"mayflies" poems
I L U like my ***** clothes
Love being forgotten
On my bedroom floor
I L U like chores love the
music that helps them
forget they're chores
I L U like ***** dishes
Love hot showers and
the other side of the sink
I L U like I love spilling
Salt, and warding off the evil,
By tossing some behind my back
I L U like I love
Breaking rules about
my own supposed
non-Superstition
I L U like black cats love
Bad luck, cause to them,
It's just Friday, you know?
I L U like the hot dog bun
Loves staring at the beef patty,
Wishing "if only, if only"
I L U like bread loves
Being forgotten till we're really hungry
And then we're all ungrateful, like
"Hey bread, you remember us?"
And bread is high above us, like
"Always."
Not even a hint of scorn
I L U like the first time I saw
Jurassic Park, The dinosaurs
Were real enough
sans chicken feathers, and
Who needs modern science anyways
when love has no fossil records?
I L U like the weather loves
Surprise parties.
I L U like painful
surprise party memories love
being forgotten on my bedroom floor
I love you like Mayflies love living,
oh so briefly, once a day, every single day,
Chapter one to chapter none
I love you like mayflies love themselves,
brevity and all, stirred by nothing but
the glow of Dawn's light,
Dead by dusk, the Mayfly never
knows its final form.
It dies
in complete
incompletion,
but that's okay.
It drank the salt ocean,
it breathed the living air,
And that's how I want to L U
Feb 25, 2017
Feb 25, 2017 at 4:26 PM UTC
Upon still waters white with slender neck
this beauty glides so gentle in serenity
and as the reeds call to warm winds
she dips her head in acknowledgement
Mayflies skip across this crystal stream
I am in awe of this wondrous day
this is my heaven, my dream
so by it's cool banks I lay
Green leaves are everywhere
willows here weep no more
for this cool and pleasant waters
is where I will rest forever more
Our shatter light from wars holy
will blend with the brotherhood
and I pray to God
for he said we would
By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris
By NeonSolaris
© 2011 NeonSolaris (All rights reserved)
Sep 9, 2013
Sep 9, 2013 at 1:18 PM UTC
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.
this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.
and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
Oct 17, 2012
Oct 17, 2012 at 11:17 AM UTC
it was the moon that fell through. a lump of gray astronaut
pale acne-blasted, an orphan of the dome, floating in a pond
face down; gasping... green brass minnows surge through diatoms
that have no word for moon; a legion of blind unicorn gall stones -
invisible to naked eyes; uncountable geometries horde the dark waters
they cannot disprove or disobey. large mouth bass inhale calcium polygons
they have never met; that have no word for large mouth bass -
that hasn't always been unknown as september is meaningless
now, even more so, the meaning is less,
without the moon... so
the last tide is false. a satellite has lost it's grip and displaced a placid
jewel of ice cold pause. in the backwoods of these. words. a. moon.
is. breathing. in. a. void. teeming. with. ancient. life.
it is a void, unfamiliar to a native of heaven. this void used to rise and fall
in obedience to the wax and wane. in accord with her orbit.
but now it burns the ocean of serenity with irony's forge.
pounding the stainless steel of unfathomable loss;
even the dross sustains a shape of things to come undone -
when the hammer falls and the blacksmith is a poet
born to ****** fables from mayflies. a natural.
the hammer was in the hand before the moon gained
a face or an ocean to adore it. it was there,
ticking like a season, burgeoning with locusts -
holding off the mob; the moon was long ago, slipping off the roof -
long before firemen met lightning.
the tide was a pious fool.
the measure was not the span of the impending verse, but the hour of it's
callous beauty, assembled. a lunacy, stripped of all moons.
and only the sun remaining -
to behold the uncanny descent of a faithful, vestigial goddess.
a yellow throne. a yellow eye. and the sun's first chill...
as wave after wave of syllables sum succulent sorrows -
savoring sacred symmetries, asymmetrically... summoning -
super luminary strawberry switchblades,
saving sanity for questions with question marks.
this poem fell through. a lung collapsed or not.
and the moon is at the bottom of my heart.
