"mountainsides" poems
The loving puddle in the gutter off market street-- the one that fills with dirt and **** and damp newspaper, plastic soda cup, strange indecipherable Chinese pamphlets with bleeding characters. She smiles at the sun and renders its visions on her face, and with great tension attempts to demonstrate her willingness, her blushing consent to being totally subsumed by its whims. Of course she trembles at the diurnal stampede of feet, but is not afraid-- for she too speaks in eternity. She has evaporated before-- she has kissed the incessant sky over Marrakesh in the soft morning and dreams of the sparkling mountainsides in the night, when she is divided by callous rubber tires or cast below by competing distant rains. Yet she has always found her way back home; Nestled in the subtle indentation of road besides the brickway near Battery.
"Dewdrop, let me cleanse
in your brief
sweet waters . . .
These dark hands of life"
It was one of the waning days of winter, in the blurred haze of rains, when we left the coast and began our journey home. As she drove, I watched the pebbled streaks roll across the window into great vertical streams, to be cast off indistinct along the stationary road. Upon all our sides, Even the black-toothed mountain tops lost their grandiose summits into the fog. Off the road, next to the sagging remains of a gas station, a man sat beneath the naked fist of an old willow tree. He, with a teal umbrella, twirled the nylon circle so that the collecting sheen of water spun and spiraled centrifugal out into the bombarding camaraderie of fellow drops. The damp fields sat empty of life behind him, casting into evanescent black oceans of dirt. As we hurried past, I turned back-- and following him with my own watering eyes, I watched for as long as I could--until he too faded silently into the mist.
Sep 4, 2018
Sep 4, 2018 at 3:27 AM UTC
Politicians speak about "The Fallen",
Our dear departed servicemen*
Its a nasty euphemism
for the Legion of our dead.
For they did not gently flutter down
like leaves of gold and brown.
They were raked by foes' machines guns
as they fought to take some ground.
They've met slaughter on the beaches,
been slain on distant mountainsides.
They've been sacrificed, quite needlessly,
for some Politicians' pride
Many a mother's heart's been broken
Widows and orphans have been made.
Political Stupidity has dug many a grave.
So don't speak about "the Fallen",
you who haven't borne the fight.
You've never paid the butcher's bill
so what gives you the right?
May 29, 2012
May 29, 2012 at 7:55 AM UTC
My love, my love these shaky Isles
Abandoned in the vast blue seas,
Born in Mesozoic times
When sedimentary oozes ease.
From far Antarctic mountainsides
To windblown dust from Austral plain
They lay in layers thick and deep
Beneath the Tasman Sea's domain.
A thousand million years of ******
Of plate tectonic shear and drift,
Mid oceanic larva seep
Determines continental shift.
Deep magmatic plumes arise
From down within the planet's core
To burst asunder from the crust
As mountain God's volcanic lore.
Ash and larva from the vent
In pyroclastic feirce display,
Obliterate the cold blue sky
Explosively in massive way.
Rooster tails of feiry ash
And bread crust bombs cascade about
Vulcan roars his rage to all
In violent, vast, volcanic route.
Ignimbrite flows from the vent
In sheets a hundred meters deep
The incandescence, from on high,
Would, watching Angels, cause to weep.
Like quicksilver, it cloaks the land
To cover all in burning flow,
To last a million years as sheets
Of sharded rock where 'ere you go.
So the land was born of fire
And bent and twisted by the force
Of upthrust from the great, beneath
And earthquakes felt throughout, of course.
Earthquakes of unearthly fear
Wrack foundation's very base,
Sudden as the artic gale
Unpredictable to face.
So the shaky Isles were born
Here to lie in ocean's vast,
Clad in forest lush and green
Snowclad mountains, rivers fast.
Well kept cities, well kept towns
Population proud and clean,
Beauty all around is felt
Perched atop creation's dream.
So the Shaky Isles exist
Perfect in their place in time,
Perched atop subducting plates
Perched in ignorance sublime.
What's around the corner now?
