"paddies" poems
A slow walk up Centennial
and I still can’t find the place
it's menacing cold, and muted
and the street sweeper and winter breeze
move the Turkish blend and dust pack
A novice mixed duet plays
Brahms on broken strings
the erhu and overcoat
veiling a blue heeler and sphinx
Maggianos is settled in the center block’s
luminance and seasonal drape
it's festive warmth bringing home Bedford Falls;
the flavour and character and social circles
Annie’s playing and the keeper's singing
(his word pool and slander
raising everyone in arms!)
the crowd chants and mayhem breaks
as crawlers and contemporaries
smash their steins
Dark alleys and dripping holes
hold a grim reminder of the pierced underside
paddies flutter and forge their words
with a broad manifesto
Night gardens come alive
(slowly sapping the respite)
hunched figures and ladies in lace
shuffle inside the big orange door
Oct 19, 2017
Oct 19, 2017 at 11:25 PM UTC
Look on me dearly:
your stolen sullied sullen
daughter. I could dig you up
to hold your bones but
want only to wash myself
away, like white foam
from the seashore.
If I burn what is buried,
is it cremation
or disintegration? You would fly
ashes in the wind, like a wish
given
lift, like an altar of lit
incense.
Think of learning of your blood:
yellow skin and rice paddies
and great-great-great-great-granddaddy
grey for the Confederacy.
Do two halves not one whole
soul make? I take
a breath
and leave it
free.
Sep 22, 2021
Sep 22, 2021 at 1:28 PM UTC
he had a third beer
before the hot platters came
he would have had another, had she not
stared, like she going to ask every question
he did not want to answer…
how did it feel to slap his first wife?
how did it feel to pull the trigger
and mow men down like so many weeds?
those were the questions in her eyes
and had he ever told anyone, what happened that night
when they came upon a village, where the young ones
slept with the dead, their ancestors
only a few feet away, watching, mute,
beyond the paddies where they planted the rice,
the narrow trails where they hunkered and spoke
the ancient tongue, not adulterated by the romance of the French
or the clumsy amalgam of shredded sounds from the new soldiers
the giants who ignored them in the steaming light of day
but came one night, bringing strange smells, oiled steel
muzzles pointed at their faces, shoved into their empty ears
grunting and groaning in an even more grotesque tongue
leaving tears and trembling in their wake,
the torn flesh, the wounded wombs, the silken vessels
meant to be there for the milky planting of tomorrow’s seeds
not the greedy groping of the interloper’s devilish deeds
was she asking about that night, the sounds he recalled
like puppies under heavy foot, or worse, like
the madding moaning of his own sister
when someone ripped her open
not in the distant killing fields
but in the back seat of her car
not two miles from where they sat
where he ordered more beer, and
she asked those questions with her silence,
with her eyes, the questions he would never answer
not after all the beer, in all the free world,
and he was pitifully glad
they served no sushi, in Kiki’s, though
the sharpened knives were there
ready for his confessional
and the raw slaughter of truth
Jul 30, 2013
Jul 30, 2013 at 2:43 AM UTC
Philippine terrain? Tree-dotted mountains
and palms against dazzling blue skies
white-hot clouds, carabao
wild grasses in South Asian sunshine
Birdsong and church bells
folktales, legends from ancient hills
and rice paddies mirroring the heavens
Seven thousand one hundred and seven
eyes breaking waves to catch the sun
glimpses of hope – a glory to come
Apr 18, 2016
Apr 18, 2016 at 6:13 AM UTC
Another year, another Paddies day,
Here in New York, hope for sun to play.
So the Irish celebration, takes winged flight,
Green is the color in everyone's sight.
Parade in the street, down fifth avenue.
The master of ceremony, we don't know who?
But the master this day, stands as St. Pat,
Clad in green, with a leprechaun's hat.
Hear the bagpipes, the drums pounding loud,
This is the Irish day, to stand and be proud!
A Catholic holiday, dietary sanctions they lift,
Eat meat and drink alcohol, is the Popes gift.
What are we celebrating? Let's take a closer look,
Power up the computer or crack open a book.
St. Patrick was born under English rule,
His family was clergy, formally educated in school.
Kidnapped by the Irish, and held as a slave,
To journey back to England he must be brave.
