delicacy
As I try not to drown in this perilous sea,
With eyelids which rub raw and a heart like a drum
I'm not the one in your head; on the tip of your tongue,
So, try as I might, there's nothing to be said
There's no use in this fight: leave this poem for dead,
Skin still speckled with love-coloured bruises, I know
Though I shift in my seat, I would much rather go,
Loutish lover, with these words, I bid you adieu
This is the last sonnet I shall write for you.
Apr 9, 2014
Apr 9, 2014 at 5:17 PM UTC
Sometimes I am in the center of all things intentional and accidental.
My conquest lies somewhere in between its execution. When this happens,
I am ready: I will wear a white shirt. Keep mum like a leaden chapel.
My eyes will be red like surgery. My precision of stasis,
impeccable – like mother gutting fish in the kitchen,
or a door unhinged by my father. Each exploit
drawn out of the mundane. Hearing the sinking dreaded music of shovel excavating
the Earth,
taking the image blurred. Clarified like clearing of a throat is my reckoning
of a dull Wednesday. Rain descending like a flower. Bathes the world like soiled
linen where we are cut from uniformly. Sometimes I am two abysses in one place:
the gap of the ground and the horizon, sometimes cut-rate like pothole.
I know a day exists and can neither be decent nor loutish. In this frame,
I can be sepia. Whitewashed like wall, hewed like linoleum on floors.
In this center I can be the forever grass
when all things expire by morning
washing me with dew.
May 25, 2016
May 25, 2016 at 12:28 AM UTC
life the grandest stage.
life, gelid waters – I, the pompous admiral.
life, thorns withholding enigmas,
clenching the true blood of flowers.
life, the flimsiest avant-garde.
our measures
conceal all our knowledge,
our fondness of exactitudes
bludgeons us to back to our smallness.
the heart, like a riot,
will always scream blood.
the soul, like a jailbird,
will always carve a song.
the mind, like a grave,
will turn soundless filled with bones.
some will beat back to the same old music,
assaulting the others with a concealed knife
gutting all of us as we lay still – the rest shaking around us.
when I was young, I was unsure of myself
and now that I have aged, it is all but the same:
I am a horde of drunkards.
I am the incessant pendulum.
I am the night-watch
and sometimes I am being watched by the night itself.
I am the loutish vandal on the wall.
I am hot, steaming music I am an earful of ***
I am a handful of hollow I am the dandelion whittling away
in the garden of full women seething with woes
I am the catapult of air from the sling of trees I am a somber god
I am an ungodly god I walk over toppled waters past genuflected hills
like maddened horses screaming victory
I am a limbless beast crawling back home
I am young I am old
my blood ravages the sinews of my body – I am a binaural cinematheque
of slow minutes I am a mausoleum of chiaroscuros
I am all pleasure pleasure pleasure
I am just as ****** as everyone I am sour mash stirred in a wide-mouthed
glass clinking together with this heavy slither of attendance around me
somewhere in Pasay
I am love I love I am hate and I hate
I am forever the lion that roars at what life has done to us
and they will cage me soon when the roses shy away from the deliberate daylight
and when all of this is through
I have only just begun.
Jan 8, 2016
Jan 8, 2016 at 9:39 AM UTC
They have me chained in this noisome cell
With its smells, its moans and shrieks,
No wonder they call it Bedlam for
I haven’t slept in weeks,
They brought me here from the Bridewell,
For they said I was raving mad,
I swapped a cell for a place in hell
And the food in here is bad.
We’re chained and beaten by loutish guards
And starved and purged as well,
Unless we ***** and take the cure
They bleed us in the cell,
I see the others who beat their heads
On posts, and the old stone wall,
Hoping to join the peaceful dead
When they have no blood at all.
The rats will nibble at hands and feet
If we sleep too deep, and soon
You’ll hear the patter as hundreds scatter
About the cell in the gloom,
There are chains and shackles around my neck
My waist and my ankles too,
The only part is my beating heart
Where they can’t chain me from you.
I live with the shrieks and moans and groans
Of the most demented souls,
The prostitutes in their open cells
Who squat on the sewer holes,
A guard says he will take care of you
And I know just what he means,
Be true my love, he’ll take hold of you
And I know the man’s unclean.
I should have minded my temper when
I was walking in the yard,
Was cursed by the devil’s tempter, then
I hit the Bridewell guard,
I hang on tight to my sanity
For I never scream or shout,
And hope for the governor’s lenity
That they come and let me out.
The visitors come and they poke their fun
At the lunatics in here,
They hold their noses and spit at us
And they make their feelings clear,
We’re only **** in the world they’re from
If the fools could only see,
That our putrid state could be their fate
In seventeen sixty-three!
David Lewis Paget
Dec 5, 2014
Dec 5, 2014 at 8:46 PM UTC
January thirteenth two thousand
and nineteen will complete
mine third score orbitz round the sun,
who as a youth evinced
demure and effete
traits, and now weathered, Ongepatshket,
and plenty seasoned,
I feel ready to greet
a garrulous, humorous, and indecorous
Shikse for an indiscreet
liaison, where she will
get reddit to shutterfly,
and twitter like an uber keet
oozing with NON GMO
gluten and monosodium
glutimate saccharine dripping
with au naturale oversweet
ample ***** shapely waist,
and derriere replete
with plenty of junk in the trunk
cavorting, flirting, and issuing manumission
to fraternize, friskily frolic
fruitfully mixing bedlam with bunk
sundering politesse as a "FAKE",
gentlemanly, and honorable hunk,
when in truth,...this lapsed (Lou Zoo Lee)
christened nebish lunk
bookish, loutish, and wonkish teasing
seminarian formerly seclusive monk
keying into my inner philanderer,
yeah...yeah...yeah overdrunk
with prurient fantasies donning an imitation
of (guess who), one
narcissistic trumpeting punk
at heart my idol, no matter the teetering
ship of state he nearly countersunk,
which purportedly mirrors
his Wharton curriculum vitae,
which...well showed he nearly did flunk
apprenticed as POTUS with
FLOTUS attractive trophy
wife (number three) female chunk
and,...oh yes aesthetically
pleasing female real estate
from appearances marriage
barren and devoid of great
je nais sais quois,
though Melania rarely irate,
and partial government shutdown of late
reverberating with fallout, that does oscillate
furloughed federal employees to perspire
principally at increased amortization rate.
Jan 4, 2019
Jan 4, 2019 at 11:40 AM UTC