Feb 12, 2012
Feb 12, 2012 at 11:07 AM UTC
You’re your own idea
written in blood and electricity.
You’re Pulcinella. You’re judy.
You’re someone else’s description
of light
imagined alive.
You’re temporary.
You’re the dream in a Jivaro head.
There’s the ceiling of a skull
just above your clouds
and even further out
there's another.
You’re pock-marked, wood-wormed
with thoughts,
words,
that you’ve been taught
on you, like tattoos
and shared birthmarks.
You’re picture-framed
in my eye sockets
flipped and made
understandable
and only some of you
oozes
through
like the sun
below the surface of the sea.
You’re me
and i’m you
swirling in each other’s boundaries
like the Tao and oily water
and the point between the colours in rainbows.
You’re infinite to mayflies.
You’re an explosion’s leftovers.
You died last time I saw you
and reformed in the doorframe
when I came around again.
You’re the world’s re-used love letter
from ****** to organised organism
incubated in original sin
the kiln
making Russian dolls from living things.
You’re the seed of a ghost.
You only existed since this morning
and yesterday’s you woke up
and is now out haunting.
You’re both here, and there, and here
a string vibrating
a seismograph
a tree ring
Earth’s music
playing
and playing
and playing.
Mar 6, 2016
Mar 6, 2016 at 1:40 PM UTC
Here is Cedar Draw, a stream which
spills free from the dam upstream
and then slowly licks its way westerly
among the billowing cottonwood
and volcanic boulders that still appear red-hot,
flattening out, pooling here and there
where fat trout and perch can feed
on luckless grasshoppers and mayflies
blown into the water by the wind.
Here is Cedar Draw, widening into
lush shallows with bulrush and cat-tails
clicking in the wind, showy red-winged
blackbirds clinging to stalks high above
the waterline, and where snowy egrets
ply the mossy banks for frogs. The
only sound heard is the chittering of
birds and that warm summer breeze
softly moaning and sighing for you alone.
Here is Cedar Draw, as fine a place
a poet could every hope to find to relax,
meditate, sip a little port wine, tease the
iridescent-blue damselflies that abound
here, cool one's feet at water's edge,
scribble in a notebook disjointed thoughts
that may or may not make it into a poem,
perhaps to doze a little and finally to
rouse up and thank your muse for such
a great day and such a splendid spot.
--
Sep 18, 2011
Sep 18, 2011 at 11:27 AM UTC
She sat astride the stool in silence
Watching how the mayflies flew,
Symmetry in chaos painting
Colour’s gentle strokes anew.
Felt the touch of evening breezes
catch the tendrils of her hair
Watching mayflies rise and fall
through symmetry, without a care.
Promise fills the moment’s magic
Hope is pounding through her breast,
Mayflies rise and fall in sunlight
Love’s anticipation best.
Scattered light intrudes through leafage
Casting sunspots in the shade,
Mayflies rise and fall in sunshine
Tranquil peace of mind is made.
Softly a guitar is strumming
Melding with the lakeside air,
Rendezvous with him a-coming
Mayflies rise to empty chair.
Mayflies rise and fall in sunshine
Rise and fall...and they don’t care.
Marshalg
‘Foxglove’ Taranaki
3 January 2013
Jan 10, 2013
Jan 10, 2013 at 10:08 PM UTC
I strolled, awhile, down by that bog
Through thick, astringent, swirling fog....
Perchance, perhaps, in circumstance
I fancied that the reeds did dance,
Swayed in time to pulsing beat
Expanding in round ripples, neat,
To radiate across the pond
In league with moss of ferny frond.
Causing spider webs to sway
Through which the dewdrops came to play
In iridescent beams of light
Illuminating shards of night
Which cast a most unearthly glow
That only frogs in bogs, would know.....
And know they did from ancient time
Where bullfrogs ruled in slippery slime
When incandescence filled the glade
Whilst time stood still and mayflies played.
Dancing in the fantasy of Patty's Pond.
With love M.
Jun 29, 2023
Jun 29, 2023 at 5:51 AM UTC
Dead bee
The moss grows round it
Water spray
Purify it
Pest is relative
Coming from where?