He returned one day to the Irish shore,
About the eternal Trinity, the Irish learned more.
A bishop now, native clove he did use,
To teach the Irish, about celestial clues.
About the father and son and the holy ghost,
The three leaves on a shamrock, they will forever toast!
The three leaves of a shamrock, and it's circular shape,
Are the same as God's Trinity, the logic you can't escape.
This is why the shamrock is so highly revered,
Wear one on your vest, or tucked into your beard.
Enjoy the day, celebrate with family and friend,
Toast to St. Patrick, may his legacy never end!
Visit poemsbypaul.com
Mar 13, 2013
Mar 13, 2013 at 12:56 AM UTC
his ancestor a coolie
laid the rails many long years
but returned to Peking
to fight white devils
this, the tale
passed through the generations
with the jade necklace which
never left his mother's neck
first born son
spawn of two doctors, expectations
were high he would practice
honorable healing arts
early in his years
he fueled their fears, and ire
coming through their sterile door
with bloodied knuckles
black eyes, fat lips
they tried various exorcisms:
confinement in the temple, lashings
and hushed cabals with head healers,
but none could shrink his will
much to their dismay
Stanford rejected him; he landed
at a community college, where he spent
an indolent year, before vanishing
a thousand tears and fears later
the PI revealed what a hundred
billable hours had reaped
the son was so far west
he was east, in a village on the Yangtze
stooped over paddies, his feet firm
in the mire the generations
had yearned to escape
Dec 3, 2015
Dec 3, 2015 at 3:06 PM UTC
Alight me Paddies! Today the world is Green;
I am in a mood, alas, to gnaw crubeen,
To kiss my Irish lass, and cuddle her awhile,
To hear the Irish Rovers sing their bonny Isle,
To wear a shamrock, laboring o'er a stout:
Murphy or Guinness, to me it matters naught.
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 5:50 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
Talk, shutter
Cooling babble,
Paddies ‘tween
The bugs swim, paddle
Whispered gush,
Though never hush
There cast soft in the light of ease
Sensual talk
Down the candid rock
A bridge to honor the way
Bemoaned pleasures
Nature’s fetters
Gone as a little mouse
Trickling now,
Walk on wetter
The fall may never stop
And soon all secrets are revealed
Silence—
Heads go to the leaves
Spies returning to the eaves.
Aug 25, 2014
Aug 25, 2014 at 9:56 PM UTC
a refugee from Yale, and the stale stench
of old money, he took a job with the park service
where he maintained outhouses,
and got high in the cover of cottonwoods
this crap crew job gave him no
deferment from the draft, so he landed in Can Tho
he didn't clean outhouses there--little people did,
stirring his dreck in burning diesel for 75 cents a day
when his Huey was shot down in the
Mekong, only he and his door gunner survived
they hid, submerged in paddies until dark
hearing faint but ferocious voices of the VC
who never found them--and they made the
miracle mile back to base camp, covered in muck
that smelled like dung; a scent that stuck
with him in dreams, no matter how much he bathed
when he came home, he again labored
for the forest service, and asked for ********* duty
fearing if he lost the smell,
he would lose himself as well
.
Jan 25, 2017
Jan 25, 2017 at 11:06 PM UTC
My father a medic in Vietnam
for many years refused to wear
his wedding ring because he said
of countless times he had to handle
the aftermath of soldiers jumping
out of helicopters at the exact
moment their wedding rings caught
on protruding bolts or couplings,
leaving their fingers and rings
aboard Hueys while they fell
caterwauling in air below crimson
contrails dissolving in rotor wash
only to land, godforsaken,
in flooded rice paddies,
shocked and shaken, disjointed
but alive, forever joined in holy
matrimony to far-flung wives.
Nov 1, 2016
Nov 1, 2016 at 9:48 AM UTC
The landlady pounds, one door left,
And my “Momma’s” chopping chives in the kitchen;
So I wince when
My black hat’s conquered wrought wool.
Right, and right out the window, the workers break,
And my “Uncle’s” feet crack, crack come the chemical grass;
So I concentrate when
My chopsticks carve pork.
“Up,” cries the baby, starved are the mice,
And my “sister” bids farewell to her soldier;
So I grasp when
My feet twitch to understand the cold, cold concrete.
