"oxen" poems
Already over the sea from her old spouse she comes,
the blonde goddess whose frosty wheels bring day.
Why do you hurry, Aurora? Hold off, so may the birds
shed ritual blood each year for Memnon's shade.
Now it's good to lie in my mistress's tender arms;
if ever, now it's good to feel her near.
Now drowsiness is richest, the morning air is cool,
and birds sing shrilly from their tender throats.
Why do you hurry, dreaded by men and dreaded by girls?
Draw back your dewy reins with your crimson hand.
The sailor marks the stars more clearly before you rise,
not raoming aimlessly across the sea;
the traveller, though weary, arises when you come,
and the soldier sets his savage hand to arms;
you're first to see the farmers wield their heavy hoes
and to call slow oxen under the curving yoke;
you rob boys of their sleep and give them over to schools,
where tender hands must bear the savage switch;
and you send reckless fools to pledge themselves in court,
where they take ruinous losses through one word;
the lawyer and the pleader take no delight in you,
for each must rise and wrangle with new torts;
and you ensure that women's chores are never done,
calling the spinner's hands back to her wool.
All this I'd bear; but who would bear that girls must rise
at dawn, unless himself he has no girl?
How many times I've wished Night would not yield to you,
the stars not fade and flee before your face!
How many times I've wished the wind would smash your wheels,
your steeds would stumble on a cloud and fall!
Jealous, why do you hurry? If your son is black,
it's since his mother's heart is that same color.
How I wish Tithonus could still tell tales of you:
no goddess would be more disgraced in heaven.
Since he is endless eons old, you rise and flee
at dawn to the chariot the old man hates,
but if some Cephalus were lying in your arms,
you'd cry out, 'O run slowly, steeds of night! '
Why should this lover pay, if your husband withers with age?
Was I the matchmaker who brought him to you?
Remember how much sleep was given to her loved youth
by Luna - and she's beautiful as you.
The father of gods himself, to see you all the less,
joined two nights into one for his desires.
I'd finished my complaint. You could tell she'd heard: she blushed;
and yet the day rose at its usual time.
10.1k
Society has good intentions Bureaucracy is like a friend
5 years ago - other furies other losses -
America's
trying to control the uncontrollable Forest fires, Vice
The essential smile In the essential sleep Of the children Of the essential mind
I'm
all thru playing the American
Now I'm going to live a good quiet life
The
world should be built for foot walkers
Oily
rivers Of spiney Nevady
I
am Jake Cake
Rake
Write like Blake
The
horse is not pleased Sight of his
gorgeous finery
in the dust Its silken
nostrils
did disgust
Cats
arent kind Kiddies anent sweet
April
in Nevada - Investigating Dismal Cheyenne Where the war parties
In fields
of straw
Aimed over oxen At Indian Chiefs
In wild headdress Pouring thru
the gap
In Wyoming plain
To make the settlers
Eat more dust than dust
was eaten In the States From East at Seacoast Where wagons made up To dreadful
Plains
Of clazer vup
Saltry
settlers
Anxious to ********** The Mongol Sea (I'm too tired in Cheyenne -
No sleep in 4 nights now, & 2 to go)
9.1k
Your colors are so heavy, how dare I, I cannot sleep. Years inundated under, through skin coils, marigold fields. Yellow crocuses, orange California poppies. Moors of cattle ranchers, yokes of oxen. Plasticine uber-confidence, silky white-skinned testubular thrice people harmonies. Blisses of contagion, contagious bliss. Wrists and incisors, tying down in a bedroom, waking up to live harps and choruses. You dance like you're so alive, but I'm so alive I can't dance. Or breathe. Or knead my fists of earthen wears, or sell my soul completely. I drove off a cliff last night, but the four foot fall ended neatly. The plateau authors my chance to sew my bright, beyond- my fortunes. But the hour before I fall asleep, seems to be the greatest torture.
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:54 AM UTC
Freezing dusk is closing
Like a slow trap of steel
On trees and roads and hills and all
That can no longer feel.
