"outlying" poems
"See! warp is stretched
For warriors' fall,
Lo! weft in loom
'Tis wet with blood;
Now fight foreboding,
'Neath friends' swift fingers,
Our grey woof waxeth
With war's alarms,
Our warp bloodred,
Our weft corseblue.
"This woof is y-woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our warwinning woof.
"Now Warwinner walketh
To weave in her turn,
Now Swordswinger steppeth,
Now Swiftstroke, now Storm;
When they speed the shuttle
How spearheads shall flash!
Shields crash, and helmgnawer
On harness bite hard!
"Wind we, wind swiftly
Our warwinning woof
Woof erst for king youthful
Foredoomed as his own,
Forth now we will ride,
Then through the ranks rushing
Be busy where friends
Blows blithe give and take.
"Wind we, wind swiftly
Our warwinning woof,
After that let us steadfastly
Stand by the brave king;
Then men shall mark mournful
Their shields red with gore,
How Swordstroke and Spearthrust
Stood stout by the prince.
"Wind we, wind swiftly
Our warwinning woof.
When sword-bearing rovers
To banners rush on,
Mind, maidens, we spare not
One life in the fray!
We corse-choosing sisters
Have charge of the slain.
"Now new-coming nations
That island shall rule,
Who on outlying headlands
Abode ere the fight;
I say that King mighty
To death now is done,
Now low before spearpoint
That Earl bows his head.
"Soon over all Ersemen
Sharp sorrow shall fall,
That woe to those warriors
Shall wane nevermore;
Our woof now is woven.
Now battlefield waste,
O'er land and o'er water
War tidings shall leap.
"Now surely 'tis gruesome
To gaze all around.
When bloodred through heaven
Drives cloudrack o'er head;
Air soon shall be deep hued
With dying men's blood
When this our spaedom
Comes speedy to pass.
"So cheerily chant we
Charms for the young king,
Come maidens lift loudly
His warwinning lay;
Let him who now listens
Learn well with his ears
And gladden brave swordsmen
With bursts of war's song.
"Now mount we our horses,
Now bare we our brands,
Now haste we hard, maidens,
Hence far, far, away."
Apr 26, 2010
Apr 26, 2010 at 10:58 AM UTC
The soon to be beached meadows shimmers
as the heightened sun dehumidifies the outlying cornfields
evaporating the ground cover.
Scarabs appear postulating
the broken bonds of farmer
and nature.
In the combustible sands
Great things will be birthed.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 7:35 PM UTC
As i stood
under the moon’s and stars’ and planets’ light,
i checked my watch,
but felt distant from
the time of day,
or time at all.
For i connected to these outlying rocks
not as lights in the skies,
but distant eternities
outlasting i.
Jun 24, 2013
Jun 24, 2013 at 7:45 PM UTC
A constant reinvention where the outlier becomes the mainstream and circulates back to the outlying regions. Beautiful layers on a bed of kindness and understanding.. compassion mixed with passion and hot tempered moments of reality checking in-your-face murals along the textured walls..seen through crisp, foggy mornings.
Jun 30, 2015
Jun 30, 2015 at 2:14 PM UTC
Flame-tree abloom: dabbing red,
the distance paling green -
from the half-open window
to a dreary room;
Horizon waves bathed in gold dust -
from a vessel floating
in deep, enveloping seas;
Smudged streetlamp ayonder
a dark, rainy night;
Love, blooming silent, outlying mundane life.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 2:04 PM UTC
It's gone.
I've checked.
I know.
But then,
it never was
much.
Made mostly of scraps;
A rough frame of old bush lumber;
Walls of flattened fuel cans
and lime coated hessian;
A roof of corrugated iron,
battered and rusting.
Scorched by searing summer heat;
Blasted by dust storms;
Chilled by winter frost.
Insubstantial
against the vastness of desert
that stretched in every direction
from the tiny bush town.
But it was home.
Within its walls
were love and care.
At its table
were sustenance and conversation.
For three years
we lived there
when I was a boy.
I'd rise early
and sit on the edge
of the gibber plain
with our dog
watching the sunrise.
One morning
I heard
the jangling of hobbled camels
returning to town
from a night
in the desert.
On another,
there were herds of cattle,
walked in from
an outlying station
for drafting and yarding,
then transport southward
in a train
hauled by a small steam engine.
At the stock-yard
we'd pretend to be cowboys,
prodding the cattle in the loading race
with sticks,
revelling in the dust and noise,
caring little for their terror
or their destination.
One day we hiked
out past the stock cemetery,
of carcasses leering sightless,
scavenged by crows.