Who's concerned, who really cares
For Kiwis make the best of now...
The rest remains as chance declares.
Marshalg
Celebrating a love affair with my beautiful New Zealand.
31 August 2012
Aug 30, 2012
Aug 30, 2012 at 9:32 PM UTC
I’ve wanted pretty, soft, hands for as long as I can remember;
thin fingers,
long nails.
The kind that pair well with coffee mugs and bookstores.
The kind you don’t hesitate to kiss;
but mine are riddled with anxiety.
There are scars on my knuckles from walls that didn’t deserve my anger
and I can’t seem to stop biting at my fingernails.
I will never be the pretty girl with soft hands and thin fingers.
I am the strong girl
who scales mountainsides
and presses my hips into the walls I once used to punish myself.
My hands haven’t been the same since I covered them in chalk and started gripping onto what has become a lifeline for me.
So,
no,
I will never be the pretty girl with soft hands and thin fingers.
I will be the strong one.
Oct 25, 2020
Oct 25, 2020 at 9:37 PM UTC
(Creation to the end of an Ice Age)
© 2008 (Jim Sularz)
Sun’s first rise over life-less skies, the earth cools, and the waters pool -
the sun burns East to West.
And the planet’s broken plates quake and move.
Lightning strikes, the waters stir, and the bonds of life begin to churn -
the sun burns East to West.
And the waters swirl in a living urn.
Strange aquatic things, they all evolve, some spiny finned, start to crawl -
the sun burns East to West.
And they slowly stretch ***** and tall.
Eons past where the cunning reign, a savage place, with small sized brains -
the sun burns East to West.
And the dead surrender their twisted remains.
An asteroid streaks from the sky, blocks out the sun, cause most to die -
the sun burns East to West.
And all in the blink of time’s eye.
Footprints in stone, some on mountainsides, make it clear that rocks don’t lie -
the sun burns East to West.
And the fossils always tell the time.
Eons past and eons more, the fittest evolves, and man is born -
the sun burns East to West.
And the early brain, once fast asleep, begins to dream and mourn.
The first million years, man lives in fear, learns to hunt, invents the spear -
the sun burns East to West.
And migrates to claim the vast frontiers.
Tools from stone and controlled fire, creates language, that shake man’s empire -
the sun burns East to West.
And splash cave paintings with human inspire.
Life-times of hunter-gathering, and story-telling in the dark -
the sun burns East to West.
And a world spins with a million hearts.
The earth starts to warm, the oceans rise, and the waters shape the lands -
the sun burns East to West.
And when an Ice Age ends, then comes, the Age of Man.
Jun 10, 2012
Jun 10, 2012 at 5:03 PM UTC
Go, my friend, to Tbilisi, where the War of Roses was won. Run the mountainsides and fall into the canyons of lapsed eons. Sunk in the valley wide, past huddling of trees that open and yawn, sprinkles a misting of sunny, dewy rocks where a certain party of gypsies gather. You will only find them there after the picking of the cherry orchards, and if they welcome you, they will feed you their cherry soup. It will intoxicate, but no more than the captivating dance of cherry stained aprons you may be privileged to witness. Dark haired and dark eyed sultanas, ****** from healthy eating and laboring, do motion a curvilinear spell. Band with the men of that tribe, if they will have you. Let them choose for you, a server of cherry soup. Though cherry season is short, your life will lengthen.
Mar 12, 2016
Mar 12, 2016 at 1:44 PM UTC
Does your darkness forecast shadows,
A high noon noose hangs from the gallows,
Feel the sharks circling shallow,
Swim fast, I'm bleeding.
Peripheral landscapes drape your gilded chatter,
Purple & pink horizons, summon laughter,
Your eyes blink lightning speed patterns,
My clouds follow, miles per hour.
What in this wide world changes,
Can we live high on mountainsides,
Open our door to the strangers,
Surrender to the ocean tides.
~My palette craves color,
Your canvas seeks attention,
My callused fingers are covered,
When your callous words are mentioned.
