"lurching" poems
it was probably a mistake
the day you swore her eyelashes were wet from the rain;
the night you promised to never belittle the importance of the sun
because here she lies,
tears precipitating,
stomach lurching
at the thought of you and
I promise you, I swear
that the sun could never shine
nearly as bright as she did
when she started
rising and
falling
for you.
you have opacified her
radiance
you have shunned her
selfless light
and she who was once a sun
is now a hopeless, spiraling
monsoon.
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 4:53 PM UTC
*Blue is the boulder overlooking the bay
Loosely pocked by weather-worn stains
Unwavering guardian of all that lay
Enigmatic yet silently screaming its pains
Blue is the reflection dancing playfully
Laid generously by the twilight moon
Upon the vast canvas of the darkened sea
Elated ripples readily accepting such a boon
Blue is the halo encircling the moon
Lavish circlet gifted by the sun
Unnoticed by eyes that slumbered too soon
Evading the sands of time that run
Blue is the silhouette of a lone sailboat
Lurching and bobbing by will of the waves
Unknowingly catching the zephyrs that float
Eluding the fingers from watery graves
Blue is the man; perched upon the boulder
Lapping up the stars mirrored upon the sea
Usurped heart of his had never sung drearier
Ensnared by woeful wonderment...*
that man is me...
Mar 30, 2015
Mar 30, 2015 at 10:28 AM UTC
I hear the carve of oars,
I see your palms enfold the wood,
as shards of stars shred
a black and glistening wave.
I hear the carve of oars,
the shore is breached,
we reach dank granite stairs, climb
a tower in moon gritty light.
I hear the carve of oars,
you speak, your turgid cheek
blue-steel-gray, your gaze grates,
my salt raged eyes summon waves and stars.
I hear the carve of oars,
waves rattle a candle's flame,
chill the bed frame, the wet stony room ––
the door closes, it scrapes.
I hear the carve of oars.
I know your lurching gate,
the clank as oar lock’s turn.
You slip the shore.
I hear the carve of oars
Copyright © 2002 Gary Brocks
Aug 28, 2018
Aug 28, 2018 at 8:47 PM UTC
Sun to set, to herald the arrival of my moon
Prepare my vessel for an odyssey, golden mast and all
Best be on my way, best be soon...
Done this a hundred times come every nightfall
This night, I wish it different, wish it otherwise
My head isn't where it's supposed to be
Swimming in the clouds, in the star spangled sky
Speaking of plans to which the heart would agree
Time is now, it's time to finally drift away
Let go of all worldly trepidations
Hold all unfounded apprehensions at bay
Be brave to pursue fantastical notions
This journey ahead, I want to immortalise
Don't think I'd want to turn back
Leave behind the pillow stifled cries
With the moon as my guide across an ocean of black
*"Close your eyes and just feel the drift
Know that the stars are protectively watching
Picture your moon; her hands bearing a gift
A gift you'd soon receive, after much longing"
"Feel the water, like a thousand hands propping you afloat
Passing you over to more hands that lay ahead
Lurching forward gently, this ethereal boat
Rest now upon your giant floating bed"*
I took that leap of faith... I'm sailing
Cresting and bobbing towards my moon
I hear the stars for they are singing
Lulling me by with a celestial tune
On my way, now on this nighttime adventure
Don't think I'll ever look back
Together this night would span forever
Floating endlessly in a sea of black
Sep 7, 2014
Sep 7, 2014 at 3:49 PM UTC
He waits for the wind to carry him home,
Across waves that rise and fall with
The pulsing of his aching heart,
She waits on rocks by the shipwreck,
Wondering how he got away,
He counts his blessings and clutches his chest,
The lurching feeling fading with the haunting
Visions of the flames in her eyes,
She cries and buries her face into her hands,
Tears forming shallow bodies of water
Like the rock pools where she dreamed of
Capturing his heart.
Apr 29, 2015
Apr 29, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
Left, right, straight ahead.
You are in the Labyrinth.
They want you. They will get you.
Their ice cold eyes are haunting you.
Blacker than the darkness clears a shadow every light.
Can you feel the hands reaching out for you?
They have implanted themselves into your head.
You're crawling away. But even if you would run..
Left, right, straight ahead. You are in the Labyrinth.
You can keep crawling.. lurching.. running away..
But deep down inside you already know
Nobody will ever see you again.