Diesel cooks, so down goes the neighbor,
And the “Missus” smiles with our son atop lap;
So I admit when
I try to smile, I really do.
Herein lies the endurance, the rice paddies ancient,
And we’d all bliss ignorant, come the table we surround;
So I reconcile when
Again, I try to smile, I really do.
Aug 19, 2015
Aug 19, 2015 at 11:28 AM UTC
Take me home sweet senorita
Ride me on your wings
Flap your arms
Cause hurricanes
And watch them like Van Gogh would
With stars in our ears
Then send me down little ******
Along the Yangtze River banks
To flood my paddies and scythe my stalks
And feed the family waiting
Take me home weeping widow
Let me ride in the hole in your heart
Where the walls are decorated in photographs you were never in
Drop me in the heart of industry
Let me build to make my way
To build the home to which I walk
To build the table on which I will feed my family the spoils of a day in field
Take me home
Mother
Slide me between your arms
Show me where to go
Bring to me my family
Fed upon my table
In my house
With the harvest of my hands
Be the mother of my family
Make where you are, my home
Jan 24, 2011
Jan 24, 2011 at 10:42 AM UTC
Icy winds blew
along the wharf,
as three men mixed
for a quick conversation,
exchanged money
& a loaded gun,
then dispersed
like the ocean spray.
Later that night,
Davy and Ian were shot
point blank in the face,
with no witnesses
but the gulls shrieking
above the dockyards of Belfast,
a place where some paddies
pay with their lives.
Feb 28, 2014
Feb 28, 2014 at 9:49 PM UTC
I feel flat lined, on this flat earth
now and then, when I follow the wild pigs’ path
into the thorny mesquite, the scrub oak,
I see a spike on my graph
when I find their fresh droppings,
dung still steaming on morning’s crisp ground,
perhaps I have found, something to make
my heart pump enough to register a blip,
a puny peak on the scrolling page
true, this is not
the rubber tree jungle where
I first learned terror and trembling unto death
where I hunted other prowling prey, who had no sharp fangs or tusks
to tear my young flesh, but could, with a fateful finger flick
spill my rushing red blood in the puke brown soup
of the rice paddies
those days now are seen
faintly, through a milky haze,
though for others it seems, recalled
at night, in dread dreams
I do not share their nightmares--if I did
I would not wander into the winter woods
to face my foe, to hear its gray growling, hoping
its charge will be quick on this flat land,
and that the thumping in my chest
will paint a beautiful sharp line
on the pallid parchment
Feb 3, 2015
Feb 3, 2015 at 8:42 AM UTC
The World's Times chronicled
Crusades and Fatawas,
Jihads and Inquisitions,
Coups and Genocides.
Such resourcefulness
The Construct.
Another Cathedral rises
In a destitute country.
Do-able
We're told
From the leader's lips
We'll always have the poor.
Uh huh! The poor!
That's what was said.
We can always put them to work,
And there won't always be work.
They'll need membership cards,
And birthings and burials,
Like always.
See the pyramids along the Nile
You get up every morning from your alarm clock's warning
Another temple
Will grow from
Rice paddies;
A synagogue,
A mosque will
Cinch tiles
On the backs of peasants.
I've had enough
Laundering by recluse
Single mothers,
By crooks posing as shepherds,
And Holy Wars
*so oxymoronic
cleanses too*
Any Divines
Benefitting from
Our labour and wages;
Our drachma, denarius and shegel,
Aren't worth the worship.
Yet the lenders are good
At getting their pound.
*Don't drop a coin
In a wishing well,
Pay cash for a mass
Where they'll ring your bell.
Choose a charity,
There's so many,
That need a
Pauper's Penny.*
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 3, 2014 at 8:18 AM UTC
Farmers working in the springtime paddies,
Under the hot summer sun.
Flowers and trees surrounding the ***** streets of the village,
A seed of life in despair.
A girl lost within the heart of the town,
Looking for what is lost.
A long-forgotten story buried deep into the past,
Resurfacing from the power of one girl.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 9:55 PM UTC
a 2nd reiteration
listening to
dropkick murphys'
song
*i'm shipping off to
Boston*...
you ******* quasi-paddies
and Iraqi Aladdins
have ****** up "my"...