Jul 4, 2018
Jul 4, 2018 at 12:07 AM UTC
She’s the same old
Country girl
When she settles back in
With plentiful rice in mouth;
Dry and yet fulfilling with
Words echoing
In between chopsticks,
A sentence upon,
And within,
Every other mouthful.
She has a way with
Talking while drinking tea
Wherein her hands,
Once left to grains of Mao,
Speak nearly as much as the
Sound of
Slurping mountainsides,
Leaves telling stories
And roots shaking rock –
A little something so very
Ancient, so very practiced
And so much so,
That the burden of “old”
Overwhelms her “new”
And 25-year old back.
She rattles and he’s a way,
Away, a way away,
With tinkered thoughts of
Mirages buried silk screens,
The gentle sweep of
Fingernails upon back,
Shooting stars,
Dodging cars
And failure.
He’s the man on the run,
On the road, wherein –
He never ate,
He only watched her
And he never drank,
He only watched her;
He’d watch
Until the faint dreams of a
Sunrise’d give birth,
The new day’d be promised sleep,
And twilight’d be labeled,
“Escapade” or “escape.”
When came the closed eye,
He be the same ol’ boy,
The “other” she’d never known.
Aug 15, 2015
Aug 15, 2015 at 9:22 AM UTC
Brown grassy mountainsides;
full of yucca and sharp burs and
stripped-naked trees.
(Your buffalo have all been murdered, America.)
atop this vertical precipice, the edge
of everything that’s never been,
before a white and faceless
Void: the sore thumb of a
boulder. A gray and
ancient troll.
There sits a changed and stoic
stranger wrapped in a wool blanket
against piercing winter wind and frost.
Sharing my thoughts. My organs. My perch.
Walking along this trail…
there can only be death.
I check my silent moving
watch. Time to turn back.
Feb 8, 2011
Feb 8, 2011 at 7:28 PM UTC
The coldness of my unleashed disinhibitions have gracefully succumbed to the wisdom of cosmological forces, despite my ravenous salivations for all that is vehemently forbidden.
As I bark inside the relief of this solitary pound of articulated and socialised liberty, like an expression of abstract artistry within an ethical mudslide; I continue to teeter upon geographical tightropes which span unforgiving terrains across the ancient divides of propriety, where the baron plains of deuterocanonical origin are populated by restless spirits with gnashing teeth.
So, if they could ever be personified, I could easily butcher a myriad of depravities which tangibly characterise my inner Astarte and Ishtar demons – although, such an event would have to occur after we have engaged in a myriad of abominations where raunchy and indulgent copulations shamefully expose our brazen wantonness to animalistic inclinations.
Never offer to tie me down.
Restriction diametrically opposes my socially skilled yet nomadic being, as it sojourns across a psychedelic array of vibrant gardens, and weaves through present pathways which are timeless in their being.
It just is.
That is the essence of ontology.
Can we ever effectively contemplate the philosophies of predetermination and predestination?
As I am not dichotomous in my thinking, there is a legitimate place for being an omnivore within the walls of our societal fabric.
Although I radically accept that of which I do not approve, the psychology of ambivalence has led me to raise questions around the validity of horticulture.
My clock has melted down the flamboyance of those multicolored mountainsides of being and nothingness.
Sep 13, 2015
Sep 13, 2015 at 1:20 AM UTC
A distrust of details…
Ample amounts of reporting,
And eroding authority;
More freeze-thaw cycles,
Upswells, dead zones. Early signs
Wash up onto the shore, as the
Earth’s core continues to warm.
Hurricanes play mercilessly with
Uninsured lives, and earthquakes
Evolve from tickles to fissures.
Snow disappears from
Whole mountainsides.
The floodgates HAVE opened, temperatures ARE
Rising; Perception is always partial
but there’s plenty of evidence, regardless -
When we start to question the record-keepers
And legislators, those omitting parts of history;
People who willingly walk into the sun, selfishly
Sidestep the natural order and equilibrium of all things,
Exactly where does that journey end?