But the carp is in its depth
Like a planet in its heaven.
And the badger in its bedding
Like a loaf in the oven.
And the butterfly in its mummy
Like a viol in its case.
And the owl in its feathers
Like a doll in its lace.
Freezing dusk has tightened
Like a nut ******* tight
On the starry aeroplane
Of the soaring night.
But the trout is in its hole
Like a chuckle in a sleeper.
The hare strays down the highway
Like a root going deeper.
The snail is dry in the outhouse
Like a seed in a sunflower.
The owl is pale on the gatepost
Like a clock on its tower.
Moonlight freezes the shaggy world
Like a mammoth of ice -
The past and the future
Are the jaws of a steel vice.
But the cod is in the tide-rip
Like a key in a purse.
The deer are on the bare-blown hill
Like smiles on a nurse.
The flies are behind the plaster
Like the lost score of a jig.
Sparrows are in the ivy-clump
Like money in a pig.
Such a frost
The flimsy moon
Has lost her wits.
A star falls.
The sweating farmers
Turn in their sleep
Like oxen on spits.
6.8k
Cock-a-doodle doo.
Pigs snorting and grunt.
Bleat baa the sheep.
Hidden in the trees squeak the squirrels.
Gobble gobble gobbling turkeys.
Low oxen moo the cows.
Hohi-a-hohhle hi
Bray donkeys so similar.
Rolling on the red dust.
The village.
A swallow-tailed bee-eater.
Calling and singing.
A green barbet, dark brown head.
Answers the call.
A red-capped lark, black bill.
Entertains the morning.
An emerald-spotted wood dove.
Seated lonely somewhere.
Coos to the extravaganza.
The village.
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 5:20 AM UTC
Think me not unkind and rude,
That I walk alone in grove and glen;
I go to the god of the wood
To fetch his word to men.
Tax not my sloth that I
Fold my arms beside the brook;
Each cloud that floated in the sky
Writes a letter in my book.
Chide me not, laborious band,
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.
There was never mystery,
But 'tis figured in the flowers,
Was never secret history,
But birds tell it in the bowers.
One harvest from thy field
Homeward brought the oxen strong;
A second crop thine acres yield,
Which I gather in a song.
3.8k
Diminutive minutes fly by and imbue.
Ennobled, hungers the second hand.
Verbose and loud, its villainous ticking;
Oxen heavy, that kneading sound,
Under skull and depth of dreams.
Rescind the mad lives we vitiate;
Enchanted by hollow, fear of ghosts,
Dancing in a pitch waiting room.
Happenstance for insomniacs,
Ogres and dark shadows howling
Unapologetic at the light and moon.
Riot of the quiet, against daylight
Star: quarry in the void of night / time / dark.
Jul 16, 2018
Jul 16, 2018 at 11:54 AM UTC
Oh Mr Sentinel ***** you *** with the bullwhip and echo tongue
For four hundred years they had your fathers and mothers
toiling the sugar and cotton fields no better than oxen and horses
They were all beasts together without rights or gain
All you knew was what Babylonians put in your heads
Your perceptions are nothing but that of a slave
As bright as those of the oxen and *****
That were your mates
Now you sit here thinking you're Bob Marley without stringed guitar
you may have a pen in hand but nothing much has changed
what you call a brain is just a dusty mirror from ***** in the Plantation mansion
you are just the *** overseer who gives your *** to ***** at night
payment for echoing his words and ******* a **** on Saturday
Who are you really but a mindless carcass with no class
Your momentum comes from ***** and is *****
it's 21st century and you are still a Sentinel on the cotton fields
You come cracking your bullwhip talking trash
your ****** *** still has a ten dollar price tag hanging off it
the mixed blood of your ancestors fight for dominance in vain
four hundred years of slavery and you're still in chains mind asleep
there's freedom in the sun whether in tropics or in snow town
freedom is a mind unchained to massa's bulls and stunted ****
Show me the freedom of a ******* Sentinel the mottafucker chicken
Go find your ******** radicals and do your worst, how did your pimping go in Liverpool.
or where you too busy spinning your **** in Birmingham Alabama.