The cat stretches
Common sense
Rock bottom
Delve deeper, come on
There’s no soul here
Empty it out
Start again
Transcend yourself
Transcend transcendence
So yeah, there was a gardener
Wielding a pressure blaster
Which ripped the moss from its roots
The sun peaked
And the moss turned dust
Because the aesthetics of the pavement
Supersede existence
Who the **** cares?
Dead bee on the pavement
Blast it into the bushes
It depresses the school children
A hedgehog rots in the gutter
Flies lay eggs in its flesh
And create a home
Isn’t that beautiful?
What the **** did the moss get?
“China would have done this in a day”
My father says
Watching road workers rip apart asphalt
“It’s quite nice, though”
Looking into the concrete river
As mayflies hatch deformed
Due to the heat from the channel
Half the students stare at their toes
Wishing they were cuter
Stronger
Smarter
Because narcissism has become the new desire
Things are rotting everywhere
But we pretend they’re normal
**** man, rock bottom
The children pick up the bees
And stick them in their mouths
Until the moss completely coats their hearts
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 11:16 PM UTC
Sometimes most days almost always
When I
Scrounging stuck in traffic
Unknown mayflies driving the cars around
Insectoid feelers grasping the wheel
When I
Bones of lava boiling over
Teeth everywhere and pointy
I hypothesize:
A mass extinction event or
A pandemic colony collapse
Wouldn't be
Too bad
Oct 2, 2012
Oct 2, 2012 at 10:58 PM UTC
We
cannot lift the Veil
as long
as we perceive
it.
The Heart of Any Thing
Dwarfs the center
Of Everything.
Comets
and Brevity
have together shaped
the contours
of
our blindness-
we are vexed
we are Mayflies
and forget
we arrived
on fire!
Truth is The Marvelous Mirror.
Do not reflect.
See.
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 1:39 PM UTC
The Willow's Long Locks Whisper A Soft Song,
As The Cloud Children Play On A Sky So Blue,
The Morning Glories Giggle All Day Long,
As The Linnets Wings Whistled While It Flew
A Stream Sprawls Underneath The Willow,
Swans And Other Waterfowl Swim Silent,
As Catfish Prowl Underneath The Billows,
To Keep The Guppies From Being Violent
The Golden Rays Tickle The Leaves So Green,
As The Breeze Dances With Lush Blades Of Lawn,
The Mayflies Wings Glittered Above The Stream,
As A Mother Deer Weaned Her Newborn Fawn
Each And Every Sparrow Sang All Day Long,
As The Willow's Long Locks Whispered A Song
Apr 3, 2013
Apr 3, 2013 at 8:37 AM UTC
Flickering dim lightbulb mockingly,
Withers and dies ever gracefully.
Fathers verses and mothers eyes,
Empty "I love you's", at least you tried.
I lost my heart with my head in the skies,
These days dreams die short lived, just like mayflies.
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 1:28 AM UTC
Mayflies
by Michael R. Burch
These standing stones have stood the test of time
but who are you
and what are you
and why?
As brief as mist, as transient, as pale ...
Inconsequential mayfly!
Perhaps the thought of love inspired hope?
Do midges love? Do stars bend down to see?
Do gods commend the kindnesses of ants
to aphids? Does one eel impress the sea?
Are mayflies missed by mountains? Do the stars
regret the glowworm’s stellar mimicry
the day it dies? Does not the world go on
as if it’s no great matter, not to be?
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.
And yet somehow you’re everything to me.
Originally published by Clementine Unbound. Keywords/Tags: mayfly, mayflies, time, mist, transient, transience, pale, inconsequential, stars, sea, everything, A. E. Housman quote
Apr 8, 2020
Apr 8, 2020 at 2:06 AM UTC
We'd grown accustomed to the rain. The incessant rain.
The waterlogged ground, the standing water all around.
Long weary months, no sight of sun, underfoot the soil is mud.
The seasons change from Winter into Spring; But still the rain,
still the lashing days, the night's when lulled to sleep by natures tattoo upon the roof.
Birds, rain soaked, dishevelled, find little shelter amidst the rain soaked leafless trees.