I think, somewhere around the place
Where we start to forge our own histories,
Or indifference begins.
Aug 31, 2011
Aug 31, 2011 at 1:37 AM UTC
Carla,
Whom I love and regret in equal measure,
Told me to talk less and think only in the morning.
It’s unfair, she said, for someone with your demons,
To obsess past mid day.
You will only exhaust yourself,
Become dizzy from looking over your shoulder.
It’s the sparrow’s lunch you eat, she said
Afterwards you think only of suicide,
It’s your pathetic answer to everything.
You have a propensity, an absolute need to confess, Carla advised me,
You see sin as an obligation,
As a necessity to fuel your ridiculous notion of salvation,
Repentance is a shell game,
No sooner have you apologized for being yourself,
Than you begin sinning all over again.
Your quest for innocence is a self-selected Sisyphean task.
I told her I had no idea what she was talking about,
And that if she wanted to save me she had to speak in simpler terms.
Quit looking for the meaning in things, Carla said,
Life is lived on the surface,
What we really fear is not that we will die,
But how we will die,
I mean good god,
The insane Christians
Have us picturing death
With nails driven through our hands and feet,
Hanging from a crucifix,
Can you imagine the indignity,
While some low level centurion,
Stabs at us with a sword,
I mean really,
Hauling crosses up mountainsides
Being laughed at and scorned in our weakest moment,
The drama is laughable,
When the absolute truth is most of us
Will die peacefully in our sleep,
Gone without even knowing the party is over.
Replace your metaphysics with a game of chess, Carla told me,
At least do psilocybin once in awhile
And have a genuine spiritual experience,
And she held up her hand for two more glasses of scotch,
Neat,
And lit her cigar.
Aug 30, 2016
Aug 30, 2016 at 7:10 PM UTC
Hot on the tail of that wily, elusive beast
named ‘inspiration’, I travelled north.
North, where colours mute
and transformative shadow
bends in darklight,
revealing the world as it really is,
as it once was.
Hundreds of years pass,
rolling back time, boiling clouds
rushing over peaks in reverse,
a tiny tornado ***** in on itself,
and hundreds become thousands.
Rain blackens the babies of volcanoes,
engorges forces with greater purpose
and cleanses every shred of vision
from my grasping, desperate mind.
Thousands become millions
And I am stripped of incentive to try.
There is no ruination, here.
No furious nor frantic need
to imagine past lives
in this manicured, managed place.
High-vis’d toilers scuttle on mountainsides
carefully placing and re-placing rocks,
funnelling feet and discovery
on a prescribed and sensible path.
Only the rain
wreathing a secretive misted ribbon,
creeping in glacial cut-throughs,
is possessed of fanciful virtue.
Nothing shatters but the slate
and the landscape does not turn inward
to eat itself
in gnawing, atavistic need.
It says more about me,
than it does of the Lake District
that I would wrench out and offer
my super-heated heart
to see the mountains fall.
Aug 24, 2015
Aug 24, 2015 at 8:53 AM UTC
A new day sprays my room with colors
and dust particles and light rays
like underwater sleep and showers.
There are chemicals to be blasted,
jackhammers with holes to pound
into mountainsides
This house looks like you and it was built in my honor.
Every time I climb the stairs, I hold your hand
Every wall, every angle, every archway, every door
They're all your eyes, your lungs, your veins
I revere in your deep colors.
Arms outstretched, a temple flattened
We will make our patterns loud and our faces heard.
I'd rather destroy this landmark than soil it with people
And their idea of success or power or God.
We are God. It's time we shout it.
We may not have every planet. Or the stars
Or the souls and tears of a million followers,
But we have knowledge. We have wisdom.
We have a healthy curiosity for more.
In this, we are the kings of our own world
We wear the crown of daisies and clouds
Muses are alive in every forest, every fence
Every field that we have wandered without sense
Every breath we have taken in this gulch.
When you looked at me, you didn't have to say anything.