Oct 3, 2018
Oct 3, 2018 at 9:25 PM UTC
I shall go away
To the brown hills, the quiet ones,
The vast, the mountainous, the rolling,
Sun-fired and drowsy!
My horse snuffs delicately
At the strange wind;
He settles to a swinging trot; his hoofs ***** the dust.
The road winds, straightens,
Slashes a marsh,
Shoulders out a bridge,
Then --
Again the hills.
Unchanged, innumerable,
Bowing huge, round backs;
Holding secret, immense converse:
In gusty voices,
Fruitful, fecund, toiling
Like yoked black oxen.
The clouds pass like great, slow thoughts
And vanish
In the intense blue.
My horse lopes; the saddle creaks and sways.
A thousand glittering spears of sun slant from on high.
The immensity, the spaces,
Are like the spaces
Between star and star.
The hills sleep.
If I put my hand on one,
I would feel the vast heave of its breath.
I would start away before it awakened
And shook the world from its shoulders.
A cicada's cry deepens the hot silence.
The hills open
To show a slope of poppies,
Ardent, noble, heroic,
A flare, a great flame of orange;
Giving sleepy, brittle scent
That stings the lungs.
A creeping wind slips through them like a ferret; they bow and dance,
answering Beauty's voice . . .
The horse whinnies. I dismount
And tie him to the grey worn fence.
I set myself against the javelins of grass and sun;
And climb the rounded breast,
That flows like a sea-wave.
The summit crackles with heat, there is no shelter, no hollow from
the flagellating glare.
I lie down and look at the sky, shading my eyes.
My body becomes strange, the sun takes it and changes it, it does not feel,
it is like the body of another.
The air blazes. The air is diamond.
Small noises move among the grass . . .
Blackly,
A hawk mounts, mounts in the inane
Seeking the star-road,
Seeking the end . . .
But there is no end.
Here, in this light, there is no end. . .
3.1k
"We have come to be danced
not the pretty dance
not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance
but the claw our way back into the belly
of the sacred, sensual animal dance
the unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance
the holding the precious moment in the palms
of our hands and feet dance
We have come to be danced
not the jiffy ***** shake your ***** for him dance
but the wring the sadness from our skin dance
the blow the chip off our shoulder dance
the slap the apology from our posture dance
We have come to be danced
not the monkey see, monkey do dance
one, two dance like you
one two three, dance like me dance
but the grave robber, tomb stalker
tearing scabs & scars open dance
the rub the rhythm raw against our souls dance
WE have come to be danced
not the nice invisible, self conscious shuffle
but the matted hair flying, voodoo mama
shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance
the strip us from our casings, return our wings
sharpen our claws & tongues dance
the shed dead cells and slip into
the luminous skin of love dance
We have come to be danced
not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance
but the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath & beat dance
the shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance
the mother may I?
yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance
the Olly Olly Oxen Free Free Free dance
the everyone can come to our heaven dance
We have come to be danced
where the kingdom’s collide
in the cathedral of flesh
to burn back into the light
to unravel, to play, to fly, to pray
to root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced
WE HAVE COME"
Jul 2, 2014
Jul 2, 2014 at 1:47 PM UTC
Mariana in the Moated Grange
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
Came to her: without hope of change,
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
He will not come," she said;
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
3k
the night of the fake dead has become eternal
(i will wear Susan Lucci's face for it)
staggering through excesses unknown
and the uncertainty of this ranking system,
you tried to eat my earlobe
but lost interest in it quickly.
your scent safe in this butterfly net,
i am surrounded by the
murderous howls of your perennial
buttercups, determined to tempt
my animal ******* instincts.