Nowhere are you really safe.
Never will you get out of here.
May 4, 2014
May 4, 2014 at 4:58 PM UTC
Beside his heavy-shouldered team
thirsty with drought and chilled with rain,
he weathered all the striding years
till they ran widdershins in his brain:
Till the long solitary tracks
etched deeper with each lurching load
were populous before his eyes,
and fiends and angels used his road.
All the long straining journey grew
a mad apocalyptic dream,
and he old Moses, and the slaves
his suffering and stubborn team.
Then in his evening camp beneath
the half-light pillars of the trees
he filled the steepled cone of night
with shouted prayers and prophecies.
While past the campfire's crimson ring
the star struck darkness cupped him round.
and centuries of cattle-bells
rang with their sweet uneasy sound.
Grass is across the wagon-tracks,
and plough strikes bone beneath the grass,
and vineyards cover all the slopes
where the dead teams were used to pass.
O vine, grow close upon that bone
and hold it with your rooted hand.
The prophet Moses feeds the grape,
and fruitful is the Promised Land.
4.6k
Thinking with short breath, gripping my chest, sinking with stress?
Just to attest, Imagine putting stress to the test
Over pushing boundaries set with intent
Chasing leads, gaining lost time pursuing a lust with broken trust
Only to rise to the question
Can the duality of morals and ethics which define us..
Be overwritten?
Misconstrued needs for skeptics lost in line
Slowly assimilating breathless methods
Hijacked
Black rose petals spiraling to conclusion, Decomposing as if to forget this
Why don't I neglect this elusive euphoria defined in terms of confusion?
Split paths once veering in opposite directions begin running parallel
I know I'm here, but who's that there?
Ominous reflections veer back with eyes unfamiliar
A face with no definition grabs my wrist lurching me forward
Weightlessly ***** following a diverging direction with questioned intention.
Where are you taking me? (Silence)
Operating in two places at once, questioning who is the driver
Hijacked
There but ever increasingly distant, attempting to reach you
The sunrise rekindling the spark of yesterdays intuitions
Preserving eloquence like a flower in full bloom
Suddenly fades eerie in an instant, dwindling on gloomy restless expressions
Cloudy perception refracted by crystalline illusions
The evanescent cypress terpene, king of bliss
Flowing in the direction towards what has been calling it most
An icy chill enters my chest, a constant race to chase an endless quest
A ploy of acceptance with a cotton ball
Aug 22, 2019
Aug 22, 2019 at 11:50 AM UTC
I always feel like I’m running.
Not running away, there’s no such thing.
Just running forward towards something.
Something.
There’s no such place.
With how long I've been running
surely I'd have found it by now.
I've though of what it must look like.
Something could be a field
buried in a brilliant, sunlit cloud of alfalfa.
It could be a tundra,
frozen and without borders.
A rainforest,
vivid with life, green and flourishing.
A mountain, lurching
over a city,
and in the city there would be nothing but good men.
No liars, nor cheats.
Just good men and good women,
good drink and bad bars,
blocks and city blocks of motels
riddled, reeking with the smoke of cigarettes
smoked sometime post-sex.
And in the city there would be nothing but goodmen
railing
good men
raving and ranting, chanting for more
railing.
*These stairs sure are steep,
I best not fall.*
Something could be a desert.
The dunes would stretch, immaculate, across my vision.
The horizon would be sun, sand, and sun again.
Is the sky still blue in a desert?
Is desert wind built of language and faith, or just oxygen heated to boiling?
Is the night full of hushed whispered deviance?
Is the night bent over the day's sofa?
Is he waiting for sunrise?
Rise, sun, rise,
what are you waiting for?
Do it.
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 4:33 PM UTC
I'll be going home without leaving
tonight,
inside
we all are wrapped in dust
as if
the love
we create in all our small spaces
cannot provide the instances of growth we need to feel whole
I beg
you, realize the end you wander to in time
Jessica went away with all the lurching other guys
just to wind up growing older in a slow roll, home well before midnight
every time he or she wonders what in wandering they would have found
depression in a sick head worries what with your shadow not around
might happen to me, to me
Nov 8, 2014
Nov 8, 2014 at 11:53 PM UTC
Haunched like a faun, he hooed
From grove of moon-glint and fen-frost
Until all owls in the twigged forest
Flapped black to look and brood
On the call this man made.
