"panning" poems
And lights.
She looked a little pale
In the yellow light.
The spots had been
Changed to white.
And when the white
Couldn't hide her pallor,
She asked the makeup
To put on a brighter colour.
They didn't ask if she had eaten.
They tried once,
Came back browbeaten.
"Diet only for ma'am"
Her abdomen perfectly satisfied;
Her soul craving for more.
And camera.
The perfect shot
Ended with a sweeping glance
Across the set
At her hero all decked
In the knightly splendour.
She was a princess whom
He saved from a dragon.
Little did anyone know
That after a day's worth
Of angry cameras panning
Her face and scrutinising her life,
She needed saving
Mostly from herself.
And action.
This time, a thriller.
She walks down the corridor set
- Director's thumbs-up,
To hunt down the culprit
Who snatched her family.
She gives the perfect action sequence,
Complete with blood trickles.
"An award winner, surely."
She is done with the shoot
And heads home, her van.
Someone is waiting.
He had been waiting since she left
Him that summer.
Waiting for an excuse, at first.
Then acceptance.
Then forgiveness.
She gave it her best performance,
But could not fake the relief
When he approached with an apology
And a gun.
Mar 27, 2015
Mar 27, 2015 at 5:48 AM UTC
strait crazy
saintly mania raving.
new age jainist phasers
sang they praises
like
'hey mr bojangles,
go mangle up the angle,
shake shake shake the frame
& they'll thank you later.'
...sorry not today.
I'm feeling under the
earthquake weather.
wallowing wonder
following the devil
thru the desert
on great endeavors
to make it rain feathers
that sound like thunder.
famous as ever
nameless as heaven
to say the least
I'm slaying beasts that
came from me
in the first place.
this is lovehate.
lovehate lovehate.
& it's useless.
just lemme set the mood.
it's stupid
brutish beauty
mooing truly bluesy
marks & bruises
infused with martian
harmony incarnate,
caramelized carnage
set to soothing violent music.
broke record store cliché
faded to frustration feeding
a creaturely need for creation
& hellish lust for selfdestruction.
-nothing special-
just an absolute mess who
dilute the stress through allusion
allegory alliteration
hallucination delusion
***** it's a celebration.
tell the rest those losers
that got left I'm doing my best
even though I'm pretty upset
with how it's all panning out.
oh well I guess.
Apr 23, 2015
Apr 23, 2015 at 7:55 AM UTC
I was not sick
and needed no
convalescence
no rebirth
or panning
view of
bloodscape
the black
gasp of dawn
it offered
never
drew
no sickness
no hospital
beds
or starched sheets
no goodbye
rain
or last shot
of whiskey
it unended
when the
sickness of
the mind
rolled in
with its fingers
shaped like a gun
and a trash bag
for my jewel
*give me
no sickness*
I begged
and robbers
there were three
beat me down and
left me like a
headless buck
Sep 11, 2017
Sep 11, 2017 at 3:55 PM UTC
Them bastardized youths fell outside, dizzied by a reality unsolved.
Their maws scowled judgment and drooled Pabst down improbable bodies each of them lay in the stink of subtle conformity.
Fiercely unique culture beasts starved away in suburbs; Wikidrifting, those drugged litterbugs scampered.
Dropout fish fast against the current of their time, tired from dancing through desperate crowded nights and disparate lonely dawns, dangling degrees and the specters of success burning incessant their pride.
They were the ******** made so over time contracted by blind parents to nine-to-blithes in which quiet desperation, credit nooses, and irony were the small print.
They were carpenters afraid of their hands. With chisel to headstone, they lied on the hoods of used Japanese cars, panning the radio for a real connection and gazing up at vanishing constellations.
They were their poison and they their elixir, but a cold cigarette was a much quicker fixer of Helplessness Blues and the back of a Bible where a brief intellectual wrote “I am suicidal.”
For how does the turn of the epigram read to those who care less with every new beat of a drummed-up society so high off its piety that seeing stars vanish is simply a shame?
