"miscellany" poems
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, “Why not?”
In casting about for a corner
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, “Just it.”
And he said, “That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.”
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but ****
A hill each of potatoes,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, “I know!
It’s as when I was a farmer——”
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
3.5k
When to grab I'm not sure
Not when Time is tariff
Barely making of Future's contour
Space and fate in Miscellany
But perhaps I Must grab,
for that remaining Flickering seconds--
before Regret stabs my back
of once-in-a-blue-moon's Wasted Opportunity
Sep 25, 2018
Sep 25, 2018 at 4:46 PM UTC
Typically, statistically impossible events
are often called miracles; for instance,
when three classmates meet
by coincidence in a different country decades
after leaving school, may be considered
miraculous. However, a colossal
number of events happen every moment
on earth; thus extremely unlikely coincidences
also happen every moment;
Events that are considered impossible
are therefore not impossible at all —
they are just rare, depending on the number
of individual events;
It was British mathematician &
Cambridge University
Professor John Edensor Littlewood
who suggested that individuals should statistically
expect one-in-a-million events i.e., "miracles"
to happen to them at the rate
of about one per month.
By Littlewood's
definition, seemingly miraculous events
are in actuality commonplace;
The law, framed by Littlewood,
was published
in his 1986 collection, A Mathematician's Miscellany;
seeking among
other things to debunk
one element
of supposed supernatural
phenomenology
& is related to the more general law
of truly large numbers,
which states
that with a sample size as large
as the totality of reality,
any outrageous thing is likely to happen
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 2:06 PM UTC
A harrowed frenzy
Ghosting through halls,
Memorizing nonsensical miscellany.
Exhaustion reigns supreme.
Jun 6, 2014
Jun 6, 2014 at 11:09 PM UTC
SUCH A SUNNY DAY
the objects
in his pocket
have lost
their identity
their significance
to anyone but him
a hairy comb
photo of an unknown
woman
who can she be
a torn-in-two
train ticket
chewing gum
much masticated
yet put back
in his blazer's breast pocket
small change
a penny and a sixpence and
a button
from the cuff
no clue as to who
he had been
before the water claimed him
as its own
the disgust and fascination
of those
passersby who continue
to pass by
it such
a sunny day
for death to
intrude this way
the miscellany of objects
ownerless now
the waters of the Liffey
calm and unmoved
Dec 16, 2018
Dec 16, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC
mixed stirrings
hard to place this constant ire rising from ashes of a fire not quite, yet felt
stir into that melting *** the sum of miscellany unknowns
all wrought from the unsweet gifts of quotidian sighs
no need to wrap the present, baby, for it's already here
twinkling in the birth of every moment
we hardly know it nor acknowledge
so busy wrenching pain from secret places the darkness loves to keep
yesterday brought unsought smiles of outer space dust
then space in pushed into the blue spit bubble of crayfish folly
and fear frozen into place on cauldroned cheeks
as tendons pulled fury tight on a cocky bounty's cry
I want to carry that sweet loading joy
which scorches my receptiveness in astringent non reciprocation
I die to please that spangled energy so much
which holds back its cagey kernel, far from my prying hands
I kneel to take in out of the blue blessings
which fall slapdash on this preoccupied trajectory, forever waiting in sozzled hope
I take the package you flash and cast heavy
which leave sweltering whiplines across my insides
all fine, all just a fine melange
beneath your magic fontanelle lies a sunken cache
there are painfully few privy to that miracle
I live in hope of neither looping nor taking
but just to be happy to bear witness to the shiny array of your gem stock
you are like none other, inimitable and hard gemstone (inside)
a mix of purity stirred in crazy, along with star shine and fire sparks
my angel with honey eyes
Dec 8, 2013
Dec 8, 2013 at 2:34 PM UTC
~
from the anthology of the unwritten,
from the tombs of the stillborn,
where carcasses of idled titles and orphaned stanzas
do not compete for proof of life,
and
nameless birth certificates unissued,
yellowing and wasting midst
crumbling aleph bet spawn
here
comes a poem of concession
comes a poem of summation
of a life lived, knotted poorly, not well,
worse cursed as vanilla inadequate
the satisfaction in the writing,
the gleeful breaking of the sac,
the gushing relief giving way to
the childbirth of a new moon-poem,
arrested, wrested
a single plague affliction,
the cancer of weakness,
means Pharaoh wins
the cancer of weakness
no cure, no pharmaceutical poultice,
spreads insidious; one day - pain in the remote,
your big toe, then
next you can only street stagger
begging forgiveness and the kindness of strangers
hoping for the accidental cure of touch,
the miscellany lottery ticket probability of low chance
the visible mark you leave,
a weak indentation upon a pillow,
it is the dented head, cut deep by the shadow,
shake it out and you're a disappeared one,
nothing to show,
did someone once sleep here?