(enuma elish la nabu shamamu)
(shapiltu ammatum shuma la zakrat)
i have tripped in the garden of Eve's desire
and felt torrents across my cheeks
of alternating salt and sugar-sweet nectar.
i have held the red locks of wort
and danced on the blossom-littered ground
in remembrance of wandered attention.
(When in the heights heaven had not been named)
(and below, firm ground had not been called...)
i have wept in the shadow of Adam's twin towers
and seen the rift between the continents
ebb and fall under silence's blanket.
i have leathered my skin under this star
to defend my eyes and tongue from
the bite of the turtle goddess.
i have seen the feast of the water,
devouring the naked soil of Pangea,
and tasted its salt with my eyes.
i have undertaken the toil of the shaduf,
churning mud and planting seeds for
the return of the floral messiah.
(Amaru baur rata)
(Shagane Ir Imshi)
i have borne the yoke of the oxen
and reaped stalks of wheat
in the summer's first harvest
i have broken bread with companions
under starlight mixed embers
glowing log light orange dynamo
(The Flood swept thereover)
(His heart was filled with tears)
Will you scream for me?
Can you profess the holiness
of my mission?
My name, my motif, echoes
across the ages...
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
In the end we are called upon by
stronger forces, blank expressions, glassy eyes
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
Siaynoq!
the cold of the world's knife,
pressed against the flesh of our selves,
unconscious rhythm heartbeat pounding
twisted sense rhumba of a thousand tiny shards
Siaynoq!
Call me to a greater purpose
Siaynoq!
Spill my blood across the sand
Sep 28, 2013
Sep 28, 2013 at 7:01 PM UTC
I'll watch the silver moonlight spread across my pillow and delicate fingers.
The sandman nowhere in sight, and not wanting to be found. I'm growing tired of this game of hide and seek.
Instead I'll stay with the sky as the sliver light slowly stains red with the coming dawn.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 2:25 AM UTC
She knew, right afterward.
Amazing.
She knew.
I took her word for it.
Oo-Oo-Oocyte!
The largest, roundest cell
Females have. It is
Visible to the eye
Clothed or nakey.
With the largest surface
Volume in relation to
Her cell-fluid-gorged surface.
One is produced ea/month.
One?
Yowza.
Me?
Millions of the little buggers.
Millions! Yeah! THAT’s
The ticket!
And tiny those little tickets are.
Hardly more than a nucleus with
That powerhouse of the cell,
The Mitochondrial outboard motor,
Propelling the tail.
The smallest and straightest
Human cell
(Cool tail, though)
The juxtaposition is kind
Of amazing.
Large vs. small.
Roundest vs. straightest.
Tail-propelled nucleus
Vs.
Moon-shaped cytoplasm.
The opposite, embryologically-
Speaking.
And she was positive,
POSITIVE
We’d conceived.
Roughly 9 months later,
I was there. Physically.
The rest of me was
Possibly sunning in Togo.
Kind of freaked me out,
The birthing process,
The first time.
My son. My baby boy.
Our child.
5/28/91.
I’m more proud and more
Astonished at the man
My little baby has grown into
With each passing day.
Golden child, beginning
Life with blonde hair,
Almost white, darkening
As he grew into the French-
Indian DNA of his
Mom’s side of the family.
He is so much like
His Mother, for which
I’m very happy,
Because his Mother
Is simply amazing
And worthy of an entire
Slew of poems just
To describe her.
And I’ve another
Golden child
Gold blessing vein running
True and deep, different
Than his older brother
Of seven years,
Yet similar, opposite in
Some ways, having grown strong
As the little plaything for
His older brother’s friends,
Making him very tough,
Strong as a team of oxen,
A work ethic he inherited
From Dad, Mom, Brother
Yet fitting together as
Loving siblings can
When they have God
At the center of their lives.
Thank You, God, for
My two sons.
I’m protective, but I know
They do not belong to me.
They are Your blessings
To my wife and me.
They are Your blessings
To this world, set in motion,
Wound up to take what they see
And make it better, and
To prevent it from getting worse.
They will do Your work.
