Mullioned poems on Hello Poetry

haley Oct 2017

you
had a chapstick tube
stowed away in your bag of things you never put to use
those scarred chapped lips
scratching, tearing
crevice of your mouth craved my heart
bleeding, uncaring
and subsequently my mango chapstick would serve it's purpose
on your lips and never mine.
among other things, you had a pair of white socks.
you never wore them,
too pristine
(you'd ruin them as you teetered on slippery suspended logs)

you reminded me of a cracked open window,
always hoping you would be at the mullioned panes
chapped lips, white socks and all
but the only thing that pushed against the glass was the scent of mango air.
and
mango never smelt so bitter.

when
will you come home
replace the mango air with your feverish cologne.
a swaying of the breeze and your tee shirt wraps a cotton arm
around your waist
the bitter aftertaste
your tongue like grapefruit wedged against my teeth

i missed the smell of burnt bread bottom,
when we were in the kitchen
and the gown of silver hemmed water that danced down the roof,
tapping
again and again and again
but, when you come home next month.
I will be gone.

the mango
around our home
had long since
turned bitter
and that brown picket fence no longer bends around my heart
i am somewhere where the mango still smells sweet
and
boys give my their chapstick for i've long since run out of mine.

Thomas Hardy

Architectural Masks

I

There is a house with ivied walls,
And mullioned windows worn and old,
And the long dwellers in those halls
Have souls that know but sordid calls,
And dote on gold.

II

In a blazing brick and plated show
Not far away a ‘villa’ gleams,
And here a family few may know,
With book and pencil, viol and bow,
Lead inner lives of dreams.

III

The philosophic passers say,
‘See that old mansion mossed and fair,
Poetic souls therein are they:
And O that gaudy box! Away,
You ****** people there.’

Windsor I Guadalupe Jr Feb 2016

What I Saw That Night

times like this, the plenary moon
  tonight wearing many faces,

the white-washed truant at bay
    white-hulled still, the brim of the sky
to a full, on such a bright night leaving a trace
   of say, prongs of fire on the kiln

the skin the soft breeze molests with a chill
flung from pinecone – the blackened spires of the
very heart of flame and the mullioned wood that understands
  what the heat of placeness mints underneath
  our skin – what silence remains a translation when the smoldering
  remains are bitten repeatedly, aureoled in the moment of vital meaning.

we hear its threat, retained in clock-whirs
like a primordial word or the fluting of  light’s bendable
   rondure harnessing a truth we let in.

I fail behind the walled-up lip of laughter
because the weight of passing
is heavy on my back – like a bough dragged
  by rainwater, or sound elected to drown:
the smell of poinsettia assaults,
lifting its slaughter against Kiltepan and Ambuklao,
  past mountains lulled to sleep: the moon sleuthing
  like a well-oiled machine.  what do you hear?

  we are aware of its full absence,
like that of our undulation after a fall,
  or the wild sibilance of breath trying  to  utter something,
  going back home with a song in between teeth,
    without words.

After Baguio.

#poem #poetry #sadness

Tyler Matthew Oct 2019

Clarity

Peering intensively through fog-marked mullioned glass
into a cool and conquering October sunrise
I am met with a profound and welcoming sudden awareness -
zephyrs breathing through each emerald green grass blade,
brow of country hilltops, mountains materializing
with the passing of each era like wrinkles in a face,
clouds crawling the longitudes to reform over Pacific pools somewhere,
soil forcing upward making way for elm or oak or pine to tower,
rivers thundering wild down the backs of continents,
cliff or crag breaking the maelstrom on occasion,
and all the while spinning, all of this and more, clinging to the frame of the earth
as it dances balanced on axis, pirouetting through the cosmos
in turbulent, beautiful, simply complex form just as I
back away from the window and extend an arm to brace myself.