******* jukebox!
no music video ever came
with a ******* news channel
recommendation!
wankers!
sprat boilers!
brat spanking fetishists!
give me my ******* jukebox
back... you *******
toddler's little pinky
wankers off!
it's not enough that
the blood starts to boil...
my thinking becomes
all scrambled!
i turn into a Danzig hunger-strike
when i don't get
to listen to new music!
wankie ***** wankie *****
sure...
but when i **** off while
taking a **** and taking a ****
i don't make a *******
video out of it, do i?!
juggernaut... juggernaut...
juggernaut...
say it thrice like Beetlejuice...
and... well... shazam!
a rhino appears!
i'm taking prisoners...
the ones attached to the charge,
as they scream...
pretending to... "tag along".
give my jukebox back you
******* invertebrates!
Oct 25, 2018
Oct 25, 2018 at 8:14 PM UTC
my fingers, the same fingers
that played the guitar
I mean look at your fingers,
the same fingers you licked
after getting the sticky pale red juice
from a cherry popsicle on them
my fingers were dug into the tall grass
my mouth, the same mouth I kissed Amelia with,
the same mouth I ate hamburgers with,
was pressed against the ground so tight
mud was getting stuck in my teeth
and my ears, the same ears
that heard my first sounds
were filled with colored noise, with black noise
with screaming from people I thought I knew
and those mortar and AK 47 rounds that came as fast as hail stones
and then those same ears started ringing,
but ringing is not the right ******* word
because it doesn’t sound like school bells
or phones you are eager to answer
and I can’t describe what is sounds like
and anybody who does wasn’t really there
but it is easy to say 45 years later it was
like something you knew, but you didn’t know
whatever it is you knew, and contradictions
are imperatives and declaratives, not interrogatives
like the people of “the world” think they are
and people of the world are filled with interrogatives
and you are filled with answers
that won’t come to your tongue
because you are still spitting out the ****
from the rice paddies and the lies you needed
to keep you from sticking the barrel
in your own mouth, but they, those who weren’t there
wanted to believe even more than you
so they could still look at you without thinking
the blood on your hands, the blood coming from your lost limbs
the blood oozing into the mire in some script
the dead donor did not know--all that blood
could not be spilled in vain, though you knew it meant little
when you rinsed it from you boots,
or even when splattered in your face
the same face that smiled for the little gray square
in the year book eighteen months before
or maybe a million years ago
in the land of affluent aphorisms
and fingers on bra straps
rather than the rock and roll auto switch of your M-16
the fingers, the same fingers
that squeezed the trigger
and killed something inside you
while the rounds sliced the exploding stinking air
you were happy to silently breathe
Sep 8, 2013
Sep 8, 2013 at 12:43 AM UTC
Remembering My first taste of coffee--
just another commodity
standing outside Lowell Tech, a local factory,
a city corner in Haverhill snows— a worker's town
Passing out leaflets for a vapid Revolution
Another action/demonstration
to “Seize the Day!”
No computers; no social media
to fill the ranks of rallies at that time
So we froze our ***** off
trying to explain with sound bites, frosted breath
and fogs of rhetoric
A truth-- so tyranic, remote, arcane
too preposterous to even process
let alone explain
Standing there behind
its barbed wire reality
smoking from its stacks
the poisons of its process
Standing there
Stamping blood into my feet
Trying to convince my freezing self
my breaking heart
that all this truth?
was truly worth it!?
as I threw my education and my life away--
Trying to convince
...that inside that building
IT-- was being made
****** and
that Agent of Death and Defoliation
of an orange persuasion
so our war could have its way
with rice paddies and jungles
and people of a browner, poorer smaller bent
While on the home-front
we filled the mill with unwilling bodies
that died somewhere else
off site...
“Outta sight”
...or maybe some years later
from toxins dumped in river
left to leach to cancers somewhere else
into the ground they sink
Through tentacled subsidiaries
restructured divestments
Legal dismissals
of responsibility
the players run like roaches
for the exits
One fast move after another
they dissolve disperse
morph into
renamed ****** entities
Clean up their storefronts
clean out our pockets
while “providing jobs”
“investing in community”
along the way
Putting on a Goodwill Tour
Then
taking it away
“What? We never said....”
