"mulling" poems
The world pours in.
I wake to my morning coffee.
The cream of that idle Tuesday,
The wakefulness of regret.
Flashbacks to appointments I would have missed,
had it not been for this stupor.
Mulling over what activity to engage in,
the clock strikes never-mind.
So I fall back into my sheets,
stomach churning from hunger I can't quail
and work I can't get.
Mar 2, 2011
Mar 2, 2011 at 5:08 PM UTC
We were born into a world of shallow minds and deep disturbances of young millennials mimicking mindless mimes because we were told to stay in line but be yourself but follow me but think "originality."
A generation full of copycatting individuals with monotone mindsets mulling over social ladders and trends dictated by invisible monarchs of industry inviting and spoon feeding insecurities masked as improvements.
A generation spending more time pretending not to care than on passions stifled by our peer pressuring playmates who are all prescribed Vyvanse, Adderall, Ritalin for their incurable imaginations deemed "learning disabilities."
A generation of temporary friendships because no one can connect with each other but we can connect to the internet and chat with strangers and share thoughts, photos, and secrets to a virtual audience that loses interest in an entanglement of wires forming a noose around our sincerity.
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 2:38 AM UTC
I may never walk anything more the same as him
In converse shoes slapping campus pavement,
Than taking down miles in memories
And mulling over trite bereavements.
If all we have left is muscle memory
Where summer grass stroked skin like hesitant fingers
Then I'll sink into autumn leaves
And worry my lip where the impressions linger.
Feb 5, 2015
Feb 5, 2015 at 8:20 AM UTC
The most beautiful thing I've ever read-
was a love poem that I found,
hidden between the dusty cupboards of my mother's room,
filled with things that just
"didn't matter"
anymore.
It was flooding with thoughts I waved off as-
"foolish"
with fake plastic vows of love,
not unlike those crisp, shiny valentine heart rings,
only given to the most attractive every February.
Stories of parting,
from which shone a glossy sparkle like that of a fake glass diamond,
labeled with black numbers as something worth a thousand.
I've always thought that if you were going to leave someone, you should be aloof and cold.
If you make "warm memories", won't the parting just be that much harder?
That sunset that was described as being unrealistically
ethereal,
I tried to see it myself,
even hooking my feet around the cold metal bars of the balcony,
and pretending that I could fly.
But that sunset was fake too, I discovered.
A synonym of those medals that you eagerly await to get, but in the end,
aren't gold,
or silver,
but just a sheet of mocking plastic,
thousands of identical ones of which have been made,
in a factory choking on smog,
thousands of miles away,
in China.
There was always that villain,
who would try to break the lovers apart.
Sometimes,
the villain was described as, "dark", and "Irresistible".
I was puzzled by that fact,
mulling obsessively over the idea,
Why didn't the protagonist get with the villain in the end?
I was undeniably jealous, of the heroine,
who seemed to draw everyone to her with a warm light,
that I didn't seem to have, no matter how hard I tried.
She was a perfect damsel in distress,
waiting for her partner, who would always,
always,
without fail, come to save her from danger and the unknown.
They were both risking everything for what they loved.
"Stereotypical love poem,"
I scoff,
willing myself to throw that piece of paper away with the trash,
But-
to this day, the most beautiful thing I have read,
is that stereotypical love poem,
now tucked between two bookshelves,
which are full of things, that
"matter"
now.
Jun 11, 2013
Jun 11, 2013 at 8:33 PM UTC
Your love lingers inside me
intangibly
like mulling spices
in an empty jar.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 11:06 AM UTC
My daughter fell in love with a potato,
"A potato.......
My mind was confused and my face was a picture...
of why would someone ever love a potato?
I asked this myself in my head then out loud.
My darling how have you a fondness for a potato?
*He is the only one for me he is so soft and never
has a chip on his shoulder..*
A chip? really, how did you meet my little lady.
He was just mulling around in a mash pit,
The music was the spud rock and he was my root.
I will have to meet you new boyfriend,
Dad, I love Barry, he even let me wear his jacket
it was so fluffy inside...
