"moldering" poems
Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,
the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back
from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere
except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle
of unobservable mysteries - roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This
I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn
flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay - how everything lives, shifting
from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.
47.6k
The most exquisite symbol that I could give,
“A teardrop on the cheek of time”. This tomb
Of my heart white walls of marble enclose.
Nothing matters. Even if the people suffer,
Their blood will stain the Makrana stone;
Unclean, no longer pure. My love rests
With your moldering body forever. Only
Our youthful memories keep me until
I lie with you, again, Mumtaz.
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 4:42 PM UTC
1.
Late-spring's dilemma
Is unabridged and sweet;
Beardtongues and fuchsias peer through grass blades:
Blotches on the bristly canvas.
Camellias? Still in April.
2.
Slices of rye shift on my plate;
Miramar’s war machines whip overhead;
My mouth opens into the Gulf of Kuwait;
The toast becomes
Moldering lips of Pendleton.
3.
There’s a single-story house on a hill
That to helicopters
Looks like an easel.
Great canyons open
To the south and west; the street clings to time—
A pianist’s metronome
Waltzes crosswise on an eardrum.
4.
The eucalyptus bends the deafening breeze.
Are you still dredging Coronado's cradle?
(The tide
Disintegrates the illimitable skyline.)
5.
An unlit Anza-Borrego beats about my ears,
Stars piggybacking the horizon.
The cacti shrivel:
Glitter in a hurricane.
6.
End-of-spring guesses
Prey upon a betrayer’s conscience.
Stilted, they flash ephemerally.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 10:04 PM UTC
choices
embrace things
that sickens
enslaves
maims
kills
unbound
yourself
loose
your chains
turn away from
the dungeon
that has
become
your death
chamber
you
alone
crafted
with such
deft skill
you exiled
yourself
hid away
from the living
inhabiting a
convenient
confinement
relishing
the deceitful
pleasures of an
addled mind
a twisted
portrait
of a
shackled
self
living
inside
the
dark abode
of your head
bumping
about in
unmapped
caves
dwelling
in a place
that no one
could find
nor dare
explore
you heap
stones
at the door
providing
your only
means
of escape
safely
entombed
in your
vapid
delusions
a decrepit
graveyard
an abandoned
township
of lonely
sarcophagi
long forgotten
by the
moldering
bodies
of the city's
ghostly
citizens
you reek
with the
stench
of death
you
murdered
yourself
and
became
dead
to us
But
Jesus
wept
over
your
self
denigration
never
forsaking
your favored
condition
The
Good Friend
lifted
you
from
Edens
dust
and
showered
you
with
fine
things
yet
you
found
no joy
in
the gift
of solace
the might
of grace
the balm
of love
the rest
of peace
all
only
heaped
torments
upon
you
your
sisters
wailed
in grief
imploring
The
Resurrector
to make you
whole
he only
shrugs
and
extends
a palm
unloose
the rags
of your
swaddled
grief
unbound
yourself
Lazarus
come out
and walk
amongst
the living
again
put
down your
stones
the hand
is nigh
choose well
my friend
St. Alban's
Bible Study
7/09
jbm
Nov 7, 2011
Nov 7, 2011 at 10:45 AM UTC
You’ll find them in all such establishments,
(Be they graceful small-town former Victorian homes,
Or cinderblock edifices mindful of some campus multi-faith center)
Sitting in the basement, cheek-to-jowl
With moldering burial records and banking statements,
Yellowed newspaper clippings, faded prayer cards
Small squared-off boxes hastily tabbed together,
Ostensibly temporary containers which have acquired
An unintended and wholly unwelcome permanence.
The whys and wherefores of their subterranean placement
A mixed bag of foible and outright foolishness:
Unresolvable squabbles concerning possession and burial,
Families that skipped out on the bill, leaving mom behind,
Cases of outright not giving a good-goddamn.