We'll take you down
leaving only the stench behind
Mar 6, 2019
Mar 6, 2019 at 3:01 PM UTC
(but will you) love me
in pigeon's pose when
my tummy rolls over
like rice paddies and
the dimples in my
thighs are as moon
craters on that 27th
spoonful of peanut
butter, orbit on my hips
squeeze the fat beneath
my arms to relieve all
your stress, when I'm
singing zee avi in the
shower and you realize
I once told you a choir
teacher said I was a high
soprano but my voice is
so low on that ceiling
mingling with the steam
in the silver vents, don't you
know that
heat
rises?
Sep 22, 2014
Sep 22, 2014 at 10:00 PM UTC
the only sounds, the sloshing of our jungle boots
and a cricket symphony
the air affluent with the odor of the paddies
oxen dung, rice-rich stagnant water
a lone golden cloud I see has two lives--one in the western sky;
another on the water’s face
and it suffers two fates, in unison, as light fades, while sky
births crimson before it morphs to black
in its silent death throes, I see the cloud melt from the heavens
but on the water its departure is less graceful
blurred, convulsive from our mad marching, our soles slaughtering
a would be perfect reflection of firmament
Nov 3, 2016
Nov 3, 2016 at 6:50 PM UTC
just another day, this eve of May
with April's abnegation of her title, the queen of time
just another day, when the mother marked an "X" on the calendar,
holding her breath with hope, her coffee in one hand
and the red pen in the other, the hand she used to make two slashes
to bring your boy a fraction closer to home
he was to arrive alive and well in a fortnight,
neatly packaged, like a belated mother's day gift
a reasonable thing to expect, the eve of May,
since you, his father, had arrived the same way,
after her same hand, younger, more dream driven,
had brought you home with the same crosses
but you, the man for whom she waited, all those eves ago
were wrapped neatly only long enough to see April's thirty crosses,
May's eager ambitious start, and you came unwrapped,
leaving your uniform on the bedroom floor
in a heavy heap you said reminded you of what you left behind,
not in the steaming stench of Mekong’s paddies,
but in the quiet lanes of your hometown,
in the high school where you met her, the church where you married
and where you were sure you would be buried
‘twas not yet to be so, your eve of May passed,
along with thirty five more, though you were there,
walking the same streets, to you, the crumpled green garments
were still in a heap on the floor, even though
she had buried them in a drawer years before
you did not mark off the days, for they made you
wonder if their end meant your homecoming
and not his, an infidelity you felt
you watched March march by, and April finally relent
when “they” came to the door, neatly packaged themselves,
***** and filled with well formed words--you did not hear them,
though you saw their lips move, and you watched
your wife walk past, to the ancient kitchen,
the kingdom of the calendar,
and make a final "X" this eve of May
just another day, when another mother's son
who was crucified in the desert
would become a mystic memory
May 1, 2014
May 1, 2014 at 4:24 PM UTC
For days we liased
Along lines and trains
Til we came upon a town
Wet with rice paddies
Steeped in Uji
This area is famous
He said
For centuries we make tea.
I nodded and drank.
To the sea
We marched slowly
Along busy roads
Crashing waves
to a small family shack
This area is famous
He said
Teriyaki and Eel
Eating a delicacy of spine
Into the mountains
Fuji welcomed us
To orchards
And High spirits
In the snowy dome
This area is famous
He said
The fruit basket
Drown in sweet wine
So we fly
To electric billboards
and modern architecture
The pride of industry
In hazy skyline
Hiroshima is very famous
He Said
Really, Why is Hiroshima famous?
For Atomic Bomb!
May 11, 2017
May 11, 2017 at 1:50 PM UTC
i.
Betwixt the rice paddies
And the mountain's of green;
Walk's mine soulmate,
Philippines queen.
ii.
Her breath
The cloud's, billows the air;
Her graceful step's,
Stride with her hair.
iii.
O' how I wish, I couldst
Fly through the air;
I'm trapped in the flesh,
I want to be there.
iv.
I want to be there
To sink in the sea;
Sing Jane a lullaby,
Yet seems as a dream.
v.
Though verily I love her,
certes, her blood do I bleed;
Her hand do I need
To comfort mine
Own.
©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane nagley dedicated( agapi mou)
Oct 8, 2016
Oct 8, 2016 at 6:31 PM UTC