No sound but a drunken coot
Lurching home along river bank.
Stars hung water-sunk, so a rank
Of double star-eyes lit
Boughs where those owls sat.
An arena of yellow eyes
Watched the changing shape he cut,
Saw hoof harden from foot, saw sprout
Goat-horns. Marked how god rose
And galloped woodward in that guise.
4.1k
I see the sunrise over sin,
Repress what I did once again.
Shadows me like its prey,
Lurching out of me eagerly.
I see the sunrise over sin,
It’s boiled over once again.
Scolding from white hot shame,
My guilt has the power to lame.
I see the sunrise over sin.
Push it down before it begin.
The moon rise over blame,
She brings clarity and aim.
I see the sunrise over sin,
Connects us all a kin.
Judge others harshly without perceptivity,
Ignorant of the hypocrisy.
I see the sunrise over sin,
Should **** someone but who’s in?
Let’s all perish together again,
Cleanse this place of our contagion.
I see the sunrise over sin.
Let’s live samsara again.
Improve from the last time.
Not just a rhyme.
Nov 13, 2019
Nov 13, 2019 at 11:26 AM UTC
no novocaine, no experience
the nurse on break
tells me to "wait right there."
the big lights above the pleather chair
my pale skin illuminated and glowing
under rays of white white light -
and I'm tied down like a
banded submissive
to a blacker than black chair
it's only me and invisible monsters
in a game of
cat mouse tick tock
tick tock
sweating, I realize I must move
there's no other option for this lab rat
I feel like
All I've ever been, is here -
sprawled out in the open
hand choked of blood and oxygen
I cannot take this
I cannot take this!
Something in my mind turns off
Something in my mind turns on
I chew the soft parts away easiest
it slides in my mouth
my teeth are cold and wet now
Chattering and lurching sounds
come from my mouth & teeth
as the splinters of bone
crackle away in my bite.
It took either a minute or a day
But it was over.
And so,
I left it there
tied to that black chair.
I opened the glass-paneled door with an exit 'bing',
and I was happy I never met the Doctor.
Apr 5, 2012
Apr 5, 2012 at 1:52 PM UTC
Sometimes a jolt can stop you.
Like a phantom step that calls for you drive your heels to the ground,
Or a sentence in a book that yanks your gaze back to the beginning,
Heaving and lurching over.
Sometimes I stop,
To take in that I have stopped.
That it has been as few months that I could count on fingers,
The same that have scratched at my insides,
Heaving and lurching over.
Sometimes that same jolt can push you,
Like a static shock from a touch.
And that is why I do not claw, crave, beat or binge,
As I think of you most days, not out of love but as a warning.
For if the shock from your static unmoving self
Had not left me stung and stumbling,
Heaving and lurching,
I would not have ran forward.
*I have been cold inside and out.
I have been clawed and have grown talons in return.
And I was paler than my anaemic self,
Lacking in haemoglobin to burden with rasps of air,
Because my heart was weak and could not push blood to the surface.
But now that the colour has drained from my face,
I can blend into snow.
White, all but for red lipstick,
And apple in hand.
So I know when people have found me
They must have had to stop to look.*
Feb 19, 2013
Feb 19, 2013 at 6:19 PM UTC
Weighing brutality's candour is taxing
Feeling the certainty, heavily dark,
Sonorous mutterings echo in twilight
Whitely, loquaciously, utterly stark.
***** ***** in a temperament simmering
Stalking through rage in a judgemental way,
Lurching for conflict from deep in the mindset
Locked in a skirmish of consequence play.
Searing white pain of brutality's candour
Reeling from obvious lack of control,
Obliquely collapsed beneath blue jackaranda
Flaccidly spent, I surrender my role.
Marshalg
In absentia
7 December 2011
Dec 8, 2011
Dec 8, 2011 at 12:15 PM UTC
Clem, the rodeo clown
wears a bold painted smile,
a bright plaid shirt and bib overalls
with cuffs too short for his legs.
Between the rides and roping -
Clem banters with the emcee,
wheeling off groaners and
scrambling in and out of his barrel-
playing the air-headed bumpkin.
But Clem is nobody's fool;
when that gate opens, his real work begins.
Bull and rider explode from the chute
and the game is on.
The cowboy weaves and writhes to stay on top
for that eight golden seconds
that will earn him his pay
against a half ton of feral energy
stomping and lurching to fling him to the earth.