And so they remain, in lieu of repatriation and redemption,
To sit for something akin to perpetuity in some cases
(Members of the profession resolute in their respect
For the dignity of life,
Though their sincerity enjoys less unanimity)
While others wait for mass burial
Once legal niceties have been satisfied,
While still others, in care of firms not so scrupulous
About crossing their t’s and dotting their i’s,
Are flung, albeit somewhat surreptitiously, out the back door,
The remains to take flight if the grass is dry and the wind is brisk,
Otherwise to be left to the vagaries
Of curious birds and creped soles.
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 11:28 AM UTC
Getting on
through a trying work hour in the night-time rush,
groped by strangers with dark eyes
the color of neglect and whiskey.
Men with knives under their sleeves,
calling you back and back again,
refills for their poison and pretzels for the table,
don't be a ***** darling.
I only want to feel those hands trembling
under mine.
All you ever knew were the bruises and the burns.
Gliding closer and closer to
your face, your hands,
inching towards the skin that gleams, exposed
and invokes the shame you feel from
fetid breath on your neck, these
animals with moldering livers.
but another round for the men in the grease and grime.
Green bottles and a smile that said
'I like the taste of your weakness,
You like the abuse.'
Dec 9, 2013
Dec 9, 2013 at 4:13 PM UTC
I followed a writer
up a prodigious tree
Every leaf I brushed,
his poem.
From the crown
I scanned the pastoral
a poetic landscape in repose,
A resplendent chorus of
Glistening verdant wisdom.
O’ vast vibrato of sibilance
slipping the breaths of
Thalia and Melpomene!
Alight by dusk, I lingered.
Comes the long wind of winter
to undress each tree!
So from my aerie,
through gaunt branches,
I could see…
The low-slung place
where each poem fell
I thought, “here so many,
clothed in so much comedy
and tragedy…
recite their odes
of heaven and hell.”
And down I climbed
and away I walked
Over quiescent leaves
while red and russet
ran from their dendritic veins
Moldering into the palette
of dormant memories.
O’ even now
The sweet scent of decay
Reminds me of Spring
when I will climb again.
From the rot of the roost
to the dust below boots,
by the pen of the winter writer
Spring will come again.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 9:28 AM UTC
Coincidence of the stars,
Chemical compounds,
Natural bonds of our tired flesh
Emerging from mud and earth.
Feral beasts,
Fed by the dirt and brush,
Being who's instinct and will
Conquer the evolved heart.
The blood must flow
And the teeth must gnash.
Heathens in skins, a religion of fire and smoke,
Bones in the dust under a canopy of stars,
Guided by nature and the will of the African plains.
The order of the suns and moons,
Woven from the fibers of
our very tissue and DNA.
Oceanic creatures and woolly ape
Bred their kin,
Harvested knowledge from the
Seed of grass, growing wild though the hills.
To live and to fall
Beneath the crust of the earth
And feed the flowers,
To grow a garden from moldering flesh,
And sleep in darkness,
Bodies akin to the soil
Given only to ground.
A fragile
and calloused concoction.
Coincidence of the stars,
Creation of the cosmos.
Dec 18, 2013
Dec 18, 2013 at 12:52 AM UTC
Dark souls bound
by non-death to the shadows;
Wandering, wallowing,
Looming.
Fingernails like fishscales;
chipping. peeling.
tearing at my flesh.
a last soul-torn scream.
mute-silence
carved-out tongue
corrupt. filthy.
absolution comes to none
like they--
like me.
dark souls--
Good God, now me!
eyes. cataract-blind.
fingers numb.
teeth ache.
no way to cleanse
the blood.
putrid. ***** wretches.
eating marrow
from the bone!
--
Wretched me!
I'm eating marrow
from the bone.
all gone hollow inside.
no gore can ease the agony.
moldering away.
rotting.
a zombie, a zombie.
don't you wish you were
undead like me?