We were the biological
Vessels that delivered
Them from Your world
Before
To this world,
Now.
Mar 1, 2013
Mar 1, 2013 at 5:12 PM UTC
Walked through the paddy fields
Following a brown dragonfly
Standing Scare crows made of hay in old clothes and a hat
Row of women working in the fields
White herons feeding from the shallow water
Looks like white pearls on a green necklace
Children chasing a calf with a loud cry
Folk songs of farming from the village are heard far away
Some fields getting ready for the cultivation
Men ploughing fields with white oxen
An old man guiding a flock of quacking ducks to their way
Waiting for them to cross the lane like nursery kids
Running with a bunch of paddy in my hands
With a pleasant smile of the dragonfly following me !
Jul 9, 2016
Jul 9, 2016 at 2:14 PM UTC
as if pulling (on the tab)
prevents the continued closure
of the lunch box
oxen milling brunch
as it unfolds sinewed pasture
green purloining sunlight
oxen munching salami on Thursday morning
mourning the luncheon of Sunday
black black blackberries lugubrious
lubricate brioche freshness
pile of white pile of brown pile of pylons
pile (on the tab)
shots are on me
shots fired no casualties
oxen bagged lunches aren't as fun as pulling punches
Mar 20, 2014
Mar 20, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
Southern Icarus
by Michael R. Burch
Windborne, lover of heights,
unspooled from the truck’s wildly lurching embrace
you climb, skittish kite ...
What do you know of the world’s despair,
gliding in vast solitariness there
so that all that remains is to
fall?
Only a little longer the wind invests its sighs;
you stall
spread-eagled as the canvas snaps
and ***** its white rebellious wings,
and all
the houses watch with baffled eyes.
Originally published by Poetry Porch. Keywords/Tags: Icarus, flight, flying, hang-gliding, kite, glider, wind, canvas, South, southern, truck, unspooled
Note: The following poem unites Icarus with Tom O'Bedlam in a final, magical quest ...
Finally to Burn
(the Fall and Resurrection of Icarus)
by Michael R. Burch
I.
Athena takes me
sometimes by the hand
and we go levitating
through strange Dreamlands
where Apollo sleeps
in his dark forgetting
and Passion seems
like a wise bloodletting
and all I remember
—upon awaking—
is: to Love sometimes
is like forsaking
one’s Being—to glide
heroically beyond thought,
forsaking the here
for the There and the Not.
II.
O, finally to Burn,
gravity beyond escaping!
To plummet is Bliss
when the blisters breaking
rain down red scabs
on the earth’s mudpuddle...
Feathers and wax
and the watchers huddle...
Flocculent sheep,
O, and innocent lambs!
I will rock me to sleep
on the waves’ iambs.
III.
To Sleep, that is Bliss
in Love’s recursive Dream,
for the Night has Wings
pallid as moonbeams—
they will flit me to Life,
like a huge-eyed Phoenix
fluttering off
to quarry the Sphinx.
IV.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Quixotic, I seek Love
amid the tarnished
rusted-out steel
when to live is varnish.
To Dream—that’s the thing!
Aye, that Genie I’ll rub,
soak by the candle,
aflame in the tub.
V.
Riddlemethis,
riddlemethat,
Rynosseross,
throw out the Welcome Mat.
Somewhither, somewhither
aglitter and strange,
we must moult off all knowledge
or perish caged.
VI.
I am reconciled to Life
somewhere beyond thought—
I’ll Live in the There,
I’ll Dream of the Naught.
Methinks it no journey;
to tarry’s a waste,
so fatten the oxen;
make a nice baste.
I’m coming, Fool Tom,
we have Somewhere to Go,
though we injure noone,
ourselves wildaglow.