The industrious ducks, madly dibbling, turn the soaking ground to pools, their ever probing beaks sifting mud.
The despair of weather's dreary cycle, month after month. And then, the sun! at last the sun!
How we rejoice; the rain has ceased at last.
Now the sun is here to warm the earth,
Trees and grass grow green again, embracing the warm, life giving rays. The countryside is growing beautiful again.
Now the lakeside is thronged with downy ducklings, brown and yellow ***** of energy, darting at the rising Mayflies.
The Geese also have their young and parade in line astern, a guardian in front and one behind.
The lonely Swan has made friends with a white Duck, and the Carp, great and small, are basking at the surface, warming their backs in the welcome rays. The soggy earth is turning hard, and new cracks appear daily.
No rain now, only the blazing Sun.
People lately clad in raincoats and boots, now roam about in lighter garb, bare backed, bare legged, turning redder with each day.
The lonely country walks are now awash with sturdy hikers and the parks are thronged with Sun worshipers, stretched out to brown, like drying fish.
By the Hall, the lake shimmers like a mirror, and from my window I see the Swallows swooping low, dipping their beaks to the water for sedges and and mayflies. The first Bats, from the culvert spread their wings and join the evening Swallows in their search for food.
Sun wind and water are in harmony.
How glorious the Earth with teeming life! How wonderful her colours and her creatures; I cannot truly comprehend so great a beauty.
All life is miraculous! the elements surely blessed.
Oct 13, 2014
Oct 13, 2014 at 10:44 AM UTC
I lost the reigns I thought I had,
and lost my thoughts in memories.
I've been thinking in past tense,
and I don't think I'm walking forward.
I don't embrace the change with acceptance,
and I don't welcome it with uncertainty.
The ivy on my fingertips is a sure fire sign that
I am wilting by the hour.
I think leeches might have eaten,
what I thought was my heart,
and the mayflies might have collected,
what I thought was my mind.
As I lay and desinigrate,
I become meshed into the wood around me.
I lost the reigns I had, like,
I am not meant for the reality I claimed.
The soft chill of the air at night,
and the spiders on my spine: my fright.
The air seems brisk yet it doesn't touch me,
but I can tell from the way it floats above me.
The reigns, they still left me,
alone in the dark.
Because I couldn't find them,
I couldn't re-spark.
So I am lost like a legend,
a small useless clock.
I am without reason,
my will has been stopped.
Aug 23, 2013
Aug 23, 2013 at 7:41 PM UTC
For Kara--
I was an idle mind miles out at the wheel, just combustion
On a road. The borderlands
Lose their sense of place and aim
Just skirting the middle space with no face or claim to
Dauphin, Lebanon, or Lancaster.
I’ve given my love to any of the three
One is in memories and
One is in late, and
One is where I graciously keep moored
The threads of my rebirth.
These signs are riddled in bullet holes, their figures
Come to semblance of entangles, brilliant in brunette
And a gaze, reluctant ever to be caught,
I wouldn’t wish to go back
If she could be remade from bones, copse, and sunlight
Through auric clouds of mayflies.
But, the illusion scatters, and in its lack,
I do find her, much more real than ever
She is what keeps me settled in the several fawning hours
And though weak from sleep she’s the very victory of a single breathe
I start my day believing in, that she’s a spirit,
There’s this life of hers inside the countryside
Like winds who speak in sweetened tones, mild
In mockery and bewilderment, the very grip of control
Has her fingers playing palmistry, pretending magic
Distorting the sad matter of earth, her very being is a song
That to lose or to grieve my lonely way
I, to Mt. Hope, find clear direction back.
Fall in love with Lancaster girls and they can break your heart
They'll have you already like rolling hills and city lights,
And she is the entire scene commingling
Where it ought, that summer aura of hers
Is a blessing just so hard to bear,
For stories are not so wearing on me, they are easier to believe.
I no longer need to pretend
That airplanes are shooting stars
When there’s no need for wishing to a home
Where the heart is anymore; there is the
Hand that leads me everywhere,
Back to the miles of shimmering land
Where one hears always sighs of content
And rests easy in disbelief.
