"mussel" poems
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
12.2k
My heathen greeting for I am old now
Wildfowl whispered on marshland like maidens around burning fires,
The Norse winds breathing in my soul ‘Odin doth call’
Blood is the sweat of this iron sword; proud are war smiths
I watch the coal biter musing in blood damp earth,
Before a fire and smoke of tallow he dreams of war
Fill these horns to brim, for I shall drink to Odin’s law
And eat I this meal of bread oyster and mussel shell
I see heavens stained blood red clouds as we cross the rainbow crystal bridge, we shall enter Valhalla victorious once more,
Lo shall they bleed at shores blooded by iron the Saxons fall,
Raged fires shall consume their roof as thunder of north comes forth
You call us ****** that which pierces dark shadows,
We blow our horn in assembly before Odin warriors of the north
Settings suns shone red as quiet falls, serene I see Valhalla
the goat and mead hall, roasting beef and herring
I no longer fear drowning suns for the Valkyries sweet song I do hear
Freyja shall breathe my new reign at dawn
The old wars are over but our fight shall ne’er end,
─ Lo I see my father
ASPAR (Arnay Rumens) © 2013
Dec 29, 2014
Dec 29, 2014 at 7:40 AM UTC
As if he had been poured
in tar, he lies
on a pillow of turf
and seems to weep
the black river of himself.
The grain of his wrists
is like bog oak,
the ball of his heel
like a basalt egg.
His instep has shrunk
cold as a swan’s foot
or a wet swamp root.
His hips are the ridge
and purse of a mussel,
his spine an eel arrested
under a glisten of mud.
The head lifts,
the chin is a visor
raised above the vent
of his slashed throat
that has tanned and toughened.
The cured wound
opens inwards to a dark
elderberry place.
Who will say ‘corpse’
to his vivid cast?
Who will say ‘body’
to his opaque repose?
And his rusted hair,
a mat unlikely
as a foetus’s.
I first saw his twisted face
in a photograph,
a head and shoulder
out of the peat,
bruised like a forceps baby,
but now he lies
perfected in my memory,
down to the red horn
of his nails,
hung in the scales
with beauty and atrocity:
with the Dying Gaul
too strictly compassed
on his shield,
with the actual weight
of each hooded victim,
slashed and dumped.
3.5k
Walter was history's best fisherman -
history's best minnow fisherman.
He combed and cleaned his net
like a lint trap or a summer screen door
so delicate, seaweed fibers, mussel shells.
He fished more of a dance, a twirl
his arms up and down and around and always
spun in the shallows like a waterspout
he would glide his butterfly net through the lake
and capture little fish he placed
into a sand castle bucket filled halfway with water
he would always pour back into lake.
He was strictly a catch and release fisherman.
All the mothers on the beach would stare
at Walter and his water waltz and at his mother
who stood next to him so he wouldn't fall.
It was hard not to stare at Walter
always alone with his aged mother
and he had to be at least a teen by now.
Perhaps it was hard to tell, autism doesn't age well,
but we had been beach regulars for fifteen years
and Walter and his mother had for ten.
The last time I saw Walter he danced and fished.
I laid on the beach with my cousin and we observed
his patterns and his mother his rock who stood there
for ten years with the minnow fisherman.
The next day my own mother cried
more than when her own mother passed
and she told me, she died
Walter's mother died
Even now I stand in the shower skin deep in water
and think about where Walter is now.
I see him in my mind dancing in some bath tub
with a butterfly net in some foster home
without a mother to break his fall.
Oct 4, 2010
Oct 4, 2010 at 9:30 PM UTC
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Jan 29, 2014
Jan 29, 2014 at 2:11 PM UTC
Shards of sail staple sky to sea as fingernail-thin boats lean in to the horizon.
The surge of surf converses constantly with the silent shore, urging its message upon the oblivious beach.
My children scramble on the man-made groyne, a facsimile of wild rock, in which they find caves 'with a proper rock on top' (Bea) and 'a hundred miles deep' (Willem).
We are here on bikes, salt wind in our hair, and my *** slowly absorbing moisture from the almost-dry sand as they unburden their youth upon the rocky playground.
And then come the treasures.
A flat shell the size of my palm and worn pearlescent smooth.
A fossil pebble of concentric ingrained ripples.
'Something amazing Mummy,' comes the cry. 'You have to see this stone; the colour of Coca Cola,' shouts my boy.