Those ******** dropouts tragically remiss, those Supertramps, Kerouacs, Cohens, and wits.
They were the alternative, urbanite fools that littered alleys with Greek fables and Tibetan tattoos.
Criterion flash cards and the literary canon allowed them to flirt with god in verse and art clues until Pollock’s canvas did rip off their eyelids which left them to know only Socrates knew.
They danced and they writhed, then ****** to pass time, and kept on their passions till lost were their minds. Then they all died, those blasphemous ********
But at least they washed on the back of their crimes.
At least they danced.
At least they were.
And there may be something to movement in chaos.
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 8:06 PM UTC
I am a miners daughter. I am a gold panners' wife.
He is busy gold panning while I run around the forest enjoying nature.
Left alone, of no interest, no comparison to the prospect of gold.
As I sit here naked, I wish that I was an interesting as the prospect of gold.
I wish my gold were being sifted from the sands, with his hands.
I am pure gold, why can't he see.
He bought the claim, he has the deed.
But my gold goes unnoticed, as does my needs.
Dec 6, 2013
Dec 6, 2013 at 2:30 AM UTC
__|small gee for god; big bee for byron|__
Strikes a chord with you, does it?
This shambling poverty of thought,
Insta-rated and underwhelming;
Thank god for Byron.
__|keats versus shelley|__
Sparing no injury to his phthisicky frame,
Keats lies atop a make-believe of cherry trees
Searching among the clouds
For wealth, health and a Grecian urn,
While Shelley does Venice
And blows himself a hookah.
__|o poesy! for thee I grasp my pen|__
Panning the wayward sky for inspiration,
A hope, a word, a beginning;
A versification so ecstatic as to transfix the senses and pierce the heart,
A lightning phrase capable of uprooting all commonality,
As outrageous a miracle in the minds of men as crucified immortality.
__|requiem|__
Unlike the wilting rose which has no higher calling
Than to bloom and die upon the stem,
And having relinquished its last perfumed petal
Retreat from memory again,
I fear that I shall linger,
Tethered to this eternal moment
By shudd’ring will and breath combined,
A brighter shade of myself than what of me I have left behind.
Apr 16, 2021
Apr 16, 2021 at 4:21 PM UTC
start with a bucket of dusted gravel
tip into a cold pan, a wriggling jungle of alphabet
gasps.
drown.
rock the pan of words in arms
agitating the line-breaks
the twisting plait of water
spurts the lightweight
sediment over the edge
to a scrap pool of dog-tailed idioms
the rest charges, a collage of schooled fish
the pulse in the rubble sinks
like a dictionary to the base.
ransack the salt-swamp of dazed stanzas
as a malnourished mole
catch a lump, grasp between digits
it twinkles under caked mud.
free it from parasite-adjectives
strain from the crocodile water
a chiseled torso of words in the rock
all along.
Mar 25, 2012
Mar 25, 2012 at 7:06 AM UTC
One year ago exactly, I awoke to the miserable news that my dear friend, Morgan Helman, was dead. I called her voicemail and wept my goodbyes. I punched the wall and screamed until I thought my lungs would crack. I wrote a poem to express the ravaging anguish I was experiencing, and to try and honor her life. I read it as a eulogy at her funeral. In it, I mentioned a time when she had asked me to write a happy poem. Everything I had ever written was a result of sadness or some other tortured emotion. I apologized that what I wrote for her was far from happy. I told her someday I would a write a happy poem, though I doubted my own words. One year later, I have walked away from the depressed mental state I used to call home. On the anniversary of her passing, I completed this "happy" poem. It's different than what I'm used to creating. It might not be as artistic as some of my other poetry. But it is a vivid expression of the first step in a new direction. This poem is dedicated to Morgan Helman and the legacy of love she left in her wake.
You Are
Resonating laughter
as the child plays,
hallway smiles
on bad days.