Nov 27, 2011
Nov 27, 2011 at 4:02 PM UTC
Does memory deserve such a platter?
Cellophane instead of silver, but still
An impressive tower.
Such weight it bears—
Exhibit of blue curiosities
Resting on shoulders,
Original honeycombs.
The honeyeater feasts
On what has made a meal of me.
Grand rooms echo with silence.
Love turned to hate
So often without comment.
A history of broken hearts lies beneath
Street level. Away from sun’s glare
I buried them.
It is a tomb I walk in, tour guide
To myself. It is an ossuary hidden deep
Underground. It is the Catacombs of Paris.
Here moldering in the dark repose
A stack of secret skulls and bones—
Those gleeful arsonists.
In the end, even they succumbed
To the fires they set,
Burning down chapels without regret.
The city rumbles overhead, oblivious.
Everyone is absorbed with their own busyness.
No one pauses to wonder outside the still museum.
The cool façade belies the treasures hidden within.
They forget the history we share.
No visitor ascends the stair.
Inside, all is quiet.
The sole curator walks among the artifacts—
The rare objects, a Gordian knot,
The personas we once wore:
The naked emperor, the femme fatale,
The honeycunt.
Nov 15, 2019
Nov 15, 2019 at 8:30 PM UTC
Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play
Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day
They count and verify their MeBook friends -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.
Feb 11, 2017
Feb 11, 2017 at 3:24 PM UTC
The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls,
The treetops are marble-made that the riffler of wind deforms,
To know all mother tongues from the quarry of rough stones,
To speak everything at once, Bride of Unbecoming,
The moldering walls of lips, the kiss of vacant streets
And the quiet, wet solitude bespoken by back roads,
The whispered origami of the Forum, paper gods in folds,
Smothered in the false pillows of their own repose,
The wolf’s beard dipped in the fresh pant of dewfall,
While lovers have placed on the stones of the Appian Way
Their perfect hearts like votive candles, cupping the flames,
Looking down the swift arrow of loneliness, Sagittarius its same
Heaven-glow and besprinkled guidepost of a starlit Sacred Way.
Mother of Rome, your powdered face has been made ashen by those
Unreturned home, your far-off travels lead only to the graves of sons.
The ancient way across this world lies like sunset over black pearls.
Jul 20, 2020
Jul 20, 2020 at 11:32 AM UTC
Through a purgatory,
Wooden toys moldering.
Complete the illusion.
Strangely frozen.
Just for a moment.
Empty forest,
Succumbed to death.
The hollows bare.
The Children loiter,
Moonlight streamed in.
A meandering complex,
Darkness lurks.
A hiding place,
Unexplored.
The answers,
Fermenting in the dark.
Veins of coal.
Voice of truth.
Fading again.
Words dripping.
Slowly like molasses.
Make out a whisper.
Lungs burst.
A deranged smile.
Mar 3, 2013
Mar 3, 2013 at 3:43 PM UTC
Let the curse be invoked, let ghosts gibber and moan!
It appears the Bard’s skull is out and on loan.
Although long protected by a malediction dread,
It turns out Shakespeare’s body is missing his head.
Some Victorian fans thought it quite the lark
to make off with his skull; a deed done in the dark.
Alas poor Shakespeare whose works I know well
Your skull now a paperweight where miscreants dwell.
Like Crassus the Roman, you serve as a prop
And your moldering bones are missing their top.
If Poor Yorick had heirs they are under suspicion;
Subject them to torture to obtain their confession.
Mar 26, 2016
Mar 26, 2016 at 12:50 PM UTC
Neglected now is the old guitar
And moldering into decay;
Fretted with many a rift and scar
That the dull dust hides away,
While the spider spins a silver star
In its silent lips to-day.
The keys hold only nerveless strings--
The sinews of brave old airs
Are pulseless now; and the scarf that clings
So closely here declares
A sad regret in its ravelings
And the faded hue it wears.
