"lumpen" poems
She was like the iron pyrite
The teacher asked them to examine, and describe;
Cold, dense and prickly,
Difficult to love.
Given the right light
And a gentle handling,
Oh, how she'd sparkle,
But in that place, expectations and sensory overload
rendered her lumpen, and resistant.
Removed from her books and her inner world - all she needed -
And placed in a maelstrom,
She was bewildered and forlorn.
Un-cooperative, they called her,
And the teachers loved the other gems instead,
Pretty little nuggets; Ruby, Jasper, Jade.
Two years of discouragement and dislike
And even the tentative sparkles had darkened.
The other gems enjoyed each other
And moved away from her magnetic pull,
sensing difference.
No outright meanness, not yet,
But hints were brewing, whispers had started
And she wandered alone, in the playground,
Talking to the seagulls, and singing to herself.
The teachers only wanted conformity
And called her parents to voice concern
about her lack of friends.
Had they asked her, allowed her to have a say
She would have told them it didn't matter
But they were determined that it did, to them, if not to her,
And her parents were added to the burden of people
Worried and disappointed, watching.
She knew now, she was different, she had always known but never minded,
Now it was a problem. She didn't fit,
Like that scratchy purple uniform, around her chubby waist
Food didn't judge, dislike or condemn.
That life ended, and a new struggle, in a new school, began.
This was harder; the meanness was apparent now,
Difference wasn't tolerated
And someone wandering alone was a target.
She found a place to hide, behind a staircase, with a book,
But they found her, removed her and patrolled her only refuge
Forcing her to submit to the torture.
Every day was a war zone,
So she found another way, and embraced ill-health, stealthily
Spraying deodorant directly into her own face
induced asthma attacks; and not all those ear infections were real,
She was an accomplished actress.
She got through it, millions do.
She found her own place, her own friends in her own time.
Among Onyx, Jet and Tigers Eye
Her darkness didn't mark her out as different,
And all that fake illness
Was great prep for theatre,
Where she was able to return to her inner world,
And no-one cared if you feigned madness
Or embraced the real thing.
Difference was celebrated,
The whispers now, were that she had a great stage presence,
And a talent to be nurtured,
Not a difference to be despised.
Sep 17, 2013
Sep 17, 2013 at 4:35 AM UTC
An abyss that echoes shrieks of eagles circling above:
the moon lies smashed in her sunken depths by nights,
this pit of enveloping darkness, a vessel emptied of life.
Brick by brick, aeons layer her walls, who knows when
she was dug? she carries fragrances of primordial waters
gathered in the heart of earth to the winds of the present.
Long before Joseph's well, she stood when desert land
was verdant wood, and before the earth was tread
asunder by the chariot, this graveyard of the stars.
Plunder she has seen, and abuse as she towers over the past.
Not a wellspring, emptied dry, but a bowl abegging.
The bowl that gave a creed to a continent?
Caravans pass by disgraced crevices remnant
of that era, gone long of stone. Effeminate, she pawned
her bricks over for a life. Or a well to collect the dead,
frightened by the hundreds by the colonial bullet.
Rise and fall, she carries in her wheel of life, her spoked zero.
Of which yet arises a homespun yarn of dreams.
Darkness wells forth from this abysmal chasm, and her
waters cause feuds by brother to brother. Men of straw,
of whom in a few years, no trace would remain,
yet remain and the dove that flew the night a tryst was made
still challenges the jacketed savant on Parliament square.
A pair of inverted eyes guard the gates of darkness.
And now and again, you see yet a star
shooting out to the skies again from the waters: to the moon,
a mushroom cloud, a circling satellite, and an octet notes.
She's not one well: her waters brackish, are
a thousand islands, that came together under the shadow
of an empire on whom the sun never sets.
Count the roots of the banyan, trees.
Her sons grow weak and lumpen. Her daughters rise.
And so she endures, this ancient mother.
In her depths, on the day, when the star of David is reversed,
she endures the ******** reversed, that shined in her of ages ago.
Of men, two quarters great, arise from the same shadow:
The eagle on the west, and the dove on the east.
The not is the all, the zero is everything.
Eternity, two zeros conjoined.