Disney movies
when I'm sick,
lightsaber battles
as a kid.
Rope swings
for make believe Peter-Panning,
backyard sprinklers
spraying the trampoline.
Hot soup
after it snows,
Refreshing popsicles
when the sun glows.
Warm cookies
melting in my mouth,
playing cards
at Grandma's house.
Blazing campfires
engulfed in inspiration,
jam sessions
with passionate musicians.
Barefoot freedom
in the grass and on the beach,
Sandy paradise
sinking beneath my feet.
Captivating books
as it gently rains,
favorite songs
when I'm disarrayed.
Intimate poetry
as my soul sings,
genuine happiness
spilling out of me.
Caring parents
whose admiration lasts,
trustworthy friends
who remove my masks.
Comforting arms
when my friend dies,
calloused hands
pulling tears from drowning eyes.
Raw love
strung on splintered wood,
My God
you are everything good.
~ m.w. ~
Feb 3, 2014
Feb 3, 2014 at 1:23 PM UTC
rocking the metal pan
side to side, agitate
the sand so swirling
water
lets gravity push the
worthless sediment
over the edges into the
pool
gravel-dust gathers
momentum
swarming in a circular current
allowing the golden
nuggets to sink to the
base
fingers as feet through
quicksand
explore the grey salt-swamp
cold makes them slow and dumb
soft skin complains as grains
scratch skin a thousand times
toy fingernails clawing
catch a lump, hold it
between
thumb and finger, bulge with
fulfilment as your gobbet
glints beneath its caked mud
set the pan upon rocks
clasping tightly, pull the
stone through the pool,
freeing
it from the clinging dust
release it from the depths
of the crocodile water
and the ugly mound of
chalky mud submerged will
be caterpillar to
butterfly, a solid
gold nugget lying fat
on the face of your
soggy outstretched palm.
Mar 19, 2012
Mar 19, 2012 at 9:29 AM UTC
knitted on a dodgy bobble hat
or a favourite chunky jumper
from scandanavia, or yorkshire
untasteful but definitely practical..
smelly and friendly like a wet dog
pliable like warm playdoh...
patulioi oil
will always remind me of you...
'a hippy place in my heart...'
like a beachnut,
no, a beach hut
shelves littered with the flotsam of our throwaway society,
flip flop corner...
19:10
some random hermit crab making his escape from
the dripping bundle of just found fishing net
down through the crack in the floor...
into the sand
and back to the sea.
the moths and midges gravitate towards the fossils and rock shelf
because that's where the gaslamp gently hisses.
suncracked and faded
pieces of
70's buckets and spades flicker in the corner
between the scraps of rope
and the deflated inflatables
and the bottlecap damian hurst
next to sea purse corner,
biological tendrils contrasting the ever stoic rubber ducks
who escaped from the pacific gyre...
panning around, the smartphone registers,
the garish tatty windbreak
and the 90's ghettoblaster
which still has some juice left from those batteries
we bought at the gift shop...
last year...
for our imaginary beach hut....
in the outer hebrides...?
you take the camping gaz from the cupboard
and put the kettle on...
the beach is desert island white
the sea azure like a gaudy 70's postcard
the wind tugging relentless through our hair.
but the pub is warm and friendly
where grizzled fishermen philosophise
hardily. by the fire.
between warming shots of smokey single malt.
Jul 6, 2015
Jul 6, 2015 at 6:47 PM UTC
Your eyes cataracts - fogged over, with a hint of blue
Still you saw more than most anyone I've known
I thought you a sorcerer, a mystic man
with lightening speeds you spun tales in thunder clapping rooms
A modern day chief, good will ambassador of Hope
you were the glue of an entire village,
sticking your heart on everyone like that
The Discovery Cafe, your story telling room, disguised as a restaurant,
a place you opened years ago
Many came hungry only for your stories
One could not easily eat and run or have a cup of joe and go, just not possible
when Tito had the floor
Tales of fishing, gold panning, black and brown bears, one with his head stuck in a lard bucket,
or the one that chased some lady up a tree.