Apr 14, 2020
Apr 14, 2020 at 3:57 AM UTC
I’ve spent countless days at the top of a hill
Keeping eyes fixed on an Oxen
I am in love with the Oxen, yet he does not love me
It’s his lack of ferocity that makes me humble
Power is ingrained in his physical make-up, yet he spends hours relaxing
His jaw in constant rotation, others surround him, he barely takes notice
Before I know it, the sun is ending it’s shift
So I must say goodbye to the Oxen
For I must return to a husband with hungry fists
Oct 30, 2012
Oct 30, 2012 at 8:19 AM UTC
From home in the morning,
I take the bus routinely
As often as the sun rises
Or as I, asleep, assume it rises
Behind the veil of Washington's overcast
But today I am awake for it all
And watch the caravan of I-5
Puttering in inches, billowing exhaust
As I imagine the dust kicked by as many oxen
All hoping to reach the Emerald City
But some of them don't make it
Or decide to settle elsewhere
Sometimes even my fellow passengers are lost
Perhaps they've gone to malaria or the pox
And I pray I'll see them again tomorrow
For when the sun goes down
Or I assume it does as my eyes close
We've drunk the waters of that Platonic river
That as far as I remember begins with an L
And, reincarnated, come back up as always
Sep 28, 2012
Sep 28, 2012 at 4:33 PM UTC
some claimed the paddies smelled like
fetid fishes, ***** some said like the dung of oxen, peasants
or other beasts who squatted there
others whispered the fields reeked of death
while I found no odor to be grander evidence
of life’s languorous longing for itself
we marched those mired moors, as hunters
of invisible prey--ourselves too being stalked, or worse,
mocked by other hairless apes,
who like we, sought light, but
could divine darkness far better, for we
knew little of night, its sacred riddles
some said those places reeked
of rotted flesh, the festering relics of our deeds
I inhaled deeply, slowly
only rich, fecund stories
were revealed to me, ones I fear yet
this silent night
Jun 21, 2016
Jun 21, 2016 at 7:37 AM UTC
"Mariana in the Moated Grange"
(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure)
With blackest moss the flower-plots
Were thickly crusted, one and all:
The rusted nails fell from the knots
That held the pear to the gable-wall.
The broken sheds look'd sad and strange:
Unlifted was the clinking latch;
Weeded and worn the ancient thatch
Upon the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Her tears fell with the dews at even;
Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;
She could not look on the sweet heaven,
Either at morn or eventide.
After the flitting of the bats,
When thickest dark did trance the sky,
She drew her casement-curtain by,
And glanced athwart the glooming flats.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
Upon the middle of the night,
Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:
The **** sung out an hour ere light:
From the dark fen the oxen's low
In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, "The day is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
About a stone-cast from the wall
A sluice with blacken'd waters slept,
And o'er it many, round and small,
The cluster'd marish-mosses crept.
Hard by a poplar shook alway,
All silver-green with gnarled bark:
For leagues no other tree did mark
The level waste, the rounding gray.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary
I would that I were dead!"
And ever when the moon was low,
And the shrill winds were up and away,
In the white curtain, to and fro,
She saw the gusty shadow sway.
But when the moon was very low
And wild winds bound within their cell,
The shadow of the poplar fell
Upon her bed, across her brow.
She only said, "The night is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creak'd;
The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd,
Or from the crevice peer'd about.
Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without.
She only said, "My life is dreary,
He cometh not," she said;
She said, "I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!"
The sparrow's chirrup on the roof,
The slow clock ticking, and the sound
Which to the wooing wind aloof
The poplar made, did all confound
Her sense; but most she loathed the hour
When the thick-moted sunbeam lay
Athwart the chambers, and the day
Was sloping toward his western bower.
Then said she, "I am very dreary,
She wept, "I am aweary, aweary,
Oh God, that I were dead!"