More treasures emerge and are grafted on to the sandy pile.
Quartz-like lumps and a mussel entangled with tiny seaweed strands and miniature white shells, like micro leaves and hints of feta in a fancy restaurant.
The boy wears welly boots, no socks, and a plastic medal around his neck. 'Batman, Batman, Batman,' comes the cry, while Bea determinedly scans heaven and Earth for jewels to stud her imagination.
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 11:03 AM UTC
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Jul 22, 2012
Jul 22, 2012 at 1:34 PM UTC
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Dec 12, 2014
Dec 12, 2014 at 12:01 PM UTC
.
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Sep 19, 2013
Sep 19, 2013 at 3:48 PM UTC
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Mar 22, 2013
Mar 22, 2013 at 12:31 PM UTC
deep pan cooking not hardeep cooking 21.08.18
monday started top draw
my venom going to spill
natalie is going to get poetry draw
forget girlfriends she will run for hill.
how dare she complain
when something is uncontrollable
insomnia through hardeep may rain
but freedom of speech not so honourable.
gabby and chloe showed they cared
how natalie was blunt
explaining hardeep was literally chaired
footage available now hunt.
onto shares and stocks
rodrigo learning how to trade
laughing off my socks
no barings even if bad bug won't fade.
nick and rodrigo in control
on boarder line ready to hassle
the biceps taking fall patrol
it was rodrigo not nick who liked mussel.
failure to the task
hunger will be plenty
one comment can not mask
hardeep can make something out of empty.
dans hands were magic
don't get confused
gabby refusal was award and tragic
like basic budget just amused.
was sally watching adverts
the aviva app dash cam i log
roxanne will need youtube diverts
it was a tin man not a brown dog.
nick explaining about travel
lands of paradise and greens
at airport all unravel
seeing face on all them screens.
legs up and over
natalie and gabby to exercise
hardeep with a nasty dig and sober
saying nick doing shopping add criticise.
natalie and hardeep getting louder
hardeep gets my crown
unacceptable all about curry powder
she bring herself not hardeep down.
going to end with a critic
natalie won't see no irony
vicious mouth and hyper-critic
its all add to cbb savoury.
Aug 21, 2018
Aug 21, 2018 at 4:59 AM UTC
She loves it
when we go fishing,
enjoys all of the activities,
spearing & angling,
gathering & netting,
anything to get
down on the shore.
Her boy in the boat
always bounces,
craves more of my dangling.
She's a looker,
baits my hook just right,
I don't fight her
& it ain't no shrimp.
Nooooo,
no wimp here,
I always use my big long pole
looking for her sweet fishing-hole.
When I finally get there,
find the right spot,
I scrape her scales
from every conceivable angle
to uncover her tasty pearl.
I give her a whirl,
shuck the shell out of her
as she squeezes me hard
with her tight mussel,
ready to receive my roe,
a splish,
a splash,
a huge shot
of my hot cocktail sauce,
curling her toes.
Aug 29, 2014
Aug 29, 2014 at 10:13 PM UTC
River gift, flowing upstream and down
Cresting with the bumpy waters tow,
Slick as an eel, you move and fro to play,
Warm in the gleaming sun that rides
With you each day,
you have shone, great
Knowledge of salmon, found the pearl
In the dark mussel, bend as even light
Must, piercing the waters of the under-
World, lording the fey, riparian borders,
Like a God.
Nov 4, 2012
Nov 4, 2012 at 1:47 PM UTC
Do you think about what a small boy does, when
He throws a mussel into the surf?
The shell ruptures into smithereens,
The shocking orange entrails exposed,
The cold salty water flushes the hole.
Slowly everything inside disintegrates.
It melts into the galaxy of foam.
The boy will someday wade in. Swim in. Throw his empty bottles in.
Maybe as a father, it’s in this same foam his children will learn to float.
And someday the boy will die. And a sunflower will grow on his grave, in full blossom. The seeds will be thrown into the sea by another little boy. And he will find himself at the scene of his first ******
Dec 10, 2012
Dec 10, 2012 at 5:49 PM UTC
The former Chilean soldier,
sits with a straight back,
eating Paila marina,
the same thing he makes
every Sunday, although
his wife and children are gone.
He delights in the long-ago flavors,
the rich swirl of saffron fire,
the unlocked mussel shells,
ginger-skinned shrimp
and floating onion slivers.