The way your hands moved, while you went into a trance was a sight to behold
Though you never confessed it, I'm pretty sure you were a hypnotist
How many times I went for coffee at 9AM never leaving til' noon,
completely bowled over, ****** in by the fantastic rip tide of you!
I saw you just months before you passed
Though you had gone deaf and blind, your love was ever present, it's been felt everyday since,
in a world that has changed a darker shade of blue,
Tito how can I ever thank you?
Jul 23, 2012
Jul 23, 2012 at 12:00 PM UTC
My imaginary friend climbs into bed with me and whispers in my ear every time I try to sleep. We dress in night-time: pull on black stockings, snap them around half-moon thighs.
We ladder the sky
and splinter our spines.
There are things we don't talk about (because we are the gaps between reality that still believe in selkes and Cornish piskies)
but for years we have been panning for dreams.
Doubt burns like fuse-wires but God sometimes freezes the electricity.
She crosses her fingers when she promises to believe. (That's the bargain). She talks to Him each hour
but He never replies
and she is so used to being doted on.
We pretend we are dead.
Just for tonight.
She doesn't think she matters:
mourning for the moon - her halo of humidity.
She traces the clouds' edges with highlighter.
I balance her morning-massacre mind with the inaugural thrum of a threatening migraine. I am not used to her megaphone chest and she forces our Scorpio symphony down my throat like an over-active heartbeat. (That's what frightens God).
She told me not to stick quills to my back,
said the weight of wings would only weigh me down.
Sep 28, 2014
Sep 28, 2014 at 11:22 AM UTC
My metaphor is better for the bin
My simile just says silly me
A joke, lost in translation
Wood, hidden by the trees
So I talk to the wind
Panning truths which dry to sand,
falling ashen.
Look to the cloud's lining
filing away like smoke
Out of time, out of sorts
Caught in a vortex
Time ganging up
Clogging, fogging
Come back mojo
Jun 8, 2012
Jun 8, 2012 at 11:57 AM UTC
So, you grew up,
leaving me Peter Panning for gold
amongst the grit of adulthood.
Your guitar gathers dignified dust,
while mine puffs and wheezes
yet another senile song,
an arthritic dog
treading painfully in step
with its selfish, thoughtless master.
I never envied you your brilliance
because it was shared, it was ours
but I've been toasting marshmallows on the embers
far too long.
And now your real life,
the one you've worked for, studied for,
sweated for
(and the one I've studiously ignored)
is to carry you over the sea
and away.
I have no doubt it is still your brilliance
that paves the trail,
But it's for others, now
and that is fine.
I am reconciled,
and full of hope for you and yours.
Let's see now:
G, B minor, C...
There's a song in here somewhere,
I know it.
Mar 17, 2015
Mar 17, 2015 at 4:58 AM UTC
Smash cut to my alarm clock
We’re in a movie
This is the story of an apathetic college guy
He meets a silly white girl who he spirals into love with
She wears black and smiles with such honesty
I need to look for any possible sign at all
I hate tripping onto my own fall
Smashing my face on the pavement
Let’s move that to a zoom in, close up
Plot Conflict, Disappointment to see you walk with some other guy
The antagonist of this quote on quote love story
No standing chance to be with you
Watching you walk away
Every single day
Not a chance, Old Sport
Only hearing the echo of your laugh
What kind of **** is this?
How did I overlook this?
Someone give me a fighting chance!