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 8:30 PM UTC
Walking the surrealistic byways of creative bliss
Through Cat hair grass within the fingerling forest ...
Good morning to Uncle White Pine , to my Cousin Brown Thrasher reading my mind ! To red rosy clay and chipper Mr. Soapstone , to Mayflies granting wishes and Chattahoochee crawfishes ...
The Gulf breeze telegraphing the wonderment of forest song with love
for all .. To the playful King Sun hiding behind the cloud bank to the
old gray Opossum hanging upside down , bluffing sleep on a lonesome Cherry branch .. Warm wishes fill my dreams while picking tea cups from a 'Story Tree' , each with a serving dish , hot refreshments and lively conversation with a well read ****** , a witty Fox , a Woodpecker poet and a guitar picking Catfish ..
Mar 19, 2016
Mar 19, 2016 at 2:15 PM UTC
It was a night of sulking darknesses
there in the distance, clouds thunder
raining tears down the shanties
crickets scratch the silences elsewhere
as winds bring the smell of ash home
in their thousands, mayflies clash
for a swab at an orb
hung hazy into the shadows
canoodling the trees
foreboding come thoughts clouding
the morning after, the stairs are awash
in swarms of broken wings
and shattered dreams
a newspaper's thrown across
there are deaths:
heaving at the heart.
Jul 28, 2015
Jul 28, 2015 at 4:42 PM UTC
Period homesteads line Peppercorn Road , meticulous working farms of corn , cotton and sorghum cultivars , rugged gravel drives cut into dried , red clay ditches , Charleston architecture cooling her Summer residents . Double story barns with white washed brick silos , picket fences and blue ribbon cattle .. Sturdy Pole barns shelters surrounded in shamrock clover , the clanging of cowbells as Dairy cows return from her glistening fields ... Catfish feeding frenzies over field corn and evening mayflies , gas porch lights illuminate the family garden with activity in Summer well into night , Crowder peas and Fordhook butter beans , Okra and Butter peas harvested free of Red wasp and Bumblebees as opposed to hungry mosquitos , red chiggers and Crane flies ... Silver washtubs on hot , humid nights , the instant relief of cool well water relieving the pang of harvest .. The creaky screen door and porch ceiling fans , white rockers and good books ...Mason jars filled with sweet tea , hearts filled with adventure and young eyes with sleep .. Coonhounds sing to the ever rising gold Moon .. All was well .. All was most certainly well ...
Mar 7, 2016
Mar 7, 2016 at 8:58 PM UTC
The weeping willow offered a branch
for me to hang myself.
I tied a knot in boy scout memory,
always prepared and never without
The Lord. I smoked my last cigarette
and watched the town lights
swallow up the stars.
There is a receipt for a soft drink
in my pocket.
I don't know how long it has been there,
but father fell asleep so long ago
and I have had enough caffeine
to last me a life-time.
I watch the frogspawn ooze
in a brook full of piss-water and mayflies.
The moonlight bounces off the headstones
like a snooker room in the old men's club.
Life can find a way along every ill attraction,
through alcohol to poverty; to the way you
are never noticed, until you are already gone.
When I told the tree I couldn't do it,
the street-lights dimmed
and eyes stung from the brine in the sea.
I stole a chip from the Weeping Willow's
shoulder, hung the bark from my neck
as a necklace: a collarbone sign for peace
in a landlocked town full of drunks
and absent-minded teachers.
The Weeping Willow told me to get some sleep,
before handing me a self-help book
that promised change and new wisdom.
I read the first couple of pages
and realised that I was lacking in self.
Ever since I just use the willow
to **** my pain again.
Aug 26, 2014
Aug 26, 2014 at 9:20 PM UTC
Cicadas pizzicato their magical violins
in sweet , whirling summer serenade
Field Crickets staccato their beautiful cellos
from the pink Dogwood Trees , Killdeer
swoon to the music of June , Mayflies tango
by the light of the Moon
Apr 16, 2016
Apr 16, 2016 at 1:04 AM UTC
In the time it took to read these lines
A million mayflies were born and died
In half a blink of the cosmic eye.
Sep 3, 2012
Sep 3, 2012 at 8:23 PM UTC