"Served without pretension,"
the saying rings in his memory,
the deep voice of his abuela,
as she stirs the liquid gems
in her wide, copper ***
shining on a darkened stove.
“Only some things really matter,”
She often explains.
He always waits silently,
squatting nearby, inhaling the scent,
mouth watering, eyes catching
the lift of her great ladle.
She will turn and smile at him,
the way no one ever has.
He is warmed and fed already,
before even tasting the meal.
Now he is rich, wanting nothing,
sitting in his well-appointed house,
sipping the best wine
and listening to soft music.
Yet he sees and hears none of it.
Only the world in his bowl
is real to him now.
Jul 8, 2020
Jul 8, 2020 at 4:18 PM UTC
My generation is one of mechanical hearts but real flesh
Real brains and a real chest
It's just we have grown from broken limbs and hard breaths from getting knocked down
That we put up a wall
made of stainless steel on the outside of our most precious mussel
trying to save it
But the thing is we never took it off so it just built on the other making a hard casting with pipes that pumped blood for you
It's not comfortable
But it what our mistakes has made which in return made us forget about passion and compassion
Focusing on our hurt and our deception
That instead of leading this country to greatness
We are leading it to the fire
That only seems to grow higher and higher
We made it where we can't get enough oxygen so we make it artificial
Every problem that comes up we make it beneficial to only us
We turn too much to the inside that we concave
if we don't stop
It's not just going to be hearts
That are machines
If we don't stop
We will all be
A society
Of robots
and it would be my generations fault because it was one who spent their lives making mechanical hearts when they didn't account for the rain that is always bound to come and tear the mechanical heart apart
Jul 13, 2015
Jul 13, 2015 at 10:29 PM UTC
A single touch
Would break
My back and soul.
A touch to unload
All the burdens
These worn joints
Have been bearing.
Such a touch
Would cause my heart
To crumble.
Strong as an ox,
A horse, a water buffalo.
Fit as a fiddle,
A lute, a viola da gamba.
Happy as a clam,
A mussel, an Arctic quahog.
If only they knew
That a single touch
Would be my undoing,
Unraveling,
Fragmenting--
The one thing
That could make me
Breakdown.
If you knew...
Would your hand reach out
With all the care you could muster
To grasp my shoulder in support?
Would your arms invite
My head to lay across your breast
That I might cry out, alone no longer?
If you knew me,
Would you supply the touch
My soul desires?
Jun 24, 2014
Jun 24, 2014 at 3:31 PM UTC
There are certain parts of misery
That never made sense to me.
I never caught on to the self harm thing,
I figured I already felt bad enough.
I never drank it away,
Because a hangover was just a reminder
That putting a coat on
Doesn't stop the snow.
DABDA doesn't make sense either.
How can you be angry
About something you haven't accepted yet?
I do now understand masochism.
I certainly don't practice it,
But I get it.
The thing with masochism
Is that you really have to love it.
You really have to let go.
My nerves are just nerves.
My skin is just skin.
My eyes just make drawings out of ****
******* purple from the fourth wall
Letting the people eat a different truth.
My brain on a steady loop
Of Whose Line Is It Anyway reruns
Just waiting to invent the next thing
We all take for scripture.
Dec 1, 2017
Dec 1, 2017 at 5:00 AM UTC
I don’t know where to start,
Or how to begin,
The only **** I get is the smallest violin,
Poor me,
Poor him,
You’re a piece to my puzzle,
I’m the bullet in the mussel,
In the game I’ll never win,
The one called love,
Or the eighth deadly sin,
But you lie,
And I cry,
And you laugh with a grin,
Lie straight to my face,
Hit my heart with a mace,
Cause the speed that it beats is at a very deadly pace,
Because it wants to win the race,
But you beat it,
And you ****** it,
Yet you still do destruct it,
And my heart’s gonna stop,
Cause my tears always drop,
Into puddles that I mop,
Cause no one’s there to catch them,
Clean ‘em or dry ‘em,
**** that kid,
Nobody wants to try him,
So they all just play him,
Get a lie gun and spray him,
Go out for a day,
And continue to slay him,
Cause he’s already broken,
So let’s break him some more,
Let him cry,
Want to die,
And walk out the door,
Hey look it’s his friend,
Let’s be friends till the end,
No more no less,
But for me you pretend,
Because you never even liked me,
So stop ******* lying,
And I’ll just keep ******* crying,
While wishing of dying,
And never doing better than hoping and trying,
And I’ll help speed the process for you,
With my **** drug addiction,
And a future with conviction,
Cause all I’ve learned in life is love is just fiction,
Happiness is a privilege that leaves me alone,
All I see now is sadness,
And that’s all I’ve ever known,
Ever since my day off birth,
And the day’s that I’ve grown,
Look at my heart and you’ll see that it’s sewn,
Been used and abused,
And turning into stone,
Cracking and breaking,
From all the love faking,
The lying,
The crying,
The wishing of dying,
Depression,
Aggression,
Love’s an imperfection,
I got something to mention,
Actually a question,
Tell me I mean and meant nothing to you,
And have it as your confession… ?