We trudged
to the red sand hills,
then back to the rail-line
for a ride home
with the fettlers.
We went barefoot often -
foot-soles like leather
from the searing sand.
In the heat of the day
we'd pause in the scant shadow of a bush,
to choose the next meagre patch of shade,
then run like the wind
to roll on our backs,
waving scorched feet
in the air.
It's still all there in my memory.
Every few years
I take the old track north,
just to check,
to experience again,
to remember.
Other than the vastness of the desert,
it all seems smaller now -
one tiny settlement
within the compass
of an unbroken horizon.
The old house
is just a memory.
It's gone.
I've checked.
I know.
But then,
it never was
much.
Sep 13, 2018
Sep 13, 2018 at 11:03 PM UTC
All the hungry eyes
Are pulled to the center set, roaring fire.
She seers excitement and anticipation
Onto cold skin.
But the outlying glow
Of the saucer eyed, girl
Scaling the rim of each room
Can also spread warmth
Wich may even reach your bones.
Jun 3, 2015
Jun 3, 2015 at 10:28 PM UTC
All the things I am scared to say
pile in my brain; begging to flood over
they don’t know their own names, but
crave to be heard.
your voice. its vibrato, true velvet
floating across every atom of my being
a truth spoken that only comes from your lips
a masterpiece no mere humans could create
my darling, do you sift through the clouds
scanning my eyes as I worship the light you bring?
do you hear me call your name as my dreams
project themselves toward where you are.
your eyes. their stare, a protective state
I have never known; dancing across my
every move. laughter finds itself within the
outlying colors of your world. Don’t you see…
don’t you see, our eyes match intensities to
create another creation. a world colliding
but not in a collision. A big bang, but in serenity.
a secret kept; only for us.
please, don’t allow me to write about the hands
that write me everyday. defining a path in the dark
a leader, led by truth and goodness
sought by many; found by me.
I fall into an eternity, wrapped into you —
you rise and fall; I reciprocate. We are
patterns; carefully placed alongside
juxtaposing backgrounds, only to become one.
I surrender, fully. I understand now. For you
my heart would fall from my chest, fulfilled
it leaps.
I will not chase it, it has found its freedom.
Freedom in the throwing up of hands.
A white flag positioned
Feb 28, 2019
Feb 28, 2019 at 11:45 AM UTC
I feel trapped in this world, with no way to escape
I tap upon the glass of my subconscious mind
But they echo no more from my room of confinement
And instead they vanish. **** and leave me behind
I've thought this over thoroughly but never had the gall
To step down to that crooked slab of asphalt underneath
Instead, these thoughts, they bounce around and cause a chain reaction
That exposes daily reasoning as a sword without its sheath
The sheath; a sense of normalcy, not elsewhere to be found
Overcome by spikes in temper, putting ties in danger
Of whom I love and whom I ultimately care about
Suddenly and unbeknownst to me, becoming strangers
Depression dulls the blade's sharp edge
Where confidence had once been rested
Anxiety loosens the hilt with doubt
Rendering potential nigh ineffective
Hatred of person in all past events
Where regret is an outlying feature of memory
Hesitance an outlying feature of future
And behind is left a feeling of agony
To top it all off, there's the constant harassment
Where progress in peace achieved is a minimal
Where the freedom of speech is abused as a right
By these sadists of mankind, true message subliminal
*Sticks and stones may break my bones
But words will never hurt me*
Was the biggest lie ever told to children
As they cut deep psychologically
But no matter how down in the dumps I become
I never give up and I strive for the best
So when I finally get to stare Death in the face
I can welcome him warmly with a gentle caress
Aug 23, 2015
Aug 23, 2015 at 3:36 AM UTC
Back home,
The roads blend into the hills
Across long stretches of countryside,
Twisting and turning,
Amidst sweetgum and southern pine woodland,
Blue wildflowers and dandelions
Decorate our fields and backyards
That make sweet snacks
And wishes
When you spread it’s feathery parachutes,
The summit of Shades mountain
Elevates our historic town,
Above former native territory
And the outlying railroads
That carry steel out of Birmingham,
And hearing the distant trains call of arrival
Over the vast stretch of woods below,
Accents the whispering trees
And calms my soul,
The affections of home
Remain bittersweet,
But my absence and return
Have unearthed in me,
Where I belong
Dec 16, 2023
Dec 16, 2023 at 4:26 PM UTC
Fires in ditches and fields with
Newspapers, boxes, and dry grass
As our accessible anthracite;
Once smouldering enough on its own feet
To become its own source is when
The limbs were stripped and introduced;
Torn from trees or salvaged from
The outlying waste - they fed the
Crackle - spitting whispering embers skywards.