Aug 14, 2013
Aug 14, 2013 at 2:18 PM UTC
I like Charlie;
Charlie talks to trees.
never understood though why;
he ventured,
'tween Camilla's,
knees.
guess you "had to be there."
when,
ying became his yang,
Diana wasn't looking
then.
Camilla's legs went TWANG.
Yeah,, I like Charlie;
Charlie talks to trees.
and he's a fully paid up member
of the lumpen bourgeoisie.
God bless Charlie.
Feb 27, 2011
Feb 27, 2011 at 9:16 AM UTC
Ideas in light flow through intertwined wires.
Imaginary fires, light-up a couple of neurons here and there.
Slumpen lumpen forms.
Humans just for a moment.
And in another part of her mind, atop a vast landscape, an alien plays impossible notes on a flute.
Jan 22, 2013
Jan 22, 2013 at 5:28 PM UTC
I’m feeling a little sunken,
Lurking here at the bottom of the
Ocean wallowing here in my
Muddy slime-filled pit.
Feeling rather lumpen,
Stodgy, awkwardly unblended, I remind myself
Of things unstirred, of things
That cause the upper lip to rise above the teeth.
I have formed a second skin, like congealing coffee,
Overheated, I am clammy, and I wish to shed.
Scrub me, I am just dead skin,
I am something to slough off, discard, and rinse.
Aug 11, 2014
Aug 11, 2014 at 10:09 AM UTC
I bolted out of the door like
a ghost was after me
My head had run short of remedies
I just couldn’t stand the words that hard been spoken to me
Though I didn’t get so angry,
I went vigorous and as dangerous as acid
I contained my temper, Iced my thoughts in seconds
Slowly heated up like a boiling bot
But my lovely face kept smiling
Then I muted myself
Cause if I said a word, it would be terror for them.
Worse than that of the famous Napoleon’s and Hitler’s
I knew if I rose up neither Samson nor David would have stopped me.
You’re not a coward I said to my self
What happens next, now is the moment…
I dramatically stand up, with a roaring, thunderous voice
And cried out with energy;
“you think you can handle me….Ahhhh
A man of my caliber shouldn’t be addressed by
an antiquated voice of a lumpen. I say to you
Watch your mouth carefully
or else, hell will be too close for you to be”.
For a moment I felt cracks of pity off my face.
Unfortunately, this was only said to my heart
No one heard the drama inside me,
Cause by that time; I looked worse than fear its self
The words running through my nutshell couldn’t
Solve the situation,
‘should have said it off’
I kept this as my Wish.
Apr 25, 2014
Apr 25, 2014 at 4:24 AM UTC
I saw not the moon
She loved me never
Lumpen rock
I saw not.
The moon and how
High out of song
She shrilled-
The lying moon
May 19, 2017
May 19, 2017 at 3:25 AM UTC
Sad me is heavy,
Saturated with toxic teardrops,
Soaked and weighted down,
Falling,
Falling,
Falling to the ground
To sink into the Earth's crust
Spreading, embedding,
Becoming mud.
Sad me is a solid mass
Of rippling, crippling grief,
Lumpen iron, Raw ore
Bleeding,
Bleeding,
Leeched by circumstance,
Scarred by consequence,
Dreaming, screaming,
Remembering love.
Oct 17, 2013
Oct 17, 2013 at 3:52 PM UTC
Winter is again upon me,
I stand at the window
and stare through scenes
of frost and falling snow.
An ache ascends through,
knotting from a dark core,
rising up like a free spirit
congealing lumpen in my throat.
I feel the chill creeping,
rub my arms and shudder,
the fire is burning so low,
and my eyes see dying embers.
The desire to stoke is dulled,
by apathy frozen in time,
my eyes turn to stare
through frost and falling snow.
Jan 3, 2024
Jan 3, 2024 at 7:33 AM UTC
I'm dressed for travel!
Tattered rags and
Drawstring leather saddlebags,
Home-made shoes and
Unkempt hair...
A woven sack? What's hiding there?
A folding knife, a
Length of string, a
Photograph, a mandolin,
A lumpen package bound in twine,
An apple and a draught of wine,
An empty space I've yet to fill--
Lord willing, though, I think I will.