Panning Shot, I try to find your usual trail
To share something with you
To make this ******* movie interesting
A common thing, a simple thing
Playing with your hair or taking on a dare
The end is coming soon
And I never even got a chance
To try to have you dance
For the final scene
What a wasted chase for such a pretty girl
Cut to black
May 13, 2013
May 13, 2013 at 10:31 PM UTC
I've resolved to hold out hope
Some offering resilient
Passed down, an heirloom
From day to day to day
Through this damning night courier
I sell this trinket for a pittance of sleep
Please, just ten more minutes of pittance
And so hopelessly I'm found
Face first in down, safe swaddled dreams
Abound to excavate another vein
And so hopefully I'm found
Panning for dreams for passing tomorrow
Oct 3, 2014
Oct 3, 2014 at 10:45 AM UTC
Wading in a muddy riverbed,
panning for broken pieces of
pretty blue bottles that
glint in the
sun's rays like
azurite
Upstream,
without warning,
a deafening cry
of impending cathexes
The river surges
gasp...
rushes,
tosses,
thrashes me
in mysterium tremendum flow
and a flurry of foaming crests
I bathe in effervescence and
glide through
torrential sentiment,
submerged in
cosmic love
...sigh
Crawling from this eddy transcendence,
trembling
precariously up the shoreline
to rest in his arms of
fiery brilliance
gasp....
....
....sigh
to set him ablaze with
Divine oxygen that
beads from my
velvet lips like
dew drops, and
coo giggling whispers in his
ear of
soft, tender
reflections,
as he feeds to me
crackling embers that
surge to my
heart centre with
volcanic intensity
Reciting a story
sui generis
nested like Matryoshka,
the ever-unfolding opus,
tangled in sheets of
layers
upon
layers
of papyrus,
scribed
and
scribing
Oh, to wake in such a dreamscape.
sigh
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 6:13 PM UTC
My cat is gone
Stormshadow-san.
I've waited long enough,
Its time to search.
The giant hill covered in mis-matched patches of overly-healthy and near-dead grass, was no longer a ****** opsticle,
But an enormous accelerator to my race to find my buddy
I run fast into the wooded clearing
Panning far and wide
Ntt nttntt nttntt! Ntt nttntt nttntt! I exhort to him in his native tongue.
STORMYYY! NTTT NTT NTT!NTT!NTT!
(I sound like a dying chipmunk)
Gazing high into the swaying treetops,
A white-spot catches my not-so-great eyesight
My heart follows me down the hill
Faster than legs can move it raptures me to a scar in the little mountain before me
Its not him, but I keep looking
The trees, not yet fully budded, and green from the waters touch.
I see early flowers of purple and white springing from the dead and withered leaves.
I can't believe.
But I do, believe, in Love, and life.
My wandering eyes now fixated upon these little ironcly painted flowers fill with salt water and fog my heart.
I can tell that my heart is letting go, but the stubborn child in me says
"NOO OHOHO OHohoh *snort!"
I feel myself being held, by a father who understands and cares of his sons tears
And the tears suddenly disappear.
Like a flood, calm washes over me.
I turn back to the house of " exceptance"
Mine eyes look up for one second.
And there is snake eyes-san, jet black with girly features. She meows hello and slides below
My terribly worn out sneakers.
I knew she knew, and she knew I knew.
"He's gone, but im here with you"
Jul 12, 2015
Jul 12, 2015 at 5:47 PM UTC
in a state of disuse
the old gold mine stood
as the cost of retrieving it
twas not financially viable
miners back in the days
of the gold rush
had abandoned
their panning sites
skeletons of gold cradles
lain by the creek edge
the flecks of gold
had become a dream
the grandest of illusions
with the advent
of modern mining techniques
the old mine had life giving oxygen
put back into it again
a company from Sydney
commenced quarrying
along the creek's ore vein
good quality gold
twas retrieved
a bounty of abundance
which shone so vividly
if the old miners
of yesterday
were around
to-day
they'd be quoting
these words
in a most affirming way...
thought nothing can bring back the hour of splendor
in the grass of glory in the flower
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 9:30 AM UTC
The sun set upon this world and in the morning again it rose,
monuments towered the crust, but all life was somehow gone.
Panning through the downtown streets, there were no people in this land.
The ocean depths were devoid of life, and the polar caps lay silently ******
The Vegas strips were dead and still, the lights we know were dim.