As children with little sense, our noise
Was all we could offer to appease
Wayward youth's disorder.
The crippled heat was secondary,
But to watch things burn was valuable;
A ring of lives held tenuous.
One thing I came to know
From the nights we gathered in droves is
That within this life of loose bonds and swells
I soak in the hungry gloam.
Jun 14, 2015
Jun 14, 2015 at 9:18 AM UTC
The pieces I desired to reach was ever outlying
yet heartening.
Apr 13, 2019
Apr 13, 2019 at 10:42 AM UTC
becoming the subject of a muse,
merely an object as the muse.
i see the discomfort that comes from
having your story told for you,
displayed without your consent.
i am the director of my own life.
i wrote you out of my script,
so leave your idealized version of me
out of yours.
the unsettlement i feel
to be spoken of so highly,
with a glaze of gold outlying my skin,
stuck to a pedestal.
i am not your trophy,
i will never be your wife!
your version of me
projected through the eyes of obsession.
infatuation.
did you see me as your possession?
and so here it lies.
here lies the irony of making you a muse,
to preach my uttermost desire
to be shed as yours.
May 16, 2019
May 16, 2019 at 6:30 PM UTC
My heart is taken
By no one
Love
that was so mistaken
It should be forever
Feelings
Overrated
Story like compound lever
My heart is taken
By you
Pain
every morning reawaken
Now I say whatever
Tenderness
Outlying
Not happy end altogether
May 28, 2017
May 28, 2017 at 6:33 AM UTC
Construct your steel fortress
To keep the sanctimony,
Stones, and bottles from causing
More damage than the message they carry.
Chain your armoured Land Rovers
Around the outlying mobs
Just as the Holy Cross kids chained
Daisies to hang 'round their necks.
Don your plastic faces to match
Your plastic shields and be sure
Never to forget your baton, bias or bitterness
Lest you be left vulnerable or human.
Load your guns with rubber
And only pull triggers when provoked
To be absolutely clear just when it's
Okay to open fire on a child.
Hold your faith in your palm,
Grip it tight every chance you get
For it will guide you through the
Nightmares -- ones in which you'll soon feature.
"Great peace have they who love your law,
and nothing can make them stumble."
May 19, 2015
May 19, 2015 at 2:39 PM UTC
Worn-through pillowcases holding tales of adventure
Dreams that came and went
Tears from your old lovers’ eyes
A trail of insomnia-ridden restlessness
A trickle of medicine left a sickeningly sweet smell of sleeping sickness remedy
On that night there wasn’t enough for both you and me.
And as purple faded into brown, our fingers anticipated another turn of the page
Dawn burnt your fibers, the sunlight faded your colors grey
Withdrawn and featherless, there’s only time to dream of flight
Outlying eyelash left forgotten
Briskly bent bristle, broken by beauty
You were strong, you held on for long
But oh, you were fragile.
Now the hollows of this room are your only friends
Darkness comes in waves but you will bathe again
It always ends with the sneaking creep of the ticking clock that trickles in around half-past the past.
Nov 5, 2013
Nov 5, 2013 at 10:48 AM UTC
~ youth ~
holding a baby
as if she’d
had it thrown at her
my mother
came out of the museum-
it had stopped raining
it had also
stopped
snowing
and people
were giving me
money
~ to message ~
to be somewhere without a book on my person. hard word this, hard word that, for the never arriving marble of grief. to rename fish from the lobby window of a submerged hotel. to let the water from my mother’s body but not before telling her god lives in me as long as my son is outside. to have nothing but the mewing compositions of rooftop strays to keep me from becoming the devil your pen pal was fed to. to die well. die punctuated. by imagery the drowning cull from years on land spent openly preparing the eaten, subliminal beast.
~ disburden ~
god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist. renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city. the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves. I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman. my only tool is comfort. in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.
~ apace ~
after a child drowns in a child, the church bathroom is scrubbed
in full view
of the elderly.
provided they have gestural transportation
a second class
on image crafting
is held off site.
~ clotheshorse ~
a father shepherds his family from the storm cellar as his own father prepares to lose the orchard.
your life is a boy
looking for signs
made by women.
your mother is a vow of silence
you were born to second.
I am nobody I speak of. those alive to nuance, those seeing
a necklace in a grandmother’s clotted leg.
god is not silent. god is forgiven.