1.8k
A Life of Humble Humility
The creator and ruler of the entire universe so powerful and so great, wanted a relationship with his people and loved them so much that he would leave heaven to be with them. He was concieved by a very ordinary ****** girl no older than 13 or 14, was born in a stable with pigs, oxen, and donkeys where it was cold, dark, and smelled very bad. Throughout his 20's, he ate and dined and held the company of prostitutes, tax collectors, uneducated fishermen, bad men, and unclean people. He did things that few could believe and none could explain and often did not take credit for these things. He took time to pray, ask for help and to rest, but was always ready to help those in need. He lived a life of service, of love, compassion, prayer and healing. When he rode into Jerusalem at the age of 33 on a Sunday, the king and ruler of everything came in on a donkey; a pack animal and lowly beast of burden of peasants rather than a horse or camel more fitting of his royalty and status. A week later, he was falsely accused and, though found not guilty, was condemned to be flayed till he was near death and then forced to carry a heavy piece of wood through town, beaten, mocked, spit upon and publicly humiliated to be nailed by his hands and feet to die in the most painful, brutal way imaginable. He was obedient to his father's plan and will to the very end and gave everything so that he might have a relationship with his beloved children.
Lord, help us please to love as you loved, serve as you served, to live as you lived. In a society that focuses on competition, personal gain and success even at the expense of another; send your Holy Spirit to be with us as we try to live by the example you have set for us: a life of humble humility. Whatever success we have, help us remember that it is from you or you working in and through us. As we strive to serve each other and you in a way that honors you and gives you glory, fill our hearts a with joy and peace that only you can provide! AMEN.
Sep 26, 2013
Sep 26, 2013 at 12:26 PM UTC
bitterness of iron:
remove the milk
in bate of oxen blood spills
a bovine scent coagulates --
two membranes,
five and nine in aluminium
warp the boiling point --
two hundred, ninety degrees Celsius,
left standing, half a day:
cardboard instruction sets carbon constriction
imprinting
burnt hair, burnt hooves --
the taste of not eating
a liver, raw --
Where is the nameless face
carrying cups of coffee, bought
on a journey
somewhere, and nowhere et al . . .
kindreds, wrapped in the smell of decay:
the uncured hide around his hips,
or was it his wrists, never touching?
Oct 26, 2013
Oct 26, 2013 at 7:09 AM UTC
Closed heart
Closeted mind
Apart as one
Closely fine
Stitched seams
Loosely tight
Everything's great
And not alright
Fighting internally
External bruises inflicted
Carrying burdens
Heavy
Even oxen
Wont
Bear
Spooky night
Haunting chills
Souls taken
Upon thrills
Oh closeted heart
Closed eyes
Gouged
A sight
To devious to view
Do you think of me.
For i dream of you
A love
So lustful
Sexually taunting
Welcome sensual spirit
Goodbye wanting
Shoveling fears
6ft under
Lightening
Shocks of thunder
Pul me down
Closely fine
TO far from me
Near being mine
To hell i go
For i truly know
Demons stich me down
Loosely tight
Moments right
Shoveling fear
Laying burdens
Hard to care
The end is here
Murray
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 12:59 PM UTC
A rude awakening:
A friend’s best impression of
A thousand,
Deep,
Bellowing trombones.
“BWAAAAWWWWP!”
Shake it off.
Walk home and go to bed.
Fasten hat to head:
“Bye everybody.”
(wave)
Good choice on the hat,
‘Tis chilly.
Text her, “Hi,” just because.
Just in case.
Long walk home
Late at night
And still groggy.
Those trombones still ringing in my ears.
I feel new.
Like a kitten.
Every sound on the street inspires shudders.
Cars approaching from behind:
Crescendos dropping into empty ringing silence.
Someone laughs down a dark side street.
Head jerks,
And looks away.
There it is again.
Is it for me?
Walk faster.
I might still be sleeping…
Although I’m pretty sure—what’s that?
A bicycle,
Or the amplified sound of an insect
Cleaning itself.
Where is that shadow coming from?
Is something floating above this intersection?
Just keep walking.
But only after
I push this button
That does nothing.
I guess I’m just a pigeon
Flapping my wings.
But don’t I know it.
How sad is that?
Where’s that Morpheus with my **** pills?
Home base.
Olly olly oxen free.
Apr 1, 2013
Apr 1, 2013 at 2:58 AM UTC