#nature #awareness #feeling #happiness #beauty #life #sunrise #balance #earth #peace

Al Drood Feb 2018

Decay'd Gentry (a Poe Pourri)

Bleak and windswept, my errant ramblings
led me to some time-forgotten vale
wherein a desolate mansion stood; its mullioned windows pale
against the ebbing day, yet from within illumin’d,
as by dancing fiends at play.
Fram’d by gloomy trees, stone pinnacles leaned awry,
and, through o’ergrown gardens,
that flanked a ****-strewn pathway to its rotting door,
a sleet-cold wind keened for lost souls in torment
‘cross the desolate and cloud-wracked moor.
With dying Phoebus now a blood-red smear upon the western hills
I so resolved to shelter here out of the coming chill.
Foreboding dragged my every step and
cawing rooks mocked overhead as if to say:
"Go, stranger, for you'll find no welcome here!"
Along the gravelled path I trod and beat the door with blackthorn rod;
it opened slowly; in I walked with beating heart and ne'er a thought
for all the world I'd left behind, as rain and sleet and howling wind
blew shut the door with crack of doom,
and left me peering through the gloom!
Around a table there they sat 'midst putrid food and cobwebbed vats
of mouldering wine; their bony mouths gaped vacant
as they grinned and laughed through time.
I swayed and swooned as in a trance, my own existence thrown by chance
into that hellish company, who revelled, foul decay’d gentry!
And then a fearful thunderclap's reverberations
brought me back to sanity, I screamed and fled
to where the hillsides cried and bled;
with staring eye and hair turn’d white,
I ran into the raving night.

One for EAP

Michael Edwards Jan 2019

SIMPLE CHORDS

Above the multi-mullioned windows
chimneys ****** their brick and stone
beside the stately sycamores
which wave and sing to simple chords
conducted by the wandering breeze

Reaching down from branch and limb
and silvered by the moons first touch
where softened contrasts merge as one
their night time shadows shift and sway
on wood side tracks and gravelled paths

Into this scene a girl appears
a gentle lass of summers few
unpractised in the arts of life
and waiting for the warming sun
to melt the ice of youths reserve

Light of foot she strokes the ground
with shoes which dance to simple chords.

Al Drood Oct 2019

Decay’d Gentry (a Poe pourri for Halloween)

Bleak and windswept, my errant ramblings led me to some time-forgotten vale wherein a desolate mansion stood; its mullioned windows pale against the ebbing day, yet from within illumin’d, as by dancing fiends at play.  Fram’d by gaunt trees, stone pinnacles leaned awry, and, through o’ergrown gardens that flanked a ****-strewn pathway to its rotting door, a sleet-cold wind keened for lost souls in torment ‘cross the desolate and cloud-wracked moor.
With dying Phoebus now a blood-red smear upon the western hills, I so resolved to shelter here out of the coming chill.  Foreboding dragged my every step and cawing rooks mocked overhead as if to say: "Go, stranger, for you'll find no welcome here!"  Along the gravelled path I trod and beat the door with blackthorn rod; it opened slowly - in I walked with beating heart and ne'er a thought for all the world I'd left behind, as rain and sleet and howling wind blew shut the door with crack of doom, and left me peering through the gloom.
Around a table there they sat 'midst putrid food and cobwebbed vats of mouldering wine; their bony mouths gaped vacant as they grinned and laughed through time.  I swayed and swooned as in a trance, my own existence thrown by chance into that hellish company, who revelled, foul, Decay’d Gentry!  And then a fearful thunderclap's reverberations brought me back to sanity, I screamed and fled to where the hillsides cried and bled; with staring eye and hair turn’d white, I ran into the raving night.

haley May 2020

Snow Day

From behind mullioned panes
Droplets of snow fall onto each other
Knitting together their fingers until
They are one.

Caroline Shank Feb 2022

Time Chimes

Time Chimes

I call to you
from out the mullioned
window on the back
of my house.

Windows open to recent rains.  I feel the
soft air of yesterday before the crepuscular
failure of today. (I know, you hate that word,
crepuscular. You hate a lot of words.)

The last light of day lay like velvet
on my doorstep. A signal
to shake the lace curtains.
Wave to far years gone to
other lovers.  The vibrations
on my skin reminds me of you.  I am
old now.  These are memories of
when we were young and tan
and satisfied with a bed and a beer
and a joint shared in the upstairs room.
Now curtains slow as my breathing
slows.  I am comfortable in my
old chair here by the light.  The
mewling of feral kittens is music
enough.

Night surrounds me.
The ocean is my song.
I am completed in my time.
You, my muse, are aware of
my souls quiet caring. The
sun sets where once we saw the
sky with blue eyes and shooting
stars.  Our destiny is a psalm
to missed timing and unlit
cigarettes.

Hear me in your deafness
calling on the memories we
made like Michaelangelo.

Art is never a vehicle for
humans last only a
minute.

Time chimes in the
downstairs room
and I sing to myself.

Caroline Shank
2.1.22

— The End —