But the old guitar, with a lenient grace,
Has cherished a smile for me;
And its features hint of a fairer face
That comes with a memory
Of a flower-and-perfume-haunted place
And a moonlit balcony.
Music sweeter than words confess,
Or the minstrel's powers invent,
Thrilled here once at the light caress
Of the fairy hands that lent
This excuse for the kiss I press
On the dear old instrument.
The rose of pearl with the jeweled stem
Still blooms; and the tiny sets
In the circle all are here; the gem
In the keys, and the silver frets;
But the dainty fingers that danced o'er them--
Alas for the heart's regrets!--
Alas for the loosened strings to-day,
And the wounds of rift and scar
On a worn old heart, with its roundelay
Enthralled with a stronger bar
That Fate weaves on, through a dull decay
Like that of the old guitar!
May 23, 2015
May 23, 2015 at 1:38 PM UTC
I want to be your best friend.
I want to be your love.
I want to be someone you can trust.
Someone you miss.
Someone who can help you if you need help.
Someone who you let give to you.
I want to be your comfort, that someone out there will always love you whether you even think of them anymore.
That if in 20 years you are crying and call me up, I will be there to help you, no strings, no questions asked, no matter what you've done to me.
I want to be the one who would die for you.
And the one who will live for you.
Whether or not you even notice.
In the end, it really doesn't matter.
What matters is THAT I love you, and that everything in my life that I love will have something of you about it, to me.
And when I am far away,
In London looking at the old streets,
In India when I'm looking across the slums to the sparkling city beyond,
In Ireland when I stare at the sea from a moldering castle-
Wherever I am, whenever it is, I will think of you, and it will mean more to me because I knew you.
That's what I do, it's who I am.
I love the world through a conduit.
Through a person who has touched my soul.
And they get all mixed up, eventually, the two of them, until all the love I ever have, and had, and could have is for everything, all through one person who has changed me.
Every artist dedicates their work to something,
Every artist has their reason for the art they make.
And when you live your life as if it is art, you have to live it the way you do BECAUSE of something.
I will give you all I can, and ask nothing,
Because you exist and I can love the world by thinking of you.
The whole rose tinted glasses thing?
I know it means you see no flaws in the person you love, but it means something else, as well, to me.
Those who love the way I do see the whole world through how much they love,
And let me tell you,
THAT is why it is worth it.
Because the whole world is beautiful when you love someone like this.
Dec 30, 2012
Dec 30, 2012 at 12:57 PM UTC
i've never felt so weak in the knees over someone who couldn't stay
i asked myself
what was stopping you from anchoring yourself to me
the moldering wood who could never keep us afloat
the winds, so spirited and sudden,
would tear us in two.
but it would be a privileged to see is my last breath in you.
Oct 30, 2014
Oct 30, 2014 at 10:56 PM UTC
Here’s my hefty, over-lumbered
case to put you in:
suggestions on a pin
to ***** your dogma,
error’s commas captivating
run-ons with their length
prolonged for lack of strength
unseen in staying parts -
your wants is off the charts!
But needs are nadirs; we all stoop
to let them talk us into something.
Independence *** thing) wrecks your time
and chews your peace apart.
Your heart beats out
a chapter shorter now each night -
the longing makes it right
and lubs the biggest dub of all -
recordings of the ball,
the master moldering in some storage tomb
alone for adding rooms
onto the house you’ll owe forever for.
Why snore you with my secret?
Loud man come, inventing orders -
hupping-to shreds being into blue.
Who showed me out of there?
Who whisked without a care
and smashed the batter of your special batch:
for sure, at times, a catch,
but else an error, comma,
asterisk,
rappelling down your robe of risk?
Aug 31, 2018
Aug 31, 2018 at 4:40 PM UTC
Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Play
Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day
They count and verify their MeBook friends -
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.
