"marrowed" poems
From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.
From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting
Hand, the breaking of the hair,
From the first scent of the heart, the warning ghost,
And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh,
The sun was red, the moon was grey,
The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.
The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums,
The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed
Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart,
And the four winds, that had long blown as one,
Shone in my ears the light of sound,
Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand,
Each golden grain spat life into its fellow,
Green was the singing house.
The plum my mother picked matured slowly,
The boy she dropped from darkness at her side
Into the sided lap of light grew strong,
Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh,
And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger,
Itched in the noise of wind and sun.
And from the first declension of the flesh
I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts
Into the stony idiom of the brain,
To shade and knit anew the patch of words
Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre,
Need no word's warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer,
That but a name, where maggots have their X.
I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret;
The code of night tapped on my tongue;
What had been one was many sounding minded.
One wound, one mind, spewed out the matter,
One breast gave **** the fever's issue;
From the divorcing sky I learnt the double,
The two-framed globe that spun into a score;
A million minds gave **** to such a bud
As forks my eye;
Youth did condense; the tears of spring
Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons;
One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.
4.2k
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the ****
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the ***** and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his ***
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.
2.2k
If only there were words
to the unspoken verses
when silence is the only sound
More than only
near paralyzing torn,
weary of searching endlessly
for what cannot be found
silence whispering poignantly
drowning out the midnight rain,
There is no more sorrow
in search of the lost
unstrummed guitar chords
Unwritten psalms
forever left unsung;
without amity,
woe betides an unfinished,
abandoned heart's song
Only a heart lonely knows,
there is no absolving darkness
whispering of screaming silence
by night and by day:
"all things must steal away"
not to be thought of wanderings end
as a velvety-crimson rosebud
shamelessly withers brown
Swirling eddies stir
a black swan of loneliness
swimming within the flood
of raven river waters'
silently eclipsing
its pitch black flow
Muted pleas silent as pity
blowin' in the fleeting windsong,
speaking in beckoning salutations
singing in sweetly beseeching tongues
Like the hush of a pensive soul,
once touched by another, moved
like a bedrock marrowed mountain
left stifled, stranded and wondering,
feeling an awkward silence
when the leaves come falling down
There are no misbegotten promises
cast lightly in the moonlight’s restless spell;
there is no solacing stillness
when silence is the only sound...
Mar 11, 2017
Mar 11, 2017 at 8:46 PM UTC
In the beginning was the three-pointed star,
One smile of light across the empty face,
One bough of bone across the rooting air,
The substance forked that marrowed the first sun,
And, burning ciphers on the round of space,
Heaven and hell mixed as they spun.
In the beginning was the pale signature,
Three-syllabled and starry as the smile,
And after came the imprints on the water,
Stamp of the minted face upon the moon;
The blood that touched the crosstree and the grail
Touched the first cloud and left a sign.
In the beginning was the mounting fire
That set alight the weathers from a spark,
A three-eyed, red-eyed spark, blunt as a flower,
Life rose and spouted from the rolling seas,
Burst in the roots, pumped from the earth and rock
The secret oils that drive the grass.
In the beginning was the word, the word
That from the solid bases of the light
Abstracted all the letters of the void;
And from the cloudy bases of the breath
The word flowed up, translating to the heart
First characters of birth and death.
In the beginning was the secret brain.
The brain was celled and soldered in the thought
Before the pitch was forking to a sun;
Before the veins were shaking in their sieve,
Blood shot and scattered to the winds of light
The ribbed original of love.
1.7k
It's raining outside...
with drops of a different kind,
tarred with morality and sin.