New York was a desolate wreck, buildings crumbled and toppled in.
The Statue of Liberty stood tall, queen of all beyond her eyes.
She saw what had happened that fateful night, but she did not blink or cry.
The Eiffel Tower stretched into the heavens, king of all of grand Parí.
The Golden Gate Bridge connected two dead shores, silent as could be.
And what of this lovely place, where Big Ben let his hands tick away?
The world was so deathly silent; his ticking could be heard in Bombay.
There were no fish in the sea; they had perished in the night.
There were no gulls on the beach; hushed were their cries of fright.
There were no mummies in the tombs; the riches they had gone to waste.
There were no people in LA; to a silent crowd it roared and quaked.
There were no ***** in the sand; their scurrying feet were still.
And a pest control had done its work for there were no rats in the landfills.
There were no worms beneath within the earth; no birds to pull them apart.
There were no roaches in the dumps; no crying kids in Wal-Mart.
There were no ants within their dens; no eaters to pry them away.
There were no bacteria within this world; no viruses now, much to their dismay.
The plains were barren; there were no trees, grass, ferns, or weeds.
The tropical forests, the coniferous mountains, all rocky as could be.
And what of this once lovely planet? It spun through time and space.
Once so full of beauty and life, now completely laid to waste.
The Earth stood still as it raced through that void; all life stripped from its crust.
Still it never knew that we were gone, and so it spun finally hushed.
Jul 7, 2011
Jul 7, 2011 at 11:00 AM UTC
*Her expression is that of a child
Filled with wonder and mild
Panning deep blue waters
She is the gulfs daughter enthralled-
in the afternoon sea-breeze , longing for
sanddollars , tiny shells and dolphins ,
sandcastles and clapping palm trees* ..
Feb 20, 2017
Feb 20, 2017 at 5:19 PM UTC
We dredge secrets,
That's the start,
Panning love from art.
Our words wash over
Like sluicing water,
To clean the buried heart.
Crack the hard rock
To reach motherlode;
Veins enrich us,
With jewels to share.
Float to the summit
On romantic trysts;
Reclaim me from
An open pit
With deep drill
Diamond bits.
These small gems
We call poems
Are sweet as gold
From honeycombs.
Dec 7, 2014
Dec 7, 2014 at 2:13 PM UTC
I sit alone in a darkened room,
Eyes panning in optical zoom,
I stare hard into the black,
Waiting for them to attack,
They're always sneaking into my dreams,
Making things feel worse than it seems,
I'd ask them to leave it's too late,
Using my fear as a form of bait,
They'll never stop from eating me away,
My soul is bound to soon decay.
To live or to die I shall remain,
As I watch you go insane,
Try not to worry or have any fear,
For I will never shed a tear
But now I hide in the shadow of protection,
And hope that you are only a projection,
A crazed creature of my imagination,
A closely detailed illustration.
Aug 1, 2012
Aug 1, 2012 at 11:21 PM UTC
not got poetry within me...
have searched and sought,
found only dry bones
and hollow whispers
mirages to a soul that sighs.
mirages to a soul that cries...
bones that clack and clatter,
whispered words that natter
and scatter and dissipate
....at an alarming rate
my ear aches, my heart aches
and those bones, do break...
and shatter
mirages drift, mirages drift...
as i sift and seive a tired mind,
yet no poetry do i find....
Nov 26, 2015
Nov 26, 2015 at 4:50 PM UTC
Your poetry is like cinematography in my head.
How do you do it?
How do you point the formatting like a camera,
like you’re panning for gold,
and discovering something precious
so deep and real
just with the position of your italics?
I told you this,
and then you reciprocated,
saying,
I, on the other hand, use word choice
I listened and heard your intention
I choose and commit to one
like an undying promise
imbuing that choice with all the meaning I can.
You tell me you noticed,
and I suddenly had no words.
Jul 1, 2018
Jul 1, 2018 at 9:35 AM UTC