Fathers out there would have the same look on
their face as I do now!!!!!
"OK, as I was waiting impatiently to see this lad.
She walked in hand in hand, I just gave the daddy
look, hi Barry he stared in a starch looking gaze.
my daughter spoke "I'll just get my bag,
I spoke in my sternest voice,
"Barry if you don't treat my daughter right,
"Lets just say ill mash you up, understand....
And then they left not the gentlemen of before
no jacket to lend her, just walking out the door
like he had just been roasted by my words...
Hours had past worry in my thoughts then my
daughter came back, tears in her eyes.
"What ever was the matter my darling?
*"He had steamed off because I wanted to know
why he never leant me his jacket,*
"He said I was being a dumpling with him,
*"So I told him you were right and that he had
a chip on his shoulder, he replied I was fried,*
I told her that potato's can be a little mashed, and
a chip they will always have, because you cant change
a potato they will always have a little starch inside...
Nov 20, 2016
Nov 20, 2016 at 6:51 AM UTC
new york glasses boy asks questions
in auschwitz: were there americans in concentration camps?
in krakow: are europeans a race?
in budapest: are you okay? why don’t you want people to sing to you?
at dinner i hide from the orange rubber cake
people try to sing and i try to run
after much mulling over a recycled candle
i wish for a simple easy adulthood and contemplate flinging myself into the danube.
Feb 25, 2014
Feb 25, 2014 at 1:00 PM UTC
Every Grain Of Sand,
A Second,
Every Clump Of Soft Earth,
An Hour,
Each Molecule A Cell Taken Away From My Being,
Every Worthless Thought A Burden,
Mulling Over The Possibility Of Destiny,
Is This Mine?
My Fingertips Tentatively Touch The Glass,
My Future,
Slipping Away,
More And More By The Minute,
My Knuckles White,
From Clenching My Life Expectancy In My Palms,
Years Flowing Through A Sea Of Pain,
And Tears Rolling Down The Gullies,
Carved Into My Warn Cheeks,
The Hourglass At The End Of It's Life,
And Mine Is Gone With It's
Nov 22, 2012
Nov 22, 2012 at 10:51 PM UTC
My pen and I sit and write by the River Thames,
The London Eye clear despite gazing through a haze.
Questions rise, amazed am I, by my silent pen.
Try do I, so why can’t I follow other men?
Mulling now on thoughts and how they form inside the mind.
Do they come with time, or like Holmes must one go find?
Or have I overlooked a simply queer idea?
What if thoughts collect like the staid hands of Leah?
Famous poems, here were born-- but hordes have also died.
All these words go unheard by many bards that tried.
Trapped in Limbo words remain ‘til they recompense—
Freed by one whose work’s undone, still unsure from whence.
Never fret if an idea you ever forget,
For here it remains, at the River Thames, in set.
Waiting to be writ by a pen and hand so kind,
For poets can clean the pollutants of the mind.
Jun 6, 2012
Jun 6, 2012 at 11:01 PM UTC
My fist crushed his angry eye
A desperate mother begged for my sixteen year old assistance
Her egg whites rolled back into her vomiting head
The personalized presents I picked out still unused
Clotting never came, I passed out dripping blood on the toilet
She screams for help at night, though now it’s less often
The ****** wore off and she found herself in an empty lot, **** recent
You cried when your knees failed you on each stair, each day
The irises never grew this year, dead roots
It was a freak accident, no way we could have seen it coming
He was mangy and homeless, but man was he resilient
They took paid swings at each other’s hairless faces, we filmed it
The bottle left my fingertips, I heard her yell in pain
Money is easily removed from unprotected leather
I probably said some things god wouldn’t forgive on a good day
She tasted smoke on my lips, boy was she ******
I wonder if people can hear the evil **** that lives in my brain
Like ugly sea serpents mulling about in an aquarium getting restless
Little kids with sticky hands pressed against the glass
Thankful for land legs and transparent barriers
No one would swim with the sharks by choice
Except an equally wicked leviathan
I imagine they will roam in circles
Until I die
Mar 28, 2011
Mar 28, 2011 at 3:19 PM UTC
Back in the '40's
My great-grandma used to sing
On the bus
Everyday
Never the same song
Never to anyone in particular
She just used to get on
Walk down the isle
Sit down and start to sing
After my grandfather was born
They put my great-grandma
In the hospital
The loony bin
The cackle barn
The mental institution
In there she got really sick
They said her liver was failing
She liked wine
And soon
She died
They said it was cirhossis
But to this day
That woman haunts
Me
Was she crazy?