With eyes as keen as a hungry hawk,
Clem tracks every buck and lurch
for any peril sign - and then it happens:
the rider is hurled airborne,
landing inches from the driving hooves.
Clem seizes the cowboy with
a linebacker's grip
and swings him safely over the fence
as wranglers speed the bull from the ring.
The show goes on and Clem
has plenty more jokes for the crowd
who knows he's never a barrel of laughs
when a rider's life is on the line.
Sep 1, 2016
Sep 1, 2016 at 8:14 AM UTC
When love was young and bore an immigrant
Soul, how fresh and adventurous the years
And brinkmanship, my rite, was took for grant,
Aye, in my flotsam and jetsam, I spent no tears
Which by and by a greedy sea of beginnings
Has left no bounty, but cargo delivered or turned
To wood adrift, which built but useless things,
Children love tossing in fires bonny burned.
Here I lie, on the waters edge, searching—
For something to contain my emptiness,
My wanderlust, but like shy waves lurching,
I wrestle now, toward land, not loneliness.
Though I spent my life as a flag unfurled,
A disembodied soul is without this world.
Jun 26, 2013
Jun 26, 2013 at 2:11 PM UTC
The apartment hasn’t been cleaned for so long and has housed a depressive in it for the same length of time so that there is a glaze of slime-dirt on the floor, made of dried coffee, hot chocolate, maybe some **** or some spillage from a tube of steroid cream to treat an inflammation that never really goes. The rate of ooze changes?. Clean textiles are piled up on the floor, never having been folded, and mix here and there with ***** practical fatpants that make me look like a geologist and white-white cotton blankets that can be washed on HOT with lots of bleach that I purloined from some mentalhealthfacility. The inbox is full of—is bristling with—remonstrances from Programs for the Nondoer—you haven’t filed, haven’t turnstiled, haven’t had your hologram chip assessed by central CENTRAL intelligence, what is wrong with you. Upon stepping outside there is a beat during which I think maybe somewonder might swirl and buoy but no, just wethumid and ***** sidewalks cruddy and Haitians and quasi-Haitians muttering “taxitaxitaxi” in front of their Gypsy conveyances with their dubious certifications. I should go for a ride in one, a dubious passenger for a dubious palanquin. I tried the library but it was too hot and decrepit and too filled with Books For African-Americans, which always ****** me off; are only African-Americans going to read Wright or Douglass or Brooks? Everyone is overrated, anyway, movies and theater and the moribund beat of commerce, and as the dangerous autos pass, sometimes not running you over, you can see morechange in the pockets of the shareholders of BeePee and Iacocca Coach-Wirx. Any friendliness exhibited seems to contain an underovertone of You’re Not Included Whiteboy White ****** Ghost ***** all archaic names I’ve been almost astounded to be called usually while balancing on tiptoe on some lurching, roaring dieselbus, grinding past off-off-off brand groceries that do a dubious business. While making my police report I wink at a sevenyearold boy and I get a lustrous wink back butalas this is not enough to beat back those slurrycolored brainfazes.
May 8, 2013
May 8, 2013 at 2:09 PM UTC
When love was young and bore an immigrant
Soul, how fresh and adventurous the years
And brinkmanship, my rite, was took for grant,
Aye, in my flotsam and jetsam, I spent no tears
Which by and by a greedy sea of beginnings
Has left no bounty, but cargo delivered or turned
To wood adrift, which built but useless things,
Children love tossing in fires bonny burned.
Here I lie, on the waters edge, searching—
For something to contain my emptiness,
My wanderlust, but like shy waves lurching,
I wrestle now, toward land, not loneliness.
Though I spent my life as a flag unfurled,
A disembodied soul is without this world.
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 3:25 PM UTC
Velveteen and closed with slim metal clasps
Laying on the seat next to the edge of a dress.
Let me slip my hand inside to find
Nothing but a $100 bill that isn't mine.
The car comes to a lurching stop
I pay the cabbie and get out to walk.
A few coins and an aching heart
Linger with the clasp's top apart.
My silken dress swirls around my knees
At the bottom of the stairs of apartment three.
One single step leads right to the next
Velveteen catching my ragged breath.
The metal clasps held firmly closed
As I knock on the door to fill the hole.
Stolen bills and velveteen held close
And the door unbolts…
But metal clasps remain closed.