you were once upon a time
binary
a 1
now a 0 -
flip flop bottom top,
listening to Frank's "That's Life"^
my litany too long;
woeful work this business of flailing,
posting a tired-out self help love poem
ain't no cure for the falling-out-of-love
black and blue, self-inflicted bruising blues,
the wrists ache
the bones don't freak
but squeal, somebody's squeezing me
the alarm clock, a death knell,
everyone saying don't worry
you got a proven record,
the boss's eyes twinkling
"but what have you done for me lately?"
funny
Death says
Hey, aren't you the boss?
Who shall over rule thy Dominion?
What have thy done to yourself lately?
Answer: never end a poem with a question mark @
3:06am
May 10, 2017
May 10, 2017 at 3:16 AM UTC
...Portend for the life of you--cast your
eyes as far from you, as what you could
not see coming otherwise.
A living through and through...of what
came first--word or sound, sound or word?
These spaces...spendthrift pages that are
but doorways to their impending figure,
wind coiling at its corners...coiling at its
corners.
As a thing grows into itself invisibly...
as so you fall the falling curtain--with no
audience at one side, nor actors upon the
other.
Irrevocably you are, that you are--sun
halved, golden bowls burning--of good and
evil--a miscellany saint's evocation...that
you are, irrevocably you are...amaranthine.
Gesticulating beyond time, times, and half
time...a procession of one whose sojourn
repeats upon itself.
A heaven ago...hell now...a hell ago--
heaven now, change knows all your names--
and because you withstood all it can ever
be, it holds them steadfastly.
Amaranthine...irrevocably you are...that
you are.
You, the faces of disambiguation--whose
seal you smile to open...with full marks
for bravery.
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 10:55 AM UTC
*You always say
that I always may
declare creation
in those speech-act moments
when words become action
Thus see me breathe life
into hitherto stiff fancies
See me empowered by verbal magic
that conjures up fanciful shapes
in the image of my inclinations
So I say let there be beauty and wonder
a swallow swishing crazily past
and a lonely dove cooing for its mate
Let there be rustics exuding the rich smells of life
from newly-turned earth with neat furrows and fat worms
wood smoke and freshly-cut grass in musty he-goat odour
Variety is the spice of life the sages from long ago said
So let there be good-time girls and pompous pimps too
and petty thieves and flashy conmen in loud clothes
Let the world sizzle with a menu of a la carte activities -
sooty greasy grime and lurid crime to shock good people
In simple terms let the world be a poem teeming with life
and let its people know their roles in the scheme of things
Let them play their parts to perfection
while I try out a miscellany of diction and imagery
to capture and portray the wonder of another complex day*
Nov 23, 2015
Nov 23, 2015 at 3:35 AM UTC
On a given day
Something can come along
That steals our hearts away,
Beyond our control. It can be any
Old thing, a song that was playing
When we first made out with the
Woman who sleeps beside us
After all these years. It could
Be a child eating ice cream
Who reminds us of when
We were their age, the
Faded black and white
Photograph of when
Our parents were
Still in love with
Each other, but
This miscellany
With no home
Fades and soon
Disappears, and
Returns to those
Dark places, that
We had hidden
Them before
And
We know
That there are
Deep wells, dug in
Our hearts, where
Birds fly, calling
Us again
Aug 18, 2015
Aug 18, 2015 at 8:02 PM UTC
Sentient street,
As we walk through the gates of sentience,
Like a child,I quirked my head,
Left~right and back with innocence,
To glimpse at their seemly slums;a nimble haul of dread,
Tucked me,as I gander the miscellany artistry,
The winsome combs on their chambers,
By builders and framers,
For all;but the aesthetics I knew belonged to the affluent,
An erudition I needed not to imbibe as a student,
Oblivious of myself;I spotted their melancholic eyes in their inscriptions,
And read the histories and encryptions,
The stares they gave tremored my heart,
And tore the arteries apart,
My soul wept for their bereavement but tears was deficit in my eyes,
As I march to the yard of his repose;I said"A journey we shall all embark"
Gawking at the annexation of other chambers,as grief berserks,
I got there,
I stood meters afar and stared,
As the priest blessed the yard;And prayed for his soul,
Conferring him into the bossom of his maker,
And instructing the digger afterwards;to dump him into the hole,
His folks quaker,
And bade him their farewell with flowers,
In their last hour,
But as they fetch sands and stones to wrap him,
In their faces I saw grim,
When the diggers spat and slapped;his coffin with stones and shovels,
For this has been their long awaited muscle,
And in deligence;they deliver,
"This journey I will embark too"I said,
As I stood in my shiver,
And withdrew and left in mopes.