Was she just a drunk?
Was she crazy and decided to self-medicate with the alcohol?
I've tried to find records of her
On the internet
And in attics and basements
But nothing ever seems to
Come up
Nothing wants to be found
At least not yet
In the meantime, I'm stuck here
Wondering
Oct 8, 2012
Oct 8, 2012 at 12:11 PM UTC
I no longer
seem to know
roses busily
bloom
this time of year
bougainvilleas
flaunt themselves
over the fence
I hold my mug
while mulling
over warm cider
a cheap steam
spa
treatment
for my face
is born
Dec 10, 2014
Dec 10, 2014 at 7:17 PM UTC
Mulling over the
Usual things and
Nothing changes much.
Difference sought
And dreams in
New experiences but
Everything's the same
©Jacqui Slade
Feb 23, 2015
Feb 23, 2015 at 1:51 PM UTC
saying **** off* seems so much more
easier when you're petting cats....
they just say it for you...
there he is, Quarus,
the operatic singer nearing sunset,
200 variations of a mulling of meow,
i end up calling him Orbison Rufus,
the ginger Roy of Peckham -
he basically meows lazily like Roy
singing... as said / i.d. (id est): the umbras
or umbrellas - counting the shadows'
version of Apache's yawn: ah-woo ah-woo
ah-woo nagging the reflex...
gave them the yawn and gave them 1950s
America... Billy the Kid talking to the king of
Specs... hank marvin.... cheese grater
with those teeth... dozen cows buckling with
the herding in while the dog carved a feel
for religion in the translation of the Vatican
from coliseum into football requirements...
the movies were great in the 1950s, just after
the technicolour... petting cats was never such a thrill...
the operatic meow, onomatopoeia from echo
in a cave to knock-on-wood...
200 variations of the knock
and 12 whiskey shots downed
while playing poker... 12 cowboys
1 Milwaukee and 30 Turks... classic Tarantino...
i said the Apache yawn... i never said giving
out smoke signals...
Quarus my ginger is demanded as having laughed...
he's Roy Orbison with the meow,
pretty much lazy...
looks like a murmur when he tries singing,
pretty woman, trolling down the street,
Gucci, Chanel, and everything in the scrapheap of lobotomy,
as is Paris necessarily mentioned: chiselled
white collars... Roy knew before Elvis...
the trick came with sunglasses,
and the gluttonous slur of the half-opened mouthing
for subsequent mouthing it off...
no amount of cheese in French could ever
charter the success of the cheeses added to cheeseburgers
with the milkshakes, which were plainly Dutch
laughing cows named Novices....
quick-melts and some said:
dreadlocks of string-yellow Gouda pulled
for a hippies' worth of Chinese chugging down
a pint or two, for worth of gag and the slim mascot;
the Chinese never taught Cannes arithmetic
of the thumb through to pinky...
i don't know how they taught counting
with their complex ideograms, they never taught
arithmetic give their encoding...
they taught pure math.. they never taught the simplest
of assurances... meaning so few of them became bankers.
Aug 15, 2016
Aug 15, 2016 at 11:21 PM UTC
Mulling about
The muck
The haunts we are hardbound
Foggy fetal leavings by the sea
Right before the light;
The days of purple haze
Of sallow street cars, street lamp, amped up
Yet dampened loss of desire
Pop another oxy-hydro-fire.
To be able
To muck about
With inner abandon
the abandonments deep
Numb battlements / "Hoorah!"