Aug 24, 2013
Aug 24, 2013 at 9:13 PM UTC
The ground around you turns to ashes and light that was is no more
The flicker of light within has been snuffed out you tremble to no end
The pain fills the cracks and once again you are whole
That would be the irony you are not whole cracks filled with pain
Is like gluing glass back together it’s never as strong as it once was
You are in pieces that have been etched to fit, but not by your hands
The person you are was made by fools, ones of merely surgical mask and tools
You have become a pack mule to bend and break to the use of others
You’ve lost your voice an identity of yours hidden with a mussel
Wondering if you were ever to be who you wanted or if you were always their toy
A toy smashed into the ground thrown high up to hit the ground, or tooken to see what’s inside you
The insides back then had flesh, bones, organs, the blood of life
Now I am porcelain, empty on the inside and an identity easily broken to never find itself
Jul 18, 2011
Jul 18, 2011 at 2:19 AM UTC
Frustratingly
My use to knows
Are somewhere lost
In nothingness
I blindly navigate
Using mussel memory
In syntactical frenzy
Sampling residue of
Forgotten stale grey matter
Until finally
A rogue cluster of poetical
Muse cells submerge
Fingers form familiar patterns
Hands grips tight the neck
The cords surface in mind
And matter of fact
Magnetically draws
The remaining missing piece
Into the healing soul
Of the guitarist.....
Poetry and Music
Are my saving grace
Thank you Universe!!!
Pardon me my feelings are showing...
Sep 17, 2019
Sep 17, 2019 at 6:38 AM UTC
Many underestimate how the people are
Many do not know what is in them
They can be like a pearl mussel
From the outside they look worthless
But inside they are beautiful and precious.
Apr 29, 2018
Apr 29, 2018 at 5:34 PM UTC
My sweet little mollusk,
You polish the sea-tangy sand dollars smooth with the soles of your feet
You fill up your sweet siren lungs with a sun-sated breeze and submerge your bare fingers
Until they can sweep the slippery silt of the seabed abyss. I can’t sleep.
Your anemone fingers trace watery ripples through the ebbs of my dreams, trailing streams
Of fluorescent-blue algae sunk deep. Your barnacle tongue shatters ships
Into ruinous splinters of treasure. I kiss
The cerulean ocean that hides in your lips.
My sweet little scallop,
The galloping waves break the curves of your shallows.
There are flecks of unpressed sea salt brine in your irises, tireless riptides of foaming-bright promises.
Your skin has the silvery sparkle of scales that effervesce endlessly, bending beneath the fierce tides of your palmprints.
I’m dropping. The current caresses your cheeks’ fishbone hollows, rethreading the necklaces strung out of seashells.
You bury your face in the swells of the tempest. I envy
Your azure, I worship your lapis.
My sweet little mussel,
Your tussled cyan-coral hair is unbleached, unleeched and resplendent
I am rendered transcendent by the green iridescence of your silk seaweed whispers. I have drowned in your splendid.
I can still hear your aquamarine through the white roaring waves cracking onto the shore.
I want more. Your crustaceous sand whirlpool has nestled below the soft curl of your chest. You press the world’s oceans in the dip of your palms
And drink deep from the waves swirling under.
I’ve drowned in the water-spilled seas that are cupped in your hands,
I have drowned in the pearls of your wonder.
Mar 9, 2020
Mar 9, 2020 at 12:15 PM UTC
catalina island
by the sea
philandering squid
my two front teeth chipping
on a rock out in the ocean
my mouth constantly feeling like a mussel
tongue wrestling
by the sea
May 26, 2019
May 26, 2019 at 4:23 PM UTC