Sentient Street
©Historian E.Lexano
Apr 11, 2015
Apr 11, 2015 at 9:48 AM UTC
Writing stories; blowing soul into descriptions
burying a luminous seed into her "ebony hair"
and "towering physique"...
like Michelangelo setting a Dying Slave free
by carving marble, such a benevolent artist
Writing stories; piping a miscellany of twisted
tragedies, Elysian epiphanies, and hearty hearths
out of our minds...
not as if we are celestial Gods; no, but as if wisdom
tapped on our skulls, and whispered a symphony
Writing stories; braiding windswept trails into
hacking hearts, mellow minds, and aching heels
bolted onto a crossroad...
to bequeath them, you (and ourselves) a fifth
path, a dire escape into a less knotted universe
Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015 at 7:29 AM UTC
she climbed her golden throne and sat with power clinging at the tips of her fingers and anger pouring out of her sight. She took a breathe and you could see from the way she was moving that she was an embodiment of strength and that the roses that covered her kingdom were just beautiful thorns hidden behind a diversity of colors. And she was a reflection of those roses, fierce but hidden behind her miscellany of beauty.
Nov 24, 2018
Nov 24, 2018 at 4:13 AM UTC
three bags,
two large
one small
two boxes,
of assorted
miscellany
photos of
one and all
two calendars
two clocks
one for the bedside
one for the wall
quilt and favoured pillow
one petite eletric recliner
assorted toiletries,
mostly pretty soaps
decorative pillows
nine in all...
this is what we moved
from place to place
gathering up the fraying
edges of a life unravelling
moving her one rung
closer to the divide
melancholy thoughts
meloncholy thoughts
these are the small pieces
of a life lived large and hard
tears gathered in linen
as new friends are lost
uncertain the path before
sadness at the cause
brave hearted she is
at yet more loss....
brave hearted she is
at what lies before
Aug 21, 2017
Aug 21, 2017 at 5:04 PM UTC
Tucked away from company,
the bag of shame,
where we dump the
ever-replenishing
bowl of misfit stuff
with its leaning tower of
letters and unsolicited magazines,
artwork, small treasures,
confiscated things, and
bits and pieces we might need -
amassed together awaiting
removal or repairs,
a new home of their own,
or to join the drawer of miscellany
and its collection of
eternally optimistic maybes,
better safe than sorries -
really, there’s no need for worries,
it can't hurt to keep it all
Tucked away from every day,
wrapped up in layers of redirection
- no need for locks, secret rooms -
hidden away in plain view
to be exhumed by scent or sight,
by feelings of fright or contentment,
memories of true and untrue
tangle together
really, it's better they do,
it can hurt to keep it all
NCL July 2019
Jul 25, 2019
Jul 25, 2019 at 1:53 PM UTC
i.
The year's first falling
leaf against his nose:
does my dog think back
to the Autumn before?
He must, for he is so happy.
ii.
It is so obvious to me:
this tall pile of leaves
belongs to the wind, not
to my red rake and black
plastic bag flapping (empty)
at my feet.
iii.
A boy (and his dog) in
the woods, walking on leaves
as thick as memories;
so glad to be alive
although not yet knowing
(what that means).
Oct 5, 2016
Oct 5, 2016 at 3:43 PM UTC