Semper Fi the pain
Only significant
With derivatives
From ******* plantations
Opioid addiction’s contractually binding
Lingering love notes
A vice grip on idle minds
So many now that prey
But with a side affect of
Try holding in your ****
for three-plus days
So as not to feel
Not at all
Not even the rage
We keep anxiously pacing
Clawing at
Nonexistent strings
A Beast inside our cage
Forgiven by preacher men
Proclaiming to hallelujah
Change
At war with illusionist
Freedom
The boys fight for still
A country of patriotic pill poppers
Believing in heavenly kingdoms'
Healing
Secret silent pleading
Because nothing takes away
The pain
Like Hydro Oxy foxy pills
Self medicate down wind of will
If unaffected "consult your physician"
He’s at the edge of the stage
A Spearmint rhino making it rain
For Peaches
From patient list of his *******
The business of lust
Is feeding the loss of will
If you still feel lost -- and war sure did
Give them nothing but
PTSD & bad dreams
Machine gun migraines
Pop another pill
Jagged little killer
Softly knocks you off your feet
Black is cheaper
Smoke out not to feel
The muck-about days of
Constipated pains
Reader Digesting heavily,
Numbingly unreal.
Casualty of a nameless waste
That’s his deal / what it's like :
Most fecund
A life on the toilet
In wait for relief…
Get off the ***
Can't give a ****
Like this bowel movement
His heart has called it quits
To all this unholy *******
Veteran
Patriot
Manhood’s defeat
Damnation
Mucking about...
Jun 17, 2018
Jun 17, 2018 at 11:02 AM UTC
And as you look at yourself naked in the mirror
For the first time in months
Mulling over valleys of curves
Where other girls might find emptiness
Or the blush of acne
Where modest peach may be found
You begin to wonder - who spun the planets in their dance
And if this earth really wanted it -
Or if gravity's whimsy is really some mad beast
To which celestial beings are found
With zip-locked lips, tight, wide-eyed, forcing a smile
As they are twirled madly about -
As the stars watch their blood stained ballet from their ivory tower
Spewing spells of laughter in things called nebulae -
And as you look in the mirror
And gaze into the eyes of a girl who's seen
Thick and thin wrapping her bones like a trend
You ask yourself if the earth threw a tantrum
When it was handed it's stack of seven,
It's crummy hand,
If today it is still cursed to watch
A stumbling, shuffling race
Breeding life just to slaughter it,
And not thinking about where they plant their eucalyptus trees,
Blazing trails with their talk of taxes and alcohol-stench -
If the earth is left to bellow in the currents of it's winds
Or dream wistfully of the moon in its tides
If the whispers of the breeze
And the uproar of the hurricanes
Was just a way to say
WHATS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
If it ever cursed it's luck from the draw
To burden beasts of salt and volumes of soil,
If it cried and howled to the stars above
When it wasn't given it's way.
Jun 29, 2016
Jun 29, 2016 at 12:55 AM UTC
what if we were castle turrets?
our tasseled but torn flags whipping the clouds,
dragons tearing off the shingles
with their nostalgic disorders.
we could be sagittarius.
emerging from the groves with purple,
bruised collarbones
only because they stretched miles within
our bodies like archers' bows, bitten
& shooting unintended victims.
which i guess is what i was always scared of,
mulling your jeans around in my room
and eating frozen strawberries alone,
staining my fingers with more than just
your sharpie-written love letters.
milky-white plant smoke can permeate hands
just like your smell can permeate my canyons,
sending tremors inside of their fibers
giving us scars that we don't like to burden,
sending rocks into our jagged feelings.
what if we were golden like our naked skin
under the olive branches that inevitably
mean hate, anger, shame, and the bee sting
of slaps from loved ones?
diamonds can pour through our smiles,
fill our upturned palms
and give the rubies of our tattoos to a shrouded god.
i've been listening to song lyrics & hurricanes,
& i understand now.
i understand what it would feel like
to belong to someone.