I knew you were mine. I didn't have to say it.
And I wouldn't have given you the satisfaction in doing so.
This is a calling for every American soul aching to be free
I yearn for a revolutionary who will hold this man
With this face: no fear, no guilt, no pain
In the face of a billion firing squads,
At the edge of the gallows
With nooses around our necks.
This is a calling for a patriot:
"I threw that statue down the elevator shaft
Because I love you."
Oct 15, 2010
Oct 15, 2010 at 9:25 AM UTC
Infinity on end
The hourglass has fallen and time continues to pretend
With grains of sand spread far and wide
They cover hilltops and mountainsides
They paint the world an unearthly glow
But all that glitters is not gold
Yet here in our little bubble, ignorance is bliss
But just beneath the surface we know not what we miss
Cos while we think we live, we live only for the puppeteer
To cut the strings
Is to switch off the life support, rebel
To flip the switch
Is nothing but a one way ticket to Hell
Or so they’d have us believe
Edges on display
The shiny glass has broken, fragments scatter in disarray
With shards of glass spread far and wide
They cover oceans and countryside
They paint the world with unearthly snow
But all that glitters is not gold
Here they give us nothing, yet we honour and obey
So what have we got to lose, of what are we afraid?
Cos while we think we live, we live only for the puppeteer
To grow our wings
Is to remove the safety net in place
To cut the strings
Is nothing but an almighty fall from grace
Or so they’d have us believe
Eternity’s end
The hourglass has shattered and the puppeteer descends
With freedom now spread far and wide
The tainted earth is purified
The strings are burned to ashes and dust
Leaving all that glittered now to rust
Now we see the world in truth, no more ventriloquism
We see it all; the black and blue; why not embrace the crimson?
Copyright ©2016-2017 KF
Dec 14, 2016
Dec 14, 2016 at 7:21 PM UTC
Sixteen children watched
as I played a video of unimaginable horror.
The planet misbehaving
water turning into tumbling concrete
boats heaved up mountainsides
helplessness too small a word.
It is important
to bring the world into the classroom
and I put my misgivings aside
trusting the children to understand.
They had seen the images already,
could say 'Tsunami',
didn't laugh, though the scene was ridiculous.
I was proud of them.
Perhaps we will write to Japanese children
and wish them well.
Ten minutes later,
Harvey pushed Aaron off his chair
and all hell broke loose.
Mar 16, 2011
Mar 16, 2011 at 12:54 PM UTC
a bird on a wire
anxiously tweets
outside my
Good Friday
pane
The Carl Vinson
battle group
plies the China Seas
rolling through waves
like a deadly
Tsunami
MOABS plaster
mountainsides,
commanders are
certain the right
bomb, for the right job
produced a righteous
body count
Tomahawks strafe
another Syrian
neighborhood, already
desperately choking on
the stench of corpses
“Crucify Him!”
They shout
“We want blood!”
“Give em a
good scourging”
Before we place
a crown of thorns
on his head
Let the blood drip
pierce him with
a pike, let it all
spill out
The pundits
sanctify the
sacraments
of death with
strategic acuity
Just another day
in a closer walk
with Thee, for the
Pilgrims of Sorrow
Music: Soul Stirrers,
Pilgrim of Sorrow
Painting:
The Road of Sorrows
Nina Marchenko
Good Friday 2017
Lavallette NJ
jbm
Apr 14, 2017
Apr 14, 2017 at 6:08 PM UTC
beneath her feet
her most daring
feet
that traversed
the murky waters
of dawn, past mountainsides
of prayers, stallions the blackest mare
love combined, daresay silence annuls
the noise of heart and the shadow
casts its darkest immaterial stone
beneath her feet
her most daring
feet
the dead continue
to bury the living
and the living excites
the demanded hue of another blue
to hold close into the sky
whose also darling feet dangle
much like water’s fervent collapse
mantling the rivers, miles you have
walked without images of I
beneath her feet
her most beautiful feet
we go wind by wind in excess
of days
in the night’s blackest dress soiled
by light is inmost dance instep,
curated from machineries
beneath her feet
your feet I adore
which bony prominences hurdle
me weak, ruined,
where I lay
is always the cradle of Earth
your feet and I beneath
them, emerging from the possible life
of leaves in birdflight,
beneath your feet
your cold feet, unrelenting
on the unkind tomb of my body
your swift drop of feet, their
superfluous coming-and-going
love landing on my body – trampled, weighed down
beneath your feet,
your most darling feet.