Nov 7, 2016
Nov 7, 2016 at 5:48 AM UTC
Oscillate, particles-
Vibrate, separate-
Cosmic body transcend
Space and time
The small resides
Here/there
All at once
Yet this lumpen flesh
Sits immobile
Leaving my love
All alone.
Stubborn matter-
Spirit made form
Obey the leader
And leap forth
Leap I say
From the net of
Real
To the Romantic
To the Ideal
Oct 30, 2016
Oct 30, 2016 at 8:52 AM UTC
<>
a lump in my bed
————————
sheet covered, toe to head, alive or ?
call it lumpen woman, though shapely,
the thick coverlet says yay, let’s suppress!
what lies sheet-deep, let everyone wanna guess?
two arms snakily shoot/emerge, straight out,
from besides ears, to aerate treasured tresses,
blonde mane, lioness locks, somehow sun colored, of the
rest, a-guessing kept, I man of reason, am’nt a speculator
reasoning that when the world was 1st created,
there was a holy hole in my side, missing a ribbing,
leaving me needy for a plugging, a poultice covering,
a bandage stitched, so my breathing unimpaired
thus this how and why the lumpen woman is come
into bed and body, to patch and complete, warm and
stoke me, wake up us to freshly chilled spring atmospheres,
and other supposed reasons to compose only love poetry
Fri May 22
early morn bedecked bed
isle of sheltering
May 23, 2020
May 23, 2020 at 5:38 AM UTC
today its vast,
leadlike heaviness,
caught in a web for years,
a river of tears,
knowing not to touch mercury,
never to touch lead,
but all this lumpen, toxic, metal,
here now,
the painful, real circumstances,
a life unravels horrific,
watch the watchmen,
politicians reliant on crazy logic,
journeying headlong with coboclos, and shaman bundled and secreted, in rabbit warren, their pronouncements,
She amazed the vastness of the labyrinth, like tendrils that surmounted her, all her lonely long life, her mother, her father, her brothers, her sisters, baby Jesus, God the Father, church, other parents of schoolfriends, the watchmen, hippies, engineers, pretend girlfriend trapdoors, pretend boyfriend trapdoors,watchmen, irish, americans, english, russians, coboblos, shaman, germans, dutch, irish, english, americans, chinese, spanish, portuguese, italians. worldwideweb
one woman an island, allegedly.
her strenght from the biggest Daddy the one above,
He sent her his Son ,
He filled her with Love,
she hopes for his return,
others burn and condemn themselves in the safety of numbers,
they are numbered....
right now, she cannot find hope or love for them ,
she did love when it counted,
all that too is from God.
Oct 25, 2020
Oct 25, 2020 at 6:05 AM UTC
As an indie alt rock'n tribe beck ha dishabille poet, hive u challenge writing *** null guess to begetting heir or heiress, which includes gestation of an, emotion, idea, sen timent, unbeknownst if outcome birthed to be fabulous then however the whim sic al notion spins within thine cerebral centrifuge, the imagination pregnant with fetus of a fledgling concept feeling with byte size sea legs, not quite ready for prime time beak combs obvious, as swollen womb expansive lettered girth manifests and coalesces into miniature Confucius versatile baby (unless unexpected contusions render exertion aborted effort, the proud procreator bounteous, which success inspires this scrivener to tackle another and fleeting thought and sire by product with audacity. oft times, the sacred seconds silenced by stillness louder than "Big Ben" ear splitting only to me squirreled away in this basement. den the dead quiet riot audio logical sonic boom decibel asper a water nymph sprung from a fen, or when sneaky fiery fox slips into the house, where yokes roosting long foster mass squawking. manifold egg on eyes zing hen, the end result metamorphoses into a totally tubularly unforeseen jumble of gibberish senseless wordy clump aspiring to convey some essence of logic, though best to take a furlough than persist to interpret trumpeted dump of discordantly strung English bits, which intractable insistence might spell f-o-r-c-e-d g-r-u-m-p as the mood one may find them-self, unless ***** can call the literary mod squad to resolve harrumph, and with any lucky the once amorphous lumpen pro lit tarry hit might undergo an amazing transformation. a cherished poem plump with wriggling juicy fruit weighing down the boughs as if limbs ready to slump iz born.
May 24, 2017
May 24, 2017 at 5:04 AM UTC