~
from - father, footrace, fistfight - (June 2014)
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 3:45 PM UTC
Your indigo crystal aura spins through the meteorites and rock matter
Creamsicle wheat, gold aura'd
The golden freed, guild and greed appealed. As if
from up the causeway of some starving and scary ghosts. If Shel Silverstein had ghosts their ghosts would be still too decent.
In the tired eyes of friends and their declarations- I have no cyn to give nor cywm to live. Tired am I of breezing through narrow rills in Hidden Creek the obvious spillway ditch of our not even near immortal wealth that weighs on the souls of the outlying suns.
Realize that active sight, only breathes from active mind.
And until today I never realized that I don't mind child. My child
My sweet sweet child of the radiant and crimsony misty blue and white skies through divine amber and aurulent lights, that twinkle acrosss such
Incredible sea-green and robin's egg blue colored ocean sized eyes.
From these Ides whereon I've drifted supine, lost, scattered and random
In the weeping tide's of Alice's watery eyes.
Sep 5, 2015
Sep 5, 2015 at 8:35 AM UTC
Lick Not Bite
Where is the sale?
Hiding in the sky
Quick reach up
Get the sale now!
Poor agents no sale
Time for a meeting
Then coaching session
And call monitoring
Are they following?
Teach them then
Spoon feed them
So they get more sales
Aren’t outlying agents
With 0 or just 1 sale
With 7 or 8 or more
Poor little reps
Always stressed on calls
Pushed to extremes
Sales account joy!
Aug 19, 2024
Aug 19, 2024 at 9:23 AM UTC
Her body pulls away, outlying
Ask the mountains
Question the clouds
What is rotation's logic?
Have we spun fallaciously all along?
Communicating with inexact words?
Kissing off-target?
********** an imprecise expression?
She settles now on unapproachable horizon
Learn from the shore
Understand the sea
Neither dare, nor desire, to claim
For the indignity or cumber of a difficult collide
Start anew by holding hands
Discover the "we" in you and her
Ever so gently, allow her to orbit
The offered affection
On her own terms
The heart will again probe for
A returning circuit to attachment
Her body will move closer
Mar 25, 2020
Mar 25, 2020 at 3:24 PM UTC
When did you become
A somnambulist, my dear?
Where the disconnect?
About the time your ache
For outlying places began to moon-wake?
I get the sense
You knew long before me
Our days of limerance had culminated.
As if something remote
Had stolen you away.
Do you remember the twinkle
Of twilight in each other's arms
Or was this phosphene?
What then was love? Cafuné?
It's no matter.
The sweet smell of rain
In the air now tells me
Something's brewing, and
You won't be happy
Until what was "us" has been
Washed away.
Oct 23, 2019
Oct 23, 2019 at 12:47 PM UTC
god went from wall to wall unaware he was god disguised as a graffiti artist. renderings of my son on a ventilator adorn the moving city. the homeless are tattoos that remove themselves. I guard the outlying cross and go through the motions again of nailing to it the same madman. my only tool is comfort. in flight, a wasp carries something it’s not.
Sep 16, 2013
Sep 16, 2013 at 1:40 AM UTC
I think that I'm not getting out of here alive
That someone will have to make an effort
On cold stretches carry me out of this room
To the one big outlying unknown
If you think that this is too much
Well here is another even darker verse
Thinking in my very last moments
If this insomnia is family curse
Those questions sticky as honey
Don't want to leave your mind
Keeping you awake all night
Asking yourself, if you are to others kind
Experience adventurous moments?
Is this really our life's point?
When something inside of you is broken
How can you keep going on?
Not able to sleep will make you crazy
From crazy you will go straight to numb
I wasn't imagining my very last moments
Laying out here in the dark
I didn't really care what will be after
It shouldn't matter, nonexistent anymore
I didn't have any ulterior motives
I just wanted to cut straight to the bone
Sep 9, 2017
Sep 9, 2017 at 5:21 PM UTC
zoned out
distant in the curve of a cloud
an outlying perspective
detached and hanging in a moment of flat affect
an idea blooms and bubbles in my mouth
you haven’t asked me enough questions
you haven’t asked me enough questions how will you know .
May 24, 2016
May 24, 2016 at 2:46 PM UTC
A journey or a walk-a-bout
garnering experience and/or pain
hoarding every happiness
and love, that still remains
Mellowed in remembering
the touch, and look of eye
no harshness, and no sobering
no answer, when, or why
Knowledge just a myth
all that we can know, or think
outlying dogma, just beneath
the razor's edge, racing to the brink
Hearts and spirits wandering
eternity it seems
ever to be pondering
the meanings of
our dreams
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 9:23 AM UTC