Mar 25, 2016
Mar 25, 2016 at 4:25 AM UTC
He and I are the same:
umbrellas on sunny days, nothing in the rain and
shivering, slightly, in the warmth of sunny rooms.
His gentle face watches me walk through the door
and he paces the floor looking for a rhyme
that will hold me, neat like the sonnet he’s folding
my quiet dear, who walked in shadowed rooms
forever, noticed slightly dimming lights
and slighter changes in the weather, afternoons
with showers, clear and starry nights.
she smelled like air and puddles on the street
The rosy blush of clouds after a storm--
the pinkish blush of clouds after a storm--
the white and empty sky after a storm--
He admits defeat, and again we are the same,
afraid to speak each other’s names, waiting
for rhymes that would’t come, or never came.
But we could slink back into the mountainsides,
coastlines, deep tree recessions and rain-filled
nights, you and I. Be brave and build a home,
a bed and a desk, fill up our books with poems
about the weather, the curves of our necks, lay
our words in the soil of the cold, careful northwest.
Aug 2, 2012
Aug 2, 2012 at 10:31 PM UTC
When I’m with you, I feel beautiful.
I feel as though the world around us fades away,
and all that’s left is you, me, and the sound.
The sound of our hearts singing out in harmony.
The warmth of our lips touching, ever-so gently.
So gently that the butterflies inside of me weep out
the sweetest nectar that has ever been made.
When I’m with you, I feel alive,
I feel giddy, and wild, and free.
So free that I can barely keep from leaping off mountainsides
In hopes that I may soar,
Away from all the troubles
And into your loving arms.
Sep 17, 2012
Sep 17, 2012 at 1:01 AM UTC
Had I not waltzed out into that fair night
And faded off into the autumn air,
As such would be the loss I dared endure
If ever such a life I failed to spare.
If I had been aware of such a place
Where blissful contemplation often floats
About in clouds of radiating light,
Perhaps I would find her there.
But even though the sturdiest of walls
Could stand in front of her, or deepest moats
Rest along her path in peaceful currents,
A barrier is yet a broken limit.
Or had she stood atop the tallest peak
Of ever treacherous vertical slate,
Could I simply stare blindly to that spire
As though she held the sun within her arms?
Or could I put my life to such a test;
Perhaps within a split-second decision,
That light which draws me in may never die
But even so, I still aspire to fire.
Or could my own propulsion bring me up
Along those horrifying mountainsides?
If not the danger, then the fear itself
Would lend itself to me and take its toll.
But had I ever reached that daunting spire
And gazed upon her ever lovely hair,
She’d simply spread her wings and fly away,
And leave me in the howling autumn air.
Mar 17, 2014
Mar 17, 2014 at 9:15 PM UTC
we don’t hold hands
but it’s okay
i build back my
own heart to not
burden you with
expectations
i rear-end an old man
on the way to your house
my heart keeps beating
even when the car turns
off and when i look at you
it doesn’t stop stuttering
i’m so wound tight
but the hours grow softly
into one another until i have
to remind myself to wind up again:
i need to leave, so i shroud
myself in a satin second skin
perfect for saying good
bye
i drive away
we didn’t kiss
that’s okay
there are no
expectations
my gut twists
painfully as i’ve
always wished i
could be more
bold
i sleep fast
caught between
two mountainsides
and there’s no time
to ask myself when
it’ll all end
Jan 3, 2023
Jan 3, 2023 at 1:32 PM UTC