Dec 9, 2016
Dec 9, 2016 at 6:36 PM UTC
Dustily mustily covered in mold
The chamber belies the treasure it holds
From mothers and brothers and fathers and more
Inside meager demeanor confides kingly hoards
Chess boards and old lords’ bright silver spoons
With hobgoblins lurking somewhere in the gloom
Stalking their prey for a meal they might slay
In this moldering attic well hid from day.
Mar 18, 2016
Mar 18, 2016 at 11:35 AM UTC
Emotional sequestration perseverates
across thine time warped
weft wise wold,
sans interpersonal stagnation
flourishes as oft twice told
tale amidst derelict hollowed
moldering sacrificed stranglehold
did potential..., now bankrupt acquaintanceships/
friendships get out sold
agonizingly excruciatingly
jujitsu physically writhing
front row seat occupied -
whereat direct view of scaffold
penurious adolescent Anorexia Nervosa
plagued decades prior fraught
psychological, neurological and illogical
repercussions steam rolled
natural heterosexual propensity
stifling, stinting, and stymying this old
morosely jinxed kerfuffle inciting,
hermetically heat sealed,
tightly bound stinging
straitened yellow jacketed
bee devilish mold
hogtied hold, pig in the poke,
xenophobic-ally
fastened, galvanic hold
wrenching vice grippe
fiercely extolled sterile lackluster
human existence devoid cold
hence, imperative ambition
to act forthright and bold
before advanced age
finds this wordsmith additionally auld.
This solitary reader quests doth newt plead
per outreach need
without supplicating, lionizing, boot mead
dee eight ting, enticing Nietzscheism lead
me by thine pug nose,
nor doth this passive heretic - heed
ding perseverance
without selfishness nor greed
aye only seek to be freed,
where ambivalence to enjoy life exceed
sharing soulful travails yes in deed
foster repartee with persons no matter creed
faith, intelligence, nationality breed
united by state worthy charisma agreed?
Jun 18, 2018
Jun 18, 2018 at 9:58 PM UTC
A world,
Once serene,
Blessed with dignified change
At the pace of shifting continents,
And eroding mountains.
The epochs rolled on.
Then came infestation,
With its slimy tendrils.
Every rock fouled by growth
Every crevice dark with
Rot and decay.
Filaments grow upward and branched
Giving shade for corruption
Beneath their moldering feet.
Some run across the festering plains
Trying to rise higher and live longer
Only to be rent limb from limb
And sink into the ooze
That strips flesh from bone
The muck always wins
And the cycle of death continues
Until the sun, disgusted,
Burns the world clean once more.
Aug 17, 2024
Aug 17, 2024 at 3:00 PM UTC
Paleo-Yuppies at Work and Place
Fading slowly from the existential struggle,
Waving their MePhones about in protest,
They swarm to Starbuck’s for adjective coffees,
Uniformed in knee-pants and bulbous sneaks
And Chinese soccer tops with little checkmarks,
Their graduate degrees at parade rest,
And in confusion, suddenly-stalled careers
Raging against the thirty-something machine.
Not trusting anyone under forty,
They rustle their foam cups and resumes’
Instead of suspicious Democrats,
And demand promotions and Perrier.
They mourn pinstripes and leather briefcases,
And the old floppy disc of yesteryear,
And fumble their PowerPoint Presentations
Tho’ once they illuminated the world
With colored markers on glossy whiteboard.
They no longer play games on a Commodore
Or rock to neo-Carib fusion jazz;
Their Rush is Right baseball caps are now filed
In trays of antique curiosities
Beside the moldering hippie stuff shelved
In an adjunct of the Smithsonian
Where curricula vitae go to be eaten
By a computer virus named Vlad.
Now, as the sun sets on Ferris Bueller’s day,
They count and verify their MeBook friends –
They did not change the world, not at all, but
The world changed anyway, and without them,
And in the end they love neither Jesus
Nor The Force; like Eve, they bow to an Apple.
Oct 5, 2017
Oct 5, 2017 at 5:17 PM UTC