Jun 26, 2011
Jun 26, 2011 at 10:09 PM UTC
The silence is pristine in a shower.
Freely mulling in a cocoon of hot water,
You are safe, in the womb of the moment.
Nourished by this aquatic placenta.
Your mind is set free of the burden of noise,
To meditate and reflect on its own voice.
And grow thee to enlightenment slowly, steadily.
I leave with this advice, bathe thee readily,
For that is the key to life.
Aug 18, 2016
Aug 18, 2016 at 5:58 AM UTC
I rolled my own tobacco tightly, lips pursed through a gormless grin,
As he, the idle Gean Canach, warming up, kisses a lonesome gin,
This dream as told to be his tonic - the bitter slice - so I begin...
Musing over beauty, his admirable hair, warholic an' fitted to wear,
Of Tartan-clad men whose ghosts have chequered stares,
An' Art, Free Speech, Faith, dipped in batter - much to his despair,
Of people, prickened purple as they blow a silent whistle,
To how the sun beams through heather-fields of shared pistols,
An' those scattered morsels of society, left to nothing but the gristle,
To how more questions than answers affect his whispered speech,
Yet he stirs mulling over youth and language receded to their peak,
'...Come, I'll walk you back to your hiding place – safely out of reach...!'
Back home to talk of MacDiarmid and McFarlan, to agree and feel solemn,
As he explains that a poisoned bee carries but only poisoning pollen,
An' how a love of our country, for its freedom, is all we have in common,
He tells of the tears from the Nationalist, nation-less, who lives in arrears,
Of the ink further dried on the receipt of forced union; of some 400 years,
An' that of my friend the leprechaun; ****** on the burnt grass that he shears,
An' now he exclaims - '… Swallow the pound..! Gulp on its hardened flesh...,
...We are as separate - the reluctant strawberry atop this eton mess...,
The majesty of our homes, as one, forever in a state of undress,
...We shall squander fortunes on entire pleasures dear to empty minds,
The resources of our country fixed to the crown with no benefit in kind,
Computerised Tesco's an' ****** at the BBC is all that we will find...'
It is time to take our leave; he has risen sharply an' yet crumbles into a seat,
The fires of the red sun burn for independence with stomping feet,
My dream recited, I wander still, and turn to the fools an' scoundrels on the street.
Dec 30, 2013
Dec 30, 2013 at 11:11 AM UTC
the magnified, mascara applied
eyes of my skull
burn holes in my thighs
mulling over the size of this hull
i chunder my lunch and wonder of
everyone else
and if they're also laser beaming love
into themselves
or if they're boundlessly born with it
unstained smiles, strained bites
maybe they're just born with it
no pained bile or insatiable appetites
either way, i hardly
can infer
if my stomach is
half empty
or half full
Sep 9, 2024
Sep 9, 2024 at 11:08 PM UTC
Two star-crossed lovers,
their eyes bridged by a glance
both busy and hurried
with little faith in daily chance
destined for fallen love,
their hopes arisen by circumstance.
*He sees
an intrinsic beauty
inside her resides
the epitome of purity
where an ephemeral stare
lulls him into abyss, eternity
and he longs beyond longing
to live life in unity
with her.*
*She sees
the embodiment of perfection
a soul bright gold
seeking a lover's impression
a confidant to quarter
her every thought, every recollection
so she pleas God, please
let there be a connection
with him.*
And so they pass
mulling in mutual isolation
over fortunes unfulfilled
for a moment's hesitation
over lives of love lost
for lack of fate's cooperation.
Sep 29, 2011
Sep 29, 2011 at 3:51 AM UTC
My mother would often suggest I sleep on it.
Presumably mulling over all the possible outcomes whilst dreaming.
We were raised with anxiety, my mother was a live wire; adrenaline primed our hearts to avoid judgment, or catastrophe in an uncertain future.
At this very moment I am living in the now, and in love with all living things, no-longer afraid; no longer clinging to the illusion of control, in an uncertain future.
Jun 30, 2021
Jun 30, 2021 at 10:11 AM UTC