Nov 11, 2013
Nov 11, 2013 at 9:38 PM UTC
When love was young and bore an immigrant
Soul, how fresh and adventurous the years
And brinkmanship, my rite, was took for grant,
Aye, in my flotsam and jetsam, I spent no tears
Which by and by a greedy sea of beginnings
Has left no bounty, but cargo delivered or turned
To wood adrift, which built but useless things,
Children love tossing in fires bonny burned.
Here I lie, on the waters edge, searching—
For something to contain my emptiness,
My wanderlust, but like shy waves lurching,
I wrestle now, toward land, not loneliness.
Though I spent my life as a flag unfurled,
A disembodied soul is without this world.
Jul 26, 2012
Jul 26, 2012 at 12:34 PM UTC
She never minded the scars I carved.
She'd beg me for more, and as her wrists were tied in knots.
I'd make sure another night was never forgot.
Sure, she'd struggle, much as any of us must.
But she was lurching toward me wild and bewildered such.
She would calm as I tended wound and her panting
below became a parting of bloom. Springtime crept
in like a slow, low light on a horizon only meant
to be seen by us two.
Her struggle turned to sound and her mouth stuffed still.
Her lids heavy hiding stained glass eye windowed sill.
Her knees buckled with belt tied firm to keep her tight.
Her smile crept wide as tongue wetted what kept words inside.
Her drool ran and stained our sheets,
her eyes filled with tears which ran down cheeks.
Pleasing pleadings strung out by Morse code taps of her feet.
She was more than a canvas,
she became my tapestry.
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 3:23 AM UTC
.
When love was young and bore an immigrant
Soul, how fresh and adventurous the years
And brinkmanship, my rite, was took for grant,
Aye, in my flotsam and jetsam, I spent no tears
Which by and by a greedy sea of beginnings
Has left no bounty, but cargo delivered or turned
To wood adrift, which built but useless things,
Children love tossing in fires bonny burned.
Here I lie, on the waters edge, searching—
For something to contain my emptiness,
My wanderlust, but like shy waves lurching,
I wrestle now, toward land, not loneliness.
Though I spent my life as a flag unfurled,
A disembodied soul is without this world.
.
Sep 29, 2018
Sep 29, 2018 at 7:51 PM UTC
On the mud flats of Padma Delta
where the mighty Ganges slides
into the Bay of Bengal
ships come to die.
Rusting oil tankers,
container ships from Panama
passenger liners,
and cargo ships from Zanzibar
North Sea fishing boats
research vessels and mother ships
anything that floats
each one has made its final trip.
Steel Leviathans
low tide beached
oil-slick stuck.
Metal monoliths
****** deep
into black sand.
The people of Sitakunda
come marching, ants
across the slippery surface
of diesel sand
to pick the carcasses apart.
Barefoot, with only blow torches
hammers and brute strength
wrenching rivets, nuts and bolts
breaching beams and deck
splitting welded seams
until the hulls are gutted
ribbed struts broken down
and torn from the edges of shape
Bit by bit
they scour and empty
right down to the core.
Bit by bit
they carry *****
to the waiting shore.
Where melting pots are kept boiling
giant stock pots stewing goodness
in a broth
but metallic flavours and oily spiced stench
hang in the misty bleakness of the bay
Skeleton hulks shift and ride
lurching, lifting with the tide
rolling, dangerous still
collapsing, with groaning creak
to maim, to crush and ****
the daring, the slow and the weak.
© M.L.Emmett
Nov 10, 2015
Nov 10, 2015 at 10:29 AM UTC
Bottoned to the jaw
stone cold face to thaw
roughed and raw under
the black cloud dress shirt,
loud like thunder
as a I skirt the jungle
that is the tangle of bangles
and bands, hanging from wrists
followed by hands, twisting
to grab clear courage
with a flourish
Gulp, gulp, gulp
another plunge, more lurching
spiked up exterior like a sea urchin
lurking in the deep, dark ocean
Slowly getting dull
I'm emptier the more I am full
fire slowly flitting out,
I'm a dying coal
a half burned ember
put out by the snow of December
just pretending to be fire
I'm happy (I'm a liar)
but I never tire
of drowning
lurching, lurching
prickly again, I'm a sea urchin
Mar 31, 2013
Mar 31, 2013 at 1:30 AM UTC