I can feel it, but not on my skin
it melts, like mired paper snow,
eyes brim with flakes of commas, ellipses, and unblinked zeugmas
that they thought I'd never know
But I absorb every drop-
every antidote, every toxic remark
they eat away at my soft and white
cancerous to gently marrowed bones
yet I long for the slipping
of soft yellow butter on flaky warmed toast
simply resting onto the surface, eternally
Mar 6, 2017
Mar 6, 2017 at 11:27 AM UTC
~for M.C.C. ~
who sang me to sleep,
when my soul begged me for
sweet release,
just was lucky, I guess
*"Mornings here with a coffee cup
Stories in my head, looking up
If the rain holds off we'll be in luck
But we're lucky anyway"*
<>
Been there, done that,
ritualized & compartmentalized
the essences of the routinized,
to measure the days of my life,
as small keepsakes,
charms and tokens on a bracelet,
jingle bo jangle,
when another be repeated,
the telling belling of
a ✅ of satisfying satisfaction,
<>
and I!ve been bone
marrowed & narrowed hell~married,
imprisoned until decisioned,
that no life was no life at all,
(take note! y'all y'all),
and I miss my dog's greetings,
and snoring while I'm wide awake,
always loved to drive too fast on
back country narrow lanes,
in my suburban shrunk
small suv,
with radio blaring, no need for
trucking on the Truckee,
been there, done that..
<>
in the small ways,
in the
small places,
take my slow going days my way,
and not no need
to rent borrowed uninfluenc-ed content
cause I custom built it in,
easy like, five easy pieces,
learned to make daisy peaces,
of the bright nights melding
with life affirming hot sunlight
and there is no bad time,
with a cold blue~ribbon
in my left,
my right grasping two O'clock
on my heart and steering wheel,
driving freedom fine,
Chapin~ Carpenter
on the stereo dial,
no set time,
just anytime,
rain or shine
for me and my poems
to *** together,
like old time,
any fine rhyming time,
together we flashback
to the sweet Release
from jail in 2008
<>
***and break out a new one and clap it onto the clasp
my bracelet of charmed
keepsakes,
like memories of
my old dog, thinking
one more time,
just got lucky***
6/27/25
Jun 27, 2025
Jun 27, 2025 at 3:32 PM UTC
In the untimely event of my demise
Someone please pluck out my useless eyes.
Because when death comes to take its' tole,
I wish not to see that empty hole.
Dark and dingy musty earth,
rot and rancid smells at birth,
doth contend to trust not worth.
Bring forth out of filth and mire to purge mine nose of its' desire
Hear mine ears the worms that squirm,
below that massive earthen berm.
Cast out the sounds of pleading death,
take no more from lungs, my one last breath.
Feel the roots clawing through skin,
take not heed of where the've been.
Covered dirt to marrowed bones,
death waits for the to fill its' catacombs.
Taste of the thy wretched dung,
flick out of the thy evil tongue.
Speak not for grace in such a place,
where time has rendered the thy final resting place.
Aug 3, 2012
Aug 3, 2012 at 3:42 PM UTC
When I'm departed
Leave not the scars of my scars
Upon your eyes nor brain
When I'm departed
Forget not the way my hair reminded thou of a lion's mane
Nor how eyes of winter bark is of the lamb
When I am departed
Even as you burn down the corpses’ temporary sanctuary with hellfire to allow me the will to fly
Even as you hear the crackling of marrowed fuel
As I am laid from dust to dust to the sky
Do not forget my words
Do not forget my unspoken lyrics
My voice may be gone but the memory
The letters of my life paint the history
Of who I was
Let these pages live on
Even as they yellow like dying grass
For only then, when they are dust as well
Only then, will I be gone
Feb 2, 2017
Feb 2, 2017 at 5:29 PM UTC
Your hollow bones make the most killer tunes and tones
Please don't fill them with lonely independence
I have sugar and adventure that I will lend you
I am your neighbor
I am your person
If you must, we will fill them with what I have for you,
We will make them into rainsticks
and play them
till the sun turns to rain,
till the rain turns to ice,
and till you climb the droplets to the clouds
Where you will find your head
And finally forget all the things they have said
That have made you settle and waste the day in bed.
We will let you breathe
You can sigh into my skeleton
And my bones will sing to you a song only your voice could inspire.
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 1:58 AM UTC
Haunting glades
ruffled by wind
starlit serenades
envelopes souls unwound
the darkness's Æthered aura
on these marrowed hills
the silken moons glazed glow
belays the nights chilling light
correlating perused solitude of
preluding constructs
condemning intentions and
facilitated goals
Nov 12, 2016
Nov 12, 2016 at 6:09 PM UTC